- Welcome Gary Vaynerchuk!
(audience cheers)
- Thank you. - Yeah, man.
(audience cheers)
- Thank you, Philly, sit, let's do this.
(audience murmurs)
What up, what up?
What up?
(audience cheers)
Good to see you, Philly.
First of all, before we get this started,
the amount of gratitude that I have for this city
for beating the fucking Patriots in the Super Bowl.
(audience cheers wildly)
Let's fucking go!
Thank you for that.
Man, I hate those fuckers.
Today's an extremely special day for me
because today is my mother's birthday.
(audience cheers)
And I thought I would use that as a framework
of the opening dialogue, giving a sense of
who's speaking today.
I won't go too much into mindset and motivation
and those kind of things 'cause I think we have a lot
of people covering it, I'm actually going to go
pretty practical on the back half of this
about why I think most of you are massively missing the mark
and I include myself in that.
That we're missing the mark in this enormous gold rush
of Facebook ads and Instagram ads, LinkedIn, YouTube.
No matter how much content you're producing for whatever
you're trying to achieve, whether that's to raise money
for the PTA or sell sneakers or build your real estate firm,
whatever you do, the one thing, for all the people
here in the front and all those homies that I love so much
in the back-- (audience cheers)
Man, it takes a while for noise to get the fuck up here.
Shit is crazy. (audience laughs)
The one thing I know for fact that connects
every person here, that cameraman right there,
myself, you, all of you, is that attention is the asset.
That before you can tell me how great you are,
why I should buy your thing, why I should do the thing
that you want me to do, vote for me, buy my thing,
do this, help that,
that attention is the asset and I have spent the last
20 years of my business career becoming a practitioner
in what I call under-priced attention.
Whether it's email, or websites, or Google AdWords,
or YouTube, or Facebook, or Twitter,
the reason I have the great luxury of standing up here,
at least for the merit of what I've been able to accomplish
in my professional career, is I've been able to execute
within real estate that has been under-priced by the market,
I've been able to storytell and execute in there
and that has led to the results that I have.
As I got older, I got smarter and started investing
in the platforms that became the most important real estate
and those are the foundations of the things,
and when I buy the New York Jets and win by Super Bowls...
(audience cheers)
It will, 100%, be on the back
of the things that I'm going to talk to you
on the second half which is how all of you need to start
buying and creating on these platforms
and why so many of you have failed.
How many people here by show of hands have run Facebook
or Instagram ads and it hasn't worked?
'Cause I think it's a lot of people, raise them high.
There's a very specific reason.
It's because it's not that easy, it's not just, you know,
it's like me saying I'm going to put a ball in the hoop.
That's great, but it doesn't mean I'm going to be
a professional basketball player.
It takes a skill set, and I'll get into that,
and that's the thing, if you want to ask me what I'm trying
to accomplish here today, every person in here is
under-spending and under-creating on Facebook,
LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, podcasting, email,
everybody, me too.
And I have 22 full time people, I'm spending three to four
million dollars a year between advertising dollars
and people and I'm under-doing it.
So, I really need to deliver that, that's part two.
Part one is a little bit more interesting to me.
Over the last year, it's become obvious to me that optimism
is actually a strategy.
That I'm fascinated by what I was gifted.
I was gifted, through my mom's DNA and by the way
that she parented me, to be fundamentally in a place
where I just am incapable of seeing the negative.
I don't really, it's not that I'm delusional.
Basically, my life for the last 27 years
has been pretty basic.
If I wake up and me and the seven or eight people
that I love the most didn't die, I'm fucking pumped.
(audience laughs)
(audience applauds)
Now I really, really need you to understand what I'm saying.
I mean it, it's super basic.
I have a happy life not because of my success.
Seeing my dear high school friend, Jess, right there,
one, two, three, in the fifth row...
It was super fun, I ran into her in the hotel last night
and I was there with her husband and friend
and it was fun for me, it was emotional for me
because she's one of a very, you know, we only went to
a high school of 254 kids, I know it's 254 in our class now.
I don't know how many of you follow me on Instagram
but the happiest day I've had in the last month
was when I posted my report card a month ago
because I was ranked 243 out of 254 in my high school.
(audience laughs)
But there's not a lot of people, because I was very insular,
what she can tell you is that for the first three
and seven eighths year of my high school career,
because I worked in my dad's liquor store
and because I worked after school,
I didn't do after school sports,
I didn't hang out, I didn't have much of a social life,
I sold baseball cards in the malls of New Jersey
and I worked at my dad's store, I was in my own shit.
