And the key for me as an entrepreneur is if i lose 91 times and i win seven times, the seven times will offset the 98 at bets and most people don't see that you've got your perspective. I just want to be happy, don't you want to be happy gary welcome to five questions. Thank you for having me, or should i say, welcome back. This is my sixth interview with you since 2007 uh and congratulations on 12 and a half, an amazing read.

Of course, you know not too much of it surprises me based on knowing you for such a long period of time and it's your sixth business book and, of course, did anything, did anything pop out as somebody who obviously has interacted and consumed, and we've interacted a Lot was there anything that was caught, you uh, you know what for me. I think it was reinforcement for something that i've been thinking about and you and i were similar in many ways. Obviously you know you know. I came from like an immigrant family, hard workers.

You know i've been working since i was a little kid like you and, and so like i don't know, the work ethic thing is is penetrated through everything. You've done, of course, but one of the things that you said actually is that curiosity is one of the top soft skills that you mentioned the book and to me that makes so much sense, because when i think about what drives me, it's curiosity. It's the reason why i have a research business and i want to uncover the biggest workplace trends you you focus on marketing, consumer trends and just overall trends about where we're going. You know in the future, so curiosity like i even you know i was talking to david copperfield and he even said curiosity is why he got into magic.

So the fact that that was one of the the soft skills and emotional intelligence skills that you focused on. I think that really resonated with me because it reinforced how i'm thinking about what motivates me and why i do what i do. I love it so going on to that, i love how you included it and most people don't think of curiosity as a scale. How has your curiosity led to you experiment and have breakthroughs in business and your life? I mean it's foundational for me.

You know in hindsight my my attachment to youth and child ish like optimism and and curiosity um is essential. I think curiosity leads to um opportunities. Humility, i think, is actually a very important partner to curiosity and innovation. So not only am i inherently curious like oh, what is that or why do people like that? Even at this point in my career, where my time has for lack of a better word, humbled me in what its value is on paper, i'm willing to spend 70 hours, which is to go down an empty road, yeah right people.

Well, one of your great examples. Gary is you have you know, invested or participated in social networks that haven't succeeded, but you've learned from those experiences too, which has helped. You then later invest and make decisions that have greatly benefited. I, i would have been the first investor in tinder.

If that wasn't incubated at iac uh, because of what i learned with yo bongo, which was a big loss for me, uh and and tried to get into highlight, which was a loss, and so i think that's exactly right, i think people under value they really undervalue. Learnings, they really do reps the at-bats. You know, i think when we say this is a good analogy. Actually, first time, i've ever thought of it, hey go in the gym and take a thousand free throws.

Uh, i think everyone who's listening right now is like. Oh, that's gon na help that person be a better shooter. What i don't think we go deeper into is realizing that person's gon na miss 397 shots in that session. If they're like early in their basketball life, that's how i treat business with curiosity, i'm willing to miss 397 shots so that later i'm an nba player - and i think curiosity, along with humility, lead you down paths that actually occasionally become fruitful and the key for me As an entrepreneur is, if i lose 91 times and i win seven times, the seven times will offset the 98 at bats and most people don't see that and you can curiosity yeah and you can't replace actually doing it as in i've done tons of research on This about how people best, learn and from a workplace perspective on the job, training, trumps, everything because you're actually doing it and learning firsthand what works.

What doesn't work, what you like? What's going to benefit the business you're measuring! Nothing is more obnoxious to me than watching business students give operators advice when they've never actually run a business. It could be right in theory, but it lacks context absolutely and um and and practicality often - and you know - and that's not to say i mean i'll - give you good example: head coaches often times never play the sport professionally um, but they've played it somewhat normally, and It's a little bit of context, but you can be a great head coach and not be a great player and that's fine. But yes, i i think curiosity is a massively underrated ward in the business world and that's what this book was about. I mean kindness, i mean, when is kindness even been part of the business lexicon ever and i've been around and to me, and it was way worse before you were around and and and for and me right and and for me it's the obvious way to build Something meaningful long term people sticking around for the long term leads to continuity.

