- [Man] Yes, hello.
- [Gary] Hello.
- [Man] Great to meet you.
- [Gary] Nice to meet you.
How are you?
- Good, very good. - Good, good.
- Hello, everyone.
- A few words.
This is our participants of the FLY program,
something we started new
basically teaching or showing
bigger companies how you can think and act
more of like start-ups,
to be more in love with it.
So, it was something you can certainly talk about.
- Sure.
(laughing)
- So, we were thinking if you could talk
maybe a little bit about entrepreneurship
what could be motivating.
- Sure, um, hello. - Hey.
So, I think what's super interesting to me
is the last eight or nine years of my life
I've been spending most of my time
with Fortune 100 companies
with my agency.
I think, without side-railing whatever you're preaching,
I think the biggest issue that we,
who have a point of view from the outside
of bigger companies,
have is sometimes too much of an ideology, you know?
I've become unbelievably empathetic to a lot of you
in what I didn't know coming from a family business
and coming from start up culture
is most of the companies that are big in the world
care about their finances every 90 days.
And, so, he can inspire you
for the next fucking six years of your life.
You can, you know...
There's nuances that you can pick up on,
and there's probably little tactics
that could create little moments
within your organization,
but I'm no longer delusional about this,
and I have no interest in pandering to an ideology.
I think all of you know the issue at hand
which is your organization's lack of appetite
for the investment that's required
to make meaningful change
during a major macro consumer and economic shift
of the growth of the internet.
I mean, this is...
It's going to be very hard for all of us
to muster up enough energy
and ability to move these things.
And, not to make it
there's nothing we can do,
but I think the reality is...
I would say this.
The most meaningful conversations I've had
with the biggest of the biggest companies
is instead of me pontificating that you should do this,
why don't we have a conversation
of what's gonna happen in the next three to 11 years
whenever it's your time
to actually really get hurt by this
when you'll be willing to do something about it.
Your companies aren't gonna do shit
until they have to.
Right? So...
I think the biggest thing you can do
is get them ready for the marathon.
Right, so I think about running.
If all these big companies,
I have no sense of the companies in this room,
but if big companies
are gonna be sucked into
adjusting to the reality of a new world,
I think everybody here understands
that there's very few big companies in the world
that don't have most of their money and energy
tied up into an infrastructure
that is becoming less relevant.
And, so, that's why it's gonna happen,
and so how do you get them on the treadmill?
Like, for the sake of what you're doing here,
you've gotta get your company on a treadmill
or eating a little bit better.
Not running the marathon yet, right?
What can you do to make incremental steps
so that when an Uber or Air BNB
or real Netflix or a big event happens
in whatever industry you're in.
And, that's what's happening, right?
If you went around and said,
"I'm in this,
"I'm in this,"
in my head I'm like,
"Okay, in the next 24 months,
"in the next 72 months,
"in the next 96 months."
Eventually, all of our numbers
are gonna come up.
Network television across the globe is dead
because now we have OTT,
and whether it's Netflix,
or something in Asia,
or something, you know, or Amazon,
it's over.
Having a satellite in the air is a bad idea.
Right? Having your retailers.
It's not that eCommerce is gonna take all the business.
It's just that there's enough being done
on commerce that the leases aren't a good deal anymore.
So, it doesn't take a...
I think the other thing
to think about as a theme
is it doesn't take...
It's not like whatever you're doing
gets replaced by some other new thing.
It's it doesn't take a lot of market share
taken away from you
for the whole thing to break.
So, those are the themes that I see going on here.
So, I think, you know,
for you and you,
and the key is not for us to be ideological
and say, "They get it."
You know, we think they don't get it.
They get it.
They're just playing by different rules,
and they can't get it done.
So, I think instead of spending all this time
on ideology that is great
for one day of inspiration,
but then next Thursday you can't do anything about it,
I'd challenge you guys
to think about curriculum
that actually makes something practical
that can move them...
Right?
'Cause it's coming.
For real.
(mumbling from audience)
Yeah, you know, for me,
'cause I've been in it for a long time,
it was question the decade ago.
Is it a fad?
Is it small?
It hasn't even... (sighs)
The internet is...
This is the secondary life.
This is the real life.
It just is.
- [Audience] That's scary.
(audience mumbles)
- And, Tara, to that point,
a lot of people are making business decisions
based on how they feel about it,
and that's dangerous, you know?
It's very dangerous to make business decisions
based on your personal point of view of technology.
And, I don't know if you guys
got to see my speech or not,
but that's what I was trying to talk about up there,
which is be practical.
Like, know what you're actually talking about.
I don't know what you're talking,
probably organizational,
but that's why I spend time on marketing
because marketing you can actually change the money.
You can actually move a million dollars
from Google AdWords to Facebook,
or from bus stop ads to Instagram,
where as a lot of the heady shit,
it's so inherently deep in the organization.
You can't move it
'cause there's a human that's gonna stop you.
So, that's what I would...
As you think about trying to bring value,
it's more practicality
because I think there's a little bit of audacity
amongst us in the start up world.
They know.
They just can't do anything about it.
- [Man] That's something we talk
quite a lot about actually.
Can we do something about it,
and what can we do?
I think what to demonstrate
is the small steps.
Like, something I hope they are getting involved with.
- I think HR is a very interesting place,
as I've learned more about big business.
HR's a place where companies waste a lot of money.
You know, nobody kind of questions
the HR budget for employees.
It looks good,
but then the money's being spent on things
that are just checking the box,
so one of the places I've seen fruitful for organizations,
if you're lucky enough to have
an open-minded or flexible HR lead,
is she or he,
you can team up with them,
or maybe you're in it,
or maybe you have part...
Again, I don't have context for the room,
but that's often times a place
where I've seen some really interesting things
'cause then you can go into education.
And, ultimately,
I don't love the way
school is done in the world,
but education's the game.
And, the funny part is,
I made a comment up there.
A lot of you have opinions
about Facebook ads and Instagram ads,
but you've never run one.
The biggest thing that I...
The reason that I think I have a lot of success
is I'm a business man
and then I care about all this stuff.
So, when I get to the C-Suite
or the board of big companies,
I talk about business.
And, when they get even a little educated about business,
not, "It's cool,"
not, "We should do it."
When it's about the P&L,
when it's about money,
they start listening a lot more.
- [Woman] You can bet on it.
- 100 percent.
To me, every time I talk about HR,
every time I talk about innovation,
every time I talk to the CFO,
the reason I believe in people
is turnover is expensive
so take care of your people.
It's money.
The reason I believe in innovation
is you're wasting so much money as a big company
on all these other things.
Are you not willing to put a little money
into where we're going?
So, I think that's the other thing is
make none of this ideological.
Make all of it financial.
'Cause that's what companies respond to.
(mellow organ music)