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- [00:00]
Gary Vaynerchuk
This is for everyone who's listening, who wants to push the envelope. I believe that you have the courage to be creative in two very extreme places. One, nothing to like. There's just nothing to lose. So why not invent punk rock or, you know, or be a modern contemporary artist in Manhattan when you're living in a shithole and you're just splashing stuff? And then on the other side, which was where I came from, was incredible depth of knowledge and conviction. By the time I did my first episode of Wine Library TV on YouTube In February 21, 2006, I was 31 years old. I had spent pretty much my entire life since I was 15, which at that point meant more than half my life on studying wine. Even though I was gonna be silly and do this stuff, there was no one who was going to walk up on me and outclass me in knowledge, even though I was silly. No one, not the poshest sommelier in England or France or Italy was going to be able to come in and expose me for not having substance. This is the GaryVee audio experience.
- [01:04]
John Hegarty
I'm going to go straight into it.
- [01:05]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Please.
- [01:07]
John Hegarty
The thing I loved is I got to. To know you, obviously, through. When you were doing wine.
- [01:13]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Yes.
- [01:14]
John Hegarty
And it kind of. It went like wildfire all of a sudden. I thought about it. It was obviously, I am one of those incredibly stupid people who owns a vineyard. You're one of the smart people who sell the wine.
- [01:29]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Yes. Well, actually, the people in between are the smartest. The retailer and the producer take the biggest risks.
- [01:35]
John Hegarty
The biggest risk.
- [01:36]
Gary Vaynerchuk
The distributors make the most margin and they're just peeing out. They're fulfillment people.
- [01:42]
John Hegarty
But what I thought was brilliant about what you did is that you changed the way people thought about wine.
- [01:49]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Yes.
- [01:50]
John Hegarty
And I've always thought that's a sort of fundamental in driving great ideas, is that you don't operate in the world that's there. You change the way people see it and feel about it. In that way, you gain huge attention. And that was. And then you decided, I've done that. But I think you're going back to it, aren't you?
- [02:12]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Yeah. I mean, you know, it's always around. I mean, geez. The reason I was four minutes late, which I apologize to everyone, I was. I was literally talking to my best friend, Brandon Warning, who's kind of taken the reign of running the wine business, my family wine business, since I started Vayner years ago. But I've literally secretly run that wine business every day since I've left.
- [02:35]
John Hegarty
Yeah.
- [02:35]
Gary Vaynerchuk
You know, and then obviously I had the direct to consumer wine brand. I got a little more into your world of being a producer. I didn't own the vineyards, but I bought.
- [02:43]
John Hegarty
But those people.
- [02:45]
Gary Vaynerchuk
And so that was a very successful venture. In less than three years, we sold it to Constellation. It was a substantial exit. And then over the last four years, I've been the restaurant business in a significant way, which has dragged me a little bit into the wine world, which has been fun. And then several years ago, I innovated for my father's business something called Wine Text, which is a daily text for a really good wine deal that has really revolutionized my dad's business again. So wine is always very near and dear to me. In fact, one of the things I'm spending a lot of time right now is on non alcoholic wine.
- [03:19]
John Hegarty
Oh, yeah. That's a huge growing market, isn't it?
- [03:21]
Gary Vaynerchuk
And for gentlemen like you and guys like me, it's getting scary. Like, and I use scary as a great term, as a slang term for, oh my God. I think we're within the next five years gonna see really high quality non alcoholic wine, which I think will be very attractive to many consumers. So, yes, it's definitely one of the,
- [03:46]
John Hegarty
you know, still there. You're still doing it, still engaged with it. And of course, it was your background. Your family had a wine shop.
- [03:55]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Yeah, I mean, it was a liquor stor.
- [03:57]
John Hegarty
A liquor store.
- [03:57]
Podcast Narrator
I love that.
- [03:58]
Gary Vaynerchuk
It really was. It was a liquor store. My dad's store was called Shoppers Discount Liquors. But we had a very interesting location in New Jersey. One side was like very blue collar, one side was very white collar. My dad had a liquor store before the one that I grew up in, smaller in Clark, New Jersey. Very blue collar. So my father was a blue collar merchant. Beer, liquor, pints, cigarettes, wrapping papers, when I didn't even know what the hell that was. But I noticed as a teenager that people were asking for wine and I was a collector in trading cards and comic books and toys. And when I realized people collected wine when I was 15, that changed everything for me. And that's what I wanted to build. But it was funny when you were talking about, you know, creativity, breaking the rules. You have an incredible career in that. I'm building one. I was thinking as you were talking, I said, what allowed me to do what I did in the wine world when it was so entrenched for being a very posh. You know, I remember when Chances Robinson flew from England to be on my wine show in New Jersey. I gotta go watch the clip. You know, it was a very watershed moment. Even Robert Parker, even though he was American, it was definitely an upper brow. Play the answer. And this is for everyone who's listening, who wants to push the envelope. I believe that you have the courage to be creative in two very extreme places. One, nothing to lose. Like, there's nothing to lose. So why not invent punk rock or, you know, or be a modern contemporary artist in Manhattan when you're living in a shithole and you're just splashing stuff. And then on the other side, which was where I came from, was incredible depth of knowledge and conviction. By the time I did my first episode of Wine Library TV on YouTube In February 21, 2006, I was 31 years old. I had spent pretty much my entire life since I was 15, which at that point meant more than half my life on studying wine. Even though I was going to be silly and do this stuff, there was no one who was going to walk up on me and outclass me in knowledge. Even though I was silly. No one, not the poshest sommelier in England or France or Italy was going to be able to come in and expose me for not having substance.
