- I'm like a business CAT scan.
Genuinely, I think it's the thing I do,
it's unbelievable.
It's why I like Q&A I can literally like,
it just so, it's the thing that most comes natural to me.
("Monday To Monday" by Saba)
-Saba, mother fuckers, I've been telling you.
("Grandma" by Fiifi Jr.)
St. Louis, we're here.
I don't have any Cardinals on my fantasy team right now.
That's concerning.
Literally right here is where we lost one of our biggest clients.
New guy came in, fired us, fuck face.
- [Tyler] In person? - No, I was on a call though.
All well? - Yeah.
- [Gary] Good to see you.
- Hey, Tyler. - [Gary] Hi. How are you?
- [Woman] Very good. - [Gary] Nice to meet you.
Hey man, how are you?
- [DRock] Fit all of it? - [Pat] Yeah.
Gary, Pat. - Nice to meet you man.
Real pleasure.
DRock loves footage.
I need to come to a Cubs-Cardinals game
and take Brandon.
Yeah, he would love it.
- [John] Who's Brandon? - Brandon's my best friend.
He runs Wine Library. - [John] Oh, he does.
- And he's a huge Cubs fan.
I took him to Game 1 of the World Series last year because
in ninth grade I promised him if the Cubs ever made the
World Series I'd take him to the first game.
And we did it.
I'm so pumped.
- [Pat] We're gonna stop at one spot.
So instead of basketball.
I don't even take Tylenol.
It's so funny everybody things I'm a crack head
'cause of my energy.
It's so funny how I play out.
I'm always the opposite of what people think.
I don't even take Advil.
I'm Eastern European old school.
The only things that go in my body are like tea and coffee
I guess is the closest I have to anything.
Like I don't take anything. Nothing.
Protein and fucking actual work.
My body building up is exactly the same as
my business building up.
- [John] Grind it out. - No shortcuts.
Fucking mentally pounding through.
Disciplined, fucking eat shit.
Fucking Rocky Balboa, carry a boulder on your fuckin' head in
a mountain while it's snowing shit.
We're in Missouri.
That's your update.
(DRock laughs)
This is my favorite social media content.
- Geez.
- There's a barbecue master.
- [Gary] Hey Mike. - Hey.
- [Gary] How are you, man? - Nice to see you.
- [Gary] Real pleasure. How are things?
- Good. Real good. - [Gary] Good, man.
Real pleasure.
- I saw you on TV the other day.
- [Gary] Yeah? Where? - Yeah, I don't know.
I can't believe, I don't remember anything.
(group laughter)
You're saying I'm hungry, I passed an Uber twice.
(group laughter)
And I don't know why I remember it
'cause I don't even watch TV.
It was weird. - [Gary] I love it.
- Want to come on back? - Sure.
- [Mike] This is our pie shop.
We got a little pie shop.
So, what are you in town for?
- [Gary] Giving a speech to EO and YPO.
- [Mike] I don't know. We could do a thousand--
- [Gary] You're on a macro kick. - [Mike] I got nothing, yeah.
- [Gary] Yeah, I get it.
- [John] Well you make sure people are well taken care of.
- Yeah. I have good people everywhere so.
- I love it.
- You guys want sandwiches or ribs or what do you guys want?
Something easy you can eat in the car?
- I have a feeling, sorry Jordan,
I'm gonna have to eat something.
I'll take some ribs 'cause I'll just eat the meat.
Yeah, you really fucked up the South-By location.
Put me directly in the ghetto.
I like it though, back to my roots.
While everybody's at the Four Seasons and the JW Marriott,
I'm hilting it like a fuckin' boss.
- [John] Where are you out of? - We're staying in the Hilton.
It's just funny.
It's just like an OG spot.
There's all these great hotels now finally there but Tyler for
some reason doesn't use the resources around him like Phil
and Nate and De Mayo.
He just does shit on his own.
It's caused me a lot of pain.
But it's learning.
It's all learning process.
No. Nope.
I only want to answer the questions that
people want answered.
- So personal, business, it doesn't matter.
- Having questions that you want asked is selfish.
The key to a good speaker is to give it to them.
- Hard to argue with that. - I think so.
- So, no whatever, I'll create a framework,
that's what this talk's about, right?
I can talk about thematically stuff that's top of mind but
with a group like we have, you know,
it's real business talk, right?
It's companies, it's good, it'll be good.
- Thanks a lot. Take care.
Can I get a picture with him? - Of course.
- Uh-huh.
- Got it? - Cool.
- Awesome.
- [Woman] Thank you. - Such a pleasure.
Thank you so much.
- [Woman] Thanks for coming by. - Yeah.
It's just so nice out.
- [DRock] How are the ribs? - Good.
- [DRock] Yeah?
- I didn't think I was going to eat food today.
