Gary Vaynerchuk's Plan To Own The New York Jets

What's up, everybody? Ryan here. Welcome to Freedom Fastlane. If you're listening on itunes, you got a special surprise today because we just did a big binge drop, allowing you to listen to never before released recordings from Freedom fast lane live 2015. And we're doing this, obviously, because we have announced almost the full lineup for Freedom Fast 2016. And I want you to get some of the goodness that was that came out of last year so that you know it's worth your time and your trip to join us this year at Freedom fast lane live 2016. Today you're going to hear from Gary Vaynerchuk. And before we go into it, I want to tell you a little bit about what my experience was with Gary. Now, most of you know that my lifelong dream is to own the Cleveland Indians. That's the filter through which I look at all business opportunities. I'm not jumping around from opportunity to opportunity.

I'm dialed in and looking for the opportunity that brings me the Cleveland Indians. Now, as of right now, my strategy comes down to a couple of things. It means building breakthrough brands, brands that are big and worth tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars through creating something cool in the marketplace, being well marketed, building teams within those brands, scaling them. That's part one. The other part is investing into brands that are doing something cool and also training my students and building an audience so that I have additional deal flow. That's why I teach the models that I teach, because I want more deal flow. I want to be a part of more businesses that have the opportunity to worth many millions of dollars. That's overall my strategy. I wanted to find out what Gary's strategy was. I wanted to know what Gary's ultimate strategy was for getting the New York jets, because that's his goal. So Gary talked a little bit about it from stage, and he talked a little bit about why he builds his audience, why he doesn't sell the dream. He just builds up a platform. And he basically said that that opens him up to specific opportunities that wouldn't necessarily exist, including the opportunity to launch new businesses, be an early investor in new startups, and that name recognition gives him certain opportunities that will give him the. I think he estimated $9 billion that it will cost him to buy the New York Jets. Now, I wanted to unpack this a little bit more. And to be quite honest with you, I didn't feel comfortable releasing all of Gary's talk because we paid quite a bit of money to bring Gary in. And there are people who sat in that room and listened to Gary's keynote. But I wanted to share the Q and A where he and I sit down and we unpack it a little bit further. We also take some questions from the audience so you can hear how he addresses that Q and A. We attempted to end early, and then Gary said, hey, I want to do more Q and A. So we extend it up past that. And you'll enjoy hearing Gary address some of the specific questions from the audience, as well as his overall strategy to buy the New York Jets. And as we address some of the differences that he and I have on things like taxes, his answer surprised me on what he felt about taxes. And had we had more time, I probably would have pushed back against that a lot harder.

Also, I wanted to mention, you know.

Out of all of our speakers, Gary surprised me the most because sitting backstage, Gary was a completely different person. He was completely present, totally humble, was asking about Esther, was playing with Esther. Man, I couldn't spend enough time with Gary. He was completely different than I expected. He was actually really calm and subdued and humble. And I just loved the guy even more as a result of seeing him in that state. I was very surprised at how present he was. He always looked me in the eye, was always looking to serve. And it was a wonderful experience with Gary, which will be contrasted very sharply by the other keynote, who you'll hear from in the next part of this series. Hey, you can binge listen to Freedom Fastlane LIVE 2015 over the next day and a half or so. So make sure you listen to the whole series. But for now, enjoy this Q and A with Gary Vaynerchuk.

Thank you, Gary.

So the first thing I want to ask you is, as I was listening to you backstage, they're what's interesting, knowing the demographic of what's in this room.

Yes.

They follow Gary.

You mean attractive.

Well, I mean, I'm leading the cause on that one. We all know that. But they follow Gary Vaynerchuk and they follow Tim Ferriss.

Yes.

Now, the rhetoric on both of those sides is. And I know you know Tim.

Yep.

Is. Is you talk about working your fucking face off, and then the other side is build a cash flow business and work four hours a week. Now, I know that Tim also works his fucking face off.

I think that's an interesting place to start.

But I'm curious if you say.

Don'T leave anything on the court. Yeah. Or don't leave anything in the tank.

Yeah.

I don't want you to have any regret.

Yeah.

There's A lot of ways to look at that go the opposite way of what looks obvious in me saying that your regret is maybe you tried to make so much money and you didn't hang out with your kids and they go to college and you're like, who's Rick? So you know every. So what I mean by that. Right? And that's why I wanted to stop you there. I want to make sure everybody understands. I think things like this are very fun and interesting to me because what I know and what all of you subconsciously know is we're all fundamentally different. We have different skills, we have different wants, we come from different places, and a lot of different things are gonna happen to us. The reason I was pushing self awareness so much is if you're able to unlock the. I'm not gonna lie to myself, it really changes the game. And then if you can deploy a lot of work ethic against that, that is the model that I've seen sustain. You know, the other thing that happens in a lot of shit like this is the lack of sustained wealth. There's a big difference between being rich for a few minutes and being wealthy for life. And so those behaviors matter too. There's a lot of people that were real estate experts and now are social media experts, and they're going to be whatever the next thing the experts are. And they're always. That's right. That's exactly right.

Yeah, that's what I'm looking at.

Look, I think Tim's point in Four Hour Workweek, and you know, I don't like one of my flaws is I don't read books. So I don't. I don't know fully, but I know Tim Stuber well. I think that finding efficiencies is always smart, but the way I think you find efficiencies is a little bit maybe different. I think a lot of people think of them as algorithms. I think of them as doing really well at what you do and then taking a percentage of those monies in hiring other people to do the other things really well. I think that there's a lot more stickiness to that model.

Yeah. Based on that point, I'm curious about VaynerMedia going from 3 to 100. And you mentioned that people have been the lifeblood of that. But really, what were the leverage points of that meteoric growth?

I punted everything except for two things. Winning new business because I'm a great fucking Salesman, and micromanaging HR because I love my people. And by me spending 92% of my time on that and letting my brother. Letting all our other executives do everything else that I could do too. I'm an operator. I did it. Wine library. But focusing on the two things in an agency business that matters, which is in an agency, you're selling people's time. So people are the asset. So I wanted to become close with them and work through all the things that make them know the intent and lack of politics and all that. And then I went out and sold Pepsi and Toyota and Quaker and GE and so we didn't have to do RFPs or have a new business division, which is why a lot of agencies lose.

I want to talk about the balance or the difference between staying on the cutting edge and letting distractions keep you from doing what's productive. Because.

