Nobody Knows What This Is (And That’s the Point)

It's last year in America. $10 billion worth of sold on whatnot and nobody in this room knows what it is. I can't believe how big of an opportunity this is. I really believe live shopping is in the place that social media was in 2009. It had already happened, but it was going to be much bigger than anybody thought. to give you context of how big live shopping has already become. What not predominately collectibles, trading cards, comics, Pokemon, Funko, but there's fashion, handbags, beauty on it, whatnot roughly did last year somewhere between 7 and 12 billion in gross merchandise value. It's still early. Anybody here that's like, but what about this? Any question you have, put that into the chat. JBT, I have bad news for everyone. All the excuses have been eliminated. What's up? Look at this crowd, bro. They're creeping up little by little. — Yeah. Are they going to be on stage with us in a minute? — Uh, all right, man. You guys can sit down uh if you want to. If you're not, [ __ ] it. Don't. Uh, okay, Gary. Here we go. We got a brand new year, 2026 January. You got room full of entrepreneurs and so forth. Uh, do you get into uh vision boarding, planning out your year? — What's your goals? Do you do any of that type of stuff in a in a normal basis? Historically, I'm not super passionate about a New Year's resolution or things of that nature. I think that a lot of you come to an event like this or make a vision board or make a list and you're tricking yourself that you did something. And this is an important point and it's a funny way to start, but you know, I love events. Uh I speak at them, I go to them, but I'm always scared that people that go to events, make vision boards, make a New Year's resolution are getting tricked that was the action you go here to start the ne the thing you do when you leave is the game. And so historically, no. But I'm sure you're asking that question because you got a very different version of me backstage right now than you're accustomed to. I'm like in psycho mode. — Like in all the times I' ever seen him, he's in a running at a different level right now. — Yeah. I literally called my brother an hour ago because we had a scheduled meeting and before we even started the meeting, before I even said hi to him and that I love him because that's usually how we start our calls, I literally asked him what season was Jerry Rice's. he was the best wide receiver in football history. What was his best season? And he's like, "What the [ __ ] are you talking about? " He's like, and he looked it up. He's like, "95. " And he gave me the stats. And I'm like, I have a weird feeling that 2026 is going to be my greatest season as an entrepreneur. — And the reason I like I literally told Andrew, I'm like, I weirdly think I might have accomplished more in 2026 already than in 2025. And I'm not bullshitting you. Obviously, not in volume. We're 4 seconds in. But I had some downtime during the holidays and got, you know, we all know this, you get clear sometimes. I did it with my health and wellness. You look back at some old, you know, pre20, where were we in pre 2015 videos of me like I had a nice little chunk like I was in a different place physically and just on a flight one day in Houston. I just changed my mind. It was just the moment and I got better at my my, you know, eating habits and I started to work out and I've been here 10 years later. I made a motto for myself this uh this vacation called intentionality and impact. Everything for me right now is I and I. I keep showing the uh me and my inner crew just keep sending each other the eyes emoji to represent I and I. I'm just super [ __ ] locked in. I have just sat down and fully wrote out all my companies, all my top hundred employees, and I'm making an intentionality and impact list underneath it. What do I want to accomplish? Two, three, four things because I have like I don't How many people here know a little bit about me? Have a sense of who I am. — For the people that just made noise, don't know who I am here, I have like 700 [ __ ] companies. And like for real, too. Like Vayner X, my advertising agency is 2500 plus people, 450 million in revenue. It's a big ass business. V friends, tens of millions of dollars in re revenue in collectibles, digital and physical. Vayner Sports is a top sports agency. My restaurant group with Flyfish Club, the NFT restaurant with multiple restaurants were opening. Like I don't want to bore you. There's another six meaningful eight figure a year revenue businesses that I am either the active CEO of or the active chairman deeply involved in. So, I just needed to create that kind of level of clarity of what I want to accomplish. But even more importantly, I have like 50 to 70 employees that work with me that have been with me for 12 of the last 15 years when I transitioned out of my dad's liquor store and their

family and they're running loose the way I run loose. And so, be when you run osmosis and family business vibes, you can have years that are remarkable because the magic was the magic and you can have years that are [ __ ] and you did nothing. and me giving them all, you know, I trained them all to be that way. I took them all as like they were all youngsters in their 20s and I've trained them to be those kind of executives, but me giving them that clarity as well. And so, I don't know, bro. I'm like I'm [ __ ] going to have a very serious year. — Yeah, you're running uh hot. Like I almost thought you started taking Adderall or something. Uh you were hyperfocused on like what you're going to do, how you're going to do it uh inside of it. Let's go to the people here. Uh, one of the things people always want to know from you, uh, they're entrepreneurs, influencers, is there a new thing? social media? Is there something? There's always a thing. Is there a thing right now going on? — There's always, you know, my last book that I wrote was called Day Trading Attention. I finally figured out like what do I do for a living? I day