Gary Vee: The AI Opportunity Is Real — You're Just Looking at It Wrong

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1:05He predicted TikTok talking to computers and the creator economy before anyone saw it coming. And in our lifetime, most unpredictable moment, I went straight to him for answers. What would you do if you have a laptop and AI? I would build an app that's$5 to$50 a month, make unlimited organic content, and try to... For me as a person in Silicon Valley, I can totally see how Anthropic releases new lines of codes tomorrow and this business is done. Why would I start if it's already being automated? Because everything you learn along the way will set up your next thing. What are you going to do? Lay down and cry?

1:39I'm asking you.

1:56battled and got through it. It was pretty cool. Well, you do speak Russian, which is amazing. I'm glad you... How old are you? 50 years in America. Crazy. No, 47. I came here when I was three. I actually want to talk about AI and what's happening. And, you know, I've been watching you for eight years now, so I've been preparing for this interview for eight years. And what I noticed about you is that you're right at so many things. I remember you predicted TikTok, and you're the reason I started TikTok. I have 3 million followers there because you were like, you need to start TikTok. When you're looking at this AI era, do you think it's our last chance to build wealth right now?

2:36That's a great question. You know, one of the things I try to do is when I talk about things publicly, I've spent a lot of time thinking it through and I've seen indicators of actual human action that shows me an insight to the earliest of preview of something I think will be at scale. So that's why a lot of my predictions have worked out. It's like when I talk about our grandkids marrying AI robots, well, it's already happening in Japan. It is. And so like, to me, that's not a long putt. That's just something that's happening in a part of the world that clearly to me is a human psychology. And so it's going to work.

3:12Your question's interesting because my intuition is it has the chance to create hyper micro wealth the fragmentation of you know vibe coding and all this stuff and the stuff we're already seeing right kids building out products very quickly and having success on the flip side you're also alluding to clearly the super scalers right when you look at what meta and microsoft and google and app like the biggest companies in China, like you could see a winner takes all scenario where 12 or 13 companies, my gut is that the economy and the consumer behavior is so large that yes, there'll be 25 companies that take so much, right?

4:00You look at, you know, Adobe and Salesforce and ServiceNow SaaS companies. I mean, SaaS companies are clearly coming out of an incredible 30 year run and now walking into a potential buzzsaw you know i saw a headline yesterday i don't know if it's true i mean just you know i was busy yesterday but x maybe it was claude claude just made gave everybody a bloomberg terminal for free you know like those kind of headlines seem very real to me they seem really natural but it's almost like meta or anthropic or or someone else is going to eat up more Bloomberg and ServiceNow and Salesforce. It's like the battle of the titans.

4:41Yeah. And then over here on the scraps, well, the scraps actually might be quite big and it might be a social media like era where all of us become, literally all of us become vibe coders. Just like I thought one of my great predictions in 2008 was everybody would have a social media account when it did not seem like that. Is everyone going to have a mini app that is monetizable because they themselves were able to build it, not need a developer for$500 ,000? I don't know. I believe that the middle will be in trouble, and the middle might be a VaynerMedia. you know um but i have a feeling the the the separation of the middle class of entrepreneurship and could be real the differences the long tail could be quite at scale maybe even then creating this middle you know this middle class i don't know if you put a gun to my head i would say no it's not our last chance okay so we have a few years right i think so and again let me take another counter just to build on this conversation if it is our last chance and 79 companies make all the money governments will get massively involved yeah and like it may lead to a nirvana like you know back to where we come from and where we're sitting could extreme capitalism mean a different version of socialism right coming back to the roots you know what i mean could a world where there's only 100 companies that make 80 % of the monies, would they then be forced to subsidize all the displaced workers?

6:23Do we live in a three-day work week environment with the other four days subsidized from the companies that we work from? Do we have more leisure? Do we get more into the arts and family? And do we have side projects that make these micro pennies? I don't know. So what if tomorrow everything crashes for you? Like VaynerMedia, you lose your followers. what would you do if you have a laptop and AI? If I lost my reputation and my personal brand, but I kept my knowledge of how to make content on social, I would build an app that's five to $50 a month. And I would make unlimited organic content on LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, and try to get customers.

