- Want some gum?
- I'll eat this, I'm not scared.
Even though this is 32 years old, 31 years old
(crunches)
- You can hear that crack in your mouth.
Is that good?
No.
That was not good.
- It's good because everybody watching now
is like, holy crap, why'd he do that?
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music continues)
- Which one of the knickknacks is
your personal favorite?
You got one?
(mumbles)
- You know it's funny, I'll tell you one thing.
The LJN wrestlers mean a lot, a lot to me
because they were core, core childhood toy for me
and when I got hardcore into garage saleing in
the mid to late 90s, I could still find them,
so that was huge.
This is huge to me, actually.
A lot of this stuff really fuckin' matters to me.
This is unbelievable, because I literally
bought this last year at a garage sale
for a dollar at noon on a Saturday.
Like, how was this Thunder Cat in package,
sitting on a table for five hours for a dollar
and nobody came across and bought it?
To me that's, anytime I've ever bought anything
that is really valuable at a garage sale
past 10 AM, I think like the garage
sale gods are giving me love 'cause
everybody's swoopin' in at 6 am.
- What is that value to you right now?
- It's like a hundred, hundred bucks on eBay.
- Really?
- And when I graduated from lemonade stands
in '85, '86, '87, the natural move was to
baseball cards. I had collected
them a little bit.
I was a huge baseball fan.
I was pretty good at Little League in
second, third, and fourth grade.
And then '87 Topps came out and it
became a complete cultural explosion.
And baseball card clubs popped up
in my grammar school, then junior high.
And then I went to a baseball card show in
Edison, New Jersey on Oak Tree
Road at the JCC and it literally
changed the course of my life.
I was like, What is this? You know,
this is amazing and how do I get
to be a part of this?
And a year
later, I did my first ever show.
- And you're like, what, like,
14, 15 years old or something?
- My first show I was 12.
- Jeez.
- I paid like 70 bucks for a table,
which felt like a drillion.
And it's
a really special show 'cause it was
also the show that I first started seeing
my ability to compete with people
that were older.
It built enormous
confidence in me at a very young
age and the way I merchandised my table,
the way that I would spend two
hours walking a show and learning
all the prices and memorizing them.
They way I negotiated, traded, sold.
Everything that I still do to this day.
Those were very early training grounds for me.
And when you're a 13, 14 year old and
you've got 40, 50 year old guys.
For everybody watching, you have to understand,
a lot of people owned baseball
card stores at this point. This was
an explosion in the late 80s, early 90s.
These were men who were businessmen and ran
a million dollar, two million dollar business
and they're trying to rip me off,
and realistically, I feel like
I ended up on the right side of
a lot of trades with those guys.
- Hey, I'm Mize Oz from Yahoo! Sports.
- [Mike] This is Gary Vee.
We are gonna
open some old baseball cards.
- [Gary] All right, Jim Beattie.
I remember him, but not a lot.
The old Mariner
symbol, so gangster.
- So good.
- By the way, Tweet me @garyvee
if you have an old Mariner's symbol tattoo,
I'm gonna fly you into New York
just to high five you.
This is a shitty pack.
I don't know if you guys beep around here.
This is an atrocious effort, I'm devastated.
The good news is, there's not
a single card in here, I mean, even
MacGuire and Bonds is probably less
valuable than my Diamond King.
- Want some gum?
- I'll eat this, I'm not scared.
Even though this is 32 years old, 31 years old.
(crunches)
- You can hear that crack in your mouth.
Was that good?
No, that was not good.
- It's good because everybody watching now
is like, holy crap, why'd he do that?
It tastes literally like cardboard.
- Oh, that's a good one!
- This is a big deal.
So, if you follow
me for my marketing business stories,
if you Google my name right now,
Gary Vaynerchuk and Rickey Henderson,
I put a very long piece out on
LinkedIn and Medium, called the Rickey
Henderson rule.
My first baseball game
in 1984, I was poor, I was born in Russia.
