Why Staying Too Long at the Wrong Job Kills Your Career | Tea with GaryVee Ep #82

0:00Let's get into the show. Aaron, what do you got on the first question. Okay, question from Andrew, 22 years old. What would be your advice to a three-year Walmart associate who's having trouble promoting and moving up? I have the capability and experience, but not the opportunity. Should I cut my losses and find somewhere else? Yes. You know, cutting losses is like, I think this is a humongous issue for the world. Notice how he asked the question, should I cut my losses? people think putting a couple years into a job is cutting the loss it's not cutting loss you had an experience you also don't know if you're right or they're right a lot of employees love to shit on their bosses and their bosses bosses and saying not getting the opportunity meanwhile they might just suck and him going to target good news when you're at walmart target is interested Target's interested bro what's his name?

0:52Andrew go to fucking Target now if Target after a year or two also says you suck you should go to five below and if five below says you suck or blow well then guess what now you're 0 for 3 three strikes you're out at the old ball game you need to rethink your whole fucking sitch but if he's not getting the at bat in a Walmart store A there's like thousands of Walmart stores B there's other retailers and he needs to figure out if he's good or he's right that he's not being seen some people are not being seen and some people stink at their job and you don't know until you have multiple data points you know but like look you've got to respect if you go 0 for 4 and every store says you suck like you're going to have to eat it a little bit and maybe retail is not your career maybe you need to be in camp counseling or you know a chef let's get into the next question aaron from you this question is from ali i'm currently a stay-at-home mom who's feeling financial pressure to work i'm overwhelmed trying to find a job that helps me be a present-ish parent to my toddler have a flexible schedule and support my family financially what do i do i search and search and feel like i'm hitting dead ends more searching i mean like that's a lot to ask you know again we're in this new era we need to understand this new era everyone's like it's so hard now it was so much better for our parents it wasn't better for our parents our parents were willing to sacrifice time with kids to get the finances done we want more it's just the truth like are we are gang can i get all 1 000 of you across all platforms to agree that we just want more like our fucking parents and our grandparents generation really were willing to take an l in certain categories.

2:44We want more. And companies are like, sorry. Like again, I keep saying this about businesses. They don't have the luxury of being just your family. They don't have the luxury of being bullshit like school. Like where it doesn't fucking matter. Like there's ramifications. Companies go out of business. Companies are going to use AI. Companies are going to pick who their best employees are and they're going to decide best is time put in or impact while time, but let me be very transparent as a boss. I don't need any of my employees to work 100 hours a week for me to be like, they're the best. If they work, let's just be even more direct.

3:23There are employees, all my companies, that work 42 hours a week, but they're incredibly impactful in those 42 hours, and I'm good. And there's other employees that work 67 hours, and people know me, like hard work and all of that, but if they're not impactful, they're not as good. It's just real life. If it's either impact or like some version of less impact, but more hours put in, like not all of us get the same output or impact on the time amount we spent. I can do a 15 minute meeting and really have financial impact. Most of the people that work for me cannot. That's just real life. And that's just the game.

3:59So, you know, here's a problem. The problem is we're asking for too much. We just are. Read that again slow. Okay, from Allie. I'm currently a stay at home mom who's feeling financial pressure to work I'm overwhelmed trying to find a job that helps me to be a present-ish parent to my toddler Ish Which she's being fair Yeah I give her a lot of credit Have a flexible schedule Flexible schedule Be present And support my family financially What do I do? This is where I think entrepreneurship and live selling can come in My actual answer to her is to buy shit at thrift stores and garage sales and flea markets and look around the house for random stuff and post on Facebook and look at Facebook Marketplace and sell shit on eBay and whatnot.

