- The reason I spend my time talking about this
is not because I want to be a fucking motivational speaker
and fluffy, fluff, fluff and ra-ra-ra, it's because
it's the fucking thing!
♫ We're unstoppable
- Yo, yo, yo, what up, vlog?
Busy day today, didn't really film anything
on this Friday, just work, work, work, work, work.
Did film an Ask Gary V, how did that go, Seth,
was it a good Ask Gary V?
- Great one.
- Awesome, nonetheless, gave a talk in Portland
a couple weeks ago to Dutch Bros coffee company,
it turned into an epic, I mean an epic.
D. Rock, how long was it?
- Two and a half hours.
- So, this is gonna be a two-and-a-half hour episode
of DAILYVEE?
Two and a half hour episode of DAILYVEE,
touched on a ton of new content, I think you guys
are gonna super-enjoy it and sit back,
pour a glass of wine from the Gary V. Wine Club,
oh wait, what, you're not part of the Gary V. Wine Club?
D. Rock, are you part of the Gary V?
You are, Seth, are you part of the--
- Not yet.
- Dude, what the fuck?
Guys, don't be a dickface, sign up for the Garry V.
Wine Club and watch this now.
- Let's welcome to the stage, Mr. Gary Vaynerchuk.
(audience cheering)
- Hello.
Thank you.
Thanks.
All right, let's go, let's go, sit down, let's do this.
- [Audience] Gary, Gary, Gary!
- What up?
What up, what up, what up?
Thank you for having me, thank you so much for the awesome
intro and reaction, very frankly, how are we doing
the Q&A, where is the Q&A gonna come from?
You guys have runners?
Awesome, cool, I just can't wait to get to the Q&A,
so I just wanted to get that out real quick.
And the reason why I want to do the Q&A
to be very frank, is I think I get to speak a lot
and when I think about speaking, at the end of the day,
I'm trying to reverse-engineer the audience, right?
To me, as a lot of you know, how many people here
have seen some of my content online, raise your hands?
Thank you, actually, real quick, how many of you have not,
raise your hands, okay, fuck you guys.
(laughing)
Kidding, kidding, kidding.
So, for about 70% of you, you guys have seen the content
and I'll go through certain things that I want to talk
to you guys about, for the 30% or 40% of you
that just raised your hands that you haven't,
you can go to YouTube or Facebook and see this,
so what's super-important to me is to make this talk
contextual and when I think about this audience,
and whether it's of age or mindset,
the youth in the offense of this organization
is super-attractive to me, from afar, right?
For me, I'm 41, I'm old, but I feel 16 in my mind,
right, and I work like I'm 19, you know,
in my prime, because I'm on the offense.
It's a mindset.
And so the thing that I want to first start with
is intangibles, right?
I've been thinking about this quite a bit,
and let me tell you why this is the first thing I want
to start with, yesterday, for some of you that know,
I'm a ridiculously die-hard Jets fan, right?
And yesterday, the Jets fucked me up
because they won a football game.
So for some of you that aren't into football,
my strategy for this season was to go 0 and 16
and take a quarterback with the first pick
and so I literally was in the stands yesterday
in New York, really upset as my team was dominating
an arch rival in the Miami Dolphins and all the fans
around me were pissed because I was booing
when the Jets were doing good shit,
and it was fucking awkward, okay?
But here's what happened.
The Jets took a player this year by the name of Jamal Adams
out of LSU and he basically was disproportionately
impactful on the game yesterday without doing anything
that you would normally consider a turning point.
He didn't have an interception for a touchdown,
he didn't do any of the things that would show up
in the stats sheets that would make you say,
oh he won the game as a defensive back,
what he did was intangibles.
What he did was, the hour before the game,
the way he interacted with all his teammates
didn't look anything like a kid playing his third game
of his life in pros, it looked like a 16-year veteran
doing the little things.
What he did was, on every play when the Dolphins
made a mistake or an off-side, he basically looked
at the entire crowd, which was half-empty and would get them
excited, what he did was when a teammate came off
the field that made a nice play on special teams,
he ran over and gave him dapps.
He literally, fundamentally willed the vibe of the game
to go in the direction that created the outcome.
I am not physically structured to win all my competitive
battles through my life.
Yet, when I think about all the one-on-one basketball
games or the floor hockey matches or ping pong
matches or tennis or football or whatever,
like 80% of the time when I fucking win something
in a physical confrontation sporting event
it's because I used intangibles to mentally outmaneuver
or disproportionately figure out how to win.
I am fascinated, fascinated by this.
I am fascinated by fucking mindset, I am fascinated
in a complicated world that we're all growing up in,
it's a binary decision if you're gonna be positive
or negative about shit.
I'm fascinated that when you're addicted to kindness
and optimism and positivity, it just, you know,
it's so funny.
You know stuff like the secret,
I love when people talk about like the secret,
people think you sit on your ass on your couch
and you're like, "I wish I had a million bucks"
and it's like, bloop and it just shows up.
What I'm fascinated by is the reason people succeed
that put their mindset into it is because it does something
that has really also caught my attention over the last two
years, which is the following.
When you bet on optimism, when you're on the offense,
when you're playing towards intangibles,
you do something super-duper interesting.
You start suffocating excuses.
If you asked me what the number one things is
that I'm thankful for that my parents gave me,
taking me from a communist country and moving me to the US.
You know, parenting me well, nothing bad,
you know, roof and clothes, all good stuff,
if you asked me the number one thing I wake up
every morning and thank that my parents did
is that I never saw either one of them complain
about jack shit and they basically created learned
behavior for me, I'm incapable of actually complaining
about shit.
And that has become the foundation of my success.
When I was in my 20s and early 30s, I spent
eight, 15, 16, 17 hours a day for 13 years, building
my dad's liquor store for him,
I own nothing of Wine Library, right,
I leave that business in my mid-30s, I've no wealth,
I've built a 60-million dollar wine business
for my dad and I don't sit there and complain,
I think about it as I did the right thing by thanking
my parents and giving back.
Literally, literally, no joke, if I leave this conference
today, right now, if I leave, right, if we do this,
we have a nice little Q&A, it's a good talk,
it's fucking cool, I leave, I go to cross a street
to go into my car, to go to the airport,
and I get hit by a car, literally as I'm laying there,
I'd be like fuck, I shouldn't have left the conference
that early.
It is in my mindset that literally every negative thing
that happens to me is my fucking fault.
I recognize that that's not true, you know,
when I talk about this publicly,
everybody starts bringing up stuff like what if you're raped
and what if you're this and that, I understand.
I'm a logical, practical person, I'm not talking about
knowing or thinking everything is my fault,
I'm talking about living a life where you default
into believing that as your mindset because what happens
is you start spending all of your time on offense.
My friends, listen, here's what fucking freaks me the
fuck out, do you understand, you like that?
Let me get to it, it's really interesting to me,
I wish everybody in this conference, including myself
by the way, who spends all this time on this,
I wish we had better perspective.
I wish that there was some fucking crazy,
that dude right there with the weird fucking horse
T-shirt, I wish he was some weird genie that could take us
back in time 80 years ago so that every one of you
could live one fucking day in your great, great
grandparents shoes and understand how fucking good
you have, like if you really, really understood
how amazing the era we live in
and listen, I'm not naive to what's happening
in our society, I'm aware of the political current
climate, I'm aware of everything.
Let me just say thins very clear so everybody gets it
through their fucking dome, this is the greatest
year to ever be alive in the history of mankind.
I am super-empathetic, again, when you make those kind
of statements, do I believe that there is
suppression around?
Of course, but on a macro data, macro data, health,
life expectancy, how much hate and negativity actually
is in the complete world, this is the best.
We have it the best and all I see is people sitting around
and dwelling around dumb shit around what they don't
have instead of focusing on what they do have.
My friends, the internet is a fucking miracle.
It's a fucking miracle, the scalability in which you can
achieve, the things that you could be doing,
the fact that you could be laying fucking naked
in your bed at two in the morning
and doing productive shit is fucking crazy.
It's crazy, if you got your side hustle,
if you think about your side hustle
or you're crushing it with these guys and doing
side hustle, there was no side hustle for your
great-great-grandparents.
Like, when it was 9 p.m. it was dark and cold outside,
it wasn't practical.
We take things for granted, do you know how upset,
do you know what's crazy to me?
How mad I get when my internet is a hundredth of a second
slower than what I'm used to.
Like, literally, a hundredth of a second slower
and I feel it because I'm used to what speed it's
supposed to be and that's frustrating like on a plane
because the Wi-Fi on the plane is a little slow
which is so ridiculous because I'm on a fucking plane,
and then it's Wi-Fi, it's there, I'm old,
I remember not having it, it's crazy how quickly
we take things for granted.
So, London just banned Uber and my buddy landed there
and he's like what the fuck am I gonna do?
I'm like, I don't know, what everybody has done for the
last 300 years, dickface, take the train.
We just get used to shit so fast.
And in our speed of getting used to how fucking awesome
it is, I'm just desperate this afternoon for you
to not lose perspective, perspective is the fucking game,
right?
Both my grandpa, look, I sit up here, get paid
super-duper-duper-well, get people to think I'm cool
because I have entrepreneurial DNA and the timing of it
was cool because entrepreneurs got cool.
Both my grandfathers had the same exact thing I had
and because they were Jewish in communist Russia
post World War Two, their communism put them
both in jail for 10 years in Siberia.
Just think about that, timing, opportunity,
yes, it is absolutely difficult for all of us,
we all have stuff, do I believe a white male
has more privilege?
Of course, yes I do, here's my problem,
if anybody has ever done it with your circumstances,
then you have nothing to talk about in the mindset
that I want for you to win.
If anybody has ever achieved something with two
alcoholic parents, that's the blueprint that you can follow
versus looking the other way.
Life is binary, it's either offense or defense,
you are there sitting in your seat right now
on the offense or you're not, there is no fucking
half-pregnant, there is no in-between, you're either
this or that.
And so, I come here with the energy to let you know about
how I see it from afar not knowing every nuance
of your life, A, I think this is the greatest opportunity
to be alive because the internet has created infinite
opportunity for all of us.
B, I love something that I'm fascinated by,
which is that everything gets accelerated.
What you're living through right now, my friends,
in society and the business world, is everything is
getting accelerated, what the internet has done,
it hasn't changed us, it's exposed us.
What the internet has done is not necessarily
suppress things, it's made everything at the forefront,
there is no hiding, everything is so clear,
out in the open, difficult to hide.
And so I'm fascinated by thing because it leads to bigger
opportunity, the speed at which good can happen
is extraordinary, it just comes down to actions.
So, what's really happening?
This first and foremost, this device, if you're sitting
in your seat and you have any entrepreneurial,
intrapreneurial DNA, aka, do you want to be the CEO
of this company one day and grow in the ranks
or do you want to do something for yourself one day,
if you have either one, which I assume is one or the other
inside your body, you have to take a step back and
wrap your head around the following, this right here,
this device is the remote control of our society,
this is everything.
Everybody keeps trying to tell people to spend less time
on this, I recommend you spend all your time on it.
I don't give a fuck if you look at another
human being's eyes again.
This.
Because where do you think the world is going,
I have two young kids now and I love all these parents,
like, Gary, you're into this social media stuff,
this is terrible, right?
I'm like, no, Dick, this is the best,
because, they're like, "But I'm gonna tell my kid
"to spend less time on technology."
I'm like, why, what world do you think your kids
are gonna be living in 20 years?
I love the naivete, the naivete, this is all history,
my friends, people thinking we're gonna go backwards,
every person in this room is gonna be wearing
contact lenses full time, on their body in 20 years
and triggering between real life, augmented reality,
where I don't know, Santa is on here, on stage with me,
right, and complete virtual reality.
Everybody in here, in 20 or 25 years is going to be living
a mixed reality world, you may not like it, you may think
it's weird, but people used to think online dating
was weird, people used to think the internet was weird,
people definitely thought sending a 14-year-old girl
into a stranger's car was super-weird and that's
what we do with all our daughters now at 14,
and put them into Ubers and strange men's cars
every day, social norms are changing at a speed
we've never seen before.
So, this amplification of everything is what I want to focus
on right now, I wrote a book six years ago called
the Thank You Economy, I want to talk to you guys about it
today, because it maters to most of you right now.
It is stunning to me how doing a good deed now travels
to such greater length than it ever did before.
To me, if you took anything away from my talk before
I go into the Q&A, I want you to understand the following,
somebody is always watching now.
There is no interaction that you're having
ever again that is just between you and that person.
And let me tell you why I want you to think this way,
though that may be true, because it becomes he said,
she said, thought that may be true, if you switch
and live the mindset that I've been living for the last
seven years, I really believe that a lot of good things
will happen for you, if you believe that every single
thing that you do is on the record,
you'll be stunned by how your behavior changes.
If you actually believe that every single thing
you do is actually being documented, is actually
going to be recorded, is actually being watched,
a miraculous thing happens, you change your behavior,
not that you go from being a dick to being phenomenal,
and I'm telling you because I've been living it
for the last decade, you just start sliding every
so often a little bit towards a better place
and start changing your behavior and what happens
is you start having momentum of positivity.
I believe that karma is practical, I believe that doing
the right thing is always the right thing,
and so how many people here are managers, raise your hands.
Actually, can you guys stand up, if you're managers,
can you stand up real quick, don't get lazy on me,
let's get the blood going,
let's not clap up for them, they don't need to be clapped,
I'm trying, fine, clap, clap.
All right, you can sit, can we keep the lights on,
it's better, I like seeing their faces.
I'm fascinated by management, how many people became
a manager within the last two years, raise your hand.
Funny shit, right?
It used to be fun saying your manager was a dickface
until you became one.
(laughing)
And now you're like, oh now I get it.
Management is super-interesting to me,
I'm super-fascinated by it, I have 800 employees
at VaynerMedia and I love watching somebody go
from super star, entry or specs tier and when
they go to management, shit changes because
everything flips.
Let me tell you something, managers, I run VaynerMedia,
I'm the CEO, 800 employees, I work for everybody.
I don't have people working for me, I work for everybody.
The biggest issue that managers have when they make
that leap, is they get very fucking confused, they think
that people work for them and they don't understand
that they're working for those people.
