Kind Candor and the 12 Other Ingredients of Business Success

0:00A lot of people that are confused about entrepreneurs, they don't realize that the business is the other family member. A business is another child, another spouse. It's the output of people's passion. I look at businesses more like friends. You don't get to choose who you're born into as parents or siblings, but you do pick your friends and a lot of times that's why those are the most meaningful relationships. You do get to pick your business. This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience. I think this is your best work yet. And I'm curious if you could tell us a little bit about it and why you wrote it.

0:35First of all, that's like so huge to hear from you because I know you well enough to know what that statement means. And it's funny, I've been quietly and I haven't been publicly. So talk about why I admire you. I think you have a really good read on this. I do think that the only book that was like this was Crush It. I felt Crush It, you know, much like many people's first album, right? You have your whole life to write it. So I had, quote unquote, a lot of things to say and new things to say. And during a time of transition in the world, you know, the economic crisis, social media. So this, I really got into my feelings in a different way and really asked myself like what is it that allows the insanity of like the christy stuff i hope you're enjoying the podcast right now make sure you follow the podcast that's why i'm interrupting let's keep going on this show but follow the podcast it'll make my mom super happy when you're 45 and now you can say okay i've put more than half my life down in my professional years.

1:42And boy, this is really going well. And I'm happy, right? It's not just like friends that we have that have done well financially, but are not happy, right? We know that. There's a lot of them. There's a lot more of them in the world believes or knows. And so, you know, I have for over a decade now been passionate to share and talk. And I feel like, you know, COVID, right, you get to and you have time to think and I'm at a different pace. And I think I finally kind of put down in a really fun format, which was really the thing I was most scared about. Like how would I structure these feelings?

2:21And I really talk about what I believe, which is emotional intelligence in business is the advantage. That being kind doesn't mean you get walked all over and you're bad at negotiations. that optimism matters, that accountability, pointing a thumb at yourself versus a finger, especially if you're an owner, where you hired that person, so what are we doing here? A lot of people that are confused about entrepreneurs, they don't realize that the business is the other family member. Oh, it's so true, 100%. I mean, it just is. A business is another child, another spouse. It's intense. It's the output of people's passion.

3:03I look at businesses more like friends. 15 years ago, naysayers were saying that social media did mean shit and it was something to write off. But what we know now is that it was virtually the same then as it is now. And yet the thing that was missing was our business culture's ability to measure it. Correct. As soon as the technology allowed people to measure it, all the ad dollars came flying out of television into social media because it was the fast, the most personal, the smartest, and everyone knew everything about it. And so it was all of a sudden what used to be just like literally six months or 12 months before was just like, oh, it's too fuzzy.

3:47It's social media. Became the shit. Yes. And what I see now is the same thing. It was very easy to measure a P &L or to measure someone's performance on these eight KPIs. And yet we've all seen businesses that have the KPI shit in the bag or leaders that check the boxes. I can manage a P &L until the cows come home. But what we can't measure, but we know because we see it in the best leaders and the best creators and the best entrepreneurs in the world is emotional intelligence. And I think you've written the first book that underscores it. I think I wrote that book in creativity and I think you wrote it.

4:27I think you wrote it in emotion intelligence. I appreciate it. I'm really proud of it. For everybody listening, I created these scenarios because that's where everything comes from. I'm more of a listener than I'm a talker, which always makes people laugh or freak out or disagree. But I always remind them, I'm like, you only see the content I put out and post-produce very effectively. Most of my day is the consumption of information. and a lot of the scenarios are baked in the, at this point, hundreds of thousands, if not even millions of DMs, emails that I've received over the last 15 years of this journey and there's just some really complicated stuff out there, right?

5:07Like stay-at-home mom or dad who still has a lot of fire in their belly and like, what do you do here? And like just all sorts of fun stuff that I went through and I really talk about accountability. Curiosity was a fun one for me to explore. and so I structured the book out of these 13 ingredients that I think really give somebody a real shot in the business world and it's a life book in that way too. I called it 12 and a half because this one really caught a lot of people off guard. Gary Vee, the character, the public domain speaker and pontificator and content creator, very good at candor, too good.

5:46Gary Vaynerchuk, the CEO and human, very bad at it. That's why I called it 12 and a half. And I called it kind candor. My journey to making kind candor a half from a zero was because I started calling it kind candor instead of candor. Because I saw, back to your point, I saw candor for a long time as an excuse to be mean. I saw candor as something that often created fear. But what I didn't have yet was the maturity to understand the vessel that candor was being delivered in was the vulnerability. You know, my father was rough with his candor delivery. A lot of managers that were in that store were.

