Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Gary Vee

Episode Date: September 26, 2023

To his fanatics, he's an inspiring businessman, marketing guru, tough-love motivational speaker, and blue-collar-masculine embodiment of the American Dream; but, to his critics, he's just a bro-y blowhard—a grandstanding motormouth whom Fortune Magazine once called a "snake oil salesman." We're talking about Gary Vaynerchuck, aka Gary Vee, a serial entrepreneur whose multi-pronged "empire" and cult of personality scream god complex... but is this guy dangerous, obnoxious, or actually kind of inspiring? These are the questions Amanda and Isa are aiming to answer on this week's episode of Sounds Like A Cult. Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod @isaamedinaa @amanda_montell To check out Amanda's new book, The Age of Magical Overthinking, click here! Thank you to our sponsors! Go to thefarmersdog.com/cult to get 50% off your first box. Go to BEISTRAVEL.com/CULT for 15% off your first purchase. Hatch is offering $20 off your purchase of a Hatch Restore 2 and free shipping at hatch.co/cult. Go to betterhelp.com/cult to get 10% off your first month.

Thank you to our sponsor, The Farmers Dog. My dog fiddle loves his healthy food, and I love that he loves it. Listeners get 50% off your first box by going to the farmersdog.com slash cult. Go to the farmersdog.com slash cult for 50% off your first box. That's the farmersdog.com slash cult for 50% off your first box. Thank you to our sponsor, Hatch. Right now, Hatch is offering our listeners $20 off your purchase of Hatch Restored 2 and Free Shipping at hatch.co slash cult. Sleep deeply and wake gently with the restored

2. Go to hatch.co slash cult to get $20 off and free shipping. That's hatch.co slash cult. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Make your brain your friend with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash cult today and get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp. H-E-L-P.com slash cult. Right now, Bays is offering our listeners 15% off your first purchase by visiting baystravel.com slash cult.

Go to baystravel.com slash cult for 15% off your first purchase. That's B-E-I-S travel.com slash cult for 15% off your first purchase. That's B E I S travel dot com slash cult. The views expressed on this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like A Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable facts. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. People have said that I'm the greatest thing that has ever happened of all time and people for entertainment purposes only. in the street and outside of it, have apologized to me in deep detail, five, seven, ten years later, and they all say the same things.

I was in a really bad place and your light made me feel even worse and I just wanted to tear you down. It's all the same shit. It's true. It's all the same shit. I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I- and his goal is to become even richer because he came from nothing. He's an aspirational populist who people love to hate, but can stop watching. This is Sounds Like a Cult. A show about modern day cults, we all follow.

I'm Isimadena and I'm a comedian touring all over the country and currently in New York City. I'm Amanda Montel, author of the forthcoming book The Age of Magical Overthinking. Every week on this show, we discuss a different group or guru that puts the cult in culture, from Elon Musk to academia to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult, but is it really? And if so, which cult category does it fall into? Live your life, watch your back, or get the fuck out. For our new listeners, a Live Your Life level cult is like a baby cult, definitely fanatical,

but mostly harmless. A watch your back level cult is borderline dangerous, checks off some of the culty boxes but isn't totally destructive. And then we have a Get the Fuck Out level Colts, which is like, Q&N level Manson vibes, aka Run for Your Life. After all, what classifies a Colt is up to interpretation. All right, well, this week, I want to start off by playing you a clip from the Colt of Gary Vaynerchuk. Okay, I was totally unfamiliar with this person,

I'd never heard of him. I know, this was Asa's idea, and I guess how to describe this man, really quickly up top, Gary Vaynerchuk, aka GaryVee, is to his fanatics, and inspiring entrepreneur, social media marketing guru, tough love motivational speaker, sort of blue-collar masculine embodiment of the American dream. But to his critics, he's more of a rowy edgelord,

money, grubber who plays fast and loose with the truth. Fortune magazine once called him a snake oil salesman. And more concretely, he is a serial entrepreneur in his mid-40s who co-founded a few popular companies, including Rezi, if you've ever made a restaurant reservation using that platform, as well as empathy wines and a social media marketing agency called VaynerMedia. He dabbles in NFTs, Shocker. And we got a few requests for this episode

from a few of our struggling male listeners. Yeah. Hello to the male listeners. We love our male listeners. We love our male listeners. Yeah, it's definitely more of a male-focused cult than the soul cycle and the bachelor of it all.

