GaryVee’s Blueprint For Winning In The Digital Age

Forbes

Serial entrepreneur and VaynerMedia CEO Gary Vaynerchuk joins Forbes to share his blueprint for building brands in today’s fast-moving digital landscape. From his take on TikTok, AI influencers, and trading cards to his critique of corporate marketing, Gary doesn’t hold back. He explains why most businesses are vulnerable without a strong social media presence and how to day trade attention effectively. Gary also reflects on education, entrepreneurship, and his long-term vision for VeeFriends. If you're building a brand or just trying to stay ahead, this one’s for you.  00:00 – Intro: GaryVee on the Forbes Stage 00:47 – How Entrepreneurship Started for Gary Vee 03:39 – GaryVee's Message on Grades and Success 06:03 – Why He Wrote Day Trading Attention 07:32 – How Emotion Kills Modern Marketing 09:44 – Boardroom Politics vs. Consumer Focus 12:01 – Why Small Brands Win in the New Economy 13:08 – What “Day Trading Attention” Really Means 15:59 – The Platforms Gary Vee Prioritizes Now 17:56 – How to Use Data to Drive Marketing 19:18 – Why Every Business Must Master Social 22:10 – Legacy Media vs. Digital Reality 23:16 – Why Trading Cards Matter to Gary Vee 25:12 – The Power of IP in an AI World 28:14 – How Community and Characters Build VeeFriends 30:36 – Teaching Kindness and Accountability Through IP 31:45 – GaryVee’s Vision for the Next 15 Years  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00Hi, everyone. I'm Maggie McGrath, Senior Editor at Forbes. From navigating the early digital

00:08landscape to building a modern media powerhouse, our next guest has consistently been ahead of

00:14the curve when it comes to internet trends and capturing audience attention. He is a New York

00:20Times bestselling author, a sought-after speaker, and a serial entrepreneur. Please welcome Gary

00:27Vaynerchuk. Gary V, thank you so much for being here. I'm humbled to be here. You've been generous

00:32with your time with Forbes over the years. You've appeared at the CMO Summit. You participated in

00:36our Scale Up series several years ago. But for anyone watching who perhaps missed these interviews,

00:42can we start at the beginning? What sparked your entrepreneurial drive? Probably DNA. The truth

00:49is it was so early. It's almost hard for me to recall a time in my life where it wasn't

00:57a foundational currency, a backdrop. I think about Wonder Years, the TV show, and like

01:04talks about like music and the 60s being a backdrop of Kevin Arnold's life. Entrepreneurship

01:10was the backdrop. You know, basically, as soon as I moved to Edison, New Jersey in August of 1982,

01:17I was born in the Soviet Union. I came to the U.S. when I was three, four. We lived in Queens

01:22for a couple years, and then Dover, New Jersey for a year. But then we moved to Edison, which

01:27is where I grew up. And that was August of 82, right before school started, first grade.

01:34Pretty much at that point, meeting friends in the neighborhood, you know, shoveling snow,

01:41you know, when it snowed, and we had a snow day, washing cars, lemonade stands, seven, eight, nine,

01:51ten years old. Literally, just as I was rolling into this interview, I was doing a podcast with

01:58Dr. Beckett, who invented the Beckett baseball card guide. This was the price guide, the monthly price

02:05guide that dominated the 80s and 90s around trading cards. That was my Bible at 11 years old. So I

02:13went from lemonade stands and shoveling snow and, you know, those kind of things to baseball cards.

02:22And then I went from baseball cards to working my father's liquor store and becoming weirdly obsessed

02:28with building a huge business for my dad and mom, which I feel very proud of. And so it's always been

02:34there. Even I was a poor student from probably many different reasons. But at the top of the list

02:40was, I just could not think about, it was pure obsession. I would sit in third or fourth grade

02:46class and think about how I was going to sell sports cards to my classmates at lunchtime. And like,

02:52what were they gonna, what was Brian Chen or Tyler Bunting gonna react to? Or, oh, this kid's wearing

02:58a Cincinnati Reds hat today. I'm gonna sell him a Pete Rose after school. And it was just, it was

03:04really, really, really ingrained. And so I would say there was no spark. I think, you know, November

03:1314th, 1975, the moment I was born, the spark was there. And, and I'm very grateful that, you know,

03:20something that was naturally in me is something I enjoy so deeply.