trade attention, which is why, you know, if this was 25 years ago, I'd be sitting up here talking about having a website and you'd all be like, what is that? you know, stuff that would make the kids in here like laugh like email and Google Adwords. And then obviously most people got to know me when I was pot committed to social media. But within social media, there was the moment to go after Vine or after, you know, t a lot of you remember how much I was asking you to go on Tik Tok in 2018 and 19 before COVID and a lot of you didn't listen because you said it was just teenage girls dancing and now you're pissed you missed that moment. the right this second there's nothing astonishing. It's not like what I was yelling about Twitter and Facebook in ' 07 and08. It's not like 2017 Tik Tok. There's nothing like revolutionary, but there are a lot of micro interesting things. So, first of all, how many people here believe that they are better at writing than they are at making videos for the internet? Raise your hands. So for everyone who just raised their hands, I could not push Substack more on you. So I think Substack, you know, all right, three employees of Substack here. Real talk because I think humility matters and learning matters. Like how many people here are have never heard of Substack or know very little about it? Raise your hands high. It's a lot. So I'm excited because a lot of hands just raised their hands. Substack is an unbelievable platform for people that are good writers. It's a little bit of like Twitter. Patreon that you can charge to subscribe to you, which is like, you know, the writer version of Only Fans, you know, and so, you know, it's a it's a really interesting place where a lot of creative people that are more journalistic or fictional writers, like that's cool to me that there's this new place. It's got a lot of Twitter elements with notes. It's very interesting. I'm going very serious on it. I've hired two full-time journalists on team Gary, my content team that just started. That's another thing I'm excited, invigorated by. They're going to watch this entire interview right now and give me follow-up questions on stuff I talk about. Like, they're interviewing me and then that will become my first person written content because I can't write for [ __ ] but I'm not going to leave any place that has attention on the ground. So, I'm going to build infrastructure around me to be able to do it. So, Substack, I think, is a monster for people here. And literally, I will get, let me see how many people are here. I will literally get four emails in two years from four people in here who will literally send me an email that just says, "Thank you so much. I was in the audience in early January 2026 down in Florida. I had never heard of Substack. I always love to write. " And I just made four $44,000 this month on recurring revenue because people follow my articles about surfing. So, that I'm excited about. For anybody who's followed me for the last year knows I'm completely ballistic, completely out of my mind, super excited about live shopping. I mean, if you're an influencer on earth and you're not paying attention to Tik Tok shop, Tik Tok affiliate, whatnot, eBay Live. I can't believe how big of an opportunity this is. I really believe live shopping is in the place that social media was in 2009. It had already happened, but it was going to be much bigger than anybody thought. I was like, but like I think it's very big. I'll break it down for you. How many people here are familiar? Actually, the reverse and please raise your hands high because I want people to get a sense of how early we are. How many here are not familiar with what the app WhatNot is? Have not heard of it, don't know. It should be most of you. Raise your hands. What not? WHAT NOT so 60 70 80% of this room to give you context of how big live shopping has already become whatnot predominantly

collectibles trading cards comics Pokemon Funko but there's fashion handbags beauty on it but whatn not we don't have it's a private company a lot of fundraising we're trying to decipher if they I'm not sure if they're really putting out their numbers but they're roughly did last year somewhere between seven and 12 billion dollars in GMV GMV. GMV stands for gross merchandise value. That means last year in America, $10 billion worth of [ __ ] sold on whatnot and nobody in this room knows what the [ __ ] it is. You know what I mean? Yes, I know you do. I get it. But you know what I mean. It's still early. Tik Tok shops numbers are crazy. So, I could not recommend. And again, we now live in an AI world. Anybody here that's like, "But what about this? What? " Any question you have, put that [ __ ] into chat GPT. Go do three to five hours of research with ChatGpt or Google Gemini or Perplexity or whatever your choice is and ask the basic questions. Hey, literally here's the prompt. Hey, I'm at a conference where Gary Vee is talking all about live shopping. I don't really fully know what the [ __ ] he means. Where do I get the product? How do I ship the stuff? Like, ask the questions. I have bad news for everyone. All the excuses have been eliminated. Whatever you tell me I'm like chat GPT it. So now we're information is completely commoditized. It's free. Everyone has it and the only thing left is accountability. Are you in a place where you're going to blame everybody? Or do you realize that 100% of your happiness and 100% of your unhappiness is 100% your fault? And what I know is we're in the greatest era of saying it's everyone else's fault. We've gotten really good at blaming our parents for everything. politicians for everything. We blame everyone but ourselves. And that is fundamentally the most obvious reason that most people don't have joy. — Heyo. — Ao is right. What would you say? Uh, — by the way, can I say because I know a lot of people here don't know me, that doesn't mean wrong [ __ ] didn't happen to you. You think I mean, I've lived life like there's people that have had horrific things happen in their