There'S a tendency of what's hot. Let's go here. You called it white space. Like, let's go after this.

Let's go.

There's that commercial we're going all in on.

Woo.

Woo.

And there's this idea of whatever's hot, I'm gonna go there. And yet those also can be shiny objects. You even mentioned you've cut out everything but Facebook ads.

Yes.

So what's the difference there between.

Going for white space and then going all in on what's actually moving the needle?

This is where hard work really comes in handy. When you're like me and you work 15 hours a day. If you're deploying 10 hours a day on practical execution and five hours a day on where's the Future, you can pull them both off. I'm being dead serious. Like, if you're only gonna work eight hours a day, well, then it gets harder. Right? Cause you're only spending six on practicality and two on the future or just eight on practicality. I've made all my wealth on being right about Snapchat and Instagram and Facebook. But I had to go through a lot of social cams and Yobongos and Plurk. Plurk. And like, you know, and like. And I spent 40 hours on Socialcam when it was exploding in 2009. It completely disappeared. But what I learned on human behavior on it helped me be very smart on vine and Instagram video. So look, to me, going for the shiny thing is going on the offense. And you have to do it. And I think you have to allocate 20 to 30% of your time and energy to it. And, you know, I'm a big believer in it. It doesn't seem like what most people think from a Practical standpoint, I do believe the fact that I work so many hours helps me. When vine came out from midnight to 4 in the morning for three straight weeks, I played on Vine. Literally slept three hours a week, a day for like three weeks. I just needed the time. I had to figure it out. It was getting too hot. I knew it was big, but I was busy as balls. And that was it. I just made the commitment. I mean, just, it's, you know, it's just what you want. But again, I want to buy the New York Jets. It's going to cost me 7,8 billion by the time I'm ready, right? I have a funny feeling. And as a matter of fact, I really wish I. You know what? I don't know how you feel. I'm fucking pissed. I want to buy the Jets.

I totally get that.

I wish I just wanted to be what I am now and fucking chill.

Life would be a lot easier if I had smaller goals.

I mean, it's exhausting. Like fucking fuck, you know? But I can't help it. It's my oxygen. The climb is what I live for. I definitely know that I'm a true bred entrepreneur because I don't like success.

Unpack that. What do you mean you don't like success?

I don't like the wins. I like the process. As a matter of fact, the wins suck. Like, my wife has the funny joke with me. Like, vacation time with my family is my fucking life. And my wife and I have a funny joke. The second we land, the plane lands. I get depressed. It's the week before that. I live for. Like, that's how I'm wired.

I want the process of trying to buy the jets. I made a video seven years ago holding up a newspaper. Like I was like a hostage, like, to prove the date. Not being smart enough to realize I was gonna be old by the time it actually happened. I wanted to prove the date. I made an entire video. I'm starting to talk about it a little bit, so I wanted to hold onto it forever, but I got fucking loose lips. It sucks. Anyway, I made a video where I basically claim that this is the worst day of my life. And I'm gonna play it the day I buy the Jets.

So AJ and I, my brother and I started having a dinner once a quarter where we only can talk about good news in sports because our relationship has defaulted into only negatives. And our days are like this. Hey, we just won a 10 million dollar account with Mountain Dew. Hey, this is great. This is Great. We hired 43 people. This is great. This is great. Hey, Sally and Karen are fighting. Hey. The Dove client is pissed about this. And it's just. We don't even acknowledge these fucking amazing things, that we're just firefighting, right? And that's what entrepreneurship is for me. It's just the process of growing. Like, that's how I see it. It's very kind of sad.

I want to call something out that not a lot of people like to talk about, and it's that half this room don't actually care about their businesses. They only care about the cash flow that it produces.

I respect that.

And that's why they got into it, and they're in the business because of the cash flow. But the idea of working 15 hours a day to do something that they don't really enjoy all that much, they just want the cash flow from. Sounds like a really terrible life.

It is.

So I want you to speak to that.

I think you made a mistake on the first move.

I mean, when your first move is wrong, you're fucked.

So now. Now sometimes you don't have a choice, right? Like, nobody talks about the fact that people have student loans and, like, have rent. And, like, I understand why. My part where I'll pick a bone with people in here is when you got to a place where you could now make a pivot and you got lazy and comfortable. And you're not. I do not believe that anybody has the right to complain. You will never hear me complain about the hours I work or the things I miss out on. I'm so mad at people that complain about the successes they don't have while they watch entire seasons of Games of Thrones or like. Or, like, are a part of the fucking softball team. Or like. Or, like, fucking are on planes, like, playing, like, Angry Birds or Words with Friends, like, what the fuck's the matter with you? Of course you're not gonna have that because you're not deploying the work. So what I think is I don't judge anybody here that did something to get the monies. I judge somebody who sits in here who's not happy and complains about it and has gotten to a place where the practical stuff has been checked off, right? The debt's not accumulating anymore, right? Like, you're in a place. The reason I wanted to hammer home and I kind of glossed over it, was that I took a step back in my career was because I think if you're a really great entrepreneur or thinking long term, you're willing to sacrifice Things, you know, what cripples everybody is. You didn't have anything. You found an idea. You found somebody that gave you a concept. You got something that worked and now you got something. Something that you were sold by the American media machine that you want, like a fucking watch or a car. Like, you know you got something and the fear is you don't want to go back to not having it. My greatest rationale for marrying my wife and the greatest thing that I know about myself is not only am I capable to going back to Queen's studio apartment, I secretly want it to happen like, you know, Rocky V when it's all sad and shit. Because he's like, back to the thing and everyone's like, oh, too bad. I'm like, that's fucking awesome. Like, for me it's the game, right? And so, like, I don't need fancy shit. Like, fuck. That stuff kills me. Like, yes, I want to buy the jets.

But I won't buy a jet on the way there, right? Like, I may because it's actually time efficient. I've come to learn. But it's really interesting. I think the thing that makes me sad is people accumulate a little something and they don't want to go backwards. And so they're not willing to change their behavior to go three steps forward. People are literally, literally crippled and scared to take one step back a place they've been. And they should understand that's what scares them though. Instead of going three steps forward and they get into that hump and that million that they're making is now their handcuffs and they're stuck. And the reason I push hard work is there's a lot of people in here who, who are in that exact situation and still have seven hours a day to start something new, but aren't putting in the hustle to do that. Cause that's what I would do if I was in that crowd making a Millie. Wanting to make 10 million or 100 million. Cause I'm ambitious. Or want to build businesses or want to get to the next level. I hate selling fucking trinkets or whatever the fuck you do.

