NEW UNLOCK: How to Smell the Roses Without Stopping | Seize the Yay Podcast

Um, I almost think that that's why I'm so successful out there. It's because I'm only inside. And for me, there is no winning. There is no smelling roses. One of the things I challenge myself is to get a little bit better at smelling roses. Um, but I'm not even sure that's right because I think the process is the rose. You know, just playing is what I'm up to. I just want to play. You got your perspective. be happy. Don't you want to be happy? Can you tell us something really down to earth about you? Well, it's funny. Even the nature of the question makes me uncomfortable. So, so the meta of the question is probably the most down to earth thing about me. Meaning I it's actually what I think a lot about. My favorite thing is what people who actually have met me say behind my back. Yeah, that that's the real answer. I mean, the most downturn thing about me is my parents and my circumstance created a framework where I'm unable to hear the cheering, you know, and so I think one of the reasons I deal well with negative feedback is because of the way I deal with positive feedback. I think the reason so many people struggle with trolls or negative comments or judgment is because they also overvalue compliments. Yes. So I for me I think it's that I have both of my index fingers in my ears. What I mean by that is I just don't hear either. And so for me humility is the thing I'm most attracted to within myself and in others. And so yeah, just being uncomfortable with the question I think is the most down to earth thing about me. Yeah. Well, I love that so much. I think in every of all the content I mean what I try to do with each guest is research everything I can about them. There is way content on the internet. But your humility and even calling, you know, the latest wine company empathy, that alone is something that shines through so strongly that you have, you know, come from what you call typical immigrant upbringing. And I love that it stuck with you the whole time. Yeah, me too. I think one of the things I most struggle with, you know, I think fame and money and awareness exposes people. I don't think it really changes people. Yeah. And um I think it really is sad to me to watch contemporaries or friends or acquaintances when they do hit a little bit more awareness or more money that there is an evolution in their personality. And I think that I don't think that's a change. I think that's who they actually were the whole time. Um so yeah, I I I'm very grateful that I don't have that DNA trait that makes me think I'm somebody just because I may have some financial or large following success. Yeah. Well, what also is in your DNA is this entrepreneurial trait and this incredible ability to be ahead of the curve and to see have this intuition that lets you see what other people don't in what the next 5 10 years are going to look like. Yes. So, in terms of your way to Yay, that's pretty much the story of how you got to a life that makes you yay. Take us back to the very beginning because I think anyone who's looking to you for guidance of how to find what lights you up and our lives, we're expected to have so many different careers in our lifetime now. It's so overwhelming. Take us back to young Gary. Like born in the Soviet Union, moved to Queens for a couple years, then moved to New Jersey. Um very close to his mom. Dad's working every minute. Doesn't really have him in his life the first 15 years cuz he just works so hard. Um 14 years. Then I started working in my dad's liquor store. So I got to really know him. But just quickly gravitated towards business. you know, six, seven, eight years old, lemonade stands, shoveling snow, washing people's cars, baseball cards, you know, all those things. And so, much like somebody is a natural athlete or a natural singer songwriter, you know, every time I watch videos of young LeBron or young Beyonce, I always think, man, I wish my mom I wish there was recordings of me at baseball card shows or behind the lemonade stand at 8 years old. there was a natural talent that I had in selling. And so, yes, I, you know, it's so interesting to be in the prime of my life during the rise of entrepreneurship. You know, it's on a pedestal. It's cool now. You know, it's crazy for me because when I was selling stuff in high school, it was dorky. It was nerdy. It was like, you know, make making money was not cool. It was being good at school or being good at sports. So, it's very weird. It's very weird for me to have admiration or recognize that rappers and athletes and actors and actresses all want to be entrepreneurs now. And so it's very cool uh in a lot of ways, but I also have concerns about people forcing themselves into entrepreneurship when I know that it's really lonely. It's really difficult um and it's just not for everybody. Yeah. Well, I loved, you know, I was listening to a um I think it was two years ago, you were on Joe Rogan, and one of the things you pinpointed about yourself that makes you DNA, you know, entrepreneurial to your DNA, not just in aspiration, is that six-year-old Gary had, you know, Gary's lemonade stand, had multiple venues, and you weren't just the kid that wanted to sell stuff. You were looking more at where you would put the sign to get the most sales funnel towards the lemonade stand. Like, I don't even know how a six-year-old could conceive of those ideas. It took me 30 years to even know that. I was giving a speech and I just kind of was giving