The Biggest Financial Opportunity for People Under 25

0:00I know I might have scared you on Halloween because we're a little late but here it is hope you enjoy it also have a TikTok live today at 1 p.m. If you want to check that out, check out my Instagram post this morning. There's a way to get a link to it. I know, Instagram to TikTok. We bounce around here. Audio, Instagram, TikTok. Audio, Instagram, TikTok. This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience. You go and speak, and you do a lot of public speaking. We were saying earlier that we're kind of similar in that realm. The other side of your life is business, running businesses, running companies, doing all of that stuff.

0:41How have you balanced the two? And what do you see as the primary difference in them? Because one is you're selling you. It's very different. And then you're selling media companies. So a couple of things. The way I balance it is first, and this is important, this may help some people that are busy, especially working parents. The real answer to your question of how I balance it is by not over judging myself and giving myself grace. When you're doing 93 things like I am, you know, when you're juggling 13 things, I don't know if you know about this, but six fall to the ground and break. I don't cry about the six plates that broke.

1:17I'm happy that I have seven plates in a world where most people have one. Oh yeah, that's smart. So first, it's a relationship with myself. I'm so entrepreneurial, I have so much stuff going on. Stuff fails. I'm not dwelling on my failures. I want to learn from them. I definitely don't want to hurt other people. Yeah. So like I'm always conscious of that. Investors, employees, that's very real to me. Yeah. So first it's that. Second, I work. Like real talk, like how do you get a lot done? Like I have 11, 12 hour days. That's real life. Yeah. You know, and that's not for a lot of people. Yeah. And I don't think you have to work that hard.

1:54I just love what I do. Yeah. You know, it's just real life for me. It's the most fun that you have. Yeah. I always tell people this. I'm like, I'm telling you, you may not believe me especially if you're not that kind of person when people tell me they get a high from running I'm like you're full of shit I'm like what are you talking about like running is the worst but it is not lost on me that there are many people that really get a tremendous joy from running I have no idea what the fuck you guys are talking about so when I say to people I like working and running my companies more than golfing and sailing and laying on the beach it's not lost on me that 90 % of the audience right now is like this guy is not telling the truth.

2:32But I know it to be true for me. You know? You enjoy. I really enjoy it. I'm very blessed. It's why I talk so much about doing what you love. Right. It's nirvana. Yeah. I would argue it's the ultimate human experience. Yeah. So, hours, judgment, and then self-awareness. I know what I'm good at. Yeah. And then I hire for what I'm not good at. When did you realize that the Gary Vee part of it was a, something you were good at? was it because you ran companies and you can deal with people? Actually, I'm gonna tell you a cool story, especially for the comedy crowd. The greatest compliment I was ever given went completely over my head.

3:10When you just said, when did you know? I knew after the fact I did something. Let me tell you the story. Okay. YouTube comes out. I was right about.com. For context, everyone, I launched an e-commerce site for my dad's liquor store in 1997 when that was like, what are you talking about? Yeah. And exploded, built a huge company for my family. For my family. I had to start my own thing later. Immigrant family businesses, you all know who. If you know, you know everyone. So I was right about the website. Then I was really one of the first significant email marketers in 1997. I was right about that.

3:41Then a website called Google came out. I don't know if you heard about it. And they had this concept of Google ads where if you searched ads with pot up, I literally did that first. Day one, the day it launched, I bought all the wine terms, it crushed. I built this huge company. Then YouTube comes along and I'm like, man, this is interesting, because I've been watching MySpace. I'm like, MySpace is doing something interesting, which is why I was an early investor in Facebook, Twitter, all those things. YouTube comes out, and I'm like, this is cool. A year earlier, I asked my developer who does the tech stuff.

4:10I'm like, can I make wine videos to review wine on our website? Because better than words would be me tasting it and telling people. He came back, he's like, no, it costs too much to host the videos. If like 50 people watch this video, it costs like$4 ,000. We'll be out of business, no way. So when YouTube comes out, Eric Castro, I always want to give him flowers. Eric Castor came to me. He's like, hey, there's this new site, YouTube. And I think you can do what you wanted a year ago, make wine videos, and we can just embed the video and we cost nothing. I'm like, nothing? That's a good price.

