Tea with GaryVee Ep. 67 | Selling on TikTok Shop vs WhatNot, How to Handle Family Judgment While Building Your Dream, & Why Growing on Instagram Feels Impossible (And How to Fix It)

0:00This is the GaryVee Audio Experience. Everyone on earth should try selling on TikTok shop and whatnot just to see if they like it. I think that a lot of us love something but we don't know it because we never tried it. The real fix for all of you that are stuck is curiosity. So many people here are lacking a gene a trait called curiosity. Some of them have curiosity but McKenzie you know what beats curiosity unfortunately in some people's body? Insecurity. All right here we go we are live live live in New New York City, good morning everybody. Happy Thursday. Hope everybody's having a wonderful day.

0:39This is Tea with Gary Vee, I am Gary Vee. I'm ready for the first question, let's get right into the show. I feel like I haven't been productive enough and I feel like I'm kind of making excuses like, oh I got time. Or just not being as productive as I know I could be. Like I know I could be going harder in the paint, I'm just not. First of all, what's going hard in the paint? Meaning like what are you trying to build? your career, a startup, your personal brand, like what are you trying to go hard at? Because I can tell you right now, there is nobody that goes weaker in the paint than me when I don't like what the fuck I'm doing.

1:14Right, and I think I've gotten good with that. Like I've left toxic environments. I don't do anything that I'm not passionate about. So I'm doing what I love, but I just, I feel like I'm not going as hard because I think it's like the family judgment of like, you're not doing it the right way or you're not going down the right path kind of deal. All right, so what are you doing and what family members are saying what? I got on Whatnot, you know. I've been having fun with Whatnot. I'm actually making, you know, a decent money. Like, I'm kind of just all in on Whatnot right now. And what are you selling?

1:45I got, like, Pokemon cards. I got, like, VeeFriends, anything. You know, I go to Goodwill. I'll find, like, plushies and stuff, you know, and flip that. So it's been fun. What do you want to build? So I want to be a music producer, like full time. And I think I was like halfway into it, but it was like the money wasn't really there. So then that's why I like pivoted and I was like, okay, I just got to, you know, find my own path or like, you know, get free. I don't like clocking in nine to five. Right. Let's break it down even further. How many, how many hours a day do you feel like you're working?

2:19No bullshit. Don't bullshit. Don't bullshit me or anybody else. Yeah. Like six. Yeah. That's fucking ridiculous. Six is enough if you wanna make 30 to$50 ,000 a year there's probably some sort of path to six. And of course, there'll people that will jump in and be like, if you create AI agents and efficient, you can work one hour a day and make a lot of money. I mean, anything's possible. But the way you delivered the six, I think you're right. The question is, I also think you might be using the judgment of your family as an excuse as well. And let me say something completely left field. Like you don't need to build an empire.

2:56Like let me ask you a different question altogether. Are you happy? Yeah, like 98%. Well 98 % is about fucking 60 % more than most people on earth. I'm lucky, I'm very lucky. Yeah, I mean look I think you know breaking this down I mean there's a lot of different things here. How old are you? 25. So there's a hundred different dynamics in play in this call. One, you do have time. Like you could work six hours and like be 98. I promise you that 100 % of Earth would probably sign up for working six hours a day and being 98 % happy. And that's the beauty of being 25 years old in a lot of ways. But I don't fully believe you.

3:38Does that make sense? Not that I don't believe you. What I feel intuitively on this call is you intuitively feel like this is not sustainable. Like you can't, like what you're doing now, eventually this, you won't be 98 % happy. You'll be 9.8 % happy. And you're probably trying to ponder a strategy to eliminate that vulnerability. Yes? No? Kind of. Yeah. I want to pivot back into music production. Like I was mentoring people and I was making money, but I wasn't making as much as I'm making on whatnot, if that makes sense. Yes. And I think what also makes sense is if you're, do you feel like you're hungry and ambitious or no?

4:13I'm pretty hungry. Yeah. Yeah, I push. Well then, yeah, I don't agree with you because if I'm listening to you and you're only working six hours a day, you have the opportunity to work 10 hours a day, five hours on whatnot and flipping, and five hours a day on music, and 10 hours a day at 25 is a piece of fucking cake. Right. And if you love them both, and if you're 98 % happy, you would have the energy for that. I got the energy. I think I'm just not doing it. But why? Again, I'm like, nobody in my family has done this, what I'm doing. So? The fuck does that have to do with anything? Which one of your parents were non-supportive and kind of talked down to you?

