Identify Your Strengths and Run With Them | w/ All-In Challenge Winner Jose Garcia Suarez

over the last week or so I've been uh jamming with my friend Michael Rubin and helping out on this all-in challenge that I am accepting right now I am giving away the Ultimate garyvee Experience how should that go okay you get to you're gonna be a guest of my podcast Vayner Nation how are you uh very special episode um of the garyvee audio experience this is one that's been years in the making as many of you remember during the beginning of covet I got very passionate team up with Michael Rubin from Fanatics to do the all-in challenge you know I was worried about Vayner and my world because it was very challenging to navigate through that first batch of uh vulnerabilities with clients but I knew that even if Vayner ran out of business I'd still be okay and I needed to do good for a lot of people that were in trouble and so I'm very honored that Michael called me and I was a piece of the group that helped raise 60 million dollars to feed the hungry during covid with that campaign during that campaign I put myself up as one of the all-in challenges and somebody was going to win the ultimate Gary experience and uh and that gentleman is with me today on this show I'm going to let him introduce himself tell us about his life story I'll ask him a bunch of questions I'll let him ask a couple questions maybe that might make sense it's literally for some we're meeting in person and we're going to work out together right after this and I gotta say he's extremely handsome dude in good shape and so I think he's gonna crush me in the bench today but look I don't think we'll film that Dustin but anyway he'll say how are you my friend I'm doing great yeah I'm really happy to be here I think you're actually I thought it was just like so fortunate that you were the person that I haven't when the event from uh just because my interests are within business and I was like you know everybody else like I like LeBron and I think other celebrities and stuff were on there because this is so applicable I'm sure Gary's gonna have some great lessons that I'll have that I can take away uh as somebody who aspires to be an entrepreneur himself um so yeah I can go into like what yeah tell us like my you know for a lot of people you did what everybody else did right it remind me you could buy like a ticket to win the raffle right yeah forty five or ten bucks each yeah like that yeah and do you remember how many you bought uh yeah I just bought one set no way yeah like one five dollar yeah really yeah and that was yeah I mean that just the Vayner Nations thinking back to when they bought like a thousand tickets yeah you literally bought one brother yeah I wasn't gonna go yeah crazy yeah you bought one five dollar entry yeah and then yeah I just left and did you buy like a bunch and you put them into different things yeah so I think that I did that no [ __ ] because it won't hurt my feelings do you recall which one you really wanted the most uh I mean I remember seeing I think Tom Brady was on there get out of here that just put a spear through my soul oh that was devastating like I totally like I don't really like the Patriots but I respect Tom Brady as a guy like I like Tom so much more now he's a Buccaneer now he's endearing he's like losing yeah he's a [ __ ] you're in the NFC I'm like oh I like Utah I'm like forget about those 20 years of pain um so yeah okay fine yeah tell us about your life tell us who you are as a kid like where'd you grow up sure yeah I I'm from L. A uh my family came from Mexico uh when I was a very young kid so you were born in Mexico yeah yeah um but I grew up in L. A though so I don't really remember much about it I came when I was three how old are you uh I was like 10 months older guys I don't really remember yeah um but yeah most of my life has been in La yeah I went to high school there um worked my ass off and then I was able to go to Harvard for undergrad um where I studied English um and after that I got really interested in like real estate investing partly because of all the YouTube content that I would consume um and I wanted to you know get in get into that space yep I think part of it was also fueled by like my dad I think every immigrant has this American Dream store like owning a home yeah Home Building like a whole owning product something yeah uh so that got me really interested in so then I single way back I apologize we'll go back to this in a second sure that was a very quick glance of like I worked my ass off and went to Harvard yeah Harvard's pretty legit Dustin um when you said you worked your ass off yeah classroom or because you were first generation immigrant like correct classroom and [ __ ] like a job like yeah Sports because you're in good shape like bring it back like yeah all of it huh yeah so it was I think it's hard because I think I look back to those days about like what was the hard-working was luck part of it was there was some aspect of luck because my older cousin yeah my little cousin told me about the magnet school that I should apply to that had all the available resources for me to take advantage of uh