6:26Many people I came across in business in the 90s and 2000s were. The candor wasn't the problem. The vessel that was delivering the candor wasn't kind, wasn't empathetic. But now that I've got a better sense of that separation, and then I was very self-reflective. All the things that weren't working for me always pointed back, always. pointed back to lack of candor. And so, yeah, I mean, I talk about these ingredients, I talk about scenarios where three or four of them, it's really fun to show people that ambition and patience can be played out in the same scenario. People think that's a contradiction, you know?

7:07And so I really went there. You don't get to choose who you're born into as parents or siblings, but you do pick your friends, and a lot of times that's why those are the most meaningful relationships. you do get to pick your business. Did your emotional intelligence develop because of business or did your business acumen and emotional intelligence develop because of Gary the human? It's so weird. It's such a fun question. Thank you. My brain immediately goes into, man, it's hard because this was all happening at six and seven and eight and nine. You know, I talk a lot about this. I'm not sure people believe it, but this has been a very big theme amongst my friends and relatives lately, probably because of the Christie's thing.

7:55You know, you sit there and you have an event where like five of your drawings sell for a million dollars and you know, and you're up there and you're out selling Pollock and Warhol and you're like, what the fuck? And then you go through the feelings of like knowing people or if I'm what the fuck, then many people are like, this is bullshit. and I get a lot of feedback from people I grew up with that are like, man, I wish they knew that all you used to do was doodle in class and on the chalkboard. And, you know, I was, you know, I've come to realize I'm dramatically more creative than I've thought about.

8:30Even the way as an entrepreneur, I've always thought of it as creativity, but I thought of it as strategy, you know, even though in so many ways I now see them the same. And so, you know, I think for me, when I talk about being a businessman at six, seven, and eight, there was a piece of content I put out recently where, you know, I do this thing called trash talk where I go garage selling and I put out YouTube videos to teach people that it's out there. And I give this young girl$20 for her lemonade and I'm walking back to the car and I'm talking about the reason I did that was that happened to me when I was 10.

9:05Some guy stopped on a bike, filled up his lemonade and he gave us a$10 bill. And I'm a 45-year-old man. I was eight years old. So it was 10 cents back then. Well, it was$10, which was like$4 ,000. It was actually the reverse, right? It was$10. No, I mean, lemonade, your lemonade was 10 cents. My lemonade was actually maybe 25 cents, but we've sold at 10 cents back then, so maybe. And so in the comments, just the amount of, it's amazing how cynicism is so prevalent. Like that never happened, that never happened. And like, you know, a couple of my, both Marissa Bird and Robbie Turnick who both happened to be there were like, no, that really happened.

9:46And it's something we've talked about. And so, you know, it's this really fun journey. I've gone on a tangent. The answer is I'm not sure. I've been doing it so much for so long. I genuinely believe the talent of human intuition was always there. but the refinement of these natural emotional skills, being a leader of my friends at six, like I was, to being 14 and being the son of the father who owned the liquor store, interacting with clients and with employees. At 22, I was running the business, like for real. So I just think at 45 years old, I have so much pattern recognition and wisdom of reps from a kid.

10:39My mom last night sitting right here was saying how often I spent time with 80 year olds as a four year old just would gravitate towards it. And so, you know, it's fun. I think I'm very onto something with this book. I think it's gonna really leave a positive impact this conversation. And I think I'm gonna build an empire, but I'm gonna do it with honey, not vinegar. Start cutting down how much time you work on your not work or your work or your business or your product and you start realizing, my God, my profession, my career, my passion, if you're lucky enough, like you guys are, is the majority of what I spend my time on.

11:20Yes, very true. And I think that's why I'm so passionate about communicating my points of view on what the internet has created. Looking at the five of us, none of us were born into a world where this much opportunity existed. Our parents and grandparents did not have this opportunity. They just didn't. The internet is like electricity. It's like running water. And I don't think we've understood that. And electricity and running water led to better quality of life day to day. The internet leads to happiness if you choose to harness it. Oh, 100%. It's a big deal. I think a lot of people were looking for permission to bring their strengths on the EQ side to the business world.