I would then take eight hours a day and work from 7, 8, 9 at night to 2 and 3 in the morning doing something else in parallel to this to siphon and allow that to be the big thing. Yeah, you like that one, right? I saw who clapped? I'm gonna give you daps, my man.

I see you back there in the last hour, I've probably heard you talk about your wife and kids more than I've ever heard you talk about them.

Interesting. You're not paying attention.

Right.

And if your wife was here, I would ask her, what's it like being married to an entrepreneur?

The greatest. Oh, sorry.

No, listen, I mean, it's very hard on Lizzie. Like, we had a very intense conversation the other day where she talked about like the wall she puts up when I'm home for a half a day in a week, where I'm traveling the whole week, where she doesn't even acknowledge that I'm there. Like, that's tough. She doesn't want to because it hurts that I'm going to leave the next morning. Like, it's very tough. Like, it's where we're going to survive and win. And why I could be so frank and tell you that story that most people would keep inside is that we just over communicate. We just talk a lot. Like. And the truth is it's sad because I'm not capable of being anything else than what I am right now. I don't have it in me. I would die. And that's intense. But it's my truth. There is no cutting it down. It just is not going to happen.

And that's hard. And that's hard now. There's just getting better. Like, I cannot believe the amount of time I spend with my kids and work more than I did 10 years ago when I thought I was working the most. I would have no time for anything else. It's just. It's literally getting into again. I know this guy in third row saw it in Dailyvee. I know that guy saw it like every minute. It's every minute. Like what you saw there, that's not edited for your pleasure. It's every fucking. Like, as a matter of fact, one of the things I told Drock is eventually, let's just put out all the film. Cause I don't want. Cause I'm thinking the next thing people aren't gonna believe is that we're editing for that. Like, fuck it. Like, I'm gonna put one of those fucking head things on. Like, just like it's the way you can fix it is every minute gets put in play. And so one of the big things I arbed was my health. Now I work out every day and like, you know, trying to make sure I can sustain it. It's just every minute. Like, nobody here is more efficient with every minute in their day than I am. I know that for a fact. I know that for a fact. I just fundamentally do not believe that anybody else in Here is programmed for 18 hours a day, every day of their lives. For every minute I don't even eat.

Like, you know, like they're, they're out of 300, out of 275 days that are non weekends, 240 of them. I have meetings from 7pm to 11:30 minimum.

That sounds awful.

Not for me, man. Like what sounds awful is to be at home at 8:30 watching fucking the Bachelor.

That's what sounds, what sounds awful is like can't wait for the new Call of Duty, you know, like that sounds fucking awful.

So I mean you basically operate like you realize that life is a game and you're operating it like it's your own game rather than living somebody else's. I'm curious in life and business, what activities or habits produce the greatest return for you right now versus 10 years ago where you thought that you were hustling, you thought that you were moving the needle and now it's completely different. What are the actual activities?

Activities?

Having, having a full time assistant is the biggest thing that happened for me. Like just because I'm, because I couldn't be my assistant. I'm not organized that way. So full time assistant was a true tangible answer to you. Somebody who, when I tell them, program me every minute and make sure you see every email and make sure nothing gets dropped. Like that has been a game changer for me.

Realizing what the jets meant to me 10 years ago was a big one. Meaning I realized, oh my God, the New York jets are the kryptonite to this work machine. Meaning when the jets play, literally you could come to me, tap me on the shoulder and say the Internet has collapsed and will never come back and alcohol sales are banned in America. And I would say shut the fuck up, the jets are on defense like, like that, that, that, that. You know, I think I saw you guys talking about it in the back room. I think you might have said on the whiteboard. It's very popular amongst my friends now. This whole. I meditate for 15 minutes every day. That whole thing, that's fine. Fuck that for me. But, but, but, but what I realized is like awesome and fucking jealous because I wish I could do that. It's not for me. But for four hours on Sunday, 16 times a year, I'm in full meditation. And I mean it, I mean it. And when I realized that that was what was happening, it became so much better even because it's really true. Like I care about this thing that my conscious brain understands is not as important as the other Things. But, like, literally, the jets are my religion. Like, it is the one thing I'm religious about. And I really unwind from work in those four hours. And it's good that it's in the fourth quarter when a lot of stuff builds up. It's huge for me. It's huge. I mean, literally, it's my religion. Like, the jets played the Giants on Sunday. That was the first day of Hanukkah. I fucking called my family. I'm like, listen, fucking family.

Just so we're on the same page, you want me around for Hanukkah? We're doing it Saturday. Cause I'm going to the Jets Giants game. That's how we roll.

So we are gonna take some Q and A in the audience. So if you do have a question, put your hands up one of the mic runners. We'll find you. I don't know if you even remember this, and I've never told this story, but originally, when we planned this event a year ago, I was like, I want Gary Vaynerchuk because he's going to own the New York jets, and I want to decompress that process.

I.

Originally, we were going to do this through Saturday, and I said, I want Gary to keynote the whole thing. Two days later, I get a call. Gary declined the speaking engagement. I was like, why? He's afraid he's gonna miss the jets game on Sunday.

All right, book him for Friday then.

That's what happened.

Yeah.

So that is.

I don't book anything for Thursdays in the fall until June 7, when the NFL schedule comes out, in case it's the one week the jets have their Thursday night game.

I got married on November 13, and we went on our honeymoon in February in case the jets made a playoff run.

So I would kill my children for a Jets Super Bowl.

So.

I think that's the punchline. Right? Like, tough to top that.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but I was a finalist for a shit show on Fox called Utopia.

Holy shit. Really?

Yeah.

Which ended up being just VaynerMedia. Was gonna work on that show.

Oh, really? Well. Well, you. I hope you might be, could have saved it, because it was awful.

It was a warship in, like, Belgium. Right.

It was terrible. And I was. I was. I was about to be on this show, and I went through this entire casting process, which was, like, months of.

My life, because I had this terrible.

