Why Being Dumb Is My Best Strategy

[Music]

um

um

you know

this whole past week i had this single

question on my mind

and that question is

why should y’all listen to me i mean

what one big idea do i have to share

with you that you haven’t heard already

and so

because i’m not a crypto mega

billionaire sadly

i’m not the most popular youtube blog in

lithuania

fortunately

um i haven’t done any internships at

nasa or studied at harvard

and so i’m not that smart in talking

about you know smart things

but i am pretty good at generating dumb

ideas

and in fact i always think that was my

super strength in life

in fact when i was in 10th grade

i decided that it is more important to

cook secret sandwiches and sell them in

school than studies that would dictate

the rest of my life

and when it came time in 11th grade to

choose the lessons that you’re going to

study for the rest of your life and

you’re going to hone in

i decided to pick the minimal amount of

lessons so that i could focus on

building a business in a garage that

rented out

um

and so i’m not the best role model in

terms of textbooks you know i finished

my math exam by one point if it was one

point below i would fail

um and uh but i am super grateful that

throughout i always have people around

me that would support my dumb ideas it

would support me being the dumb idea

generator that i am you know

like that one time

uh when we dressed our friend with a

fake mustache

and then we sent him off to buy alcohol

when he was 16 years old and the legal

agent at that time was 20.

