So should be, it was very easy for me to understand. It was cable television. It was, the television was shit on when it was invented. The radio is primary.
Hey, is it scary? No, it's not. It's the same thing we do with electricity. Like, I use history as an incredible beacon to understand nothing's different and everything's different.
But I think people lead with fear. And I lead with optimism and history. And I reflect both internally about my journey, but also externally about the human journey. And that becomes the data points that I make decisions on.
This is the Gary Vee audio experience. I am so excited to have you here. I know that the audience is going to be particularly excited. You and I met when you were at the early days of starting VaynerMedia.
And while I was not a client, and I think this is an important thing, when I called you, when New York was having a difficult time, and we pulled together to try and help the city and said, Gary, we need your help. Will you give us a PR team to help with the moment for Broadway? Without hesitation, you said yes. And so that's a weird thing.
Because it was not a transaction. It was just a relationship. And you didn't have to say yes, because it's not like I've been a paying client of yours for years to come. And I think it's such an interesting story about you, because you're a man of contradictions.
Which, by the way, I would say many of us are. If we were honest, we would all be much more honest about our contradictions than we tend to present. So I think about, because as you know, I mentioned when you first walked in, I did a lot of research. And you have a lot of lessons that you share.
You know, interestingly, when you walked in, you said it's all about the audience for me. And I always say, when somebody asks me to speak, how can I be useful? Because what's the point, otherwise? Yes.
You talk a lot about wanting to win and slitting throats. But at the same time, you also talk about kindness and relationships. And you just did a book for kids, three-year-olds. What is that contradiction about for you?
I don't see this contradiction, because to your point, everything needs context. I view business. When I do business, and I was just yapping with your lovely, hubby about trading cards, I view the sports. And I think when we all watch sports, we know that there are players, both in women's and men's sports, that are incredibly fierce when they're on the field.
Like throw an elbow, and a tooth comes out, and they spit it. I'm just a very different player when I'm talking about slitting throats, or things that nature being hyperbolizing, about being competitive, that is within the context of fairly playing in business. That's an important word before I said that. Well, I wasn't thinking you were going to come back.
Yeah, of course not. And then, again, as a big sports fan, I'm very frustrated when my team loses a game. And they went so hard. And then the game's over, and everyone takes off their helmet in this scenario.
And they're hugging, and how's your wife Karen? And then we're just beating the crap out of each other 30 seconds ago. I think that's who I am. I think in business, I'm competitive.
I'd like to win. I want to build an empire. I have great ambition. I enjoy it.
I am probably frustrated. I didn't have the physical talents to be an athlete. I get such joy out of pick up basketball. I just run 50.
I'll play pick up basketball as much as I can. I like competition. A board game sends me into a frenzy. It's in me.
But that is wildly overwritten by the other fortunate DNA traits I have, which is I'm a nice guy. And not only am I a nice guy, chemically. I got very double fortunate. I have an all-time mother that took those ingredients and knew exactly how to cook it, predominantly because I got so many of them from her.
And so yeah, I think nice guys finish first. To your point, thank you. You actually think that? I know that.
Because I know it. Because I'm not a child. I also don't score things the same way I think society does. I think one of the great issues we have in society right now is how we keep score.
I think we continue, unfortunately, to go down the path of materialistic things, followers, bank accounts, stuff, how many rooms in a home. And I just don't see life that way. It's to your point of contradiction. I want to build these things.
But I want to build them for the sake of building them, not from the fruits that come out of them. You know, I don't build businesses to buy a third home or a golf course or a private jet. But you were a kid. So like me, you were an immigrant.
And you were a kid who came here not speaking English. You're living in a house in a small apartment with lots of people, like not easy. Studio in Queens, eight family, like real tight. Right.
OK. So you definitely had to figure out how to be nice to get along. Well, it's really funny. You know, my great-grandmother and my grandmother, they were sharp cookies.
You know, the niceness was an incredibly unique energy that my mom was bringing to my surroundings and my great-grandfather on my dad's side. But, you know, I was very young. I was four, five, six in those environments. Those environments didn't necessarily form my niceness.
