How to Build a Real Business in the Creator Economy: Q&A With Top Creators

Summary

Podcast Summary: How to Build a Real Business in the Creator Economy: Q&A With Top Creators

The GaryVee Audio Experience | Host: Gary Vaynerchuk
Release Date: November 13, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this dynamic, high-energy group Q&A, Gary Vaynerchuk brings together accomplished and aspiring creators for actionable guidance on building sustainable businesses in the creator economy. He dives deep with top creators on scaling, monetization, authenticity, personal branding, and the strategic use of platforms and products. Gary's trademark candor and tactical advice, peppered with humor and empathy, animate the conversation, culminating in a masterclass for creators ready to turn creative output into scalable business.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Follow What Genuinely Interests You

• Summary: Gary emphasizes the importance of pursuing the platform or approach that feels authentic, even if it means slower growth in the short term.
• Notable Quote:

  "Pick the thing that sounds the most interesting, like the one that you want to do. Because then you will work harder....I just ebb and flow with what I want to do and you guys need to do that too."
  — Gary Vee (11:26)

• Insight: Staying true to your passion ensures staying power, motivation, and, ultimately, long-term success.

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2. Scaling Solo Creators to Real Businesses

• Summary: Gary coaches creators on moving from solo hustle to scalable business structures, highlighting reinvestment and smart hiring.
• Key Points:
  • Maximize personal brand monetization on platforms (e.g., Stan).
  • Reinvest profits into hiring operational talent, especially those with small agency experience.
  • The first critical hire: a strong account manager to free up creative energy.
• Notable Quote:

  "You gotta kiss frogs to find princes in hiring...The first person you want to hire is an account person, because you don’t want to be dragged into taking care of the client as much as possible.”
  — Gary Vee (06:58)

• Timestamps: 04:28–07:28

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3. Decision Paralysis & The Power of Action

• Summary: Creators often get stuck overanalyzing which move comes next—new product, new channel, or team expansion. Gary's advice: make a choice, act, and pivot as needed.
• Notable Quotes:

  "Everything you just described are all viable things...What you need to focus on is not being scared of making a decision and running with it. And not being scared to change your mind four months later."
  — Gary Vee (11:00) “No one on earth has ever existed that knew exactly what the right next step was. There’s too much nuance, too much individuality.”
  — Gary Vee (11:44)

• Timestamps: 10:40–12:00

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4. Authenticity & Documentation Over Curation

• Summary: Gary champions radical authenticity, advising creators to document their process rather than over-curate for growth and audience connection.
• Notable Quotes:

  "I still think the most profound thing I ever said in this office just randomly in an interview with a kid was document over create. Documentation is just fucking bananas because it's authentic as fuck."
  — Gary Vee (24:32)

• Application: Sharing the journey wins audience trust and outpaces performative content.

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5. Monetization with Integrity

• Summary: Many creators fear monetization cheapens their brand. Gary reframes selling as serving, as long as you believe in your product and remain transparent with your audience.
• Notable Quotes:

  "You're allowed to sell something you believe in. Where you guys get fucked up is you sell something you don't believe in...They will smell it, and they will feel it."
  — Gary Vee (27:01)

• Timestamps: 25:20–27:27

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6. Leveraging Platform Tools & Digital Products

• Summary: Multiple creators share success stories using Stan Store for digital products, guides, courses, and especially paid communities.
• Key Tips:
  • Use low-friction, low-cost community offers to foster engagement and scale.
  • Diversify product offers—don't fear complexity but sequence offers over a longer horizon.
• Notable Quote:

  “The community product, four bucks a month, seven bucks a month. Because remember, if someone’s paying nine bucks a month, they care more.”
  — Gary Vee (22:10)

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7. Mindset: Patience, Humility, and Long-term Play

• Summary: Gary repeatedly grounds creators in patience and humility, urging them not to overvalue short-term outcomes or audience perceptions.
• Notable Quotes:

  "None of us are that serious. Even the ones that are getting more successful, bigger... Don’t overthink it... Go with what you want...(and) play. You’ve got time."
  — Gary Vee (31:17)

• Timestamps: 31:17–31:58

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8. Hiring & Scaling: Focus on Your Unique Abilities

• Summary: Gary counsels creators to identify their strengths (creative vs. operator) and hire accordingly, including from their audience when possible.
• Notable Quotes:

  "Hiring is guessing, firing is knowing. It's like hooking up... Sometimes they were right, sometimes I was right. You just go through the trials and tribulations of fucking building something."
  — Gary Vee (17:40) "For almost everyone on this call, they fucking hate it [operations]... The fact that you’re self-aware enough to make the move, you’re fucking golden. Go find that person."
  — Gary Vee (60:48)

• Timestamps: 15:00–18:45, 60:12–61:20

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9. Dealing with Growth, Competition, and Market Changes

• Summary: As spaces get crowded and AI increases competition, the differentiator remains: giving away value.
• Key Advice:
  • Provide disproportionate free value to remain top-of-mind and outpace others.
  • Lean hard into one-on-one engagement, replying to DMs, and direct interactions.
• Notable Quote:

  "The number one way to win this game is be the one that brings the most value."
  — Gary Vee (38:18)

• Timestamps: 38:18–39:25

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10. Overcoming Imposter Syndrome & Charging What You're Worth

• Summary: Creators hesitant to charge higher prices or offer new products are counseled to experiment freely and refund if expectations aren’t met, removing the pressure and guilt from selling.
• Notable Quote:

  "You can put up on Stan $500 for a 30-minute consultation… If you feel like the woman on the other side didn’t get value or isn’t happy, you literally can look her in the face and go, ‘You know what? That didn’t feel good enough for me. I’m refunding you.’"
  — Gary Vee (53:16)

• Timestamps: 52:12–53:29

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11. Balancing Business with Life (Especially Parenthood)

• Summary: No single right way to balance business and life, especially with a newborn or major life changes—give yourself grace and zoom out on time frames.
• Notable Quote:

  "Not overanalyzing one or two years, you’ll get crippled by that. ...Life is multi-dimensional. There’s no right answer on this one."
  — Gary Vee (49:08)

• Timestamps: 48:51–50:43

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Memorable Lightning Round & Quotes

• On pivoting personal brand:

  "The second you start making new content is the second you become the next thing of you."
  — Gary Vee (57:35)

• On consistency and converting content:

  "Consistency, having your profile URL and copyright... and making occasional right hook content where you’re asking people to go check out what you’re selling. Period. That’s the framework, period, period."
  — Gary Vee (45:05)

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Notable Timestamps & Segments

• [04:28–07:28] – Hiring your first team member, structuring a creator-led agency
• [10:40–12:00] – Overcoming indecision, making and adjusting choices
• [15:00–18:45] – Sales, reinvestment, and enterprise scaling strategies
• [24:32–25:20] – Documenting vs. creating for authenticity
• [31:17–31:58] – Sequence vs. simultaneous offering; humility and patience
• [38:18–39:25] – Standing out as a business coach/free value strategy
• [52:12–53:29] – Overcoming fear of charging and monetizing
• [60:12–61:20] – Finding partners and operators for creative agencies

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Final Takeaways

• Authenticity trumps all.
• Hire for your gaps—especially operations.
• Document over curate to build trust and scale.
• Give value first, monetize second—and only if you believe in it.
• Patience and humility are superpowers; zoom out on your timeline.
• Charging what you're worth is ethical if you’re prepared to refund if unsatisfied.
• Consistent, clear calls to action—paired with relentless value—convert attention into sales.
• Balance hustle with grace for life’s personal chapters.