childhood in this room. There are kids that grew up to incredibly challenging situations. I was born in the Soviet Union. My mom lost her mom at five. My dad lost his dad at 15. Everybody had alcohol issues in the Soviet Union because everyone was depressed because they lived in a jail. Like we came to America, my grandma got mugged within three seconds of us hitting the US floor. I lived with cockroaches and eight family members in a studio apartment in Queens. Like and by the way, that's nothing compared to some of the abductions and like just there's [ __ ] But I'm saying something very important that I need you to hear. You taking accountability when you become a grown-up to get to your happiness doesn't dismiss that [ __ ] happened. But if your mind is fully indwelling and blaming, you have zero [ __ ] chance to get out of that mud. And I'm just trying to get people to get out of rolling in that mud. And by the way, the only people listening to you when you talk about that [ __ ] is other [ __ ] people that are losing or your mommy because she's an enabler. None of it's going to be productive. And that's why so many people are struggling right now because we're just a bunch of pusses. Flip it. Uh tell me about uh you know things sometimes go in cycles, right? Like in different uh genres. Uh podcast. Is podcasting dead now? Is it growing now? Is it in a growth spurt? Is it worth still starting a podcast? Where's podcast at your level? — I'm very bullish on podcast. I'm sure it's not lost on anybody. Now podcasts are hitting TV, right? We got podcasts on Netflix at scale. Like I'm incredibly Look, back to Substack, back to short form video on social. It's never been better for you to make clips for social media than today. But a lot of people are like, "Oh, it's over or I missed it or there's a billion people doing it. " podcasting, Substack writing, newsletter writing on LinkedIn, short form content, long form Mr. Beast, YouTube videos, everything I'm going to say, anything you can do, it's better today than it's ever been because attention is coming from every traditional place, television, print, radio, and going into this, it's better than ever. On the flip side, you're competing with everyone.

My problem is when I hear entrepreneurs or people complain that there's too much competition when they claim they love capitalism. I'm stunned by the hypocrisy. We are competing with everyone. And don't blame the audience. You know what my favorite thing is? They're like, G, I'll get this sometimes. Gary, bro, you don't get it. Like, yo, I'm so [ __ ] advanced. They don't get me yet. You know, I'm so like the audience doesn't get me, dog. I'm like, they get you, dog. They're not interested. I You know this about me because now we're getting to know each other a little bit. I like anybody else as a personal brand of my businesses, there's peaks and valleys. There's years where I'm redot. head down or don't have my [ __ ] together enough to break through. And it's a it goes back to sports. In a career of 15 years, if you play in any league, not every season's the same, right? Some years you twisted your ankle, you tore your ACL, you're getting back from rehab. Some years in business and the stuff we're all doing, your head's not right. You're worried about your mom's not feeling well. You know, sometimes everything's fine around you, you just didn't click. You made some bad your decisions were just okay and you missed the moment or you were hanging on to a moment that's passed. You know, luckily most people aren't posting every day on MySpace. But that's how I think about it. Like some people hold on to some [ __ ] Usually you don't jump on the new [ __ ] fast enough because you think it's a fad and you value your time. That's worthless too much. — That part. I'm stunned by how many people that don't have a [ __ ] dollar to their name and no one gives a [ __ ] about them and they're like, "But I don't want to waste my time. " I'm like, "Your time's worth shit. " People talking to me about my time is valuable and they don't have anything. That's called lazy and delusional. Friends, it's super simple out here. 100% of everything's on you, regardless of what's going on outside. And you get there and you feel empowered all of a sudden. Because if you really believe mom or your boss is in control, you're sad. If I thought anyone was in control of anything, I'd be [ __ ] devastated. — It's funny because it's so true. Like you see everybody's like, "Oh man, it's a down year for me. — A bad year. " — Talk to me about um you know, obviously a lot of people follow you and I obviously follow you and for a long time uh there was this giant craze that skyrocketed called NFTs. — Yes. And it was the coolest [ __ ] hype in the world of people buying digital art that a 5-year-old drew. — Uh, and then — that's a dick at mine. Mine were very 5-year-old doodles. — So, and then you kind of watch from the outside, right? the market kind of crash. The whole NFT market crash — fully. — Uh, tell me about the NFT market. Uh, good, bad, indifferent. — Great. I mean, look, I was very at the forefront of it. I believe in the blockchain tremendously. Ownership matters. This is digital ownership. It's how Bitcoin works. It's how NFTTS work. For the people in this room, which I'm sure is a small percentage that really watched the whole thing with me from 20 to 24, I got very excited about it. Um, I went all in. I collected the premier project Crypto Punks. I still believe in that. I think that's the Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock. I started my own V friends. And then at the height, August 2021, the height, I started making videos that 99% of NFTs were going to go to zero. And I took a lot of flack from the NFT community, but no one was listening to me because everything was going up, up and up. And the reason I said those made all of those videos was I lived through the web 1. 