The Jordan Harbinger Show - 597: Gary Vaynerchuk | Leadership, Social Media, and Self-Awareness

Episode Date: December 9, 2021

Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) is the chairman of VaynerX, the active CEO of VaynerMedia, and the author of several bestselling books, including #AskGaryVee: One Entrepreneur's Take on Leadership, Social Media, and Self-Awareness. What We Discuss with Gary Vaynerchuk: With so many platforms at his disposal, why does Gary continue to write books? Where does a workaholic like Gary stand on the concept of work/life balance? When do we quit if something isn’t working? How do you know if you’re hard-wired to be an entrepreneur? How do we balance the hunger required to achieve Plan A while not taking too much comfort in Plan B? And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/597 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Miss the show we did with Vince Beiser — author of The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization? Make sure to check out episode 97: Vince Beiser | Why Sand Is More Important Than You Think It Is! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger show. Win the marathon and lose the sprints. Like, have three business failures. You know, you've gone from a nice apartment to a worse apartment. Now you live in a rental studio. Now you live in a trailer, but then you build a $10 million business. You won. You won in a 17-year period.

You just happen to lose in a three-month, three-year, five-year period, right? Like, it's just about, how does it end? Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills are the world's most fascinating people. We have in-depth conversations with people at the top of their game. Astronauts, entrepreneurs, spies and psychologists, even the occasional Fortune 500 CEO, organized crime figure, or a music mogul.

Each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice that you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better critical thinker. If you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, we've got these episodes starter packs and these are collections of top. episodes organized by popular topic to help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start to get started or to help somebody else get started with us. And of course, I always appreciate it when you share the show with others. Today, one from the vault recorded a while back.

We're talking with Gary Vaynerchuk. If you've been using social media at all for the past decade or so, this guy's been in your feed, possibly more than you'd like for quite some time now. He's built a beast of a business with VaynerMedia, and he's always dishing out advice for entrepreneurs and business owners. His brand of off-the-cuff, frankness, and almost manic delivery, that style is something of a trademark. Gary and I actually go back over 10 years, might even be close to 15 now. So this conversation is unlike any other that he's had before, especially when he's interviewed on podcasts. We get pretty personal and we get pretty detailed with competitive instinct with young entrepreneurs versus older entrepreneurs

and working inside and outside of the system. So there's so much here in traditional Gary V. style, so enjoy this one. I know you will. Here we go with Gary Vaynerchuk. My first question is, why do you keep writing books? And I say that, I put a little bit of stank on that. No, it's a good question.

Yeah, yeah. It's not just because you have something to say, because you got other platforms for that. That's right. It's not just a direct money play because publishing sucks for that, generally, unless I'm missing something. No, I make way more money speaking

and other ways to monetize the personal brand. Right. So is this street cred for speaking or is there more to the story that I don't get? I think it's street cred for speaking for a lot of people. And if you're listening and you're just getting going, you know, even for you guys, I think there's some validity against that and other people. I had that happen in 09, 10, 11. So I'm past that too. There's a really funny answer to this question. There's a lot of people that are the complete opposite of me. They actually consume information much better in written book form, and there is a stunning amount of people

who love reading books and consuming and don't want to watch a 20-minute video and don't want to follow every social media person and click a link and read a medium that their choice, their preference to consume information is in Kindle or print form when they're traveling on vacation, or before they go to sleep,

They like reading a book. This is literally eating my own dog food of not being romantic about any platform and recognizing there's a lot of ways a lot of people consume information. And every three years or so, I kind of gathered up, put it together in $20 book form, you know, and away we go. So I actually think there's a real tremendous ROI to a lot of people that it costs 20 bucks. They can read it in three to five hours. They like it. And so I'm not trying to try to impose my will of how people shouldn't consume information. Instead, I'm just unromantic about it, and I'm producing it in a medium that clearly millions of people still prefer. Yeah, this sounds so weird for someone like me, but I just got back into reading. And the reason that I like it so

much, well, one, I had to because everybody sends me galleys. Nobody says, I made a 20-minute video that summarizes my new book. That's yet to happen. That would be awesome, but it doesn't happen. So I started reading again on the Kindle, I plow through stuff. But what I love about reading is it forces the thought leader to really explain everything because so many people are looking at these drafts and then there's an editor who like doesn't care about what you do looking at it and it has to make sense to them

and the publishers got people looking at it who have no idea who the hell you are maybe so they're looking at it versus a video which is great to get an authentic feel for someone's personality but the information might not be as clear as it is in a book where there's so many people nitpicking everything you say hell I sent you a thing where I was like I think this is a mistake

that you wrote in the book. And you were like, yeah, hopefully we got that. And then Alex, your assistant got back and was like, nah, dude, I think you're just misreading it. And I'm like, I don't know, because everybody's smarter than you, right, when you're looking at a book. And I just realized, wow, I'm probably one of like a thousand people that sent in something like that. And when something's getting picked apart that much, there's going to be a lot more detail in it. And some people love that. I like that. I think a lot of people, yeah, millennials probably hate that stuff because they just want, look, quick info. And I'm with them on that, most of time. You know what's awesome, though? The book is made in that way. I mean, I'm talking a lot of

shit to my audience about perfectly parented and I wish everybody was an immigrant and all these other books I want to write. But I'll be honest with you, the early feedback from people that are getting to scratch both their itches, the fact of matter is I wrote it in a way where it's Q&A and there's chapters. And so I've been stunned by how many people have hit me up that are reading it for reviewing purposes. And here's the punchline of people that don't even like me. They have to do it. And because they're writing it for their magazine or website. And these are people, literally, I've gotten emails that are like, hey, man, I'll be honest with you.

I thought you were a douchebag. But I always had people around me saying, no, he's a good guy and he's smart. So I was like, and then I had to read this because I'm the one that's responsible for reviewing it. And I got to be honest with you, man. It's a great book. And what I like best is I can read chapter 13, that I read chapter 19, then I went back to one.

It's built in a format that's more made for my brain. And I think the format is going to give me a chance to have a format that I can go back to the well with and I think a lot of people are going to enjoy. Obviously, you're a workaholic of some kind, kind of like me. You love building things, you love making things. At least we can maybe agree on that. People talk about work life balance. This is like a buzzword thing. People talk about it a lot, how it doesn't exist because of internet, blah, blah, blah. Where do you stand on that? I stand on it being a very, very individual thing, meaning I have no interest in imposing my work-life balance on anybody else.

Jordan, I don't know if you've been seeing, but these daily bees, these kind of daily vlogs I've been putting out, they've really created an interesting storm for me in two directions. Number one, people are emailing me and saying, geez, man, I follow you for seven years. I've heard you talk about hustle from the day I met you. I didn't get it. You're like really working at a level that makes me feel uncomfortable. And they're saying that is a good thing. And then there's other people saying, hey, man, cool and great, great job, buddy.

You're going to be a billionaire and buy the jets, but your family's going to hate you and you're to regret this and you're going to die lonely, right? Yeah. And so Lizzie and I have our work life balance. We communicate about it. We grew up a certain way, both with fathers that worked their faces off in different ways for different reasons. Mine immigrant and ambitious, Lizzie's ambitious and corporate superstar. And so I think that it's a common conversation, but I think it's kind of like raising kids, right? I would never have the audacity to tell somebody how to raise their children because every individual situation is different. People aren't in my bedroom. They don't know what makes me and my wife happy or me and my kids or how things play out or the fact that when I'm home.