So, when I think about the Thank You Economy
and being documented and what I really want from you,
I'm not here to raz the managers, I want everybody
who just stood up to get to the place that they want to
in their lives and in their careers and I want to suffocate,
real quick, for all of them to leave their fucking fancy
PoVs at the fucking door, because what happens as you grow
up the ranks of society and life and in business,
is you have to start deploying humility, not ego.
And that has been the most fascinating thing
that I have watched throughout my career,
watching that shift become difficult,
because the way to succeed within an organization
that has people working is you have to figure out
how to learn to eat shit and that is super-difficult
and the higher up you go, the more shit you
have to eat, the amount of shit that I eat every day
is so fucking staggering to me,
and it is basically the blueprint of my success and every
other person that I have seen.
Literally your ability to be the bigger man and woman
in every situation, even though nine out of 10 times,
you may be right is the variable of your success
both within your organization and compounded when you
go out into the real world and this takes me back
to where I started.
Please understand the following,
being nice is ROI positive.
It is traveling, it is be known, it is leverage,
the ability to be not nice, politicking,
on the defense, always wins up-front, which is why
people are seduced by it.
But it never wins the long game, you're winning
the sprint for about 40 seconds, but you never
win the marathon of what's being played here.
It is now compounded because information about us
travels at a level we've never seen before.
Being a dick in Portland in 1974 was super fine,
because you could move to Minnesota.
That information now travels with us at scale,
you don't even want to know how much of a jerk
your great-great-grandfather was, all that stuff
is lost in history.
All of our baggage, here forever.
The biggest thing I remind people when they go on tilt,
whether it's politics or life or whatever,
is just remember, everything you're saying
is going to be there forever.
Everybody in this room is going to have a conversation
with their granddaughter and they're gonna have to explain
their points of view on everything.
Let's forget politics, life.
Everything.
And so I'm fascinated by thing dynamic, I think it's
a super-interesting time, and I really want to,
not inspire, it's really funny, I think about,
I don't get a super-high to inspire and make a fun event,
I get a super-high on the emails I read on the way out
to this flight this morning.
The people that were in the audience, the guy who just told
me backstage, when he saw me speak two years ago,
quit his job and went on the offense.
I'm in for one thing, legacy.
I'm in it for one person sitting here, emailing me
in six years and saying, you know, I was a little fancy
as a manager until you came to Portland, I was a little
high on myself and thinking I was special, I was building
towards the wrong path that wasn't going to be
historically correct.
And I am just fascinated by the fact that that the most
simple of traits now is the fundamental game
we're playing, that is crazy to me, as we go more
Jetsons, the people that know how to play like the
Flintstones are gonna win.
Literally I believe the manners that your
great-great-grandparents have are far more suited
for where we're going than the majority of us.
Now, we don't realize what's actually happening
in front of us, which is we are all,
not just me, all day putting out content,
D. Rock, where you at?
Not just having a weird dude following you around
full time, filming you, not me, all of you.
Maybe mine's an extreme version, but for all of you,
all of you, you are documenting your entire life
at scale forever.
And when you start wrapping your head around that,
two things unfold.
I hope, for 95% of you, number one, the quality of the life
that you're trying to live as a human so that you're
proud about the conversation you have at 60, 70
and 80 and when you get there, a funny thing happens,
as you push yourself to be a better fucking human being,
better things start happening for you in your actual
selfish business wants and needs.
And so, I hope that I can suffocate and ignite
a mindset here today of people actually understanding
what they're doing.
Think about all the dumb shit you believe five years ago
that you don't believe anymore.
We keep evolving, we keep changing as we grow.
I implore you to understand how big the stakes are
in the world that you live in right now.
The opportunity is so ridiculous.
And so let's get into the details before I get into
Q&A of this.
I am desperate for every person in this room
to understand couple of piece of data.
Number one, if you believe that this is the remote
control of our society the way I do,
then it gets really interesting when you start thinking
about social media.
Social media is this nice little, in my marketing world,
it's a slang term for nice to have, that you
support with television, things of that nature,
I see a lot of young faces, it's norm for you,
it's the main communication funnel, but it probably
has a balance between business and your real life
of what you're doing as a human.
I need everybody to understand something,
more than 50% of the time spent by all Americans
on a cellphone is on a social network.
This is pretty much the punchline.
How many people here are retiring in 10 years,
and I don't mean you're gonna open up a bunch of these
and you're gonna fucking crush it and buy an island,
I mean, you're fucking old and you're finished?
How many people are retiring in the next 10 years?
Great, zero.
So, for everybody here, please understand the following,
everything, everything that is running our society's
attention right now, Facebook and YouTube
and Instagram and SnapChat and Twitter,
everything, 12 years ago did not exist.
The smartphone did not exist, Uber did not exist,
Airbnb did not exist, nothing.
You know, back to the awesome dude with the fucking
horse T-shirt, the reason I wish you could take everybody
back is we don't have context to how remarkable,
it's tough, the people that lived
during the Great Depression, the people that lived
during the World Wars, people that lived during
the industrial revolution, it's hard because it's our lives,
it's hard for us to understand how different it is for us
than the prior two generations.
It's difficult because you have no context to anything
else, but the stakes and opportunity are all time,
they're all time.
Our great-great-grandkids, everybody else,
will look back at this era as the moment.
So, I implore you to take a step back and really
fundamentally ask yourselves a couple of questions,
one, what legacy are you building because it will be
the leverage for everything that you want
over the next 60 years and that is based on your actions,
and two, very honestly, are you squeezing the shit
out of this moment as much as you can?
The thing that I'm super-passionate about as a lot of you
know is I think work ethic is the one thing that's
super-fucking controllable.
Right?
A lot of us were born with what we were born with,
you're only so pretty, you're only so smart,
you're only so fast, you're only what you are,
the one thing that I'm fascinated by as you sit here,
the way you were parented, where you were born,
what you got, the one thing that actually is in your
control is the decisions of what you do with your hand.
It's like a great poker player, right?
A great poker player doesn't need the best hand every
time to win, it's how she or he navigates with that hand.
We're not gonna change who we are or where we were born
or to whom we were born with, but no matter where you are
in the lifecycle right now, we all have the opportunity
to start looking at it a little different,
and to me, very frankly, I just think we spend
an enormous amount of time on dumb shit
when we have ambition to do so much more.
Now look, you do you, I'm not interested in peddling
being a workaholic, I'm really not.
You can do whatever you want.
The happiest friend I know from growing up, I think
he makes $50,000 a year, he's on 17 fucking softball
teams, he takes every vacation day off,
and he's happy as shit and I love him and it makes me
so damn happy.
I have friends who are employees at Facebook,
they have a hundred million dollars in their bank,
and they're miserable and it's shit.
This is not a money conversation,
this is very simply, do your actions
back up your mouth?
To me, looking at hashtag, looking at people talking
about this, looking at their social media,
when I have the whole East Coast to West Coast
long flight, I get into a lot of work, I get
all my work done and then I start looking at all
of your social media on the way here.
And I'd look at the hashtag and what you said
about the earlier speaker and I do my thing, right?
The thing that fascinated me a lot about this conference
is you've got a lot of people peacocking
in this organization, aka, a lot of you are talking
big shit and I don't mean about this conference,
I went back and looked at all your tweets,
did you know there are 37 billionaires sitting with us
today?
I'm fascinated by that, I'm fascinated because we're
sitting in a world right now where entrepreneurship
is on a pedestal of cool, and so everybody is flocked
to it and everybody is talking about how they're gonna
crush and what they're gonna do and who they're gonna be
and then you look at their content, and every Friday night,
they're at a fucking concert, and every Sunday morning
they're this and every Tuesday afternoon they're that,
and they watch a shit-load of fucking Netflix
and they're incredible at fucking Candy Crush
and fucking, fucking, fucking.
And so, I go on this rant not to do anything to raz
or to fucking call anybody out,
I'm just asking a very simple question.
I promise you, if you want to be pumped professionally
and personally there's one thing that will drive you
to the biggest success, it's called self-awareness.
Do you know who you are, do you know who you're about?
Are you actually talking about shit that you care about,
are you talking because three or four people that you love
talk that game and you feel like you got to fit in
or appease your mom or dad or uncle or aunt or grandmother's
ambition?
The thing that helped me so much was just self-awareness.
In fourth grade I punted school because
I knew I sucked at it, I knew I could make $3,000
a weekend as a 10-year-old selling baseball cards,
but I couldn't spell 90% of the words that were
being thrown at me.
It was just who I was, it was how I was wired,
and I implore everybody in this conference to really think
about this incredibly interesting thing
which is when you're self-aware and you can get to that
place of understanding yourself, I implore you
to triple down on your strengths
and punt your weaknesses.
This country is really good at selling down our throats
what we're not good at.
We're always being sold what to fix.
I truly believe that most people in this room
will succeed by not addressing those things,
now, something could be fatal, right, something
could really hurt you, but I think that you need to just
lift those, get them to a certain place
where they're not a vulnerability and triple down
on your charisma and triple down on your salesmanship
and triple down on your work ethic.
Whatever those, three to four, one, two, three, four,
five pillars are, it's fascinating when you study
who's winning and who's not, it's the people that have
the confidence to suck at shit that are winning.
I can't read.
Right?
I'm terrible at it, like, reading a second grade book
to my daughter is like, you sure you want me to read,
you should go look at a bird.
Yet, standing in front of 800,000 people, I'm like, cool,
I'm good, we need to start thinking more and more
and as you're going through your careers right now,
I implore you to be confident in what you're good at
and to punt what you suck at,
because I promise you, everybody else sucks at shit too.
Everybody's got strengths and weaknesses
and I'm fascinated by people's obsession to pour
all of their efforts into fixing the weaknesses,
which is playing defense, and not tripling down on their
strengths, so if I leave you with anything,
structurally from a strategy standpoint
and mindset standpoint, I highly implore you on that.
And that's it.
Those are the things that are really kind of happening
to me, I'm fascinated that we're in this era.
I want people to take bigger advantages of it, right?
I need people to understand how ridiculously unbelievable
it is and to figure out do they really want stuff,
how many people love working because they just love the game
of trying to win at a career or building a business?
Raise your hands, those people are gonna have
a disproportionate advantage because it doesn't
feel like work, it's just their zone.
For the rest of you, you need to figure out what
you like about it and spend all your time on that,
because if you're in a place where you don't like it,
you're not gonna put in the amount of work that's needed
to actually achieve the things that most of you want.
It's very, very simple, put yourself
in a position to succeed.
Put yourself in a position to succeed.
And how many people here feel like they are not
self-aware?
Because I want to address this if I can,
just raise your hands if you struggle a little bit
with self-awareness, raise your hands,
nobody wants to do that.
I'll just go to it, I respect that's a tough one,
and why we got half the hands that we should have
and more importantly the ones that we got
were fucking crocodile hands.
(laughing)
If you were listening for the last seven minutes,
I'm going through awkward territory, I'm going there
because it has been clearly in the last four years
the thing that I've seen as won and lost.
I would highly implore you take the five people
that spend the most time with you,
co-workers, or family members if you feel like you're
struggling with this issue and invite them to dinner,
create a weird event where it's like your mom
and a co-worker, and she'll say what the fuck is happening,
create a weird event and tell everybody you really want
to figure out what you're good at, what you're not good at,
and spend three hours getting people that love you
and know you the best comfortable with telling you
the truth because nobody wants to tell you.
Because most people are kind, we don't tell people
because we like each other, especially the people
that are closest to you, but this is something
I threw on about a year ago in a blog post or maybe
two years ago and it's been the thing that I've been
the most emailed about, it's remarkable.
And it's an unlock because when you don't see it,
when you're blinded to it, you're doing the same repeat
behavior that's stopping you from the thing
and once you can break it, if you have the humility
to be comfortable with yourself, to go there,
it's a humongous unlock and it's the disproportion reason.
Listen, my friends, a lot of people when they talk
about technology and social media and investing in business,
they want me to talk about details, right,
like we're about to do Q&A, we'll go to it now,
in two minutes, I promise, and if you want to ask me
a simple question of how to get more Instagram followers,
I'm thrilled to answer to you, I'm thrilled,
I will give you everything I've got in detail,
but if you ask me why I got to sit here today,
if you asked me why I believe he's been able to build
this business, my friends, all the magic is in the gray,
it's not in the black and white.
All the tactics you can Google right now,
you can Google anything you want.
You want to do Facebook ads better?
It's the best deal in marketing, you want to sell shit?
You Facebook advertise it.
Your company should do a shit load more Facebook
advertisement, I should do more Facebook advertising,
it's a fucking steal, it's the steal.
Right?
Instagram influencers, fucking steal.
People don't know how to price themselves,
they give you awareness, some are overpriced,
some are underpriced, fucking steal.
Under 30?
Snap-chat ads, 3$ CPMs, swipe up, people watching videos,
these are details, but if you're fucking insecure
it's not gonna mean dick.
If you don't know what the fuck you're doing with yourself
it's not gonna mean shit.
The reason I spend my time on talking about this
is not because I want to be a fucking motivational speaker
and fluffy-fluff-fluff and ra-ra-ra, it's because
it's the fucking thing.
It's the thing.
If your operating system isn't right, you've got
no fucking chance.
Do you know how fucking unbeatable I feel?
Do you know if you think that I'm the best,
then I'm fucking the best, and you're wearing my hoodie
and I'm the fucking best, do you know how good that feels?
Phenomenal.
Do you know if you're sitting here right now,
never heard of me, and you're like, fuck this guy,
I don't like this bravado, I don't give a fuck either.
I don't care if you think I'm the best, I don't care
if you think I'm the worst, I'm just in my shit
because I'm grounded, 'cause I know what I am
and I know how I'm trying to live my life.
And I want that for every fucking person, because
let me tell you something, it fucking is the best.
It's such a good place to be.
Do you know what it's like to be in your own head,
and nothing else matters?
Do you know what it feels like to give a shit so much
about what everybody thinks, yet not care at all?
Do you know when I leave here, I'm gonna look at
every single Tweet about this talk and if somebody
says eh, I'm gonna be devastated like I fucking died,
yet I equally don't give a fuck!
When you can get to that place, amazing shit happens.
You know why?
Because you stop being scared.
When you're not scared, you do shit.
When you're scared, you do nothing.
And when you're not scared, you do shit,
and even better, when you're coming from a good place,
and your intent is good because you're good
and you have good to give, shit really starts happening.
