- Do I believe that work ethic is a foundational
piece of success?
Yes, I do.
Do I want anybody ever to work so much
that they get depressed?
Of course not.
(upbeat music)
- Gary V on Hustle Porn.
- Look, I think that you always have to sleep in the bed
that you make, and so I'm aware that I've been
disproportionately passionate over the last decade
around hustle and hard work, like when I wrote "Crush It"
there was so much of that in 2009, I thought there was an
amazing opportunity of the internet, YouTube, social media.
That was true, people benefit from it, both of you,
many who are watching.
Yeah, I mean I think, look, I think it's sad when you get
to a place in your career where you can drive traffic
for others by just the sheer mention of, and yeah,
it's not fun to be the subject of articles or keynotes
where people are taking things and not painting--
- [Interviewer] It's like bandwagoning.
- It's just not the full picture.
It's very clear, if you read or watch anything
for even more than five minutes that I want people
to be happy and be self-aware.
Do I believe that work ethic is a foundational
piece of success?
Yes, I do.
Do I want anybody ever to work so much
that they get depressed?
Of course not.
I never think that money is the driver, and so I think
whether it's lazy headline reading, or not doing homework,
yeah it's not been the most fun to get dragged into--
- No, yeah, I was like, (mumbles) no!
And there's so many people who are proof of the words
that you say, me included, so yeah, it's like,
oh, man, you just watch--
- There's a byproduct of success, you know?
Where people will, hustle porn's a term,
leveragepreneur is a term.
Leveragepreneur is when you're using other people
to build yourself up at the cost of the other person,
and you know, I think that as you get bigger,
people will leverage you, and I'm okay with that
because the truth always wins in the end.
And I know the body of work that I've put out, my intent,
and if you wanna clip one thing or one definitive statement
from one talk without the context of the whole thing,
of course you can say, anybody says anything.
But the reality is that I believe work ethic is important
if you wanna achieve hyperbolic success.
I don't wanna tell people how to be happy.
So why are you telling me how I should be happy?
- [Interviewer] Mic drop.
- And there's plenty of people that are super depressed
that work 40 hours a week.
It's just hyperbolized link-bating, leveragepreneuring,
and I'm okay with that.
But at the same token, it's important not to not take
other peoples' points of view into account,
and I'm in a constant focus of that as well.
(upbeat music)
A lotta people asked, "How much do you sleep?"
And my answer's six, seven or eight hours,
and it fucks with people, right?
'Cause they think I'm sleeping like an hour.
(crowd laughs)
And my point there is, sleep's important, like I don't know
who thinks they're gonna survive without sleep.
Sleep's important.
What's important for what I'm about is what you're doing
when you're awake.
I'm fascinated by people who say, "I hustle,
"I sleep four hours."
But then watch three hours of YouTube videos a day, right?
And so for me, as you know, and what you're referring to
as somebody who interacts with me, is Tyler's sending you
emails like, "Can you do 11:30 p.m. to 12:30 p.m.?"
Every minute I have is programmed.
- It's more like 11:15 to 12:25 (laughs).
- Yeah, no, like I mean, the amount of five and seven
and 10 and 13, I basically, Tyler, I see your face.
What do you think?
It's eight o'clock until 11 p.m. is pretty much programmed
to the minute with zero slots for anything
but the next meeting.
- [Tyler] Yeah, 6 a.m. really.
- But I'm working out, right?
But like, for work, eight to 11 with zero lunch,
zero downtime, like if I go take a piss,
I'm cutting into some meeting.
(crowd laughing)
Now, but here's the thing, here's the thing.
That's matching my happiness and the ambition.
That is not for 99.9 percent of people.
Time management needs to be predicated on what
makes you happy and what is coming out of your mouth.
The biggest thing I'm worried about is people
are talking big game, but then their actions don't match it.
So to me, it's happiness first, and then
eliminating hypocrisy, and that's how I think about it.
So for me, it's that because I love this game, it's what I
would wanna do, and my ambitions are great, and I enjoy it.
I want to spend 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. on a meeting to build
what I'm building, it's what I love to do.