Dream I wish I didn't have of winning a reality show. And. And. And it's a terrible bane of my existence. And I'm afraid Gary Vee is going to rip me a new one over admitting this dream. But I was a finalist for Utopia and I actually was like, what if the Indians are in the playoffs while I'm on the show? Are you going to feed me that? Are you going to feed me info about the Indians? And they said no. And this was actually a contention point. And one of the guys says everything is negotiable. So we actually had this on the table. You'll feed me Indians info if they're going to be on this show?

My kids are my kids birthdays are in May and August because that's not football season.

I will never, ever miss. I have not missed a play of a New York jets game since 1982. I've physically seen all of them.

Literally. Literally. Only the death of somebody in my family is the only shot of me ever missing it.

So let's decompress. Let's actually decompress the plan.

Okay.

From.

From what? From what I'm taking away. The plan is.

Yes.

Is a.

You have.

You have your core business that is basically build a business called.

That was wrapped around my singular skill of really good marketing at scale to be an evergreen machine on my side for the rest of my life that I can then use to deploy all my other business behaviors and use that machine to make those business behaviors big.

And when you say those other. I mean those other assets that cash.

I'm going to. No, I'm going to buy Twinkies. The business. Like I'm going to buy a business for 2, 3, 4, $500 million and then flip it for 2, $3 billion.

Okay. So. So your. Your core business basically gives you leverage.

That's right.

In order to get into other businesses.

Yes.

Or points in other businesses or entire other businesses that give you the point.

No. Yes.

And the exposure for people to actually want to use you as in the name of an investor. Which from my understanding is the only reason why you.

Have your name out there. You don't sell the dream.

No, I don't want to sell a fucking dream. You just build up.

Name recognition. So people want to say, Gary Vee's an investor in this.

Guys, there's no growth hackers showing up on cnn, you know, like, like, like it's just what you want to play. Like I want to build leverage with everybody in this room. I'm not trying to extract something from you in a one month, one week, first time you landed on my website, one speaking engagement situation. I have the potential to know you hopefully for the rest of my life. And so for me, I've always had this secret backup game plan of the reason I wanted to provide everybody. Long before there was Kickstarter. I was like, you know, what if I just provide a lot of value at scale to every American, like all of them, maybe all of them will give me 10 bucks to buy the jets one day if I can't get there. You know, like, it's like I literally think like a marathon runner. Like, the reason I'm out there is a couple things. One, I want to be a practitioner. So if I'm doing the social, every single tweet, all 200,000 of them, I've written with my thumbs, right? Like, I game planned, like our Snapchat, our Instagram strategies. Like, I do it and I want to be the best craftsman in right now I'm immersing myself in VR because I know it's a decade away and I want to understand it like a tactician, but I also use it as brand leverage. You know, like, I get paid to speak. It's great money. I get paid millions of dollars in advance to write a book if I want to. It's great money. Like, I can do things.

It has brand equity. But I have to be right and I have to be good. And the problem is too many people are selling, they're bottom feeding, they're selling to dreamers and not practicality. And it has no shot of being long term. And two, they're just not patient. You know, it's just like, who here's retiring in five years? And I don't mean you're gonna fucking crush it and retire. I mean, I mean, you're fucking old and you're finished.

Nobody. And so, like, you know, like, in a world where people are gonna work for 20, 30 years, why is everybody's behavior like they're gonna work for two or three months?

What is your opinion and your relationship with risk? How do you view and evaluate it? Is it even a real concept to you? And how do you measure that, if at all?

Yeah, it's not real. Like, I fuck with risk. You know, I like it. Like, it's part of the. Like, if you're an entrepreneur, you're risking, you know, Like, I think the biggest, riskiest thing I'm doing is I get some weird, strange fan that kills me on the streets because I'm out there. I'm not joking. Like, the risk of being like, if you play say to anybody in this room, what you think about risk is like, Asking somebody who has a business or is an entrepreneur like, what's your thoughts on Oxygen?

Do you know what I mean by that?

I get it. But there's thoughts on.

Let me break it down. There's no such thing as a game. You have to be okay with risk if you do business because it's one of the core foundations of what happens. It's the biggest reason most people don't do it. It's the reason we have so much fake entrepreneurs right now. Because risk has been eliminated. There's so much free flowing money. These 22 to 25 year olds are raising money. There's no risk. They just learned on somebody else's back.

Mm.

I asked because when you're at. There's 400 people in this room and about 398 of them have a fear that it's all gonna go away one day.

I think weirdly, all 400 of us do, right? Like there's always some piece that. But again, I kind of told you what I thought about that. I don't know, I could say this. There might be one and a half other people that actually are like me that actually think that's kind of romantically cool.

I'm being serious. Like the single biggest thing I live for in my life is I told you so. It's actually quite sad and not noble. I live for sticking it to people.

The thought of losing everything. And then everybody's like, see, he wasn't that great. Like all the shit. It's like Ronda Rousey, right? Like she lost. Now everyone's shitting on her and I'm like, fuck, I wish I was her. Because right now I'd be like, motherfucking, I'm gonna fucking show everybody, right? And so like, nothing would drive me more and put me in the most ninja form of myself than to lose it all, live in a fucking studio, have like my family, be like, what the fuck? And then like literally like as like the shitty fucking faucet with the fucking cockroach in the corner, I'd be like, cockroach, we're gonna fucking get it all back, motherfucker.

I just, I. And I don't. And I don't know, and I don't know if it's. Cause I secretly want a movie made about me and that would add some drama to the fucking plot, you know? Like, I don't know what it is, but it's funny. I'm so cozy with Risk because the on paper bad thing that happens on Risk is actually really intriguing to me.

Yeah. I'm of the opinion that when you can operate from that place, then nobody can really compete with you because you're willing to leave it all out there. And it's eight miles.

Zero percent of people are. It's eight miles. Last seen, right? Like, you know what's funny? I said something to my staff the other day. I'm like, I'm getting so into this thesis that I'm like, do you think I should live life naked? And they're like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like, I'm like, should I walk around fucking earth naked? Because I. Because it's kind of like this thing that if, like, it's like if you just put it out there. And it's why I brought up the weird thing, like the conversation I'm having with my wife, which is very personal. Like, I'm sure Lizzie would be like, why are you talking about that? Like, you know, like it's this nakedness that gives you power. Like when fucking Eminem spits all his negatives, the other guy's like, fuck, what do I say? And so, yeah, I believe in that quite a bit. I really do. And that's how I run my business. Like, I'm not scared of it. I'm so not scared. It would make you uncomfortable to be in my shoes for one hour at the lack of scared I am in.

