0:00

When you are 90, you rarely talk about what

0:02

you did. You always talk about what you didn't do.

0:04

If you are lucky enough and if you want to

0:06

get inspired to spend just a little time with a

0:08

75 to 90 year old that

0:11

you don't know and you listen, what she

0:13

or he will talk about is what they

0:15

didn't do. I should have married Ricky Thompson.

0:17

I wish I did something different in my career.

0:19

The thing that impacted me as a workaholic and

0:21

someone who's really ambitious, I wish I spent more

0:24

time with my kids. That hit me hard. You

0:26

were not born for a long time and you're

0:28

gonna be dead forever. The

0:31

moments we have here are small.

0:34

And you're gonna be a great

0:36

example. The

0:39

art skills were the things that I focused

0:41

on and I think our society has focused

0:43

on for a very, very, very long time.

0:46

The IQ of it all, the grades of

0:48

it all. In athletics, the

0:50

speed, the strength, the math, which

0:52

is amazing because it's a major part of our world.

0:55

And for me, that was work ethic.

0:57

Like, you know, since I was 14,

1:01

spending 12 hours a day in my dad's liquor

1:03

store in Springfield, New Jersey, not too far away,

1:05

was just how I grew up. I worked every

1:07

weekend. I worked every summer vacation.

1:09

My parents were gangsters. I don't know

1:11

if you guys remember, but the last

1:13

day of school, starting around middle

1:16

school, was a half a day. My

1:18

parents used to pick me up at that half a day and bring

1:21

me to the store so I could work the end of the second

1:23

day. They didn't even give me that half day. It

1:26

was work ethic. And I always understood that that

1:28

would do something. But as I'd gone through the

1:30

journeys of my career, other

1:32

things started to become obvious to me, which

1:35

was these things are going well for me.

1:38

And yes, I'm working hard, and yes, I'm

1:40

doing the thing, but I

1:42

have a feeling a lot of this is

1:44

coming from the things that I was also

1:46

gifted, predominantly for my mother, which are the

1:48

soft skills. The things that

1:50

we did not grow. How many people here by show

1:52

of hands are over 40?

1:55

Raise your hands. Amazing. The majority

1:57

of the room. Let's clap it up for some of

1:59

the youngsters in here. So

2:04

what some of the youngsters in

2:06

here definitely don't realize is for the

2:08

over 40 year old crowd in here, we

2:11

didn't talk about empathy. We

2:14

didn't talk about some of these

2:16

softer traits in hard

2:18

places. We

2:20

didn't talk about that in business. This

2:25

guy's finish last was

2:27

a thing that a lot of us grew up

2:30

hearing and something in the last 15 years clicked

2:32

for me where I just didn't believe that to

2:34

be true. I didn't believe it to

2:36

be true because I'm nice and

2:38

I'm going to finish first. And

2:41

I would watch others and I started

2:43

realizing actually a lot of people that

2:45

had ridiculous talent who

2:47

weren't nice were actually losing a lot more than

2:49

they could be winning. It

2:51

seemingly looked good. Back to

2:53

being a big sports fan, they were winning at

2:55

halftime. They were up

2:57

21-0 because they had that edge, those sharp

3:00

elbows. But something became very clear to me

3:02

that there was a lot of other parts

3:04

of the formula to get to

3:06

the highest level and more importantly, and

3:09

I know this matters to a lot of people in this room, if

3:11

you were going to lead, if

3:13

you were going to be a leader and obviously there's

3:16

leadership in business. I'm a CEO of

3:18

2000 employees. Obviously

3:20

there's leadership in services,

3:24

whether it's military, police, fire, that's

3:26

obvious. But every

3:28

person in here will taste

3:31

leadership in their entire lives.

3:33

It will happen. You're either an

3:35

older sibling. I

3:37

would argue that most of my

3:39

leadership was ingrained in to me

3:41

by being the oldest of

3:43

two siblings, especially growing up in

3:46

the 80s in an immigrant household. It was

3:48

different. You took care of them. Back

3:50

to the youngsters not knowing, this is crazy, I'm about to

3:52

tell you something, back in the day, we used to

3:54

go outside and play. And

3:57

our parents had no idea what we were doing. By

4:00

the time I was seven in

4:02

Edison, New Jersey, I was

4:04

outside nine hours a day and my mom had no

4:06

clue what I was doing. And

4:08

what I knew at seven was I

4:11

had to take care of my four year old

4:13

sister and you start learning those things. But

4:15

then even if you don't have the serendipity

4:17

of being the oldest, you will

4:19

lead because many people will

4:21

taste the beauty of being a parent. You

4:24

wanna talk about real leadership? You wanna talk about

4:26

real fear? You want to

4:28

lead because that person

4:31

that you gave birth to is the person you love more

4:33

than anybody in the world. And so as

4:35

I started looking at the world over

4:37

the last 15 years, I like to

4:39

think, I like to observe, I like watching people.

4:42

It started getting obvious to me that these

4:44

softer skills mattered. But here's

4:47

where some of these skills kick in. I was giving a

4:49

lot of thought to like, what do I wanna talk about? Couple

4:51

things. In the framework of the room we're

4:53

in, one thing I think a lot about

4:55

is empathy, right? Empathy's a funny

4:57

word. It wasn't really talked about, like I

4:59

said earlier, for just not a we've

5:01

been a word I heard in the first 20, 25 years of

5:03

my life. It's

5:05

starting to pop up a little bit here, but I

5:08

think it's very much misunderstood. You

5:10

know, empathy oftentimes

5:12

comes from a place of like

5:14

feeling compassion for the other person, having

5:16

feelings for them. And I think it makes

5:18

sense when you're a leader to have empathy

5:20

for the people that you are managing or

5:22

leading. But I think for

5:24

happiness, for lack of anxiety,

5:27

for joy, for the journey

5:29

that I want for every person in this room, one

5:32

of the things to really think about is having

5:34

empathy for the person above you. One

5:37

of the things that I've seen bring

5:39

enormous happiness to many

5:41

people in my organizations, the companies I

5:44

invest in, the companies that I

5:46

run, and then just organizations,

5:48

sports organizations, service organizations,

5:50

is when you in this room let's

5:54

just do a for instance. When

5:56

you're working on something as an engineer here,

5:59

right? Or if this is. on something and you're working

6:01

on it for seven years and

6:03

you've got it finally working in real life, not

6:05

in the lab. And

6:08

then on a one hour's notice, on

6:10

a one second's notice, we're

6:13

shifting strategy and you're no

6:15

longer doing that. There's enormous

6:17

frustration. You're in

6:20

the trenches and somebody in a

6:22

board room is making a call and

6:24

you're frustrated. I

6:26

think about that a lot. Why? Because

6:29

I think that's the exact moment where

6:31

if the people in this room deployed

6:33

empathy to the people above them,

6:36

if you think about being frustrated with your manager or your

6:38

leader, or their leader's leader, or

6:41

their leader's leader, I don't know if you've

6:43

heard, but everyone's got a boss. And

6:47

the guys in this room really know what I'm talking about. Everybody's

6:50

got a boss. No

6:52

matter what your position looks like. And

6:54

so I think about, when

6:57

I come to a talk, whether

7:00

the room is this way, that way,

7:02

left, right, business, startup, entrepreneurs, high schools,

7:04

military, it's all the same thing for me

7:06

up here right this second. Can I say

7:08

one thing? That one person

7:10

in this room has not heard in that

7:13

way that makes them actually act

7:15

on it to make their life better, period.

7:18

I know the framework

7:21

of a lot of people's professional careers in

7:23

this room. And I know

7:26

that disproportionately, the quickest way for them

7:28

to get happier day to day is

7:31

to actually put them in the boots, or

7:33

the shoes, or the sneakers of

7:36

the people above them, parallel to

7:38

them, and below them. Below

7:40

them comes natural. Below

7:42

them comes natural, there's a sense of like,

7:45

okay, this person's reporting to, that comes natural.

7:47

Not everyone's good at it, we all know

7:49

that. But that comes a little more

7:51

natural. But above

7:53

you, or six

7:55

rungs above you, that

7:57

comes hard, because you think they should

7:59

be. working for you, which is true. One

8:02

of the reasons everything has worked for

8:04

me professionally is every morning I wake

8:06

up, including today, on a groggy day on

8:08

the East Coast, I wake

8:10

up and say, I work for those 2,000 people

8:13

globally, not the other way around. True

8:16

leadership is only based on that.