And so, for me, it's fun to see her right here
because you could say, you know, I have empathy.
One could say, well, you're happy 'cause you've made it.
I was fucking super happy when I wasn't making it
and doing the shit that nobody wanted to do.
You know, a lot of people are very confused
with my narrative, when people want to troll me,
they're like, easy for you, you were handed
three million dollars or this, that, the other thing.
I spent the first 12 years of my career, 15 hours a day,
paying myself less than $100,000 a year, every year,
building my family liquor store business for my parents.
I left at 34 years old with zero equity in Wine Library,
no money to my name, and no equity on paper.
I basically started over seven years ago.
But I checked, thanks Dad, but I checked--
(audience laughs)
But I checked a very important box for me.
I don't know how many of you are immigrants,
or the children of immigrants, or how many of you,
in the same way that I am (audience cheers)
that have the great, great fortune to have their parents
be their heroes, but there's no greater feeling in life
than feeling that you've settled the score with your parents
and gave them as much as they gave you.
And that feels incredible for me of what I did
in the first part of my career but here's what I will
tell you on my mom's birthday.
My mom did some crazy ass parenting on me.
First of all, the number one thing that my mom did for me
and the number one issue for the far majority of this room,
and I'm just lucky of good parenting and DNA,
I don't think I'm better than you, I'm just telling you
because I see it every day and because I've read a lot
of tweets in the last 24 hours of people that are
in this audience, and I look at not just the tweet
that you said you're excited to see me, I look at all
the shit you post 'cause I'm trying to get a sense
of you fuckers. (audience laughs)
The number one gift my mom gave me is a lack of entitlement.
If you want to talk-- (audience applauds)
For all the good shit that's going on with me,
I literally think I mean nothing.
I'm being dead serious with you.
I think I'm the greatest of all time,
with my confidence, bravado, and ego, and excitement,
and the things I see are happening, but I equally know
that if I disappeared tomorrow, cool,
I'd have a good social media day and then,
everybody would move, I'm telling you,
when Prince and David Bowie died in that little window,
and I watched those icons of culture get about 24 hours
of love and then everybody forgot, I was like, fuck.
Right, I mean it.
I mean it, and so, what's really empowering
and what's holding so many people back here is entitlement.
You feel like somebody owes you something because something
went wrong somewhere along the way and I don't.
I actually thing whatever went wrong for you
is the best shit that ever happened to you
because adversity is absolutely the foundation of success.
(audience applauds)
The other thing I know is I have bad news,
nobody gives a fuck about your problems.
(audience laughs)
And this is super important to understand,
the second you actually understand that nobody actually
gives a shit, the only people that listen to you complaining
are your loser fucking friends.
(audience laughs)
If you like complaining, just take a step back,
look around the next time you're complaining about
the government, or racial, or feminine.
I had a guy sit in front of me the other day crying that
his life was bad 'cause he was a white male.
(audience murmurs)
Rich, white male.
I was like, oh shit, we've gone everywhere now.
(audience laughs)
You're either on the offense or defense.
I just want you to know something, one of the things
that's been really on my mind is I think a lot of people
think they're in the middle, they're like at trans.
You're only on the offense or the defense.
And I've realized that I've been on the offense
my whole life because I never felt entitled to anything.
An incredible thing happens when you're born
with very little.
I was born in the Soviet Union, we come to America,
I live in a studio apartment in Queens.
My parents bought me six toys in my entire life
kind of thing, we took one, one family vacation
in my entire life, right.
When I wanted a Nintendo, my mom looked me dead in the face
and said, good, go buy it.
And that was huge, on the flip side, what she also did
was she instilled...
Let me rephrase, she reinforced things that came natural
to me and made them the most important things.
While I was getting D's and F's and every other
immigrant parent was making their kids get A's and B's
'cause they thought that's what mattered,
my mom was accelerating and going out of her mind
any time that I showed compassion,
any time that I showed empathy,
any time that I showed gratitude.
I once opened a door for a woman, this is an amazingly
interesting story to me.
I remember after losing a little league baseball game,
which I'm extremely competitive, so basically, if I lost
at anything, from the ages of five to 13,
I cried on the spot.
Like some straight fucking real tears shit.
