Hey guys, it's Gary Vay, Nerd Chuck, and this is the GaryVee audio experience.

Let's start with this. I fully, fully 100,000% with no hedge do not believe that you can teach entrepreneurship.

Right? So that's awkward. You know, what I mean by that is that, you know, it's crazy for me that that word is now considered like cool and

good. Like when I was your age, 20 years ago, entrepreneur meant that you were a fucking loser that was figuring it out. Right? So watching, watching what's happening to the world right now, where this has become a hot topic is interesting to me. And like, I'm super pumped that people now value that in a different way than they did the way. I mean, I grew up a DNF student, right? And the reason I grew up a DNF student was I was unable to sit in a room like this and listen to whoever was sitting there.

Because all I wanted to do was sell shit, right? And so that's all I've ever known. I've had no other gear somewhere around fourth grade when I got an F on a science test. I literally like that day was like, yeah, that makes sense to me because I don't give a fuck about Saturn. Right? Like, like, I don't, that's not who I am. And so I think, I think if there was anything I could do, if there was anything I could do that would be awesome for you guys to make the most money I could make. I would create a video.

I would do a video of the money I could make. I would create a test or a drug that allowed people to become self-aware. I think the number one thing that I could tell you, because I'm desperate to bring value since I'm here, is I think everybody lies to themselves. And I think all of you want certain things to be happening with you. You want yourself to be something. And I think what you need to do more of, and if I can give you, clearly I'm coming out the gate with my best piece of advice. I really do think, you know, you have to

audit who you actually are. I think that America as a society has done a really good job in selling us how to fix the things that we naturally aren't. And there's a lot of money being made on us forming into something we can't be. And I, either through massive ego and bravado, complete ignorance. I don't know what it was early on in my life. Maybe the outrageous level of self-esteem that my mom instilled in me. I was able to quickly, very, very early on.

And let me take it back, because a lot of you don't know who I was born in Belarus in the former Soviet Union. And so I came here when I was three, and we were super poor.

You know, I lived in a studio apartment. I know what it tastes like to walk five miles to Kmart by toilet paper, come home, and then sit there for an hour and split the toilet paper to get efficiency.

That's a huge advantage for me, right? Like the fact that I've been working 19 hours a day every day for the last 20 years is easy for me. It's the only gear I knew, right? I was poor. I sucked shit at school. It was the only gear I had, right?

So like I sit here with enormous disrespect and with enormous assumptions around all of you that you're just too soft to beat me, right?

That I think that you've had it better, and that that alone doesn't allow you to beat me. And that's how I think of entrepreneurship in a very rugged, very raw, much dirtier way.

I've been investing for about seven years. The first three things I invested in in 2007 after I built my wine business, and I realized this internet thing was going to be big, right?

Was Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr, right? And then I've collectively gotten stupider since that moment, mainly because I didn't think of myself as an investor when I invested in those companies.

I just thought that Ev Williams, Zucks, and David Carp were really fucking smart and we're going to win, right?

And so like when I think about Uber, like Travis is one of my best, best buddies, like now he has a lot of press, and I'm sure a lot of you know who he is, that just makes a lot of sense because all the negative press he gets makes sense because he's a fighter.

But he was the only CEO of that company because Uber's had a fight city hall for the last four years. It's hard to fight the mafia that owns the taxi service in Vegas.

That takes, like I can't do that, like I'm too not confrontational, right?

So I think that the number one thing that you can do, the, you know, I'm desperately competitive and want to be the person that brings the most value to you out of all these talks.

Like I secretly sit here and say, oh, they're going to get all these people that they've heard of, but I'm going to be the one that tells them something that actually fucking matters.

And that one thing is you need to bet on your strengths and don't give a fuck about what you suck at.

You're going to, way too many people in this room are going to spend the next 30, 40 years of their lives trying to check the boxes, other things that they're not as good at.

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