So, I implore you, let's go, get the mics ready,
I'm ready, let's go into the Q&A,
but I implore you, I'll go into every detail,
but I implore you to get inside your head real quick,
figure out who you really are, and figure out if what
you're talking is being mapped by what you're doing.
Because the second you put those things together,
shit fucking unlocks.
Thank you.
(audience cheering)
Let's do it.
Let's get to the good part.
How are we doing this?
Just line up in the rows,
line up behind you and line up behind you?
Great, what's your name?
- [Audience Member] Hello.
- Hello.
- Wow, that's odd.
My name is Angela, I'm from Dutch Bros
Hillsborough Cornelius, a huge fan of yours.
- [Gary] Thank you, thank you.
- Okay, so I watched tons and tons of your content,
your videos, your daily Vs, I listen to your podcast,
I question that I was thinking about for a while
is how do you as a leader motivate your team to be just
as hungry and passionate as you are and make them
want to bust their ass just as hard?
- I don't.
I think it's crazy for CEOs and owners of things to
expect their staff to bust their ass and be as hungry
as them because when you own something,
it's different.
And so, what I do, is I try to motivate
by meeting each and every one of them.
The reason you've seen it, that I meet with all of them
and do those meetings, I want to buy the New York Jets,
I need like seven billion fucking dollars,
I work 18 hours a day, I wake up at 4.30
to be here today, I'm going back.
This was originally, I was supposed to sleep here,
no, I need to get three meetings in tomorrow,
I'm taking a bullshit red-eye tonight,
I don't expect that from others,
because most people aren't insane to have this
romantic point of view of not being able to buy
a Jets jersey for 20 bucks when he first came to America,
to owning the team.
I've got a fuck you, on me, got it?
I don't expect that for anybody else.
What I want to know is what makes every one of them tick.
Do you know how many people just want to make 200,000
a year and have great work-life balance?
That's fucking unbelievable, that's fucking
hitting the luck.
If you are the kind of person that is obsessed with
making $200,000 a year, and being able to go to all
sporting events of your wonderful children,
that's incredible balance and if that's what you want,
I want to empower you to do that.
I think the biggest mistake the leaders make is they
expect others to care about their shit as much as they do,
that's fucking ludicrous.
I want to figure out what you care about
and it's my job to put you in a position to succeed,
to be hungry, and if that means seeing every fucking
recital of your little Suzy, I'm gonna fucking
do that for you.
- [Audience Member] What up, G?
- How are you, bro?
- [Audience Member] Good man.
I'm Logan, I work for West Vancouver franchise.
- Oh, is this the thing we do, you say where you're from
and then your four people are like, yeah,
what up, motherfucker, what's up!
I got it, I got it, just trying to get it down,
I got it now.
- They're my groupies.
- [Gary] You all from VaynerMedia New York, give me some!
All right, go ahead.
- One thing I've learned from working with the company
for so long and stuff is the passion.
Everybody here has passion.
- [Gary] Clearly.
- And we give so much.
I mean it could be passion with our job,
it could passion from outside, it could be
whatever it is.
- You guys are so ridiculously lucky,
we've an internal job board, I have full-time employees
trying to help people get jobs to leave our company
'cause we want it better for them,
I've literally never sensed a truer purity
of that mission as much as you guys have as well
and it's remarkable.
You guys are very fortunate.
It stems from the top and like-minded people find each
other, it's really rad, I'm really impressed,
I'm super-pumped to be here, go ahead.
- Basically my question is, do you ever hold back any
of your passion, does it ever maybe get the best of you
sometimes and that you have to maybe take a couple
of steps back and realize, I may have gone too far.
- The answer is no.
But, more importantly, for me it's kind of like,
I do lots of things out of passion that I'm not pumped
about, for example, let's go back to football,
two years ago, at a Jets-Steelers game,
Jets were beating the Steelers, this was four years
ago, for no reason, Steelers were much better,
Jets were bad that year, Jets are on the verge of winning,
this 85-year-old guy is coming up the stairs,
and I get sports muscles, when I'm in Jets world,
I'm not me, it's the only place I'm not me.
I get too emotional, right?
So, the guy is walking up and the Jets are winning,
it's the fourth quarter and I stand up 'cause I'm
ridiculous and I'm like, hey, old man, you're finished,
old man, you're finished, right?
And everybody is kind of looking at me because it was
super-inappropriate and then I go,
and I don't mean the game.
Right.
So, my passion went too far there.
So, I understand.
I get it.
I guess, first of all I just wanted to tell you that story
because it's so fucked up.
I needed to get it out of me, it's so horrible,
I'm glad I was able to share it,
I feel better now.
- I guess this is more like, maybe I feel like
sometimes when I give off my passion--
- [Gary] It makes people creep out?
- Kind of, yeah.
People basically get scared the shit out of them
just because I did so much--
- Bro, honestly, as long as you're coming from
a good place, I did the same thing, I curse,
but I'm coming from such a good place,
that I'm not trying to impose any negativity,
as long as your passion is coming from a good place
and it's not a shtick 'cause you think it's helping you
and it's an act, and it's not trying to do something
that's bad for them, you're fucking good.
Let the chips fall, you know what I'm saying?
This is back to self-awareness.
You got to ask yourself two very important questions,
number one, is it a shtick?
Are you doing it 'cause it's self-interest
and it's a narrative you're trying to pave
to do something selfish for you?
Number two, are you doing it to suppress somebody
because you're insecure about their skills
that you don't have, as long as it's neither one
of those two, fucking be as passionate as you want.
- [Audience Member] Thank you.
- You're welcome.
Wow, yes.
- [Audience Member] Hi, Gary.
- Hi.
- I'm Erika, nice to meet you.
- [Gary] Nice to meet you, Erika.
- I run the social media pages for the Spoke and Dutch Bros.
- [Gary] All 10?
- Yeah.
So, six months ago, I was at an agency, running
their social media department, I was miserable.
Not my kind of humans, just not my place,
I watched your videos for about a year,
telling me to hustle, telling me to do it,
just work hard, so I quit my job, I started my own
social media company and I feel blessed,
but in three months I've doubled my salary
and it's really taken off, a lot to do with these people,
but, so my next question for you is how do I go
to the next step, you know I've got this small business,
I'm hustling, working 12 hours a day, how do I get
to 800 staff?
- [Gary] Is that what you want?
- Yeah, I picture, my company is called Talk Fast Social,
I picture a TFS on a building every day
and I work for it.
- [Gary] Love it, so how old are you?
- I'm 26.
- Good, all right, step number one.
The next 10 years of your life you have to close your
eyes and think about nothing else.
Now, that doesn't mean you can't find love,
it doesn't mean you can't do other things,
but the only way you can build something
very, very, very big is you put those on a building
and you put in the back of your mind
and you close your eyes.
The biggest reason almost everybody fails in their
big ambitions is 'cause of lack of patience.
You know I talk about this all the time.
People struggle because what they do is,
they get a little success and they start getting
greedy in a good way, I'm using it as a slang term for,
okay, you've got a little momentum, you're like,
wait a minute, fuck, I can do this and then people
start getting greedy and they over-extend themselves
because they're rushing so fast.
People literally say things to me, I got to do five million
or I got to put my name on a building.
They make up these things, like the Jets thing,
the Jets thing is not even real for me.
I've talked about it a little bit.
I desperately want to buy the Jets because I think
I'm more likely to win a Superbowl for them
than any other way, but the chase of trying to buy them
is what gets me off, not getting it.
I've forever in my have never needed anything.
Not a certain dollar amount, not some vision of a building,
you know what I mean, I'm just telling you it's
one step in front of the other, patience
and doing tried and true things.
I leave money on the table at extreme levels
every year because I'm being patient, I'm building
real legacy and real relationship step by step,
by step, by step, you just got to close your fucking
eyes for the next decade.
- [Audience Member] Thank you.
- You're welcome.
- [Audience Member] Hey.
- Hey.
- [Audience Member] I'm Gamby.
- How are you?
- I'm great, how are you?
- [Gary] Great.
- Good, I'm from Chico, there's like six of us.
- [Gary] That dude like yawned, he's like, yeah.
Go ahead.
- So you have a chief hiring officer at Vayner Media,
right?
- [Gary] Yes.
- So, when you bring her on, what's that discussion like
when you talk about her objectives, do you have
KPIs, things that are available, are there incentives,
how much detail can you go into and obviously
you don't have to tell me how much she makes,
stuff like that, but whatever, how much can you tell me
about how to make it something that's as objective
as possible for someone like that to be successful
with what you put in front of them?
- So, first of all, it's a great question,
and asking about the black and white around it
is super-interesting to me because it's the most
gray role in our organization, right?
So, for example, lifetime retention of employees
is not a KPI because if we think Karen,
I mean, like the young woman we just met,
we may encourage her to start her own company,
I'm trying to push six or seven of my best people out,
like you need to start your own company because we're
gonna have a problem in three years because you're
such an A and you just need to scratch this itch.
So, I'll be honest with you, I micro-manage HR
for 20 years that I ran my company, my entire life,
until I found a soulmate in Claude who literally
looked at all the situations the same,
and she was on the account side and then she left
Vayner and I courted her to come back to do a totally
different role because the truth is, the KPI
is how do you keep 800 people, 1500 people, 4000 people
happy with the machine, and by the way, it's impossible.
The level of cynicism that is in our society
is extraordinary.
It's so hard to prove to somebody that you care,
everybody is so scared to trust because they don't
want to get hurt, that it's easier to be cynical.
I understand, but all that Claude may do,
the whole flight here, we text about individual people,
I know exactly what's going on right now
with Kristsuz Valdi, right, and exactly what's
going to happen with Joe Catrone and why we've
moved Natalie Karie into a different pot,
I'm so fucking in it, but we have lightweight KPIs,
but Claude and I are outside the lines.
We surround ourselves with people making sure all the things
that are black and white, simple things,
like people getting raises appropriately at the time
they're promised.
Not just silly shit that, we've got the special part down,
we surround ourselves to make sure we don't drop
the ball on the commodity, the key is,
how the fuck do we get everybody to feel good
every day, right?
That they know that we've got their back
whether they work with us for one more day.
Every time that somebody quits in a weird way,
I always grab them, always, I'm like, dude,
what the fuck, man, I put out content every day,
I've told you, I emailed you, why didn't you use me
if you were so unhappy, I could've gotten you a job,
the other way, like I thought I was underpaid,
I'm like, dude, you've got $11,000 pay up,
A, I would've been thrilled to give it to you,
but way more importantly, there's 11 people like you
that I'm friends with right now, let me help you.
Basically what I'm trying to do is build real trust
through scaling the unscalable.
One-on-one conversations, the problem is,
that we're learning, at first it worked unbelievably,
but now she becomes too much of a machine,
so it's me and her, now we're like the parents
or the siblings, so you got to bring in other things,
I used to have an open-door policy, not working.
2018, mandated 15 minutes with every fucking employee
I have twice a year.
Mandated, it's gonna take me enormous amounts of time,
I don't care, it's all I've got.
Religion, you know, I don't care what the church or the
synagogue, or the temple or the mosque is decorated
like, I care about the religion and too many people
care about, you know.
She makes hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands
of dollars, nobody is bonus at Vayner Media because
I want everybody to be obsessed with the logo,
and so when people talk to me about their incentive
packages or things of that nature, I just match it
and put it into their salary.
Some people go, well, then they're de-incentivized.
No, they're not, if you don't fucking achieve,
we fire your fucking face.
Cool.
- [Audience Member] Hey, what's up, Gary?
- How are you?
- [Audience Member] Good, how are you?
- Amazing.
- My name is Mick, I'm with these lovely people
from around California right here.
- [Gary] I saw that move, I saw that move.
- So, I took over managing in my stand earlier this year
and one of the more interesting things,
challenges that I've come across is identifying
qualities in people that I think would translate
well into them moving into leadership
and management.
So I was curious for you if you have someone in your
company who you're looking at to put in leadership
or management, what are some of the most important
qualities that you look for?
- Empathy.
Empathy is fucking disproportionately important for leaders,
if you are not capable of thinking about the other
person first, you are finished.
Empathy, work ethic, I think work ethic matters,
it's tough, right, because if you're not working
as hard as your team or harder, that starts becoming
the vulnerability, gratitude is one that I look
for quite a bit, are they actually grateful
or are they entitled and think, of course I'm gonna
be a manger.
But empathy is fucking 80% of it and then the other
20% is work ethic, gratitude, things like that.
Yeah, you got it.
- [Rich] What's up, Gary?
- Hey, bro.
- I'm Vince, and I guess I'm here with everybody
because I think we're all here for the same reason.
Also, this adrenaline rush is like the best adrenaline
rush I've gotten since high-school, so thanks, man!
- [Gary] Real quick, paint me the picture
of what was happening in high-school when you felt this.
- Honestly, I'd say it was like my last home-run
when I was playing baseball.
- [Gary] Respect.
That's not what we thought.
All right, keep going.
- So, my question for you, you talk about the
seven to two.
- [Gary] 7 p.m to two in the morning.
- And I just kind of want to know because I know
you're trying to be that Jets owner, by the way,
William Johnson doesn't have shit on you.
- [Gary] That's for damn sure.
- I just want to know what's your side hustle
looking like right now because obviously
if you want to get to that,
what steps are you taking?
- So, when I talk about side hustle,
I talk about either really wanting something
that you don't have right now or getting out
of a bad situations.
I'm so in my zone, my side hustle is my hustle,
I'm working 7 a.m to 10, 11, I don't think I've been
home before 10.30 in the last three years,
on a week day.
My work life balance is in the extremes, I take
seven weeks' vacation, I have the weekends, but Monday
through Friday, I don't even see my kids.
That's just how my wife and I, we're comfortable with,
that's my reality.
So I don't have that, I would say my side hustle
is probably Gary V, I'm spending all my time
being the CEO of Vayner Media, but because of the concept
that D. Rock and I and my team have figured out,
it feels like I'm me out and about, but it's because
I only show, and I only talk 30 times a year.
I'm able to create so much content, so I think my side
hustle is Gary V, because I enjoy this so much,
I enjoy jamming with you guys.
Bro, if I could make you guys feel what I felt like
when I heard that young woman say to me,
I was in a job and I watched your shit for a year,
you pumped me up, gave me the courage, let's call
it what it is, to make that leap, and now I'm
doing twice as good and do you know what it feels like
to impact people?
It's knarly.