Do you have a logical voice in the company that is like me?

I'm serious. I'm practical as fuck. The sad thing about me wanting to lose it all is none of my behavior maps the potential of me losing it all, you know? So I'm quite. I'm immigrant. Like, I'm real practical. I'm just showmanshi and like. And high energy and things that. But I'm a contradiction. I'm pulling from opposite directions. I'm real practical.

I was warned ahead of time.

I am. I run P&LS. It's all cash flow. I understand my expenses. I don't over exaggerate. I mean, I've grown it from 3 to 100 million with no fucking cash infusion, no M and A. It's been all cash flow management. That's really. That's prac. That's called practicality, you know. And rent, I've got like four fucking. Fucking. What are they called when you fucking security deposits? Those fucking things piss me off because we keep moving and like. Like I'm. I think about every little practical thing.

I was asked ahead of time to not talk about politics. So here I go. I'm curious, you mentioned we're living in the greatest shift right now ever. And there's more opportunity involved in that shift than ever. There's also more bitching going on than ever before of people whining about everything.

I love it.

And there seems to me, at least from my perception, to be kind of a dividend of people who get it and see that there's opportunity and people who want to cling to the past and hold onto that.

I don't think that's a Republican or Democrat thing.

I'm not arguing for that. I'm curious if you see a divide or if there is some sort of an alignment in that thinking there's only.

A divide because things have been too good for too long and everybody's fucking soft. That's the only reason there's a dividend.

What do you think is the global war?

We need a good fucking punch in the mouth.

Like, we need a good punch. We need something actually to talk about, you know, instead of pontificating like, like, we need, like, like everyone's like, the economy's so bad. Economy's not bad. Economy's fine. Like, it just is. It's more than fine. Like, like it's not a boom, but nobody's. It's not the fucking depression. Like, what's the matter with people? It's context. Like, do you know good we have it, like, go to fucking Laos where I'm on the board of Pencils of Promise and build schools go where people like, like the lack of context. And then you have fucking media companies that are in the business of ratings. So they're pushing to the extreme on all these points of views and they're dividing us out of commerce.

Listen, I'm the biggest capitalist in the room and I know you are, but I'm tied. You can tie me, right? But to not be self aware enough to know that the reason there's a divide in our country is because media companies are trying to make money on commercials for people to watch them. So I know Glenn Beck and his blueprint. I know what CNN's doing. I know Jeff Zucker. He lives right next to me. How he runs cnn. They're running for ratings to make money. The religion of our country, capitalism. But it is absolutely dividing us because people headline read and don't know what the fuck they're talking about.

So back to where the genesis of your question, because I got on a tangent, is the government has no impact on winning entrepreneurs ever for the rest of time.

Ever. I have never in my life Pondered the government as a variable to my success.

And as somebody who was born in a communist country, I'm more than happy to give my 50 cents on the dollar for this fucking amazing country. And yes, it goes to losers. I don't give a fuck. Net net. It's fucking better than anywhere else.

That's the problem. The problem is people want to take things in a microscope. They don't want to go net net. They want to say, oh, 50 cents on a dollar. And it's going to people that aren't doing shit. They don't play the whole net game. They don't play the cool. Go do that in Switzerland, fuckface. Go rock it out. Remember all your friends that said if Bush got reelected, they were gonna move to Canada? Where'd they go? Nowhere. Remember when everybody said that they were gonna go to fucking Canada when Obama got fucking reelected? We. Where'd they go? Nowhere. You know what we have? We have a lot of people that talk shit and their actions don't map their words. So fuck them.

Let's head over to the audience. Go over here.

David Vu from Huntington Beach. Hey, what's up, Gary?

How are you, brother?

I took you before you talk.

One of the fun things about speaking is when somebody or a couple people in the crowd give you love along the way to, like, build your momentum. I really appreciate your. Yeah, your p. Diddying of my talk was really appreciated.

Awesome, brother. Ashley took your course on udemy.com fucking amazing course. Every entrepreneur in here should take it.

Thank you.

I'm actually instructor on there as well. I have the number one course in the business category. I have a question for you, please. Opinion and action oriented. The first is, what are your thoughts on the Udemy as a platform and would you bet down on it for building your brand? And number two, would you run Facebook ads to sell it on top of Udemy already running Facebook ads?

I would bet on elearning Udemy. Linda, you know Grovo company I'm about to invest in in B2B space. I believe in that. I believe I ran it because I just wanted to understand the data. We just ironically just ran ads this week against it just to understand the data. But I would tell you that the blueprint is for people that have enough name recognition, like the people that take the stage during this weekend. You should do it yourself. Like, why give Fuck it. Udemy's it's like a publisher. They don't bring any real value. They're just taking your money for exposure. So I would do it Yourself, or if you're coming up the charts like you did, use it. And then when you were big enough, leave and do it yourself. So like, the model to me is they're taking too much of a percentage for just being the platform. If you're an A list player or have a big enough audience. So just build the tech. The tech is commoditized to do elearning yourself. And then two, if you're new, use it because there's a lot of free eyeballs. Nobody knows who you are. Once you get to that space, leave and do. You just like the music industry, Right. You come up on a label, you become one of the biggest bands of the world, you start your own label. Got it? You got it. Go back here, Gary.

I'm Jeff Woods. I'm the host of the Mentee Podcast. I write for Entrepreneur. When we were in Las Vegas for Thrive, I told you I was quitting my corporate sales job to start a company with Gary Heller. And I'm here now. So that happened.

Good for you, man.

Thank you. We've been in the boardroom and we've identified what we want to do, which is to really take authors like yourself.

You did that in a boardroom?

His.

Fuck, that sucks. Okay.

To take authors like you, and instead of just going for the book, how do we take that intellectual property, repurpose it so that it's now monetized over courses over speaking, and systemize the crap out of that so that we can just pump people in.

Yep.

Here's the question.

Yeah.

How do we create a subscription model around that?

