Why the World Needs More Purple

0:00This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience. Vayner Nation, what is good? We are back on the podcast 2022. I'm really not planning on doing too many interviews or episodes. I'm kind of, I'm focused on VFriends and VaynerX. I think the speaking, the books, even the content, I'm down to the lowest levels this week in seven or eight years. But when I get an opportunity to do a show where I think all of you who are listening are gonna really enjoy the combo or have wanted to see the combo. I've definitely heard through my navigating of the world that people wanted Mark and I to interact or how would we jam.

0:47And I'm really excited that he's on the show. So I'm gonna let him introduce himself and how he likes to speak about himself. I'm just curious myself. and then we'll get into a little bit of book life because he's a beast and then maybe just shoot the shit on a bunch of different stuff. Mark, how are you? I'm great, man. It's great to be here. I can't believe we've actually never talked before. There's people like you and there's probably 15 other people over the last decade that, you know how it's almost like a neighbor you have, you've never talked but you head nod. You know, like I've always felt that I had these kind of like people that ran in similar circles, shared friends.

1:30And it was just sheer serendipity that we weren't at the same conference, at the same event. That, you know, that if we met seven years ago at a South by Southwest, we would talk 13 times a year versus not once for seven. You know, like it's one of those kind of things. It's actually when Kobe Bryant passed, I actually promised myself to slightly do a better job. I've done a little bit of a better job with it, but I'm such a mad scientist in my lab, my family, which is my real life, and then professionally, my laboratory and my crew around my laboratory, cheer and cheer and look for everybody on the outside, but spend so little time on it.

2:13So I find myself in these predicaments where, but I wanna be a little more thoughtful because I definitely feel like I've always loved the way people talked about you and that know you that know me so i'm happy we're here yeah me too man thanks um so quick quick intro um i'm actually from the blogging world i started blogging in 07 uh actually discovered you back in like 09 2010 um basically blew my career up going viral on facebook and twitter back in the day back when you kind of could go viral on facebook twitter um grew a massive audience millions of readers each month parlayed that into a publishing deal books did super well have sold about 15 million books crazy numbers how many have you written uh four one self-published and then three conventionally published um the last one was i did uh i co-wrote will smith's memoir with him it came out a couple ago.

3:17What was the experience in co-writing?

3:49You know, with him, it was great. I don't really aspire to be a memoirist or a ghostwriter or anything like that. He was cool enough, and the whole thing was cool enough to do? Yeah, he and I really hit it off, and I think he... Did you come across Brad Haugen in his world? I know he's on the productions. Did that name... I think he works on some of the content site. good friend of mine anyway keep going um but yeah i mean he he and i like he was in the right spot in his career to do the book what i would call correctly you know which is like actually open up and actually get into kind of the ugly parts of his life yeah um and then i think he and i just like on a personal level our our skills and personalities complemented each other really well.

4:39So that ended up in, I mean, I'm a nineties kid, so I get suckered into things all the time. But honestly, I mean, it was such a great experience, but it's funny. Cause I mean, now, now that that book has done so well, you know, I've talked to my agent and she's like, you know, other celebrities are going to want to do stuff and blah, blah, blah. And people are going to reach out. I'm like, you know, I don't, I don't know, actually, like, I don't know if that's something I really wanna focus on. So - It sounds horrible. I think if you don't have the right person or if there's not a good chemistry, I think it would be horrible.

5:13Yeah, it's kind of like the way I think about VaynerMedia, like clients, like it actually is hard. When I talk about eating shit, I don't think people really understand. Like having, when you're creative, having somebody, two cooks in the kitchen is incredibly challenging. Yeah. It's not that it's horrible. I use that as a slang term for, man, you wanna say serendipitous and the person wants to say, you know, by chance. Like, you know, I love my art of being a content producer and being a businessman and have absolutely with my father, my brother, especially when it's family like that, had challenges when I knew what I wanted to do was right but I wanted to be empathetic or have compromising capabilities or, you know?