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For creators navigating the wilds of today’s economy, GaryVee’s advice is a GPS: bold, unfiltered, and rooted in creative abundance. This episode is a must-hear for anyone serious about long-term success in the creator economy.

Transcript

[A]

Pick the thing that sounds the most interesting, like the one that you want to do. Because then you will work harder. If you did what I told you to do, but you don't want to do it, it's gonna be hard. But if Tim wants to triple down on YouTube. Cause he fucking loves YouTube because he's a filmmaker and he doesn't wanna do TikTok. TikTok could have been the right answer for more growth in the short term, but deep down, long term, YouTube's probably gonna work. Do you understand what I'm saying, everyone? If you wanna be a businesswoman instead of a content creator, be more of a business. Like what has made me unique. Ish. I don't think I'm unique, but I think all of you know I've had longer staying power than a lot of people. I'm constantly evolving. I haven't disappeared. I don't fuck things up too often, you know, is because I really go with what I want to do and I'm okay. And you also actually, this is really good. You all also also know there's moments when I'm red hot and Gary Vee feels like proper and there's times like, where's he been? Like, I'm not as hot. Like even the last two years, I've been so head down building Vee friends and vaynermedia. The Gary Vee of it all is not as hot as it was three years ago. But now I'm going to start streaming live on Twitch and Kick and doing podcasts and doing more of this stuff. And next year I'll feel like fuck, Gary Vee's everywhere. I just ebb and flow with what I want to do and you guys need to do that too. Hey, podcast, before you go to the podcast, I've got a big announcement. I know several years ago a lot of you bought 12 books of 12 and a half to get the NFT, the book games NFT. I also know that a lot of people have dropped off on their journey with veefriends, which is a massive mistake because what we're doing on Burn island and what we're doing on base with book games is remarkable. So you need to go to vee friends vfriends.com oldbooks go to veefriends.com oldbooks with an S. You will go to that landing page and we will help you explain if you are trying to figure out where your NFTs are, how to bring them over to the website and how to start activating them so that you can start using them for all the incredible exchanges and draws and raffles and experiences that we're doing for people that actually own the book games. So please go to veefriends.com, where you can start your journey on reactivating your book games. Journey. This is the GaryVee audio experience.

[B]

Gary, what's happening?

[A]

All good stuff. Good to see you.

[B]

Likewise. We got 30 people in the chat right now and we're gonna dive right in. I'm rolling first.

[A]

Let's go. Stone, how are you?

[B]

Honored to be on the call. I think I'll speak for myself and everyone on this call. We just really appreciate you. Honored to be on this call.

[A]

Thank you.

[B]

A little bit about my story and then I'll ask a question. I was first exposed to your content at 15 years old in high school. Started my business at around 17 years old. Started posting three times a day on TikTok around financial literacy, self improvement for my generation. Then that kind of shifted into me creating a second account, teaching people how I built that account and how they could too. And so I was still young. I couldn't even set up Stan, couldn't even activate stripe, but turned 18, made a couple hundred, or made $100,000 in the first couple of months by just teaching older people how to use social media.

[A]

I get it.

[B]

And then convinced my parents I didn't need to go to college, went all in on entrepreneurship. And now that's basically what I do is I help people who didn't really grow up with social media boomers, business owners, but experts grow their audience and monetize.

[A]

Makes sense.

[B]

The mission is to continue doing that and then like, impact my generation with what I've learned and share more about my interests.

[A]

Makes sense.

[B]

I had so many questions, but the main question I think that would be beneficial for me and a lot of people in this call was, would be if you were rebuilding Vanyard today as a solo creator with no team, how would you.

[A]

How would you go about.

[B]

I mean, maybe you can go macro, maybe you go micro, however you want to answer this question, but how would you go about structuring the business and the offers within Stan? You know, like, how would you go about selling them? How would you go about doing it through Stan and yeah, just operating.

[A]

You know, I would build the Stone brand on Stan like you are more all in. And I would start taking my profits and reinvesting them into two key employees to be the operators of the agency side, if that's what you were looking to do. And then I Would pick AI and live shopping and contemporary modern social media. Creative and media as the three pillars that I would sell services against on the Stone media side. But I would literally do what I did. Gary Vee was being built while VaynerMedia was being built. Got it. And so I would use Stan to maximize my financial impact on the stone front. And then I would take those profits like I did as, you know, a 35 year old, and reinvest them into employees to get the agency up. Okay, got it.

[B]

Any particular how would you go about figuring out who to hire first? Those two main Guessing. Okay.

[A]

And I know it's a funny answer. What I would probably. I'm going for effect a little bit to make you feel less pressure on getting it right. I would hire people that have already done agency life for smaller agencies, not the biggest ones or maybe Vayner for that matter. You know, sometimes you get lucky and hire epic people. I once hired Chris D here at Stan to work at Vayner and we were right about him. Other times, I'm sure Chris, while he was at Vayner, worked with some dopey people. They didn't work out like, you know, it's life, right? You're trying to. You gotta kiss frogs to find princes in hiring. But I probably hire people definitely with agency experience that you could afford. And then it depends on how good Stone is. Right. Gary was good enough to both build up Gary Vee and build a huge agency. Not everyone's good enough. Plenty of people are good enough. If nothing else, you'll learn. But if you're asking me the question, you're asking me, which is how do I, you know, build an agency while being Stone F? I think it's making as much money on the Stone F side through Stan. This is why I'm obsessed with Stan. Stan can make people money. And then taking those dollars and being able to reinvest into the agency while you build that up.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Hiring is people who've done it before. The first person you want to hire is an account person. Because you don't want to be dragged into taking care of the client as much as possible. You need that really strong account person first. Cause you know the strategy and the creative that people need to do. You need the babysitter, the handholder, the accountable one. So account person first for Stone F is outside in the world.

[B]

Makes sense.

[A]

All right, good. Good luck, bro.

[B]

Awesome. Thank you so much, Gary.

[A]

I got it, brother.

[B]

Awesome. All right.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Do you want to bring up Tim next also? Just want to Check with the chat. We want to make this a group call. Now. Everybody's screen be shown.

[A]

Yeah. Everybody get on screen.

[B]

That feels good.

[A]

I agree. That feels good.

[B]

Let's let everybody.

[A]

And on screen. Especially when you look like a model like Tim R. Everybody on.

[B]

Well, thank you. That's just a picture though. Can you hear me?

[A]

Yes, Tim.

[B]

Okay. Well Gary, thank you very much for this opportunity. Of course. So I'm a filmmaker from the Netherlands. I'm 35 years old. I've had a creative video agency for seven years together with a friend. But I quit that about three years ago. It was pretty successful, but just with the two of us and one employee. So not like big time successful but just enough to have a little bit of savings and to get a little bit of money when he bought me out of the company.

[A]

Understood.

[B]

So I quit with it in search of. In pursuit of more creativity and more.

[A]

More.

[B]

I don't know the English word for it at the moment, but I just wanted to do more what I wanted and not work for clients all the time. So I pursued. I wanted to do this long time dream of me to pursue YouTube. So I did. I started in January. As of Now I've built 60,000 subscribers. And I started with a Stan store about four months ago, launched my first product and since then I've sold 500 products. That is going very well.

