Like watching 27 year olds, say it's a fad watching 36 year olds say like i can't figure out a non-custodial wallet like i don't want a coinbase like they're scared of this. The way parents were scared of putting credit cards into a computer, the garyvee audio experience vaynernation. What is good? We are back on the podcast 2022., i'm really not planning on doing too many interviews or episodes. I'm kind of i'm focused on befriends and vayner x.

I think the speaking the books, even the content, i'm down to the lowest levels this week in seven or eight years, but when i get an opportunity to do a show where i think um. All of you who are listening are gon na really enjoy the combo or have wanted to see the combo um. I i've definitely heard through my um, through my uh, navigating of the world that people wanted mark and i to interact or how would we jam um and i'm really excited that he's on the show. So i'm gon na, let him introduce himself and how he likes to speak about himself uh, i'm curious myself and then uh we'll get into a little bit of like book life because he's a beast and then maybe just shoot the on a bunch of different stuff.

So mark, how are you i'm great man, it's great to be here? I can't believe: we've actually never talked before the amount of peop. You know. There's people like you and there's probably 15 other people over the last decade that you know how like it's almost like. A neighbor you have you've, never talked, but you head nod.

You know, like i've, always felt that i had these kind of like people that ran in similar circles, shared friends, yeah, and it was just sheer serendipity that we weren't at the same conference. At the same event, that you know that that if we met seven years ago at a south by southwest, we would talk 13 times a year versus not once for seven. You know like it's one of those kind of things, it's actually. When kobe bryant passed.

I actually promised myself to slightly do a better job. I've done a little bit of a better job with it, but i'm such a mad scientist in my lab, my family, which is my real life and then professionally, my my laboratory and my crew around my laboratory. Cheer and and cheer and loot for everybody on the outside, but spend so little time on it. So i find myself in these predicaments where, but, but i i want to be a little more thoughtful because i definitely feel like i've always loved the way people talked about you, and that know you that know me.

So i'm happy we're here. Yeah me too man. Thanks um, so quick, quick, intro um, i'm actually from the blogging world. I started blogging in 07, actually discovered you back in.

Like 09 2010 um basically blew my career up going viral on facebook and twitter back in the day back when you kind of could go viral on facebook and twitter um grew a massive audience. Millions of readers each month parlayed that into a publishing deal books did super well have sold about 15 million books, crazy numbers. How many have you written uh, four one self-published and then three conventionally published um the last one was i did uh, i co-wrote will smith's memoir with him that came out a couple months ago, um and then what was the experience? What was the experience in in co-writing? You know i with him it was great um. I don't really aspire to be uh, a memoirist or or a ghost writer, or anything like that.

It's just he was just. He was cool enough and it was the whole thing was cool enough to do. He yeah he and i really hit it off and - and i think, did you come across brad haugen in his world. I know he's on the production.

Did that name. I think he works on some of the content side. Good friend of mine anyway keep going um, but yeah i mean he. He and i like he was in the right spot in his career to do the book.

What i would call correctly, you know, which is like actually open up and actually get into kind of the ugly parts of his life yeah um, and then i think he and i just like, on a personal level, our our skills and personalities complimented each other really. Well so that ended up in i mean i'm a 90s kid, so yeah he's the christian. I get suckered into things all the time, but honestly i mean it was such a great experience, but it's funny because i mean now now that that book is done so well. You know i've talked to my agent she's, like you know, other celebrities going to want to do stuff and people are going to reach out.

I'm like you know, i don't i don't know actually like i don't know. If that's something i really want to focus on. So it sounds horrible. I if i think, if you don't have the right person or if there's not a good chemistry, i think it would be horrible yeah, it's kind of like the way i think about vayner media, like clients like it actually is hard.

When i talk about eating, i don't think people really understand like like having when you're creative, having somebody two cooks in the kitchen is incredibly challenging yeah. It's not that it's horrible. I use that as a slang term for man that you want to say, serendipitous and the person wants to say you know by chance. Like you know, i, i love my art of being a content producer and being a businessman and have absolutely with my father.

