April 10, 2025 • 43 mins
It’s not about impressing people—it’s about impact. Gary Vee talks about the power of authenticity, why kindness is his competitive edge, and how staying true to yourself is the ultimate key to winning in business and life.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Today's guest needs no introduction, but I'm going to give
him one anyway, because his story is just that good.
Gary Vanachuk, entrepreneur, investor, producer, host, best selling author, and
one of the most electrifying voices in business today, is
joining us. From building Wine Library into a powerhouse, to
leading Vaynerrex Veno Media, be Friends, Veno Sports, Venusree and
(00:26):
shaping the future of marketing and so much more. Gary
has redefined what it means to stay ahead of the game.
His insights on brand culture and the power of attention
are legendary, and his energy absolutely unstoppable. So get ready
for an unfiltered, no bullshited conversation about his personal story,
the future of business, content, social, and what it really
(00:49):
takes to win in today's world. Gary, Welcome to the show.
I'm honored to have you with us.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
That was very nice. Thank you for having me. I'm
glad to be here. Let's do that.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Yes, awesome, great. So I always started with a couple
of more personal questions, so I would love to ask you.
You are as I said, you know, a high energy entrepreneur,
marketing guru, futurists. However, we call you and you let
us know maybe in a minute, but that barely scratches
the surface of so many talents. With all the projects
and companies you've already launched, what's one idea or one
(01:21):
passion you haven't had time to pursue yet but would
love to bring to life sooner rather than later. Is
there anything that's a great question to start this up?
Speaker 2 (01:30):
And it's really tough one because really, v friends, was
that I knew my whole life that I either want
to buy or start an intellectual property. You know, I'm
forty nine years old. I grew up in the eighties.
It was everything Star Wars, you know et you know, Transformers,
Gi Joe and I have three and a half, your
(01:52):
younger sister I was very close to. So it was
Cabbage Patch Kids and my little Pony and Strawberry Shortcake,
and you know, it was just back to the future.
There was so much good going on in the eighties
of intellectual property being created. So I would say that
one always loomed I got to it. I would say,
the last thing I really want to get to for
(02:13):
sure is I do get excited about the concept of
doing private equity to buy iconic nostalgic brands and refurbish
them with contemporary marketing. And that's why I started Vainermedia
in a lot of ways. So that's still looming for me.
And then I want to have an era where I
go to a cave and not shave for a year
(02:35):
and just have people find me and ask me questions,
like a Yoda like character. So I definitely want to
scratch that in my career, like a sabbatical where I
just give back on a one to one level in
an unscalpable fashion. Obviously I just used a silly kind
of example, but something like that is something else I
want to do professionally, and there's probably some other things
(02:57):
for sure.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Awesome, Awesome, I mean what an ants as the first
for the crush questions? And obviously you know, if we
weren't possible long enough, you know, we won't become iconic
enough for you maybe to step into our business as well,
maybe in fifty years or something like this. All right,
good to know it, was there ever a moment in
your childhood, you know, in your early days that perfectly
foreshadowt the entrepreneur you would become. Was there a moment
(03:20):
where you where you learn about this and you knew
what to do in your life.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
The first part, for sure. I actually ironically just brought
it up earlier today. I am fascinated to this day
of how interesting my Lemonade Stan career was. You know,
having a lemonade Stan is such a tail tale kind
of indication to entrepreneurship, especially in the eighties and nineties. Ye,
(03:46):
but when I did my lemonade Stan, I you love
this Christian. I spent more time making signs and figuring
out what tree and what poll to put it on,
and so the even at my early stage, it was
clear that I was going to be a marketer, because
I think I put more time into marketing my lemonade
stand than definitely making the lemonade. I think I should
(04:06):
have done a better job making it a little more delicious.
There's too much sugar in there, So that's that I think. Yeah,
very early on the first time I did a baseball
card show, selling my own baseball cards in a mall
in New Jersey, I knew that I would never not
be a businessman, you know. So somewhere around five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve,
those formative childhood years when it would snow and we
(04:30):
would have a day off from school. Most of the
kids went and made snowmen and had snowball fights. And
I did a lot of that too, but I would
say at least thirty to fifty percent of the snow days,
I would go into my parents' garage, grab a shovel,
and go ring doorbells and work hard for five bucks.
(04:50):
And so my childhood is an incredibly clear preview to
who I became. And I think one of the reasons
business works for me is I do it for the game,
not for the money that comes along with the game.
And I see a lot of people who do that,
and I think they're happier, less anxious, not always more
financially successful. I see a lot of people who just
(05:10):
do it for the money make more money than people
that do it for the love of the game, but
all of them are less happy, more anxious, and I'm
very grateful.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
I agree completely with you that you know, having just
one motivation doesn't matter what it is, you know will
limit you in your success and your business success, whether
it's just going for money or or just having fun.
I think it has to be a kind of combination
of a lot of things. However, we come back to
this in a second. Okay, So one thing I would
love to hear from you is, you know, if you
had to choose, what would you say is your most
(05:42):
defining character trait? Is it a perseverance, is it creativity,
is it integrity? Or is it something completely different?
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Self awareness?
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Self awareness?
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Yeah, if you ask me to answer you on that,
I think being competitive is very up there. Yeah, being
tenacious is very up there. I think optimistic is huge
for me. And I know people are confused by this,
but I think being kind has been extraordinarily important to
my success. As you know, because we run in the
(06:15):
same industry. There may be some people that don't like me,
but nobody who actually knows me doesn't think that I'm
not a nice guy. And I'm proud of that, and
that's an indication of being well parented and a strength
of kindness. But all of those things are secondary. I
think self awareness, which I think leads to the combination
of confidence and humility. Yeah, you know, I just know
(06:39):
who I am, and I know what I'm good at,
and I know what I'm not good at, and the
things that I'm not good at, I don't think I
stink that doesn't lead to insecurity. That just leads to reality.
Everybody has strengths and weaknesses. I feel like I'm also
empathetically self aware, meaning when I was when I was
a bad student, I understand I was coming into business world.
(07:00):
I knew that people thought I was dumb and not
good because in the eighties and nineties, where you went
to college was the indication of your worth. And I
wasn't upset that people thought I wasn't going to be good.
I understood them. Today, when I walk into a room
in our industry and I can see someone's like not jiving,
I'm empathetic. I'm like, oh, that must be a competitor
(07:22):
who doesn't know me or took something I said out
of context. So I think self awareness has been the one.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Which is a huge achievement. I think if you know
who you are, I think that's a big advantage how
to act and that people can really rely on you
whatever personality you are. I think that's a huge achievement.
I think obviously you've met and you've mentored so many people,
young people, senior leaders across the industries. Who's the one
person who has truly surprised you with their journey, and
(07:50):
why is there one who stands out of this? Maybe
you had a complete different expectation, you know, meeting this person.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Well, i'll give you an interest one. I'll go with
age a Bayer truck. I'll go with my brother in
this one, all right. My brother grew up very similar
to me. We're eleven years apart. We grew up differently
because we were in different economic situations in our childhood.
But he's incredibly capable. He has a lot of strengths
that are stronger than mine. He's wildly competitive. He's extremely ambitious.
(08:21):
You know, you said you are. I don't know if
he's more ambitious, but you know where I'm about to
go with this story is interesting, you said, who surprised you?
Aj has Crohn's disease, and early in his career at
Vayner he had a pretty bad spell and had to
(08:42):
have a decent chunk of his small intestine taken out
and it completely changed the course of his life. My
brother is way more rounded than I anticipated. I saw
him as, you know, a little bit more like me.
And because he is a lot like me, right, and
I'm saying this as a positive, I'm really proud of
(09:05):
him as a father of three young little ones, as
a human who has found lots of time for his
passion and golf in his tempered ambitions of professional achievement.
I think he's incredibly well rounded and incredibly comfortable in
his skin, and also has a brother that went on
(09:27):
to be really like me, you know, and just the
way he cheers for me and doesn't see it as
a negative, and the way he preshoots me. I'm just grateful,
as you could probably tell by my tone. But if
I'm truly going with surprise because I had so many
expectations because I just watched him and enjoyed him, and
(09:51):
you know, when he was thirteen, he would like out
negotiate me for business deals we did together, like you know,
because he was tough. He was like, no, we got
to be fifty fifty. I'm like, I'm put up all
the money and doing all the work. You're just shipping
out the packages for eBay. He's like, well, they wouldn't
ship without me. I'm like, that's true. I'm business building,
that's business. So like you know, I just he would
be the one that most surprised me. Yeah, I'll give
you another one, you know. I would tell you. The
(10:15):
one that least surprised me was Mark Zuckerberg.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
All right, why is that?
