- On this episode, the legend
stops by.
(lively hip hop music)
You ask questions.
And I answer them.
This is
The #AskGaryVee Show.
How do I do the intro again?
Hey, everybody, this is Gary Vaynerchuk?
- [Voiceover] And this is episode (mumbles).
- I just did Wine Library TV, which I have a different--
- Uh-oh.
- No, is this, what is this supposed to be?
- [Voiceover] It really is 184.
- Oh, it's 184, so I'll call it 185.
- I'm just gonna make up whatever comes out of my.
Hey, everybody, this is Gary Vay-ner-chuk,
and this is episode 184, five?
- [India] Four.
- Supposed to be four, but we're gonna go with 185.
We're gonna skip 184, Seth.
I know we like to call you the guru.
This is the real guru.
185 of The #AskGaryVee Show,
and I am fired up!
You know what, I pushed against guru, too.
I am fired up. - I can tell.
- About having you here.
I'm in a really-- - [Seth] India's here.
- [Gary] India's here.
- Brittany's here.
- The whole crew's here.
- Staphon's here.
- But who's really here is really one of the true pioneers
is really one of the true pioneers
of the modern marketing movement.
Somebody that I've gotten to know over the last half decade,
and it's been a real pleasure because you get to know,
I've enjoyed the relationships that I've gotten
from the other side, people that are coming up the game,
they've gotten to know me, we're friends.
I feel very, very honored for you
to be here on this show, Seth.
Please, please tell the one person in the VaynerNation
who's watching this right now who doesn't know who you are.
A little 47-second bio or however you like to roll.
How would you like to say hello.
- I notice things for a living,
and try to point them out to people.
I'm a teacher.
I've started a couple companies.
More than a couple, I do projects,
and I try to make a ruckus, that's a good day.
- That is a good day,
and it's been a good life that way.
- I'm not complaining.
It's been a thrill and a privilege.
- Seth, how many books have you written?
- Well, there's 18 bestsellers
when I was like an official author.
- That is so ludicrous.
- [Seth] But before that--
- [Gary] I'm like pumping out my fourth--
- [Seth] Oh, come on.
- [Gary] Four is very--
- [Seth] You know what, it doesn't look good on you.
- [Gary] 18. - It doesn't look good on you.
- I'm gonna go for 19. You know that, right?
It's like a Tiger Woods-Jack Nicholson type thing.
Is it 18?
- It's 18.
- I swear on my cheddar I'm gonna go for 19.
- When I was a book packager,
I did a book a month for 10 years.
So, those other books, but then there's 18.
- So, a little bit, just because I think it's gonna be
quite enjoyable for the audience, I know that for a fact.
A little bit deeper. Tell you sold the company yahoo.
Indulge me here for a little minute.
Where did you start out?
- I would say the big turning point was
helping to invent commercial email as we know it
that's not spam.
That when I started doing it in 1991
most people did not have an email address.
- That's right.
- And persuading backers that we were going to invent a way
that email could be used,
think about any email you got today that you wanted to get
that came from a company, not a person.
That didn't exist before we did it.
And, so, Yoyodyne was the business that we built
to do that.
Before that, I was book packager.
Before that I worked at a educational computer game company.
We invented pretty much commercial
educational computer games like
Kids on Keys and Fraction Fever.
And I had a line of science fiction games.
It was great fun.
When I was 24, it was so lucky that I got that job.
That was pretty cool.
- Of the 14 best-sellers that you've written.
- 18. You're subtracting already.
- I'm trying. That was subliminal.
That means that I need 14 more.
- Is there a new Gary Vee book coming out?
- Yes, but we don't need to talk about that.
- I hear it's called #AskGaryVee,
and then you can pre-order it on Amazon right now.
- I'm gonna have to make volume 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
10, 11, 12, 13, and 14.
No, that's eight. That's tomorrow.
Seth, of those books, you know, do you have a favorite?
I know it's like children, do you have one that stood out?
I mean, I know that Purple Cow seems to be like,
every time I talk to people about you,
like what I think of you
that seems to come out of people's mouths quite a bit.
Tribes was some where I got mentioned in,
which was very big for me.
So, thank you. At the time I was starting the wine thing.
Any of them stand out, was there anything that really?
