The Key Media Strategies for Maximum Impact | Gary Vaynerchuck

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1:05Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives. But first, we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors.

1:55Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. When I was conceiving the idea for the painted porch, having a sort of a physical space, an office space, a bookstore, a studio for Daily Stoic, I had some idea of what it would look, and that idea has changed a bunch over time. You know, we're going to have a coffee shop as part of it, and then we ended up renting that out to Astro Records, which was there for three plus years. Lippy just left, so now I'm deciding what to do with this other side of the office. We added in the studio at some point. It's been this really awesome, cool experience.

2:31But the thing I didn't anticipate, the thing I didn't think about was just like having a spacement, people would drop in. And I never knew who would be in town, who'd be around, the sort of bump in, pass through traffic we would get. And it was cool. A couple of weeks ago, Gary Vee was out to do the podcast. and as he comes in to record, we're going to go next door to record the episode, another friend swung by, not to do the podcast, he was just passing through and he wanted to hang out and check out some books. And it was Manu Ginobili, who has also been on the Daily Stoic podcast. As the three of us were sitting there talking before I went over with Gary and recorded, I was just like, is this real life?

3:15Is this really what's happening? And a couple of days later, Sam Koppelman was there and Chris Bosh stopped by. Matt Choi was there. Again, I was like, is this real life? And it is real life. And that's one of the things that I actually learned from Gary, which is that you kind of take these swings. They're not big, crazy swings. But when you try something and you put yourself out there, you never know what can happen. And I've known Gary a long time. He and I go not just way back, but he's been a big supporter of my career. Actually, Gary's company, VaynerSpeakers, is who I use to do all the talks that I do, or a good chunk of them.

3:56So like on the Thursday episodes, when you hear me doing the Q &A, or sometimes on the Sunday episodes when you hear one of my talks, Zach Nadler, who's my speaking agent and one of the co-founders of VaynerSpeakers, he set that up. Gary has sent me all around the world, introduced my work to all sorts of cool people and organizations. And he's a really interesting thinker about marketing and business. He's currently the chairman of VaynerX, the CEO of VaynerMedia, the CEO of VFriends, and a six-time New York Times bestselling author. He's always had his finger on the pulse of what the next big thing is, specifically with digital media.

4:31And he's really informed how I think about the content we make at Daily Stuck, the sort of content pyramid, as he calls it. But if you ever check that out, you'll see that's actually kind of the model of Daly's Dook. And he's also just added being a children's book author to his resume. This is the week the book launched. It's called Meet Me in the Middle. It's an awesome children's book with a story on the importance of seeing things from a different perspective. It's also a really interesting design book. Like each page is two-sided, so you can like start from either end of the book. So it's sort of a metaphor for itself, like the idea of meet in the middle.

5:04You can start on either end. and we ended up having a shorter interview than normal because Manu and I, and he just got caught up in what we were talking about. But I think all of us would have gladly taken that trade any day of the week. But I thought this was a fun interview. He's always got a ton of energy. He always makes me think and see things differently. And I think the same will be true for you. You can find Gary V on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. I refuse to say X, at Gary V. You can check out my episodes on the Gary V podcast. Anyways, here is my interview with the one and only Gary V.

5:53Do you think people's attention spans are getting shorter? No, I really don't. I think that they have optionality on short-form consumption that didn't exist prior. yeah but i think in fact i'll argue the counter i think people are binge watching eight hours of a netflix true or way more than eight hours youtube show like my like some of my vlogs or other people's can run very long yeah no i actually i actually think we we have more optionality but like i'll give you an example the saturday morning comics used to crush and print yes and nobody like over emphasized like are we getting attention shorters when people would like rip through those in four seconds like Garfield or Charlie Brown I think we are concerned about social because it's such a paradigm shift yeah and we've become obsessed with looking at the negatives of it versus the positives and I think that becomes one of the subconscious byproducts of us being like everyone's attention spans are shorter I'm like I don't know like uh I'll give you another one in New York back in the day there used to be 10 10 a.m there was like 10 10 wins we'll give you And it was all short form.

7:01They gave you the news in two seconds or sports radio would have like a one minute sports flash. Yeah. You go on a morning show, you have two minutes to explain a book, but you go on a podcast, you might have three hours. Yeah. I actually think distribution has allowed for the contrary. It has given merit to both short and long in a way that traditional media consumption for 70 years, which became our framework of how we analyzed short and long attention. So that would be my answer to that. Yeah. Although I also feel like on the creator side, people are not as like, it is hard to make something compelling.

