← The GaryVee Audio Experience
Loading summary
Transcript295 lines
- [00:00]
A
This is the GaryVee audio experience. Hey, everybody, it's Gary again, back with another episode of my new show that I'm super excited about called Interrupted by Gary Vee. Today's guest is Jesse Itzler, an entrepreneur, but I'm gonna let him frame it up for you and then I'm gonna fire away with a bunch of questions. But first and foremost, Jess, thanks for being on.
- [00:24]
B
Oh, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
- [00:26]
A
So tell the vaynernation that's listening right now who you are.
- [00:31]
B
Great. Well, I'm a serial entrepreneur. I started out in the music business. I had. I was signed to a record label called Delicious vinyl in the 90s.
- [00:39]
A
What year did you sign?
- [00:40]
B
I signed in 1990. I was 21.
- [00:42]
A
And what kind of artist were you?
- [00:44]
B
Don't laugh. I was a rapper.
- [00:46]
A
I'm not laughing. I'm not laughing.
- [00:48]
B
I was a white language.
- [00:49]
A
Oh, by the way, for a rapper, believe it or not, I'm aware. I can see it. For everybody who's listening, you'll hear some laughs in the background and things of that nature. We're here at an off site kind of conference thing, so we're just recording the podcast in between sessions. So keep going, Jess. So you're a rapper at 21?
- [01:04]
B
Started at. Right.
- [01:05]
A
Where'd you grow up?
- [01:06]
B
I grew up in Long island and then I went to school in Washington, D.C. at American University. Got a record deal. Good test taker. Maybe. I don't know about smart, but fair enough. Got a record deal right out of college after a lot of rejection. Signed to Delicious Vinyl. Got dropped from the label a year later.
- [01:25]
A
Why?
- [01:26]
B
Sales. And just wasn't the right thing. And tough timing. I was behind Vanilla Ice and I wasn't nearly as good as Eminem. Here I am. But it was the best thing that ever happened to me. The worst thing at the time. Cause I only had two things on my resume after that. I was a kiddie pool attendant and I was a rapper. And that's not gonna get you a lot of jazz.
- [01:45]
A
How did the rapper thing go down?
- [01:46]
B
How old are you gonna be? 52.
- [01:50]
A
You look great. So, 52. So you're eight years older than me. So when does rap hit your radar?
- [01:55]
B
Rap hits my radar in right away, man. Right when it came on the scene. I was probably my, I don't know, 16, 15, so early 80s. I heard it's like that by Run DMC. Sucker MCs by Run DMC. Fell in love with it. Grew up in Long island where hip hop was like emerging Fast.
- [02:14]
A
Yes.
- [02:14]
B
And just got the bug. So started out breakdancing. Started out in the. You know, just doing whatever I could do. This is a different era. You know, I remember it and just got into it. And when everybody in college was, like, making resumes and sending resumes to companies, I'm like, I'm getting a record deal. I don't need a resume. And at that time, I'd never been in a studio.
- [02:34]
A
Were you an entrepreneurial kid?
- [02:36]
B
I was an insane kid. Like, I tried everything. My parents gave me a long leash, and I just tried anything. And they allowed me and supported me to do anything like that. But I wouldn't say I was a sharp entrepreneur. I didn't have a paper route. I was. No. But I was just. I was excited.
- [02:52]
A
You were not looking to make money?
- [02:55]
B
I was looking for adventure, man. I was looking for fun. And I still am, but I was never really wired to make money.
- [03:02]
A
So what did your crew look like? Were you like a skateboard kid, too?
- [03:05]
B
I was athletic. I was artistic. I was a good storyteller. And I wasn't scared. I wasn't scared to fail. I wasn't scared to try. Cause my parents really just supported my effort. They praised my effort and not the results.
- [03:21]
A
And did they acknowledge when you failed?
- [03:24]
B
They praised the effort. So if we got blown out of a basketball game, or if I had a great game or a bad game, it was like, you tried so hard. And they've always praised the effort. And as a father of four, that's something that we do with our kids. It's all about the effort.
- [03:38]
A
Where do you think the Mendoza Line is on praising effort and making one appreciate process versus creating delusion when one is not good at that thing?
- [03:49]
B
Well, I think the fine line in between those two points is disappointment. And I think disappointment's been stripped from kids.
- [03:55]
A
I agree.
- [03:56]
B
There's participation trophies. You know, everyone's on it. You know, you can make the team.
- [04:00]
A
So your parents, on the way home of losing a game 42 to 16, were like, Hey, I really appreciate the fact that you were down by 30, that you were going hard. But in the same token, they weren't making excuses or saying, you're gonna be Michael fucking Jordan.
- [04:12]
B
Yeah, but my dad owned a plumbing supply house. Man. My dad didn't even get that deep into it. It was like, he took me to the game, he watched it, and then he went and he sold plumbing supplies.
- [04:21]
A
Did he talk?
- [04:22]
B
Of course he talked. But it wasn't about, like, raising this kid that's gonna go To Harvard or that's gonna be an amazing athlete. It was like letting you.
- [04:30]
A
So you went. You went hard. And you get in the car and he says, good job, kid.
- [04:35]
B
He says, how'd you feel about it?
- [04:37]
A
You know, okay. That's a really good.
- [04:39]
B
Yeah, I like that. And then I said, I feel terrible. We got blown out, right? And then he'd say, like, well, you know, you did great, and keep. Keep trying and that kind of stuff. My father wasn't the kind of person that put any kind of pressure on me to succeed. He was a family guy. He still is. And it was just about that. And mom, teacher, and then raised four kids.
- [05:00]
A
And what was she saying to you?
- [05:04]
B
Same thing. It was just.
- [05:05]
A
She said, you look so cute in your shorts. Was she like that kind of mom? My mom was. She was like, you looked great too. I was like, thanks, mom. I think it was like 16 when I first realized, wait a minute, I'm not the best looking person on earth. Like, you know, was she like that kind of mom?
- [05:21]
B
She was. They really gave me my distance, and they let me figure it out. What number were you in the game? I was the bottom four.
- [05:28]
A
Got it. It's cool, though.
- [05:29]
B
It's very cool.
- [05:30]
A
It is cool. Like, they've been through enough reps where I'm sure you're a sister or brother. That's the oldest brother had it slightly different.
- [05:38]
B
Yeah.
- [05:39]
A
Yeah.
- [05:40]
B
It was the best kind of childhood for me, though, man. There was no. I didn't feel any pressure to have to. You know what they did? They put the pressure on me.
- [05:46]
A
By not putting the pressure on me,
- [05:48]
B
they made me want it for me, like, it can't be my parents dream. It would have to be my dream.
- [05:52]
A
I get it.
