Are You on Offense or Defense?

In this episode of The GaryVee Audio Experience, I talk about what it takes to move from talking about doing it to actually doing it. I share why emotional intelligence, personal brand, and human connection matter in an increasingly digital world, along with an underused opportunity in B2B influencer marketing. I also discuss how social media changed distribution and why changing consumer attention could reshape the next era. You'll learn about: Putting AI Into Practice Emotional Intelligence And Human Connection Building A Personal Brand The B2B Influencer Opportunity Distribution And Changing Consumer Attention

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This room is filled with individuals who have incredible credentials and they're either on the offense or the defense on this issue. And like, this requires work. And I think a lot of people tend to not want to put in the work to do all the learnings and be a practitioner. Life is only how you see it. There is nothing else. For you to now go, "Wait a minute. Maybe this isn't defense, maybe this is offense." Either you're gonna put your head in the sand and let that wave take it, or what you're saying now is like, "Maybe I'm gonna take the surfboard and ride this wave." And it just requires work. But you can't put in the work if you don't have the right perspective on it. And that's why I want everyone here to like, go on the offense on it. Because there's gonna be places to cut little pieces for yourselves,

• 0:45Speaker 00

  but you're gonna have to be that kind of player, not the passive player. Otherwise, you're gonna get the results of what being a passive player is. This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Who better than Gary Vee or Sarah H? Both of these folks don't need any introduction whatsoever. But we do, we're at an interesting point in time. We're all of a certain age, if you will. Seen the invention of the internet, the mobile, the social moment. And what's interesting about this is that it's a bit scary, right? And I think that what's interesting about this is that we're losing control that we've been used to. And I'd love to get your perspective on, you know, we're dividing these notions of growth versus disruption, human interaction, and technological connection. So, I'll start with you, Sarah.

• 1:39Speaker 02

  So, I'll tell you what my therapist told me about control.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  Mic drop.

• 1:49Speaker 02

  I'm a certified control freak. Life is not about what you control, but how you react to what is thrown at you. And whether it's any of the buzzwords you listed that we've witnessed over the past 30 years, I would say it's probably the same situation. It's not what gets thrown at you, it's how you react to that. But, you know, whether it's what we saw with the invention of like, the freaking Netscape browser to search, to social, to programmatic, to commerce, to AI, whatever it is, it is not about what these technological changes are, but it is how we react to them as consumers, and how we react to them as brands, and how we react to them as governments.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  How do we think about this world right now? And what are we missing?

• 2:28Speaker 00

  We're missing, good morning, everyone. We're missing the fact that almost everything out of every single person's mouth on this subject comes from the framework of self-interest. Thanks for having me.

• 2:43Speaker 00

  Like, I mean, I think that, you know, four and a half years ago, I was like, "Oh shit, this is coming." Like, this machine learning thing is starting to actually become the AI thing. And I did what I always do in the last 30 years. I went into the history books. And I just spent an enormous amount of time, including the New York City Public Library, because some stuff is so OG, and read about what humans said about electricity when it was invented. You know, I struggle to know what the big deal of all this is. Like, as if governments are not gonna get involved. As if. I think the bigger question becomes, does this collective room have the humility to know that most of their opinions

• 3:26Speaker 00

  are grounded in their financial self-interest? And if they have that humility, then they can start taking the path of putting themselves out of business before someone else does it for you. And I think that is the question of this era. Because, to your point, there's some youngsters in here, but there's enough OGs in here that have seen the same movie over and over. And they're not all the same. The internet's different than the mobile revolution, the social rev- they're different. And this is a big one. This is a real big one. And this one is interesting because it's coming after the jobs and the financial well-being of this room. You know, the bougier people. And so, I don't know how white collar is gonna react, but my intuition is not well. And I'm looking forward to it.

• 4:12Speaker 00

  I am. And I'll tell you why. Like, I believe in merit. I believe in evolution. I like when things change. Even if they hurt me. Like, because I can't stop it. You know, I didn't need to go to therapy. My mom gave me her DNA and raised me. Like, I don't know-

• 4:32Speaker 02

  So did mine, that's why I'm in therapy.