0 internet stock market crash of 2000. I was there with my wine retail e-commerce site in 97 and I watched pets. com go up to $7 billion in market cap on Wall Street and they had zero revenue. April of 2000 all of them crashed. I watched Amazon go from 150 bucks a share to $4, PayPal$100 to $2. You know the these are rough numbers and not exact. Please don't quote me. But and I saw the same thing happening with NFTs. I'm like [ __ ] this is real. But the greed has taken over in the internet era. the greed was on Wall Street in the NFT so Twitter, social media on Twitter. And so it was the same pattern today. In fact, it's a weird time for you to ask me this question. Literally over the last month, you can see like heavy indications of a lot of growth. The last couple weeks in crypto, Twitter on OpenC, and like the like you have some really nice projects that what we needed to get into is collectors, not flippers, right? The reason trading cards do well is you have flippers, but there's so many people that collect. They want this. They want a Dan Marino rookie card and they want it. They don't buy it for to sell it in a week

because they think it's going to go up. Same in comics, same in sneakers, same in watches. NFTTS, the flipping and the greed got ahead of the collecting. Now you're seeing the collecting aspects. And you know this because you collect like because I have comic books and people are falling in love with the characters because I have a big trading card deal with Tops and they're in hobby shops around the world like Pokemon like Marvel. Now people are falling in love with the V friends. Now they want to buy the most important original collectible which is the NFT and that's how it's going to play out over the next decade. So there'll be five to 10 projects. 48 Pudgy Penguin Good Vibes Club. I don't know which one. Doodles. God willing I'm healthy and can navigate this business for the next 20 years. I will make feature films and I will make theme parks and I will do all the things that I think I'm capable of. And you know when I look at an audience like this I'm like every person in this audience grandkids in 40 years are going to wear Vfriend friends pajamas. — Let me go on a different same path. You ask — did the pajamas throw you off? — No, I love it. I have a baby girl. I'm like yeah I can see her wearing that [ __ ] She wears Valentine's and Christmas. Give me a pair. Damn it. Like I mean — make them quit talking about it. All you do is talk Gary I need — for me it's really fun. It's my most selfish and selfless business. Selfish. I don't know if you guys know this. You should chat GBT right now to get the confirmation. You'll be blown away. Pokemon's worth 100 billion dollars. 100 billion. So I believe in the AI era the big winners are intellectual property and copyright. So I've built my own. On the flip side, V friends is very important to me because the lead characters, patient panda, ambitious angel, accountable aunt. These are 250 characters that are taking the good virtues that my mom taught me that I spit on stage as Gary Vee. So, I'm trying to leave a positive impact. I believe a lot of the cartoons and IP that kids have today are not helping parents along. I wanted to bring a little bit of that Jim Henson, 1980s. I used to watch he Thank you. So, like it's like I wish you could see my goosebump. It's really cool. Like I have this very altruistic like I want to save the world energy because the characters represent that. The stories are about that. I don't know how many 80s babies are here. But how many people remember He-Man? — So remember when we watched He-Man like young kids there was this cartoon He-Man, right? He-Man would do the show and then at the end the last like 40 seconds of the cartoon He-Man would pop up on the screen and talk to you. he was Adam before he was He-Man and be like, "Hey kids, I hope you like the episode. " And he's like, "And remember kids, be nice to your sister. " And I was like, "Oh, [ __ ] Be nice to my sister. We're not there anymore. The garbage that kids consume now is garbage. " So, I want to make all these characters famous as [ __ ] huge as possible. And I think a lot of you, I will say this very humbly, and I'm really poking at you because I want happiness for you. I believe almost everyone in here's whatever percentage is unhappy whether you're fully in a very dark place or you got pieces is 100% around accountability. I just believe it. And as you can imagine I want accountable ant kids books comic books video games and car. I want kids to love Accountable Ant. This little [ __ ] ant that's always accountable. I want them to like and love that character as much as they love Spider-Man or Hello Kitty because it's called Accountable Ant. And so by the time you're [ __ ] 19, you can just be accountable, which is the greatest issue in our society. A couple interviews ago, or might have the last one, I can't remember, we had this unique conversation that you said something I thought, dude, that's really unique. Uh there's different like industries that are out there and one industry that you said that is coming like is a gonna be making a new like normal everyday topic conversation is this thing called collectibles where it becomes like the weather. It becomes like a thing that we do like a normal conversation. — Yes. — Talk to me about the lane or the industry of collectibles. — It's the coolest thing I've been watching for a decade. I think collectibles and again I'm I view this as a business and entrepreneur conference. So, I'm bringing up this stuff with the hopes that this opens up some paths to add to your business or create a whole new business. I believe that collectibles is starting to get dangerously close to joining music, sports, fashion as a lifestyle genre. We are getting dangerously close to almost everyone collecting something and you could see it, right? You look carefully of why Lebuoo happened, right? You look at what's going on with watches. I'm sure it's on the radar for many of what's happened the last five years with sports cards. Um, you're starting to see it with like old stuff like VHS tapes and CDs and humans hoard.

