Don’t tell Gary Vaynerchuk you “don’t have time”

Richard Reis
3 min readOct 28, 2015
Gary Vaynerchuk at the NJ Tech Meetup 2015

At the NJ Tech Meetup 2015 the interviewer asked Gary where does he find time to get so much work done. Since a lot of people complain about this I thought they’d drive value from his answer (put on your seatbelt, *click*):

“Stop watching entire seasons of House of Cards or Lost or whatever!

Here’s the thing, if you’re happy with your life, and you’re good, and you’re not complaining, do you. Like don’t work at all, I don’t give a f***.

This message is for the people who say they don’t have time, or don’t have opportunities or don’t have money.

If you’re complaining, you better audit yourself. Because if you’re complaining and I audit you, I promise you I will find four hours that you’re not doing jack sh**.

You’re sleeping, and by the way I’m a fan of sleep! Sleep is important. But you might be sleeping 8 hours, and 7 is cool too. That’s one.

You’re playing mobile games? F*** you. I’ve never played one second of a mobile game. Like really? You’ve got time for Angry Birds and you’re complaining? Get out of here.

So I don’t want to hear that you’re one person just starting out and you don’t have time for content.

Your actions my friends, are much, much, much louder than your words. Your actions are your game.

That’s the game right? Either you’re right or you’re wrong. Either you win or you lose.

BUT if you’re going to come to me and tell me you don’t have time in a world where I work every f***ing second for 18 hours a day, you’re gonna have a tough time making me feel bad that ‘it’s not happening’ for you.

I love when people are like ‘no no no Gary, I’m gonna work smart’ *audience laughs*… That’s good… Like I fully feel comfortable I’m working smart every minute. Like putting in the work matters. It just does.

Talent is massively important. But putting in the work matters.

I’m really serious about this. Please go talk to your grandparents and go ask them to introduce you to 4 or 5 of their friends, and go ask them how they rolled in life. Like what was tough when there was war, and depressions, and real sh**. And you’re crying that you don’t have 1000 Periscope followers? Get the f*** out of here!

I am convinced by the complaining that’s in the market, that we lost. America lost, WE lost.

And by the way, I love America more than breathing. It’s because we are just too far along in having our run. And you can just see it. 9th place trophies? Is that where we’re at? Like we gotta be that ‘politically correct’ with our kids that if you come in 9th place you won?

This is why there are so many fake entrepreneurs. Because of ‘fake winning’.

You have to understand. The market doesn’t care. It doesn’t care if you went to Harvard, it doesn’t care if you grew up in the Bronx with a welfare mom. It’s gonna be the market, and you gotta win in it. Period.

And that’s it, the market always rules, and too many people don’t understand that. They celebrate when they raise money… We’re in a culture right now where we celebrate people when they raise debt.

It’s broken my friends, and sh**’s gonna hit the fan.

And I’m gonna play this video again a few years from now and say now what? Now we will see who is a wartime general.

All we have right now is a bunch of peacetime generals. Real easy to be a 26 year old entrepreneur right now where you can just raise money cause some dentist wants to find his Zuckerberg.

Show me on the next bubble burst, who’s gonna make money during that.

Show me.”

If you want to see the full video, here’s the link: https://youtu.be/7VhG9PpJjpc

Thanks for reading! 😊If you enjoyed it, test how many times can you hit 👏 in 5 seconds. It’s great cardio for your fingers AND will help other people see the story.You can follow me on Twitter at @richardreeze to find out whenever others just like it come out.📚 Do you like books? If so you might enjoy my latest obsession: 
Most Recommended Books.📚

--

--

Richard Reis

"I write this not for the many, but for you; each of us is enough of an audience for the other." - Epicurus https://www.richardreis.me/