Be Kind In Tough Situations

0:00What is the most memorably up reaction you've ever elicited from a client? Early in VaynerMedia, we went into a meeting and the gentleman saw that I was wearing jeans and a hoodie and he viscerally delivered, thanks for dressing up. That's the wildest part of the story. We won the business and he was an early investor in Resi because we became so close after that meeting. Again, that goes back to compassion and empathy. I could have met his negativity with negativity. I chose not to. And it's led to a very fruitful relationship. I'm a child of the 80s and I'm a Laker fan. And that was sort of my first touchstone into American pop culture.

0:38That was, you know, a huge part of my identity growing up. So I didn't know that my future partner would be Shaq, who was my favorite athlete growing up. For you, is that Mark Gastineau? That's a great, great one. Mark Gastineau was huge. It was Al Toon and Don Mattingly. I was a big baseball fan as a kid, the Yankees. So Donnie baseball for sure. but the Jets kind of quickly took over in my like 10, 11, 12 year old world. And Al Toon, number 88 for the New York Jets was my guy. I don't know if you're allocating any more equity, but I feel like Al Toon, Don Mattingly would be down for just like maybe a silent partner seat on the VaynerMedia board.

1:22I think you're right. I think I did quite well convincing them that being in business with me would be a good idea. You know, it's funny on that point. I think a lot about being more thoughtful of reaching out to people post Kobe's death back to your fandom. Yeah. You know, literally several weeks before that, my friend Rod hit me up. We went to Qatar together before the World Cup for some business reasons. And he meant he called me. So I got to know him, you know, those long trips, a couple days, you get a little closer than even normal business acquaintances, you become friends. And he pinged me like a couple months earlier.

1:58and he's like, dude, Kobe's listening to your podcast. He likes what you're about. And I'm like, this is fucking amazing. And I was very like, I don't like the pressure. I don't like to push too hard. I'm like, it'll come to me. And then obviously the tragic death. And I remember being very effective. I'm like, you know what? It's actually happening actively with Mike Tyson. I'm like going out of my way. They want me on the podcast. Mike Tyson was top five for me. And we've never met. Ironically, I saw him driving through the airport the other day in Miami, like on the cart, like, watch out, watch out.

2:28I'm like, is that Mike Tyson? And so like, I'm going out of my way to make sure I show up on the podcast. I think a lot, you know, I don't even know why I'm telling this story other than for everyone who's listening, if there are people you admire or you like, you know, I've always been great at doing it on DM. I usually do it for kids that are coming up. Like, I love that. Like the high school kid, you know, Victor, who's going to go number one in the NBA draft. I think for four years, I'm like, if these videos are real that I'm seeing from France, You're going to be really crazy. Good luck, kid.

2:59You know, or a hip hop artist. I love doing that shit. But I don't do it for the people that I grew up with. Like, I've never reached out to Don Mattingly or Altoon. And I think I'm inspired and will do so after this podcast. Yes. We're around the same age. I feel like as we talk about cultural moments and these kind of big shared fan moments, no one will really understand that the feeling a few minutes before a Tyson fight. Oh, my God. Is such a second to none electric feeling of danger and excitement. You want something crazy? My teeth chatter. To this day, it didn't happen with the Garcia and Tank fight.

3:39but it did happen with the Wildner Fury fight. To this day, my teeth chatter only in two scenarios, in life. The moments before a huge boxing fight, that all happened to me because of the Tyson thing.

3:58And double overtime playoff hockey if I care about the game. And I've come to recently realize why both are the same. they're the only sporting events that can end out of nowhere with no preparation of the shock i get it with mma too right playoff hockey you know baseball extra innings a run cut like a home run a game winning this is why walk off home runs are so iconic in baseball you don't have that in football the drive is coming you could in theory a shocking turnover and ends it But that's so funny you say that. I've thought about that my whole life. How how insane that those three, four minutes before the fight starts just shakes me to the bone.

4:42Yeah, we just talk about like a high that we try to recreate in our lives. That's definitely one for me. I feel like, you know, one unique as I was, you know, as Texan Shaq, and I was thinking about what we were going to talk about. I'm like, you know, Gary and Shaquille actually share a unique thing in common, which is that in very different ways, but equally meaningful that fans have sort of forged these relationships with you over time. you mean something to people and you have this outsized presence in people's lives, which complicates their ability sometimes to relax and be human when they actually get the chance to meet you.

