Latest / In Search Of Excellence / Gary Vee: $2 Billion Dollar Taco, Live Shopping, and Customer Service | E134

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Gary Vee: $2 Billion Dollar Taco, Live Shopping, and Customer Service | E134 · In Search Of Excellence

• 0:00
  Gary Vee: One of the first videos I ever made was called, Facebook should be worried about Twitter, because Twitter just come out. I was again, fascinated by it that video went viral. Elaine Cook was the first CTO. I met him for a taco at South by and he told me he was quitting and selling every share, and did I want any first, I tried to talk him out of it. I said, I think you're making a huge mistake. Second, I could see he was making an emotional decision. Couple weeks later, on emails like, do you want to buy it? I'm done. I'm like, playing.
• 0:25
  Gary Vee: He's like, I'm done. And so me, Fred Wilson and Kevin Rose bought up all his shares. That was my first investment, and
• 0:31
  Randall Kaplan: he left 700 million, $2 billion on the table. That's right, just
• 0:35
  Gary Vee: staggering. Several months later, my video went viral. Facebook, Dave Morin asked me to speak at Facebook.
• 0:40
  Gary Vee: Sucks. Was there. We had dinner that night. We hit it off. We started to get to know each other, and sister, Randy called me. Mark wanted me to call our parents are looking to sell some shares. They're gonna buy a nice home near us in California.
• 0:50
  Gary Vee: Would you like to buy some Facebook equity and share? I literally took 80% of my savings invest in Facebook.
• 1:00
  Randall Kaplan: You're listening to part two of my incredible interview with Gary Vee. If you haven't yet listened to part one, be sure to check that one out first. Now without further ado, here's part two of my awesome conversation with Gary.
• 1:12
  Randall Kaplan: You took a company from 3 million to $60 million in a short amount of time. You saw things that people didn't see at the time you bought keywords AdWords, wine was five cents, and then after nine months, went to 10 cents. So what did you see that nobody else saw as really a first mover advantage, but I think it's so important sometimes in building businesses.
• 1:34
  Gary Vee: It's what I see right now with live shopping on social I'm gonna assume that I'm gonna just look around the room that people here know that Tiktok shop exists. People sell things on Tiktok huge. I'm gonna assume that people here know that, or this might be smaller, but you might know what whatnot is live shopping. I'm gonna assume that people in this circle know that China's been selling stuff on live social for the last seven years, at scale. I'm gonna assume that people are listening and watching. Might have saw the viral video of that woman with the handbags. Who does a million dollars just by doing this. I know that all to be true. I also know that almost every single person in this circle right now is underestimating it. I know that 99.9% of the people who are watching this right now don't understand it the way I do. I understand it for what it is, which is it's going to be massive, massive that, if you ask me right now, out of all the optionality in the world of how to make money in the next five years in America, that live shopping is at the tippy top of my list. That's what I saw with websites, email and Google AdWords. I don't think I was the only person that saw it. I just think what I'm very good at is I view these trends like poker, and I view live shopping on whatnot, and fanatics live and Tiktok shop, and meadow will have to do it, because it's going to get too big. I view it like having the nuts in poker. I feel like I've got the best like I know it's the best hand. And so if you know you have the best hand, educate me here poker players. You go all in because you've won, sure they may fold, but you go all in. I know that that's what I do for a living.
• 3:12
  Gary Vee: What I'm good at is knowing what humans are going to do. And I know when it's the biggest hand, the best hand. And so the reason I was able to build my daddy's liquor store was having a website was better than having a catalog, right? I wanted to compete with Sherry Lehman's, zakis, morels, Sam's wine club in Chicago, K and L in California. I wanted to have the specs in Texas. I wanted to have the best wine store in the country. What were those stores doing when I was in high school and college? They were buying full page ads in the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times Wednesday dining in section, and they were sending catalogs in the mail. I outflanked them by having a website and having a new mail an email newsletter. So my email newsletter in 1998 when 94 Dominus came out and insignia, I would email everybody, and they would buy from me, they would get the catalog from Sherry Lehman's four weeks later. Because catalogs are slow, email is fast. Catalogs are expensive to make and ship email was free, so even though I had no money, I outsmarted them by knowing where the attention was, because Wall Street had moved to email. But not everybody caught up. I believe social media is now in my brain. 20% of all social media content is live shopping.
• 4:35
  Gary Vee: It's not yet, but it will be, and so I'm going to move fast during this era on it. That's what I did with email, with having a website at all, and then finally, the big, final atomic bomb out flanking everybody on Google AdWords.
• 4:54
  Randall Kaplan: You need to have great customer service to build any business. So talk to us about this crazy story, about this. Woman who wanted a case of, I love this. Beringer white, Zinfandel, and the two and a half hours, though
• 5:07
  Gary Vee: this was, this is such a so anybody who owns a business, if you're listening right now and you want to make a point a culture, do something in action. Don't make a fucking poster and put it in the hallway. Don't tell a story that happened in the past. You and I have enough war stories where we can tell the kids do an action so I was building this store.
