- I believe that right
there is the definition of entrepreneurship, it's
when you love your game more than what the game gives you. Ay! You got your perspective. (cheering) I just wanna be happy,
don't you wanna be happy? (hip hop music) (cheering) - Gary V. - Oh ho, the Darnold
jersey, what's up Jet fans? Darnold and Leonard, I love it. I feel warm already.
- [Man] I love you Gary! - I love you back mom. (laughing) - Exactly, everyone thinks
that they already know you and think they can just
talk to you whenever they want. - They can, I'm like, I love you back. I think social came along, the internet evolution came along. at a very good, life is
so much about timing. I was born in the former Soviet Union, and if I was my grandfather, I'd probably be in a Soviet jail during this time of my
life and I'm not kidding because both my grandfathers
spent time in a Soviet jail. I happen to have the serendipity of timing where the internet came
along and created a framework that allows people to interact at scale. I disproportionately enjoy human beings. I actually secretly dislike animals. (laughing) Because so many people like
animals more than other humans and it always breaks my
head so they can come up to me, I like being accessible. I like saying hello, I love
the idea of that one moment in time that I get to meet
somebody and so I'm super interested in meeting
all 7.8 billion people. And so, yeah I feel
that way about them too. - That's good, I mean, you can tell. And we're gonna talk a
lot about authenticity and knowing who you are. You came four years ago,
sort of blew into my class, sat up there, no questions. Some people just get out
of the way because you just know that they're gonna do it without you. You gave a 45 minute talk, it
felt like it was off the cuff. It was so powerful, I mean
that really was a great day. I didn't even think it was
here, it was really spectacular. Years later you gave this
credit for helping blow up your Facebook platform? - [Gary] Yeah. - Is that really a good talk? - That talk, I was telling
some people right before, thank you for that invite. It was definitely off the cuff, I'm only comfortable in improv. I stay in my lane, I talk about
what I know and don't talk about what I don't know and
that makes everything very easy and off the cuff. It was an interesting time because four years ago, again, back to timing. When I walked into that
classroom it was clearly the time where something
had transpired in me which was a concern that entrepreneurship
was about to become rock star status and if you
listen to that talk, I'm coming aggressively but
it's out of love not disrespect. At that point and way more
so today, I have a concern that we're living through the greatest era of fake entrepreneurship. I believe that self awareness
is incredibly important and I do believe that the
coolness of entrepreneurship has made people go towards
that light that might actually be way better being a
number three or number six or number nine and so. The opening line in the class was I don't think
entrepreneurship can be taught. And where I was going with that, - So that's awkward he says. - And where I'm going with
that is actually, I've refined that message 'cause it was the
first time I've ever said it. I think of entrepreneurship so much more similarly to sports. I could be better at basketball, right? I could play everyday, I
could work on my left hand, I could do things and I
would be substantially better in a year and a half. I just never had a shot
of going to the league. And I think that there's
a big difference between being an entrepreneurship and being a successful entrepreneur. That's a conversation
that I subtly found myself bringing to the forefront four
years ago in your classroom and then what happened was,
we got serious about Facebook on my end and we chopped
up that key note into a lot of different points and many
of the clips from that talk went on to get
disproportionate virality so. You were great, the team
around you was great, the campus was great, the
vibe was great, it was just all good stuff and I'm really
really happy to be here again. - It's great to have you back. It is sort of back by popular demand. We have a series every Wednesday
and so I ask the students midway through the semester, if you have anybody who would it be? And they started naming
some people and then all of a sudden you felt this vibe. We want an influencer,
we want social media, we want some of those people, and then someone yelled Gary
Vaynerchuk and the whole class just starts going yes, yes, yes. And at the time, sorta we
started talkin' about it. So like it might happen,
maybe it'll happen and then when it did they
really were pretty pumped so there're a lot of students
missing other classes tonight to be here. - Best decision of your career. (laughing and applauding) It is. I'm very confident about that. - We're gonna get into
education in a minute but first, the thing that
struck me with so much clarity and you know sometimes you
hear something and it's just the way someone said a little differently. And it really was your
message around self awareness and knowing your strengths. Could you sort of, not
everybody heard that, can you tell us what you mean by that? And why you said it's
the most important thing for an entrepreneur. - I think of it in practicality. I don't think you get the
same returns by overwhelmingly working on your weaknesses
as you do on tripling down on your strengths. I don't know what else to say. It's so clear to me, I think
so much of what I talk about is predicated on not only
my successes but watching my family members, watching
that whole ecosystem of startup founders, just watching. I watch a lot, I read a
lot of people's behavior more so than books or
things of that nature and so yeah I mean, I believe
that the entrepreneurs that have gone on to quadruple
down on their strengths and then hire around their
weaknesses have had much better success than the
ones that dwell on their shortcomings because somebody
they look up to was good at it and said it was
important and they waste their time on something they'll never be. - You could spend decades of
your life trying to improve on some of those weaker things
when really if you really just understood what makes
you unique, and what makes you different, and better, there's some things you're just better at. And if you keep practicing
you get even better. - And almost everything is a commodity. Most things are commodities. Almost nothing... In the scheme of things
there're very few things that matter and most of
the things that actually matter are predicated on
emotional intelligence, not on information you know and deploy. So, you know, I don't know. And then you get into other
things like when you talk about the current state of
startups and venture capital and the whole thing, we're
living in the greatest era of financial arbitrage
machines, not actual businesses. Everybody's life right
now is about CAC and LTV and hitting metrics to get
the next fundraising round and has nothing to do
with the end consumer. It's B2B finance game on
the back end and that's why so many people are gonna lose. - And yet you still think
it's a great time to be and entrepreneur in terms of
the ability to raise money. - To me it's not the last
part but yes, raising capital is a piece of cake today at a
level that we've never seen. It's ludicrous, the
youngsters in this audience think it's normal to get
somebody to give you money based on your idea at
a four million dollar or six million dollar evaluation. That makes me want to
punch you in the face. (laughing) Because for anybody in here who's over 40, that is a ludicrous concept. But that is what happens
when there's an enormous amount of money pumped into the system, on the back of us not paying
the piper properly in 2009 'cause we're soft as a culture. And so, this is a very fake
entrepreneur environment. When I see entrepreneurs
that are failing in this environment with how much
capital, with how little it costs to be in the game, with
the internet at full scale. If you're an entrepreneur
that's failing right now that's a year or two in, you suck. (laughing) I mean it. You suck at entrepreneurship. Doesn't mean you suck. I suck at piano. But let there be no mistake,
if you're 18-24 months operating business in this
environment, and you're not winning with all those advantages, (clicks tongue) you're not an A. - I think it's important
'cause you don't have the perspective of history for
people who are 20 years old. You're a lucky time where you
can raise a half a million dollars on a okay idea. What do kids their age in
2008 when they graduated, what did they have to do? - Not do that. - [David] Yeah, they'd go get a job. - Correct. - Yeah, so it's a unique
time to be an entrepreneur. You referenced it. - Which gets into
entitlement and being soft, and then people think
their ideas are good. It gets really convoluted. We need a correction. You're talking about a person
who's disproportionately benefited by the cool
factor of entrepreneurship but I don't want that. I appreciate it, as you can imagine, coming on stage and getting
this kind of love from the 20 year old said, it's
like something I could've never dreamed of, it feels remarkable. But I'm unbelievably passionate
about over-communicating the shortcomings of an
environment where entrepreneurship is cool, it's the same way
that being a professional athlete and a rapper is cool. Very few people can actually
achieve it at a heavy, high level success. So two things are important to me. One, I want to redefine what
a successful entrepreneurship path looks like. If you make a $136,000 a year,
on a business that you run that you like doing
around something you like, and you can live that
lifestyle, that is a remarkable feat but that is not the
picture we're painting of a successful entrepreneur. We're painting private jets
and islands and all sorts of fucking ludicrous shit. And so, A, I think it's remarkable. We need a level set. The one percent earners in our
country, one of the richest countries in the world, the
bottom of the one percent make $420,000 a year. Yet, everybody starts the
conversation of macro big success at a million bucks. We're twisted and we also
have to talk way more about happiness, we also have to
talk about what it looks like to have a Scarlet
Letter of an L when you're company fails in a world where
you've never had a public loss in your life because you played through a school system. There's a lot of things
that we have not addressed. There're a lot of people
right now that are flossing on Instagram as entrepreneurs
who are gonna to go into deep depression or even suicide
when they take a massive L on the next correction in our economy, and that's going to be tough. - It is a sort of pretty deep
things to start with but yeah, if you are. (audience laughs). Gary dives right in. (audience cheers) In talking about mindset
you're hitting, we have one of the leading researchers
on purposed based identity as opposed to achievement
based identity where people tie their self-esteem and