and we thought this is the dumbest idea

ever this this is never going to work

right

and then we made a video about it

because it worked

uh

so yeah uh dumb idea but it actually

worked

um but the most shocking one of them all

was when i was 16 years old and i

remember this vividly i would go every

morning to school and i would see this

old abandoned volvo just standing there

and one monday evening

i decided why

what would happen if i would actually

buy it you know

um and i mean again the dumbest idea

ever the owner’s probably dead there’s

something with the documents you know

but it was a monday morning and it was

dark outside i decided just to screw it

and so

i knocked on the door

and this old man exits out the door and

he’s standing there and i’m standing

here and we’re just both looking at each

other and turns out it was actually his

car

and so

things escalate from there i get his

phone number wink wink

uh and uh we go there on a saturday so

it was me my brother and my brother’s

friend and we try to start it up

and after a couple of tries we actually

managed to get it running and so i’m all

sleazy and you know i’m ready to ask the

question okay so how much do you want

for this car and he says nothing and i’m

like what do you mean by nothing what

nothing and he says

one

euro yeah i bought this car for one euro

i swear to god that’s a true story now

totally expected totally planned

absolutely knew it

now

what am i trying to tell you with all

these stories um you know these stories

have a single underlying theme in all of

them

uh and

you know now i’m super grateful to be in

a position where i’m at right now i’m 19

i can travel the world you know we’re

building this fabulous agency called

candy with two other fabulous

co-founders we have a great team we have

great products we have great clients um

now to give you some context so what we

do is we actually take ecommerce brands

and then we scale them with paid social

media ads and optimization work and

obviously during this whole time we had

a lot of failures a lot of mistakes but

i think all of those mistakes have

actually set us on the right path to

where we are right now and our goal is

to actually help people by bringing

great products to the market

and obviously during this whole process

i worked my ass off right i mean i never

had any fun never had any weird looks

never had any crazy parties

never

bought inflatable unicorns just to go

down slopes on a tuesday absolutely

never never you know even our website’s

hiring page says that we’re looking for

people to join our illuminati master

plan so you can really tell that we’re

really serious people

um really serious people so anyway

that’s the theme that i want to touch on

in this talk but in order for me to do

that let’s go back in time to a time

when i was nine years old and when i was

nine years old me and my parents

actually traveled to italy

and when we got back home i decided that

i want to make movies and i made my

first ever real movie

are you ready to see it

really yeah okay

let’s see it

yeah so you could really tell i was a

talent

in the making you know almost some cans

film festival material anyway but that

was just my hobby you know

my real business ventures actually

started out when i made my first ever

real digital business

and it was a minecraft server

and so i made ads for my server i built

custom lobbies i programmed games they

even went into the code and like set up

plugins and i even had product market

fit

uh five people came

so anyway i dropped minecraft because it

was it was clearly not working and i

pursued filmmaking instead

and when i was in school i was

freelancing on the side getting some

side gigs earning a bit of money uh

whenever anyone recommend me i mean i’m

still a kid but it was all about to

change because i felt sick i felt sick

for two weeks and it was december 22nd

of 2017 and i marked this date as the

biggest epiphany date ever in my life

ever

and so to give you some context those

prior 14 days to this date actually

consisted of me waking up

then i would watch this show called top

gear and i will go to sleep so i would

wake up

watch top gear and i would go to sleep

i would wake up

watch topger and i would go to sleep

and then i would wake up and watch time

you get the point

so anyway after 14 days of non-stop

entertaining your brain starts to become

numb

and you start asking yourself all these

philosophical questions questions like

what am i doing with my life what’s my

life’s purpose

and the answer to that would probably be

not much right i mean all of us have big

dreams and big ambitions we all want to

live in beautiful houses have beautiful

wives husbands you know dance in front

of sunsets um

but i wasn’t doing doing anything much

about it you know

and uh

you know that lambo isn’t gonna by

itself right

um and so

i had stories that i told myself the

usual stories you know like i need to

finish university i need to graduate i

need to finish school i need to find a

stable job i mean all of this is

completely required right

but then i realized

wait these are kind of the similar

stories i told myself previously and it

didn’t turn out that way

and so i thought hmm

what if

what if i’m just too dumb

i mean obviously i have all the time in

the world if i can watch tv shows all

day right so that means i’m just not

utilizing that time

and when i realized that my dumbness

actually sparked this natural curiosity

and so i became so hungry for knowledge

and i typed into youtube how to become a

millionaire

and now at 19 years old i’m proud to say

it didn’t work i’m still not a

millionaire but these videos did

actually teach me a lot that you have to

read a lot and you have to work a lot

and you have to fail a lot and these

things just kind of crossed over my head

and this was the deal breaker for me

because i realized that the more books i

read the smarter i became

and so if i read like five books five

practical books on like managing

finances i’d be five books more ahead

than the guy who didn’t read them and so

this is just like a no-brainer solution

for me so again this dumbness actually

sparked natural curiosity and i wanted

to learn so much

and so naturally i got a lot of

of ideas after learning

and i asked myself okay so now how do i

apply it all into

practice and

i wrote hundreds of emails to companies

saying that i’ll do work for them for

free because i realized that my value in

the marketplace was low

and i didn’t have any portfolio work to

back me up

and so from these emails from this free

work that i did i got my first clients

and i controlled everything you know i

could actually send emails and get

clients so that was again

a no-brainer for me and from those first

clients we actually landed our first

ever clients and and then we made our

agency in the garage

and we’ve always figured

during this whole process that if we

fail for some reason

then i would hop on a bike and i would

just deliver food and we’d figure it out

and uh you know