4:38$3.99 is always the right price. So I start this wine show, Wine Library TV, in February of 2006. I do a show every day. It's a 20 minute video. They're still up online if you want to go look at them. 20 minutes of me drinking wine, reviewing it. And I broke out because prior to that, all the wine critics, Robert Parker, the wine specter, it was all stuffy shit. You guys know the wine world. And I'm out here comparing wine to like Hulk Hogan's jockstrap and like big league chew and like very irreverent. I was 30 years old. I'm me. I'm who I am here, Jersey boy. Like I don't have that in me. Yeah.

5:12Even when I would go to - But you knew wine. But that's why I was dangerous. Yeah. All the snobby sommeliers in New York that were pissed, they knew they had a problem, which I knew what the fuck I was talking about. So they could talk about my style, but not my substance. You know, like they were stuck. I get some traction. And I make this video where I showed people how I built my palate when I was 17. Because I wanted to be in the wine business since I was 17, but my parents wouldn't let me drink. So I would read these reviews and it'd be like, boysenberry and cassis and all these words I'd never heard of.

5:45I was a Jersey boy. It was like apple, orange, strawberry. I was like, what the fuck is a gooseberry, right? Hero sandwiches. And then luckily for me, that Whole Foods started coming around in that time in Jersey. It wasn't just ShopRite and A &P anymore. And I would go there and they would have these weird fruits. So basically when I was 18, 19, 20, I would go to a Whole Foods or a Wegmans as they started to pop up in Jersey. And I would buy weird flavors of things, of the things I read in wine descriptions because I was like, well, if I'm going to have to sense what a gooseberry is in a sovignon block from New Zealand, shouldn't I know what a fucking gooseberry tastes like?

6:19Right. Anyway, I did this video on one episode where I tasted all these different things, including dirt. Like I actually ate dirt, which I think is normal, but everyone thought it was crazy. Conan O 'Brien's producers saw it and reached out to me and asked me to do the Conan show. First, I get this email, and I think it's my friends, because this is the era where me and my friends were catfishing each other 24-7, making them pretend we were like former pretty girls from high school and saying like, oh, I always liked you. It was really, this is no joke, a funny time where we were just catfishing 24-7.

6:53So I'm like, this isn't real. I wait a couple days, they reply back. I see a phone number, so I call. It's real. Brother, you don't love this. I've never done television in my life. No local television, nothing. And my first TV appearance of my life is the Conan show, and you may know this, Conan doesn't rehearse. It's all improv. So I'm literally behind this curtain, and they're like, go! I go do this wine skit where we taste four wines and the stuff, I smell his armpit, we eat dirt, we crush. It's the last segment, it's the, you know, the not famous person, the last spot. The comic spot. Conan's like, all right, everybody, we'll see you tonight.

7:28So it ends, everybody claps in the audience, and he turns to me, and you know he's like seven foot fucking nine. So he looks down at me, I'm like a midget in this video. And he's like, man, that was really good. I'm like, thank you. He goes, so where do you perform? And I go, perform what? He goes, where do you do your skits? I'm like, I'm a wine store guy. he goes get the fuck out of here your comedic time makes incredible amazing so that's when you knew that is when i knew a year and a half later once i realized how not only did i know conan was awesome but yeah i didn't i at that point even though i loved comedy like richard pryor like like like was like what i listened to my car eddie murphy like i loved stand up yeah you know like jerky boys like i loved it we're just doing jerky boys before you got here i love that is that right I was like, my glasses.

8:16Yes. I, Andrew Dice Clay, I lived through all that. Yeah. HBO, when HBO was what Netflix is now, like I lived through that. Yeah, Sam, like that stuff was, I loved it. But I didn't understand how respected and revered Conan was. Right. And I didn't understand how profound that compliment was. Right. So three years later, I kind of woke up to it. Yeah. I was like, wow, I just got lucky in the DNA game of my cadence and my timing. Right. And Jersey. And Jersey. Like, yeah, I mean, I think this goes back to what we talked about earlier. You know, when you and I were growing up, your best friends made fun of you 24-7.

8:53Constant. Constant. Constant. Like, my way of showing love is making fun of people. I literally was thinking on the way here, because you talk about not giving a shit about what people think about you, and I thought of the line, what's the difference between not giving a shit about what people think about you and being an asshole? and I was like, I could say that to Gary because I know where he came from and he'll know that I'm not calling him an asshole. Correct, and by the way, I have an answer for it. It's called intent. Yeah. When I come and do this and take time out of my day, I'm doing it for a couple of reasons.

