How Gary Vee Predicts The Next Facebook (Every Time)
Attention, Gratitude, Zuck, Logan Paul, and MrBeast - May 22, 2024 (11 months ago) • 50:36
Transcript:
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Shaan Puri | We got Gary Vee in the house! Everybody knows Gary Vee because he's all over Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. He's invested in Twitter, Slack, and Facebook before they IPO'd.
Gary's fun! We brought him on, and our goal was to ask him a bunch of questions that we're genuinely curious about. For example, which of those investments actually paid off the most? It was a very surprising number, I thought.
We also asked him about the mindsets and what he noticed hanging out with people like Zuck or Logan Paul, or different characters like that.
So enjoy this episode with Gary Vee; it's a good one!
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Sam Parr | Gary, what's going on, man? How are you? I think Sean saw something recently that you'd posted that I thought everyone knew about you. Sean, what was that thing? The report card?
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Shaan Puri | Most podcasts start with an intro. We start with a little ball-busting.
So, I have here Gary's high school report card, which you tweeted out to be fair. I'm not putting it out there; you didn't already do it, but I thought this was kind of amazing.
You tweeted out a picture of your high school report card. I'm just going to read off a few of your achievements. Gary got a C in Ceramics, a D in English, and an F in German.
In PE, you got an A. That's the only A you have on this report card. I think Algebra was a D. This one's kind of amazing: Speech, which you are known for, you got a D.
Driver's Ed? D. Gary, you were... what a turnaround! What’s your reaction when you see this?
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Gary Vaynerchuk | That a lot of data in the world is dirty; it's fake data. I think school grades are just not a tremendous indicator of what's going to happen. The speech one is crazy. The report card I tweeted out was the recap of all four years of high school.
So, a few fun facts to build on top of what you just said: I got an F in all four marking periods of German 1 my freshman year. I retook it sophomore year and got a D in the first marking period. I then proceeded to get all F's, failing language my freshman and sophomore years. In the state of New Jersey in 1994, if you did not pass two years of language, you could not graduate high school.
So, I walked into junior year of high school and took Spanish 1 with all these 9th graders as a junior. I had the pressure on, and luckily, I had Mrs. Seniora Kennedy, who saw something in me and forced me through the system. Otherwise, it was over for me.
But yeah, I mean, the speech one really stands out to you, Sean, right? To think that I got a D in speech, which was to give a speech in class, right? I did well; it's just that I, you know, I told my mom, and I talked about this this weekend. I literally did not open a book in four years of high school and did zero homework. You know, everyone who's listening went through school, I think. They would assign a book report, and it's not that I did it poorly; it's that I didn't do it. I just didn't ever do it. I literally, in four years of high school, did zero homework. Zero. Something happened where I just knew that, you know, at that...
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Gary Vaynerchuk | High school, I was already working in my dad's liquor store and selling a lot of baseball cards at shows. It was different back then; this was pre-internet. I grew up in an immigrant family. We lived in a little 4 or 5 person cocoon. My family and I really did. It was very, very, very, in hindsight, deeply immigrant.
You know what I mean? We didn't have American parent friends. My mom wasn't friends with any of my high school friends' parents. My mom asked me about what I was doing for college in February of my senior year. I was like, "Mom, it's over. I'm not going to college." She lost her mind and forced me to go. I got a postcard in the mail from Mount Ida College, filled it out, and that's literally how I went to college.
I think if I was growing up today, my intuition is that it would have been okay for me not to go to college. It would have just all been handled differently. Honestly, I think my teachers would have said to me, "You have a bright future," instead of what they said back then, which was, "You're a loser. You're going to be a garbage man." That was the big thing, Sean, Sam, in the nineties. Your teachers would tell you, "You're going to be a garbage man," which I think is really crazy because actually, it's a very good living with a high pay. It has a high pay scale.
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Sam Parr | Our friend just started a garbage business, and he's doing about $300 a year with it.
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Shaan Puri | **Joke's on you, Miss Kennedy.**
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Sam Parr | Yeah, one. | |
Shaan Puri | Of the things we do, it's always just about what you're excited about. Like, what products are you seeing? What people are you seeing? What cool stories are you seeing that you're genuinely excited about?
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Gary Vaynerchuk | Have you guys seen "Break the Web"?
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Shaan Puri | No, what's that?
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Sam Parr | Dude, they got a great tagline. So it's "Break the Web.co: The Internet's Official Scoreboard."
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Gary Vaynerchuk | This app has got my attention. Trending topics on Twitter were so big for me back in the day when it was desktop only.
Break the Web is an app that shows what's trending right now, and it seems like the underlying tech is pretty strong. You know how everybody loves to throw around terms like AI? If you're smart, you realize this is just a collection of APIs. This one is a little bit better.
I don't know, I've put it on my home screen, which is not something I've done in a long time.
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Sam Parr | Why? | |
Gary Vaynerchuk | Why do I like it?
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Sam Parr | Well, yeah, I mean, it's like I'm looking at it now. You just showed it to me. It was all the news stuff I don't really pay attention to. I don't like yours. I saw the words "Gaza," "Trump," and like five other words that were important, but like, I don't... I'm not going to read the news.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | First of all, great observation, brother. For me as well, honestly, something that's on my mind is that everyone needs to consume less news. All it does is push fear and negativity, and it's just so scary how messed up that is.
It's funny, same brother, I don't really click into that stuff. Right now, it's brand new. When I met with the founders, I only met with them for like 10 or 15 minutes. I asked them real quick, "Can we get this categorized out?" They were like, "Yeah, that's on the roadmap."
I just want pop culture and consumer trends. So, to me, when I look at Madonna, I think, "What is that?" You know, Madonna mistakenly scolded a fan again.
