How Gary Vee runs 7 businesses

well this is gonna be one of the highlights that i know from this meeting this podcast i looked that i said meeting this feels more like a business meeting this that's why you guys are so successful i feel like i could rude world i know why i could be what i want to so from at all in it like a day's on on a less travel yeah but let me ask you a hard hitting question i've known you now for a few years a while now do you own a computer but you know what what's funny i did not own a computer for four or five years it going into covid so what what year did you buy your first laptop i went full phone because i didn't work within excel or any documentation and it was all email meetings social so i i think i stopped having a laptop in fifteen went to nineteen without one but i've had one sense you know those luxury brands or it's like quite wealth or whatever where there's no label we found the podcast version of this which is that the richest guys who come on the pod they don't know how to use a computer they're like assistant sets up a screen they just show up we had one guy try to share his screen and he was like honestly he's like honestly guys this is this is bad i don't know what i don't even know what i'm doing we go just click in chrome because what's chrome he didn't even know what google chrome was because i don't think i have one of those it's it's ironic i would actually aren't you know it's so crazy to think of evolution so i went through those four years it was the best like not having a laptop at the airport like it was the best and now it's completely the opposite right like my open claw computers like the most important thing in my life right it's just so fascinating wait what what are you doing with open clock gary i mean lots of things i think with open cost specifically i'm using it as a capture all for all information what's been really fascinating even with three admins and chief of staff and all this i'm still like i never got there like some of my friends where their chief of staff is with them in every meeting so there'd be like so much context lost right like in a meeting so much of tum mist so that for one of the first things i've done with open claw is it might even happen here i might literally take a photo of this screen sent to my open claw on text it's mainly for crm for me right now relationship wrap and then what's so amazing right is once it understands my relationship graph now i'm just building you know logic and agents on top of it like keep me updated on when things were happening like even sending you guys an email automatically in two years saying congrats on a trillion downloads because it knows i know you knows that was a milestone for you and i do want to you know say what's hey good you like like it's just like scaling all my favorite things about humans is definitely step one for me you just said something about relationships so and you have this guy nick d yeah i think i don't know if he's still with you at but he is this fascinated me he does these really interesting things he's like post these dinners almost like on behalf of gary who is this guy what is he doing so i'll i'll tell everybody who's listening this is actually a pretty this will be good this is gonna be good for your crew nick d is the bp of relationships he literally goes around the world and in essence he's been with me for twelve years started as an intern grew up in data media i trust him to represent me to some degree because i can't be everywhere and about two three years ago i realized my favorite thing about business is people it's probably why i ended up having an agency with three thousand people when that's not the best business model it's why i make so much content i just like the people part and nick just became another version of that which is like i can't be everywhere and who's got a better job than nick go around the world and listen carefully if there's something we could do something for someone for car right like jb no roi like like pay attention and nick you know me so well you know we have so much to give just keep her ear to the ground you know figure out who's got the right intent figure out who's talking shit and not talking to you you're like who's good who's gonna tell you what it was like from my perspective i got them dm from you and i don't think i you could have said it and there's a chance i didn't read it closely but it said like hey i'm gonna be in austin you wanna get dinner yes yeah i just said yes and then i just got sent an invite in the invite like said it could sent details but i show up and it's like fifty people it was at a very wealthy person's home to slip microsoft executives home yep and i'm like hey where's gary they're like oh he he's out here but i'm here i'm nick and i'm losing it on his behalf and yours was yours just felt like more of a rope dough yeah no but i i wanna give you credit i don't think i read it there's a chance i didn't read it but i get there and i met like remembered that party because i was one of the bigger ones it was never alluded like i apologize i apologize if we didn't work well but i remembered the context like we weren't trying to trick to me don't think so and i bet like i bet this cool dude named hunter do you know hunter i think it seems wood all he's got one leg and he like one apparel olympics he was badass ass i met like all these like it was like this athlete this microsoft executive this person this person i met all these cool guys it was awesome which is the easiest way by the way to spread good karma and good and like you know add value is hey let me just connect you with ten other awesome people versus what can i do for you right this that's the easiest way to do it yeah that is a that it was one and it was early in nick's world where i wanted him to get a broader like understanding of different people that were in the you know what's tough about things for busy people that like you know relationships is you just can't scale you're a human right and so like i end up with like these unlimited business acquaintances that i wish i could take to the next step and nick helps me scale that a little bit by decoding a little bit because i trust his intuition has been with me a long time grew up with me and he represents me well and he's smart and and and i trust him so then when he hits me and says hey this person really needs a new marketing person like this is how when i'm long gone i think good stories will come out like this is a true example hey this kid's got a good d brand it's gone from zero to twenty million we're not an investor in the company i've no vested interest they just lost their head of marketing he was like over dinner talking in a group of twelve like an east stressed and worried and then three weeks