(light mellow music)
(speaking in foreign language)
- What's up, vlog.
Just trying something a
little bit different here.
This is the setup to this
keynote I gave at Boise, Idaho.
One of the most in-depth,
best talks I think I've given.
The Q and A was just
obnoxious, off the charts,
bunch of highlights, emotion, funny
and probably the most up to date thoughts
on a lot of my thinking
around marketing attention,
building businesses, entrepreneurship.
Here in London.
Great trip.
Fought off a cold, I'm proud of myself.
And on the way back to New York.
Couple of meetings in New York
and then into the weekend.
Jets are two and two.
See what happens in
Cleveland this weekend.
But really, really want
to start being, you know,
in a place where I'm always testing.
Two channels, is that right on YouTube?
Setting up longer form
content in the main channel.
That's what I'm doing now.
Hack, hack, hack, hack, hack.
Don't listen to what I'm doing.
Watch, excuse me.
Don't listen to what I'm saying.
Those 4 a.m. wake up calls.
Don't listen to what I'm
saying, watch what I'm doing.
You didn't know?
Thank you so much.
You know what's interesting?
I was sitting there and listening.
Hey, Dan.
And I realized, Jesus, it's fucking crazy
that I can literally
give this entire keynote
in about one minute,
given the context that was just created
and I think it's just gonna
make sense to everybody, right?
Which is everything you've just heard
is 100% mathematically correct.
The reason they spent a lot of money
on that fuckin' rad ass video
that you saw is 100% correct.
And the reality is this is the only reason
that I'm standing here, whatsoever,
and feeling good about who's watching me,
'cause so many of you guys are
doing your thing out there,
is that I just respect the
fuck out of both of them,
and I just genuinely believe
the rest of this room doesn't.
That either it's 51-49 or
some of you are 100% math.
The world I now live
in, these big agencies,
they're 100% art.
They have no respect
to sales and that's it.
Like, I literally feel like leaving.
Thank you.
Like that's literally, like.
(attendees laughing and applauding)
But it's interesting
that that's really it.
Like, honestly there's a lot of my energy
and I have a lot of time that I,
and I know a lot of you, and really,
I'll talk for the next 20 minutes
out of the respect that I'm sure
a lot of you don't know
who I am or context,
but I'd much rather get
into the Q and A part
and just answer the detailed
shit that's on your mind
because the theory is simple.
Like it's just the same old shit.
It's math and art,
and you better deploy it where,
and then the thing that
I think I've done well,
I guess there's the thing
that I should probably
actually now spend some time on
is why was I in Seattle yesterday doing?
So the amount of free days
I have in my career now
are non-existent, right?
I don't speak for free.
Everything's about the
businesses that I run.
I don't like leisure,
so there's no free days, right?
Like everything is calculated.
I do things for a reason.
Why the fuck was I in Seattle yesterday
spending a free day,
which is a rarity for me?
It was because I was talking
about what I've done,
but mainly I was trying to extract value
from an incubator in
Seattle run by Techstars
around the voice space.
These are people that are
building businesses and apps
on top of Alexa and Google
Home and things of that nature.
I think the thing,
you know, actually this is pretty funny
since I'm so improved out,
I'm starting to realize, huh,
I've always thought that
I respected, you know,
I literally just two minutes ago said
I just respect the art
and the science better.
I don't think I'm really
or nor have I ever really been better
or really that good at others
and I would actually probably argue now
that I'm thinking there's plenty of people
that somewhat respect both.
I think the thing that actually,
in a lot of ways has worked for me
that I'd like to talk to you about
because I actually think
if I think about how much I
respect everybody in the room,
the thing that maybe I can
bring you the most value on
is why do I bet on things
that tend to work out well?
It's mainly because I'm
willing to lose money
in the short term.
I think that I'm willing to
waste time and lose money
much more than most people
'cause I'm patient as fuck,
even though my energy is frantic.
Right?
I know for a fact
that whoever has the best
Alexa skill in this room
is gonna make a fortune, in seven years.
I'm wasting money and time
trying to be that person in this room.
And so I think the other variable
that you wanna leave
this talk from besides
if you only believe in the creative
or if you only believe in the math,
how do you squeeze those two together?
It's can you allocate
an additional 20% of your time and money
and mental energy to start betting on
where we're going instead
of where we are right now?
A lot of you are winning
because we're playing in
where we are right now,
while all those fuckers
are playing in 2009.
The question is are you
willing to waste money
while you're making money right now,
being right on 2021?
That is what has kept me consistent.
I had an email newsletter in
1996 that had 91% open rates.
I didn't want social media.
Like if I was making
content back in the day,
you would have seen me sad
as fuck about social media.
I didn't want to learn Twitter.
I didn't want to learn Tumblr.
I didn't want to.
Like I had email and
SEM and SEO figured out.
I was good.
It was probably the
laziest part of my career,
because it just worked.
But I recognized that the
thing that got me here
is never the thing that's gonna
take me to the next place.
And I think we rest on our laurels
when we've figured shit out
and so I'm spending an
ungodly amount of time
on everything that isn't the math.
It's incredible that
we now live in a world
where the people that are
building great companies in this
and they do great and
they make a lot of money,
they deserve it because they take things
that we don't have to worry
about out of the equation.
And the fact of the matter is
math will always be that one.
The quant part of our
worlds is always the thing
that's gonna be scalable
and then commoditizable.
But things that aren't,
are the art, the creativity
and most importantly, the
intuition and then the audacity
to leave money on the table
every single day of your life
to invest in the world that you think
is gonna be there in 24 months
and then you have to be
right, otherwise you lose.
And so to me it's very clear.
It's a little bit of a
left-field conversation
and it has nothing to do with
me being there yesterday.
You need to get very serious about sound.
Because let me tell you something
about why what they make us successful.
We care about only a
couple things as people.
Money, health, religion,
there's not a lot of things
we really, really give a fuck about,
but one of the things that we care about
and always have but now we're
at an all-time high is time.
Uber, became a huge
company by selling time,
not transportation.
Time is imperative.
We don't like friction.
We don't like friction
on our landing pages
and we don't like friction in our lives.
And everybody, even when they
don't have a lot of money,
spend a lot of money on convenience.
Convenience is king, time matters.
And I'm gonna tell you right now.
And you'll think back to this
talk one way or the other.
You're gonna think back to this talk
because this was the talk that
means you get very serious
about investing into audio
or you'll think back to it
when other people are making real money,
real opportunities, changing the world,
whatever they wanna do with the attention
and you'll think about you
wish you started earlier.
And I lived this whole
life with social, right?
And it's fun for me
because it's just black
and white and obvious.
So we're gonna all be
invested and winning on time,
excuse me, on audio,
'cause it saves us time.
Audio saves you time.
Every single person in this room,
when brushing their teeth in four years,
will be listening to some sort of voice
telling them what they're doing that day,
what the weather is, where they're going,
what's happening, it's just gonna be that.
And if you're smart,
you can penetrate somebody's
first seven minutes
every single day of their lives
and talk about whatever the hell
you want them to know about.
And so, I would give
that a ton of thought.
Obviously, between you and me,
I'm sure a lot of you seen it.
It's not even close to too
late to start a podcast.
Podcasts are imperatively important
because people, you
know, the way we roll now
is we can listen and do something else.
It's hard to watch one of my
videos and do something else.
It's super easy to listen
to what I'm talking about
and do something else.
Anything that aligns you
with the end consumer's time
is an imperatively big advantage for you.
And listen, there's a lot
of people that are comedians
and actors and actresses
and things of that nature,
you gotta figure out how you mold in,
into these new platforms.
You gotta figure it out.
But it's coming.
And so to me,
the big things to really think about
is pairing art and science together
and then really recognizing
the consumer behavior,
because we're in the
later innings of social.
Like we're in mature platforms.
Which means really good
things for Facebook stock.
You know?
But doesn't mean as much for a lot of us.
I mean I'm looking at somebody
in the crowd right now
and I'm smiling the whole time
because we sat in an old
Vayner office and I was like,
guys, this Vine thing, I'm telling you
and I got 'em all together, all of them
and I was like, I'm telling you.
Like, I remember telling them,
you're all gonna be famous in a year
and I remember looking at them
and some maybe, it was just so obvious.
It was obvious to me because
I saw Twitter before that
and YouTube before that and
it just it's the same guys,
it's the same shit.
It's the same shit over and over.
There's underpriced attention
and there's overpriced attention.
There's headline readers
and there's practitioners.
I mean, let me give me an
example of headline reading
versus practitioners.
Headline readers, Snapchat's dead.
Practitioners, holy fuck,
Snapchat's ad product
is so underpriced 'cause
everybody thinks it's dead?
That it's $2.80 CPM to
get in front of everybody
who's under 30 in the world
and at least in the US world
and a couple other countries
and holy shit!
The swipe up conversions of these people
since they live in that world
are so fuckin' incredible,
there's no platform on earth,
not YouTube and Facebook combined
that can get somebody under 30
to watch a three-minute video continuously
even remotely close to Snapchat
and it's two fuckin' dollars
and 80 cents of CPM.
Practitioners versus headline readers.
And this is a pretty
fuckin' legit audience
and I know a lot of you and
I watch a lot of everything.
There's just a lot of
people who headline read.
There's a whole lot of
people who have a whole lot
of opinions about a
whole lot of shit in here
and they've never done that thing.
Thank you, mom.
(attendees laughing)
So, that's it man,
like honestly it's gonna be the same shit.
I'm gonna sit here fuckin' at 74 years old
and I'm gonna be like,
you know, VR fuck faces.
Like how do you,
you know like it's just the same shit.
Like I really feel like I'm done,
like I'd love to go into Q and A,
I don't know where the runners are like,
you know, I'll tell you
anything you wanna know,
like LinkedIn, super,
super, super interesting
to me right now just because,
they're really desperate
to become the B2B Facebook,
so they're seducing the algorithms
to try to vig the outcomes.
Always pay attention to who's desperate.
Always pay attention to
who's desperate, right?
That's always where the, me.
I'm impossible, I'm expensive,
I have a book coming out.
I whore myself out.
That's when you get me, right?
Like that's how you get me.
It's just not super complicated,
yeah, it's how you got me,
like it's easy.
It's easy, Snapchat, not so much momentum?
Pay attention.
Always, always, always
look to the other direction
of the conventional wisdom,
'cause that's always where
the fuckin' magic is.
Understand that if you're
the best math oriented person
in this room, that you're
vulnerable to the art.
If you're just a creative, bad news.
Math matters, find somebody.
Right?
That's what this is and it's been this
for the last 20 years and
it's gonna keep going.
But I will say the big white space
for the collective is sound.
What is your podcast?
What is your Alexa briefing?
What do you say to everybody
for the first 30 seconds in the world
and how do you use your enormous attention
on Instagram to get a
hundred thousand people
to download it and then it's early
so Amazon's like, who
the fuck is this person?
And they fly you out.
Now you're starring in the commercial,
it's the same patterns, my friends.
It's the same patterns.
And then ultimately overlaying
everything I'm talking about.
Does your mouth match your ambition?
There's a whole lot of
billionaires in here.
Out their mouth,
but they go to every
fuckin' concert on earth
and that's cool.
Like fuck, I make 40,000.
It's not about the money,
it's about do your actions
match your ambitions?
So, that's the framework
and then the last thing
you gotta figure out
is what you want in your work-life balance
and your legacy and
how much money you want
and what you wanna do with that money.
And a lot of people get
caught in the rat race
at the most basic level,
followers and likes, which
is fuckin' ludicrous.
At the next level,
which is pretty fuckin'
ludicrous too, money.
Without realizing you
wake up and you're 47,
you're like fuck, I didn't, you know?
So, two frameworks.
The things I've just talked about.
Very easy to understand.
Second part, this last
minute, a little harder.
