5 Consumer Trends of 2026

0:00Podcast nation, before I get you into today's podcast, big announcement. as you probably heard at this point because I had John from Stan on the show. I'm an investor advisor to an incredible startup called Stan, Stan.Store. I'm sending you right now to garyvee.com, garyvee.com slash Stan. Go check this out. We've done a Gary V. Stan Store Challenge which actually has a weekly call with me. This is built for everyone who's been affected, honestly, by my overall content. The tech stack, all these features and the minimal costs per month that Stand Store has built is really the tool that was needed for this world that I envisioned when I wrote Crush It, when I wrote Crushing It, and this overall thing I'm thinking a lot about lately, which is the individual empire, right?

0:48This creator entrepreneur slash entrepreneur creator economy that I think is gonna eat up the oxygen, very honestly, the thing that so many of you want in your life and the reason so many of you are not there yet is you've got the strategy for me. you've got the ambition within yourself but you don't have the tools for you to fully maximize it and I believe you can find that at Stan store Stan dot store but specifically I want you to sign up for it through my challenge because I want to get access with you and plus there's a bunch of cool things so if you want to go see those cool things go to GaryVee.com slash Stan S-T-A-N now to the podcast This is the Gary Vee audio experience Five trends that are gonna define 2026.

1:32Number one, the individual empire. As I think about the individual empire, I think we're at a tipping point to what my conversation started in 2008 around Crush It. Crush It came out in 2009 and was like, hey, you can cash in on your passion. Then there was Grape Story when I started the first influencer agency. Then there was Crushing It. And now we're in this world where it's very clear to people that being an influencer is a business. in a way that it wasn't 18 years ago. But more importantly, I'm using the word empire. In 2008, I said you, all of you, and this is still real, can make 50 to$100 ,000 talking about ALF and the Smurfs and all that.

2:10What I'm saying in 2026 is you can build an empire. We are talking about individuals now not just making money from brand deals, but there are two macro things that are happening that are massive. the CPG and consumer product opportunity that the Kelsey brothers just raised at a$200 million valuation on. When you look at what's going on with Logan Paul and Jake Paul and their brands, especially Prime and KSI's brand. When you look at Charli D 'Amelio going for a popcorn. When you look at Emma Chamberlain and her copy. When you look at all these, the Poppy and Liquid Death, which is a little different.

2:46Poppy and Liquid Death were brands and then the founders themselves went up and became the individual face. Similar a little bit to mine. I'm more business then I became face then to business with empathy wines which I did originally back then but there's another thing the blockchain so this should not be lost in everything that's going on you've got the blockchain coming and what that means is for example on my phone right now is an app called base base is coinbase's social network in that world if I make a good piece of content and somebody wants to leave me a tip and they give me money base doesn't make anything it's on the blockchain it's all mine when you donate on twitch when you get ad revenue from your youtubes twitch youtube facebook meta tiktok snapchat they're taking a rake they're taking a cut with the blockchain coming you the creator are going to get all the revenue there isn't even a visa and mastercard you're keeping it all and then number three ai as ai scales your personal brand can scale along with that and your leverage is you.

3:49As AI is able to replicate everything, the one thing it's not able to replicate is you. You, the human. I believe we're going into the era of the individual empire and I think it's the maturity of brand deals, the maturity of CPG, the blockchain overlay and the hyper expansion that AI allows you to compete with the biggest enterprises in the world. You think these last 18 years were remarkable for an individual person who's ha-ha funny like a Drewski who hears my motivating words and go do it, the next 18 years are gonna be profound and humans like Mr. Beast and others will be the biggest enterprises in the world.

4:24The thing to really understand is everybody cries about the platforms like Facebook, YouTube, they have all this control. I'm telling you in the next decade there will be a decentralized social network that's as big as those where there is no one controlling it. Now that platform is not gonna have the level of attention. Why do we all cry about what these platforms do but all stay on it? Because they have all the attention. The distribution has the leverage. We're gonna all still be on those platforms. These decentralized platforms are not going to take away the attention from all these platforms.

4:56But we're gonna be on these platforms for attention and then we're gonna monetize on decentralized places. Got it? And so it's similar to like building your brand on Instagram but then going and standing up a Patreon sub stack. But in those scenarios, those platforms still take some of the action. When that's built on a decentralized server, not a centralized server, and not done by a platform that owns it, but by a platform that's decentralized and you own all the money, you're maximizing all of your revenue and not sharing it. You will share with the places that give you the attention, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, whatever it is.