• 4:39Speaker 00

  So, you know, when we get into these eras, and I've been at this now for a little while, like, I'm like, back to showing up here this Friday, like, this room is filled with individuals who have incredible credentials and they're either on the offense or the defense on this issue. And like, this requires work. And I think a lot of people tend to not want to put in the work to do all the learnings and be a practitioner. Like, either you have 70 agentic bots running your ecosystem, like I do, or you're still talking about doing it. This is always about doing. And this is always about understanding where you actually sit, and more importantly, why. And I have incredible empathy for protecting your financial status and taking care of your family.

• 5:23Speaker 00

  The problem is, technology doesn't care about our feelings. And so, the only thing we have is our adaptability and our strategic maneuvering at this time. And there's a lot of sacred cows in this room that are gonna die. Like, when confusion is grounded in laziness, in ideology, in self-interest, it doesn't have to be. This is not, this is complicated, but not very complicated. And more importantly, what I caution all of you do is, when you're worried about what it means for you financially and your business and your job, you start to level it up to like, things that are like, theoretical in the world. You have no impact on what the fuck China and SpaceX are gonna do about this. So, you're more than welcome to use your words

• 6:05Speaker 00

  to soothe your lack of adaptability, but that is not gonna do you any good.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, one of the things that's been interesting, and a lot of people talk about this, is that the role of brand is probably the last mote that individuals have. But the way people have built brands in the past is extremely different. How do you think about that, building a brand in this space? And the role that you have to both market towards humans and technology that are often making these buying decisions?

• 6:30Speaker 02

  So, I think, I think that you could've said the same thing 20 years ago when social was starting out. "Oh, it's the death of brands. Consumers have a strong voice in brands. Brands don't matter." You could've said that when Google started taking off of brands. Oh, you know, when Bezo said, "A brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room." You know, the search results are a new TV guide, for those of you who remember that. So, I definitely don't believe that brands is dead, but it is, this is a Darwinistic world, always has been. Yeah, you gotta kill the fucking sacred cows before they kill you.

• 7:10Speaker 00

  And to just jump in, back to like, eating my own dog food. 36 months ago, and really 12 months ago, I was like, "Oh crap, for VaynerMedia, like, we're now an experiential agency." Like, the amount of experiential work we do. And then we film all of that, and that becomes the production day for our social strength? Like, either I did that or I didn't do that, right? Either like, either I invested all those dollars and hurt my margin dramatically this year because I made so much investment, and I was willing to do that, and my P&L looks super ugly, and thank God I don't have a board or I'm publicly traded, because I'd probably be fired. But that's the whole punchline, right? Like, so many, I have so much empathy. A lot of people do know what to do, but they can't do it. Because we live in this world

• 7:53Speaker 00

  where everybody's judging everything in every 90-day terms. But this is why when big things come along, smart people do nothing about it, because they're not in a position to do anything about it. And that's where I caution you. If you're in a framework, AKA you have a job, that is not allowing you, because of the financial investments that need to be done, or killing high-margin items that you know are gonna be dead in 24 months because there's an AI alternative, you need to make a decision for yourself. You can't blame that on the company. You have free will. I was born in the Soviet Union. That was a fucked-up place where you couldn't do shit. You're at the NASDAQ right now. Like, when you were like, "Thanks for coming in the rainy day." As if rain is so adverse.

• 8:34Speaker 00

  Great job, everyone. You navigated some rain.

• 8:40Speaker 00

  And by the way, I call that out because we're a little bit in that place. Like, I do not have the temperament or ability to see a room of this caliber cry about anything. And so if your job doesn't let you do the things against the face of that, go get another job. You know, like, you don't have the resume that you think can get you what? Make content on LinkedIn. I've been yelling about it for 20 years. Like, you are fully in control. And this AI thing is no joke. We're talking about this stuff. Back to Steven's point of like the technology. Like, look what's happened in five minutes. I mean, we live in an era for the first time in 100 years where software is a commodity. Like, this shit hasn't even started. Because to the point, 90% of people are still using this as an enhanced search engine. This is the furthest thing from that.

• 9:24Speaker 00

  So, you know, and here's my biggest, like, feeling of why I come to something like this. I'm not saying anything profound. You all know this.

• 9:33Speaker 00

  So I go back to my opening point of like, why aren't you doing anything about it? Because you better not blame anyone for it when it gets you if you did nothing about it when you knew it was coming. And so that's life.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Now, there should be some advice, though. That's part of the reason why we're convening. To learn from each other to say, what is that first step?

