A (0:00)

Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Gary Vee Audio Experience. Today's episode is from a private talk that Gary recently gave to a small group of employees. This one's got everything. Philosophy, marketing, strategy, personal storytelling, and most of all, a message that hits home about regret, judgment, and what really matters. If you're a parent, a manager, or just trying to grow. This is a powerful listen, let's dive right in.

B (0:24)

I think what I, I think what I want to first talk about and I think I'll yap a little bit, but then I think Q and A would be great. I think the first topic I would like to talk about is this is a mix professionally and personally. Yesterday at dinner and you brought it up in the circle. I really genuinely do believe 99% of things don't mean anything. And I really believe that that's the fundamental difference between somebody that builds something meaningful versus not. You know, we talked a lot about time. I know the 15 minute meeting thing got brought up, but like ultimately, like if you're spending your time on things that don't matter, that's a problem. And I think I'm going to take it this morning more from a place of life before business. I really think from a parenting lens or from, you know, if you're fortunate enough to still have a parent or both parents. I think people just aren't thoughtful with what they do. And more importantly, it's not even about getting meaningful time with your parents while they're still alive or your kids before they go to school. I actually think about it more from the lens of your personal, selfish day to day happiness. I think that we have an incredible capacity to be worried about dumb shit. I've most watched it in what goes on in society about how people dwell on whatever the fear that politicians and mainstream media have decided to scare us with today. And you know, I would, I, I think, you know, this is a pretty interesting year of my life. I turned 50 at the end of this year, which is like a real fucking number. You know, like, like it's like really funny because, you know, you kind of trick yourself that 40 is okay. When you're 40, you're like, wait, that's still kind of like 30, but 50 is kind of like. I, like, I'm like, I don't know how to get around this. I'm like, am I allowed to still wear hats? Like, you know, like, like it's, it's like a real thing. And honestly I go into, it's in November and I go into going into that moment with the heavy gratitude, you know, like, just look, I'm like any other human and I have plenty of adversities and challenges and shortcomings and. But I'm just so grateful how I see life, like, there's really no changing that. And what I've. What I mean by that is that was God gifted and then just pure luck of who ended up being my parent and where I ended up growing up and the timing of how I grew up and just all these things lined up in a way where when I wake up like I did this morning and there's challenges at work in Asia or London or something else, the speed in which I go from being concerned about it or upset or worried to it doesn't matter, is very fast. And I mean minutes, not weeks or months or days. And through my life, whether it's my siblings or my partners or my, my business partners or my employees or my community that follows my content. What has been interesting is how driven I am by the mix between gratitude and guilt. I would say that I have it this good. It's not lost on me, you know, when I get accolades, it's. I love it because I think it's accolades for my parents, not for me. When they're like. When you're like, you're amazing, I'm like, they're amazing. You know, truly, I'm the byproduct. I have pride in vayner x. Like, I, that's, you know, I feel like I'm involved there. But me, like what I get flowers for when I get put on a pedestal for, I'm the product. And it's a really interesting way to think about it because it's uncomfortably true. And you're the byproduct of your parents and your environment and all these variables. It allows you to be in a really interesting place of like, middle. As I started a journey 15 years ago about becoming a public figure, judgment became at scale. It no longer became the judgment of my peers or my friends or my family. It became global long before we talked about any of the things that happened with being public figures on normal people becoming public figures. You know, people were born and they're five years old. They're like, I'm going to be an actor. I'm going to be a comedian, I'm going to be an athlete. And they think about being a public figure. I was 34 years old before I made a video that anybody even cared about. Didn't cross my mind. I was grown. I was, I wanted to be A businessman. I was living that life. As that started to happen, an interesting thing happened. I realized how much all these things mattered because much like a lot of you worrying about what does the phone mean for your child or all this stuff, or for some of you, like, what's it going to mean if I start building my personal brand to elevate my career? All of that is about your concern about judgment, period. Nothing else. Zero. Nothing else. I always, I think about this concept of like, how would everybody live if they were the only person on earth, right? If there was no opportunity for anyone else to judge, how would they navigate, how would they roll? You know, obviously, notwithstanding, there was no one else to interact with. Like, more from the perspective, like, how would they see it? How would they think about it? What's powerful about that is when you can't hear them. It comes in two forms. One, the form that most people think about, which is if you really don't matter, if you really don't care about someone else's judgment, you can navigate the judgment, right? What everybody talks about, like so many people don't post on social, which is truly the great opportunity for business and people that has ever happened. Mass distribution for free. We're all marketers. When can you. When have you ever been able to get mass awareness for free? Even PR that would get you earned. Earned is paid for, right? So