If You’re Scared to Ask for the Sale, Listen to This

0:00Before you go to the podcast, I've got a big announcement. I know several years ago, a lot of you bought 12 books of 12 and a half to get the NFT, the book games NFT. I also know that a lot of people have dropped off on their journey with VFriends, which is a massive mistake. Because what we're doing on Burn Island and what we're doing on base with book games is remarkable. So you need to go to vfriends.com slash old books with an S. You will go to that landing page and we will help you explain if you are trying to figure out where your NFTs are, how to bring them over to the website and how to start activating them so that you can start using them for all the incredible exchanges and draws and raffles and experiences that we're doing for people that actually own the book games.

0:41So please go to vfriends.com slash old books where you can start your journey on reactivating your book games journey. This is the Gary Vee audio experience. Let's fire away with questions. What's the best worst thing to do in a family run business for Michelle? Michelle, Bob, thank you so much for your purchase. Michelle, the best thing to do is understand that the money is secondary to the family time. The family time is over everything. Tommy Danger, thank you for the purchase. Family time over everything. Family time over everything. Like I regret nothing about the family time I've spent with AJ and my dad.

1:20The best thing you do is actually working with your family and your friends, because you get meaningful time with them. Work takes up a lot of time. The worst thing you can do is the reverse. You choose money and ego over your family and it creates tension in your family. I highly recommend you don't do that. Those are definitely the two answers. Choosing love and your family over money is the best thing you do and choosing money over family is the worst thing you can do. Aloha, beautiful, thank you for the purchase of the kids book. Yeah, it's about the money and ego, Charlie. The biggest issues I've ever had was not about the money, It was a little bit about respect.

1:57You know, I really struggled with my dad not acknowledging what I was doing, even though he thought he was. Like, that becomes a friction, and so you need to be very careful in family dynamics about that. I would watch out for that. All right, let's keep answering questions. Everybody, fire away with your question. Use question marks in the chat. What's your message for new entrepreneurs, Kamal? It's much harder than you think. Don't let the people on social media fool you. There's nothing harder than being an entrepreneur. Somebody just texted me applying for a job at VFriends that had a startup that I thought was remarkable, practical.

2:28He was a beast. He was in his 40s. I was stunned getting that text. They went out of business. That's how hard it is. So it's hard out here. How can I use being number one on Twitter next? What do I mean number one? I need more clarity on that. Ozzy J. Someone asked, am I able to build a brand while I'm working for another company? Of course. It happens all the time. In fact, who here has heard, of the 900 of you in the room, who here has heard of Liquid Death? The water. How many of you in this room have heard of Liquid Death? Say Liquid Death. How many of you have heard of Liquid Death? Say Liquid Death.

3:05It's gonna be a lot, right? I mean, it should be a lot, right? It's clearly everywhere. Jamez says the best. Everyone's saying Liquid Death. We can all agree that most of you have heard of it, right? Liquid Death, everybody, was started by an employee of VaynerMedia. he was working at this company while he was working on building the brand. And then quit, asked me if I wanted to invest. I said yes, thank God. Because I'm a mensch. Yeah, Target Plumbing. Liquid Depth was started by an employee of my marketing company that you're in the office of right now. You're in the office of VaynerMedia. Mike was at VaynerMedia.

3:43And then the next thing he did was Liquid Depth. So yes, can you build a brand while you're working a job? You sure can. there's an example of a big version of it. So, my friend is sad. Any advice? Floss. Get to the root cause. It's always insecurity. People are only sad when they're insecure or they have a negative perspective. They see negative versus light or they fear other people's opinions or how they're gonna affect them. People are hurt out here. They're scared of people. They're scared of people. The reason I'm so extroverted is I'm not scared of people, they can't hurt me. And so a lot of you grew up insecure and that's too bad.

4:24Someone asked, do you like sweets? I love sweets. I'm like candy is a real problem for me. And baked goods. I love carbs. You give me a donut or a muffin, croissant, and soft carbs. You give me a soft, like when the carbs, when the baked goods are soft, I'm finished. Like as opposed to hard. Yeah, like scones are hard for me. I need to dip them in tea. You give me a soft carb. Like when, what are those glazed donuts when they came out? Thank you. When those first hit the scene, because they're so soft, especially when they're hard. Still. Yeah, I was dead. All right, ask your questions, I'm answering.