Speaker 2 (10:20):
When I met him very early on. Yeah, I know
this is probably podcasts. I don't know if this is visual,
but you're looking at Facebook stock here. I bought Facebook
very early on off with Mark's parents. I met him
very early on, right, and he was the only person
I'd ever met up into that point where there was
no doubt in my mind after my first dinner that
he was going to build one of the biggest companies
(10:41):
in the world. All right, you know that would be
like that's an it Like it was funny when you
asked the question. Like the things that ran through my mind,
that one stands out because, like I truly thought he
was going to build one of the five or ten
biggest companies in the world, which is a ludicrous thing
to think after one dinner at like, you know, and
the company was big ish, but like not to I
knew it. I knew it because he knew consumer, which
(11:02):
I look for, right, And then there's a there's a
lot of you know, the other thing that I'm thinking
about that could have happened if I go a different route.
I've made a lot of investments in guys and gals
that I knew could either build something big or it
was gonna fail horribly, and normally it fails horribly. I've
changed my investment thesis, like this is you know, it's
(11:23):
funny by the way I think I represented this for
a lot of people. There's a lot of people that
come up to me through the years that say, man,
you know, it's just where they are with me at
this point. They're like, man, I got to give you
some respect or flowers. They're like, the first time you
came across my path, I'm like, this fucking guy's a
piece of shit. Like he's not gonna he's not gonna last.
This is a fly by night and I and I
(11:45):
understand why. I think when you're very big personality, when
you're you're high energy, when there's a lot going on.
But because I knew I had it, I invested in
a lot of kids that had what I had. The
problem is, ninety percent of the time does end up
being what you think it is, which is all hot air.
And so it's been it's been an interesting journey of
(12:05):
expectations versus surprising outcomes. But aj because it's a respectful surprise.
I'm so happy for the balance he has for himself.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
And it's a great story you can share with our
listeners because you know, it's obviously somebody you're very close
to all your life, and you you work with him,
you spend a lot of time with him, So which
is great. You have said person who surprised you most,
as you said, you know, still in your life, and
you know, being being a core part of your life,
which is which is amazing, Which is amazing. I just
(12:36):
think about, you know, going back to your to your
Mark Zuckerberg example, because obviously you invested in so many companies.
You've mentioned Facebook, but you invested into Twitter early days,
coin Base, Slack, Liquid Death, Uber, and and so on.
Was it just because you knew this person? You know?
Speaker 2 (12:52):
What was this? I can break them all down for you.
Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr were the first three companies
I invested in. It was a It was a moment
of brilliance being in the right place at the right time,
and I probably will I'm not sure if I'll ever
be able to replicate it. I was so uncomfortably right
that social media was gonna win, and I did such
(13:12):
a good job vetting the entrepreneurs. Back then, I didn't
think I was an investor. That's a lesson. I want
to really make everyone listen carefully. When I didn't think
I was an investor, I invested best. Okay, all I
did in two thousand and six and seven when I
invested in those companies was I had a little bit
of savings after working for twelve years for my father.
(13:35):
I didn't make a lot of money those years, but
luckily I lived so humbly that I had a little
bit of savings and I spent it all. All the
savings that I amassed in my life, I invested not equally,
seventy percent of Facebook, twenty percent to Twitter, and ten
percent to Tumblr, and they all returned staggering. If I
(13:56):
had money back then, I'd probably be running the jets
for the last ten years. It would have been open.
The multiples were tens of thousands of X, like crazy numbers.
But I didn't put enough capital to like completely go
to stratosphere. But I'm not complaining Comma. So those my
friend Christian was I was. I knew social was going
(14:17):
to happen, and I met everybody, and I just thought
those three and the one for me at Twitter wasn't
Jack Dorsey was actually Avan Williams. Okay, he was the
founder that I most was like, that's the guy, and
he was the guy at the time more than Jack.
Actually were equal to Jack, but Evan was a little
more front facing. That was that Liquid Death. Mike worked
at vayne or Media. The day before he started at
(14:37):
Liquid Death sent me an email and I wanted to
support him because I liked the narrative of me supporting
my employees on their own entrepreneurial venture. And I liked
him and thought he was creative. But I would be
lying out of my ass if I could have comprehended
the level of business that he's been able to build.
(14:57):
And I'm so happy for him. Slack's a wild story.
Stuart Butterfield, the founder of Slack, was the founder. The
co founder of Slack, was the co founder of Flicker.
Flicker was one of the most important websites in Web
two point zero and in a lot of ways was
(15:18):
a precursor to Instagram. Right, it was a photo app,
but it was desktop, not mobile, wasn't out yet. It
sold to Yahoo for like forty to sixty million dollars
which was an enormous number at the time, and I
read a lot about Stuart and I when I went
to California on a trip, I went out of my
way to like find him, meet him. I met him.
(15:38):
We hit it off. We didn't we hit it off
in the moment for an hour, for thirty minutes, that
was really it. We would talk on Twitter a little bit,
an email here. But then when Slack pivoted from I
don't know if people know this Slack was a game. No,
I didn't.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
I didn't know that.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Do you know that.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Slack was a product that was built for a remote
workforce building a desktop game. They built it for them
sells to talk to each other, and that became the
actual company what if?
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Sorry?
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Yeah, they ate their like it was crazy. Their own
feature internally became the app. It's I love when sawdust
becomes the actual thing you sell. It's an amazing story.
So I got in early there because of that. Uber's
a wild story. I mean, Uber's my biggest miss. I
didn't invest any Angel round. Travis was my closest friend
in that era of social investing. We were investing together
(16:27):
a lot, and I said no twice because I just
bought an apartment in Manhattan, and I was very, very
e liquid. Yeah, And I love that I lost out
on hundreds of millions of dollars by saying no twice
because it reaffirms my biggest thesis, which is scared money
doesn't make money. And it was one of the few
times I was on defense in my entire life, and
(16:50):
it was one of my biggest financial misses. It's my
biggest financial miss.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Have you ever missed one opportunity completely where you missed
to invest any single dollar in where you say, oh shit,
you know this is something I should do.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
The biggest misses in my career Uber I invested later.
I still did very well, but it could have been
I mean I literally could have made three four hundred
million dollars on fifty thousand dollars investment. AIRBMB emailed me.
It was Joe, one of the co founders. His email
was Joe at air Ben and Breakfast. I don't know
if people know this Airbnb the B ANDB stands for
(17:23):
Ben and Breakfast. Airbnb emailed me. I never saw the email,
so I love that I have the email, but I
don't regret it because I don't take that loss personally
because it's not really lost. I didn't see it. Pinterest
was introduced to me before Ben even went to California
when it was being done in Pennsylvania. Also, I didn't
(17:44):
have the meeting. I later invested fairly early on again
kind of a half win half loss. Yeah, what is
the biggest company that I passed on where I was like, no,
this doesn't have it. You know what's funny, I'm so
con sumer centric. Yeah, that I'm pretty good at the
(18:05):
game because trying to I really want to give you one.
I mean, I have the uber and you know there's
some losses there. What's a I don't know if I
think you mean.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
You know you mentioned the biggest successes obviously, but also
you know those ones where you.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
I got one, I got I got one for you brother.
It's not that it went on to explode. It's the
one that I thought was going to be massive that
was a dud. During that era, I invested in something
called Yo Bongo.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
I've never heard about that.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Yo Bongo. I invested in because I had been chasing
what is now known as Tinder for two years. Grinder
had been an app that was doing very well in
the gay community, and I fully believed that there was
going to be one for heterosexuals, and I for months
and years stayed my ear to the ground waiting for
(18:57):
the dating app. And there was this app that came
out called Yo Bongo, which was because the iPhone had
just come out, which was it was positioned as you
could meet people. You would open the app and it
would see other people near you that would have the app,
and you could make friends. I was like, yeah, friends.
(19:17):
I already knew where this shit was going to go,
and I wanted to invest in it. So I invested
in it. Right behind that, an app called Highlight came
out did the same thing and got even more traction.
And then a couple months later or a year later,
I saw Tinder and I was like, this is it.
I lost my mind. I went to go try to
(19:39):
invest and found out that it was incubated inside of
IAC in the match group. So I never got a
chance to invest in it. But I thought, I told
everybody that Yo Bango was going to be enormously big.
I wrote a big check by my standards at the time,
and it just didn't happen.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Oh, but I mean, this is would be unusual if
there's not a single case.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Oh, actually, I'm sorry, Christian. I have hundreds of things
that have gone to zero, hundreds of things that have
gone to zero. But all of those, many of those,
I knew that there was a chance it could go
to zero. I was very confident about your bombo.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Right.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
We talked about the investments, which is great. Let's talk
about your own kind of ventures. You know, all the
companies you created. How do you before we dig into
this a bit more, how do you measure success for
your own companies? We touched it, you know, a couple
of minutes ago. Whether it's you know about money, whether
it's about recognition, you know, whether it's about the size
(20:51):
of a company. What is your measurement of a success?
The first thing king to mind. I was going to
jump in, but I want to give you a little room.
