In short
The GaryVee Audio Experience: Episode Summary
Podcast Information
- Podcast Title: The GaryVee Audio Experience
- Host: Gary Vaynerchuk
- Episode Title: The Marketing Unlock That Actually Works in 2025 | GaryVee Elevate Event Throwback Q&A
- Recorded: 2017 at the Elevate Conference, Copenhagen, Denmark
- Relevance: Content remains pertinent in 2025
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Episode Overview In this episode, Gary Vaynerchuk revisits a keynote and Q&A session from the Elevate 2017 Conference. He discusses crucial marketing principles that have evolved but remain highly relevant, emphasizing the importance of attention in the digital age.
Key Theme:
- The necessity of empathy in marketing and understanding customer perspectives.
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Key Concepts and Discussions
- Empathy in Marketing
- Core Idea: Many marketers focus on their needs rather than understanding the customer’s needs.
- Gary’s Advice:
- Be consumer-centric.
- Formulate marketing strategies based on what customers want instead of what brands want them to do.
- Underpriced Attention
- Gary emphasizes the importance of leveraging platforms like Facebook, which he views as providing “underpriced attention.”
- Implementation: Marketers should become proficient in various content formats (pictures, writing, audio, video).
- Building a Personal Brand
- Discussion Point: The balance between being out there and not overwhelming potential customers.
- Gary’s Position:
- Personal branding can be powerful but is not mandatory for everyone.
- Success is dependent on individual comfort and effectiveness in self-promotion.
- Humility and Education
- Advice for Innovators: When marketing a service that is not widely recognized, humility is essential.
- Action Steps:
- Embrace continuous learning and adapt based on marketplace feedback.
- Focus on educating the audience about what you offer.
- Time Allocation for Entrepreneurs
- Question: How much time should be dedicated to marketing versus other business functions?
- Gary’s Insight:
- Marketing should be a constant focus, integrated into all aspects of running a business.
- Content Creation and Distribution
- Discussed the necessity of creating both educational and entertaining content.
- Recommendation: Utilize multiple platforms to ensure content reaches audiences effectively.
Key Takeaways
- Empathy is Crucial: Understanding and addressing customer needs leads to effective marketing.
- Attention is an Asset: Utilize underpriced attention channels for better engagement.
- Personal Branding has Value: While not essential, a strong personal brand can open doors to opportunities.
- Persistence is Key: The journey of marketing often requires patience and continuous effort.
- Adaptability is Essential: Stay flexible and respond to changes in consumer behavior and market trends.
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Audience Q&A Highlights
Common Questions Addressed
- Marketing Strategies for Reluctant Brands:
- Gary advises focusing on the message and the medium that aligns with the brand’s comfort level.
- Educating Consumers about New Services:
- Emphasize storytelling and clarity in communication to facilitate understanding.
- Balancing Content Creation:
- Create a mix of value-driven and entertaining content, and don't hesitate to utilize influencers to broaden reach.
- Investment in Personal Branding:
- Gary encourages building a personal brand as it could yield long-term business opportunities.
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Conclusion This episode of The GaryVee Audio Experience serves as a timeless reminder that effective marketing hinges on understanding and addressing the needs of customers through empathy, strong personal branding, and strategic content creation. As entrepreneurs navigate the challenges of building their brands, these principles provide a solid foundation for growth and success in an ever-evolving marketplace.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Gary V Audio Experience. On today's episode, we're sharing Gary's keynote that he gave at the Elevate conference in Copenhagen back in 2017. Gary dives right into a Q &A with this one and touches on some really important questions like why you should have a personal brand, why it's so important to have empathy in the workplace, and so much more. Let's get right into it. Hello, Gary. How are you? I have been so excited being here. So I would really like to ask you, what is your number one marketing advice? And I'm thinking about online marketing.
0:34So whether it's online or offline, Marta, I would tell you that the thing that has been most interesting to me coming from entrepreneurship or liquor store retail or the really entrepreneurial Silicon Valley startup world to now being in the last seven years spending a lot of times with the biggest brands in the world, global brands. I'm stunned that people are not consumer-centric. I would tell you my number one marketing advice is to be empathetic. Everybody's so selfish when they market. They want the customer to do what they want them to do instead of the way I think about it, which is more counter-punching, which is listen to what your customer's doing that you're trying to sell and market to and formulate a marketing strategy around that.
1:27And so for me, the reason I today push Facebook so much is because at scale, whether in B2B or B2C, Facebook is underpriced attention that the masses are paying attention to. And if you become an amazing practitioner in the pictures, written words, audio, and video of that medium, you win. So when people watch television or listen to radio or read magazines, then you need to be good at that craft, My number one marketing advice is empathy and then skill set around once you realize where they are. And to me, in November 2017, that is to become the disproportionate best Facebook marketer that you could be.
2:13Thank you.
2:19Now, Helle-Marie Potrop. Where are you? Do we have Helle? Yeah, I'm here. How are you? Hi, Gary. How are you? Good to see you today. Great to see you. So I am actually in the Facebook marketing business, and sometimes my clients, they say something around they don't want to market themselves too much. But sometimes people have this feeling that they don't want to be too much in other people's face. Yes. Do you have advice for that situation? I would tell you that you should not convince them of that. because I'm so out there people are always like okay should I build a personal brand for my business should I be in their feed five times a day every day I think the answer is not necessarily right I think to me I think it's reverse engineering the individual now if your business is selling yourself as a fitness instructor or a lawyer or a financial investor or a real estate agent you're going to want to be out there right, and if the question is more about the difference between alpha American DNA where you're out in front and other parts of the world where people are more reserved, you know, at some level it's very difficult to make somebody do something they're not comfortable with, they'll never be good at it.
