- Welcome to Larry King Now,
our special guest is Gary Vaynerchuk,
the self-proclaimed hustler,
is a digital media mogul, author, web show host,
and venture capitalist among many other things.
As the CEO and co-founder of VaynerMedia,
Gary hosts the hugely popular YouTube show,
#AskGaryVee.
And has penned three New York Times best selling books.
Gary has been named to Fortune Magazine's 40 Under 40 list,
of the most influential business leaders,
and holds the number one ranking
on Forbes top 40 social selling market masters.
His newest book, #AskGaryVee, is available now.
How did this all start, you, wine?
(laughs)
What, what happened with you?
- What happened with me is,
I had the great benefit of being an immigrant.
I was born in Belarus, in the former Soviet Union.
- [Larry] My mother was from Belarus.
- I didn't know that.
- Minsk I think.
- Yeah, I was born 40 minutes from Minsk.
And came to the states in '78,
when they let some Jews out of there.
And, we set up in Queens.
And my parents lived the American dream,
they worked very hard.
My dad was a stock boy in a liquor store
in Clark, New Jersey.
And eventually became the manager of that store,
and eventually saved up enough money
to buy a store in Springfield, New Jersey.
I was lemonade stands, baseball cards, real hustler kid,
Blow Pops, anything to make a buck.
And at 14, I got dragged into the store.
You know, oldest son, immigrant family.
I always tell people, Larry,
that I lived their grandparent's life
more than theirs, right?
I'm couple generations behind most.
I did it in the 70's, and 80's, and 90's,
when most people did in the 30's, 40's, and 50's.
- You're a legal immigrant?
- I am, thank God.
- [Larry] Okay.
- Otherwise I probably wouldn't do the show--
- Donald?
Okay. (laughs)
- And, I fell in love with people collecting wine
when I was 17,
because I was into collecting sports cards.
That was my connection point.
I wanted--
- Collecting? - Collecting.
I wanted to build 4,000 wine shops.
That was, I was gonna build a Toys "R" Us of wine,
sell the franchise, buy the New York Jets.
That's what the plan was.
Heard the internet my freshman year of college,
heard that sound,
cuh, cuh, chee, cuh.
Knew that it was special.
And in 1996, I launched one of the first
e-commerce wine businesses in America.
Called WineLibrary.com.
Took over my dad's business,
kind of running it day to day in 1998,
alongside with him.
And from '98 to 2003, helped grow that business
from a three to a $60 million business.
That became the foundation.
Built that on e-commerce, email marketing,
banner advertising, Google AdWords,
things that the marketing world didn't believe yet.
And then, YouTube came out.
And I started a wine show four months after YouTube started.
And that--
- You are not a wine expert?
- I grew up a wine expert.
You know, from 15 to 30,
in those 15 years, my whole life was wine.
- Were you always successful?
- In everything but school.
- Didn't do well in school?
- Poor.
Terrible actually.
Punted it.
You know, it was funny.
And this is where I give my parents enormous credit,
and I've, you know it's funny,
it's a business book that says self-awareness.
My parents grew up, and I give them so much credit,
in a world where all their contemporaries,
as, and you know this,
education's the way out for immigrants.
- Sure is.
- My mom recognized that I was a merchant,
an entrepreneur, a promoter.
- So did school fail you, or you failed school?
- School failed me.
School's failing entrepreneurs every single day.
- Because?
- Because it's not built for entrepreneurship.
It's built for workers.
You know, if, you're being taught to play within the lines.
And there's nothing being taught that maps
to the entrepreneurial market.
As a matter of fact, my biggest cynicism when I sit across
an entrepreneur today,
is if they are too successful at school.
I probably look at Ivy League grads
starting startups right now
with more of a negative light,
than I do somebody who wasn't as good.
- Because?
- Because what I've learned
over the last five to seven years,
and by the way, in the last two, three years,
I've taken a step back on this,
because there's too many entrepreneurial friends
who've gone to great schools that have been successful,
so this is not a blanket statement.