You got to get real to self-awareness.
But once you know what
the fuck you're about,
it's ironic and intriguing
how the shit just starts happening.
Not because you fuckin'
thought it into reality,
it's because you know
what the fuck you're doing
and all your actions
mapped to that reality.
Cool, thank you.
(attendees applauds)
How many mics do you have?
Two, three.
Great, awesome.
Let's go.
You guys are in control,
I don't wanna get, I don't have feelings.
JR?
- [Jr] What's up?
Uh, Gary Vee.
- How are you?
- [JR] Thanks for being here.
- Thanks, man.
- My name is JR with
Digital Marketing Hacks
and my question is I know you say
that it's gonna end all with
robots killing everybody.
- [Gary] I hope so.
- But until then.
- [Gary] Yes?
- What role do you think AI.
- Huge.
- Artificial intelligence
and robots have?
- [Gary] Huge, huge.
- I mean, are going to
have in the next five years
in the marketing and
digital marketing space?
- Huge, even in the 15 minutes
that I've gotten a better taste
of what these characters are up to.
They're gonna love it.
Like the math people are gonna love it
because machine learning
and AI just do shit
that we shouldn't be doing.
Like it's just efficiency.
It's gonna have an enormous thing.
But the good news is there's
so much that we still can do
and so basically how I
think about ML and AI
back at the pad is get me to
fuckin' third and a half base
and I'll take care of the rest
and whatever AI can do for that, cool.
And whatever low priced
employees that can do, cool.
But like everybody is
spending way too much money
to get to third and a half base
and then the magic is the last part.
So that's what AI is gonna
mean for everybody here.
There's a lot of dumb shit
that people have assistants for
or managers for that's
nonsense, zero value.
That the biggest AI companies in the world
are gonna get their nut off on.
Yeah, hey.
- [Man] Hey, Gary.
Hey, it's uh, it's really
exciting to be here.
- Thank you.
- In this room with you
and everyone here, this is awesome.
- [Gary] Appreciate it.
- Yeah, I'm really,
experiences that help people
save time are awesome.
And I'm really interested in experiences
that are time-bending and
how people just lose time.
And I'm interested in creating the most--
- [Gary] Like hardcore drugs or?
- No, no, no, so here we go.
The world's most
connective music festival.
- [Gary] Okay.
- Alright, where festival goers
are connecting with each
other like never before.
- Yep.
- And with the artists
and the artists with their fans.
- [Gary] Okay.
- And so in 2021.
- [Gary] Are we are talking VR now?
- I'm talking about.
- [Gary] Mixed reality?
- [Man] So, 2021.
- Go ahead.
- Music festivals, connection,
the best time of people's lives.
What do you see happening in
the context of music festivals
that you're excited about
and that you're excited about creating?
- So, if I dissect that,
right, couple things.
One thing I'm super fascinated by that.
I would have never seen.
By the way, I never spend
any time predicting.
Like voice, I'm not predicting
shit, it's happening, right?
What I think I'm good at
is like recognizing winners
when it's practical and then
going pot committed, right?
Which means you'll lose
money for a couple years
and then get it.
You don't lose for seven
years and never get there.
The thing that's been
super fascinating to me
that I would never thought which is fuck,
social media is making people
do more shit in real life.
Like literally some
dude is hiking right now
just for the fuckin' Instagram photo.
(attendees laughing)
Right?
So, what's been amazing
about music festivals
is because everybody here now
is not only themselves
but they're the PR agent
of themselves for what
they're putting out.
People are going to
more concerts than ever
because of that whole dynamic.
I think what you're alluding to
is kind of like what's
gonna happen in society?
Like in general, like mixed
reality, things of that nature.
It's, you know, it's gonna be funny.
Technology's making music, you know,
going to music grow and then
it's gonna take it away.
But I don't think it's as soon as 2021,
but I think that right now,
a lot of music festivals are failing
because they all have
the same bullshit acts
and it's just supply and demand.
And so when you were first
four or five six years ago,
you win and now there's 87 micro festivals
and big companies sign
the same 13 artists,
and they're shit, right?
So I think there's a huge white space
for the next generation of that.
Like the people that the
streets fuck with, right?
And then I think that ultimately,
it's gonna be really
interesting just in general
what happens when we live
in a mixed reality world.
I think the big arbitrage,
the only thing that's gonna
break the internet is VR
but VRs quite a ways away.
Like nobody here spends an hour on VR
in a month in real life.
So we're a long, like it takes time.
Behavior takes time,
but eventually, when we're switching
between completely virtual
like I don't even see you guys right now,
my contact lenses have me in Afghanistan.
Switch it off, I'm right here.
Switch it off, and its AR
and Santa Claus is sitting
right there, you know Santa.
You know, that world I
think is super interesting
and it's gonna change all our businesses.
Thanks man.
Cool, yep, hey Shawn.
- [Shawn] Hi, Gary, you
just came back from August
and you said I'm bringing you to fire,
new shows are coming out.
- Yep.
- And you took the #AskGaryVee
show to Facebook only.
- [Gary] I did.
- So what are your
latest strategies and why
for both YouTube and Facebook?
- I think you have to make
content that is native
to the platform you put it out on.
I've always thought about that.
I fuckin' wrote a book called
Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook
five years ago on this.
I wasn't doing that.
So now, that #AskGaryVee
show is on Facebook Watch
and the DailyVee is on YouTube,
when DRock is, wherever the fuck, DRock?
Hey, you know, now I could
say what's up, YouTube?
Whereas I couldn't do that before
and those little nuances fuckin' matter.
And all the action is
in those little edges
and so I broke them up mainly
because of Facebook video.
Now that there's Watch, I'm fascinated.
Any of you watch a show
yet on Facebook Watch?
Just raise your hands.
Just curious.
Higher.
Right, so this intrigues me.
Like everybody here has to watch one.
Not because like I don't watch shit.
I mean I watched one, the
LaVar, the Ball family
because I just want to see
the fuck they're doing.
Like, to me this is the
most interesting thing
that I'm doing that the good market isn't.
You've gotta taste everything.
Like if you wanna win and fuck,
there's no way you're
in fuckin' Boise, Idaho
if you don't wanna win right now.
(attendees laugh)
No, I mean that.
Like when I think about who's here,
I'm like fuck, these people are hungry.
So like to me, 19 hands
which means maybe 31
'cause people get shy to two
weeks into Facebook Watch
that haven't watched.
That's it.
That's where I play.
That's my margin.
So that's why I did it,
because I wanted to make them native.
I have two active shows.
I needed to do something on Facebook.
And because I watched, actually,
fuck it, I'll tell you.
It's not fully announced yet,
but I'll see how this goes.
Because I watched Watch
and I watched it for,
you know, kind of like
four days in a row, looked,
I understood what the
fuck they were doing.
So I sent them an email,
I pitched them a show and
they bought it, right?
So now I'll have kind of anybody
can put a show on Facebook, right?
Like a page, a Watch page,
which everybody should be doing here.
I'll have my YouTube show
and now I'm gonna have a
produced by Facebook show
that's gonna be a big thing even more.
Listen, man, I talk and
like doin' and hustlin'
and all this.
I do so much more than I
talk which is fuckin' crazy
'cause my mouth is always
running but I'm just doing.
I'm doing, doing, doing 'cause
I'm tasting, I'm tasting.
I never think I'm fancy.
So many people in here, I know you.
Like so many people here make
it a little bit and get fancy.
Stop, stop doing the
shit that got them there.
That's the minute you're fuckin' dead.
You got it.
(attendees applauding)
Hey, Marshall.
- I have a question.
- [Gary] Yeah.
- There's a guy I follow online,
you might have heard of him,
his name is Gary Vaynerchuk.
- [Gary] Yes.
- And he told me to push all in
on whatever it is that you're good at.
So I'm making this big
push as Marshall Live.
I'm going to everything live,
like straight to ask me questions.
I love that aspect of your brand.
So the question is if
everything is moving to voice,
is live-streaming podcasts going to be,
end up being bigger than say iTunes are,
a recording that you can come back to?
- So, first of all,
you said something
interesting that we all do.
If everything is moving
to voice, nothing moves,
nothing is everything.
Like we will always have the written word.
You could have them.
Do you know much virality there is
through long form written
Facebook and Instagram posts?
Like if you sit in here and you can write,
write long ass posts on
Facebook and Instagram
and watch what the fuck happens.
We are humans.
We've been around a
long fuckin' time, bro.
Marshall, written word, audio,
video, shit is locked in.
Got it?
So it's not like you're gonna lose it.
Like fuck, if you're
great at smoke signals,
get the fuck up there, you know?
Like, you know, like
communication doesn't change.
The pillars of communication are set.
Where we communicate changes, right?
And then you have to be contextual, right?
Some people are incredible
at making a six-second video,
I keep looking at him
'cause it's fun to see him,
I haven't seen him in awhile.
Others aren't.
Like I can't put two fuckin'
sentences together in my life.
I have five New York
Times bestselling books
because I have a ghostwriter.
Because I didn't try to
become a great writer
when the blogging thing happened,
because I've bet on my strengths.
And so, I do believe that everybody here
should bet on their strengths
and surround themselves
with their weaknesses.
I actually think back to earlier question,
I think AI and machine learning
is gonna help a lot of us
in here who are creative.
Close the gap on a lot of our weaknesses
which is gonna be really awesome.
You got it.
Yo, yep.
Kevin.
- It's Kevin, yeah.
I think a lot of people in here,
using ClickFunnels or not,
have kind of come into a lot more money
than maybe they've ever
been used to making.
And in one of your previous sentences,
you said, yeah you only care about money
and all of a sudden you're 47
but then, you didn't finish your sentence.
I was hoping to like here,
you elaborate on that.
- Sure.
I'm sure a lot of people here
who let's say have come into money,
it's not as great as
advertised for a lot of people.
Some people love it.
They like watches and Lambos and houses
and that's fuckin rad, like mazal tov.
You know, other people don't
and you start questioning
what the fuck, right?
Because when you've got nothing
and you're on the come up
and you've got numbers in your head.
Whether it's a million or five
or three or whatever the fuck it is,
it's fuckin' empty when you
get there for a lot of people.
And so you know, I'm
just trying to make sure
people are being thoughtful.
Much like what I just said to Marshall.
Like life is pretty simple.
Like people play on legacy,
on family, on money.
Like there's just of couple pillars.
I just think in our space right now.
I know a lot of you have
heard me rant on this.
I do think entrepreneurship
has taken a turn towards club promotion.
Like, that's just dangerous.
It's just dangerous for
the people that are gonna,
it's not, I don't give a fuck.
It's dangerous because
people don't realize
they need to build a business,
not a perception that
they're good at business.
(attendees applauds)
'Cause, nobody's, you know
when the market crashes,
nobody's going to Vegas with you
when you work at Bank of fuckin' 'Merica.
You know, I'm just trying to get people
to be more thoughtful.
Sure, hey, man.
- How you doin'?
- I'm super well.
- Awesome, so Russell and you are two,
well, last year I was selling websites.
I was getting really frustrated
that I wasn't helping people.
I felt like they weren't
growing their sales,
but they had a really nice site.
So you guys inspired
me to start a podcast.
- Awesome.
- Didn't know exactly what for but just.
- You were like fuck it,
those guys are doing it,
I will too?
- More along the lines of us listening
to a podcast in the gym.
Host asked the other guy,
what would you tell your 20 year-old self?
And the guy answered I would
divorce my wife earlier.
I was super pissed off.
I'm married with two young kids
and wanted to have a podcast
from a different perspective
and so a year later,
thank God, two weeks ago,
I got to publish my
interview with Russell.
I've had Dean Graziosi
and so my question is,
number one is, how do
you grow even further?
And number two is, not just for me,
but anybody's starting or in progress,
what should your priorities be?
