Gratitude & Grit: How To Grow in 2024 – Gary Vaynerchuk | 1124 | Dave Asprey

Really, if I could accomplish anything in this podcast, it would be to encourage you to go try the thing you've been debating. And I know for all of you, literally, the fundamental reason that you haven't yet started posting on social media, to do the thing, because that's what you would do. We live in 20, 23, 24. Is because you're genuinely concerned about the judgment.

That's totally true. Right.

And the judgment can come from your mother. Right. Like the judgment can come from your spouse. The judgment can come from your children. These are important people. They can come from your co workers, your boss, your best friend. And then, unfortunately, it can come from Johnny Pants 47, because you once posted something and he said you were ugly or stupid or you're wrong. Right? Wrong. And so for me, the level even above, like, it doesn't matter, which is absolutely true, is what about having empathy for your mom, who's always been negative and has always put you down? Because I promise you, her mom or dad or both did the same to her. The reason I've been able to continue to go, Dave, is I'm able to go because I have empathy and compassion for the people that are trying to tear me down, not anger.

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Today's guest needs no introduction. If I say those magic words, Gary V. You've probably heard of him. If not, you probably should try social media or something like that. Gary's, I think, changed the world for the better. He's not a scientist. He's not a guru, not an inventor, but he's a hell of a business person and actually has inspired a ton of people and. And is just a heck of an entrepreneur. This is his second time on the show. He's a chairman of Vayner X, Vaynermedia, Vayner Sports. He's built really small businesses. He goes to garage sales. He buys baseball cards and shoes and all sorts of weird crap that I don't really understand. And we go back in time because he established one of the first E commerce wine sites way back in the day. Now, Gary, Virtual Vineyards did. Was that you?

Oh, my God, no. I was. I was winelibrary.com but I remember Virtual Vineyards very well.

So Virtual Vineyards and me were the first two companies to sell anything online. As far as I could tell. I beat them by a couple days with my caffeine T shirts.

I love it.

Yeah. Way back in the day. So it's funny, we go back that time, we're going to talk about marketing and what's changed in 2024 in growing a business. And a little bit about gratitude, which is one of the things I love about what you do is you talk about that so much. So you and I were old school entrepreneurs.

Yes.

And if you were, say, in your mid-20s today, or maybe you're looking at a career transition, there's a lot of us who are going to be doing career transitions in the next couple of years here. How would you look at things?

You know, it's. First of all, thank you for having me on. And honestly, I love your audience. So the answer to this question is going to be pretty fun. You know, it's funny you said not a scientist. I think of myself that way. I'm not kidding. I was just about to say I've been in the lab. And what that means is I've been in my head. You know, people see me, especially people that don't know me as well here, may see me super loud, super New Jersey, maybe a couple curse words. And I'm very empathetic to the first glance, being like, is this guy for real? Is he a blowhard? Other people love it and it clicks. Just how the world works. But what's ironic is when people see me on social media or on stages, I'm talking the whole time. Right. Even in this format, I'm going to speak a lot. I even get excited at times and interrupt you. So I apologize in advance, listening. But the reality is I spend most of my time actually thinking my favorite thing in the world is the shower, is the walk to work, is the long flight. And so I've been in the lab a lot in my own head for the last year, especially on the concept of redefining success. I think about root cause. Right. You know, I think about, like, when I think about health and wellness, I think about, like, the food system is very entrepreneurial. You know, America's a capital. Listen, I'm an entrepreneur. I love capitalism. But when capitalism, like anything in life goes too far, it does things like what's going on with our food situation. Right. Things like that. I think about these things.

You know, it's funny, I wouldn't have pegged you as someone who would call that out on the show. I mean, maybe I'm just being, you know, like, like you're, you're such a broad spectrum entrepreneur, but more media. So you're worried about the food supply too, huh?

I think about clean eating a lot Yeah, I think about laws, I think about the fact that grass fed can be worked around, but grass finished can't.

So when did this come online for you? Because I don't know that 10 years ago. This was in your conscious field. Like, what, what changed for you?

My fiance Mona, is very passionate about clean eating. That's a huge driver. But in general, I would argue that most of the good that's happened in my life is curiosity. And I'm also a kid that was born in the Soviet Union. So for example, my great grandma Anya, when we moved to New Jersey out of Queens, the first day she visited in the morning when I woke up, she made me go walk outside barefoot on the grass.

No kidding. So grandmothers are always biohackers if they.

Were trained by their grandmothers.

