- It's a funny thing to say but this like, South-By
is loaded with people that are building apps and
building theses but don't know how to make money.
("Monday to Monday" by Saba)
Saba, I've been telling you.
You lost some weight.
You're looking good, I'm impressed, I can see it.
- Yes, I love you.
- Okay, I'll see you there.
I'm running late for something, okay.
- I want you know, why's there a microphone on you?
- I'm always doing a vlog, it's called a vlog.
The future.
- How's that working? - Well, it's working quite well.
It's the foundation of my future success.
- That's fascinating.
- Yeah, listen. - Thanks for telling the future.
- Yeah you're welcome.
- Hey, great to see ya. - Dude, you well?
- I'm good, you?
- I'm really good.
What's that?
- [Kevin] I look forward to being
on camera all night with you. - Me too.
- Gary, huge fan, Nigel.
- Thank you, Nigel.
- Hey, you're gonna get the Jets one day.
- I'm gonna try man, thank you.
(hip hop music)
That was good, right?
So what I have to speak for 10 minutes for Comcast?
How's it going so far, good?
Rust baby, rust.
- [Tyler] Good chatter.
- [Gary] Good to see you!
- Good to see you too.
- How've you been? - Been good, how are you?
- All well? - Yeah, it's good.
- It's great to see ya.
- Hi, how are ya?
Good?
- You guys know each other?
- I used to work at Vayner.
- She won the trip to Detroit.
- Yeah (laughs).
- And then she was like fuck that.
I gotta go somewhere else 'cause I am not going to Detroit.
How are things, good?
- I'm doing well yeah, really well.
- If I can ever be a help, let me know.
- Oh thank you, appreciate it.
- Good to see ya, you're welcome.
Ready?
Let's go. I love the recall.
- [Man] Detroit.
- I know everything.
- Thank you.
- Guys, what about the epic, epic email town hall I did?
What do you think?
- It was epic.
- Yes, good to see you, hi.
- This is Michale on my team, Jen, Gary.
- How you doin? - Hey Jen, Gary.
- Evan. - Hey Evan, how are you?
- What are you up to?
- Going to see Comcast right now, they're a client,
so gonna see them for a quick meeting.
Gave a keynote this morning.
- How'd it go?
- [Gary] Really well.
- [Man 2] GaryVee.
- What's up man?
- Dude, good Q&A earlier. - Thank you brother.
- Can I get a selfie with you real quick?
- Of course.
- Thanks dude, safe travels.
- Thank you.
- Jason.
- [Gary] Hey, how are you?
- Doing well, I saw you in there earlier and I'm a new fan.
- Thank you.
- It was really awesome what you said about being loud
really pertains to me so, I'm gonna try to do that.
- [Gary] Good luck to you man.
- Thanks a lot. - [Gary] Stay well, thank you.
- [Shira] Nice to see you.
- [Gary] How are you?
- [Shira] I'm good, we're doing all this stuff here.
- [Gary] Awesome.
- Hey I'm Shira.
- Hi Shira, Christina.
- [Shira] Nice to meet you.
- This is really cool.
- [Shira] Yeah no, yeah we're doing...
- You did a nice job.
Yeah looks really good.
- Oh hi, are you are mic'd? - At all times.
- Okay, is this your daily vlog? - Yes, it's my daily vlog.
- I watch it.
Yo, you better tag me.
- Such a hustler.
- You tell me.
- I taught you, I know. - I'm teaching from you.
- Listen, I get it, I get it.
- I'm learning.
- [Gary] How are you?
- [Woman 2] Hi, come on back.
- Okay, I'm already mic'd for my vlog.
- I saw that, and I'm gonna do a mic check.
- Yes, double mic.
- It's good to see you man. - Looking good.
How are you doing man?
How are you?
- Good, doing great. - All well?
- I'm lovin' your Facebook stuff right now.
- Thank you man. You know her?
- I know her.
(both laugh)
- How are you? - I'm good, I'm really good.
- So good to see you.
- Yeah I'd love, we'll catch up sometime.
- I'd love to. Doing good?
- Yes sir.
- Thank you so much. - Mic check you're good.
- Do you want a big introduction?
- Nope, nope.
(group laughs)
Sure not.
- I'm way too aware of this.
- Did you need water?
- Decide on there's way too many.
- I just don't have any time, I have to...
- But no so, you should.
- But you give them out.
- Yes, Shira can just mention at the end.
- Yeah.
It's fancy.
It's a lot of cameras.
