The Exchanges

Q want to talk about that for a sec, because, I mean, you were, you, you got a book contract, I think like a 10 book deal, to write books about, I guess, about entrepreneurship. Your first book was called Crush It, Why Now is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion. And, I mean, how did you start to get attention that enabled you to attract the book deal?

A There was a web two point O conference at the Javits Center in New York, and I give this talk, and the talk was basically Crush It, which is, Does everybody understand what's happening here in 2007? Like, this is it. We can do stuff. You can do a blog about Smurfs and make a 100,000 dollars. Like, that's literally what I said. I said, Smurf it up. I said, do something about Alf. I was like, I'm doing it about wine. If you read Crush It Today, I basically laid out, 14 years ago, influencer marketing. And it landed, and by the time I got to the green room where I had my phone, because I didn't even bring it with me on stage those days, I had three emails from Penguin Putnam, from Wiley, from like, publishers saying, I'm in the crowd right now, can you turn what you just said into a book?

AI assessment note: “I had three emails from Penguin Putnam, from Wiley... saying... can you turn what you just said into a book?”

Q budgets or marketing budgets. They can't, you know, with all due respect, they can't afford VaynerMedia, you know, which is a Right. You work with Fortune, but if you were to say to somebody, look, if somebody says, said to you, well, Gary, how do I start? How do I create content with limited resources and limited time? Where do I even begin? What do you, what do you say?

A I say a couple of things. I say, look, if you want to grow and you have limited resources, your actual resources, your ability to be educated and you allocating the time. When people say to me, well, I don't have time. You know, when I audit, and I do that for my best friends, my acquaintances, distant relatives, randomly, because I'm in the mood sometimes. Guy, what people realize is they waste an extraordinary amount of time every day. If you talk to somebody who has six employees and has a business, she or he often is micromanaging that they have no reason to be micromanaging. They have hour meetings that could be 15 minute meetings, and miraculously, every time I've done a CAT scan, an MRI, an audit, we have found three hours a day, miraculously, from people that have no time. Then what I say is, now that we've found three a day, and that gives me 15 for the week, I want the first two weeks to be completely education. Give me 30 hours of education. Watch these YouTube videos. Read these tutorials that are free on the internet. Here, you know, here, you know, Google away. How do I make a LinkedIn post for a lawyer? How to, you know, make a podcast. How to write articles that succeed on LinkedIn. It's all there. It's all there. 30 hours. Then the next 30 hours, which is now obviously the first month's formula, so the next two weeks, 30 hours, belongs to you. You, the propriet…

AI assessment note: “I want the first two weeks to be completely education... Then the next 30 hours”

Q Jose Canseco, how much that rookie card was worth? It's crazy now. But it seems like your interest in baseball cards and the collecting of baseball cards, you started to kind of connect that with wine. I mean, you were working in a liquor store, but it seems to me that the baseball card collecting kind of side of you Got you thinking about wine. Do you think that's fair?

A Not only do I think that's fair, that's exactly what happened. I learned a lot from the ages of Nine to the ages of 15 in, in doing baseball card shows. I was a child setting up tables with grown men and doing business, and by the time I got to my dad's store, I was a little seasoned for a 15 year old, 14 year old, and then I got to listen, I educated myself in class, took advantage of every minute, started to really know wine, understood human behavior, Understood collecting, and took everything. That would be the word I would use. Everything. From the, by the way, let me give you one. When you're setting up a table at a baseball card show, you start realizing by, if you're talented like I was, and you had the gifts that I was given, that the way you set up your table will be a huge variable of how much money you make. Where you put cards, what signage you use, where is your table, and By the time I got to my dad's store, the first thing I did for my dad was merchandise the store. I would make signs, and I would move around cases. I would say, Dad, you want to sell this wine, right? And he was like, yeah. I was like, why is it here? I'm like, look how, and this is a 15 year old. Dad, look how people walk in the store, and they walk that way first because of the way you've set up the store. That's opposite of this thing. You've got the thing we don't want to sell there, But thi…

AI assessment note: “Not only do I think that's fair, that's exactly what happened.”

