- Super excited to be here.
This is my tenth year at South-By, which is
insane and I'm glad to go back to the form, at two
years ago or three years ago I decided to do a full Q&A,
and it was a lot of fun and really set the
tone for what I did with my last book and
things of that nature. There's a mic right up here,
I'm gonna probably talk for only two or three or
four minutes, so if you've ever wanted to ask a question,
I think it's a really good time to actually get up
from your seat right now and start getting
into line, so do that. As you're debating
your questions, let me talk to you about what's on my mind. I know there's a
good mix of people here who know quite a bit
about me, and I'm sure there's a good mix of people who don't. For my whole life I called
myself a businessman. We now call
that an entrepreneur. I've always been selling stuff,
and what it synthesized to for the people that are
paying attention to me closest is I'm really,
really focused on attention. All the happiness that
I've had professionally has been my ability to
understand where the consumer attention is while the
world underestimates it. This conference, the
people in this room, are easily aware of
where things are going. You wouldn't be
at this conference. You wouldn't be
coming to these kind of talks if you didn't understand where the attention is
either or about to be. I think this space,
our space, tends to think attention is gonna be in
places a little bit too quickly. For example, the
last two or three years I've been debating
very aggressively with a lot of my Silicon Valley
friends that VR on the consumer level is much
further away than we think. The technology's there, but it kinda reminds
me of internet '92. It's gonna take time
for normal people to, how many people,
by show of hands, outside of people
that are in the business, know of a human
being who actually spends two hours a day,
or an hour a day, in VR? A human being
not in the business? Three, so we got
a long way to go. And I think that's the things
we need to think about, right? But to me, I'm unemotional,
like Twitter, email marketing,
YouTube, these are the platforms that through the
years really helped me grow my wine business,
my brand, my agency, but the truth is I'm unemotional about whether
they're here tomorrow. I'm sad that
Twitter's ad product isn't as good as
I'd like it to be, but I would
never waste my money, tell you to waste your
money, or guide my startups or companies to waste
their money in that platform. To me, I'm obsessed with
the underpriced nature of Facebook's ads
Marketplace right now. But the day it becomes
overpriced, I won't cry. I'll just move on to
wherever our attention, there's an unemotional attention
grab that I'm focused on. Then I think a lot of the
other things that may happen here is
I'm pretty undereducated, in hindsight, right? I was an
extraordinarily poor student. And as I continue
to hear things, like, there's some amazing
thing I saw on social, my feed the other day,
a graffiti artist saying, the creative people that
are winning, are the kids that got through adulthood
without being tainted, right? And I actually
think that so much of what I think about
just comes from a pure audit. I don't have a
preconceived notion when I look at most things,
and I think that blindness. When I went into
the agency world, right now I'm
running an 800 person agency. We've gone from zero to
$130 million in revenue. When I started it,
people made fun of me, and said, just 'cause I had a
lot of Twitter followers, how was I gonna compete
with real Madison Avenue. For me, the reason we've
been so grossly successful is I didn't have any of the
baggage of the agency world. I knew nothing about the
agency world in the same way I didn't know anything
about the wine business when I went into
my dad's business. And whatever I operate for
the next two or three things until I buy the
Jets and win Super Bowls, I'm gonna be very blind to it. I implore people to
make things more simple. I think things
are extremely simple if you allow
them to be that way. I think we make
them very complicated, and I think a
lot of people here, how many people
are running or work at a startup,
early stage startup? Raise your hands high,
I just wanna get a sense. A lot, so to me one of the
things that's very devastating and the difference of being
here today versus 10 years ago is the people that
were here 10 years ago were building products and
were trying to build products and, or businesses,
one or the other. The far majority of
startups in our ecosystem today are building
financial arbitrage machines. All they're doing is
trying to hit certain metrics to raise the next round
of capital to keep going until some sort
of imaginary exit. And that's scary to me
because for anybody else here who's following
the business world, we've now lived through eight or nine very good
years in our economy. That plays
itself out eventually. And when there is no more money and you actually
have to run a business, all those things you
cared about, like CAC and LTV and all these other
lovely, important things become far less important than do you make more money
than you lose each month? Let me just remind
everybody, you're not a superstar entrepreneur when
you're losing money each month. (audience laughter) There's a lot of
interesting themes that are in play
right now, and so those are the things that
I like to pay attention to. I reverse engineer
human behavior, and I deploy my actions into places where
I think there's opportunity. That's my thesis,
that's what I roll on, and most of it's
very tried and true. I love HR, I love people. I love people's behavior, and I love consumer trends. This is the place
to be for that stuff. Thanks for having me
and I'm ready to answer questions,
whether very tactical of, like, how to run a Snapchat
filter ad or philosophical of, like, how do you tell your mom that she's
ruining your life? (audience laughter) Cool, name and question. - Steven Rosenberg.
My question is, so I watch you go all over the country
and all over the world and people ask
you the same questions-- - Yes. - [Steven] over and
over and over, I wanna add value and ask you, what kind of questions
do you want people to ask? You don't have to answer the
same question over and over. - So Steve, this is literally
the question I hate the most. (audience laughter) - [Steven] Okay, really? - I'm not even kidding.
- [Steven] Really? - I'll explain in a minute.
- [Steven] Okay, yeah. - Literally,
I would've preferred you ask me the
same cliche question. - [Steven]Really?
- Yes, I'll tell you why. - When you're answering
people's questions, you need to provide them
value, not yourself value. - [Steven] Correct. - Do you know why 98%
of the South-By keynotes this year are gonna suck shit? - [Steven] Because they're not-- - No, because they're
doing press releases for their - [Steve] Right.
- best behavior, not for the audiences. The reason I'm doing a keynote, a Q&A session is I
wanna give you something. I'm plenty
comfortable self-promoting plenty of other times, and so I don't have
any question. Listen, there's nothing
I want to be asked. All I want to do is give
people what their question is. I don't mind answering
the same question over and over, you know why? We have seven to 11 basic
themes that are fucking us up. - [Steven] Right, so,
alright let me ask you this. - Fine.
- [Steven] What do you think of eco-capitalism
moving forward in 2017? - I'm sorry one more time? - [Steven] Eco-capitalism. - Like, break it down for me. Another great thing about Q&A
is I try not to answer shit I don't understand
- [Steven] Yeah so basically, (audience laughter)
corporations being able to profit from
their waste stream, though its really wasteful,
and you have to pay for waste. And they're using
social to change that. - So, in that vein,
I don't know all the details, but I'll go
thematically with you. - [Steven] Please.
- Companies are very basic. - [Steven] Okay. - They never do good things unless it's
good for the company. - [Steven] Right. - So, if there's a
way to incentivize, it's like when people
are CEO's and they're mad at their sales team
for selling the wrong shit, but meanwhile the CEO's bonusing
them on that shit behavior, I'm like, you're a shithead. Change the
bonuses and they'll adapt. You wanna fix the environment? Make and incentivize
every company to do that, they will do it
every single time. - [Steven] Correct,
but it's hard for them to get on board initially, even though it
capitalistically makes sense, for them to listen to
that, because they hear environment and they go oh. - Yeah, I would tell you
that I don't believe that, and let me explain why. I'm not sure who's
feeding them that information, but I promise you every CFO
of every Fortune 5,000 company in the world, unless they decide to make it a political issue,
which I'm very empathetic to, is going to always make
the dollar and cent decision. - [Steven] Right, I mean doesn't VaynerMedia
spend money on waste? - Of course.
