The #1 Business Trait to Improve on in 2026

0:01This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience. I'm really happy to be here. I have a bunch of things I want to talk through, but very honestly, as I told the organizers, I'd like to do as much Q &A as possible today because I think I have a funny feeling that not much I'm going to say here is going to surprise a lot of you because one thing I am is extremely consistent of what I believe. I think what makes the way I communicate interesting to me when I analyze myself is I have certain things that haven't changed since I was 10 years old that I'm still saying back then I would just say to my mom or my friends and then I have the luxury of spending so much of my time listening that even though my 15 20 50 macro philosophies whether it's patience or curiosity or things of that nature are very consistent and if you watch me for even a year you can get bored of it because you know what's coming out of my mouth there's the flip side and the complete extreme which is my now 20 year ability to understand what's happening at this moment and how to deploy that consistent point of view against a tick tock arbitrage or nfts or whatever it might be and i think that's probably a really fun place to start this talk, which is when I think about why would you be here?

1:27Fair. Fair. I love you too. When I think about why you would love me, it would be from a place of all of us want to make our lives better, you know, and the people we love better, right? And I think one of the great mistakes so many people that follow me and think they've got my message down make is they make content for their self-interest, not for their audience. They don't understand that by making content for their audience, there's a very good chance over a decade period of time, their self-interest will come through. The amount of people that I see give me love, DM me, say these nice things to me, they're about me, this and that, and when I spend five minutes analyzing their social media execution, it's very disheartening for me because they're picking and choosing what they hear from me.

2:24To do what I do and what I see others do that is successful, whether it's a person, a brand, a business, you have to do all parts of it. People love to see the part of tenacity, but they struggle a little bit more with patience. People love to think that they're giving and they're giving but they struggle to see that they're giving with manipulation and with intent of something for themselves which is the furthest thing from giving in the world. So I think what's really interesting as I go into this next chapter of my career is I've got to push myself harder to get into the depths of the nuances and the little tiny context points that make what I do work with the hope that you can have it too.

3:18One of the crazy things that has become obvious to me in the last decade is the reason I give away everything I've got is because I don't think if you then go take it and do well that that comes out of my pocket. I'm fascinated by how many people hold things back because they don't think or realize that the world is fundamentally abundant. everyone is so scared that if they give away their best advice or their best content that somebody's going to take that and run with it i had dinner with my dad two days ago which was really nice and he reminded me of a story when i was a kid i went to a industry liquor store in new jersey industry event and i walked around and was telling other liquor store owners about how well winelibrary.com was doing and why email was the future.

4:17And when we got back in, my dad talked about us not, like that was bad. Like why would you tell them? They're gonna do it. They're gonna take our customers. And I looked at my dad and I said, they can't steal my brain. And it reminded me of who I was when I was 17, 19, 21. which is just a younger, less experienced version of who I am today. But what I promise you is, as we all sit here today without knowing exactly what Santino or Ben or whoever has in mind of what they wanna do, whether you're in B2B or B2C, whether you're in real estate or crypto, content, have your own agency, sell sneakers, it's very easy for me to talk to this room because there are certain things is that no matter what you are, even if you're not an entrepreneur, if you're a stay-at-home parent, if you are a teacher, if you are running for political office, there are things that are incredibly consistent about the human race.

5:22I was an atrocious student, but the one class I was consistently strong at was history. And I never really understood why until I got into this last decade of my life when I started understanding myself better on how I roll. And it's because history just tells me the future. We're consistent. We're animals. We are who we are. And we only navigate through one framework. Our actual perspective on life. Every single person here is navigating every single day predicated on how they see it. How they see it is predicated on how they grew up, their environment, their DNA, their parenting. But most interesting to me, what they are currently listening to or whom.

6:16The thing that's really interesting to me is if you turn your head to the left, you see it different than if you turn your head to the right. And what I've been trying to spend a lot of time on over the last 15 years of my life, first subconsciously, now consciously is I just want people to be happier because it makes me personally feel good to make people happy.

6:49To be incredibly transparent, I also feel a level of guilt because as I've come to know the world better, I've come to realize how incredibly lucky I am. and look, for entrepreneurs like me who've worked their face off their whole life, luck is a tricky word because as you know, and I'm sure people in your life have done this, people love to throw out luck as a thing to make themselves feel better about somebody who's doing well. They use it when they have envy or jealousy and that's fine. But I'm incredibly lucky. I grew up in a perfect storm of situations that gave me what I have. I have the luxury of being born in adversity.

