The Power of Personal Brands (And Why YOU Should Have One)

0:00This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience. Hey everybody, actually, if you're a really hardcore listener, you know I never do this. I'm sorry to be jumping in the middle of the podcast. If this podcast has ever meant anything to you, please go to Spotify or Apple right now and leave a review. By the way, even if you give me a one-star review because you think it's shit, I respect it. But just leave a review, an actual review. Four or five stars and the actual details of why. Yeah, that would mean something for me. So thanks. Now back to the podcast. Would love to do a little Q &A and maybe go a little more detailed.

0:29I'm ready to go. Who's got something? Gary, you talked about how you made investments early in some of the content companies like Facebook. Do you think your investments into those companies formed your idea of what was important for the future or do you think it was the opposite? The opposite. The opposite. What was very clear to me, I referenced it. You know, I launched an e-commerce wine business in 1997. Like for real, not like ha ha ha. Like I was operating it every day. I remember people walking into my store and asking them for their email to create an account and like people didn't even have email yet.

1:04Or they would say funny things that I laugh about now. I remember one guy, he's like, oh yeah, I have one of those. He's like, I'm AOL at yahoo.com. Like that's not it, brother. You know, like, and you know, going from that to people telling me they wouldn't put their credit card into the computer to running catalogs that used to cost me$70 ,000 to print and mail to now sending an email for free and selling more wine than I did two years ago in a catalog with no cost. So I was rolling. And then Google came out. And Google AdWords came out several months later. I bought Google AdWords the day that Google AdWords were being sold.

1:43And was buying wine terms for five and ten cents a click and acquiring customers for nothing. So this was all happening. And then 2003 happened. And it was starting to be blogging. and it was the first thing I never got involved in because even though I've written five New York Times bestselling books, Raghav, are you here? Where is he? He's not here. I'm literally, I'm gonna leave right now, right after this, and get on a flight back to New York for five hours and my ghostwriter and a guy on my team, Raghav, who was with me just now, is literally gonna sit there with me and he's gonna read me back what I audioed to him so I can tweak a couple of the words to finish up my book.

2:23So blogging was the first big trend I saw that I wasn't able to jump into because I can't write. And so when Friendster and MySpace came out, I was so pumped because I was like, this is the next wave. This I understand. I was watching it. And then my, it's all timing too. My brother was a freshman at BU the first Facebook year. And BU was like the third school to get it. It went like Harvard and a couple other Boston schools. and he called me and he came down for Thanksgiving and I looked at it and I was like, this is it. And the reason I said this was it was I'd gone from, that was 97, in an eight year period, we went from people not even understanding the internet fully to then people realizing they could look up, remember it was like more research if you think about the beginning to now buying stuff and I just knew that we were gonna communicate with each other on it and so no, I believe that the next wave of the internet was gonna be human connection and that's why those social networks caught my attention.

3:27Matt from Writer, we're the Generative AI platform that's sponsoring this today. Thanks for coming. Gary, when you talk about LinkedIn and how much of an opportunity it is, can you help us refine what you see in that opportunity? And then we'll talk about content creation. That everyone here, regardless of what you want to happen, what customer do you want? B2B, B2C, or by the way, there are people in here who might want a career change. Whatever your objective is, the fact that you could not have, this room have never posted in their life. If Garrett has never posted on LinkedIn in his life, the fact that he can make a video or a written post about whatever he wants to say, post it on LinkedIn tonight, and that gets 800 people to see it, is crazy.

4:13Let me explain what I mean. Social networking, social networks for the last 15 years has been more like email. You get people to follow you, you then post, and a percentage of them see it. Just like email open rates, right? When I was doing email in the late 90s, 80 to 90 % of the people that got the email opened it. Now 30%, if you have a great email, right? I see some of the heads nodding. So, you know, it's supply and demand of attention. The TikTokification of all social networks is the biggest trend going on in the world right now. So the example I just gave about Garrett five years ago would have posted on LinkedIn and one person would have saw it.