but once I had those resources then I took a bunch of different classes all the aps when was that um what grade did you go there I started that the magnet process I think I was like I was in seventh grade so it would have been like 12. so you're going to public school yeah cousins like hey there's a smack in school yeah you and educate me because I'm a little under educated no yes you had a they had to accept you or no yeah so basically all of my neighborhood schools because I grew up in like South Central L. A yep it's a pretty bad neighborhood yeah schools are very underfunded so I knew from that early age that I was not going to get a good education there yep um so and how much was your were your parents pounding education uh they were very serious about it uh I think for them not crazy right no not overwhelming yeah because the reason I'm asking you is like immigrants just coming over like they have so many other things they're [ __ ] worried about as well oh yeah certainly yeah that like yes it's like education American Dream yeah but like to go to Harvard yeah like did your parent your parents didn't dream of that or did that they didn't know what Harvard was um yeah I knew I figured out what Harvard was when I was in like 10th grade um but the reason why they would push it so much is because first they wanted us to um I think they just wanted us to have a better job than more than what my parents before so my dad's a butcher uh and my dad didn't want to see us go through that kind of struggle that's right um yeah no and then I would say I also just I've always loved learning mom work or did she stay at home no my parents made that split very early on they realized that if my mom didn't take care of us and she wasn't she didn't have like a watchful eye over us we could get sucked into the neighborhood which is a was a reality like you could get into that like gang life and stuff of course um and my mom was the one parent said the same thing yeah I think it's kind of wrestled but like we didn't you know Queens wasn't the prettiest place on Earth where we were at the time but yeah you know Edison was like it was [ __ ] Blue Collar but it wasn't gang life yeah and like but it was important for my mom to stay at home and like we would give up on you know we didn't take a family vacation for example yeah we took two yeah same place Disney World like my whole childhood we gave up we didn't go out to dinner like we gave up the luxuries to have that ultimate luxury yeah no I completely agree I think it was necessary but I think it made us stronger and I not I would I wouldn't do it any other way if I had it I think there's a beauty in some of that um but anyway so once we how hard was it to tune out the noise of the neighborhood during High School yeah that was that's where it gets that was when I look at the cliche like story I have a lot of friends I went to College in Massachusetts but the literally the other side of the spectrum of Harvard I went to Mount Ida college and most of my friends grew up gang banging in high school like good kids that's why they were my friends yeah but it the high school years was when it was even like the most challenging it seemed yeah even for the good they would talk about kids like you they were bad students like me they would talk about their friends that they were upset about that Jesus Jail murder yeah [ __ ] all the [ __ ] you watch on TV in the news of like that kid was like could have easily gone to Yale but he [ __ ] got caught up in the game you know that cliche [ __ ] how did you were you like what enabled you to stay on the Harvard cross was it the school but even if you're going to the magazine you're still in the neighborhood no so magnet schools you actually get bust out of the neighborhood that I know yeah but you were still in the neighborhood oh yeah when I would come back that's right exactly yeah I would attribute that also to my dad regardless of how tired he was he would always drive me to like events that were outside of the neighborhood that my school would put on so my track meets my swimming meets my when I needed to go take the SCT all that stuff my dad always was like Hey I'm not gonna go to work so I can take you to go do your thing uh so it was just this is what I'm saying it's like it is hard work on mine because I was technically taking the exams and doing all this other stuff and studying and all this school come natural to you uh yes but I also wonder how react how that really works because I've ever read George or uh um Malcolm gladwell's book outliers yep okay so I haven't read it but I'm very aware of the thesis yeah so I think since I was early like very young my teachers would always tell me hey you're a smart kid keep going forward but I also realized that part of that was because the month that you're born in January happens to also align to when your brain is just a little bit bigger than everybody else's at that age so it means that you get a lot of like positive reinforcement and so it's possible that I was probably you know when you're that young the little Deltas make a big difference uh it's possible that I just got so much positive reinforcement that I was like hey I'm good at it let me keep going so I don't really was your mom giving pause is your mom optimistic person yeah oh yeah definitely she was she the mother that would say to you like you can do it you're the best

definitely yeah I think she went further than that I remember having a very strict conversation with her in high school and I was like hey Mom my school was getting very intense right now I can't do my chores I know you're and my sisters hated me because he was like how come Jose's not doing his choice but my mom was like no you don't understand like he's not just goofing around he's literally looking at like studying she was telling her sister's like he's a geniusly not no but he would say like he's studying all day long like if you would do that I would do the exact same thing for you um so you're of three so we're four I have three younger sisters I love it you're the oldest brother of time yeah that's cool yeah I love them do you love that sense of responsibility yeah I think it made me mature faster but also now like I don't know I think they're my closest friends they're the people that I can trust fully and that's hard to find how old are you I'm 25. and them uh so one of my so one is 24 the other one is 19 and the other is 18. so one just started college yeah that's awesome yeah she's having a good time but you were the outlier academically yeah I don't know where that part came from I think part of it is just I needed a school that would pay for my entire education of course and Harvard was one of those places uh so I was like okay did you [ __ ] when you got in I was in public so no but I