Humans have always collected. Your great almost everybody in this room's great grandfather collected stamps. This is what we do. But now with social media, people are sharing their collections. It's creating tribalism. It's allowing people to flex it. It's Why do people buy a BMW? They need the [ __ ] logo to make themselves feel better, right? Why is fashion so huge? It's a form of expression. Everybody literally are sitting here with a haircut and their outfit for a reason. You may not even realize it. It's subconscious. It's a form of communication. [ __ ] It's also creating tribes. I don't know if you've ever been to a Comic Con, but like, you know, like it's a sense of community. It's why sports works. I was like walking in the airport today and saw a guy wearing a Jets hat. I'm like that's my brother, right? You go to a sporting event or college. It's religion. It's real. We need to feel like we're a part of something. And I think as we spend more time by ourselves with our phones, stuff like this is important. In fact, the best thing you could do at this conference when you leave right now, forget about all the content that you've had on stage that hopefully has been good. You saying hi to two or three random people is dramatically more valuable. A lot of people are in introverted. insecure to do that. They're worried about somebody not reciprocating a hello, which stops us from doing it. But it is the highest value thing you could do here. One relationship, two. And so I think collectibles has all the different ingredients. You notice how I think about things threedimensional. Collectibles because of community and loneliness because we have a gambling pandemic right now and it's a form of gambling. Collectibles because of sense of tribalism investing. You know, it's getting very sound and very real and it's a lot more fy for me to buy a rare Pokemon card and have that go up than 40 shares of Tesla. It's more enjoyable. It's more interesting. Antiques and art used to sell like crazy. they're not as interesting for my generation down, right? We'd rather have a rare this or a rare that. And so, yeah, it's very obvious to me it's a big and I would say any way that you can incorporate collectibles in any way into your business, I think it could be a factor. And if you definitely collected as a kid, you should do 20 hours of homework of what's going on with those, you know, Lisa Frank, you know, like trapper keepers, you know, like if and you know, nostalgia brings you back to a good place. Life was simple when you were nine. When I was nine, my biggest fear was I didn't want to pee my bed because I was already nine, you know, and I peed my bed forever, man. I think I stopped peeing my bed at like 11. — Let's talk about that. — Okay, I prefer not to. — Let's dub stack that [ __ ] — Why peeing your bed into double digits is a precursor for being a good entrepreneur. — The peeable penguin. Gary P. — Gary, what did you say to uh you got obviously a giant room of entrepreneurs here. — You know what's funny about what I just Let's go that way. — So — I just did that on purpose. That whole last minute I did on purpose because I so struggle with what parents struggle with. — Yeah. Like there's a parent right now who literally has an eight-year-old boy who's still peeing and I'm telling you it's a good thing. Yeah. And if that little two minutes can give you that sense of like, wait a minute, it might be a good thing. That's just like a better day and it's definitely going to be better for your kid because I promise you he's going to stop peeing one day, right? It's like grades. There are people here that are anxious about their children getting good grades. It's [ __ ] 2026. — Yeah. — The [ __ ] are we talking about? Amen is right. Like look, lack of discipline, lack of accountability. That's scary, right? You should ground your kid every report card if they get bad grades. My mom did. You should look at your kid when they're 14 or so and they get bad grades and tell them they got to start working because they're clearly not a scholar. So, you better get the [ __ ] work. There should be accountability. There should be repercussions. There should be adjustments. But this, like, you're grown. You know that grades have no indication to happiness and success, — so why parent that way, right? Why? Because you're worried about the judgment of other parents. It's so crazy. You know, I just had this, you know, I had this baby girl and uh it's so weird walking into parent world where it's like I overhear these conversations like uh weird [ __ ] where it's like uh oh, is your baby gonna be an early walker? Right. — I don't give a [ __ ] Uh I guess she'll walk when she [ __ ] wants to walk. Uh

but it's like this hyper weird uh we set these like expectations. — Andrew, it's the punch line of life. If you were living your life for outside validation, your life is not as good as you think it can be. Like as if someone's a as if some little kid walking before your kid means anything. — Yeah. Right. — You know, if like some parents said that to me, I'm like I'm going to punch your kid. Now what? — Like it's just so stupid. Like we're always stuck in high school. — Yeah. — I don't understand how grown-ups live middle school their whole life. I do not understand it. — What? Like literally living your life based on the judgment of people you don't even like. It's the great mistake of the human being. And I get that people are born in. Listen, let me I've said this publicly, but a lot of people here don't know me and others I don't say it often. Why I have clarity is because my parents are complete opposites and I got to see up close both