- [06:37]
John Hegarty
That's what was great about it, was you had that. You really did connect with that, that depth of knowledge.
- [06:43]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Yes.
- [06:44]
John Hegarty
But you talked about it in a kind of such a different way that it actually not only did you enjoyed watching it, it was. It was fun watching. It was like. It was like a sort of entertainment. It was entertainment.
- [06:58]
Gary Vaynerchuk
You know, this. And I think this translated well for me in the advertising industry. I wanted to create net new drinkers. I wanted more people to like wine. I was 31 years old and I had no friends in their 20s and 30s that liked it because it wasn't cool. And even if someone stumbled into it because they went on like a trip to Napa with their girlfriend, they're like, oh, I like this. As soon as they came back to New York or New Jersey or Chicago and started to try to go on a journey, everybody in the wine world made them feel like crap. Everyone's intimidated by wine. You know, when we go out to eat a nice meal, we're not.
- [07:35]
John Hegarty
And we're live on match day. As Doug reaches for a buffalo wing. He's got it. Oh, and he's gone for a can of Pepsi too. What a finish. There's no doubt about it. It just tastes better. Match Days deserve peps.
- [07:51]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
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- [08:16]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Scared to order salmon? We don't feel lesser than to order pork chops or scallops. But when the wine list gets handed, everyone shivers as if there's something you're supposed to know. And my point of view there then and today is you need to know what you like. And if you, and if you get into it, then you start studying a little bit and you learn stuff. Yeah, I wanted to tear down the establishment. That has been a consistent deal.
- [08:40]
John Hegarty
And that's a kind of consistency, is it, to everything that you've done. You take this there you are, hugely successful. I mean, literally. I mean, I had people, several people said, john, you've got to watch. Gary Vaynerchuk, you've got to watch. Which obviously I did. I always remember the Wood Monster. The Wood Monster.
- [08:57]
Gary Vaynerchuk
The Oak Monster.
- [08:57]
John Hegarty
The Oak Monster. The Oak Monster.
- [08:58]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Thank you for remembering that, by the way. I'm getting goosebumps. I'm humbled by you knowing that the
- [09:02]
John Hegarty
Oak Monster was a great one.
- [09:04]
Gary Vaynerchuk
You'll love this because you're from Europe, America, you know, we sometimes like things too big, too ridiculous. And our wines in Napa got way out of control in that era. Everything had way too much oak. You could barely even taste the wine at some point. And so, yes, I needed to make a point about that and I created the Oak Monster. And so I would taste a wine that would get 96 points Parker and be $150 a bottle. And everyone loves it. And I would say, yeah, but like, you could replicate this flavor for 30 bucks if you put enough oak in it.
- [09:35]
John Hegarty
Enough oak in it.
- [09:37]
Gary Vaynerchuk
And so, yes, I made a big point about that.
- [09:38]
John Hegarty
That was great. I always remember that. But anyway, so there you are, you have this phenomenal success. You say, right, I'm going to take that and I'm going to transfer that over into thinking about how the media works. Yes. So you could have gone to another industry. You could have gone to anything, anything to sort of say, I'm going to apply that.
- [10:01]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I think you'll appreciate this given your background. I knew even when I was doing wine, library, TV and again, I was 31 years old, it was about eight years after I'd run the business, truly day to day, started running it in 98. I knew that at that point in my life that I was a marketer that happened to be a businessman and salesman. And that what had really transpired between 2006 and 2009, before I started VaynerMedia was in that 11 years that I was running my daddy's business, I was innovating, marketing wise, in a way that was profound. Not only by the liquor store and wine industry, but by the general population of 8 billion people. And I started to realize that the biggest companies in the world were underestimating aggressively what was about to happen, which was, and you definitely know what I'm about to say, we had this incredible era when the world transferred from the radio to the television. And I was a really poor student, but I was pretty good at history and I was interested in it at the time. I didn't realize why. Now I do understand turning 50, you know, another 15 years of my career. I do use history to tell me the future. I love pattern recognition. I understand human, you know, trends. And so my sense in 2009, when I started VaynerMedia was that social, that Amazon, that Netflix, that these were going to have profound impacts on the biggest companies in the world from a marketing standpoint. And I wanted to go learn. I knew nothing when I started the firm. I didn't know about legends like you.
- [11:43]
John Hegarty
But the other thing, first of all, you didn't do a marketing course, did you? And I think that's interesting. But you saw yourself as a marketer.
- [11:51]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Yes.
- [11:52]
John Hegarty
You kind of had a sense of what was going on.
- [11:54]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Well, something better than a sense. Well, I have results.
- [11:57]
John Hegarty
Yes. And you know, you've done it. Yes.
- [12:00]
Gary Vaynerchuk
It's much better to be a great football player than to go to university and learn how to become a good football player.
- [12:08]
John Hegarty
So taking that learning, there was something else there that you said, which is look at the history of things and you see patterns. You see patterns, emotion. And I do think we're in a kind of world where people don't, don't try and look back to learn.
- [12:22]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I agree.
