- And then we'll see everybody else who says "Entrepreneur"
in their Instagram profile right now
when they're working in Bank of America in 24 months
and so that's what I'm waiting for.
I'm most excited for
and waiting for
and hoping for
complete global economic carnage
so that we can weed out the B and C and D players.
(electronic music)
("It's All Love" by Hi-Rez)
Hey Vlog.
CES, working, busy.
Babin wanted something,
but I don't have much to say,
I've been in fucking meetings all day.
That's it, see ya.
Nice view!
Amazing.
("It's All Love" by Hi-Rez)
Understood!
How ya doin', Em?
- Good, this is the busiest conference I've ever been to.
- Where am I going?
Right here?
Let's set this scene up!
Babin, stop crying!
It's just fuckin CES, I'm busy!
I mean, I can't always
- [Em] Any content for the vlog?
- It's up to you, Alesksa Mara!
(Em giggles)
It's up to you, Aleska Mara, to fix this!
- [Em] We all have name tags, I got Jamal!
- Aleska, it's me!
It's me, Luis!
I'm about to give a talk here with Samsung
and Entrepreneur Magazine and
Hi! - This is Idira from Samsung
- How are you? - Good, how are you?
Good to see you. - Thanks for having me.
- Yeah, of course!
- And so, only event I'm doing here at CES
a small little group, should be good.
Not exactly sure what I'm gonna talk about
but I'll figure it the fuck out
it'll be the meat of this episode,
I've just been busy as fuck!
Fuck.
- Very nice.
- Student of the University of Florida
- Very nice there
- For you - Great.
- It's sitting in your chair. - Awesome.
- I am going to introduce the moderator
- Right. - He will introduce you.
- Yeah, yeah, you?
- Good week? - Thanks for doin this!
- No problem, man, super happy to be here!
- 'member that? - That's a really great part
of that talk, that two hour talk in LA!
- Yup, that was it, man. - Startup Grind.
I remember it.
- I follow you all the time, man
- Thank you, brother. - To this day,
you've been just like, a big guiding factor.
- Thank you brother. - In motivating me
and keeping me on track
- Thank you brother
- [Man] We're about to start
- Thank you.
- Thank you so much, I'm excited to be here and see you!
- [Jason] Just start this thing!
So Gary, come on up, thank you!
What kinda conversations are you having here?
What are you seeing,
or who are you meeting with
and you're really excited about?
What kinda technologies do you see
that you're really excited about?
- I think what's very unique about CES
is that people get very excited about what's coming
so I'm always a big fan of...
Some of you here follow my content.
I'm very big on "Day Trading Attention."
What that really means is
I like being practical.
I don't like when people think I'm a futurist
or a disruptor.
I don't think I am.
I actually think all I am is just very practical.
I try to pay attention
to what you're paying attention to at scale right now,
and how do I bring you value in those environments.
So the thing that's interesting to me here is
everyone's talkin' 'bout voice, and IoT,
and connected this and connected that,
which is absolutely gonna happen.
I'm super excited about it.
I can't wait to never leave my fuckin' room
It's all gonna be great
but for me, I think it clouds a lot
which is...
I would say the far majority of companies here
will go out of business
before the promise of what they're trying to deliver on
becomes consumer at scale
and so for me, I'm excited but tempered
in trying to help people stay alive for the holy grail.
There's a lot of people in 2007
that thought "Social Media" was gonna be big.
The difference between me and a lot of them
was I knew how to stay alive
from 2007 to 2013, before it became really really.
And for me, that's what CES always reminds me which is:
great, I can't wait to have my robot
wipe my ass,
but before that happens,
make sure that you're still in business in 2027
and so there's a little bit too much 2027 talk for me
but at the flip side,
I love that people are inspired, excited,
meeting new people, bouncing ideas,
thinking about things differently.
And I would argue for everybody I'm looking at right now,
if you see something that allows you to then use that
as a proxy to be practical over the next 24 months,
that, to me, is interesting
in the way I think about CES.