Q All right. You're so, so some of this obviously applies to creators or content creators or, but what, what about somebody who has a product or a service that they're offering? Let's say, you know, somebody watching now who has a business, how central in your view is creating a content strategy around their business if they want to scale and grow?

A For me, it's, Top three things in 2021, because I think about growth, Guy. Do I think that there's millions of businesses that are chugging along doing just fine without content? Of course I do. I just know them to be true. Do I look at every one of those businesses and say to myself, if she knew that if she put 55,000 dollars into an employee and some ads, that her top line revenue would go up by 200 K thus paying. Like, I believe that. So the answer is for me, I have no idea why somebody would leave the growth on the table in a world now where the cost of creative and ad arbitrage on Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn is so extreme. That there's a land grab of opportunity. I don't know why somebody would leave that on the table. What I see is some people are philosophically just against it because they're content, which is incredible. I'm thrilled for them. And then there's another group that tried it, failed because of lack of patience, or because they weren't educated enough of how to judge the people that were doing it for them, and have decided this doesn't work. Without realizing it was they that were the reason that didn't work. It's kind of like exercising for two weeks, not getting a six pack and being like, well, this doesn't work.

AI assessment note: “For me, it's, Top three things in 2021, because I think about growth”

Q twenties? Um, I don't quite know. It may have been a combination of, of recognition or, or proving something. Probably there was some insecurity that I was chasing to prove that I could do these things. What, what do you think you were chasing in your twenties when you were working so hard? Was it, was it money? Was it a, was it a number? Was it, what was it?

A What I was chasing, you know, it's really funny. The numbers thing made me laugh that we just talked about earlier. It was definitely not a number. Numbers are just like a very quick way to tell a story. Um, yeah. I could, I never had a goal. I, to this day, I've never had a goal of like, we're gonna do this. I don't even think that way. In my twenties, I was chasing one feeling. God, you gave me the best parents in the world. You also gave me this talent. I have this incredible relationship with time. I'm patient. I am gonna give everything I've got for this next decade to my parents who brought me to this country for Who loved me, who gave me self-esteem, who gave me work ethic and accountability. I was so emotionally, intelligently charged that I knew it, and I said, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna give my prime youth years fully to my parents, and then I'm gonna go and do my own thing.

AI assessment note: “In my twenties, I was chasing one feeling. God, you gave me the best parents”

Q Right. I mean, if you can pull it off, because there are, you know, there are skeptics, right? There are people who think that the NFT concept is super risky, like maybe not A good investment of time or money.

A Yeah, I mean, I think 99% of the projects that are being launched right now are gold rushes, and they're gonna be projects that fail, and people are gonna buy tokens from celebrities, leagues, different things, and the price is gonna go down. And they'll probably even be an NFT winter. Call it a tipping point. Next year, I don't know when. That I don't know. But what I know is supply and demand, and what I know is human psychology, and what I know is pattern recognition. And then, what's gonna happen, guys? Internet, 1999. The stocks declined because those companies were built on gold rush greed, but the technology changed our lives forever. NFT technology is going to change our lives forever. This 12 to 24 months will create incredibly bad projects that don't bring back value to the person that supported it, but I plan on making my project, for example, the Amazon and eBay of that era. Amazon and eBay were during that March, April crash of 2000 stock, and if you were smart enough to see the bigger picture and bought those stocks for dollars, very nice things happened.

AI assessment note: “I think 99% of the projects that are being launched right now are gold rushes”

Q who's been on How I Built This is a A person who follows their curiosity. So I think it's a, it's a super important point. I want to, I want to ask you about a brand, and you may not, you may not have one off the top of your head, but maybe you do. Which brand right now do you think is, is doing marketing very well right now?