8:19

Humility. I don't care how many

8:21

things you have on your thing. Do

8:24

you have the humility to know that

8:26

you work for them? Easy to do

8:28

it for the flag, because it's

8:30

theory. It's not a human being. When

8:33

it becomes human, it gets harder. It

8:35

becomes more real, right? All

8:37

of a sudden you have to care on

8:39

an individual basis, and you all know this.

8:42

Every person left, right, below you

8:44

is different. The

8:47

ones that come easy to you that are like you is easy.

8:51

But the accountability to deal with

8:53

what's hard is the

8:55

game leadership. I

8:57

see this all the time. There's a lot of people who've gone through the

9:00

journey of doing the craft, and

9:02

then elevating up, and then having

9:04

to manage the people doing the craft.

9:07

That's a tough transition for a lot of people. It's

9:10

a lot harder. A lot of

9:13

people think, I didn't sign up for this. For

9:16

example, in my industry, I have all these

9:18

people that run media. MIT

9:20

math kids out to Wazoo. They

9:24

love their headphones and their work.

9:27

They come to me when they get promoted, like, wait a minute, I

9:30

don't wanna talk to Sally about her being sad. I'm

9:35

here to run media. I'm like, you're

9:37

not. You're not.

9:40

And so I get the

9:43

transition of getting into feelings. And

9:46

boy, do we love to judge once we become

9:48

a leader. Back to the over

9:51

40 year old crowd, versus some of the people under 25.

9:55

We love to judge Gen Z. I

10:00

just wanna remind all the people, my favorite thing going on,

10:02

side track real quick, I'll just go over here for a

10:04

second. My number one favorite conversation

10:06

in the world right now is

10:08

Boomers, all

10:11

frustrated and angry at Gen Z, when

10:14

they're the ones who created them. I

10:19

had somebody complaining hard the other day about his son, I'm

10:22

like, maybe if you didn't give him an eighth place

10:24

trophy, he wouldn't be entitled. Yeah,

10:29

I really hate eighth place trophies. I

10:33

don't even like the silver and bronze medal, I think you

10:35

should leave that shit when they give it to you right

10:37

on the desk. But

10:39

that's another story for another day. Listen,

10:43

if you leave here with anything

10:45

this morning, and I wanna do a lot of Q&A,

10:47

all yap here, but I really wanna get into the

10:49

details of these philosophies, these are

10:51

not just words to me, accountability. To

10:54

me, I'm not here to

10:56

do anything other than to make somebody happier

10:59

for the rest of their lives. I can

11:01

promise you right now, the fastest way for

11:03

every person here, and I'm talking whether you're

11:05

dealing with something professionally right now, whether

11:08

you're dealing something with a loved one, leisure,

11:11

friendship, life, life. The

11:14

quickest way to be dramatically

11:16

happier the second you walk out of here, is

11:19

to fall in love with accountability. This

11:22

is a very interesting framework. Do

11:25

you need me? Accountability,

11:28

I'm ready. This

11:32

is really interesting, and I'm gonna say this slow,

11:34

because I get worried, because sometimes this screws people

11:36

up and actually makes them upset

11:38

with themselves. This is very

11:40

subtle, I'm gonna go. Accountability.

11:43

If somehow you can get into a place

11:45

in your mind, where

11:47

you realize everything you're unhappy about,

11:50

right this second, is 100% your fault. Without,

11:55

without you then judging and beating yourself

11:57

up and thinking you suck and having.

12:00

insecurity, let me say it again, if

12:02

you can wake up tomorrow, and

12:04

whether you're upset in your marriage,

12:07

if you're disappointed with your child, if

12:10

you're not happy with your career, if

12:12

you don't have enough money, like whatever

12:15

it is, if you can

12:17

go 100% into accountability, you

12:21

will be stunned how quickly

12:23

your life will turn around. The

12:25

trick that I'm trying to figure

12:27

out how to communicate better is what

12:29

I've noticed when I've been on this rant for

12:31

a decade of like everything that you're upset about

12:33

is 100% your fault, I didn't realize

12:36

how many people were so deeply insecure that

12:38

that path puts them into a place where they're

12:40

beating themselves up. The reason the

12:42

world right now is pointing so many

12:44

fingers is because everyone's judging themselves.

12:48

You wanna really get going? Give

12:50

yourself a break. Love

12:52

yourself a little bit more. Be

12:54

a little bit nicer to yourself. There's not

12:56

a human in this room, a

12:59

human in this room that hasn't made

13:01

a ton of mistakes. We

13:04

have so demonized a misstep or

13:06

a loss. Back to eighth place trophies exist

13:09

because we didn't want our kids to cry

13:11

when they lost. The only

13:13

reason I'm standing here is I cried after

13:15

I lost my entire childhood. We

13:18

have to be nicer to ourselves, but I'm

13:20

telling you right now, if

13:22

you can get out of the finger pointing business

13:25

and get into the thumbs business, your

13:27

life will be dramatically better. Like

13:29

dramatically, because here's the problem.

13:32

The reason everyone's on angst, the

13:34

reason everyone's so challenged is

13:37

because when you point fingers, you've

13:39

just admitted that you're not in control. Period.

13:45

That accountability is

13:47

such a powerful drug and it is something

13:49

we have lost our way with. We

13:52

just have. We need to get there.

13:54

You can't tell me anything. You

13:57

can come up here and fully explain why

13:59

it's not working. and I can look you dead right

14:01

here with your current job and I can say, quit. You

14:04

could. You are

14:06

in control. Unlike where I

14:08

and my parents were born, you're born in a place

14:11

where you can quit and you can change

14:13

your career. You can move. You can do

14:15

anything. And the second you start understanding

14:17

that truth is the second everything opens

14:19

up. Another

14:21

thing I've been thinking a ton about which

14:24

is how do you balance these traits

14:26

that were in the book? How do you balance

14:29

confidence with humility?

14:33

Really hard. Similar to what I just talked about

14:35

which is like be fully accountable but don't

14:37

beat yourself up. Another

14:39

thing to think about is the power

14:42

of humility. There's a lot of people in

14:44

here winning and rising. Unfortunately

14:47

as people win and rise, they

14:49

sometimes get a little high on their own supply. They

14:53

get a little bit frothy and

14:55

think they're a little special. They

14:57

start to lose, you like that one? There's

15:00

some people feeling it out there. I

15:02

like how some people are looking at each other. There's

15:06

such a danger in losing your relationship

15:09

with humility. There's such a

15:11

danger. I'm a very public figure. I have

15:14

tens and tens and tens of millions of followers

15:16

across social media. Every time I post,

15:19

I get unlimited people that

15:21

leave a comment of a

15:24

goat emoji that I'm the

15:26

greatest of all time. I

15:28

also have many people that say, you suck,

15:30

you're a charlatan, who do you think you

15:32

are? Every post. Lot

15:35

of my friends who've gone through this journey with

15:38

me, other people who've got a lot of awareness

15:40

out there, many people quit along the way. They

15:43

can't deal with the negative comments. Many

15:45

of you don't post anymore because you just don't

15:47

want to deal with negativity. Many

15:49

of you have not started posting about some of

15:51

your interest. The devils who play my Rangers in

15:53

this playoff series, they caught that logo.

15:57

Many of you have not even started your journey.

16:01

because you're scared of the judgment. One

16:03

of the reasons that I can continue to

16:05

do what I do publicly is

16:07

because every time someone says nice things to me,

16:09

I can't hear them. Every

16:11

goad emoji I get does not register. What's

16:15

important about that is if you can't hear

16:17

them cheering, you can't

16:19

hear them booing. Too

16:21

many of us, right in

16:23

this room right now, in our personal and professional

16:25

lives, are doing

16:28

things and acting predominantly

16:30

based on the opinions of

16:32

others. The amount of human

16:35

beings that are living life

16:37

today, worrying about

16:39

the opinions of people that they

16:41

don't even like is

16:43

devastating. And by the

16:45

way, those people that you don't like aren't

16:48

anonymous people in the comments. They're

16:51

your coworkers, they're your siblings,

16:54

they're your parents. You

16:57

know it's hard, it's the truth. The

17:00

reality is this though, I

17:02

think a lot about this every day. You

17:05

were not born for a long time. And

17:09

you're gonna be dead forever. The

17:13

moments we have here are small.

