Physical Address
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– What just happened
between the three of us is the single reason that Gary Vee the character exists. Way too long, guys looked up to guys on dumb shit, trying to do quick cash and fucking Mercedes and flick. I'm here to fucking squash that because there's plenty of
people with good intent who've been miscommunicated to, to take shortcuts and do bullshit shit.
You got your perspective. (audience cheering) I just wanna be happy,
don't you want to be happy? (upbeat music) What was really interesting about COVID for all the challenges that it had for a lot of us, it allowed us to slow down and ponder. And for me, especially, it allowed me to tap into some things that I haven't historically talked about, and I'm grateful for that. For all the things I talk
about around self-awareness or gratitude or things of that nature, what's incredibly clear to me, what's incredibly clear to me at this point in my career is that from a business standpoint and clearly from a life standpoint, I think we grossly
underestimate perspective. I really genuinely believe that life is exactly as you see it. I believe that there are inherently people who are cynical, and because of that, they're just going to
believe things are not good or stacked against them, and I think there are
people who are optimistic.
I think there are people who are practical and delusional and all those things that I think many of you have heard about, but there are a couple things that really stood out for me during this last 18 months. And it really is interesting that one of the categories I'm spending a lot of time on right now that a lot of you know is NFT land, (audience cheering) and the way I got there is what's most interesting to me and what I thought about, what do I wanna talk about tonight, what can actually bring some value, what's something that
somebody can build off of. I really think it's time we start talking about
curiosity a little bit more. So I become incredibly
passionate about curiosity. I think that in self-reflection mode so much of what works for me, there's many things that
are part of the equation, there's many ingredients
that get me there, but curiosity is not something I saw or really even understood as part of the equation. And I think when I think of
the collective in this room, something that is very obvious to me is in our current society, we start to demonize
curiosity pretty quickly.
We get a couple of years of it as a kid, but then just subconsciously it's not some crazy agenda, but subconsciously we
start going into places that overvalue how it's been done, the black and white, the system. So much of what I've always
felt as an entrepreneur was a vulnerability of a school system is not the cliche stuff that you might see in my content, but just by nature, all of us spending the majority
of our youth in a system that grades us every 90 days, and we pandered to a
subjective reality within that really sets us up to eliminate our creativity and our curiosity, makes us subconsciously
conform to the short term and inherently makes us lack patience.
The other thing I'm
spending a lot of time on is how much we struggle with
our relationship in time and with time, We get sold so many
things like life is short, which I think all of
us at this point know, depending on the context that you look at a
statement or a situation, it changes the altercation. But so many of the rules in society of when you're supposed to
have your life figured out, get married, accomplish is predicated on a world where people
live to 45 years old. It's just the reality of it. So much of what we're affected by is how our grandparents were affected by their
parents and grandparents, and those fuckers were dying at 40. (audience laughing) Of course, you should have
your life figured out at 30 when you're dead at 47, (audience laughing) but we haven't adjusted. 1880 may seem a long time ago, but it's stunningly not.
And when life expectancy is in the late '30s and early 70s, and now we're 75, 85, 90, 95, I just think that there's so
much confusion in the system, and I just think that we need to have different conversations. Let me give you an example. A different conversation that we need in the business world, that's where I'll keep it, but it's clearly a societal statement is I'm genuinely struggling why anybody should not be kind. I have watched in the business world for the last 20 years, people justify being
cruel to the people that they're a manager of or their admins because they're stressed. I'm sorry I scolded you, you don't get it, the client had me in a bad day.
We have completely accepted
bad behavior off of bullshit. (audience applauding) I'm really passionate about this. If you're a leader by nature, your job is to stop
pressure at your level, not deploy more of it underneath you. I think that we need to just do better. I think that people in
business are confused. I think that the way that businesses
branded is misbranded. I think people think that if you're kind, you get walked over and I think that is absolutely asinine. I think that a lot of people who claim they're being walked all over are actually just trying
to manipulate situations and it didn't work out
the way they wanted to, so they use, I got walked
all over it as excuse.