7:35That's 10 seconds or a minute. Like someone might work on a book for seven years and it's this many pages. The ability to effectively and concisely communicate a big idea is a skill that not enough people have. correct and and not every format is conducive to that to your point like people can convey an incredible moment of escapism in 10 seconds yeah you can have a really fun joke or absurdity yeah or trick or you know like and that's beautiful that's like that maps a lot of things that happened it was what was cool about real life like somebody would have a joke in the lunchroom in sixth grade yeah and that was an incredibly well executed seven seconds yeah we're seeing the creation format of that out in the public because there was no formats for that yeah right like even tracy ullman would have those little breaks called the simpson cartoons which right yeah which you know they were short skits and it became something iconic so i think to your point i think there's a lot of ways to provide value in very short skits yeah and short moments but it is not profound philosophical ideas that clearly take time to think through.

8:43Yeah. Although people think it's, I think the audience side, you think it's easy because it's short or it's incite, but it's hard. Correct. As a matter of fact, much to what I was talking about with day trading attention, especially for the people that are listening that are in professional marketing, not creators or whatever, they disrespect not only because it's short, they disrespect production value. Okay. I would argue that all of Fortune 500 marketing is losing right now because they put production value on a pedestal. So they feel that a video made by an iPhone that is mundane, that doesn't have the lighting and all that is not good.

9:17Meanwhile, the audience has spoken with their actions. Humans like it. Just like Hollywood didn't think reality TV was good. And then the market spoke. And now it's a very meaningful genre that used to not exist. I think a lot of the things I think about when I think about attention or even the concept of the kids book, like finding the middle. I think a lot of it has to do with people's inability to understand that their subjective opinions are borderline audacious and often delusional. Meaning most people walk around making decisions based on a focus group of one. I sit in unlimited boardrooms constantly where they're like, well, I don't like that.

9:59I'm like, well, good news. We're not selling to you. Yeah. You're selling to 19 year olds. You're a 67 year old. You're selling to women. You're a male. We're selling to people who need this. You don't need this. Why would your subjective opinion of one be a good marketing strategy and a good distribution strategy and a good media strategy and good creative strategy? Now, if you're a remarkable marketer, decision maker, you become an empty vessel and you try to take like it's I believe one of the things that has worked for me is I don't think my opinion counts. I think I have to make subjective opinions all the time, but I never believe I'm right.

10:33I believe that I'm forced into it at times. I have to decide what wines I'm going to put on my wine show. I have to decide what I'm going to write about, but I don't think it's right. And I think a lot of people really do live in a borderline delusional, audacious state and make a lot of bad business marketing and life decisions within that framework. Well, that's the mindset in pretty much all internet comments. They'll be like, who needs this video summarizing this thing? And it's like, not you, but like lots of people. Like I get this all the time because I write books that popularize and explain ancient philosophy.

11:04And so people will go, well, just read the originals. Why would someone need a book that explains these things? And it's like, I don't know why, but they do. I know why. Because context matters. Yes. That's very nice, Johnny 74, who left the Ryan Holiday comment. Let me give you the answer. If you read the original, half the words don't exist anymore. How about that part? How about the English language and slang have evolved? Not everyone went to the same Ivy League school as you. Not everyone has been steeped in the same things as you. Ryan, my entire creator career was predicated on that. I was one of the first individuals in the history of wine ever that decided to take wine off of its pedestal.

11:43Yeah. I loved wine so much that I wanted my friends to like it. Sure. And they didn't. Yeah. Because it was stoogy and douchey and fucking elitist. and when I referred to a wine, like imagine if the Iron Sheik took off his weird boot and you smelled it, well that was gonna resonate for people that grew up in the 80s and liked wrestling in a way of like deep cassis with terroir. That's not gonna work for everyone to your point. Why is it needed? Because interpretations or DJing or whatever you wanna call it, is actually how all of, if that was the case we should all stop because it's always been talked about.

12:22It's insanity. No, no. Different people are at different places in their journey and want different things. And there's this kind of narcissism of like, well, the way I get it straight from the... What I realize is, hey, I wake up every day and I'm fascinated by ancient philosophy. And I understand how it can apply to my life. And then I look around and I would try to talk to other people about it. I'd be like, what does this have to do with me? Right? Like you realize people don't share the same assumptions as you. And that's where middlemen or popularizers or translators or influencers or explainers come in.

12:55And it's an important role. I think that's absolutely right. Yeah. Like, I don't even like movies all that much. And I used to watch Siskel and Ebert when I would find them on the dial. Predominantly because I loved their banter and interpretation of, I literally had no interest, like, literally had no interest in seeing any of the movies. but but i've always been drawn to the explain it's you know it's funny it's my language i mean i live with unlimited acronyms and analogies because i've always like felt like it was a way to convey yeah and and i find my career in that with wine it was explaining a complicated thing that intimidates people yeah and then i went into the business world and i've stayed in the forefront of new things that are happening in business and try to break them down yeah in a manner that provides people value or give them an aha because I genuinely think that those things could be beneficial to them however I literally don't expect anyone to give a shit about modern marketing yeah I don't expect anyone to care about the nuances of wine I understand why no one cares about sports or garage sales or trading cards or blockchain the thought that what I think is good means that it's good.