So, that's my side hustle, thanks, brother.
All right, yes?
- [Audience Member] What's up, Gary?
- [Gary] How are you doing?
- Doing good, name's Kyle, East Vancouver.
- [Gary] East Vancouver.
- Nicely done, guys.
Yeah, I don't affiliate with any gangs.
- [Gary] Respect, huge mistake, keep going.
- I appreciate that.
So, for one, I know there are kids here,
but holy fucking shit, nice job.
- [Gary] Thank you.
- That was pretty impressive.
I listen to you for hours, I tried audio books,
and I fall asleep to your voice because it's pretty
fucking--
- [Gary] Done bro, done.
- So, actually I'm standing here still scared shitless,
and that's kind of the transition, so with these
moments in time, these monumental steps that you want
to take towards success, I know how you're talking about
being unbeatable in your own head, reaching that status
of your own self-awareness,
just kind of like with the basics,
what would be your tactics for--
- [Gary] To get to that place?
- Yeah.
- Step number one, more than anything, I alluded to when
I talked, but this is why I love Q&A, you have
to figure out whose opinion is dictating your actions
beside yourself.
You have to figure out who has say,
let's keep it on him right now because this is gonna
matter for a lot of people.
Let's actually play through this, who in your life
has say when you do shit, who factors in,
who runs through your mind, who are you curious about,
about how they would react or think?
Who are those people?
- Honestly, that would probably be like, actually
Pierce right here, Pierce, if you saw the viral video,
or I saw, viral picture, he was the one that was pranked,
he's a very good friend of mine.
- [Gary] So, Pierce's opinion matters, good,
and who else?
- My girlfriend and my parents and my sister.
- Great.
You need to get into a place where you respect
Pierce, girlfriend, parents, you love Pierce,
girlfriend, parents, you'll do anything for
Pierce, girlfriend, parents, but you get into
a place where you don't give a fuck about
Pierce, girlfriend, and parents.
And listen, it's pulling so hard from opposite directions,
like, I want to stay on this because this will really
be a big unlock.
If I can get one person to shift a hair, it's huge.
It's crazy to me how much I care about everybody's
opinion, like these two people in the fourth row
have hoodies with my quotes on, I care so much
about what they think about me, you would not believe,
while equally really giving no shit about what they think.
And it's about this crazy balance, I never let
somebody else's opinion matter more than mine of myself.
You know, there's just nothing you can say,
from people that know me the best, my mom,
there's nothing you're gonna be able to say about me
that makes me not realize, of course you think that,
you don't really know me and that goes all the way
to my mom, right?
You know what you've seen, I know why you think that
if that's the only piece of content you've ever consumed
from me, this is where I'm a different version,
I get it, I get it, I'm empathetic to why,
but the way to get there man, is very simply,
you first.
It's so weird to say do everything you think
you should do, but that's what I do.
And I think maybe for me it's easy because
somewhere along the line I figured out that I can
get everything that I wanted for myself by myself,
so I don't need anybody, which is a really important
thing, to be in that place where you know that you don't
need anybody emotionally or financially, it's just
a very lonely and very not-lonely place.
So, it's hard, honestly, I wish I could give,
like fuck, man, I think I'm trying so hard to put out
so much content because it's the closest way I'll ever
get to giving it, I wish I could give it,
because it's fucking, so peaceful, you know?
- Much appreciated, man.
- You got it.
I can keep going, right?
I'm in great shape, right?
Cool, fuck it.
- [Audience Member] You can go as long as you want, Gary.
- I really want to go long.
You guys want to keep doing this?
- [Audience] Yeah!
- Let's go.
- Thanks for being here and setting a bunch of fires
in this room, we need it, we always love fire,
but this helps.
- [Gary] What are we, double firing?
- Big fire.
On the subject of self-awareness,
I saw you at the Hologram, super-dope, it was fire.
- [Gary] Thank you, thank you.
- On the subject of self-awareness, I wanted your
opinion on someone else's content.
They said that strength isn't something you're good at
and weakness isn't something you're bad at.
Strength is something that strengthens you,
an activity that strengthens you,
and weakness is an activity that weakens you,
I've just been stuck on that and I wanted your opinion.
- [Gary] One more time?
- Strength isn't something you're good at,
you can be really good at something and it can bore
the shit out of you, you feel no passion, whatsoever.
- [Gary] Understood.
- A strength is something that strengthens you,
a weakness is something that weakens you.
- [Gary] Yeah, cool.
- How much of that comes into self-awareness?
- I think there's a lot there, it makes sense to me,
now that I've grasped it.
Look, I'll be honest with you, for somebody
that talks so much and puts out fucking four quotes
on Instagram every day, and fucking does all this stuff,
it's insane how much I hate words.
I was just thinking, you saying that to me,
I'm like, man, if somebody is saying one of my quotes
to their buddy, I hate that.
I don't want that.
To me, that makes sense, but my whole big thing is,
and now what, okay, cool, a strength is a fucking
strength, right?
I don't know, every fucking thing that I've just said,
to me, it's about the engine.
To me, why I like that you brought it up
is that it hit you in a way that made you thoughtful,
now my question becomes, are you gonna do anything
with it, right?
To me, what I think has worked for me, is the reason
25% of people don't like at first is I'm suffocating
excuses, people want to think it's other people's faults.
It's fun to think you're suppressed, it's fun when you're
not a manager 'cause then the manager sucks shit, right?
And when you become manager, it's the regional manager
that's an asshole, and then when you're the regional
manager, who's an asshole, and then.
(audience cheering)
But who does he get to blame?
And the answer is nobody at least from this organization
or like many CEOs that I've met, my mom did this.
Here's the thing, to me, I just hope it inspires you
to do, if it broke an insight to you to make you do
something differently that tastes better,
then that's all I want.
The reason I try to suffocate excuses it's 'cause
it's the thing that holds everybody down, right?
It's the thing that you can rely on when you don't
want to work 15 hours a day.
It's the thing you can rely on when it's hard,
or it's painful, or you can't figure it out.
And so, sounds awesome, but what's most interesting
to me is it meant something to you, now I'd rather
you not care about my opinion on it, that person,
I want you to internalize it and go do something with it.
(applauding)
- I swear I'm gonna pass out, right.
- [Gary] Thanks, man.
- So, personally I think that growth and development
within a company is super-huge, you've got to grow
your people so that--
- [Gary] A 100%.
- So, I just want to know what are some of the methods
that you use to grow somebody, whether that's somebody
that you see potential in or somebody that's--
- [Gary] Listening, listening.
- Listening?
Okay.
- It's listening.
There is no blueprint, there's 3700 different things,
maybe you're slacking because you're in pain
because your parents are going through a tough time,
there's just eight million things.
I always tell my employees, even once I get you
to a perfect place, I'm prepared for your family
to die the next day.
And I say a very extreme thing and I know it's a
weird thing to say, but I say it because I need them
to understand that what I think my responsibility
as a CEO is, is to be prepared for everything.
Even if I get you to a great place, the next day
you may lose a loved one, or something else happens,
or something silly, like you're upset,
or Bernie Madoff happens, like I had a friend
who thought he was fine because he was gonna inherit
all the money and the family lost all the money,
life, right?
Life, you're cruising in Puerto Rico and you have
a mansion and weather, like shit.
Stuff, right?
So, to me, it's always listening, every day, forever.
It's not an X-ray of today, it's not hey Susan,
oh Susan, you were a little overconfident because
you were a good student, but that doesn't actually
translate to life, so let me deploy a little humility
so you understand what the real world looks like,
oh now you're in a better place, you understand?
But a leader is always on oxygen, it's forever,
so that's how I think about it.
- [Audience Member] I've got one more.
- Go ahead.
- Can I take a selfie with you?
- Sure.
Who's next?
Go ahead, I can double task.
Dude, what's up with your fucking screen?
It's shattered.
- It got ran over by a go kart.
- By a go kart?
You're gonna get a new one?
- Yeah.
(audience cheering)
- Hi, I'm Marisa, I'm from EG Oregon.
First I'd like to see I acknowledge the Russian-Jewish
heritage, I am too, so I'd like to say
(speaks in Hebrew).
- [Gary] Thank you, thank you.
- Also, I was just wondering, how long did it take you
to find the balance between your work and your life?
You say you work 18 hours a day, do you work while
you sleep as well and just--
- [Gary] I sleep really easy.
- Good, I'm glad.
- Because I'm exhausted.
I've never thought of them separate.
Hold on to the mic, hold on.
It's funny when you asked that, I've never thought
of them separate, I really haven't.
And that's cool because we work a lot.
It's funny because a lot of people are confused
by my message, it's when I bring up my buddy
in Califon, New Jersey, making 50K, on 17 softball,
I want that, I don't want the Jets or I'm gonna buy
the Sea Hawks, I want people to just figure themselves out.
I figured myself out, by the way, being a workaholic
is frowned upon.
By the way, somebody wrote an off-hand piece
in New York times that shit on me because I work too much.
There's always two sides, there's a lot of people who judge
my parenting style, they think just because they come
home at six o'clock and don't really pay attention to their
kids, but they're physically in the building,
that they're better dads than I am.
I respect their point of view, I understand how they can
go there, it makes them feel better about themselves,
I just understand, but you know, to me, I want you
to make work and life the same whether that's nine to five,
whether that's nine to three as a teacher
and having the whole summer off,
whether that's 18 hours a day, because it's just
too big of a percentage of our time on Earth.
It's literally what we spend the most time on.
It's crazy.
So, to me, the only people I know who make a $120,000
a year, who if they made 89,000 would be 50,000 times
happier and the only variable difference is instead of
driving a BMW, they'd have to drive a Toyota?
It's crazy how people get caught up in the wrong shit,
so to answer your question, I've no idea.
I've never thought of it differently.
I grew up in a family business,
so it's super-intertwined, right?
- That was kind of my question, have you always known
that you were going to be a CEO and an entrepreneur
and all these big businesses that you have?
- I knew that I was a fucking terrible student,
so education wasn't going to be my path.
I knew that I wanted to pay my parents back
for being the best parents ever and getting me out of
communist Russia, I felt a real passion for that,
so I did think, okay, I'm not gonna get a great job
because I don't have a good education, so I'm
gonna go into dad's store, I'm gonna build it up for him,
and then during that time, you know,
all of us are still learning about ourselves,
whether we're 45 or 14, you just keep learning, right?
Somewhere along the line, I'm like, wow,
I'm a really good salesman, and then I'm like,
wow, I'm a really good businessman, oh, I'm a really
good manager, oh I'm a really good boss,
I'm a really good marketer, you know, you just start
building and then when YouTube came out and I predicted
that would be big, after email, after Google Ad Words,
then I'm like, I've got a knack for what people are
gonna do before, then I infested in Facebook and Twitter
and Tumblr, and you just build it, and even now,
I never thought that I'd inspire people,
I thought I was a businessman.
Who thought that entrepreneurship would be like an
athlete or a rapper, it's crazy.
For me, I went to the Jets game yesterday,
30-year-old dudes, I'm like what the fuck,
be up in this bitch, so you don't know, right?
But I do know one thing, doing something for a living
eight hours a day, when you sleep eight hours,
I mean, it's a third of your life.
It's so, maybe half of your life.
I'm just desperate for people to do shit they like,
and if they like something that pays them less,
you don't need fancy shit, you'll be much happier
at the end.
- [Audience Member] Thank you.
- Welcome.
- [Audience Member] What's up, Gary, I'm Mike,
and I'm here from Arizona.
- This is the best.
- [Audience Member] Nailed it.
- I'm like seriously thinking about starting a new
Jersey location, just so they could be represented
here next year.
- [Audience Member] I grew up at Bridgewood, so we got
someone there.
- [Gary] Let's go, man.
- So my question for you is, as manager,
is we spend a lot of time hiring people who are like
that millennial generation, I'm in it,
a lot of us are in it.
You talk a lot about self-awareness,
how do you recognize that in a 10 to 15 minute interview,
how do I know that the person I'm gonna hire is--
- [Gary] You don't.
- Dang it, Gary.
- I got really good hiring advice, learn to fire fast.
If you guys, especially for what you guys do
for a living, I get it, I used to pay people 9.50
an hour, 12.50 an hour, stock guys at liquor store,
I did, I did what you did for a long time in my life.
Everybody has their ego tied up in hiring.
You guys have your ego tied up in your hiring,
you think you're so good at hiring and then you hire
somebody and they're shit, but you may pretend
they're not because firing them admits
that you were wrong, so it's your own ego that's holding
you back, my ego is only balanced by my humility.
I hired somebody for hundreds of thousands of dollars
the other day, six months ago, I interviewed them
three times, three times, that's a lot of time for me,
I fired him one day into him working at Vayner Media.
One day, now I fired him four months later,
but in my day, he literally got fired the first day.
Like, fuck.
So, especially for this business, for all of you guys,
check your ego at the door, you're not that great
at fucking hiring, but good news, nobody is.
Get good at firing.
- [Audience Member] Thank you, Gary.
- That one's gonna work for you guys,
that one's gonna be a big one.
Watch margin explode.
- What's up, Gary?
- Because let me tell you why margins are gonna explore,
if you're not sitting and dwelling about what you're
gonna do with fucking suckie-ass Rick,
you guys are gonna worry about the customer
and maximizing margin.
Fire!
Go ahead.
- So, my name's Daniel, I'm from Corin, Idaho,
got my group over there.
I actually kind of hopped.
- [Gary] Yeah, I was about to ask you,
what the fuck are you doing there,
their line is right there.
- Shorter line, man, hopped over there, came here,
just one person.
- [Gary] I appreciate the hustle.
- Anyway, so I got a couple of questions.
- Actually you know what's crazy by that?
I'm actually weirdly intrigued by you now.
I'm being dead serious,
that's just a smart hack.
I like it.
- You know, word, I thought it would maybe
give them some more time, but just I came here,
so it worked.
- [Gary] Good shit.
- Anyway, couple of things I wanted to ask you,
first thing, how do you not burn yourself out
when you're pushing yourself so hard all the time?
I always hear people tell me, my whole life,
Dan, if you push yourself so hard in this area,
you'll burn out.
- [Gary] Do you feel it that way?
- No.
- Because you love it.
If you asked me to hang a picture on that wall,
I would burn myself up before I even got halfway
to that wall.