03:25You mentioned poor grades. I heard you give a keynote to some local high schoolers where you

03:30actually told them, I'm paraphrasing, but don't worry about your grades. A bad grade is not the

03:35end of the world. How mad were the teachers at you after that? You know, it's funny, 10 or 12 years

03:40ago, I started talking a lot about grades in college. And I would get substantial hate emails

03:48from parents, you know, from teachers, from educators. And I, and I always tried to refine

03:56and tighten my message. I wanted people to understand that I believe education is the foundation of like

04:01life. But the system that's in place currently, and has been in place for a while, works for many,

04:08which is amazing. But it does not work for many. And I think that is a worthwhile debate.

04:13So I would say to you, that one, far less, because it's 15 years removed from where we were. 15 years

04:22ago, I would have never been invited. And I might have been taken off stage if I was too aggressive.

04:28Today, I think a lot of educators in the school system are looking for voices to round out. And

04:35they do have a lot of children who overstress and get into very bad mental places over a term paper

04:42or an acceptance letter into a college. And I think any grownup should care enough about a child

04:49to tell them the truth, which is, there is no correlation to being a profoundly great student

04:57and having a happy life. A successful life is even laughable. The concept that we are not aware that

05:05many, many people have been financially successful who have not gone to an Ivy League school and got

05:10great grades, that should have never even been a conversation. I think the deeper conversation

05:15is not financial success. It's, are you a happy grownup? And I think everybody who's watching this

05:21or listening right now knows there's no correlation to getting good grades in school and having a happy

05:25life. And I think it's an important message. And then, and I'm, I'm happy of where I am on this

05:30journey. It was very tough for me. I took a lot of lumps, um, reputationally, business opportunities.

05:37People were very emotional about the college and grades thing 15 years ago. I think we're more

05:42round, by the way, plenty of people are about to DM me just on this right now. There's still people

05:46really holding on. Um, but this is not about being educated. This is about a system in place that

05:53has strengths and weaknesses like any system. And, uh, I think it's worth debating and rounding

05:58out. And most of all, if you love your child, you should have a well-rounded conversation.

06:03You talk about how much has changed in 15 years. It's a nice segue to your most recent book,

06:08day trading attention came out last year. And you write in the beginning that in 2013,

06:14it's not quite 15 years ago, but you wrote jab, jab, jab, right hook, how to tell your story in a noisy

06:19social world. It was a guide on how to communicate on the social platforms of the day. Given how much

06:25the advertising landscape has changed in the 10 years that have since passed, I figured it was

06:28time for an updated version. What has changed in 10 years could be its own college thesis. But I guess

06:36my question to you right now is what has been the most important strategy for you in shifting your

06:42approach and growing online communities and your brand from 15 years ago to today?

06:50Humility. You know, it's, it's probably one of my least obvious attributes when I do interviews and

06:56communicate, I'm an aggressive, you know, convicted communicator. But the reality is, is that

07:01to really win with the consumer, you have to have a level of relationship with it, with them,

07:08with the collective, that is grounded in a astonishing level of humility, and non transactional

07:17DNA. I would argue that most people struggle in business and marketing, because they are overly

07:23emotional about how they make their money today. Overly emotional about how they make their money

07:29today. Why do you say that? The CMO summit, which you put on a great one. Seth's incredible. When I'm in

07:37those meetings with those CMOs, when I talk about tick tock live shopping, or I talk about influencer

07:44marketing, tick tock live shopping, if you talk to a retailer, who's got 400 leases around the country,