What's interesting, though, is that it's a great indication of where we are in society. Back to when Twitter trending topics were less political, it was really valuable. The reason I like it, or the potential of it, is obvious, especially since we're in an election season. Now, this will get eaten up too.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | Sam, on this stuff, it is an indication of the pulse. I'm always looking for what's the indication of the pulse of what people care about.
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Sam Parr | Dude, so these guys are... it looks like they only have 90 reviews. Oddly, both of these guys used to work at a bakery. The CEO worked at Pete's Coffee, and the other guy used to work at Specialties Cafe and Bakery.
So, they're both lovers of baked goods. After that, they decided to launch this. It's 3 years old, though, but it's not popular yet.
What do you think? What's your prediction? This thing's gonna be huge!
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Gary Vaynerchuk | There's no prediction back to shooting the shit, Sean. I'm not overly like, "Oh, Break the Web's gonna be the best."
The concept of date... I have a new book coming out soon this year, right? I finally feel like I've synthesized what I actually do, like long-form Twitter.
I think literally I have a meeting today where I'm gonna post my 100 most successful YouTube videos on Twitter here over the course of the next couple of months. I'm trying to stagger it a little bit because it's just very clear that Twitter is pushing video. It's gonna push it, right?
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Sam Parr | I don't know if that's going to work. I think they're... I agree, they're pushing it, but I just don't find myself using it that way.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | Yeah, that's a great call, Sam. What I know is that I never have an interest in guessing if something's going to work. I have an interest in executing on anything that might work and then dealing with the ramifications of the upside.
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Shaan Puri | Why guess when you can test for cheaper? There's almost no cost to guess, right? It's not expensive to take your best YouTube videos and have somebody repost them. That's an easy way to learn because you know you talk about day trading attention, right? All trading is mispriced assets.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | That's right. I would argue that **attention** is the most mispriced asset right now that most impacts everyone.
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Sam Parr | Alright everyone, really quick. If you've heard this podcast before, you know that Sean and I think the most important skill set you need in business is **copywriting**.
So, what we did was go through all of the podcasts that we've done—it's like 500 of them—and we found all the best copywriting tips, our resources, our frameworks, and our templates. We aggregated all of them into one simple document so you can skim it all and get everything that we've ever talked about with copywriting.
It's in the link below. It's awesome! Check it out.
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Shaan Puri | So, why is that?
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Gary Vaynerchuk | There is nobody that will ever listen to this who doesn't need **attention** as a currency to achieve what's in their stomach. Whether they want to raise money for their PTA, be President of the United States, get more listeners to their podcast, or sell their sneakers, attention is the only asset class that I think is universal.
Even a parent trying to home-school two children needs their kids to listen to them in order to get the message across. The currency of listening or consuming is profound, and we're living through the mass fragmentation of that.
If you think about parenting, it was a lot easier to get your kids to listen when, in 1954, 80% of families sat down and had dinner together for about an hour and a half. Those parents were able to communicate in a very interesting way.
Whereas now, they still can. We have technology; you can send a text or a Sam and Sean clip to your kids to get them to think about something. However, there is also so much supply, with the demand side being the same. There are only so many hours in a day.
Now, the human brain has the capacity to keep a lot more information than we think. Nonetheless, for me, more narrowly, as someone who loves business and loves to think about it, it doesn't matter what you're selling. It doesn't even matter what you're saying until you first get their attention. After that, everything is about what you're saying.
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Shaan Puri | Right.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | What’s interesting to me is that I think of it in the acronym I use internally at VaynerX and VaynerMedia: PAC—Platforms, Attention, and Culture.
Break the web plays in culture, right? There are two different currencies that I think about constantly, or two different frameworks. One is platforms. What are the top 25 platforms that have people's attention? What do they care about? From Snap to Pinterest to LinkedIn to YouTube, even within themselves, YouTube Shorts is different than YouTube. This collective of about 15 to 20 places really has, quote unquote, the attention. What are they up to? How do their algorithms work? What are their features doing? I think about them on a day-to-day basis.
Then, I think about culture. What is the slang? What are the things of interest? Who are the people of interest? It becomes a framework of what's overpriced and underpriced execution.
For example, I think the Super Bowl is the most underpriced media in the world. It's very hard to get 130 million people to watch 30 seconds of a video and actually want to pay attention to it. That $7 to $8 million vig I think is great. The problem is the creative is the variable of success. The media might be a great deal, but if your 30-second video is forgettable, or stinks, or you overpaid for making it, that’s a problem.
For instance, Verizon paid Beyoncé to be in that commercial. If they paid her $500,000, I think they stole her. If they paid $40 million, I think they overpaid for her. I don't know what the number is; my guess is it's somewhere in between.
But that is basically how my brain works and how I think about communication, marketing, brand building, perception changing, and just the whole world. It’s how I think about the world.
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Sam Parr | Have you guys seen... let me ask if you guys have seen this in terms of cool stuff. So, Perplexity is awesome, but they have this new thing. I didn't see them talk about it a lot. It's called Perplexity AI / Podcast.
They've come out with a daily podcast that's 5 to 10 minutes long, written by Perplexity. It has beautiful background music, and they've got this British guy. Have you ever seen those Planet Earth videos where it's like, "Now we see the mother cheetah go..."?
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Shaan Puri | after the | |
Sam Parr |
Yeah, they've got this voice that sounds exactly like him reading the script, and it sounds awesome. The voice is powered by this thing called Eleven Labs.
Dude, I went to Eleven Labs, Sean. I uploaded a ton of our voice and I was like, "**[expletive]** it, let's just see if I can make a podcast." It's... way... but it's like it's the best thing I've ever heard. Have you guys seen those podcasts and heard their voices?