It's no different than being in the studio
or painting or, you know, it's just what I love to do.
(upbeat music)
- So first of all, it's different for everybody.
But what I would say hustle is to me, is that when you
have passion around something, that you are squeezing
every last bit of the juice out of the orange, right?
To me, hustle is maximizing the energy
you're putting into somebody.
I'm blown away by people saying that they're hustling,
and they wanna achieve these great things,
and then they're actions don't match.
It's like saying you really wanna lose weight
while eating a Big Mac, right?
So to me, hustle would be putting all your effort
into achieving the goal at hand.
And for me that means making every minute count.
Hiring a full-time assistant who is...
Friday night didn't happen because I was hustling like
every minute, like if I miss my 15 minutes to tape
this show, I've missed my 15 minutes because
there's so much hustle in my day.
There's no hanging out.
There's no time where like, if I get to do like one joke
with you guys as I'm walking in between meetings,
we like find that to be a rare acquaintance situation,
occurrence, not acquaintance.
Hustle is putting it all on the line.
Hustle is waking up one day, the day before you die,
and realizing you gave it your all into the parenting
of your children, the building of your businesses,
the philanthropy that you wanted to do, whatever you define,
it's just all in, emotionally and executionally.
In theory and strategy and in execution.
(upbeat music)
I get very upset when people try to suppress people
from hard working without realizing that that's what makes
that person happy and whether it's me or Jason Fried
and DHH, like I think we actually agree on most things,
I think the thing we probably would, I'm curious
in a sit down is, is it up to us to know when Dan
or Johnny or Susan are on the verge of burnout?
And/or, do we know, telling people you should work 40 hours
a week or 160 hours a week, eliminates knowing
what they're about.
I don't know what else to say.
I think none of us get to sit on an ivory tower
and tell people what to do.
Do I believe that hard work is an essential part
of the kinda success that people define?
I do.
Do I think working so many hours that it burns you out,
that you need to retire or quit
or you're unhappy in perpetuity is bad?
Of course I do.
I think this is a self-awareness game, and actually I think
it's a much more interesting game of like, do you know why
you're working or what are you trying to achieve?
I would go crazy sitting on a farm in middle America
or doing 28 weeks of vacation, it's not what makes me happy.
But I unbelievably am happy for the people
that makes it happy.
I love the process of building something
the way I wanna build it.
I would go crazy having all people working remotely
the way 37signals does.
They would go crazy managing 1000 people under a roof.
I think it's about self-awareness.
(upbeat music)
I've never actually never fallen asleep--
- You're a mutant.
Okay, can we all agree-- - No I'm not sure.
I'm gonna test myself.
Honestly, by the way, I'm getting a lot more seven and six,
seven and eight than anybody would imagine.
And on weekends?
I'll go 11.
I think sleep is game. - Now we're getting the truth.
Okay, so you actually give yourself a lot of recovery.
- What I'm doing is, Monday through Friday, no question,
that game can be six and seven, and when I play basketball,
it can be even a little earlier 'cause we have a 6 a.m.
tip off, so I have to get up at 5:30,
but I almost consistently will try to make up time
Friday night to Saturday, Saturday night to Sunday,
Sunday, like I just don't know,
it's just I'm a big believer, that's all.
But now, I'm not worried about what people,
how much sleep they get, I'm worried about
what they do while they're awake.
- Okay, but the two things are connected because
if you wake up fully recharged, it means you wake up ready
to take on the world.
You know that feeling? - Yes.
- You wake up, and say come on, bring it on,
it doesn't matter how many obstacles, challenges, setbacks.
- I prefer those things.
- Okay, perfect.
Well, you know, Travis is a friend of yours, I just joined
the board of Uber, Travis has a little bit of that.
It's like, he may be dealing with 30 crises
at the same time--
- He eats it for lunch.
- But what happens, and here's the key,
you just put something on your Facebook yesterday
that I love which is, it's ultimately just business.
- That's it.
- It's not life and death.
The people who have a hard time are the people
who basically make it too important.
Perspective is everything.
(upbeat music)