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Was yelling to go on TikTok to everybody. And most big people didn't do it because they didn't have the humility to start at zero again. Hey, that is actually such a good point. That's right. But you have to understand, with TikTok, it's crazy for everyone here. You already are the kind of human that resonates. So what's crazy about TikTok is the speed in which you can grow there is. Much faster than Instagram. No, much faster. I need to put my energy into fucking TikTok. What am I doing? You're doing similar ish stuff, but you've got. It's kind of like. Like, we're all hanging out now. And if, let's say you three really hit it off tonight and you decided to go to the club, you're still you, but the room's a little different. And you're gonna be a little different. That's TikTok got it. Right. You just have to. You're still you, but you might be a little different. Cause the room's different. The room's different, the vibes are a little different, but we're still us. Correct. I love that. Okay, I'm gonna grow on TikTok. You're gonna be very happy that this night happened. Yes. Gary Vee, I am so happy. This is the GaryVee audio experience. All right, everybody, we are going to pick a subject matter, and it is free flow. Everybody jump in if you have a question. I would say this. We're gonna probably talk about a bunch of different things. I highly recommend that you lean into however much or little humility you have. This is not. Nobody needs to peacock. This is as safe as it gets. Sammy, you can literally pick anything. You can literally make a statement or pose a question about anything that's happening in culture. Anything on your mind, anything you're curious about. Obviously you know the context of the room, so that should give you some thoughts on it. But, like, you can go anywhere you want. What do you want to talk about first? Okay, so my topic, this is actually something that I'm thinking a lot about as a creator. And so I think probably a lot of you in this room can relate. But as a creator, what I bring to the table, my niche is the intersection of business, tech, and culture. Right? What I struggle with a lot of the time, especially in a world where traditional media is dying, the individual creator has more leverage, more power than ever to be a full media institution. Right. What I struggle with as this individual who's being seen by my audience as more of a media outlet than a person. How much do you let yourself, your humanness, your individuality, especially when you have hot takes and humanness that you want to bring to the table, while also remembering that people see you as perhaps someone who's informing them and a news outlet. So to summarize, because I know that's a lot really the intersection of creators as media and how to play with that in the world of you're also a creator and a human too. And this is a new era that we're in. 25 years ago this did not exist. The individual creator was not seen as a media platform. So I know that's a little bit niche because that's something. But let me, let me, let me broaden it to make work for everybody. Yes. And you can go that narrow if you want to jump in. And by the way, you can talk about yourself as a consumer of someone, as a media outlet, because a lot of you aren't that. And then number two, I would pose for anybody wanting to jump in a build on that that I think touches on it. How much of your actual full real self are you bringing to the table in what you're putting out and what has been your journey on that? How do you think about that? Have you put your toe into it? Have you gone full throttle, for example, as the elder statesman here? I've been doing this for a very long time. Fair enough. Respect. But as the elder content creators really doing it, truly for 20 years. I think one of the things that's funny to me that I always laugh about is there's not a lot of people have put out as much output as I have over the last 20 years. But literally less than 0.0011% of my content has been anything that indicates into my actual real personal life. Like my ex wife's Google result isn't even her. That's how much I kept my actual life private, even though I was so public. So I think both from a news outlet consuming people that are giving you the news and what do you want from them and how much and then finally, how much are you showing your actual life, including probably the things that are counter to who you are. For example, when I started making garage sale videos as a highly successful business person, a lot of people struggled with me doing that in my inner circle. Cause they were like, you're making yourself look cheaper. You're like this emerging business icon, you putting out videos on YouTube of you garage saling. You're degrading yourself, Gary? I'm like, no, no, I'm showing my full self. I'm good with that. So those topics, anybody want to build on that, please? Intro. Yeah. So Robert Croke, I'm kind of known three ways as the creator of Silly Bands. Kind of a cool product, done pretty well over the years. Of course I have to. It's a rule. Co host with Austin Hankwitz here, Rich Habits podcast in the Rich Habits Network and and then known through TikTok and Instagram as the Walking Finance guy, because I do a lot of personal finance stuff. So to answer your question, I think it's a great question is I believe that if you want to sustain growth and authenticity, sustained growth and being able to be real to your audience and bring value, you have to maintain authenticity. It doesn't mean you have to lose safety by sharing too much if you have kids and a wife, that stuff. But authenticity to me is important because if we look back two or three years ago, everyone was in a studio, everyone had all these exact same videos with the exact same hooks. And it's very similar right now where there's hundreds of channels saying if you use this hook, you'll go viral. And the problem with that, in my opinion is I'd rather go gross slow and have the grip on my audience because of my authenticity and helping people for real rather than going viral more. But having myself all the value be behind a paywall. So for me, I think authenticity and stick staying in your lane is important because we all know and see these. These people in every category, in every sector where you can tell they just chat GPT their script, got their script and they reading it from a script. So I think authenticity is the number one most important thing because people can feel it and sense it. So that's why I always lean on all of my stories of heartache from making tens of millions of dollars and losing millions of dollars over 30 years of my career is leaning into what I actually know and what I've actually done and the authenticity behind it. Can I add to that, please? My name is Brett Kaszewski, founder of Creator Economy nyc. We host the largest event. Great to see you. Thanks for having me. Largest event in the city for creators and marketers. Also the co founder of a brand called sipsea. We are a comment section insights platform. Gary, it's a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for having us here at our events. We talk a lot about that, like leaning into your uniqueness and that we're in an era where it's Individual individuals over institutions. And so I think like, really channeling that is important. I've heard someone talk about like they kind of play a character to an extent when they're filming their content. I'm curious if you feel that way, which I want you to answer. But before that, I think that when a lot of us are in a more knowledge type content to an extent, you do have a duty to ultimately kind of recognize that like, like people look at you a certain way, you have to have that sense of credibility. And so it's not to say don't lean into like your uniqueness and your personal elements that separate you from the other person that's also talking about tech, business and culture because there's many. But people watch you because it's you. But you do have to kind of like think before you speak or think before you post something because you kind of have to realize like, oh, but this is just my account. But it's like, yes, but it's also a brand that people are paying attention to. And that's why it's so easy for a personal brand to be tarnished so rapidly. I mean, what's that Warren Buffett quote? It takes 30 years to build a brand, two minutes to destroy it. So I think that's interesting. But I turn it back on you. Do you feel like you, you are. And this is not to say that you're not being you, but do you feel like you're playing a character or turning on I'm on video right. When you're, when you're recording? Surprisingly, not at all. I am myself, myself. But I think what I struggle with is the expansion. Right. Oftentimes I'll think the content that I'm putting out, I. My one liner is I cover the hottest business lore. It's talking about business, but in an entertaining way. So I'll often think this quality content or the quality of my content could be on the Wall Street Journal. If the Wall Street Journal actually evolved into 2025 and started being on some social. And so I will think to myself, is this something that someone who's going to Wall Street Journal will want to see? But what I struggle more with is if people come to me as a trusted media source, do they want to see me and my husband? So one thing I'm just gonna. Yeah. And I would say something for you all this could actually be a pretty advanced breakthrough. This is what's fun to hang with all of you. I can talk about things that I would say are 301 instead of 101. So one thing I would ask all of you because I have a feeling there's a lot of versions of this conversation going on for everyone. Hey, everybody. Hope you're enjoying the podcast right now. Make sure you follow the podcast. That's why I'm interrupting. Let's keep going on this show, but follow the podcast. It'll make my mom super happy. There's something that we implemented at VaynerMedia. So to give everybody context, I think a lot of people don't actually realize how many like what I actually do for a living. I run a 2,700 person marketing agency called VaynerMedia that is very global and works with the biggest brands in the world. And we have a lot of corporate challenges that I think match creator challenges. So we implemented something called PHG internally. So this may resonate with all of you and some of you may laugh about this. So many of our clients treat the Instagram grid like every brand thinks they're lvmh. Like they can be selling like deodorant and they're like, we're fucking, we gotta be polished. I'm like, you're not fucking Gucci. You sell fucking Miralax. You know what I mean? It's like that, right? So we have something internally that I think could help a lot of you. And it's been a huge breakthrough. We call it PHG Platforms handles. And then the last one is not for you. It's called Gary. Internally, it's can you get the clients to have more platforms? Right? Every client wants to just do Instagram and TikTok. We think there's incredible. In fact, this is a good opportunity. I think a lot of you. Let me give you a real interesting one that I hope some of you take me up on. If you are not producing content for Snapchat Spotlight, you are missing like a wild opportunity. I know a lot of you in here and knew a lot of you and then did a little more even homework. Cause I always wanna bring value. And clearly some have figured it out. I could not push some of you harder to get serious about Snapchat Spotlight. Snapchat Spotlight. Snapchat's TikTok, which is a distant third and fourth to Instagram and TikTok. But here's the thing back to. I know why you're feeling so good about it. Social media is just supply and Demand. Everybody's on TikTok and Instagram. There's a lot of demand inside of Snapchat Spotlight. It's just dramatically Less than Instagram and TikTok, but it's still good. Trillions of hours of 15 to 35 year olds. A lot of you are doing quite well in those demos, but there's no supply. How many people here post multiple times a day on Snapchat Spotlight? Raise your hand. Respect. Think about this room. This room. That's the punchline that. Anyway, so at Vayner we're always like get clients on more platforms. Another thing, how many people here are multiple times a day on Google Shorts? Let's start with that. Yeah, you know I love that. But Google Shorts, Google Shorts. Shorts. YouTube Shorts. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Are you scared? What's Google shorts? Same shit. YouTube YouTube shorts. YouTube shorts two times a day. Yep. So YouTube shorts. Gemini is probably going to have 30 to 40% of the of the LML market of the ChatGPT search right now. YouTube and YouTube shorts are feeding Gemini's LM to be the results of things. So literally the shorts content is a similar to Snapchat Spotlight and you can get grow huge audiences there because a lot of other people aren't. And the reason people aren't doing it is it's not as viral hit oriented as TikTok is. Right. Like shorts stay in the same kind of pocket and a lot of you will get frustrated because you're like damn 7,000, 7,000, 7,000. And you don't have that moment where you can get 13 million like you can on TikTok. But it is a steady grind similar to the social media that I grew up with. Right. It's more kind of like slow but burned up. However, the secondary value of all of that content being indexed to have you all show up in results when people do AEO and GEO, which is the next SEO, which is the results, organic results on ChatGPT and Gemini and all that is worth it for all of you on that. Right? So platforms putting your content on more than one or two platforms, putting them on all seven. LinkedIn is my obsession. It's such a big by the way, Ulta, the beauty brand, which is our client, she the CMO last on Wednesday before Thanksgiving asked me if we had one platform to drive our business based on because we work with them on what you're seeing. I said Facebook Blue. Facebook Blue for a lot of you will fucking annihilate. So I think if you leave with anything tonight like getting more cross platform next if you don't want to do that for you, it's handle strategy. A lot of you should have a second handle so you could have. Right. STC real life and start building that up. Co collab post with your main account to give it a little boost. And so you're creating a secondary place. I believe that you can do it all within your main feed. A lot of people struggle with that because they struggle with the negative feedback when they start doing something again. As someone who knew me back then, when I transitioned from wine only content, wine only everyone. Five years from 2006 to 2011, I only made wine content. When I started doing business and marketing, literally every comment was, stay in your fucking lane, wine guy. Right? So, like, I think you can. The algorithms are moving more to allowing all of you to be able to do that. It's scoring on the individual piece of content more and more and more and I predict that it'll get extreme there. I actually think what you're going to see from the social platforms is the fyp and then how many of you remember Path? Remember Path? So there was an app called Path. Unfortunately, I invested in that instead of Instagram. They were battling to be the social network on the phone because Zucks was slow to mobile. He wasn't big on mobile. Path's big value proposition was you could only follow 300 people, which was epic because you really got your thing. I actually think Path as a feature. Like, if all of us had a secondary toggle on our Instagram feed, that was like our feed. But then a secondary. Like, no, no, your core back to, you're all too young for this. A couple of us can talk about this. MySpace had your top eight, maybe when you were six. Remember when you got kicked out of it? Yeah, yeah. If you got bumped out of your buddy's top eight and you were on nine, you were. It was devastating anyway. I think. Yeah, that's right. I think. I think you'll see the platforms go to like a feed that only has your top hundred followings and you get every post from them. Because I think that's a frustration for some of us. Nonetheless. I'm talking too much, but I would say another handle and more platforms. You can do your personal stuff potential potentially on Blue, like you be again, a lot of you have very substantial misconceptions and misunderstandings about Facebook Blue, Snapchat, Spotlight, YouTube Shorts. There's a lot of opportunity for a lot of you, A lot. Hi, I'm Shosh. I'm founder of Social media. It's so good. I love it. And I also have Carson here, who is one of my folks, Sam you want to start with, like, the whole media company thing, because it's very personal to my story. So I started working at large companies like NBC Universal, then Complex, and then I was overseeing