My First Million - How Gary Vee Predicts The Next Facebook (Every Time)

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

Episode 588:  Sam Parr ( https://twitter.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://twitter.com/ShaanVP ) chop it up with Gary Vee about which of his investments paid off the most, how much cash he keeps as a safety net and what he’s noticed from hanging out with people like Logan Paul, Zuck, and MrBeast.  Want to see Sam and Shaan’s smiling faces? Head to the MFM YouTube Channel and subscribe - http://tinyurl.com/5n7ftsy5 Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (1:28) Good news for the “C” students out there (5:31) Break the Web (8:12) Attention is the only universal asset class (12:26) Perplexity.ai/podcast (14:30) Alex Schultz on growth and language translation (16:23) Adult camps better than conferences (20:06) Millionaires v billionaires (25:44) Planning for a post-iPhone world (28:43) Gary's safety net (31:41) Micro v macro gratitude (37:45) Gary's best investment (39:08) Gary's take of Zuck, Logan Paul (45:44) Who Gary admires — Links: • Gary Vaynerchuk - https://garyvaynerchuk.com/ • Gary on Twitter - https://twitter.com/garyvee • Day Trading Attention - https://tinyurl.com/yckc8erw • Break The Web - https://www.breaktheweb.co/ • Lecture 6 - Growth - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_yHZ_vKjno • Get HubSpot's Free AI-Powered Sales Hub: enhance support, retention, and revenue all in one place https://clickhubspot.com/sym — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth • Pitch your startup for a shot at a $1M investment with Sam Parr as the MC https://clickhubspot.com/pitch — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

All right, we got Gary Vee in the house. Everyone knows Gary Vee because he's all over Twitter and Instagram and LinkedIn. And he's invested in Twitter and Slack and Facebook before they IPOed. Gary's fun. We brought him on it. Our goal was, let's ask him a bunch of questions that we're genuinely curious about. Like, which of those investments actually paid off the most? And it was a very, very surprising number.

We also talked about what he's excited about now. And we asked him about the mindset and what he noticed hanging out with people like Zuck or Logan Paul or different characters like that. So enjoy this episode with Gary V. It's a good one. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. 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? 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.

So I'm not putting it out there you didn't already do. But I thought this is kind of amazing. So 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, an F in German. P.E. You got an A. That's the only A you have on this report card, I think.

Algebra D. This one's kind of amazing. Speech, which like you are known for speech. You got a D. Driver's at D. Gary, you were, what a turnaround. What a turnaround. What's your reaction?

when you see this? That a lot of data in the world is dirty. It's fake data. And 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 little fun facts to build on top of what you just said. I got an F in all four marking periods of German one freshman year.

I retook it sophomore year. I got a D in the first marking period and then proceeded to get all Fs, failed language, my freshman in sophomore year. And 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 high school and took Spanish one with all these ninth graders as a junior. and I had the pressure on and luckily I got Mrs. Senora Kennedy 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 your point shot, right? Like to think that I got a D in speech, which was give a speech in class, right? Which I did well. It's just that I, you know, I told my mom and I talked about this weekend.

I literally did not open a book in four years of high school and did zero homework. Like, you know, they would have, everyone who's listening went through school, I think, like they would assign a book report. And like, it's not that I did it poorly. It's that I didn't do it. Just like, didn't ever. I literally, in four years of high school, did zero homework.

Zero. Like, something happened where I just knew that, you know, at that point, high school, I was already working in my dad's liquor store. selling a lot of baseball cards at shows and just kind of, and it was, look, this is pre-internet, the world was different. I grew up in an immigrant family. We lived in, like, we just moved to like rural New Jersey. When I tell you, we lived in our own little four, five-person cocoon, my family, we really did. It was very, very, very, in hindsight, deeply immigrant. You know what I mean? Like, we didn't have, like, my parents didn't have American parent friends. Like, my mom wasn't

friends with any of my high school friends, parents. My mom asked me about what I'm doing for college, 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 and I got like a postcard in the mail from Mount Ida college, filled it out, and that's literally how I went to college. So, you know, I think if I was growing up today, my intuition is that it would have been okay for me not to go to college, and it would have just all been handled differently. And honestly, I think my teachers would have said to me, like, I have a bright future instead of saying what they did 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 90s.

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 pace. It has a high pace now. Our friend just started a garbage business and he's doing like 300 grand a year of it. Jokes on you, Miss Kennedy. Yeah. One of the things we do is always just, what are you excited about? Like, what products are you seeing? What people are you seeing?

