Why I Always Identify With The Underdog

there's certain things in society where it's obvious to people that people are just born to be it for me that's what entrepreneurship was you got your perspective i just want to be happy don't you welcome back to the emirates garden i

hope you guys enjoyed that episode of sweet life but you know what is even sweeter i get to hang out with gary vaynerchuk can i call you garyvee or just you can absolutely all the work thank you so much for spending some time for having me i mean what brings you to the open uh novak the tennis the passing of summer to fall and you know i'm a new yorker a jersey ball tonight yes the wind is coming uh look this is one of the most important kind of iconic new york things yeah you know to me not getting to the open is almost like would be devastating it's my true transition from summer life into the fall i mean guys we can feel the fall right now it is it's kind of like especially when you grow up here it's kind of it's like christmas right it's like this thing that happens year after year and for me you know i'm in the point of my life where i see a lot of business friends and associates here you haven't seen them because the summer covid compounds that yeah um and i grew up a huge tennis fan and he did i did and so i mean one of the few times i cried in sports that wasn't related to the new york jets was when john mcenroe lost to lendl here in 84 i think it was and so yeah i grew up a very big tennis fan and uh and i'm excited to be here tonight so

you so i just want to let everyone know we both grew up in edison before you moved so big shout out to big shout outs did you play tennis growing up i did i played uh tennis in edison new jersey three four times a day during the summer um and oded wine weinstock if you're watching eric godfrey if you're watching those are two gentlemen i played a lot of matches with in edison new jersey so yeah i hacked you know uh i have to on the tennis court and so you're here tonight to watch novak is that correct i'm uh you know for me immigrant edison new jersey like i very much associate with the underdog yeah and when you think of the big three or the big four if this is airing in the uk uh when you think of that novak is definitely the underdog in the nadal better novak run so i was i always felt a huge connection to him yeah plus i always felt that he played with a chip on his shoulder a little bit different than the other guys always spoke to me has always been my favorite player of this era and so i'm here sharing them on

today what do you think makes you gravitate towards the underdog my reality you know born in the soviet union kind of learned english in edison new jersey uh was a bad student wasn't the greatest at sports so the world was always kind of telling me you're not gonna make it and i had this incredible mother and father and kind of natural self-belief and was very fortunate that the thing that i was great at was entrepreneurship and business which is a very viable way to live life is that something you taught yourself would you say i think a lot of it was natural dna when you're five or six or seven years old and you're selling lemonade on tingling lane or oak tree road or shoveling snow or or flipping baseball cards in john adams middle school we're being very edison nerdy here you know totally nobody else knows but there we go my mom wasn't pushing entrepreneurship on me it wasn't in culture the way it is now i didn't read any books it was just so in me and i think that's why i love athletes professional singers you know i think there's certain things in society where it's obvious to people that people are just born to be it for me that's what entrepreneurship was you know i think we're in the era right now where everybody wants to be an entrepreneur right it's a very hot buzzer but for me in the 80s you know being a bad student that wasn't cool right but i still gravitated the way an athlete gravitates and uh and i've always had that connection with sports that's really

interesting i feel like i'm learning a lot about you gary thank you so i want to ask you about what you're doing with the us open and the nfts can you explain a little bit thank you for knowing that uh i've gone pot committed into nft life uh had my own project and be friends and then with the success of that stood up a company called vayner nft where we're consulting brands like pepsi like budweiser like the us open on their nft programs this one's exceptionally exciting venus williams billie jean king and erotic uh incredible tokens of collectibility and even access to those icons uh if you buy the one of one uh incredible launch it's gone extremely well it's still on sale if you want to find it and um i'm really proud of it and it's fun to see the us open be a first mover in such a new space yeah um and it's been fun to see a lot of tennis fans you know i constantly read twitter and social media and a lot of people have bought their first ever nft with the us open nft and so it's fun to be part of that history well so for those of you at home who don't know nft stands for non-fungible token in 30 seconds if you've ever bought a skin on fortnite or a power up in a video game you know what an nft is this is just for the whole world it's owning a digital asset which is a new concept yeah but so was having a website social media account these were new ideas of 95 in 2005. this is the newest one most of the people here aren't ready comfortable or understand the idea of owning something just digitally right but it will be common practice in a decade i mean i feel like this kind of harkens back to you selling baseball cards a little bit baseball cards comic books and then my main career was wine in my early age i built a very large wine business for my family liquor store in springfield new jersey yeah and the reason i was passionate about it was because people collected wine so to your point the concept of collectibility even sneakers yeah you know by the way everyone check these out when you know what you wear what you drive how you roll we as human beings use physical things to communicate our status who we are facial hair clothes i look at everybody behind the cameras right now i have a sense of them just on what they wear how they wear their hair or facial hair digital assets are the scaled version of that it's one of the biggest reasons i believe in nfts so i'm gonna pivot a little bit to your social media because obviously there are people across the world who are i think they kind of look to you as like a guru like somebody to follow like when did that become a big thing for you and how do you think it's become such a success in 2006 i was running the family wine business and i saw youtube and twitter and i said these are going to be huge yeah and so i started making content about wine and it exploded i had a comfort with the camera that i didn't know i had i was already 31 years old so it wasn't of mine to be a personality but i went all in i believed in it and then somewhere around three or four years later i wanted to talk about other things besides wine right and i wrote a book called crush it that basically predicted a lot of what the world is now running on and that book went crazy it was a one-year new york times best-selling book and i started giving speeches and my career changed and really all i am today is a byproduct of incredible mothering all the life lessons that my mom taught me all the and really not just mothering also really the streets of new jersey and the world right i was taught by my mom and by the streets and that is my content today that is what i talk about accountability compassion my mom is incredibly kind i think i'm a very unique voice in the business world around empathy kindness things that people don't normally talk about and then on the other hand i talk about accountability and self-awareness and so it's positivity but it's practical right we're not in the business of eighth place trophies this is real life and uh and i think people gravitate towards it well so you