partnerships at Fetches, and then it overheard, and I helped them through an acquisition. So I started in big media. Then I went social first and I said this, like, the. The talent, the people, they are the brand. So to that point, I wanted to help build brands around the people, because on the partnership side, people were like, oh, I want to do this campaign with you, but can I have xyz? And I was like, God, these people are doing so much at this company, but they have all the talent. So I really wanted to kind of shift gears there and go into talent management. And because I built at these small companies, I essentially built brands, right? So I really found my niche in finding these really incredible people, like Carson, who kind of, like, stumbled on the Internet or, like, he should have been here years ago, but he's here when he is and going back to, like, the brands as themselves. And, like, what do you show? What do you leave behind? With somebody like Carson, it was really sort of like, it's okay. I know you blew up because you did this running thing, but you're also a baker and find that balance of, like, just because all these people are here, Turn off the noise. What? I see creators sometimes who, like, blow up on this one thing, and then they get stuck in this niche, and then they're like, they don't have an endless amount of content that they can do in this category. They kind of burn themselves out and they become less of themselves. As a person, you have so many interesting things that you can do. Like, let's play on that. Let's spend the first few months, like, figuring that, listen to your community, throw shit to the wall that you have fun doing to be your authentic self, and then we'll kind of measure how much we let people in. But is it such a great place to do? But I think, to your point, Shoshana, like, people are scared to get less views. Like, the amount of people that got their following from being attractive. Like, truly, like, literally the amount of conversations through the last 15 years I've had with dudes with six packs who are like. Or girls that are, like, showing 98% of their body, they have so many other things they want to do, but they don't have the courage to get 10 times less views to go through the process. I lost almost 90% of my audience when I went from wine to business like, my numbers literally went from hundreds and hundreds of thousands of views, which were trillions back then on YouTube videos, to like 500, you know, but that's not the world you all live in. Like, to your point, whether it's baking or basketball or wine drinking or clothes, like, a lot of times the secondary or church or thing you start talking about becomes the much bigger thing. Yeah. To build on that. I'm Chloe. I share fashion content, and I inspire moms all over the world to get dressed up for the day. And. And I share fashion. What's that? I share fashion content. And I was just so sick of, like, fashion influencers being like. And I'm like, that's so boring. And so I started dancing because I'm a dancer. I've been a dancer all my life. And so I started, like, jamming out to these songs, and I brought something new to the table. And people are now like, can you give us dance tutorials? Can you share your makeup routine? And I'm like, I'm scared to share makeup stuff because I'm not a makeup guru. But, like, I can show up sharing what I do. I'm not claiming that I'm a pro at this. Right. And people just like you and, like, following you. And so I feel like when you share something different, like a different side of you or, like, different journey or whatever passion you have, it deepens the that relationship with your followers, and they genuinely just want to get to know you. But I think on the personal stuff versus baking or dancing, I do think all of you really want to be very thoughtful of the second you start giving the world something, it's theirs. So the amount of people who, like, share their relationships and their kids, and they get pissed when the world wants to know about their relationships or their kids, like, ifriends who. Who literally leverage their children to get more likes. Oh, no. And by the way, all of us know most people that share their kids are actually doing that. And then they get upset when somebody comes up to them when they're taking their kid to school and wants to say hi. And I'm like, yo, fuck you. I'm like, you did that. So I will say for a lot of you, especially a lot of you who are young, let it be very clear. You chose to give it to them. You chose to give it to them. So if you're gonna go there and it's a lot easier to get likes and awareness for showing your relationship, for showing your kids, for showing your puppy, like, you're doing that so you have to be thoughtful about if you even want to do that. But if you do wanna do that, which I don't think is bad, by the way, I don't think that's bad. I just think you're giving up some of your privacy and control, and you've got gotta decide. Some people love that. They're fine with it. Some people don't. But I think you've got to decide if you even want to share those elements. Personal stuff is very different than other interests and other business opportunities. I want to be very clear because I think it could be skewing. I don't think you shouldn't. I love sharing my dad because my dad's a narcissist and he loves the attention. And for him, at this point of his life, it's like his favorite thing. He literally, actually, genuinely, no bullshit. Wears a hat 247 that says Gary Vee's dad. Cause he want. Yeah, it's sweet. But like, my siblings. My siblings are upset about it. And I'll be honest with you, like, as the son of it, he does that because he wants the attention. He wants people to come up to him and, you know, like. And by the way, I'm thrilled to do that. And that's why I'm willing to share him. My mom, for anyone who follows my content. I know you know it well, Austin. I only talk about my mom. I wish I could share my mom with all of you. Everything I am that has brought value to anyone at this table is my mom, not me. I'm just the vehicle. But she. It's not about that life. I've never shared my mom. I've never had. I'm dying to have my mom on the podcast because I think my mom could really help a lot of mothers and humans, but she doesn't want it. And even if she does want it, I'm not sure if I, you know, it's those things. So I think you have to think about that. Ben Soffer, probably most notably known as Boy with no Dog on Instagram. I can relate. Well, one, I worked for Gary for a long time, but I can relate to the fact that you switched from wine content. I exclusively posted memes from 2013 to 2018. And then I. My dad owns a catering company. I grew up meeting kitchens, and it was a natural pivot when people were posting videos. You know, I'm funny. Why don't I bring a comedic spin to the kitchen? That led into food and beverage. I launched an alcohol company. It's called spritz Society in 2021. We're nationwide. I have a podcast called Good Guys. And all of that is to say that it took a very long time to pivot out of meetings. I could have easily launched a second account, but the. The people that were there, that loved me created this core base. My wife was also a memer. She's a girl with no job. And she did the same thing. She did the same thing. And we completely pivoted for memes. I will say this because I know how well you know social. We worked together for a long time, and you've had your career for almost a decade. Since we've worked together, I will say this. It's a very important nuance for both of us. It was good to stay in the same account because we had followers, and even if we lost 90%, we still had a base. Yeah. If we were both to do it again today, we may create a new account because your third post may get 4 million views. Sure. Like, this is a profound shift. 36 months ago, I would actually argue we are no longer in social media, that we're in fully in interest media. Social media was. You will see stuff from people you decide to follow socialize with. Interest media is what you're all living, which is, you know, if, like, tomorrow you wake up and start getting into the World cup because it's coming and you decided to. And you like three or four things and watch three or four things in a week. Your feed is now soccer content. Your feeds can change in two seconds now. 100%, right? I'm trying to, like, every time, like titty content, I try to neutralize it. Neutralize it. We're respect. Trying to subsidize. Right. You're trying to get booty content. Right. You know what? That. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Too much chess. You want ass. I get it in the lane of. In the lane of intro, intro, intro, intro. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't specialize in titty. My name is J Key. I have a channel called Righteous Eats where we highlight a lot of local mom and pop rock restaurants throughout New York. But I could totally relate with this topic a lot because my personal content started off highlighting recipes that I was doing at home. And I'm not a cook. I'm not a trained chef by any means. So even making the pivot, from highlighting my recipes to highlighting the stories of restaurant tours, I've had a lot of pushback. And when I started talking more about my perspectives on politics, the different perspectives that I've acquired through my Travels, you know, I basically got the same feedback that you suggested. Like, yo, stick to recipes, dick to restaurants. Like, basically like, yo, shut up and dribble. I mean, and I think for me, the solution that I found was separating my personal with whatever specific topic that I want to focus on. So my partner Brian over there, Brian, what's up, bro? So him and I, we started, I think at this point, basically three different channels. One is J Key, my personal. So whatever ideas that I have, my perspectives on Gary Vee, I would probably go on my personal channel. Channel, yeah. Whereas if I'm highlighting a restaurant, whether that do that on the road, we're in New York. Yep. That goes on Righteous Eats. And we have another channel called Creators Lunch where we wax poetic about the creator industry. That's cool. So, and to your point as well, it's because of the collab feature, sometimes we could collab and also figure out ways to boost that content handle strategy us to have different verticals. And it also, you know, whenever I want to separate myself from the food content and let's say I just become a full on, you know, a politics pundit, you know, then it could completely separate that and it's not going to confuse my audience and also gives me a. An excuse to defend myself. It's like, yo, why is Righteous Eat so talking about, you know, his perspectives on foreign policy and the trade agreement. It's like, well, nah, that was on the JK Cho channel. If you haven't checked it out, that wasn't on the Righteous Z channel. Righteousness is still about food, you know what I mean? So that's kind of how I'm, you know, categorizing things as cool. It's good. Mike? Yeah. My name is Michael Smoke. I'm known on social media as higher up Wellness and 99 of my clients content and the career that I've created for myself is built on this topic. I don't know if anyone here has seen a video that I make, but I'm not a production guru. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. I think it's clear that we're talking about two separate lanes. When she asked the question of authenticity, we have do I show my life and do I be myself? Those are the two lanes of authenticity that we're covering here. Showing your life is one aspect that I have delved into deeply and, and have seen the fruits of. In January of this year, my father passed away and he was my very best friend in the world. It was the hardest thing I've ever been through, but it gave me so much to give to other people. There's a piece of scripture, James 1, 2, 4, count it all joy when you face trials of many kinds. Worst thing that ever happened to me has empowered thousands of people. But my brand is wearing my heart on my sleeve. Now, that doesn't mean I talk about my sisters and my mom and share their names and show them in my community content. I don't do that, but I talk about my struggles and I'm very open because I believe we live in a world where we've never been more connected, but people have never felt more alone. And the people have called my content raw or frictionless. I say low production value. Most of it's in my car, most of it is shoulders up. But I believe redefining quality is super important. There's lighting, there's mics. We were talking about this. I rely entirely on my ability to communicate before efficiently. Jim Rohn has this great quote. He says adequate communication is 20% what we know and 80% how we feel about what we know. And in essence at purity, we are all communicators. That's all we are. We're as good as our ability to tell a story and convey a message. As are you. And so for me, if I'm going to get people to listen to me instead of one of the other 10,000 fitness mindset, personal development influencers within my immediate proximity, I have to believe what I'm saying because that energy is perceived through the screen. So I think there's a time to be vulnerable with our authenticity in the form of vulnerability. Because I think that is a true superpower and really taking off the mask because I believe people are incredibly attracted to that because that's what everybody wants to be is unapologetically themselves. And if you were even a little bit perceived as that, people are drawn to it, whether they're necessarily in love with what you talk about or not. I think a master class of this is Leo, high level authority, top ranking podcast, total goofball, unapologetically himself. You can play in both spectrums. And I think I'll close with this. The so much of this is giving yourself permission to create what you feel inspired to create. And that that niche you talked about that creators get stuck in is so fabricated inside of their own minds. Their followers aren't dming them saying you better never create anything different or I'll unfollow you. No, they create this narrative about what they have to do because that's what's always Worked. But my most viewed video ever is a video of me drinking the Oreo flavored Coke Zero. Nothing to do with my business, nothing to do with my content, but it showed 40 million people my face. By the way, I've literally, literally made all what I've done over 20 years. My most viewed video is me professing that no one likes blueberries more than me. It's very real. I mean, I, I think what you're getting at is fear is dramatically driving people's actions. Like the fear is such a crippler. And it's weaponized. It's incredibly effectively been weaponized by politicians, it's weaponized by parents, it's weaponized by bosses, like, melting down. What you just said is, where's everyone sitting here with their relationship with fear? Where's everyone's. I said it earlier. Humility is disproportionately the weapon of choice for all of you of where you're at right now. The more you lean into your humility, the more it will get good. The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek. That's it. And if you're going to continue to tell a story, then for me, I'll put this about, make this about me and not about anybody else. I can only grow my platform to the ability at which I am willing to be authentic. Because if I convey a message I don't care about, nobody's gonna watch. I have to throw my weird authentic edge on the content. I watch his videos because he's walking, he's himself, exactly as he appears in his, in real life. And I can feel that, People can feel that. And that's what's really important to me. It's also, it's also hard to remember. Bullshit. Yeah, this, it's really crazy. We're talking about this. This is a really fun thing, especially with live social shopping in the air. When I started Wine Library TV, that's how I started. On February 21, 2006, I ask all the youngsters here, what were you doing in 2006? In February 21, 2006, I made a 22 minute YouTube video and within a week had YouTube before they were bought by Google. Reach out to me and ask me why it was doing well, because no video over a minute. No, this is real. No video over a minute had done well before. And my literal answer was, I have no idea. Because it was that early and I had been a wine salesman at that point. I didn't view myself as somebody that people would want to Watch. But literally the hour before I started Wine Library tv, my plan was to do qvc. I thought I was going on this video and was gonna make a video and sell these three bottles of wine and post it on YouTube, and hopefully people would see it. I would give them deeper education than I was able to do in my email, and we would sell it. Literally within the first second