When I close something, I'm like, what's in it for them? What are the reasons I never post, like, losey shit is I don't understand what's in it for the audience when you show them that you're drinking champagne on a private plane. Once in a while, when I say this, I'll get a DM or a text from a buddy. You're like, no bro, it's aspirational.
I'm like, bro, there's unlimited aspirational shit out there. You don't need to contribute. Fuck you, you're doing it to flex. So for me, the first thing that people need to think about is why is this good?
Now, if you're a magician that does card tricks on TikTok, it's good because that's entertainment. So reason people go to Vegas shows. Why we watch TV? Entertainment's good.
Humor's good. Like, he brings value. He makes me laugh. Denders people give information.
Inspiration, there's a lot of things you can do, right? Attention is the number one asset. Gary V, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.
What do you think most people don't understand about how attention works? Whew, how long are we in this? This could take the entire show. I think that there's many things.
I think for the corporate marketer that's watching right now, we're listening, meaning someone that works in a company, right? Not an advanced company. Let's call it Fortune 50,000, not even 500. They don't realize that they're living in a academia boardroom environment on attention.
They're trading on potential attention, not actualized attention, historic attention, not actualized attention. They're not day trading attention. They're buying attention of the past. Even though I think deep down, they know they're not buying it.
Meaning, for simple terms for everyone, by the way, hi, everyone. Thanks for having me on the show. The reason most companies still spend an ongoing amount of money on television, outdoor billboards, print ads, banner ads or pre-rolls or bad digital stuff is because their internal reports say there's attention there, and so the way corporate works is based on boardroom and fake reports. So I think that whole set, what they don't understand is where the actual attention is.
Do I think they know? Do I think the 48-year-old that works at Tesla or BMW or Mountain Dew, do I think they know the 62-year-old? Do I think they know? I think they actually really know.
But I think they also know that if they buy TikTok media, that that hasn't made its way into their media agency because of the long run, their corporation, and it won't show up as row as positive, return on investment positive. So I think because of that, they're not practitioners. When I went through COVID on Zoom with hundreds of CMOs because now we have the opportunity to do that, I was not flabbergasted, but I was reminded how most of my great friends and contemporaries in corporate American marketing are so far away from being a practitioner of social media creative, of what's going on with micro-influencers, of my belief that people like yourself are going to really disrupt CBG because not only have you built organic audiences, not only do you know how to make actual content that people want to watch, but then even when you do advertising, you can help flank them because you understand that the first second of a video on a TikTok or Instagram matter, that the thumbnail matters, that the copy matters, the slang, the terminology, and more importantly that you know that you'd rather spend your money on social creative media or influencers over so many other behaviors they do. So that's where attention is completely misunderstood in private equity, venture capital, Wall Street, corporations, Fortune 5000, Madison Avenue, on the art world side, more than half of the people that are watching right now, emerging influencers, creators, entrepreneurs, hustlers, grinders, be ambitious.
I don't think they understand that it's everything. And then thus, they're playing at a seven. Like the people that we all see at our feeds, far circles, the Austin, Miami, LA, the crew, I think everyone's at a seven. Meaning they might have Instagram or TikTok down, they might be doing a podcast, they might be vlogging, they might know who the micro influencers are, they've watched me from the OG days all the way through all the beasts and the Pauls and the Emilio's and the Nel Poys and the Hughes and the, like they've seen it all, but I don't think on a day to day, this is why I call it day trading attention.
I don't think, when I look at the best, the people with millions of followers, I can see that they're still doing 16 months ago tactics, four months ago tactics, whether it's the thumbnail, the copy, the carousel, and definitely for the A players, why they're not A plus, why they're B minus, they don't fuck with LinkedIn enough, they either are YouTube shorts or TikTok or Spotlight staff or Instagram, and they're not all, they're very few people on earth, and I'm proud to be one of them, that is actually doing day to day creative, organic social on all of them, and I mean all of them, and takes YouTube short nuances very seriously different than what X Twitter does, and so for the A players, the B players, the reason they're not A plus, is they're not diversified enough against enough platforms, and they're not, once they hit, they start to get distracted about other things, rightfully so, they expand, they start CPGs, they start going to Coachella and hooking up, they start doing, they start thinking about other things, and it doesn't allow them, and every one of them knows it, like think about the contemporary set, it's fun that Coachella just happened, every one of them knows it, that when they were 16, 19, 20, 20, 27, they were 24, seven, obsessed, with whatever they were obsessed with, and then when they start winning a little bit, they take a little of the pedal, and they start smelling the roses, and that's amazing, but it means that there's opportunity, and for a lot of them, they've plateaued, right? Four years ago when I was yelling about TikTok, a lot of people wanted to stay in Instagram because they had a million followers there, and it was good for their ego, and so they didn't want to start at zero on TikTok, and now what's happened is a lot of those influencers, creators, entrepreneurs, who are rushing to catch up, and what I wanted to do in this book is tell everybody like, attention is it, it's like working out, you're in great shape clearly, like you can do it well for four years, but if you take off for two years, it's like shit's going to happen, and I just want people to stay on it, and so what I think that people must understand and attention is very detailed, like I just spoke down two sets, there's many more, but it's very nuanced in detail within. It seems like the two big groups there are, one, despite the fact that social media is almost everything that people spend their time on their phones doing, it's still under priced, it's just about each one of those. Yes, definitely corporations, and there's all the money up there, so it allows us, kids.