- [12:22]
John Hegarty
You know, I always say, you know, I went to art school, when I went to art school, we were told there's a Rubens exhibition, you've got to go and see it. Not that they expected us to paint pictures like Ruben, didn't know where we would, but they said, just look at it, have the context, have a kind of. And I feel with so much today, people have lost that Context so they don't reflect on something and then understand how to push it forward. So there you are. So you look at that and you go, this is going to really change. And I grab that moment.
- [12:51]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Yeah, I just, I had a sense that, you know, again, let's take a step back for the listener. I had launched an E commerce website for my Dad's store in 1997. And that was just so wild, you know, a liquor store in New Jersey launching one of the first E commerce wine businesses in America. That was just so left field. And I felt the effects of email marketing. You may know this. It was happening in the UK with Berry Brothers and others catalogs ruled the day in the wine business and print full page ads in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal in America catalogs. And I was able to outflank the Sherry Lehman's, the Morels, the Zakis, the premier wine shops in America, by sending emails in the late 90s instead of building catalogs. And I built this big web business and this big email business for my father. And then Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube came along in this three year window. And I just sensed that these platforms were going to have equally a huge paradigm shift in consumer behavior the same way that email and websites did. So I already had my own experienced pattern recognition of like paradigm shift. I'm gonna do this again. And this one was different because this was about brand building, not about selling.
- [14:13]
John Hegarty
Right.
- [14:14]
Gary Vaynerchuk
This was, you know, again, I'm getting the goosebumps. This was a brand new. I was building my brand, I was building the business's brand. This wasn't sales pamphlets, this was information, this was education, this was affinity, this was entertainment. And the economic impact was enormous. So yes, I had a feeling it was happening again.
- [14:34]
John Hegarty
But I think the other thing about that, which I love is that it wasn't just about brand movement. We talk about this, you were making it into a movement. It was bigger than because the brand is great and you've actually kind of changed the way people approach it. Because I don't think, I think people kind of like brands, but they like them when they have a profound impact and they show people a different way of doing something. If you look at the history of the great brands, that's what they did.
- [15:04]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Yeah, they have a great product a lot of times.
- [15:06]
John Hegarty
Great product.
- [15:07]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I think product sometimes gets forgotten.
- [15:09]
John Hegarty
Yeah.
- [15:09]
Gary Vaynerchuk
You know, I had a meeting last week, you'll love this as an ad man, where we had this meeting and I really, I looked the CMO directly in the face and said, look, I think we're in our prime. We're as good as, you know, like, we're in our prime right now. We're a really good firm. I have bad news for you. I think we can do a really good job in marketing this. The problem is we're gonna speed up everyone knowing about this. And I think your product stinks.
- [15:32]
John Hegarty
I love that.
- [15:34]
Gary Vaynerchuk
What I was saying, and I said it tongue in cheek, but I did say it. And then I kind of jumped in and said, listen, what I'm saying by that is not that your product stinks. I. I think you're 24 months away from people actually buying this. And I also think you need to fix this and this and at least debate this. And they were stunned because, you know, we're, you know, we're in the business of getting clients. But I heavily appreciated it. But I do think you're right. I think great brands also ride on the back of a great product.
- [16:03]
John Hegarty
Yeah.
- [16:05]
Gary Vaynerchuk
But then the point you're talking to, which I very much agree with you, is when you build a community around where the brand is taking you, well, now you're going to nirvana.
- [16:19]
John Hegarty
Yeah. That's where you've made it a part of culture. But just to go back again. But I think it is. It's such an important point you're making. And I sat in so many meetings with the creative person, I had to sell the work and stay in the meetings. And they'd be talking about problems in the Northwest or Northeast and. And pack promotions. And I'd always be sitting there going, have you ever thought about making a better product? And it was very interesting. I was talking to Jeff Raeder of Mammoth Brands, and that was. That's the first thing they do. Can we make it better? And then at least. And that's in our control.
- [16:52]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Correct. And gives you a chance.
- [16:53]
John Hegarty
Yeah, that gives you a better chance. Other things are going to affect what you do, but nobody don't really sit down and think about, is this really, really better? Do I genuinely believe in it?
- [17:05]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I think most Fortune 500 execs disrespect the consumer. Yeah, I really do. I say that. No, I don't even say it humbly. I say it actually angrily. I believe that most Fortune 500 executives disrespect the end consumer. You know what I mean? They just sit around and they're like, we're just gonna pound this message into their head and they're gonna go to Sainsbury and buy it. We're just gonna spend so much media dollars against this big idea. Listen, you and I, when it's all said and done and we're hanging out in heaven, we will be looked fondly upon in the history of advertising. You and I, on our best day are trying our damnedest to come up with the idea. Right. But we're human beings and the industry has not accepted that. That is calculated guessing, grounded in talent and history. But it's still a high risk maneuver. And everyone in Fortune 500 land just thinks we're going to push it. And on a product, I mean, I think a lot about with food, people are getting more educated of what's in their products. People are being much more thoughtful. Back to the non alcoholic wine, the chemicals in food. I mean, you guys have it better in Europe than we do in the US but like I don't. I just sit in meeting after meeting and I'm like, you know that people are not stupid, right? And I think we need more humility in ad land and Fortune 500 land. And by the way, this is more broad. Every entrepreneur and creative person that's listening right now, please think about this. Please do not have audacity that the world should like your stuff because it's your stuff. It's like the analogy I use all the time is everyone thinks their child's the cutest. On the record, most people's child is not the cutest child on earth because there's somebody else that's cute. You know, we don't, we go very subjective and our subjectivity is often grounded in selfishness.
