The Future of Marketing, Regret, and Human Truth | GaryVee Fireside Chat

0:00Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Gary Vee Audio Experience. Today's episode is from a private talk that Gary recently gave to a small group of employees. This one's got everything. Philosophy, marketing strategy, personal storytelling, and most of all, a message that hits home about regret, judgment, and what really matters. If you're a parent, a manager, or just trying to grow, this is a powerful listen. Let's dive right in. I think what I want to first talk about, and I think I'll yap a little bit, but then I think Q &A would be great. I think the first topic I would like to talk about is, this is a mix professionally and personally.

0:38Yesterday at dinner and you brought it up in the circle, I really genuinely do believe 99 % of things don't mean anything. And I really believe that that's the fundamental difference between somebody that builds something meaningful versus not. You know, we talked a lot about time. I know the 15-minute meeting thing got brought up, but like ultimately like if you're spending your time on things that don't matter that's a problem and I think I'm going to take it this morning more from a place of life before business I really think from a parenting lens or from you know if you're fortunate enough to still have a parent or both parents I think people just aren't thoughtful with you know what they do and more importantly that it's not even about like getting meaningful time with your parents while they're still alive or your kids before they go to school i actually think about it more from the lens of like your personal selfish day-to-day happiness i think that we have an incredible capacity to be worried about dumb shit i i've most watched it in what goes on in society about how people dwell on whatever the fear that politicians and mainstream media have decided to scare us with today and you know i would i i think you know it's a pretty interesting year in my life i turned 50 at the end of the show which is like a real fucking number you know like like it's like really funny because you know you kind of trick yourself that 40s okay when you're 40 you're like wait that's still kind of like 30 but 50s kind of like i like i'm like i don't know how to get around this.

2:17I'm like, am I allowed to still wear hats? Like, you know, like, like it's, it's like a real thing. And honestly, I go into, it's in November and I go into going into that moment with the heavy gratitude, you know, like just, I look, I'm like any other human and I have plenty of adversities and challenges and shortcomings and, but I'm just so grateful how I see life. like there's really no changing that and what I've what I mean by that is that was God gifted and then just pure luck of who ended up being my parent and where I ended up growing up and the timing of how I grew up and just all these things lined up in a way where when I wake up like I did this morning and there's challenges at work in Asia or London or something else the speed in which I go from being concerned about it or upset or worried to it doesn't matter is very fast and I mean minutes not weeks or months or days and through my life whether it's my siblings or my partners or my business partners or my employees or my community that follows my content what has been interesting is how driven i am by the mix between gratitude and guilt i would say that i have it this good it's not lost on me you know when i get accolades it's i love it because i think it's accolades for my parents it's not for me.

4:02When they're like, when you're like, you're amazing, I'm like, they're amazing. You know? Truly, I'm the byproduct. I have pride in VaynerX. Like, that's, you know, I feel like I'm involved there, but me? Like, what I get flowers for, what I get put on a pedestal for, I'm the product. And, it's, it's a really interesting way to think about it, because it's uncomfortably true. And, And you're the byproduct of your parents and your environment and all these variables. It allows you to be in a really interesting place of like middle. As I started a journey 15 years ago about becoming a public figure, judgment became at scale.

4:48It no longer became the judgment of my peers or my friends or my family. It became global. Long before we talked about any of the things that happened with being public figures on normal people becoming public figures you know people were born and they're five years old they're like I'm going to be an actor I'm going to be a comedian I'm going to be an athlete and they think about being a public figure I was 34 years old before I made a video that anybody even cared about didn't even cross my mind I was grown I was I wanted to be a businessman I was living that life as that started to happen an interesting thing happened I realized how much all these things mattered because much like a lot of you worrying about what does the phone mean for your child or all this stuff or for some of you like what's it going to mean if I start building my personal brand to elevate my career all of that is about your concern about judgment period nothing else zero nothing else I always I think about this concept of like how would everybody live if they were the only person on earth right if there was no opportunity for anyone else to judge how would they navigate how would they roll you know obviously notwithstanding there was no one else to interact with like more from the perspective like how would they see it how would they think about it what's powerful about that is when you can't hear them it comes in two forms one the form that most people think about which is if you really don't matter if you really don't care about someone else's judgment you can navigate the judgment right what everybody talks about like so many people don't post on social which is truly the great opportunity for business and people that has ever happened mass distribution for free we're all marketers when can you when have you ever been able to get mass awareness for free even pr that would get you earned earned is paid for right so when could a girl in connecticut make one video dancing and five years later her family's got 50 million dollars in the bank that doesn't that that didn't happen any other time in the history of life so we live in this time of huge opportunity we talked about like i think constantly about what happens when the phone is not the primary device of our society much of what we with marketing was based on, I believe that we're still marketing as if the television is the primary device of our society.