- Well, most authors will tell you
that their favorite book is the one that didn't sell.
- That's what I say.
Thank You Economy. That's so weird you said that.
- I wrote a book called Survival is Not Enough.
Charles Darwin wrote the forward.
- Wow.
- And India's laughing.
It's true, you can look it up.
Google it right now.
And it came out right after 9/11
which was not a good time to say
the whole world is gonna be different,
and we should like that.
It took me over a year. It had 45 pages of footnotes
that didn't fit in, that I published online.
It's as close as I'm ever gonna get
to sort of a scholarly thing.
And most people shouldn't read it,
because it's not what matches the gestalt
of what we're trying to do today.
But I have a soft spot in my heart,
because no one bought it, right?
The new book What to Do When It's Your Turn,
I designed every page. I wrote every page.
It made me happy to sort of play with the medium, right?
But they're all my friends, my books.
I keep them on a shelf so that I can look up say,
"I remember when I was the person who can write that book."
- Interesting.
- I don't think I could write most of my books today.
- And where do you sit today in book writing in your mind?
- This was a year and a half ago,
there hasn't been one word since then.
It's just not on the agenda.
It's not something that people
are ready to buy another book.
Maybe from you, but not from me.
Where our attention span is different.
Our priorities are different.
So, I'm focusing on the school I run the Alt MBA.
I'm focusing on how do I craft each blog post
as if it was my last one.
How do I interact with people? - I want to get into that.
India. I apologize, Seth.
India, I know you have the questions.
Is there one asking him about his social media versus,
I saw that come through. Did you pick that?
- She's ready.
- She's really good like that. So, I'll leave it for that.
So, we're gonna answer some questions.
Because that's what we do here.
- Did we turn on the cameras yet, or are we just talking?
- No, the cameras are on. The cameras are on.
DRock is doing Facebook Live.
- Hi, DRock. Hi, Facebook Live.
- DRock, what's going on with Facebook Live?
- They're loving it.
- [Gary] I'm sure.
- [Seth] 12, 14?
- We're at 3.3.
- [Gary] Three thousand three hundred?
Very nice.
- Adding the decimal to thousands makes it sound like a much
bigger number, just saying.
- It's a much bigger.
3.3 people are watching.
Big shout out to the third of the person.
India, let's get into the first question.
- [India] Demetri.
- Demetri. Good Russian name. Good start.
- Do I repeat the question?
- No, you don't have to.
No, that gets picked up.
- Semantics matter a whole bunch here.
What does authority even mean?
And I think that currencies of anybody
who wants to make change happen right now
are attention and trust.
And they're in a virtuous cycle.
You don't get attention unless you're trusted.
You don't get trusted, unless you get attention.
There are other kinds of attention.
You can light yourself on fire in the street,
but you don't earn trust doing that.
So, this attention trust cycle goes around.
The question then is, how do you get there?
I don't think you get there by saying,
"How do I hustle a content media play
"to figure out how to get in front of people
"who never heard of me, and somehow seduce them?"
I think you do it by being generous.
I think that people tend to trust folks
who step up before they have to.
They trust people who keep their promises,
especially when it's not convenient.
They trust people who tell them the truth.
And if you do those things,
they're probably gonna tell someone else.
And then you'll get more attention
and more chances to be generous.
And the cycle then goes, and goes, and goes.
And guess what?
It probably never ends at a moment when you say,
"Okay, it's my turn to take, take, take."
We left the take, take, take part out mostly.
You don't feel like you own Heinz anything.
You don't feel like you owe TWA anything.
You just are in this environment
where you know you're attention is precious,
you know your trust has been abused.
If someone shows up and treats your attention with kindness
and earns your trust every day,
well then, one of the byproducts will be
they'll want to hear what you have to say next.
- Super easy to figure out why this guy and I get along.
If you've been watching this show,
because that just wrapped up 184 episodes in one statement.
- 183.
- I know. I'm trying to play along here.
I think what is super interesting about that answer
and this question, is that's right.
And I think one of the reasons
that I've had personal success
is because I think about things
in such a long period of time that
that answer spoke to me because it's my natural state.
When you think about things
in a 10, or 20, or 40 year cycle,
well then your behavior matches that.