Right, right. Especially from the old country. Right. My grandma spent her first 75 years in the Soviet Union, which is 50 years behind America or fasting. Like, because I grew up in my dad's liquor store, I didn't eat breakfast or lunch my entire life. I still don't, predominantly. So anyway, obviously I'm very aware of your audience and it's funny because the reason I'm bringing these things up is it's how I see entrepreneurship. So I love entrepreneurship because I think it is one of the arenas in the world that allow people to maximize their joy. I love building businesses the way I see my friends who are poets, how I see my friends. I see entrepreneurship today, unlike when you and I played with it in the mid-90s, even that short ago. Now it's cool. Kids are forcing themselves to be entrepreneurs and that scares me. I want people to be entrepreneurs if they are entrepreneurs, but I'm petrified if somebody does it because they think it's the cool thing to do.

Thanks for saying that.

Well, because you know this, Dave, like, it's really lonely and hard and it hurts your self esteem because unlike school, you can't hide when you fail in entrepreneurship.

Yeah. Do you hear that interview with the founder of Nvidia?

I did not.

Well, they asked him, you know, what would you tell yourself, you know, back when you and a friend were in your college dorm starting Nvidia, what advice would you have? And his advice was, don't do was, you have no idea how much suffering this is going to cause you. And this is from one of the most successful entrepreneurs on the planet. Right?

Well, it's funny, I don't know him and I've heard many people say that through the years and I don't Think they actually mean it. I think it's a soundbite.

Yeah, I'm sure it is.

For example, I think when you're a purebred entrepreneur, this is gonna be a left field one. I actually think the adversity is the most delicious side dish.

Yeah. Cause if you're used to fighting. Correct. It changes though. I've heard your stuff has changed as well. So for me at the beginning it was even, even before bulletproof, just in tech entrepreneurship, it was like, I'm going to prove something to the world or to myself and probably more to the world. Like I'm, you know, I'm going to fight, I'm going to push.

This is very common. I think there's two fuels. There's chip on shoulder.

Right. I certainly had that and I think.

A lot of people had that. You know, I'm very fortunate. And this is. I don't love using the word lock, but this is as, as black and white like luck to me as possible. Between my DNA, the mother who was a suffocating force of positivity and optimism.

Suffocating optimism.

Suffocating optimism. But practicality, not modern parenting where you. You also add delusion, which eliminates merit. Incredibly optimistic and positive in sunshine, but held me accountable. A word that has completely disappeared from modern parenting and circumstance. I believe if I was born in America as a third generation DNA of my family entrepreneur, my life would have looked very different. But I was born in the Soviet Union and came here and grew up with the struggles that gave me outrageous perspective to gratitude. I believe, Dave, that the greatest gift is when you are born. If in the first 10 years of your life you are not an incredible means. You're lower middle class and below. This is the greatest way to be born. That money is not a thing in your family yet or maybe ever, but you have unlimited happiness. You've been taught, you've been built, you've been affected by. Money is not the variable of happiness.

That is kind of true in the science, but a lot of the studies I found, and this was before they inflated the crap out of the currency in the last three years.

Right. Fake money. All the money we've printed. Yep.

Yeah, it. It said about $74,000 of household income was about what. So I think if you're struggling all the time and you only have ramen.

Twice a week, by the way, I know people who have 200,000 but are always in debt. Oh, it's very common here. And I mean it's so funny because I talk to all My many of my employees, I can't say all because they don't all take me up on my open door policy and I don't get to everyone. But it's crazy because I'm so well known as an entrepreneur, but I'm the CEO of this company and I speak to kids all the time that work for me and they will often bring up that their parents were entrepreneurs, if they were, or anti entrepreneurs. Right. Like one of the two. Like a union man. Right. Like whatever it might be. And it's really interesting. This is so cliche. I'm sure this will land for everyone. It's interesting to watch them then react to that. Right. They either go all in on it or they go all out on it. And the ones that go all out on it tend to be the ones that lived in families, regardless of how well they were doing. Always stressing about money because, you know, there's also the other part in society that we've lost, which is there's making money, but there's also saving money.

Yeah.

And you know, Dave, you and I grew up when people talked about saving money. There are people that I know, and especially in this new world with inflated dollars like you just talked about, who make $1 million a year and don't have a dollar to the name because they're buying dumb shit.

It's a real problem. I kind of cringe when I see, you know, guys with, you know, 25 with a Ferrari and all that. Even if you have the Money when you're 25, you probably don't the Ferrari.

I cringe less about the savings money. I always ask myself, does he need that to patch up an insecurity? Are we using things to make ourselves happier? Which gets me all the way back. I'm sorry, audience, but I'm coming all the way back to the answer to a question. What would I say to 25 or 45 year old, depending on start or transition? Please pick something you actually like.