4:52One of the three people he asked to follow him because he decided he's gonna start. The fact that his first post can get 800 because the algorithm is gonna look at the content and service it to a small group of 20 or 30 random people that it thinks will like what he had to say and if of that 20, 30, 40, and I don't know the exact numbers, everyone's algorithm is obviously very secret, but a tiny group of people will see it. If it's compelling to that group, it will be brought into more people's feed. Not only could he get 800, he could get a million. Very unlikely, needle in a haystack. But the fact that that is true, just think about what I just said.

5:33Free distribution. Think about how expensive distribution is. Think about how much you spend for a newspaper ad, a Google ad, a television ad, a booth at a big conference. distribution and awareness is expensive. Social networks are free. That is insane. And people do not understand the severity of the insanity of how big that is. For the first time ever, the quality of your message creates free distribution. That is insane. So what happens when creating content is now dramatically less expensive because of things like generative AI? How does that impact LinkedIn? you know, it's gonna come, it's gonna impact everything.

6:17What's gonna happen is a term called prompt engineering is gonna start to be something everyone here knows what it is. So in a world where companies like yourselves and many others take the advantage away that I have, my personal brand, Gary Vee, the content you see, I have 37 full-time employees. 37 full-time employees who work on my content, making and distribution across the eight platforms. Think about the level of commitment that I've made for that. The fact that everyone here now can buy a SaaS product and make more content than I make for a fraction of that will mean that we will have more supply of content than we've ever seen before.

6:57I'm not gonna put my head in the sand. We're gonna use generative AI as well. And Dustin and Raghav, they're gonna get fired and have to find new jobs. But what will happen, and I'll finish the thought, is their jobs will have to change. what Dustin does incredibly well as he films me, but he's also paying attention. He's making notes. There was the gentleman, he's not here, who said, you inspired me in the talk just now. I called my son to say I'm sorry for being a dick. Hey, thanks for the inspiration. I took some action today, talked to my son this morning, called him I was sorry for being a dick.

7:30That's humongous. That's the biggest thing you can do. That means the world to me. Cheers to you. That means the world to me, brother. Good for you. You can't imagine how big of a deal that will be. You know how much he appreciated that? Absolutely. Good for you. It was a really emotional thing for me. That's a big deal. That's why I speak for a living. That little moment. But I looked at Dustin when that happened and gave him my contact and he made a note and that will show up on my content in the next week or so. With all the technologies coming, I'm not going to have to look at Dustin. We're going to upload that video.

8:03It's going to understand rhythms and patterns from AI of things that have worked for me and me and Dustin in our gut are no longer gonna do post-production. The AI is gonna figure it out and put it out. What is that gonna mean? Supply and demand issues. And so what's gonna happen is it's gonna be harder to break through because everyone's gonna be doing it. And so you're gonna have to be better. So my question to Gary is what is attention hacking? Can you give us some examples and some best practices? Yeah, so I'm writing a new, the book I'm working on, which will come out next year, actually called day trading attention, right?

8:39That's how I think about what I do for a living. You know, obviously, I think the term day trading is something most of the people in here will know. Somewhere along the line with technology, Wall Street became second to second, not hour to hour with paper. It became day trading on your computer. So hacking attention, or the way I think about it, day trading is a very simple and complicated game. Where are you all spending your time? Where? like where are your eyeballs and ears going? You know, 50 years ago was television and newspapers and so you would try to then make the best print ad to make you buy.

9:15I did that in my career. I used to spend a week making my New York Times full page ad, a week. I would be eight hours a day, a week. Should I put this wine in this corner? Should I have a coupon down here? Like real thinking. Now that same thinking goes into the first three seconds of every video I put on LinkedIn. It goes into the thumbnail. Some of my friends here are doing a really good job on LinkedIn. We were hanging out backstage and I said to them, hey, you gotta pay attention to the copy because LinkedIn, only the first 50 letters show up and then you have to learn more. Most people won't do that if you have a call to action link in the first 50 things, you're gonna get a higher retention, right?

9:57Or how do you actually think about what's happening? You're all doing it. All of you, minimally. I'm aware that some of you don't have anything, not LinkedIn, not Facebook, but the far majority of this room is doing this on something. TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube Shorts. How do you get someone to stop? Especially with more content coming. So what I think a lot about is the science around the art. First three seconds, thumbnail, words. What time do we post? Literally, right now, I'll show him and he can confirm it to you. My team, this is the thread with the whole team on it. Look at this.