• 5:34
  Gary Vee: We're now on fire at this point.
• 5:34
  Gary Vee: This is later. This is like 2002 or three. We built a new store.
• 5:38
  Gary Vee: I grew up in a smaller store, then we built a big store as I was growing the revenue. I am the man on the floor. And this is the holidays. What I tell you, from 18 to 34 years old, my December, and I mean all the first 24 days of December, outside of when I was in college. So But even then, I came home way early because I was barely going to class. I would spend from 7am to 10pm on the floor of my dad's liquor store. That was prime time, especially pre internet. You know, we are in the midst of one of the busiest days in the history of the store, and now we're doing internet business, and we get a phone call in the order department, I'm running upstairs, downstairs, I'm keeping an eye on the internet and the store, and I'm fucking a maniac. And we get this call from the son of this elderly woman was even her that her case got Miss shipped. And this was like December 23 or second or first, I don't remember, but put it this way, she lived in Jersey, and that's one day delivery, and I knew that if we put it back in the mail, she wouldn't have gotten it for Christmas. And he made a big to do that she needed it for Christmas. I remember to stay like yesterday. I knew that there would be a day that I wasn't going to be at that store. I knew that I was going to have to build my own life at some point, because I knew my dad viewed it like an immigrant, which is, oh, this is your business, but it's really not like I can't buy a home because I have no equity, like I couldn't, you know, like I would inherit it when he would pass.
• 7:18
  Gary Vee: Well, I'm fucking going to be 50 in 15 months, and my dad's still working. Still working every day. So you can imagine I was smart enough, thank God at 22 to be like, I gotta do my own thing. But I remember I needed to do things, because once I was gone, I wanted them to know how it was built. I knew then. So even though I'm on the floor and generating 10 to $20,000 an hour, just me personally on someone like you that had high net worth that would come in and be like, I need three cases of high end wine for the holidays.
• 7:51
  Gary Vee: That was I was that guy. I decide to make a huge to do about this case of Beringer whites. Now it's snowing like the weather's bad, and I decide to grab a case from the basement, and I tell my inner team, just like this in a circle, I'm like, I'm gonna go deliver this, because we have the best customer service in the game. And they are stunned. I never I don't go to pee for 15 hours during the day. That's how busy it is, and how committed I am, and now I'm gonna drive to Bergen County. Isn't that an hour and that's without snow?
• 8:25
  Gary Vee: The fuck are you doing, Gary?
• 8:25
  Gary Vee: And I said, this is I just remembered that this was my moment to make a point. So I did it. I drove. I enjoyed it. I listened to sports radio on the way. Got back, everybody was stunned. Everybody was sweating.
• 8:39
  Gary Vee: Brandon was like, you missed mr.
• 8:39
  Gary Vee: Thompson and Mr. Smith, and like, all this money was lost, but it became a story. To this day, that story is being told to employees at our store about customer service. I might have lost $20,000 in sales that hour, but I've helped my dad make millions since, and I think more companies should understand that actions carry enormous weight.
• 9:08
  Gary Vee: And I believe that every leader that's listening right now should think about what they care about most and instilling in their company, and then should go out of their way for the most hyperbolized executions of those things so that it becomes lore. I mean, look at this. I literally did that action, and here I am, 20 plus years later, having the luxury to tell that story on an important platform like this.
• 9:31
  Gary Vee: Think about that. This is the meta of the thesis.
• 9:37
  Unknown: It's how you build it.
• 9:38
  Gary Vee: It's how you fucking you think everything, Bill it's everything's based on stories.
• 9:41
  Gary Vee: Why do you think religion exists? December, 2008
• 9:46
  Randall Kaplan: and you have a meeting at ESPN, your brother ages, graduating BU, and you walk out there with a couple things. What one did you walk out with? And then what happened next? Well, I
• 10:48
  Gary Vee: first walked out with$5,000 and I couldn't comprehend how I you gotta remember. This point, I'm still making less than $100,000 a year, even though I'm 33 years old and built this huge business immigrant life. Again, if you don't live in an immigrant business, you don't understand.
• 11:01
  Gary Vee: But like I built this huge business, created hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue over that course of period of time. And I'm still making very little. My dad's making super little too, but he owns the business. So I'm starting to think about my next chapter. My brother's about to graduate, and we're bouncing a lot of ideas, daily fantasy sports, which probably would have done well, something that looked like Groupon, and Living Social that probably would have done well, something that looked like BuzzFeed, that probably would have done well, but those would have all taken time to build.