So we had a devastating loss in the little league
baseball game that we lost, I mean, I remember we lost
to the cougars, three to two, those fucking--
(hisses) Anyway.
We went to McDonald's 'cause, my mom didn't like buying shit
but she knew I was super sad, so she was going to buy me
a fucking Big Mac, so we went to McDonald's.
We got there and I will remember this for the rest of
my life, I open, I was eight, I opened a door for a woman.
You know, just walking, just opened the door for a woman.
You would've thought that I won a Nobel Peace Prize.
My mom made such a big deal about that.
You know, there's a legendary story for my mom
when, on my 10th birthday, we went to Toys "R" Us
and because Cabbage Patch Kids were so hard to get
they had them, so I took all my money and bought my sister
the Cabbage Patch on my birthday.
And that was a good one, that's better than the door,
but still, you have to understand what she did,
and honestly, for all of you that watch me,
it's what I'm doing for my community with my content.
We, my friends, more than ever now,
we need to focus on the truth.
Here's the truth,
this second that we're sitting here
is the greatest second in the history of mankind
for human beings. (audience cheers)
This is math.
No matter what you have going on,
your grandparents had it worse.
We are so good at blaming other things
and dwelling and complaining on shit
without looking at the reality of the situation.
No matter how bad you have it, millions, billions,
have it worse and so, for me, the mindset that I've rolled
in this whole game is, nobody cares.
Nobody cares and not that they don't care,
people have compassion but they can't.
Think about how much you can care even for the people
you love the most, it's just a human thing.
And more importantly, we have it ridiculously good.
This internet thing, this internet thing,
is the most important invention in the history
of the human being.
All the things that you worry about of the man stopping you
or something stopping you, all these things that we envision
that are the reasons why you haven't' been successful,
this internet thing is taking away, the internet.
The internet is the middle man.
It's true, you have to understand how ridiculous
this thing is.
The ability for you to create content, pictures, videos,
and written words on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram,
LinkedIn, beyond and going direct to the audience
eliminates any excuse you come up with.
I could literally spend the next month, one-by-one,
systematically going through this big room
and no matter what excuse you come up with,
the answer is going to be: And?
Guys, we have to eliminate complaining and dwelling.
We have to.
It's just everything and that's what she did for me.
She instilled the right positive things and most of all,
she eliminated fucking excuses.
She eliminated entitlement.
And most of all, how many people are parents in here?
(audience cheers)
She did one other thing that's super important to me.
This whole fifth place trophies bullshit.
(audience laughs)
I have two kids, I get it.
You love your kids so much, I get it.
But what we've manifested into, we are such pieces of shit,
what we have manifested into, in overprotecting our kids
and manipulating adversity, and creating a world
where there isn't winning and losing, is the reason.
I hate, I hate when I hang out with like a 48
or 57 year old homie and he'll be like,
"Gary, these fucking millennials."
I'm like, "You fucking raised the millennial, you dick."
(audience laughs)
Like all the 40, 50 year olds, all of us 38, 40,
every one of us, 50 year olds and up, we love shitting
on these kids, they're soft, they're entitled.
We made them entitled.
Like, we have to get back to winning and losing.
You have to stop coddling your kids.
Of course, of course they are struggling.
When you actually thought until the age of 14
that you won everything when you lost, you're fucked.
(audience laughs)
Fuck!
The Patriots lost.
(audience cheers)
I knew that would work.
I think, I genuinely believe,
look, I'm going to get very real with you.
If you decided to spend money to come here for this lineup,
entitlement is a big problem you have in some shape or form,
I'm being dead fucking serious.
Not everybody, I don't know all of you, but I'm telling you
right now, that 80 to 90% of you, I'm being very, very frank
and I'm coming, I'm not razzing, I'm coming from
an incredibly important place right now.
Please, eliminate entitlement.
Nobody, nothing, nothing, nobody, owes you shit.
Nobody gives a fuck that your parents were alcoholics.
Nobody fucking cares that you were born into a tough family.
And here's the truth, if you actually live that,
if you actually live that, whether it's true or not,
you can then finally navigate.
All of you are looking backwards and people are fucking
passing you by.
Yesterday is fucking over.
And I'm telling your right now, that, to me,
over the last decade, has been stunning to me.
People's ability to dwell and think about circumstances
that they had no control over that are now dictating
how they go forward is fucking cancer.
And if I can fucking strangle it out of your fucking body
here right now, Philadelphia, I would.
