How to Stay Patient While Building Your Career | Tea with GaryVee Ep #84

0:00This is the GaryVee Audio Experience. Everybody, good morning, good morning. Welcome to another episode of Tea with Gary Vee. It's great to see all of you. Erin, get into the first question. Okay, this question is from Young Wolf. Young Wolf. This person's name is Young Wolf. Yes. All right, this question better be fucking badass and not some fucking bullshit pansy shit. Because if your name is Young Wolf and you ask, like, my feelings hurt, then you're not fucking Young Wolf. Young Wolf asks, I'm an emerging Chicago artist in my early 30s, and I recently signed with Jim Jones's Vamp Life Records.

0:35It's a big milestone, and I'm grateful for the progress and what's ahead, but I struggle with feeling like I'm not where I should be yet and building my fan base and finding financial stability. Any advice? It's okay to be ambitious. It's okay to be accountable, right? You're not where you are because you haven't done it. You haven't done the work. You might not be talented enough to do it, like you might be liking certain parts of the music game, but not other parts. It's okay to have momentary micro moments of self doubt. It is not allowed to have consistent dwelling and consistent beating yourself up for dumb shit, wolf.

1:19So what I need from you is to understand who gives a fuck. Like, I mean, at 34 years old, I had a tiny bit of money in savings. I had built a huge business for my dad, but I was not financially strong. I had very little to show for my 12 year insane commitment and talents, other than the self fulfillment of why I even did it, which was I wanted to support my dad and my mom and all those good things. and I could have fucking cried. I could have, by the way, if anyone deserved to cry at 34, like a lot of people here are crying that they don't have the money, the fame, the happiness that they want at 34, but they didn't do shit.

2:08I did shit. I built my parents' life for them on some real shit and yet I chose not to cry and started from scratch and built what this is today to remind all three of you, Ezra, Aaron, Mike, who have not been here for 15 years, this fucking company that has 2 ,000 employees and does$360 million in revenue started in a conference room smaller than that conference room because I couldn't afford to pay rent anywhere on earth to start the company. And Marcus, David Zhang, two guys you guys know, and Kevin Statz, who you don't know, and Sam Taggart, who you don't know, literally didn't get paid. And AJ, AJ, AJ, I had to barter, I had to barter doing consulting and marketing for a hotel in Midtown so that AJ could stay in a crappy hotel room as a place to stay.

3:12This is real shit. I was 34. Young Wolf signed a signed artist. That's incredible, Wolf. Start being happy about what you've accomplished instead of crying about what you haven't accomplished. You've accomplished something thousands of people watching this right now wish they could. Be a signed musician. If you're not happy where your fans are at, fucking get to work. Reply to every DM you've ever gotten on social. Reply to every comment you've ever gotten on social. Go backwards now and like and reply to every comment you've ever gotten. Start now. Start now at 34, start now at 44, start now at 55, start now at 66, start now at 77.

3:56That's the fucking game. All right, let's put Aaron on. Aaron, great to see you. Where are you from? I'm from Northern Ireland. Very wonderful. It's great to see you. It's good to see you too. It's a real privilege. Without being cringe, just straight off the top, I just wanted to say thank you for your content for the past three years. It's really brought me out of my shell and given me confidence. But the question I have was - Before you go anywhere on that, because I want to know, what do you think most stood out from my content that has helped you? Just, you just tell me not to care what people think.

4:34And like, I don't know, I just really lack confidence throughout life. And just even just reading your books and watching your videos, you just made me feel more confident in myself and not taking myself too serious. I love that. I love that. And honestly, go ahead, my brother. So I'm starting to shake. I'm really nervous. Apologies. Don't be. Don't be. So I'm 39. I've got three kids. And looking at all your content and stuff, you were talking about business, I sort of thought, I need to find something I'm passionate about. And the only thing I was passionate about at the time was making cookies with my kids.

5:11It's still a side hustle. But it's getting there. It's just, it consumes me, yeah. and I've started doing content. You're so lucky. Brother, you do know that, Aaron, you do know that you've hit the holy grail to have something that consumes you. Like for example, I'm sitting here right now doing this show for all of you, but the only thing I'm actually thinking about is running to the airport and getting to Chicago because the trading card convention is in Chicago and like VFriends is consuming me. Like I've got responsibilities with VaynerX, I've got responsibilities with VaynerSports, the fives, helping my dad with wine tax.