earlier one of my best people at bain came to me you know after eight years and said i don't wanna do agency anymore and like literally just putting that person in that company and everyone wins and literally i don't have a dollar in the company literally nothing literally no transact and like we do that in a way that i i now do feel free like in the last three years people are starting to understand gary and gary be a little more like because we're doing it at such scale that eventually the truth becomes your actual reputation i think to on the surface it's like okay great so this guy host dinners that's cool sounds like he's he's got a mandate to spread good karma and just help people that's cool i i think this is actually unbelievable and i can't believe you don't talk about this more this is like you know when that story came out a few years ago where it said lebron james spends a million dollars a year on this body yeah people went nuts and this went everywhere this is like a global thing other athletes turn on to this and i wouldn't i was thinking about it the other way i was like first of all obviously this guy's you a billion dollar athlete for him to spend a million dollar a year in his body that's like masse asus a trainer good a chef and there's nothing he should be spending three four times that if if anything second is what a great question everybody should ask themselves who wants to be great is what is your equivalent of spending a million dollars a year on your body and you know my executive coach for example he has spent a million dollars getting coaching himself from the best in different disciplines he would over pay and say how do i get wanna go do an immersion with you i know you usually do once a week i wanna do immersion because he's like i wanna be the best coach so i'm gonna go learn all the modalities from the best teachers of those modalities and i just think everybody should ask us and what you're doing with nick to me is the equivalent of lebron james spends a million dollars year on his body gary spends gary spent probably at this point five million plus ten million maybe developing relationships with people who he thinks are doing good things in the world he wants be the win in their sales i've have three full time employees at ben x who host influencers that are emerging to walk through the office and meet brand heel teams to maybe get them brand deals on pure karma yeah see that's amazing and i think that that that type of investment it only comes from first principles doing good things for people is literally the highest roi and lowest risk thing and most people think it's the highest risk thing because they're when they're doing something good they're not doing something good to doing something calculated with the expectation or at least minimally the hope that something comes back to them well but on the other side of that it could be like well i need to i'm spending money on these things i have bills to pay gotcha sam to your point i didn't do this the first thirty years of i quarterly i got to a place where i could afford investing in that yeah but i what i was gonna ask is i think that you've always you for from more i could tell you've always defaulted to hiring a lot of people i think like that it seems like that's how you like to operate and also you've defaulted to doing things that don't really make sense on paper but because your you it does appears though it it works out nicely in terms of profit how do you like justify doing some of these things that don't make any sense financially knowing that like when va media was five or ten years old and your margins were a bit tighter and you didn't have enough money to go around to do some of these wacky things and yet it's still appears as though you did do them it's a really good observation i think the very simplest clean you know this is now me respecting the audience because i think you have a sharp one it's because i think most things that are taught in business school are shorts sighted and are tactical versus how humanity actually works and business actually works like if you're and and then i would also say that i am inherently a marathon runner so i train for marathons in a world where most of my conte on paper or sprinter alexis o and was at one of our events and he checked me in the best way possible we were talking about yeah we wanted to get this great group together there's you know we don't charge anything i pay for this whole event out of pocket and i paid like a quarter million dollars a year just host this event and it's like look i asked nothing in return which it's all about you know he's just having a really everybody's like this we're all like a generous true and he goes no no that's not it i was like oh shit what is he what is he about to say and he goes he goes it's just the difference between short term greedy and long term greedy he goes you know i'm he was in the first yc batch and he goes one of the beautiful things about silicon valleys you learned the virtue of long term long term greedy people and he goes it's not a bad thing it's everybody obviously wants their interest but when it's long term greedy you're gonna play totally different game than short term greedy that's exactly right and i would tell you my nuance that i do see in some others which is why gravitate towards them is and then if you're greed is about rainy day human stuff not money in your bank it becomes an extreme nuance of that what's rainy day human stuff what does that i mean i probably do everything i'm doing not to get into a deal in nine years put a million and make forty million more for my daughter has an issue in in nineteen years in her personal life and for some reason sam's nephew can help her i'm good enough to take care of my money part sometimes it's hard to run a business that way being nice all the time because you have to make difficult decisions like firing someone if they suck but you seem like you are really bad fire i literally wrote a book because i was so bad at it i hit it but it was called twelve and a half and in the book the thirteenth principle was a half and it was called can and i spoke about my journey and i was only ready sam to write about it you know you can only talk about your alcoholism when you're like close to fixing it right like and and by the way back to like alcoholism or what i was dealing with which was you're incredibly wrong sam i wasn't in a bad fire i was an all time atrocious firearm right like and i didn't see it right all of us currently the three of us and we're proud of ourselves in certain areas and know we can do but currently by far the biggest problem the three of us had is something we can't see i used to think of it as my ultimate strength sam and it had so many beautiful effects it led to so