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Shaan Puri | Wanna see Sam speak Hindi? 11 Labs made a clip. They just translated the podcast, auto-dubbed using AI in Hindi, and it's phenomenal.
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Gary Vaynerchuk |
By the way, it's something we've been working on for about a year. I think next year is the full year where like every single thing I do, every video, every language... we're there, dude.
Dude, I haven't seen Sam, I haven't seen the podcast, but I just took note. Like, I can't wait to listen to it. Look, that it's...
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Sam Parr | So good! They’ve not made a big deal about it. This has not been like a big hoopla. I randomly came across it while listening to it. I thought, "I'm going to listen to this every day. This is great!" It's David Attenborough telling me about the news. It sounds awesome.
Which language should we do? Should we do Hindi? Is that the one?
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Gary Vaynerchuk | I'm doing everything.
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Shaan Puri | Like, yeah, if you're going to do one, you might as well do all.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | Yeah, just like... I just think that. I also think like everyone's going to go after the big languages. For example, I get excited about Portuguese. I'm like, "Fuck it! Everyone's going to go to Mandarin and Hindi and like the big numbers." You know, I'm just going to own Portugal and Brazil.
But that's tongue-in-cheek. I think the reality is over the next three years, all of it's going to go down in cost so much that it won't even matter. The U.S. in seven years is going to laugh that we ever had it just in one language. They won't even understand. They'll be like...
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Shaan Puri | Dude, have you ever seen that talk that this guy Alex Schultz gave about Facebook's growth? He was the top Facebook growth guy early on. When they created the growth team, it was him, Chamath, and the guy I think Javier, who now runs it.
He put a chart up on the screen during a Y Combinator (YC) talk. There were a bunch of dots, and he said, "You know, all these dots are feature releases." You could see one dot where everything starts growing right after that. He asked, "Anyone want to take a guess what that dot is?"
People in the audience shouted things like, "Photos!" "Photo tagging!" "It's when you released mobile!" But he said, "No, we don't know." Then he revealed, "It's language translation. Local language translation." He explained that the biggest growth driver in Facebook's growth, bar none, was when they localized the service.
He mentioned that it was not easy. I don't know if you know this, but Facebook had to do something like a Wikipedia thing because there are 186 countries they had to deal with. They realized they needed users to basically retranslate the site for their local region, and they incentivized people to do that. That's how they mass-translated overnight. No other social network did this, and it took off.
That was the first time I heard about this. The second was when we did our basketball camp with Mr. Beast. Gary, I advise you to come next time! Mr. Beast basically hosted a basketball camp at his house, and he did this presentation. He said, "Here's one thing I'm doing that nobody else is really doing, which is every video I do, I now create channels in Portuguese and everywhere else."
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Gary Vaynerchuk | He told me, Jimmy told me that whole thing several years ago. | |
Shaan Puri | Such a good bet.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | By the way, tell me about this basketball camp because I'm playing basketball tomorrow at 6 AM. This is how much I love it. I'm 48.
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Sam Parr | You'll fit right in. We got plenty of wheelchairs and bags of ice.
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Shaan Puri | Dude, it's hilarious.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | But I'm a nineties Knicks fan, so no easy layups. Is that politically correct in this basketball camp?
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can hack your heart away; it's all good.
I wonder if you do anything like this. We do this thing called Camp MFM, which stands for My First Millionaire. We like the idea of getting together. You know, when you go to a conference, you end up having a good time. If you go speak somewhere, you end up having a good time. But there's kind of this dread in my stomach of like, "Ugh, another conference." I just don't want to do the boring stuff. I guess I have a resistance to doing the same thing everyone else is doing in general.
So we thought, how do we get the benefits of going and networking without ever calling it networking or a conference or anything else? We created basically an adult summer camp. It was like, what if for a weekend we just rented a house? In this case, we actually just stay at Mister B's house now because he ended up wanting to come.
So we go to his house, and then we bring in a trainer from the NBA. He treats us like we're washed-up NBA players, basically puts us through their program, and we just play ball all day.
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Sam Parr | When is it? One just happened, but it was big. It was like the founder of Airbnb, Mr. Beast, all these guys.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | Joe is the best. I have an email from Joe that says, "Gary, we're fans. We want you to look at our company," and it was [email protected]. I never saw it, you know, or maybe I did and just overlooked it. But I look at that email; I have it on a separate laptop, and I check it once in a while just because I love it.
This is actually a fun segue back to chopping it up. If it was just us three, and everyone's wondering where we're going, where do you guys sit on losing? We just talked about basketball, so I was thinking about me going to this basketball thing. My favorite thing in basketball, in pickup games, is to lose the first game. It is my favorite.
I talked about this on Steve Bartlett's podcast. I've received a billion emails about this. There's something about it that transforms everything in my body. The blood in me... like everything changes chemically, and then everything in life stops. The only thing that matters to me in the world is that we have to win game two.
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Shaan Puri | That's so funny he said that. When we did the camp, the same thing happened. The very first game, I'm trying to be the host of the event. So, I'm like, "Okay, yeah, you guys play. I'll sit out first, no problem."
We get in, I'm passing the ball, and I'm like, "Oh, that's Joe Gebbia. Let me not let him drive. I'm not gonna try to hurt the founder of Airbnb or Mr. Beast."
Oh, that was cool, man! I see someone taking a video, and I'm like, "That's cool. That's gonna be a cool clip. It's gonna go viral."
And then I was like, "Wait, fuck that! I'm in the clip! He's scoring on me." I realized he's no longer Mr. Beast; that's Jimmy, and that's Joe. Now we're competing to win, and then the whole event got a lot more intense.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | Fun when it... | |
Shaan Puri | Equalized. Everybody's job titles dropped, and it's basically who's here to win and who's here to play. That's when it got real.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | It's why I love entrepreneurship. Where I'm going with this is that email excites me. You know, like I'm like, "Yeah, eat it, Gary!" Like, dude.