14:08That is a framework that I am fascinated that people don't understand. That is crazy talk. Well, people shit on influencers. And look, there's a kind of influencer that's kind of, you know, doesn't add much value in the world. But again, like, I'm sorry to interrupt, but maybe they're attractive and modeling has always added value. Of course. And maybe they're silly and humor. Like you could take it to the full extreme. And I'm still going to say that if a million people are consuming someone. I don't give a shit if they're eating straws. The market has spoken and you can go to the most frivolous.

14:40And I would say a attractive person that has nothing to say provides value because people like looking at attractive people. That someone who's goofy. Well, guess what? The world's complicated and hard. Sometimes it's just funny to laugh at something. It's escapism at scale. Well, I was just thinking even during the pandemic, like you would think that scientists would be able to explain what's happening well, but they weren't. And so all these people got really good at going like, let me translate this thing you don't understand into what you should actually do with it. Because they understood most people are busy and confused and overwhelmed.

15:13And they want it digested down into something they can do with it. Oh, by the way, also in a medium that they consume. Yes. They did that on TikTok. They're not getting research papers. That's right. I'm very happy you published this in a science. I don't even know the name of a single science. Like, I don't know. The Harvard. I don't know. I don't know. MIT like I've heard some things in my life but as someone who failed every science class it's not gonna be where I'm gonna win right right and even if I did read it I don't know if it's good or bad I don't know what it means especially someone like me who's clearly learned that his reading comprehension was one of the reasons he wasn't good at school that has become apparent to me in the last decade yeah you know what I mean like totally like I like it's you know how many you know it was a fun aha by the way how many times did I get a long email from someone in my company where I would reply five minute meeting.

15:59And what I realized was, wow, I am remarkable in audio. Yeah. And I am atrocious in written word. And that's what has been my framework. Well, that is a huge thing, right? So people have the thing that they like, right? You like music, you like books, you like whatever. And then realizing that not everyone is in that medium. And so spending time, like to me, what the market for attention is, what I think about is like, I love books. I write books. That's my medium. That's what I wish everyone consumed all the time, but they don't. Some people like audiobooks, some people like podcasts, some people like short form videos, some people like blog articles.

16:32There's all this stuff. And you as a creator have to figure out how to reach those people to translate what you do into all those different medium.

16:48Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Bastro County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought this isn't going to work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove in Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation getting me to and from my house. It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields, and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in.

17:33We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven across the country. And by we, I mean not just my wife, but both my kids who I drove home from the hospital in that truck. Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course, because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota adventure detour. And of course, this is stoicism, too, because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that. If you've got the resilience and the right companion to make it wherever the road takes you.

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18:54My favorite question that I would get four or five, six, seven, eight years ago when I was on book four or five, and I was the new technology guy or the new medium guy or the pushing the envelope guy or the innovation guy, you'd always get like the third person in line and be like, all right, Gary, good stuff. Like, you know, that person that's looking for the Razz. all right tell me this mr the world is changing so why do you write this book like why are you even writing books and i would be like because people read them yeah like just because attention might be moving somewhere doesn't mean the old medium is gone the question becomes are you capable of producing within that environment and number two what's the juice worth what squeeze so for example if you love writing books just because it might not be commercially successful or you might make enough money given your time, that doesn't mean that the juice is not worth the squeeze.

19:46You might be doing, like when I write this book, I don't necessarily write it to, this is gonna be the best use of my time for money. This will never compete with me giving a one hour speech for the ludicrous amount of money that I get for it. However, I get incredible enjoyment as a human being. I'm getting, and I'm sure, I mean, you must get this at scale. I get an enormous amount of emails every single days of my life. every day of my life that says hey I read jab jab jab right hook this is a book that I wrote 10 years ago that is basically day trading attention this was originally called jab jab left hook yeah and you I just told you in your store I write books for two three year windows more than like forever and I'm like wow and they're like this change I got this marketing gig because like I want I know that a lot of people learn in book form in a much more profound way than they do in short form social media content.

20:36And so I wanna put a manifesto down. This one was really, I don't know if you skimmed or read, this one was a little nerdy for me, I went fucking detailed. There's like diagrams. Yeah, there's like charts and shit. I kinda went like, this could be curriculum, college course stuff, even when I read it for the audio book, I was like, in parts of it, I'm like I'm a little bored by this, but I know who I wrote it for. And so for this book, it's actually, a lot of people listening to this podcast knowing how epic your audience is, they may not love me in Instagram, but this book, what's cool about if you're trading for attention is it doesn't have to be commercial.