4:44How about that? How about that curveball? When we're asking, the reason she's looking and looking and looking is companies don't want her. They're like, they're not, and by the way, there are hundreds of thousands of companies that would want someone, but it sounds like the schedule has to be a flexible way that doesn't work for a lot of companies. it's just real life hopefully she can find something and i hope like you know but like a lot of like my dad's liquor store can't be flexible with ours it's retail it's open it like needs like you know like i don't know like so i like the idea of taking things in your own hand and and buying and flipping and i think she can make a thousand bucks a month easy flipping i think everyone can make a thousand dollars a month easy easy after three to four months of really learning right really being on eBay understanding what's worth money really going to the thrift store every day you know really really really really going there garage selling like you know like really learning flipping you know so that's my answer to that Gatsby Global what's good hey Gary how are you I'm well brother are you a Bears fan or is that just a hat it is a Cincinnati Reds hat oh shit you're right I'm getting rusty are you a Reds fan or a Big Tom How old are you?

6:0132 Love it Alright brother go ahead In a day where of course social shopping is on the rise And of course you're crushing it on and what not IG live you can utilize Of course TikTok shop Should we still try to utilize actual brick and mortar stores too For new products and new IP Or should we try to lean in on Lean in online first Get your leverage online first. When you say lean into brick and mortar, are you saying you made a product and you're hoping Walmart or Albertsons or Marshalls will carry it? I would say the way those stores are making their decisions now is they are looking for momentum and sales and heat from social and live shopping and then they bring the stuff in.

6:50They're trying to guess less themselves. It's much better for Walmart and Claire's and Five Below and 7-Eleven to know already there's demand than to guess. So you'll have more leverage by building heat online. Cool. All right. You got your brother. Good luck. See you. See ya. I like that shelf. All right, Aaron, you're up. Okay. This question is from Andreas. Gary, what's on one underrated platform or tactic that small businesses aren't using enough to grow in 2025? Live social shopping, IRL streaming, Twitch, kick, that whole game. AI learning to be able to make much more content easier without having a million dollar team, small businesses.

7:30If you have a physical store, starting to actually live sell from your store, even during store hours so people can see you're doing it, even shoppers coming in. Local influencer marketing, every local business on earth, every local business on earth that sells something should go to Instagram, search their town at the top of the screen, right? Like, let me, here we go. Can you get my screen? Here we go. every single business on earth should go to the top of their screen. And like if you're on Instagram and put Newton, Mass, right? You're putting Newton, Massachusetts, right? That's what I just did.

8:07It's a little hard to see. I get that. But I just typed in ace town and then results pop up, right? And you can put like, you know, literally results from that area. And so this photo's from there. And you look at all of them and you figure out who influencers are locally, who live locally, and do micro-influencer deal with local celebrities. You know, if you're a pizza shop, you just DM 13 people that post. You can look up the accounts that show up in your general area. You see somebody that lives in Newton, Mass, has 13 ,000 followers. You DM that person and be like, I want to give you free food.

8:40Come in and post and tag, because they're local, and there's a little bit of a local element to that. So there's just so many things you can do. So many tactics. All right, next question here. Okay, this question is from Ryan. how do I navigate a narcissistic boss when I love the job? That's fucking hard. You don't love the job because the job includes the narcissistic boss. You love the tangible parts of the job. There's no job on earth that there isn't other jobs like that with at least a more neutral or remarkable boss. People have to quit more. Like, I don't know. like people need to spend time on LinkedIn posting content and creating opportunities again I mentioned it yesterday because I'm really just giving her love Courtney's posting all this good content on how to help beginners start live streaming OBS all the blah blah that potentially leads to opportunities I want Courtney to like her job because I want her here but I get excited when people do content because I know it opens up opportunities and by the way she might be dreaming of living in Barcelona she's a young woman once in her life and she could get an actual message from somebody in Barcelona saying, hey, I've seen your videos on this.

9:58I want to start doing live streaming. I want to do this, right? We all remember Dustin used to work here. Dustin Lee used to work here. Remember Dustin, Brayden? Remember that dude? Like he's not here anymore, right? Because him being associated and building brand through me led to a very high net worth boss in Arizona who wants to have similar outcomes to my career. Like whether you get it through the shine of association with a person or you create it for yourself like Courtney's doing or a combination of the two, people need to start putting out more content about their skills and knowledge and passion to lead to opportunity or if they don't want to do that because they're weird and nervous about it, they're weird about it, they're not weird.

