Why Human Relationships are the Ultimate ROI

25:09Because for some reason, it's so blurry to me. meaning like I don't even know right it's like it's like it's just like information like like people follow the five to twelve best voices very well and I'm like the beneficiary of this on the other side a lot of people follow at what they whatever want from me on it my learning is happening and not even consuming the content it's like being in the meetings I mean don't forget what's weird about me is I'm in the traffic of my businesses right so here's something interesting by the way men back to the lebron james million dollar thing i have seven active businesses that are doing more than eight figures a year in revenue where i am meaningfully involved which ones are they tell us about it what do we got break them down vayner media vayner x which is 400 million in revenue i am the day-to-day ceo and that that owns all the other six No, it owns none of the other six.

26:11Next, VaynerSports. You know, I took three recruiting calls yesterday with my brother. Like - What's VaynerSports doing exactly? Oh, VaynerSports does sports representation. So we rep Kirk Cousins, Sauce Gardner, Aiden Hutchinson, Beau Bichette. And NIL stuff too now, or just pros? NIL at scale. We have probably 300 college athletes. Okay, so that's doing tens of millions. That's doing tens of millions in revenue. I have VCR Group, which is a restaurant group, which is, if you remember famously, I had that NFT restaurant. News alert everyone, it's crushing. It's called Fly Fish Club. We also have Capons and Ito and five restaurants and I'm actively involved texting with David Rodolitz all the time.

26:55So VCR Group, tens of millions in revenue as a restaurant group. I have V Friends. V Friends is probably the thing I'm most, like AJ and David Rodolitz are one A in the prior two businesses. This is I am one A in V friends. V friends is gonna do minimally 20 million in revenue this year in licensing and selling comic books and coins and trading cards. I'm building a true brand. By the way, that is a dark horse chance to be really one of my greatest roses because all the ashes of the NFT era that I'm gonna get to the other side and be Marvel and Pokemon is gonna fuck with everyone so heavy in 15 years.

27:33Wine library, people will be flabbergasted how involved I still am in the wine business. My best friend runs it. I am definitely 1B to my dad and Brandon's 1A. But I work on it every single day. One that's really under the radar, VaynerWatt. I have a very successful TV production company that's kind of brewing right now called VaynerWatt. We have a bunch of shows that have quietly just sold. So like literally on Hulu and ABC and Netflix, like you're gonna see VaynerWatt, VaynerWatt pop up. And then finally, and I'm sure not lost on you guys, the NIL and brand of Gary Vee, I have a full massive team on it.

28:15You know, it's a real part of my life. Speaking in books and content and NIL.

28:21Sam Parr:Do you have ads or is it monetized via speaking? I did a deal with Stan, I did a deal with Masterclass. I'm starting to let, I'm starting to be open to Gary Vee. I don't do like a brand deal. I'll look at seven and eight figure NIL deals where it's really integrated, potentially me doing a little consulting as well. But I think you guys are probably, I'm writing a new book called The Individual Empire, which talks about the me, the Bartlets, the Alex Coopers, the rise of the creator entrepreneur and the entrepreneur creator as the next Fortune 500 companies and my belief with AI blockchain, evolving social decentralization of Hollywood and Madison Avenue and Wall Street.

29:03that the biggest companies in the world are human-based organizations where the human either has a partner that can operate or a me where they can be both. So that's how I look at that world. So that's how I look at that. I'm sorry, what? I'm sorry, you just named like six or seven companies that are doing eight figures that you're like, I'm either the 1A or the 1B. And I think that's awesome because I too wish I had 96 hours a day. And so walk us through what does the day look like? What's the time blocking look like for this? Elon is like, I spend three days here at SpaceX, three days at Tesla, then Saturday, Sundays at work, and I work till 2 a.m.