Because there's no tactic that I'm going to teach you,
there's nothing motivational me, or Les, or fucking Tony
are going to say to you that's going to do dick for you
if you're still dwelling that fucking aunt
stole $800 from you.
(audience laughs)
Right?
Like people just, this woman's laughing, I'm laughing too.
Like, fucking, people email me like, Gary V,
like I'd totally be crushing it but my girlfriend cheated
on me in 1985; I'm like, you're a fucking loser, dick!
(audience laughs)
Like what, while you guys were watching MTV,
what the fuck's the matter with you?
People complain that Facebook and Instagram's
algorithm changed and they're getting as many likes.
(audience laughs)
It's free.
I get 1,000 emails and DM's a day from people
who say to me, Gary V, Zucks fucked me.
(audience laughs)
Instagram, what the fuck is Instagram doing,
they're killing me, they changed the algorithm,
YouTube too, and Google before that in 2003.
These are fucking free platforms.
And you're literally complaining about the algorithm change.
Let me tell you why you're getting less likes
or getting hurt by the algorithm change.
'Cause your content's not good enough.
Because you joined engagement groups
and you each like each other's shit, you fucking hacking
piece of shit. (audience laughs)
Oh, there we go.
Oh, you're made at Instagram because you and fucking bunch
of Pakistani hackers decided to get into a group
and like each other's shit and now you're not getting
as much engagement.
Do you think fucking Zucks is and idiot?
My friends, the lack of patience in the system right now
is extraordinary.
We have 22 year old life coaches on Instagram.
(audience laughs)
(chuckles dryly)
I don't want to get side-railed 'cause this can get
real fucking ugly, Philly.
When I was 28 years old, six years out of school,
a lot of Jess and I's friends first started getting Facebook
'cause that's the time it started coming out.
I, because I worked every fucking minute,
what she can tell you is, literally, basically,
we threw our caps in the air for graduation
and I disappeared of the face of the fucking earth
'cause I worked every fucking minute.
This was first time I'd be connected with a bunch
of my friends 'cause here's Facebook and it was awesome.
It was like digital class reunion shit, it was amazing
for a lot of us who were part of that generation.
As I connected with it, it was really interesting.
In a very nice way, 'cause we came from a very nice place,
most of my high school friends, basically, basically,
in some shape of form, 10 or 12 of them said,
"Oh, you still work at your dad's liquor store."
And I remember that era super well because
I'm really desperately trying to
put patience on a pedestal as a good thing
because it is a good thing.
Because the game is long
and so many people here are walking around
with insecurities and all their behavior of what they want
is to just prove to somebody else that they've made it.
Literally, people buy dumb shit like Supreme bags
so that they could look cool in front of their people.
Literally, people buy seven bedroom homes,
seven bedroom, guys,
nobody uses their seven bedroom home.
We live in four rooms but it's status.
They fucking lease cars to look the part.
They wear clothes to look the part.
They buy home to look the part.
All, all because they live their lives on defense.
You live your life on defense
because you worry about other people's points of view.
The end.
Back, 'cause Jess is here and just so fun
'cause I get to use stories that I've...
Freshman year of high school,
pretty interesting year, right?
'Cause you've gotta kind of reestablish your brand.
Shit gets really gnarly freshman year of high school.
(audience laughs)
While Jess was being super popular her freshman year
of high school, let me tell what I was doing.
I was walking around the lunch room trying to sell
baseball cards to everybody sitting at a table.
Not necessarily the move to make yourself the most popular
person in a world where that's what matters.
I'm telling you that story for one reason,
because of great parenting, on my mom's birthday,
she put me in a place very early on that there was only
on voice in my game: My own.
As a matter of fact, it's so scary to me how singular
my own voice is.
It doesn't mean that I don't listen to feedback,
it doesn't mean that I'm delusional and I think I can
get away with bad shit and it's all okay,
it just means that I am incapable of valuing anybody else's
opinion including my mom's, my wife's, and my children's
opinion about me over my own.
(audience applauds)
It's super important, if you really listen
to where I'm going with this talk,
if you realized how much of the actions you do
is to show your mom, or your dad, or your sibling,
or your spouse, or somebody, show somebody else
that you made it or you did it,
it is remarkably scary how many people are dictated
by somebody else's opinion.
When you lay your patience into it, it's go to have
a chip in your shoulder; I've got a lot.
But patience.
Too many people
struggle with being booed in the third quarter.
Too many people; how many people under 30?