07:52and all their cogs are locked are caught up and in stores and fixtures and employees,

08:00me pontificating that in a studio like this, you can sell just as much stuff as your store in midtown

08:06right now. With all those costs, you're, you struggle to go there, because we've made the

08:12financial commitment there. And we're going to be judged every 90 days, because we're a big company,

08:17either publicly or in a PE environment. And so you start to say no, not because you're not

08:24intellectually strong enough to know that it's happening. It's just that you're emotionally and,

08:30and actually tied up into how you're making your economics. Now, when I talk about influencers,

08:35six, seven, 10 years ago, are coming, well, if you just paid Tiger Woods $20 million a year

08:40to wear your watch, the concept of like, hey, these kids online can do more for you for hundreds of

08:46thousands of dollars, doesn't sit well, you're locked into a three year $60 million deal. So if

08:53you ask me why things have worked for me, or what has been the go to, it's never fight the market.

09:01If the truth is that consumers are now enjoying social, or influencers, or live shopping, or here's

09:08a good one that's going to really bother everyone, AI influencers. If it hurts your feelings, as a

09:15human, you're against the concept of AI humans on the internet, people that are not real, that are

09:23computer generated. If that's your ideology, you're allowed. But if the consumer is consuming that

09:30content and doesn't care if it's a real life human, or an AI generated human that's communicating to

09:35them about a bottle of water, or a dress, or a blouse, or a hat, you're going to lose that game.

09:41The customer is undefeated.

09:42I was not going to ask you this till the end, but your book is dedicated, quote, to the 1% that make

09:50consumer-centric decisions versus the 99% that make decisions based on boardroom politics, which

09:56seems to tie in to what you were just saying. You really believe that most entrepreneurs are

10:01making decisions based on boardroom politics, and that 90-day cycle that you just referenced.

10:06No, I don't believe most entrepreneurs are. Entrepreneurs have no choice. They have to be

10:10consumer-centric, or they're out of business pretty quickly. I believe most executives are.

10:15Interesting. So that's your message to corporate America.

10:18Yeah. And by the way, I don't say it from a place of audacity or disdain. I actually come from a heavy

10:24place of empathy. If you're making $613,000 a year in stock options in a big corporation,

10:31and you have your mortgage to pay, and your life is run by your income,

10:38to go into a boardroom and throw a bomb in there and say, we're doing everything wrong,

10:44that's politically vulnerable. So I understand how people and why people do what they do.

10:54But my point has always been, while I've been in Madison Avenue the last 15 years with all these

10:59CEOs, CMOs, board members, CFOs, is I understand why you do it, but it doesn't mean that it's right.

11:06Hmm. And there's a reason that there's so much decline, especially you look at the CPG space.

11:13They used to have substantial moats. If you were a small entrepreneur, you couldn't get into Walmart.

11:18You couldn't get into Sephora and Ulta. You couldn't get into CVS or Wegmans. You also didn't

11:24have enough money to run television spots. That's all been flipped with Shopify and Amazon,

11:30Amazon. And with the retailers needing younger consumers, so now they're taking their shopper

11:37marketing dollars from big companies and they're giving it to little companies to come into their

11:41stores. Small brands have one TikTok that goes viral, that outsells in product what a Fortune 500

11:50competitor there is, spends millions of dollars in television investment. We have a very big day of

11:56reckoning going on right now because attention has shifted to the mobile device and to social networks

12:02and distribution has shifted to Amazon 3PLs, to Shopify opportunities. You know, you don't need to

12:11win at Walmart to build a big business. You need to win at Walmart and Target to get to that next tier.

12:18But you can get to $100 million in revenue today without ever stepping yourself into Arkansas or

12:25Minnesota. That is unprecedented in the history of consumer packaged goods. And that's just the CPG

12:32space. This goes on and on and on. And so look what Melanie did with Canva to Adobe. She couldn't have

12:39done that 30 years ago without the internet being where it is now. She wouldn't have had the money to go to

12:43the trade shows in Las Vegas and buy a booth for $100,000 to court corporate clients. It's changed.