of being a creator, in hindsight, my life changed. The camera goes on just like that. A little camera, no mic, no lighting. And in one second, I was like, fuck. If I'm about to tell people what I literally. This is what went through my mind. Oh, shit. These three wines and the three wines in front of me were very expensive, very good wines. But I remember saying to myself, I can't have this be qvc. I need this to be the wine spectator, meaning I have to tell people what I actually think about these wines. Because in my mind, I literally thought, you know how the brain can think, like, a ton of shit in, like, one second? I was like, if this works, I kind of knew right away. Like, you know, I'm sure you've had these moments. You're like, I just knew. I was like, fuck, I think this might work. I'm like, if this works, and I'm out, and someone's like, hey, Gary, if you were like, hey, do you like this wine? And I was like, no. And you're like, motherfucker. You said it was good. I was, like, scared about that. So literally, literally in the first seconds of me ever making content, I was like, fuck. I'm just forever gonna say what I like. I just don't want to be in that gotcha moment. I don't need Dateline rolling up on me being like, yo, you said you liked that wine, and you don't. I was like, fuck it. I'm just gonna. And real talk. Like, when I first hit the scene, CAA told me I could be a successful public speaker, but I had to stop the curse. Everybody told me in 2006, 7, 8, 9, that I had to dress up. I was way too casual, like, all that stuff that is now, like, mainstream real Life. But in 2006, 7, 8, it was, like, unacceptable. And I think, like, if you're authentic and not just bullshit authentic, like the bad version of using authenticity as a cloak for not being authentic. If you're actually authentic. I've known some of you for 20 years. I am who I am the whole way through. If you're authentic, the world will come to you. Instead of you trying to be. I'm telling you, if you're authentic, the one world will come to you. And you. This is the first time you've alluded the fact. The real superpower in that is that there's no need to ever wear a mask. There's no need to play the character so you can't get gasha. I never have to worry about someone saying, I'm way more direct than I am in my videos. My video is as direct as I'm going to be. So, like, if I soften up, it's even a benefit. There's. There's no need to put a facade on because our lives are so intertwined in our careers, unlike most people with other jobs, that. That would be exhausting. And eventually someone cracks. I do get a lot of people that do say that I'm, like, dramatically more attractive in real life than on video, but I know. All right, who else? Go. Who else has got something to add to this? Go ahead, please. Hey, what's up? Famously. I'm Carson. Very nice to meet you all. Excited to be here tonight. I am new guard. It feels like a lot of y' all are old guard. We're talking about being here for a long time, building a brand over many years. In April, I had 500 followers, and in June, I had 250,000. It occurred overnight for me, working a finance job totally organically, on accident, not something I ever set out to do or intended to do or ever even thought was possible. The fact that I'm here right now is insanity waking me up. I can't believe this is happening. I just started doing funny running vlogs. I was posting for years. I was doing baking stuff. I was just being myself. I had some friends tell me it was all, like, blurry pictures of bread with, like, a blog cap. My buddy said, hey, you're funny. You know, you're a personable guy. Put yourself in front of the camera more. Be yourself more. And I started setting things up. I started being myself more. And I think people crave. If I wanted to right now, I could have a podcast that's super overproduced. And I think that people try to gather around the production of their thing and to speak to Mr. Howard Wellness. Like, it's so nice. If you go on your Instagram page right now, everything has an intro sequence and a jingle with it and a beautiful, nice layout. Like, I just started showing my camera at the end of my videos. Couldn't see me anymore because I was so sweaty from running. Like, it's my Authentic self. I was presenting myself to the world, and it made this thing occur that I think people crave and need, and everything is overproduced. And if you can just be a friend to somebody, I. Speaking of being vulnerable, like, I put most of my stuff online. I show my family again, I'm new, so tell me to stop. But I'm figuring out this whole thing, and I think that people enjoy that. Like, people want. When people approach me in the streets, which is insane in its own right, like, they feel like they're my friend, that it's beautiful. And I put out kind stuff, and kind people come to me. I think that being yourself is such an important weapon that you have to be able to be productive in this new environment. Like, there's. There's. There's giant media companies, and I'm getting more views than them. Like, what do you mean Carson's doing better than NBC? Like, what are we talking? It's preposterous. So I very much am of the school of show yourself, be vulnerable, be authentic. And I love that. Nobody could ever approach me and be like, you're not. Like, you were 100% I show yourself. And I am me online as a consumer of Carson's content, which I came across you maybe when you're at like 50k, and then all of a sudden I. I didn't see you again, and you, all sudden you're like, I have 250,000 followers. And all of them came in. I think it was June or something like that. So I'm one of those people where this is parasocial relationship, where I saw you today, and I'm like, oh, hey, I just saw you. I literally saw an espresso ad you were doing, which was fantastic, but you do such a great job. I think a lot of what we're talking about is this thing that I hear is basically a personal monopoly, which is like, what. What is it? Where are your, like, unique interests and everything intersect? And I think for you, right, like, you got to do running content. There's. There's so many, like, running content creators. Each of them have been surviving because they all have their unique infusion. And like, for you, you're not just a running content creator. You bake and like, you. You have this unique, like, monopoly over being a running baker and. And doing so much unique. Nobody's in the crossroads of running and baking right now. You're pioneering cars and run it, and you do such a great job doing that. And I think that makes it unique where you're not just running and who knows what you, if you start sharing more fitness content, it's great. But then you also show this side of like I'm eating carbs and like I had so much bread tonight. And like you're really real about that. You also are like I had three cocktails last night. You add this. See, I'm gonna run in the morning, I swear. But I think you have this nice personal monopoly with that and that that makes people, people follow you even if they follow five other running content creators. That's a great term. There's unlimited attention in play. You know, like I like the term using a personal monopoly. I would argue that even like, I mean this has been proven. I know you're in this space. You know it like there's 7,600 people that can dominate makeup tutorials. I think people are so incredibly obsessed with the math that doesn't exist. Like I'm sure you all know this. It's run through your mind and it's definitely been things that people have brought up to you. I get 8 trillion DMs that are like Gary, every niche has been taken. Like I can't find my spot. I'm like the answer is it's you. You don't even need to decide to be a wuzzle which is a term none of you will understand. There was a cartoon in 1985 that only ran for one season. There's. I know that's why I'm dropping was called wuzzles. I'm fascinated by this cartoon. It should have been a hit. It was half butterfly, half hippo, half frog, half like dog. It was this really cool concept. It didn't work but it always stuck with me. You don't need to be a wuzzle and be like the running baker. You could literally just be runner or just baker. That's how much attention is actually at play. So cool. You want to be the same Caesar salad making rapper who also knows a lot about fucking polo. Knock yourself out if you wanna fuckin take yourself there. And I'm actually a buyer of that. I think the more you show yourself interests, passions or things you know, I think are incredibly fruitful. Like I think I'm doing pretty good with the business wine jets fan niche who likes to garage sale. But I think it really works both ends. You know, you could go four different narrow subject matters that you work with but you can literally be baker and dominate. That's how much it goes down to the unique connection of humanity and like how it all actually works and Just how much sheer attention there actually is in these platforms. If you actually go a little bit deeper into the segmentation of different interest and how. Because of algorithmic silos. So yeah, way more sophisticated. Let me go right into it. This is how sick this shit's getting. I would argue within 24 months if anyone here decided to make a video about Charleston Chew the candy bar, right? Like literally you're just walking on the street and eating a Charleston Chew. And like me, you think that Charleston Chew is one of the three best candy bars in the world. That within the. When you post it, within the first 150 people that see it are all human beings that actually have interacted or shown some sort of affinity towards Charleston Chu. And how they do with it will start to begin the process of your reach which will then force everyone to understand the power of niches. Because the AI is getting so advanced. Even if Sarah was to make a video right now, even the backdrop of that pattern is going to be understood and ultimately shown to people that have a higher propensity of enjoying that background. My wife would hate that too chaotic, right? Not shown. And because of sophistication of AI. Correct. The sophistication, the AI is going to transcribe every word out of your. Like literally back to growth hacking and stuff that's not authentic and all that stuff. You will see people in 24 months say things like. Out of complete context of their video. Say things like. And Star wars like back to like the growth. Because what they're gonna know is at that point that video will likely be shown to people that have a high propensity for Star Wars. What those growth hackers won't understand is that none of those Star wars people are gonna like this. Cause you're talking about, you know, Taco Bell and like that's not the point. Now they might. You see where I'm going. But to go deeper, brother, the AI is getting extremely advanced the platform. So real quick, as a step back, just so everybody, maybe this will bring value. The reason this is all happening is the platforms make money if they keep you on the platform. Right? Makes sense. So the reason they went to interest media versus social media is you will stay on the platform longer if you're seeing stuff you want. If you're currently into soccer, that's more likely to keep you there than if a photo from someone you followed when you went to high school with them shows a picture of them going to fucking. You know what I mean? Taking their kid to school. So it will Keep going further down that path for quite a while. And so it's just getting better and better and trained and it's understanding your content more and more and more. And I think that has the potential to be remarkable for a lot of people here because it might give you the courage to widen the things you talk. Correct. So basically to your point, if Carson decides to post one video about baking today, second video about running. Third video about his time in finance. Fourth video about talking with Gary Vee. That's right. All four videos have the potential in. Yes, I believe that. But I would argue that what you've done with yourself and broken into three different handles and that I'm encouraging others has not necessarily reach of the creative value, but maybe some secondary or tertiary value of brand positioning or what you want to deal with. Right. As someone who wants to talk about politics, I'm sure it's not lost on anyone. You just may not want to deal with that corroding everything you do. And another handle may help you. Now, real talk, the AI is getting so good that just because you're talking about politics on a different handle, people, the AI is going to know that other people like your food content. They're going to know your image and they're going to serve it to them at first. So you're not going to be able to. To keep people away from the politics talk. And these are all things that we're gonna be figuring out. But what I. I'm sorry to interrupt, Mike. The one thing I just wanna push everyone towards. Cause it's where it's going. And I think it could help all of you. Anything that you're deeply knowledgeable about or anything that you're like, deeply into. And I always think cool kids get fucked the most. Cause they're stuck in cool thinking. Like, if you're a cool kid, but you fuck heavy with Legos, you need to make Legos content. I know they are, but you know what I mean. An older person might think that it's not cool even though it's now cool. You know what I mean? Whatever you deem as not as cool. Like if you're passionate about something that you're holding back, I could not push you harder to consider to start flirting with it. Can I give you guys a couple mental models to think about? So the first one that I think we're all honing in on is I always tell the term. All of our most successful creators escape competition through authenticity. Escape competition through authenticity. I think is the greatest form factor to understand what we're all saying, which is there are a million people that would do fitness content. There's only one person who is you and has your unique stories and your unique values. And what the algorithm is doing is just connecting you with a million other people, because there are 8 billion people in this world who fuck with you and your specific story. The second mental model I would give specifically back to Sammy is you are in a more professional grade industry and so being thoughtful around portraying the news while also bringing in your person. There's like, you can look at political commentators and decide what you want to do at the end of the day. The next bit of the model I give is like, we are all just new age media of old school media. And so in a world, I would ask myself, who are the old school anchors? So whether it's Katie Couric or what have you. Have you that I look up to the most, that I envy them like, that I think have the most successful careers that I personally respect. And I would ask myself, how much did they share for their personal lives and that you can use that as a model. The other one that I would ask myself, there is like, how much at the end of the day, something you're very good at. What does your gut say? Dude, that's just it. What is authenticity? Just what does your gut say? Like, you shared your stuff on the honeymoon in Bali and I was like, hype as fuck for you. I was like, I fucking love Bali. It's my whole personality, right? But like, you know, and I think you have to be soft. I do think full personality and intentional. About, like, how much do you share? Like, I think poly is a pretty apolitical subject, but you do have to think about that the next. There's one other thing. Oh, the. The. I will give now a personal example for my own content. Mino down there is super crack. By the way. How old are you, Mino? 22. Me and I were joking about League of Legends, which is a really lame game. What do you mean lame? What the fuck are you talking about? What do you mean lame? 60,000 people go to fucking stadiums to watch it played. What do you mean lame? So. So that's true. Anyways, it's a very. It's like a very nerdy game. Point being is Mino and I were talking about League and I was like stuck at this certain rate and I like spend late nights playing it. I suck. And I was like, fuck it. This 22 year old's roasting me for being bad at this game. So over the next four days, I basically got to the rank that I wanted. And on LinkedIn, I was like, I post a lot of LinkedIn. It's like actually one of my main platforms. I really love thoughtful content and you would never expect anyone to post anything about breaking a rank on League of Legends. And because of that, there are certain moments if you're super thoughtful about what you share about yourself. I saw the alpha and like, my. My post was literally like skull emoji. Skull emoji. Like just broke gold in League of Legends. I posted a video of me like breaking that rank