7:18When distribution changes, everything changes. There is a substantial chance that Meta pulls this off based on my subjective opinion. If not them, everybody, if I'm aware of what it is, that means there are hundreds of thousands of executives and the biggest companies in the world aware that Meta is doing this and trying their own versions. everybody is attacking the iPhone to change the distribution. When that happens, when glasses in six years are primary, I don't, what happens? What happens to social networks in that environment? Famously, our industry changed from a digital marketing standpoint.

7:57I know some of you came up this rack when iOS 14.5 changed its decision. This was one of the great moments of my career. I did grow up knowing Mark I did buy my Facebook stock from Mark's parents in 2007 I did speak with him 50 times before the movie came out because he was worried about the impact on the business not on himself and my biggest debate with him in 2008, 9, 10, 11, 12 was that he needed to own the hardware and we had a great debate and the day that iOS 14.5 was announced I didn't talk to him in four years and he texted me a smiley face. It was one of the coolest moments of my career because to win a debate with that guy is a lot of fun for someone like me.

8:44And what I love about him, and Mona will tell you, Ryan will tell you, like in his most down, like everyone hates him. I'm like, people don't know him. He may not be good at PRing himself, but this is not the narrative. It's not this. And he, like anybody else, has his shortcomings and obviously what he has to navigate now and like I'm watching it all but the punchline is from a business lens, that is a gangster. And if he pulls this off, which I actually think he will, or there'll be fast followers who make a better version than him and then you know how that all works and we decide to use the Samsung glasses because they did something different which is always in play, then this all goes away.

9:27The free distribution, the organic to earn to pay goes away potentially because now meta has the control of deciding what it wants i have a funny feeling with meta in that environment they have a horizontal and vertical integration play all of a sudden what does that mean for tiktok sitting in that glasses are they even allowed to be in those glasses what do they have to pay as a big in those glasses do they have to share that data so i think about these things and and let me bring it all the way back because i veered off over here on the tech part of it all. The thing I want to most talk about this morning is regret.

10:08I believe that life is very simple. That if you are fortunate enough to be grateful for the days that you wake up, that the people that you love the most are alive, and you actually see the world from that lens, truly actually. not like saying it in a talk like this or saying it once in a while, but truly, I'm gonna be very, it's interesting, I didn't really realize this. I've been thinking about this a lot. I went on spring break to my parents in Miami and we talked about this. I hadn't talked about it with my mom in a long time. From basically seven to 14, Mona remembers all her dreams. like every day which is like super interesting and and I I don't um but from seven to 14 I probably 50 times a year had a recurring nightmare it was I would argue that between first and seventh grade besides falling in love with the New York Jets and trying to like become a businessman and sell baseball cards the biggest conversation I had in my life with myself and often with my mom was the fear of one of my parents dying.

11:32And I don't, I did not realize how foundational this has been to my life. So my mom lost her mom at five and my dad lost his dad at 15. And I was raised, you know, I was a first generation, I was born in the old country. My siblings were born here. So when we came here, when my sister was like three or four, my mom, my mom, and I told some of you at dinner, I'm writing a book called Perfectly Parented. perfectly parented. It's a book about modern parenting. And I genuinely feel that way about my mother, truly. But I'm not naive to some of the missteps she did. The punchline of the book is, you as a child, when do you become accountable?

12:15Like, when do we all stop blaming our parents in this room? Like, what's the right age? Is it 18? Is it 22? Is it 30? Like, when do you recognize that and start working on yourself and you're capable of that. So I'm excited about it. I've been talking about it for six, seven years.

12:33But starting at five years old, my mom would tell me all the time, if something happens to me and your dad, you have to take care of your sister. And like, for real. It was so ingrained in me. And so what started in hindsight as a challenge ended up being my greatest strength. living that childhood in hindsight wasn't super fun you're scared but by the time I remember it like yesterday on my 18th birthday and this goes back to living it for real this morning for real I grabbed my phone as soon as I woke up and the fact that there wasn't 74 missed calls from my sister or brother I take note of that truly actually and I thank God

13:25my curse became my gift i didn't realize it was a curse when i was a kid but that fear crippling fear i'm gonna pay you a very vivid picture when i was 15 my mom went to the store i watched my brother and sister she was minimally an hour late from the normal go to shop right and buy things I took my siblings outside on a porch and made them pray. Because I thought my mom was dead. Car accident, no cell phone. Like, this was just the framework of my life. By the time I became 18, though, it turned into my gift. On my actual 18th birthday, which is like a pretty big birthday, as you all know, I just remember thinking, I made it.