What cool stories are you seeing that are kind of that you're genuinely excited about? Have you seen Break the Web? No, what's that? Dude, they got a great tagline. So it's Breaktheweb.com, the Internet's official scoreboard. This app's got my attention. Trending topics on Twitter. was so big for me back in a day when it was desktop only. Break the web is an app. It's just what's

trending right now. It seems like the underlining tech is pretty damn strong. Like, you know how everybody loves to throw around AI or this and that? And you're like, if you're smart, you're like, this is just a collection of APIs or anything. Like, this one's a little bit better. And like, I don't know, I've put it on my home screen, which is not something I've done in a long time. Why? Why do I like it? 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 word Gaza, Trump, and

like five of the words where they're important, but like, I don't... I'm not going to like read like news. First of all, great observation, brother. For me as well, like honestly, something that's on my mind is everyone needs to consume less news because all it does is push fear and negativity and

like it's just so scary, like, how fucked up that is. So it's funny, saying, brother, I don't really click into that stuff. So right now it's brand new and when I met with the founders, I only met with them for like 10 or 15 minutes. I asked them real quick, I'm like, can we get this categorized out? And they're like, yeah, that's on the roadmap. Like, I just want, I need pop culture and consumer trends.

So like, to me, I'm like, when I look at Madonna fan, I'm like, what is that? You know, Madonna mistakenly scolded a fan. And again, right now, what they're, what's interesting, though, is that it's a great indication of where we are in society. Like, back to when Twitter trending topics, it was less political. And it was really valuable. Like the reason I like it or the potential of it. And obviously we're in election season.

So now this will get eaten up to your point, Sam, on this stuff. But it is an indication of the pulse. Like I'm always looking for what's the indication of the pulse of what people give a fuck about. Dude, so these guys, it looks like it only has 90 reviews. Oddly, both of these guys used to work at a bakery. The CEO worked at Pete's coffee. The other guy used to work at specialties cafe and bakery. So they're both lovers of baked goods.

Then they decided to launch it. It's three years old, though, but it's not popular yet. So what's your prediction? What's your prediction? What's your prediction? Back to shooting the shit. To your point, Sean. I'm not overly like, oh, break the web is going to be the best.

The concept of dates. So 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. think literally I have a meeting today where I'm going to post my 100 most successful YouTube videos on Twitter here over the course of the next couple of months, try to stagger it a little bit, because it's just very clear that Twitter is going to push it, right? I don't know if that's going to work. I agree they're pushing it, but I just don't find myself

using it that way. Yeah, that's a great call, Sam. What I know is that I'm, 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. Why guess when you can test for cheaper than it's almost cost to guess, right? Like it's not expensive to take your best of YouTube videos and have somebody repost. That's an easy way to learn. Because you talk about day trading attention, right? All trading is mispriced assets.

And I would argue that attention is the most mispriced asset right now that most impacts everyone. So why is that? There is nobody that will ever listen to this that doesn't need attention as a 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 podcasts, sell their sneakers. They're the only asset class that I think is universal is attention. Even a parent trying to home parent to children need their kids to listen to them to be able to get the message across. The currency

of listening is or consuming is profound. And we're living through the mass fragmentation of that, right? If you think about, let's use parenting, was a lot easier to get your kids to listen when in 1954, 80% of families sat down and had dinner together for like an hour and a half and you did it. Right? And like, so those parents were able to message in a very interesting way.

Whereas now they still can't. We have technology. You can send a text or a Sam and Sean clip to your kids to get them a thick of something. But there's also so much support. apply, right, with the demand side being the same. There's only so many hours in the day. Now, the human brain, I think, has capacity to keep a lot more information than we think. Nonetheless, for me, more narrowly, as someone who it loves business and loves, you know, to think about it,

you know, it doesn't matter what you're selling, and it doesn't even matter what you're saying until you first get their attention. And then everything is about what you're saying. Right. What's interesting to me is I think of it in the acronym I use internally of VaynerX, VaynerMedia, is PAC platforms and culture, right? And so break the web plays in culture, right? Like there's two different currencies that I think about constantly or two different frameworks. One is platforms. What is, what are the top 25 platforms that have people's attention doing? What do they care about? From Snap to Pinterest to LinkedIn to YouTube, even within themselves, YouTube shorts differently than YouTube is collective of like 15, 20, 20, places, right, that really have, quote, unquote, the attention. What are they up to? How did their algorithms work? What are their features doing? And I think about them on a day-to-day basis, right? And then I think about culture. Like, what is the slang? What is the things of interest, the people of interest, right? And then it becomes a framework of like what's overpriced and underpriced

execution. So, for example, I think 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 and pay attention to it. Right. So that $7, $8 million Vig I think is great. The problem is the creative is the variable of success, right? So the media might be a great deal. But if your 30 second video is forgettable or stinks or you overpaid for making it, right? Verizon paid Beyonce to be in that commercial. If they paid her $500,000, I think they stole her. If they paid $40,000, 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 and marketing and

brand building and perception changing and just the whole world. It's how I think about the world. Have you guys seen, let me ask if you guys have seen this in terms of cool shit. 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 slash podcast. They've come out with a daily podcast. That's five to 10 minutes long. that's written by perplexity, and it has beautiful background music, and they've got this British guy. Have you ever seen those like Planet Earth videos where it's like, now we see the mother cheetah go after.