10:33We will post this today at 6.36 p.m. It is that specific. Like, you know, and like, read the whole... Ideal times today, 404 and 6.36, one reel, one image. For the reel, recommendation is a reel of you on stage. I promise you this is a level of commitment that's very different than post that picture. So the science around the art, but then also following trends. Like when Travis Kelsey and Taylor Swift are eating up popular culture, is there any way for you to interject into that conversation that doesn't feel forced? How clever are you? How creative are you? You know, like, I saw really good posts by a B2B company where the two heads of the company, one was called, one person's name was Travis and one was Taylor.

11:23They were both dudes, but it was perfect, right? Because, you know, like, they were able to, like, make a reference and I looked back, it was their highest performing post ever. Right? So I'm looking at the pulse of society. You know how many people lost customers by posting during inappropriate times? So you have to have a feel for the room, which is the world. You have to know your demos. I'm making content on LinkedIn for just VCs and the next post just to get clients and the next post just to get talent to apply to VaynerMedia. All three of those videos are very different. I was telling those guys, everything they make is just about selling the SaaS, but they should make videos to get better talent on their sales team.

12:04They should make videos about how they run company culture. They should make, by the way, a thing that all of you should do on LinkedIn is make a post about your interests. Maybe it's French wine, maybe it's golf, maybe you're playing pickleball. You might post on LinkedIn that you have fallen in love with pickleball, go into the fact that that hour now, every day that you play pickleball in the morning, makes you fresher to be better at work and because someone who you're trying to reach as a customer or an employee also likes pickleball, that just created consideration based on relevance for them to do business with you.

12:39So everyone's showing up in LinkedIn in their fucking suit and tie, right? But in reality, in reality, you need to show that version and this version. That you're in, you know, notice, I always say watch what I'm doing, not what I'm saying. Pay attention to how I give a keynote. I will make references to the New York Jets. I will make references to wine. I'm creating connection points. And all of you should be doing that in your content. If you're just saying the same thing of our tech works better. Cool, but you can only say it so many times. AI companies should be talking about time savings.

13:16You put a photo of a person watching their child play basketball in a gym. and then you say, use our tech and save an hour every day so you can go watch your kid play basketball, watch how many people stop. That's a very different emotional connection point because inevitably somebody on the other side of that LinkedIn post is sitting in the office right now missing a recital or a game and feels, we all are modern parents, we feel like shit. Our parents didn't give a fuck. We feel like shit. We feel like shit and all of a sudden that hits you and say, wait a minute, maybe that's why I should pay up for the tech because I do want that hour back because I do want to eat dinner with my family once a week.

13:55And like, that's real shit. Just the real way humans work. And so my efficiency on that post will go up. This is like real shit. Like I think, it's why I laugh how people think about social media. People look at social media like, it's bad, it's ruining the world, or my kid's all fucked up. It is disproportionately the most significant engine of business growth on earth. And there isn't a close second. And yet everyone is lollygagging the shit out of it. There are less than two handfuls of people in that audience that have the commitment towards LinkedIn that is required for an industry like this that will actually drive their business.

14:30They will spend so much more energy designing their booth for this incredible conference than they will for all their content on LinkedIn this whole year. And this is a big time, this is the Apex Super Bowl event, but it's still only three fucking days. There's another 362 fucking days. And not everyone's here. and you're not gonna serendipitously run into everyone you're trying to get to here, no matter how late you stay up tonight. You know, and so I don't understand how people don't understand the scale comes from LinkedIn. On that note, you've talked about... Does I want that for something?

15:03See? Yeah. No, no, what fascinates me is you said you have a staff of 37 for your personal brand and then an agency, right, and VaynerMedia and 2 ,000 other employees. And then VFriends has 50 employees. How important is it for everyone to have a personal brand focus beyond just the business at the office? I don't think it's a requirement. I don't think everyone needs to have a personal brand. I think everyone should consider it. It's not for everyone. There's a lot of baggage that comes with being a public figure. Now, most people won't have the level of public figure-ness that I have. So I think for a lot of people, especially in a B2B environment, I think it's epic.