when could a girl in Connecticut make one video dancing and five years later her family's got $50 million in the bank? That doesn't. That, that didn't happen any other time in the history of life. So we live in this time of huge opportunity. We talked about, like, I think constantly about what happens when the phone is not the primary device of our society. Much of what we talked about with marketing was based on, I believe that we're still marketing as if the television is the primary device of our society. When distribution changes, everything changes. There is a substantial chance that Meta pulls this off based on my subjective opinion, if not them, everybody, if I'm aware of what it is, that means they're hungry. Hundreds of thousands of executives in the biggest companies in the world aware that Meta's doing this and trying their own versions. Everybody is attacking the iPhone to change the distribution. When that happens, when glasses in six years are primary, I don't what happens, what happens to social networks in that environment. Famously, our industry changed from a digital marketing standpoint. I know some of you came up this rack, but when iOS 14.5 changed its decision, this was one of the great moments of my career. I did grow up knowing Mark. I did buy my Facebook stark from mark's parents in 2007. I did speak with him 50 times before the movie came out. Cause he was worried about the impact on the business, not on himself. And my biggest debate with him in 2008, 9, 10, 11, 12 was that he needed to own the hardware. And we had a great debate. And the day that iOS 14.5 was announced, I didn't talk to him in four years and he texted me a smiley face. It was one of the coolest moments of my career. Because to win a debate with that guy is a lot of fun for someone like me and what I love about him. And Mona will tell you, Ryan will tell you in his most down like everyone hates him. I'm like, people don't know him. He may not be good at pring himself, but this is not the narrative, it's not this. And he, like anybody else, has his shortcomings and obviously what he has to navigate now. And like I'm watching it all. But the punchline is from a business lens that is a gangster. And if he pulls this off, which I actually think he will, or there'll be fast followers who make a better version than him. And then you know how that all works. And we decided to use the Samsung glasses cause they did something different which is always, always in play, then this all goes away. The free distribution, the organic to earn to paid goes away potentially because now Meta has the control of deciding what it wants. I have a funny feeling with Meta in that environment they have a horizontal and vertical integration play all of a sudden. What does that mean for TikTok sitting in that glasses? Are they even allowed to be in those glasses? What do they have to pay as a vig in those glasses? Do they have to share that data? So I think about these things and let me bring it all the way back because I veered off over here on the tech part of it all. The thing I want to most talk about this morning is regret. I believe that life is very simple. That if you are fortunate enough to be grateful for the days that you wake up, that the people that you love the most are alive and you actually see the world from that lens. Truly, actually not like saying it in a talk like this or saying it once in a while, but truly I'll be. I'm going to be very. It's interesting. I didn't really realize this. I've been thinking about this a lot. I went on spring break to my parents in Miami. And we talked about this. I hadn't talked about it with my mom in a long time. From basically 7 to 14. You know, Mona remembers all her dreams, like, every day, which is, like, super interesting. And I don't. But from 7 to 14, I, probably 50 times a year, had a recurring nightmare. I would argue that between first and seventh grade, besides falling in love with the New York jets and trying to, like, become a businessman and sell baseball cards, the biggest conversation I had in my life with myself and often with my mom, was the fear of one of my parents dying. And I did not realize how foundational this has been to my life. So my mom lost her mom at 5, and my dad lost his dad at 15. And I was raised, you know, I was a first generation. I was born in the old country. My siblings were born here. So when we came here, when my sister was like three or four, my mom and I told some of you at dinner, I'm writing a book called Perfectly Parented. Perfectly Parented. It's a book about modern parenting. And I genuinely feel that way about my mother, truly. But I'm not naive to some of the missteps she did. The punchline of the book is, you as a child, when do you become accountable? Like, when do we all stop blaming our parents in this room? Like, what's the right age? Is it 18? Is it 22? Is it 30? Like, when do you recognize that and start working on yourself and you're capable of that? So I'm excited about it. Been talking about it for six, seven years. But starting at five years old, my mom would tell me all the time, if something happens to me and your dad, you have to take care of your sister. And like, for real, it was so ingrained in me. And so what started in hindsight as a challenge ended up being my greatest strength. Living that childhood in hindsight wasn't super fun. You're scared. But by the time I remember it, like Yesterday on my 18th birthday, and this goes back to living it for real this morning, for real, I grabbed my phone as soon as I woke up. And the fact that there wasn't 74 missed calls from my sister or brother, I take note of that, truly, actually. And I thank God my curse became my gift. I didn't realize it was a curse when I was a kid, but that fear, crippling fear. I'm going to paint you a very vivid picture. When I was 15, my mom went to the store. I watched my brother and sister. She was minimally an hour late from the normal go to shop, right, and buy things. I, I took my siblings outside on a porch and made them pray because I thought my mom was dead. Car accident, no cell phone. Like this was just the framework