Is it not going out of business? You know, My
first measure is it's still alive. I don't think people
realize how many businesses go out of business.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
So that's number one. I measure it on financial health
for sure. Business is like sports. There is a score
so Vayner Sports, Vayner Media, Vayner Watt, which is my
new TV production company. They will be scored first by
do they go out of business or not? That's the
(21:29):
binary part, and then how big do they get? No question,
of course, there's all the emotional stuff Vayner Media. How
many people come out of the company to go on
to have big marketing careers. Nicole at t B being
the CMO and doing well. I have a lot of
pride in that. That excites me. So how many winners
do we create? Mike at Liquid Depth, Even though I
(21:51):
don't think Nicole, I feel more of my thumbprint. I
think Mike had a lot of what he had. Maybe
there's a couple of things he picked up at vayner
Those things excite me. When alumni go on to crush,
then there's exits. I don't know if you know this, Christian,
I co founded Rezi, the restaurant app.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
No, I don't know that.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
I invented Rezie with Ben levinthal over dinner right before
Christmas that year, and Rezi incubated and lived out of
Vaynermedia for the first three years of the company. All right,
how did I measure that? It was a multi hundred
million dollar cash exit? Very easy to measure empathy wines,
which I sold to Consolation Brands. Very easy to measure
(22:32):
and a triple win for me. I did well financially.
It was only two years old when it sold, so
it was fast. It was a big exit to a
big company, and my two co founders both started as
interns at Vaynermedia. Like that stretched every inch. So you know,
I think those tend to be.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
The places awesome awesome. What kind of business you launched
do you think where people should talk about more? You know,
do you feel that one or maybe some of your
businesses that never got the kind of the recognition out there?
Anything you know you feel okay that should be bigger
or better recognized out in the market. Is there anything?
Speaker 2 (23:14):
I don't really build my businesses for the market. Yeah,
but I'm very aware of this question, so I'll break
it down. Rezi is probably the business that I co
founded that is most known by the way outside of me,
Gary Vee, Right, So I don't think, you know, it's funny.
I don't think I story told that co foundership enough
(23:35):
or it's not aware. So that's interesting. I got a
big one for you, especially in this time in marketing.
I started probably based on my Google searches. The first
influencer agency. It was called grape Story. It was an
agency to represent Vine stars and I did that with
Jerome jar one of the original Vine celebrities. We signed,
(23:57):
amongst others Logan Paul, who we discovered through a campaign
to find the next fine celebrity, Rudy Mancuso like it
was King Batch we did deals with back then, like
we really nailed it. So Grape Story in Rezi sit
in a very interesting place because I don't think people
know that about me, you know, the improbable nature of
(24:18):
how big of a business I built for my father
with no money in that era. I think I have
the most pride in but it's probably just thought as
like smaller. But you know, listen, I think V Friends
is a lot of fun for me right now, Christian,
because I think a lot of people think of it
as like something that I don't even do anymore because
afts are not as hot or you know. But that
(24:40):
one I'm quietly building, and I think that one will
surprise people in seven to fifteen years. Look back to
this podcast. In the industry, I will tell you a
lot of people are flabbergasted of how big Vayner Media is.
I don't think most people know how big vainer X is.
I don't think most people in advertising today know that
we're a two thousand person global holding company doing you know,
(25:01):
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.
We're much much, much bigger than our industry realizes because
I don't play to the industry. But honestly, all of
that is vanity stuff.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Me.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
I'm not overly worried about what people think or don't think.
I'm much more worried about what my employees think about
their happiness. If you ask me, Gary, if Vaynermedia was
known by everyone in the industry and you got all
the accolades and every ad week, pr Week, ad age
at the possible conference, you were awarded the best marketer
(25:38):
to ever live in Vaynermedia, the best agency. All of
that combined is half as interesting to me in that
my company's fifteen years old and you have almost one
hundred people that have worked in it for over ten years,
in an industry where people leave after eighteen months every day,
that I like the truth. I like real shit retention
(25:58):
of your employees for an agency owner should be the
number one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven kpi
other than can you make payroll right? Not the amount
of people that spend more time in our industry, counting
how many can lions the firm has won versus their
employee retention tells you everything that I think you need
(26:19):
to know about our industry right now.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
And how they talk about yourself as a leader and
the business you're running. E said, Yeah, well that's the
thing with me. I'm such a big personality. I'm a character.
I'm not confused by that.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
I've watched people be surprised how well my employees talk
about me behind my back, and that is deeply rewarding,
deeply rewarding, what super rewarding.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Congratulations to this. I hear you know that you're proud
of this, and you can be for sure, and obviously
that gives you confidence. You know that you do a
lot of things right, you know, running your different companies.
So let's talk about our industry we are acting in,
you know, the wider marketing world. Yes, I think it's
a trend to talk about trends. Right. Everybody you know
on a stage is asking you how what's coming up?
(27:03):
So you're in social media, you and NFTCRE in cryptocurrency
and concentration. Okay, so I've heard you talk about social
shopping as a kind of trend. Everybody what a surprise
talks about AI. Yes, let's specify a bit more. What
is the trend we are facing in the next couple
of months.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
So look, and you may know you're you're so, you're
so in this as well. You'll probably know this probably
if you especially if you're prepping a little bit for
this interview. I have stayed somewhat quiet so far on
AI compared to the way I usually roll. And the
reason I've done that is I don't like to talk
about shit until I'm really knowledgeable. I've been watching China
(27:43):
live shopping for eight years. I've been waiting Christian for
live social shopping like you can't imagine. I've been waiting
for the qvcification of social for a long time, and
it's immediate. Abercrombie and Fitch right now is a fact
did by live shopping and affiliate influencers like it changed
their business Mary Roots Organic Like. What I like about
(28:06):
why I'm talking about live social shopping is I know
everybody on the incredible possible stage that I'm going to
take in a couple of months if they sell something,
not B to B, but if they or a service.
But if they sell something can be very impacted positively
because of it AI as a trend. And I'm gonna
say this as respectfully as I can, because I feel
(28:28):
like I was getting you know, I always feel misunderstood
when I'm rasing the industry. I RaSE the industry because
I love the industry and I don't want us to disappear. Yeah,
you know, there's a reason people are taking things in house.
We as agencies are not providing enough value. I think
what's happening in our industry, with all due respect the
Madison Avenue industry compared to the Silicon Valley industry is
(28:50):
we have a lot of talking heads talking about AI
that really have no idea what the fuck they're talking about.
And so I don't want to be a contributor to that.
And and it's so big, you know, Live social shopping
is a nice transformation in commerce and content creation production days,
and I can get nerdy about it. AI is one
(29:12):
of the biggest inventions and innovations in the history of mankind,
and so I am trying to be very thoughtful and
listening and paying attention. Plus it's moving very quickly, and
so you know both. I mean, AI is something everybody
who's listening to this podcast, everybody that comes to your
(29:32):
incredible conference, should be spending time on. They should be
using it, they should be downloading the apps, they should
be understanding it. It is a big deal. It's a
big deal by the way, for anyone who's listening that
their business relies on search, they should really be paying
attention because it's going to disrupt search engines. It's a
big deal. But it's way beyond what everyone thinks. It's
going to be omnipresent. It's gonna affect so much. So anyway,
(29:58):
I think that people should be doing their own homework
on AI, meaning actively using these products, becoming a user
of not just listening to talking heads talk about it.
I think the two actually mix in. I think, let
me just put a string of trends together. I think
virtual influencers is going to become a big deal. Okay,
I think virtual influencers doing live shopping backed by powered
(30:23):
by AI is going to be a big deal for
a lot of our businesses. And so there's just a
lot going on. I think I'll give you a less
exciting trend, but it's been my passion. I'm excited it's
finally happening. I think the reallocation of the P and
L budget to organic social creative because of how the
algorithms work is one of the biggest trends everyone should
(30:44):
be paying attention to. That's interesting, it's less sexy, it's
very narrow, but I cannot believe how much growth my
company has had this year where brands are spending more
on social organic creative than they are on above the line.
And that happened over the last twenty four months in
(31:06):
a meaningful way, and it's a back to like caring
about practicality versus futurism. I think a lot of people
listening here. I hope they're paying attention to that because
that's a big game changer for a lot of brands
right now.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
So spending time creating experiences being really using that and
not just listening to people. What should be the next
one I hear you, is this the biggest you know
gap you know for traditional corporate leaders that they might
not still do understand about the modern business landscape? Is
this the case or is there anything else you would
give them? What kind of advice you would give corporate leaders?
(31:39):
Is it to spend more time, you know, with what's
really going on out there and not just tetting your team, Hey,
let me know what you think, but spending their own
time doing this.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Yeah. Look, I think being a practition to your point
of where you're leading this, being a practitioner is incredible,
Like you know, one of the reasons, Like I don't
know if people know this. If you go into the
history of me, there's two years where there's no Gary
Vee content because I wanted to be the operator and
I am the operator Vainner Media twenty eleven twenty thirteen, Like,
(32:09):
there's very little content of me, very little, it's insane.
From six to today, I am prolific, but there's this weird
little twenty four month gap. And do you know what happened, Christian?
I was running my business less wine videos, right, less
business videos, and at the back end of those twenty
four months, it became obvious to me that I was
losing my touch. Interesting because I wasn't being a practitioner anymore.
