Gary Vee's Secret Business Domination Plan

27:06I 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've sugarcoated the fuck out of it 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.

27:37So if you want to learn more, just go to marketingschool.io slash agency. Again, it's marketingschool.io slash agency and we'll see you on the other side. 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. I'm sure 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 at 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.

28:06So look, day trading attention, right? So actually I got a good question. So I was messaging my buddy this morning. So he has a$400 million a year SaaS, right? And he's like, okay, ask Gary here. I'm going to repeat it. Don't give me the cliche 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. Now, not that that's a cliche 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.

28:47Yes. You can't get the$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, 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.

29:25That's what I hope to be in, that level. 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 dollars 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-cliche 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. Right? Okay, Gary, thank you for telling me that I'm a B2B business and sass and I should do LinkedIn.

30:06No shit. 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. Cause unlike every other platform, they have an artificial high floor. So unlike all the other platforms that start at five or 10 or 15, you know, minimal sense. I think last time I checked, which is a while ago, LinkedIn starts at two bucks, which fucks up everyone.

30:44The problem is for a SaaS business, it doesn't matter that TikTok might be three cents, you're not going to fucking sell shit on there. 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. 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, knowing how to do the first second of the video, the thumbnail, the copy, the remarketing, knowing the perfect execution, just like training for 18 years and being God gifted in talent and knowing how to play basketball, that is where his growth is.

31:32And I mean, period, end of story, AKA$400 million, 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 40 pieces, you're not saying 40 posts per day. You're saying 40 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 quantum qual feedback. The biggest thing that's missing, 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 yeah and i'm willing to risk a lot of money to find the seven out of eight thousand behaviors in the art side that make the whole thing go right and that and you know this that's what's killing everyone there 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 brand yeah they're like let's make a fucking video for 800 000 and run it on fucking mbc and you fucking crazies are you nuts running a television commercial campaign leading strategy like the biggest brands in the world do.

33:08It 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. Garbage. They're getting murdered. And 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 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 cover is purple. That cover is not because I'm a Lakers fan. Why not? I'm just kidding.

33:48Because I'm a Knicks fan. The cover is 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 and johnson they're too blue right and the game is the middle so i want the ninja kids here that grew up admiring you know i want them to understand why they need organic social every day every day every day 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.

34:34Kudos 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. Cause this goes to my concern for them. They're so delusional. So this is the trenches, right? What I want for them is also a organic social media understanding. Cause they're on the opposite side. The youngsters are too mathed out and everything's math, math, math, math. And the OG brand Kellogg's How Brands Grow crew, they're in delusional television advertising land and the action's in the middle. Balance. That's right. Yeah.

35:08Can 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 dollar exit you know 12 years ago which was like 40 billion now and it was a great exit but it could have been bigger and I the reason I was so early on musically which later became tiktok was i saw the first time since tumblr what i've been looking for which was 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 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 musically and obviously it started as teenage young girls predominantly with some guys i was like oh this is different and then very quickly i understood what was happening which is why i was so bullish on it on the time and then obviously emphatic about tiktok once they acquired it and yelling about it in all my channels back in the day.

36:44The TikTokification is the reference in the book to now every social network 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. 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 five years of marketing. Whoever's best at it will win.

37:27All 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.

38:01And 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.

38:32I'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?

39:05If they are real people, well then this is, look, and Neil's had a great career, but he's a math boy right? I'm going to send this to him and now to his credit like with SEO I've known him a long time he's done a decent job building his brand like he's definitely not like many others that 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.

39:51If 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 a personal brand. And so I think that's what it is.

40:29And 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? Good. 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.

41:08The 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, 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.

41:43Did 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. 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 creatives out, all the qualitative feedback of the comments at scale. 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.

42:20It's in the earliest days in the trenches. And that shit is fucking gold. And 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. 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 year.

43:00We 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. Like I'm on, I'm on hands on keyboards. Real talk, watch this shit. I fucking literally literally write the copy to my fucking post. How many people are in the room now? In my team? Yeah, because Raghav used to tell me it was like 50 people or whatever.

43:34I think we trimmed it down. I think it's like, how much is in here right now? 25. Got it. You know, like Just so everyone knows, that's his brand team Yeah, and the reason it's 25 for 50, a lot of them now are in VaynerX, right? Like, we train on our team and then you figure out who they are. Like, big shout out, let me give her some roses. Abby's last days today, right? She's amazing. She's going into Eva Nosadam, my production company, for post-production. So Team Gary is 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.

44:04It'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 they're like what is this like I'm like people literally sometimes come and visit that we meet in DMs or something and they think I'm a motivational speaker they're like what is this I'm like this is VaynerMedia what is VaynerMedia I'm like what but I do understand it because I don't overly I promote VaynerMedia nothing in my Instagram and TikTok and that's where people consume so much of me.

44:50So 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. 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. 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 speak. 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.

45:36I'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 I think, 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, 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.