their life to how results and success, spoiler alert,
you're not gonna be happy. And so finding a purpose
aligning with your identity that you're gonna lead much better life, you're gonna be productive
over a longer term and you're probably not
gonna hit those low of lows that you talked about. I want to step back really
quickly because you mentioned it but I want to talk about a gear that you feel you have and why. And so for those of you who
don't know your background, can you talk about your
family, where you grew up and how you grew up. - I grew up really lucky
in the fact that I had disproportionate adversity in
the first decade of my life. I was born in Belarus, we came
to the U.S when I was three, I lived in a studio apartment
with eight family members. It was super immigrant right? We didn't speak English, I didn't even know my dad
until I was 14 years old and started working in his
liquor store because he woke up to go to work before
I woke up and he got home after I fell asleep. I went on one family
vacation in my entire life, or two, excuse me two, in
my entire high school life. Both to Disney World in Orlando. Stayed in a Holiday
Inn, we kept it humble. We didn't buy dumb shit, I basically wore liquor
T-shirts my whole life, through high school 'cause they were
free from the liquor store. The level of humility, and
a lot of my ability to not worry about others was
predicated on circumstance. I really think that I'm the
beneficiary of very good parenting and very lucky
circumstances and those lucky circumstances in my mind was I was never handed anything ever, ever. And I genuinely, when I
hear stories in culture of people thinking people
that are trust fund babies are lucky, I just don't
see the world that way. I actually think they're
disproportionately unlucky. It would be my great devastation, to end up being my children
or my grandchildren. I mean it. That's just the way I'm
wired. it doesn't mean they're wrong or I'm right. It just means that for
me, the way I turned out, the chemicals in my body,
the thought of being handed something or starting
with that kind of thing where my achievements
would always be undermined because everybody would say
that it was handed to me, would be devastating. - That's the challenge of
your next part of your life, is raising affluent kids and
keeping them on the ground. - Oh it's gonna be a piece
of cake, I'm not giving 'them any fucking money. (laughing and cheering) I grew up judging Bill
Gates and Warren Buffett when I was younger, of
giving away their money because I grew up in an
immigrant family where you help each other and I judged them
heavily and I was super wrong. 'Cause I had no context. I was like that's crazy, to a charity? Like what? And now I understand, I want
my kids to be happy and, I do not believe that
disproportionately paying for their lifestyle puts them in
a position to be happy, I really don't, I do not believe that. On the flip side, kids love
to shit on their parents for doing that but don't stop taking it. (sparse laughing) - You're gonna get a
lukewarm applause at USC, some of the kids here are like. (cheering) They're here with their parents. - It's a really important point. I've been talking a lot about
look, I hate, I hate when people shit on millennials
because the people that are shitting on the
millennials are the one who fuckin' raised them. (laughing and cheering) They're shitting on the byproduct
of what they've created. On the flip side, when I
say that the kids love that and they hit me up on DM
and they're like yeah fuck my mom she gave me too much. (laughing) I fuckin', I hate it. And I reply and I'm like cool dude so give up unlimited Uber asshole. Get off the fuckin' payroll
if you're so fucking unhappy. But kids talk out of both
sides of their mouth. Because they're hypocrites. Because they want to floss
in front of their friends, but what they don't realize is
the quickest way to happiness is to stop taking the money. (laughing) It is. - But it's a lesson
- It is number one. - It's hard to learn as
you're younger in that age, as you get older you see it. - It's super easy to learn,
you just have to realize that it's true and you
have to start valuing the opinions of your friends. - You have to start valuing? - Stop. - Stop, yeah okay, that's
what I though you said. I was like that goes against
everything that I think we're teaching but, why do you feel with your upbringing, and that's an advantage. Why did you sorta always feel you, you actually told my class
like I just feel you can't beat me, straight up , why
do you feel you have. - That was fun. - Why do you feel you sorta have a gear? Is it because you really enjoy
the process and the work? - I don't think anybody,
look I do not think anybody who goes to college and studies
entrepreneurship can beat me at entrepreneurship, that
doesn't mean it's right, it's just kinda how my brain works. I feel like it's a craft. We have not defined entrepreneurship
properly, here's why. Again, I absolutely believe
people that go to school for entrepreneurship can get
better at entrepreneurship from that process. I desperately believe that
entrepreneurship is a talent similar to singing and playing sports. And I think that I'm on
that spectrum and that gives me confidence in this
one little narrow thing of entrepreneurship because
while everybody else was studying in school and
playing sports and doing whatever they were interested
in, I was constantly entrepreneur-ing, right? And so I just have so much
natural ability and so many years of practice that I feel like I'm on the extreme and
that's why I'm confident about it and so yeah, I
mean, chip on shoulder right? - That's the only gear you've ever known, if that's what you've been
hustling since you were a kid. You always look at what does
a kid do when he or she is younger, does she have a
paper route, did she hustle, whatever it was and you can tell when kids are on the right track. - And entrepreneurship is
scary and you have to fight against the system and you
have to see things other's don't and you have to challenge norms and I quit school in third grade. I did. It's super weird but I started getting D's and F's in fourth grade. I consciously walked into
fourth grade and said, I'm out. (audience laughs) I did. I did and it was mainly
because for who knows why and I really have no answer
for this but I just remember, I mean fourth grade you're a baby. It's crazy to me that I
actually had the thought process of, this isn't for me, I know
who I am, I'm gonna be this, and I don't care about the periodic table. I don't even know what the
fucking periodic table is. (audience laughs) Is that the element shit? - Molecular weight of compounds. - Yeah, I'm out. - I think you'll like this
in that, at a place like SC, you're backstage in here
like we have every resource available for entrepreneurial
students, faculty, staff, incubators, accelerators,
a fund but here's the thing that I think you're gonna like. So we've been saying
this the last few years, I don't know the members
of the football team here and the coaching staff they're like, some of the best recruiters
of talent in the world here. We recruit now, entrepreneurs
at USC like we recruit dancers and musicians and athletes because we want the best
- I'm so pissed right now. - People here. - I'm so pissed. That would've been really cool for me. I mean it, I mean it. That's super rad. - Students coming in with
perfect ACT's and perfect scores, they may not be entrepreneurs
or ready for that, they're used to perfection,
they're used to doing really well, they're not ready to launch at 22. Some of them, some people are. But we say go find me a kid
who really is in it to win it. And like bring us that person,
even if she doesn't have perfect scores. - It's natural talent. It's not even in it to win
it, the SAT perfect kids are in it to win it, it's talent. That matters. I'm in it to win it to be a fucking pro football quarterback. I'm fucking in it to win it. It's not gonna happen. (laughing) We do not have the proper
context around entrepreneurship. Until we start understanding
the level of talent involved in it, we will always
undermine how difficult it is because we think it's a
process and that doesn't mean, again, this is why underlining that, we have to contextualize
how awesome it is. We have to start putting on
a pedestal starting a direct to consumer jam business on Shopify where you make a $183,000 a
year because you love making jam 'cause you and your grandma
made it and that being a massive success 'cause you're happy as shit, and you can live your
lifestyle and you live under the means of a $183,000 a year. We have to put that on
a pedestal, that is when entrepreneurship can hit it's golden era. This notion now of everybody
building the next Instagram, is ludicrous talk. - Good friend of mine, good
friend of yours actually, I had a good business, 80
employees, sold it to a public company and I grew up poor and I thought, you start a business to sell it. You have a business to have a good life. And if it cash flows, and makes
money, I'd be very reluctant to sell it unless you really
think it can be obsolete so you don't start a business
to sell it, you build it for the long term.
- Everybody starts a business now to sell it. That is the culture they grew up in. - [David] Yeah, there's
nothing like having a business that runs. - That's why everybody's building financial arbitrage machines. They're just fundraising to the flip. Everybody want's to be
26 and a trillionaire and fucking have a jet. And a fucking baby giraffe
and fucking bullshit. (laughing) It's bullshit. - So, you've talked about it couple times. The relationship between
success and failure, how do you define success? And how is it related to failure? - I define success as waking
up and being happy and being able to do what you
want to do at all times. (cheering) - Yeah and as a parent would
you rather have your kids be successful or happy? That's an easy one right? - It's super simple. We are absolutely at an
inflection point where there's people like me and different
things happening where we're starting to have different conversations. Freedom is what everybody's chasing. But they're confused about
what it actually looks like. It's not how much you make,
it's how much you spend. There's a lot of people
who could be way more free, if they didn't over extend themselves on what they're buying. Keeping up with the Jones's. It is the poison of our society. (applauding) It is. - So that's your definition
of success, what's the role of failure and why again, putting myself, - Micro-failure in the process
- Sorry? - Are you asking me, the role of failure in getting to success? - As part of it, is it related? Is it a necessary part? I put myself in a group of people, you don't want to fail
when you're younger, it's gonna be embarrassing,
you've had all these successes you've done well in school,
and to have a failure and now I think that's the
one thing at this point in my life it's like, did I take enough risk? Did I put myself out there?