4:59My dad. Great. That's the punchline of this whole conversation. You know that, right? Yeah. And the question becomes, are you going to believe him? Or are you going to fucking stick it to him? or the most healthy, are you gonna be empathetic that one of his parents talked in a negative way to him and completely disregard it and live your life? The whole time I was just thinking like, be the bigger person, be the bigger person, be the bigger person. Feel bad for your dad. Don't feel bad for you. Feel bad that dad also had a circumstance. You know, empathy and compassion is an incredibly powerful thing, brother.

5:36One of the things I always rail on, and at my VCon keynote, I once famously said, fuck your grandparents. So I really believe in that shit, brother. Like instead of being mad at your parent, you can be empathetic to them. You can learn the power of forgiveness. You can learn the power of perspective. I think you're gonna have to attack this that way. Does that make sense? But six hours is not gonna get you to, you know, financial freedom or building, you know, that is not an ambitious number. Yeah, so I need to double it, 12. Yeah, and honestly, I think you should attack this dad issue. Whether you can watch this over and over every morning and it reminds you whether you need to go even harder flipping so that you can save up some money to do therapy once a week.

6:20Whether you read things, listen to things. Obviously, I know the Be Friends community has been a positive impact on you. That's been a foundation. There's more to go, though. I'm telling you right now, the excuse that your dad, nobody's ever done it in my family, Honestly, that has almost no validity, none. Almost everything that has ever happened in life has been based on someone doing something that no one in their family has ever done. That's how it works. You know what I mean? That's a bullshit excuse. That makes sense. Appreciate you, Gary. Love you, brother. Stay well. Oh, you got rapid fire?

6:55Good. Mackenzie, talk to me. Rhonda asks, how do you choose working on your side hustle instead of having any social life? Friends, why does everybody think everything is so absolute? I have 800 side hustles. I have a social life. I have a main job. I'm a capable human being. When I was building VFriends, I saw no one, including my real job, right? I was all in. Then I was done. Then I was back. I don't understand. What is the matter with people? It is not fully absolute. It's not all or nothing. And it's not all or nothing forever. You could be all in on something for a while. Like that young man we just talked to.

7:31You could do the dad thing for 10 years and then do more creative stuff. And by the way, notice what else I said about tell me about your Friday night. And then on Saturday and Sunday, he is doing his creative thing. What do you think is like your backbone for becoming successful? The inability to listen to anybody else, regardless if it's positive or negative. I love that. And what platform do you feel like is your most profitable platform being on after being on all of the platforms? It ebbs and flows, you know? Like that's what's so cool about day trading attention, right? The concept that I wrote my last book about.

8:08Things keep, you know, changing. You know, when I first came out the game, search mattered. Email marketing mattered. You know, SEO, SEM. Then it was MySpace. Then it was Facebook. You know, Ustream used to be huge for me. Vine used to be important to me. Like things change. But I think TikTok shop and whatnot, you need to pound both of them. but TikTok shop why it's so amazing is you get discoverability people just find you whereas what not as you're seeing you won't have an audience because you gotta drive the audience right? but learning, don't forget what learning is like going on and spending three hours on what not and not selling much is learning no I'm a big believer in that like I love that you like I tell friends and people that have their social medias and they're like well I don't want to post on there I don't want to, you know like what if I post And I'm like, what's the worst that's going to happen?

9:01Nobody's going to see you if you don't post. But if you do post, the chances of you getting discovered as a business or having organic growth, you're shooting, you know, you get 100 % growth chance if you're posting versus not posting anything at all. But I feel like trying to just grow my business and do that on other platforms. TikTok shop has been my most profitable platform. So are you trying to figure it out because you're scared that TikTok will get banned in the next 90 days? Is that foundational to the question? Well, already seeing what had just happened previously, yeah, that was super scary because I'm our family's sole income now.

9:37So that's my big driving force. So it's like, okay, what are the other options? How many followers do you have on TikTok right now? Right now I have 105 ,000 followers. And on Instagram? A little over 1 ,000. All right, listen to me. Two times a day, I want you posting on TikTok and I want you going live for an hour a day to just hang like I'm hanging now and tell every one of those people to follow you on Instagram. Yeah. I feel like I have a hard time growing on Instagram like the same videos. No, no, no, no. That's not what I said.

