- Hey. (audience laughter) - [Audience] Hey. - First and foremost, I'm
always flying in and out on these things, so I don't get to see a ton of presentations,
but I catch a whole bunch kinda little something here and there. I just wanna clap up the
last one one more time, 'cause I thought that was phenomenal. (applause) I was sitting up there
and I was listening, I'm trying to always maximize work, so sitting there working,
and all the sessions were really good, I was actually able to get a bunch in today,
which made it fun, but that was really good, I
was really like feeling it. And I was like, this is really good, I was like listening, I was like, I believe in all that shit, I believe in every word that you just spit. But then you got into
the Michael Jordan part. (audience laughter) And I was like, fuck Jason. (audience laughter) 'Cause I'm a die-hard Knicks fan and I fucking hate Michael Jordan. (audience laughter) Period. Oh, man, that sucked. And I'm a Jets fan, I got Tom Brady, I'm fucking miserable about sports. Anyway. Look. I wanna really take
advantage of this format. This is a fairly small
group, and we're really tight in here, and this is
just like how I love it. And so, to be very honest,
I'll spit a little bit here, but I'd love to do a little bit of Q&A. I'm not sure how set up they are for it, but I don't even need the mic,
so I'll repeat the questions. So I think, you know,
the beauty of technology is that so many of my current thoughts are on YouTube and Facebook right now, especially if any of you
have consumed any of it, I don't need to repeat the themes. I think they're basic. I think, at some level,
everybody has touched on it. You know, I think the thing
that I'm most interested in is the notion of taking it, right? To me, the most interesting
thing to me is the Internet. I think we grossly
underestimate the Internet. You know, the Internet itself
is ultimately the thing that gives us an opportunity to solve the thing that I think is really in our hearts and we're passionate about. I associate so much with
so many, because you know, my story is, I was born in
Belarus, I came to the US when I was three, I lived
in a studio apartment the size of the stage I'm on right now with seven family members. And so, no matter what you
look like, as we all know, it's about what you live,
where you come from. And to be very frank,
I'll be very, I just, it's interesting, I see this all the time and I'm empathetic that the
system doesn't put everybody in the best position to
succeed, but I'm a product where I think all my struggles have been my biggest advantage. And really, I didn't grow
up in an education system or VC system that rewarded
me for being a white male, I grew up in a very interesting path, I was a terrible fucking student, I was a D and F student,
so like most immigrants, I didn't use education as my way out, I was just a kid that sold shit. Right, like I just sold
flowers and I sold lemonade. Now, I'm Jewish and I sang
Christmas carols like fucking it was my last song. (audience laughter) What I did, and really, what I would love to leave you here with, like I know the real answer 'cause I've seen it in so many people's eyes,
it's self-awareness. My biggest fear in this
room is that you're trying to be somebody because you want to be them versus you figure yourself out and put yourself in a
position to be that person. I think, what you had when I watched what you were just talking about, like that kid was that kid from the get. He was self-aware, he figured himself out. He was comfortable in
that nerdy environment, I was comfortable in high
school working every minute, every second, and missing every party. And like, I just, I have not
heard a voice in own my head but mine for a very very very long time. And I think what is most
interesting to me right now is, if you really pay attention
to what's happening, the Internet has absolutely
done this incredible thing, which is there's nobody who's flawed that can sit in between
you and the end consumer who's stopping you besides the
narrative in your own head. That's a big deal. Like, you know, obviously, a
lot of people growing up in the music industry, it's
just so different now. Like, just fucking go make
it, like producing a song now with technology and
putting it on SoundCloud, production and distribution. Like, that's some shit you
couldn't have even imagined. And so I just think, I'll be very honest, I think we're living
through the greatest time to be a human ever, I do. We've got problems everywhere,
we got genocide in the world, we've got nothing but unlimited problems. But I put things into
perspective, like I don't know. We got plenty of problems, but
the black plague was worse. Right? We got plenty of problems,
but World War II was worse. Like you know, there's just opportunity because of the Internet,
not because we've evolved, I don't put this on us. Like, we've still got plenty of short, but the fact that we
have so much opportunity. And so to me, it's basic. Either you're dwelling
and looking backwards, or you're optimistic and looking forward. The problem is, you grow
up in an environment, you grow up with parents that put you on the defense or the offense. And that is really the lottery. The lottery really is
who's your mom, right. The lottery is who's your best friend. That's the lottery I think a lot about. And so I look at, I have
unlimited white male friends who have tons of fucking money in the bank who fucking lost, who
suck, who are in depression 'cause they got the wrong lottery 'cause their mom's broken
'cause her mom was broken and 'cause her dad was broken. And so I am the byproduct,
against all the odds that I had, of parents that fucking dominated. Like, my mom is all time. Just all time, she is. And so, even when I was getting Ds and Fs and all the other immigrant
families were making fun of her because her son wasn't gonna make it 'cause you had to get As and Bs 'cause that's all we
knew in the 80s and 90s, she knew who I was, she
let me hone my skills. I'd get Ds and Fs, I'd get punished, but I was still allowed to
go do my baseball card shows 'cause I was building my
skill, building my skill. And they taught me work. They taught me work. I didn't see my dad until I was 15, and he made me work in his liquor store even though we slept in
the same house every night, because he'd left before I
woke up and he came after. And so we live in this world now where the fact of the matter is, your Instagram account,
your YouTube account, your SoundCloud account, the Internet. Like, the fact that, let
me tell you something that fascinates me. Because we think a lot
about money and opportunity, let me tell you about an opportunity that I can't get out of my head. Which is, there's a
website called Craigslist. There's a section called
Free where people list shit that they wanna get rid of. You go there and you take it. And then you list it
on Facebook Marketplace and you sell it. And when I think about this,
I've been dreaming about this for the last 72 hours, by the way. I'm literally doing this
selfishly so (mumbles) captures this 'cause
this video is going out. You know, it's crazy to
me that the only thing that stops somebody from winning is education and the work ethic, right. I understand that. But education comes in
so many different forms. I was on The Breakfast
Club the first time, and Envy thought I was
a motivational speaker, like a bullshit rah rah,
kind of like the secret shit. So he kinda called me
out and I was like fuck. You know, it was like. (audience laughter) He's like, you know,
you're lying on the radio, and he was like, "Give
us something practical, "fuck this mindset shit,"
right, I'm like okay, the mindset's the game, but
fuck it, I'll give it you. And I said, "Go to the dollar
store and go to Marshalls, "take your phone, scan
shit, look it up on Ebay, "and if it costs two dollars on Marshalls "and it's selling for
nine dollars on Ebay, "buy it and sell it." And that was, it was
kinda like this moment in a six minute radio spot. And then it caught a little,