You guys are still playing the fucking national anthem.
Too many people rushing, taking shortcuts, doing dumb shit
because they want to win in the first quarter.
This is a long game my friends; sure, you can get hit
by a bus.
Great, I understand.
For the far majority of us, this is a long game
and with the way medicine is going now.
How many people here between 40 and 60, raise your hands.
This is where it gets real interesting for us.
We're just going to live a lot longer than we thought.
I mean it.
How many people are 40, 40 to 50, real quick.
Do you remember how old you thought 40 to 50 was
when you were 26? (audience laughs)
When I first entered my dad's liquor store,
my cousin, Bobby, was 30, I was 22,
I thought he was old as shit.
(audience laughs)
Now, sitting up here at 42, when I look at this little man
right here; how old are you, my man?
Nine, I feel nine too.
Like, literally, that's the crazy shit
that they don't tell us.
For all the 20 to 30 year olds in here,
what they don't tell you, you're going to feel basically
the same in 20 years.
You're going to have just as much fire and there's plenty
of 60 year olds in here who have just as much fire.
It actually doesn't change as much as you think.
Especially not here, right?
Maybe you're a little slower, the back,
maybe some of that shit, but not here.
Not here and the quicker you understand that,
the quicker you won't look for a fast buck.
Do you know how many of my friends, my community,
that when I post on Instagram, I mean, this is what,
the hypocrisy, the fucking hypocrisy.
Do you know how many times I watch shit, for all my talking,
I'm a listener.
I watch shit.
Don't leave a comment on my Instagram
and think I'm not watching.
I posted something about patience a year ago.
Everybody comes in, a lot of keyboard warriors out there
these days. (audience laughs)
Everybody loves to look the part on social media
but what are your fucking actions is what I'm interested in.
So I post something about patience and comments will come in
like yeah, Gary V, patience, this and that.
Literally, it hit me because somebody had a funny username
and then that email had it, I have a great memory
and I kind of look back.
A kid who wrote a fucking manifesto of how I changed
his life on imposing patience, right.
How it was the greatest thing that I taught him
and I'm the father he never had which kinda pissed me off
'cause I'm not that old but-- (audience laughs)
Is the same kid that, nine months later, after that post
sent me an email crying, asking me for help,
asking to borrow money, which didn't bother me,
but it speaks to the desperation 'cause I don't know him,
because he maxed all his credit cards out to buy Bitcoin
and Bitcoin when down.
People are chasing.
Do you know how many of my homies that I grew up with
that were social media experts now say in their bio
that they're crypto currency experts?
Who are also real estate experts?
People are fucking experts.
People are chasing.
The collective answers to this room are:
Way more patience.
Take your entitlement and leave it in the fucking garbage,
nobody gives a fuck.
Period.
And, the fundamental thing that really matters,
nobody you've ever met has succeeded in building anything
without working their fucking face off.
(audience applauds)
I literally throw up in my fucking mouth
every time I hear the word passive fucking income.
(audience laughs)
It's my truth.
There's nothing fucking passive about income, my friends.
There's no fucking system.
You're not going to be fucking smoking weed
in a fucking island in Jamaica while other idiots
are working for you, you fucking idiot.
(audience laughs)
And so, I highly recommend, as you sit in your fucking chair
right now that you start getting real with yourself.
Every excuse that you have, it's your fucking fault.
Don't lend your aunt money, asshole.
(audience laughs)
Alright, that's my framework.
It's work, it's patience, it's a long game,
you've got to put in the effort every, single day.
I highly recommend finding something that comes natural
or you like.
Too many people do shit they don't like for the money
to buy shit that doesn't matter.
It's the most basic shit on earth.
How many of you are so miserable right now,
but if you made $30,000 less, if you could afford it,
and all you have to do is sell your home
and go live in an apartment?
Like it's crazy to me the traps that people
are putting themselves into for buying shit.
By the way, buying shit to impress other people,
you're playing for an outside game.
Now, let me tell you how I think you'd do it.
That's the framework, let's get the details.
Content, content.
A video, a written word, or a picture.
Content is the gateway drug to every single thing
in our society.
Anything that you want to happen, you want to sell sneakers,
you want people to buy your course, you want to sell homes,
I don't give a shit, no matter what you do in this room,
content is the gateway drug to your success.
If you are not producing pictures, videos, and written words
for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat,
LinkedIn, YouTube, Medium, if you are not doing that,
you are fundamentally irrelevant in society.