And, so, you're not worried about the one week,
one day, one month, even one year results.
And then I also think the market gets to the side.
There's one thing that I very much believe.
- Can I just put a little asterisk?
- Please.
- Because you're about to sell yourself short here.
- Please.
- There's a glacial strategy which says,
"I'm a glacier. I'm gonna make it all the way down
the Hudson to the ocean,
and it's obvious where I'm going.
I'm just gonna take a long time."
I would say that that strategy you're talking about,
which you have done consistently,
is that at any given moment the short term thinker
thinks you're an idiot.
Because you are not trading.
And that's the key.
Is that you are doing things that are so generous
and so trust earning,
that people look at you and say,
"Why aren't you doing that other taking thing?"
And it's that feeling that the people around you think
you've lost your mind.
That's what makes it scarce.
- I'm a little bit weird, and you know this,
because my personality actually on stage and style,
makes people think I am in short term game.
You know, I recognize that my vibe at times
comes across as the worse version of the things that
you're referring to.
And, so, it takes people
a little of time to completely figure me out.
As a matter of fact, I would tell you
one of the interesting things about
how I live my life is
the reason I so deeply feel infection towards you is
I was surprised myself how quickly you,
like I judge people based on how quickly they get me or not.
And I always wonder if,
I'm never sure if I do it on purpose.
If the shtick is almost weirdly on purpose,
or was it always naturally,
I think it's naturally there
based on what happened in school
long before I thought about these things.
But that's right.
So, I think at the end of the day,
the thing that really, really matters to me is
whether Seth says it, whether I say it,
whether the president says it,
the bottom line is the market gets to the side, you know?
When you make a book, when you write a blog post,
when I feel like,
at the end of the day the market is the judge.
And, so, when you think about who's the taste maker,
who's the authority in today's world,
we clearly have mediums today.
I mean, look at what's going on here right now.
- There are two cameras.
- That's fine, but we're basically.
I mean it's incredible we're doing live
and production TV here.
Think about this 20 years ago.
You've been through the whole gamut.
- Everyone owns their own media company.
- It's crazy.
- One thing we need to amplify here though,
there isn't one market.
There are many markets.
- Yes, agreed.
- And so you can sell to a market that wants you to be a
pickup artist, hustler, whatever.
But just please understand, that's your market.
Don't call me, because I'm not your market.
And my argument is that most people,
especially the people you want to be trusted by,
don't like to be hustled.
- 100%.
- And I wish that a whole bunch of people
who call themselves growth hackers and (mumbles)
would write on the wall,
"Most people I care about don't want to be hustled."
Because being hustled makes you feel bad.
- Agreed.
- What else you got, India?
- [India] From Bryce.
- Bryce, it's a nice name.
- Bryce. He's got a canyon named after him.
- He does.
- So, what's the next big thing?
My argument is this is the next big thing.
That, if you are waiting for something beyond
a billion people connected online with mobile being the
driving force, with a fight for attention,
and with constant froth around the edges.
If you're waiting for something else,
you're gonna miss out on a big chunk of opportunity.
This is our revolution.
There was the industrial revolution.
There was the mass media revolution.
There's this.
And it will keep changing it's flavor.
The names of the public companies that run things
are gonna have to change.
But please don't wait for the next thing.
This has been the next thing since 1991.
And the people who ask me at the newspaper conference in '93
when I told them what was coming said,
"Oh, well. We'll just wait for that."
No, this is it. This is what we got.
- I totally agree with that.
And the one thing that's on the horizon
that I think a lot of people are paying attention to is VR.
And I say to a lot of people,
"Look. That's a ten years away."
In 1998 I thought by the year 2000
everybody would come into my wine shop
and know the price of everything.
And, so, I think the thing I've learned,
my version of that same exact answer is
there's a long way away.
If VR is truly contact lenses, sitting at our home,
being in places, we're talking about 15 to 25 years away
from the scale.
We're just hitting the maturity.
Let's not forget. 15%-17% of all eCommerce done in America
is done online.
It's nothing.
If you told me in 1998 that only 15% of all things bought
would be online by the year 2016,
I would have sat there and said,
"Shit. Do I even want to do this?
That's forever from now."
This stuff doesn't go as fast as we all think it's going to.
