Listen To This If You Want To Be A Influencer In 2025

0:00Podcast nation, before I get you into today's podcast, big announcement. as you probably heard at this point because I had John from Stan on the show. I'm an investor advisor to an incredible startup called Stan, Stan.Store. I'm sending you right now to garyvee.com, garyvee.com slash Stan. Go check this out. We've done a Gary V. Stan Store challenge which actually has a weekly call with me. This is built for everyone who's been affected, honestly, by my overall content. The tech stack, all these features and the minimal costs per month that Stand Store has built is really the tool that was needed for this world that I envisioned when I wrote Crush It, when I wrote Crushing It, and this overall thing I'm thinking a lot about lately, which is the individual empire, right?

0:48This creator entrepreneur slash entrepreneur creator economy that I think is gonna eat up the oxygen, very honestly, the thing that so many of you want in your life and the reason so many of you are not there yet is you've got the strategy for me. you've got the ambition within yourself but you don't have the tools for you to fully maximize it and I believe you can find that at Stan store Stan dot store but specifically I want you to sign up for it through my challenge because I want to get access with you and plus there's a bunch of cool things so if you want to go see those cool things go to GaryVee.com slash Stan S-T-A-N now to the podcast this is the Gary Vee audio experience I just want to thank everybody I'm sure there's a lot going on in your world.

1:33My main objective here is a little bit twofold. I've been thinking a lot about influencer creator marketing. I get so many DMs from people. Please everybody, Mel, way to kick it off. Please everybody use the chat so we all get to know each other. I've been thinking a lot about this ecosystem. I'm sure it's not lost on everybody here. There's more and more competition coming in every day. I feel like we're gonna wake up in a couple years not only will every human be an influencer or creator but there's gonna be AI influencers and I've been thinking about like how do I bring more value? So one thing I've been thinking a lot about is doing this more often from the sense of just having an hour a month where I'm just doing Q &A and trying to share with everybody things I'm seeing from the brand side or the algorithms.

2:24You know, I'm very aware that based on some of the DMs I've gotten from some of you I've had a long history of putting out stuff and people benefited from it but smaller groups could be really cool. So on the selfless part of my brain if you're interested after this meeting to be part of like a group where I'm just doing this kind of for free feel free to let us know and we'll start setting up invites. I want to build a little bit more of a community around this because I think the stakes are getting higher and it's getting harder to break out. On the selfish part I'm incredibly excited about what's happening with me in two weeks.

3:00Two weeks from today we are putting out my first cartoons for my VFriends world but if you haven't been following I put out a kids book that was wildly successful this summer. The trading cards are going crazy. I'm literally trying to build the next Pokemon meets Sesame Street and the YouTube kids show that drops in two weeks is a monumental moment and obviously I'm looking for as much awareness and support on that as possible. Viewing parties like green screens, anything of that nature. So if any of you are interested in supporting or know people that might, it would mean the world to me. You can email me.

3:38I'll put my email here at Gary at VFriends. And then again, just to do something fun, I was telling the team, I want to build this influencer community. I want to do this value. But I think it'd be really cool if I could actually preview to them the cartoon. like literally the first humans to see it outside of me and so I think we're going to do that today as well. I'd love to spend as much time potentially answering people's question on how to outgame the algorithms or how to do brand deals or anything of that nature. I want to get the juices flowing there. My part is pretty simple. Two weeks from today, VFriends cartoons launch and I want as many human beings to watch it as possible and anything that you can contribute to that that would be very, very, very humbling and meaningful to me.