- You definitely didn't. - What's that? - You definitely did not. - Yeah. - Here's how I know it. Again, one mans point of
view, I'm not sure anybody is taking enough risk from 20-30. It is the most interesting
thing that I've been thinking about, which is, it is
never more practical to be disproportionately risky than from 22-30, yet everybody goes the other
way because now they're the real world and it's
time to prove something to their parents, to
themselves, to everybody else. And everybody goes conservative. It is a huge mistake. We need to flip it upside down. Everybody should go ham
from 22-30 and do a ton of ridiculous shit and
figure themselves out. (applauding) But, on your own dime, not your parents. (laughing) - There's the parents clapping. - So, how I think about it
is, you should go and be rogue and get to know yourself
and taste shit from 22-30 but you have to live by the
ramifications of doing that. And the cost of entry of that
is living with four people in a studio apartment eating dog-shit food and not having fancy shit. When you go and do that,
but you're being subsidized by your parents, then you're
living in a fake environment and you're super fucked. (laughing) - So tell us about failure and
why it's important to fail. - I love it. - You've mentioned that I love it. - You love it. - I like micro-failure. I like micro-failure. I hate macro-failure like
death of your business is bad. But, to me you know what's funny? I'll use a boxing analogy. My favorite boxing... I
watch a lot of boxing. I think boxing's a very
interesting, and I'm super into mixed martial arts
but I grew up on boxing, I understand it better and
I like watching it 'cause there's so many things
that happen in boxing. First of all what I love
about boxing is there's nowhere to hide. It's super interesting right? There's nowhere to hide. Number two, there's a scenario in boxing that I love the most. For some reason there's
nothing more interesting to me than watching somebody
get knocked down in the first round and then go on to
win the fight easily. It's an interesting psyche, right? And I like that and this is
what I'm thinking about it. Which is, here's what's bad
in boxing and in business. Going into a fight, getting
knocked the fuck out in the first round and
losing the match, bad. Getting knocked down and
then having the adversity to readjust to what you got
caught on and navigating it to easily win a fight is remarkable. That's how I think about entrepreneurship. The reason so many people
struggle with entrepreneurship is you have micro-failures almost daily. And they're very in your face. You can't hide. I like that, I like failure,
because I think I deserve it. I hate when people don't respect the game. When I fail, it means I
fucked up and I like that because I think people get audacious. My number one thing that
I hate about capitalism, is that people use it and
they love it and they're big capitalists and they love
open market and competition and all that, and then they
become 73 and they try to use all their money to protect their money. They're not willing to
let a young lion eat them the way they ate somebody else. I hate when they try to manipulate it. That's what I love about sports. What I love about sports is
when you're 36 and you were once the best player in the
league but now you're getting a little bit older and
your body breaks down, you are forced to retire. The one thing that
entrepreneurship and capitalism has to adjust to is once
you get old and your tired and you want to be on a
yacht instead of working your shit, you should lose some
money 'cause you're losing. - And that part, we bring up
so many great entrepreneurs and you're one of them to, you hear all the successes and
I think it gets romanticized a lot just how ridiculously
difficult, stressful, sleepless nights, and I do
think you have to experience failure because you learn
just the way the human being is wired, you're gonna
learn 10x with some failure than you are, that's, - I'm actually getting excited here. Let me frame it up a little bit different. Or you love it so much, so much, that you never were
able to do anything else and just the process of playing the game, is the success itself. Or you love it so much that
you actually don't give a fuck about the trophies
A.K.A the money that comes along with it, it's that
you just wouldn't know how to breathe otherwise if
you weren't in the process of entrepreneurship itself. I will never fail because
there is no failure, the at-bat is the macro-win. If I lost all my money
because I did 37 ridiculously bad decisions and over-leveraged myself, the ability to go back to
zero and try to buy shit at the dollar store and
flip it on Ebay and build it back up, weirdly excites me more than where I am right now. I swear on my children's health. - [David] No kidding. - The thought of going to
zero, having all of you judge me as see, he wasn't
as good as you thought. And then rising back like
a phoenix and sticking it in your fucking face,
excites the shit out of me. (applauding) I believe that right
there, is the definition of entrepreneurship, it's
when you love your game, more than what the game gives you. That's why I like losing. The game told me I lost,
respect to the game. That's why I like playing. I did this when.. My friends, I was an
entrepreneur when there was no conversation around this. In the 80's and 90's school
system in society that I grew up in, I was a failure
for making $2000 a weekend selling baseball cards. I did this when it wasn't cool. I'll do it now while it's
cool, and I'll do it again in 15 years when it's not
cool again because the economy will collapse and because we
don't like to be accountable, we like blaming things
and so we're gonna blame entrepreneurship, not the fact
that you weren't self aware and didn't realize that you
weren't a fucking entrepreneur. - [Man In Crowd] Uh. Uh is right. (laughing) - It's funny, last year
Kobe sat right here, and it's almost the exact same things he said about practice. He loves practice. He loves beating people up in
practice, embarrassing people in practice, so much about
the process, not the result. - A 100%. A 100% like, when people
ask me what's your failures, I've got none. I found my place. I will do it perpetuity,
and the gratitude that oozes out of my soul is why I
put out so much content the way I do 'cause I'm desperate
to give back on something that I realize I was gifted
by circumstance and I feel a level of gratitude and
almost a level of guilt and a need to communicate
in a framework that so many people in this room did
not have the luxury of that North Star or the ability to stumble into their perfect place. - You mentioned coming back
and rising like a phoenix and sort of telling people,
it reminds me of a story. A long time when, now that seems, almost accepted but when you're on Piers Morgan or something and
Facebook just bought Instagram for a billion dollars. The company's how many
months old, 18 months old, 13 employees, and it sold
for a billion dollars and people were just astonished
like how could Facebook overpay that much for
Instagram and you said famously on television, what'd you say? - They stole it. - They stole it. And at the time you were
big on Twitter, still are. - I got shit on. - Tell people what happened that night. What happened that
night when you went home and fill the story out. - I get at out of studio,
felt good about my spot, my mom said I looked cute, you know. (laughing) And I went on Twitter and
everyone's like this guy just got completely destroyed. This guy doesn't know
what he's talking about, this will go down as a colossal failure. Just got killed. And it seems ludicrous
now, given that Instagram is the entire universe. But at the time, most of the
people that were watching haven't even heard of it. Let alone thought it was
worth a billion dollars. So, the part that your bringing up is. - What'd you do that night? - I read 'them all,
favorited them, and then, three and a half years
later went on vacation and laid on a beach for three days. - Then what happened though? Facebook bought. - WhatsApp for 18 billion. It kind of put the light on
Instagram being a great deal. It's even more obvious how
great of a deal it is now. I got a couple of pina coladas, sat down and replied to every single
person and said now what dick? (laughing and applauding) - That's an entrepreneur. - It's somebody who loves competition. I love this game. Yo dude, you're leavin'? Respect. So, to me it's somebody who loves, - That's a competitor. That's a competitor. - I love this game, I love it so much. I'm worried about how it's
positioned, because I think it's just, it's slightly mispositioned. I'm trying to take the
responsibility of a lot of eyes and ears on me to bring this
conversation 'cause I think if we tweak it a little
bit, it could be remarkable because I do think this
is the greatest year of entrepreneur, the
internet is remarkable. It's so hard for a lot of
you in here 'cause you don't know a world pre-internet. Bless you, but I know a lot of
us in here as I look around, remember real life without
the internet existing and the depths of what it
allow us is remarkable. And if we can just tweak
it, around happiness, instead of around success for
others, it can get really, really, really good. Because it's never been more practical to make a $100,000 a year
selling something on the internet that you like, whether
that's Star Trek memorabilia, or flipping sneakers. It's super real but everybody's
going for a trillion when they don't have the
talent for that which is making them miss the 400,000 and
happy and they're gonna go for their trillion and miserable. And I'm trying to tweak that. - Do you have a personal philosophy? - Yes.