- [Steven] A lot. - I don't know, to be frank. - [Steven] I'm sure,
yeah, okay, thank you. - You're welcome. Me? Seriously? (audience laughter) That is literally the first time I've ever fucking
heard that in my life. Can you guys pump me up? Got it, I'll go harder. (audience laughter) What's up my man? - [Trevor] How are you Gary? - What's your name? - [Trevor] Trevor Williams,
Austin, Texas. - Love it. - [Trevor] First off,
real quick, huge fan. - Thank you. - [Trevor] I'm limiting
myself on my goals, and you kinda helped
me blast through those. - Thank you. - [Trevor] We have a
local company, IoVitamine, we do IV hydration therapy,
great for hangovers by the way. South-By a good time here.
- So the kind of shit where you get drunk and
you go into a place and they put an IV in you? - [Trevor] Exactly.
- Okay. - [Trevor] It's not just that
though, it's overall health, fatigue, it's overall wellness. - Okay. - [Trevor] Great response,
new category, the only one here in Austin. There's only about a handful of them across
the United States. We're trying to raise awareness
of how it makes you feel, how it helps you,
and we're overwhelmed. We have four partners
that are working full-time, we're trying to
scale it pretty quickly, so we're doing all of the
standing operating procedures. So how do we--
- You're trying to scale quickly because
you feel like you could be commoditized if
people open up other shops? - [Trevor] Yeah, we
just want to be first. It's a first to market play,
it's not really controllable. - Not always, right? It's first to market
play a lot of times on brand, but not on locations, and
this is where a lot of people get fucked up, they
overexpand and they lose, Krispy Kreme, things of
that nature, it's iconic. It's 80 years in the making. People wanna move fast, and they think their
advantage is locations. It's actually brand,
and what a lot of people end up doing is they go
tactical and try to open up those locations instead
of worrying about the things that will give them a marathon. Because you're not running a
sprint, unless you're looking to exit in the next 24 months
and sell off the company. So your behavior
needs to map that. It's just one thing to
keep in mind, but keep going. - [Trevor] So
what's the best way, we're overwhelmed
as it is, like... - Hire people. - [Trevor] Hiring people, okay. So getting out there,
getting on social media-- - No, no, no. Before you worry about
the tactics of marketing, if you're truly overwhelmed,
then you started with that, four of us were
running a mile a minute, have you guys
thought about hiring people? Like more people. - [Trevor] We've started,
we hired a marketing person, 20-30 hours a week, gonna
help us reach out a little. - Are you guys profitable? - [Trevor] Yes. - What are you
doing with the profit? - [Trevor] Uh, paying bills. - Right so-- - [Trevor] Catching up on debt. - Got it, okay, understood. Yeah I mean, look,
so are you looking for a tactic or a thesis? - [Trevor] I want a
tactic as far as how to deploy the most to get out message
out there and create the brand. - Well, there's three ways
to communicate to the world. You can write content,
you can do audio content, or you can do
video content, right? Video content
historically is over indexed it, and so you can make video
content and run it on Facebook, and run ads for people
within the Austin zip code, and build awareness that way. The underpriced tactic in
the market for everybody here, B2B, B2C,
startup, Fortune 50, the underpriced
attention to the target that you're looking for,
as we stand here today, is Facebook video. So you need to
figure out how to make that. At first it could
be on your phone, if you don't have the dollars. Later it can get fancy
like DRock, but the reality is that's not even really that
fancy, and so I think that, sorry DRock and so,
(audience laughter I think Facebook video targeting people
of certain wealth and interests that would
make sense for them to come to you, is probably the tactic
you're most looking for, and I would say
influencer marketing. Instagram peeps with
300, 3,000, 30,000, 300,000, if they're, you know, exchanging
your service for them, you know you give
it to them for free, they're giving you
shout-outs, that's a really grossly underpriced
awareness right now, is influencer marketing
on an Instagram world. And those would be the
two places I would focus on. - [Trevor] Perfect, perfect.
A real quick jab, it's gonna be a right hook
'cause of all the people here, but we are mobile, if
any of you or your staff want us to come to
you while you're in town, we'll come hook you up. Complete jab. And ah-- - That's a right hook,
it's not a jab. - [Trevor] Of course, of course. But I've been
DMing you as a jab only, but since I'm
here it's a right hook. - Dude, everybody's
fucking DMing me. (audience laughter) - [Trevor] Anyway,
thanks for everything you do, I appreciate it man.
- Cool. (audience applause) Hey man. - [Tony] Hey, Tony Bova
from Knoxville, Tennessee. - Love it. - [Tony] Two things I--
- Who's from Tennessee? - [Tony] Ya, go Vols.
- Alright, there's three of you. - [Tony] Well, maybe
next year there will be more. - Better than zero. - [Tony] Quick
comment to the first guy. I think he's a little bit wrong. We actually have a startup where we're taking a waste
product from the paper industry and making
biodegradable plastic out of it. - Do you think you
two should fight? - [Tony] Yeah, I do.
(audience laughter) - Alright, flagpole 3 P.M. - [Tony] They're super happy because they don't have
anything to do with this-- - So you guys can work yourself
out on other people's time. Let's move on. - [Tony] So my
question is for you, we're competing in
a commodity market--, - Yes. - [Tony] but we're
really interested in-- - By the way, real quick,
99.999% of businesses, are competing in
a commodity market. That's why I'm
obsessed with brand. It's a differentiator.
Go ahead. - [Tony] That's my question. So how do we
competing against like the DOW and BASF of
the world with plastic, how do you build a brand-- - Who are you trying to reach? The B2B decision maker? - [Tony] Both, I want--
- And consumer? - [Tony] I want the
B2B decision maker and I want the
consumer to go to them and say I want
this instead of that. - And create the pressure
kind of like Intel inside. Ya man, I mean it's
called fucking marketing, right? Like, it's gonna
be very basic here. I think that, you know one thing I think a lot of
you should be doing, especially if you're
in a B2B environment, is starting a monthly podcast
where you become the experts, as a media company in
your space and really. I mean look this is
10 years ago, Wine Library TV. I thought I was gonna
be QVC and just sell wine. That's what I thought
I was gonna do. The second the camera
went on I was like, shit, this is recorded forever.
I need to rethink this. And I just became America's
wine guy in that world. I think that you should
start a monthly podcast, or a weekly podcast
if you wanna hustle, have really interesting guests, and that small
little niche of people that are interested in your
world will find yourself there. The more you can act
like a media company, and less like an advertiser,
you will always win. 'Cause nobody in here wants ads. People want
content and the truth is we actually don't give a shit
where the content comes from. Whether it's a network, or a
producer, or an individual, or a company, as
long as it's great. The problem is, 99% of companies want them to be
commercials not content. So you could do that. Or, you could take
the advice I said before, the two underpriced
for early stage. Like, when you're David and
you're playing against Goliath, you have to do David tactics. And our little slingshot
with a rock right now, is Facebook ads. You know, I know I'm
boring the shit out of the ones that follow me, it's
just that when I stand up here and say I built my dad's store
from three to 60 million, I always feel that it
should have been 250 million, because what I didn't
do was spend all my money on Google AdWords in
2000, 2001, '02 and '03 when I had it
and I figured it out and it was five
and ten cents a click, but it was so
early and I was so young, I didn't realize how historically amazing
this would be. We are paying 6 to 13 dollar
CPMs on Facebook right now that are gonna be 50 to 80
dollars in 36 and 48 months, and everybody that's
not here is gonna be sad that they didn't jump on it. And they're gonna
look back to this talk and be like, fuck,
I shoulda listened to Gary. (audience laughter)
- [Tony] Awesome. - So those are the
two things I would do. - [Tony] Thank you so much.