- [05:53]
B
And they never. I remember when I wanted to get good grades from my parents, my grades sucked. When I was like, I want to get good grades so I could, like, get to a good school for me. They skyrocketed. So they took the pressure off of me.
- [06:06]
A
The freedom created the result was my goal.
- [06:09]
B
It was my dream.
- [06:10]
A
So now you get signed. Tell them about the New York Knicks song.
- [06:13]
B
I get signed to this label called Delicious Vinyl. I wrote a couple of songs for an artist named Tone Loke. I get dropped from the label a year later, I move back to New York City. I have two things on my resume. I was a kiddie pool attendant, and I was a rapper. But my wife always says, this is so true. You find your passion at the intersection of what it is you love to do and what you're good at and providing a product that people like or enjoy. I love sports and music, so I married those two things and I wrote a theme song for the New York Knicks. It was called Go New York, go. I was 22 and the Knicks paid me $4,000 for the song. It cost me $4,800 to do the song. She asked me if I was into money, not real. I lost $800 on my first big trade. But the reality is I would have paid the Knicks 10 grand to do the song. And the song became the number one most requested song on New York radio. And that took off.
- [07:07]
A
As a 44 year old Knicks fan, you can't imagine what that song actually is. It was being played while the Knicks made a run and actually got to the NBA finals. Lost unfortunately in seven games to the Rockets. But like, I probably heard that song 8,000 times. 7,800 of them were in a four week period in 1994.
- [07:30]
B
Yes.
- [07:31]
A
It was insane.
- [07:32]
B
It was insane.
- [07:34]
A
That became your. Tell me Living that moment where. June 1994. You're eight years older than me, so you're 22, right? 22, 23. Are you basically, the Internet's not around, so people don't know shit. The same way are you just walking around life and before you even say hi, you telling people that you wrote that fucking song? I would be, yeah.
- [07:55]
B
Well, it was interesting cause at that point in my life, I slept on 18 different couches. So. So I had 18 different friends. I bounced around for a week here at a couch, couch, couch, couch. And then all of a sudden I wrote this song. And it's the number one song. You know, at the time, during the
- [08:10]
A
run, it was big, big, big in New York. Uncomfortably big.
- [08:15]
B
Yeah. And I didn't really know how to handle that, you know, but everyone was asking me for playoff tickets and I had no money. I was sleeping on couches. And you know what I did? I got everybody playoff tickets.
- [08:28]
A
That's cool.
- [08:29]
B
Yeah, on my credit card. And I realized at an early age that to be a connector and not having to ask for anything in return and just I knew it would come back tenfold. And I wanted to be the guy that could get anything done, you know,
- [08:42]
A
that was what you wanted to stand for.
- [08:44]
B
I still do anything. Like there's no obstacle, there's no business, there's no goal, there's no race.
- [08:49]
A
So how much in playoff tickets do you end up spending?
- [08:53]
B
Enough that it could. It set me back. But. But again, those seeds. Those seeds, you know, were Paid out later. Yeah, they paid off later.
- [09:01]
A
So what happened next?
- [09:03]
B
So all of a sudden I was like, whoa. As an entrepreneur, you guys, we have a lot of entrepreneur in this, in this room, you realize that you look for something that differentiates yourself. And this was a big differentiator for me. I was like, no one else is doing sports music. Everyone is trying to be Vanilla Ice at the time or whatever, but no one's writing theme songs for pro sports teams. So that was my aha moment. And I started, I set up a company to write theme songs for other teams.
- [09:29]
A
Interesting.
- [09:30]
B
And I'm like, I ended up doing almost every team and then I sold that company in the NBA. NBA and some baseball and football.
- [09:38]
A
What was the most next famous song?
- [09:41]
B
Well, what happened was the songs became somewhat popular in each region, but that I turned it into selling them as a compilation with all the songs that
- [09:49]
A
I understand, but in its own region,
- [09:50]
B
I mean Chicago because the Jordan Came Back. There's a song called Right Back in It. But I sold almost a million units. So it became a business and I sold that company to a public company.
- [10:00]
A
And in that transaction did you make some money?
- [10:03]
B
Yes.
- [10:04]
A
Did you have to work there for a little bit?
- [10:06]
B
I worked. We had an earn out. So I worked there for a year and a half and then we hit the earn out.
- [10:11]
A
Talk to me about that year and a half.
- [10:14]
B
Well, in our contract they paid us a couple million dollars up front. But we had a 16 million dollar trigger if we hit X amount in profit. So we literally had a calendar. We had three years to do it. And I'm like, every day it was like everything was about 364more days, man. We got to hit this number. Every day was a countdown. And that's how I mean and we hit it.
- [10:33]
A
So you're wildly motivated, interest aligned.
- [10:36]
B
Yeah.
- [10:37]
A
Day you hit it, you're out. What happens next? Now you have some money, what happens next? How old are you?
- [10:43]
B
I'm 20 at the time, maybe 26.
- [10:45]
A
And you have some money, like way more than you ever had before.
- [10:49]
B
Yeah. Anyone in my family.
- [10:51]
A
And do you go crazy? Do you dumb shit? What do you do?
- [10:54]
B
No, I mean my life, My life was. Is pretty simple. It's pretty simple then, it's pretty simple now. But I was still 26, 27 years old. But what happened was the guy that bought our company had a timeshare on a private jet and he invited me at 27 years old onto his private plane. It was like when I walked on, it was like, I don't know if you guys saw the wizard of Oz. It was like the scene in the wizard of Oz when everything goes from black and white to color. It's like, what? People fly like this? I was like, you gotta be kidding me. I wanna fly like this. So by the time we landed, my partner and I were like, let's start a private jet company so we can fly on private planes when we travel. I was like, definitely. Except we had no airplanes. But we had an idea and we took that idea.
- [11:33]
A
Who was that partner?
- [11:34]
B
His name is Kenny Dichter. And we took that idea to.
- [11:37]
A
And how did you meet Kenny?
- [11:38]
B
Kenny. So I own the trademark to all these themes. The songs I was writing for the sports teams were popular, but the trademarks were more valuable. So Go New York, Go is being used by Budweiser, Footlocker, all these big companies. And I wasn't getting any money because I sold the song for four grand. So I got smarter and I started licensing the song and keeping the marks. Kenny owned a clothing company. So I'm like, can we make Go NY T shirts and hats? And. And we started working together and built a big business out of it. Then I was a guest. I'm like, let's start a private jet company. He was like, definitely. And we took a meeting with a company called NetJets, owned by Warren Buffett, the largest private jet company in the world.
- [12:19]
A
How did you get to that meeting?