- So, let's sit here.
You know both of those
things I can't answer,
because you need to decide what.
First of all you have to
define growing for me.
Is growing being a top 50 podcast?
I mean like we all get
into our micro games
and by the way, I think
micro games are good.
You know, little short goals,
micro, it's kinda good.
You scratch it, it's fun for a little bit.
I think you got to have
your macro point of view.
Like if you're telling me the truth
that you felt like the conversations
were going in the wrong directions
and you want it to go a different place,
well the answer to your
question is just do it every day
until you're dead, right?
Like that's my plan.
My plan is, you know, hopefully it gets me
to like this one little funny weird thing
that I want to buy a football team,
but other than that,
my plan is to put out shit for free,
that is historically correct,
so I can continue to
live the life I'm living,
which is I made the money I
wanted to make a long time ago.
But getting 50, 60, 70
emails, 80 emails a day
of people like fuck, you helped me,
like that's just like intoxicating
but that's what gets
me off and by the way,
I'm not sure that like,
I understand why that
wouldn't be meaningful
to somebody else like
so you just have to do
what you have to do for yourself, right?
Like that's how you grow by consistency.
You know, you grow by year and year in.
You grow when you're 19
years into your podcast.
- More specifically, in
terms of actual numbers,
and taking the what you've done and
now like, specifically on
the number aspect of it.
What do you recommend in
terms of taking your platform
and kinda skyrocketing numbers?
- Buy under priced attention.
Whether that's buying ads on
Facebook and Snapchat right now
'cause they're under priced,
if that's working with influencers
because many are still under priced,
whether that's taking the high risk
of trying to make a 10 to $50,000 version
of what you just saw,
their incredible video,
because that one video
can be your Dollar Shave
Club of your brand.
Saying yes to everything.
Like if you want it, if you're hungry,
you do what I did which
is four years ago when,
I didn't jump into podcasting right away.
The first two years, I
just went on everyone's.
And so I could have went
to sleep at 11:00 p.m.
or I could have went on
Lewis Howes's podcast 11 p.m.
Like that was a decision.
It's just about awareness.
Like where are the eyeballs?
And so just put your time
and effort into that.
Some of it's free, some of it costs money.
You got it?
- Hey, Gary.
- hey, brother.
- My first time seeing you,
your honesty is so beautiful
and it's just wonderful listening to you.
- [Gary] Appreciate it, bro.
- As someone who is trying
to like build their brand,
you know, get a podcast
and get more to Facebook
and all these other things, journals.
What kind of some tips you have
for building like a
powerhouse team around you
to help you accomplish all these things?
- First, it has to be, so stay here.
First it has to be practical.
So some people in here can afford people,
other people can't.
So they either have to learn
how to do it themselves
by spending hours looking
at YouTube videos on how to
or read or finding people.
Like we're an incredible era right now.
There are so many kids, 14
to 21, that wanna be creators
and I think it's cool
to like do it for free.
So you just need to test and learn.
Guys, everybody's overthinking.
Just do, like I don't know post right now,
like literally right now,
as soon as you sit down,
like go on fuckin' whatever
platform has the most,
go on all of them be like
I'm looking for a video and audio intern
and see what the fuck happens.
Like again, I always tell
people watch what I do,
not what I say.
I know a lot of, you know,
there's good amount of people
I see there that follow me,
like randomly out of no,
I fuckin' tweeted today,
does anybody make customizable
retail floor mats?
I needed it, I needed a retail floor mat.
Like, you do?
- [Man] I do.
- Good!
Do you do them for free in
exchange for some awareness?
Like, I would ask and then
try somebody and be like,
the amount of people I've hired,
when it was early in something
and I didn't know if
they were good or bad,
I just thought it was
much smarter to just do it
and then figure it out if it was working
and then like oh fuck, they sucked.
I'm just not scared to waste money or time
and everybody's petrified
because you worry about what
other people think about you.
That's why, if you're curious,
that's the fuckin' answer.
That's the fuckin', see ya,
that's the fuckin' answer.
You're answer's so easy.
How do you build a team?
Hire some fuckin' people, bro.
(attendees laugh)
Right?
But it's like, but you're
like, but I don't understand.
Like people are scared to get had
'cause they don't get it, okay?
Put in a shitload of
time to learn the craft
or bring someone in and watch
what they're doing carefully,
instead of like outsourcing
it and fuckin' falling asleep
because you're all fuckin' passive income
and I got a team doing shit
and I'm fuckin' stupid.
Got it?
- [Man] Thanks.
- Yeah.
- [Jay] Hey, Gary.
- Hey, Jay.
- My name is Jay and I run
The Inner Changemaker podcast
and I wanna ask a question
that goes a little deeper
with what you're saying in terms of sound
and you're watching what you do.
- [Gary] Sure.
- We've noticed that you've
launched a couple other podcasts
outside of #AskGaryVee.
- [Gary] Within my experience,
you mean like the Brown
Paper Bags and that shit?
Okay.
- The Brown Paper bags.
Kind of like the 365 daily.
So it--
- The 365 is an Alexa skill.
- [Jay] Right, okay.
- A briefing, excuse me.
So, I've been doing sub
branding in my podcast.
- [Jay] Yeah.
- Because I'm testing to
see if there's traction
and I'll spin them out
and create new pillars.
- I see.
Okay, so I guess my real
question is for content creators
that started on like one platform.
For example, I started an
interview based show, right?
Just kinda like you have,
you know a Q and A show.
- [Gary] Yes.
- If you kinda have that
urge to kinda branch out.
- [Gary] Do it within the interview show,
'cause you have a audience there?
- [Jay] Yeah.
- Don't worry that you
may lose a couple people.
Like right now, as I'm
sure everybody has seen
for two strategic reasons.
Out of nowhere I'm talking
a lot more than I should
be about wine, right?
I'm doing it for a reason.
There is no question that
there's people unfollowing me,
'cause like, yo bro, I fuckin' came here
to fuckin' get pumped up
because I have no fuckin' juice.
The fuck are you trying to
sell me actual juice, right?
So, but I don't give a fuck
because I'm playing up like a macro game.
Like I don't wanna lose people from it.
I'm sad, I don't wanna
disrespect your attention
and know what you came for
but I need to test something
and this is what I have.
And so I think it's better
off for you to like try it
because one, you may hit paydirt.
You know, one thing a lot
of people don't realize
is your numbers look good
but they disguising the fact
that you've plateaued and you're tired.
And so I think you try it within it
and you take the risk of a little decline
for enormous upside because
you can always go back.
- [Jay] Right.
- Instead of starting a whole new thing
that's gonna take energy, got it?
- [Jay] Got it.
- Cool.
- [Jay] Appreciate it.
- You're welcome.
- [Prince] Hey, Gary.
- Like your hat, bro.
- Thank you, appreciate that.
My name is Prince.
I run a company called Art of Visuals.
We have over a million content
creators in 122 countries.
You said something earlier
about everyone 14 to 22
wants to be a content creator.
I absolutely agree with that
and have a tons of those
people in my community.
The problem is with there
being so many content creators now,
how do these content creators,
how do they create a business?
How do they make money when.
- By being better.
- We have thousands of people
doing it for free, et cetera?
- [Gary] By being better.
- Cool.
- Yeah, it's, you know, it,
guys, it's supply and demand.
And then once there's too much supply,
you have to be the best and
just move on to the next thing.
Like I bought all the Google
AdWords of every wine term
for five cents a click the day it started.
That was good, then everybody jumped on,
they started becoming two and
three and four dollar words
and became different.
Then I had to be better,
then I had be more crafty,
then what I started doing is the day
the Wine Spectator would
come out with good scores,
we would buy that exact
wine, that exact vintage,
that became our new
arbitrage for a year or two
before everybody caught up.
When a market's mature,
you've got to be better.
- Do you think it's good enough
just to be a content creator?
- Nope.
- Do you think those
content creators need to also
have products and other things
that they're pushing as well?
Besides the art.
- Look, if you're
fuckin' Steven Spielberg,
you probably could end up
just being a content creator,
but if you're like Sal, you know,
maybe you've got to consider
other revenue streams.
You know?
- [Prince] Right.
- It's just very basic business.
Supply and demand, Prince, right?
Four years ago there are
people that land grabbed.
They were good and they were first.
It's just real estate.
If you were the people that bought
Malibu beachfront property first, you won.
Right, boys?
You won, you made money.
But there's a reason you were the first.
It wasn't fuckin' Malibu yet, Prince.
And now people who buy
Malibu beachfront properties,
they're just better.
So all those kids that like,
they're gonna aspire to be the next this,
they've got a rude awakening.
To be the next this, you've
got to be five times better.
It's evolution.
When people debate these
athletes versus others,
yet these athletes would destroy
every athlete from other generations
because they work out 24/7 now.
They have data now.
Like it hurts my feelings
too that my childhood,
they would get fuckin' destroyed.
LeBron would step on
people's heads in the 80s.
Like people don't get it.
It's just fuckin' evolution.
- [Prince] Cool, thanks Gary.
- You got it.
Great hat.
- [Jer] Thanks, man.
I don't really have asked for you,
- Of course.
- I have listened to,
I mean I've watched your stuff a ton.
- Thanks, Jer.
- Um, I just want to say thank you
for giving me the permission
to pursue my passion
and now do what I love everyday
and spend time with my
family and make things.
And I'd be remiss if
I didn't say thank you
because I don't know if I'll ever see you.
If you ever wanna play bubble hockey,
I'll destroy you.
- [Gary] Dude, thanks.
- And I know
that you say that you'll--
- Are you filming this?
Where do you live?
Well, first of all--
- I live here.
There's a spot right down the street
I can take you to play.
- Listen, listen.
Listen that's gonna happen now, I think.
- I'm a winner in Boise, Idaho, Gary.
- It's so crazy, you see,
you're funny, you're smart,
you know me, you know that
now I'm getting click,
now I'm blacked out and
wanna destroy your face.
- [Jer] I know.
- But the only, you know
what's more interesting though?
Your fuckin' Whalers hat is fuckin' me up,
because I'm like fuck man,
he's got a Hartford Whalers hat.
This team hasn't been in the
league for 20 fuckin' years,
he probably is awesome at bubble hockey.
I'm gonna do something for real
based on what you just said.
I want you to come to
Vaynermedia for a day.
I'll pay for your flight
and the hotel and during.
(attendees cheering and applauding)
And during that day,
we'll play bubble hockey
and we'll see what's up.
(attendees applauding and cheering)
- Hello, Gary.
I first want to say thank
you to both you and Russell.
You two are kind of like
the Jesus of marketing and branding.
I come from a poor little
country, the Dominican Republic,
and if it wasn't for you
two, I wouldn't be here.
- Thank you.
- So I just wanna say
thank you.
So my question right now is like,
what are you doing in other languages?
Because right now, like my
main language is in Spanish
and I see like a blue ocean.
Russell is always
talking about blue ocean.
- [Gary] He's right.
- And all the language is ridiculous,
the blue ocean that there is.
Marketing, fitness, whatever, you name it.
The ocean's blue, so I wanna
know what are you doing?
'Cause I'm going balls deep into Spanish.
- So what I've been doing
over the last six months,
I've poured an ungodly amount of money
into infrastructure to
transcribe all my content
into a ton of languages and
paid distribution in them.
I'm spending an, I'm going to Singapore,
which is my second trip to
Asia in the last three months.
Going to Mainland China in January.
I'm going to India in February.
I'm spending an enormous amount of time
and I'll spend millions
of dollars next year
just on the transcription, the
distribution of the content
that I'm natively making in
America in the English language.
So a solid amount.
- Okay, I'm so into like influencers,
influencer marketing in other language,
like it's cheap in English,
in Spanish is pennies on the buck, so.
