(whoosh)
(click)
- What is going to go down a the National
in Chicago this year.
I'm literally spending four days at the National Convention
as a dealer.
I'm coming, guns a-blazin.
- [Man] Oh, look who's there
- I'm coming.
I'm out of control for four days.
(drum beat)
I called this man's wife and convinced her
to let him come to this conference.
He wasn't coming.
He's like have a good time everyone, I'm devastated.
I'm like gimme your wife's number.
I'm gonna do crazy shit.
I'm gonna have like (pop) there.
- Hey Vayner.
- I'm gonna like try to break the place.
(plane engine)
- Hey!
- You got your perspective.
(escalating notes)
(audio rewind)
- Been here since Tuesday night, got in super late,
three hour delay.
Got in Wednesday, all day.
Been here with my best friend Brandon Warnke,
man who runs Wine Library, sign up for WineText.com.
This is fucking 1992 for us.
- It sure is.
- 1992 action.
Fans punching myself.
Little Lou holding down, Tyler holding it down,
D-Rock you've even shown some business skills,
which is really amazing to me, and I'm proud of you.
It is now, what is it, Saturday, late afternoon.
Get a full day tomorrow, devastated Brandon's leaving.
Still gonna try to talk him out of it.
Just having the best fucking time.
Best fucking people.
Trying to let them make cash, and I'm considering
becoming a full time sports card dealer
and shutting down Vayner Media.
(bright piano music)
First of all, I'm just unbelievably humbled to be here.
I'm an immigrant that was born in the Soviet Union.
I grew up in New Jersey.
Very lemonade stands, very much sports cards,
you know for a lot of us, of a certain age here,
87 Topps was like a rite of passage,
it was like the crescendo moment.
It was like, it just, the sixth grade baseball card club
in Edison, New Jersey changed the course of my life.
I got very into this world and basically,
I'm one of the great all-time terrible students
because I spent 99% of my time between the ages of 10 and 16
reading Beckett and tough stuff and trying to buy cards.
I grew up from such humble beginnings, and,
that I was never able to afford to come to this convention
as a kid.
I would always read about it, and dream about it,
and so this is a substantially surreal moment for me.
To me, happiness is about doing what you wanna be doing.
Too many people focus on the money,
the things that come along with it.
I think you have to focus on the process.
This is the fuckin best.
I missed shows so much.
I have Randy and Bregman over here,
at 40, I'll do those at 30.
Jeter stays at 80.
This storing this little thing is at 20.
Tomorrow I'm raising the prices by 10 bucks each,
I'm being dead fucking serious.
Very simply, we have to make happiness the north star.
We have to.
Because the framework of all of us
over the last hundred years is success,
pending the worst things.
My great hope is that happiness becomes a north star
equal to financial success because it's so much better.
That's awesome, buddy.
Real pleasure man.
- Nice meeting you.
- Thank you so much for buying that.
- Yeah.
- Real nice meeting you.
And you're here how long?
The whole week?
- I know.
- Come back four other times.
All right.
- Here, here, bro.
Take a pack.
And if you pull a, pull a signed auto of mine,
then you get a $25,000 business consultation.
- Oh yeah.
- So long.
One of the big things that I'm passionate about
is are you doing something you enjoy to do.
Like happiness and fulfillment has to become
a much bigger part of the conversation
than financial upside.
I'm always very hurt when people think
that I'm pushing hustle, and too much work,
and make it for the money.
You know, my behavior doesn't map to that.
I would have been a venture capitalist then.
Like I'm talking about actually liking what you do.
- (mumbles)
- Come on.
- I appreciate everything you've done for me.
- You're out of control.
Thank you so much.
Really.
- If it wasn't for your mindset, my mindset would never.
- Stop by before the show ends.
We'll hang one more time.
Real pleasure.
- You know these are my very first vintage cards
I've ever bought.
- Let's go.
Smart move, now you've got the right story.
- Awesome.
Well, we're excited to have you.
And I'm curious, cause I know you came to the National
for a bit last year.
- I did.
- But what was really the tipping point, awareness wise,
or just in seeing the hobby where you were
like this is the difference here,
this is what brought you back.
- For me, it's the nature of flipping.
You know, the macro trend of 14, 15, 16 year olds
buying and selling sneakers is something
that I've watched for seven or eight years.
When I really analyze that market,
the kids are getting far more sophisticated.
This is not what I saw from kids seven, eight years ago
where they'd stay in line for four hours
flip a supreme and be pumped to make their 300 bucks.
This is running hardcore tech to map things on the web,
this is having 44 kids in their high school
stay in lines for them.
You know, the 15, 16 year olds that I interact
with on Instagram on DM, they remind me of me,
who at 13 and 14, I already knew what the outcome
was gonna be with my professional career,
which I thought I was gonna be successful.
And I can sense my own, when I talk to them.
And some of these 13, 14 year olds feel to me
like you know, I'm trying to figure out how to invest
in humans and take 20% of the upside of a 14 year old
cause I can see it.
And what I started noticing was frustration around supply.
They weren't able to get enough when they were right.
And then I started sensing cards, momentum,
watching the market.
And basically, there, it was a series
of a couple conversations, where I just notice,
and I intuitively have decided for myself that sports cards
much like nerd culture, and comic con, and Marvel movies,
much like sneakers, that there's a bubbling
of it being cooler and more scalable than it has,
this has been an inside hobby.
It's a lot of people I'm seeing right here
that I know have been to the last 22 Nationals,
15 Nationals.
And over the last three or four,
based on the homework I've done, the room's getting younger.
Compared to a decade ago.
That's good.
You need to change the conversation, period,
about the aspirations not to be a millionaire,
it's to be happy.
If I can replace the word millionaire with happy,
and I'm crazy, I think I can pull it off.
Literally, I'm doing what I did when I was 16 years old
with this guy, my best friend Brandon.
- That's awesome.
- We're literally doing a show.
- You having fun?
- Like in the in an uncomfortable,
like can I muster up the courage
to quit everything I'm doing
and only be a baseball card dealer, like that much fun.
- Happiness is the most important--
- It's the, it really is.
And I preach it, and like I'll be honest with you,
I'm scared that I may do something weird
like that at some point.
Just garage sale and do baseball card shows.
Happiness.
Happiness is progressing.
Happiness is the fucking progression.
Life's about alternatives.
Like either you're happy and optimistic, and moving forward,
or you're unhappy, pessimistic, and looking backwards.
You wanna go home and go to sleep and dwell?
You wanna complain?
Like, you're more than welcome to.
To me it's a very simple game, this is binary.
What's the alternative?
There will be a Gary Vee card in here,
which for anybody, you could imagine, if you grow up--
Think about this, if you grew up loving
and flipping sneakers, and one day you had
your own signature sneaker, that's what these cards
are for me.
This has literally been the best week in my life.
- Really?
- Yeah man.
This is just like.
I'm like literally sad that it's Saturday night.
Like I don't do five days of anything.
D-Rock will tell you.
I fly to give a speech in Hawaii and fly back,
I'm there for four minutes, like I never stay anywhere ever.
I wish I could live here the next year.
- Wow.
- This is as good as it gets.
- (laughs)
- It's fucking Wednesday.
We sold 100 faces of Cab.
- Yes.
- With a baseball card show.
- Yes.
- A lot going on.
- A lot.
- I love you.
(piano chord)