like, then I read all the comments, and people
are like bullshit, or yes. Then I started getting emails like yo, I make $500 a week, but I'm making 200 now 'cause I'm going to dollar
store and selling it on Ebay. And it built in this whole thing. And then I've named it
the 2017 flip challenge. And we have 10,000 emails of people who've literally went garage
selling to the thrift store and the dollar store and
have made 20, 30, 40,000. I started thinking about the long tail, the long tail of all this, right. Like, we're in this, especially
like in this incubator, like 99% of startups are gonna fail in this generation because we're living through the greatest era
of fake entrepreneurship. The amount of fake entrepreneurs
that are in this building right now is extraordinary. (audience laughter) It's true, it's true. And by the way, please, I know
a lot of you don't know me, I'm not sitting on a high horse like I'm a good entrepreneur and you're not. It's just black and white
obvious 'cause it's a bubble 'cause it got cool, right, it got cool. And it doesn't cost anything,
and there's so much money in the system, there's so much incubators willing to give you money. All my friends for the last 10-15 years are building all these businesses where it's really not that hard to
lose money every month, right. I think on you panel, you guys said, as entrepreneurs, you know, losing money and then making money or
building, I couldn't catch the whole thing 'cause I was distracted. The problem is, it takes a lot of talent to build something to then
eventually make money. And we spend 99% of our time
talking about fucking Slack and Uber and Snapchat
and fucking Instagram. We got like 17 companies to talk about and there's 17 fucking companies
going out of business every hour, every minute, and meanwhile, there's more money being
pumped into the system. And it's just all so obvious right now, where this is all going,
and it's not very privy because we're lacking self-awareness. What we're doing is we're
just riding the waves of what the current conversation is. There's so many people that are gonna be founders of companies who
would've done incredibly well being number 17 at this startup or number 94 at that company
or number 167 at that company, but they wanna be number one
of the Uber of pancakes, right. And like so, and I'm watching this and I'm fascinated by it. Meanwhile, meanwhile,
there's so much practicality. Let me tell you what breaks my heart. I read a lot of feedback from my audience. I've gotten two examples
in the last three weeks of kids that were making money
on retail arbitrage, right. So I think, I brought up
already the Craigslist to Facebook Marketplace. I think no question,
if you said to me hey, this is a classroom of 16 year olds and they have to make money
in the next 24 months or bad, bad stuff happens, I
only default into go buy shit and sell it and run
the Internet arbitrage. We'll spend the first three months, I'll teach you everything
about Craigslist and Ebay and Facebook Marketplace and Letgo, and then we'll talk about China and buying shit there and the arbitrage. I would spend an enormous amount of time, because the practicality right now and the inefficiency of the Internet, of buying and selling
stuff, is extraordinary. In the last three weeks,
I've had these kids who, you know, have been following
my content and are like Gary, I wanna get your advice. And basically, both narratives
went the exact same way, which is hey, I listen to you, I got good, I started buying stuff, then I hit it big, a bunch of people made a lot of money on the solar eclipse glasses. Like, you could literally buy those things for like 16 cents in China on Baidu and then sell it for like
four dollars a pop on Amazon. People made bank. Like, I know one kid who made $317,000. On a $3,000 starting point, right. It's very real to me,
instead of I'm gonna build some crazy app that's gonna
fucking change the world, right. 'Cause it's practical as fuck. And both of them have made real money, one kid's made like 16,000 this year off of like $100 base, right. These are like real money. And both of them took it
all and bought crypto. - [Audience Member] Woo! - Yes. (audience laughter) Yes. By the way, I believe in blockchain as a technology out my ass. The part of the story he doesn't know is they bought at 17,000. - [Audience] Aww. And they bought at 17,000
because they read 400 articles that said it was gonna be 34,000. And by the way, Bitcoin could
be 400,000, I'm not sure. I don't know. Here's what I'm disappointed
in, short term thinking. When he goes woo, I'm not mad at him, I'm like listen, maybe, long term. I don't know anybody's money situation. Let me give you something
that will really work for you. If you don't have to take
it out of Wall Street, put your money into Facebook and Amazon, and I promise you, unless America melts over the next 7 to 10
years, you'll do well. There's certain things that are just so black and white obvious, right. And then everybody else is
looking for a lottery ticket. I used an analogy in
the podcast I just did with some good guys, and it hit me, maybe 'cause I was in Miami and stayed at the Hard Rock Casino fucking Hotel which was fucking disgusting. (audience laughter) But a lot of people were
treating their business the way you go to a casino. Yeah, you could have one
night where you took 5,000 from the casino, but why don't
you keep going every night and tell me how it works out. They don't build Vegas on us winning. And everybody's treating their
business that way right now. Everybody's jumping from trend to trend, they have no foundation of
what they're actually doing, they're riding only headlines
and they're gonna get exposed. Instead of taking a meaningful step back and doing a lot of thinking about A, how exciting it is to eat shit. You know, the thing that works for me that I really wished on
everybody else is I love the journey, I love the
game, I love the struggle. Do you know why I keep doing new things? 'Cause I like when people clown on me. You know why I came out with a sneaker, my own sneaker, especially
growing up in that era? Because I knew people
were gonna shit on me thinking I had too big
of an ego and audacity, and I knew people didn't
think it was gonna work. And that's why I did it,
'cause I wanted that struggle. And then the high of outselling future and weekend sneakers combined, that high is the greatest and the low, that's my L. When you love the game that
you're in, you win either way. You either win and you get to talk shit, or you lose and your boys get to talk shit and you laugh along with them. The biggest problem
right now is insecurity. Everybody's actions are to get shit to close their insecurity. You need a new pair of fucking Supremes because you wanna tell
people who you are through your Supremes, but you're just fucking disguising your weakness. And so I am absolutely obsessed for people to start talking about
self-awareness and patience, 'cause they will work. Now, it might take 15
years, it may take seven, it may take nine, but if you actually take tried and true things
like that during a time where there's this much
opportunity, it's not sexy to walk around and say
you buy weird like candles in China and sell them on Amazon and make $7,000 a month, but it works. And I've literally sat in rooms and had these one on one discussions, and kids have chosen the sexier thing because we're playing one
big fucking game of optics. We're playing one fucking
big game of optics. And like, VC is super interesting to me, I did really well, right, here's my story. I made a lot of money
selling baseball cards a kid. My dad worked his fucking face
off and saved every dollar, immigrants have figured it out. It's called make money, buy no dumb shit, save it for 13 years, buy an
asset, have the American Dream. Right? Versus what's going on,
by the way, new prediction 'cause I've been doing some homework, college debt is gonna take