5:57Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, and it's, and it's, there are obviously there were moments where it's like, there were certain things that I felt should be in the book or certain directions. I thought certain chapters should go. And it's at the end of the day, it's his book. Yeah. So good for you to have like some, cause some people, some people with no leverage and juice aren't great at having out of humility, you came in with some real front-facing consumer leverage. Obviously, the reason so many people have brought you up to me is because I say the word fuck so much and you've obviously, you know. It's such a dumb reason for people to associate us.

6:42It's incredibly fair. I've had more than a couple people ask me through the years, probably five, which is a lot if you think about it. hey are you pissed he wrote that book like I'm like no I'm pumped he wrote that book I was like I'm like you know um not from like that more like they just really think there was a lot of crossover of beliefs and then obviously the word fuck I think actually just to go right into it because there's so many marketing branding content people you have two books with that in it sorry I I have a cough, everybody. Sorry if this hurts the podcast a little bit. Do you think, like, the brilliance of what Tim Ferriss did, I met Tim around that time as well.

7:23We were all kind of running around in those, you know? And he ran Google AdWords to figure out which title would work. You know, obviously, you know, Ryan Holiday and others. I watch how people navigate. Do you think that in the title had real impact, no impact, some impact on the success real impact for sure i mean so that book you know you mentioned the tim ferris thing running adwords to kind of figure out four-hour work week a lot of subtle art was very much market tested through blogs so there are you knew what was working absolutely and that that that title so i originally started writing that book with a different title and then i wrote an article called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, and it went fucking bananas.

8:12And I was like, oh, shit. Okay, maybe this should be the book, right? So there are a lot of sections in that book that grew out of viral blog posts. It's like, I know this works. I know this gets people. Yeah. Let me ask you a question.

8:34for the people listening what is the one two three sentence recap of the subtle art of not giving a fuck the 2016 book that went bananas basically it's I always joke that it's a book about values but you know if I told people it was a book about values nobody would read it so you gotta put fuck in the title and kind of trick people into it I mean you just you do realize you just completely in two sentences recapped my entire career. I would argue that you in two seconds - Here's the thing, Gary. The amount of shit I eat. Here's the thing, man. Please, please, please. And I think you and I landed in this spot for the same reason, because you and I live and breathe and eat and sleep the online social media world.

9:22And what you quickly discover when you're in that world is that there's an infinite amount of stuff out there. And so if you don't figure out that, like if you don't discover values to sort that stuff, if you don't figure out the principles of like, this is what matters to me, this is what's important to me. And this is just crap that I'm going to ignore. You're going to drown. And I quickly just, you know, coming from a self-help angle, I quickly discovered that a lot of my generation's problems, a lot of the anxiety and depression and stress that my generation goes through, it comes from just not figuring out what those values are.

10:02What are those sorting mechanisms in your life? And then when you don't have your own, you're grabbing onto people's. Totally. Grabbing to others, you're completely succumbing to outside affirmation. And the second you are living for outside affirmation, it's game over. Yeah. You know, it's funny. I remember seeing the book in the airports because I'm always in the airports, right? Yeah. And it grabbed me too, like every other human. And I remember feeling a huge, I do to my community famously talk about how little I read, but I remember feeling an incredible kinship just on title. I also believe so much of the world's problems is headline reading and making assumptions.

10:42So like I selfishly asked you that question right now for my own self, but I really do believe that getting into a comfort zone of understanding the following do the people that know me the best like me and do the people that know me the least have a chance of liking me or not liking me is a very simple framework that can help I mean I every day I get accused of things that are not true get negativity thrown at me and I'm pretty I see positive communicate, like I'm trying to, but I have a style that I think rubs people. The conviction and the confidence and the competitiveness, like I get it, I understand why it lands like that.