Hope we get to cross paths one day and I wish you nothing but
the best, man. And that's it.
So I have you have a great day.
Totally get it.
I agree with you.
Not everybody hits everybody the same way.
And I hope serendipity takes over and allows us to share a
beer one day so maybe you get a different perspective.
Wish you nothing but health bro.
Thanks, man. Stay well.
- [DRock] You're not selling t-shirts?
- I do but not for a living.
I just want the awareness I'm not there for the economics.
Like even the joke the guys said,
"Do you make your money selling t-shirts?"
I was like swag or books there's no economics in it.
It's exposure. - [John] Yeah, yeah.
- It's marketing.
I don't want to lose money and I'm thrilled to make
some but it's disproportionately not the interesting part of
writing a good book. - [John] Yeah.
- The interesting part of writing a good book is having
somebody email you when something happens.
- [John] If you want to get good Mexican food,
there's good Mexican restaurant on fifth right up the street.
- [Gary] So this is a very Latino based neighborhood?
- Yeah.
- [Gary] Smells good.
I love this smell.
So this is the wood from the locker room?
- From Wrigley Field. - From this last year?
- [Both] From two years ago.
- Yeah. It was the wood.
It was the wood in the locker room that was stopping them from
winning the World Series.
- Yeah we helped 'em.
- This is so cool.
So there's a B2B and a B2C component?
- Yeah. - Right.
'Cause this is the B2C stuff.
Consumer stuff. - Yep.
This is old dugout wood from the Astros and we turn it into,
you probably don't use this as much in New York but a boot
jack, take your cowboy boots off.
- Not a big thing in New York but definitely super smart way
to turn things into collectible utilitarian instead of just like
the same old stuff everyone did.
- Very practical stuff. - I totally understand.
It's actually very similar to my core thesis about marketing
which is buying nostalgic brands and make them modern.
- Yeah.
- Take the old and make it extremely new.
It's super interesting.
- Yep. - That's cool.
- Yeah, so... - I'm glad we stopped by.
What's going on with the bowling league?
- [Man] So I bring my guys over and we got it off in five
minutes (Gary laughs) found some art.
This is almost a storage and random area.
Our baby right here has helped us in a lot of unique ways.
This is a rolling UV printer. - Uh-huh.
- You print just about anything.
We can print those signs for example.
Right now we're printing on leather.
That turns this into a really unique cool product.
This part isn't waxed but we can even print on felt to make our--
- Pennants. Yeah.
("Blue" by Fiifi Jr.)
Pretty cool.
Who's the next? Anybody?
That's why you got to build the next chapter.
- [John] Yep.
- [Gary] That's what you got to do ASAP.
Give that a lot of thought.
- [John] Yeah, that's true. - That's how you'll win.
And that's how you'll lose.
I love everything about that except that one piece.
You know what the best part is,
this is the exact kind of place...
I'm aware.
What do you think my first reaction was?
- [John] Yeah, no, I know.
- I'm like a business CAT scan.
Genuinely, I think it's the thing I do,
it's unbelievable.
It's why I like Q&A I can literally like,
it just so, it's the thing that most comes natural to me.
I'm like okay, this.
It's pretty cool, right?
I've never said that before.
It's so weird what just happens.
What?
You love this hood?
So move there. It's where Boyd's from.
- [Tyler] Wait, who? - Mike Boyd.
One of my brother's best friends who who works at Vayner who's
like a huge hip hop head.
This is where David Lee's from.
Basketball player.
Hit up Babin right now, show him the Vayner Rookies picture.
Tell him to find them, interview 'em.
You know what?
That's what we can do over the weekend.
Mhmmm.
Go have him really interview 'em.
Like get somebody charismatic to ask like
what did you know about Gary? - [DRock] Like Emily.
- Have Emily interview 'em.
What do you know about Gary?
How did it happen? How did you see him?
Did you contemplate not coming to see him?
How did the interview process come?
Maybe interview Andy
and Alex Klein about how you got to kiss
a lot of Gary frogs to actually get a prince.
Like, you know?
Got it? - [DRock] Yep.
- [Gary] Make a phone call.
Good afternoon, thanks for having me.
I'm really excited to be here.
I see that there's three mics.
To be very frank, I have quite a bit of time up here and it's
been allocated for 45 minutes for me to talk and
45 minutes of Q&A.
I'd like to pretty much inspire maybe even an hour of Q&A
because I think the number one job of a speaker to bring value
to their audience and I think in the world that we live in a lot
of my thoughts and theses live online on YouTube and Facebook
and you can get quite a bit of that.
I see all of you have books and can get quite a bit there.
I'll set a framework because I'm sure a lot of people don't know
who I am or what I believe in and hopefully,
to be very honest, actually how many people
here are in B2B businesses?