(32:33):
I could feel like people would ask me something about
Reddit or Twitter or something. I'm like, oh fuck, So
I went all back into Gary Vee and I did
everything YouTube and LinkedIn and Snapchat and and it's I
believe today, when I'm in again, it will happen. When
I come to Possible, there'll be a cocktail hour, There'll
be six of us hanging around, and when we get
into it, it's very quickly obvious to me that the
(32:56):
agency CEO that's sitting there with me that the two
CMO those that you know, somebody that like most people
that get senior, they lose or touched to the dirt. Yeah,
and so yes, I think that's very good advice. I
would also say the following creative's too expensive for our
industry and we're getting outflanked. We have to stop paying
(33:16):
the production dollars we're spending. And number two, the other
thing I would say that I would recommend to corporate
leaders is our media spends are being spent on potential reach,
not common sense actual reach.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Yeah, and I.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Would highly recommend, if that caught a nerve, for them
to look under the hood on how we're reporting against
reach and our mmms. And there's some real, real, real
vulnerabilities in marketing right now, and the doors are closing
in on us with these new brands that are popping up,
that are doing it in a contemporary way that don't
follow the Madison Avenue playbook, and we need to adjust
or we're gonna have some problems.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
So becoming or going back to the entrepreneurship in some way, right,
you know, when you start your business you do everything
on your own. That's a kind of step you know,
back and learn more about, you know, than just listening
to somebody. So talking about advice for leadership and you
know also young people you've mentioned already, you know, being
happy about your self awareness. What's the one misconception people
(34:16):
have about what it really takes to be happy? What
is the you know, to fulfill you know, what you
do and to not necessarily meet expectations of course, and
also not not everybody's expectation out there, because you know,
if people know somebody, then they should have an opinion
on you, but not you know, not knowing somebody and
talk about but what makes a difference to be really
(34:37):
happy in business?
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Yeah? I think this bleeds into life. I believe what
and this is a man This has been something I've
been fascinating my whole life. Yeah, you know, some people
are lucky. And I don't like using the word luck
because I think the word luck is weaponized by people
that are entitled and not looking to do anything. But
some people are lucky. And I'm one of those people
where where you're born into your DNA is a certain way,
(35:01):
and then the parent or parents that mold you are
a certain way. When people like one of the reasons
I'll do a podcast like this and talk about myself
quote unquote is I don't think I deserve any of
the accolades that are bestowed on me. I think that
they are When I get accolades, that's a flattering moment
for my parents, not me. So I enjoy this because
(35:25):
I know my mom's listening right now because she listens
to everything. And I like when you're like, hey, good job, Gary,
I feel that's like you're giving love to tomorrow Vaynerchuk,
not Gary, so that I like. So some people are
just fortunate. I knew that I was fortunate. I was
self aware. I was so emotionally intelligent in the scheme
(35:46):
of things. In hindsight, my whole life. I see it
a lot of my son by the way, so now
I know what it is. He's very empathetic. It's crazy
like everything he just feels, and I was that way.
I have some answers to this because I've studied for
a long time and I watch people. I believe disproportionately
the secret to happiness and business and in life is simplicity.
(36:09):
You know, we're getting to know each other more and
more Christian. If you really knew me, let's say we
really grew up together, you really knew me, well, you
would know. And twenty people know this about me? Is
I care about nothing professionally? It would I'm telling you, brother,
I'm telling you, it would fucking stun you how little
fucks I give about Gary Vee, Vayner viv It's shocked.
(36:32):
I am so detached emotionally from my professional career. It's
almost like I don't know if it's brilliant or fucked upness.
I don't know what it is, but I will tell
you that the only thing that I give a shit
about actually is are the fifteen people I love the
most on earth, healthy and alive. And I'm crippled when
(36:53):
there's a health scare, and I'm light as a feather
when there's not. I have so much adversity. I'm a
human being. I'm forty nine years old. I have things
in my personal life. I have a billion pressures in business.
There's not a day in business where I don't have
fucked up news. We let go of somebody today that
I care about deeply. It's fucked with me for three months.
(37:14):
Three months, this has been a heaviness on my chest.
It's hard to be a leader and to be out there,
and I'm a public figure, all that judgment, all those
whispers behind your back, like all that stuff. But the
reason is it's humility. I don't think I'm that important.
I think I'll die one day. Maybe I'll get twenty
four hours on whatever the social media, if social media
(37:36):
even exists at the time, I'll get some flowers, right,
and then everybody will move on with their life. My
family will care longer. And so I think humility and simplicity.
I don't need stuff. I don't need a fucking private
jet to impress anybody. I don't care if people think
I'm good, bad, or indifferent. I want them. I care
if you know me, By the way, Christian, I care
(37:57):
more today what you think about me than two years ago,
because we've interacted more that matters to me. But right now,
I promise you, Maddie, who's sitting right heroes worked with me.
Now what Mattie nine eight years, I really give a
lot of I care. Maddie is not as important to
people in the advertising world as Christian is. But I
can tell you right now, I could give a fuck
(38:18):
what you think compared to Maddie, because Maddie knows, and
so I think the secret to life is detachment from
bullshit and deep attachment to love.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Which is a huge achievement if you allow yourself to
think like this, I would say. But also in acting
in business, you know, in so many ways to give
a shit on you know, other's opinion in that way.
Not many people can do this, as we all know.
We know we are pressed into a framework, you know,
especially when you work for bigger companies, et cetera. But
you're your own boss, and maybe that's also one of
(38:51):
the key differences.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Yes, but I'm my own boss that plays with the market,
right right, Like you know, it's a different version. Yeah,
there's many days when I wake up and I'm like,
you know, being judged by three random people that are
my bosses. Sounds really good right now, versus you know,
the field of society, you know, so like you know,
there's different versions of it, but yeah, simplicity and humility,
(39:15):
and people say it, but then they don't act on it.
I've unfortunately had to let go of leaders through the
years who say they care about people, but they don't.
They're posturing, they're politicking me, they're trying to appease me.
But you know, I tell people, I mean, I tell
people all the time, don't worry about what I think
about you. Worry about what the people who work for
you think about you. Maddie Will if you hung out
(39:36):
with Maddie, she would tell you it's wild how senior
some of the people have been that have gotten fired here,
the leaders, because they just if you can't get along
with the boys and girls, especially the ones that you're leading,
you're not for me.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Yeah, Gary, I have a last one. Please, You've accomplished
so much already. What's one thing you still feel, you know,
like you you must do before you call it a day,
professional whatever, whatever?
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Overall, I'd like to I'd like to become even a
better father. I think I'm a great son, like the
best I feel like, I feel like I can walk.
I can't wait to go to heaven. I expect God
to give me like best Son Ever award, But I
feel like there's more to be done as a father.
I have a fifteen and twelve year old. I want
to really crush that and do more there. Number two. Professionally,
(40:29):
I'd like to create a company that has the most
amount of offspring from the company that went on to
build companies that are similar to mine, which are wildly
successful but also nice to their employees. I'd like to
reframe the company. Actually, I'm going to give you a
slightly different answer, but it's the same answer. Before I'm done. Professionally,
(40:51):
I would like to rebrand nice Guys Finish Last to
nice Guys Finish First. That's what I would like to do.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
That's a great statement to the end of our conversation today,
and to your first point, I'm pretty sure and I
know that he's a great son because you're a great father,
so that's for sure. And I can tell you because
I have a son as well as you know, and
I feel in a very similar way. So Gary, that
conversation was nothing short, but incredible. Thank you so much
for your time, your energy, insights, and that honest conversation.
(41:22):
And I'm sure you know many of our listeners will
walk away ready to hustle Haara and think bigger, appreciate manness.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Let me say one last thing. I assume we're going
to put this out before the conference, right, that's a plan. Yes, okay, good?
Let me just send with this please please please, Because
I see it in your eyes, which is why I
approach so many people. I'm going to be around quite
a bit. I actually am so happy this is happening
because I get to say it out loud. I send
this to you in person. Now I want to say
it out loud. The conference you've created has become the newest,
(41:50):
most important conference in our industry. That's an incredible accomplishment
in what is fucking two minutes? What is this year?
Speaker 3 (41:55):
Three?
Speaker 1 (41:56):
It's going to be the three yees.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
Correct, It's absurd what you've become published you and your partners.
I'm going to be around a lot more this year
because I'm allocating more time, because it's that important. If
you happen to see me, like walking in the hotel wherever,
and you want to say hello. Please say hello. Relationships
are everything.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
We make sure you have to connect with the right
people and then connect with the right one and this
is you for sure. Gary, appreciate you. Thank you very
much for mind see you by. Thanks for tuning in everyone.
Once again, I'm your host, Christian Moho. If you have
a question or suggestion to me, reach out, send me
a d M on LinkedIn. If you're courious to learn
(42:35):
more about Possible, sign up for our newsletter, or if
you want to join us at the Possible Show in Miami,
visit possibleevent dot com. Possible Now is a co production
of iHeartMedia and Possible. Our executive producers are Ryan Martz
and Yasmin Melendez. Our supervising producer is Meredith Barnes. Special
thanks to Colleen Lawrence Mac from our programming team. Our
(42:58):
theme music is composed by Anthony Keticoli. For more podcasts
from iHeart, visit the iHeart app Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Today's guest needs no introduction, but I'm going to give
him one anyway, because his story is just that good.