5:03I'm a pastry chef, I love it. Thank you, Miss Light. Thank you for being here. G, earlier we got, I'm scaling a$5 million plumbing company. What's the number one thing I should focus on? Social media content. everybody here needs to do social media content social media content social media content everyone who's watching here organic social media posts I talk about this all the time chat, mods, tell everybody the URLs that can help them Harvey, Boz, AZN thank you for being here every plumber should be running social media organic posts on Facebook and Instagram and when a post does well 5 ,000 views, 10 ,000 views they should be running$100,$500 of media against that post locally in a 20 mile radius to get clients.

5:45Same thing that mechanic should do. Phil, Phil, post, I'm a mechanic. Here's what I do well. Here's how you can avoid the mechanic. Here are your good principles of what you should do to your car. You post it organically, something gets a thousand views, run that on a 10 mile radius that puts your phone number in there and email and says, call me. Like local marketing on Meta is a monster. Perry, thank you for joining. Checho, thank you for joining. Effort, Bren, Peter Borg, Sam Rose, thank you for joining. Nick, everybody, who is confused of what's rolling above my head? Who's confused with these crazy sales above my head?

6:20Who is confused about what's above my head? Say confused. All right, what's the next question? I have so many things that I want to start. How do I pick one? Roll the dice. Flip a coin. Throw a dart. Roll the dice. Flip a coin. Throw a dart. All of you don't realize, everybody, what you're seeing above that's saying Confused is V friends, it's my Pokemon Marvel that I'm building. As you can see on these completed auctions, it is a beast. Bottom left hand corner, there's a shopping bag if you wanna learn more. Friends, all of you are using the excuse of I have too many ideas, I don't know which one to pick, to be an excuse to not do.

7:02Remember in sixth grade when you had that buddy who would come up with excuses because he was scared to ask out a girl? He's like, I'm too busy with practice or this and that. Like you knew the girl liked him and he was still scared because he wasn't ready. I wasn't. I had so much potential in sixth grade. Still not. Yeah, I get it, Charlie. I appreciate the honesty, man. Like honestly, I blew it. I was a beast in middle school. All girls liked me. I was still very cute and hadn't gotten a little less cute. I was much cuter as a kid than I am as a grown-up. I had that Fred Savage cute face. You can see it in Xander a little bit.

7:35It's like that younger, You know how girls like teeny bop kids because they have that younger, like I had that younger face and I had nothing but Riz. I was so charismatic, but like fifth grade president, I dominated, but I was scared to get rejected by a girl. Straight up. And I blew it. I regret it. Like all those great moments that I could have had of memories and like spin the bottle and like a sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade girlfriend. I blew it. And that's it. And so that's how life is. But I don't blow it in business. I don't blow it in many other things. Friendship, random relationships.

8:13When I say random, I don't mean like hookups. I mean like rolling up on strangers and having a combo and it's a fruitful combo. People that say that they have so many ideas they don't know how to pick one are me in sixth grade. They're scared. They're scared to fail in front of their friends. I was scared to ask Sylvia Ventura out because I didn't want my friends to make fun of me if she said no. It's not super complicated. the reason I could talk about confidence and security is I lived that life

8:42I lived it I just am very lucky that that was really the only place that I was really scared in my life everything else I just wasn't scared business asking for the sale like right now watch this hey everybody all 865 of you it'd be really important to me it would mean the world to me if you're watching and I've ever brought you value like a video or two really brought you value How many people here who are watching, I've helped you build your business? Let's just, you helped, say you helped. I helped you with your business or with your upsetness, depression, unhappiness, and I got you happy. Like how many people here, say you helped.

9:21Lucas says you helped me build myself. Like for all the people that said you helped, I feel comfortable saying, hey, is there a comic pinned? It's Meet Me in the New York. Can you put the comic? I'm very comfortable with this. and this is something people are scared of, what I'm about to do. It's pinned? Amazing. That was pretty quick. When Laura explores, it would mean the world to me if I've helped you for you to buy a$25 comic pack that's in the store right now and as you can see above me, the collectibles sell. Look above me. My collectibles sell. If you do homework, if you collect Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic the Gathering, sports cards, sneakers, watches, Flip Life, so when Bucky Tim says you've helped, I feel comfortable saying it would mean the world to me if you bought one right now.