My brother, you know, especially when it's family like that, had challenges when you know i knew what i wanted to do was right, but i wanted to be empathetic or have compromising capabilities, or you know yeah so and it's and it's there. Obviously, there were moments where it's like there were certain things that i felt should be in the book or certain directions. I thought certain chapters should go and it's at the end of the day, it's his book yeah. You know, so it's good for you to have like some, because some people, some people with no leverage, yeah and juice, aren't great at having that humility.

You came in with some real front-facing consumer leverage you're, you know. Obviously, the reason so many people have brought you up to me is because i say the word so much and you obviously you know it's such a dumb, dumb reason for people to associate us, but it's it's incredibly fair. Actually, i've had more than a couple. People ask me through the years, probably five, which is a lot.

If you think about it, hey are you pissed? He wrote that book like i'm like no, i'm pumped, he wrote that book. I was like i'm like you know. Um not from like that more like they just really think there was a lot of crossover of beliefs and then obviously the word, i think, actually just to go right into it, because there's so many marketing branding content people, you have two books with that. Sorry, i have a cough everybody um.

Sorry. If this hurts the podcast a little bit. Do you think, like the brilliance of what tim ferriss did, i met tim around that time as well? We were all kind of running around those you know yeah and he ran google adwords to figure out which title would work yeah. You know.

Obviously you know ryan holiday and others. I i watch how people navigate. Do you think the that, in the title had real impact no impact some impact on the success, real impact? For sure i mean so that book? You know you mentioned the tim ferriss thing running adwords to kind of figure out four hour work week. A lot of subtle art was very much market tested through blogs, yeah um.

So there are, you know, you knew what was working absolutely and that that that title, so i originally started writing that book with a different title, and then i wrote an article called the subtle art of not giving a and it went bananas, and i was like, Oh okay, maybe this should be the book right um. So there are a lot of sections in that book that grew out of viral blog posts. You know it's like. I know this works.

I know this. Like gets people yeah um. Let me ask you a question: um want the for the people listening. What is the one two three sentence? Recap of the subtle art of not giving a the 2016 book that went, bananas uh.

Basically, it's i always joke that that it's a book about values, but you know if i, if i told people it, was a book about values, nobody would read it, so you got to put in the title and kind of trick people into it, but i mean I mean you just you, you do realize you just completely in two sentences, recapped my entire career, i would argue in two seconds: here's the thing gary the amount of i eat here. Here's the thing man and i think you you and i landed in the spot for the same reason, because you you and i live and breathe and eat and sleep the the online social media world and what you quickly discover when you're in that world is that. There's an infinite amount of stuff out there, and so, if you don't figure out val like if you don't discover values to sort that stuff, if you don't figure out the principles of like this is what matters to me. This is what's important to me, and this is just crap that i'm going to ignore you're going to drown, and i i quickly just you know coming from a self-help angle, i quickly discovered that a lot of my generation's problems, a lot of the anxiety and depression And stress that my generation goes through, it comes from just not figuring out what those values are.

What what are the sorting mechanisms in your life and then, when you don't have your own you're grabbing to people's grabbing to others, you're completely succumbing to um outside affirmation and the second, you are living for outside affirmation, it's game over yeah. You know it's funny. I remember seeing the book in the in the airports because i'm always in the airports right yeah and it grabbed me too, like every other human, and i i remember feeling a huge you know i i do to my community famously talk about how little i read, But i remember feeling an incredible kinship just on title. I also believe so much of the world's problems is headline reading and making assumptions so like.

I selfishly asked you that question right now for my own self, but i really do believe that getting into a comfort zone of understanding the following do the people that know me the best like me and do the people that know me the least, have a chance Of liking me or not, liking me is a very simple framework that can help. I mean i every day i get accused of things that are not true, get negativity thrown at me and i'm pretty positive, communicate like i'm trying to you know, but i have a style that i think rubs people, the conviction and the confidence and the you know. The competitiveness like i get it, i understand why it lands like that. I also think like alpha.

Male energy timing is a little awkward and i'm empathetic to that. Those are macro trends, but everything that makes it palpable that not giving a. Of course i care, but it's it's having a structure of understanding, no, no, but but do the people that know me like me and then, as you get further away, does it still stay as good like strangers, thinking that i'm a charlatan makes sense. 13.

