The #1 Way to Capture Attention in 2027

In this episode of The GaryVee Audio Experience, I talk about matching big ambitions with daily execution and staying close to the craft as your career grows. I share how confidence, self-awareness, and kind candor shape the way I work and lead. I also discuss using social media and AI to create in-person connections, motivating people around their changing needs, and choosing impact over maximizing dollars. You'll learn about: Big Ambitions And Daily Execution Staying Close To The Craft Confidence And Kind Candor Online Attention And In-Person Connections Leadership Around Individual Needs Choosing Legacy Over Currency

• 0:00Speaker 00

  The way you get attention is you communicate where attention is. Today, the way you get attention is being one of the most effective content creators in social media or streaming. That's it. I'm sorry, that's what happened. My entire belief system on any business is you use these modern platforms at scale to use AI and social as a gateway drug to in-person. I will always follow where the attention is like a psychotic day trader. This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience.

• 0:33Speaker 00

  Thank you. Hi, everyone.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  Okay, so Gary.

• 0:38Speaker 00

  Yes, sir.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Serial entrepreneur, chairman of VaynerX. You had a wine company.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 0:44Speaker 01

  NFTs.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  Trading cards. You co-founded Resi, the reservation platform. You're probably the longest-standing, most loyal Jets fan in history. We all wish you luck today.

• 0:59Speaker 00

  Thank you. We're gonna fucking need it.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Gary, let's just start, you know, a media company, a reservation platform, a wine business, hand-drawn NFTs, you're an artist. These are all wildly unconnected businesses and industries.

• 1:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  Are you crazy or how do you get the confidence to just say, I'm gonna go start something, I'm gonna go do something new?

• 1:28Speaker 00

  I do think confidence is the word, and that I take no credit for. You know, I sit here today and I get those lovely words from someone I also admire and have a deep friendship with, fully, 100% on the back of having a world-class mother. You know, the answer is confidence, you know, and you know this because we run in enough similar circles where I think you have a good sense of this being very true, which is I have a very solid gear of not struggling with judgment of others. You know, I'm comfortable to be in my zone. And when that, when I do something that is admired by people that I would be flattered

• 2:11Speaker 00

  to be admired by, whether what they do for a living or if they're cool, if they're, if, if...

• 2:22Speaker 01

  Thank you all you bullies.

• 2:25Speaker 00

  I've, I've lived in a cocoon my whole life, you know. I, I do think it is confidence. You know, I'm not scared. I'm not scared of judgment of other human beings because I have empathy for where that judgment comes from. I also believe everyone else sucks too at something. And I'm inherently curious. I think that's why when it's all said and done, everyone's like, what is this potpourri and bruhaha of different things this guy did? I'm not trying to maximize for financial outcome. You know, if I did, I would be probably more focused or doing far more financial engineering.

• 3:05Speaker 00

  You know, it's kind of nice to be 50 and Dr. Eddie says I'm gonna live to 92, so I've got a lot more time to do more. But the answer is confidence. You put it in the question. And that, and that's where my gratitude, which is a huge driver for me, comes from because, you know, I'm aware that a lot of people got into this room from confidence, but also got into this room from the other extreme, which is insecurity, right? There's only two ways to get to the top, truly. Extreme confidence or extreme insecurity. The confidence one's a lot more fun. You know, it's, you sleep better and it's more sustainable when you get there. And I think about those two frameworks quite a bit.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Gary, there's a couple frameworks that I've seen use over time, so I just maybe wanna rapid-fire a couple of them and have you share some of the meaning behind them. These are very impactful for me. Clouds and dirt.

• 4:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, macro, micro.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Clouds and dirt mean?

• 4:07Speaker 00

  This one's probably really good for this room. Clouds and dirt for me is you've got to have a fairly big vision, a general macro understanding of the thesis, what you're, you know, on a human level, what you're up to and trying to accomplish, but a professional level, what's this organization trying to accomplish? What are you trying to accomplish within it? And then dirt is, are you an actual practitioner? What has been very interesting to me, I'll speak to one of my businesses currently, I'm the active CEO of a very large marketing agency called VaynerMedia. We, what's that? I named it after myself.