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Sam Parr | That one would have been a bigger one for you than Uber too.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | No, it wouldn't have. But maybe... no, because I was the... they both probably believe it or not. This is how much startups were back then. They both would have been priced between $48,000,000.
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Sam Parr | That's crazy, right?
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Gary Vaynerchuk |
I know, bro. I got into Tumblr's B round... Series B. Not angel, not seed, not Series A. I got into Tumblr's Series B. This is actually it right here. This is my Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook stock. I got into Tumblr's Series B at a $14,000,000 valuation.
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Sam Parr | That's insane.
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Shaan Puri | That's like, you know, precede now.
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Gary Vaynerchuk |
That was literally 2007 or 2008, right? We're only talking 16 years ago. So like, you guys are young dudes, so think 16 years ahead. How old will you be in 16 years, Sean?
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Shaan Puri | Dude, I don't even want to know. 52... 50? I don't know what.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | Sam, how? | |
Shaan Puri | Old, am I right?
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Gary Vaynerchuk | Honestly, no bullshit. I don't know if you guys hang out with like 60, 70, or 80-year-old business people like I do. I do a lot of that because it's the best. I mean, to me, the two extremes are the best: hanging out with 17-year-olds who are, like, shitting on all of us, saying, "These fuckers are gonna wait till they see what I'm gonna do," and then 73-year-olds who are just... the amount of 60, 70, and 80-year-old businessmen and women I know that go at it because they love it is stunning.
It's still what they do, and it gets me excited because at 48, it's like, man, I'm still in halftime, right? Like, I'm in... it makes me, you know, I get excited about that.
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Sam Parr | I wanted to ask you about that. I think you and I kind of have similar backgrounds, where we were raised around a rough crowd every once in a while. Yes, and I still kind of have a little bit of that, where I enjoy doing good, "rat shit" every once in a while.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | Same. | |
Sam Parr | and | |
Shaan Puri | Gary Sam's nickname on the pod is "Hose Water" because he's just no water fowls, baby. Just drink it straight out the hose.
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Sam Parr | So, he's Sam Hose Water Par. | |
Gary Vaynerchuk | Dude, I'd love to. I mean, hose water was the...
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Sam Parr | Best. It's the best, dude. Such a... | |
Shaan Puri | Hose water. | |
Gary Vaynerchuk | I drank out of the hose literally from 1981 to 1982.
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Sam Parr | I peed in the backyard more than I pee in the toilet.
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Shaan Puri | 100%
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Sam Parr | They used to call me "Look, Ma, no hands!" like every day.
So, listen, I had a question. We're all probably a little bit similar in that we kind of did a bunch of crappy stuff. Now, Gary, you're older and a little further along in your career in terms of success than we are. But we've all done interesting things where we're able to hang out with some of these guys who are legitimate billionaires.
I'm not sure if you are or not, but you're in that ballpark. I see you with Michael Rubin and whatever. You hang out with some of the shot callers of the world.
What do you think is the difference between the store owner who's doing, you know, a retail guy doing half a million or $1,000,000 a year, the $10,000,000 a year business, the $100,000,000 net worth person, and the $1,000,000,000 net worth person? Do they all have similar mindsets, or is it just maybe luck or the industry they picked? A different industry?
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Gary Vaynerchuk | Yeah, two things. It's 12:34, and I still don't know why 11:11 has everyone's attention and 12:34 doesn't. The 1, 2, 3, 4 is just so cool.
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Shaan Puri | Should we make a wish real quick?
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Gary Vaynerchuk |
I don't know, let's make a wish! But we should start a trend and try to make 12:34 matter for entrepreneurs. That's a really fun question, Sam. My brain, as you were asking it, goes in me...
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Sam Parr | Focused on 1, 2, 3, 4. | |
Gary Vaynerchuk |
Well, yeah... I just happened to look over and see it. It caught my eye. I've always thought about 12:34, I've always thought it was interesting that it has no pop culture relevance.
The first thing that goes through my mind on this question is risk tolerance and fear. Right? So, by the way Gary, I think it's fear.
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Shaan Puri | I just had an idea.
1234. I get it. I wanna... I gotta use it.
1234 should be where you shoot your shot.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | I love that when you... when.
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Shaan Puri | You see, 1-2-3-4, that's when you gotta send that text. You gotta send the tweet. You gotta send the email right there. That's the idea for 1-2-3-4. We can make this a thing.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | Can you get somebody to register something like **1234.org**? Because I feel like, you know, I don't want these hustler kids—like the 13-year-old me—would listen to this and immediately register **1234.com**.
I think it's fear. I think about my dad a lot. My dad... I think it's how people view their ability to go backwards. So, I think there's something very scary about my chemicals. And Sam, I've always felt this in you as well. It's funny that you brought it up. I don't know if you... I don't know you well enough to know this, and I'm not even sure you're going to believe me when I say it, but I do think you have a good shot at understanding what I'm about to say.
My favorite Rocky is **Rocky 6**, when he goes back to Philly with nothing.
Yeah, Sean, there's something so weird in me. It's almost like, am I sandbagging myself? Like, I'm going to be very vulnerable here. I don't view it as like I'm cool; I actually view it as I'm potentially flawed. Right? Like, there's something in me that romanticizes being okay with it all falling down.
I'm back in, like, Queens in a $400 a month apartment. The entire internet is like, "See, he was fucking overrated! I told you!" All the people that love me, all the friends that I have that don't love me are like, "See, your fucking guy was a loser. He fucked it up. He sucks."
I don't know why I like that, but I believe, Sam, to answer your question, it's something to do with that chemical. I believe the people that... I think you brought up some good stuff. I think a lot about if my dad had a supermarket instead of a liquor store, I would have taken that to way bigger heights because liquor was... you couldn't ship it. And sure...