- Media company, and become the
voice of the market, and become the platform that people talk
about the market on. That brings
interest to decision makers or market in the
place where people are that's underpriced right now. - [Tony] So just own it
as we're the experts-- - If you are. Like one of the sad things
about the world we live in now, is people are
claiming to be experts when they're 21-years-old
out of school, and they just want to be an
influence or an Instagram. - [Tony] Right, awesome. Thank you very much.
- Thank you, yeah. (audience applause) - [Russell] 'Sup Gary?
- How are you man? - [Russell] My name's Russell. - I'm aware. We played
basketball for two hours, two hours ago. - [Russell] Yeah,
so that was awesome. Shoutout to Tyler, thanks Ty. So my question today
is just, for the people, like you get to hang
around cool ass people, like Tony Robbins
and Adam Gerard, and all those awesome people. Is there anything that you
notice that they have in common and that you really think that
makes them uberly successful? And on the other
flip side of that, is there anything
that you notice among, not necessarily
failures in life, but people who just fucked up, excuse my language, but uh-- - Don't worry. (loud audience laughter) - [Russell] That really make
them kind of mess up in life. - Yeah, I think, you know
it's a really great question. It's really hard, and the
truth is we're all individual. But I will say that I do believe
that people that care less about what other
people think about them tend to have a better life. It's just liberating,
and the truth is, you think it's the people
that troll you in comments, I'm actually
talking about your parents. And like, I genuinely
believe that self-esteem is the ultimate drug in life. That I'm obsessed with driving
self-esteem into my children, my mom did that
for me, and listen, there's a very fine line between
self-esteem and delusion. Right, there's a very fine line. But the reality is,
there are just so many people sitting here
that are broken inside because they care
what their older brother thinks about their behavior. Or what their husband
thinks about their behavior. Or what their mom
said to them growing up. And I don't really
know how to break that. What I'm trying to do
with my life is in parallel, achieve what I want for me. But the reason
I document so much, is that I'm trying to become
the injection of audacity into the people that watch me, that gives them the
courage to take the jump into the pool that
they're scared to swim in. And so, people are
just being held back by other people's opinions, and that's deep stuff
that you can't really hack at. I'm trying to play
my tiny little part. But I would say
that's the differentiation. Like, it's unbelievable
to me, I tweeted something which was an inside tweet
without context for my company. Which was,
"insecurity leads to politics". The people at VaynerMedia
that are so talented, that are so about to
win, that I'm about to fire because they're insecure and that leads them
to terrible behavior. It breaks my heart,
and we try hard. My crews there,
they know, we try hard. We pound at them, we
try to make them feel safe. We have a Chief Heart Officer,
I do my thing. We have a good culture, I try. But insecurity is a killer.
It leads to all the bad shit. And so it's the
difference between self-confidence and insecurity,
it's the difference of like. Listen being self-emotional
and putting yourself out there, there's so many people
that have opinions about me. As long as the
people that actually know me have the opinions they have, versus the people
that have never met me, but they heard me
say fuck on stage. Like, as long as
I'm good with the people that actually can look under
the hood, then I'll always win. So if you feel good
about who you actually are, you need to get loud. And if you don't, fix your shit. - [Russell] Thanks Gary.
- You got it Russell. (audience applause) - [Justin] Hey Gary.
- How are you? - I'm good man,
my name's Justin. I really appreciate you
and the content you put out. - Thank you. - Now, you talk about hacking
culture. I'm really curious,-- - By the way the entire line
is a bunch of fucking dudes, can I get some ladies up here? (women in audience
cheer and applaud) I see you darlin',
you're welcome. Go ahead bro, sorry. Just a
fucking sausage fest, fuck. (audience laughter) - Sorry I'm adding to that.
How do you think about like,-- - Ladies, let's go.
Go ahead. - How do you think about
tapping into the Zeitgeist, specifically around
like content creation? - Like, like hacking culture. - Like hacking culture, ideas
that are going to spread now, when is the right timing,
to make content around that? - That's the magic,
let me tell you one thing, all creatives in the room?
The creative is still the variable of success.
With all the math that has come into
our world and tech, the creative is still
the variable of success. (audience cheering) Now, before we
get pumped creatives, most creatives are dick
faces because they think their opinion's better
than everybody else's because AdAge one said they
said made something nice. So it's this very
hardcore mix of actual humility balanced with ego but
the underlining reason that I've been able to do it
pretty consistently for myself and the things I'm involved with is it's all about listening. It's all listening.
Like I talk so much that people don't get it, the only thing I'm
actually doing is listening. The reason I'm so good with
my community to engage with is because first I'm
listening to what you're saying, and shit, I'm there, so
I might as well say what's up? Right? The reason I took
their selfie picture and put it in my Instagram story
was, first, I was listening and then I gave them daps,
like, I'm constantly listening and for the people
that follow my vlog, I don't do anything by accident. I'm not spending all my
time with 30, 40 different emerging Atlanta 19-year-old
hip-hop artists for my health. I'm doing it because I believe
there's about to be a run in that scene of
the Russes and the Nebus and the things like
that, Skip and Flip, like I think they'll be culture, and I wanna have that
association. I wanna taste it. Same reason I came here,
back in 2006, '07, and '08. I thought that this
"Twitter", "Instagram" thing, these people, were
gonna build the future. I didn't give a
shit about technology. I was like a very
weird guy here 10 years ago. Everybody was like,
"We're gonna save the world, "and we're gonna, "we're gonna build products to
make people's lives better," and I'm like "yeah yeah yeah," but in my head I'm
like, "I'm gonna sell shit." (audience laughter) You know? And so, what I do is just listen. Even in politics, no matter
where I sit on issues, I listen, nothing confuses
me of what's going on because I listen. I know
the difference about what's going on in my
Chattanooga, Tennessee office versus my L.A. office. I go into those forums.
I pay attention to what's going on
on 4chan and Reddit and other places that
people don't pay attention to. I look, me and A.J.
started a sports agency 'cause I wanna know the
up-and-coming athletes of the next generation
that are 16, 17 and 18. I'm patient,
and I pay attention, and I'm not scared to fail. For every "Snapchat" and
"Instagram" that I've won on, I lost on Socialcam, right? I lost on Plurk. Remember Plurk, 2009 here? But I'm not
scared to do two things: one, spend it on godly time, listening versus thinking
I can manifest it myself, and number two,
once I have a thought, try things. So for everything I get
credit for that I did well, there's 18 things I didn't
do well that are forgotten 'cause it doesn't matter. - [Justin] Yeah. Cool. (audience laughter) That was a good answer.
Thanks man. - You're welcome. - [Jared] Hey Gary, I'm super
pumped to be here. - Thank you man.
- [Jared] Shout out to DRock. I love all your stuff. - What's your name?