7:04If you want to stay ahead in the AI era, I bring you the people who see what's coming next every week. Subscribe to this channel so you don't miss it. That's a very interesting approach. I just talked to Bill Gurley, who's like a legendary investor, and he told me, you can't even imagine how many websites are there that are just like passport photos that charge you$6. And yes, AI can do that, but because we're still so used to going to a website and paying, and they're making tens of thousands of dollars a month, and we just don't realize it. Because for me, as a person in Silicon Valley, I'm looking at all the businesses, and I'm like, okay, I can totally see how Anthropic releases new lines of codes tomorrow, and this business is done.

7:40It's not how consumers work. He's right. It's not how it works. And in fact, I would argue what I do for a living and what I'm obsessed with actually explodes in this next era. It's all going to be about brand because you have to discover it. In 30 years, by default, somebody will be like, oh, let me go to the main AI thing and I don't need to. But there's going to be a long period of time here. Yeah. So there's this long tail we still need to adjust. Whereas humans, we take some time to adjust to new reality. When you're a Silicon Valley girl and you even know who Bill Gurley is, you live in a different world than the 99.9 % of people on earth who've never heard of Bill.

8:19And that's opportunity for everyone who's listening. Correct. Because transitioning to that era together with small companies, small businesses, other people educating them, I feel like there is a lot of potential there. When you layer what I've been obsessed with about the last 20 years, which is there is a advertising and brand building ecosystem called social media that does not cost you money. And that's the point about AI apps. It really doesn't cost you money anymore to build something in the way that I grew up. But the fact that you can actually get awareness that you're one TikTok away from having people know who you are and building a platform, that's intoxicating.

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9:38The only thing left is to close the book. The end of an era. And don't miss Taylor Swift, The Era's Tour, the final show featuring for the first time the Tortured Poets Department. Now streaming only on Disney+. But do you have another worry? Talking about social media, right? I see a lot of AI content and we're getting flooded with so much content so we're competing more. But also another thing that I'm always thinking about, what if this social media platform, like why would they pay human creators? Why would they not just, you know, generate AI creators? This is much more personalized content.

10:15It's free and they don't have to pay anyone. Well, platforms don't pay people. Well, some of them do. No, they really don't. Like Meta doesn't pay people. TikTok doesn't pay people. Like they don't pay people. They are an open vessel that people go on and create for. And then businesses come and sit in between people that make content and people that consume content. And then businesses advertise on there or go to a creator and do a brand deal. Now, if you're saying, why would L 'Oreal go to you like they might today versus someone that looks kind of like you that they could even own like a Mickey Mouse?

10:53Exactly. And make 100 videos versus one. They're going to do that. That is good. Now, right now there's stigma around that and big companies are scared to go too deep into AI because there's pushback. But over the next five to ten years, they will. Now, what they might use you for, though, is you might be one of the hundred faces they use, 99 of which they own the IP. But you're going to be able to do this. I think the rise of analog value is going to be extraordinary. So we're sitting in this world right now where a lot of people are behind the scenes doing stuff. I think, you know, for me, and I think you know this about me, I'm comfortable and good in both environments, both with my thumbs and right here.

11:34That person's going to do incredibly well. The person that's very comfortable with analog hosting a conference, having 25 people in this room right now while we do this, right? Brands are going to find incredible value in the analog world. Real life, restaurants, real life studio podcasts. like real life is gonna explode. We're gonna live in this barbell world. Extreme technology, but extremely scaled. What we take for vantage us for is like, that's normal, like being outside, like a pop-up shop, you know, going to a sporting event. They're gonna continue to increase in value. And so, yeah, you're gonna be, like the game's gonna change.

