Tips to Grow Your Business in the Age of AI and TikTok | Interview with Forbes Maggie McGrath

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Tips to Grow Your Business in the Age of AI and TikTok | Interview with Forbes Maggie McGrath"

The GaryVee Audio Experience
Host: Gary Vaynerchuk
Guest: Maggie McGrath, Forbes
Release Date: June 12, 2025

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1. Entrepreneurial Roots and Early Drive

Maggie McGrath initiates the conversation by delving into Gary Vaynerchuk's entrepreneurial spirit. Gary recounts his formative years, highlighting how his drive was ingrained from childhood activities like lemonade stands and baseball card trading.

• Quote:
  “There was no spark. I think, you know, November 14, 1975, the moment I was born, the spark was there.” (00:00)

Gary emphasizes that his passion for entrepreneurship was a constant backdrop throughout his life, seamlessly transitioning from simple childhood ventures to managing his father's liquor store.

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2. Rethinking Education and Grades

The discussion shifts to Gary's perspective on education. Maggie references a keynote where Gary advised students not to stress over grades, a stance that previously garnered backlash.

• Quote:
  “I believe education is the foundation of like, life. But the system that's in place currently... does not work for many.” (02:55)

Gary elaborates on the evolving conversation around education, advocating for a balanced view that recognizes both the strengths and limitations of the current education system. He underscores the importance of prioritizing happiness and personal fulfillment over conventional academic success.

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3. Evolution of Marketing Strategies

Maggie introduces Gary's latest book, "Day Trading Attention," positioning it as an update to his 2013 work, "Jab, Jab, Jab Right Hook." She seeks insight into the most critical strategies Gary has adopted over the past 15 years.

• Quote:
  “Humility... is maybe one of my least obvious attributes when I do interviews and communicate.” (06:06)

Gary identifies humility as a cornerstone of his modern marketing approach. He contrasts the aggressive, transactional marketing tactics of the past with a more relational, consumer-centric strategy grounded in humility.

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4. Embracing Social Media and AI

A significant portion of the conversation revolves around the shift from traditional marketing to leveraging social media platforms and artificial intelligence (AI).

• Quote:
  “If the truth is that consumers are now enjoying social or influencers or live shopping... you're going to lose that game. The customer is undefeated.” (06:48)

Gary advocates for embracing new technologies and platforms like TikTok, live shopping, and AI-driven content creation. He argues that businesses must adapt to these changes or risk obsolescence.

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5. The Role of Executives vs. Entrepreneurs

Maggie touches upon the dedication of Gary's book to the 1% who make consumer-centric decisions, prompting Gary to distinguish between the motivations of executives and entrepreneurs.

• Quote:
  “I don't believe most entrepreneurs are [driven by boardroom politics]. Entrepreneurs have no choice. They have to be consumer centric or they're out of business pretty quickly.” (09:22)

Gary highlights that while entrepreneurs naturally prioritize consumers to sustain their businesses, many executives in large corporations remain entrenched in boardroom politics, often hindering agile, consumer-focused decision-making.

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6. Day Trading Attention: The Core Thesis

Gary delves deep into the essence of his book, "Day Trading Attention," explaining how the rapid pace of content creation and data-driven strategies are essential in today's marketing landscape.

• Quote:
  “My thesis... is it's moving that fast, that today,... watch the organic AI driven algorithms reach the audience based on the creative value and then analyze the quant and qual data of that success or failure to make another decision to put out another piece of content later today.” (13:12)

He critiques the outdated, lengthy processes of traditional advertising campaigns, advocating instead for a nimble, responsive approach that leverages AI to optimize content and ad spending in real-time.

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7. Navigating the Expansive Social Media Landscape

Maggie raises a practical concern about maintaining a presence across numerous social media platforms, to which Gary responds by underscoring the inevitability of this necessity for business success.

• Quote:
  “Understanding social networks and how they work for a business is now right on par to understanding how to balance your checkbook. It is oxygen to me.” (18:35)

Gary stresses that in the digital age, a robust social media strategy is as fundamental to business operations as financial management, necessitating active engagement across platforms like Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, and more.