- [12:21]
B
This is a crazy story, man. The president of NetJets daughter had a sweet 16, and Christina Aguilera was performing. And through somebody that knew me, they knew that I knew the manager and called up and, like, this guy wants to do things special for his daughter. And like I said, nothing is impossible. I called up, and the next day at the concert, she was a background singer with the mic off. And he called me up. He was like, I don't know who the fuck you are or what you do, but my daughter is a hero in our town. If you ever need anything, let me know. A year Later, I need 650 airplanes. Jim, you remember Christina Aguilera's story? I'm like, that was me. Can I see you on Friday? Friday comes, we go and we have the meeting. And it lasted about 12 minutes. And the CEO, Rich Santulli, said, literally threw us out. This is a direct quote. And it really pissed me off. He said, if you think I'm giving two guys who probably didn't break a thousand on their SAT, which really pissed me off, I got a 980 on my SAT. So that really bothered me. He's like, that's never happening. He threw us out. And then the president, Jim, who had got his daughter hooked up, grabbed me and said, that was unbelievable. I said, we got thrown out in 12 minutes. He goes, Santulli doesn't give anyone 12 minutes. I believe in this, but bring it to life. Come back next week. So we came back next week and we realized, like, we could never sell this idea in a PowerPoint because this guy sees 100 PowerPoints and entrepreneurs have to differentiate. So we brought in our own focus group and we set up a table by the boardroom table. And one by one we had eight people come. Carl Banks from the New York Giants run from Run dmc, a powerful female real estate mogul in New York. And one by one they stood up and they said they'd never buy a fraction what NetJets was selling, but they'd buy a 25 hour jet card, what we were offering. And he gave us a deal. And a year later we did $5 billion in sales.
- [14:09]
A
Then what happens?
- [14:13]
B
Then life changed. The chips are purple and money's interesting, man. It's interesting. We all play for it, we all want it, but we don't really even know what we're playing for or why we want it. And then we get it and it's confusing. And my relationship, we think of relationships in terms of people has a relationship with your mom and your dad. We don't think of relationships in terms of money and time. And I have a very good understanding of my relationship with time. I know you just posted, I've been talking to that for a while. And money. And all of a sudden I came into a lot of money and I was single and I had airplanes and I was in New York. I could go on a date with this lady. I'd be like, if it was going good, I'd be like, you want to go to Canada? What do you want to do? I mean, like people are going to Studio 54 trying to get to Studio 54. I'm like, let's go to Hawaii tonight. So I had a great decade.
- [15:10]
A
Fair enough. And then what happened?
- [15:15]
B
And then I decided that I didn't want to sell airplanes anymore. Like, that wasn't. I didn't feel like. I felt like I wanted to make a quarter by myself and a 75 cents in the company I was in. I want to go out on my own. So I was training for a hundred mile run. I realized I signed up for the USA National Ultra Marathon Championship because you didn't have to qualify you. You could just send $50 registration and you're in the national championship. And I'm like, I'm competing in the national championship. It's fucking unbelievable. Then I googled how do you run a hundred mile race? And it came back with a year. Everything came back with, how did that
- [15:54]
A
even hit your radar to enter? Do you remember?
- [15:56]
B
I went through a crazy period of time and I was thinking about giving all my money away. I was thinking about charity. I was just like, I just.
- [16:03]
A
You're just trying to figure it out.
- [16:04]
B
Trying to figure it out. And I was like, I want to do something big for charity. And like, I don't want to have a bake sale or a golf outing. My friends are all having like foursomes. I don't want to. I'm not a foursome guy.
- [16:15]
A
So golf term. Relax. Yeah, keep going. Just trying to help the kids at home. Go ahead.
- [16:22]
B
I want to run 100 miles without stopping. So I was like, and what would be the biggest race to do that in? For me, it was the national championship. So I googled it. It gave me everything was like a year training program. The race was in 90 days. So I went from basically couch to 100 miles in 90 days. And during the training, I did a lot of research around hydration and nutrition and everything pointed to coconut water. So I became the human guinea pig for coconut water. And like, what year was this? This was in 2008. Six. 2006. Because when you run 100 miles, like, how many calories that's taking an hour? How much sodium? How many fluid ounces do I need? Coconut water was the solution. So anyway, I. I finished the race. When I got to mile 83, I had seven toenails floating around in my shoe. But I don't negotiate my goals. Like we don't negotiate our goals in this room. Like, whatever our goal is, it's unwavering. And the plot might change and the script might change, but the goal doesn't change. It's not like my goal wasn't 87 miles or 83 miles. So I finished it and then I was like this coconut water shit, man. There's something to this, by the way. I was in a wheelchair for four days after the race, but I did finish it. And I spent a year trying to figure out how to.
- [17:31]
A
Do you have photos of you in that wheelchair?
- [17:32]
B
Yeah.
- [17:33]
A
You ever post it?
- [17:34]
B
Yeah.
- [17:34]
A
That's a good one.
- [17:35]
B
Yeah, I have a whole. Did a documentary on it.
- [17:37]
A
Go ahead.
- [17:37]
B
You know, anyway, long story short, I Spent a year trying to figure out how to import coconut water. And I did get a 980 on my SAT because I couldn't figure that shit out, man. It was way over my head, but I knew I could.
- [17:48]
A
Bro, I can't even spell coconut water right.
- [17:49]
B
Okay, so you.
- [17:50]
A
I get it. Keep going.
- [17:51]
B
You would have been a great partner for me, clearly. But I knew I could market and sell it. So I partnered with a company called ZCO, Z I, C, O. They were doing about $3 million in sales at the time. You know, one of the things as an entrepreneur is figuring out how to get from point A to B the fastest, you know, and for me, the learning curve was too great. So partnering was the fastest way. So I partnered with zco, and two years later, we sold it to Coke and I got married. I married an entrepreneur. My wife owns a company called Spanx, which is a big deal here in the States.
- [18:27]
A
Sure is.
- [18:27]
B
And internationally, too. And that's where I am.
- [18:32]
A
And then what?
- [18:35]
B
I started shifting my life to think
- [18:37]
A
about changing my show to. And then what with. Go ahead.
- [18:41]
B
I started focusing, putting more on my plate of the things I love to do with the people I love to do them with. So my life shifted. It didn't really shift because it's always been this way, actually.
- [18:51]
A
You just put the energy into a different bucket.
- [18:54]
B
The energy was actually always there. But I started really obsessing on experiences and just really obsessing on almost like living a manic life.
- [19:06]
A
Is that how you ended up in Atlanta? The Coke transaction?
- [19:08]
B
No, my wife's business is in Atlanta.
- [19:10]
A
Understood.
