(cheering and applause)

- [Man] Thank you, you changed my life.

- [Man 2] I love you, Gary.

- Love you back, thank you.

Thank you.

(cheering)

- [Woman] Love you, Gary. (cheering and applause)

- Thank you, Vancouver. Thank you very much.

Thank you, let's do this.

I mean look, we could stay here all day and do that,

but I want to bring some value.

Yeah, so listen I think we're doing a pretty cool format.

We're gonna go 20-20-20.

I'm gonna yap here a little bit,

then we're gonna do a quick little fireside.

Then we'll do some questions with you guys.

Thank you for the love.

I think that that moment in itself is something

that I think everybody should think about.

A funny thing happens when you do the right thing.

A funny thing happens when you over-deliver

to the others and try to take less.

A funny thing happens when you deploy patience

and run a marathon.

A funny thing happens and what happens is you start

building equity, you start building legacy,

you start building leverage.

That reaction I appreciate and I know and have seen it

for others.

But I know the reason I get that reaction

and it's not because of my skill set on a sporting field

or how I sing.

It comes from the fact that I'm desperately,

and I mean desperately trying to figure out how

to bring value to you.

I've been thinking about it a lot which is like hey,

why am I playing this patient?

Why am I not looking for anything in return?

Why do I like it better if I give you a whole bunch

and you never give me anything?

And I mean that.

And by the way I'm not this great human being.

It's not that I'm the nicest guy in the world.

There's something behind it.

I'm a businessman, I have my own goals and ambitions.

So I've been really trying to reverse engineer like

why is this my state?

What makes me different in this way?

And the other people that I see do it,

why do they do it?

I think it comes up to this, my friends.

I think first and foremost, and this is so important

for so many of you to hear and I've been saying it

a bunch and I know there's by the way a lot of engagement

on social so I know a lot of you have context on me.

I spend the first 13, 14 years of my career

building a business and not worrying about building

a personal brand and not having a social media account.

I was building an actual business.

I think the real reason I give away my content for free,

I engage with all of you. I answer, I give love.

I think the biggest reason I do that is 'cause I don't

need your help or money to accomplish my goals.

I have enough talent to build businesses that are not

predicated on turning admiration or attention

into short-term dollars.

I think this is very important because if this conference

is positioned as how do we build things

and have great impact, it starts with only two things.

There's only two things.

Listen, my whole talk given the framework

that they've created for this conference is actually

very simple. I was thinking about it,

I'm like okay let's make it contextual.

Let's talk about something slightly different.

It's actually very easy if you're sitting in this audience

to achieve the ambition of the context of this conference,

which is to do things that are also then good

for humanity. It's actually very, very simple.

It's two things.

It's intent and this is a big one and we don't

talk about it enough in our business world,

entrepreneurship, tech, solopreneur, intent.

Like what are you actually up to?

What are you actually trying to do?

Is your intent to actually build a great business

and give back to the world?

Or is your intent to disguise

that you want to make money

by saying that every time somebody buys one

of your granola bars you donate a granola bar to the hungry?

And I'm glad that eight of you laughed over there

because I'm going to tell you something.

As somebody who was there and saw Blake early on

when he formed that TOMS shoes model

and as somebody who's an angel investor in 2013 and '14

and looking at every single company,

I saw an ungodly amount of 23-year-olds claiming to me

that because they're Millennials, this was the best,

this was my favorite pitch.

Because they were Millennials they cared

about the world more and so they both wanted

to make money but also they cared more about the world

than Gen X, which was really cute.

Then I would look at their business model

and whatever the fuck they were selling that they

were then donating one to somebody that was so

fucking needy, right?

And literally, if you pressed them on why it was going

to this country, if you even asked one question

why it was going to this country,

you pretty much ended up

realizing they just threw a fucking dart at a map.

(audience laughter)

Then I just want to remind everybody I'm a businessman.

I understand that I put out content,

but I'm a businessman.

So it wasn't very difficult for me to look at the P&L

and the projections to realize that they were selling

this granola bar, or umbrella, or sneaker for twice

the price that it needed to be so they could afford

to actually give the sneaker.