3:34I want to remind everybody, some of the biggest companies in the world, you don't even know the name of the CEO, let alone what she or he looks like. So just because there's certain people taking advantage and others of the opportunity of building personal brand as a branding mechanism to build their business, it doesn't mean it's the only way to do it. And so I never try to convince people to build their personal brand or be out there more. I remind them that if they're good at it and enjoy it, it's an incredibly owned and controllable IP that is unbelievably scalable. but I would tell you that I don't think this is a one size fits all situation in environment and so I'm not overly passionate that everybody needs to build their personal brand but there is significant upside if you can.
4:29Cool.
4:36Ritvars. Thank you so much for the enormous amount of content that you provide the regular people with. That's quite surprising. Thank you. And I have a question for you. How do you start to market a service that people currently don't see as something that they would benefit from? First, you have to really wrap your hand around humility. My entire career has been around this question. When I first got into the wine business, I tried to make Americans drink Spanish wines, New Zealand wines, wines from obscure places in France like the Mataron and Languedoc. And because I saw that being my opportunity, I felt that I was a disproportionately good marketer and storyteller, that there was more arbitrage in me bringing these brands and these regions to the surface.
5:27As you can imagine, when I started talking about social media in 2007 and eight and nine, as a lot of you know, most companies still don't believe that social media is ROI positive. That is nine years later. And so the first thing I would tell you is too many people get frustrated when they're going into this kind of world. If the market doesn't perceive the value of it, that means that you're making a bet that it's true and that over the next 24 to 48 months they will because if it's longer than that, you'll be out of business by the time you were proven to be right. You know, it's not fun to be right and not get the benefits of being right because you were so dramatically early.
6:07Like, cool, I understand that you know that VR is gonna happen and virtual reality's gonna happen. The problem is it's gonna take 20 years before it's at the scale that may benefit for the way that people are building their businesses today. So I would first say humility and then you need to go on a hardcore education pounding. How many people here have been following my content for more than five years? Raise your hands. So these 12, 15 people, I've been saying the same fucking shit for a decade. Every day, for free, at scale, more than any goddamn human being on the mobile device. And I still have to do it every day, all day, to everybody.
6:47And so it's enormous patience and empathy and make sure that your timing isn't too far ahead. And then finally, just continuously looking for underpriced attention because you won't be able to afford to tell your story and overpriced attention for too long if you're selling something people aren't ready for, and then you've got to really pound the value prop, right? I'm not into social media because I like technology and gadgets, and I'm a technologist, and I think it's fun or cool. I'm in it because I think attention is the number one asset if you want to build a business, and I look for where it's underpriced and overpriced, and when I speak to it, I speak it in business terms, which eventually get people to understand it in business terms, not because of the altruistic it's nice to reply to somebody on Twitter.
7:34And so I would make sure that you're speaking the language of the individuals that you're trying to convert and that's the framework you have to live in. And this model has the most upside but also has the most graveyards. Okay, thank you.
7:59Then it's Kain. Over here, can we have a mic, Rana? Thank you. He's fast. Hi, Gary. Welcome to Denmark. Thank you for having me. Like, I guess, a lot of other people in here, I am an entrepreneur with a very small business. I have three employees. I'm in a creative business. I'm a jeweler. and that means that obviously I'm wearing a lot of hats, as we call them. So my question is, given all the things that I need to do, what percentage of time should I allocate for marketing? Versus what else? Versus everything. In my case, talking to customers, designing, creating jewelry, handling my employees, everything, admin, decoration, you name it.
8:52I mean, I think for, how many people here are entrepreneurs? Amazing. So, you have the audacity to want to live life on your terms. And so I need, hold the mic, let her hold it for a second. My friend, thank you. One more time, hands in the air. We have the audacity to live life on our terms. the percentage of successful entrepreneurs, ones that can make a living and live their lives on their own back, not in a company structure, is quite low. The percentage of those that amass the kind of wealth that everybody thinks they're going to amass when they get into entrepreneurship is even smaller than that.
9:40The answer to your question, my friend, is all of it, all the time, always, forever. Yay.
9:54And so to that point, and that's collecting the energy in this room, I think we all understand. You're in a boat, there's marketing, there's your employees, there's sales, there's the product if the jewelry isn't good, who gives a shit if the marketing's good, it's not, right? There's all these things and we're all in a boat and here pops a hole and you've gotta go put your finger in it and then there's one over here and your toe and then finally it fixes and good and now two more over here. We are in the firefighter business. I am in constant anxiety. I have to be here for the next four hours.
10:26When I get off, America has started today. My office is in motion. We're five, six hours ahead. There's a lot that's about to happen in my business in the next five hours, and this is fun, and I'm obsessed with the admiration, and I can't wait to take selfies and high fives and answer questions and give a great keynote, and I'm so excited to be in this amazing town and meet you guys, and it's fucking incredible, yet the second it's over, from the high of the high of people traveling hours, or I changed their lives, I take my phone, and I have 17 headaches. This person quit, and this client's mad, and this didn't go well, and this is a problem, and da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
11:10Everything, always, forever, because we have the audacity to want it. in this way, which is the best way to have it for a human if you're capable.
11:31And let's find the capabilities to find the next question. Caspar. Yeah? Hello, Gary. Hello, my man. I do watch what you do and not what you say. I like it. But still I have a question. I have a lifestyle brand and a DJ collective. So I'm a DJ. I'm playing after hours today. So my question is my own DJ promotion or for me to... Yeah. I see it. I would probably do it. If there's nothing that stands out to why not do anything under your name, I would do it under your name. Because personal will always over index versus a logo, and I think that we are now in the day and age where people are okay with understanding people are complete people and have multiple things going on.