one of the you know we had some amazing

projects and a lot of fun doing all of

this but one of the great demo ideas

that we actually had

uh was when we realized that we’re done

at marketing because we’re a young

marketing agency you know all of us are

16 17. so what we did is we invited

industry experts to talk one-on-one and

ask them questions that were relevant to

us

and so we then called it a podcast and

uploaded to youtube and then we got our

first clients from that

so after after some years passed and

then went off and co-founded candy and

and during this growth period that we’re

experiencing right now i learned this

one thing about ads that i want to share

with you about running great ads

now in order for us to scale businesses

we have to test a lot of creatives we

have to see which one of these creatives

on social media actually performs the

best which generates the most profitable

sales uh so let’s say we create like six

different ad creatives for the same

brand for the same offer and then we

launch all of them with the same budget

so let’s say 10 bucks each and after

some time passes we actually can see

measurably and quantifiably which one of

these creatives performs the best

so let’s say it’s creative number four

and then we can actually launch this

creative with bigger budgets because we

know it works

and this process never ends we

constantly have to be innovating and

testing and watching which winners are

winners

and

you know even if we have success and the

beauty of y’all of it all

is that we can see results in real time

and we can see results measurably and

quantifiably and what matters in

business is results right

and this is the kicker

what we found after testing thousands of

creatives is that a lot of times the

dumbest and the weirdest ideas perform

the best

now why why is that

um you know usually in business we think

that the smartest people get the best

results but i don’t think that’s always

the case

because when you think you’re smart you

become complacent when you think you’re

smart you stop innovating because you

know it all you stop creating because

you know what works and you stop

delegating because only you can do the

work the best and so what happens is

that a lot of businesses when they’re

creating ads they’re using these brain

dead approaches that everyone else is

using they’re doing things by the

textbook and what happens is that they

look like everyone else

all of their ads look the same

and then you might ask okay well what if

all of your dumb ideas fail what do you

do then

um and the answer to that is

well that’s great that’s awesome that

means that we’re not smart enough and we

have to understand the customer better

in order to make the ads perform so

being dumb actually enables us to create

ideas that would actually break out

through all the noise

and would be actually interesting to

watch in the feed

and if we fail at that that means we

have an opportunity to improve

and so this is the paradox of being dumb

when you realize that you’re dumb you in

turn become smarter because you want to

bridge that gap you’re never satisfied

because because you always realize that

you’re dumb and i would always prefer to

be the dumb one in the group because you

never have a self-image that you have to

live up to you always ask questions

instead of being the right person

and you don’t care about your appearance

because you’re always dumb you’re the

dumb one already so it’s

really more fun but also it’s way less

stressful

you know i love

watching and reading youtube comments

especially below songs because you can

see how people interpret them

and this question and this comment

really stuck with me and it said that i

treat people like crap because i’m just

so stressed i like music like this it

helps

and this got me thinking

so why are people actually rude

you know if i was a smart ass i

immediately would say because they’re

bad people or because they’re ex or

they’re why or there’s that because i

know the right answer right but because

i realize that i’m kind of dumb

you know i don’t know the right answer

so really why is he like that

and

what i found is that a lot of times

i’m just not smart enough to understand

that person

you know i don’t know what he’s going

through i don’t know whether that person

that just yelled me suffered a divorce

or whatever so

i’m too dumb to realize that

and now let me be completely honest with

you here this talk isn’t about being

dumb or being smart this talk is more

about self-awareness

and i learned this lesson the hard way

uh

actually during one of the most

fundamental events in my childhood

and that was when i was 10 years old

and when i was 10 years old my parents

actually got a divorce it was a nasty

divorce with lawyers and everything

and at that time this 10 year old child

understood that maybe parents don’t have

it all figured out maybe those smiley

faces behind the covers of magazines has

something darker maybe that successful

business isn’t so successful because of

poor financial decisions

and maybe that new bmw x5 or that lambo

was leased out of borrowed money you

know maybe adults just aren’t that smart

you know this might sound weird but i

love watching ants i think they’re

fascinating you know they’re always like

fighting and struggling and running

uh but they’re so little like like you

could squeeze one with a finger and

they’re dead

and there’s life’s purpose is building

this ant nest which is like a two by two

and if we decide to build an industrial

complex there it’s gone completely

forever like bulldozed off the floor and

nobody cares

and all of their like thousands of ant

colonies are dead and nobody bats an eye

and they seem so stuck so brittle their

life seems so meaningless their whole

purpose is just gone

my my greatest lessons in life actually

came when i realized how insignificant i

really am

you know because i don’t know i don’t

know whether my friend lost his mother i

don’t know whether that

that child suffered a divorce i don’t

know whether

you know that friend’s business

had a bankruptcy you know i simply don’t

know

it took me 14 days to realize

of watching tv shows at age 16 to

realize that

i’m just this little tiny speck in the

universe traveling through space and

time

and one day

i too will die

and now whether i want to do something

about it or not it’s completely up to me

and i think that’s the greatest freedom

of all

and if i can i’ll like to do something

about it

but

when we transmute our importance from

ourselves and then then we realize that

our importance is just an illusion

created by our egos

and that really all of us are kind of

like these dumb ants

and

then what happens is we become more

accepted to new ideas we become more

open to give love to receive love we

become

more suggestive to new ideas

and i think we become smarter

so it took me 14 days to realize that

i’m this dumb little ant

and i hope it’ll take you less than that

and maybe you’ll even get lucky and buy

a volvo for one euro thank you