46:05I'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 right i love selling yeah so if i'm i'm if i'm heavily involved in pitching new business now big shout out to kaylin mcnamara who's crushing for me now and helping me scale sean walsh like it's starting to happen amy bradshaw but if i fucking get involved in selling like it's gonna work we just landed a 20 million dollar client it's good that i was involved right And I liked it and it was good.

46:42And 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. 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. You're like, what do you mean? I'm like, well, all those people I just gave shout outs to, like, everyone's getting further along.

47:19Dustin is stronger today than he was 24 months ago. You know, like, I'm building people. And like, and I'm young. Bro, I'm 48. Yep. Like, like, I've, I'm going to work for the next 40 years, minimally. And like, I'm pretty sure to the end. Yeah. And I know I can die tomorrow. But if I don't, which is more likely, I'm going to fucking build. Right. And so like, I'm not in a rush and everyone's like 25 and it's like, I don't have it figured out. I'm like, nobody 50 has it figured out. 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.

47:51I'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, or a, um, a social network. I think I could build a huge QSR franchise business. like I know there's other things right 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 a hundred more million dollars a year.

48:38Why would I want to do that? Right. Who wants to be miserable? This has been my whole rant for the last seven 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 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.

49:16You 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, 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.

49:49I knew I could do it. I knew that I wanted to build the greatest marketing death star of all time. 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 Droga 5, 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, and now everyone's in deep shit.

50:33Now 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, right? To prove it to the girl that didn't go out with them or stick it to dad who said they were never gonna make it or to their teachers that got decent at, that's like, all my teachers told me I was gonna be a garbage man.

51:11I 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. 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. Well, entrepreneurs. Yeah. Yeah. Like it became cool.

51:45You 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. like 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 like 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 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 seven eight nine-figure deal?

52:26Of course. I made a video on my couch in 2007 that said Facebook should worry about Twitter on a flip cam. Remember those? 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.

53:05We 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. This was four years before its IPO. It IPO'd at$42 a share. it went down to$19 in the first six 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 Web2O 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 Web2Summit 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.

53:59Two pieces of content. Going back to this talk about idea, total addressable market, so people in private equity use total addressable market. I love that thing. 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. Like I will be speaking every language and every piece of content I put out next year, money in the bank, this voice that goes high and gets raspy and does it all shit with my cadence.

54:44That'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. Can we talk about some of those macro things? Let's talk about your Twitch experiment. 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 live streaming is in the same place that social media was in 2014, which was in 2014, everyone knew social was real, right?

55:26It was like, okay, it was real. Like it wasn't like the fad that people thought in 07 when I was there. It was seven 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, it's how I feel right now. Even right now where people are like trying to ban it and it 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.

55:58It is the communication pipe of our world. I believe that live streaming right now is where social was in 14. Nobody here or who's paying attention doesn't realize that like twitch really fucking matters and that clicks and aiden ross and kai sinan like like 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 six seat hair salon in Des Moines, Iowa that her or him are gonna figure out what I'm saying here in the next year, two or three and are just gonna put a fucking camera and live stream 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.

57:15No, no, everything. 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, they're 6 a.m. to 8.30 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 cereal deal and a Tropicana orange deal and an oatly milk deal and a fucking frying pan deal. I smell it. And so how is it going? I am live streaming in my office at VaynerMedia and VFriends 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.

58:01So I am on mute the entire time. So the hundred or so people that watched me sitting in my office for 12 straight hours at 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?

58:42That'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 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 slash Gary VEE if you come in say you came from here because I want to give love to him like 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 daily v was when i put it out where people like oh he's busy busy there's something that is like inspiring to a lot of people like oh fuck man is he just like does he go to the back like you see it right does does he go to the bathroom like why is he not taking lunch like and then of course the people that have been watching from the beginning last couple weeks they're like no he's a fucking robot like and and what it does i think and it would By the way, I understand it.

59:49Again, 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 Gary Vee and be like, oh shit, that's what it takes? It's not the fucking, you know, it's not private planes. It's not fucking the watches. Oh shit. 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 to be me. 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.

1:00:30For me, it is my hobby. My profession is my hobby. And if that's not you, then you should only work seven hours a day. When I don't do things I like, I want to do them for one 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. 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. Fuck that shit.

1:01:04I would rather rip my arm off than fucking paint a fucking wall. Everyone's different. You know what's heavily underrated too? It's as you're talking about that 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 and the things that i don't like to do that are most important we hired a head of legal mark yutkin 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'm not reading a fucking contract or you didn't fucking mind.

1:01:45I'm with you. You know, you said this on a podcast years ago. I think someone asked you straight up, how much money do you make, Gary? And then at the time, it was like 5 million bucks or whatever. And I think I'm not even going to ask you that question. This ties in with 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. You know, 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.