Those environments, I think, it's really interesting. I think one thing I'm spending a lot of time on, I know I'm ranting here, but I'm going with this conversation. I'm fascinated by growing up early, and I'm fascinated by growing up late. What does that mean?
I think we have a growing up late issue in society right now. I think too many parents are treating their 27-year-olds like they're 2.7 years old. We have a real angst in society right now. We have grown men and women being treated like children by their parents in a way that we've never had historically.
And that's predominantly because we're a mature empire in the West. It's kind of a privilege. It's a massive privilege. But it's even wealthy families of the 70s and 80s did not have this kind of like minutiae payroll that we now have.
Again, at scale, you have 25-year-olds running around this city who have their parents subsidizing much of their life and have an app on their phone to track them. We have a late adulthood thing going on that's an issue. And I'm fascinated by early adulthood. I was raised by parents who lost the parent very young.
So my mom lost her mom at five, and my dad lost his dad at 15. They became grown, and they lived in the USSR, and they immigrated to America at 20. They were grown early. I was grown early.
I was grown early. People with immigrant stuff, I actually think it's a grown early thing, because there's a lot of people that are not born in another country that grow up with very little and have different outcomes. I think it's a grown early thing, and a lot of immigrants grow up with nothing and do not have success. And I think it's a grown early thing.
It's an over coddling thing. It's an adversity thing. But the kindness was informed in those early queen's days. The kindness were formed from the womb.
My cocoon of my life was my mother. And my mother is pure kindness. But accountability, I got that from her. Purely.
Everybody, I hope you're enjoying the podcast right now. Make sure you follow the podcast. That's why I'm interrupting. Let's keep going on this show.
But follow the podcast. Don't make my mom super happy. So, you know, it's interesting. It's interesting.
So you're recently 50. Yes. I think, you know, with age comes this look back. Right?
I mean, for so much of my career when I was CMO and trying to survive these crazy sand dogs right after the other. Yes. Which I know, you know, it's not easy. No.
You're just in the hustle. Yes. But there are moments where you reflect and you look back. And I had some of those opportunities more recently when I had to give a TED talk.
You know, things where you reflect back to your point to try and be useful to the people who may take the time to listen. So, you know, if you listen and you do that, which it sounds like you're doing more of now. No. Well, you're a parent.
Hold on. Go ahead. I'm going to go somewhere else. Go back.
Go back. Go to your parent. And, you know, one of the things I think about, right, of somebody who became a parent is. Yeah, I grew up fast.
And that definitely was part of how I learned to be resilient. I didn't want my kids to have some, you know, I didn't want my kid to have to survive, revolution, you know, lose their father in order to be resilient and I worry about their resilience. Because it's a hard thing to pass down, right? Because it was a circumstance.
You can't fake it, that's right. it was a circumstance. You can't fake it. That's right.
Right. So do you worry about that for your own kids? Couple things. My know was not that I'm not reflective.
My know was I've been reflective my whole life. Ah, interesting. It was a different no. Oh, that's much better because I definitely was not reflective my whole life.
It's funny. I think a lot back to my great grandfather being a big factor in my life for that one year when we first immigrated and she passed away right after. But I spent almost all my time with either of my mother. But my mother was just about to have another baby and we had my sister pretty early, which was, you know, having another child when we first got here was definitely not probably the most strategic.
Because my sister is such a core part of my life. But I spent a ton of time with my great, my great-grandfather. And he spent all his time with other 80-year-old immigrants from the old country. And I don't know if it's DNA.
I don't know if it's nature or nurture. But I've been 80 my whole life. I've been reflective my whole life. I was a terrible student, but I was great at history because I was, like, I would argue that all of the accolades I get as a businessman about seeing around corners, early investor and all these things has a lot to do with historical pattern recognition.
I lack fear. What does that mean in historical pattern recognition? Um, social media was very easy for me to understand. It was cable television.
It was, the television was shit on when it was invented. The radio is primary. AI is scary. No, it's not.
It's the same thing we did with electricity. Like, I use history as an incredible beacon to understand nothing's different and everything's different. But I think people lead with fear and I lead with optimism in history. And I reflect both internally about my journey, but also externally about the human journey.