Yeah, they've got this voice that sounds exactly like him, reading like the script, and it sounds awesome. The voice is powered by this thing called 11 Labs. Dude, I went to 11 Labs, Sean. I uploaded a ton of our voice, and I was like, fuck it. Let's just see if I can make a podcast.

It's the best thing I've ever heard. Have you guys seen them come out with this podcast? Gary, if you ever want to see Sam speak Hindi, 11 Labs made a clip. They just translated the podcast, auto-dub it using AI in Hindi. And it's phenomenal.

By the way, it's something we've been working on for about a year. Like, I think next year is the full year where like every single thing I do, every video, every language, like we're there.

Dude. I didn't see Sam. I haven't seen the podcast, but I just took no, like I can't wait to listen to it. Like, look, it's so good.

And they've not made a big, this has not been like a big hoopla. They haven't done, I randomly came across it. I was listening to it. I'm like, I'm going to listen to this every day. This is great. It's David Adboro telling me about like the news. It sounds awesome. Which language you're going to do?

Should we do Hindi? Is that the one? I'm doing everything. Yeah. If you're going to do one, you might as well do all. Yeah. Just like, I just think that I also think like everyone's going to go after the big, like, for example, I get excited about Portuguese.

I'm like, everyone's going to go to Mandarin and Hindi and like the big number, you know? I'm like, I'm just going to. in 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 and cost so much that it won't even like the us in seven years are going to laugh that we ever had it just in one language.

They won't even understand. They're like, 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, Chimoth, and the guy, I think Javier, who now, runs it. And he's like, he put a chart up and it was a YC talk. And he puts a chart up on the screen. There's a bunch of dots. He's like, you know, all these dots are feature releases.

And you can see one dot where everything starts growing right after that. He goes, anyone want to take a guess what that dot is. People in the audience like photos, photo tagging. It's when you release mobile, what is it? We don't know. And he's like language translation, local language translation. He goes, the biggest growth driver in Facebook's growth, bar none. was when we localized the service, which he's like, was not easy. They actually, I don't know if you know, Facebook had to do like a Wikipedia thing

because there was, you know, there's 186 countries that they had to deal with. And so they were like, we need users to basically retranslate the site for their local region. And they incentivized people to do that. And that's how they mass translated overnight. No other social network did this.

And it took off. So that was the first time I heard about this. The second was when we did our basketball camp with Mr. Beast, which Gary, I invited you to, you got to come next time. Mr. B. Space and we host a basketball camp at his house and he did this presentation. He's like, he's like, here's one thing I'm doing that nobody else is really doing,

which is every video I do. I now created channels in Portuguese and everywhere else. He told me. Jimmy told me that whole thing several years ago. Such a good bet. By the way, tell me about this basketball camp because I'm playing basketball tomorrow at 6 a.m. Like, this is how much I love it. I'm 48.

You'll fit right in. There's plenty of wheelchairs and ice in bags of ice. But I'm 90s Knicks fans So no easy layups Is that is that politically correct In this basketball camp? Yeah, yeah

You can hack your heart away It's all good We Actually, I wonder if you do anything like this So we do this thing where It's called Camp MFM It was my first million to MFM So we were like

We like the idea of getting together Like 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 fuck you had another conference

I just don't want to do the boring. I just, I guess, have a resistance of doing the same thing everyone else is doing in general. And so we were like, how do we get the benefits of going in networking without ever calling it networking or a conference or anything else? And so we created basically an adult summer camp. It was like, what if for a weekend we just rented a house? And in this case, we actually just stay at Mr. Beast House now because he ended up wanting to come. And so we go to his house and then we bring in a trainer from the NBA. He treats us like we're, you know, washed up NBA players, basically puts us through their program.

and we just play ball all day? When is it? One just happened, but it was big. It was like the founder of Airbnb, Mr. Beasts, all these guys. 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 Joe at AirBet and Breakfast.com. And I never saw it, you know, or maybe I did. I'm just like, but I look at that email. I haven't owned a separate laptop, but I look at it, once in a while just to like, I love it. This is actually a fun segue back to chopping it up.

