This episode’s guest is Gary Vaynerchuk, aka GaryVee, and he is back for another remarkable episode to share all the golden nuggets from his new book, Twelve and a Half: Leveraging the Emotional Ingredients Necessary for Business Success.

Gary is an entrepreneur, social media influencer, speaker, author, and investor. He had early investments in companies such as Canva, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Venmo, Snapchat, Coinbase, and Uber.

Gary is a five-time New York Times Best-Selling author and a highly sought-after public speaker. His other books include; Crush It!, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, and The Thank You Economy.

In this episode he discusses:

  • Kind candor
  • Empathy
  • First job
  • Weakening weaknesses vs strengthening strengths
  • Why NFT are the next big thing

Enjoy this interview with Gary Vaynerchuk!

 

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Transcript of Guy Kawasaki’s Remarkable People podcast with Gary Vaynerchuk:

Guy Kawasaki:
I'm a Guy Kawasaki, and this is the Remarkable People podcast. I'm on a mission to make you remarkable.
Helping me today is Gary Vaynerchuk, aka Gary Vee.
He is back for another remarkable episode to share all the golden nuggets from his book, Twelve and a Half: Leveraging the Emotional Ingredients Necessary for Business Success.
Gary is an entrepreneur, social media influencer, speaker, and author.
He's also an early investor in companies, such as Canva, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Venmo, Snapchat, Coinbase, and Uber.
Gary is a five time, New York Times best-selling author, and a highly soughed after public speaker.
His other books include; Crush It!, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, and The Thank You Economy.
In this episode, he discusses kind candor, empathy, what you should look for in your first job, whether you should weaken weaknesses or strengthen strengths, wow that's the tongue twister, and why NFTs are the next big thing.
I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is remarkable people. And now here's the one and only truly unique, Gary Vee.
If I told your fans about what you would do to someone who embezzled a quarter million bucks, let's just say that empathy would be way down the list. So, why empathy?
Gary Vaynerchuk:
That's a really fun way to start. First of all, Guy, it's really good to see you, really genuinely it's really nice to see you. I hope you're well.
Guy Kawasaki:
Thank you.
Gary Vaynerchuk:
What's funny, something happened yesterday where an inner circle person, somebody's who has been with me for a while and they were just like, "I can't believe that's where you went first." I default into thinking what's going on with the other person.
I'll give you a better one. When we were a very small wine business, my dad's business, we had an employee figure out a hack in our shipping system and steal more than that amount of money when we surely couldn't afford it. We figured out it's that moment, the investigation was going on for a little bit, we get to the aha moment.
My father who grew up in Soviet Russia and came here with nothing and so I'm very empathetic to his reaction is, jail for life. I, because the employee was with us for five years immediately. And this is my late twenties go into something's wrong with him, something's wrong we have to help him.
And that was the crescendo moment for me in my career. When I look back, that clearly indicates that I believe in compassion and empathy, because I think it's important.
Of course, nobody wants money stolen from them. But I do think the soft skills really do matter and I do think wondering what's wrong with the person on the other side that would get to a place where they would do those things is a strength, not a weakness, and I think most people have it misunderstood.
Guy Kawasaki:
Is this Gary Vee 2.0 or is this just 1.0 unmasked?
Gary Vaynerchuk:
Yeah, this is Gary Vaynerchuck much more unmasked because he didn't realize, it wasn't conscious. All the hyper Gary Vee of 2009, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2011.
If one looked behind the wine videos, or the cursing on stage, or the guy that you met early on. That style was what would happen to me when I had the lights on no different than an athlete is potentially a slightly different version of themselves on the field than what they were at home.
If you had talked to all my employees that were with me, they would laugh because they're like, "Man, one on one, it's such a different demeanor as an operator, it's such a different demeanor."
I'm still high energy and all that stuff but I think it's Gary Vaynerchuk being more unmasked as I started to tap into, how did I get here? Why is this working? What's different about me than a lot of the people I've come across? Is there anything that I can communicate that brings value? Maybe there's a lot more people like me out there that don't have somebody to point to.
So, I would say this was always who I was.
In fact, the most ironic part of that question or that statement, the book's called Twelve and a Half, the half, which I refer to as a shortcoming of mine is candor, which completely was an off-speed pitch for so much of my fan base, the people in my community, the people that follow me, because Gary Vee's greatest strength is candor.