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8. Transition from Traditional to Digital Marketing

Gary elaborates on the dramatic shift from traditional marketing avenues to digital platforms, emphasizing the importance of organic content and the strategic amplification of successful creative efforts.

• Quote:
  “Now when you put out all your advertising on the organic algorithms... when something does remarkable, that's when you should put media dollars behind it because you've gotten validation that people think it's good.” (16:33)

He highlights how digital platforms have democratized marketing, allowing smaller brands to achieve significant reach without the exorbitant costs associated with traditional media channels.

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9. Intellectual Property and Community Building with Veefriends

Shifting focus, Gary discusses his venture into intellectual property (IP) through Veefriends, a project centered around trading cards and community engagement.

• Quote:
  “Veefriends is a big deal for me. In fact, if I had to bet on the most substantial business I will build in my life, it's going to be Veefriends.” (25:28)

Gary explains that Veefriends is designed to foster a strong community while imparting values like kindness and empathy through its diverse characters. He draws parallels with iconic franchises, emphasizing the power of IP in creating lasting, engaged communities.

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10. The Future of Marketing and Community Engagement

Concluding the discussion, Gary paints a vision of the future where IP-driven communities play a pivotal role in business success. He believes that authentic engagement and meaningful community interactions will drive the next wave of marketing innovation.

• Quote:
  “If modern parenting has so over coddled children... that's hurting our kids... I want to build an intellectual property that's gonna teach the virtues of kindness and empathy.” (30:52)

Gary underscores his commitment to creating IP that not only entertains but also instills important societal values, positioning Veefriends as a cornerstone in his broader entrepreneurial journey.

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Key Takeaways

1. Embrace Humility in Marketing: Building genuine relationships with consumers is more effective than aggressive, transactional approaches.
2. Adapt to Rapid Content Cycles: Utilize AI and data analytics to create and optimize content swiftly in response to consumer behavior.
3. Prioritize Social Media Mastery: A strong presence across multiple social platforms is essential for modern business success.
4. Leverage Intellectual Property for Community: Developing unique IP like Veefriends can foster engaged, value-driven communities.
5. Shift from Traditional to Organic Strategies: Move away from outdated marketing methods towards organic, data-informed content amplification.

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This episode provides a comprehensive look into Gary Vaynerchuk's evolved marketing philosophies, emphasizing adaptability, humility, and the strategic use of modern technologies to build and sustain successful businesses in an ever-changing digital landscape.

Transcript

[Maggie]

Can we start at the beginning? What sparked your entrepreneurial drive?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Probably DNA. You know, the truth is, it was so early. It's almost hard for me to recall a time in my life where it wasn't a foundational currency, a backdrop. I think about wonder years, the TV show and like, talks about, like, music and the 60s being a backdrop of Kevin Arnold's life. Entrepreneurship was the backdrop. You know, basically, as soon as I moved to Edison, New Jersey, in August of 1982, I was born in the Soviet Union. I came to the US When I was three. For. We lived in Queens for a couple years, and then Dover, New Jersey for a year. But then we moved to Edison, which is where I grew up. And that was August of 82, right before school started. First grade, pretty much at that point, meeting friends in the neighborhood, you know, shoveling snow, you know, when it snowed. And we had a snow day. Washing cars, lemonade stands. 7, 8, 9, 10 years old. Literally. Just as I was rolling into this interview, I was doing a podcast with Dr. Beckett, who invented the Beckett Baseball Card Guide. This was the price guide, the monthly price guide that dominated the 80s and 90s around trading cards. That was my Bible at 11 years old. So I went from lemonade stands and shoveling snow and, you know, those kind of things to baseball cards. And then I went from baseball cards to working my father's liquor store and becoming weirdly obsessed with building a huge business for my dad and mom, which I feel very proud of. And so it's always been there. Even I was a poor student from probably many different reasons, but at the top of the list was I just could not think about. It was pure obsession. I would sit in third or fourth grade class and think about how I was gonna sell sports cards to my classmates at lunchtime. And, like, what were they gonna. What was Brian Chen or Tyler Bunting gonna react to? Or, oh, this kid's wearing a Cincinnati Reds hat today. I'm gonna sell him a pete. And it was just. It was really, really, really ingrained. And so I would say there was no spark. I think, you know, November 14, 1975, the moment I was born, the spark was there. And I'm very grateful that, you know, something that was naturally in me is something I enjoy so deeply.