That's a competitive advantage to be a record, I'll be closer to people over a record. And then the second side of that, to be, I guess, a combination of even people whose jobs are social media, still a misunderstanding of how much leverage is available, about how broad to go, and about how deep to go, and then this temptation to take your eye off the ball, if some success does come, you know. Yes, almost everybody is less successful than they would like to be. Almost everybody is a C to Z list player that's listening, and not a B or an A grade player, which means that the incentive and the impetus, which is going to slow down the people at the very top, is the competitive advantage for the people that are further down the line.
Correct. I'll just start growing a little bit for me. You got it, that's exactly right. And the reason I framed it as day trading attention, well I think, you know, day trading is something, not everybody knows what that is, but a lot of people know what that is, and that's a very different way of buying stocks than the way I buy them.
Like I'll be like, seven years old, I'm like, you know what, Netflix is gonna win. I'm gonna buy some Netflix, and I'm gonna go to fucking sleep. And you have maniacs right now, all over the world. So you've got like, create aggressively, but trade lazily.
Yes, and so for me, I wanted people to understand that tension is that way too. And so I'm glad that you crushed it, and went from obscurity to a million YouTube subscribers, and you're crushing, but you're 23 and yourself, huge ambitions, and you're talking to all sorts of shit that you're the next Mr. V's, but guess what? I know you're not, because you've already taken the foot off the pedal the last month, and shit's happened.
And by the way, that's okay. I'm not here to say be a fucking psycho. I'm just saying the game is psycho. And if you wanna play it, you have an opportunity, and you have to think of it this way because the styles, the jokes, the slang, the platforms, the algorithms, all of its moving nanosecond by nanosecond, and either you're about that fucking life or you're not.
You love this, so my house made Zach is way more terminally online than I am. I don't use TikTok personally, but Z does. And he is an honorary CMO of my company, Chief Me Officer. And he will tell me six months before something becomes mainstream on Instagram, what's going to be the new meta on TikTok.
And then six months after it's mainstream on Instagram, it then becomes the new meta, it breaks out into mainstream media. Like at the moment, the pedestrian-cooked, gasoline-maxing, like, walk-pilled cities of America. You know, whether it's being dialed or locking in, like all of the language moves so quickly. And he'll tell me about the new meta, and then we'll use it in ads on your tonic, and then that'll spin away.
And I'll need to keep checking in with it. I'll need to get the weather up on it. Yes, there's a separate Cisco getting a coffee before my talk. Guy in line, says, oh my God, Gary V, you know, very flattering, nice little chat.
Guy who rings us up is a dude who has nail polish. He rings us up. He taps me after we had a nice pleasant dream, and I took a picture with him. He taps me on his shoulder again.
He goes, do you remember, like a couple years ago you said, male makeup was going to hit? He's like, look at the guy who just rung us up. I'm seeing that everywhere. I'm like, yeah, he's like, how'd you know that?
I'm like, I live in the fucking dirt. Your buddy Z lives in the dirt. The end. You're either in A and R, this is an old music thing.
Back in the 80s, how'd you discover Metallica or Guns N' Roses? You had to be fucking up at two o'clock in the morning and go into the bars. And that's how you discovered Nirvana. You either were in A and R that not only put in the work and was out the two in the morning in LA in Seattle and New York at hip hop clubs.
You also had the ear, right? So Zack, your buddy, is not only putting in the time. There's a fuckload of people putting in the time. He clearly has a talent to have a sense, a smell of what might hit.
Yeah, he's picking a trend. And, okay, so let's say that someone isn't toward the top of the tree. Where do people fall short when it comes to building relevancy and tension online now in 2024? Right this nanosecond is we film and record this.
The biggest framework perspective issue in the game is people make content for selfish reasons versus selfless reasons. The number one thing that I think hurts people that are not winning is because look, some people are just gonna be attractive enough. Some people are just gonna be charismatic enough. Some people are just gonna have enough experience and expertise in something that it's gonna be enough.
You're gonna track things more reliable and scalable. I mean, just like the three things I just mentioned. Like, that's just a DNA game or a circumstance game. For me, I wasn't attractive enough.
You know, maybe I was charismatic enough, but I started making business content at 34. I'd already been doing it my whole life. And I'd already built a very large business on day trading attention on email, search, YouTube, social. So I had the skills, I wasn't 18.
I'd lived through it already and could speak to it, right? Not that 18 year old, by the way, for all the 18 year olds, I was hustling since I was 10. I had things to say at 18 that were right. So, but I had experience, I think for the rest of the crew, that isn't that yet.
There's so much opportunity. But I think even for the people that have the luck of the draw or the ones that don't, the big game is most people make content to become famous rich, to scratch their own egos and insecurities, it's selfish. I can tell you right now, no question. The biggest reason I think a lot of things work for me and things I've observed in others is when I post something, I'm like, what's in it for them?
One of the reasons I never post like vuji shit is I don't understand what's in it for the audience when you show them that you're drinking champagne on a private plane. Once in a while, when I say this, I'll get a DM or a text from a buddy be like, no bro, it's aspirational. I'm like, bro, there's unlimited aspirational shit out there. You don't need to contribute to fuck you.
So for me, the first thing that people need to think about is why is this good? Now, if you're a magician that does card tricks on TikTok, it's good because that's entertainment. So reason people go to Vegas shows. It's why we watch TV.
Entertainment's good, humor's good. King Vatch, what is it? He brings value. He makes me laugh.
Then there's people that give information. Inspiration, there's a lot of things you can do, right? And so I think the framework of what's in it for them versus what's in it for me will really help. Most people listening right now, especially given how sharp I think the audience that listens to you is, they're thinking of it very smartly from a business standpoint.