- [19:04]
John Hegarty
Well, also the other thing too, these corporations, often the first thing is profit. So if I can, if I can make this cheaper.
- [19:13]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Correct.
- [19:13]
John Hegarty
Then that is better rather than could I make this better and in the long term that will be better.
- [19:20]
Gary Vaynerchuk
You know, I will say I do believe we're in the early stages of people starting to feel it. There's a, there's a supermarket, if you call it. There's a store in LA called Erewhon. Are you familiar with it?
- [19:32]
John Hegarty
No, not at all.
- [19:33]
Gary Vaynerchuk
It's a very bougie supermarket. They call it like a Whole foods, but like 10 times more expensive, 10 times cooler. I mean they're charging $40 for a shake and they're selling the cleanest bread, America for $22. When you can go buy bread for $4 and it's highly successful, you look at LVMH, right?
- [19:53]
John Hegarty
Yeah.
- [19:54]
Gary Vaynerchuk
You know, I think that in the business world I'm starting to think that people are starting to see, you know, What? Maybe if I make it $2 more, but it's better. And I communicate that that's actually a better business than this era, that we had to drive everything to the lowest possible cost. This Tesco, Sainsbury, Walmart era that I think is fine. And I'm a capitalist, I'm all about it. But yeah, I get it. But I do think the consumer evolution is real. I think unfortunately there's separation of wealth in a lot of parts of the world that are probably leading to some of this. But I do think there's huge for everyone who's listening, there's huge optionality on price and quality. There's a lot of ways to win now. It's not just the lowest price, it's not just the highest price. It might be a unique value proposition to the left or the right, not just to the up and the down. It's given more optionality for entrepreneurs and creatives.
- [20:49]
John Hegarty
It's interesting that because, I mean, virtually everybody we've talked to has talked about. I mean, James Dyson was fantastic about how I wanted to make a vacuum cleaner that really was better. Yes, Technology, engineering. And then it had to look better, it had to look like it and charges $100 more than his competitor and we all know has a hugely successful business because he has not only put quality into it, he's put engineering into it and he's actually made it look great. And suddenly goes, a vacuum cleaner, normally in a cupboard, I'll pay a bit more for that. So that value is something I think a lot of corporations miss.
- [21:32]
Gary Vaynerchuk
There's also something else that I think Dyson does that I think is wildly not talked about, which is it saves time. I think when you sell time, you win. And I will tell you that my belief of why Dyson has done both incredibly well in vacuuming, but also in hair and blow drying is subconsciously. I don't know if a lot of women slash men that are listening right now even realize why they love Dyson, but I'm about to point to something that they might be like, oh my God, that's why I love it. Because it saves her seven minutes in getting ready, because it saves her or him 4 minutes in cleaning the floor. Time is an incredibly important.
- [22:12]
John Hegarty
I must go back and ask you that. It's a really fantastic one.
- [22:17]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I mean, I agree with you, the engineering, but I'm telling you, for many of us, you know, I was an early investor in Uber, but I really blew it. I could have been the first investor.
- [22:28]
John Hegarty
Uber? Yeah.
- [22:28]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Travis, the Founder of. Well, not about Garrett Camp actually invented Uber. They were co founders, but Travis and I were very friendly at that time. I could have invested. I do not invest. I was actually. I, I, I went against one of my biggest principles. You know, scared money doesn't make money. I had less savings that I was accustomed to because I just bought my first big boy apartment in Manhattan. Bad timing, because in hindsight, if I had the liquid, it would have been ended up being the greatest investment of my career. So I don't invest in Uber, but it's being run by one of my best buds, and they come to New York City. In fact. In fact, in my office next door is an email from Uber thanking my brother AJ for taking the first Uber in Manhattan. We were right there. And in fact, in that first day that Uber was here, I watched like, the first day launched was about a week after AJ took the drive, and I watched people taking Ubers in Manhattan, and I would watch cabs drive by people with the light on, and they were still waiting for their Uber. And I realized that Uber was going to be massive because Uber was selling time. It was also selling the perception of time. The fact that, you know, now it seems mundane, but the fact that somebody could sit in a skyscraper like this, order an Uber, go downstairs and have the Uber. Uber there in 2011, whatever that time was. 14, whatever the year it was, was profound.
- [23:55]
John Hegarty
Yeah.
- [23:55]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Was profound. And so, yes, I think time's a big one. Time's a big one.
- [23:59]
John Hegarty
Yeah. There's only so much of it. So. So then you, you decide, I'm gonna go. I'm gonna start VaynerMedia. I'm just gonna take that. Thinking of how into a kind of world that is dominated by big Montino skyscrapers the size of whatever. But you went in with this view of, I'm going to change the way people feel or think, and you focused on this new thing, social media. Social media. So you start that pitch it. How did you get to the clients? How did you get to people?
- [24:34]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I had a lot of Twitter followers because of the wine business. And again, back to what I said earlier about football. One of the things that makes me very unique in the history of advertising is I'm truly the practitioner of the craft that my agency sells. Think about that.
- [24:52]
John Hegarty
Yeah.
- [24:53]
Gary Vaynerchuk
You know, again, you have. It's so fun to talk to you about this today.
- [24:57]
John Hegarty
Today.