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Sam Parr | You know, like there's a ton of components.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | Yeah, there's a ton of serendipity. Honestly, I think a lot about if my dad didn't want me to work in his store. I would have gone to California because I fell in love with tech. Who the heck knows what I could have created in '95, '96, or '97? I could have had one of those Mark Cuban moments.
I think about that. For everyone who's listening, and if you have kids, like this: if you can sell, you're in the game. If you can sell, you'll never be at zero.
So, what do you got here? Is 1234.com available?
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Sam Parr | No, dude. 1234 is owned by a telecom.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | Yeah, that's what I figured. That's important. I like the one, like the 137. Yeah, do that.
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Shaan Puri | Are you kidding me, dude? I love that! That was so dope.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | I was so pumped about this, bro.
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Shaan Puri | The funny thing, by the way, Ben, my guy, he texted us a screenshot of GoDaddy. It's 1234.org for $15,000. He just said, "Pull the trigger?" | |
Gary Vaynerchuk | No, no, don't... don't pull that one. We're good.
Yeah, actually, that's a good one. I never think you should overpay for names because I think names are made.
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Sam Parr | Dude, I agree. I agree.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | Right, Sam, but do... | |
Sam Parr | You know who disagrees? **Fucking Darmesh.** Darmesh at...
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Gary Vaynerchuk | I know.
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Sam Parr | Dude, I've been with them multiple times. So, Darmesh founded HubSpot, which bought my company. I've gotten close with him. He's like, "Dude, I bought Chat.com today."
I'm like, "Why?" He goes, "Because it was available." I was like, "What are you gonna do with it?" He's like, "I'm not sure. I'm gonna figure something out." When I paid well, **eight figures** for it.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | Yeah, look, he's smart. He knows that, you know, as long as...
I mean, to me, the scary thing for... Let me take a step back and not go too fast. He's smart enough to know he could probably flip that because it's a very, very, very big deal.
On the flip side, there is a little concern for me about what happens when this no longer becomes the remote control of our society.
I'm very fascinated by 20 years from now. Talk about 16 years ago on Tumblr. If you told me that 16 years from now we would live in a predominant VR world, I would be like, "Maybe." I can see that possibility, right?
You can see that it's pushing in a direction. I don't think it's going to end up being these Apple Pro, you know, Google Glass, Snap, the Facebook thing, Quest. My intuition is that it's going to have to be much more lightweight.
But I never underestimate the human being. I'm positive somebody's going to make the contact lenses that work like this, and then we're off to the races.
Now, back to the way I think about day trading attention: this no longer houses the attention; now it's housed here. Whoever controls that paradigm wins big.
And then all of a sudden, does .com even matter in that? Is that how the UI/UX works? Does .com matter at all in 1990?
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Shaan Puri | Dude, that's how I feel about SEO businesses right now. With ChatGPT and Google's just trying to give you the answer.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | That's why VaynerMedia never did search. When I started the company 14 years ago, everyone was like, "What the heck? Why don't you do search?" I was like, first of all, I thought if I built a very big company, I'd be able to **merge and acquire** search if I wanted to add it, right? It was already established. I grew up on search the decade, the 15 years before.
So here's a good one for the kids: If you're building towards the future and you're capable, remember that you can always buy the current. That's how I thought about search. I was going to master social in '09, and I felt like social was going to eat up search anyway. I think it's starting to happen now.
Search is in a weird spot. Google is in a weird spot. It's in a great spot in some ways, but yeah, I think search is definitely a different world. I actually spoke to somebody on Thursday who is really getting hurt because he was one-dimensional on search. That's such a fear of mine. If you sell your stuff via email, via your podcast, via social media content, or via search, you must develop into a **Swiss Army knife**. Because if you're just a fork, if you're just one-dimensional, you're going to get caught.
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Sam Parr |
Hey Gary, let me ask you about that. You were saying a second ago, "I'm not afraid to go back." So, like the way that I run my personal finances is I've got my safety net. I've got this account that has enough money that I'm good forever, and that's in Vanguard and bonds. It's like... I've never touched that. And then anything above that amount, I'll bet it and I'll start new shit.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | Same. | |
Sam Parr | And so, you're talking about like you don't mind going back, but it sounds like that's not exactly how you run your finances.
So, do you have like a safety net? And then anything above that, you're like, "Dude, bet it, bet it, bet it"? Or do you just use profits from Vayner to make these bets? How does that work?
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Gary Vaynerchuk | Yes, I have. I'm going to be comfortably transparent. I'm very fortunate, so my net worth is $1,000,000. But that's it. That's it, Sam.
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Sam Parr | Wait, so you only keep $1,000,000 in your liquid portfolio? That's your safety net?
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Shaan Puri | No, no.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | No, I have other things. I have money in all sorts of places, but I have this one place that has **$1,000,000** and literally everything else is in play. | |
Shaan Puri | Wow.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | Now, Sean, I want to paint a very clear picture here because I don't want to create hyperbole. I haven't bet everything on everything, but if I ever feel the way I felt about Facebook in 2007 when I put my $236,000 in savings and invested $200,000 into Facebook, right? If that ever happens again, I'm willing to bet very large.
That feeling is similar to the feeling I had about the internet when I saw it in '95, and it's similar to the feeling I had about Friendster and MySpace. That little like, "Oh, the internet's changing." I look for those moments.
And, you know, again, I'm willing to go big. But to your point, Sam, it's not like I'll go to $0. You know, $1,000,000 is a lot of money, especially if you're capable. I don't know, I feel very...
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Sam Parr | Your reputation.