- 30 years ago today, 1986, sitting in my office
at 215 1st Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
- As like, literally, literally today?
- I'm making that part up, but it's 30 years ago,
sitting in my office in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Do you know who walks in?
I'm 26 years old.
Guy named Guy Kawasaki.
- Telling you Apple's the greatest?
- Well, I was already a beta tester.
We did a deal with him, right?
The point is, if Guy had waited for the next big thing,
he wouldn't have become Guy Kawasaki.
If I'd waited for the next big thing,
I wouldn't have become me,
and you wouldn't have become you.
This idea that there's always the froth around the edges,
there are people who are working in VR today
who are gonna go off and do something interesting,
but it's not gonna be because they're right about VR.
It's gonna be because they're right about being a
trusted person worthy of our attention.
That's the arc of the people you trust
and the brands you trust.
Not that they got the product right the first day
or the iteration right the first day.
It's that they made a commitment to show up
in a certain way, in a certain universe
in front of certain people.
- What's crazy about that is
when I think about the thought leaders
in marketing, and names that people throw out there,
and authors in this space.
30 years ago he walks into your office.
It's unbelievable that when you have the chops:
A. How long you can keep the attention of the end consumer.
B. How long this all plays out.
Like, I just got fired up.
The level of domination that I'm gonna have in 2037
just dawned on me.
And I'm really excited about 2037.
- You should be except
football will be against the law by then.
- Don't even start with me.
Let's go.
- Well, she already knows the answer, right?
- Go ahead. You go.
- No, that's the thing with psychics, they already know.
Why are they asking?
Next.
- Yeah. I mean, look.
You guys know where I sit on this one.
I won't meditate. I don't need to see psychics.
- Whoa. It's not okay to put those two things
in the same sentence.
- Yes, it is. I'll tell you.
- No, it's not.
- Well, you don't get to say.
- I do, because one is science, and the other one is not.
- Okay.
- Science is one of the coolest things
that's ever happened to mankind.
- I hate science, Seth.
Seth, I'm telling you the truth about this.
I mean, you know I hate disappointing you.
- You don't have to like it,
but you can't deny that it works.
- I don't deny science.
- So, it's not okay to start conflating
things that are based on science--
- Versus things that are not.
- Correct. - Okay.
- Thank you.
- So, let me ask you a question.
What do you think about emotional intelligence?
Seriously, like can I tell you something?
Can I tell you something that weirds me out.
- Go ahead.
- Help me here, because I trust you.
Why is it that often, not always,
and I understand brain tricks and all that shit,
but I get weirded out when I think of random shit like
somebody I haven't talked to in seven years,
and then the next day they call me.
Or a million other things.
Tell me about intuition.
- That has nothing to do with emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence is Daniel Goleman's semantic take
on what we need from people.
The ability to look people in the eye.
The ability to not eat the marshmallow.
Emotional intelligence is an important concept
that people should understand.
You're talking about instinct, intuition.
Okay, let's have conversation about that.
- Can't they be cousins?
- They're not related things, no.
They're just not.
- I believe you. You're probably right.
I don't look this shit up.
- Think about the people you know,
who you've hired here, right?
The ones you like the best aren't the ones
who are better at typing than someone else.
They're the ones who have the emotional intelligence
to bring tension to bare to cause change to happen
in a way that benefits others.
- 100%
- That has nothing to do with a friend calling you.
- No. No question, no question.
- Coincidence is super easy to explain.
- Please.
- We, as humans, are story telling machines.
We notice things, but we have to make stories about them.
You, yesterday, thought of more than 300 different people.
- Probably more than that.
- And one of them called you.
You paid attention to the coincidence,
but you didn't say,
"Holy smokes, 299 people didn't call me today."
- That's right.
- The reason that coincidence works is
as story manufacturing humans,
we're always looking for that correlation.
And that's why people buy lottery tickets.
Because they think that there's some sort of
weird cosmic numerology thing going on,
because we're wired to look for weird coincidences,
but there aren't actually weird coincidences in the world.
We just think there are. - It's all science.
- I didn't say that.
- That's what you said.
- No. There's plenty of things that aren't science,
because we make up stories that are irrational.
What I'm saying is there's a good reason we evolved
to make up stories that are irrational,
because they kept us alive.
