How To Grow Your Business In 2024
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00:00 number one asset.
00:01 - The best leaders in the world take the pressure
00:03 and stops with them and they convert it underneath them.
00:07 The worst leaders in the world feel pressure
00:09 and pass that shit down.
00:11 And a lot of you do that.
00:13 Real talk.
00:13 And you're like, oh I'm sorry, I was stressed, I lost.
00:15 You go in a pop.
00:16 If you spend any time apologizing to employees, fuck you.
00:20 - That's so bold, Gary.
00:21 - But like, I wanna make a point.
00:22 Listen, if you're excusing behavior
00:25 where you're yelling and screaming at people
00:28 with an apology, you are not as good as you think you are.
00:31 I don't care how much money you're making.
00:33 And I highly challenge this group of winners
00:37 to get stronger and be an actual leader
00:40 and when you have pressure coming to you,
00:42 aka losing, losing an employee, losing an account,
00:45 losing a pitch, and I challenge you
00:47 to have it stop with you and convert it
00:50 to self-reflection and compassion and empathy.
00:54 Do you thank your team massively for the efforts
00:57 of trying to win a pitch when you lose it
00:59 or only when you win it?
01:01 Fear is a short-term motivator.
01:04 - I wanna open up to questions from the audience.
01:08 - Thank you. - That was great.
01:09 That was fantastic.
01:09 - Thank you.
01:10 (audience applauding)
01:12 Thank you.
01:14 - Are there questions from the audience?
01:15 We got microphones.
01:16 There's one right over there.
01:18 - Oh, I'm gonna get this one in the back
01:19 and then we'll get her.
01:20 How are you, my friend?
01:21 Give me your name.
01:22 - O'Brien.
01:22 - O'Brien?
01:23 - Yeah.
01:24 - Like last name?
01:25 - Except it's my first name.
01:26 - Epic.
01:27 - We call him OB.
01:29 - I like that.
01:30 O'Brien, it's a real pleasure, brother.
01:31 How are you?
01:32 - Hey, good, good.
01:32 Thank you for coming.
01:33 I'm curious the answer to this,
01:36 but I think it'd also be helpful
01:37 for a lot of people in the room.
01:39 Back to your LinkedIn comment
01:40 about how your advertising business
01:43 is running all of your sales through LinkedIn.
01:47 I think conversations I've had with people,
01:49 there's a struggle to connect what we do
01:53 from a relationship-building standpoint
01:55 in the real world with the marketing efforts
01:58 that go on on LinkedIn.
01:59 And I would just be curious how you think
02:01 about converting real-world relationships
02:05 from an online platform in the marketing.
02:07 - I love it.
02:08 I think you should use LinkedIn as a gateway drug
02:10 to play golf with people,
02:12 to have wine dinner with people.
02:14 I think, to your point, O'Brien,
02:16 I don't think people realize
02:17 all I want LinkedIn for is the attention.
02:20 But what you put in the creative
02:23 will be the variable of your success.
02:24 So when they make a post from the master account,
02:29 if you then put, hey, first eight people that email me,
02:33 I've got a steak dinner for you
02:34 to talk about this in depth or any other business things,
02:37 here's the RSVP way, you've now taken digital
02:40 and used it as a gateway drug to do physical.
02:43 So all I wanna do is create the arbitrage
02:48 of getting attention to convert into however you convert.
02:52 I don't get $20 million fee scopes just from the LinkedIn.
02:56 I get the attention of saying something smart
02:59 and then they hit me up.
03:00 And I'm not talking about using LinkedIn
03:02 the way you might have tried in the past,
03:03 which is spamming people and sending them messages.
03:07 I'm talking about putting out meaningful content
03:10 in the feed 'cause LinkedIn is now a content platform
03:13 that happens to have recruiting on it.
03:15 And so that's how, right?
03:17 You use the content to spark the conversation
03:21 to then do the golf, to do the steak dinner,
03:23 to do the whatever you want to do.