But I will tell you that in a world of private schools,
in a world of mommy and daddy having a lot of connections,
that when you go from 12, 15, 18 years of that ecosystem,
and you go into a market, and you create an app,
the market doesn't give a crap who your dad is.
The market responds to your product,
and a lot of these kids have not been able
to take the punch in the mouth
that comes along with entrepreneurship.
- You're big on self-awareness, right?
- [Gary] Huge.
- How does one get to be self-aware?
- I don't know.
- So how do you teach it?
- I don't know.
But I know it's damn important.
And so, I know where I start and where I stop, Larry.
And I wish,
honestly I'm curious to see
over the next 40, 50 years of my career,
if I figure it out.
I think that,
the things that I've been pushing people to do is,
one, create an ecosystem where you make the people
closest to you feel comfortable to tell you the truth.
So, one of the things I've been asking for people to do
is tell your mom and dad and spouse,
best friend, coworker,
hey, tell me the truth.
What am I good at, what am I bad at?
And spend a month or two to get them comfortable
to actually tell you the truth.
Cause the people that love you
sure don't want to tell you.
- How did the website thing come about?
- Way back when?
- I mean, you, your web show.
- [Gary] Or the web show now?
- What is the biggest thing you do, is your web show?
- The biggest thing I do right now
is I run a 650 person social media digital agency
that works with the brands like Toyota, and Pepsi--
- [Larry] That's called?
- And that's called VaynerMedia.
- And what does VaynerMedia do?
- We're a modern day Mad Man.
We're a Madison Avenue agency,
the same people that used to sell commercial time
on anything you ever did in radio and television,
we now do that on Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram.
And we produce the creative for the brands
to sell stuff, through the phone.
Because Larry, and I'd love to get,
I'd almost want to,
I know we're doing a show here,
but I'd love to get your thoughts,
maybe after, maybe right now, who knows.
I think we're living through a very interesting moment.
I believe that the telephone is becoming the television.
And the television is becoming the radio.
And I've been spending a lot of time studying
the transition, in the late 50's, from radio to television.
Because this is the first time
we've had a platform shift in our society
in a half a century.
And I think it's a very big deal.
And I've been spending an enormous amount of time,
the last five years,
trying to be the best storyteller for that platform.
- Next, utilizing the digital world
for your entrepreneurial benefit.
How social media can transform your business.
Stay with us.
- We're back with the incredible Gary Vaynerchuk.
Is that a Jewish name?
- You know it's funny,
I know it always confuses people.
People don't think it, but I am.
- [Larry] Okay.
(laughter)
The book, #AskGaryVee is out now.
An entrepreneurs take on leadership,
social media and self-awareness.
Okay, how do we use social media
to help our business?
- Well I think we first understand
that social media is a slang term
for the current state of the internet.
And when you position social media that way,
you take it a lot more seriously.
So step one Larry,
for 97% of the people that are watching,
is to actually take it serious.
That's number one.
And again, we were talking as we were getting ready,
a lot of radio people didn't take television
serious when the transition happened.
That was their loss.
- Correct.
- [Gary] Right?
That's what's happening right now, Larry,
this is historics,
that history always tells you the future.
And so that's what's happening.
So first take it serious.
Two, understand that Facebook,
and Instagram, and Snapchat,
and YouTube these are different channels.
It's the difference between CNN and Fox,
and ABC and Sports ESPN.
You've gotta understand the context
of the medium that you're on.
So when you're story telling
about your business on YouTube,
you've gotta produce different content
than when you're putting a picture on Facebook.
So again, sitting in your presence,
I almost wanna ask questions more than do this interview.
I think that people
underestimate context of the medium.
I would assume that when you interviewed somebody on radio
versus when you did it on television,
there's slight differences
'cause they're different mediums.
- Slight.
- Slight and it's slight, but it's real.
And in that slightness is all the magic.