12:53Mm-hmm. When you talk about attention, you called your book Day Trading Attention. And obviously it's

13:00a whole book. Yes. I don't want to give away the whole book. It's okay. You can. But what is the

13:04thesis? What does it mean to day trade attention? From a marketing lens, this will probably land with

13:11anyone who's from marketing or knows a little bit about it. We used to spend months and months and

13:16months to plan our campaign. You know, the way, you know, again, if you ever watched Mad Men, or if you

13:23know somebody in the industry, or if you're in it, you get a brief, you work on it for months to think

13:28from strategy, then creative tries to crack the idea, then you got to sell it to the client, then they say

13:34yes, then it has to go to a production shoot, then that takes time. Then, then finally, then nine months

13:41later, this is happening today. There are brands who will spend millions of dollars to take nine

13:48months to make a 30 second television commercial. Do you know how insane that is?

13:56Trying not to laugh because I know a lot of people make money that way, but the world is moving faster

14:00than that. I mean, hundreds of thousands, millions, and then hundreds of thousands, if not millions of

14:07dollars, and then they have to spend millions of dollars to amplify that 30 second commercial. My thesis, my

14:16argument is that is dinosaur behavior. On the record, I wish it still existed. Very few humans were built to

14:26dominate the 1960s, 70 Madison Avenue landscape more than me. I would have crushed. I would have been in

14:33midtown with a cocktail. I would have been charming gift of gab. I would have had good ideas. I would

14:39have cared. It would have gone great. It would have gone great. We would have built a huge firm.

14:46It just doesn't exist. I wish it did. What we do at VaynerMedia, what day trading attention is about

14:52is harder than coming up with a slogan and making a 30 second video.

14:58But the argument is it's moving that fast. That today, as we sit here right now, every fortune 5,000

15:06company should have already posted three, six, 11 pictures or videos across the seven social networks

15:14and watch the organic AI driven algorithms reach the audience based on the creative value

15:23and then analyze the quant and qual data of that success or failure to make another decision to put

15:33out another piece of content later today. Three, six or seven pictures per social. So that's three on

15:41Instagram. No, I would say overall. I'm trying to be empathetic here. The number is going to be far

15:46greater. And with AI coming, these numbers are going to be, I'm going to watch these. I'm going to make

15:49fun of myself about that quote in 24 months. And by the way, Gary Vee, my personal brand this morning

15:57has already put out 12 to 15 pieces of content. Across all the social media platforms. For

16:02everybody who's listening from LinkedIn to Facebook to Snapchat spotlight to TikTok to X Twitter to YouTube

16:10shorts. Every one of these platforms now is very similar. Facebook proper, Facebook proper, not

16:17Instagram. One could argue is the most important platform right this second because of how much

16:23attention is actually on it and how many people have forgotten about it because they've moved on

16:28to TikTok and Instagram. So you have the best marketers, at least the contemporary young ones

16:33or even old ones that get it, putting all their energy on TikTok and Instagram. Meanwhile, back to day

16:39trading, Facebook sitting here with an ungodly amount of attention, especially if you're targeting 45 to 80

16:46year olds. Oh, by the way, they have plenty of money, right? And brands are not posting in there

16:52organically. The other thing that's crazy is an ad land. You always used to make something knowing

16:57you were going to spend media dollars to amplify it, to hide if it was bad. I've been saying lately

17:02for 70 years, working media dollars, the money you would pay the print Forbes to put a full page in

17:09the magazine 20 years ago, a billboard outside, a radio station, a television, working media dollars,

17:15the media dollars, not the creative. That was in for 70 years. Those were used to hide bad creative.

17:23Now, when you put out all your advertising on the organic algorithms, when something does remarkable,

17:30that's when you should put media dollars behind it because you've gotten validation that people

17:35think it's good. So now I believe the job of working media dollars is to amplify good creative.