7:33Just like this lovely lady flew from Moscow, like where we're from, where I was born, what people don't, you know, what most people in the world don't realize is the Soviet Union in its 70 year run, you weren't allowed to leave the country. Like, leave it. It was, for all intents and purposes, jail. and so the fact that I was born in that place at the time where some people were able to leave, that's luck. The fact that I get to go to America, a foundational country in our society that cherishes and applauds entrepreneurship when I was born a purebred entrepreneurship, luck. The fact that I was an immigrant and for all the immigrants in here, you know immigrant life in that first half decade or decade is basically about food and shelter.

8:26You're not worried about fucking fresh kicks. You're worried about fucking eating. And so when you have that, and then you have a little bit of a frugal mom like I did, my parents didn't buy me shit, which trained me as an animal that I had to go get mine. That was a luxury. It's hard to be hungry when you're always fed. And so that was luck. But the biggest luck I had by a country mile is that I had a mother who built such a framework of perspective for me and balanced confidence and self-awareness but also ramifications, eliminating delusion. She created such a framework that I had no chance but not to win.

9:16I think the world is about communication. Period. I think there's nothing else. I think the world is based on communication. It's how everybody does everything. Communication is why this world is religion-based. The printing press has invented a new form of communication, books. The disproportionate leader of printing books in the first two decades of the printing press were religious institutions. And here we are hundreds of years later and our society is framed on it. In a much more small way, Google AdWords come out in 2000. The number one advertiser on that platform for the first five years is Amazon, and it is the foundation of why they're one of the biggest companies in the world, besides the talent of the executives.

10:09For me, life is crazy simple, and I'm desperately trying to get this room to make it crazy simple. Here's what it is. it is based on the opportunity to communicate so that you can achieve what will make you happy and it's predicated on what you are trying to accomplish based on who you actually are after that everything becomes incredibly secondary after that level of self-awareness and understanding of how the world operates you can decide what you want to do you can then focus on your passion trying to maximize your dollars or whatever else tickles your fancy. The problem is the simplicity of the framework is something people struggle with tremendously.

10:56As many of you probably know, the other thing that drives me today is I think that negativity is dramatically louder than positivity. I believe if you analyze the world, social media, mainstream media, your household, negativity is loud positivity tends to be quiet because it's got internal strength to deal with the negativity and it doesn't bother itself with the negativity because of that we have a world that is louder about bad and quieter about good when this became obvious to me 7, 9, 5 years ago I felt an incredible an incredible energy of conviction and really just honestly accountability.

11:53I felt like I had to get loud about the truth of the world. And here's the truth. The world is better today than it's ever been in the history of mankind. Yet so few people believe it. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18+.

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13:12I love when all my friends are like, Gary, you fucking social media ruined the world. Look what's going on. I'm like, wait, you loved mainstream media? You mean 1920 to 1990 when the world was at the height of dictatorship and fascism, war? What the fuck are you talking about? We are incredibly, incredibly capable of misunderstanding the situation. We can do it in the macro. And then to bring it way down, for me to get off my philosophy train and get into the trenches with you, it's the biggest reason most of your businesses don't grow the way you want to. You are misreading the situation. The reason I talk about the things I talk about is, for example, as all of you are trying to build, how many people here by show of hands have five or more employees in a company they run?

13:59Raise your hands. Stand up, actually. Stand up. Stand up if that's you. More than five. More than five, your business. All right? Please stand, don't be bashful. You trying to, five? Yeah, you're good. First, let's clap it up for these winners.

14:20Now, now, now, this is very important. For the people that are standing, the number one most obvious thing that I see every day of my life over the last 20 years is they think somebody in their company is at fault for something without realizing it's their fault. This is the breakthrough. You like that one? You're excited about that? Anybody who's standing right now, just, this is the easiest, my favorite framework. This is probably the most simplistic sentence that I genuinely, this is not some foofy, foofy, let's do a show shit. This is real as fuck to me. Everybody who's standing right now, the quickest way for your business to get much, much bigger is for you to realize right now every single thing that's wrong in your company is not Johnny or Sally's fault.