And that becomes the data points that I make decisions on. There's so many things to unpack in that conversation. It just did not one thing. It's interesting because we have parallels and then, yeah, we're obviously different.
Of course. You know, I also like you didn't have that sort of fear. Partly I think because when you have to survive, you don't have the luxury of fear to be cut. That's right.
You also are living it and you know what the downside is. You know, when you're born into something that's remarkable, you're confused of what bad is. You know, I don't fear to go to zero because I grew up in an environment where we didn't have much, but we had love. And like, so I knew that money wasn't going to be the, like, I was taught very early that money's not, not taught by words by actions.
I got an unbelievable childhood. We had little. You know, my mom was also cheap on top of everything else. So even as we were starting to make it and become middle class, it felt like, well, I was like, you know, late back to reflection at like 35 and call my sister one day.
I'm like, wait a minute. We were a little bit better than we thought. It just, mom didn't buy us anything. You know, it was just that kind of life.
Nonetheless, of course, my friend, we know, we know it's not that scary. Like, like in the great words of the song, like, all you need is love is kind of very uncomfortably real. I surely don't need stuff. I do not need outside validation.
It's not really true. It is really true. And you know, it's fun. It's fun for me because I get this sometimes.
I'll get like a fourth grade classmate who will listen to this who I haven't talked to literally sometimes in 30, 40 years. And all of them, all of the people that knew me before you all knew me. Love this moment because they know and I definitely know as you ask that. I know that people don't believe me.
I know that people believe that the things that come out of my mouth today is because they think I got here. And now it's easy for me to choose love or be chill or this. I know I got here because I believe that stuff. I'm watching interview.
It was a really interview. You were on stage talking about your new children's book. And I'm really fascinated by the fact that you thought you wanted to talk to for your own. We'll get to that.
You know, there's crush it. And then there's like teaching children. Yes. And at the end of that, they opened up the mic and people came up and asked questions.
And there were people who knew you from your mind business to different things. But one woman did what often happens, which is she stood up and sort of gave a little soliloquy about her background and then was like, I really want a job. And your graciousness and accepting her resume in front of a whole audience was actually very remarkable. So I mean, I don't think you can manufacture that, right?
So I understand that. But at the same time, you know, one of the things that happens when you like, yeah, the things you might not have had and let's put love aside because I also feel like I was fortunate and then I had a very loving childhood. There was sort of a sense that you could do anything right in my home, despite all the other things. You do still age.
And I think a lot of people with age and human nature, they're not, we don't like change humans, right? And you actually thrive in change. I love change. God, I love it.
I'm practical. How can you not like change? It's the most true thing that will happen. It's the only constant.
It's the only constant. I just, you know, again, I'm aware that I'm a funny character. Like because I've done so much content for so long and because a lot of it will skew motivational or there's people that walk into VaynerMedia who've known me for a decade and they're like, what is this? I'm like, there's VaynerMedia.
They're like, you're the company. I'm like, I have 2,700 employees. You know, like, I actually associate with the COO if we're talking corporate. I actually associate internally with the COO part of myself, maybe more than anything, which I'm an operator.
I feel like if you ask me, what are you? I would say, I'm an operator. I'm aware that I'm a marketer. I'm aware that I'm a salesman.
I'm aware that I'm a personality. I'm aware that I'm a lot of things. A guidance counselor and coach and therapist. But in my soul, I like being practical and operating.
That's the stake. Everything else is the side dish, the sizzle, the amoose bush and the dessert. And I think it speaks to change. I just don't even have the audacity to not like change.
It's the least practical energy. But both of you and I know, both of you and I are not, you know, we love risk and we're a little bit fearless. You know, we can agree. Sometimes that's good and sometimes that's not so good.
But the thing is, most people are not like that, right? Most people are not built that way. And that's just human nature. Yes, most people really struggle with the outside noise.
Right. So today in a world where AI is coming in and people are so, I mean, I spoke to somebody yesterday who was in the retail business and she was telling me how many senior people in her business are now out of a job because of all the shifts that are happening. For now. But there's a real thing, right?
And so there's a real fear as to what's going on in the market. Knowing that not everybody's built the way we are or the way you are. What advice do you have on a practical level? Because you are an operator.