was it was honestly like a life-changing moment I was like this is this feels it I felt the trajectory of my life just completely I just felt it yeah you just feel it you know that life is different now where else did you get accepted to uh so I applied earlier to Harvard because and that was it and then I was like I'm done of course I studied so hard I was like I'm good and did like your friends make fun of you like Razz you like oh Harvard boy oh definitely yeah oh yeah definitely um but I don't know I think all of that just comes from like a sense of like you know yeah and so now you're out of it like give me the yeah give me the postmortem on the 25 year old from the streets yeah who went through Harvard for four years what do you think I would say um I think Harvard's difficult the first time you go around it there Harvard's a lot easier when you're the second generation in and there are people at Harvard who are like 10 generations of course um but I think the first time it's difficult because first there are some cultural aspects that you're not really that I wasn't aware of like I didn't even know what squash was I didn't know what rowing was of course all of these cultural icon things that people connect with uh all those bougie Sports yeah so that was difficult for me when I first started um later on as you go through your first year you create enough shared experiences that it becomes a lot easier to become you can make friends and stuff makes sense but early on I remember that was a big obstacle I think that first month was [ __ ] wrong I would say the first like six months was tough first year yeah because I was even weather right weather's different yeah that Boston [ __ ] weather I also was very used to going that same as New York but I just hate the Patriots so much go ahead I also was just used to always coming back home to like with my parents my mom and dad and we didn't live like we don't live in a very big place in L. A and I know it's like it kind of sucks but it's also really nice to have noise in the house yeah whereas if you just go home by yourself the lights are off you turn them on it's kind of I don't know so the first shooter was lonely first year was tough yeah and how about academically yeah no academically was fun I think my school prepared me enough you had the academics that was fine the social part was just like it was just weird for me yeah it was tough uh just because we didn't have the shared experiences I know yeah and you didn't get the luck of the draw of like another kind of non-shared experience you didn't get that cliche in a movie yeah another kid from the other side of tracks and you guys became homies it didn't that didn't like play out no okay and then there's also I think Harvard tried to connect People based off of culture they were like hey this is a Hispanic kid let's put him with other Hispanic kids I think that's I like the where that comes from it came from good intent yes but it's not sometimes as practical as one would think it's difficult because so I would notice that a lot of the Hispanic kids from like Harvard and these other schools are generally International kids that's right and those are rich kids no they share a lot more in common with kids from here yeah uh so that was like I understand where it was coming from but it doesn't really work out that way I actually would find what was what would you like no I'm sorry I want to hear that yeah I actually find I would find more similarities with like the poor kid from Indiana or like of course you know we would because we knew the same stuff yeah of course yeah I actually was going to that's where I was going well if you had to like recap it right now what was the Breakthrough socially for you yeah in Harvard uh I would say I started playing Futsal like indoor soccer and then I met one of my good friends who I'm actually gonna go visit we get together all the time and then he introduced me to the rest of his friends so that was it that's the poor first new first it's just [ __ ] out of like it's the same old story yeah so is that one kid and his friend group and that became your Social Circle exactly and then from then on the three years after that I had a blast yeah it was great that's

a had a blast yeah it was great that's awesome yeah but yeah I would do it all over again as a 25 year old yeah telling that story Mrs compelling what can you tell and knowing my audience the parent that's listening right now who has the 13 year old they're more like me Scrapper first generation made it and their child is actually not entrepreneur academic Superstar um what Insight can you give to somebody who's listening right now who's a 10 to 13 year old that's going down that path and maybe it wasn't their path so they don't have insights since you freshly are off that path any hot take that you can say like hey parents always remember this or consider this or watch out for this yeah I'm actually a big fan of people who say that college isn't for everybody because I completely agree I think the world endows or whatever you happen to believe in luck whatever um I think you're given a set of talents and people should harness those talents and you should lean into them so there's some people who are very talented in academics cool lean into those but there's some people who that's not their strength people are very creative or people are very funny lean into those strengths so that's what I would say don't lose hope on your kid because of that like lit like actually take the time to listen to what the kid is good at you know what's fun is that it's for me it comes natural if my kid was a comedian to like you're the next Kevin Hart if you know if they're you know it's actually the thing that is worrisome for me is I get a lot of emails and DMS from parents like yo garyvee what do I do like I'm like you bro and this my [ __ ] kid's getting straight A's I'm like awesome I'm like don't let them become anxious about the grades yeah you know like yeah