Because sometimes there's a correlation
between the stick breaking
and the lion jumping out of the woods.
And then when we listen for sticks breaking,
it might keep us alive, and we'll have grandchildren
and other people will listen for sticks breaking.
Where it breaks down is now there are no lions,
but we're still listening for sticks breaking.
We're looking for broken windows.
We're paranoid about certain things because--
- It's hippos and sharks.
- Hippos and sharks, sure.
- I love that.
Look it up if you didn't understand that.
Go ahead, India.
- I think it's advisable under several conditions.
Condition number one, where you want to--
- When did you start your blog?
- Really, it was '89 as an email newsletter.
So, do the math.
- Yeah, no. It's a long time ago.
- Then I met Joi Ito and switched it to type pad.
There was some blogging before that,
but I can't find it.
I don't know where it is.
And then, after I met Joi Ito,
I've been doing it as relentless as I could.
There was a period with five blog posts a day,
and then I realized it wasn't helping me or the reader.
So, now it's been one a day
for a really long time. - For a long time.
Do you know how long?
- Years and years.
So, if you want to develop
to get to the dip to be the best at something,
you're gonna have to say no to a lot of things.
- You love no.
- No is super important.
- Super important.
- And, so, when Twitter came along I said,
"I could be pretty good at this, because I'm early.
"But I would have to use my blogging time
"to be pretty good at this."
So better--
- How much time do you spend on a blog post
do you think on average?
I mean, I'm sure they all vary.
- Well, I spend 10 hours a day
thinking about the next blog post.
I write a bunch, but you don't see most of them.
- What do you just like kill them?
- Yeah. No.
- Well, they stick around, right?
You might bring them back?
I assume when you're spending 10 hours a day,
in four weeks you may spend 10 hours and you're like,
"Oh, shit."
And recall that.
- Sure. It all connects.
That's why I think every human should have a blog,
even if you don't put your name on it.
Every day write something
that you're willing to put in the world,
so that a week from now, and a month from now,
and a year from now you can look back at it and say,
"I said this. I predicted this. I noticed this."
- Did you keep a journal as a youngster?
- No, not at all.
- Do you like writing?
I know it's a funny question.
- I like talking about ideas.
I like helping change happen.
There was a time in the middle of the 18 books
when the thought of sitting down
and going to this practice of writing a book
really engaged me.
But I'd rather look someone in the eye
and talk to them.
- What about public speaking?
We've gotten to do a couple of events together.
- I love giving talks.
I hate flying there.
I love being on stage.
You're on, and then you're off.
There are rules.
You can't bring on a chimpanzee and a marching band.
- Well, you can.
- You're allowed to use slides. I have rules, right?
I can use your slides, but you can't go beyond that,
can't throw things at the audience and stuff.
- I like that.
- But there's too many variables.
So, back to India's question.
- What was the question? Oh, yes.
- So Steve Pressfield in his book The War of Art
talks about the resistence.
And Linchpin I talk about The Lizard Brain.
- Do you read a lot?
- Yeah, I do.
- You read books?
- Yeah.
- Like how many books in a year will you read?
- Well, I get two or three a day in the mail,
and I read them until I get the joke,
and then I stop.
So, that's a thousand.
- Jesus.
- But sometimes you don't need to read that many.
#AskGaryVee, did I mention that's on sale in two weeks?
You can pre-order it now on Amazon.
That book will probably take me more than
15 minutes to get the joke,
because it's just rich and layered,
and a lifetime of insight.
You know what I'm saying?
But there are others books,
if the author did a good job in five pages,
you get the point.
You that the rest of it is proven,
and now you can go on to the next thing.
- That's cool.
What's the last great book you read, for you?
What did you enjoy recently?
- Fiction-wise, there's a book called Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
Hysterical, brilliant, funny, science fiction,
and it's about you.
You're in it.
You're not gonna like the Deveraux character.
- Is that who I am?
- Yeah.
- Is he handsome?
- Yes.
- Yeah. I love him.
- But that's not the best thing to say about him.
- That's all I care. - There are parts of him that
- Who cares? - I'm in, but you don't want
to go there.
Anyway, and then, there's a really great novel about
Marcel Duchamp's work called
The Bride Who Was Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even.