We
didn't have anything, and it was like a big deal.
Like, I think my mom made me wear a suit.
Like, we were like, this is us, making
it in America. We go to a baseball game
in the Bronx, Rickey Henderson comes off
the field, and winks at me.
I spend the next
two decades buying all things Rickey Henderson.
I call it the Rickey Henderson rule.
It's why I tell people to apply in
Instagram and Facebook, and like say hello.
He's so awesome.
Guys, such a pleasure.
- Absolutely.
- Real pleasure.
- I'll tweet you for salary auctions, okay?
- Awesome, awesome!
- Anyways, it was a pleasure meeting you.
- Thank you, so nice to meet you.
Brother, good job. You did a nice job.
- Thank you, thank you, thank you.
- Thank you.
- What's up, Gary?
- Hey brother!
- How ya doin' man?
- Looking forward to this!
- Good to see you, brother.
- Good to see you! How are you?
- I'm good, I'm good.
- Good, man.
- I love the politician, but I
care about the voter.
- Only.
- Right.
- The reason I'm so me, is I only care
about the end consumer.
The end.
- That's it, that's what-
- Whoever's closest to that wins.
- Right.
- The end.
- Right. So for 20 years, I've designed
campaigns based on what the voters
are looking for and what they want.
- The problem is, most of these politicians
make assumptions of what they want.
- They do.
- It's about assumptions.
- That's right. The ones that don't succeed.
- People, that's right.
And they pander.
And by the way, 20 years ago, because
of the media landscape, if I'm running for
Governor of New Jersey, and I'm
in a liberal town, my messaging may be
slightly different than when I'm in
a conservative town.
You can't get
away with that anymore.
- Right.
- Everybody's filming everything.
- That's right.
- I can't say one thing, and then a
completely different thing an hour later.
But, I would've. If I was a candidate
40 years ago, I would've.
Now, not completely
different, maybe it's different angles,
nuances, so you can say authentic.
But, it's a very interesting time.
We've become more polarized, because
there's nowhere to hide.
- Do you know how to overcome that polarization?
- In general?
- Well, from what we found, is
human contact, like sure, our digital programs-
- By the way, I agree with you.
But the way that people willing to be on
a computer, versus the way you
would act with that person in
front of them, totally different.
- So, what we do is we design campaigns
where we actually get people to talk
to other people, and what we found was that-
if you take, like, a voter or a customer
that is not being touched, and you personally
touch them, and you know, personally
communicate with them, that on the
political side, it's like a 17% increase
in voter turnout when you do that.
- Yeah.
- And if you had a million votes-
- Now you're preachin'.
- 17 percent-
- Preachin'.
- It's insane, And so, I'll give you
an example, you know Billy Reid?
The fashion guy?
Clothing guy
down here in New york.
- Okay.
- My wife loves his clothes.
- Love it.
- Orders all these clothes from him, right?
And then, she ordered all these clothes
from him like a month ago, and she
gets a personal, hand-written note
from their office.
She will now buy,
the rest of her life, what'd you got?
- In the corner, orange book.
- Yup. Yeah, right.
- That book, that I wrote in 2011-
- Yup.
- It will always play.
- Yup!
- It's scaling unscalability.
You know why
I would win the American vote?
- Tell me.
- Because I would spend every minute
literally going to every single
person until I couldn't.
- I know, you're due, my buddy.
- I know!
Just all of them.
- Right.
- One by one!
- Yeah.
- And I would be like, look, here's,
tell the truth and be good, and like,
get to all of them, you will win.
- Totally.
Thank you so much.
- You're welcome, sir.
- I'm very, very grateful.
- My pleasure, I'm going to hold onto this.
- A hoy!
- What's up, dude?
- How are you, sir?
- Good, man, how are you?
- Good to see ya buddy, how are you?
- I'm well, how are you?
- This is Caj, by the way.
- Hey man!
- How are you doin, sir?
