How to Monetize Your Passion in 2025

0:00This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience. Hey everybody, before I go into today's podcast if you're listening to this before 9 a.m. Eastern Time, which I know a lot of you are dog walking, the gym just consuming on your travel. I'm live right now probably if you're hearing this or shortly. I'm live at 9 a.m. Am I doing it on all my socials? I'm live on all my socials and then the questions themselves, the Tea with Gary Vee show is back if you're unaware. The questions themselves are on Whatnot. So go check that out. We're at vfriends.com slash live for that. vfriends.com. vfriends is my Pokemon meets Marvel world.

0:41If you're not aware of it, I know some of you heard of it when I was doing NFTs two, three years ago, which I'm still doing and that's the ultimate collectible. But it's now become a huge cartoon, vfriends.com slash cartoons. If you have somebody under 10 in your life, it's become a kid's book, it's become a big, big deal. Go check that out. That's vfriends.com slash live. the Gary Vee show that you all loved. Tea with Gary Vee is live right now today at 9 a.m. See you on my socials. See you in a little bit. Hope you enjoyed today's podcast. I'm excited to be doing Tea with Gary Vee. I'm gonna do a lot in 2025.

1:15It's my home. I miss it. It was such a big deal in COVID and I hope to see you there. Hit me up on Twitter or on text at 212-9315-731 and let me know if you're excited about Tea with Gary Vee back. In fact, actually, go to my Instagram post right now and leave a tea emoji if you heard this. I just wanted to get a sense of how many people are cross-pollinating between the podcast and Instagram. And I'll see you on Tea with Gary Vee today, 9 a.m. Eastern. I was following you, and you said get on TikTok in 2019, and I did, and it was blowing up. I do artwork, and at the time, you know, I'm a single mom, and it just was kind of overwhelming.

1:51I watched Social Dilemma. I got freaked out about this big app, and I literally deactivated, deleted the whole thing. I had a video go viral. Let's even, you know, because I want to bring a lot of value to everybody who's watching. This is why I hate when the world sells fear. Yeah. Right? You watch a documentary on Netflix. The documentary's full objective is to scare people about the downside of social networks or technology. There's always downside. There's downside of automobiles. When cars were invented, people could drink alcohol, drive a car and kill someone. That didn't happen when we had horses.

2:32But it doesn't mean that that's the problem. And like, just, I'm sorry to jump in, but it's a big opportunity to help a lot of people. Don't let the world scare you. You were building. You were following somebody who was selling love and optimism and practicality. And that was leading to good. Then you consumed something that was selling fear for no fucking reason. And it threw you off. Keep going Yeah, I was in a fight or fight place And it was like, alright, I'm going to be scared And family was freaked out about stuff too So I was like, whatever, I got pushed that way So I dropped that I took over a flower business four years ago I absolutely love it I am doing what I love It was my sister's business I recently heard about somebody That was making a lot of money on TikTok Who had started a year ago And I was like, okay, maybe it's not too late I'm still going to hop on there so I did so real quick on that yeah it's never too for everybody who's watching it's never too late to start doing good activity mm-hmm right like like just because you missed bitcoin or crypto or tiktok or influencer marketing or live social shopping which we're doing right now like it's there's never a bad time to start doing good shit it's even like working out like I've had a good five weeks even though I've had a bad 40 weeks and it like feels good like it feels good yes well and i think pursuing your passion no matter what is the right choice and you talk about that all the time so doing flowers i do feel like i am pursuing my passion i get to create the the business is lucrative i'm making better money than i've made in past stuff that i've done and i'm happy but gary i'm still an artist i'm a watercolor artist and i still have something bigger that i want to share with the world and it's like i see tiktok as an opportunity to do that.

4:24You're right. I've started going live on TikTok for about a month and I'm making money in my lives. Painting. I'm doing names. I do little dog portraits and it just kind of hooked doing names. People want their names drawn. You don't say. I'm so shocked to hear that TikTok live and shopping is working for you. Go figure. Go fucking figure. I'm like, I hired this coach. It's a girl who's been on TikTok since July just because I'm freaking inspired by her. And last week she made 20K just in the week going live. I mean, no shit. There's a huge potential to make money going live. Who the fuck are you telling?

