Practice English Speaking&Listening with: 5 Core Pieces of Value to Get You to Succeed | NAC Success Resources Keynote 2019

- Take a step back and understand what you're doing

with yourself.

What makes you happy?

Are you trying to be rich because you wanna stick it

to your parents or everybody else that said

that you couldn't?

Or are you trying to do something

'cause you actually like it?

Are you trying to be rich because you wanna go buy shit

to create a perception that you're happy?

Or do you actually want to be happy?

- Yeah!

- You got your perspective.

I just wanna be happy, don't you wanna be happy?

So listen, I think there's two core things

that I wanna think about,

which is, there's a lot of ways I say it,

macro, micro, perspective and execution.

When I think about why the 9,000 of you

would allocate time and money to come to an event,

it means that there is a need for offense, more offense,

getting out of defense, offense.

To me, this is about one big conversation.

(laughing and cheering)

One big conversation of what are we actually doing here?

And so, for me, when I think about what are we actually

doing here, the first thing that always comes to mind,

and I know some of you have heard this from me,

but the fact that the odds of being a human being

are 400 trillion to one is something that I struggle with

not thinking about almost on a daily basis.

I genuinely believe that every person

in this arena right now, including myself,

disproportionately aren't understanding how fortunate

we are to have a life.

There is literally nothing, there's literally nothing

that you will ever accomplish, ever,

that is more ridiculous than the fact that you were even

given a life in the first place.

The fact that your mom could've got up

and got another glass of wine, (laughing)

and that would result in you not being here,

or a human, blows my mind.

And so, for me, one of the things that I clearly am

is optimistic and positive,

but I'm disproportionately practical.

The great fortune of my life was that I was born

in the Soviet Union and I came to America,

and my parents were poor and we lived in a studio apartment

with multiple family members, and I wasn't given anything,

and I genuinely believe the biggest issue

for so many people in today's world to get to happiness,

forget about how you define success from a money

or a business standpoint,

is I just think most people are entitled.

I think that most people are entitled

and genuinely believe that they deserve something,

and I think when you come from zero

and you come from such a nasty place, like Soviet Russia,

the framework that I was brought up in

was lack of entitlement, nobody owes you shit,

and if you wanna accomplish something,

you've gotta do something about it.

And, for me... (cheering)

Because let me promise you something right now,

if you look to the left and right of you,

like, no matter what your problems or short comings

or lack of opportunities are,

the person to the left and right of you has their own life

and aren't worried about your dumb shit

'cause they've got their own dumb shit.

And so, for me, my mom, basically,

'cause my dad worked every hour

so I didn't really even know him until I started working

in the liquor store as a teenager,

my mom's lack of interest in any excuse

created a framework for me.

So, for me, what's interesting about that

is that made me positive, not negative.

What's amazing about being in a place where you realize

nothing is entitled is you get into a place

of full accountability.

Genuinely, I believe that every problem I have,

I run a 1,000 person, $200 million marketing company,

Vana Media, and literally, every single problem

in that company, and let me promise you,

there's 40,000 fucking problems right this second

as I'm on this stage,

every one of those problems are my fault

because instead of what I watch so many people do and say,

oh, fucking Susan's fucking up,

I realize that I'm the fuck-face that hired Susan.

(laughing and applauding)

My friends, I'm coming out the gate here

with a very important framework,

which is, I promise you that the second that you

stop dwelling, stop worrying about shit

that you cannot control,

start realizing that everything fucked up is your fault,

you actually get ridiculously happy, not upset.

(cheering and applauding) I mean it, I mean it.

Now, just to make sure there's no confusion,

you're talking to somebody who was a Jewish guy

born in the formal Soviet Union,

where both my grandfathers went to jail.

One for a decade, one for two years, 'cause he was Jewish.

So, I'm not talking about there isn't shit

that needs to be overcome,

I'm not saying that shit isn't fucked up,

I'm saying that if you cry about it 24/7, 365,

nothing's gonna happen.

And so in that framework, here's my point.

If there's any confusion to the following statement,

there's a very significant chance that you won't go

to the place you want to, which is,

this thing right here should fuck with your mind

like you can't imagine.