But our female listeners, no men, you know, who have probably heard of this too. It's like a Tony Robbins vibe. So I'm going to play this and tell me what you think. Here we go. Who do you love the most in the world? My family? Good. Who in your family? Pick one. Oh, I'm...

You're very politically correct. Cool. Every day make... In the mid... Like literally once a day, Genuinely sit there for five minutes and make pretend one of them got shot in the face. Whoa. I'm being that serious with you. Some people work out, right?

To deal with whatever anxieties or thoughts they have, I actually sin and truly try to convince myself that I have lost one of the five most important people in my life. And that is the biggest thing I do that leads to the biggest happiness I have. Isn't that crazy? Okay, I understand why you said Tony Robbins

because it's like when Tony Robbins during one of his conferences, singles someone out from the crowd and makes them feel really attended to and really special and he sort of breaks them down to build them back up. I mean, it's definitely like that vibe, but I think it's just hilarious. He said this specific thing, like he actually does

and he said in multiple interviews, inspires him is like pretending that his family has been like, shot, why? Because he thinks that it puts everything in perspective of being like, whatever grind I have to put into the world. Like, fucking, who cares bro, I have to work 15 hours a day. Well, my parents could have been fucking shot dude. And like that's his version of pushing himself forward.

All right. All right. I understand. Okay, so he's trying to make it seem like you have no excuse not to hustle and grind every single day. That just doesn't make sense to me. But my impression of his oratory style is that you just have buzzwords and phrases

flying by so quickly that you don't even have time to think slowly and critically about what's being said. Almost like Donald Trump. Yeah. It's just like spewing such passionate garbage all at once. Yeah. That at the end of it, you're just like, I don't know what we've said, but.

Yeah, yeah. And well, it's also like the fact he uses like his deep voice and he's so angry. Like he speaks like he's on a ticking time bomb. Like he's gonna run out of time. Which makes you feel like you need to get up and you need to work. A hundred percent.

He's just praying on people's fight or flight and adrenaline and cortisol. He has the sort of like populist masculine voice and delivery that kind of communicates to people like I'm one of you. When I was a kid, I sucked too. I was shy. I got beaten up in the face.

And now I'm rich, bitch. So before we deep dive into GaryVee here, we should mention that this isn't just an episode about this like one cringey blowhard. It's really a bigger picture commentary on the con artistry of the marketing business itself right now and a discussion of where we draw that line between clever viral strategy and cult. So for those of you who don't know who Gary Fainter-Chuck is,

we're gonna tell you about him. He is the crossroad between capitalism and frat culture, I would say. The New York Times has called him the patron saint of hustle culture. Vice has called him the king. People continue to come back to him because he's done what he's told people they should be doing.

The thing is he has a very similar story to like Tony Robbins like it came from nothing. Grue everything from zero. He is actually an immigrant from Belarus. He moved to America when he was three. So he really leans on the American dream mentality. But his business that he built for his parents, which was a wine business, was already valued at $3 million when he started to build it. How's that possible? So his parents started a winery in New Jersey and they built it from the ground up and they worked really hard. They built a business and when he was a teenager

in the 90s, like 1997, he put his parents company on the internet. So he was one of the first people to create an e-commerce site for a business. All right, not because he's a genius, but because it was the fucking 90s. Yeah, totally. I feel like, well, first of all, it's weird examining similar immigration stories to your own family and also interesting

from a nature and nurture perspective to kind of notice how they diverge. Because like my ancestors were also Bella Roussian Jews who like came to this country with a dream. They didn't succeed, so they didn't get to become cult leaders. In fact, the next generation ended up becoming cult followers, which is the other side of the thing, right? Like there's a reason why culty MLMs in particular recruit so many followers from immigrant communities because they disguise it as this Gary V. style entrepreneurship opportunity that'll allow you to succeed outside of the traditional labor market.