What advice do you have for somebody? That you're in control of your life. You're not in control if someone fires you because they've decided they have the power to do that and they've decided AI can do your job. You are not in control of that.
You are in control of knowing that looms in the air and you can start making content on LinkedIn tomorrow to build a bigger profile to create other opportunities for yourself. You could. But you know how many people, it's so funny because I watch so much of your content and what struck me is, you know, you do content just anywhere. It doesn't always have to be perfect.
You said here. Exactly. I had a girlfriend visiting and she was saying to me that sometimes my hair is not perfect on the podcast. I should really glam it up.
And I got to myself, some people are just left in the old world of media. But the new world of media, which is not, you know, CBS evening news, is very different. And in fact, if you go on a TikTok, a lot of it, it does better if it's messy. I think we're in an incredible era of and.
You know, I think high production value, high fidelity. You know, my wife Mona, like, aesthetics matter so much. She struggles to consume anything in any form. A room, a magazine, a post.
She needs the aesthetics. I need the authenticity. I don't think a dog marketing or an ambulance. I think that's charm.
I think that's even more real. And everyone's allowed to consume what they want. I definitely think we're in an and era. But the thing is, many people, because of that fear of it needing to be perfect, don't start at all.
Yes, I mean, you've been doing a lot of research when I'm very humbled by it, by the way, because we know each other. You know I think about self-esteem and insecurity 24-7. I think that's, I don't think there's anything else. Like, what we're talking about here?
We can talk for the next hour. I promise you, the Plinko board, the chess moves, it's all going to go down to a very binary game. Where do you sit on your self-worth? Where's your self-esteem?
Where's your insecurity? And I can tell you everything that's about to happen after that. I feel like I should just lie down. You know what I mean?
I mean, for everyone who's listening, like, of course you're going to struggle making content if you're worried about what people are going to think about the way you look, how good your writing is. I mean, there's people who take nine takes because they tripped up on a word that was like a little flubby, like, I mean, I could say something that makes no sense for four minutes and keep going and be like, that's what it is. So I want to go back to trying to be useful. Please.
I know it's the thing that drives both of us. I wonder why that is. Do you ever not have self-esteem or something you always? Okay.
Well, first of all, I wanted to dig into the self-esteem question because I'm curious to know if you think of your self-esteem or if you always had it, but hold that thought again. I want to go back to the advice, right? So you were saying because I wanted to just be clear that content doesn't need to be perfect. You were saying you have control, get on LinkedIn and do what?
You know, have a voice? If you're a retailer, like we were just talking about, like, talk about your perspective on what you're seeing in the retail environment. What you think about live shopping or not. What you think about AEO and LLMs.
What you think about NCAPS or what's going on with mixed retail or pop-up shops. I can't speak to an executives knowledge base or their thoughts, but I can speak to if you don't have thoughts on that and you don't have opinions on that and you don't have expertise on that, maybe you were overpaid. Well, also you need to be present. You need to be out there.
Correct. Like you talked about 14 years ago, we did it like this. That's nice. By the way, I'm like, I just talked about it.
I love a good look back for context, for information, but not for the actual blueprint because the field changes, the field of play changes. So let me pull back the thread. Okay. There's so many threads in the conversation between you and me, which is what I predicted.
Did you always have confidence? In many arenas, I will tell you one of the silly regrets of my life. I did not have confidence with girls in high school and college to the level that I could or should have meaning. I wasn't bad at it.
I wasn't a complete zero, but it was the one place where I did value the feedback, meaning if I asked a girl out and she said, no, that seemed hard and that led me to not doing it, which is why I know what it feels like. I understand. In that arena, I didn't do things that I wanted to do. Oh, she's cute.
I'd like to date that girl. I wouldn't do it because I feared the no. In that arena, I struggled with that. In pretty much every other arena I did not, especially from an adolescent standpoint.
It was insane to me. It continues to be insane to me. How starting at 11 years old, even though every teacher, don't forget 80s, 90s, middle, lower class New Jersey, these teachers gave it to you straight. My teacher starting in fourth grade told me I was going to be a loser.