Because I'm talking on stage to nobody. You and I are talking right now to the ether. But when it came to one on one, I really struggled with conflict and negative feedback.
I thought it would lead to fear. I believe a leader's biggest job is to eliminate fear.
I matured over twenty years and realized my lack of candor was actually leading to fear because people didn't know where they stood, and that was a humbling moment in my late thirties, early forties, where I'm like, "Wow, this is a real flaw in my management style. I need to get better at this."
To finish this off it's just the unveiling of who I've always been.
Guy Kawasaki:
I have two if scenarios, because I know you like scenarios because they're one third of your book. So, if Joe Biden calls you and appoints you secretary of kindness. First, would you take the job? And second, what would you do?
Gary Vaynerchuk:
I would probably take the job. Yes. Even though God, I'm really in the prime of my career and I got a lot going on, I would take the job.
What I would probably do is use all my charisma charm and incentives to get the fifty most public voices on the red and blue side to agree to go to Camp David with me, if non-presidents are allowed to go to camp David, I don't know if there are rules on that, but if not, I would take them to who knows Turks and Caicos, I don't know. And I would ask for me to be able to facilitate a ten-day immersion of conversation.
That is what I would do. And I would try to really get a read of the human beings, the taste makers, and see if I could find common ground.
I've become very passionate around purple. I've been using the purple heart in almost all my content for about four months now know, because I do believe everybody actually is a level of purple, but we've tribalized politics to the point where people are changing their opinions on policies just to fit completely red or completely blue and it's unfortunate, it's the biggest way to have friction.
I view kindness in a 360 way, this is not about be nice. This is about civility and courtesy, compassion.
I think a lot about Bob Dole and Ted Kennedy, very different points of view on where the world should be, but spent multiple decades having civility and finding compromise, and we're a long ways from that in your scenario.
And I believe the fifty taste makers on both sides, they could be politicians themselves. They definitely are pundits in media, they're definitely social media, they're podcasters, they're comedians, they're all sorts of people.
I really think I'd be very effective in creating a different dialogue amongst each other over a ten-day period, which I hope would then create foundation to build on top of over the tenure of my public service. I really do think that's what's needed because we're so dug in, we're treating it like high school and junior high right now and that's unfortunate.
Guy Kawasaki:
Second scenario. What if Joe Rogan calls you up and says, “Gary, I need some advice. The wheels are coming off the bus from here.”
What would you do? What do you tell Joe Rogan?
Gary Vaynerchuk:
I've thought a lot more about your first scenario than I have this one. I think for Joe we're in this place right now where people are really struggling to understand the nuances.
I think that people are so headline reading. I think for Joe, A, I don't think that would be the conversation, I really don't, I don't believe that I could be wrong. I don't believe Joe feels the wheels are coming off.
I think a lot of people are incredibly mis-seeing what's happening in our society when there's controversies, canceling, whatever you make deem it, people are so dug in that it's almost like we're not even really having a dialogue.
Ten years ago when there was a controversy, Gary Hart, the politician, you really were in trouble, your career was in trouble. Today people's careers are in less trouble because people are canceling everybody every day.
There's so much going on with contention that both sides are digging in and then you're getting fired if you're just on the wrong side of the company, but you see what's going on, people are offering to subsidize the financial means.
And then you have to understand there's really only two things that a lot of humans are thinking about; their values and their financial stability, and both matter to varying degrees on different people.
I think A, first scenario is believe it or not more realistic than the second scenario, not because I think Joe is too proud of things of that nature, but I don't know when you're going to distribute this, it's February twenty-second. Everybody can Google right now when the heat of the moment was, I feel like it was ten days ago. It is genuinely past Guy.
That's the problem with the way that we're treating things with venom towards each other, it's past Guy, which is very unfortunate because we move on to the next thing, we move on to the next thing.
Instead of having sustained dialogue, we have these dog fights for forty-eight hours or a week, and then everybody collectively moves on. And that's why I think we have a lot of vulnerabilities.
Guy Kawasaki:
You could certainly make that case about pulling out of Afghanistan for a while you thought that was the only issue facing the world. And here we are a few months later, nobody's bringing it up anymore, right?
Gary Vaynerchuk:
Yeah. This is why it's shame and name calling and lack of civility are so ineffective, both sides obviously we're getting into a lot of politics here. both sides are so dug in there is no levels of compromise and we're going to need leaders to pop up on both sides that really, really play in the middle for us to get back there.