- Jared, from Austin. My wife is here and
she gets super pissed when I go into my YouTube
shell and watch you and Casey and all that.
- Understood. My voice is annoying,
I know, sorry about that. (audience laughter) - I love it all, I just have, I don't know the context of
this whole video but I saw it, you were comparing TV
as dying just as radio has already died. - Right. - [Jared] Working in radio
I can't believe that, right? - So dying is a
very dangerous word. Nothing dies, right?
Like radio's around, newspapers are still here. When I say dying
it's a slang term for, I think the
advertising on that platform is grossly overpriced
versus the alternative. Meanwhile, I'm right
now spending a ton of time on iHeartRadio Drive Time radio, live reads by the disc jockey, just because
I think that's underpriced. So to me, I'm not a digitalist. I'm just an attentionist. So I just look at prices, right? Outdoor media should not be up
12 to 15% in the last decade in a world where everybody
here when they're a passenger in the car is
looking at their phone versus out the window, so like, that's just bad common sense.
The price is overpriced, that's why I'm down on it, but it's not like billboards
are being torn down, so, a lot of times
especially with the way I roll, things seem up, you know,
absolute, it's the nuances underneath the
absolute statements that matter, but keep going. - [Jared] And so, from the
consumer standpoint, filling that funnel,
are you a believer that TV, radio still play a
role in filling from the top and then obviously
Facebook ads-- - But I think
Facebook's much better as a top of the funnel platform. Because it's
massively underpriced. Meanwhile, I think
a Super Bowl commercial is the best deal in marketing. Like, not even close. At $6 million a pop, a steal. On the Gary radar of pricing? Worth $20, $30, $40 million. Meanwhile, I think programmatic
digital banner buying and preroll is the
worst shit on Earth. Nobody gives a
fuck about your banner and definitely not the pop-up that's stopping you from
doing what you want. And yet, the market of advertising,
Madison Avenue, loves it, because they're
justifying the $5 CPM. There's never been a time
when the value of something was predicated on its price. - [Jared] Alright, thank you.
- You got it. (audience applause) - [Julia] Alright. - Alright, let's do this.
What's your name? - [Julia] My name is
Julia and ten years ago, this man sent me my
wine for my wedding for free. Seriously, he did.
- Don't tell them my secrets. - [Julia] I know right? (laughs) So, thank you.
- You're welcome. - [Julia] I'm really glad I
get to say that in person. So, ten years ago, entrepreneurship was
not even on my radar. And now I own a company. Both my husband and I
run a financial planning firm that we started to
help creative people 'cause lord knows we
need some help with our money. And that being said, we're using video a lot--
- Good. - [Julia] Because
we're actually both actors. - Yes.
- [Julia] Right? And I'm hitting
this point of overwhelm because my question is
how do you own a business that uses video and social
media and keep your sanity? I'm really an empathic person
and I feel all this pain and need around me
and it overwhelms me. - Pain from the
people that are sending these crazy emails? - [Julia] Well, yes, sometimes, like directly from the client. It's just from the
social media world at large. - Oh, you mean how
all of social right now is just negative as fuck. - [Julia] Yes! I feel it's like
emotional dodge ball and opinion dodge ball. - Yes. - [Julia] All these ideas. How can I get in there
and try and help people? - You stay on the offense of
positivity if you believe it. You manage the amount
of time you spend looking and rubbernecking at negativity. - [Julia] How do you do that? Do you have like time blocks?
- I don't give a fuck. - [Julia] Okay, all right.
- I see all the negativity, I just know that
life is like this. I expect things to be difficult. I want to remind everybody, no matter where
you stand on politics and things of
that nature, just data. This is the
greatest era to be alive. As sad as you are
about certain things, I promise you,
it'd be worse right now if the Black Plague
was doing it's thing. (audience laughter) And so, I think we
get crippled, right? You know, I think
a lot of people here need to go an spend more
time with 80 and 90-year-olds and ask them what
they lived through. Nothing's perfect. We're always gonna have it bad. It's always
going to be something. We've always picked on each
other for being different. It sucks. So if you're lucky, and
you don't have that in you, I think you do
what I'm trying to do which is be completely,
utterly on the offense of positivity
because if you're positive, and you're happy, and you're optimistic,
you owe it to each other right now to get louder
because the only people that are loud are the
people that are upset. Right? Negativity is on
fire and happy people are clamming up and
staying away from it. That's how we stay happy. I went the other way. I'm going right at it, putting it out every single day. That's number one,
but we're all wired different. I'm able to eat shit at scale
for the rest of my life. That's why I'm a leader, that's why my company, it's why I put myself out there. If you get fatigued you need
to take yourself out there. It's okay to not be there
every day, read every comment. - [Julia] I feel like if I'm
not out there all the time, that I'm losing people
and undercutting myself. - Yes, you are, but
what's more interesting? Making $11 million a
year and being miserable or makin $6 million a
year and being decently happy? - [Julia] Thanks.
- You're welcome. - That's it. - [Julia] Alright, thank you. - Well good, good to see you. - [Julia] Get some
ladies up in here. - They're coming.
They're mixed in. - [Mark] 'Sup?
- Sup. (audience laughter) (Mark pops lips)
(Gary laughs) (pops lips) That was my question. - Yeah what's your name? - [Mark] Mark. - Mark. - [Mark] I saw you last
year, I was really inspired. Told you about a
company that I started one year ago called Wanderbrief. We're a platform
where we connect freelancers with companies
all over the world. People trade their
skills for experiences abroad. - Understood. - [Mark] And we've got a
lot of interest from people and then not a lot of companies. - Not a lot or a lot? - [Mark] Not a lot of companies. And then you said you
have to focus on the companies like it's a
strip club and you need to have the girls and
the guys will come, right? - That's right.
- [Mark] This is the opposite. We need girls here on the line. But that strategy
actually worked really well so we're now working for
a Adobe, Vodafone, Heineken and Porsche, but I actually
have a question for you. So if you could
work anywhere in the world, where would you go? - Nowhere. - [Mark] Thank you. - And the dude laughing
back there is clearly like, it's never even crossed my mind. It's never been there. It's never gonna be there. I don't want to work anywhere. I just don't have
that ability in me to think that somebody else is
going to steer my ship. I'm just not interested. And by the way,
I don't think that's cool. I don't think I'm cool for that. To be very frank,
I wish I didn't even have it. You know how awesome it is to
be the number two or three? You get almost all the benefits and you get to blame somebody. (audience laughter) So the answer is I don't, but I don't think
that's a badge of honor. I don't think everybody, right now everybody
thinks they need to be an entrepreneur and a founder. Meanwhile, I promise
you the following. The number 11 at Facebook,
she made a lot more money than everybody in
this room combined. Right, we're not thinking smart. This is back
to self-awareness. You need to know who you are. I know who I am. I am a leading CEO
entrepreneur, that's who I am. It's always who I've been. At 14, I was telling my dad what we're supposed to
do in the liquor store. So, my answer
to that is nowhere, but I want to make sure
that everybody hears me loud and clear, that
doesn't make it cool. That just makes it my truth. You just need to
figure out your truth. - [Mark] Cool, so then
maybe you can give your spot to number 11 of
VayenrMedia and I will take him or her on a trip. - Thanks for the right hook. I'll look into it. (audience laughter and applause) - [Henry] Hey, what's up Gary?