I mean, this is literally one of the first times in three years that I'm actually doing a work thing on a weekend. Why? Because it's two days before my book comes out and I'm in that zone. And I'm okay with doing that once every three years. But I'm all in when I'm around. A lot of people who judge my work life balance, a lot of people that are going to tweet about this podcast around this issue, when they're home, they're looking at their phone, they're playing video games, they're not really engaging mentally with their spouse or their children. And so I don't think it's a quantity game. I think it's a quality game. I also think that you're speaking right now to a guy whose dad, he didn't even know until 14 years old because he worked every minute and I have the greatest

relationship in the world with my dad and I love him so much and I've been massively fulfilled. If either one of us leave the earth tomorrow, I will feel phenomenal of the quality of our relationship and the depth and the time. And so I think, people think in micro moments, yes, I get it. You'll never get back the moments when a kid is three and they do the first this, and the other thing. On the flip side, you never get back the moments in the 20s, 30s and 40s. I mean, when my parents and I go on vacation together, like I go and lay in their bed until 2 in the morning, right? Just talk to them. And that comes out of having a great relationship. And that doesn't happen for a lot of people who saw every wiffleball game and every dance recital

and then her kids turn 18 and never want to come back, right? So I have no interest in telling people how to live their work-life balance. I'm thrilled for anybody to critique mine because I understand I put myself so out there, so I deserve it. I have no interest in trying to defend against it. I just want everybody know the only people that I'm going to respond to around this conversation are the 11 people in my most inner circle of my family who are the people that I most care about around this issue. I think that's wise. Not Rick from Kansas, who I adore, who probably bought 15 copies of this book, who I would love to talk about a million things about business,

how to help him. I'm here for you. But trust me, brother, I have no interest on your point of view on something that I spend all my time and effort on every day communicating with those 11 people. I think that's really wise because I think a lot of people spend way too much time listening to other people on every issue. But work-life balance, it's a really intimate topic,

and it's not something that anybody's figured out for everyone else. It's impossible to do that. It's intimate boy. It's intimate boy. Like, to me, that's like getting into, like, your sex life territory. Yeah, exactly, exactly. I agree with that. And I think if you're a guy like yourself who's got everything turned up to 11 a lot of the time,

if you're turning up the family life stuff and it's like, okay, I'm done with work. We're not just going to sit around and watch TV. We got plans. We're going to go to the zoo. And then after that, we're going to go have a nice lunch. And then we're going to go visit Grandma and Grandpa, and then we're going to take naps. And then we're going to get up and go to the movies. You're packing in great experience.

and it's not just, yeah, you're not just playing Mario Kart with your kids for five hours and being like, I parented today, right? Yeah, and by the way, and that's fun too, five hours, just chill. Like, what's everybody's point of view in four years when I take Zander Misha at every Jets road game and we leave on Friday nights and we have all that time on Saturday because we went to San Diego on the road and we went to the San Diego Zoo? And then we went to the game and then they're meeting their favorite football players on the field. Like, there's a lot of benefits from doing successful business things that then you build up

the leverage and then you get to deploy it. You know, like, by the way, when I went to Misha's recital the other day from 9 to 11 in the morning, I did that by looking myself in the mirror and deciding that. It's unfortunate and it makes me sad and my heart breaks for the thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of individuals who can't go to that recital because their boss wouldn't give them off that day. Right. Yeah.

I mean, like, this is a very in-depth conversation. Yes, I work 15 to 18 hours a day all the time. hundreds of days a year. But by the way, there's still 100 days a year left, 125 days a year left where I can do enormous amounts of things, the end. Yeah, I feel like people impose this on others because of their own kind of guilt. Of course, which is why, look, I'm so content and so ambitious at the same time, but out of my contentness, I have no interest in judging others because it's not going to make me feel better about myself, I already feel the best about myself. That's great, actually. I like that.

I don't know what else to do with that. I mean, it's a very important thing. When you get into the best place with yourself, it's stunning how you treat others. You know why I'm a good dude? You know why everybody that really knows me undercover feels good about me and what's building up as my reputation as I'm starting to chip away? And by the way, I'm only going to get way stronger and way more liked and way bigger and way better because of it, it comes out of being happy with myself. It then gives me unlimited ability to help others. Like, it's just easy for me because I don't need anything from anybody. Right. Your cup overfloweth, as they say, somewhere. Jordan, when we sat down and said, look, we need to do podcasts for the book. And the first words out of my mouth, I wish you could have

saw it. I was like, guys, I just, I didn't do it that long ago. I'm like, listen, if he comes back and says, no, that's going to make a lot of sense for me. And please reply with like, thank you so much. And like, is there anything we can do for you? Because I default into wanting to provide 51% to the other person. I know what to do with my 49. I'm that talented. I'm that good. I'm that hungry. I'm that strong. I want to work that hard. And when you get into that place, when you get into that real Zen place, well, then you become massively liked because you become really not selfish. You really deploy empathy at scale, which is something I wrote about in this book on purpose, you start really caring about what the other person cares about. And my thought is, I'm so fucking jazzed up for

this interview. And I think the reason I've already had two or three good things in this interview is I feel so guilty that you're having me back on that I'm like, okay, I need to deliver like seven, 15 fucking zingers, all-time zingers that he can use as micro quotes for his, maybe he wants to use anchor and he'll of the audio from here. Maybe he'll turn it into quote cards. Maybe I'll say one of the best things I've ever said and that becomes a gateway drug to the other A-listers that want to do this show because they're like, oh, Jordan must be able to extract great stuff from people. I don't know, but I can tell you my mental energy level, like my workout this morning before this interview, even Mike was like, man, and I'm like, yeah, man, I need to deliver. I think today, Jordan and I

produce one of the best singular episode podcasts in our genre ever. I'll take it. and I've got plenty to throw at you. I know you can rock it back. One of the questions that I get all the time that I can't answer because I just don't know the answer, when do we quit if something isn't working? There's this whole idea, never stop till you win.

And then there's this whole, yo, this isn't working. This ain't working. It never will. Cut your losses and run. I shut down Vayner Live, our live events division. I shut down Vayner Sampling, our sampling division. I'm about to integrate my grape story influencer marketing camp, a business, separate business into Vayner Media. Media's division, human media.

Once ran a social network called Corked. I helped co-found a developer-designer community called Forrest. I started another video blog where I was the producer, half owner called Obsessed TV. I did Daily Grape for only 84 episodes after I finished 1,000 episodes of Wine Library. TV, I stop shit all the time and nobody. and I mean nobody is more tenacious than me. Like if I get into a fight to the death, I will literally die with the most effort you've ever seen.

If I'm down 20 to zero in a pickup game to 21, I'm literally yelling at my four other homies and saying, guys, I'm not joking. I think we can run off 22 straight. Like, I've got nothing but tenacity. However, energy and time are your biggest assets, not the money. It's the energy and time.