versions. My mom is straight confidence, straight bundle of joy, pure optimism. Trust is given until you [ __ ] up nine times, then maybe we'll talk about it. my father who I love and this is not a Raz because I knew the my grandma very well who raised him deeply insecure cynicism to everything trust has to be earned and it's not as fun it's always [ __ ] heavy but life is binary you're either in practical optimism or you're in delusional cynicism and most people are in delusional cynicism right now because of the combin combination of contemporary parenting in the last 30 years and an incredibly good job by politicians scaring the [ __ ] out of all of you. — That's what's going on. — Yeah. — And by the way, it's I don't blame them. They've always tried to scare you. I blame all of you. You've started to believe them. Ah, see, not as many claps, right? Oh, yeah. The politicians blow. They suck. Yeah, yeah. Oh, wait. It's my fault. It's just accountability. — Go ahead. I got you. — No, man. Uh, — no, but the key I'm just kidding. I'm — in a for real, man. Are we coming to the kind of last minute here? Last question. — No, no. Remember we kind of we're going to add a little bit more. Remember? — Yeah, I'll go. Should we go a little longer? — How do you feel if I get a couple questions of the crowd? — I would. I mean, I'm game for that. — I'd prefer you weren't even here and it was just me and them. — I felt it. I felt it just to be honest with you. — And uh so let me get a couple questions from the crowd. Uh I'm going to take uh let me hop up and uh get it. Give me this guy right here. — Gary, thank you for being here. — You're welcome. What's your name, my man? — Eric. Eric Wilson. — Eric, — quick question for you, — please. Um, you were talking about moving into the potential of feature films and stuff with all of your characters. Yes. Um, if you need a voiceover artist, I'm here for you. — Let's go, my man. — I love it. Just a straight [ __ ] right hook. I like it. — That was it. No jab. — He doesn't Eric doesn't He doesn't [ __ ] around. He's like, "Give me my money. " — Go right here, man. Here, pink shirt. — Gary, I'm a huge fan of yours. I've been following you for a long time. And — thank you. — I have a celebrity entrepreneurship podcast. Eddie was there already and with over 30 million downloads. I would love to invite you to be my guest and I have a substack with over 120,000. — Is that right? — Yeah. Good for you. You know, — tell them about how meaningful Substack is. Like let's break it down. This is real. I like this stuff. Let's get into the real of the real like explain when you started Substack, what it's how it's impacted. So, I have over two million followers on Instagram and any brand that launches any platform, they reach out to me right away and I'm the first ones to try. I was kind of skeptical at first because I had a huge email list and I was doing it because over years, you know, I had it and they were like, well, you can transfer all your emails to Substack. I was like, well, it's fine. So, they let me import all my emails and I started doing it and of course, you have to be very constant on it like you have to post all the time. Like just to jump in, I apologize. Like friends, everything's consistency. — It's all discipline. I said to my trainer yesterday morning, literally yesterday morning, I'm like, we're doing something. I was like, man, if I was [ __ ] disciplined in the gym and with what I eat, the way I am in business, I'd be a [ __ ] Adonis. You know, which again back to mom and

dad for me, professional life versus health and wellness, like I've gotten much better like I referenced earlier, but the delta and I, by the way, I go to the gym seven days a week. — You know, two or three of those are a lot of soft tissue, you know, le like, you know, it's not lifting every day. I'm wild. Seven days a week. But like it's like the next like all of you work. You all go to work. But what do you do between 9 and 6 pm? 9:00 am to like I'm [ __ ] like a [ __ ] like you understand like I'm [ __ ] on it. I don't [ __ ] have lunch. a minute. You know all of you want to get better in business? All of you have twohour meetings that should have been 17 minutes. — This is like I apologize. This is all discipline. It's all on you. You're it. Just you. And so the results are the results. And can I really help some of you right now? Get the word luck out of your [ __ ] mouth. Luck is the weapon of choice of losers. No one's lucky. Of course there's serendipity. Of course there's things that happen. But my friends, that saying you manufacture like luck. If you're sitting on like, well, she got lucky. If you're like looking at it right now, she got lucky. You're finished. You're [ __ ] finished. I'm sorry. Go ahead. — So, yeah, with Substack, I know many people make like close to 100,000 if you set up a paid subscription. Oh, subscription, many people do make like close to 100,000. some of my friends like content creators and if you just start the Substack, you should start the paid subscription because you can charge for your articles. — So between Substack and charging people monthly for your newsletter and live shopping and selling stuff. We're going into an amazing era for people that make content because we were all in that era for a long time of just get followers and hopefully brands will reach out to you and there's things or you could start a business. There are now really viable financial models for the individual empires that I think people are building. — You can send me an email to Gary at Vayner Media and I will happy to look at your podcast. — Thank you. — You can swim over here. We right