How you doing? - Super well man. - [Henry] Good. I'm
Henry from Los Angeles. I work for a company
called The Herbal Chef. - Okay. We do cannabis
infused fine dining. - Awesome.
(audience laughter) - [Henry] I do all
the social media stuff with them and all that. And I was wondering if
you see any similarities in the cannabis
space and the wine space? - Of course. Wine was
illegal in this country. Some of you saw my
South-By speech last year. I hate this fucking state
because I can't ship wine here. Right? It's state by state regulated. There's taboo. 80 years ago it was super
taboo to drink in this country. 20 years ago it was
super taboo to smoke weed. It's getting chipped away at. You know, obviously
the new administration's got its agenda so it
may slow down the curve of what we've got going on. It will be
interesting to watch that from an
entrepreneurial standpoint, but I think we are now fully
on the other side of the hill as a social issue
on that product and I think it's really cool. I'm excited to learn
about all the benefits that have been
suppressed because people have not wanted it to succeeded. And so, sure, I will say this. Like VR, I think
cannabis on the consumer level at big scale is going to
be slower than people think. - [Henry] Right. - And I think it's also
going to be very competitive. I love looking at history. The reason I know I'm right, that we've gone to
a primary mobile world and now the television
is the secondary device just like we went through
with radio and television. I think if you look
back at all the startups that happen in
alcohol post prohibition, 99% of them failed.
- [Henry] Yeah. - And so everybody's
gold rushing on this. They don't realize how
slow it's going to take and they're
building shitty businesses. They just put the
word cannabis in it and they think they're going
to succeed because it's coming. - [Henry] Yeah. Cool, do you see any mistakes
that you made with Wine Library? - There's no parallels to
what I did with Wine Library because it was a long, you know, alcohol was legal
and for a long time. I think the mistakes I made
with Wine Library are tried and true to what I'm
talking about which is in 1996, when I launched WineLibrary.com,
I thought in four years everybody would be
buying wine on the internet. Right, and it took the
internet much slower to be an e-com platform. Even now it's still
a smaller percentage than most people realize,
so I would tell you that innovators in this room, it tends to happen
slower than they think and tends to happen faster than all the people that
aren't here think. It's finding that timing. - [Henry] Great, thank you.
- Cool. Hey, darlin'. - [Connie] How you be? - What up?
- [Connie] How are ya? - Super. - [Connie] Good, good, good.
- What's your name? - [Connie] So I
am Connie S. Falls. I live in Atlanta,
so I probably see all the great trap
rappers you're probably dealing with these days.
- Yep. - [Connie] So for me, for my
business, I have a government contracting company
that deals primarily with the Federal Government
doing construction. - Okay. - [Connie] I have a podcast
that I do for entrepreneurs where I do the interviews
and have those kind of conversations that
are very transparent. - Okay.
- [Connie] I have a T-shirt line that deals primarily with entrepreneurs.
- Okay. - [Connie] Entrepreneurial Life
Is So Awesome. And I have a
nonprofit that's in Nigeria called We Are Global Champion.
- You're doing a lot of shit. - [Connie] I'm
doing a lot of shit. So my question is,
you do a lot of shit, too. - Be careful. - [Connie] How do you balance
your work and your life? - Oh, we're talking
about work-life balance? - [Connie] Yeah.
- Communication, the end. Like, you just gotta
figure out who's in. You know, again,
back to not giving a crap. I'm not worried about
what everybody here thinks about my work-life balance
or the way I parent my kids. I worry about what
my wife thinks and, you know, and the inner circle. The kids are
getting a little older, I'm gonna start hearing
their feedback pretty soon. And so I think that we
are crippling ourselves on parenting and work-life balance
and we're judging ourselves and we're all just trying to
do the best we can, right? Like, this gold
standard is ridiculous 'cause it doesn't exist. There's just whatever the
current politically correct point of view is which
has historically been wrong on almost every
social issue of all time. So for me, by looking at that, I'm just worried about
what's happening in my house, so I don't give people whole
lot of advice on this issue because your
relationship is different. You know what
your relationships are. And so I just try and
over-communicate, the end. And some days it's
rolling for six months and then it gets tough. And like, we just try, but it's hard to
suppress who you are. Like, if you're hungry
and you're climbing, it's tough to not
climb and be hungry. And so you need to be
more selfish than you realize 'cause your happiness
is the starting point of how it's going to
impact everybody around you. So you just talk
these things through. - [Connie] Awesome. Thank you.
- You're welcome. (audience applause) - [Shawn] Gary, my name's Shawn. - Shawn.
- [Shawn] It's a pleasure. - Real pleasure. - [Shawn] So let's say you're
the Jets owner right now. - Okay.
- [Shawn] What would you do to outbid the Broncos and
Texans to get Tony Romo? - Nothing. - [Shawn] Ugh!
(audience laughing) - He's finished. - [Shawn] The best
thing y'all got going is Fireman Ed, the fan. - He's not doing
his thing anymore. We lost him, too. - [Shawn] RIP.
(audience laughing) What role can we
expect virtual reality to play in our ability to enjoy
football when you're an owner? - Back to what
I was saying earlier, I think, ironically, it
probably will match up more when around the timing where
I have a shot to pull this off, so I think in 20 years it
could get really interesting. But I'll be honest with you. I'm spending very
little time, mental time, in a world where
time is the asset on consumer VR
because I just don't think it's as close as people think. I'm spending time
meeting a lot of people in it. I am looking at B2B VR
because I think a lot of money will be made in that as
Google and Apple and Amazon and those companies
buy up the talent and the platforms
and the apps that maybe can help
them build their play, but you know, yes, one day you can put on
your contact lenses and feel like
you're there, right? Like, it's really cool
to play Madden Football with contact lenses where
you're the quarterback and you see everything, but I just think it's much
further away than people think. If you said you're a
genie from the future and you said it's
six years from now, there's some traction. Yeah, okay, that
kind of makes sense. But like, just not next year, it's not the next year. And there's a lot
of shit to do between now and six years from
now that needs a lot of focus. A lot of people
here are worried about VR while they haven't
figured out how to do a proper Facebook ad spend. (audience laughter) You like that one? That was good, right? So... Yeah, I just don't
get ahead of myself, man. One foot in front of the other. - [Shawn] Is that the Cap'n
Crunch dude on your shirt? - That's the Cap'n Crunch dude. - [Shawn] I dig it,
man, thank you. - It tears the
roof of your mouth. - [Shawn] It does, you
gotta be careful that... (audience laughing) It's the ultimate life
lessons in modern or... I went blank. - That's okay. We got your back, go ahead. We're sittin' here. - Thank you.
- It's the ultimate life lesson in? - [Shawn] Not overindulging! One goal at a time, man.
- Good one. Told you, it's support. All right, thanks, man.
- Thank you, Gary. - Let's move it. - [David] First off
I have to thank you. When I first
started following you I was a biochemistry major about to be in
academic probation, and that was 18
months ago. (chuckling) I have since
been going to the MSU Entrepreneurship Program
and have rebounded (mumbles)
have made a complete 180. - That makes me happy. - [David] My
question to you is-- - What's your name?
