Rapid Response: GaryVee wants your attention, w/VaynerMedia’s Gary Vaynerchuk

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1:25Pop culture is a massive, massive currency. I think businesses and brands have more permission to be contextual to the room they're distributing the content in. When I make Facebook content, I'm thinking about parents. Those are going to be different videos that I'm putting into TikTok, yet I believe most people are just making a video and then pushing them out. Being happy is worth fighting for. The world is selling fear, brother. The world is weaponizing fear. The people who are most hurt and unhappy are very loud. They do feel a sense of responsibility for pushing optimism, happiness, joy. And VFriends is how I'm going to scale that.

2:13That's Gary Vaynerchuk, known by a sea of entrepreneurial acolytes as Gary V, founder of VaynerMedia, VaynerX, and author of best-selling books From Crush It to Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. I'm Bob Safian, former editor of Fast Company, founder of The Flux Group, and host of Masters of Scale Rapid Response. I wanted to talk to Gary because no one has commanded the entrepreneurial zeitgeist and played off of social media and pop culture more effectively or consistently than Gary. This episode was recorded at the VaynerMedia offices in Manhattan and features a classic Gary move of sharing a recent social post to illustrate a point about Taylor Swift in the NFL.

2:56His energy is effusive, passion for what he calls day trading attention, the topic of a new book in the works, and for a new platform called VFriends that's evolved from NFTs to what he describes as Pokemon meets Sesame Street. Gary's exhortations about embracing the new while also embracing empathy is instructive for a world that he says is too red and blue when it should be purple. It's just one of his colorful phrases. Let's get to it.

3:37You ready? I'm ready. You sure? I'm always sure. All right. I'm Bob Safian. I'm here with entrepreneur, author, founder of VaynerMedia, future owner of the New York Jets. Very nice. At the VaynerMedia office is the Igloo Conference Room. Thanks for doing this, Gary. Thanks for having me. So the theme of this podcast is about rapid response. And you are like the epitome of the person who runs to the new with great gusto and energy. I'm curious what rapid response means to you. I think it means opportunity. I think it means curiosity. I think it means truth. I'm fascinated by people's inability to get out of no culture.

4:23I'm fascinated by putting your head in the sand. For years, I was a public figure. Speaking of like, here's an opportunity, here's an opportunity, here's an opportunity. I would wonder why people close to me, let alone the general audience, wouldn't act on it. And it led me to realizing that people are insecure or lack self-esteem or really struggle with people's judgment or have these poor relationships with themselves. It's funny, when you speak about rapid response, I think it means someone who lacks fear. Because the nature of running fast to something new is potentially scary. You may fail.

4:58You may waste your time. You may get burnt. But for me, it's subconscious. It's all I really know. And that's not a bad thing, to waste your time. I mean, you're not really wasting your time. Well, that's my point. so many of my friends are like you spent 30 hours digging into that hypothesis your time has become so valuable why are you doing that i'm like because if i write once every 45 times it fully pays for everything else i think people are incredibly good at academia but not good at actual life and so i don't see it as waste of times things i've learned going down rabbit holes became data points in context to other moments of going down rabbit holes that allowed me to either bail early, pattern recognition, or triple down on an opportunity.

5:44And so I really don't know how a CEO or entrepreneur sees the world in any other way. I feel like that's their responsibility. The whole framework of this makes me think about comfort, fear, self-esteem, insecurity. Those are the things that pop up in my mind when I hear it. You've got a new book project. Yes. Day Trading Attention. Yes. You've done six business books before this, right? So why Why was this a rabbit hole that you decided to go down? It's the biggest conversation I see that's universal. Whether you are a nonprofit, whether you're running for mayor, whether you are running a small business, whether you're the CEO of a big company, a creator, an influencer, everyone is trying to figure out how to create demand.

6:31When I say everyone's selling something, I don't see that as a negative. I mean everyone's trying to communicate something that matters to them. I think selling is very good when you believe in what you're selling. I think if you're part of a nonprofit curing a disease, that is incredibly good selling. And I also don't begrudge someone who's trying to sell lollipops. I did that in sixth grade. Everything's allowed as long as you're doing it the right way. And so I believe that the world of marketing and communication has made a very aggressive turn. And I think people are struggling and wasting money on traditional and digital.