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Gary Vaynerchuk |
Yeah, correct. I also think about "Face Off" like where you change... I have these very deep-seated... it goes back to like wanting to win a basketball game.
I think it's more... I think the worst thing for my love of entrepreneurship that's happened is what Sam just said: I no longer can do it without anyone knowing. Yeah, it's a whole different game. It was so fun when people didn't know.
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Shaan Puri | What you're saying reminds me of "Two-Faced." I think it's super interesting that your answer to the question about the difference you've seen in mindset and psychology was about who's willing to go backwards.
Almost what you said was that you kind of crave it. There's like a romantic idea about going back, which I resonate with a lot. It's almost like there are TV shows I wish I could watch again for the first time.
In the same way, there's no greater feeling than going from not making it to making it. Once you've made it and you try to make more, it doesn't have the same thrill, adventure, satisfaction, or self-respect.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | You have to almost go into different games. I worry about that. Let me rephrase: I don't worry about it, but I sense that there may come a day when I talk a lot about never retiring and dying at my desk.
Then there's an equal part of me that realizes I'm wired in a way where I might wake up at 79 and think, "You know what? I'm done. I'm just going to focus on my grandchild." I just don't know. I think we all underestimate how long life is.
We underestimate our capacity to make hard decisions and to take different directions that we can't see along the way. Then there's luck. Look, we've lived through a lot of prosperity. The three of us have been very fortunate regarding where we lived during what era.
There's a lot going on in the world. You know, there were people in the Roaring Twenties talking about this over dinner, and then a very challenging 30 years punched them in the face. Everything seemed so great in 1927. America was on its way to being awesome, and then came a massive world war, the atomic bomb, Korea, Vietnam, and social unrest.
All these things are fun to think about. It's fun to romanticize the future. But I will say this: I'm actually going to ask you guys this—what do you think your personal relationship is with gratitude versus taking things for granted?
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Sam Parr | I changed on that once I actually sold my company and was financially free. Then, like two weeks after the sale of the company, the CEO got into a life-threatening accident. I was like, "Oh, that could've ruined my deal."
Like, this all could have been ruined. Then I hit some threshold and thought, "Dude, I did not work any harder than anyone else who has done some of the things but failed." This is 100% luck.
I'm so grateful that it just has worked in my favor. In many ways, I feel like I am the luckiest guy around. It just seems like I'm so gracious for the luck that I have. That's it. It's kind of changed to more of a mindset where I've just been gifted this, and I'm so lucky. I'm thankful.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | Good for you, Sam. Sean, where are you at with it?
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Shaan Puri | I'm different, so to me, I'm like, "Alright, I think people make a mistake. They're grateful in the macro."
If you say to somebody, "What are you grateful for?" almost everybody will respond with, "My family, my health." Yep. And to me, this is... I'm not saying they're wrong; obviously, those are great things. But it's sort of like when a company says, "Our values are integrity and excellence." It's true but not useful. It basically leaves no register.
So I try... my focus is, how do you be grateful in the micro? Meaning, can I be... if I'm in an elevator, can I find something in that moment? Can I get a practice rep of gratitude in that? Because that actually shifts me. When I can take a breath, be grateful for the fresh air, I can look at something my kid is doing and how silly they are, and just in that moment find something.
If I could do that, you know, 10 or 15 times a day, that is, you know, like the antidote.
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Gary Vaynerchuk |
Yeah, I think that's how micro and macro work together. I really do think of it as being alive. Like, just thank you for that... I'm not dead, I didn't die last night, right? And I... to your... I think when your macro is that, I think you're actually... I love what you said. You're just talking about applying [the concept].
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, that's how I apply it exactly.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | That's my. | |
Shaan Puri | That's my relationship with it.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | Yeah, that's right. But like, if you're getting to that place, that's how I live. I'm like... literally, it's a nice sunny day in New York today, and I'm just like, "Yeah, that's awesome!"
You know, like, just choosing positivity. I think people have been so sucked into focusing on what they don't have or what's not going well. | |
Shaan Puri |
Naval has an amazing definition of happiness, by the way. I don't know if you've ever heard this. He goes:
> "Happiness is what you feel when you don't feel like anything's missing in your life."
People think happiness is something you've got to achieve, something you've got to go create, something you've got to get. It's like... you know, you think you need to accumulate things to have happiness. And he's like, actually, it's just when you're not focused on what's missing.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | Well, that's right. I think simplicity is just so... *fucking*... man, it's so right.
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Shaan Puri | But you don't.
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Sam Parr | Your life is not simplistic.
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Shaan Puri | I don't... | |
Sam Parr | I don't know what your personal life is like. I don't know if you have multiple homes and what you own, but your professional life is not simplistic. | |
Gary Vaynerchuk |
I'll tell you why it's simplistic. I'm not attached to my professional success or who I am. I'm in a very weird place with my winning and losing and my "Gary Vee" of it all. Like, I care so much, but it's a game. My professional life is a game.
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Shaan Puri | Right.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | I don't want to be unhappy. I fight for happiness too much, and I think it is in the simplicity. You're right; the day-to-day is chaotic. There's meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting, right?
But I like it. I like juggling 17 balls, and I'm not upset about the 13 that fell on the ground and broke. More importantly, I'm not worried about the people who are watching me juggle. When the ball breaks, that I think is massive.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, but when Theo Von makes fun of you, it's pretty hilarious.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | That is like the ultimate, because I love Theo. To me, going back to where we came from, Sam, I'm like, "My God, I've gotten to a place where someone as epic as Theo Von or any other comedians, like Tim Dillard, is involved." I love these guys.
I'm always fascinated when people struggle with a comedian razzing. I think it's such flattery.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, that was awesome! It was awesome. I saw that and I was like, "Oh, the guy I look up to, he's crossed over to mainstream. It's awesome!"