- It's super, I mean you know, again,
'cause I just can't,
'cause I'd miss and I haven't see,
it'd be like I remember when Jerome and I,
I was like Jerome you
need to go and figure out
who these fuckin'
influencers are in Mexico
because they're like
even in music right now,
there's so many, like I'm spending a lot.
Maybe you guys are paying attention
because I love hip-hop.
I'm spending more time with these artists.
Like I keep telling them
like you need to go down to South America.
There's so many artists there
that are really popping.
You have the leverage
'cause the brand of America,
I mean they're much
bigger artists than you,
but you're America.
So you're automatically bigger than them.
Yeah, I mean, I totally agree.
- [Man] Well, thank you.
- You got it, good luck.
(attendees applauds)
- Gary, Caleb Maddix's dad.
I wanna thank you personally
for your impact in his life.
Between you and Russell
Brunson, seriously.
I mean coming from a dad,
there's no way I can repay you.
- [Gary] I appreciate that.
- Just that the character
that you've taught him,
so I thank you for that.
I have two-part question.
One, you gave him some advice
last time you're with him about patience.
- Australia.
- I hear you talk
about that a lot
and I wanna know is that dad you know,
can you expound a little bit more on that?
And then the I'll wait
'til you answer that,
and I'll have one more part about that.
- Right, so you know it's super fun
for some of us in the space.
We're literally watching your son grow up
and I mean, I just saw
him, like fuck dude.
Yeah, you don't look 14 anymore.
Like you know, and now he's hanging around
with all these fuck faces
so he's gonna get into trouble, right?
Like patience is important
because he's got more swag now.
His sneaker game is stronger,
like he's going into that time of his life
where dumb fuckin'
decisions are gonna be made
because he's making decisions
to make short-term cash
because he's trying to arbitrage it
for other things in his life.
Like, why do I preach patience?
Because it's the only thing
that keeps people away
from being straight fuckin' assholes.
- That's good.
- [Gary] Thanks.
- Alright, so what did your dad do?
You know, you talked about he coached--
- I didn't have my dad in my life.
Like, I mean, luckily
still have my dad in my,
I didn't know my dad
until I started working in a liquor store.
Like my dad left before I woke up
and came home after I slept.
Like as a matter fact,
it's probably funny how
I feel about you guys.
It's fun to watch because I
didn't have that, you know?
But what my dad did do for me, ironically,
is because I have that kind
of salesmanship and charisma,
I was completely full of shit.
Like I would be,
everything I make fun of, subtly,
I would be, if it wasn't for my dad.
'Cause at 14, 15, I went
to that liquor store
and you would walk into that,
it was called Shoppers
Discount Liquors back there.
I was 14 years old, I looked 9.
You'd walk in and be like
do you have this product?
And I'd be like yeah that we,
'cause I was already full sales kid.
I'm like we have that product,
but I knew we made more money on this one.
I was like but this one's better.
I had it, it was phenomenal, I'm 14.
(attendees laughing)
People were like, you had it?
Like yeah, it's my dad's store I taste it.
I mean I don't think I,
talk about making shit up.
I don't think I said a real thing once.
And so my dad took me and
he taught me (spits) that.
My dad thinks embellishing
is straight lying
and he suffocated me
over a three-year period
that really changed the course of my life.
And I think a lot of my success comes from
I have all the skill
sets of that character
but between being old country
and really, really my dad
really not allowing me to be that guy,
so that's what he did for me
and I think that's what you,
as a dad, you need to just
keep watching him evolve
and when he goes into territories
that you think are historically incorrect.
Not new ideas and doing new shit.
No, tried and true fuckin' human
dynamics that win and lose,
that's how you try to guide it.
- Yeah, one more if you don't mind.
I'm sure a lot of these people
probably have kids as well.
So like your dad was
a powerful businessman
and you had a lot of ideas
and passion as a young age.
What did he do to not like,
how did you guys balance that?
Was that decision of him
making you stop sell baseball cards
to come work in the liquor store.
Was that the right decision?
Would you do that for your kids?
I'm only asking out of curiosity
because when I hear that I'm
just very curious about it.
- It's a tricky one, man.
First of all we were an insular family,
we're an immigrant family.
We didn't know shit.
There was no internet, like
we didn't know anything.
We literally just
thought when you turn 14,
you go work at the store.
We were merchants, like right?
Like you know people like that,
you know that cliche story.
It's just what it was,
it was my 14th birthday,
it was fuckin' time.
You know my Ds and Fs in school
weren't helping me with
any compelling reason
that I could get out of it.
So you know, as far as how we did it,
we fuckin' fought tooth and,
I fought for every inch I
had and then I got lucky.
What happened was when
I came from college,
my dad had saved up a lot
of money through these years
and started building a dream
house for him and my mom
and he took that year off
and he was just not around.
And that year I took the business
from three to 10 million dollars in sales
and that was the end of the debate.
- [Matt] Awesome, thank you man.
Appreciate it, Gary.
- Thanks brother.
Hi.
- [Sarah] Hi, my name is Sarah.
- Hi Sarah.
- [Sarah] I'm really enjoying your speech,
so thank you.
- Thank you.
- I was wondering in retrospect.
You've built a brand around
yourself and your name.
- [Gary] Yes.
- Is that what you would
recommend looking forward
or rather more of a brand around a brand?
- I think you have to do both
if you're gonna build it around yourself,
because what you're alluding to
is you can get pigeonholed
and you live and die by the person.
I think a lot of people forget with me,
I built my library first.
Gary Vee came later.
So it's not like I went
the Caleb route, per se.
I didn't come up the game as me and so,
I know how to build.
Like I'm seriously, it's a
little bit fucked up now.
I don't think I could pull
it off but I kind of wanna,
actually you just inspired me, Sarah.
I'm literally gonna build a
25 million dollar business
in the next three years
that nobody knows is mine,
just to remind everybody, for myself
'cause I'm weird like that and I need it,
like, that I built businesses.
Now let me promise everybody
in this room one thing.
Fame is the number one
arbitrage in our society.
Fame is not Snapchat ads,
not being the first result on Google.
Fame.
Full brand awareness is
the number one arbitrage,
so I've built my brand
as a biz dev machine.
- Sure, well I'm glad I can inspire you.
(attendees laughing)
And let me know if you need a goalie
on your bubble hockey,
'cause I think I could be pretty amazing.
- I might, he's got a
Whalers hat, I'm scared.
- [Sarah] Thank you.
- Awesome.
- [Rachel] Hi Gary.
- Hey Rachel.
(Rachel gasps)
- You have a name tag.
- Oh, I got so excited.
Okay, I'm Rachel.
Wow, that was like cool for
a second then it wasn't.
So I'm the mom of two young daughters.
I've got a third on the way.
- [Gary] Congrats.
- And it's awesome.
Being a parent is obviously
quite challenging as an entrepreneur.
You talk a lot about what you were taught
through entrepreneurship
through your dad's mistakes
and successes and you've
had a lot of success
as an entrepreneur.
So for your, you have two kids, right?
- [Gary] I do.
- What are the three
main things that you hope
that they get out of life
and how are you gonna instill
those three principles into them?
- The biggest reason I'm
obsessed with entrepreneurship
is it's the clearest thing
and most obvious thing to me
that allows you to do the following,
which is do what you
want to do today, right?
Like waking up and being able to do
whatever the fuck you
wanna do is incredible.
So the only thing that I want for my kids
like from that standpoint
is the ability to do
what they wanna do everyday.
Now, what scares me about that
is they're probably gonna
have that no matter what
because they're gonna
inherent extreme wealth.
So much so that I've really
been having feelings.
I used to make fun of Warren
Buffett and Bill Gates
in my head of like,
you're gonna donate 99% of your money?
You know it's funny.
You talk shit until you live shit, right?
Now, I'm like, fuck, I don't
wanna give these kids shit.
Fuck that.
(attendees laughing)
Like because rich kids
have a huge disadvantage
because when I wanted
Sega Genesis in 1989,
my mom's like cool, go get it, right?
You know, like when I wanted
to go to a Knicks game,
I had to sell baseball cards and shit,
sit in the fuckin' you
know, like fuckin' top row.
Fuckin' Carmelo's coming
over my Hamptons house
to play with Xander, like it's fucked up.
So I don't know what,
but here are the things
I give a fuck about.
Number one, more than anything.
And I will kill them, murder, go to jail.
They have to be kind.
Kindness is the most important.
Number two, if I ever
see them even a innuendo,
even a subtle little joke of imposing
my and my wife's wealth on somebody else
because they think they're part of that,
I'll break their fuckin' neck.
(attendees laughing)
And then number three,
I will not raise them
in the political correct
environment we live in now.
They know there is no such
thing as fourth place trophies
or participation prizes.
(attendees applauds)
So, now if they want to be nonprofit.
You know, look they're gonna
look at daddy's mountain
and they'll be like fuck that,
or they maybe do what I do.
You know, my dad's things seem big,
mine's gonna be a hell of a lot bigger.
But like other people have
made it bigger than me
and kids have done this.
They're gonna look at that
and they're gonna say,
fuck that, I'm going the other way.
I'm building schools in Afghanistan
or they're gonna be like fuck it,
I'm gonna climb that mountain.
I'm gonna stick it to big mouth.
I don't care, I don't need
my kids to be entrepreneurs.
I just need them to be as lucky as,
my mom, I got Ds and Fs.
Every immigrant got
good grades in the 80s.
There's a couple of people
a little older here,
there was no entrepreneurship.
School.
Good school.
That was it.
My mom spit, spit in the
faces of all those parents
that made fun of my Ds and
Fs and gave me air cover
to be me and it really fuckin' worked out.
Not only for me, but the
world became it, right?
If my kids wanna paint in tomato sauce,
I will back them to the Earth's end
as long as that's really
why they're doing it,
not because they're
doing something to like
run away from themselves or that nature.
So just blind support
as long as they're kind.
- And the last thing I wanted to say
is I'm gonna buy the Minnesota
Vikings so I'll see you.
- Super Bowl?
- In the owner's club.
- No, no, and, Super Bowl.
Jets, Vikings, 2047, I'll see you there.
(attendees applauds)
- I love this, thank you.
- Hi Bren, haven't seen
you, what's up, Bren?
Hi Dan.
- My question is about time.
- [Gary] Time.
- So you're an angel investor
in a hundred companies,
you have books, an 800 person agency
and a family and it's unreal to watch
how much content you're putting out.
How do you choose between the
thousands of startup pitches
you're getting and the which
interview to do or which
speaking event to do?
- Conference to come.
- It's just so much.
- 100% blind belief in my intuition.
(attendees laughing)
'Cause Dan, you know this in you and Bren,
everyone's hustling, right?
Like, eventually you lose, right?
Like, eventually time,
you don't have enough time
to do all the opportunity,
so you're crippled by opportunity.
You just have to go that route,
otherwise, you're just
gonna spend all your time
thinking about the process
of making the best decision
and it's, you know, and you're gonna waste
being able to do four things
which would have included the two things
you've been debating for
the last fuckin' day.
So just the belief in my intuition
and then lots of making fun of yourself.
This one is a perfect example.
I have to like, talk about time.
My son has a birthday now
'cause he's got an August birthday.
I didn't realize it
was like this Saturday,
like and I think it actually
came after we booked this,
but like all the money and from this talk
is going into the fuckin',
I was originally gonna go to Seattle
then now I have to take a private plane
not to miss the flight.
Like I just fucked it up
and the whole day, I'm just complaining.
I'm like, I'm a fuckin' idiot.
So like you're not always
gonna make it right.
Like you're always gonna
like play micro, macro.
But I think everybody's saying no.
Everybody's saying no to shit
because they think
they're being thoughtful
or they're smart.
Like you know how many
people are saying no
that aren't even fancy
enough to say yes yet?
So I just say yes, man, a lot.
- [Dan] Thank you.