much good but it actually ended up leading to the worst of the worst meaning you i've been really managing people since i was eighteen years old right but the liquor store for real like truly like this eighteen year old child is the boss you know because he's the boss's is son in this liquor store and all the way up to where him now and so i used to think my greatest strength was eliminating fear i had superhero syndrome right like i can take care of everything i got it and i had this day in my early forties which led me to writing the book where i realized i thought everybody was rolling with me with lack of fear but that many of my company were scared because they didn't know where they stood with me because i was unable to do can and on friday i was like sammy get out the best weekend my guy like have like really i think you guys know i'm a little go lucky that way i'm to say i at the best fucking weekend this weekend right and you're working with va for three years you're like alright gary like you too and then like monday i'd be like you talk to you in my office real hey so you know give me your last day and by the way i've been sitting on this for a year and a half back to you your points sam right and is your last day and you're like bro like i like you've never said anything like and then i would blame you i'd like sam you're you're so could you then i would talk to sean be like sean could you leave say like everyone company knows sam sucked for the last eighteen months i was giving him a gift for the last year of charity and he's mad at me i was coming up with that excuse so my can was at a zero i brit so i have this real waters moment where a group of former va employees like we're in a facebook group like not talking nicely about me and these were people i really had a lot of continue ironically like you know it's funny that person also over time realizes what they did so there was like a a lot of them i reconciled with in a great way but it was really hurtful but i knew i had to be accountable like why are these people are all lovely people who i really went to bad for and a lot of great things for really nice careers on the equity of their time with me why aren't are they shitting on me and it was all and i knew it ed because i've just looked at the eight names and i was like these were all sloppy exits you know what's funny is have you guys sort of obviously we have but jensen hung the nvidia guy he has this great line where he's like i'm not gonna fire you i'm gonna squeeze you so hard that greatness comes out of you right then interestingly day port the founder of bar he had another point where he goes i never fire anyone i refused to fire anyone but we are gonna make you great like he said something like that and i thought that was so fascinating it he because that's the exact opposite of what i think you know we had neil patel on and neil was like i only hire people who have been there done that i only hire people who have built this thing already that i want built and if they can't do it then i fire them within a week which is probably honestly the more common attribute of like just hiring people who have been there done that and then if they suck right away you know you hear a higher slow fire fast i bleed into both those categories by the way and then have a third element which is i'm the cliche girl that wants to date the bad boy because i'm fix him right so if i didn't have entrepreneurial dna i would one hundred percent be a therapist guidance counselor or a coach right like and so i allowed both in my investing and in my operating too much in my twenties through mid forties too much of my profit therapy dna into my day day i've been able to clean it up in the last five years and let me say this to anyone who's struggling with being too nice you know or because it was never that i was scared to not be liked it was that i thought i could fix it that i would squeeze it that i make it but through love not like trash you like what you know and and so for anyone is struggling with this like there's a better way like you know can't let let me say this way as long as you're delivering things with can all of it becomes dramatically more pal i was not i was holding it all in that became the vulnerability and i'm really glad as i've gotten a fifty i'm now in that place where it could be a lot better and it and it showed up in the business results i've been a dramatically better ceo the last three four years where i've cleaned up my can i rebranded it in a kind can it became to eat ethos of our company because i think can a lot of times is used as an excuse to be a dick face and suppress people and so we had to put that word kind in front of it and it's it's worked for me and for my leadership and it's been a big step forward to my career you give a lot of coaching and advice to entrepreneurs around the world could you learn from so i learn from my mother's by far number one by a country mile because almost the far majority of what i do is predicated on the people and emotional intelligence front more than the information i learned through social media at scale right just like just consuming content at scale from random people that are farming carrots in idaho to someone going deep cut on what they're doing with claude code to po and truly like i am a product of this era like in news this video are you are you turning the sound on lately when you know when you're scrolling on instagram honestly like i you know i'm pissed right now because i want to my favorite thing is to give flowers and the truth is it's so weird sam like my brother for example would answer this epic he's got his ex so dialed in and he would sit here and talk about ai or live shop like he would give you like seven names that he'd be like so good and i'm so shitty because the answer is i have seven active businesses that are doing more than eight figures a year in revenue where i am meaningfully involved what which ones are those tell us about it what what what what do we go break it down va media va x which is four hundred million of revenue i am the day to day ceo and that that owns all the other six no it owns it owns none of the other six next wow va sports it was va sports doing exactly oh sports to sports representation so we rep kirk cousins sauce gardner aiden hutchinson bob and and and i all stuff too now or just pros and i all at scale we yeah probably three hundred college athletes okay that's doing tens of millions that's doing tens of millions in revenue i have cr group which is a restaurant group which is if you remember famously i had that n nxt restaurant news alert everyone it's crushing it's called fly fish club we also have tape ponds like it and five restaurants in and i'm actively involved texting what david rod it's all the time so vc