of my life. By the time I became 18, though, it turned into my gift on my actual 18th birthday, which is like a pretty big birthday, as you all know. I just remember thinking, I made it like I got to 18, they didn't die. If you can simplify your life and care about very little, everything gets really good. The only other thing that I see is a real curveball for people as they get older, besides the health of their family and caring about that if they can get there, is regret. And that's the part of the convo I want to have now is why I brought up yesterday a little bit of like, have you ever missed something or this and that. Like, how do we look at and what do we define as regret? I think that most people operate from a place of fear, that most of the way we think about stuff is what will go wrong and what if I think the number one thing professionally to bring it down a level, but also personally that everybody here should be thinking about is how to mitigate risk. Excuse me, mitigate regret. Like if you asked me, the other thing that was very interesting about my life, just to bounce back before I finish that thought, was as a 5 and 6 year old when I would go outside. We immigrated to Queens when we first came to America and we lived in a studio apartment with six or seven family members, depending on how it was flowing. So as you can imagine, as soon as I woke up, my mom took me outside and we stayed out there as long as possible, you know, just like that. Not a lot of room. And a story that when I was like 10, 11, 15, that I always like remembered was my mom would just always tell a story how interesting it was that as like a four year old boy, I would go outside and we would go towards a park, but instead of going to the park and playing with the other kids, I would always take a hard right and go sit with like the old 85 year old Russian dudes and like, kick it. Be like, yo, Vladimir, what's good? You know, like. And she would always tell that story. And then, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago, only I was like, oh shit, like wisdom's weird. Like, like old souls are real. Like the fuck am I going and hanging with these nine? And I would. And I remember that. I don't really remember. I remember the Stories when I was 10, 11, 12. But I think the stories were told because when we moved to Addison, New Jersey, and I grew up there, every time somebody's grandparents would come to visit for the summer for a week and go watch us play basketball or hang out, I would always roll up on them and be like, tell me, where were you when JFK got assassinated? Like, what about NASA? Like, what about the Vietnam War? What about this? What about that? And it just dawned on me, like, what my framework was. So as I turn 50 and as I watch, like, how I've lived my life and I've watched the collateral impact on the conversation with the people around me, and more importantly, taking myself out of the equation, when I watch and observe others who either both are really winning emotionally or losing emotionally, it all comes down to dramatically simplifying getting into a place where you leave here. There's a lot of things you leave here with management, this, that. But when I thought, when I talk, I'm always like, what value am I bringing? Like, why should they listen? What are we doing here in this hour? And it puts me in a very strong mindset of like, I've got to leave something of value. What can I say? What can I say? What can I bring up that actually allows someone to leave? The biggest thing that I can talk about to leave a value is that you would be flabbergasted about how much shit you care about. That does not matter. It's really unfortunate. I wish this had happened. Last Tuesday, I was supposed to go to New Jersey to a retirement home. CBS Morning's doing like a big piece on me. And it's about this that I basically believe one of the great things anybody in the world can do for themselves is to donate their time to a retirement home for one day to leave karma and good in the world because, boy, are those people lonely. But more importantly for you to look at what regret looks like in its face from someone who's not your grandparent. You talk to a 90 year old and you really talk to a 90 year old, you will realize what life's actually about. They lived it, they played it. We talk about experience. I'm sure all of us have pride and like, we have some experience now and the value of that. So regret and simplicity. I really think about that. I think the choices you make in life are super important. And I think that eliminating fear and getting into a place of like, just really understanding and just really playing out scenarios over and over in your head of like, I just really enjoy worst Case scenario planning, obviously. I spent my whole life making pretend my parents were dead. You know, like, I like playing that out because I think it makes you less scared. I say it all the time at like work, I'm like, when I'm interacting one on one, sometimes I'll tell an employee where I can just see, I'm like, what are you scared? Like, what if I fire you right now? What's going to happen? Like what? Like, just like there's a. I'll give you, I'm going to keep building on this and then we'll, we'll just all talk. There's a really interesting partner energy that comes along with this. It's called humility. So the thing that fascinates me about people that have accomplished something in their careers around fear of losing job is how many don't realize that if they had a relationship with humility, they would not be scared. If you had the ability to think that if, God forbid, the economy keeps collapsing and both you and your spouse who are working both lose your job. If you had in your mind that that's okay, if you happen to own your own home, then you said in your mind, okay, so we both lose our job. Neither one of us can get a job for 18 months. We can sell our home and live in a shittier home or rent an apartment. If you went there, if you actually believed that, you wouldn't be scared. So many people are like, oh, I just have to spend another six months building up some cash