It's the game, right? It's the game. If they just added a little bit of like, yes, I understand you're trying to figure out what will go viral, what will over index, what will work, how do I make it happen, how do I build myself up, I want to be a speaker, I want to be an actor, I want to go on a sports day, whatever. Just fuck man, just something of like, can you say something or do something that actually will bring value to someone?
Before we started this, you're like, hey, the book went pretty deep on the content. That's how I thought about writing the book. We literally had this combo right before we started. The fuck am I writing this book for?
Because I was ready to go so detailed. Because I know that people that are good, like winners, the kids, the zacks out there, that they're gonna listen on audio or read the book. One tactic, one that tweaks it and gets them value. And so I think the first thing that they need to focus on is the perspective of, what's in it for them?
I know why you're doing it, you want. What do they want? What's good for them? You know, but in a real fucking fundamental way.
Like in the same way that those corporate fuckers know they're buying bullshit and not social, I'm asking all the hustlers, all the winners, you know you're doing this for you. Just add a little fucking something for them. How can you judge that? Because it's really difficult to extract our own ego from the desire to grow our online platform.
We want to be validated by the world friends. Even the most delusional, the most not conscious of us. I just believe in the human spirit when I say this. I think even the ones that are least in touch with our feelings, the ones that have done the least amount of mental work, the ones that are most cynical, even those people, I think as they're listening to us right now, can have a sense of when they post something, are they trying to bring value to the person on the other side?
How do you go more hard and fast rule than that? No, I don't. Do you know what? It means one from a friend, George Mac, he has Mac's content razor.
Would you can see me wrong content if not, don't cousin it? Yeah, I think that's wonderful. I think the reason I say no, I don't, and why I think that's wonderful, I think it all sits in the same cousin tree of analogies that one can use in this moment. It's not super complicated.
Let's in it for them. Is this good? Did you say something that brings value, whether you're being vulnerable and creating a connect, vulnerabilities, a powerful one? There's a lot of people winning out there.
This was interesting. Literally when I landed last night late last night, I've been traveling like crazy this week. I literally tweeted, man, it's been a week. I saw the photo of you in the back.
Yeah, exactly. And I was like, this is just like, I was without context, and this is why written word has no context. I was really like, I didn't want to spell it all out, I just kind of wanted to go with a quick tweet. I was talking from the lens of like, man, this feels like 2016, right?
I was like, New York to Miami. Miami to West Palm. West Palm to Miami. Miami to San Francisco, San Francisco, Austin.
Back to New York. I mean, tonight, then Saturday, Utah back to New York all in one day. I'm like, ooh, this is 2015 life. But I had a lot of people hit me up on DM on Instagram.
And I'd be like, you cool? Because they're not used to, they interpreted as like, maybe I'm struggling with having a pot hole or something. And that was very lovely. And it reminded me how much vulnerability stops people in their tracks, provides values, allows people to be compassionate towards you.
And so there's a lot of ways to bring value. I think Maxwell is absolutely right. Like, would you consume it? I'm always like, what's in it for them?
That's the one I go into my brand. What's in it for them? Talk to me about the role of authenticity online now. Look, I think people talk a lot about this.
And I think it's obviously very important. And the reason I think about it from importance is I don't think it's very important short term. I think it's incredibly important long term. Let me explain.
Authenticity is something that gets exposed out over time. You know that this I think is gonna really land for you and a lot of listeners. And lots of people are tricking. Lots of people in the short term.
So the reason I like authenticity is why I'm on book seven, why I'm still here, why in the 2007, eight, nine social media world of just Twitter and a little bit of Facebook. There was a lot of personalities. And by the way, I was probably the front runner to not be around a year later because I came out. I'm so loud.
I'm so over the top. I'm so ridiculous. And in 2007, cursing and casual dressing was so not in vogue. And I remember the whispers in the back stages.
I read the tweets. I'm like, oh, the wine guy from Jersey Gary G. or whatever his name is. He'll be gone in a year.
That's clearly just sizzle. And so for me, authenticity speaks to like, why I'm still here in 24 and why almost everybody I met in 2007 is not here. And I think, you know, what is the importance of it? I think it's an incredible indicator of longevity.
I think in the short term, it's hard to dissect. Most people don't really know people. People pop out, they get hot for their looks, their smarts, their what have you. What I like about authenticity is, I think it is incredibly grounded in the marathon more than the sprint.
So I think for all the kids that are listening, good news, you can win in the short term with not being authentic. You can fake the funk. You can trick people to fucking at scale, especially with AI coming all sorts of shit. You'll be able to trick the fuck out of people for a little while.
And then you'll be exposed. And then what do you do with the rest of your nine years of life? Well, hypocrisy on the internet is like catnip. I'm not sure.
Because do you remember, you might not be to a British pub in sort of the 2000s? There were these touch screen games that was spot the difference. And it was done with the timer. You had to hit the differences between the two things.
Hypocrisy is basically like an ideological equivalent of that game. You said this thing in the past. You did this thing in the future. I can compare what you stated from what you did or what you said and what you said.
And I see there's a discourse here. And I'm gonna bring it to bed because it's so perfectly designed for social media because I have to screenshot it for the thing that happened before in the video. And I have the video now and people can compare and contract. Yes, two dynamics on that.
One, for everyone who's listening, that doesn't mean you're not allowed to change your mind. Of course. I think that's one of the most powerful, wonderful things of the human. And to your point, if one then goes and owns that, speaks to losses, says, hey, I used to, now I, so hey, you're in control of that to your point.
