46 Minutes of Business & Life Advice

0:28Okay, yeah, you don't know how to make money. Ladies and gentlemen, Gary Vaynerchuk. Good to see you, brother. How you been, dude? It's been a year or so since we got to hang out before. It has. I apologize. I'm sending this link to the Discord so people can join. It's great to see you. Yes, let's do it. You know, first of all, thank you. This has been very fun for me. Two podcasts with you have been incredible. The community that I've been working with just loves your content, loves to be with you. And so I got some good stuff for you today. I can't wait. We're going to dive in? It's been really, really a fun journey doing this with you.

0:58Let's rock, man. So we're going to start 30 ,000 up in the air. And then we're going to come right down to the ground at the end. And then I got some fun stuff to surprise you with. So mortgage industry is a mess. Okay. Coming out of COVID, we had the best years in lending and real estate of all time. Rates dropped to the bottom. Incredible. Industry went to a$4 trillion industry overnight and everybody became superstars. Right. Last year, Rude Awakening, total readjustment back to normalcy. But now normalcy doesn't feel normal. and lots of people lost their jobs, lots of stuff happened and negativity, like it always does in the press, just dominated everywhere.

1:38So the first place I want to start with you on is just, you talk a lot about positivity, but nobody's immune to the bad stuff in life. It just happens in business, in like, well, okay. Okay. Everything. So if someone's dealing with this market, the chaos, the press, what advice do you have to stay positive? How do you, how do you frame up around that? Well, I think in the context that you just brought this up in, like positivity, um, can't be delusional. That's a good comment. You know? And so for me, I'm not looking for some sort of like hope and delusion and fantasy land, but I also think that positivity needs to be fair.

2:18And here's what I mean by that. You know, most people are incredibly, incredibly naive if they think that their work life needs to be the reality of their positivity. Meaning, how do I deal with it? If you're in this, in the mortgage business and your business is down right now, did you practically save when you had the best two years of your career? Like, did you make more money than ever during COVID and then take that money and buy a boat or 8 ,000 pieces of Gucci? That might have been a bad idea if you didn't understand, like, well, you know, this is kind of, like, inflated once-in-a-lifetime reality.

3:03And eventually things are going to normalize. And things that go up so fast tend to come down so fast. There's that. Then there's also, like, are you really complaining about having less money? Yeah. Because I think, you know, the reason I tend to stay positive is I have a really interesting relationship with money, which is I didn't grow up with a lot of it. I worked from 22 to 34 all the time to build something for my father and mother. So I wasn't compensated in reality towards the impact I was making. And so I lived humbly by the standards of society. And, you know, it's not my driving force.

3:43I've also never spent money to put myself in a vulnerable position. And so, for example, let's say you did. Okay, cool, Gary. But what about me? Okay, let's talk about you. You had two great years in mortgage life and made a lot more money than ever. And then you decided to sell your house and buy a new house. Absolutely. Happens all the time. Story all the time. Right? And now you're feeling the pain because you're not making as much money. And even the mortgage payments, even at a low rate - Absolutely. Are too much because you went over your skis. I say to you if you're my best friend sell your house sell your house and go to a lesser house sell your house and rent for a little while but you know what friend says in that scenario I don't have the mental strength to go backwards that's a very that's absolutely true I Gary you're my best friend we've been together Robbie Turnick, Brandon Warnke I'm talking about people in my life it's not their realities I'm just saying in general I, person, don't have the mental strength to go backwards.

4:43Why? Because I flexed my new house. Bro, it's not just that. People's production doubled, tripled, and now their production's normalizing, but that's not their identity anymore in their head. They're still the mega superstar, and it is a humble pie. Once you fall in love with humility, you have a chance of being happy. Yeah. And so, you know, humility is not at the expense of confidence. and ambition. I'm all sorts of confident and ambitious. I also have the humility to realize I'm not special. I also have the humility and the self-confidence to not need outside affirmation. And so, you know, when I hear you start this conversation in the context of mortgage professionals who made a ton of money and right now aren't, like, I don't, I struggle with the heavy negativity being a financial situation.

5:39Because if you crushed the last two years, you seemingly have the opportunity to eat a lot of humble pie and reset, including, well, Gary, I didn't buy a house. Yeah. And so I can't down trade. I bought a lot of stuff. Absolutely. Sell your stuff. Like if you bought an$8 ,000 handbag that in hindsight you wish you had 8 ,000, Sell it for 6 ,700 on eBay. People want their cake and eat it too. And that's why they have issues. I say lean into accountability and address the situation. Well, some of the stuff too, as we kind of move into the next question here, the stuff that drove their success in a great market and even the markets before it aren't working now.