21:12This is not a capitalist book. This is a life book. You might be trying to raise$10 ,000 for your PTA. You might be running for mayor in your small town. You might have a family business that your mother just retired and you're like, wait a minute, what do I do with, like having attention and saying something to make something happen is for everyone. And that's how I wrote it. Well, what I took from you, and I think it was what you're saying is you kind of become platform agnostic. Correct. You're very intent on the message. What is it that I'm having to say? And then just as like I publish a book and then it gets translated in 30, 40 languages.

21:48I don't think in Spanish. I don't care that much about, you know, Mandarin. I don't think about that. But that's the process by which this one single thing gets broken down so it can reach all these other people. and I think that's how I think about social media and audiobooks and podcasts it's it's like I have this thing that I'm trying to say and I'm trying to communicate and then I I want it to to break out and go to all the different people not only do I think over the last 15 years when I analyze it detached from my own self that what has worked for me is being platform agnostic but I've also been contextual to the platform medium agnostic meaning I didn't want to make short form videos as a matter of fact when YouTube came out I was one of the first humans on earth to do long form video one of the reasons I got flown out to Google and Yahoo video and before Google even bought YouTube and Viddler and all these companies Ustream which was the precursor to Twitch was I was doing long form when everything was pirated IP early YouTube was family guy clips you were on Revver what was that one?

22:52Viddler? There was one that was going to be like YouTube but you got paid for your videos. Oh no, I never did that. I'm trying to remember what that was. But yeah, the point that I'm making is like written word. One of the reasons I didn't blog. If you look at my career on the internet from 96 to today, which is now a chunky little time, we're getting there. E-commerce early, email early, search early, YouTube, social, all of it. Not blogging because I couldn't write. I started to blog after I was being transcribed from audio, from video. Got it? So like, look, I think this is where I'm going with this, which is like, you have to be self-aware of what you're capable of.

23:32But more importantly, I couldn't wait to blog and write, but I just didn't have that skill. And once I, I mean, even my, you know how crazy these books are? I audio them. Almost every book I've ever written. Let me phrase, every book I've ever written. Actually, Stephanie Land, my favorite ghostwriter who I worked with for years, lives in Austin, Texas, by the way. Big shout out, Stephanie. Thank you so much. If you need a ghostwriter, Stephanie Land. Google her. she was my ghost writer for the first year. They were wild sessions. I would literally write the book and, you know, I can talk. I fucking talked out books.

24:03And, you know, and now I've put out so much content. Raghav, who works with me on my books now, who's on my team, it's all already written. And then I post and clean up and tighten up and create a framework and all that. But it's fascinating. And I think for everyone who's listening, like, not only are you platform agnostic, When I was yelling four years ago about TikTok, all the Instagram people didn't want to go because they didn't want to start over. Ryan, they didn't want to start over. I got a million followers here. And they don't understand. Attention doesn't care where you have your audience.

24:34I won email in 1997. I had 90 % open rates. 90. You know email. I know your career. That doesn't happen anymore. I'm not happy that it's 30%. But the world changed. And so I promise you, like tomorrow, I saw Elon tweeted, should we bring Vine back? he's going to bring Vine back. Yeah. Because short for, first of all, Vine started this whole thing. Yeah, that's one of the big misses in the history of like big tech companies that Vine is first. Well, they sold. Yeah. They sold. No, I mean, Twitter buying it and then effectively killing it. Well, by the way, that happens all the time. Yeah. I mean, it's happening in CPG at scale right now.

25:10Unilever buys Dollar Shave Club, doesn't know what to do with it. Like M &A has a great history of buying and not letting the organ fit the body. Because what they do is they don't give the people that are building it the autonomy. Yeah. They try to incorporate it into. And then it becomes a line item on their budget and then they kill it. Yeah. Corporate life. Anyway, platform agnostic, to your point, I'm obsessed with the message. Yeah. In what form, how, what slang, where could give a fuck? To me, it is the message and then respect of the audience and mediums. Yes. And I think a lot of people disrespect audience and mediums.

25:42Although you said something to me once that sort of shaped how I do stuff. You said like, I basically say seven things. You're like, I have like seven things. And I just say that thing over and over and over again. And I think about that because as a creator, you can get like self-conscious. Am I repeating myself? Is this new? And first off, it assumes that people are paying way closer attention than you are. It also assumes that there's not something new to say about one of those seven things. And that when you say it in a new context or in response to a new thing, that's not creating a new message.

26:14But when people hear like, oh, you do 100 pieces of content a day or 200, whatever that They're thinking that's 100 original things. No, if you go seven things times however many networks or platforms there are, that's like seven things. I think one thing I'm excited about with day trading attention is I hope people realize, almost everyone who's listening here who's ambitious and going at this, businesses or humans, are gonna realize after they read this, oh shit, why am I not on Facebook? Or oh fuck, I got TikTok and Instagram reels. yeah, like why am I not doing YouTube Shorts? The incremental slight tweak to be on those platforms as well with a slight copy or editing adjustment that respects the room of YouTube Shorts being different than TikTok is one of the explosive things for the A players.