- [24:59]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Forget about when I started the company. Today, I will do more social media marketing myself. I write the copy to the team, I write the content to the team. That I post on my Instagram contest. I'm a practitioner of the craft. So, anyway, I had a lot of followers on Twitter, and Twitter was starting to get important. It was starting to be known. Right. It started to make it into the BBHs and BBQ. People had heard of it at least, which was much better than it was two years earlier when I started on it. And it was very interesting, actually. I got a cold email from espn, and they said, we've been doing our homework. We're thinking about getting on Twitter. You have, like, 500,000 followers. Like, can you come in and consult us about Twitter? I'm like, I didn't get paid for this. So I came in and, like, I knew nothing. No deck, no presentation. I just showed up and started talking. And all these fancy executives and espn. I'm such a sports fan. These were like, wow, ESPN executives in the C suite. And I do have the gift of gab. So I walk in and I go one hour straight of just insane knowledge. And at the time, again, it would be like somebody walking in two years ago talking about AI. Like, nobody knew what the hell I was talking about in the room. But I also, for my wine days, I'm very good at being breaking down complex things in an average Joe way. And I think that's helped my career as a communicator. And even though they didn't really know what I was saying, they did know what I was saying because I was making it contextual. And, you know, at the end, by the way, I didn't even ask how much they were gonna pay me. At the end, they're like, okay, thank you so much. And they're like, the check is gonna be in the mail.
- [26:48]
John Hegarty
I said.
- [26:49]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I was like, how much? They're like, $5,000, brother. I thought I made 40 million. I go downstairs, I'm like, I can't believe I just got paid $5,000 for that. You know, I grew up very humble.
- [27:00]
John Hegarty
Yeah. Yeah.
- [27:02]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I grew up in a studio apartment the size of this room we're in right now with family members. You know, even though I'm building my dad's business to a big business, he doesn't pay me shit. So I'm making no money. So this $5,000 was like. Like, I hit. So I call my brother, who's still in college but about to graduate, and we're debating starting all these different businesses. One would have looked like Groupon, ironically, one would have been about fantasy sports. And I called him and I said, hey, I think we should start A company consulting the Fortune 500. So I just started making content more and more about marketing, not wine. And that just was all lead biz. Dev Bon and Bao, who went on to have a pretty big career in advertising, was at PepsiCo at the time, had us stand up their PepsiCo account. The NHL became aware of some of the work I did for espn. We started the company in a conference room like this in Columbus Circle at another company that got famous in that era called Buddy Media, that sold the salesforce. They had some clients they introduced us to and kind of away we went.
- [28:03]
John Hegarty
Yeah, but I think the other thing there is that because you were engaging with it, you were opening doors. And I think that's. I was trying to say to people do interesting things and interesting things will happen soon.
- [28:14]
Gary Vaynerchuk
That's right.
- [28:14]
John Hegarty
And not enough people are out there engaging, you know, bringing the outside world in, bringing. Affecting what you're doing. And then people suddenly go, we would need to talk to you.
- [28:23]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I also knew that something most people didn't know, that seems common sense now, but I knew I didn't have to go through adage or the New York Times or the. Or the industry or, you know, I knew that I didn't have to go to Cannes. I could make content and it would come to me. I was living my thesis. What I wanted my clients to do, I was doing or my own business.
- [28:45]
John Hegarty
And that's the power of creativity, isn't it? Because they were creating content that people were connecting to and that gave you power 100%. You're talking to people and they're responding.
- [28:57]
Gary Vaynerchuk
You know, it's funny, I. I'm a businessman, but when I get into like long evenings or deep discussions, I always associate much more to my curiosity and creativity than I do to my salesmanship or operational capability. I agree with you. I think it's been the beacon of things that have worked for me and the others that I admire. I think it's a very big gift when you can see things differently and if you then on top of that, have the ability to execute. Because you know this. We've met a lot of creative people, but they can't execute themselves into their own pants,
- [29:32]
John Hegarty
which you were. I've always thought being an outsider gives you greater perception. And I think if you look a lot of great creative people throughout history, they've been outsiders. And it's that sense of outside looking in gives you a perspective as opposed to being part of the group.
- [29:50]
Gary Vaynerchuk
A very senior executive at Kubla Sis who's gone out to do Something else ran into me literally at Madison Square Garden, ironically, right there, and grabbed me and said, hey, you don't know me. I'm like, hey, John, nice to meet you. His name is John. So I just want to say something to you. He said, you know, like, we used to really make fun of you and we really thought you were kooky and an idiot and all this. And he goes, I had dinner with a bunch of my old pals, you know, many in the C suites and the biggest companies world, many outside the industry now. And somehow he got brought up. He got brought up. And the punchline of that little 10 minute chat we all had was, it makes sense in hindsight that it took a complete outsider to actually disrupt our industry.
- [30:29]
John Hegarty
And that again, a great lesson for if you're an outsider, you have an advantage. Use that advantage.
- [30:37]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Can I say one thing on that?
- [30:38]
John Hegarty
Go on.
- [30:39]
Gary Vaynerchuk
But you must deploy common sense. Here's what I mean by that. When you're an outsider, you can break things if you're right. What I worry about is like, oh, I'm an outsider. And you're just kooky about it and you just think you're gonna win because you're different and you're forcing the different. The reason it worked for me in this scenario in ad land was I knew the truth. It was that the industry was putting something on a pedestal that was subjective, not objective. And in business life, things have to get objective. So if you're an outsider and you can see that there's a flaw or a something that's put on a pedestal or a romance from the industry that is not grounded in truth. Why I knew that the wine industry, you know, that the wine industry, you know, this, would complain about wanting more people to be into wine, but then yet they would spend all their time being douchebags to anyone who wanted to get into wine.