• 9:50Speaker 00

  You put it, you put that into an AI bot and it will tell you a better answer than the three of us.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  That is, that is correct.

• 9:56Speaker 00

  Like, information's a pure commodity.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think if, to Gary's point, if you're going to just ask that question and get better advice on bots, the question is if somebody's asking you a question, what value are you bringing? What's your superpower? What's your kryptonite? And the bots ain't gonna tell you that. So, what you do about it, again, very different. But what are you bringing to the table as a human that's gonna make a big difference? That's gonna, what's gonna determine whether or not you stay in this doozy or not.

• 10:24Speaker 00

  Well, this is why I'm so excited about this era. I mean, if you just listen to that, and I think everyone here knows this. If information intelligence continues to decline, emotional intelligence is the winner. Just like Laura said perfectly. We think about this quite a bit in all my companies. It's a, we're going into the barbell era. Extreme digital, AI, extreme digital. And then extreme analog. Like, as an investor, I'm looking to figure out which dumb phone company I'm gonna invest in. Because I'm completely convinced Gen Alpha 14, 15-year-olds are gonna be dumbphoned out in 36 to 48 months. I'm already seeing the behavior now. Right? So, in this extreme analog, you know, there's a lot of people here who did win on their processing power, on their memory, on their intellect. And that was remarkable. And I grew up in that era and I have some of those skills as well.

• 11:09Speaker 00

  But like, I have the humility and the interest to continue to compete and realizing that's just not as valuable as it used to be. It declined when the search engines came along. It's really gone now. And so, luckily for me, I very much have been focused on emotional intelligence for a long time. And I'm excited, personally, that so many people are going to ascend in this new era. Because things like empathy and compassion and intuition will rise in value, which is not mappable. And that is a new world order. And there'll be winners and losers of that. And then to the point you're making, like, look, it's very clear that analog behavior and reputation and brand

• 11:50Speaker 00

  and intellectual property and copyright are some of the defensible things that were coming. You know, again, it's very fulfilling for me to see that more and more people understand the value of building a personal brand. Too many of us in this room, 15 years ago, saw it as braggadocious, you know, self-promotion. It, building personal brand is only a variable based on what you're putting out. There's so many bright people in here. It is time for them to write a Substack with their thoughts and that being a moat. Your NIL, and I know you don't think of yourself as like LeBron James, but let there be no confusion.

• 12:31Speaker 00

  Every person's NIL in this room is going to be, and gonna have a very direct impact on your earning power, especially in a decade. And, you know, that's something you can start investing in now. And again, it goes back to the theme, at least I think, of what I'm bringing to the table here, which is like, it's all fun to get together and pontificate. But it's much more fun to execute against what your observation is. And leveling it up to some ideology, because you don't want to put in that work, is the weapon of choice of too many right now. And I'd like to push three or four people in this room to go into action after they leave here. We don't need to debate this anymore. Like, you know how this movie plays out.

• 13:14Speaker 00

  There'll be government involvement, there'll be big company involvement, there'll be individual involvement. Like, really? Do we really need to talk about semantics? Like, this is about action right now. And it's coming fast. What's different about social and Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 is this shit's moving fast, fast. Like, when I like saw Twitter in 2006, I had like four years to get good at it and still none of y'all knew about it.

• 13:42Speaker 00

  This is like, Jesus. It's like every night, like, I have four different bots just to keep me on an update on like features and new competitors and open source and like, are the moats really the moats? Like, these LLMs are gonna have to go upstream and be an application because there's so much open source. Like, there's a lot to be figured out. And, again, with rooms like this, especially because I see so many faces I know, this is pure practitioner and action time. This is pure practitioner and action time. And the best way to run a marathon is to start training for it on the treadmill. If you're just using it to search things, you are not in the fucking game. Hey, everybody. I hope you're enjoying the podcast right now. Make sure you follow the podcast. That's why I'm interrupting.

• 14:26Speaker 00

  Let's keep going on this show, but follow the podcast. It'll make my mom super happy.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Let me open this up for questions.

• 14:34Speaker 03

  Uh, morning, everyone. My name is Jalen Pierre. I'm a junior at Seehofer University in New Jersey.