Number three, it's understanding
that you have to provide value.
Too many businesses right now on Facebook
and Twitter and Instagram,
every post they put out is buy my stuff,
buy my stuff, buy my stuff,
here's where I'm gonna be, check me out,
buy my book, check out my experience,
watch me on my show,
and nobody's providing values.
So the prior book I wrote to this was called,
Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook.
Give, Give, Give, Ask.
And it gave people a formula
of how to put out content
that actually gave people enough value
that you then had them in a consideration
to buy your stuff.
- But the technology changes so much
that something could be new tomorrow,
that wipes out what was yesterday, right?
- Tough crap. Right?
The market is the market is the market.
Everyday people put out shows on radio and television
that tried to knock you off your pedestal.
You had to become number one,
stay number one,
that's the market.
I wish that Twitter wasn't losing it's leadership role.
I have 1.2 million followers on Twitter.
I built my brand on Twitter.
I'm dominant on Twitter.
- I have 2.8.
- Well, 'cause you're a legend.
- Why is Twitter going?
- Because Twitter lost it's way in my opinion,
'cause they didn't create an algorithm
and everybody who follows everybody,
see's everything and it gets too loud.
And so they had, what I call, a fire hose problem.
Too much information meant that people tuned it out.
So, what Facebook did and what Instagram does,
is they don't show you everything.
They show you the stuff based on what you've been liking,
that it thinks that you're gonna like.
- All this is most appealing to the young, right?
If you're over 40, are you into this?
If you're over 50?
- I think so.
I think if you look at behavior,
let me ask you a question.
Have you noticed some of your over 40,
over 50 friends start to send emoji's on text?
- I don't know what that is.
- Do you know the little poop pictures
and the little face and the smiles?
- I don't text.
- Well listen, let's turn off the cameras,
we got things to do here.
I need Larry to send some poop emoji's immediately.
- A poop emoji?
- Yes.
Poop Emoji is the next thing.
- [Larry] Sounds like a dog in the backyard.
- In the next segment, we're gonna talk poop emoji's.
Look, I think if you look at the data,
it's stunning what's happened, 35 to 60.
I'll go a different route with you.
For anybody who's watching right now,
if you're lucky enough to know your parent
at the age that you are now,
if you're of an age where you actually
knew your mom and dad at the same age you are now,
you will notice that your behavior is much younger.
- Of course.
- That has a lot to do with technology.
We're living through a youthification of our society.
The fastest growing segment
on the Instagrams and the Snapchats in the world,
are the 40 and overs because just like Facebook,
these things age up.
- Wow.
- Yeah.
- Now, explain all of this with regard
to the New York Jets.
(laughter)
- I desperately wanna buy them Larry.
- You do?
- Yes I do.
- Can you afford it?
- Not yet.
But I've never felt more
in control of that actually happening
than I do right now.
- Why this, you're so level headed and on top of things.
- [Gary] Yes.
- But sports things are a fan thing.
- [Gary] Yes, they are.
- And that's short for fanatic.
- Yes it is.
- [Larry] And that's emotional.
- Yeah listen, I'm a flawed human.
I mean we all have our short comings.
You know look, I'll tell you the truth.
When I came to America,
in Queens and in Dover,
I couldn't speak English.
Dover, New Jersey.
- Spoke Hebrew?
- No, I wasn't speaking Yiddish,
but I was speaking Russian.
There was something when I moved to Edison, New Jersey.
Eric Godfrey, Robbie Turnick,
they were playing football
and they made me a Jets fan,
and it was my first American thing.
Everybody had a Jets jersey
and I wanted one
and we couldn't afford stuff like that.
It's not what immigrants do.
You don't go out and buy a $30 Jets jersey.
So, my mom knitted me one.
And so I have it.
It's my prized possession.
It's literally my prized possession.
And I've created a fairy tale in my mind,
somewhere around 2nd or 3rd grade,
that I was gonna go from
not being able to afford a jersey,
to owning the whole damned thing.