So it hasn't changed that much because of AI or anything like that? No, because it's true.

I think it's incredibly hard. And if you're going to build something for yourself, you don't know if you're destined to have a $10 million business or a $300,000 business. But if you love it, if you love Star Trek more than anything in the world and you want to build a business around that passion, you start a podcast, you make content for social media that then leads to Creative Commons product like T shirts, or you create like Anything, literally. That's what's so amazing about the world now. You create anything so easy, anything from a beanie to a protein powder. That maybe is a slang term that Spock said in episode four of season three. I don't know Star Trek very well, but I'll use Star Wars. Greedo was my favorite Star wars character. Tier 7 character in the Star wars ecosystem. But like when you, when you know something deeply or you love something deeply. We live in an unprecedented time in the world where the Internet, the blockchain AI, you have these, the mobile device. You and I, when we started our stuff back in the day, we didn't live in this lucky time where we could have just done organic content and got free distribution. Social media is free distribution. You know how insane that is?

It's so crazy. You know that caffeine T shirt I talked about a long time ago? I sold it to 16 countries in Alt drugs caffeine on Usenet, which has been basically read it from 1990. Right. And it was the first time someone had done that and it wasn't that much money, but I was just trying to pay my rent and tuition. So I was happy about it. And it was very scrappy. And it's one of those things though. All I had to do was talk about it to my people because I finally found my people. But now you can find new people anywhere.

Well, even better. In the same way that I was on Prodigy and then the Internet, Prodigy on the E. Robert Parker, Mark Squire's bulletin board, talking about wine. Yeah. Find my community and then make them aware of Wine Library. You and I had to spend hours, countless hours building community to have a community today. Wine Library TV started on February 21, 2006. YouTube itself was was created launched on December 15, 2005. Within two months, or roughly a little more than two months after YouTube existed, I started a long form wine show about wine on YouTube. I made a 20 minute video. I posted it, 19 people watched it. Maybe today 2006. Gary with his, which I was born with, my charisma and capability to communicate. And my wine knowledge at that point was more than half my life because I started learning about it at 14. That first video, Dave might be watched by 800,000 people. The first one.

Wow.

I mean it could also have gotten 80. But anybody who's listening right now, let me just give you the universal truth. If you do not take social Media Seriously in 2024, it doesn't mean you're going to go out of business. It doesn't mean that you're bad, but you are absolutely missing out on opportunity to create your thing. That is incredible in the speed and time, if you produce content on the Internet of building awareness and opportunity. Because the algorithm now is letting the creative find its audience. When I started doing social back in the mid-2000s, and you and everybody else, all of us, when we started doing 2000, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, it was more like email marketing. You have to content and slowly but surely build a following, aka list. And then you would post and 30 or to 40% just like email newsletters of your audience would see it. Today what we have is the interest graph, not the social graph. The social graph was build the following post. The interest graph is make something and let the algorithm, the AI, find the audience of the billions of people it has on the platform. That is remarkable.

It's crazy remarkable because you don't have to do all the sleuthing. Are you worried though? And this is something that I, I'm really thinking about. When podcasts first started.

Yes.

You had an early podcast. I had an early podcast. Right. You have these conversations and now there's a. There's one guy, every single guest I've had on my show for 10 years, he'll call them the next day and try and schedule the same interview. Right? And there's a lot of kind of people who will go to a website. In fact, you probably even have some people in your group. Here's how to ethically steal this business model. No, it's not ethical stealing, but they're going in there. Just mirroring a competitor's website. It feels like the, the amount of new information and signal to noise is going down and we're just getting an echo chamber of a bunch of people saying the same thing but moving their hands differently. And now with AI avatars, is it going to be impossible to find the good stuff versus all the copies of good stuff that are lower quality? Cop.

I've never had the audacity to judge what people decide is good.

Mm. Oh, no, hold on. That's bullshit. You sell wine. Yes, but there's ratings for wine.

There is. And if you go watch the thousand episodes of Wine Library tv, I would always say, trust your palate. I would say the reason I'm doing the show is I'm tired of people only buying what Wine Spectator and Parker buy set and give good ratings. And then I would say vehemently, almost every episode, hey, by the way, I just rated this wine 94 points. But I love Big League Chew. I love beef jerky. I love. I love oysters. I love sweet breads. I love Jolly Ranchers and lemonheads. Unless you like every single thing I like, then this was the thing I said 40,000 times. You have to trust your own palate. So I value craft. I think when the story you just told me, my brain went to, yeah, but he or she may not be as good at interviewing as you are. So they can have the same exact guests, but you might ask different questions. And even if you decided to ask the same questions, I believe in energy. I believe that the intent.