5:47You are very fortunate. You are right there. You are right there. You are right there, brother. You're on the cusp, you got it. And you're so young. I'm so pumped that you're on the cusp at 39. That's incredible. You know I talk about this a lot, but I'm gonna say it again, brother. God willing, nothing out of the ordinary, you are gonna live for another 60 years. I hope so. And so, for you to capture this passion this early, and something that incorporates your kids? Are you kidding me? What a fucking blessing. Yeah, I'm living the dream. You really are. I'm just trying to get it to the next level.

6:23You're going to get to enough revenue where even though it's a lot less than the job that you're stepping out of right now to make this call on, is making more, but once you realize when you're putting 80 hours into the cookie thing, you'll be able to make as much, you're going to make that jump. You just have to use every minute right now to invest in content and selling. Got it? Perfect. Got it. Good man. Good luck. Go hard. Thank you so much. More content, more selling. More content, more selling. More content, more selling. Got it? Thank you so much. You got it, brother. Cheers. Cheers. Aaron, what do we got?

6:54I've been building a pest control business since 2020. One van, one man. I do around 120K year gross without advertising or marketing. Wow. I'd like to scale and hire out, but I'm afraid I don't have the capital or access to capital to do so. Advice? I know he's 120 gross, but I want him to live like he has 68 gross. So again, he said 120 gross. Might mean his take-home's like 65, 72, 84. I know what I'm asking him to do but here is the thing. If you want to scale a business, you have to give the money to the business, not to yourself. We talked about this yesterday. Who was tuned in to yesterday's show?

7:35Say yesterday in the chat right now. And not all of you on social media, only if you're on Whatnot. If you're on social media, get over here right now. So a lot of you heard this yesterday, I see you all. A lot of you heard this yesterday. I asked who's worried about money, and a lot of people said yes. Then I asked how many of you have three streaming services you pay for each month, and many of you said that. Then I asked how many of you buy$6 bougie coffee, and many of you said that. I'm telling you right now, I'm gonna say this slow, and I'm gonna say it hard. Almost everybody I know on Earth, Sid, I need you to pay attention, because you're a part of this crew.

8:11Almost everybody I know on earth spends too much money on dumb shit, even if they think they're financially disciplined. We have gotten into the era of believing luxuries have become necessities. I met with somebody last night where the father of his wife wore the same pair of jeans every day for 10 years. You guys are a bunch of kids. I'm 49 and I can project up. I knew, and remember, I grew up lower middle class. So I understand that I didn't grow up wealthy enough, but I need people to hear this. I knew many people in my life who wore the same clothes constantly. The fuck is this concept of a wardrobe?

8:57The fuck do you need a wardrobe for when you have no money? Why do you have 16 fucking shirts and 19 sneakers and 11 different pairs of pants and fucking nine handbags when you have no fucking money. If you're trying to build a business, if you're, like, we have completely lost our way. We don't need shit. Who said that we were entitled to be cozy at all times? What happened to being comfortable with being uncomfortable? And the amount of people that tell me they're uncomfortable in DMs, and then I get weird sometimes as you see Once in a Blue Moon, I go back and forth. The new definition of uncomfortable is some bullshit.

9:47People out here crying like their life sucks and went to a concert on Saturday night and drank a$19 beer. You fucking dick faces. And we got hundreds of kids in the office today. It's bring your kids to school or work day. I'm looking at Sid's little girl. Yes, baby, I said dick faces. Yes. Yes. Fucking, my life sucks, I've got it so bad. Fucking bought a$16 beer. Your life can't be ruined, and at the same time, you bought something on StockX in the last month. Come on. Mario's in the building. Thank you. Mario, how are you? Hey, doing good, and you? Great to see you. Where are you calling from?

10:40Belgium. Very nice, it's a pleasure to be with you. How are you? Yeah, I'm doing good, doing good. Very, very good, thank you. What's your question? My question was, how would you market a pizza catering company? A company that does catering at venues and just trying to find a way to get more creative with our content. What are you doing on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram? Yeah, not a lot, it's not a lot because it's not really - Mario! Mario! Mario! Mario! Are you telling me, how long have you been following my content? Tell the truth, how long? A lot. How long? How many years? Mario, you have the audacity, Mario, to call me after four years of watching me and ask me that question.

11:31if you were talking to your great grandmother right now, she would say, I will say it to you like an Italian, Mario, you spit in my face. You understand? You spit in my face, you're calling after four years of consuming my content, you know I'm gonna say it's fucking organic social media. Make fucking pizza videos on Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok, Instagram, and you'll sell fucking pizza, Mario. I don't know, is this the right way for the Belgium market, yeah? I don't, yes, it's right for, people are on fucking social media in Belgium, Mario. And the winner is Fox on the Fractor. Let's go, Fox.