5:18I wonder if you just tell me a little bit about the skill as you've raised your profile over the last 10, 15 years of receiving love from people who are struggling to communicate because maybe you make them nervous or it's sort of affecting their ability to speak English. Shaq's incredible superpower amongst 600 of them is humility. Yes. It is not something I would know had I not gotten to know him. It is 100 % the same for me. It's not very easy to figure out through my content and how I roll publicly that humility is a core strength. the answer to your question is when you have humility, you're almost embarrassed when people are so pumped to be around you.

6:12So for me, out of almost embarrassment, I'm overly aggressive to try to get them to be as comfortable, like the speed in which I go to like touching on the shoulder, like trying to be self-deprecating, make a joke, like like whatever I can do to speed up the mo that moment which you know to your point as your profile grows more and more it's like super I kind of like it more I'm looking at Madison Square Garden we're talking basketball I like it at like I was at Cleveland last night like I like when it's masses because really it's just like quick like hey can I get a selfie oh my god like that's like easy when I'm like doing a book signing or like appearing like that's where you get it right because the person like you've got like two you got a two minute interaction so the first like and I'm incredibly uncomfortable with it because I think when you're humble and that means you had great parenting and I know Shaq had it and I know I had it, you're uncomfortable in it.

7:05You're like, oh my God. And you're also like grateful. Like I'm just so grateful. I'm like, my God. Like I can give you the talk track. Boom. I cannot believe I live a life where someone is crying right now. I cannot believe I've done enough good or interesting stuff or clever enough stuff or creative enough stuff that this person is like genuinely nervous. And I get a double weird one that is interesting and I'm flattered by. Many people tell me that they had never before froze up or felt weird or star struck. And there was even like surprise it's happening. And I have spent a lot of years on this and it got me to a place of like, Shaq is like a transcending superstar beyond like really famous people, not me, are almost completely untouchable and have escapism value.

7:58Like, I love listening to your music when I'm down. Like for me, sports, it lets me balance all the craziness of my life. For me, I think a lot of times people like me because I've added something tangible to their perspective or mindset, which I think is why people get caught off guard when they meet me. Because when I talk to those people, they will say, I admire you, which is different than I think you're incredible or I can't, you're a mate. Like, you know, like admiration comes when you were like deeply actually doing something for someone. And so I'm very humbled by that, you know, like, and so anyway, to answer your question directly by being borderline embarrassed and by wanting them to get the most out of the moment, because the other thing you feel pressure on is there's 800 people in line, you know, you're only at this place for three hours.

8:45Right. And you know, that the handlers of the event at the bookstore, the event are about to move this person. And if they spend their entire time, you know, like, you know, being enthralled, they may not get the question out. They may not get the picture. And so I feel like this quadruple pressure of like, well, this is awkward. Like, I'm, I'm embarrassed, but I'm humbled. Oh, crap, I better help this person get what they want from me right now. So that's a sense of responsibility. And so it's, it's a fun mix of like, just trying to get them to be as comfortable as possible as fast as possible to maximize the micro moment.

9:18No, it's an interesting distinction with Shaq. You meet Shaq. You know, I'm not nervous around celebrities anymore, but I still get nervous around Shaq just because you will never meet a larger fucking person. And that is so off. It's so off putting, even if you've been around him 100 times. But he's so you meet a guy like Shaq, and he's an alien and you're a human. And he's been this source of escapism with you. you have been additive in helping people with the thing that we're generally trying to escape from um and then you sort of think about the ways people approach you and there's probably a bell curve which is like you know to the far right man people probably come really there's probably a handful of people who come really correct like they have the perfect joke or the perfect reference that just disarms you and you're like man and and they and they kind of drop it and walk i'm sorry i'm sorry to interrupt go ahead i'm disarmed at scale one of the things that has happened last five to seven years as my profile has grown is I've had far more conversations with other people with high profiles where they ask me how I roll.

10:19And what I've realized is, and this is what Shaq has. Shaq is very unique and I associate with him. Shaq is by default genuinely likes people at scale. And I have that. So like, I don't even need to be disarmed. Right. Like literally to your point, people coming correct to me is everyone, as long as they don't have some deep venom and negativity, like really overly confrontational, which is, by the way, one in a million, six times. And like, you know what I mean? Like, so I don't have disarmament, but to your point, they, it runs the gamut of how people roll. I will say a lot of people go way too fast into, can you give me$100 ,000 for my start?

11:12That's when people, I always am fascinated by how did we not even get to hello? And they try to do it clever. The big pitch is the following, Gary, nice to meet you. I'm going to help you buy the New York Jets right now. If you give me$400 ,000, I'm going to return that, like your Facebook and Twitter, and you're going to buy the Jets. And like that almost never works because it's like too aggressively selfish in a micro moment without even like the hello, what's good, you know? Listeners, if you're out there, notice he said that almost never works. It means it sometimes fucking works. I mean.