But if you told me to run like a 500 million dollar
business for the next 17 years, 18 hours a day,
I'd be like, you bet.
- Okay, so another thing I wanted to ask you,
if you are that point I guess, great leaders can inspire
people, bringing them kind of the same point, right,
the same goal, same mission, how can you inspire
other people to feel that same desire
to keep pushing it non-stop, not feel like
they need to take a break every other day,
you know what I mean?
- By listening to them, it's gonna be the same shit,
guys, it's not about us, you're like, you're a great
leader, inspire them, yeah, by never thinking
about my part, I'm a great leader and I inspire
because I listen, because I deliver when people
ask for things, including, hey I don't like this,
I'm like, look, you don't like this,
so there's somebody I'm about to let go, right?
She's on her seventh department,
she didn't want to do this, she didn't want to do that,
right, and I've been trying, trying, that's it,
I'm over it, tried, really, seven is fucking crazy.
And so, it's about them, bro.
By the way, to build a great organization,
you need Bs and Cs.
I love C-players.
Who's gonna do a C-player shit?
If we all had As, nobody would be doing anything.
Everybody would be strategizing and architecting,
and I love people on my vlog are like,
what do you do all day, you don't fucking work,
you have meetings all day.
I'm like, yeah.
Understand, 16-year-old Charlie from Calgary
that doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about,
you'll one day hopefully understand what it is,
because you're thinking all day, you're making decisions
all day, that's what an executive does.
I miss the times of stocking shelves, it was easy,
it was fucking fun.
And so, yeah, man, it's about them, and they're
not gonna be you, they're not as ambitious as you,
and that's awesome.
What you should do is figure that out,
and then try to make them the best version
of that player, not everybody can be the quarterback, man.
Long snappers matter too.
- [Audience Member] Hey, Gary, what's up?
- How are you, my man?
- Good, man, my name is Chris.
First of all, I've been sitting here, listening to you,
it's amazing, stumbled across your USC video a couple
of years ago, and I've just absorbed tons of your content.
- [Gary] Thanks, brother.
- And I also think it's cool that my wife and I were in
New York about a year ago and I sent a Tweet at you,
asking if you wanted to go to the Knicks game
and I thought it was so cool that you actually responded,
like you say you do.
- [Gary] Thanks man.
- And you sent a video, I thought that was rad.
- [Gary] Thank you man.
- Yeah, that was cool.
- [Gary] I appreciate it.
- Question that I have for you kind of in my head--
- And by the way, real quick, I apologize,
that to me is super-important, especially for a lot
of managers here, when a customer tweets anything
about your business, take the 13 seconds on the way
to going and taking a piss to make a video and be like
thank you or I'm sorry, it's so powerful.
I'm busy as fuck.
Dude's in New York, like, you want to come to the Knicks
game, that's not the shit that you're supposed
to be answering, but because I did, it builds a deeper
relationship with us, it's just real.
So, actually I got something fun,
while we're having this conversation, I want everybody
to open up Instagram, and go to Oprah Winfrey's account,
@Oprah, and I want you to scroll all the way down,
all the way down, to her first photo ever,
I want you to look at it while I'm giving this point.
I'm sitting with her and I'm putting Oprah on Instagram,
I'm in a room with Oprah-fucking-Winfrey,
and I'm like, Oprah, Instagram, it's gonna be important,
and she's like, t-d-d, I'm trying to explain to her
why it's so important to reply to people.
And I go to her, when you were doing your show
at the height of your popularity, when you guys
would stop and reset the cameras, right?
I'm like, do you ever look at anybody in the audience?
And she's like, yeah.
And I was like, did you ever smiler or wink at anybody?
She's like, yeah.
I'm like, do you know they will be telling that story
for the last 15 years?
It matters, man, depth versus width.
The way you get more customer count in your locations
is by over-indexing on the ones that are coming in
in the first place.
Go ahead.
- Something going along with that that I've told a lot
of my crew about is that Ricky Henderson effect
that you talk about, I think that's huge.
- That's what I call it.
Just real quick, when I was 10, I went to a
Yankees game, it was my first game, we were poor,
going to a game was crazy, I think I wore a suit.
And Ricky Henderson was coming off the field
and I stood up and he winked.
Now, what's crazy about the story is,
it's like, 80 people just thought I winked at them.
Right, so I don't know if he really winked at me,
but the amount of Ricky Henderson baseball cards,
jerseys, here I am, right, 30 years later, talking about
Ricky Henderson, depth, man, depth versus width.
And by the way, that's how you've got to manage Sally
who works for you for four months at the front
of the store because you really gave a fuck in 13 years
when she's a top executive, does a business development deal
with you because you did the right thing,
because kindness is practical and karma is ROI positive.
Honestly, honestly, this was not a big enough reaction
to that statement, you've got to really get it to your head,
those claps are dick for what I just said.
It's a big deal, it's a big deal.
- Yeah, so my actual question, I've seen you scale from
400 people a couple of years ago to 800 now,
and we've grown a lot, my wife and I have about 250 people
on our crew and it's been really hard on me,
we've grown quickly in the last year,
we've went from about a hundred to 250 in a year.
- [Gary] More locations?
- Yeah.
So, how do you connect with your people?
- [Gary] Technology.
Do you have everybody on your text?
- Yeah.
- Lay in bed and text them.
Here's a big one, here's a big one.
Don't judge yourselves, there's 230 Vayner Media employees
watching this video right now, being like,
fuck that guy, I haven't heard from him in seven months.
I don't judge myself, I know I'm trying with all
my fucking might, but if something slips through the
cracks or if I go through a bad rally,
or to maybe my number one, two, three, my guy
who's like, fuck you don't talk to me,
I don't judge myself.
I try real hard, but I don't cripple myself by shortcomings
because I know that I'm trying harder and better than most
and life is about alternatives.
When I'm most down on fuck, I say to myself
would they be better off somewhere else, the answer is no.
- [Audience Member] That's good, thank you.
- You got it.
How are you?
- I'm doing phenomenal, man.
- [Gary] I love it.
- I couldn't ask for any more.
- [Gary] You're the best.
- And I don't even work for Dutch Brothers.
- [Gary] You snuck in?
- Yeah, I just rolled in, but I love all these people.
- [Gary] Yeah, they're great.
- And this atmosphere.
- [Gary] So did you literally break the fuck in?
- No, I got a free ticket.
- Oh, respect, respect, I would've thought
it would've been way cooler if you just snuck the fuck in.
- I heard you were speaking here,
so I came down from Southern Washington.
- [Gary] I'm flattered, how are you?
- I'm doing phenomenal, I'm a dishwasher at
Trapers' Sushi currently and have been for a few years,
but I'm trying to break out of that and move up
in the restaurant.
And hopefully one day become a sushi chef and hopefully
not cut off any fingers.
- Though, if you did, that could bring a lot of awareness
to you and maybe create a viral moment that could be
ROI positive.
- [Audience Member] True, true.
- Just keep that in the back of your mind.
- But between my multiple sclerosis
and my traumatic brain injury
I had from when I was a kid, I have symptoms,
defects, whatever, that would hold me back,
but I'm still moving forward, I'm a marathon runner,
I run races all the time.
(audience cheering)
It's because my legs are hurting from this half-marathon
I ran yesterday and the day before I ran
the (mumbles) in Washington,
but anyway, I've written one book and I'm becoming
what I am, a motivational author, and wanna-be speaker.
- [Gary] Love it.
- Thank you, and yeah, I'm just wanting to move forward
with that, and I'm working on my second book right now,
and I've started, and watching you in the past
few months or a year, I've been totally fired up.
- [Gary] Thank you.
- And I love you, man.
- [Gary] I love you back.
- Thank you.
- [Gary] Are you trying to figure out how to make
that more successful?
- Yeah.
- [Gary] Are you putting out content on a daily basis?
- Yes, I am.
- [Gary] How?
- On my Facebook.
- [Gary] What about YouTube?
- I'm working on, I've started on YouTube, I just haven't
done very much all.
- What about Instagram?
- [Audience Member] I've downloaded Instagram and begun
putting content on there, just haven't gone
full force into it.
- What's your name, Shane?
- [Audience Member] Shane.
- Shane, let's go a different route.
Shane, I want you to do me a favor, I want you
to send me an email to gary@vaynermedia.com, okay?
- [Audience Member] Okay.
- You got that?
You know Vayner Media right?
- [Audience Member] Yeah.
Vayner Media.
- Just say, Shane, I'm the guy who spoke at the event,
and the marathons, you made the joke about cutting the thing
and all that, put it all in the title, okay?
- [Audience Member] Okay.
- Instead of me giving you one tid-bit, Shane,
I'm gonna fly you to New York city,
to Vayner Media, and you're gonna spend
a day with me and my team and we'll show you what to do.
Love you back!
Let's keep going.
How are you gonna top that, bro?
Worst spot, ever.
- How are you, Gary?
- [Gary] How are you?
- I'm good.
Name's Dan, and I respect that you're a straight
shooter, you don't sugar-coat anything.
And I'm just curious what you have for us,
as a company, as your biggest criticism or some advice
for us as a company.
- That's a great question.
You know what's cool about that?
That's a super-great question, and fuck,
I'm really sad with what I'm about to say,
which is, so at marketing conferences a lot of people say,
hey, this happens every conference,
hey, Gary, name one brand that's doing social media
really well that's not a Vayner Media client,
and I always look like a douche because I don't know.
And the answer, this is such a great question,
and it's a great follow up to that moment, I can't
answer because I've not spent one minute auditing
the marketing or the organization.
I understand the founder's intent very clearly,
we've had some people out from the organization,
at four D's, for one day section, so I got a little vibe,
I spent some time, I clearly got a sense of the energy.
I've made a living by treating my company like a family,
which means that you get all the things that come along
with a family, I've made less money, I've got weirdness
of people that have been with me for a long time
that are probably in bigger spots than they deserve to.
When I start auditing this company from afar,
the critiques that I would have, I can't critique because
I'd be a hypocrite because I do so many of them myself.
But as far as from the marketing standpoint,
what you guys are doing on Facebook, bigger marketing,
digital, things I could really help with,
internally, operational, I love all the strengths
and all the weaknesses, I understand they just happen over
and you fixed those over time, that's a commodity.
I don't have a sense of the marketing,
so in a world of shooting it straight, the answer is
I don't know.
And that sucks, but that's true.
- [Audience Member] I respect that, Gary,
I respect that a lot.
- Cool man, thank you.
- Hey, Gary.
- [Gary] Hey man.
- I'm Logan.
- [Gary] Hey, Logan.
- Number two, I guess.
- [Gary] Number two as in you're the second Logan
that spoke today?
- Actually, maybe the third Logan, there's like
a couple of us.
- [Gary] Who's Logan in here?
All right, Jesus, let's go.
- So, my first question of two, I assume
maybe you've taken a look at
some of our company's social?
- [Gary] Nope.
- So that's question is easy.
The second question--
- But I can tell you one thing, because it doesn't
matter, you're not doing enough Instagram,
influencer marketing, you should be the fucking farm on it
given the nature of the business, you can,
and you guys are West Coast.
You have to understand, there's an alpha mom
in Tampa, Arizona that you could give $50 to
or five free this or 10 free that,
or one month free this, who's the alpha mom
of your entire five mile radius,
by her just giving you love, three times on her
Instagram, it's gonna disproportionately change
your business at a local micro level.
Multiply that by 74,000 humans and you change your
fucking business.
How the fuck do you think I got here?
Humans are amplifying my shit.
I do it two ways, I hack attention and understand
where people pay attention, and I do nice human things,
and I'm a good dude, and it makes people want to talk
about me, and I'm smart as fuck, charismatic as shit.
Go ahead.
- [Audience Member] So, I still have two questions.
- Go ahead.
Respect, Logan, the third.
- First question is we have a social media account
times three, probably for each thing, for almost
every location that we have.
- [Gary] So, every location has three different handles?
- No, every location has a Facebook, Instagram,
Twitter and probably SnapChat.
- [Gary] Okay.
- I was curious about your thoughts.
- I like it.
If you're doing anything with it.
Like, having one, for this location and it's somebody's
fifth job who's also on shift and does it once
in a while, that's bad.
But if it's actually being run, it's good.
It's like, what's the ROI of having an Instagram
handle for every account?
It's the same question of the ROI of a basketball,
for me, zero, for LeBron, a billion.
If a location uses those four things properly,
they're gonna get ROI.
I don't think it confuses the market,
I'm not one of these people that thinks just the main
handle should do all the work.
They should work hand-in-hand because you could do
different things because the local context
of a single location can reference the high school
football games victory, and that's how I see it.
You can't give it to Sally on her fourth job,
to do in-between, you've got to invest.
- [Audience Member] Thank you.
- You're welcome.
- Second question, you just got done with Tony Robins
and Wim Hof, is that right?
- [Gary] Yes.
- I was curious as to what your biggest takeaway
from that whole experience was, working with those two guys?
- We didn't see each other because everybody is flying
in and flying out.
So, my biggest takeaway was we're busy as fuck
and we didn't see each other.
Hey man.
- So, how would you define success and I can expand
on that if you need.
- Sure, my first answer to that is doing what you want
every single day of your life.
Right?
And again, this has been the theme today,
if that is to be a part of 17 softball teams,
mazel tov!
If that is trying to buy the Jets, great.
To me, I lived 11 years or so of my life waking up
every morning up sick because I didn't want to go to school.
I didn't want to do that.
I remember what it feels like.
This time of year, fall, I love the Jets so much,
right, that I was pumped, but Sunday nights were the worst,
knowing that the next day was the start of this
terrible fucking week that I fucking hated.
Now, to wake up, I'm fucking on vacation always.
I can wake up every day, fucking fired up, right?
So, being able to do what you want, when you want,
and it doesn't take a lot of money to do that,
people are very confused how much money it takes
to do what you want, how you want, it's that you don't
know how to spend your money in the right places,
so that you're like, fuck, I need 300,000,
you don't need 300,000, you need to figure yourself out
and put yourself in a position to succeed.
But that's the answer, do what you want every day.
- Awesome.
One other thing, as far as relationships go,
you kind of focus on your own opinion first,
how does that keep you connected with people?
- Easy, my selflessness comes from my selfishness.
Right, if you talk to the people around me, I'm the best
because I'm in the giving game at all times,
I've got a couple of things that I have to do for myself,
but once you're good, your connections are better.