15:17It is 100 % your fault because you fucking hired Johnny and Sally. You can sit.

15:28This is a very big deal. This is like funny to me. I am shocked that we now live in 2021 in a world where bosses don't want accountability. Where are we? Accountability. The reason the world is so tense and the reason the world is so upset is because people don't like accountability. We love to point fingers. We hate to point thumbs. You could still be right, but the act of pointing your thumb makes it better. Let me say that slowly. I take accountability for everything that's wrong in my businesses easily. It has become second nature. Logically, I often think I'm right. And Johnny and Sally are wrong.

16:19Logically. But in real truth, I am the one who hired their boss's boss. Hey everybody, 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. My biggest concern is that I know there's a lot of people here who consume my content, leave comments, DM me, engage. They talk my talk, but they don't live my talk. I get more emails from people that are the employees of people who love me and talk about me all day to tell me that Rick loves you. I have no idea what you're talking about, but Rick's completely full of shit.

17:07He talks like you talk. He repeats your shit, but he's a fucking asshole. That Rick story is super common. I know there's a ton of Ricks in this room right now. I know it more than the sun will come up tomorrow. You talk that Gary Vee you don't live that Gary V shit. And where you don't live it is not on the hustle and grind, you don't live it on the kindness and humanity. You don't live it on the empathy and about them. 100%. Fucking 100%. And I don't say that on stage to come up here and like I'm good and scolding you. I'm coming on stage saying cut that shit out, I promise you if you listen to this, it's real.

17:56It's real. The reason I pound patience down everyone's throat and everyone hates the flavor of it is because once you have a framework of patience, it eliminates so much bad behavior. Patience is important because most people can't see, like the way I set up this talk, can't see that most of the shit they do is for affirmation from other people. people can't see that most of the shit they do is to get credit from other people. Normally toxic relationships, whether parents, siblings, plus ones, or my favorite thing to hate, because I hate the word hate, but I hate this, so many of you live your life based on the comments from strangers on social media.

18:53People here don't post certain shit because they don't think it's gonna get enough likes. People post certain shit that they're not even about anymore because they think it's gonna get a bunch of likes. People are scared to make video content when they know video content works because they're scared the way they look and they don't want people to say they don't look good. The world runs on a currency of people trying to get affirmation from others. People buy shit they can't afford, do shit they don't wanna do, all to impress people they don't even like.

19:40The opportunity for you to accomplish whatever the fuck you're up to right now has never been greater than it is right now. We're, thank you. We're at full scale of web two. from TikTok to Facebook meta, from TikTok to meta, fuck, that's gonna be hard. From TikTok to meta to YouTube to podcast, you are now pretty much capable of reaching almost any person on earth if you're good enough. My favorite other non-accountable thing. My Instagram's down because meta wants me to just run ads and they're fucking with the algorithm, these fucking fuckers.

20:26My favorite part of that is not true, Rick. Here's what's actually happening. From Facebook to TikTok to Twitter to YouTube, they're just a blank supply and demand machine. They all start out the same way. How many people here by show of hands have been following me long enough that when I get crazy and got crazy on TikTok three years ago, you listened and it worked out for you? Raise your hands. Let's clap it up for them. That's awesome. So for the people that just raised their hands, for the people that just raised their hands, was that the first platform that you built a big community? Raise your hand.

21:04Perfect. So for those hands, what they realized when they went through it was, oh, what Gary's been saying consistently is right. You can start at zero when a platform has a ton of people consuming, but not a ton of people making content, and the ads haven't started yet. It's just supply and demand. There's people consuming, there's people making. The third variable that always happens is eventually that platform adds an advertising product and over time more money goes into it but there's still just one feed. It's just supply and demand. It's real estate, it's the algorithm. The algorithm isn't trying to trick you into spending ads, you're just not better than everybody else.

21:50You're not funnier. You're not better looking. You're not smarter. The algorithm is truth. Your subjective feelings are false. This is a good thing. This isn't bad. This is awesome. When you realize that's true, you realize, oh crap, there are people still exploding out of nowhere on YouTube, even though it's at scale. When you realize that, you're like, oh crap, there are people crushing on Instagram right now, even though the majority of us, me included, organic reach is down. They're innovating. They're adjusting. They go from a picture looking good with lighting to making a reels because that's how the algorithm's working.