If it was just us three and everyone's this, where we're going. Where do you guys sit on losing? So we just talked about basketball. So I just think about me going to this basketball thing. And like my favorite thing in basketball in pickup is to lose the first game. It is my favorite. And I talked about this on Steve Bartlett's podcast. I got a billion fucking emails about this.

There's something that just like the blood. in my head, like everything transforms in my chemicals and then everything in life. Like everything stops and the only thing that matters to me in the world is that we have to win game two. 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, yeah, you guys play. I'll sit out first. No problem. We get in. I'm like, I'm passing the ball. I'm like, oh, that's Joe Gabia. Let me not let him drive. I'm not going to try to hurt the founder of Airbnb here.

Mr. Beast, oh, that was cool, man. I, you know, I see someone taking a video. video. I'm like, that's cool. That's going to be a cool clip. It's going to go viral. Then I'm like, wait, fuck that. I'm in the clip. He's scoring on me. And I was like, he's no longer Mr. Beast. That's Jimmy. And that's Joe. And now we're competing to win. And then the whole event got a lot more fun when it equalized. Everybody. All the job titles dropped. And it's basically who's here to win, who's here to play. And that's when it got real. It's why I love entrepreneurship. Where I'm going with this is that email like excites me. You know, like, I'm

like, yeah, eat it, Gary. Dude, that one would have been a bigger one for you than Uber, too. No, it wouldn't have. Maybe, but no, because I was, they both probably, believe it or not, this is how much startups were back then. They both would have been priced between $4 and $8 million. That's crazy, right? I know, bro, I got into Tumblr's B round.

B, series B, not Angel, not seed, not series A. I got into Tumblr Series B. This is actually it right here. It's my Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook. stock. I got into Tumblr's series B at a $14 million valuation. That's like, you know, pre-cede now.

That was literally 2007 or eight, 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? Dude, I don't even want to know. Fifty-two, 50? I don't know what.

Sam? How old are my? Right. Honestly, no bullshit. I don't know if you guys hang out with like 60, 70, 80 year old business people. Like, I do a lot of that because it's the best. I mean, to me, the two extremes are the best, right?

Hang out with the 17-year-olds that are like shitting, listening right now, shitting on all of us saying, these fuckers are going to wait till they see what I'm going to do. And then 73-year-olds who are like just like the amount of 60, of 60, forget, I think is like literally children, 70 and 80 to me, 70 and 80 to me, just, it's stunning to me how many 73, 75, 77-year-old businessmen and women I know that go at it. because they love it. It's still what they do. And it gets me excited because at 48, it's like, man, I'm still like, I'm in half time, right? Like, I'm in, like, you know, I get excited about that.

I wanted to ask you about that. So I think you and I kind of have similar backgrounds where it was like raised around like kind of a rough crowd every once in a while. Yes. And still kind of have a little bit of that where like I enjoy like doing like hood rat shit every once in a while. Same. And, uh, Gary, Sam's nickname on the pod is Hosewater because he's just, just no water fountain's baby, just drink it straight out the hose. So you stand hose water bar. Dude,

I love to, man, Hodge water was the best. It's the best, dude, summer hose water. I drank out of the hose literally from 1980 to 1980. Dude,

I, I, I peed in the backyard more than a pee in the toilet. Oh, 100%. They used to call me look my no hands, like every day.

So listen, I had a question. So you, so look, we're all three probably a little bit similar where it's like, kind of like did a bunch of scrap stuff. And now, Gary, you're older and a little, and further along in your career in terms of

success than we are. But we've both done some interesting, or we've all done interesting things where we're able to hang out with some of these guys who are like legitimate billionaires. I'm sure you're, I don't know if you are or not, but you're in that ballpark. And I see with Michael Rubin and whatever, you know, you hang out with some of the shot colors of the world. What do you think is the difference between the store owner who's doing like, you know, a retail guy doing half a million or million dollars a year, the $10 million year business, the $100 million net worth person and the billion dollar net worth person. Do they all have similar-ish mindsets, just maybe luck or industry? They picked a different industry. Yeah, two things. It's 1234. I still don't know why 11-11 has

everyone's attention and 1234 doesn't. The 1-2-3-4 is just so cool. Should we make a wish real quick? I don't know. It should be a wish, but we should start a trend and try to make 1234 matter for entrepreneurs. That's a really fucking fun question, Sam. My brain, as you were asking it, goes in me... What's focused on one, two, three, four. Yeah, I just have to look over and see it.

