The number one variable of growing your business in this room that is practical, achievable doable, is how serious you take making content on the internet. It's that simple, no matter what anybody in this room says to me of why? No because they've never started and they have an ideology or because they've made 45 posts on instagram and haven't sold anything yet, no matter what your excuses. I promise you. Social media is not broken in that story.

You're the one that's broken, you've got your perspective. I just want to be happy. Don't you want to be happy one of the great things about kovid? Is it breaks your patterns right, something that monumental, obviously there's so many things that are challenging and difficult and obviously devastating, but when you're able to make it to the other side of a war or a pandemic or a challenging time in one's life there? What was specific about this pandemic was it gave you time to kind of slow down, even if you were panicking up front incl, which is what i was doing. You know, literally within the first couple days of the shutdown four of our top five clients emailed us and said we're not going to be paying you for a while and the way i build.

My company is for top line growth, i'm incredibly not incentivized for profit, which means we're running on very tight margin, so not getting paid is always a challenge and then, on top of everything else, vayner's size was very, very unique in that we were not small enough And not big enough, so we got 0.0 dollars from anybody, and so we had to navigate and after all that was done and what is the framework of so much of what i'm thinking about now started to emerge, and you know the reality is, is that i Can sit here, knowing this industry extremely well, knowing the enormity of the advantage of this room, because there's so many immigrants in the room and that intro is absolutely true. Life is about understanding the alternative. It's really hard to complain about what milk was put in your starbucks when you came from the dirt. So so you know there's a lot that we don't need to touch on in this room.

I could talk about what i think you should be doing from a content standpoint, because the reality is, i promise you. The number one variable of growing your business in this room that is practical, achievable doable, is how serious you take making content on the internet. It's that simple, no matter what anybody in this room says to me of why? No because they've never started and they have an ideology or because they've made 45 posts on instagram and haven't sold anything yet, no matter what your excuses! I promise you. Social media is not broken in that story, you're the one that's broken.

It was funny last week someone's like gary, my you've been talking about linkedin and he showed me the posts and he's like it's not working and in the post. I'm talking about making content in the feed of linkedin, knowing who you're trying to reach running ads against the employees of those organizations for content in the feed. And then i ask him what he's doing and he's spamming people by paying 100 bucks a month for a script that just emails people on linkedin. That little story is something i think about every day the roi i like to say of a basketball is billions of dollars for lebron james, it's zero.

For me, how one plays with the tools is the variable of success, and so we can get into the mindset. Very much the intro, which was lovely, thank you and in depth. I i do believe that the far majority of what is the opportunity in this room or the limitation sits in two very simple categories: one's uncomfortably black and white, and one is remarkably gray. The black and white is what i just started with.

Until you start making dozens of videos pictures and written articles a week. You will continue to leave an extraordinary amount of money on the table and somebody sitting next to you is going to do it and take your market share and i don't care if you've been the queen of that city for 30 years and work on your reputation. Slowly but surely you will lose because that's what always happens in business, if that wasn't the case, ibm would still be winning. I i love this industry and i love og's, because my dad's, an og ami, i started so young, i'm an og like i love og life and it is absolutely building on reputation.

But i love when an agent says to me: dear, you don't get it. I dominate this town for the last 30 years, i'm like dear you, don't get it, you don't get it much bigger companies than you have gone out of business with audacity, and it is audacity in 2022.. It is, it is only, and this is very clear if you're sitting in the crowd and you're not doing this work, it's only two things and they're both interesting one is audacity, you're, audacious that what you did in 1993 or 2001 or 2007 is enough for you To dominate 2022 or you've lost your ambition, which is okay. I don't think of that as a bad thing, i don't think it's a bad thing that you're not as hungry.

Maybe you've scratched your itch. Maybe you do want to do other parts in your life, but look don't lie to yourself and understand yourself on where you are in your journey. 2022 is going to be a remarkable opportunity for this room. The question is very simple, though: who's going to actually put in the 30 hours of work, starting today to actually know how to do pictures and videos and written words on these platforms and who's not, and it becomes a very simple game.

It's a black and white prescriptive game, either you're good at it or you're, not no different than basketball. We need to have a very big conversation in the business world about how much kindness compassion empathy are the superpowers of business people don't think. So. When i talk about kindness - and i talk about a lot, my favorite email is like title all caps, gary you're wrong, i'm like here we go, i open it up, you don't get it gary.

You talk about kindness, i'm always kind, and everybody takes advantage of me and walks all over me and i reply: hey rick, maybe you're, manipulating the situation, because you want somebody to walk all over you a little bit because you're actually subconsciously trying to create leverage, because Let me promise you one thing about actual kindness: if you're confused by the definition, actual kindness means giving without expectation and i believe in business, what is very clear to me is people think kindness and they use kindness, but what it really is is a slight version Of manipulation you're doing something with thinking. Something else is gon na happen, you're referring because you think you're gon na i - and it's all good it's nice to maybe think, but don't confuse that with kindness. That's called strategy, don't say you're kind, say you're, throwing out reels and trying to hope it returns own. What it actually is.