The political system is really built for that to be a struggle because everybody who has any ambition that needs to win a primary or win their constituents, need to go so far to left or right, we're really in a challenging time right now in American history and we've been here before multiple times to remind everybody of the history lesson and unfortunately, historically, it's been wars or other tragedies that have brought us together.
I don't think anybody's interested in that here, but we're going to need some really strong leadership on both sides for people that carry the flag of purple because to your point, Afghanistan, Ukraine, I was reading some of the feedback of people that are not on Biden's side of week on Russia and I was laughing and I was like, "What about four years ago, it's week on Russia on the other side."
Because the way Helsinki went down and so we're just not having thoughtful dialogue, we're really not and it's really unfortunate.
Guy Kawasaki:
In this most recent book, you clearly communicate that business is not a zero-sum game, that the rising tide floats all boats, and I'm to use every metaphor I can, that you focus on the customer not the competition and nice guys finish first, all that good stuff.
Gary Vaynerchuk:
Yeah.
Guy Kawasaki:
So, what does buying the Jets or the desire to buy the Jets mean to you now?
Gary Vaynerchuk:
For over a decade, I've been saying that I sleep seven or eight hours, people every day say that I don't sleep.
For seven years consistently, not that I expect anybody to listen to my content consistently, which is why I'm empathetic to why this happens for more than seven or eight years now, I've been incredibly clear that the thrill of the hunt, no different than going garage sailing, or being a fan of a sports team to win a championship, is a great driver of mine. The buying of the New York Jets has always been the same. In fifth grade I realized Guy that I was not going to be a Jets player.
In first and second grade, I became what I would call Americanized. Early in my childhood I was picked on because I didn't speak the language. I moved to Edison, New Jersey when I was seven, several boys were playing outside with a Nerf football, they took me in, they made me a Jets fan, and I've fallen in love with that sport and basically learned Americana, learned English itself, watching the Jets as a child and it became a real symbol for me.
And in fifth grade I decided I wanted to buy the Jets, not play for them, and I've held steadfast eighth grade, tenth grade, senior year, all these moments where people would ask questions about what you're going to do, but it's always been about the process of trying to buy the Jets that's the fun.
As a matter of fact, I made a video about ten years ago, holding up a newspaper like I was a hostage just to prove what it was from. Not thinking it was going to take me thirty, forty more years and it would be clear that I didn't make it yesterday, where I go into detail about why today, which is the day I bought the Jets is actually not as amazing as many may think that.
When the Rangers won the cup. Ironically, literally I was just on with Mark Messier on some business stuff, right before this, that night I was in the building, the Rangers won the Stanley Cup. It was my first sports championship, I cried, it was the greatest and I never followed the Rangers ever since then.
It was all about the climb. And so to your point, look, somebody else is going to try to buy the Jets instead of me, I'm not delusional to what competition looks like, I love competition.
As a matter of fact, I took competitiveness off this book. It was one of the traits and as I was doing it, because COVID allowed me to really get into my feelings and I was building out this book, I actually pulled competitiveness because I actually want to write an entire book just on the values of being competitive.
So, the things I'm talking about is of course, Yahoo versus Google versus Bing was like the search engine battle. But I don't think it was Google being tough or hard on Yahoo or Microsoft that made them win. I think it was that they were consumer centric, there's Coca-Cola and Pepsi exist with many other beverages existing, there's just a lot more abundance in the business world than people realize.
Guy Kawasaki:
Wait, can I back up for about thirty seconds or so? You said you took competitiveness out of this book so you could dedicate an entire book to it. Not because competitiveness doesn't belong in this list of gratitude, self-awareness, accountability, optimism, empathy, kindness.
Gary Vaynerchuk:
Correct because you also kept out tenacity and ambition, right? Tenacity and ambition are in that book, I don't think of those as fufi, fufi words.
So, I believe in purple. I believe in blending. When I was going through it, the reason the book subtitle was ingredients, so I have this thought of, "Hey, I need to show people how I'm going to build my empire."
Another non soft word. VaynerX, my marketing holding company has almost 1800 employees. We're a very large company at this point now for starting at zero, thirteen years ago, we call it the honey empire, honey over vinegar.
But we're trying to be build an empire and the part that is a struggle for people is ballots, it's this or that. I think tenacity is imperative for success, I really do. I know the word hustle has become a detrimental word, so I've taken out of my vocab, but I use the word work ethic all the time.
I don't want anybody to burn out. I don't think you should chase the dollar at your health expense or your mental health that's insanity.