12:02And I think I've been doing that, but not communicating it as much. And that's why this is so aha for me. This is why people I deeply admire who I think consume a lot of content like yourself will say, I think this is the one. It makes a lot of sense to me because it is, in the same way Crush It was the one, it was like, I was uncomfortably right in that book, which is like, hey, you're gonna be able to make money not by having a job and not by having a startup. and like the creator economy is ungodly in exactly the way I laid it out. Same here. I don't think it's gonna be uncommon for people to believe that empathy and kindness and patience are like the alpha shit, not sharp elbows, not negotiation.

12:49Like when I hear things like don't take it personal, it's just business, I'm like what part of cruelty is acceptable in any scenario, right? When I think about people not realizing the world's abundant and actually want to tear down other people's, like you can't imagine how much I want everything to happen for you and everybody that looks like you and I. Right? Like the level of cheering I have for everybody who's a personality who might be amassing attention through content. That's why I've always loved your platform. I want everybody on it to, like I don't think like Tim Ferriss or Kevin Rose or Arlen Hamilton or like Rick Warren.

13:28Like I don't think any of their attention that they get for what they do, even though it might be tangentially touching what I do, is taking out of me. And I want people to, I'm very competitive. Like this is not about like, again, I don't know how hardcore you read it, skimmed it, got a sense of it, but like this is not written in the sense of like, oh, let's be fluffy, fluffy and eighth place trophy. Like tenacity is one of the 12 and a half. There's nothing soft about tenacity, right? Ambition. These are real things, you know, but I think people are confused. I think people are confused. And then we had this whole era.

14:12And this is where this book is actually seeded probably 10 years ago, maybe 12, when I realized, oh no, a lot of these kids think it's cool to be mean because Steve Jobs was considered mean. And I remember thinking, man, if I ever get to as big as I think I'm going to get, because I thought it, and not that I'm Steve Jobs now, but like I have enough attention and enough success and enough pattern recognition and have seen it and witnessed it in enough other places because it's not a focus group of one that I feel like maybe this conversation and I've been doing it quietly in my social and I think I really want this book to go viral because I wanted to change the temperament of leaders I'm a very big believer that if you see anybody in your circumstance succeed in happiness forget about money well then you can too you know like if If there's anybody out there who was born into two parents that were addicted to heroin and were never around and that person went on to achieve happiness, then every child who sees that person can point to that.

15:23I think it's very powerful to be co-founders, one who does have a family and one who doesn't because your audience then gets to see themselves in one of you. And so I think that's incredible. In a world we live in now, very polarizing, left, right, blue, red, this isn't about okay let's like take the teeth out of business like this is very much a business and life book like for achievement for success and there is absolutely like it's a game it's the best way i can put is i think of it like football which i obviously you know i love a lot surprise when they play football they beat the living shit at each other and they go hard but when the game is over and this drives me crazy as a fan because I'm mad that we lost and I don't want you to buddy buddy with the other guy, we just lost but they ask how the wife is.

16:19I mean, now I'm very into that world. They talk about things like, hey, I'd love to give a donation to your charity. You'd be blown away by the stuff that's actually being talked on the field and you know this but like you did at a younger level, like this is the professional level and I see business that way. this is win let's win but believe it or not back like your your incredible partner there you can win with more hearts than daggers for sure I was saying something to Brandon my best friend who runs Wine Library now who I built Wine Library with who I've known since I was 14 doing baseball cards and I said something to him this is a true story this happened only a couple hours ago I was telling him about my ambitions for him as an executive at Wine Library and why I think we can be way more successful next year and I said to him something pretty powerful that I'd never really articulated.

17:07I said, Brandon, you know the guy that you worked with those 12 years? The one that you admire and think is the best? I currently, in my current form, as a businessman, as a person, as a father, a husband, a man, I view that guy that was me only a decade ago. And I referenced a former employee of ours who was like a C minus. And it really took him back. And it's actually the truth. I can't believe how much better I am today than I was 10 years ago and I thought I was the best 10 years ago. You can imagine, one of the things that I'm most proud of is I only give advice I took. Over the last 10 years, I have become better.

