Speaker 1: Hi everyone, It's Sophia. Welcome to work in progress. Hello friends,
Speaker 1: Today we are joined by a guest I am so
Speaker 1: thrilled to talk to, not only because We've been friends
Speaker 1: for a long long time, but because I've been an
Speaker 1: admirer of his even longer. Today's guest is none other
Speaker 1: than Gary V. He is a serial entrepreneur. He serves
Speaker 1: as the chairman of vayner X, the CEO of vayner Media,
Speaker 1: and the creator and CEO of V Friends. Gary is
Speaker 1: considered one of the leading global minds on what is
Speaker 1: next in culture, business, and the Internet. And today we're
Speaker 1: going to get behind the scenes with the man publicly
Speaker 1: known as Gary V and learn about how his life
Speaker 1: and mission and motivation have led him to where he
Speaker 1: finds himself today, where he's focused on kindness, the world
Speaker 1: a better place, and figuring out how to be Gary
Speaker 1: Vaynerchuk off the mic, off the screen, and in his life.
Speaker 1: Gary has added another business vertical to his incredible empire,
Speaker 1: and that is that he is an author. He published
Speaker 1: a book back in twenty fourteen that was pretty incredible,
Speaker 1: and the follow up, called Day Trading Attention, is about
Speaker 1: where he finds himself and what insights he has for
Speaker 1: all of us in the ever evolving landscape of modern
Speaker 1: social media, ten years after he published his first book
Speaker 1: on branding, and somehow, while he's juggling all of these balls,
Speaker 1: he's also managed to write a kid's book. It's incredible.
Speaker 1: It's called Meet Me in the Middle. It is an
Speaker 1: all original picture book featuring Gary's beloved v Friends characters,
Speaker 1: and it encourages young readers to see how different the
Speaker 1: world looks from another point of view. With its unique
Speaker 1: two in one flip book format. It is so special.
Speaker 1: It's published by HarperCollins Children's Books. I'm really excited about
Speaker 1: this one and enjoy. Hi Gary, I'm so excited you're here.
Speaker 2: Me too. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Of course, I'm so amped. I mean god, I feel
Speaker 1: like we've known each other for one hundred years. It's
Speaker 1: crazy that we haven't ever done each other's shows. And
Speaker 1: the fact that you know I've seen you more in
Speaker 1: Europe this year than I have in the States is
Speaker 1: hilarious to me. So I like getting together with you,
Speaker 1: even on Zoom Me too.
Speaker 2: Me too. It's wonderful to be here. Thank you for
Speaker 2: having me.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy. I mean, we have so much to
Speaker 1: talk about. You know, you are, as our friends at
Speaker 1: home know from your intro, like this incredible serial entrepreneur.
Speaker 1: You have worked in everything from you know, wine to media.
Speaker 1: Now you're an amazing author, and it's so interesting to
Speaker 1: me that we're looking at the year where you've got
Speaker 1: these two books that could not be more different. Out
Speaker 1: you wrote about day trading attention, how to actually build
Speaker 1: brand and sales in the new social media world, which
Speaker 1: is such an area of your expertise. And you wrote
Speaker 1: a kid's book called Meet Me in the Middle. So
Speaker 1: walk me through how you managed to write not one
Speaker 1: book but two and why is one of them this
Speaker 1: adorable children's book? Like, talk to me about this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So thank you so much for you know, day
Speaker 2: Trading Attention. To your point, it's a follow up actually
Speaker 2: to a book I wrote in twenty fourteen called Jab
Speaker 2: Jab Jab right Hook. When what I'm very focused on
Speaker 2: is I believe attention is how the world moves. You know,
Speaker 2: people don't change their mind, don't get inspired, don't buy things,
Speaker 2: don't vote for people, don't get excited about things unless
Speaker 2: they actually consume the information. That's just how the journey
Speaker 2: is and I, you know, I think so much of
Speaker 2: my career is predicated on that. I think I bet
Speaker 2: on the Internet and then the evolution of the Internet,
Speaker 2: which is really social media in a lot of ways,
Speaker 2: or at least one part of it. I think I
Speaker 2: had a good sense of where attention was going, and
Speaker 2: you know, we met in those early days of where
Speaker 2: the web was starting to get attention, taking away from
Speaker 2: a world that you understand very well in television and film.
Speaker 2: But also, you know, it's not that long ago that
Speaker 2: people read magazines for real, for real.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I miss him.
Speaker 2: US weekly was like your Twitter stream or Instagram just
Speaker 2: twenty years ago. And so I fascinate around attention. I
Speaker 2: built one of the largest marketing companies independent marketing companies
Speaker 2: in the world based on it. And I felt like
Speaker 2: I had a book to write because social media has
Speaker 2: changed so much. The fact that one who's listening right now,
Speaker 2: a stay at home whose daughter just went to college,
Speaker 2: her third child, and now has real time on her
Speaker 2: hands because she's been so committed to raising this incredible family,
Speaker 2: who equally is deeply knowledgeable about gardening and loves it
Speaker 2: and knows it. The fact that that woman can literally
Speaker 2: make a video right now about what to do with
Speaker 2: bell peppers in the soils of Texas during the summer months,
Speaker 2: post that on TikTok and get a million views, and
Speaker 2: that becomes the beginning of a process of her starting
Speaker 2: her second career because maybe she was working prior to
Speaker 2: starting a family. I'm obviously painting a picture here that
Speaker 2: is intoxicating to me. And five years ago, she would
Speaker 2: have had a grind three videos a day for two
Speaker 2: years to build any kind of base to kind of
Speaker 2: make that a career. Today, because of the way the
Speaker 2: album Rhythm's work in social media works, she can be
Speaker 2: on her seventh video and it hits, and it happens fast.