12:10Huge win for Fox. Let's clap it up for Fox, everybody. Mario, Mario, you don't love me. You don't love this community. You don't love pizza. You don't love customers. Mario, you have to do this. I need you to understand this tough love that I'm giving you, I need you to do this. It will change your business. Pizza video, pizza video, pizza video, pizza video, Mario video, pizza video, pizza video, Mario video. Yeah, yeah. Mario, how old are you? I'm 34. 34, a kid, ready? In this moment in your life, you are either gonna become Super Mario or you're going to become terrible, shitty Mario. Okay, we'll be watching.

13:01Love you. All right. See you. Thank you. All right. Aaron, give me some questions. All right. Next question is from Crystal. You speak to tripling down on LinkedIn. What is the proper etiquette when posting about your side hustle when your upper management is watching every post and move you make? Here are your options. One, create a pseudo, like, you know, like, isn't, right, Charles Dickens' real name is not Charles Dickens, right? That was his pseudo name, right? That whole thing. So you create the new version of that with AI. Like, with AI, you can change your voice and your facial features, and you can be like a different person on your side hustle.

13:37Like, new shit's happening. Number two, you could go all in and just deal with the ramifications, right? Which is like the consequences. You can go to HR and be like, I'm doing this side hustle. It does not affect my job. Aaron, you know this. I would be okay with that as long as you weren't doing consulting for a competitor of our clients. Most bosses are not like that, I get that. Or you could set up the side hustle under your spouse, your girlfriend, your boyfriend, your sister, your brother, and they could be part of it more, and you could kind of position it as like, I'm just helping my brother, even though it's yours.

14:10Those three ideas stand out to me, real life. You know, you can quit and go all in. Aaron ask me a question. Okay, this question is from Brendan. I'm running the social and e-comm side of a retail store that's tied to a pretty well-known personality. Videos with them go crazy, but we're not seeing that energy turn into online sales yet. What would you do to turn views into conversions when the attention is already there? By throwing some right hooks. You know, if the brand content's not leading to conversion, then do some ads. Have the personality make an ad and be like, if I've done anything for you that has brought value, you please buy my thing.

14:48You know, a lot of people just bought that hat, Aaron, as a thank you, because they want to support me for all the value I've brought them. You know what I mean? Other people just want to make a quick buck on eBay and other people want to rock the fucking hat. C. Cuerva, great call. He said,$13 beer, why$63 hat? You're absolutely right, C. Cuerva. I say it here all the time. I'm going to say this nice and slow. So do not ever buy anything from me ever if money is tight. Because the things I sell are the least necessities. No one needs wine and no one definitely needs collectibles. I mean, that's absolutely right.

15:31Do not buy anything from me ever if you can't afford it or money is tight ever. Nick is in the building. Nick, where are you calling from? What's up brother? Where are you calling from? I can, where are you calling from? I'm on Long Island. I love it. I love you already. Nick from Long Island's, I already fucking love you brother. You're my fucking brother. I already love you. I know Long Island sign guy real well. Did I not change that motherfucker's life? 100 % his social media is doing crazy. Sid, you can't hear what's being talked about. Nick from Long Island said, I know Long Island sign guy real well.

16:07I just said, did I not change that motherfucker's life? He said absolutely. Do you see what's going on? I've taken a lot of tips from him and from you throughout the years. And I've been posting social every day. This is just for everyone else to hear. Every single day. And it's popping off. Like millions of views. Lots of customers from my business. It's been amazing. Absolutely amazing. Yeah, Nick, let there be no confusion. This 15 year tirade I've been on is 100%. And I need people to desperately start doing. and not thinking I'm guessing or joking. Real quick, real quick, real quick. Real quick, ugly primo just said, how do I deal with toxicity at the workplace?

16:50The answer is quit. Start looking for other jobs. Or look yourself in the mirror and find out if you think something's toxic that's just inconvenient and you're a soft puss. Gotta make sure you're not a soft puss, Ezra.

17:05Don't wanna be that. No, okay, go ahead, Nikki. see Nick from Long Island comes and all of a sudden I'm talking like a Jersey boy right Nick from Long Island comes to the show and I'm going soft pussy you know that's what happens alright go ahead Nick so give me 90 seconds to give you a background on me just so you can understand me as a person hey Nick hey Nick for some reason it got muffled for a second you were very clear and then it got less clear go ahead again is this better? yes sir go so give me 90 seconds just so you can get some context of who I am so 2016 going to college started listening to you about business hustle culture yada yada put my head down grinded stopped listening to you for a while just something you said is actually a good thing um and i came back to you like two years ago but not for hustle culture or anything like that which i know you've talked about in depth which there's been some confusion on but more about what you preach about humanity and your perspective on things and i absolutely love it and I share it with everybody, my friends, my family, your podcast, everything.