27:02Like this book for me was like a 201 or a 301. Like what I'm excited about this one is like if you've never been in the game, it will help. But for people that are like you, like real players, the reason I went so deep is like, I'm like, hey, let me take that next step in book form so that even the best people in the world that are winning, seemingly winning, Charlie D 'Amelio, Logan Paul, Mr. B, let me give them three to four things that, because I have the luxury of not only being one of those people, but I also have VaynerX, a 2 ,000 person global marketing agency. We spend billions of dollars in media on behalf of clients, make quadrillions of pieces of creative across all platforms, so I'm sitting at the epicenter of really looking at quant and qual data that makes it very clear of what can and can't be done.

27:46And one of the biggest expansions is, to your point, I'm not gonna, the biggest mistake creators make is they change, they talk about things they don't believe in because they think they need something new to say. And what I think is, look, I believe in things. I get pumped when I change my mind. That gives a whole new genre. But why would I compromise my belief system? I just find new analogies, new context points, new mediums, new platforms. I always layer current events into it. AI allows me to talk all over again of what I talked about with social media. The analogies I made on social media stages in 2006 of everybody putting their head in the sand and hoping social media wasn't gonna happen, well, guess what?

28:24It's back. It's back. It's called AI. By the way, I'll go into the camera here. Your AI strategy cannot be, you will get fucking destroyed by that tidal wave. You better find a surfboard and ride it because AI doesn't give a shit that you're scared of it. It's just gonna happen. Well, I think where you get yourself in trouble as a creator is if you think you got to wake up and have a hot take every day on something that you just heard about eight seconds ago. No, you, your message should be timeless. And then you should be saying it in a timely way. It's funny. That's what we were just talking about.

28:55When you just said that, I was like, Oh, right. The way I do social and the way I navigate is the combination of both of those styles of books that we both have. You write timeless and forever, which is actually my core message. I have seven to 10, whatever it is. And then I am very like day trading, but like, that's how I write books. I like my books to be tight windows. Like here's the opportunity and both matter. But the interpretation of classic back to the starting point of this podcast is the game. Yeah. And, and what's funny too, is when you're making stuff, you're also creating a library of content that like today, the Daily Stoic YouTube channel will do more views than it would have done in a month, several years ago on stuff that is old, Just scale.

29:37Like entertainment studios are libraries. They're making new stuff always. And some of those things are going to be hits in the present moment. But really what they're trying to do is find the thing that will be a perennial timeless hit. And then you have this library just in the way that you would have an investment portfolio of things that are paying, you know, increasing a few percentage every year. That's what you're trying to build. Like I have, like, I'll put out a video today. I hope it will do well. but like my best performing video will do a hundred thousand views today but i made it 10 years ago yep that's right not to mention youtube is the second biggest search engine in the world yes and that has a lot to do with that yeah by the way literally as i walked in here meta just launched her ai product like update into instagram and whatsapp i was just looking at it right before i walked in search is changing right in front of our eyes how so well i mean i literally just watched zuck's two minute video on instagram so i haven't even played with it yet but what is very clear to me is holy shit like one of the biggest changes in our society and we've known this with chat gpt but like it's very clear of it coming to social what i saw in the preview there or at least how we talked about it what i'm definitely gonna be looking at on my flight tonight in detail from austin back to new york is oh shit instagram search is fucking remarkable and it's very visual and the results are really strong and like this is going to just like tiktok has been growing very rapidly as a search engine amongst Gen Z, you know, the size and scale that Meta plays at with Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp.

31:05Like it's just very clear that the search engine is something they're pushing very hard within it. And the dynamics that we've seen on YouTube play out to what you just described is about to come to a short form social media world. One of the things I think about is like, how can I get multiple uses out of one singular thing? So you and I are having a conversation. That's a podcast episode, right? This will be a clip. So this clip is a TikTok. It's an Instagram reel. It's a Twitter video. It's a Facebook video. You can do short-form videos on LinkedIn. And then I'm going to take a combination of those clips and put them together in a YouTube video.

31:39I'm going to tack an intro on there and be like 10 times I've talked about this topic. And soon you're going to put it into an AI model and it's going to write a profound article or book. Sure. I mean, I put this about seven years ago, 10 years ago. I know a lot of people are gonna hit me up about this because another thing I get hit up a lot about. I put out a free deck, it was like 84 pages, and it did that, it was the content pyramid. I was like here's why I do daily V and podcasts. Here's how I take this and make 84 pieces of content. And like, I mean, when I tell you every time I'm in an airport a 27 year old kid, guy or gal comes up to me and says that's how I built my social media agency, that deck, which I put out for free.