5:08I know. So what's the question? Okay. The question is, so now I've got this business. I mean, I read your recent book. I listened to it on audio. I'm like, okay, I'm promoting my flowers. I need to be on all these different networks, but I'm also promoting my art. Now I'm taking an extra 10 to 12 hours a week going live, which isn't even enough. I need to be going live more. I don't know how to balance it all. I'm a single mom. You're balancing it. You're balancing it. The reason you don't know how to balance it is because you're judging yourself. Good news. You're fucking balancing it. Thank you.

5:44The end. Thank you. Why are you beating yourself up? What is balance? Who the fucking, where is this king or queen of balance? Where is this lord of balance that everybody's been telling me about? Who the fuck is the king of balance? Yeah, I wanna be the queen of balance and it's hard. You are the queen, no, it's actually easy. You are the queen of balance. Let me show you how to do it. You, Queen Sasha, the queen of balance, have decided right here this morning at 9.07 Eastern that you are good at balance, that you're balancing it. you've decided thank you no not not thank you not me telling you you realize what i'm actually saying i'm not trying to be nice to you i'm not trying to be kind to you i'm trying to get you to wake up that there is no such thing and either you decide you are balancing it or you decided you're not balancing it 99 of the people that are watching tea with gary v right now have decided they're not balancing it because most of the people in the world live in a place of the reason you were susceptible to that documentary was because most people are prepared to be scared yeah i live in a place of love i live in a place of love now love is different love is amazing i'm talking about fear oh i know i know because i've been there correct so very simply you are balancing it who gets to decide you're trying your best you're doing the flower thing you're doing the the watercoloring thing you're you're a single mom and doing that thing you're fucking living i guess i like okay the fear is that i'm taking away from my flower business and that is my bread and butter so is it your bread and butter because because i hear that you're starting to make money on your art online i think the earning potential online is going to be a a lot higher than what it is in my flower shop.

7:46So it sounds like you're investing. So keep going. Yes, I'm investing. I'm investing.

7:57Yes, no, that's it. And by the way, let's make up scenarios. And then January 19th comes, and for some reason, the US bans TikTok, well then you'll adjust, and then Instagram will have live, like everything is manageable. Yes, yes. And I watched you talk about that too, because I was like, what if it does disappear? And you really brought just, it's okay. It's okay if it does. And things are going to keep evolving. Everything's okay. Yeah. It's called fucking life. Shit's going to fucking happen. Somebody is going to wake up today as a seven-year-old and have their father have a heart attack and change the course of their life.

8:33That will happen today. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I don't understand how people are confused out here. Yeah. we are all collectively capable of dealing with shit. Our great grandparents laugh. Our great great grandparents are watching us in heaven and saying these fucking pusses, these fucking pusses, the fuck are they crying about? We had fucking famine, we had fucking world wars, we didn't have shit. The fuck are these kids crying about? Well, I get that. You know, I have a six month younger cousin who passed away from cancer about five years ago. And it's like, that's a big wake-up call. That is my baby cousin.

9:17If you have a cousin who had this tragic event happen, that should absolutely not allow you to be concerned about what you're worried about. Totally. Right? What's going to happen? Let's play role play. You're going to spend too much time on your art and the flower shop is going to be down 18%. Who gives a fuck? Thank you. As soon as that happens, if that goes on for six months and you're like, oh fuck, the flower shop is down 16%, well then you can fucking adjust. And go back to spending more time on the fucking flower shop. Okay, that brings a lot of peace to my heart. Thank you. Well good, good.

9:56Have the best day. Right Dustin? Our fucking great great grandparents are chilling in heaven right now and they're just like, what the fuck's the matter with these people?

10:08they're like we have anxiety over dumb shit somebody made fun of me fucking 18 year olds getting shipped off to Europe front lines to shoot Germans in the face or get shot in the face and we're fucking sad because somebody left a comment that said you suck like some girl doesn't like you who gives a fuck There's four billion other girls. The fuck? All right, next person. Andre, what's good, brother? Hey, Gary, how are you, sir? Thank you so much for doing this. I'm thrilled to be here with you, my guy. Man, I am shaking because I've been following you for like the last five to six years and I have taken all of your advice.