12:30I remember the early days of this, people would have like a very different life on Facebook than they had on LinkedIn, you know? And I would always laugh because they thought they were tricking somebody. Like, we all know, you know it's funny, now that I'm a parent, my daughter is doing a lot of things that I did, and at eight, I thought it worked. Now I just realized my mom was letting me do it and laughing at me. And that's how I think about why it's okay to mix personal and professional. You're not tricking anybody that you're so professional with a nice picture with a tie on LinkedIn while you're throwing up on Instagram.
13:12So I think we should just embrace it. And so I think the personal part will always over-index over a logo.
13:27All right. Now it's time for Jesper. Yep, over here.
13:36Hey, Gary. How are you? I'm good. So I have a micro question. You don't want to stand up? I can stand up if you want. Let's clap it up for him.
13:49So I have a micro question. What kind of content should the world's leading VR physical therapy company be putting out on social media?
14:00First of all, Jesper, you need to be putting out content that makes people understand what the fuck that means. Right? Yeah, makes sense. And I'm making a joke, but you know that's similar to two questions ago. Your job right now is to get people to even understand what that is. I mean, you know, this is a room that has a chance of understanding what that means. The 99 % of normals have no idea what you're talking about. I think a lot of us that are fortunate enough to understand the cutting edge of marketing or technology have one certain language, but then there's the rest of the world. The ones we're trying to sell to.
14:36The ones that don't overthink their copy on an Instagram photo. Like the normals. And so for the normals, and even for this group, we've got to really wrap our head around what VR, you know, physical therapy is. I think we can theoretically understand. But I think the first thing is you have to put out content to make us even comfortable that it's not a janky experience because I think the ones that understand it understand it's got ways to go technology-wise. There's a lot of things that are there. and so I would just over-educate. I think, you know, I don't know if you follow me, but when I talk about documenting versus creating.
15:11Yeah, we're doing that. Been vlogging for like the last year. Everything we've done. Huge, and so then you've gotta figure out, if you're doing that, you're three-fourths of the way there, now you gotta figure out two core things. Is it interesting, and do you know how to distribute it? Yeah, number two was down, but one is, like you're talking about, it's the education thing that's maybe, we're doing the storytelling, but more explainer videos or where we at? I think, again, it's a lot of these similar answers. You need to make entertainment content and informational content. You're gonna need them both in a business like this and so I would just keep creating at scale.
15:50It's just imperative. And then I would also think a lot about influencers. I mean, if you've got good tracking on what's going on on Instagram or other platforms and you get the luxury of having somebody maybe tear an ACL or something of that nature and you can get an influencer to go through rehab with you, I think there could be an incredible narrative there that can bring disproportionate awareness to your product. Yeah, makes sense. Thanks. Cool, you got it.
16:25Now it's time for Stoyan. Oh, up here. He's up there. Hey. Hey, Gary. How are you? Very good. Good. First of all, thank you so much for, I follow you from 2014. Thank you. I had a video with U99 talking about different contexts and channels. So my question is, I actually had a couple of questions. I'm a speaker and I'm a consultant in productivity and time management and I do it for a year. My background is for movie producing. and since the new thing, I'm sort of a one-man army, as many people, I guess, and it's really hard sometimes with allocating the time because I'm focused primarily on content, on delivering to customers and to sales directly, like reaching out to customers, but I'm also super curious about influencers and I've never done it before, but I was just wondering if it will make any sense to allocate time where I am right now with spending some of my time on influencers, marketing, trying to reach out to people on Instagram or maybe LinkedIn even better.
17:31So I just wanted to hear what's your thoughts about that. Well, I think, look, again, at the youth that you're at, at the ambition that you have, you know, one thing that always scares me about my narrative is people always ask me, how much do I sleep? Or am I an advocate of not sleeping? Because I'm not. I think people should sleep six, seven, eight hours, depending on your body. I'm a huge advocate in what the fuck are you doing the other 18 hours, right? And so when I hear your question, the answer's of course you should. You know you should. You know you should test. Everybody here should spend meaningful amounts of time testing everything.
18:09Everything. You know, that's what you're supposed to be doing because you don't know the answer for your specific nuance if LinkedIn or a podcast or influencer marketing or you don't know if that's gonna be the turning point and what you're doing is you're doing too many things. People are keeping their time precious when it's their biggest asset. People are not reinvesting money back into their business because they wanna buy dumb shit. People are not trying things because if they fail, they worry about what other people think about that failure. And so we're all, you know, the answer is yes to everything.
18:47Literally, fuck it, I'm like, yes, and I can leave and go fucking fly to LA right now. Because the next three hours is yes. It is. It's yes. So, of course you should. Like, what are you doing for 18 hours a day? Find an hour and do it for an hour every day to get to the answer. And then also understand that the first 10 times you do it, it might not be right. Because it's like, you know, I always talk about the ROI. People are like, what's the ROI of influencers? Or VR? or the ROI of those 10 hours reaching out to influencers. The ROI of a basketball is very different to people. To me, it's nothing.
19:25To LeBron James, it's a billion dollars. So all this stuff works. It's are you good at it is a whole nother question. So it's not just the ROI of trying it, then you gotta get good at it. Nothing you're good at right now, you were so great at the first time you tried it. So, of course, man, like everything that's happening, you need to figure out how it works for your business, B2B, B2C, personal brand. The question is, what are you doing with your time? You know? And so that's why I get mad at people who wanna be an entrepreneur and watch four hours of Netflix a weekend, or, and by the way, people need escapism, you need to check out, you need to rest, you have to be in a mental place, but the scrutiny that we have to put on our time as young entrepreneurs, you know, it's just time or money.