Very true.

I believe in the moment. I believe in all these other variables. So, you know, to me, I listen. I've had a career where people have done slight variations and tweaks and very slight and have built things. But I always say, but what about me? I was affected by Randy the Macho Man Savage wrestling interviews, and I loved Chris Rock and Eddie Murphy. And, like, when I watch my keynotes, like, meaning I don't watch them, like, when I'm on stage and I do keynotes somewhere about a year or two in, I'm like, wait a minute. This feels a lot like Macho man and Eddie Murphy mixed up with a little bit of, like, you know, I think that's how the world has always worked to your point. The size and scale we're playing at now. Yeah, right. The size and scale we're playing at now. And there's a lot. And AI is coming, but I don't know. You know, it's funny, maybe this goes back to being suffocated by practical optimism. I'm optimistic. I believe that the cream does rise to the top. I believe that you don't get to choose how much competition you have. Right.

I don't.

You really don't. And I like to figure out the merit of it. And I also have enjoyed. And this is also fun being with you because we've been through this journey and. And have seen each other from afar, up close at times. We have moments. Right, Dave? Like, you and I both have had moments. Yeah. Sometimes we're hotter and winning more than we are. Like, you know, you think about all the personalities that have come up in the Internet age that you and I can think of now. Early podcasters, early Twitter personalities. Some come and go.

Yeah.

They have a good year. Other people have been consistently around. Some people have family events or their own personal. This is why I want people to choose things they love. Many of the personalities that have fallen off have fallen out because of burnout.

It's so common, right? You haven't burned out and you run, man. I feel it. Like, I. I've seen your energy. It's. It's consistently high. It's because you like what you do and because of your optimism. But there's probably something else in there, too.

Gratitude.

It's gratitude.

And that's when I tell you, man, God, this is like, so fucking even emotional. Like, I just don't know how to value anything other than the health of the people around me. I don't know how to do it. Of course I am proud of my career. Of course I'd like to do well. I'd like everything I do to do well. Of course I'm grateful for the accolades. I'm empathetic to the people that want to tear down my building because they don't know me. And I don't mind when they leave a negative comment like, I'm empathetic. I just. The reason I will never run out of energy is I don't value this stuff enough. I will tell you something. I know we don't know each other that well, but I know that we, like, you know, it's one of those things. We have a good sense of each other, even though we haven't had the luxury of that kind of time yet. And I say, yeah, because I hope we get those dinners and times.

Me too.

I don't value myself based on my professional career, even though it's my passion. I don't get self validation from Gary Vee or the successes or the followers or the money or the headlines. I just don't. I get validation from the people that actually know me, how they speak about me behind my back.

See, that is something that. If I could have internalized that when I was in my early 20s, that would have been life changing for me. And I write all my stuff, and I feel like you do, too. Just like, this is what you need to know. And if you learn it early on, it profoundly changes what you do. The amount of time you're trying to prove stuff to other people or you're responding to trolls and all that kind of stuff, it sucks the life out of you. And if you just say it doesn't matter.

And then if you say a level above, which is, don't feel bad for you, feel bad for them. Dave, could you. For everybody who's listening, really, if I could accomplish anything in this podcast, it would be to encourage you to go try the thing you've been debating. And I know for all of you. Literally, the fundamental reason that you haven't yet started posting on social media to do the thing, because that's what you would do. We live in 20, 23, 24, is because you're genuinely concerned about the judgment.

And that's totally true. Right?

And the judgment can come from your mother, right? Like the judgment can come from your spouse. The judgment can come from your children. These are important people. They can come from your co workers, your boss, your best friend. And then unfortunately, it can come from Johnny Pants 47, because you once posted something and he said you were ugly or stupid or you're wrong. Right? Wrong. And so for me, the level even above, like, it doesn't matter, which is absolutely true, is what about having empathy for your mom who's always been negative and has always put you down because I promise you, her mom or dad or both did the same to her. The reason I've been able to continue to go, Dave, because again, this is a fun interview because we don't get to catch up often and I'm sure you. But we're both watching, always is. I'm able to go because I have empathy and compassion for the people that are trying to tear me down, not anger.

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You're always welcome if you, if you find you need a job at any point to be a facilitator at 40 years of Zen. This is my neuroscience company where I teach entrepreneurs with neuroscience how to do gratitude and empathy and forgiveness so they can get that state. I spent six months rewiring my brain to do exactly that. But you, how did you. How'd you pick this up? Is this from your mom?