the whole country down. I had no idea, I don't know, you know, I knew college debt was fucked up. I didn't know the following thing that I've been doing homework
on the last three days. This story is real and is being scaled across America right now. You're $237,000 in college
debt on some interest that's fucking bonkers. You're making $84,000 a year
and banks are lending you a half a million to buy an apartment. (audience laughter) So just get ready, 2009
is coming all over again. I don't know how long Trump
can artificially hold it up, but shit's gonna hit
and it's gonna hit hard. And here's what's gonna happen. Everybody's gonna blame the
colleges, 'cause you know, Omar who needed a new BMW,
even though he had $313,000 in debt, he's not gonna
blame himself for the BMW, he's gonna blame Babson. And so colleges' brand's about
to get fucking collapsed. Just like the banks got shit on. Including all of these opportunities that we know are good alternatives. You know, by the way, 1930, 1940, 1950, vocational skills were hot. Then the propaganda of
college came through. Which is cool 'cause
it worked for a minute. It's just, shit changes. And so we're living through
a really really really really interesting time, because
there's so much carnage in the system ready to
come, at the same token, it's never been better for all of us, because the scale of anything you wanna do on the Internet is actually real. It's never been more practical
to make $100,000 a year talking about fucking the Smurfs. (audience laughter) It's the truth. Like, if you look at the niches, if you actually play out a
podcast, a YouTube channel and an Instagram account
and really understand how to build stories like my man just did, day in and day out consistent,
especially if you know what the fuck you're talking
about and have patience, you will be stunned how much
money is gonna be for you on the other side of that rainbow. And the only way you'll
do it while nothing good is happening is you'll talk about the shit you love the most. You could talk about the
1987 Pistons for a living. That's crazy. By the way, the 87 Pistons
really fucked with Jordan, which is why I had to
drop in on my man Jason. (audience laughter) I know you do, man. I got none, fuck. This is why I wanna buy
the Jets, I'm like fuck it, nobody else is gonna do it for me, I'm gonna buy the Jets
and win my own Superbowl. Anyway. (audience laughter) Then I built my dad's business for him, I left at 34, I had no
equity in the business, I haven't saved a lot of money 'cause we poured all money
back into the business, I grew my dad's business from a $3 to a $60 million business. I paid back my parents for giving to me. And then I did something really smart, I was building a liquor
store that my dad owned into a winy commerce business. And I was using modern technologies. And along the way, I
realized that social media was the second coming of
what I saw with Google and blogging and email,
and so I just understood the pattern recognition,
so I was an early investor in Facebook and Twitter
and Tumblr and obviously, as you can imagine, it changed
the course of my career. But what's really
fascinating to me is that the opportunities are way greater than they've ever been
'cause it's scale now. It's just that all we're
doing is playing lotto. I'm a bad gambler. Like for example, I never
taught myself how to play poker. I don't like gambling that much. So when I gamble, I go to fucking like, when I go to a casino, I go to
actually like own the casino at the end of the night. Like, I'm playing the most high risk shit. Like, it's only like roulette, one number, put like fucking $500 on it. Like none of it is basic, it's
all like I'm trying to like create memories, right. Which is why I lose all my fucking money. (audience laughter) That's cool for casinos,
that's not cool for life, and that's what people are fucking doing. People are talking about
building fucking businesses and apps and things like that, and they're not looking at the math. 99% of these companies
are gonna go away, and it's been good for nine
years in the economy. There's money in the system. None of the businesses
that are pre series B are making any money. What do you think happens
when they can't raise their next round? You know how many companies
are down rounding right now? All of them. (audience laughter) Like, we are not having that conversation. So meanwhile, the propaganda of that or crypto or other things
got people pumped, respect, interested, I'm sure
there'll be people that win. Meanwhile, there's all
this practical money. And listen, because I grew up
pretty ridiculous, you know, D and F student in like rural New Jersey, so like hunter boys
that wanted to shoot you with their, you know, shotgun. Then I went to Mount Ida
College in Newton, Mass, 94% minorities, like kids
that wanted to shoot you with different kinds of guns. And so like literally, my whole group that I grew up with from, you know, first grade through
college, 98% of my friends make under $100,000 a year. Then I got into the tech
world and these towns, and all my next generation
friends, you know, 60% of them have 8 and 9 and 10 figures. And I look, and I look every day, and I live in this fucking bizarro world. And money is not the
variable of happiness. I got boys on two fucking softball teams, fucking working factory
jobs, making 47k a year and fucking happy as shit. I got a friend who's got a buck
50, 150 million in the bank, fucking miserable,
depression, three times a day at the doctor who's like, I'm just, and so I'm looking at
this and I'm like okay. Let's take a step back. The Internet is at
maturity, we're at scale. There's real dollars
to be had if you build a practical business. And we're pumping people
into a casino environment of like winning a lotto ticket. And then okay, fair. If you're building a lotto ticket, that's how you win $50 million companies, $100 million companies,
and I respect that. My advice over here on the practical side is much more one, two, three
million dollar a year business. But then I just look and I'm like man, how many people are out there right now who would love to make to make
$212,000 a year and love it. And I'm just struggling with like, trying to figure out how to get this noise into the system because it's so real. It's so real, there's so
much opportunity, and so if I could say anything
before I go into Q&A, I really would love to make
practicality and patience sexy. I really would. Because that actually changes your life. Like, that's actually good. Like, if you're sitting here
and you're really in like some need of finances, I'm
being dead serious with you. You go to Craigslist, it's free. You drive your car, you take the TV. You put it on Facebook, you
sell it for $60, you got $60. It's just, there's so much of it. And like, the people that
listen to me and are like angry and have dirt under their
nails and are ghetto like me that like love it, like love it. They're making like 3,
4, 5, $6,000 a month now. Shit adds up. Shit adds up. And so like, please, think
about all the cool stuff that's out there, learn, by the way, I know that's what's being
pushed down your throat 99.9% of the time, so I'm
not even gonna speak to that. Let me talk to you about
the 0.01% that's not. The Internet is amazing. Like, really crazy amazing, like we can't, we take it so for granted, all of us, including the smart ones in
that have been part of it. We'll look back when, me, we're
all grossly underestimating what's actually happening. The Internet is the
middleman for everything. It will suffocate everything, all of it. Bookstores and taxi
companies, they're just first. Everything. What do you think is gonna
happen to mainstream media? It's all getting suffocated. Suffocated, retail, suffocated. Personal relationships,
suffocated, real estate, suffocated, it's all getting suffocated. Which means you have all the
same access as anybody else. You just do, it's just true. And the people in the middle
that used to just be there because of establishment,
they're gonna have to adjust and actually bring value