When you're trying to say you didn't, that starts to kill the lack of authenticity. The other thing that's interesting about what you just said is man, deep fake videos, what a game changing reality we're about to walk into. Like, you know, one of the things I think a lot about is that people find what they're looking for. So if you're looking for negativity, you're gonna find it.
If you're looking for positivity, you're gonna find it. I think with all these fake videos, I mean, the amount of videos of you and I that will be on the internet in the next seven years, next 10 years of things we never said. Literally in a decade from today, most people will not believe any of the videos they see on the internet, because they'll be more fake ones than real ones. We're going into such a wild era that it's gonna reset so many things of truth, hypocrisy, things of that nature.
But yes, I have enjoyed that, I'm with you on what you just said. It's been interesting to watch that. I've asked my friend, everybody, your. Can I give you, I apologize?
Can I give you a great example? Cause I don't think a lot of people sit in both the creator, influencer, entrepreneur world and in the Fortune 500 marketing world. My favorite hypocrisy happens in corporate America. When you're the CEO of an old media company, you're like, print TV, it's awesome.
And then they go and get a job at Facebook or Twitter or Snapchat. And they're like, social media is number one. But I'm like two weeks ago, you just said that TV was number one. The hypocrisy of corporate animals based on what they're selling is at the highest level.
What's funny about that is that such a vaulted world that very few of us are going to see. And you see what people linked in post or tweet or Instagram story or whatever. But that thing, you maybe get to see in boardrooms and see suites and stuff like that. Or if you just, you know, most of people listening don't read ad age or ad week or PR week.
That's right, right? And so this little industry that spends all of the $70 billion on television, all the crazy shit that goes on in the world and marketing, this goes back to the really exciting part of this conversation and this book to me is the biggest companies in the world are blowing it. And individual little human beings, like you and I, have the ability to get market share in a way that has never existed in the history of mankind. Just to round out the authenticity piece.
I think, I heard this sentence a couple of years ago and I had me not to stop thinking about it. Speed running authenticity. People trying to do that. And that's what you were talking about before.
Like, how can I growth hack my way to seeming like I'm telling the truth? Seeming like I'm actually putting me into my content. Does that be working very hard on this over the last six months or so? When I first started the show, I wanted to be seen as a justifiable, verifiable, reliable intellect.
I wanted to have, I was coming out of a time being a reality TV person, model club promoter, professional party boy, and I wanted to signal, I am someone with really natural chops, right? So I almost sort of counter-signalled from opening up. I thought that that was sort of unrational and unsophisticated, you know, if I'm a hero, someone like a Jordan Peterson or a Sam Harris, you know, I'm not seeing them getting super emotional. Some of that changes now.
Anyway, recently, I've tried to put more of myself into the content. The first thing is when I get compliments about it, when I'm recording it, I feel better. When I get compliments about it, they genuinely land because I invested some of myself into it. The other part is I actually think that, I think that people see the humanity on the other side of that, like the way that it makes people feel when you put some of you into it, not just playing the role.
Anyone can win by saying the right mouth noises. It's, can you do that and it actually be you? That's the question. And there is a way, you're right.
Over a long enough time, scale your rolling the dice of playing a role, eventually you might get rumbled. You might thread the needle and dance through the mine and get out of the other side fine, but none of that success is going to land with you in any case. It's gonna be hollow because on the other side of that, it's going to be you looking back on this illustrious history of you being somebody else. Is that success?
It doesn't look like success to me. I think that was extremely well said and it was funny. I wanted to let you roll, but all my urges, because I love to jump in, and I know I get razz for that at times, but it's just how my brain processes. The way you started that whole Silicon is, was the most interesting part.
Everyone is dead on arrival, on authenticity, when they start a sentence with, I want it to be seen as. It was crazy how my spiky senses went off when you started that, because what I realized when you said that was like, right, that's why this has always worked for me. I've never had the ability to be seen as. You know, there was just something that triggered me so early in my life is why I was such a poor student.
I never valued being seen as. I didn't have that gear. I went through high school without feeling peer pressure, which in hindsight now is insanity. That's almost like robotic.
Sometimes I even razz myself for feelings, or you're a robot. That's not right. And of course I do, and of course there was micro moments of it. But yeah, I think it's a beautifully well said thing, brother, and I think if you're sitting at home right now and saying, I want to be seen as, you're going to put yourself in a vulnerable spot, because you're putting the weight of subjective opinions on the outside over your own peace of mind of navigating your game.
Well, ultimately, if I look at a lot of the creators I really love personally for me that I actually care about and I have a lot of faith in, Mike Isritel is a good example of this. He's been on the show, he's the founder of Renaissance periodization. Big Jim Bro, all he does is make incredibly sus jokes and break down exercise signs better than anybody else on the internet. That's it.
And I forget with him on camera and off camera and we've got phone calls. And he is the same guy on and off. And that's him. And as he changes his content will change.
But it's not like his content changes and then he changes to catch up with it. Like he's leading from the front personally. And yeah, I think that's, I think that trying to realize, here's the final thing as well, just the point of authenticity. If you do you, you can never get it wrong.
Of course not because the only game in life is to mitigate regret. And if you live a fake life, you can have a trillion dollars, all the girls, all the guys, all the trips, all the handbags, all the Lamborghinis, I promise you, I know unlimited 17 to 90 year olds that have all the stuff who are not living happy lives, who feel empty, who have deep regrets. And so yes, of course. What have been the biggest changes in the type of content that works online across the life cycle trajectory and I started creating February 20th or 21st, 2006.
That's when I did my first episode of Wine Library TV. And so a lot has changed. You know, it's funny my early instincts ended up becoming the game. One of the reasons I had a lot of eyes on me back in 2016 was I was doing long form video on YouTube and then I started doing it on a site called Viddler.