Continuity, a good atmosphere is less political. Thus people are actually focused and going fast, and so it's interesting stuff, absolutely and curiosity is only one of the 12 essential emotional skills that you cover. In the book - and the other thing that i thought was interesting is there's a half so which skill do you feel weakest in and how are you trying to improve it, so you can be more effective in every area of your life yeah. So the book is called 12 and a half, and my point in the book is like these are the 13 traits that i subjectively believe currently based on my experiences with myself and others.

Uh really are foundational for modern business success. The half comes in because i'm i feel like i'm very far along with the 12. and here's. My half and other people have their halves, but my half is, which is a stunner for a lot of people who don't know me well or more importantly, from almost everybody who's listening.

Who knows me as gary b on a podcast or on stage, but doesn't know me as gary vaynerchuk an executive, my great half, my whole career has been candor, which is wild because the ability to be cancerous in interviews or on stage or on television or on Podcasts is a strength of mine. You know i i get unlimited like hey gary. I love your no approach. I really appreciate you shooting it straight, but as an executive deli, you know speaking to the masses with you right now.

It's really easy because i'm not speaking to an actual human being speaking to tamara or sally or ricky or chanel, is so much more challenging for me and i always tried to skirt around the bone. If i had to give critical feedback, it would always still come in a package that was much more about optimism. I would skirt around the actual issue and i was trying to find different ways to get them there without telling them like hey, you're, really struggling or you're, not good at this, or you know like it just i was always scared that it would lead to fear And and spiral out of control - and i i really struggled with candor and and two or three years ago, i started getting better at it, a lot better at it, because i i was my subconscious became my conscious i'd always known. It was always hanging in there.

Dan, like i always knew like man for somebody who really doesn't care about the money really truly like meaning. Of course i want some, but like it's not about that, it's not about this. It's about the process, i love being liked. I like being admired.

Why do i even have anybody who's ever worked? For me? Not love me! Oh wait! A minute. It's been this candor thing right, dan you're, doing great dan you're doing great dan. You can get this damn listen, the way you're working with johnny, listen, maybe you'll. Just and then all of a sudden dan you're fired by the way, by the way i just gary.

What you said is so important, because you want to be like very few people will admit they want to be liked, but i think at everyone's heart, if they were very honest with themselves, they want to be liked as well. So i adore how many other people do you know who says i want to be liked, but that that's they do want to be liked. I i i love being liked. I also often interview say i don't care what people think that's actually equally true.

I can hold both of those feelings. What i mean by that is, if johnnypants99 says you suck garyvee it's hard for me to have weight in that i care a lot more. What you think of me dan than johnnypants93, because we've interacted a lot over a decade. I care a hell of a lot more with alex raffington.

What she thinks of me she's one of my three admins and really knows me more than she i care about her opinion of me way more than i care about your opinion of me, and so that's what i mean, but all in all, i want johnnypants93. I want you - and i want her to like me, because i'm aware that i got very fortunate lucky a word that i hate using, because i think people weaponize it but very lucky and fortunate that i was given natural dna. That is good, parented, well, circumstances that led to good work, ethic and kindness and a million other things so yeah i mean uh anyway, candor is my half and when people go through this book, whether it's gratitude, so many people lack gratitude. It's wild humility is impossible.

You know i come with heavy conviction and confidence, so people don't see this in me, but the way i operate, my business humility, is a core foundation of what's going on with me um, you know. Empathy is well documented at this point in my career. I need my damn winery after it um and you kind of go through it self-awareness one of the things that makes it very easy for me to navigate. Is i understand why somebody wouldn't love me if they just saw a clip on instagram, where i dropped the f-bomb nine times, and i go aggressive at something and they're like who is this guy? Of course, many people with the way they were raised would be turned off by me.

