i want to remind everybody you can say easy for you to say garyvee did it i just want to
remind everybody i only give advice that i ate from 20 to 32 for 12 years of my life i worked
seven days a week in a liquor store every [ __ ] day and gave up everything i worked
i worked 15 [ __ ] 16 hours a day every single day i did not have one saturday off in my 20s
none biggest day of the week none now literally literally literally 99 of the
people in this room will take more saturdays off tomorrow than i took off in my entire 20s
it's just true like like i just need people to know how it happens i'm very fearful that you see
me flying around with [ __ ] drock and you think that's what happened this is just a lot of work a
lot of work and i'm don't forget i'm also rogue i gave up on school right around fourth grade
so i was willing to take d's and f's and let them push me through the system so i could learn how
to sell baseball cards and do all my things so i've been on this for my whole [ __ ] life
i don't know i think entrepreneurship's in a very weird place where everybody thinks they are one
i think everybody thinks they're an entrepreneur because they write it in their instagram bio and
i think that that's not gonna work out i really don't and i think self-awareness is something we
need to talk more about you may be great at sales you may be an entrepreneur you may be
great at operations you might be really good at finance and math the more you can put yourself in
a position of what you do best instead of trying to be something else the more you will succeed
it's black and white it's true it's forever you just might be super creative and you haven't sold
[ __ ] in your life like it's really weird to all of a sudden be really into selling when you never
sold anything for the first 25 years of your life i was ripping people's [ __ ] flowers out
of their yard when i was four and trying to sell it back to them that's dna you know what i mean i
mean it though i'm not trying to become a cfo now just because i know it's good financial arbitrage
and i just i don't know i'm worried that everybody's getting pushed into things that
they're not instead of blocking it out and going all in on who they are because that's
just where it's gonna be that's just tried and true you know it's funny it's really hard to
ask a giraffe to be a penguin or vice versa and so one thing that's become much more obvious to me as
i've gotten older is like wow dna is powerful like i'm so comfortable with no and losing and fear
but i'm so empathetic to people that aren't i and this will surprise a lot of you that
maybe follow me i'm unbelievably comfortable with aggressiveness and candor and binary talk on stage
but one on one i've really struggled over the last 25 years as an executive with radical candor
and shooting it straight because i'm so optimistic and i'm always trying to fix it
and so that's taken me a lot of work and through that work it i'm like okay you know there's the
things that come natural and things that aren't if you grew up in a framework with parents
or customs that really desperately overvalued outside affirmation the opinions of your
parents's parents or siblings because you come from uh let's call it what it is an immigrant
background where there's a huge commonality there um school you were so deeply bought into school
that the short-term affirmation of every 90 days with grades and report cards made you comfortable
it's very hard to then go into hey hey this is what you should learn from entrepreneur land like
don't worry about it it's all gonna be fine that's very hard you've fully built yourself as an animal
to completely value outside judgment that is not based on the market but based on another
human being that's what i'd like people to learn which is like hey like what are we doing here
you've won the 400 trillion to one lottery of being a human being do you really want to live
with regret like do you not understand that the internet is the greatest optionality in
the history of mankind that our grandparents and everybody behind them had nowhere close to
the options you sit with today and really like what are you valuing that's making you conform
into doing something that doesn't make you happy your current overhead so sell your home and rent
that sounds crazy you know when i started talking about like hey in the pursuit of happiness would
you consider selling your home and renting i mean i got destroyed in the comments sections and
let's play like like that i'm some horrible person i'm like how is living your life
to pay the bills that you've created for yourself that's all humans all that humans do
are create their own jails and then live within it like i don't know like i just my great fear
is regret because it is the obvious thing i see in people that are 80 to 100 years old
that seems super scary nobody was thrilled that they played it safe it just you don't see it
and i think people should spend more time with 80 to 100 year olds that aren't their grandparents
i mean it i mean it i think people need context on life a little bit i think people have a horrible
relationship with time do you know people in this room are scared shitless of 30 like it's some
thing it means nothing but our society has decided to tell you that you have to
figure it out to marry the children and what are you talking about 98 of the 59 year olds i know
don't have it figured out the hell are we supposed to have it all figured out at 30 25 like people
are making terrible decisions getting married because they think they're supposed to by this age
you know like buying homes because they think they're supposed like the rules of modern society
have led to everybody wants to blame technology you know and drug companies for you know all
our problems we need to blame our norms our expectations our ridiculous north stars that have
make no sense we're living when i look at this young of a crowd they're living to 110.
there's an enormous amount of people in here that are going to live to 110 and are freaking out that
they don't have it figured out by 30. you're not even a [ __ ] quarter of the way there yet that's
all we do so so knowing that that's very hard in a human way the situation you have with your parents
all that stuff the professional one feels like i have a prayer of communicating that and letting
people and here's my point if you want to be a professional skier or if you want to start a
blog or podcast around cooking my big thing is if you jump and start swimming you know
this is riding a bike kissing a boy or girl or or you know swimming this is
it seems super scary until you do it and then you just laugh about why it felt so scary like
if you go do that thing and live more humble live with judgment you could always get a job again
just close your eyes in 229. nobody cares your lack of patience is killing you slowing you down
on everybody else your need of things is killing you only if you can watch gonna get whipped
need to be happy because happiness drives everything you're not lost in life you're
just early in the process everybody's trying to prove something so early you can wrap your head
around not giving about any advancement to your 29 please whatever it takes call your grandmother go
to your great grandfather's burial spot go back to the old country go to a shelter do something
do something that recalibrates your perspective on what is actually going on here every person in
here [ __ ] won the lotto you won way too many people have made decisions without ever trying
everybody's judging themselves way too early you can literally do four different things over the
next two years six months at a time to figure out everything that you think you might like
you should try to do doing something around passion is this is very similar to love
you're blinded because you like it it's not russian it's not rational i'm scared
i'm super scared i'm scared because i know exactly what happens this month every year every year i'm
scared i'm scared because i know that there are so many of you that graduate this month and have
no [ __ ] idea what you want to do and that's okay most people don't you should not be stressed about
that i'm actually not scared about that i'm scared that you don't realize that you're entering the
greatest five-year window of your life if you are 22 years old you are entering first of all some
of the greatest years of your life hey but b this this is the moment because you have to understand
this next five year window is when you don't go practical and safe this is not the time to get
the job mom wanted you to this is not the time to try to maximize as much money so you can buy a fat
whip this is the time to realize that you have a five year window and it's three for some it's
eight for others but there's a five new window for you to attack the life that you want to win
not because it's the secret because the world's so zen because it's [ __ ] hard as [ __ ] out there
you