Why “And” is the Answer: How to Create Content Outside of Your “Niche”

0:00When you have actual self esteem and you're a real person and you know what the fuck you're doing that you can't hear the outside noise. So when everybody left a comment every time saying, stay in your lane, wine boy. We don't want to hear your business stuff. It's like, you know, when people do politics, they're like, shut up and just be pretty or shut up and just play basketball. As the old saying goes, they said that to me too. Shut up and drink wine and spit it. What do you know about business? This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. How are you? I'm really good.

0:30What's up, Gary? Good to see you, my friend. Hi. Such a pleasure. Nice to meet you. What's going on? This is my Russian mob boss, Medvedev. I love it. That's the world I come from, I come from that land. I was born in the Soviet Union. Oh wait, you're being dead serious. I'm not joking, we're from Australia. I hear it, I hear it. I was born, hey man, how are you? Sorry, did you want to? Pleasure. I was born in the Soviet Union, which is now, the part I was born in is now Belarus, but that's where I'm from. Dude, that's so cool. Yeah. Yeah, Howard, thanks. Where's your family? Like, are they here?

1:05Yeah, yeah. All my family. We all left. You all went to New York? We all, yeah, we all went to Queens when we first came to America. A lot of our friends went to Australia. But everybody tried to get out of Russia if they could back then. But I grew up in Jersey. But I've lived in Manhattan for 25 years. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. You've got a sick office for the cool view. Yeah, I'm a huge basketball fan, so that's Madison Square Garden, so I always love looking at it. Yeah. What can I help with? Anything? Anything on your guys' mind? Well, knowing that I was coming in here today to talk to you, I thought it would be a good opportunity because I feel like you know so much about this.

1:45So I don't know how much you know about me, but I own a fitness app called Sweat. Female only, biggest in the world, traveled the world, done boot camps with thousands and thousands of women, and everyone knows me as Kayla, the personal trainer. and obviously I've evolved as a human. I've had two kids, I'm married and I'm wondering how do you go from the narrative of being a personal trainer to being a founder. And you're aware that I was Gary, the wine guy forever. That's right, yeah. You'll love this as a personal trainer by doing it. Okay. Right? How do you go, you know those ridiculous dudes that are so buff up top and have like stick legs?

2:27If they're like, fuck, I've been making the wrong move. how do they go and become and fix it? They literally go in the gym the next day. That's right. Your content. The only brave thing you need to do that I don't think is brave but the world thinks is brave is you need to start making content that at first will not get as many views. Right. Literally, you're going to love this. You're going to love this because you built such a real thing which is amazing. Congratulations. All you have to do is give up on two things. One, the short term data on views and how well the content's doing, right? And two, the precious grid.

3:08And that's it. If you do that and you start talking about handbags, if you start talking about soda, if you start talking about collectibles or travel or cool hats, whatever the fuck you talk about is what you become if it's good, if it's right. There's a billion personal trainers. Not everybody breaks out. they're either they don't have the right personality they don't have the right charisma and often times you know this they don't have the right actual information and so they just look good but their information isn't real. There's a million Gary V's but they're not real. They literally watch my videos and regurgitate it.

3:46So what was the finding that you had from going from Gary the wine guy to who you are today? That I knew that my mother did a good job but it was another moment that it reinforced that when you have actual self-esteem and you're a real person and you know what the fuck you're doing that you can't hear the outside noise so when everybody left a comment in every time saying stay in your lane wine boy we don't want to hear your business stuff it's like you know when people do politics they're like shut up and just be pretty or shut up and just play basketball as the old saying goes they said that to me too shut up and drink wine and spit it what do you know about business meanwhile I had already built a huge business for my dad it was who I was and so whether you're going to talk about something you know or whether you're going to talk about something that you're interested and passionate about and you're going to take them along on the journey.