- Nice to meet you.
- It was nice to meet you.
- Hey there, Brian Carcaterra.
Good to meet you! How ya doin?
- Really well.
- Excellent, excellent.
- Aaron James, right here.
Nice to meet you.
- Hey Aaron, such a pleasure.
How ya been?
- Good, man. How are you?
- Really well.
Yeah, super busy.
- That's cool, I appreciate you takin' some time.
- I know you consume my content. I literally
know nothing about anybody.
I know nothing.
I know nothing about what people are doing.
I have no fucking clue what any of the sharks
are doing, what any of my competitions
are doing, what anybody that sells business-
I couldn't tell you a single thing, I respect
Seth Goden, but I've no clue what
Seth Goden's doing right now.
You know what I mean?
- You're finding inspiration
and drive, motivation from other sources
outside of your industry, outside of your
competitive setting.
- Only within myself.
- That's it?
- That's it.
Motivation and drive
is fostered within my own head.
What I consume is people.
- Yeah.
- The thing that he probably isn't
doing yet, all the way, is reading
every single comment.
All of them.
- Yeah.
- Are you?
- I think I am.
- Good for you man, then you know what-
- I gotta tell ya, it was first the negative ones
and now I love it, I'm like, cool
people are watching me.
- 100%
- Yeah, keep going.
- Even better, especially if you're at
that lucky place where you could actually
reply to most of them, I mean, from 2007-
- I'm not there yet.
- The reason I did The Thank You Economy,
which I wrote in 2011, from 2008 to 2012,
I answered every single tweet, all of them.
Every email, I used to go to inbox zero
and go to sleep at 2, 3 o'clock in the morning.
I had to go to inbox zero.
And then, you know,
it took over.
But, the best ones
are the ones that-
- I read about that.
You said Instagram
was gonna be worth-
- Yeah, that was a different thing.
(laughs loudly)
- The, no, the thing I like is the ones
that are coming on, you get this guys
a charlatan, he's full of shit
and we have bravado, so you're going to get that.
And honestly, I have empathy.
Like,
if you're somebody, especially LinkedIn,
LinkedIn is probably where I get my most hate-
- I can see that, yeah.
- Because it's professional, and
I'm not delivering that with my content,
but I'm doing that because the
message is right, the information's right.
I understand that I'm not wearing a suit and tie,
I understand I'm cursing, I have empathy.
I very much mean this:
I have respect
if you're a 62 year old Charlie, and
you grew up a certain way where
fuck is disrespectful, who am I to judge?
I don't care that it's 2018, I don't
care that it's cool now. Like,
whatever, that's your world and
I respect that.
And I'll jump in
and say, hey brother, I see the comment
like, you know, I get it, like if you were-
and I'll say what I just said. If you were
brought up in a certain way, I can understand
that, but like, can we agree that if we get
passed that, do you see where
I'm going with this? Or like, I'm sorry
I bothered you or things in that nature.
I would highly recommend engaging.
- I need to do that more.
- You should. Instead of saying,
fuck you, I'll show you, you need to say,
I hear you, respect, but here's why
or how or what.
And you'll be stunned.
I would argue that if you did it
for the next six months to see
what it tastes like, I can think off
the top of my head so many of some of the
people that have become real advocates
of my work, Behind the Scenes, are people
that started off not liking me.
- Yup.
- Yeah.
- Yup.
- And you know what it is? It's respecting,
it's not getting too high on your own supply.
Like, I'm always gonna read that shit
and respond, because I never want to think
I'm always right or I'm so great.
Like, all the success is not gonna make
me think that I'm not, that today's not the day
that I have a point of view that's wrong.
- I guess.
How do you handle the impact
of the emotion when the people
that are close to you bring that
sort of negativity your way?
- I try to understand--
- Forget about the stranger that's
just blindly tweeting, but
- Yeah I get it, I get it.
From my standpoint, I feel bad for them.