• 4:52Speaker 00

  I believe in personal branding.

• 4:56Speaker 00

  You know, 2,000 people, we were the ones that came out 15 years ago and said, social's gonna eat up television, print, radio. It did. And as I sit here today, literally texting on my drive over to this place, I'm talking to the leaders of the company on a Sunday about a nuanced way that I think we should do thumbnails and the first three seconds on a post on Instagram today. This happened 12 minutes ago. And me being the best practitioner at the art of social advertising really matters. And so I'm sure all of you know this, as your careers have evolved, in the beginning, you're in it. You're really in it.

• 5:39Speaker 00

  And then at some level, in every industry, you become an executive, you become the architect, not the mason. And I believe very deeply that even the greatest architect in the world should be at the venue, you know, banging on some nails or doing some of the stonework. I think it really, really keeps you attached to the actual craft that you're executing. It's worked incredibly well for me. And I also believe that most people spend too much time in the middle. That means nothing. Ironically, I'm about to watch a technology come along and destroy the middle. You know, AI is gonna destroy the middle. And that's interesting to me because I think I've been living that life of like clouds

• 6:24Speaker 00

  and dirt, and I think that's where we're going as a society. And I think for a lot of people in this room, I recommend thinking a lot more about the dirt.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Macro patience, micro speed.

• 6:36Speaker 00

  I think way too many people want things in the macro too fast, especially youth culture, like, why am I not a billionaire at 25? I think people are incredibly inherently impatient. And then on a macro, on a perspective, on a big-picture level, and then on a daily basis, I think people are too passive. They're not getting enough shit done. They're macro impatient and micro, they're complacent. They're entitled, they want this outcome that is profound, and they're not doing enough during the day. So I talk a lot about macro patience. I wanna buy the New York Jets, right? That because I wanna win a Super Bowl.

• 7:17Speaker 00

  Well, I believe that if I have the wheel, that I can win a Super Bowl, you know, and so...

• 7:28Speaker 01

  That is definitely not true.

• 7:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, that is, it might be delusion, which is what you always have to be worried about with confidence, right? You take one step too much and now you're in complete delusion. But I, I do think that macro patience, micro speed really, really, really does matter. I'm going through it with my back right now. Let's talk about like, I've had a QL issue because I was a 14-year-old carrying way too many heavy liquor boxes, and by 18, my back went out. But later I learned it was my QL. Finally, only finally did I realize that my glute med, my outer glute med was been dormant and not connected to my brain.

• 8:11Speaker 00

  And like, on a daily basis, I'm fucking in the gym for an hour a day, like doing all this rehab. I'm in month six, literally ironically, as if like God thought it would be fun for me to bring it up at this event, literally yesterday, after month seven, I was like with my trainer on Zoom, like, something definitely is happening this week. Like, it feels different. I can feel like something's happening and so, but that's fucking hard. Like, I wanted my back to feel better the day of that, you know, I wanted it for 30 years. I definitely wanted it nine months ago when I was like, this is it. But to have the discipline to like do it every day, like do it every day and be patient and not give up, that's a very small example, but it is how I think about everything.

• 8:55Speaker 00

  Like, I am shocked by people's ambitions that come out of their mouths when I analyze their day-to-day behavior.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Which is a perfect segue to something else you say often, and I'm stolen from you. Ideas are worthless. Execution is everything.

• 9:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, there's a level of hyperbole to that, and I do say it all the time. Obviously, ideas matter, but I struggle with the thought that there wasn't, like, I don't find that Steve Jobs or Elon Musk or anybody, that's obviously tech, or anything that's happened in your field, no one who's achieved something remarkable in your field, in my gut, is the first person that had ever contemplated the concept.

• 9:39Speaker 00

  And that's it. Like, I'm pretty sure in the history of man and woman, that a very small percentage of the people that did the most profound things were the singular human that first thought it. The end. And if you really think of it at that simplicity of a level, like, it really speaks to execution's the game.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  You talk a lot about self-awareness. You quote, self-awareness is the ultimate skill. How does that translate into business, personal success?