12:15But I remind influencers, influencers are crying to me quite a bit right now. It's like, Gary, AI did, I'm like, you took money from real celebrities. 20 years ago, none of us existed. And all of that money went to Jennifer Aniston. If you were on Shark Tank, you were the only business people. I, Gary Vee, do not have a television show. I get speaking fees and appearance fees greater than most of the sharks, right? That would have never been possible. So the world turns, shit changes. We just get too comfortable in our space. Well, what's funny is when we're young and we're disrupting something, we like it.

12:54But when we're the one that gets disrupted, we don't like it. Yeah. How are you adjusting your social media strategy? Nothing because of what we just talked about. To me, I stay in, my last book I wrote was called Day Trading Attention. I live in that environment. So if AI wasn't even happening right now, I'd still be focused on what I'm focused on, long form written content. So much more sub stack, Beehive, LinkedIn, X, longer form content. So I hired two full-time writers on my staff, journalists, who basically will listen to this entire interview. And he's going to come up with 15 to 20 follow-up questions, which is why I needed someone who had a journalistic background.

13:31Because if it was just transcribing, I can AI that. And then we will create a first-person article about the barbell theory, why analog is on the rise, right? So a lot more written content. Interesting. And I feel like it's becoming so much easier because I remember a couple of years ago, I met, four years ago, I met someone from LinkedIn. They're like, you should be on LinkedIn. I'm like, I can't write. So I'm so bad at that. And then ChatGPT came around and my LinkedIn's growing like crazy. Yeah. And I've always had ghostwriting infrastructure for my books because I've never been able to write.

14:01But I've always wanted it. You know, it's funny. Every book I've written, everyone with my written content, people come up to me. They're like, man, it sounds so much like you. I'm like, it is fully me because it is truly transcribed for my words. I don't write differently than I talk because it's just the transcription. But so writing content, I'm incredibly focused on being, and I'm pushing my team right now on this, I'm just being remarkable on every platform, like obsession to how to win Snapchat spotlight, obsession to understand how to be great at YouTube shorts, to make sure I'm feeding the LLMs of Gemini with my content.

14:38Why shorts, not long form? Both. But shorts allows me to pump out a lot of how to, why, right? There's a little bit of a different thing there. So just hyper fixation on the craft of the written word, the images, testing new formats. I call it pack platforms. So I need to know everything that's happening on Substack X, Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok, shorts, all that. that's algorithms within those what kind of content what format what kind of is it a real is it a full like with uh on linkedin is it right now imagery is doing incredibly well video crushed last year it's declining a little bit this month like just so what's the algorithm within the platforms doing and then see culture like what is happening in popular culture across everything like Like, you know, America has long in popular culture fed from black culture.

15:37Now we're seeing Hispanic culture. We're seeing Korean culture impact so much of U.S. pop culture. Slang terms, quarter zip, la boo-boos in then out, the Starbucks bear tumbler for three weeks, then not, Stanley cups, then not. I love your passion when you're talking about this. Well, because pop culture, you know, baggy pants for guys. Like, pop culture is relevance. right I can make one reference in here of something that's happening in popular culture and then for somebody who's listening if they're also into the same thing I'm into immediately we are connected right we are connected by being born in the same place like people look for we're tribal we love sports religion is because the way it is cultures we have you and I met immediate we're just from the same place it is what it is but by the way when I walk outside right now, if somebody's wearing a Jets hat, they're immediately my brother.

16:32So, you know, I think pop culture, especially in B2B environments, is very misunderstood. But even B2C environments, the biggest consumer brands I work with in my day-to-day, I think they underestimate pop culture. Yeah, even creators. Like, I'm talking to so many big brands, and they've never advertised with creators, and I'm just surprised. So you're saying you're not running faster because of AA. You're just doing whatever you're doing. I'm saying that I don't have a different social media strategy right now because of AI per se. If I wake up from a coma right now in seven years and everything's different, it will not take me long to get back on the bike and be successful because I'll just spend 100 days paying attention to where is everyone paying attention to?