(audience laughter)
This is freaking me the fuck out!
(audience laughter)
So quiet, so quiet.
- It's social media.
- Hey brother, good to see you.
You well?
Good to see you man.
- Now you're an influencer you could say,
you're also a CEO, you're an entrepreneur,
you're a businessman.
How do you balance between your own personal brand
and then, being responsible to a company and employees
and all that?
- I run my company.
I'm the CEO of an 800 person, $130 million a year business,
and that takes up all my time.
The GaryVee thing is my side hustle.
I have a team that records content, in vlog form.
- It's right here.
- We use, who's right, somewhere.
DRock, DRock films, we make a vlog.
In that, we have 18 hours worth of content that's happening.
A lot of those turn into my Medium posts.
A lot of those turn into my meme videos.
A lot of those turn into my audio podcast.
I don't have time to build a personal brand.
I don't have time, I live my life as an entrepreneur,
and I don't win on being attractive or funny.
I win on being an operator and being right about things
that are happening, and that's just my day-to-day life,
and then we produce it at home.
But I spend all my time running my company,
and when I do public speaking, that's business development
for VaynerMedia.
It's a lot more fun to get a $3 million scope doing
a keynote at the ANA than being part of an RFP process.
That's just smart business.
- What is someone supposed to do if they don't have
a person running around following them on camera?
- Do what I did for the first 30 years of my life.
Build a business that allows you to afford one.
- (laughs) That's good advice.
- You know like, look I think this Shira,
like I think a lot of people forget about my narrative
because of my spiel in this genre.
I spent the first 15, 16 years of my life
building an actual wine retail business before I even
said one word to the world about my business thoughts.
I didn't come out the womb and say I'm an influencer.
I built an actual business and then I talked
about building businesses.
The thing I tell everybody in this room,
and people watching at home like, self-awareness
is a big part of this as well.
You have to know what you're good at and what
you're not good at.
The amount of people that have started video shows,
'cause they hear video marketing is good, but they're scared
to be in front of a camera, and they're awkward,
that's just not a good strategy, it's not your normal
place like, you have to know yourself.
And so, even though the mediums were there,
I could've been a blogger.
I just knew that I couldn't communicate very effectively
in the writing format, and so I punted it,
kept building a business, and then when short-form Twitter,
when video for YouTube came out I'm like that I think
I can do, and that's what I jumped into.
- Do some sales and marketing.
- That's so cool.
- I've been doing it for four decades.
- I'm so much more old school than they think.
- No but you got to, I mean there's a lot of
sorry kids which are a bit simplistic about this stuff.
- 100 percent.
Even on stage I've gotta be more simplistic than I'd like
'cause I don't have time to into details.
- No, and I think but you need to use their sort of
crass language to get the message across so.
- Yeah exactly.
Real nice to meet you, take care.
So South-By's going super well.
Just had a great client meeting.
Were you in the client meeting with Comcast?
- [DRock] No.
- Great client meeting, and
great keynote, it seems like people are really enjoying it.
DRock even liked it, which is rare and exciting.
And I didn't play super well in basketball.
I didn't play well at all, that's alright though.
Haven't been on the court for nine months,
gonna work on that.
And then, did some VaynerSports recruiting, which was fun.
Can't show that.
- [Joe] Hey. - Hey.
- My name is Joe. - Joe, how are you?
- I'm also a fellow New Yorker.
I've been following you guys since back in the day
when you were-- - Thank you brother.
- throwing good shit up on the Tube.
- Thank you man.
- I actually follow you on Snapchat too.
- Thank you man.
- It's been crazy to see your evolution.
- Thank you.
Awesome man, I'm running late for something,
I'm glad you said hello.
- [Joe] Thanks. - Good luck to you.
- [Man 2] Gary!
- [Gary] Yo!
- [Man 2] What's up man? - [Gary] Sup guys?
- [Woman 2] Can I shake your hand, 'cause I saw follow
you in Vegas, Facebook.
- Yes, yes, thank you, real pleasure to meet you.
- Nice to meet you, sorry.
- Good, no worries, yo.
- I recognize you from the back son (laughs).
- How are you man?
- Wassup man, good to meet you man.
- Wassup man.
What are you guys, you guys hustlin'?
You loadin' up some trucks?
- Yeah no doubt, we're here from DC man.
- Real fuckin' workers. - Hey man.
- I love it man.
- Trying to be like that. - I love it.
- Hey, can we get a picture? - Yeah, let's do it.
- You know how to operate that broke iPhone?