my same standard first five minutes of my speech and I just remember it very clear. It I just stopped. I'm like, "Wait a minute. I used to sit I mean how I mean this is just like weird. I used to sit and watch these cars drive by and be and literally take my sign and move it. " You know, Drock's in the background right now filming uh some stuff and he got to see me in action this last week in Chicago at a baseball card show. It's the first time I was a dealer in 25 years. And I mean, the way I was moving around the tables and changing stuff and changing prices and signs and angles, you know, that's what I did. And that's what I do in content and on these platforms. The way I think about LinkedIn and Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and my podcast and email service and text messaging platform. It's a lot of the same thing. It's attention hacking. It's attention arbitrage. And it's not only attention. Hey, here's the best part of my table or hey, here's Instagram. It's also what am I gonna say? Yeah. What's the, you know, what's the language in the sign? What's the copy I'm gonna put? What's the title of the meme? Um, it is something I've always done. Yeah. It's so cool watching your story, how it literally just from strength to strength evolve through from six, from your first business at six to everything that you've since touched. So you moved into the family business at 14 discount liquors. Did a little rebrand. Yes. And it became the wine library. So a deep love for wine and sales and collecting very big theme of my life. Collecting wine was a huge reason I fell in love with it because I was transitioning off collecting cards. It was a big big theme of my life. And I mean you turned that business into e-commerce before e-commerce was like a word. How did you do that? I mean, how do you firstly upskill without I mean, you went to college, you went, you know, you went through school, but how do you upskill to knowing before there's a Gary Vee? I mean, who was your Gary Vee firstly at your age? Was there a you who was prolific in content and no democratizing? Let me rephrase. I'm sure I mean, you know, actually somebody who I'm very fond of historically is Barbara Walters. I thought Barbara Walters was an incredible journalist and incredibly smart about culture and people, but I didn't look up to business people. Uh, leveling up did not happen in school. Yeah. It came in the trenches in the dirt. And the internet, you know, I had probably been on a computer for less than two hours in my life when I decided to launch wine library. com. Oh my god. I mean YouTube had been like four months. No, YouTube didn't come out for 10 years after that. Oh my gosh. Wine Library TV. Oh yeah. Was 4 months after YouTube. This is 1996. 10 years before YouTube came out. Nine and a half. Um I just inherently understand people. Yeah. Like deeply. Same reason I knew that VR wasn't going to be big in a year or two, two years ago when everybody was going on that bandwagon. I would look I watch I'm watching what your fiance's wearing like that. I literally like that's what I do. That you look great. You know, like you know I look at the haircut he's wearing. I look at like everything. I watch I watch. I'm an anthropologist. You know, I think if my DNA was slightly to the left or right, I'd be one of those people that goes into the Amazon and for 29 years of their career follows redheaded ants in the Amazon. I'm that curious by behavior. Yeah. Luckily for me, well, not luckily for me, the way that's manifested is in people and then trends and behaviors around business. But that maps to how we look at social issues, politics, you know, which diseases or issue like why are we passionate right now about plastic straws to paper straws? I'm fascinated by why that's the issue we decide while textiles, you know, continue to do enormous damage to Earth and we've got people who are yelling about the environment wearing Gucci belts. Yeah. I'm fascinated by that. What do you choose to do? not to do? You know, why coffee over tea? You know, in our culture today, like just those kind I'm always thinking. But most of all, and this is where humility comes in. Yeah. And I'm going to round this up. I never think I get to pick. I never get to impose. I don't think I get to say what it should be. And I think a lot of people think that way. I watch and just react to what people are doing. Yeah. I love that you just ask the questions that kind of give us the answers rather than like just hammering answers down our throat. You invite conversation and you use your platforms to really get us to think about I'm an anthropology nerd as well. Like I did law arts, but I did all my thesis on like studying what people do and why they do it. It's why I find like war history in the USSR. Like all that stuff is so interesting. It's huge to me, right? Like I leave a place of communism. I go to a place of capitalism. You know, I I'm also driven by gratitude. I genuinely think if me and my grandfathers, both of them for that matter, switch spots, I'm the one who spends 10 years in a communist jail. They're the ones who get accolades in the current world. So, you know, I'm driven by gratitude. Like just completely and utterly driven by gratitude. Yeah. I was um adopted from an orphanage in South Korea. Same thing. Came here. I was like, it could have been so different, which means every second is like make the most of every opportunity that there is out there to use platforms to share these stories. Adversity at a young