And that's a very alluring promise. I mean, I think as an immigrant myself, I do think there is like a hustle culture because you don't have generational wealth to lean back on. Totally. Like a lot of Americans have generational wealth and you do have to hustle and like I feel like I hustle because of I've seen my parents build things from nothing. Yeah. But he did get lucky in that like his parents company was like already three million dollars and he was in the boom of the internet. Like he created an e-commerce site and it was successful

because it was one of the first e-commerce sites. Okay, okay. So it's a case of opportunism, past off as genius, snake oil, past off as bootstrapped entrepreneurship. Like it's giving Keith Warniery with less faux science platitudes and more like Pinterest aphorisms gone frappros. Exactly. So speaking of opportunism, apparently he was also us faux science platitudes and more like Pinterest aphorisms gone frat bros.

Exactly. So speaking of opportunism, apparently he was also an early investor in big tech companies like Facebook and Snapchat. And when business insider interviewed him about that in 2017, he basically said, oh yeah, like I'm tapped into the future. And I have just this intuitive ability to understand consumer behavior. So, you know, from what I can tell, he tends to position himself,

not just as like a marketing guru, but as kind of a loud and proud marketing profit. Something I found funny about him was that he was kind of a scammer low-key since he was a kid. He tells this story about how when he was a kid, he used to go around his neighborhood and pick flowers off the garden of his neighbors, like steal the flowers, put them in a bunch,

and then sell them back to his neighbors. Like, he would sell the flowers back, and he tells the story proudly. Oh my God, you know what's so creepy about that? Is that like, I'm not even gonna say there's a fine line between just like on the book's capitalism and scamory because at this point in our culture, to succeed at all, you kind of have to be a bit of a scammer.

Yeah. I mean, it's just endlessly fascinating to me to think about when fake it till you make it. Crosses over from a piece of like great American advice into cult leader territory because while Gary Vee is, you know, a very on-the-nose example, American Protestant capitalism conditions us all to oversell ourselves as a way to get ahead. Especially if you don't already come from wealth. Yeah.

Because the game is so rigged against so many people that it's like to create generational wealth within one lifetime is like, he has this mentality because I don't know, I'm not trying to be like, you have to do it. Right. That's not, you don't have to do that, but like, he has this mentality because I don't know, I'm not trying to be like, you have to do it. Right. That's not, you don't have to do that, but like, he has to take advantage of someone else. And I think he is so proud of that. And people love to hate him and hate to love him for that,

whereas a lot of really successful, rich people are less talkative and less forthright about their scammery, you know? Exactly, and I think the reason he is so forthright is because if you look at his whole big picture is like, he's ultimately just like a mega influencer. Which he tries to pretend he isn't. He is like the epitome of no press is bad press.

Right. And that's essentially what he's done. So he went on to build his parents' wine business by not only putting them online and creating e-commerce site, but he also created a YouTube channel where he would try wines and critique them like very fratally, like he would drink wine

and then eat it with a cereal and then describe the wine in a really grotesque way. Like this wine tastes like if you farted in your hand and then like microwaved it. And so like he went viral doing insane dumb thing. Oh my God, I see. So he's just like, literally if you took every type of gorilla marketing and like through it

in a bag full of scrabble tiles and dumped it out and was like, that's how you build a brand, folks. Exactly. And he ultimately ended up building this brand called VaynerMedia or VaynerX is like one of the conglomerates of VaynerMedia. And I know people who worked there, quote, very we work vibes. It's a type of space where they work in marketing. They're working 70 to 80 hour weeks.

They are allegedly way underpaid. And they are behind some of the greatest like super bowl commercials because he created such a name brand for himself on the internet that brands just wanted to work with him because he was one of the first people who understood like a virality.

