You Want to Get Really Happy?

Today’s episode is a throwback mashup from 2020 where I talk about overcoming the fear of being judged and why change is a good thing as long as you maintain balance. I bet this hits home for many of you.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience. The reason I'm saying out loud "it's okay to change", is because I like people having the ability to continue to mix. And, and listen, all of this is about balance.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:16Speaker 00

  Like, all of it's about, like, life is about balance, right? Like, one of the reasons I'm talking more about how much I sleep, is because I think a lot of entrepreneurs think staying up all day is how you hustle and win. And I'm like, "Wait a minute, I might be a part of that movement, I need to create clarity." So over the last 3-4 years, I mean, we had Arianna Huffington on the AskGaryVee Show 4-5 years ago. I've been very thoughtful about clarifying, you know, because in the first book I wrote that broke me out, Crushed, I talked about 7pm to 2 in the morning, as the time you do side hustle while you still pay your bills, because I was trying to be practical, you can't quit your job. Why don't you work after, instead of going out, or playing Xbox, or doing things to escape your real life, why don't you work? And then eventually that thing could become the thing and you can leave.

• 1:00Speaker 00

  Which was great, and I still believe in that, but then obviously people heard the 2am thing, you know, and like, and so, you know how things evolve. And so, balance is incredibly important, the whole, all of it. And people's own balance, for example, for me, I find balance in extremities. Like, I love going hard, you know, Monday through Friday, and I love being completely checked out on the weekend.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  Do you ever, I, I, I go pretty hard as well as we all do, but I feel guilty sometimes on the weekend, or at moments when I'm not doing anything. And I've got to tell myself, "Chris, just, you're allowed to do nothing."

• 1:36Speaker 00

  I've never felt guilty.

• 1:37Speaker 02

  You don't feel guilty, okay.

• 1:38Speaker 00

  I would argue, and my friend Tom Bell, you hit this for me, my ability to not judge myself is my greatest strength.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  And that's hard.

• 1:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  Not to be able to judge yourself, that's hard.

• 1:49Speaker 00

  You know why I don't judge myself? Because I don't judge other people. You want to get really happy? Stop judging people.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  Oh, that's good.

• 1:57Speaker 00

  You stop judging people, you stop judging yourself. And by the way, for everybody who's driving and you judge people, you don't know anything about them. You don't even know everything about your sister. How are you judging strangers? Like judgment is poison and has led to so much darkness. Especially with social media. What has happened? People blame social media. Social media hasn't done anything except expose us. There's no social media. We're social media. They're empty platforms. We fill it. When you leave that nasty comment because you're jealous that that girl's pretty and you're insecure about your looks, that's your darkness. That's not Instagram making you write it.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  It's not Instagram's fault. It's not the video games' fault.

• 2:41Speaker 00

  Bro, these platforms are empty. This notion that Facebook or Instagram or the Russians are controlling us is laughable. We need to change society. We need to put happiness on a pedestal, not money.

• 3:00Speaker 00

  Couple of things are exciting to me about your story. Two things stand out quite a bit. Number one, anytime one compares themselves to somebody else, they always lose. When I was 27 years old, I worked in a liquor store.

• 3:15Speaker 03

  I know that.

• 3:16Speaker 00

  And my friends drove to my liquor store and would buy champagne and I would carry the box to their BMW.

• 3:24Speaker 03

  I remember you saying that in a video, yeah, but you had no ego about it.

• 3:27Speaker 00

  Right, because they're... First of all, if your friends have bachelors or are engaged or have moved into a new apartment, I think you should be happy for them.

• 3:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, of course.

• 3:38Speaker 00

  But it should stop there. To your point, and I can even tell by your energy, you are. But then what happens is, and then you look at yourself and you say, "Where am I?"

• 3:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:47Speaker 00

  It just doesn't mean anything. It's like, people have to realize, like, life is so long. It's like, you know, just because we're at this point and you're not as... in the same place as somebody else, there's little value to that comparison. Like, there's just little value. Like, I think so many people get upset about comparing themselves to others without realizing what those others are going through. So it's cool that they have their bachelors, but they might be in a super abusive relationship, but you don't know.

• 4:15Speaker 03

  For sure.

• 4:16Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? You really don't. And it's super important that you ground yourself in that and not compare. Number two, far more interesting to me, is I want to play this game of like, why those schools are your dream?

• 4:29Speaker 03

  So it's not necessarily my dream. It's like, when I was in school, I did really well. And I was like, I know that I'm passionate about it and I'm creative and I have the talent.

• 4:37Speaker 00

  What would you like to happen?

• 4:39Speaker 03

  Networking. Like, so, and that's another thing with videos. I've watched a few, you're like, you don't need education. So I was going to ask you like...

• 4:46Speaker 00

  You need education. You don't need to pay for it in the current packages they are. Let's play this game. So you want to go to those fashion schools, which I understand, those are legit spots.

• 4:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:56Speaker 00

  Let's say you go there and crush. What would happen next?

• 5:00Speaker 03

  I don't know. It was just a matter of who I met within those years of being there. And like, the fashion directors at those schools were the actual designers themselves. So like Diana Bonfrostenberg, Calvin Klein, Marc Jacobs, all of those people. So if I were able to get face to face with those people...

• 5:15Speaker 00

  But let's play that out. The amount of FIT students and Parsons students that have face to time with those three is zero. They'll come and give a speech. You might take a selfie, but you're not getting real face time. You're far more likely to send a top designer DMs and offer to work for free for them. And they say yes. And then you grab coffee and pick up schmata and actually get close to them and actually get face time than ever going to one of those two schools.

