- Good morning.
- [Audience] Good morning.
- So, I'll give a little spiel, but honestly,
I think given the size of the audience,
and given the vibe here, I think we should go into Q&A.
I think that's where the more interesting
value comes out of.
But, to create a little framework.
I am an immigrant.
I was born in Belarus in the former Soviet Union.
I came here when I was three.
I lived in Queens, in Rego Park for two years,
in a studio apartment with five, six,
seven, eight family members.
So, I can relate to that grind and that hustle.
I literally didn't even know my dad
for the first 14 years of my life,
because he would leave before I would wake up
and get home after I fell asleep.
First as a stock boy in a liquor store
making two bucks an hour,
and then eventually a manager.
And immigrants, and I'm sure some of you know this,
immigrants have really figured out the secret
of American Business.
Which is don't spend any money
on dumb shit for 10 years,
save it all, and then buy something, right?
And so, that's what my dad did.
And he bought a small liquor store
in Springfield, New Jersey.
I grew up in Edison, New Jersey.
You know, lemonade stands, shoveling snow, baseball cards.
You know, it's so crazy for me that I get to live
through the era where an entrepreneur is cool.
The fact that I take 10 selfies a day blows my fuckin' mind.
The fact that hip hop artists that I love DM me.
It's just so crazy.
And it's happened, right?
It's happened for sports.
I think a lot of people forget.
In the 1950s, baseball players and football players
had jobs during the summer at hardware stores.
Everything gets it's day,
and I think there's nothing more Americana
than the entrepreneur, than the business person
and so, I'm just fortunate.
You know, when I was your age, I was a loser
by a lot of people's POV,
because I was a terrible student.
And the narrative 25 years ago was that entrepreneurship
was not a feasible way out.
That the only way out was Yale and Harvard and Cornell.
School was the only benchmark that created opportunity
and so for me,
I'm excited about this entrepreneurial thing,
but at the same token, to be very frank,
one of the things that I want to try to dissect
in our Q&A now is,
I also think it's gone a little bit too far
in the other direction.
I think everybody thinks they're going
to be a winning entrepreneur.
You know, it's funny.
Everybody says they're an entrepreneur.
That's like me saying I'm a basketball player.
That's cool.
It's fun that I get to run at the YMCA a couple of times.
But, I don't get paid.
Right, I'm not an NBA All-Star.
And what I think is happening right now is
people are putting the word entrepreneur
in their Instagram profile and they think it's a wrap.
They think they're going to make it and this and that.
And it's extremely hard.
It's extremely lonely.
Listen, if you want this, you need to understand
that there's a lot of stuff
that people are not talking about.
Nobody in my tech startup world is talking
about the suicides that are happening when kids fail.
Maple, the food service
that was supposed to be so big, folded yesterday.
This is happening every day. Right?
And everybody thinks it's so easy,
and the reason they think it's so easy
is I grew up, when I was your age,
you couldn't roll up on people and say
here's my idea and they'd give you a million dollars
on a $4 million valuation.
That was insane, that's not how it was.
And I think the other thing I'm fearful of,
especially when I look around the room,
there's a couple of us, but for the majority of you,
we've had a good economy now for the last
seven or eight years.
And for a lot of you, seven or eight years ago,
you were a real youngster.
So you haven't lived through when the world melts.
I lived through the collapse of .com, 2000.
And then right behind it 9/11.
And then 2007, and eight.
And I've navigated my businesses through that.
That's hard.
Everybody's a peacetime general,
but who's a wartime general?
Everybody's really great, everybody's a hero
when you can print a logo on a t-shirt
and say I've got a fashion brand. Right?
But what about actually building something sustainable
that you can eat on and things of that nature?
So, for me, I'm not trying to discourage,
I'm just trying to paint a very real picture.
This is a long game.
Like, from 22 to 30, I did nothing.
I worked 15 hours a day, Monday through Saturday.
You know, it's funny.
I was talking at a talk the other day,
it was a Friday.
I go, "Tomorrow, more of you are going to
"have more Saturdays off in your 20s than I did
"in my entire 20s, tomorrow."
Because Saturday is the biggest day of retail
and that's when we sold the most wine,
so I was just there every single Saturday
of every 20 to 30 years old, 10 years.
Every fuckin' Saturday.
And so when people,
all the cliche shit that we all talk,
"I'm grindin'," "I'm hustlin',"
you know, like "I'm doin' this."
I laugh because I look at people's Insta
and they're fucking at Coachella.
(audience laughter)
So I think there's a mix.
There's a mix because entrepreneurship
has also gotten cool.
I said something at a talk that really resonates with me.
And she's like, "Oh fuck, club promoters
"have taken over entrepreneurship." Right?
We're putting it on this pedestal.
And now, with the way that Instagram dominates our world,
and the visuals of watches and private jets,
and girls and guys,
and boats and champagne,
I'm just like, "Fuck."
99% of people are gonna lose.
And what I'm scared of,
is if people actually knew what to do, which is eat shit,
like work real hard, be real patient.
You know what I would wish on you more than anything?
More than anything.
And I'm looking around the room.
Our wonderful cops back there, a couple people here.
There's seven or eight of us that know this,
the rest of you don't,
which is if you knew that at 40,
you felt the same way inside as you do at 20,
it would fuck with your head.
If you actually knew how on fire
like, I think we're friends.
Like, I think we're the same age.
It's crazy.
When I was 22, my cousin was in the business.
He was 30, he was eight years older than me.
I thought he was old as fuck.
(audience laughter)
I remember, that's not super long ago.
I was 22, he was 30.
He was old as shit.
So when I sit here and I'm 41,
I'm like, "Fuck, these kids think I'm real fucking old."
(audience laughter)
And I feel fucking as young as you.
And if you knew that, if you knew that,
you would get way more patient.
If you knew that, you would get way more patient.
I promise you, the number one thing
that I'm trying to leave here with
is to get a couple of you to get real fucking patient
'cause that is the singular advantage.
If you actually don't give a fuck,
the way I didn't, of what people think about you,
all through your 20s, like you just don't care,
like you literally don't,
and you just build something for yourself,
you have a much better chance.
So many people here will fail
in their entrepreneurial journeys
because they're worried about what people think.
That's just what it is, my man.
That's just what it is.
People are worried about what other people think,
how many followers they have,
how good the business is doing,
what they're doing, where they're going,
what they're wearing.
It doesn't fucking matter.
It especially doesn't matter
if you pour all that energy into building something
and then at 33 you're winning, and they're resetting.
(audience cheers and applause)
And if you really knew how young you would be at 33,
it would really change everything.
Like, that's the thing.
I'm trying to really put the words together
'cause I'm going back to that time.
It's just hard. Right?
It's hard when you're that young.
It's hard to realize you'll feel that young.
I just don't know how to say it.
I really don't know how to say it.
I don't, but I want to say it with conviction,
so that a couple of you believe me.
But you have to build an actual business that makes money.
If you're going into the tech business,
if you want to build an app, it's hard.
For every single Snapchat and Instagram,
there's eight million Insta-shits. You know?
Everybody fails.
And we get seduced by the two or three people that don't.
It's really funny.
I went to Mount Ida College.
It was 94% African-American, Latino,
real minority college.
And every single person wanted to be a rapper.
It was 1994.
Everybody was gonna and I remember thinking,
"Wow, this is some delusional shit."
How are you gonna be a rapper if you're not writing?
How are you gonna be a rapper if you're not in the studio?
How are you gonna be a rapper if you're not hustling?
And it's funny, like, the white boy version
of that now is tech.
Everybody thinks they're gonna build Snapchat and Instagram.
And I'm like, how are you gonna do that
when you're at Coachella?
How are you gonna do that if you're out every night?
How are you gonna do that
when you're raising money and you're,
it's funny, raising money has been so detrimental
to the startup community.
It doesn't take a hero to lose $30,000 a month.