group tens of millions in revenue as a restaurant group i have v friends v friends is probably the thing i'm most like a aj and david rod are one a in the prior two businesses i am one a in v friends vi friends is gonna do minimally twenty million in revenue this year in licensing and selling comic books and coins and trading cards i'm building a true brand like that by the way that is a dark horse chance to be really one of my greatest roses because all the ashes of the n nxt era that i'm gonna get to the other side and be marvel and pokemon is gonna with everyone so heavy in fifteen years wine library people would be fl how involved i still am in the wine business my best friend runs it i am definitely one b to my dad and brandon one a but i work on it every single day one that's really under the rate radar vein watt i have a very successful tv production company that's kind of brewing right now called vein watt we have a bunch of shows that have quietly just sold so you like literally on hulu and abc b and netflix like you're gonna see bain watt va what pop up and then finally and i'm sure not lost on you guys the the n n and brand of gary v i have a full massive team on it speaking in books and content and n i deals do do you have ads or just or is it monetize via speaking i did a deal with stan i did a deal with masterclass i'm starting to collect i'm starting to be open to gary beat i don't do like a brand deal i'll look at seven and eight figure n i deals where it's really integrated potentially me doing a little consulting as well but i think you guys are probably i'm writing a new book called the individual empire which talks about the me the bartlett the alex cooper's that the the rise of the creator entrepreneur the entrepreneur creator as the next fortune five hundred companies and i belief with ai blockchain evolving social deeper you know decent central centralization of hollywood and and madison avenue and wall street that the biggest companies in the world are human based organizations where the human either has a partner that could operate or they're a me where they can be both hey everyone really quick if you're enjoying this episode on ceo stuff so del heavy hard conversations with your team hiring then i've got something for you so the team at hubspot they actually went and put together a bunch of best practices that sean and i use in our own companies and they put it together and something that's really easy to read and understand and so you wanna just save yourself ten years of headache and heartache then you should check it out i wish we had this long time ago would help me a lot but there should be a qr code on your screen that you can scan or a link of the description so check it out it's totally free and totally awesome you just named like six or seven companies that are doing eight figures that you're like i'm either the one a or the one b and i think that's awesome because i too wish i had ninety six hours a day and so you know walk us through what's the what does the day look like what's the time blocking look like for this right like what's a day in the life of gary v to do all this you know i wake up at six or seven there's a workout session every day ish i'm pretty much an eight to eight thirty to eight to nine am star point done between eight and ten pm depending on the day but there's not a single break no launch no anything every minutes booked sixty percent of the meetings are fifteen minutes and again let's get to the point here right let's get to the point here this is thirty years of building equity and my secret weapon was hiring people and again you guys again this is fun talking to you then let's say a net new podcast where i've interacted a little bit with you guys i this feeling that i was gonna be able to have a lot of really good a and b players around me that would stay with me that could do bigger things could do things on her own but that the relationship and that they would believe in me and then that they would say you know in fifteen years i might actually make more money being gary's number thirteen versus me my own number i just had this in into it and that i could convert these into b's and c's into b's i just had this feeling that my superpower was the human relationship side and so the reason i can do this so yes i work a lot and yes i mean i'm un uncomfortable efficient with my time and yes i'm on a boat which has seven holes and i put my finger in the one that needs it most for every parent that knows you're only as happy as your most unhappy child and so my ebb and flows of like oh shit banner sports needs to be or shit banner like there's all that but the real reason is because of the fifty people from ryan har or kale or claude or jt or a aj and greg or david rod and connor ham or andy kaye and john and jt t john t in may and rips some friends or brandon warner on wine library or eric watt bain watt on that and i've got another one coming that i'll announce next year standalone business and it's somebody who's worked for me for eleven years who's gonna be my cofounder founder and i had the experience with res you know like people forget that i'm the cofounder an inventor of res but i had ben eleventh ball be the one a i was the 1b b and that was a hefty nine figure exit and i had empathy wines two former interns of mine who worked for me for eleven years and we started empathy wines in eighteen months sold it for almost nine figure hefty the eight figure deal to constellation brands in eighteen months just like you know what i one's like grew ins i'm like i did that not not to one point two billion but it's because when i do things on a net new business the person is my family member it's family business we know everything about each other it's seven to ten years before we decided to do x y and z they roll differently than a lot of people trying it with net new people they hire randomly well i was listening to your podcast this morning and someone asked a question that a lot of content creators ask they said i'm doing live the shopping and live streaming but i don't wanna do this all the time and i'm nervous that this all relies on me and i wanna get other content creators you have listed six or seven businesses doing tens of millions in revenue and it all is started off of you and i don't know what percent is run or you get customers still for each thing because of you but a lot of it's based on you and your content do you get nervous about that or do not care you think i just love this so much that i ain't going anywhere not only is that true sam i think i'm the preview this is what's going to happen this is what is happening like if you look at the derivatives of all the people that are like kind of that crew right now now what do you think is happening and then of course