The Blueprint for Discovering and Pursuing Your Passion | VeeFriends Facetime Experiences - Transcripts

in a super conference that all of you need to be at is finally here. Tickets have dropped to the original V friends holders but are now available to buy. I have a link in my bio for the people that have never bought an NFT but want to come because they've heard that Busta Rhymes and Deepak Chopra and Steve Bartland, all these people are speaking, go to vcon.co, C-O, drop the M, to see what's going on there. But the link in my bio has a site that we have on vcon that will let you fill it out and will help you get a ticket to our super conference. May 18th to the 20th in Indianapolis, Indiana. The conference is bananas. The 50 speakers I'm about to announce, bananas. This is the huge super business pop culture and innovation conference. I want everybody in my community be there. So link in bio or click here because the team is using this in all sorts of formats to make sure you get to indie in May for the super business conference of the year. I hope to see all of you there.

This is the Gary Vee audio experience. All right, so you clearly have many passionate diehard fans that care about you on a really deep emotional level and they're willing to travel across the country and pay $1000 for you. So my question is, what are some practical concrete steps that a content creator or a company can take to have an audience care about them on an emotional level and therefore care about their words, products

and services that they offer? It's a great question, brother. Two things, one, I love your shirt. Two, the answer is the way you get people to love something is by you loving them first. For a human to get love at scale, I think it's predicated on them loving first. For me, one of the great reasons I think everything happened was my intent was to provide value. I was like, I'm good, I know how to be happy without people's money, love, attention, I'm good. So this allows me to be remarkably generous emotionally and strategically. I don't think you can really create something of scale as a content creator without providing outrageous levels of value. Value comes in a lot of different forms, but I think the thing that's been a little bit different about my world is unlike a music artist or an athlete or someone who's funny or attractive or an actor, I'm on a daily basis trying to give people either emotional or tactical things that bring them value and I did that for a decade before any of you knew who the fuck I was. I did it every day, every day, every day and in 2010, it was a couple of hundred people and in 2023, it's a lot more. So I think the answer is kinda like parenting and all of you were too young for that at this point but like they're gonna love you as much as you love them first and I think the reason a lot of people struggle as content creators is it's all about them.

And so I think that's the answer to your question, my guy. Thank you.

I wouldn't buy that hoodie.

I love it.

Even better, I'll send it to you. You are a very big advocate for NFTs, crypto. Yes. That sort of stuff. And clearly it's like taken like, it's taken a lot. Yes. So do you still think it's the future? Yeah. Or like, are you buying low?

Or are you like, how's that? Yes, yeah. I don't know if you caught this, but most of my summer and fall last year was saying that 99% of them were gonna go to zero because I believe in the macro, but I saw all the green in the short-term behavior. So I knew it was gonna be a problem. It's kind of like the difference of believing that stuffed animals are gonna be something that everyone's gonna be into as kids versus beanie babies, right? So too much of the behavior was beanie babies in speculation, but I believe in NFTs and Web3 the most because it's a macro technology. I'll give you the comp. The way you said that, Gary, you believed in NFTs. That would be like you saying, Gary, you believed in iPhone apps. But 99% of the iPhone apps in the first two years have failed and I'll be like, yeah, that's exactly right. But I still think Instagram and Uber and Waze are coming and that's how I think about NFTs, right? I know that a lot of projects failed because a lot of people came in with greed.

and people will build meaningful things going forward. You always say like in your 20s and 30s, you got to like experiment and go explore. Yes. I kind of did the same thing. I came to the States when I was 17, studied really hard as an immigrant, like being Korean, ended up going to Stanford in my grads, made my parents really happy. But then I realized I never really risked doing something that I truly felt passionate about because I was afraid of failing it, at it,

but also I was afraid of my parents jumping in there. Of course, disappointing parents, especially immigrant parents in a US environment is one of the biggest things I focus on because I got so fortunate because I was an immigrant, but my mother gave me the freedom to be myself and it led to so much good, both emotional and professional success, but that is just a very rare story. To this day, parents, India, Asia, Europe, Africa, it is the great disservice that parents are doing to their children and they don't realize it, they think they're helping. And so it comes from a good place, but it has created a lot of hope. I've never grudged towards them.