That was a big early mistake of my career. There was this competitor to YouTube called Viddler that had tagging and I was doing such long videos and people wanted to see the third wine I was reviewing. So the tagging at the bottom, you can click the little button and get to the third wine. It was like this profound technology.
That's right, well, it didn't exist then. Anyway, nonetheless, so much has changed. First of all, all of social media content in 2006, seven, eight as public creators and influencers was only Silicon Valley elite. There was no normal people on it, going back to club life.
So many of my New York friends and LA friends that are of my age who I didn't know because I was working in the liquor store and I was working all the time. I didn't do as much night life, but a lot of them I know now and they built their careers and everyone's kind of found each other. They talk often about the 2006, seven, eight era of like the social media people, myself included Zuckerberg, Evan Williams, Travis from Uber, of like, oh, we thought those people were nerds. Like, that wasn't cool.
So the 2006, seven, eight, nine creators, influencers, content was more intellect, more business, more innovation, more techy. There was no, nobody was cool. There was nothing cool about it. And so a lot of it was, if you go look back, I mean, I bet you if you read the first 10 million tweets, which I assume from 2006 to 2000, I don't know how long it took them to get there.
It is nerd, it's engineers, it's front end designers, it's Python and Ruby on Rails engineers, it's startup founders, it's VCs, and it's not VCs today, which is like cool bro, Jim bros that are also VCs, it was fucking finances, it was coders, it was nerds, I was, when I tell you, I was like a charity prod, I was like the industry, the 2.0 Silicon Valley industry would point to me a lot in 2006, seven, eight, nine, because I was a wine store owner in New Jersey, like, see, this isn't just San Francisco. I was like an enigma. So that was that. Also, nobody thought in what I played out here, nobody was thinking about this in like deep strategy.
First of all, the biggest thing that changed is social media for the first decade was email marketing. That's as many followers as you can, at a certain percentage of them, we'll see it every time you post. Now, in the last four years, we've lived through the Tiktokification of all social media. Now, what do you mean when you say that?
We now live in a social media world, where somebody listening right now, that 17 year old you and I does not even have a profile, starts a Tiktok account, and her or his third post gets two million views, that didn't exist ever for the first decade, it couldn't happen, she would have only had 11 followers. Now, the Tiktokification, the four-year page evocation of every platform, the AI algorithms, it is now around interests, not around who you follow, means that every individual piece of content now has the potential to reach a level of awareness that is far outreaching the effort you've put it into it. It's the ozempic and steroids of social media. Well, it's made, it makes social media much more egalitarian.
There you go, the meritocracy that we're living in right now. I always know when I talk about something important right now, this is how I always write, the goosebumps are. The unrealistic issue. Oh, the fuck you mean to you?
Yes, you are very handsome. No, when I know I'm talking about something that matters, I get goosebumps, which is why, you know, Bartley talks about AI, you're pressing a button, I just look at my goosebumps like this, and make sure we click this. The merit of this fucking game right now, and it intoxicates me, and I fucking got the gray hairs and the fucking wrinkles I put in the fucking work for the last 20 years, and I'm pumped that I've been commoditized on the merit of the fucking, it's the lion eats lion, it's the sports you can't cheat, like what I love about social media right now is it's fucking merit-based. I don't even need to go to your next post.
I fucking, when I tell you, I want to eat this fucking monset, excites the fuck out of me. And I love that for everyone who is sitting right now. I mean, talk about something inspirational. You're listening right now, because you motivate them.
And they see me on them, like, yeah, either I like that guy or fuck that guy, but they're listening right now. They're sitting right now, fucking not in a good place. They're like, fuck man, I blew it, or I missed it, or it's the fact that if they believe me, because it's 100% true, if they're sitting there and be like, wait a minute, my single post about what I know about Zelda, my individual post back to UK culture, like wait, if I know it out about darts in detail, is that what these two fuckers are? Fuck it, love it.
I think like, what do I think about British culture? Darts, like, that's where you can, it's darts, fish, and chips, and tea. You know, if we, if you really think about that, you know, going global, like, wait, my unbelievable knowledge of cricket, if I break that down in a green screen or do this like knitting, right, or like Nick Maratus, one of my top dogs at VaynerMedia, because he finally heard me and he wanted to be a practitioner, not just an executive, he flips egg omelets, flips them, you might have seen him, he's the guy who takes an egg, like just egg ome flips in here and catches it. He has a fucking TikTok, Instagram I think that has more views than I've ever had in my career, that's fucking amazing.
Like to me, I just love the opportunities of back to finding what you're looking for, for everyone who's listening right now, who still has either a lot or a glimpse of optimism left, please listen one more time, because I'm gonna repeat it for the fuckers in the back. The fact that tomorrow you can start, you decide to go after something you either really know or you really love. It's going back to what's changed, the day before I started Wine Library TV. I can't believe I'm saying this 18 years later, because I lived it.
I sat there and said I'm doing this YouTube thing and I debated two things. Will I do a wine show? Because I know more about that than anything. Or will I do a show about the New York Jets?
Because it's the thing I love the most. I almost did a jet show and I ended up doing a wine show. And I want everyone listening right now about their content on social. Am I gonna talk about something I know the most?
I'm gonna count it. I don't love it. I don't hate it because if you hate it, you'll be dead. I don't hate it but I don't love it.