This computer that I'm holding in my hand

is literally more powerful than the computer

that President Reagan had to run the Free World.

This computer in my hand is connected to an internet

that doesn't know who you are or where you came from

or what you're up to.

The platforms on it, Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn

and Twitter and Podcasting and YouTube,

they don't care where you came from,

who your grand-pappy was, what you did yesterday,

they're unemotional platforms that every person in this room

can go on and start building something for themselves,

and the cost is zero.

(cheering and applauding)

One of the reasons that I like to remind people

that the cost is zero is that, I don't know if you know,

but when Facebook's reach started to decline,

or when Instagram changes its algorithm,

people actually complain and are fucking pissed.

And I try to remind them that the platform is free.

(laughing)

They're like, Facebook's fucking me up.

I'm like, it's free, dick. (laughing)

Why did Instagram, I lost followers,

Instagram cleaned up their shit.

It's free, asshole.

We...

Whether you have too much,

and there's plenty of people who have too much,

and whether you have too little, and everybody in between,

in 2019, especially in America,

we are on full complain mode, and that is the opportunity.

If I can do anything in this room today,

get one person of the 9,000 that came in here dwelling

and complaining and thinking shit's fucked up,

and actually get them to realize that is 100% the framework

of how they see the world,

and, literally, if they just changed that

and start actually doing.

If I can accomplish that, waking up at three fucking 45

in the morning this morning was worth it,

and that is my agenda. (cheering and applauding)

Because what I'm about to talk about for the next

25, 30 minutes is execution.

I'm gonna talk to you about why I think Instagram ads

are so underpriced,

that whether you're selling real estate,

or you're a financial advisor,

or you wanna sell T-shirts, or you wanna sell yogurt,

or you wanna be a comedian, a rapper,

like, it's so underpriced.

Instagram has the collective attention of the far majority

of our country.

Instagram Story ads are so underpriced

that even if you put content that's average in it,

it's over performing.

This is exactly what happened on Google in 2001 to 2005.

It's exactly what happened on Facebook from 2009 to 2012.

When our collective attention is in one place at scale,

and we're actually consuming,

and the ads haven't gotten money yet from BMW and Nike

and Pepsi and Coca-Cola, to make the ad prices go up,

us entrepreneurs and individuals have to strike,

just like buying beachfront property in Malibu

before people realized it was Malibu.

I day trade attention, that's what I do for a living.

I spend all my time trying to figure out

where there's attention, and then I try to figure out

how to run media ads and how to create content

for those channels.

I am agnostic, I do not care about social media,

I don't care about Facebook, I don't care about Instagram,

I don't care about Twitter,

I care about your collective attention.

Whether it's on this stage right now,

whether it's the content that I make,

whether it's getting ridiculous seats at WrestleMania

so I show up on every fucking 15 minutes,

whatever it is, I'm interested in where the attention is

and how do I penetrate it, understand?

What happens next is the most important part.

I've got your attention for these 40 minutes,

but if this keynote sucks, I lose.

I've got your attention on LinkedIn,

I post that on LinkedIn,

guys, my last book, it's not up here,

my last book, Crushing It!, I wrote about the most important

platforms in the world, to produce content on,

I didn't even put LinkedIn in it.

Literally, only 24 months ago, when I was writing the book,

I didn't even put LinkedIn in the book

to talk about the value of LinkedIn for us entrepreneurs

and individuals.

Today, as I stand here right now,

I would argue that LinkedIn might be the platform

that I'm most excited for everybody here to go home

and go produce content for.

And I don't mean go spam people and send them messages,

I mean posting content.

And it could be about fitness,

it could be about orange juice, it could be about anything.

LinkedIn, today, on this day,

is acting more like Facebook did four years ago

than Facebook does today.

The amount of organic reach you get, without paying for it,

is so remarkable, it's unbelievable.

Yet, we live in a world of headline readers

verses practitioners.

I produce content daily.

I just replied to a comment to somebody that's

in the audience here 'cause they were pumped, (man cheers)

not you because it was a lady and you're dude,

but you might've been an hour ago or, you were,

oh, you were, I DM'd you back.

I DM'd you back, but there's some lady here.