20:16Talent is the variable that sits in, but the assets that you're sitting with in the beginning are time, and then you amass money, and then you can use the money to save time, and you're just going back and forth, and everybody wants these big dreams, and they're not willing to work at the level they need to when that's the advantage they have. So, fuck yes, you should. I just want to wrap it up, and that's the biggest inspiration I got from you since 2014 just to cut off the crop and just fucking work. So thank you so much. You're welcome. And I just want to say one thing. If that's your ambition, you can work 10 hours a week.
20:51If you're happy, I'm happy. But don't go running around saying you're going to build a$17 million business and think you're going to do that on 25 hours a week. That person doesn't exist. Anybody you know who's built something meaningful has worked for it. I know people have inherited money, but they're not the one that built it. Anybody you know that built something, put in the work, there's just no shortcut. It's like working out. You can't think about push-ups.
21:22Good. Thank you.
21:31And before we take the next question, you can begin to wonder if you want to ask Gary something because we got a few more questions prepared, but then it's up to you, the audience. Awesome. So, yeah, in a while we'll set you free.
21:51Jonas, over here. How are you, Jonas? Oh, shit, I can't believe I'm talking to you, man. Don't worry, brother, it's going to be okay.
22:07Alright, so my question is, in a very, very early stage of the startup, my first startup, and on a very, very tight budget, the first thing to focus on, the most important thing, and how to? There's so much, brother. Yeah, but it's so overwhelming, that's why I'm asking you. Of course. I mean, I think a lot of what I just talked about is true. The biggest advantage you have right now is your time. It's your number one asset. You're young, you should have plenty of energy. you're hungry, you're ambitious, great. You need to work every goddamn minute you can. It's the single biggest thing you've got.
22:43The other thing is you need to figure out how to get leverage, right? So you need to figure out what does that mean. So what's the business? Right now it's a web shop selling posters. It's a what brother? A web shop selling posters. A web shop selling posters? Yeah, yeah. So you're a web shop that, when you say posters, physical? Yeah. Okay, so you're trying to sell them to people? Yeah. And how much does it cost you to make them? 10 bucks right now. It's in very small pieces like in package. So one thing that I'm a huge fan of in the beginning is doing a lot of work for free. And people get very mad at me for this advice.
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23:28I don't know why, because they debate me in theory instead of actually ever living a business. you know one of the things that you're looking for is awareness you need to let people know you exist one of the great ways to do that is to do free work for people that have awareness you're giving them work they're giving you awareness so I would have a hardcore strategy in the market that you're trying to fulfill to do free work and reach out to the companies or individuals and say I want to do this for you for free because I like your work this is the kind of work we do would you like it? And by the way, I have a thousand people a day offer me free and I don't take them up on it because the value exchange of the time is not worth it.
24:09So just because you even offer it for free doesn't mean they'll take you up on it. But the number one thing I would do first, if I was your partner, I was like, cool, let's get side jobs, let's sell shit, let's do something else to mass dollars, let's borrow money, let's rent money, let's raise capital, or let's take our money that we have together to do as much free work for the biggest celebrity, the biggest athlete, the biggest business, the coolest thing, the coolest festival, the coolest brand, free as long as we're getting awareness out of it to build our brand to then create deal flow. All right.
24:42You think that's possible too with a very tight budget? You're meaning that I have to work free for them or then I have to provide some of my products for them for free? Both. Free and free. which could mean that you may have to get a side job at night or borrow money or have a separate business all together or do services for other people at low costs what I get surprised that people don't understand is what are the alternatives why are you asking me this question you're asking because you don't have the answer right now because there's not that many alternatives when you don't have a lot of money and nobody knows what the fuck your product is yeah exactly right so entrepreneurship is super fun and cool on Instagram but in real life it sucks shit so you know doing shit for free is not fun go ahead I'm just saying that I have a part time job right now that's good and I'm working on this after hours great so you know the money you just want me to use all the money for the business right?
25:49yes so don't buy another thing No more nice jacket. That was for my mom, so. Respect. That's good. That's good. Yeah. I think a small company that makes posters, number one arbitrage, is to make posters for free for things that will give them awareness. When people are like, who made that poster? If your brand's there, things of that nature, that is your number one move you can do when you're tiny. And so you just need to be able to afford that, including selling the nice jacket that your mom gave you.
26:31Thank you, man. You're welcome. Okay. Miguel, where are you? But you know what, real quick, because it's a funny moment, it's just very true. Like there's a reason immigrants over-index in success. That's the kind of shit they do. They don't buy anything. they live in a place that has a shitty house for seven years and save every dollar even though they could have moved out two years earlier or four years earlier. Non-entrepreneurs, as soon as they get a little money, buy dumb shit instead of putting it back into their business. And so it seems like a funny joke, but when you have no options, you have no options.
27:11It's not miraculously gonna happen. And everybody got tricked because of venture capital funding. and everybody thinks they're gonna write a business plan on paper and go out and find some miraculous VC and then they complain, well, in Denmark and Norway, they don't have good VCs, but Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley's a fucking bitch too. They'll take the meeting, but they're not gonna give you money either. And so we need to be smart and more practical. That's real life. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, Miguel, where are you? Down here? Can we get a microphone? Smack in the middle.
27:52Yeah. Hey, Miguel. Oh my God, Gary Vee is in the house and I'm about to ask a question. Yes, you are. Okay, hi, Gary. How are you? Very good. If you're about to open a trampoline park in Copenhagen in around four months, how would you approach the marketing until the opening and after? Okay, let's start with the four months. Is that an arbitrary thing or is that 100 % locked in? Like, why four months? I had a meeting with the owner, the boss, yesterday, and he wants me to run it, but he wanted to do the marketing. And I asked him, what would you do? Facebook ads and Google ads, and that's it. That's what you asked him?
