This week, Cory speaks to entrepreneur, investor, author, speaker, influencer and future owner of the New York Jets Gary Vaynerchuk, who is well known for being the CEO and founder of digital agency giant VaynerMedia, athlete representation agency VaynerSports, venture capital firm VaynerRSE, host of the popular DailyVee show and a 4x New York best seller. Prior, he grew his family’s wine business from $3 million to $60 million in revenue and was an early investor in multi-billion dollar behemoths Twitter, Snapchat, Uber, and Venmo. In this weeks episode, Gary talks about his secret life-hack, the biggest thing holding people back, easy skills you can learn that will benefit you in the long run and what’s next for influencers.
[00:00:00] Interviewer: What’s a life hack you do that very few people know about?
[00:00:03] Gary Vaynerchuk: I think my biggest life hack is other people. Having two admins, having a whole team around me in content, I am willing to pay people to do things that either I am not good at, or I don’t want to do. I hate logistics. I am incapable of ordering food or figuring out where my car is. I think my life hack is using other people to help me and building a family and a team. It seems counterproductive, it’s not technology, it’s human, but it really is my hack.
[00:00:33] Interviewer: When did you start doing that?
[00:00:34] Gary: It started happening seven years ago when I got an admin, I was like, “Wait a minute. Somebody else is doing my calendar, or booking my flight? Cool.” Over the last 18 months, two years, started building out a bigger content team, when I started having like Biz Dev and all this and I was like, “Oh, right. I love people. People love me,” [laughs] especially if they are close to me. This is a real family. This is a real team. Everybody plays their role.
The key is if you have somebody who is doing entry level tasks, then you are building opportunity for them. I think I am really good at that. As long as people are graduating up, I would be like, “Hey, I’ll eat crap for two years and book your flights and the stuff”, but then I become an important cog in the VaynerMedia machine. People are really buying into the minimal tasks, or on the content team.
“Cool, I could be doing just little pictures for Instagram, but eventually I can film your blog or do your podcast.” It’s been a graduation. Once I realized I was bringing as much value to them, including maybe they wanted to do something else, and I got them a better job than they would’ve gotten without me. I really triple down on it because it became an even trade, if not me giving more to other party while they were eating crow.
[00:01:38] Interviewer: What’s something that you know you should do right now, but you haven’t done yet?
[00:01:40] Gary: That’s a great question. Get more serious about my commerce capabilities. I am about to, but I still haven’t, which means I haven’t. Starting my beanie hat business, doing limited editions of hoodies, doing more collaborations like I’ve done on K-Swiss, getting back to my sales roots. I’ve been this incredible concept called Vayner Mentor, where I have a COO, people that have worked for me for five or six years. I am able to throw half a million dollar a year salary employees at people’s companies for 100 to 200 days and completely transform their business.
I am sitting on this business, where I know a lot of businesses would love to pay me $250,000 to $500,000 for the year, fundamentally transform their business from a three million dollar to a 10 million dollar to a 15 million dollar business, is Vayner Mentor business where 80 to 90% of the deliverables are done by my seven to 12 beasts internally, and then a little bit of me. I haven’t done it yet, but boy should I do that.
[00:02:38] Interviewer: How do you make hard decisions on tactics around two really good things to do, you’re not sure which one to do first. You have any tactics on making hard decisions?
[00:02:45] Gary: I am a intuition guy. I think you’ll interview a lot of people for this podcast that are more [quant-based], are more disciplined. I am definitely making decisions based on intuition. What feels right? Where do you think my world’s going? How am I thinking about that? There is a little bit of what side of the bed did I wake up on the flip side, I’ve been thinking Vayner Mentor, the Beanie Company, creating more audio content for 15 months. I’m intuitive and quick but I’m also thinking about it, thoughtfully.
I’m marinating. I’m marinating at scale. I’m being thoughtful, tasting the tea leaves, the undercurrent of my organization, of my inner organizations. Team Gary, the 17, 15-person team, in 800 people at Vayner, 500 people that are hitting me up, people like yourself which becomes another 1,000 of my network. I’m stress testing the opportunities, supplying demand of opportunities, crippled by opportunities. I don’t have any other system than letting it marinate and run through my brain, on an every-second basis of my life.
[00:03:45] Interviewer: Got it. What’s something controversial today that won’t be tomorrow?
