This Is Why Discomfort Is So Important

0:00It's good for you to go through these frustrations because one of the great shortcomings of society is people have lost their ability to be uncomfortable. So much of what you're seeing in today's society is we've demonized the ability to have adversity discomfort in our bodies. It's really, really nice to be with all of you. Obviously, you know, given the sheer size and scale of this class, it really excites me. when I think about how I wanted to build the company a couple of years ago through analyst class and then creators and then PCS and just everything we're doing. It feels very rewarding to be in this moment with all of you.

0:47The amount of love that this group has gotten from individuals in this organization has been extraordinary. And I'm really grateful. I'm really proud of you. Thank you for that. Obviously, some of you are better than us. And then so, you know, really what I want to do in this time is bring you all the most value. I think one of the things I'm most proud of as a CEO is I'm obsessed, would be the word I use, that this decision to come into here at this time is the best decision you've ever made professionally. And that may lead to one of you sitting on this Zoom right now, ending up doing what I do and ending up being the global CEO of VaynerX that is potentially in the cards.

1:40Others may leave in three months, but learn something during this time that is foundational to what they do. Javi, what's good? Hey, Yari. Great to finally meet you. Such a pleasure. Yeah, I was wondering, knowing what you know now about the industry, about the world in general, and even like yourself, your growth as an individual, what would you tell your 25-year-old self, knowing everything you know now?

2:14that I would tell him, hey, kid, you've got 90 % of this figured out. But all the pain and discomfort and missteps that you're about to have over the next 21 years are going to be because you aren't good at candor. That your lack of candor is going to lead to a lot of people loving you at all times because you're making everything so awesome, but you're going to build resentment and that's going to manifest in personal relationship vulnerabilities. And it's definitely going to manifest in your passion to be a businessman because you're not going to be able to give people critical feedback and then you're going to surprise them when you fire them.

3:02And then instead of you being the good guy where you gave good feedback and unfortunately didn't work, but you were gracious and you still did the good severance and you were a good person and you're good. Now you're going to be a bad guy to some of these people because on Thursday you said, Hey, Javi, keep crushing it. And then on Monday you walk in and be like, Javi, this is your last day. And he's going to be like, what the fuck? You said last Thursday, everything was rolling. My obsession for happiness and like good skewed too far. And I didn't have the balance of candor. It's why kind candor was invented.

3:36It's why it's foundational here. And let there be no confusion to everybody here. The establishment of kind candor has helped our company quite a bit over the last two, three years, a lot. It has really helped us. And it's really helped me personally. And so that's what I would tell him, my friend. Thank you. Grace? Hi, Gary. Thanks for talking to us. Of course. If you had to distill the role of the PCS into one function, what would it be? knowing everything that's going on in culture at this exact second.

4:21I'm obsessed, Grace, with the PCS. I would argue the PCS at its core is the thing that's closest to me, who I am. It's scary how much shit I know. And it's by being super wide and then being strategic when I go deep and everything in between, right? Like it's, you know, it's knowing why slime was hot with nine-year-old girls for 24 months. It's knowing why Polo G could be the next Drake, but with a little more hood. It's why knowing that why Facebook written words are working on fan page. It's like fucking just knowing, you know what I mean? Curiosity at scale, grinding at scale, not imposing your own opinions on shit at scale, which is impossible in this highly charged political climate.

5:18It's being like a neutral vessel of curiosity. and then having the talent to convert signals into hypotheses.

5:35Thank you. Welcome. Devin. Hey, Gary. Great to meet you. Just a quick question. So we see with a lot of these social platforms, longer form content becoming more prevalent. and I was just wondering your thoughts on how you see the actual ad space changing as the type of content shifts. One more time, brother. Something chopped for me. I missed the part right before more prevalent. One more time. So like as longer form content becomes more prevalent on these short form content platforms, how do you see the ad space changing within those? That's a great question. For me, it hasn't changed much. Let me explain what I mean by that.

6:20Think about me. I don't know if you guys know this. This is actually wild. I've done a very bad job branding this, which is unusual for me because I'm pretty good at personal branding. I was legitimately, no bullshit, one of the first 15 YouTube celebrities. Like in 2006, Wine Library TV, it was like Zay Frank, Rocket Boom, Lonely Girl, Renetto. Like I knew everybody who had 10 ,000 subscribers. Think about what I just said to you. So because of that, I've always known that the long form ecosystem had legs, that it wasn't how long the video was, it's how good the video was. I actually got flown to Yahoo and Google because they had Yahoo video and Google video before Google bought YouTube.