at the moment, and it was like one of my highest engaged posts in a way that like, I remember seeing AOC back in the day post that she played League of Legends and I was like, holy shit. AOC has an entirely new dimension to her that I didn't expect. So as you think about the that I personally believe it's like your gut plus authenticity plus a little bit of intention around what you share that has the opportunity and you're thoughtful about that. All that means that the last mental model I'll give you there is. I really respect Taylor Swift as an entrepreneur and a thoughtful artist and a personality. There's a. There's a reason why I really respect the Taylor merit score, which is like, she's one of few artists and celebrities who has maintained their relevance across generations and decades and very few market is crazy insane. But keep in mind she started as a niche country star. And so I think all of us as human beings have the desire to be our full selves online. The reality is I think society and the market can only accept and ingest so much of you at one time. And it's really cool to see her have eras she's lasted that long where she's been able to inject her personality in different parts of herself through decades. And so I just have you think about, like, what are the things that I potentially know right. Did it so well. I don't know who that is. Yes, you do. You sure do. My thing is like, how do you intentionally think through? You are this full multi potentiate person, but what are like the different parts of your personality that you introduce over time is maybe something I would think through. So how do you be fully authentic yourself but also be intentional about what you show? I want to click back on the john and I think everyone at this table can probably agree with this. And Austin kind of started this conversation earlier because I feel like Gary has laid the groundwork because the number one Biggest pet peeve I have with influencers right now, as things get bigger and bigger and there's more competition, is they build their following and then they put up a paywall and we all need to make money, but they lose the authenticity and stop providing value to their audience to get the paywall up and running and make money. And I think, Gary, you've. You know, you've inspired so many of us because you've never put the paywall up. And I talked about you when I first really blew up three, four years ago. I was like, look, I'm gonna follow the GaryVee model. I'm gonna just provide so much value that people can't stop me. And then it'll monetize itself through brand deals and the Rich Habits podcast and our network and all the things we do with Stan. So I think that's the most important part for me is provide the value and the money will come, rather than build the audience on vanity metrics and then try to model. Yeah, I think. I think an understanding as a build that value comes in all shapes and sizes. Right. Like, I was. How many people are streaming live at this point? A little bit. That's another subject we should talk about. Like, the one that I would tell all of you to start with is TikTok Live, because TikTok. Yeah, TikTok Live's the only streaming platform that gives you audience. I literally back to being the og and I love the old jokes. I'm about to stab you. I'm realizing it's a funny bit. We can. Yeah, I was on the morning, 3,000 people watching me, and I like, just go live. As you all know, it goes into FYP, random people are showing up, and every 10 minutes, I just ask, how many of you in this? And I'm trying to make a point to my audience. It's really meta. I'm doing my thing and I'm trying to teach my audience to do the thing I'm doing. And this crushes them because a lot of them know who I am. Obviously, I've been around for a long time, but every 10 minutes I'm saying, hey, how many of you have never seen me? I don't mean, like, I fell off with you and you're just recatching up with me. I don't mean, like, you've seen two or three of the videos that I've made or photos, like you kind of have heard of me. How many of you right here in the room right now have literally never fucking seen me? Have no idea who I am, have no clue what the fuck is going on. Say never seen. And I do this every like 10 minutes. It's like, it's like. And like the rest of my audience is like, what the fuck? Because you know, 20 years, 55 million followers, like I've been out there and it reminds people that there's 8.3 billion people on earth and it reminds people and for all if I'm at a place where I'm addicted with everything going on, to be on there as much as possible. Because for me, it is awareness that I can't achieve in any other way. I promise you, all of you should be considering to do it if it's an incredible opportunity. And I just had drinks. Sorry I'm late. The reason I was running late is I was having drinks with the CEO of Twitch and obviously they're the OG and obviously everything's. So many platforms are moving to live, but I think I have found and I believe many of you in this table have clearly won on content creation. I would argue live streaming, right? The Kaiser, you guys know it. Speed, you know all that stuff, Aiden, all the kick, all the Twitch stuff. Live streaming, right? Just live chilling and then social live shopping. Like what's been happening in those two. I am dying to see and can't wait to see a lot of you because we're in phase one of the creator economy which is just pure content. But we are literally right now in the pre dawns of super scale of live streaming content creation which is here. Faze clan, Aiden Ross, all of a sudden you guys know Marlon, you know it all and live social shopping. The fact that everybody at this table literally has two new full genres, QVC or just Truman show is a really big deal. And for back to like being relevant over and over like Taylor, like I think about my career of like I want on YouTube then it was Twitter then and I was the Twitter guy. And on and on and on. A lot of you have the personality, the tenacity, the creativity. I'm sure you see what the guys are doing on Twitter with their show. Live is very real for a lot of you and live shopping is very real for a lot of you. And for a lot of you they will be dramatically more lucrative than what's going on right now. And all of that attention goes into digital products or other things. And it is a give, give, give. And occasionally ask like I've never paywalled, but I ask people to buy wine from my dad's store. I've had sneakers I've had books, I have vee friends. I really think the live component. And it's funny I keep looking at you cause, like, it's so hard for me to find people that have really watched me do it for 20 years. But it's funny when I blew up, Twitter and YouTube get a lot of credit. But there was a site called Ustream, which before Twitch, before Justin tv, that I really cooked on and like, it really worked for me. And you know, watching this live revolution the last five years and now we're like, 2026 will be the year of live streaming and live social shopping. And a lot of you are gonna be wildly, positively affected. And that makes me happy. Can I add to that, please? Intro. Just want to say I am a fashion and marketing coach. I have been doing this full time since 2020 during the pandemic. So I got fired from my job. And it was either two things. It was either you had to panic or you pivoted. And I definitely pivoted and I started working with a lot of brands and then I scaled that to about six figures just with brand deal alone. So I've worked with all the favorite brands that you guys probably know, like Wendy's, Taco Bell, Febreze, all these different brands. And then also I wanted to, you know, make my brand a little bit more lucrative. So I just decided to pivot again. And I went into just coaching on just how to get the brand deals and how to actually, you know, just in digital products and things like that. And the reason why I'm saying that is because you brought up a good point of TikTok Live. So this year, guys, I did a million dollars on TikTok Live alone. Yeah, it's very real. That is a very big situation because. Because literally I get on live. I got on that every day since January 1st. And I would just sell my digital products every day. Wow. I would sell them every single day and I would just have the strategy. So when you went back to value, right, that whole science of just giving people value for 45 minutes, 46 minutes, and then the science of selling on live and then doing 6k days and 7k days and 8k days and things like that, TikTok Live is literally where it's at definitely like seven figures online this year. Did you have a previous falling before you? Like, so did you grow by way of life? Yes. So that's this actually a science as well. So I had like 90k on tick tock and then. But that was from fashion videos that was just strictly for fashion videos. And then I got on live, and then I grew a hundred thousand just by getting on Tick Tock live alone. So there's just a science to that. So if you're somebody who is just not really a Tick Tock fan, because, like, I really care to post on there, the algorithm is still gonna notice you because you have all these new followers now. So the for you page actually sees you. And that's why I really love TikTok Live, because people who don't know you are gonna see you on that platform. I could not push all of you more to literally tomorrow just go live and just chop it up. You will be flabbergasted. As we sit here today, there is no discovery mechanism that is even within a distant mile of going live on TikTok. So how many people here have gone live on Instagram? Raise your hands. Just curious. Have gone live. So the people that have gone live, of course you hate it because. Let me explain why you go live on Instagram. Here's what happens. You go live, it pings. Your community shows up. You go live. First couple seconds, it goes to 500, 1,000, 4,000. I don't know where everyone's at. Everyone's got different numbers. And then as you stay on, it declines and declines. Declines. Yes, Chloe. It's, like, sad. I get it. Chloe, where are you guys going? I get it. Now, let me tell you about TikTok. When you get good at it, you start small, and then if you're really in the zone and you're not paying attention and you look up in 25 minutes, you're like, there's 2,000 people here. No, no. It's actually insane. I feel like Instagram is very, like, Instagram still has this personal feel where you see, like, Brett join and it's like, oh, you know TikTok. It's like. But I. I do have a question. I'm curious if anyone has a follow on what is it about live? Well, I think there's a supply and demand element. There's not that many people that are going live, so it's going to push you. But, like, it's the ultimate form of authenticity. It goes back to what Michael's hitting on, which. Well, why? Here's why. Here. Yeah, here's why. You know that subconsciously, you know, it's harder to hide. No. Post production. No. And you'll like this. I'm gonna use SNL and general pop acting. There's a lot of actors that win Academy Awards and we all revere who don't do snl. Cause they can't do improv. They can't do improv. But I mean, wouldn't you also argue is because of AI, like with AI slob content, all these things that. No, because this was happening. This has been happening for four or five years. Listen, there's some dynamics that are brewing on that. I wouldn't say that's because of this. I'm gonna say that there are people in this room. I'm say it again. There are people in this room that are winning. This is not people that haven't figured it out yet. This is a room of people that have figured it out. And I know as I sit here that multiple people in this room are gonna be dramatically more successful as a live streamer or as a live shopping seller than they are currently sitting here as a successful content creator. They're just different. I'm inspired. Good. Go live right now. Ladies first. Yes. Okay, Mine's quick. When you are going live, any of you guys, do you find that traffic is. There's a difference or it's better when you announce, like, hey, I'm gonna be going live or tomorrow for this thing. This is gonna. Or when you're spontaneous, you're like fucking here. Yeah. So for me, I think at the beginning I would make an announcement, but I guess as I got really consistent, like people were just expecting. Yeah, the for you page just kind of put me on the forefront. So now everybody was there. You have to understand how the dynamics work. If all of you were to do it on Instagram and you did weeks of promoting it and your stories in it, it will do better. TikTok is an algorithm that randomly shows you based on the momentum you're building and the things you're talking about. In fact, I don't know if you noticed what I'm doing. I'm promoting Stan Store, but I'm not even using the dot com. I don't know if you figured this out yet. You start promoting things off platform, your viewership goes down. When I mentioned I was like doing it early on a couple weeks ago, I'm like, you gotta watch me on whatnot. And I was like, 2,800 tanks it. Tanks it. So TikTok is so advanced they wanna keep you on platform. So I was paying attention to you saying, six, seven thousand, like that's important. Impressive. Either. A, the algo didn't hit it. You found a way to promote it without the algo realizing it. But like, every time I'd Be like, check out garyvee.com stanstore so the algo is very. So really what you wanna do on live is just build your brand and bring value. You don't wanna be like and sign up for my newsletter and go to. I was like, go to. And, you know, I'm happy to promote at times, especially these last couple months, it's like Black Friday and wine time. So I was like, oh, and my dad would love for you to sign on WineText. I'd be like, 18. I'm looking at the number 1800, 1400. I'm like, motherfucker. Like, you know, like the algorithm's that advanced. But on the flip side, if you pure and bring tons of value, this is when you're just live, not shop. When you're on TikTok shop and doing QVC, you are selling, but that's a different version of selling. And you're selling within TikTok. So they're like, yay. Because they're making a rake, right? You sell something, they take a percentage. So just think logically. I'm gonna go live, I'm gonna sell something and they're gonna get 10%. They're gonna pump you. So I don't know who here has physical items they can sell that are easier than alcohol like me and you. But if you. How many of you here sell something physical? Oh, yeah, big time. I mean, I could not push you harder on TikTok shop. You should also look at what that's the independent standalone app. That's crushing. Very real. There's a We. I did a collaboration with the supplement company I'm sponsored by for a magnesium line. One magnesium supplement from zero. We took it to 900,000 in eight months. And that's only 91% of the revenue was nine videos that I made. And they're running ads against the video. Yes. Makes sense. I mean, that's. But the return on time in that is insane. Like, it was probably 20 minutes of combined effort on nine videos that generated almost a million dollars for the brand. A lot of people want to win on organic. We talked about that in our partnership. But the real game is the organic that then gets amplified with media. That's ROI positive on the ROAs. If you want scale. Scale. You're saying strong organic. Sorry, I'm saying in your version, there's a lot of things going for it. You are you and there's that. There's recognition. The paid might work. But for that supplement company putting out 45 pieces of creative from that shoot day and then running ads against the ones that most over indexed it organically. Especially if they post produced it after it did well organically. To add an element of sales DNA to it would have probably outperformed the 9. Testing things on a better CAC. I've run 7000 different ads for Winetex, my dad's wine thing, all of them roughly average at $42. 