10:13I see what you're doing. Yep, because I'm not letting you make up some bullshit. Let me say it. I'm going to be like a doctor here. Dr. Gary is in the building two times a day. I want you to post on TikTok and the entire TikTok make it creative but the whole post is saying follow me on Instagram. Okay. And I need you to go live for an hour a day not selling and just shoot the shit with your community and tell them 18 times to follow you on Instagram. That's it. Yo everybody thank you so much just jumping in real quick in the middle of this podcast. Thank you so much for listening to this episode.

10:49It would mean the world to me if you could leave a review for this episode and I'm gonna get you back to your pod right now because you don't need me talking about that but I realize I'm I'm lagging on getting the support of my podcast listeners so viewing this episode and overall would mean the world to me five star four star three star fuck it two star one star honest feedback's fine all right back to the show all right question from Michelle if you inherited your parents company but you weren't interested in the subject matter what would you do especially if you want to keep their memory alive and not just sell it very successful business but you don't have the capital or credit to run it?

11:23Literally, listen to that question. They're not passionate about it and they can't financially afford to run it because they have no idea what the fuck to do with it. And literally, you know one way to not honor your parents is to try to honor them and have that business go out of business because then you both fucking lost. You want to honor them? Sell the fucking business, take the money and build something that you're passionate about. That would honor them more than that. If I heard that right, you don't like it and you can't afford to do it, the fuck are we doing here? The number one issue in society is people holding up an ideology that has no practicality in it.

12:00You don't even know if that's what your parents want. They're dead. Deep down, all the fucked up shit that parents do, it's all grounded in one thing. They just want their kid to be good. They're just imposing their own fears on their kids when they're fucking them up. Get a good job. Don't be an entrepreneur because they're scared to be an entrepreneur. But what if your kid's a fucking entrepreneur? Clearly this kid's not an entrepreneur. this kid their parents were entrepreneurs they're not an entrepreneur which is hence the question michelle sell it sell the fucking company take the money and do something i'm an artist i've been doing that for since like 2012 11 i've always wanted to be a film director and screenwriter so i've been learning these things now like i have an event that's on march 2nd and i'm blending the storytelling to the show it's pretty cool but now i'm kind of like you know resources funding all all this type of stuff, so I'm doing it myself.

12:49And I feel like I'm in a place of just getting, it's getting difficult to manage everything. What's difficult? Remember, difficult is how you see it. So to me, literally you were talking, no bullshit, Ish. I think you're gonna like, this could be interesting. I'm about to say something very weird. I want everyone to hear it. Ish, you were just talking and I was getting jealous. I'm not joking. I am at a point in my career, V friends, Tea with Gary V, anything I do now, everyone's like, oh that's gonna be successful and if it's not, it's gonna be like, what the fuck? Like being in that place where you're still in the beginning and you're building your thing, I'm romantic as fuck to that.

13:34You know, when you don't have the funds, when you have to get scrappy, literally we were in the office yesterday only talking about how we gotta get back to startup culture that when you don't have money, you're doing it right. And when you do have money, you're doing it wrong. Let me give you an example. If somebody came around and be like, I believe in you and here's 100K, I promise you, you would waste that 100K in a way that would surprise you. Okay. So you know how it is. The grass is greener on the other side, right? Yeah. I was with some single friends and some married friends the other day at a party and everybody started laughing because the married friends wanted to be single and the single friends wanted to be married.

14:10It's like everyone just likes the grass on the other side. You need to enjoy this middle of the wall that you're in right now. You need to be excited and wake up and be like somebody might come to this show. There might be nine people at this show but one of them might see this blend of fucking Poet Society storytelling, improv slash music. Like you need to enjoy this part. You ever see interviews of artists that have made it and like they've made it. We're talking top 1 % and you watch the interview and you listen carefully and they're like, man, I miss when it was just my homie and me in the van and we were fucking grinding.

14:45Please fall in love with where you are right now. You're in the middle of the wall. I have a feeling you might get to the other side of the wall and you're gonna remember this interaction, be like, motherfucking Gary was fucking right. I got the money, I got certain things that I wanted, but I fucking miss that creative process. I miss a little bit of that unknown. I miss a little bit of that fucking dirt. I missed that. Go ahead. I don't mean to cut you. No, please. If I can, I remember, what was it, back in 2019, I started doing shows at House of Blues, and I had this feeling where it was like, oh, everyone was happy, and then I was like, wow, I feel empty.