4:22That's great. Do you want to take some questions or do you want to show the episode first? I actually think I'd rather take questions. So like I'm kind of doing two things here. I really want to build out a version of this for creators and a version for TikTok affiliates and shop. I think karma has always been my go-to formula. As I've gotten busier, I feel like karma's been harder for me and so I want to lean into it more. so I'd like to do that actually premiering the cartoon is not going to take too long so you know Maddie, Bram, anybody feel free to unmute and raise your hand and Jack will call on you literally anything like I'm at the forefront of social, creative, YouTube brand deals changes, connected TV management building out teams literally anything you want I'm here for you so let's do that yeah we actually got a first question here in the chat from Ivy and Ari let's unmute them I want to hear it Ivy and Ari if you're on if you want to unmute and ask a question hi Gary hi good morning I was wondering what inspired you to create a cartoon so thank you so everybody actually in the chat write the number of years you've been following me if any.

5:49I'm going to assume most have if you're here but if you've got that number I'm going to use that to answer this question. So as you see these numbers come up on the chat if you see them, some of them are quite long and then some of them became much shorter within two or three years. Obviously a lot of you were affected by this. I was very loud six years ago about TikTok. I'm like TikTok, TikTok, TikTok because it was similar to what I saw about YouTube, Facebook, Twitter. That has been my knack on understanding social. When I exploded on TikTok, as you can imagine, my audience went from 18 and up, 20 and up to 13 and 14 and up.

6:32And obviously, I started to see the effects of people consuming my content at 13 and 14. And I'd like to think that most of you know, I'm like wildly optimistic and positive but not delusional. This is not foofy. This is real to me. Like it's practical and accountable. And so what happened was as I was starting to feel the feedback of what happens when you get to someone about good true content at 13, 14, 15, I'm sure this will resonate with everybody. If you start getting in the right mindset at 14, that's going to be better than if you start course correcting at 22. Like it's never a bad time to start earlier in anything.

7:16So that really affected me. What I really, I have two children and many of you have followed me long enough to know I talk a lot about being parented well. And I just started really paying attention and I just felt that modern parenting, at least from one humble man's point of view of the eight billion people on earth, I thought there was three or four topics that we could talk about that were a little different. I thought eighth place trophies was a bad idea. I thought paying for your kids after they're 18 was a bad idea. And so I thought there was things that kids should learn and it was predominantly around where I'm going with the book, Meet Me in the Middle, right?

7:53Patient pig and eager eagle. Being patient and being eager is amazing, but out of whack, it's a bad thing. And so I got inspired to leaving a positive deposit of the middle at a younger age. And I also always wanted to build a collectible business because I love that world. And I've always, so I just thought there was this mix of Pokemon meets Sesame Street. And listen, a lot of you have heard this from me. I think you should do things you want to do. I think when you're 90, you're going to be upset. Every one of you, I just saw Kenyatta just answer. I saw Adrian just shake his head like, do your thing.

8:30Because I'm telling you when you're 90, you're going to be sad if you didn't do the thing that's in your stomach. I know a lot of you from afar. I know a lot of you have built a foundation to be able to do more things. But a lot of you are scared to do new things because you won't get as many likes or you're scared to lose your audience instead of realizing you're gonna gain a bigger audience. I was the biggest wine personality in America in 2011. But I wanted to talk about business and mindset too. And I was willing to lose that for something else. And so I didn't wanna live my life and not give an attempt to build one of the most important kids brands in the world.

9:09like Marvel and Disney and I was like, let me go for it and so here I am. Love that. Bram, do you want to go next? Yeah, sure. Hi, Gary. Hi, Bram. So this is Bram. I'm Gertrude. Oh. I logged into his name. But yeah, firstly, congratulations on being friends. Our daughters love the book, so do we. And I'll just keep it short. So I am a content creator. I have my own separate page which is where I do my brand deals and then we also started a kids company where we do, it's all about gratitude, gratitude books, sweaters now. So my question is, I have a good following on my personal page and there are two separate pages.

9:54So do you think I should be putting them into one? No. How do I go though? Good news everyone. The algorithm change of the last three years has taken this completely out of the equation. No more thinking. It's individual pieces of content. You could start a third one and post a good piece of content there. And I mean, I have big pages too. And literally, I think everyone here knows this because you see other people with like 500 followers and you're like, how'd they get 13 million on that view? The whole game changed. And so I wouldn't overthink that. The following is now a vanity thing more than, I believe in the next 24 months, they're gonna eliminate even your followers as a reason for the content to be seen.

