We're gonna give you a round of applause.

(group applauds)

- Hey, I sent you those videos.

- Casey, slide over a little bit.

We're gonna make this nice and intimate for you guys.

The biggest thing, like everything we've ever done here,

everything I've been a part of with these guys

is a two way conversation.

So if you've got questions, raise your hand.

We'll dedicate a portion at the end to take your questions

but I think you're gonna be stimulated in a lot of ways.

Now for Gary,

I'm gonna give him a brief intro

but you're gonna do it as well.

First and foremost, self-made.

Just like a lot of you guys as athletes,

that lonely work when it's just you in the backyard

busting your ass,

this is what he's done his whole life.

Guy from former Soviet Union, an immigrant,

came to the east coast and he's been busting

his tail ever since.

He took a family business from 3 million to 60 million

like that.

Busted his tail,

then created his own entrepreneurship company around media

which is what everyone of you do every time

you turn your phone on and it is a global company.

He's doing multiple things in the sports world,

entertainment world, storytelling world,

but most importantly the thing I love most about you, bro,

is that you wanna give and that's what tonight is.

It's about giving you guys every tool that we possibly

can think of over the next hour.

So, first and foremost, Gary,

I wanna know your mindset at a youngster.

When you were a teenager, when you were 17, 18, 19,

like some of these young kids here before they got to campus

when you were like, okay,

I'm gonna go compete and I'm gonna create something

I'm gonna own.

- Mine goes back, first of all, thank you for having me.

Mine goes back a little bit further.

So I was born in Russia.

I came to the US.

I couldn't speak English,

went outside one day when we moved to Edison, New Jersey,

bunch of kids throwing around a Nerf football

and literally I learned how to speak English

by watching the New York Jets play football.

So like it's fun for me to be here and like somewhere

around third or fourth grade,

after falling in love with the sport,

Unlike everybody in this room,

somewhere around third or fourth grade I realized

that I was more likely to buy the Jets than to play for them

and so really by the time I was in,

like if you go open up my fifth grade yearbook,

everybody's like occupation and I don't know why in the 80's

everybody wanted to be a fuckin' architect

but everyone's like architect, architect, architect

and mine just says owner of the New York Jets.

(group laughs)

So 17 and 18 like,

unlike a lot of people in this room as well

'cause you wouldn't have gotten here no matter how good

you are but I was a straight D and F student, right?

So education was the way out for us immigrants.

So it was crazy that I was so bad at school

but by fifth grade,

I was making two, $3,000 a weekend selling baseball cards.

I knew I was an entrepreneur from the get,

before it was popular and cool like it is now

and so at 17, 18, I was like,

I didn't give a fuck about girls,

I didn't give a fuck about school,

I didn't give a fuck about anything.

I was like, I'm gonna go fuckin' work,

I'm gonna put my head down for fuckin' five decades

and I'm gonna buy the Jets and win seven Superbowls

and call it a fuckin' day.

(group laughs)

- Not a bad life plan, right?

- But you know like,

you know what's fun to talk to athletes,

like I feel like you guys,

it might be different but it's the same

like I just didn't care about anything.

It was like this narrow.

- Well, it's interesting you say that because how many of us

think we're gonna play forever?

Right, like the hardest part,

at least for me as an athlete and Casey I wanna get

your point on it is you're so focused to be great,

to even get a seat in this room that you have to be

that dialed in on your craft.

Sometimes you can mix --

- Basically, it's tunnel vision.

You gotta have a certain amount of tunnel vision

like we all do.

When I was in high school,

I wrote down I wanted to go to the NFL,

literally in a class wrote it down,

kept it in my back pocket, in my wallet,

all these different places.

That was my tunnel vision.

That's all I focused on and that was the mindset,

you know what I mean, but to his point earlier,

it's like you don't,

it's not about just writing it down and just kind of

waiting for it to happen like, you know what I mean,

there's was a lot of hard work to go get it

but it kind of set me up everyday.

I had a mindset, I had a focus.

Like he said, I wasn't focused on other things other than

what I wrote down on that piece of paper.

So I think that's the key to remember.

It's like you gotta have a certain amount of tunnel vision

but at the same time you wanna understand the big picture

at the end of the day too.