7:03I don't think this is a digital versus traditional thing. I know because I live in it every day you can waste an ungodly amount of money on influencers on facebook on instagram on tiktok on spotify just as easily as you can in a newspaper or billboard or radio and so I think the craft of being great at storytelling running ads creating content for the modern internet being prepared for the ar vr world of the next decade the framework that makes sense to me is day trading attention. Meaning, whether it's a Super Bowl ad, which I think is underpriced for Fortune 500, or it's a carousel ad on Instagram or LinkedIn, or it's an emerging influencer on TikTok to make content for your local car wash business, or SaaS business selling to Fortune 500 companies on LinkedIn, I think the nuances of communication and marketing have become so profoundly challenging that most people are really struggling.

8:04And I'm very fortunate to be sitting in the eye of the storm. And I always get most excited when I think I'm writing a book that is gonna lead to tens of thousands of emails of thank you. And I've written a couple of those and I know what they feel like versus the other ones I've written that have less thank yous. I think this one's gonna be a big one. I think it's a follow-up to Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, which was a big book that I wrote in 2013 that said this is how you do content on social media. this one is probably the nerdiest book I've ever written I'm a little worried that it may not be as commercially successful because it is a little textbooky on the flip side that's what might make it very commercially successful so I definitely pushed myself to go further into like going behind the cloak of what I do for a living what we do for a living why a lot of things work for me I feel like I'm writing a book of the secret sauce that makes most of my stuff work and I'm excited that people are going to take that baton and be able to build for themselves.

8:59I mean, there's so many ways to reach people now, so many more ways than ever. And it sounds like you're saying that people feel like, oh, I have to cover all the bases as opposed to looking at each one as a marketplace and figuring out what the right opportunity is for you, for your brand, for your message at that moment. Period. There's just so many examples I can give. If you are a florist, Instagram feels incredibly natural because a lot of people are there but it's also hard right now the supply and demand of attention on Instagram makes it challenging meanwhile I know the cliche the average the typical florist is not thinking about LinkedIn meanwhile LinkedIn is acting like Facebook in 2015 where on LinkedIn if you post about floral arrangements or why you're a good option for a corporate floral or just a one-off Valentine's Day thing It is more likely that you will get organic reach on LinkedIn than Instagram.

9:57I know that 99.9 % of the people listening to this podcast would not believe that to be true, but I know it to be true. And there's a hundred other things I'm thinking about or know to be true. And so I'm going to use this book to lay that out, but also get people into the right mindset, which is there's attention and there's filling that attention. this podcast the variable of success for me and for you is the words that come out of my mouth the creative is the variable if i give sharp insights if i give things that bring people value they will feel better towards me so i think people are thinking about all these social networks as distribution but not thinking about filling them with something that actually works i believe that people are mainly mailing in the content.

10:41It's inherently selfish. Look at me, follow me, buy from me. It's incredibly repetitive. I look at brands and people every day. They're saying the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over that's grounded in selfishness. And so I don't think people are strategic. I don't think they understand the science around the art of making a picture or video work for you in YouTube, YouTube shorts, Facebook, Facebook reels, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, WhatsApp channel, Instagram channel. These are new things, broadcast channels, the carousel ad, the video, the reel versus the regular post, LinkedIn versus Twitter, Twitter versus Snapchat.

11:21Snapchat discovery is where a lot of creators should be making content, but they're only making it on Instagram and TikTok. So in a lot of ways, the books I've been writing for the last almost two decades, I feel like this is the 301 course. and I'm really, you probably can sense it, I'm really proud of it. It was really harder for me. I always am so ahead of things that I can just spit it but this one I'm dreaming of someone right now who's listening to this post, buying the book on Amazon and a week later having like 40 highlights in it. All my books have done well. They've all been New York Times bestsellers but I'm still getting emails about Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook even though a lot of the content is not as timely.

12:03I felt like I needed to do the updated version and the more advanced version. And so I'm excited. I'm really excited about it. So an attention question to ask you about. Please. So Taylor Swift. Yes. Travis Kelsey. Yes. Have changed the NFL's business. Yes. Without the NFL being part of its plan at all. That's right. What is the attention message from that? I know you're a big NFL fan. Yes, I am. So is there a message in that? Yes, of course there is. It's actually one of the biggest parts of the book, which is that everybody on earth underestimates pop culture. Pop culture is the currency. Andy Warhol is a savant.