Like, I'm in the trenches,

I'm not sitting in the ivory tower,

I talk about this content daily 'cause I do it

and I live it, you're talking to somebody.

I wanna remind everybody,

everybody starts with zero followers.

I wanna remind everybody that everybody starts

with zero followers.

In 2007, when Twitter hit the scene,

I spent six, seven, eight hours a day

between 7:00 p.m. and 2:00 in the morning

going on Twitter and replying to every single person

that mentioned anything about wine for six hours a day,

for four years, and still, nobody knew who the fuck I was.

So when I hear people put out three posts on LinkedIn

after a keynote like this and then email me

and say, hey Gary V, loved you in Chicago, great talk,

but gotta tell you, you're wrong.

And I reply, what happened?

Well, I posted on LinkedIn and nothing good is happening.

And then I ask, how long you been doing it?

They're like, well, I've posted twice

for the last two weeks.

And I reply, you're a fucking asshole.

(laughing)

I just looked at a student like, you know when you can feel?

Like, how is anybody confused that it takes,

let me say it very slowly, an obnoxious amount of work

to create any level of success.

There is so much confusion in the system

about the amount of work ethic that needs to be ployed

to actually have success.

Let me tell you this, anybody you've ever met that made it,

worked their fucking face off.

You know people that are rich that didn't,

they inherited it, but they didn't make it.

And the confusion of the one or two stories you hear about

when it happened fast, like Instagram or Facebook,

has confused everybody.

And the amount of excuses we put into the system

so that we don't have to do that work is remarkable.

What's interesting is, the reason I have such a good

framework on this is because I'm one of the great,

all-time worst students in the history of this country.

I mean it.

I literally never opened a book in high school,

did all my Scantron test C, B, C, B, A, C, B, A.

If there's any kids in the crowds,

I'm gonna give you a real good secret if you're

in public schools, they just push you through.

The reason I watch people live for the weekend

and love Friday like it's the greatest shit ever

because they hate their Monday through Friday

so fucking much,

the reason I hear the system's broke, my boss is a dick,

it doesn't work for me, I'm not from that,

it's just excuses not to do it.

It's the same shit I did from 1st grade to 12th grade

'cause I didn't wanna do that bullshit homework

that meant nothing in real fucking life.

(cheering and applauding)

The problem is, that shit ended when I was 18,

you've got the rest of your life.

Which gets me back to this.

This thing freaks me out so much, you can't imagine,

because the one thing this thing is is actual opportunity

that our grandparents didn't grow up with.

This thing allows you to still be practical

and maintain the job that you hate

so you can pay off your student loans and your mortgage,

but create your side hustle on here

around the shit that you actually love,

whether that's the fucking Chicago Bears,

whether that's fucking sneakers,

whether that's doing comedy skits,

whether that's reincarnating the formula

that your grandmother had for soup from your country

that you're now gonna sell direct to consumer

on the back of Uber Eats.

I don't give a fuck what ridiculous thing comes out

of your mouth, this thing, if you make content on it

and understand where people actually pay attention,

actually gives you a prayer for that to happen,

as long as you do a couple of core things,

and that's what I'm gonna talk about.

Core thing number one, the single biggest thing,

in my opinion, that the majority of these people

in this room are doing wrong.

This is number one.

I believe that 98% of the people in this arena right now

buy too much dumb shit.

I have become crazy fascinated, as I've lived my life,

I'm trying to understand why the fuck so many

of my parent's immigrant's friends, other immigrants,

and just immigrants in general,

have a disproportionate success rate in the framework

of America, and I finally figured it out.

They're not smarter, it's not even necessarily

that they work harder.

It's that they come to America and they buy nothing stupid

for 15 fucking years.

They just live like shit, buy nothing, save money,

buy a business, and move on.

The level of insecurity that is permeating this country

so that people end up buying cars and houses and clothes

that they can't afford to impress people

that they don't even like is the great epidemic

in our society. (cheering and applauding)

I get to say this from truth.

I lived my 20s, all my 20s, 22 to 29, my 20s,

in a shitty fucking apartment in Springfield, New Jersey.

I didn't buy any fucking clothes,

I didn't have swag fucking sneakers,

I went on no fucking vacations,

I just fucking worked and saved money,

and I was building a business for my parents,

not even for myself,

so when I tell people to be patient,

it's easy 'cause I lived it.