10:54I bought your book, Day Trading Attention, which I just gave away yesterday. After reading it three times, I gave it away in my networking group, which is my question to you today, sir. Go ahead. I want to fill you in a little bit with what I do. I live in a small town in Middle Tennessee. The population here is about 25 ,000 people. The U.S. census says that 25 % of the community here is Hispanic, which I am a member of. So 25 % of the 25 ,000 people are Hispanic in this town in Tennessee. Go. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. and so i started a a page called shovelville in spanish so which is the town that i live in so i update the community about anything that's going on we've been able to establish um relationships with a lot of like the schools the um the non-profit organizations and all this whatever is going on here so we then i then took over a local networking group that i that had been here for the last 15 to 10 years.

11:53And so I started incorporating value. I really wanted to bring value to the people, to the attendees. And so the way that we do it is 30 minutes of open networking. The first 30 minutes, then we do a 10 minute sit down video podcast with a different guest, a different business owner every month. And we only do it once a month. And then we do an activity afterwards. The last 20 minutes is an activity. Either we do... I got it. speech networking. Got it. So go to the question. The problem is that yesterday we were highlighting one of the Hispanic businesses for the first time. We decided to do it in Spanish and I've just been getting kind of some negative feedback on that.

12:34I don't know if it's because... That it wasn't in English? Well, just a video podcast portion of it but we had an interpreter there. I don't know if these people were... I don't know how to take it. I got some phone calls. What? Just people crying like, yo, speak English, it's fucking America? some dumb shit like that? No, I mean, it was like, I don't know, it was confusing phone calls about, they said they didn't like it at first, but they ended up saying they did, and so I didn't know how to feel about that. You know, like, I don't know. How about not giving a fuck? Yeah. How about that feeling?

13:06Okay. How about taking it in and giving it thought, and if it happens seven or eight more times, maybe adjusting, or maybe using AI to translate into every language. But I think the first piece of advice is, how about not giving a fuck? Next time you can do it in English. Next time you can do it in Korean. I don't fucking know. Okay. Like, what are they saying? They're going to beat you up or they're not going to give you money? No, sir, I think it's more of just, maybe it's not something that they're into. but it's the first time we've ever done. Bro, 99 % of people aren't into anything. Meaning like the biggest companies in the world don't have all 8 billion people giving a shit about.

13:54Did you feel good about it? Yeah, I loved it. So do it again. Okay. So I guess the next question would be how can I, because right now the local chamber of commerce has kind of moved their date to the same date that we're doing our meeting. So a lot of our members had gone, So change your date. Okay. How can I go about... What are you romantic about the date for? You mean the second Tuesday of every month? No, I'm not. Great. How can I... If you're the second Tuesday of every month and somebody bigger or somebody that also has attention that fucks you up does it, you're allowed to make it the third Thursday of every month.

14:34Okay. How do I go about reaching a younger demographic? Like maybe... TikToks. Okay. those 25 to 30 years you read the fucking book three times I did the fuck are you asking me that for I'm sorry I just I'm kidding I'm fucking with you bro I love you listen to me put your fucking two index fingers directly in your ear and go fucking execute okay got it yes sir have the best day Eric how are you where are you from hi how are you Thank you. I'm in Orlando, Florida. Amazing. Yeah. So I'm a devout follower. I listen to all your content. Thank you. And I've been posting content online. So I'm an accountant.

15:25I used to work in corporate America, the chief financial officer of a$50 million company. I left corporate America, have my own accounting practice. Congrats. And thank you. I have a six month old buying a house and I want to start crushing more online. Okay. So I've been taking your advice, posting content. A couple of my videos took off, but they're comedy sketches. Okay. I got like a million impressions on LinkedIn this week, or actually like two million, but I'm not getting to my target audience. Well, that's because that's, are you making content that would hit your target audience? so it's corporate america humor talking about brother are you making content that has your information on it as well like there's a part for you to put p in the copy of your comedy skit you could put ps this is a comedy skit but i'm actually a former fortune 500 cfo with my own practice if you have any interest in working with me here's my email should i push the sales part on all the videos.