17:49There's nothing else to say. I've become better. But how do you become better is maybe the main question there. One step at a time. One thing I talk a lot about in this book is optimism. If you've decided it's bad, it's already bad. Yeah. you know like they give you this like cynicism and pessimism is a game changer for people it is awful it is a it is a game over before you started i have room in my life for a lot of things and in my business for a lot of things cynicism is not one of them i literally i got i got i got no space for it so again the other thing that i want to just say real quick asked DRock the other day like hey so what hit you because we just did the audio book and he was filmed the making of it then the book and he's like it's the perspective part it's when you talk about like a billion people not having clean water like it's truly like what I realized in this book and I didn't really put the nail in the coffin but it's very clear to me what I did in this book the other thing I did in this book in hindsight was talk about something I never talk about I'm I'm not even sure I've articulated this yet in content.

18:57So here you go. I can't, even as I'm about to try right now, ever fully articulate to people how little I think business matters. There is something in, yeah, I will. I love what I do. I love my process. I love the game. I'm all that I appear to be from a passion standpoint about this. but if if the concept of business was wiped off the earth tomorrow i'm incredibly okay with that like to me it just doesn't mean that much and people have so much pressure in the workplace especially entrepreneurs and employees and like i'm just i realized oh i'm dain you know they say like a desperate fighter is a dangerous fighter in a boxing match and i feel like it's really weird to say this this balance of massive ambition massive with equal content is mind-boggling and a lot of what i undertone in this book is like you can eliminate a lot of anxiety if you realize what actually matters how do we get our message out more yes my answer was more content.

20:18You have a podcast. I want you to transcribe this interview into a LinkedIn post. I want you to write a medium post. I want you to have your own blog on your own website. I want you to take seven quotes from this interview and put pictures over it. I want you to take seven clips and put it on Facebook. I want you to put it on YouTube. I want you to put three one minute clips from this on YouTube. I want you to make an infographic of what I'm saying right now of how we're going to make more content chart. I mean, more, more, more, more, more. And how do you find the time? You buy time. Very true.

20:50Yes. You buy time. Yeah. Leveraging. Correct. Yeah. You buy time. What is the thing that is not on the radar now that has that, that you are equally passionate? For me, for me, for me, it will be long form storytelling. There is no scenario. of me leaving this world without me putting out meaningful television and film. I just have too many stories that I want to tell. What's the first one going to be? There's a basketball player by the name of Connie Hawkins who got banned from the NBA. And I think it's an incredibly important story because I think it's unjust. and so that's on my mind. And then I'll probably get forced into animation.

21:47V-Friends is insane what I'm actually doing. And so probably my first at bat will be where I am right now in V-Friends land, an animated film or movie around Patient Panda and Empathy Elephant who I do think are my Woody and Buzz Lightyear. Those are the two kind of alphas of the Optimist Prime and kind of the alphas in my universe. So we'll see. But most of what I'm gonna do is gonna sit under the foundation of these emotional traits, right? Like humanity. I genuinely get happiness from other people getting happy mainly because I'm pretty emotionally fulfilled. Yes. Once you're happy, what? The only logical next step is to make other people happy.

22:33There is no more. So I get it. But the answer is you have to make your actions map your ambitions. The best part about the way I like to roll too is we all love to have hot takes. I think his is a little bit tongue in cheek. He's actually, I think, just being incredibly nice to me, giving some love to this project. But it's really, really cool to watch a lot of us evolve over the last 15 years. And I'm excited for the next 15. I can't wait to see which solid, solid, solid acquaintance or friend or very good friend and then becomes governors and presidents. And like, you know, our generation, our call it 38 to 52 crew is now going into that next year.

23:17And I just think it's gonna be a lot of fun to see how it all breaks out. So you basically have to leave short term vanity things, because if you want to be big, then you have to make sacrifices. I am going to build Disney. I'm going to. Now, I might, you know, maybe I pass too soon, maybe whatever, but I do believe over the next 30 years that I will make these characters incredibly culturally relevant. And, you know, I'm obsessed with over delivering for everybody who owns a V friend NFT or the five people that now own the original art. If you talk to my team right now, they'll tell you the level of autonomy that I give them creatively and process wise is And how long did that take you to get to that point?

24:05I've always been basically in that point because that was a natural strength of mine realizing practically. See, the interesting thing about me that I don't talk a whole lot about is I would argue that I'm disproportionately more practical than I am emotional. And people are confused by that because I'm so high energy and I'm so vibed out that it disguises my level of practicality. I haven't been able to build these 80, 200 million dollar businesses out of charisma. It's been operational. So very quickly, I realized scale came in 98 people doing a 7 of my 10 versus one person doing a 10. But that's so hard to let go.