But I also think it's insane to think that work ethic is not part of the equation. You can't be a good parent unless you put the work into it, you can't be a good teacher, can't be a good entrepreneur, executive, it's crazy. You're not going to dream it into existence.
So, I took competitiveness out because I started to realize, I want to go into this in a different way, let me just put on the shelf here. But tenacity and ambition throughout the book was able to deliver on aspects that I thought were important in scenarios, or making a case to why these emotions matter if you want to build something significant.
I, can, without a shadow of doubt, tell everybody publicly now it's not fun. But that by far the biggest weakness of my professional career was candor, I demonized it.
My father was very good at it, but he delivered it with such poison that I watched all the detrimental effects of candor. He said, "I'm shooting it straight." The problem was, it was shot out of a gun of making people upset. And a lot of people missed the point of candor.
I don't think people realize how candor was delivered over the last fifty years in business.
I believe so many people use the excuse of candor to not be kind. I really believe that.
I feel like a lot of managers used it to suppress people, maybe even get people to quit, that they were threatened by that the entire ecosystem of candor was not good, it wasn't working. And it made for bad work environments. Employees always talked about wanting more candor, but it was that "You can't handle the truth." line from the movie, it just didn't work.
And I especially sure didn't see it working and even the great employees that I have come through my doors through the years that are like, "Hey Gary, I want to be a manager that's more candores." I would say, "Knock yourself out."
And I would watch them from afar and it just wasn't working, people would quit on them. It would kick in fear, when you give candores feedback, I have an observation that it's a flaw of mine and I start really working, wordsmithing it, thinking, doing what I do, thinking.
And I just stumbled on the concept of calling it kind candor. And from that day forward, it elevated me. It immediately elevated the C-suite, we stood it up at Vayner aggressively as a North Star and it has been a profound impact on our organization, which is why I was excited to put it into this book. And the definition of kind candor for me is; you're about to deliver news that is feedback often critical.
You should deploy enormous levels of compassion and empathy that we live in the society where when you do that, many will panic with it. I believe that if you come into the meeting with a framework of kind candor, that your word choices, your energy, the energy of the room, your ethos, the chemical transfer of communication, all of it, demeanor, tone of voice, will completely change.
And I've seen it in practice, and I'm really proud of it. And I hope it helps some people.
Guy Kawasaki:
I worked for Steve Jobs and I would not say that he had the kind part of candor. Let's just say, so I hear you, I hear what you're saying. Although, I will tell you the unkind candor Steve Jobs definitely worked on me.
Gary Vaynerchuk:
Yeah. And I respect that. The debate on that, and I've had this conversation with a lot of leaders, especially in their forties, fifties, sixties, and seventies that enjoy this subject matter.
I'm genuinely curious, there was emotional makeup that you had Guy that allowed that to work on you. My intuition is that if he delivered kind candor, instead of whatever version of candor he had, that it also would have worked on you, I really believe that.
And so my point is Steve could have, may rest in peace, might have had more executives hang with him longer because I'm sure you saw some people that were incredibly talented, but they didn't have the emotional strength you had for whatever parenting circumstances who knows, and it wasn't something that they could deal with, and then they ended up not being there.
And my intuition is some of those people, would've been great value adds to the three companies, three chapters of his career. And so for me, that's just a net game, that's all.
Guy Kawasaki:
True. And you only hear about Elon and Steve, you don't hear about the people who have kindness and candor.
Gary Vaynerchuk:
I think that's right.
Yeah. That was the point of the book. I'm aware that this point in my career, especially because my popularity on TikTok and other platforms, I have a lot of young characters watching me.
And I really am excited about putting this conversation through the ethos because to your point, Devil Wears Prada, Steve, others, we've glamorized the hard ass boss. We always do a great job in popular culture of showing that they have a soul and then you're like, "Okay."
Guy, I really struggle with the concept of why somebody should verbally undress an employee in a conference room with other employees. I don't see the value in that. I don't think it's motivating them the way that people would like to think in the old school ways that it was.
I get frustrated plenty. There are executives that disappoint me greatly, but having the emotional strength to be able to have a meaningful conversation with them in a closed door, it's just always going to be a bigger and better impact on the organization. I believe that firmly.
Guy Kawasaki:
Let's move into more granular and personal advice because I'm sure some people would love to hear this.
So, Gary Vee's advice on what to look for in their first real job.