I don't stand up here ever talking about shit

that I didn't actually do first.

And so, if you're not pumped,

if you're not like loving life,

before you try to figure out the hook or the secret,

or if you think Tony's gonna re-jigger your fucking brain,

or I'm gonna give you some fucking secret

to do on fucking Instagram that's gonna change everything,

before you think about that,

go home and look at your fucking credit card bill

and stop buying dumb shit.

(cheering and applauding)

Because when you don't buy dumb shit,

that money stays in the fucking bank

and you can do something with your fucking life.

Instead of having a new pair of fucking Off-Whites.

Who the fuck are you flossing for?

Fuck! (laughing)

Fuck, Chicago! (cheering and applauding)

You think somebody's gonna like you better

'cause you fucking got a new Audi, you dick.

Jesus.

And that is what is most interesting about this place,

because if you wanna look at this place in a negative way,

it's super easy,

'cause everybody's fucking fake life-ing on Instagram.

You know how many people here are gonna go hiking

this weekend for the fucking stupid picture?

They don't wanna go hiking,

they just wanna get a couple more likes on Instagram.

I know people who jump the fence, at night,

at private plane airports, to take a photo

to make pretend they fly private.

Do you fucking understand what's going on?

And then it gets deeper.

There are people in bullshit relationships, right now,

posting photos of themselves on vacation

acting like they're fucking happy.

My friends, this is a manifesto in Chicago this morning

about executing on truths.

(spits) That shit.

And let me give you very basic truths,

if you spend money on shit you don't need,

you're gonna lose.

If you buy those things to impress other people,

you've already lost.

You need to take a step back and understand

what you're doing.

This is not a conversation today about making more money.

Success means being happy,

not how much money you have.

We are in the middle stages of mental unhappiness,

mental issues in our country,

predicated on a lot of different things,

not paying the piper in 2009 like we should've,

we should just be getting out of a depression.

But we all got bailed out, let's start there.

On the greatest generation of funny parenting

I've ever seen in my life.

My favorite thing going on in the world right now

is 40 to 60 year olds shitting on millennials

when they were the fuckers that raised those people.

(cheering and applauding)

That's my favorite shit.

These kids are so soft, no shit, dick,

you gave them an eighth place trophy.

(laughing and cheering)

These kids don't take feedback well.

No shit, dick, when their teacher yelled at them,

you ran to the school and fucking fought like an asshole.

Fuck, that pisses me off.

Guys, let kids lose.

Let's actually talk about losing.

Micro losing is the greatest shit.

I stand here in front of you today

because the first 18 years of my life,

the world told me I sucked, and I lost at everything.

I sucked at school, I wasn't big enough for sports,

everything fucking sucked.

- [Man] Yeah! - That's right, bro.

(laughing)

But we're fucking here now!

(cheering)

And we're here now because a singular person in my life,

my mother, instilled such disproportionate self-esteem

in me without creating entitlement.

When I was nice to people, she fucking praised the shit

out of it.

When I struck out in a game,

she didn't make pretend some shit was rigged,

she said the pitcher was better than you, dick.

(laughing)

The fine line, how many people here

have consumed my content?

(cheering)

I'm gonna give you a secret I've never said,

all I am is the puppet and the byproduct

of Tamara Vaynerchuk.

What I'm trying to do for you is what she did for me.

What Tamara, my mom, Vaynerchuk, that's what I said,

did for me was she positively and optimistically

gave me a framework of the world,

but she didn't create entitlement,

because when I lost, I lost and when I won, I won.

And so when you look at my content,

you can see certain times when it feels

fucking a little rough and a little edgy,

and other times when it's warm and fuzzy.

It's because both exist,

and everybody thinks you have to pick sides.

It's like the bullshit in our country right now,

people think you have to pick sides.

It fucking makes no sense, the reality is this,

just like in our country, we're just one human.

Life is binary in that some things are soft

and some things are hard.

And the reality is, some things are very basic,

and here they are.