17:17

One thing I would recommend everyone in this room

17:19

to do as an action is to

17:22

spend a lot more time with 80 to

17:24

100 year olds that are not your family members.

17:27

If anyone here can find the

17:29

luxury of maybe living close to a retirement

17:32

home and providing some service to

17:34

it, maybe you have a neighbor, for

17:37

me, given how busy I am, I usually do

17:39

it when I'm traveling. If I get

17:41

lucky enough to sit with somebody or at the

17:43

gate at the airport if I find a good

17:46

90 year old that looks like Yoda, I'll roll

17:48

up on him. Start

17:50

just talking. The

17:54

thing all of you would realize

17:56

if you, I mean this is really important. People

17:59

love talking about like. living a fulfilled life, service, this

18:01

and that. There's so many little things we can do.

18:04

Like if you close your eyes right now and think about,

18:06

do I have a neighbor 80 to 100, 75 to 100 next door? The

18:10

answer is many do. Like just

18:13

doing something nice, like bringing something over, flowers,

18:15

cake, you know, stuff that we used to

18:17

do. You know, but you're

18:19

doing it for selfish reasons. Yeah,

18:21

you're being selfless and doing something kind and I

18:23

promise you, and I think this

18:25

will land with a lot of people, boy, there's an

18:27

83 year old that's living by

18:29

themselves in an apartment complex, really

18:32

appreciate someone coming over, ringing the doorbell and

18:34

saying what's up and giving them, you know,

18:36

some flowers or a cake or something, but

18:38

you're not being selfless. You're

18:41

being selfless and selfish. What

18:43

you're looking to do is build that relationship because

18:45

let me promise you one thing. If

18:48

you start spending your time with somebody

18:50

that's actually lived life, 85, 87, and

18:53

is not carrying the baggage because

18:56

they want to actually like razz your mother or

18:59

tell you what your dad's doing wrong. You know,

19:01

that grandparent life is a little different. There's

19:03

baggage there. You need a neutral third

19:06

party 86 year old in your life. You're

19:10

gonna learn something real powerful that I'd like to

19:12

talk about right now, which is I live

19:15

my life every day completely

19:17

based on what I've learned from them, which is the

19:19

following. When you are 90, you

19:21

rarely talk about what you did. You

19:24

always talk about what you didn't do. If

19:27

you are lucky enough and if you want to

19:29

get inspired to spend just a little time, six

19:32

hours, 10 hours this year, with

19:35

a 75 to 90 year old

19:37

that you don't know and

19:40

you listen and you talk, what

19:42

she or he will talk about is what they

19:45

didn't do. I

19:47

should have married Ricky Thompson. I

19:52

wish, and this is a big one, I

19:54

wish I did something different in my career. You

19:57

know, the thing that impacted me as a workaholic and

19:59

someone who's, really ambitious, I wish I

20:01

spent more time with my kids. That hit

20:03

me hard when I started doing this in my 30s,

20:07

40s, that was like, I'm like, that's the one, that's

20:09

my danger. That's my

20:11

danger and it shifted me. It

20:13

shifted me. So I ask

20:15

all of you, whether you're a youngster, whether

20:18

you're in the first quarter or entering the fourth quarter

20:20

or anywhere in between, it's

20:22

never too late to get better. It's

20:25

never too late to fight for more happiness,

20:27

ever. It's never a

20:29

bad idea. I watch so many of my

20:31

friends at 50, 60, just

20:33

wrapping it up, they're like, Gary, all the stuff you talk

20:36

about, I'm done. I'm like, done what? You're

20:39

gonna live to 90. You're 56, you're

20:41

gonna live another 40 years. You're done?

20:45

Should never be done. Should never be done

20:47

to not regret. You should never be done to be

20:50

happier. Something I wanna touch

20:52

on that I knew I wanted to touch on here. It

20:55

was my biggest emotional vulnerability,

20:57

professionally, which was candor. A

21:00

lot of you here, one of the

21:02

biggest thing in this environment that people struggle with

21:04

is candor. Some of you, like

21:07

me, don't wanna deliver candor because

21:09

you don't wanna hurt people's feelings. You're

21:11

actually non-confrontational. You really love the

21:13

person that you're about to talk to that

21:15

stinks at something and you don't wanna say

21:17

it. And you're like, I used

21:19

to dance like a ballerina. I

21:22

would dance. I had something to say to somebody.

21:26

for 45 minutes like I'm Fred Astaire.

21:28

I would dance, dance

21:31

and never get to it. And

21:33

what did that do for me over 20 years? It

21:35

led to me having very awkward firings and all sorts.

21:37

When I think back to any person, the tens of

21:40

thousands of people that have worked for me for the

21:42

last 30 years, the only ones,

21:44

the only ones, the 100

21:46

people that most don't like me,

21:49

all same issue. I wasn't able

21:51

to be candorous with them and

21:53

I manipulated it in my own mind of like, they

21:55

should be happy that they're still here because they stink

21:58

and how does Johnny not see that he stinks? I

22:00

shouldn't have to tell him, I should have told him. Because

22:04

I didn't do any favors. The problem

22:06

was my whole childhood and my whole

22:08

early upbringing, anybody that was

22:10

in my life that was good at candor was

22:13

horrible at delivering it. The

22:15

candor was delivered in venom. And

22:18

I wasn't able to take the vehicle that the

22:20

candor was being delivered in

22:22

separate from the value of candor. So

22:26

what I did was, what I always do, in

22:28

the world I market and I brand, when

22:31

I realized how big of a vulnerability this

22:33

was for me, I branded myself. I

22:36

created a word and a structure for me to help

22:38

me. And that's how I came up

22:40

with kind candor. When I tell

22:42

you, for a lot of leaders in here, for

22:45

the organizations in the back, for the organizations in

22:47

the front, and for everybody in between, including again,

22:50

the thing I believe, which is a lot of

22:52

these things are impacting your relationships in your real

22:54

life, not just your professional life,

22:57

I highly recommend people, especially

23:00

the ones that are DNA wise

23:02

similar to me, who struggle with telling

23:04

people the truth when they're disappointed in

23:07

them, you must find

23:09

a way to get down the path of candor. Candor

23:12

has led to, the lack of candor has led

23:14

to every negative thing that's ever happened in my

23:16

life, singly. That's how big of a deal this

23:18

is. So I impose,

23:20

I pray, I push all

23:22

of you to realize how big of a deal this

23:24

is, but here's

23:27

why candor scares me. There

23:29

are many people in this room as managers who

23:31

use candor as an excuse to

23:34

be nasty, to

23:36

razz, to manipulate. And

23:39

so it's a very, very, very dangerous thing.

23:41

I'm just being candorous with you to help you.

23:48

You know, Gary, I'm just keeping

23:50

it real. I'm like, yeah, real negative, real

23:54

manipulative. Candor

23:56

is a tricky one, but if you can

23:58

understand the kindness part. All

24:00

of you know this. You've either been on the

24:02

receiving end or you've been the deliverer

24:04

of a message and you know when

24:06

it didn't land. You're like, damn, that did not go the way

24:09

I wanted to. It is always

24:11

because of your relationship with candor. No

24:13

question after watching this be the framework

24:15

of my companies getting the

24:18

feedback after the book's been out and just kind of watching, I

24:21

really believe in this concept of kind candor.

24:23

I really believe if you understand it, if

24:26

you can really deliver the challenging news with

24:28

a little honey instead of vinegar, if

24:31

you've really got the intent for that person to win, I

24:34

believe that kind candor really, really

24:36

matters. And I highly recommend

24:39

you start working on your relationship with candor.

24:41

When I tell you, when I think about competitiveness, 10

24:44

out of 10. Accountability, nine

24:46

out of 10. Patience,

24:49

this is a big one. I

24:51

crush patience. Everybody wants everything

24:54

now, which is why they don't get what they want. Patience,

24:57

10 out of 10. Kind

25:00

candor today, in front of you,

25:02

four out of 10. Literally

25:04

was a one out of 10 or two out of 10

25:06

three years ago. Four out of 10. Let

25:09

me just tell you how big of a deal this

25:11

is. From one out of 10 to four out of 10, it's

25:14

doubled my business. It's

25:16

made the closest relationships that I

25:18

have. My sister, my family,

25:22

three acts better. I

25:25

just know that candor is a big one.