• 5:41Speaker 03

  So what, like, how would that happen without going to school?

• 5:45Speaker 00

  You would literally take your phone right now and...

• 5:46Speaker 03

  And message them.

• 5:47Speaker 00

  And DM, DF, DVF and say, "I'm willing to work my face off for free." And you do that to 400 of the top designers in the world. And none of them answer. And then you sit there and say, "Gary, he told me this was gonna work. I hate him." And then you do it again. And you do it again. And do it again. And then somebody says yes. Until Virgil says yes and you're in Paris doing an Off-White show. This is real. Like, this is why breaking down this conversation is so important. Like, this is what's so fun for me. Like, the fact that you in your mind truly believe that going to those two schools is gonna let you interact face-to-face with those three is amazing because that's where I get to say, "Cool, but not really." And then there's another part of that question.

• 6:31Speaker 00

  Let's say those schools actually did give you face-to-face with those three. The next question is, "And what then?" And so, what are you gonna do in that hour? I mean, getting an hour with Calvin Klein's ludicrous, but let's say you get it from Parsons. You know, what?

• 6:47Speaker 03

  Good question.

• 6:48Speaker 00

  And it's not a tough question. It doesn't have to be a scary one. Like, I'm not asking to like, "Ah, I got you." It's about, what? Like, do you wanna be a designer?

• 6:58Speaker 03

  Of course I do.

• 6:59Speaker 00

  Well, great. Then, I have great news for you. You're far more likely to break out as a designer, just designing and putting it out on social media, than you are to go to a school. Like, if you have the talent, whether you do go to FIT or you go to Instagram, it's all gonna end up in the same place anyway. Talent wins.

• 7:18Speaker 03

  So, if I wanted to go ahead and, within the meantime, like, if I started putting everything out there on, like, all of my capsule collections,

• 7:25Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 7:25Speaker 03

  sketches, everything out on Instagram, but I didn't have that following and I wanted to start my own business within, without an audience, how would I go about actually starting that without having like...

• 7:36Speaker 00

  Well, first of all, the way you just talked about it, that costs nothing.

• 7:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:40Speaker 00

  The other way costs you $240,000 in debt.

• 7:43Speaker 03

  I know.

• 7:44Speaker 00

  Well, I also know. And so, that's why I wanna bring that up. To me, I'd rather you do that. Listen, your ability to put out those sketches, first of all, you put out those sketches, there is a 0.01% chance of a miracle. Right? The other thing you can do is DM those sketches to 5,000 top models on Instagram.

• 8:03Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 8:04Speaker 00

  All you need is one person to think it's cool.

• 8:09Speaker 00

  I would rather you lay in bed for 11 hours a day and DM people all the sketches, whether they're designers, fashion magazines, fashion pages, and models. I genuinely believe what I'm about to say. I believe that's a more likelihood to what you want than going to FIT.

• 8:26Speaker 03

  Okay, no, I definitely think so because even after school it would just be kind of, I don't want to be in the exact same position that I'm in now of like, oh, I just, not necessarily wasted four years of my life, but I just put all of my eggs in that one basket and spent like three, four years of my life dwelling on getting to this school to finally get here and then be in the same position and now what?

• 8:45Speaker 00

  Correct. The reason there's so much unhappiness right now in the world, especially in the American world, is there's a ton of people that have hundreds of thousands of dollars in college debt and everything they thought they were gonna get from it, they didn't.

• 9:00Speaker 03

  Basically what happened to me.

• 9:01Speaker 00

  Basically what happened to millions of people.

• 9:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:04Speaker 00

  I genuinely think that you need to sketch, capsule, and put it out for free to the world on all platforms. Like, this is why I yell about TikTok. Like, if, you know, if you, if you did figure skating, I assume you have athletic rhythm capabilities that most people don't. The fact that you, like, when I look at you, I'm like, this girl should just go on TikTok and put this stuff out.

• 9:29Speaker 03

  I have a TikTok as well and it's just a matter of like knowing what content to put out there that would grab people's attention.

• 9:36Speaker 00

  Work it the other way. That's what everybody does, which is why people fail. My game is just put out everything and figure out what people want.

• 9:43Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 9:44Speaker 00

  After the fact. Everybody sits there, because this is what gets into insecurity and judgment. That's why I talk about it so much. If you just put it out, you'll find out. If you sit in your head, you'll never post.

• 9:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's basically what's happening. I never post and I think that's, like, I resonated with one of your posts about never posting because of insecurity and just like worrying about what other people think and whatnot, but you're not going to get anywhere that way.

• 10:09Speaker 00

  That's what everyone's doing.

• 10:14Speaker 00

  I want to continue to put out information that I know is leading to more happiness. You know, like hanging here with Nikita, like it's just perspective. It's just, you know, I was born with it. I had parents around me that gave it to me and I just want to pass that on. Once you look at it a little bit different, it just changes everything. It's literally just looking at it different. Like it's so exciting for me that I know what you actually want is a lot easier than the way you're seeing the path. It's literally leaving the studio right now, sketching and posting it on Pinterest. And literally that could be the moment. Hey everybody, if you enjoyed this podcast, please go back and look at the prior episodes.

• 10:58Speaker 00

  They're loaded. I appreciate your attention and thanks for being part of this journey. See you later.