Transcript
A (0:00)
This is the GaryVee audio experience.
B (0:04)
Gary, we chatted a little bit before we started. You were entrepreneur from day one, basically. But I want to take you back in time. So this is going to be all about your career and how you got to where you are. And you, you know, a small kid, immigrant family.
A (0:23)
Yes.
B (0:24)
Why?
A (0:25)
It's almost like the reverse. It's funny, when you just said why, the answer that bounced in my head is like, why not? Meaning I had no choice. I cannot explain in any other way than I'm about to why entrepreneurship was my life. Me gravitating towards entrepreneurship when I was 6 with lemonade or when it would snow instead of, you know, I would play a little bit. But if there was two snow days in a row, it was impossible that I was sledding, snowball fighting, playing football in the snow, and making a snowman. One of those two days, I was ringing doorbells, shoveling snow, washing cars, trading cards, and everything I've done in my career. The only way I can explain it is if I was to ask everybody on the other camera right now, why do you breathe oxygen? Why do you guys breathe oxygen? And this is why I think, and not every entrepreneur is a terrible student. But I was. And I think there isn't reason, I believe, that I was willing to die on the hill of entrepreneurship. I could not think about anything else. And I was willing to face the ramifications, which at that time meant that I would be grounded multiple times a year by my mother. This is real. And by the way, I used to get very aggressive anxiety come rapport card number one time, because I knew I was walking into a firing squad, I was going to be punished. This is like clockwork. I would be punished three times a year. Cause my mom kind of let me go for the summer. Three times a year, I would be grounded for two weeks with no television, no video games, and no friends. And it was devastating. And yet, even with that, I was not willing to get Cs, which in hindsight, I feel I was very capable of doing, because I needed every minute to study my baseball cards, to sell my baseball cards, to sell pencils, to sell gum, to think of a business idea, to make a movie, to make a song, to sell. I was creative to sell it. Me and my buddies, let's make a rap song in 86 when it was hot. Why did I do that? So we could sell the tapes. It was business, right?
B (2:42)
Do you think your dad's entrepreneurship was part of it, or do you think.
A (2:46)
I think from A genetic standpoint. But to be honest, my father worked every minute. I don't know if I even understood. I never saw my father. It wasn't like my father was at dinner saying to me how some entrepreneurial parents are teaching their kids like I am with my son specifically. I didn't have those kind of talks with my dad. I was aware that my dad went from being a stock boy to being a manager at a liquor store to eventually being a partner and owner in a liquor store, but I didn't. First of all, the word entrepreneur didn't exist.