18:09And it kind of leads me into my question, which you've talked about a lot, but when we can have the nuanced conversations, it's better.

18:18Empathy and feeling bad for your employees. My brother and I own a business for three years now. I have a few employees and, you know, they have problems with money, with time, yada, yada, yada. And I find myself feeling bad for them a lot. That comes with firing, too. like I fired my first employee and that was fucking brutal. Brutal. I guess my question to you is, how do you handle feeling bad for people? Because you can't just give them innocent amounts of money. By, I struggled with this my whole life, Nick. Stay right there by the way, Nick, because your video went out. Just stay right there for a second.

18:53I struggled with this my whole life. Firing people has been the bane of my existence. I hate it to this day. I'm 49 years old. I've been doing it for 27 years, really probably a little bit more because from 18 to 22 I was influential to who got fired. I hate it. How do I deal with it? By realizing that if I don't do it, everybody else gets fired too in the form of us going out of business. You know what I mean? That's one. The other way is you realize that at some level there's a little ego in it where you think they're better off with you and you learn that if you fire someone who you've already decided isn't good, you've realized that you can actually help them a lot with the firing.

19:41I've seen many people find better environments for themselves than the environments of my workplaces. Even though my workplaces subjectively and objectively were better work environments, their fit in that place was better, right? And you know, listen, for example, my organizations are A organizations. Some people do better in a B organization where they're not held up to the same standard. Like it's just real life. And so I think there's a little ego in it that we have, me, you, have to let go of. And then the other thing you realize is one thing that I've done way more of brother, this may help, this is another little tip.

20:21I used to sit on a firing for fucking years. This is embarrassing, years. That's Jackie, years. And I realized I was better off firing people a little bit earlier and giving them more severance than what was really happening. Because even though I was paying them the whole way, they didn't know they were gonna be out of a job. And then I was so bent out of shape of like paying them for two years to do nothing or do a bad job, that my appetite for a severance was like, fuck you, you had a severance for two years in real life. Like you haven't done shit. And then, and then I, so there's, there's a lot of ways to, you see where I'm going, right?

21:01You may want to fire, like, and by the way, let me say another thing while I'm on this rant. Once you know, it's always, you know, like it's very rare where I'm like, I got to fire Ezra. And then miraculously, I'm like, no, I don't. Like, even if I don't for like three months, he'll do some dumb shit that reminded me why I needed to fire him in the first place. Like it is what it is, you know? and so honestly bro, I feel so equipped to answer all questions, that's why I do these shows. This one's interesting because it's been hard, motherfucker. It's been hard out here because you're right, I have a bleeding heart.

21:38I am empathetic, I am a people pleaser. I love people more than my businesses. I just, you have a sense of responsibility. And by the way, let me give you a fucking one that really got me fucking going. This is actually, I'm glad I stayed on, Nick. You're gonna like this one, brother. this is what really got me there, Nick. I realized that people that were remarkable and working their fucking faces off, I wasn't able to give as much compensation to because the fucking leeches and the bottom feeders were eating up the dollars and I was now hurting the people that were carrying them. It had nothing to do with me and that really got me going.

22:13Yeah, it's affecting other people, not just you. Correct, because I was eating, the reason I got fucked up is I was willing to eat the shit. I was like, fuck it, even though I'm the whole fucking team and I'm the guy, I'll take less to be nice to these people. When it hit me that it wasn't me, it was my A players and my hardest workers that were taking money, less money home because I was carrying, I was like, wait a minute, I'm doing fucking communism and socialism. I'm fucking, what about, look, and it wasn't like everyone got paid the same, but like if Sid was making 10K less because I was carrying three bozos, like was that right?

22:48The answer was no in hindsight and I want to do less of that. But I still need Sid to take$10 ,000 less. HR, cut 10 ,000 off of Sid's payroll please. Just cause I'm in the mood to do weird shit. Go ahead Nick. I was gonna say, I really like your take on intuition. I feel like one day he would not realize that intuition is such a huge part of. I will die, Nick, I will die on this. I believe in a hundred, within the next, I will die on this. Within the next hundred years, we will realize that our gut is the primary brain and our brain is secondary, and it will create a new world order, and I'm sad, because my intuition says I won't see it, but I can't wait to be chilling in heaven and see it happen.

23:34Yeah, you said that like two years ago, and I always think about it weekly, because it's so many occasions where your intuition says you do something, you just gotta listen to it, and nine times out of 10, it's the right thing to do. A hundred thousand percent. I love you, bro. Have the best day.