15:39Because there's nobody here who's the next fucking Taylor Swift or Charlie D 'Amelio. Like it's not that kind of industry for that. So I think, but what it will be is it leads to you being on, it leads to this conference inviting you to be on stage next year. Like there's a lot of value in it in B2B. B2C is a little scarier because it can change your life. If you became internet famous, your life's different. And there's a lot of baggage that comes along with that. And a lot of people don't even, I'll be honest with you, I'm not very interested in, how many people here really follow me, like just for context?

16:08So all of you know, I don't share my personal life. I'm deeply private deeply private I just am so aware of the business ramifications of it but why did I say that? you're in control you don't want people in your business don't post it I think to remind people first it's not for everyone and it's okay you don't have to but I do think a lot of people think of it as only like high energy dynamic person it's not there's a lot of very introverted very thoughtful very articulate very deep thinking writers that crush, especially for this industry. You go write a white paper that really is right about what's happening and like talks about your solution and why it will work, you will be stunned how much that will work.

16:54So you gotta find your way of communicating. I think it's worth considering, but it's not a requirement. There are plenty of people have monster businesses that has no personal brand attached to it. It also could lead to happiness. Let me explain. So now you're getting going a little bit with what we're talking about here, but you start, you remember like, wait a minute, he did mention that I could post other stuff and you post your first ever video cooking, ever. You love to cook, it's your place, it's where you feel like you're most you, you're even a little funnier, a little more dynamic, right?

17:24And you just film cooking a meal and you're talking and you just post it and it fucking explodes and you find yourself two years from now being literally a food influencer and making more money with brands supporting your food videos than you were doing being a senior executive. I believe it is a path to happiness. I just, I genuinely believe a lot of people here have deeper passions than what you're doing right now for your living. And I think it's worth potentially scratching those itches. So, Gary, on stage, you have a very specific way that you exhibit yourself and use hands, gestures, and you have your hat, you know.

18:03Yep. Is all that by choice? The reverse, the reverse. Yeah, it's really funny. I love that both of your questions kind of have the same answer. When I first hit the scene, I wrote a book in 2009 called Crush It, which really talked about what I thought was gonna happen and ended up happening with social media and all this. It went very viral. I was pretty unknown. I was in the wine world, but definitely not in the business world. And I started getting asked to speak. And I don't know if you picked up on this, but I curse. And I'm very casual. and today the way I'm dressed on stage even in an event like this you can kind of somewhat get away with it the casualization of business over the last 15 years has happened in 2009 it wasn't there yet and CAA was my speaking bureau at the time and they called me because I was because I was naturally good at it I didn't know that I was a good public speaker and I'm you can see how I speak it's very improv it's very like it's not a presentation even for the people that follow me the most they'll see things that I say often but there's always new shit.

19:07It's contextual. My speaking bureau reached out to me like pretty aggressively in like a good way. They came from a good place. They're like, bro, you could be like a legitimate speaker. Like you could be big. Like this could work for you. And it's very lucrative. But you have to start wearing a suit and you can't curse. And they didn't even finish the sentence and I said to them, you just, I'm like, thank you. Because they were coming from a good place. I'm like, you just don't know me. I'm not capable of that. I'm just really great at one thing which is being comfortable in my own skin and dealing with the ramifications of that.

19:39Pro and con. That is my greatest skill set. So all of that is just really how I live my life. And I'm okay that people won't book me to speak because they don't want someone to curse or they think it's disrespectful to be too casual. I respect that. That's their house. That's their event. They're allowed. But I'm not interested in feeling uncomfortable because I can't be my best self. When I'm speaking, I want to impact people. like all of you just saw that talk I was like reinforcing over and over the same thing because I know the three little there's like three or four things for that collective group knowing there was a lot of different people in there those were the three things that if they did better shit would happen and like if I'm not comfortable I'm not gonna be able to authentically like hit do you know what I mean?

20:24and I'm aware that there's people in there that thought it was inappropriate that I cursed I believe that every time like I believe that and I respect that but I also know on the flip side, that talk has much more impact on the collective than most talks that would be given. And that's all you could ask for, right? Have as big of an impact. So no, I don't, I don't, I'm not like Vince McMahon and like creating a character that I think will work. I just got very fortunate that the world went in my direction. I always think about myself of like, who the hell would have I been if I was doing business in the 60s, 70s and 80s?