there's kylie jenner and hailey bieber where they need a business person to also be round but then there's also like i mean you guys are like in pot you know everyone has different hopes and dreams and say you've nailed it like to me like i love this shit bro you know people go and buy a home in the bahamas and that's and play golf and that in baker's bay and that's their is when they need an escape when i need a break from invader which i do a locks client services sucks shit i don't go to aspen i go to two days off sides for v friends because it fills my soul and i do the comic stories of my characters you know or i go to a half day at wine library and talk to brandon because he's my best friend since i was fourteen and i need it for my soul but then we also fixed the business what what's going on in these fifteen minute meetings because i suspect what you're doing in fifteen minutes has taken most people an hour so maybe you have a format mad bro you took my shit i was used asked that i was about to say the thing that everyone else is spending an hour on well this is gonna be one of the highlights that i know from this meeting this podcast everyone's gonna i looked that i said meeting this feels more like a business meeting that is why you guys are so successful everyone's gonna say yes right now on the treadmill walking the dog in their car on a plane or however they're consuming this everyone's meetings are twice as long as they need to be if they're a winner and they know it you got slam poetry snaps for me and i just went there i knew it subconsciously then it begins that i'm just you know then years went on in a became conscious and then i executed i have this huge pride of how underrated as a business man i am because what i just dropped on you guys literally nobody really knows which is wild because i'm gary and i'm talking all the time and i think i got there on the the fifteen minute meeting and the family business vibes of my partners and crimes in the top and by the way it's not just one person like every company requires three or four family members for it to really work the way it works for me because you gotta have a backup and a backup and a backup because there's so many variables that can go into these things so the fifteen minute meeting has been gangster for me game changing for me i do think i'm getting three days of work in one day this is all happening at a time where i'm spending more i mean more time with my family than ever you know i have teenage kids i am a wife it's just like you can be so much more efficient if you have remarkable people around you and you're obsessed with not wasting time to fill the slot what percentage of those meetings are you making decisions are being informed i would say thirty percent on being informed seventy percent of making decisions that's insane that's hard get the context switching the that that's challenging you know it's funny you said that i've got a bunch of new film people because all my people who lock this feels incredible go on to these incredible things after they filmed me for a little while and get all these offers or start doing things and so i constantly have a d rock coming through you know every year or two the number one thing sam every single new admin and every single new person that builds me says is they do not understand the switching i think i clearly dna i wonder if growing up in retail where you're just switching like everything's just always on i don't well i actually think that sometimes when i say context switching we had a guy our one of our friends came on the podcast and like as we were doing the sound check he got a text from his daughter saying she didn't get into the college that she wanted to get into and it screwed him up like the the rest of the podcast was kinda shaky because he was like oh i'm so sorry i can't stop thinking about my daughter just texted me minutes i'm so sad for her i think one it's it i'd come to learn it's unique to do that too now you're really talking about it that has definitely been even that has definitely been something i'm that i got for my mother which is being able to carry in the moment adversity and negativity and still show up like i think a lot about that as a leader like i get a lot of bad news every day one i'm psycho and i'm in the hr of all my companies and now we have so many goddamn employees every day someone's dad is it's just like i wanna know if somebody in my company is going through tough stuff and then there's just when you're in client services we went sixteen months without losing a client at ben x we're ripping hot right and then recently in the last sixty days we've lost two and and first one was not surprising the second one was a little bit and i was walking right into another thing and i was just like it's funny you say that i was like man i really gotten to that because i was pissed and like i wanted to to fix it but i knew i had to show up for this thing and this thing and this thing and then not to mention all the things that happened in my personal life similar to the college thing there's always something just like being able to like eat shit and firefight fight is like a really strong emotional framework that is hard what about no notification fatigue i i tease sean all the time sean what's the joke what's the stereotype if i want if anyone wants to get a hold of you do you do you know what that stereotype is about you sean call ben i don't know no you sean will not reply getting a in touch with sean when do you need to except as is a pain of the butt with me i tend to reply but it wears me out i get so exhausted because i feel like i wanna like please these people sean worst part as i go to them him and i say hey long time no talk when i think somebody and i see that actually they have been talking and i haven't i'm like okay i should even send this maybe i should just i would say i'm in between you guys i try to reply a lot i use flights quite a bit to catch up and then if they can't get me dig get to the admins and the admins have a good sense of my reality how do you decide what projects to go into because you know for the six or whatever you said that are working obviously maybe a couple didn't work and then there's hundreds of opportunities you're saying no to so what's the bar now what's the box how do you think about that my tummy just got yeah like i want to do this and i wanna do with this person not a good gary sick cute like you say me tell me i guess i gotta tell me tickle you know it's just there's so much serendipity hear it i'm very comfortable dying on my sword which is my intuition i'm very comfortable well have you guys all ever came close to bankruptcy or or not being able to make payroll you know it's funny but make payroll res was in trouble i had to put personal