16:30You're allowed to do both. You're allowed to do both, right? I called out the guy on TikTok that said, hey, Gary V, why are you shilling mugs? You're always selling something. In fact, as you know, because you're a devout follower, 99 % of my content, 99.5 % of my content has no selling in it. But if I'm in a live shopping platform like I am right now, I'm going to put that up. And I think people should buy this mug instead of a crappier other mug. That's just what I believe. Because V friends is the next Pokemon. At least that's what my mom says. So you have to understand, like there's, you're allowed.

16:58Here's the funny thing about selling. You're allowed to sell, it's fucking America. On the other side, people are allowed to not buy. I never expect anybody to buy, but I'm always happy when they do. Does that make sense? Yeah. So of course it's okay to sell. And some content, like I just told you, you could have the content and the selling. Other content, you could just have the selling. You could literally make a video that might not get a million views, but it might get a hundred views, where you're like, hey, this is what I do. I'd like to do business with you. but the good news, you get 100 views of that and you get three customers, that might be better than getting a million views of comedy with no customers.

17:35Yeah. Both are allowed. The answer to your question is and, and, and, and, and, and. You're allowed to do comedy and you're allowed to have a very boring accounting video. You're allowed to make more content. This is fucking the best part of social, it's free. okay so my roadblock i've had was how do i make accounting not boring and you're saying you can't make accounting not boring it's fucking boring yeah but that's okay like like sometimes i'm very serious sometimes i'm silly sometimes i'm ridiculous sometimes i'm um stoic like you're just allowed to like make accounting interesting. They may make you laugh like but then you can come back on the next one and go very detailed and go into a very big nuance of what the new administration did with this tax deal.

18:29Don't try to make accounting cool. Just make all of it and let the chips fall. That's what I was doing. I was trying to make topics easy to understand and I felt like I was doing But that's okay too. Do both. I'm telling you that's okay too because you might have a viral video get 17 million and you put the ps in there and you did get six clients what you're missing out on which everyone gets fucked up on is the game is about and not or and boring content entertaining content left field content new tax yes yes yes and and and every platform tiktok linkedin instagram this is a fucking gold rush of opportunity these platforms are free.

19:13Yeah, LinkedIn video has been going crazy. It's really a great opportunity and I appreciate you sharing. More. All right, who do we have on the show? Hi, how you doing? My name's Austin. Austin, great to see you, brother. Where are you from? I'm from Utah. Good morning, by the way. Love it, man. Pleasure. Good morning. Nice and early for you. Yeah, well, I'll keep it super quick with you. So, I'm 23. Long story short, I got an entrepreneurship about two years ago. I ran in a pretty high level business, but it went bankrupt. And now I'm kind of just stuck in that phase of like innovating - So wait, you ran a high level business, but it went bankrupt.

19:47Did you learn from the missteps? Yes, I had business partners. I was young and experienced and I failed a lot, but I'm carrying that as motivation into my next - It's great. I mean, given that you're this young and you've already learned those lessons, it's a real fucking, back to the dude who's like, how do I stop sucking in life? Some people with a bankruptcy decide that they suck, you have decided it's a learning experience. I was young. Let me take that L. I learned. I'm still young as shit. Let me build from here. And I'm fucking proud of you for that, brother. Thank you. I appreciate it.

20:19And the big part for me right now is I've kind of been in this gray area for the past year and a half, traveled the whole nation trying to find my answers on what's next. And I think I finally have the really good idea I want, but I'm not financially heavy. and I'm kind of lost on like, where do I go for the capital? And like, what's the best way to find these business partners that I can actually trust? I mean, the capital high net worth individuals is always a great place to go. And so it's like literally like Googling or chat between like thousand richest people in Utah and then sending respectful messages to them on LinkedIn.

20:55And all you need to do is go one of 180 or 250 or seven. People always say like, what do I do? I'm like, reach out to people. Then they're like, well, I have. I'm like, well, how many? And they're like, seven. I'm like, no, no, 7 ,000. Like if you want to live a 1 % life, like you want to live a 1 % life, right? You want to have your own business and be successful. That's a 1 % life. If you're only willing to take seven no's via email, then you don't have the stomach for a 1 % life. If you're willing to sit down and eat shit for the entire month of January, because for 14 hours a day, you're emailing every fucking person that you could possibly find that has money anywhere in the world, because you're doing the research and you're sending the emails and you're connecting on LinkedIn and you're just being respectful and doing it the right way and not too spammy and then following back up a month later so you're not desperate, like looking for one person to say yes to start the process, well then now you're living a 1 % life.