there. — So I'm a hypnotherapist, but what I say to people is I'm not hypnotizing you. I I'm unhypnotizing you. So, um, I believe like I'm a little bit oppositional, so I kind of oppose. I feel like you have similar qualities. How do you stay unhypnotized? — I just believe my mom. — I mean it. I mean, it's kind of funny thing to say, but I It's funny when you said that. I don't know if you heard me like whispered. I'm like, I like that. It makes sense to me. Like, I don't Honestly, this is why I probably even sitting in this room right now. I am so driven by gratitude and even a percentage of guilt that the DNA I was given like I didn't control my parents had sex that night. Right. — The serendipity of my life. I didn't control where I was born and I got fortunate this lucky thing happened with America and Russia where a couple hundred thousand Russians got out and I came to America. — I didn't control that. My mom is the greatest human being of all time and she's the one that parented me. — Right. I didn't control that. I remember grew up my whole life having very little but had so much love in my life. So I knew as a child that money had no correlation to happiness. I grew up in New Jersey where we [ __ ] fought each other every day after school. So I'm completely a [ __ ] person that's willing to fight at all costs. — Yeah. — And so you know I I'm detached because I was never in — Yeah. You know, when my fourth grade teachers said I was going to be a loser because I was getting bad grades, my brain said to me that they were losers. — Right. — You know, I did not need validation from the pretty girls in my school or the coolest guys around or any grown-up. I just got fortunate, which is why I'm so desperate to communicate the steps to get more of it. I got more of it along the way, too, right? I had to work to become a more stronger. So, how do I stay detached? I don't know. Cuz I've never been attached. — Exactly. And I have an 18-year-old son and he started selling candy when he was 12 at school. He dropped out of high school cuz he has ADHD. He's very high on the spectrum. Yes. He bought his own Tesla brand new when he was 17 years old. — So, listen, like the reason I won't clap

for that is not because I don't like your son, — right? It's because you just told me the only thing I know to be true, — right? — Which is if you're lucky enough to have the DNA that doesn't conform with the [ __ ] academic system that's in place right now, you are likely going to be good at making money, right? — My point to the world right now is — being good at making money should not be what we put on a pedestal. — I want to know how kind your son is. — Right. He's 18. He's getting there. — Yeah. But now I'm going to and I'm sure he's lovely, but I want to say this. I was uncomfortably kind at 18. — Okay. — And I think we need to change the calculus in our society of what success is. — Yes. — Cuz I know unlimited millionaires that are straight pieces of [ __ ] — Yeah. — He took me out for dinner on Mother's Day to make to now. I like that. — Yes. — It's awesome. — Thank you, Gary. Thank you. — White shirt. Hi. — Yeah. Go ahead. — I'm sorry. Hi, my name is Claudia Laurat and I just I'm in the process of launching my brand. Okay. Um at 55 I quit corporate America and completely did a 180 wrote six books. I'm launching the first of a series of four called the quantum omni mindset. Let me ask you what your opinion is on this. There is a saying where people say there's nothing more concept than change. I think that's what's wrong with our society. Why do we have to change? Because change could be for the worse or it better. Why not flip that and call it there's nothing more changed than evolution. — I think that's semantics. — Yeah. So it doesn't really make any difference. — You said the same thing. — Really? — Yeah. — But you evolved. You evolved for the better. — No, I get it. But you literally said the same thing, just used a different version of the word. — Okay. Well, thanks. That's what I need to know. — You got it. — And by the way, I think that's great. But I think let me even go deeper because it might help everyone. I think people when you get into entrep My point to you is actually a little bit different which is it doesn't matter what you call it. — Do you know what McDonald's is? — No, but you know Yes. It's a junk food restaurant. You know it, right? — No. Wait, wait. — The name though, if you didn't know McDonald's, if you heard the name, it sounds like an Irish pub. Like what is Google? The [ __ ] is Nike? The amount of people in this room that are overthinking things that don't matter. What you're talking about does not matter. You know what matters? What you're going to execute against it. My personal brand name publicly is the stupidest name of all time. It's Gary Vee with two silent e. — I think I can. — Thank you. — You feel, — my friends, it's just execution. It goes back to how I started here. If you think coming here today was you doing the thing, it was not. It might be the lubricant you needed to do the thing right. But too many people do all the proxies and they don't do the thing. It's kind of like, do you know, does anybody have that friend that like picks up something new like tennis and then goes by like goes and buys like an $8,000 racket and gets [ __ ] the sneakers and like back to content creating, you get the best [ __ ] camera and lighting, but then you [ __ ] suck at it. Buying the things, getting the lighting, all that stuff, that's not it. And then you start using excuses. Well, I don't have good equipment. That's why I can't make a I'm not good at content. I'm like, [ __ ] you have an iPhone. — This is