6:27And there's a whole change in the world today. I mean, you've been a big pioneer of social media. You've been understanding where attention's at. Yep. And so one of my favorite talking points you have is this thing of slow down the macro and speed up the micro. And people get confused on this because you talk a lot about patience too. And they think that means, well, I should just go slow. For some reason, people have decided to turn the word patience into passiveness. That's, yeah. Why do the two words exist? When I say be patient, I don't mean lay on your couch and watch TV. I mean, I don't understand how people understand this.

7:02Clip that Dustin. So if someone's never heard the slow down the macro, speed up the micro, what does that mean? Expand that for a second. Your day to day, like, you know, I don't know, like, we're gonna do this together in real time, because I like jamming with you. Like, like, you even laughed a little bit. Julian's fooling me around, like something that was like a five minute transition. Like, this is my calendar. Yeah. Like, it's constant. Yeah. And by the way, this is look at these meetings. Just what does that say? 11 to 1105. Five minute meeting. 1105 to 1130. 11.30 to 11.45, 11.45 to 12, 12.05 to 12.15, 12.15 to 12.30.

7:38I did, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. I did 15 meetings before 1 p.m. today. Okay, so the reason this is - I did 15 meetings, so that's speed up your micro. Your day-to-day, go way faster, be way more efficient. But macro, I'm not in a rush to buy the New York Jets. I love my process. I'm not in a rush to buy a Lambo or a house. like everyone needs to really, really, really, really speed up their day to day, but slow their skis on their big goals. Enjoy the process. Don't rush to get the trophy. Yeah. It's my favorite thing when talking to my sales team is, you know, I'm not having the success I want.

8:19I go, great, let me see your calendar. It doesn't look like that. It doesn't look like that. There's all these pockets. So it's - I mean, people like - It's a good comment. Like literally, I had 12 meetings before one o 'clock today. Real ones, real business meetings. Yeah, yeah. To your point, there are people, I see people in the chat, I know you're going back and forth, like that really don't have 12 meetings in a week. Yes. And that's okay, this is not judgment. No, it's just commentary, yeah, of course. It's like, by the way, I envy it sometimes. You know, I'm a human being. You don't think sometimes in my 19th meeting by noon, I'm like, you know, I wonder if I had the DNA that would have been like all about, you know, a different, and by the way, this is why I know it to be true.

8:59I can't help it. It's what makes me happy. Like I'm almost like the reverse of a lot of people. Like I kind of like secretly dream about wishing that I was super basic and had happiness in that. There's a sick side of you. It's like, I'm romantic about people who have found tremendous happiness and simplicity because I love that. I have it mentally, but I don't have it actually. Yeah. And so I like that. Now there are some of you guys asking if you ask questions and And yes, you can, although there's tons of commentary coming in. So we'll do our best to get to some questions. And I do have some special questions at the end.

9:34But I want to keep coming down the chain here. By the way, I think I did a good job. We were at like, you're checking this number right now with a little push? Yeah, yeah. Not too bad. I had to give you a little. Gary V effect. It's all good. 30 to 1230 is a good run. All right. So I want to hit, I'm circling on patience with you here. Okay. Social media, patience, instant gratification world we live in. Yes. I mean, it's just true. Everyone wants it now. We want it now all day long. That's called entitlement.

10:03So I do see people, especially in my industry and others, waking up to the reality that social media is going to matter. And they're trying to find their voice in the game. Makes sense. And we talked about this a year ago in the first podcast when it was the Wine Library TV clips. Yes. All the clips you did that no one cared about. You did a good job with that. I appreciate that. So I find people consistently need some kind of message or encouragement to stay consistent. to stay the game when they're not getting engagement, not getting likes, not getting what they think they should get. I started working out very seriously at 38 and a half.

10:36I'm like a six year old, and a half. You had the half in there. But it's the truth. I was 38 and a half when I started working out consistently. I have only for the first time, outside of a huge pump on a chest day, in the last three months, have noticed that I have chest muscles. Yes. that like literally have, you know, got out of the shower, look like, and I'm like, wait a minute. Hey. Hey. Holy shit. It's happening. It's happening. I am eight, nine years into this journey. I'm nine years into this journey. Nine years it took me of like real working out to finally have some tiny. There's people born with more chest muscle than I have right now.