Well, there's. I mean, there's people want things, and when it's around people, people want access. Right. So, like, the reason I like Periscope and Meerkat and Facebook Live and built my brand on ustream way more than the history or my narrative talks about is one of the ways to build subscription is access. But then there's natural byproducts of like products that can be sold. The problem is most people in business, they're always information products. Right. Which is a little bit difficult. So I think on a personal brand kick, you go one of a couple routes. I think you go in access, people will absolutely pay to be like in the access two hour Q&A once a month, whatever. Number two, I think this is the white space in this. I think you gotta tell a bigger story about the person. So, like, one of the things that I could probably sell, believe it or not, in subscription, is just 12 items a month or a year around My interests. Maybe something for tailgating because I'm a big jets fan. I, I think we go too narrow with these personal brands. I think if you opened up like mine would be something for tailgating. Maybe a wine twice since that's my background. Maybe you know what other sneakers I'm really into. So maybe it's literally a sneaker. I think if you actually paint a more 360 picture of that person outside of themselves, like for this guy right here, maybe it's a baby item for a 1 year old. Cause that's what just happened in his life. I think if you actually tell a better narrative of that person who they are as a human, not just as a business person, it gives you 12 items to sell and maybe you can build a subscription business that way. I've always thought that was a big white space.

Cool. Thank you. And now on the context of thrive and incorporating that give element. The question we've been asking is what's that give element that's going to be woven into the heart of the company that would win the heart of the world. And we realized we want to help reform the education system. So if we could start targeting the children of today while we're developing this kick ass content, we. What are the skills that we could be teaching the next generation that they need to know that they're not being taught in school?

Are you asking me what the curriculum of that should be?

What skill sets would you do you think we should be teaching them?

Yeah, every kid that's in school in America is fucked because they're teaching them nothing that's real. Like nothing. There's not a single. We literally have a school system that teaches kids to memorize information and then regurgitate it two months later when the fucking information's. Who's the 15th president of the United States? This fucking old guy.

Like information has zero value. So of course. But you know, that's a heady statement. There's a billion people doing that or trying to do that or wanting to do that. So the answer is sure. But again, I think it comes down to the execution. I think everybody knows the things. Guys, do you know what you how interesting this whole thing is? Do you know how much better we would all been off if we were taught in high school how to do our taxes? How to like, how to like, like just like basic ass shit. Like, like just. How about like how about how embarrassingly not handy I am. Like forget about like geometry. Like fucking teach me how to hang a picture. Like, you know, like.

There is no mapping. There's absolutely no relevance right now to what's actually happening and they can't keep up with it. I am speaking at the best universities in the country on a consistent basis going into the top marketing classes. Sit for an hour before because I want to hear what the professor's saying. And it's so out of school. It's so not relevant. It's so ludicrous. And I look at the kids in that class who are amassing debt for getting this marketing business degree which is completely on their heads for the rest of their lives. You can't even bankruptcy out of it. It's fucked. Which is why I believe in education online. Which is like sure, yes, I do think that you need to fix. I need to. Everybody needs to fix education at the K through 8 level. The problem is you can't get through the parents romantic point of view of the world. The biggest problem right now, the only thing that universities are gonna live on for the next 30 years, the big ones, is the romance of the parents to send their kids to that school. It's called brand. It's why I spend all my time on it.

Thank you.

By the way. I didn't get into that and it's so wild that that's how I got into it. It was something I wanted to cover on this talk. The difference between being in sales versus being in brand and marketing. The reason I don't try to transact is because I'm in the branding business. I'm trying to mean something to everybody and I can't do that by trying to make a dollar on them the first time I meet them. And so the 99% of the people in Internet marketing and marketing in the Internet world and this whole fucking thing, you guys are salespeople, you're not branding.

Let's go over here.

Gary, Calvin, Richard. Originally from New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina kicked me out of there and forced me to Texas to become an entrepreneur. Love it. When I started my business crush it is what gave me the kick in the butt to make it happen.

Thank you, man.

Right at the same time. So I appreciate it.

Thank you.

On a faith based business doing a gym fitness bootcamp, sports performance training. I'm constantly getting pulled to do stuff online.

Yes.

You recently gave a butt kick into fitness professionals on your show. What would you suggest? How to use my niche and you know and attack the online service. I've got some guys that can actually make it happen. What would your angle be?

Look, I think it's going down. The education the thing is, is the reason I believe in Udemy, back to the last question is because my Udemy course I think is $10. Like it's 99, but it's 10, right? With the code or whatever, it's 50 or how much was it? Do you know? 40.

Good. Like, I believe that all the stuff that everybody's trying to be told to do in fitness, I think about things in moral compasses. I think it's a very bad idea for fitness people to sell fucking fitness like pills and powders that they have no idea what they are, but they're trying to maximize the margin and buy it from China and they have no fucking idea if people that take it are gonna die or, you know, I think that's a bad idea. Do you know what I mean? I also think it's a bad idea to do a course on Fitness for 800 buck ebook when the information's free on YouTube. You want to do it for nine bucks, you want to do it for 17 bucks. You want to really know your science of the fucking product you're selling.

Cool.

The disconnect is not monetizing outside your skill in products and services. It's mispricing them or selling shit that you don't know what's behind it. Got it. So that's like you know the answers. Everything that's being pitched to you is right except in execution. In theory, it's right to sell products. In theory, it's right to sell information. In theory, it's not right to sell a $397 ebook that's just cut and pasting from shit you found on the Internet. In theory, it's not right to sell supplements that you have no idea what's in them other than you're just driving margin and you're white labeling something that your homie said, here's what we can get wholesale.

I'm talking more of the coaching itself, like extra coaching training, the physical training, more on that angle.

So if you want to go that route where you've coached coaches and they coach people, that's a super interesting business model. The vulnerability is it breaks when people leave you. And so one of the things I talked about is people skills. So if you decide to build a business where you coach up coaches and then they train people and you make a vig on their training, you better make sure they love you for life because they can leave you and then you have no business.

Zach Evanish. I met you in Austin at that conference first.

Yes, yes, I remember.

Thank you.

Pleasure let's give it up one more time for Gary Vaynerchuk.

No more Q and A. I have.

No idea what time it is, actually. Let's find out.

I'd like to do a little more Q and A.

You want to stick around for a moment? Hold on.

Let's see what's 5 o'?

Clock?

And we have the.

I've got to see west. I gotta go back. I saw us get back down. We got time.

Let's keep going.

You guys want to do more Q and A?

Good. So could we actually get. We'll take one, but I want to get a mic runner over here. I think this guy's arm is about to fall asleep or fall off. So will one of the mic runners come over here?

I want to get this one.

Good awareness.