17:41We've gone from it be good money, big money, hiding bad creative to now big money, amplifying good

17:49creative. The fortune 5,000 brands that most attack that first will win. So that's what you mean when

17:57in day trading attention, you say use data to inform content creation and optimize ad spending. So

18:03basically see what goes viral. I would argue or over index, right? Viral is like a whole different

18:09animal in itself. If you and I started a T brand and our first 50 posts got 80 views because we're new

18:18and our 81st post got 8,000 views, we need to take note of that. One, you know, for me, 8,000 views is a

18:26devastating moment for a brand that's just starting with 50 views. 8,000 is a great win. I was there too.

18:32We're all starting at zero. So over indexing. But if you have virality, yes, you should bet the farm

18:38on it. You mentioned a few minutes ago, the number of social media platforms and how you should be on

18:45all of them. I personally am losing track and I lose the energy to keep up on threads and blue sky

18:53and Instagram. And I've ignored Facebook. I'm not on tech talk. That's Maggie personally,

18:58like Maggie. And Maggie's allowed. Maggie, the person is allowed. But for entrepreneurs and for

19:03yourself, how do you keep track and stay on top of all the new platforms emerging? Because one of

19:09your other pieces of advice is prioritize early adoption of new platforms and features, which

19:14that in and of itself is a job to say nothing of building a business. By knowing I have no choice.

19:19Like if I want to be successful, I need to be able to convey my messages. And success comes in a lot

19:30of forms. I have a lot of selfish and a lot of selfless energy inside my body. I desperately want

19:36to achieve entrepreneurial success. I love building the things I'm building. I want VaynerMedia to be

19:41huge. I want VaynerSports to be huge. I want VFriends to be huge. I want WineText to be huge.

19:45But I also have an incredible gift in that I was mothered so damn well. Parented. Big shout out to

19:54Sasha too. I'm not leaving you hanging dead. I was parented so well that there's a lot of things I

19:58want to say. And if I want to reach 8 billion people, I need to be everywhere. And so I think

20:05if you're a business, if you're Coca-Cola, you have no choice. You're trying to sell Coke to everyone.

20:10Right? If you're a politician, you're trying to win your election. You know, if you're anybody

20:15who wants to achieve something commercially, you have no choice. I would argue understanding

20:22social networks and how they work for a business is now right on par to understanding how to balance

20:29your checkbook. It is oxygen to me. I could not comprehend having the naivete to walk around

20:37earth and not realize that if my business is not good at social, I am vulnerable for decline.

20:45My business is not good with social. I am vulnerable to decline. That's an important message.

20:51I do not believe that people have grasped how much of the consumer's attention actually sits on

20:56these seven platforms. When you take them, you add the streaming service, you know, the Netflix,

21:04the Hulu's, you add some of the iconic print magazines that have been able to segue like

21:11yourselves to online digital. You're not leaving much left. Like after YouTube, Twitter, Facebook,

21:21Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, LinkedIn, and Hulu, Netflix, like, do you know how little cable television

21:30is being consumed? I mean, like, do you know that none of the four of us right now can name five

21:36active sitcoms on network television? I don't know if I can name one. I'm really not kidding. Like,

21:42think about it, Mac. Like, give me, give me this, like, last fall's new series. It's impossible.

21:50And I don't know if you've noticed, but the newspaper keeps getting thinner and thinner and thinner

21:54and more and more expensive outdoor billboards. Have you watched how humans walk or sit in cars?

22:00We're all on our phone. I, I, I don't know what else to say. Like, and again, I, I need everybody

22:07to hear this. I'm not happy about this. I'm also not sad. I don't think this is like catastrophe.

22:13Like, worlds change. Like, you've seen that photo, right? When everyone's like, the world's ruined.

