Why 2026 is the Year to Start a Business

0:00The thing that inspires me is that there's a 16-year-old kid right now literally listening to this in the outskirts of Pittsburgh or in rural Peru. Literally, if they have the internet, which third world countries have unprecedented access to the internet, she or he can do something. They can build, they can vibe code something. They can build an agent. They could service clients that are unaware that they could be so effective and efficient with AI. They can become renowned or famous using social. They can make content from TikTok affiliate and have one video get 500 ,000 views and make$40 ,000.

0:42I spoke to a woman yesterday who's a TikTok affiliate who made$400 ,000 in December making 30 pieces of content. This is unprecedented opportunity for the have-nots. This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience.

1:24to to say what's going to be next. So in a world of AI in 2026, with all the kind of chaos that seems to be happening, how are you managing both your brand and all the related companies as well as all of your clients? You know, I think with thoughtful optimism while trying to be very strategic about the humility that needs to be deployed by anyone that has it going well. You know, I think a lot about the mid-90s, right before the internet really became a consumer trend. There was just a lot of companies that felt remarkable. I think about Toys R Us quite a bit, given the things I'm into as a retailer and toys and collectibles.

2:14And, you know, they misunderstood the moment. and I think that for me, I know that AI and all these other things will be in the short term, you know, demonized. There'll be stigma around it but that's only based on what humans do with very big technologies, electricity, the internet, you know? And so for me, for my clients, for my brands, for my personal brand, I think curiosity is important. so everything that I hear from AI or blockchain or even like governments passing laws, everything is a maybe, not a no. And I think right now too many people listening to, actually people listening to this I think are in maybe culture.

3:03I would say the masses outside this window are in no culture and in that no culture they will be vulnerable. And what I mean by no is people that are overly romantic about yesterday, people that are overly concerned about can any of these technologies or trends hurt my business without realizing that if you don't jump on board and you know use these tools and opportunities that that's that's the problem right if you're a animation studio and you're like this sucks that us normal people can do animation in a way that they learned how to do for 20 years and you don't jump aboard and start using Hicksfield or Nano or these things.

3:45That's the problem. Because the invention's out, the genie's out the bottle. And so I think I'm in a very thoughtful place because I've always been underdog. I was scrappy underdog the whole way. So every new big change was big advantage. I find myself with real businesses now. And so they can be disrupted very heavily and I don't wanna be a hypocrite. I don't wanna make the mistake that I've been talking about for 30 years and I'm not going to and I don't plan on it. You've been quite successful at being able to see where things are going. Yes. You know, whether it's social, whether it's e-comm, you know, then into AI.

4:30When you look at this moment, what's inspiring you for the future? I think what's inspiring me is that there's a, I love merit. You know, right before we started this, we were talking about the Knicks. I love sports. You know, the Knicks beat the Cavs last night. There's no like, was there, you know, I mean, I guess there's cheating and stuff, but you know what I mean, right? Like, the score was a score. Everyone knows it. It's not like politics or the Constitution where people debate it, you know, or judges, six to three. Like, it's just clean. and I like that about business though it's not as clean as sports.

5:09There's a lot of fooling around potential taxes. You could play. What I love about big technology shifts is there is a little bit of opportunity and merit. The thing that inspires me is that there's a 16 year old kid right now literally listening to this in the outskirts of Pittsburgh or in rural Peru that literally if they have the internet, which third world countries have unprecedented access to the internet, she or he can do something. They can build, they can vibe code something. They can build an agentic. They could service clients that are unaware that they could be so effective and efficient with AI.

5:57They can become renowned or famous using social. They can make content from TikTok affiliate and have one video get 500 ,000 views and make$40 ,000. I spoke to a woman yesterday who's a TikTok affiliate who made$400 ,000 in December making 30 pieces of content. you know this is unprecedented opportunity for the have-nots and so you know keeps getting built on right the personal computer then comes the internet then the internet evolves into this social place then the algorithms within social become very merit-based not on how many followers you have then ai comes along and low-cost technology to make you profoundly effective that if you put in the work, it's kind of like getting into shape pre-Ozempic and steroids.