41 if they're good. 1 radio appearance I did on Boomera Esiason's AM sports show, the way the hosts were talking about that one ran at $14 customer acquisition and we ran millions of dollars against it and it never tapped out. Creative is the variable of success. Creative is the variable of success when you guys are doing the lives right now. I apologize real quick, last thing and I'll answer that. There's some of you have not talked and I'm looking at some of you. I just want you to know you're gonna be dragged in in a second if you don't jump in yourselves. So keep that in mind. Go ahead. When you guys are right now for the physical products with the friends. Yes. Going live on Tick Tock. You're going live on whatnot. What? Not yes, you're doing it simultaneously. No, you're doing one into the other. What or the other. You really kind of can't do it simultaneously. You can, but there's. For the consumer on the other side, you're being very direct. If we went live, notice the algorithm. If we went live on whatnot and TikTok and started making references on whatnot like the giveaway's up on whatnot, we're gonna lose anyway on TikTok. So you don't go simulcast. But back to numbers. So again, vFriends, some of you may start as an NFT project for me, but it's a full media thing now. It's comic books, trading cards, school squishmallows, Uno. Like I'm truly trying to build Harry Potter and Pokemon on Black Friday on whatnot, which was giving us no traffic. So not TikTok on whatnot with 700 people watching. We did 240,000 in sales. The thing all of you are gonna learn if you start selling online in live is there's a term in CPG land, consumer packaged goods land, that's called heavy users. Every brand on earth, I'm talking Coca Cola, Gucci, Dove Soap. Every brand on Earth has 1% of their customers that means so much you couldn't imagine. Like you couldn't comprehend, bro. It's not 80, 20. It's 99. 1 heavy users. The 1% top users of literally anything you can think of. A toothpaste fucking Dr. Pepper. Like, I don't give a fuck what think mad happy hoodies. Like, you cannot understand what the 1% means. That 1% is showing up in live shopping. And that's why this is so lucrative. I would let me say this. This is like a very hyperbolized, not hyperbolized statement. I would rather have 1,000 psychotic live shopping viewers than 50 million followers on social media. Kevin Kelvin. Different. It's like we grew up true fans. Different. 1000 psychotic live shopping customers. You know, I know what a thousand of your 50 million followers means in social. I've built on that. I've lived that. I'm saying something different. 1000 psychotic live shop. So you all know what QVC is, right? QVC today is doing billions in sales. Nobody. What who watches it. Billions. Nobody has cable. Billions. Because all they need is like 20,000 middle America moms watching. Be like, I need that. Precious moments. And they call. They're like, fucking cute. Like, this is. I don't know how many of you bought on Live Shopping. This is like Apple Pay done. You think it's easy to buy shit on Instagram? Live Shopping takes that to, like, a psychotic level. Yep. Gary, I think this might be a good transition to the next question, please, which is how all of you guys are thinking about building your businesses, right? How you think about monetizing. I'm curious, like, if anyone has any top struggles that they're thinking through, anything they're aspiring to, anything like that. Can I add to that? Yeah. Hi, I'm Austin. Nice to meet you guys. Thank you. Something I've been struggling with, I'm trying to balance. And I think you both are good examples of this are entrepreneurs that are also content creators. Right? Maybe not creators that are entrepreneurs. Right. Kind of thing we're all kind of on. But, like, there's some of us that are, like, really entrepreneurial, but we are kind of not maybe forced to be creators, but, like, we're also creators. Like, how do you guys balance? And this is for everyone in the room, right? How are you guys balancing, like, your creator business with content? Really hard. Yeah, really hard. Just, like, honestly, a main thing for me every day is how the fuck do I set up my day? I'm the CEO of an alcohol company. I run it every day. I have to cook and I have to put out content. Because when I do that, you sell great. I have a cookbook deal with Simon Schuster in 27. Like, I don't even know how that happens. Like, it's just from putting out content. I have a podcast that the more I am myself in long form, the deeper my relationship gets with my audience everywhere else. The more people buy Spritz Society when I tell them to. The more people engage in my cooking content, the more I create. It's just the more I do, the better everything else. There's a halo effect. Right. So it's setting up your day for me. Every single day. I start out, I make a list. I know it's very simple, but that really, really helps me. I wake up, I prioritize. What am I gonna do today? I can't give 100% to everything every day. So today I'm gonna give, like, Thursdays, I give 100% to cooking. That's really helped me with that. When I have like 100% to cooking on Thursdays and sort of banking it out that way, really, that really helps me. Something I'm like, weirdly fascinated about. And I love that all of us are here because I would hope you'd be honest about this and you just share it is. I'd be curious for everyone's businesses. And of course, with Stan, right. It's like thinking about how much of your creator business from a revenue perspective is coming from your audience directly. Like, you're monetizing your audience if it's with a product or like, whatever's going on there versus depending on the marketing budgets of Fortune 1000 companies. Right. Because I feel like that's something. I wouldn't say I've struggled with it, but I've really reflected upon. It's like back in 2022, the stock market started going down. The economy's kind of a little weird. And so I saw that pullback in those marketing budgets myself. And, like, man, I need to monetize my audience more. Like, I need to figure this out. And so I'd be curious. Anyone chime in? You know, what does that look like for you? Yeah. Hi, my name is Mai pham. I started YouTube when I was seven, back in 2010, and I've been doing it for fun for 15 years, but full time for seven years now. So I've really seen the creator economy shift a lot. And I really started as a hobby when I was a kid. But slowly I've seen everything shift. And I think since back then, it wasn't something you could really make money off. There wasn't a marketing budget. Like there were back Then I really had to tap into my community and also I lived in Canada years ago and they had no money back then. It was only us creators had it. So I really had to tap into the community aspect. And tonight I've heard you talk about how you have another account and how like whenever you post on there it's like, hey, that's not me, that's this account. So I get to say whatever I want. And I heard John speak about Taylor Swift and her how she's evolved around the eras. And I've also heard Gary talk about getting another account and different platforms and I feel like hearing all this, it's connected to a lot of things. So bear with me here because I haven't said anything, but I also have a brand myself, it's called Alchemy and we sell custom milled fabric one size hoodies, but it fits size extra small to 3 XL. And we price them around 140 USD, which is a lot for somebody that makes a product. And I'm going to touch on a couple topics here, but I think with the second accounts thing and building a community in the Taylor Swift, I'm actually deeply inspired by the way Taylor Swift builds her community as she longevity. And I've done a lot of research about her and I read about her and I think something she really tapped into is making people feel very special. And maybe you don't outreach and reach millions of people or get virality. You know, I've had spurts of virality here and there, but I've been doing it so long that I'll take breaks. Honestly, like I, I struggle a lot with mental health and sometimes I'll just feel like I can't post. Like I just can't feel like myself. And during the winters that typically happens. And maybe I'll only post like one YouTube video every month or one YouTube video every two months, which might stress a lot of people out because you're like, people are gonna forget about me when I come back. Like they're not gonna care anymore. And I think that that is true. Some people do forget about you. But, but the reason why I've been able to do it for so long and have a successful brand, even though I take a lot of breaks, is through having a second account. And I have a private account. It doesn't have to be private, but I started my private account and the reason why I did was When I was 15, I got suspended from high school and impulsively used my sister's ID and went to the tattoo Shop when I got a tattoo and I made a YouTube video about getting suspended. So I'm going to go do a glow up. So I got a T my family to see. So I was like, you know, you guys, if you guys want to go see what my tattoo looks like, follow this account. But I made it private so that my parents couldn't follow, my sister could have followed. No one could follow it except I could see the people that were gonna come in. So that's how the private account started. That's so good. This was like seven years ago, so it wasn't a strategy. But I use that account to kind of post whatever pictures I wanted. I spam the stories. To this day, I just, like post a bunch of random stories. I don't think twice about it. I just post because the people that follow it sat there on the way, like on the private list. And like, they wanted to follow it. They didn't just follow it. And they felt like they're forcing, like you're force feeding them content. They intentionally want to see more about your life so the people that are there will, like, actually care and you don't have to think about, you know, am I sharing too much? Like, like, is it, Is it annoying? It's like, no, the people that wanted to be there are there. And that's what I've been able to use to, you know, kind of, like, rest assured, like, things will be okay. Because even if even though maybe publicly I'm not posting a lot, I'm still there. And like, there's like the 10,000 people that will like my pictures or, like, there's like, you know, like, there's the people that will watch my stories and will see the process of what you're going through behind the scenes. But also I've used that towards my business and that's how my business really, like, took off in the way that it is. Because like you said about having like a thousand live shoppers that are like super crazy about you, it's like, yeah, this kind of takes the thing about, you know, having one true, like 100 true and 100,000, like, crazy, like, you know, worldwide fans. And I think Taylor Swift does a really good job at that because she has so many core true followers. And I think that's also probably a big reason as to why her career has so much longevity. And I think that I've seen that throughout my career, even though, you know, the creator economy is like, just really starting to boom. I've noticed throughout the 15 years is having, like, A really core group of people aids that longevity because no matter if you switch, you're not so anxious about, you know, your views going down because you know you have a core group of people that are there and follow you. And to really see you and to go to the brand part about being an entrepreneur, I post a lot of behind the scenes on that second page and I think people can utilize their stories even if they don't want to use a second page. Or what you said about using another platform. I'm probably going to start hopping on Snapchat or YouTube shorts and just posting random things and I won't care about it as much, probably because it's starting at zero. Who cares? It's a different audience. And to jump in because that's. First of all, you just shared such incredible stuff. The who's care part is the part that I get excited about. Back to mental health self worth. I really think, for example, as you know, and you're being very. You're actually digging into something pretty powerful. You've inspired me. I just literally took an Instagram story. Like stories was such a good function for a lot of people. I really believe people's preciousness with their core grid on Instagram is literally the limiter of their upside and happiness. I will die on this hill. The preciousness of the Instagram grid has destroyed so many people's upside. You got there by being free. And then once you got it, it became your jail. You have a good scripture for this. I feel like you did. I felt like it was coming. I felt it because. Right it is the power and fame and money thing becomes right. But I could feel it coming from you because it's real, right? Yeah. I feel that all the time. Right in my heart. I wish I could get everyone on Earth to just be free on their grid. In knowing that I've been fighting that battle for a decade and gotten not as far as I would like to, is where platform and handle came from. All of the magic is in the creativity and the lightness and the lack of angst and the humility and the not giving a fuck and not keeping up with the Joneses. I'm obsessed with this new thought in my mind. Literally 8.3 billion people have found unhappiness by comparing themselves to 83 people. People are walking around and comparing themselves to Elon and fucking and, you know, like, Kylie Jenner and they're like, well, I'm not like. And I'm like, there's like 80 people that have made 8 billion people unhappy because we've become uncomfortably envious, uncomfortably materialistic, uncomfortably lacking self esteem. And it's. I'm very passionate. It's funny that it has so much to do with why I'm building vfriends. I'm building this entire universe that I'm trying to really make very popular with 5, 6, 7 year olds and get them into accountability and kindness and patience and tenacity. And it's just really interesting. And you're such a great case study and I knew a lot about how long you've been in the game, but even listening carefully to your words and I'm sorry to jump in, but I was inspired, like not caring, right? Because everyone's so like, again, I say this, I say this a lot. So many of you are stuck in a jail. Because I normally get 800,000 views, I normally get 2 million views and all you actually consciously or subconsciously are thinking about is what do I need to make to hit that metric? Cause anything you do that will deviate around from it or something you haven't shared yet will not hit that metric yet. It also is the piece of creative that probably starts the process of your next happiness. And if you have to use training wheels of a Finsta or Stories or a different platform or a different handle, Mazel tov. But you've got to start putting out more random shit, it will set you fucking free. Hi. Hi, I'm Anya. I'm Smith at creative marketing and I worked at. Hey, Jen. I worked at Instagram and I was on the team that launched Reels. And when I was also on the team that tried to launch Instagram Shopping and fail. And before that I came to fashion. I worked at Chime Lyft. Lucky to be here now. When I was helping to launch Reels, I was in charge of a teen ambassador program in Instagram and I was studying how people ages, I think ages 16 have to be pet age 16 at 16 time we hadn't rolled out teen accounts to 22. We're growing on the platform of all stripes and sizes. And we were, you know, it was 2020. We were up against Tik Tok. We could not get people to use Reels. The internal work, she was literally called me Reels is saying it was pathetic. And what I discovered in just talking to people was something I coin I called the perfection barrier. On Tik Tok, you can go viral and be anonymous. My most viral TikTok that has almost 3 million views is of me failing to make a popsicle out of Coconut water during the heat wave. 2.8 million people saw it, but my parents did on Instagram. Your social graph, your teachers, all of a sudden, for these people, for Gen Z and Gen Alpha, it's there. It doesn't matter that you can toggle between your grid and trial reels and real, you're only what's visible on the real side. You still have that, that barrier in your mind of I need to be perfect here, I'm going to be judged here, I can't be free, pinned in the same way. I think that's what's limiting so many of us. It's certainly what's limited me on my own journey. And I think that it's so founded in the belief that as you get older, you stop learning. I think adults are really scared of failing and being bad at stuff. When we're kids, we're told, like, try the trombone, like, try learn how to like double or right of worth. And like, I honestly, I'm worried about getting dementia. So I'm trying to teach myself new things and. Can I interrupt for one second? The fact that such a young woman in today's society is already thinking about dementia is also the thing that I think a lot about. Like, I promise you, no one on Earth in 1984 your age even knew what the word dementia was. Well, I'm like the only person in my family who's not a doctor, so maybe I'm not a doctor, but. And you know, grandparents had it. But I really think that like continuing to learn no matter how successful you are is the key to like, continued success and liberation. And I actually recently bought a brick to block social media on my phone from 8pm to 11am every morning. It's messing with my serotonin levels and my push content. Like I've become a lot more consistent in posting content as a result of limiting my goodness and pushing myself to try these different things. So the thing