25:27

I know that people really struggle with it

25:29

because it's a hardcore DNA trait. And

25:31

for the managers in here, leaders in here,

25:33

it's a tricky one because almost everybody is

25:36

either too red or too blue with it when

25:39

candor needs to be purple. You

25:42

understand? That's a big one. I

25:44

really hope that somebody leaves with that. I'm

25:46

gonna touch on patience before I go into Q and A. The

25:51

reason most people struggle with patience is

25:53

probably another massive thing

25:56

that's going on in this room professionally

25:58

and personally. Most people

26:00

want to accomplish things financially or

26:02

status wise to impress

26:05

other people and that is a huge vulnerability.

26:08

The keeping up with the Joneses or

26:11

how people judge them based on their

26:13

money, their accolades, their status is destroying

26:15

people. This goes back to 20 minutes

26:17

ago of trying to impress people

26:20

you don't even like, right?

26:22

So the lack of patience has

26:25

been one of the most obvious things unlike

26:27

candor. At 20, I already

26:29

understood it. You know,

26:32

I felt that I was gonna be a

26:34

great businessman but I spent 22 to 34

26:36

working for my dad's liquor store, building

26:39

his business for him. I built his

26:41

business from a four million to a

26:43

$70 million business and I never

26:45

got paid much money at all because it

26:48

was a family business and my dad's like, yo, what

26:50

do you complain about? It's a family business. When

26:52

I die, you'll get it. I'm like, dad, you

26:54

have great DNA. You're gonna die at 94. I'm

26:57

gonna be 72. I'm

27:00

trying to do work out here. Trying to make something happen.

27:03

And so, you know, but it

27:05

was my patience and my

27:08

deep ambition to do something great for my parents

27:10

who did great for me that allowed me

27:12

to know that even though at 34 I

27:14

barely had any money based especially on

27:16

my crazy ambitions, that I

27:19

would be able to get to it because life

27:21

is long because you can make things

27:23

happen. You can build brick by

27:25

brick and so patience

27:27

is hurting a lot of people here in a million

27:29

different ways. People are short cutting

27:32

to decisions, making decisions

27:34

on short term values versus long

27:36

term realities and I highly,

27:38

highly recommend a deeper falling in love

27:41

with patience. How are we doing Q&A? We've

27:43

got runners? Cool. I'm

27:45

gonna speak for a little bit more but I really want

27:47

people to start thinking about the question they wanna ask and

27:50

by the way, I know some of you may know me

27:52

and different, thrilled to talk about marketing. I think about

27:54

that quite a bit. Whatever

27:56

that may be and I think about marketing not

27:58

just like let's sell sneakers. and soda,

28:00

marketing is how the whole world works. Communication's

28:03

how the whole world works. You

28:05

may want to raise money to cure a disease

28:07

because your family's been affected by it. You may

28:10

want somebody to be the mayor of your town.

28:12

You may want a lot of things

28:14

happen. I don't think anyone here is

28:16

confused that marketing and communication dictates the

28:19

temperament and the decisions of human beings.

28:21

And so, couple just two

28:23

little things on that. First and foremost, if

28:25

you want something to happen in the world and you're

28:28

gonna be the one that is trying to make it

28:30

happen, and you

28:32

may have lots of opinions about social

28:34

media because everyone does now, it's

28:37

still the platform to make what you in

28:39

this room want to happen happen because

28:41

it's free. You're

28:43

more than welcome to buy television ads. Go pop

28:45

out $50,000 a spot, knock yourself out. You're

28:49

more than welcome to run an ad in the newspaper.

28:51

The problem is that 80 year old that's your friend

28:54

is the only one reading it. You're

28:57

more than welcome to have an opinion on TikTok,

28:59

China, this, and Mark Zuckerberg. You can

29:02

have any opinion you want, but

29:04

let me just say one thing in this room.

29:06

If you're gonna be a marketer, you

29:08

need to be agnostic. You need

29:10

to be unemotional. You need

29:12

to care about where the attention of society

29:15

is, period, end of story. The

29:17

biggest reason people are not good at marketing

29:19

or making something happen is they have an

29:21

ideology of what it should be. The

29:24

kids shouldn't be on these phones all the time.

29:26

They are. Just

29:29

to remind you, you are. And

29:31

so, on the marketing front, social will continue to

29:39

be the underpriced game and then something

29:42

else will come along. When I was

29:44

coming up in the game, it was email. Email

29:46

was new. Kids,

29:48

you wanna hear a good one? Lot of people in this room

29:50

really didn't want to have email. Some

29:53

people, I still have people I do work with

29:55

who have people print out the email for them

29:57

so they can read it to this day. I

30:02

just want to say one thing on technology and then we'll move into Q

30:04

and A. Please

30:06

stop fighting technology. Technology

30:09

is undefeated against your

30:11

opinions. I

30:14

understand you have an opinion about AI, good

30:17

news. AI doesn't care what your

30:19

opinion is, wrong. How

30:23

many, watch this, how many, I need people to

30:25

be honest, lying is the devil. By

30:29

show of hands and raise it high because usually people like

30:31

to do this on this question. By

30:33

show of hands, who in here was

30:35

this person? You had a Blackberry

30:38

and you loved it because it had all

30:40

the buttons and everything. And when

30:42

the iPhone came out you said, I'm never getting an

30:45

iPhone, it doesn't even have the buttons, my

30:47

Blackberry is good and now you have an

30:49

iPhone, raise your hand, hi. This,

30:54

those hands, and by the way, this is a pretty OG

30:56

crowd, I could go one generation

30:58

back. There were people rolling around the

31:00

world in the mid 90s with a

31:02

beeper. Who

31:05

said, I'm never getting a cell phone, my

31:07

beeper's more than, I don't need people to

31:09

call me any time they want. Let

31:12

them beep me and I'll

31:14

call them back. And

31:16

the amount of people in this room that said they would

31:18

never be on social media and now they spend all

31:20

their time on Facebook arguing with people. Humans

31:25

are horrible at this. People said they wouldn't get

31:27

the car, people said they wouldn't buy a television

31:30

because the radio was perfect. People

31:33

will always demonize tomorrow because

31:35

of fear. Humans

31:38

are scared. And

31:41

unfortunately, other humans figure that

31:43

out and weaponize it against us. And

31:45

I'm not talking about governments, though they're very good

31:47

at it. I'm talking

31:50

about school. I'm

31:52

talking about school telling you that if you get Ds

31:54

and Fs, you're gonna be a loser. Meanwhile,

31:57

does anybody realize how broken school is?

32:00

is in 2023? Does anybody have

32:02

children here from K to 12? Raise your hands. You

32:05

know how bad it is, right? We're

32:08

literally telling kids to memorize stuff

32:10

and regurgitate it when they have

32:12

literally the answers on their phone.

32:14

These kids are chat-GPTing the answer

32:17

to writing papers in one minute. And

32:20

I'm like, good. And

32:22

school's like, bad. For what? School

32:25

has broken us. I'm

32:27

being dead serious on this. And I'm not trying

32:29

to be mad at school. And

32:31

don't get confused. I believe that

32:33

education is the most important thing in the

32:35

world. I just think it should

32:38

be relevant to the world we actually live in. And

32:41

asking our children to spend 12 years of

32:43

their lives memorizing stuff and

32:45

then re-spitting it out every three

32:47

months is the most

32:49

asinine thing I've ever seen in a

32:51

world of the internet exists with the

32:53

answers to the question on their phone

32:55

at all times. These kids are disenchanted

32:58

because they're smart, not the reverse. So

33:02

that's just that. All right,

33:04

I think it's time for Q&A. Thank you for having me.

33:06

Thank you. Thank you. Thank

33:09

you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank

33:11

you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank

33:13

you. Thank you. All right. Let's

33:17

get into some real stuff. Those are the philosophies.

33:19

There's many others. Some of you have seen some of it,

33:21

read the books. But I'd love to go into Q&A. Let's

33:24

not be bashful. I know this goes, just raise your hand. Who's

33:26

got a question? Show me back there.