before I take a risk. Or you realize that you buy a lot of dumb shit every day and that you have, you know, a relationship with certain things in your life that are unhealthy. There's so many people that make under 100,000 a year, that buy $7 coffees, that take unlimited Uber, that order seamless, that are, that are signed up for 11 fucking, you know, streaming services have a gym membership that they never use. Like just really a relationship with like worst case scenario planning. And if it happens, like I have a lot of optionalities to get tighter. I think about that stuff so much and fortunately, you know, actually I was about to say fortunately this group. But it's funny, most of my friends or like acquaintances or business associates, I'm blown away by how many people make $400,000 a year or more and have no savings. We've become remarkable at spending every dollar. Like it's just so fascinating. I mean, kids now, it's a big topic. I talk about some of you on this side. Soon some of you or maybe now some of you have kids that are about to be 18 or 22. We are the generation that grew up where if we needed a little help early in our 20s to get an apartment or if we got married, our parents would lend us money and we would have to pay them back. That is gone. The amount of 20 to 30 year olds that are fully on the payroll in society right now is staggering. And then people are like, why are they depressed? They're depressed because their parents through action have told them, you're such a fucking loser that I have to pay for your existence. There is nothing that I would wish more than if every single human understood that if you have a child who's over 22 years old, if you give them $1, you are building a devastating framework for your family. So these are things that I think about and I think a lot of it really shows up in the. Let me bring it way, way down to work for work. This framework of perspective shows up in the most interesting way. If you are not carrying fear and emotional baggage, you go fast. One thing I can promise you as you're navigating right now, professionally, business is like sports, which is why so many people like it. It's one of the few places left, Sports is the only place in society where merit is left. Merit either win or lose, right? Like if we did this, that we could be out if it wasn't negative 18 degrees outside and we could do sporty activities. If we all just played one on one basketball tournaments and to the end and every time you lose, you're out. And we did a tournament just like March Madness, somebody would be the end winner and they would be the winner now be it. There'd be no debate they won. In our corporations there's a lot of things that are merit sales. That's why do you think I'm so in love with current state of social pure merit. You get views, can't use your media, can't do this, can't use your. This is on brand subject. It's fucking merit and I love it. But as we also know, there's a lot of things that are not merit about our workplaces. Humans make subjective calls on who gets promoted, who does. I'm literally this morning looking at the May promotion and raise cycle at Vaynerx and I'm looking at it and I can see through some of the decisions of like who made the political subjective decision to put someone on because they're personal friends outside of work. Right, Those things. But merit is an Incredible thing. And like sports in business, one of the biggest variables to grow is speed. Speed. And there's two ways to address speed. One, we talked about the 15 minute meetings, all that stuff. But two is if you're not spending time politicking, you're actually spending time on the business. If you don't have to think how to sell the person above you or how to convince the person parallel to you to get on board, well then you're actually running the business, right? And so I think the more you can control, you know, back to this. The more you can control you what you can control, right, what we talked about. The more you can't control the person that's co leading something with you or your contemporary. You can't control if your boss is going to be on board or not on board, but you can control you. The more people realize that, the happier they become and the more effective they become. And so if you leave here with anything, leave with the fact that me included, we all have a lot more work to do to get our life more simple. Way more simple. I love capitalism in a lot of ways, especially because I was born in communism. But we now live in an era where capitalism has gotten so far that we are in full pledge materialism. Most human beings are deeply unhappy because they are completely and utterly focused on getting things that mean nothing. And a lot of times that's one thing that's going on in my company right now, because that really pissed me off last week, is that a couple people that have been in the company for six or seven years are upset that back in January or last August some people got a title promotion and they feel like those people are their contemporaries and they want that promotion. Now I understand the concept of having a more senior title to leverage it for maybe an outside job. But even titles are collecting things, you know, especially when people are asking for titles with no compensation associated with it. That's insecurity, you know, Especially when that human was told by me that if you ever left and you wanted to leverage a higher title to get another job, that I would give that to you. Now what are we talking about? These things that I think about, the more you can simplify your life, the more you can actually focus on what fucking matters. And most of all, because those sometimes are hard to see, the more you can not make a single. I do not make a single decision that isn't through the frame of any meaning of any meaning that isn't through the frame of what will I think about this when I'm 85. What will 85 year old Gary think about this? That's it. And I ask you to take in what we talked about this morning and see if it brings you any value, because I think it's an incredibly important conversation. Thank you.