- Easily one of my favorite episodes of 'Daily Vee'
this lunch got into some real insights,
some different thinking, and some
really powerful stuff here in Toronto.
So I hope you enjoy today's Daily Vee
(Alternative Rock Music)
- Oxygen to me, it's how everything works.
You know, and if you do it great,
you're getting people to do things for the right reasons.
You know and that's cool.
Branding and propaganda can get very close right?
That's why I throw in for the right reasons.
Because that's long term.
But to me its not being at the mercy of anybody.
I think what I like about my life is
I'm not at the mercy of anybody.
And a lot of that has to do with branding.
And just my own, kind of like,
lack of expectation of others.
Which makes it all upside, which is good.
So I think to me that's what's been so interesting
about the auto industry is,
technology has stepped right in the middle of
you and the end consumer in a meaningful way.
And they have the leverage.
The amount of referral business that goes on in this world,
the amount of money, dealerships pay
for referrals in one shape or form,
is a bad macroeconomic structure.
- It's unbelievably expensive.
- Not only is it unbelievably expensive,
the referrers are being kind to you still.
They have all the leverage.
Apple one day decided, it was 30 percent vig on the app.
Right?
You guys know what goes on in the Apple world?
Like when you transact there, Apple's vig is 30 percent.
Do you know how crazy?
That's a big number.
You know if one player in the referral business
decides to double the fee because they can afford to,
they'll all be double
and you're going to do nothing about it.
You have no leverage.
Brand is the only thing that can stop that.
Got it?
Brand is the one thing that goes from utility, to emotional.
- So I have a quick question
about what goes along with branding.
So our dealer group, we have 12 stores.
Not all of them are named the same, but our name is Pfaff
and we're trying to brand the name Pfaff
and get the name out there.
But we have a Porsche dealership, a McLaren dealership,
some luxury high end dealerships,
what is more important to focus on?
The Porsche name, the McLaren name,
or to keep branding as Pfaff.
- Pfaff
- And get the name out there.
- It's not even close.
It's even a close debate.
- So that's what we've on the path of doing.
- It's so much, it's so important,
that if that was my family business
and I looked at the contracts,
and there was a way for us to fire somebody not doing it,
and they were the biggest economic driver,
I would spend all my life
convincing my dad we had to fire them.
That's how much of a non debate it is.
- So should we switch all of the
new acquisitions that we've got to the name Pfaff, as well?
- You should do whatever you think is right Gene.
But if I was part of the business,
and I had say,
It'd be the only thing I care about.
It's the answer that I just gave the gentleman there.
It's the only, brother, it's the only thing you got.
It's the only thing you have.
It doesn't feel like that, right?
That doesn't win the sprint, Porsche wins the sprint.
Pfaff wins the marathon.
- We were having the same conversation.
I actually, I'll admit I said the opposite.
- I get it.
- Right?
It's because the end consumer isn't the person buying so.
- You're right about that but
you're just not playing out the chess of it all.
- Can you walk me through it?
- Sure.
In four years when Porsche sends you an email
and says you've got 18 months and we're out.
You're going to be like fuck.
(Laughing)
- You can still sell the oranges or
the lawn mowers, or the pre-owned anything.
- But Jimmy, on that note guys, I'm gonna say it.
I want to make sure you understand it.
Nintendo was a playing card company.
Nintendo started as a playing card company
I started off as a wine merchant.
Like, I get it.
But I actually usually think the number one move
when shit is interesting,
is to leverage while you've got it
the building of the other thing with the assumption
that the first thing might not even be there at all,
and then taking it all as upside.
And then you can get smart right?
The orange is kind of silly,
lawn mowers a little bit closer.
But what about, why can't you guys start
the coolest air refreshment thing in a car company
out of your little one stop?
Like why couldn't somebody here create
the ten dollar premium air refresher, why not?
You could.
And you'd have pretty much as
much permission to do it as anybody else.
I'll go a different place with you.
I think that BMW and Porsche and Mercedes
should be going into other sectors.
I'll go the reverse.
I think if I'm at Mercedes and I'm the CEO
I would be creating an Alexa, Google Home, Apple Homepod
competitor because I have permission because of my brand,
to be behind engineering and high quality product.
Why should Braun be the biggest razor in the world?
I would buy BMW's razor.
So, you know, you gotta think about
where you have permission to hedge.
- Some of these guys are already doing stuff like that,
like making bicycles and making this.
- Makes sense, that's cool.
- You can buy anything that's branded Harley Davidson.
- Because Harley Davidson really built a brand.
Whoever was running, like I know nothing.
But like whoever was running that ship,
in probably that era.
They went all the way.
I actually think they went too far.
I think of Harley Davidson similar to Playboy.
I think sometimes you whore out your name so much
that you dilute it so you have to be careful.
- 60 percent of our sales are in motor clothes,
rather than actual physical motorcycles.
- Which by the way may be great.
You know it's funny sometimes you look at margin,
you know my dad's business,
I'm trying to convert Wine Library,
It's called Wine Library.
I'm trying to get my dad to basically become a food store.