[00:03:48] Gary: Something that’s controversial that’s very narrow to my world is this notion of people following you around and filming. Like literally, I’m talking to you right now and [Girac] is filming today’s blog. I had a meeting this morning with Ryan Serhant from, Million Dollar Listing. He had a person filming him. Today, I was with Gunna, the up and coming rapper. He had somebody filming him. There’s a lot of people that are cynical to the blogging, reality TV kind of narrative that people on the edges are seeing emerging. I believe in 36 months, you’ll have somebody following you around filming.
[00:04:16] Interviewer: How do you think entrepreneurs and people should deal with controversy? You think they should shy away from it, seek it, or just not back away when it comes up?
[00:04:22] Gary: Everybody needs a little bit of truth. For example, I don’t like talking about politics or controversy because, in my truth people are able to handle it. People are tilt and too emotional. I don’t think all publicity is good publicity. I don’t think you run into controversy for awareness. I think getting the right awareness matters. Look, I think there’s a lot of people who’ve done well and are interested in a night fight and are good at that.
The truth, right, like who are you as a person matters more than just being a proper strategy of like, “Run into controversy, don’t run into controversy.” For me, I just live my truth. I get involved and feed my trolls when I want to. I stay out of it when I want to. I jump in and out of topics when I want to. I think you just have to feel it and it feel authentic to you. I don’t think about this stuff, strategically. I just live my life and let the cards play out.
[00:05:09] Interviewer: You talk to dozens, hundreds of people every single week. What do you think that the biggest thing is that’s holding people back?
[00:05:13] Gary: Other people’s opinions. The number one reason people are held back are other people’s opinions. Which if you seed it all the way back, the parenting and the environment you grew up with, unfortunately, did not build enough self-esteem inside of you to be confident, and be able to deal with the ramifications of living in a siloed, cocoon-like environment than your own brain.
Look, I’ll just make the very personal. First time I saw you speak in Dallas, it became very obvious in 30 seconds of your speech and the few minutes we spent running around that conference that you were inside your own head, and had a drive, and a mission in your own head. That was it. You weren’t going to look up to me. You weren’t going to overreact to a TechCrunch article. You weren’t going to react to a no or a yes, too high or too low. That’s why I became attracted to you, as an entrepreneur. I think that that is the biggest thing holding back people that aren’t as lucky as you and I are, where they just generally value other people’s opinions too much. That’s different than having empathy. I love somebody today. I respect kind of razzed on me and my followers. I responded because I actually respect that I think he’s coming from a good place. Just that’s what he believes. He hasn’t had the time to dig into who I am, but most people don’t come from that place. They’re coming from insecurity. A bunch of people were insecure are responding to people that are insecure. To me other people’s opinions is the number one reason people are held back.
[00:06:32] Interviewer: For a 15 year old student, or a 25 year old, or a 35 year old, what would be tools or tricks to kind of remove other people’s opinions?
[00:06:40] Gary: I think a tool or trick that would really over-index is very similar to how you learn how to ride a bike or learn how to swim. It’s just mental. I literally think this would be valuable for anybody 15 to a 115. Tomorrow, go and do something you’d been wanting to do that you’re desperately scared about what your parents, the world, the market your social media followers will think do it. then see how not scary. All the negativity actually is, you start getting it to practice like anything else.
It’s unbelievable to me how much getting pushed back for cursing on stage, or being too cocky or whatever it is, it became habit. Now it just doesn’t even seem like anything. It’s literally cra — simple as that. Tomorrow do the thing that you’ve been scared to do, that is the most practical not move across the country. Something practical. Start a YouTube page. Tweet about something, like something. Do one thing that makes you uncomfortable. See the reaction from the audience and your inner family and your friends. Realize very quickly that it wasn’t as scary as you thought that feedback.
[00:07:41] Interviewer: When was the last time you did something like that?
[00:07:43] Gary: That’s a really good fucking question. The last time I did something like that, I would say probably the K-Swiss collaboration. The last time I did something — to me it seemed perfectly obvious and it was going to work, but I was aware that people would think it wouldn’t. Like people are like, “What the fuck are you talking about? Why are you coming out with a sneaker when it doesn’t do well? You’re going to look stupid,” right?
[0:08:01] Interviewer: Right.