So I would say that there's a balance. Everybody's got their own internal guiding life. what I want to do here and why I just ranted seven or eight of nine my recent failures. What I call my micro failures, not my macro failure, is outside of like you go into debt, out of business and you have to get a job, outside of like you get a divorce if you didn't want to. Out of the death blow, outside of the death blow, you always fight if there is a death blow. But if it is just a micro loss, if it is just kind of like mortal combat or something, If it just takes out half your energy or your arm just falls off and you didn't die, well, then you can let that happen.

You've got to accept micro losses. It's part of the game. You know what's funny? This is an interesting time to talk about this because I've been using this analogy. And last night it played out real true. I compare entrepreneurship to UFC. In UFC, everybody's going to lose. Yes. Everybody. Last night, both favorites that we wanted to win, lost, right? They lost. And so it just happens. You're going to lose. It's not boxing. You know, it's not. chess. UFC's very similar entrepreneurship. There's going to be losses along the way. Too many people listening right now are worried about what their mom and dad, what their girlfriend, what their homies that told them not to do it think when they've lost on the execution that they decided to do when they left their job and they don't want the shame amongst them. And I'm here to tell you that those people don't fucking matter. They matter in life, but they don't matter in the arena of entrepreneurship because they don't get it. Because anybody that tells you to not do it

is scared of it. Yes, I agree with that. I think when a lot of people are making a decision to quit, whenever anybody asks me this question, because like I said, I get it all the time, and my answer seems to change a lot. It's always, what are you most afraid of? And very rarely is it, like, losing my house.

It's usually like they're all counting on me or, like, they don't think I can do it, and there's a part of me that just wants to prove them wrong, and it's like, okay, if that's the reason, eliminate that from your mind as much as possible, because then we were just talking about ego, and you see people getting, like, a second, on their house to show their ex-wife that they're not a loser. That's just a terrible calculation,

but I understand it. 100%. And I understand it tremendously. And here's what I'll say one more time. Win the marathon and lose the sprints. I mean, it's very simple, right? Like, it's all the cliche stuff. Be willing to lose battles, win wars, right? Right. Like, have three business failures. You know, you've gone from a nice apartment to a worse apartment. Now you live in a rental studio. Now you live in a trailer, but then you build a $10 million business, you won. You won in a 17-year period. You just happen to lose in a three-month, three-year, five-year period, right? Like, it's just about, how does it end? Right? How does it end? I mean, by the way, Jordan, that's why I roll the way I roll, man. Like, I'm not crippled by people thinking I'm full of shit or a douchebag or too much ego

when they first consume me, because I know where they end up. I know that 50% of the people that are listening right now, or 30% is probably true, of the people that are listening now that know who I am, started off not loving me. I am one of those people. I'll tell you. I'll admit it. Wait a minute. I didn't know that. I'm excited because that works out nicely. It does. Tell me where you first consumed me. I've got to guarantee it was in a public forum because I'm batting a thousand if I meet you in a private forum because I'm a different kind of energy in that sector. Do you know? Yeah, I do. I do. My friend Poss, who's a fan of the show, is this tie guy. He's like, oh, I know Gary Vaynerchuk, because we talk on Twitter. And I was like, whatever,

that guy talks to everybody on Twitter. You know, I was like, I don't like wine. This is stupid. And I watched an episode of Wine Library, and I was kind of like, oh, he's funny. I like that he said the wine tastes like racquetballs, because that's what wine, all wine for me tastes like some version of rubber things that you don't want to eat. And then we did an interview. We had one of our, probably first or second year podcasting in your office. And you were really nice. And I thought, okay, he's a really nice guy personally. But I still, there's just something about him that's a little off. I don't know. Maybe I don't believe that he believes what he's doing. And then I followed your stuff for a while. And I was like, he clearly really believes what he's saying.

So I admire that, but I'm still not fully interested in a lot of this stuff. And then I saw the book and I was like, there's a whole chapter that just says, care. This is lazy. I'm not sure about this guy. And I slowly came around, but it took like seven years or something. I'm stubborn. Well, yeah. I mean, for everybody listening that doesn't know, the care chapter was in crush it. I mean, that's 2009. Yeah. So this is what, seven years later? And you know what's so funny?

It's so funny when one's mindset is in a certain place how they decide to figure something out. No joke. And this is going to make you laugh, Jordan. The number one thing in my life that I've been emailed about over the last decade is chapter nine of crush it, one word care. Really? Yes. The number one thing, not the web 2.0 talk that put me on the map, smurf it up, you know, stop watching fucking lost. not the real recent run of a lot of big hits,

like the Monday morning thing where you could have been a bus, fuck you Monday, or the six minutes for next 60 years, two things that have gone quote unquote viral for me, not DailyVee, which has been a game changer for me, these 19 episodes of this vlog,

not appearances on TV, not my first Conan appearance, not Twitter and Facebook going public after I said they would, not the Snapchat phenomenon that's happening for me right now of like getting way too much credit for something I don't deserve

of like, oh, you got people on Snapchat. it has been that chapter, that word, and people literally emailing me saying, I've been selling $900 e-books, I'm a scum bucket, I'm selling supplements that I have no idea what's in there, I'm a scum bucket, and something about that chapter, that word, fucked with my head, and you've changed my business.

This is what's happened over the last 18 months. That chapter, that word. And you going into the mentality of cynicism, which is what you're referring to. Yes. Which, by the way, Jordan, you don't understand, here's why it never bothers me. I agree with your cynicism. I know that I'm unusual. I know that most people that sell good are full of shit. I know that people haven't quantified that I didn't talk to the world

until I was 30 years old and had already built a $50 million business. And that was wine. And I didn't talk to the world about business or motivation or hoopla or marketing. until I was 34 years old and had already built a $60 million business and had already invested in Twitter and Facebook. I was 34 years old and an accomplished businessman before I came out and became this guy that maybe peddled things that the world would be cynical to. And I knew that my personality and my bravado and my showmanship would disguise my very practical, very tangible, very meat and potatoes kind of accomplishment.

and that that's why I know I'm different. Most people that sell what I sell, sell it out of the gate because they're taught by a motivational coach to sell motivation to other people, yet they've never accomplished anything in their lives. You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Gary Vaynerchuk.

We'll be right back. Thank you so much for listening to and supporting the show. Now, I know that a lot of you hear these codes and you're running and you're jogging. We put them all in one place, Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. we recently redid the page, please consider supporting those who make this show possible.

And don't forget, we've got worksheets for many of the episodes if you want some of the drills and exercises talked about during these shows. They're all in one easy place. And that link is in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com slash podcast. Now, back to Gary Vaynerchuk. To be clear, it didn't really take me seven years to come around. I liked you well before that. And it's funny because now people who have the exact same comments that I do where they're like, oh, this freaking loud mouth guy.

I'm like, no, no, no, trust me. And I find myself saying exactly what somebody else would have said to me probably five years ago when I said those things. And it's funny because, like many wines, it's an acquired thing. You know, you got to get past the stuff that bugs you. And a lot of people love the energy up to 11 and stuff. At first, though, I just thought he's using that to overcompensate for a lack of whatever. And now I just realized you're really excited about everything. Listen, man, and you know what's funny.