32:17That's exactly how I've been thinking the whole time. And now, the library to your point, the intellectual property of human, just like Marvel and Disney, just like why do VFriends to build another library of IP, is a moat. It's a major, major, major, major moat of opportunity within impact and business. And the main thing, the top of that pyramid is you have to have something unique and interesting to say. Or it might not be the most unique, but it is profoundly your thing to say. Yes. Right? Because a lot of things are universal. Or you plus a thing becomes a unique thing. That part. That's why I wanted to jump in and say that.

32:56I want everyone to hear this. Your interpretation, your slang, your framework. People are like, Gary, what about authenticity? I'm like, the most authentic thing in the world is the human being. Truly snowflake. Never before, never again. Twins, even twins, wired super differently inside. Yeah. Right? Uh-huh. I believe that people walk away from their essence. Yeah. And I want them, I think you would, I mean, I know you well enough to say this and it's one of the biggest compliments I can give you. It has definitely worked for me and I admire it. And whenever I see it, the people that really lean into themselves, like really don't try to put other things on a pedestal, other people, other opinions, just get really comfortable of the purest form of them.

33:41Yeah. Man, do they have impact? Because that's where the uniqueness, that's the uniqueness. Like the way you say things. Yeah. Like the analogies, the stories, the interpretations, the subtle observations that are slightly tweaked contextual to the moment. And that as a human and that as an operator and that as a parent and as an executive and that as an entrepreneur and then as author and a concept creator, it all plays out. It all plays out.

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34:46no one has ever been like you before. No one will ever be like you again. You have unique experiences, unique DNA. All that's totally unique. So why would you copy other people? Why would you try to be like someone else? You should be you. That's your monopoly. I believe this is why I talk about patience so much. I think one of the reasons people do it is they want to get there faster. Oh, Gary V did it. I'm going to be like him. I'm going to be crazy, loud. Okay, cool. Like if you're a Jersey kid from the 80s, cool. You can probably get like, we probably over, you know, we make, But if you're an introvert from the South, and you've never cursed in your life, please don't make videos where you're cursing.

35:20It's gonna feel awkward. Just like why I was a little bored in reading my own book, because academia is a little bit like, I can glaze over, but I know why I wrote it. And so, yeah man, it's because people lack patience, Rye. Rye, when you were behind the scenes with Ferris and all that other stuff, when I was in my daddy's liquor store all those years, I didn't make a piece of business content until I was 34 years old. Yeah, people go, it's too late for me. Yeah. I'm too old. Yeah, dude, I did not make one single piece of business content in a world that was different. By the way, one of the biggest theses of day trading attention is social change three years ago.

36:00We now live in the TikTokification era. Social media for the first 10 years was email marketing. Get as many followers as you can, and then a percentage of those people will see your content. Yeah, your number of followers and the views something get are - Had a direct correlation, just like email. If you have 10 million people on the email list, you know, 10 % open rates, a million saw it. Same with social forever. Yes. Twitter, Facebook. It would tweak, and once in a while, some shit would happen, but that was it. Now, it's all algorithm. It's why I thought Tumblr was going to be the biggest social network when I invested in it.

36:31Yeah. It was interest-based, not social-based. Even in 2007, I kind of had instincts to who you follow, challenging game, because your your friends in high school versus college, there's middle school versus family life, then you have kids and your friends don't, new parent friends, that evolves. Interests, yeah, you could pick up new interests along the way, but there's some things that will always be with you, sports and wine for me, and there'll be new things. But even when you get new things, the algo will figure that out. So the interest graph was, the reason I was so hot on Musical.ly was it was the first time I saw the interest graph again since Tumblr.

37:07And that is now, and now it's now eating up everything, And it will, because that's how entertainment, and all these books, and it's how we make choices. We make them based on relevance, and that's when you buy something. That's how you get excited about something. So Patience Pig is this one, but talk to me about Stoic Slime. Oh yes, we've gotta talk about Stoic Slime. But yes, and I promise you, I will write a Meet Me in the Middle with Stoic. The problem with Stoic Slime is Stoic Slime and Balanced Beetle are the two V friends that are most, that's your world. It was funny, when I was doing this book, at some point I was like, oh, wait till Ryan sees this.

37:39literally meet me in the middle right patient pig and eager eagle right patience and being eager yeah the point of this book and i'm so excited to be going into kids book land because the truth is i've really felt the impacts of getting to kids 15 to 25 yeah especially now they've been doing it for so long it's fun to find that 40 year old that's been watching you since they were 25 and you talk to them and you listen to the impacts and you get so humbled and now i'm like getting being a little greedy, I'm like okay, let's go younger. Like to me, you know, patience. Do you know that I believe most alpha winners that hear me talk about patience, that it's one of the things that, they like me, I'll go get all that, but they don't like when I go patience because they interpret it as complacency.