- Yeah.
Hey.
- [Frank Jay] Hello.
- Hello.
- [Frank Jay] Great to meet you.
- Great to meet you, too, bro.
- [Frank Jay] I have a
two-part name, Frank Jay.
- Love it, how are you Frank-Jay?
- Very good thank you, brother.
I wanna appreciate you
and your dedication,
your consistency and your communication.
We own a company called
International Tribe Design
where we bring a style of communication
which is very simple but
yet rare in the society
which is honesty and authenticity
and I feel like you embody this.
And I feel like a lot of us entrepreneurs,
well at least for me, it was
like shall I present myself
strategically or authentically?
- [Gary] Yeah.
- And what I wanna ask you
is the first part of the question.
What do you think sells more
or influence more people,
authentic honesty or strategic marketing,
Neuro-Linguistic
Programming communication?
- I think in the short
term, it's a real battle.
I think either could win.
I think in the 30-year macro,
the radical candor
authentic way always wins.
You know what I mean?
And the thing that fucks with people
is a lot of people can win on strategic,
you're being very politically correct.
Like a lot of people can win on bullshit,
play it out for four years,
get out of the game with
their chips and win.
Not a lot of people can, though.
But then, once you know
of one of those examples,
it sounds exciting 'cause
it's a fuckload easier.
- What do you think the
future is for collaboration
for as competition?
So what we're all about is collaboration.
Let's bring us all together.
I think we can all do
great things as a team.
- I think both will work, right?
Competition matters, right?
Like I wanna destroy fuckin' Whaler hat.
I want to kill Vikings girl.
Like competition matters, right?
Like I'm not gonna like.
Zenning this all out,
but I'll tell you, like in real life,
Droga5 let's just put it
even in black and white.
Droga5, David Droga.
Phenomenal businessman,
has an incredible agency,
he's gonna get his.
Let me tell you one thing
that a lot of you are making mistakes
'cause you're saying shit
behind people's backs.
You can't stop winners from winning.
Winners win.
So something, I don't remember
when it became obvious to me,
but it's unbelievable.
If I see a winner, I'm
like she's a winner.
It's binary.
Even if she's taking David Droga,
Winning in My World
alongside Vaynermedia, right?
I'm pumped, I'm happy for him,
because if you're also a
winner, you're gonna always eat.
Winners win.
A lot of people see
somebody who's a winner
and they're not there yet
or they feel like they're
taking away from them,
and they're talking shit.
And really all that's doing
is exposing where you're at.
Like it's unbelievable.
You know, I hang out with a lot of people,
you know, like people
start yapping a little,
I'm like, winners win, right?
And so unless you're doing
something really not noble
or things of that nature, winners win.
And so I think that I
collaborate with other winners
who take from me.
Complex and Vice and they're gonna win.
You're not gonna stop a winner,
and so keep that in mind.
I think that's something
that does hold back
this competitive, driven, hungry demo
more than you might realize.
Envy is stupid.
It's just not practical.
I just don't spend any time, like why?
I don't know.
- Awesome, appreciate it, brother.
Thank you.
- Yeah, for sure.
Hey, Rob.
- [Rob] Gary, great to
be here with you man,
seriously, live.
- Thanks, man.
- It's been about three
years since I've been.
You came across my Facebook feed,
you were talking to some millennial kid
and you just owned him.
And you just had me
hooked from that moment.
But a couple things,
so you talking about--
- I apologize.
I'm really anti the downplay
of like millennial kids,
like and I don't think
that's what you're doing,
but I just figured I'd put it on film.
Like I'm 42.
There was plenty of lazy
losers, entitled fuckers
when I was 22, too.
Like this notion that millennials.
Like millennials are, first and foremost,
dramatically better human beings
than any other generation.
It's actually not even close.
And you can't be mad at them.
The market, this has nothing
to do with millennials,
and over parenting, this
has to do with economics.
The last nine years have been phenomenal.
We haven't had a crash.
How many people here are under 29?
Raise your hand.
You've never tasted the
game when it was hard.
You've never been punched
directly in the fuckin' mouth yet.
(attendees laughing)
You don't wake up like I did in April 2000
and the market collapsed and every invoice
and every order is over.
You don't know what it feels like
when the corporations that
wanna give you $10,000
for a selfie don't spend money anymore.
It's a little harder to be an influencer
when there's no cash in the system.
So I'm not mad at millennials.
I'm mad at people's not
understanding of why,
you know, they're awesome human beings
'cause they're far more well-rounded
and they just had it good,
and that's not their fault.
We could have had that.
I got into the world in New Jersey.
2000, got shit on.
9/11 got shit on.
2007 got shit on.
So I've tasted that.
So just keep that in mind.
And by the way, the
reason I told that story
is please keep in mind that
the economy has been phenomenal
for the last nine years.
Like a lot of the good is coming for you
because of what's
happening at a macro level.
You're just average.
I'm being serious, and I'm
not saying that to razz,
I'm saying that to make you reflect,
so that you can step up your game
so that when the fuckin'
ravage comes, you don't die.
So good, you got a little
zing that you're average
but now you can actually stay alive
and not go work at fuckin',
go back to business school.
(attendees laughing)
Sorry, bro
- Didn't know that was gonna
take you down that course but.
(laughing)
So you talk about how companies
are kinda behind the eight ball
on the whole social
media, Facebook marketing.
It's a good value right now.
Are you starting to see
that trend diminish?
- No.
- And when do you see
that being not a value Facebook?
- As soon as math again, and
art combine to not be valuable,
like on television.
Meanwhile Super Bowl is the best ad.
Anybody here who's got
20 million throw around,
run a Super Bowl ad this year.
The problem is they're seven.
It's only seven for the
ad, which is phenomenal,
but the network makes
you buy some other shit,
so where it gets fucked up.
But Super Bowl is an incredible value.
I don't know, I'm stunned
that these big companies
that I work with still question its ROI
and wanna run commercials and billboards.
It's so fun to watch them
all go out of business
over the next 20 years, they deserve it.
I can't wait, seriously.
- Last thing is, you mentioned
political correctness
and your kids which is awesome
and I think that's what
everyone loves about you
is you just say what's on your mind.
And I think we can all take
a page out of that book
of just being pure honest.
With this crazy climate
of the whole you know,
the Google guy that got fired from there,
the whole ESPN thing like,
how do you how do you see
this political correctness
and what do you do to to
mitigate that in your company?
- So it's a really good question, Rob,
and it's a really tough one.
Couple things.
Number one, said something the other day
that finally articulated
how I feel about all of it,
which is I said to a
friend like fuck, people.
So there's only one place in my life
where I'm not logical or practical.
American football, right?
Like against all data,
I think that the Patriots are cheaters
and Bill Belichick's a terrible guy
and even though Tom Brady's like clearly
and I've like literally spent money
on investigative journalism,
he's the nicest human being ever.
I still say things like yeah,
he left his pregnant wife for Gisele,
he's a piece of shit, like
I will do anything blindly.
I've chemically, like
even talking right now,
the chemicals in my body are different.
I feel it.
I hate them so much.
I really want Bill Belichick to die.
(attendees laughing)
Like I don't even, I don't.
You know it's funny,
I wonder if people think
like I'm going for,
like I want it.
So cool, we've established that, right?
I'm clearly irrational, over-emotional,
not logical and just the
worst version of myself
in that one narrow place.
I mean there are people
who are fans of me,
who've DM'd or have
tweeted that I'm a bad guy,
I mean I yell at children at games.
I'm not joking.
You know how people get beer muscles?
You know that term?
You drink and you wanna fight?
I have sports muscles.
Like I go to a game
and even though everybody would probably
be able to beat me up, I wanna fight you
'cause it feels better
than feeling the pain
of your team beating mine, right?
Like a week ago I realized,
holy fuck, that's how blindly everybody
is now about politics.
You're either red or blue
and you deploy no logic,
no rationale, you are blindly emotional,
you have no idea what the
fuck you're talking about
and that's it.
You mean we're about to
turn every issue into a.
How the fuck is climate a political?
Like what are we doing here?
So I have a huge office
in New York and LA.
84% of my employees are liberals.
84, right?
And so I have liberal
points of view all day long.
The thought of hating anybody
or disliking another
human being for any reason
other than maybe being a
Patriot is insane to me,
insane to me, insane to me.
But I have clearly,
Republican put like an eighth place trophy
is why China is gonna shit on us
with such a big fuckin' dump
that we'll never be able to breathe again.
How I handle it is by
one by one, one by one.
It's very, you cannot handle
this at a macro right now
because our society's on tilt.
That's how I do it.
(attendees applauds)
Thanks, man.
I'm so fuckin' pissed I
was born in fuckin' Russia.
I would fuckin' run, win
easy and fuckin' dominate.
Really would, I'd really
feel like I could do it.
Josh?
- [Josh] Gary, I wanna talk about--
- It was nice meeting
you in the airport, man.
- Yeah, absolutely, thanks.
I wanna talk about influencer marketing.
- [Gary] Yeah.
- YouTubers, vloggers, Instagramers,
a lot of people are
talking about Facebook ads,
Instagram ads, Snapchat ads, ROI.
We can measure ROI with those.
- You can measure with influencers too.
- You can but it takes a lot longer.
- [Gary] No it doesn't.
- How so?
- You've got to make the creative,
be a sales creative instead
of a brand creative.
You can't measure the
ROI of Facebook either
when you do it the way I do it,
'cause I'm pumping it for brand.
I'm not trying to sell you shit.
I can measure it if I had a $49 course.
- So how--
- Josh, people are confused
between branding and selling.
Make fuckin' phenomenal influencers,
go for the sale in the
creative if they choose to
and you can afford them.
Logan Paul sold a
fuckload of Dunkin Donuts
fuckin' gift cards.
Sales, super fuckin' measurable, Josh.
- So would you focus, like,
let's pretend you're not
Gary Vaynerchuk, right?
Let's take you out of
the equation you are--
- [Gary] Who am I?
- You are a 41 year-old, 42?
- [Gary] 41 still.
- 41.
- Slow your roll.
- You're a 41 year old nobody, right?
You have say a million dollars
of investors behind you.
- Well then you're definitely
not nobody if you got that.
That's just contact shit, Joshy.
- All right, fine, fine.
You're a 41-year-old nobody.
- Respect, respect.
- You're getting
into the game, right?
Will you focus on growing
your personal brand,
or would you focus on leveraging
other people's personal brands
that are already a thing?
- Both.
- So would you ride the backs of,
using the people that
you're building like,
that you're investing in?
- Sure, yeah.
- [Josh] Okay.
- Like if you're trying
to, are you asking?
Josh, what are you asking?
I'll give you the answer.
You're trying to build
your personal brand?
- I am trying to build my personal brand.
- Thank you.
- Yeah, absolutely.
- Are you thinking about, are you trying--
- But I wanna build my personal brand
in a different niche than the influencers
that I wanna invest in.
- Understood.
I think that as long, understand this.
Just because they may
be in a different niche,
they have so much awareness
that the people that watch them
may be into other things, got it?
- [Josh] Yep.
- So if it's a good deal on awareness,
you might be able to convert,
and then your product has to be good.
- [Josh] Cool.
- Do you know what I mean?
- Yeah.
- Like that's the math
you're looking at.
You don't have to use the
targeted nature of the ads
if the influencers are a better deal,
even though you might
lose 85% of the audience
because that's not why
they're watching them,
but they're still gonna
get 15% of opportunity
and then the whole fuckin'
kit and caboodle is,
are you good enough?
- All right, one last question.
I'm a diehard, diehard Patriots fan.
If Tom Brady makes it to
a Super Bowl this year
will you go to the Super
Bowl with me, on me?
- No.
- [Josh] No?
All right.
- And not only that.