Hmm. So, I wanna make a piece of content and post it on YouTube or TikTok or Instagram, I don't pay anything. And all these people are like, oh, these platforms are keeping too much of the money from the creators. Bullshit. They're giving you free distribution, unheard of in the history of time.

If I want to run a commercial on television, I got to pay. If I want to run an ad in a newspaper, I got to pay. So what would I tell everybody? If you don't have access to money, start making content on the internet, for free, build up attention and awareness, and watch how people start coming at you. So what even is VaynerMedia? Like, we've been talking about this guy for 10 minutes,

and I still don't understand what his businesses are. So I feel like the reason you don't understand it is because we're so past having to hire a company to create social media for us, because we all inherently understand it. But he created this company that was a media company that companies like Coca-Cola or Disney would hire to be like, how can we get on TikTok before TikTok existed?

How can we go viral on YouTube? How can we go viral on the internet? But now they kind of have been deemed irrelevant in my opinion because people have in-house social media teams. So like VaynerMedia, what a company would do is like, let's say a mattress company goes and is like, oh, we're like a new mattress company and we're hip and cool, but we don't really have a brand yet. They go to them and they're like, hey, what do you think you can create? And then they're like, you guys are going to be like the company for hipsters.

And you're going to use the color blue because that is proven in research that it attracts millennials more. And you're going to pitch to ages 33 to 35 because those are the people that are buying nice sheets, but not nice enough. And so they do all of this research. It's like marketing. Yeah, it's marketing. So how does he make his money now in like what is his reputation now?

Yeah, so now he still has all these companies. They're still really well known in media and marketing. But I think his main source of income from what I can assess, because obviously like it's not transparent on the internet, has I think his main source of income is literally being an influencer. He allegedly makes a hundred to 200,000 dollars every time he gets hired to be a public speaker.

Okay. He has 9.9 million followers on Instagram. Mm-hmm. Over three million subscribers on YouTube, three million followers on Twitter. And he has over 30,000 members of his discord. I don't even like understand what discord is. That like a lot. Yeah. I mean, it's essentially like creating a group chat on Instagram. It's a live chat. It's wild. You know, I personally don't find Gary V. Karrismatik at all, but clearly there is a certain demographic that just gets caught up in his energy, which, you know, cannot be underestimated, I wish

I had that much energy. He seems to have it in spades. And it's obviously working really well because his videos have a lot of views and he's not just talking about business. He seems to have like no shame running his mouth on topics from, I don't know, Jim routines to how to love yourself. Exactly. So he's not just a business coach.

He's crossed over into lifestyle guru I would say in my opinion. His point is just to create noise. Got it. OK, OK, he is a noise maker. Oh my god, that's got to be like a new phrase. There's influencer, there's thought leader, there's taste maker, he's a noise maker.

Yeah. So then it seems like he has these books that he's quote unquote written. They're published by Harper Business, which is a real imprint of Harper Business, which is a real, oh my God. A real imprint of Harper Collins, which also, which is different, imprint of Harper Collins published my books, tier. Oh my God. Oh well.

So talk a little bit about his attitude toward the workplace. Like what is he really trying to build? Because when we were talking about Elizabeth Holmes, we were speaking a little bit about the difference between a con artist and a cult leader. And he has created this like obsessed cult following, are those people genuinely inspired by him or are those people kind of like hate tuning into him?

Yeah, that's a good question. I think a lot of those people are hate tuning. I think a lot of his following comes from people hate tuning or his popularity, but the people who actually like follow him and click the follow-button join his discord, I think those people are inspired by him. But I found this quote from one of his followers that said, Gary is a good motivator and helps keep my spirits up one time. He is inspirational, but not so much educational. I mean, like, that's like us. Yeah. I'm not gonna get it. Well, God, I think it's just so interesting.