28:28Yes, he would do the marketing with Facebook ads and Google ads. And that's what he wants to do? That's it. Okay. And what would you do? I'm very high on that. I kind of did a little bit of homework on the attention arbitrage on Copenhagen before I got here. I think that's cool. I would just add influencer marketing on top of that. I think there's a lot of Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook personalities that I think can bring disproportionate attention to this and are underpriced. It's incredible to me that there's a lot of individuals in the Copenhagen metro area and suburbs that you could invite for free that even have 719 fans or 3 ,000 fans on some of these platforms that the ROI of you giving it to them for free for the photo is worth it for you from a business standpoint.
29:17So I would say those three. And then, look, it's very abstract to say you're gonna do Facebook and Google. Really understanding the content that you need to make in a Facebook environment is incredibly important. So you can waste$10 ,000 on Facebook in a month very quickly if you don't know what you're doing. And so just make sure that you guys have a deep understanding on the kind of content that will convert. Are you trying to, and then also the four months before and the four months after. In the four months before, I would drive them to a landing page that has a Google form that fills out so that you can use that data to remarket when you open.
29:54Then after the fact, you're driving them to a place where it frictionless, you know, conversion to the tickets or the packages that you're selling. What about something like make people, you know, the journey of now we're here, now they're manufacturing the trampoline parks in Hanover. You know, this is the thing similar to the VR physical service. This is the thing that I want to make sure everybody understands because a lot of you are paying attention to what I'm doing and I'm a believer. I'm a believer in the documenting the journey instead of creating. I just want to remind everybody that there are millions of documentaries made every year, but only 13 of them are things that people want to watch.
30:35So yes, I believe it, but can you and can he and can others make a great documentary on the journey that makes people really want to watch and fall in love with the characters you and that? That is a real challenge, but if you can do yes, I'm super interested in it. And I want to remind everybody that's now thinking about this first time they're hearing it, there's so much young talent out there that just want to get their first work out there as a videographer or as a post editor. I believe that everybody here can hire two to three incredible creative interns, pay them very little, but their ROI is the work.
31:15And they get a body of work. And that's an incredible opportunity for both parties. We've never had people that have been editing on YouTube since they were six years old and are now 17 and are producing this kind of quality post-production. That is not the world we grew up in. And so I think yes and keep in mind that you might be able to grab the extra hands even for poster. You know, like the fact that you can get somebody to work for free because for her the documentation output is a project she can point to if she chooses to take that risk because she has the same mindset as you to work for free.
31:48I think there's a lot of creators out there that are looking for opportunities, minimum wage free, and obviously there's laws and you'll have to navigate what the reality of what you can do, but very low cost, high quality creators are in the system right now. Another thing for you to think about. Look, for sure, if you could make a vlog of the road leading up to this, but I'm telling you right now, brother, it's hard to get people to get really excited and watch, so I don't want you to disproportionately put too much energy into it, or be thoughtful and go all in for six to eight weeks, You've got to be smart about that.
32:21Can't be ideological about documenting versus creating. Can't be ideological about anything. You know, theory's only as good as the execution that creates the result that you want. Things that I believe in change by the minute if I don't like the way the cadence of the attention or the platforms are evolving. So my religion is never what I talked about last week or last year. My religion is what's happening right this minute in the creative and distribution opportunity of communications to create the donation, the voting for my candidate, the opening of my trampoline park. I worry that people that follow me think that these things are set in stone because they've not been carefully watching the last 10 years where I will change my point of view on anything other than if I think your attention is in a place that's underpriced, that's where I want to be.
33:12Thanks a lot. You got it. Thank you.
33:19Now for Maria Irene. Where are you? Here? Can we get a mic right down here? Right here. Yeah. Perfect. Hi. Hi. I'd like to ask you what the one thing that you make sure to do every day to keep strengthening your online performance is. To deploy gratitude that the seven people I love the most are healthy. Okay. That's the real answer that I'm not sure if it brings anybody any value or maybe it brings people a lot of value. That's the truth. None of this works unless I'm in the right grateful, passionate, excited about it standpoint because all this shit is hard. And so for me, all of this is mindset.
34:04There's no tactic. There's no double-checking the copy on my Facebook post. There's no updating the picture on Instagram. There's no looking at all the replies on Twitter. All of that is so secondary to am I in a good place to do the amount of work that is required to do more, more, more, more, more. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It's why I'm so fearful right now about entrepreneurship because I think a lot of people are doing it because it's cool or it seems cool and it's so hard and so lonely and exposes you so much that I want people in the right mindset. So there's no tactic I do every day other than consume and listen.
34:45I read my email. I look at the replies on Twitter. I read all the replies from the night before on Instagram from my pictures. I'm very qualitative. I don't care how many likes or shares. I don't care as much about the data. I understand it. I see it. But I'm spending a lot more time on the gray, the vibes that I get from the comments and engagement of the community to give me an indicator of what's working and what's not working. Like a performer that does, it's kind of why I'm a good public speaker. I'm right now creating context on what you guys are interested in and it's already formulating my keynote that's gonna come in an hour based on this Q &A session.
35:24That's good. That's what makes me good at what I do. I do that with my creative, with my businesses, to be very frank, with my whole fucking life. Thank you. You're welcome.
35:43Maria, Lucia, where are you? Hi, Gary. I'm here. Hi. Thank you for visiting Copenhagen. Thanks for having me. So when we talk about success, like in general, what do you define as your absolutely personal success? That's interesting. You know, for me, I don't think about my absolute personal success in the micro or the short term. I think about my ultimate personal success in the long term. So somewhere in about 15 to 20 years when I have a tremendous read on who my two children are as human beings, that will be a very big judgment day for me on my personal success. in 25 years when an intern named Kathy that starts today is running a huge business and she learned at VaynerMedia the right things to do to build a huge business, that will be my personal success.