[Maggie]

You mentioned poor grades. I heard you give a keynote to some local high schoolers where you actually told them, I'm paraphrasing, but don't worry about your grades. A bad grade is not the end of the world. How mad were the teachers at you after that.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

You know, it's funny. 10 or 12 years ago, I started talking a lot about grades in college and I would get substantial hate emails from parents, you know, from teachers, from educators. And I always tried to refine and tighten my message. I wanted people to understand that I believe education is the foundation of like, life. But the system that's in place currently and has been in place for a while works for many, which is amazing, but it does not work for many. And I think that is a worthwhile debate. So I would say to you that one far less because it's 15 years removed from where we were 15 years ago. I would have never been invited and I might have been taken off stage if I was too aggressive. Today. I think a lot of educators in the school system are looking for voices to round out. And they do have a lot of children who overstress and get into very bad mental places over a term paper or an acceptance letter into a college. And I think any grownup should care enough about a child to tell them the truth, which is there is no correlation to being a profoundly great student and having a happy life. A successful life is even laughable. The concept that we are not aware that many, many people have been financially successful who have not gone to an Ivy League school and got great grades, that should have never even been a conversation. I think the deeper conversation is not financial success, it's are you a happy grownup? And I think everybody who's watching this or listening right now knows there's no correlation to getting good grades in school and having a happy life. And I think it's an important message and I'm, I'm happy of where I am on this journey. It was very tough for me. I took a lot of lumps. Reputationally business opportunities people were very emotional about the college and grades thing 15 years ago. I think we're more. By the way, plenty of people are about to DM me just on this right now. There's still people really holding on. But this is not about being educated. This is about a system in place that has strengths and weaknesses like any system. And I think it's worth debating and rounding out. And most of all, if you love your child, you should have a well rounded conversation.

[Maggie]

You talk about how much has changed in 15 years. It's a nice segue to your most recent book. Day Trading Attention came out last year. And you write in the beginning that in 2013, so not quite 15 years ago, but you wrote jab, jab, jab, right hook. How To Tell youl Story in a Noisy Social World. It was a guide on how to communicate on the social platforms of the day. Given how much the advertising landscape has changed in the 10 years that have since passed, I figured it was time for an updated version. I think what has changed in 10 years could be its own college thesis. But I guess my question to you right now is what has been the most important strategy for you in shifting your approach in growing online communities and your brand from 15 years ago to today?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Humility. You know, it's probably one of my least obvious attributes when I do interviews and communicate. I'm an aggressive, convicted communicator. But the reality is that to really win with the consumer, you have to have a level of relationship with it, with them, with the collective. That is grounded in a astonishing level of humility and non transactional DNA. I would argue that most people struggle in business and marketing because they are overly emotional about how they make their money today.

[Maggie]

Overly emotional about how they make their money today. Why do you say that?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

The CMO Summit, which you put on a great one. Seth's incredible. When I'm in those meetings with those CMOs, when I talk about TikTok live shopping or I talk about influencer marketing, TikTok live shopping. If you talk to a retailer who's got 400 leases around the country and all their cogs are caught up and in stores and fixtures and employees, me pontificating that in a studio like this you can sell just as much stuff as your store in Midtown right now with all those costs, you struggle to go there because we've made the financial commitment there and we're going to be judged every 90 days because we're a big company either publicly or in a PE environment. And so you start to say no, not because you're not intellectually strong enough to know that it's happening. It's just that you're emotionally and actually tied up into how you're making your economics. Now when I Talk about influencers 6, 7, 10 years ago are coming. Well, if you just paid Tiger Woods $20 million a year to wear your watch, the concept of like hey, these kids online can do more for you for hundreds of thousands of dollars doesn' well, you're locked into a three year, $60 million deal. So if you ask me why things have worked for me or what has been the go to, it's never fight the market. If the truth is that consumers are now enjoying social or influencers or live shopping or here's a good one that's going to really bother everyone. AI influencers. If it hurts your feelings as a human, you're against the concept of AI humans on the Internet. People that are not real, that are computer generated, if that's your ideology, you're allowed. But if the consumer is consuming that content and doesn't care if it's a real life human or an AI generated human that's communicating to them about a bottle of water or a dress or a blouse or a hat, you're going to lose that game. The customer is undefeated.