Sean, what were we going to say?
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Gary Vaynerchuk | Well, I... | |
Shaan Puri |
I want to ask two questions:
1. You showed those stock certificates on the wall. Speaking of winning, I saw:
- You invested in Twitter in '09
- Slack pre-IPO
2. I think the Liquid Death guy used to work with you... worked for you?
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Gary Vaynerchuk | Yeah, he literally worked at VaynerMedia the day before he started Liquid Death.
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Shaan Puri | Facebook pre-IPO. I'm curious, what was the best investment for you? What paid off in terms of the bets you've made? Those are the winners.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | I haven't sold one share of Facebook yet. Oh.
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Shaan Puri | That's insane.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | But that goes back to that... that goes.
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Shaan Puri | Back. Good. | |
Gary Vaynerchuk |
Yeah, that goes back to "jockey over horse." I tell all my friends who get into investing, I'm like, "Man, they're like 'What have you learned?'" I'm like, "What I've learned is... when I only invested in the person."
When I... I've hit this new state where I'm really trying to be obsessed with the person *and* the idea. And if either one isn't like an A+, then I'm like... [shakes head] right?
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Shaan Puri | You said "and" or "or."
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Gary Vaynerchuk | And right, okay, but if... | |
Shaan Puri | I and the horse.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | That's right, but if I... or it's a fully person, not an idea.
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Sam Parr |
"What year did you do that? Did you do that Facebook deal like 2007?"
"Oh my god! So I mean, I don't even know... You'd be up 400 times, I don't know. I mean, a lot."
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Gary Vaynerchuk | A lot. | |
Shaan Puri | I want to get your rapid take on this. One of the things we do on this podcast is we love anecdotes and little insights on people that we think are wired in an interesting way. Maybe not even the way we want to be wired, right?
Like, you know, Elon is really interesting. We don't think he's perfect. We think there are a bunch of things he does that are cringe, and there are a bunch of things he does that are epic.
So, I'm curious if you've bumped into, studied, or have an opinion on any of these people. I want to go rapid fire and see if you have something. Give us either an insane story or an interesting insight.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | So, yeah. Is this from outside observation, or if I met them, is it inside observation?
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Shaan Puri | Either one, or if you have nothing, you could say "pass." I don't have anything on them.
Alright, so the first one I want to do is Zuck. You've talked about Facebook and the jockey. Give me Zuck.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | Dude, I think he's uncomfortably underrated. He's the only person that I've met back in '07. In this era now, I think it's getting more obvious, but he understood attention. He literally tried to buy Twitter, he bought Instagram, he bought WhatsApp, and he tried to buy Snap. He just understood that attention was the only asset.
And he's a nice kid. He's just a very simple, nice kid. I'm happy with the way things are going for him a little bit right now. People can see how doofy he is. You see him in the corner of the UFC thing, and you're like, "This is just a nerdy kid." You know what I mean? He doesn't give a fuck.
Now, people will think it's because he's got a trillion dollars, but it's just that he's a dentist's son from Cadet. He's just a nerd with no bad intent who spent his childhood coding, which put him in a position. He put in the hours.
I'm a fan, man. I think he's a very good operator. The reason I've never sold a share of Facebook is that I've been committed for a long time in my own mind, which was, "I'll never sell until he's gone."
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Shaan Puri | Logan Paul | |
Gary Vaynerchuk |
So, do you know that Logan Paul was starting to emerge very little on Vine when VaynerMedia, for Virgin Mobile, did a campaign called "Finding the Next Vine Scholar"?
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Shaan Puri | Discovered him, right? Like when he was... I think he had like 15,000 or 18,000 followers at the time.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | It was crazy. And full disclosure, Jerome Jarre, who was one of the 10 most followed people on Vine, was my partner. Jerome and I launched the first influencer agency called Grapestory back in 2013. He was the one who said, you know, he let me pick from three people. I think all three of them got big, but I think Logan is... you know, he grew up in the limelight.
Think about what happened in Japan or all this stuff. It's tough. These kids... you think about child stars. When we grew up, we all knew that child stars would be messed up, right? And now I think like everyone's going through that. The limelight is hard.
So, I think Logan is well-intended. I think he's very entrepreneurial—like, very entrepreneurial. I've always thought of him as like Marky Mark, or the Fresh Prince, or The Rock. Meaning, I always watched him from afar, and as I got to know him a little bit, I was like, okay, this kid is Logan Paul today, just like Marky Mark was Marky Mark before he was Mark Wahlberg. Just like the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, you know, what Will Smith was before he was Will Smith.
I've always thought that Logan would crossover, and he has, obviously, with WWE in a lot of ways. I think that will continue. If he told me Logan is like an action star and is at the Academy Awards, like John Cena was last night, is Logan doing that in 15 years? I'm like, that makes sense to me. That's how he's wired.
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Shaan Puri | Sam, you know he's only 28. He's only 28 years old. The dude basically, like, you know, he's 14 or whatever. He won in the social media game.
Now, think about the pivots, right? Both him and Jake. But the thing about the pivots is now he's got "Impulsive," so he's got the podcast where he's super chill. It's the opposite of the crazy vine prankster guy. He pivoted to being the guy asking questions. He's inquisitive, he's curious.
He's got, you know, the popular podcast, goes to WWE, becomes the champion in WWE, creates Prime, which is going to make him a billionaire by the time he's 28 or 29 years old. Now, because Prime is probably going to...
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Gary Vaynerchuk | Be. | |
Shaan Puri | Worth tens of billions of dollars. If you know, they did $2 billion in sales.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | Last year, I'm in this world. Like, Prime is definitely like a 2, depending on the time they decide to trade it. It's 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 billion.