6:55You know, like back in the day, like if you ate well and you went to the gym and you did the right things, anyone could, even if they maybe didn't have the predisposed DNA or the environment too. And technology-wise, I think we're there. It's a level of opportunity that is profound. And it's making me very optimistic because I think that's lovely. Hey, everybody. hope you're enjoying the podcast right now make sure you follow the podcast that's why I'm interrupting let's keep going on this show but follow the podcast it'll make my mom super happy and I was listening to an interview you did I think it was on Tom Papa's show where you said this is the biggest financial opportunity for someone under the age of 25 ever ever and you said AI's been bigger than the internet I was thinking think of all the millionaires and billionaires that have been made on the internet AI is even bigger than that you know whether it's bigger or not, because the internet's fucking big.

7:49But I don't know, I keep looking at this light above your head. It does feel electricity-like. It feels even more, because it affects the real world. When we get into robotics, it feels like everything will be AI'd out. Everything. And so, whether it's bigger or not, I don't even know how to, One judges that. It's definitely the biggest thing since. You know, the mobile device in between, that was very big for me. That was probably my best subconscious understanding, meaning day one iPhone, I go to the Shorthills Mall in New Jersey, I get it. I turn it on in Wine Library, and within one second, I'm like, oh, this is it.

8:38This is it. Like, everything's different now. You know, and if you remember, like, a lot of people were very, first of all, BlackBerry was red hot. And it was expensive. And I don't think people understood app culture and the internet being at your fingertip. And it changed everything, right? There's no Uber or social. It's a whole big thing. Anyway, nonetheless, this feels like the biggest thing since the internet for me.

9:32And I think you said that AI deserves its place on that sort of innovation, not Rushmore. Yeah. You know, is that where the Bloomberg Press is? What are your other faces on that? That's a fun one. You know, I think the printing press is like really there. I think the television is there. I think the internet is there, the personal computer, the mobile device, the steam engine, electricity for damn sure. Things that fundamentally change society. It's almost like we're getting lulled into misunderstanding how big this is, right? It feels like it's been around now for the last two, three years. And it kind of feels like internet 95, 96.

10:18Like people are like, oh, it's big. And you kind of like, is it? Because like I haven't felt it yet. And then like it feels like overnight you feel it. I think social was the same way. I'm like, man, this MySpace thing is big. And then it kind of took like another five to seven, even 10 years where people are like, whoa, social really transformed. Television too, by the way. You know, took a while for everyone to get on. Da, da, da, da, da. So, yeah, I think we're in a, in fact, it's fun to be on this show because I actually think the blockchain's relationship with AI is actually going to make a lot of normies understand the value of the blockchain, a ledger of truth and ownership in a world of deep fakes and fake and fake and fake and fake and fake.

11:09I think the blockchain is gonna shine with this AI overlay in society. I wanna dive into that in a second, but I wanna think about how you, you speak a lot about entrepreneurship. Yes. And so it feels that AI is allowing people to be entrepreneurs in ways they never were. I rewatched your conversation, I think it was from 10 years ago with Larry King. And in it you say, I know where I start and I know where I stop. And I was thinking about it through the lens of now, if I'm working with Claude, the places I stop, Claude can now take over. Yes. And does that fundamentally change how an entrepreneur thinks in terms of, oh, I don't need to now build out this entire team.

11:55I can find assassins who can do the things I need to do really well. But I can still keep going without needing to find a developer or without needing to find a UX person. Yes. You know, this technology really benefits the architect more than the masons. Really? You know? Yeah. The most creative, the most strategic are going to have a very nice chapter. You know, and that's just kind of the reality of it. And so, yeah, I think, and you know, it's a really tough thing for me to think about. For example, as someone who really does adore merit, you know, maybe one could argue that the last 50 years, the most creative, the most strategic did not actually get what she or he deserved.

12:52That because there was so much cost and overhead and tax on executional parts, that that if there was a queen god of merit and she came down, she's like, actually, the songwriter didn't get enough of the economics, or the painter, or the person that came up with the idea. I don't know, but no question. It is shocking to me how much the creative, of the strategist, the architect, is gonna benefit from this technology. All right, so you mentioned blockchain. What was interesting to you when you first started to learn about it? Well first, including AI, nothing was more challenging for me to understand than Bitcoin in 13, 14, 15.