10:32It's crazy how this is all going. And so I would just focus on making very good content depending on what page. You can even create a third page. You can create another page called Gratitude, Gratitude, Gratitude and post there for learnings and testings. I do that with different pages. So it's now down to the individual content, not the page. Got it. Okay. And then one last question. I have to ask you what you're grateful for today. So you may know this about me. Gratitude is way up there. Gratitude Gorilla is a monster character in my world. Like I'm obsessed with gratitude. and so I, as a matter of fact, there's a, I don't know if you know, there's a fish that's called a gar, G-A-R, that's the name of a fish and another character in VFriends is called Grateful Gar and it's really, I really think of it as myself, even though there's a Gary B, gar, I view the gar as Gary too because I'm very grateful.

11:27I am grateful every day that I wake up and nobody that I love passed away. I keep it simple. I only leave gratitude for health everything else is manageable you know what I mean? and so I'm always grateful that my loved ones and people I care about are okay yeah amazing Tina you wanna go next? I would love to first of all thank you for my copy Gary how are you? good so I have to tell you the highlight spot of the entire book okay we loved all of it my five and a half year old did my younger one which I know you mentioned four to eight she was kind of like I don't know what's going on but thought the pig was cute was the line when it was saying something about a dodo bird yes i had to pick her up the floor she was laughing like i couldn't stop laughing like dying laughing like the funniest thing she's ever heard that's awesome thank you for just love i also took a lot of lessons honestly as a creator as a content creator about being an eager eagle and a patient pig so took some personal lessons out my question for you is on threads okay so threads is this hot new spot I've been growing like super organically it's been fun and refreshing as a creator honestly to just get out there and just feel what I guess it used to be like yeah y 'all yeah like create and so my question for you is I feel like I have a good rhythm now on really kind of maximizing what my posting schedule will be using chat gbt and I'm getting really good engagement but now what like how are people monetizing it like I keep seeing like these threads bonuses but to me that seems like smoke and mirror.

13:03Yeah. So I think monetizing comes in so many shapes and sizes, everyone. Obviously, I think you've all are aware of this. The size and scale that you need to be at in views to actually make your monetization from the platforms giving you a share of ad revenue is very large. Like, you know, I mean, there's a lot of strong people here, me included, but all of us combined, we don't have the reach of a tenth of what Mr. Beast is getting to be able to get those kind of real dollars. I think monetization comes outside of the platforms. So you're building reputation, you're building brand, and then you're able to create monetization outside of it.

13:44So if you're getting a cadence of organic growth through threads while everybody's looking elsewhere, I think you double down on that because the attention is the most valuable thing. and then there's a million ways. Books and clothes and product and consulting and speaking and I mean you could literally go on forever and I think all of you are educated enough to know that and new things will pop up of ways to monetize but I think Tina, if you've got a pattern going and it's working, especially with something like threads where you're basically outflanking people not realizing that there's action there, I would go hard.

14:20Okay, thank you. You got it. Thanks Gary for the invite. Glad to be here. Josh, do you want to go next? Adrian, we literally made it for that comment you made, brother. Like I wanted to make it in a way, I saw the comment you just made while we're waiting for Josh to pop up. I appreciate the honesty. I'm the same way. If I like someone, I always want to like their soup or their wine. Wine was the worst when I was in that business. People would invite me to their home. I'd sleep in their house in Napa and then wake up the next morning to like have to taste the wine and then I wouldn't like the wine.

14:55It was like the worst feeling on earth. You know, so like, I appreciate that comment. Dude. Go ahead. Dude, I was so nervous. I was like, dude, I don't know if I'm back to the like, they like this shit, but it was really good. Thank you, man. Bravo. It definitely, it definitely has like, I saw Rob wrote, like it definitely has like the Teen Titans, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Like I definitely mixed in, like similar to what Tina said about the book, V Friends is very focused on actually making parents think. Like there's some real episodes in here that are gonna poke at parenting, which I'm excited about.