I'll close with is I don't do New Year's resolutions. I try to do four things other than my job that I'm proud of every year. And I think that that's cool really to the start of this conversation because my first job, I did social media for Marc Jacobs. And this is a little personal, but while I was working in the fashion industry, I developed an eating disorder that was pretty bad. My identity was very connected to my work. I was constantly comparing myself to like sharing an elevator with Emily Radajowski. Like, how could a 22 year old girl like, feel good about Herself in that context. And what I learned from that was I really need to separate my identity from my work. So that's when I started this practice of every year. I need to do four things other than myself that I'm proud of. And I don't. I. I try to make decisions around that, but I also can look back and reframe how I think about things. And I think that this is. I don't know, those are all things that have helped me. I have nowhere near the amount of followers y' all do, but I think it's so important to continue these conversations and just be honest about where our fear lies. Like you said earlier. Yeah, I mean back to not having as many followers, I would argue that it is very clear to me being in this for so long that I think all of you have heard this. Fame, money, power, it exposes you. It doesn't change you. I feel like we've gotten very lazy and we try to blame the algorithms and the social platforms for the issues. I think these are incredibly obvious social issues. I think modern parenting was very challenged over the last 40 years and created a lot of dynamics that we're all dealing with now. But you know, I would argue that your self awareness of like what works for you is like kind of ultimate end state. Like I will never need to turn off from 8 to 11. Right. That will never be part of my journey. And I don't view that as me being good, bad or indifferent. That's the serendipity of how my life played out. But there's other things I do do need to do and everybody. I needed to never share my personal life. I knew that in 2006. I knew not to share my kids or family when none of this even could begin to be thought about. But I needed that for me. Carson, back to you, brother. You being new to it, maybe that's not an issue for you. You know what I mean? I think this is a massive game of being quite self like challenge yourself to. Actually no one here should be like anyone else. But do you understand yourself? And are you selling out for short term gains from what's actually in your soul? Is like a really good question, right? Are you willing to go against what feels right to you? Cause you want the money, the fame, the girl, the boy, the thing, the thing, the thing. That's the ultimate game of this. Cause there's no right. There's right for you. And. And by the way, there's no right. There's only right for you. And there's Only right for you at moments in time. What works for you now could change. Dramatic. We were talking about that early on. She was talking about, like I was a stay at home mom and I needed this. And I said, yeah. And in 10 years, when your kids are two or three years away from going to college, after you've done 10 years of this, you might be like, oh, fuck it. I actually need to go back to like full. I need to milk it before they go. Like, you're just allowed to fundamentally change your fucking mind. And I think a lot of people get. One of the biggest things I see a lot of people struggling with is you think whatever you're deciding now is like locked for good. Like you're allowed to do this for three years and then completely hard pivot. I filmed, by the way, to answer your question of how you handle being an entrepreneur but a content creator. At the height of my height Pre Covid with DailyVee and where I was really exploding, I was, you know, this. I mean, you know, like I was working 18 hours a day running companies and yet was the most prolific content creator. Cause I filmed every minute of my life for five and a half years to be able to make the content. Covid came, we stopped. Document, right? Document, Don't Create was like my platform. I have not been able to get back to filming that way. Cause I got out of practice. And now when train comes, like, trane knows this train's newer in my world. Like a lot of times, like, nah, nah, nah. When that would have been like, definitely film this five years ago. It's to my. There's really no reason I'm saying no to him. It's actually leaving upside and opportunity on the table. I'm just conditioned right now to not be back in it that way. But like a year from now I might be back in it. I think this concept of like thinking the decision you're making for yourself right now is forever is fucking insanity. You could like flip the fucking switch completely. You can disappear. I talk about this a lot of my content. I always wonder if I'm just gonna disappear, like literally out of nowhere and never be seen again after being as publicly. And I'm good with that. And I'm good with going in a cave and having a beard and fucking being like Yoda for five years. And then I might just be there for five years and be like, no, fuck it, I gotta be back. It's just that flexibility of knowing yourself is a very big deal. You asked me if I had scripture for this unfortunately I do. Fortunately I'm excited to hear what it is. Proverbs 13:12 says hope deferred makes the heart sick. But a dream fulfilled is a tree of life. Like you alluded to your soul. What your soul wants to do. You alluded to your preciousness of your grid is your prison. You alluded to creators getting trapped in niches they have. The dream fulfilled was a tree of life to me is like I trust where the message on my heart is going. Even if it has nothing to do with what I've talked about. That tree of life is the self sustaining energy source that is our creativity. Hope deferred makes the heart sick. And that Proverbs verse is the creator who feels stuck in their niche. And now they can't come up with any videos because their heart is literally sick. Because they know deep down 100% they want to do something else. So the best thing they can do to serve their career is completely paradoxical. It's follow the inspiration that feels friction. 100 I could not. It's super real. It's super obvious. Please to your question. I was thinking about this. There's a lot of. I consider myself a founder first. I create content by way of what I do with my businesses, community and media and software. And many of you I've been following for a while I'm a fan of. It's very cool. There's this element of being a creator versus being an influencer which is what leads me into kind of John's question, where it's like you talk about you're sharing your life, sharing your kids. Right? Your kids are eventually going to one day be 30 years old. Right. At a certain point. Right. What does that look like for you when you're no longer like the mom of younger kids? And so it's like how do you have yourself live on? Where I feel like an influencer basically is built an audience based off of their like their lifestyle, their beauty, their personal relationships and they end up monetizing that based on the attention they're getting. Whereas a creator is a sense of essentially building an audience based off their mission or their knowledge or something. And then they're able to kind of monetize that. And that to me is a bit more sustainable long term than it is when you're influencing based off those relationships and things because they ebbs and flow so much. And so I just challenge people in the room who might gear more towards whatever an influencer might be to think about how do I lean more on the creator Side. And how do I think about what that longevity looks like? Because you might hit that moment where, like, Maya, you're talking about, like, there are weeks when, like, I don't want to create content. Not. But it just thought it was relatable. I mean, I certainly feel that when I'm creating content, like, LinkedIn's my main platform. So when you are in your 50s, right, like, yeah, at a certain point you need things to be more sustainable. I mean, I think you're a great example. I've been following you for a long time. You've successfully pivoted into, like, what would be a more sustainable element right. When you talk about and became a founder. So it's kind of just like, what does that mindset look like when you're thinking long term? And how do you start to kind of plant the seeds of that? Because you can't be an influencer forever. You know, there's only a few Kim Kardashians. At a certain point, you might get less and less interesting or you might not care to do what you were doing now when you're 27, right. So how do you, how do you kind of figure out what is that sustainable path forward to keep building? That's that sustainable brand? I mean, it's why Kim launched Skins or something like that. So, yeah, I'm curious anyone's feelings or thoughts around sustainability? My name is Elliot. Elliot. I'm a customer of his on YouTube mostly. And yeah, I think, like, when I think about sustainability, I think about myself in high school doing, like, photography. And I was really into photography. I love photography. Could not get my hands off camera. And I was like, go to the woods and take pictures of leaves. And it was amazing and it was like super creative and I loved it. And then I started doing, like, senior portrait shoots. But I needed to make money. Right, right. Like, make it sustainable. Okay, let me try to go make money off of it. Destroyed my love for photography. And, you know, I made money, but it wasn't really worth it in hindsight. And so when I started doing videos, I was like, okay, like, even if I make money off, try to make it sustainable as a career, monetize off of it. I need to make sure I never lose my love. Love for the craft. And I was doing a little, like, a little reflection with like, with Claude and AI today. It's like my journal. But I had a. I had a topic that came up which was like, hey, like, when was the last time you made a video for yourself and you didn't Post. And I feel like that's cool. It's really easy to get caught up in, like, we have to be doing live, we have to be posting, we have to do stories, and we have to be doing all this. Whatever you're outputting is, you know, put it out there. But I really relate to that topic of, like, you gotta keep some stuff for yourself because ultimately, if you give everything away, then you. And it's funny, right? Like, there's something in the way I process that. Nothing that's been talked about, I think about as I have to. I think of it as I could. Right? Like, even the way you're using the terminology, like, you could be doing live. You could be doing live shopping. But I think it's funny to, like, that's what I just picked up on. Like, I think a lot of people process to. I have to be. And I think a lot about, like, if everybody. If you just. This is like a fun exercise. If you like, literally in your own self talk in like running a company, making content early odd, whatever it is. If you literally just change the word have to to could be. It changes the relationship with it in an enormous way. This is gonna make a lot of you actually laugh. There have been many things I've publicly told the world that there was opportunity in that I started doing that I just got too busy to fully take advantage of. And everybody that followed me crushed it way more than me because I was in could have versus have to. And that made everything cool for, like, I like knowing what I could be doing. I like having the inner dialogue and the concept of, like, I'd like to get to it. I told Ben about a new business I'm gonna be launching next year. We saw each other at a birthday party in August. He just asked me, what's up. I'm like, little behind. Like, I am behind on it. It's likely gonna happen next year, but. But between now and, let's say, October, when it opens in soho, somebody else might do it. And in that window, hey, that won't stop me. But it would take a little bit out of it. But, like, I'm not devastated because I didn't feel like I had to, but I felt like I could. And I think that's something that. I mean to take it a little further. I would tell you, as someone who has been doing it for a little while, I'm completely determined, detached from my entire professional career and Gary Vee. And I mean completely when I I wish all of you really knew me, like, really knew me or that there was technology in AI that could like, could swallow a pill right now and it project on the and it would show you the truth. It is scary even to me. Even as I'm saying it, I am stunned by how detached I am from all of it. I think one of the things that hurts everyone is how much they are attached to their financial fop back to the grid. I could care less. I get pumped. I mean, if you looked at my TikTok right now, if you went there right now, there's videos that have like 7,000 views. I have 15 million followers. I'm not archiving that. Like I'm pumped. It goes back to like scars or authenticity or the sweat on the camera. People like to talk about it with content. But how authentic are you when you post something that doesn't do well? Are you hiding it? Like these become real questions about how far deep are you willing to go into pure authenticity? But I think full detachment, like literally, really, truly understanding that not one fucking thing we all talked about here today matters at all. That's when this shit gets real good. When you understand the whole thing from the get to right. The second literally is bullshit. Literally. If God forbid somebody in your life that you love the most was sick right now and it was a six month thing that nothing we talked about would be on your fucking mind, you get into that gangster place, this shit really gets fun. 100% right. Can I just add to that one thing I've gone by for my whole career on social media is don't let the other algorithm steal your joy. I go by that every single time I'm about to post. And that's why I'm so like kind of like you, detached. Because when I see something that doesn't do well, I'm like, okay. And like it doesn't like, can I, can I build on that? Because it's brilliant. I just need everyone understand. Do you know what the algorithm is? It is an enormous amount of people have it or. Because remember if I showed you 3,000 people right now in this room, you'd be like fucking shit. But when you see 3,000 in your views, you're like, right, the algorithm is many, many, many people got this served and this one just wasn't it. There's no algorithm. There's people on the other side that just decided this one wasn't it. And that's cool. Yeah, that's what I was saying. Like I was gonna piggyback off what you said. Like if video has 800 views like, could you fit 800 people in your room right now? Like, can you ask yourself that question if you get. I'm big that. Can 700 people fit in your room right now? And that's how I look at. It's good. You know, things like that. So I think that's really important. Just even, just as a. We're talking about like content creation and revenue. This guy in the corner here, just even with that too. I'm a conversions guy. So whether I have a thousand followers or whether I have 10, can you convert 10% of that? That's what I think about all the time. So I think just in general, a lot of people are so stoked on, you know, followers equals dollars. So what does that look like to you? Right? Like if you have 200,000. Because if you can't convert at 200 followers, you can't convert at 200,000. So you have to think about it in that way. And there's another build on that. And you touched on this like, also another thing. Because this is the era of monetization. Yeah. Again, back to some of the OGs. Like I had seven years of like. And I believe in this right now. I'm gonna say something as an additive, something I think could bring you value. Cause you're doing your thing. Right. But I'm gonna add an. And I will say this, the longer you can hold your breath in monetizing your audience, the more you will win, hold out. You know, that goes especially you because I remember our video. I've watched a lot of your stuff. You are, for example, the live shopping thing didn't surprise me at all. You fit the category for me subjectively. I could be wrong. I've only consumed a little bit. But you fit the category for me subjectively as somebody who will do better in live shopping than even content. Because you've got a sales DNA that others at this table don't have. But ironically for you, the counter move of doing as many things as possible just to bring value to the audience with no thought of conversion is. Is actually gonna lead a lot more to you. Whereas for other people here, understanding a little bit more about the live shopping dynamics would matter. It's funny