1:02:26And it's funny. I'm trying to recall what I said to those guys and it's not popping up. 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 it's their obsession with losing you know like like what how much do they love the game right like they're how purebred are they like i think billionaires tend to like it way over the things that come along with it their tolerance for losing right um their self-awareness you know putting yourself in a position to succeed you know and there's serendipity there's you know do you recognize where the economics are?

1:03:07I 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 gonna be as cool anymore anyway.

1:03:45Like starting to get to a place where like people are like, well, that's common. And plus, you know, there's so many people claim it that aren't it. I'm willing to go to zero. And I think, 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 have taken him all the way back or zero. And I want the kids to hear this. It doesn't mean that they were like really going to go to zero. But it was like going to mean that they weren't going to make any money for five years.

1:04:23Right. Right. Like 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 seven 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? A million dollars in cash. That sounds kind of low. Well, listen, for people that are very fortunate that have crushed it, for every normal person, they're like, that's an insane amount of money. 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 a million dollars in cash, a lot of people won't earn that.

1:05:05Because don't forget you got to pay taxes. So like I just feel like if I lost everything and had a 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 turn a million dollars into 20 million dollars just flipping shit on eBay that's funny what would you flip on eBay I mean you know 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 think about how right we ended up like and that only happened because you could see the data starting to emerge.

1:05:51I'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 skillset, one to five million would come fastest as buying something and selling it for more. Got it. I want to talk about VFriends, 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's what works harder yeah and i said me you see 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 it more so than enjoy i think yes on On the record, so as cool as that little like peacocking flex is, like let there be no confusion.

1:06:50There are tons of people that work eight 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 like 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 eight hours a day. And that's awesome. And by the way, I envy that zero. 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 I love when everyone tried to pin me seven years ago 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 it how to cash in on your passion.

1:07:37Why'd you take the passion part out? 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 going to live but like you know like fuck. So no I thank you for asking that question because 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.

1:08:16Do 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. So if I versus me, my twin brother who was exactly me, Barry. If I work 12 and he works seven 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.

1:08:54And so no, that's how I, I don't think it requires hours. I think it requires self-awareness. You have to know yourself. Some people don't even have the natural energy to work that much. That's fucking hard. But I think the energy comes from loving it. I can't run on a treadmill for 20 minutes. This is real now. I really can't. Like fast, right? But I can play four hours of basketball straight, which is actually harder on my 48-year-old body. 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.

1:09:36And 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. 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 yeah 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 six and she would visit us in Edison, she'd like wake us up in the morning dew.

1:10:22This 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 like are like, give me the grass. And I was like, fucking Babushka Anya, you know, like, like, so old school is becoming new now, but I promise you the thing that no one's talking about yet for real, for real, that I think is going to be common talk in 50 to a hundred years is this motherfucker. Yeah. The intuition, the gut and everybody wants We went over rational the last 100 years. You actually, I mean, speaking of your gut, you basically bet all in on Twitter and Facebook, right?

1:10:54Yeah. That's your gut. 100%. Yeah. We can segue into BeFriends 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. Well, NFTs, 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. But just like contemporary art with Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol, just like basketball trading cards, Michael Jordan's rookie cards worth a lot of money, 99 % aren't.

1:11:40just like sneakers, just like watches, just like everything that's collectible. 99 % or 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 VFriends as my intellectual property, which it is. A Pokemon meets Sesame Street. So Sesame Street of like good intent. I want to teach accountability through accountable aunt and patience through patient Panda. Um, and collectability like Pokemon. And like right now, if you want to know what's going on with V friends, go to eBay right now, everyone who's listening and type in V friends, enter completed auctions.

1:12:23You will be blown away. And so quietly, quietly, I would say I am head down building something. I have a kid's book coming out called Meet Me in the Middle. I have cartoons coming out with Moonbug, who does Cocomelon. I promise you anyone who has a one to three-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 Pokemon. And again, back to patience, VFriends is VaynerMedia 2010 and 11 when everybody laughed at me. And VFriends in 20 years will be VFriends and everyone's going to look back at clips and be like, fuck man, he really knew it.

1:12:56Yeah. Two 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 still was, 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 five years has exploded.

1:13:36And the collectability part is very real. I know that if I don't make it Pokemon-esque or Marvel-esque, that the collectible value won't be there. And I want VFriends Series 1 NFTs to be one of the great collectibles in the next two, three years. Excuse me, two, three decades. And I'm excited about grinding that out. So the vision is fully the same. Get 8 billion people to fall in love 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 collectability will kick in.

1:14:16All 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 underlining technology, the legalities around it. So there's a lot to still uncover, but I was there in 95, 6, 7, 8, 9, 2000 for internet one. I was there for 2004, 5, 6, 7, 8 for internet two. 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 know how to buy books. If you can't find day trading attention by Gary Vaynerchuk.

1:14:50Because like, I don't know, does chat GPT excite you more than Google? Do you not know what Amazon is? I have a funny feeling they can find you, but I thank you for that. All right, thanks so much. Thank you.