[A]

I'm sorry, that chopped on me a little bit. So far you've sold 500, what, 12k.

[B]

A month since then. So I'm really, really stoked about that.

[A]

I'm good.

[B]

I'm just wondering what should be my next steps because the product works. But I'm all the time I'm thinking about new tools. Sorry, can you still hear me?

[A]

Yes, sir. Yes.

[B]

Oh, I think there's some. We can still hear you, Tim. Okay. Anyway, sorry. So I've got a lot of ideas all the time, like new ideas. Should I start a high ticket offer or mid ticket offer? Should I double. Double down on making more content or should I be hiring help or should I myself on multiple platforms? Because right now I'm only doing YouTube obviously, same time.

[A]

So is he chopping for everyone else? Is that on my side.

[B]

Gary?

[A]

Are we on. Is it my side?

[B]

I think it's on your side, Gary.

[A]

No worries. Give me one second. Give me one second. Everyone. I can hear you all.

[B]

I think you're good now, Gary.

[A]

Okay. The answer is yes to everything, Tim. Like the answer is yes, meaning what you were just describing. The answer is there is no. Right Answer. Everything you just described are all viable things one can do in your situation. What I think what you need to focus on is not being scared of making a decision and running with it. And not being scared to change your mind. Four months later When I look at all these beautiful young faces on this screen, if everybody just heard me and really understood me, it will completely change their careers. Tim, there's been three years that I've wasted on some stuff.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I'm gonna say it again. Cause I want all of you to hear me. Everything Tim just said, all of you are thinking too, right? All of it can be the right answer. All of it might be the third best thing you could have done out of your five options. It does not matter. You must pick things, you must do things, and you must adjust the things when they become real. No one on earth has ever existed that knew exactly what the right next step was. There's too much nuance, there's too much individuality around this. There's too much macro new things going on. I will give you something. I can see this room is picking up what I'm putting down. So I'm proud of all of you. Makes sense. You've all been successful. So let's keep going. Listen to me. This is very important, what I'm about to say. Pick the thing that sounds the most interesting, like the one that you want to do. Because then you will work harder. If you did what I told you to do, but you don't wanna do it, it's gonna be hard. But if Tim wants to triple down on YouTube. Cause he fucking loves YouTube because he's a filmmaker and he doesn't wanna do TikTok. TikTok could have been the right answer for more growth in the short term. But deep down, long term, YouTube's probably gonna work. Do you understand what I'm saying? Everyone? If you wanna be a businesswoman instead of a content creator, be more of a business. Like what has made me unique? Ish. I don't think I'm gonna unique. But I think all of you know I've had longer staying power than a lot of people. I'm constantly evolving. I haven't disappeared. I don't fuck things up too often, you know, is because I really go with what I want to do and I'm okay. And you also. Actually, this is really good. You all also know there's moments when I'm red hot and Gary Vee feels like proper and there's times like, where's he? Like, I'm not As hot. Like even the last two years, I've been so head down building V, Friends and vaynermedia, the garyvee of it all is not as hot as it was three years ago. But now I'm going to start streaming live on Twitch and Kick and doing podcasts and doing more of this stuff. And next year I'll feel like fuck. Garyvee's everywhere. I just ebb and flow with what I want to do and you guys need to do that too. Got cool. Interesting. I'm sorry about the WI fi. Let me see what's going on. This is so unusual. Classic. Give me one second. Give me one second. I'll be right back.

[B]

Gary, if you could just have Vayner turn off their WI fi on their phones and computers or whatever real quick, that would be helpful.

[A]

It's not that I think I know what happened. See, this could be it. Sorry about that.

[B]

Danko, you're up next, by the way. All good.

[A]

Let's keep it going.

[B]

Hi. Okay. You wanna bring up Dan? I'm here. Hey, Gary.

[A]

Great to meet you. Pleasure.

[B]

Good to be here. I appreciate you doing this.

[A]

Happy to do it.

[B]

So for my question, I've gone through the ringer with digital products looking to get into software. Built a software over the past two years with an incredible team. We decided to pivot and we're going to be launching that in January. Ish. I feel pretty clear on what I should do regarding promotion, social media, etc. I feel like I'm good at fucking up and figuring things out. But the thing that I'm not clear on a bit down the road, let's say a year from now, is where to start with enterprise deals. When, or at least like getting started in that domain. When I don't.

[A]

I got it. Okay, so you've got a SaaS product that you anticipate growing into enterprise.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Two things. One, one, start making LinkedIn content the way you do for other social channels today. Today. Because what's gonna happen is you start making that content, you could be very vulnerable, Dan. You could be like, hey, I'm gonna be in the enterprise space. So I'm here now. I've been crushing it over there. Now I'm excited to get to know a lot of you because I'm a good listener and I wanna figure out what matters to all of you. You'll be stunned what kind of results that kind of content over six months will get for you two. It's similar to what I told Stone. You will hire an enterprise Salesperson from HubSpot or from Buddy Media or from Square or Shopify. You will hire friends. The biggest mistake a lot of you make is you take the money you make as an influencer and you buy dumb shit instead of reinvesting it in your career. I love all of you so much right now. Cuz I know that I saw you. Thank you. Listen, I know you hear my war stories through my content. I wish you were my best friend and watched me from 22 to 34. I had nothing. Nothing. Not a handbag, not a cool pair of sneakers, nothing. All of you were caught up in the materialistic world. You're all fucking Madonna out here, you know, like trying to be a material girl way too much. Every dream will come true if you stop spending your money on things that don't matter. Now, a nice vacation with your family, that shit matters. You know what I mean? Like there's things to spend on. But all of you could get much further along if you just stay disciplined on reinvesting your money into your dream instead of. Most of you need more people on your team. But again, it's hard to give up that cash. Cause for a lot of us, we didn't come from that cash. So when you got it, you wanna either save it or buy dumb shit to get those feelings out that you had what you didn't have. But it is slowing you down from building your dream. So that's how Dan. You're gonna hire a salesperson who knows the space. And you're gonna learn from him or her. And you're gonna also learn what you don't want from him or her. Almost everybody I hired at Vaynermedia that same way. I learned things I wanted and I learned things that I didn't wanna do that they were bringing from the old world. And I had a pretty strong opinion on how to do it more modern. And you find your way. And by the way, I want you all to hear this. Sometimes they were right. Right. You know, I was me feeling myself and I'm like, I'm gonna do it this way. And then three years later I'm like, fuck, I should have done it the old school way. It was more right. And you just go through the. The trials and tribulations of fucking building something. And you can't be scared to hire wrong. Everyone I know, a lot of you are scared to hire wrong. Hiring is guessing, firing is knowing. It's like hooking up. When you hook up, you don't know somebody ends up being the person the love of your life, and, like, that's who you're going to marry. And a lot of people are just a bunch of fucking fuck boys that you fucking tell stories about when you're older. That's hiring.

[B]

Nice. Thank you. Mozzie, you're up.

[A]

Yeah. By the way, great call out by Gannon. I actually fully agree with that. Great call out, Gannon. Gannon said best decision I made was hiring from my audience. I agree with that. Every time I hire people that don't fuck with Gary Vee or know Gary Vee not as.

[B]

Gary. What's up, man?

[A]

What's good? I'm really good. Monty, great to see you.