I used to come to events like this
and nobody knew who the hell I was
and I was in the wine business
and it made no sense for me to be here.
I'm an extrovert.
It's comfortable for me to do what I recommend these people,
which is: if you literally don't know each other,
it's probably a good idea to say "Hello."
You've got a common point of view of where the world's going
as many as people as there are here,
it's still a very tiny percentage of the net score.
And so for me, it was comfortable
to come to something like this,
listen to people, and say "hello,"
grab a business card, send an e-mail,
try to build a relationship.
I'm a big believer in serendipity.
I didn't chase the people on stage.
I knew equally that the person sitting right next to me
in the 13 year macro might be valuable to me
and so my advice to everybody who's "not being chased down"
and cameras and all this
is to say "hello" to the person next to them
because that's how life actually works.
Now, there's a lot of people here that are shy.
I grew up with parents that had an accent
this is an international show.
There's a million things that I can run through my mind
from the Psychology of
why every person here now won't look to the person
to the left and right and say "hello,"
it still doesn't make the advice wrong.
That is the ROI.
The ROI, my friends,
everything you've seen here,
you could watch on the fuckin' internet next week.
(audience laughing)
The ROI of coming to this thing
is to engage with the people next to you right this second.
There's nothing I'm gonna say right now
that you haven't heard me say in some other version
for the last fuckin' decade.
- And you gotta remember
that everybody's here to meet people.
That's the funny thing,
is like, you're great at - Yes, but
Go ahead, please.
- No, you're afraid of reaching out
but if you wanna connect
and you have to remember
that the other people are thinking the exact same thing.
Then, when people come,
When you ask people,
"Why did you come to something like this?"
"Why do you go to some conference?"
the answer is always "To meet other people."
That's always, always the number one thing.
It's not for like, watching people on stage.
Unless it's you.
But otherwise, it's to meet the people who are there!
- Yeah, in South by Southwest 2007,
Mark Zuckerberg asked me to introduce him to Kevin Rose,
the founder of Digg.
The world changes.
And so...
the people that get to sit on the big stage,
things like this, that, the other,
they change.
But you have access to everybody
there's fuckin' hundreds of thousands of people here.
I'm just a very big fan of saying "hello" versus pitching.
I wrote a book called "Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook"
because I really wanted to establish the way I think of it
which is: I just think
that Herb and Greg should know each other.
I don't think that Greg should pitch Herb his business.
I think they should just say "hello" and create context
and then something may come from that.
And I just believe in that.
I don't know what else to tell you
I think it's very practical.
- Let's talk as to technology - Greg, say hi to Herb.
(audience laughing)
- Greg and Marco
Marco and guy's....tag is...
Robert, now you know each other.
They already know each other!
Alright, well, whatever.
So, Gary, VaynerMedia's got a division called VaynerSmart
- Yes.
- Where you are using new technologies,
AR, VR, the internet of things
to connect more ends with consumers
talk to me about being on that cutting edge,
how you stay on it.
- I got very focused on IoT products...
like, literally your beer re-ordering itself for you
smart refrigerator being more important than anything
but the reality is,
VaynerSmart was named three years ago when I started it
and the promise didn't come true,
meaning, it's not moving as fast as I want it to,
thought it might,
so now what VaynerSmart does, really,
is an obnoxious amount of Alexa skills
and Google Home skills
and even podcast marketing
which is very basic, that can be in media
because voice has become very real.
I'm spending an enormous amount of time thinking about that
and so, VaynerSmart itself is probably gonna get rebranded
because it's encompassing with AR and machine learning.
I'm starting to realize: okay,
the things that I know are gonna happen in a 10 year macro,
but I don't know exactly when and how it's going to pop
I need to create a division
where it's highly not profitable
because I'm just investing
and so VaynerSmart and some of the ML,
and AI, and AR stuff is there
and then stuff that's even further out,
like VR consumer
or some of the connected stuff we're seeing here
that will just sit in my investing world
and networking world not as an official department.