- [David] David Well. - David, go ahead. - [David] Feel like I'm
about to pass out here. - No worries. DRock will catch ya. - [David] My question to you
is how do you feel about the rise of entrepreneurship
programs in universities? - Concern. - [David] I came down here
with Michigan State University (audio cutting out) - Yep. - [David] Actually,
there's a whole lot. - Yep. - [David] Anyway,
how do you feel about the rise of seed funding for college entrepreneurs
at their university? - I'm concerned because
I think entrepreneurship has become a
rockstar status thing, right? If you told me 15 years
ago that a great young dude would stand in front of you
and say he's about to pass out just because
he's talking to you, I'd be like what the
fuck are you talking about? Right? Entrepreneurship has been
put on the current pedestal of rockstar status,
which is great for me and I'm pumped about it. But what it's doing
is it's making a lot of 15 to 22-year-old
impressionable kids think that
that's the only way out. I'm gonna remind everybody
and this is a good segue David, and I
appreciate you bringing this up 'cause it opened up the mind. My friends, we have lost. We have lost people that
have come to this conference a decade ago, nine years ago,
eight years ago, to suicide,
because of the pressures of being
successful in our space. The hardcore startup
Silicon Valley pressure thing that doesn't hit everybody here. But we've created this
world where everybody wins and the truth is
barely anybody's winning. Everybody
thinks they're building the next Snapchat, or Instagram. Those are one,
two, three companies that have made it happen. So I'm scared. I love it, because
I'm an entrepreneur and I live the
reverse of your life. I got D's and F's, was
emotionally sound as shit, making $4,000 a
weekend, was a good kid, and everybody
told me I was a loser 'cause I wasn't
gonna be good at academics. So I'm thrilled that
we're not just black and white from the 80's and 90's, where
school's the only way out, and shit, I wish I was
growing up in this era because I'd be
really doing my thing. At the same token I think the
pendulum has swung too far. Entrepreneurship is very lonely. It's all on your back. It's a ton of pressure. It's all on you,
there's nobody to point to. If you fail everybody you
know knows that you failed. That's a tough scarlet letter for the majority
of people in it. Especially if
they're not pure and bred. Do you know how
much I love failing? - [David] No. - I fucking love it. I love scarlet letters. I want not only the A,
I want fucking to Z. Because I'm a
purebred entrepreneur and losing is attractive
to purebred entrepreneurs. - [David] It's the
only way you learn. - Hundred percent. And it's the cost of
entry to the game. But now you have a
ton of people who aren't, and they were
good A and B students, or they'd be a great number
four or a great number 13, or a great project manager. Great! But they wanna be a number one. That's just a
totally different game. It's gray. Shit's gray. So I'm concerned
because we're funneling too many kids into it and
there will be a lot of pain that comes along with
that because right now I know a ton of 26 year
olds with their startup. They've never failed,
their grandfather was the naming rights
of the fucking library that they went to college with. They're like cruising but the market, the
funny thing about the market. In school, even in college,
even in a lot of jobs? Your last name?
The family you came from? Money, can protect you. The market? You launch a product, the market
doesn't give a fuck, David. The market doesn't give a fuck
what your grandfather did. That's where
people are getting hurt and there's
gonna be a lot of pain in the next two, three, four
years whenever this melts. So I'm passionate to
make sure that we talk about self-awareness
and getting to know yourself and what you're good at. Not that entrepreneur
is the key to success. Thanks. (audience applauding) - [Belky] Hey GaryVee.
- Hey. - [Belky] I'm Belky,
Austin, Texas. Between Snapchat
and Instagram stories, where are you
seeing more engagement? - I'm growing on
Instagram stories, but I think the
opportunity is in Snapchat because everybody got lazy
and is only doing Instagram. - [Belky] That's
all I really wanna know. - Yeah, I think
when you trade attention, my man, when
you trade attention, you love moments like this. People are lazy. They're like, "Oh! Instagram's
now got all the features. "I have more
followers on Instagram. "It's hard to build
followers on Snapchat. "I'll just chill here
and grow, this is better." Not realizing
that tomorrow Snapchat can drop a feature
that changes the game. They could. They may not. But I've been growing
quite a bit on Snapchat. I'm growing faster on Instagram just because I became
somewhat viral in December on Instagram and my
worlds' changed there but I would tell you the
majority of the people here need to take a step
back and the answer is, if you're ambitious, and
you want things to happen, the answer is do both. Cool.
- [Belky] Thank you. - You got it. - [Daniel] What's up Gary?
Daniel from Houston. - Hey, Daniel. - [Daniel] Saw
you at the Super Bowl. - Appreciate it. - [Daniel] Crazy
that they kicked you out. - (laughing)
Yeah, that was crazy. - [Daniel] So I had a question. Going back to the David and
Goliath that you talked about. - Yeah. - [Daniel] (inaudible) - Yep. - [Daniel] How do we
compete for creatives to bigger
companies when everyone wants to be freelance and
have their own business? And I'm asking this
question because I know that you truly care
about your employees and bringing value to them. - Yep. - [Daniel] But how do
we do that at a small scale when we're very conscious
of our staff. - Well, first, my creatives
are kids directly out of school that weren't getting
paid that much but I realized that creative talent
isn't based on how old you are. I don't
underestimate experience, but that would be like
thinking every NBA player at 35 is great
because of experience. There's pure talent. I think you should
focus on young, young people who do great creative work
because you can afford them and for them the
experience is worthwhile. I think you get unemotional. I didn't give a shit
about who the cool creative. I can't name one
cool, creative director in the agency world right now
let alone seven years ago. You're not competing for
fucking creative directors that are going to Droga5
and fucking Crispin Porter. - [Daniel] Right. - You're competing for
the kids that have the talent to one day do that, that
are growing up in H town. Go fucking find them. - [Daniel] Alright, I'm
gonna go fuckin' find them. - Good.(audience laughter) - [Joshua] Gary, good
to fucking be here finally. - Thank you brother. - [Joshua] Joshua,
long time fan, not here to read you
a fuckin' resume. - No worries. - [Joshua] Got a true
jab, jab, jab, maybe even fourth jab but maybe
with a right hook at the end. - It always is. - [Joshua] First off,
hats off to the ladies, got a little girl at
home who I ditched out on to be here so. (audience laughter) - So you're clapping up for the
ladies while dissing a lady? - [Joshua] She's only two. (audience laughter) - Go ahead, go ahead. - [Joshua] Hopefully,
I can keep grinding. So, first off was gonna
bring a painting for you, I hit you up on
social earlier, no response. - Sorry. - [Joshua] No big deal but
didn't want to get a canvas in here.