the game, my friends. It's all this. It's all in your [ __ ] head. All of it. And it all comes down to the most important part, which is, do you like yourself? Like, where are you at with you? Because I promise you, if you don't think you're awesome, you've already lost. You might as well not get out the gate. And let me tell you how quickly you can get into feeling good about yourself. I've got a secret that will make your [ __ ] head spin. Everybody else sucks, too. — There's I'm looking around this room. There's people that are more attractive than others. There are people that are stronger are, you know, smarter in memorizing. Some people are more emotionally intelligent. Some people have scales capabilities. Other people are operators. Life is about being self-aware. Life is about leaning into the humility of loving who you are versus wishing you were someone else. Life is realizing you might be tricking other losers, but you're not tricking winners. Uh-huh. For all of you peacocking and posturing, we see you. We see right through you. You're not tricking me with your [ __ ] facade. All I've got is intuition. I can see right through you and so can the other winners. So have fun tricking everybody

by putting entrepreneur in your Instagram profile. But you're not an entrepreneur if you're not doing it. You're not anything unless you're doing it. And most of all, you don't need to be doing it for people that can see it or can't see it. You need to do it for you. — You have And when you start actually doing it for you, [ __ ] gets weird. I'll give you an example for the people that do follow me at the height of my personal brand. And now I'm starting to show up in search results with all sorts of crazy characters who've built bigger businesses than me. Bezos and I'm getting I'm [ __ ] on fire in 201617 Davos and getting offered the bill like I'm turning down Shark Tank. I'm doing it's my career is crazy. I wake up one morning because I'm just read my DMs and emails and I decide, you know what I'm going to do with my personal brand? I'm going to start filming myself going to garage sales. — Yep. — Yeah. They're my favorite, too, because they're me. Like, I was just getting too many emails saying, "Bro, I don't know how to make a thousand bucks. The [ __ ] are you talking about? How do I make my first $100? I got nine like literally DMs of like a screenshot of a Wells Fargo with $89 in it. Help. And I was like, "Okay. " Like I saw it enough that I was like cuz me telling them to invest in the next Twitter wasn't going to cut it. So I was like, "Fuck it. I will show them what I did when I had 20 bucks. " And I literally started trash talk and making videos on YouTube of like literally going to garage sales, buying something for three bucks and selling it for 50 bucks, buying something for $7 and selling it for 99 bucks. And I put it out and I said, "Now what's the excuse? " And by the way, they still had excuses. The comments were filled with like, "Yeah, but what about the gas? " — eBay fees. — You're either a complainer or you're not. And on real talk, most of you [ __ ] that I'm looking at right now complain too much — about [ __ ] you don't even control. Everybody's walking around like they're the [ __ ] head of the UN. I don't know. That's what I got. Gotti, gratitude and love to you. I'm a film director and a storytelling coach. And 10 years ago, I was making commercials, making a lot of money in New York City, the very easiest fit in the planet. I'm from Argentina and I lived in India. And I always wanted to find how to live a fulfilled life. And a friend of mine, Nicolas Casabe, a very prestigious film director, told me, "Look at this guy. 10 years ago, you and you appear. " Boom. Okay. I don't know. Boom. Boom. SHOW YOURSELF. GO TO THE STREET. DO WHAT YOU W OKAY. ARE YOU OKAY? I'm doing commercial for mechanics big traveling the world Japan and I'm I say okay let's do what Gary V said I'm going to the streets of New York alone with my film camera and a big microphone without crew looking at okay I'm going to find my fulfillment happiness looking at people in the eyes in Union Square and I start to stop people I said it's a social experiment and I did 20 episode of one minute are you happy with life are you scared of death what is important for you and people start to cry, hug me. It's a beautiful series. And I said, "Wow, I'm the new humans of New York as I'm a filmmaker. " And I thought, "THIS IS GOING TO BE VIRAL. " It was not. The series called Dreaming New York. Let's live my dream in New York. But I put it and I have like 200 views. And I go to a party and the sister of a friend of mine, a COO of a foundation, Marcelo, I've seen your can you do that for my company because it's emotional. I don't know anybody. I said [ __ ] Gaddy B. What the [ __ ] And I closed a $125,000 doing what my passion and since then, get ready for this one. I said happiness. I met another city of happiness and another one. and I interviewed Talbin Shahad and Mo Gaudat and stuff and happiness became my light and I became now a film director but a storytelling coach connecting with people's happiness soul and branding and you are a huge inspiration. So gratitude for your crazy beauty honesty you have to have a big pair of bim it's in Hebrew. So whenever makes sense, I would love to maybe interview you one of my series if possible. — Thank you, my friend. All right, two things. One, I am so proud and happy for you. It means the world. I'm so happy for you. — Two, you are so full of [ __ ] You said it was going TO BE SHORT AND THAT WAS LONG AS [ __ ]

I I've got to go. Love you guys. Thank you. — Thank you. Give it up to me, everybody.