5:32But where you're gonna monetize, you're gonna monetize in a decentralized way where you keep 100 % of that dollar, not 90 or 80 % of that dollar. Number two, Gen Alpha unplugging. This is so fun for me. I am completely convinced that young Gen Z, Gen Alpha that's coming next, and very honestly, probably all of Gen Z and maybe even young millennial are all understanding this is great, but, and more importantly, and. This is great. And by the way, I know you all want to demonize it. This is great. It's changed your life. I know we're all shitting on it, but like how do you order food? How do you get a date?

6:08How do you like do a million things? This is great, but it's not the end all be all and we don't want to live like this 24, 7, 365. This and. So the unplugging is just the pendulum swings. In 2006 when I'm like this, this, this, this didn't exist and didn't have any of the market share. Now it's gotten so much and I think within the next decade and I think starting in 2026, you'll see more businesses like this. I just talked about a business where you get paid to walk with people, like literally walk with them. I think experiential, music festivals going outside, going to events, just going out and putting the phone away.

6:45Private clubs that make you put the phone in a locker before you walk in. The forcing of the de-plug is now starting to already happen. And more importantly, the choosing to de-plug is happening. More kids want to take a hike on a Saturday. And I think you'll see it more and more. Right now it's like checking the box. It's a little bit of like, it's coming from a defensive place, like people that are like real mental health issues and they want to blame something. They don't realize it's more grounded in human truth than blaming the device. But I think someone like myself and many in the room right now with me as I film this will actually just start to do it in the same way we just started to exercise more.

7:24Like we're just all gonna be like, you know what? I need seven hours that I allocated in 2023 to a phone laying in bed doom scrolling. I need to allocate that to go out and do things with no phone. And so it's very early and obvious to me that the unplugging, the deplugging, the finding a little more balance, especially for Gen Alpha, who is 24-7 living in an on-demand digital world. They grew from the womb. They've been watching YouTube on-demand kids. They are now deeper into a Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft. These kids are now getting their phones. they're in their phones they're full socialed out and I feel like it's clear to them because of the narrative and of the optionality that's in front of them that they will be the generation they're really 12 13 14 11 right now they in 7 to 10 years will be the generation that has a really interesting balance of like thoughtfully and happily putting in time to being completely deplugged and what that means for your business and what that means for your winery your pub your nightclub I mean, for example, all the nightclub guys and gals that I know blame this for destroying the nightclub.

8:37Are you gonna be the nightclub that opens in 2027 that is like insane? Like insanely like no phones, nothing. If I heard in New York one of the hottest new clubs is like there's like a million lockers when you walk in, very thin lockers where you can use your thumb to open it and you put it in and you put your phone in and you go in, that'd be the first club I wanna go to. So would everybody else. So it's here. If it's here for me, it's definitely here for the 15-year-olds that are coming up the game. Number two biggest trend in 2026, the unplugging of Gen Alpha, which is an indicator to the unplugging of every generation.

9:11Number three biggest trend of 2026 that no one sees, the underpriced attention, the monetization of randomization content. Let me explain. This is a weird one. I'm excited about this. I think this is gonna be the breakthrough for some people. When I wrote Crush It! in 2009, or 2008 came out in 09. It was like, you can cash in on your passion. So if you're a hardcore Star Trek collector, if you really go crazy for two years on your blog at the time and on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube at the time, eventually you'll get to a place where you can get t-shirts sold, sponsorship, you can go speak at Star Trek Con and all that stuff.

9:49What I'm saying here is very different. This is about where we are now in overall marketing and overall communication, which is we're now in the interest graph, not the social graph. We're now in a place where I, Gary, could tomorrow make my first ever piece of content around surfing, ever. And even though all my followers do not follow me for surfing, the way the AI algorithms now work is when I post about surfing and why surfboards are good and why you should buy a surfboard for me or why this is a good surfboard or surf chalk or whatever the hell I learned about surfboards, that content is going to reach people that are in a high propensity interest of surfboards.