• 10:10Speaker 00

  Oh man, I'm obsessed with this topic. I really think when you're self-aware, obviously if you're self-aware and you're insecure, you're gonna try to disguise the things you're feeling. And so those two things work incredibly hand-in-hand, self-awareness and confidence. But, you know, I think, I think one thing that I think a lot about, and this could be quite powerful for some people in this room. I have an incredibly nuanced way of thinking about working on weaknesses while compounding strengths, which I don't think is talked enough about in society. Clearly, again, to be in this room, in this offsite, this is a wildly talented crew.

• 10:53Speaker 00

  And my belief is that the way you got to be here this morning is actually very grounded in your natural talents and the work you put against that natural talent. And I actually think the upside for your joy and your impact is actually far greater in compounding that super skill and just rounding out some of those weaknesses with like, get that 3 to a 6, but way too many people obsessed with getting that 3 to a 10, when it never is gonna happen. And I think about it similar to athletics, like people have ceilings on certain aspects of their game. So yeah, I mean, I think self-awareness is, is, is growing in importance

• 11:37Speaker 00

  because I think so many things are about to get commoditized with the next chapter of technology. And I think emotional intelligence and human capacity and your human traits are about to accelerate in a way that's probably gonna be surprising to everyone in this room, including myself, which is gonna be interesting to watch.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  Speaking of bedside manner, you oftentimes use the term kind candor.

• 12:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  What's that mean?

• 12:04Speaker 00

  Well, for me personally, kind candor has kind of at some level saved my life, meaning, yeah, and might have too. I think that, I think back to my mother who gave me all her best traits and then my siblings often joke that I also took two or three of my dad's best traits and since I was first, I took the good stuff. I had, I was very fortunate with a lot of things. But one thing that was a huge blind spot for me was I demonized candor my whole life because my father, my mother is terrible at it. I took that from her and was parented by her. I was born in the Soviet Union and immigrated here when I was little

• 12:48Speaker 00

  and grew up in a very immigrant 80s, 90s household. So extreme, you know, mother every minute, never saw my dad. And then at 14, I started working with my father. So I was incredibly affected by my mom. And then when I got to work with my dad, like my whole first 14 years of my life was like rainbow and sunshine and like, you know, smiles, but incredible accountability, like a good Russian woman, right? Like, like the thought, like watching children navigate today's world. I was scared to even contemplate disrespecting in my mind because I thought she would know that I was thinking it.

• 13:25Speaker 00

  Let alone verbalizing it, right? So I got really fortunate. And then I started working with my dad and like, I mean, the first day I ever worked for my father, I watched him run up the stairs of his liquor store and verbally undress an 18-year-old stock boy with so much visceral venom that it was like shocked me. And in hindsight, candor is my strength publicly, but privately, in my relationships and when I manage people, it is a real struggle for me. I always thought that I could figure out how to make it better by going around being direct. And it hurt me in my personal life, it hurt me professionally.

• 14:09Speaker 00

  And somewhere only maybe five to seven years ago, I finally got to rock bottom and extreme accountability. And I, and then as some of you know, there was a term called radical candor that like had momentum in corporate and pop culture. But I watched my executives weaponize radical candor to just be manipulative and assholes. So I didn't like that one. And so we stood up something called kind candor in all of my companies. It has been, when I tell you it has been game-changing, it has been game-changing. Because it's very hard to confuse it. Kind and candor, two very understood words.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  And you talk a lot in other centers about attention is the asset.

• 14:57Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  What does that mean and how do you gain trust and attention?

• 15:04Speaker 00

  It's a great question. So what it means is, why I started the firm, I started on the marketing side, probably very heavily influenced by the fact that I was born in the Soviet Union and grew up in the US during like some pretty interesting end of Cold World times. Weirdly like a terrible student, terrible student, but got As in history while I got Ds and Fs and everything else. Because I was super fascinated by like when a coup d'etat would happen, they would attack, you know, the, the printed, you know, the newspaper and the radio station and TV station at the same time that they would go after the palace. Had some weird inherited kind of like understanding of communication

• 15:48Speaker 00

  and basically know for a fact that the world constantly changes at the most extreme levels, anytime there's a communication change. The printing press changed everything, everything. The radio changed everything, the television.