I know. I mean, they worked towards them. I know. They worked their ass off, but then when I went to Stanford, I think I did enough for them and then I started following my passionate art and running. I love that. Running and I went to Kenya to leave it wrong with them, which is amazing. So yeah, that's kind of my story.

I thought it was kind of- I love that. It's very similar to mine, right? I didn't do it through school. I did it through, I want to give back to my parents by building their business, and then a 34 went and did my thing. No, I love that. I love that you did that. Did your parents struggle in that transition when you were ready to do something for yourself or were they fulfilled? Yeah, yeah. That's the other thing. It's like, the other thing I'm thinking a lot about is like, all right, I went to the Ivy League school, but let me live my life. And it's like, where do parents, they really need to find their way in letting their kids live their lives, which is really interesting because when I speak to the parents, which it happens multiple times a year, that are doing this to the children,

their parents did it to them.

Yeah, right, exactly. Which to me is almost the most inappropriate because you know that you were so unhappy about this. Why are you, it's hypocrisy at its best. You were mad at your parents and now you're doing it to your kids. That's a level of lack of consciousness.

Lack of consciousness. Lack of consciousness. For them, that's the playbook. They really believe they will work for me. I know that. For me, it was very interesting conversation with them. They would ask me like, why would you not work at Google or Facebook where your friends work at six figures and whatnot. I've been making like 20 to 40K a year, which is really not much compared to my friends. I'm just so happy. When I made the decision to go into running, I was like, I'm just gonna fucking live in Kenya.

I don't really believe in shit. I know that. And what the world hasn't figured out yet is living within one's means is the only thing one needs to do to eliminate the anxiety associated with their fee. The amount of people I know that make $283,000 a year and stress about money every day is staggering. It's because they live a $413,000 lifestyle. If you make $39,000 a year and you live a $23,000 lifestyle, you've won, especially if you're happy. And by the way, I say this from a place of knowledge. I, I, I, in every year of my 20s post-school did not make $100,000 a year. And when I was from 45 to 55 to 65, because my dad didn't pay me that much, I lived within those means and had savings. I just, I got fortunate or unfortunate that I worked every minute. I didn't have the weekend to spend money on. I never wanted to impress anyone, so I didn't need to buy anything to impress.

which makes them buy things they don't need. I am still doing full-time marketing right now. Two years ago, I did like organic social media is when I started. I remember last year, I'm gonna talk to you one client, now I have five. So I am excited, but I've been hosting more on LinkedIn, TikTok, and I've been sending out, we sent probably over like 150 cold emails, like a 30% open rate, but like really not that many people have.

Oh, you think that's high. I remember. That's good. It's very high. Really? Okay. 30% open rate. Yeah. And then what? Nothing, crickets.

What are you emailing them? Just like information that like I saw their stuff, I thought they'd be a good fit,

this is my website. You're going in too hard. What you need to do is send an email and say, hey, I would title it 90 minute karma, 90 minute karma driven free social media Q&A seminar. I'll say it again nice and slow because I want to make sure you get it. Titled 90 minute karma driven free seminar Q&A with me in there you go. Hey, love your stuff. I'm just very good at my craft and social media content. I like providing people value, no strings attached. Here's the Google hangout link, April 17th from four to 5.30. Please come if you want to come. And I'm just going to talk of the state of the union of social media as it continues to become important. If you have one person show up, phenomenal.

you're not getting conversions because you're trying to sell. Yeah. Right, right, right, right. Yeah. Well, another thing is we've kind of been, so right now, like I said, you do organic social media for my clients. What's some other marketing things? I do like, I've done like brand photo shoots that I coordinate for some of them. I'll do like marketing collateral, just miscellaneous, just to add value. I don't add that into a price right now. It's just more than their monthly retainer. So just show them like, I appreciate you. Here's some extra work that you need help with.