[B]

Likewise. Appreciate you and the team doing this, man. So, yeah, so I've been in the Galant spend too much time on me. But I've been, you know, a content creator for some years. I've been blessed to, you know, work with brands, get paid, and coach people and stuff like that. But I'm in a place right now, and I think it's really just because of, like, everything that's going on in the world and a lot of different vision that I see happening. Like, I feel like the world needs, like, happiness. They need, like, positive reinforcement, they need joy and things like that. And I'm actually, as a creator, in a space where I don't really feel fully aligned with what I was doing before. And I kind of feel like God is calling me to do something bigger.

[A]

Good for you.

[B]

And I have this idea, and I'd love to get your feedback on it in the little bit of time that we have, but can I give you the.

[A]

Can I give you the preview?

[B]

What's that?

[A]

Can I give you the preview?

[B]

Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

Just by the way you delivered your sentences, I know the answer is 100. You could literally tell me you're gonna sell bacon in Detroit, and the answer's gonna be yes, just by the way you communicated your sentences.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And I will tell you, Monty, the reason I interrupted you and I apologize is cause I know we're gonna run out of time. And I got a lot of you here, my friends. You. Your intuition. Your intuition has the answers, not your brain. A lot of you are talking yourself out of your destiny. I'm so happy for you that you feel a calling to something. Go ahead, finish.

[B]

Yeah, no, I mean, I kind of got the answer there, but just, I guess, for more context for everybody, because I know everybody's like, what the hell is he talking about, though? So I have this idea of, like, quote, unquote, monetizing happiness and. Or monetizing kindness and incentivizing people to set a daily goal to go out and do some random act of kindness. I couldn't really figure out how I could monetize it, but I actually spoke to Stone last night or the other day, and we were talking about the idea of, like, creating a community, right? And maybe having, like, some type of, like, daily checklist of random acts of kindness and kind of make a movement out of it.

[A]

I'm sorry to interrupt you. Stan knows this. My favorite product that Stan has is the paid for groups. Cause it can be so inexpensive and there's so much scale, right? You know, if any of you beautiful people made a video and said, listen, I'm creating a closed group, the comments are all fucked up. Reddit's all fucked up. Like, my little area is two bucks a month. And I know if you're paying, you already care a little more. And I'm gonna be in there every day, and I still can't get over that product. I know the Digital product's good. $50, $100. Courses my number one thing I think all of you should do is sell your time just to learn. You know, 30 minute meetings. Like, you can get your numbers way up over time. And I think you'll learn also, and I think you'll feel good. You don't. You could. You have no idea how good I feel right now during this call with all of you knowing I'm saying some stuff that might matter for some of you, but the community product, four bucks a month, seven bucks a month. Because remember, if someone's paying nine bucks a month, they care more. So that community product's a killer on Stan. A killer on Stan for all of you, including creating little side communities for other things you're into. Let's say you're into building out a happiness thing, but you're also really into golf. You could stand up your own little golf thing on the side. It's very fascinating if you get smart with the stand product. This is why I'm here.

[B]

Love that. Thanks for that insight. I appreciate you, man.

[A]

Got you, bro. Let's keep it going.

[B]

Amazing. Raj, you're next. What's up, Gary? Can you guys hear me?

[A]

We can. Rajan.

[B]

So nice to meet you, Gary. I'm 22 now. Just graduated college. Just a short story I started because of you through ebay. I started selling shoes on eBay at 17. Did it for five years, and then I rolled that money into a real estate project. So me and my Friend from Virginia Tech are developing micro resorts in Virginia, and we've been documenting the journey on Instagram just, like, how our build's been going, and we've gotten to over half a million followers. So smart.

[A]

I've seen it, brother. I've seen it. And Jon from Stan is like, you guys are doing it genuinely, just so you know your answer overall. And then I'll get into. Your actual question is to quadruple down on what you're doing. Like, quadruple down. And what I mean by that is, like, more documenting, more going hard, more like, it's just. You're on it, actually on it, and you need to go harder.

[B]

100. Thank you. I mean, thank you so much for that. And that's the plan. We. It's crazy how Instagram can bring investors for us to. We're about to close on, of course, and try to build, like, the biggest resort in America. Like, the tagline now is building the biggest Airbnb in Virginia. But I think we can build the biggest resort in America.

[A]

You got nothing but time, bro. You're 22. Good for you.

[B]

Thank you. So through documenting, I met my other friend in this call, Yanni, who got to a million followers documenting his bowling alley.

[A]

Yes, I saw that too.

[B]

So we've just been purely documenting our business, not.

[A]

Look, I'm sorry to interrupt, but some of you might have saw this. I still think the most profound thing I ever said in this office just randomly in an interview with a kid was document over create.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Like, I just think documentation is just fucking bananas because it's authentic as fuck.

[B]

Yeah. And we've just done a piece of purely authentically, and I want to hand it off to Yanni because we have a question.

[A]

Related. Okay. Go ahead, Yanni, Go ahead. Gotcha.

[B]

Hey, Garrett, thanks for your time. This is really cool.

[A]

Thank you.

[B]

So, yeah, me and Raj have very similar story in terms of documenting our business. We've, like, fully been authentic in doing that and haven't taken, like, really a single dollar in doing it. And I think that's why we both seem like the crazy growth we have. I grew a million followers in 60 days of posting about the bowling alley build. And so, like, what's crazy is, like, for this challenge, we want to win the challenge, but we've never asked for money.

[A]

I think you double. You double down on. You double down on authenticity. The piece of content that you bring out is. What do you guys think is actual value? Or should we not do it at all? Just build it with them. Break the fourth wall be like, yo, like, literally the video is you guys struggling with this and, like, just saying, like, but we want to, and we're not against it, and we think we have something, but we'd rather do this with y'.

[B]

All.

[A]

What the fuck would you want? For what? Break the fourth wall.

[B]

So literally, just like, when I in my cabin videos, I asked, should we do brown or black siding? Like, the same thing? Like, what should we charge for?

[A]

Yeah. And just even, like, make it just really authentic. Be together and just be like, listen, we're, like, really want to do this. We really believe in this. A lot of you that are following us want this for you. We want to win this. But we're, like, a little caught because we've been holding our breath, and, like, you don't want to monetize, and we don't want you guys to feel that from us. But, like, you know, like, one thing I want you to all hear, as you guys know, I tend not to monetize sometimes for three, four years, and then it's veefriends or then it's a book or something. The reason I'm always comfortable selling something, even though I prefer not to. I prefer not to is because I believe in what I'm selling. Like, I genuinely believe that this comic book from vee friends, in 20 years, everyone's like, all of you are gonna be like, why didn't we buy GaryVee's be? We already knew he was fucking gas. The fuck did we fade him for? Because I really believe it. Like, when I sell wine on winetext, I know. It's like, literally, in 31 minutes, we're sending out a wine text. It's a $200 wine for $49. I'm proud of that. Like, you're allowed to sell something you believe in where you guys get fucked up. As you sell something you don't believe in, you sell it because you want to make as much money as possible. Got it? And they will smell it, and they will feel it.

[B]

Okay, that makes sense.

[A]

Cool. Yeah, it's just. It's back to, you know, people throw around authenticity all day, and 99% of people are not authentic who say it. Like, when you actually live that life, you win. Why do you think I fucking pound your beautiful young skull so much on the concept of patience? Right? Like, all of you are tired of me saying you're 39 and you're young, but, like, the reality is it's true. And once you believe it to be true, you become unstoppable I was 34 years old working in my dad's liquor store. Rajan, you're 22.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We're not even close. It's disrespectful to you to compare you to where I was at 22. I made $41,000 when I was 20. 22, working 100 hours a week in a liquor store. We're not the same. You're way ahead.