10:38They need to start DMing and applying to more jobs if they're unhappy. You do not love a job if you don't love the boss. And if you're using the word narcissistic, you've now done enough homework to understand what that is. a narcissist is a very tough human to interact with. It's a very substantial human flaw. It's a really tough thing to navigate. It's a non-winning game. It's like all four walls are blocked in and that person needs a lot of therapy and like a lot of work. So if she or he, was she, what was it? Ryan. Ryan, if he's figured out that truth, that's rough, man. Like that to me is really worth looking for some other opportunities.

11:19So, Paul. Gary, how are you? I'm quite well. It's lovely to see you. It's PK here. It's great to see you, PK. I have a personal question. It's tough to ask. My mother's recently been diagnosed with kind of between stage three and four lung cancer, unfortunately. I'm so sorry, PK. No, that's okay. Thank you. My question is, I feel like my work ethic at work is struggling. As it should like grieving grieving i can tell you right now brother you know where i sit on work ethic because you know i know you've been around these parts for a bit brother i'm on the record that when those unfortunate days happen in my life i will be a shell of myself from a productivity standpoint right we must become much more gracious to ourselves of times of grief it's a little ironic because i have the gracious grizzly bear you've got to be gracious to yourself here brother like you're you're allowed that now now i own my own businesses and when i when i'm less productive during those devastating chapters in my life my business is just going to feel the effects but no one can quote unquote fire me right you've got to balance a little bit of like making sure you're over communicating with your place of work to make sure you're not putting it because i've had unbelievable amounts of people DM me, unfortunately, who've been let go in this situation because it's been too prolonged for their boss's subjective opinion of what they're willing to be gracious about.

12:58And so you don't want to double compound your worries. So make sure you're a good communicator and honest with your job. That's the thing. I've kind of been keeping it close to my chest. I haven't really divulged much to my work yet just because there's a lot of unknown right now. She's kind of going through treatment. Do you think I should be more? Let's talk it through. I want to make this valuable for everyone. How good do you feel about the humanity and kindness and graciousness of your organization or bosses or managers or bosses boss? Yeah, I mean, they are very understanding. I know that they...

13:30How long have you worked there? 10 years this year. Okay, I think you're in a great spot, brother. I think you go have a real combo. And again, you only know if you... Look, there's a lot of people who grief who actually need to be at work. it's escape of course of course there's been people who i've given time to that have come back three days later and said gary you're the best and but i'm back because like these last three days were actually the worst and i actually need even though i might be running at 65 percent i need to be here um so you know you just got to figure it out you know what works for you but 10 years the way you just responded to me you've built equity you seem to feel like it's not a cold-hearted organization.

14:11I think you need to go and have a proper combo, brother. Okay. I appreciate you, Gary, as always. I'm sending you a lot of love and prayers, PK. Love having you part of this community. Love you, bro. Appreciate it, Gary. Love you. Take care, my man. All right, Aaron. Let's keep this rocking and rolling. Okay. This is a question from the chat, actually. I was successful with my company but didn't sell when things were good. Now I'm 36 and starting over. Any advice on regrets and starting again? Looking backwards is is not good for your neck or your soul. That is my advice. Aaron, I've made a million mistakes.

14:47Not 10, not 40. I've made so many mistakes, it's like laughable because I have so much opportunity in the last 10 years. Last night I was in dinner with some people and the kid is the founder of Mad Happy, the brand. You know, that ripping hot, iconically epic fashion brand that makes a fuckload of money. He reminded me nicely that I passed on investing. You know, like I only make mistakes. In fact, I would argue that my life up to this point is predominantly massive amounts of mistakes with a couple of occasional good decisions.

15:21And I love it. I don't know what else to say. I do not understand on the collecting capacity of especially youth right now. Youth has gotten so good at being critical on themselves five seconds into the game. Using a sports analogy, the amount of children under the age of 37 on this earth that have started to dwell in a game of life similar to a game of basketball where the score is 14 to nine in a four quarter NBA game and they're crying because they're down 14 to nine is staggering. So if you follow basketball and you understand my analogy right now, you need to wake the fuck up and understand how real what I just said is.