But motherfucker, I know accounting and I also know I'm silly and I'm a bro or silly girl and I'm just gonna make it a little more entertaining. Or I'm fucking obsessed with Avatar and I'm just gonna make unlimited Avatar movie content. I don't think people realize that most people if they go hard for a couple of years on what I'm saying. That on a bad day, they're making 80 to 150,000 a year in merch and a couple brand deals in pre-roll, right?
And for a lot of fucking people on earth making 150 talking about proper football instead of making 230 being an executive in the state organization doing landscaping is a much better life or even better. Because I actually believe the even more extreme. I think over time, everybody will make more than if they hate their job of making social media content around their passions or expertise. And I think that's a level of merit long-tail entrepreneurship.
Because we think about this shit from a Mr. Beast from a Logan Hall state but most people are not gonna make millions of dollars a year in social but most people have the opportunity to make hundreds of thousands and that long tail is misunderstood right now. Talk to me about when it comes to the specifics of content style, what do you think of the greatest upside at the moment? Everyone's talking about virtual video, about face-to-camera, sub-stack.
It's one of my favorite, I don't know what you call it, social media, I guess it's kind of what media should have been. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. It's content, subscription. I think media should have been, absolutely.
I mean, they had it, they absolutely had it. I mean, Ev Williams is probably one of my three favorites. Is that good behind me? He's also the dude behind Twitter.
I know Jack gets a lot of the credit now. In 2006, 2008, Jack invented the concept. Ev ran the company. Ev was the guy, at bare minimum, they were the co-guys.
But in 2006, 1979, of Twitter was Ev Williams. He also was Bebo, he's like, I'm not Bebo, excuse me. He sold something to Google. I apologize, I got the wasn't Bebo, it was something else.
He, I think, blogspot or something of that nature. And he also then did a podcast. He sold a big company to Google. He was about to build a podcast company.
And then Apple Podcast came out. He was smart. He was like, this is going to lose. Shut it down.
Very smart. And then Twitter. He did medium. You're right.
They were very close. I was so bullish on medium. And sub-stack, I think, innovated that same. It's similar to Dig and Reddit.
Dig was Reddit. Blogger. Thank you. Blogger is what Ev Williams did.
From content strategy side. Someone says, Gary, I found my thing. I'm not going to be going to be credit or tea or dot. What should somebody be thinking about?
I think a lot of people get stuck in the mechanism. What to make? Let's go nerdy. First, it's a self-awareness game.
There is multiple mediums that work in communicating. I'm glad you brought up a sub-stack because it allows me to go there. There is the written word. There are people listening right now who know more about video game 1980s culture than anybody in the world.
However, they're very self-aware and they're like, fuck this shit. I'm not going on camera. I don't have the gift of gab. I'm incredibly awkward with my words.
I'm shy. I don't like it. Good news. I'm a little bit more there or they have great gift of gab, but the camera makes them.
It kills them. Great. You've got video. You've got audio and you've got the written word.
If you want to go to the extremes, you could even animate and cartoon it. You could even go that far, but that's a little bit of a further put. But what would I say? First, you have to know your media.
The preference is video because video is a starting point to everything else. I do audio and written word without doing it because everything is extracted from my video. Video is the holy grail. No question.
Video is like, that's right. However, it is not required. That's very important for people to hear. Number two, once you decide to do it, you have to decide your medium.
So for example, if somebody who's listening is really into modern IP law with AI coming, with NFT culture, with Disney, with Pokemon, LinkedIn and YouTube are going to be much better mediums for them potentially, then let's say Facebook. But if you're into parenting, Dr. Becky, big shout out, she's getting a lot of momentum. Facebook's a fucking dream.
So you have to know where your audiences are. You have to know what mediums. And then per medium becomes the creative area, meaning LinkedIn is a fucking monster for the written word. You fight a fucking epic four sub stack, like New York Times, opt-in, blogging, medium.
You write fucking 12, a newsletter person. You write fucking 12 paragraphs of fucking fire about something B2B or business oriented. And you post that on LinkedIn with a good picture. They're now 4U page stuff.
We'll get you lots of fucking views, lots of reads. And LinkedIn is a very different audience. You get one proper fucker to read that. You're getting a message on LinkedIn that's going to make you money.
B2B and like growing up business, LinkedIn is one of the biggest opportunities that people miss because, for example, this iconic CPG brand you're building. If you write four paragraphs on your strategy of something you see on LinkedIn, that may lead to a business development deal that will never happen on Instagram where you're building consumers. You got it? Right?
And LinkedIn is so global, it can even be a small, you know, live shopping player in China. People don't understand what's going on. So the answer to the question is don't all work. When you go into them, it starts getting into real culture.
When you're writing something, your headline matters. It's good old newspaper. If that LinkedIn post, the variable is going to be your opening headline. What do you think about when it comes to copy for headline?
I think about like what is unique. Can you say it different? And I'll tell you the biggest thing. Actually, thank you for being so good at interviewing.
You're pushing me in a good place. When I think about social media creative, I think about it in consumer segmentation, something I call cohorts. So when I make content, I'll make content for, I'll think like, okay, I'm making this for 48 to 55 year old parents of a 21 year old and it's a wealthy family and the kid is lazy, but they were the parents that made all the money because they grew up poor and they have anxiety that they're kids lazy, but they're the ones that created the nepotism because they made that money. That's the content being made for.
Cohorts with teeth. That was a very narrow thing. I wasn't saying parents. So I think when I think of headlines, I'm like, what narrow group am I writing this for?
I'm going to write this article and this headline is going to be written for the buyers of the biggest retailers in America. Tidal. What big box retailers don't know about beverages. You see what I just did?
Improv? Not my brother? Uh-oh. Not my brother?