I'm kind as fuck, none of you are walking over me. On the short term and we are short-term structured. And I think that I'm passionate
at this point in my life to really start talking about the nuances that are very clear to me, that sustainable things are grounded in very good virtues, and that we have to start
recognizing that soft skills will continue to dominate
and gain momentum because hard skills are starting to be commoditized. And as technology eats up things that people can do with AI and many other technology
advances, robots, they'll kill us in the end, we'll probably all be gone, but the robots will win.
Your children will probably
get killed by robots, kidding, but maybe not. (audience laughing) But I think for all of us, as we navigate these next two,
three, four, five decades, I think it's incredibly
important to take a step back and really recognize
how much has changing. All these changes, whether it's blockchain or a mature social media or all the other technology things are fundamentally changing the world. The railroad system really changed shit. Airplanes really changed things, like the television really changed things. I believe that all of us are
incapable including myself to really wrap our heads around what a mature internet with an emerging blockchain
means to society. And my intuition is that what it's definitely causing is a very big opportunity for soft skills and other things that we haven't talked
about in entrepreneurship.
In my brain and in my company, I call it the honey empire. I believe you get more
out of honey than vinegar, but let there be no confusion, I'm trying to build an empire, which is not a soft word. People struggle with contradictions. I'm incredibly ambitious and tenacious. I'm incredibly fast day by day, but I'm incredibly patient. I think people struggle
with patience and ambition, even though it's exactly what you see if you study things that have been built that are meaningful.
And so I think nuances
context really matters and we've lost that, we've become an incredibly hot take headline reading society, clearly, politically, everybody understands that, it's the easiest thing to read, it goes beyond that. – Gary, what's up? Oh my God, I'm freaking out. – Don't. – This is crazy for me guys. I mean, we have Gary Vee
in the house, this is nuts. (audience cheering) Lots of questions for Gary tonight, starting with this video question from Service Credit Union.
– Hi Gary, what is the
most notable disadvantage a micro or small business would have in today's market? And more importantly, what is a key attribute a business owner should
have in overcoming it? – Can I get him to play it again? What's the biggest vulnerability that… – What is the most notable disadvantage of a micro/small in today's market and what is the key attribute/trait a business owner should
have to overcome it? And this is coming from Michael. – Michael I think the
biggest vulnerability that a small or medium-sized business has is their perspective that their size is their vulnerability. It fascinates me how much
people love to think about why they're not growing. And no question, this is the luxury of getting
so much content sent to me in text, email, DMs. Everybody goes to, this person got more fundraising, this is a bigger company, they opened a location in my area. There's a very specific
reason why David and Goliath is a story that still
plays out in our society. The biggest mistake and
the biggest opportunity for a smaller business is to be David.
The problem with small businesses is they inherently want to be Goliath, they want to be bigger, but they don't have that resource. The problem with Goliath is they're slow and audacious. It's actually very easy to build, compete with big companies today because of the size and
scale of the internet. We see it so much. If Goliath always was
gonna continue to win, well IBM would still
be the biggest company, Microsoft would've
never let Google happen, Google would've never let Facebook happen. I think you need to, when you're small, you need to lean into
scaling unscalable behaviors. – For small businesses
and small business owners, where do they get the confidence to grow their business in what might be a very saturated market? – What's the alternative? You decided to have a fucking business. Seriously though, right? Like the confidence
comes from the audacity of thinking that you can
build a life for yourself where you pay for yourself and nobody else is doing it for you.
You already made that decision. The alternative is go get a job and shut down your company. Like, people love capitalism
and entrepreneurship when it's working for them, the second it's not, they don't like it. I mean, I'm so tired of all my friends that are capitalists. I'm a capitalist, which means I'm willing to go to zero and if I lose, I lost. But like, everyone's like
such a great entrepreneur, and then somebody bigger comes along and takes market share and they're crying about some shit. Everybody hates when the
government's involved until they need the government. Stop being soft. – Love it, stop being soft,
everyone, myself included. – But it's a very, I wanna stay on this, it's a very important point, this is what you signed up for. If you don't have the confidence, you can build it through
historical staying alive. Do you know how many people here… Clap up if you've had your own business for more than five years. (audience applauding) The level of admiration
I have for everybody who just clapped, it's hard. Your confidence should
come from the fact that you're part of a small group of people that decided to take on
the risk to begin with.