- Hell yeah.
He is a broke iPhone.
(group laughter)
- Let me get a wide one, yeah.
Appreciate it man.
- [Gary] Take care of yourself. - [Man 2] You too man.
- Thank you. - Great meeting you man.
- Thank you man, take care of yourself, stay well.
Super busy.
Where are you Ben Larer?
Can't find you.
(fire truck)
But I'm pushing practicality.
You know, we got eight years of a good economy,
like, this world of ours,
and this is, I mean if you're here,
you're ambitious, you know what's going on in the
new world, you're hyped, you've got a lot of energy,
you're entrepreneurial, you're a risk taker.
The problem is, when I look at this crowd,
there's so many young people who've never lived
through the punch in the mouth.
- Yeah, yeah.
- You know? (laughs)
- I've lived through the punch in the mouth. (all laugh)
Trust me.
- So after eight, you know after eight great years
in our economy,
I want people to pay attention to actually making money.
You know, users and engagement and followers,
lifetime value, CAC,
you know all this stuff that people talk about
in a startup world is all nice and dandy,
but if you're business is not making money each month,
and it's losing money,
you're not gonna be raising money
when there's none out there.
And so, I'm pushing practicality.
It's boring, but it's tried-and-true.
- Lookin' to acquiring something, and invest.
What do you look at?
- In this world, in the South-By world,
I look for the jockey over the horse.
So I'm looking at, does she have the fire
to change her business nine months in
when the market changed on her?
So in startup land, it's hard.
Let me tell you guys how all to make money.
No joke, if you're sitting on money,
every person here should invest in Facebook,
and then when the world melts in nine months,
and the stock's in half and you hate me,
don't sell it, just hold on,
because I promise you in nine years,
that investment's gonna return you a fuckload of money.
So that's the slow, double or triple your money bet,
but that's kind of better than
the fucking zero interest you get in the bank.
The way to make crazy money is to only bet on the jockey.
Because they've got to pivot,
they've got to adjust,
you know, the operator, the pilot,
she and he is the one that's gonna dominate and win,
because the reality is these startups
are so young and early,
like Facebook looks nothing like what
Facebook looked like nine years ago.
He made a bunch of adjustments.
Like this shit changes.
And you've gotta be used to that.
Spotify had to adjust.
Birchbox has to adjust.
Like, everybody's navigating and just raising capital,
or looking the part,
so I'm looking for somebody who can
get punched in the mouth, spit the blood out,
and move forward.
(crowd cheers)
- [Ja Rule] I like that, I like that.
- [Gary] I like that. And again, looking at the demo,
you have to be architect and the plumber.
Right? And the mason, and the garbage person.
Like, the thing that I have a lot of pride in,
is I can come on and talk all high level,
and then when somebody calls me to the mat,
like you did, the reason I love you is,
I do a lot of shit.
And I just pontificate, and nobody calls me to the mat,
we run out of time, and then I leave.
You called me to the mat, I'm like okay.
But what I'm excited about is that's my best moment.
Because if you want to go into details,
I'll get so finite into that detail,
so to me, the one thing I would pride myself in,
as you grow in your business,
as you grow, the thing that I have the most pride in,
is VaynerMedia now has 800 employees,
not one of them that works for me
does as much actual social media as I do.
I'm still by far, and that's what,
probably the biggest reason,
my side hustle is GaryVee,
is because it keeps me grounded
in actually the doing of the shit that I'm doing.
And what happens to a lot of people as they grow,
they get away from the work,
and they become a manager, and then they don't know
what the fuck they're talking about.
- [Ja Rule] Ahh. What's up Gary, how are you, man?
- How are you? Good to see you.
- Good man, good to see you. - [Gary] Life good?
- Life is great, man.
- Good man. I'm excited to do this.
(laughs)
- Oh man, you sitting down on the band?
- Yeah, we're gonna go chill.
- That's good.
- Yo, what up Envy?
- What's up, sir?
- Good to see you, my man.
- Good to see you, as always.
- How are you? Good to see you.
- How are the boys? - Out of trouble?
- Tryin', tryin'. Watch your head, watch your head.
- So, how'd everything go downstairs?
- Boys still making some cash on the side flipping?
- Yes. Yes. You know what he's doing now?
He's making slime and selling slime.
- Yeah, slime's killing, that's killing.
My daughter too.
How old is he?
- He's 12 now. Just turned 13.
So he goes to school with his slime, and he sells it.
The other day he came home with $120.