16:07I don't give a fuck that he missed it. I missed everything. What's he gonna do? Cry? What's he gonna do? Go on a random live stream and ask some guy he admires what he should do? It's over, Sid.

16:22That's it. There's no fucking time machines.

16:29Get over it. Because, and here's why, not because I'm a dick or like trying to give tough love, because we have no, because bro, we have no choice. You have no choice. Why, how, coming from a place of regret, cynicism, disappointment is such a bad way to start a sentence. Coming from a place of offense where you want to learn and build on top of why and how are remarkable. Using why and how from a place of regret is the poison in society. Yesterday's over. Learn from it and forget about it. You cannot give weight to yesterday.

17:15Fuck yesterday. Fuck you yesterday. Yo, yesterday, go fuck yourself. Alan K., what's good, bro? Hey, I'm just calling up. Glad to be on here and finally get to talk to you. It's a pleasure, man. first the the beard mustache combo is epic bro the raleigh fingers is coming in my man i'm bringing it back i'm bringing it back i love it um i'm a high school teacher um and um i have a new social media marketing class that i'm putting together and you know i'm getting the best information i love it thank you get the kids updated thank you um and i'm you know so i'm using your info i love ai i'm all about it once it came out i'm doing everything with ai i even wrote a book for teachers on how to use ai love um and they um the problem is a lot of teachers don't want to use ai right they don't want their kids to use the students and i'm the opposite i'm against the american education system even though i'm in it yep i tried to i'll try making like chat bots for my my students and you know to help them study and do everything um and i love doing um you know ai um engineering right the prompt engineering the problem i have now is i'm a teacher i'm passionate about it i love helping you know teenage kids find their passion and do what they need to do i just don't know how to turn that into another income where you know it's hard to keep kids attention while they're in my forced to be in my classroom let alone get them interested in what I have to say, you know, on their own.

19:00I would like to, you know, I'd like to turn it into my own, like, way of making sure income. I got it. Brother, I'm a teacher too. I just don't do it in a classroom in an archaic system. I do it in the entrepreneurial arena of live social and social media content. You should do that at scale and that will lead to income opportunities of speaking, book writing to get paid on that, courses and many other things. the classroom in the academic corporate structure of government is not the place to monetize for teachers it's a place to scratch an itch i admire the fuck out of teachers it's a destiny and a home for a lot of people my sister taught first grade for a long time uh i believe teachers are massive but teachers come in all shapes and sizes some are in classrooms and some live in other places if you're asking me a question of monetization you must live elsewhere okay so see i was looking at the whatnot right and i was like okay what if i did something like you're doing right now but what the hell am i gonna sell like a book but i'm saying if i'm my my attention would be more to like the student and kids ain't reading no books today i understand so i hate reading books too i mean to be honest with you but but why should a kid buy anything from you whether it's a book or an online course when there's eight trillion things of information for free exactly that's what i'm saying so like i don't so well rule number one sell something people fucking want okay well how do you get people to want your book because i sell millions of books even though i put out the information for free it's by putting out so much content for free and bringing so much value brother do you know why so many people collect fee friends like they collect VFriends now because they want to really support me on this journey and then they fall in love with Genuine Giraffe and Patient Pig and so Alan, that's the punchline.

20:54You gotta figure out what you can actually sell but I think before you worry about like what, I think you putting out a ton of information for free about what you know about AI on social media and live stream sessions will start to build a community which then will have monetizable value. I put the videos I'm making for my social media class. I actually put them on YouTube. So hopefully. Yeah, but that's not a read day trading attention. You know, in that purple book, you just hung, literally just held up. You know that I would shit on you if you just put it up the video on YouTube. I need to clip.