- [19:11]
B
But I shifted after these sales to like, really becoming more experiential and being intentional about what year was the life
- [19:17]
A
was the coconut water sale.
- [19:18]
B
2013. Ish. Yeah. And the Coconut Water deal was interesting because we were the first company ever, I believe, or at least publicly, to actually go to again. How do you get from A to B the fastest? To go to influencers and celebrities like Giselle and Kelly Ripa, Eminem, and take money in as investors in exchange for. For equity, for doing more stuff like 50 cents got 50 cent, got equity.
- [19:45]
A
Yep.
- [19:47]
B
These guys wrote checks. It was really authentic. And customers are smart now, man. They can see through endorsements. So we had these, like, real people that really believed in it, real brand ambassadors. And it worked, and we sold it pretty fast. And now I got four kids. We're part owners of the Atlanta Hawks, which, you know, we live in Atlanta and I got.
- [20:06]
A
Which is the epicenter of culture in America.
- [20:08]
B
Yeah.
- [20:09]
A
Maybe the World even for that matter. Yeah, it's a really dynamic time in Atlanta for me. Like, just like, it's been really fun to watch it for the last decade. It's just very clear to me an importance of business, because I think business is a byproduct of what is established in culture. Popular culture in America starts in Atlanta. I really believe that it's an amazing city. When I think about what hip hop actually means to the world and where the innovation and it's just. And then you start layering in the tax breaks that are now in place for Hollywood and just the Hollywood infrastructure that's being built, it's just a really interesting time in Atlanta.
- [20:52]
B
Yeah, I feel fortunate to be a part of it, and I feel fortunate to have been raised in New York, because I think New York gave me a lot of edge, a lot of competitiveness, and it helped me just get over my fear. Man, you couldn't you get swallowed in New York if you were walking around scared?
- [21:08]
A
That's right. What do you think? What's, you know, hearing that background and a lot of people, you know, hear that, it's obviously, you know, I think this is what, you know, we don't even really know each other that, that well. And I think our relationship is like so good because I think it's bound on this intuitive, creative, entrepreneurial execution. I think we have more similarities than we don't, but obviously we have differences. What it's what leads me to this question. What's just hot? Take what are four to seven observations that you think are interesting right now in the world through the lens of entrepreneurship, like individual person, platform, what somebody's doing, what's like on your radar as a consumer of energy around shit like this.
- [21:58]
B
I think that a lot of entrepreneurs have been tricked into thinking that things happen quickly. And, you know, for me, my journey was different. And I remember going to Coke when we had Zico and the president of Coke said it takes eight years to build a brand in this country. And I was like, eight years. Like, you know, I live in dog years. Everything's times. I'm like, I'm gonna live eight years is forever. And I feel like every year for me is four years literally the way I live my life. So I feel like that's in the
- [22:25]
A
speed of your execution.
- [22:27]
B
I just feel like I've done 200 years worth of stuff in 50 years. But I feel like entrepreneurs are feel like it's get rich quick and everything has to be quick. And we try to cut corners and not all but that's just the vibe that I'm getting because we live in an age of likes and insta and fast and speed and that's amazing. But there's also that leads to disappointment. Like it takes time and that's okay. To build the foundations of a long lasting business.
- [22:53]
A
I think what we've glossed over and you touched on it lightly with the tickets is a lot of your execution. You know, it's really cool to get the meeting with the jet company. What's more interesting to me is why those really fancy people would go to that meeting and sit there. You built up equity through relationships. What takes time to be able to convert that energy for that execution.
- [23:17]
B
Yeah. Yes.
- [23:19]
A
And also. Right.
- [23:20]
B
Yeah.
- [23:20]
A
I mean, why did Carl Banks and run and all these people, why did they go?
- [23:24]
B
Why did they go to people? I'm tell you why. Because people buy into stories. People and momentum more than products always. So you're the business plan. You're the business plan. Like we had momentum and we had a story. And when you have a story, that's exciting.
- [23:41]
A
But even taking it for yes. But what I'm curious about is buying the tickets on your credit card. Hey everybody. Hope you're enjoying the podcast right now. Make sure you follow the podcast. That's why I'm interrupting. Let's keep going on this show, but follow the podcast. It'll make my mom super happy. You're right. How does one who's listening right now get in front of the Carl Banks and the run of their day? Gonna right now get in front of Gunna and Von Miller right now for everybody who's listening is a disconnect. I want to go into that because I would argue the seed of so much of this foundation is within that.
- [24:18]
B
You put yourself in a position where luck can find you. You put yourself in a position where you attract luck. So like when I was 21 years old, man, I had nothing. I wasn't, I wasn't like broke, but I had nothing. I was staying on couches. My office was the Beverly Hills Hotel because I realized that if I went to the Beverly hills, I was 21 years old. I got invited to a lunch meeting and I walked in. I'm like, Russell Simmons. There's lior. There's all these music moguls and entertainment moguls.
- [24:46]
A
And I'm like, this is where everyone is.
- [24:48]
B
You don't have to have a room at the hotel to come here for lunch. I was like, what? I can buy an $8 salad and sit here for 10 hours. And I did every day. And that was my office. And then people started recognizing me. And then it was on me to attract them. Hey, Gab, you here again?
- [25:07]
A
You look cool. Look at you.
- [25:08]
B
Whatever. Just to get a face. And now all of a sudden, after six months, I put myself in a position where I could get a record deal, where I could find somebody, where I could call somebody, where I could say, hey, can I borrow you for five minutes?
- [25:21]
A
Let me interrupt. I apologize.
- [25:22]
B
It's the name of the show.
- [25:23]
A
Thank you very much. What scares the fuck out of me is how unbelievably true that is. How an $8 salad for that cost is the arbitrage. And how somebody in Iowa that's listening to this story right now in the rural part of Iowa has something 37 trillion times more powerful than your ability to be in a place to pay $8 for that salad. Which is called direct messaging on Instagram. What scares me to no end is that people will spend 80 trillion hours on dwelling and complaining and worrying about what they don't have. But we live in Bumblefuck, Iowa, listening to these two right now and not realize what they do have, which is us two schmuckos with all our charisma and all this. Still didn't have something called Instagram DM. And the 21 year old, you would have stayed on that couch and DMed for 19 fucking hours. Cause you would have bled for it. And then there would have been one. Yes. And that is such a real story right now for anybody listening. Not just people that happen to be in city areas where this shit could happen. The serendipity of creating that for you now is literally. But people then hear me say that. Cause I put out that content and they give up after 29 people that they DM. And then they DM. And they're like, gary, you're fucking full of shit. I DM'd a bunch of people. I haven't gotten my music out there or sold my T shirt. I'm crazy. And I reply, I'm like, hey, Carl, with three followers, I'm like, how many people have you DMed? They're like, 29. I'm like, go fuck yourself. You sat there for fucking 12, 15 hours a day.