10:04Now, if you can't afford it, if 25 bucks makes it hard on you, then please don't buy it. Never buy something you can't afford. Even if it's to thank someone like me that's helped you. It went away again in activity. I don't know if it's gonna come back or is that a refresh thing? But I just wanna thank people as they buy it. If you buy one right now, I wanna thank you. Tommy Danger, thank you. Santa, thank you for picking one up. Also picked up a Squishmallow. Can you scroll up a little bit so I can thank a couple other people? Christian again, Santa's going crazy. Christian Santa just dominating.

10:35Anyway, I feel very comfortable asking for the sale. Luis Morales just purchased one. Thank you so much Luis. So a lot of people are scared to ask. I'm not scared, but I was scared in sixth grade to ask a girl out. Seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourth. It wasn't my biggest strength. A girl had to be really aggressive for me. Like, all right, there's no risk here. Somewhere in my early 20s I got stronger, but I missed out on so much fun. Speaking my language. Great, Charlie. And when you realize later it's the stupid, and by the way, I had a lot of boys who had no problem with that, but were scared crapless to sell a comic, can't do business, can't, you know, so I did, and that's just the game.

11:20So that person, yeah, the shop's only US only, I apologize, everyone. Luis Morales, thank you for that. That's it. Lacey, Michelle, thank you for looking at the kids book. I'm excited about it. All right, next question. I got this, this one's from Najah. Najah. Najah. You have been around for a while now and made some pretty accurate projections about the future of marketing and social media. As you project the future, why is personal branding a key for building trust? And how do we do that as bird lines between fake and real or increasingly? Look, personal brand is slang term for reputation. It's just reputation.

11:59Why does reputation matter? Because that's how life works. Like who do you like? Who do you trust? Who do you, like it's the currency of our society. And so I think everybody who's joined, like I'm just looking at everybody who joined, Risa, Rich Thompson, Michelle, Halar, Riley Waters, Jeremy Lim 875, Thao Castle, Patrick AI, Leibniz, Yesen, every one of those people, putting out content about your ideas, your thoughts, who you are, Rob Ryan, Robbie good to see you. like building more and more reputation leads to opportunity. Like the bigger you are on social, the more DMs you get of opportunity.

12:33Sometimes some funny, funny, funny business opportunity, you know what I'm saying? And other times like business opportunities. And that's it. And so, you know, your personal reputation is the punchline. It's the punchline of life. And social media allows to scale it because you're reaching so many more people. how many people in the chat right now have never seen me before have literally never seen this face have no idea where they are just say no idea I'm gonna make a point right now about what I'm doing thank you so much smart meditation thank you so much yes Drew right Serena says I've been watching you for 10 years and now Tom Gritgain says no idea Elena no idea I hear you shop I don't really know what they do I hear you I see you but I don't know what they're doing Lydia, right, knows who I am.

13:27Just had a job interview, let's go Jesse. That's awesome for you. Jose, no idea, some other people have been 10 years. Last time I saw you you were 49, option B being very clever. It was my 50th birthday Friday, I love that. Mr. The Coolest says no idea, right? Is this just on TikTok Live? Yes, Patrick. You know, like a lot of people here have no idea. Other people have watched me for 10 years and it's transformed their life. That's how the world works. what would you tell your younger self that I have everything figured out in life I was naturally gifted perfect circumstances of mother environment but candor was going to be my biggest issue telling people you love the truth and the things that's bothering you with them is a gift not a negative you're not making the atmosphere worse you're addressing a problem you have so much resilience Gary and so much capacity to enable bad behavior because you can eat shit because you think about the big picture at all times that you're gonna create resentment things and it's gonna lead to all your biggest problems.

14:24So if you're watching right now and you struggle with telling people you love or like how you really feel, take it from somebody who just turned 50, everything in my life that's been bad has been based on that. The toughest challenges in my life, the biggest issues in my business career, and I highly recommend all of you get better at it. All right? That's that. That's what I tell my younger self. Please ask your questions. Living in Wilmington made that purchase. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. It's over for you bitches. Made a purchase. Thank you so much. DiPrimo just joined. Cody just joined.