29:43every day. What's a day in the life of Gary Vee to do all this? I wake up at 6 or 7. There's a workout session every day-ish. I've actually been a little bit sporadic lately. I'm pretty much an 8 to 9 a.m. start point done between 8 and 10 p.m. depending on the day, but there's not a single break, no lunch, no anything. Every minute's booked. 60 % of the meetings are 15 minutes. And again, let's get to the point here, right? Let's get to the point here. This is 30 years of building equity and Sam said something interesting. My secret weapon was hiring people. And again, you guys, again, this is fun talking to you than let's say a net new podcast where I've interacted a little bit with you guys.

30:33I had this feeling, which is truly, this has been a good prediction of mine. I had this feeling that I was gonna be able to have a lot of really good A and B players around me that would stay with me, that could do bigger things, could do things on their own, but that the relationship, and that they would believe in me and that they would say, you know, in 15 years I might actually make more money being Gary's number 13 versus me my own number. I just had this intuition, and then I could convert Ds into Bs and Cs into Bs. I just had this feeling that my superpower was the human relationship side.

31:07And so the reason I can do this, so yes, I work a lot. And yes, I'm uncomfortably efficient with my time. And yes, I'm on a boat which has seven holes and I put my finger in the one that needs it most for every parent that knows you're only as happy as your most unhappy child. And so my ebbs and flows of like, oh shit, VaynerSports needs me. Oh shit, VaynerM, like there's all that. but the real reason is because of the 50 people from Ryan Harwood or Kalen or Claude or JT or AJ and Greg Genski or David Rodolitz and Connor Hamlet or Andy Kay and JT, John Trautman and May and Rip Sun V friends or Brandon Warnicke on Wine Library or Eric Wattenberg, Vayner Watt on that.

31:48And I've got another one coming that I'll announce next year, standalone business. And it's somebody who's worked for me for 11 years who's gonna be my co-founder. and I had the experience with Resi. You know, like people forget that I'm the co-founder and inventor of Resi, but I had Ben Leventhal be the one A, I was the one B, and that was a hefty nine-figure exit. And I had Empathy Wines, two former interns of mine who worked for me for 11 years, and we started Empathy Wines, and in 18 months, sold it for a almost nine-figure, hefty eight-figure deal to Constellation Brands in 18 months, just like, you know, everyone's like, Gruens, I'm like, I did that, not to 1.2 billion, and so blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

32:26It's because when I do things on a net new business, the person is my family member. It's family business. We know everything about each other. It's seven to 10 years before we decided to do X, Y, and Z. They roll differently than a lot of people trying it with net new people they hire randomly.

32:45Sam Parr:I was listening to you. Go ahead, John. Well, I was listening to your podcast this morning and someone asked a question that a lot of content creators ask. They said, I'm doing live shopping and live streaming, but I don't want to do this all the time. And I'm nervous that this all relies on me. And I want to get other content creators. You have listed six or seven businesses doing tens of millions in revenue. Presumably, you're getting close to a billion. You're doing many hundreds, at least, in revenue. And it all is started off of you. And I don't know what percent is run or you get customers still for each thing because of you.

33:18Sam Parr:But a lot of it's based on you and your content. Do you get nervous about that or do you not care? You think I just love it so much that I ain't going anywhere. Not only do I not love it, not only is that true, Sam, I think I'm the preview, not the anomaly. Do you hear that? Sounds like breakfast is ready because Quaker's coming in hot with morning nutrition, 100 % whole grain oats, and a good source of fiber to fuel the rhythm of your morning and kickstart your day. And that sounds absolutely delicious. Fuel to start whatever's next. Quaker, official sponsor of FIFA World Cup 26.

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34:32So you think there's a model that works? This is what's going to happen. This is what is happening. If you look at the derivatives of all the people that are like kind of that crew right now, what do you think is happening? And then, of course, there's Kylie Jenner and Hailey Bieber where they need a business person to also be en route. But then there's also, like, I mean, you guys are, like, in, you know, everyone has different hopes and dreams and, Sam, you've nailed it. Like, to me, like, I love this shit. Bro, you know, people go and buy a home in the Bahamas and play golf in Baker's Bay and that's their escapism when they need an escape.