• 16:05Speaker 00

  I'm really genuinely fascinated by this, you know? The television, like one of the things I still to this day, I'm gonna bring it up right now, can't get over, is that in polling, which at least historically was better than it is today, in polling JFK destroys Nixon on TV for the American public and Nixon destroys JFK on radio. Because we were in that time where people were consuming that debate kind of 50/50. And so I've just always been very affected by this. You know, my, my wife is Persian, so much around the Iranian revolution. Like I just think about this stuff quite a bit. And so obviously when the internet came along, you know, I launched an e-commerce wine store in 1997 while people are like not even thinking about that.

• 16:50Speaker 00

  And as you know, because we met during this time, there is very few humans on earth in 2006 and 7 that were yelling louder that social media was gonna change the world completely.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  No, it was you.

• 17:02Speaker 00

  What's that?

• 17:02Speaker 01

  It was you.

• 17:03Speaker 00

  And it has happened and we are here. And now, to your point, when you overlay AI, no one here, no one here in 36 to 48 months is gonna believe a single piece of content they consume on the internet. Not one. Obviously, there'll be a chicken Versed kind of, you know, cat and mouse game of like the big tech companies trying to prove it's not AI and like how we consume it. But what will be left, and this is why I'm actually very bullish on you building more locations, like what is going to be left in AI telemedicine and all this? What will be left is what's happening right now. It's crazy what's happening. Extreme technology that in five years, you know, obviously in five years, it'll be 2031,

• 17:47Speaker 00

  but I think it's gonna feel, to your point Alan, like 2060. But meanwhile, all of the energy in society is gonna be around things that feel like 1960.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  I actually think you're in your family.

• 18:01Speaker 00

  I think you're incredibly well-positioned, really. I, I am, like, for example, back to like me doing 9,000 businesses. My latest one is I'm looking at real estate to build a drive-in movie theater. Where not only is it a drive-in movie theater and I want to open up 50 to 100 of them and build a national chain, but in the radius of it, your phone does not work. And we give you a dumb phone in case your family needs you or something like that. Like literally, I think we are going into almost a bridge-like environment where we're pulling so hard from both sides. And I think this company is clearly to me, and I'm sure for the people that are optimists like me,

• 18:42Speaker 00

  like when I think about AI, and I mean this, and I'm very into tech and business and marketing, the number one thing, and I've said this throughout all my interviews the last three years on podcasts, if you're like, want to ever stumble on it, the number one thing you'll see me talk about is medicine. My go-to line in interviews, especially when they're incredibly cynical AI, is you're scared of AI right now because you're scared to lose money or your job, but when it saves your daughter's life, you're gonna fucking love AI. And so like I'm sure all of you know better than me, I'm just skimming headline levels and digging a little bit here and there. Some of the things that, if AI is figuring out the hardest math problems that have baffled the greatest mathematicians for 150 years,

• 19:27Speaker 00

  that is clearly logical, that it is gonna have a profound impact on your industry and solve a lot of things that are gonna make us all happy. And so...

• 19:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think that the way you gain attention, now I wanted to frame that. The way you get attention is you communicate where attention is. The way you get attention is you communicate where attention is. So the way to get attention when it was printing presses, you wrote for newspapers or you wrote books, because that's where the attention was. People read. And then the radio, like you wanted to be a radio voice. And that's how Bob Hope and Seal Ball and others actually got their career. And then television, the television star. Today, the way you get attention is being one of the most effective content creators in social media or streaming. That's it. I'm sorry, that's what happened. I know people have emotions about that.

• 20:21Speaker 00

  But the actual consumption within social or, you know, and there's different things. Substack is wonderful. Enormous amount of consumption now in Substack. Profound writing in that, if that's your choice of medium. But podcasting and social and YouTube and streaming.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  One-on-one conversations?

• 20:41Speaker 00

  For sure, but that, but one-on-one doesn't scale. That's not the attention at scale if you're really trying to garner it. I think it's highly valuable. In fact, my entire belief system on any business is you use these modern platforms at scale to use AI and social as a gateway drug to in-person, right? Like, to me, this business is about being the most contemporary marketer within social to a high network individual in Substack and in LinkedIn and in certain pockets of TikTok and Instagram to make them aware of it, to eventually get them to come into it. Hey, everybody, I 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.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  So just kind of off the top of my head, you've started at least seven businesses since you were 14, almost all of them totally different industries. Talk to me a bit about just like more how do you perspective? Is it ever too late to learn new skills or new business? How do you do it? Put it in perspective.