14:16like I got to 18 they didn't die

14:22if you can simplify your life and care about very little everything gets really good the only other thing that I see is a real curveball for people as they get older, besides the health of their family and caring about that, if they can get there, is regret. And that's the part of the con I want to have now. This is why I brought up yesterday a little bit of like, have you ever missed something? Or this and that. Like, how do we look at, and what do we define as regret? I think that most people operate from a place of fear. that most of the way we think about stuff is what will go wrong and what if i think the number one thing professionally to bring it down a level but also personally that everybody here should be thinking about is how to mitigate risk excuse me mitigate regret like if you asked me the the other thing that was very interesting about my life just to bounce back before i finish that thought was as a five and six year old when i would go outside we immigrated to queens when we first came to america and we lived in a studio apartment with six or seven family members depending on how it was flowing so as you can imagine as soon as i woke up my mom took me outside and we stayed out there as long as possible you know just like that not a lot of room and a story that when I was like 10, 11, 15 that I always like remembered was my mom would just always tell a story how interesting it was that as like a four-year-old boy, I would go outside and we would go towards a park but instead of going to the park and playing with the other kids, I would always take a hard right and go sit with like the old 85-year-old Russian dudes and like kick it.

16:18Be like, yo, Vladimir, what's good? You know, like, and she would always tell that story and then, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago only I was like oh shit like wisdom's weird like like old souls are real like the fuck am I going and hanging with these nine and I would and I remember that I don't really remember I remember the stories when I was 10 11 12 what I but I think the stories were told because when we moved to Edison New Jersey and I grew up there every time somebody's grandparents would come to visit for the summer for a week and go watch us play basketball or hang out i would always roll up on them and be like tell me where where were you when jfk got assassinated like what about nasa like what about the vietnam war what about this what about that and it just dawned on me like what my framework was so as i turned 50 and as i watch like how i've lived my life and i've watched the collateral impact on the conversation with the people around me and more importantly taking myself out of the equation when I watch and observe others who either both are really winning emotionally or losing emotionally it all comes down to dramatically simplifying getting into a place where you leave here there's a lot of things you leave here with management and this that but when I thought when I talk I'm always like what value am I bringing like why should they listen what what what are we doing here in this hour and it puts me in a very strong mindset of like I've got to leave something of value what can I say what can I say what can I bring up that actually allows someone to leave the biggest thing that I can talk about to leave a value is that you would be flabbergasted about how much shit you care about that does not matter it's really uh unfortunate i wish this had happened last tuesday i was supposed to go to new jersey to a retirement home cbs morning's doing like a big piece on me and it's about this that i basically believe one of the great things anybody in the world can do for themselves is to donate their time to a retirement home for one day to leave karma and good in the world because boy are those people lonely but more importantly for you to look at what regret looks like in its face from someone who's not your grandparent you talk to a 90 year old and you really talk to a 90 year old you will realize what life's actually about they lived it they played it we talk about experience I'm sure all of us have pride and like we have some experience now and the value of that so regret and simplicity i really think about that i think the choices you make in life are super important and i think that eliminating fear and getting into a place of like just really understanding and just really playing out scenarios over and over in your head of like i just really enjoy worst case scenario planning obviously i've spent my whole life making pretend my parents were dead you know like like i like playing that out because i think it makes you less scared i say it all the time at like work i'm like like when i'm interacting one on one sometimes i'll tell an employee where i can just see there i'm like what do you like what if i fire you right now what's gonna happen like what like just like there's a i'll give you i'm gonna keep building on this and then we'll just all talk.

20:00There's a really interesting partner energy that comes along with this. It's called humility. So the thing that fascinates me about people that have accomplished something in their careers around fear of losing job is how many don't realize that if they had a relationship with humility, they would not be scared. If you had the ability to think that if God forbid, the economy keeps collapsing and both you and your spouse who are working, both lose their job. If you had in your mind that that's okay if you happen to own your own home, that you said in your mind, okay, so we both lose our job. Neither one of us can get a job for 18 months.