I believe the following, that we are so blessed

to be in this room because for the first time in my life,

I think it's practical, not ideological,

to actually build a business around the things

you actually like to do, which will then mean

that you'll actually work the 13 hours a day,

if you wanna make a million dollars a year, that it requires

because there is no fucking passive income.

Do you understand?

You can make a good investment, I understand,

but when you buy 30 homes properly

and you think it's passive,

what about when the tornado comes?

What about when the fucking person that manages it quits?

What about when somebody lights the fucking house on fire?

The amount of money you make is wildly correlated

to the amount of anxiety and stress you're able to carry.

(cheering)

People want it easy out here.

There is no easy if you want to live a 1% life.

People are so funny in the audacity of the words

that come out of their mouth.

My friends, the top 1% earners in America,

one of the richest countries in the world,

start at $420,000 a year.

If you're in this room and you make $420,000 a year,

that means you make in the top 1% in this country.

Yet, everybody's walking around like

if you don't make a milli, you haven't even started.

We're delusional, and all the people that make 420

and above, they work their dick off.

Guys, they work.

Like, it's so much work, it takes work.

Now, what I believe is, what absolutely just drives me

so happy and why I wanna be here is

I can't believe that you can actually make funny videos

on Instagram and get brands to pay you $10,000

for you to hold a bottle of Pepsi in your hand.

I mean, it's crazy.

What's crazy is you can literally go start a Shopify store

and sell T-shirts or makeup or bow ties

'cause your grandfather wore bow ties, and you design it,

on the internet and it gets shipped to you from China,

and then you run Instagram ads.

The level of, guys, if this existed when I was a kid,

fuck college, I wouldn't have graduated high school.

I'm not sure I would've made it through

fucking middle school. (laughing)

This is a mindset and execution game.

You have to understand how ridiculously good it is,

and I believe that's very hard when there's

so much negativity being pushed on social media,

on mainstream media,

everybody's trying to convince you it's bad,

it's the greatest.

It's the greatest, the problem is everybody can do it

and supply and demand then kicks in.

Everybody can sell bow ties,

everybody can make funny videos,

everybody can show off their abs and get the right angle

on their fucking ass, and all that shit.

Everybody can do that.

But it doesn't mean that you shouldn't try.

And more importantly, and I what I really wanna

leave you with is something you really need to understand,

which is almost everybody fails because of their intentions.

Almost everybody fails because of their intentions.

They start businesses for themselves.

Makes sense, we're humans.

But everything that runs through their mind

is what's in it for me?

How do I maximize my profit?

What's it gonna be like for me?

How is it gonna be good for me?

The only way to succeed in the world we live in

is to actually be consumer centric.

There's a very specific reason that Amazon is winning.

It's because everything that happens at that company

is trying to figure out how it's good for you.

It's good for you to buy Prime because you love the fact

that, all year, that means everything you buy

has free shipping, that's good for you.

It comes quick 'cause that's good for you

'cause you value time.

The singular reason that my content has worked,

whether it was wine for the first six years of my career,

or it's been business over the last eight years,

has worked is because before I post any piece of content,

in my mind I think about how is this gonna be valuable

to you?

How is this singular piece of content going to bring

any value to you?

The single reason I've been able to build an audience

is I don't put out content that's a top-of-the-funnel

piece of content that gets you into my database

so I can sell you my product.

It's a piece of content that I hope brings you value,

which then creates a relationship with us,

the end, period, the end.

And so if you're taking anything from this talk,

number one, the opportunity is ridiculous.

I need you to understand that.

If you don't know what Shopify is, Google it

and learn about the platform that costs nothing

to start a store on the internet, that works really well,

and sell something on it.

If you don't know how to run an Instagram Story ad,

like I referenced it earlier,

you wrote a note about it but I didn't get to the detail.

The reason I didn't get to the detail

is 'cause the details are called Google.com.

Go to fucking Google.com, type in how do I run

an Instagram ad, enter, and 8,000 trillion fucking billion

results come back.

Everybody wants people to come up here

and fucking draw shit on a fucking white paper.

Are you out of your fucking mind? It's 2019!

Information is a commodity, information is zero.

It doesn't cost anything, don't buy information.

The internet, it's free.

Take a step back and understand what you're doing

with yourself, what makes you happy?