or they're finished. And record companies and book publishers and real estate agents,
they don't do a whole bunch once they're established,
that's the truth. They create distribution, but
that's become commoditized. And so you need to understand this truth, because when I look around here, people are gonna live
for 40, 50, 60 years, like, what are you doing,
like we got so much time. I get fearful when people
are in their 40s, you know, and they think like
it's a young man's game. Like, you're gonna be living
here for another 70 years, technology's getting good,
you're gonna be older than you think. You have so much time, and
everybody's in such a rush. They're in a rush because they wanna prove something to somebody. Either their parents or
to the contemporaries. And I'd really like to make it attractive to be like the person
that went like, listen, I think being a tortoise is cool 'cause you get to win the fucking race. You know. Maybe your mom or dad thinks
you're a loser right now, but like, it'd be much
better if you won that debate instead of rushing into some dumb shit to make them think you're
not a loser quicker. And that's all I see over
and over and over again. And I just think that this
conversation needs to be put in the system because look,
there's a big difference between making money and raising money. And we have become way too romanticized about raising capital. Which has a need and I believe
in it, and I'm a VC myself, but everybody's defaulted into it. Now, let me promise you something, knowing how to make money is
always a good skill, always. And I think it's time that we start having a bigger conversation
of teaching people that, but everybody's too fancy. You're too fancy. (audience laughter) It's true. People are fancy. Everybody likes to put founder
in their Instagram profile like it means something. Like if I have basketball
player in my fucking Instagram account, doesn't mean I play in the NBA, motherfucker. (audience laughter) And so that's the problem right now. We've romanticized something,
it's very easy to say, you can't say you're a professional singer because everybody would
call you out, we can see it. You can't say you're a
professional athlete. But you just put that word
entrepreneur and co-founder and you are it, but you're not. You're renting that status. There's a big fucking
difference between being an entrepreneur and being
a successful entrepreneur. And unfortunately, we
have confused the lines and it's putting people
into really bad, bad habits during an easy time. If you're under 31 in this room, you've never been punched
in the mouth professionally. Which to me means you're fucking soft. It's not your fault, you might
be able to handle that punch, but you didn't live through
2000 and 2001 and 2008, definitely not 94. Like, you haven't been
punched in the fucking mouth. And so like, if you've
been doing something for two years right now, three
years and you're not winning and it's this easy, you
better rethink shit now. Yesterday. It means maybe you're number three and you should go find a one. It means maybe you're
dreaming and playing lotto and you need to get practical. Because this has been
the easiest fucking time to make money in the last 100 years. And if you haven't figured
it out, you just might suck. I'm serious, it's true. Like it is cold, but honestly, I'd much rather give it to you cold, give you at least the
thought to think about it 'cause it's fucking true cold, instead of fucking pandering to you, and then when you fucking crash
and you're really hurting, all those people that said
rah rah, you can do it, they're not around. And so please get practical. Please learn how to make money
if you're a business person. And so that's where I'm at. I'd love to do some Q&A,
thanks for having me. (applause) Respect. - [Male Speaker] So everybody
that creates a channel can set their own price. People pay them directly. We split the revenue with them 50/50, and you can use crypto. - Okay. - [Male Speaker] I wanna know,
you were early at YouTube. - [Gary] Yup. - [Male Speaker] You wanna
be early at Reflections. - Probably not, but let's talk it through. So the first thing that's interesting is, what's the revenue share? - [Male Speaker] It's a 50/50
split, so Apple gets 30 cents for every dollar, we split the rest with the content creator. - So the 70 that's left, you mean? - [Male Speaker] Correct,
35 cent to the creator, 35 cent to us. - And so what are you
doing to get my 35 cents? - [Male Speaker] So we're
incentivizing influencers right now to sign up for
the app and be a part of it, and then we will launch
at South by Southwest. - Right, so you think that
you're get seven or eight people that have a little bit of an audience and that they'll be able to then, because they're on it, get
other people to jump on. - [Male Speaker] Yeah, so we
had 100 users in it from LA. Some top influencers and some creators that I can't mention right
now, but they are influencers. - You know, usually the reason,
and I've seen a lot of apps like this, usually the
reason this app scares me is because people underestimate,
people love to say yo, you need to come on my thing,
and I've seen this show over and over, because you're on YouTube or you're on Facebook
or you're on Instagram and they're not paying you shit. You need to come on mine and
that's how we're gonna do it, which is the right argument, right? The problem is, those platforms
have fucking eyeballs. Everybody's a big shot
when Instagram's fucking giving you the algorithm and Facebook is giving you the awareness,
but when you go over to a new platform and now
you're asking your audience for their money and there's
nobody actually there, that model has been a real
difficult model to happen. There's a very big reason why
there is still no platform for content that is
working that way in a world where influencers have
been real now for 13 years. Don't let this current state
of Instagram like trick you. Long before Instagram,
there's been influencers on YouTube now for 12 years,
there's been influencers for a very long time in a lot of places. When you ask people to
pay for content, that shit better be real, 'cause it's
unlimited fucking content out there, and second
of all, everybody thinks that they can move them, but every one of these A listers over the
last five years digitally have done some version of their own app, have been given equity in some new startup that has the same exact
business model as you, and none of them have
popped because when you try to drive people away from a free platform where there's a lot of
other people to a place where you have to play for yours, people get exposed for
not meaning that much. So I think the biggest thing you need to, and then of course, you're
doing the other move that a lot of people do, which is like to bring seven or eight
people that have a look, have an audience, well, maybe that
momentum can carry through. The problem is, when people
start going to a paid place, they start trying to get their audience to come and pay them over
here, which starts making them lose their audience in the free place. And that attention was
the currency they had in the first place, and so they
start losing on both sides. There's a very systematic reason why this model has not worked consistently for the last seven years,
including companies that have had $20 to
$30 million in funding. So I would just say, please do me a favor and like really really go do the homework on the 10 to 15 that have
died over the last four to five years so you don't
make the same mistakes, because I don't believe that
you may not figure it out, I just know it's a lot
harder than people think. 'Cause the theory of Facebook
and YouTube is fucking you is ridiculous, they're the people that put you on in the first place. You're not paying YouTube
and Facebook and Instagram for those hundreds of
millions of potential views, so you gotta think about that. - [Male Speaker] Thanks. - You got it, brother. Hey, man. - What's up? A quick question.