• 11:32
  Gary Vee: And I really didn't have any money, and AJ surely didn't, and because I just invested in Facebook and Twitter, so all my liquid was gone, and so consulting, getting paid for action, was a better cash flow option. And it's amazing. And I get this random email because at this point I had masked a lot of followers on Twitter, but it's still early, and so first couple years of Twitter, and ESPN asks if I could come in and consult on how to grow their social, their Twitter. Specifically,
• 12:06
  Randall Kaplan: what year was this? This is 2008 Steve Bornstein was CEO, or he had it wasn't at
• 12:12
  Gary Vee: that level. It was way lower down. It was three to four levels below that, maybe five, if I'm thinking properly, of their org at the time. It was marketing, but it wasn't even like it was definitely not the CMO, let alone the CEO. And I don't even think it was the number two in marketing. It was a lower level, but the guy had the ability to write a $5,000 check, which is nothing for a corporation, so it was lower level. Anyway, I go in, I sit in a room like this, I consult for a couple hours, I enjoy it to no end. And I leave and they literally, it's like old school, like, you got to check back better. And I call my brother as soon as I'm in Midtown, because it was in Midtown, or something like that, I call my brother, said, I got it. We're going to start a consultancy. I didn't even call it an agency yet.
• 12:54
  Gary Vee: Wasn't really an agency, but I couldn't believe that it was 2008 going into oh nine, and I couldn't believe the biggest companies in the world didn't understand social media, because I've been committed since oh six, and that's probably one of the first times I've learned about timing. I'm just talking about it right now with live shopping. I'll say it again. I don't think Andreessen Horowitz invested in whatnot a long time ago. I'm not a genius. I just feel like in this nanosecond that everybody's underestimating how big it's going to be, and I didn't understand that. I didn't understand that it would take that long for people to get it.
• 13:33
  Gary Vee: And as they got bigger, it got slower, right? I didn't know that entrepreneur Land Information and action goes faster than it does in corporate land. And so I was like, Wait, there's an opportunity they still don't get it. And so that's why I decided to start VaynerMedia, which is also blown up, yeah. I mean, VaynerMedia started in the conference room of Buddy Media.
• 13:55
  Randall Kaplan: Mike, Fred, Mike Lazaro, yes, and you got equity for building a website. I got equity
• 13:59
  Gary Vee: for giving a quote, not even building a website, and
• 14:02
  Randall Kaplan: they sold the company Salesforce for a billion dollars. Yep, that was a good outcome for a quote. For me, I
• 14:08
  Gary Vee: did extremely well. I literally made seven figures to give a quote, because at that point, I'd written a book called crush it. That was the first time I'd hit the scene outside of the wine world. And very quickly after there, I was starting to be viewed as an angel investor with the super angels Tim Ferriss and Dave Moore and Chris sack and Kevin Rose and Travis kauna. And I was definitely in the game calcas. I was in the game in that era 2006 to 2012 it's a very good era, from my personal brand with books and speeches and investing and VaynerMedia is something I'm very proud of. We literally started it in a conference room and $350 million a year revenue business now with, you know, 2000 plus employees, and we're definitely the most progressive contemporary agency in the world, and it's also been the foundation of my other behaviors. I started resi inside of there with Ben Leventhal, 2014 I started empathy wines, which I sold to consolation with me and John, two former interns in that company, 2019 and then V friends, which I believe, and it's fun to put this on video to look back on in 20 or 30 years from now. But I'm in the midst right now of building an intellectual property I'm very affected and inspired by pokemon being worth $100 billion I do not think people realize how big that company is. I also am very inspired by Jimson, a real creative force who really wanted to leave a deposit of good on the world, Fraggle Rock, Sesame Street, Muppets. And so, yeah, I'm I'm Tripp, I'm building V friends. And a lot of the talent that works inside of V friends came from Vayner. So Vayner has been an incredible company, but it's also been an incredible incubator of talent. And. An osmosis of like, how I want to do things, and I'm very excited about
• 15:59
  Randall Kaplan: it. I'll tell you, back in my life, in 1999 I'm on my honeymoon with my first wife in Hawaii at Hualalai. I don't know if you've been there or not.
• 16:09
  Gary Vee: Oh, actually, I have.
• 16:09
  Gary Vee: I spoke to Brian Jordan there, and
• 16:11
  Randall Kaplan: this guy next to me is reading a magazine that no longer exists the industry standard. I said, Hey, are you on the bus? He said, Yeah. I said, What's your name? I said, my name's Ron Conway. And so talk to us about Ron, and then as part of the story, tell us about how making bad decisions on emotions is a terrible strategy. And you can talk about plain cook from Twitter and how you got that deal, and then talk about Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg your dinner, and then you got
• 16:41
  Gary Vee: it. So that whole Silicon Valley year up for me started with so now I'm right about email. I'm right about the website. I'm right about Google AdWords in oh five, and here comes YouTube and I and I, and I see, see that, and I'm like, fuck, I'm gonna build my dad's store with this. So I've used the tool of web, I've used the tool of search and email, and here comes video online. And I start using the tool. I start YB TV on February 21 2006 less than a year after YouTube comes out, and I want to take a moment right now and give a huge shout out to Eric Kastner. Eric Kastner was my lead developer.