It's funny for my grammar school and high school and, like, other people because they remember when there was no camera on. And I get these emails all the time and it makes me feel good because it does help me almost remind myself because you know what's funny? I think the reason I really can pull it off is I'm more cynical about myself

than anybody outside of me. I believe that. Like there's times I brush my teeth on a Wednesday, August 4th, and I'm like, this is literally weird shit. I'm looking at that person. I'm like, hey, don't forget. Like, don't become a fucking character

chair of yourself, fuckface. You came from nothing. You're not shit. You die tomorrow. Nobody gives a fuck. These are real talks I have with myself. I'm sure. Yet, meanwhile, I equally, more than anybody, think that I'm going to end up all time.

Like, Jordan, I literally sit here with you right now, and there's nothing. Zero doubt in my mind that I'm the guy of this generation. That's a strong belief system. Especially when right now anybody listening knows that I'm dramatically behind Zucks or Travis or Elon Musk or, you know, even from a kind of a personal brand standpoint to Ferris or Tony Robbins or Tony Shea. and from a business, like financial, like hundreds of thousands of people who've made more money already, but I know what I'm doing. If I pull off what I think I've got in me, I think it's a more hyper successful version on both ends of a Richard Branson, both financially and impact on people.

I hope so. That would be really cool. People download a lot more of these interviews. They'll be looking for them at that point. They still are. They already are. You know what's funny about that? It's funny how your brain thinks. I think about that shit too, though. That's funny you just said that. You know what? I'm going to make you happy right now and I want everybody here this because I think it's going to make them understand how I think about the world. That statement is probably the single thing that I've heard come out of your mouth or on public or on a tweet or anything. I just liked you more than I ever have before on any move because it means that you're thinking about the marathon. You're able to project that in 29 years, this is what I'm talking about, by the way.

I'm 40 years old. Like I'm 40. Man. Like in 20 years, I'll be 60. And you're I feel good about that. That's a long time. You'll have a lot left in the tank at 60. I can make that prediction about you. A lot. And so, listen, I've been right about so many things. When I bet on the virtual reality Facebook, and I own 10%, and I'm Peter Thiel. For people that don't know, Peter Thiel own 10% of Facebook. He made a lot of money in PayPal, but obviously he made a lot more money with the Facebook bet. I'm convinced I'm going to make that kind of bet in my investing world. I'm going to build VaynerMedia into a billion dollar company. VainerMedia has gone from 4 to 100

million in revenue, literally in four years. That's ridiculous. Agency sell for two to three times revenue. So right now, people don't get it. People are stupid, Jordan. People Google my net worth. That's the second biggest search term for me. There's some cockamanian website that puts my net worth at 10 million. I saw that. And that's what people think it is. I looked it up at Thrive, because I was like, is that accurate? And then 10 minutes later, you told us about VaynerMedia. And it made me wonder how they calculate those things. But it made me feel a little bit better about myself for a minute. I'll give you that. I mean, for example, I don't want to go here, but I want to teach people like how stupid things you read on the internet.

I'm going to make more than $10 million this year, like as my income. Like, it's so stupid. Like, all you have to do is look up Wine Library's property value. Like, the property that my wine business sits on is worth more than that. So people are not smart about, like, things. Like, people like hear hucksters that claim they make that their net worth is $25 million. And they're like, see, he's better than Gary V. And I'm like, you're a fucking idiot.

This guy's selling infomercial products. Like you're an idiot. And there's a million of them. There's so many people that don't get it, don't understand the game. And so for me, I like that you're thinking 25 years out because you're right, because you're damn fucking right. These two interviews that we've done, you're going to get a shitload more listens in 231 than you are right now.

When everybody wakes up one morning and whatever the Business Insider or Wall Street Journal or whatever the fuck we're listening to starts with, today, virtual, virtual, sold for $47 billion. Investor Gary Vaynerchuk made a wise bet eight years ago and owned 10%. Big day for him. Guess he's going to buy the Jets after all. When that fucking day happens,

people are going to Google or whatever the fuck they're doing then. We're going to find this and I'm going to listen to every fucking word. And you know what? Let me actually take myself out of this moment and put myself in 20 years from now. Hey, everybody.

That's right. Uh-huh. Exactly. I always knew it. Because when you understand yourself and you deploy self-awareness, you get to navigate at a surgical level. And that's how you win, whether you're doing what I'm doing, or you become the best parent of all time, or the greatest policymaker, or the greatest nonprofit, you know, fundraiser or whatever you want to achieve in your life, it is nothing but being self-aware and deploying all your energy against it, just like LeBron James did, just like Whitney Houston did, and just like every great entrepreneur did.

I love that. I think there's going to be people who email and go, I turned it off when he started talking about all of this stuff. And it'll be like the things you just said in the last three minutes for sure. I truly hope not, and I truly think that the people that do that, if you forward them to me so I can have a five-minute one-on-one conversation, I would do that because anybody that was scared of what I just said is wired for failure in the short term. The long-term marathon theory, and you've mentioned this a lot. I think about it all the time because a lot of people go, you know, you should start charging for the episodes of this. There's premium content you can do now. Oh, you can have people sponsor the show with recurring income. And they don't understand the strategy because I'm thinking about, all right,

how do I become the next Larry King only a little bit more dynamic and no suspenders? You know, I'm thinking of that kind of thing. And most people are not interested in that. They're trying to think about how they can buy a Ferrari Enzo in the next two years or one year or whatever. Shorten you, it's even scarier. So that's all right. Next, they're not even thinking about buying the Ferrari. They're thinking about how do I rent the Ferrari, take a picture and put it on Instagram, and make people think that I'm a winner and then leverage that. It's even worse. Yeah, you're right.

That's even more sort of meta. That's 90% of it. You know it. We know what we're circled around with. That's 90% of it. If they actually wanted to do the behavior to buy the Ferrari, I'd be more excited. It's not even that. It's like literally not even that.

It's how do I arbitrage renting the Ferrari? I'm going to rent a baby giraffe. I'm going to get some models or strippers from Vegas. in the shot. I'm going to put it on Insta. People are going to think I'm living the lifestyle. I'm going to arbitrage that and I'm either going to sell them on how to get there even though I didn't or some other horseshit. It's all about those baby giraffes. I don't know where that came from. I don't know if you had that in the can or if it just popped in your head. No, I think I saw some picture along the way. I don't know if it was a Blasarian party or

some horseshit, but like there was a baby fucking giraffe that somebody was holding. And I was just like, this shit is taking it. It's one thing to get your buddy to take his money out of the bank and put it on a bed in a hotel room, $100,000, take a picture and then put it back in the bank and go that way. It's another thing to rent a big time watch for the day and, you know, do that. It's another thing to spend a couple Gs to rent a big time car, take a picture and act like you bought it. It's a whole other fucking thing to put a baby giraffe in your photo.

That is, you're right. That is next level showmanship for sure. This does lead into an interesting question. How do you know if you're an entrepreneur in the first place? Because I think a lot of people are more interested in faking it. Do you think people are hardwired for this, or is it developed over time? I think the winning entrepreneur.

And what I say by the winning entrepreneur is somebody who could amass a million dollars, I think is an outrageous winner. And I would say even 500. Like somebody that can really do it and live a top 5% lifestyle on their own terms and their own business, I think that's hard-wired.

I do think that people can become the best version of an entrepreneur of themselves by studying, by putting themselves out there, by learning their craft. But I think of it the same way I think of athletics.