I don't give a shit that you didn't grow up with it.
I don't give a shit that you hate going to a restaurant
and seeing two people on the phone and it's sad.
I don't give a fuck.
I don't give a fuck if you're judging your grandkids,
they're so introverted now, they don't know how
to communicate, they don't look in your eye.
Fuck you, grandpa, this is the new game.
(audience laughs)
You can be sad all you want, you're the same asshole
that said you'd never get a cell phone
and now you have one, Barry!
(audience laughs)
Technology doesn't give a fuck about how we grew up,
technology is going to do it's thing.
Technology doesn't care what your opinion is.
Too many people here have an opinion about society
and then, use that to dictate their business careers.
That is the most insane shit of all time.
Your romantic point of view on how it should be
is the reason that you're not moving forward
in your business career.
You, in one side of your mouth, think that Facebook
is ruining our democracy and in the other side
don't think it works to sell your dumb shit.
We have to take a collective step back here right now,
Philly, and understand one thing,
this is the remote control of our lives.
Let me say something very simple,
I'm going to demonstrate it to you and if you really
understand what I'm saying right now,
it's going to really matter.
Facebook and Instagram, our screens, right.
There's only so much real estate.
Facebook's and Instagram's only asset in society
is your attention.
The reason the algorithm is the way that it is
is 'cause if they keep showing you dumb shit
and you don't like, you're going to leave.
How many people here have been on email for 15 years
or longer, raise your hand.
Great, remember how we used to read email 15 years ago?
We read it.
(chuckles)
For all the youngsters in here, I had an email newsletter
in 1996 that had 91% open rates.
Everybody read it, everybody acted on it,
I sold a lot of wine.
But we just kept sending email and so did everybody else
and you started to tune it out.
You know why the algorithm's not showing
your content as much?
'Cause the people that do see it, aren't showing
that they like it, thus, it doesn't want to show it
to other people.
The algorithm is saving ourselves from ourselves.
The algorithm works, it's why it's working.
But here's the problem with the algorithm,
there's only so many pictures and videos.
Right now, we're just competing amongst ourselves.
I'm the alpha, I'm the biggest invested,
it's why I'm growing the fastest.
Others in here are doing solid, decent or nothing at all
and that is a direct correlation to your success and,
more importantly, your future success.
Here's the problem, my friends.
Coca-Cola, and BMW, and Comcast, and the Eagles,
and GE, and the biggest companies in the world
haven't invested properly into the feed yet.
The feed is just one feed.
Right now, it costs eight or nine dollars
to get in front of 1,000 people.
Soon, it's going to cost 50, and 90, and 200,
and you're going to sit and cry that you weren't doing
more of this, just like I cried that I didn't spend
more money on Google AdWords from 2001 to 2004
when they were grossly under-priced.
Let me show you why I know this.
Philly, please do me a real honor and stand up right now if...
Jesus fucking Christ.
(audience laughs)
Please stand up right now if, besides live sports,
you basically mainly now watch Netflix, HBO Go, Hulu,
or anything that's OTT.
If you're mainly watching Netflix, stand up.
This is fucking crazy.
(man yells) Thank you, bro.
I want everybody to look around, stand, keep staying up.
I want everybody keep staying up, look at this room.
We can all agree these are 13 year old kids,
this is now a good wide range of individuals and ages.
We have switched to OTT.
You can sit, thank you.
85% of this audience
consumes this many television commercials.
Nobody here watches television commercials.
Super Bowl, the best, we all watch it.
Every other commercial, the worst.
Now, let me give you data: 80, let me say it nice and slow.
Eighty billion dollars in spent in the making
and distributing of TV commercials in America a year.
And all of it's going directly in the fucking garbage.
When Pepsi, and Kellogg's, and Kraft, and BMW,
finally feel the pain of them throwing money directly
in the trash, which is coming, they will switch it.
And it will come into this nice little place on Facebook
and Instagram and everything else.
And right now, while you're sitting on your hands
and not spending every dollar you can afford to
on running ads, not organic,
not you posting on your organic page,
no running a $100 worth of ads on a one mile radius
of your office or to people that buy T-shirts,
or whatever it may be, while you're sitting on your hands,
you're watching the single greatest marketing opportunity
walk right by you, and everybody in this room
including myself will regret for not spending more.