- That you could share. - I want to give more than I took. Because I want the
selfish leverage of that. - Explain what you mean. - I want to give more than
I took because I don't wanna owe anybody anything. And I want to pay back the
gifts that I was naturally given 'cause my parents had
sex at the right moment. (laughing) - I've watched you, - I mean, I don't know. It might have been a big
snowstorm in Russia that day, anything could've happened. I mean this, this is one of my
most viral pieces of content. I love that everybody's
so into Math and Big Data and quant and have not
deployed the level of gratitude around the math of 400 trillion
to one, which is the odds of being a fucking human being. There's nothing you'll
ever accomplish that's more remarkable than that you have a chance to accomplish something. (applauding) If we can lean into gratitude,
- There you go. a lot of good can happen. I'm just super grateful
and it is an enormous. There is no Red Bull, there
is no fucking soda or coffee that comes anywhere close to gratitude. People think I'm fucking
drugged the fuck up. I haven't even smoked
a cigarette in my life. 'Cause my mom got fucking Nancy
Reagan-ed you know, and so, (laughing) I just came to realize
oh shit, this insanity's predicated on gratitude. When you're so grateful for
the at-bat, you're happy. But people dwell about dumb shit. - Yeah the small stuff is so small and, - People like mad when
they get the wrong milk. (laughing) Like seriously, I travel
a lot, you go to Starbucks and like, I asked for almond milk. I'm like this fucker bought
a seven dollar coffee, it's crazy. The fuck is the matter with people? (applauding) We need to start some sort
of cultural rule that anybody who's mean to somebody that
works at Starbucks should get punched in the throat. (laughing) Like it should become a meme. Like it's the collective
responsibility of somebody to punch that person in the face. - [David] We don't condone that here. I like working here, so
I just can't even laugh at some of the stuff. - I don't work here, I don't work here. Punch people in the face. (laughing) - I'm glad you made the
point about gratitude. It really is. (laughing) It really is sort of central
to some of the things that, we've got Doctor Glenn Fox who's a specialist in gratitude. By the way, he'll put
you in an FRI machine, stimulate gratitude,
stimulate different emotional states and watch what
happens in your brain. He's an expert on that, it
truly is better outcomes, better life, better health,
better recovery, everything. - I believe in it the most. People's perspective is broken. - I've been watching you
just call up friends randomly now and tell 'them you love 'them. - It's really nice. I'm tilt on this gratitude thing like, people's perspectives
are completely broken. And parents, sending your
kids to a third world country for four days to build a house
ain't gonna fuckin' fix it. (laughing and applauding) - I'm gonna have some students
ask some questions a bit, so why don't you get lined
up, the ones who have already prepared questions and then we'll open up. - Line up kids. (laughing) Yeah exactly, line 'them up. Why dreams are important. - And these people were picked? - Their in class and they
wanted to ask questions. - Got it, and then can we do
more just randoms behind it? - We can do that, okay yeah.
- Okay, cool. - But I want to talk about dreams and the importance of dreams.
- Yeah You have one dream that
you have stated so often it's almost as if it's
not only going to be, but you tell everyone about it. I have a friend Adam Cheyer
who is the architect of Siri and Bixby at Samsung. He's one of the greatest
AI people in the world. And he calls them verbally stated goals. He says once I commit to
something, I tell everyone I know because that commits me
and it also opens the world to sort of help me. What's your verbally stated goal? - I'm gonna buy the New York Jets. (cheering and applauding) I'm comin' bro. You're young as fuck you'll see it. It's a 100% gonna happen. I don't even know why
it's so obvious to me. (laughing) I genuinely think back
to the world helping. I actually believe, recently
I had a weird dream, it was very vivid. The opportunity finally happened,
and I was in a great spot it was like 20 years from
now, I was right there, but I wasn't all the way financially there and then everybody knew
that the moment was upon us because the Johnson family
was selling the Jets and then the country rallied
and GoFund-ed the rest of it. (laughing) It's funny, I'll make this very USC'd out, VaynerSports is a sports agency that my brother and I started. It's three years old,
it's doing extremely well, we have 25 guys we rep, we
love football, we're all about it, it is our passion. We had the great fortune
of being in the final three to get Sam Darnold. So I flew, this is the second
year, our company's like two seconds old, but because of who I am and because of who Sam
is, we were in the mix. Legitimately in the mix. Much to the shock of
the sports agency world. So we fly to Sam's house. I fly from family vacation,
I remember Sam's dad calls and goes it's this time,
this is the only slot, this is when we're doing it. And I remember me and
AJ working on logistics and like the only way we
could do it was I had to get like a private plane, which
I don't like being boujee but fuck it, this is the moment you know? So we get there and it's
the greatest and they're the best, I don't know
how many of you interact with Sam at his time
here but the best dude and all this good stuff and
it gets to the final moment of the pitch and we're just
wrapping up and I look at Sam and his parents, I go. Darnolds listen to me and listen to me good, if I had my choice of Sam going with VaynerSports and
going number one overall to the Browns and mind
you, if Sam had decided to go with VaynerSports,
he didn't, but if he did, it wouldn't changed the
trajectory of our company. It would've been disproportionate
leverage, it would've changed everything, I go, if
I had my choice of you going to VaynerSports with us and
going number one overall to the Browns, or you not going with us, but going three to the Jets,
I'm telling God right now, I want you to go to the Jets. And we were in the green
room 'cause we represented Josh Jackson at that draft
and he gets picked and I'm like, there's this incredible
clip of Sam getting drafted and hugging his parents
and me in the background looking like a weird fucking stalker. (laughing) He gets drafted and I hug
his mom one second later, literally she just hugged
Sam then she turns to me and she hugs me and she
whispers she's like, you told God to do it. (applause) So yeah, I really think
I'm gonna buy the Jets and I think America's gonna love it. (laughing) - I hope it happens while
Sam's still a quarterback. - That won't happen. - You got a hell of player. - That won't happen only
because, I'm a marathon runner. Back to everything I just told you, I will not do short term behavior. I need another 20-25
years but I will do it. I will retire Sam's number. - There you go, that's
a great thing to say. (applauding) Students, come on up and
ask questions of Gary V. Come on over here.
- [Girl] Hi, thank you so much Come on over here.
- for being here first. - Get in the light. Say hi. - [Gary] Hi. - Hi, thank you so much for coming. My question is about
the process of selling. A lot of entrepreneurs now
attribute their success to how they can sell their
ideas, themselves and their products, so I'm curious how
technology and social media have changed your process
of selling and how you're still able to maintain a
lot of close relationships when you're communicating
with so many people at a time. - Well there's a couple
things to talk about this, if you notice the way you said that. One of the things I'm worried
about and want to bring up to the culture is, selling
their idea themselves right? A lot of that is talking
about getting funding. That's B2B selling. What I think is happening if
you look at a lot of people, they're great at selling to
a singular venture capital 'cause they can make a
great deck, talk about their pedigree but when their
business runs, they're very bad at selling to the actual consumer. So, for me, my whole world has
only been about the consumer. It has nothing to do with B2B. It has nothing to do with anything. I will never allow anybody
to have leverage over me and the end consumer. So my selling hasn't adjusted
in a social media world, it's just excelled what
I've always naturally done which is engagement at scale. And reverse engineering
and asking questions and listening to what
you actually value versus what my audacity wants you to value. Selling to a VC and getting
funding is the furthest thing from selling to the end consumer. - That's interesting, thank you. - You're welcome. (cheering) Hey. - [Woman] It's a pleasure. It's a pleasure. - So you mentioned mental
health in the beginning and you're known to be able
to predict what's gonna happen down the line with
companies like Facebook, Instagram now you're
high in audio content. My question would be,
what is your prediction going down the next 10-15
year, where our society's gonna be in regards to mental
health and what is social media's impact gonna be
in assisting that change? - So, thank you. Look, I'm gonna bounce here a little bit. First of all, let's talk about
social media for one second. Social media is pipes. Social media's impact is zero. The humans that put out content within it. Social media has changed nobody. Social media has exposed everybody. So there is no social media,
there is no Ricky social media. It's pipes so, where I think
we're gonna be with mental health is in a much better place. I'm so thankful that I
get to watch this happen. Nobody talked about exercise
in America 40 years ago. Right like, Jack LaLanne. You know what I mean? So I think the biggest comp
to mental health is physical health in America over the last 30 years. Nobody talked about exercising, nobody talked about eating healthy. So I'm very excited, I
think you're gonna see a lot of consumerization around it. I think there will be a
sole cycle of meditation. I think we're gonna
eliminate a lot of stigma, which is gonna allow for
healthy conversation. I'm very very optimistic what's
gonna happen over the next 20 years, I really am. - [Woman] Great, love to hear it. Thank you.
- Thanks. (applauding) - [Piper] Hi.