Everybody in here can do that.
And so, a couple things I want to get across,
and I wanna really go into Q&A,
and get real detailed 'cause I'm here.
I'm not coming back.
(audience laughter)
So let's take advantage of it, you know what I mean?
So the couple things that I think
you need to really wrap your head around is "it's for life."
99% of the kids that walk into my office or I come across,
they're trying to flip their shit.
Which means they're doing it for the money.
And when you're doing it just for the money,
you've got way less chance to actually make the money.
So if you build a business,
if you're in the mentality,
if you're in the mindset of building it for life,
you get slower.
You get more true.
You build much better foundation.
Basically if you're thinking about building a house,
everybody's worried about decorating the fucking room
and what lighting are you gonna have,
or what color is your wallpaper.
And meanwhile, the cement you built the house on is shit
and it's not gonna matter
'cause the first time it's gonna rain
your shit's gonna fall.
Right?
And so that's, everybody's just jumpin',
everybody's so impatient.
You want to and listen, I get it.
look around this room and I associate.
I don't look exactly like everybody
but I can come from that same kind of place
with a lot of people. Right?
When you have that chip on your shoulder,
the hardest thing to do is patience.
Right?
And there's so many narratives,
whether you came from nothing,
whether your parents,
whether your sibling is going to Yale.
There's a million different chips
and we've all got them
and the hardest thing to do
when you've got a chip on your shoulder, is to wait.
'Cause you can't wait to be like,
"Fucking told you."
Right?
Everybody's living for that.
I love that.
I live for that.
But the best way to do that
is to actually pull it off
and the best way to pull it off
is to put it into a 10-year window, a 20-year window,
and everybody's in a 10-month window.
Everybody rolls up to me and is like
"I'm gonna be a millionaire by 27."
I'm like, "What the fuck does that mean?"
(audience laughter)
I'm like, "Cool, mazel tov."
(audience laughing)
It's the wrong mentality
and the youth right now
because of the pedestal of entrepreneurship
and the PR nature.
You guys know this.
Your fucking Instagram and Snapchat
is basically you PR-ing yourself to the world.
You're getting that perfect lighting,
you're waiting for that perfect,
you guys are even doing shit
just for the fucking selfie.
You're like, "I really don't wanna go out.
"But fuck it, I'll go there and get my--"
(audience laughter)
People are actually doing stuff now
just for the selfie itself.
So we're painting this image
and underneath in the reality
everybody's gonna lose, everybody's gonna lose.
And so how do you build your brand?
How do you build your app?
That takes a lot of work, like real,
you've gotta love the work.
The thing that really I got lucky with and that's DNA.
When I was four and
I didn't read a business book
or go to a GaryVee talk
to get motivated at six years old
to think it was fun instead of playing
to stand behind a table and sell lemonade
every single fucking day.
That's just DNA.
And so I don't sit here easily and be like do this
'cause it's not easy.
You've got your DNA.
You've got the things that come natural to you.
But I will tell you why I'm successful,
'cause I like the grind,
'cause I feed off the journey,
'cause I love the process,
'cause I like the pain.
I like the phone call that I had to have this morning
about a tough situation.
Shit's pressure.
You build a business, you're just managing people.
It's a lot of stress.
And so, but I love that
and you gotta decide if you love that.
If you're the person in your family
that loves to have everybody's fuckin' problems on you
and you try to navigate it?
Now I'm hearing something that makes me think,
okay you might be able to build a business.
But if you're not
then you may really wanna be the number three
or the number six.
You may wanna catch that tiger by the tail
of somebody that you see can eat shit 24/7/365,
and what you're good at is
you're really fucking organized,
you're really fucking creative,
you're a really great salesperson.
A lot of people getting confused
with being a good salesman and woman
with being a good entrepreneur.
They're very different things.
You've gotta figure yourself out.
The key is self-awareness.
I suck at most things, really.
I just suck shit at most things
but I know what I'm good at and I go all-in.
And all the people we admire that's what they do too.
They're not good at everything,
they're good at something
and then they just go deep. Right?
And so I would highly recommend
the other thing that I'd love for you
to leave here with besides patience,
is start being honest with yourself.
I know what you wanna be,
I wanna be six foot five,
the quarterback of the Jets,
bang supermodels and have a trillion dollars.
(audience laughter)
I get it, I understand people want to do things.
I get it.
I understand you want an island and trillion dollar
or raise a family or start a cooking,
I understand what you want
but it's much better to understand what you are
and build around that.
And triple down on those skills.
For example, for me I really like people
and so I'm a very HR-driven CEO.
You emailed and said, "Hey, I'm super pumped
"you're gonna be speaking in my school."
I'm like, "Come with me."
- [Woman] Yep.
- That's good, that's gonna build our relationship.
How long have you been at Vayner?
- [Woman] Since, well, I was an intern.
- I know that.
- [Woman] Hired in January.
- Right, so we're now five, six months
and we can go two years without interacting
if the serendipity,
if she doesn't take me up on my open-door policy
but when she emails she's like,
"That's really cool that you're gonna be there."
I'm like "Come with me."
Not because of anything else
but I wanna build a relationship with my employees.
So I know that I'm good at that.
So that's why we're HR-driven.
That's why the Chief Heart Officer
is the most important person
not the CFO, not the COO, her and me.
That's just, that's not what a lot of people think
on the outside,
especially if they watch my videos where I'm competitive
or when I'm on stage like this,
when I'm my most crass and aggressive
but that is who I am
and that's what I triple down on.
Right, and so you need to figure
that out about yourself.
One thing, I'll leave with this and then
I really really wanna do Q&A.
Number 18 at Instagram made a lot more money
than number one of a billion different companies.
Number 6 at Google, number 42 at Facebook,
number 113 at Bain & McKinsey,
they made a lot more money than
number one of a billion other things.
So please, please make sure,
and I know the entrepreneur club's here
and I'm not trying to suppress it,
I'm trying to get people to get self aware
because that's where all the upside is.
And you could be a co-founder or a number three
and really really win, you gotta put yourself in that lane.
Those are some shits on my mind,
thanks for having me.
(audience applause)
- [Abraham] So,-- - What's your name?
- [Abraham] Abraham. - Abraham.
- [Abraham] One, thanks for coming,
but there's a big problem with entrepreneurs,--
- Your voice is amazing.
(noise in the room drowns out speaker)
- So what's going on is that that's great
but a lot of entrepreneurs,
sometimes they fall into a trap
that they throw money down a well
until they've whittled themselves
into a hole and they can't dig themselves out.
- And are you talking about debt?
I'm asking, credit card debt?
- Everything. Because what happens is,
like you said, these guys can lose $30,000 a day--
- That's different though.
When you're lucky enough to be able to raise capital,
that's lower risk losing money, right?
To me, you may lose your reputation which is the worst,
you may lose an opportunity which is terrible
but it's much more fun to lose $30,000 a month
of somebody else's money
than take $58,000 in credit card debt
'cause you got a dream and then it's compounding interest
at 18%, you're fucked forever.
So I'm just trying to get clarity.
- [Abraham] No, I understand, but generally,
when do you tell that young entrepreneur
that keeps trying to chase that Instagram dream
when they should,-- - Stop?
- [Abraham] Stop because if they're chasing
after the wrong dream,
and they'll have been in it for ten years,
all they've done is dug themselves in this crazy hole.
- So, two things, and this is why I'm trying to get clarity.
If somebody's taking on personal debt
and they've been adding, first of all they won't be able
to get away with ten years of that,
but to me I'm always very fearful of somebody
taking out credit card loans to start their business.
It scares the shit out of me,
because it ends up bad almost all the time.
If it's somebody who's good enough
at raising capital forever and losing other people's money,
and reputation hasn't caught up with them,
that's a little less scary but it also seems
like a waste of time.