I mean, Gary Vee really is such a reminder that there is a cult for everyone because I look at a dude like this, and I'm just like, how could you ever even tolerate hearing his voice long enough to feel inspired by it? Yeah. But I think already if you're attracted to this message and this delivery,

you're probably not feeling the dissonance that I think a lot of us who live under capitalism like already feel, you know what I mean? When I think about how much money I would like to have to live, I think, you know, I wanna live a life like the Scandinavians where maybe you have like six weeks off during the year, you like have your medical expenses

taking care of, maybe you own property. But in order in this economy to have that type of life, you have to hustle and scam on some level. And that's just like dissonance that I am tortured by every single day, but it seems like his followers are not even tortured by it. They're like, let scam. I think it's where you have to scam people

if you're coming from nothing, which is the message that he sends. I see. So that's where I think it gets colty, because he didn't come from nothing. And he's also lying, in my opinion, in that his strategy is what made him succeed. He didn't have a strategy.

Right. He got lucky. Right. Which is why I think that quote from one of his followers resonated with me so much is that like he was like, yeah, sometimes I like me to get him to like snap me out of things to inspire me, but he's not educational. Like you shouldn't take business advice from this man. So what are like some worst case scenarios with Gary V? Because if he's just like on the internet being an influencer, spouting blowhardy bullshit,

I mean, yeah, like that sucks, but it's just an influencer, spouting blowhardy bullshit. I mean, yeah, like that sucks, but it's just an influencer. Yeah, like he's not part of an institution like MLMs. He's not taking advantage of people's mental health. Like what exactly is he doing that so culty? So I think there are a couple aspects about him that are culty and I think the first one is like his company, VaynerMedia.

I know people very well who work there. It is very much this like, bro, frat culture. Allegedly, the turnaround is really high. And if you don't immediately fall into the bro culture, like you're not gonna have a career there. And Gary, being an influencer, having millions of followers, he comes into the office often, and you can see him him doing his little videos.

And so what she said is that people work there then wanna get close to the people who are close to him. So that's what I think was Coltie. So there's this sense of conforming to this really problematic culture. There's a cult of personality going on and like in a lot of Coltie companies, not just this one. I'm also seeing that if you Google

what it's like to work at VaynerMedia, one of the first things to come up is a Reddit post where someone says, cultish, no work life balance, low paying, low production value creative. And another person says, it's a business capitalizing on the name of a popular LinkedIn motivational speaker.

But the company also has a 52% positive rating on Glassdoor. So you know, clearly somebody has enjoyed their time there well enough, which is not as I it's not cool to you. Whether you have a few weeks old puppy or a senior dog who's seen multiple decades, any dog person like me knows that what you feed your dog is so important to give them along in healthy life. The farmer's dog makes and delivers fresh, healthy dog food. It's recommended by FETS, nutritionally balanced, and made from human-grade ingredients

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I love this one personally for weddings because you just don't want to take anything too clunky, but it has enough space to fit casual clothing for the brunch, the lunch, and then the dresses and the shoes for all the special events. Right now, Bays is offering our listeners 15% off your first purchase by visiting baystravel.com slash cult. Go to baystravel.com slash cult for 15% off your first purchase. That's B-E-I-S travel.com slash cult. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ What is he going after? Like, what is his endgame? Do you think he even has one or is it just to like,

make as much money as possible, exploit his persona as much as possible, and then get the fuck out of there? Is that what it is? Well, I feel like he's been doing it for so long at this point. I don't think even if he accomplished his endgame, he wouldn't get the fuck out because he's more addicted to it than he knows.

But I saw that his endgame is to buy the New York Jets. He's saying he wants to be rich enough to buy the New York Jets and then I was like, okay, how much are the New York Jets? They were last sold for $630 million in 2000, but his net worth is only $130 million, which I don't say only in that, like that's not a lot. So a lot of money, but for all the work he does,