• 17:21
  Gary Vee: One of the most progressive things I've done in my life was the day I started working in my dad's store full time, may of 98 I told him, from the day I started, I will take nothing in my salary, but we need to hire a computer guy. That's what I call developers. Back then we need to hire a computer guy. And by 2000 or 2001 I was able to finally get to a place where I was able to hire Eric Castor and then later John cassamanos was still our CTO, and we had, we're a fucking liquor store in New Jersey, and I have literal developers full time on my staff. It was so progressive, it'd be like, if I hired astronauts right now, like, it just made no sense. Anyway, I want to give a shout out to Eric Castor, because without Eric Castor, a lot of this does not happen. He was the one that sat closer than you and I are sitting right now at my desk, and was like, read, TechCrunch.
• 18:07
  Gary Vee: Read, meta filter. Read, read, write, Reb. Read, you know, dig, he was the one that showed me web 2.0 and during that journey, he showed me YouTube, because I asked him two years earlier if I could do videos on the site, and he said, No, too expensive to host. Now we found this. They were hosting it. So now I'm doing YouTube. I explode. This is where my career really takes a turn. The wine show explodes.
• 18:32
  Gary Vee: And then I'm now really starting to get into this tech stuff, and how do I use it to build a wine store? But still, wine store, wine store, wine store. And then Google buys YouTube. And one point you you remember this, that number, I don't think the kids can now. Everything's inflation. You remember that number? 1.4 5 billion. Do you remember how everyone reacted?
• 18:55
  Gary Vee: It was insane. I'm saying it right now because I want you guys to hear and be affected by it. It'd be as if you woke up tomorrow and Tiktok was forced to sell, and sold for a trillion. It's like you couldn't, we didn't see numbers like that. Yeah, everything was big. Numbers were hundreds of millions. I mean, Flickr sold for 40 million to Yahoo, and that seemed like a drillion.
• 19:15
  Gary Vee: Flickr was the precursor to Instagram. Anyway, I'm just like, holy shit. And now I'm a little bit older, and I'm reading more business magazines, not just wine, and I read a Wall Street Journal article about the sale because I was fasting, I felt different this time. I was like, fuck, man. I feel like, I know. I feel like my talents are not being maximized. I'm using these things to build my dad's business. There's got to be a way. I just felt different. I was just reading everything about it, and one article specifically, it references Ron Conway, and it says, angel investor. I never heard the term in my life. Angel investor. Ron Conway made a quadrillion dollars. I don't remember how much he put in or what he got, but it was staggering. It was like for his $100,000 investment, made $4 million or, I don't know it might even be, it was just staggering. I don't remember the details. I just remember immediately going from print, because it was, I think, the journal, to computer and Googling, not Ron Conway, Googling the term angel investor, Googling it ironically, very, very apropos.
• 20:19
  Gary Vee: And I'm like, Huh? And I literally, again, said to myself, I'm going to be an angel investor. I'm going to build up some savings. I had some savings at that point. And the first, one of the first videos I ever made that wasn't a wine video was called Facebook. Should be worried about Twitter, because Twitter just come out. I was again fascinated by it, and I promised myself, after the Ron Conway article, that the next time I felt it, that I would invest i. And the next time I felt it was Twitter, and that video went viral. Blaine Cook was the first CTO of Twitter.
• 20:59
  Gary Vee: Developer, developer, thank you.
• 21:04
  Gary Vee: And I met him at South by because now I'm going to these conferences, and he Twitter. I don't know if you were you in the mix? You
• 21:10
  Randall Kaplan: remember this? I was in the mix, but not dinner.
• 21:13
  Randall Kaplan: Do
• 21:14
  Gary Vee: you remember that Twitter would go down all the time? It was, yeah, down all the time. It was the hottest app in Silicon Valley, but it was down.
• 21:20
  Gary Vee: Down did not work all the time.
• 21:24
  Gary Vee: They did Ruby on Rails early on, it was complicated. He was getting so much heat. I met him for a taco at South by and he told me he was quitting and selling every share, and did I want any first, and I'm really proud of this, back to being a good person. First, I tried to talk him out of it. I said, I think you're making a huge mistake. Second, I could see he was making an emotional decision, and he he just went the whole way. And couple weeks later, on emails like, do you want to buy it? I'm done. I'm like, playing. He's like, I'm done. And so me Fred Wilson and Kevin Rose, if I recall properly, bought up all his shares. That was my first investment. And then couple
• 22:00
  Randall Kaplan: and he left 700 million, $2 billion on the table. That's right,
• 22:05
  Gary Vee: just staggering. And then, and then, several months later, because I become friendly with my video went viral Facebook. Dave Morin asked me to speak at Facebook. Zucks was there. We had dinner that night.
• 22:18
  Gary Vee: We hit it off. We started to get to know each other. And Sister, Randy called me one night when I was in Miami, and a speaking engagement said our parents, Mark wanted me to call. Our parents are looking to sell some shares. They're gonna buy a nice home near us in California, because they were still in Connecticut. Would you like to buy some Facebook equity? I said absolutely. Miss game chair. I literally took 80% of my savings invest in Facebook. Congrats.