I was going to be a garbage man. I was never going to mount to nothing to my face. That's straight or just really depressing? I think, again, by today's standard seems inappropriate.
A lot of us in this room right now grew up in a era where I was just kind of normal. I wasn't super inappropriate. That's what authorities did. Not only them.
My friends, parents, as we started getting into high school years hung out with kids that got A's and had ambitions. I could feel some of their parents being like, you need to cut that one. You know what's funny? I was such a good kid.
I never drank. I never did drugs. I'm such a nice boy. It wasn't awful because I was a good influence everywhere other than getting D's and F's.
I never wavered. I never struggled. I sold baseball cards in the malls in New Jersey when I was 12 years old, all grown-ups and me. I'm making as much, if not more money.
I was getting wild validation from the business world. I was getting wild validation from a social standpoint. I was beloved, both by boys and girls, which even made the not asking out girls even more interesting. It's interesting that that was there.
Everywhere I was getting validation, other than grades. I was never scared of a no in any environment. Sports I loved losing. I didn't want to lose.
In fact, until I was 10, I cried every time I lost anything. Tennis, pool, race. I don't know if a human could cry more between 5 and 10 than I did. I probably cried every day.
Did you cry now? I am very easily triggered into crying. I just watched Song Song Blue. I barely held on in a couple of spots.
Not through the movie for people. I won't go there. Back to dating, I cried on a very big date. My senior year of high school at Lion King when the dad dies, I cried full pledge.
That did not go over well in 1994. That ended the upside of the date for sure. I'm very emotionally charged. I have incredible extreme empathy, compassion and sympathy, which makes me a remarkable marketer and salesman.
Luckily, I was so well-parented, I tend not to do anything with that special scale that tends to be detrimental to the other side. It's interesting to say that I read that your empathy also made you not such a great mentor because you didn't like having feedback. I don't know if that was empathy. I might have said it that way at the time to your point as we all keep evolving.
Yeah, it's crazy. People ask me a lot of interviews. What would you tell a 25-year-old year or 18-year-old year? Because it's the truth.
I always go to it when I sat that kid down and said, kid, this is how I felt that 18. You're right. You are a superhero. It is going to happen.
But you've got Kryptonite. Let me tell you what it is. Your inability to be Candrous, which is wild because as you know, Gary Vee, especially in the Ad Land, I came out. Guns of Lazing with Mike.
Mike, Andrew, you watched your putting out that led to the book. Love that. That's a wild one. My candor, even in this interview, my candor is unstoppable.
But when I start to have feelings of anything that looks like liking you, let alone loving you, which could happen immediately, by the way, within the first five minutes of meeting someone, that started for a long time in my life. The predominant years of my life, the clock on me not being as well at giving you candor. You know, I've been a boss since I was 17 years old. Since I was 17, I was managing every one of my dad's liquor store.
So I was a child. You know, my mom is also not overly candorous, and my father was inappropriately candorous to his employees in a Soviet-like style. So I grew up being shocked by how negative my father would talk to his employees, which kind of like made me want to overcorrect them the other way. I was raised by someone that isn't obvious to everyone here, is my north star is who I put in a pedestal who also struggled with candor.
She, she, like me, I picked this up of her, wanted to figure out how to fix it without the candor. We put in triple effort to do it. And I basically managed employees my whole life to the tunes of tens of thousands at this point, where I'd rather figure out how to put you in a position to succeed on the shortcoming that I'm seeing than help you. Now I understand it to be helped.
At the time, I thought, I would say, hey, you're struggling with this, and I would think you're thinking you're going to get fired, but I hated the thought that I was going to deposit something you were going to have to sleep with tonight, because I hate fear. I fucking hate fear. I hate that the world weaponizes it. My relationship with fear is not only do I not fear you fear, I'm going to fucking kill you fear.
So I viewed as me giving what I now understand. It's feedback that is well-intended. I viewed it in my teens through my twenties, through my thirties, into my forties. I viewed that as I was contributing to fear.
I was unable to see it. It was a blind spot. It was my kryptonite. I did not understand.