Second, clip on a video. You know that you know, but my mom thinking that that's devastating and i think there's a lot to that that i think a lot about. Well, it's it's also just the world that we live in now, right, like it's we're exposed to. So many other people all the time and so many other people are exposed to us that it's it's unreasonable to think that everybody who comes across you is going to like you, but i think, but i think there's a bigger thing.

I love your thought on this. I i think, we're also in the explosion of popular culture judgment and and pushing away as fast as we can any level of accountability. So, judging is on fire and accountability. Everyone's running away from pointing fingers super fun, popularized point grabbing thumbs devastating.

Nobody wants to do it thoughts. Absolutely one thing i wrote about when the pandemic started was like. I feel, like people have this addiction to like moral righteousness like it's. It's actually becoming a problem like.

I think we should become not less moral but like more amoral. Like like withhold judgment on like what is actually good and evil because it because you're the judge when you're the judge and the jury, it's a game of opinions outside of the things that most common sense nice human beings can agree on. I don't think anybody's on the side of murder, yeah, of course, but it's i i think you know it's so easy to pass judgment like moral judgment on people or groups of people today and there's so little repercussions, and i think that that is like we've just Kind of we've got this like crack addiction to moral righteousness as a culture. Well, it makes you feel better when it feels meaningful.

It feels me, but there's no consequences. Yeah. I think to your point, man we're going to really nerd out on this. I i think it it's an indicator of more collective unhappiness, because i think we're in a bigger game of outside validation.

Yeah, because when you're unhappy, the trigger of tearing somebody else's building down is an endorphin and a maybe not a dwarf. Maybe i'm using is a hit emotionally for you that helps you prop up in the short term yeah, and so you know it speaks to you know it's funny. People will blame technology, social media things of that nature, but i think it really starts to your point. Back to what you did in 16, it starts on values like if parents raise their children in and i'm a capitalist and i'm an entrepreneur.

But but i love the game, i'm not in it for the lambo or the watch and if you're teaching your kids, that, like it's all about those things like we're, going to aspire to get a mercedes-benz or you know you don't. You got ta lose 15 pounds because you don't look good or like all these different things, everything you're doing to reinforce that the outside world's judgment matters i'm the greatest beneficiary of a mother who built me the reverse, yeah, nothing else mattered. But what happened in our four walls and are we nice to people and to each other and call it a day yeah for sure man? I actually i want to ask you a quick question very briefly at the beginning that you're backing off on content and uh, you are somebody who's created a prodigious amount of content over the years, and i've also been backing off on content over the last year or Two i'm curious to hear why your friends - i i probably won't, deliver on my hyperbole in the beginning here. It's that a new thing came in to my life and you only have so many hours family.

You know matters most then professionally, which is my great hobby. I got ta allocate a little piece to my dad's business because i love him too much so i got ta keep a little eye on wine library wine text and then i have a behemoth of a company over a thousand employees globally. You know mexico city, london, aipac la new york vayner x is now a big dog. That's a lot of work, i'm the active ceo and i'm like an active ceo, like a ceo ceo, so that takes up a ton of time.

The only other thing that took a time before was garyvee right speaking, books content with v friends coming along. It's a really tricky one, because not only do i have to be the ceo operator, it's a big company and you're dabbling with nfts. I want to ask you about that, because i saw that somewhere, um that's become a huge company jesus christ, it's kind of even hard for me to like wrap my head around, but i also have to be it's not like vaynermedia, where i didn't have to build. The brand i just had to build a company i mean i could have, but i built it in a b2b environment.

It was a whole, unique strategy. The friends i have to build patient panda empathy elephant. You know curious coyote, like i have conviction. I have like real work to be done, yeah call it, you know, dc comics marvel disney transformers he-man, so i'm a great storyteller and marketer.

I believe that, but i have to put that energy now into patient panda and - and you know, an empathy elephant and you know an adventurous astronaut not into gary vee yeah, that makes sense uh. Here's a good analogy: i've got to become more walt disney than mickey mouse. I've got to become more vince mcmahon than hulk hogan and the reason i used vince mcmahon and walt disney is you still kind? They still were pop culture and away like you knew who they were. They weren't the ceos of like ge.