Speaker 2: And not that I want to teach people to be impatient,
Speaker 2: because that's my great fear, the fact that what I
Speaker 2: just said is true. It is possible if she has
Speaker 2: the talent, the charisma, the creative capability, or the knowledge
Speaker 2: or the mix of all of them. That is a
Speaker 2: big deal. And it's a big deal for this woman
Speaker 2: that I just made up, and it's a very big
Speaker 2: deal for Coca Cola BMW, and it's a very big
Speaker 2: deal for this podcast and your acting career and it's
Speaker 2: a very big deal for my dad's new winetech dot
Speaker 2: com service. Like right now, somebody fighting to be mayor
Speaker 2: of a small town who's down by twenty points can
Speaker 2: easily win the election, and he or she gets remarkable
Speaker 2: at social media, organic advertising, not even paint. And so
Speaker 2: that's why I wrote Dat Training Attention. The thesis is
Speaker 2: that marketing and attention has changed. Social media has changed
Speaker 2: without most people realizing it's no longer to build as
Speaker 2: many followers as possible, and then a lot of people
Speaker 2: see it every time. It's make great content every day
Speaker 2: and some of those pieces of content can change your
Speaker 2: life or your business. And I go into incredible detail
Speaker 2: the so many emails in the first couple of months
Speaker 2: or first month of the book being out of people
Speaker 2: who really follow me, who usually get the headlines for
Speaker 2: my content or podcasts like this. I went textbook kind
Speaker 2: of with day trading attention and really proud of it.
Speaker 2: It's doing very well because marketers can use it, but
Speaker 2: small business, I mean small, the local pizza shop, the
Speaker 2: local flower shop, landscapers, dentists. I really wrote it for
Speaker 2: everybody from a seventeen year old who wants to be
Speaker 2: a famous creator like everybody on earth. Now that's seventeen
Speaker 2: all the way all the way to a CEO of
Speaker 2: Fortune fifty company.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I wrote it because I had something to say,
Speaker 2: which was social media's changed, and I think most of
Speaker 2: you have missed how big this changes. Let me show
Speaker 2: you good at it for every platform from YouTube to
Speaker 2: TikTok to snapchat to Instagram.
Speaker 1: That's really exciting. And you know what it speaks to
Speaker 1: for me is flexibility and reaction time, both of which
Speaker 1: you've always I think, been at the forefront of. I mean,
Speaker 1: in the almost twenty years I've known you like it.
Speaker 1: It's so cool to watch how quickly you're willing to
Speaker 1: move across all these sectors and just follow your curiosity
Speaker 1: from this vantage point, as you know, a multiiphen at entrepreneur.
Speaker 1: If you if you got the opportunity to hang out
Speaker 1: with like eight year old Gary, would you see a
Speaker 1: through line like would you have things to talk about
Speaker 1: with that kid? Or has your whole life just been
Speaker 1: a series of like unexpected left turns and now here
Speaker 1: you are?
Speaker 2: Mix of the two. Eight year Gary was the preview,
Speaker 2: no question, a eight year old nineteen eighty three, eight
Speaker 2: year old Gary I could speak to, especially if I
Speaker 2: had context. Let's say I was actually me and new
Speaker 2: technology created it. I could be like, hey, bro, I
Speaker 2: know you because I am you. You know that feeling
Speaker 2: you're getting when you sell lemonade? Like really really, and yeah,
Speaker 2: you know how much you like like being nice to people?
Speaker 2: Like you know how like the teachers like you because
Speaker 2: you stop the fights instead of starting them. That's going
Speaker 2: to be your life.
Speaker 1: Wow, So that's very cool.
Speaker 2: I think by eight, not by six, by the way,
Speaker 2: but by eight, just to give you context, by eight,
Speaker 2: I'd already established probably the two core foundations of my life,
Speaker 2: which is I love, deeply love being an entrepreneur, which
Speaker 2: is why I'm multi hyphenated. Like if you're at entrepreneur,
Speaker 2: you're too creative to I'm not doing it for the money,
Speaker 2: like the way that Like, of course, money is a
Speaker 2: part of the equation, but if I stayed in one thing,
Speaker 2: I can maximize my money potentially more, which is why
Speaker 2: so many people give you advice to focus on something.
Speaker 2: It's actually there's a lot of truth to it. But
Speaker 2: when you start over indexing to what I call pure
Speaker 2: bred entrepreneurship, it's just too creative, and in that creativity
Speaker 2: you look more like a free spirited artist. You're singing
Speaker 2: and you're doing pottery, and you're trying to do acting.
Speaker 2: It's like the egot, right, Like it's like theater. If
Speaker 2: I had your skills and I was still me, my
Speaker 2: life I think would be very theater and TV and film,
Speaker 2: and I'll do a TV commercial and I'll do stuff
Speaker 2: with streamers and social media. Like I think the level
Speaker 2: of curiosity and just pure joy for experiencing it. I
Speaker 2: don't love to travel, like I don't get excited of
Speaker 2: the thought of like people see the pyramids or Big
Speaker 2: Ben or the rainforest, but I know many people that do.
Speaker 2: My version of that is entrepreneurship. So I ate that
Speaker 2: was starting to form. And then the other pillar, which
Speaker 2: is I am very passionate about kindness. You know me well,
Speaker 2: and you know me through the eyes of many as well,
Speaker 2: because we have a lap in circles. I like that
Speaker 2: people that actually know me think I'm nice and that
Speaker 2: matters to me heavily. And I was an eight year
Speaker 2: old kid. I was very emotional. I cried a lot.
