Gary Vaynerchuk What's Next Conference Brussels Interview | Belgium 2017

first of all I've never ever seen it someone get a rockstar reception like you just had is that something you get used to it's something that um you never get used to and you always if I think I don't I can't speak for others but I always felt was maybe there you know in your in you want to say yeah I feel like somewhere deep down I always felt there was some sort of version of this in my destiny it didn't manifest the way I thought I didn't know the internet was going to happen I didn't know I didn't know it would happen in this EXT I thought it would be more on a pedestal for my business accomplishments you could only see how the Bill Gates and the Rockefellers and the you know it wasn't this cool you know business people are cool entrepreneurs are cool now so it's taken a little bit more young fandom than I anticipated but deep down I always felt like I was gifted something that over the course of my life it would manifest I knew that I know people liked me cuz I liked them more that has really played out for me and was it always an idea to do that in business or yes I since I was 13 I know it was going to be a business you know even before that but yes I always knew I was a businessman talking the baseball cards lemonade like my whole life I did nothing else not school not theater not music not I was interested in nothing but being a businessman pure bread you know like pure like a pure bread entrepreneur but I also was the same kid that was really nice to the most disliked nerd kid in my school and the most popular I always got along with everybody and I think that's playing out in social media a lot of different types of people can appreciate uh my message my attitude MH if I can go back to the beginning um well Wine Library TV now seems like a genius move but I can imagine that back in the day it was the stupidest thing what YouTube was only less than a year old um why was I wasting my time on it I was building the business why am I spending an hour making a show and then four 5 10 11 hours interacting with people in the comments I'm supposed to be running a business I just built this big business what are you doing in you know it wasn't that I knew how everything would play out but I knew that it was right I knew that people were going to pay attention I knew that the attention would go there and I didn't know that I would be such a showman I didn't know I could do this uh but when I realized I could very quickly I said okay this is really interesting you know being funny in class is one thing being able to do it on a world stage and on camera is another thing but it happened and I'm like okay you know I don't have any entertainers or those kind of people in my family so it never crossed my mind um but when I realized I had a little something um and then I became addicting you know it builds on itself you know that feeling builds makes me want to try harder to have more of that feeling and it becomes a hamster wheel

mhm you had a lot of love for what you did with Wine Library TV but you also had your fair amount of hate how do you explain that it's something meaning people yeah that people like look down upon uh said you were dumbing down on the wine yeah that's very true the wind industry did not like it at first when you're a Pioneer you have to be willing to take a lot of heat you know the people that invent the future are the ones who have the self-confidence and the humility and the ego and the intestinal fortitude to deal with the push back of the market

MH it's something that has manifested throughout your career I can I think I can say uh in Belgium we have a saying I don't know if it's in English the high trees catch the most wind um is that what has been seen I love it is that maybe what we see and that will be for until I die yeah I will always innovate I have too much confidence to worry about what other people think all the upside is being a Pioneer uh I want to be the highest tree M with the heaviest wind is it maybe also fair to say that you move around in a sector that has too much I think everything has I feel like the sectors that I just happened to jump into were the sectors I jumped into but Finance Healthcare education politics the Auto industry I mean they all have it because humans manifest humans create and politics to protect their short-term

interest but how do you as a client separate the weat from the Sha um you try you know and sometimes swing and miss you swing and miss and sometimes you hit three home runs I mean you know I think that's the talent of a client I surely don't struggle with it when I'm a client use intuition you're not like I told him you're not scared to fire if you pick the wrong thing you just move

mhm uh how have you you've been in social media since it existed how have you seen it change I think people are starting to take it more seriously especially with things like bre and Donald Trump I think people are starting to understand this is not a joke this is not kicks and giggles this is how humans communicate and so I've seen it come from something nobody even knew existed to early Pioneers believing in it to the investment Community media industry believing in it to normal humans believing in it to the establishment believing in it to the universe believing in it m and also resonates in marketing I suppose yeah and I think that um marketing's behind because there's a lot of holding companies that make more money selling the old stuff um so when you've got big companies that have financial interest in the status quo then you uh then you have this situation

mhm you didn't only build a brand with Wine Library you also bu built yourself into a brand I did uh something that you leveraged with uh Vayner media I can think I can say you're a very smart dude thank you you're paying very close attention you're exactly right on everything so far go ahead um what I wonder is how much is that linked to you as a person the business growth well yeah is it something that or is something that you did with your business something that you can transplant onto like big Brands yes yeah yes on all fronts yes it's bigger because of my brand but people have to remember I got a brand because I built a business before I became a brand so I was always going to be a good businessman anyway and so a lot of our clients never knew who I was when we've got them um yes I can transplant it to my people fans if you were listening to what they were saying to me yes I can transplant it to Brands yes now can this brand be 100% me absolutely not but if I can give it 2% me it's got a chance to be much bigger MH can my employees be 100% me no but if I give them 30% me it could be much bigger can Vayner media be Gary vaynerchuck absolutely not but if it could be 90% of me then it could be much bigger and so that's how I think about

it mhm how I would think it is what makes you is your sincerity on what you sell and and what you do uh when I look at Brand and uh well I always know that they want in the end to sell me something yeah but if they make the best water and product so it's eco-friendly and if they are better than the other waters and they're confident well then that's me you know I run businesses I'm not Mother Teresa it's just that I think if you do business with me you'll do better if you than if you didn't as long as that business thinks that their water is better than everybody else's where they get into trouble is if they know they're getting their water from the same place that somebody else is getting their water and that's 80 cents and they're $140 and they don't believe it mhm the thing that has always worked for me is I believe pure like just you know I think people can taste it it's why they're attracted to it I just think that Vander media is the agency for every single person that in the world that we do digital like if you want to do Billboards that's not us activations at South by Southwest Live Events it's not us yet you know so I think that um if we stay in our lane um making digital work for you and bringing you money I do think that's us

MH I saw you when you finished your speech you signed all the books I saw you take a selfie or take a video of yourself and you say I slay it and I Crush guys yes is that comp competition something that drives you as well the most it's the part that you know being so competitive unfortunately is my gift than my curse it's my gift because it's helped me so much it's my curse because it's the north star that manifests the ego and the bravado that for some people is a turnoff um but I know that I'm coming from the good place I want to beat these two guys but I don't want them to fail I want to better I just want to be better and I think a lot of people want people to fail and they're not very good and by killing everybody else if they're the only ones left well you've got me to me I want everybody to play I just want to rise above everyone MH uh in your speech

or in the Q& A section you talked a bit about your Investments you said that um well if you um are involved from the beginning and you're involved organically and you build the business yourself if I'm the operator it's a home run yeah but you also have quite the track record in investing something that you don't have what I refer to is the middle so when I'm the operator it's a home run when I invested and have nothing to do with the business I've done extremely well home runs Facebook Twitter it's the middle when it's kind of my business and I'm kind of supposed to be involved but I'm not the decision maker that was funky for me in 2009 to 13 now I've done it better I had a company called Brave consulting firm they just sold to Turner when I was involved that way I've got a company called resi a restaurant open table competitor it's doing extremely well I learned a lot failing and made promises up front that were different Ed my time and my strategies more effectively I've learned from failing thank you so much okay thank you yeah real pleasure I wish you well