A You know, believe it or not, we work with TikTok Vayner, but it's not the work we're doing with them that's going to make me say TikTok. It's going to be the fact that I think Nick Tran is a very good operator as their CMO. I love what they're doing with their television commercials, using content that, like, it's my favorite concept. It's, you're getting affirmation that human beings think this is interesting, and then you're taking it to another platform and giving it even more awareness. So I think TikTok has done a very solid job of, it's really funny, I think TikTok and Facebook, believe it or not, Building awareness around groups. I'm blown away by how much under-thirty-year-olds are signing up for Facebook groups at scale right now. I think it's an effective marketing job by them. Elf Cosmetics, I think, has been very native to TikTok, to a demo that they need to win there. That, those are some things like, you know, my brain went very fast when you said that.

AI assessment note: “TikTok has done a very solid job of, it's really funny, I think TikTok and Facebook”

Q Is that still part of your message today?

A Yes. I mean, I think the right, if you read Crush It today, 13 years after I wrote it, um, you know, I'm talking about influencer marketing. I'm talking about podcasts. I'm talking about everything that ended up happening in You know, the book, when you deconstruct it is, you know, if you're, if you're not knowledgeable about wine, or jujitsu, or, you know, harvesting honey, You know, that's going to hurt you. If you're not deeply interested in the community around those interests, you're not going to be able to cultivate lifetime value. It's very hard to put in that community time and that, and have content that hits unless that layer of making content money comes from a place where you're bringing so much value to the audience that things start to happen, right? Right. People want to do things with you. Your audience wants to buy things from you. So it's a really interesting game of selflessness that drives selfishness. But yes, I don't think, 13 years ago, people realized how much democracy would be coming to content consumption, that it was not relegated to television, print, radio, NPR, ABC, and that the internet was going to be distribution, and if you found your way of communication, whether through video, audio, written word, There was going to be opportunity on the other side of it.

AI assessment note: “Yes. I mean, I think the right, if you read Crush It today”

Q It's just so natural. He loves talking to people, and it's part of what makes him so approachable, but I am an introvert, so when I see that, I'm like, oh my god, I am, I need to just go into a room for a while by myself. Do you ever want to just jump off the hamster wheel for a couple of weeks and just not be around people?

A My answer is the same as Valens. I love it. The airport, the cab, the high five, the, the Jets games. I love it. Um, you know why? I can't believe it. I'm so grateful. And by the way, I'm not a comedian. I'm not a supermodel. I'm not an athlete. People like me because of things I'm saying that I'm hoping will help them, or, or giving out information that did help them. I figure out TikTok, I'm telling my people. I figure out NFTs, I'm telling my people. Like, I'm getting it not from fame, I'm getting it from someone admiring it, or being grateful. It's an incredible energy. On the flip side, I actually- Completely understand why people in first glance in an Instagram feed of a 32nd clip at my height of it of feeling and conviction will be like, fuck this guy. But I also know there are people that walk around the world that are adored, that know as people get closer to them, they hate them more. I have the reverse.

AI assessment note: “My answer is the same as Valens. I love it.”

Q Gotcha. Gary Vaynerchuk comes up to me, and he says, what are you looking for?

A By the way, even the way, even the way you just said that, you nailed it. The Gary Vaynerchuk you see on the internet was that boy. How are you? What can I help you? Like, just pure, pure enthusiasm, and I will not let you leave my store. I will make you a hostage, unless you give me your email address. Now, this is 1996, seven, eight, and it was really 97, right before I graduated, and then 98, full-time. A lot of people didn't even know they had an email, just got it from work. My favorite stories, because I can see them in my brain, are people say things like, oh yeah, I got one, uh, it's AOL at yahoo.com. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. You probably have an AOL and a Yahoo. Um, and, and so what I did was, I built a very powerful 10,000, then 20,000, then 30,000.

AI assessment note: “The Gary Vaynerchuk you see on the internet was that boy.”

Q flower business to people who, who are providing services for, you know, consulting services to people who are creating products. Do you believe that anything that Can be turned into an interesting, uh, content story? Do you think that if somebody cares enough about their thing, even if it, if it might seem a little boring on the face of it, you can turn it into something interesting through content?