[B]

Yeah. I'm not even a year into documenting the bill, which is. I'm so blessed. Like, it's crazy the amount of growth we've gotten.

[A]

So keep going. Keep going.

[B]

Just keep documenting it.

[A]

Keep going. Yep. And keep being authentic with them. All right. Sophia, Sophie. Excuse me. My dyslexia's kicking in.

[C]

Hey. No, all good. Lovely to meet, meet you. Pleasure to see everyone else on the call. It's a weird moment for me because a couple of you are, like, youtubers that I followed and I heard about stand through you. And I basically, long story short, went on this huge health journey, was really struggling with inflammation, and had to quit my job because I was so sick. And I said I was gonna find the answer, and if I found the answer, I would share with people. So similar story documented on my socials and found the answers, blew up on socials, and was also training to be a women's health practitioner. So as my theories of me getting rid of my inflammation was going viral, I then made a really simple, like, $80 guide, set it up, and it, like, blew up, and we made, like, half a million dollars since being on stamp, which is crazy.

[A]

It's. It's really. It's. It's really not crazy. And it's what I desperately need. Like, again, a lot of you have followed me for a long time. I do my own stuff, my wine stuff, my vee friends. For me to do this with a company is unprecedented. It's because I don't think it's crazy what you're going through. I think it's the preview. If people listen and put in the work to understand Stan.

[C]

This is the kind of next stage in my journey, which is why I'm glad that we get to ask these questions. Is that the thing that made me healthy again was something very specific, and it was almost like a medical protocol, and then you adapt your life afterwards. So it was called the aip. And I'm now doing Anti Inflammatory living, which because of all my book sales on Stan. Penguin then commissioned me to do this book. So I have the guide. I'm launching the book And I want to launch on Stan a course, which is a course, if I version of the book to really give people more help that like visual learning and I can support them more. Now my problem comes from I found it really, really easy to make this kind of sharing my journey. Here's my guide. It's with one message, one product, super easy to sell. Now that the ecosystem is becoming a little bit more complicated, I'm now kind of in this push pull of like, okay, so this week, if I only want to do one sales post on my page because I want to keep it authentic, do I do the guide, the book, the course, and then I feel like it gets a bit muddled.

[A]

Time, time, time. So this is why I'm obsessed with time. Like if you thought about it in a six month, month window, you wouldn't be as crippled.

[C]

Yeah, right.

[A]

Like if you, if you didn't think about it for this week and you thought about it for this year, a funny thing happens. Everything that you want to push becomes easy to push.

[C]

The only thing I struggle with though is how would you, would you focus on one at a time so that the messaging isn't complicated or the messaging is not complicated?

[A]

People aren't that focused on you. Humility.

[C]

Yeah, maybe I'm just open.

[A]

Humility. Humility. You know, none of us are that serious. Even the ones that are getting more successful bigger. You Throw Beyonce and MrBeast and Kai Sinette and Barack Obama and Donald Trump all together and nobody's that serious. What I mean by that is don't overthink it. Go with what you want to go with with. Focus on pushing what you most feel in your tummy right now that you want to push. Are you most upset about the book? Are you most worried about the guide? And just roll with it? Three weeks of the book, then one with the guide, then back to the book, then two with the guide, then one of the court, like, play. You've got time.

[C]

Okay?

[A]

I promise you it's time.

[C]

I have one more question, if that's okay.

[A]

I don't think they're letting it happen, but go ahead. You can DM me, I'll get to it.

[C]

Okay, thank you very much, everyone. Thank you.

[B]

Mayor. Go ahead.

[C]

Hi, Gary, nice to meet you. Mayor. Huge fan.

[A]

Thanks.

[C]

Like, I've kind of gone the opposite way with my business in the way that it kind of came up. I have an MBA in marketing, so for me I'm kind of like, okay. Like I kind of understand, like how everything works.

[A]

Well, the, the academia of It. Right. Which is less real than what's actually happening.

[C]

Putting it actually on paper is a completely different story. But so I feel like I've grown my business pretty much with like one hand behind my back. I only just quit my full time job back in June of this year and I started a mentorship program. So I started a community which then kind of grew into a mentorship program. So I've been selling high ticket mentorship to people within my community and I feel like I've hit a wall. I'm spending a lot of time coaching people one on one and my days are like, it's, it's me, I am the business and it's exhausting.

[A]

You have to, you have to, you have to rate, you have to raise your. This is why Stan exists. You have to. Oh, go ahead.

[C]

Sorry, sorry. So I basically I started at 2100 for the first round just to kind of see how many people would get in. I got five. Next round it was 3,000. I got four. The next round it was 3,000. Again I got six. The next round it was eight at 35 and now it's 12 at 38. So I'm stuck in a thing where like I don't know how to scale this thing and I, I know that I can break it up in the group coaching and then the one on one and raise the prices. And I think that my limiting belief is that I don't know who's going to want to pay for it. There's so much competition out there.

[A]

Why, why are, why are people paying for it now?

[C]

Well, my belief is that they pay for me. They, they.

[A]

I see, I see, I see, I see. You're talking about the, the group or the $5 a month community?

[C]

No, so my community right now is on school and that's $60 a month. So I pretty much use that as a warming ground for my leads in order to convert them into high ticket mentorship. So for the high ticket mentorship I've now run, I'm on my fifth wave. I got it ready to sixth wave. So I want to be able to spend less time next year because it's going to launch next year working like.

[A]

I'm, I get it, I get it. You're, you're, you're misplaying it. You need to go to 10,000 and F4.

[C]

I guess I worry that for. Because I'm not coaching coaches or anything. I'm coaching other creators. Right. So I teach creators how to create content and so for them it's kind of like, can I.

[A]

Can I play this game with you? So you. You're. Break it down a little more because it's gonna help everyone. So I'm willing to stick on this. You. Did I hear that right? 5800 was the last one, so my.

[C]

Last one was 3800.

[A]

3800. What did I. What did I get if I paid you 3800. 3800 for what?

[C]

So you get an eight week mentorship program with me where I work one on one with you for how long? So two hour kickoff call, and then every week you get a one hour call with me.

[A]

But let's just talk. Let's just. Cool.

[C]

Longer than.

[A]

I get it. I get it, I get it. Let's just play with it. So 3800. Two hours. One hour for what? Ends up being nine hours. Right? Cool. So play this game with me. Let's say you go to 8,000 on this next wave for the same amount of time. Just play with me. Which would allow you to take half as many if you wanted to free up half the time. Okay. If no one buys it, it's not like you're out of business. It means you reprice the seventh wave. Mm. The end. I want to be very simple with you.

[C]

I guess. Like, my thing is. So if I. If that's repricing the seventh wave, what about the sixth wave? What do I do if no one buys the sixth wave? Do I just not do anything?

[A]

What do you mean not do anything? You do the thing that got you there in the first place. You start bringing more value to community. That's in bulk. You make more content. Also, you just take a couple weeks. You don't have to be on the same schedule. You just take a couple weeks and you reprice it. And for everybody who's like, wait, you wanted eight and now it's six because no one wanted to do it. You're like, yep, that's exactly what happened.