15:28Anyway, all right, Jack, sorry, go ahead. Go ahead, Josh. Okay, hey, that episode was awesome. Thank you. I'm excited to show my kids. Thank you. So my thought is anytime that my wife and I have had success, we've been super laser focused and I'm kind of more of the entrepreneur. She's more of the baker. and so I'm always trying to pull for more ideas and more things. I'm always amazed by you because you have so much going on. You have so many ideas. When is it time to just focus on one thing and when is it time to have more ideas and go out? Because I'm always ideas. She's always focused. It makes you guys a good team.

16:13There's a lot of answers to this. First, and I'm really glad we're doing this. first you need to decide what success is let me be very clear one of the reasons I'm challenging to follow if you don't get this kind of time with me is I am not trying to maximize fame or money I'm trying to maximize me being happy and so when I do things that fail miserably and I lose money, time and effort I'm not sad, I'm happy because I did it that is not what most people do it's also the luxury after doing it well for 25 years right so to your wife's point Josh like I focused on just building Wine Library for my dad the first 12 years of my career right and then and then when I was building VaynerMedia I mean there's something for the hardest core Gary Vee fans they know this one very nerdy fact about my career there's almost no content from me in 2006 to today literally 18 years there's almost daily content for me except from 2012 to 14 there's very little some public speeches here and there I was so laser focused on building the foundation of VaynerMedia I put Gary V on the shelf and that's because I sensed that it was time to focus because I wanted to build a foundation that would allow me to do more.

17:49So by the time I popped back up in 2014 with the Ask Gary Vee show, I had a couple people able to help me that worked at VaynerMedia. Prior to that, 2006 to 12, I did everything myself. So, you know, I think for all of you, this is going to make sense. There's moments when you have to hit while the iron is hot, whether you're growing whether you're growing your fan space whether your deals are coming in what I do Josh is I respond to what I'm feeling so if I feel like there's something and look how do you tell somebody like Josh like what the feeling is it's hard to say that but I will say this and I'm saying this for everyone you also have to know what you're doing this for I literally today on the elevator coming into my office was reminiscing about early Wine Library when my life was simple.

18:44I was making$48 ,000 a year. It was simple. I was opening a store and closing a store every day. That's what I did. And it was awesome. And I love what I do now, but I love that too. And so, you know, I think one thing that I hope all of you, because all of you have gotten to some place of public success, I hope you have the humility and the kindness for yourself to know when you don't need to grow. As a matter of fact, this has been a year like that for me. I've not really grown the Gary Vee thing as much. I've been very focused on VFriends and VaynerX and my personal life, to be honest. Kids, my personal life.

19:22Like, so I, and I'm okay with that. Like, I saw today somebody post how many views they got this last month on Instagram. It was their post. and it was 20 % more than I got this last month. And this is somebody that I know for a fact, like learned from me seven years ago. I was happy for them, not sad for me. And so I think eliminating envy, eliminating jealousy, realizing that nobody else's life has anything to do with yours, saying things like, I hope all of you can get out of your vocabulary things like, oh, they copied me and now they're growing. or they've got like all these things that I know slip into the mindset of like what we all do for a living.

20:10Nobody's taking away from you. And if you're not growing, it's okay to take a breath. Some days, some weeks, some months, and even some years are just a reset or you're focused on something else. I am very professionally obsessed. I am super ambitious. I'm super into this. I love what I do. but having grace for yourself is also important. And so for example, if she's the straight man and you're the creative force, as long as you guys are over communicating and not creating resentment or tension, just keep communicating and it will, and you know this, it probably already has. It ebbs and flows, it ebbs and flows.