22:18We're all on our phones in the subway. And then they show a picture of everybody reading the

22:22newspaper in the subway in the thirties, nothing changes, everything changes. But yes, I will say

22:27this nice and slow, given the magnitude of the audience that listens to this audio,

22:34whether you're B2B, which is LinkedIn, or you're B2C, which is the rest of them.

22:40If your business is not strong, forget about on strong on social, every quarter is about to get

22:49worse. Switching gears a little bit, please. You mentioned every, everyone's watching their

22:55phones. Everyone's online, but you have trading cards. Yes. The tops V, I want to get this straight

23:01tops V friends, Chrome trading cards. And you mentioned baseball cards earlier. I imagine

23:06there's a tie between that love at 11 and V cards, but how does this fit into your overall business

23:12strategy? Because it's returning to the physical, it's returning to the real world.

23:16Well, let me, let me build on that. While I just made that whole rant on social, I would argue one

23:23of my favorite businesses to invest in and be involved in right now is experiential. This is not

23:28about, or this is about, and the problem with traditional marketing is it's overpriced. It's

23:35back to day trading attention. Let me be very clear. I would buy tomorrow for every one of my clients

23:40and for my businesses, V friends, wine text, Gary V the brand. I would buy commercials on network and

23:47cable television. I would buy full page ads in print. I would buy radio, terrestrial radio, live

23:54reads. I would buy direct mail. I would buy all of them if they actually slashed our prices by 90%

24:02to make it valuable to the actual reality of how much attention those things have. Got it?

24:09So everything I just mentioned, as we sat here for the last 15 minutes, plenty of people did

24:15consume a commercial on network television during the today show or something. Many people are right

24:21now across this country having a coffee, reading their local newspaper, the pricing's off.

24:27Hmm. So I don't believe we've gone completely digital. In fact, I actually think experiential

24:34like concerts and festivals are growing because we need a little bit of detox from digital.

24:41And you know this, we also want to take the photos at these places for digital. People literally go

24:48to events to take a photo to post on Instagram at scale. Anyway, back to V friends. I'm going to add to

24:56this. I hope this brings some value to someone. One could argue in the next decade with the explosion

25:03of AI that the only safe business is intellectual property. One could argue. Obviously there'll be

25:14many others. Four years ago, I decided to launch my own intellectual property inspired by Pokemon and

25:22Marvel and Disney and ultimately really Sesame Street. As I've been on my journey, I've realized

25:27back to that selfish, selfless energy, Jim Henson really does it for me. I feel like he really was

25:35very entrepreneurial and wanted to win, but he had a lot of soul. There was a lot of good in there.

25:40I really resonate with that. So anyway, V friends was born on a NFT project, blockchain. Remember that

25:48little exciting moment, which by the way, on the record, that is going to be fun to watch. I'm sure

25:53some of you in this room, you guys are youngsters, you may not know this, but in 2000, all the internet

25:58stocks collapsed in April of 2000. And literally major magazines and newspapers, including this one,

26:06wrote versions of the internet was a fad.

26:09I'm sure we could find that Forbes article.

26:13I'm sure. And then obviously by 2004, it was quote unquote back. Same will happen with NFTs. There was

26:19too much greed, just like on internet stocks, but non-fungible tokens on the blockchain, in fact,

26:26is one of the most important innovations that sit today because I'm sure it's not lost on anybody who's

26:30listening. Deep fakes, no longer being able to trust video is a crisis in our society. For the last

26:38hundred years, video proof has actually been the judge and jury of our society. Now there will be

26:45literally millions of videos of me in the next decade saying things I never said because AI deep

26:52fakes are that good and nobody will be able to tell the difference. The blockchain actually is one of

26:57the counters to that. And I don't want to get on a tangent. We'll talk about that another day. But

27:01anyway, V friends is a big deal for me. In fact, if I had to bet on the most substantial business I

27:08will build in my life, it's going to be V friends. Interesting. The trading cards is a very big

27:14deal. Tops is the iconic trading card, you know, company, even people that don't collect have heard

27:19of it. They've only done intellectual property deals with Disney. So Star Wars, Marvel, Disney. This puts