4:34The biggest mistake people make is they claim to be an expert when they're a novice on their way to being an expert. People just want the truth. I don't think I'm trying to branch out to do anything different. I'm obviously not talking about handbags or soda, but I am talking about being a founder and being a leader still in my industry. You should. But trying to, yeah. You should. By the way, it's one of the more important things you could talk about. Especially Australia should be proud. I was an early investor in Canva. We got Canva, they got you. There's like a real, that's epic and you know this.

5:05Listen, I have an incredible female entrepreneur base, but I'm still a dude. And we all connect, we connect because we're from the same place. People connect on different things and obviously gender, race, religion, interests are all gonna be connection points. You're the person that's going to be interesting to a lot of people. so you would say that like you know what do you say to people who would comment something like let's bring back fitness content like you know you would say that you're so humble what I say I'm so humble that you guys want that for me and maybe one day I'll miss in fact I'm actually thinking about starting a new podcast called No Whining with Gary V where I just destroy complaining which is something I love doing while I review wine no whining oh yeah I love that you know so like but I stopped doing day to day content for wine in 2011.

5:53Did that help your wine business? The content back then? No, you branching out of wine. The real answer is no because the wine business is successful and it ebbs and flows. It's successful when I'm leading the charge and it's less successful when my dad's leading the charge. Yeah, right. Sorry, dad. You know, like the wine, you know, the funniest thing is when people come to see me here, they're like, what the fuck is this? I'm like, you know what? You know VaynerMedia is$450 million in revenue. I run the largest independent advertising agency in the world. I have 100 employees in Sydney. I love that.

6:32With this company. So like, you know, I'm an operator. I'm an actual businessman who actually then went to content, right? So the answer is no. From a content standpoint, it declined. If you're asking, well, the fitness business, you know, I don't know the context. I thought you sold it? Sold it and bought it back. Oh, that, now I understand. But by the way, what about and? What about the concept of and? Which is? Which is you can do unlimited fitness content and unlimited business content and then pick a third thing, parenting, and then a fourth thing, a new hobby that you've picked up, crochet.

7:08But you understand? Yeah, yeah. The game is about and. Everybody got taught the wrong thing, which is stay in your lane, niche, don't confuse the audience. It's all wrong. I think they do it to women in general. They do it to men in general. unlimited men 5 ,000 times a day on my live stream. But what about my niche? It's a human thing. Right, okay. I promise. So your advice is - There's massive, I'm sorry to interrupt, there's massive appetite for more female founders. I just was an early, I have a big announcement today? Today, a female founder that I invested in nine years ago just had a massive nine figure exit.

7:44She's announcing it today. And I've helped her along the way very aggressively. and she's not she's great but like everything she does over indexes because there's so much hunger for it there's plenty of dudes talking about what they did like there's unlimited and they they is for everyone you know like don't get caught up in that matrix like they did that to me because I was a bad student they did that to like you know yeah no complaining everybody's getting shit on yeah White men are getting shit on, promise. Yeah, so just do it. Just lean in, just do it. It's how you built your thing in the first place.

8:27Yeah, and people who struggle with, like I'm a person, I'm a people pleaser, obviously like growing up in a great family, like very acts of service, love like feeding and making sure everyone... Me too, me too. I struggle with it heavily. I'm an enabler, like I lack candor, I build resentment because of that. I have that flaw too, that has nothing to do with this conversation. Okay. You don't know those people. Yeah. It's Sally Pants 49. It's not your mom. You know what I mean? It's a, you know what I mean? I mean, that's. Right? It's a good way to put it. You don't know them. And of course, I mean, I'm hoping one little thing we say here helps someone that's, right?

9:10Of course, but you're not in control of other people. And if you're not happy, If you're not doing what you want to do and scratching your itch, the whole thing will break anyway. You're so right. 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. Yes sir, you're welcome. I was just like, Kayla's really almost everything I'm referring to for my entire career. I know the feeling. I haven't either. Though I am starting to debate it this year.