And once I wrote a book about it, it was about 13 habits of leadership, I called it 12 and a half, because I said every leader has halves, and my half is candor. And I'm going to rebrand it in this book and call it kind candor. And I've rolled that out to all my organizations, because I think radical candor. I've also watched.
I've watched manager after manager use candor as an excuse for manipulation, for holding down a young talent. Look at all the head nodding going up. We're grown now. We know.
And so I was like, damn, I don't like this candor. People are using this as a weapon for the wrong. And so I didn't have a good relationship with it. So it's funny.
You know, having worked in a lot of different companies. When I got to tech radical candor, as you know, was a thing. I remember. It was hot.
And I like you didn't like making people uncomfortable. I wasn't afraid to do it, but I didn't like it. And let's sort of get off on that, which, you know, we work for plenty of people who did. But I did learn later that it was really helpful to give people feedback early.
But how you give that feedback is everything. I mean, it's everything. I agree. You can say that to people in a way to cut them down or you can actually do it in a way that's supportive.
I mean, there's many ways of doing it. After 45 years of being atrocious at it, not having a good relationship with it, not understanding it, not seeing it, these last five years where I've implemented it day by day to get better, you know, making it simple. On a chart of one to 10, I live with gratitude knowing that so many of the things that matter. I was given the DNA and the circumstances in the mother that made me an eight, nine, ten out of ten on so many important things.
But candor was two, one, zero. And now knowing that I'm in the five, six, seven range territory, it's changed our company. It's changed my personal relationships. It's changed my life.
And I strive to get better. It is super hard. It's no different than the gym. I've been on.
It's a muscle. You get more used to it. It actually, between how I changed my health and wellness 12 years ago at 38, I still, every morning, do not want to go. Do not like it.
And on candor, it enables me to know that people can build. They can change course. And that's why I talk a lot about a lot of stuff because I know humans can do it. Do you think that working with your brother was easier because you could actually just be, like, have shorthand and not worry about offending him?
Like, you didn't have to have radical or different kinds of candor? Because you weren't, you weren't business with him for a long time. I mean, you are in other ways now, but I think that, I think there's a lot there. I think my brother was such a breath of fresh air because with my father, who, so my brother and I started VaynerMedia in 2009, I'm 34.
I just spent 12 years working 100 hours plus a week in a box, a store with my father. And, you know, I'm the son. He's the father. You know, he started the company, but I'm the driver of the business.
You have no equity. I have no equity. I'm starting to build resentment. I took the business from three to 65 million.
Did you get a bonus? You're poking. Like, listen. No, no.
It's so funny. I very much understand my father. You know, we barely got that. It was really intense.
It was real immigrant shit. You know, I've come to looking back and like, I really understand my father. Like, he's still, if he walked in right now, he's like, but he's going to get the business when I'm gone. I'm like, Dad, you know, I'm going to be 73, God willing, you know.
So my brother on the other hand was 11 years younger. I was his hero. I was as much, if not more of a father figure to him than even my own father was to him. I had already accomplished a lot.
So, you know, I came into that partnership with a lot of emotional and experiential and results equity with my brother. And my brother, to his credit, we started the company 5050 equity wise. We didn't know. We didn't know how it would play out.
We looked at each other. We promised each other. We don't know how it's going to play out. We just our entire career as to how it plays out.
And to his credit, the way it played out was, I was, and he will say it, much more significant impact than what the business became. And we started the inner sports, even though he was running at full time. The equity was different. In my favor, even though he was running it.
And everything we've done subsequently, we haven't. We all know families aren't easy, particularly. I mean, I work with my husband. So I say this to you as somebody who has familiarity.
Yeah. And I really enjoyed it. I'm grateful for it. But it's not easy.
No, it's not easy because you're blurring lines. It's my brother and I have had it easy. I'm being very trained. You know, my father and I had it incredibly challenging.
Yet, wildly easy in the macro. It is, I mean, I wish it on everyone. And we really had a lot of arguments and had a lot of tension and had a lot of moments. But my gosh, and I'm sure not lost in anyone in this room or anyone listening.
As you get older, the time you spend with your family increases in value. And all the other things you're worried about decrease in value. And I, back to crying, I'm getting a little emotional now. I had a very interesting moment.
