Gary Vee's Secret Business Domination Plan

Here's the deal. Neil and I have been traveling and we're slightly behind on the podcast right now. So, we are going to share with you some of the greatest hits. You're going to like these and they're going to be very helpful to you. And I would encourage you to listen to them all the way through. And these are our top podcasts or some of our top interviews. So, check them out. Gary, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

So, first question I have, how are you planning on buying the New York Jets? How far off are you?

I think I plan on it by building 2 meaningful, maybe 3 meaningful businesses that I own more so than, let's say, starting a fund or investing. And so the 2 big ones in my universe are VaynerX, the holding company that holds VaynerMedia and the other several marketing companies in that, and then VeeFriends, the intellectual property company that I started as an NFT project. And I feel like what I've always planned on with VaynerX and VaynerMedia was to build a private equity firm on top of that. So I've always thought about my mission in marketing when I started the company 14 years ago was if I built the best contemporary marketing, I thought in Star Wars terms, if I built the best marketing Death Star in the world, meaning, and I used the Death Star, if you're a Star Wars nerd, if it pointed its powers against a planet, it could blow up a planet.

Yeah.

So if I could build the best marketing Death Star, and whether I pointed it towards a bottled water or a political campaign or a nonprofit, whatever I pointed it to, if it always did remarkable, better than any other way that it could have done that, well, that would be the ultimate leverage in the business world. And private equity is an industry I'm fascinated by because I think it's right. And I'm a business nerd. The idea of buying something and doing it better, it's like fun.

Yeah.

It's like operations. That's what I love to do. But I've always looked at it as they're good at They're good at CFO, they're good at COO, they're good at CEO, they're good at financial arbitrage, and they're all— and I mean the best ones, the Apollos, the Carlyles, the BlackRocks— they're all really bad at marketing.

Mm-hmm.

And I mean really bad. And I have some nice relationship with some of the top guys and gals in the game. And what you learn is they understand the Excel sheet of it all. They understand a lot, but marketing is a black hole for all of them. That is consistent to what I see in the Fortune 500 ecosystem. I get to work with some of the biggest brands in the world, and it is very clear to me that the way I define marketing in a day trading attention and the way they define marketing is different. I've been able to find the middle so that we can work with them, but it is my everyday hope that when we work with them, that I'm moving them more towards our side of things, right? I always tell my people at Vayner, we get paid to think and strategize for them, not only run the media and do the creative and all that. All that leads to a long rant of the 3 entities that I think could get me to the kind of business success that could allow me to fulfill my 4th grade dream is VeeFriends, VaynerX, and this private equity firm that I'm going to build on top of VaynerX, meaning the talent from VaynerX will come over and we'll be the first private equity firm that creates hypergrowth of the businesses we buy, not just operational efficiency.

Right.

At 48, if I execute that for the next 20 years, at 68, I feel like I'm then in a position to make that kind of play.

Got it. Did you always see it that way when you first started?

No. I mean, in 3rd grade or 4th grade when I was like, I'm going to buy the Jets, I didn't even know what that meant. That was just the time when I realized I wasn't good enough to play for the Jets anymore.

Yeah.

By 3rd grade, big shout out to Wakeel Shaw and David Johnson and Rashawn Courtney, the kids that taught me in 3rd and 4th grade that even though I had good hand-eye coordination and a lot of passion, I was not born with the God-gifted ability to juke out or out-athletic, have size, speed, or strength to compete at the highest levels.

Yeah.

And I was a very practical kid. By that time, I was like, okay, because first, second, third grade was, I'm going to play sports when I grow up. Fourth grade was like, I'm a businessman, because by then lemonade stands, washing cars had come into my life. And then by sixth grade, I'm a baseball card ninja. Like, I'm collecting and selling and making like real money for sixth grade, 1985 or whatever it was. So Back then, it was like I didn't even know. And then somewhere in high school, I realized I took a U-turn. I was going to take a little bit of time before I got to my own goals. I fell in love with my dad's business, the liquor store. And more importantly, I started collecting the emotional thoughts of how much I admired, appreciated, was grateful, and deeply loved my parents. And by the time I was 16, 17, I also had a level of confidence because of the baseball cards and the liquor store that I had real entrepreneurial Real skill before it was this thing.

Yeah, right. Yeah.

You know how old are you?

I'm 37.

So you I'm I'm enough older that maybe this will hit for you. But like you might have been the era where it first started hitting. But like when I was growing up, there was no such thing as entrepreneurship. It wasn't cool. There was no Gary Vees.

Yeah, right. Yeah.

So like I didn't even know. I thought I was going to be a businessman my whole life. That's what I said when I got bad grades. But I realized I wanted to do something for my parents. So I realized in high school, I'm going to go work in my dad's store and I'm going to build the living shit out of that business for him.

Mm-hmm.

And that's what I did from 22 to 34. And that was— that will, you know, I have a very good feeling that when I'm in my 80s and 90s and I'm doing stuff like this, I will always refer to that as the best chapter of my career. Because unfortunately, if I'm 90, there's a likelihood my dad won't be around at that point. And I will— and I'm saying this for all the kids at home right now that are, let's say, 10 to 20 and feel like they've got it. A lot of those kids want to not go into their family business and they want to go and like be better than their mom or dad, or they don't want to deal with the bullshit.

Yeah.

I will say with this, I ate a lot of bullshit. I built my dad's business substantially for him. I worked 7, 6 days a week constantly, and I made absolutely no money.

$3 to $60 million, right?

$3 to $60 million, 22 to 34 years old, never making $100,000 a year, like working every Saturday. Like it was retail. It was— but, but I sit here today and even though at 34, when I started my now career that people know, no question at 34 there was some level of resentment lingering. It was small, 3, 4, 5% of like, fuck, man, I built this huge business for my dad. I have no money. Like, especially once I started putting up my head and seeing what the world was.

Yeah. Do you have regret?

Well, this is where I'm going. I think you're going to like this. And I'm trying to be very transparent here because I think it may inspire someone to join their family business that wasn't going to before hearing this. And I think they will meet me in 30 years and thank me for this. This is where I'm going. To your point, at the time I had resentment. It was small. I'm going to paint numbers, 3%, 4%, which wasn't bad. It was more like I would— my dad and I, I would razz him a little bit and he would, you know, there was a little I can tell you right now, now there's zero. There's— when I say there's zero regret, I already at 48 can tell you right to your face it will be the single best decision I ever made professionally. Now I'm going to get a little emotional. Those feelings, the fact that I know I have all those stories with my dad, it's insane, bro. I was just with my dad on spring break with my kids. It's just the best. Like laughing on those inside jokes, joking about the fights now that used to piss me off. And yet I still had my whole life in front of me. Yes, I was 34 and didn't have a whole lot. Yes, I made a remarkably off-the-charts great decision in that transition of taking my $280,000 in savings and investing in Facebook and Twitter. So of course that accelerated things. But those 2 investments still sit in my bank, and everything I've lived on and built— I started from zero with VaynerMedia in a conference room like this with my brother, from dead scratch at 34, and had plenty of time. To get it done, and so what I'm saying because I know this audience because I admire this audience that is of your very successful show. I'm just going to say it nice and slow. If you're good enough, if you're good enough, if you're great, if you've got it, if you're a player in this game of entrepreneurship, the years that you would go if you decide to go help your family business expand its restaurant business or dry cleaning business or whatever you know classic. often immigrant, but not always immigrant family businesses. If you go and give them 22 to 30, a couple things will happen. One, you're gonna learn a lot of shit pretty fast 'cause you're gonna be in the trenches of a family business, not in a corporation where you're not learning any fucking real shit. Two, if you go straight into your game, that's epic. And I, I, listen, I know if I was born in this era, I wouldn't have went into my dad's business. The internet would've been too much. It would've been too seductive.

Yeah.

I would've been— I would've made millions in high school, let alone, you know?

Right.