• 14:39Speaker 00

  Let's go, Jersey. Let's go.

• 14:44Speaker 03

  For the record, I'm 21 years old. My question, you all talk a lot about we're in the era of action. We're in the era of doing things. Um, I really appreciated Jalen's comments about the power of the people opportunity in AI and being that advocate. I want a people job. Frankly, like, I'm using it, I'm building the agents, but I want a people job. I want people personally. But with that being said, how does one go about, at least for where I am right now, building that credibility so that maybe these other companies and people that are developing the people jobs can begin to see the value in that?

• 15:13Speaker 00

  They're gonna see it. Bro, people jobs are gonna be everywhere. Like, the only thing you can do is, you're doing it right now. You can network, because people make people outcomes, and you can produce content. Nothing that's going on, if you want a people job, for example, like what?

• 15:30Speaker 03

  I don't know either. I don't think I've created it yet.

• 15:32Speaker 00

  What does that mean? Because there's a fuckload of people jobs out there.

• 15:35Speaker 03

  So, right now, I'm looking for roles in town acquisition, also like live event management, event producing. I came here at 7:30.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  You've got people in the room to do that.

• 15:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, like, you have, there's unlimited jobs. My point of view on that is, whether it's LinkedIn or Substack or Twitter, start writing or making videos of your thoughts of what would make good events, good productions, things you want to learn. Put yourself out there. Go to networking events. Use LinkedIn to message, you know, HR and leaders in event companies. But, but there's going to be a plethora of analog jobs for you. This conversation has nothing to do, other than it's accelerating more of it. There'll be more people jobs because of what's going on in analog.

• 16:15Speaker 02

  How many of you guys have kids within two or three years of Jalen's age? Go tell your kids to show the fuck up like Jalen.

• 16:22Speaker 00

  Or, or the other side. There is, I love when everyone's like, oh, Gen Z has never had it worse. There's never been a generation that has more millionaires. There is unlimited kids that don't have to show up at all, who are very happy and making $2.3 million a year playing the digital AI and social game. Again, like, it's about reverse, like, I, meaning, I agree with you. I love, and I'm also people. Like, I'm about that life. But I guess the point I'm trying to make on jumping on that and adding context is, the second this becomes ideology versus reality is when people start to miss opportunities. There's some kids that are inherently built to be behind screens and they get great joy from that. And of course, we want, everybody wants some level of balance.

• 17:05Speaker 00

  We want Jalen to, you know, get the benefits of what modern technology will bring. You know, and so it's always a quote-unquote balance. But let there be no confusion. Like, I have four different 15-year-olds that live in Pakistan and Afghanistan that I interact with from a marketing standpoint, that are making $2 to $4 million a year because they're activating AI and social properly. Like, this has never been a greater time to be Jalen. Even though the propaganda tells him he's gonna be in the generation that has it worse than his parents. That is false propaganda. And it's semantically contextualizing a certain set of data. On the reverse, as we all know, because we were all this age at one point,

• 17:49Speaker 00

  his optionality compared to ours is stunning.

• 17:52Speaker 04

  I'm Monty Dagonath and CFO of Atrade. And I sit on public boards. I just wanted to say thank you. I think for practitioners, great head practitioners like myself, you just slap us and grab with us.

• 18:04Speaker 00

  And I'll tell you why that's so important. Life is only how you see it. There is nothing else. For you to now go, wait a minute, maybe this isn't defense, maybe this is offense. For you to have the capacity to become who you became is a direct indicator that you're exactly the kind of person after a thousand of hours of work that is gonna be running the financial infrastructure opportunities of a thousand-person team that may lead to opportunities for you that you could have never comprehended. Right? And so, that excites me because it is true. Either you're gonna put your head in the sand and let that wave take it, or what you're saying now is like, maybe I'm gonna take the surfboard and ride this wave? And it just requires work.

• 18:49Speaker 00

  But you can't put in the work if you don't have the right perspective on it. And that's what you're referring to. In particular, I'm intrigued on the creator front.

• 18:57Speaker 04

  Because you could argue either the creators in the barbell are part of the reason that everybody is affected by creators because of their notificities. But Gary, just get your thoughts on the evolution of the use of creators, being a creator.

• 19:12Speaker 05

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• 19:36Speaker 04

  The balance on the human and the AI piece of that.