9:28One, I respect you. Thank you. I mean it. I like what you do. Two, I'm aware there's a lot of people in this audience that may not know me because like, you know, everyone has different audiences. Yeah. What am I doing here? am I here to like peddle a book or a new movie? This is not normal stuff like the way we grew up and you go and do these. I'm here because if three people, three brother. Yeah. If three people who had never heard of me. Right. If I was the right style of love, which is Jersey love. Yeah. That got them to say, you know what? He's fucking right. Mm-hmm. And do something about it.

10:03Well, this was a good use of an hour. Does that math work? Yes. For someone who's been through a lot of marketing and DMs and stuff. If you walk away with three, that's enough. You'll love this. Listen to what I said. I'm not looking to get three fans. Right. To move three. To move three. Right. I'm going to walk away with hundreds of fans. Right. Because I'm good. Right. Right? Like, I'll get hundreds out of this. Yeah. I'll also get 25. I'm like, fuck that, dude. It was too much. And I get that. I'm not confused by what my energy is. but it's not about how many I get it's not by how many I lose I know that for some reason the way I communicate what I talk about what I observe I have 15 years of track record now to know I'm going to change move, adjust three people and is it worth it of course one person and has that changed through the years no because before you're building companies you're doing this stuff now that you've been successful No.

11:05Is there Move People? I was successful because Move People was the real game I've always was playing. Really? Yeah. Really, real talk. Starting the wine? Yeah, like, think about my life. I built a huge company for my dad, I left with nothing. I started my next company in a conference room because I had no money. Because I spent all, I literally worked 100 hours a week in a liquor store for a decade just to build a business for my dad. It was immigrant shit. Yeah. And by the way, did I leave with some resentment? Of course, I'm a grown man. Like, I was 32, I was like, fuck, I have nothing. Right.

11:34I started a new company. You literally, just to be clear for you, for our listeners, you built that, you took a liquor store and built this into a$60 million a year business. That's right. Not$60 million valuation, revenue. Right. And then you. It wasn't my business. It was for your parents and you left with your, you're back to zero. Zero. Like when I started VaynerMedia, which is now a$400 million a year business, we started it at a Buddy Media's conference room in Columbus Circle because I couldn't afford rent. even though I had just built this huge business. I didn't build Wine Library for my money and my bankroll.

12:09I built it as the great thank you to having the best parents in the world. That's how I thought about it. Now, at the tail end, why I left was I was starting to build resentment towards my father. That's real talk. I didn't want to feel that way, but now it was getting older. I was about to start my own family. I went to the bank because I wanted an apartment for me and my wife at the time. And they were like, you can't get an apartment. You're worthless. But I'm like, yeah, but I built Wine Library. and they're like, that's cute, that's your dad's. And it kind of was like the first time that I had to wake up and be like, because I was, I would use the word obsessed.

12:40I was obsessed with building something big for them because to this day at 49 years old, it is the thing I'm most grateful for. Like my mom did it, bro. Like she did it. Like again, I think I'll tell you what, back to what I just said earlier, one of the other reasons I'm here for this hour is out of guilt. 99 % of the people listening to this podcast did not have the mother I had. Out of gratitude, 99 % of the people did not have it. And I feel like I'm just a messenger of what she did well. My mom lost her mom at five. Wow. I think about her all the time. I'm like, how did this woman become the greatest mom of all time without even having an example?

13:20That's insane. You know? So I'm very good in my gratitude. Yes, sir. I have a question for you that you just touched on a little bit. And it was from one of my producers. you hear a lot, you're very good about sparking people and getting them kind of out of their rut and make them at least think about what they're going to do and how they're going to go. And her question was, you hear a lot about start a business, do a thing, do a thing. She goes, how do you start this business and do these things when it's just you and you have no money to hire people to work with you? Social media. It's the greatest, it's so funny where social is now.

14:02it's in such a bad place as a brand because of the political unrest it's confused people that it's the greatest opportunity to humans ever brother literally let's use an example I know of which is similar to this bread thing god I don't want to get this wrong there's a woman that I just came across is it bread or is my brain just breaking because you've got bread in front of me there's a woman is it cookies I don't want to make this up there's a woman I recently come across who either sells bread, cookies, pickles, and cupcakes. I just can't remember. I apologize, audience. But she literally is good at it.