- [31:37]
John Hegarty
I know, I know. Just thank you. I gave a talk at the Bordeaux symposium saying, lose the mystery and keep the magic. And you know, I always said, you know, no industry grows by making people look stupid, which, of course, the wine
- [31:52]
Gary Vaynerchuk
industry is number one.
- [31:54]
John Hegarty
Yeah. Make you look stupid. So there we are.
- [31:58]
Gary Vaynerchuk
And unlike high fashion, no one aspires like high fashion are also a bunch of douchebags. But people still want to wear a Prada or, you know, Louis Vuitton. Like nobody really, you know, you want to look cool with a bottle of wine, but it's a different thing. And so like, you can't have audacity when you're addressable market Isn't big enough.
- [32:20]
John Hegarty
Yeah, the difference between arrogance and confidence, isn't it? You have to understand, have to understand.
- [32:26]
Gary Vaynerchuk
You know what the difference is? Humility.
- [32:27]
John Hegarty
Humility. The other thing that you said there too, which I thought was good about. It's not enough to be an outsider, but also to trust your own judgment, to be able to relate to things and then say, I think this could be better. I think, I believe genuinely this could be.
- [32:44]
Gary Vaynerchuk
In fact, you're talking about something I love to think about, don't talk about often. So I'm glad you got us there. Do you know that I don't guess. Do you know that in my entire 30 year career I've never guessed once and yet I've innovated so much, done things that people are like, how do you see that? I just stay very narrow. I don't have the audacity to jump into things that I don't understand. You know, again, this one seemed left field. I remember the first article ever written or mentioned ever written about VaynerMedia and me in the ad world. It was some blog post that said wine boy thinks he can win in Madison Avenue. It was a real razz. But I, I enjoyed it first of all.
- [33:27]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Yeah, cool.
- [33:28]
John Hegarty
It was a challenge.
- [33:29]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Deep down, I'm an athlete in my mind, meaning I like getting booed on the road. You know, like, I'm the kind of athlete that like wants that opposing team to hate that gets me going. So I enjoyed that. But I remember laughing at it to myself. I snickered like that two seconds to myself. I'm like, oh, they don't realize my whole life has been marketing. I sold wine by being the best wine marketer of a generation. So it was interesting. And so I don't guess I trust myself because I don't guess I don't go into real estate being like, oh, you need to know, know stuff. It's a lot easier to trust your judgment or your intuition when it's grounded in some truth of knowledge or experience. Instead of like having reverse audacity and being like, I can just randomly do something better because I like golf and I can run this golf company better. But what do you know about the golf business?
- [34:25]
John Hegarty
Well, there's a great lesson there too, that so many businesses have been started by people who care, who obviously who actually care about what they're doing and what they're making. It isn't just, I'm going to start a business. I really care about this and I think I could do it better. So again, it's bringing yourself into what you're doing. Express yourself. This is what it's about. So this is, you know, we're now, you know, seeing another big change with AI coming along. And so, you know, you now have to constantly innovate. That's going to be crucial to your success. And how. How do you. How do you do that? How do. Do you have a process? Do you have a kind of a way that you're approaching that?
- [35:09]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Yes, my process is I want to put myself out of business before someone else does it. That's my North Star. Yeah. You know, I can't have this great run in this last decade of disrupting the ad world on this social first approach. And then just because now I'm big, be like, well, this AI thinks of that. I don't. Like, I don't have the hypocrisy. Thank God my parents don't have that in their body and then pass it on. I don't have the hypocrisy to do it. So, yes, I have a very big approach, which is the only thing I really do, brother, in life, is pay attention to the consumer. I don't do anything besides pay attention to what's going on in the world. What are people thinking about? What's the temperament? What's trending? Why are people wearing baggy jeans again, like the 90s versus tight jeans? Like, why are mustaches doing well versus not? Like, what's going on? Like, what are people wearing? Why did hats grow? Like, you know, why are people traveling to Portugal versus, you know, like, I watch every. Why is this music working? What's going on with Korean and Latino culture, not just black culture in America, and then you go into Europe and different parts and Asia because we have offices everywhere. And so obviously, about three years ago, I'm like, oh, here comes AI. And I was aware of machine learning and I have some very nerdy friends because I do a lot of Silicon Valley investing and it's been in the air, but I was like, oh, it's here. And so I think from my standpoint, I'll tell you what I'm doing in black and white. Vayner X, my company, we've gone very big into analog. So I think that the rise of AI is creating this barbell effect. Extreme digital. Like, extreme digital. Like there's like, extreme digital, right?
- [36:52]
John Hegarty
Yeah.
- [36:53]
Gary Vaynerchuk
And then on the other side, the rise of extreme analog. Music festivals, sporting events, going to restaurants and checking in your phone, detoxing Shabbat Sun Friday from digital, like, just the Extremes. I'm very bullish. Real life, I believe over the next five to 10 years. Let's use 10 years. It's 2026. I believe in 10 years it's obviously 2036, but I think the world will look more like 2050. I think it's going to speed up very aggressively. However, I think that's going to create the rise of 1950. I think you're already seeing vinyl sales are up. Kids are asking for non smartphones for their first phone. They're asking, not their parents. Gen Alpha sees the anxiety of Gen Z blames digital, which I don't think is fully true. It's modern parenting. But we'll talk about that another show. And so I'm so for us, for example, I don't know if you know this, but Vayner's very unique. We are a creative and media and strength. Like we're more old school. What? You knew everything under one roof, right? In addition, we are a fully integrated experiential agency. Live shopping, production, a big wave that I'm obsessed with podcast production. So I had a meeting two days ago with all 2,000 plus global employees and said we are no longer an agency. We're a production company that happens to do agency work all under one roof.