9:43First time. Any advice on that? Go high. I'm debating like national TV commercials. Not like, hey, here with Kayla, get these protein bars. You know, so like just go high because you can afford to. Got it? Yeah. Just. Only the best. That's right. Treat yourself like a premium brand. Right? You're not an$8 candy bar. You're a$4 ,000 handbag. Treat it like BLVMH. Don't be Labubu. You know what I mean? You like that one? Makes sense, right? You know what that means. It means you guys are going to say no to a lot of stuff. Of course. What are you doing in New York? NRF. I spoke there yesterday. Interesting.

10:30I was just getting out of my comfort zone and speaking to a bunch of data and analytics people. Community, actually. And how to build that because we've lost human touch with the AI and all that stuff. It worked. It was good. I liked it. But yeah, I was interested in your take on branching out doing something different. Yeah, it's a great skill of mine. At the height of my business, when I was really six, seven years ago, ascending and everyone's like, this is the business guy, I started making garage sale videos to help people make 20 bucks. And all my friends are like, you're destroying your brand.

11:07People are putting you in the conversation with Elon and you can get there. What are you doing? And I'm like, I'm helping people. Like, this is what I want to do. So, the difference between, not the difference between me and you, but the difference between me and you is, when you were the wine guy, right? Yes. Let's say you were here. You're here now. So, let's say you're here. Right now, if you go on to Chattucket here, or you go on to Google, you say, who was the most famous female person trainer in the world? My name comes up. Okay. So, how do you go from here and shift, rather than here to here?

11:35So, you spoke about from here to here. How do you go from here to here? It's what I was just talking about. Like, it's by making choice. It's just, it's by not, you're gonna love this. It's by not giving a fuck about this. The fuck are you giving a fuck about that for? The only thing you should, thank God, at this point in your life, because of your hard work and your execution, the only thing you should be thinking about is what makes you happy. Yeah, true. And when you do those things, what you'll learn is it's going to compound. Meaning, when you start doing all the business content or whatever you're planning on doing, it's going to help everything.

12:17It's because you're in a good place. Right? And then even funnier, today, because once you do one thing for a long time, like any human, we all burn out, you're going to wake up one day and be like, I actually do want to make a piece. You know what I mean? That's what's going to happen. Yeah, so I think what's going to happen is instead of going from this to this to this, it goes from this to this to this. And I think that if you're really hearing me and you watch this back, it's erasing all of that and not even thinking about that. Okay, great. You understand? Like, I love that thinking because it's why you were successful.

12:53But you're here, to your point, what are we talking about? Got it? When you go to that place, like all the shit I'm doing, everyone around me, the smartest people in the world, are just so confused, they still do not understand that I'm gonna die one day and I want to be happy. Yeah. And if that means I wanna try to build the next Pokemon, even though that wasn't the logical thing, then that's what I'm gonna do. I mean, everybody in my inner brilliant circle, external and internal, why are you still speaking? Like, yes, you're wildly compensated. I get paid a lot of money to give a speech. The literal answer is because I like it.

13:35Yeah, makes you happy. It makes, when I go on stage, it feels good to me. And I'm not calculating. Yesterday, I spoke at the Javits Center, flew to, where'd we go, Fort Lauderdale? Fort Lauderdale. Flew to Fort Lauderdale, gave a speech, and flew back and walked into my apartment at 11 p.m. I got plenty of work done on both flights for two and a half hours. I got the joy of those 40 minutes on stage, and it was wildly, even though it was hefty six figures for that speech, wildly ROI negative for me. That if I sat here and operated for nine hours, it would have been better business. That is not the way you should be thinking about it right now.

14:14Personal opinion. And I think if you look back and as you keep going through your journey you'll realize how right that is. And once you do that then you're light. Think about all the energy you're using right now thinking it through. Right? Instead of just doing the thing you know you want to do. And I got a better one for you. Here's the coolest part. You may do it for six months and be like, meh. I like it. I don't want to do that. It's not as cool as I had it in my mind. And then you get to do something else. Thank you so much. You're very welcome. Everybody, if you enjoyed this podcast, please go back and look at the prior episodes.

14:50They're loaded. I appreciate your attention. And thanks for being part of this journey. See you later.