- [27:10]
B
I think, can I add on to that?
- [27:12]
A
You can do anything you want.
- [27:13]
B
So I think a lot of people that send DMs don't even actually know how to send the proper DM.
- [27:18]
A
I agree, by the way, real quick, because I'm gonna add on to it. There's been plenty of people that went to the right places that lost. Oh, yeah, you had the right tack to start the conversation with Russell Simmons. It's my life. I'm on the other end of this now. It is fascinating to me to watch people go with selfish behavior in their one serendipitous moment to get something to happen. When I write an email, people roll up on me. I apologize 99.999% of the time to tell me what I can do for them.
- [27:50]
B
Yeah, it's the whole thing about this. It's like, as entrepreneurs, there's one rule of thumb. We have to create value.
- [27:58]
A
If you obsess on as humans, Right?
- [28:00]
B
If you obsess on value and wake up, how can I provide value as a husband, as a boss, or whatever? In the long term, it's gonna pay off always.
- [28:09]
A
You won't have the ability to pick up all the opportunities.
- [28:12]
B
Right. One thing that I do that really helps me, I ask myself a very simple question. What I recommend myself as? Fill in the blank. What I recommend. Recommend myself as a dad, as a CEO, as a business partner. And if the answer is no, why and what am I doing wrong when it comes to DMs, I feel like people want to know, like, what's in it for me? So when I write an email, I could spend three hours on an email, sleep on it, review it, edit it. How can I make it shorter? Is the caption punchier? If I was the recipient, how would I react to it? Like, it's not like, just, oh, I'm gonna DM and boom. It's like, how do I get this person to respond in the way that I want the response to happen? And I don't believe in real quick.
- [28:54]
A
And what we're painting for everybody who's listening is, look, the fucking Internet has given everybody an at bat. It doesn't mean that you can hit a fastball. And so the work you put into having the ability to hit a fastball, but the fact that we're now in a place where everyone gets an at bat, which was not the case pre Internet, is bonkers. Bonkers shit.
- [29:15]
B
You're a genius about this DM thing, though, because, like, I got a lot of layers to get to me. I have my assistant voicemail people screen my email, but I check my own social. So I actually. To your point, now that you bring it up, the guy that does all my merch for my company, 29 or 29, this race company, we have DMed me and you know what he said? He created a win win. I mean, I'm sorry, he created a no lose win. Wins don't work. Because if I say a win win, you talk about this too.
- [29:45]
A
No, no, I like where you're going
- [29:46]
B
when you have a win win. Gary might win here and I might win here. That's not a win win. That's a Gary's dominating the win. A no loses. Oh, there's no risk. I can't lose. He sent me a DM and it said, hey, send me your logo. I'll send you a bunch of samples of stuff. No cost, no risk, no anything. If you like it, I'd love a shot to work with you. I'm like, okay, I sent it to him. A day later, I get a FedEx with these amazing product line and I'm like, done. Hundreds of thousands of dollars later.
- [30:15]
A
We talked about this earlier and it's great for everybody to listen. It's about doing instead of talking, people DM me all day long. Gary, I wanna work for you for free. Okay? It's amazing. Like, if you think about it, that sounds win win, no loses. Gary, I made this. And then we look at it. Our team looks at things that are made with my content. We 99.999% of the time don't even hear you when you say you're gonna work for free.
- [30:43]
B
Yeah.
- [30:44]
A
Action. Always action.
- [30:47]
B
I invited. I went to a dinner party with my wife, and they went around the room and they asked everyone to name three people that were alive they'd want to have dinner with. And you came up, oh, a Gary Buffett. This one, that one. But when it came to me, all three of mine were rappers. And the reason was I wanted to meet the three people that changed the course of my life as a 14 year old kid growing up in New York. So at the end of the dinner, I called my 10, I invited the 10 most influential artists in my life to my house for dinner. And they all came. I knew two of them. And people like, how did you get Rakim, man? How did you get Big Daddy Kane? And I'm like, I asked them in a no lose. And they came. People want to help people.
- [31:28]
A
Yeah, it's really crazy because again, it's super important because I want to make sure the listener gets value. You put up enough W's on the board and had enough social currency to pull off that Hail Mary, which is amazing.
- [31:38]
B
You're right.
- [31:39]
A
On the flip side, it's also how you got there, because the 21 year old you that had nothing was willing to ask 100 people to get one. Yes.
- [31:49]
B
Yes.
- [31:50]
A
Okay. That's why I'm fired up. So for everybody listening, if you've put enough wins on the board, you're probably more likely to get 7 out of 10 yeses than you think. And for everybody who's the 20 year old you and me that nobody knows at all or gives any fucks, you will get a 1 out of 400. How do I know that? Because you and I are exactly the characters that say yes out of that 400 once every thousand times.
- [32:13]
B
I still do it.
- [32:14]
A
Me too. Which is why I'm saying it again.
- [32:16]
B
Yeah.
- [32:17]
A
This is a very important conversation. And because we grew up in the same era, I shit on these entrepreneurs in this era. You gave me the Internet. Fuck you. Fuck you. This Internet thing. Fuck you, man. First of all, I would have definitely not graduated high school. And second of all, I would have made some crazy shit happen. Like, you've got it so easy right now.
- [32:46]
B
Yeah, I mean, I remember just to that point, Gary, when I was starting out at Marquee Jet, I was looking for my first customer and I didn't have a database, I didn't have Salesforce. I had no way to get lead.
- [32:56]
A
The only way I could get a
- [32:57]
B
lead was to show up where rich people were. This, this was like in 99, right? But I had to go where rich people were. I didn't, we didn't have get a pager. A what?
- [33:05]
A
Did you have a pager?
- [33:06]
B
I had a pager. I probably had like. But there was no but.
- [33:09]
A
You had that pager to like act cool.
- [33:10]
B
I had to show up. I didn't like that. No email list. And I heard about this event called TED, this conference called TED in Monterey, California. I'm like, there's got to be rich people at TED. So I flew 16 hours, I connected in Chicago, landed in LA, drove five hours to Monterey, and I get to the event and I recognize immediately, like, you can't get into TED without a credential. And I'm like, that's so ridiculous. You need a credential. So I just traveled 16 hours, I need a sale. So I go to the coffee shop and I realize that every 15, every hour and a half, people are coming in and they're ordering lattes and muffins. Cause they're on break, they have credentials, they're on break at the conference. And I'm like, so the next day I showed up at the coffee shop and I stole a fucking coffee. No I bought every single muffin in the store. I controlled all the muffin inventory in Monterey, California. And the first break comes and the guy comes. I was like, I'll have a latte and a muffin. The guy's like, you can have a latte, but we're out of muffins. He comes back out. I'm like, I'm so sorry. Sorry, I overheard you. I actually have a muffin. I have 450 muffins. Would you want one? He's like, well. Well. He's like, no, no, you could take one. I said, well, what do you do? We start talking. I said, I want to a jet company. He goes, get out of here. He's like, I'm actually in. This really happened to me. I'm actually in the market for a private jet. He goes, do you mind if we sit down and talk about it? I'm like, Mr. Qualified. You can sit wherever you want to sit, man. Absolutely. And he was my first sale. Josh Koppelman from half.com. and that's how my first sale.