• 22:43
  Gary Vee: Thank you. I've never sold a share. Promised myself that night that if as long as Mark was the CEO, it never sell
• 22:51
  Randall Kaplan: you've invested in over 100 companies. What do you look for when making an angel investment?
• 22:56
  Gary Vee: Early on, I went for the horse. Then I went for the jockey. Now it requires both the horse was the idea. Biggest mistake I made as an investor early on, as a kid, a kid in my 30s, was I if I liked the idea, I could see how I could run it to success. I didn't realize I was a good operator yet. Then I learned that that wasn't always working. Then it was about the kid. But even with the best operators, if you're operating a bad idea, that also will work.
• 23:20
  Gary Vee: So now what I look for in Angel Investing is the jockey and the horse, the operator and the idea. And
• 23:27
  Randall Kaplan: so what's the best way to pitch you? I read what you're going to say and what I would give is my answer is very different. What you're going to give is your answer.
• 23:38
  Randall Kaplan: What's your answer? My answer would be to come in prepared.
• 23:41
  Randall Kaplan: And if you have to get in the door and you don't know me, you can create a ridiculous PowerPoint presentation that blows you off of your chair. And I'm good on the preparation.
• 23:51
  Randall Kaplan: We'll talk about that in a few minutes, but I prepared materials for people that they have to respond, right? Because, you know, when you open this document, holy shit. Did this take 40 hours to prepare or more? This thing's like a Rolls Royce. It's a Ferrari on steroids. And if someone's putting that much work into it, it shows the amount of thought progress. It's brilliant. I've received a few of those.
• 24:14
  Randall Kaplan: Sometimes, a lot of my deals, most of them, 99% will come from people I know. Yeah, right. And so it's a self selecting process, of course, but every now and then I get something ridiculous in the mail. We've never invested in a cold deal like that, but we've come very, very close.
• 24:27
  Gary Vee: Interesting. Yeah, mine's the opposite. And this goes back to self awareness.
• 24:30
  Gary Vee: This goes back to like, you got to know yourself. Like, I always say, everything works.
• 24:37
  Gary Vee: Everything works. Like, there's a version of success and happiness that comes in so many different sizes and shapes that it can work for me. I don't even consume decks. My team knows this. Like to really prepare for me. I need to have the dialog. I need to have the feel like for me at this point, it to your point. So much comes from word of mouth, different angles. But what really gets me is if somebody says something that I believe in, that I can follow up with a couple of questions and they can answer it. For example, what cliche happens to me is I make a big stink on something like this about live shopping.
• 25:17
  Gary Vee: Now I'm gonna get pitched, honey.
• 25:18
  Randall Kaplan: That's what I was thinking. I'm gonna get
• 25:22
  Gary Vee: bombarded. Yeah, I won't look at most of those emails. I won't go for the Rolls Royce deck. I will go for the person that finds me somewhere and or I get a meeting through a person, because I want to, if somebody co signs someone, I'll take that meeting. But it's not what they say to me, it's my follow up question. I really tend to invest in things I know more and more, by the way, as I get older, and so I know what I'm talking about with live shopping. So to me, I enjoy the back and. Fourth, because the other thing I think I do well is push. I push well in dialog to like real places. And most people can't answer those real places. You know this, a lot of founders are very good at the surface level conversation, but when you poke and prod, they fold like cheap chairs. What the
• 26:11
  Randall Kaplan: craziest thing is, you ask someone about, they talk about run rate. Run rate doesn't apply to the cash in the bank. So I always ask, what are the gap revenues? You know, how many CEOs know what the gap revenues are the last three years? Less than 1% and for me, the meeting's over, right? I mean, if you don't know your finance as well, and
• 26:27
  Gary Vee: so for me, you're referring to things that are a little bit further along. I do so much early stage. Yeah, that to me, it's almost the reverse of I love you for that, that like that just, I wish people knew how nerdy I am with business. That just got me so fired up. But that's obviously a little bit of a later stage company in that scenario for me, because I'm so intuitive of consumer behavior, I get excited about them having to answer pre revenue. Since I do such early stage real questions about consumer behavior. And I'm so in the traffic. One of the reasons the Gary V brand still lives and I run the agency is I never want to be away from the dirt
• 27:03
  Randall Kaplan: your views on marketing and day trading attention. And we'll go back to jab, jab, jab, your favorite number five. So talk, talk about that book in particular, and what you want to call it, and I know you want to call it something else. So what we did is we, we actually made you a new book. And here's your new book. It's actually Jab, Jab, Jab, Jab, Jab, Jab. So congratulations on your new book. Thank
• 27:27
  Gary Vee: you. I love that.