- Yep. - [Joshua] Second
off, if you, DRock, Tyler, anybody else wants to
get the best fucking workout you can get in
while you're here, full on MMA-style thing going on first thing tomorrow morning, not sure if you're
leaving tonight or not. - Leaving. - [Joshua] Last thing, another
venture we got going on, the best fucking cold brew
you'll have in your entire life, So you can give that
a little taste later. - That'd be interesting, okay. - [Joshua] But I guess to
get to the real hook would be with all these
different things going on, and you kind of
already answered another question earlier
with over-communicate, really taking a lot
from what you're doing and employing a
Chief Heart Officer. As you can tell, with
all these different little entrepreneurial
endeavors going on, really trying to
find that balance. - Sure. - [Joshua] And so what I'm
seeing is that there's less sales with all the
different endeavors, less money coming
in but more profits. - Okay. - [Joshua] So the
margins are increasing. - Yep. - [Joshua] Right, so I think
it really becomes a question of you know when you talk
about bringing on more people, that's an ideal but I don't
have the cash for that. - Okay. - [Joshua] So it becomes this
sort of imbalance of is it cutting labor or is it
putting everybody onto sales? - Listen, no business succeeds
long-term without driving top line revenue. You can maximize your
margin for only so long. So, sales is the
oxygen of businesses. I'd also tell you that when
you're doing three businesses equally you're
doing no businesses. When people say
I do a lot of things, I said be careful. I run VaynerMedia, like
I'm the CEO of VaynerMedia, that's what I do for a living. I have figured out through
DRock and a creative team to create an
enormous amount of content. By the way, I want to remind
everybody I've been running VaynerMedia for six years,
it's been around for eight. I only started doing the content
two years ago and change when DRock
on spec did creative for me, I wasn't even
going out spend on it. I've figured
out how to you know, They GaryVee stuff is my
side hustle that I have very little to do with other
than just living my life and then it's produced for me.
So I've run two businesses in my life every day
of my life continuously since I was 22-years-old
the first day out of college. So when I say be careful, it may seem like I'm
doing a lot of stuff, mainly 'cause I'm working 18
hours a day and because I'm efficient as fuck
and I'm doing a lot of eight-minute meetings,
13-minute meetings, 19-minute meetings while you
make them an hour and a half lunch but I'm not
running three businesses. - [Joshua] Right, so that
really is that working 20 hours instead of being-- - No, that's not,
that's not for everybody. - [Joshua] But I'm
saying, so if you have somebody such as myself
saying that is for me. - You can't run three
businesses at the same time. - [Joshua] Right.
That's what I'm telling you. - [Joshua] Right.
- Cool. Period.
(audience laughter) - [Joshua] Thank you.
- You're welcome. - [Joshua] Do I give
my card to you or to DRock standing here? - DRock's right behind you. - [Joshua] Alright,
get you some cold brew. - Thank you man, next. - [Shahim] Hey Gary, what's up? - 'Sup? - [Shahim] Shahim from Austin. - Pleasure.
- [Shahim] Good to see you. For those of us who are getting
ready to start our monthly podcast but are
feeling resistant about it,-- - Because? They're worried about what
other people think about it? - [Shahim] I think
that's part of it. - What's the other part? - [Shahim] I don't know, I'm
curious on how else we can bust through other than wanting
the pain and wanting the scarlet letters you know? - Dude it's
only scarlet letters. Like, you don't
bust through on day one. If you do not love the
process of what you're up to, you've already lost. It's true. This shit's hard. Like, what you do want? You want your first
fucking podcast to be number one on fucking iTunes? Who the fuck are you?
(audience laughter) I mean that's the part,
you have to love it. I love when people shit on me. I love when I showed up to
the tech world they're like, the wine guy thinks
he's gonna win this thing? Yep, you know I love
going to Madison Avenue and being like, this Twitter, Business Week said Twitter
boy tries to start an agency. I said fuck yes. I'm about to do this
TV show right, on Apple. Planet of the Apps. Re/code rights, Planet of the Apps has
four celebrity mentors. Gwyneth Paltrow, will.i.am.,
Jessica Alba, and others. (audience laughter) When I tell you that article
made me so fucking happy, you've gotta
love the process man. Like, you're gonna break
through if you're good enough, and you won't break
through if your show is shit. But you've gotta
try to figure out if you're shit or awesome. - [Shahim] Do you
feel like you have to be an entertainer or personality? - I think people
have to listen to it. You either have to be massively
entertaining or really know what the fuck
you're talking about. And when you have both. (audience laughter) You know what I mean? But there's plenty not massively
charismatic over-the-top assassins in what they do
because they fucking know their craft and they say it
their way and by the way, maybe they are better off in, I'm obsessed with
getting everybody to understand, you have to find your medium. Maybe you're a great writer, maybe you're
great at podcasting, maybe you're in video. Maybe you cartoon it up like
Hugh McCloud who dominated this scene of the early
days of South-By. You've gotta find a way you
communicate if you want to communicate to the world. Don't do podcasting
just 'cause its trendy. Got it?
- [Shahim] Got it. - Good luck man. - My man? - [Thomas] Hey Gary.
- Hey. - [Thomas] So, I flew in
from Norway to say hi, I'm Thomas from
United Influencers - Awesome - [Thomas] First
international guy, I think. - Yep - Two part question. Why do you think
influencer marketing has grown so fast the last years? And what was the tipping point? - I mean influencer marketing
has always been around. Right?
- [Thomas] Yes, I agree. - It's been product placement. I mean John Wayne
smoked Lucky Strikes, right? This has been around forever. I think the
reason it's exploded is because we've become
a primary mobile world and instead of
watching Seinfeld, we're fucking watching
Logan Paul on Instagram. It's not super complicated. It's just where
the attention is. What's cool though is that the platforms
are the full distribution and the individuals
don't need middle men and women to get them direct to consumers. So the dollars that used to
go for interrupting a TV show and go to the platform is
now going to the individual because they are the absolute
content and the distribution. - [Thomas] Cool. And then the second part is have Vayner
started experimenting with amplifying influencer
content with paid Facebook Ads and what's your
experience with that? - Yes, we will
always amplify anything. Even if I get the
greatest celebrity of all time to promote this cupcake, if I think Facebook Ads
are grossly underpriced I will try to convince
my client to amplify it because we're trading
underpriced attention. - [Thomas] Cool.
- You know what blows my mind? We do a piece of video content,
it explodes on Facebook, and then my client
wants us to cut it down to a 30 second spot
and make it a TV spot and then overpay
for distribution. Everybody's in a TV mentality, they think you graduate to TV. I shit on TV commercials. (audience laughter)
- [Thomas] Cool, thanks Gary. - You got it. (audience laughter and applause) - [Raja] What's up Gary? - Life is good my man. - [Raja] My name is Raja. I'm a firm
believer in opportunities. I just drove from Dallas,
three hours away, so I really
wanna shake your hand. - Sure. Okay. - [Raja] So Gary, when do
you know the transition from going from
defense to offense? - I don't know.
I try not to be on defense. Look, I think you
should always be on offense. Offense is always
the best defense, right? Like, I always say to people
I mentor or my companies I'd rather win a
basketball game 157 to 152. Right like offense always, back to the top line revenue for the guy who
had three businesses. Offense always solves problems as long as your defense
is not a complete disaster. So I just think offense
is a very good mentality and obviously it's a very
clouds question, very up here. We've all got very
different issues and that but there is a trigger mindset, I'm always trying
to stay on offense. - [Raja] Beautiful man.
Thank you so much - You got it. - [Jeremy] Hey, what's up? I'm Jeremy from
Salt Lake City, Utah. - How are you? - [Jeremy] Doing good. So I started a small
social agency in college so I know the power
of Facebook ads in social listening and
influencer marketing. - Okay. - [Jeremy] And I'm now
at a global agency and I have a startup
on the side in retail. - Okay. - [Jeremy] I just wanted to get your opinion on
the space of what, number one, what's the
most disruptive piece of work you've seen in the last year? - What does disruptive mean? - [Jeremy] Stands out,
caught your attention, was extremely successful,
really broke the norm. - Yeah, I don't really,
you know I don't really know. I'm jumping in 'cause
I really can't answer you because I don't
think in advertising lingo. Like, there was no video on... You know there was that
PSA about gun control right, where you couldn't see
the guy in the background and it was him the whole time. That was neat and interesting
and well thought through. There's work but I spend zero
time looking at creative work I spend all my time
on what people are doing so I never know how
to answer that question because I'm not consuming shit. - [Jeremy] So the next question and flipping that
on it's head I guess. What's the most
disruptive thing you see coming for the advertising industry? You already mentioned Facebook and influencers and what not but besides that?