[Maggie]

I was not going to ask you this till the end, but your book is dedicated, quote, to the 1% that make consumer centric decisions versus the 99% that make decisions based on boardroom politics. Which seems to tie in to what you were just saying. You really believe that most entrepreneurs are making decisions based on boardroom politics and that 90 day cycle that you just referenced?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

No, I don't believe most entrepreneurs are. Entrepreneurs have no choice. They have to be consumer centric or they're out of business pretty quickly. I believe most executives are.

[Maggie]

Interesting. So that's your message to corporate America.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yeah. And by the way, I don't say it from a place of audacity or disdain. I actually come from a heavy place of empathy. You know, if you're making $613,000 a year in stock options in a big corporation and you have, you have your mortgage to pay and your life is run by your income, to go into a boardroom and throw a bomb in there and say we're doing everything wrong, that's politically vulnerable. So I understand how people and why people do what they do. But my point has always been, while I've been in Madison avenue the last 15 years with all these CEOs, CMOs, board members, CFOs, is I understand why you do it, but it doesn't mean that it's right. And there's a reason that there's so much decline. Especially you look at the CPG space. They used to have substantial moats. You couldn't, if you were a small entrepreneur, you couldn't get into Walmart, you couldn't get into Sephora and Ulta, you couldn't get into CVS or Wegmans. You also didn't have enough money to run television spots. That's all been flipped with Shopify and Amazon and with the retailers needing younger consumers. So now they're taking their shopper marketing dollars from big companies and they're giving it to little companies to come into their stores. Small brands have one TikTok that goes viral that outsells in product. What a fortune 500 competitors spends millions of dollars in television investment. We have a very big day of reckoning going on right now because attention has shifted to the mobile device and to social networks and distribution has shifted to Amazon 3pls to shopify opportunities. You know, you don't need to win at Walmart to build a big business. You need to win at Walmart and Target to get to that next tier. But you can get to $100 million in revenue today without ever stepping yourself into Arkansas or Minnesota. That is unprecedented in the history of consumer packaged goods. And that's just the CPG space. This goes on and on and on. And so look what Melanie did with Canva to Adobe. She couldn't have done that 30 years ago without the Internet being where it is now. She wouldn't have had the money to go to the trade shows in Las Vegas and buy a booth for $100,000 to court corporate clients. It's changed.

[Maggie]

When you talk about attention. You called your book day trading attention and obviously it's a whole book. You don't want to give away the whole book. You can, but what is the thesis? What does it mean to day trade.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Attention from a marketing lens? This will probably land with anyone who's from marketing or knows a little bit about it. We used to spend months and months and months to plan our campaign. You know, the way you know again, if you ever watched Mad Men or if you know somebody in the industry or if you're in it, you get a brief. You work on it for months to think from strategy. Then creative tries to crack the idea. Then you gotta sell it to the client. Then they say yes. Then it has to go to a production shoot. Then that takes time. Then, then finally, then nine months later. This is happening today. There are brands who will spend millions of dollars to take nine months to make a 30 second television commercial. Do you know how insane that is?

[Maggie]

Trying not to laugh? Because I know a lot of people make money that way, but the world is moving faster than that.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I mean hundreds of thousands, million and then hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. And then they have to spend millions of dollars to amplify that 30 second commercial. My thesis, my argument is that is dinosaur behavior. On the record, I wish it still existed. Very few humans were built to dominate the 1960s 70 Madison Ave. Landscape more than me. I would have crushed. I would have been in midtown with a cocktail. I would have been charming. Gift of gab. I would have had good ideas. I would have cared. It would have gone great. It would have gone great. We would have built a huge firm. It just doesn't exist. I wish it did. What we do at VaynerMedia, what day trading attention is about is harder than coming up with a slogan and making a 30 second video. But the argument is it's moving that fast, that today, as we sit here right now, every Fortune 5000 company should have already posted 3, 6, 11 pictures or videos across the seven social networks and watched the organic AI driven algorithms reach the audience based on the creative value and then analyze the quant and qual data of that success or failure to make another decision to put out another piece of content later today.