So I think that's real life. So I can't sit here and say, go into your family business where I know if 15-year-old me is listening, he's going direct to fucking consumer. But I do think you'll be happy that you did it, even if you get into big fights with your family. Remember, if you don't choose money over the love of your family, it will always be okay. It's always ego of the family members that's the issue, not the money. And here's the big one. I was 33 years old. Let me put it that way. I was 33 years old. Working full-time in a liquor wine store, you have time if you're good enough. And so anyway, that was my pit stop to do some mitzvah for my family. And then I've been on my my actual solo journey since thirty-four. So last fourteen years I've been building my world, and I'm feeling pretty good about it. Cool.

One more thing. I want to hang on the jets for one more one, and then I have some I have a lot of questions. But um. How do you plan on structuring that deal for the Jets?

I think because I know that I don't have the financial ability to buy the Jets within the next 5 years, I'm not spending too much time on it. Meaning even in the last couple years, the NFL is now more open to private equity investors. By the time I'm ready, there's going to be so much change. Who knows what the blockchain, with new regulation, with cryptocurrency, with the new world order, the BRICS Alliance, the US, the modern Cold War. I mean, I'd like to think I'm thoughtful enough to know that by the time I'm ready to strike in 20 years, the model that I— like, the model might be $5 from every human on Earth, or it might be borrowing against all my assets, or I made the wealth. There's so many ways to—

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Or I may meet 2 or 3 people tomorrow, let alone some people on my mind right now, that become my greatest business friends who also might be diehard Jet fans and they might be my partner group. So there's just— it's too far out for me to know. I just know that since somewhere around 1985, I've wanted to try to buy the Jets. I will say it right now on film. Look at Mark Cuban. I mean, let's say I wanted to buy the Mavericks. I would have never in a million years thought that Mark Cuban was going to sell it this year.

No way.

A year ago, I'd have been like, okay, Mark's a little bit older than me, and boom. I know I'm 100% not in control when the Johnson family decides to do what they're going to do. I can only control being a great enough businessman and entrepreneur to create the wealth creation that gives me a shot. I spend 100,000% of my energy thinking about that.

Yeah.

I don't think about deal structure. I don't think about the day. I don't fantasize about it. And most of all, I don't need to actually accomplish it. And this is the curveball to the whole thing. What I didn't know for a long time until probably my mid-30s, even before the whole GaryVee thing started, somewhere around then I'm like, oh, I don't like need to buy the Jets. I need to try to buy the Jets. And I would say for a lot of entrepreneurs that are listening, that will probably resonate for the purebred, not the people that use entrepreneurship to make money to hide their insecurities.

Right.

I mean, for the purebred entrepreneurs that will do it for the game, the ones like me that want to wake up at 6 AM on a Saturday to go garage sailing because buying something for $5 and selling it for $80 is fun because you're an entrepreneur. To that guy and girl, I think they'll understand what I'm saying with, I don't need to buy the Jets. I need to try to buy the Jets.

You're more so talking about it's really respecting or focusing on the journey more so than the endpoint.

Yeah. When I first started hearing like, it's the journey, not the— I'm like, oh, like I didn't— like, you know, it took me a while before like I'd heard it over and over again. I'm like, oh shit. Like, I'm central casting for that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Even to my love of losing in entrepreneurship. I love the game of entrepreneurship more than I like myself. And what I mean by that is I get a sick, almost twisted joy out of when I lose because I'm like, good. Because you learn. Yeah, because I'm like— and even more than that. Yes, of course.

Yeah, yeah.

No, it's like, I don't know if you see this, I'm getting goosebumps. It's like this sick respect for the game.

Yeah.

That I like when the game fucked me.

Yeah.

Like I wasn't good enough.

Yeah.

Somebody else did it better or I didn't see it. It's like, it's like being such a good fighter, actually. I think about great fighters. I got to talk to some of these MMA guys that I respect. I have to have dinner with one or two of the best of all time and ask them, do you think it's cool that you got knocked out because you enjoy the fact that you understand why you fucked up?

Yeah.

Like, oh, I didn't fucking see his feint. Do you love the game so much that even at your own expense, there's some sort of joy beyond just learning, some sort of ideological respect for the whole thing? I respect entrepreneurship so much. I I believe in merit so much. The reason I loved sports so much is either you win or lose.

Yeah.

Right? You play. That's why I love fighting. Like, you fight, someone's going to win or lose. It's a fight. That's why I wish every boxing and MMA fight could not end in judging because that's not merit. Just let them fight until somebody loses. Like, that would be the ultimate sport in my opinion.

I like that you mentioned that because we did an acquisition a couple of years ago. Didn't work out, right? But it's like, But the cleanup of everything and the comeback, right? It's like, oh, that's fucking good, right? Good for you.

Good for you. No, as a matter of fact, I learned pretty early in this latest 14-year journey. I would say it's funny to hear you say that. Here's a fun thing. I try to think about things I'm not doing well because I want to talk more about things I'm not doing well. But the reality is I'm very calculated, so I don't mess up often in business. But 2 things stand out for me currently. One, When I invest, I've come to realize 50% of the time I'm doing a charity. I'm just writing a check because I like the person.

Just like an angel check.

And it's straight charity. And I've got to really fix that because, as you can imagine, all of those have gone to zero. Number 2, I was very bad at M&A early on. I was doing little deals. It was just fun. It was almost like cool and interesting. I can't believe I'm buying. And all of those didn't work either. And I've gotten much better. When I bought PureWow.com for VaynerX, That was already, thank God, the 9th time I did it. The first 8 were small enough that I could make it to go to zero, but in a weird way, that made it go to zero.

Mm-hmm.

You know?

Yep, yep, yep.

And sometimes you have to just go through those. And hopefully that means by the time I get to private equity land in a decade, I'll be really good because I've learned these silly mistakes now.

By the way, I have to ask you something. So the thing that you just did with the, uh, you're like, by the way, I have to talk to a couple MMA fighters. So, um, one of my friends, Nick Gray, asked a question on Twitter. He was like, um, Ask Gary Vee about Nick, his relationships guy. Oh, Nick Dio. Yeah. Can you talk about that?

Of course.

Is that what you just did there? Is it like he's going to set it up once he sees this clip or something?

Nick Dio? Yeah. Yeah, that runs through my mind. I mean, probably VaynerSports. So VaynerSports, my sports agency, we're very fortunate. We rep Cory Sandehagen and Stipe Miocic. I'm pretty deep in the MMA world, but let's go to Nick Dio. I think that similar to how I was one of the first people ever to have a DRock.

Mm-hmm.

Big shout out, DRock. Dustin's doing it right now, like literally follow me around and film. I think what I'm doing with Nick Dio is about to become more normalized. Nick's been with me for a decade in the VaynerX world. I like the way he moves. We speak a similar language. Much like me, he does certain things that people don't understand, which annoys them and things of that nature, but I know where his heart and energy and capability is, and I feel like And especially in my new state of being more candorous. I had a great talk with him in Miami recently that I think has really set us in a good direction, and Vegas that has set us in an even better direction. So I'm proud of myself being more candorous of how to tweak things like this because 90% was perfect. He is, he is a VP of relationships. What that means is Nick, for a living, goes out and represents me in the world with people that we feel are emerging. Often, I would say 80% emerging, 20% established. Nick is one, and Tyler Schmitt would be the other. These are the only people I would feel comfortable that would speak to someone like a Jack Harlow, who I have a nice relationship with, who I admire, who I want to help. And like, he can represent me at the Kentucky Derby with him.

Right.

He can be another liaison of scale. I am so busy, but I love relationships. So I think there's a lot of people who, there's a small group actually that will understand what I'm about to say. There's some people like myself that both love the relationship thing and love to operate. As you know, some people love to operate and they have no relationships, and other people are just relationships and they don't know how to operate.

Right.

I do both.

Yep.

But right now I'm very deep in operations land between VeeFriends and VaynerX. I'm like in it.

Yeah.