I've been to the last six Super Bowls,
they've been there two or three times,
you know and I'm now with
VaynerSports and Steve Ross,
the owner of the Dolphins is
my business partner so I go
and the owner's dinner, it's all fun.
The last two Super Bowls, two
of the last three Super Bowls,
I left the city Sunday.
I've not watched the Patriots play a down
of a Super Bowl game in
the last four Super Bowls
that they've played in because I refuse.
Everybody's like the greatest
comeback in a Super Bowl.
I'm good, I have no idea
what the fuck you guys are talking about.
I didn't see shit.
- Well you like winners,
and I'd like to invite
you to the winning team.
Anytime you wanna come.
- No, no, Josh, Josh,
you're confused, my friend.
I'm a winner.
You root for winners, dick.
(attendees jeering and laughing)
- Yeah, true, that's very true.
That's very true.
- [Gary] Be careful.
- Thanks, Gary.
- That, by the way, you just
witnessed my favorite move.
Knicks-Heat game, seven
years ago, dude walks by,
beer, remember sports muscles.
Guys, I get up I'm like, you fuckin' suck,
sit the fuck down.
I mean it, I get weird.
He looks at me goes yeah we suck,
look at the scoreboard, asshole.
I go not them, you asshole, you suck.
By the way the darkest
version of what you just saw
and Josh knows I love him
but the darkest version,
I go to Foxborough for every game,
we always get shit on.
Around the third, fourth quarter
when I'm really getting shit on
because I bring my Jets jersey,
I'm fuckin' running in
there proper, right?
Somewhere around the fourth quarter,
when I'm getting shit on,
I change the conversation.
I'm like look Zan,
I'm super pumped that
your entire self esteem
is wrapped into your football team
because you work at Pizza
Hut and so fuck you,
my life's better than yours.
Maybe your football
team is better than mine
but I'm better than you, Zan.
Jared.
- Hey Gary.
So going back a little bit,
you talked about intuition, right?
And belief in your intuition.
- Yes.
- I'm a two day idea guy, right?
I get an idea and then.
- Yeah, me too, man.
- After two days, I'm like
that was a crappy idea.
- And you're being nice, man.
You probably like a seven
that you let too, right?
More, right, Nicole?
Like he bothers the
fuck out of you, right?
- [Jared] Yeah.
- He's like what about a
drone ice-cream company?
(attendees laughing)
Go ahead.
- That's a good idea!
- Thanks, man.
- So how do you develop that intuition
and how do you like support
and strengthen your belief
in your own intuition?
- By acting on some of them.
The biggest problem is,
especially when you have like,
people around you, is like
you wanna be right, right?
Like it's much better
than getting made fun of
for being wrong consistently.
But like by fuckin' picking like just by.
I try to do stuff every, you know,
everyone's like, oh
you you're always in it
like doing like, just trying shit.
Like nobody talks about the
stuff that I'm doing that.
Guys, nobody remembers the
part where Michael Jordan
couldn't get to the finals
because the Pistons were
beating him every single time.
You know what I mean?
Guys, let me really unleash
you doing more shit.
Nobody remembers the losses
as long as you have a win.
And you know?
Listen, some of you know my stuff
and like I'm starting to
like figure out my own stuff.
It comes down to six people.
Your mom, your dad, your
siblings, your loved ones.
You're doing so much shit
based on their points of view
on stuff, you can't even imagine.
You can unwind that,
you're off to the races.
It scares me how much I value
my wife and parents' opinion,
and how much I don't at all.
And in that balance, I win.
At a macro, I value them,
but on a micro, my decisions, not at all.
You know Jared, so you just
got a do one or two of them.
You go one for seven, it's a
lot better than going O for O.
- [Jared] Yeah, thank you.
- You got it.
- Last question.
- Yeah, sign it?
- Yeah, could you sign my book?
- A hundred percent.
(attendees laughing)
Hi.
Let's do it, while I'm signing.
What's your question, Katie?
- Hi Gary, I'm Katie Richardson
and I was first introduced to you
as I was trying to go to bed at night
and my husband's got his phone on
and I'm hearing this
guy make a rant in a cab
throwing f-bombs every other word.
I'm like what the heck is this?
And turns out you speak tons of truth
and so you have won
over this mother of four
who's a business owner, and I love it,
and so that's part of what
my question to you is,
is like you own who
you are and I love that
and like that's what people
are so attracted to, right?
- [Gary] A hundred percent.
- You're up there being Gary.
At what point, like you talked about how
you worked with your dad
and it was a three million-dollar company
and then you took it to
10 million after he left.
At what point did you
give yourself permission
to be you and then realize,
like tell us that story
about when you are like,
wow, this is working, people
are connecting with me
and my way of being and
like what was that like
when you're like this is working?
- I feel like--
- I'm gonna keep doing this.
- You know it's funny there's,
thank you first of all.
There's a lot of things there.
Number one, it is 100%
because of nature-nurture.
Being an immigrant
and always having a chip on your shoulder,
you're always an outcast to
begin with at some level.
And I was a Russian immigrant,
which was our major
enemy when I was a kid,
so I had some weird shit going on
that I don't tell a whole lot
'cause it's not as relevant these days,
but there's a lot of parallels
to whoever the bad guys are now.
I was the bad guy, it was
kinda weird for a little while.
Number two, my mom became a mom blindly.
I remember walking sophomore
year in high school,
no freshman year in high school.
I'm 4'11", my freshman
year in high school.
I spurted it in sophomore year.
I have the worst fuckin' mullet
you've ever seen in your life.
I've got a backpack that I'm rolling with
that's bigger than me.
And I'm walking down the hall and I go,
I remember this vividly,
I'm like wait a minute,
I'm not the best-looking,
awesomest dude in the world?
Like my mom had me so brainwashed.
(attendees laughing)
I'm being serious, on
straight positivity that like,
that never went away.
Like my mom, if I opened
the door for a woman,
like my mom was super smart
and I'm doing the same thing.
She would make, if I opened the door.
This is a true story, Katie.
I opened the door for a woman
when I was nine at McDonald's.
That's the story.
I went to McDonald's, woman was coming
and I held the door open for her.
My mom reacted as if I won
the fuckin' Nobel Peace Prize.
(attendees laughing)
And she did that about
all the shit that matters,
which is what makes me who I am today.
Fourth grade, Katie, fourth grade,
I got an F on a science test.
I needed to get it signed
because I guess that's
how they used to do it.
I don't know if they still do that shit.
I flushed it down the toilet
because my dad hadn't gotten to me yet
and then like I was like,
but I was still a kid
so my conscience was still around
and so I just couldn't
sleep and I told my mom,
and basically three weeks later,
I was sitting in social
studies, fourth grade
and said fuck this, I'm out.
And from that day on, I
decided to fail every class,
work on my business skills
and become who I'm gonna be.
- I love it!
Thank you.
- [Gary] You're welcome
(attendees applauds)
- [Bret] Right, it's my second time.
- [Katie] Hey, Gary.
Sorry.
- Sorry, Brett.
- I just had to quick ask.
I make amazing baby products
and I don't know if you're
still having babies or not.
- [Gary] No.
- But if you need like the
awesomest baby gift for a friend,
come to me, and my company's
called Pudge, like baby Pudge.
- [Gary] Send me an email
to gary@vaynermedia.
- Okay.
- In the title, write our entire story.
I was the one with the four kids,
the husband in the bed and you won me over
and the Pudge and this, all of it.
- [Katie] Awesome.
- And then we'll interact.
- Yeah, I'll make you look
amazing as a gift-giver.
- Thank you.
- [Katie] You're welcome.
- Bret?
- I was gonna say it's my
second time seeing you,
and it's funny how a different energy
of different audiences.
Like, the first time I went,
you were like you even told the audience,
I am not excited to be here.
I looked at your stuff, it sucks
and the lady had been like
talking about coaching
the whole time then you're like,
don't do it just do stuff.
Anyways it was awesome, it was in Provo.
It was just a couple
of months ago in Provo,
but it was funny.
But anyways, quick side question
is like do you sense
different energy in audiences?
- [Gary] Hundred percent.
- [Bret] Okay, because it's
like, it's the same person--
- I have my religions and my
beliefs, then I have my craft,
so I'm doing everything
state of the art, right?
So I have my thesises then I have my work.
I was in Seattle yesterday
I spent nine hours, understand
the voice space, love it,
my craft, my craft.
So I have my thesises
Bret, I have my craft.
The reason I'm doing well in speaking
is I take my thesises, I take my craft
which sometimes has some nuances
that are valuable, right?
Usually always ahead of the market
and then I reverse engineer
the actual audience.
I reverse engineer the audience.
Like I give a lot of thought
and speak to the people that organize.
Who are you?
Where are you in your funnel of life?
And like what can I
bring to the most general
and how quick can I get to Q and A?
So that whatever I miss in the general,
we can get to in the details.
- [Bret] I totally agree
because it's just a different energy
that I feel this time versus last time.
But my big question is.
- Please.
- When you think of like,
LaVar Ball or Kim Kardashian
or even Donald Trump for that matter,
- [Gary] Hacking culture.
- [Bret] Yeah, like what are your thoughts
on them and like, is that
the kind of fame you want?
Or is that the, I mean,
you talked about fame
being the biggest arbitrage,
what are your thoughts
on those kind of people?
- So there's a really interesting
thing that I believe in,
which is until you know somebody,
you don't know somebody, right?
And so like look.
I mean, getting political never works
but like, you know, Trump's
got his shtick, right?
And like he won on my thesis
for the last 10 years, right?
Kim Kardashian literally is like,
we are all living in reality TV.
People shit on reality TV in Hollywood
then they shit on influencers.
They're all gonna pay
because if you're not abiding
to what the consumer wants,
you will always lose.
It doesn't matter what you
want on your ivory tower,
it matters what the world is consuming.
But I don't, to be very, very, very frank,
I don't think about it a whole lot, right?
I know why they're winning.
They were native.
DJ Khaled is an unbelievably
important case study
in the in the last 10 years
and the next 10 years.
His personality was native to a platform
at the right time in the right moment
and he disproportionately
changed his career on that back.
Kim Kardashian and Donald
Trump navigated reality TV
when reality TV was what social media
has been for last 4 years.
Somebody in here's gonna get inspired
and make a voice application
for their business
that will be that for when voice is here
in two years for the next
six years, from 2020 to 2026.
It's literally the same
game over and over, Bret.
So what I want, listen, fame and exposure,
it doesn't change you,
it exposes who you are.
So I don't know how you
personally judge those three
and everybody here judges
those three differently.
I just wanna be known for
what I am and who I am
and how I roll.
- [Bret] Appreciate that, thank you.
- You got it.
- Hey, Gary.
- Hey.
Hey Rach.
- Hi Gary, how are you?
I'm here with my amazing husband, Josh
who is like my backbone and
amazing business partner.
I'm a little googly talking to you
because I remember meeting
Justin Timberlake when I was 14,
but you're like my 32
year-old Backstreet Boy.
(attendees laughing)
- He was in NSYNC.
- Oh yeah, I love them
all, but I love you more.
For the past seven years,
you've given me the ability
to be really authentic.
I'm in a niche where
it's very club promoting,
it's network marketing.
- [Gary] Yep.
- So I basically, for
the last seven years,
have sold my soul to
direct selling companies
and they made a lot of money
and have built an incredible
following of network marketers
and direct sellers.
And now that I built a
great team that's passive
and I serve them and I love them
but I really wanna branch out
into more mainstream impact,
primarily to female entrepreneurs.
And I wanna know what's
your recommendation
for somebody like me
who's had this huge niche,
they all expect me to be
the prospector, the closer,
of the lead generator, the team builder.
Just now to say all right,
I'm someone new, transition.
- If we had coffee, I'm
gonna give you the 90% answer
because there's 10% that's too personal
I don't wanna do it here.