35:10People have skiing. People have so many, and sometimes, unfortunately, they have bad things like drugs. People need escapism, you're just going. When I need a break from VaynerX, which I do a lot, because client services suck shit. I don't go to Aspen, I go to two days off sites for VFriends, because it fucking fills my soul. And I do the comic stories of my characters. Or I go to a half day at Wine Library and talk to Brandon, because he's my best friend since I was 14, and I need it for my soul. But then we also fix the fucking business. or I go on a six hour flight and ask AJ to come with me because I need him because he's my brother and I just need that good energy because I'm fucking frustrated what's going on with Bee Friends or Wine Library and we fix the inner sports, you know what I mean?

35:58What's going on in these 15 minute meetings? Because I suspect what you're doing in 15 minutes is taking most people an hour. So maybe you have a format. I'm mad at you bro, you took my shit. I was asked that I was about to say the thing that everyone else is spending an hour on. Bro, this is gonna be one of the highlights that I know from this meeting, this podcast. Everyone's gonna, I love that I said meeting. This feels more like a business meeting than this is why you guys are so successful. Everyone's gonna say yes right now on the treadmill, walking the dog, in their car, on a plane, or however they're consuming this.

36:30Everyone's meetings are twice as long as they need to be if they're a winner and they know it. You got slam poetry snaps from me. And I just went there. I knew it subconsciously, then it became silly. Then years went on and it became conscious and then I executed. I've been in that, and I would say a lot of what has led to these, this, you know, I have this huge pride of how underrated as a business man I am because what I just dropped on you guys, literally nobody really knows, which is wild because I'm Gary Vee and I'm talking all the time. And I think I got there on the 15 minute meeting and the family business vibes of my partners in crimes and the top, and by the way, it's not just one person.

37:07Like every company requires three or four family members for it to really work the way it works for me. Because you've got to have a backup and a backup and a backup because there's so many variables that can go into these things. So the 15-minute meeting has been gangster for me, game-changing for me. I do think I'm getting three days of work in one day for sure. And also, I'm sorry, Sam, I want to say this. This is all happening at a time where I'm spending more time with my family than ever. I have teenage kids, I have a wife, I got remarried a year ago. I'm like way, I kind of went with the generic, but there's so much more slicing and dicing that I'm accustomed, my son is all in on AAU basketball, it's eating up all sorts of time.

37:51My daughter is gonna go to college in a couple years, so I'm milking unprecedented levels of time with her. So it's just like, you can be so much more efficient if you have remarkable people around you and you're obsessed with not wasting time to fill the slot.

38:06Sam Parr:What percentage of those meetings are you making decisions or being informed? I would say 30 % I'm being informed, 70 % I'm making decisions. That's insane. That's hard. The context switching, that's challenging. You know, it's funny you said that. I've got a bunch of new film people because all my people, luck, this feels incredible, go on to these incredible things after they film me for a little while and get all these offers or start doing things. And so I constantly have a DRock coming through you know every year or two. The number one thing Sam, every single new admin and every single new person that films me says, with like to a T, is they do not understand the switching.

38:48That I, and I talk about something that never even crossed my mind until the last five years when this got louder in my circle. I don't even, I didn't even know that was a thing. Like I didn't know that people like if they're in this kind of meeting that need to like decompress or whatever, whatever people are doing to go to the next thing. I, I think I, it's clearly DNA. I wonder if growing up in retail where you're just switching, like everything's just always on. I don't know.

39:14Sam Parr:I actually think that sometimes when I say contact switching, we had a guy, one of our friends came on the podcast and like, as we were doing the soundcheck, he got a text from his daughter saying she didn't get into the college that she wanted to get into. And it screwed him up. Like the, the rest of the podcast was kind of shaky because he was like, Oh, I'm so sorry. I can't stop thinking about my daughter just texting me this. I'm so sad for her. And you're talking about another thing altogether. I'm going from, you know, you're, you have an HR headache and now you're doing a financial planning for three years and now you're going to describe the same thing.