21:00It would have been tough because I wouldn't have gone there and it just I would have been some sort of different thing I mean it might have been better I might have been very unique and a trailblazer but um no I'm I'm just not comfortable of doing anything that doesn't come naturally to me I just always feel like it's icky and off and me like not in my pure form is like bad My last kind of insure tech was when we put in his base. Did the VC chain. Built it, sold, got acquired. Integrated it in the last starting of Venture Studio. Curious with the PC and MCA. The pros, cons of the Venture Studio model.

21:35Do asset class. I mean, the Venture Studio concept, which I've flirted with a lot. These are like where you're incubating multiple businesses. You know, I assume you're bringing in some founders. You own a piece. Like, it's, you know, honestly, I really, really love that concept because I'm very creative and I have 100 ideas. So I think this will be your most enjoyable venture because you're gonna be able to scratch a lot of inches. What inevitably happens in these models is if you're good, one's gonna take off and then that's gonna eat up a lot of energy. So you gotta keep that in mind if you want that or not want that.

22:07But what do I think? I think money's expensive right now. There's nobody in this industry that's confused by interest rates. So money's expensive so it changes all the rules. The VCs have all the leverage after they have had none in the last decade. like you literally had to beg people to take your money. Think about that. Right? Now, VCs have the leverage which I think is more appropriate. I think it was a little frothy, a little bullshit. I don't think people were building companies. They were building financial arbitrage machines trying to get to it. You know what I mean? So me personally, I think VC, being a VC right now is great.

22:40Your money's more valuable. It's harder to get LPs. So it depends on how much powder you're sitting on. And then as far as a venture studio model, I think the more creative you are, the more it's the right model. Because otherwise you're just a financier. And it's boring for operators. We're doing like hybrid too, it's not just about unicorns. If it's cash flow, like creating cash. Go figure. I know, right? A lot of. Yeah, I know, I know. But that's because venture capital just wants to show a multiplier to raise more LP, like it's a full ecosystem. I think you're going down in the right way. But it would be on the next venture.

23:16You know what's funny? I, similar to the other questions, like I don't, I'm a counter puncher. I'm a counter puncher. What does that mean? It means that I don't sit and say, I want my next venture to be bubble gum or sass. That like what I, because I day trade attention, I'm just kind of constantly watching. I'll give you, I'll give you themes that you might find interesting. I'm completely infatuated with the continent of Africa. The sheer talent and brain power and the youth. I think the stack goes something like in the next 15 years, like 35 % of the people under 25 in the world will live on the continent of Africa.

23:54So like, I like using history as a predictor. So if you really pay attention to what's happened in the Middle East in the last 30 years, you can see a very, obviously there's so many different geopolitics, there's a lot that's different, but there's a lot that's the same. So for example, I don't know what my next venture is, but I know that I'm incredibly bullish on Africa. and so what that will do is it will make me read for two hours about things going on in Africa which may lead to something as interesting as oh, there's a super fruit that only grows in Kenya, right? That I know the African market in the next 30 years is gonna be mature as a consumer market but I could also import it to the US and get all the coastal people that are trying to live that life.

24:35Curious, I did that with monk fruit. My fiance's very health out and she's like, in pillow talk, She's like, you have to do something with monk fruit. And I pulled up an email that I sent to Phil Toronto in 20, who works for me, in 2013. And it just said, monk fruit, we need to research it. She was blown away. And it was like a perfect story I could tell all of you of like how I actually work. I stay uncomfortably curious around different theses. And then because of that, right? So I'm building a Pokemon meets Sesame Street intellectual property called VFriends. I've been wanting to build something like it for a long time.

25:14Originally it was called Workplace Warriors. I was gonna do little toys and figurines for your desk because I think a lot of us know what cubicles look like. But I bought Bitcoin and Ethereum in 2013, 15, and was watching it. And then when I saw the NFT thing was starting to mature, I decided to launch the IP as an NFT while equally making videos that 99 % of NFTs were gonna go to zero. So it was a very like complex, like I'm all in on the macro, be careful of the micro. But now I'm like very far along. Yesterday I was in New York City on a float for the Halloween parade. Trading, if you go to eBay right now and type in vFriends, you will be blown away with the pins and stickers and trading cards.