36:45Right now, I'm living out Sasha and Tamara's personal success. Right now, I'm a byproduct of my parenting and my upbringing and my nuances. My personal success has a little bit more to go and I think that's how I think about it. And as long as I am daily acting on that long-term legacy North Star and that everything that comes out of my mouth and everything that I do spends a disproportionate amount of time on how the rest of my family and my employees are affected by it and what it sets up for them, that's basically how I think about it. I live my life only, only based on what people are saying behind my back.
37:28Right? You know, it's interesting, right? I mean, it's basically my framework, you know? People are always like, man, he's so nice. I'm nice because when I stop to take one more selfie and say hello and look you in the face and listen to your question, that's what you're gonna say about me when I'm gone. And so success for me is not in the short term. It's just, you know, to me, playing the game is success. Waking up in the morning is success. Being able to be who I am is success. that's what I love about entrepreneurship, you're in control. But the absolute personal judgment is a long, long way away.
38:09It's very interesting for me, I apologize, it's very interesting for me right now what's happening in the world that people are getting exposed. Whole lot of people are being taken down and I love that. I love it because the truth should be undefeated. I like that. I like when merit wins, when the truth wins. And so for some of us that are living our lives that way, this is very exciting times.
38:36Thank you. You're welcome.
38:44Daniel. Yeah. Hey, Gary. How are you, Daniel? Good. I've been watching your Q &A, Ask a V, and tried to make my own version of it. What's it called? SAP integration Q &A. So it's quite technical. And that's my challenge here about how do I both make it, well, technical, how do I present these things? And as we talked about earlier here about make it a bit more entertaining. If you're going to make a documentary, which comes across as a film, there's gotta be an entertainment value because the structure of a film or documentary is escapism. We're there to get caught up in the story so we don't have to think about the real world.
39:33That's why we like music, sports, and film. When you're doing something technical, you're in the utility education business. It does not have to be entertaining. You don't come across as the most entertaining dude I've ever seen. I'm being frank. Guess what, though? Guess what? And I'm not razzing or making a joke. I need you to understand why this is important. If you fucking know your craft, and you know what the fuck you're talking about, it's not gonna matter how fucking charismatic or funny you are. You will win on your merit. You just might need to be extremely patient because when there's small niches, it takes time to hit any critical mass because usually there is no critical mass.
40:13And the way you surround your team with people that don't understand is you find people that do understand. Okay. So that would be the intern or whatever. That's right. When I built Wine Library for people that worked on the floor that knew about wine, they needed to know about wine. Like, there was plenty of people that I saw and I'm like, oh, she's an amazing salesperson. But then when I asked her about Chattanooga Pop, if she didn't know what it was, that wasn't gonna cut it because the business I was in was, you expected to walk in the store and you had questions and you needed answers and it was important.
40:43So I don't think you should run away into the entertainment. I think you should triple down into technical utility and knowledge because that wins too. Okay. You know? It may not get you, you know, millions of followers on Instagram, but that's not what you're trying to achieve. You're trying to achieve what you're trying to achieve and so I think that that's great and I would triple down on the depth, not the width. Okay, so just more technical content. And then remember, audio, written, video. Have you had to take a step back yet and be self-aware about which platform you're best at communicating is very important and then understanding going forward, just like yes, yes, yes, all of them, all of you are going to have to produce content in written, audio, and video form to be relevant in the noise that is coming in 2022 because you have to let the consumer pick which medium is best for them and you have to be everywhere to really win.
41:41I mean, you can't be everywhere right away, I get it, but you have to wrap your head around that And for me, somebody who could not put three sentences together that make any cohesive sense, I needed to hire a ghost writer who is listening right now to this video and transcribing it and then is going to call me and ask me five more questions and I'm going to answer them and that's how I make my LinkedIn and Medium posts. And at first I couldn't afford that. So I had to give up on writing and I had to wait. And so we all go through these journeys but you've got to really give thought to the mediums too.
42:14You could have a very successful, super niche podcast where you're just talking this stuff out and the 1 ,800 people you're trying to reach, 700 of them listen to the podcast, you will win if that's how narrow your world is. True, thanks. You're welcome.
42:36And now it's your turn. So do we have the first up? Yeah. Yeah. Pick me, pick me. Hi, how are you doing? Simon, Sweden. How are you? So I actually don't have a question for you. I've been following you a couple of years. You've given me so many ideas and thought awakenings that I thought, man, I owe you big time. But there's no way I can pay you back at the moment. So I thought I'll give you something that might bring you a little bit of joy. And I know you're backing to wine quite a bit now. but I just realized that you're drinking a lot of white wine. I am. But still. So I'm bringing with me a Pierre Long Chateau de la Pau.
43:19Very nice. From 2011. I hope you like it. It's what I can give you. It's very nice. Just the way of saying thank you, man. Please. Give him a hand.
43:32Your pleasure. Thank you, man. Thank you so much.
43:42You know what's amazing about life? The fact that I was just giving an analogy of wine store knowledge and of all the wines in the world that I used Shatneuf the Pop as the example, which is pretty esoteric, and for that to be the wine, like that's when I'm always like the universe is looking at me and saying, keep going. You know? It's interesting.