[Maggie]

Three, six or seven pictures, I believe that they're per social. So that's three on Instagram.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

No, I would say overall, I'm trying to be empathetic here, okay? The number's gonna be far greater and with AI coming, these numbers are gonna be. I'm gonna watch these, I'm gonna make fun of myself about that quote in 24 months. And by the way, Gary Vee, my personal brand this morning has already put out 12 to 15 pieces of content.

[Maggie]

Across all the social media platforms for.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Everybody who's listening, from LinkedIn to Facebook to Snapchat, Spotlight to TikTok to X, Twitter to YouTube shorts, every one of these platforms now is very similar. Facebook proper. Facebook proper, not Instagram, one could argue, is the most important platform right this second because of how much attention is actually on it and how many people have forgotten about it because they've moved on to TikTok and Instagram. So you have the best marketers, at least the contemporary young ones or even old ones that get it, putting all their energy on TikTok and Instagram. Meanwhile, back to day trading Facebook, sitting here with an ungodly amount of attention, especially if you're targeting 45 to 80 year olds. Oh, by the way, they have plenty of money, right? And brands are not posting in there organically. The other thing that's crazy is an ad land. You always used to make something knowing you were going to spend media dollars to amplify it, to hide if it was bad. I've been saying lately for 70 years, working media dollars, the money you would pay the print Forbes to put a full page in the magazine 20 years ago, a billboard outside a radio station, a television, networking media dollars, the media dollars that was in for 70 years, those were used to hide bad creative. Now when you put out all Your advertising on the organic algorithms. When something does remarkable, that's when you should put media dollars behind it because you've gotten validation that people think it's good. So now I believe the job of working media dollars is to amplify good creative. We've gone from it be good money big money hiding bad creative to now big money amplifying good creative. The Fortune 5000 brands that most attack that first will win.

[Maggie]

So that's what you mean when in day trading attention, you say use data to inform content creation and optimize ad spending. So basically see what goes viral, I.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Would argue or over index. Right. Viral is like a whole different animal in itself. If you and I started a tea brand and our first 50 posts got 80 views because we're new and our 81st post got 8,000 views, we need to take note of that one. You know, for me, 8,000 views is a devastating moment for a brand that's just starting with 50 views. 8,000 is a great win. I was there too. We're all starting at zero. So over indexing. But if you have virality, yes, you should bet the farm on it.

[Maggie]

You mentioned a few minutes ago the number of social media platforms and how you should be on all of them. I personally am losing track and I lose the energy to keep up on threads and blue sky and Instagram and I've ignored Facebook. I'm not on TikTok. That's Maggie. Personally, like Maggie and my personal and Maggie's allowed. Maggie, the person is allowed. But for entrepreneurs and for yourself, how do you keep track and stay on top of all the new platforms emerging? Because one of your other pieces of advice is prioritize early adoption of new platforms and features, which that in and of itself is a job, to say nothing of building a business by knowing.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I have no choice. Like, if I want to be successful, I need to be able to convey my messages. And success comes in a lot of forms. I have a lot of selfish and a lot of selfless energy inside my body. I desperately want to achieve entrepreneurial success. I love building the things I'm building. I want VaynerMedia to be huge. I want Vayner Sports to be huge. I want veepriends to be huge. I want WineText to be huge. But I also have an incredible gift in that I was mothered so damn well parented. Big shout out to Sasha too. Not leaving you hanging dead. I was parented so well that there's a lot of things I want to say and if I want to reach 8 billion people. I need to be everywhere. And so I think if you're a business, if you're Coca Cola, you have no choice. You're trying to sell Coke to everyone, right? If you're a politician, you're trying to win your election. If you're anybody who wants to achieve something commercially, you have no choice. I would argue understanding social networks and how they work for a business is now right on par to understanding how to balance your checkbook. It is oxygen to me. I could not comprehend having the naivete to walk around earth and not realize that if my business is not good at social, I am vulnerable for decline.