• 27:27
  Gary Vee: That's awesome. It was supposed to be left hook, by the way, jab, jab, jab. Left. I was I was so this book I wrote because I realized no one understood what was going on with content on the internet. By the time I wrote this, 10 years ago, 2014 there wasn't a lot of science around the art of a post. I believe, as we sit here today, my friend, that the best social media, organic post, just post on your account is a more important form of advertising than any television commercial on television today, outside of Super Bowl, the individual post, you
• 28:04
  Randall Kaplan: said, the Super Bowl, which costs $233,000 per second, is the greatest marketing spend on it is TV. It is no no
• 28:15
  Gary Vee: in America. In America, here's why. My newest book, day trading attention, I do believe that I sit at the top of the organization that is the best marketing firm in not wasting a penny on advertising and getting the most for a penny. And that requires a lot.
• 28:28
  Gary Vee: I Gary and Vayner X, the holding company, cannot get 130 million Americans. Cannot get 130 million Americans to consume a video for 30 seconds, for a million dollars. But the Super Bowl can no meta, no Google, no all the other things, influencers, tick tock. There's no combination that can get there like the Super Bowl can.
• 28:56
  Gary Vee: The problem is, if your video is bad, you just wasted all the money, the creative is always going to be the variable of success, but buying the attention, yes, and buying the attention, the Super Bowl is the best. Let's talk
• 29:08
  Randall Kaplan: about ingredients of success. What's more important? Work ethic, talent or passion? Yes.
• 29:17
  Gary Vee: Look, you know this. I mean, look, the reason I like work ethic is it feels very controllable. It's like working out, like you can get there.
• 29:25
  Gary Vee: Working out came really not natural for me. I didn't do it at all until I was 38 like at all I didn't have a muscle my fucking body. So if I, who despises it to this day, can get to a level of discipline that gets me there. I believe people can do the same professionally.
• 29:48
  Gary Vee: I also believe that it's a lot easier to do that level of work ethic when you're actually passionate about it. So it's a very The reason I answered the way I did, yes, all three different for every one of us in here. But of the three, work ethic is controllable, and it's something that I get scared and that people try to downplay, look as someone who's unfortunately been tagged with hustle culture and things of that nature. I have been consistent. Had Ariana Huffington on The AskGaryVee Show a decade ago. I believe in sleep. I just think work ethic matters, not to burning yourself out and being sick. That's stupid. I am worried that people are using health and wellness and mental health and all these great things that are important as weapons to create entitlement or to create laziness or to justify non action, and I think that's a mistake. I
• 30:49
  Randall Kaplan: believe that work ethic is the most important ingredient in success. Success of our success, because, as you said, you can control it. I have something called Philo, first in, last out, and I do a lot of coaching, as I know you do as well. I tell every young professional, even mid professionals, that come to me, Hey, I'm not liking my job, whatever. If you're the first one and the last one out, great things are going to happen to you no matter what.
• 31:10
  Gary Vee: I think that's exactly right, because even if you're in an environment that doesn't reward that you're going to learn that it doesn't instead of leaning on excuses, which will empower you to make the tough decision of leaving. I fully agree with you on that. Let's
• 31:23
  Randall Kaplan: talk about my favorite topic, which is preparation. I'm writing a book called extreme preparation. I always want to be the most prepared person in the room. How important has preparation been in your success, and are there any examples you can give about your extreme preparation leading to something successful in your career?
• 31:40
  Gary Vee: It's my entire life, so my favorite thing, and Sid just stepped out, but Dustin's here, so I want to look at him.
• 31:46
  Gary Vee: Dustin actually probably knows this better than Sid. The thing that baffles all my top executives when they started my company is I go into meetings cold and dominate them. They think I do no prep. They make me huge decks, and because the way we do our decks, they can see I didn't open it, I walk into the meeting brand new client, and they are baffled. It's one of the best compliments I get. It's it's so flattering they are stunned. It is by far the number one chatter conversation of VPs and above when they first joined the company, asking all the other OGS, how the fuck did that just happen? It's because I only am prepared. It's the only thing I do. The reason I can walk into Nike or smart water or a t shirt brand or Lexus or any brand and crush a meeting is because most businesses are not that complicated. I can promise you that what smart water wants is to sell more smart water. And if they're meeting with me, I'm not talking about supply chain.
• 32:48
  Gary Vee: We're not talking about other things. We're talking about demand creation. So I think preparation is the only thing.
• 32:55
  Gary Vee: The reason I do such narrow things is they're the things that I'm preparing on at all times. The reason I have V friends and Wine Library and winetext.com and GaryVee is I have to actively work on the craft of marketing and demand creation to feel like I have any ability to talk to anyone about it. I'm a full practitioner of the moment. I can speak about live social shopping right now with the expertise I can because I sold $130,000 worth of clothes on a live stream a week ago. So I think you're on to something very powerful. I would argue that the bad version of it is school and the good version of it is sports. I'm always prepared, because I never talk about anything or act on anything or involved in anything that I don't actually do. I think some people study but they're not about it. And that's where the vulnerability, even with prep work, comes in, because when people start poking and prodding, you start going to 301, instead of 101, level preparation. So I think the ultimate preparation is to actually be a practitioner of so I love entrepreneurs that are investors. They lived it. How
• 34:05
  Randall Kaplan: important is setting goals in our success?