I appreciate you guys. Attention.

Hey, Gary. Devin Dorris from St. Louis, Missouri. Love your show, man. Thanks, man. By the way, St. Louis is now the heavy leader to be the opening city for my AskGaryVee book tour in March.

Sweet.

So I hope you're there. Yeah, definitely. So I think it's safe to say. Did they say sweet in St. Louis? That's it. It's a lock. We're doing St. Louis. Nice. Go ahead. So I think it's safe to say, out of all the people I follow, that you're definitely the biggest hustler. And I'm just curious how you keep from burning out when you're just going so hard all the time. You know, I got lucky. I really love it. Like, you know, we've gotten to go a little bit deeper in this Q and A. Like, I've gotten to some funny places with you guys here today. Like, this is me, right? Like, I love it. I love it more. You know, that really rang true to me, and you did a good job by bringing that up. Like, I hate money. Like, it's unbelievable how much I don't like money. Meaning I like money because I understand it enables the things I like. But the thought of counting it or looking. The thought of looking at it is ludicrous to me. Right. I find that funny that that's the meme that you put a bunch of cash on the bed and you look at.

I just love this game so much. Do you know how humbled I am that I can sit in a city and have 400 people really care or. Or begin to start caring about what I say? I'm humbled by the attention. I'm grateful for the skills I was given. I'm glad that I Have a good balance of charisma and the bullshit, but also practicality and honesty, which I think makes me different in this space than a lot of people, because so many people that have my charisma. Do you know how manipulative I could be given the talents I have?

I'm being serious.

I could be the guy, like, I think I could make a hundred million on bullshit in a heartbeat, right? I've got it. And so, like. But I'm really happy that I have the other part that would never allow me to, like, sleep at night, right? Which then makes me this kind of thing that I think makes it a little bit more interesting because the funny thing is for the people in this room, maybe for yourself as well. The first time you capture me, hear me, see me, you know, the level of cynicism is high because it's so fucking over the top, right? I like the. Ah, I gotcha. Cause you thought I was full of shit, But I'm more honest than anybody, right? Like, I love that. And so I love building businesses. I'm talented. Do you know how good it feels to, like, be able to, like, build $100 million revenue business in your fucking sleep? I can do that every day of my life for the rest of my life. I've got it in me. Like, it's just. That's unbelievable. Do you know how crazy it is to truly believe you're gonna pull off a goal that you put out in the world for 40 years? Do you know what kind of fucking national holiday I hope it is when I buy the New York Jets?

I'm just grateful. Do you know how thankful I am to have the greatest parents who parented me perfectly, allowed me to bet on my strengths when the narrative wasn't obvious? Immigrant families push education. That's the way out. My parents let me be my entrepreneur self, and it helped me. So I'm grateful. You know, I lost my grandparents before I was born, so I haven't had a lot of. I'm 40 years old. I really have had very little death in my family. I'm grateful for that. So, you know, I'm just grateful. And I feel like I've got something, and I feel like I can't. If I got so lucky to get this thing, well, then who am I to, like, not fully squeeze the living shit, you know? I feel like a lot of people got an orange, and I feel like I got this fucking, like, boulder ass fucking orange, and. And I need to fucking squeeze that shit, you know?

Cool.

Thank you. It's A boulder ass orange.

I want to add to that that you live in 2015, 2016, in the United States of America.

I'm also a white male in America in 2015. Like I've literally hit the lotto at super scale.

Like you could have been a fucking bottled water that I just drank.

Forget about being another human. What if you were a fucking ladybug? That sucks.

I think you kind of iterated this several times. You look at it like a game. There's almost no way to lose. So in that vein, there's no reason not to just put it all out there and use the camera.

I'm an optimist because everybody in this room should be like, like the, the thought of like an American, the poorest American complaining contextually is fucked up. It just is. It just is.

Amen to that.

Go over here.

My name is Matt Paulson from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. How are you? So you built a 65 million dollar a year wine business and decided that wasn't enough for most people. They would just ride that wave as long as it would possibly go and say I'm the wine guy that does 50, $100 million a year. But you decided to start over. So it's easy to decide to start over when you failed and what you're doing isn't working. How do you decide to start over when what you're doing is working really well? And how do you know that's not enough? And how do you decide to do something else?

Because when you look yourself in the eye and you actually have that first real conversation, like I did on my 30th birthday, you realize that you're failing, you know, because to the outward game, 65 million might seem like winning. And you're right. I mean, the craziest part of that story, and it's funny, when you were talking, I was like, huh? People don't even know the real story. Got right around that same time I got offered to be a judge on Top Chef when Top Chef was the number one show on tv. And the next hour was going to be called Changing the Wine World, a one hour reality show on me. I would have been really famous, you know, and yeah, I just knew that wasn't for me. But again, it's the same way as I want every. So that's the one version. Please make sure you're doing your version, which is, it might not just be about more money or more business success. It may be about work, life, balance, or the other things you want to do. Listen, I've Been surprised what's happened to me in the last couple weeks. I've started having interesting feelings of for the first time. First time, I'm like, hmm, okay. I might start wanting to deploy this skill against other things. Like, yes, I'm very happy of who I am as a philanthropist and I do good deeds and things of that nature. But there's a lot of other things I can do with this propaganda machine that is going to be interesting and I'm starting to have those feelings. So I already am recognizing I may do this for who knows what other reasons or what kind of things, but for me it was just. Honestly, it was very obvious in the same way that maybe somebody sitting in a trash can right now poor and has nothing and looks themselves like in a puddle and says, you're not winning. I literally looked at myself that exact way in the rear view. I can tell you exactly where in the rear view mirror on i95 and around Karlstadt, New Jersey. I literally looked myself directly in my eye and said, you're not gonna win. You're not winning. You're just not winning.

You're just not squeezing. You've got this big fucking orange. It's a fucking Boulder orange, Gary. Squeeze it.

All right, we're going to take one.

More and we'll go way in the back here.

Hi, Gary and Ryan. Thanks for the presentation. I'm Ty from Fresno, California. If you know where it is, don't ever go there.

The question I have for you two is actually about expansion and contraction. Yes. I haven't experienced that. It was very tough. I went through some expansion and at one time I was leveraging somewhere over a million dollar in my, you know, derivative market. And. And when I get so close to my dream, for some reason I effed up really bad.