- What's your name? - Eugene. So I'm a serial
entrepreneur, and then I went into corporate America, made
at most a six figure income, and then I just walked
away from that to go back into tech 'caused I
couldn't breathe, basically. And so I just thought
of an ad site company. Basically, what we do is we do marketing for small businesses. We take their customers and
we, hundreds of customers that come in the door every single day, and we turn them into
a marketing resource. So we get them to promote on social media for discounts and free stuff, or you know, drive Yelp reviews and
things of that nature. So it's built, our
entire platform is built on top of the Facebook
Messenger application. - Love it. - And so a lot of the conversation is altered by AI, all of that stuff. - [Gary] Understood. - So I just wanted to
kinda get your viewpoint on that, that process. - I like a lot of what I'm hearing. I like the small business part, I like the practicality of it, like the long tail in that
world has not been exposed, Facebook continues to
think about it every day. You know, it's where
Google makes its money, the long tail is extremely profitable. And a lot of people aren't focusing on it. The only thing I would tell
you that made me kind of think that I would, if I was
an investor or a partner, I'd be like hey. Incentivized actions to help a business usually ultimately break. So just keep in mind the psychology of like what happens when
you're incentivizing an action, the end consumer eventually
understands it's flawed. What Yelp's, you know, anonymous
breaks for the same reason. Eventually, the data, the
content isn't valuable. The fact that everybody
just heard that you have a business that takes
a customer that comes to a local business,
they get a better deal to write a review on Yelp,
has already made them not like Yelp as much anymore. Yelp was cruising until
people started having friends or dating somebody who
worked for a PR agency that wrote fake Yelp reviews. When you game the truth,
you become vulnerable. So I would be very thoughtful about what you're incentivizing
so it doesn't become the vulnerability of what you're building. You stay away from that one vulnerability, every other thing is right. AI Messenger hasn't even
started, it will be a huge space. SMBs' spend on social
media hasn't even started, it will be a huge space. Just gives thoughts to the last part. - [Eugene] Nice, thank you. - You got it. How are you? - [Victoria] Good, how are you? - Good, what's your name? - [Victoria] Good, my
name is Victoria Ekwenuke. I'm the global brand manager at Ebay. - Awesome. - [Victoria] Yeah, and I just
found it very interesting that at your core, buying
and selling is who you are. - Yes. - [Victoria] And you
know, a part of my job, I'm thinking about the future. I was actually spending some time at the Long Now Foundation. And they're building a clock
to last for 2,000 years. And I can't help but think,
you know, we've evolved. So trade, barter, commerce, e-commerce, you talk about Craigslist, you
talk about being practical. How do you think all that's
going to evolve in 2,000 years from now, and what are your
thoughts of the future? - First of all, my first thing that ran through my head is like
Victoria, I love you, but I'm not fucking Nostradamus. (audience laughter) That's the first thing that I thought of. Look, I think, you
know, I think one thing, if you study human behavior,
when you start getting into hundreds and thousands, you start to see circles, right,
so I think technology is getting awfully close to barter. Do you know how much dumb shit everybody in this room right now has in their home? And then somebody else has dumb
shit that that person wants? Like, I'm fascinated by barter
in such an interesting way. Look, we're always gonna
trade, it's always that. You know, back to the
woo-hoo in the audience. Like, crypto's so fun
because it's opened up so many different thoughts in my mind. The fact that you can sell me your home and we can do that in the blockchain, and all the people in the middle that have nothing to do
with anything get cut out, and all those economics go
back to us, energy bills. Like, you start looking at some of this, 30% of the money you're
paying for your energy in your home is for people in
the middle that do nothing. So we're getting closer and
closer to a world of us. Which I think is super fascinating, massively vulnerable for governments. Which is why I think it's
not gonna happen so quickly. If you really understand blockchain, like, China, America and Russia
are not in the business for allowing it to actually succeed. 'Cause then we become one team. You take away currency, bombs
are the only thing left, it gets really kind of, like I don't think people are playing, people
are so obsessed with Bitcoin, they're not even on the
theorem, they're not even on blockchain, like
this is real technology. You're right, I am at my
heart, I mean like, basically, I taught my brother how
to be an entrepreneur by garage selling and selling on Ebay. My favorite hobby in the
world, and I'm not pandering to you right now, you
can go watch all the film for the last 10 years, my favorite hobby, like I can't fucking
wait till March and April so I can start going garage
selling on Saturday morning. I get a bigger high of finding some random little
fucking toy for 50 cents at somebody's house and seeling
it for six dollars on Ebay than I do closing an $11
million deal for Vayner Media. And by the way, it's not even close. And that's why I keep doing it. Back to like what you
had to do, because when you can't breathe, what
are you gonna suffocate? And so like, I think it
will continue to evolve, I think it's getting more
and more interesting. What I'm really interested
in is between your platform, Craigslist, Letgo, Facebook Marketplace, there's arb (arbitrage), right. You don't even have to be,
if you wanna be efficient and actually make money,
and not just do it for fun like I do, you don't need to leave your room and just buy shit in between the five platforms
and find the arbitrage. It's crazy, it's crazy, it's
an amazing time for retail. It's just an amazing time,
you've got big box retailers going out of business, but we can like, if you ask me what is the one thing that everybody in this room
has the best capability to build a $500,000 a
year revenue business that gives them $200,000 take
home, it is absolutely retail on the Internet and it's not even close. And if you really understand how Amazon, Shopify work with those platforms, I mean, the fact that you can basically
create any T-shirt company, use Facebook ads to target
any long-term fan, right. Like, make T-shirts that are like, I grew up in Chicago in the 90s, right. (audience laughter) Run it in front of him, he's like, "I grew up in Chicago in the 90s. "Fuck it, I'll buy it." If you understood how to run Facebook ads, Facebook's so underpriced right now, there's so much inefficiency. That's what I'm speaking to. Facebook ads are so underpriced that I can get in front
of every one of you on the three emotional things
that you give a shit about with a T-shirt and probably
convert 1 out of every 30 times. The ads are so low, the margin
on the T-shirts is so high, I can just run that at scale
and make 200,000 a year no problem, yet people are
trying to solve problems like build these billion dollar platforms, and they're all gonna lose and
they're all gonna be going, like if he doesn't make it practical soon, when the economy decides to do its thing, he's going back to corporate America. He has to make it profitable. Like, it's just the way
it is, so I don't know, I'm really starting to
get passionate about like, let's get practical. Like, I know it's fun
to create the next Waze. I know it's fun to create
the next Instagram. It's just the math's against you. Meanwhile, all this money
is sitting in the system and it just feels, and guess what? Back to like some of the themes,
like nobody's stopping you. There's no boss, there's
