- The last scene of 8 Mile, the Eminem movie.
They go into battle, he makes fun of himself the whole time,
because it leaves the other person with nothing.
("The Entertainer" by Scott Joplin)
(logo reverberating)
I was gonna buy unbelievable amounts
of Netflix stock three years ago.
The phone call hung up on me, on vacation, by the way.
- Wow. - Hung up on me.
I didn't call them back, never did it.
- You've missed-- - I do fucked-up shit
all the time. - Yeah, you missed out
on some good shit, man.
How do you handle that? - Easily.
- Do you just feel like it wasn't meant to be?
- 100,000%, because I'm always like, I suck and you,
I just think everyone sucks, and it makes it easier.
I don't know-- - That's kind of like
a very pessimistic way of thinking, Gary.
- I just think it's massively optimistic.
- Really? - Everybody sucks.
That means everyone's awesome, let's go.
- Now, I do feel like my father,
my father would always tell me,
you're never as good as they say you are--
- I think there's-- - And you're never as bad
as they say you are. - Well, that's for sure.
- You know, so I do exist in that gray area.
- Well, there's another thing.
They saying hasn't been able to penetrate.
- Yeah, 'cause who the fuck is they?
- I'm just like, you can't.
Here's why I don't take their judgment.
It's not that they're wrong and I'm right.
It's that they lack context.
Nobody knows what's going on in my bedroom.
- The world is out of context, baby.
- The world's out of context. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Everyone's throwing around judgment now 'cause it's easy.
- 'Cause of social media. - 100%.
But by the way, we always did it.
Now we just can read it.
People judged you in the streets.
People judged you in the office rooms.
People judged you at the cafes.
- [Charlamagne] You just didn't see it so much.
- 100%.
(fighter groaning) (muffled cheering)
I passed on Uber twice.
Had I wrote a $25,000 check into that company,
like I did the other companies,
it'd be worth $300 million.
I've never said this this clearly.
I passed on Uber because I bought an apartment.
If I was renting one more year or waited,
actually, that was my second part.
If I had just stayed in the apartment
I was in for one more year,
I would have $400 million that I don't have right now.
And I'm glad the market punched me in my mouth.
I deserve it, I'm driven by it, I'm hungrier.
I deserved that L.
You know, how like Rocky lost to Mr. T
'cause he was flashing and flaunting?
Like, that's what I love about this game.
Like I said, it doesn't matter where you were yesterday.
You're only as good as your last at-bat.
So I never count my chickens.
I don't think I'm fancy now that things are going well.
I'm still hungry as, I'm like, hungry forever.
(poker chips clacking)
I talk about everybody spending as much money as possible
on Facebook and Instagram right now,
'cause it's under-priced.
I say that because when I built my dad's store,
when people were like, oh man,
he built it from three to 60, that's amazing,
I think that fucking sucks because I know
it should've been three to 200, but I didn't spend enough
on Google Ads when I had the best hand.
Forget about passing on Uber.
When you're investing, you're always making mistakes.
I operated Wine Library.
So when I say the biggest mistake I've made in my career,
I was controlling that car, right?
The biggest mistake I've made in my career
was I didn't spend enough money
on Google AdWords in 2001, '02, '03,
when I knew I had it.
But I was too young and didn't understand
how special that moment was when I was buying keywords
for five cents and getting unlimited customers.
I just thought it would always be there.
I didn't know any different, I was a fucking kid.
I didn't have the experience.
I was smart enough to see it,
but I wasn't experienced enough
to squeeze the fuck out of it.
That's why I'm yelling so loud,
if you follow my content, on Instagram and Facebook,
because the ads are so under-priced,
and I know it's going to go away.
And shit you buy for $3 and $4 CPMs to get people
are gonna be $20 and $30.
They're not gonna be as affected.
So actualized, it's gonna go from $2 to $50 in my brain.
And it's gonna happen fast.
Two years, everyone's gonna be sad
that they didn't do more on Instagram and Facebook, right?
They're not gonna be crying about algorithms.
They're gonna be crying about, where are people?
'Cause that's what always happens.
Everybody here has to shift from crying,
and that's what a lot of you are doing,
wa-wa, Instagram and Facebook and Google
aren't taking my money.
Nobody gives a fuck about your tears.
Stop crying about what you can't do,
and start figuring out what you can do.
- No way!
- VaynerMedia is a mistake.
And you want a better answer?
I knew it was a mistake before I started it,
because it's not scalable, right?
It's client work.
It's a step backwards from a progressive entrepreneur.
There's a lot of things wrong with it.
But I knew why I was doing it.
I did not understand corporate America.
I could read a million books
and it would have never done it for me.
I needed to go in there and taste it,
back to the dirt under my fingernails.
And here I am two years later
and I have a fairly solid grasp.
Do I know everything? Of course not.
But I have enough flavor in my mouth
right now to know what to do,
because I'm not in business to be successful tomorrow.
I want to be very relevant 40 years from now.
When I'm 75, I want to be gangster.
I want 20-year old entrepreneurs to be like,
that is the guy. - The marathon.
- Absolutely, and so I needed that tool,
that knowledge in my belt, so I took a two-year, three-year,
whatever this run is gonna be, sabbatical,
and learned what I had to learn.
I'm obsessed with mistakes.
I do so many things wrong, I mean.
I screwed up Obsessed TV
when I tried to scale multiple personalities.
Samantha's amazing.
That was me screwing up.
I'm always thinking I could do so many things.
I screw up every day,
because I'm trying to juggle too many balls.
I need to focus, and I know it, but I can't help it.
It makes me happy to juggle.
(laid back electronic music)
Please tell me you caught that.
I was a breakout YouTube star in the first year, 2006.
I decided that the right strategy
was to leave YouTube completely and go to Viddler,
because Viddler offered me equity in their company.
And I've left an enormous amount of attention.
I deviated from my intention thesis
to do short-term economics
and equity in a company, and I lost, I lost.
When DRock finally came into my life
two years ago and we started to try to build up
my YouTube for the first time,
I was sitting on 40,000 followers
in a world where I could've had millions
if I just stayed the course.
So I make mistakes all the time.
I'm re-orging VaynerMedia every day
'cause it's based on a mistake I made the prior year.
I just don't give a fuck about my mistakes.
Everybody else cares about your mistakes.
If you're worried about your own mistakes,
you've already lost.
- What does it all mean, Basil?
- The leverage is in being accountable of everything.
The leverage is exposing your weaknesses.
I proudly talk about passing on Uber twice,
being a DNF student, you know.
I proudly talk about my shortcomings, right?
I can't wait for more bad things to happen, I mean it.
Because I will talk about them.
Because what, you're so fucking perfect?
I look at losing as a positive,
mainly because everybody here doesn't like losing
'cause they're worried what other people think
about their loss. - They're programmed
in a different way. - I don't give a fuck
about what other people think about my L.
It's my L.
You go worry about yourself.
I got, this is my L.
I'm not worried about what my wife thinks about my L.
I'm not worried about what my kids think about my L.
I don't give a fuck what my parents think about my L.
I don't give a fuck what you think about my L.
It's my L.
And the reason people don't like losses
is not so much that they don't like losses.
They're worried about what everybody else
thinks about their loss.
That's the fucking gear.
(laid back music)