I have to figure out how
mainstream you wanna be.
- [Rach] I'll buy you coffee.
- I'm sure.
(attendees laughing)
- Everyday.
- I don't know how
mainstream you wanna be.
So like if you want to be mainstream
like the cover of Forbes
and like mainstream,
like all the way mainstream,
you'll have to give up network marketing.
Completely.
That's it.
- Yeah.
And I have no problem with
whatever God has for me.
I just would know if there's any advice.
- I mean it's a stunningly
binary answer, Rach.
- [Rach] Correct.
- If you want to go mainstream,
you have to give it up,
because it is not mainstream.
- Because of the stigma.
- What's that?
- Because of the stigma.
- [Gary] 100%
- Yeah and then my last question--
- And the math around how
many people make money
and how many don't.
- Correct.
My last question is there
any trends that you see
or platforms or any advice that you see
with women entrepreneurs
primarily my age 30s, 40s?
- Yeah, so the thing you know
it's funny, Katie, right?
Hey.
Hi.
Katie said the most important part,
I've become unbelievably fascinated
and empathetic about the
difference between men and women.
You know I'm super fascinated by it
from a business standpoint.
That's my lens to the world.
It's harder to be 100% yourself
when you're a woman, than a man.
I genuinely believe that because
men are dick faces, right?
And so the answer to your question
is to be 100% radically transparently you.
I'm also massively empathetic
how that's difficult for everybody
especially attractive women.
But that's the answer.
- Thank you.
- You got it.
- What's up?
- What's up, man?
Good to see you.
- So.
- How you been?
- [Curtis] I've been good, man.
- Good, man, it's good to see you.
- So, four years ago, I was couch surfing
and living out of my car and
I sat in a room with Gary
and 13 other kids and
Gary told us that this app
was gonna change our lives forever.
And it did and Gary was such
a positive change on my life.
Now unfortunately they
deleted the app, what do I do?
(laughing)
- Yeah, fuck.
That's amazing.
- Actually I just wanted
to make that joke but--
- I knew.
- But what do you?
But the real question,
real question for you.
When you run into your failures
and you feel like you're
at your rock bottom,
what's your next move?
'Cause I'm always trying
to reinvent myself
and I'll do things that work
and then I'll do things that don't work.
- Curtis, you and some of the friends,
you guys have a big advantage
and all of you have gone
a little bit different
with that transition of mine
and what happened on
Snapchat and Instagram
and things of that nature,
but you have something very special.
First of all you have talent, right?
Second of all, you've
once tasted what it's like
to buy beachfront property in Malibu.
- No I live in an apartment, still.
But yeah, that'd be nice.
- [Gary] But know what I mean?
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- AKA, you knew what
it meant to your career
by being one of the first 40 people
that mattered on a platform
that became huge, right?
Instead of trying to,
what you and others that have.
By the way, you know why,
I wish you could see the
goosebumps I have right now.
It happened to me.
I won Twitter and then I
wasn't at the top of stuff
like I was in that 2006,
seven and eight world,
you know, right?
Why do you think the Vine thing,
and this is where I'm going with this.
Basically if you choose to,
it's gonna happen again.
And let me explain why.
The reason I got you guys all together
and I flew to L.A. and met
with others of you, like,
the reason I did that was
it was black and white.
I'm like I fuckin' seen
this show before, right?
- Yeah, you said that.
You actually said that.
You were like saying.
this is the new YouTube
and blah blah blah.
- [Gary] It just was so black and white.
- Yeah, I remember.
- And obviously, it took different tacks
and the ones that kind of
tripled down on Instagram
had what happened but you,
instead of trying to
catch up to what's now,
I give you the recommendation
that I took myself
because I tend to only give
advice that I've actually done,
'cause it just feels better.
You gotta either hibernate,
make do, grind through
and spend all your time
looking for that next one.
That is one, you should
be downloading, you, you,
should be downloading, you.
You should be downloading a top 100 app
in the Apple Store that is
social or consumer facing
every day of your life,
creating an account
and producing the first piece of content.
- [Curtis] Okay I'm gonna do that.
- Awesome.
- [Curtis] Thanks, Gary.
- You got it brother.
- [Man] Fellow 4'11" freshman, here.
- I love it.
- Really quick question,
maybe a little personal.
You know we have this engine.
All of us in this room have this engine,
we have a hard time shutting off.
It's what makes us successful.
How do you balance work and family?
How do you do it?
- By first and foremost,
not adhering to the current
state of political correctness
that everybody here has deployed
on me, most of all, right?
And second, extremism.
I almost took the whole
entire month of August off,
like I go all in, right?
I go when I'm in this like.
Monday through Friday,
I do not see my kids pretty much at all.
39 weeks of the 52 weeks in the year,
it's just what it is.
And then on weekends,
and you know seven weeks,
eight weeks of vacation a year,
I'm all in the other way.
That's how I do it.
For me.
But that is only uniquely gonna work
if me and my partner in crime
are aligned on that strategy,
audit that strategy everyday.
By the way, I don't even
want to do it anymore.
As now, they're eight and
five and not five and two.
They're just more
interesting to be around.
(attendees laughing)
You know, so like for example,
I guarantee you, in 24 more months,
this exact trip, they're
here and we go to,
we go and see the Grand
Canyon or something, you know?
So like, I'm so sad that so
many people do certain things
in parenting because that's
what the other parents
think they should be doing.
Like, I don't know.
Like, I just wanna make a
very important statement
that I implore every parent
in this room understands.
Everything that is right
in parenting right now
by the common standards,
will not be in 20 years.
You're gonna be judged
one way or the other.
So.
- [Man] Thanks.
- You got it brother.
- [Alex] Gary, over here.
- Oh, sorry.
Hey Alex.
- [Alex] Hey how are you?
- Good.
- Fellow 42 year-old.
I think your mom and my
mom should hang out, bro
'cause I think--
- [Gary] Similar stuff?
She sounds amazing.
- And then, just wanna let you know,
like validation on the sound, totally true
'cause I like literally take a shower
with you every morning, so.
- [Gary] Thanks brother.
- I do, I just play it
I got a little shower thing.
- I get it.
- I listen to your audio.
- [Gary] I get it.
- Gets me going so thank you.
- That visual is fuckin' awesome.
(attendees laughing)
- I didn't even think about
you seeing the visual,
but now that I think about it, yeah.
That could've gotten off way, thank you.
So I got a two-part question for you.
One is on culture.
So our company has grown and now,
we're we're doing pretty well and I'm,
you've been to like nine figures
and that's where we wanna go, right?
So my first question is okay,
from a culture standpoint,
when you grow rapidly,
how do you embed the culture
to make sure that it grows
with the right people, right?
So we built values manifestos--
- Ready, ready, ready?
- [Alex] Yeah.
- How do you get muscles
by doing push-ups?
- You do it consistently every day.
- I spend an ungodly
amount of my time on HR.
Like now, I have 800 employees.
The biggest thing I'm working on for 2018,
so I have an open door policy,
which is not working for me.
It's real open door,
like the key big thing
for my two admins and assistants
is when an employee asks,
they get booked.
Whoever, first day, nine years, done.
Not working.
They think I'm fancy and Gary Vee,
they're scared, nobody wants
to really talk to their CEO,
so next year, I'm gonna mandate
that I see every one of my
employees every six months
for 15 minutes.
Which is gonna eat up big amounts of time.
Culture is the only thing you trade on.
- So you're gonna see all
800 employees, 15 minutes?
- [Gary] Yes, twice a year.
- Okay, so literally am thinking I wanna--
- The math is daunting.
- When I do the one-on-one
time, it always works
but I'm just thinking that
from scaling standpoint,
like how the heck do I do it?
- Scaling the unscalable is
how you build long term wealth.
- Damn dude, that's a good one.
- Thanks, bro.
(attendees laughing)
I didn't get up here from my looks.
- Now we know why you get
paid to stand up there.
My second question was okay, as you grow,
obviously have things you
get you've got haters, right?
I'm sure that people don't
like you and whatever.
- [Gary] Sure.
- So I always focus on
the mission and the vision
and the people that we're helping, right?
But when you get like certain people,
I mean it still affects me,
like my inner self.
- Of course.
- So how do you overcome
that so you can keep growing?
- Empathy.
- [Alex] For them?
- Yes.
- Like just with their
life circumstances or?
- Sure, if a human
being can generate hate,
they're not in a good place.
- Okay.
So what do you do mentally and
mindset to just keep going?
- I deploy gratitude that I'm not them.
- Okay, got it.
- [Gary] Thanks man.
- Thank you.
- Hey man.
- [Woman] Hello.
So I started on Vine as
well doing like comedy.
- I remember.
- Yeah, and now I do it on Instagram
and I grew a large following on there.
- [Gary] Very large.
- Yeah and it's still growing
a lot but I wanna be ahead,
as you say and I know I have
a lot of meetings about VR,
and creating content within VR.
- I'm a very anti-consumer VR guy
in the timing that I like.
So everything for me is 24, 36 months.
- [Woman] Yeah.
- Right?
I just don't know how
many people are consuming
at the scale that you would
be giving up opportunity costs
in other places in 36 months of VR.
Until I see even one person
consistently consuming VR
like an hour a week, like
if I can find one human
who's not a fuckin' really weird nerd,
who spends one hour, right?
So I think the reason you are feeling that
is you're in the LA bubble.
Everybody's pumping a ton of money
from venture capital into VR.
- [Woman] Yeah, they have budgets.
- And it's literally, like,
I mean the thing you should study
is what happened to the web in '99, 2000.
You've probably seen it, pets.com,
all these companies were worth a drillion,
that's what I feel about VR.
It's coming.
Amazon's coming, right?
eBay is coming, but I think for you
and knowing the arbitrage
that you can trade on,
I don't believe,
like if I was talking to you every week,
I'd be like that's not a good place
to be spending your energy.
That's my intuition.
I do think voice is incredible.
And then I think for you specifically,
'cause I know enough from afar.
We don't know each other super well
but I know a lot from afar,
you might wanna think about
what you wanna put that
energy into, what bucket.
That's why it's good
that you're here, right?
What I do think these guys do,
that's sales and quant,
like or if it's, you know,
a brand or an event or,
you're gonna be able to push
that energy towards something.
You need to take a step
back and get thoughtful
with yourself on like what
other interests you have
or that that wouldn't come natural
as the first thing you would think of.
Like the five or six things you think of.
Health and wellness and
lifestyle, it's interesting.
It's probably something subtle,
putting your energy into
building in that world
if you wanna really double
down on entrepreneurship,
is a good idea.
- [Woman] Okay, cool.
Thank you.
- You're welcome.
- [Host] All right guys, we have time
for only three more questions,
so we'll go Miles over there
and then we have two here
and that'll be it.
- Charles, get up there, we'll do four.
But you have to stand up.
I saw your face.
- Hey Gary, I'm a big fan of mental models
and ways to kinda overcome challenges.
And I like understanding
other people's processes.
So my question to you is
what is your number one
business challenge right now?
And what is your process to
come up with that solution?
- I'm crippled by opportunity,
is my number one business problem.
And it's similar to
what I gave over there.
I'm just attacking it
with blind intuition.
Every time me and my team try to attack it
from a quant standpoint, it's too foreign,
it's moving too fast on us.
And so, that's it man.
Crippled by opportunity
which is a blessing
and a fuckin' half, as you can imagine,
but it's the truth, you
know, it's the truth.
Like do I say yes to a second
season of Planet of the Apps,
do I like, do I, mean I mean
the Knicks are for sale,
it's like running through
my mind, you know?
Like there's a lot going on, man.
I have a lot going on.
- Right, but I mean other than intuition,
I mean I got imagine
that there's a bottleneck
in terms of leverage,
where's that next step?
- My time, yeah I mean.