Like really in it. Actually, this is a great joy because I'm really not doing stuff. My poor PR team's like, come on, do something.

I'm like, eh.

Like I'm just busy and it's 15 hours a day. operating those 2 businesses.

Yeah.

So he's running around the world. Sometimes I'm DMing someone that I think is cool and they reply. And, you know, I'm at a nice point in my career right now, especially if they're emerging. A lot of them are like, GaryVee, what the fuck? Is this real? I'm like, I make a video. It's really me. Let me connect you with Nick Dio or hit up Zach Owens, part of that team as well, who's in the office helping me look and watch the current world. I have an obsession with the emerging talent. I love the idea of like who I was at 23, and I wish there was a 48 20-year-old version of me who would've DM'd me and be like, I see you.

Flying low.

Yeah, it would've meant the world to me. And by the way, of those people that I will speak to on DM and Scale with Nick and Tyler and Zach and Ashley and this team that I'm building, 10% of them are going to go on to be really important peeps, and it's going to be nice to be there from day one. 10% of them will go on to become great friends and/or really, really great acquaintances. 20% of them will be fun to just see at the cliché Formula 1 Vegas or a conference and just like, it's nice. Like, I'm pumped that now that we have this.

Yeah.

The next time I see you at an airport or conference, like, you know, I really enjoy relationships. And 60% will be ones and dones or never happen. That's okay. But I value that. And so I'm allocating resources with people I genuinely deeply trust. 'Cause you can imagine that's the most important thing if you have a human represent you. That's what I'm focused on.

I love that. So it sounds like Nick is, if I were to simplify this, he's kind of your chief of staff for relationships. He's a duplicate version of you.

Yeah, that would be a way you could think about it for sure. Um, he's, he's just an inner circle human that I feel I— when I tell you I don't check in on him, I mean, of course occasionally like, yo, what's up? Like, or is anything cool going on? Like, but like, I know he's sitting right now either having lunch with someone I mean, look, it's a dream fucking job. I make fun of him all the time, like, dude, you got the platinum belt. And you have to have incredible trust. I think a lot of people listening to me right now would be like, wait a minute, but then Nick's gonna leave and take all those relationships. And that may or may not be true, but don't forget, Nick has been with me for so long that like, that would only be true if I can't deliver for him, not the reverse.

Yeah.

And even if he wanted to do something for himself, that would make me happy. And it's all fine. I think the world is abundant. So yeah. I really am excited about it and I think more people should do it.

I think one thing that's underrated from my perspective with you is you're a pretty good identifier of talent. And so let's use the Raghav story as an example. So Raghav, when he first applied to work at my company, he wrote an 8,000-word blog post as an intern, right? And it's when he said—

By the way, for everyone listening, this is pre-ChatGPT, so he wrote it.

Yeah, yeah, he actually wrote it. And then when he said he was going to you, I was like, I was like, I kind of want to know the story about how you identified him and how you identify talent in general.

You know, one thing that's great about me is I don't want to say shit when I don't know or don't like talking about real talk. And he's such a key dog in my world. And just talking to him today and hung out with him this week, obviously, with the audiobook. And he's been my writing partner on the last 2 books I've written. The answer is I don't fully— it's a little hazy to me. I feel as though I'm not sure, but I think it was Andy. Yeah, I think Andy, Andy Krajniak, who led my content team, who's now the president of VeeFriends, I'm 98% sure that he hired Raghav. And the way it works in that world is similar to— and you're starting to get a sense of how I roll. Once you cross the chasm with me that I trust you, you have unlimited carte blanche, and then I watch it. So with Raghav, it was he was hired just like many other people were hired. But then I sensed month 6 in, I'm like, okay, this kid's got something. So I'm not necessarily upfront.

Yeah. Right.

So I didn't realize it from the interview process.

Right.

I realized it because I'm not good at that anyway.

Yeah.

I'm actually not. I'm so optimistic, brother, that I think everyone's going to be awesome. Yeah. I'm a little bit. Yeah. I've got that trait. Too much optimism. So my critical thinking on interviewing is sometimes flawed. But I'm remarkable once I can watch you on the field. Right? So I have no idea by resume, and I mean none, but I definitely know 6 months in if I watch. And with him, it was just very clear he was very talented.

And it's, I think for those watching, it seems like you either have it or you don't in this situation. Like it's a gut thing. Yeah?

Yeah. And I think when you're hiring, you're fully guessing. Real talk. For anybody who operates a company, they know. What is not guessing is promoting and firing. Hiring is guessing. Promoting and firing is knowing.

Yeah.

Right? And I think that that is something I've done well with promoting. I've done worse with firing because GaryVee, the character on podcasts and on stage, epic at candor. Gary Vaynerchuk, the executive, is too much of a bleeding heart, back to charity investing. And I've been overly nice, but that used to be my excuse. What the reality was, was I don't like the candor and the conflict of telling someone that I subjectively think they stink at their job. And I also thought it instilled— this was my big mistake, actually. Let me go deeper for all the people that I hope this helps. I thought it would instill fear. Hey, Dustin, I don't think you're a good manager. You're too snarky to this. I would think like Dustin's going to walk out of that meeting being like, fuck, I'm going to get fired and start like— and that was never like— I didn't know how to get to that place. I've gotten a lot better. at sitting down with people and being able to tell them, hey, I'm concerned about these things, but real talk. And I think I've also earned a little bit where I think this will land better, because I was a kid coming up a liquor store at that point. I think I'm in a better place to be able to be like, hey, hey, hey, this is not working, but real talk, fix it, because this is working great and this is working great and we just tweak this and we're like fucking cruising.

Yeah.

So I've struggled with that. And, you know, So, but I can tell you that promoting and firing is knowing, hiring is guessing. And I think people waste too much time hiring. I think too many people have pride. I think a lot of people don't fire people because they don't want to admit they were wrong.

Hmm.

And I'm in a great place with it because I think I'm wrong every time somebody starts. And what I mean by that is I know that I don't know. I know that we hired them, especially if I make the call with a direct report, that I feel like it could happen, but I don't know.

Yeah, you really don't know till like 6, 12 months in.

And as if I'm gonna listen to their fucking rec— their, uh, what is it on a resume? I don't even fucking— thank you. Like, I don't even fucking know the term. That's how much that's shit. Like, oh yes, I'm gonna call the 3 people you told ahead of time to say that you were epic, that you found in the world. Yeah, I mean, I've been bad at references. I apologize to everybody who's listening or watching. If I've ever been a reference, I can promise you I have sugarcoated the fuck out of it, right? Because I usually care more about the person than I do about the business that I don't know about. That's just real fucking talk.

Agency owners, if you want to grow faster, my partner Neil Patel and I, we are hosting live agency owner workshops in Beverly Hills, and you're going to learn how to get more clients. You're going to learn how to take yourself out of the day-to-day. You're going to learn how to recruit the right people, and you're going to be hanging out with like-minded people such as yourself. So if you want to learn more, just go to marketingschool.io/agency. Again, it's marketingschool.io/agency. Did you know that Amazon doesn't do reference checks for that reason?

Because Jeff Bezos is smart.

Yeah.

Look, real talk, I don't either. And neither— we don't really.

Yeah.

It's not helpful. Some of my mid-tier managers do it because they think it's the right thing to do. It's only because I haven't done a good job explaining it. But like, we don't— I don't give a fuck. I don't believe it for shit.

I'm with you too. I want to come back to this in a second, but I want to talk about the book too. So like, look, day trading attention, right? So actually, I got a good question. So I I was messaging my buddy this morning. So he has a $400 million a year SaaS, right? And he's like, okay, ask Gary Vee here. I'm going to repeat it. Don't give me the cliché answer. For businesses looking to win in crowded markets, what are the marketing tactics they should run today?

That's a great question. For him, it's 100% LinkedIn. But here's the problem. That's not that that's a cliché answer. It's a very simple answer. But let me break it down for him. Do I believe that if that buddy who has a $400 million SaaS business, which is enormous, if he has a SaaS business, his organization is a sales organization?