I think it was my junior year of college. I called my mom one day out of the blue and completely broke down and said, Mom, because basically since I was 15, I'm coming into the family business. I'm going to build a monster and I wanted to build it for my parents. I wanted to.
I was so grateful for them. I had that nobleness superhero syndrome. And I knew I would have more time. I knew who I was.
I was doing V friends because you really always did want to be a superhero. 100%. 100%. And I was raised to be a superhero.
I don't know if I always wanted to be a superhero. My mom made me a superhero. You know, again, my mom was very affected by her upbringing. You know, at the time, I was seven or eight, nine, 13 years old.
My mom was an immigrant mom who lost her mom early. My dad lost his dad early. And she would say things to me like to my face. You know, this is my hero.
If anything ever happens to us, you have to take care of your brother and sister. I will say, though, as a kid, again, I have a younger sister seven years. And there was always that sense because you're the eldest. That's right.
If something happens, it's on you. So, I mean, there was the sense of incredible responsibility of an older child as a thing. It's a thing. And I just brought it up earlier because it's the thing I'm most working on in my lab right now.
My head, this early adulthood, late adulthood. You and I had that. And I'm going to say it again, I'm poking at this zit for everyone who's listening. Because I know what's going on with a lot of parents that have 25-year-olds.
There's a lot going on right now. I get all the DMs from both of them. You and I had that. And we have 29-year-olds.
And we have 29-year-olds. We're mommy and dad. We're picking up the phone 13 times and taking care of everything financially and emotionally. We have a problem.
And a lot of what the world's upset about and that's going on has to do with that. Not social media. Not other things that just hear lack of adultness and lack of self-esteem that we have in the younger generation at scale. Many are not.
I'm not generalizing. But shocking amounts do. So, anyway, that's kind of where I was at. Sorry.
I'm sorry. Thank you. I never, I never do. And I'm just bawling to my mom.
And I said, mom, I don't know if I want to go into the store. I don't know if I want to join the liquor store at the college. I feel like this was a moment of potential insecurity. I'm like, I think I'm going to be one of the great business men of all time.
I've got all this stuff. But if I, you know, dad's tough. Like, you know, any of the best. I mean, I want to make sure I'm painting a very clear picture.
My dad in his, you know, my dad's a cat. And he can still be tough. I'll tell you exactly what my dad is. He's a cactus.
He's super, you know, tough on the outside. But inside it's mushy. Which is why he has the cactus. I know it all.
A lot of it. Anyway, nonetheless, I really broke down. I didn't want to do it. If I go, I'll never get credit for who I am.
Everyone's going to be like your dad. You know, all this stuff. And it was just one day. It was a 20 minute conversation.
I moved on literally the next day. I'm sure my mom, I don't even recall what my mom said. I just remember how I felt. I'm sure it was lots of encouragement.
And, you know, that's kind of my game played out. But I, my dad and I, 80% of the time it was wonderful. 20% of the time there was real contention. Hard to leave.
No. No. Because my dad wanted it too. Let's talk about the other side of the story.
My father comes to this country with a hundred bucks. He works his face off every minute to have his own liquor store business. He's an old school man. He's the man.
Here comes his son. And that happened. Son starts to work around the store. First he's just happy that the son's not a schlemiel and can contribute.
Then all of a sudden he looks around and five seconds later, his son's 23 years old. And everybody that he's had a business relationship for 20 years has no interest in talking to him. And they only want to talk to his son. And his son's the boss, not him.
Yeah, not to talk. So I'm incredibly compassionate to like how that must have felt. So now, and don't forget, now I built a monster for him. So now we're one of the most powerful stores in the country.
Wineries from Framster coming in to kiss the ring and do a deal. I'm like, we're as hot as hot as hot gets. We're the kith of like wine retail to put it in street wear terms. And now I'm willing to walk away.
And he gets all that power. He was hyped. He was also. So you had no sense of guilt.
I definitely had no sense of kidding. You know what I just did? I just got $50,000 for 12 years to build a $65 million business for my dad. And I'm giving him all the power, which is the only thing he actually wants right now.
I felt like a hero. And my dad was naive. You know, I was like the razzle. I can do it without you.
