Is Gary Vee An All-time Entrepreneur Or?...

0:00This message is brought to you by Single Grain. Single Grain is a marketing agency ran by yours truly. single grain does paid media seo creative conversion rate optimization has worked with a handful of companies just such as uber amazon airbnb salesforce to startups venture-backed startups a lot of different companies and ultimately our mission is to do innovative marketing that drives customers if you want to learn more just go to singlegrain.com again it's single grain grain like wheat and we'll see you on the other side all right marketing school listeners. This is a 20 to 30 minute segment of a full interview I've done with an amazing founder, entrepreneur, creative, visionary.

0:40You're going to get a ton of insights from this. And if you want to listen to the entire thing, go search for leveling up with Eric Su. That's the entire podcast that you're going to find. So you get 20 to 30 minutes here. And if you want the whole thing, you can just search for leveling up with Eric Su. And without further ado, enjoy the episode. All right. So this next conversation is with Gary Vee, also known as Gary Vaynerchuk. And we talk about how he plans on buying the New York Jets, how he plans on structuring that deal and the overall vision for his organization. So how he plans on making his business into a private equity business.

1:16And we talk about Vee Friends, of course. We talk about how he's just overall philosophies on life and business. It's a great conversation. It's wide ranging. You're going to enjoy it without further ado here we go 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 uh you know i i think i plan on it by building two meaningful maybe three meaningful businesses that i own more so than let's say starting a fund or investing and so the two big ones in my universe or VaynerX, the holding company that holds VaynerMedia and the other several marketing companies and that.

1:59And then VFriends, 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 use the death star you know if you're a star wars nerd if it pointed its powers against a planet it could blow up a planet so if i could build the best marketing death star whether i pointed it towards a bottled water or a political campaign or a non-profit you know 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.

2:56And I'm a business nerd. The idea of buying something and doing it better, it's like fun. It's like operations. That's what I'd love to do. But I've always looked at it as they're good at operating. 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 Carlisles, the Black Rocks, they're all really bad at marketing. 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.

3:32And 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. And so all that leads to a long rant of the three entities that I think could get me to the kind of business success that could allow me to fulfill my fourth great dream is vFriends, 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 hyper growth of the businesses we buy, not just operational efficiency.

4:30At 48, if I execute that for the next 20 years, at 68, I feel like I'm 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 third grade or fourth 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. By third grade, big shout out to Wakeel Shaw and David Johnson and Rashawn Courtney, the kids that taught me in third and fourth 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.

5:10And 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. and 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.

5:48And 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 skill. Before it was this thing, right? How old are you? I'm 37. So 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 V's, right?

6:24Yeah. 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. And that's what I did from 22 to 34. Um, and that was, that will, you know, I have a very good feeling that when I'm in my eighties and nineties 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.

6:58And 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. I will say with this, I ate a lot of bullshit. I built my dad's business substantially for him. I worked seven, six days a week constantly and I made absolutely no money. Three to 60 million, right? Three to 60 million, 22 to 34 years old, never making a hundred thousand dollars a year, like working every Saturday.

7:34Like it was retail. It was, 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, three, four, 5 % of like, fuck man, I built this huge business for my dad. I have no money. Especially once I started putting up my head and seeing what the world was. 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.

8:07And 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. Three, four percent, which wasn't mad. It was more like I would wrap my dad and 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 gonna get a little emotional. Those feelings, the fact that I know I have all those stories with my dad, it's insane, bro.

8:41I 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 two 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.

9:28I'm just gonna 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 couple things will happen one you're going to learn a lot of shit pretty fast because 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 have been too much it would have been too seductive i would have made millions in high school let alone you know 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's listening, he's going direct to fucking consumer.

10:25But 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 actual solo journey since 34. So the last 14 years, I've been building my world and I'm feeling pretty good about it.

11:10Cool. One more thing. I want to hang on the Jets for one more. And then I have a lot of questions. But 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 five years, I'm not spending too much time on it. Meaning, even in the last couple of years, the NFL is now more open to private equity investment. By the time I'm ready, there's going to be so much change. Like, who knows with the blockchain, with new regulation, with cryptocurrency, with the New World Order, the BRICS Alliance, the US, the modern Cold War.

11:45I mean, I'd like to think I'm thoughtful enough to know that by the time I'm ready, strike in 20 years yeah the model that i like the model might be five dollars from every human on earth or it might be borrowing against all my assets or i made the well there's so many yeah you know or i may make the i may meet two or three 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.

12:21I 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. I don't think about deal structure. I don't think about the day.

12:54I 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 thirties, even before the whole Gary V thing started somewhere around that I'm like, Oh, oh, I don't 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. I mean for the purebred entrepreneurs that will do it for the game, the ones like me that want to wake up at 6 a.m.