12:39He's a genius. He was right. Pop culture is a massive, massive currency. And actually, this is really fun, and we'll do it in real time three or four posts earlier. Here we go. Where is it here? What does Taylor Swift and Kelsey have to do with me? Here's what it has to do with you, Donnie the mechanic. Attention is the number one asset. Just posting aimlessly a video or picture are getting harder to win because everyone's doing it. So now understanding the science behind the art. What's the thumbnail look like? What's your copy look like? What time do you post? How does TikTok work differently than Instagram?

13:14It's just so clear how hard it is to be great at social in 2024. And to be great, you've got to really know your craft. So I'm about to get into it why I'm playing this for everybody. And this isn't just being pretty or funny or like just gimmicky anymore. Like you've got to get great at it. We call it at VaynerX SOC, strategic organic content. Strategic. Why? I want everybody right now to ask themselves why they posted the last or the next post. And most of it is grounded in their subconscious that something like this used to work. And I want it to work in the algorithm. That's not good enough anymore.

13:47And this whole philosophy is grounded in something we call PAC, platforms and culture. So really understanding the platforms, how YouTube shorts works, but then also understanding culture. Like, why are corduroy hats, why is everyone infatuated with Taylor Swift and Kelsey? Right, it's not just two celebrities getting together. Understanding the deeper meaning and understanding what that means to you and understanding is there anything for you to do about it. Let's take that down to somebody who's a mechanic right now listening. Does Taylor Swift and Kelsey have to do with me? Here's what it has to do with you, Donnie the mechanic.

14:16This morning I see how many people now follow Kelsey that did it a week ago. Those are people that didn't know who that was. On the flip side, for Taylor, there's a lot of football fans who now know her a little more because she had more awareness, right? Well, for Donnie the mechanic, that might mean in his local town in Detroit, he may want to go do a collaboration with a Thai restaurant where maybe they cook a meal at the auto shop. And so what happens is when you understand, what happened with Taylor and Kelsey is they're cross-pollinating their platforms. So if you're a mechanic in Detroit, like I said in this post on social, you're not thinking about hitting up the Thai restaurant down the street.

14:53yet that's the kind of left field post that will get people's attention. What if you're lucky enough to have an employee that works for you, that's first name is Travis and another one that's first name is Taylor? Literally, you're a law firm. Travis Johnson, Taylor Smith. You can easily use the micro moment of the infatuation of our society to do something clever and silly. What people don't realize is that little clever video on Instagram that only got 90 views. One of those 90 views is someone who's actually considering to hire an attorney and they actually like the fact that you were a little silly and not buttoned up and you made them feel more comfortable to reach out to you to work with your law firm or your dentist's place.

15:34People are very linear. They don't realize how big pop culture is and how they can factor into their boring business. I had a gentleman reach out to me who has literally, I used a concrete cement business in one of my analogies. He literally owned a asphalt business. he started to make TikToks even though he thought it was the wildest, craziest thing he'd ever heard and it literally has doubled his business. An asphalt seller, like guy that comes and redoes your driveway, made a couple TikToks, one went decent, another one went viral and if I recall properly, a business that was doing$800 ,000 a year servicing a local area, I think he was in Wisconsin, is now doing 2.5 million, the tears were coming through the email But most people who are listening to this podcast who are in a B2B or like a different kind of business are not thinking how TikTok can work for them.

16:30And pop culture doesn't necessarily mean that you need to have your celebrity endorser. Correct. You're playing off of what the conversations that are going on. It's like being good at a cocktail party. Think of this as your social media marketing. You go out tonight and it's a fundraiser of your local PTA or it's the banquet for the high school basketball team. Are you the kind of person that comes to that event and you're enjoyable to talk to and have a circle around you? Or are you in the corner by yourself? The reality is being an introvert and not being comfortable in that is incredibly appropriate and awesome.