The quest to buy the Jets
is my happiness.
Whether I buy them or not,
so many variables.
- What if Woody Johnson doesn't sell?
Well, he'll be dead by the time.
- Well, that's right, I mean,
there's an advantage of being 25 to 30 years
younger than the current owner, but you don't know.
Anything can happen, right?
So there's a lot of things
I can't control in that fairy tale,
but I can control the ambitious climb to get there.
- You are so on top of things.
Does a Jet loss affect you?
- Yes.
The Jets are my one Kryptonite.
I'm actually stunningly level headed.
I'm basically unemotional when it comes to business.
- I can tell.
- You know, it's a win/loss thing,
it's a net/net game, I can deal.
Yes, the Jets bother me
because I'm not in control.
- We got quite a few questions on my blog
regarding tips for jump starting a business.
What are the three most important things
to keep in mind when starting up?
- One, that cash is oxygen.
I'm blown away by all these people
that are starting businesses that don't realize
that money (laughs) is important.
They think about all these things.
They're trying to think about four years from now,
and they haven't made their first check.
Just complete lack of practicality
when thinking about a business.
Number two, strengths.
Are you a salesman?
Are the accountant?
Do you have financial strength?
Do you have sales strength?
Are you operationally?
Are you good at HR?
Whatever you're best at,
do that,
surround yourself with the other three or four pillars
that need to have a business.
And number three, look for the white space.
Meaning, where are people not marketing
and story telling, that you can?
Is Snapchat, is YouTube,
is a blog, or a podcast your way to separate yourself
from everybody else while they're running direct mail,
or radio, or television, or print advertising?
What's the white space in your sector
that nobody else is filling?
- [Larry] Okay, well, a little game of If You Only Knew.
I just (mumbles) .
What's the best piece of advice you ever got?
(spits)
- That.
When I was fourteen I was full of crap.
I was a salesman.
I would say anything to you
to make you buy my baseball cards
or a bottle of wine.
My dad grabbed me by the neck
and he said, "Listen to me,
"where we come from,
"you've got one thing: your word,"
and that one moment
easily,
my mom did most of the work.
My mom did most of the work.
My dad was at work.
I never saw my dad until I was 14.
She built a self-esteem,
she made me the right kind of guy, kind.
She built the foundation,
but that one tweak by my dad
changed the outcome of my life
from being a good huckster/salesman
who would've made it okay
and made a good buck to having real potential.
- Did you get some bad advice too?
- I don't really listen to advice at all,
so I'm sure I get bad,
Larry, I actually think I get bad advice everyday.
- Is there a company we should be
paying more attention to?
- Music.ly.
It's the emerging thing.
Snapchat's the one for most people,
but I'm making that assumption
that as people continue to watch this,
they'll know about that.
Music.ly is the emerging social network
with junior high kids in America and China.
It has a chance.
- Your biggest failure and what you learned from it?
- I think my biggest failure
was when I transitioned from day to day
in the wine business to starting VaynerMedia,
I wrote a book called Crush It!
that became a big New York Times list,
I started three other businesses.
I was like a guy that came out of a long relationship
and wanted to date everything.
I learned that even though my brain
tells me I can do everything
because I work 15 to 18 hours a day,
I can't and you only have so much energy and focus
and I need to cut that in.
- What industry is on the verge of exploding?
- Virtual reality.
And let me say this Larry
'cause I think you're gonna get a kick out of this
because if you think emojis is crazy,
let me tell you what I'm bout to tell you.
12 years from today,
when we're doing this interview
as we're gonna have a long relationship as you said,
we're gonna be doing it,
it's gonna feel like it's happening
just like right now except one thing,
we're both gonna be sitting at home.
- (grunts) How about an industry
that's slowing down or dying?
- I think television advertising is in deep crap.
- Business leader we should be paying more attention to?