11:21It's true. What I would say is like, look, I don't understand how you don't understand that anything meaningful and good takes real time and effort. Yeah. Like, I just don't like wouldn't it be logical that if it only took nine days or nine months. We got it. To get to the top that everyone would do it. Yep. It's fucking hard. Yeah. It's hard. It's hard, but it's worth it. Love is hard. Worth it. Right. Right? Relationships, hard, worth it. Like we have to get out of this entitlement, like as if living entitles you for it. You have to work for it. Listen, I have to work for it. Like I've had to work, I don't have the book here, it's somewhere, 12 and a half.

12:10Like I've gotten better because I've leaned into candor. I've had to work at it. Yeah, and you were honest about it. I've had to work at it. It's come so not natural to me, I still hate it. I will always hate it because delivering something negative in theory to someone is like, like it kills me. But like, I don't know what to tell people. Like it is what it is. Like if you would like to have something of meaning, you're going to have to put in a lot of work for a very long time. My whole thing is instead of thinking you're going to hit a lottery ticket, why don't you do what I do and other people that I admire do, which is, this is going to take me 57 years and actually believe it like I have and just sitting it sitting it somebody had a really interesting talk with me the other day who like actually started off by hating me and thinking like oh your parents like was kind of this person like Gary's dad and like somehow met someone that was they uh his neighbor was like 80 years old and like knew the whole story like worked with my dad like knew the story yeah the truth and like broke it down and it kind of got the guy like completely 360 on me.

13:14And then I ran into the guy at an airport and he like had a few minutes with me and we really talked about it. He's like, now that I understand that you actually built the business for your dad in a lot of ways, or took it to a, listen, my dad built, my dad is the American dream, came here with nothing and built a local, but I really did something for my dad. And he said to me, how did you like really like, the reason I never believed it was I just don't believe how a 22 year old will work every day, seven days a week for 12 years and have nothing. And I was like, it wasn't nothing. You think money's the thing.

13:46I had satisfaction that I'm gonna go to the grave giving back to the parents who brought me to this country, who built me, who loved me, who put a roof over. I gave back. Giving is the ultimate getting. Right? So when I talk about patience, I worked the first 12 years of my career to financially incentivize my parents. Yeah. So of course I believe in patience. I was 34 when I kind of started for myself. So I think that people are really confused and because I had 57 years when I was 22 and I'm like, when I'm 79, I'll get to what I - Got it. And I, at 22, well then all of a sudden you can imagine why 12 years didn't feel like shit.

14:32When everyone's like, I'm gonna be a billionaire by the time I'm 30. Well no shit you're freaking the fuck out at 24. You have$53. dollars and you're like that's far from a billion like and i only got six years i'm 47 i'm like chilling i'm like is it halftime yet like exactly like there's i'm at the two minute warning of the first half i'm chilling over here two great quotes from you reputation is the ultimate currency and social media is grossly underpriced attention yeah someone today getting inspired and going okay I get this. I'm ready. I believe in, I'm ready. And this is more tactical. Like this is coming down a little bit down to the street, but like, what is going all in look like today?

15:13Doing the pushups today. You decided that you want to chest muscles, right? Yes. And I would say drop to the floor and do a good pushup in the version that you're asking. It means take your phone, flip it over and talk about something, you know, or you're passionate about. Yes. Something you know or something you're passionate about. You want the framework of success? Something you know. I will talk about wine or the Jets or something you're passionate about. Be nice to each other. No passion. No passion. No passion. And do that as many times as you humanly can until the end. And you've talked about it's irrelevant.

15:59I think you have to also think about, are you good enough? Well, what is good enough, right? Like, to your point, you don't know, this is back to loving yourself, you don't know you're good enough until you do it. Yeah, I just mean like, get to a certain point where it's like, sometimes we have to, you know, get a little self-aware. Yeah, I mean, look, but to your point. So I had a really good friend who picked up the camera and started to get in the game. And he's a tremendous professional. He's got it all down. Like he doesn't, and he's good looking too. It's like shit. He's got it all. All of it.