If I can leave here with anything,
if I can leave here with anything, it would be to get you
to understand how much of a gold rush the under-priced
attention on Facebook and Instagram is
and get you to finally get off you fucking ass
and Google how to run, I love when people are like,
well, Gary, how do I run ads on Facebook?
Google it, dick!
(audience laughs)
How do I run ads on Facebook, enter.
I didn't grow up with it.
Neither did I.
You didn't grow up driving, you figured it out.
The fact that you're willing to not put in the five
to 10 hours to understand it for something that brings you
so much value is mind-boggling to me.
And then, if you understand it, the fact that you're not
doing it and still debating, boggles my mind.
This is my, listen to what I'm doing, this is platform
that goes up in price if more people are on it.
It is the single platform behind the foundation
of all my success and I'm trying to get you to go into it
at my own expense 'cause I'm competing with you
for that same real estate because it is that good
and I'm just putting it on the record so I can run
this exact video in eight years and when I'm talking
about something new, it's going to say remember in 2018
when yo were in Philly and you didn't listen to me,
you fucked up. (audience laughs)
Don't make that same mistake with augmented reality,
or virtual reality, or Ai, or whatever the fuck else
I'm going to be believing in nine years.
This is going to go away.
The same way that Google AdWords did and the same way
that email went away, it's not that it goes away.
TV's not away, radio is not away,
it's just not a great deal anymore.
Attention is the asset.
Everything works but what about the price?
I can run a lot of television and people would know about me
but that would cost millions instead of tens of thousands
for the same thing.
We, as a collective, have not quantified
how remarkable this is.
How many people here sell something like vitamins,
or T-shirts, or sneakers, or wine, raise your hand.
Every one of you needs to figure out influencer marketing.
You should leave this fucking conference right now,
go home and start DM-ing people on Instagram and asking them
how much money it costs for them to post a picture
holding up your shit.
How many people here have consumed my content
for a year or longer?
Thank you, you know this is the same shit.
I got one fucking pitch. (audience laughs)
I'm being serious.
My pitch is simple: Stop buying dumb shit,
and start doing the right thing.
And here's the right thing, it's very basic.
Make pictures, videos, and content for the social networks
and the platforms that people pay attention to.
How many people here listen to podcast, raise your hand.
(audience cheers)
How many people since listening to my podcast,
now, have started watching a little less video
because you're listening on the podcast, raise your hand.
This is so interesting to me.
Everybody here, if you have a business of any sort
or ambition needs to figure out how to start a podcast.
Audio is passive.
You can listen while you're driving,
you can listen while you're traveling,
you can listen while you're working out,
you can listen while you're walking the dog.
It doesn't make you do this.
You just got those nice little fucking ear pods,
the ones that you said you would never wear.
(audience laughs)
In your ears.
My friends, something I figured out about myself
a very long time ago,
I'm very good at knowing what you're going to do
while you're telling me you're not going to do it.
A lot of people here said that they would never have
a Facebook account, that they would never be on Snapchat,
a lot of people here said they would never be on
internet dating, a lot of people here said, yeah,
a lot of people here-- (audience laughs)
A lot of people here said they would never
have a cell phone.
You're going to do everything, do you understand why?
Technology's more powerful than your opinion.
(audience murmurs)
It's true and I have good news for you or bad news,
depending on if you're optimist or pessimist.
Most people are people are pessimists.
It's just starting.
The robots are going to kill us.
(audience laughs)
I'm not joking.
So, since they're going to fucking kill us,
wouldn't it be a good idea to do the right thing
while we're here?
This is just starting.
Bookstores came first.
Then, people that owned limo companies.
Everybody's on the record.
The internet's coming and it's going to take everything.
All of it.
There's the internet then there's the companies
that are the first layer above the I internet.
Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon,
and the all of our jobs is to be the next layer
on top of that.
And the level of disrespect that so many of you have
for these platforms and their capabilities
is the vulnerability of your upside,
if you are not a practitioner.
You know how many people here have opinions
on Facebook ads work but have never run one?
If you are not a practitioner on producing,
not you hired your 24 year old niece 'cause she's young
and she gets this shit.
You, if you are not a practitioner
of these six or seven platforms on this phone,
54% of time on one report is spent on social networks
on all time spent on a cell phone.
Everybody's a cell phone, every minute, always.
Watch your behavior.
Everybody makes excuses, well, my customer's not on it.
Or not yet, or it's coming.
This is here.
If you are not here, you do not exist.