- I think Jeff Bezos, who runs Amazon,
is the single best entrepreneur of this century
including Steve Jobs.
- And he went into the newspaper business.
- Because he's smart.
You know what he did there Larry?
He went into the brand business.
He bought that brand, Washington Post,
for nothing and now he's gonna deploy it
in a different platform like the Kindle.
- What's the best success story you ever heard?
- You know what's funny?
That's a great question.
I'm very under-educated on the entrepreneurs
and successful people in the world.
My favorite success story is my dad.
He came here with nothing.
Zero.
- Good example.
- I live in a studio apartment a quarter
of the size of this studio. - He's still living?
Yeah, he's young. He's 62.
He's only 22 years older than me.
- [Larry] Still working then?
- (blows raspberry) On fire.
- Part of the world that is exploding
in business and commerce?
- I'm very intrigued by Africa.
I think Africa is emerging.
They've got cell phones that at scale,
I think that's gonna be the place
everyone's gonna focus the next decade.
- Young entrepreneur who's impressing you?
- I think Mark Zuckerburg
is gonna take that throne from Jeff Bezos
and I think he's grossly, grossly underestimated
and in parallel,
Evan Spiegel of Snapchat has surprised me.
He's 25 I think.
The way he's navigated that business
with all the pressure of the whole world looking at him.
- Where do these kids get this?
In garages?
Where does this come from?
This genius.
- I don't think it's genius.
I think that they're lucky
that the internet came along
and allowed them to do it earlier.
The internet is such scale.
- Well, where is the internet?
- In the ocean, in the sky.
The internet is basically our lives.
I actually think the internet
is more our life than this is.
This is where people spend their time.
Attention is the asset and the internet owns it.
- (sighs) Gary Vaynerchuk in 10 years?
- Hustling.
- Owning the Jets?
- [Gary] No. - Not yet.
- My behavior doesn't map to owning the Jets in 10 years.
My behavior maps to owning the Jets in 30.
- Lot of social media questions.
Serena Brahney on Facebook:
"When do you know you're ready to start a business?"
- If you're asking that question,
you're probably not ready.
(laughing)
Larry, I believe a purebred entrepreneur
suffocates in the notion of doing anything
but running their own business.
- @chefchipper on Twitter:
"What was you favorite baseball card as a kid?"
- 1990 Leaf Frank Thomas rookie card.
Me and my friend Brandon adored that card.
- Just saw Frank a couple weeks ago.
- He's a real player.
He was a real player.
- Oh, he's in Hall of Fame.
Bruce MacLelland on the Larry King Now blog:
"Do you get political at all?
"What are your thoughts on people
"from the private sector?
"Donald Trump?"
- (Sighs) I don't tend to get political
mainly because I've voted both party lines already
at this young of an age multiple times.
I'm quite practical about politics.
I wait 'til there's a decision
and I make the decision that I think
is best in the current situation.
- @BreckLandscape on Twitter:
"What's more investable:
"a digital company with millions
"of users and no profit
"or one with a few users
"and millions in profit?"
- Both
is true,
but if there's no growth at no profit
with millions of users,
that's the one that you wanna run
because the upside is so great.
- Now, Twitter had that, right?
- Yeah, and look.
I was an early investor in Twitter.
- Twitter isn't bad, is it?
- No, it's not bad
and by the way,
I made a crap load of money, Larry.
The people who invested in Twitter
before it went public made a fortune.
Twitter's issue is that it needs
to hold onto the attention of its users.
- Mr. Lou on Facebook asks,
"In the age of digital media,
"how do you suggest someone maintain
"a solid print audience?"
- By making sure, A,
they are building a digital audience,
and by B, trying to find something clever
that the print product can deliver
that the digital product cannot
and also this Larry:
holding your breath.
The user is dying off
and when I say dying I don't mean literally dying.
I mean we are watching 40, 50, 60, 70,
80-year-olds shift into digital consumption.
- But if print is dying,
why does a Carlos Slim invest in the New York Times?