- [34:41]
A
But like. But if you think about. It's actually stunningly unbelievable and wildly not. It's incredibly practical. You know who your customer is. Go there. What pisses me off. And this is why he's telling this story. And it's an interesting take is that's amazing and epic and iconic of a story. You can lay in your fucking bed and email and DM people. Like, what does it matter with people? Like, back to nothing is impossible. Well, the Internet has made it uncomfortably easy. And yet people are losing. Fuck you.
- [35:19]
B
I think it goes back down to what I said earlier, even deeper than the DMs. Gary, go ahead. Is negotiating your goals. And I think you asked me about entrepreneurship and I said, people want to happen quicker and speed up the process and this and that. But I also think it's easy to negotiate your goals. It's easy now to say like, oh, I'm not gonna do this. I'm gonna try this. I'm gonna throw. And like, people don't stick with things. Most people do 95% of the same thing.
- [35:46]
A
They don't mean it, Jess. They actually don't. It sounds good. Like, there's a really deep psychology on this that people have to wrap their. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with it. Like, why do you want to be a billionaire? Why do you wanna start a business? Like, this is what goes into a very deep conversation, which is people do things they think they're supposed to do. They don't mean it when you mean it. There is no other option when you mean it. There is no other option when you don't mean it because you think it projects well, or it's the thing you should do, or your parents want you to, or you think it's cool, or it'll get you girls, or it sounds fun.
- [36:24]
B
The deeper layer of that, the deeper layer of that, of meaning it comes from wanting it. And I could say if someone said to me, what's the silver bullet of being an entrepreneur? I would say, you have to really want it. And then people laugh. I really wanted the promotion. I really wanted to win the lottery. They don't understand what I'm talking about. I can look at someone in their eye and tell right away if they want it or not. If they're willing to go through the 18 couches that I went through and I'm not. I have plenty of egg on my face too. You gotta want it so bad that the obstacles don't mean anything. So. So if you do 400 DMS and they don't hit, it doesn't mean anything. You're on DM1. It starts with.
- [37:02]
A
And when you're really there, you're like almost evil about it and you're happy. Nobody replied. Like, where I go is a scary place where I'm like. Like I hear that. I'm like, yeah. Like I'm like, I want, I want disgusting. Like I want. Like I mean it. If I hit 400 DMs and it comes back goose egg, I get crazy. I'm like, uh huh. I'm like, you fuckers are gonna be real sad when you see this DM in six years.
- [37:27]
B
Yeah, it's fuel.
- [37:29]
A
It's real fuel. Like I'm on some real chip on shoulder. I'm gonna fucking kill your mother shit. Well, you can't when it comes to business in real. I mean, it's when it comes to everything. Like in real life, I don't wanna kill your mother. But in business, when I watch athletes play, like, I love people that, like I love Draymond Green. Like that's who I am as an athlete. Fuck you at all costs. I don't give a fuck. Fuck you.
- [37:55]
B
See, I think it's everything. Because if you don't have that attitude in other buckets of your life, it's everything. You have to create an environment in your head that no matter what, you're gonna get it done.
- [38:08]
A
But real quick. Cause your part ownership in the Hawks is a good comp. I'm always fascinated by this. You're on the field football game, right? That's a rough fucking sport. You're breaking people's fucking faces. Triple 0, game over. Everyone comes to the middle, and you're like, hey, how's Sarah been? I actually feel that in my business life, like, in the context of business, I'm gonna break your ankle and, like, I don't give a fuck, and fuck you, and I want the whole crowd. The reason I've become friendly with Novak Djokovic is, like, he's one of the few people I've reached out to ever. Because I'm like, motherfucker. There is only one thing I see on earth right now that I completely wish I could do, which is be in center court at Wimbledon against Roger Federer and know every fucker in that stadium, and everybody who's watching is rooting for Federer. When Novak goes into that zone, when he's like, basically like, fuck all of you, I get crazy. I have hairs on the back of my neck right now and goosebumps. Novak, when he's against Federer in center court in Wimbledon, like, happened this year, he and the entire world is like, let's go, Roger. Let's go, Roger. When he hits a big shot and everyone goes quiet. The chemicals in my, like, all I want to do is be in that moment. Because nothing excites me more. To look at every single person in the crowd of like, what's up with your boy, Dick?
- [39:30]
B
Listen, if there's one thing we agree on, it's that that's the way I'm wired. And what that does is it makes
- [39:37]
A
you not be scared of losing. You actually already set it up to enjoy the losing.
- [39:41]
B
When I took my book Living with a Seal to the publishers, I got 11 rejections. And all it did was make me be like, I can't wait.
- [39:48]
A
My brother AJ and I have a sports representation business. We just went through a draft class, right? We got a ton of no's. When I tell you I can't wait to see those fuckers in real life in six years and look them dead in the. I'm already doing it. Cause there's some kids that. That said no three years ago that are already not doing as well as they thought they were gonna do. And their agents don't give a fuck about them anymore. Cause they're not gonna make any money, and I would have fucking taken care of them for life. I look them dead in the face and say, you fucked up, Dick.
- [40:16]
B
Listen, anger is a really no.
- [40:19]
A
It's not Angry?
- [40:20]
B
No, no, it doesn't sound angry to me, Gary.
- [40:21]
A
No, it's not. It's.
- [40:23]
B
First you kill someone's mother, then you.
- [40:26]
A
It sounds. No, no, I know you're. No, no, it sounds. Sounds wildly aggressive. It's actually unbelievably good oxygen for its deep merit based competitiveness.
- [40:41]
B
It is. I think. Listen, I think whatever you have to pull, whatever emotion you have to pull from people say, like, get rid of your anger. It's negative. Anger to me is like fuel. I need a little anger, you know, it's fuel. I need it. It's a hard thing to channel consistently and there's a negative.