That's why I wrote this book. That's what I know is missing right now. People are trying to hack the algos. They're looking for best practice.
That's wonderful. That's called P platform strategy. But then there's this thing I call pack platforms and culture and then you have to have consumer cohorts. So you have to know the platforms.
Absolutely. Vertical this. Carousel that. Like Instagram are now littered with characters that do the Gary V thing and tell people what the best platform things are.
But the platforms tell you. The fucking Instagram guys making content every day like this is what Instagram is about. You just follow every time TikTok puts out an announcement. That's what they're going to do.
It doesn't take a fucking superhero to understand if meta says we now care about carousels. Go make fucking carousels. Like Jesus. The culture.
The strategy. The headline. Like the way I'm thinking here. Like who are you making it for?
Why are you bringing? Let's go back to something I said earlier. Okay. So now you're writing a LinkedIn post.
What big box retailers don't know about the beverage market. If you write this as a fucking press release for you, you're being selfish with the whole article. It's not going to hit. If you really take a step back and spend 30 hours analyzing what's happening at big box retailer with drinks and understanding something that they're overestimating, you can now say you could start it with like one of the biggest mistakes about how big box retailers think about the relationships with Coca-Cola and Dr.
Pepper is they over value. What Poppy was able to do. What the prime was able to do. You got it.
Like with death. Got it. That shit. I fucking love that shit.
That level of depth is missing in the game right now. And that goes for everything. You want to be a fashion brand? What's the micro influencer strategy?
Do you go to Coachella not to be a Coachella but to film everything for you to post produce it for your social content because no photoshoot in the studio like this could ever replicate the actual energy of a fucking festival where the cool fucking kids are fooling out. Things like that. Talk to me from a platform perspective. I think we're going to be asking this question.
Okay. So I have another that are in front of me. I can do written word on LinkedIn. I can do written word on sub-site.
I can do virtual video on TikTok, Instagram. I can even do that on Facebook. I can even do that on Facebook. I can just sign up on Instagram across on Facebook and do YouTube shorts, et cetera.
What are the platforms over the next three to five years that you're the most bullish and bearish on? I can't answer that question because it's not my brain thing. Let me explain what I mean. The main thing is don't romanticize about yesterday, Instagram, and don't try to get too excited about tomorrow.
Elon post yesterday, Vine, question mark, right? So Vine's coming. Don't overthink today. I don't know what's going to be there in three to five years.
I definitely wouldn't, like the reason I'm good at my game is when it happens, I'm all in. So I can only speak about today and anybody worried about three to five, if people ask me, what's next? Three to five years. I don't know.
I know that meta and Google are not going to disappear. So I continue to think they'll innovate or M&A and be in the game as macro companies, but YouTube shorts was not in the cards for me three years ago, right, but then TikTok's pressure made them go there. And it's going to be massively interesting to watch when they reboot it. We're back.
100%. It would make, it would be, Elon's too smart to not do it. Just put it on by? Yes.
Right. Okay. And that was part of the deal. Yes.
Once, you know, but they shut it down, but it's still there. Right. And they only IP. And you know, I mean, you know, Vine is the absolute seed of this generation.
Short form videos started on mine. It was a profound thing when hit. I remember looking at a day one, I was like, ooh, this is different, different. And it just completely captured youth culture at that time.
And I was very serious about it. As a matter of fact, I launched, you can Google this right now, we're listening. I mean, the article said it, like the first influencer agency called Grape Story, which your own jar, one of the first celebrities on Vine, and we signed Logan Paul, Marie Muckoo's like all of these characters, Brittany, for a long, like we were talking to all of them. So I, to answer a question directly, I'm not going to get too scattered here.
I don't know what three to five years is going to bring. I know that for everyone who's listening, the answer is more and yes, and and, meaning, my argument with everyone here today is every minute that you don't spend on gathering more attention is a minute that you're potentially declining on your long term opportunity. There's times to cash in on your attention. There's times to do other things, but I feel like a lot of people will, you know, we talked earlier about regret.
The only things I regret as a businessman is not going harder on my thumb on the scale every time where I knew the attention was. I should have made more TikTok videos six years ago. I should have done more Google ads in 2001. I should have sent more emails in 96.
I should have done more tweets in 2007. And so whether it's, you know, we haven't talked about live streaming, I mean, there's so much going on with Twitch and all these live streaming platforms, TikTok Live is very important. Look, we don't, three to five years, what if fucking TikTok gets banned by America in seven months? Where does all that attention go?
Right? I mean, to me, that's a huge opportunity for Vine. Like, okay, if I time this perfectly, then I'm fucking Elon, right? Like, I'm that guy.
If I fucking announce Vine the day, I could probably get every, like, it could happen in rap, rap, rap. That means scene. What a fucking strategy. You know?
And so I don't know. I know that as I sit here today, write this nanosecond. Instagram is harder than ever. Because the supply and demand curve on Instagram is hard.
More content was made on Instagram yesterday than ever in a history of Instagram. But the attention has been fragmented into YouTube shorts and TikTok. So how can Instagram be as good as it was four years ago? It's not.
It's a blind demand. It's a blind demand. It's a blind demand of attention. Blind, Gary Vee, Gary Vee, which I was based on.
Of course. Of course. Okay. So is that room, in your opinion, actually even a better question than that, and if I'll release the headshot this week, what do you want?
Yes. I love it. I'm really enjoying it. I went ham this weekend.
This has been a crazy week for me. So I've been a little bit sad that I haven't been able to jam with it as much. First of all, I love the beginning stages of seeing AI so integrated into native social, right? So for everybody doesn't know, you know, it's ironic, you may know this.