If you're good enough to raise capital
for a decade and keep losing people's money,
you're probably good at some shit.
And instead of keep doing that
why don't you go become a professional money raiser
and take a commission on what you raised
for other people.
It just seems like you'd be smarter about that skill.
Listen, I hate telling people to stop
because you just never know.
The only time I ever tell people to stop,
I'll never say it here,
I'll give you guys what I just gave you.
I'll only tell people to stop when I know them,
if we were homies like, "Yo bro,
"Abe I love you but come work with me man,
"this is not happening."
You know, I think it's a very difficult conversation,
I also think the market will tell them.
What I think again, and I brought it up earlier,
is that it's been good for the last eight years.
Right, you know?
You're an Instagram influencer,
when things are good, detox teas
are paying you 3,000 bucks to take a photo,
when things are bad nothing's there.
And you go from being an influencer
to working at Chase Bank.
- [Abraham] Thank you. - You got it.
My man. - [Ian] My name is Ian.
- Ian. - I have a quick question.
- [Ian] I read your book, Crush It!
- Thank you.
- [Ian] What you said about patience really has resonated
with me 'cause I think it's so true.
But a lot of us are in the midst,
I can't speak for everyone.
For me, people I hang out with, my freinds.
We're in the midst of finding our passions
and the process of finding that
can be very--
- [Gary] Daunting.
- Exactly.
- [Gary] Yeah.
- [Ian] What do you suggest one does
to keeping an open mind and--
- I got one, I got an answer for you.
'Cause this has been asked from me for the last ten years
since Crush It! came out.
But I don't have the right answer,
but I have one answer that has resonated the most which is,
I think a lot of people trying to find their passion,
and like okay cool if I love it
then that gives me a better chance to build a business.
I would say the one thing is I would take a step back
and reframe it.
Instead of looking for it let it come to you
is how I think about it.
So what I would do is
when you're not looking for your passion
and you and your crew are talking
about what you're gonna do and how you're gonna do it,
what do you do?
Right, to me it's like what are you doing
when you're not trying to build a business?
Whether that's music or sports
or shopping or fishing or coding,
what are you doing when you could be doing anything?
That's why eSports fucks with me
'cause I'm 41 right, which means I grew up with all the kids
that were like the early video,
we were the early video game crew.
Like Nintendo fucked with our heads, you know,
we're like, Oh my God!
You know and we were playing
and everybody was told not to play, right?
I think about all those kids
that were like the best Madden players
in the first year or two, best players in, you know,
Doom and all that shit, and like
they were talked into being lawyers
yet they could be making $4 million a year now
as eSports stars and if they would have just
followed their passion, which is,
and you know, 15 years ago if you're like "video games",
everybody would have laughed you out of this room.
Like what are you doing video games for?
Like that's a waste of time!
Right? Right? That's a waste of time.
And now you've got people making $5, $10, $15, $100 million
a year being video game players.
I would ask, first of all, you got a lot of time
back to patience, I'm glad you brought that up,
and two, just audit what you're doing
when you're not thinking about business.
Those are always the hard businesses, the sports business,
the music business,
the fashion business, those are hard.
Everybody likes them, that's why their big businesses,
but you should at least start there.
You're better off failing in that and then resetting as,
now you're 27, you went for it in sports,
you picked up other passions along the way,
you're like, "Oh, I found out all about food"
or "I like jazz now" or, you know,
it's fucking crazy how life long, how long life is, my man.
Yep. You got it.
- [Blake] Hey Gary. - Hey man.
- [Blake] My name is Blake.
So I just had a question on your, do you always,
you're always talking about owning the Jets one day.
- [Gary] Yes!
(audience laughter)
- How often do you sit down and really focus on a bigger,
just expanding your vision?
Like what is your process for really sitting down
and really getting to think bigger,
get yourself to like be so, dream so--
- How do I like manifest?
- [Blake] How like-- - What's the mindset?
- [Blake] Yeah, what's your mindset behind that?
- And how do I like process?
- [Blake] Yeah.
You know, why do you do that?
Why do you dream big, like why, what's the purpose of it,
because some people dream big, but--
- Yeah, that's a good question.
- [Blake] Why aren't you the like, what's the--
- So let him hold on to the mic for a second, just in case.
So first of all, I hate that my dream
is to buy the New York Jets.
I'll tell you why, because,
for a lot of reasons (chuckles)
they're fucking pissing me off.
(audience laughter)
Because it's a vain one. It's not super noble.
It's not like the kind of thing I can like,
it's not like I wanna like, you know,
when I work on Pencils of Promise
or I'm going to Ghana in a couple weeks,
those are things I feel proud of,
when I'm with Charity: Water
and we're trying to literally cure clean water
around the world, that's where you can feel like a good man.
Buying the Jets seems like fucking one worse version
of the fucking shit that's going on on Instagram, you know,
But, it's my truth, you know.
What people don't know, 'cause they shouldn't spend
this much time knowing my shit is
I learned how to speak English by watching the Jets.
I used to get made fun of and picked on
'cause I couldn't speak English,
but the first time I went outside
and the kids were throwing a Jets football around,
they made me feel welcomed and that's the first time
I felt like an American kid.
It got deep in me, you know, it's my truth.
Somewhere around fourth grade, as I started to play,
I'll never forget it, Joaquil Shaw ran me over like a truck
and that's when I was like, "Yeah, I'm more likely
"to own the Jets than play for them."
(audience laughter)
Somewhere around fourth grade I was like,
"Yeah, that's how I'm gonna do it."
And then I never let go of it.
And then, to be very honest with you,
I don't think about
a lot of things other than the process.
Everbody's always making these manifesto boards
and fucking writing down what they're gonna do,
I'm just like, I've got that one thing,
I'm gonna buy the Jets, cool,
what's really great about shooting big
is that if you fall short, it's still big. You know?
So that's why I get pissed when somebody rolls in,
like, "When I'm 32, I'm gonna be a millionaire".
I'm like, "Cool".
Like, go bigger if you're 22, you've got time to go bigger.
You can settle on that, and if you're doing that,
then you become short-term, then you're about the money.
When you wanna buy something for $4 billion,
you can't even worry about the money in your 20s, 30s, & 40s
right, 'cause it's so big, like that money's bad, actually,
'cause if you get the money and spend it on dumb shit,
you're not getting there, so I'm punting.
My lifestyle is pretty humble in the scheme of things
'cause I don't want to waste the money of private jets.
I need it for the New York Jets.
(audience laughter)
My process is to not think about it.
I've said it, it's been there forever
and then I just make it about the work.
- [Blake] So you say it one time, you just keep on,
it's just in the back of your mind, not--
- I do make decisions based on it, right.
I sold 30% of VaynerMedia to Steven Ross,
the owner of the Dolphins, because he, specifically,
was an NFL owner, there's only 32 of them,
I want to get on the inside.
I go to the Super Bowl, I hang out with the other owners.
Even if I make the money, those fuckers have to vote me in,
like, you know, that's an inside club.
I'm chipping away at that.
I do do make some decisions on that,
lots of decisions on that,
but to be very honest with you, it's a good time to say it,
I don't really wanna buy the Jets,
I just wanna try to buy the Jets.
(audience applause)
- [Navindra] Thanks for being here.
- Sure. - [Navindra] I'm Navindra.
So I work with my buddy Ollio and we make
lights for skateboards for night time safety.
- Awesome.
- [Navindra] And part of what we did when marketing
was collaborating with like brand ambassadors
and stuff like that and I noticed
that it didn't really focus on getting
us a purchase from people it really
just focused on getting their followers
on to our kind of platform.
- Yep.
- [Navindra] But I wondered how long do you think
typically decision making it does
for like buying something.
- Listen if you're able to siphon fans
from other people with those endorsement deals
and get them on to your platform that's a win.
It's up to you now to actually get them to actually buy.
Getting people to the place is super important.
Closing's a whole different skill.