That's self-awareness and empathy, that's you know, so i really go into it in this book, but it's also things like tenacity and ambition, and and most of all, my biggest argument in the book is like look. The soft skills are actually the hard skills right like i can find anybody who can have the talent to do the math or the creative or the man like you can find them show me the people that are excelling at humanity and i'll show you a company That, if they hire that way, have a totally different outcome, yeah, especially in the world, where it's increasingly getting automated with new technology. If the technology's promise is to do much of what our hard skills do for us, then what remains is the soft skills, the emotional intelligence, everything you talk about the book now with tape, where you take things a step further, which really makes this book interesting and Valuable aside from just telling us hey here why these are important, how how they've applied to your life and made you successful and other people successful? How do you tailor these individual soft skills to different people? Like you mentioned, like a co-worker or secretary or someone, you interact with environments and situations, because that's where things get complicated for people, it's the only thing that matters like a vanilla strategy without context is always going to lose. I mean i deploy different tactics on these traits to the same person based on the day of the week.

I have a different, contextual thought process. If it's raining outside versus sunny on how i have to be as a leader, i literally like compassionately and empathetically recognize that there are humans on earth that are very affected by weather and so little things matter is what you're saying in a in a real way. I actually manage differently on a tuesday than a monday, based on the weather, let alone a million other. I just had a tough meeting by the way, just now with a team that has been dominating all year now, things are different.

You know some bad news from the client and now like i have to be empathetic to that. I can't talk to them today. The way i talked to them yesterday when you're a true leader when you're trying to achieve inhumanity in business and life, if you are not capable of adjusting at every moment to every nuanced variable, you are creating vulnerabilities and you know what's really interesting gary one of The big things i recognized early during kovid is that everyone's in a unique situation, meaning like i would talk to people who were pregnant and had covert. I talked to people who had two children and was like a single mother living at home or was an entrepreneur or indeed everyone.

You know income situations where you live, you know, do you have kids or not, there's so many different variables and as a leader, it's all you know what you said is very fascinating with you know, depending on the weather time of day et cetera, but it's also Like what's this individual's life circumstances, because work and life, as you know, are more blended, i mean think about you know all the remote work that uh did you were you able to skim the book? The answer is yes by the way to what you just said. Were you did you skim it? Were you able to actually read it uh, i'm more like you yeah, i'm more. Like you, i scared my chest. Okay, yeah! That's that, by the way that doesn't even register for me, i'm very grateful for even knowing it exists, let alone skimming it.

Let me ask you this: did you skim the part where i talk about a scenario? Make pretend scenario where the employee that's upset with the manager may want to consider the fact that something atrocious happened to the manager's life that day? Yes, so i think one of the things that i'm really proud about this book is, i think it gives a holistic much more nuanced thought, which is when you're an employee. You just have an inherent thing of like manager you're. What are you gon na do for me, you what i'm gon na do for you or company what like, but we don't deploy em. We tend to talk about empathy down, hey leader, have empathy for your people, but we don't talk a lot about hey employee.

Have empathy for your manager if a manager has proven to you that she or he has been solid for a year and something atrocious happened today out of left field, i see people canceling that manager like. Oh, i knew it you, sam or sarah. What about? Having compassion and empathy to the thought of, like man, i hope everything's okay with sarah or sam, this is out of character. We don't do enough of that.

Cordialness stability, empathy. We need more and all of my researchers. You know i've interviewed tens of thousands of executives, managers, hr leaders, employees and you know, what's really interesting - the higher up. You go in the hierarchy, the more they're suffering from mental health 100, and so that yeah, i've done a whole course with linkedin about managing well-being.

As a as a leader because they're the ones who are suffering but no one's thinking about it because they're making more money, but they have more responsibility, so that's more stress dan. If i wasn't completely detached from everything professionally my success, my failures, the money, the accolades, the haters, the all the pains, the fact that, every day all that happens to me is problem after problem after problem. That's all i what i'm a firefighter i'm a firefighter. If i wasn't completely detached, it would be impalpable yep, so i love to switch gears as much as i know that you are like mr nft, but you're also like nfts is like part of your your career, obviously like you're, always for looking you're, always testing.