13:28on a Saturday to go garage selling because buying something for five bucks 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 end point. Yeah. When I first started hearing, like, it's the journey. I'm like, oh, like I didn't, it took me a while before, like I'd heard it over and over and again. I'm like, oh shit. Like I'm central casting for that. Yeah. Yeah. Even to my love of losing in entrepreneurship, I love the game of entrepreneurship more than I like myself.

14:05and 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've heard of i think about great fighters i gotta talk to some of these mma guys that i respect i have to have dinner with one or two 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 fame like like do you love the game so much that even at your own expense there's some sort of joy yeah beyond just learning some sort of like ideological respect for the whole thing.

15:02I respect entrepreneurship so much. I believe in merit so much. The reason I loved sports so much is either you win or lose, right? You play. That's why I love fighting. You fight, someone's going to win or lose to 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 years ago didn't work out, right? But it's like, but the cleanup of everything and like the comeback, right? It's like, oh, that's fucking good, right?

15:38Good for you. Yeah. 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 like two 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. It's like an angel check. And it's straight charity. I've got to really fix that because you can imagine all of those have gone to zero.

16:10Number two, 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 ninth time I did it. The first eight were small enough that I could make it to go to zero, but in a weird way, that made it go to zero, you know? And sometimes you have to just go through those. And hopefully that means by the time I get the private equity land in a decade, I'll be really good because I've learned these silly mistakes now.

16:41All right, everyone. Quick message from the Agency Owners Association. So this is the peer group for agency owners that Neil and I both put together. This is for people that are doing six figures, seven figures, eight figures, even nine figures as well. And we're all here to help you grow your agency faster. In this group, we share leads. We also, we share learnings with each other. It's a community where people can ask questions. Their most burning questions, personally, professionally. We'll share templates, reports, things like that. We're constantly adding more value to the group. I will tell you that the price is continuing to increase.

17:11The good news is that there's no long-term commitment. So you can just learn more by going to marketingschool.io slash agency. Once again, that's marketingschool.io slash agency to learn more. And we hope to see you inside. By the way, I have to ask you something. The thing that you just did with the, you're like, by the way, I have to talk to a couple of MMA fighters. So one of my friends, Nick Gray, asked a question on Twitter. He was like, ask Gary Vee about Nick, his relationships guy. Oh, Nick Dio. Yeah, can you talk about that? Is that what you just did there? Is it like he's going to set it up once he sees this clip or something?

17:42Nick Dio? Yeah. Yeah, that runs from him. I mean, probably VaynerSports. So VaynerSports, my sports agency, we're very fortunate. We rep Corey Sandhagen and Stipe Militick. I'm pretty deep in the MMA world. But let's go to Nick Dio. But I think that similar to how I was one of the first people ever to have a DRock, big shout out DRock, Dustin's doing it right now, like literally follow me around in 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.

18:20He 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 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 um nick is one and tyler schmidt would be the other these are the only people i would feel comfortable that would speak to someone like a jack harlow who 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.

19:18I 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. I do both. But right now I'm very deep in operations land. Between VFriends and VaynerX, I'm like in it. 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.

19:50I'm like, I'm just busy. And it's 15 hours a day operating those two businesses. So he's running around the world. Sometimes I'm DMing someone that I think is cool and they reply, you know, I'm in a nice port in my career right now, especially if they're emerging. A lot of them are like, Gary V, 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 who I was at 23, and I wish there was a 48-year-old version of me who would have DM'd me and be like, I see you.

20:30It would have 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, you know 10 of them are going to go on to be yeah really important peeps right and it's gonna be nice to be there from day one yeah 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 cliche formula one vegas or a conference and just like it's night like i'm pumped that now that we have this yeah the next time i see you at an airport or conference.

21:06I 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. Because you can imagine that's the most important thing if you have a human represent you. And 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 That would be a way you could think about it for sure. He's just an inner circle human that I feel, when I tell you I don't check in on him, of course, occasionally, like, yo, what's up?

21:44Like, is there anything cool going on? 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 fun of him, man. 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 going to 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 that would only be true if I can't deliver for him, not the reverse. And even if he wanted to do something for himself, that would make me happy.

22:14And 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 a 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 by the way, for everyone listening, this is pre-Chat GPT, so he wrote it. Yeah, he actually wrote it. And then when he said he was going to you, I was like, I kind of want to know the story about how you identified him and how you identified talent in general.

22:52You know, one thing that's great about me is I don't want to say shit when I don't like 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 up with him this week, obviously, with the audio book. And he's been my writing partner in the last two books I've written. The answer is I don't fully, it's a little hazy to me. I feel as though Sid or Andy, Dustin, do you know? I'm not sure. I think it was Andy. yeah i think andy andy kreniak who led my content team who's now the president of v friends um i'm 98 sure that he hired ragov and and the way it works in that world is similar to and you're trying 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 it was he was hired just like many other people were hired but then I sensed month six and I'm like okay this kid's got something so I'm not necessarily up front yeah right so I didn't 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 gonna 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.

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