Yes.

You can't get to $400 million in SaaS without having sales DNA, which means it's in direct conflict to how I see the world. Meaning I think being in sales means you're just bad at marketing. I like it much better than when it comes to you than when you have to go sell it. Yeah, right. Nike doesn't direct market to me. I go and seek it out. Anybody listening about relationships, it's a lot better when it's coming to you than when you're chasing it. That's just the way the world works. So what I would say to that kind of business, what excites me, why I started VaynerMedia, why I want to do private equity, is I would look at his business potentially to buy it one day. That's what I hope to be in, that level.

Yeah.

97 out of 100 times, which is why I think I have the career I have right this second. I'm pretty sure that I see $200 million in top-line growth for your buddy that he can't see. 97— I don't, I don't know him. Um, I can tell you right now the non-cliché answer to that answer is it's all in LinkedIn. Now that would be like me telling you, if you want to make a lot of money and have a lot of fun and live an epic life, become a professional NBA All-Star basketball player. Yeah, right. Okay, Gary, thank you for telling me that I'm a B2B business and SaaS and I should do LinkedIn. No shit. Yeah, Sherlock. So what this book tried to attack and where I'm going to your buddy is if he understood and his team understood that if they were making 30 to 40 pieces of creative a day on LinkedIn and understood that the CPMs that his math team is saying Gary's full of shit when they listen to this podcast because they're mad at the CPM costs on LinkedIn, because unlike every other platform, they have an artificial high floor. So unlike all the other platforms that start at 5 or 10 or 15, minimal cents, I think last time I checked, which is a while ago, LinkedIn starts at $2, which fucks up everyone. The problem is for a SaaS business, it doesn't matter that TikTok might be 3 cents. You're not going to fucking sell shit on there.

Right.

LinkedIn is high-value stuff. When you go to a private club that serves high-end food and wine, it's more expensive than fucking McDonald's.

Right.

So for a SaaS business, on fucking March 29th, 2024, in this exact nanosecond, knowing how to spend media dollars on LinkedIn against creative that will actually get someone who's a CIO or a CFO or a decision maker to buy that SaaS product.

Yeah.

Knowing how to do the first second of the video, the thumbnail, the copy, the remarketing, knowing the perfect execution.

Right.

Just like training for 18 years and being God-gifted in talent and knowing how to play basketball. That is where his growth is, and I mean period end of story. Aka four hundred million dollars. Aka millions of dollars spent on LinkedIn between media and creative, but it would work.

Got it. So, and by the way, when you say forty pieces, you're not saying forty posts per day; you're saying forty ad creatives.

Correct. So you could do four to seven of those organically. You could do some of them targeted as paid media, which is a dark post in the old terminology that people know that you would do against employees of a certain company. Get back quant and qual feedback. The biggest thing that's missing, especially. especially from this audience, affiliate marketing, math, like really good operators, the math crowd, which is a lot of this crowd that's listening. The thing that's missing for them is the value of the art without any direct attribution.

Yes.

It's killing them.

Yes.

The reason I'm different than a lot of people is I understand the value of math and art.

Yep.

And I'm willing to risk a lot of money to find the 7 out of 8,000 behaviors in the art side that make the whole thing go.

Right.

And you know this, that's what's killing everyone. And they all got fucked in iOS 14.5, and they're going to continue to get fucked. Brand over everything.

Right.

Now, that doesn't mean— now, to the credit of a lot of the kids that are listening, you know why Fortune 500 land sucks? They're brand over everything, but they're delusional brands.

Yeah.

They're like, let's make a fucking video for $800,000 and run it on fucking NBC. And you fucking crazies, are you nuts? Running a television commercial campaign leading strategy like the biggest brands in the world do. It is insane how much money Coca-Cola and BMW and fucking all of them, like Nike, they are throwing beautiful money in the trash. Garbage.

Yeah.

Garbage. They're getting murdered.

Yeah.

And every— it's happening right in front of our faces and no one's seeing it, which is why I've never been more excited. The reason I wrote Day Trading Attention is for every marketing company in the world to pass it on to every employee for legacy. I know how right this book is going to end up being because I'm writing it at the perfect time. The COVID is purple. That cover is not because I'm a Lakers fan.

Why not? I'm just kidding.

Because I'm a Knicks fan. The cover's purple because I think in terms of the American and UK political systems, red and blue. Hardcore math kids that are watching right now, they're either red or too blue, whichever side you want to pick. They're red. The fucking BMWs and the Nikes and the, you know, ConAgra Foods and SC Johnson, Johnson Johnson, they're too blue, right? And the game is the middle. So I want the ninja kids here that grew up admiring you, you know, I want them to understand why they need organic social every day, every day, every day.

Right.

And great organic social, no direct attribution ROI. And I want the Fortune 500 executives that happen to be listening to this, A, kudos to you. Kudos to you right now if you work at a Madison Avenue ad firm or a Fortune 500 and you're a brand manager or CMO, kudos for you to even listening to a show like this, because this goes to my concern for them. They're so delusional. So this is the trenches.

Right.

What I want for them is also an organic social media understanding, because they're on the opposite side. The youngsters are too mathed out and everything's math, math, math, math, math. And the OG brand catalogs, how brands grow crew, they're in delusional television advertising land, and the action's in the middle.

Balance.

That's right.

Yeah. Can you talk about the TikTokification of social? I mean, even LinkedIn's getting into it now.

Correct.

Yeah.

When I invested in Tumblr in 2008, I called my brother AJ and said, bro, I know I told you Facebook and Twitter are going to be huge and they were on their way. I said, but Tumblr is going to be the biggest of them all. And he said, why? And I said, because Facebook and Twitter, you follow people, and Tumblr, you follow shit you're interested in. And I was convinced. And Tumblr had a $1.1 billion exit 12 years ago, which was like $40 billion now. And it was a great exit, but it could have been bigger. And the reason I was so early on Musical.ly, which later became TikTok, was I saw the first time since Tumblr what I've been looking for, which was—

Yeah.

if you gave people the things they were interested in constantly, forever, you know, like how life actually works, what you're reading, what you're watching, what you're wearing, it's always mapping you. Social, I could tell by then, was no longer mapping. If you started on Facebook in the 37-year-old set, you were getting stuff still from people you went to college with that you met at one party once.

Yeah.

And you were like, I don't give a fuck about Ronnie Johnson. Like, and nobody was just like email. Nobody was like fixing their feed. So once I saw Musical.ly, and obviously it started as teenage young girls predominantly with some guys, I was like, ooh, this is different. And then very quickly I understood what was happening, which is why I was so bullish on it at the time. And then obviously emphatic about TikTok once they acquired it and yelling about it in all my channels back in the day. The TikTokification is the reference in the book to now every social network TikTok is going to go into a place of trying to service you to the best of their AI capabilities, things they think you want to watch, which will keep you on the platform longer, which will allow them to sell more ads and stuff. It makes all the sense in the world.

Yeah.

It's how everything in the world works, and it is profoundly important. And why— I'm glad you asked me that with my rant on the prior rant, which is why Organic social media expertise is the battleground of the next 5 years in marketing. Whoever is best at it will win.

All right, quick note, this is about my company. It's called Single Grain. And Single Grain is an ad agency where we're focused on driving innovation. I want to talk about a couple of new strategies. And if you need help with marketing, great. If not, here are a couple of new strategies that you should try out. One is programmatic CRO. So we are doing programmatic conversion rate optimization on our site. So it's building products that will automatically optimize your site to increase conversion rates. We're also auto-optimizing, auto-updating from an SEO standpoint, and we're constantly thinking about what else we can do in terms of enriching the visitors that are hitting your website and also tailoring custom messages for them using AI. And so there's a handful of things that we're doing from a marketing standpoint, and our mission is just to drive more innovation. So if you want to learn more, just go to singlegrain.com, grain like rice. So singlegrain.com to learn more and we'll see you inside. Let me ask you this. So I debate with my podcast co-host Neil all the time on this. So this is Neil Patel and he's like, I'm like, he's like, you know, you're doing all these things. So, you know, I was talking to an agency. They get, they help people get like 100 million, 150 million views per month. I talked to one person that's paying for it. I'm like, so what's the ROI of this? Right? She's like, I don't know what the ROI is right now. Right? So we started doing this. It was like last month, 12, 13 million. Not bad, right? But for B2B business. And then Neil's like, Dude, I guarantee you all the views you're driving will not drive any business. And I'm like, well, I don't necessarily agree with that. What's your take on it?