Speaker 2: At seven, six, eight, nine ten, everything was I was
Speaker 2: very emotionally charged. Like kids getting picked on, teary eyed me.
Speaker 2: I was so empathetic. Yeah, I was so empathetic I
Speaker 2: could feel and so like, Yeah, I was very I
Speaker 2: was that kid, and I feel like that's who I am.
Speaker 2: I'm proud of putting kindness as an important along with
Speaker 2: tenacity and competitiveness and being in yang with me right, Like,
Speaker 2: there's so much competitiveness and like fire and hyperness and
Speaker 2: chaos that's controlled, i'd like to think, but there's this
Speaker 2: very soft part of like humanity, of like not at
Speaker 2: the expense. I don't want anything I do to be
Speaker 2: at the expense of others.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree with that. And now a word from
Speaker 1: our sponsors that I really enjoy and I think you
Speaker 1: will too. I think that's how you know, this sort
Speaker 1: of Venn diagram of friend groups that we are a
Speaker 1: part of forms, right, is like those sort of central tenets.
Speaker 1: I think what's been really interesting for me to start
Speaker 1: to realize is that just by nature of the way
Speaker 1: of the world, like kindness can sometimes be expected of
Speaker 1: women in ways that actually requires that we abandons. And
Speaker 1: the really neat thing I think having friendships with folks
Speaker 1: like you has done for me over the years is
Speaker 1: remind me that I am absolutely allowed to set a
Speaker 1: boundary and still be a kind person, and that in
Speaker 1: certain ways, I think when when you begin to do that,
Speaker 1: you actually get kinder because it's it's not a default,
Speaker 1: it's a real passion and a real action. And that
Speaker 1: the thing I didn't expect about learning those lessons, which
Speaker 1: are hard. You know, I hate the idea of somebody
Speaker 1: not liking me or letting somebody down. But what it's
Speaker 1: actually helped me build is more resilience and more confidence.
Speaker 1: And when you talk about how kindness and particularly self
Speaker 1: esteem are these obsessions of yours, like what I hear
Speaker 1: also is that creating really resilient confidence is as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's a lot there to unpacked. So
Speaker 2: those beautiful words. So a couple things one being liked
Speaker 2: and letting someone down are incredibly different. Like, for example,
Speaker 2: people have very significant hot takes on me and anybody
Speaker 2: who has any kind of awareness. Oh and I don't
Speaker 2: struggle with that at all because it is not based
Speaker 2: on any actual interaction be letting people down. Ironically I
Speaker 2: have I'm petrified of But actually, and this is important
Speaker 2: for you to hear, and I want everyone to hear this.
Speaker 2: I also I stink at boundaries. I say yes all
Speaker 2: the time to things that make absolutely no sense. Oh well, yeah,
Speaker 2: I try to actually unwind it once I come to
Speaker 2: my consciousness, which then oftentimes actually makes me let people down.
Speaker 2: I have worked incredibly hard in saying no more often upfront,
Speaker 2: which then eliminates letting someone down. It's ironic that, you know,
Speaker 2: having candor like I'm not interested or I don't have time.
Speaker 2: I hate that feeling, and I do think for certain
Speaker 2: people you let them down, but you let them down
Speaker 2: so much more when you say yes and then don't
Speaker 2: deliver or more sloppy with it. I work on that
Speaker 2: every day. So I am also bad at boundaries. Many
Speaker 2: men also are bad at it. I can speak and
Speaker 2: raise my hand even though hourly it may seem that
Speaker 2: I'm great at it. I really struggle with that. So
Speaker 2: I really struggle with that one too. Ooh self esteem, boy,
Speaker 2: you're right. I mean I could literally, I could literally
Speaker 2: spend the rest of my life just talking on that
Speaker 2: one topic. I believe pure self esteem, and people get
Speaker 2: very confused because ego is perceived self esteem that is
Speaker 2: actually insecurity disguised as self esteem yeah, real self esteem
Speaker 2: is incredible. Let me give you an example. I believe
Speaker 2: that I have real self esteem. Before I go any further,
Speaker 2: I want everyone to know that that is when I
Speaker 2: say that sentence, I take no credit for it. I
Speaker 2: have nothing to do with it. And when I say it,
Speaker 2: I say it out loud, strictly for one reason. Because
Speaker 2: my mother, Tamara Vaynerchuk, deserves a gold medal in parenting,
Speaker 2: an Olympic gold medal in parenting, because she cultivated it. First,
Speaker 2: she passed on her own natural DNA of confidence to me,
Speaker 2: but then she was the She not only gave me
Speaker 2: the ingredients, she cooked the meal. So I am the
Speaker 2: byproduct of being someone. I'm the byproduct. So I say
Speaker 2: it comfortably because I don't think it's barbado. I don't
Speaker 2: think it's bragging. In fact, when I'm going to say
Speaker 2: it nice and slow, I take zero, zero credit for it.
Speaker 2: I have a lot of self esteem. Let me tell
Speaker 2: you how that shows up in a way that I
Speaker 2: never understood, from high school parties when they started getting
Speaker 2: serious sophomore year of high school, to the most significant
Speaker 2: parties that happen in pop culture today, with circles that
Speaker 2: I run in if I told you I have zero,
Speaker 2: I have zero fomo. I never envy not being somewhere.
Speaker 2: I never see a photo on social media of somebody
Speaker 2: in a private plane or an abiza, or a jewelry
Speaker 2: or a watch. It never crosses my mind to think
Speaker 2: someone else's life is better. It never crosses my mind
Speaker 2: to be triggered to want less for them. In fact,
Speaker 2: pretty much most of the time, my mind goes too
Speaker 2: good for them, if they got there the right way. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and self esteem comes in a lot of variations, but
Speaker 2: that way, I am stunned by the envy and jealousy
Speaker 2: currency in our society today, which is a direct link
Speaker 2: to one's anxiety and depression and unhappiness. And so I
Speaker 2: am so grateful for self esteem. I'm so captivated by
Speaker 2: how one teaches it builds it. The reason I wrote
Speaker 2: my children's book Meet Me in the Middle is I
Speaker 2: think it is a game of using politics left, right, blue, red.