20:42We can sell our home and live in a shittier home or rent an apartment. If you went there, if you actually believed that, you wouldn't be scared. So many people are like, oh, I just have to spend another six months building up some cash before I take a risk. Or you realize that you buy a lot of dumb shit every day and that you have a relationship with certain things in your life that are unhealthy. There's so many people that make under$100 ,000 a year that buy$7 coffees, that take unlimited Uber, that order seamless, that are signed up for 11 fucking streaming services. have a gym membership that they never use, like just really a relationship with like worst case scenario planning and if it happens, like I have a lot of optionalities to get tighter.

21:37I think about that stuff so much. And fortunately, you know, actually I was about to say fortunately this group, but it's funny, most of my friends were like acquaintances or business associates. I'm blown away by how many people make$400 ,000 a year or more and have no savings. We've become remarkable at spending every dollar. Like, it's just so fascinating. I mean, kids now, it's a big topic I talk about. Some of you on this side. Soon, some of you, or maybe now, some of you have kids that are about to be 18 or 22. We are the generation that grew up where if we needed a little help early in our 20s to get an apartment or if we got married, our parents would lend us money and we would have to pay them back.

22:30That is gone. The amount of 20 to 30 year olds that are fully on the payroll in society right now is staggering. And then people are like, why are they depressed? They're depressed because their parents, through action, have told them, you're such a fucking loser that I have to pay for your existence.

22:55there is nothing that I would wish more than if every single human understood that if you have a child who's over 22 years old if you give them one dollar you are building a devastating framework for your family

23:12so these are things that I think about and I think a lot of it really shows up in the let me bring it way way down to work for work this framework of perspective shows up in the most interesting way if you are not carrying fear and emotional baggage you go fast one thing I can promise you as you're navigating right now professionally business is like sports which is why so many people like it it's one of the few places left sports is the only place in society where merit is left merit. Either win or lose. Right? Like if we did this that we could be out. If it wasn't negative 18 degrees outside and we could do sporty activities.

24:00If we all just played one-on-one basketball tournaments to the end and every time you lose you're out and we did a tournament just like March Madness somebody would be the end winner and they would be the winner. That would be it. There'd be no debate. They won. In our corporations there's a lot A lot of things that are merit, sales. Why do you think I'm so in love with current state of social? Pure merit. You get views, can't use your media, can't do this, can't use your this is on brand, subjective. It's fucking merit and I love it. But as we also know there's a lot of things that are not merit about our workplaces.

24:39Humans make subjective calls on who gets promoted, who doesn't. I'm literally this morning looking at the May promotion and raise cycle at VaynerX and I'm looking at it and I can see through some of the decisions of like who made the political subjective decision to put someone on because they're personal friends outside of work. Right? Those things. But merit is an incredible thing and like sports, in business, one of the biggest variables to grow is speed. Speed. And there's two ways to address speed. One, we talked about the 15-minute meetings, all that stuff. But two is if you're not spending time politicking, you're actually spending time on the business.

25:28If you don't have to think how to sell the person above you or how to convince the person parallel to you to get on board, well, then you're actually running the business, right? And so I think the more you can control, you know, back to this, the more you can control what you can control. Right? What we talked about, you can't control the person that's co-leading something with you or your contemporary. You can't control if your boss is gonna be on board or not on board. But you can control you. The more people realize that, the happier they become and the more effective they become. And so if you leave here with anything leave with the fact that me included, we all have a lot more work to do to get our life more simple.

26:23Way more simple. I love capitalism in a lot of ways, especially because I was born in communism. But we now live in an era where capitalism has gotten so far that we are in full pledge materialism. Most human beings are deeply unhappy because they are completely and utterly focused on getting things that mean nothing.

26:48and a lot of times that's one thing that's going on in my company right now because that really pissed me off last week is that a couple people that have been in the company for six or seven years are upset that back in January or last August some people got a title promotion and they feel like those people are their contemporaries and they want that promotion now I understand the concept of having a more senior title to leverage it for you know maybe an outside job but even titles are collecting things you know especially when people are asking for titles with no compensation associated with it that's insecurity you know especially when that human was told by me that if you ever left and you wanted to leverage a higher title to get another job that I would give that to you now what are we talking about these things that I think about.

27:44The more you can simplify your life, the more you can actually focus on what fucking matters. And most of all, because those sometimes are hard to see, the more you can not make a single, I do not make a single decision that isn't through the frame of any meaning, of any meaning that isn't through the frame of what will I think about this when I'm 85? Will 85-year-old Gary think about this? That's it. And I ask you to take in what we talked about this morning and see if it brings you any value because I think it's an incredibly important conversation. Thank you.