Gary Vaynerchuk:
So, I have a really different take on this. I think everyone's first jobs that they should be high-risk because they're so young and it bodes well for high-risk behavior.
I'm a big fan of, who's your hero in the industries that you want to be in, make a list of her or him, how many are there? And at all costs if you're capable to be their admin, do it. Or the intern for their chief of staff.
I call it, get close to the Sun.
I want to be like Guy one day, literally send an email everybody that's listening to this rant to Guy. I want to be careful with saying I'll work for free because people get very emotional about that and I'm very empathetic to why, but I'd be lying if I didn't say at all costs, because I think people will have much more successful, happy lives professionally if they can figure out how to get close to the people they want to be like, because the learnings and you know this, you've been very public about your career paths and who you rub elbows with and we've talked about it.
The closer you get to the source, the more you learn through osmosis in an incredible way, Hannah Park works for me, she's amazing. She just joined as my second chief of staff with Marcus Krzastek who's been with me from day one. She's been with us for eight years, senior exec, she's a beast. Five weeks in we're driving, having a convo. I'm like, "How's it going?" She goes, "I've learned more in five weeks than I've learned in eight years."
And I actually believe it, I know where she was going obviously to some level that's probably not true you forget what you learned, but my number one piece of advice for first job is get as close to the person you want to end up being like, you want to be a fashion designer, get coffee, be in the room, take notes. The osmosis of being close to the person is profound.
Guy Kawasaki:
Second question. How do you know when it's time to look for greener pastures versus fertilize the pasture you're in?
Gary Vaynerchuk:
That's such a goddam great question. It's impossible to generalize when to leave a job and go to another one, it's really hard. Here's what I would say.
If you have sustained for an entire year, constant thoughts of leaving your job, really genuinely living for Friday, and being upset about Monday, you owe it to yourself to really, really, really try to find a new situation.
Even if you have to take a financial step backwards, there's so much subconscious unhappiness when you're not fulfilled at work. So, maybe this year, you can't take a nice vacation in December because you need to take a real pay cut to pay your bills, but I'm telling you it's going to work out for you, if you're really, really unhappy. It never ever works.
So, I would say sustained, constant daily, 365 days “This sucks” deserves a real action.
Guy Kawasaki:
If you were to allocate one's effort between fixing weaknesses versus enhancing strengths, what would the mix be?
Gary Vaynerchuk:
Eighty-twenty, enhancing strengths.
I think we spend way too much energy on things we're not great at and not refining things that we're naturally great at now. We're going general here. There are some flaws.
If you are incapable of balancing a checkbook, you can put yourself out of business real fast, but unless it's a catastrophic flaw, if you're not organized, don't have an organized career, have a creative career.
I really think that people don't double down on their strengths enough, I really believe that.
Guy Kawasaki:
Let's talk about NFTs for a second. So, you're Mr. NFT, why is an NFT valuable?
Gary Vaynerchuk:
Because the blockchain is an extraordinary infrastructure of technology that allows us to do things that we haven't been able to do before, which is we have a public transparent ledger run on decentralized servers that allow us to create digital ownership.
What that actually means is it's a better checks and balances system for the utility that our society runs on, which is why ultimately NFTs will have a very similar twenty-five-year window to the internet. I don't have to tell you, you're the OG in this call.
You know exactly how many people couldn't see how big the internet was in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, when at best, popular culture and mainstream saw it as a wonderful tool for academia to look up things at their college campuses.
And you really know, this is why it's fun talking to you about this. We just grossly societally underestimated the impact of the internet.
At that point, we put it into a pigeonhole, right now, the pigeonhole for blockchain, consumer blockchain is collectibles and art.
That is a subtle part of it. I believe in a decade, every ticket to every event is an NFT. I believe every receipt to high end purchase is an NFT.
There are things that are going to be made up that we can't even begin to think about when we go to a utility first comma NFT world, right now we're in a NFT comma little bit of utility world in Web 3.0. And I think that's where people are grossly underestimating the reality of this.
I'll give you another revolution comp, Web 2.0, which as you know, we met during that era, I was a Pied Piper for social media. And I think what people missed was people need to communicate. And I think NFTs will be a communication portal for human beings.
Human beings communicate through the things they buy at a very high propensity, fashion is built on it. I would say even automotive decisions are built on it. I think people buy homes and zip codes because of it.
We communicate through the things we purchase NFTs will tap into that human behavior as well.