Gary Vanachuk, entrepreneur, investor, producer, host, best selling author, and
one of the most electrifying voices in business today, is
joining us. From building Wine Library into a powerhouse, to
leading Vaynerrex Veno Media, be Friends, Veno Sports, Venusree and
(00:26):
shaping the future of marketing and so much more. Gary
has redefined what it means to stay ahead of the game.
His insights on brand culture and the power of attention
are legendary, and his energy absolutely unstoppable. So get ready
for an unfiltered, no bullshited conversation about his personal story,
the future of business, content, social, and what it really
(00:49):
takes to win in today's world. Gary, Welcome to the show.
I'm honored to have you with us.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
That was very nice. Thank you for having me. I'm
glad to be here. Let's do that.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Yes, awesome, great. So I always started with a couple
of more personal questions, so I would love to ask you.
You are as I said, you know, a high energy entrepreneur,
marketing guru, futurists. However, we call you and you let
us know maybe in a minute, but that barely scratches
the surface of so many talents. With all the projects
and companies you've already launched, what's one idea or one
(01:21):
passion you haven't had time to pursue yet but would
love to bring to life sooner rather than later. Is
there anything that's a great question to start this up?
Speaker 2 (01:30):
And it's really tough one because really, v friends, was
that I knew my whole life that I either want
to buy or start an intellectual property. You know, I'm
forty nine years old. I grew up in the eighties.
It was everything Star Wars, you know et you know, Transformers,
Gi Joe and I have three and a half, your
(01:52):
younger sister I was very close to. So it was
Cabbage Patch Kids and my little Pony and Strawberry Shortcake,
and you know, it was just back to the future.
There was so much good going on in the eighties
of intellectual property being created. So I would say that
one always loomed I got to it. I would say,
the last thing I really want to get to for
(02:13):
sure is I do get excited about the concept of
doing private equity to buy iconic nostalgic brands and refurbish
them with contemporary marketing. And that's why I started Vainermedia
in a lot of ways. So that's still looming for me.
And then I want to have an era where I
go to a cave and not shave for a year
(02:35):
and just have people find me and ask me questions,
like a Yoda like character. So I definitely want to
scratch that in my career, like a sabbatical where I
just give back on a one to one level in
an unscalpable fashion. Obviously I just used a silly kind
of example, but something like that is something else I
want to do professionally, and there's probably some other things
(02:57):
for sure.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Awesome, Awesome, I mean what an ants as the first
for the crush questions? And obviously you know, if we
weren't possible long enough, you know, we won't become iconic
enough for you maybe to step into our business as well,
maybe in fifty years or something like this. All right,
good to know it, was there ever a moment in
your childhood, you know, in your early days that perfectly
foreshadowt the entrepreneur you would become. Was there a moment
(03:20):
where you where you learn about this and you knew
what to do in your life.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
The first part, for sure. I actually ironically just brought
it up earlier today. I am fascinated to this day
of how interesting my Lemonade Stan career was. You know,
having a lemonade Stan is such a tail tale kind
of indication to entrepreneurship, especially in the eighties and nineties. Ye,
(03:46):
but when I did my lemonade Stan, I you love
this Christian. I spent more time making signs and figuring
out what tree and what poll to put it on,
and so the even at my early stage, it was
clear that I was going to be a marketer, because
I think I put more time into marketing my lemonade
stand than definitely making the lemonade. I think I should
(04:06):
have done a better job making it a little more delicious.
There's too much sugar in there, So that's that I think. Yeah,
very early on the first time I did a baseball
card show, selling my own baseball cards in a mall
in New Jersey, I knew that I would never not
be a businessman, you know. So somewhere around five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve,
those formative childhood years when it would snow and we
(04:30):
would have a day off from school. Most of the
kids went and made snowmen and had snowball fights. And
I did a lot of that too, but I would
say at least thirty to fifty percent of the snow days,
I would go into my parents' garage, grab a shovel,
and go ring doorbells and work hard for five bucks.
(04:50):
And so my childhood is an incredibly clear preview to
who I became. And I think one of the reasons
business works for me is I do it for the game,
not for the money that comes along with the game.
And I see a lot of people who do that,
and I think they're happier, less anxious, not always more
financially successful. I see a lot of people who just
(05:10):
do it for the money make more money than people
that do it for the love of the game, but
all of them are less happy, more anxious, and I'm
very grateful.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
I agree completely with you that you know, having just
one motivation doesn't matter what it is, you know will
limit you in your success and your business success, whether
it's just going for money or or just having fun.
I think it has to be a kind of combination
of a lot of things. However, we come back to
this in a second. Okay, So one thing I would
love to hear from you is, you know, if you
had to choose, what would you say is your most
(05:42):
defining character trait? Is it a perseverance, is it creativity,
is it integrity? Or is it something completely different?
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Self awareness?
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Self awareness?
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Yeah, if you ask me to answer you on that,
I think being competitive is very up there. Yeah, being
tenacious is very up there. I think optimistic is huge
for me. And I know people are confused by this,
but I think being kind has been extraordinarily important to
my success. As you know, because we run in the
(06:15):
same industry. There may be some people that don't like me,
but nobody who actually knows me doesn't think that I'm
not a nice guy. And I'm proud of that, and
that's an indication of being well parented and a strength
of kindness. But all of those things are secondary. I
think self awareness, which I think leads to the combination
of confidence and humility. Yeah, you know, I just know
(06:39):
who I am, and I know what I'm good at,
and I know what I'm not good at, and the
things that I'm not good at, I don't think I
stink that doesn't lead to insecurity. That just leads to reality.
Everybody has strengths and weaknesses. I feel like I'm also
empathetically self aware, meaning when I was when I was
a bad student, I understand I was coming into business world.
(07:00):
I knew that people thought I was dumb and not
good because in the eighties and nineties, where you went
to college was the indication of your worth. And I
wasn't upset that people thought I wasn't going to be good.
I understood them. Today, when I walk into a room
in our industry and I can see someone's like not jiving,
I'm empathetic. I'm like, oh, that must be a competitor
(07:22):
who doesn't know me or took something I said out
of context. So I think self awareness has been the one.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Which is a huge achievement. I think if you know
who you are, I think that's a big advantage how
to act and that people can really rely on you
whatever personality you are. I think that's a huge achievement.
I think obviously you've met and you've mentored so many people,
young people, senior leaders across the industries. Who's the one
person who has truly surprised you with their journey, and
(07:50):
why is there one who stands out of this? Maybe
you had a complete different expectation, you know, meeting this person.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Well, i'll give you an interest one. I'll go with
age a Bayer truck. I'll go with my brother in
this one, all right. My brother grew up very similar
to me. We're eleven years apart. We grew up differently
because we were in different economic situations in our childhood.
But he's incredibly capable. He has a lot of strengths
that are stronger than mine. He's wildly competitive. He's extremely ambitious.
(08:21):
You know, you said you are. I don't know if
he's more ambitious, but you know where I'm about to
go with this story is interesting, you said, who surprised you?
Aj has Crohn's disease, and early in his career at
Vayner he had a pretty bad spell and had to
(08:42):
have a decent chunk of his small intestine taken out
and it completely changed the course of his life. My
brother is way more rounded than I anticipated. I saw
him as, you know, a little bit more like me.
And because he is a lot like me, right, and
I'm saying this as a positive, I'm really proud of
(09:05):
him as a father of three young little ones, as
a human who has found lots of time for his
passion and golf in his tempered ambitions of professional achievement.
I think he's incredibly well rounded and incredibly comfortable in
his skin, and also has a brother that went on
(09:27):
to be really like me, you know, and just the
way he cheers for me and doesn't see it as
a negative, and the way he preshoots me. I'm just grateful,
as you could probably tell by my tone. But if
I'm truly going with surprise because I had so many
expectations because I just watched him and enjoyed him, and
(09:51):
you know, when he was thirteen, he would like out
negotiate me for business deals we did together, like you know,
because he was tough. He was like, no, we got
to be fifty fifty. I'm like, I'm put up all
the money and doing all the work. You're just shipping
out the packages for eBay. He's like, well, they wouldn't
ship without me. I'm like, that's true. I'm business building,
that's business. So like you know, I just he would
be the one that most surprised me. Yeah, I'll give
you another one, you know. I would tell you. The
(10:15):
one that least surprised me was Mark Zuckerberg.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
All right, why is that?
Speaker 2 (10:20):
When I met him very early on. Yeah, I know
this is probably podcasts. I don't know if this is visual,
but you're looking at Facebook stock here. I bought Facebook
very early on off with Mark's parents. I met him
very early on, right, and he was the only person
I'd ever met up into that point where there was
no doubt in my mind after my first dinner that
he was going to build one of the biggest companies
(10:41):
in the world. All right, you know that would be
like that's an it Like it was funny when you
asked the question. Like the things that ran through my mind,
that one stands out because, like I truly thought he
was going to build one of the five or ten
biggest companies in the world, which is a ludicrous thing
to think after one dinner at like, you know, and
the company was big ish, but like not to I
knew it. I knew it because he knew consumer, which
(11:02):
I look for, right, And then there's a there's a
lot of you know, the other thing that I'm thinking
about that could have happened if I go a different route.