I really do. Jordan, do I think I can become a very good hockey player, even though I've never learned how to ice skate? The answer is yes. Really? Do I think I could become somebody that could ever be anything more than a guy who could be solid in a rec league? Absolutely not. Ah, okay. I was like, you've got a long way to go if you're going to be in the NHL.

So that's the problem. And that's where your head went. Everybody listening, everybody reading all this stuff. Everybody thinks they're going to be on the pantheon of like a millionaire. Do you know how it is to be a millionaire? Do you know what the date is? What is the date? No, I never looked at it, actually.

The top 1% in the United States makes $428,000 a year. And that's across all age groups. By the way, that's your gross income, adjusted gross income, not your net. Right. And this is across all age groups because it's different for 18 to 34, 34 to 45 or whatever. Yeah, this is the U.S. tax return people, right? So that's it. Do you know how hard that is?

Yeah, actually. I mean, you know how crazy that is? Like, literally, I'm doing a CNN money calculator. Here we go. 400,000 a year. If you make 400,000 a year, you were better than 99% of the rest of America. I made $400,000 in two talks.

Yeah, those are great speaking fee. Like, guys, this is math. Do you know what happens when you're the top 1% basketball player or singer or surfer or anything? And so what? Because you're going to read one of my fucking books and listen to this podcast and go to a fucking class, you all of a sudden are going to become that?

It's ludicrous. Talent is absolutely part of the equation of being a big-time entrepreneur. I think there's an element as well of stealing yourself to criticism, and this is from the book, you say, if you want to be an entrepreneur, if that's what you really, really want,

you cannot give a shit about what other people think of you, not even your parents. I won't lie, people will criticize you, they will say mean things, maybe even hateful things, often because they're jealous that you had the guts to get out there and do your thing,

or because they love you very much and are scared for you, and that's okay. If you truly trust and believe in yourself, you will learn to ignore them, and they will learn to accept your decisions. I mean, I was told I was a straight loser from first grade to 12th grade because I was a shit student. Yeah, you got terrible grades growing up. What did your hardworking parents think about that, by the way? Because it seems antithetical to be a Jewish immigrant and a terrible student and yet have

a really great work ethic. And it kind of makes me think something else was going on all along. Did you know early that you weren't cut out for the traditional path? By fourth grade, I started communicating with my mom and dad, mainly my mom, I was scared to deal with my dad. By fourth grade, I was saying like, look, I'm different. I'm going to sell stuff. I'm a businessman.

I used to call myself a businessman. The word entrepreneur wasn't in the lexicon. You know what? I was unwavering. My mom would slap me. Yes, European mothers punch in the face. My mom would punish me. No TV, no Nintendo.

You have to understand. I was like that scary fighter that you would like punch as hard as you can and they would just like bit the blood out on the side and then look you dead back in the face. You know, like that's who I was and that's who I am. Like I just won't wait for like I just have always been very, very, very comfortable in the fact that I felt like I got parented properly. I got the right DNA. I had the right skills. I knew how this was all going to end up.

I knew it from a very young age. My teachers would tell me I was a loser. I would be polite because my mom taught me to, but I would in my head say, you're a fucking loser. And I would say, I'm going to show you. I'm going to stick in your fucking face. And so the other thing is, you know what's interesting?

I've spent some time with myself. This is me talking to myself in the last year of, am I cursing and being polarizing on purpose because I actually get motivated by people underestimating me and neglecting me and saying I'm not good? Is that my motivator? You know, Mike this morning goes, I'd like you to get six reps here. And I've got a lot of sleep last night and I'm really been on point. And I was like, fuck you, Mike. And I got seven, right? And I like, it was hard what I was doing. And so, but I don't think if he said, let me get to six here, like let's try to get six here. I don't think you'll get seven. I need the adversity. It's why I love being a Jets fan, Jordan. I love the losing. And so weirdly, I'm asking myself, hey, man, are you sabotaging yourself in front of people because you want them to underestimate you? Because you love the aha. I told you.

you so got you, I knew you'd come around. Like, is there a vanity? And by the way, I'm not proud of this trait. Like, it's not a very noble thing to kind of sandbag yourself because you get off on people underestimating you and then you're stunning them. Right. It doesn't seem like it would motivate a lot of people. It could demotivate a lot of people. That's right. People, I think, go the other way, right? And I love losing more than winning. I'm just built that way. And I don't really even know what that is. And I'm not educated super well. And I'm sure there's a bunch of people right now that completely understand this. And when took anthropology classes or understood humanity or understand psychology, like, I'm sure it's very basic. But like, I built that way, man. I love the journey.

I can't lose this game because it's the hunt, right? I love the hunt. Like, I love the process of trying to buy the New York Jets. I'll be fine if I don't. Like, I'm so scared for all my friends who like at 80 and 90 and 70 when they're like, oh, man, sorry. They won't understand. Like, I want it. Yes, I do, but it's the hunt that gets me off. You obviously have a super competitive instinct. Would you agree with that? I'm the worst version of who I am as a human is at sporting events. I'm a really bad guy. I'm disrespectful. I'm way more alpha than I am on stage and public, as some of you could not imagine. I get into a fight verbally. I'm willing to get physical. I'm disrespectful to kids.

I curse heavily in front of four and five and seven-year-old kids, even when the parents turn around and say to me, hey, man. And I'm like, hey, man, nothing fucked faces a football fucking game. Like, I get crazy. That's insane. And I'm not proud of it. I'm proud of myself in every place I am, even in the cursing on stage, even in the ego of certain moments, including parts of this interview, I feel proud because I know it comes

from a good place. I am not officially, on record, I am not happy with who I am at sporting events. It is the worst version of myself. It is the place where I can't control my emotion. Because unlike business and real life where I'm in control, I'm not in control of Carmelo Anthony or Brandon Marshall. Yet I care so much. Well, you'll fit right in when you buy the Jets,

yelling and screaming on the sidelines. I'm asking this because at some level, and correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm imputing this to you, is there a little resentment or maybe that's not the right word? When you see someone in business that's a little bit ahead of you, I'm not saying you don't learn from them or anything. No, I'm in a good place with that. I'm so happy for everybody that's winning, you couldn't imagine.

I'll tell you why. I believe in meritocracy and I believe in marketplace dynamics. And if that person has been able to make the right decisions, they deserve it. I do not feel that anybody on earth is winning at my expense. That is a great answer, because honestly, I wasn't sure what to expect there. Do you feel like other people winning helps drive you forward because they're paving the way? Absolutely. I mean, I think of Chris Saka and I think of Travis.

These are my contemporaries five, six years ago, and they've gone to building their status in a couple of great decisions. Travis Kallonik's CEO of Uber. That's right. And I'm pumped. I mean, you couldn't imagine how I feel about them. Tim Ferriss, I think one of the great personal brands in this space, like, nothing makes me happier than his winning. And I want him to become the biggest. Like, I don't think anybody can eat up all the success, not even remotely close.

And so, A, especially people I know. And then even people I don't know, but I know from afar, as long as people are winning in an ethical way and aren't stealing or cheating or ripping off somebody, I'm very, very happy for them. Even if they are directly in my genre, there's a wine startup in Australia that's crushing directly in my industry pumped for them. Even like local stores, like Gary's Wine and Liquor, which is ironically my name, Gary's Wine and Marketplace, which is the biggest wine library competitor in New Jersey. Some people think I own it because it's Gary's. It's a guy Gary Fish. I have a lot of love for him. I have respect for him.