Speaker 2: I believe the middle is the right answer. I believe
Speaker 2: purple is the right answer. So, for example, one of
Speaker 2: the things I'm passionate about is I believe that eighth
Speaker 2: place trophies are horrible. I started talking about this ten
Speaker 2: years ago, and at the time they were incredibly popular.
Speaker 2: So I actually took a lot of heat from a
Speaker 2: lot of my friends and people that had children. But
Speaker 2: it is very clear to me that many of those friends,
Speaker 2: because I have the receipts, have come to see my
Speaker 2: point on this, which is, if we are teaching children
Speaker 2: that losing is such atrocity that we must filter with it,
Speaker 2: that it is so bad to lose that we're going
Speaker 2: to fake it because you don't trick children, they know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And so we were teaching children to fear losing. Life
Speaker 2: is predominantly losing with occasional meaningful wins. Yeah right, yeah,
Speaker 2: so you know, Yes, I believe in self esteem and
Speaker 2: I believe we've been very bad at it. And I'm
Speaker 2: going very general here. I do believe the last thirty
Speaker 2: years of modern parenting has really struggled with it. I'm
Speaker 2: devastated that social media happened during this thirty year window
Speaker 2: because every parent is blaming social not themselves. The lack
Speaker 2: of accountability of modern parenting is extraordinary. And where we
Speaker 2: have a scapegoat, right and without me and so I
Speaker 2: don't know, this is a big topic for me. This
Speaker 2: is what's this definitely. Most things I do entrepreneurial are
Speaker 2: basically built from a selfish and selfless framework. Right, There's
Speaker 2: like two energies in it. The friends is my Sesame
Speaker 2: Street meets Pokemon. It is my intellectual property. I have
Speaker 2: enormous ambitions of Disney and Marvel and anything you can
Speaker 2: think of. Very shortcake, I I that's selfish. I want
Speaker 2: to build one of the biggest valuable companies in the
Speaker 2: world on these characters. The selfless part is the Sesame
Speaker 2: Street part. While building people to fall in love with
Speaker 2: these characters, I'd like to teach people very high value
Speaker 2: attributes that I think are important in the next thirty
Speaker 2: to fifty years of society. And I think accountability and
Speaker 2: competitiveness are good, and I think that we have shied
Speaker 2: away from both too much in the last thirty years.
Speaker 1: Agreed. And I mean, you don't just see that with
Speaker 1: our kids. You see it as grown ass adults.
Speaker 2: Well, that's because grown ass adults that are thirty six
Speaker 2: now were parented twenty five years ago with a currency
Speaker 2: that you know, what's hard about it is it's so
Speaker 2: well intended. You know, parenting is a game of well intentions.
Speaker 2: Most of the time that you only have the value
Speaker 2: of looking at it in hindsight of where you misstep.
Speaker 2: Right when you grew up poor and you go and
Speaker 2: buy your kids lots of things because you want them
Speaker 2: to not be made fun of for having hand me downs.
Speaker 2: That was well intended. You were trying to protect your
Speaker 2: child from your greatest fears and issues of growing up.
Speaker 2: When you wake up later and they're in your twenties
Speaker 2: and they're not capable of doing anything and expect you
Speaker 2: to keep giving them handouts, you're like, wait a minute,
Speaker 2: I went far and overreacting to my pain and trauma.
Speaker 2: And so that goes back to why I believe in middle.
Speaker 2: I don't think eighth Place Trophies was like let's make
Speaker 2: our kids insecure, you know. I think it was like
Speaker 2: just trying to be like, hey, effort matters, and let's
Speaker 2: show them that effort matters. And then it just kind
Speaker 2: of got away from us and it became delusional.
Speaker 1: I like that the idea that sometimes when we go
Speaker 1: in the opposite of bad, like that's actually not what
Speaker 1: goals should be. The middle correcting to the middle.
Speaker 2: By the way, this is what this is the relationship
Speaker 2: advice you'll get at therapy. Right, if your spouse or
Speaker 2: partner is all the way over here on an issue
Speaker 2: raising kids, the natural reaction for the parent that sees
Speaker 2: the world the complete other way is to go completely
Speaker 2: in the other place, when in actuality, if they go
Speaker 2: to the middle, they have a better chance of getting
Speaker 2: their spouse and their child to that middle place. And
Speaker 2: this is ply on what happened in politics. It was, Yeah,
Speaker 2: we both pulled each other further and further and further away.
Speaker 2: And so look, that's a bigger issue for another day
Speaker 2: and another podcast. In the realm of parenting and human
Speaker 2: mindset and really what we're talking about here life's perspective.
Speaker 2: For example, I when I hit the scene, I was
Speaker 2: very hot on hustle and my that was slang for
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight had just happened. There was jobs,
Speaker 2: the Internet is on fire and it is about to explode.
Speaker 2: If you hate your job, work after work on the internet,
Speaker 2: and you can leave your toxic job and build your
Speaker 2: happy future. To me, that sounded like very practical hard work.