39:44Sam Parr:Like if I get bad news, I'm like, how do I not? Well, I'm actually, I'm building on it. I think one, it's, I've come to learn it's unique to do that. Two, now you're really talking about it. That has definitely been something I got from my mother, which is being able to carry in the moment adversity and negativity and still show up.

40:13I think a lot about that as a leader. I get a lot of bad news every day. One, I'm psycho and I'm in the HR of all my companies. And now we have so many goddamn employees. every day someone's dad is sick. It's just like, I've actually thought about shutting it off because I'm like, this is just almost getting depressing now because it's always like, I ask the team to let me know about those so I can send a text or flowers or I want to know. I want to know if somebody in my company is going through tough stuff. And then there's just, when you're in client services, we went 16 months without losing a client at VaynerX.

40:47We're ripping hot, right? And then recently in the last 60 days, we've lost two. and it came boom boom and the second one was like hmm and the first one was not surprising the second one was a little bit and I was walking right into another thing and I was just like it's funny you say that I was like man I've really gotten to that because I was pissed and I wanted to fix it but I knew I had to show up for this thing and this thing and this thing and then not to mention all the things that happened in my personal life similar to the college thing there's always something just like being able to like fucking eat shit and firefight is like a really strong emotional framework that is hard

41:22Sam Parr:What about notification fatigue? I tease Sean all the time. Sean, what's the joke? What's the stereotype if anyone wants to get a hold of you? Do you know what that stereotype is about you, Sean? Call Ben? I don't know. No, Sean will not reply. Getting in touch with Sean when you need to, sometimes it's a pain in the butt. With me, I tend to reply, but it wears me out. I get so exhausted because I feel like I want to please these people. The worst part is I go to them and I say, hey, long time no talk when I think of somebody and I see that actually they have been and I haven't, I'm like fuck, okay, I shouldn't even send this, maybe I should just.

41:53I'm a mix of the two of you, but I have three full-time admins that people know, people know my intent is to get back to them, especially if they work for me. You know, friends, acquaintances is a little, people know that it's email, not text, if they really know me. If they don't know me, they may think that I'm just a bad dude, but like when you get, I made a humongous, and I mean catastrophic mistake during COVID, for some reason, instead of just being like a normal business person and doing it all in Slack, I decided my, because don't forget, I didn't have a computer and I was doing everything through iMessage.

42:26So when I got my computer, I went desktop iMessage and I opened, Sam, it was the worst mistake. I get shit.

42:34Sam Parr:Dude, I have that open right now. Yeah. It sucks. But I open it all the time because I got to type something long and I'm like, it kills me. I have all these notifications. I would say, I would say, I'm in between you guys. I try to reply a lot. I use flights quite a bit to catch up. And then if they can't get me, they get to the admins, and the admins have a good sense of my reality. How do you decide what projects to go into? Because for the six or whatever you said that are working, obviously maybe a couple didn't work, and then there's hundreds of opportunities you're saying no to. So what's the bar now?

43:09What's the box? How do you think about that? Took my tummy. Just gut. Yeah. Like I want to do this, and I want to do with this person.

43:17Sam Parr:Say that again, Gary. Say it cute. I thought you said tummy. I got tummy tickles. There's so much serendipity to it. AD, you like that behind the scenes? That was good when we could crack it up. You know, I, yeah, just I'm comfortable. I'm very comfortable. And this is a theme of this whole interview. And I thank you guys. You've done a good job extracting some different angles out of me. I'm very comfortable dying on my sword, which is my intuition. I'm very comfortable. Like too comfortable. Well, have you guys ever came close to bankruptcy or not to make payroll? You know, it's funny, but make payroll.

44:03Resi was in trouble. I had to put personal money in that I didn't really have at the time. But nothing I've ever operated is the 1A. I'm an immigrant, man. Like I'm a real immigrant.

44:13Sam Parr:So Vayner's cash flow or balance sheet has always been solid? Yeah, I've had to make payroll my entire life. You know, I got trained by a Soviet immigrant father who didn't even, raising capital, forget it, debt, forget it. Literally didn't have a credit line. And we were in the liquor business where you had to legally pay your bills on 30-day terms where you went on COD to the whole industry and you couldn't get product. So I think I got trained so well, you know, always have money in the bank for a rainy day and 30 day terms legally bounded by the alcohol laws of America and no credit line, that by the time I went to my own journey full time, it was in my subconscious of like, well you always have that money, the end.

