(funky upbeat music)
- No matter who's making America great,
I'm 50 years old and I'm driving a truck
and I'm gonna happy,
'cause it's gonna be a 11 percent growth
in the next five years.
Then all of a sudden,
bang, UPS, bang, American Express,
postal service, Uber, automated, heroified.
What am I gonna do then?
'Cause I'm sitting here telling you
that America is gonna be great,
and I'm gonna be good forever.
- Yeah, I mean look,
that's going political.
Like, anybody, anybody,
that thinks the President of the United States,
whether it's Barack or Donald
or Bernie or Hillary
is gonna help them,
they're a fucking loser.
(audience laughs)
Straight up.
I promise you, you are!
That means you need somebody
(audience laughs)
So whether your President is
for minorities and females
or your President is for the
26 year old white male that's got no skills,
here's the punchline.
The market is the market.
What is the 54 year old going to do?
Adjust!
Or lose!
- [Man] Right, but how do we
how do we get that message out to say,
you know what?
You can probably drive a truck 'til you're 55,
you can program in tech and do those
'til you're 90.
Talking to BMW, they said that
they can't get enough kids to be technicians
because their theory is
the old mechanic with the big grease on his shirt.
I was talking to the head of the
head of the machinery operations
meaning crane operations.
They said their jobs are empty for 15 months.
These kids can go to school for one year,
come out and make $150,000 dollars
but yet, they're going to a school,
50 percent of them will retire with the title
of a job that doesn't exist today.
They're staying in school for four years,
half of them is digital classes,
they're leaving with $300,000 dollars in debt
and they still don't know how to operate anything.
So, how do we get the parents in this room
to save that money?
How do we get the kids in this room,
well not the kids in this room
but who's gonna watch us online to understand
what they need to do and move ahead
and not think,
a diploma is gonna save me,
the President's gonna save me,
welfare's gonna save me or anything else.
How do we, what happens then?
What needs to happen?
- Carnage.
(mild laughter)
Carnage needs to happen.
People are complacent.
Here's most people's strategies in life.
(laughing)
- [Man] You holding your breath?
- I mean, I really have no passion for this conversation.
Like, if you're not capable in 2017 to Google shit
and figure out what's going on in the world,
fuck you.
(crowd exclaims, laughs)
I'm being dead serious!
By the way, I'm being really serious!
What role does the government play
or thought leaders or this and that?
Whatever that cliche statement of like,
the teacher comes when the student is ready, right?
I believe in that thing,
I don't know, I'm not
lots of things happen!
Lots of things happen in life!
Right?
I woke up one morning and realized,
you know what?
This liquor shipping law is never gonna get better.
There's dirty politician money,
they're gonna keep paying this off
and I'm not gonna spend the rest of my life
worrying what the 'right' thing to do is
and what's right.
No, they're gonna keep paying off politicians,
state by state and because I'm the biggest,
I'll always be picked on.
So I adjusted!
I started over.
Like, I started over.
This whole Wine Library thing and I got so lucky,
guess what?
I owned zero percent of Wine Library,
'cause it was under my father's name,
so I had no collateral to even start it.
I started VaynerMedia by getting somebody
to pay me $80,000 dollars to do a marketing campaign.
And I built it.
And so that's what's gonna happen
and everybody has their version,
not everybody has my business talent to build
billion dollar companies.
But if you're making $74,000
or $197,000 or whatever you're making
and your market gets fucked,
I don't see truck driver Johnny feeling bad for
Rick the bookstore owner, 'cause Amazon came along.
This has happened forever!
This is not the first time that innovation fucked shit up!
Nobody's crying for the farmers in middle America,
nobody's crying for the people in Cleveland
who own the docks!
This is what always happens!
So this is what's up now!
And so what 55 year old Charles has to do,
when he is out of a job is get another job.
Whatever that job is.
So if Charles is smart, and has skills,
he's teaching himself something now
to be ready for three years from now!
But Charles wants to watch football.
But Charles wants to drink at the bar.
- [Man] So he needs to put his 20 percent
into what's going on in the future.
- Mister, that's right. - And bank that.
- You're damn right.
I know tens of thousands of people,
and I know thousands of people extremely well
and I know hundreds of people deeply well.
There is no correlation between how much money
someone makes and their level of happiness.
I have friends who make $47,000 dollars a year
and are the happiest people I know.
Their work life balance is on point,
they're part of two soccer teams,
they play video games,
they watch every show they want,
they take two vacations that they scrap together,
and they're freakin' happy as hell.