Intuitions to solve for the bottleneck
which is making decisions
in deploying my energies
against those decisions
while leaving everything else on the side.
You know, I decided a year ago,
I was raising 150 million-dollar fund,
I gave all the money back.
It was the biggest
financial loss of my career
because I hired the staff
and I was gonna pay the staff
with the 2%, if you know venture,
of you know the overall fund
that I was gonna raise $150 million on,
that's a lot of money, 2%, I
had a pretty expensive staff.
I was going through the process
and I'd raised about $80 million
and one night, I'm
flying home and I'm like,
I don't believe in this.
I don't wanna spend this
$150 million in startups.
I think there's too much
fake shit in the market,
I don't know where to deploy it.
I think I'm gonna lose it,
and I gave it all back, right?
That's intuition, thought
process, understanding, you know?
So I'm just doing that everyday.
- Awesome, thank you.
- [Gary] You got it.
- [Sabrina] Hello.
- Hi Sabrina.
- Big fan.
- Thank you.
- But my girlfriend is an even bigger fan,
and I basically couldn't
live down the shame
of not asking you a question.
- [Gary] I love it.
- So I'm a social media manager
and I would just love to
hear about what you think
is the best campaign you've ever ran
and why do you qualify it that way?
- Sour Patch Kids candy.
We made it a cultural phenomenon,
because we gave.
We took all the money from
television commercials
which go figure, 12 to
15 year olds don't watch
and we gave it to all the
people that sit at that table
or the ones that look like them.
In 4 1/2 years ago, we
took Sour Patch Kids
marketing budget and put
into Snapchat and Instagram
when nobody was thinking that way,
and if anybody has a nine to
17 year-old in their life,
they eat Sour Patch Kids.
- [Sabrina] Awesome, thanks so much.
- You got it.
And Sabrina, to answer your question,
the reason I quantify it that way, wasn't.
There's been campaigns that we've done
that have made more money,
have, you know, gotten,
excuse me, many more likes
or awareness or more views.
He stands up here and he goes,
thanks, everybody, we have 100,000 views.
I already know him
enough to know, yeah and?
What's happening with those views?
You know a lot of people in social media,
they plan vanity metrics, not sales.
The Sour Patch Kids is the answer
because we have had
campaigns getting more views.
This Budweiser, Derek Jeter and Harry,
the stuff we're doing
for Budweiser's insane.
We've really crushed sales,
we're changing a tough brand
in the U.S. but Sour Patch Kids
became the fastest-growing
candy in 20 years.
- Thank you so much.
- You got it.
- [Man] Over here, Gary, real fast.
- Oh, okay.
Hey, Linds.
- Hi, so I'm a course creator
and I also help entrepreneurs teach better
so their students get better results.
I'm a little bit at a crossroads.
I heard you talking about being in a space
that's a little overcrowded.
- Saturated.
- Right?
And so course creation
is a little that, right?
- [Gary] Of course.
- I see, though, the chance
to make better teachers,
to make their products better.
- [Gary] Good.
- That's one thing.
And I think I could do really well there.
- [Gary] Great.
- But I'm also around the opportunity of,
I'm a past tenure track
professor and I left academia.
And as I was leaving,
fellow professors were like,
you figured it out, like go.
I also feel a calling to help professors
kind of do what I do.
- [Gary] You should definitely do that.
- So that scares the shit out of me.
- No, no, no.
I have great news.
- But this is easier, like
helping entrepreneurs is so easy.
Okay.
- No shit, Linds.
- [Linds] I know.
(attendees laughing)
- But this is back to that Kevin.
Like you got to decide what you.
Like by the way, I have
a crazy thing to tell you
based on something I've been looking at.
- [Linds] Please tell me.
- The professors are
about to become easier.
- [Linds] I know.
- [Gary] 'Cause they're all
about to go out of business.
- No, it's a sinking ship
and the ones who know it--
- Yes, but guess what?
This is the thing I
wrote about in Crush It!
I said all these newspapers and magazines
are in deep shit.
It's that the writers are
gonna be better, not worse.
They think there gonna be.
These professors are about to
get the money they deserve.
- Yes, and there's brilliant people.
- Linds, Linds, eat shit for 36 months,
leave money on the table
that was easy from the entrepreneurs
that are never gonna make it
and go help the professors.
- What's my first move?
- I mean, your first move
is to build the business structure,
like what's the business
that you wanna do?
Do you wanna be TED conferences?
Do you wanna be a course?
Do you wanna teach one-on-one?
Do you wanna sell a product?
I mean you need to decide what you are.
- I want to help them
plan an exit strategy
and to realize that
there's actually money,
that there's a lot of professors
that could probably make
courses really good.
- [Gary] That's what you should do.
- Yeah, okay.
- So like charge them
money for your knowledge
if that's what you wanna do.
- [Linds] Okay.
- And you know you can put that
in seven different buckets, right?
- [Linds] Thanks.
- I'm telling you right now,
you're walking right into the,
what is going to be an
enormously large space
and the fact that you were one of them,
do you know how much I
kill with small businesses?
Not because it's funny and haha,
it's 'cause I was one of them.
- [Linds] Yeah.
Thank you.
- You're welcome.
- Hey Gary, I'm Kailyn.
- [Gary] Hi Kailyn.
- This is crazy, to like
literally be face-to-face
with you right now, so thank you so much
for answering my question.
One of the reasons that I love you so much
and love following you so much
is I really resonate with the whole
chip on the shoulder thing.
That's what drives everything that I do.
I grew up super poor.
At least standing here with
all these people right now
is just insanely surreal.
- [Gary] Right, and you
wanna kill them, right?
- I don't wanna kill them,
I wanna like work with all of you
and just like, hit me up, please.
(attendees laughing)
But this thing that's happened is,
I feel like an entrepreneur
on accident, honestly
and the things that I
love to do is the business
that I do that's making me money.
But recently, I've started
being like way more vulnerable
about the whole chip on the shoulder thing
and like in telling my story.
And that's resonating with a lot of people
but that's fuckin' hard.
Like I hate doing that.
- Because?
- I'm very introverted.
I don't like being out there that much
but that's what seems to be
making the biggest impact, so.
- I have great news.
It's binary.
Either you do more of it
and you get used to it,
and like everything in life,
once you get used to it,
it just becomes your norm
and you didn't realize it.
Now you may never be the most extroverted,
but you just.
Everybody here can be
a better singer, dancer
and basketball player.
They may not become LeBron,
but if you do it everyday,
you get better.
You keep putting yourself
out there every day,
you'll get better.
So you can either choose to do that
or you could say I don't like it.
I'll leave the money on the table
because I love the privacy
and the private life
and not having to engage and you do that.
It's your choice.
You're in charge.
- Are you an advocate for doing
like what's harder though?
If that can make
a bigger impact?
- I'm an advocate on doing
what you wanna do,
not because I said so
or your friend said so.
Its, I'm an advocate of you
doing what you wanna be doing,
but I always encourage to
taste more 'cause it works.
You know how many people here hate oysters
but have never had one?
(attendees laughing)
I think about that shit everyday.
(attendees laughing)
That's how I think about business.
Like you've made a judgment on something
yet you've never done it.
So, you know what I'm gonna say,
you know you've like consumed it.
I mean I already know
you're gonna do more of it
because you've already
done the hardest part
which is you've done it.
You're now a foregone
conclusion to me, KP.
You're just gonna keep doing it.
- I love that you just
called me that, thank you.
- [Gary] You know, like,
that's what you're gonna do.
- Okay.
- You're just looking for me
to give you a little more juice
to do it a little bit more,
and a little bit more,
and a little bit more which is amazing
and I'm thrilled to do it
'cause it's fuckin' free.
Here you go, go!
- [Kailyn] Thank you.
- You're welcome.
- Just really quickly.
Is there anything that is hard for you?
Like I know like , no.
Your mindset, the way that
you think about things,
you're like I am confident, I can do this,
but like is it hard.
- [Gary] Yes, yes.
- To get up in the morning sometimes?
- [Gary] No, nope.
- Is anything hard at all?
- Spelling is fuckin' impossible.
(attendees laughing)
I can't read for shit.
If I was reading from a
teleprompter right now,
I would crumble and be out of here.
Can't read for shit.
Like you know, fencing probably is hard.
Oh I'm really way below
average in swimming,
poor swimmer, like always think like fuck,
I'll be super pissed if I like.
If I die because we get fucked up,
like somebody hits a, and
I have to swim further
than everybody and
like, yeah there's shit.
You know why you asked that question?
- [Kailyn] Validation.
- No, why you asked me that question?
Validation the first part.
The second part.
You're asking me that as somebody
who knows a lot about me,
because I don't spend any time on it.
We all suck at shit.
So like I don't care how you
judge mine, you got shit too.
So because I don't care about that,
the only reason people spend
time on their weaknesses
is because it's everybody
else's opinion on it
that they're trying to avoid.
I don't care about your
opinion about my weakness,
'cause I know you've got them, too.
So let's just move on.
- Thank you so much.
Can I get a photo with
you when you're done?
- [Gary] Yes.
- Thank you.
- [Gary] Hey, Charles.
- Hey Gary.
If you ever, I swim a lot,
so if you ever need somebody.
(laughing)
- [Charles] Thanks, bro.
- Let me know.
I'm 37, so I'm not you know,
where you are at, age wise
but you know, I've been
lucky a few times in life
and you know, I've done well
and done not so well on everything
and I have done well.
I guess my question is,
it's always the concept
of the encore, right?
You know when my one company,
I've had eight-digit companies before
and now I'm launching another one.
And I guess it's like
how do you get into it,
make bets on it but feel accomplished
if you don't outdo your last time?
- Because I do not even remotely think
that the financial part
is the way I score it.
You know what I mean?
I mean that's really simple.
Like outdoing the last one is, you know,
even the way you position
and listen to your words,
you're positioning it like,
if you're putting pressure on
that I need a niner, right?
Then you're then you're probably gonna.
Especially, you know what's
funny about positioning a niner
when you've had an eighter?
It's hard to get going.
- That's probably the challenge, yes.
- I know exactly what's
going on with you, Charles.
And so that's why I'm asking you,
are you doing the ambition of a nine or 10
or because you see the white space
and you're gonna strike
like a fuckin' cobra
or is it 'cause you really
just want to fuckin' do it?
So let me give me an example.
What I've been doing for
the last seven years.
I don't love it.
Client services?
Like having a 32-year-old brand manager
from the University of Chicago
telling me what she should
do with Captain Crunch
when she can't sell shit?
- No, I'm actually from
the USDA, so, yeah.
- Great, yeah like not fun for me,
but I know why I'm doing it.
I decided at 35, 36 that I was gonna spend
10 years of my prime
as a business person building
a Death Star of communication
by eating shit and building
a very big business
and then I was gonna
point that Death Star,
the Vayner X machine
against the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation
because my brother has
it and I wanna cure it.
Some business that somebody comes along
that didn't know how to run it
so I bought it for a million
and then I can get it to 100.
But I realized six, seven years ago,
fuck, I now know who I am.
Let me build the biggest infrastructure
in the world around it
and then whether it's to
help hurricane victims
or sell sneakers,
I'm gonna be able to
point this fuckin' thing.
So for me, I don't look at my EBITDA,
I don't care how much we're growing.
I've made a 20-year decision
that I'm in the process of
and I'm gonna execute against that.
And the numbers and dollars
are just not the way I score.
If you've been lucky enough
to have the success you've had
and you're this young, I
would take a big step back
and try to figure out, you know,
what is like the most fun
or the most macro thesis
you can come up with.
- Great, thanks.
- You're welcome.
(attendees applauds)
Guys thank you for having me.
Thanks, it's awesome, thank you so much.
Hope you enjoyed that keynote.
Now, the question from it.
What was your biggest new
takeaway from the talk in Boise?
(mellow music)
