Hello everyone!
I am still pumped from meeting so many of you in person at #VeeCon 2023. Grateful doesn’t even begin to cover the emotions I felt in last week spending time with everyone in Indianapolis. It was everything I expected and more. It’s in moments like these where you can feel the energy in your heart and your mind, and your body through real connections and conversations.
Preparing for VeeCon is something I look forward to every year because I not only get to help so many of you in person but also from people who send in their questions through #AskGaryVee hashtag on social media.
Here are some pieces of advice I have sorted for the readers of this blog from my closing keynote at VeeCon 2023…so gear up to learn from my answers to these real life questions:
1. Here’s the great thing about *decisions*
When you make a decision, you wouldn’t know if the other way would’ve worked out. People says things like “If I had gone to Amazon instead of the company I work for now, my life would’ve been different” but you don’t know that. You don’t know that for sure because what if Amazon fired you in a few days? The amount of times people come to me for fearing to make the wrong decision is insane and what they truly fear for is people judging them for making the wrong decision. I would consider that I WON VeeCon if some of you started applying this today: being human is making decisions and living with them. That’s the thing you CAN control, you control nothing else. So, today, consider freeing yourself from the fear that hasn’t and will never serve you.
2. “The resume” is some 1992 sh*t and the “gap” is your resume does not matter
I don’t remember (ever) looking at a resume. There are people trying to force things to cover up the “gap” in their resume that doesn’t even matter. There was a girl who came up to me to tell me about the video I made about how it does not matter if your resume says you worked somewhere for just 6 months but it mattered that you left a toxic job juts because you didn’t feel like it. She said she was comfortable quitting a job she didn’t love because of that video. Companies are looking at resumes less and less. They’re caring about which college you went to less and less. So men, women, new moms, who are wondering if taking a break to try something you love, or have a family will hurt their careers is total nonsense. The skills you incur as a parent, as a mother, as a father is way more valuable in life and in business than you think. These fears around resume and colleges come from the stuff old world wanted to teach us. It’s time to let go of that perception. This is the new world and we have no place in life for a company that cares about these things, that’s the company you shouldn’t wanna work for in the first place.
3. Get comfortable with losing
I’ve lost so much with so many micro losses that losing is my comfort zone! I’m a New York Jets fan (hah!) The amazing thing that comes out of doing something (even if that means losing in process) is that you’re not scared to do it anymore. Period.
Zoo animals get killed in the wilderness in 30 seconds because they weren’t trained for the environment. Which is why you need to jump into the game and actually fall in love with losing. That’s how you know it won’t control you. I don’t hate 8th place trophies for nothing. I hate it because we want to teach our children that losing is so bad that they’re giving you an 8th place trophy to mask the horrible shame that you didn’t win. I don’t say that being #1 is the only best thing but owning your Ls teaches you so much more than winning will. So much of life IS about losing.
4. Fear may seem like a great motivator, but it is the worst
Fear in an organization is the worst motivator you can use. Fear would make your employees steal from you, leave you, lie about stuff because it brings out the worst in people. There are so many of you who act as a buffer taking the sh*t from your horrible boss and then cooling it down for the people who work below you. A micro-managing, fear-based tactics are not here to stay. You know what is? *kind candor*!
Kind candor is the only right answer for how a workplace should operate and anybody who’s being a buffer between a jerk boss and their subordinates need to quite there job *right f*cking now*
5. Have compassion for those who hurt you
If you think you suck, I want you to understand that it was someone else’s opinion of you. It was instilled you by someone who feels suck-y about themselves. It could be your friends, your parents, anybody. A lot was said about the parent front here at VeeCon…I met someone who struggled with self-love because of their parents. Which is why, there’s a new pillar…You should look into your grandparents.
Sure, you love them for giving you cookies and stuff and hate your parents over the tiniest things where the grandparents have been the problem all along, They instilled these habits in your parents that you hate. Instead of letting the blame be your partner to resent stuff about your upbringing, try to feel sorry for your parents for going through that. Deploy! Compassion!
6. Don’t judge the progress
You don’t judge a baby that’s 2 years old. Which is why you can’t judge yourself early in the process. I get why most people are driven by pity, shame, fear and more things of that sort but you have to understand the beauty of progress and process. VeeFriends is a baby and you know why the mascot is a black cat? Because everyone judges a black cat to be unlucky. in the course of the next 50 years, we’re here to flip the narrative.
We’re here to say that having a black cat…is good f*cking luck! Everything’s a process and the only thing that matters is not standing in your own way by judging. We never want to make mistakes, or make the wrong decisions, we end up doing so you know why? because we’re humans!
In the next few weeks gear ups to see more action from VeeCon on all my socials, Can’t wait to share it all with my community. If you any interesting snippets to share with me, tweet to me at GaryVee on Twitter!