- That's the whole title?
- Yeah. That's really juicy book.
- Oh, India's fired up.
- There you go.
But nonfiction-wise, I'm just constantly amazed
at how generous authors are,
because authors know
you can't make a living writing books,
but they do it anyway.
Anyway, we're still answering India's question.
Are we running out of time? I'm sorry.
- It's not India's, it's Jonathan's.
- Jonathan.
Wait. So, the punchline is this--
- The punchline is when you're fucking Seth Godin
you don't have to do it
because you're a beast in 20 years.
- Completely the opposite.
Zig used to say you can be a meaningful specific--
- And Zak said,
"If you're fucking Seth Godin, you can get away with it."
- Has anyone ever walked out on this show?
- Yes.
- Because I could go second.
I have something important to add here.
You're heckling me.
- I am.
I just, you know what? I'm just happy you're here.
- He was my friend.
- I'm sure. I apologize, go ahead.
- So, Zig used to say,
"You can be a meaningful specific
"or a wandering generality."
- Interesting.
- And the problem with most social media
is you are not the customer, you are the product.
It was optimized to make you anxious until you use it again.
It was optimized to extract from you nervous energy,
not productive output.
Most people who fall into it are checking one last time,
checking this, posting that, liking this.
Why? To keep them from doing important work.
- Which was watching television for a lot of people.
- So now you have a chance.
- Hold on. Here's where we're gonna disagree a little bit.
I mean, stick here for a second, India.
Hold on. This thought that all of a sudden Myspace,
and Friendster, and Facebook, and Twitter came along
and took us away from all this
mass important work.
- Who said that?
- You did.
- No. So, let's start with Clay Shirky.
Clay Shirky pointed out that Wikipedia got built on
a decrease in television reviewing.
That that billion hours that were invested
in building Wikipedia came from TV.
- It could've come from reading.
- No. He shows, it's great book.
It came from TV.
- He put a chip in everybody's head who--
- Look.
- Listen. What we can't talk about this?
- No. You don't have to agree with me,
but you can't deny this scholar's work
without examining it and saying,
"Wait. I challenge his methodology."
- No, no. I think that's fair.
And I think you're right about that.
No question do I believe
an enormous amount of internet behavior has come
at the behest of television.
- So, what my point is
television's dying because we're giving people more choices,
because channels are breaking down, etcetera.
Mass is going away.
What do we want people to do
with the time they're not spending watching Happy Days?
- They're still watching a lot of TV,
which is stunning to me.
- [Gary] I know you know that. - [Seth] I agree with you.
But my argument is
that people who are watching you and I talk, right?
Bryce, and Jonathan, and the psychic,
who already knows what I'm about to say.
- Yeah, they set that up.
- have the ability to make a dent in the universe.
- 100%
- We gave them a platform they could use to do it.
- 100%
- And they think that they're advancing their cause
by using various social media networks
the way that they're optimized to be used.
And my argument is they're not.
That I am super glad that the musicians of the 60's
that went way out on an edge,
weren't seduced by
just sitting there listening to Beach Boys records all day.
They decided to make Bitches Brew,
they decided to make Soul Train Company,
or whatever it is.
They went outside the thing to say,
"This is my work."
And the problem I have with the people who are saying,
"Me, too. Plus, plus."
They think they're doing their job,
they're not doing their job.
They're hiding from their job.
They're job is to create a body of work
that earns them trust and attention.
- Seth, so real quick. You know, that's interesting,
but let's go a little bit deeper here.
- Okay. I'm ready.
- I like this. Don't you believe, when you're saying,
"Plus, plus. And this, that, or the other thing."
Don't you believe that that is
exactly mapping the people that did just,
not just everybody is going to make great bodies of work.
- Not true.
- Okay. Go ahead.
- You think they're born that way?
- No, no.
- Everyone who makes great work
was born naked, unable to read,
and pooping in their diapers.
- [Gary] Okay. - [Seth] Right?
Somewhere along the way
you make a decision.
You make an investment.
You go forward.
And if we look, we see that it used to be
that John Hammond would pick you,
and you would become a famous recording artist.
- Yes, you know I believe that.
- So the pickers are gone.