Anybody would just clap and has been doing it for
five years that's remarkable, but don't be audacious if somebody big comes along, they're better than you then, that's what you're saying. Don't cry about it, don't try to change the rules 'cause it's not working for you. My favorite version of
it is you were small, you got bigger and hurt other people, but now somebody else came
along and is bigger than you, and you're crying about it, right? You weren't crying when you were taking other people's money. So don't cry when I'll take yours. (audience laughing) – I love it. All right, this is from
Mark Sky on Twitter. My girlfriend and I are
quitting our careers to take on an ambitious
20,000 kilometer bike ride and paddle from home
in Canada to a summit, as a charity adventure
that lasts 18 months. What is the best way to gain exposure? – The best way to gain exposure is to do the most obvious thing
to everybody in this room, anybody could sit in this
seat and answer this, which is to document the entire journey.
The question is, are
you good enough at it? Everybody knows the answer. You start a blog and
you put it on YouTube, you chop up all the pieces of content you put on TikTok and
Instagram and Twitter, but are they compelling? Do they know how to post that content? Will they reply to all the comments? People's lack of patience
with building exposure is why most people don't have any. It took me two years of Wine Library TV before anybody gave a shit.
I did it five days a week for two years. (audience applauding) – Now, Gary, in one of your podcasts, you said something super commendable that you actually had a
position in your company for someone to read the comments, reply to people. And from there, you guys create this assessment as to what your content should be. Can we talk a little bit about the importance of replying to comments and acknowledging people in social media. – Like in the prior
session, to your point, we have a very prominent role
at VaynerMedia called PCS, post creative strategist. These individuals' jobs
are to read every comment from every post of a brand and then use their psychology,
anthropology skills to make observations from the comments, by reading the qualitative data and inform an insight that makes the next piece of content.
The amount of people
that hit me up every day is hundreds, thousands
of people who are sad that they're not growing. And then occasionally, I used to do it all the time, now I do it occasionally I will go look at their account. 90% of those people don't even reply to the 15 people that leave a comment. If you're in this audience, and you're sad that your
profile is not growing on the business side or the personal side, and you are not replying
to every comment you get from the content you are putting out, you are audacious. Thank you. (audience laughing) – I love this next question
from Michael on Twitter. He asks, what are the key principles to happiness and success in life? – I believe it's simplicity, I really do. I think for the people
that know me in my life, I'm really simple. I really enjoy my career, I love this.
Like you couldn't even
imagine how humbled I am by people's interest in what I talk about, but I think the key to happiness is being content while being ambitious. And I think being content
comes from gratitude. I'm so grateful for what I have, and I've always been that way, that all this special stuff
that has been happening doesn't mean enough to me. This is not where my self worth comes in. The Gary Vee crap and the
collapse and the follower, like it's incredible, but it's not what I aspire to, it's not how I see my value.
And I think the only way to be happy is to have a quiet mind. And I think a quiet mind comes from a balance of very deep humility and true perspective of understanding that like you just genuinely understand that you don't mean shit
in the scheme of things, but you aspire in your
behavior to mean something. And I think it's a very
interesting balance that I think it works incredibly well. I just wish people, people are just impossibly addicted to outside affirmation, to acceptance. And I wish people lived
in their own cocoon and just did the things
that made them happy. So many people would aspire to make so much less money if they didn't care about
what other people think and would be dramatically happier, dramatically happier. And I wish that in society.
– Now, what do you do when… Yeah, it's gone, they're all good ones. (audience applauding) – It's a tough conversation because in the business world, so many people think that scoring is based on how big your net worth is or how much money you make. And it's really unfortunate 'cause I think troop red entrepreneurship almost doesn't give a shit about all the collateral that
comes along with it, it's art, you just love doing it. And we've got to find our balance much like the chat I had upfront as I spend the next half decade refining what I talked to you about up there, and what I'm talking about right now is we have to change the
definition of success. We have to, it cannot be the flex. We can not put expensive watches and cars and bank accounts on a pedestal, we must get away from that. But that doesn't mean
we demonize it either. We have to make it about
the process of the game. We've gotta find our way 'cause right now we're over here.