So now a is your product good enough?
Like listen I'm a big time marketer
but I always tell people I'm like
if your product is shit there's nothing I can do.
Right, I could just let a lot more people know
your product is shit you know?
So A, first of all you gotta make sure the product's right.
B, have you asked?
So like the question is if I went
to your Instagram right now have
you also just put out fly pictures
and cool shit or have you actually said
you know link in our profile buy our shit?
Like have you thrown that right hook?
- [Navindra] Yes, yeah I have live link
to my website everything.
- Right and so if you're not converting
the next thing I would do is I would literally DM
every single person that follows you and ask them why not?
Ask them like hey we done some stuff we're just,
you know you don't wanna say hey we're doing a survey
'cause they'll be like fuck you
but like hey you know quick question like
you know obviously you gotta be smart,
you gotta be. - [Navindra] Personable.
- Yeah you gotta be one on one,
you gotta be like hey Karen,
you know thanks for following us quick question right?
And then you gotta remember how Instagram works
and the DM it only shows the first couple words
so you gotta test different words
that get more people like you gotta be smart.
'Cause if it's like Hey Karen she might
be out but if it's like quick question she might look.
Or like got something for you she'll definitely look.
Like you gotta be smart like what people
don't understand is there's the clouds and the dirt, right?
And when you watch me and DailyVee I'm giving
you the clouds right?
Because I can't give you the dirt because
it's usually dirt from my clients
and I can't share it but what I just
did for you that's the dirt.
Understanding how everything works
you have to be a practitioner.
I've gotta be a plumber not just an architect.
And that's why I'm different than
most people that look like me.
I'm in it.
I'm doing the work.
I understand how this shit works.
I understand how to get people
to swipe up in an Instagram ad
and watch a four minute video from,
excuse me on a Snapchat ad and
get to watch a four minute video
most people haven't even run
a Snapchat ad yet.
I understand why it's smart to buy
filters around 20,000 like you
should be buying filters around skate parks.
You know like if you're doing that awesome
it makes me happy and you should be smart though.
You should buy it from 4 P.M. on
so you catch both waves of after school
not just at nine where you catch one
like there's this is detail shit.
- [Navindra] Perfect thanks.
- [Shawn] Hi I'm Shawn and I'm vice president
of marketing for the entrepreneurial club so.
- [Gary] Awesome.
(audience applause)
- I don't know how I made it I've seen
the struggle first hand it's been a long struggle.
Not really my dad 'cause he wasn't really here for me.
I seen the struggle and in the face
how do you soften the blow?
- How does one soften the blow what they see?
- Of like struggling 'cause it's like I'm a student
and I struggle here and I struggle there
so how do I soften that blow?
- By realizing you have no fuckin' choice.
Like you know like that's the not fun answer.
Right like I wish I could come with a little
bit more honey for you but the reality
is like I think it's better to go the other way.
Right like I think it's like it is what it is.
Like you could dwell on that struggle
which is very real or you could change
your perspective and be like okay
it's the odds of becoming a human being
are 400 trillion to one.
You were more likely to win the Mega Millions
in your life nine times than to actually have a life.
So you could say fuck it
like I got this life,
it's not as good as rich white kid that
got a $400 trillion trust fund
but at the same token and let me tell you this,
I look at that face and I'm like
do you know how sad I am for my kids?
I'm being dead serious. You may think it's funny,
I don't want that life.
I love this narrative.
I like the admiration.
When you get trust fund babied,
you get disrespected.
Like, like I look at this,
I look at you with way more respect than my homies
that have everything handed to them,
because I'm like you had it handed, that's not fun either,
I've spent time, like I used to think that was fun,
I've spent time with them, they're real fucked up.
Like, I'm serious, you know, everybody's grass is greener
on the other side, I get it,
and I don't wanna be like hey, it really sucks
to be a trillionaire kid, it doesn't.
But, there's plenty of suicide and fucked up depression
and all that.
I think the right answer man, is to realize
you got what you got, and it's like poker, right?
You might not have gotten the best hand,
in your perspective, but you still have a shot.
You know, like, my favorite story of my life
is playing checkers with the founder of Uber, Travis.
We're at this fancy fucking conference in Hawaii,
and we're playing checkers.
Right, it's like two in the morning, I dunno,
we're just playing fucking checkers, right.
(audience laughter)
And I'm in deep shit, like it's over, like he's got me.
If you've ever played checkers, I'm finished.
And so I'm like fuck man,
I really don't want to lose this match
and so I decide to, I think about it for a little bit,
over a couple of moves, and I decide to make pretend,
that I made a move that I'm upset about,
hoping that he reacts to it quickly.
So I make this move, and I go "Fuck."
and try to make pretend that I need to go back,
but like, my hand was up ready.
So he jumps me, which set up a triple jump for me,
and I won.
That's how I think about your life.
(audience applause) You know.
Thank you, man.
Listen, listen, the other thing is perspective.
I've been to Harlem plenty, and not as much as you obviously
but when you go to Ghana, when you go to other places,
there's a lot of people out there, man.
The trip that I sent a lot of my friends to,
that come from inner city coasts, is Mississippi.
Like, perspective is a funny thing.
I just think there's only one person Earth
that's allowed to complain.
Like, there's the seven plus billion of us,
and there's literally somebody who's in last place.
Like on that rank.
Right, right?
They're in a cave right now as a human slave, or something.
I'm being...
This is weird but it's true, there's somebody
who's in last place.
And unless you're that person, you can't complain.
And I think if you take that mindset,
it gets real good, and that doesn't take out of the equation
being a minority, being a female, being poor,
being born to really difficult parents situation, like,
that doesn't eliminate it.
I'm just trying to figure out what the mindset is
to get out of it.
Because if you're on the defense, you're on the defense.
Because I see the same thing happen with the kid
who sits and complains, a friend of mine who,
literally, literally, literally has $20 million in the bank,
as a trust fund kid, he's losing.
Everything out of his mouth is defense.
And it sounds ridiculous but you sit there,
and it's another human being and that's there problem right?
Everybody disrespects me,
I'm a loser, this and that, like.
That's life, you got it.
- [Kayla] Hi Gary. - Hi.
- [Kayla] My names Kayla. - [Gary] How are you?
- Thanks for coming down, this is very surreal for me,
because I actually grew up in Edison, repping JP.
- [Gary] No way! - Yeah.
- [Gary] I love it.
Did you go to John Adams Middle School?
- No, I actually went to
Rochester Prep and Liberty Franklin,
but my brother went there.
So, very surreal 'cause I've been watching
Wine Library back in '07.
- [Gary] I love it. You're OG.
- Yeah.
So I'm actually kind of on this quest to learn
from the best people, kind of consider myself
a student of life and a student of people
not in any institution, thank you.
(audience applause)
- You know that nobody else gets anything remotely
close to that now right?
That's how it starts, that's it, it's over.
She was smart, she won, lets move on.
(audience laughter)
- [Man] Okay, I wasn't going to ask you to shout out me.
- [Gary] (laughs) Definitely not.
- So, me and my brother are just starting up a business,
and we want to expand a lot during the summer.
- [Gary] What kind of business is it?
- We're doing like ad tech startup.
- [Gary] Yep.
- And so, we're trying to like bring on more people
and we're just wondering how much time
should we spend on getting good people
versus trying to bring them on quickly.
And also have them share the vision of the company.
- [Gary] Is the company in a place where you're getting
a lot of deal flow and clients?
- [Man] Recently, not really.
- So, are you trying to bring on engineers
to build it out?
- [Man] Yeah, engineers and people like that.
- Then I would go with good.
I'd be a little bit more picky.
The only time you should over expand
and be just hiring C's and D's
and just hoping that some are good,
is when the business pressure of,
people wanna give you money.
And because of lack of people, you're saying no.
But when you're actually building the product,
you know, a bad engineer can really set you back, right.