03:25 Like always willing to do a 15 minute Zoom for free
03:28 to talk about this a little deeper,
03:29 if this can help you, even if it doesn't.
03:31 I go right at it.
03:31 I have unlimited things where I'm like,
03:34 I'm not here to be transactional,
03:36 but I'm not Mother Teresa.
03:38 I'll spend 15 minutes with you
03:39 and go deeper into what I just talked about there.
03:41 I understand that you may not hire me because of that
03:44 'cause you're already in another partnership,
03:45 but I'm gonna leave a very strong deposit
03:47 as a human being in our 15 minutes on Zoom
03:50 or a 30 minute coffee at Starbucks
03:53 that hopefully in three years or from word of mouth
03:55 leads to something.
03:56 So I think there's a way to be transparent
03:58 but also be incredibly intellectually generous.
04:02 - That's great.
04:03 Question over there.
04:04 - Is it on?
04:06 Hi.
04:07 Hi Gary, I'm such a big fan of yours.
04:08 - Thank you, what's your name?
04:09 - Also my birthday today, so if we could get a picture later
04:11 I would love that.
04:11 - I'm in.
04:12 What's your name?
04:13 - I'm Jessica Bass.
04:14 This is my first producer event here.
04:16 (audience applauding)
04:20 - Your content around attention grabbing
04:24 has really inspired me to step outside of my comfort zone
04:26 and post myself more on LinkedIn, so thank you for that.
04:29 But my question is really around Gen Zers.
04:31 You talk a lot about them being lazy
04:34 and just kind of poke myths
04:35 and some of those stereotypes of Gen Zers.
04:38 - And real quick 'cause I just wanna make sure this lands.
04:40 I actually don't think there are any,
04:42 like I know unlimited lazy boomers and Gen Xers.
04:47 Unlimited.
04:48 I think they have way more options than we have grasped.
04:51 Go ahead.
04:53 - For sure, for sure, and that's my question
04:55 because that's our future, right?
04:57 The people doing the work back at the office are Gen Zers.
04:59 We wanna keep them, keep them happy.
05:01 We're also trying to create a return to work culture
05:03 that inspires them and teaches them about our culture
05:05 and also opportunities within our organization.
05:08 How do we balance the two and keep them happy
05:11 and also keep them at our firm?
05:13 - Purple, right?
05:15 To your point, the entitlement is absurd.
05:18 I had a leader talking with somebody in our office.
05:20 We're bringing plenty of people back too.
05:22 Everyone's going through the same thing.
05:24 So the kid says, "Hey brother,
05:26 "I'd love to come to the office but I got a problem.
05:29 "I live 40 minutes away and I have to bring all my stuff."
05:32 Stuff?
05:33 This is real by the way.
05:34 The kid goes, "Yeah, I have to bring my laptop."
05:40 And then there's a pause.
05:41 This is no bullshit, stick with me.
05:43 He goes, "And the charger."
05:47 (audience laughing)
05:50 So I'm with you, I'm aware of where we're at.
05:53 I believe it's a game of numbers.
05:56 To answer how I'm solving it for my organization
05:58 and all my startup and all the boards I'm on
06:00 and all the companies I'm involved in,
06:01 I'm just telling them,
06:02 you know you gotta kiss a bunch of frogs to find a prince.
06:06 Like, I don't know, if you sense entitlement and laziness
06:09 in the interview or the conversation
06:11 or if they ask ridiculous questions, don't hire them.
06:14 Like, to me, I love merit.
06:17 Like, merit.
06:20 But I think the mistake we're making is we're labeling them.
06:22 That's like labeling all women.
06:23 It's crazy what we're doing with this generation.
06:26 We all know that labeling in groups is terrible.
06:29 And by the way, Gen Z is contributing heavily.
06:32 They've got all sorts of feelings of everybody older.
06:34 Like, the greatest way to be happy
06:36 is number three in the world.
06:38 The greatest way.
06:39 By the way, if you're not 100% happy as you sit here today,
06:42 I've got the medicine for you and it's free.
06:44 It's called number three.