• 34:08
  Randall Kaplan: And do you believe in writing them down? 135, year seven plan, seven year plan.
• 34:13
  Gary Vee: I think about this one a lot. So again, I play it a little looser, as you can tell, than black and white. Obviously, I've had a goal since fourth grade of buying the New York Jets. I'm sure it's had an impact on my success.
• 34:24
  Randall Kaplan: They're worth$7.3 billion today, and it's moving fast, with private
• 34:28
  Gary Vee: equity coming in, right?
• 34:29
  Randall Kaplan: You're gonna buy one day.
• 34:30
  Gary Vee: I think so. My intuition now is that as I get older, I'll start to put myself in a position for extreme wealth creation, if I want to. But I'll be honest with you, just to be very clear, the chase of it is the great enjoyment. It's a lot of fun to chase that, that fucking football team that's pissing me off right now.
• 34:49
  Gary Vee: Anyway, you know, I think people do it different ways. I've learned that I'm not a reader and writer, I'm an audio and visual guy, and so I talk to myself a lot about things I want to accomplish in personal life, professional life, yeah, I think knowing where you're going is a good idea, but I would argue that the ability to adjust and not be rigid to them is equally, if not slightly more important if you're gonna do this thing in five years. But clearly, something's happened putting your goal on a pedestal when it does not contextualize the truth of your life at the moment you're in right now is a vulnerability.
• 35:29
  Randall Kaplan: I think people look at you, they look at me, they look at all these other tech people who have done very, very well, and they say, Oh, my God, that person is rich. They have nice things, et cetera, et cetera. And I think everyone wants to be a billionaire, not everyone, but a lot of people.
• 35:43
  Randall Kaplan: And I think that's a motivation.
• 35:43
  Randall Kaplan: So what's your advice? And look straight ahead. I mean, I talk about this till I'm blue in the face. People who are motivated by. They are generally not as successful, and they're generally not always happy either,
• 35:57
  Gary Vee: either. You know, listen, I've read, I think you know this. I talk about this at nausea, yeah, I'm gonna say this to the camera. I'm extremely, deeply empathetic that the response to this, for most people, is cool, rich guy, but I'd like to find out, like, fuck, you easy for you to say.
• 36:17
  Gary Vee: I'd like to find out we have the luxury of spending time with people that have it, and we know how dark some of their lives are. There is just no correlation in any kind of common sense, way of money and happiness. It just doesn't it's black and fucking white. So what I would say is, God willing, if that's what you want, you are able to earn not be handed your way to a place where you have it. And I'm gonna tell you right now, when you get there, you will see how right we are, period,
• 36:53
  Randall Kaplan: your dad at one point said you're gonna be the next Oprah and a V Connie wears a hat that said I'm Gary V's dad, yes, and he's so proud of you. How does it make you feel unbelievable,
• 37:05
  Gary Vee: other than I wish he wasn't so one dimensional and spread some of that love to my siblings. Sometimes it's unbelievable, and my dad does it very publicly, and my mom does it very quietly, and they both mean the same. Making my parents proud is probably my strength and my weakness. It's a big currency for me. I really like making them proud. It feels really good.
• 37:31
  Randall Kaplan: We're at the end of the show, and I always end it with a game called film a blank to excellence.
• 37:36
  Unknown: I ready to play. Ready to play.
• 37:37
  Randall Kaplan: The biggest lesson I've learned in my life is
• 37:40
  Gary Vee: losing is the thing you should always strive for, because it makes winning a lot easier.
• 37:47
  Randall Kaplan: My number one professional goal is to buy the New York Jets. My number one personal goal is
• 37:55
  Gary Vee: to have everybody that I love show up to my funeral with a very good feeling in their stomach about who I was.
• 38:03
  Randall Kaplan: My biggest regret is.
• 38:07
  Gary Vee: My biggest regret is already realizing that as much as I keep an eye on it. I want to spend even more time with the people I love.
• 38:17
  Randall Kaplan: The one piece of advice that I give to my kids is be
• 38:21
  Gary Vee: a good human being on their terms, not how you want to define it.
• 38:28
  Randall Kaplan: The craziest thing that's happened in my life is
• 38:32
  Gary Vee: fucking all of it, brother, you know, I am not detached from how miraculous my life has been, and silly things like judging the Miss America contests when that was something I watched with my mom, to important stuff like getting an email weekly from someone who says that a piece of my content took them out of not only a dark place, but sometimes the darkest, scariest moment of their life was super humbling.
• 39:00
  Gary Vee: You
• 39:01
  Randall Kaplan: read your own email. Yeah, the funniest thing that's happened in my career is
• 39:08
  Gary Vee: the funniest thing that's ever happened in my career. I mean, probably my first appearance on Conan O'Brien. I could not explain to you how going from operating a liquor store to literally being on the hottest late night show in television in 2007 when that was a whole different game than it is today. It was and it was funny. If you actually watch a clip, it is actually funny. So I think that's the funniest thing that's happened.