We've got to find this. – Now, Gary, tell me when life hits, when the storm of life hits, 'cause we've all been there, no matter who you are, how do you remain in that state and that space of gratitude and balance. – Very easily. When your entire life
has only predicated on the health and wellbeing of a small group of people you love more than breathing, nothing scares you. (audience applauding) I mean, the first couple
of months of COVID, Vayner was a very weird spot. I don't build it for profits, so we didn't have profit. You know, I built it for growth. We were very weird, in the US the way they
subsidized businesses, we were in the middle, we weren't small enough
and weren't big enough, so we got nothing. All of our clients are humongous and all of them right away said, we're gonna slow down the way we pay you.
It was a very big challenge, and I just remember having the
greatest moment with myself when it was super scary
week one saying, oh my God, everything I've been telling them is true. If this company goes out of business, I'll be beyond okay. – I love that, I have a question because what you said prior to what you just said, really hit home for me
because in my previous role, in my previous job, I actually attached my
worth and my identity to income, my job, my work, my schedule, social media, because I worked so hard to get it. I fell in kind of that loophole then life hit me with a
very big wake up call. And I was stuck with this
super uncomfortable feeling of my internal changing, and if I didn't change my external, it just wasn't working and I became a very unhappy person. So just in case there's
anyone in the crowd and the fans and the audience, anyone listening online who can relate, what would be your advice to them to have that courage, to start redefining success in their life. – That they can. Like everybody's so obsessed on what they've done and said.
Like the greatest gift in the world is the ability to be comfortable
in changing your mind. (audience applauding) Actually, I have a very
different thing to say right now. We need to start hanging
out with 90 year olds more. (audience laughing) I mean this. You wanna do something that will bring you an incredible amount of value, but also bring someone else an incredible amount of value, go donate your time to a
retirement home for one week, you will learn a lesson real fast that 99% of the stuff that all of you are right now thinking
about means jack shit.
This is a game of perspective. I don't understand how
we don't understand that. You must shift perspective
into simplicity, which then makes the
ability to do what we all do so much more palpable because there's no weight on it, because it doesn't matter as much, which then inherently
makes it more enjoyable. Of course, you're gonna burn out if your entire self worth is in how good your business is doing. Of course, you're gonna burn out. A funny thing happens you don't burn out from games. When you make your career a game things changed very quickly. – I love that, I'm gonna start the clap on that one. (audience applauding) All right, next, we have a video question from a Facebook winner, Matt Huber.
– Gary Vee, it's Matt
huber here in Edmonton. Absolutely love what you do. The focus big time on the humility aspect. We're five-year stronger on
20 to 30% year over year, we got 20 Albertans working with us and just rocking it. Our question for you is how do we get from the small business to the medium sized business? We got managers and we're
helping them succeed, but how do we let go? How do we grow that to the next level? – What's tough about video questions is you wanna ask them, you know, there's the next question there. It's like, you know, again, I talk about these, the Maddix a lot, and I will repeat them to my death. The best way to go from a small business to a medium business is by deploying patience and doing what you did to get to become a small business. Of course there are strategies. I've been very consistent about this. For 15 years, I put out
a very simple message that has been uncomfortably
historically true. If you understand where the
customer's attention is, and you know how to make pictures,
videos, and written words for those platforms, you will grow.
For that gentleman's business, if he got great at LinkedIn ads, his top line revenue would grow. The question is, how's he judging himself? By the way, what is even a
small or medium business? Like what are the rules of all that shit? Is like, is 5 million small? Is 50 million medium? Like, what is this shit? I'm sure there's some answer
to it if you Google it, but everybody's answer's different, right? Like what? Like it's these constant games of making these things for us. You know what that is? That's fucking the 90
day school grade shit, the fuck are you trying
to do for tomorrow? What is that? He's gonna make his own subjective call if he's a medium business
or a small business.