Speaker 2: But then we got into a culture where people were
Speaker 2: like brag that they only slept for two hours. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I constantly talked about sleeping for eight hours, but people
Speaker 2: started to manipulate the word hustle to burn out, where
Speaker 2: for me, the word hustle continues to mean hard work
Speaker 2: is part of the equation. Yeah, I watched hustle get canceled,
Speaker 2: and now I see it back because it's enough years
Speaker 2: removed and it's back to meaning a good thing for men,
Speaker 2: not everyone. I'm fascinated by that, like to me, where
Speaker 2: people get out of kielter like as the thought of
Speaker 2: like as if wanting to have a happy life, so
Speaker 2: putting in the extra effort, the extra reps, the extra
Speaker 2: readings like you do in your world, the extra hours
Speaker 2: of analyzing that I do in my world, as if
Speaker 2: that was worth it, if you were then burnt out
Speaker 2: and de brass, that's crazy, that's illogical. Yeah, but again, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: we weaponize words and theories and concepts, and so you know,
Speaker 2: I'm incredibly passionate about getting to the essence of it.
Speaker 2: I'm not worried about the semantics of the words.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this notion of the middle is actually kind you know,
Speaker 1: to oneself and to the rest of your business. What
Speaker 1: do you think is the importance of of applying kindness
Speaker 1: in business, empathy in business, hard work versus burnout priorities
Speaker 1: in business.
Speaker 2: I'll put hard work and burn out on the on
Speaker 2: the on the shelf for a second. On that one,
Speaker 2: it's quite easy, which is like somebody asked me the
Speaker 2: other day, is health and well is important business? My
Speaker 2: response was, if I'm dead, I go out of business. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So like, like I get, I kind of laugh at
Speaker 2: some of the ways that some of these things have
Speaker 2: mutated and manipulated. Like hard work and burnout is a
Speaker 2: very simple equation. When you love what you do for
Speaker 2: a living, like many of us do that are listening
Speaker 2: right now, the cliche of like it's play not work
Speaker 2: is real, and so like it's hard to burn out
Speaker 2: when you're happy. I'll just make this very simple for everyone.
Speaker 2: If you love skiing more than anything in the world,
Speaker 2: you will ski on that mount all day long. And
Speaker 2: that's just the way it's going to be. And the
Speaker 2: same for entrepreneurs that love working, you will not burn out.
Speaker 2: You must watch out for burnout. And things change. And
Speaker 2: maybe two years ago you liked working ten hours a
Speaker 2: day and you startup and now you're falling in love
Speaker 2: and you only want to do seven and you have
Speaker 2: to be open for change, and that's awesome. You can't
Speaker 2: be romantic about yesterday. Semantic of why I think kindness
Speaker 2: matters and business is actually remarkably less fufee foofee and ideological.
Speaker 2: It's actually practical. I believe the best way to build
Speaker 2: businesses is to have retention both on the client side,
Speaker 2: on the employee side, on the customer side. I believe
Speaker 2: kindness is eighty percent of the formula of why somebody
Speaker 2: will stay with you. Stop there, you know me. People
Speaker 2: so buy their flowers from local flower shop and pay
Speaker 2: ten dollars more than them driving down the street and
Speaker 2: getting it from another place that just sells like Costco
Speaker 2: is a great retailer. They will bring in very high
Speaker 2: quality flowers just as good, if not better, by the way,
Speaker 2: than your local florist, and it will be ten dollars less.
Speaker 2: But many people choose to go to the florist out
Speaker 2: of actual kindness and relationship. Kindness is a beacon of relationship.
Speaker 2: You will like people more if they are kind to
Speaker 2: versus them being indifferent or not nice to you. It's
Speaker 2: not complicated. Yeah, employees, I love American football, so bear
Speaker 2: with me. Everyone. There's something offensive line if you don't
Speaker 2: know what that is. Those are the five people that
Speaker 2: protect the quarterback from getting plummeted. Yeah, teams that are
Speaker 2: able to keep those same five guys together for a
Speaker 2: long period of time win way more games because it's
Speaker 2: a dance, all five of them. There's so many complicated
Speaker 2: things the defense does to trick them to be able
Speaker 2: to beat up the waterback. So you're going and you're swimming,
Speaker 2: you're dancing, you're blocking this guy, you're letting you go
Speaker 2: because you know this guy behind me's going to block
Speaker 2: him and you're gonna and when you have that continuity,
Speaker 2: continuity in my company leads to so much of our growth.
Speaker 2: So I actually think kindness is just practical. And then
Speaker 2: finally real life, this is not super complicated. People that
Speaker 2: deploy kindness get kindness back in return. People that don't don't,
Speaker 2: and so loneliness is bad. And yeah, you know, even
Speaker 2: if you are effective in making money by not being kind,
Speaker 2: you're always going to end up in that Scrooge moment
Speaker 2: and you're going to wake up and you're going to
Speaker 2: realize that nobody's around your deathbed, or nobody wants to
Speaker 2: go on vacation with you, or you have nobody to call,
Speaker 2: and that's sad, and I think that's important to understand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, on every level, from the personal to the professional.
Speaker 1: It changes everything when you think about how many things
Speaker 1: you work on as a professional, how do you balance
Speaker 1: all your business verticals, your life, your personal life, your
Speaker 1: charitable work. How do you get through the day?