nobody who hires you, there's nobody who decides, the
Internet doesn't give a fuck if you're black, white, girl, alien, the Internet's the Internet. That's why it's the best. We will never achieve what
the Internet is gonna do. We will never get good enough,
we're too fucking flawed. Unconscious bias is not gonna
get fixed any time soon. The Internet doesn't give a fuck. So take advantage,
instead of like dwelling or being pumped or whatever the
fuck side on things you are, just take fucking advantage. Attention is like real estate, right. The Internet is so
young, you can still buy beachfront property. We weren't around when
Manhattan was fucking, do you understand a human
being bought an acre in Manhattan for two dollars? You do understand that happened, right? It seems ridiculous, but it happened. Let me just remind you
who the biggest spender of Google AdWords was in
the first five or six years. Amazon. And that's why they are who they are. And right now you have
Instagram influencers, you have Facebook ads, you
have real underpriced attention to do anything you want. You have people that are now
used to buying e-commerce, like there's so much opportunity. I just think we're looking
in the wrong places. You know. You know what it feels like, it feels like there's like dollars like
on the ground, right. And there's just like a huge sign, like a trillion over here. And they're like, and
then just fall in the pit. And there's all this fucking money. (audience laughter) Fuck. Let's keep it going. Hi. How are you? You can give it to the
next guy so he's, hi. - [Female Speaker] Hi, how are you? - Good. - [Female Speaker] I'm a little nervous. - Don't be. - [Female Speaker] 'Cause you
might blast me, I don't wanna end up on YouTube. - I don't wanna blast you. - [Female Speaker] But
basically, my project is called the Black Barrier. Basically, we follow black
people, I'm from Oakland, I'm from Bay all day. - Let's go. - [Female Speaker] And so for
me, it's really passionate because I saw a lot of
black people being here, a lot of gentrification happening. And they wanted to tap
into the black community without being a part of
that gentrifying mechanism that's being here, being in tech, you have the monetary means to buy big, million dollar houses,
and marginalizing people who really need the
support and extra help. - Understood. - [Female Speaker] So for
me, it started out as a joke, like I do Bay Area Bay of
the Day and shout out people. I also shout out a lot of small local black owned businesses. Now, the way I'm scaling
this to monetize it is I've been doing like smaller events to get my name out there, but
we're launching a website. It's gonna be theblackbayarea.org. It will be a larger ticketing
hub, so if you wanna go on and tap into any black event locally, you'll be able to buy the tickets from me instead of like a
Ticketmaster or Eventbrite, you'll just go ahead because
I'll be the word on the street. So I've made those
relationships with the promoters and people that I wanna
reach out to tap into. The second aspect is gonna be e-commerce. Now, I'm not gonna lay it
all out all at one time, I'm just walking you through
the three things (mumbles). The second one is e-commerce
from smaller merchants. So if you're from the Bay, you know this. One thing that you really really want, then I'll have it on the
site, the hottest product that a smaller local vendor will have. I don't know how I'm gonna
monetize it for myself, but I know it's important for my community to have the visibility of
someone going to a ticket hub that reflects of the
community, they can buy items from the community, the stuff
that's hot that you normally, you don't even have to
go to a flea market, you can live in Boston but still buy like (mumbles) barbecue sauce. The third one is gonna be real estate. So I'm looking at black real
estate investors to see, not investors, I'm sorry, realtors to post listings for homes to do roommates for black people who want
a room with black people, but also, no, it's real,
it's real at life though, it's real life-- - Oh, I'm all ears, I'm
laughing at them laughing. - [Female Speaker] I mean,
no, people getting toothpaste and mayonnaise and stuff like that is really really important. I mean, there's mayonnaise
and toothpaste and things like that that people are
having uncomfortable situations, and those cultural
conversations can't take place till where they can feel comfortable. So they are looking for someone who can understand their culture and grew up where they're from. - I agree, take a step back. How long have you been
doing the media content? - [Female Speaker] I'm rubbing
up on my seventh month. So far, I have had about
6,000 followers on Instagram. I have DeVon Franklin, I have Iamsu, I have local notoriety from
people just trying to get their word out there about their business, because a lot of Instagrams
and a lot of things that are showcasing black
people are showcasing someone in the front saying hey, this is my brand. I'm not doing all that, I'm
putting the people first. And so that's my goal,
it's to push their product, push them, but also figure
out how I could stay afloat. Because right now, I do it from the heart, I don't do it to like, I don't bet on this and put my life on it. - I totally understand. - [Female Speaker] But I'm working in it like once it might've
worked for me, you know? - So there's a lot of themes
here that excite me and a couple of things I
think you should think. So first of all, my biggest belief period right now is that everybody in this room and their businesses are a
media company first, comma, then you do something, everybody. Like, every single business
you've got in here, no matter what you tell me you do. My man over there with the video platform, he's a media company first,
comma, he's a business. That's how I actually think
the next 20 years play out. That there will not be a
single business, Ebay tomorrow needs to hire their
editor in chief for real, not branded content, not the way most big corporations
do it, all the way down to the smallest business idea here. Media company first, comma,
then you do what you do. That all the upsides
there because the media's so underpriced and
there's so much awareness. You've naturally intuitively done that. You've started with media. Now you're starting to see
there's something popping a little bit, and you're
like wait a minute, I'm gonna make some money
on this thing, right. Not that you started there,
'cause I'm listening to you, not that you started
there, you're debating whether you're gonna do that, right? You're debating that. You're not sure, maybe you want to, you're still early, it's seven months. You know, let met tell
you a couple of things. Number one, it's very
easy to start allowing, no matter what, too much of the commerce, the reason it's working
is 'cause it's pure. The church and state that you have to do between this content and
what business you want is extremely important. It's why I work, I put out so much content in the business world for free, and I have no interest
in any of your money. I come out with a book, but I'm asking, I'm not interested, there's
no top of the funnel, retargeting you, I don't
hold something back and be like now you
gotta pay, motherfucker. You know, like-- (audience laughter) I'm putting it all out and letting the karma of the relationship work out, and businesses struggle with that. So much so that I don't
monetize my personality, I've always run other
businesses, the wine store and an agency that tries to
get the big companies, not the audience that I speak to. I think a couple of things, number one, if I could convince you to not be thinking about this right now
for another two years, it would be the first
thing I would tell you. Now, you may hate your job or
how you pay for your living, and so you wanna get over to
this as quickly as possible, but I can tell you right
now, if you can wait longer and not spend any mind time on that, but triple down on what you