money in that i didn't really have at the time but nothing i've ever operated as the one day you know i got trained by a soviet immigrant father who didn't even little raising capital forget it debt forget it literally didn't have a credit line and we were in the liquor business where you had to legally pay your bills on thirty day terms where you went on cod to the whole industry and you couldn't get product so i think i got trained so well you know always have money in the bank for rainy day and thirty day terms legally bounded by the alcohol laws of america and no credit line that by the time i went to my own journey full time it was in my subconscious of like well you always have that money the f alright let's take a quick break and i got a question for you when a buyer ass ai for a solution like yours does your business come up most companies have no idea and by the time they found out they've already lost the deal to another company that did hubspot has ae o which helps you show up in the moments when thread buyers are looking for a company like yours before the first click before they fill in the form that is the moment hubspot ae is built for check out hubspot dot com the agent customer platform for growing businesses you meet a lot of people who do you think is doing cool shit right now what are you know either businesses that are kind of blown your mind maybe something that's taking off faster than you would have expected maybe something totally unrelated to what you do but wow you know you you get exposed to stuff that the average person doesn't where you seeing a lot of heat right now are so many good areas i mean like you know i'll answer a question that might bring i'm trying to think about how to bring the most value to the audience i'll go to places where people are betting on five years from now not to create an exit five months from now so that takes me to people that are really spending time on advanced ai like really knowing where the stigma is today but won't be in five years right like creating a entire agency of virtual people right knowing right now it's a little weird but let's survive three to five years and we're gonna have the cia of virtual people they're all gonna be the most famous virtual people and we own it you're in the ip business not the representation business that i like i love everything and this is my wheelhouse but i love everyone who sells something to the consumer that realizes what live shopping do in the e commerce is what e commerce did to real comp like real life and so what i mean by that is like in six to ten years you know i think e com now is what twenty five thirty percent of the market like in six to ten years live shopping will actually be ten to fifteen percent of all commerce and that is scary big did you invest in what whatnot i did not i talk about when not all not an investment possible you've been talking about live selling for years one you'll love this anytime i've invested in something that i end up having to talk about a lot i make a lot of content i'm upfront that i'm an investor so the way you know if i'm an investor and something is i'm saying it a lot early on because i never so you know what i'm sure everyone thinks i did and by the way it it ran through my table like i don't i wasn't actively investing at the time which is the answer sean to why i didn't and i know it crossed my desk but i never took like a meaningful meeting with grant but i'm so happy for him he's done a great job i'm happy for the people that invested i think sean didn't they ask you to invest in the seed and you forgot to reply to the email no no no that was a that was a not a finally one i didn't shoot myself in the foot somebody else shot me in the foot i met with grant i was like i love this my last business got acquired by twitch i'm amazing have you have i told you how amazing i am you gotta let me invest and rounded like just clothes but a lot of times they'll let you in if they like you they'll they'll open up or they'll they'll they'll squeeze you in he he was just like let me see what i can do and i didn't hunt to chase it down like ten times more and i just let it go and yeah know that was a that's a big mess i have a great email in my inbox from joe at bed bed and breakfast brent yeah i'm trying to remember was it yeah bed and breakfast dot com that's a good one yeah do you have any other ones that you haven't talked about yeah i know you have uber obviously that's the famous one airbnb but i never saw the email so it doesn't hurt pinterest i had a guy who was the cs the chief strategy offer at campbell soup who was like sixty years old said gary you gotta look at this start up from pennsylvania that's how he said it my friend's cousin knows the guy i'm like okay that's like i'm that's yeah it's like i got horse that's like getting a script for hollywood in shut you know i didn't even like contemplate it yeah so that was close and then but i got in later through scott be what a great investor he is by the way he invested in i think uber and pinterest in the same couple of weeks both at a three and a half million dollar valuation both was like twenty five thousand dollar checks when he had like that's exactly seventy five he told me he had like he's like i he's like i had seventy five grand in personal savings and i put twenty five in each of those companies course it's like eight or nine figures and by the way he's better than that even like he's got more wins and he's an operator he's one of the best yeah i mean i mean matt you know one of the reasons i'm starting my next thing is a lot of cp magic spoon a lot of good brands came to bain wanting us to be the people but we didn't take on those kind of clients some things i invested in some i didn't i wanna be better at that of my biggest win that i don't deserve is gonna be liquid death mike worked at va media the day before he started liquid death as a creative and he sent me an and said hey i'm leaving thank you for your time learned a lot here by the way i'm doing this thing would you like to invest he was a creative i'm a cliche businessman that things creative are our business people right so i was like you know and i didn't know him well enough because we had a big company at that point well he's also saying that he's launching a water company called liquid death like that is like a silly they got paper you'll appreciate this the way i think about branding and marketing it actually fits me more than a dozen for me the way i like stuff so that wasn't the crazy part i was kind of agnostic about that part i thought it could work but i didn't think it was brilliant and i definitely didn't think what a lot of people thought which is it has no chance because on consumer brands marketing isn't an a stunning variable especially if the