that's one thing yeah make sure they're happy yeah but like you know lean into the truth yeah to a parent's ideology we speak a lot about the paranaliology of like you got to be a good student you're not you're [ __ ] up that your kid's an entrepreneur for a lot of us entrepreneurs it's the reverse yeah yeah what um what are so let's pick back up the story real estate caught your attention so like where are you at this point in your career yeah so I went back to LA I was working for a real estate PE firm um and I was investing in multi-family and industrial buildings yep um I had a great time learning that but I also wanted to figure out like I knew I wanted to start my own business I don't really want to work underneath anybody um and I just like that ownership that you take and that risk taking so I applied for business school during the pandemic I don't know if I had won the prize yet but I got into the Stanford's Graduate School of Business uh and so now I'm completing my second year there wow and I'm about to graduate uh hopefully I'm working on a startup with a friend of mine from civil engineering school we'll see how that one goes uh anything you can cheer on that front yet yeah so the hypothesis so basically we are well he he's the brains he's the PHD in civil engineering he created a model that will give you suggestions on how to make structural and non-structural improvements to buildings to make them more resistant against hurricanes earthquakes buildings that are standing now both so you can make oh even pre-conscious yeah so even reconstruction uh when it's pre-construction you can make even better improvements like non-structural improvements um roll still exactly post is [ __ ] challenging it's more difficult yeah exactly and then the ROI debate and all those things for all of that yeah so right now we're doing Stanford has this class called Lean LaunchPad and so we're conducting a bunch of interviews with industry professionals that I know um and to ask them like which customer who would you think would be the ideal customer for this yep uh and so I think the final product exactly yeah so I think what we're imagining is creating some sort of SAS tool where we create a nice front end yep have the user put in their the database of the building charged them monthly yeah get value did it something like that I love that um before we get out of here anything you want to ask me yeah uh I would I mean I actually have a few questions let's do it try to make this valuable for the listeners okay that's fun we should just do random oh okay around every other person right like we have all these like fancy [ __ ] on the show like yeah like this is more of a journey like that was cool yeah I like liked it more yeah nice thanks Dustin so I guess the question that I was gonna ask everybody we love dust we gotta change this trend I started that I don't even like um when you started like vaynerx yes um what was the initial business idea and what were some key moments as you were starting your company the what happened was speak we see what you're doing on this on the Twitter this is how people talk back yeah and I was like okay that's so cool and they're like you know what's your fee and I was like fee you know and I was like and I like really was just like so excited to go to ESPN and talk to them I was like well what do you guys normally and they're like well you know would you do five

thousand dollars for the hour and that seemed like a trillion dollars because you understand at this point in my career I was still I built a huge business for my dad but I wasn't making a lot of money yeah and so like and listen 90 000 a year is a lot of money but like not compared to what I was doing and I was 34 and I've been doing it for 12 years so like this was like big to me and I remember I went and not only did was it cool to get five thousand bucks I loved it I talked for an hour about big business it wasn't wine I'd been doing that for 20 years of my life and I was and it was just very obvious to me that and I remember thinking like wait a minute I'm not that I thought that I was smarter but I definitely felt like these are like big corporate heads at ESPN and I'm like wait a minute you know just kind of all rushed in my head of like there's something here got out of the office in Midtown New York and called AJ my brother he was at bu not far from where you were and uh and I was like bro because we knew we wanted to start a business together and this must have been like the fall so this was probably the beginning of his senior year in May we had a bullseye that we were going to start a business when he got out of school because he already knew he didn't want to go into the wine business the liquor business and so it was we were starting we were doing things we did this like t-shirt search engine please dress me and like doing all these fun things we probably thought we were going to do fantasy sports okay which probably would have been right by the way because we were ahead of that trend but I said hey you know this is that skill I have you like marketing social media all this stuff I'm like why don't we just start a consultancy that's when I called it at first not in an agency and we'll get paid to learn and let's see what happens so the thesis was get paid to learn and figure it out yeah two years later so I was still running the wine business I just wrote crush it the book right there on the Shelf yeah that uh this one right there you see it oh this one yes and that was my first book which was basically like hey social media's gonna be a big deal yeah right look even what you said cash in on your passion right like the internet will make the [ __ ] that people thought the hyperbole of like follow your dreams now practical unlike it was ever before the internet yeah that was the hypothesis the book went banana spiral New York Times bestseller went bananas now I'm speaking garyvee is being built now my wine company I'm still running my dad's