38:21But there's a reason there's two words in the dictionary. Patience is not complacency. Eagerness, I love, ambition, you know, but this book is basically telling kids, and parents by the way, that in America we've become way too red and way too blue. And the magic is purple. By the way, that's why this was purple. I'm like all about purple now. Do you know Aristotle's golden mean? All right. So many, many centuries ago, Aristotle said that most virtues are a midpoint between two vices. So courage, the opposite of courage is not cowardice. There's recklessness and cowardice and courage is in the middle.

38:59For the Stoics, the virtue of temperance or self-discipline would be between eagerness and patience, right? Like it's in the middle there. Love you. And so I'm using these V friends to show being eager and hungry, amazing. Being patient, amazing. What I do in here is I go, too much patience becomes complacency. Too much eagerness becomes sloppy. And how these two V friends, you know, it's fun, come together. And I think it's cool. It's a middle book for kids. So you can read it from both sides. So two nights out of the week, you can get them on both. and I'm so darn excited about this because I love both audiences in a parent and kid world.

39:39So the cartoons I have coming out for VFriends on YouTube Kids this summer, the books, the master plan I have for the next 50 years of VFriends, my audience is gonna be both. Unlike a lot of things, Cocomelon is driving parents crazy, but crushing for little kids. I'm hoping to be, like I'm excited, I can't wait to get the first DM or email. Bluey, kids and parents like Bluey. By the way, it's one of the reasons I, like the Bluey founder flew out from Australia and we had a meeting in New York and he was giving me some nice flowers about some of the stuff I did around TikTok and how it helped blow up Bluey and I was like, fuck, I gotta do that for myself for VFriends.

40:12Wow. It was profound. Bluey does that. Correct. And that's what VFriends is gonna do as well. Like I want it for both and this is like kind of my first like real foray into it. I'm excited to get the first email this summer from someone who's like, hey, got the book because I'm a fan of you, read it for my four-year-old. Gotta be honest with you, the patient big thing really hit. Yeah, yeah. Like I know that I'm going to be on a plane and I can see my face in the screen on a plane already grinning because that is a little bit of my secret plan, but that's absolutely right. The whole concept of meeting me in the middle.

40:43Because people think stoicism has no emotions. No, there's has no emotions. And then there's a slave to your emotions. Stoic is in the middle between those two. You have it and you choose which ones you utilize or don't utilize, but you're not overpowered by them. the biggest pandemic in parenting right now, a lot of parents right now that are listening have an opposite view of their co-parent, right? Their wife or husband thinks something, they think the opposite. Yes, yes. One parent takes the lead on something and goes over here. Yeah. The other parent that has a different view, to get their kid in the middle, they think they have to go here.

41:17Yes. You're too soft on him. You're too hard on him. Correct. And so the answer actually is to go here. Yes. But that is like the opposite of what most people do. Yes. So I fully understand. It makes so much sense. And I think about it daily. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If your instinct is to be hard, you're probably actually already being too hard on them. So you should actively go easier. And if you're overprotective, you should be like, hey, I'm going to really push them. Correct. But what ends up happening in a parenting environment, why do co-CEOs not work? Parenting is hard. So you have one parent that is third generation wealthy, and their framework's different than the person they married who was born in Mexico and is an immigrant.

41:55Yeah. They're gonna have different PSVs on their kids, of course. But again, when the first parent moves on whatever, the other parent that's on the other side of the pillow tends to go too far. This is what happened. By the way, this is politics right now in America. Of course. Everyone's much more a shade of purple, but we keep pushing each other because of these moves because everyone's actually trying to get the purple, but what they're doing is extremely making red and blue get more red and blue. I'm very passionate about this, and I'm very hungry as a person that loves to communicate and make content and hopes that, you know, every day I hope one of my purple, which is the predominant message I put out, disguised in business and other things, that it really has that ultimate viral moment that makes everyone that's too far left or right on anything, parenting, business, politics, go, huh, that's right.

42:46Well, it's funny, like parents are like super concerned about how much screen time their kids have, right? And so you all want your kids to do stuff in the real world. So like one of the strategies we came up with is like, hey, you love watching YouTube videos. I'm going to make, if we're going to choose to watch videos about places, then you're going to get excited to go to those places. Then we're going to go to those places. So instead of banning them from the thing, which makes them want to do it more, You think, how do I take this thing you have interest in and use it as a bridge to go to this other place that I want you to do?