[C]

So would you also maybe splitting it up like I was told by like another coach to split it up into group coaching and then the one on one. Obviously you're able to price the one on one. Higher look.

[A]

Yeah, fragment fragmenting one on one to groups of ten to then having a community pay 60 bucks, 90 bucks, whatever a month. Of course, that makes quote unquote sense. You could also do a presale and request and say, this time I'm being more selective because I'm doing less. So fill out the presale to see how much interest you have. At 8,000, I have a wait list.

[C]

So I could easily do that.

[A]

I would email that wait list and tell them what you're doing, say that you do not have time, so you're gonna do way less people. Here's gonna be the price. And I need a little more detail of what you'd like to accomplish. So if you're interested, do the presale. Show your commitment to the presale and write out three paragraphs on what you want to accomplish so I can select the perfect people to help.

[C]

Okay. I kind of love that. Right now I'm not even doing calls. They just. They pay me because they trust me, so I like that.

[A]

I get it.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

You got it.

[B]

Okay, Jenna, you're up.

[C]

Hi, Gary.

[A]

Hi, Jenna.

[C]

Jenna. My background's in real estate. My business took off on social media, and real estate agents started asking me how I was selling houses using Instagram.

[A]

Makes sense.

[C]

And so I started teaching them, and it organically transitioned into me being an online business coach. For the last two or three years, I've had a lot of success on Stand store, and yes, I help people like Mariscale, so I was really passionate about hearing that conversation. But in addition to that, I think my biggest thing right now is you talk a lot about attention being the greatest currency, and I really appreciated your book day trading attention. I think my question for me and probably others in the group too, is especially being a business coach. We've seen the space get crowded, and I'm wondering in the next, like, year two, I mean, obviously I want to be doing this for a long time, but what is something that I could double down on to continue to stand out and keep winning attention from my.

[A]

Audience, bringing more free value at scale to create the leverage for monetizable events because the competition is going to get much harder. It's not going to be just humans. Like, I'm going to create AI humans that I will own that will give good business advice that look like all of you and will be competing with you. I will have 800 business coaches that are AI people competing with you. Like, you have to keep going. It is what it is. It's just the jungle out here. But the number one way to win this game is be the one that brings the most value. Okay. Right. Look what I'm doing. Look what the Stan challenge cost. Yeah, makes sense that.

[C]

Thank you.

[A]

Just keep doing it, Jenna. More and more and more free stuff. Free, free, free, free. One on one. How many of you are taking a full day with your favorite Cocktail, whether that's water or fucking bourbon. And just replying to 500 DMs one day just. Cause the answer, none of you. Right. Like, you know what I mean? Like, we gotta go deeper, get our hands dirty.

[C]

Absolutely. Thank you.

[B]

Okay, Jalen, you're up. All right, you guys can see me?

[A]

Yes, sir.

[B]

Okay, awesome. Hey, Gary, first of all, just thank you guys for giving me this opportunity to hop on a call. I really resonate with you, Gary, because you are just so real and raw. And that's how I teach my students. I'm extremely raw. I'm extremely real. Like, it's either you get it done or you don't. And I like that you're like that. I really, really love that you're like that.

[A]

Thank you.

[B]

So for me, just a little quick, quick, quick background. So I started off at my grandmother's house. I was literally creating content with a tripod and a phone, and literally all I did was just create fashion content. I was fired from my job and pretty much I was like, okay, well, how am I gonna make this money? Literally during the pandemic, So I would just started creating content with a tripod and a phone, and literally it just turned into a whole platform people, which just started following me from that. And then I started working with big brands. So like Wendy's, Taco Bell, McDonald's, like, they all just hit me up and started working with, like, me as a person.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

And then after that, I would say I got into marketing by fluke. Like, people were just like, okay, well, how do you get into brand deals?

[A]

How do you do that?

[B]

And I started teaching people how to get into brand deals, how to get into that motion. And then that turned into, like, you know, helping people actually make on social media, which is great. So I'm in five years in business and this is the first year that I've done 1 million in revenue just using her products on social media on stand store.

[A]

Congrats.

[B]

So that has been really, really amazing to see, like, the whole shift in my business just with teaching people and, you know, just that huge. So my. So you can hear me?

[A]

Yes, I said that's huge. Congratulations.

[B]

So thank you so much. Thank you. So my question is, okay, so when you first scale to that first, like, million dollar revenue in your brand, like, what is. What did you do next? Like, how did you scale that? Like, after that, what did that look like?

[A]

I never really did that. What I did was I took all the attention I had to build a business. I'm a businessman. Who happened to do content later, Right. So just to give you all context, VaynerMedia, the company I run, which I think a lot of people don't remember, that I actually have a career that I'm not a. This company will do $347 million in revenue this year. So I decided to lean into who I am, which is I'm a businessman. So I didn't, you know, and I think all of you have to do the same thing, which is like, what do you do with your attention and what do you deploy it against? Is it services? Is it coaching for you? Having a love for fashion? Do you make a product? Right. Can you build, can you bring, can you build a $10 million eyeglass or hat wear brand for other people? It's a restaurant. It may be a school. Like, we have to like. So I didn't, I didn't. The next move for all of you is either tripling down on what you're doing, so go make 3 million doing the same shit, or knowing yourself well enough of like, what should I make? What's the next thing I should take this attention and send it to. Right. They're keeping me on track. Keep it going.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

Thank you.

[B]

Yeah, you're up.

[C]

Hi, good morning, everybody. Can you hear me right?

[A]

Very well.

[B]

All right.

[C]

Thank you so much for doing this. And honestly, I'm just going to give you a quick background of what I do. I'm an immigrant girl. I moved here like five years ago. I'm 22. And I immediately jumped into doing content creation because I saw the opportunity and honestly, I kind of jumped into monetizing by accident. Brands just started reaching out to me and I was like, okay, this is something that I could make money from. Right now I have a community where I teach women how to monetize in different ways. It's a school community, it's a low ticket community. Everybody's paying like $67 a month. But my big question is, and I'm doing it like, the question is, for me and the girls inside of my community, the space has been question. What would you say right now is the simplest framework that someone can follow in order to monetize attention on social media?

[A]

Stan Store how would you literally making content that sends literally, it's why I'm here. Literally having a tech stack that allows you to sell what you're most comfortable with, whether that's one on one coaching, informational product or group coaching or my. And I know John's gonna make a face now I'm obsessed with the communities here and it sounds like some of you already doing it with school, which is great. But I think the reality is that those are the angles and then it's just about what you're teaching the problem. This is why I wrote day trading attention. The game changes all the time. For example, Nelli, I think your community, a lot of of them should be doing whatnot and TikTok shop selling. I think a lot of people are better at taking their time selling on social live selling than trying to become an influencer. I believe that. I believe there's a lot of people that will make a lot more money and have a lot more joy selling clothes and fragrances and shoes and product on live social shopping versus trying to amass a million followers on social. So it all just becomes what advice you're giving. But I think that the Stan tool is probably a very good thing to educate your community on. I really believe that I'm doing the same thing.

[C]

I teach them how to do different things like TikTok shop UGC brand deals. I teach them a bunch of different ways to monetize. But my question was mainly when it comes to content, how do you convert in the simplest way possible? How would you explain converting attention into sales?

[A]

Consistency, having your profile URL and copyright so that people that stumble on you go into your funnel and making occasional right hook content where you're asking people to go check out what you're selling. Period. That's the framework, period, period.