Please, stop judging it.
Please, stop being romantic.
And, most of all, start being honest with yourself,
the reason you have those excuses is you don't want
to put in the work.
You do not want to put in the work or even worse,
you have a big ego and you don't like the feeling
of starting with 19 followers or fans on Instagram
because you're worried about what other people think
about you not having a big following 'cause
you're a big shot in another world and you fuck,
fucking pisses me off, your fucking ego pisses me off!
(audience laughs)
(snickers)
It's, your ego, it's your detriment.
You have ego because you think somebody
gives a fuck about you.
You know...
In really, summing this up for me, it's super simple.
It's so easy and it's so hard.
It's so hard because judgment and all these things
have been so drilled into your mind, it was your framework,
it was how you were parented, the environment,
it's your core.
But at some point, you've just got to realize
that there's only one game.
It's an inside game and there's only one move,
it's called work.
And just the lack of execution.
The enormous amount of ego,
just all these things are wrapping up into one concoction
that isn't working.
If you have not had sustained growth, it's because normally,
you're impatient and you're trying to move too fast.
And here's another thing and let me tell you why
I have a lot of passion for this moment,
this, to me, since Google AdWords, is the greatest,
and early television ads,
early cable, early cable, CNN, MTV, ESPN,
they took advantage of early cable that's why you know them
still, they moved fast, it's all the same game.
Attention is the framework.
Here's what scares me/excited me the most.
It's so great right now.
How many people here are under 30, stand up, do it.
So let me tell you a couple things about you, for me.
One, I'm so pissed at all these old fuckers razzing on you.
- Yeah. - Thank you!
- You're welcome. (audience laughs)
But here's another thing I know about you, and honestly,
I genuinely believe this is the best generation
that ever was, when I look at the actions, all the--
(audience cheers) I really mean it.
I mean it.
Here's the one problem for everybody standing up.
You haven't been punched in the fucking mouth yet.
(audience laughs)
I need you to understand while you stand here,
you've run your professional career, over the last
eight to 10 years, during only economic growth.
All us other old fuckers that are sitting down right now,
we've been punched in the mouth,
we lived professionally through 2007 and eight,
we lived through 2001 and '97 and '96.
Of course business is good and you can make money
posting a detox tea on your Instagram.
Or you've got a fucking brand 'cause your printed some words
on a fucking T-shirt, you dick.
Of course, of course,
when the economy is wining.
My friends, and you can sit, thank you.
My friends who are 30 and under,
please, be prepared for the punch in the mouth.
Please, be prepared with the biggest, let me tell you
what happens when the fucking assholes on Wall Street
are cheating and the economy collapses.
Big brands stop spending money.
Nobody's reaching out to you anymore, offering you 500 bucks
for a picture.
You don't get the leads, nobody's returning you calls.
People go into a shell, emotionally, not just financially.
And then, you have to have something.
Nobody wants to give you money for your fucking,
we're the Uber of dry cleaners.
And every other fucking stupid ideal running through
everybody's fucking head right now.
(audience laughs)
I mean this, I mean it.
Everybody's building apps and thinks it's worth
four million dollars and they're going to raise
a million dollars from fucking venture capital,
they're going to be fucking Instagram.
My friends, for every one Instagram,
there's eight trillion Insta-shits.
(audience laughs)
Please, understand that we are living right this day,
May 3, 2018 the best fucking opportunity for entrepreneurs
in people ever.
Stop listening to the bullshit propaganda.
Stop listening to the bullshit propaganda of negativity
that's sold to you every fucking day
because they're trying to make money.
Fear sells, don't get caught into it.
Optimism is the gateway drug to happiness, period.
You either choose to see it or you don't, that's on you,
knock yourself out, it's the facts, it's the data.
We're healthier, better, everything.
We've got nothing put problems, you know what's happened
because of this internet thing, we've been exposed.
You know why it's so, you know how much I love fucking
MeToo and all this stuff, it's the best,
'cause we fucking deserve it, we're being exposed.
Big media hid it, this is exposing it.
This is it.
This is our moment.
You will regret if you don't go hard.
Please, stop being lazy, and egotistical, or undereducated,
or entitled, go learn how to make pictures, audio,
video for Facebook, Instagram, YouTube.
Get the fuck out of this conference hall right now,
run home and do shit!
Thank you so much.
(audience cheers)
Thank you.
The back, the back!
(audience applauds)
(upbeat electronic music)