- What's different about entrepreneurship
than rap and sports,
is when you say you're a rapper
someone's like all right, rap.
And then if you suck, everyone's like oh you suck.
And when you say you're a basketball player,
people are like, at the YMCA or going to the league?
The one thing I love about entrepreneurship
is it's binary.
Either you're gonna win or you're gonna lose.
(slow music)
Being a businessman or woman wasn't cool in 1992.
It was Bill Gates, a fuckin' nerd.
So now that everybody wants to put entrepreneurship
in their Instagram profile,
and that's cool in the club,
that is just bazaaro world,
but that's also done what sports and rapping has,
which is everybody wishes they are.
And what's different about entrepreneurship
than rap and sports,
is when you say you're a rapper,
someone's like, all right, rap.
And then if you suck,
everyone's like oh you suck.
And when you say you're a basketball player,
people are like at the YMCA, or going to the league?
But when somebody now says their an entrepreneur,
it's just accepted.
And we haven't matured into
are you a successful entrepreneur,
or a wannabe entrepreneur?
And to be very frank, I'm concerned about it,
because I think, the one thing I love about entrepreneurship
is it's binary,
either you're gonna win or you're gonna lose.
And I think that there's a lot of people right now
that are not built
with dealing with the emotional baggage
that comes along with a public loss.
And so I spent a lot of time with young entrepreneurs
around the mentality of like,
when you lose, are you ready to take that ridicule,
and what are you gonna do?
The greatest reason I believe that we're living
through such fake entrepreneurship right now,
is not only is there an enormous amount of capital in play
for these 22-25 year olds,
but they're the generation
that was parented in a way
that tried to eliminate losses from the ecosystem.
I mean this is the generation of eighth place trophies.
My favorite thing that's going on in society right now
is 45 to 60 year olds clowning on millennials
and making fun of them,
and I keep looking at them
and I keep reminding them that you parented these kids.
- [Man In Hat] Everybody gets a trophy right?
- Yeah, and so we've demonized to these kids losing.
I love losing.
Micro-losing especially, more than macro-losing
is incredibly motivating.
I mean there's nothing more fun
than losing regular season games.
You know, you learn from them.
Come the playoffs you'd like to build on that,
but yeah, I think adversity is the foundation of success.
Being born in the Soviet Union,
living in a studio apartment with eight family members
when I was a kid.
Going on one and a half vacations my entire childhood.
My parents buying me nothing,
because they didn't have,
like the money nor the mindset to do that for me
is fundamentally the reason
I'm successful at entrepreneurship.
I'm not scared of anything,
nor do I care about anybody else's judgment,
which allows me to navigate very quickly,
and my losses are my losses,
and my wins are my wins,
and they both feel the same.
When I hear the accolades, or when I get razzed,
I basically can't hear them.
I'm just so in love with the process.
And that's what getting up off the floor is.
You had no choice,
it's in your DNA to wanna play.
- I'm wondering what's the message
to a company that doesn't have innovation
as a core part of their business?
- They're in trouble.
- How do they respond?
- By letting themselves die.
- [Man In Hat] But what do they do if they don't wanna die?
- Innovate.
- [Man In Hat] And how do they do that?
What's the secret?
- By looking at the leader of the company in the mirror,
and see if she or he is capable of innovating.
Everything stems from the top.
If you have a company run by somebody
who right now is sitting and saying
well I'm retiring in 18 months,
and I don't give a shit about innovation,
you're in trouble.
Or not talented enough to know how to innovate.
You know how many A's, number ones
hire a CMO and say you figure it out,
but they don't even know how to judge it?
How are you a CEO in 2019,
and don't spend 100 hours to educate yourself
on how modern communication works
so that you can judge it within your own organization?
Gary, I didn't grow up with this stuff.
You didn't grow up driving, you figured it out.
I know you didn't grow up with it,
but it is your job, it's required of you
to know how to run your business.
And to me, how your business markets and communicates
is as important as you knowing
how to run the finances of your company.
It's just that some people don't wanna put in the work
to get updated on the new platforms
and the new world,
and that's to their peril.
The advice that I think will play for everybody in the room
regardless of what you do,
including if you're like the PTA president
or thinking about running for local office,
like I have no idea what you wanna do
professionally or personally,
but the one thing that has been tried and true
and I keep things extremely simple,
is you have to reverse engineer
the audience you're trying to reach,
and you have to tell them something that brings them value,
not you value.
Every single person here
that is in power to do so,
needs to go spend the next 100 days
having phone calls, having dinner,
having breakfast, having drinks
with every one of their customers
and they need to listen to what they care about.
And then they need to go back to the pad
and cook that meal.
That's all I do.
I read my comments left and right,
I was just talking with your CMO prepping,
you guys were wrapping up.
And she's like are you always like this on your phone?
And I was laughing, what I was doing,
I was reading comments.
Because the qualitative feedback
is the insight I need for the next innovation.
The amount of people who hope their customers like
what they are doing,
or they're trying to force their customers
to like what they wanna sell
is fascinating for me to watch.
- You've talked about this,
is that people who are dragging down
the culture of a business
should be, they shouldn't be there.
- I wish most businesses
were into documenting in coach.
What most businesses are doing is,
Harold's a dick, but his numbers are remarkable.
That's what's really happening.
That's what I'm referring to.
That if you've got somebody
who's driving top line revenue,
or she or he is crushing their numbers,
what most companies are doing
is they're looking at surface level,
they're like if we fire Carol,
we're gonna lose those three accounts
'cause she's so wired in there.
What they don't realize is the hidden lost revenue
that's happening with Carol or Harold
destroying the culture,
and completely messing up the continuity
and speed of the macro.
- So what do you do,
from your point of view what do you do
if you have someone who's really kickin' ass,
bringing the numbers in
and they're just a,
they're a jerk, what do you do with them?
- What I do, one man's point of view
is I sit them down.
I look them dead in the face,
and I say you think I'm joking because you're delivering,
but I'm not joking,
and if you can't be a good human being
I'm going to fire your face.
(laughing)
- [Man In Hat] That's pretty right there.
- That's what I do,
and I do it, and I do it,
I'm a big shot on stage now and I'm acting tough,
I do it in a conversation.
I'm like look, I'm not kidding,
I know you don't believe me
because you've worked at other places
that value dollars,
and I value dollars,
I just value slow dimes.
So when you deliver on culture,
the buy in and the macro is remarkable.
And what it does for the business is extraordinary.
I'm a pot committed buyer of this thesis.
That you have to fire the best performers
that are destroying your culture.
(dramatic music)