100%. And the DNA. And it was. Look, I was such a poor student. I'm not a reader, I'm not a consumer. I'm like this very interesting consumer. I'm consuming everything, thus almost rendering me consuming nothing. Deeply curious, always gravitated towards humans. Here's a good one. My mom, if she was, you know, she's very behind the scenes. My dad would do a podcast. He likes the limelight. My mom's very behind the scenes. My mom would tell you that the weirdest thing, the most interesting, intriguing thing about my childhood was starting at about 3 to 6, predominantly in Queens in the early 80s, late 70s. We would go outside to get some fresh air or whatever we were doing, and I would pull her arm. I would gravitate to go sit on a bench with a stranger who's over 80.

Holy crap. Okay, tell me more.

And my great grandfather, who passed away unfortunately pretty quickly after we got here, was my best friend in my youth that there, you know, now. And I can, I don't remember 3 to 5, but I remember 6 to 10 when, when grandparents would visit my friends. And again, I'm an 80s baby, so we were outside at all the time. And when a grandparent would come for the holidays or a birthday and they'd come to the park where we were playing basketball or baseball or wiffle ball or football. I would always go out of my way to go talk to them. You know, don't Forget I was 34 years old before even I started any level of a public life. I know myself because I lived it like I spent my 20s and my early 30s building a business for my father. I owned none of wine library. I never got paid much. I wanted to give back to my parents. I was very unique. I'm a first generation immigrant. I was born in the old country. I was in a cocoon. I wasn't a good student. I didn't go to a university that expanded my world I like was family business, immigrant life, Cocoon didn't go out. Like I was closed in this beautiful closed environment that made it unique. Which is why now in my 40s, I'm like, Ah, I loved wisdom. I'll give you one right now. We champion youth.

Yeah.

We want to look younger. We love the kids, have more say, you know, Gen Z, even young millennials have more say with their parents and in the workplace than our generations. We clap for the youth. Seventy years ago, we clapped for the elderly.

Wow.

And I believe we're in the pre dawn of going back. I believe in the next 20 to 30 years after this chapter of our over obsession of youth, we will counter it because that's what we do over 50 and 100 year windows. And I believe that you will start to see signals right now. No, because we're in generational warfare. I've never seen the level of judgment of boomers versus Gen Z and Gen Z versus Millennials. It's really unfortunate. Humans have found another thing to tribalize, to be bad at each other. And it breaks my heart. And back to social media and branding. I believe you will see more breakout stars who are in their 70s, 80s and 90s.

Oh, yeah.

If you're listening right now and you're 70 and older, please start a podcast called the Wisdom Week or There you go what I've learned. And don't be insecure. Everybody who's 80 has something massive to put into the world. Tell us about your life. Tell us about what you learned. Because that's what I've always been drawn to. So I think, to answer your question, question, where did this come from? I think I came out a 90 year old man.

Wow. You know, this is also just an enormous drop of knowledge. The reason I started the biohacking movement is because when I was 26 and my health was failing and I had brain fog and arthritis and just all the bad stuff, I hung out with a room like 60 to 100 people in their 70s, 80s and 90s who taught me longevity before it was supposed to be done. And that led to me becoming an expert in the field. I didn't know how to do it, so I asked the old people, right? And old people know a lot. And the crazy thing is they want to share it because they have a lifetime of wisdom and they got nothing else to do with it but just share it.

Especially now because unfortunately are not respecting their elderly, especially in America more than ever. And they're just sitting around with so much to give. Which is why I'M telling all of them that are listening. Don't wait for your grandchildren to ask. Start a podcast. Yeah, go make tiktoks. Tell us. I'll tell you the exact month. In August of 1982, my Babushka Anya, when I woke up, instead of making me breakfast, took me outside in my bare feet and made me walk on the grass for 15 minutes. And now it's cool to do grounding. They know.

They totally know.

When we used to drive on the highway, my grandma Esther and my babushka Anya, they would go crazy when they would see something in the grass on the side of the highway, and we would pull over and we would pick it and we would bring it home and they would dry it and make it tea. Now, I've learned all these years later, that's that it's a St. John wart or.

Yeah, St. John's wort.

Yeah, right. It's called Zvita boy in Russian. We would literally be driving to, like, the beach or to the store, and out of nowhere, I mean, we'd be listening to, like, Michael Jackson or Cyndi Lauper on the flip radio. If we, you know, out of nowhere.