I've made a lot of investments in guys and gals
that I knew could either build something big or it
was gonna fail horribly, and normally it fails horribly. I've
changed my investment thesis, like this is you know, it's
(11:23):
funny by the way I think I represented this for
a lot of people. There's a lot of people that
come up to me through the years that say, man,
you know, it's just where they are with me at
this point. They're like, man, I got to give you
some respect or flowers. They're like, the first time you
came across my path, I'm like, this fucking guy's a
piece of shit. Like he's not gonna he's not gonna last.
This is a fly by night and I and I
(11:45):
understand why. I think when you're very big personality, when
you're you're high energy, when there's a lot going on.
But because I knew I had it, I invested in
a lot of kids that had what I had. The
problem is, ninety percent of the time does end up
being what you think it is, which is all hot air.
And so it's been it's been an interesting journey of
(12:05):
expectations versus surprising outcomes. But aj because it's a respectful surprise.
I'm so happy for the balance he has for himself.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
And it's a great story you can share with our
listeners because you know, it's obviously somebody you're very close
to all your life, and you you work with him,
you spend a lot of time with him, So which
is great. You have said person who surprised you most,
as you said, you know, still in your life, and
you know, being being a core part of your life,
which is which is amazing, Which is amazing. I just
(12:36):
think about, you know, going back to your to your
Mark Zuckerberg example, because obviously you invested in so many companies.
You've mentioned Facebook, but you invested into Twitter early days,
coin Base, Slack, Liquid Death, Uber, and and so on.
Was it just because you knew this person? You know?
Speaker 2 (12:52):
What was this? I can break them all down for you.
Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr were the first three companies
I invested in. It was a It was a moment
of brilliance being in the right place at the right time,
and I probably will I'm not sure if I'll ever
be able to replicate it. I was so uncomfortably right
that social media was gonna win, and I did such
(13:12):
a good job vetting the entrepreneurs. Back then, I didn't
think I was an investor. That's a lesson. I want
to really make everyone listen carefully. When I didn't think
I was an investor, I invested best. Okay, all I
did in two thousand and six and seven when I
invested in those companies was I had a little bit
of savings after working for twelve years for my father.
(13:35):
I didn't make a lot of money those years, but
luckily I lived so humbly that I had a little
bit of savings and I spent it all. All the
savings that I amassed in my life, I invested not equally,
seventy percent of Facebook, twenty percent to Twitter, and ten
percent to Tumblr, and they all returned staggering. If I
(13:56):
had money back then, I'd probably be running the jets
for the last ten years. It would have been open.
The multiples were tens of thousands of X, like crazy numbers.
But I didn't put enough capital to like completely go
to stratosphere. But I'm not complaining Comma. So those my
friend Christian was I was. I knew social was going
(14:17):
to happen, and I met everybody, and I just thought
those three and the one for me at Twitter wasn't
Jack Dorsey was actually Avan Williams. Okay, he was the
founder that I most was like, that's the guy, and
he was the guy at the time more than Jack.
Actually were equal to Jack, but Evan was a little
more front facing. That was that Liquid Death. Mike worked
at vayne or Media. The day before he started at
(14:37):
Liquid Death sent me an email and I wanted to
support him because I liked the narrative of me supporting
my employees on their own entrepreneurial venture. And I liked
him and thought he was creative. But I would be
lying out of my ass if I could have comprehended
the level of business that he's been able to build.
(14:57):
And I'm so happy for him. Slack's a wild story.
Stuart Butterfield, the founder of Slack, was the founder. The
co founder of Slack, was the co founder of Flicker.
Flicker was one of the most important websites in Web
two point zero and in a lot of ways was
(15:18):
a precursor to Instagram. Right, it was a photo app,
but it was desktop, not mobile, wasn't out yet. It
sold to Yahoo for like forty to sixty million dollars
which was an enormous number at the time, and I
read a lot about Stuart and I when I went
to California on a trip, I went out of my
way to like find him, meet him. I met him.
(15:38):
We hit it off. We didn't we hit it off
in the moment for an hour, for thirty minutes, that
was really it. We would talk on Twitter a little bit,
an email here. But then when Slack pivoted from I
don't know if people know this Slack was a game. No,
I didn't.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
I didn't know that.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Do you know that.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Slack was a product that was built for a remote
workforce building a desktop game. They built it for them
sells to talk to each other, and that became the
actual company what if?
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Sorry?
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Yeah, they ate their like it was crazy. Their own
feature internally became the app. It's I love when sawdust
becomes the actual thing you sell. It's an amazing story.
So I got in early there because of that. Uber's
a wild story. I mean, Uber's my biggest miss. I
didn't invest any Angel round. Travis was my closest friend
in that era of social investing. We were investing together
(16:27):
a lot, and I said no twice because I just
bought an apartment in Manhattan, and I was very, very
e liquid. Yeah, And I love that I lost out
on hundreds of millions of dollars by saying no twice
because it reaffirms my biggest thesis, which is scared money
doesn't make money. And it was one of the few
times I was on defense in my entire life, and
(16:50):
it was one of my biggest financial misses. It's my
biggest financial miss.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Have you ever missed one opportunity completely where you missed
to invest any single dollar in where you say, oh shit,
you know this is something I should do.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
The biggest misses in my career Uber I invested later.
I still did very well, but it could have been
I mean I literally could have made three four hundred
million dollars on fifty thousand dollars investment. AIRBMB emailed me.
It was Joe, one of the co founders. His email
was Joe at air Ben and Breakfast. I don't know
if people know this Airbnb the B ANDB stands for
(17:23):
Ben and Breakfast. Airbnb emailed me. I never saw the email,
so I love that I have the email, but I
don't regret it because I don't take that loss personally
because it's not really lost. I didn't see it. Pinterest
was introduced to me before Ben even went to California
when it was being done in Pennsylvania. Also, I didn't
(17:44):
have the meeting. I later invested fairly early on again
kind of a half win half loss. Yeah, what is
the biggest company that I passed on where I was like, no,
this doesn't have it. You know what's funny, I'm so
con sumer centric. Yeah, that I'm pretty good at the
(18:05):
game because trying to I really want to give you one.
I mean, I have the uber and you know there's
some losses there. What's a I don't know if I
think you mean.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
You know you mentioned the biggest successes obviously, but also
you know those ones where you.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
I got one, I got I got one for you brother.
It's not that it went on to explode. It's the
one that I thought was going to be massive that
was a dud. During that era, I invested in something
called Yo Bongo.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
I've never heard about that.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Yo Bongo. I invested in because I had been chasing
what is now known as Tinder for two years. Grinder
had been an app that was doing very well in
the gay community, and I fully believed that there was
going to be one for heterosexuals, and I for months
and years stayed my ear to the ground waiting for
(18:57):
the dating app. And there was this app that came
out called Yo Bongo, which was because the iPhone had
just come out, which was it was positioned as you
could meet people. You would open the app and it
would see other people near you that would have the app,
and you could make friends. I was like, yeah, friends.
(19:17):
I already knew where this shit was going to go,
and I wanted to invest in it. So I invested
in it. Right behind that, an app called Highlight came
out did the same thing and got even more traction.
And then a couple months later or a year later,
I saw Tinder and I was like, this is it.
I lost my mind. I went to go try to
(19:39):
invest and found out that it was incubated inside of
IAC in the match group. So I never got a
chance to invest in it. But I thought, I told
everybody that Yo Bango was going to be enormously big.
I wrote a big check by my standards at the time,
and it just didn't happen.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Oh, but I mean, this is would be unusual if
there's not a single case.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Oh, actually, I'm sorry, Christian. I have hundreds of things
that have gone to zero, hundreds of things that have
gone to zero. But all of those, many of those,
I knew that there was a chance it could go
to zero. I was very confident about your bombo.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Right.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
We talked about the investments, which is great. Let's talk
about your own kind of ventures. You know, all the
companies you created. How do you before we dig into
this a bit more, how do you measure success for
your own companies? We touched it, you know, a couple
of minutes ago. Whether it's you know about money, whether
it's about recognition, you know, whether it's about the size
(20:51):
of a company. What is your measurement of a success?
The first thing king to mind. I was going to
jump in, but I want to give you a little room.
