- When you learn how to enjoy being underestimated,
it gets real good.
(hip-hop music)
What up vlog?
Morning, it's Tuesday 24th of July.
I'm headed to go see some executives
at a Fortune 500 company.
Just on my hustle, on my grind, just wanted to give
a huge shout out to everybody on YouTube and Facebook
for watching the vlog.
It means the world to me.
I appreciate the attention.
I appreciate the community, all the comments
we're reading, we're reading and reading.
A big shout out to everybody who time stamps and says
this is fire, that's leading to us making a lot of
great content so just thank you so much.
Really just appreciate the community,
thank you so much.
Instagram story people.
I got one thing to say.
You got one fuckin' life, do something with it.
So many of you living your life
based on somebody else's opinions.
So crazy, stop it.
There's not gonna be a single convenience store
in America in 20 years.
Like, we're thinking about things in 20 and 40 year windows,
not in 5000 year windows.
Like, social time at the store, really?
You'll find other things to do.
You know, like, and by the way, ready for this
and this will make sense to you.
If you are a person that thinks social time
at the store is a thing, you'll be able to go the store.
It's not like there's not gonna be stores,
it's just that leases are gonna have to change,
dynamics are gonna have to change,
experiences are gonna have to change,
like fuck these supermarkets and big box retail.
They didn't exist in 1947.
You went on to Main Street.
Like go read everything said about supermarkets
and big box retail.
It's all the same shit.
We hold the past on a pedestal and we demonize the future.
I'm trying to get my kids to have more screen time,
not less.
I want the logical answer of why we should limit
our kids' screen time.
Not the, you didn't grow up that way.
The logical.
What world do you think they're gonna live in?
Sup my guy?
- Gary, you saved my life brother.
I'm doing this 'cause of you.
I have a business I just started,
I just bought myself that camera, spent like 20,000.
I'm here working 'cause of you,
'cause you told me to work a 40 hour job
until I could be like fuck this and do my own thing.
- My guy, what's your name?
- David.
- David, it's a real pleasure to meet you man.
- David, my name is Domenata.
- Domenata.
- I'm an artist.
You'll see me soon.
- I can't wait.
(ambient piano music)
Such a pleasure to meet you.
How are you?
- I'm well, thank you.
- How are you partner?
- Good to see you.
All good?
I was 84,000 followers on Instagram 18 months ago.
After being on it for five and a half years.
84,000.
I don't think I'd be at 3.6 million if I thought about
how to get from 84,000 to 100,000.
- Because you're genuine.
- Correct.
- People are smart when it comes to genuine.
- And they're, you know what's funny?
They're smart in the end.
They're not so smart in the beginning.
People fall for, you know, sizzle a lot.
I sand bagged myself because I'm so in the long game.
Like Andy and like my team, like, the biggest complaint
this little squad has is like when can we start
making the content more about you being smart?
(light chuckling)
Like that's just not even a part of my narrative.
But you have to understand why 'cause that's the leverage.
You know, like I prefer being underestimated
by Madison Avenue.
- Well there's an advantage.
- It's our strength.
- Exactly.
- People still to this day after everything that's out there
in our industry think VaynerMedia's me
with a bunch of interns still to this day.
I love the romance of me thinking I'm omnipresent
and have this incredible EQ but
you can't get high on your own supply.
Like I'm thrilled that I have good intuition
and it's helped me scale, fine.
But I always think I could be equally as wrong
and you just do the best you can.
- You're the man Gary.
- Thank you my guy.
- You are the man.
You da, you da man.
- Thank you my guy.
How are you?
- Good, good, good.
- This is such a badass post.
- Really that is, that pic in general
is great.
- Great, right?
- And perfect for the quote too.
- 100%
The copy's fire.
The fans AKA anyone who had an opinion about me
said to me that a website wouldn't work.
That email wasn't better than direct email.
That Google Ads weren't as good as Yellow Pages.
That YouTube was a fad.
That Twitter was stupid.
That Facebook would never be more than a college app.
That an agency was a bad idea.
That social media was ridiculous.
That voice isn't going to be big.
- That's it.
When you learn how to enjoy being underestimated,
it gets real good.
I think that, you know, ideology and reality
are very, very important.
I desperately a lot of the stuff you referenced
and anybody here who knows me deeply,
I desperately want to bring the most value
to entrepreneurship in the world because it put me on.
I came from the Soviet Union, we had nothing like,
the game that got me to where I am today
is something I admire
and I respect and I love it and I wanna give back
tremendously to it and I leave economics on the table
all the time for that but I still publicly
always says that I wanna buy the New York Jets.
It's imperative to have everybody aligned
to the reality and I do think that every organization,
every person, does have the ability to have
selfish wants and needs and selfless acts.
Look, we're building what we, what I'd like to call
a honey empire, right?
The word empire is aggressive like we wanna build
a very big organization.
It's, I love the game of building businesses.
But there's the reason it's called the honey empire is
we think we're gonna do that through being
an HR driven organization, not a CFO driven organization.
To me, the culture creates continuity.
Continuity is something I believe in tremendously
because I believe in speed.
Speed comes from continuity.
Do you know how pumped I get when I get a superstar
into my company and she or he also is a bad person?
It's a huge win for me.
'Cause I get to sit in the grass like a cobra,
(laughing)
and she and he thinks that I'm gonna not look the other way
because they're driving revenue.
Because they don't realize I can drive way more revenue
in one day that they can in their whole lives.
And so the perceived leverage they think they have
because it worked everywhere else
is a massive vulnerability in my company
and when I sense it in an interview, I tell them this.
This is the most bizarre.
It'd be one thing if I sandbagged it.
I actually tell people what I just said to you.
Literally that visual and clear
and they still don't believe me.
Because they've been conditioned to believe
money over everything.
So I get pumped, I don't usually fire them right away.
I first let them create context amongst the whole company
that they are both A, a winner and B, a jerk.
And then I fire them.
And then everybody gets recalibrated of like
oh shit, right, honey empire not empire of honey.
(ambient rock music)