So what you were doing actually was your intent

was to look like a good person

but still make as much money.

Every dollar that you would have if you didn't

have the bullshit model that you were donating something.

So what you were were completely full of fucking shit.

(audience cheers and applause)

And I have great news.

I searched a lot of accounts on my long-ass flight

to Vancouver last night of people using hashtags here.

These are wonderful people that are in the audience

using the hashtag and they're going to change the world

and bring to humanity.

And some of you are full of shit.

(audience laughter)

So if we're going to accomplish something

from this conference these two days of inspiration

and good stuff,

if you're gonna actually accomplish something

when you walk out there and go back to your normal lives,

I promise you step one of the idea really good part

of the strategy needs to be your actual intent.

I want to remind everybody that it is very okay

to be selfish and build something and do it in parallel.

You don't need to disguise your ambitions and wants

and needs with horseshit that you're going to donate

to the rain-fucking-forest.

(audience laughter)

You don't have to do that.

You're capable of both, and I am that.

I live it.

I tell you from, I always talk about stuff

that's real to me.

I am an assassin, killer,

ninja, selfish winner

in business and I can separate that from who I am.

I want to remind everybody my favorite all-time thing

of doing good is when somebody called me out on Twitter

for not donating to things or doing GoFundMe's

on social media. That I was a bad guy.

And I literally DM'ed this person and met him

at Starbucks where I stopped in between that meeting.

This is back in 2011.

I stopped at my accountant's, picked up my tax,

yeah picked up my tax returns.

You like this story, this is a good one.

This is my favorite but I don't tell this story very often.

But it's good under the context of this.

He said, "GaryVee, why don't you donate and do good causes?

"You're just selfish, you just care about yourself.

"Why don't you do things like your friends on social media?"

And he mentioned some social media influencers.

I DM'ed him, I said, "Hey fuck face, meet me at Starbucks."

(audience laughter)

I went to my accountant's, I picked up my tax returns,

I showed up to the Starbucks.

He walked in, he shit that I was actually there.

And then I showed him my tax return.

Then I said to him, "Young man here's the difference

"between you and I.

"You're still of the age where people trick you easily,

"where people use social media to PR themselves

"and are using causes to build themselves up

"that they're good people, and you're confused.

"When you do good you stay quiet about that shit."

I showed ...

(audience applause and cheers)

You guys know me, you guys know me.

I'm very comfortable to be loud and proud of my vanity

and my kind of like accomplishments.

And I self-promote.

But the things that I'm most proud of you don't know

jack shit about, you don't.

So I showed him my tax return which you know,

shows your donations and how you actually roll.

And he was like, "I'm so confused."

And I said, "You're confused because you don't understand

"what's actually happening."

That's the point of this intent talk.

Nobody in here is tricking the one percent of winners

with their bullshit.

So if you want to actually accomplish the thesis

of this conference, you need to make sure

that your intent is pure.

Your intent, the way you make your money,

the way you make your money is something you're proud of.

That you're not bottom feeding, and most of all

if you're going to do good for the world, just do it.

Don't use it as your PR engine to make money on the side.

Intent. (audience cheering and applause)

It's true, and I'm sure you've sniffed it out.

Number two, the only other way to do this whole thing

is my favorite part.

The doing the work.

You know, before you can help the elephants

and before you're going to help carrots,

you actually have to be in a position to help.

The way you do that is create the means

and the infrastructure to help.

Whether that is a voice and an audience,

whether that's the financial means,

whether that's the relationships, everybody here,

and when I say everybody here I don't mean this conference,

I mean the whole fucking game.

99% of people are so quick to get to this thing

that they don't lay a foundation down.

You gotta actually build a business

that gives you that air cover.

I wanna remind everybody here, and it's really fun

because I always love when the mix of the crowd

is 18 and 88. (audience laughter)

Because if you're under 26 years old, you've not,

27 years old, you've not lived through a tough economy yet.

It's been all upswing since you've been in the game.

Just has, 2008, '09, like call it what it is,

in 2010 it was already on it's way up.

Simple as that.

So you're looking in seven, eight years,

really means you're actually 30

and you haven't really played.

I look around and I see people more my age and older.