A I think that niches are a much longer tale than people think, but I don't believe all of them have the size of macro intrigue that Make it something that we would all who are listening say, oh, that's like a very lucrative opportunity. You know, Frisbee, right? Do I think that you can amass a 150,500 thousand, four million people into a group on Facebook and start a podcast? And I do, I really do, Frisbee golf. Like, I really, really do, and I continue to believe this. A person who's obsessed with Frisbee golf or Frisbee or what have you, is she or he more excited about the notion of making 86,000 dollars a year and living that lifestyle doing Frisbee every day because they were able to get a 25,000 dollar sponsorship from the biggest thing Frisbee percent and YouTube absists and this and that. Versus a buck 30 being a director at a company that makes them miserable. That to me is the centerpiece of this argument, because if, if it's wine, you could build a multi-million dollar company because there's enough interest in wine, even as a niche. If it's professional basketball, you could go on to create a seven figure business easily for yourself. If it's the Red Power Ranger, not even Power Rangers, the Red Power Ranger, you know, you're now starting to look at a five-figure monetization at scale strategy, or maybe six if, you know, Comic-Con this and this and that. So, you know,…

AI assessment note: “I do think almost everything, it's stunning what people collect or interested in”

Q But, you know, some, and initially, I have to imagine, people in the wine world just thought, who is this, who's this bozo?

A Hello, everybody, and welcome to Wine Library TV. I am your host, Gary Vaynerchuk, and this, my friends, is the Thunder Show, aka the Internet's most passionate wine program. I feel like I do wrestling promo videos. In perpetuity. But I had the ambition to make it possible for people that were more casual to be influential voices in the wine world because I thought it would be good for the wine world. Very elegant, very structured, almost like a hot dog flavor in the mid-palate. I know, stick with me, I'm sorry, but a little hot doggy, a little gaminess, meatiness. And all the people that thought I was downgrading wine, not holding it up to the standard that it deserved, They didn't realize that I was creating wine drinkers and interest at scale. And what first initially shook the wine world was not only the fact that I was out of control and talking about wrestling and football and all the things the wine world would never want to be done, especially 15 years ago. But what was happening was, I was also showing that I actually knew what I was talking about, which really confused a lot of people. And then most of all, the one that completely was the big one. I was panning wines that we sold.

AI assessment note: “all the people that thought I was downgrading wine, not holding it up”

Q of this in the podcast, but I, I'm really curious. What motivates you? I mean, if it's not, I mean, you're very wealthy. You've made a lot of smart investments. You've sold businesses. You go to garage sales on the weekend looking for bargains. What, you know, I mean, I love that. I love that, but what, what motivates you? Is it money? Is it, is it, what is it?

A It's three, it's three things. Let's bring down garage selling. So I'm living life, putting out all this marketing stuff, and I'm, I listen for all my talking. So I get a lot of DMs and emails saying, cool, Gary, but I can't put a thousand dollars into Netflix stock. I can't put 5000 dollars into YouTube ads. I'm like, okay, that makes sense. I'm going to show people what I did when I was 17 to 24 to make some side money. I'm going to show them how I garage sale. You want to start with 11 dollars? I got something for you. And let me show you how you go from 11 to 4000 dollars. In a summer, by going to town sales, I'm getting educated. The other part of that, so that's legacy, guys. To answer your question, three things. I want legacy. I'm, I'm, I'm attracted to legacy. I'm genuinely curious, which is number one for me. When you said what drives you? Curiosity. I'm wildly curious where I sit. In my profession. I, I love sports. Sports has an epic. There's a lot of data that supports a LeBron James versus Dominique Wilkins conversation. In business, it's a little trickier, because What's interesting is my relationship with money. I have a little bit of a different take with entrepreneurship. I think innovation matters. I also think how much you give back to, you know, it's how I'm living my life. How much you give back to entrepreneurship is to the game is interesting, but I am c…

AI assessment note: “To answer your question, three things. I want legacy... Curiosity... The thrill of the hunt.”