06:46 The second you realize that you are fully in control
06:49 of your life is the second you get happier.
06:52 When you think the president has an impact on your success,
06:56 that means you're a loser.
06:58 (audience laughing)
07:01 (audience applauding)
07:04 - All right, we got one right there and then Paige
07:09 and then go to Ryan.
07:10 - Hi, Michelle.
07:12 - Michelle.
07:13 - Just 'cause you just hit on accountability.
07:15 Can you talk a little bit about what you view
07:18 and how you define accountability versus responsibility?
07:21 'Cause I think accountability's a little bit
07:23 of a scary word for people.
07:25 And I think maybe for some of those in this room,
07:27 as I'm a newbie, so I'll go out on a limb and say that.
07:30 But I've heard you talk about accountability
07:32 and I like your honesty behind it
07:34 and the challenge behind it.
07:35 Can you just share your thoughts?
07:36 - Well, with the way you asked the question,
07:37 my belief is that if we all agree
07:39 that something is my responsibility
07:41 and it does not go well,
07:42 then I need to be 100% accountable.
07:44 The amount of leaders and CEOs and leaders I talk to
07:51 that will tell me the reason this year went bad
07:54 was, well, their head of sales was just shit the bed
07:58 or my CFO.
07:58 They just keep talking.
08:00 And literally, I wait, I eat it, I rope a dope,
08:03 little Muhammad Ali, George Foreman,
08:05 and then I go in for my move.
08:06 I'm like, you hired them.
08:08 You are allowed to fire them.
08:12 I have good news.
08:13 100% of the problems in your business are your fault.
08:17 (audience laughing)
08:22 Like, it's true.
08:23 And in this framework, the energy
08:26 in this kind of framework of a business,
08:28 if you spend one minute crying
08:30 about what they're doing in corporate,
08:32 that's a minute you're not spending
08:33 on the shit that you do control.
08:36 I just will never understand it.
08:37 I sit on some non-prof, excuse me,
08:40 I sit on the board of Bojangles, right?
08:43 Franchisor, franchisee.
08:45 And all these people, they're like,
08:47 some franchisee came up to me
08:49 'cause they know I'm on the board
08:50 and they just start shitting on the brand.
08:53 And they're like, he's like, Gary, you have to understand,
08:55 entrepreneur to entrepreneur, this is a real problem.
08:58 I looked him dead in the face and said,
08:59 bro, you're not an entrepreneur.
09:04 If you sit in a framework where you rely
09:07 on a corporate entity to be a partner,
09:10 you're not a full-bred entrepreneur.
09:13 And you must face that.
09:14 That is the truth.
09:16 If he was a, I said to him, right to his face,
09:18 I said, if you're an entrepreneur,
09:19 you would start, instead of having a franchisee
09:22 of Bojangles, you would start Schmo-Shangles.
09:25 (audience laughing)
09:27 And this goes back to self-awareness, period.
09:30 So what do I think about accountability?
09:32 I think it stuns me with all the shit
09:35 that's going on in my life, how happy I am.
09:37 And when I deconstructed that over 25 years,
09:40 number three is the game.
09:42 It gets really good.
09:43 It's why everyone's so unhappy right now.
09:44 They actually believe all the propaganda
09:46 in media and social media
09:47 that everybody but themselves is in charge.
09:50 You don't like the school, take your kid out.
09:52 You don't like America, fucking move.
09:54 (audience applauding)
10:02 - Paige.
10:03 - Hey Gary.
10:04 - Hi. - I'm Paige Boglesingh.
10:05 Nice to meet you. - Such a pleasure.
10:06 - Thank you for being here.
10:07 - Thank you.
10:08 - I have a question around succession planning.
10:10 You and your brother, you lead the firm.
10:13 I'm sure you think about this.
10:15 You've got kids, all of us have kids.
10:17 We have a lot of happy nepotism here.
10:20 So I'm just curious how the 12 1/2 fit in with that.
10:24 - Well, number three is a big one.
10:28 We just touched on it.