17:05As a business, you'd like to think that you're trying to market and get business. And so to me, there's so much more permission for creativity than people allow themselves. But people continue to like wear their suit and tie in their LinkedIn profile. They don't understand the room. And I think businesses and brands have more permission to be contextual to the room they're distributing the content in. When I make Facebook content, I'm thinking about parents because I know the demo is going to be older. Those are going to be different videos that I'm putting into TikTok where I know they're going to be youngsters.

17:37The words and the videos and the slang and everything I say and do is different. Yet I believe most people are just making a video and then pushing them out on these channels and expecting for it to succeed. They think of it as distribution. I think of it as a place you have to be contextual to win the room. Because it's a conversation. Before it even gets into a conversation, you can't win when you're a fish out of water. As a communicator, if you don't know the room, you will lose. If you go give a commencement speech to a very conservative college and you sling unlimited liberal, it won't land with those kids and vice versa.

18:14If you're a Jets fan like I am and you go to Boston and you on the Patriots, you're going to lose some people. You've got to know the room. You're raising capital from a VC firm that is very buttoned up, that's a different presentation, to an angel investor who they were all entrepreneurs and they built it themselves. If you do not know the slang, you will be out of place. And so I believe before it becomes a conversation, my friend, if you do not know what the picture and video needs to look like at 3.34 p.m. on a Monday in LinkedIn, which is mainly consumed by people who are at work, Think about all the psychology goes into this.

18:52I'm posting different content when I know you're at work than when I'm posting on the weekend and knowing you might be skimming your LinkedIn real quick while you're catching your kid's baseball game and you're bored. I reverse engineer the psychology of the person in the room at the time that they consume the content. That level of thought, besides thinking what the thumbnail looks like, besides thinking what the first three seconds of the video has to be to even keep you to consume it, This is a level of science in day trading attention that I believe 99 % are not executing on in social. And therein lies the opportunity and the vulnerability.

19:29I love Gary's clarity about how much harder it is to be effective in our attention economy, but also how much untapped opportunity there is. After the break, Gary will talk about his latest entrepreneurial venture, VFriends, and about what makes the culture at VaynerMedia distinctive and instructive. We'll be right back. Real leaders don't back down when the stakes are high. They innovate, they push forward, and then they take the stage at the Masters of Scale Summit. Join us in San Francisco, October 7th to 9th, to hear from the CEO of the New York Times, scientists using cutting-edge technology to find cures, the leader of crypto powerhouse Coinbase, a retired four-star general, and many, many more.

20:18Apply now at mastersofscale.com slash apply25. That's mastersofscale.com slash apply25. If you're ready to take your startup from idea to impact, then AWS is your launchpad. From data storage to machine learning to secure app hosting, AWS gives you the tech trusted by the world's fastest scaling startups. And here's the best part. Join AWS Activate today and you could score up to$100 ,000 in AWS credits tailored to your stage and network. Go to aws.amazon.com slash activate and start building. Expanding your business in the U.S. can feel like a maze. Every state has its own payroll, benefits, and compliance rules, which can pull your focus away from growth.

21:08That's why founders use Deal. Deal is the professional employer organization, or PEO, that gives you a dedicated HR expert plus Fortune 500 level benefits for your team. The National Association of PEOs says businesses can grow twice as fast if they use one. So if you're scaling, make it simple with Deal. Go to deel.com slash mos and get up to three months free. Before the break, we heard Gary Vaynerchuk talk about how fear hampers leadership and the untapped entrepreneurial potential in day trading attention. Now he talks about his newest venture, VFriends, and how it's scaling unconventionally.

21:52He also talks about the culture at his biggest established business, VaynerMedia, and why no one at the company but him can fire anyone. Plus, lessons about in-office versus remote work and why happiness is worth fighting for. Can I ask you about VFriends? Please. I am fascinated by VFriends. Thank you. This started, at least when I first saw it, as NFT. Yes. And then collectibles and toys and clothing. and now there was a Halloween float. I saw you were on TV on a Halloween float. What is VFriends? Is it a promotional vehicle? Is it the next Pokemon or Disney? Much more number two. I'm loudly and quietly trying to build Sesame Street meets Pokemon.