13:55I don't remember which South by Southwest it was where Aaron Battalion, the former CTO of LivingSocial, broke down the blockchain for me. He was really teaching me about Ethereum, actually, because I'd heard of Bitcoin because I was a nerd culture at that time, but it really didn't register.

14:16Once I understood ownership, I remember the example for me was a deed or a marriage license. I thought a lot about like wow you know what really hit me was Wine Library when I launched it the server that the website was on was in the closet of my liquor store and when the power went out this is real when the power would go out which would happen once or twice every year or two because of a storm in New Jersey literally the website was down so there was no cloud there's no Amazon services and so I remember understanding like oh wow every document like no more like fire in a building and like really important documents are gone so it was first ownership you know like oh wow I digitally own this like you know the joke that they made about NFTs for five years like why are you buying that ape I can screen shoot it now I have it too I always thought that was so funny I was like oh me taking a photo of this building and being like, I own this building.

15:27You know, like, you don't. So ownership, you know, that truth, that providence, and then obviously that bled later into one of my great passions, which is collectibles and identity and community. But that was the first thing. And there's a, I'm friends with a number of people who were in a famous call you created around crypto puns. You know, it's Mr. Beast, and it's Nick Tran, and Bobby, and Logan Paul, and all those people. And I remember Bobby telling us about you basically saying, here's why I'm in on this thing, which inspired a lot of those people to get interested in the technology. What at that time were you seeing that others weren't?

16:17I'm very big on timing of when the masses are ready for something. on that call, which has been wildly over-embellished. Yes, there was that call. I did that call about comic books last week and I was tweeting constantly about NFTs at that point. I thought people would collect them forever. I believe that right now. I'm very aware. Literally yesterday, I had lunch with someone and I showed them that$400 ,000 worth of Bored Apes were bought. in the last 24 hours. They were on the ground stunned. They and 99 % of the world think NFTs were scams and a fad. They, that person who's incredibly successful and a proper business person, I said to them, you're shocked, right?

17:10They said, yeah, I said, you didn't think there was$400 ,000 sold of NFTs in the last 30 days period, let alone one project in the last 24 hours. He said, absolutely. reminds me a lot of the internet in 2000 when all the stock prices collapsed greed will always set something back there's an enormous amount of greed in nft culture in that 12 month 24 month window that ultimately hurt it um but what i saw is what's happening today it's a collectible it is a collectible just like comic books and coins and stamps and sneakers and canvas art, handbags, vintage clothes, watches. NFTs are a collectible.

17:53They will forever be a collectible. And in fact, we are filming this right before Memorial Day 2026. One of the most exciting things for me that I'm gonna do this weekend is I already blocked it on my counter for three hours while I drink some really good tea. I am literally doing homework on artists and projects because I believe this is very similar to the late 60s and early 70s when contemporary art here in New York City was considered a fad and people who bought up Andy Warhol's and Jackson Pollock's did quite well and I do believe, like I said, in August of 2021 that 99 % of NFTs will be worth zero but I believe that means 1 % will not and I believe based on where NFTs are right now, whatever the 1 % are and I do not claim to know, though I do think CryptoPunks is one for sure that will make it, they are grossly underpriced, whatever that 1 % is.

18:53Yeah, I mean, they were showing at Art Basel in Hong Kong, at Art Basel in Switzerland. I mean, I think any movement, I think about who can name a Cubist other than Picasso or maybe George Brock, right? Correct. The fact is there were thousands of artists trying to do this work. And so you just gotta find those people. That's right. When hip hop was said that it's not music and it's not real, Sugar Hill Gang or LL Cool J or Russell Simmons or what have you, these people we know and the nine trillion other rappers that were trying to make it in the Bronx and Brooklyn and Queens, we don't know. And that's just how everything is.

19:36That's funny you said that because I have this theory and you were raised in Queens. like you were from this world too, I was raised in Manhattan, but that hip-hop was the primitive of almost all modern culture. Oh, I could not agree with that more. You know, the idea that like, I don't know how to make music, so I'll get some turntables and I'll make my own. I can plug it into an outlet in the park and I can play for people. You know, sampling to me is early mimetics. A hundred percent. And so I always tell people to look at early hip-hop as an inspiration for where you can go if you just really have the will to do it.