10:29 Like, you know, my kids,
10:33 I think all of us who've garnered success,
10:36 especially if we didn't start with anything,
10:39 have feelings towards this.
10:41 I think about accountability.
10:42 Look, I'll give you a really good answer to this.
10:44 When all those really wealthy people
10:46 started saying things 10 years ago
10:47 that they were giving 99% to charity, right?
10:50 Gates and I was like, that's crazy.
10:52 'Cause I come from an immigrant family
10:53 where like everything's passed on.
10:56 I promise you, I don't think that's crazy anymore.
10:58 You know, what do I think about succession plan?
11:00 I think it's about parenting.
11:01 I'm thrilled to talk about it in the macro.
11:03 I have no interest in telling anyone here what to do.
11:06 That's their business, their money, their prerogative.
11:09 But what I will tell you is
11:11 you want your kids to be hungry, don't feed them.
11:14 Like, you know, like people,
11:17 I'm on the board of Charity Water.
11:19 We build wells in Africa.
11:20 One of the things that's incredibly passionate to me
11:23 as something that I just, when I got educated about it,
11:25 I just couldn't understand.
11:26 As we, you wanna talk about gratitude number one?
11:29 730 million people on earth right now
11:33 do not have access to clean water within a day.
11:37 Water, the shit that is on your table.
11:39 That really shook me.
11:42 You know, you wanna talk about real,
11:43 like, you know, we think about all this, you know, right?
11:45 Water.
11:47 So it's amazing when I got involved with Scott Harris,
11:50 we should all look up Charity Water.
11:52 It's pretty profound
11:53 if you wanna learn a little bit about it.
11:54 Anyway, it was a billion people only 10 years ago.
11:58 I'm really proud of the work.
11:59 I put a lot of time and effort into it,
12:00 and I'm a well member,
12:01 which means we pay, our donations pay for the staff.
12:03 It means if you give a dollar, it all goes to the work,
12:06 not the bullshit that we see with these nonprofits.
12:08 Anyway, enough of that commercial.
12:11 My friends hit me up all the time.
12:14 Hey, Gary, you're a well member on Charity Water.
12:16 Can I send my kid to Africa with you for a week
12:19 to be on the ground?
12:21 I'm like, you can, and you should.
12:23 But if you think your private school,
12:26 private jet riding 17 year old
12:28 is gonna go to Africa for a week
12:30 and somehow profoundly change into another human being,
12:34 you're out of your goddamn mind.
12:36 My friends, none of us can fake environment.
12:41 You can't fake environment.
12:43 What we can do is teach our kids that it's not their money
12:46 and they should be kind to people.
12:48 What we can do is stop giving them money.
12:51 That's your choices, but a succession planning,
12:54 I think a million dollars,
12:56 $1 million inherited is an obnoxious amount of money.
13:01 And so I've stopped thinking about that a long time ago
13:03 because I think about all the kids
13:06 that are growing up right now that grew up the way I am
13:08 that would kill my kids in any level of competition
13:11 in merit-based business.
13:12 And that doesn't bother me.
13:13 I don't want my kids to be entrepreneurs.
13:15 I don't want my kids to be even business winners.
13:18 I want them to be kind.
13:20 And I want them to like what they do
13:22 the way I like what I do.
13:23 My favorite part about being an entrepreneur
13:25 is I love the game, not the things the game
13:27 allows me to buy.
13:28 - Last question, Ryan.
13:32 - What if I answer it fast?
13:35 Can I sneak one more in?
13:35 - What's that?
13:36 - Or do you wanna get me the hell out of here?
13:37 - Yeah, this is the last one.
13:39 I'm gonna show you.
13:40 - I'm just having too much fun.
13:41 Maybe five more.
13:41 Okay, good.
13:42 - Ryan here.
13:45 - Ryan.
13:46 - A question to you.
13:47 So I started consuming your content
13:49 at the beginning of the pandemic.
13:50 You gave a speech sort of like this,
13:52 but talking about the power of branding,
13:54 marketing, which is a common theme.