11:48Well, I'll tell you why. To your point, I am overly empathetic. And I'm like, fuck, if, you know, this person may rightfully think, hey, this is someone I've always wanted to invest in my company. I may never see him again. he's walking through the airport like fuck it and so like I'm not like the lack of judgment of how anybody rolls up to me is a great gift I have I'm very grateful for that it just makes me happy all the time I'm just not bothered and to your point like if I've got that 38 seconds to two minutes it's it's occasionally possible that the person says something that's if somebody said to me hey I built an AI tool that ingests long-form creative and outputs short clips like you do across the board, which a ton of people are working on.

12:33And I've seen a bunch already. That's probably going to get my attention today if I'm walking through the airport. And I will say, email me at Gary at VaynerX.com. And I may invest in that company. Like you're right. It may happen. Yeah. And part of the empathy is probably, you know, unlike a five-star athlete, unlike Victor, unlike a lot of musicians who were sort of prodigies in their teenage years, like, you know, you probably never want to lose sight of being able to, to some degree, see yourself in that person. You've been that person who probably had no shame, who rolled up to people. I'm going to ask the question, what's he going to tell me?

13:06Fuck off. And he tells me fuck off and I never see him again. Well, it's funny. It's funny. So a couple of things. A, that was a very brilliant observation because I didn't grow up ever thinking I would ever have anyone ever know who I was outside of like, and there he is the, the, the Gary wins the businessman of the year in Springfield, New Jersey. Like I thought I was a good businessman and like there'd be a gala and people are like, oh, you're good. But like, I never thought anytime before the age of 30 that the world would know who I was at scale. So to your point, there's that. On the flip side, no to people, yes to business.

13:41So I was very good at ringing doorbells and saying, do you want me to, you know, shovel your driveway for five bucks? It just snowed nine inches. I was very good at like business rolling up on people. I have a little bit of a weird nuance where my family like was taught to like stand on your own two feet, never complain and kind of don't ask anybody for anything. So I actually, here's an interesting insight to me. I don't really raise capital. I actually envy, which I don't envy, but like I admire my friends who are able to raise capital. So I'm actually not great. I would never be the person that would pitch someone to business in the middle of the street.

14:19It would never happen. But I would sell something because I believe in it, right? Like I knew that the people were ripping me off by paying me five bucks to shovel snow for an hour. I just thought five bucks was like a billion dollars back then. I was like, fuck it, let's go. So, you know, there's a real mix of nuances there if you want to get into the insight. But I don't judge it in the negative if someone does it back to your prior point. And to your prior point, unlike Victor or Shaq, Though Shaq loves to tell the story that he wasn't that great in high school, it at least crossed his mind that he might get good at basketball.

14:54You know what I mean? It was like, you know, for these people, to your point, like if you were aspiring to be an athlete or an actor or a musician, it has crossed your mind multiple times in your youth that people are going to think that you're going to be famous. For me, that was never, I was going to be a businessman, a good one, a big one. maybe the Wall Street Journal would write about me but that means like people I know would be like cool you did it not like strangers know who you are and so that's absolutely right and by the way I might be a last of Mohican let me throw something at you that I thought about literally yesterday in Cleveland I'm like wait a minute the amount of people that are going to be able to be 30 years old before they even make any content on the internet, right?

15:43Be a grown ass man, 35, like at least emotionally and like have responsibilities and children and a business and then only be like, wait a minute, people are going to know who I am. I better be prepared to deal with that. Every nine-year-old on earth now, every 13-year-old on earth wants to be famous. They want to be a YouTuber. They want to be a podcaster. They want to be an influencer, a creator, it's almost like we won't have humans anymore that don't think that they're going to be. You know, like it's like it's like even by default, even if you're like, I'll never want to be, you know that you might be.

16:17You know that you may post something one day and everyone will know what it is because it went viral. It's really a whole different world. I mean, going back to Neanderthals, isn't it the human condition that every generation believes that they're the absolute height and peak of civilization? We won't get into AI a bunch here, but as all of these questions of AI come up, and you just hit on it in a slightly different way, but I'm like, well, okay, like, when AI is accessible without the use of a device, when the information of the world is accessible without the use of a device, which is on its way, then...

