(Audience laughter) Then I built my dad's business for him, I left at 34, I had no equity in the business, I haven't saved a lot of money 'cause we poured all money back into the business, I grew my dad's business from a $3 to a $60 million business. I paid back my parents for giving to me. And then I did something really smart, I was building a liquor store that my dad owned into a winy commerce business. And I was using modern technologies. And along the way, I realized that social media was the second coming of what I saw with Google and blogging and email, and so I just understood the pattern recognition, so I was an early investor in Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr and obviously, as you can imagine, it changed the course of my career. But what's really fascinating to me is that the opportunities are way greater than they've ever been 'cause it's scale now.
It's just that all we're doing is playing lotto. I'm a bad gambler. Like for example, I never taught myself how to play poker. I don't like gambling that much. So when I gamble, I go to fucking like, when I go to a casino, I go to actually like own the casino at the end of the night http://casino-games.my/online-casino-no-deposit-bonus/. Like, I'm playing the most high risk shit. Like, it's only like roulette, one number, put like fucking $500 on it. Like none of it is basic, it's all like I'm trying to like create memories, right. Which is why I lose all my fucking money. (audience laughter) That's cool for casinos, that's not cool for life, and that's what people are fucking doing. People are talking about building fucking businesses and apps and things like that, and they're not looking at the math. 99% of these companies are gonna go away, and it's been good for nine years in the economy. There's money in the system. None of the businesses that are pre series B are making any money. What do you think happens when they can't raise their next round? You know how many companies are down rounding right now? All of them. (audience laughter) Like, we are not having that conversation. So meanwhile, the propaganda of that or crypto or other things got people pumped, respect, interested, I'm sure there'll be people that win. Meanwhile, there's all this practical money. And listen, because I grew up pretty ridiculous, you know, D and F student in like rural New Jersey, so like hunter boys that wanted to shoot you with their, you know, shotgun. Then I went to Mount Ida College in Newton, Mass, 94% minorities, like kids that wanted to shoot you with different kinds of guns. And so like literally, my whole group that I grew up with from, you know, first grade through college, 98% of my friends make under $100,000 a year. Then I got into the tech world and these towns, and all my next generation friends, you know, 60% of them have 8 and 9 and 10 figures. And I look, and I look every day, and I live in this fucking bizarro world. And money is not the variable of happiness. I got boys on two fucking softball teams, fucking working factory jobs, making 47k a year and fucking happy as shit. I got a friend who's got a buck 50, 150 million in the bank, fucking miserable, depression, three times a day at the doctor who's like, I'm just, and so I'm looking at this and I'm like okay. Let's take a step back. The Internet is at maturity, we're at scale. There's real dollars to be had if you build a practical business. And we're pumping people into a casino environment of like winning a lotto ticket. And then okay, fair. If you're building a lotto ticket, that's how you win $50 million companies, $100 million companies, and I respect that. My advice over here on the practical side is much more one, two, three million dollar a year business. But then I just look and I'm like man, how many people are out there right now who would love to make to make $212,000 a year and love it. And I'm just struggling with like, trying to figure out how to get this noise into the system because it's so real.
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You either win and you get to talk shit, or you lose and your boys get to talk shit and you laugh along with them. The biggest problem right now is insecurity. Everybody's actions are to get shit to close their insecurity. You need a new pair of fucking Supremes because you wanna tell people who you are through your Supremes, but you're just fucking disguising your weakness.