do well, so for example, download Anchor and start interviewing these local businesses and
start your podcast tomorrow, become a media company. Take that podcast transcription
and use Mechanical Turk or some outsource people or an intern, and now you've got a Medium
post or a LinkedIn post, now you've got written content, go ahead. (background noise drowns
out female speaker) Mic, mic. It's all right. - [Female Speaker] Oh, so
I've already started that. So because I'm not a media person, I come from more of a non-profit side, and so I have someone,
we have people writing from the community on our
Medium blog, people look at it. We also do a lot of, I'm
hosting a free photography show for people in the community. Like, I do a lot of things,
so it's just the fact that I think I wanna hone on on ticketing because every time I hear
people, when they come to me, especially black people, they are like, what's popping tonight, what's going on? I just want a single website
for the ticketing portion to be really important, because I think that's a motivating factor for people to look into the multimedia. - Two things. It's so early, you're seven months in. And have you debated
bringing in a partner? - [Female Speaker] Yeah,
but I got trust issues. (audience laughter) - Yeah. But let me tell you something
about your trust issues. If you asked me, and I'm
listening and we're vibing right now, if you asked me to put my children's health on the line of can you run a successful
ticketing Internet company, I would bet against you. And so like, I'm being serious with you. I think you clearly have
some, like you told me about your background, which
is where your passion is. You're clearly hitting a chord,
you're only seven months in. (background noise drowns
out female speaker) That's exactly right, that's what happens when you're onto something,
and so it's moving faster than you expected, you're onto something, which now gets you to
start going into a place that you're not as comfortable with. Like, you're spitting
out ticketing and retail, and I heard you, not all right away. But ticketing and retail,
and then you know, what was the third thing you were saying? - [Female Speaker] Real estate. - Real estate. I get it, I get it. But it was a hot fucking mess. Like, your thought process
there was a hot mess. Like I'm telling you, it's
a hot fucking piece of shit. But your first part is
so off the charts right that you need to fucking
start interviewing people you do trust and figure
out to bring somebody who actually knows how to do that part. The biggest problem is,
people wanna be everything, like wanna do everything, like we aren't. Like, I couldn't get any entry level job in my own company 'cause I
couldn't pass the written test or the math test for the
two disciplines, I couldn't. I own the whole fucking thing,
and the straight facts are, I could not work for my own
company in an entry level job. That is the truth. That's not me making a joke,
that is the fucking facts. There are a lot of people that know how to build simple tech, first of all, they wouldn't build tech,
they would rent the tech of the ticketing platforms
and the e-com platforms and the real estate platforms
and pay nothing for it. They wouldn't get ripped
off by somebody to build it. I get it, but like, you
need to do what you do. And what you do is you have a pulse on what the fuck is actually happening and you know how to story tell it. That's where all the leverage is. If you had six million people
on that Instagram account, you could sell a lot of T-shirts, a lot of tickets, have
a lot of classifieds. You're only seven months in,
this thing has just started. Back to the thing I talked about, you're a young, young, young woman. You may look at some 19 year
old, I saw some 19 year old here earlier, I just went
like fuck, that's young. You know, but-- (audience laughter) You are that young. You are that young for you to do something that makes you happy for
the rest of your life. If you go into a coma for six years and just focus on what you do, you have a far better
chance of being successful than trying to decide that you're gonna be the one navigating the business aspects, especially 'cause I heard you spit the way you thought about
it, and you're clearly not very deep into your business mindset yet, which you may later on do. But like, I think you
need to either do one, I'm trying to give you really good advice, you need to do one of two things. Bring in a business partner
to drive the business parts so you can focus on the
content, or stay focused on the content for another 15
months and revisit it later. Those are the options, in my opinion. I could be wrong, but
that's what I'm feeling. (background noise drowns
out female speaker) I get it. Patience is a strength and
people think it's a weakness. Cool. You're welcome. One more. - [Male Speaker] All right, I'm
gonna shoot, if that's okay. Since you're a media mogul-- - I'll get YouTube, don't worry. - [Male Speaker] Since you're
a media mogul who's built such a successful company
and you're looking back at it from perspective of,
you know, where you are now, what first steps would you take in terms of creating a media
entity or a media company, you know, saying you had zero followers or zero funding or really scrapping it out to create a content-driven business? - I think the best advice
for a content-driven business is to scratch your own itch. - [Male Speaker] Scratch your what? - Own itch. Like, make the media company, the blog, the Instagram account
that you wish existed. Because you know it. You know it, you're one of it. Like, we're on, guys, do you know how big forums still are on the Internet? Like, 1994 technology,
because little groups, little neighborhoods,
that's why the young woman who was just talking who's
going to the bathroom, I hope, right now, it's like,
that's why it worked, 'cause it was niche, it was niche. I'm telling you, man, people
try to boil the ocean. Go narrow. You know, like go narrow. Like Barstool's winning
'cause that team made what they wanted, they wanted irreverence, they wanted mixed
culture, a different way. That's the only way to break through, 'cause you have to understand,
it's an incredible time, but all of us can do it. So it's a supply and demand issue, right. It's an incredible time,
it's an incredible time. But everybody can start one. So it's easy and hard. Which means to me go deep as fuck. Like, go very narrow to
what you know, right. And go deep deep deep into that, I think that's the place to go, and then use the modern places
where there's attention. You start a media company today, you should be voice and social first, not website and email first. 'Cause it's underpriced attention. You can take that attention from Instagram or a podcast and then start a website. I bought PureWow, a
women's lifestyle business, back a year ago. And I'm gonna launch a men's one, and it's all gonna be launched
on the back of my audience. And I built that audience
in social and voice, and I'm gonna penetrate it to a website and other things as well. And so I have it already. And so we all have that
too, we have what we have. We have our lives, our
passions, our interests. I want people to go narrow, real narrow, there's a real long tail
business, really, there is. I mean, really, there is. Cool. And I wanted to do this guy. - [Male Speaker] Thanks so much, Gary. Actually, I have to thank
you for all the content, because I actually, I put it
on the streets, and it works. - Thank you. - [Male Speaker] My problem
is, I'm a doctor, and-- - Golfer. - [Male Speaker] Yeah, for sure. I'm a plastic surgeon,
and pretty good as well. Actually, (mumbles) and I
have one startup as the CEO. And the problem is, about
following your advice, we put everything on the streets,
we documented everything. And we got a good problem. Because we have audience we
built, audience for my patients, and we have audience