27:28V friends in amazing, amazing company, way too premature. But the tops Chrome is the iconic brand. I want kids

27:36around the country to buy a pack of cards and fall in love with my characters. They will discover it on

27:41YouTube Kids. We have cartoons. They will discover it. We have kids books with Harper Collins. We do

27:46ungodly amounts of things on digital. Every day we're on Whatnot and TikTok shop selling collectibles

27:53on live social shopping. But I believe trading cards and comic books are incredibly imperative for me to

28:00have a prayer to pull off my ambitions. And that's why I'm so excited about it. Ambitions to reach 8 billion

28:05people. That's right. I was going to ask if the cards were a way of building community in a different

28:11way. But what you just described sounded like an IP play. It's fully an IP play. I don't think an IP can be

28:17successful without community. Let's think about it. Right? Harry Potter. Right? All those kids and grownups

28:24growing, you know, dressing up as Harry Potter to go to the Midtown execution or to a new film if they came out with

28:31one, that's community. All those nerds that go to the Javits Center or go to San Diego for Comic-Con,

28:38by the way, back to sports. You diehard Philly fans, us Knick fans, what was I in last night in

28:44Madison Square Garden? I was there with a community of 30,000 other maniacs that desperately wanted us

28:51to win a game and all left as if someone in our family had died. That's true community. And if you

28:58go to whatnot and you go type in vFriends and you watch 1,500, 300 people watching us live in the

29:06middle of the day, as we open up trading cards, as we read comic books, as we show off our little new

29:12pins, you'll realize what community is about. For me, what's crazy is I was so affected by my

29:18childhood. And I grew up right in the 80s. Garbage Pail Kids, Cabbage Patch Kids, My Little Pony,

29:26Strawberry Shortcake, Transformers, G.I. Joe, Max Hedrum, Alf, the Smurfs. I was being bombarded with

29:34intellectual property. He-Man, much that was commercially driven, right? Make a cartoon to sell

29:38toys. I was an entrepreneur. I love pop culture. This was almost written in hindsight. I wouldn't have

29:46been able to predict it 15 years ago, but I'd always thought about potentially buying Gumby or

29:51Scooby-Doo. I always thought about buying one day later in my career some IP and refurbishing it.

29:58It is far more enjoyable to start my own. And here's why. Back to the selfless part of me.

30:04When I make every child in the world fall in love with a countable aunt and patient panda,

30:10I genuinely believe that I can leave a deposit of eliminating some of the anxiety that is ravaging

30:15our world. If modern parenting has so over-coddled children that we have eliminated merit,

30:24we've eliminated accountability, we've eliminated ramifications and consequences,

30:30and that's hurting our kids. Eighth place trophies were well-intended, but they caused enormous harm.

30:36And so I want to build an intellectual property that's going to teach the virtues of kindness

30:40and empathy. Empathy elephant is one of the most important characters in Be Friends.

30:44However, so is tenacious termite, and so is competitive clown, and so is accountable aunt.

30:51And I think about it in terms of politics. I want Be Friends to be purple. I don't want to be red.

30:59I don't want to be blue. All the magic's purple. And I've built 283 characters that are going to

31:05allow me to do that. And I would say Gary V and my 50 million followers that I've been able to amass,

31:10if you look carefully, they resonate with the purple. Some days my fans love what I'm saying,

31:16other days they don't like it because I'm poking at their vulnerability. And I've had a very unusual

31:21path of popularity on social media because I've been in that place, but I can't reach 8 billion people.

31:28I'm not everyone's cup of tea. It's just not how humans work, but IP can.

31:34And your characters can. And my characters can. And so Patient Panda

31:37and Karma Kiwi, these little characters are going to help me finish off what I started 15 years ago.

31:45Well, we'll have to have you back in less than 15 years to get a progress report on how that's going.

31:49But Gary V, thank you so much for being here. We so appreciate your time.

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