33:29

Gary, if you talk about how you deal with

33:31

failure with all your success, you've had to overcome

33:33

failure in the past. And second

33:35

question, if you could talk about where you see

33:37

AI playing in society's future

33:39

social area. Yeah, I'll go to

33:41

the second one. AI is gonna eat up everything. If

33:44

you leave, there's a lot of mental things we

33:46

talked about here as a practical thing. Every person

33:48

here, actually I'm gonna assume a

33:50

lot of this crowd has not gone into AI

33:52

yet. It's new. And I'm just, I'm

33:55

generalizing. But by show of hands,

33:57

how many people here have not played with an AI

33:59

app? or an AI website yet, like really

34:01

done AI work. Raise your hands if you haven't yet.

34:05

That's what I figured, so thank you. Please, please,

34:08

because a lot of the hands will remember this, you

34:11

not doing stuff with AI is just

34:13

like the thing you made fun of your parents for

34:15

not doing with the internet. This

34:18

is the internet 1992, it's that big, it's

34:20

not going away, and it will make your

34:23

life so much better. When you're in the

34:25

kitchen saying, hey Alexa, can you order me

34:27

food for two friends? One's lactose intolerant, order

34:29

now, and that saves you 18 minutes

34:31

of going to the website or calling or being on

34:33

your seamless app or Uber Eats. This

34:35

is gonna make your life better. Like everything, of

34:37

course there'll be some things that aren't good, but

34:40

there aren't some things that are good about everything. Nothing

34:43

has been, like alcohol has some

34:45

bad things. Right, a

34:47

car, like everything has bad and good.

34:50

Please don't do to AI what

34:52

you've done to everything else. It's gonna be a part

34:54

of our lives, so it's gonna affect, brother, it's gonna

34:56

affect everything. When I say everything,

34:59

everything. So the quicker you get used to it,

35:01

like the better your life will be, period, end

35:03

of story. As far

35:05

as failures, my man, I fail almost

35:08

every day. When you're an

35:10

entrepreneur, you're failing. I'm failing constantly. How

35:12

do I deal with it? By not giving a shit

35:14

what you think about my failures. Your

35:18

failures are your failures. The reason everyone

35:20

struggles with failures is because you actually

35:22

worry about someone's opinion of your failures.

35:24

If I lose, I'm

35:26

playing. You think

35:28

I care about somebody sitting in the stands watching

35:31

me play, saying you stink? You

35:33

stink, you're sitting. I'm playing.

35:38

I fail every day, I fail all the

35:40

time. The key is to make them micro

35:42

failures, not macro failures. See, people don't have

35:44

that definition down. I micro fail. If

35:47

I macro failed, I'd be out of business, I would

35:49

have a job, that's macro failing. I don't macro fail,

35:51

I don't take those kind of risks, I'm not too smart.

35:55

But micro failing, every day, I

35:57

hire someone, every day that ends up. It's

36:00

thinking. We have

36:02

a pitch, we don't win. I post something that should have

36:04

been great and it didn't. I'm losing

36:06

all the time. The key for everyone here

36:08

to get more comfortable with losing is

36:11

realizing they're valuing people in the

36:13

stands, judging them on

36:15

the court. You're

36:17

playing. You really care what somebody else is

36:20

telling you about how you're raising your child?

36:23

Get out of here. As

36:26

if they don't suck at parenting too. By

36:32

the way, this is the whole thing right now in America. We're

36:35

obsessed with telling everybody everything about everything they're

36:37

doing wrong without realizing how much we're doing

36:39

wrong. We are in judgment city.

36:42

We are in finger pointing city. I

36:45

deal with losing very easy. I just don't

36:47

care what anybody thinks about my losing. Definitely

36:49

not people I don't know and not even my

36:51

own parents. I want to make them

36:54

proud. I love them with

36:56

all my heart. I have no intent of losing.

36:59

But if you're living, you're losing. And

37:01

we have to get a lot more comfortable with losing. So

37:04

much of the depression and anxiety of

37:06

the youth today is not because of

37:08

social media. It's because we as parents

37:10

demonized losing. They're scared to lose.

37:15

And we have to start cheering for losing. Losing's

37:17

just part of the game. Name's Andre.

37:19

Andre, pleasure. Thank you for being here. I'm

37:22

glad to be here. I hope I'm not

37:24

alone in this, but how do folks either

37:26

discover or confirm what they were born

37:28

to do? I feel

37:30

like there's a couple things, but

37:32

how do you really discover it and then.

37:35

Hold on to the mic. When you say there's a

37:37

couple things, have you gone out and tasted and tried

37:39

to go for those couple things? Yes

37:41

and not fully but. That second

37:44

part, right? This half pregnant thing.

37:48

No really, it's a big thing in my mind. I'm really glad you

37:50

asked this question. I feel that people are trying, this all goes

37:52

back to the thing I've been talking about the whole time subtly.

37:55

Stop valuing other people's opinions. The

37:58

reason he said not fully is he. go all

38:00

the way because subconsciously there's a fear that

38:02

it's not gonna work out. Will this make

38:04

enough money to sustain my, most of the

38:06

reason people don't go for their dream is

38:09

because they don't think they'll make enough money

38:11

to sustain their life. Either their family's too

38:14

practical or they're insecure. There's too many variables.

38:17

My big thing is I don't, this is why I want you to

38:19

hang out Andre with a 90 year old. You'll

38:21

be more scared to not go for it after

38:23

hanging out with people that literally, when

38:25

I tell you, when you hang out with

38:28

the 80 to 100 year old set, all you

38:30

see in their face is regret. You

38:34

know, you'll see joy and happiness, but if you look,

38:37

if you look for what we're trying to learn from them

38:39

of like, what did you do that I can learn from?

38:41

It's all regret, brother. You will

38:43

be far more scared to wake up one day and

38:45

say, why didn't I go for being a piano

38:47

star? Why wasn't,

38:49

why didn't I try to be a standup comic?

38:52

You know, why didn't I move to

38:55

Sweden? Whatever it is, be a cook. Be

38:58

a professional video game player. Whatever it is, you will

39:01

be fearful of that so much more than

39:03

your sister or your uncle or your spouse

39:06

or your best friend laughing at you when

39:08

you stop doing what you're doing and you go for this thing.

39:11

I get, I'll give you a big

39:13

one. One thing I talk a ton about that, boy,

39:16

I can't find anyone talking about this, is if

39:18

you are in debt or if you're living

39:20

a life where you're like kind of never getting over the

39:23

hump, sell your home

39:25

and go rent a smaller home.

39:28

Sell your home and go live. The

39:31

amount of 35 year olds right now that

39:33

should sell their home or stop paying for

39:35

their apartment and move back in with their

39:37

parents is high. They can reset, save

39:39

some money, have some time with their

39:42

parents, which I know is like not everyone loves that,

39:44

but a lot of people would love that. A lot

39:46

of people do like their parents, I would love that,

39:48

but their pride won't let them do that because everybody

39:50

will judge them. You sold your house and now you

39:52

live with your parents, you're

39:55

a loser. As if that person is living,

39:57

this is the whole game. So

40:00

my man, the reason you're half pregnant is

40:03

something is stopping you from

40:05

doing it and I promise you that something is

40:08

judgment from others. And

40:10

so you already know what things you

40:12

want to do. Gary, I can't buy

40:14

my passion. Yes you can. Every one of

40:16

you can tell me what you love most. Mine's

40:19

the New York Jets. Right?

40:22

So what am I doing? I'm trying to build the biggest businesses in

40:24

the world so I can buy the Jets and finally win a

40:26

fucking Super Bowl. Thank you. Whoo! Thank

40:29

you. That's good. But

40:33

everyone here knows what they like. They're scared to

40:35

admit it. There's big ass dudes

40:37

in here that love ballet. They're scared to say

40:39

it. We

40:42

all know. I will never believe anyone

40:44

that says I don't know. No, no, you're scared

40:46

to admit. You're scared

40:48

to go for it. And so that's what I'm trying

40:50

to push for. Hi,

40:55

darling. Hey, there.

40:57

My name is Maryland Cuevas. I'm at

40:59

such a big time. Thank you, sweetie.

41:02

Thank you, sweetie. Let's talk about

41:04

fear, confronting fear and

41:07

resistance to change. There's a lot of

41:09

people that have the mentality of if

41:12

it's not broken, it's not fixed. Right.

41:15

We've been doing this forever. Let's not change it.

41:17

This is how we got here. Yep.