Speaker 2: Macro? Micro, So in the micro, ironically, I'm looking at
Speaker 2: all four of them right now. I have three admins
Speaker 2: and one chief of staff for full time unbelievably capable
Speaker 2: human beings spend the entire life making sure I'm operating
Speaker 2: every minute to the best of my ability and that
Speaker 2: everything is on track. That's a lot of infrastructure. So
Speaker 2: that's one of the ways I get it done. That's
Speaker 2: the micro. The macro is going to be probably one
Speaker 2: of the better moments of this podcast. The inability to
Speaker 2: judge myself when I inevitably drop balls. Why I am
Speaker 2: able to do so many things and be a renaissance
Speaker 2: man and confuse even the most capable and successful friends,
Speaker 2: I like, what are you doing? Is grounded in two
Speaker 2: core things. One my lack of need of maximizing money
Speaker 2: and needing to maximize the joy of my creative process
Speaker 2: of being a businessman. AKA, I want to do many things,
Speaker 2: not one thing. Two me being self aware that that
Speaker 2: is what I'm trying to do and what I like. Thus,
Speaker 2: when I inevitably, if you are juggling seventeen crystal balls,
Speaker 2: when six of them fall on the ground and smash,
Speaker 2: I can't cry over that spilled milk because I made
Speaker 2: the bed that I'm sleeping and I decided to juggle
Speaker 2: seventeen balls. My ability to not beat myself up when
Speaker 2: things don't work, fail, lose money, or crash and burn
Speaker 2: famously is a one hundred percent direct correlation to why
Speaker 2: I'm capable of doing it. I'd rather for eleven successful
Speaker 2: balls with six of them hitting the ground than over
Speaker 2: cherishing one ball that never hits the ground.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: That makes me happy, But I'm willing to admit and
Speaker 2: argue that it doesn't mean I'm maximizing my financial upside.
Speaker 2: I'm just choosing my creative upside and the joy of
Speaker 2: the process and wanting to be ninety three and not regretting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that. And now a word from our
Speaker 1: sponsors who make this show possible. You know, not personalizing failures.
Speaker 1: Very similarly to what you were talking about earlier, where
Speaker 1: we've made loss a bad thing, We've made failing a
Speaker 1: bad thing. It's just part of life. If we didn't
Speaker 1: judge it, imagine what we could do.
Speaker 2: Oh, I have something so beautiful. I'm so glad you
Speaker 2: just said that. I believe the reason most people struggle
Speaker 2: is they are judging others too much. So one of
Speaker 2: my great other superpowers that was given to me DNA
Speaker 2: wise and then was parented and then I watched by example,
Speaker 2: is my mother. Boy, this is really real, is one
Speaker 2: of the least judgmental people I've ever met by life.
Speaker 2: She may have it, but she keeps it in her
Speaker 2: lock box in her head in a real way, and
Speaker 2: it doesn't come natural to her. And I have that too,
Speaker 2: And I believe that because I don't actively judge, that
Speaker 2: them very good at not judging myself. And I believe
Speaker 2: that most core issue in life is their judgment of themselves.
Speaker 2: I love that, So I encourage everyone who's listening. Maybe
Speaker 2: you don't need to spend all your time deciding what
Speaker 2: your sister's doing wrong, what your husband's doing wrong, what
Speaker 2: your what your boss is doing wrong. You start taking
Speaker 2: that energy away from the and so like the enormous
Speaker 2: hours that people spend on deciding what people are doing
Speaker 2: wrong that are in their inner circles or are their bosses,
Speaker 2: is it's an insane amount of time. And if you
Speaker 2: took all that time and energy and you focused on
Speaker 2: what you can control, Like if you're fixated on telling
Speaker 2: your mom that your sister is doing all these things
Speaker 2: wrong with your niece, and you took all those hours
Speaker 2: to then make sure that you're parenting your daughter with
Speaker 2: your beliefs in a positive energy. You're freeing up hours
Speaker 2: and hours and hours of dark, negative stuff and converting
Speaker 2: it to light positive stuff. Yeah, and that's just good
Speaker 2: for the soul.
Speaker 1: And good for everyone around you. My God, imagine if
Speaker 1: the internet could do such a things.
Speaker 2: Of all good for you, because while you're judging your sister,
Speaker 2: it means that your framework on life is judgment and
Speaker 2: you're judging yourself. And those are the hours I really
Speaker 2: love that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, shifting to being a judgment free human.
Speaker 2: Especially when you don't have content. I mean, it's one
Speaker 2: thing to judge your sister in this scenario that I
Speaker 2: just painted, especially if you're talking about siblings, because with children,
Speaker 2: so that means You've known your sister for thirty forty
Speaker 2: fifty years. What about all this judgment we have on
Speaker 2: people we've never met.
Speaker 1: It's insane. You know better than anybody.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, I mean yeah, I mean and forget
Speaker 2: about even like I'm not even going into like people
Speaker 2: of fame or notoriety. I'm just talking about even like
Speaker 2: your kid's teacher, like you don't really know missus Thompson. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I said something profound to a kid seven or eight. Profound.
Speaker 2: Excuse me. He emailed me and said he said something
Speaker 2: profound to me, and it just finally played out in
Speaker 2: my career. He's been gone for seven years. I got
Speaker 2: to see email the other day. He said, Gary, years ago,
Speaker 2: I came into your office. I don't know if you
Speaker 2: remember him. I did. I remembered him. He goes, but
Speaker 2: I didn't remember this moment. He goes, I was complaining
Speaker 2: about my boss and you said to me, but wait,
Speaker 2: you've loved your boss for the last three years and
Speaker 2: you've just been struggling with them for the last three months.
Speaker 2: And I said yeah, And I said, have you contemplated
Speaker 2: at all that something crazy might be going on in
Speaker 2: their life? Like they're about to have a divorce or
Speaker 2: their mother just told them that they're terminally real and
Speaker 2: the shock of the reaction is changing their behavior of
Speaker 2: m Yes, and nothing happened, meaning like he took that
Speaker 2: in that So now he segues his story. He goes,
Speaker 2: now I'm at this new company six years later, I've
Speaker 2: been going through the same thing, and it did end
Speaker 2: up that they the boss is actually ternally ill. Terrible story.
Speaker 1: Whoa horrible but that's it.