That part. My dad rewrote history. And I get it at a pride. In fact, the greatest thing that happened to me was the decline of the business the next ten years finally allowed me to get what I was looking for, which is my dad giving me a hat tip.
I like that for you. When my dad asked me to help. Not how'd you have been so difficult for him? I still can't believe it happened.
That, you know, I can't believe it happened because I know where the business was going. It was starting to get a little weird. You know, a lot of those people would have just re- Died on the ship. You know, my dad is a die on the ship.
You know, the good news is, the truth is, actually, I believe in my father and I did not have a good relationship. He would have died on the trip. The good news is we have a great relationship. And we're really close.
And I love him the most. And so I don't think it was that hard for him. Okay. So let me pivot to your brother leaves.
Yes. Right. Right. When you were focusing on that line business, right, versus having to share your interest across six things.
I joke now I have six jobs. It's very hard to be good at six jobs. How do you think about that? Easily.
There's such a lot. It's really not. In fact, I had a meeting yesterday with my comms team. There's some business magazines that want me on the cover, which is humbling.
And they asked me what I want on that cover. And I said I want it to be a picture of me juggling nine balls with three of them falling. And I wanted to say the juggler, the untold story of Gary Vaynerchuk's business life. Because to your point, even people that know me well have no idea that I have a flourishing TV and production company in Vayner Watt.
I have a restaurant group in New York City and in New Jersey that's crushing a private club called VCR and Flyfish Club Downster. I have seven to ten alternative sports investments, pickleball, whiffleball, unrivaled women's basketball league, many, many, the sailing league. I'm really deep in alternative sports. I have a 2,500 percent Vayner media that people know.
Be friends. People are starting to get known more and more. I still quietly run the wine business through my best friend. And we do wine text.
I have a lot going on. Let me tell you why the answer is easily. Okay. I ask you in return, what's your KPI?
What's your ROI? What are you trying to achieve? I am trying to maximize joy. Okay.
Same mark because I want to hear about that. If I wanted to maximize money, someone's argument of like you should prioritize would hold more weight with me. Do I believe that if I spent every minute on VaynerX or VaynerSports or VFRENZ or VCR that that thing could go and one could definitely VaynerX, VaynerMedia, that if I put 100 percent into that would I financially do better than spreading it out? The answer is there is a path for me to believe that.
That is just not what I'm trying to achieve. I want to wake up tomorrow morning and be excited. And what excites me is doing a lot of things. I like potpourri.
I want many things. I do not want one thing because I want to enjoy myself and when I go deep into something I do, I can go three months where Vayner eats up every minute. The fact that I can step outside for a second after that and go play here and go play there, that is my joy. That's what I want to do.
So I don't struggle with prioritizing. What do you think drives the curiosity to learn? Because that's really what you're describing. I'm inherently wildly curious.
You nailed it. That was a real aha in the last five years. I'm like, oh shit. I'm wildly curious.
The end. I think what's driving me is I'm very creative. I'm very curious. These are not the obvious things of Gary V.
I've got all these elements to me. I just, I'm into it. Sometimes in sports, other areas, listen to your body. In medicine, I'm very good at listening to my soul.
I'm very good at listening to my body. This might make sense to you based on the vibe of this combo. Sometimes I'm like, man, I wonder if I'm just going to wake up at 62 and be like, you know what? I'm moving to Peru and I'm going to live on a mountain with a goat.
I will listen to my body to the end. And if that's what I want to do, that's what I want to do. Okay, so for people listening who are like, I don't want to touch with my body. What are you saying?
Yes. How does one get in touch? I think it's different for everyone. You know, for some people it's therapy to unblock something.
For some people it's exercise. For some people it's going on a heavy acid and trims trip. I don't fucking know. Like, you know, for some people it's forgiving people that they're mad at.
That's one. Let me go into this path for a second. Okay. I believe forgiveness is the answer to the quiz that many people are struggling with right now.
What does that mean? I believe the dog's consent. I'm going somewhere big. I think they can feel it.
That's fine. But I think it was more that they, you know, they have a different sense. I think they know where I'm going. The dogs are like, what's happening?