45:01You meet a lot of people, who do you think is doing cool shit right now? What are, you know, either businesses that are kind of blown your mind, maybe something that's taking off faster than you would have expected. Maybe something totally unrelated to what you do, but wow, you get exposed to stuff that the average person doesn't. Where are you seeing a lot of heat right now? Oh, there's so many good areas. I mean, like, you know, I'll go, I'll answer a question that might bring, I'm trying to think about how to bring the most value to the audience. I'll go to places where people are betting on five years from now, not to create an exit five months from now.

45:36So that takes me to people that are really spending time on advanced AI dating, like really knowing where the stigma is today, but won't be in five years, right? Like creating an entire agency of virtual people, right? Knowing right now it's a little weird, but let's survive three to five years and we're gonna have the CAA of virtual people. They're all gonna be the most famous virtual people and we fucking own it. You're in the IP business, not the representation business. That I like. I love everything, and this is my wheelhouse, but I love everyone who sells something to the consumer that realizes what live shopping's doing to e-commerce is what e-commerce did to real life.

46:25And so what I mean by that is in six to 10 years, I think e-com now is what, 25, 30 % of the market. In six to 10 years, live shopping will actually be 10 to 15 % of all commerce, and that is scary big. And a lot of - Did you invest in whatnot? You know, I think I did not. I did not. I obviously talk about whatnot all the time. I was not an investor. That was possible. You've been talking about live selling for years. John, you'll love this. Anytime I've invested in something that I end up having to talk about a lot, I make a lot of content up front that I'm an investor. Yeah. So the way you know if I'm an investor in something is I'm saying it a lot early on.

47:04because I never, so, you know, I'm sure everyone thinks I did. And by the way, it ran through my table. Like, I don't, I wasn't actively investing at the time, which is the answer, Sean, to why I didn't. And I know it crossed my desk, but I never took, like, a meaningful meeting with Grant, but I'm so happy for him. He's done a great job. I'm happy for the people that invested. My friend Chris, who's, like, in the music business, has a small fund. He invested in it, like, some...

47:28Sam Parr:I think, Sean, didn't they ask you to invest in a seed run and you forgot to reply to the email? No, no, no, no. That was a, that was a, uh, not a, finally one. I didn't shoot myself in the foot. Somebody else shot me in the foot. I met with Grant. I was like, I love this. My last business got acquired by Twitch. I'm amazing. Have you, have I told you how amazing I am? You gotta let me invest the rounded, like just closed. But a lot of times they'll let you in if they like you, they'll, they'll open it up or they'll, they'll, they'll, they'll squeeze you in. He, he, he didn't, he, he was just like, let me see what I can do.

47:56And I didn't hunt to chase it down like 10 times more. And I just let it go. and that's a big miss. I have a great email in my inbox from Joe at Bed-A-R-Bed and Breakfast. Yeah, I'm trying to remember, was it? Yeah, airbedandbreakfast.com. That's a good one.

48:15Sam Parr:Do you have any other ones that you haven't talked about? You have Uber, obviously. That's a famous one. That's like Airbnb, but I never saw the email so it doesn't hurt. Pinterest. I had a guy who was the CSO, the chief strategy offer at Campbell Soup who was like 60 years old said, Gary, you got to look at this startup from Pennsylvania. That's how he said it. My friend's cousin knows the guy. I'm like, okay, that's like, that's like getting a script for Hollywood in Chicago. You know, I didn't even like contemplate it. And then, and then, yeah, so that was close. And then, but I got in later through Scott Belsky.

48:54what a great investor he is, by the way.