age is an incredible foundation of success. Yeah. Absolutely. You know, you and I had to live our whole lives once it started becoming aware to us what our circumstance was, understanding like, thank God. Yeah. No matter what was hard, no matter if it was hard being for me in a family that was trying to make its way and it was a struggle early on or for you having to think about like the dynamics of being adopted or no matter how hard it was, there was still a part of your brain mind that understood there was an incredible luck and great gift that was given which creates an really interesting framework of just ambition, you know, gratitude just good mix of things that tend to work out. Yeah. So things have worked out so incredibly well for you with that drive and like intuition from building the family business. I think it was 3 million to 60 million through just taking it over. Then Vayner Media in 2011 founding it with your brother. You've got Ask GaryVee. You've got the Daily V. you're like literally the most prolific content creator in the world, which is absolutely incredible because you use it to inspire, you know, future generations to think about what they're doing and not just be on this conveyor belt of achievement, which is what sees the A is all about instead of seizing the day all the time. You got to find your joy and do what matters to you. I'm on a I'm on an incredible mission, an incredible mission to redefine the north star from financial success to a happiness conversation. Yes, I really believe it can be achieved. I'm flabbergasted by what has transpired over the last 3 years in watching a lot of young alpha males convert in front of my eyes from guys that would do cliche dumb [ __ ] in their 20s with girls and money to ones who talk about empathy and kindness and gratitude. And it is not lost on me that I am taking the gifts that my mom and dad gave me and I'm giving them to the world and my happiness framework and the way I treat people is for some reason becoming cool and if and I'm just going to squeeze the [ __ ] out of that because it's leading to good. Yeah. So how do you like in that whole anthropological discussion of redefining success from a financial metric and an external validation metric to a internal yeah like fulfillment metric? When did you click over to I'm successful or what does that feel like for you? And you know imparting to you you've got beautiful children and they're I'm sure have had their own

lemonade stands. What is the metric of success or feeling or definition that you want to impart to them? Well, a it's for them not to feel like they have to lemonade stand. So like she has no interest in I'm always like let's sell slime or this and that. She's like no. I'm like great. Awesome. You do you showing a little bit of an ability to flip cards. So that's exciting for me as you can imagine. But I want them to love their game as much as I love mine. And whether that is being a professor in a college, which would be really ironic and funny, or um, you know, a sculptor in Egypt, like I or a stay-at-home dad, you know, for me, as long as they're on fire the way I am, then I've achieved my goal for them. And to be honest, I don't even that sentence was funny to me. I don't even want to impose a single thing other than, you know, making sure they're good human beings. Yeah. Um that matters to me. And make sure they're not entitled. I have to be very careful of that given the financial circumstances they're growing up in. Um that's really it. That's it. As far as like when it clicked for me, it clicked in a couple different ways. I remember the first day literally. A god, I'm getting really interesting goosebumps. Like different kinds like inside, not outside. I haven't talked about this day. I got a little emotional just now. The first day of my career, that first day, that first day that I was like, I'm done with college. I will never have to go to [ __ ] school again. And I will never forget that Monday morning in the liquor store. It was the great It might still be my favorite day of my life. It was just like I knew I was on the beginning of the thing that I was meant to do, which is, you know, be a professional businessman. And so that was amazing. Literally that day I felt successful. And then you know honestly all the accolades like building up the business, making the smart investments in Facebook, Twitter, all that stuff, Tumblr, Veayner, becoming Gary Vee, quote unquote, writing those books and speeches and the millions of followers. There's I'm I don't see things like in that way. I I'm aware like when I did Planet of the Apps with Gwennneth Paltro, Will I AM, and Jessica Alba, I was aware on Apple's platform. I was aware like, "Oh, this is cool. " Like, uh this is another level up for me and positioning to them. But you said something so incredibly profound. I am so inside. I'm so inside. You know, I'm only an internal validation. I'm not an external validation, which looks like a contradiction to the way I roll cuz I'm so out there. Um, I almost think that that's why I'm so successful out there. It's cuz I'm only inside. And for me, there is no winning. There is no smelling roses. One of the things I challenge myself is to get a little bit better at smelling roses. Um, but I'm not even sure that's right because I think the process is the rose. You know, just playing is what I'm up to. I just want to play. So much so that I even like when I lose. That's the best sound bite I've ever had because there's a whole segment called