Are you trying to be rich because you wanna stick it

to your parents or everybody else that said

that you couldn't?

Or are you trying to do something

'cause you actually like it?

Are you trying to be rich because you wanna go buy shit

to create a perception that you're happy?

Or do you actually want to be happy?

We live in remarkable times.

The internet is the single greatest and most complex

and ridiculous invention in the history of the human being.

We, luckily for some unknown reason,

happen to be living during the era of it finally hitting

it's scale, 30 years in,

and it is in it's prime opportunity.

The comp I would make is imagine we were living

in Chicago hundreds and hundreds of years ago,

and we could be buying up property for almost nothing

because we just didn't understand what

was actually happening,

that's how I think about attention on the internet today.

It is so valuable and it is so underpriced,

and literally, the only thing that's stopping you

is insecurity.

The reason you're not posting is you're worried

that nobody's gonna care what you have to say.

The reason you're not posting is you don't like the way

you look in the picture or the camera.

All these different things that come down to

what other people think, not what you think about yourself.

The reason, my man over there, I was clapping

and I love talking about losing

for the first 18 years of my life

is 'cause it was easier shit

because I didn't give a fuck what you had to say.

I was in my own cocoon, doing my own thing,

making my own self happy,

and I stand here today in the same God damn place.

Do I want my content to do well? Sure.

Do I want my businesses to be successful? Yep.

Do I want Empathy Wine to do well? Sure.

And the sneaker, do I want, of course,

like, I'm playing, I'm playing my game,

I want to win, I'm playing my game.

But when I lose, I'm grateful for the opportunity to play.

(cheering and applauding)

What I learned about myself at a young age

was that, I see it, I gotta leave with this though.

I recently realized, oh shit,

this is all working because when I was five, six,

seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13,

when it was a summer day in the '80s in Jersey,

and everybody went out to play, play hoop, whatever,

I wanted to work.

I rang doorbells and washed people's cars.

I sold lemonade, baseball cards exploded

and I started buying them and flipping them.

Then I turned 14 and wanted to work at my dad's liquor store

for 14 hours a day for two bucks an hour,

because I realized work was my passion, I like the game.

It's why athletes, being in this stadium,

athletes that love their game, a lot of athletes don't,

as I've gotten to know athletes,

they do it 'cause that's where the money is,

but they're not happy, they don't love it.

It blows a lot of our minds 'cause we'd love to play

in the fucking league, but not everybody wants that.

This is one big game of happiness

and the internet allows you to,

but are you patient enough?

And are you secure and have enough self-esteem

to go through the process of eating the fucking dirt

to get to a place of happiness?

Success, my friends, needs to stop being talked about

how much money you have,

it needs to be talked about how many fucking smiles

you put on your face.

(cheering and applauding) It does.

It does.

And I love the cliche shit, motherfuckers,

I know you're in the crowd right now,

they're like, easy for you, dick, you have money.

Motherfucker, I was happy before I had it,

you didn't know me, dick. (cheering and applauding)

You didn't know me.

You didn't know me and I don't necessarily know you,

but I know this, because I read 10,000 fucking comments

a day in my DM,

we have a ridiculous opportunity, you just need to see it.

Please try to build a business around the thing

that you would do if you weren't getting paid for it,

because it's the only thing that you're gonna work

hard enough at, 'cause you actually like it.

Go flip Thomas the trains on eBay,

start a blog about fucking Smurfs,

start about a podcast about reviewing whiskeys

or the '85 Bears.

My man, you could start a podcast and an Instagram account

and a YouTube show about just the '85 Bears

and get $100,000 in sponsorship,

from car dealerships, and pizza shops,

and all sorts of shit in this town,

and to me, the fact that that's true

and so many of those same people are making 87,000

being a lawyer or 90,000 being an executive and hating life,

or let me just play with this and I'm gonna leave with this,

would you really rather make 212,000 a year and be unhappy,

or make 97,000 and do the thing that you love the most?

And the only thing you have to do

is live a little more humbly, just a little.

We have to fucking talk about this, that's the game,

that's the game.

Please, wake up, I love you Chicago.

(cheering and applauding)

Wake up Chicago!

- Come on, guys. - What up, dog?

I see you back there, I see you up there!