41:21

So when you want to bring something new and

41:24

to a leader or your manager, how

41:27

would you advise us to

41:30

approach that and also how

41:32

we face our fears? Thank

41:34

you. You're welcome. So the first one's really interesting.

41:36

I have this framework that work, and don't forget,

41:38

I have an agency that means we get hired

41:40

by companies and we're trying to tell them what

41:42

to do. None of our clients do the full

41:44

thing that I want them to do. They

41:47

still think running television commercials on network

41:50

TV is a better way for you

41:52

to buy something, which is just insane

41:54

to me. And

41:57

I tell my team all the time because they're very frustrated

41:59

because we're progressive. I'm like, look, everybody

42:01

makes the same mistake in the question you're making.

42:03

They're in the business of convincing. I'm

42:06

not in the business of convincing. I'm

42:08

in the business of conviction. I

42:11

can't convince you up here in 45 minutes. We

42:13

don't know each other like that. But boy,

42:15

do I have conviction in everything that came out of my

42:18

mouth. And for some of you, that might be enough

42:20

at this moment. Literally, today was the

42:23

only day that some of the things I said

42:25

are gonna penetrate. There are people who

42:27

follow me for 10 years and will email me and say,

42:30

I've heard you say the same thing for 10 years and today

42:32

was the day. Which

42:34

is what keeps me motivated saying the same 13

42:36

things, 8,000

42:38

different ways on every different platform. And

42:41

so, when you go into

42:43

your next meeting, don't try to convince them.

42:45

Have conviction in what you believe. Humans will

42:47

feel that. Right? And

42:50

you just gotta. Right? It's

42:54

just an everyday thing. It's the same thing. I

42:56

always think that working out is

42:58

a great comp for life. Most people

43:01

just wanna do eight pushups

43:04

and think it'd be all good. You

43:07

know, they don't realize that it's an

43:09

everyday thing. It's an everyday thing.

43:12

Everybody here can be in better shape. Eat

43:14

healthier and exercise. You

43:17

know the blueprint, it's

43:19

hard to do. Everyone's looking

43:21

for the shortcut. So, you

43:23

just have to keep pushing. Keep pushing. You

43:25

have to go into accountability. If

43:28

you're pushing everyday respectfully for three years

43:30

and it's not happening, and it's bothering

43:32

you like that, well then quit. This

43:37

is my big thing. Complaining

43:41

is the worst. Complaining

43:43

drives me batshit crazy. Especially

43:47

when you have options. You

43:49

can't quit because you're getting paid 200,000 a year and

43:52

your lifestyle, well guess what? Have

43:55

the humility to get your lifestyle down.

43:57

If you're so unhappy at work, you

44:00

spend the majority of your life, then

44:03

return your Lexus and

44:06

drive a fucking Dodge. If

44:10

you're so unhappy, don't

44:12

go on two vacations that are bougie,

44:14

do a staycation. If you're so unhappy,

44:17

stop buying $5 Starbucks coffee and

44:19

make your 18 cent coffee

44:21

at home. You are in

44:23

control. So conviction,

44:26

conviction, conviction, your

44:29

boss is driving you crazy, it's never gonna

44:31

happen, it's eating up your soul, leave. Because

44:35

you can. Two

44:37

years from pension, three years from retirement, you still

44:39

can leave or eat it, because

44:42

that's your strategy and you want it, but shut

44:45

your mouth. If

44:48

you know why you're doing it and you're

44:50

just eating it for another three years, eat

44:52

it and stop complaining because you're driving us

44:54

all down with you. I'm

44:59

sorry. Let's

45:04

go to this youngster. Go

45:08

ahead, you can go here and we'll go to you next. We got

45:10

him next. Sir.

45:12

Sir, Captain Durphy. So first, talking

45:15

about candor, I have to be completely honest and

45:17

say that when I heard that you were coming,

45:19

the only time that I knew of you was

45:21

on YouTube going to garage sale and stuff.

45:23

So I thought we were gonna get really good at going

45:25

to like Rub and Rub and Rub. Can

45:28

I say something, sir? My

45:30

garage sale videos that I know people have seen, that's

45:33

me listening. I was getting, you

45:35

know, I would talk about my story and be like, hey, I

45:37

didn't have anything either and then I saw Twitter and I invested

45:40

in it and I invested $25,000 into it and it made X,

45:42

right? And

45:45

I started just getting these emails like, okay, Gary,

45:47

good for you, but like, I don't have $25,000

45:49

to invest in the next Twitter. And

45:51

I was like, cool, let me show you what I did when I had

45:53

$2 to my name. I

45:55

drove around New Jersey, went to garage sales,

45:58

I bought stuff in high school. I sold it

46:00

at Flea Markets in the Shanek Station in Hunterton

46:02

County, and then the internet came along and then

46:04

I sold it on eBay. Those garage sale videos

46:07

that all my bougie business friends make fun of

46:09

me for because they're like, you look so stupid,

46:11

and this and that, that goes back to the

46:13

crowd. I'm like, you may think I look stupid,

46:15

but I get 10 emails a week from people

46:18

that had $400 to their family's name and made

46:20

$6,000 this summer buying stuff at

46:23

garage sales for a dollar or Goodwill and selling it for

46:25

20. Means a lot to me those

46:27

videos. So actually, following up with

46:29

that, you talk about empathy, but then

46:31

you also talk about not caring about people's opinions.

46:34

How do you balance empathy with not

46:36

caring about people's? Empathy, thank you, sir,

46:39

empathy is having the

46:41

capacity and compassion to care about other people's

46:43

feelings. Not caring

46:45

about other people's opinions is

46:47

based on being secure in your own

46:49

skin and not valuing judgment. They're

46:52

very, very easy to balance, though the

46:54

question's absolutely right. It's all

46:56

emotional frameworks. For me, it's the

46:59

game of being selfless and being

47:01

selfish. For me, having

47:04

compassion and empathy, it's even the entire

47:06

speaking style I have right now. To

47:09

me, I sit here, and I'm just literally

47:11

in real time right now, what can I say that'll

47:13

bring value? What can I say that'll bring value? What

47:15

can I say that brings value? As

47:17

far as, I've also cursed four times,

47:19

sir. I know there's people in here that

47:21

don't like that. I respect that.

47:23

I'm actually empathetic to that. If you grew up

47:25

in a household or were taught a certain way

47:27

or that's a horrible thing, you're not gonna like

47:29

that. I grew up in Jersey,

47:31

so, you know, it's a

47:33

little hard for me to contain it,

47:35

but I'm empathetic to the judgment. On

47:37

the flip side, I'm also aware that

47:39

I'm okay with that judgment, because if

47:41

that's what you took out of this

47:44

talk, we've

47:46

gotta work on all the things we're

47:48

talking about here to level up the

47:50

consciousness. So, I think it's very balanceable.

47:52

I think that they're just both very hard.

47:55

This is 40 years of practice. One

47:58

of the great things that happened to me, Parents that have poor

48:00

students, let me give you an insight that's left

48:03

field, truly not being talked about. What

48:06

allowed me to be who I am is that

48:08

I got poor grades and every teacher and every

48:10

friend's parent told me I'd be a loser, but

48:13

I knew I wasn't. I

48:15

knew I wasn't because I made more money

48:17

than everyone selling lemonade. I

48:19

knew I wasn't because when it snowed, I

48:22

got a shovel and rang every doorbell. I

48:24

knew I wasn't because the world was telling me the

48:26

truth, not the systems. And so

48:29

I got practice. A

48:31

lot of parents reinforce school, yeah,

48:33

this is bad, without realizing

48:35

school has no impact on someone's truth in

48:37

life. And so we need to

48:39

think about those things and I just got a lot of

48:42

practice of tuning out the noise because

48:44

the noise was telling me one thing, but I

48:46

was living another. I'll give you another one. The

48:48

greatest thing I wish on everyone besides health is

48:50

living the first 10 years of their life in

48:53

a household that's extremely happy with

48:55

very little money. That was mine. Because

48:58

I was brought up in a way

49:00

where I realized very quickly, oh, money

49:02

has no impact on happiness. I grew

49:05

up the happiest little boy on earth.

49:07

We had nothing. I wished it on

49:09

everybody because you get conditioned. You understand.

49:11

And so I think a lot about

49:13

these things, it's practicing, it's emotional practice.

49:16

Emotional practice. We talk about physical practice.