15:25Like, have you ever felt that? You know, I haven't felt empty, and I think I'm gonna help you here. I've had so many crazy things happen in my life, and my brother makes fun of me for not popping bottles or smelling the roses, right? Like, I don't feel empty, but I don't put accomplishments on a pedestal. I'm not trying to do it for the outcome. Like, I'm not trying to fucking, it's not about the bank account. It's not about the Grammys. It's not about the certified, verified account. It's not about 10 million followers. It's not about being stopped every second that I walk. It's not about being envied or being put on a pedestal.

16:03I'm in my grind. I'm doing it right now right now as I'm with you I don't need to be doing Tea with Gary, there's 431 people I'm wanting that right now I'm in the dirt, I like the process I like the game I'm not here for all of y 'all I'm not here for my dad like the last kid, I'm not here for the fans I'm not here for nobody but me I'm gonna do me I wanna do me okay i appreciate that you understand everybody else was happy but it didn't fulfill you actually i think that's why you can win but you took it as a negative yeah i take it when i'm like that as a positive okay yeah i think it threw off my barometer of like okay then what is the goal correct and it made me think about that let me explain the goal is not having it Like my, I want to buy the Jets, that's on some, in fourth grade, I'd said something in school and it's funny.

17:05Let me promise you, nothing bad is gonna happen in my life if somebody else buys the Jets one day. I don't give a fuck. Let me tell you what my first post is gonna be when Sally Smith buys the Jets. Congrats to Sally, win me a fucking Super Bowl. I gave it a try, I didn't get there. On to the next thing. I'll go buy the Gritty Knicks. the goal in life is to not create a goal that fucks you up gotcha okay the goal in life is to like the fucking dirt every day got okay yeah i'm getting hype like i got some stuff i gotta like i'm i'm so ready to do stuff like it was already before this but but when you think it needs to lead to something when it's in in your soul and I can feel it in you.

17:57Like, look at this, I got goosebumps, I can feel it in you-ish. You don't wanna have a goal. People are like, why am I not successful? I don't know, maybe because you're such a dick face that you're not even clicking a button in the top corner to get$253 shipped to you in the mail because you don't wanna spend three minutes to post it on eBay and ship it out. What about the gas fees, Dustin? What about the gas fees? I'm gonna do trash talk heavy this year, fuck it. all right what's the question mckenzie okay six million followers but we haven't turned that into a real business what's the best next move to monetize it by going on one down and selling shit selling shit makes money i'm out of here i'm 24 i have two kids and i'm building a balancing a w-2 building an agency and running an e-sports business i know my income building ventures will will set me up for life, but I'm putting less time into my creative passions, like my personal brand and my fashion brand.

19:00Do you think I'm approaching this the right way with my age, having two kids and the responsibilities by focusing on income now and letting my creative passion take a back seat? Okay. Let me tell you what happened to my creative passion from 22 to 34. It was suppressed because I was building a business for my dad. You got responsibilities, bro. You're 24 with two kids. I'm proud of you, bro. Like you're fucking doing the right thing. it sucks sometimes because I know you want to get that creative nut off right? but sometimes if you've got something really burning at you and you're excited work on it at midnight do you work on Saturday and Sunday or no?

19:36you got the weekend off? yeah the agency and the app is what I focus on on the weekends beautiful so you're getting a little bit of that you know and so nah man I gotta tell you your temperament is making me feel very kind and comfortable and really good. And I just think it's a game of patience for you. And what you're going to be blown away by is those kids are going to be, you know, they're going to be 13, 14, 15 real quick. And they're going to want to hang out with their friends, not their dad. When that happens, you'll have more time to work on it. And you'll be 35 years old. A baby. For the fashion brand that I'm looking to build, or I'm working on, I have tech packs and things like that.

20:18Do you think Whatnot is a good place to do live shopping or a TikTok live with TikTok Shopping? I think both. I think both. TikTok Shop is in a lot of ways better because it allows you to get audience. Yeah, so you need 5 ,000 followers to get on TikTok Shop Live, right? So I don't know if you're at 5 ,000, you know. Not on my personal note. Yeah, so you need to build that up. And so while you're waiting, come here and start building and start pushing people from social to here. Look what I'm doing. You know what's so funny? I always say, Mike, watch what I do, not what I say. So I say TikTok shop's better and everyone's like, ah, I don't have 5 ,000 followers.