11:27I also think like alpha male energy timing is a little awkward and I'm empathetic to that. Those are macro trends, but everything that makes it palpable, that not giving a fuck, of course I care, but it's having a structure of understanding, no no but but do the people that know me like me and then as you get further away does it still stay as good like strangers thinking that i'm a charlatan makes sense 13 second clip on a video you know you know but my mom thinking that that's devastating and i think there's a lot to that that i think a lot about well it's it's also just the world that we live in now right like it's we're exposed to so many other people all the time and so many other people are exposed to us that it's unreasonable to think that everybody who comes across you is gonna like you.

12:18But I think there's a bigger thing, Mark. I love your thought on this. I think we're also in the explosion of popular culture judgment and pushing away as fast as we can any level of accountability. So judging is on fire and accountability everyone's running away from. Pointing fingers, super fun, popularized, point grabbing thumbs, devastating. Nobody wants to do it. Thoughts? Absolutely. One thing I wrote about when the pandemic started was like, I feel like people have this addiction to like moral righteousness. Like it's actually becoming a problem. Like I think we should become not less moral, but like more amoral, like withhold judgment on like what is actually good and evil because it because you're the judge when you're the judge and the jury it's a game of opinions outside of the things that most common sense nice human beings can agree on i don't think anybody's on the side of murder yeah of course but it's i i think you know it's so easy to pass judgment like moral judgment on people or groups of people today and there's so little repercussions and i think that that is like we've just kind of we've got this like crack addiction to moral righteousness as a culture well it makes you feel better when it feels meaningful it feels meaningful but there's new consequences yeah i think to your point like man we're gonna really nerd out on this i i think it it's an indicator of more collective unhappiness because i think we're in a bigger game of outside validation yeah because when you're unhappy the trigger of tearing somebody else's building down is an endorphin, maybe not a door, maybe I'm using, is a hit emotionally for you that helps you prop up in the short term.

14:15And so, you know, it speaks to, you know, it's funny, people will blame technology, social media, things of that nature. But I think it really starts, to your point, back to what you did in 16, it starts on values. Like if parents raise their children in, and I'm a capitalist and I'm an entrepreneur, but I love the game. I'm not in it for the Lambo or the watch. And if you're teaching your kids that it's all about those things, like we're gonna aspire to get a Mercedes Benz or you gotta lose 15 pounds because you don't look good or like all these different things, everything you're doing to reinforce that the outside world's judgment matters.

14:59I'm the greatest beneficiary of a mother who built me the reverse. nothing else mattered but what happened in our four walls and are we nice to people and to each other and call it a day yeah for sure man on like the traditional social media and blogging everything everything just feels like i don't want to say dead but like saturated right like it's the roi is so brother it's it's the tail as long as time the reason you and i in 07 and you did blogging the reason you found me in 09 was i would say the most frustrated i was in my career in my entire career was 2005 to 2009 because i couldn't write i still can't i can't write for a lick yeah and i saw blogging coming and i'm like and you know and i'd won on kind of e-commerce and search and email for sure.

15:58And I was like, this is gonna be huge. And I knew that I was like on the sidelines with like my helmet in my hand. And literally the second, you know, the second, oh I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I got my time wrong. 03 to 04 to 06, because the second YouTube came, I was on it so blistering fast. That's why my wine thing worked so well because I was like, okay, I can use the new thing. And then obviously social, the new thing, and then every app on social. But you're right. Like it's gonna take the next TikTok to do anything in web two. But even that is gonna be a slight alteration of what we've seen since 05.

16:40Web three is like crazy new world, which is what we were learning about the internet back in the day. Yeah, it's web two. It just feels like you're taking the same playbook and applying it to new platforms. Exactly. Over and over. And after like - It's a real art. Like knowing how to capture the art of TikTok versus Instagram is a real art. But to your point, you're still making a short form piece of content in video form. 100%. And it's after 12 years or whatever. Like it, you know, it kinda, you kinda just keep getting the same thing over and over. Whereas like web three, it just feels like we're in like 3D chess.