I've watched him execute for 30 years and he's done a great job and he deserves all his success, even though every dollar he makes comes out of wine library's expense. I love meritocracy, capitalism, and marketplace dynamics more than I like my own vested interest. And you were born in the communist country. And that to me is fucking ironic. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, and honestly, these are the contradictions that can be.

confuse people about me, but these are my truths and they will play out over the next 50 years to solidify my place wherever I deserve to be in the entrepreneurial lexicon. How do you keep the competitive instinct from affecting your personal and your familial relationships? Because you could drive your family and friends nuts trying to compete with them all the time. Do you turn it off? Do you curb it somehow? Yeah, I mean, I'm competitive. I'm very competitive with my dad. I'm very competitive with my brother. I'm competitive with everybody. Yes, but I definitely act differently in human world than I do when I put on my jersey every day, which is business world, you know?

Yeah, okay. I can see that. It's better to get in a fight over scatigories than it is over what you're going to do with your employee pension plan or something that could break the ship. Me and AJ have built a $100 million revenue business in five minutes and have had bigger fights on the basketball court and on the board game court than any day remotely on business. It makes sense that you galvanized to be on the same team when it actually counts,

and the competitive brotherly kind of BS comes out on the driveway. Yeah, and by the way, we're on the other side of each other in that scenario, but in VaynerMedia we're on the same team. Right, exactly. You talk in the book about Plan A, Plan B, but I'm wondering if you have a Plan B, does that mean at some level you're setting yourself up for failure? Should you never have a Plan B because you're super confident in Plan A?

I'm a big fan of Plan B, Plan C, Plan D, and people are always mad at me for that. They're like, no, Gary, there's that quote. If you have a plan B, you're set up for failure. I'm like, no, if you have a plan B, you're set up for practicality. Like, if you truly don't have a plan B, like, if you truly don't, well, that can get really dangerous. That can get into suicide.

That can get into divorce. That can get into losing your family. That can get into depression. Yeah. Like, my current plan B is the Gary V. brand, not Gary Vaynerchuk, the entrepreneur and operator, right? Yes. Like, I would tell you why I'm doing this book maybe more than anything deep, deep, deep down,

is it's my plan B. My plan B is that I talk about burning out as an operator, what I did, how I built $100 million businesses. Why did I stop? Because either I failed or I got burnt out. But I have enough in audience where maybe I talk about work life balance or I obviously have started taking care of my health, but I always thought that that could be a cliche thing four years ago. That's probably why I started getting serious about it. When I started having thoughts that I would have a heart attack at 46 and then that would be where my plan B would kick in. And that's, That's what I would talk about, which is, hey, all the success in the world isn't worth your health.

Here to things I did. I was like, wait a minute, I'm foreshadowing. Let's get serious about my health. I mean, it's unbelievable. Right this second, as I'm talking to you, I'm in the best shape of my life. You can tell. You look good, by the way. I appreciate it.

And it's crazy. I see it a lot because we're producing so much video content and they're doing a bunch of mashups. And I was like, damn, I didn't think I looked bad. I have a small frame. I wasn't obviously overweight. My weight was proportioned. But, I mean, I look way different than I did 24 months ago, you know? and so, and I feel different, and it's great.

Anyway, I don't want to get off to a tangent when a lot of time I want to get some more info in here. Plan B is the Gary B brand. I can make three to five million dollars years speaking if I had to, even with a loss on my resume. Yes. How do we balance the hunger required to achieve plan A while not taking too much

comfort in plan B? Again, it's emotional intelligence, Jordan, by knowing that's the case. I know deep down I have that plan B, but it's always plan A or bust. So it's like having it, but not relying on it. This is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Gary Vaynerchuk.

We'll be right back. And now for the rest of my conversation with Gary Vaynerchuk. Because I think a lot of people fail because they do 50-50, they do 80-20 even, and there's heat energy being sort of tossed out, lost in the equation. I'm a million dollars in a bank account that I make pretend doesn't exist. Just in case? That's like my version of what you just asked. I know it's there.

I literally had to recall it right now. It's the first time I've thought about it in 11 months. What do you think separates the people who take your information and act on it versus people who simply find motivation in it? I think the real talent gene of both work ethic, desire, and the capability to actually pull it off. I think the people that listen to me and will never do anything about it use me as a comfort and escapism like people use television or sports or music.

And I think that's great. and I'm happy about that, and I actually think it provides value. I think for a lot of people, see, this is where everybody is half glass empty and I'm half glass full. Let me explain. I think those people, a lot of people in my world, you know who I'm talking about, the 50 people that if they got together talked about it, would say, ugh, those people, right? I don't. I yell at them sometimes.

I go, you're such an asshole. Do you understand how much value you're bringing to that person? You're there Tonight Show. You're their Zelda. You're their New York Jets. you're their Leonardo DiCaprio, you're their run DMC. When they're consuming you, they don't have to think about what they're in tune to, which is, shit, I'm not going to pull this off and I'm not happy about it.

You're their escapism and you're providing them real value because life is hard and complicated. And for those 30 minutes during the Ask Gary B show or Daily Bee or The Hour of the Jordan podcast, you're providing them comfort and value. And that's very powerful. And then for a smaller group, you're laying the most, motivation in the blueprint that they're going to go out and change their life. And you draw the distinction between being a student and being a practitioner. What is the difference in your opinion between those two things? The 99% of shit that everybody in social media

and marketing and branding and content say every day on social media that I read and I laugh, including some of the biggest names in the game, because they actually have never used a Snapchat geo filter. They've never run hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, if not tens of thousands of dollars in Facebook ads, yet they have very strong opinions about Facebook advertising. The people that write articles for Forbes or Fortune or Huff Poe that are contradiction to the common conversation just to grab the headline, yet their logic makes no sense, and it proves they never use Periscope or Facebook Live or a Twitter geo ad. It's the difference between all the things I've been saying about Snapchat and the 50 Huxters that have been following me very

carefully, packaged up all my quotes and headlines and a couple of others, and now sell a $300 ebook on how to use Snapchat. So there's no reading this stuff only doing, is what it sounds like you're saying. You know, like everything else in world. Yes. You know, the way every athlete looks at every non-athlete when they have an opinion about it. Right, every armchair quarterback. Oh, I mean, I've become very friendly with a lot of athletes because athletes now care about investing and care about personal brands on social media, so I've been in a sweet spot. And as you can imagine, for a lot of people that are turned off by me, an enormous amount of kids that grew up in the ghetto

and had nothing and became athletes, they love my business communication style versus others. So I've made a lot of friends in that world, and it is stunning. I would have never thought as a Monday morning quarterback, the level of utter, not disdain, but just pure and utter, like, they laugh at any of us that talk about stuff

because we have no clue the seven days a week getting prepared for a sporting event on Sunday, or the grind of an NBA schedule or what your life is like since you're the age of nine and being prepped to be a world-class athlete, and they're right.

