Gary Vaynerchuk (57:34)
For me to partner early in my career. A lot later it got changed up. Check this out. One of the reasons I'm scared to partner is I'm building such a big thing. I'm scared that I want to do something and by doing a small partnership, if I then later want to do something in it, I'm worried that that partner's like, yo, fuck you garyvee, you fucking stole my shit or you did wrong by me. I'm so scared of reputational. So I'm very timid on partnerships because of that. Because my favorite thing, this is a very important statement that I hope hits for someone. I'm not trying to maximize money. I'm trying to maximize the joy of the game. When you analyze my career and I've got another 50 years when it's all said and done and it's written, people are going to look at it if they, if I keep doing what I'm doing and it's worth looking at and they'll be like, man, he did a lot of dumb shit and I'm going to come from fucking heaven and whisper down to them, it wasn't dumb shit. I wasn't trying to maximize money. If I was trying to maximize money, I would just do real estate, all the tax laws in its favor. I'm trying to maximize fun. Like I'm serious. Like I like ah athletes, you know that I'm in the business. Vayner Sports, big agency. We just. My brother, big shout out to AJ just signed the biggest jets defensive player contract in history. We rep SAS Gardner, we have all these crazy athletes. It broke my heart when we got into the business 10 years ago and honestly I knew it earlier. Eight years ago we got into business. Probably 12 years ago is when I realized this. When my notoriety and my juice started growing. I started meeting more fancy people. I started meeting real athletes. I so wished as a kid that I could be a football player or anything. I love sports that much. Third grade, my hand eye coordination had me cooking all star and everything. Fifth grade, size, speed, athleticism, power, all started to matter. I Got fucking cooked out. But I didn't realize how many athletes don't love the game. I just love it so much. I played five hours of basketball on Thursday. I'm fucking 50 in November. I'm not supposed to be out there like that. That's how much I love it. But for a lot of athletes, it's the way out. It's the path to paper. It's the biggest thing they can do to make money. As an entrepreneur, I think when people think about entrepreneurship, everybody who's watching, they think about money. I think about sports and art. If entrepreneurship was like teaching and you could only make 50,000 a year, I'd be sitting here right now talking about entrepreneurship, renting a fucking Kia, eating fucking inexpensive food, living in a humble home, and I would be happy as fuck. And I know a lot of people don't believe me. And the good news is, I don't give a fuck, because I know it's the truth. I'm in it for the game. So the reason I don't do a lot of partnerships is a lot of times I'm not trying to maximize the financial thing. I want to paint my own picture. I don't want to co cook. I want to cook, you know? And so for me, this is the. Like, this is why I fucked with Kobe so heavy. Like, long before, like, just day one. Kobe, like. And by the way, I'm a Knicks fan and hate every other player and team, but I was like, that motherfucker, and he was in the west, so that was good. It wasn't going to fuck up my Knicks. That's why I hate Jordan and Brady so much. But I understood them. There's certain people that it's just about the game. As an entrepreneur, what most excites me is to see where I stack up. But I have the humility. When someone builds bigger shit, I'm like, you know the game. You see the best athletes in the world play a game and the game's over. And as a fan, when the jets lose to the Patriots and the game's over and all the jets play or dap up the path, I'm like, don't fucking. You know, I get pissed cause I'm a fan, but they're on the field and they know, like, ufc, right? These motherfuckers are trying to kill each other. Fight's over. That's why I love UFC so much. They fucking right? It's like a brotherhood, right? That's how I feel about fellow entrepreneurs. But the money isn't like what excites me. And people are gonna be like, in the comments or in their heads right now. Yeah, because you got it now. I'm like, motherfucker, fuck you. You didn't know me at 17. Go find my boys from around the way. It was always about this when they were fucking going to parties and hooking up. I did a baseball card show. Not for the $187 that I made. Cause I'd rather hook up than get $187 because the fucking game. It's like these lights, you know, like in the summer when you got those lights and little flies, they can't help it. I feel like those flies know that that light's gonna zap the fuck out of them and they're gonna die, but they can't fucking help it. It's like love, right? Like, you know, love. Like, you can't help it. That's how entrepreneurship is for me. And that's why partnerships, it's not about, like, I don't trust. In fact, I trust too much. It's just that I just want to.