And so now the number of people who are picking themselves
keeps going up.
All I'm saying, my only point in this case is this
if you find that at the end of the day you could say,
"I did a really good job,
"and my social media universe is clean and taken care of,"
and that's all you have to point to today,
I don't think that's a good day.
- And what I'm saying is
Sally Pants McGee, who has that to point to in 1974
has that same thing to point to.
- She can do better.
- Oh, she has a chance to do better.
So, what you're saying is that
everybody could go to Yankee Stadium today,
hit the bat on table, and take a swing?
Which is different, no. Hear me out.
Yes, yes, yes.
- Athletic endeavors are different.
- Athletic endeavors are different than
intellectual endeavors?
- For sure.
- Hold on. So, what you're saying is
everybody has the same capacity to learn?
- No, what I'm saying is
what we define as athletic endeavors
is one axis.
But I could say, for example,
if you're a caregiver for a senior citizen
who's struggling with Alzheimer's
you are capable of looking that person in the eye
with empathy and affection in a way that
changes them forever.
- Tell me how you develop empathy.
Tell me.
- Well, now you're changing the topic.
We can have that conversation. - No, I'm not.
No, no. Because you just said,
"I can teach Andy how to be a caregiver."
Andy can definitely be taught. - No, no, no, no.
- Hold on let me finish.
- Andy's a lost cause.
- Andy, Andy, Andy.
Andy, you can teach to look in the eye.
Check. Agreed?
- I can teach Andy to do,
I can't ever teach him to hit a home run in Yankee Stadium.
I can teach him to do something
with his voice, his heart, his soul.
- Hold on.
You can't teach him to hit a home run in Yankee Stadium,
but you can teach him to be the best version
of a baseball player that he can be?
- But it has no economic utility.
- Well, that's a whole different conversation.
- Well, that's the conversation I'm trying to have with you,
but you keep interrupting.
- No, no. Not true. Not true.
Because what's most interesting to me is
there's not economic situation that Sally Pants McGee
could be focusing her time on something else
besides liking buttons on Facebook.
- Of course there is.
- Here me out. - That's where we disagree.
- Okay, well. Hold on. Hold on.
Do you agree with me that Sally Pants McGee
would probably likely, in 1984,
to be sitting and watching. - Of course.
- Well, that's what I'm saying.
I'm saying nothing's changed.
The places that people are deploying
their energy have changed.
- My point is that liking something in Instagram or Facebook
is a way to hide from the productive things
she could be exposing herself,
because the productive thing is scary.
- You think she's gotten to a place
where that makes her feel better,
and that we've tricked people,
and people have tricked themselves
to be a part of something
versus when they sat on the couch.
- No. When they sat on the couch
the entire culture was in on it,
and it's similar.
What I'm saying is
we didn't build the internet
so that Youtube could show cat videos.
We built the internet.
- But aren't cat videos escapism for somebody
just like reading a good book is escapism for you?
Seriously, I'm asking.
- I know people around the world
who have something they really need to escape from.
The people who are watching this much less.
- Fine. I would argue and agree with you
that people have much bigger headaches than,
but the reality is that somebody who's watching this
has their microversion
of what they think they're escaping from.
I sit here everyday and yell and say,
"Look. If you're a white male in America, Jesus Christ.
"You wanna talk about winning the lottery? You won."
So, I'm with you on that.
What I'm fascinated by--
- If it's entertaining, there's nothing wrong with hit.
- People think cats falling out of a tree are funny.
- Just acknowledge you're entertaining yourself,
you're not doing your job.
- That's fine. - That's the only thing
I'm trying to say. - But who gets to define
what the job is?
- But the question to India was,
when I'm doing my, from India was,
when I'm doing my job, why aren't I using the other forms
of social media.
The answer is--
- Is that you defined what your job was for yourself.
- What Neil Gaiman has said is
the way he deals with writers block,
if he hasn't written a book and needs to,
is he makes himself super bored.
He eliminates all inputs
until he's so bored that the only way to entertain himself
is to write.
- So, are you saying that one of the big KPIs for you
of just staying to the blog was
not getting all that stimulus
and allowing you to create more.
- Forcing me to say either,
"I did nothing today," or "I made something worthwhile."