17:13No, it's like finding America. Yeah. You know, like you thought it was just Europe. and like, wait a minute. No, it's really like that. It's our version of that. Final thoughts, give me, you know, I don't, I feel like we may have to do this again because I want to extract. What are some hot takes from a social commentator? What are you seeing out there? What should people think about? What is a good, what are some good takeaways? Hey gang, keep an eye on this. Whether it's literal like OTT shows or like pop culture or common emotional themes you're seeing and just like takes? I feel like there's kind of like a great moderation coming.

17:56Like I feel like a lot of what felt so unstable with social media and just the news media in general throughout the 2010s, I feel like it was a lack of education on the user's end of like people don't understand how social media feeds affect their moods, their information consumption, the way they think, the beliefs that they adopt. And I think the general public's knowledge of how these things work is catching up to like where you and I were five, 10 years ago. And I think as that happens, we're already seeing it now. People are just learning better, learning to turn off all the noise and bullshit.

18:39They're learning to back off not hit the reply button so fast yep um and i i i see a kind of a new boom of like independent voices happening right now um i i'm like so bearish on traditional east coast media right now it's crazy um like what does that mean like new york times and washington got it you know, shit like that. It's just, I just think they're, it's just a sinking ship. Yeah, I mean, I think all traditional media needs a different model. They do, they do. It's not even about, for everybody listening, it's not a left or right thing. It's funny, when you said a great moderation, I've been using a purple heart.

19:25I've been falling in love with the color purple. I've been spending so much time on this. Too bad my favorite color is green, but I'm going to figure this out. I am completely convinced that what's about to happen is purple. You and I, we need to really actually become friends. We're clearly very similar in a lot of ways. I'm sure very different than others. And those are the fun parts. But the world is so red and blue. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. They can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.

20:03Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18 plus. Yeah. And the answer is purple. And sometimes it's dark purple, sometimes it's very light purple, but it's so clear that we will die. And this is not even from politics, like socialism or storming the Capitol, it just becomes societal. It becomes like operational. It becomes your day-to-day life. It's everything. It's not just, I mean, it's most visible in politics, right? But like - Correct, but it's everywhere.

20:41It's everywhere. Like I'm a big gamer. I see in the gaming community, it's like the loudest, most insane 2 % of gamers are the ones that you hear about all the time. It's like the fucking crazy sports people are the ones you hear about all the time. you know and it's well it's it's our own fault for loving rubbernecking yeah well and it's i feel i hope slash feel that people are they're smartening up to this and i think this is why you're seeing like substack take off you're seeing like uh you know you there was a chart recently of like joe rogan's numbers compared to all like the um what do you call it cable news shows or whatever and it's like you know his audience is as big as like the five biggest cable news shows combined, you know?

21:24And it's like, I mean, people are 700 ,000 years old that watch cable news. Like we have to understand that. By the way, I think ageism is a problem. I'm not shitting on 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100. I'm almost 50, fuck, you know, you're old. I'm shitting on the concept that the world's evolving. That I have unlimited friends who are 71 years old who know what Stubstack is and like read like all sorts of different things and are just like, and I have very interesting friends who are willing to watch both Fox and CNN and this and that. And it's not even about like the politics anymore. It's just the formats.

21:58So here's a thought for you. I'll leave you with this thought. You know, when I was a kid, I used to make fun of my parents because like we get like a VCR and my parents didn't know how to program the VCR. And like my brother and I would figure it out, right? And we would like make fun of my parents like, oh, I'm so bad with technology. It was like a funny thing in the 90s to be an older person who was bad with technology. I think now it's potentially like a social problem. Well, and also I think we judge them so negatively. We'll talk, brother. Congrats on all your success. We will cross paths again.

22:29Thanks for being on the show. Thanks, man. Great talking. 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. Fall is the perfect time to refresh and reorganize your space. At the Home Depot, find power tools and tool sets starting at$50 to help tackle DIY projects, home updates, and more. Whether you're drilling brackets to support new shelving or sharpening your hedge trimmer blade with an angle grinder, the Home Depot has the tools you need to check projects off your list.

23:03Shop Labor Day savings at the Home Depot and gear up for fall projects with the right tools to keep your projects moving. Journey. See you later.