You know you knew who they were, but they weren't at the front of the lights. Yeah. Why? What tell me what's going on in your nft stuff, because you've seen that a little bit in the social sphere, so i'm kind of i'm a bit behind the curve to you but uh. You know i discovered nfts last year.

Basically like dropped everything. You know it start started neglecting. Everything, in my mind, are you are you like? Are you like me that way like like blogging, when you first saw it you're like this social, that, like you've, got that kind of you've been looking for with that innate kind of you know something's happening, and it kills me a little bit because it's it's? You know now i've got like a team of people. I've got like an online business.

You know we're selling courses we're doing all this stuff and, like i feel bad now now now it's like you know back in the day, i could just drop everything and be like hell, yeah nfts um. Now i'm like having someone welcome to my life yeah like you're, getting all my 3 30 meeting is with you know, like a toy retailer trying to do a huge deal for the holidays and, like 345, is like we have this problem with the client, our project Manager is not screwed, you know you're, like oh man. This is not yeah, it's hard yeah, so i i'll use this opportunity. So this is this.

Is this is exclusive and that this is the first? It's just been publicly. Let's go, i don't get a lot of guests, i'm excited so uh. I'm gon na bring subtle art, we're going to fractionalize subtle art and bring it to the nft space. We're going to carve it up into a thousand individual quotes and the way the way copyright agreements work with publishers is that the publisher has his license to the full book.

But if it's just a quote or if it's just a paragraph or a section, the author can do whatever they want with it. So what we're doing is we're carving up the book into individual quotes and paragraphs, and then i'm basically going to uh uh, give creative commons license to those individual quotes for whoever purchases it. So if you buy the nfp, you get the quote, and then you could quote unquote. Do what you want with the do, whatever you want with it, yeah you're buying it from you.

I can't give the copyright you're giving the with all sorts of stuff but you're getting the creative commons rights kind of like flickr was back in the day when everyone was like whoa. It's i'm not gon na mess with you um, so yeah super excited right. So when i buy a bunch of your most famous quotes yeah and then make hoodies and sell and make tons of revenue, you won't send me a letter no and you're gon na be like. Why is gary able to sell more hoodies of my quote than we were team? I wouldn't ask that about you, but that's not fair enough, but with some some random kid on the street.

So this this is cool. I got ta get when uh. When are you doing this uh looking at late february, early march or we'll keep an eye on this? Where, where should people follow? You look what's your twitter because i'm sure that'll be the best place to for this audience too. Twitter is, i am mark manson.

I am got it what um in our ten minutes here? What what other things should? Entrepreneurs go getters kind of um? What are some other things that we can help people with, or what do you anywhere? You want to take this like a a fun story. Working with will um an insight to what's working with you on content right now, because a lot of i think we have enough crossover that where you take it, this audience will like so whatever you want. Well i'll say this: i asked you the content question because i mean for me: it's been a combination of discovering web3 like it's, i mean i i've. I've been in the crypto for many many years, but it always seemed it was like two ponzi-ish years ago.

It was all currency right, like i really understand the bitcoin thesis and i'm still long at bitcoin, because i think the brand is too strong. Yeah and nfts are so much more consumer. What you and i do. It's, not currency.

It's it's this last year or two. It's like oh they're, actually building stuff like that. Let me give you an example: yeah nft project gets pumped and it completely fails. Yeah, like it went up to 4 000 a piece and then in the nft winter, they're 88 bucks i in 2026, i'm gon na buy 8 000 of them and the ip and refurbish it no different than what i did with k-swiss or what happens with brands.

All the time, with a coin, from 2017, it pumps we have the winter, it's dead, yeah, there's still an asset with nfts and a narrative that makes it very very different than coins, and i think that i'm really excited about when we get to that part of The story: well, if you think about i mean like there's so many books throughout history that blew up after the author died, you know or like yeah. Can you give us two or three, because i'm not educating? That's if i love that ah well, like so like scarlet letter nathaniel hawthorne, like is that true, yeah or like moby dick, like armin melville, like died, broke and alone like and then moby dick became the great american novel after he died. You know so it's this sort of stuff happens in publishing and i'm super excited about nfts in the publishing world as well, because it solves a lot of the issues actual pro like practical problems, the publishing industry has - and it's crazy too, because like doing this, are You currently i'm sorry interrupt. Are you currently in a book deal? Yes, how many more do you owe them? One yeah i my last book that just came out the one i sold a drillion of because i did an nft thing: um, i'm a free agent and i'm in the weirdest spot.