Is it not going out of business? You know, My
first measure is it's still alive. I don't think people
realize how many businesses go out of business.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
So that's number one. I measure it on financial health
for sure. Business is like sports. There is a score
so Vayner Sports, Vayner Media, Vayner Watt, which is my
new TV production company. They will be scored first by
do they go out of business or not? That's the
(21:29):
binary part, and then how big do they get? No question,
of course, there's all the emotional stuff Vayner Media. How
many people come out of the company to go on
to have big marketing careers. Nicole at t B being
the CMO and doing well. I have a lot of
pride in that. That excites me. So how many winners
do we create? Mike at Liquid Depth, Even though I
(21:51):
don't think Nicole, I feel more of my thumbprint. I
think Mike had a lot of what he had. Maybe
there's a couple of things he picked up at vayner
Those things excite me. When alumni go on to crush,
then there's exits. I don't know if you know this, Christian,
I co founded Rezi, the restaurant app.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
No, I don't know that.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
I invented Rezie with Ben levinthal over dinner right before
Christmas that year, and Rezi incubated and lived out of
Vaynermedia for the first three years of the company. All right,
how did I measure that? It was a multi hundred
million dollar cash exit? Very easy to measure empathy wines,
which I sold to Consolation Brands. Very easy to measure
(22:32):
and a triple win for me. I did well financially.
It was only two years old when it sold, so
it was fast. It was a big exit to a
big company, and my two co founders both started as
interns at Vaynermedia. Like that stretched every inch. So you know,
I think those tend to be.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
The places awesome awesome. What kind of business you launched
do you think where people should talk about more? You know,
do you feel that one or maybe some of your
businesses that never got the kind of the recognition out there?
Anything you know you feel okay that should be bigger
or better recognized out in the market. Is there anything?
Speaker 2 (23:14):
I don't really build my businesses for the market. Yeah,
but I'm very aware of this question, so I'll break
it down. Rezi is probably the business that I co
founded that is most known by the way outside of me,
Gary Vee, Right, So I don't think, you know, it's funny.
I don't think I story told that co foundership enough
(23:35):
or it's not aware. So that's interesting. I got a
big one for you, especially in this time in marketing.
I started probably based on my Google searches. The first
influencer agency. It was called grape Story. It was an
agency to represent Vine stars and I did that with
Jerome jar one of the original Vine celebrities. We signed,
(23:57):
amongst others Logan Paul, who we discovered through a campaign
to find the next fine celebrity, Rudy Mancuso like it
was King Batch we did deals with back then, like
we really nailed it. So Grape Story in Rezi sit
in a very interesting place because I don't think people
know that about me, you know, the improbable nature of
(24:18):
how big of a business I built for my father
with no money in that era. I think I have
the most pride in but it's probably just thought as
like smaller. But you know, listen, I think V Friends
is a lot of fun for me right now, Christian,
because I think a lot of people think of it
as like something that I don't even do anymore because
afts are not as hot or you know. But that
(24:40):
one I'm quietly building, and I think that one will
surprise people in seven to fifteen years. Look back to
this podcast. In the industry, I will tell you a
lot of people are flabbergasted of how big Vayner Media is.
I don't think most people know how big vainer X is.
I don't think most people in advertising today know that
we're a two thousand person global holding company doing you know,
(25:01):
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.
We're much much, much bigger than our industry realizes because
I don't play to the industry. But honestly, all of
that is vanity stuff.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Me.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
I'm not overly worried about what people think or don't think.
I'm much more worried about what my employees think about
their happiness. If you ask me, Gary, if Vaynermedia was
known by everyone in the industry and you got all
the accolades and every ad week, pr Week, ad age
at the possible conference, you were awarded the best marketer
(25:38):
to ever live in Vaynermedia, the best agency. All of
that combined is half as interesting to me in that
my company's fifteen years old and you have almost one
hundred people that have worked in it for over ten years,
in an industry where people leave after eighteen months every day,
that I like the truth. I like real shit retention
(25:58):
of your employees for an agency owner should be the
number one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven kpi
other than can you make payroll right? Not the amount
of people that spend more time in our industry, counting
how many can lions the firm has won versus their
employee retention tells you everything that I think you need
(26:19):
to know about our industry right now.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
And how they talk about yourself as a leader and
the business you're running. E said, Yeah, well that's the
thing with me. I'm such a big personality. I'm a character.
I'm not confused by that.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
I've watched people be surprised how well my employees talk
about me behind my back, and that is deeply rewarding,
deeply rewarding, what super rewarding.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Congratulations to this. I hear you know that you're proud
of this, and you can be for sure, and obviously
that gives you confidence. You know that you do a
lot of things right, you know, running your different companies.
So let's talk about our industry we are acting in,
you know, the wider marketing world. Yes, I think it's
a trend to talk about trends. Right. Everybody you know
on a stage is asking you how what's coming up?
(27:03):
So you're in social media, you and NFTCRE in cryptocurrency
and concentration. Okay, so I've heard you talk about social
shopping as a kind of trend. Everybody what a surprise
talks about AI. Yes, let's specify a bit more. What
is the trend we are facing in the next couple
of months.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
So look, and you may know you're you're so, you're
so in this as well. You'll probably know this probably
if you especially if you're prepping a little bit for
this interview. I have stayed somewhat quiet so far on
AI compared to the way I usually roll. And the
reason I've done that is I don't like to talk
about shit until I'm really knowledgeable. I've been watching China
(27:43):
live shopping for eight years. I've been waiting Christian for
live social shopping like you can't imagine. I've been waiting
for the qvcification of social for a long time, and
it's immediate. Abercrombie and Fitch right now is a fact
did by live shopping and affiliate influencers like it changed
their business Mary Roots Organic Like. What I like about
(28:06):
why I'm talking about live social shopping is I know
everybody on the incredible possible stage that I'm going to
take in a couple of months if they sell something,
not B to B, but if they or a service.
But if they sell something can be very impacted positively
because of it AI as a trend. And I'm gonna
say this as respectfully as I can, because I feel
(28:28):
like I was getting you know, I always feel misunderstood
when I'm rasing the industry. I RaSE the industry because
I love the industry and I don't want us to disappear. Yeah,
you know, there's a reason people are taking things in house.
We as agencies are not providing enough value. I think
what's happening in our industry, with all due respect the
Madison Avenue industry compared to the Silicon Valley industry is
(28:50):
we have a lot of talking heads talking about AI
that really have no idea what the fuck they're talking about.
And so I don't want to be a contributor to that.
And and it's so big, you know, Live social shopping
is a nice transformation in commerce and content creation production days,
and I can get nerdy about it. AI is one
(29:12):
of the biggest inventions and innovations in the history of mankind,
and so I am trying to be very thoughtful and
listening and paying attention. Plus it's moving very quickly, and
so you know both. I mean, AI is something everybody
who's listening to this podcast, everybody that comes to your
(29:32):
incredible conference, should be spending time on. They should be
using it, they should be downloading the apps, they should
be understanding it. It is a big deal. It's a
big deal by the way, for anyone who's listening that
their business relies on search, they should really be paying
attention because it's going to disrupt search engines. It's a
big deal. But it's way beyond what everyone thinks. It's
going to be omnipresent. It's gonna affect so much. So anyway,
(29:58):
I think that people should be doing their own homework
on AI, meaning actively using these products, becoming a user
of not just listening to talking heads talk about it.
I think the two actually mix in. I think, let
me just put a string of trends together. I think
virtual influencers is going to become a big deal. Okay,
I think virtual influencers doing live shopping backed by powered
(30:23):
by AI is going to be a big deal for
a lot of our businesses. And so there's just a
lot going on. I think I'll give you a less
exciting trend, but it's been my passion. I'm excited it's
finally happening. I think the reallocation of the P and
L budget to organic social creative because of how the
algorithms work is one of the biggest trends everyone should
(30:44):
be paying attention to. That's interesting, it's less sexy, it's
very narrow, but I cannot believe how much growth my
company has had this year where brands are spending more
on social organic creative than they are on above the line.
And that happened over the last twenty four months in
(31:06):
a meaningful way, and it's a back to like caring
about practicality versus futurism. I think a lot of people
listening here. I hope they're paying attention to that because
that's a big game changer for a lot of brands
right now.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
So spending time creating experiences being really using that and
not just listening to people. What should be the next
one I hear you, is this the biggest you know
gap you know for traditional corporate leaders that they might
not still do understand about the modern business landscape? Is
this the case or is there anything else you would
give them? What kind of advice you would give corporate leaders?
(31:39):
Is it to spend more time, you know, with what's
really going on out there and not just tetting your team, Hey,
let me know what you think, but spending their own
time doing this.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Yeah. Look, I think being a practition to your point
of where you're leading this, being a practitioner is incredible,
Like you know, one of the reasons, Like I don't
know if people know this. If you go into the
history of me, there's two years where there's no Gary
Vee content because I wanted to be the operator and
I am the operator Vainner Media twenty eleven twenty thirteen, Like,
(32:09):
there's very little content of me, very little, it's insane.
From six to today, I am prolific, but there's this weird
little twenty four month gap. And do you know what happened, Christian?
I was running my business less wine videos, right, less
business videos, and at the back end of those twenty
four months, it became obvious to me that I was
losing my touch. Interesting because I wasn't being a practitioner anymore.