I had to check his bag, I'm like, my son, I'm like,
- [Gary] You're like, what are you slingin'?
He's like slime dad, slime.
- I'm gonna just introduce everyone at the same time,
and then when I finish,--
- Those are the ones I like, right,
but I haven't seen that color,
- [DRock] That's not the ones you have.
But that's what you like.
- It is the one I have.
Dude, so awesome, it's been a pleasure my man.
Good to see you.
- Remember, so you said, document.
We did $40,000 in the next 90 days.
- People think I'm making up shit.
Just gotta execute.
- All I'm sayin' is, it's, it took a lot of sweat, right?
My boy Vic's upstairs.
- Good shit's supposed to take work.
- Yeah.
- I know, we gotta go.
- My bad. We'll talk later bro. I just wanna say,--
- That makes me very, very happy.
Thank you brother.
("Coming Home" by MadReal)
Thank you guys.
- [Envy] Now we're closing. What's up man, closing?
- We're closing, Ja?
- It's 2017. Let's go out and get some fuckin' money.
(audience laughter)
- GaryVee? GaryVee?
- God, fuck, that was perfect.
You know, I would say, let's go make some actually money,
because shit's about to hit the fan,
and making money is a very good strategy.
It's a funny thing to say,
but this, South-By, is loaded with people
that are building apps, and building theses,
but don't know how to make money.
- Give it up for Gary Vanerchuk!
(audience applauds and cheers)
- We should do this again.
- [Ja Rule] Ah, no, I gotta get some pointers, man. (laughs)
- I love you so much man. Yeah.
Bye guys.
Alright. Let's go.
(laughter from audience)
You're welcome.
- [Man 4] What are you trying to get
out of South-by-Southwest?
Why do you even show up?
- [Gary] I show up for two core reasons.
One, there's just a shitload of people here.
Can I curse on Forbes?
- [Man 4] Nope.
- [Gary] Okay. There's just a lot of people here.
Just beep that last part.
And just even having this, and shaking hands,
and meeting people that you only get to see
once in a while, and two,
a lot of my business associates congregate here,
so I did 11 meetings today.
That would've taken me four months to schedule,
and I did them all in one afternoon,
so it's actually efficient for me to show up
to South-By.
- [Man 4] So people sometimes confuse you being loud,--
- [Gary] I'm loud.
- [Man 4] And confident,-- - [Gary] I'm confident.
- [Man 4] With, like, being obnoxious or whatever.
- [Gary] Yeah.
- [Man 4] So what scares GaryVee?
You know, you go to sleep at night, what scares you?
- [Gary] The health and well being of my family. That's it.
- [Man 4] And that's what keeps you going?
- 100 percent.
And when it comes to business,
I know that I'll end up being historically correct.
I'm empathetic to somebody seeing me
curse in a video like this,
or act too proud,
and they'll be like, he's full of hot air.
They're either gonna be right,
or I'm gonna be right in 20, 30 years.
And I know what my intent is,
I'm not trying to hurt anybody's feelings.
I understand that my Jersey-ness
might be too crass for somebody.
But I'm not gonna change who I am
because of the way you see the world.
I have respect for the way you see the world.
Have some for me.
- [Man 4] So you're about to share an Uber
with three other people, alright?
- [Gary] Okay. - [Man 4] Who do you pick?
- [Gary] I would pick my two dead grandfathers,
because I never met them,
and I would pick Randy the Macho Man Savage,
who also is dead, because he's
my favorite all-time wrestler.
- [Man 4] Last question. - [Gary] Yes.
- [Man 4] What was the last time you were humbled?
- [Gary] I'm humbled everyday. Humbled?
- [Man 4] Humbled.
- [Gary] I'm humbled every day.
Being an entrepreneur is humbling 24/7/365.
Don't get it twisted.
For all my bravado, and all my ego,
I live on humility,
because I'm losing every second
there's problems, I've got 800 problems.
By the time I got off stage just now,
I have 800 humbling moments in my phone right now.
When you run big companies, you're humbled all the time.
I love being humbled.
I enjoy being humbled.
That's part of the process.
("Coming Home" by MadReal)
- [Tyler] This week's gonna be fuckin' insane.
- [DRock] Why?
- Fuckin' blizzard coming in Tuesday,
you're speaking in that, you're not speaking, (laughs)
Gary's speaking in that Sev Wednesday,
Salt Lake City Thursday,
all hands Friday,
ton of internal shit going on,
you were supposed to be in Austin, Tuesday,
we cleared that out, so now we have a full day to work with.