Speaker 2: But he said the fact that I cried, this is
Speaker 2: why email. He said, I cried because most of our
Speaker 2: team was shitting on the person. And I've been gracious
Speaker 2: because the advice he told me seven years ago and
Speaker 2: we just saw in office and it was the worst
Speaker 2: of the worst scenarios. Wow. Of course he was great
Speaker 2: for us for a while, but has been not great
Speaker 2: at all the last three months. He's dying.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That goes to the lack of judgment, That goes to
Speaker 2: benefit of the doubt, that goes to choosing optimism over cynicism.
Speaker 2: That goes to everything that I'm trying to stand for
Speaker 2: as a human, as an operator, as an entrepreneur, and
Speaker 2: as a citizen the world.
Speaker 1: Well, and that's just it. You just never know what
Speaker 1: people's battles are. You never know who looks happy that's
Speaker 1: got one foot over the edge. You never know who
Speaker 1: is angry because they're suffering, like you just don't know.
Speaker 1: And I think to cease to judge others and perhaps
Speaker 1: through that learn to cease to judge yourself feels like
Speaker 1: a very powerful It's a powerful nugget of wisdom.
Speaker 2: For sure. It is my definition of how to achieve happiness.
Speaker 1: Well, so I love that because my next question for
Speaker 1: you is going to be what is currently bringing you happiness?
Speaker 2: You know, as you also know, I'm a pretty public figure,
Speaker 2: but don't talk about my family much, so I'll be
Speaker 2: lightweight about this. But I've been an eleven year old,
Speaker 2: and boy, the compounding happiness of this age range is huge.
Speaker 2: Here's an interesting one. What brings me happiness is that
Speaker 2: I know so I love the world and I love people.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite inside jokes with my friends is
Speaker 2: I don't like animals because I like people, and they
Speaker 2: always people get very emotional if you say you don't
Speaker 2: like dogs, Yeah, this I'll always I'll like. If we're
Speaker 2: having these kind of combos, sometimes I'll say I don't
Speaker 2: like dogs, and everybody freaks out, especially if they've never
Speaker 2: met me before and they don't know my spiel on this,
Speaker 2: and then everybody freaks out and you're You're a villain,
Speaker 2: You're the worst. And then I go into if we
Speaker 2: loved each other by default the way we love dogs,
Speaker 2: the world would be remarkable. I watch some of the
Speaker 2: most condescending, cynical, manipulative, deceitful people I know because I
Speaker 2: know people, like we all know people.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, of course.
Speaker 2: I watch how they pet dogs and interact with it
Speaker 2: versus what they do to humans, and it drives me
Speaker 2: up the wall because it's all based on insecurity. The
Speaker 2: most insecure do the most damage, and people make them
Speaker 2: insecure because they can talk back. And so what brings
Speaker 2: me happiness is a very weird statement. I believe that
Speaker 2: we are in an era of eight billion people strong
Speaker 2: that really struggled with societal shifts of the last fifteen years,
Speaker 2: and I actually believe that some of this one step
Speaker 2: backwards pain is actually going to work itself out for
Speaker 2: two steps forward.
Speaker 1: From your lips. Scary, I hope, so.
Speaker 2: Very hard. I get it, like it's not a tomorrow thing.
Speaker 2: I am Polish on the twenty fifties because of the
Speaker 2: tension of the twenty twenties. When the world looks back,
Speaker 2: I really am and I you know, and so I
Speaker 2: see new debates being formed, new ideas being formed. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there will be plenty of This goes back to losing.
Speaker 2: Will there be skinned knees, yes, Well, there'll be skinned elbows. Well,
Speaker 2: they'll be stitches and bruises. Yes. And when I say that,
Speaker 2: that's a very that's a very optimistic point of view
Speaker 2: on what I'm actually saying, which is, there will be payment,
Speaker 2: there will be rules, there will be terrible atrocities, there
Speaker 2: will be social problems, there will be there's so much
Speaker 2: going on in the world. However, I've been very good
Speaker 2: at history my whole life. I know the proxies, the
Speaker 2: patterns that lead to things. I believe in the human race.
Speaker 2: I do not believe that we're just going to disappear
Speaker 2: next year, Like I just don't see it. And so
Speaker 2: I'm optimistic that a lot of people are learning a
Speaker 2: lot of lessons. And it goes back full tale to
Speaker 2: the beginning. I think we're going to get back to
Speaker 2: the middle a little bit here, And I mean the
Speaker 2: world forget about even Milkans and Democrats, I mean parents.
Speaker 2: I will tell you right now, me being on this
Speaker 2: podcast saying I hate a place trophies kids should, I'll
Speaker 2: give you another one. I think it's healthy when kids
Speaker 2: fight physically when they're little. I'm being serious. These are
Speaker 2: things that I could never say seven years ago without
Speaker 2: being completely judged as like you are a and today
Speaker 2: there's a more thoughtful of like well, Gary, I'm not
Speaker 2: sure I want my kid to punch another kid in
Speaker 2: the face, but I at least understand what you're saying,
Speaker 2: which is letting real life play out instead of creating
Speaker 2: these paradigms that create falsities. Has merit let merit ring
Speaker 2: Let merit ring.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to give you a merit badge because
Speaker 1: sometimes when things feel really hard in the world and
Speaker 1: I wonder how we're going to get to better places,
Speaker 1: I wonder how the moral arc of the universe will
Speaker 1: be bent toward justice, I see people choosing to help
Speaker 1: and it was very cool for me as a person
Speaker 1: who's known you for as long as I have. You know,
Speaker 1: we're doing all of our brand work out at the
Speaker 1: Big Ad Festival, and it was so meaningful to be
Speaker 1: asked to participate in a carved out evening that you
Speaker 1: created to do something good in the world, and you
Speaker 1: made this enormous commitment to charity water And to your point,
Speaker 1: when we think about how we move these billions of
Speaker 1: us forward, sometimes it's the simplest things that have the
Speaker 1: most seismic shifts. There are, you know, hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: of people in the world that don't have access to
Speaker 1: clean water. And for you to say, I'm going to
Speaker 1: build for the next ten years with this organization working
Speaker 1: to solve that very human problem, it was really special
Speaker 1: to me. So does that feel for you like an
Speaker 1: act of kindness, empathy, paying it forward, all of the above.