21:31What I'm saying is I put it on there because I want teachers to. I get it. To make their life easier just to use my videos. That I love. That you're wonderful for. But if you want to actually turn your world into monetization, You gotta clip the shit out of that Put it on TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, LinkedIn Facebook, Twitter Read the book and fucking live the book Alright man, love you man Stay well Darian? How are you brother? Good man, where are you from? Pennsylvania Nice, great to see you Wanted to connect on more of a human level Please So there's a lot of messaging out there That if your circle isn't energizing you motivating you, supporting you, making you a victim, or playing the victim themselves, you should shorten that circle and make your network the people that are really energizing you and giving you the support you need.

22:23Then there's a lot of messaging out there that take your grind into your own hands and make your own pathway and blaze your own pathway in the world. Both of those scenarios bring a lot of loneliness, and you yourself find yourself alone many nights. Let's talk it out. The first part, the first part that you brought out, brother, there's often when it's well said, there's a second part to that sentence that has a comma in it that says, and then go find people who bring you good vibes and good energy. Right. Let me explain to you V friends, my little universe. One of the reasons it's going so well doesn't have to do with how good of an entrepreneur I am and how well I'm operating.

23:11It's that a lot of people in the VFriends community have literally found their best friends in the world by being joint collectors of this. If you go look at Comic-Con, if you go look at a sporting event, if you go look at all these things, people find things around similar interests that have a more, and what I'm trying to do with VFriends is bring a more positive vibe. I take what you're saying and it is valid. You're right. I do think the first thing which is limit your interactions not cut completely out because a lot of times as you know these are your best friends or your parents or your siblings I'm not a big advocate of like never talk to your mom or brother again but I am a big advocate of protecting your sanity when you have deep negativity around you and maybe you don't talk three times a day maybe you talk once every three days right and I do believe it is on all of us that we have the ability to get out of our loneliness, but we must find our communities, whether in interest, in discord, in Fortnite groups, chess clubs, book clubs.

24:17I will say through Whatnot itself, a little plug for Whatnot, I have met several individuals that I met through the app and then went and visited them and we hung out and we grabbed drinks and had dinner. And it is a very connective community and you can find long-term friends in communities like The Hobby and virtual communities like whatnot. So 100 % agree. Do you feel like there's an opportunity for you, brother, to double down and quadruple down? Hearing your question, sensing your energy, really excited about this conversation. I appreciate the vulnerability and the thoughtfulness because this is an important conversation.

24:51Do you believe that there's an opportunity for you to quadruple down on some of the things you're finding in whatnot or other places that are showing you previews or are flirting with the ability to create a network of a dozen or so really positive you know friends do you think there's an opportunity there there absolutely is and there absolutely is an opportunity to connect more with individuals and robbie rob congrats on your but in their streams as well 100 everyone has that opportunity the second part of the coin i think is you know when you have a nine to five and then a five to twelve you know you don't have the the opportunity to make space in the physical world with your friends that are here.

25:35And so that in and of itself also creates a space of loneliness where yes, the digital community can feel part of that, but it doesn't fill the hole. Yeah, I mean, I think if you're personally feeling that, my brother, I would say that you are not allowed then Monday through Friday to do five to 12 and you're gonna have to force yourself to give up one of those five to 12s on every Tuesday or every other Thursday, right? Like, I think that's gonna be, again, really doubling down, really attacking. Like, when you have this level of thoughtfulness and self-awareness and clarity that you're communicating with me on, I think it becomes the game of jumping into the pool, right?

26:15Meaning, when I hear that, that's also valid. That sounds very clear to me. And if you were my best friend in the world and we were having, which is kind of how I'm treating this conversation right now, I would say to you, brother, you've gotta pick every Wednesday and fuck five to 12 and you're gonna have to join the bowling club, the pool club. You need to keep pounding and finding more people in the general Pennsylvania area within an hour drive. Whatever you're missing that it's clear that you're searching for. Yeah, yeah. Makes sense. Keep going because I actually think you're bringing a lot of value.

26:45What of what we've talked about right now feels right or feels like, yes, Gary, I get that logically but in my tummy right now, I don't feel like that's right. no i i think your perspective of taking a day off and using that day to be social and to go out and find something in the local community that is physical and something that you can create you know in-person networks with um i think that's completely valid uh one of the things i've tried to do more is try to get more connected with my church and so that's i mean that's that's by the way brother you're going down a very good path i think for a lot of people in the last 40 years the loss of community as people started to go to their place of choice of worship on every Sunday was such a grounding, such a great community that a lot of people have lost.