We're playing dumb fucking games out here. – Oh my gosh. I love it, I love it. (audience applauding) Gary you speak a lot… – What's a medium sized business? – Honest to God, I'm with you, who f thing knows? – But really, is it 50? Somebody help, what's a
medium sized business? No, no revenue, not people. (audience responding) 5 million bucks somebody just said, that's a medium sized business. That's smaller shit to me, that's a bullshit business. But this is important to understand. I'm not right, I'm not cool, I'm not special, it just doesn't work for my brain. For somebody else, a
million, that's insane. Do you know how hard it is to build a million dollar business? I know by the way, what about the fact that
you change over time? What about 23 or $5 million business is a medium-sized business, but then you're 36 and it's not, or it goes down, like we just, we play in these semantics that don't mean anything
except make us anxious.
– You speak to a patience a lot. And I'm very curious to hear this answer because I am not patient at all, and I'm one of these people where I have this grand idea and if there isn't this outcome that I'm looking for within the week, I immediately think that I'm failing and I'm doing a miserable
job and no one cares. So if there's anyone
out there who's like me, what advice would you give them in being patient with their business? – Do you remember in sixth
grade when you had a zit and you were scared shit
just to go to school? Everybody else had zits too, that's my answer to that question. (audience laughing) This is where humility
is a fucking superpower. You may see bravado on stage, my happiness is grounded in humility. You know what humility
looks like in this scenario? If you don't think you're important, it's almost like your
results don't matter. Who are you disappointing? Yourself? Those are voices that
were put inside of you by somebody else. – But what if you're a perfectionist? Like, what if you expect
12 out of 10 everyday.
– If you're a perfectionist
you're insecure. – Oh, that's good, you hit me right between
the eyes with that one. – Well, if we're getting a shitload abuse and not a lot of conversions, it doesn't sound like
it's a platform issue, it sounds like your offering isn't good. No, no, it's not, by the way, by the way, this is why business is so funny to me, that's a good thing, that wasn't a bad thing,
that wasn't a razz, because listen to how
the question was asked. I'm not in the right path but you're getting plenty of attention. You're not converting which means you have to understand that what you're offering isn't landing, and this is where curiosity and humility to take a step back and say, how do I tweak this? Because you might be
an inch away, brother, you might literally have to
drop the price by 10 bucks, add a day, change a word
and everything flows.
But what people often do is they go to the front to fix when the back is the issue. It's never this, everyone here is obsessed with the sink, it's the fucking well. You know what's so crazy, now I'm gonna get up. What you just did about
I see his true intent, but when you were squirming
with everything, I said no, in a good way, in a good way, I know, what just happened between the three of us is the single reason that
Gary Vee the character exists. Way too long guys looked
up to guys on dumb shit, trying to do quick cash and
fucking Mercedes and flick, I'm here to fucking squash that because there's plenty of
people with good intent who've been miscommunicated to, to take shortcuts and do bullshit shit.
(audience applauding) Okay, let's keep going. – All right, this is a tweet from Rob. How does one balance family life, two small businesses, and a full-time job? – By not judging themselves. – Oh, love that. Can we go deeper into that? How does that look. – Easy, there is no such
thing as work-life balance, every family is different. There is no such thing called balance, you're the judge and the jury, just like a medium sized
business or a small business. We do these things to
make ourselves upset, we have to stop. How do you balance it? By trying. (audience applauding) You try, you try to go to the recital, you try to go to the
parent-teacher conference, you try to run your business, you try. – And if you try your
hardest and can't do it, you should not judge yourself.
– What is can't? What's can't do it? What does that even fucking mean? You missed the baseball game. Come on. The kids can have you miss
a fucking baseball game. (audience laughing) Everything, it's true, it's true. Every single person here has 9,700 things they can think of that
their parents fucked up and they still love them. And oh, by the way, forgot 8 trillion things their parents did that was fucked up. We were in some crazy fucking dynamic of like over analyzing
everything so fucking much with a layer of cynicism that is making everybody go fucking crazy.