21:46Okay. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. It does. You know, you're not going to know if they're trustworthy. The good news is you're not looking for partners, you're looking for investors. So, does that make sense? Yeah, no, it doesn't. And with my first company, I brought in business partners because I wanted to make sure. Real quick, real quick. Like RetroBoom89 says, why does it have to be on LinkedIn? It doesn't, but LinkedIn is such a professional place that a lot of high net worth individuals are going to respond better to a LinkedIn message than they are on email where they get a lot of spam or a fucking DM on Instagram.

22:18Like, you know, you got to keep those things in mind. And then last question for you. I know a lot of people want to come up. No worries. My biggest challenge that I have been facing though is not getting burned out after failure because, you know, failure is inevitable in the part of entrepreneurship. Bro, you're not burned out. I can just tell by your energy. Don't let the fucking world sell you on this burnt out shit. Burnt out is different than took a gut punch getting back up slowly. This is the problem with everyone in today's society pushing on the kids. You're burnt out. You're depressed.

22:54We used to call this 20 years ago sluggish or a fucked up day. you know that video that's viral that like shows the guy walking into the fucking like the side of the door and it's like if you were born in the 70s you're like you don't even and the 80s you're like and the 90s like and then like there's a there's I hate that because I believe in fucking Gen Z and Gen Alpha the most but what they have and I feel bad for them they've bought into this bullshit bro you're not burnt out you're fucking on five you're fucking it's fucking 7.33 in the morning in Utah and you're on the fucking Tea with Gary Vee show fucking talking about building your future.

23:32You're a fucking go-getter and ambitious and a winner, but this fucking society has fucking sold you on, how do I deal with burnt out? It's not burnt out. You fucking took a micro L, and you're fucking, like, I don't know, you got punched in the face, you chipped the tooth, you got a little blood, you're gonna stop bleeding, you're gonna fix your tooth, and you're gonna go back out there. You understand? Of course you're fired up because a fucking grown ass man is telling you in your face, stop listening to the fucking bullshit of society trying to tell you you're burnt out. You're not fucking burnt out.

24:11Bro, you think you're burnt out? I don't think I am, but I don't want to be delusional. That, that. You're not delusional. Stop listening to fucking losers trying to make you lose. I've never told anybody you're burnt out. You know what tells people they're burnt out? Philosophical fuckers who can't do shit. You know what misery loves company is? Yeah. That's what the fuck is going on. So I just got to block them out. Just do me. Block out everybody. Block out people like me too. Block me the fuck out who's gassing you up. Block out every fucking person on earth. Perfect. You understand? I do.

24:52Listen to everybody, but hear no one. Right? because you gotta stay humble, you gotta check yourself, you don't wanna become delusional, but don't let everybody, or anybody, excuse me, fucking dictate your soul.

25:08Burnt out. It's fucking 7.33 in the morning in Utah. This man is showered with a fucking coat and hat on, fucking asking business questions on fucking live stream on an app that he probably had to download for the first time. Bro, you're a winner.

25:27I guess my goal is to win even more, you know? Good, but let me tell you how to win even more. Fall in love with trying to win versus winning. Okay, that's a good perspective. You understand? Yeah. Fall in love with the fact that you're trying and you're hungry and you're competing and you're in the fucking arena not sitting around saying, you're burnt out, everyone. You're in the fucking arena, bro. I'm pumped up now. I'm ready to work. I feel like you got me out of the hole. Yeah, dude. It's because you weren't even in the hole. This is the fucking problem with society right now. Trying to tell everybody it's all bad.

26:07It's all fucking good. Yeah. Yeah, it's perspective. It really is. Bro, life is only perspective. There is nothing besides your perspective. There is nothing else. There's nothing else. It's all fake. I'll tell you why. Is$150 ,000 a year a lot of money or a little money? Perspective. Perspective. Yeah. Is having a boyfriend or girlfriend right now a good thing or a bad thing? Perspective. You saw, I don't know, were you watching earlier when Sasha was on, that young lady? She was fucking building, then she watched the Social Dilemma documentary scared the fuck out of her. Like, what did that accomplish?

26:46Stop letting fear have any power over you.

26:53Fuck.