- You know bro What's your name
again? I apologize. - [Jeremy] Jeremy. - Jeremy, truth is man.
I'm not Nostradamus right? I don't know. What I'm really good at is
reacting when I see something so I don't know what
the next disruptive thing is but I know that I'm spending
a lot of time on Marco Polo, and After School and
Anchor and House Party and trying to figure
out are these the next Snapchats and Instagrams. So it's not about me knowing
it's me doing the behavior and downloading
and playing with things when they have even the hint
of the potential to be it. - [Jeremy] So how do you
see that potential or the hint of the potential?
Just user base? - Yeah, is there a lot of
attention gonna be somewhere, where then I have to figure out
the context of that platform so I can be a creative on it, to drive
whatever the hell I want, whether that's
getting donations for a cause or selling sneakers. - [Jeremy] Thank you.
- You're welcome. - [Korom] This so weird. This is so weird. What's going on Gary? My name is Korom Julio, I'ma get a little bit
personal right now with myself. At the age of 12 years old, I began selling iPads and
electronics left and right. I slowly moved up from there. I used to come home at 3:00,
4:00 AM telling my dad, "Take me to QuikTrip." Would come home
with 20 sealed iPads, and flip them the next day. I gradually went up to cars, and then now I'm
doing real estate. And my birthday
was two days ago, so I just turned 20. And why I'm
telling you all of this is because I am extremely,
extremely confused in life. - [Gary] Okay. - [Korom] I do public
speaking here and there, people invite me to speak. I'm in school full
time taking 19 hours. I do real estate,
and I am making money. But I don't see any
business coming to me, I don't see
something that I love, and I'm trying everything, but just nothing
is clicking with me. - [Gary] So let's
take a step back. First and foremost bro. You're a salesman, right? Like, it was in you.
Just like it was in me. Good thing about
being a salesperson, is it's a skill that
always plays out, right? The other thing is, you're 20,
and you're lacking patience. You don't need it to
come right this second. If I give you a
good piece of advice, and you know this if
you're follow my stuff. I'm obsessed with patience. - [Korom] Yeah. - You don't have to have
your eureka moment right now. You need to realize,
you're a salesperson. That's clearly
what you are based on the narrative
you just painted. And, what you should be doing, is tasting a lot
of different things. Putting yourself
in different rooms, different networks,
consuming different content. You need to figure
out what floats your boat, but by the way, it may
just be the game of sales. And it may not
matter what the product is. And that would be okay as well. But you don't have to
"figure out" what your monster business is right this second. And you have to be thankful, for having, clearly,
really strong sales skills. Because it is a survival tactic that will always work for you. - [Korom] Gotcha.
So you're saying just keep doing what I'm doing and hopefully
something comes up? - Keep doing what you're doing
and be on the offensive. Try and learn new
things in the world: cooking, fucking tires,
like I'm serious. Yoga, meditation, like
just keep putting yourself out there, because
something might grab your heart. - [Korom] Gotcha. I kind
of got jealous of him, can I get a hug as well? - Sure.
(audience laughter) All right. Dude is that a flip cam? Oh no, it was your
phone, okay. I got scared. I got excited, it's like retro. All right. - [Man 3] Good afternoon Gary.
- How are you? - [Man 3] I'm doing great,
and yourself? - Good. - I'm here on behalf of
Marine Corps Recruiting. - Amazing. DRock's interested.
(audience laughter) I'm kidding
I'm kidding, go ahead. - [Man 3] I have a friend,
Staff Sergeant Jeremy Reese. He's out recruiting out in
Seattle, Washington right now. He is a protege of mine,
he is a disciple of yours. He follows everything you do. - Okay. - He asked me to
ask you this question. He started his own vlog,
video blog, on fitness, and empowering people. What's one piece of advice,
if any, that you could give him? - I mean there's so many, but I would tell him
that too many people think they're influencers
before they actually are. And I would tell
him to put his head down and put out good content. And just be patient. That's it. - [Man 3] Okay.
- Cool. - [Man 3] Thank you,
I appreciate it Gary. - You're welcome. We may be able
to sneak one or two more, I think they're
pretty hardcore here. So, I apologize
for anyone in line. Let's go quickly. Hi. - [Nat] Hi, sorry.
- No worries. - Hi, my name is Nat. I'm from Sydney, Australia. I have so many
questions for you, but I guess I wanna
ask how do you quantify your values or your
strengths as a person, in order to stand out? For example, when
there's so much competition, and so many people that
are brilliant at everything, and it seems to be
whoever shouts the loudest, or whoever has the best
relationships, how do you-- - That's just not true. - [Nat] Okay. - The loudest, and best
relationships never win. It's just what people
that aren't winning think. It's the people that
are the best that win. - [Nat] How do you prove-- - The market proves it
for you, so lets go in detail. Like TechCrunch doesn't
pick the winners, right? Like, The Wall Street Journal
doesn't pick the winners. The three cool kids in the
crowd don't pick the winners. The problem is
everybody wants to be anointed a winner, or
best at what they do, before they've actually done it. Let me just remind you,
and everybody else here. I built a business for
18 hours a day, every day, running a wine liquor
store for 13 years every day. Before I ever had
the audacity to come to something like this and talk. So, let me tell
you something amazing. If you're good enough,
you will win. But if you are upset that
somebody else's grandpappy got them ahead of you,
then you're gonna lose. Everybody started ahead of me. I'm just catching up. - [Nat] And then, so just,
how would you then balance being ambitious
to being patient? How do you-- - By recognizing
you have no choice. (audience laughter)
- [Nat] Okay, good. - Do you understand?
- [Nat] Yes-- - I'm the most
fucking ambitious, and most patient
person you've ever met. Which is why I'm gonna
win real, real, real big. Find your version
of that, You know? Like, you have no choice. Who's gonna cry for you? Like, what's the choice? Are you ambitious?
- [Nat] Yeah. Awesome. I don't think you're as patient. - [Nat] Yeah,
that's the problem. - No shit. (audience laughter) And the problem right now, is that we're all
living public lives, and all this horse shit. This is what entrepreneurship
and success looks like. Fucking, going to fucking
Bali, and fucking watches, and private jets,
it's all horse shit. Horse shit. But it's fucking
with people's minds, and they're getting impatient. I don't give a fuck
what anybody else has. I'm focused on my shit. Start focusing on your shit. You're a young woman. How old are you? - [Nat] 27. - I'm going to
punch you in the face. (audience laughter) You have your whole
life in front of you! You know what I mean? Put your head down,
and do whatever this thing that you wanna prove that
you're the best at, hardcore. If you actually
spent all your time doing, instead of dwelling,
you'd be much further along. (audience applause) Awesome. I think with that I gotta go. I love you guys! (audience cheers and applause) Have a great South-By, enjoy it! Say hello to somebody,
that you don't know. I'm gonna shake some hands
for a few seconds right now.