I'm like, you're only worth $130 million. Well, and it's hard to trust net worth projections anyway. I think he's like, if you're gonna make it in this world, like you only need to think about yourself, right? And hustle and grind. And he literally is the type of person who's like, only think about yourself, pretend your family fucking died, I guess,

until like, keep grinding. And he says, I'm passionate about eating shit and like, taking shit in order to keep grinding. Like, I put in the work, even through like, bleeding and grinding. I'm like, what are you bleeding about? You shouldn't be bleeding, you're in marketing. That is so representative of a cult leader

and the speech that they use, because it is so much about the delivery and how that person makes you feel, not at all about what they have to say. Yeah. You know how like you in reaction to MLMs are like, oh, I know we're not supposed to judge these people, but how the fuck could you ever believe

that this is really available to you? Yeah. I'm having that instinctive reaction to Gary Ve and particularly in regard to MLMs, like how do people still believe that these companies can deliver on their promises? Like with the internet and anti-MLM culture, anti-scam culture, all the information that exists on YouTube

and even TikTok, like how can people still buy into this? And I think, well, first of all, like, we always say your algorithm is only gonna show you what you wanna see, encourage your confirmation. Yeah, yeah. But also, like, we live in a time when get rich quick schemes are almost more believable than ever because people can become rich overnight.

That's what I was gonna say. I feel like makes him a little less culty than MLMs. Like his businesses are ultimately like real businesses. He's selling a service to a company. And it's not like you have to recruit someone to get into the business. And then with his inspirational speeches, he's inspiring people to like go viral,

which like you can do. You can get famous overnight. That's what I'm saying. Tiktok influencers becoming overnight sensation, and people getting rich overnight from crypto. This message, especially in that economy, is resonating in a way it never has before. Exactly. The problem with him, I think, is that he's saying that there is a recipe. Right. But there is no recipe. He's leaning into the luck of the algorithm,

which is what he got. And that's the MLM promise too. It's like, this is a good system. A good system always works. If you follow the system exactly and have a good attitude, you will become a millionaire in here. And his system is like, it's not a pyramid scheme, but it is equally a false promise in that you can do everything right on social media and never have anything go viral.

But because of our values of individualism and exceptionalism, we think, no, I'm going to be the one to succeed. Exactly. So let me ask, I mean, clearly he is an expert in something, he's an expert in how he himself went viral. And marketing and cultishness overlap in significant ways. What makes his marketing strategies culty enough that we're discussing them on this podcast?

I think first off the bat what makes them like culty is that he is tapping into people's like ethos, like he's tapping into the way that people, like he's tapping into the way that people like live their life, not just the way that people work conduct business. Yes, okay. And so he's like, you have to turn into a machine. Every part of you needs to be a machine.

And the way that he delivers that isn't a very preachy way. He does it in this God-like manner. Like, I know what's right, and you have to follow it. And his own website and his bio scream his own praises. He never gives credit to anyone for any of the work that he's accomplished. He thinks he's done everything on his own.

Right, right. And he's constantly wrapping his own brand, wearing his own merch. I mean, it's just so funny because like, if someone were to give good marketing advice, it would sound a lot like this. It's just that most people aren't bold enough to actually go this far.

Yeah. And personally, he's been on the record saying that he has no friends, he has no social life, that he works 15 plus hours a day, and he's glamorizing that hustle culture. In a way that like, I feel like in our social circle, we're just like, no, I'm not gonna do it. I give up.

The American Dream is alive. We've accepted this, but in his circle, they haven't given up yet. Yeah, and I think that doesn't prevent us from hustling, you know, but we know our priorities. Like mental health is like at the front of culture now. Like people take like time off. It's so important to like not make your work your entire life.

And we know that. And yet look at us. Hustling. Evening time making this podcast. Seriously, it's like this message is packaged in a way that personally does not appeal to me whatsoever. But that grind as much as I want to question it and destabilize it, those messages are still in me. So, is he a cult? Is he not a cult?

And how cult he is? How do you see him in comparison to MLM culture maybe? It's tricky because he does have a lot in common with MLM culture. The idea that if you just put your nose to the grindstone, you will succeed, you will follow in his footsteps. But that's any of those that also exists in influencer culture in a subtler way. It's like, if you only tried hard enough, if you only rearrange your priorities,

then you could be as glamorous and beautiful as me. Yeah. So there is this toxically positive energy that exists in MLM culture, but I think the difference is that he hasn't actually done anything illegal. Yeah, yeah. He's just like deeply annoying.