27:36In fact, you know, it's funny. I go to church on Sundays in the fall and winter as well. It's called MetLife Stadium, right? I genuinely, and I mean this, my community of Jet Friends, right, of New York Jet Friends is a real community for me. In fact, it's very church-like. We go there and we talk about our sins of ever picking this team as our favorite team. We talk about the adversities of life, you know, like rooting for the Jets. Here's a great Jets fan walking by me right now, Alan Harker, part of that community. Like, this is why I'm such a big fan of sports, by the way, especially when you're a fanatic.

28:15It starts to, and you are religious about it. You build an incredible sense of community. and so a actual religious like uh institutions i'm pumped that you're leaning into that and i think a lot of people synagogue church uh mausoleums like you know uh you know whatever their place of uh uh preference and and religion is is a great thing to do and in general i think also finding you know that's obviously one form of community i really do think interests you know So actually, let's go a little bit deeper. Are you into movies? Are you into sports? Are you into cooking, golf? What are some of your interests or things you're into or watch on TV?

28:57Give me a little more color commentary here. Yeah, I don't watch a lot of actual series on TV. I am big into anime. I do play a little bit of video games. I do go out in golf. I do. It's great. Also, I sell sports cards here on whatnot and also in local card shows. So also - Let me ask you a deep question. Let me ask you a deep question. Yeah. Do you trust people? Not always. Yeah. That's why I'm enjoying this right now. I'm really excited about this, brother. I'm really happy you and I are together. Notice how that, like that was a, maybe for some people watching right now in my team, that was like a left field question, but notice how I went there and how good this feels for me right now and I would have bet all of it on you answering that way.

29:44I'm very fortunate. I have two very opposite parents. One of them trusts everyone until they give them a reason not to. And usually it takes her, a lot of reasons for her to lose that trust. I was fortunate enough to get that DNA and also be fundamentally parented by that person. The other parent trusts no one. And even when someone gives them years of good reason to fully trust, he is not capable of trusting them and is always waiting for the other shoe to fall and is actually searching, almost often manifesting and creating some weird, non-truthful justification to lose the trust. I would tell you that this is the path I want you to look through because you are doing a lot of great things in the first part of how we address the issue that we're talking about.

30:41It's the second part that's actually the punchline of the conversation you and I are having. your DNA and your circumstances of growing up and the things that happened in life have put you in a place where it's a little harder to trust and that is leaning and leading to why we're in this predicament and I will tell you if this is any solace and you're gonna have to go on your journey and I'd love for you to hang out more with us and good news, you're catching me at a great time in my career starting in October I'm gonna be doing Tea with Gary V and a night version of this. Okay. I'm actually contemplating cutting out alcohol permanently.

31:20So the winding down with Gary Vee thing's a little tough. Though I might do a non-alcoholic wine brand deal. That could be a whole thing in itself. I might start a brand again. Anyway, nonetheless, I'd really like you to hang out a little bit with us, brother, because let me say one thing about this crew. There's a lot of people in here that I've gotten to know over the last four or five years that are incredibly worthy of your trust. And I already feel like I have a good sense that they quote unquote won't let you down. And like anything in life, it becomes practice. Once you get three to four relationships where you get sustained two years, where you, maybe it was uncomfortable to trust, but they've done nothing to break that trust and you're starting to get more comfortable, you'll then become stronger in being able to open up and trust.

32:06And then you'll become so strong that even when someone does fuck you up, right? And breaks your trust, it won't be a devastating knockout outblow, it will just be a tough punch, and you'll wipe the blood off and move forward. That's what we need to build up. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And that makes total sense. I think you're spot on in terms of your analysis where I do have trust issues from trauma in the past, and everyone does. And by the way, good news, brother. It's incredibly valid. It's appropriate because me not having trust issues and you having trust issues does not make me better or more capable or more awesome.