And. Your answer is I do brand. Brand is not measurable. If you want direct results, you need to spend media dollars against ads. I do brand. And the end, and some people believe in,

I believe in brand more than anything in the world.

Me too. Yeah. A lot of small businesses and people don't have that patience and don't believe in it. That's okay. Yeah. You just need to find the ones that do. Right. The other thing you can do is if you see a high turn rate, you can create a consulting product

instead of a retainer client. So the good news is you've had six clients from day one, you've lost one.

And it was just because it was just because it was like, it wasn't the fit. It was a family friend.

It was a family friend. Yeah. That's the only thing. Spend no time thinking about who you lost. Think about all your time of how to get better

and find new people. We interrupt this program to bring you a special report.

Passion. I'm in my Discord right now, and this is something people ask me all the time. And I find that many are scared of their passion, AKA their interests, their hobbies, skiing, Legos, cooking, video games. People don't think their interest is a business. Dustin's interest in BMX by culture, I don't believe he thought that that was a business, that he could make 150K a year being in the BMX business. But he didn't understand that he could do a daily podcast or do videos or be a hoodie maker of BMX culture and make 100K a year. That is real. My big thing is if you're 18 to 29, try it, because you won't have to regret not trying it. Someone just asked me what kind of content, what kind of content do you find does the best? My answer in my Discord was the one that comes from the heart or the one that comes from the brain. You were either winning on emotional truths or intellectual truths. Things that you really fucking believe in or have real passion for, or shit that you really know so much and what GaryVee has won on in my opinion is that the shit I love is the shit I know and I've got both.

when you go into the real world. You know, I was quick for it, I think last time we talked we were talking about building our own Kain manufacturing plant. WILD last year, we actually did that. Totally different than any other one. We use the Japanese technology. They've been doing it for, and two, it uses a different technology that's basically cider, more acidic stuff. Gallows started importing and using these cans on all their dark force initially to plant in the US.

That's awesome.

That's fucking awesome.

I mean, I guess it's stuck. You know, I think it's education comes in the form of communication, right? So unlimited podcasts, unlimited infographics, unlimited you interviewing people that actually know the truth, unlimited you making one, two minute hot takes why, just unlimited. Like again, it's so easy and so hard. Like the things I believe in, if I own this business, I would do what I did with Wine Library TV. I make a video every day for five years, and then shit would start happening. And you know, that's hard to say because people don't have the time they think, but it's similar to, I used to literally think I didn't have time to work out. I'm busier than ever and I have time to work out. I prioritized. Most people are not prioritizing content creation without realizing it is the oxygen of their growth. People think social media content is like some nice little nice to have or tier six to my real business.

Your real fucking business is to communicate your business. I mean, what, because this would be obviously, right? So like, I mean, platform wise, I mean,

LinkedIn, LinkedIn, LinkedIn, but B to B to C or B to C to B is a fun model. If you go crazy and do a TikTok thing of like, like if you became the guy that says, demand your favorite beverage to use this technology and like every time, at the end be like, let's all go attack Bud Light. Here's the LinkedIn to the Bud Light brand manager on LinkedIn.

Like you could create a whole viral movement. Do you think consumers give a shit?

I mean, the commodity. Yeah, no, no, no. I think consumers give real shits now. I think 10 years ago, consumers gave no shits. 20 years ago, consumers gave no shits. Now, better, whether that's healthier, better for the environment, better for it to be stable, but go to the consumer side that then says, then you create a website that has like 80 of your, if you came out and said 80 of our favorite brands that we would love to see our cans and you have a fucking logo of like whatever brand and then literally a URL to the LinkedIn of the brand manager of Dr. Pepper or fucking Corona or whatever, fuck. You could create a whole swell because at the end of your TikTok, you're like, by the way, link to the people that can help you make this a reality in our bio. Okay, yeah. And you know, Corona and Dr. Pepper, they're too big to maybe give a shit, but if you find some small, mid-size brands that are like, would be iconic customers for you if they switched over in that sweet middle, that'd be epic.