how it works and it ebbs and flows within each other. You get, you know, like, I always know when like I've been pushing beef Renz or the wine thing or a book too much. I'll go like on a one year cleanse of like not a peep of anything. Stan Store was challenging for me. I really thought it was gonna be really great. I think the company's gonna be great. I think John is that kind of entrepreneur. I really view him as like I really, especially with the deal we made. I really hope Stan wins, but I know Jon will win whether Stan wins or not. Meaning, you know, Ev Williams lost with Odo and then Twitter was next. Like winners win kind of like is a big belief of mine. But Stan was a challenge for me because I'm very deep in veefriends right now and live shopping and like I'm doing more selling than I'm accustomed to and prefer in fact when One of the reasons I'm livestreaming on TikTok so much is it allows me to provide more value. I'm allocating more time for my business work to provide more value. Cause I'm aware that I'm pushing Stan store, that I'm pushing veefriends and I need to get the right cadence of value exchange. I banked a lot, but again, you know this like you might have banked a lot with the people that are most psycho into your shit, but somebody finding you for the first day would be like, oh. And so it's a tough challenge for all of us. We got acquired by a company called Maker Studios. Of course, Maker was essentially the first iteration of sort of this professionalization and really the idea of monetizing in ways outside of traditional sort of platform revenue or brand sponsorship. Right. And so the thing that I've been obsessed with for the last 15 years is how creators and I think it's really fitting that you talk about scripture because when I zoom out and I don't think this would be very novel to this room. I talk about this all the time. Like when you say creator and you call someone like Iman or Donald Trump a cult of personality or my kids, I'm Korean, my kids listen to K pop idols. I don't think that those words are mistakes. And I also don't think about value and utility and skill serve. You don't use these words sort of interchangeably. It is because for the communities that you're actually connected with and have a two way arrow and an actual relationship with you are providing that value the same thing. That's ultimately a religion, right? So when you think about that and you think about monetization, someone rocking a cross or a Star of David, that's merch, right? When you think about Patreon, when you think about that's tithing, that's no different than giving a certain percentage of Your income to what it is, right. 100%. This is something that, you know, and I spent the last 10 years investing in creators because I think ultimately if you have that distribution, you have an inherent advantage over everybody else because, you know, you're competing with a big CPG company, a multinational corporation that might, you know, have all of the retail shelf space. But at the end of day, the day like all of that is becoming commoditized in a real way, in a very real way. Right. And you know, Jake, he mentioned AI, it's like technology is deflationary. Right. And I think, I actually think that when technology is deflationary, I think this is my sort of like hot take and sort of my steel man on the authenticity and sort of what's going on. I actually think we're in the post creator, Right. I think what most people understand as the creator economy and all the stuff skills built towards, you know, the things that I've seen with creators over the last 10 years, like really good programming, being able to optimize all of these types of things, are irrelevant. We talked about follower count before. Follower count is an irrelevant metric. Correct. The channel strategy, trying to build and drive people to your own, that's no longer relevant. Correct. If you look at the best creators and the people that are sort of out there, they're taking a completely different approach towards ubiquitous, right. It's like. And, you know, live. I'm super bullish on Live too, because I think that that's the, the clearest way to show, you know, a level of authenticity. And by the way, like, what Speed show is doing, there's a ton of production that's going into that, right? Yep. And I saw this at YouTube and Maker. I think the first sort of people they're getting on are sort of the most outlandish and most bright. But at the end of the day, in long tails. Yeah. In 10 years you're gonna say in five years you're going to start seeing live the most mundane things. Correct. YouTube right now is an index of like, essentially, you know, like, like an encyclopedia. Right. So anyway, I said, I say this all to say the thing that I've been obsessed with and sort of thinking about, and my question to you is how, when, when distribution no longer matters. Right. And the marginal cost of being able to create goes to zero, what are you going to do and what are the, what are the ideas and tactics that you're trying to employ to stay relevant? Right? Because I think, you know, authenticity is a really funny word. I think Authenticity, community. These words. It almost became like, sure, 2016 Facebook, you know, like, oh, you have a Facebook group. Like, it's a checkbox that everyone says because you have a discord group. Right. But it doesn't actually mean anything unless it's actually critical to the utility of the product that you're building. Right. Or to the community that your audience. Or there's actual depth in it. Yeah. Right. So, like, what do you. Well, I think you know what's so profound, Bri, about, like, how thoughtful. What you said. If I just may to add into it. There is another massive paradigm shift along with AI, and we didn't fully get into it yet is. I don't know how many of you are aware of this. I have a sense you do have a read on this. We're pretty much within a decade of the phone not being primary. Right. Like, I think the most interesting, especially how young this crew is and looks like about half are wearing glasses right now. The fact that every person on earth is gonna be wearing glasses. Glasses are coming, and the phone's gonna be dead. Straight up. Do anyone here who doesn't wear glasses hate wearing glasses on their face by chance just, like, hate having something on their face? I think it becomes normalized very quickly. Right. Used to these on my face that when I wear my contacts, I'll catch myself going like this. But I know people who hate. Like, they can't. It's almost like they go, but it's gonna. Here's what's gonna happen. It's sim, let me tell you. So a big argument I had back to being the elder statesman. Everybody was addicted to the BlackBerry. And when the iPhone came out, I was like, this is gonna win. And all the homies were like, no, no, no, Gary, you don't get it. I can type without looking at it. And I said, no, motherfucker, you don't get it. This has the fucking Internet and has apps. And once the app. You know, the first app that went viral on the iPhone was the beer app. You could drink a beer, Remember, that meant nothing. But then you started having fucking Tinder and Uber and fucking Insta. Like, so everyone's gonna wear glasses because there's gonna be a killer AR app that you're gonna feel so left out because literally, like, everyone who's wearing glasses right now is gonna be like, holy shit. And all of us are gonna be like, what the fuck? And be like, you know, like, it's just gonna be so obvious. And that reset of distribution, and honestly, it speaks to A, it's gonna be fascinating to see the battle to win the face between these seven to 10 tech companies. The stakes are high. This was high. But that shit's on your fuck. That's literally everything. And again, you will feel left out of the world because the world will start to ar. Activate. Like, you'll be. I'll go to a Knicks game, and if I'm like, nah, fuck the machine. I'm fucking not doing the glasses. Like, the game itself is gonna be different for me. What's like social media right now? So people who don't want their kids. Correct. Don't have a kid. So, yeah, they don't want their. Scott Galloway talks about this a lot, and he's like, you don't want your kid on social, but all their friends are on social. So, like, you're almost restricting them from the person themselves. And I've always argued that social on the phone is gonna be mundane because we demonize the typewriter. Did you ever see the signs about electricity? When electricity came into hotels, they had to put signs that say, Thomas Edison's electricity does not bring demons into this room. Do not light the switch. I'm just gonna say this slow. For the first 10 years that electricity was invented in Manhattan, in hotels, there was a sign by the light switch that said, step one. This, by the way, this is 100 years ago. How old? 150 years ago. I'm that old. It's funny, though. It's funny. I showed him my report card today. All bad grades except gym class, A and P only, but he didn't catch this part because we were streaming. I didn't get B's and C's in history. History will tell you the future. Every light switch in every hotel in this city only 120 years ago, which is really not that long of a period of time ago, had a sign that says, do not light this switch on fire. Literally. People thought the way to use electricity was to spark a match and put it on the flip. Like, I don't think people understand that. Innovation goes forever, and it's definitely not gonna stop while you're alive. This is the fucking beeper and means nothing. So everyone who's keeping their kid off the iPad and the phone is in for a rude fucking awakening because their kids are gonna marry a fucking robot. As creators, though, as creators with the glasses, which, as you say, are coming, I believe it. But again, 10 years, a long time. Just to keep in, like, before you get too hot of, like, oh, like, it's a long Time, but go ahead. Yeah, go ahead, Brian, finish. I'm sorry. Talk about our kids gonna marry a. Yes, I will. I'll answer that because I think that goes to the point that I was trying to make about authenticity. It's coming. Yeah, I agree. Go ahead. I will. Yeah. Well, first of all, Japan, it's happening already like it happened. This is not predicting, but go ahead. Well, I think so much us are thinking of entrepreneurship either through the lens of building companies or being creators ourselves. What would be your POV or advice then? If the distribution channel is changing, right? The phone is dying. We're now going to be seeing things through our glasses. That one person, not one person here should factor that in. That a decade is too far for everybody. Understanding it, being curious. It's good to know. To change a business strategy at this level makes no sense. But AI generated content, it's coming very quick. It's here, it's here. That's different. Everybody here tonight should. Tomorrow should use Nano Banano and understand it. Tomorrow, tomorrow. Like your content with AI is like. To your point, brother is like, like, that's glasses. It's coming. It'll be good to remember tonight. In six years when you see something, you'll be like, wait, you know, like, this is good knowledge for that. Kind of like I saw Bitcoin in 14. That led me to understand digital collectibles. Obviously NFTs, greed fucked it up, but like long term, it's out there. It was a 14 conversation. Ownership. You can't own anything on the Internet. Those are servers. You own everything on the blockchain, right? So if money is on the blockchain, so is everything collectible and physical and da, da, da. So that's how I view what I'm doing right now is what Aaron Bataleon from Living Social did for me in 14 to explain. No, no. A blockchain's decentralized servers, meaning no one owns it. Which means a human can own it. Cause no one owns it. I'm like, ah, got it right. That's like, what I'm doing here is like, hey, today it's good for you to know. In 12 or 13 years, in six years, somebody might say something like, I'm building an. God willing, all of you do very successfully. And you're in a place where you want to deploy some capital for alternative investments, right? And you're in a place where you meet someone in seven years, you're like, I'm building an AR business. You're like, okay, wait a minute. Recall 15, 2026 dinner. I'm hearing more that the glasses are a year away. AR is gonna really whirl in that. You see what I mean? Not today. AI. Not one person here should not be making content with AI creative tools starting tomorrow. Like you have to understand it. I mean, yeah, the stuff that you're saying. No, you're saying no, no, no. I'm saying yes. Like the hey gen avatars that are now, you know, running and sort of like allowing people to scale is bananas. One thing to the point of this distribution though, the counterpoint to that is distribution in real life. Right. So I think that's, you know, whether it's that or live. I think this need and yearning for synchronous because everything that we've had is all Async right now. It's where you want, how you want. Right? But I think this sort of the synchronous stuff, they're gonna. I apologize. Right. They're gonna kick us out a little bit. I'm gonna sneak something really quickly in that is very tangible for all of you. And it's building on this theme. Real life businesses in real life are about to explode. Absolutely. It is correct. That's right. And live sports and concerts and restaurants. Like for a lot of you there's a real parallel to build business around inhuman shit fashion shows and real inhuman shit meetups. Non scalable. What's gonna happen is there's gonna be no middle. It's gonna be deep advancement of tech over here. Agentic AI agents doing all just shit. That's like, you gotta really start to study. And then over here is like take me out to the ball game and go to a stand up comedy show and do a. If you're a fashion influencer doing your own fashion show and then meet up with all your fans and do meet and greets against step and repeat. Like it's about to be like Jetsons and Flintstones and nothing in between. The mental model for that is the barbell. Right. You don't want to get stuck in the middle of the barbell. You want to be on one side where it's about utility, accessibility and ubiquity, or on the other end you want to be prestigious, highly gatekept. You want to be sort of like you want to be. You want to be protected by the moment. Yeah. By the way, you'll watch LVMH start to decline because they made them brands too accessible. And like if you look at high fashion, some of you are probably into this like, like LVMH became too accessible. And you start looking at like some of the brands that are winning or some of more of the Italian brands or mezz. Like correct. Like Lori Piano is a great example. Like they didn't make as much money, but they kept the line. And now what you're seeing is as, you know, as wealth goes up, it's like, wait a minute, like lvmh. Louis Vuitton is actually mid. In the middle now all of a sudden you can already see the early signs of LVMH being in a very vulnerable start, whereas Bruno and Piana and others are actually growing immensely. It isn't that valuable. You're too young and there's too much to do. So you're valuing a hypothesis over getting such meaningful feedback that would actually allow you to guide your next move. The reason I do so many things is the day data is more valuable than the outcome. And you're right, because in the instances where I have tried random things, I always gain. There's never a moment where I'm like, oh, I shouldn't have done that. Every single waste of time for me has been too valuable. Enough information in return. People overvalue their time. Heavy. It's lack of humility. Honestly challenging you. Cause it's very clear that you already know. So you just need a push. Yeah, that's what these things are for. Nights like this are that like literally. I posted an Instagram story. Cause I was inspired by. Everyone here needs to think about what's. It's very clear that you're holding back and one man's point of view. I can smell it from a mile away that that's hurting you, not helping you. Yeah. I think also sometimes I find it because. Because this type of content that I make is super hyper specific and I'm okay with that. That's good. Yeah. Like, I'm not trying to diversify necessarily, but I do feel like. Do you yearn to sometimes share other things? I. I don't know. I. Because I think that my concept of that is like sharing my personal life and I don't necessarily know if there are like other parts of. I don't know, there's not necessarily like a baking thing that I want to share or something. Yeah, I get it. But I mean, I think what does interest me is the idea of other platforms and the live streaming and that like diversifying in that way. That's right. But I do have a hard time conceptualizing that's distribution, not