You know with your own nfts in the marketplace: you're launching and everything that you've been doing so you've said that 98 of nft projects will go to zero and called for an nft winter. What do you think will be the two percent that appreciate long-term in value? I'm not sure, i'm incredibly positive. My big bet is crypto punks, just given the nature of its status of establishment um. What about like ip? Like you know like vv, with nfts and like disney nfts with like marvel and star wars, star wars? The problem is people.

I come from a collecting background, so i'm too smart good, so you know thomas, so you know this. Not every not even close to every spider-man has value what about the first ever spider-man nft. Of course. The question becomes, though, which one right maybe like versus on chain versus what, if solana, wins the day in 12 years, then it's gon na be the first solana spiderman, not the first eth right, so we're too early see where i'm going yeah there's a lot to Think through you could bridge over to different chains, there's a lot to think through what is actually an nft versus a digital asset.

Maybe closed environment. You know decentralized, switching, it's switching away from close being a closed environment, though it's going to be a question. The question yeah, i know that, but the question will become: will the market accept it as the first or was it the first? That meant it on main net because they didn't got it because now it won't be the first. That's so there's all the and all of it's awesome like i actually have no idea at a minimum you're having fun and you're learning about this space.

You don't know, but you're willing to you know, see what's going to work and especially for your business, because nfts is rocked. I don't know what you do. I also like the fact that the results are going to be the results. I don't know i have hunches.

I will spend my money and put my reputation on the line against those hunches, and i have the humility and the confidence to navigate that, because i realize that if i am wrong, it's incredibly, you know this. I enjoy talking about passing on uber twice well, because it's an example: it's an it's. A great example of hey you're, not always gon na, be right, yeah. It's also the truth right like like, like, like you know, so, if crypto punks disappears in its relevance like and becomes friendster right, then i'm like okay, i was wrong.

I shouldn't have bought that and that will be just as good learning content for my audience as if i was right and i think too many people are attached to success, i'm either attached or detached from both success and failure. I'm obsessed of the oxygen of the process right, you know this, you and i grew up in the revolution of social media personal brand moments of that too right, that's how we broke out. That's how we broke out yeah. You were very aware, because you were actually there you're, not reading it.

In my wikipedia, you are aware that when i hit the scene there was 500 other people. That in theory, looked like me right, but when you did wine library tv, i would had no interest in wine gary, but i still watched the show to me. That's how i knew you were going to be successful. I think that's fair.

You said to yourself because you're thoughtful about psychology that okay wait a minute. This dude may be different because i'm not interested in a subject matter, but he's compelling enough for my interest. You could have talked about anything right what you didn't know at the time. Nor did anybody, nor did i myself other than my own hopes and convictions and intuitions is that i was obsessed with not compromising my reputation for anything at all costs, including how i predict aka observe i don't predict.

I just talk early enough um. The way i handled myself, you know i'm not transactional uh. The way i like to have true relationships: you're, smart. You know where i'm at at this point.

I'm doing this show because of you, i'm busy, i'm busy. I don't you know you know, but this is what i like about you because i think you're awake, but i'm a long-term gary vee person right. It's yeah we'll be talking when you're, you know 70 years old, but i, but i think you probably could have been long-term other people who, along the way, decided not to reciprocate relationships. Yeah.

You know i just i just saw your future early on and you know i was like it's it's worth the investment and - and you know you kind of uh - you both reinforced what i knew and showed me a path forward at the same time, and i think A lot of people would agree on that. That's very nice! I'm incredibly grateful at this point. I'm a 40 turning 46. I know we're recording this on wednesday.