That there are days when I will answer nothing but email,
and I feel horrible at the end of the day,
because I don't believe that's a productive use of my time.
- Let me tell you what the most interesting part
of this last four or five minutes was for me.
Seth's self awareness for himself.
And I think that to me is the most interesting part of
what just happened.
Like, to me that speaks to really understanding yourself
and positioning yourself in the best position to succeed
based on what you think is important.
- And all the successful contributors/artists I know
are similar.
- So, for me, I need chaos.
Like I just walked here, apparently.
I just walked into my office, they'll all laugh.
It was so quiet, I started yelling at everybody.
That I can't get into my place
without all the inputs and the chaos.
- Right. So, that awareness is key.
- It is.
- But if we look at most of the people
who are showing up in my box and your box,
they're saying. "What do I do know what I do?"
They're copying patterns in social media
without being aware of the fact.
- Not the social media though.
- Well, that's the question.
Without being aware that those patterns
are sabotaging their (mumbles).
- No, the question was for you.
When is it right?
- When is it right for them?
And the answer is, what I say is
first try nothing.
See what happens.
If you are forced to level up,
not by fitting it,
but to level up by standing out,
by saying something important, generous, unique.
- You know what's funny?
I'm just sitting here, and I'm thinking
it's one of the funniest things about how I go about things
is I don't want to read anybody else's things.
I don't consume anything else,
because it puts me in that--
- Except my book.
- But really, not even.
Like, I'm crazy that way.
I don't want to consume anything,
because I just like observing people
in whatever format,
the real world or the digital world,
to be able to just do my thing,
because that's what makes me comfortable in analyzing.
It's interesting. It's interesting.
- So the way we built the Alt MBA, which is a school I run,
is it's 28 days, and there's an enormous amount to do
with your name on it in public
and commenting substantially with your name on it
on other people's work.
Cycle repeat, cycle repeat.
13-14 assignments in fours weeks.
- Do some people struggle with that system?
- Everyone does.
That's what it's for, right?
If I send you to Ranger School, you're gonna struggle.
If I sent you to Tight Rope Circus School,
you're gonna struggle.
Learning is hard.
That's why the drop out rate on online courses is 98%.
- Is that true?
- Yes.
And the reason is
because as soon as it gets hard,
and it has to if you're gonna learn somethng,
you quit.
- Well, that's why people are mad at watching my content,
because I talk about hard work,
and they don't want to hear that.
They wanna see what the secret is.
- Exactly.
- It's just like you and Mike, Muscle Mike.
You need someone to be like,
"You have to do this."
- I needed, you know what's funny about that, India?
- You're looking very fit.
- Thank you, brother.
Because that's what India's referring to,
I need to be accountable to somebody.
I figured out my trigger in that game.
I need to be accountable to somebody else,
besides myself.
- Exactly.
- India, last one.
(blows raspberry) - Most things.
- I think that that's now self-evident,
but mostly it's he is a superstitious troglodyte
who wants to deny that science exists.
- Not true at all.
- And I had Charles Darwin write
the forward for one of my books.
- I believe in science tremendously.
- It believes in you, too.
- More than I believe in it.
- The thing is gravity doesn't care
whether you agree in it.
It's not just a good idea, it's the law.
- It's just like, science is just like the market.
It is what it is.
I mean, I'm super fine with science.
I don't understand it.
I don't know what it is,
but I'm super cool with it.
Listen, Seth.
I'm super pumped you're on the show, man.
- It's a pleasure. How can people find you online?
- They know how to find me.
What I want to do is, let's link up
make sure everybody starts reading Seth's blog
on a daily basis.
It is massively, very much knowing my audience,
for the few of you that don't do it,
it will be a tremendous addition to your world.
- Please don't send me email.
Send him email, do not send me email.
- Right. Because I just like people more than Seth does.
- It's true.
- It's just true.
That's what we disagree on.
I like human beings, Seth doesn't.
Seth, you get to ask the question of the day.
Any question. There'll be a lot of answers.
We'll get some consumer insights from it,
which I love.
- Who would miss you if you were gone?
- He's a deep soul.
Seth, thanks for being on the show.
Love you, pal. - Thank you, team.
You guys are awesome. All of you.
- You keep asking questions.
We'll keep debating them.