And so I am absolutely obsessed for people to start talking about self-awareness and patience, 'cause they will work. Now, it might take 15 years, it may take seven, it may take nine, but if you actually take tried and true things like that during a time where there's this much opportunity, it's not sexy to walk around and say you buy weird like candles in China and sell them on Amazon and make $7,000 a month, but it works. And I've literally sat in rooms and had these one on one discussions, and kids have chosen the sexier thing because we're playing one big fucking game of optics. We're playing one fucking big game of optics. And like, VC is super interesting to me, I did really well, right, here's my story. I made a lot of money selling baseball cards a kid. My dad worked his fucking face off and saved every dollar, immigrants have figured it out. It's called make money, buy no dumb shit, save it for 13 years, buy an asset, have the American Dream. Right? Versus what's going on, by the way, new prediction 'cause I've been doing some homework, college debt is gonna take the whole country down. I had no idea, I don't know, you know, I knew college debt was fucked up. I didn't know the following thing that I've been doing homework on the last three days. This story is real and is being scaled across America right now. You're $237,000 in college debt on some interest that's fucking bonkers. You're making $84,000 a year and banks are lending you a half a million to buy an apartment. (audience laughter) So just get ready, 2009 is coming all over again. I don't know how long Trump can artificially hold it up, but shit's gonna hit and it's gonna hit hard. And here's what's gonna happen. Everybody's gonna blame the colleges, 'cause you know, Omar who needed a new BMW, even though he had $313,000 in debt, he's not gonna blame himself for the BMW, he's gonna blame Babson. And so colleges' brand's about to get fucking collapsed. Just like the banks got shit on. Including all of these opportunities that we know are good alternatives. You know, by the way, 1930, 1940, 1950, vocational skills were hot. Then the propaganda of college came through. Which is cool 'cause it worked for a minute. It's just, shit changes. And so we're living through a really really really really interesting time, because there's so much carnage in the system ready to come, at the same token, it's never been better for all of us, because the scale of anything you wanna do on the Internet is actually real. It's never been more practical to make $100,000 a year talking about fucking the Smurfs. (audience laughter) It's the truth. Like, if you look at the niches, if you actually play out a podcast, a YouTube channel and an Instagram account and really understand how to build stories like my man just did, day in and day out consistent, especially if you know what the fuck you're talking about and have patience, you will be stunned how much money is gonna be for you on the other side of that rainbow. And the only way you'll do it while nothing good is happening is you'll talk about the shit you love the most. You could talk about the 1987 Pistons for a living. That's crazy. By the way, the 87 Pistons really fucked with Jordan, which is why I had to drop in on my man Jason. (audience laughter) I know you do, man. I got none, fuck. This is why I wanna buy the Jets, I'm like fuck it, nobody else is gonna do it for me, I'm gonna buy the Jets and win my own Superbowl. Anyway. In the last three weeks, I've had these kids who, you know, have been following my content and are like Gary, I wanna get your advice. And basically, both narratives went the exact same way, which is hey, I listen to you, I got good, I started buying stuff, then I hit it big, a bunch of people made a lot of money on the solar eclipse glasses. Like, you could literally buy those things for like 16 cents in China on Baidu and then sell it for like four dollars a pop on Amazon.
People made bank. Like, I know one kid who made $317,000. On a $3,000 starting point, right. It's very real to me, instead of I'm gonna build some crazy app that's gonna fucking change the world, right. 'Cause it's practical as fuck. And both of them have made real money, one kid's made like 16,000 this year off of like $100 base, right. These are like real money. And both of them took it all and bought crypto. - [Audience Member] Woo! - Yes. (audience laughter) Yes. By the way, I believe in blockchain as a technology out my ass. The part of the story he doesn't know is they bought at 17,000. - [Audience] Aww. And they bought at 17,000 because they read 400 articles that said it was gonna be 34,000. And by the way, Bitcoin could be 400,000, I'm not sure. I don't know. Here's what I'm disappointed in, short term thinking. When he goes woo, I'm not mad at him, I'm like listen, maybe, long term. I don't know anybody's money situation. Let me give you something that will really work for you. If you don't have to take it out of Wall Street, put your money into Facebook and Amazon, and I promise you, unless America melts over the next 7 to 10 years, you'll do well. There's certain things that are just so black and white obvious, right. And then everybody else is looking for a lottery ticket. I used an analogy in the podcast I just did with some good guys, and it hit me, maybe 'cause I was in Miami and stayed at the Hard Rock Casino fucking Hotel which was fucking disgusting. (audience laughter) But a lot of people were treating their business the way you go to a casino. Yeah, you could have one night where you took 5,000 from the casino, but why don't you keep going every night and tell me how it works out. They don't build Vegas on us winning. And everybody's treating their business that way right now. Everybody's jumping from trend to trend, they have no foundation of what they're actually doing, they're riding only headlines and they're gonna get exposed. Instead of taking a meaningful step back and doing a lot of thinking about A, how exciting it is to eat shit. You know, the thing that works for me that I really wished on everybody else is I love the journey, I love the game, I love the struggle. Do you know why I keep doing new things? 'Cause I like when people clown on me. You know why I came out with a sneaker, my own sneaker, especially growing up in that era? Because I knew people were gonna shit on me thinking I had too big of an ego and audacity, and I knew people didn't think it was gonna work. And that's why I did it, 'cause I wanted that struggle. And then the high of outselling future and weekend sneakers combined, that high is the greatest and the low, that's my L. When you love the game that you're in, you win either way. |
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