- Time is the problem.
Was it because it's hard to move an organization
at a speed that technology's changing?
- No, the technology hasn't delivered
on the promise of its speed.
I don't know one fucking consumer product
that's reordered itself
or itself for anybody in this hall
It's always about...
My mistakes in my career are always timing.
Always.
I understand consumer behavior so well
that it's been my calling card.
I really know that everybody's gonna do a lot of things here
online dating was obvious.
I didn't think it was weird dudes in their basements.
I thought it was gonna be Tinder
and I invested in Yobongo, and One, and Highlight,
and everything,
I got unlucky that Tinder was incubated inside of IAC.
I knew that was gonna happen.
Everybody here
is going to be very deep in IoT and voice
and order their toothpaste while they're...
it's all happening
it's not the tech, the technology...
so much of the promise here
is going to be four to six years later than they said
when they talked to you at the booth.
So we move fast as fuck, 'cause I'm willin' to lose money.
The technology wasn't fast.
- How do you stay...
are you trying to plan out to the four to six years
when something that is talked about now
is actually going to - Always.
Yeah, I lost a fortune last year on voice strategists
'cause I could taste that it was gonna be now, right?
And whether it was 2018 scopes
which I've signed with clients,
or 2019, I knew it wasn't gonna be 2020.
I can't say that for a lot of the technology we see here
so for me, I'm not scared
if I think it's really close within a year, year and a half.
Look, I bought cryptocurrency in 2014
but it wasn't because
I didn't know "when" or "how"
and I didn't even know "if."
I really didn't.
I just knew "maybe".
Or "kinda", or "probably".
Or "why it could".
I think the fundamental separation that I have
is really predicated on two things.
I have empathy, so I'm thinking about
what you're thinking about
and number two, I don't care about money in the short term.
If you really actually understand what I just said
on those two things,
if you're actually consumer-centric
and you don't need money in the short term
you always look like a fuckin' genius
- I don't like people
and I don't like companies and businesses
that are ideological.
There's way too many enthusiasts here
that would like to see this shit happen.
I don't like to anything to happen
I just wanna try to figure out
what I think is going to happen
and a lot of times, that's put me in a place
where people judged me and made fun of me
until they did it.
All my friends made fun of me
that I signed a K-Swiss sneaker deal
'cause I had the "audacity" to think it would work
until it all sold out in four hours
and then they stopped laughing.
And the reason it worked
was 'cause I "understood" where attention sat, right?
And that's how I think about the world.
- When something works, you're a genius
and when it doesn't work, you're a fool.
- Success has unlimited fathers.
Now everybody thinks they were involved
like Babin thinks he's the reason
the K-Swiss sneakers sold, right?
But failure has none, right?
But that's what makes it fun.
If you're in a place where you're comfortable
with accepting your losses,
I'm proud to say up here that I've had to pivot VaynerSmart
'cause the timing of IoT hasn't worked
in the way that I thought it would.
That's comfortable to me.
- It means you're watching your market.
- Yeah, to me, that's comfortable
I'm so sad that so many of you don't do things
because you're worried about being judged.
It makes me sad.
That sucks!
Fuck, you know?
To me, that's my loss.
What's that got to do with you?
I don't give a shit what you think, Marco!
I'm doin' my thing!
And so when you start getting comfortable
with losing in the micro
well, then, you can really start doing things
and so for me, that's why it's comfortable to day trade.
If you day trade, you're gonna miss a lot
you just have to make more than you miss.
And for me, I just am comfortable in that mentality.
- When brands come to you,
how comfortable are they with this drive?
In our story, we put this guy on the cover in June.
The story about us and about you
focused quite a lot, actually,
on that division between the personal brand
and the brand and it was interesting to me
I didn't realize the degree
to which you've wanted those to feel separate.