14:42She saw my content. She said, fuck it, I'll just start posting about it. And long story short, just by posting on Instagram and TikTok, two years later, she makes$750 ,000 a year take home baking her fucking thing and shipping it to people around the country. and she's a pig and shit happy and it's changed her life. She is not the enigma. She is the preview of what everything is going to happen. I've been thinking about writing a new book called The Individual Empire. Right. I like the title. You like it? Yeah. I like it too. Yeah. Thank you. That was positive reinforcement. Thank you. The concept of the book is we are in a place now between social, live shopping, YouTube, streaming, Twitch and Kick and all that.

15:31I'm sure you see the Young Comics and all that. Drewski, right? The blockchain, which people still don't understand. The NFT is Bitcoin. But I do. All these different pieces. We are dangerously close to where everybody in a decade can make a living around things that they love, are interested in, talking about Star Trek, talking about old video games, talking about rock bands of the 70s. and being able to sell merch, being able to get brand sponsorship, and you are one TikTok post away from your life changing, and that is happening at scale to people every day, brother. Right. Right? Yeah, yeah.

16:13Look at the SNL crew. Marcelo, this new kid, Patterson, who's just joined. Yeah. Like, they're all growing up from social content. Right, yeah. You had to fucking work it. You had to go into, like, there are people whose lives changed from one silly video. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, didn't have to go to a club, didn't have to get hired by anybody, no gatekeepers. Nobody had that part, brother. You get it. This is the part that's lost. People don't get it. There used to be gatekeepers. You're good enough to be on TV. You're good enough to be on this stage. Now it's just you and the market. That's right.

16:48So, I don't know. I think we're living in the greatest era of opportunity. So the answer is, how do you do it? It's social media. I think it starts with passion. I don't think you can work the 10 hours a day or while you have a full-time job, when you get home after a long day, how are you possibly gonna muster up the energy from 7 p.m. to midnight to work on something unless whatever you're doing is something you like? So like if you like, I'll just gonna keep going with what I know to be true, which I think may spark some ideas for people. Puzzles. You know what I'm talking about, brother? Puzzles.

17:19Jigsaw puzzles. Yeah. There's people like doing those. Yeah. filming yourself putting together a jigsaw puzzle if that's actually what you want to do over a beer and watching love island in the background yeah filming yourself and posting clips of that on tiktok genuinely actually if you got a little something if you've got consistency and perseverance if you learn a little something yeah literally leads to if you do it consistently for two years leads to you being on the other side at bare minimum brother getting five thousand dollars a year in brand deals from jigsaw puzzle companies, that gives you$5 ,000 more than you had before.

17:59Right, yeah. That's worst case if you're consistent for two years. Yeah. Best case, you quit your job you hate and you are Jigsaw Jane and you make$180 ,000 a year for Jigsaw Jane t-shirts, $50 ,000 in brand deals from the five biggest jigsaw companies, a$10 ,000 appearance at Jigsaw Con. Right. This is real. yeah and I know you know what's funny I was saying this shit in 08 09 010 and people laughed at me all of you know what I just said is real right it's real is it getting is it getting more crowded to the point where it's not even the opportunity is even bigger than it was bigger than now yes you know what everybody this is so funny this is the greatest opportunity in human history and what do humans do they're like Gary but there's everybody else is doing it too I'm like no shit Sherlock.

18:50But that's why this is an opportunity. And that's why I noticed the examples I gave. Jigsaw. You gotta go nicher and nicher. Jigsaw and a beer where you like, notice what I'm about to do. You both like the new Jigsaw, but you're also a micro-brew connoisseur and you know micro-brews. So now what's your point of differentiation? You're doing the Jigsaw, you're making your content, but you're also real quick, let me tell you about this rogue IPA, and all of a sudden it's the beer part that took off and that's where you're making your money, not the jigsaw or both, or you're the only beer jigsaw person.

19:25Your niche is you. Right. Like I'm a Jets fan, root beer, garage sale, like all the things you know. Yeah. There's other people that talk about business and opportunity and social media and motivation and practical. But the more you give the world every little nuance of you, the more likely you have a point of differentiation. What's cool about it is that it's, everything you've said today It comes from a passion and a love. It all comes from whether you're dealing with kids or whether you're dealing with building these companies or dealing with your parents or all of these things. They're not fake things.

20:00They're not looking at the market and saying, what would possibly make a lot of money that I can kind of exploit and then show up and try and sell something that you're not into? That's right, or sell something that I think people are buying. People chased crypto. People chased real estate. People chased cannabis. people chasing AI right now. They're not passionate about those things. They think the money's there. Right, right. And I just, I don't know, maybe this is why I was an F student. Like I was a real bad student. Yeah. Like real bad. Yeah, like two, my class rank was 243 out of 251. There was like eight people worse than me at North Hunterdon High School in New Jersey.