- [David] Piper. - My name is Piper, and I'm
wondering, for many people graduating, moving to new
cities, what sort of advice do you have for building a community and the right people around you? - Being self-aware. If you're an extrovert, it's a lay-up. Just go outside and say what's up. (laughing) But if you're introverted,
put in real work to create safe places to meet people,
spend a lot of time networking with people that you feel safe with. Finding people to introduce
you to in those markets. I really think all of this is
one big game of self-awareness and if you're introverted
your whole life, at 22 moving to a new city is not when
you miraculously become a social butterfly so you
need to lean into who you are and what you can do is
spend a lot of time doing homework of people that you
knew from, your older than you that are in that town
or friend that has a cousin in that town and feel
comfortable in your process but the aura why is always people. So meet as many people as
possible in that new place but do it your way, not my way or the way that it's supposed to do. Do it your way. - Great, thank you so much
- You got it. (applauding) - [Man] Yo.
- Yo. What are you about to drop a fucking beat? (laughing) - Sup man, nice to meet you. - It's a real pleasure. How are you? - I'm good, how are you?
- Good. - Thank you for coming. - Yeah, happy to be here. - So my question is, how
do you know when a business opportunity or venture is worth your time and when do you say no when
so many people would say yes in that situation? - I think too many people
over-value their time, when their time is worth nothing. (laughing) So, it's my favorite one. I love when people are like
yo, is this worth my time? I'm like well, and it's
in a business context, I'm like how much money
is your business making, they're like yo I don't have one yet. I'm like well your time
is worth dick zero. (laughing) So, I think people are
audacious with their time. They're fancy before they're fancy. So, everything's worth your
time when you're at zero. You may bail. I'm a big believer of, I'm in yes culture. My whole game is yes comma. I'm not a great person
to ask the no thing. I think there's people that
are more disciplined that know. I just like the value of
yes and then if I'm a week, an hour, a year in, and I've
realized it's not right, I leave, I bail. Because I'm not worried about
the loss because I'm not hearing anybody's opinions. I think you get context. The reason I like starting
up and stopping businesses is 'cause I like the context. Right now, I'm super hot
on this theses that sports trading cards are about to explode again. So I'm spending an ungodly amount of, me, I spend four and a half hours
looking at qualitative data and quant data on Ebay
around Giannis rookie cards from Prism graded PSA 10. Four and a half hours. (laughing) I don't have like three minutes
for people that are running like 10 millions dollar businesses for me. So I like saying yes 'cause
I know I'm learning things and then if I decide it's
not worth it, I'll bounce. So couple things I would tell you is one, we need less audacity. Right? And we need more tasting and so, and I know when it's time
to say no after I've said yes and realized after
tasting it, it's no. You know how many people hate
oysters but have never one? That's how I think about that question. - [David] Excellent. - So when did you know Wine
Library was a great vehicle for entrepreneurship and did
you ever think about quitting? - I knew Wine Library was
right because my biggest goal at 18 years old was to
go and work for my family business for a decade, I stayed
longer, to build a massive business for my parents
'cause I love them so much. And I had to A, give more than I took. And so they gave me so much
including fucking life itself and so, it was a brain twist
of how do I do this so. The biggest thing I'm proud
of on earth is that from, when I tell kids to be patient, they don't know my
narrative a lot of times. I as a 22 year old kid,
worked for my parents business for 12 years everyday, every
Saturday, gave up my entire social life during my
20's which is the prime. Took my family business
from a three to a 65 million dollar business, and then
left at 34 years old with no money because I never paid
myself more than a $100,000 a year 'cause I poured all the
money back into the business and I own 0.0% of the business. (applauding) Because that's what immigrants do. It's a different model right? When a family starts a business,
it's the family business and you don't get the business
until the family dies. And I wanted to do other things
so I came, I did my thing, I changed the course of my
parents' financial life, the way they changed and
created the course of my life and then I was ready to do my
own thing at 34 with nothing so when people are impatient
at 26, I laugh because I only started at 34, for me. 'Cause the first 12 years was for them. And so I knew that was right from the get, 'cause that was my mission. - Cool, thank you Gary.
- Thank you bro. (applauding) - [Woman] Hello. - [Gary] Hello. - Thank you so much for coming. (laughing) I'm curious to know given
that you have your hands in so many business
opportunities and other interest at any given time, what do you think is the key to your productivity? - Gratitude for sure. And I have a general thing
that really works for me which is, I think 99% of things don't matter. So that allows me to not
get bogged down my anything. And I'm a big fan of juggling
46 balls and being okay with nine of them dropping
versus only trying to hold up one and making sure it doesn't drop. A disproportionate comfort with failure, enormous gratitude, and a
perspective on what it all means in the scheme of things period. - Thank you. - Yeah. (applauding) - [David] We'll take some
questions from the two microphones for a couple minutes. - Yeah, how much time
do we have left overall? - We got about 20 minutes. - Good. - Then we got a couple thing to say. We got a couple more.
- Like 30? - We're good, we're good. - We can do 30? - Yeah yeah, I was low balling it. - Nice. Go bro. - [Tony] Hey what's up
Gary, my name's Tony. I appreciate you and your
content, thanks for coming. - [Gary] Thanks bro. - I'm a captain in the Marine
Corps and a grad student here at Marshall School of Business. - [Gary] Thank you. - The U.S Military relies
on a clear chain of command to execute the mission. You have any thoughts on
veterans culture in business? - Meaning, I do have some
thoughts but I want to make sure I'm understanding the question. Do I think they map well post? - [Tony] Exactly. - Tremendously. I think the biggest issue and
you know this is depending on the nature of what their
course was in the military where the services we're
providing for this country like how extreme is some of
the stuff they went through. To me the discipline and the
skill set speaks to upper management in an incredible
way, doesn't necessarily speak to entrepreneurship, can
speak to entrepreneurship but the biggest thing is
like people that went into combat versus didn't have
so many different variables. People that are great at
teamwork and being part of a machine make for
incredible employees. - [Tony] Thanks Gary.
- You're welcome. - [David] Come over here
or switch, alternate. - Hi Gary, thanks for
coming, my name's Barr. - [Gary] Hey Barr. - My question is, so
you're always in the media and you're a big social
image and I was wondering on a day to day basis, how
do you monitor your mentality and mindset to make sure
that your thoughts and other people's opinions don't
change the goals you set for yourself and who you are as a person? - I just talk to myself all day long. Dude, other people's thoughts was, (blowing raspberries) that went away a long time ago. There's nothing that
happens in business right, like of other people's opinions
that's harder than having peer pressure in high school and college and staying the course. Once I was able to get over
the girl that I liked wanted me to do something that
I didn't want to do, and I didn't do it then I was
like everything else was easy. (laughing) - [Barr] Thank you.
- You're welcome. - [Man] What's goin' on Gar? - Hey bro. - I spent 10 years in
the Marine Corps too so. There's a program here, and
three years ago I learned about you so. - [Gary] Thank you. - I always tell guys
now coming out and women that you should probably
listen to four days straight of Gary V. I say it all the time.
- [Gary] Thank you. It used to be go to school,
go to school, go to school. Now I hear you sayin' when
your 22 now's the time to lose. Now's the time to eat, long story short, I heard you speak once
and this Marines stepped up and he said hey, how do
I get five minutes in front of anybody and you said you're a veteran. Just ask for five minutes. If they don't give you
five minutes then you know they're anti-American and then. - [Gary] I didn't say that. I didn't say that. - And then Tony Knapp asked
us to go reach out to some entrepreneurs and I asked
you for five minutes so, we didn't get that chance
so thank you for that but, I wanna invite you, we're
having a graduation party. The whole veteran
community here at Marshall, we're having something on
May 4th, if you're around come be a part of the team,
that's all I gotta say so. - Thank you so much for the
invite, you'll appreciate that, so I'm away that
day for my mom's birthday but I appreciate that and
I appreciate your words bro and I appreciate your service for real. Thank you. (applauding) - Hey Gary, my name is Raj and - [Gary] Hey Raj. - Big fan of you. - [Gary] Thank you bro. - So I work in an emergency room. See people like down in the
daily, people get paralyzed from things that isn't their fault. - [Gary] Right. - My dad grew up with polio,
my mom had a brain aneurysm almost died when I was
like in the first grade so help for me is number
one, and I see people - [Gary] Me too by the way. - Fucking complain all the time,
- [Gary] You're preaching. - About everything. - [Gary] Dude I even give a fuck about entrepreneurship or business. (laughing) I'm being dead serious. I love what I do but I
could buy the Jets tomorrow and then get a text that
my kids and wife were hit by a bus and died and do
you think I'd be pumped that I own the Jets, what
the matter with people? - Yeah, no, no I agree. Dude I think fucking health is number one. - [Gary] You're set bro. You won Raj. I'm being dead serious. If you actually internalize
the perspective between your parents and what you see day to day, you should be happy in perpetuity. - No I am, dude, it's weird but I wake up. I wake up every fucking
morning and say whatever is out there, thank God I am alive
and my family's alive. That's the most important thing to me. - On everything, I wake up every, (applauding) - [Raj] I'm being real. - Nothing on Earth scares
me because every time I wake up and somebody didn't
call me in the middle of the night, right? I'm super pumped too. I wake up every morning fired
up 'cause I'm like another day that something atrocious
didn't happen to the nine people that I love the most. I mean it. Guys perspective is the game. Realizing what we're talking
about and then realizing the reason you shouldn't
value everybody's opinions is because they don't actually
give a fuck about your life. They're worried about their own. Get off your fucking high
horse, nobody gives a fuck about what's going on with you. That's a good way to think about it. So cool dude, you've won life. (Raj laughing) - I bring this up because
dude, I see so much, and I don't know it might
just be my surroundings but I see so much negativity
and I just, my goal in life honestly is to bring as
much positivity as I can to everyone around me. - [Gary] So just put out the content. Do that daily. - How can I do that? - [Gary] Do what I did.