- Yeah, because there's something with
themselves that can't--
- I try to understand.
Let me give you an example.
How about my dad?
My dad, up until about probably three years ago,
competed directly with me, in our own business.
Like I make a buy, he makes, competed.
You know, and not in a healthy way.
But I get it, because I'm gonna do that
to my kids, too.
Like, I get it because
he's overly competitive.
It's also probably
the single trait that he gave me
that I'm most thankful for, above
everything else.
Above everything else
that my dad gave me.
And he gave me, you've
maybe heard my spiel of honor, which
really fucking saved me.
If I had to
give up honor, which is fucking
noble as shit, and has made me
a much better dude, I'd still keep
competitiveness, because it is
the fuckin' fuel that everything-
like, I would just not be anywhere in
the same universe of who I am without it.
Which is why what I, but it's in me, like-
I don't like, I like when other people win,
which is a little bit different, because
my big thing is like, well they deserved it.
Like, most people hate when people win,
and they say they get lucky.
I see
somebody win, as long as they're
not a criminal, like stealing,
I'm like, she deserved it.
She
fuckin' deserved it. She was either
smarter or grinded harder.
Both.
I don't
think like, I've worked 15 years and
this guy came along and got big in two seconds.
Well, he was smart enough to really-
You know how many people have consumed
my content? A fuck-load. You know
how many people have gone pop committed?
Very few.
You know what the ratio of the people
that have gone pop committed?
All of them have won.
All of them.
Because it's just basic math of attention.
- Yup.
- I create no vulnerability, I'm not
guessing if Barrow is going to be big.
And that's what everybody starts doing,
they start getting into personality traits
and they start guessing.
If I could tell
you anything, could I tell you what happened
to me from your point, where you
are now in your career, to where I'm sitting now?
- 100%, that's why I'm here.
- I got narrower.
- I get that.
- I got narrower.
- I get that.
- And I know you get it, because you feel
the pressure, that wait a minute,
I've said a lot of the same stuff.
People are watching.
And you feel
this pull to like, Let me...I think
this is where I am!
(stammers)
I've gotten so, I mean, but you know,
a lot of people will say in my comments,
because I read my comments, Fuck Gary,
like, yeah, they'll go on my Instagram,
this guy says the same shit everyday! And
I jump in, I'm like, yup, until
the end, motherfucker. There's 13
things I believe in, like what do
you want from me? I'm not going
to make shit up, but it's all about
going more narrow for you, now.
- Yeah, I see it, too.
- Because every minute you spend
not being narrow, is a minute you're
not spending getting your team to
make more content for the thing.
- And I think that's what I mean when I-
I shouldn't say I'm the best at it,
It's what I love best.
I love
taking someone who's clueless and
just walking them through, and theN the
biggest win is I got a job, you did it thing.
- It's fucking huge too, and you know
what's great about what you do?
There's a black and white short term order.
Why?
I didn't have a job, now I have a job.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Right?
Now when you do branding,
like the shit that takes, you know,
3, 4, 5 years sometimes, so it's a little tricky.
- Last thing is, sorry, I've been
listening to your voicing, and then
I started doing what you started saying,
hey, remind me to call home in an hour
Segway that, and now I don't miss a call.
It beeps, flashes, you know.
So I could
see that being, as you keep saying,
the next thing.
- It's gonna be the next thing.
- Cool, man.
- So literally like, now you have
to level up, you should build an
Alexa skill called, how to get a job,
you know?
And under that it goes, 365
days a year, we'll give you one tip on Alexa.
- Oh, I didn't know you could do that!
- You sure can.
- Oh my God, yeah.
- [Alexa] Sorry, I don't know that one.
- Not yet, Alexa.
- You will soon!
- Not yet Alexa!
(laughs loudly)
- Not yet!
- You will soon!
- Yeah, of course.
- Awesome meetin' ya! It was great, man.
- It was a great pleasure, good luck to ya.
- I had a wonderful time.