And so, are both of you engineers, or is one of you?
- [Man] Yeah, we're both engineers.
- So that's great.
Entrepreneurship has created some funny ass shit,
including two nontechnical co-founders,
building technical products
and outsourcing and getting fucked.
So you guys are in a good spot.
What I would do, to be frank, you're young, right?
Like, I think you should be spending every minute on it.
Like, I think you should be interviewing people at
10:00 P.M. and 11:00 P.M., at 6:00 A.M., like,
I would try to get 20, 15, 10 interviews into a day,
instead of three, four, five.
That's how I would probably attack it, because,
you're going to need to win on quality.
Are you having, are you guys having a problem
with deal flow of getting good talent?
- [Man] I think we just need to talk to more people.
I'm trying to reach out to people but I'm still trying to
get more people to interview with us.
- Are you guys spending any time in communities like
Meetup or Reddit or other places
where there's a scale of people talking?
- [Man] No, but I think we need to start doing that more.
I just got into the engineering classes.
- Awesome.
The good thing is you're teched out, right?
- [Man] Yeah. - You know...
You know, what's so crazy and I think some of you know this
it's crazy that bulletin boards are still around.
And kind of real, right?
So I know when a lot of my engineering talent
is looking for talent.
It's stunning to me that they go into
some of these ruby or python bulletin boards even, ya know?
Slack channels I think is a place
where you can siphon some...
Public Slack channels is a place
where I think you can find some engineers.
So those are just some details I think you can use.
- [Man] Okay, thank you. - You're welcome.
- [Jarret] Hi, Gary.
This is Jarret. - Jarret.
- [Jarret] I watched your content for a while.
- Thank you.
- [Jarret] I think is really awesome
so thank you for being there. - Thank you.
- [Jarret] I'm actually just starting a business now myself--
- [Gary] Good, awesome. - [Jarret] with a few friends.
We're still in the design phase.
And I wanted to know when it comes to, of course,
designing and then marketing and building a website.
There's only three of us.
Do you think it's smarter to focus on one thing at a time?
Do you think it's smarter to- - What's the business?
- [Jarret] It's for skateboarders to protect their
shoes from any damage that could happen to them
while you're stopping.
- Have you designed the product yet?
- [Jarret] It's basically finished.
We just have to manufacture it.
- And so is there anything stopping you?
Is it money? Is it the right partner?
Is there anything stopping you from manufacturing it?
- [Jarret] Well not right now.
Money is definitely an issue,
but we're working towards that right now.
- So you're gonna clearly sell this on Shopify, right?
- [Jarret] I've never heard of Shopify.
(audience laughter)
- So you should definitely build it on Shopify.
Because that means you won't have to really build the site.
So you'll be set there.
So that's good. - [Jarret] Okay.
- I'm glad you came to this talk and heard about Shopify.
(audience and Gary laugh)
So I think you're in motion, right?
- [Jarret] Yeah. - If you get the product.
The site's gonna be, once you Google out Shopify
and learn how to do it, that's a really low-cost way
to be into retail, so that's huge.
And then on the marketing front,
I think it's hard core influencer marketing.
Obviously, you've got to file it back to your thing.
You might've gotten the wrong influencers, right?
Like maybe they gave you--
- [Navindra] Yeah, I realized that getting the top tier guys
doesn't really do anything.
You gotta get the B-level guys
because they're the up-and-coming ones.
- Yeah, the long-tail is always more interesting
because a lot of people really pay.
If somebody has 18,000 followers,
a lot of times, those 18,000
are really watching and following.
You start getting to that high level,
it just becomes passive and one's feed.
So I gotta find the right influencers
and just gotta scrap, right?
Just gotta get awareness, ya know?
But shoot for the moon.
You should hit up.
You should slide
into the DM of every single major skateboarder in the world
and ask them to put you on.
And 99.999% of them will say "No."
But if one says "Yes," everything changes.
It's just grind.
It's a game of numbers.
Do you have the perseverance?
Do you love "No" the way I love "No"?
I love "No," ya know.
Because "No" gets followed up by, "I fucking told you."
(audience and Gary laugh)
(audience applause and cheers)
- [Crowd] Let's go Kenny!
Hey Kenny!
Kenny, yeah, Kenny!
- [Kenny] My name's Kenny.
Nice to meet you. - I hear it.
(audience and Gary laugh)
- [Kenny] My question
isn't necessarily entrepreneurship related.
- Sure, no worries.
- [Kenny] It's more personal branding related.
- Sure, let's do it.
- [Kenny] How can college seniors and recent grads
start building a personal brand
to potentially build a business
or to get hired at a company they wanna get hired?
- Talk about shit you know, Kenny.
- [Kenny] That's it? - Yep.
(audience laughter and cheers)
You know, everybody's trying to build a personal brand.
It became this thing.
It's crazy. You're holding Crush It!.
When I wrote that,
people didn't even know what the word meant, right?
People laughed at the book you're holding.
Because you have to understand, it's 10 years ago.
The thought of like, "Go on YouTube."
People didn't even know what YouTube was and Twitter was.
I was like, "Go on YouTube."
I went on CNN and all these places.
Literally these are the interviews.
You can find them on Google or on YouTube.
I'm like, "Go on YouTube and Twitter."
And the hosts, this is CNN, the hosts are like,
"What's YouTube?"
(audience laughter)
It seems crazy now, but everybody wants to do that.
The way you build a personal brand
is people want to follow you, right?
So why would people wanna follow you?
You're pretty.
You're funny.
You're smart.
You're motivating.
You gotta have something.
But the thing to do is not to front.
Everybody's playing an act
which is a house of cards.
You need to speak your truth.
- [Kenny] Document, don't create things.
- Document, don't create.
Like all those people just gave you daps
'cause you're clearly a likable dude.
That's gonna play out,
that's a winning formula,
that's the shit I had too. Right?
I just also, first of all,
and this is something you gotta think about
I also just decided to put my head down for 12 years
before building a personal brand
because it was a lot more fun to build a personal brand
around building an actual business.
The reason I came up with document don't create
was it gives a kid like you a shot.
So you could,
you could either put your head down for 15 years,
pop out and then start building
or right now you could just be like,
I'm Kenny, I got it, this is what I got going on.
Not much yet.
I'm not gonna give you business advice
when I haven't built a fucking business
but I could surely tell you
what fucking kids fuck with right now.
You could talk about your life, culture.
Everybody wants, listen if you'd like,
I knew, this gets a little bit into younger than this demo
but you might have some younger nieces, nephew, kids.
I knew slime and spinners were coming
'cause I watch eight year olds.
You know how much money I could have made
by buying fucking a bunch of spinners in China
and selling them on Amazon?
There's people making a hundred thousand racks,
like fucking real money,
like real money
like every week on Amazon
because nine months ago they saw kids
gonna fuck with spinners
and they started buying a shit load of them in China
and they ranked first on Amazon.
Everybody in the world wants to know
what you guys fuck with.
Every fashion brand, every soda brand,
every sneaker brand.
So tell 'em.
You know how valuable of a show
and how many people would follow you
if your day was walking around this campus
and just asking people, what's your favorite song,
what's your favorite soda,
what's your favorite brand?
That's valuable.
I'm interested.
- [Kenny] Do you think personal branding
will eventually replace the resume?
- Sure, if you define it as,
I definitely don't give a fuck what your resume says.
I'm far more interested in
what our interview is gonna feel like
and if I'm intrigued
I'm definitely going to your social
to figure out who you are.
I know when Jet players are not gonna be good
by the way they treat their friends
and women on social media.
It's crazy.
I'm like, this guy's a fucking piece of shit.
Sure enough, sucks.
Hell yeah.
What, I'm gonna listen to your bullshit piece of paper
versus your actions?
- [Kenny] Thank you. - You're welcome.
(audience applause)
- [Ariel] Hey, what's up, Gary?