content. Right. I have a hard time conceptualizing how my World maps into that world. Because what I do, there's so much post production involved and so it feels very weird and like, well, bare minimum, like, sure, Twitch and Kick might be different, but where do you post? Social creative Instagram and TikTok. Great. So like Google Shorts and Facebook Blue, there's no restriction to that. Yeah, Spotlight. What about. Because you were saying, like with the Spotlight thing, right? Like you're talking about free of content. And I think that's another barrier for me is I don't post very frequently because the content I make is quite high lift. So don't. But like, yeah, okay, this goes back to. You don't have. Like I always talk about like, this has been something four posts a day. But like, that's could, that's not have to. What you definitely don't have any restriction against is post. Posting that on Shorts and on spotlight and LinkedIn could be massive for you. There's a lot of us here that are very affected by LinkedIn. You see what I mean? The reason I jumped in and went deep is because I think this is helping others. Some of the things we just talked about for three minutes are incredibly easy and others are things that you don't want to jump over. And that goes back to could versus have to. That's why I love platform expansion. Even if you did it in a way, my ideal way for all of you to platform expand is get good enough to know the subtle differences of thumbnails first 3 seconds and copy on all seven platforms. But if I just accomplish tonight, all of you posting the same exact video with the same copy on three more of the platforms, it's still gonna work enough to have substantial returns on your ambitions. I want to ask, incredible day, incredible dinner. How can we all help Stan grow better? John, what can we do Better conversation with me and Austin. What can we do to help you guys grow better? Because you built this incredible thing for all of us. What can we do to help? Did you invest in Stan? What's that? Did you invest in Stan? Ask John. He just did, actually. So did Gary. Robert, thank you for that. What I care most about with Stan is the mission, which is just to empower anyone to get to work, make a living working for themselves. We're all here, sitting here, coming from pretty humble backgrounds, having built something for ourselves in a way that in all of society's time has literally never happened before, this ability to democratize success. And so I think the first thing that I care most about is like, we recognize that we have the opportunity to inspire generations to come in a way that right now in society, I think it's really easy to be super cynical and like, recognize this is going wrong in geopolitics or this is going on with climate change. And to recognize that like, we are the change we want to see in this world is most important to me. Like, we have the influence to spread the right values, to have the right message. And so that's actually what's most important to me around Stan and the business, whatever. It's the brand that I care about and the movement we want to create. And so my ask would be like, yo, just keep doing what you, you guys are doing. The reason why you guys were invited here was very intentional. It's like we're trying to find our people who feel that way and can spread that message in terms of actually working with Stan, spreading the message of like what we do. When you're inspiring other people to go after their dreams, you can mention Stan, what have you. And then also those of you who don't, we don't work with on a very like, contractual or personal level, we'd love to work with you guys too on that. So thank you. Talk about when you talk about this, how you want to move the curve of the entrepreneur. This is very personal to me. So at this point, my co founder and I talk a lot with Stan about why we're still doing it. Because at this point you get to some sort of financial security and you're like, oh, wait a some sort of thing. I'm sure you guys have all felt this out and you're like, oh, wait a minute. The little kid inside of me that thought this would make me feel happy is like, oh, actually none of this matters. Matters the fact I don't want the thing, I don't want the notoriety. What matters to us now is legacy and impact. And when I think about how fucking hard this job is, like, I think about how entrepreneurship is one of the greatest forms of self development, right? Of how you have to make your first dollar online to go live with that confidence like you do to make a million dollars. Like there's so much pre work to make that first dollar. You're going to challenge for eight tweets with thousands of people, try to get them to make their first dollar. You have to be so many Instagram's about yourself. We literally did our eighth call today and like the amount of people that are still have not posted their first piece of social media and I'm like on there for an hour fucking Going, I was on with a lot of you. Like, I'm like bringing every. You know, like, I'm a shithead. Yeah, I'm a shitheaded. I'm full of shit. I'm full of shit. I'm full of shit. Like, I'm giving it, like, every move, you know, Like, I'm like a ninja with all my weapons in the bag. For eight weeks, I'm doing everything I got. And, like, this fear is deep. This fear is fucking deep. Everyone is literally stuck in seventh grade forever. Yeah. Like, literally valuing the opinions of strangers that you don't even like. All of my partners make fun of me. Of course. They're like, what are you doing, bro? It's embarrassing. You're 50 something years old. Tick tock. And Instagram is for kids dancing and all this stuff. I go, you guys have no clue what you're talking about. Literally no clue. And a month and a half later, I resigned and have never spoken to any of them again because they wanted to diminish what I was working towards. Yeah, but there's another. There's another way to look at that. I would argue that the. The ones that make fun of you are envious of your courage. Correct. Yeah, well, that's the whole point, is because we're talking like, mew and I need to hang out way more often. You just. You have to put the official scriptures, the shit that's naturally in me. Can you help me? I just need. We need to hang around where you're like, hey, that was 14. That was. That's the version of Sally 17.4. Like, I need. I don't know the official shit, but I fucking know. Like, the reason I. I wanna bring that up, brother. Cause I like you a lot. I actually think cutting those people out is the counter move. I actually think having the compassion and empathy to understand they envy your courage. Like, in fact, I actually challenge you to reach back out to them and check in and wish them well. I mean that. I get it. But I'll tell you what, if it, you know, I don't know all the details and I have a funny feeling the little jokes at the table wasn't fun fully the full story of why you're not there. But I will argue one of my favorite things that I jumped on early. Like, actually, this may help some of you, like, the second you're able to be strong enough to engage with the negative feedback with compassion and sympathy. I don't know all of you, but, like, I've never in my life have gone on someone's account and said something negative. It wouldn't even run through my mind to take the 13 seconds or 9 seconds to consume something to then even. And I'm talking about the height of politics. And there's been a lot that's happened last seven years. And I'm passionate about a lot of things in my life, but I've never done that. And I don't judge if someone has. There's been a lot of weak moments and everyone goes through shit. But the concept of someone taking time, like imagine living a life to go around and try to shit on someone, they're miserable, you know, Like, I just, I don't. I honestly don't know how to look at that with anything other than like, first, gratitude that I'm not in that place, that the luck of parenting and circumstance. And then second, just like I feel bad, man. Like my happiness and joy. Back to this group, specifically back to chosen. A lot of people here are pushing in their own ways. Something that's pretty good. And it triggered basically when I'm. By the way, what I'm doing on TikTok Live is I'm poking at zits. I'm just pushing at everyone that you need to be accountable. Everything's in your control. We have to understand what's actually happening here. Politicians have had a great run of telling you you suck and I'll take care of you. Both sides, they say the same thing. You're not capable. I got you. And my thing is like, I got real things to talk to you about mentally and financially, but I actually can't help you. You're capable of helping you and a lot of people aren't ready for that level of accountability. I don't know where everyone's at, but literally I'm just gonna keep it incredibly real with all of you. 100% of everything in your life right now that's not going well is on you. Cause you can control it. Meaning, like there's bad stuff, like parents get sick, like real stuff, but you can still control how you deal with it. Parent gets sick. Do you decide like this is the worst or are you grateful for the time you've had? Yeah, like you're in control. Don't like New York cause of the new mayor move Dick. Like, I don't know, like, like you're allowed. Like, you know, don't like the president leave Sweden's sick Ryan Holiday Stillness is the well. All his books are really great. Yeah, Ryan's great. But it that like it led to me Having that thinking with any situation. Good. I was on a when the airlines were all going to shit. Yeah. It's like I try to teach this to my girlfriend but like I was like, all right, like it's good thing we can do. So I'm just gonna sit and enjoy. But like when everyone's complaining it's like what's the point? And by the way, I travel a drillion times a day. Like people yelling at people at the airport and the thing that always fucks me up is like almost all of the times it's in the geist of keeping you safe. Like we're not like we're gonna change this part in the plane because you know if we don't, we're gonna go up and we're gonna down and be out and you're crying because you'll be an hour late for your meet. And the people yelling at these poor people that I have the most compassion for people at the airport, they get shit on. That's a real job. All right, so you want to talk about AI, let's do it. You mean that AI influencers are going to put you all out? Yeah, yeah, it's coming. Well, can I jump in on the other point? I'm Sarah. Talk to you soon. Ben's leaving. Let's clap it up for him. Six month old son. It's so nice to meet you all. This is really great. Have a great night, bro. Sarah? Yeah, I mean to your point, I think something I've been really thinking about is like, and I, I mean my career is basically mindset work with people and what I've realized and it just like actually saddens me so much to see how many people's dreams just dissipate because of mindset work. Like fundamentally. Like I think so often we're teaching strategy. Do live, do this. You can win with obsession alone. Like that is the only thing you need. Like I've seen so many people get an Alex Heroi book. You read one Alex Heroi book, you have the entire playbook. You don't need anything else. You don't need a video you don't need. And it's like people will read every strategy and they will never take action. 100 they'll never win because there's something in their subconscious limiting. Do you know that? That's how my content changed. For four years all I did was put out tactics like this is what works, this is what works, this is what works. And the reason I changed my content was like I couldn't understand why people wouldn't. I would literally be like, drink this. It's free, and it will work. And people are like, no. And that is when I started talking about self esteem and insecurity. It's only that. It's only that. What I don't like is that when people figure that out, a lot of people. This is my biggest issue with therapy. I'm obsessed with therapy. I am devastated by how many therapists don't look to solve the problem. They keep the client in perpetuity. They don't go to the places and that. I find that very selfish. And I find a lot of influencers do that as well. You're absolutely right. Like, there is no tactic that will mean anything if you're not there mentally. None. And you were talking about, like, kind of like the victim mindset and everything, and, like, how so much of our lives are in control. I was just thinking about how I was talking to my mom and I was like, I. I think it's so, like, I. Like, I had nothing growing up, and I was talking to her about it, and I was kind of getting into an argument where I was like. Like, this is so unfair. Like, everything I have, I worked for. Like, you didn't contribute a single thing to my success. And she was like, but isn't. Are you only here because I gave you nothing? And it just like. And she's right. Like, I would not be. I wouldn't have the grit, the, like, anything, you know? And so I don't view it as, like, victimhood or, like, I. I am who I am because of everything that led me here. Of course, I don't know. So I think I just. It switched my perspective a lot because I did blame my parents a lot. And I didn't even come to New York City for years. Like, I avoided this city because it reminded me of that. I get it. And I was like this. There's not one person here. I have publicly spent hundreds of hours telling the world that my mom is the best of all time. And I truly, truly believe it. I could spend the next 30 minutes of this dinner telling you many things that I feel my mom did wrong and put me in the wrong spot. There's not one person here that isn't back to who's a parent here, who's a parent here, Right? So, like, we can do everything we're gonna do. Like, there's 0.0 chance that they won't have those same things too. It's just the way the game is built. But I think to your point, if you're at a place where you're starting the process at this young of an age to realize that. I had this conference called Vcon that came along with my NFT for three years. And my opening sentence in VCon 2, literally just come on stage, 10,000 people, opening mic, literally opening mic, opening line, fuck your grandparents. And the whole crowd is like, what the fuck? Like, literally everyone was like, what the fuck is going? I'd never said it before. This is my core fandom. So they never heard it from it. And it's like. So I'm like coming out all smiley. But I knew where I wanted to go. It's like, all right, so let's go number one. Fuck your grandparents. And everyone was like, what the fuck's going on? And I wanted to make a point. I was like, so many of you in this room are so bent out of shape about your parents and you don't realize the shit that they're doing to you. Their mom did to you. And you love grandma. Cause she gave you cookies. And meanwhile all your problems with mommy is because of Grandma and you're giving her a pass. So on the record, fuck your grandparents. And I think when you start getting into that place of grace and understanding that they had parents too, and your grandpa. I was really lucky. I was born in the Soviet Union. I immigrated here when I was three. In Russia, you literally had a baby nine months to the day of your. I, Gary Vaynerchuk, was born nine months to the day of my parents wedding night. The actual day. Everybody had a child within 10 months. Everybody. And everybody got married at 20. So I got very fortunate. My mom's 20 years older than me. My grandma was 60 years older than me. And my great grandma, like, I literally knew my great grandma well. And one of the things that worked, my father is incredibly flawed, has done so many things that could have broken me if I wasn't built by my mother. But I've never been able to fully get into a bad place with my dad because I knew his mom and she was worse than him and she fucked him up. And Grandma Esther was crazy. And then the reason I wasn't crazy bad to Grandma Esther is great Grandma Anya. She was the fucking OG og and she was even. So I got lucky that I actually got to see. I lived with them in a studio apartment in Queens. We really grew up like that. I know most of you don't have that, but I promise you, whichever parent you're struggling with, their parent. And then the great great parent that most of you don't know. And I think that starts to help you as you get older to kind of take that resentment away. And to her point, adverse. Listen, there may not be a more significant statement than adversity is the foundation of success. Count it all joy, when you face trials. Everybody, if you enjoyed this podcast, please go back and look at the prior episodes. They're loaded. I appreciate your attention and thanks for being part of this journey. See you later.