Raise your hand. High, please.
Awesome. How 'bout B2C?
Startups to consumer? Raise your hands.
Okay, so I want to really like get a sense of the audience so
I can take the conversation in a certain direction
but as you can imagine...
("Blue" by Fiifi Jr.)
How many businesses in this room have an
Alexa voice skill strategy for their business.
I promise you, none.
Yet, 100 million Americans in three years will wake up and
say, "Alexa, give me my morning routine."
And some local business is gonna be the one that gives the news,
the weather, the sports scores.
Why can't that be you?
Why can't your sports shop be the thing that gives the local
people of St. Louis their sports scores and then every single
morning the whole god damn town is thinking about your business.
It can't be you because you wait.
Were not on the offense.
And so, that's just three and four years away and that's not
something (mumbles).
People don't even know what an Alexa Echo is and the ones that
do here, you know their kids are using it 85% more than they are.
Right? Where do you think the world is going?
There are parents in this room that are keeping their kids off
of technology as if the kids are gonna live up
in the caveman world.
Where do you think this is going?
We're not going backwards.
I'm sorry.
Thank you.
(audience applause)
Let me grab this.
What is one ninja trick you used to vet somebody to be a rock
star marketing employee?
I believe in the, I got a good one actually,
a little bit left field.
I am a much bigger believer in firing than hiring.
Like my whole life has been predicated on
having good EQ and intuition.
I have fired so many, I have hired so many shit heads.
(audience chuckles)
I think people are at their best when they're in interviews.
You know? You just can't get anywhere.
They're complete non-events. Right?
What's your biggest weakness?
Oh sometimes I just work too hard.
(audience laughter)
Fuck you. (audience laughter)
My biggest trick is actually not thinking
I'm so smart in figuring it out.
It's be optimistic, give trust instead of having it earned.
Hire them to the best of your capabilities but then audit them
aggressively always and get rid of them when they don't play
either the honey or the empire part and in my world that is
internal politics and HR skills and the skill of what they're
supposed to do.
People have so much pride.
It's unbelievable how many people in this room have fake
ego in how good they hire so much so that they don't fire
losers 'cause they don't want that loss to smear they're
incredible hiring record.
It's why most people build small businesses.
You know, let me just say something about this audience,
I'm watching you.
That was a really good reaction 'cause a lot of you know that
was real fucking truth right there.
(audience laughter)
That was good and then, guys all of my stuff is psychology,
it's all humans.
That's what we screw up everything.
Like we're screwing it up.
Like it's on us.
You can't hire a 28, 42, 60-year-old marketer
and just outsource it to them when
it's your business 'cause you're
never then gonna entrust them because
you don't know the skill.
That's why you're not doing new stuff 'cause you don't know if
she or he is right or wrong 'cause you don't know.
And instead just go to Turks and Caicos and listen to three
audiobooks and you're good.
Like you'll have some foundation.
It's crazy to me.
It's crazy to me but I love it.
I'm so pumped a lot of you are gonna go out of business when
the shit melts.
(audience laughter)
Know I'm happy.
'Cause that's actual capitalism.
("Motion Picture Soundtrack" by Shallou)
That's how this goes.
You deserve to lose.
You've been complacive for 11 years.
You're finished.
You suck.
I really only focus on what I'm good at.
HR, selling, strategy and then I really leave everything else
to other people 'cause I know maybe they won't be as good
as me or as this, that as me
'cause I just know what I'm good at.
And I will tell you like the reason I've been really
successful in book writing is when I thought that I had to
write the book, I didn't even consider it.
When I reverse engineered what I was good at which was talking
my ass off I realized there were ghost writers that could help me
do the other part, I got really good.
You just have to be dangerous enough.
I'm not a CFO driven entrepreneur, right?
But I will buy the New York Jets for
billions, billions of dollars.
I just have to be dangerous enough to not allow my CFOs to
put me out of business.
So figure out what you need to be dangerous at,
check your ego at the door
and quadruple down on your strengths.
That is the historic nature of people that have built very
large successful enterprises.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you. (audience applause)
("Joey" by Fiifi Jr.)
The brands have been
commoditized so they need the personal brand meanwhile a lot
of the umbrella companies they play within
are handcuffing them
on social because they're scared of regulations 'cause they
didn't read three sentences of the regulations.
So, that's what I think.
Seton Hall, baby.
They beat Marquette.
Let's go Hall.
That's the only college basketball team I've ever liked.
- [Tyler] Really?
- [Gary] The bandwagon run of '89.
So fun.
Small Jersey school going to the Finals.
'89 to like '94.
Lightweight but that '89 run was like magic.
I was 14, NCAA, small Jersey school,
Final Four.
They crushed Duke. Like it was crazy.
That's actual meritocracy.