20:57Meanwhile, I'm here today on Whatnot, pushing people from my social to Whatnot. You go live on Instagram, you type in your Whatnot URL and pin it, then you go live on Whatnot and you be on Whatnot and you yell at everybody to come over. And that's how you build slowly. All right, who's next? McKenz? We have Melissa. Melissa. 61 female wanting to totally recreate myself. I have no products to sell. I work a nine to five and my soul is slowly dying. Tell me the number one thing you would recommend I learn right now to launch a new life and a new career. Everyone on earth should try selling on TikTok shop and whatnot for a couple of hours just to see if they like it.

21:36Like, I think that a lot of us love something, but we don't know it because we never tried it. Like, in our little circle right here, somebody here loves skateboarding but doesn't know it somebody here loves cooking but doesn't know it somebody here loves oysters sweetbreads uni and caviar but you're all scared to try it i think people are scared to try shit i don't know her like that but i know she's 61 and you know i'm the guy that's like you know everyone's ready for the joke of like you got 40 more years but i'm gonna say on the flip side we're at 61 now that's different than 16 Like it's time for her to fucking fight.

22:12And she's kept a conservative, I get it. She's a woman of that generation. But the real anecdote, the real potion, the real fix is curiosity. My friends, the real fix for all of you that are stuck is curiosity. So many people here are lacking a gene, a trait called curiosity. Some of them have curiosity, but McKenzie, you know what beats curiosity, unfortunately, in some people's body? Insecurity. We need people trying more shit. What does she need to do? She needs to try more shit. She hates her nine to five. Maybe she should work a seven to nine bartending. Maybe she likes bartending. She could become a famous social media bartender.

22:57I don't know. Maybe she heard me right now, and she's gonna set up a whatnot right now and sell some shit out of her house. I believe garage sales, my beloved garage sales, are moving to live social shopping. I predict in three years, you will see thousands of people every Saturday morning, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people literally just running around their house and being like, all right, this pillow, nine bucks, nine bucks, 10, 11, 12. I predict that. And I think a lot of you should be doing that because all of you have a ton of shit in your house that you don't need. When it comes to those challenges in life that you feel like burned out and you're doing the same thing over and over and it's not working out, what should I do?

23:36How should I get better? Take a break. Bro, I don't take breaks, but also I don't get burnt out because I am not looking for the result. Yeah, yeah, I feel you. I really feel you. I want to stay in this. Bro, I was working 18 hours a day for my dad's liquor store seven days a week through my entire 20s. That man paid me nothing because immigrant style. I don't blame dad. He said, one day when I die, you'll get the business. That's why I don't pay you nothing. I go, cool, you're gonna live to 90, I'm gonna be 70. I gotta go do my own thing. But the reason I didn't burn out was I wasn't looking for the result.

24:16Exactly. I knew what my mission was. And at 22 to 34, I had one mission, to fucking pay back my parents for all the things they did for me. And then from 34 on, I started building for myself. Brother, there's a video that's going somewhat viral right now because Cass and Mike have a new book coming out called Shoveling Shit, and they tell the story of me working, starting VaynerMedia in their conference room, and people seeing it from their eyes, where Mike's like, Gary didn't have fucking money. It just hits different than me saying it. And so, why did I not burn out ever? Why will I never burn out?

24:55Because I'm not looking for a result. Exactly. The reason that people quit the gym is they want their muscles to be a certain way, their waist to be a certain way, the scale to be a certain way, and so they quit because they're impatient because to do it the right way, it takes time. 100%. The reason people quit business is because they want the fucking money, they want the things that money brings them. They don't love the fucking business. They love what the business gives to them. I don't like what the business gives me. I love my fucking businesses. That's very hard, very strong. I appreciate it.

25:32I love you, bro. Good luck to you. Fall in love with what you do for real, everyone. Like, if you love it, it's a wrap. Think about that. Everybody, close your eyes. Think of the person, no bullshit, that you love the most in the world. Okay, open your eyes.

25:54That person that you just thought of, they may annoy you once in a while, disappoint you, but you're never gonna be done with them. There's not a single day where I don't hate every one of my businesses. I'm in the business of just eating shit 24 seven. All that happens in my life is headache, headache, headache, headache, headache, headache, headache. But I love it. Think about the person you love the most. You'll never quit them. You guys don't love your businesses. You love what you think your business can do for you.