• 21:46Speaker 00

  Putting it in perspective, looking at, like, here's my answer that just popped up. Looking at this audience, obviously, there's a different range of age groups here, but no one here is 15. And so, like, what, when you asked that question, I looked here and I'm like, wow. Everyone in here has two to three meaningful chapters in front of them. Like, for real. Especially, you know, really with characters like you coming along and extending people's lives, it only just compounds my belief, which is like, why wouldn't you do more things? Why wouldn't you try more things? You know, I know everyone here is busy and you might not like this, but I think everyone here should do a side hustle of something that has nothing to do with what you do here. You know, I actually think it makes you better at your core job.

• 22:31Speaker 00

  I think when you get to have an outlet somewhere else, especially if that outlet is a gateway to you doing something you're doing here a little bit better because you're trying something that's a little more uncomfortable. So maybe selling jam that you make with your cousin will allow you to be a little more contemporary. And then you feel a little more confident bringing that contemporary energy into this, where you would feel scared to bring that into here without knowledge, given the seriousness of what you do. And so, you know, how do I think about it? My greatest dream in the world is to die at my desk at 101 and call it a day.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  Gary. None of this stuff is linear. Success doesn't happen overnight. Oftentimes, you know, the light is dim when times are darkest. You've been pushing five, six, seven, eight, 10, 15 years. You know, what would you tell this team that's really proud of how far we've come, but knowing that some of our hardest work, hardest problems are ahead of us? Like, how do you have it?

• 23:37Speaker 00

  What's the alternative?

• 23:41Speaker 00

  That's how I, I think about life in pure optionality. Like, anyone that...

• 23:46Speaker 01

  You can be sad.

• 23:47Speaker 00

  More like, anyone sitting in this, like, having the audacity to cry about things is wild. At least professionally. I obviously don't know what's going on in people's lives, but professionally, like, seems like everyone here is doing okay.

• 24:03Speaker 00

  Right? Like, so...

• 24:10Speaker 00

  The way my brain works on this, if I'm sitting out there, is like, you know, at least from what I've heard historically, I don't know every nuance of what's going on with the business, but like, I think complaining might literally, genuinely be the most wild concept to me when you're in a certain place. Like, to anyone here who's like, oh, this is too hard or this is, you know, a challenge or the last 90 days have been rough. Like, everyone here has massive optionality. Like, like, like, everyone here has worked really hard, probably won a little bit of the genetic, like, you know, skill pool game. And like, like, I don't know, like, like, how do you get through, like, the hardest times? By realizing you have options. I'll speak for myself. With 13 current businesses that I am either the CEO

• 24:54Speaker 00

  or the active chairman of, I have a fuckload going on. I have a family, all the stuff, right? Literally, when I'm like truly pressed, like, fucking, and like, for context, when I enter other countries and they ask for occupation, I literally write firefighter.

• 25:14Speaker 00

  Real talk. I actually do that. Basically, if you read my inbound, especially how I'm structured, because I have clear superhero syndrome, like, all my day is, is fires. Like, my entire day is just shit. And then I'm incredibly, which you definitely don't do, I'm very HR-driven and care about people's feelings. And so, on top of everything else, I have to get updates from my HR department on anything that has happened bad to an employee's life. And that was beautiful when we were 30, 40 people, 70 people, 100 people, because I was very involved and did some nice things.

• 25:55Speaker 00

  At 2,000 in one company and 4,000 overall, I'm like, it's depressing. You know, it's, it's really, it's challenging emotionally. Anyway, when I'm like fully pushed, like, in the shower, like, pushed, like, thinking, like, I'm like, well, I talk to myself, I'm like, well, asshole, if this is like too much and you don't like it, fucking move to Iowa and milk cows.