15:00H.H. House just joined. Dwayne just joined. Bellin. Jorge. Daughter. Lance. Samir. Charity. JJ's. Mr. Okada. Rogue. Thank you for Scholar. Thank you for joining. Jumba. Thank you for Tackles. Treasures. Thank you all for joining. How do you get over heartbreak very easily? Time. Time. And just realizing honestly you're better off. If somebody didn't want to be with you, it would have ended at some point. It's better that it happened where you didn't have like children or lost economics. Like somebody breaking up with you before marriage and children is a blessing. You should love them. It's a real blessing.

15:43It's a real blessing. Q, what about the future of AI influencers? What do you think? Thoughts on faceless content. Fan, Heather. Faceless content can crush. Face content does better, but faceless is unbelievable. Faceless live streams crush. Go ahead, question. Future of AI influencers. It's gonna be big. I highly recommend you making some if you think you're good enough at brand building. It's gonna be big. All right, we got a question from KFC Barstool. Oh, KFC Barstool, my man. Let's go KFC. All right, how can people use your random content strategy in industries where there are already a lot of established experts or people with a real passion?

16:22Can your mild interest crack through if there's a lot of people with the knowledge and authenticity that you might lack only being sort of interested? That's a great goddamn question. What a good question. The answer is you can break through, but I think the random content people should make should not be based on lightly interested. My belief is that people just show one side of themselves on the internet and I'm asking them to show all their sides. So KFC, he likes the Jets, he likes all this different stuff, but there might be, and he's shared a lot, he likes pop culture, he likes making his content, but he does news now, because I think he thinks, KFC, if you're watching, that it might get more awareness.

17:00I'm dying to know what else he's into that's not being showed. What about dad lessons, now that he's in it a little bit longer? What about fishing, or story time? I think a lot of you have to start sharing content about other things you actually are knowledgeable about or interested in. Like, for example, for me, I'm thinking about starting to share history content because I know a lot about history. I use it a lot. And so that would be new for me. I'm like, let me tell you the story of when Gerald Ford had an assassination attempt or the coup attempt in Cuba or the Bay of Pigs. I might go into that.

17:38That's how garage sale content came. That was a real passion of mine. In a lot of ways, my garage sale content is my most viral authentic content. How many people here like my garage sale content and wish Trash Talk was back? Let me know. Let's answer some more questions. Let's do it. Best advice for someone who wants to pursue a career in sports media? To go intern for somebody in sports media for free. Or minimum wage. The number one way to get into an industry you're obsessed with is emailing 100 people that work in it on LinkedIn saying that you're a hustler, you're a grinder you'll eat crap just to get in people are fancy out here brother people think because they went to like college they like people think they deserve something there's 83 ,000 other people that want to be in sports media this week go tell people that you're hungrier now people are like oh Gary that's bad advice you're underselling yourself cool you can't be selling if no one's buying you know all four of you in this room represent people that were willing to bet on themselves.

18:45You're not getting paid zero, but there are other jobs that probably could have paid more. I know that. But you realize what the platform means and what the learnings mean and what the culture means. And there's just so many people out there that just think they're bougie. You want to be in sports media? Everyone wants to be in sports media. Literally 50 % of dudes and 8 % of women want to be in sports media on earth right now. How are you going to break through? You need to like message people and say you're hungry. I think being an admin, a gopher, an assistant is the game. Do you have the humility to eat crap for three years?

19:20I promise you everybody on ESPN right now that you admire, interned and ate crap. Interned and ate crap. All right, as a 32 year old man who's got some student loan debt, what would your advice be to him who's trying to get ahead financially and not stress over life? Manage your money. You don't need to be on Netflix and Amazon Prime. You don't need Uber. You don't need$7 Starbucks. Manage your money. My friends, we don't talk about saving anymore. We don't talk about saving. And then I would say the biggest thing somebody should do that's in debt is to flip on the weekends. I'm such a believer in garage.

19:57How many people here got addicted to my Gary Vee 2017 flip challenge and learned how to go to garage sales in flea markets and flip stuff and buy and sell stuff. You know, Roby says, I just bought a$28 lunch. You can make a$3 lunch. Now, you can buy$800 lunch if you can afford it. I can buy$800 lunch, but I couldn't in my 20s. You know, like you've got to live within your means. And I really believe that flipping is massive. I believe garage sales, thrift stores, flea markets, or buying things on the internet and flipping them I mean, show the auction above my head. You know, these things right above my head right now that everybody can see, like those were free.