- [38:26]
John Hegarty
So you've changed the way people approach it.
- [38:29]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I want everyone in my company. You'll find this fascinating given what you did for a living. Everyone in the company has to make.
- [38:37]
John Hegarty
Yes.
- [38:38]
Gary Vaynerchuk
So even someone who has great ideas. Like if you were you, me and you were together back in the day and I did this. Yes. I need your great ideas and then you need to tell me what you can physically make. Can you sing? You want to draw? Because we make $5 ads. Like sometimes it's just a $5 production to put on social, sometimes it's a 500,000. But just ideas to a deck to present is over.
- [39:04]
John Hegarty
Yeah. So you're saying that actually. Unless you can actually implement what you're doing.
- [39:10]
Gary Vaynerchuk
That's right.
- [39:11]
John Hegarty
And I keep talking about AI, people keep saying it's a tool. I say it's not a tool. It's something you collaborate with. With. And if you collaborate with it and then everybody in a sense is now a creative director for sure. Because you've got this, you've got this thing there that can help you really, really help.
- [39:28]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Now what, what's going to be exposed in that is that not everyone is creative. Everyone has to.
- [39:35]
John Hegarty
I, I say everybody's creative, but not everybody can do it. Like I can sing. Everybody can sing, but you really. That's right.
- [39:43]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Let's. That's exact. And by the way, even more optimistic. Everyone can get better at singing if they put in effort. I fully believe that when I say not everyone's creative, a caveat, especially for this kind of audience. You're more right than I am. Everyone is creative. Not everyone has the ability to be creative and execute in a manner that is commercially successful. And that is important to understand. There's a very different thing inherently. You know, there's so many people I know that. I mean, my mother comes to mind, what a wildly creative person in fashion, in home design, architecture. She can draw. She does a lot of things well. She does not come from a commercial lens. It's for her insular bubble.
- [40:36]
John Hegarty
But she's doing what she loves. And in a way that's the. I think that's the first step. Because if you don't love it, why should somebody else love it?
- [40:43]
Gary Vaynerchuk
I agree with that completely.
- [40:45]
John Hegarty
So, you know, you've got, in fact,
- [40:46]
Gary Vaynerchuk
let me say something pretty might seem counter to what I've just been saying. I don't. I personally me which is may seem wild. But stick with me here. I do not put creative commercial capabilities on a pedestal. I just think it is. In fact, I find, and I'm sure everyone who's listening will agree with me often the things we most love is creative and has no commercial essence to it.
- [41:17]
John Hegarty
But I think the important thing is to get people to understand that they are. They are inherently creative. And actually setting up a business is a creative act.
- [41:25]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Well, that's where you're more right.
- [41:27]
John Hegarty
You have to have an idea, you have to have a product, you have to have a service, whatever. What are you going to call it, what you're going to look like. All these things are creative acts and getting people to kind of understand that and then to keep it going. Because obviously innovation is core to the success of continuing success of a business and creativity is at its core.
- [41:47]
Gary Vaynerchuk
And now to your point, even more so. I believe emotional intelligence and resilience is my favorite form of creativity. Yeah, I would argue my greatest accomplishment creatively has been the creative conversation I've had myself around my optimism and world perspective.
- [42:05]
John Hegarty
Well, I think creative people have to be optimists. Pessimism destroys creativity.
- [42:10]
Gary Vaynerchuk
There's nothing I hate more on earth than cynicism, truly.
- [42:14]
John Hegarty
I mean, you've got to get out of rooms where people are being like that. It will destroy you. So there's so many what you talk about, what's the Biggest lie in marketing.
- [42:25]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Oh, so many. Oh, geez.
- [42:29]
John Hegarty
Have we got enough time?
- [42:30]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Yeah. Again, knowing that a lot of bad people listen. This is more inside baseball. So I apologize to the general public that's listening to this. Let me just get on my soapbox here because boy, there's a lot of them. I would say a couple things. The biggest lie in marketing, very nerdy, is on the media side. Is that reach that we talk about. Like, oh, this is reach when you buy.
- [42:55]
John Hegarty
Yeah.
- [42:55]
Gary Vaynerchuk
It's not being actualized.
- [42:57]
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- [43:26]
Gary Vaynerchuk
When you buy a GRP or you buy all these impressions, people aren't actually seeing it. So the biggest lie is on the media side. Principal ad buying. There's real fraud in ad land. It's really, it's kind of disgusting. I would say. Now the other side of the equation, creativity. I think the biggest lie is the lie that the senior creative director tells themselves that they're creative skills subjectively are better than others. I think there's an extraordinary lack of humility at the creative director level in Atlanta.
- [43:57]
John Hegarty
Well, I've said this a number of times. I have a theory, and I said this to people at bbh, that most companies are triangles and the boss sits at the top and he details. I said, if you come to bvh, the triangle is inverted. I'm at the bottom, you're at the top. Because you can have an idea that could transform the fortunes of our clients, our business and everything. My job is to sort of recognize that and make sure nobody gets in the way.