20:50Some days, some weeks, some months, and some years are better than others. But being, here's a big one, but being comfortable with being uncomfortable is a real talent. Like, right? Like, not being able to figure out how to grow for six months and being okay with that and enjoying the challenge or at least being neutral while you go through the muckery. It's important. Sweet, thank you so much, Gary. Appreciate it. Thanks, Josh. Appreciate you coming out. Rob, do you want to go next? Okay. Did I unmute it properly? We good? Good, Rob. Okay. Good. So I'll reverse a little bit here, Gary. So what we want to accomplish as a family is the opportunity for our family to continuously do what we want.

21:40It's too strong of a word, but be able to be together. We've got a great lifestyle right now, even as the kids get older. You know, girlfriends coming in, boyfriends coming in. You start thinking about it, and that's amazing. And I just want to give an opportunity where if they want to stay close, then that opportunity is there. They want to move around the world. Of course, that's their choice. But right now, as a lot of their friends are working, you know, nine to five jobs or part time jobs. And, you know, we make videos and they get paid much better just to make videos. We're a very, very blessed family.

22:15So what we're wanting to do now is we know that it can all go away tomorrow. And if it does, that's fine, too. the family will still be the family but we want to strike while the iron's hot and so when right now I'm here to talk a lot about organic content and it seems like what we've been able to do is we have found a pattern where we do see I every day in my head I'm thinking like this is gonna be the last day it's like people are gonna be bored with us so we move on we're done for been thinking that for three years it's just you know my thinking but then we end up having the best month ever.

22:50We think of an idea and all of a sudden it gets us 100 million views on Instagram. So it's just insane what stuff happens. But I'm trying to, I want to be smart. And as you talk about organic content being more and more important, is there something we could do as a brand where basically the only thing we do is get attention? And we've been very blessed that brands have come to us and paid for us to create content for them. But that's all that we've done so far. Well, I think, you know, look, you have such an unusual thing with the tall family. I think your next transition is you can debate making a product for tall people.

23:26And it doesn't have to be clothes. You have a very tall family. This is not a gift that I understand. So you need to figure out what else you all know. And so I would say the fun thing, Rob, especially for you because I know you a little bit, is to play around with a product that you can sell on TikTok shop and whatnot. I couldn't recommend that more for you because you're not gonna lose your spot on what you're talking about and the kids are getting older and they are gonna move around and things will change. But for you, what won't change is using this moment of attention, you might be able to create a very small five to$25 product that you could sell for the rest of your life.

24:13I would highly recommend like you looking into that and I would recommend it not being closed. I would think a lot about like what can you make. I think everyone here no matter what you do should get very educated with TikTok shop and whatnot. I believe live shopping is what social media was 10 years ago. It's really big and it's about to explode. And whether you sell your own product or other products like as a retail store right? Whether you become Apple or you become Walmart both are interesting so think about it. Cool. Let's keep going. Thanks very much. Sorry Kenneth. Yes go ahead. We need to make some content I think will do well.

25:01Is there ever going to be a list of anywhere of the heights of the V-frame characters? Oh that's fun. Yeah. Send me an email on that. I got an idea on that. I actually have something brewing. long term like medium term reach out to me on that that'll be fun love that thanks around adria garzi crew hi it's adriette and i have twin girls cody and haven and we've started this crazy media company as i like to call it and i'm a person who likes to kind of seize opportunities and i don't know how many chances i'm going to get to just talk to gary b and so here's my question we started a podcast my girls and I and I wondered if you'd want to come on the podcast I love it send me an email right now to Gary at VFriends it will be next year because I'm not doing anything the rest of this year and I would be happy to look at it alright we'd love to have you on my kids are I call them kidtrepreneurs so they love you I love you I introduce them to you and I can't wait to show them the cartoon because I I'll tell you anytime you're helping up here and out by teaching these kind of lessons it's invaluable kids don't listen to me I literally did a very long interview with parenting.com last week about this.