I've become so awakened by my own experiences in entrepreneurship. Jordan, do you know how pumped I am about DailyVee? I do not know, but I can only guess. Like, do you know how satisfying it is for people that, like, you know very well? And I mean, like, your actual friends who you have dinner with seven times a year,

emailing you and saying, fuck man, I thought I knew. But now that I think about it, that's right, we only see each other during these times because you're fucking really working fucking six to midnight every day, aren't you? I'm like, yeah, man, what do you think? You think I was lying to you?

Like you think I was trying to sell you something because it made me feel better? What about your kids? You've got these little kids and you're teaching them these different skills. Are you trying to push them in the way to become entrepreneurs? What are you doing parent-wise

to get this rocket and rolling? because I can't see you pushing your kids in the direction to go work for GM and the HR department. You'd be stunned. This is another contradiction. I am going to do exactly what my mom did for me and my dad. I'm going to support. I could care less how they're wired

or what they decided to do. I'm going to support it in a way like you've never seen before. Meaning, look, when you have a really successful father or mother, here's what happens. You look at that mountain and you say, I'm going to climb the shit out of that and I'm going to fucking prove the world wrong. For example, I would have been great with a dad that was a billionaire because I would have become a trillionaire because I love adversity, right?

Like I love that everybody would have thought, Daddy did it for me and Daddy's better than me. And I would have been like, fuck you, Daddy and the rest of the world because that's who I am. Right. Well, yeah, we know that. But I think for my kids, they may do what 90% of kids do, which is they look at that mountain and they're like, fuck that. Or they look at that mountain and they feel guilty that they took private planes to the Super Bowl and they want to start a nonprofit or be an artist or bring other. their value to the world, like, in a different way than business does, right? So if my kids want to be a teacher, if my kids want to make statues in Iowa, if my kids want to be comedians, the only thing I won't let my kids do is spend daddy's money in a vain way that doesn't provide value to somebody else. But if they want to provide value to people in a way that means that they have to go work

and be head of HR at GM, because that's what makes them happy. However they react to their reality, I will support them as long as they're good human beings. As long as they don't buy baby giraffes, you're good with it. That's right, man. As long as I understand why they bought the baby giraffe, you know, if they can trick me into saying, you know, dad, I'm doing this because at the end, I'm going to go, aha, see, this is all shit. If I know what they're doing is trying to provide value to something or somebody, I'm in.

If they're just fucked with because of the wealth that they were surrounded by or the notoriety, and they're starting to feel it a little bit because, you know, the last 18 months for my brand have been pretty intense. Ask Airy B and this DailyVee especially and Snapchat have changed the amount of people that come up to me in public. I'm now at one to three people a day versus one person every 30 days only 18 months ago, right? Because I've come back out the show and my content has been on fucking fire for the last 18 months after being fairly quiet for three years, right? So, you know, Misha's noticing it, right? She's like, you know, she sees like people like getting excited and taking a selfie.

And so it's going to be interesting, man. But what I can tell you is I'm going to support them 100%. Now, is it true that you play basketball with your son Zander in the living room and he cries when you pick up the ball because he knows you're going to block him? Very good job. I'm not sure where you picked that up. I know I've talked about it a little bit. Zander has not scored a basket on me yet. He's two, by the way.

He's three years old. I would say that Zander is minimally not going to score for the next 10 years. Why do you block your three-year-old son and living room basketball? You never let him score. He cries. Because, like, I did it for AJ, and he's one person, and Zander may go the other way, but for now, until I realized I have to stop, I realized with AJ at six or seven that I was doing the right thing, right?

That it was getting him motivated. He was working on his left hand. He looked at adversity and decided to climb the mountain. If in five or six years or three years or two years, I see Zander dropping the ball and walking away and leaving, it means that he doesn't have that gene, and then I will support him in a different way. But for now, I don't know, and this will be better if he wants to go that route. My prediction is one day he dunks on you, and it's the most proud day of your and his life at that time. When AJ beat me on one-on-one, maybe he was 17, 18, I don't know, 16, 19, I don't remember

when. There was an incredible feeling. Listen, accomplishing something in a true environment is the greatest feeling of life, and that's why I love business. You know what I love about business? Like, for example, all these hucksters that I keep innuendoing to. And these, again, just so everybody knows what I'm talking about, we're littered right now with marketers and coaches and experts that are just not that. They're hacking. They're hacking the system.

They're not going to win. We've seen these guys and gals forever. And yes, and understand what winning is. Winning doesn't come just in the form of money. For example, everybody old cares way more about how they made their money versus how much they made. That's a good point. I have noticed that. I never really thought about it. And so I spent a lot of time with old people and I did in my early 20s and I've stopped because I think I got what I needed. I really wanted to understand that the way people that lived it, what did they think about? They thought

about family time. They didn't care about money. They cared about being respected. They cared about the legacy they were leaving. And these were successful people and just like old man McGee that was at my playground, you know, when I was a kid who like worked at Johnson and Johnson for 50 years. They cared about the right stuff, the stuff that's noble. And that's what I care about. Right now, some of those people, they may be able to bang some hotter chicks. They may be able to make a couple more million bucks quicker, faster.

I'm going to beat them in the long term. Nobody even knows who they are in 10 years. More importantly, they're going to have children who are going to be embarrassed about how their dad made their money. Do you know how many wives I know right now that have husbands in, whether it's MLM or did something shady or da-da-da-da, who literally don't tell other, like, I see them in, settings, there'll be a business networking thing. I watch these things. This is how I'm weird.

I'll be talking to you, Jordan, at some like business event, and I'll be going through the motions, but I'll actually be paying attention to the conversation to the left of us, which is two wives, and one of the wives will say the other wife, like, oh, what does your husband do? And I know the husband very well. I know exactly how he made his money, not good, and I see the answer from the woman, and it's fucking embarrassment. And there's nothing worse. You can't be that guy. I can't be that guy. And other people can. They're wired differently. Mazel Toff, do your thing.

I don't judge you. I don't. I do not judge you. However, when you try to tell the young and impressionable or the old and desperate that this is the way to do it, fuck you. That's why I'm loud now and that's why I'll go on the offense. I won't throw you under the bus.

I don't win by chopping down other people's trees. I'm just going to build the biggest tree and everybody's going to be like, look at that tree and I'm going to show them the right way to do it. Legacy is greater than currency. Forever, homie. You talk about playing in the white space, working around the system, not within the system. What is the white space and how do we find it? That's tough.

So I think the white space right now for me, clearly, this 55 minutes and 46 seconds, I know you edited, so I don't know exactly what time is. But, you know, my current white space is I'm going to be the purest bred, most honest, most noble entrepreneur in a world where I think we have the emergence of Huxter entrepreneurs. That's my white space right now. This interview is literally my white space. Perfect. I'm going to write a $19 book that gives so much of value,

not because I just wanted to crank out a book, but I want to guilt everybody else into making better books for everybody because they're like, shit. Ask Gary Vee was so good. I want everybody who's writing a business book that's coming out this fall next winter, next year, to read this and be like, shit,

and make a better book because it's better for the market. You know? Yeah, I do know. And I agree with raising the bar. The other way to find the white space is pay attention to what everybody's reacting to and become unbelievably cynical to it. What does that mean?

It means if everybody's like, it's all about Snapchat, and I'm saying that, well then become cynical to it. When you become cynical, you've got to also be open to being right or wrong, right? You can't be blindly cynical.