PlayTA which is forcing every guest to stop and pull their identity away from their output because we're human beings. We're not human doings and not be achieving not be successful and what is the activity that you do? And some people are like damn I have nothing. I don't play. I don't play for joy. I literally just go after goals. And that's there's no rose smelling. Like what is it all about if you're not doing that? So for me it that gets synthesized a little bit differently. To me all of it's playing. Yeah. And all of it's smelling roses. Which is what I love about you because I think people do sometimes try and get this fitting in the boxes. It's very artificial distinction between work and play. If you are on fire for what you do, it's all work and it's all play. [clears throat] Literally my favorite things to do are going garage salailing, buying stuff, and flipping it on. Like I get this and I've said this often and it is absolutely true and it just is. I get a much bigger high of buying something for $8 at a garage sale and selling it for 26 bucks on eBay than I do in landing a $5 million client. It's not even close. Arbitrage. I mean arbitrage. It's just buying and selling. Yeah. Gives me a high that, you know, nothing else does. And so you've also said something really interesting recently with which kind of landed really strongly for me was that it's so important to always have a goal that's not I mean followers financial if you're always going after that you can hit the top but for you like with the New York Jets your goal is to own that football team. That's right. But you were like if I did it what would I have to aim for anymore? Like it's scary to achieve the goal. So you have to tie it to something that will always be to aspire to. Otherwise, if you hit it too easily, like what's left? And I think there and I think that for me, that's a good point. And I think another thing that's interesting to me

is I think you need to have a selfish and a selfless goal. And I think they need to be as big as possible. So I think one of the things that makes me happy is my goal professionally to buy the New York Jets and then to win Super Bowls should keep me busy for 30, 40, 50 years, which is nice long time. My goal to be the most giving entrepreneur of all time is something that will take me my whole life. Yeah. You know, and it's extremely selfless. Like I am extremely proud and quite conscious, not just subconscious now at this point that I am going to impact a lot of people and it feels really good. admiration is a lot more exciting than a couple extra zeros in your bank account. And so yeah, and that's why I love this platform so much because when you can show the human side of people, everyone is just a person that you being just a person but using the incredible impact you have for the positive benefit of people out there in society. It's so exciting. Like you have made me so excited for humanity. I agree. I think a lot of people are confused right now and they see the negatives in social and digital and they're seeing people scale hate. What they don't understand is it scales everything and it's on us. If you're so happy then start putting happy into the universe. Yeah. You know, right now the people that are most unhappy are the ones who are loudest in their content on social. Nobody tweets great job Quantis on the flight we just took. A machine just went in the air, landed safely. I had a nice coffee. I had Wi-Fi. I bought some sports cards. I don't land and tweet Quantis, great job on my flight today. But if it was a three-hour delay and they were out of coffee, the amount of people that tweet, you know, [ __ ] you, Quantis. You know, people are unbelievably interesting to me. We stay very the 98% that are happy are staying quiet. Talk about it. Yeah. and the 2% that are miserable are loud and it confuses the other 98%. And uh I don't want to do that, right? I think you can use I'm a complainer on Twitter and but I also made sure recently when we open the restaurant, everyone wants to complain, especially plant beans. So now we're really conscious of always do the good news and that's the thing I tell a lot of my friends. I'm like don't wait for your to for you to be on the other side of it. Like recognize what we're doing. And so for me, I'm putting, you know, when I twe I mean, I think this morning on the way to shower, I tweeted a blue heart. That was it. And like, and that's just nice. And the internet went wild. I mean, I don't know if they went wild, but I think one human seeing that maybe just thought that's nice. Like, like to me, we need to start doing that. We need to make like maybe this is the podcast. This is the moment. Like, let's make a call to arms. Like, if you're in a good mood, [ __ ] share it. like because this tiny percentage and I mean guys the reason we are still here all these years later is human beings are remarkably good to remind everybody we have had atomic bombs that can wipe us off the face of the earth now for 70 years we're here we we've had genocides holocausts we've had the black plague we've had world wars we're here and everybody spirit is unstoppable And everybody's dwelling right now on a rise of nationalism and hate, which is terrible. However, let's contextualize it. And instead of judging people and calling them racists or bad people, why don't you go loud about good, instead of getting sucked in to being doing more hate around people who hate, why don't you actually combat it? Why don't we learn from Martin Luther King and from Gandhi and from other people in the