Yeah i've had an incredible one with harper collins who do you work with harper as well? Amazing yeah, you don't work with hollis. Do you uh? No, i don't know. Okay, my publisher is hollis at harper business she's. Amazing.

I find myself in a crazy predicament. I'm super happy there yeah comfortable. What can they offer? You that's the thing it's like: what can they offer you and, and - and i want them to right - because i don't i'm doing plenty of my own stuff - i'd like to have a couple places where i have some partnerships, but the economics are too extreme. If my next book is an nft and you get the book, yeah yeah, it's crazy and it's it was fascinating to me as well because like when i first approached harper about this, this nft project, i expected tons of pushback.

You know, and - and i expected them to kind of flip out and i'd - have to do damage control and, to my surprise, like they're, i wouldn't say they're on board, but they are open. They are very open and curious, like they're. They are watching very closely. Well, listen, they they saw.

You know one of their authors, sell 1.2 million books in a day and you - and i know what that means. I mean you know, i'm not i'm not the you know. I've done really well, you've done really well. Those are just uncomfortable numbers, crazy numbers, yeah, that's crazy and those are moments in time.

I think right now we're in internet stock 99.. That's the one thing, while everybody's listening, just a quick did that it's almost like a disclaimer. I always want to say we are the nft thing. Is real it'll be here forever in a big way, so learn it? The individual nft projects, 99 of them, are in beanie babies, mode super hyped they're going to crash.

You know what else was in beanie babies, mode, internet stocks at 99., and that's what happened but amazon and ebay were there at seven bucks a share you could have bought them. You could bought amazon for seven bucks a share before all these splits. They had it's insane yeah, so um. Nonetheless, uh go ahead.

You were finishing a thought, but i was curious if you're debating as a prominent, you know author, like do you sign a book deal or do you do it yourself now with nft land yeah? I i honestly i i don't know i mean we'll see how this launch goes, we'll see how the market goes. I mean, like you, said it's, it's there's. Definitely a bubble right now so like we'll hope to see how things shake out, but i could totally see in like two three years from now it being a very, very difficult question. Uh answer um, but what i was gon na say before that is like.

I feel like i'm, i'm also in this weird, like no man's land, because i'm so excited about web3 stuff, but it also feels like it's still very frothy and new and not completely consolidated or figured out yet. Meanwhile, like on the web 2 side on like the traditional social media and blogging and everything everything just feels like, i don't want to say dead but like saturated right like it's, the roi is so brother. It's you know it's the tail as long as time. The reason you and i in 07 - and you did blogging the reason you found me in 09 - was, i would say the most frustrated i was in my career in my entire career was 2005 to 2009, because i couldn't write, i still can't.

I can't write for a lick, yeah and i saw blogging coming and i'm like, and you know, and i had one on kind of ecommerce and search and i'm an email for sure. Yeah and i was like this is gon na be huge, and i knew that. I was like on the sidelines with, like my helmet in my hand and, and literally the second, you know the second. Oh i'm sorry, i'm sorry i'm gon na.

I got my timer wrong. Oh three, two! Oh six! Oh four, to oh six, because the second youtube came. I was on it so blistering fast. That's why my wine thing worked so well, because i was like okay, i can use the new thing and then obviously social new thing and then every app on social but you're right, like it's gon na, take the next tick tock to do anything in web 2.

But even that is going to be a slight alteration of what we've seen since o5. Web 3 is like crazy new world, which is what we were learning about: the internet back in the day, yeah it's web 2. It just feels like you're, taking the same playbook and applying it to new platforms exactly over and over and it in africa. It's a real art like knowing the capture the art of tick.

Tock versus instagram is a real art, but to your point, you're still making a short form piece of content in video form 100, and it's after 12 years or whatever like it. You know it kind of you, you kind of just keep getting the same thing over and over, whereas like web 3, it just feels like we're in like 3d chess. No, it's like finding america yeah yeah. You know like, like you thought it was just europe.