• 26:20Speaker 00

  Because it's actually very important for this crew, because you're in a fun chapter, where like, I think this is going to resonate for everyone. It's just not a very good use of energy. For you, like, please put it in perspective. 800 million people on earth, as we sit here right now, do not have access to clean water. They cannot in five hours get to clean water. I just struggle with anyone in this room complaining about anything. I actually know now, at this point in my life, that this caring so deeply about something that doesn't matter has been an incredibly important outlet for me. You know, like, I, I've come to realize, like, uh, you know, somewhere about, again, maybe five to 10 years ago, like, wait a minute.

• 27:03Speaker 00

  This is the place where I can really get out all of that stuff on something that... Oh, I treat football the way people treat politics. Like, like, I really hate people that live in Boston.

• 27:18Speaker 00

  You know, like, actually. Like, literally, I felt that this morning. I'm like, you know, like, Foxborough, that piece of shit play. Like, I, I do things in football that people actually do in real life that I find insane, but I find in football, that's silly and that's right. And that's a good outlet. I hope that everybody here has those outlets. And if you don't, it's really worth considering to start a hobby or get into something that doesn't matter. I actually think it would help you in what does matter.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  So what does it mean to you to be a great leader? And what are some lessons that you share with everyone here? Whether or not they're leading their own pod of five people, being a team of 150 people across the country that's growing up for you.

• 28:02Speaker 00

  Love.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  What does it mean to be a good leader? What can you share with this group?

• 28:06Speaker 00

  There's a thing in your question that's super important. You will be here in 10 years, and that's the thing I'm most focused on. Meaning, in the way you framed up that question, it's all right. But the one thing that is true, I think, is you will be here. But in what form will you be? Back to leadership, right? Like, you'll be here, but to achieve this, right? The entire variable of if Atria is going to be the company that does it is based on leadership. That, to me, is cool. This will happen. But if this company, and especially this early group of leaders managing the people, if they are not remarkable at leadership, it won't be Atria. It'll be another company. Maybe I'll start it. It'll be called Schmatria.

• 28:53Speaker 00

  And we will win.

• 28:56Speaker 00

  You know, just being first isn't enough, or first version of. Back to idea and execution. This is incredibly easy to replicate. I'm sure it's already popped up in different ver... It is replicatable, right? This is obviously remarkable talent. I hope there is not naivete from top to bottom, that there isn't other humans that are also remarkable. This is about leadership. This is about continuity. My favorite thing about leadership, ironically, with my love affair with football, is the analogy I think about. The data around offensive lines in football, if they stay together and what it means for success is stunning. And that is how I think about companies.

• 29:38Speaker 00

  If this core group can stay in place for a long period of time, and more or equally important, or a byproduct of you staying in place, your direct reports stay in place, this will fly. But to answer your question on the setup of that framework, leadership is only grounded in you caring about them, not yourself. And then more importantly, delivering for what they want, based on what they need, not what you want them to need. This is important. How many people here have more than one child? Raise your hand. Raise it high. Who's got more than two? More than three?

• 30:17Speaker 00

  Anybody who's two to four knows that leading the humans that are most important to you in the world, you have to have a different playbook for each of them. They're different. And to really lead them successfully is to really give them what they need with a mix of what you want them to have. But it's what they need with a mix of what you want them to have versus the way parenting has been done for so long, which is a binary, one-track play for all four of them of what you want them to be. And real leadership is reverse engineering the human at all times, because they will change. How long has the company been around?

• 30:59Speaker 02

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• 31:25Speaker 01

  Starting on 2020, we opened in New York September 22, so we just hit our four-year anniversary of being operational.

• 31:31Speaker 00

  How many people here have been here for more than... for three years and have managed people in that time? For three years. So the hands up, you know this. Even in the three years, some of the people that are reporting to you directly have already slightly a different version of themselves. Leadership is constant day trading of the people that work for you, reverse engineering what they need. And if you're able to fulfill that, you will have a level of retention that will make you outflank others. Having retention of B-plus or B-minus players will always beat a revolving door of A players that work for you. And that is an important framework to understand.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  Legacy is greater than purpose. Close this out and talk to your customers.