I always thought about 1234. I've always thought it was interesting that it has no pop culture relevance. I believe the first thing that goes through my mind on this question is risk tolerance and fear, right? So, I think it's fear. I just had an idea. 1234. I get it. I get it. I got to use it. 1234 should be where you shoot your shot. I love that.

When you see 1234, that's when you got to send that text. You got to send the tweet. You got to send the email right there. That's that's the idea for 1234. We can make this a thing. Can you get somebody to register like 1234.org? 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. I do think you have a good shot of understanding what I'm about to say. My favorite Rocky is Rocky Six when he goes back to Philly with nothing. Yeah. Sean, there's something so weird in me. And it's almost like, am I sandbagging myself? Like, I'm going to be very vulnerable here.

Like, 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, you know, $400 a month apartment. The entire internet is like, see, he was fucking overrated. I told you know, all the people that love me, all the friends they 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. Sure. You know, like, that's like the one component. Yeah, there's a ton of serendipity. Like, honestly, I think a lot about if my dad didn't want me to work in his store, I would have went to, because I fell love with tech, I might have went to California. And who the fuck knows what I'd created in 95, 670? Like, could have had one of those Mark Cuban moments. So I think about that or, you know, like, I think when you can sell, when you can, for all the, everyone who's listening, and if you have kids like this, if you can sell, you're in the game, right? Like, if you can sell, you're, you'll never be like zero, right? And so, what do you got here? Is it one, two, three, four.com available? No, dude, one, two, three four is owned by like a telecom. Yeah, that's what I figured. That's important. I like the one, like the 137. Yeah, do that. Are you kidding me? Dude, I love that.

That was so dope. I'm so pumped about this, bro. The funny thing, by the way, Ben, my guy, he texted us a screenshot of go daddy. It's 1,234.org, 15,000. He just said, pulled the trigger, question mark. No, no, no, no, don't pull that one. Actually, it's a good one. I never think you should overpay for names because I think names are made.

Dude, I agree. I agree. Right, Sam? But do you know who disagrees? Fucking Darmesh. Darmesh at a... I know. Dude, I've been with them multiple times.

So Darmesh founded HubSpot, which bought my company, and I've gotten close with him. He's like, he's like, dude, I bought chat.com or chat.com today. I'm like, why? He goes, because it was available. I was like, what are you going to do with it? He's like, I'm not sure. I'm going to figure something out, but I paid eight figures for it. Yeah, look, he's smart.

He knows like that, you know, look, as long as dot com, I mean, to me, the scary thing for, let me take a step back, 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 of what happens when this no longer becomes the remote control of our society, right? Like, I'm very fascinated by 20 years from now. Talk about 16 years ago on Tumblr, 16 years from now, if you told me that 16 years

from now, we live in a predominant VR world, I would be like, maybe. I can see that possibility, right? You could 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, because 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 dot com even matter in that? Is that how the UIUX works? Because dot com didn't matter at all in 1990. Dude,

that's how I feel about SEO businesses right now. Well, that's exactly what happens. If it's chat GPT and Google's just trying to give you the answer. That's why Vayner Media never did search. When I started the company 14 years ago, everyone's like, what the fuck? Why don't you do search?

And I was like, first of all, I thought if I built a very big, I'd be able to M&A search if I wanted to add it, right? It was already established. I grew up on search the decade, the 15 years before. And so here's a good one for the kids. If you're building towards the future, if you're capable, remember that you could always buy the current. And that's how I thought about search. I was going to master social in 2009. And I felt like social was going to eat up search anyway. And I think it's starting to happen now. Like search is in a weird spot. Like, Google's in a weird spot. Like, it's in a great spot in some ways. But yeah, I think,

I think search is definitely a different world. Like, if your business, I actually spoke to somebody Thursday, who is really getting hurt because he was one dimensional on search. And I, you know, that's such a fear of mine that if you sell your stuff via email, via your podcast, be your social media content, via search, you must develop into a Swiss Army knife because, you know, if you're just a fork, if you're just one dimensional, you're going to get caught. Hey, Gary, let me ask you about that. You were saying a second ago, you're like, I'm not afraid to go back. Yes.

Do you, so like the way that I run my personal finances is I've got like my safety net. So I've got this like account that has enough money that I'm good forever. Same. And so that's in Vanguard and Bonds. And so it's like, I've never touched that. And then anything above that amount, I'll bet it. And I'll start new shit. Same.