- That was a little swag, right there.
Like a finger roll of the mic.
- [Ariel] My name is Ariel
and I wanna give you a shout-out
for giving a shout-out to Reezy Resells.
- Yes.
- [Ariel] I actually met him this weekend.
Question was on Amazon, Gary,
saw them one day. - Yep.
- [Ariel] So my question is,
I'm a senior electrical engineering.
However, I've been having dreams lately
of helping my dad in Ecuador.
- I love it. - [Ariel] He has a business
there but I'm doing the Amazon thing.
I'm a senior and I got a few things lined up for the next--
- And the Amazon thing, just so everybody learns,
is you're buying shit in stores and reselling it on Amazon
and making a profit. - [Ariel] Exactly.
- I don't even wanna get into,
I don't know if you guys heard,
you know this whole thing started
'cause I was on Breakfast Club, right?
- [Ariel] Exactly, yeah yeah.
- And Envy tried to call me out,
try to fuckin' gas me up.
I was like, "Okay, Envy.
"Fuck you. Watch this."
And I dropped up the whole thing and it's--
Guys, I'm getting 500 emails a month right now
from people like,
"I make $23,000 a year, we're broke.
"I've got $40,000 in credit card debt.
"I live with eight family members
"and this shit changed.
"I go to Marshalls now everyday
"and I'm making 200 extra bucks a week."
It's crazy what's going on on Amazon and eBay.
You can literally,
if you got three hours, make hundreds of dollars every day
by just going to stores like TJ Maxx and Marshalls
and Dollar Store scanning shit,
looking for how much it's selling for on Amazon,
buying it and selling it.
It's fucking, it's crazy right?
- [Ariel] Yeah. - What are you flippin'?
- [Ariel] So I started flipping books,
I'm doing wholesaling
and actually I pay for my daughter's daycare
through that type of money.
So that's really amazing.
- How much time are you spending on it?
- [Ariel] I probably spent at the beginning
probably 10 hours just watching YouTube videos
and DM-ing people
but now I probably just spend five, 10 hours
and it's incredible.
- So five, 10.
- [Ariel] Five, 10 hours a week.
- Buying, going to places to buy?
- [Ariel] No, just researching products online.
- Got it, you're doing it all online?
- [Ariel] Yeah, I'm doing it all online.
- You're finding shit?
- [Ariel] Yeah, just a few extensions,
I think one is via Amazon,
and it's Jungle Scout, purchase later on,
The app itself is ridiculous.
You just scan whatever you have at home.
It just tells you how much it's worth.
And it started with a $5 investment.
- A what dollar?
- [Ariel] A $5 investment.
But in the end I make a thousand dollars already
within the last four months.
- One more time, break that down for me.
How much of investment?
- [Ariel] So I started,
the story is actually boring 'cause I was working home
and then I found a web design book
and I sold it to like, they gave me $6.50.
I went to my girlfriend's library.
And I'm like, you got books you never read.
Let me take those, flip 'em.
- So you stole books from the library?
- [Ariel] No my girlfriend-- - Your girlfriend did?
Even better, even better.
'Cause if you got caught, it was on her.
I like you.
- [Ariel] My girlfriend's library.
So I took that, I flipped it.
I made a few bucks of profit
and then I just, I've been doing it.
- Guys, I'm telling you, if you need,
this is just a different thing.
If you actually want to be an entrepreneur,
selling is always a good idea,
engineers, skateboard, it doesn't matter.
Whatever your background is, selling,
just to learn it, just to taste it,
is a foundational thing.
At the end of the day, it's what you're gonna do.
You could build the best product.
Somebody's gonna sell it.
You might as well have a little knowledge of it.
Everybody should be grounded in selling.
Right now, while you've got time and you've got time.
Just so you know.
Lots of it (laughs), lots of it.
Start going places and buying shit.
Get the app, the scanning apps on your phone.
Make two, three hundred dollars a week on your
five to 12-hour investment of going places,
listing it, it is a foundational thing
that will serve you well and you might as well
put a couple hundred bucks in your pocket each week, too.
And God forbid you stumble on something.
This will happen and then the spinner or the slime
or something happens where you walk into
the right store doing the right close-out
and you scan something and it selling for 35 bucks
on Amazon and it's $3 a piece and they've got 400 of them
and you've been saving up and making some money
and you go all in, all of a sudden you've got $4,000
on that $5 investment.
This is the emails, 500 emails a month,
that started with $9 now have $4,000.
But that's a little less Madden,
That's a little less listening to all of Logic
and Russ's songs on repeat 400 times a day.
That's a little less hanging out.
It's work.
- [Ariel] So I just want to touch on--
- Go ahead.
- Help out my Dad, but I don't know if it's feasible
to do it overseas, 'cause I haven't made enough money
to go over there.
Do you think it's a good idea to do it
'cause he's having tech, so I don't know what--
- What's he do?
- He builds products to help flowers
last longer whether they come here or they just,
there's a lot more, I guess greener, and different--
- How old's your Dad?
- He's probably like, 60-something,
but he's got a Ph.D. in like--
- The reason I asked you how old,
I think I would wait, but on the same token,
there's nothing like working with your family.
Maybe you can go back and forth.
I'll tell you good news.
I don't think there's a wrong answer here.
I think either way it's gonna be right.
- [Ariel] Alright, cool, thank you.
- [Gary] You got it.
(audience applause)
- [Jose] What's up, Gary? - How are you, my man?
- [Jose] My name's Jose, I'm a big fan.
- Thank you.
I had a question regarding marketing,
a little bit of entrepreneurship.
- Let's do it.
- [Jose] I'm trying to start my own business
like a lot of people here.
I would work for myself.
Working for others kinda sucks.
But I'm wondering, we've heard several buzz words
like products, sales, et cetera.
I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit on
how to, when your product is an idea,
is a concept, like a value system,
I'm trying to build up a web platform for fathers,
that can buy some community resources, things like that
'cause I feel like that's
a lane that's not very addressed.
- [Gary] Understand.
- [Jose] It's building now. - I get it.
- [Jose] But what I became upon not too long ago.
- Congrats. - [Jose] I go
there's nothing out here for the men that speaks to 'em.
(audience applause and laughter)
But at the same time what I'm doing now,
you know, I've got the blog.
I'm starting to get more into the regular YouTubing
and kind of creating consistent content.
- You have--
- [Jose] That jab, jab, jab.
- You're not an idea, you're a media company.
- [Jose] That what it is.
- So what you need to realize is you're a media company
and how do media companies make money?
They make money on subscriptions.
You gotta sell your content.
What's hard about selling content
is there's a lot of it out there.
A lot of people here don't want to pay for content
because, sure, this person might be selling
an $8 thing, but they know they can find it
for free somewhere else.
We don't love to pay for content,
but if you're good enough, they will,
and so here are the couple things you should do.
Keep pumping out tons of content.
It's your only shot, and then you gotta build
an actual fan base that cares about you,
like personal brand. They have to care.
They have to care enough to pay for something.
If you have enough fans that love you,
well, then all of a sudden, Harper Collins comes along
and offers you $100,000 to write a book.
That's one way to make money.
If you have people that love you and care about you
and you brought them value, all of a sudden people
might pay you $500 to give your first speech, right?
And then it builds, right?
Or, if they really love you and they care about you
and you brought them value,
maybe you start doing a father's retreat, right?
And maybe a fan of yours owns some property upstate
and so they don't charge you,
and so now when you charge $200 a head
and 150 people come, and you have no overhead
'cause the fan you brought value to
gave you the property for free.
So you've got to treat yourself like a media company.
And so it's not an idea.
You just have to put that energy and that content
and that fan base into buckets that you can monetize,
but first, my man, you've got to actually build a community.
- [Jose] Which is what I'm working on now.
- I love it, so just build, right now is the time
you should work for somebody, right?