17:17Oh, my God, AI changed everything. We're back to reading newspapers. Okay, I'm going to make newspaper ads. Like it's not complicated. The thesis is simple. understanding and how to be good at the thesis is hard. Has your hiring changed because of it? How many people do you have now? You know, it's funny you say that. We at Vayner, so I have many different companies, but the biggest one I run is VaynerX, VaynerMedia, and there's Chuck Media and the Tomorrow Group, three very large advertising agencies, all of which do something pretty similar. We're exploding. And I'm having this very, very challenging game.

17:51I mean, I was in Seattle yesterday, as you heard before we went on here. I met with the three biggest companies that are HQ'd there, all of which are like, we want to do more with you. We want to do a lot with you. Two that are already working with us. A third that wants to jam with us. So the demand of customers is exploding. I still need an extraordinary amount of human beings because it's human-based business. Yes, I understand that AI can do the job. It is not lost on me that 100 people can now do the work of 400 people. I'm just worried about the output wars of the future what if you're competing with somebody that has 400 and you have 400 you cut 200 and they still have 400 and in our world you and I we're like ah we're outflanking them we're going to be better we're going to make more EBITDA but what if they weaponize those 400 people with the same tools that we weaponize our 200 people in my world advertising if my 400 people now make 27 ,000 ads and your 200 people make 16 ,000 ads for whatever human element is there.

18:54And I understand it doesn't work that way, but this concept of, is AI a shield and a sword and a gun versus rocks in a war, right? You would think 200 will beat 400, but what if the 400 also have shields? And so there's something here that I haven't fully figured out. I'm definitely being cautious we are definitely first and foremost attacking things that do not have value for example if you're a project manager at VaynerMedia and your soul because you know every project manager comes in different shapes and sizes but if you're the kind of project manager who only takes notes like that is how you well that person has already been kind of smoked out and asked to do more.

19:45Was there something that you transformed with AI within your team that blew your mind? You're like, oh my God. My mind has not been blown since kind of the, you know, I had a lot of friends in Silicon Valley talking that machine learning was getting better and better. And I was like, maybe I'm impressed on how fast everything is happening. But I'm in a point where like, yes. It's normal for you now. To me, basically, here's where my head's at. I'm going to take my phone and be like, build this app i want to do this enter done so if i'm already there everything in between is just a step to that that's where i think we're going anything you transformed in your process or you just started executing by yourself i mean like building probably the biggest thing that happened to me is i am an anthropologist pop culture strategist so having that level of thinking power with me that i used to rely on search and like just digging around the internet that was profound.

20:43I feel the same when I was flying here yesterday. I was playing with Claude Scales, which is like a skill that you can build that executes for yourself. It was preparing me for this interview and I was like, this is fascinating. I feel like I'm a superhuman with all these tools because Perplexity Computer every day sends me stocks to buy, Claude Scales does my research. It's just fascinating. Yeah, but I also think it feels like a superhero today, the same way I felt with the iPhone, that first year with the iPhone. so I bought the iPhone the day it came out especially in New York because Wall Street and any big city there was Blackberry obsession and I felt like a superhero that first year because I could go on the internet for real not like the way the Blackberry people could and that gave me a hyper advantage like I would go and do at that point I was already out about a little bit I would go and do something and I could look something up before I like went on stage or went into a meeting and that was like powerful in a way that I didn't have to do with my laptop, even though that used to have that.

21:41It was just so fast. You feel like a superhero with clawed perplexity, GBT, Meta's infrastructure starting to get very impressive. To remind everybody who's listening, your grandmother in the office did not have internet, did not have AI, did not have social media, didn't have an office to your point, Did not have mobile computing, did not have computer in office, did not have internet. Yeah, I mean, this is just technology. But do you feel that we're in this period of time and we are like 1 % of the grasping technology, do we need to run faster to make the most out of it? Well, it depends on the human ambition.