- [44:22]
Gary Vaynerchuk
That's right. On paper, yeah.
- [44:24]
John Hegarty
But you could have put that in practice.
- [44:26]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Correct. And in the ad world 15 years in now, I will tell you in the same way that people love to say in every ad firm, great ideas can come from everywhere or anywhere.
- [44:36]
John Hegarty
That's kind of.
- [44:36]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Have you ever read Marxism?
- [44:39]
John Hegarty
No, I haven't.
- [44:41]
Gary Vaynerchuk
But you know.
- [44:41]
John Hegarty
Yeah, I know. Obviously know who you.
- [44:43]
Gary Vaynerchuk
If you read Marx, if you read the concept of socialism and communism, what I was born in, it reads beautifully. But in practicality it's been disastrous. I will say that great ideas can come from anywhere. Being written on the walls of AT firms is similar To Marxism.
- [45:01]
John Hegarty
The other thing you have to do there is then you have to kind of select the kind of people you've got there. You just don't let anybody.
- [45:09]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Again, you know this better than I do. I'm a newbie to this truth. The amount of times, you know, and I'm empathetic. You start as a junior copywriter, you eat shit for 25 years to finally get to the place to be the person that decides. It's kind of hard to have the humility and the patience to let the ideas come from elsewhere.
- [45:32]
John Hegarty
Listen, I know, of course you did
- [45:33]
Gary Vaynerchuk
it well, that's why you're a fucking legend. But 99% of people don't. And I remind all my creative directors at every ad firm, if you're so goddamn creative, go do it in the real world.
- [45:45]
John Hegarty
Well, I was lucky. I got to work with Charles Sartre very. In our first year in Avatar. Charlie has all kinds of issues, but one thing he was genius at is that he loved the idea more than anything else. And if somebody else had had it, he would move aside and go with that. Because in the end he worked out it would make him more famous, by the way.
- [46:05]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Sounds like.
- [46:06]
John Hegarty
And it was a great lesson.
- [46:07]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Makes sense to why he pulled off what he pulled off.
- [46:10]
John Hegarty
Yeah. So that's good.
- [46:11]
Gary Vaynerchuk
So this is again, a mental rarity.
- [46:13]
John Hegarty
Yeah. So we've got this. The future is kind of, I'm being told, here. Understood.
- [46:19]
Gary Vaynerchuk
We can go for like four hours, it feels like.
- [46:22]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Thank you.
- [46:23]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Because I do have a meeting.
- [46:23]
John Hegarty
Yes, go ahead, sir. No, no, no, I. I'm just sorry. The thing that really fascinates me, and I was. I think people get AI wrong because they look at it, they go, they can take cost out. Rather than. This creates opportunity.
- [46:37]
Gary Vaynerchuk
That's right.
- [46:38]
John Hegarty
And I think somebody said something very smart the other day. He said, you know, AI really needs humans, because with humans, it can really do some amazing things. And I think that to be is the future of it.
- [46:54]
Gary Vaynerchuk
That's the current of it, by the way.
- [46:56]
John Hegarty
Well, I think it's such a lovely observation. Again, it inverts the way people are thinking.
- [47:02]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Well, listen, it's the way people think on anything new in Vegas. Fear. Have you ever read the history of what people felt about electricity?
- [47:11]
John Hegarty
No.
- [47:11]
Gary Vaynerchuk
It's profoundly interesting. The term demonization got popularized. The reason we all know what the word demonized is is because of how popular that term became. It happened before the electricity, but it got really into the culture when electricity hit this town and JP Morgan had it down there. But almost everyone else was scared of it because the word in the street was if you let electricity into your home, you would also be bringing in demons. People are scared. Let's call a spade a spade. The reason everyone's up in arms about AI is they're scared it's going to take their job. There is nothing else. There's nothing else. And so to your point, when people realize, you're not going to lose your job to AI, you're going to lose your job to humans that use AI if you are not one of them, the second that happens, then they start thinking of it like the typewriter or a computer or the Internet or a cell phone. And so I hope people get there soon.
- [48:11]
John Hegarty
Yeah, I think that's a wonderful observation, and I think, Gary, that's a great way to end that. I think this actually should be series one, because obviously we've got about another three series we could go on about.
- [48:26]
Gary Vaynerchuk
Listen, anytime you ask, I'm interested. I'm gonna just sneak in some flowers. Anyone? You know, I have a lot of. I have a good feeling a lot of people are gonna listen and watch this because they come from my audience. Please, please take an hour to understand this man's career. What he did publicly, how he did it privately. Give yourself an hour. It's a North Star that many of you should aspire to, and anytime you ask, the answer is yes.
- [48:51]
John Hegarty
Oh, okay. Well, I'm now feeling embarrassed, but that is just wonderful. Thank you very much. You are beyond that. What a great conversation. And let's hope the Oak Monster doesn't come back. The Oak Monster. I remember that. Thank you very much. That was so good.
- [49:07]
Gary Vaynerchuk
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. Hear that?
- [49:18]
Podcast Narrator
That's the sound of busy. To a restaurant. All that shouting and banging. Might as well be a symphony. It means the long days and longer nights are paying off. Sure, it's noisy, but there's a worse sound. This not busy. Busy means business, which is why toast gives restaurants the tools and tech they need to help them perform under pressure. Sounds pretty good, right? Toast built for busy journey.
- [49:46]
Gary Vaynerchuk
See you later.