49:18

We don't talk about emotional practice. So

49:21

I think it comes down to practicing. Like truly having

49:23

a bad day where people are throwing judgment at you

49:26

and just knowing yourself enough to be like,

49:28

I'm just gonna go golf because that's what helps me. Or

49:30

I'm gonna watch sports because that's what helps me. Or I'm

49:32

gonna listen to music. Practicing. That's

49:35

what I do. Every time I'm having a struggle, I

49:38

push myself into something that gives me

49:40

escapism from that struggle. And

49:42

getting conditioned. We need more

49:44

emotional practice. My

49:47

man. Hello,

49:50

Gary. Gary Vee. How are you, brother? I just

49:52

wanna say that I would see you on YouTube,

49:54

take thought, and you inspire so

49:56

many people, right? And I just wanna

49:58

know who's your inspiration. Thank

50:00

you brother. So I've always answered this question

50:03

the same and I've just recently figured out

50:05

how to add to it. So

50:07

historically it's always been my parents. They came to

50:09

this country at 22 years old. I

50:12

lived in a studio apartment the

50:15

size of a third of this stage

50:17

with seven, eight family members. Like it

50:19

was rough. They

50:21

worked every minute. I watched my

50:23

mom raise three kids solo doing everything

50:25

for us. Like my dad used

50:27

to wake up before I saw him and got home after I went

50:29

to sleep, just worked, worked. There's nobody

50:32

even within their realm. However, I

50:34

will say this brother, lately I've realized there is

50:36

a certain other thing that inspires

50:38

me to no end. So I live in Manhattan

50:41

and I take a lot of flights because

50:43

I travel a lot and a lot of those flights

50:45

are day trips so I actually take a lot, especially

50:48

in the last 10 years, a lot of 6 a.m.

50:50

flights. So if you take a 6 a.m.

50:52

flight, you're kind of leaving the apartment at like 4.30, right? And

50:56

there's something that's just so obvious

50:58

to me. When I'm leaving at 4.30,

51:01

today would have been a perfect day. When it's like dark

51:03

and gloomy. And you know, I

51:05

live in a city and we're going to Newark or JFK

51:07

or LaGuardia. So I'm driving through the city usually to get

51:09

to one of the airports. And

51:11

you know, it's like 4.30 and like you just woke up

51:14

and even though I'd like to close my eyes in the car,

51:16

I'm up, so like I'm just kind of like

51:18

looking out the window. This is the

51:20

scene that I just always, you kind of wipe off the,

51:22

right? And I'm looking out the window. These

51:25

humans, this is what gets me to

51:27

gratitude. The amount of people I

51:29

see, you know, I'll

51:31

just paint you the picture. That 52 year old

51:34

woman that I see coming out of the subway

51:37

at 4.55 a.m. with

51:40

two bags in her hand and I start making

51:42

up scenarios, brother. I'm like, man, she

51:45

just lost her husband. I'm serious, this is what

51:47

I do. This is back to mental training. What

51:50

I'm training there is gratitude, right?

51:53

This woman's, it's 4.55 in the morning. She's

51:56

got two bags carrying shit. I'm

51:58

like, she might have lost her husband. lost her husband recently,

52:01

she has three kids to take care of.

52:03

This is her second job now, she's doing six to

52:05

nine before she goes into, you know what I mean?

52:08

And it's just like, that person,

52:10

the people out there that grin

52:13

like bite their tongue and just put their head

52:15

down to provide financially

52:18

and emotionally for their family with

52:21

all sorts of adversity and

52:24

don't complain, that person

52:26

bro, for me is number one. No

52:29

Elon, no Tom,

52:31

definitely not Tom fucking Brady. No,

52:33

you know, no, like Oprah, no

52:35

people that are on the gram

52:38

or tick tock, not me, not

52:40

those people, like the people that

52:42

nobody talks about that are

52:45

the same way the military and the

52:47

services and the police, foundational, that get

52:49

overlooked, these people, these millions

52:51

of people who just grin it. You

52:54

know, everyone right now

52:56

is thinking about a person like that that

52:58

they know of or was important to their

53:00

life. The people whose

53:03

shoulders we stand on in

53:05

our families, not just in our world. And

53:08

so I'm so inspired by them, you

53:10

know? People, you know, when

53:13

you're young, you're like trying to achieve, you got

53:15

ambitions, you're looking up to things. One

53:17

of the reasons I put out the content I

53:19

put out, my man, is because for all the

53:22

conversations about Rolexes and Lambos and like,

53:24

those are just facades. So

53:27

many of the people that have 10 million followers on

53:29

these platforms, I know them. They're

53:31

not happy like that. They're

53:33

not content like that. That's

53:35

the makeup. The

53:38

people that are just really putting it out there

53:40

and doing the right things for the people they

53:42

love, at their

53:44

inconvenience, that inspires me

53:46

to no end, my man. You know? I'm

53:49

not impressed that I am good at making

53:51

money. That was a God-given gift. I'm impressed

53:53

that I'm nice to people. And

53:56

so I think we have to start championing that. And

53:58

I think the person that's most admirable. in the world

54:01

is the person that is dealing

54:03

with the most adversity and

54:06

doesn't complain. I admire that

54:08

to the end. Thank

54:10

you so much for taking the time to make for us.

54:12

Thank you. What's your name? Jeannie Fortunato. Jeannie.

54:15

So I have a 17 and 18 year old. Yes. 18

54:18

year old's in Seton Hall doing great. She's

54:20

up and running. 17 year old's graduating in

54:22

June, zero direction. Yes. I'm

54:24

looking to give him an elevator speech. Like it's okay

54:26

that you don't know what you're doing, but

54:28

everybody's like, oh, Julius in Seton Hall. What's the inch

54:30

doing? And I'm like, we

54:33

don't know what road

54:35

he's taking yet. Any advice on a

54:37

good elevator speech for a 17 year old that

54:39

doesn't have a direction? Sure. Let's start

54:41

with this. How do you feel about it? I'm

54:44

fine with whatever he chooses. Do you feel like he knows that?

54:47

Oh yeah, yeah. So what's

54:49

the problem? Yeah.

54:53

I mean. He doesn't know. He

54:55

doesn't know. He doesn't know. He doesn't know.

54:58

No 17 year old knows. He

55:01

doesn't know how to handle the

55:03

pressures of everybody saying, okay,

55:05

your sister's in Seton. Of course. Where you going,

55:07

Ang? Ang needs to figure out how

55:09

to not value other people's opinions. This

55:12

whole thing. You need to tell, it's one thing

55:14

that Ang knows that you're good with it. When

55:17

you see Ang rolling, and whether it's a

55:19

friend, whether it's a sibling or

55:21

a cousin, right? You need to,

55:24

every time you as a parent to a 17

55:26

year old sees that his

55:28

uncle came over, and he was a little hot on it.

55:31

Can you think of the three or four people that

55:33

you feel are most bringing the most pressure, even though

55:36

they love him, are bringing the pressure? You

55:38

need to really shit on those people to Ang.

55:41

I'm serious. When Uncle Don comes over,

55:44

and Uncle Don is coming from pure love, he

55:46

wants Ang to be good. When

55:48

I was your eight, right? When Uncle Don leaves, you

55:50

need to look Ang in the face and be like,

55:52

Uncle Don's a fucking idiot. You

55:56

have to, you have to, you see what I mean? You have to

55:58

decrease the, value

56:00

of the voices so that

56:02

he can have room to feel safe.

56:04

You're one place but you're mom, right?

56:07

He needs to know that all those

56:09

other voices are wrong. You

56:11

have to judge the judger. The

56:14

thing that I do for a lot of young people is when they're struggling

56:16

and I'll talk to them and they're like, da, da, da. I'm like, yeah,

56:18

but da, da, da stinks at this. Or da,

56:20

da, da's bad at that. Or why don't you

56:22

tell Uncle Don to stop drinking? I'm

56:25

being dead serious. I know it's like. Their opinion is

56:27

none of your business. Pounding. Their opinion of you is

56:29

none of your business. No, no, you need to undermine

56:31

them. I know, no, I'm really,

56:34

I'm being serious. It's gonna help them because

56:36

that goes into too much like poster. You

56:38

need to teach them, he's 17. So

56:40

even though he's a kid, he's starting to go

56:42

through that transition, you can teach him real

56:45

life. You know, like people

56:47

don't like to talk about the truth. You

56:50

have like an aunt come over and cause all this

56:52

ruckus but you know the aunt was a mess until

56:54

she was 40. Tell the

56:56

17 year old that the aunt was a mess until she was

56:58

40. It really, you

57:00

know, I get it and you know, obviously I'm

57:02

trying to use some extreme examples for a giggle

57:04

and to put into perspective, you don't need to

57:06

tell them a secret alcoholic is in your family but.