- Because he wants to use
that to push his propaganda.
- He's got a vehicle.
- (laughs) Yeah.
- As Jeff Bezos.
- Of course.
Larry, that's the real answer,
you know it.
- Yeah, @KJM1016 on Twitter:
"How would you suggest one avoids
"running their social outlets
"without making it feel like spam?"
- By not being spam.
Larry, this pisses me off all the time.
People are like, "How do I be less sell-y?"
Be less sell-y.
Provide people actual value.
If you don't want your social media
to feel spammy, why don't you talk
about putting out content
and acting like a media company
instead of acting like a salesperson?
- Jon Crabtree on the Larry King Now blog:
"Do you see any new apps emerging
"as game changers in the next few years?"
- Like I mentioned,
I'm very hot on music.ly.
I also think Anchor,
this audio app is quite interesting.
- What is that?
- Think of it as voice Twitter,
so you instead of tweeting,
you're doing it by voice,
so you literally put up the phone to yourself
and say, "Today I'm thinking,"
and quite interesting.
It's very, very early,
but I'm keeping a very keen eye on it.
- Who invents these things?
- Youngsters a lot of times who don't know any better.
You know what I would tell you and I think
this will make sense to you.
I look at it very similar to music genres.
I think of it as like The Clash
and Kurt Cobain, and Run-DMC.
I think it's people who come up, they don't see what
they want, and they create it.
- @SoulmanScofield, Do you think you'll ever retire
or do you enjoy working too much?
- I think when I'm sitting here with you,
and I know all the context I know about you,
and the fact that you pretty much have interviewed
anybody who's important in the last 50 god damn years,
the thing that most excites me,
is that you're sitting right here,
right now and interviewing me.
I have no interest in doing anything other.
That to me is the most interesting thing
that's happening in this room right now,
is that while I'm doing this interview,
the parallel part of my brain is saying,
"Damn, this is the guy.
"This is exactly what I'm gonna be doing."
- Are you married?
- I am.
- [Larry] You have children?
- I do.
- How old are the children?
- Six and three.
- Boy and a girl?
- Mhmmm, girl, boy.
- Alright, how do your thoughts on your ability in business
to raising a family?
Do you use the principles at home--
- I do. - [Larry] Yeah?
- I think first of all, I'm an EQ-HR-driven CEO.
I think I win not on my IQ,
but on my emotional intelligence.
I think that I'm very in tune to people's feelings.
I try to reverse engineer what they're about.
For example, I have no interest in my kids
being anything but who they are.
My mom gifted me by parenting me to my strengths.
If my kids are artists or want to be in the non-profit
sector or climb mountains, I'm all-in.
I want them to do them.
The one line in the sand I have is no eighth place trophies.
Lizzie knows, and now I'm looking at the camera,
'cause I want her to see my eyes again,
no eighth place trophies.
Life is about winning and losing. It's binary, right?
So as long as my kids know that,
I don't care what they do.
They don't need to make money.
They don't need to be entrepreneurs, but to win,
there's a real market.
To be a great artist, to be great at helping other people,
you have to be great at it.
- Does your wife get involved in your business?
- No, we have a very strong line in the sand.
My parents had that.
Her parents had that for the most part,
so I think we're just kind of acting
on what we saw behaviorally.
Look, when you're the CEO of a company,
when you're the top dog,
you're only in the negative issues business.
I'm a firefighter.
All I'm dealing with is headaches.
What's gonna happen right now?
I'm gonna step outta here, and I'm gonna look at my phone,
and there's gonna be seven things I have to deal with
that isn't a fun thing to deal with.
So to come home and pour that on my wife isn't interesting.
I don't have anything positive to say.
On a micro level, it's all negative.
It's the macro level that's awesome.
- Gary, you're incredible.
Great meeting you. - Thank you, brother,
nice meeting you.
- [Larry] This is the first of many meetings.
- Thank you, my friend.
(upbeat music)