• 19:40Speaker 00

  I think the thing that, so I don't know. There's a lot to think through here. The one thing I know for sure is there's somewhere around 8.3 billion people and there's going to be 83 billion creators on social in a decade because the speed in which, you know, the AI, and by the way, that might be way too short. It might be 67 trillion. Like, the amount of humans that everyone here has consumed, everyone here has consumed an AI influencer and they knew, because it happened 12, 14 months ago and you're like, oh, their face is a little blurry, right? Or whatever it might be. Everybody, if they use social media in this room, has also consumed an AI influencer that they did not know wasn't a human. And that's going to rise.

• 20:22Speaker 00

  I think the creator economy is a profoundly interesting marketing tool and everyone should have it part of their, you know, toolbox, especially, by the way, B2B. The B2B influencer in a LinkedIn, Substack, X environment is the great underused opportunity right now to growth and sales, which I think is prevalent for this room. I think it's a, it's a great opportunity. What I'm concerned about is the supply and demand curve, but then I think about what's going to be the counter by the platforms, right? Because they're probably going to get very serious about having potentially separate feeds for AI versus real. This is so clearly going to be a game of and, not or.

• 21:01Speaker 00

  There will be unlimited economics in AI influencers and just AI, and there'll be unlimited opportunity in analog and human. And I think it will ebb and flow depending on the distribution. So much of this has to do with distribution. And I think that's probably, just for fun, one of the bigger things that I think everyone should be thinking about. That phone has been the primary device of our society now for well over a decade. I think everyone knows, whether it's glasses or other things, like, we're, it kind of feels like here in this next 15, 20-year window, that the phone as we know it will not be the primary as it's been for 20 years. And when that moment happens, it completely resets the game.

• 21:43Speaker 00

  Because social is the dominant player in that environment, and that is the dominant place where our collective attention is. If it shifts to this and AR or other things, or something comes along that we can't all think of, it resets the whole stake. And so that's something I think a lot about.

• 21:58Speaker 02

  I agree with Gary. I also think it goes back to a lot of the principles that we've seen in social since day one, which has been the good ship rises to the top.

• 22:09Speaker 00

  Merit. There's a point here that's really important. I think what social did was created merit because the gatekeepers lost the gatekeeping of distribution. For many of us in this room, we didn't like what the world liked. And that's the real insight of social. Like, you might have not, like, when she says the quality rises to the top, you're like, that's, so many people want to argue that. They're like, low fidelity, like, not high quality, but, but you don't get to decide what the collective likes. I actually think social was the preview of what AI is about to do. I think what AI is really going to do is create the most extreme version of merit that we've ever seen.

• 22:50Speaker 00

  That a human that is incredibly talented is going to keep all the economics. Incredibly talented human beings have actually shared the wealth of their brilliance at scale with upper-middle management, with number threes, you know? There's just a lot of Horace Grant and BJ Armstrongs in here that have made a lot of winning that had nothing to do with them. And that's really painful. That's like a really tough thing to look at. And I think what AI is going to do is going to create hyper merit, and my intuition is we're going to push very against it because we're not ready for that heat. America as a country and capitalism create, notwithstanding when capitalism goes wrong

• 23:31Speaker 00

  and tries to change the game, but at its core, it creates and exposes, you know, winning and losing. It's why we love sports. We love merit when it doesn't hurt us. We hate it when it does. And so my concern is we're going into an era where the best of the best individual humans are going to be able to use agentic at scale and capture so much more of the economics, not rendering down the trickle-down to a lot of other very talented people. And that's going to cause a lot of feelings. And so social created merit and Hollywood had a lot of feelings about it. But AI is going to do it for the whole thing. And, and, and that's why I want everyone here to like go on the offense on it, because

• 24:14Speaker 00

  there's going to be places to cut little pieces for yourselves, but you're going to have to be that kind of player, not the passive player. Otherwise, you're going to get the results of what being a passive player is, and that's a very different economic and fulfillment outcome than we've had for 200 years. And we need to be mentally prepared. Our stomachs for this are going to be challenged.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  It's a lot. Please join me in thanking Sarah and Gary Vee.

• 24:40Speaker 00

  Thank you. 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.

• 24:52Speaker 06

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• 25:07Speaker 00

  Journey. See you later.