So I want to ask if you signed to their thing,

like they left that. Yeah, but honestly, it's not that difficult. Meaning it's, to your point, it's been one of the more difficult ones in the last decade because the last decade's been fucking fantasy land. But the economy right now is much stronger than it was in 2008 and nine. It's much stronger than it was in the late 90s. Like, you know, like it's much stronger. So you don't want to get caught in the delusion of like what's happening, which is everyone's lost context of a 50 year window. Like, yes, if you compare it to four years ago, it's harder. But it's way easier than it was in 2008 and nine. It got real bad. Like people are losing jobs. Like people aren't employed.

You don't need fucking HBO Max, fucking HBO Max.

Yeah, that's putting it into perspective. Yeah, so that- the reason that's good is now you're like, okay, wait a minute, because now it's like, even though you're like, I'm up for the challenge, it's like, ah, shit. It's tough. It's not really tough. Like, it's actually shit. I would actually argue it's way easier with the way social media is, what they weigh information is, like it's never been easier to be an entrepreneur even in this softened economy. Yeah. Because the ease of the tools and the costs associated with the opportunity

are outpacing the difficulties in the market. What is something that most people in this day and age is like kind of blind to? Like something that you're seeing that's obvious to you

but that other people are just not seeing at the moment? That people's entitlement is destroying their happiness. I just don't understand how we got into this place

where everyone thinks everyone owes them something. It's true and when you say that, I also just kind of feel guilty about it

because I know that I have some of that as well. By the way, all of us do. You can't be a human being without expecting things from your parents. But boy, oh boy, does that lead to unhappiness.

Very good, very good. What's your take on how everyone's expecting your crypto crash and just generally the crypto market?

What's your take? I mean, I think it already corrected in a meaningful way, right, things are down quite a bit. I believe, you know, my take I made very public a year ago and further back of 99% was gonna go to zero because I thought there was too much greed but the macro is very real and I think over the next three to five years, blockchain technology will be a meaningful part

of our society. And how would, are we able to see more integration of AI into NFTs?

What's your take on AI and NFTs like combined? I think AI is gonna be a part of everything. It's like an oxygen technology. It's a utility to make things more efficient. So yeah, I mean, to me, the creation of NFTs will be AI potentially, the scripts that are written for the narrative. I mean, there's so much that AI is like saying computers. Like, well, it's like 1980 and you're asking, do you think computers will integrate with my pavement company? I'm like, yes, and 40 years later, we have websites for every pavement company and people process their billings through a computer. Like AI is just gonna be omni. It's a thing. It's like, of course you will, it's like a tractor or like a calculator or like a marker. Anything that makes humans lives more efficient, we will do.

more efficient in our society. Thank you. My last question is, since we're a meditation based project, we actually do guided live meditation on all of our social media every weekend. What's meditation to you? And like, if you practice this, how do you practice it? And how would you, are you mindful of things?

And how would you ask other people to be mindful? I think everything I just heard is full commitment to gratitude. I feel like I meditate every day, though I don't actively meditate the way the world speaks about it. And the way I do that is by leaning 100% into gratitude. By being grateful for what I have versus anxious or unhappy for what I don't have, it keeps me in a steady state of contentness

that I wish for the world. Hey Gary, I wrote about company culture, the culture advantage. And I look at why culture is so important to innovation, why companies need to focus on it. And that's my message. The question I have is how do I get that message out there? What communities and where do you find people

who care about company culture? LinkedIn. I think you should produce unlimited amount of content on LinkedIn. I do it every day. I get feedback from it every day. The problem is it's not where are they. Are people disciplined enough to spend a decade making content every day at scale and building community every day at scale to have a big enough audience to find audience? I think it is just completely forgotten. What is it, 2023? I have made content at scale and I've engaged with people at scale. I went from 2006 to 2011 with not going to sleep until I emailed back every person that emailed me. I've been making content on the internet every day at scale for 17 years.

I don't know. Thank you so much for listening to that entire episode. We wanna remind you to give Gary feedback so make sure you tweet him at Gary V. But if you're listening on Spotify, you can drop your comments, questions and anything in between in the Spotify Q and A section down below. See you in the next episode.