• 32:18Speaker 00

  This one's really fun in here because I'm really, really, really happy for everyone here. I have a very good feeling that many of you, when you are no longer actively working every second, are going to feel very good about what you did for a living. And so I'm happy for this group, for you. You know, I think that so many entrepreneurs just shockingly get caught into the framework of thinking that the dollars or the rankings on a list or whatever it is is just like the punchline. I'm shocked by the extremities of materialism and numerical validation that the world has fallen into. I think we need to get back to some old-school values.

• 33:02Speaker 00

  I'm hoping that my intuition on the 2060 and 1960 realities of what AI is going to create, I hope also gets us back to a level of 1960s values of civility or like if you're doing something interesting, that that's profound, not necessarily how much money you make. And you know, yeah, I mean, I for sure have chosen to live my life and definitely my career more from a legacy and impact framework than maximizing dollars. And when you're good enough, the dollars can come along as well. And if they didn't, that would have been fine too. You know, my first chapter from 22 to 34,

• 33:44Speaker 00

  my legacy play was I wanted to build a business for my parents for what they did for me. And so from 22 to 34 years old, I never made $100,000 a year. I worked 100 hours a week, plus consistently 52 weeks a year in a liquor store, and built a business for my father that went from $3 to $70 million a year revenue, and left at 34 to start my career with nothing. I chose legacy over currency in my great... in my best years of my youth. And I've consistently chosen legacy over currency up until this morning. And I will continue to do that. And I think more people should consider it, because, boy, do you feel better.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  My question is, one of the things that most attracted me to this was the idea that we could make this successful and give it back on a mass scale to academic centers, to the general public. How do you think we get to that? What technology are we going to use to get there?

• 34:43Speaker 00

  I mean, I think it's clearly, you know, if you're... I think it's not a technology. I think it's a spirit. You know, if I'm hearing that statement properly, it just sounds like as long as that's the intent of the organization, you can easily do that. You know, without knowing every detail about the medical industry or this universe, like...

• 35:06Speaker 00

  I can speak for myself that I think is the comp to what you're asking. I could have monetized my audience the way so many others have with $10,000 courses and, you know, you know, five, you know, one-on-one coaching or virtual coaching. I've decided to give out my best information for free in perpetuity. Obviously, that has an economic impact in different ways, not so direct. But if I'm hearing that properly, that you're going to do profound work and then you can give it back to the world, you can use pen and paper to do that. That's not a technology. That's an intent.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Where is the attention going to be in five years?

• 35:42Speaker 00

  I don't know. You know, I get a lot of credit publicly for predicting things. It's been a false need the whole time. My greatest skill is moving very quickly on when it happens, not predicting it. Here is what I am thinking about. This... This has been why I've won and others have won. This is the remote control and attention center of our society, just like the television was, just like the radio was, and before that, the printing press. What is very clear to me is this will not forever be that. You know, in fact, one of the reasons companies like Meta and Google are working so hard on glasses for many reasons, but one of the most selfish reasons is if this isn't primary, Apple has far less leverage, right?

• 36:27Speaker 00

  And so the attention, I believe, will stay in feed culture while this is the distribution center. There could be another company that comes along. But I think what's clearly in the air is voice as a user interface, right? I think, I think Amazon is sitting incredibly strong. I think Alexa with a layer of AI where... Think about how you're using AI now. When that's a voice environment, when you're just talking, like you're walking through your home and you're saying the things that you would type in or voice. I mean, I can speak for myself. All my Claude, all my Open Claude, it's all voice. You know, I do voice memos into it, not typing.

• 37:11Speaker 00

  So I think voice and VR, AR are the ones we can see. But what's cool about the world is something can come out of left field and completely reshape it. And so I don't know. But what I can tell you is, until that day, at 101, when I die on my desk, you know, I will always follow where the attention is, like a psychotic day trader.

• 37:33Speaker 03

  I have a question. How do you motivate your teams? Given your success after all these years and all the companies that you have, I think it would benefit all of us now. How do you keep everybody motivated to share that success with you?

• 37:47Speaker 00

  I think it answers... I think you're touching on what I spend a ton of time on with leadership. I motivate our teams by not having an ideology on how they should be motivated. Most teams, most humans on teams are motivated by a couple of core structures. Financial, title, which always blows me away. Talk about insecurity.