business and now me and my brother have this company in August of 2011 which was two years two months after three months after we started it I kind of just like had this moment where it was not sustainable anymore and I was like I gotta decide I was like a third a third and I was like I want to do one thing ninety percent and five percent the other things and I decided to go all in on vaynermedia with a new hypothesis which was I'm gonna build the greatest marketing company of all time yeah as an operating system to my private Equity Behavior so instead of doing what PE does what you know which is by companies where they see opportunity of better management and better margin I'm going to buy companies where I see the opportunity to create hyper growth against intellectual property okay could you impact that a little bit sure I'm gonna buy one day I'm gonna buy The Smurfs IP okay Captain Crunch from PepsiCo one day I'm gonna buy Bubblicious from Mondelez take it out and then make everybody on Tick Tock chew Bubblicious and quadruple growth okay because that's my skill yeah so that was 2011. fast forward to 2021 after 10 years of building a massive company this nft thing comes along and I go huh maybe I don't need to buy the intellectual property maybe I can establish the intellectual property yeah and that's how be friends was born along the way I started empathy wines with people that worked here sold out the consolation for a substantial exit I started resi the restaurant app here oh no way back to Amex I didn't know that's cool now v-friend so it's working this is the operating system yeah for all my other Behavior and um and so I think I have a moat that most people don't have which is you know this true private Equity like being smart financially and operationally is commoditized there are tens of thousands of people on Earth that know what to do hey Chuck E Cheese's not been run well let's uh we'll take a former person a partner you know what it is yeah the amount of people on Earth that know how to leverage media and creative on CTV Tick Tock influencer like the true craft of what I do for a living is very few and the ones that are they're Mr Beast they're like building their own trillion dollar stuff so I'm uh I'm in a nice spot in my career I'm young I turn 47 in a couple weeks and I've got 40 years of being on the field in my opinion yeah because I'm kind of one of these I think I'll do it until the end so I'd like to think I live to 100 Maybe by 87 I'll be like all right

yeah maybe I'll take some foot off the pedal but there's no from who I am right now for at least 30. yeah and so 30 years of execution on the back of now where I'm at is going to lead to a whole lot of [ __ ] that I probably can't even dream of and a lot of [ __ ] that I am dreaming of and so um that was the hypothesis of Vayner it was two get paid to learn it was the recession it was like [ __ ] this is the most practical thing quickly behind that build the greatest marketing company in the world as an operating system to affect the other 40 meaningful businesses I built wow that's amazing um I guess just as a follow-up what are some interesting Trends you're seeing now on social media uh The Tick Tock application of everything so now the algorithm is rewarding the content from an organic standpoint that we didn't see for the last decade so six years ago hey Gary I want to build social media to build up my business great start putting out tons of content to get followers so that you have a big enough base of followers that when you post a good amount of people see it now it's make great content for the platform and the psychology of who you're trying to make it for and watch the algorithm put it in front of tons and tons of people on the Merit of the creative that's a game changer AKA in plain English if you want to start a coffee shop in Boston tomorrow yeah your first post on Tick Tock could get a million views and build your business for you overnight that was unheard of the last time this happened was Facebook fan pages in 2011 which is why Facebook became Facebook it was always about rewarding creators with more awareness based on their creativity not on their ad spend or ability to build a following that was like the lightning in the bottle that would get people addicted that's what I loved about Twitter I'll never forget when Twitter when I understood that Twitter had a retweet like this is day one Twitter I'm like wait a minute so you post but wait a minute somebody likes it they retweet it and retweet wasn't there it was people doing it I was on Twitter before the retweet button people would see a tweet control copy it oh wow put RT colon and paste it it's so much work um so you know like these are the trends that I've always thought about Word of Mouth awareness sorry about that you know and so stuff like that and so um you know I think um the biggest trend is the tick tockification of social awesome okay um yeah let me know when if when we have to go yeah well you know what I just didn't realize Mike's in my Lobby Mike flew in to work us out oh no I forgot awesome so pumped all right listen I think that's good yeah I think we got to go work out yes I think this was very real this was good everybody was listening I actually need your help you know I read Twitter the most can everybody just tweet let's use the hashtag Jose uh Jose GB j-o-s-e-gb use that hashtag I think it's specific enough I don't think it's not a Jose GB hashtags I'll find them it's all I know the day this is going to launch so I'll watch for the first week um leave your feedback because I feel like me and Dustin sensed that this was a different kind of podcast I feel different and so I'm actually curious what you all felt because that feedback may give me an insight to maybe starting a series or shifting my podcast or making new content thank you my young friend thank you for making such a good show thank you for having me I'm super excited let's go pump some [ __ ] iron let's do it