Nine to three, just get on, but it's that late night.
It's the stuff I talked.
Crush It! was a breakthrough for me because I started talking
about that 7:00 P.M. to two in the morning, right,
because I wanna be practical.
It's not like, hey quit, it's gonna all be all right.
It's gonna be two years to get to a place
to have leverage where people are gonna pay you
for the things I just broke down.
What are you gonna do in those two years?
So I'm a big fan of getting that job that's kind of
light-weight and just paying you and it's easy.
I don't care, stand behind the register of a slow store
so you can work now with phones, fuck.
When I wrote that, it was desktop computers.
Now with the phone, you can building your business
while you're standing behind a register
at Saks Fifth Avenue, like nobody's up there.
You're just building your shit.
And getting paid.
I love that.
- [Jose] Dope, dope.
(Gary chuckling)
- You're welcome.
(audience applause)
- [Woman 2] Hi Gary, thank you for being here.
I guess I wanna step away from the entrepreneur--
- Let's go. - Questions.
This is more like about morale
with everything that's been going on--
- [Gary] Yes. - Since last year.
- [Gary] Yes.
- Almost every notification you get from CNN
- [Gary] Yes. - New York Times.
- [Gary] Yes. - It's like--
- [Gary] Negative.
- [Student] As like an immigrant, a woman--
- [Gary] Yes.
- [Student] A sister of a special ed child.
- [Gary] Yes.
- How do you,
it's like the system's against you,
how do you move on from that?
- It's funny, right,
because I gave that young man the same answer.
And I spend a lot of time with minority female friends
in the last year about this.
To me, I just try to remind them,
it's perspective.
I genuinely,
what I'm about to say is very very uncomfortable
because I'm a white dude.
(Woman 2 laughs)
But I'm gonna say it because I think it's my truth.
I genuinely believe that happiness
is much more of a mindset than people realize.
You're more than welcome to look at those things
and you're getting pounded by them.
But I've been lucky my whole life,
forget about being a dude,
just even when I was a bad student,
I just don't listen.
I think that you've never had more opportunity
than you have right now.
I understand the propaganda that's being pushed
but the reality is the internet doesn't give a fuck,
the market doesn't give a fuck.
You know what's really funny?
When it comes right down to it,
people wanna make money, people wanna win,
people wanna be happy.
I just think you're way more in control than you think.
I don't know what else to tell you like what,
like now, obviously for the really unfort--
Listen, I didn't get my green card until I was 19.
My family was procrastinating our citizenship.
I think about it all the time.
I'm like fuck.
We could have gotten really caught.
Unless you're sitting with not the right paperwork
which I think is then a real conversation
I have no interest in like sitting on a soapbox,
but if you're set and you're here,
you have it really good.
I don't care what people say.
There's an unlimited amount of opportunity.
First of all, old white dude,
angry white dude,
they can't stop you.
What are they gonna do?
What?
The cliche angry white dude that we're referring to
isn't in a power position to begin with.
- [Woman 2] Really? - Sure angry white dude,
like all these 28 year old angry white, they're losing.
64 year, when you say really,
let me tell you about 64-year-old white dude.
He wants to make money
and if a brown girl can do it for him, they're in.
That's just the truth.
That's the part that nobody talks about.
Nobody's stopping you.
Jeff Zucker can be running CNN Breaking News
'cause he wants ratings
and it might be tricking you.
But you're letting it trick you.
So I, I would change your mindset.
You've got, you can do whatever the fuck you want.
You can, you can, it's hard.
Do I think it's harder for you?
Yep. And?
- [Woman 2] That's all I needed, really.
- I think so, right?
People need to be reminded.
It's so weird but I was,
I'm telling you,
the little bubble I lived in
and again some of the 40 year olds here know.
It was only school.
I was an F student.
I had no chance.
I think you can win.
I'm positive you can win.
You just need to start changing your mindset.
Fuck them.
- [Man 2] In the organization
and try to have an impact in the community,
along the lines of Social Work.
- [Gary] Love it.
- [Man 2] Rather than try to make a business.
- [Gary] I would do a lot of listening
and I would do a lot of documenting.
The media is what's powerful, right?
So if you're trying to make a change,
first know what change you're trying to make,
listen to the community,
don't be idealistic of what you want.
One of the things that's been really interesting
as I've gotten into social efforts
and things of that nature
is people have their opinion
of what they want for the community
not what the community wants for themselves. Right?
People get on their high horse, how they want it to be.
So the first thing I would say is,
you may look exactly like them
but make sure you hear them
'cause it's a psychological game not a facade game.
So first, know what they want.
Once you understand what they want,
literally with your iPhone making videos
and posting them on Facebook and Instagram.
We live in the greatest time ever.
We're in control of the media.
The media run shit.
Why do you think dictators
or when there's a coup in a country,
they take over the media first?
The media makes you think shit.
That beautiful wonderful woman right there
believes those fuckers pumpin' that negativity
'cause that's what, we're humans.
I get it, I'm not mad at you.
That's the game.
So the fact that we now have that at our fingertips,
like film, post, distribute?
Do you know how much money that costs a media company?
My man over there, like Z,
for me to say you're a media company, that's crazy.
You needed people to pick you.
You needed to wait four years.
You needed to get lucky in Hollywood.
You needed to have 800 people put you on
and take all your money out.
It's all you.
The internet changed everything.
It is the biggest change in our society.
We grossly underestimate it.
You take it for granted.
We underestimate it.
It's the biggest shift in human culture ever.
That's why I'm optimistic.
'Cause you have so many options.
That's why I'm optimistic,
that you could actually make a change
where you couldn't have 30 years ago
unless you were one very special human of all time.
Now you can make that change,
create content around the true stories
that people need to hear.
- [Man 2] Thank you so much. - You're welcome.
(audience applause)
- To complete that goal of Fronzi?
Fronzi's questions,
so I started a Christian apparel line on Shopify,--
- [Gary] Christian? - Christian--
- [Gary] Apparel line on Shopify.
- On Shopify about eight months ago--
- [Gary] He heard about Shopify
(audience laughter)
- About eight months ago I started the journey
so there are, there's a greater cause behind the apparel
so it's not the apparel that I'm selling, right?
- Sure.
- So I'm really focused on putting that in the frontline,
emphasizing the why and the purpose.
And I haven't been so much on--
- What's the technical details besides it being Christian,
like what happens with the money?
You donating all of it?
- No, at the moment no.
- I understand.
- But my question is though,
that I've been really focused on actually providing--
- The reason I asked that question and made that joke
is you need to really make sure
that you walk the fine line,
when you get into cause or good for profit,
you need to make sure you're not full of shit
or people with smell it.
- Right.
- And it's okay, you should make money!
There's nothing wrong with that.
But make sure you know,
like I love when people are like "Oh I'm so"
So Tom's shoes, remember that back in the day?
I was super friendly with him,
he came from a decent place,
like he actually he was the first guy
who was like "Fuck it, I really want to make these shoes,
"and I want to really give a pair of shoes."
But then every fucking huckster entrepreneur
came through my office and was like
"Ok cool yo listen check, I'm starting an umbrella company,
"and when you buy one umbrella, I give one umbrella
"to the kids that get rained on." Right?
Like everybody is just making,
like people are just making up shit
and then I would look under the hood,
and I'd be like "Why is your candy bar,
"where you're donating one,
"twice the price of every candy bar?
"Oh I see.
"You want to keep all the money still,
"but you want to front like you're doing some good,
"so your shit is double the price.
"You're not actually giving,
"you're inflating the price
"so that you can look like a good Christian."
I'm not saying that's what you're saying,
I'm saying you need to be careful
cause that's what everybody's thinking.
- [Man 3] Right. So my question regards on the flip side
- Go ahead.
- [Man 3] I'm extremely focused on the purpose,
the cause behind it. and I'm not sales-y enough.