And I know tons of people who I grew up with
in the Silicon Valley boom
who have hundreds of millions of dollars
in their bank account, and are as miserable
and as lonely and as broken as you'll ever see.
So I implore all of you
to please reverse engineer and figure out
who you are and figure out what level of monetizing
and stuff you need
and what level of creativity you need.
I promise you one thing, one thing that will
catch you very off guard.
I should be way more rich.
I leave money on the table every day!
I have left ungodly amounts of money on the table.
I spend tons of times sending DM's
and engaging with people, meeting people randomly
and not cashing in.
I actually believe the statement I am about to make.
I think that I love the journey
and the game of entrepreneurship so much
that I have subconsciously sabotaged my financial upside
to make sure I can play this a little longer,
'cause I fear if the numbers keep getting too big,
eventually it will take the fun out of it.
When you were lucky enough, like I am,
to actually do something that you love so much,
do something that puts pressure against
the one thing you care about besides it,
which is the time I spend with my family,
my family's my whole life.
And being this, and doing this
is the only thing that cuts into that.
I couldn't breathe if I wasn't an entrepreneur.
I didn't breathe when I wasn't an entrepreneur.
That's the reason I got D's and F's in school.
'Cause I just couldn't be me.
And I'm not capable of that.
And so, I think being here excites me because
I think, coming to not L.A., San Francisco,
New York, London is always more fun for me.
It always feels a little more practical.
It always feels like there's a little bit more
chips on the shoulder which is what I have.
But I want to remind everybody,
just because you didn't grow up with a trust fund,
just 'cause you don't live in Silicon Valley,
the market doesn't care.
If you are good enough, you will win.
So when I was a young kid,
I made a lot of money selling baseball cards
and comic books and toys.
And then I started working for my dad's business
and I was making,
when I was 22 to 28, I was making
35 to 55 thousand dollars a year.
But I had no expenses.
I didn't go on vacations,
I didn't buy fancy things, so I saved my money,
I saved my money, I saved my money.
And then when I had hundreds of thousands of dollars
I didn't have millions.
And by the time I was 33, 34
when I had that opportunity,
I'd still not bought a home,
I was still in an apartment.
I was 33 years old, and I was renting
because I was saving cash to go on the offense.
And so when I had a chance to invest in those companies,
I put hundreds of thousands of dollars,
not millions, but those hundreds made millions.
Made tens of millions and so,
that's it.
Nothing crazy, nothing
I didn't have any crazy, crazy advantage,
there's a lot of people that make $55,000 dollars a year
when they're 23.
The problem is, they go to Coachella.
And they want to buy a watch.
And they want to buy a BMW.
And I didn't.
So I ate shit for 13 years,
and then I had a moment, and I struck.
- So what should we do, Gary V?
Let's wrap this up, what should we do?
What should people do?
- People should fuckin' stop complaining.
- [Joe Rogan] Right.
Good call. - People should figure out
who the fuck they are.
- [Rogan] Good call.
- People should not listen to America propaganda
of fixing the shit they suck at,
they should be tripling down on what they're good at.
They should be competent in certain areas,
but you're not gonna become Beyonce
or your bone structure is a certain way,
you're not going to solve everything.
Your IQ can get a little bit better
but don't worry about the incremental,
figure out what fuckin' puts you on fire
and you're halfway decent at.
If you're lucky enough right now to be listening,
and you're good at what you like,
become tunnel-fuckin'-vision.
Because there's way too many voices
telling you what and how,
and here's the other thing,
and this is the big one, Joe.
Because you have a humongous audience.
The biggest thing that I've seen dividends from
have the conversation with the person
that's holding you back.
The reason most people who are listening right now
are not doing that thing,
is they're worried about the opinion of somebody.
Usually, their mother.
Usually, their father.
And the reality is, is that your spouse may be
the person holding you back,
and you have to have that conversation.
- [Rogan] Cut 'em off!
- We have to get to a place where you're doin' you
because the number one thing that
scares the fuck out of me is regret.
And you're gonna sit there at 72,
and you're gonna say I wish, I wish, I wish.
And whether that's money,
or spend more time with your family,
there's a million ways to do this.
Not everybody wants to buy the Jets,
not everybody wants to smoke weed on the beach
in the Bahamas.
Everybody's got a different fuckin' thing.
Figure out what your fuckin' thing is
and stop making fuckin' bullshit excuses.
Who the President is, your mom did this,
I missed it,
'I had that idea for Uber',
then why didn't you fuckin' do it, dick?
(modern hip hop music)