[0:08:02] Gary: Then it did phenomenally well and then it went the other way.
[00:08:05] Interviewer: That’s awesome. Who are three friends or acquaintance that you think are undervalued that you think are going to be super successful but aren’t, yet. Success for this exercise means, like impacting the millions of people?
[00:08:14] Gary: That’s just fucking great — By the way, good job man. These are like interesting questions.
[00:08:18] Interviewer: [laughs] Thanks.
[00:08:19] Gary: I’m a huge, huge, huge fan of, Rachel Tipograph. She’s the CEO of MikMak. There’s just something about her as an entrepreneur. On the record, I’m not convinced MikMak as a guaranteed winner, but it’s funny. I’ve even referred to her to some friends as a similar version to you. Like you are 1,000% going to be macro successful. As far as like the company that you’re running and the company Rachel’s coming, I’m not ready to say a thousand.
I’m in the 80s and in the 90s, what have you. Rachel Tipograh for, for sure, I think is going to make a real impact. I’m a pretty big fan of Baldwin Cunningham. I think he’s going to have an interesting career. I think he’s up to something I think he’s focused and good at what he does and great network and has the long view on things. I’m a pretty big fan. I would say Gunna, Gunna the rapper, G-U-N-N-A. I just have a funny feeling this kid’s about to become a superstar.
[00:09:11] Interviewer: That’s right. Teams and calls you can source with us, advice to young people trying to figure out what they want to do, or what’s an easy skill to pick up that you think very few people have.
[00:09:18] Gary: Look, the thing that a lot of the audience that’s listening has a huge advantage of is their unbelievable understanding of how they and their friends communicate. That is how then people will communicate. I would say, pay very close attention to how you, the listener right now, are consuming content and what you’re doing. Then, try to learn how to produce. Become a producer for those environments. Whether that’s audio, written or video. This is not just pictures or videos on Instagram.
This was way deeper, and there’s a lot of incredible kids that are listening to this that are incredible writers. Where do they do that? To me, test and learn like I think there’s an unbelievable amount of creators that are listening now and they don’t realize it. Because they don’t realize they’re making means, or them drawing, or them singing, or them writing. Just the creative underbelly of even the people that are listening that don’t think they’re creative. It’s because they don’t understand the business and marketing and advertising and communications world and they natively have that skill. I would just say, “Do more stuff. Make more stuff.”
[00:10:21] Interviewer: What you think is next for influencers?
[00:10:23] Gary: Retail.
[00:10:23] Interviewer: Retail.
[00:10:23] Gary: Retail. Retail. There’s just so much money. If you’re a kid listening right now and you’ve got 400,000 followers or something, [inaudible 00:10:30] you need; tomorrow go make a T-shirt on that page, post it. In your stories, post it on your main account, link it in your Instagram profile and see if you can sell some shit. You will be stunned by how much demand there is to buy some of your products around the media you’re creating.
[00:10:45] Interviewer: Yes. It’s been interesting seeing to watch team [unintelligible 00:10:46] like doing millions of dollars in sales with their commercial store.
[00:10:50] Gary: You can imagine, for me I was an investor in that. That was a big thesis. I come from e-commerce in 1996 when a lot of your listeners were not even born. For me, watching, go back to full circle, me watching thousands of pairs of my sneakers selling out in minutes. Then, now selling secondary, like it’s there man. I’m not even in the same world as a lot of influencers. It’s there.
[00:11:12] Interviewer: The last question. Anybody you want to thank, anyone you’re grateful for recently that you’d like to thank?
[00:11:16] Gary: It’s lovely. I want to thank every single kid — First of all, my parents are the only people I ever thank. On the flip side, I want to thank the future behavior of this podcast. I want to make every kid who listens to this and said, “Who’s Gary Vee?” Goes and types in Gary Vee into Instagram and searches, and goes down the rabbit hole and then actually gives me five minutes, five seconds, eight seconds of their time.
Attention is the number one asset in our society. Anybody that gives me even a little bit of it, I’m grateful for them. I’m grateful for them. I’m just blown away by it. I want to thank — I know a lot of people who haven’t heard of me before who are listening to this are about to discover me. They are you going to stay around for a long time or just bounce. Even if they just bounce, I want to thank them for the add back.
[00:11:58] [END OF AUDIO]