- Understood.
- [Man 3] So I was wondering what would be some suggestions
in like balancing that out?
- Well what do you think sales-y means to you?
- Well I think that's what it is,
I think more of a perspective thing.
You know I've been in retail for a long time growing up,
and I don't know, it's been pushed upon me like
"Oh you gotta sell this, do that"
- So you became visceral to it?
- Yeah, I think that's what it is. So now--
- So how about just running Facebook ads against
Christian Americans with $100,000 income levels?
- Right, so I've done that.
- And?
- I'm trying to still emphasize the messages behind it,
rather than the t-shirt itself.
So I'm still looking for that balance.
- So how are you doing that?
- That's one of my concerns right now, so--
- So you need to pump content.
- Yes, that's what I'm doing.
I'm currently doing that.
- Okay.
But the sales aren't keeping up enough, right?
- Right.
- So why'd you stop doing the Facebook ads,
they didn't work?
- I decided to re-vamp my entire website,
and just sit back, strategize, put my head down.
And now I'm going to continue on
with the Facebook advertisement.
- Yep.
To be very frank,
I just think it sounds like it's early.
Like I think you're just having an early talk right now.
Like, patience seems to be the word
that's running through my head.
I'm like, you clearly know what you gotta do.
Like create content about the purpose behind it,
and run ads, and try to sell the other stuff.
And if you feel like you're not sales-y enough,
hire a partner or a head of sales to worry about that
so you could put all,
it sounds like maybe you don't want to
put your energy in that,
and maybe you need somebody to focus on the sales
so that you can focus on the purpose.
- Right. Thank you.
- Patience. You know, just keep pulling levers.
(audience applause)
Also, hashtags.
Christian hashtags on Instagram,
click it, see the top nine posts, click.
- Yeah, I'm going thirty at a time.
- Good.
- Hey good morning I'm Chris,
- Chris.
- I want to piggy back on your idea about no choice earlier?
- Yes
- So I was forced into entrepreneurship
because I can't legally work for a company--
- Understood.
- At first I thought it sucked,
but it's been the most empowering thing
that I've had over the past couple of years.
(audience applause)
But my friends still all have
like two or three side hustles.
So I wanted to get your view on
what you think about a side hustle
and whether or not folks should just
drop it and focus on one?
- I think you've got to know the person, right?
So like I do think, if you look at the data,
like focusing on one business always works out
better than three.
I always tell kids when they roll in they're like
"All right yo, I've got this umbrella company,
"I've got a sneaker company,
"I've got a babysitting company,
"oh and I sell bananas on the side."
I'm like "Alright cool," I'm like
"When you got four businesses you have no businesses."
Right? But, I look at myself,
I've got my core businesses,
but I'm so entrepreneurial and I love the action so much,
I do side things here and there.
I almost always lose
because I'm not focused on it,
and I'm relying on somebody else.
But I need that action to make me actually do my main thing.
Like the side stuff,
it's like a good meal.
I like the sea bass but the English peas,
I need that too to make the whole meal.
And so I think that you've got,
it's more reverse engineering the person.
But I do think that it's much more fun
to start creating side hustles
after you have something that's stable
and can afford the loss of the side hustle
instead of thinking the right strategy is three things
because you do definitely get stretched in.
And it's very,
guys, 99% of small businesses don't win.
When are we gonna accept the math?
It's hard, right?
We're just, the vibe,
feels like half of us are gonna make it.
One person in this room is gonna make it for real.
Because when shit hits the fan,
I can't say it enough,
when the market crashes,
that's when you have to have a big enough business
to get through.
There's a lot of people here in 24 months
that might be on their way
but then the money falls out.
And people aren't buying anymore.
Then your suppliers want their money.
- [Man 4] So it's 10:00 AM.
We're running, kind of like, ran out of time.
- We can't, we can't kill this guy.
- [Man 4] The last question with him.
- Cool, awesome.
- [Gerard] Thank you for that. My name's Gerard, Gary.
Thanks for doing the Pat McAfee Show.
It was awesome. - Thank you.
- [Gerard] So my question is,
I'm transitioning to taking over my father's business.
- Yes. - [Gerard] Open another, rather.
- Yes.
- [Gerard] It's an Eastern European grocery store and deli.
- Love it. - [Gerard] Port Chester.
So the demographic's changed
due to some of his personal issues and flaws.
We've lost a lot of good customer base.
- Because of the way, how he rolls?
- [Gerard] As an alcoholic and drinking on the job, yeah.
- Respect.
- [Gerard] To make a long story short.
- Yep.
- [Gerard] So, between social media,
doing community events, and a lack of capital,
what can I do to invest
and try to bring back some revenue into the business?
- [Gary] So you're gonna be,
so it's a deli and a what?
- [Gerard] Deli, grocery store. - Right.
And lack of capital and what else?
- [Gerard] Bad credit as well.
Reputation has declined as part of his flaws.
- And he'll be cool with you
becoming more of the public face
because he knows it needs to get saved?
- [Gerard] I'm currently going through
some barriers with him.
- Yeah, because,
I mean, notice how I asked a pretty unique question.
- [Gerard] Yeah.
- Everybody would assume, sure, right?
Look sometimes things fail for those reasons.
If your dad is able to have the humility
that he knows he has no other choice
but to let you become the face
because of the damage control
then you got a prayer
because then you can go on heavy offense
of creating content on an hourly basis
that puts you at the forefront.
And what's great about local businesses
is it won't take long for the word of mouth to go.
And I'm gonna assume,
it also sounds like,
has he had the business for a long time?
- [Gerard] 30 years. - I knew it, so great.
A lot of people don't want it to go,
underlining, if it's a more recent phenomenon,
people are as much sad as they are mad. Right?
So I think if you can get your face in front of it
and then I would start just doing,
I would start doing guerrilla marketing,
like stunt marketing.
The only thing you've really got as an asset
is your inventory. Right?
So I would start doing,
I mean, this is a risky move.
This is really what I would do.
I would start doing,
I've been thinking about doing this for Vayner,
for Wine Library.
I want to do something called Free Food Friday.
Like literally, literally,
just give away $20 gourmet credits
at Wine Library on Fridays for like four hours,
just to see what the fuck would happen.
Just to see how many people show up.
Obviously you can't take that big of a financial risk
but maybe a version of that,
to start giving back to the community.
I would do really weird shit,
like I've got a really weird one for you.
I think that the first day it snows,
that you should, stick with me here,
I think you should go,
I think you should go and shovel people's yards
as a thank you for being a customer.
Stuff that's stunt-y that could change the mood.
Right?
When you need to change the momentum,
you can't change it by doing little things.
You need to do big things, weird things,
things that have,
owning and we want to give back to the community.
So a lot of community stuff.
I would literally put a search query
around that entire town on Twitter and Instagram
and I would literally, as the business,
reply to every single fucking comment.
If you go into the business.
You're gonna be similar to how I rolled in.
You're just gonna be sitting there, right?
- [Gerard] Right.
- You'll be fuckin' sittin' there.
So the fuck man.
If I had a fucking mobile phone when I was sitting there,
I would've been able to do even more damage.
And you could just literally search your town, Port Chester,
you search it, look at every photo
and just fucking pound pound pound.
You see some kid who's got like 4,000 followers
who's from the local high school, drinking a Gatorade.
DM and be like,
"Yo I'll give you Gatorade free for this whole month.
"Come through, take a photo with me."
It can happen fast. You see where I'm going?
Your asset, credits a problem.
You're going into a fire
but you still have products, some,
I'm sure there's food in there, there's stuff in there.
- [Gerard] Plenty. - Beautiful.
That's your ammo.
Your ammo is your hustle
and the fucking product.
- [Gerard] Thank you.
- You're welcome.
(audience cheers and applause)
- [Man 3] Thank you.
- [Gary] You're welcome.
- [Man 3] I think--