Yeah, exactly. And he is, I think he's so focused on making his money that he's like, why would I get in legal trouble by formally scamming people when I can influence people to scam themselves. Totally. Totally. Oh wow.

Yeah, he's like encouraging you to become your own cult leader. Yeah. And he does it in a way that he isn't held liable. Right, but I do think there are aspects that put him on the edge of being able to flip a switch and start a cult the day he wants to. Yeah. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪

Expectations always lead to very vulnerable frameworks. One of the biggest reasons a lot of you don't do the right thing is because you expect somebody to do that in return after you do it. The expectation of others and the opinions of others are disproportionately guiding your life, and I think that you will end up regretting that in your older years.

If you put yourself in a framework where humans can disappoint you, you're finished. Expectations of others is a very dangerous game. Just do so much right shit that you can't even remember your right shit. People write a thousand dollar check to out charity And then they fucking promote it for the rest of their lives like just do the right thing so much that it's normal Okay, so out of the three cult categories live your life

Watch your back Or get the fuck out What level of cult do you think Gary V is in the end? Spoiler, I think he's a watcher back? Oh, you do? Yeah, I think he's a solid watcher back because he has these communities. He doesn't just have these large 9 million follower communities, he has these smaller,

insular communities, 30,000 discord followers that he has already convinced to think like him. I also went on the Discord and read some things that the people were saying, and people were joking about how they're in a cult. They're like, ah, yeah, we're in the cult of Gary Vaynerchuk. They're joking about it, but it's one of those things where if he turned around and said,

let's all go to an island tomorrow, and I'll teach you how to market yourself. Right, like a crypto island. Because he feels very much in that same space of this is all perfectly legal and yet it all feels like a cult at the same time. Yeah, exactly. And he is leaning into the crypto space now. He started selling NFTs. Like he just keeps getting culture and culture, but like you said, he hasn't yet done anything that is like red, red flags. So I think he's a solid,

solid watch your back. Oh God. I wanna say he's a get the fuck out. Really? You can't call him and get the fuck out and say that like, other things we've said are watch your back. Yeah, I mean, I guess we said that. What are the exit costs?

Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, we said that Tony Robbins was a get the fuck out. That's true, but I feel like Tony Robbins promises are a lot more spiritual. Like walking on rocks, you're physically burning your feet. That's true, that's true. But the funny thing is, is that money is God

in the United States. Like, money is spirituality in the United States. The American dream is, in a way, just as much a cultish fantasy as heaven. The imagery of one involves a pearly gate. The imagery of the other involves a white picket fence. But that's the same sort of image. It's the same sort of promise that like paradise exists.

It's behind this barrier. And if you want to access it, you have to buy into this lie. Yeah, but he's just selling you the lie. He's not forcing you to buy it. Mm. And then, yeah, I'll watch your back. Yeah, I'm mad about it, but I'm going to agree. It's probably a watcher back. Yeah, I'm mad about it, but I'm gonna agree. It's probably a watcher back.

Ooh, Amanda! You cracked me. Well, that's our show. Thanks for listening. We'll be back with a new episode from Esa next week and an episode from me the week after that. But in the meantime, stay comfy. But not too, Coltty!

Sounds like a cult was created, hosted, and produced by Issa Medina and Amanda Montel. Our theme music is by Casey Colt. To join our cult, follow us on Instagram at SoundsLikeAColtPod. I'm on Instagram at Amanda underscore Montel, and feel free to check out my books, Cultish, the language of fanaticism, and word-slet, a feminist guide to taking back the English language. And I'm on Instagram at Esa Medina, I-S-A-A-M-D-I-M-A, where you can find tickets to my live stand-up comedy shows or tell me where to perform. We also have a Patreon and we would appreciate your support there at patreon.com slash sounds like a cult. And if you'd like our show, feel free to give us a rating on Spotify or Apple podcasts.

And if you don't like our show, rate other podcasts the way you'd rate us. Oh, yeah. you