The #1 Business Skill to Develop in 2026

0:01Every soda's got something to say. Cola's brag. Probiotics give TED Talks. Then there's Mr. Pibb. No pitch, no promises, just bold cherry bringing the flavor. Bold kick of cherry. Hey yo Mr. Pibb. When people see me, I'm a yapper. Right, I'm yapping here. This is how people normally see me. But the reality is, is that 90 % of the time, I'm not doing things to be seen. 95 % of the time. and in that time, I'm doing predominantly listening. My entire career is based on listening but it's hard to see that because I'm such an active talker. This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience. I just got offered a board seat to a publicly traded company off of one video I posted on LinkedIn.

0:53You're Gary Vee. Yeah, but I was fucking Gary in a liquor store We're making videos every day that nobody gave a fuck about too. It's content. You're exactly right. That's where I was hoping you would go. I'm Gary V now because I fucking did what I'm telling you to do for 15 years every day. I've given away content for free that's valuable. If you are very into pictures on Instagram and you want to get a lot of people to see it, which is the point of the whole thing, instead of posting it as a picture, post it as a one second video. As a one second reel. As a one second reel. That will get more views than the picture potentially.

1:28And by the way, it flips sometimes. Other times the picture is. So I'm obsessed with the algorithm. I want to know how every algorithm works. What are they overvaluing? Do they like reels, carousel, PDFs? This is something I spend enormous time on. 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. The number one goal for anyone who's trying to live a life on their own means is to cut down their overhead, save money so much so that you can attack your dream for a year and not worry about money, which means you kind of need 18 months worth of money because you attack it for a year.

2:06And then when you're like, fuck, I failed at my dream. Let me get a job. You got to give yourself a couple minutes there to find a new job. If you were selling women's clothes to Gen Xers and boomers, it would be Facebook proper. If you are an accountant trying to build an accounting firm, it would be LinkedIn. If you were starting a healthy gummies candy for kids and you know that you're targeting moms but young moms and maybe even you know 18 to 25 then TikTok gets very important. So the answer to that question is you have to reverse engineer the upside of the audience that exists in which platform at that moment.

2:50With chat GPT and perplexity like It is scary. You can literally type in to an AI chat, GPT environment right now, the most hardcore question. You can literally say, how do I find out if I own a pizzeria in Brooklyn to get to more people on TikTok? Enter, the answers are real. They're real. Whether it's LinkedIn or YouTube Shorts or Snapchat or Instagram or TikTok or Facebook, every one of these platforms have different algorithms, different features, different opportunities to make different levels of content. one has to get good at understanding the overlay of what are you capable of. Everybody who's got a service business, you do, you cut hair, you do consulting, you're a physical trainer, you make a video that looks like this.

3:35I will now make it for everyone. Give me a phone real quick. Hey everybody, I'm making this video because I just started this personal training business. Hey everybody, I'm making this video because I just started my own accounting firm and I'm looking for clients. Hey everybody, I'm finally going after my lifelong passion to start my own landscaping business. So you're getting this video because you're in my contacts on my phone. Some of you were my best friends since high school. Others, I probably met once and you're in my phone. I'm sending this to literally everybody from A to Z in my phone.

4:07I'm not asking you to hire me to do landscaping, but I'm asking if you know anyone who might be in the market for a landscaper. This is my one plea, my one ask as I start on this journey, and I hope my journey maybe even inspires some of you to finally jump and start your own thing. So I'm starting with Andrew Anderson, and I'm ending with Zachary Zazaloff. Please, you know, I apologize if we've only talked once and you find this to be spam. I will put the link to my social media and website if you like my landscaping business, and it means a lot to me if you've even watched 30 seconds of this video because it is really my dream.

4:46Have the best day. make that video cast and literally text every single person. Grab your favorite beverage of choice, tea, wine, water, put on your favorite music, start at 2 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon, go into 9 p.m., get it done, you will have a business. Play, play, play, everything is and. When you're like in your, when I'm not here with you and you're in your head in three weeks and you're like, should I post on my account or should I post up my personal or the thing or should I post about the business or should I post about this Taco Bell? The answer is and. Whether it's LinkedIn or YouTube Shorts or Snapchat or Instagram or TikTok or Facebook, every one of these platforms have different algorithms, different features, different opportunities to make different levels of content.