- Fucking like crazy. - Just post. Post fucking positive perspective. Less fucking swans and
fucking blow up swans and fucking pools and more
fucking positive shit. - [Raj] No, no you're right. - What do you mean how can you? Nobody followed me either. Bro everybody starts with zero followers. What do you mean how can you? Take your fucking phone, turn
the fucking camera around, hit record, and say some
positive shit and post it. - Let me do this right now, - [Gary] Do it right now kid, do it right now. (cheering) - Hey! - Live fucking life bro! - Yes! I love you so much dude. - I love you back (kiss). (cheering) - Thank you so much dude,
you're awesome, I love you. - [Gary] Just post it. - I'm posting it. - [Gary] I'll share that shit. - Fucking Instagram everything. - [Gary] I'm gonna share it
and change your fucking life. - I love you so much. I wish you the bet in life. - [Gary] You too buddy. (cheering) - [Man] Hi Gary. - Hello. - [Man] So. - Follow that shit. (laughing) - [Man] So I have a question for you. - By the way this dude gave me
a book that is like literally the textbook of my brain. I've literally not
stopped thinking about it. Literally I've done this entire
interview, kiss that dude, did everything and still have
not been able to comprehend that I have never seen my
thoughts in textbook form and you just handed it to
me in that room an hour ago and I'm freaking the fuck
out because I genuinely think we're gonna put it out. - I think so too. I think it's gonna bridge
the gap between your content and people contextually. - I agree. I'm very capable at the macro
but the reason I couldn't get into a school like
this is I'm not interested in the micro, you put it into the micro. - [Man] Thank you. - Thank you. (applauding) And everybody learns different right? I learn my way but for a lot
of people, what you did is, I can't wait to really analyze it. Go ahead, what's your question? - So, you talk about putting
out content and the importance of it for startups and
companies and you know. So, my question is, there's
different ways to do that right? There's the documentation
way where you like record yourself.
- [Gary] Like I do. - And put it on all the
different platforms which is a little bit more long
term building brand, right? And then there's creating content for ads, video ads and everything right? So I know the end goal is
to do all of it and do it at scale and do it on every platform
as much as possible right so, how would you chose
in the starting steps. - [Gary] Pick one. - Just pick one and it doesn't matter? - You know what's the
best about picking one? You'll never know the alternative anyway. - [Man] Cool. - Pick one. - [Man] Done, already done. - Flip a fucking coin. - [Man] Done. - Everybody here is thinking
about these three options. Pick one because there's
no chance you'll ever know what would've happened anyway. I passed on Uber twice in the angel round. Right? So, right now based on
what's about to happen, I probably passed on 800 million dollars? Right? Nice solid track to the Jets. (laughing) But the reason I'm super
pumped about it is cool, looks bad on my PNL but
maybe if I did that, different things would've
happened and different speeches and different opportunities
and maybe I would've been in London on a day that I
wasn't and I would have been hit by a bus and I'd be dead as fuck. (laughing) That's why you just pick one. - [Man] Done, I love you. - [Gary] I love you more. (cheering and applauding) - [Anir] Hey Gary, thanks for coming out. - Yup. - My name's Anir and
my question for you is, what is your best guess
on how the next economic collapse is gonna play out? - My hope is it's based on
the college debt crisis. - [Anir] Oh yeah, I was gonna say that. - My hope. Because then we're gonna
blame colleges which is wrong 'cause we need to becoming
accountable but I think it'll bring a healthy
conversation to the top. But I have zero clue. If I knew I would sell
all my shit the day before and re-buy all that shit the next day. (laughing) - [Anir] Fair enough, thank you. - Yeah you got it, thank you. - [Man] Sup Gary. Hey bro. - [Man] I'm a big fan. - Thank you. - I was exposed to you in 2017, while I was on the Marine
Corps and I was really debating on re-enlisting, read your book, AskGaryVee, decided not
to, I'm glad I didn't. My question's on networking. We started a club here
called the Kanna Club and the Trojan Cannabis
Network are obviously centered on cannabis. This room is full of leaders
including my partners Joseph and Annette that's up there. - [Gary] What up Annette? - Do you have any, as far as leadership, do you have any type of. - [Gary] Tips? - Tips for networking,
like growing, I'm sorry. I'm sorry man, I listen to
you every single morning. - Dude I'm so flattered,
you don't have to be sorry. Look my biggest thing
about leadership is people confused about leadership. When you're a leader, you
work for everybody else. They don't work for you. I'm the CEO of a company
that has a 1,000 employees which means I have a 1,000
bosses and I actually genuinely believe that, it's
not like a cliche headline. - [Man] Got it. - You're in the listening business. Your job is to put everybody
in a position to succeed. - So what would be your
great like an event, like as if you were a
student what would you want as a student. - [Gary] At an event? - Like at an event like
for a networking event. - Like alcohol. (laughing) There's no one size fits all right? This goes back to why listening works. Some students want it to
be a gateway drug to a job. Others want it to be a
gateway drug to funding. Another person wants it be
a gateway drug to another hookup, I don't fucking know. There's a lot of different
things people want out of a networking event. I think the job of
creating a networking event is to bring value to seven
different psychographic cohorts instead of one. - [Man] Okay. Appreciate that, thank you Gary. - You got it. - [Jess] Hi Gary. Hi, hey Jess. - I was curious about your
partnership with K-Swiss and the shoe you made.
- [Gary] Yes. - What was the idea behind
that and what's come out of it? - I get a cold email from
the K-Swiss president, and it says we'd like
to do a Gary V sneaker. So I thought, when I read it I was like, I wonder if they think, because
I started really exploding on Instagram and I was like,
is this an influencer deal? Like I don't do that shit. But the way it was written I'm like, are these motherfuckers
talking about my signature on an actual sneaker? So, I met Barney in a cafe in L.A , and he was like look, we think
entrepreneurship's the next pillar, we can't compete
with Nike with athletes, we can't compete with Adidas with culture and Yeezy right now. We think that you could be the face of a sneaker that does well. For me it worked because
I want to refurbish iconic brands in my career so
K-Swiss was an iconic brand when I was a kid and so
it was super interesting. We were able to put the
deal together and it's been a monster hit for K-Swiss and for me. When you're an 80's, 90's Jersey baby and you grow up when the
signature sneaker thing happened. It's so insane to me
that people wear sneakers with my signature on it. It's super fun more than anything else. And I've learned a lot about
refurbishing iconic brands which will service me well. It was much more for me to
have another taste at... I remember when I did it, there was two very big different camps. One that thought it was super
cool and one thought that it was gonna be a colossal
failure and be bad for me but back to some of the themes
I've said to you tonight, it was a win for me from
day one 'cause I was gonna learn for something that I
wanna do later and if it was a colossal failure, it was
just gonna be a fun joke for me and my friends that
one time when I was an idiot and thought I could sell sneakers. - Thank you. - [Gary] You're welcome. - Hey how's it going Gary? From one New Yorker to another,
thank you for stopping by. - You got it. - My question's about happiness. So Henry David Thoreau's got
a quote that most men live in quiet desperation and they
do so till the day they die. - [Gary] Okay. - Is it basically just as simple as just trusting your gut? - [Gary] Yes. - Okay. That's just all I wanted to know. - Because I think trusting
your gut sounds more like dying on your own sword. - [Man] Yeah exactly. - I just want to lose my way. - [Man] Okay. - Do you understand? - [Man] No, no, I get it. - I want to lose my
way, if I'm gonna lose, I wanna lose my way. Not the way somebody told me to do it because then you lost twice. You know how many times
you guys have lost twice? It fucking sucks. Yes. - [Man] Thank you. - You're welcome.