The big picture at the end of the day in our sport

is we can't play forever and Thomas talked about it

a week ago about we all have an expiration date

when it comes to playing football but while we're in it,

we're locked in.

So that's the only difference between being an athlete

and kind of different occupations is that literally

you cannot play this forever but while you're in it,

you're in it.

So you gotta grind like there is no tomorrow.

- The other thing you guys have is it's the religion

of our society.

Like when you're in it, you have unlimited leverage,

unlimited and when you're out of it, it goes away.

I mean, it's unbelievable.

Like I have no time,

I can't meet anybody but I'll give you a quick little story.

Dexter McDougle, third round pick of the Jets from Maryland,

he like hit me up,

DM'd me on Instagram or Twitter or something

and I said to him,

I was like, look,

you better take this meeting soon because when you get cut,

because he wasn't playing well (laughs),

I'm not taking this meeting.

So like what's amazing about football,

and sports in general,

but football more than anything in America,

it's not only, it's crazy, when I got older I was like,

wait a minute, it's better to be a business man

than an athlete because I started meeting like 30 year olds

who were done, right?

And it's like, wow, that's crazy.

Your whole life you've just been like this

and then you're so young and you've gotta reset

and think about it different.

What's crazy and you can probably speak to this better

than I can,

it's crazy how smart this generation of athlete is.

They think about entrepreneurship,

they think about the platform,

they think about building their brand,

they think about investing.

It's crazy what's happen, I mean,

you two have a better perspective than I

and I've reverse engineered it backwards

but the advantage,

back to these three letters as you were framing it,

like the leverage of this brand is bonkers.

- Yeah, well think about it.

When I was in college,

the best advice I got from our fifth year quarterback

was get three business cards everyday after practice.

Right, you guys have alums that want to get to know you

that are doing amazing things in the universe

but those three business cards now are as many as you want

because it's the internet.

You guys don't know this about Gary

but he was one of the first investors on all the things

that are on your phone -

we're talking Twitter, we're talking SnapChat,

Tumblr and on and on and on,

his list of businesses are insane that he saw early.

So the goal for today when you walk outta here

is you think about okay,

how could I cultivate opportunities

while I'm a student athlete with those three letters

when I walk outta here unlike,

unfortunately for Casey,

he scores a great touchdown in the Rose Bowl

to win the National Championship against Michigan,

Twitter and Instagram don't exist!

His platform is way different

than what it coulda been if he's, where's Deonte,

last year scoring a touchdown in the Rose Bowl, right?

You've noticed, obviously, your platform has altered

and that is a beautiful opportunity for you guys.

So I'd be curious if you could give them some thoughts on --

- It's real simple.

The same way you're slipping into the DM to get something up

there to accomplish,

you need to be doing for business.

It's the same thing!

Right, you're just reverse engineering what you want.

You just have unlimited tools.

Unlimited.

And so like everybody here is going through their screens,

creeping on what they wanna do,

do that same practice for business because you're right.

It's crazy what I'll do for the Jet,

if Tanner, if Tanun Perder, fucking DM'd me right now,

the long snapper of the New York Jets,

I'd meet him tomorrow.

If the CO of a $500 million company emailed me tomorrow,

it'd take four months for me to meet with him.

That's what you have and that's crazy

and you can mad bank.

- [Male] (inaudible) But what can you tell us in this room

as athletes, current athletes, about our social capital

and being able to leverage that?

Like you're saying,

(inaudible) so like tomorrow when we walk outside

on this campus we're doing that because we have a year

and we have four years --

- Yeah, I mean, look, I think first of all,

the NCAA shit is so fucking bullshit but you gotta navigate

through that, right?

So you've gotta be careful

and like coming from Communist Russia,

fucking NCAA's scarier than that.

(group laughs)

So but the reality is that's your reality, right?

Like you know that that's the reality but to your point,

there's nothing against collecting business cards.

Like it's only about relationships.

You need to dap it up with as many people as possible.

Life is only about the people.

I made tens of millions of dollars

because I became friendly,

I thought Twitter was gonna be important

and I made those relationships with those founders

and that's what opened up everything.

Everybody you talk to ever, ever that's made it,

that really made it, it's just relationships.

You miss some, right?

You go find my first book somewhere, Crush It,

I thank my entire family and one random person.