43:11Watching parents today who are of the era where parents demonized alcohol, which then only led to kids loving to drink alcohol. And then kids going through college experiences where they saw someone who never drank alcohol because it was demonized completely get wasted on their first week of college. Watching that generation of parents not realizing that with social media and screen times, they're doing the same thing. like that's brilliant good for you and i look the other thing i would say to parents is like you're the parent like if you think tiktok like tiktok is a good one because i talk about it marketing a lot of times the most extreme parents are like china or bad or whatever i'm like why are you yelling at me i'm talking about tiktok about business like you don't like tiktok for your kid you're their parent delete it off their phone oh we can't do that the peer pressure at school i'm like oh you're a puss parent i understand now yeah don't be mad at me i'm talking about marketing and selling flowers on tiktok yeah like you have a problem with anything address it yes this is my favorite v friend actually was going to be the first book but i got to this the v friend that i most want to make popular is accountable aunt we have become remarkable at pointing fingers sure biden's the worst trump's the worst republicans democrats america china my my spouse mom fucked me up dad fucked me up my boss is a dick capital we are What about this, brother?

44:30The thumb, Ryan, the thumb doesn't exist anymore. Do you know why I'm so happy? I stay in thumb. I spend an ungodly amount of time in an enjoyable way. This is the interesting part of like, what could I have done better? I fucked that up. Damn, I shouldn't have done. I could have. And some people, when they hear me say things like that, they're like, doesn't that get depressing? I'm like, no, I'm in control. When you think everyone's in control, but you, you're finished. Yeah. Yeah, I talk about this. It's called self-discipline for a reason. You know what I mean? Discipline is this mythical thing that you think you get to enforce on other people.

45:05No, discipline, it's here. It's here, right? You can hold yourself to high standards, and then you can hope other people come up to this. It's not this weapon you really can't do. It's so funny you say that. Somebody, man, this struck me. I was on an Asian tour speaking. And I was in Singapore. And it was like this kind of like VIP dinner afterwards. It was the only one I did on that tour. And this young woman, she might have been 27. We got into one of those favorite dinners I have. 12 people, everyone gets deep. And she talks about how she resented her mom her whole life because she was one of the biggest judges in Singapore and she was never around.

45:40And then she was young, 25, 27, 29. And she goes, in the last five years, I realized my mom was showing me how to live versus telling me how to live. One of the profound things of self-discipline is it accomplishes the goal that most parents, coaches, managers, and leaders want. A lot of people want to deploy discipline on others by acting with self-discipline, by acting. It actually creates the osmosis on your circles that you're looking for. Yes. And by the way, it's really the only part you control. Correct. Like, I remember I was interviewing this Air Force general, and he was like, even me, he's like, I'm a general.

46:17He's like, I've probably given two direct orders in my entire – you think – you fantasize like, that CEO, they have like an iron grip, or that coach. It's all volunteer world out there. You know what I mean? Only self-discipline. Do you know the people that consume my content listen to my marketing habits better than my 2 ,000 employees? I'm sure. Of course. Yeah, of course. Like, people are always saying about like, oh, your kids. I'm like, what are you talking about? I'm their dad. Yeah. I'm the only creator or person they're not going to listen to. They'll take some good stuff and it's parenting, but like they're not putting Gary V.

46:49Like I'm not Gary V to that. Like I do that for my friends and some of my friends are going to do that for my kids. That's just the way the game works. You have to be about it more than you talk about it. God, man, talk about life, man. That is it, man. And honestly, that's, by the way, just as a side note for all the people, there are a lot of people building marketing agencies and things of that nature. the reason VaynerMedia has become one of the largest independent global agencies in the world is I'm still a practitioner. Yes. The fact that I'm still, I wrote the copy to my Instagram post walking into this bookstore today.

47:19Yeah. I wrote the copy. Yeah. Like I'm still in the dirt. And I think that a lot of people, when they, here's one thing more universal than agencies, friends, when you go from being the employee to being the manager within your company, everything changes, you know, and, and a lot of you think that all of a sudden everyone works for you when in reality, it's the reverse. You start working for everyone. Well, what I found too, from my marketing agency, which doesn't really exist anymore, because I just, I got tired of trying to tell other people what they should do. And I just said, I'm going to start making my own stuff.

47:49If I'm actually good at this, I want to market me and what I'm interested in and things that are like that I controlled. Right. Makes so much sense. I just went to super scale. Of course. Right. But like You represented that era and I always thought that. I remember hearing about you and others that were doing it for bigger prominent figures and I'm like, they're gonna figure out that they should just. Because my belief was even if you were not an electric video personality, that everybody, if they had chops, whether in written form, audio or video, not every, by the way, tons of people don't consume my content because it's too much.

48:28So they prefer someone like you to be the messenger. That makes sense. There's a lot of people that stop listening to this podcast already because it's yours and I'm too much for them. Just like when you come on mine, it might not be dynamic enough to hit up that adrenaline for them. That's beautiful. That goes back to a thing we touched on here. Not every flavor for everyone about everything. Just be you, do what you do. And let the chips fall. But to the broader point I was making there was I was like, oh, these kids that are actually the practitioners, they're going to have their day. because once you don't know how, you are not as valuable and as long as you know how, you are always valuable.

49:05Yeah. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode.

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