You know I'm not a scholar.
I didn't go to Yale, and did a couple studies,
and am a good public speaker and wrote a book,
and we're having this conversation.
I do what you do.
There's never been a day,
The day I left college at 22 I drove from Boston
to New York, to New Jersey, to home.
I got there at 4:18 and worked from 4:18 to 7:30
before me and my dad went home.
This is the day I left college.
From that moment on to the second I'm sitting here
right now, I have never not operated as a CEO,
of business in my life.
Even in transition between Wine Library
and the building of Gary Vee, I was the CEO of Vayner Media.
Yes I was a little more passive than AJ was.
But it wouldn't be there without me.
I don't say this stuff in theory.
This is not theory for me.
This is not intellectual.
This is practical reality.
I think the way I communicate it feels hyperbolized,
because I'm a showmen.
But now I'm in an interesting part in my career,
because now I have some history behind me
that makes it a little, it's a little harder
to completely laugh me off the state, you know?
Because you keep winning that much, it's hard.
That's why I built Vayner Media.
Madison Avenue, tough place, big companies,
holding companies, billion dollar companies,
he's just a Twitter kid.
The articles are on the internet.
Twitter boy thinks he can win Madison Avenue.
This fuckin' kid, they didn't say that.
This guy thinks, that's what they wanted to say.
This guy thinks he's a big shot.
It's a lot harder to build a Madison Avenue agency
is than to get some Twitter followers.
Vayner Media is the fastest growing organic top line
revenue agency in the history of the business.
Seven years, 150 million dollars, no M&A,
all organic, no cash infusion.
That doesn't happen because I'm charismatic.
That happens because I operate.
- So how do you handle work life balance?
- Communication.
- Good Answer.
- Communication.
- I always think what my wife would've said to that.
- Day trading communication.
If my wife texts me right now and she's like "fuck this"
I won't go to Chicago right now,
I'll fly home, and I'll talk til it's not fuck this.
Now a lot of it was back to making good strategies.
Like I at a young age knew who I needed to marry.
I didn't know it.
You know us guys, and we're mainly guys here.
When you're younger you're like
you want your girl to be obsessed with you.
I didn't realize how desperately I needed
to marry somebody who was super independent.
And had her own shit, you know?
That's funny to me in hindsight of the teenage me
would've never thought that right?
So my wife's super her own person,
and she's a stay at home mom.
But from a framework she doesn't need me you know kind of.
Which is interesting.
And then in extremism.
So Monday through Friday when I'm on the field,
it's seven am to Midnight.
And then on the weekends I'm completely checked out at home,
and I take seven full weeks of vacation,
completely checked out.
And that's it, extremism.
Something that won't work for most.
You know, you don't know what's going on
in somebodies bedroom right?
I'll give you another answer.
Maybe even more important that communication.
I'm just not interested in your guys opinion
on my parenting style.
Too many people are pandering
to the current state of political correctness of parenting.
- Everyone has their own way.
- That's right, and I'm apathetic to it I get it.
But I actually, I actually am on the record of this,
I do believe this co-parenting concept
will be looked upon in 100 years from now as wrong.
I do not believe in two cooks in a kitchen.
There's no such thing as co CEO's.
- So you leave everything for her to decide?
- Or him, I think in 70 years,
I think we all know couples where
when you look at their DNA,
the women or the man should be at work,
the women or the man should be at home.
So I think we went through women at home, man.
Now we're living through another,
starting to get into a co-parenting thing.
And we'll do this for another 20-30 years.
I think our kids, and probably more likely our grandkids,
are gonna be really smart and audit with each other
and be like.
You have a higher capacity to earn,
I have a higher capacity to nurture.
And then let's go because boy I know ten couples
where the woman's at home and she's 50 fucking times
more capable than the guy.
And I know equally as many couples
where she's a disaster and not nurturing at all
and he's the most lovely thing of all time.
I think that's going to be the future of parenting.
I think so.
I think it's practical.
Bon Apetit
- What's your biggest miss?
- My biggest miss is definitely the things
that I haven't done.
So I don't know them in detail.
Because that's my biggest issue.
Cripple by opportunity, right?
The biggest misses black and white are,
I was super right about YouTube, a company called Viddler
came along, and gave me seven percent of their company
to move my Wine Library show to Viddler.
And I stopped producing for YouTube up until
a year and a half ago.
And I left ungodly amounts of branding
on the table over the last decade.
I passed on Uber's angel round twice.
If you guys go take outta the library Crush It,
my first book.
I had only acknowledged one person in my acknowledgements
besides my parents, my family.
And that's Travis the CEO of Uber.
Because he's a dear friend of mine and
I passed on a friend of mines company twice
and it ended up being Uber.
So that's pretty black and white.
I didn't answer the email that reads like this.
Hey Garry Vee we're huge fans we
desperately want you to invest in our company
we'd love to have a meeting.
Didn't even reply to the email.
That came from AirBnB.
I was so right that I have such real losses.
You know because you couldn't get them all, right?
