I think that one out of every tube, one more likely two out of every three people in here that are co-founder are not pure bread actual entrepreneurs and are making a mistake in starting a company.

And let me explain what I mean by that. And I know that's a razz and that's like a tough thing to say, but it leads to a bigger conversation of self-awareness.

I'm not saying it like I'm cool I am, you aren't. I'm saying that we are living through a narrative time right now where over the last half decade, entrepreneurship has been glorified to an extreme

where everybody just feels that they're entitled and should and it's attractive to start a company and what they're really doing is not putting themselves in the best position to succeed and are wasting time, hurting their brand, losing people's money, doing a lot of things that won't help them and stunting their own growth because they would have been incredible number two's, three's, four's and five.

We have a lot of people that are built DNA wise and skill wise and have studied and went through school and have been formed and have trained to be unbelievable consultants at being a McKinsey and other places have a great career and then get involved in entrepreneurial ventures where they can leverage the monies they made and invest in things of that nature who are starting consumer apps, out the gate and have no fucking clue how to be a true bread entrepreneur because they don't have the stomach to deal with the market says go fuck your stuff.

And so that's a problem and more importantly that problem bless you and that problem is about to rear its head because there's a lot of people in this room know you know I know and I'm sure others as I look around as money crunches start to happen bless you.

I think that a lot of I think that we've just lived through the golden era of people saying they were entrepreneurs but what they were was they were operators that were building machines aka companies that were built for financial arbitrage people been building startups that are predicated on raising the next round you've been building your company for user growth to raise your next round you're not building a company.

And so look and this is not me staying on my high horse right before she gets a fan in 2009 and Jeff you know this better anybody in the room in 2009 at the height of my career bless you as I listen I get it does anybody else really love to sneeze anybody.

You do I'm super into it gives me like a weird high you two what is that okay let's figure that later.

At the height of my career after by the way just for context I got much more said investing but my first three investments were Facebook Twitter and Tumblr so I'm in that friends with Zucks friends with Travis from Uber on you know crush it just came out and it's killing everything's going great.

And in the middle and it's 2009 it's all about to happen I'm at the height I'm one of the 20 most follow people on Twitter and Twitter just starting to matter me and my brother started client service business.

A client service business something that is really at the lowest end of admiral start ups right just eight times ebba business like a not super sexy like each shit from clients all day right.

And so so this is not me post gaming or Monday morning quarterback this is me telling you what I've been doing with my behavior while all this was available to me nobody could have raised more money than me in 2009 and 10 I'm right there at the top of it all that I had already built a sixty five million dollar business I'm at the top of my game and I took four steps back including being ridiculed and made fun of by my internet famous friends I went built VaynerMedia AJ even to you know didn't love it because all this is a lot of money.

I didn't love it because all this friends were millionaires on paper joining path and you know and dig and read it and all this stuff and we kind of struggled with it for the first two years because it was hard it was a big humble pie that I had to eat I had to go into brand manager meetings and it was crazy for where I was in my career but I was self aware to know what I was capable of building that would be successful.

And in the 48 months since I really run it it's been alive for six years I've grown that company from 30 to 650 employees from three to 100 million dollars in revenue right and not pass through revenue of media like we do 100 million right and in current 2.5 to 3 time revenue valuations for agencies it's a 250 to 300 million dollar valuation with a business that's going to kick 70 million dollars in profit this year.

That me and my brother in my partner right and that one you can clap because that was real execution in the face of a lot of sexy other things to do in the face of and I wasn't a kid I'd already made it and I still went practical the level of practicality the level of self awareness the level of patience the level of humility the level of empathy to the market and gratitude for your opportunities and the level of understanding what's happening in the macro and micro economic climate in our

space is shit and it's about to hit the fan and so I highly recommend if you take anything from my talk tonight I would ask you to do one thing start the process becoming much more honest with yourself it will help you make much better decisions and it will help you in the long run it may not taste as fun or as glamorous in the short term but it will put you in a much better position because something I've learned as this has become more obvious to me in the last year as I started doing the ask Gary V should

go and started giving more EQ more self awareness more those kind of talks and as I wrote this book I started realizing huh I started asking more questions and what because I was so isolated from Silicon Valley when I built my web 1.0 company

I started talking to a lot of my 40 and 50 year old friends at these companies at GE at Proctor and Gamble at Fox News at Turner at Toyota at all my big clients fortune fighters and you know what I realized holy shit a lot of these 40 and 50 year old friends of mine they were all worth millions of dollars in 1999 on paper in Silicon Valley

because the next wave of what we just lived through is a lot of people getting jobs

and so you can either right now with my advice if you believe me for the three of you in here you can either take your business and start becoming practical with it and try to build a business that makes money instead of trying to position it for your next round

or you can start dusting off your resume and trying to get the best first jobs that are about to become available as all this shit is going to hit the fan because I promise you it is

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