10:31Why is this important? I believe for everybody who's watching right now, if they started posting content of everything that they are interested in, everything, not passion, but passions, posted everything that's random to them. I just took up checkers, and the first video is them learning how to play checkers. So not only their passions, but their curiosities. the rise of curiosity content. You're curious, you're exploring, you're on training wheels, but you're learning. My brother AJ does not know how to ride a bike. I probably said that because I think it's funny, but if he started making content as a 39-year-old man about his journey on learning how to ride a bike, here is my belief of the world we now live in.

11:14For many of you, these random, random pieces of social content become the first indicator to a massive financial and happiness opportunity. The monetization of random content. You post something funny about sunflower seeds because you spit one out on your friend and you're like, that's funny, let's make another one. And you find yourself six months later getting$5 ,000 from a sunflower seed brand to do content. It's about a very simple concept, which is why not? Why not post something random all the time that you're genuinely interested in? You're not watching this video and you're just going random for the sake of random because you believe I'm right.

11:52Though, honestly, that's probably not a bad idea either. But obviously, if it's grounded in truth and authenticity, it's going to work better. When all of you start putting out more random content, when that post gets 3 million views, it opens up the opportunity for you to build on top of it. Now, you might not be able to. You get inspired by me in this video and you eat a pickle and you put out a video about pickles and it hits. And it gets fucking 3 million views. And now you're even getting DMs from people like, what do you know about pickles? And do you want to do a pickle? And do you want to come to the pickle festival?

12:24You might be like, I don't. And honestly, I don't care. And honestly, I have nothing else to contribute. Like, I'm very surface level. I just eat pickles. A, the Rizzler just says ridiculous things and makes a face. Like, there's a lot of people that have made full careers about ridiculous things. The where's the beef lady in the 80s was like, she said, where's the beef? That was her career. So you could be a random spokesman or something of that nature. but if you keep it authentic if it's something you really know about or it's something you want to know about it actually allows you to build in depth not just randomness and so your random thing becomes the documentation of your journey which then becomes your monetizable framework of content it's a left field thought that I think a lot of people are going to struggle with grasping I myself am in my journey of really getting this narrative down but it's very clear to me do I believe it's in the vested interest of all of you posting way more often on TikTok, completely random stuff that is grounded in things that you really know about or things that you're curious about?

13:23The answer is yes. Let me give you, if you just got motivated by that, let me give you the list of what you need to do. You know, if you're gonna go down the random play in social, make sure your bios in your TikTok and Instagram are really tight and awesome. Meaning email, phone number, like knowing that people are gonna randomly see something. Cause don't forget, there's a whole left field thing here. you're a lawyer that wants or you're a golf trainer you train people golf lessons you give golf lessons you start putting out things about pumpkins you start putting out things about um wet hair you start putting out things about um porcupines this is random ass shit when your porcupine video gets three million people are going to land on your account if they see that you're a professional golf expert and you do golf lessons and you have an email there and a phone number of the three million people that see your porcupine video nine of them are looking for golf lessons so this gets very practical of just general awareness relevance on an individual thing you connect on some of you like me because we're both sad jet fans right but then when you needed four years later some wine or you needed an agency you went to me because we're jet fans somebody loves porcupines they love your video they may choose you to do the golf lesson so there's two things Your career might be about porcupines because you decided to go down that path or it became a gateway drug to your service or your business because you want on interest in a micro moment, not a macro moment.

14:53Your profile's got to be tight. Number four on my 2026 trends underpriced opportunities, the rise and continued rise of the content of Africa. the numbers are staggering when you look at how much youth of our overall population in a decade will be in the continent of Africa when you're worldly enough to interact with many of the incredible young talent from these countries when you understand that the way the world turns is every continent gets its time many of us who are in my age group watch the rise of Asia and the rise of the Middle East, it is very clear that Africa as a continent is absolutely the big winner of the next 20, 30, 40 years.

15:41And for many of you watching, this should open up the aperture. Do you have relatives there and you're like, wait a minute, Gary, you're saying that I can actually grow my, like my professional careers, growth is actually from my grandparents and cousins that live in Kenya or Nigeria. I'm like, yes, that is exactly what I'm saying. The opportunity there is extraordinary, both doing business there and two, understanding how amazing the raw firepower of the young talent is in that country from an intellect and hunger standpoint. Again, follow what I'm saying here, similar to what we saw in India, in Japan and China and overall Asia and the Middle East over the last 25, 30, 40 years here in the West and Europe and the US.