Because you over well because you held your breath. You're be not for some reason because you decided to go high risk, high reward in your actions, which by the way, the timing and serendipity allows sometimes for it to work out and sometimes it doesn't. But it wasn't because of some reason you played the game of high risk, high reward. Which is why when he said, who's the logical voice? I said, me, motherfucker. You know, I don't play that game. And so when people say, gary, when are you gonna buy the Jets? Five years. I'm like, are you an idiot? I don't play that game. I need 25, 30 years. I'm a tortoise in a hare's costume, right? So go Ahead. Yeah, that's why I, you know.

You know, it's funny because I was sitting there, I thought I was one of the hardest working person until I hear Gary say that he don't eat.

And I said, you know what? I was in it for the wrong reason. So I gotta fix myself. I feel like I'm lazy because I sleep like about eight hours a day.

That fucking is crazy. Yeah. Well, no, by the way, real quick, just so I'm fully always on record, I'm a big fan of sleep. I think it's healthy. That's just math too. Nobody's gonna win on three hours of sleep every day. The vine story, that was three hours of sleep for three weeks. Fucking slept 19 hours that next Saturday. So sleep is good. Eight's not bad. I mean, look, six would be better than eight. That gives you two more hours to fucking do something.

So basically what happened to me was I become so depressed and sometime in my dream I. I had a dream that my wife was reaching her hand out and try to choke me. I went negative in the red zone. So I lost the house, all my retirement and things like that. But one day I become emotional and I decided to go for a bike ride, which I haven't ride forever. And I took my mountain bike, went out.

To the poorest side of town to try to figure out what I don't want. And the street called Washington, where I can get killed at any time, basically in Fresno, in the west side. And then after that, I ride my bike all the way to the richest side of town and try to figure out what I want. And next thing you know, I was about five hours into riding and I was by the river. I got so tired I fell asleep. And by the time I wake up, I talk to my wife, I say, I probably, you know, I'm so tired. I think I figured out who I am during that trip, but I was so tired that I couldn't get back up because behind me was a hill. I came down, you know, and it was a hill. So I have to ride back for forever there. But the question was.

In your experience, have you ever come to the time where you're going through a quick expansion? Do you prepare yourself or foresee a contraction ahead of you?

So what I do is in two businesses that I've operated, they had hyper growth, but they were based on complete and utter practicality.

The only thing that I can't hedge against in my business is my death. Everything else is very calculated. Because the difference between you and I so Far. And the best part is, you know what's amazing about life is you're so much younger than you realize. Like, if somebody took. I'm the patient. I'm the most patient guy I know. Which again, based on my energy, confuses people until they get to know me. If somebody told me how young I would be in spirit at 40, at 22, I would have been in a coma. I would have been that patient, right? What's crazy to me is I listen to you, and that's a very intense story that you're sharing with everybody. And you told it in a funny way. I thought you were about to tell us that you entered the Tour de France. You know.

But what's really cool is I'm looking, I'm like. And what's amazing about entrepreneurship, you know who I feel bad for? Athletes. I feel really bad for professional athletes because they only have a window, right? Like if they decide. I thought of you as an athlete, actually, when you were talking that if you made your money and you were number one draft pick and you were in the NFL and during those seven years, you just fucked up. You were impatient, you hooked up with too many girls, you drank, you didn't do the right things. When you're 32, there's just no going back. It's over. The greatest thing that we all have in this room is that we decided to be business people and that you could, like, you're like, I'm 40. I'm gonna be a businessman in 40 years. Like, we get to play forever. And so you get to learn from that. The difference between you and I, the reason I don't contract and will never contract is I don't try to over expand. I'm outrageously patient. I can wait to get mine and always could. I was 29 years old, built a huge business, and was making $47,000 a year take home. And I had friends who were making a buck fifty on Wall street, new cars, hanging out every weekend. And I'm 28, 29, working 7:30 to 10pm you know, like. And like this whole Gary Vee thing that you guys, all that only started when I was 30. Like, like you just have more time than you think. And so I don't think I will because it's not in my behavior to leverage myself to where I don't have control. And I can lose it because I don't want that to happen. And it's because it's not in my actions. So maybe I, at this point, at 40, have left 25, 50, $100 million on the table by not accelerating. But I'm gonna get there and I don't wanna ride the bike fucking in the bad part of town.

Gary, thank you for being here.

Thank you so much.

What I got out of my time with Gary Vaynerchuk was a high level view of how he thinks and a.

Little bit of a tweak on how.

I need to think about my businesses in order to get the Cleveland Indians. What I didn't get so much was the specific business stuff from Gary, but that's not what he talks about. However, some of the most popular speakers from last year were those who got a little bit more into the nitty gritty of the businesses that they were building and sharing a little bit more on the how to piece. So we've gone really heavy on that piece In Freedom fast lane live 2016 last year our most popular speaker was Jeff Hoffman, who you'll hear from through the rest the of of this binge series. So you can go through that one and you'll hear that that talk. We are focusing really heavily on those types of speakers. This year you're going to hear from John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods Markets. You're going to hear from Peter Diamandis. Peter freaking Diamandis is going to be there. Alicia Silverstone, billionaire Jesse Itzler. It's going to be absolutely incredible. Including the presentation from Mike Diller where he talks about how he built one business to fund the billion dollar business. He built the cash flow business that made a few million bucks so he could invest in the big disruptor. We're going to unpack that in detail at Freedom Fast Lane Live tickets go on sale towards the end of September. But if you're on the Freedom Fast Lane newsletter, you got an early bird link with a discount code. So if you open up your email, check through your inbox, check through your archives, you can get tickets now, but those end at the end of August, those go away at the end of August and then we do our big push for the tickets to the rest of the world. So if you're not on our list, go get on the list or you can wait until we're open to the public, which will be towards the end of September. So I hope you'll join us. This is one thing that you're not going to want to miss. Mark Jenny, my best friend in the world, you can hear his presentation in this binge series. He even said this is the one event that I'm not going to miss and he was on stage. So he said it was the best event he had ever been to. I can almost guarantee you you'll walk out saying the same thing. So join us in Austin for Freedom Fast Lane Live. You can wait until tickets go on sale at the end of September or you can get on our list and you can get a discount code the next time we send it out. If you want to get your ticket and make sure that you get there now. Alright, so we'll see you in December and enjoy the rest of this series. For Freedom Fast Lane Live.