now for entrepreneurs, guys that wanna make the same path. And now the problem is
when people Google my name, they can find both. And maybe some patients,
they like say hey, I don't wanna make a
nose job with this guy, because they don't have
full time on just it. And on the other side-- - You're looking at it wrong. You know what I mean? Well, because you're
looking at the downside, not the upside. - [Male Speaker] Yeah,
it's what I'm asking you. Because it's a little
bit new for me, you know. Just all this audience,
and now people are making, well, sending emails in
and direct on Instagram, I wanna build up a
business in a new field, and an extra, oh, I'm (mumbles), well-- - It's super interesting to
have you here, because I think one of the things I'm
trying to figure out is the people that are taking
my advice are winning. - [Male Speaker] Yeah, for sure. People, I can say, it
works, for sure, this works. Yeah, you can buy his books. Yeah, it works. - What happens is they
get into the crossroads that happens to you, which
is you're trying to do it to build your chiropractor
company, your yogurt shop, your surfing knowledge,
and then what's happening is you're getting
inundated now with people who want you to teach them
how to do that for theirs. - [Male Speaker] For sure. - Look, I think that's, to your point, you said it very quickly,
it's a good problem. I would definitely tell
you not to worry about it. Right, like I have so much, if you look at my Instagram content, right. - [Male Speaker] Every day. - Thank you. If you, but, thank you, but let me-- - [Male Speaker] What can I say? - If you look at my latest post, my latest post on Instagram
is me hanging out with Gunna, the up and coming rapper from Atlanta. That is not necessarily what Chase Bank and ABI and SAP, my clients
want to see from me. But the truth is the truth. - [Male Speaker] Yeah. - I run the best agency, and
so they're gonna hire you. If you're great at your
craft, there's nobody who's not gonna come to
you because you're teaching other people how to build a business, it will all be net positive. Don't allow yourself to
look at the negatives or perceived negatives or issues. For every person you lose that says, "He's not spending all his time on that," you're gonna get three others because you are spending all your time on that. - [Male Speaker] Good for them. Give a shit for them (mumbles). - Life's a net game. Do you understand? Too many people are dwelling
on what they're losing without understanding that those
same tactics make them win. When I started speaking
in 2009, I cursed a lot. And I didn't wear suits. And you know, there's a
lot of youngsters in here, this may seem foreign, but that was not super fucking acceptable
just eight years ago. And I would get emails,
then I got a speaking agent, and I would get so many emails. Literally, CAA, my agency,
would call me once a month and say, "If you stop
cursing, we can get you "four more speaking gigs a month easy." And I would reply consistently for three years, motherfucker-- (audience laughter) If I stop cursing, nobody's
gonna listen to me speak 'cause I'm not gonna be me. Right. And guess what, I won
because the world changed. When you're yourself and
you're true, that's why, Jason, I really loved what
you were talking about, could you imagine how much
the world has evolved? Let me leave you with this as
you're thinking about stuff. If you told a parent 12 years ago that, when they have a 15 year old daughter, they would rather than
15 year old daughter go into a strange man's
car four times a day instead of driving their own car, they would've laughed you out of the room. (audience laughter) But if you live in a rich
rich rich neighborhood and your daughter turns
16, the big new gift is not a new Benzo, the big
new gift is unlimited Uber. (audience laughter) Right? It's true, could you imagine
if I had a video 15 years ago and say one day in 15 years, all of you are gonna send your 15 year old daughters into 43 year old weird
Benz cards 24 hours a day? (audience laughter) They would've laughed me out of the room. Norms change. Norms change. To be very honest, this, you know, especially when I talk to
my friends and minorities, like urban culture is
America's culture now. Like, when Merbo and I talk about, like it's just the truth. It's just the truth. Go show me anything that's popular, I'll show you where it started, Atlanta. You know, like it's just, it's so basic. It's so basic. Literally, if you told me
my mission as a brander over the next seven years was
to get 15 year old white women to buy something, I would
start with rappers in Atlanta. Because that's how it ends up there. And so you can run away from things, you can like look at
things, I just think that, no matter where you are or
what you are, look at hip-hop, I'm 42, I grew up with hip-hop where guys faked how hard they
worked 'cause their aunt lived in Oakland and they
visited her once a year. And they said they were from Oakland, but they weren't fucking too sure. You know what I mean? They were fucking bullshit,
but in 1992, 93, 94, people remember it, you had
to pretend you were hard 'cause there was only one move. Lil Yachty would've got
his face beaten in 1992. (audience laughter) Yeah, right? But if you stayed true,
it would've come to you, because now everything is acceptable. And so everybody is
deviating into something. I say put your fucking flag on the ground of who the fuck you are,
I have a funny feeling it's gonna come to you,
especially with the way the world's working now. Because what all this Harvey
Weinstein and Matt Lauer stuff is it's all very simple. It's over. The Internet, there is no hiding, everything will be exposed. Do you know how great the
world is gonna be in 50 years? Let me make you optimistic. We're taking one step
backwards, you know why? We're facing shit we need to face. We've been faking the truth. And so we're taking one big step back and we're dealing with it. It's like, it's gonna be
a painful fucking decade, it hasn't even started. We're gonna be dealing with a lot of shit, but let me tell you what our grandkids are gonna be living through. They're gonna be living through a world, because of the full
exposure of who we are, where everybody realizes
everybody's got fucked up shit. There's not a person in
here, not one person in here that doesn't do something that we consider right now a real flaw. It's just the truth, it's just the truth. We as a collective have to
go through the pain of that, but when we get on the other side, like when we're all old
and we're looking at this, remember this talk. That's pretty egotistical,
but try to like-- (audience laughter) Try to build on this yourself
and forget where it started. Let me go that route. We're gonna be happy 'cause
it's gonna be different. It's gonna be real real different
because everybody's gonna start accepting people's shortcomings. And we're gonna have very
different conversations, and things like marriage
and things like money and sex and race, like we're gonna have some real conversations
over the next 20-30 years, get ready 'cause this isn't gonna stop. And we are just not the
animals that we wish we were. And we just have to face that, own it, go through that painful process. But we will be much better
people in 50 years from today because of this time during this era, because the Internet is exposing us, and I'm very grateful for that. I'm happy 'cause the truth should win, but you've gotta go through some shit to get to the other side, and
that's what we're gonna do. That's cool on a holistic
level that I'm sure a lot of people, looking around here,
are very passionate about. On your own personal level,
do that with yourself as a person and as an
entrepreneur, and shit will go in a totally different
place, I promise you. Own your shortcomings, own your strengths, surround yourself with the other shit, and stuff starts to pop. Thank you for having me. (applause, cheering) (pop music) (calm music)