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Sam Parr | That high seven, I. | |
Gary Vaynerchuk | I talked to Mr. Shit. | |
Shaan Puri | I talked to Mr. Beast, and he was like, "20 billion is where Prime is going."
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Gary Vaynerchuk |
That would be very, very... I mean, that's like... Look, I never underestimate Jimmy's foresight because he's great. I've known him a long time, but just being in M&A at CPG levels, my intuition is that they won't be patient enough to get to that big of a number. Right? Like...
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Shaan Puri | They just... they're not operating. The other guys are; they're not.
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Sam Parr | They got the job. They're not operating. Yeah, they're pretty young too, though.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | Yep, and more importantly, shit changes. Like I said, everything's all kicks and giggles until it's actually in front of you.
It's all fun and games until you fly to Atlanta and Coca-Cola actually offers you $5.9 million. You've got to sit there with KSI and Logan and those guys and say, "Okay, if we say yes..." Because you know what they're going to say.
You guys are like this, so you're really going to understand what I'm about to say. You know what they're going to say? They're going to say, "We could do this right now and then in 24 months start..."
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Shaan Puri | A new thing, yeah.
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Gary Vaynerchuk |
Yeah, like a shampoo or a deodorant and sell it to Dove. So I think it'll be interesting to see how long they hold their breath. And don't forget, one bad year... you guys know this, how businesses work. One bad year takes a lot of leverage off the table in a negotiation.
So, you know, they'll be thoughtful about that because no matter what you are, once you saturate distribution... and don't forget they're selling on something that's more like Supreme, right? They're selling on *cool*.
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Shaan Puri | Cool, yeah. | |
Gary Vaynerchuk | Right, kids are buying it literally to drink it for the status symbol, like a fashion brand. That can only last so long. Z Cavarricci's were only cool for so long. | |
Shaan Puri | Those are the... that's the... that we, me and you, have no clue.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | The reference was for all the Jersey boys that grew up in the late eighties and early nineties. People will Google it; they were the hottest jeans pants. | |
Shaan Puri | If you... | |
Gary Vaynerchuk | Were you to wear your cabaricci's? You were not. And I didn't have them. By the way, I was having a great life, but they were messing it up. | |
Sam Parr | Is compared prime to Jinko jeans. What were you going to say, Sean?
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Shaan Puri |
Well, I asked you a bunch of names that are, you know, basically names that people know. I'm curious who do you think is dope? Who are you learning from? Who do you kind of admire? Who do you admire? Who do you learn from? Who are you inspired by?
Because... okay, a lot of people are inspired by Gary Vee. Who is Gary V inspired by?
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Gary Vaynerchuk | That's a great question. I'm a little weird on this one, but I'm glad I brought up "Break the Web." I'm inspired by the collective more than an individual.
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Shaan Puri | The field.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | Yeah, I love the field, brother. I spend almost all of my time on the collective, so I don't even have the allocation of time.
I am also very inspired by the following person: show me the person that's currently living through massive adversity. Like, somebody's list... I'll tell you, somebody who's ten times more inspiring to me than I think I am or deserve to be to others.
Show me the kid that's listening right now whose father passed away from a stroke. He's 16, he's got three younger siblings, and his mom has to now work two jobs. He's holding it down for the family, right? He's literally a sophomore in high school, and he's basically the father figure for three siblings. He had to quit the football team because he's also like... I’m the son of two parents who lost a parent before they were 15.
Back to gratitude, I think I got really messed up by being scared that my parents were gonna die my whole childhood. But it kind of converted into this gratitude framework that's insane. It makes me unstoppable, you know?
So, for me, it's less about Bezos or Elon or, you know, Oprah or anything. It's much more about someone none of us know that is really in it. | |
Sam Parr | That bodega owner energy.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | That stuff I grew up with, and I mess with it. But that person, I think, has it lucky. Back to earlier, our simplicity—like owning your own little business and living within your means—that's kind of chill. It could be really epic. It doesn't put you on like this podcast, but it's a great life in a lot of ways. I see it a lot; I lived it while building my dad's business from 22 to 34.
I'm not that person, the one that's like, "Back to your..." Sam, the spin of the wheel really created real adversity. I'll say it again: not a peep of complaining. There's a very small group of kids that get that, and they just convert into leaders instead of saying, "Woe is me" or rebelling. I admire that level of tenacity, grit, and accountability. It's like, "Fuck it, this is on me. I gotta put this shit on my shoulders. I'm gonna do this for my three siblings." I admire the hell out of that kid.
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Shaan Puri |
I had a quote I wrote down when I was doing the research for this that I think is exactly what you're talking about. It goes:
> "Forget rags to riches. Some people are just rags to rags, just so that their kids have a shot at rags to riches."
I respect the shit out of that. I love that quote.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | Yeah, I remember. Thank you for finding that. I really... man, I'm really affected by that. Like, Sam really hit it on the head. I hate the word "luck" because I think that people weaponize it against those who have worked really hard.
But I believe in serendipity and luck quite a bit because it's just the way... like, I was born in the Soviet Union. I got lucky to get out of there when I did. If I hadn't, I would have come to this country in 1991 when it fell. I would have been 16 or 17. I'd sound like Ivan Drago on these podcasts. It would have all been different.
You know, I just really do admire people who... I really do think entitlement and lack of accountability has become a disease in first world countries in 2024. I just really admire people who play the other...
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Sam Parr | We appreciate you doing this, man. You have day trading attention coming out, I think, on May 21, right?
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Gary Vaynerchuk | That sounds right.
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Sam Parr | You're the man! We appreciate you hanging out.
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Shaan Puri | Thanks for coming on, man.
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Gary Vaynerchuk | I gotta jump to this board meeting. I appreciate it.
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Shaan Puri | Alright, take care. See you!
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Gary Vaynerchuk |
Love you guys. Good luck!
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