Well, it depends on what the views are. If the views are bots and the people you're working with are the worst of the worst characters, then definitely not.

Real views.

If they're real views and they're all coming from like the Philippines or Afghanistan, then also again, right? If they are real people, Well, then this is— look, and Neil's had a great career. Yeah, but he's a math boy, right?

I'm going to send this to him.

You know, and, and now to his credit, like with SEO and SEO, like, you know, I've known him a long time. Yeah, he's done a decent job building his brand.

Yeah.

Like he's definitely not like many others that like— he's actually, to his credit, let me even show the other side of the pillow. He's done a much better job than most math boys and girls of building a brand. I would argue with him of like, Neil, why do you even have a personal brand? What's the ROI of Neil's personal brand?

Infinite.

Correct. So I think Neil's the easy one for you to debate on this one. If Neil believed that that wouldn't do anything, then we wouldn't know who Neil is. He would be like many of the math kids that sit in their room that nobody's ever met. There are math kids right now making real bank, real money in the fucking— behind the scenes in Bosnia and fucking Iran and fucking Kentucky, and they just slay, all math, and you've never heard of them once in their life. But Neil's got his pretty little face all over the place for a fucking reason. It's because Neil subconsciously or consciously values brand. It's why he built the personal brand.

Right.

And so I think that's what it is. I think I'm going to argue for Neil. I'm sure there's a little bit of brotherly banter in that because his actions have totally contradicted the way you painted that picture because he's been very aggressive in building. Why keynote Affiliate Summit in 2009?

Yeah.

If you don't want people to know who the fuck you are.

Yeah. You know what's interesting? We debate this concept.

You like that, right?

We debate this concept of—

By the way, I bet you Neil and everybody else would agree that purple's the answer, right? There's nobody who's smart that thinks it's either all art or all math.

Right.

The problem is there's a lot of people who think it's all math and all art, and that's the opportunity for us purple people.

Yeah.

Eaters.

Yeah, you can't— you can't—

it's—

there are some people that speak in absolutes, and I think that's a severe disadvantage.

I do too. I also am a big fan of the learnings of the art and the math. Math is fun. Like, you can run it. You're like, oh yeah, this didn't work. $32 CPM, $32 CAC. This one does work. $6 CAC, right? $4 CPM. But what people are not as good at— and you read the book or you skimmed it?

No, I've gone through— I've skimmed it.

Yeah, of course. You're busy.

Yeah.

Did you capture the part of PCS, post-creative strategist, the people that read all the comments and the qualitative feedback, or not yet?

No, I've heard you talk about it. Cool.

Yeah. So The thing that I'm in love with— so obviously math, super easy. Like, here's what you paid, here's the conversion, CAC, LTV, CAC, LTV, you know, all that. I am really deep in something called PCS land, post-creative strategy. After creative's out, all the qualitative feedback of the, of the comments at scale.

Right.

The reason I'm so right about a lot of stuff that emerges is because I read it, but it's not in a fucking recap newsletter from me or you.

Mm-hmm.

It's in the earliest days in the trenches, and that shit is fucking gold. And that's the math around the art. So why I love to do things like you're doing is you learn from it too. I have no idea if those 12 million views are going to lead to anything. I also know that one of those 12 million views might be the future acquirer of the entire business, right? This is why I like running ads on LinkedIn so much. I can target employees of companies. So that means I can target hedge funds. Yeah.

Do you guys go hard on that?

I'm obsessed with LinkedIn. Of course. Look, VaynerMedia is— VaynerX is a $350 million ARR. We have 2,000 employees. We're a big company. We do a ton of shit. Yeah, man. I'm like, look, I think the thing that I'm most proud of at 48 and being in this game is I'm a fucking practitioner.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

I'm not in my ivory tower talking about marketing that I used to do and trying to like sell books and fucking give keynotes. I'm on hands on keyboards. Real talk, watch this shit. I fucking literally, literally write the copy to my fucking posts.

How many people are in the room though?

In my team?

Yeah, because Raghav used to tell me it was like 50 people or whatever.

I think we trimmed it down. I think it's like, how much is in here right now? 25. Got it.

Just so everyone knows, that's his brand team chat room. Yeah.

And the reason it's 25 from 50, a lot of them now are in VaynerX. We train on our team and then you figure out who they are. Big shout out. Let me give her some roses. Abby's last day is today, right? She's amazing. She's going into Eva Nosadam, my production company, for post-production. So like Team Gary's a training ground for a lot of people that then go into VaynerX or other things. There's people on VFriends. There's people at VaynerSports. It's like a very all-in-the-family, old-school kind of world.

And actually, that brings up a question I had. So it seems like you're still very involved with all the content that you're putting out.

Period. The content, the operation. Like people ask me all the time. It's so funny when people come to VaynerMedia, bro. Like people, especially with the Knicks and like the— like they're like, what is this?

Yeah.

Like I'm like, what? They're like— like people literally sometimes come and visit that we meet in like DMs or something and they think I'm a motivational speaker. They're like, what is this? I'm like, this is VaynerMedia. Like, what is VaynerMedia? I'm like, what? Like, I'm like, you know, but I do understand it because I don't overly— I mean, I promote VaynerMedia nothing in my Instagram and TikTok. And that's where people consume so much of me. So I get it. But bro, I'm so involved. And by the way, I'm too involved, but I'm too involved for people that would analyze it if they were trying to help me extract the most money. But I'm trying to extract the most joy.

Right.

I'm involved because I like being a COO, not just a CEO, and definitely not a chairman who's just going to fucking— you know, our contemporaries who've made it.

Yeah.

I just don't— I don't look at a 30 and 40-year-old who was just on the party scene and skiing and on yachts and like speaking. Like, I, by the way, I'm not confused why that's fucking epic. And especially if they're single, like there's a lot of— I get it, but it's not for me. I'm a fucking operator.

Right. I love that. And you know what's interesting? There's a Zuck video recently where he was talking about how he doesn't believe in delegation, how it's overrated. And then, you know, he doesn't mean that completely, but he's basically saying you got to be involved.

Yeah. And I don't— I didn't see that. But what I can tell you for sure I think at the highest levels, what you get really good at, it's always come natural to me. And I know it's a foundation of my future success, let alone my past success. And I definitely see it in others that I can get close enough to that I'm like, okay, they're doing the same shit. If you focus on the things that are the highest value and you like, not just the highest value and not just what you like, that cross-section.

Yeah.

of highest value and you like, well, then it works. I love selling. So if I'm heavily involved in pitching new business— now, big shout-out to Cailin McNamara, who's crushing for me now and helping me scale. Sean Walsh. It's starting to happen. Amy Bradshaw. But if I fucking get involved in selling, it's going to work. We just landed a $20 million client. It's good that I was involved.

Right.

And I liked it and it was good and that's good. Of course, someone could say like, Gary, what do you like? I mean, I really have very successful people constantly yell at me. It's like, what the fuck are you doing?

Right? What do they say?

Well, they just if they know me really well, they're like, bro, you like could be making a lot more money. Like, like why are you running the agency? I'm like, well, it's the operating system. They're like, you could do that now. You could raise $500 million tomorrow. Like you're you. Like I'll give you $10 million for the. I'm like, yeah, but I'm not ready. Like what do you mean? mean? I'm like, well, all those people I just gave shoutouts to, everyone's getting further along. Dustin's stronger today than he was 24 months ago. I'm building people and I'm young, bro. I'm 48.