(32:33):
I could feel like people would ask me something about
Reddit or Twitter or something. I'm like, oh fuck, So
I went all back into Gary Vee and I did
everything YouTube and LinkedIn and Snapchat and and it's I
believe today, when I'm in again, it will happen. When
I come to Possible, there'll be a cocktail hour, There'll
be six of us hanging around, and when we get
into it, it's very quickly obvious to me that the
(32:56):
agency CEO that's sitting there with me that the two
CMO those that you know, somebody that like most people
that get senior, they lose or touched to the dirt. Yeah,
and so yes, I think that's very good advice. I
would also say the following creative's too expensive for our
industry and we're getting outflanked. We have to stop paying
(33:16):
the production dollars we're spending. And number two, the other
thing I would say that I would recommend to corporate
leaders is our media spends are being spent on potential reach,
not common sense actual reach.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Yeah, and I.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Would highly recommend, if that caught a nerve, for them
to look under the hood on how we're reporting against
reach and our mmms. And there's some real, real, real
vulnerabilities in marketing right now, and the doors are closing
in on us with these new brands that are popping up,
that are doing it in a contemporary way that don't
follow the Madison Avenue playbook, and we need to adjust
or we're gonna have some problems.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
So becoming or going back to the entrepreneurship in some way, right,
you know, when you start your business you do everything
on your own. That's a kind of step you know,
back and learn more about, you know, than just listening
to somebody. So talking about advice for leadership and you
know also young people you've mentioned already, you know, being
happy about your self awareness. What's the one misconception people
(34:16):
have about what it really takes to be happy? What
is the you know, to fulfill you know, what you
do and to not necessarily meet expectations of course, and
also not not everybody's expectation out there, because you know,
if people know somebody, then they should have an opinion
on you, but not you know, not knowing somebody and
talk about but what makes a difference to be really
(34:37):
happy in business?
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Yeah? I think this bleeds into life. I believe what
and this is a man This has been something I've
been fascinating my whole life. Yeah, you know, some people
are lucky. And I don't like using the word luck
because I think the word luck is weaponized by people
that are entitled and not looking to do anything. But
some people are lucky. And I'm one of those people
where where you're born into your DNA is a certain way,
(35:01):
and then the parent or parents that mold you are
a certain way. When people like one of the reasons
I'll do a podcast like this and talk about myself
quote unquote is I don't think I deserve any of
the accolades that are bestowed on me. I think that
they are When I get accolades, that's a flattering moment
for my parents, not me. So I enjoy this because
(35:25):
I know my mom's listening right now because she listens
to everything. And I like when you're like, hey, good job, Gary,
I feel that's like you're giving love to tomorrow Vaynerchuk,
not Gary, so that I like. So some people are
just fortunate. I knew that I was fortunate. I was
self aware. I was so emotionally intelligent in the scheme
(35:46):
of things. In hindsight, my whole life. I see it
a lot of my son by the way, so now
I know what it is. He's very empathetic. It's crazy
like everything he just feels, and I was that way.
I have some answers to this because I've studied for
a long time and I watch people. I believe disproportionately
the secret to happiness and business and in life is simplicity.
(36:09):
You know, we're getting to know each other more and
more Christian. If you really knew me, let's say we
really grew up together, you really knew me, well, you
would know. And twenty people know this about me? Is
I care about nothing professionally? It would I'm telling you, brother,
I'm telling you, it would fucking stun you how little
fucks I give about Gary Vee, Vayner viv It's shocked.
(36:32):
I am so detached emotionally from my professional career. It's
almost like I don't know if it's brilliant or fucked upness.
I don't know what it is, but I will tell
you that the only thing that I give a shit
about actually is are the fifteen people I love the
most on earth, healthy and alive. And I'm crippled when
(36:53):
there's a health scare, and I'm light as a feather
when there's not. I have so much adversity. I'm a
human being. I'm forty nine years old. I have things
in my personal life. I have a billion pressures in business.
There's not a day in business where I don't have
fucked up news. We let go of somebody today that
I care about deeply. It's fucked with me for three months.
(37:14):
Three months, this has been a heaviness on my chest.
It's hard to be a leader and to be out there,
and I'm a public figure, all that judgment, all those
whispers behind your back, like all that stuff. But the
reason is it's humility. I don't think I'm that important.
I think I'll die one day. Maybe I'll get twenty
four hours on whatever the social media, if social media
(37:36):
even exists at the time, I'll get some flowers, right,
and then everybody will move on with their life. My
family will care longer. And so I think humility and simplicity.
I don't need stuff. I don't need a fucking private
jet to impress anybody. I don't care if people think
I'm good, bad, or indifferent. I want them. I care
if you know me, By the way, Christian, I care
(37:57):
more today what you think about me than two years ago,
because we've interacted more that matters to me. But right now,
I promise you, Maddie, who's sitting right heroes worked with me.
Now what Mattie nine eight years, I really give a
lot of I care. Maddie is not as important to
people in the advertising world as Christian is. But I
can tell you right now, I could give a fuck
(38:18):
what you think compared to Maddie, because Maddie knows, and
so I think the secret to life is detachment from
bullshit and deep attachment to love.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Which is a huge achievement if you allow yourself to
think like this, I would say. But also in acting
in business, you know, in so many ways to give
a shit on you know, other's opinion in that way.
Not many people can do this, as we all know.
We know we are pressed into a framework, you know,
especially when you work for bigger companies, et cetera. But
you're your own boss, and maybe that's also one of
(38:51):
the key differences.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Yes, but I'm my own boss that plays with the market,
right right, Like you know, it's a different version. Yeah,
there's many days when I wake up and I'm like,
you know, being judged by three random people that are
my bosses. Sounds really good right now, versus you know,
the field of society, you know, so like you know,
there's different versions of it, but yeah, simplicity and humility,
(39:15):
and people say it, but then they don't act on it.
I've unfortunately had to let go of leaders through the
years who say they care about people, but they don't.
They're posturing, they're politicking me, they're trying to appease me.
But you know, I tell people, I mean, I tell
people all the time, don't worry about what I think
about you. Worry about what the people who work for
you think about you. Maddie Will if you hung out
(39:36):
with Maddie, she would tell you it's wild how senior
some of the people have been that have gotten fired here,
the leaders, because they just if you can't get along
with the boys and girls, especially the ones that you're leading,
you're not for me.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Yeah, Gary, I have a last one. Please, You've accomplished
so much already. What's one thing you still feel, you know,
like you you must do before you call it a day,
professional whatever, whatever?
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Overall, I'd like to I'd like to become even a
better father. I think I'm a great son, like the
best I feel like, I feel like I can walk.
I can't wait to go to heaven. I expect God
to give me like best Son Ever award, But I
feel like there's more to be done as a father.
I have a fifteen and twelve year old. I want
to really crush that and do more there. Number two. Professionally,
(40:29):
I'd like to create a company that has the most
amount of offspring from the company that went on to
build companies that are similar to mine, which are wildly
successful but also nice to their employees. I'd like to
reframe the company. Actually, I'm going to give you a
slightly different answer, but it's the same answer. Before I'm done. Professionally,
(40:51):
I would like to rebrand nice Guys Finish Last to
nice Guys Finish First. That's what I would like to do.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
That's a great statement to the end of our conversation today,
and to your first point, I'm pretty sure and I
know that he's a great son because you're a great father,
so that's for sure. And I can tell you because
I have a son as well as you know, and
I feel in a very similar way. So Gary, that
conversation was nothing short, but incredible. Thank you so much
for your time, your energy, insights, and that honest conversation.
(41:22):
And I'm sure you know many of our listeners will
walk away ready to hustle Haara and think bigger, appreciate manness.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Let me say one last thing. I assume we're going
to put this out before the conference, right, that's a plan. Yes, okay, good?
Let me just send with this please please please, Because
I see it in your eyes, which is why I
approach so many people. I'm going to be around quite
a bit. I actually am so happy this is happening
because I get to say it out loud. I send
this to you in person. Now I want to say
it out loud. The conference you've created has become the newest,
(41:50):
most important conference in our industry. That's an incredible accomplishment
in what is fucking two minutes? What is this year?
Speaker 3 (41:55):
Three?
Speaker 1 (41:56):
It's going to be the three yees.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
Correct, It's absurd what you've become published you and your partners.
I'm going to be around a lot more this year
because I'm allocating more time, because it's that important. If
you happen to see me, like walking in the hotel wherever,
and you want to say hello. Please say hello. Relationships
are everything.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
We make sure you have to connect with the right
people and then connect with the right one and this
is you for sure. Gary, appreciate you. Thank you very
much for mind see you by. Thanks for tuning in everyone.
Once again, I'm your host, Christian Moho. If you have
a question or suggestion to me, reach out, send me
a d M on LinkedIn. If you're courious to learn
(42:35):
more about Possible, sign up for our newsletter, or if
you want to join us at the Possible Show in Miami,
visit possibleevent dot com. Possible Now is a co production
of iHeartMedia and Possible. Our executive producers are Ryan Martz
and Yasmin Melendez. Our supervising producer is Meredith Barnes. Special
thanks to Colleen Lawrence Mac from our programming team. Our
(42:58):
theme music is composed by Anthony Keticoli. For more podcasts
from iHeart, visit the iHeart app Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.