[B]

Amazing. Okay, let's keep it moving. You are next.

[A]

Yep.

[C]

Yes I am. Hey, thank you for having me. Hey everyone. My name is Kamaria. I am an online business coach and I just made a really big pivot here recently that I was not expecting to make. So this call came at the perfect time. So in the past three months I have really shifted my content to teaching creators and entrepreneurs how to create. Create custom apps and digital experiences using no code AI software. And they're loving it. They're eating it up. And I even took it a step further and got a little, got a little sassy and started talking about how this has not been something that most women have been privy to. And so I'm like men been dominating the space. Like ladies, let's go. Like let's, let's catch up. Stay ahead of the curve. It's been going amazing. Here's a question I have for you though. You are a pro at making complex things. Very easy, digestible, simple. I am in a bind right now with my content with trying to figure Out. How can I master the art of simplicity and accessibility with something like this? That has not been.

[A]

It's a great question. Honestly, the answer to that question is I got there out of a lot of effort. You gotta practice. You just gotta keep doing it. I'm telling you. First of all, your macro thesis is right. Vibe coding. AI coding is gonna be a massive space for a lot of people in this room. There are people in this room who are going to build an app in that way that is gonna change their life. And to your point, the people you're teaching are gonna be able to make tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands. And then it's gonna get competitive. It's all the same shit, but for you. From 14 to 30, for 16 years of my life, I was trying to educate people on complex things, about wine, using common sense language. So by the time I was starting to break down business stuff and other opportunities, I had a lot of practice. You're early in your journey. There's no magic pill I can give you to make you better at breaking shit down. You just need to keep trying. The fact that you know that that's what you're trying to achieve is huge. So you just keep doing different tactics in every piece of content every day until you find your flow. This is really trial and error. Trying different things, trying different adjectives, different words, different styles. Singing it, dancing it, talking it. Calm, high energy, very simple words, harder words. You just play and you will get there. Honestly, it's really testing and learning.

[C]

That's so helpful. One of the things that has worked, and I know I'm at 27 seconds, is going live. So I literally showed them, like, okay.

[A]

Obsessed, you know, until I get good.

[C]

At explaining it in 60 seconds. Let me show you for an hour that converts.

[A]

More, more, more. Live is huge. More, more of that. Okay. And you'll see what works through that. All right, Millie. Okay.

[C]

Hi, can you hear me?

[A]

Okay, we can.

[C]

Perfect. I have one yes or no question that I don't need context to, so I could ask a secondary one. Do you review every piece of content before it goes live?

[A]

No.

[C]

Okay. When taking a look at what your day to day looks like now versus when you had a newborn, how would you advise somebody to go about going hard and scaling a business to your level of success while balancing parenthood by.

[A]

Not over analyzing one or two years, you'll get crippled by that. Like, you know, this is not the time for you to, you know, spend 24 hours a day on a business.

[C]

Right.

[A]

I didn't every chapter of my life early when I had kids, even what I'm pouring into my relationship with Mona now and my new wife. Like, I do not judge myself in 6 month and 12 month windows, you know, by realizing this moment's not going away, Millie.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

And to give a parent advice on, like, what they do with their newborn is crazy, right? Because it's so personal. There's so many variables. Everyone here views things different. I can speak from. And, you know, men and women have different dynamics, and then men within men and women within women are different at so many levels. For me, I'll just use me. I grew up with a father that I barely spent any time with because he worked every minute of my life until I was 14 when I started working there. And I have the greatest relationship with my father. So I'm not petrified of missing a moment because I don't think that's what leads to a great relationship. So I just think you go all in on what you feel. And if you go hard for three weeks on the baby and nothing on the business, and then like Monday morning you're like, fuck, the business is fucked. I'm gonna go all in. But you missed something from the baby. None of it is catastrophic. And I think it's giving yourself grace.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

All right. And that goes for everybody with new hires, new relationships, parents that become sick. Like, life is multi dimensional. There's no right answer on this one. The right answer is not to beat yourself up on the decisions you made.

[C]

Thank you.

[A]

You're welcome.

[C]

I appreciate your time.

[A]

Of course.

[B]

Okay. Chloe, you're up.

[A]

Oh, you're on mute.

[B]

Chloe, you're on mute. You look like you sound great, though.

[A]

Yeah, it was good.

[C]

Hi, Gary.

[A]

Hi, Chloe.

[C]

Gary, can you hear me? I'm obsessed with you and Stan, so. This is so exciting. I'm obsessed with you, Gary, because. Because you just like, light the fire. You're so inspirational. You get me so amped up. And I freaking love Stan because it gives people a chance to monetize, no matter how big or small.

[A]

I agree. I agree.

[C]

So I'm a fashion creator, and I'm actually an elementary school teacher turned stay home mom. And then I stumbled upon content creation. And I. My whole goal is to inspire moms to get dressed up for the day and feel fabulous, looking amazing, living your best life. And I. When I had like 30,000 followers, I wanted to monetize, but I. The affiliate links weren't enough.

[A]

Nope.

[C]

With my following, and then the brands weren't reaching out to me.

[A]

Yet that's why we're all here.

[C]

And then I. And then, and then I found Stan. I'm like, oh my gosh, I can start making money. So I made style guides. Wardrobe capsule wardrobe style guides for busy moms every season. Now I am really happy with what I have. People want more of me. And so I've gotten a lot from this call. Community is. I didn't even know that existed. People want one on one calls with me. But I'm scared.

[A]

Why?

[C]

I'm scared to. I'm scared to charge.

[A]

Here's the thing. Let me make you feel so good. Because I was scared to charge. How about that, everyone?

[C]

Okay?

[A]

Do you know why? I got over it. When I did my first speech and they paid me $5,000, I was scared. And I said to myself before I flew down to Florida for the speech that if I don't do a good job. Cause I knew I wasn't gonna prep. I knew I wasn't gonna make slides. I knew what I was gonna do. And I literally didn't know if I was gonna be the greatest, which is what ended up happening or if I was gonna suck. And what I promised myself was, and I meant it. And this is not a story for the sake of the story. I'm telling you, I meant it. I promised myself that if it did not go well, according to me, that I was gonna give the money back. Chloe, I have good news for you. You can put up on Stan $500 for a 30 minute consultation or whatever you come up with, you can do it. And if you feel like the woman on the other side didn't get value or isn't happy, you literally can look her in the face and go, you know what? That didn't feel good enough for me. I'm refunding you. It was really nice to meet you, Sarah. Do you know how powerful that is?

[C]

I'm dead.

[A]

It is. It's the ultimate dead move. It's the great. By the way, everything has worked in my life because I've always been willing to give the money back.

[C]

Amen.

[A]

See, I'm inspired.

[B]

Let's go.

[A]

I think that will help a lot of you. It's a big deal. And I've done it. And I've done it in very, very significant ways because it makes me feel good. And that's what good people do when they're trying to go on a journey of monetization. And that's that. That's the game.

[C]

Thank you for your time.

[A]

You're welcome. Thank you, Chloe.

[B]

Eileen, you're up.

[C]

Cool. Hey everyone and thanks so much again, Gary, for taking the time. Really inspired by everything that you do. Definitely feel like some imposter syndrome for being here, but. But I guess, like for some context, I kind of consider myself a bit of an accidental content creator. Where I worked in tech and startups, and broadly, my dream was just to be able to work on my ideas full time. And I feel like I've gotten there now just through creating a lot of cinematic lifestyle content. So I make a lot of series based stuff about the lessons that I've Learned in my 20s.