People are confused, you have to go selfish
to get yourself right because once you're right,
all you're doing is giving and everybody is fucking pumped.
And then all you have to do is to make sure that the thing
that you're selfish about isn't something that breaks
one of those seven people, right?
You just got to make sure those things you're selfish
about are the things that your partner can deal with,
whether that's being a workaholic,
whether that's being home, whether that's being
into golf, and you've got to golf every Saturday,
it can be a million little weird things.
You just got to make sure that's okay with the other
person, that's where people have disconnects.
Right, if we were all ripped down to, you can only do
these three things, we could all get there,
and I would recommend everybody to have a few lines
in the sand and then give and that really creates
the balance, you got it.
(applauding)
Hi.
- Hi, I'm Kaytlin from (mumbles).
So, I have a couple of bullet points, I didn't want to
forget anything, so bear with me.
- [Gary] I'm ready.
- I 100% know what I want and will accomplish with my life,
I want to impact the world, people specifically,
massively and I'm not talking about ripples or waves,
it's like tsunamis, I want it to be big.
And I have my why, I know why, I'm still figuring out
the how, that's something I've been on for a little bit.
- [Gary] What's the why?
- I love people.
I love people so much.
- I hate dogs because I love people so much.
Dude, me and you, I love people so much,
I think the whole animal thing, I'm weirded out
by this whole issue.
I hate dogs.
Super-unpopular, people are freaking out right now,
seven people were just like, I fucking loved
this guy until that moment.
Fuck that dude, people love fucking animals,
I don't know, I just love people so much,
that it makes me weird against animals for some reason.
Not that I want to kick a dog, but fuck,
I just wish people would like people a little bit more
instead of their fluffy schnauzer.
- [Audience Member] Anyways.
- Yeah, sorry.
- So, also, what really fascinates me because I love
people so much and you do too, I have no idea how you
could say, fuck it, I don't care, that's something that
super-duper fascinates me.
- And honestly, maybe that's the thing, right?
Because I think what allows me to deal
with every single day, people are like,
you're a charlatan, you're full of shit, you're
snake oil salesman, you suck, your daddy gave
you a liquor store, they don't know my story.
So, I think the reason I can deal with it,
the reason I can love so much is I don't care so much
'cause I know who I am.
When people try to troll me and be like,
easy for you to say, daddy gave you a liquor store,
they don't know the truth which is that I gave up 13
of my best years of my life to build my dad's store for him
and I left at 36 years old with no fucking collateral
value and no money in the bank, starting over.
But what am I gonna do?
Spend all my time replying to everybody?
What am I gonna do?
Go on fucking TV and say, that's my story?
- What about, you said, even your sister, your girlfriend
saying--
- [Gary] I'm married now, let's not talk about girlfriends.
- But how do you say I don't care about that too.
Sorry, it was only--
- I'm kidding.
I don't care because I know where they're coming from.
Everybody is coming from a perspective,
I deploy empathy and I know why my sister thinks that,
I know why my wife thinks that,
I know why my mom thinks that.
- [Audience Member] You don't worry if they're disappointed?
Or not happy with your decision?
- I only care if I'm doing something wrong.
Wrong is different than doing something that somebody
else doesn't want you to do.
That's very different.
I worry if I hurt somebody or try to do something malicious.
I'm only trying to do good, so it makes me
very appeased with myself and sometimes that means I have
to be selfish for a moment, but I know what my macro
effect is, and if you want to build a fucking tsunami,
you better fucking figure out how to get real selfish
real fast, because if you look at Gandhi or M. L. K.
or anybody else, they're the most selfish fuckers going.
I'm serious.
Go break that down.
This dude is dying laughing, brother,
I'm telling you, if you go look at them,
you start realizing that they were selfish about having
a legacy and figured out the code if they're giving
at all times and everybody knows about it,
that's going to build a legacy.
I know why I'm standing here today,
and I'm getting paid unbelievably, but it's not ROI
positive to me, I could make more money other ways,
it's why I'm going overtime, because I know I have a little
more time than normal, and I want to keep going,
and I know in the last 20 minutes, there's one answer,
two answers, it's gonna matter, it's gonna build legacy.
You better get real fucking selfish 'cause you're
not gonna have a ripple, you're gonna have nothing
because you won't be strong enough to deal with it.
Everybody likes the come up, everybody wants to be big,
you don't know what happens when that happens.
You got to be strong.
You don't know what happens when you get the fucking
other side of it.
- [Audience Member] Thank you.
- You're welcome.
- [Audience Member] It was really helpful.
- You're welcome.
- That wasn't my question, though.
This will be fast, I promise guy, I promise so much.
So, I know how I said, I'm still figuring out the how,
I don't want to be stuck figuring out the how and not
thinking about the next step, and in order to accomplish
something that huge of life purpose, I have to have
some key components, what are those?
- The first thing you need to have is what do you have
to give?
- [Audience Member] So, once I figure out the how, then--
- You can't figure out the how, for me,
once I figured out that I understood how to build
businesses and that entrepreneurship was a gateway
to the outcome for so many people because it was
independence, I spent 15 years of my life building
a business, to have then credibility to talk
about building a business, right?
Which gave people more confidence to look and listen
to me, because if you're a 20-year-old life coach
on Instagram, you're gonna be faced with cynicism
because you're 20 years old.
So, I think the thing that you have to figure out
is what do you have to give.
I've confidence to give.
Got it?
I'm up here, on full fucking attack to inject you
with confidence and eliminate insecurity which
leads to having very difficult questions about how
you judge other people's opinions in your inner circle,
that's how I got there.
I was like, wait a minute, all of you aren't doing your
thing because your mom parented you in a weird way,
'cause she was miserable and misery loves company,
so she tried to make you feel insecure 'cause she was
insecure and that's why you're not confident,
and that's why you're not doing shit and that leads
to you got to go confront your mom and that's like fuck!
That's what I have to give, that confidence
and self-esteem was my drug that allowed me to open up
my opportunities which led to awareness because
I was never scared to taste shit and I figured out
what I was good at because I never cared what you thought
about my shortcomings because they were my shortcomings.
You have to figure out what you have to give.
- [Audience Member] Thank you.
- You're welcome.
- [Audience Member] What's up, dude?
- What up, bro?
- I love the passion that you bring, it's super-inspiring,
I wish some day I could have the same amount.
- [Gary] Thanks.
- But I listened to a lot of your stuff,
and I want almost the help of reconciling of a lot
of things you say, sometimes I feel like they contradict
other things.
- [Gary] They always contradict.
- Perfect.
So, earlier you were saying--
- The whole conversation we've been talking about today
is listen to nobody, listen to everybody.
- [Audience Member] Yes.
- Have you been following along at home?
Go reconcile that shit.
Go ahead.
Can I tell you, you know where I figured something out,
I'm gonna try to go there.
I figured out, you know, I'm reading every one of these
comments, right?
So I'm like, fuck, it is a contradiction,
I'm a contradiction, the fuck is this?
And I realized, oh, because it's macro-micro.
On a micro, I listen to everybody,
on a macro I don't listen to anybody.
So, it sounds like a contradiction because
we think they're on the same plane, but they're not.
Right, I hate selling, yet I'm a big-time sales person,
it's 'cause I play build-a-brand, so it comes to me,
not send them emails and be like, hey you should book me,
it comes to me, macro branding,
so I don't have to micro-sell.
But go ahead.
- Earlier you were saying, the hustle--
- [Gary] Yes, work ethic is fucking insane.
- Self-awareness, I would say, situational awareness,
what everyone--
- [Gary] A 100%.
- And then, you also say that we want to get technology
in kids' hands, I think that limits work ethic
and they're not mature to have situational awareness,
that they ruin their reputation and opportunity
for future, how to reconcile that?
- I think that's a romantic, old, traditional man's
point of view that you've absorbed and I don't know
why, but I couldn't disagree with you more.
I think what you just said is what people
have been saying for throughout history
about every advancement in technology and they're always
historically incorrect.
But I could be wrong, maybe you're right,
but I think that we are very much shortsighted
on thinking about technology because what we're
not recognizing is the playing field of situational,
experiential, changes what technologies impact.
I mean, for example, we debate things based on
anti-technology, yet we put other things on a pedestal
that do the same, aka, we look down at texting
and writing to each other, but if somebody writes us
a letter, we've now put that on a pedestal,
even though it's the same exact thing,
it's just a thing that's delivering is different.
So, I don't know, I think there's a lot of places
where I contradict, but on that one,
I think that, you know, we were told,
there's people in this audience, mothers that were told
that Elvis was the devil because he shook his hips
or the Beatles have long hair, or Madonna this,
you know that's just defense, man.
By the way, if you hold on to that, I'm talking some
because I want you to get in here, I don't want it
to be just, 'cause I'm up here, we also don't know.
And there's another thing, we've been betting
against humans as humans for a long time, we're still
standing, like I don't bet against humans, we adjust.
Right, technology changes us.
Do you know what the biggest fear in the world,
in society was, in the late 1800s?
The kaleidoscope.
Everything you just said, you want to have a real
fucking funny thing, take your phone out right now
and read about the dangers of the kaleidoscope.
We are scared, we are scared, and if I got my timing right,
I think it might be the early 1900s, we are scared
that kids are looking at technology too much and not
looking at the real world, because the kaleidoscope
comes out and we're freaking out and we're looking at it,
and it's so crazy, that people are walking around London
and Paris, full time because it was so pooh!
That's how I see phones now, phones are making kids
more social, not less social, it's giving plenty of people
courage that they didn't have in real life and just because
it's not the way we grew up, I don't see any romance of,
you have to go up to the bar and ask a girl out,
that doesn't make you any more of a man,
you can slide in through the DM.
- [Audience Member] That's awesome.
- I think we've put things in the past on a pedestal
because it's what we came up with, you know what I mean?
That's what I think, you're welcome.
Yo.
- [Audience Member] What up, dude?
- What up, bro?
- My name is Paul, representing DB Sacramento,
I'm one of the managers over there.
- [Gary] Very nice.
- Aside from managing, I have a little side hustle,
it's called Brosthetics Apparel.
- [Gary] Brosthetics.
- I started about two years ago and Dutch Bros
have been super awesome because they have been
super-supportive and they have been really supporting
my passion, anyways, you always talk a lot about
creating opportunity, and making sure to be fearless,
it's always going to be a no unless you try it.
- [Gary] A 100%.
- What I did, I actually made four T-shirts for you,
I made a Brosthetics collab for the Gary V.
I did all the designing myself, printing
and I did it for my T-shirts and I was wondering if I could
present this to you right now?
- Yes.
(audience applauding)
Who's next?
- You are so awesome, by the way.
- Thank you.
- So, I know how much you like the Jets,
so I had to do a little color scheme,
also I wanted to make sure it's pretty presentable,
so I made a thermal, because it's really cold over there.
- You mean in New York?
- Exactly.
- It's colder here.
- You wear V-necks.
- Yes, I wear this.
- Three-quarter sleeve.
- That's all right.
- And then plain through, all of this is a really cool
like a swayed mixture, so to be honest,
if you like it.
- I'll wear it, I'll wear one.
- I appreciate it, thank you so much.
- D. Rock, come.
Thanks brother, appreciate it.
- Hey, Gary, my name is Carlos.
- [Gary] Carlos, your hair is fucking awesome.
You said that, right, 'cause you're smart.
Go ahead, Carlos.
- I'm 18, I don't work here, I completely snuck in here.
- [Gary] Let's clap it up for the hustle.
- I've been watching your stuff for a long time,
you've motivated me a lot, I've hustled a lot,
I've gone out, done social media for different businesses,
done all that, I'm here really just to ask you
if I could come to Vayner Media with that other guy
on a plane, if you could give me a ticket,
if there's any way I could talk to you or present
an idea, a music idea, we have patents for and stuff
that you might be interested in, kind of revolved around
making streaming music profitable.
- Okay, so let's do this.
I love to shoot it straight, why don't you do this,
why don't you email me first the framework,
and then let me decide, right?
So, gary@vaynermedia, Carlos dude with great hair
that snuck in, and then just give me all the stuff
and I will reply to you within this week.
We'll start a relationship that way.
- [Audience Member] Thank you so much.
- You're welcome.
- [Audience Member] How's it going?
- Really good, man.
- Good, so I'm Patty from Covalis.
And as I came to speak for many of us,
we are college students and our friends down at
UGNR as well.
- Hold on, hold on, you guys, your bro gave me his shirt
and now you're fucking leaving?
Flight?
Let's boo these guys.
Awesome.
Thanks guys, have a good flight, be safe,
all right, go.
- Okay, so for a lot of us college students.
- Let's boo them one more time.
All right, go ahead, go ahead.
College.
- College students, yeah, we've got a long going on.
- [Gary] I mean, I don't know if we got a lot
going on, bro, but go ahead.
Those are the best fucking four years of your life,
you have nothing going on.
I mean, you do, but it's still fucking a vacation.
- Yeah, okay, I'll give it to you.
If we're not pursuing franchising, this job is--
- [Gary] A stepping stone.
- To the next place.
- Which by the way, the more I'm getting educated,
I'm gonna do a little more homework before I get
caught up in the whole nature of it because I've got
my own version of that.
If this is what I think it is, this is where people
should go for a stepping stone.
When you have an organization that is supportive
of side hustle, like, cool man, yes and you're lucky
that you stumbled into it because a supportive stepping
stone is rare.
- Yeah (mumbles).
- By the way, it's just smart for companies
because he knows, sorry bro, we'll get to it,
but there's millions more behind you.
The reason they're supportive is because it becomes
a deal flow, the reason I take care of all of my employees
is because it makes 10 more want to come in the door
once they know the truth.
Being supportive as an employer is fucking practical,
it's actually smart.
It's unbelievable, it's basically the thematic of everything
I've been talking about.
Positivity and offense always wins.
Historically, always.
Go ahead.
Just go ahead, go, go.
- So, also earlier we did an exercise with the other speaker
about talking to someone else about their weakness
and what they're not good at and it came up again
and this is where I'm gonna pose my question,
there's this inherited fear of failing in your career,
your major, your degree, your business, moving up
in Dutch Bros management, whatever it may be for yourself,
what's your one liner for just taking the leap
and going for it?
- You know, I hate repeating myself, but I get it,
and I'll do it until the day I day.
Who are you afraid of, like what?
What if you get fired from Dutch Bros tomorrow?