It's been around for almost four years. They keep iterating it. And the latest version of it is really caught by or last week with, by the way, all those nerds from two thousand six seven, the Josh Almonds, the Massey, I was like, all my favorite homies from back in the day. They're all there.
It's the way that it always works. The nerds are always a few minutes before the cool kids. So here, but now you see a blend back to cool kids being on their over the weekend in a way that we've never seen before, not even Clubhouse. It's usually the nerds.
Now for air chat to not become Clubhouse or other things, AKA a feature, regular Twitter spaces is Clubhouse. It needs to keep innovating, but it's really cool, right? So everybody doesn't know. It's very much like Twitter, but the difference is it's all audio.
So you record your tweet, but then it transcribes it into the written word. But when you consume it, you can read it or listen to it. When there's a conversation or a thread of tweets, it'll just play almost like a podcast. It's really neat.
There's a lot of cool things in it. So the way I think about things are, are they features or are they permanent platforms? So it's going to get followed up by some existing, larger platform and just get folded into the feature list. Correct.
That's right. So obviously Twitter would be a natural because it looks most like Twitter. But this might have too much friction for that. The answer is the verdict still out.
But when I think about the things that people have asked me about in the last several years, Dustin is filming in the background right now. You remember, I was really on it with BeReel. BeReel's next. I'm like, I think it's going to be a feature, right?
Now, BeReel could have built on top of it, snapped it, snap early, could have been a feature, and then they built more things into it, and then obviously their killer feature stories became foundational to every platform. So you know, I'm always paying attention when new platforms pop, reclip. I don't know if you've seen this. This one's on my mind a little bit.
Again, I've been watching it for several months. It hasn't popped yet. It's on your phone. It's recording everything that you're talking about.
It's a recorder of everything. It's on as well. It's what people are scared of thinking what Alexa is, talk about conspiracy theorists. But here's the interesting part.
It's only recording the last two minutes. So it doesn't record everything. It's a rolling last two minutes. You know what that allows to happen?
When you're... Oh, we just said that thing. Oh, that's very smart. It's very...
The reason I thought TikTok was going to explode musically was I'm like, oh my god, this is social media or training wheels. They're giving people music. They're giving people all these edits. It's going to help non-creators be better creators.
The reason I like Reclip, it allows everybody in the world to be an audio content creator or video, because then when you're done with the Reclip, you can add features to it becomes like a TikTok. I think they're onto something. Again, these are... I'm always watching, but I don't...
It's even rare for me to mention something like Reclip in such a prominent platform like this podcast, because I don't want... On the record. I don't know. But I'm always in the lab watching.
I'm always refining my day-to-day social, back to day training attention, and I'm always watching for the next wave. And sometimes something I'll tell you this, when I learned on social cam. Social cam was a social network, I think in 2011 or 2012. That was hot for, I don't know, 48 seconds, AKA a summer, but I created on it.
That helped me understand what to do on Vine. It was even... Vine actually hit. Social cam didn't, but it was short form video.
So in Vine came, I was like, wait a minute. And then obviously when the whole next year I came, I was ready for short form video. Talk to me about long form content versus short form, and we can fold into that conversation volume versus quality, such depth of content as well. I think a lot to talk about there, yes, to your first question.
They both work. People will watch a three hour movie if they love it, or a 45 minute vlog. I did very well with DailyVee. They were long.
And people will watch seven second videos that crush, and people will not watch seven second videos, because they're garbage. And people will definitely not watch 25 minute videos if they're garbage. So that goes back to self-awareness. Are you capable of doing a vlog, or a great video series, or you're not, same as short form.
Quantity quality. Quantity is not available. You either make 97 piece of content in a month, or you don't. Quality is completely subjective.
Either this person's attractive, funny, insightful, or not. I'm very high on that. However, I do think that people, I think I'd do a good enough job contextualizing when I would, you know, I've been screaming on social media for seven years, volume, volume, volume. The reality is, it's a quality quantity ratio.
Volume if you're capable. If you have a lot of jokes, if you have a lot of good looks, if you have a lot of techniques, if you have, if you have shit to say, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go different ways, and it's different, you know, if you don't, of course not. This goes back to earlier why I'm obsessed with passion or expertise. You're dead if you're not doing passion or expertise.
You just won't have enough juice. There's not enough fucking fuel in it. Passion will take you forever, which is why I like that actually more. But expertise, especially if you don't hate it.
I always get worried about expertise, because a lot of people's thing that they know, because it's their profession, they don't like. And I do think that fuel will run out as well. But to answer your question, one more time to recap for everybody, both long and short form work and don't work. Now, good to you.
I think quantity matters in the future AI world. You're going to get drowned out by the quality of content if you don't commit it to quantity. But yes, of course, it's predicated on the quality of that quantity. I just think you should have more at bats.
Many of the posts I put out with all this 20 years of expertise and writing the fucking book and being that fucking guy, I miss all the time, but I love that feeling. Like I'm trying to learn. I saw somebody the other day in a piece of content making fun of me and my team for doing all sorts of different shit. And I was laughing because I'm like, no, no, that's the game.
The point I think he was trying to make is like, he's lost his way. He doesn't know what he's doing. He's just throwing, we're not throwing against him all. Let's see what's next.
We're exploring different features and things to try to learn what's next. And I have the humility for it to not do well. The reason most people suck at social media is they're scared to not get as many views as their little fragile ego needs to go through the day. I don't give a fuck.
I'm streaming on Twitch on mute in my office. 83 people are watching. I don't give a fuck. That doesn't take away from everything I'm doing.