22:23I mean, I think a lot of people are going to check out of this era. Let's talk about Silicon Valley. I have a lot of Silicon Valley friends who were psycho. all in, going so hard during early Web 2, 2005, 6, 7, 8, blogging, podcasting, and then social, who made enough money and are in a different part of their life now, who have given a shit about AI and blockchain. But with somebody who wants to build wealth. I feel like this is just such an opportunity, and it's unique for the next 10 years. I feel like we have this year, and then it's basic for everyone. I think that makes sense that you think that, and I understand that.

23:01I think you and I will see each other in 10 years and be like, man, you were right. It's just that as much as it looks like AI creates a winner takes all world, I have a funny feeling it's not going to. Okay. Because don't forget, there is the human, like there's, it's going to take too much time. Like, you know what people don't do well? Hang with me for a second. Let's play this game. Let's, let's take that point. Let's say 10 companies won everything. Do you literally think that 8 billion people are going to be like, yeah, that's awesome? No. Okay. And governments wouldn't. Yeah. So that's it.

23:34It's just funny to hear this from you because you're the one like hustle, do this. People don't like to take my sentence in its totality. Hustle go hard if you complain and are a crybaby and you don't realize that accountability can help you. Hustle if you like it so much that you would do it if it was free. I would build businesses if it was free. Meaning like it made me, like it's my joy. I build companies the way people like to go golfing and cooking and watching movies. It's more fun to me. You know, it's so funny. We put on a pedestal someone who's a philosopher or a great reader, someone who reads books all day in the rooms, a real thinker and writes, oh, wow, so noble.

24:18That's what I do. I just do something with it on the other side. You know what I mean? So I think hustle, if it makes you happy, one could argue that the extreme opposite of hustle is what I also do. I mean, the more you know me, the more you would realize I'm incredibly detached from my career or my public persona. I'll make it very blunt. I don't give a f*** about Gary Vee or my Vayner empire. I do not think it makes me better then. Who cares if I'm good at business? Some people are good at skiing. Some people are good at singing. Some people are good at writing. It just happens to be something I'm good at.

24:59I have my self-worth wrapped up into who I show up as as a human to people in my life. That I'm a nice guy. Was that a switch ever in your life? Absolutely not. Never. It was ingrained in me by my mother and my circumstances and my DNA. What would you say to someone who thinks their worth is tied to their results? and that makes them very anxious in this era. Correct. I would tell them that, first of all, it depends on what results, right? You know, if you're saying financial results. I don't know, I'm in Silicon Valley. Great. Your company's valuation. I would say I understand. It's a very common human trait.

25:35I would also say that almost everybody I know on earth that is wrapped up in that metrics mindset has incredible anxiety and anxiety sucks. How do you separate yourself from it? But I feel like it's easier to say for you because you have all the millions followers already and millions of dollars. You're saying that because you don't know me. If my friends that have known me my whole life will tell you that I have the millions of followers and dollars because I've always been this way. That's the reason. It's not the. Right. My detachment because I have an incredible relationship with losing. Good sleep is everything.

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27:04I like it. What do you tell yourself when you lose? That I sucked and that was funny and let's not try to do that again. And like, what can we do? Like, I love the challenge. I was the kid when I was losing in sports or ping pong or pool, I loved playing again. I loved playing again. I loved playing again. I didn't think me losing in front of my sister or mom meant that I was lesser then. I played outside of this short-term validation framework, and I also was incredibly structured to not struggle with peer pressure. In high school and in college, when so many of my contemporaries did everything for validation amongst their peers, I did not.

27:42and that was just tremendous parenting, luck of the draw with DNA and the circumstances I grew up with. What are you telling your kids? Well, they're not me. I'm trying to leave deposits on that but they're growing up in a very different environment. Now, luckily, my children share a lot of mine and my ex-wife's DNA and are also a little bit cocooned. My 17-year-old daughter does not live her life for her friend's or boy's attention. so she's cooking with gas my 13 year old son also he's i would have said three years ago i'm like he's already starting to like really develop this and so you know look dna is a real thing and then when you have parents that are conscious and are pushing you on the right things the only core thing they're for sure they have different is environment i don't have this ideology for my children to be exactly like me or just like me, or they need to be hungry like I was.