Which I can see is pretty much gonna happen.
When that happens, what are you scared of?
Your dad is gonna be like, I told you you're a loser,
or your girl is like, I can never trust you,
I can never marry you, like what?
It is a woo, tell me the thing, like what?
This is why I'm petrified of fucking eight place trophies.
If you grew up where everybody gets an eight place
trophy, you're actually scared of losing
and then you're fucked because losing is real.
I swear on my fucking kids' health, I'm obsessed with losing
and I fucking love losing.
I love losing because I know exactly what you're
thinking about my loss and I can't wait to stick it
in your fucking face when I come back.
I remember once my grandma said I was lazy because
after seven hours of fucking dragging wood in my parents'
backyard, I was like, I need a break, because she's old
school Russian gangster and I remember laying there
and her drilling me and me thinking to myself,
I'm gonna fucking stick it to you grandma, like nobody
has ever, I like losing.
When the Yankees and Rangers won their championships,
I stopped rooting for them.
People laugh at me, like you're a Jets fan,
I love being a Jets fan, I hate being a Sea Hawks fan
because you won, it's over, the climb is over.
That's it.
What are you fucking fearful of, your sister making fun
of you because she's got a better job?
Fuck her.
That's my answer.
Cool, don't forget my friends, you could be winning
28-nothing at half time and lose.
So, your older sibling that's got a great fucking job,
could be a crackhead next year.
Could, could, because he's had a whole facade the whole
time of trying to suck your parents' dick, right?
And he's actually insecure inside and something went wrong
at the office and he starts doing coke on the side,
guys, don't you understand how this is being played?
This is real, I'm being serious.
Who gives a shit if you're losing when you're in college,
you've got 80 fucking years to stick it to them, bro.
- [Audience Member] Thank you.
- I actually have a whole different new concept,
I recommend fucking up on purpose, I'm being serious,
it's so much better to eliminate expectations from the get.
Then you're playing with house money, if you're scared
of other people's opinion, you fuck up on purpose,
then everybody thinks you suck shit,
then it's all upside.
I'm telling you, I'm not joking, by the way,
actually, you know what's fucking weird?
This is what's fun about talking, maybe that's what
happened to me, maybe what happened to me was
because I got Ds and Fs and every teacher and every
friend's parent thought I was going to be a loser,
because, how many people are 40 years or older?
Raise your hands, good, so for the few of us here,
education was the only thing, there was no entrepreneurship
in the 80s, that wasn't a conversation, I didn't even
know what the fucking word meant.
The first time I heard it, it meant that you were
kind of like a loser, that didn't do anything,
maybe that's what happened to me.
Maybe the advice I'm giving you man, is based on what
happened to me, which was because I sucked so bad at school
and that's the only way that we were graded back then
that all expectations were goose egg for me
and all of it was upside, so I was liberated
to play in the fucking machine and just went on straight
fucking offense and fucking won.
So, go fuck up.
Are we done?
Have we defeated the crowd?
Oh, no.
Hey.
- Hey, Gary.
Oh, sorry, I'm a coach, so I never have a voice.
I'm from Bent, Oregon, this is my crew.
And I'm a mew assistant manager in our franchise
and someone once on a podcast told me
the best thing you can do is find a person
who encourages you and inspires you
and just latch onto them.
And I definitely have a (mumbles), but I'm wondering
who was yours, you're so confident, so sure of yourself,
but when you were just starting, who was it?
- [Gary] My mom.
- Your mom?
- [Gary] My mom.
- What did she do for you?
Everything?
- When I was nine years old, and opened a door
for an elderly woman at a McDonalds,
she reacted as if I won the Nobel Peace Prize.
- [Audience Member] Good mom.
- What my mom did was super-smart, she overreacted
on everything that I was doing, that was a good human
trait and she held me accountable for things that
didn't matter, like grades, I got punished four times
a year, every year, from the time I was in third grade,
until my senior year of high school.
Literally, I would get my report card, I would take it
out of the mail and flush it down the toilet,
this is true, which would buy me a week,
then my sister finally broke down and would tell on me,
I'd be punished for two weeks, no TV, no Nintendo,
and we'd reset.
My mom built huge self-esteem in me and I feel like
the biggest reason I am who I am today, to everybody
is because I feel so guilty and so grateful for what she
did for me, that I want to do it for everybody else.
Which is, guess what?
You suck at a ton of shit, good, so does everybody else,
you're also probably pretty fucking rad at something,
try as many things as possible, until you figure out
what you're rad at and you like and go fucking do that
for the rest of your life and stop giving a fuck
about everybody else.
- [Audience Member] That's awesome.
- Thanks, cheers.
Hey.
- Hi, I'm Val.
- [Gary] Hey, Val.
- I'm here with Dutch Bros, I didn't sneak in, but--
- [Gary] But you're keeping it pretty shady.
- What?
- [Gary] I don't know, aren't you supposed to say,
I'm from Eugene, Oregon or something?
- Let's go!
I'm actually--
- [Gary] Corporate?
- What, no.
I'm here with Dutch Bros Rockland,
formerly from DVAZ.
We're all family here.
- [Gary] Respect, go ahead.
- My question is for you, with how busy you are,
I'm sure you have set some boundaries so that you spend
quality time with your family, how do you disconnect?
- Easily.
Like, I'm aware that I spend so much time doing me,
that it's hard, actually, I say easily, that first day
is defragging, you're still on that drug
of adrenaline and working, but it's so important to me
to win at extremities that I do my best.
I would say 80% of the weekends or 80% of vacations
I'm good, I'm fucking there, I'm in it, but 20% of time,
something just happened or I'm hot on this wine club
that I'm building for my dad, I'm just into it,
I miss wine, and so this August, when I was with my family,
I probably did a little too much wine club on the phone
when I should have disconnected, but it's similar
to what I said, I don't judge myself.
I'm not gonna be perfect, I'm trying really hard,
for all of us, some things are better than others,
but in reality, I think I owe it to the whole system.
Not just my kids and my wife, I owe to the whole fucking
thing, to really work hard at checking out and being
there, and I enjoy it.
I'm always into the jersey I'm wearing, do I love my work,
does it come more natural?
It does, it is more natural for me to work every day
for the rest of my life, it's my zone, it just is,
it is what it is, it's the truth.
But especially my kids are now eight and five,
so now they're like actually real.
When they were that little, I'm like, fuck that,
but when they become real and they can say shit
and now my daughter is like me,
and I'm like, fuck, she's like me, a girl version,
fuck that's gonna be crazy.
So, so, I enjoy it and it's getting even better.
For me, and everybody is different, as they're getting
older, it's even more fun and then carving out more
time with my wife.
I'm back to Jewish holidays, I text my wife
on the air, I'm so pumped for Yom Kippur because
we can't do shit, we're just gonna hug and lay together.
And I'm trying the best I can, too many people are letting
other people judge their parenting and relationships.
This all comes down to the same shit, right?
People are allowing other people to tell them how to
parent, which is fucking ludicrous because whatever
is politically correct now isn't going to be.
I promise you, the way of, oh shit, they did it right
in the 60s, divide and conquer is gonna be super hot
in 2020.
So, I'm not relying on everybody else telling me how
to do it, I'm gonna do it the way that feels right
for me, my spouse and my kids and every day.
If I walk into the house tomorrow and my little guy goes,
you travel too much, I hate it, I will adjust,
if I feel like I have to.
If it hurts, then I'll adjust.
Actions, back to the dude about the weakness and story,
words are bullshit.
Actions, I took most of August off, that's an action.
I just did, I took fucking 28 days in a row,
that's more days than what I took in my entire
20s combined off, not natural for me, but it's actions
and so just hacking, hacking every day.
- [Audience Member] Awesome, thank you.
- Welcome.
Vera, can I say some shit?
He's adjusting, I saw you on the phone with Taylor,
is he freaking?
Good.
All right, hey, who's up, oh sorry, bro.
- [Audience Member] What's up, Gary, I'm Matt.
- Matt.
- I'm over here with DVTC from Caldwell, Idaho.
So, I'm kind of, first off, your energy, incredible.
- [Gary] Thanks, bro.
- Dude, we do this every day, we get to vibe with you,
thank you for coming out here.
Also, going back to Logan the Third, his marketing
and social media, you mentioned investing into that.
What are some specifics, that we could do money,
do we need a specific person for it?
What are some big--
- I think you can hire some, where are you guys,
Colorado you said?
- [Audience Member] Caldwell, Idaho.
- I think for $27,000 a year you can get a full-time person
that fucking dominates.
Now, here's the vulnerability, who's the judge
of the person if they're good or not.
So, if you run your shit, the key is that you know
so that you can judge.
Too many people outsource their social or anything,
their finances, they outsource to other people
because they don't want to do it or they don't know how
and that's what gets them in trouble.
So I think at that price point, I think there's
plenty of 22-year-olds that know what to do,
I was one, but I also think there's far more that don't,
but look the part because they're young.
And there may be a 47-year-old that knows exactly
what to do, so I think, whoever is the judge and jury
of the person who's managing, has to be capable
of understanding what the result is,
and the result is not likes and the result is not
followers, I don't think you're paying your dues
with likes, you don't take likes, right?
So this is the business mind, a lot of people on
social media, in the beginning, they played on vanity
metrics, people have their self-esteem wrapped up
in how many followers or likes they get,
I'd rather have four people follow me
and three of them buying than 2.3 million
and none of them buying, from a business standpoint.
From an ego standpoint, the second one is rad.
But from a business standpoint, those are specifics.
- One more, time frame of it, is it an every day,
all day, 24-hour thing?
- Yeah, now that person is not gonna work 24 hours,
but sure.
The answer is always more.
But then you go backwards, so the answer is yes,
now what's practical and what can you afford,
right, and wherever it stops, that's where you want,
shoot for the moon and end up in the clouds,
don't shoot for the mountain top
and end up somewhere in the fucking river.
Where the fuck does this shit come from, thanks, bro.
Did you get that one D. Rock?
Thanks.
- What up, Gary V?
- [Gary] Hey man.
- I'm Vayland, and I'm from the Corvalis, DB.
So, I'm going through a big point of growth in my life,
I'm 20 years old and I know the next 10 years
are gonna be a lot of progression for me,
if you could give yourself one tip when you were
my age, what would it be?
- Don't count anything.
- [Audience Member] I feel that.
- Do you?
- I think I do.
- Let me tell you what I mean, literally
don't judge where you're out for the next 10 years.
Literally close your eyes until you're 30.
Same advice I gave earlier.
The biggest problem for people is they're keeping
score along the way, which means they're looking back,
which is allowing people to pass them.
I went into a coma in my 20s, just like, checked out.
I don't think what I did was right, I checked out so extreme
that I stopped talking to anybody, I just went there,
right, I think, in hindsight there is a healthier balance,
but I think everybody else is too much in the other place,
like at 30 I'm gonna be this, at 22 this, and if I'm
not the manager at 21, then I'm gonna be this,
if I'm not making 63,000 at 20,
people are just counting against themselves because
they're so used to the game of school and rankings
and scoring and then you get into the real world
where it's detrimental, not a positive.
Do you understand?
- [Audience Member] I do.
- And you're gonna wake up at 30, I woke up at my 30th
birthday, this is a real story, drove to the store,
looked myself in the mirror and I said the next 10 years
are gonna be really important building years.
You just do that at 20, I promise you when you're
at 30, you're gonna do the same thing.
So, the answer is, it's forever, there's
important years in your 20s, there's important years
in your 30s, there's important years in your 40s,
and 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s and 90s.
So, don't over-judge yourself, do learn the work ethic
and the skills that match your ambition.
- [Audience Member] Thank you Gary, don't stop grinding.
- Hi.
- Hi, I'm Hannah.
- [Gary] What's your name?
- Hannah.
- [Gary] Hannah?
- Yeah, I don't want to say where I'm from,
I don't want them to scream.
- [Gary] Okay, does screaming freaks you the fuck out?
- Yeah, because I would probably start shaking.
I have kind of a broad question, though,
I eventually want to get to something creative,
like marketing or something like that,
and I stopped going to college.
- [Gary] Awesome.
- I think that was a bad decision.
- [Gary] No.
- You think I could still make that happen?
- A 100,000%.
- Okay.
- Good, Hannah, Hannah, do you know that if you spend
the next three months emailing people that have
businesses that have jobs that you're interested in,
one of them would say yes?
- [Audience Member] No.
- Good, that would happen.
- [Audience Member] Free advice.
- Free advice.
- [Audience Member] Thank you so much.
- You got it.
- [Audience Member] What's up, Gary?
- [Gary] Life is good, man, how are you?
- Pretty good.
My name is Alec Peter, I'm here from Rosenberg with my crew
and you can make as much noise.
- [Gary] No, but the one dude was doing some kind
of crazy thing.
I love it, respect.
- First off, thank you for giving us your time and I'm
pretty stoked that I finally was able to get up here,
and ask you this question,
I've been trying to focus more on stop thinking
and doing more, and this is my one starting point,
I'm here off to start doing and stop thinking.
Thank you.
- [Gary] No worries, man, keep it going.
- My question is, so you do what you do every single
day, you wake up and you run your business,
and you do your daily vlogs and you go places,
and you're a motivational speaker for a lot of people
and people look up to you and they need motivation
so they look up your shit.
What drives you to do what you do and just keep moving
and don't stop what you're doing?
- The gratitude for that situation.
I'm completely driven by gratitude.
Do you know how grateful I am?
Do you know what did I do?
My parents had sex at this one moment and created me.
Like, I'm being serious, I'm being grateful,
I have such a good thing going, people like it,
I like it, it's so good, but what did I do?
Do you know how lucky I was that I was an immigrant?
Do you know how much I'm driven by a chip on my shoulder,
do you know how lucky I got that I was 4ft 11 when
I went into freshman year of high school,
all these things went in my favor,
I don't know man, I'm driven by gratitude.
Every morning I wake up and I'm just grateful,
grateful, grateful, I'm 42 years old almost,
and unfortunately, three of my four grandparents died
before I got to know them,
so not only was I born in a communist country,
where capitalism and entrepreneurship is shit on,
I went to the place where it's post on a pedestal,
I got the greatest mom in the world,
my dad taught me work ethic and my word,
which made me not a bullshit artist, saved my ass.