- [40:59]
A
But it's funny just to play out the story, to give context. Cause I think all these things have layers. It's funny. I'm not angry at any of these kids. I'm devastated for them. Which then manifests me. It's like this incredible. All I want to do is have dinner with the 11 people that said no to your book and you and just sit. I love that shit. I love. But I also like losing. Like, if you're gonna be that person, you also have to be the person that when you're wrong, you're like, man, you saw it. I didn't fucking see it. I'll take that. L. That's why I love sports, bro. You win and lose. Entrepreneurship's hidden right now. Accuhires fake headline. Like, it's just not sports, right? 182 to 79. That's what it was, you know? Yeah.
- [41:47]
B
I mean, there's score. You can use bank accounts and scorecards and that kind of thing.
- [41:50]
A
You can. But people, there's a lot of. Of hiding. There's a lot of manipulation in that. We're just like. You're watching every. I wish everybody recorded every single action. Then you could see it more. Because that's what sports is. We're watching all of them, all the minutes.
- [42:04]
B
I think also at the end of the day, we can talk about this. This is a great conversation. You know, going back to your question about entrepreneurs and what I see at the end of the day, man, we humans, we all want the same thing. What do you think the one thing that we all want is?
- [42:19]
A
I think it's happiness.
- [42:21]
B
Exactly. We want to be happy. So if you're happy, all for it, you know, things make people happy. Different things make people happy. People are driven by different things.
- [42:30]
A
When you said, my dad's a family man, plumber, you know, like, I was like, so awesome. Like. Cause I know that, like, I know so many, like people that feel different. Like, to Your point, there's 7,000 ways to be happy. This is about self awareness of how you tick, not how you think you should tickle.
- [42:45]
B
My brother asked me, my son is a swimmer. He's young, 10 years old. And my brother asked me how my son was doing his swim. And I said, you know, he's doing really good, but he doesn't have the eye of the tiger. And he's a great swimmer, but he does just doesn't have. My brother said, that's okay as long as he's happy.
- [43:02]
A
Yep.
- [43:03]
B
And I'm like, no, my son would be happy playing Minecraft and eating Haagen Dazs every day in Fortnite on the couch. That's not what I want. I want him to live up to his potential. And I don't see how anybody.
- [43:15]
A
But is that a different framework than the way your parents went about it? I'm just curious because it was interesting to hear you. Like when you just said that. I went back to the beginning of this podcast thinking about the freedom your parents gave you and were they into the guiding aspect. Is that why you run a basketball team or not? I'm just curious.
- [43:31]
B
Their potential. So, like, when I look at myself and I'll answer it this way, I don't want to be the 80% version of me.
- [43:38]
A
Right.
- [43:38]
B
I don't want to grow up and be like, okay, you could have been built vayner to this, but you only took it here.
- [43:42]
A
That's you within yourself.
- [43:43]
B
I understand. You know, I understand my parents. Their scorecard was how they raised their kids. That's what made them happy. My mom's whole life, I remember going to this grocery store and someone my mom got into confrontation. I'm like, I can't believe my mother even has a life outside of our family, that she would even react like this. Their whole life was about building my family.
- [44:05]
A
Yep.
- [44:05]
B
That was it. That's what made them happy.
- [44:07]
A
Yep.
- [44:07]
B
My life is bigger than that. Not in a bigger. It's just. It's just got more buckets. It's wider. So for my family, that's their happiness to them was taking care of their kids, putting them in college, giving them a car.
- [44:20]
A
I got it.
- [44:21]
B
And for me, it's. I want a number one. My standards are high, man. I don't want to write a book. I want to best sell.
- [44:27]
A
But do you want to impose that on your children? So my children, for me, when you went there, I'm like, I have no Interest in my kids, taking on my characteristics in any shape or form. I just want them to be in love and respect their characteristics as much as I do mine.
- [44:45]
B
That's fantastic.
- [44:46]
A
Yeah. And to your point, everybody does their own way. I'm just curious where you're going with it.
- [44:50]
B
My kids are on their own journey. And because I used to play basketball till midnight every night and my son wants to play Fortnite, I can't tell him to go play basketball ball. They're on their own journey, but I do want them to live up to their potential. I just sat with a financial advisor and he said to me, what would you rather give your kids? A boatload of money or a boatload of life experiences? I want my kids to experience and see what they like.
- [45:14]
A
On their terms or yours?
- [45:16]
B
On. On both. Like I want to know. I want to give them the opportunity.
- [45:20]
A
It's amazing. By the way, first of all, while we're talking about this, because a lot of people are listening, I have 0.00 interest in ever getting into anyone's actual personal way of parenting. Cause everyone's got their own uniqueness and they should. I love the macro conversation of this game because where I go into this is kids are living in a reality that is intuitive to where their world is going versus the world we came from. I think so much about esports for that reason. It's changed the last 24 to 36 months. But the demonization of parents, and you're not doing that. But I'm just. I'm using this as an example. There are a ton of parents out there who have taken their kids out of the path of becoming all time great professional esports players because they've deemed that not being a thing. And I think about that every day.
- [46:13]
B
My parenting is a work in progress, guys. I'm figuring out as I go. You know, I have four kids. They're all under 10.
- [46:19]
A
Like, I'm curious about Fortnite all day and Haagen Dazs as actually being the stepping stone to actually winning, to actually getting full fulfillment. I really believe that. Like, I'm debating it for myself. I'm fascinated by that because I. And it sounds like you too for that matter. I didn't do anything that gave people confidence that I was up to something. When I was 11, I was doing everything off the reservation. I was an immigrant kid. Everybody had to get good grades. I was getting Fs. I never clicked into wanting good grades for myself. I clicked into this is all horseshit. And I always Wonder what are the 10 and 12 year olds thinking right now that we can't see? And I feel like some of them are exactly where I was. And I think about that.
- [47:03]
B
Listen again, I think I can only speak for myself. And just so you guys know, my kids have glitches just like your kids have glitches.
- [47:10]
A
Everyone's got glitches.
- [47:11]
B
You know, it's like you think you sold a company. It's like I got the same. My kids don't get out of the carpool line. Cause they have anxiety. The same kind of stuff everybody deals with. And I don't know. I just know that I wanna give them as much opportunity.
- [47:24]
A
Yeah, honestly, you'll appreciate this. I wanna take even the four of them out of the equation. I just think you're a creative thinker and it's just an interesting conversation for me. You know, just. I think we're at an interesting time. I think people are in deep shit in thinking they know where the world's gonna be in 15 to 20 years. When I think about what 5G is gonna do as an infrastructure and what that opens up. You got fucking Elon Musk today talking about, like living on mobile. Like people are. Like people don't get it. Like we FaceTime people in fucking China and it costs $0. The people that were making decisions for us didn't have phones that got off a wall. Like, it's fucking crazy out here and it's about to get wildly crazier. You think technology's advanced now? This is dog shit. This is a fucking pager.