5:34One has to get good at understanding the overlay of what are you capable of. We need people to understand the game. 18 months of savings against a low overhead, less expensive apartment. If you're 26 and you're living on your own apartment, move in with your best friend and have a roommate and cut it in half. Like you don't need Paramount Plus. I know it makes most sense to build and maintain your brand across all platforms. However, if you could just choose one, what would it be? I would have to know what the person's trying to achieve. So for example, if you were selling women's clothes to Gen Xers and Boomers, it would be Facebook proper.

6:15If you are an accountant trying to build an accounting firm, it would be LinkedIn. If you were starting a healthy gummies candy for kids that you're targeting moms, young moms, and maybe even 18 to 25, then TikTok gets very important. So the answer to that question is you have to reverse engineer the upside of the audience that exists in which platform at that moment. because as you can imagine, if I was targeting college kids and this interview was done in 2010, the answer would be Facebook. Now Facebook is literally grandma's and it used to be literally college kids. And so TikTok is very underestimated on how many people 30 to 50 are on it.

7:02People want to default and think the kids are on it. It is a huge platform for 40 to 60, huge! So those kind of things. Live social shopping is a monster. Like straight up even like this weekend, sign up for account on whatnot, sign up to sell, and like sit in your living room and sell random shit in your house. It's like eBay. If you're a plumber and you know that a third of your clients hire you for 500 bucks to change a little thing that they could have changed if they went to YouTube and to Home Depot, if you make that content and say, don't hire me on this situation, go to this video. In fact, if that person made, if that plumber made the video instead of pointing them to a video, building brand, and said go to this video that I made and go to Lowe's and spend$19 and this is how you do it.

7:51The level of trust that happens that when that same family that didn't need the sink but when their oldest son took a huge poop and exploded their bathroom and it fucking broke and they actually did need help. Which plumber do you think they're gonna fucking call? It's called trust. Just like 14 year old girls live on TikTok, executives live on LinkedIn. that's why I've been yelling about LinkedIn for a hundred years from 2006 to 2009 I was the wine guy yeah that's how I first knew you yeah in my head a little bit you're still Gary the wine guy of course I still like bringing it up once in a while and Dustin's shaking his head in the background sometimes I just get on a kick and want to do more wine content and by the way it doesn't perform as well you know at times and other times it performs great it's down to the piece of content so what I would say to everybody is good news the algorithms have changed no longer is it solely about who follows you.

8:43I made a hard pivot from wine only content to business. And then at first it was tactical business, then it became like motivational because I realized people weren't doing the things because it was more about emotional frameworks than actual tactics. Now I'm back to like more tactics because I'm like I've talked enough about the emotional framework. And so you're just allowed to ebb and flow and good news, the algo has changed. I think a lot of people would be blown away if they went to their platform of choice that they built the most equity with and understand the most, and posted something left field today.

9:14One of two things will happen. It will do terrible. Or it will do remarkable. And I wish that people understood both are good. Yeah. When you have no money and you have no experience and you have no connections and you're not doing anything, what content are you gonna put out? So many people, Pablo, that want to be something. I wanna be a rapper, I wanna be Gary Vee, I wanna be a sneaker store owner. So many people should literally take a job at a company or for someone they want to be, document every day what they've learned that day about it in their content for two to three years and then they will become.

9:56I want that content like here's what's going on in the market, here's what's going on in the market, here's what's going on in the market. How do you get comfortable with selling? Giving tips and tricks is great, but how do you use personal branding to actually sell? Oh, it's a good question. I love this question. I love selling because I like what I sell. I love selling wine because I only sold wine I believed in. I never sold a bottle of Kendall Jackson Chardonnay or Santa Margarita Pinot Grigio in my life. I'm sorry to call out those two wines, but literally did not sell it. Literally people would come in and be like, do you have a case of Kendall Jackson Chardonnay?

10:32I'm like, yes, and I'm happy to get it for you. but have you ever tried other Chardonnays that are buttery and oaky because here's this and it's$2 less and when they would come back and say and we're talking in the 90s when it was$8.99 and$6.99 and when like two weeks later when that customer would come back and be like oh my god I love this Chardonnay that's J.Lore whatever it was at the time that was everything to me and so what I would say to all of you is selling is amazing the problem with the world right now is a lot of you are selling something you don't actually believe in so selling how do you get comfortable with it by asking yourself if you believe in what you're selling if you believe in what you're selling it gets comfortable if you don't you get skittish if you're a good person sounds like this person's a good person now she has to ask herself does she believe in what she's selling this is a huge deal everybody if you enjoyed this podcast please go back and look at the prior episodes they're loaded I appreciate your attention and thanks for being part of this journey see you later