57:10

But you definitely need to put things into perspective.

57:12

On the flip side, and this is where it

57:14

gets dangerous, you can't create entitlement. Right,

57:17

and that's hard, right? So it's this weird balance

57:19

of like, hey, everyone sucks but you might suck

57:22

too if you don't do anything. Right,

57:24

like, when I tell

57:26

you, parenting is

57:29

just like politics right now. We've gone way

57:31

too extreme and everybody has to get to

57:33

the middle as fast as humanly possible. So

57:35

it's like, hey kid, there's unlimited

57:37

people that don't know anything at 17. The

57:40

world is filled with people that suck at school

57:42

and don't know what they wanna do, comma, you're

57:46

not gonna be laying at home doing nothing. No.

57:49

Right, so you don't need to go to school

57:51

but you're gonna work. And by the way, if

57:54

you wanna work at Walmart, good. If you wanna be

57:57

an entrepreneur, fine. But you're gonna have

57:59

to do that. And yeah,

58:01

I got you, because I love you, and you can stay here, but

58:03

I'm not giving you any money. Here's where

58:05

parents get caught. They talk big game, but then

58:07

they pay for the kid's Uber. They

58:09

talk big game, but they get them an Equinox

58:12

membership. They talk big game, but one

58:14

of the parents undermines the whole ship by slipping them

58:17

100 bucks quietly, and be like,

58:19

you can't do that. If that kid's such a big

58:21

boy, and he's gonna do it without school, he needs

58:23

to stand on his own two feet. You can do

58:25

subtle things like put a roof over his head, which

58:27

is already remarkable. But

58:31

parents undermine their words with their actions.

58:34

So he's good. You're lucky

58:36

that it's- Great kid, I don't- You don't worry

58:38

for a second. A lot of people don't, most,

58:40

so many kids that are bad at school are

58:42

the ones I least worry about. Right?

58:46

I'm much, honestly, me personally, I'm much more

58:48

fearful of the great student, because they're being

58:50

taught to be a robot. Like

58:53

to me, the kid, but where I

58:55

get really scared is, unlike 1985, 1996, 2000, a

59:00

lot of those 17 year olds went out and got a hard

59:02

job, and learned it, and then

59:05

excelled. 2023's got

59:07

this weird mix where parents are like, cool, but

59:09

then like subsidize their life. You

59:12

need to make him stand on his own two feet. That

59:15

will teach him everything. But

59:17

you could be absolutely emotionally supportive, just

59:20

not financially supportive. That's where parents really lose

59:22

their way. Because then the kid doesn't

59:24

understand why. He needs

59:27

to. I mean,

59:29

we all saw this when the government pays

59:31

you to stay home more than you get to

59:33

go to work. Everybody wants to stay home.

59:36

I'm the most motivated of all time. If the government wants

59:38

to give me the Jets right now, I'd understand why that

59:40

would trick me. But

59:43

it's not real, and that's his version. You're

59:46

welcome. Handsome?

59:50

Oh man. I

59:53

thought I just met the best name ever. I

59:56

have a selfish question. You

1:00:00

should. You should. And I'm

1:00:02

curious about social media trends. Yes. What

1:00:05

are your thoughts on like short form versus

1:00:07

long form? Both work. What

1:00:10

are you better at? I

1:00:12

typically do long form stuff, but I'm just getting

1:00:14

into short form. Do long form and then edit,

1:00:17

you see how I do it. Do long form

1:00:19

and then post edit for short form to bring

1:00:21

awareness to long form. You

1:00:23

understand? Couple other things. It's always

1:00:25

about organic reach. What's giving

1:00:27

you more organic reach in the beginning. Right

1:00:29

now Facebook Reels, it doesn't

1:00:31

come natural. Most people have moved on from Facebook,

1:00:33

they don't think, but Facebook Reels for

1:00:36

under 35 is crushing. So

1:00:38

Facebook Reels, if you haven't been doing YouTube shorts,

1:00:40

for sure, for sure. Especially

1:00:43

if you're long forms on YouTube. And

1:00:45

then the obvious, TikTok and Instagram, things of that nature. Okay,

1:00:48

do you see any other apps that you should? There's

1:00:51

two apps that are in like alpha alpha

1:00:53

alpha mode, Clapper in case TikTok gets banned,

1:00:55

I think could be a winner. And

1:00:58

Lemon 8, which is done

1:01:00

by ByteDance, which could also get banned,

1:01:02

but is Instagram based. Those two, but

1:01:04

I'm not ready to really talk about

1:01:06

them because I don't like guessing, but

1:01:09

I'm watching. And those, but you

1:01:11

wouldn't get, the reason it's not a good use right

1:01:14

now is I'm watching to be more

1:01:16

right to when it happens, it's not

1:01:19

happening on those two platforms like that

1:01:21

yet. Whereas with Facebook Reels

1:01:23

and YouTube shorts, you could post your first

1:01:25

YouTube short and it could work. You

1:01:29

got it. Good

1:01:32

brother. Hi, my name's

1:01:34

Peyton. Peyton. Another social media question. Please.

1:01:37

To generate a big audience. And so it's kind

1:01:39

of a two-parter. So one, what

1:01:42

is the number one impact social media has

1:01:44

in your day-to-day life? And

1:01:46

the second is how did you generate

1:01:48

like that following from scratch? The

1:01:51

number one thing it brings to me is knowing what all of

1:01:53

you care about. So

1:01:55

I don't really consume social media for me. I

1:01:58

consume social media to understand. what

1:02:00

eight billion people on earth care about. So

1:02:04

I'm watching. Like

1:02:06

if I wasn't an entrepreneur, if

1:02:08

I didn't have that, I feel like I would have

1:02:10

ended up being like, you know those weird scientists that

1:02:12

go like to the mountains and like watch ants for

1:02:14

30 years? That's,

1:02:16

I got that in me. Like so much

1:02:18

of everything you heard today was 25 years

1:02:21

of observing all of you. So

1:02:24

that's the biggest value it brings to me is like big

1:02:27

things like oh my God, kids

1:02:30

are fearing losing because of eighth place trophies. That

1:02:32

was not like something, that was like observing the

1:02:34

DMs from kids along the way being like, but

1:02:36

I'm scared, but I'm scared. I'm like why? And

1:02:39

you just talk and you just talk and you're

1:02:41

like, oh right, you've never lost.

1:02:44

Everything's been covered up. I mean, this

1:02:47

is the craziest, parents actually go to school

1:02:49

now and argue for a better grade for

1:02:51

kids. That's

1:02:53

insane. Like

1:02:55

we've just done too much, too many

1:02:57

training wheels and so that's what

1:03:00

it does for me. As far as me,

1:03:02

what I did well that I want for

1:03:04

him, handsome and everybody else is

1:03:07

what I do really well is I make what I

1:03:09

want to make, not what I think is gonna do

1:03:11

well in likes and followers. So

1:03:14

back to the garage sale, but like I knew that I would

1:03:16

get judged by my fancy business friends, but I didn't care,

1:03:18

I wanted to make it because I knew that was gonna bring

1:03:20

value. I started

1:03:22

making wine videos, that's how I started. I

1:03:25

know a lot about wine, I made wine videos. I'm recently starting

1:03:27

to make them again because I miss it. It's

1:03:30

not doing as well as my business content, but I

1:03:32

don't care. And I think

1:03:34

the more authentic you can be, the

1:03:37

more real you can be, people can smell

1:03:39

bullshit from, we're all animals, we're sensing it.

1:03:42

And I think the reason I've connected is people know

1:03:44

I'm authentic and I think they value that

1:03:46

and I think we all value that. And

1:03:48

so I would make content you want to make, not

1:03:50

what you think will do well. Thank

1:03:54

you. Please, let's give our guest speaker another huge

1:03:56

applause. Thank you. Thank you

1:03:58

very much. Thank you. Thank you,

1:04:00

thank you, thank you so much, thank you, thank you.