7:17that was their product and both those companies flew me out to probe me and ask me why people were watching 20 minutes of my videos and my answer was literally i have no idea i because i could you know at that point i was a businessman the thought that i had on camera charisma didn't even cross my mind like it wasn't a function of like how i thought all this notoriety and awareness and micro fame I have now is so funny to me. I didn't do anything public until I was 30. You know, like it wasn't even on the rate. It's not like you guys who grew up knowing normal people could be famous for me when I was 15, unlike you, I thought you had to want to be famous and go to Hollywood and wait tables and try to be on television.

8:09So here's how. It's the reason VaynerMedia is going to be the biggest agency in the world. What people don't realize is you have to make content that people want to watch. And so the whole VaynerVideo1 bridge one thing that I'm pushing that we haven't really accomplished yet is going to be the whole game because people will watch five minutes and 17 second videos. they're going to be consumed at scale on streaming. What do you think Netflix commercials are gonna look like? They're gonna be there. And my intuition is people are gonna make shitty ones. And my intuition is Vayner is gonna make the best ones.

8:46And people are gonna actually like wanna watch our shit. Like in between fucking Stranger Things, we're gonna make a nostalgic fucking video for fucking Casper. And people are like, what the fuck was that? Because they're not even gonna be sure or if it's a commercial part of fucking Stranger Things, we're gonna confuse the shit out of that. It starts in sock and it builds up. And so I think that's how it's gonna go. Awesome, thank you so much. Got you. Kevin. Hey Gary, how you doing? I'm well Kevin. First off, thank you for this opportunity. These have been some of the best three months of my professional life.

9:27Makes me so happy. I'm grateful, you know. My question is, has there ever been a time in your life where you felt down and out, pressure on all sides, and how did you overcome that moment? I think my toughest times were, you know, in school, when, you know, when you're 12 years old and 13 years old, and every teacher you have tells you that you're gonna be a loser and a garbage man. I don't know, I feel bad. I was so pissed that they would always shit on garbage men. And I feel like that's such a job I respect so much. But that was the hot thing in the 80s. You're gonna be a garbage man. I was like, oh fuck.

10:06You know, I was actually kind of pumped. I'm like, oh shit, I can get stuff for free instead of the garage sales and flip it. But that was hard. It was hard. I think that's why I'm unstoppable now. Because at 11, 12, 13, 14, every grown up I knew, teachers and my friends' parents, every grown up I knew told me I was gonna be a loser while my mother told me I wasn't and the world told me I wasn't. I was selling lemonade, shoveling snow, selling baseball cards, flipping stuff at garage sales and I was great at it. The market told me I was great. My mom told me I was great because I was a nice person and here I am 46 years later, a nice gangster businessman.

10:57But it was hard and actually, I've never said this before, it just hit me, and built a personal brand because I can deal with people shitting on me because they've been shitting on me. Of course you can't be a personal, of course people struggle putting themselves out there. They grew up as A and B students and like haven't had that emotional adversity yet.

11:27Thank you so much. Appreciate you. Appreciate you. Mayor. Hi Gary. Thank you for this opportunity. I think it means the world to all of us. So for me, you're the main resource for NFTs and most trusted person in the world. You actually took utility to NFTs and you brought the game into another level. I wanna know, what do you think is the limit for this industry? Because it's totally new, it's just been there for years. And I wanna know the future of that based on your ideas. You know, the last year of NFT land has been really good to me. I stood up the property, I'd done well. But most of all, I'm proud that I had the strength to say that 99 % of them were gonna go to zero during the height of it all.

12:19Right? I don't know how many guys and gals followed this, but like I was putting out a ton of content saying 98 to 99 % of this is going to zero. And I would always confuse people because I was supposed to be the poster child and the Pied Piper, and it would fuck people up. And I was like, well, yes, but this is just the truth, right? Like, you know, to Simon's point, I liked Alien Friends' art. It went up to like$15 ,000. Now it's like 100 bucks. It's just the way it is. It's like sports card trading, right? Like, yes, Michael Jordan and LeBron went up, but all that money I spent on Chris Webber rookie cards, I didn't make money on that.

12:53And Chris Webber had a great career, a borderline Hall of Fame career, and it still didn't work out. So, you know, the future, but the reason I put my reputation and my career on it is it is the biggest technology shift since the internet. every single company and person will interact with nfts they may not even be called nfts the internet used to be called the information superhighway the first four years i talked about the internet i said the worldwide web the web my website my my my dad's liquor store is going to be on the web now we say the internet i'm not even sure we're going to use the word nft in six years.

13:35But the concept of a blockchain at scale affirming neutrally with no ability to cheat transactions is the biggest fucking thing that's happened since the internet. And so I think about it every day. I'm enjoying this downtime because it lets me build VFriends because I'm an operator. And all the hysteria and the scams and the greed of money. Money fucks up everything. Money fucks up everything for the people that are fucked up. Money doesn't fuck up everything for people that are good. Money just exposes truth. And so there was a lot of great that happened in the last year in NFT, and there was a lot of shit that happened.