If you're a good person and you're trying, truly trying and not trying to hurt anybody, you're fucking phenomenal, (audience cheering) Enough. – How do we eliminate that outside noise? Sometimes, you know… – By not fucking caring
about other people's opinions once and fucking for all. High school is fucking over, stop playing in it. It's over, you left. You're not in fucking high school, you are, I know, but everybody else, stop. It's over, what? Who? Your mom? Tell your mom to go fuck herself, she fucked up too. What, you're spelling, what? Who? What? Just living for other people's judgment. Everybody else sucks shit too. – Now, if you're gonna tell your mom that, how do you have the courage to have that kind of
conversation with her? – Because you don't say
it the way I'm saying it, you say it in different way.
You say, mom, I appreciate your opinion of how I'm being a father, how about the time you did this, that shuts them up real fast. (audience laughing) I love it, I love it. – Like I just don't understand how people are so deeply into
this affirmation culture, keeping up with the Joneses. it's just really a problem, And it's getting worse by the second and news alert, it's not
social media's fault, it's your fault. This lack of accountability
is fucking disgusting. (audience applauding) We have to go deeper and we have to be more
optimistic and positive. We have to become more
optimistic and positive. You know why? You get to decide life.
Just so you know, news alert, you're deciding what life actually is. It is your subjective call. And if you're like, well, Gary, fuck you, I grew up in a family
that was very pessimistic, and this is what it is, well, then what do you want? Then go to therapy, right? Like do something, fight for it. Fight to be happy, listen to positive shit, that's a funny game. Miraculous thing happens when you cut out your
most pessimistic friend, you become more optimistic. And let me tell you about complaining. The only people that are
listening to your complaining are people that extremely love you, but are enablers or your
other loser friends, and you're just complaining to each other.
– How about those people who, 'cause I'm sometimes like this. I have high anxiety in certain moments and I create this narrative, the storyline in my head where I'm like, this person's judging me because of this or this person's mad at me because he didn't look at me today and didn't say hello
when I said hello to him, how do you escape that mental block? Because sometimes it's all consuming. – By making me pretend that
you're gonna die tomorrow. – Actually, I love that. – I'm being serious, I'm
giving you my answer. How the fuck am I gonna care about Johny thinking that I'm not good-looking today if I'm gonna die tomorrow, you think I'm gonna care about that? We don't have perspective.
All of a sudden, miraculously people stopped worrying
about a lot of things when COVID hit. That was funny. She changed. We just care about dumb shit 'cause the world is too good. How about that one? How about that one, my friends? We've decided it's so
bad because it's so good. Look at the data. What can I tell you? Too much prosperity. This is where again, humility comes in. So much of this good shit for me, so many entrepreneurs struggle
with the word luck I do. I worked so hard since I was 14 years old, I struggle with it, but
I'm incredibly lucky. I was born in a communist country and was in the right
time, in the right place. My grandfathers both spent years in jail for being entrepreneurs in Russia, and I get clapped for in Edmonton.
(audience laughing) So, I lived in a studio apartment, the size of this fucking stage with fucking multiple family members, so I have perspective, I'm grateful for everything I have. We lack gratitude. You understand that, right? You lack gratitude. There are almost 2 billion people on earth that don't have access to clean water. Are you a fucking asshole? Think about what I just said.
There are over a billion people on earth that don't have access to clean water, and you're complaining that your Instagram's
not growing, fuck you. (audience cheering) – Okay, this next… – Can we stay on this one? – I'd love to. Are we good guys? I'd love to. – You wanna take anxiety
out of the system, you wanna be happier, look at the world and be grateful for what you have.
Everybody's so interested
in paying attention to people that have more than them, they don't recognize that
there's way more people that have less than them. – So Gary, what do you
do to stay grounded, to stay in the space of gratitude? Are there affirmations that you say, do you meditate? Do you spend time with your family? What is your source of that gratitude? – My sources that I was
extremely fortunate with the luck of the DNA game and outrageous levels of remarkable parenting by my mom. That's me, that's me.
That's why I stand up here today, not thinking anything of me, all this things that I'm spewing, I'm just a vehicle passing through what my mom gave to me and I'm sure she got, you know, like, I don't think there's
anything special about me, I know what I'm saying
is special and important. I know a lot of other
people know it to be true. I have so much judgment on me in the world because I am obsessed with
talking about positive things in a world where anger
and darkness is loud and happiness is quiet.