• 38:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, I understand that. But not because of who I became professionally, because of how I was raised. And here's the thing internally, why I always laugh about title. Like literally on an all-hands meeting the other day, I was like, by the way, anyone who's planning to leave the company and needs a bigger title to leverage to another company, like email me, I'll just give it to you.

• 38:33Speaker 00

  I'm dead serious. Like, I'm actually serious about it. Like, if you're a director and you want to be a VP, because, like, just come in, I'll say yes, put it on your LinkedIn, they believe you. If they pick me directly, I'll be like, "Yeah, he's a fucking VP," and we move on. Like, I'm being serious. Like, I'm literally being serious. So, obviously, financial, obviously, title. I often use this, and maybe this will work for you. I talk a lot to the company and companies, and I say, "Look, some of you come in, and at 24, you get 15 minutes with me, and you do the thing, which is you sit down, and you're like, 'Gary, one day I'm gonna run this company.'" I'm like, "Awesome," because I'm tired. You know, like, and then you crush for five years,

• 39:16Speaker 00

  and you're growing, and then you fall in love, right? And then the calculus changes a little bit, especially when you have children. And especially when those children get to five years old, and you want to go to things, right? And so now, you're 37, and you want to just chill for five to seven years in the VP slot, you know, incrementally make a little more money, have job security, but go to the softball game, right? And I'm like, "I'm here for it, because I need everything. I need people who are destined to take over my job. I need people..." And so, the way I motivate is by delivering for the person what they need in that season of their career,

• 39:59Speaker 00

  as long as we agree that they're doing a good job, and as long as we agree that we can communicate authentically with each other. And so, when I watch, and this happens every day, when someone takes the foot off the pedal a little bit professionally, I'm happy for them. Leadership and motivation comes from selflessness, not selfishness. I am fascinated by humans' capacity to think just because you pay someone money, they owe you their life.

• 40:27Speaker 00

  That is a very, very wrong framework that... I understand it, they shouldn't take it... I understand being taken advantage of, and boy, with all this kindness you have on stage, I fucking get taken advantage of heavy, honestly. Like, I've actually had to re-correct, back to the candor, to think like, seven or eight years ago, my company wasn't losing from like... You know, I know people are like, "Gary, he's always working, hustling," all that. My company was losing from being too left, not too right. Because entitlement is very easy to create when you're caring. It's a very... For parenting, we completely lost our way. Like, parenting is what companies need to be careful of, if they're careful of, if they care about their employees. Modern parenting has lost. You know, people want to blame technology and all these other things.

• 41:12Speaker 00

  This is not a technology problem. This is an entitlement. Everybody who's 22 is a fucking bitch problem.

• 41:21Speaker 00

  And I laugh when everyone is like, you know, "Oh, these, you know, all the 50, and 60, and 70-year-olds are like, 'This is a problem.'" Like, you fucking created it. This is what happens when teachers go to fucking horseman and want to fight teachers. You know, parents go to fucking horseman to fight a teacher to get an A instead of a B?

• 41:41Speaker 00

  You have 26-year-old grown-ass men in New York City that are getting texts by their mom at 11:50 at night because they're on a fucking family-tracking plan.

• 41:54Speaker 00

  So, now I'm just spewing shit I'm upset about.

• 42:02Speaker 00

  Thank you, everyone. 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.

• 42:13Speaker 04

  Para los grandes, para los chicos, para los bajos y los altos, los pacifistas, los valientes, para los optimistas y los pesimistas, los que valoran lo de adentro, para los que están lejos, los que no vende lejos, y los que no vende cerca, para los introvertidos y los extrovertidos, para los que piensan y los que hacen, para los que nos mostraron el camino. Coca-Cola, para todos. Compra una Coca-Cola en una tienda cerca de usted.

• 42:44Speaker 05

  It's getting chilly outside. But you know what that means?

• 42:50Speaker 05

  It's time to cozy up with Panera Bread. Let's get toasty, cheesy. Oh, hello, broccoli cheddar soup in a bread bowl. How about melty? Okay, Chipotle Chicken Ovo Melt. It's dipping bread and soupy goodness season. Oh yeah, we're so back. It's Panera season. Order now.