Right, but then on top of everything else,
I've had very little death or pain around me and I'm
42 years old, it's unfortunate why that's the case,
given the circumstances before, but it's still my reality
and I have a communications style that for some reason,
who knew, don't forget, I was 33 years old
before I even made a video.
I've never thought this could be real,
it didn't even fucking cross my mind,
I was a business man.
Like, watching 20-year-olds that are hungry
and thinking about their lives,
I'm excited because I'm like, bro, you don't have
any clue where this might fucking go,
because at 31 years old, I'm like, maybe I'll make
one video on this YouTube thing, you have no idea
where it's going, so I'm completely driven by gratitude,
I'm so thankful, I'm so grateful and it drives
the shit out of me.
- And that helps you to not procrastinate and just
be in a slump, if you ever are, in a slump,
I'm sure we all are.
- Everybody is in a slump, but here's my thing, man,
nobody gives a shit.
- [Audience Member] Fuck yeah.
- You know what I mean, the thing that people don't realize
about slumps and depression and things like that,
you got to break them down, for some people
it's a real disease, it's real stuff, but that's on
a different plane, but being in a slump,
everybody's in a slump, everybody's got adversity,
there's always something.
To me, somebody has always got it worse.
There's 7.7 billion people and unless I'm
in some weird little cage in some fourth world
country, that means I'm not in last place,
which means I've got nothing to complain about,
you know what I mean?
- [Audience Member] Yeah.
- You live in America.
- [Audience Member] Fuck yeah.
- The fuck are you complaining about?
- I was just wondering, you've spoken for a lot of
businesses and people, I was just wondering what do you
think about Dutch Bros and what we are and what we do
and the questions that a lot of the people have asked you?
- Look, the biggest takeaway for me is there is a lot
of energy, it's young and all that, it's all rad,
to me, it's just really cool that there's a smart
operator at the top.
And listen, you guys know me, I don't know him,
I don't give a fuck about him.
I'm being serious.
And the same way he does it to me, but it's important
for me to tell you this, we don't know each other,
we met three seconds before I came on stage,
it's just cool to see somebody smart and building
a framework that works both for his organization
and the people in it, I know it because I do it as well
and it's cool, I'm hopeful that this becomes
humongous because you need examples of capitalism
that is positive on both sides, because I think
that's a 2.0 version, right?
The reason I'm excited, that I'm cool to young kids,
is I'm teaching them good principles, not bad principles.
All the other dickfaces that are popular on Instagram
and YouTube are flashing fucking cars
and watches and fucking clubs, and all this fucking
shit down these 23-year-old dudes' mouths
and it's fucking stupid because it's short-term
behavior, I am collecting popularity because of gratitude
and because once I get them in, them in like,
okay, listen, you want to know what the real thing is?
It's fucking hard work, it's being respectful,
it's being a good person, it's being 30 years
in the making and to me, my energy of this,
it's cool to see it because you don't see it often
and when you see it, you appreciate it.
(audience applauding)
Two more.
I got to go, I apologize.
- I'll keep it short, I promise, thanks for staying.
Gary, I'm Chelsea, I'm with the DBAZ.
We're all getting tired.
So, I love that you say listen to people,
I get to be at a position that's a little bit like
your chief hiring officer in your offices,
I've been in that gray area for a while though,
engagement, and player retention, that kind of thing.
- [Gary] Okay.
- I wonder when it's important to say I don't give
a fuck about your opinion and when it's important
to say, hey I need to coach you and guide you
and actually pull you aside from this path that you're
on right now?
- I think you know.
How long have you been doing that?
- [Audience Member] Six years.
- Do you like it?
- [Audience Member] Love it.
- Comes natural, right?
- [Audience Member] Yeah.
- You know the answer, it's circumstantial.
Right, the fact that you even asked me that way
made me know that I didn't have to answer it.
You know what you're doing.
The thing for you and I and people that really
give a fuck about HR and people is it's tough,
it's so emotionally draining, right,
because when you see somebody who's not self-aware,
you know how tough, the game is already over, right?
I think the one thing I would tell you,
you can see how I talk about these issues,
I go that one extra place where most people don't go,
it's because that uncomfortable place,
fuck you, mom, and this and that, that uncomfortable
place is where it is.
Because what you're doing as somebody who loves it
and is good at it, and what I was doing early in my career
is you go right to the edge, the problem is,
that doesn't create the unlock.
The unlock is when you suffocate it.
So, I think about it like this, I try to give
a bunch of honey before I deliver the vinegar,
and I go back to the extremes of pulling,
if I'm gonna have a tough conversation, I'm gonna
really set the framework, which is like, look,
I'll do anything for you, you don't have to work here,
I'll make it so awesome, and then I'll go,
you're a fuck-face, and you're a fuck-face because
you're insecure and Karen underneath is better
than you, so you're suppressing her because you don't
want her to take your job, because this is about
as high as you're gonna get up and you know that.
So, what's happening is you're manifesting bad
behavior because you're protecting your grounds,
'cause you got to pay your mortgage, I get it.
But it's not gonna work, so now what?
So, that's the part that's hard,
but when you really give a fuck, if you're making decisions
because you have to hit a certain margin to pay
to the mothership, that's different, but I know
that's not the case already, so you're fucking lucky,
you know how many people have to make decisions on that?
So, you're making decisions on EQ, so you're just
gonna have to go that, if we're gonna have this
moment together, six months, six months going one step
further in radical candor which does not come natural
to us.
- [Audience Member] Or maybe Dutch Bros.
- Or maybe Dutch Bros.
Radical candor is tough and I get it, and by the way,
not maybe Dutch Bros, everything I can tell already
makes me know they're not good at it
because I'm not good at it.
When you're so EQ-ed out and it's so good vibes,
you're leaving money on the table because it feels better.
So radical candor comes hard, but it's the evolution for
him and me and our next frontier, for us to take our
companies to the next level, we have to inject a little
bit of that and the way I'm doing it is a different
version of what we've been doing, this is now me
talking to him, I'm creating bigger severances,
real packages, mascot jobs that don't bother anybody else,
anything if I have to deal with 17 people that I'm
emotional towards, that are fucking everything else up,
but not addressing it will collapse the whole fucking
empire and that's why I call my organization the honey
empire, the honey empire.
It's not the empire of honey, I will always chose
people .1% more than the business,
but after you get into year three, seven, nine,
you get to a scale where your strength becomes
your vulnerability, so yeah.
- The leaders above me are great
with radical candor, it's the millennials
and the generation z
that's coming up that seem a little bit more sensitive
towards that kind of thing.
- Yeah, but I'll be honest with you, that's a cop-out,
I'm not gonna let the millennial generation z
be the conversation, I actually think that we should
be looking at ourselves, and not them,
because it's easier to be like you fucking kids,
I don't believe in that bullshit,
I really don't, it's us.
You know?
It's us.
They are big boys and girls and there's plenty
of fucking people that are soft as shit in their 40s,
60s and 80s too, that were lazy as fuck and entitled as fuck
and the same way with that dude with the technology,
we are using the millennial and the gen z cop-out
of entitlement to not address it because subconsciously
we've got our own things to work through.
It's always our fault.
(audience applauding)
- [Audience Member] What's up, Gary?
- What's up, bro?
- My man, I've got to be honest with you,
I've never heard of you before until this day.
- [Gary] I get it, I've never heard of you either.
- Dude, thanks, man.
Well, we're hearing each other now.
- [Gary] Here we are.
- And I'm definitely gonna look up your stuff,
that's for sure, I'm gonna say that.
- [Gary] I'm gonna definitely look up you,
you're like straight out of central casting.
- Thanks.
- [Gary] What's your name?
- My name, oh, my name's Kyle, but everyone
just calls me by my last name, Rodo.
- [Gary] Rodo, loving it, let's do it Rodo.
- So, I have two questions for you.
The first one is about SnapChat.
- [Gary] Okay.
- So, I run the SnapChat for my franchise, it's
in West Valley Arizona.
They all just left except for her, they had
to catch a flight.
- [Gary] She's a gangster.
- Oh, dude, I know.
- [Gary] That's your girl?
- Yeah, I'm dating her.
- Oh, you're dating her, like she's really your girl?
Okay.
That's not exactly where I was going, but it makes
it awesome, go ahead.
- So, what can I be doing--
- [Gary] To make it better?
- Not even to make it better, damn, yeah, I guess--
- [Gary] Do you want people to come into the store?
- What's that?
- [Gary] You want people to come to the business, right?
- Hell yeah.
- Let me throw a really interesting curveball at you.
You should literally take the account right now,
look at it, and be like, hey, guys, what can I do here
to make it better for you?
One of the craziest moves in social that I find fascinating
is just asking the audience what they want,
you'll be blown away by how much feedback you'll get
that will unlock.
Literally, like, hey, it's Rodo, I run the fucking
shit for this store, what up, I need you guys to tell me.
And SnapChat is legit now, you can just keep holding it
down, so you're good, you don't have the 10 second bullshit
anymore, right?
So, you're just holding it down, it's Rodo,
what up, I fucking run shit here, what do you guys
want on this SnapChat?
And here's what's gonna happen, 80% of them are gonna be
like, give us free shit, no shit.
Which you can mix in, by the way, I'm on a whole kick
at Wine Library now, every Saturday, we're just giving
away $10 worth of gourmet food and we're doing it,
the ROI actually works.
Giving away free shit, people like to shit on it,
it's kind of clever if you've got something good,
because the cost of entry is low.
But look, you know this, people want entertainment,
and you're fucking entertaining just on your fucking face.
You know?
I mean it.
- Yeah, I hustle hard for that.
- I believe you, so remember when I talk about
bet on your strengths, not on your weaknesses,
go fucking all Bill and Ted's excellent adventure.
Go all, I mean it, I can taste it from this far away,
you'd be entertaining as fuck, and it will bring people.
Make every fucking person want to watch it for you
and for Larry, the mop guy, 'cause he's funny,
create a fucking sitcom, bro.
- Thank you.
So, before I go to my second question, would you mind
if I took that SnapChat right now?
- [Gary] Yeah, let's do it.
- I appreciate that.
All right, here we go, brother.
- [Gary] Go ahead, bro.
- What's up, DB, West Valley,
I'm here with, (audience cheering).
I'm here with Gary V, he's a huge motivational speaker--
- [Gary] He never heard of me before today!
- I haven't, I haven't, but we're here,
and we are curious to see what you guys want to see
or we're curious to hear what you guys want to see
on this SnapChat.
- Tell him, tell him what you fucking want!
Can we do that, that's okay, right?
It's okay, it's approved, approved from the top.
Yeah!
- I'm posting that.
- [Gary] I bet you are, Rodo.
Okay, number two.
- Everything you've been saying about self-insight,
and self-awareness moment, I'm eating that shit up,
I love it.
- [Gary] Good, it's delicious, right?
- Oh, good, dude, yes.
- [Gary] What does it taste like, cinnamon?
Okay, go ahead.
- So, I have so many--
- [Gary] Go ahead, we're not going anywhere.
- What you've been saying with like, how you are constantly
finding out new shit about yourself every day,
but also you have these--
- [Gary] Core principles?
- Yeah, you were telling that guy, fuck your girlfriend,
like, love them, but don't fucking listen to them,
how do you, while you're still constantly learning
new stuff about yourself every day, how do you keep
this self-insight in check?
How do I know--
- [Gary] You're right?
Everybody wants to know if they're right.
- [Audience Member] Yeah, well, I mean--
- You don't.
- [Audience Member] Except sometimes.
- No, dude, to me, this is why intent has been brought up
so much, my big thing is I don't know if I'm right,
I just know I'm doing things for the right
reasons, and I'm okay with letting the chips fall
where they may.
Let me tell you something that didn't get brought
up today while we're on this gig.
One of the biggest reasons a lot of you don't do the right
thing is because you expect somebody to do that in return
after you do it.
And that expectation, the reason I'm good
is because I give with zero expectation in return.
And when you give with zero expectation in return,
it unlocks you, and I can see some of you get this,
it's a big one, I'm sitting here and I'm jamming
with you guys, I'm like, ah, right, I'm always
trying to break down the formula, because it's never
one thing, right?
It's like wine, a good wine has a blend of components,
a lot of what works for me is I do it for the right reasons,
I'm all in, I don't mind if I lose, I actually weirdly
prefer it, and if I do great for you and then I need you
in a year, and you don't deliver, I'm cool with that too,
I'm empathetic.
Maybe you didn't get it, maybe you're not a good person,
maybe you got some shit on your mind that didn't allow
you to come through.
I think the expectation of others and the opinions
of others are disproportionately guiding your life
and I think that you will end up regretting that
in your older years.
- [Audience Member] Thank you, that was great.
- I never have to rush, anybody, are we done?
- [Audience Member] Yes, one more, one more.
- Yes, let's do it.
- [Audience Member] Hi, so our company has done--
- What's your name?
- I'm Shell.
- [Gary] Shell?
- I'm from (mumbles).
So, our company is founded on its culture and we hold
it very close to our hearts, and earlier
you were talking about leadership and you were saying
that selflessness and empathy is everything
when it comes to leadership, and I just wanted to know
how has selflessness and empathy impacted your life
and impacted your company within your leadership?
- It's allowed me to, God, that's such a good question,
Shell, it's almost like asking me how has brown eyes
impacted my life?
I don't even know of anything else,
what I think it's done, it's created a stickiness
and an emotion towards me and the organization
that has created its strength.
I believe that continuity leads to speed, speed leads
to results.
So, the reason I love culture so much is it means
we stick around with each other longer, so we know
each other's strengths and weaknesses, we become
a gelled unit and then we can be faster in whatever
we do, decisions, strategies, executions.
I'm a retailer, when it's busy on a Saturday,
everything, everything.
So, for me, man, I think it's impacted, I don't
there's an accident that this company and my company
have hyper-grown very quickly in comparison to other
people's companies, right?
I think that, I feel like there's only one way
to make anybody besides the person that owns something
give a shit, which is to give a shit about them more
than they give a shit about you, and in that,
creates the stickiness that creates continuity
which creates speed and my genuine belief about
everything else in business is that speed is the variable
to success.
- [Audience Member] Thank you.
- You're welcome.
Dutch Bros.
Okay guys, so you sat down and watched that entire
marathon which is insane.
So, the real simple question of the day is,
what was your favorite part of this keynote,
what made you feel the most,
what part can you feel the most?
(melodic music)