20:09I could not agree more.

20:14You mentioned, okay, so this moment happens with, you understand blockchain, maybe you pick up some Ethereum or Bitcoin, you get excited about CryptoPunks, Ford Apes, whatever, you launch BeFriends. Yes. Which at the time was really one of the most successful collections out there. While it's super hot is when you're saying 98%, 99 % of these things are going to zero. Yes. Was the community of NFT holders who are very opinionated, were they dragging you for why you couldn't get on the industry? Not really. It's almost like no one gave a fuck, to be frank. I think everyone was just so caught up in the gold rush.

20:57I got a couple of messages from thoughtful people and be like, yo, why are you saying that? I'm like, because it's really hard. like what I'm accomplishing right now with vFriends really requires a good operator. And it was very clear to me that the kids that I was meeting because I was looking at every collection were, you know, I'd just gone through investing in so many web 2.0 companies and 99 % went to zero. You know, it fell on deaf ears predominantly because I did pick the white hot moment. I mean, I think ironically those videos came out in that August that I think might have been the top volume

21:37Not really, not really. I mean, I did it because it's what I believed and that's what I do for a living. Like everything that's about to happen in this interview is what I believe. So, no, it wasn't like, oh fuck you Gary, what the fuck are you doing? You're the Pied Piper and now you're shitting on it. I just think people didn't care. Again, that was the punchline. I didn't feel like 99 % of the people that were collecting were collecting, they were flipping. People were saying things like community, community. What they meant was cash, cash. You know, like let's all keep buying this up so it goes up.

22:14It was just very clear to me that this was, things gone awry. Reminded me a lot of the junk wax era in trading cards in the 90s. When I first got in in 86, 87, 88, it was collectors and a little bit of speculators. By 92, it was speculators. You were gambling. They were like, this quarter, Browning Nagel, a famous Jets second round pick. People were buying thousands of his rookie cards and hoping he would be Joe Namath. It's happening a lot in sports cards right now, but at least trading cards at that point had been an 80-year collectible. NFTs were new. There was a lot of speculation. COVID, the US printed all this money.

22:55People were taking their stimulus checks and buying watches and Dom Perignon and NFTs. NFTs and it was just very clear. There's a reason why trading cards rebounded so quickly. They had the history of being a collectible. But I think the NFT market's in a very good space right now. You have a much smaller group, but they're real. And they're really collectors and they care. Or there's a percentage holding on, hoping to get back to the old prices. but you have some builders and I'm excited about where the space is right now. When you think about your businesses and where you want to go, I love the audacity of thinking as big as you do.

23:41You talk about wanting to own the New York Jets or you talk about Be Friends becoming the next Pokemon or Disney. Yes. Are those, how much of that is like North Star so we are always keeping a future vision or is there a little year roadmap? I mean the Jets thing started in fourth grade so I think that is more like a childhood dream that really got real in my teenage years early 20s and then the calculus changed when I wanted to buy the Jets when I was 18 22 24 these franchises didn't seem so out of reach they were in the hundreds of millions and I thought I could get there now they're in the tens of billions and that's a little bit more of a long putt but I still believe I still want to try if that makes sense VFriends Pokemon's the most successful intellectual property in the world right now that's a big one ironically I feel more confident that I can make VFriends a top 10 intellectual property than I can buy the New York Jets with the Jets I have to get very fortunate that my maximum moment of economic power also aligns with if the Johnson family ever wants to sell it.

24:57I'm not in control. With V-Friends, I'm in control. I'd love to be a Disney, Pokemon, Marvel, Star Wars. I'd be very proud of my efforts if I pulled off a Transformers, He-Man, Care Bears, My Little Pony. I'd like to be minimally in between those kind of tiers. and we're off to a nice start. I feel very confident. But I would say, no, I don't think I'm, I mean, I'm definitely not doing it for show. You know, a lot of times, it's really funny to watch how social media plays. There's something funny a couple years ago where that was the clip and somebody in the comments was like, this guy's so full of shit.