I don't have the losses that most people have,
Because I have never done anything
financially that could hurt me really bad.
I'm stunned by people's ability to do things
that can put you out of business.
Like overextending yourself.
I don't do that.
Now I'm not, if I don't have the cash I don't do that.
I'm willing to borrow.
I mean I got a lease at Hudson Yards
that scares the shit outta me.
Right?
But those are a little more calculated.
One of the biggest reasons I built my personal brand,
is I used Gary Vee as an insurance policy for my life.
Like if all else fails, I can make 20 million dollars a year
speaking and writing books.
That's the most ridiculous thing
I've ever said in my life, but it's true.
And it's awesome.
So I think I did that, but I also did it for branding.
Vayner Media doesn't pick RFP's.
Last week. Five of the biggest 500 businesses
in the world and said will you take our business.
That's called brand you know?
So, we don't have a sales team.
We don't have a head of new business.
And we're the fastest growing,
let the market come to you.
The person that asks, gives up the leverage.
Sales.
That's why it's hard.
They way I knew the internet was going to be big,
the way I knew e-commerce, the way email,
and Google AdWords, I was building, by not being educated,
by not knowing rich people,
I came from like a very funny place.
I didn't know a lot of stuff.
I didn't even know venture capital existed.
So I'm like wait a minute.
This is interesting
I'm good at things, like this is not a joke.
I'm like I understand, I'm not a good salesman.
I'm not a good wine merchant, I'm good at things.
So I started reading everything about YouTube
selling for two billion dollars.
And I don't know if you guys remember
when YouTube sold for two billion.
It was one point seven.
It was in 2007 or 2008, I don't remember exactly.
But if you remember, that was like a
trillion dollars at the time.
Remember?
Good, I'm glad you guys remember
That was like, a trillion.
A trillion's a lot.
If I woke up this morning and Snapchat sold for a trillion.
I'd be like whoa that's a lot.
So it hit me that hard and it
was something that I understood
as one of the first 50,000 people to understand.
So I'm like there's something in that.
In that digging I read about angel investors.
Then I Googled angel investor.
This is why I always give this advice.
And I'm like oh you can invest in companies?
I'm being serious with you.
There's certain things I'm good at,
there's certain things I'm not.
Before they go on the stock market?
Then I started really getting into tech.
And I was like this is going to eat the world.
That's when I basically, binarily over night,
decided everything that's happening
now will basically eat up everything.
Everything.
And so I started really learning,
I started reading tech crunch every day.
And then I went to South By Southwest 2007.
And at that South By Southwest 2008 Twitter was exploding.
And everyone was shitting on it, even the tech kids.
They're like who cares if you..
Because it was psychology it wasn't utility.
Everybody was like who cares, you know you'd have
real tech people, the people that now you all know.
Like very famous and then some that you don't.
But they'd sit here and I'd be at the BBQ pit,
because I'm listening right?
For all my talking, and I'm doing a lot of it today,
I listen all the time.
And I'm listening, and they're like
who gives a shit if you walk the dog this is stupid.
Nobody's gonna care that you're eating pizza.
And I'm sitting there and I'm like everybody's gonna care.
I'm like that's what we do.
That's what life is.
We don't want to admit it.
So that's what I'm good at.
Right?
I knew that everybody was gonna put their credit card
into a computer when everybody told me they wouldn't.
Every one of you is gonna retna scan everything.
Because it's going to save you time.
I knew that everybody was gonna online date
when everybody thought it was
the weirdest shit ever in 2000.
It's just time arbitrage.
It will be the thing we trade on every time.
I get an email from Dave Moren the head of Platform,
it says, Mark would love for you to come
and speak to the company about why you believe this.
I said, I'll be there tomorrow.
I flew out to Palo Alto.
I spoke in front of the company
when it was the size of this conference I just gave.
I only spoke about consumer behavior.
Because at that point there was something weird about
Facebook that they really were doing
what I would do if I knew how to do that.
So I went weird.
It was I had ever spoken.
I didn't even know how to articulate it.
Right?
I didn't know Mark was there.
He sat all the way in the back, slouched.
Came down, goes do you want to have dinner tonight?
I said, I sure do.
We had dinner.
He was one of the only people I've ever met in my life
that I've thought had the same intuitive understanding
about people as I do.
Which is super funny to me because the way he's portrayed
in the movie is super, like he's so not introverted.
He's introverted in some ways.
But in a macro he's all time.
We became friendly, he would come to New York a bunch
and I would see him.
Which are going to be great stories one day
to tell my grandkids.
And one day his sister called me, Randy
And said, "Our parents, Mark and I's parents
want to sell a bunch of stock to buy a house
and we'd really like you to be part of the family.
Would you like to buy some stock?"
And I said, "I sure do."
I was in the back of taxi in Miami.
I will never forget that moment my whole life.
I put in every dollar I had in my bank account
except for 100,000 dollars,
and I have not sold one share since.
Thank you, thanks for having me.
It was really nice meeting you guys.
Have a good day take care. Bye.
What was your favorite insight,
your favorite new insight, from today's episode?