44:08And we have one more over here. Casper, behind you. Yeah. Thank you. Hello. Hi, Gary. Guys, real quick, just so you know, between the other Q &A and the keynote and the fact that we're covering so much, I've made a new decision. I'm going to answer every single person's question in this conference. So you better get way more extroverted and start raising your hands because I'm gonna systematically pick on you over the next three hours Go ahead. Hi, Gary. How are you? My name is Vasily I've been watching your content for more than a year actually saw your life in the Bucharest in Brent Mines if you remember that I sure do Also possibility to ask you a question there and just want to say, you know, thank you so much for everything you've been done and in Bukharest, I shared my success as well as an entrepreneur where I was successfully building e-commerce store with influencer marketing through DMing 100 to 100 people and also my journey on the Fiverr.com platform.
45:11And so, you know, interesting fact that after that, I saw the keynote you posted and it brought so much attention to my Fiverr profile, started getting a lot of, you know, contacts. So I just want to say, you know, thank you so much for this. It was an incredible amount of opportunity. And from this freelancing, I was able to build as a social media marketing agency on Fiverr. And my question to you is, I started to work on my personal branding, and I got invited to some conferences, business conference to speak. And I want to ask you, if I continue, if I start continuing to expand personal branding, would it help me get bigger clients with bigger companies?
45:52or would it also just bring like audience to you, like you have a large audience following you? So what do you have, you know, opinion on that working personal brand to... Both are gonna happen. Okay. Thank you. That's my opinion, Vasani. Thank you. Like both will happen, right? And so what will happen is you'll get bigger clients because what you're doing is building brand. I love when people get cynical about personal brand because I know there's cynicism around it. All it, you know, if you don't like the word personal brand, let's call it something else. Reputation. Yes, if you have a bigger reputation, things will happen, right?
46:34What will happen is on the personal brand side, fans or audience, not clients, what will happen is opportunity. You know, every single investment I made that made me tens of millions of dollars were built on the back of a personal brand. It built me opportunities, it created meetings for me, it's how I got to places. Of course reputation matters, it's always mattered. People are now trying to comprehend what's happening here because it's become bigger than the mainstream media. Everybody here can be as big as they want to be on merit and skill and that's incredible because there used to be gateway and gatekeepers, right?
47:14So yeah, both will happen and then you'll decide what you want to do. I could easily make$30 million a year being Gary V. I choose not to because I still want to be a businessman and that's why I have an 800 person agency and that's why I'm gonna have 18 fires when I get off stage because I want to build businesses. I don't want to be just a personal brand. But that doesn't mean that's wrong and there's a lot of people who do that and if that's what you want to do, the more awareness you have, you will be given something called options. And let me promise you something. Options are good. Yeah, thank you Gary.
47:50And I wanted to ask you as well for Fiverr platform, what are your thoughts on that? Like if we're expanding our services, we're getting a lot of requests, we're like top rate seller, you know, in the top category for social media marketing. So what are your thoughts on expanding that, going fields like production, doing production video, maybe building like a brand? I think you should use it as a gateway drug to bigger scopes. Okay, thanks Gary. And last question, sorry for that. But is there any chance for stability to have, you know, 10, 15 minute talk to you one on one at some point, maybe in your future conferences like in Stockholm or maybe it could be just FaceTime or anything like that?
48:30Maybe in the back half of 18 because I'm fighting for every minute right now. But if you send me an email and say, I'm the fiber guy who asked 47 different questions and I'll see that and we'll set something up. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much.
48:50Now there's people everywhere. Great. We've broken the ceiling. Who's next? Yep. In the back. Hi. Hi. Hi, Gary. Hi. I'm Christina. Christina, how are you? Thank you for being here. I didn't know you at all until a few days ago, and I don't think I ever learned to pronounce your last name. But the only thing I know about you is I watched one single of your videos, and in that one, you were talking about one is better than zero. If you can get your message across to one person, it's better than to zero. And that was at a time when I was really dying to make videos, but I really didn't dare to put myself out there because of failure of what people may think.
49:32So I did this one video, and there was one people watching, and she became my client straight away. So I just wanted to say that.
49:43That's awesome. And the question very briefly is like, you know all the sales funnel thing with the email marketing and having a lead magnet and your landing page and building up your subscriber list? I see a trend that people are starting to scrap their email lists and creating Facebook groups instead. So have the potential clients into a Facebook group because that's more interactive. if you can do lives and Q &A and sharing and life coaching and stuff like that. So I just wanted to hear your thoughts about that because right now I don't know where to focus my energies in my limited time. Both.
50:21Yeah. Yeah. You know, like both. Let's talk it out. Here's why it's important. Remember, watch what I'm, you know, you haven't seen as much of my content. A big thing I say is watch what I'm doing, not what I'm saying. If you go to GaryVaynerchuk.com right now, I want your fucking email. I don't talk about email the way I did in 1996, 7, 8, 9 because I think it's established. I think we all understand what email is, its potential. I used to have, how many people here do email marketing or have? In 1997, I had an email newsletter of 200 ,000 people for wine that had 91 % open rates. Underpriced attention.
51:02This isn't new for me. I'm just figuring out how to articulate what I've been doing for the last 20 years. That's how I built a$3 million business to a$60 million business in five and a half years that had no money. Making all the right decisions. So here's why yes. What happens if Facebook groups organic reach, they decide that that's a new place they need to monetize and they kill it and now you can't reach those people. Like you have to have both. You never want to be at the mercy of a platform and you need to always have insurance policies but people pick one or the other. The new wave says yes, Facebook, and they're right.
51:38There's more attention there. Email is spam. Nobody's reading their email. It's not converting the same way, right? The old guard says, I'm not gonna trust Facebook. You know, when Facebook's, you know, newsfeed started lowering organic five years ago, four years ago, they're like, aha, told you, sucker. The answer's both. Yes and yes, as I heard somebody whisper again, right? So, again, I need everybody here. if I leave with anything, and this is not, DRock will tell you, this is not something that I've been pushing very hard. Audacity. You have audacity. Who the fuck do you think you are? Who the fuck do I think I am?