16:32And a buddy of his gave him, gave him crap and said, dude, this isn't you. And he called me up and he goes, is it not me? And I don't think he, my answer, he didn't like it right away. Cause I said, of course it's not you. You're so uncomfortable. It's not you yet. It's not that you, you and me hanging out, having a beer. Like, and now I watch him, dude, he's relaxed. He's on, it's, and it's, it's real. It's wraps. It's wraps. I mean, what thing on earth have people not gotten better at after they've done it a gadrillion times? Yeah. You may have a cap. Yeah. But like, you can, like, I just, I don't, you know, even with Dustin, go back to, so I love that.

17:12And going back to what Dustin just said, like, I don't want anybody to judge if they're good enough at it. But to his point, one of the things that people, like, you know, that whole thing of like, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over. and expecting a different result. People are like, Gary Vee, I made 1 ,700. This happens sometimes. I made 1 ,700 videos and I'm still getting 49 views. I'm like, yo. We just talked about it. We should talk about this. You've proven to me and yourself and the world that you're not interesting at this right now. You're not bringing value to people.

17:45Whether, you know, and value comes in all shapes. This is why modeling is an amazing thing. You were born and you are valuable. Like, right? Awesome. By the way, you still have to work at it. I love when people are like, if you are naturally attractive and you do not eat well and do not work out, it's going to go well. It's not gonna work out well. Exactly. You are naturally funny. Yes, but I think all of us have watched documentaries and comedians where it's very clear, no different than what you just said, that they needed a lot of reps in small comedy shops before they became fucking Kevin Hart.

18:20That's right. And there's layers, you get coaching, you learn how to, yes, There's layers to all this stuff. But this is a good question. I want to hit this one because it's in line. How do you succeed in doing videos on things you know are passionate if somebody else is already in and succeeding at it? Nobody else's winning is coming out of yours. If that was true, the game was over a long time ago. That's right. Why did LeBron try to pass Kareem? Kareem was the all-time leading scorer. Yeah. Like, why is Kevin Hart doing that? Eddie Murphy did that already. But why did Eddie Murphy do that? Richard Pryor already did that.

18:48What are we talking about here? This con... Excuses like that. And notice the word I used. Excuses like that are just people that are scared to do the thing and fail on merit. They feel better that somebody already took it. The world is abundant. If you're good enough, no matter how much is already taken, you can get yours too. I wasn't the first person to talk about kindness. I wasn't the first person to talk about work. I wasn't the first person to talk about technology. That is a ludicrous point of view. and I come from a place of compassion when I use that statement, that person needs to realize that's a subconscious excuse to not do.

19:28And it's better to blame that, oh, they didn't get lucky, somebody already did it versus them having to put in the work to do it. Dude, I get the same vibe and I talk to people because I'm on video and I'm big on video. I have a lot of, I'm loud. I'm wearing costumes. I do a lot of weird stuff. And then there's the engineer who's sitting down and explaining line by line through a complicated mortgage document. Both those people have tremendous audience capacities. Huge, and are needed. Sometimes you need to escape and be entertained to learn. I fall in that category. I want to entertain to trick you into the thing.

20:00Yes, yes. Other times people need a little, people come at me all the time, they're like Gary, I need more details. So when I put out the$1.80 strategy, or even that little thing I just did, the reason I did it three times, I'm like, oh, that's a little bit more tangible than I normally go. Either talk about something you know, or something you're passionate about. That's like, that will land for some people. It will. And like, to your point, like it all comes in all shapes and sizes some people really like to read 800 pages of a technical book i would die you would not survive no no die if somebody walking around me you have to read these 800 pages of electrical engineering and if you don't you'll die i'm like just kill me right now all right so i did something fun uh with my community you know gary lots of people want access this to you and you know, you're busy and you love Q and A.

20:44I've seen you at this stuff. So I asked some of my buddies on the internet, if they have a question for you, record it, and I'll play it. And so I got some people that jumped in. Let's go. So let's hit you with some questions. What happened to daily vlogs and do you see them making a comeback in 2023? Great question. Yeah, my boy. We're filming one right now. Yeah. I do see it coming back. I don't know if you heard, but there was this thing called COVID. I thought weird. Yeah, Google it, C-O-V-I-D. It was a thing. It happened. It kind of fucked up the flow. But I think we'll be back and I expect by 2024.

21:17I mean, I can sense myself getting close. By the way, you get out of practice. That's true. Dust. How many things have I said I don't want to film? That would have been insane. I would have been upset if you didn't film three years ago. True? Really? Out of practice. Yeah. Out of practice. Just got to get back into practice. But yeah, I think we are going to be more than back. Daily B. So you think the blog space, personal blog space is going to start, people should pay attention to that, potentially for their own business and branding and marketing efforts? Yeah, documenting over creating. I mean, it's everything.