past, which is you do not defeat hate with hate on hate. You defeat hate with love at scale. And we all have our 14 followers, our 1,000 followers, our eight followers. And instead of flexing about your new handbag or your hot new sneakers or the hike you took or the remarkable meal you're having, what about putting out good? What about co-signing somebody that did something nice? What about watching somebody open the door for an old lady and roll up on them and make a video and tell them about this nice kid? We need to get louder about happiness. Uh if we all collectively do that, I have a funny feeling the internet will feel a lot more happy. Yeah. I mean, that's what this is. There's a little quote book. It's called CCA. It's like the podcast. It's a happy quote for every day. I love that. And people like everywhere just I'm like life is pretty awesome. I mean, we're in a really exciting time. It's a great time to be alive. Be excited about it. 400 trillion to one. Yeah. That is the current scientific odds around being a human being. And that's something that uh did you know that 400 trillion to one you are more likely to get struck by lightning 10 times in your life than have one. It is the great miracle. Like that whole miracle concept like you the baby's a miracle. It's actually true. And so people are walking around moping about their mom being a jerk or their brother stealing their money or somebody or their pimple on their face or they can't get a new Supreme or I mean just or Gary Vee sneak is sold out so [ __ ] up or like stuff that I don't know why this specific thing drives me crazy. People yelling at baristas for using the wrong milk. I mean, that to me, I don't know what it is about that one, you know? People literally yelling at somebody, "No almond milk, you [ __ ] They just bought a $6 coffee. " Like, do you know how blessed you are? Like, I mean, I mean, a $9 coffee, Gary. Come on. Respect. So, just to wrap up quickly, I want to give a little shout out to one of our dear mutual friends, Justin Dry, and the incredible work that he's doing with Veno. Venom Mofo. you are here to launch Empathy Wines in Australia, which is so exciting. So, just quickly give us a rundown on that. So, I started a winery uh almost a year ago called Empathy Wines. The ambition is to produce an incredible wine in the in US dollars, a $40 wine for 20 bucks. Obviously, there's some price variations here in Australia. Justin and I have been friendly for a long time. We only wanted to sell it direct to consumer from winery to people in America. He reached out. We got into a conversation. There's such warm feelings there and admiration. We got into a combo and Venom Mofo is the exclusive partner of being able to sell the wine outside the US in the Australia, New Zealand and Singapore market. Uh and uh the response has been remarkable in this marketplace and it's a beautiful rosé California gra and the white just came out and the red will be coming out in the fall and so it's um it's been an incredible project and it's really you know it's funny when I was making the rosé. I was thinking about an Australian rosé. There's an Australian ros that I'm very fond of called Turkey Flat. Uh and I remember as I was blending it the whole time I'm like I'm going to make a better ros than turkey flat. rosé and Whispering Angel. Those were the two things I was thinking about. And so, um, it's been a lot of fun and the partnership with Venom Mofo has been extremely seamless and completely built on kindness and friendship and empathy. Um, and uh, and I'm enjoying it. So exciting to see it go live tonight. I'm excited. We'll be partying. So, two last questions. What are the three most interesting things about you that don't normally come up in conversation? And you are probably the hardest guest to come up with anything that hasn't been on a podcast before. I'm remarkably non-confrontational in real life, even though I'm a tough guy on video and stage. Nice. Uh I sleep seven to eight hours a day. No. Yep. Amazing. I mean, six and five when I travel. Uh, and I really don't I genuinely don't care if I'm financially successful like deeply like almost to the point where I have to be careful cuz I almost can feel as I'm evolving the want to sabotage myself. I'm not kidding. I like really have to be thoughtful. Like I'm really having a very interesting time with myself where I'm like man I really like almost like and I've said it a lot which means it's like I get into this weird like am I going to become like a weird monk and just disappear like I'm am I going to go I'm just all about happiness like and maybe my version of a weird monk is actually to just become a junk and baseball card dealer, right? Like just really go there. But I can feel it in me. You're going to marry condo yourself. This is what's next. Maybe I'm just a very I'm a just a I'm Things are very clear to me. I like that. And they have nothing to do with the modern version of success. This is not about stuff. Uh this is about waking up and not having anxiety. I love that. And final question to finish off. What's your favorite motivational quote? I don't know. It can be a Gary Vee quote. That's also fine. You can make it up on this. I will. And I can tell you like what I think about which is kindness is karma, right? Give more than you take. And probably wrapping it up, like probably my favorite thing to say because it hits people once in a blue moon, doing the right thing is always the right thing.