So you're talking about like, you don't mind going back. But it sounds like, that's not exactly how you'd run your finances. So do you have like a safety nut? And then anything above that, you're like, dude, bet it, bet it. Or do you just use profits from Vayner to make these bets? How do you, how does that work? Yes. I have, I'm going to be, I'm comfortably transparent.

My, I'm very fortunate. So my zero is a million dollars, but that's it. That's it. Sam. Wait, so you only keep a million in your like liquid portfolio. That's your safety net? No, no, no, I have other things, like I have money in all sorts of places, but I have this one place that has $1 million and literally everything else is in play. Wow.

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 $236,000 in savings, I put $200,000 into Facebook, right? If that ever happens again, like I'm willing to bet very large because that feeling, similar to the feeling I felt about the internet when I saw it in 95, similar to the feeling that I felt about

Friends through 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, like, it's not like I'll go to zero, zero, you know, a million dollars is a lot, a lot of money. And especially if you're capable.

If you're capable, like, I don't know, like, I feel very... Or in a reputation. Yeah, correct. I also think about face off, like, where you change. Like, I have, like, these very, like, deep, Sean, it goes back to, like, wanting to win a basketball game. Like, 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. it's a whole different game. It was so fun when people didn't know. What you're saying reminds me of, well, two things. I think it's super interesting that your answer to what's the difference you've seen in the mindset, the psychology was who's willing to go backwards.

And almost what you said was, you almost kind of crave, there's like a romantic idea about going back, which I like a lot. I resonate with that a lot. It's almost like there's TV shows. I wish I could go watch again for the first time in the same way. Like,

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, self-respect. You have to almost go into different games. Like, I worry about that. Like, I don't, let me phrase, I don't worry about it. But I sense that there's a day where I actually, I talk a lot about never retiring and dying at my desk. And then there's an equal part of me that realizes that I'm very wired in a way where I'm, I just might wake up at 79 and be like, you know what? Like, I'm done.

I'm just going to focus on my grandchild's. Like, I just, I don't know. I have, like, I think we're all very, like, I think we underestimate how long life is. You know, I think we underestimate our capacity to make hard decisions to different directions that we can't see along the way. Then there's back to luck. And, you know, I mean, look, we've lived through a lot of prosperity. The three of us have gotten very fortunate of where we live during what era, right? Like, there's a lot going on in the world.

Like, you know, there was people in the roaring 20s talking shit like this over dinner. And then, you know, a very challenging 30 years punched them in a face, right? Right. And it all seemed so great in 1927. America was on its way. It's going to be awesome. And then, you know, massive World War and atomic bomb and Korea and Vietnam and social unrest. And so, you know, all these things are like fun to think about.

It's like fun to like romanticize about 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 for granted? I changed on that. Once I actually sold my company and was financially free and then like two weeks after the sale of the company, the CEO got into a life-threatening. accident. And I was like, oh, that could have ruined my deal. And like, like, everything, like,

this all could have been ruined. And then I like hit like some threshold. I'm like, dude, I did not work any harder than anyone else who else, like, who have done similar things, but failed. This is 100% luck. And I'm so grateful that I like, it just has worked in my way in many ways. I feel like I, I am the luckiest guy around. And it just seems like I'm so gracious for the luck that I have. It's, it's kind of, it's changed. more sore. I've just been gifted this and I'm so lucky and I'm thankful. Good for you, Sam. Sean, where are you out with it? I have a different. So to me, I'm like, all right, I think people make a mistake. They're grateful in the macro. So if you say to somebody,

you're like, what are you grateful for? Almost everybody. My family, my health. Yep. And to me, this is the, I'm not saying they're wrong. Obviously, those are great things. But it's sort of like when a company says our values, our integrity and excellence, it's true, but not useful. It, It basically leaves no register. And so 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. And if I could do that, you know, 10, 15 times a day, that is, you know, like the antidote, you know? Yeah, I think that's how micro and macro and micro work together. I really do think of it as being alive. Like, just thank you for that I'm not, that I didn't die last night. Right?

Like, and I, to your point, I think when you're macro is that, I think you're actually, I think I love what you said. You're just talking about applying. Yeah, that's how I apply it. Exactly. That's my relationship with it. That's right. But like, if you're getting to that place,

That's how I live. I'm like, literally, like, it's like a nice sunny day in New York today. And I'm just like, yeah, that's awesome. You know, like, just choosing positivity. Like, I think people have been so sucked into, like, focusing on what they don't have or what's not going well. Naval has an amazing definition of happiness, by the way. I don't have you ever heard this. He goes, happiness is what you feel when you don't feel like anything's missing in your life.