Yep.

I'm going to work for the next 40 years minimally and I'm pretty sure to the end. And I know I can die tomorrow, but if I don't, which is more likely, I'm going to fucking build. And so I'm not in a rush and everyone's like 25 and is like, I don't have it figured out. I'm Nobody 50 has it figured out. What the fuck are you worried about?

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

So what do they say? They're like, look, you can make a lot more money doing different things. I'm like, I'm aware. I know what hedge funds are. I know what private equity is. I know, like, I get it. I know I could start a— if I want to go for high risk, high reward, I get that I could try to start a SaaS business or a social network. I think I could build a huge QSR franchise business. Like, I know there's other things. I like this.

Yeah.

Like, you're allowed to make less money for much more joy, even at high levels. Like, when people talk about like, oh, don't choose money over happiness, they always think of like, like a guy backpacking in fucking Peru. No, no, I'm doing that right now.

You're happy.

But I'm also making real money.

Yeah.

But like, yes, I'm aware I can make a lot more money, but I don't want to, dickface. I want to be happy. Why would I want to be miserable and make $100 more million a year. Why would I want to do that?

Right.

Who wants to be miserable? This has been my whole rant for the last 7 years as my content evolves. I'm like, okay, I understand if you don't have money that you think money is the answer, but I'm telling you right now, I know unlimited. You already know at this young of an age in your circles how many people are deeply hurt and dark and miserable with plenty of money.

Too many.

Too many. The end. As many as that are miserable and sad without money. Money is not the variable of happiness. I know everyone who doesn't have it doesn't believe it, and it makes sense to me why. But you will find out if you're lucky enough to get there.

You know what's interesting? I think back when you started Vayner, I think this— I'm paraphrasing here. So it sounded like Zuck was like, why are you doing an agency?

Right?

And then so I talked to the founder of WP Engine yesterday. And as he was talking, it clicked for me because I realized, you know, obviously I'm talking to you today. He's like, you know, what works for me is like agency and like what works for other people might be SaaS and what works for you is like agency. So like do that. It's not like it's within your skill set, so do that.

Yeah. And mine was even weirder. I don't really think that what I do well is agency. I knew I could do it. I knew that I wanted to build the greatest marketing Death Star of all There you go. I also knew that for me to do that, I needed to go through it. Meaning at that point in my life, I probably could have raised $50 million to start Vayner instead of zero. But I also know I would have not learned. I would have had too much money and I would have hired all these people from Ogilvy and Leo Burnett and Droga5, and I would have gotten nothing but bad behavior and I would have learned nothing. I needed to eat shit. for a decade to taste everything, to learn everything, to have every fucking battle scar. And now I have all the context.

Yeah.

And now everyone's in deep shit.

Yeah.

Now it gets interesting. Now they fucked up and let me figure it out. And so now— and so this goes back to why I always talk about patience. I can promise you right now, I'm really fucking happy I did, right? Because I think the problem for You, your crew, the crew that's 25, and definitely the crew that's 15, is everyone's just so uncomfortably impatient, mainly because 90% want to be successful to fill gaps in their soul.

Yeah.

Right. To prove it to the girl that didn't go out with them or stick it to Dad who said they were never going to make it, or to their teachers that got D's. And that's like my— all my teachers told me I was going to be a garbage man. I don't know why they picked on garbage men because they make plenty of money, but that's what was the '80s thing of like, you're bad at school. But like, I get why people can build resentment, why people have insecurities, parent dynamics, not being popular in high school. It all makes sense to me. I get it. But it is what fucks people up from maximizing happiness and success.

Yeah. It also sounds like not enough people are willing to eat shit. Everyone wants to win, but not enough people are willing to eat shit.

That's because most people are fake entrepreneurs. Wanntrapreneurs?

Yeah. Yeah.

Like, it became cool.

You made it cool.

I feel like it was going to happen. And to your point, and thank you, and I take that as a compliment.

It is.

I happen to be in the right place at the right time, no question. But yeah, and honestly, one of the reasons I take on the responsibility to talk about the things I'm talking about now, which is fix your soul, pay attention to your insecurity, I take on the responsibility that people do think I'm cool, and I'm hoping if I spit real shit, it might help someone.

Yeah, I want to tie in a story so that ties in with this book. So is there anything you can share around a piece of content that you created that led to maybe a 7, 8, 9-figure deal?

Of course. I made a video on my couch in 2007 that said Facebook should worry about Twitter on a flip cam. Remember those? Yeah, you flip in, you stick it into your laptop. It went viral to 500 of the right people, most of the employees at Facebook at the time, which led to Dave Morin asking me to give a speech at Facebook at the time, which led to Mark Zuckerberg being in the back of the audience, which led to him walking down after I luckily said smart enough stuff that caught his attention, asking me for dinner when I already had a flight back to New York on the red-eye. But I said, of course, I'm leaving tomorrow. We had dinner. It started our relationship and my investment in his company from his parents' stock a year later I've never sold a single share of the company.

Yeah.

This was 4 years before its IPO. It IPO'd at $42 a share. It went down to $19 in the first 6 months. It's now $500 a share. And that was very, very good that I made that piece of content. Not only did that piece of content lead directly to that investment, it also sparked the beginning of me building a brand in Web 2.0. And this goes back to the argument, and I don't think Neil fully believes it, that it's not valuable. That single piece of content and my keynote that changed my career, the one at Web2 Summit in 2008 where I say Smurf it up and that whole thing that went on TED's website and got a trillion views is 99.9% of the springboard that led to everything you're looking at.

Right.

2 pieces of content.

That's why I— so going back to this talk about idea total addressable market. So people in private equity like to use total addressable market, right?

Yeah. I love that thing.

So idea TAM, it's like, Yeah, go wide. Why not go wide? Because people are going to know who you are.

Well, human personal brand TAM is billions of people usually. Yeah.

So why not?

I aim to be known by every single person on Earth before I die. That is my TAM.

Well, speaking of large TAM too—

And especially, I apologize, just to give a little nerd talk with AI voice conversion, we're here. I will be speaking every language in every piece of content I put out next year. Money in the bank. This voice that goes high and gets raspy and does all its shit, With my cadence, that's insane, bro. I'm going to crush fucking Brazil in my fucking Portuguese. I'm going to fucking annihilate it. I'm going to be massive in Germany. I can't wait. Japan, finally. I'm hyped. So TAM for personal brands that talk about macro things, it's $8 billion.

Yeah. Can we talk about some of those macro things? I mean, let's talk about— so your Twitch experience.

Yeah.

How's that going right now?

Great.

And what is it for those that don't know?

It's going great even though mathematically it's doing atrocious. I believe that livestreaming is in the same place that social media was in 2014, which was in 2014 everyone knew social was real, right? It was like, okay, it was real. It wasn't like the fad that people thought in '07 when I was there. It was 7 years later. You weren't walking around in 2014 being like, Facebook could go away tomorrow. No, it fucking happened. But nobody understood what I was still doubling down on, which was, no, no, no, it's about to get way bigger. By the way, that's how I feel right now. Even right now where people are like trying to ban it and demonize it and it's all leading to mental health or it's the biggest thing. I still think right this second that the business world and society are underestimating social. It is the communication pipe of our world. I believe that livestreaming right now is where social was in '14. Nobody here who's paying attention doesn't realize that Twitch really fucking matters and that Clix and Adin Ross and Kai Cenat, it's happened. But I think most people don't realize what's coming next, which is the live streaming of the mundane and the lucrative nature behind it. So I have a feeling in the next decade that we will wake up in 2034 and there'll be people who are live streaming their hair salon Like working in their 6-person, 6-seat hair salon in Des Moines, Iowa, that her or him are gonna figure out what I'm saying here in the next year or 2 or 3 and are just gonna put a fucking camera and livestream. And for whatever reason, they are going to become famous, meaning they will make money on subs, they will make money on advertising, they will make money on Johnny or Susan's hair salon merch. They will speak. They will write a book that influencers, like I wrote in 2008 with Crush It happened. Live streamers of the mundane, not people that entertain you straight to face while playing video games. No, no. Everything lawn. I've been using mowing your lawn, cooking. I'm obsessed with this one. I think some stay-at-home mom or dad live streaming their six a.m. to eight thirty of prepping the whole family for the day is going to be the show. I just think it's going to crush. And then they're going to get a Kellogg's cereal deal and a Tropicana orange deal and an Oatly milk deal and a fucking frying pan deal.