- Yeah, I mean, look,
I don't want to be a charlatan or a motivational speaker
those aren't interesting to me.
But I'm also willing to people
to judge me and misunderstand me
because I know how this all plays out at the end.
So you can boo me in the second quarter;
I'll talk to you after the game.
- And I like the way that you think of yourself
as an R&D lab.
You're testing things on yourself that you think
are going to pay out.
- Yeah!
I didn't invest in Facebook and Twitter,
and Uber and Snapchat,
and buy cryptocurrency in 2014
and launch an e-commerce site in 1996 by accident.
I didn't create a brand that allowed me
to sign a sneaker deal
bigger than 99% of athletes by accident.
None of this is fuckin' accident.
This is me being willing to eat shit
and have humility and take negative feedback
while I try to figure shit out.
I work.
I do shit.
While everybody's debating, I'm doing it.
And I'm willing to take micro losses for macro wins
and most people aren't
because they want short term money
or they actually value other people's opinions
over their own.
I realized that I mean nothing
which then doesn't allow me to have the audacity
to be cynical or skeptical.
I'm empathetic
and by the way, "parents having sex at the right moment
giving me DNA", like, this is not me
but I'm like, "Why am I not skeptical?"
"Why am I not cynical?"
Oh, because, the fuck does my opinion mean...
The amount of people dropping their two cents
on social media to shit on somebody
like they mean something?
People try to build the biggest building in town
by tearing everybody else's building down.
When you have enough talent
to just build the biggest building,
you just build the biggest building.
I could give a fuck about anybody else.
I'm doin' me.
And honestly, I wish all of you the best
and I even really hope you beat me
'cause that will keep me hungry
but the truth is, I'm not worried about other people's shit.
We're counting everybody else's points too much.
Worry about your own shit.
Now, that bubble will burst
and then we'll get to see who's still around
and then we'll see everybody else who says "Entrepreneur"
in their Instagram profile right now
when they're working in Bank of America in 24 months
and so that's what I'm waiting for.
I'm most excited for
and waiting for
and hoping for
complete global economic carnage
so that we can weed out the B and C and D players.
- Well, Jesus, if you had stopped talking a minute ago,
we would've ended on a high note
but instead, we ended on a bad!
(audience laughing) - I don't think, by the way
that's where I think this is so fun.
I think that is a high note.
It's the same way I'm looking at what's happening now:
the truth should win.
If you're a piece of shit: you should lose.
If you're not a good entrepreneur: you should have a job.
Merit and the truth area always the winners in the macro.
We're just in a micro right now
and people are confused.
- This is Jennifer Clark, she's brilliant.
- Hi, Gary - Hi, how are you doing?
- Alright, let's go find somewhere to sit!
- [Man] Back in the day
- I love it - We work in the music sector
now doin like, downloads - That's awesome.
- Dude, your stuff is so motivational!
- Thank you, brother, nice meeting you.
- And we've been workin for a while,
are you here for CES or somethin?
- Yeah, just meetings
Take care. - Good meeting you, man!
- Thank you, thank you so much!
- Thanks again, Gary!
- Thank you, man, take care!
- Alright, you too
- What's happening Babin?
("It's All Love" by Hi-Rez)
Babin, I guess this is our thing.
It's how you close it out
Alright, good day,
just a bunch of fuckin' meetings.
Obviously Babin got his
the meat of the episode in that talk
that was a good talk!
- It was a really good talk. - Entrepreneur, Samsung
- What was your highlight of CES
and what are you kinda taking away from it?
- The quality time with you, Babin.
- That wasn't the greatest part.
- Just got a lot of fuckin' meetings done.
It's always smart to go somewhere
where you can save time by being there.
Three days in Vegas saved me four fuckin' weeks of travel.
So I'm pumped, I'm in a good mood.
Efficiency at scale
Hi Linda!
- [Linda] You goin' to dinner?
- I am!
I am, alright, I gotta go.
Bye.
("It's All Love" by Hi-Rez)