[Maggie]

My business is not good with social, I am vulnerable to decline. That's an important message.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I do not believe that people have grasped how much of the consumer's attention actually sits on these seven platforms. When you take them, you add the streaming service, you know, the Netflix, the Hulu's. You add some of the iconic print magazines that have been able to segue, like yourselves, to online digital. You're not leaving much left. Like, after YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, LinkedIn and Hulu, Netflix. Like, do you know how little cable television is being consumed? I mean, net. Like, do you know that none of the four of us right now can name five active sitcoms on network television? I don't know if I can name one. I'm really not kidding. Like, think about it, Mag. Give me this. Last fall's new series. It's impossible. And I don't know if you've noticed, but the newspaper keeps getting thinner and thinner and thinner and more and more expensive outdoor billboards. Have you watched how humans walk or sit in cars? We're all on our phone. I don't know what else to say. And again, I need everybody to hear this. I'm not happy about this. I'm also not sad. I don't think this is, like, catastrophe. Like, worlds change. Like, you've seen that photo, right? When everyone's like, the world's ruined. We're all on our phones in the subway. And then they show a picture of everybody reading the newspaper in the subway in the 30s. Nothing changes. Everything changes. But yes, I will say this nice and slow, given the magnitude of the audience that listens to this audio. Whether you're B2B, which is LinkedIn, or your B2C, which is the rest of them. If your business is not strong, forget about on strong on social. Every quarter is about to get worse.

[Maggie]

Switching gears a little bit, please. You mention everyone's watching their phones. Everyone's online. But you have trading cards. Yes, the tops V I want to get this right. Topps, VFriends, Chrome trading cards. And you mentioned baseball cards earlier. I imagine there's a tie between that love at 11, of course and vCards. But how does this fit into your overall business strategy? Because it's returning to the physical. It's returning to the real world.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Well, let me build on that. While I just made that whole rant on social I would argue one of my favorite businesses to invest in and be involved in right now is experiential. This is not about or this is about and the problem with traditional marketing is it's overpriced. It's back to day trading attention. Let me be very clear. I would buy tomorrow for every one of my clients and for my businesses. Veefriends, Winetext, GaryVee the brand. I would buy commercials on network and cable television. I would buy full page ads in print. I would buy radio, terrestrial radio, live reads. I would buy direct mail. I would buy all of them if they actually slashed our prices by 90% to make it valuable to the actual reality of how much attention those things have got it. So everything I just mentioned as we sat here for the last 15 minutes, plenty of people did consume a commercial on network television during the Today show or something. Many people are right now across this country having a coffee, reading their local newspaper. The pricing's off. So I don't believe we've gone completely digital. In fact, I actually think experiential like concerts and festivals are growing because we need a little bit of detox from digital. And you know this. We also want to take the photos at these places. For digital people literally go to events to take a photo to post on Instagram at scale. Anyway, back to Vee friends, I'm going to add to this. I hope this brings some value to someone. One could argue in the next decade with the explosion of AI that the only safe business is intellectual property. One could argue obviously there'll be many others. Four years ago I decided to launch my own intellectual property inspired by Pokemon and Marvel and Disney and ultimately really Sesame Street. As I've been on my journey, I've realized back to that selfish, selfless energy. Jim Henson really does it for me. I feel like he really was very entrepreneurial and wanted to win, but he had a lot of soul. There was a lot of good in there and I really resonate with that. So anyway, Veefriends was born on a NFT Project Blockchain. Remember that little exciting moment which by the way, on the record, that is going to be fun to watch. I'm sure some of you in this room, you guys are youngsters, you may not know this, but in 2000 all the Internet stocks collapsed in April of 2000. And literally major magazines and newspapers, including this one, wrote versions of the Internet. Was a fad.

[Maggie]

I'm sure we could find that Forbes article.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I'm sure. And then obviously by 2004 it was quote unquote back. Same will happen with NFTs. There was too much greed, just like on Internet stocks, but non fungible tokens on the blockchain in fact is one of the most important innovations that sit today because I'm sure it's not lost on anybody who's listening. Deep fakes. No longer being able to trust video is a crisis in our society. For the last hundred years, video proof has actually been the judge and jury of our society. Now there will be literally millions of videos of me in the next decade saying things I never said because AI deepfakes are that good and nobody will be able to tell the difference. The blockchain actually is one of the counters to that. I don't want to get on a tangent. We'll talk about that another day. But anyway, Veefriends is a big deal for me. In fact, if I had to bet on the most substantial business I will build in my life, it's going to be Veefriends.