product's commodity and water as a commodity right like water and plastic versus watering and can doesn't really change the variable in fact the can is the advantage so i understood that part it was more interesting why i invest it goes back to this nice guy theme a little bit i just wanted to invest because i wanna support my employees on their own ventures so i literally did it for that reason only and you know that's gonna be a bottoms first check ins thanks podcast guess is brought you by my friends at mercury they make the world's best banking product i think you know this already i used mercury all my businesses i think i have like maybe seven or eight businesses we use mercury as our business banking across all of them and now they actually just launched a personal banking account so i have my personal account there i moved off of wells fargo in chase i'm just all in on mercury why i like products that are easy to use i products that get me and the problems that i have so like it very easy to make a joint account with my wife very easy to spin up virtual cards one click and i get savings yield it just has all the stuff that i need in one place so if you're looking for the best banking product on the market stephanie mercury i will fist fight anybody who disagree disagrees with me on that go to mercury dot com slash personal and learn more mercury is a fintech not an fdic insured bank banking services are provided through choice financial group and call them an a members fdic you're significantly larger than both of us but we sort of run in the same world and there's a lot of scammers and shady people in this like content and business world like i've noticed that as we've gotten bigger i've tried to be very careful about who i associate with yeah being a nice guy do you struggle to like say i don't wanna be around this person like they have a background of doing x y and z or they don't they don't or they're they're they have political beliefs that i don't buy into and i don't wanna be associated political i'll i'll be on and you guys know noticed i never talk politics politics political beliefs won't throw me off because i'm very empathetic that people can see the world i mean hate or like ridiculous on both the leptin and extreme left and racism as we know it today sure but like political beliefs know but i don't think they do honorable work sure i've struggled with that and you know also you know me being on the speaking circuit for so long sometimes those you know those kind of carriers might be at the same place and they wanna a quick selfie and i don't want and that's what i'm talking about yeah yeah and you know this there i i i you know you're smart and so i know that question is grounded in you know that i've avoided a lot of stuff and association and that's the reason yeah of course you never i mean there's people the amount of people that will take a self forget about people we know there are people that are tier nineteen people that are trying to do this they have like four followers and they sell up four thousand dollar course and they're criminals right they'll take a selfie with me at the airport and then make a post and say that like we had a meeting at the airport to strategize their mastermind well they did when they asked you a question i got it's you do have to be conscious of that and you do need to worry about your n and your reputation it is on my mind and now what deep fakes and where this is all going i think about that stuff all the time because when i think of the epstein files because i'm like a huge true crime fan and so i've seen the epstein files like the j mail you know you can like go through his email i'm like i always wanna be so careful about who i'm speaking with again i'm freaked me out man i will tell you and you guys know this i make a lot of content about my mom and like it's just i can't help not say it like you just talk them everything that goes to my brain while you were just saying that thing on the epstein because i think about that too i'm like who's emailed me through the years and what but the thing i can rely on sam is i am not cliche human meaning i don't say like things that are not nice be like i'm definitely not in writing you know like you and so like i don't worry about that luckily in an august credit powers has raised like i really believe being the bigger person being a nice person you know what's really interesting to about actually i wanna ask you guys a question this flows be away we are fortunate we've worked hard we had talent we're at where we're at and what that allows us is to spend some time in private and public settings with other people that have won the thing that completely rocked me and when it was happening to me in my conte my era was how many winners and i mean winners they've got the girl they've got crazy money they've got it well actually still spend most of their time shitting on other winners out of envy or i don't even know what and i'm like this energy like i'm like what do like i had to say this to a couple buddies not too long i'm like you guys are a bunch of fourteen year old bitches i'm like what are you talking about she should be happy for x y z that they're crushing it yeah he's not the nicest ever but he's not a piece of shit and by way everything you're shitting on you guys do the same shit what is this like you're winning like focus on winning if you're so actually sad that they want even more than you and you got feelings about it why don't you take these three hours of bitch about this person like yet does and go build something well sean what percentage of incredibly successful people do you know who you think are are good wonderful people with good attitudes i think they're good wonderful people with good attitudes but are they're definitely imbalance in some core way right like there's they're not well rounded chill ass you know people right like i think they you're you're unlikely to be extreme winner without some version of an extreme personality sure and that i think that's fair hunter thompson said that he said there's there's no reasonable people on the top of mount everest yeah gary i had a a person kinda point this out to me about about why this happened so i don't know if you've ever read like the renee gerard like meme theories like peter ti is really big on this so basically the core thing you'll get this as a consumer guy which is that we don't want what we want because we want it we want it because other people want it yeah for whether it's your luxury bag that you're or believe that's in fact in fact this is where all my gratitude comes from mother and dna i want it for my process not because others want it and it makes me feel simple but it's very clear to me that most are the other way yeah so so i think most people