- [48:12]
B
I agree.
- [48:13]
A
I know you agree. So we're imposing today's reality against kids that are gonna live in a world that 15 years from now looks nothing like today. And we must hedge for that in when we think about shit. Gary's president, but you know what I mean, it's fun. I know that makes sense to you. We're byproducts of that. Yeah, white kids talking about rap in 1985 in fucking long Island. Rap wasn't even a fucking genre to people. It was a fad. Rock and roll. The Internet was a fad. People laughed at my fucking father when I launched an E Commerce wine business. The Internet was a fad. Fuck TikTok and Vine. The whole fucking thing was a fad. Do you understand what's coming?
- [48:56]
B
Fuck
- [49:00]
A
parting shots. What do you want people to know? You got a lot of people listening.
- [49:03]
B
Well, first of all, I want to thank you for the opportunity. This is super cool. I've been wanting to do this for a long time. We connect once a week in a while. But it's good to see with you.
- [49:10]
A
It's good to see you too.
- [49:11]
B
I like the arm wrestle.
- [49:12]
A
How's Vayner speakers going? Okay, we'll do that pay per view. How's Vayners speakers going? One thing that everybody should know is I think you guys saw about 16 months ago we started Vayners speakers. I teamed up with my agent at ca, Zack Nadler. He's now the CEO of that. It's been really fun. He's actually in the room while we're talking. And one of the key targets for us was Jesse, because we were looking at things that arbitrage who is way better than people realize at this exact second they are at this thing. So it's exciting that you're with us. Straight talk. Because that's what I love about you. How's it going?
- [49:50]
B
It's been great. Zach's been amazing. I was hesitant to do it because I was getting a lot of. Yeah. So, I mean, just so you guys know, I started speaking about three years ago. I wrote a book. The book became a number one bestseller. It was a number amazing. But it launched me in a completely different direction than I anticipated. I started getting asked to speak, and the first speaking event I went to, there were 40 people, no microphone. The guy said to me, speak loudly and slowly. You have 45 minutes. And that has led to, you know, much bigger stages. And I did it all myself for two years. And then Gary text me and said, I don't remember this. I'm starting this thing. And I saw you speak. You were great or whatever, and introduced me to Zach and what goes through
- [50:32]
A
the process, like, why am I to
- [50:33]
B
give him the gig?
- [50:34]
A
I get so much inbound myself. Like, what are you thinking about? Right.
- [50:36]
B
The process for me was, you know, can I do this myself? I'm doing it myself. And it became an easy decision for me because I fell in love with Zach. And, you know, you handpicked Zach and what you guys do at Vayner speakers, and I weighed it all, and it became super simple for me. And it's just been a really good process. Listen, after I sold my last business, I'm like, I'm never having partners again.
- [51:00]
A
Right.
- [51:01]
B
I don't want partners. I want freedom.
- [51:03]
A
Right.
- [51:03]
B
You'd work, so you get freedom.
- [51:05]
A
Correct.
- [51:05]
B
And I have a partner with partnership with you guys. And it's been really. It's been really good.
- [51:11]
A
And what's been the most surprising thing? I like learning
- [51:17]
B
it's just there hasn't been really big surprises. You guys laid out exactly what it has been, and it hasn't. We've been able to talk the surprises
- [51:25]
A
that deliver on first time. I agree.
- [51:28]
B
This is what we're gonna do, and we're gonna do it. And when I was disappointed in certain things, I would say to Zach, like, I want something bigger. I need more. And, you know, and he would respond, so, yeah, it's been really.
- [51:39]
A
You like it? You like speaking?
- [51:41]
B
I love it.
- [51:41]
A
Yeah, me too.
- [51:42]
B
I wouldn't do it if I didn't like it.
- [51:43]
A
Yeah, I understand.
- [51:44]
B
Yeah. As you get older, man, it's like you only have two buckets. Gary, you got aggravation versus reward. And I want low aggravation for the most amount of reward. If something's high aggravation, even high reward, I'm not doing it. And you guys have made it low aggravation.
- [52:01]
A
You know what's funny, Jess? If you, I and many others can get people to realize you don't have to wait to 50 and some success to put yourself in a position for that. And you could actually do that at 22. You just have to be a little patient and a little more humble. But you could be way happier. You and I, in a lot of ways did do that, which is what I think led to this. And I think a lot more people can do it, but they have all these expectations of what they're supposed to do from 22 to 30, and it fucks them up.
- [52:31]
B
It's true. And just to add on about the speaking. Cause I just, you know, I've talked about walking in and speaking in front of 40 people. And then, you know, as entrepreneurs, man, it's okay to start small. And I just want to say first, go ahead.
- [52:44]
A
I'm sorry.
- [52:44]
B
It's okay to start small. You start small, you think big, you scale it fast. Something my wife always says, you start small, think big, and scale it fast. And that's the way we've been able to do it. It feels really authentic and grassrootsy.
- [52:57]
A
When I wanted to get into tech, the first five public things, meetups, events, I did. This is in 2009, when wine library had gone from 3 to 60 million. The first five things I did was cold email conferences in the tech world and offer to set up a table and pour wine. I was a bartender at the first, a Robert Scoble Jaiku event, a technorati conference. I literally. The first five events. I found a picture of me and AJ recently at a tech cocktail event, which was a D.C. meetup. I was the help. That was after real success. Most people don't have the humility to do that with no success.
- [53:46]
B
Yeah.
- [53:47]
A
18 couches.
- [53:48]
B
18 couches, brother.
- [53:50]
A
Love it, brother.
- [53:50]
B
Thank you, man.
- [53:50]
A
Thanks for being on. Let's clap it up for Jess. I think 18 couches could be a really. I think 18 couches could Be a real framework for either a book or a talk. Because I really think. And you saw I zoned in on it. I think if you can go deep in the way that I've gotten deep into, like, fear and insecure, like if you go deep, deep into the network you built, which then became the foundation of everything you've pulled off and the pattern recognition of human arbitrage when you over deliver and you ask for less in return, I think there's a real unlock there for you. And I think the framework of 18 couches could be a really cool starting point. Yeah.
- [54:27]
B
And the mindset of me when I was on 18 couches was, I'm a millionaire. They just haven't paid me yet. That's how I was thinking. That's how I was thinking, bro.
- [54:34]
A
I've owned the jets for a long time.
- [54:36]
B
Right, Exactly. That's a tough one, though.
- [54:39]
A
I'm gonna pull it off. Everybody, if you enjoyed this podcast, please go back and look at the prior episodes. They're loaded. I appreciate your attention and thanks for being part of this journey. See you later.