mentioned your first book i did notice on your social that you were doing some voice overs for a new year yes today can you tell us about that one november 16th a new book called 12 and a half comes out uh leveraging the emotional ingredients for business success okay i really am passionate about this unique place i think i sit in the business world which is i don't think that people think that you know uh curiosity or empathy are super powers right i think people think sharp elbows tough negotiator it's a doggy dog world and i don't see the business world that way i see it from a framework of a lot of soft skills and so it's a book of why i think emotionally intelligent soft skills are actually the alpha skills in today's business world well you know if the entire business world looked at the world that way i feel like we would be in a better place i believe

that to be true um so i have to ask you know you seem like you don't sleep very much do you get to take a vacation i do and by the way on the record i have high energy when i'm awake but i'm a big seven eight hour yeah i think i'm about to sleep i like sleep i just like being very productive and on when i'm awake yeah uh and i love they i love this time of year because everyone's checked out yeah i only have anxiety when i know the world is on when i'm not yeah so i type to be vacations when everyone else is taking vacations that's called fomo yes the only you know fomo for me of like fun things like at the us open or ibiza or parties never fomo of like oh other people being productive when i'm not yeah that's why you're so successful gary so i have to ask you where do you go when you go on vacation you know i'm a very completely being checked out guy meaning beach no wife like out like just being completely off the grid um that's how i like to do it yeah is there anywhere in particular you usually go turks and caicos beautiful uh mykonos those are two places that stand out for me i mean two of the best well i hope you get to go on vacation soon but the vacation is not happening right now because we are about to play tennis takedown are you ready i'm ready they're cheering for you do you hear it thank you crowd all right so let me tell you the rules real quick so there's going to be one minute on the clock we asked 100 fans on the grounds okay five questions okay you want to guess the most popular i know that game go ahead yeah so first question what's the most romantic place at the u. s open the fountain what's the best place to vacation paris what's the best beverage to drink while watching tennis honeydews name the active tennis player you'd most like to meet i hate this answer but i'm sure it's roger federer what do you love most about yourself that i'm kind all right so i think you are going to be the winner right now but we're gonna check so we ask you what's the major magic place at the us open surveys you said fountains survey says top answer 46 points we asked what the best place the vacation is you said france survey says nobody said paris crazy out of 100 people that's insane i know new york is so anti-france i know because we have clashing personalities i kind of like that i'm actually happy right now keep going all right we asked you what's the best beverage to drink while watching tennis you said honeydew survey says it's on the board 12 the top answer was beer we asked you to name the active tennis player you'd most like to meet you did say federer survey says ding ding top answer with 32 points and final question what do you love most about yourself you said your kindness i want to give it to him because the top answer was personality interesting 42 points somebody give me a number what did gary be for 132 you are sitting at the top of the leaderboard we are going to get you any u. s open swag you want i love it thank you for having me so much i have no authority to get cheers you do botcha what's up it's garyvee first of all thank you so much i hope you're doing super well during these times uh i also want to ask you please subscribe because my commitment and exploration of youtube is about to explode stories polls more content more engagement more surprise and delight this is the time to subscribe i hope you consider it and i hope i see you soon