48:57Sam Parr:He invested in, I think, Uber and Pinterest in the same couple of weeks, both at a$3.5 million valuation. Both was like$25 ,000 checks when he had like 75. He told me he had like, he's like, I had 75 grand in personal savings and I put 25 in each of those companies, which it's like eight or nine figures. And by the way, he's better than that even. Like he's got more wins and he's an operator. He's one of the best. Yeah, I mean, you know, one of the reasons I'm starting my next thing is a lot of CPGs, Magic Spoon, a lot of good brands came to Vayner wanting us to be the people, but we didn't take on those kind of clients.

49:37Some things I invested in, some I didn't. I want to be better at that. The best one, my biggest win that I don't deserve is going to be Liquid Death. Mike worked at Vayner Media the day before he started Liquid Death as a creative. and he sent me an email and said, hey, I'm leaving. Thank you for your time. I learned a lot here. By the way, I'm doing this thing. Would you like to invest? He was a creative. I'm a cliche businessman that thinks creatives aren't business people, right? So I was like, you know, and I didn't know him well enough because we had a big company at that point. And I'm like, you know.

50:09Sam Parr:Well, he's also saying that he's launching a water company called Liquid Death. Like, that is like a silly thing on paper. You'll appreciate this. The way I think about branding and marketing, it actually fits me more than it doesn't for me, the way I like stuff. So that wasn't the crazy part. I was kind of agnostic about that part. I thought it could work, but I didn't think it was brilliant, and I definitely didn't think what a lot of people thought, which is it has no chance, because on consumer brands, marketing is a stunning variable, especially if the product's a commodity and water is a commodity, right?

50:37Like water in plastic versus water in a can doesn't really change the variable. In fact, the can is the advantage. So I understood that part. It was more interesting why I invested. It goes back to this nice guy theme a little bit. I just wanted to invest because I want to support my employees on their own ventures. So I literally did it for that reason only, and that's gonna be a fucking money, it was first check in. Right.

50:58Sam Parr:Do you ever, because, so you're significantly larger than both of us, but we sort of run in the same world, and there's a lot of scammers and shady people in this content and business world, business content, whatever you want to call it. And when you, like I've noticed that as we've gotten bigger, I try to be very careful about who I associate with. Yeah. Do you, being a nice guy, do you struggle to like say, I don't wanna be around this person. Like they have a background of doing X, Y, and Z, or they have political beliefs that I don't buy into and I don't wanna be associated with them. I'll be on, and you guys know this, I never talk politics.

51:32Political beliefs won't throw me off because I'm very empathetic that people can see the world. I mean, hate or like ridiculousness on both the left and right. Extreme leftism and rightism as we know it today, sure. But like political beliefs, no. but I don't think they do honorable work. Sure, I've struggled with that. And also me being on the speaking circuit for so long, sometimes those kind of characters might be at the same place and they want a quick selfie and I don't want to. That's what I'm talking about, yeah. And you know this, you're smart. And so I know that question is grounded in, you know that I've avoided a lot of stuff and association.

52:14And that's the reason, yeah, of course. you never i mean there's people the amount of people that will take a cell forget about people we know there are people that are tier 19 people that are trying to do this they have like four followers and they sell a four thousand dollar course and they're criminals right they'll take a selfie with me at the airport and then make a post and say that like we had a meeting at the

52:37Sam Parr:airport to strategize their mastermind well they did when they asked you a question i guess it's You do have to be conscious of that and you do need to worry about your NIL and your reputation. It is on my mind and now with deep fakes and where this is all going, we're gonna go through a really mucky era where I really believe being the bigger person, being a nice person. You know what's really interesting? Actually, I wanna ask you guys a question. Has this hit your radar? This blows me away. We are fortunate, we've worked hard, we have talent, we're at where we're at. And what that allows us is to spend some time in private and public settings with other people that have won.

53:15The thing that completely rocked me, and when it was happening to me in my contemporaries, my era, was how many winners, and I mean winners, they've got the girl, they've got crazy money, they've got it, will actually still fucking spend most of their time shitting on other winners out of envy, or I don't even know what, and I'm like, this energy, I had to say this to a couple buddies not too long ago. I'm like, you guys are a bunch of fucking 14-year-old bitches. I'm like, what are you talking about? First, you should be happy for XYZ that they're crushing it. Yeah, he's not the nicest ever, but he's not a piece of shit.