- [Man] Appreciate it. - How's it going, my name is Brennan. - Hey Brennan. - I think we live in this
really interesting time where everybody wants to
better themselves without looking at themselves. - [Gary] No shit. - But I also think it kinda
shows up entrepreneurship where you see all these people
with all these quick tips and these nuggets right? Take a cold shower every
morning, or do this stretch to, it's all bullshit in my opinion. So I'm curious in the social
media age, how do you remain authentic while also
pitching new ideas and trying to make people's lives better? - By speaking your truth. It's really easy to be authentic. Don't say shit you don't believe in. - [Brennan] Cool.
- Yeah. - [Brennan] Thank you.
- You're welcome. (applauding) And you know why this is important? And you'll appreciate this,
in a world where people are pandering to vanity metrics,
you know how many people hit me up they're like Gary,
I wanna be this and I'm tryna do this on my social media
and I'm like then don't put up half naked pictures on your Instagram. And they're like yeah
but that gets more likes and I'm like you're a fucking idiot. You just told me you're unhappy
and you want this to happen but you're pandering to
likes on a platform that's not gonna be as relevant in a decade? Remember when you were in
junior high, for you like third grade, fuck you guys are so young. For the older people here,
remember when somebody took you out of your top eight on MySpace? (laughing) That used to really fucking hurt. It doesn't hurt as much now. You got it. - Hey Gary I'm Jackie, - [Gary] Hey Jackie. - I actually quit my job,
my corporate job six figure and I wanted to do what
I wanted to do and pursue and everyone around me kept
telling me I made a mistake. - [Gary] Right. - So I was living my truth,
really excited doing what I was doing but then I kept
listening to everything, everyone around me and I
started feeling regret, for pursuing what I really
loved and I started listening to those voices and fell
into a deep depression, to the point where I ended
up losing everything. - [Gary] Makes all the sense in the world. - I stumbled upon your content
and it started to motivate me to get back on my feet. I'm at ground zero right now, what advice do you have for me? - Don't listen to them again. You are on your way. You let insecurity and valuing
others opinion fuck you up. - What if it's like constantly
in your face and you're doing everything you can. - Stop talking to your parents as much. (laughing) I'm being serious. This is one big game of
what your listening to. And if your parents or your
loved one or your spouse or your best friend's
unhappy, they're going to subconsciously or
consciously make you unhappy. Misery loves company. The end. - One last thing. I saw you in Dallas four
weeks ago at We Live, I don't know if you remember
the wholesaling event. - [Gary] Yup. - I missed my opportunity to take a picture with you
- [Gary] Let's go. - And I said I was never
gonna miss that again. (cheering) - Don't listen to them. - Your content is giving
me motivation to keep going and I really appreciate what you're doing. - You have it in you already. You just let people that are losing get you into a wrong place. And even if those are the
people that you love the most, you need to mitigate how much
you're listening to them. If they're constantly in your
face get out of fucking face. - I quit my job because
I hated what I was doing and I actually love what I'm
doing but I listened to others. - [Gary] Losing players lose. - Thank you so much. (applauding) - Hey Gary, my name's Alex. First of all I really want
you to buy the fucking Jets. That would be the like
coolest thing in the world. - [Gary] Thanks Alex. - This is nerve wracking. - [Gary] Go ahead. - A few weeks ago you
posted this really beautiful tribute to Nipsey Hustle. Beautiful video. (cheering and applauding) And I followed you for maybe
a year or so and I wasn't aware of the relationship you
two had and I was wondering if you could speak to just
that and who Nipsey was as both an entrepreneur and as a man. - Nipsey would be giving his
version of the exact stuff that I'm saying right now. He was a pure energy that genuinely wanted other people to win. He was immensely talented,
he was hard working, he was patient, he cared about legacy, he cared about others. And it's a devastating
loss for me personally. It really is. I really liked him a lot. In a way that I didn't feel
about others and I think for a lot of people here who
didn't really know Nipsey as well, when this went
down, I'm sure you probably were caught off guard by
how it hit so many people that you did know about. And that reaction only
happens when somebody's truly authentic and a genuinely good force. And he had his shortcomings and we all do. He was a special dude. It's really tough man. I'm really really genuinely
sad that the world misses out and then I get optimistic
and think, he now because of this tragedy becomes
bigger than he ever could've been without it and
all that kind of stuff. If you listen very carefully
to him, he had it figured out. - Absolutely and, you mentioned earlier, about how you prefer
marathons over sprints. I know that's like a huge
thing for his methodology was that the marathon
continues and whatnot so. - [Gary] He was a special
dude, it's a big loss. - Thank you. (applauding) - [Elmud] Hi, my name is
Elmud and first of all thank you for coming. - Thanks for having me. - I had a quick question. I came all the way from India
to the U.S so that I could get a specialized degree in a
Masters program India assigns and the thing was that
you come here you get in a good company, get the
experience and then you start something of your own. In my mind and my family's
mind that's the correct way to go but when I look
online on social media, everybody seems to be
demonizing going to college and getting a specialized technical degree because if you do that or you
don't have the entrepreneurial spirit because you would
have just quit and started. - [Gary] Fuck them. (laughing) - [Elmud] So what's your thought on that? And do believe that this
is the right path to take. - Don't listen to me or
them, listen to yourself. - All right. (laughing) - Just 'cause
entrepreneurship's popular now, you would've been super fucking
right when I was your age. If your super wrong now, you'll
be super right in 20 years, this shit goes in circles. - Most of the entrepreneurs
that I see even back in my country who I know
personally, they're mostly people who are flexing on
Instagram creating a brand around it and then using it to get more followers who pay more. Is this something of a
circle that if created, but I feel that I'm more
technical and have an actual physical value to give than to
just create Instagram posts. (applauding) - Let me tell you how it's gonna happen. It's the same way that so
many of my friends flexed on me when I was your age. They flexed on me because
they got a degree and got a six figure job and got a BMW. They're gonna flex in the short term, you're gonna flex in perpetuity. - [Raj] Hopefully yes. Yes. - [Gary] But that's on you dick. (laughing) That has nothing to do with
me, your parents, America, India and the fake fucking
flexers on Instagram. You winning is you. - [Raj] All right, thank you. (applauding) - [Shevah] Hi Gary. - How are you? - My name is Shevah. I'm a great fan of you, I've been following you for a while. - [Gary] Thank you. - I wanna thank my friend
who gave me this opportunity to come and meet you. - That's very nice of you to thank him. - I'm happy in entrepreneurship
for the last 15 years and I failed in two startups
and now I'm on my third startup, and we launched two weeks back. So, I'm been an entrepreneurial
journey where I have seen lot of failures, I made my
million bucks but I failed and then again I never gave up. My question to you, I've
got two questions for you. The first thing is about a family. I've been always hustling,
I believe in what I do and even now what I'm
doing I completely believe in what I'm doing so am I
doing justice to my family? Because they're also going
through this struggle which I'm going through. Staying away from the
family, working for this. - Let me ask you a question. Are you capable of getting a job? - [Shevah] Yeah. - Well, then the question
becomes very simple. If you're capable of getting
a job, you need to speak to your family and ask them. To me-- - [Shevah] They are supporting me. - Well then. To work. It's my feeling like am I doing justice or I'm being selfish? - [Gary] Of course you're being selfish. - [Shevah] Yeah. - You should be selfish. - Everybody should be selfish. And you should be selfless. You should carry both those
contradictions in parallel. - I'm giving everything I
should give to my family, I'm giving my 100% but still
you know I'm staying away from the family, I'm
focused more on my business. - My friend, my friend there's plenty of people that are spending tons of time with their
family and bringing their family no value. I'm serious. I love when people hit me
up they're like Gary V, whatever, I come home at 6
p.m, you're always traveling. I'm doing what's right. And I reply I'm like your family might not like that your home. (laughing) I have a lot of high school friends that judge me right, real quick. Showing your children how to live, is the most important thing you can do. - [Shevah] Yeah, I
completely believe in that. - Well good. Being home at six, and making
pretend that your happy with that is not going to work. - [Shevah] Basically I'm from India so I'm traveling and staying away from home for long months,
it's kind of like you know. - Bro, that goes down
to you and your family. Not me, not anybody here. If you and your family are
cool with that, then you won. And if not, then you lost. - [Shevah] I understand. - That's you communicating to them. I have no context on that
but what I can tell you much like I told the last gentleman, this is all one big game of one. Your circumstances. Your life. Not what worked for me. I tell you what worked for
me and hope that it can be a framework for you to
have a proper conversation with yourself just like other people can share what worked for them. This one big game of self awareness. If that works for you and
your partner, then you won. - Yeah, she does. - [Gary] Well then you fucking won. - Thank you Gary,
- [Gary] You're welcome. - I'm very happy, this my
third startup so I hope I'll definitely be
successful, thank you Gary. - [Gary] Good luck brother. - [Shevah] Thank you. - [Toby] What's up man? - Is that an Atari hoodie? - [Toby] Shit. - Fresh, go ahead. - [Toby] For sure, for sure,
for six dollars, Goodwill, I'm feelin', - I fucking love Goodwill. - For sure, for sure. Name's Toby, really
interested in the combining of culture and entrepreneurship
especially with the surge of financial literacy and
hip hop but as recently, 21 Savage, the late and
great Nipsey Hustle, and the whole thing he did with the Marathon store and Iddris Sandu. So really just interested
in trying to get into that. Me and my friends we
build really cool shit, in terms of art installations
right and different cool things with tech
and basically tryna break out into that field and
try to find that person that you latch onto or
build that next thing with. So my question is, we
have some really cool shit for Gunna right now right? - With Gunna? - Gunna man, I know you're
really in with him and his camp right so how do
we get our shit to him? - [Gary] We're gonna FaceTime him. (blows raspberries) - Let's do it let's do it, let's do it. (murmuring) Fucking Gunna. Right in his crib he got we got
(mumbles) in the right form. It's really poppin' too. - Unfortunately, he's the best at it too. I thought he just picked up. I think the thing there is
like it's just taking at-bat's. First of all, this was an
at-bat and we missed, right? 'Cause he's not available. - For sure. - [Gary] But you can DM him, guys. There's a lot of interesting things that happen in the DMs. (laughing) One of them is business development. Your ability to take
what you just showed me and DM Gunna and Lil Baby and Tee Grizzley, and whoever
the fuck you want to get to, all you need is one to say yes.