20:38I just don't know how to do things if I don't like them. And so like I failed school my whole life. I literally can't hang a picture on the wall. Right. But I can build empires. Yeah. And I think, I believe that's true for everyone. Meaning, not everyone is a good entrepreneur and a good business person. I get that. Yeah. But if you understand what you're good at. Yeah. Or what, more importantly, more importantly, what you like, and then please, hopefully, you're good at it, because then it's instant. Or if not, you can get good at it. Right. I think there's something there. we do a thing on this program called an uncomfortable moment where we take a look at some stuff that maybe makes our guests a little uncomfortable but maybe not let's do it as a fellow Jersey kid we took a look at what your life would have been if you had different parents and you were just a lazy Gary Gary TV Gary TV listen honestly I look at that and you just showed me a picture of why I'm so grateful for my parents first of all did you guys like photoshop my arms they look very thin there I'm a little bit concerned about that this was before you started working out more fair enough that might be true number two yeah man listen I'm very grateful that I was born with little, grew up with little.

22:10I learned, you know, I always say this thing, brother, it's hard to be hungry when you're fed. I'm empathetic to kids that have their parents do everything for them. It's hard to be hungry. Like, how on earth? You know? Like, do I have, listen, and you can't overcorrect the other way. I mean, I was literal child labor. I started working at my dad's store at 14. Like, do I think my dad, my mom and dad, if they were sitting here, would say, we love our son, he's the best, thank God he talks about us this way, but if we could do it again, we wouldn't have made him work 10 hours a day when he was 14.

22:40You know, but at the time we were so... Yeah, you're not thinking. You're immigrant life. Yeah. You're fucking just trying to get by. Exactly. You're not thinking about... My first car I bought at a garage sale for 550 bucks. This is like not like, you know? Yeah, yeah. No, there's that thing of that we overanalyze in every aspect, adults, kids, all of it. And it's a luxury to be able to sit back and be like, how am I feeling? Yeah, it is a luxury. What am I like today? Instead of just hustling and getting up and having to go do something. And I will say this, it's purple. It's not red or blue.

23:12I think I said it earlier, and I hope everyone heard it. I like that we're talking about these things. There's a lot of people, when you and I were kids, everybody who was an alcoholic father, it wasn't talked about. Right. You know, there was fathers in our neighborhood would like slap their wives. That wasn't good. Yeah. There's many things that are better now. Yeah. You know, like, macho men wouldn't talk about feelings, and that led to suicide. You know why suicide is also up? We now call it suicide. Before, it was like, oh, dad slipped in the kitchen and died. Like, we hid things. The world is true.

23:46The reason we know about stuff now is, like, people did all these things before. They weren't reported. He had a heart attack. No, he didn't. He hung himself. Like, I grew up in this environment. Right. That's not what happened. Yeah. We didn't report it the same way. And why did that happen? Because that macho guy couldn't talk about his feelings. He held it in so much and he cracked. So I don't think like, it's not one or the other, but using political terms, we need to become purple as humans. Yeah, right. This all blue and all red thing is fucked up. And they're both out of their goddamn minds.

24:24Completely out of their minds. Yeah, no, it doesn't work. Completely out of their minds. And like, I don't think hate or canceling or judgment or looking down on people is gonna motivate people. This is about the opportunity. And let me say it nice and slow. If you have the luxury of even hearing us talk right now, that means you are listening to a podcast on an$800 phone. Right. $300 AirPods. I'm on the board of, I have a very big event here in a couple weeks in New York. I'm on the board of an organization called Pencils of Promise. We build schools in third world countries where if you do not build a school, the way the kids in the neighborhood get educated is some 80 year old has one book and reads it over and over.

25:06I'm on another board called Charity Water. 800 million people do not have access to clean water. It means that within an eight hour window they cannot get to clean water. 800 million people on earth. That is 10 % of our society. Jeez. I don't know what to say to everybody who's listening other than you have life by the balls. You are lucky. You don't think so because CNN, Fox, your parents, your neighbors, and everybody else has told you everything sucks. The truth is everything does not suck. You've decided to succumb to it. And there's humans like me and there's plenty of other people on social, not on mainstream media.