So you got to poke. Kind of what you did with me, Jordan. You poked, and then eventually you said, okay, this is real enough, and you'll poke the next person. Poke what everybody's doing. Live streaming is the best. Okay, poke.

That means use it. That means watch 50 people use it. Come up with your own opinion. Not because I say so. Not because everybody says so, right? Yeah, right. So basically try it out. Yeah, poke, taste.

Taste. Taste. You know, like, cronuts are delicious. Well, don't just say they're delicious because everybody's talking about them. Go eat one. Not too many cronuts, but try a couple. Correct. All right.

I'll give you a good one. I will never meditate. And meditation's about to become huge. Yeah, absolutely. Meditation is going to become coffee and soul cycle in America in the next five years, and I'll never do it. because I'm scared it's going to fuck with my brain, and I feel like my brain's perfect.

So even though everybody says it's great, and everybody says I need to, and everybody says it's the best thing ever happened to them, I know myself, so why would I just follow them? So I'm going to use the white space. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. That's what I'm hearing right now. That's for sure.

Do you have contact with tons of younger entrepreneurs? What's the difference between the way young entrepreneurs in their 20s and the older guys, and I put that in air quotes, in their 30s and 40s do business? What are the differences and what can we learn from each other? Your gift is your curse. 20-year-old entrepreneurs think anything's possible, and then they become overconfident and

get caught by mistakes. It's also their gift. 30- to 40-year-old people tend to be more practical. They've learned from their strengths and the mistakes, and they don't take as big of risks. So every day, I'm pulling in opposite directions of being 20 and 40. I try to keep challenging myself and do random crazy shit, like a daily vlog, or like, who the fuck knows, opening a Europe office or just keep challenging myself in the offense, but I've learned from my other mistakes. You can't do everything. You need to empower people. And so it's really a funny contradiction. The strength is the weakness, which is blind, naivete and faith and bravado and optimism. And that can catch you. I also do think there's a lot of fake entrepreneurs right now because

there's an entitlement that if you're in your 20s, you should be an entrepreneur because a shark tank, because of the social network movie, because of like this rock star status of entrepreneurship. So there's a couple more 20-year-olds in the game now that should be number threes and fours instead of number ones, and that's a little bit of a difference as well. Most 40-year-olds were been selling blow pops since they were in high school.

Yes, absolutely. And they've seen a recession. Yes, which helps. A lot of younger people haven't. That's right. You mentioned earlier one of the best ways to go out of business is to make emotional decisions or get romantic about how you make your money

or let your emotions get in the way of the task. What does that mean to get romantic about how you make your money? And can you give us some examples of emotional decision making? I'm glad you asked that question. I get to clarify here. Being romantic about how you make money, this is how I define it. It means that if you're successful right this minute, look at the way you're making your revenue

and understand somebody's going to try to disrupt that. If you're at the top of your game, you know who should have invented Uber? Not Garrett, Camp, and Travis. the guy that owned the biggest cab fleet in the world. Yeah, you would think. You know who should have invented Airbnb? The Starwood Group, not three entrepreneurs in San Francisco.

You know who should have invented Wine Library.com? Sam's in Chicago or Zackys or Sherry Lehman's or K&L, the biggest liquor stores at the time. So when you're at the height of your game, you need to understand that people are going to disrupt you. You know what people listening to you right now are making all their money on running quant, affiliate arbitrage, Google AdWords, affiliate marketing,

other arbitrage ways, and it's mainly on desktop computer conversion, and the whole world's going mobile, and their numbers aren't as good as mobile, and they've only got 24 months of this fruitfulness. I don't know the answer to that, but I assume you do. I have intuition. I don't have the exact answer, but I know a lot of people are making their money on conversion-based marketing when the marketing conversion-based changes. Landing page optimization changes when it goes from desktop to mobile. Let's go back to emotional decisions. You mentioned that in the book as well, examples of emotional decisions, can you give us an example of an emotional decision? I called a couple taxi guys and said Uber's coming and they said it'll never work. TV people that don't believe Netflix is really going to win,

right? And right now, Time Warner and Comcast can be winning. They could be doing a much better job. Just I can give you a million. I mean, podcasting is rolling right now, but here comes anchor. Could that disrupt you? Like, you should be on anchor right now. I don't know. You need to constantly not believe in your own bullshit. Yeah, I agree with that. What do we do? for the type of person who makes emotional decisions? Is there some way to stop ourselves from doing it? Is it a habit that can be cultivated or broken? I think that gets into a place where I don't understand. I think that goes to going to therapists, rewiring yourself. I don't understand that. I can just social commentate and give examples and then everybody has to make their own decision. You know,

like I will myself to victory. I just mentally got my place into over a six-month period to fix my health that wasn't working for me for 38 years. But I can't sit here and be. I can't have the audacity to sit here and be like, hey, everybody, mentally will yourself. Right. Everybody does it differently. Everybody does. Yeah, it's basically mental and emotional strength, and it's tough. It's like getting back in shape.

This is awesome. I know you get a run. I think this is the best interview you've ever had. I think it's really damn good. I think the last one we did is pretty damn good, though, too. So it might be tied. All right, brother. Stay well.

If you're looking for another episode of the Jordan Harbinger Show to sink your teeth into, here's a trailer with Vince Beiser. It's all about sand. You heard me, sand. It's actually quite fascinating. There are even sand mafias killing people over sand. If anybody had told me three, four years ago, that I was going to be spending my every waking hour thinking and talking about sand,

I would have just laughed. It's actually the most important solid substance on earth. We use about 50 billion tons of sand every year. That's enough to cover the entire state of California every single year. Every year, we, use enough concrete to build a wall 90 feet high and 90 feet across right the way around the planet at the equator. A bunch of sand might get broken off of a mountaintop, washed down into a plane somewhere, and then that sand gets buried under subsequent geological layers and pushed down

under the earth and compressed and turned into sandstone. And then that sandstone may get pushed up again by geologic forces over hundreds of thousands of years and worn away again and again broken down back into grains. So an individual grain of sand can be millions of years old. We're fully eclipsing the rate of creation here. You're probably sitting in a building made of just a huge pile of sand. All the roads connecting all those buildings also made out of sand. The glass, the windows in all those buildings also made a sand.

The microchips that power our computers, our cell phones, all of our other digital goodies, also made from sand. So without sand, there's no modern civilization. And the craziest thing about it is we are starting to run out. For more on why sand is the next petroleum-like resource and some crazy stories about sand pirates and the black market for sand, check out episode 97 with Vince Beiser right here on the Jordan Harbinger show. Big thanks to Gary Vee.

There's always so much there with him, especially when you get him to open up and sort of like turn off the performer persona for a bit, which is, you know, he's used to that, but him and I go way, way back. I mean, this is probably 14 years, 15 years now that we go back. So it's always good to chat with Gary. Links to his stuff will be in the show notes on the website at Jordan Harbinger.com. Please use our website links if you buy books or anything from our guests. It does help support the show. Worksheets for episodes are in the show notes. Transcripts are in the show notes as well. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram, or hit me on LinkedIn. I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using systems,

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My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogart, Millie Ocampo, Ian Baird, Josh Ballard, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. If you know a Gary V fan or just another immigrant entrepreneur that might enjoy this, share this episode with him. Hopefully you find something great in every episode of this show. Please share the show with those you care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen

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