Yeah.

I smell it. And so how is it going? I am livestreaming in my office at VaynerMedia and VeeFriends HQ in Hudson Yards, New York, my table. I am doing literally 12 hours a day straight of meetings. 97% of them are information that can't get into the world. So I am on mute the entire time. So the 100 or so people that watched me sitting in my office for 12 straight hours on mute have built their own little community talking. I try to unmute. Dustin did a great thing for me and added an unmute counter, so that inspires me to unmute a little bit more. I'm figuring it out. I'm doing it because I like to be a practitioner. I just want to taste it.

Yeah.

I know that I'm not doing it in a way that can really go crazy like my other stuff because I'm not making for it. I wish I was 2007 Gary and I could just be with them for 12 hours because I have a funny feeling I would have ended up in a really good spot.

Right.

That's not where I'm at. I'm trying to hack. I'm hoping that something good will come to mind at some point. I'm excited about taking it on the road with me. Like, that's something I'm thinking about as I try to push myself to get on the road a little bit more. Again, I've brought it up 10 times, I'm so in operations mode, I'm literally sitting at a fucking desk for 12 hours a day, 80% of the time right now, so it's not the most compelling, but there is a wild, almost like entrepreneurial ASMR with it. Like, it's been really interesting to watch a lot of people, as a matter of fact, everybody who's listening right now, twitch.tv/GaryVee, if you come in, say you came from here, 'cause I wanna give love to him.

Love it.

Come and check it out. What I'm noticing is for a lot of beginners or even people in the middle, kind of like what DailyVee was when I put it out, where people are like, oh, he's busy, busy. There's something that is inspiring to a lot of people like, oh, fuck, man. Is he just like a— does he go to the bath— you see it, right, Dust? Does he go to the bathroom? Why is he not taking lunch? And then of course, the people that have been watching from the beginning the last couple weeks, they're like, no, he's a fucking robot. Because I think, and it would have, by the way, I understand it. Again, 16-year-old me who one day dreams to be a great businessman, I do a lot of stuff for 15-year-old me. I would have loved to come home from after school, put that on if I looked up to GaryVee and be like, oh shit, that's what it takes? It's not the fucking, like, you know, it's not private planes. It's not fucking the watches. Oh shit.

I gotta get into that.

And then, and by the way, check this out, that will then help them say, am I up for that or should I do something? Like, it's not that I want them I want them to use me as a proxy to figure out if there's valuable for them. I have no interest in people working 15 hours a day unless they're like me, which is it is their favorite thing to do in the world. For me, it is my hobby. My profession is my hobby. And, and if that's not you, then you should only work 7 hours a day. When I don't do things I like, I want to do them for 1 minute a day. And if you don't like your job, you shouldn't work. 10 hours a day. That sounds fucking miserable. That's why I got D's and F's. That's why I don't like going to the gym. That's why I don't hang pictures on the wall, because I don't like handyman shit.

Yeah.

Other people can't wait for tomorrow— it's a Friday as we're recording this— to do work around the house. They enjoy it. It's their therapy. It's their ASMR. I fuck that shit. I would rather rip my arm off than fucking paint a fucking wall.

Yeah.

Everyone's different.

You know what's heavily underrated too? It's, as you're talking about, you don't want to do these things. It's if you're an entrepreneur designing the organization around your strengths.

Oh, that's the only way I've built all my companies.

Yeah.

The first thing I do every time I build a company is surround people with strengths in the things that I don't like to do that are most important. We hired a head of legal, Mark Yudkin, who's now my COO. He's my fucking brother. We hired him way too early. We couldn't afford him. We fuck— I went for it. I was like, fuck it, we're gonna need this, and I give a shit. I'm not reading a fucking contract. Are you out of your fucking mind? Right.

You know, so I'm with you, you know. Yeah, yeah. You know, um, you said this on a podcast years ago, uh, I think someone asked you just straight up, how much money do you make, Gary? And then at the time it was like $5 million or whatever. Like, how much— like, and I think I'm not even gonna ask you that question. It's— this ties in with, uh, the question that you had with My First Million. So they asked you this. Your pod's not live yet with them, but What's the difference between billionaires versus millionaires? And then I have a follow-up.

Go ahead, please. Oh, you're asking me? Yeah. Look, I think there's a lot of differences. I think the one that most stands out for me, or one of the things that most stands out for me is there's a lot. And it's funny, I'm trying to recall what I said to those guys and it's not popping up. Do you want a hint? No, I actually don't because I think it'll be more interesting for you, let alone everybody else. To me, it's their obsession with losing. How much do they love the game? How purebred are they? I think billionaires tend to like it way over the things that come along with it, their tolerance for losing, their self-awareness. Putting yourself in a position to succeed. And there's serendipity. Do you recognize where the economics are? I think there's tons of people who are millionaires that could have had the potential to be billionaires if they just picked a different genre to put their energy against, a better business model. I think about that a lot. I know I didn't go into that with them. I think about that a lot. Those things stand out.

Makes sense. Yeah. What you had said was, The willingness to walk backwards.

Yeah, to go to zero. Yeah, that goes back to the love of the game. I defined it more for them. I think that I think I'm on that path, and I think whether I get there or not is completely— I could give a fuck. Because by the time when I get there, it's not going to be as cool anymore anyway. It's starting to get to a place where people are like, well, that's common. And plus, you know this, so many people claim it that aren't it. I'm willing to go to zero.

Yeah.

And I do think that there is some realities to that. I think the risks that are required for the bets that turn out to be those things are sometimes and oftentimes grounded in a Bezos or an Elon or an Oprah willing to take a risk that would've taken them all the way back or zero. And I want the kids to hear this. It doesn't mean that they were really going to go to zero. But it was going to mean that they weren't going to make any money for 5 years.

Right.

Right?

Right.

I'm definitely in that place. I'm willing to go there. Not put myself out of business, but fuck myself up for a good 7 years because I'm not worried about the judgment.

Yeah. And here's what you told them. This is where the $5 million ties in, kind of. You only need your safety net. What's the safety net?

$1 million in cash.

That sounds kind of low.

Well, listen, for people that that are very fortunate that have crushed it. For every normal person, they're like, that's an insane amount of money.

Yes.

And I think my normal person DNA is so much greater than my entrepreneur that crushed it DNA that I'm just very aware that $1 million in cash, a lot of people won't earn that. Because don't forget, you got to pay taxes. So I just feel like if I lost everything and had $1 million, and again, we're not playing some weird fantasy game, I'd still be me. I would have just learned whatever the fuck I did to lose it all, which would have been a big learning experience, and I'd still be me. I can make— I can turn $1 million into $20 million just flipping shit on eBay.

Yeah. That's funny.

What would you flip on eBay? I mean, the reality is it goes back to listening. I would go to eBay and take a look at trends. I mean, me and my brother AJ were buying video games and vintage rock t-shirts To flip on eBay in 1999.

All those video games, yeah.

Think about how right we ended up. Like, and that only happened because you could see the data starting to emerge. I'm not sure if marbles are popping off or scarves or magnets or Cocomelon early collectibles. I don't know what's popping on eBay like that, but I promise you, if I was back to zero and I had a million, no question buying and selling shit would be the first thing I'd go to. Because for me and my skill set, $1 to $5 million would come fast. This is buying something and selling it for more.