- [Toby] For sure. It's just at-bats . We just took an at-bat, right? The last three times I've
FaceTime he picked up, for fans, this time he didn't. So, that's just the way it is. But you don't need me to co-sign that, you could just hit up people. - [Toby] For sure, for sure. Hear that. - It's literally just one at-bat. - [Man] Let's try once more. You know? - For sure, appreciate you man. - You got it. Yeah let's do like speed
round 'cause I feel bad for everybody standing up. - [David] No three part
questions (mumbles). - [Max] Hey Gary how are ya? - [David] And only for
USC students please. - Good bro go ahead. - I'm Max. My question for you is I
work with my brother in app development and social media
marketing a little bit. - [Gary] Yup. - What's your suggestion
for working with family but not fracturing the relationship? - [Gary] Love your
brother more than money. - And I definitely do. - [Gary] Then you'll be just fine. - Thank you so much. - [Gary] You got it. - Gary my name is Devin. So right now I am working
with my dad, I'm helping him with marketing for his
manufacturing company. I know that with your
father and Wine Library, you kind of faced some
resistance as you brought it into the more e-commerce
side am I correct? - [Gary] Yeah, just confusion right. My dad was like, don't
sit on the computer, you gotta be on the floor selling wine. - Okay, so it was a misunderstanding more than technology on his end? I'm just sort of facing that same gap I feel in terms of marketing. - Listen, I wanna address
it 'cause I like that last dude, I understand that exchange. I'm not mad at him. I hope that nothing will
make me happier than posting this clip in four years and showing that his company did a trillion. There's a world of
abundance, I want him to win. It's the same thing your going through. My big point to him during
that exchange is the same one I'm about to make to you. Which is, when there's a
father and mother that runs the business in a family
business, when you're asking for money from somebody,
you have to recognize that you're in the position of asking. And so what I did with my dad
was I knew he had the power, and then the reason I
told him to go and execute and stick it to me is 'cause
that's what I want for him because that's what I did to my dad. What my dad did well was he
gave me just enough room, but what kids always don't
do well with parents is when they get the opportunity,
they have to understand they have to execute to give
their parents more confidence but they go and shoot for the grand slam, I just hit singles. I just did 10% more than we
did a year ago on Saturday which gave my dad. Kids right now are just
shooting for the moon and striking out. Go ahead. - Something you once
said, I just remembered, advice for somebody who wants to get close to the seat, you'll get promoted fast, actually that was the answer. Just get close to the
seat, get close to you. And you said get done what you want done and only that basically. - [Gary] Get done what that person wants? - Get done like the tasks
that you order and don't go above and beyond and try
to do things that are. - [Gary] I don't remember the context but keep playing with me here. And don't worry about time, let's hack a little bit, go ahead. (laughing) What are you asking me? - I'm curious how you sort of dealt with the contrast between
your knowledge of technology in that day and age and your father's and the resistance there. - [Gary] With respect. - Okay. - I respected my dad came
here and worked his... Kids don't respect what their
parents did to get there, they have complete lack of
context, they take it for granted and they don't understand
what the dirt was like to even get to this point. At the same token, I died on my sword. I communicated to my dad
with respect, now I got lucky 'cause my dad game me more
room than I see other people giving kid, people. But the reason he did
that was 'cause I worked in the liquor store every
day when I was 14 and 15 and 16 and 17 and had
shown him things that gave him a little bit more confidence. A bunch of kids never work
in their family business, go to college, take a gap
year and then come back and think their running
shit when they've never been in the business. You've got employees
that've been in the business that deserve respect. You don't just come and be
the heir apparent so I rolled in with respect but you need
to continue to articulate it. - Just to say, I'm going
in with the full mindset of trying to learn from
my dad, how he is a CEO, I'm not working for money. - [Gary] You're at the mercy
of how much room he'll be able to prove, give you to prove shit. - I've been doin' a good job so far. Better than the last guy. - I believe that. By the way I'm feeling good
about this spot, so here's my, I don't feel bad. - [Devin] I just want
to make sure you didn't have the wrong idea. - I'm using you to make a macro-point, but coming back to you. I think it's a game of
patience potentially. Right?
- [Devin] No that's it. Does that make sense? - Working at the liquor store at 15 to-- - Yeah dude it's patience right? - It's patience.
- [Gary] It's just patience. - It's seems like. The biggest thing that
your dad would do wrong is not give you the at-bats. - [Devin] True. - The biggest biggest
thing that you would make is trying to hit a grand
slam on every at-bat. - [David] Okay, excellent,
good questions, good questions. We're gonna lose the theater in a few minutes that's why.
- [Devin] Can I have a hug? - Yeah. (applauding) - [Gary] It's patience. - Thank you so much. - [Gary] You're welcome bro. - I want to ask, give me a minute. How many students are here,
how many students are here? Oh excellent, how many
students from my class, Glenn's class, okay. I want students from my
class and Glenn's class, any student who has a
quick take away or a quote or an insight that you learned today to line up at the mics. This just is a Gary V request day. So I want my students, any
student that has a quote, or something they've learned
today to come to the mics in a second and I want to come to you. We don't have time for more
questions, so guys, guys, there's a 1000 people here, not everyone gets a selfie, all right? Seriously, he can't say no, I can. Let's respect our guest. Any of our students ready? It's unbelievable. Let's thank Gary V. First of all. (cheering and applauding) - Thank you. - So good, so good. Upper deck. - My guys, my guys. - [Crowd] Gary, Gary, Gary. Thank you, thank you so much. Thank you. - The Greif Center for
Entrepreneurial Studies is the oldest entrepreneurial program in the country. Started in 1971, yes, you
can teach entrepreneurship and not everybody is ready to
sort of take the leap at 22. We've got a great tradition, some of our alums have
made us look very good from the founder of Salesforce, to MySpace, to Kinko's to
some company called Tinder. I don't know about it exactly
but I hear it's doing well. Just a great tradition of
entrepreneurs graduating from here and we decided
instead of giving you an award that we've already given
is to create an award. And this is the first ever
Hustle Award for the entrepreneur and this is the entrepreneur,
The Gary Vaynerchuk. - Thank you. Thank you. - Gary V. (cheering) - Thank you. - One more time for Gary V. - Thank you guys. Thank you so much. Thank you. - Gary V. It's been a great day to be a Trojan. It's been a great time
having Gary V back here. - [Man] Gary I love you. - I love you. - Hopefully be our adjunct
professor of entrepreneurship, one day but have a great week. It's a great day to be a
Trojan, fight on, fight on. - Thank you. - Fight on.