Right? 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 don't need to accumulate things to have happiness. And he's like, actually, it's just when you're not focused on what's missing. Well, that's right. I think simplicity is just so fucking, fuck, man, it's so right. But you know, your life is not simplistic. I mean, 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. I'll tell you why it's simplistic. I'm not attached to my professional success or who I am. I'm like in a very weird place with my winning and losing and my Gary V of it all. Like I care so much, but it's a game. My professional life is a game. Right. I don't want to be unhappy.

Like 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. And more importantly, I'm not worried about the people who are watching me juggle boo when the ball breaks. That I think is massive. Yeah, but when Theo Vaughn makes

fun of you, it's pretty hilarious. That is like the ultimate, like, because I love Theo. Like, like to me, back to like where we came from, Sam, I'm like, my God, like, I've gotten to a place where someone is epic as Theo Vaughn or any other comedians, Tim Dillon. Like, I love these guys. I'm like, these guys. I'm always fascinated when people struggle with a comedian razzing. I think it's like that's like such flattery. 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 you going to say? Well, I want to ask two questions. One, you showed those stock certificates on the wall, speaking of winning. I saw, okay, you invest in Twitter in 09, Slack pre-IPO. I think

the liquid death guy used to work with you, work for you. Yeah, literally work that VaynerMedia the day before he started Liquid Death. Facebook pre-IPO. I'm curious, what was, what investment was the best investment for you? What paid off in terms of you've made a bunch of bets, right? And those are the winners.

Facebook, I haven't sold one share yet. Oh, shit. That's insane. But that goes back to that. Like insanely good. Yeah, that goes back to jockey over horse. I tell all my friends, like, who get into investing. I'm like, man, they're like, what did you learn?

I'm like, what I've learned is, when I only invested in the person, when I'm, when I, I've hit this new state where like, I'm really trying to be obsessed with the person and the idea. And if either one isn't like an A plus, then I'm like, eh, right?

You said and or or? And, right. Okay. Jockey and the horse. That's right. But if I or it, fully person, not idea.

What year did you do that? Did you do that deal? Facebook. I thought 2007. Oh my God. So, I mean, I don't even know what that. You'd be up 400 times. I don't know. I mean, a lot. A lot. 100x at least. I want to get your rapid take because I know you've, one of the things we do on this pod is we kind of, we love anecdotes and also little, 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 Elon's really interesting. We don't think he's perfect. We think there's a bunch of things he does that are cringe. We think this bunch of things he does that are epic. So I'm curious, you've bumped into or I've studied or have an opinion on any of these people. So I want to go rapid fire.

See, if you have something, give us, give us like either an opinion or story. Yeah. So is this from outside observation or if I map them inside observation? Either one. Or if you have nothing, you could say, pass. I don't have anything on them. All right. So first one I want to do is Zuck.

You've talked about Facebook and the jockey. Give me Zuck. Dude, I think he's uncomfortably underrated. Like, he's the only person that I met back in. 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.

He tried to buy Snap. He just understood attention was the only asset. And he's so nice. He's a nice kid. Like, he's just a very simple, nice kid. I'm happy with the way things are going for him a little bit right now. Like, people can see how, like, doofy he is. Like, you seem like in the corner of the UFC things.

You're like, this is just a nerdy kid who's like, you know what I mean? And he doesn't give a fuck. Now, people will think it's because he's got a trillion, but like it's just, he's just like a dentist son from cadet. Like he's just a fucking nerd with no bad intent who fucking spent his childhood coding, which put him in a position, right? He put him in the hours. I'm a fan, man. I think he's a very good operator. And the reason I've never sold a share of Facebook is I've been committed for a long time in this in my own mind, which was I'll never sell.

until he's gone. Logan Paul. So do you know that Logan Paul was starting to emerge very little on Vine when Vayner Media for Virgin Mobile did a campaign called Finding the Next Vine Star?

You guys kind of discovered him, right? Like when he was, I think he had like 15 or 18,000 followers at the time. It was crazy. And by the way, full disclosure, Jerome Jarre, who was one of the 10 most followed people on Vine, who was my partner. Jerome and I launched the first influencer agency called Rape Story,

in 13. 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, right? You think about, like, what happened in Japan or all this stuff. Like, it's tough. These kids are, you think about child stars when we grew up. We all knew that like child stars would be fucked 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.

And I, you know, I've always thought of him as like a Marky Mark or a 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 cross over and he has obviously with WWE in a lot of ways. And I think that will continue. Like if he told me Logan is like an action star and it's like at the way John Cena was at the Academy Awards last night, like, is Logan doing that in 15 years? I'm like, that makes sense to me. That's how he's wired.