I was at a conference like this many years ago and i had just invested in uber and it was the taxi and limo national convention. So i'm giving my talk and i finally throw it out there and, as you can imagine, the room wasn't thrilled with me, but it was a discussion and all i saw all i saw was question after question statement after statement. That was why it wasn't gon na work and all of the answers were regulation gary. This is not going to work because we're going to pay the politicians off similar to how i hear car dealerships and car people talk about tesla or direct to consumer.

I promise you when technology is coming along, hoping for regulation is always going to be a bad strategy. My favorite is everybody who hates big government because they're an entrepreneur, but then when something comes along and you up, you love the government, don't you so, when the blockchain comes and starts taking out fees, you better shut your mouth in this room and notice. How few claps just happened? Why do i bring that up right now, not to razz not to scare, because i want you to do the 50 hours of homework, so you can innovate. What blows my mind is people's inability to put in the work in the face of information? All of you know that this blockchain thing is brewing.

You've definitely heard about bitcoin at this point. You've, probably maybe heard of ethereum it's happening, and it's going to affect this industry soonest. This is the book industry for the internet. The blockchain is contracts.

Understand that please it's a very important thing. Please spend 15 hours, googling ethereum and smart contracts get educated, not to play defense, but to play offense you do 15 to 30 hours of homework. You might just change your career. You might shift slightly in what you're doing now to something else.

It's a remarkable time, and one thing i know about an immigrant-centric reality - is it's not scared to put in the work, and i really know this statement it likes to pick which work it wants to do. People don't like change and change is the only guarantee. What the blockchain eventually will do is change the face of what brokerages leverages in the ecosystem. Right now is the time to build your personal brand on the internet, and i mean right now how you do that.

Can be totally different, you don't need to be over the top or curse like me. You need to be you, i'm me, you be you, but what you need to do is start producing content to educate people on who you are, if you're uncomfortable with the way you look and you want don't want to be on video, then do audio and do A podcast, if you're, not sure that you can handle the camera, then write on linkedin or facebook if you feel more comfortable being the hostess with the mostest start, a facebook group regionally within your area, one of the greatest arbitrages in this industry right now, is starting A facebook group for the local area, where you sell around the town, not around selling homes, bringing people in building community and then just happening to be the person that's hosting that group and picking up the business. These are the black and white tactics available to you. How you build your team and how much empathy you have for the consumer on the other side is the other variable, but the opportunity is staggering.

It is staggering the speed in which people are changing what they consume, which then dictates what they think, which then dictates how they buy is at a level we've never seen before. I come here fly across the country and fly back for one reason to put so much pressure on this room. To do the homework. To do the homework i mean it, the the opportunity is so real.

You are literally one one because i'm on the receiving end of these messages, you're one viral tick-tock, video away from selling 13 homes because of it - and you don't go in there and start doing the latest dance you're, trying to sell homes and you're. More than welcome to shake your ass fine, but but it's a lot more interesting to talk about what you want to talk about, but making it contextual to the room. People say no so much face. Excuse me: tick, tock's, fastest growing demo is 38 to 55 year olds.

You can still think it's. 12 year olds. It hasn't been 12 year olds for two years. That's the game of no versus the game of.

Yes, that's the game of staying curious. The biggest biggest vulnerability to people in business today trying to sell to human beings is their unbelievable, calmness and interest in saying the word no and their visceral reaction to the idea of maybe the innovation that we're living through is big. The opportunity is even bigger, but this requires homework before you decide that content on social media can't sell for you. Did you really do the 20 hours of homework and the 50 hours of you doing it? It doesn't count when you have your niece.

Do six posts for you this world is reading about push-ups instead of doing them. I wish actually that's not even that's actually, not even true. I wish this was a game of people reading about push-ups and not doing it we're not even reading about push-ups we're dismissing push-ups before we even read about them. I ask you and implore you here today, my friends to open up your heart, to curiosity, to open up your eyes to the reality of what's happening in our society and how people are making their decisions and to shed your preconceived notions and start putting in the Work for a lot of us me included.

It was easy to put in the hard labor right. It was easy to put in the work it's much more challenging to figure out the new technologies. The problem is the world, doesn't care about you and me. The world's gon na do what the world does and the way people are gon na make buying decisions are gon na, be based on the people they see here period and the story, and if you're not showing up here in 2022, you're not showing up, it may Feel good for you to see your picture on a billboard.

You might like it, but now you're servicing your ego instead of your wallet. Thank you. This is a very simple business conversation. If you want to sell things, it's a good idea to make it easier for people to buy from you, and so the innovation is the mindset.

The innovation is going home now and deciding what you just saw in this talk and saying: is he right or is he wrong and if you find yourself saying he's right, but i don't want to. I really mean this: that's okay, but then you have to be honest with yourself of where you are in your career, whether that means maybe doing something else, because you don't have fire for it or being content, which is fine, a beautiful thing if you're content, but You have to be aware that this is all happening around you. I i don't have to tell this room how much innovation is going on in this space. You've got the biggest technology companies in the world interested in your money.