16:54Which is here, right? Alexa. It's here. Alexa. Well, by the way, a text message is telepathy, but I'm saying like, now take the device away. And like, I can, you know, when I have access to the text message, without needing the phone, the phone is in my DNA or connected to my ear, whatever the case may be like where we're headed. My point is like, we want to believe we're the butterfly. But like, we may be the larva, the butterfly may look back at us and be like, man, that was so fucking cute. Like they had fire in a wheel and they thought they had it all. No, not will they, or they may. It's 100 ,000%.

17:31It's the law of the universe. When people are like, phones and social media, I'm like, do you understand in 40 years, the iPhone and TikTok and Facebook are going to be the mundane? People thought they were flexing in the mid-90s with a cellular phone that looked like a cup of coffee and like a big antenna, no texting. Like, I mean, do you understand some of the things we accept today that would have been insane? Could you imagine 20 years ago telling parents, guess what? In 20 years, you're gonna want your 14-year-old daughter to go into a strange man's car to go to places because that's gonna be safer than them driving.

18:14The concept of Uber is insane 25 years ago. Do you know how many 13-year-olds take Ubers to the mall now in high net worth neighborhoods. And like people would have like, I mean, it's insane. And that's just consumer behavior. Or 25 years ago, online dating was for like dudes that lived in the basement of their mom. And it was like the least cool thing. And that's social norms, not even technology. To your point with technology, like, oh man, I mean, 50 years from now, everything we're doing now is gonna be laughed at as like amateur hour. Yeah, I think there's a fate to it that, again, it's hardwired into most of us to be resistant to change, even as change is the law of the universe.

19:01And so, you know, it feels like we're like protecting our species. But again, like our species is in the state of constant evolution where exactly just the ways that we define a human. You know, you think about even like education, like education for us was the memorization of facts. What happens when every kid has all of the access in all the world at their fingertip? Then like, what is it even to be educating? It's like all of these things are, and I'm happy I live right now. I think maybe that's the takeaway of what I'm saying. I'm happy I get to be here in this moment. Me too, because you don't get to make that decision because we're too small as an individual human.

19:36To me, I'm happy about everything. yeah this is also why it's impossible to talk to you because i could this we could talk about seven different subjects okay i'm gonna get this shit back on the rails this is an advertising podcast okay all right so i saw you in can this year uh speaking alongside greg hon they gave you guys like 20 minutes for the two of you to interview is very very very poorly thought out maybe give them an hour um i saw you at the a-list this week um i see you more prominently your company more prominently and consistently in the trades and at the award shows. You know, I think, you know, as you're as you're building your stature in the advertising industry, you know, there was a there was this really cool rebelliousness and sort of outsider-ness that you retain.

20:22But most who are in your position sort of rose the ranks of the ad industry and developed this kind of reverence along the way. And of course, your story is quite different, quite different. I wonder, what was your relationship to the industry when you entered it? And how, if at all, has it changed now that you're a decade in? I didn't know anything about it, which ended up being a gift and a slowdown. I tend to like the concept of fresh eyes can innovate. And I'm also a bad student. So like once I decided I wanted to start an advertising consulting company, which is what we really called it at first, I just said to AJ like, hey, we understand startup.

21:05I understand small business. We know nothing about Fortune 500. We're going to be doing this for 80 years. Let's like figure it out. Let's just people are starting to reach out to me because I have a lot of Twitter followers. ESPN and Pepsi just paid me$5 ,000 for an hour of consulting. That seems like a ton of money. Like let's figure this out. And so we came in very naive. it was about community management at first like brands were not replying on social media brands didn't have accounts the nhl i was watching the rangers game the other night and i saw the at nhl twitter thing as a promo and i was like aj's laptop created that account my brother's laptop created at nhl for twitter like it was that early for social in 2009 my relationship was naivete when we started doing media and creative from day one underneath the umbrella, I didn't realize that Madison Avenue had split it to separate companies 20 years earlier.

21:58I'd never heard of Nielsen brand lift studies. I didn't know about Can Lions. I didn't know about Ad Age. I'd never heard about Affirm. I never heard about Martin Sorrell. I didn't know who David Ogilvie was. When I tell you nothing, I was a poor student who was 100 % obsessed with wine from the age of 17 and to build his dad's business. And my interest lied in sports and music and Jersey. And I was interviewing someone for a very senior role last night. This kid literally grew up idolizing marketing, right? Like he was like, I read this book and Fallon this and DDB and Ogilvy. And I was like this, and I thought it was the neatest.