Speaker 2: And eating my own dog food. If I'm going to
Speaker 2: come on here and say, like doing the right thing,
Speaker 2: don't complain about what you can't do, control what you
Speaker 2: can control. What I like every single person to hug
Speaker 2: and kiss every person on earth, if any If you
Speaker 2: really knew me and you know me, know me, but
Speaker 2: I'm going to like my mom. My greatest happy place
Speaker 2: is when everyone's being high to each other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, will you tell us a little bit about what
Speaker 1: that commitment looks like and why you picked charity Water.
Speaker 2: Yes, I will say that. So my company, manor X
Speaker 2: has committed to a ten million dollar donation over the
Speaker 2: next ten years to help eradicate the fact that people
Speaker 2: don't have X clean water, which is about seven hundred
Speaker 2: million plus people right now on Earth can't get in
Speaker 2: a couple of hours, which is insane.
Speaker 1: Insane.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that was that was me wanting so many
Speaker 2: things to quote unquote be fixed. I don't want war,
Speaker 2: I don't want social injustice, I don't want conflict, but
Speaker 2: I I'm not God. Yeah, Like politicians can't pull that off.
Speaker 2: Like like you know, people don't understand how this really works.
Speaker 2: It's complicated. It's not as simple as like this president's thinks.
Speaker 2: Like countries are differently and there's different of course some
Speaker 2: have more power in others. But it's hard. Let's just
Speaker 2: get it. If it was easy, the presidents you love
Speaker 2: the most would have got a lot done in eight years,
Speaker 2: and oftentimes they don't. This is a god's game, not
Speaker 2: a man and woman's game. But what is a man
Speaker 2: and woman's game is instead of crying what Joe Biden
Speaker 2: and Donald Trump should do or what you know somebody
Speaker 2: else should do, why don't you ask yourself what are
Speaker 2: you doing? Yeah? Right, Like, why don't you donate twenty
Speaker 2: five dollars to a nonprofit if you're such a goodie
Speaker 2: two shoes? Oh you say you have no money, why
Speaker 2: not go give your physical hands and feet and work
Speaker 2: on Thanksgiving warning to people that have no food because
Speaker 2: you maybe have food. Like to me, the punchline of
Speaker 2: life is I understand what everybody else should be doing.
Speaker 2: Now let's get to you. And that was a night
Speaker 2: where I could focus on what I can do. I
Speaker 2: can't change everything, but I do think clean water is
Speaker 2: a bare minimum entry to humanity and that all of
Speaker 2: us that can should consider to figure out how to contribute.
Speaker 2: And I believe in Scott as an operator. I don't
Speaker 2: believe those monies that I work very hard for are
Speaker 2: going in the garbage or poreograsy. And I believe that
Speaker 2: Scott and Charity Water will do the right thing by it,
Speaker 2: and I'm very proud to do it, and I'm very
Speaker 2: that's very nice for you to bring that up.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful. I absolutely love it. I know we're right
Speaker 1: coming to our cutoff, so I'm just going to jump
Speaker 1: to my last question for you. It's my favorite thing
Speaker 1: to ask everyone sitting here today looking out at your
Speaker 1: next week, month, year, what feels like you're work in
Speaker 1: progress right now?
Speaker 2: What am I working on?
Speaker 1: Yeah? What's your work in progress? Could be personal? Professional,
Speaker 1: I talked about it earlier.
Speaker 2: I believe that candor is the unlocked to happiness for
Speaker 2: a lot of people that are delusionally optimistic like me.
Speaker 2: Can This goes back to boundaries. Candy has been a
Speaker 2: struggle for me, which is crazy because Gary Vee publicly
Speaker 2: is the king of Candor. I'm Gary with a mic
Speaker 2: on a podcast like this or on stage king of Candor. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Gary Vee is great at candor. Gary Vaynerchuk day to
Speaker 2: day with loved ones, friends, acquaintances, employees, executives, interns struggles
Speaker 2: because he doesn't want to disappoint. He has too much
Speaker 2: of a superhero complexity, right, And I think I can
Speaker 2: do it all, and I can do a lot, but
Speaker 2: I can't do it all. And then when you're trying
Speaker 2: to do it all, you sometimes let people down and
Speaker 2: you're better off telling them the truth upfront and appeasing
Speaker 2: them and trying to figure it out later. And it
Speaker 2: is my work in progress.
Speaker 1: I love that candor.
Speaker 2: It's a good one, and I call it kind candor. Yeah,
Speaker 2: tonally my company because I think people with weaponized candor
Speaker 2: to be rude and mean.
Speaker 1: Interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, weaponized candor and they're like, they make you feel bad.
Speaker 2: They use it to politic in companies and they're like,
Speaker 2: I'm just giving you candor. No you're not. You're being manipulative, right.
Speaker 2: It's like how people like Gary I just keep it real.
Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, real negative, Like you're choosing to be
Speaker 2: cynical not optimistic. So anyway, kind candor is my ambition
Speaker 2: and my work in progress.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 2: Thank you, my friend, love you, thank you,