13:56 So something you said a minute ago
13:58 is if you get one person in this room
14:00 to take away something that's worth your time
14:03 of being here.
14:04 So to the 98% of people, I think that you said about
14:07 LinkedIn, well, under post on LinkedIn.
14:10 So what are some tactics?
14:12 You talk a lot about tactics in your content.
14:13 So what are some tactics to the 98% here,
14:16 or maybe the one that would be good?
14:18 - I've started a lot more LinkedIn since listening to that
14:21 and learned a ton over time.
14:23 - So I'm not saying it, since you're their contemporary,
14:25 in that learning over this time,
14:27 what's an observation?
14:28 What's an aha?
14:29 What's a thing you went into it not thinking was real,
14:31 but you were inspired to go down the path,
14:33 which I'm trying to do for everyone.
14:34 Give me one or two things that have stood out.
14:36 - I would think authenticity.
14:38 If you are yourself,
14:40 and you're not trying to be somebody different,
14:41 I think that's huge.
14:42 - Let me jump on that one.
14:44 Friends, as you think about what you're gonna post,
14:47 you could post about loving golf and loving,
14:49 you don't need to post directly about this job.
14:52 Getting people in common interest
14:54 is a huge way to do business.
14:55 You know this.
14:56 Why'd you join all the country clubs
14:58 and the PTA and all this stuff?
15:00 So, step one, mixing your content.
15:04 It doesn't have to be literal information
15:05 about the product and service.
15:06 If you love Zelda,
15:08 you will be blown away how much money you can make
15:12 by talking about Zelda.
15:13 Especially if it's a repost
15:16 and you somehow were clever to what they posted
15:18 and you posted on top of it
15:20 and made some sort of reference
15:21 to Mike Tyson's punch out,
15:23 that snicker from the person
15:25 that can't believe you brought up Glass Joe from 1989
15:28 might be the reason they do business with you.
15:29 It's profound how humans actually work.
15:32 Keep going.
15:32 - Authenticity, also a repost of what somebody's done
15:37 is not necessarily content.
15:39 - Well, I would say a repost, correct.
15:41 A repost without you adding your two cents
15:45 is less effective.
15:46 Notice how earlier I used the analogy of DJ.
15:48 I think a lot of us know what happened
15:49 the last 20 years with EDM and DJs
15:52 where you're like, wait a minute,
15:54 did they even do anything?
15:56 And yet they're super famous.
15:58 That's what you can do.
15:59 You can do,
16:00 you can take a very good post
16:03 on what you believe is well from someone else,
16:05 not even in this ecosystem,
16:06 or from the corporation.
16:08 You could repost it with a quote
16:10 and add a sentence to it.
16:12 Now you're a DJ.
16:13 You're like Avicii out here.
16:15 - 100%, I would say the last thing is
16:18 what we all make money on is insurance.
16:20 Don't necessarily talk about insurance.
16:22 - Yeah, I think that's right.
16:23 As I referenced earlier, phishing, all this stuff.
16:25 I think it's a mix.
16:27 There was another book I wrote
16:28 called Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook.
16:30 And it talked about the individual posts can be jabs.
16:32 You're not setting up.
16:33 The reason most people in insurance,
16:35 when I analyze it,
16:36 both on the brand or on the individual level,
16:39 don't succeed is every one of your posts is a sales pitch.
16:43 And they smell it and they're not interested.
16:45 When you start mixing it
16:48 and you start talking about Zelda and golf,
16:50 or this is a big one.
16:52 Make pretend that you retired from this
16:55 and you've now started an insurance media business.
16:58 You're now the Bloomberg or CNBC of insurance.
17:02 And you're not talking as a human
17:03 who's trying to sell something,
17:05 but you're talking a level up about the space
17:07 or the opportunities or this new tax law.
17:09 You're talking about information.
17:12 That's education.
17:14 That becomes a gateway.
17:15 That's a good framework to think through.
17:16 - I'd say one last thing.
17:17 - Please.
17:18 - Is don't give up after like two posts.