22:38I was like, this is so rad. Like that wasn't my journey. I didn't know anything, but I knew that marketing had built my dad's business. and I knew that social was going to win. And I knew that big companies believed in something I didn't know, but I had a sense that it wasn't right. Right. And, and we got in and very quickly, early meeting at Campbell's and Trident and Mondelez Cadbury. I was like, okay. And then like things started happening which was I realized television was god and I real and that was weird to me because the internet was cruising and I and like and then you know it took me about five or six years to calibrate the industry and what I mean by that is like I'm like okay like how you measure media like matters like they might not even believe in programmatic digital ads they might not believe in television but grps and impressions and mmms and mmas is like why they do it because they're a corporation and they have to conform to that oh creative like this is all a facade it's all about awards and headlines and it's just people's subjective opinions and they don't really validate them and and just like you just start like really look but but to the point of creativity the creative is the variable of success i believe the super bowl is the best ad in marketing in the world.

24:01Best Buy, underpriced, 100 million Americans will consume it. It's what we do. But your upside is based on how good the ad is. The process to the ad is something I have challenging DNA towards, but the punchline of the concept is right. And so frequency and reach, I agree on that. The problem is I believe in actualized reach, not potential reach. So a GRP means nothing to me because I know it's fake. it's fucking fake like you know and so same with a social media view by the way I have no love towards social media other than I think it's underpriced attention and I think the industry hasn't calibrated it yet but you know my relationship was knew nothing believed in my thesis so I wasn't scared to speak my mind which of course you know was a different narrative and I'm empathetic to why the industry is like especially the way I roll tons of confidence tons of conviction tons of passion and i'm willing to like challenge the status quo i didn't wine i just come from 15 years of challenging the wine industry which on a good day makes the advertising industry seem easy like you want to talk about pretentiousness you want to talk about ideology you want to be you want to talk about focusing on the past i would literally taste wine that i knew below par and the winemaker would say the owner would say to me my grandfather built this.

25:23I'm like, your grandfather didn't make this wine. This wine you just made, like had to deal with the fact that it rained and you picked the grapes too late. Yeah. When you're at that Ad Age event that I saw you at this week, do you feel at home? Yes and no. Yes, from the standpoint, I'll tell you about the Ad Age event. I really, so I left early and I left early because I had some business stuff and family stuff, not for any other reason. Some people hit me up. They're like, oh, why'd you leave? I was I wasn't leaving because I'm like, I came because I love being part of this industry. I'll tell you what really threw me off.

25:58I can't believe how disrespectful the industry is to the industry. I was talking to my tables. We had two tables for Vayner. I was very upset. Genuinely, I literally said to one of my industries, I'm like, this industry really has a lot of work to do. I'm like, we're at the main industry event and we are not even staying quiet out of respect. like there was just no respect for the winners I was really upset I didn't say a damn word while those people were on stage talking about thank you thank you for like it I was shocked I'd never been we won a bunch of good stuff last year but I wasn't able to come I don't recall why family or travel that was already locked in and I I said to my COO I'm like um because he Mark Yunkin he he actually accepted war list I'm like was it like this last year he goes yeah he He goes, I was nervous to like give the speech before I got here because you weren't here.

26:53And I was like, fuck, I can't do what he does. And he goes, but then I was like not nervous at all because I realized nobody's paying attention to anything. So I did not feel at home from the standpoint of it reinforced to me the thing I continue to want to challenge our industry to do, which is we can be nicer and better to each other. Yeah, everyone's waiting their turn for their moment and not giving a shit about anyone else's moment at that event specifically, which is some of it is just the programming. It's too many people. You got people who haven't seen each other in a long time. They're trying to catch up while someone is on stage trying to say something profound.

27:25I'll be honest with you. I fully disagree with you with all due respect. We had a full hour beforehand. Yeah. I've been to, I'm involved in a lot of industries. You know this. I've got my head on a lot of things. This industry needs to look at itself directly in the face based on what I saw at the gala last week. to not have the cordialness, to not have the respect, to not have the empathy and the compassion towards each other. For when someone's getting an award, to be quiet for four seconds and let them thank their teams, I was on the ground shocked. And my team knows that I have a lot of feelings towards the way this industry rolls.

28:05And I went over and I'm like, this is another example of where we can all be better. We could be better at treating our employees better. I don't think this industry does a good job. I really don't. And I think the lack of respect towards each other at the gala was shocking and we need to be better. You just said the magic word. Anyone who's seen your content knows that your management philosophy can be boiled down to the word empathy at the center. You spread it, you espouse it, you bang the drum about it, importance today more than ever. I love it, by the way, and it has rewired my brain. And I think it's helped a lot of people.