Got it. I want to talk about VeeFriends, um, but before we get to that, I remember there was a clip of you talking to another— I'll just call him an influencer. I'm not even gonna name names, but this guy was asking— you guys were collaborating— he's like, who works harder, you or me?

Who works harder?

Yeah. And I said me. Yeah, you said there's just no way, I work harder. And it's like 18 hours a day, right? Um, do you think it takes 15 to 18 hours a day, or is it just more so because you enjoy More so than enjoy it.

I think there's— on the record, so as cool as that little peacocking flex is, let there be no confusion. There are tons of people that work 8 hours a day who make more money than me and are happier than me. I'm really fucking happy, but I'm— and I mean really fucking happy, but I'm not delusional enough to not think that there's people who are equally, if not more happy, and work 8 hours a day. And that's awesome.

Yeah.

By the way, I envy that zero.

Mm-hmm.

No, I don't think working harder is like some sort of cool flex. I think it was misunderstood by society. Working harder when you fucking love the shit out of it.

Yeah.

I love when everyone tried to pin me 7 years ago of like, you're the hustle porn guy. I remember that article that was written, and I was like, this is so fucked up. This is so not taking the words out of my mouth, and you're completely taking me out of context. Literally, my first book was Crush How to Cash In on Your Passion.

Yeah.

Why'd you take the passion part out?

Yeah.

Because I've been on the record that I did no homework in high school. I don't believe in work if you fucking hate it. I'm actually the most extreme example of all in when you love it and fuck that shit if you hate it. I just told you about the sign thing. I don't think you should work at all if you hate it. I don't know how you're gonna live, but like, you know, like, like, fuck. So no, I don't— thank you for asking that question 'cause it's giving me a few minutes to really break this down. I think people continue to not hear me and others on this. Working a lot is only cool if it starts with you fucking love it, comma. Yes. Do I think if you do 100 pushups that that would be better for your physique than 30? I believe in that. Volume, quantity is not debatable.

Yeah.

So if I versus me, my twin brother who is exactly me, Barry, if I work 12 and he works 7 and we were the same Yes, I would get more outcome. It's the way it is. Sorry. But all these people that work 10, 12 hours a day to be an entrepreneur, to act cool, all to just make money so that they can go ball out and are living lives where they're fucking drinking a bottle of vodka at night to deal with their pain, that's not happy. That's not good. That doesn't work out. And so no, that's how I— I don't think it requires hours. I think it requires self-awareness.

Right.

Right? You have to know yourself. Some people don't even have the natural energy to work that much.

Right.

That's fucking hard. But I think the energy comes from loving it.

Yeah.

Right? I can't run on a treadmill for 20 minutes. This is real now. I really can't, fast. But I can play 4 hours of basketball straight, which is actually harder on my 48-year-old body. But because I love it, I go. And because I think running on a treadmill is the worst shit of all time, I can't. This thing is so underrated, bro. This thing is so fucking— bro, this thing is so underrated. And the other one, because now I'm rolling, this thing. I believe when we're dead and we're looking down from heaven, that intuition, the second brain, will be much more understood. No one's talking about it. I can tell you right now, this has made all the good decisions.

Yeah.

This has kept it from being delirious, but this has been everything. And no one's— and that's above my pay grade, but I'm telling you, this fucking thing and this fucking thing, both of them right now by us humans— and we're getting cool now, like ice plunge, fucking psychedelics, grounding. Like, we're starting to figure— like, we're starting to become more, you know, old school. Like, everything that's hot right now amongst influencers, my great-grandma Babushka Anya made me do when I was 6. And she would visit us in Edison. She'd like wake Wake us up in the morning dew. This is real talk. And make us go outside and walk barefoot. I'm like, what are we doing? We're supposed to be Americanized. This is so weird. And now the coolest kids in LA are like, give me the grass. And I was like, fucking babushka Anya. So old school's becoming new now, but I promise you the thing that no one's talking about yet for real, for real, that I think is gonna be common talk in 50 to 100 years is this motherfucker.

Yep, the intuition, the gut.

And everybody wants to— we went over-rational the last 100 years.

Yeah. I mean, speaking of your gut, you basically bet all in on Twitter and Facebook, right?

Yeah.

That's your gut. 100%.

We can segue into VeeFriends right now.

Let's do that.

I believe in NFTs remarkably. I know where NFTs are right now. But again, you seem to be really on it. This will land with you. At the height of NFTs, I was making videos saying these things are going— 99% are going to zero. The mistake that most people are listening right now that don't know about NFTs as a collectible digital asset is they think NFTs are Beanie Babies. They don't realize that NFTs are stuffed animals. It's a genre. 99% of the projects ended up being Beanie Babies.

Yeah.

But just like contemporary art with Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol, just like basketball trading cards, Michael Jordan's rookie card's worth a lot of money. 99% aren't. Just like sneakers, just like watches, just like everything that's collectible.

Mm-hmm.

99% are zero. 1% is remarkable. The hysteria of the moment got everyone thinking every single one was going to be collectible. But yeah, I'm really excited about it. And for me personally, it's really exciting because I think of VeeFriends as my intellectual property, which it is, a Pokémon meets Sesame Street. So Sesame Street of like good intent. I want to teach accountability through Accountable Ant and patience through Patient Panda. And collectibility like Pokémon. And like right now, if you want to know what's going on with VeeFriends, go to eBay right now, everyone who's listening, and type in VeeFriends, enter completed auctions. You will be blown away. And so quietly, quietly, I would say, I am head down building something. I have a kids' book coming out called Meet Me in the Middle.

Yeah.

I have cartoons coming out with Moonbug, who does Cocomelon. And I promise you, anyone who has a 1 to 3-year-old in their world or recently knows exactly what I'm talking about. So I'm enjoying the shit out of building my Marvel Pokémon. And again, back to patience, VeeFriends is VaynerMedia 2010 and '11 when everybody laughed at me. And VeeFriends in 20 years will be VeeFriends, and everyone's going to look back at clips and be like, fuck, man, he really knew it. Yeah.

2 final questions before we wrap here. So what's the 10-year vision for it? Because it was Disney before, it's something else now.

Well, Disney, it was always Disney. It was always like Disney, Sesame Street, it was always IP. The reason I now say Sesame Street is I don't think I fully appreciated how good Jim Henson's intent was. Man, I admire him.

I remember watching that stuff.

It's really— yeah, it really did a nice thing. All the integrating immigrants and bilingual stuff and teaching love and accountability. He did a great job. Fraggle Rock, the brief was stop war. My admiration for Jim Henson the last 5 years has has exploded. And the collectibility part is very real. I know that if I don't make it Pokémon-esque or Marvel-esque, that the collectible value won't be there. And I want VeeFriends Series 1 NFTs to be one of the great collectibles in the next 2, 3 years— excuse me, 2, 3 decades. And I'm excited about grinding that out. So the vision is fully the same.

Yeah.

Get 8 billion people to fall in love Large TAM. With the very, very, very, very lucky black cat, who's the logo, Empathy Elephant, main character, Dialed-In Dog, Dynamic Dino, Perfect Persian Cat. If I can get people to fall in love with them, then the collectibility will kick in, all the opportunities will kick in, and it's all built on the blockchain. So many things I can do in the future as the world learns about the underlying technology, the legalities around it. So there's a lot to still uncover, but I was there in '95, '96, '97, '98, '99, 2000 for Internet 1. I was there for 2004, '05, '06, '07, '08 for Internet 2. And I'm here for this now, and I'm excited about the decade out.

All right. Well, Gary, we could go on and on, but we'll end it here. What's the best way for people to find the book online?

I mean, people go out of my books. If you can't find Day Trading Attention by Gary Vaynerchuk— Don't buy it. Because, like, I don't know, does ChatGPT excite you more than Google? Do you not know what Amazon is, uh, I have a funny feeling they can find it, but I thank you for that.

All right, thanks so much.

Thank you.