Wait! A minute, it's really like that. It's our version of that final thoughts, give me you know. I don't i feel like we may have to do this again, because i want to extract what are some hot takes from a social commentator? What are you seeing out there? What should people think about? What is a good? What were some good takeaways - hey gang, hey gang, keep keep an eye on this, whether it's literal like ott, shows or like pop culture or common emotional themes, you're seeing and just like takes. I i feel, like i feel, like there's, there's kind of like a great moderation coming like, i feel, like a lot of what felt so unstable with social media and just the news media in general.

Throughout the 2010s, i feel like it was a lack of education on the user's end of like people. Don't understand how social media feeds affect their their moods, their information consumption, the way they think the beliefs that they adopt, and i think the the general public's knowledge of how these things work is catching up to like where you - and i were five ten years ago And i think, as that happens, we're already seeing it now. Um people are just learning better like learning to to to turn off all the noise and they're learning to back off not hit the reply button so fast, yep um and i i i i see a kind of a new boom of like independent voices happening right Now um, i i'm like so bearish on traditional east coast media right now. It's crazy um! What's like what does that mean like new york times in washington, got it yeah uh like that um? It's just i, i just think they're, it's just a sinking ship, um yeah.

I mean, i think all traditional media needs a different model. They do they do it. It's not even about for everybody. Listening, it's not a left or right thing.

It's funny when you said a great moderation: i've been using a purple heart. I've been falling in love with the color purple. I've been i've, been spending so much time in this too bad. My favorite color is green, but i'm gon na figure.

This out. I am completely convinced that, what's about to happen is purple, i'm sorry you and i we need to really actually become friends, we're clearly very similar in a lot of ways, i'm sure very different others and those are the fun parts. But the world is so red and blue yeah and the answer is purple and it's and some people and and sometimes it's dark purple. Sometimes it's very light purple, but like it's so clear that we will die - and this is not even like from politics like you know, like socialism or storming the capital, it just becomes societal, it becomes like operational, it becomes your day-to-day life.

It's it's everything. It's not j, i mean it's most visible in politics right but like, but it's everywhere. It's everywhere like i, i'm i'm a big gamer. I see in the gaming community.

It's like the loudest most insane. Two percent of gamers are the ones that you hear about all the time. You know it's like it's like the crazy sports people are the ones you hear all the time you know, and it's like it's it's our own fault for loving, rubbernecking yeah. Well - and it's i, i hope, slash feel that people are they're smartening up to this, and i think this is why you're seeing like sub stack takeoff you're, seeing like uh, you know you.

There was a chart recently of like joe rogan's numbers compared to all like the um. What do you call it? Cable news shows or whatever - and it's like you know, his audience is as big as like. The five biggest cable news shows combined. You know - and it's like i mean people are seven hundred thousand years old - that watch cable, cut news like we have to understand that by the way i i think ageism is a problem, i'm not on 50.

60. 70. 80. 90 on i'm almost 50..

You know euros, i'm i'm on the concept that the world's evolving that i have unlimited friends who are 71 years old, who know what stubstack is and like read like all sorts of different things and are just like, and i have very interesting friends who are willing To watch both fox and cnn and this and that and it's not even about like the politics anymore - it's just the formats. So so here's a thought for you i'll leave you with this thought. You know when i was a kid i used to make fun of my parents because, like we get like a vcr, and my parents didn't know how to program the vcr and like my brother, and i would figure it out right and we would like make fun Of my parents, like, oh i'm, so bad with technology, it was like a funny thing in the 90s to be an older person who was bad with technology. I think now it's potentially like a social problem well and also, i think we we judge them so negatively and then the nft thing fires me up because all my 20 30 and 40 year old friends became their parents overnight because they're like i don't want to Learn this it's a jpeg like watching 27 year olds, say it's a fad watching 36 year olds say like i can't figure out a non-custodial wallet like i don't want to coin me, like they're scared of this.

The way parents were scared of putting credit cards into a computer like literally watching 20 and 30 year olds over the last 12 months, become their 65 year. Old parents has been one of the most joyous things for me, because i let them i trap them. I let them cause these are my friends, i let them i let them i'm like. That's the you used to make your fun of your mom for yeah, totally man, totally technology, we'll talk brother congrats on all your success.

We will cross paths again thanks for being on the show thanks man great talking, you.