have this sort of meme nomadic drive right and this way why you see trends and fad catch on because i wanna go by needles right now because all the other kids are buying needles and i wanna this because other people say this i wanna wear jordans because they wear where jordan right so so that's like a normal thing and there's a another term in that philosophy that's called a meme rival and so i was on a i was on this plane ride and i had this embarrassing moment where i was admitting to somebody i was like you know what i feel stupid even saying this but god it kinda drove me nuts the way this guy was saying that i was kinda about somebody was i rarely do but i was doing it and i was like honestly i was like guys i feel stupid saying this but like that shit bothered me and like blah lot and he goes he goes you know what he goes that person person's your meme rival like what's a meme rival basically it's like i don't know if you saw when bezos was launching like his rocket and elon rocket and then they had this really massive aggressive thing i it's in elon biography it's very funny yeah because he's like congratulations to jeff on the first sub orbital and he's like you on landed it and he's like congratulations on the first successful landing from only a you know two mega ton whatever it's like they added these little qualifier they started blocking each other because for each other they're rivals right and like and it's just very strange thing you think these are the most secure people on earth but we all have a core part of us that has it's have you learned to tame and it's funny i literally believe the reverse i genuinely believe that the far majority of people get to the top from extreme security hey let me ask you one more question and you could and you don't have to answer if you don't want to if it's too private but with the six or seven businesses that you've named they're badass ass and like i'm looking at the people you hired or i guess they're you're they're they are your c cofounder they're freaking awesome and i was looking at some of your partners and your other businesses in order to get these off the ground do you have to fund them personally or do you get backers for a lot of these things because you it's not like i'm reading this deadline article and you have like a list of like five or six people and their baller and i'm like those guys aren't cheap and he's gonna watts steve ross owner to dolphins who's in media with me as well he funded that he wanted to be a part of that on the rest i funded that's awesome like i was looking at i didn't know but that you had a restaurant and i was looking at that and it looked like a membership club and i looked at the interiors and i was like no it was a it was a meaningful build out like no it's it's been really cool like i i've been a really fun part of my career i'm actually i actually just use this platform this incredible platform so thank you for having me of talk a little bit more because i actually wanna start talking a little bit more about either the juggle to your point earlier i am proud of what i'm doing and i you know no one really knows which is wild and i'm proud of that too right that goes to the humility but now i'm maybe ready for being like hey guys by the way i'm not a motivational speaker right that might actually be a weirdly good operator at scale well sean google fly fish club manhattan or just fly fish club please come when you guys are new york you'll be blown i live here now gary i live in the right sides here so like asap email me after this like asap asap i want you to see it it's it's a three story restaurant with a private policy really gets real but more importantly because you know this it could also be going out of business tomorrow meaning it's a like the business is extremely viable the the in fact sam now that you're here upper less side if you just go over to g w which i know was counterintuitive the rest restaurant we opened in bergen county new jersey called capo bonds chop house we now know we're about to open another one in west chester we're about to open fifty of those in high network neighborhoods of the biggest cities in the world we got the model we got it and and don't forget this the brilliance of what i think when when it's all written the v x marketing machine impacts all these businesses right what's the model it it says that it's a membership the model is open up the new version of ruth crisp and like the best steak steakhouse that has the most new york city vibes just not in new york city and everyone in bridges and tunnels of the seven most important places on earth that have high net worth individuals are gonna sell the shit out of these places it's not a new invented model a member you have to be coupons is just coupons is just a roof wrist steak steakhouse two point o but we have a very strong what we do to eugene credit to g men's credit to noah his credit those places have nailed cool right there's that nightlife element we're going twenty percent less on that and twenty percent more on food we think the secret to retention lt is just execute a food program that is so undeniable and a little bit of that sizzle but your stakes gotta be right right right like our strategy is killer chicken par it's like yes actually that's kinda what people want you've gotten into this business genius he decided this already a an agency and a a restaurant the two best businesses on earth you literally the two worst and again this is a great way to end it up which is like i'm playing for what makes me feel good not just maximizing the dollars and then on the other side i'm gonna turn v friends into pokemon and it's gonna be one of the most valuable intellectual prop reason world in twenty years which in an ai world will have an extraordinary amount of value and will be the best kind of business someone can build well we appreciate you man you're the shit thank you guys yeah hey well wish you well that's it that's a pod i feel like i could rude world i know i could be what i want to put my all in it like a days off on a travel never look hey let's take a quick break i wanna tell you about a podcast that you could check out it is called the science of scaling by mark robe he was the founding ceo of hubspot and he's a guest lecturer at harvard business school the guy smart and he sits down every week with different sales leaders from cool companies like cla y and van and open ai and he's asking about their strategies their tactics and how they're growing their companies as you know head of sales or chief revenue officer if you're looking at to scale a company up if you're a cro or a head of sales just look to level up in your career i think a podcast like this could be great for you listen to the science of scaling wherever you get your podcast