26:13And thank you for touching on this. My tweaking to modern parenting is not judgment and critique. Parenting is the hardest job. There's not a single parent that doesn't have a kid right now that's over 25 that doesn't have opinions of what their parents did wrong. Not one. When I tell you I am writing a book called Perfectly Parented. This is true. And I could sit here for the rest of my life and tell you things my parents did wrong. It's impossible. It's the way the game is. So I have huge passion for VFriends, books and cartoons to help parents. Because if a kid sees it while they're being entertained, like there's an episode with Accountable Ant.

26:58One thing that is not happening in modern society is accountability. Everything is everyone else's fault. Meanwhile, everything is your fault. Like that's how life actually is. And so like it just, thank you for saying that. I'm so passionate. I pray, that is the word I will use, that every episode helps at least one parent not have to address some topic with a kid because they get them themselves through VFriends. It will. Thank you. Well, thank you. By the way, while I've got all of you and I see that Tyler's putting in links, Tyler, can you please put in the whatnot link for the conference room sale I'm doing soon.

27:38I want everyone here to see it. I want them to learn about live shopping. Everybody, please download this WhatNot app and follow this and watch me. When is it, Tyler? This Friday? What's that? 23rd. 23rd, a week from today. Beautiful. You've got to watch a week from today. I'm telling you, you're going to learn from it. Watch what I'm doing. Some of you that have watched me for a long time, I used to say this a lot. I need to bring it back. Watch what I do, not what I say. I think you need to watch this. I think you're going to find some real opportunities for all of you. All right, let's keep it rocking.

28:08Maddie, yeah, go ahead. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Yeah. Awesome. Hi. Hi, Maddie. Thank you so much for having me. I'm Maddie. I'm honored to be on this call. I'm very new to the parenting world. My little baby is five weeks old. Wow. Very new. Congrats. All the parenting advice. But honored to have this book and can't wait for him to understand it. Thank you. but I thought I would take this opportunity to kind of look at this new chapter of my life because I started in music and built a lot of my audience that way and that's still a part of my life but I've moved into more of the lifestyle and travel space and obviously now this whole new world and just letting my audience into this process the good and the bad so far has really connected with a lot of them and I was just curious what you've learned in this space and if you see Elaine here because I feel like everything was super curated and then it was super stripped down like raw.

29:13Yeah I think that I'm sorry go ahead Maddie. I just I feel like there's a balance in that and I don't want to just be focusing on negative things but also include people in on the process. So I'm just curious if you've seen any sort of... I have. I watch it all the time. The answer is everything works and everything doesn't work. This is real, right? Like, and I've watched people go through the ebbs and flows, right? Like right now, there's so much data that supports the people that are over curate are not doing as well as they used to. But then everybody who loves curating and making everything look polished and the grid look good, see somebody explode who only does that, and then they want to gravitate towards it because they like the aesthetics.

30:01And so I need everyone to hear this nice and slow. There's no right answer. There's right answers for you at right times. And so if you wake up and be like, man, I love even the way you ask the question. Man, I've let people into a lot of the challenges. Today, I just want to do something like bubbly and good. Do that. The thing that I'm most worried about is that you are all talking yourselves out of doing what you feel in your stomach because you think there's a better way and then when you do something that you feel in your stomach what I'm scared about is it doesn't do as well as your other content and you give up after one post and you archive it and try to act like it didn't happen the level of insecurity please watch what I'm doing I keep putting out all sorts of stuff I'm me and I happily leave shit that that doesn't do well on my page.

30:56Please remember that you're not in high school anymore. Here's how I'll say this. You know how like 100 years ago people didn't know a lot of things we now know? I mean like real stuff like penicillin and like don't smoke and like just real shit, right? I always think about what in 50 years are people gonna know that we sit here today and don't know? Some things are obvious like drinking out of plastic bottles is like pretty obviously gonna end up being like, no, you shouldn't do that. You know, that I can like wrap my head around. I'll give you one that I don't think people have figured out yet.