22:32The amount of humility that I find in the business world is staggeringly low. The amount of humility that I see in the business world is staggeringly low. Why do I keep finding things like NFTs and TikTok and YouTube and Facebook and Twitter and email and.com. Why is my career my career? It's based on two things. Curiosity and humility. Do you think I had a lot of time in December and January this last year to spend on reading about something called NFTs? You think I had those 50, 60, 70 hours a week extra to keep digging in in January? I did not. What I had was curiosity and humility. curiosity because my spidey senses said there's something fucking happening and by listening and reading all your DMs and comments all that time I put in that's how I stumble on shit but way more importantly than that humility I have friends when I pinged them in January and said you need to google this shit you need to watch some of these YouTube videos you need to read about this NFT they replied with my time's too valuable yeah you know where this next line's going I am fascinated fascinated by the lack of humility to create innovation in the entrepreneur and business world people value their time and my favorite part is this has now become very clear to me the people that tend to value their time the most in my world when I really analyze it are the people whose time is the least valuable they're built on some straight facade ego they think they're somebody they're also and this is a big one most people continue to be transactional what's it for me for the 30 hours I put in this month nothing when you innovate nothing if you're gonna innovate you gotta go build some shit stay alive until everybody comes.

24:52These are the things that are running through my mind. These are the frameworks that I think about so much. This is where I'm at at this point in my career. I don't understand how people don't realize that kindness is the single strongest foundation to building a huge business.

25:17And let's have this talk. I really want to have this talk. I'm not on some ideology shit up here. I'm not on some zen, foo-foo, Buddha shit up here. I'm on some, I'm a better businessman than all of you combined shit, okay? That's where I'm at. So let there be no confusion when I talk over the next five minutes. I'm not on some like, let's zen it out, let's all be nice and kumbaya. I'm on some, I'll fucking destroy every one of you fuckers hard shit, okay?

25:53I have to say this because you have to hear me. I believe that kindness is an alpha killer business trait, not some nice additive to the way the world is today. Here's why. It's sustainable. When you're building something, How many people here are building something for themselves? Raise your hands. Higher. Higher. Thank you. There's a lot of people doing that in this room. You have to understand why kindness matters. Kindness matters because you yourself will feel better and you're the fucking engine. You have to understand why kindness matters. If you're kind to your employees, they stay longer.

26:39Continuity matters when you're building something meaningful. You have to understand why kindness matters. If you don't fuck over your vendors by not paying them or doing the right, if you do the right thing, they keep doing business with you. You gotta understand why kindness matters. Why the fuck did I buy this sneaker? Why? It does look good, but why? This. This fucking little swoosh is worth$1 trillion. This fucking little swoosh is worth$1 trillion fucking dollars. That's called brand. when you're kind and you do it for 15 years you build a reputation that reputation my friends is called brand we all of us have been taught way too long for the last hundred years about business that it's a dirty game that it's a sharp elbows game that if you're nice you'll get walked all over game it's not true.

27:43And I think it's fucking time we start talking about it. Seriously. It's not true. It's fucking not true. It's not true. And it's fucking time that we talk about it. The people that are the kindness, most honorable, when you're so good that you have no negative intent for anybody else, that you don't do wrong things, you move fast. Do you know how many of you waste unlimited amounts of energy and time being mad about some dumb shit. Do you know why I out navigate so many of my competitors? I don't waste a minute on fucking drama. People love some fucking drama. You love a good confrontation. Love it.

28:32My dad once got so, I once saw my dad, we had a beer truck delivering beer. The beer truck was leaving. it's a big truck beer truck the guy didn't have a lot of room in the parking lot he ran over a flower I saw my dad from the corner this man was so happy that he was about to get into a fight with the beer driver you would have thought he won the fucking lottery he ran so fast he is looking for it and I said dad you look for confrontation you gotta get better inside so you have peace so you don't fight. My friends if you're looking for fights you're hurt.

29:19There is no reason to be in major confrontations. The people that win in business the big game. Not some transactional small shit you think you're somebody. The big fucking game are the people that are capable about being the bigger person in every situation.

29:46Hey 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.