14:19But what's the future? You've heard me say this, I'm saying this for everybody else. Every concert ticket, every sporting event ticket, every plane ticket, every premium item you buy from LVMH will come with an NFT as a receipt instead of a piece of paper or QR. It's going to eat up paper and QR codes and emails and apps, and I can't wait. Got it. Thank you. Sure. Ali. Hey, Gary. Hey, Ali. Just three weeks into the office at London, and I'm loving it here. And thanks for sharing your good advice with us today. My question for you is, within the next six to eight months, what are maybe five interesting ways you see brands leveraging NFTs and how can a PCS fit into that?

15:12The likelihood of a brand doing anything in the next six to eight months is almost zero because the market is so bare they're scared to be associated with something that isn't winning. If they were smart, what they would do is lean into their social good and nonprofit work that they're doing right now and issue NFTs for free to the world that is collectible to the best of their ability around their IP and brand and give the royalties to their nonprofits that they have commitments to. That's the number one, two, three, four, and five best thing they can do. let me teach you something that's really smart about that if they give away a million for free and now they're even selling for a hundred bucks with five percent royalty the money starts adding up right but also they have a million people in the world that have an nft sitting in their wallet so in a year or two they can say come to this website and connect your wallet and prove that you have this nft and get free shipping for the year or get 20 off or get access to our super or World Cup or Olympics party.

16:25What they theoretically have done is they've seeded a first party data pass to consumers at scale.

16:38Wow, love that, thank you. Yeah, they don't keep me around for my looks. It's this baby. Oh, Sarah, you laugh at that, come on, get out of here. Why do you think, or do you think it's become more popular for people to leave their jobs when they're unhappy for a job that even has a lower salary. Do you think it has become more popular than in the past? In the 80s people used to earn big bucks but they're not happy. Do you think it's become more socially acceptable for people to take a paper but it helps their mental health and their life fulfilment? Do you think that it has become more popular?

17:20And do you think there is a correlation to where we are now? 100%. I think that you are more thoughtful. Every generation is more thoughtful than the prior one because you have the luxury of the data, right? You got to watch, you know, we got to watch the people who grew up in the 60s and 70s and you got to watch the people who grew up in the 80s, 90s and 2000s. and there's more options, there's more information. You guys have no idea. I lived my entire childhood up until I was 19 years old without the internet. Think about that. So in the 80s, finding a new job was looking in the classifieds in a newspaper.

18:07Recruiters couldn't email you or hit you up on LinkedIn. in, you have more options. And with more options comes better decisions. And more thoughtful conversations. People are becoming more thoughtful. When I was growing up, to your point, make as much money as possible so you can get a house and a car and a vacation. And now people are more minimalists, value other things. And I think it's a beautiful thing. but I think it needs to be personal. I think a lot of kids struggle with being very ambitious. There's some kids that hit me up and say like, hey, I feel out of place with my Gen Zers. I do wanna work 15 hours a day.

18:51I do wanna build an empire. I'm like, that's good too. I go so hard, but when I say work hard, I don't say work hard and burn out. People are making assumptions out here. They took a word I used to love called hustle, which meant work hard. Like it matters. And we've manipulated it into this world of like, oh, if you do that, you're doing drugs and alcohol and have mental health issues. That's crazy. I'm the most chill, calm person on earth. I'm so content and happy. I'm chill as fuck. I sleep seven, eight, nine hours a day. I'm calm as a cucumber. That's because I'm in my zone and my zone is to be a fucking entrepreneur operator.

19:36for people that aren't they shouldn't because it's fucking anxious you know like if i was a if i was my admin my incredible admins i'd be anxious i don't like getting everything right and making sure everything's running on time i'd be fired in project management within a week at the intermediate a week, or maybe I would quit in 48 hours. So I think yes, no question. But I think it's because we're trying to be more self aware. What we have to be careful of is what I'm also seeing, which is amazing all that. The one thing to watch out for is entitlement. The one thing that I see creeping as a cousin to a lot of this thoughtfulness with a lot of youngsters is staggering levels of entitlement.

20:27Like, I should be the vice president of the company. I'm like, you've been here three weeks. And so the over coddling and delusional positive reinforcement of modern parenting has confused a lot of people. And that's one thing, that's a watch out. And by the way, I hate when people are like, all Gen Z, all millennia. No, 80 % of you, I don't see it in, but 20 % is a lot. because it used to be 1%. Like everybody in the 80s and 90s were like, I'm gonna give coffee to my boss for five years. Then I'm gonna do this. Then I'm gonna do that. Now kids are rolling in at 20 and being like, yo, where's the corner office at?

21:08So that's a watch out. Thanks Gary. Bye bye.

21:22I'm going to go.