20:44The 24, those were free. That Walmart, those were free at Comic-Con. If people showed up, that was free, what is up there right now. A lot of the stuff I do is free and people get it and then they flip it, right? Like some of it's tough because you buy packs, you don't get good stuff. Other stuff is, you know, goes up, some stuff goes down. but like learning stuff, learning stuff, learning how to flip and buy and flip and buy, whatever it is, collectibles, t-shirts, you know, like I want people to learn how to buy and flip and if he lives with his, let's say he makes 83 ,000 a year or 52 ,000 in his job, if he makes 52, that 32 year old, he has to live a$27 ,000 a year lifestyle, move back home, move in with nine people, make a bologna sandwich instead of spending 28 bucks at lunch so that he could save and pay down debt.

21:34Make some extra money on the weekends, buying and flipping stuff. All of a sudden, you start to build momentum. Learning skills when you learn how to flip. Learning skills. How have I built this universe? It's been over 30 years of buying and flipping collectibles. It gave me the insight. So, anyway, let's keep it going. G, what would you do if you were 22 again? I would, me personally, based on my life, is I would actually go have more fun because I worked every minute. And I mean every minute. Like I work 7 to 10 p.m. Monday through Sunday. You know, literally my whole 20s. So 22-year-old me would have had more fun.

22:09Most people do not work the way, very few people work the way I worked. And it was a different time. It was a family business. I'm a psycho. Most people don't do that. Most people need to work more. Most people at 22, like aren't working enough. Like they want a job to overcompensate them on their impact so that they can enjoy their leisure. Most people need to work more. That's just real talk. But everybody's gotta figure out their own life. Like everybody's got different circumstances. You know, I'm talking in the macro. You know, some people are, you know, we had somebody on the last show who's taking care of their dying mother.

22:53I mean, everyone's got stuff, right? You know, there's a lot of 22-year-olds that are working too much. they need a little more time off. And you gotta, self awareness matters. All the things we talk about, self aware hair, a V friend, Empathy Elephant that we just saw up here. Look at that, Stand Store Challenge changed my life already. This is what we're gonna do here. This is exciting. I'm definitely going, actually you know what? I'm definitely going TikTok live garage selling. Yeah, 100%. That's what I'm doing. 100%. That's what I'm doing in the spring. Thank you Dustin. I'm gonna like systematically teach people how to do it.

23:27How to make money, how to get happier. How to make money, how to get happier. Happier is defined by lighter and more grateful. Lighter and more grateful. Are we really gonna spend our whole life just being upset about stuff we don't control? Lighter and more grateful. Lighter and more grateful. Thank you for the roses. Thank you for all the stuff. Let's keep answering questions. As far as social content goes, where does production quality matter versus lo-fi candid? Lo-Fi Candid is something you should do 90 % of the time because you guys can all afford that. And if you can afford doing higher production, you throw that in the mix a little bit.

24:05But production quality is not a direct correlation to success. And that's been proven. I won that argument when I wrote the, friends, if you're new to me, I wrote a bunch of books that went crazy. This first one changed the game. I wrote that in 2008. It came out in 2009. It pretty much literally established the entire creator influencer market ecosystem. Here's Jab, Jab, Right Hook. When I wrote these books, like I was debating people. People thought production value was everything because it was all about television. I won that debate. I won that debate. I won that debate. I won that debate.

24:41Just also want to show you all my report card real quick while I'm at it. Just want to make sure you see what my class rank was. Look at that class rank. By the way, the fact that my GPA was 1.67, the original 6.7 is me, but look at this class rank. I was ranked 243 at a 254. Did you get an A in cooking? Nope, I don't think I did. I didn't get any A's. I only got A's in gym. I got A's only in gym. I only got A's in gym because I was a gym class hero. As Courtney and Braden know, because they've competed with me in sports, I try. This is it, friends.

25:25And I'm gonna be one of the most financially and emotionally successful entrepreneurs of all time. How about that? And that was my report card. That's all you need to know. That's all I need to know. Man, it's so good to see all of you. Thank you all for being here. How do I get to 10 ,000 followers on TikTok fast by not wanting it fast? Bang! All right? I got you with that. It's a banger! That was the bang answer right there. You understand? Bang! I need you all to wake up on the other side here. You want it fast, it's over. I've been doing this for 30 years. You were sperm in your daddy's balls when I started building community.

26:11There is no fast.