[Maggie]

Interesting.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

The trading cards is a very big deal. Topps is the iconic trading card company. Even people that don't collect have heard of it. They've only done intellectual property deals with Disney. So Star Wars, Marvel, Disney. This puts Veefriends in amazing, amazing company. Way too premature. But the Topps Chrome is the iconic brand. I want kids around the country to buy a pack of cards and fall in love with my characters. They will discover it on YouTube. Kids, we have cartoons. They will discover it. We have kids books with HarperCollins. We do ungodly amounts of things on digital every day. We're on whatnot and TikTok shop selling collectibles on live social shopping. But I believe trading cards and comic books are incredibly imperative for me to have a prayer to pull off my ambitions and that's why I'm so excited about it.

[Maggie]

Ambitions to reach 8 billion people.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

That's right.

[Maggie]

I was going to ask if the cards were a way of building community in a different way, but what you just described sounded like an IP play.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

It's fully an IP play. I don't think an IP can be successful without community. Let's think about it, right? Harry Potter, Right? All those kids and grownups growing, you know, dressing up as Harry Potter to go to the Midtown Execution or to a new film if they came out with one. That's community. All those nerds that go to the Javits center or go to San Diego for Comic Con, by the way. Back to sports. You die hard. Philly fans. Us Knick fans. What was I in last night in Madison Square Garden? I was there with a community of 30,000 other maniacs that desperately wanted us to win a game and all left as if someone in our family had died. That's true community. And if you go to whatnot and you go type in veefriends and you watch 1,500, 300 people watching us live in the middle of the day as we open up trading cards, as we read comic books, as we show off our little new pins, you'll realize what community is about for me. What's crazy is I was so affected by my childhood and I grew up right in the 80s. Garbage Pail Kids, Cabbage Patch Kids, My Little Pony, Strawberry Shortcake, Transformers, GI Joe, Max Headroom, alf, the Smurfs. I was being bombarded with intellectual property. He man much that was commercially driven, right? Make a cartoon to sell toys. I was an entrepreneur. I love pop culture. This was almost written. In hindsight, I wouldn't have been able to predict it 15 years ago, but I'd always thought about potentially buying Gumby or Scooby Doo. I always thought about buying one day later in my career, some IP and refurbishing is far more enjoyable to start my own. And here's why. Back to the selfless part of me. When I make every child in the world fall in love with accountable aunt and patient panda, I genuinely believe that I can leave a deposit of eliminating some of the anxiety that is ravaging our world. If modern parenting has so over coddled children that we have eliminated merit, we've eliminated accountability, we've eliminated ramifications and consequences, and that's hurting our kids. 8th place trophies were well intended, but they caused enormous harm. And so I want to build an intellectual property that's gonna teach the virtues of kindness and empathy. Empathy Elephant is one of the most important characters in veefriends. However, so is tenacious termite, and so is competitive clown, and so is accountable aunt. And I think, you know, I think about it in terms of politics. I want veefriends to be purple. I don't want to be red. I don't want to be blue. All the magic's purple. And I've built 283 characters that are going to allow me to do that. I would say Gary Vee and my 50 million followers that I've been able to amass, if you look carefully, they resonate with the purple. You know, some days, my fans love what I'm saying. Other days, they don't like it because I'm poking at their vulnerability. And I've had a very unusual path of popularity on social media because I've been in that place. But I can't reach 8 billion people. I'm not everyone's cup of tea. It's just not how humans work.

[Maggie]

But IP can, and your characters can.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

And my characters can. And so Patient Panda and Karma Kiwi, these little characters are gonna help me finish off what I started 15 years ago.

[Maggie]

Well, we'll have to have you back in less than 15 years to get a progress report on how that's going. But, Gary Vee, thank you so much for being here. We so appreciate your time.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Thank you.