17:20 - Yeah, I mean that goes back to seven, tenacity.
17:24 This is what always blows me away.
17:25 People that got in this room,
17:27 you put in the work.
17:29 And then you go into this new arena
17:31 and you're like four posts in.
17:33 You're like, I suck, fuck that Gary guy.
17:35 (audience laughing)
17:37 The first thousand posts I made meant nothing.
17:40 So I'd like to think that this room understands
17:43 what a good day's work,
17:44 putting in the work learning really means
17:47 and how that can actually impact the outcome.
17:49 And so, yeah, I mean look,
17:50 I really think the content thing is very misunderstood.
17:54 Like very.
17:55 People, they have all sorts of feelings about social media.
17:59 That it's bad, kids, I get it.
18:01 But I really hate making headline reading opinions
18:06 your business strategy.
18:09 (audience laughing)
18:12 Let me sneak one in.
18:13 I'm the worst, I know.
18:14 One more.
18:15 Somebody.
18:16 - He told me he's like, "Said, I gotta get out of here.
18:17 "It's 3.55."
18:18 - I know, but we've got to roll here.
18:19 Anybody got a quick question?
18:20 - Right here, Christina.
18:21 - All right.
18:22 - You saw the board.
18:23 - Yes.
18:24 - You saw the board here with all the--
18:25 - I did, which fired me up.
18:26 I wanted, you know how crazy I am, Christina?
18:28 I saw the board and like, literally my DNA,
18:31 I'm like, I need to get to the top of that fucking board.
18:33 (audience laughing)
18:35 Like I'm like, should I retire and join this company
18:37 to get on top of the,
18:38 these boards fuck me up, but go ahead.
18:40 (audience laughing)
18:42 - All right, two questions.
18:43 How do you get to the top of that board
18:48 using all 12 and a half?
18:50 - By knowing which two or three to use in every circumstance
18:53 both on the customers you're trying to get
18:55 and on the employees that work for you.
18:57 - Second, and I'm just gonna use myself as an example.
19:00 Let's say we have somebody on the board
19:03 or a group of people on the board, what have you,
19:07 like someone in your company.
19:08 Maybe you've got a great salesman,
19:10 you know, he's top of the game and he's--
19:13 - A dick face?
19:14 - There's some toxicity around.
19:15 - Yeah, uh-huh.
19:16 - Do you risk that?
19:20 - So it's interesting.
19:22 In my company, yes,
19:23 because everyone's an actual employee of the corporation.
19:27 This is a little bit of a different framework, right?
19:30 Like this is not a corporation and you're all employees.
19:33 You have your own shit.
19:35 My answer to that is a little bit different.
19:37 My answer to if you look at that board
19:39 and you're like, damn, I wanna get there
19:40 but I don't wanna compromise or act like that.
19:43 That goes to a thing that me and my father
19:44 thought about for 20 years.
19:46 When I started working with my dad at 22 years old,
19:48 I told him, I will spend zero minutes on our competition.
19:53 He thought that was the craziest shit he ever heard.
19:56 He was obsessed with what every liquor store
19:58 in New Jersey did and what they got.
20:00 Did they get a better deal on this vodka?
20:02 Why didn't, like he just spent all his energy
20:05 on everyone else.
20:06 I said, dad, the only people I'm gonna pay attention to
20:09 is first our employees, second our customers
20:14 and way down here, number 29,
20:16 I'll have a sense of what the competition's doing
20:20 because you never wanna be delusional and audacious.
20:23 But when I tell you very few seconds will be spent on them
20:26 because what they do has no impact.
20:29 I promise you, if I started in this company tomorrow,
20:32 had no contacts on that board,
20:33 within a half decade, I'd be the first person on this board.
20:35 I promise you because nothing and no one on that list
20:40 is stopping you from doing what you need to do.
20:42 - Agreed, thank you.
20:45 - Awesome, let's give Gary.
20:47 (audience applauding)
20:48 - Thank you.
20:49 (upbeat music)
20:52 (upbeat music)
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