21:48Yeah, I like it. All right, this one's a long-winded question. I tried to close it down, but here we go. Three years in as a full-time real estate agent, I sell about 26 houses per year. The bulk of my leads comes from leads delivery platforms like Realtor.com, Op City, where you get the leads for free up front, but then you have to pay a 35 % referral fee out of your commission once you've closed the deal on the back end. So I'm in like the top 1.5 % in the Midwest region. I do very well with this model. I've incubated my business, but I want to go to the next level where I get more customers on my own.

22:19I don't have to pay that fee on the back end. I pay up front. I invest early on and I try to get the leads on my own. So I either have to create the content myself and sort of cowboy and figure out how to deploy that content properly. Or I can use a website company that can provide me an IDX fed website. They can create the Google search queries and Facebook ads. They can contour landing pages specific to those search queries and ads and bring in the leads so that I can focus on closing deals. It costs about$1 ,300 a month to do this. And with the uncertainty in our current market economy, what's going on in the next six to eight months, I don't know, is this the right time to throw the money at it and have a company do it for me?

22:58Or should I be sort of holding on to my budget and try to be a little bit more frugal, learn how to cowboy it and try to snowball on my own obtaining leads? That's my question. Both are fine by me. I'd prefer him do it himself because I think you have a lot more control. You'll learn a lot more. But in the math that I just read at 1300 bucks a month, 35 % commission on one deal in theory, on like an average house puts you in the math. People are funny. Yeah. People are funny. Well, and when I, when I heard that from my boy, it's, I think there's a space for both, but I also think like you do this a lot too.

23:38You got to play in the, in the, in the meat to figure it out. Yes. The dirt matters. Like you gotta make your own videos and publish your own stuff and watch and learn how to do it. What's interesting about him, if you think about it, he's like really interested in giving up economics to not do a certain thing, which is okay. There's a lot of people like that. Of course. That's why we have plastic surgery. There's a reason lipo happens. You don't want to do the four years of the gym and eating healthy. You don't want to fucking put in the work. Yeah. Which is fine. By the way, he might be right.

24:11It might be worth the arbitrage. I think the problem is, okay, it's 35 % commission now. Here's the problem when you don't have the leverage. What happens to that guy when realtor.com tomorrow says it's 50 %? That's right. What's he going to say? I guess it is. I guess it's 50 now. I don't like that fucking game. When someone else has the leverage, bad things happen. And as this economy squeezes, Amazon and Google and Realtor.com and Zillow and everybody else is going to say, well, we don't like our numbers. You know what we're going to do? We're going to take a bigger piece of the cut. Yep. And everybody who's been sucking off that teat is going to swallow it because they have no leverage because they didn't build their own moat.

24:55Well, and this goes back. Whoever is closest to the customer has the leverage. Yeah. You've been saying that for, it feels like decades of my life. and figuring out how to get in that strategy zone for yourself, for your own voice, is the core to controlling your own destiny. Otherwise, someone's going to control it for you. That's why everyone's like, fucking social media, the algorithm. Like, you don't even fucking pay for it. You don't pay for all this captive audience. And it's like, it's like, I'm like, what? It's like, you're happily paying 35 % commission to realtor, but you're mad that the algorithm is shadow banning you?

25:33Nobody's shadow banning you. You fucking just suck at content. Yes. Get better. Learn. Watch videos. That's my favorite thing. The shadow ban. I've been shadow banned. I'm getting shadow banned. No, you're not. You stink. All right, let's go here. This is an interesting question. Carl, I met this guy through the NFT community and Twitter. When Twitter turned into the NFT community, that was an amazing period of time. So this is going to have some layers to it. Okay. Thank you so much for giving me this great opportunity to be able to come onto your show and ask the one and only Gary Vaynerchuk what I believe to be such an important question being a foster care advocate.

26:08This is actually a two-part question, Gary, so let's just jump right into it. Gary, what piece of advice do you give kids, especially to those in foster care who will be aging out with no one in their corner, pretty much no support system? The second half of that question, how and where can they access resources, people, pretty much mentorships coming from such a disadvantaged place in order to nurture an entrepreneurial spirit. Again, Alec, thank you. And Gary, thanks so much for taking the time to answer this. Carl, I think this is one of my favorite questions. I'm a big believer that the perceived negative is actually the positive.