I don't know when you're gon na drop it, but on november 14th on the sunday um, which, when are you, dropping this uh next week, a couple weeks, two weeks, yeah yeah. So you know like now: i'm 46, as everyone's listening and man i was a. I was i had wisdom at seven. I hung out, with 80 year olds, 80 year old, eastern european jewish begrudging grandpas on the at at the park in queens and these 85 year old smug from the old country and the hard life they were captivated by me, and i of them i, to this Day believe that i'm an old soul that i was born with wisdom and then parented with it and then circumstanced with it, and the fact that i found my way to be able to pass it on without expectation of others, is a gift like.

Thank god. I was able to make money and fulfill myself with a roof over my head and food on the table in a manner that didn't require me to monetize my audience right. I i had so. I got so fortunate right, so many people that are great communicators and do what i do they're required to monetize their audience, because that's the only way they can get their selfish needs.

I was able to get my selfish needs out of being a retailer about. Vaynermedia is a 300 million a year business, i'm a businessman that happens to also desperately enjoy talking to people at scale. What the people on the other end have felt is wait a minute. The other shoe never dropped with this guy.

There was no funnel to this, or that or this it was a real relationship, not a transactional one, and that i think, has been the pedestal that i've been able to be put on by the audience. Absolutely, and what's your best piece of career advice that your word is bond, it's really helped me. Man really genuinely my dad, instilled that in me, my gift of gab. I could have been a cult leader for christ, right, like i am captivating you're right and the fact that do you know how many days a year, i thank god for making me a nice person.

When you know you have a super communication superpower, you shiver down your spine of the thought. If you weren't in a good place, what damage you could do - and i have history to show me - i know who hitler is. I know who mussolini is. I know who jim jones is.

You know i, you know you look at the history of like when you are given that gift of communication. You could go gandhi and martin luther king or you can go hitler and mussolini and like not that i want to put myself in those territories, because i stay in a much much smaller place in society. But i'm aware that and i'm grateful for that, and i and i think everybody has their version of communication skills. I think a lot of people listening right now, don't realize how much of a legacy and a good legacy they can leave if they had the courage and the self-esteem to put out things they believe in.

We can help each other and unfortunately, negativity is louder than positivity and that has played out over the last. You know 15 years and i take on a huge sense of responsibility to speak about optimism and practicality and and hope and good stuff, because i believe it absolutely and you're. You know we talk about personal writing. We've talked about this for such a long period of time, whether people call it reputation or or whatever consistency has always been important when building a brand, as you know, and the advice that you just shared you've been sharing this for way over a decade, and it's Because i think, because your dad taught you it when you were younger and it's something that has stayed with you and it's also, i i understood it was something that was.

You know what it actually inspires me because i do believe it was taught to me. I believe my natural state does have a little bit of a little too much schmooze. I know who i was at eight. I remember how i sold baseball cards to ten.

The sale was more valuable than my honor right it just whatever it took, and you know, as you become a little bit older, you know i was able to be in an environment where lying was demonized, and so my dad really took a lot of my vulnerabilities Out of me in scaring me, he scared me. He scared me straight at some level and he caught me at 13. 14.. So i'm 14, 15.

16, 17 and i start to read it's almost like working out. I reformed and by the time i became, and then it was just over like i was just in such a good spot right and then, by the time, i'm 22, i'm this full product of my mom, instilling the majority of the good, my dad really plugging the Hole on what could have been a huge vulnerability and limited my upside, and here i am as a 46 year old man and professionally. I am in a very unique spot and have a lot of opportunity to really shape a conversation, i'm incredibly hungry for this book. I really want people to understand that the good traits are not over coddling, not soft, not la la la land - that actually, these good things actually lead to empires yeah, and this will clearly be part of your legacy.

Well, i hope so everything you just shared is such great advice. I obviously urge people to read the book and you know i'll be following you forever and i just think that the legacy you live is going to be a really positive one. Promoting the you know, emotional intelligence and skills that people really need not just professionally but personally, and so thank you so much for being on the show. Gary pleasure have a great great day.

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