24:43It's not really hard if you're fortunate enough to not have ego. Ego is just insecurity disguised. Very true. And it's so true. But listen, you'll appreciate this. I have empathy. The hardest thing to let go is the image of oneself. You know, it's one thing if you're letting go how people stock your shelves at a liquor store, which I did, which my dad couldn't. Or a million other things. I've let go the most valuable thing of all. They are actually 100 % in control of my image. I love it. I mean, I do not micromancy. It's absurd when you think about the level. Here's why. I believe the truth always wins.

25:23So if Seth went rogue, I mean, Seth tomorrow could not leave. he could literally record the first two minutes of the podcast and be like, hey guys, this is Seth. Let me actually tell you the truth about Gary Vaynerchuk. I love how he's laughing. But I would never know. There is no checks and balances. I blindly trust Seth. Mainly because I know who I actually am. The reason I'm not scared is every mistake is fixable when the truth and good is on your side. 100%. Being the bigger person is always the move. The world doesn't get upset at you for the mistake. It gets upset at you for the cover-up.

26:06I basically live my life expecting to make substantial mistakes on a daily basis, mainly because humans are flawed. I mean, the biggest problem with our society right now is hypocrisy. All we do is deploy judgment on others while we're doing something else that's wrong. Don't judge anybody, man. Don't judge anybody. I'm obsessed right now on judgment. And be happy. I'm just so angry, and I don't get angry, I'm angry at people's ability to judge with deep levels of hypocrisy on the back end. I am sure of the following statement. Every person I've ever seen in society has done things that they're not proud of.

26:42Oh, 100%. Yeah, I have. I know it. Everybody has. I know it to fact. Yeah, everybody does. And if they're lying. Thus, I don't have the capability of judging somebody else's life. I don't know what's going on in their bedroom, in their house, in their head, in their relationship. I just hate judgment. I'm crippled by judgment. I hate it. I want to eliminate it. As meditation has become a big thing in our culture, I don't meditate. But I kind of live a very thoughtful, mindful, spiritual, macro, intriguing mindset life. I often say that I live in a cocoon. I go to myself. I'm self soothing. You know it's funny, when you asked that question, I literally thought about a cat licking itself.

27:32I'm not kidding. That's a pocket to your head? I've never used this analogy ever. I know my team has never heard this. I think you're gonna find this really funny. I don't, this is true, I don't know why cats lick them, I guess that's how they bathe themselves. They clean themselves, yeah. I would tell you that I do a mental version of that. I am within myself. I am not in need of an outside or other force to navigate what's going on in my life. I've also never experienced the death of somebody disproportionately close to me because I lost all my grandparents except for one and didn't have a very large family.

28:11So here I am at 43 years old and not losing my parents, siblings, children, spouse. So, you know, I'm maybe gonna need it then. the only thing I really do care about is those 11, 12, 13 people. I wish people actually knew how real that is to me. I think people say it and they're not truthful. I think people say, all I care about is my family but then I watch their actions and it's not true. I don't go to anybody. I go to myself. That's amazing. I do. I go to myself in my sleep, in my showers, in my flights, in those moments where I have a second to myself where I'm not working every second. I go to myself.

28:55That's amazing. I'm jealous. And honestly, a lot of what I'm trying to put into the world is trying to get people into that. Lately, I've been doing, you know, at a keynote recently, I've been doing this kind of like, I've only done this shtick now a couple times where I put my fingers in my ears. I'm like, my happiness comes from this. Hearing a voice. You know, I can't hear anybody. You know, when you can't hear anybody for real, and I want to really go here right now You don't even hear your wife in your ear? I do not hear my wife Come on, Carrie I don't and it's funny, you went there and that's where I was about to go in its truth, in its purest form when you don't hear your spouse or your parents or your children that's it that's why I am who I am I don't hear it I think I have a unique life for a reason I really do know that I don't have this admiration or success or notoriety or the thing that's happening with me is the byproduct of who I am.

29:55Couple things, back to ego, insecurity, all that stuff. A, I don't think I did that. I think Gary Vee is the byproduct of Tamara and Sasha Vaynerchuk, the byproduct of capitalism in America, like the byproduct of a kid who was born with nothing and had to earn his keep. So like when people like, When this nice feelings that I'm getting from you guys come, you'd be so surprised how much that doesn't go to me, which keeps me disproportionately grounded. So that's how you don't have an ego. That's exactly right. You know, and it's like, I have confidence. Yeah, you definitely have a lot of confidence.