• 39:31
  Randall Kaplan: The best piece of advice I've ever received is,
• 39:36
  Gary Vee: you know, I know you've seen that because you've done your research. Fuck, man.
• 39:37
  Gary Vee: I'm really glad my dad tightened me again. I wasn't gonna go sell, like, junk bonds, but I just know that I couldn't be sitting here at the level that I'm at if I didn't fear like if I didn't put my reputation on a pedestal.
• 39:57
  Randall Kaplan: 10 years from now, I'm going to be doing exactly
• 40:00
  Gary Vee: what I'm doing now, waking up and working on what I want to 20
• 40:03
  Randall Kaplan: years same Are you ever going to retire? No.
• 40:08
  Gary Vee: And I mean this. Not only am I never going to retire, my great preference at this point, God willing, is that I'm always operating retirement comes, as you know, in all shapes and sizes. People go to consulting, people go to full time investing, and I define it as operating. I prefer to be operating something for the rest of my life.
• 40:29
  Randall Kaplan: If you could pick one trait that's led to your success, that trait would be
• 40:36
  Gary Vee: sorry, because I love traits. The I was about to answer humility, which is not very seen in Gary V's content.
• 40:42
  Gary Vee: You got to really know me that I was about to say patience, because it has been huge. But I'm I'm going to go with tenacity today. I'm fine.
• 40:49
  Gary Vee: Tenacious and it matters.
• 40:55
  Randall Kaplan: The one trait that is most important to somebody else's success, who you don't know is
• 41:02
  Gary Vee: so the one trait that I deem is most successful to someone else's like, universally, a trait that is a good indicator to success. Yes, tenacity, hard work.
• 41:16
  Randall Kaplan: You could be one person in the world. Who would it be? If I could be someone, if you could meet one person in the world today, who's alive? Who would it be?
• 41:24
  Gary Vee: Who's alive? This is important because I've never because the macho man, Randy Savage, is dead. If I could meet one, this is, this is a very interesting indicator of me. I am so insular. I'm very curious.
• 41:34
  Gary Vee: It could really be a lot of people. If I could meet one person in the world that is alive, who would it be? You know, who I'd like to talk to right now? Vince McMahon,
• 41:53
  Randall Kaplan: did you seen the Netflix forget about
• 41:55
  Gary Vee: I'm short of the Doc.
• 41:55
  Gary Vee: I'm only two episodes in. Let me tell you why. Vince, there's so much there, and I'm sure that surprised a lot of people, and I'm very empathetic that there's plenty of there. But the angle in which I would want to talk to him, and what I would want to talk to him about, is strictly around character development. I believe that everything I've accomplished in my career will be dwarfed on my execution of be friends. I believe that in 30 years, when I sit here and do an interview with somebody as awesome as you, what they're going to want to talk about is be friends. Nothing of what we talked about. Sure they'll touch on it. I believe that Walt Disney and Vince McMahon and Jim Henson are the prominent figures of modern character development.
• 42:37
  Gary Vee: Jim Henson and Walt Disney did it with fictional characters.
• 42:42
  Gary Vee: Vince did it with real human beings, which I think is very fascinating. The other two are dead. So character development, how to get people, Dave, by the way, you know what my fourth one on that list is, David Stern.
• 42:56
  Gary Vee: David Stern understood that Michael Jordan and Larry Bird and Magic Johnson needed to be superheroes, not human beings.
• 43:03
  Gary Vee: That's what sports is. Steph Curry's a superhero for little short kids, not a basketball player. And that's what I'm going to do with my V friends.
• 43:10
  Gary Vee: And that's why Vince, in this moment,
• 43:15
  Randall Kaplan: you could go back and give your 21 year old self one piece of advice. It would be,
• 43:19
  Gary Vee: don't do a single thing different, because at 48 and a half, almost 49 you're a very happy person.
• 43:26
  Randall Kaplan: The one question you wish I had asked you but didn't, is,
• 43:32
  Gary Vee: you know, it's so funny. I don't think in that term, because when I'm sitting in this seat, I think I'm here to bring value for the audience.
• 43:40
  Gary Vee: Thus I have no feelings towards questions. You know your audience better than I do.
• 43:48
  Randall Kaplan: You're awesome.
• 43:48
  Randall Kaplan: I want to do a shout out to Mike Herman, yes, so we wouldn't be here, but for him today, yes, I just met him. He's a new parent at our kids school. He just moved to LA as you know, yes, he had been here five weeks. He shows up back to school night, and randomly, we start talking as we're walking out. And we started talking works at fanatics. I know someone there, and here we are. Here we are. I really appreciate it. Thank
• 44:10
  Gary Vee: you for having me.
• 44:10
  Gary Vee: Thank you. Thank you. You.