Sam, you know, he's only 28. He's only 28 years old. The dude basically like, when he was 14 or whatever, like one he won in the social media game now he and then think about the pivots right both him and jake but the thing about the pivots now he's got impulsives who's got the podcast where he's super chill it's the opposite of crazy vine prankster guy he pivoted to like he's the guy asking questions he's inquisitive he's curious he's got like you know the popular podcast goes wwee becomes a champion in wwee creates prime which is going to make him a billionaire by the time he's 28 29 years old now

because Prime is probably going to be worth tens of billions. They did, I think, $2 billion in sales last year. I'm in this world. Prime is definitely like a two, depending on the time they decide to trade it, it's $2,000, $4,000, $7 billion. That high. I talked to Mr. Beast, and he was like $20 billion is where Prime is going. 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 answer. intuition is that they won't be patient enough to get to that big of a number, right? Well, the beauty is they're not operating. The other guys are, they got a pretty killer operating. Yeah, they're pretty young too, though. Yeah, and more importantly, like I said,

shit changes. Like, everything's ha, ha, ha, until it's actually in front of you. It's all kicks and giggles and we're going to 20 until you fly to Atlanta and Coca-Cola actually offers you 5.9, and you've got to sit there as 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 going to really understand what I'm about to say. You know what they're going to say? They're going to say, huh, we can do this right now. And then in 24 months,

start a new thing. Yeah. A shampoo or a deodorant and sell it to duck. Like, so I think it's, 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. And 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. Cool. Yeah. Right? Kids are buying it literally to drink it for the status symbol, like a fashion brand. And that can only last so long. Zcaburici's were only cool for so long. Those are the fucking.

Great, great points. That's the point. The week, me and you have no fucking proof what that is. Sam, that Cibarici reference was for all the Jersey boys that grew up in late 80s, early 90s. People who were the hottest jeans pants. If you didn't wear your Caperici's, you were nothing. I didn't happen, by the way. I was having a great life, but they were fucking it.

You just compared prime to Jinko jeans. What are you going to say, Sean? 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? And who are 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? 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 like inspired by the collective more than an individual. The field. Yeah, I love the field, brother.

I just like, I spend almost all of my time on the collective. So I don't even have the allocation of time. I also am very inspired by the following person. Show me the person that's currently living through massive adversity. I'll tell you somebody who's 10 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 and he's holding it down for the family. right? He's literally a sophomore in high school. And he's basically the father figured out for three siblings. He had to quit the fucking football team because he's also like, like, I'm the son of two parents who lost a parent before they were 15. And back to gratitude. I think I got really fucked up by being scared that my parents were going to die my whole

childhood. But it kind of converted into this gratitude framework that's insane. It makes me unstoppable, you know? And so, yeah, for me, it's less Bezos or Elon or, you know, Oprah or anything. It's much more like someone none of us know that is really in it. That bodega owner energy. That stuff I grew up with and I fuck with it. But that person, I think, has it lucky back to earlier our simplicity, like owning your own little business, living within your means. Like, that's fucking kind of chill. It could be really epic. It doesn't put you on. like this podcast, but it's like a great life in a lot of ways. And I see it a lot. I lived it what building my dad's business from 22 to 34. I, not that person. The one that's like,

back to your point, Sam, the spin of the wheel really created real adversity. I'll say it again. And not a peep of complaining. There's a very small group of kids that get that and they just convert into leader instead of woe is me or rebel. rebelling, I admire that level of tenacity and grit and accountability and fucking like, fuck it. Like, this is, I got, this is, this is, it's on me. I got to put this shit on my shoulders. I'm going to do this for my three siblings.

Like, I admire the fuck out of that kid. I had a, I wrote down a quote when, uh, when I was doing the research for this, that I think is exactly what you're talking about. You go, forget rags to riches. Some people are just rags to rags, just so that their kids have a shot at rags to riches. and I respect the shit out of that. I love that quote. Yeah, man,

thank you for finding that. I really, man, I'm really affected by that. Like, Sam really hit it on the head. Like, I hate the word luck because I think that people

weaponize it against people that 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. Like, I got lucky to get out of there when I did. If I didn't, I would have come to this country in 1991 when it fell.

I would have been, 16, 17, I'd sound like Ivan Drago on these podcasts. It would have been all different. And, you know, I just, I, I, 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. And I just really admire people who play the other way. We appreciate you doing this, man.

You got day trading attention coming out. I think on May 21, right? That sounds right. You're the man. We appreciate you hanging out. Thanks for coming on, man. I got to jump to sport meeting. I appreciate it.

All right. Take care. See you. Love you guys. Good luck.