I know what the big tech companies are doing. I know what's happening with blockchain. I know what's happening with the 20 year olds that everybody makes fun of who are picking up incredible market share from a lot of you, because they're actually being seen on social. They may not know the business yet and you love making fun of them.

For that. I got bad news for you that they'll figure out yeah. No, that's that's may need to take a pause on that one people make fun of things until they don't everybody made fun of the kardashians until they didn't everybody made fun of tesla to they. Didn't everybody made fun of my pictures until they sold for a million dollars today on christie's? Congratulations, people love to make fun of things, and what i'm worried about is this room's too successful? That's a great success is the beginning of the end.

What are some of those you know? You've you've spoken candidly about your parents and the meticulous upbringing. What are some of the things? They taught you that now even get you to sit here and give back in such a fashion. My i think gratitude is the reason i give back. I think the single reason i want to put out all the content and do things like i'm very compensated for a speech like this, but no longer does that make financial sense to me in my business world.

It's just amazing to be here with all of you. I love it. Why? Because i know how i communicate. I know that i come here with an agenda and that agenda is to suffocate one person in this room's, with the hope that it's exactly what they needed to go do something so that in four years they could send me an email and say i was in San diego in 2021 - and i thought i was hot, but then you got me and then i got my together.

Then i got my together and now my family's so much better life and that feeling for me is better than even when i'm winning. So my my selfishness is my selflessness, it's fun for me, i'm already good. You know it's very easy to give when you're fulfilled right and so for me what happened. A my family heritage was crazy up.

My mom lost her mom at five. My dad lost his dad at 16.. We lived in the soviet union, a lot of people, don't know this. I didn't realize how many people don't know this.

You weren't allowed to leave the country. The country was a prison from 1918 to 1990, a prison you weren't allowed to leave, leave everybody spent time in jail because the government owned everything, cuba and venezuela are a vacation compared to soviet union in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. So you know here i am we left in 78, i'm three years, i'm growing up in america, but - and this is gon na - really hit for this room - i'm growing up in america, but am i really because in my four walls it's russia right, but but but I both right so in the house, all i'm hearing every friday night and on the weekends is the stories of the old country and it's a disaster and i'm out here drinking coca-cola and watching mickey mouse and so very quickly. I'm just thankful, i'm just grateful, and so gratitude was big.

The the other thing they taught me was it. The story looked like this sixth grade nintendo explodes right and i'm like mom, nintendo and she's. Like good, go get it, and so you know that framework gets. You serious about lemonade and washing cars and shoveling snow, and so my parents taught me a level of work ethic that i would in hindsight at 45 say is, was probably too extreme.

The three of us talk about it a lot. I think all of us collectively look at each other and say: maybe we took it to 130 100 would have been fine. 80 would have been fine. We lived in 130, i worked from the time i was 14.

I worked every weekend and every summer vacation day of my life, all of them like when people hear it, i don't think they understand all of them, not like kind of you know like you meet people they're like they helped out in their family business every day. I was a terrible student. My parents sat me down at 14 and they're like you're, not going to harvard so you're going to work every day, and so so work ethic was taught, and then i had such a gift of communicating that my father really really impacted. My life, because he has no tolerance for lying, and i had an incredible ability to manipulate everyone on earth and when you're young and you realize you have gift of gab, you have no idea how to fully function with it right, and so my dad really helped Me because i was so scared of him and for my father embellishing or a slight exaggeration was like a death blow.

He keeps it so straight and that really helped me a lot. I i i think about that a lot i was gifted with so many things, but i it really worked out for me on how they parented me, but i, but it all comes down to gratitude. When i tell you the only thing on earth, i care about is the health of my family. It is the only thing i care about everything i do in business is a game.

I don't give a i money, all of it, health and and and and when you really believe it when you really believe it not on stage we clap it's nice, you know people that really know me when you really believe it. You know what happens this much pressure at work, mental health. My mental health is the greatest of all time because at least you know in the scheme of things from a business standpoint. When you genuinely mean what i just said, you don't have bad days.

You have bad days because you're worried about money, that's what it is. You have bad days because you're worried about the money and when you don't worry about the money, not because you have it or you don't. I feel the same way i made. I sold five pictures today at christy's auction that made me more money than i made from being 22 to 34 years old in my career combined wow, nice.

That's that's not a humble brag, that's a, but i was exactly the same way. I am right now at 30 at 26. It was just always the game and i i promise you. This is the big.

You know we talk a lot about inclusion in our society. Thank god, finally right and we we've we've been attacking a lot of things in this country, the last 20 years, sexism, racism, immigration, many many things that we all know. The one thing we are not talking enough about in america is ageism. We love making fun of 70 year olds who don't know how to use tick tock.

Meanwhile, those understand life there's a lot of wisdom, there's a lot of wizards, and so the reason i brought that up is you want to get happier. Go hang out with 90 year olds and really listen to what they talk about. You'll realize real fast. Most things mean nothing, and once you realize most things mean nothing.

Losing a deal means nothing.