[A]

Yep.

[C]

So I've been doing it full time for about a year now and I still feel like most of my eggs are in like the brand deal and like content creation bucket. Just this year I started launching my first product on Stan and it did really well. But I think I know that my end goal is more on the entrepreneurship side. But I don't fully know what I want to build next. Whether that's a journal, a course, or that makes sense. Like realistically, I want to do all those things.

[A]

By the way. By the way. Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.

[C]

My question to you is, as a generalist, how do you keep a cohesive narrative across everything that you try and.

[A]

Experiment with and then also by realizing no one gives a shit about me and how cohesive I am?

[C]

Okay.

[A]

You understand you're overthinking for the audience.

[C]

Yeah, I do that a lot.

[A]

And you will get to everything. Just pick one and do it. I'm telling you. This is why, even though everyone's sick and tired of me talking about it, it is patience that is the secret balance. Notice what I talk about patience and humility. Not obvious from an alpha white dude who's rich, who's out of loud, but I'm telling you, it's fucking patience and humility. Lean into those two things, you will get to everything and no one gives a fuck about your continuity.

[C]

Okay, that's good. I think I'm like a super impatient person.

[A]

So every, everybody, everybody has that vulnerability because most people are trying to impress people for no reason. Once you stop worrying about everybody else, you will get very patient.

[C]

The follow up question, I guess to.

[B]

That is like, can we get three minutes? You gotta get three people.

[A]

Of course. Sarah.

[B]

Sarah, you're up.

[C]

Oh my God, I'm so glad to be here, Gary. I see so much of myself in you because I'm a Russian immigrant jewel.

[A]

Love it.

[C]

In Brooklyn.

[A]

Love it.

[C]

And yeah, I think like, I mean, there's so many things I could ask, but I think, like, maybe the question I have is like the thing I am actually really good at is attention. Like, I feel like I get so much attention virality, but the thing I'm trying to grow out of is the thing I'm getting attention for is something I'm so like not in alignment with anymore. It's like videos about how to get your ex to come back or like stupid like that. And it makes sales and it makes so much money. But I'm so over it.

[A]

Well, good news you could go through. Now that I know we're the same, you can do what I do. My entire career was wine. For the first seven years that everybody knew me, literally I was the Internet's wine guy. So many of you are so young that you may not even know that. How many people in the chat did not know that? The first seven years that I was basically the wine guy did not know. And then who did know? Just leave a chat like, so Sarah, you could do through the same transformation I did. Nobody would have ever believed that Jonathan T, at this point, this many years later would have not known that part of me. Cause for seven years I was the wine guy and Dwayne the Rock Johnson was a wrestler and Jake Paul was a YouTuber. Like the second you start making new content is the second you become the next thing of you.

[C]

Do you have any tips on that pivot?

[A]

Yes, just start making that you want to make and don't be scared of the short term financial ramifications.

[C]

I love that. Thank you so much.

[A]

You're welcome. Abigail.

[C]

Hi, Gary. Thank you so much for this call. I'm really, really enjoying it. I'm learning so much already from everybody else's questions, which is great. I feel very privileged to be here as well. I think on all people have also said they feel a bit like, oh, wow, this is, this is really happening.

[A]

But it's happening.

[C]

I'm very happy to be here. My question is the bread and butter of my business is a membership. So it's reoccurring revenue, it's low tickets about $7 a month. And it's grown at a very, very big scale recently. And I think my question is how do I kind of keep that personal connection that I had when it was smaller?

[A]

Now that it's growing effort, just effort. Just making hard choices. Like I said it earlier, taking a full day and DMing when you want to do other things instead of spending a day making content that might go viral, that might get a bunch more people for $4. Today's a day you just go one on one with as many people in there as possible. It's just effort. It's just effort, you know, like, if you want to, you will.

[C]

I guess I have a second question as well as I still have.

[A]

Go ahead, go ahead. Good.

[C]

But do you think it's still possible to grow a cult following with the amount of people sort of doing what we do right now? And how would you go about that?

[A]

Because I know none of you, none of you existed seven years ago when I got this question asked 7,000 times a day. Yes, I believe you. You can.

[B]

Okay, Gannon, do you have time for one more?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Okay, good. See if we can hit a buzzer beater. So, yeah, for the past, for some context. For the past, like two years, I've been running, just kind of teaching people how to like run Instagram content and build an audience on Instagram. And then I had a conversation with a friend where I was like, hey, over the next six months, I want to build out this, like, community of people and show them how to build on Instagram. He's like, ultimately, you're a fucking idiot. Which I respect the guy because he told me that. And he was like, just go all in on what you're really good at, which is like the automation and manychat stuff. So I did. So, yeah, that was three months ago. And now I have an agency that will probably do 300k through the end of the year. And I am not an operator. And I realized that. So I'm really good at content. I've generated. Just like talking about.

[A]

I got it, I got it. You probably got a lot, Gannon, from what I said about bring in the client, partnership, operating person, you're just missing one, either partner or key employee, that's all. Yeah, I was gonna ask like, is it an operator or it's not a partner? It really just depends on your long term ambition. They both can work. Obviously, once you go into a partnership, there is some hair on that in case, God forbid, you don't get along. So if you can get away with it, I would say hiring someone that you bonus very well. And then if she or he earns it over time and you want to do a partnership right now, you have the leverage. But I'm so proud of you this quickly, understanding you're the strategist and the creative, not the operator, that's what fucks me up. I'm both. And in fact, I should probably not operate because I have so much Magic on the other side. But I like it too much for most of you. You just took the words out of my mouth. For almost everyone on this call. They fucking hate it. Cause they're more creative and strategic. Everyone's allowed to be a version of themselves. What they are. The fact that you're self aware enough to make the move, you're fucking golden. Go find that person. LinkedIn, TikTok, literally, you guys are smart. Make the video that is. I'm looking for my first key hire. This is who I'm looking for. And make it entertaining and inform and you'll find it. Like you said, Gannon, you literally were the one who said I found employees in my community. Do it again. All right, I gotta go. Love you all.

[B]

Appreciate it.

[A]

See ya.

[B]

Thanks, Gary.

[A]

Big announcement, as you probably heard at this point, because I had John from Stan on the show. I am an investor advisor to an incredible startup called Stan Stan Store. I'm sending you right now to GaryVee.com, gary V E. Go check this out. We've done a GaryVee Stan store challenge, which actually has a weekly call with me. This is built for everyone who's been affected honestly by my overall content. The tech stack, all these features, and the minimal costs per month that Stan Store has built is really the tool that was needed for this world that I envisioned when I wrote Crush it, when I wrote Crushing it. And this overall thing I'm thinking a lot about lately, which is the individual empire, this creator entrepreneur slash entrepreneur creator economy that I think is gonna eat up the oxygen. Very honestly, the thing that so many of you want in your life and the reason so many of you are not there yet is you've got the strategy for me. You've got the ambition within yourself, but you don't have the tools for you to fully maximize it. And I believe you can find that at Stan Store. Stan Store. But specifically I want you to sign up for it through my challenge because I want to get access with you. And plus there's a bunch of cool things. So if you want to go see those cool things, go to garyvee.com Stan S T A N.