22:40And I say loudly and then quietly. When I first launched it, NFT summer, all the Gary V of how I do things, I brought awareness to it. quietly, to your point, when I'm building out a Halloween parade float for New York City's Halloween Big Bash, I didn't overly promote that in my channels. I did it because I knew hundreds of thousands of people on the street were going to see the float and we're going to hand out tchotchkes and cards and shirts. And I wanted to see organically what it was going to do. I'm working on YouTube Kids. I have a kid's book coming out next year. I'm 47, soon to be 48.

23:13I believe that you and I benefited from the content we consumed as a kid on television not fully there was plenty of silly stuff but even if you go back to the 80s when G.I. Joe did its cartoon it had a message at the end when He-Man did its cartoon it had a message at the end Sesame Street I will tell you when I started this I thought I was building Disney now I know I'm building Sesame Street why because as I've been on this journey I don't think I understood or gave enough credit, and even though I follow pop culture, I'm incredibly impressed and humbled by what Jim Henson's agenda was. I think he had great intent.

23:51Fraggle Rock's brief, when they tried to create it, the brief was stop war. What greater mission could you have? I, as Gary Vee, am a character. I know who I am. But in all of my bravado and competitiveness and loudness and cursing and jerseyness. For the ones that have looked closer, I'm really pushing empathy and patience and kindness and nice guys finish first and there is a way to build a big empire but doing it in a kind way and we need more compassion and real leaders don't yell at people. They capture the stress and they treat their people. You build up people and you play long and life should not be transactional.

24:32I want to win. This is why I say Pokemon meets Sesame Street. I also believe we've lost our way in some of our warmth. I think it is bad to give kids eighth place trophies. I don't think it teaches them about life. I think we've over coddled kids. We've created entitlement. I believe there's a lot of anxiety. I have thousands of under 25 year old employees or under 30. I believe a lot of them don't have enough self-esteem because they've been over coddled because everything's been taking care of themselves. So using politics, red and blue, VFriends is purple. I want to teach the world about purple.

25:04I think the competitive clown I want to make him very famous and I want people to care about him But he as a character is going to teach kids winning and losing is good And when you lose you can learn from that and by the way if you're seven and you lose when you cry when you lose That's not bad It's actually good when parents say what are you crying for this doesn't matter For a seven-year-old who's got wiring of being competitive and ambitious. I promise you It does matter and I don't think we should eliminate that from kids And I think we haven't found our equilibrium in modern parenting. So VFriends is a collectible storytelling platform that I hope in 30 years will be in the conversation with the Marvels and the Pokemons and the Hello Kitties and the Sesame Streets.

25:52I want to build out these characters. Accountable Ant will teach kids and parents that accountability matters. If you blame the school for your kids' problems or social media for your kids' problems, you're not setting them up for success. Patient Panda will teach people that patience is how you actually win. Everybody wants it now, now, now, which makes them shortcut, which is why people don't achieve what they actually are capable of. So what is BeFriends? It's an intellectual property. And as an entrepreneur, you said, at one point you thought it was Disney, now you think it's Sesame Street.

26:24Like when you started this, was it just NFTs? Did you see the journey? And how does the journey sort of change? Even if you look at my earliest content, I knew NFTs was a moment similar to after school television. I viewed the NFT summer. Don't forget, I was making videos that said 99 % of NFTs are going to zero. I knew what we were in, which is what Web1 was in in 97, 98. I knew the internet was going to be big and the internet stocks and the internet companies were overvalued by short-term greed. Same with NFTs, but the technology is real. Digital collectibles will be a part of everyone's life.

26:56And that's what VFriends are. They are digital collectibles. But I also want physical collectibles. the comic book, the trading cards. It's a 360 fidgetal IP. Fortnite is played as a video game digitally. But people buy Fortnite trading cards and Fortnite comic books and Fortnite hats. And I mean, Disney was digital. If you really think about it, it wasn't really digital. But when Disney came out, that was cinema. But you watched it on TV. You bought physical items. so for me NFT hysteria A was an opportunity to create the original collectible it's really cool just like owning the first comic book from Spider-Man VFriend Series 1 NFT is the original digital collectible but now we're expanding it and I have a real purpose behind why the characters exist and it's to scale me I have done well and have amassed a nice audience there's a lot of people that value me but there's a lot of people that won't consume me I don't look the part for them.