25:38He's just doing everything for show. And like four people that I went to junior high with that I don't think I spoke to in like 14 to 25 years all jumped in the comments being like, I was there in 86. this has been what he's been talking about. So, you know, I do it for myself. Now I talk about a lot of my stuff publicly for the last 15 years, but I have a pretty clear roadmap on the VFriends part. The roadmap with the Jets is I need to amass as much wealth as truly possible and get outrageously fortunate that it becomes available at a time where I can do something about it. Right. I think about, when I look at the opportunities that you've created, a lot of it feels like you are seeing asymmetries that a lot of people take to.

26:18and I remember watching early videos of you where you were going to like, you know, yard sales. Yes. And being like, I can buy this mug for$2 and I go on eBay and sell it for$10 where you were already successful at that point. So it seems like part of the fun for you is also seeing that there's these mismatches and having to take advantage of it. I do love that. And those videos started trash talk because I started getting emails and direct messages that were like, hey, you're talking about investing$50 ,000 into a startup like I have$18 in my Wells Fargo and I was like okay let me do something about that and so I was like what did I do when I had$18 I was like I did garage sales and I flipped on eBay this is how I taught AJ business and I knew it was real the flip life and the arbitrage that was one of the great chapters of my life that's 17, 18 19 because I still get messages still of like you changed my life in that era.

27:18I learned how to buy and sell and flip. Whether it's someone who says they make an extra$15 ,000 a year, going to flea markets and garage sales and goodwill and that's meant something to their family, all the way to kids who are like 30 now that said that was a starting point, buying a mug for a quarter and selling for five bucks and now they train on Wall Street. That was very fulfilling because you're right and you could probably see it through the video. deep down I'm still a garage sale kid and I like my inner family and friends know this me going to a garage sale tomorrow buying a trinket for a dollar and selling it for $39 on eBay is definitely something I get more joy of than landing a$3.9 million client at VaynerX no question about it but teaching the audience on that one that chapter was one of my great chapters of doing what I want to do with my content, which is bring value to the people that consume it.

28:20And I think one of the things I really respect about what you do is anyone at any point in their career can look at it and find something. Yes. Something inspires them. Yeah, I appreciate that. And also, I have real energy to be there in the moment. People ask me a lot of times of like, don't you get tired saying the same kind of stuff? or sometimes people want to razz me and be like, you've been saying this for 15 years. It's like the biggest compliment. You know, I don't want to make up net new things. I want to talk about what I believe. But I just know that the post this morning, I mean, I've made unlimited content about you're young, you have time.

28:56The post I posted just now before I walked in here, you know, I think it's titled for 17 to 25 year olds. Like for a 19 year old, when I said it 15 years ago, they were four. It wasn't their time. you know and like there's many people who've come up to me or messaged me that said you know I heard you wah wah wah like Charlie Brown wah wah wah like it was all noise and then like one day I just needed it and the message met the person it's very intoxicating when you have a lot of energy to want to leave a positive deposit it keeps me incredibly resilient tenacious and consistent I'm proud of that and it feels nice to want to leave a positive deposit.

29:42And you know this, I've been doing this a long time. I feel like what I do is needed more than ever because negativity and cynicism is incredibly loud today compared to when I first started making the kind of positive practical content I made. And so there's almost a sense of responsibility at this point. And do you think we are entering an era? We see meta laying off thousands of people. We see people really freaked out. I have a 24-year-old daughter, right? She still has to figure out what she's going to do. Yes. It's a challenging time. But there does seem to be this interesting, like, liminal uptick in everyone wants to understand and figure out their specific place in the system.

30:28And I think about not only all the collectibles, but the rise of all collectibles. We can't stop us seeing hack-rip videos of Pokemon or One Piece. we can't stop seeing people who are flipping watches. But now I think about polymarket. Now I think of 24-7 stock trading, which is coming quickly. And it just feels like, is everything a trade? I think that is very inherent in humans. Shiny rock for sheep wool is like a trade that we don't think about today. These vegetables for that cloth, I think it's inherent. I do think unfortunately we're in a very materialistic I think you know Madonna nailed it like I think we're a little like we're like it's wild I love all this stuff but I'm I'm very not materialist I don't want the stuff I'm interested in like the community I think collectibles is winning on community more than people realize I think live shopping is winning on that more than people realize people are lonely they're looking for community but yeah I think greed is, unfortunately I think gambling culture is rising, I don't think that's good.