16:24So huge opportunities. The cultural impact. I don't have to tell anybody that follows music. We've already seen the early indications, just like we saw Latin music massively impact the US. Over the last 25 years, we've already been seeing African music impact top hits in the US. African influencers, the culture, the food, the sport, and it goes both ways. Just like you're seeing manga and anime and Asian culture massively impact the West, the West is massively, always, because of the Hollywood machine in America impacted the East. The opportunity in Africa is very clear. You have to understand it.

17:03It's either direction. You're 23 and you wanted an adventure and forget about even relatives. You're like a white boy in Kansas and you're like, I'm an entrepreneur. Wait, Gary's saying Africa? I'm saying Africa. So doing business and obviously Africa's a massive continent. In fact, it's so much bigger than you think because it's misrepresented on the globe and obviously every country has its geopolitical stuff, its entrepreneurial opportunities, some are great, some are not great. Really no different than Europe or anywhere else. But overall, the impact's enormous. The basketball culture, both the African Basketball League, but the talent coming, Nigeria's athletes starting to penetrate the NFL in a massive way.

17:41There's just so much. There's so much. The food and cuisine. How do you think pizza or hot dogs became big in the US? The Italian and German influence on a young late 1800s, early 1900s America impacted. Where do you think tacos and Mexican food, like it's impact. So like to me, again, if you're a food entrepreneur and you believe that Gary Vee sees around corners, here you go. Do I believe in 12 to 15 years, there's a huge QSR that's grounded in authentic cultural African cuisine that today nobody ate fucking sushi in America 60 years ago. Nobody ate tacos 40 years ago. Like, do I believe that?

18:21Yes, I do. Does it take patience? Yes, it does. Is that how great businesses are sometimes built? for damn sure. Africa's impact, massive. Opportunities, massive in both directions. Number five on big opportunities in 2026, alternative sports. This has been massive for me. I've been following eSports for a long time. We represent a bunch of eSports, Mongrel, Clix, and all these great athletes in Vader Sports. Obviously, I got involved in pickleball early on. That's been very fruitful. I'm obsessed with what's going on with wiffleball. Paddle, three on three, the big three, and rivaled basketball, both men's and women's.

18:57I've had my hands deep in this. Obviously, many of you know my long-term ambition to own the New York Jets. Mondays in the fall are tough for me. I'm very upset right now. I'm filming this on a Monday after a tough loss. But what's very clear to me is that this is gonna keep going. I'm involved in slam ball as well. This is gonna keep going. I had a conversation a few months ago about bowling. I'm like, ooh, I like that. The rise of UFC and esports in the last 30 years, very clear. even the NBA Finals was on tape delay in 1982. So think about the remarkable impact over the last 40 years. Super Bowl I, Super One did not sell all the tickets to the stadium, 1967.

19:38It's really only just 50 plus years ago. Not that long if you think about it. So if you love sports, looking at different sports, darts, bowling, you know, I just, I think it's gonna continue to rise and here's why. Distribution. baseball horse racing boxing amazing on radio radio is the number one platform they're the biggest sports television comes along you know what's good on TV American football it explodes right now we're in this world of IRL streaming social media why did I invest in pickleball because I knew it would do well with short clips on Instagram and then people like oh this is kind of cool and that it showed well on TV which is now what is TV I watched my pickleball matches on pickleball TV on Amazon Prime.

20:22What is TV? YouTube TV, you know, streaming, connected TV. There's no longer only 13 channels or only 36 channels or even when direct TV came, only 800 channels. There's a billion channels now, right? And so as distribution changes, so do the rules. Do you think these exhibition fighting matches between Tyson and Jake Paul and Mayweather and Paul and Paul and Paul, like, do you think these things would work if social and YouTube didn't exist, nobody would care. Nobody would watch. So it goes from YouTube to Netflix. This is gonna continue to happen. This is the device that's changed the world as we talked about.

20:58And there's going to be room for more sports, more sports. And basketball and football and baseball and soccer were invented by human beings. There's a kid right now watching this, right now on YouTube, who actually got inspired by my rant and is going to actually invent the next hockey, basketball, and football and in 53 years we'll reference this video and that makes me feel good. I hope I'm alive to get those flowers. The rise of alternative sports because of how the media landscape has changed is firm. All of you need to look into it and it changes absolutely everything. And number six for 2026, because I decided you'll have to wait for a special video in the future.

21:38Thanks for watching.