52:17If you want to live that life, that you're a fucking coach and people should pay you for the shit that's coming out of your head, you better fucking do both.
52:29That's pretty clear. And I'm saying this because I want to pressure you, just like clearly when you saw that video, that clicked for you, you can't put yourself, I never put myself in a vulnerable spot. And just relying on Facebook is a vulnerable spot. But it's where the attention is. So I hedge it with having email, and SMS, and my website, and my podcast, and, and, and, and, and, and, and I'm busy. four offices,$200 million in revenue in VaynerX, right? Like two young kids, like fucking in Copenhagen, like a fucking, you know, like, and so if I'm doing, now, my ambitions may be greater, but I'm still not gonna let you be in a vulnerable spot where you wake up one day and a platform makes a change and you're like, what happened?
53:23People are going out of business when they only rely on SEO or just email or just direct mail or just Facebook or just Twitter. I wish Twitter stayed number one. I was one of the first people to have a million followers. It was great. It's how a lot of you first heard about me. That was my first coming out moment. I loved it. I didn't want it to change. I won. You know how I won? By spending 15 hours a day replying to people on Twitter for three and a half years. Do you know what that feels like when you wake up in the morning and you realize Twitter's starting to lose its attention? Do you know what I did?
53:57I took the punch in the mouth, I spit my tooth out, and I started building Instagram and Facebook. I had no choice. So, yes, it's harder, it's more work, but the alternative is ugly. You wanna go work at a bank? Thank you.
54:22And unfortunately now, I'm the showstopper. That's my part of this game. I think we're going away and coming back, right? Yeah, yeah. I think you guys need to decide, and maybe with you guys, is if, when I come back for the hour for the keynote, you know, how much do we want to continue the Q &A at scale? Because so much of what I talk about is online to watch. I'll let you guys decide. I'm thrilled to talk. I love to hear myself talk, but I'm thrilled and feel like there's a lot sitting. I can feel it in the Q &A part. So you guys decide, you guys decide, but thank you so much. Oh, you can't leave yet.
54:56Because I have saved actually a very great question till the last. So before I let you go, have a break. Caspar has a question. Great. I just want to ask you, Gary. Let's say there's this guy who has spent a year to plan something, plan an event. Yes. He spent all his money. Yes. And he feels that he has it down. It's going and it's going to be great. And then the day before the event, something happens. The email that's supposed to go out with the last crucial information, it goes haywire. All of a sudden we have a guy who has received 600 emails from the organizer of this event. Sounds like a terrible situation, right?
55:45Yeah, poor guy. Exactly. Can you give an example of how you sometimes turn something bad into something positive? I had something like this happen. I don't know. No, no. Not how did something like this happen. I had something like this happen. I also had an email from Wine Library nine years ago go out instead of once like 87 times, which made 11 % of the list unsubscribe, get reported to Google, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and it was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me because what I did was, in that scenario, to try to parallel to this make pretend guy and what he should do, I went on my merry, I put things in motion to get us back to white listed, get the data on what happened.
56:45I had to still run the store because it was busy and we had to get packages out. But when that was done, two days later, if I recall, on the weekend, I sat down and I called and emailed every single person that was affected for the next 31 days. Three hours here, eight hours there. Sounds like this guy is lucky it wasn't 11 ,000 people. which makes me think it's gonna be a piece of cake to personally call.
57:24Look, look, this is super interesting. I don't know if I wrote this in the Thank You Economy, which was a book I wrote, but I definitely have said this publicly. I believe that we expect things to happen, that we actually don't judge that much on the bad thing. We judge on the thing you do next. So much so that I have at times thought about doing something slightly wrong, nothing crazy, just because I thought the apology would be ROI positive to the entire event. So I think something amazingly good just happened. Let's see. We will. Well, you'll get your chance later because Gary will be back and we will of course talk about what will happen.
58:17I think one thing that we already thought about was that we would very much like these questions and we would like to make them as interesting for everyone as possible. So we will make a small stand out here. There is a small Elevate stand out here. And if you feel like you want to ask a question, you're more than welcome to come and deliver your question and we'll do a little bit of screening before so we make sure that it's relevant to everyone here. I would also say, if I may, since we're just shooting this shit up here, as somebody who's obsessed with Q &A so much so that the reason I wrote the Ask Gary Vee book was I was hoping it would be so successful that every keynote I would give for the rest of my life would just be Q &A.
58:53And it's because, it's very interesting, and we just had a bunch of people randomly ask. And I think as an organizer, there's so much, you actually make me very happy. you have such good intent to try to make the question valuable. And some people may want to pitch or thank or things of that nature and I get that. But it is pretty amazing doing this for the last year or two, more Q &A, how much so many of these things are universal. 60, 70, 80 % of the things we're all dealing with, they may have a different business, but I think we can all recognize in this last session there were so many things that were relevant to you that you would have never thought to ask, but my answer to somebody else's question might have been the unlock that you needed for where your head's at.
59:34So, also something to think about. Give him a hand. Thank you.
From the publisher
📍 From the ELEVATE 2017 Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark
📆 Recorded in 2017, more relevant than ever in 2025
We’re living in an era where attention is everything, and yet so many people are still sleeping on the opportunity right in front of them. This keynote/Q&A combo from my 2017 trip to Copenhagen hits on a mindset that’s even more relevant now — how to make the most of your time, your brand, and your content strategy in the world we live in today.
Whether you’re an early-stage entrepreneur, an overwhelmed creator, or just trying to figure out how to get more people to care about your thing — this one is loaded with straight truth.
🧠 "People are protecting their time like it's precious when it's actually their biggest asset."