53:58And by the way, everything you're shitting on, you guys do the same shit. What is this? Like, you're winning. Like, focus on winning. If you're so actually sad that they won even more than you and you got feelings about it, Why don't you take these three hours of bitching about this person like fucking yentas and go fucking build something?

54:16Sam Parr:Well, Sean, what percentage of incredibly successful people do you know who you think are good, wonderful people with good attitudes? I think they're good, wonderful people with good attitudes, but they're definitely imbalanced in some core way, right? Like they're not well-rounded, chill-ass, you know, people, right? Like I think you're unlikely to be extreme winner without some version of an extreme personality. Sure. And I think that's fair. Hunter S. Thompson said that he said there's there's no reasonable people on the town on the top of Mount Everest. Yeah. I had a person kind of point this out to me about about why this happened.

54:54So I don't know if you've ever read like the Rene Girard, like mimetic theories like Peter Thiel is really big on this, which is basically the core thing. You'll get this as a consumer guy, which is that we don't want what we want because we want it. We want it because other people want it. Yeah. Whether it's your luxury bag that you're carrying or - I believe in that. In fact, this is where all my gratitude comes from. Mother and DNA, I want it for my process, not because others want it, and it makes me feel simple, but it's very clear to me that most are the other way. Yeah, so I think most people have this sort of memetic drive, right?

55:29And this is why you see trends and fads catch on because I wanna go buy Neato's right now because all the other kids are buying neatos and i want to say this because other people say this i want to wear jordans because they wear jordan right so it's not so that's like a normal thing and there's a another term in that philosophy that's called a mimetic rival and so i was on a i was on this plane ride and i had this embarrassing moment where i was admitting to somebody i was like you know what like i feel stupid even saying this but god it kind of drove me nuts the way this guy was saying that i was kind of bitching about somebody which i rarely do but i was doing it and i was like honestly i was like guys i feel stupid saying this but like that that shit bothered me.

56:03And I blah, blah, blah. And he goes, you know what? He goes, that person's your mimetic rival. I go, what's a mimetic rival? Basically it's like, it's almost like when you were talking about your, I don't know, the gummy brand and you were like, well, Grooms did this, but we did this too. There's a hint of that, right? Like all companies, you have these rivals. But it's so funny. But you noticed that I had to say smaller at the end of that sentence? Yeah. I don't know if you thought that. I get it. I was trying to paint a picture of like the pride to your point I have of doing a lot of things early, but I do think humility, if you have it with, to your point, competitiveness and alpha, if you can get, I always call it a bridge.

56:45If you can have these counter things and find balance in it, you can get really palpable and awesome. If you're nice and humble, but you're also a gangster and want to win and you can push hard, you find this weird middle of peace. that's kind of how I am trying. That's what, that's where I feel I am right now. Right. But, but everybody has these memetic rifles. Like, I don't know if you saw when, uh, Bezos was launching like his rocket and Elon's launching his rocket. And then they had this really passive aggressive thing. It's in Elon's biography. It's very funny. It's like, congratulations to Jeff on the first suborbital launch.

57:21And then Elon landed it. And he's like, Congratulations on the first successful landing from only a two megaton, whatever. It's like they added these little qualifiers. They started blocking each other because for each other, they're mimetic rivals, right? And it's a very strange thing. You'd think these are the most secure people on earth, but we all have a part of us that has it. It's how you learn to tame it. It's funny. I literally believe the reverse. I genuinely believe that the far majority of people get to the top from extreme insecurity.

57:53Sam Parr:Hey, let me ask you one more question. And you could and you don't have to answer if you don't want to if it's too private. But with the six or seven businesses that you've named, they're badass. I'm looking at Deadline did an article about the production company, VaynerWatt. And like, I'm looking at the people you hired, or I guess they're they are your co-founders. They're freaking awesome. And I was looking at some of your partners and your other businesses. In order to get these stuff to ground, do you have to fund them personally? Or do you get backers for a lot of these things? Because it's not like I'm reading this Deadline article.