(audience applauding) What you're seeing on the
mainstream media and social media is the loud dark minority. The problem is the quiet,
happy majority is quiet. (audience applauding) If you're happy, do me a favor, share it and not flex it. Don't show them you're happy
with your Porsche, Rick. Talk about real shit, this is real talk here. – You're a son of immigrant parents, I'm a daughter of immigrant parents. My beautiful mom is here today. Her and my dad escaped communist
Poland back in the '80s, created this unbelievable
life here in Canada. And I remember listening
to you on a podcast, I think maybe the moment where I truly fell in love with Gary Vee, and you said your greatest gift was being the son of immigrant parents. – 100%, adversity is the
foundation of success. (audience applauding) This macro prosperity is
the foundation of anxiety. You don't worry about everything
we talk about in society when you don't have food.
– Gary, did you ever have anxiety? Did you ever put these
pressures on yourself when you started first creating content? If you ever were in this space of doubt and fear and insecurity, how did you get out of that bubble? – The most insecure
place I've ever been in was the fear of confrontation, which blows people's mind because on stage and public persona, candor is my strength, but real life, I hated candor because my father was very
aggressive with candor, but very negative. And I wasn't able to separate the vehicle he was deploying the candor in from the value of candor. So, for 25 years of my
career, I was anxious every time I decided
somebody had to get fired, it completely put me into spirals. I would avoid it, it was always sloppy. To a T, every person that's
ever been close to me in business that works
for me or worked for me that doesn't love me
is based on one thing, my inability to be candorous.
And it's been a very big shift for me in the last three, four years, the new book is called
"Twelve and a Half", it's about 13 attributes, but I call it "Twelve and a Half" because I'm only halfway through
my journey on kind candor. And I needed to create the
word kind in front of candor to even begin to deploy candor, and it has led to an incredible
amount of unhappiness in my life and career was my inability to be candarous, which is wild 'cause my
content is incredibly candarous 'cause I'm not talking to anybody, I'm talking to everybody, but when it's Steve or Sally
or Johnny or Nicole or Karen, it was very hard for me.
And so now I do it. – Would you change anything about your journey or your process even the negative moments, the life-changing moments, the things that you didn't love. If you're here right now and you could. – Of course not, of course not. It would be crazy. – I love that, I agree. It's all about the process. – The number one, people
looking backwards, backwards, dwelling it's over. I don't know if you guys heard, we have not invented time machines yet. You're not going back anyway. People sit and dwell and they make these subjective, this keeps going back
to the theme of tonight. They make subjective calls of that's where their life got ruined. And they decide that that's
where life got ruined for 47 years, they think about it. It's no, I think I'm incredibly grateful, and I always do a fun game with myself, which is maybe something on paper would have been something great, but maybe that would have
led me to going over here, and that's where I would
have gotten hit by a bus, like I believe in that.
I'm very imaginative of it could be worse, it could be worse. It's just completely one
big game of gratitude, and I want, I come and do this because I'm passionate about one person in this audience
emailing me in nine years saying I was in Edmonton in 2021 and I wasn't grateful, you're right. I was spoiled, I was entitled, I was delusional and I practiced
it and it changed my life. I believe in that 'cause I'm on the
receiving end of that now, 15 years later, I like it, it feels good, it makes me feel nice. It's a better feeling.
When you're full, when you're full, when you're good, you have nowhere to go, but trying to make it
good for everybody else, which is why I know that I have to deploy sympathy and empathy for everyone who's mean to me because they're not good, they're hurt. So they're trying to drag me down to be hurt with them. People struggle with negative comments, I'm gonna save you, I'm gonna make you get real comfortable with negative comments on
social media and in life, they're hurt. Don't feel bad for you, feel bad for them. They're showing you their hand. They're upset, they're hurt. You're welcome my man. – All right, everyone, please give it up for
Mr. Gary Vee himself. (audience applauding) – Thank you so much, really.
Thank you, thank you so much. I love you Edmonton. Thank you, thank you so much. Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much. YouTube watcher, what's up? It's Gary Vee. First of all, thank you so much. I hope you're doing super
well during these times. I also wanna ask you please subscribe because my commitment and
exploration of YouTube is about to explode. Stories, polls, more
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