58:23Sam Parr:and you have like a list of like five or six people and they're ballers. And I'm like, those guys aren't cheap. On VaynerWatt, Steve Ross, the owner of Dolphins, who's in VaynerMedia with me as well, he funded that. He wanted to be a part of that. On the rest, I funded. Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the Unreal College Deal. Everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller.

59:00Sam Parr:Learn more at windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th. Terms at aka.ms slash college PC. That's awesome. Like I was looking at the, I didn't know that you had a restaurant and I was looking at that and it looked like a membership club and I looked at the interiors and I was like. It was a meaningful build out. Like, no, it's been really cool. I'm in a really fun part of my career. I actually just use this platform, this incredible platform, so thank you for having me. Talking a little bit more, because I actually want to start talking a little bit more about me, the juggler.

59:36Mainly, yes, to your point earlier, I am proud of what I'm doing. No one really knows, which is wild. And I'm proud of that too, right? That goes to the humility, but now I'm maybe ready for being like, hey guys, by the way, I'm not a motivational speaker. I might actually be a weirdly good operator at scale.

59:53Sam Parr:Well, Sean, Google Fly Fish Club Manhattan or just Fly Fish Club. And please come when you guys are in New York. You'll be blown away. I live here now, Gary. I live on the other side. So like ASAP, email me after this. Like ASAP, ASAP. I want you to see it. It's a three-story restaurant with a private open posse room. Like it's real. But more importantly, because you know this, it could also be going out of business tomorrow. Like you could, you know, So it, meaning it's a, like the business is extremely viable. In fact, Sam, now that you're here, Upper West Side, if you just go over to GW, which I know is counterintuitive, the restaurant we opened in Bergen County, New Jersey, called Capon's Chop House, we now know we're about to open another one in Westchester.

1:00:34We're about to open 50 of those in high net worth neighborhoods of the biggest cities in the world. We got the model. We got it. And don't forget, this is the brilliance of what I think when it's all written, the VaynerX marketing machine impacts all these businesses, right?

1:00:49Sam Parr:What's the model? It says it's a membership. The model is open up the new version of Ruth's Chris and like the best steakhouse that has the most New York City vibes, just not in New York City, and everyone in bridges and tunnels of the seven most important places on earth that have high net worth individuals are gonna sell the fucking shit out of these places. It's not a new invented model. But it's a member? You have to be a member? No, Cape Bonds is just a Ruth Chris Steakhouse 2.0 with almost like an STK, BLT, you know, yeah, just one of those catch, catch, you know, whatever you wanna call it.

1:01:33But we have a very strong, what we do, to Eugene's credit, to Grutman's credit, to Noah's credit, those places have more cool There's that nightlife element. We're going 20 % less on that and 20 % more on food. We think the secret to retention LTV is just execute a food program that is so undeniable. And a little bit of that sizzle, but your steak's gotta be right, right, right. Dude, you've gotten - Our strategy is killer chicken parm. It's like, yes, actually, that's kinda what people want.

1:02:09Sam Parr:You've gotten into this business genius. as he decided to start an agency and a restaurant. The two best businesses on earth. Literally the two worst. And again, this is a great way to end it up, which is like, I'm playing for what makes me feel good, not just maximizing the dollars. And then to your point, because that's absolutely right and really kind of funny. And the liquor store was even worse than the two of them. And then on the other side, I'm going to turn VFriends into Pokemon and is gonna be one of the most valuable intellectual properties in the world in 20 years, which in an AI world will have an extraordinary amount of value and will be the best kind of business someone can build.

1:02:50Sam Parr:Well, we appreciate you, man. You're the shit. We love hanging out with you. God bless you, brother. Stay well, wish you well. All right, that's it, that's the pod. Hey everybody, if you enjoyed this podcast, please go back and look at the prior episodes. They're loaded. I appreciate your attention and thanks for being part of this journey. See you later.