Guy Kawasaki:
At the current state where it's NFT with a little bit of utility…do you shake your head when somebody pays a few million dollars for a screenshot of the first tweet or somebody's sketch of a monkey, or is that proof of insanity or proof of concept?
Gary Vaynerchuk:
I think it's proof of how much money the government has printed to be honest with you, we have a real inflation issue because governments print money in perpetuity.
But I think the bigger point that you're making is there's a reason I put out content every day that says 98 percent of NFTs are going to zero.
I was there in 1997 and 1998 and 1999. And I watched the valuation of internet companies that literally had no business model reach billions of dollars. You were there very intimately, you recall this, all those stocks had their heyday and then they all had their D-Day is March and April 2000.
The problem was Amazon was sitting there for $6 a share before all the splits. And I think that's, what's going to happen here, Guy. 98 percent of these NFP projects are going to zero. I can tell you right now on the record, my VeeFriends project is not, because I'm going to operate it, I know what to do, I know how to bring the value to the people that actually own the token.
And over next thirty, forty years, I'm going to try to build a Disney Pokémon like intellectual property and I'm going to be successful. And I think there'll be forty-five to 500 other people that are deep in it that will be the Bezos’s of this.
We've long forgot about the executives of pets.com and Dogpile search engine. You remember this? It was a day of reckoning. We have multi-billion-dollar valuations on internet companies that didn't sell a thousand dollars’ worth of stuff on the internet, we had our day of reckoning.
We will absolutely have our day of reckoning in NFT land where 80 percent, 90 percent of the projects will lose enormous value. But the macro concept of the internet was very right in 1999. And the macro concept of the consumer blockchain, aka NFTs, is beyond right.
Guy Kawasaki:
Just for clarity. Can we separate NFT from cyber currency? Are you as big a believer in cyber currency?
Gary Vaynerchuk:
I'm not as much, no.
I am less excited about cryptocurrency because I think what NFTs do is they allow to tap into many more emotional triggers and utilities than cryptocurrencies that have to be accepted as a currency. I think that the NFT market has more flexibility of creativity and mass consumption because of Fortnite skins, because of two K-points, because of FarmVille, and Virtual Sheep.
Why people buy Nike's that are expensive or Birkin bags, there's a lot more human psychology going on with NFTs than there are with cryptocurrencies, even though I'm sure they'll be cryptocurrencies that are successful. I've also not spent anywhere close as much time on cryptocurrencies as I have with NFTs because of that intuition and belief.
Guy Kawasaki:
So, my last question is, if I'm a young person listening to this podcast and I'm buying into your vision of soft skills and kind candor and all that good stuff, give me the Gary Vee career advice.
You talked about the first job, working for the person that just by osmosis you gain value, but in a more general sense, if someone young buys into this vision, what's their steps? How do they optimize going forward from now on?
Gary Vaynerchuk:
Fighting for content and happiness at all costs and living within the financial means that creates. Guy, I believe in it so much, man. And I know that I have so many contradictory elements to me.
I'm very self-aware, but man, I was really happy in my twenties making under 70,000 a year, beyond happy. And I just think that I was proud that I was helping build a business for my parents and I knew I would leave in my thirties with nothing, and I was happy, I made those decisions, I was self-aware.
People need to fight for happiness. Guy, we are very fortunate. We have professionally run in very unique circles. Can you please, from your powerful voice, tell these people how many people with high wealth that you know, that are incredibly unhappy.
Guy Kawasaki:
I would say it is very high correlation. The more you're worth, the more unhappy you are. I mean but obviously you're not worried about food and clothes.
Gary Vaynerchuk:
That's right. But a Diddy and Biggie had it, "More money, more problems." It's very real. There's an incredible false narrative that money buys happiness, it's just not true.
And I do think that the more we actually have the real conversation about that.
Yeah, you may be perceived happy on social media, but it's not about that.
I would say fight for happiness, fight for your creativity, especially in your twenties and early thirties, mid-thirties, even to forties, I think more high risk, high rewarded behavior around what makes you happy.
The long tail of opportunity is here now because of the internet and even now because of the blockchain for creative people, you're going to regret it. Spend more time with eighty-year-olds that are not your grandparents. Go volunteer at a retirement home and speak ninety-year-olds see what they talk about.
They'll give you the answers, and their answer is they spend time on things they wish they didn't often professionally or in unhappy relationships with their family, whether a spouse or a parent or a sibling don't live with regret but turn it into something practical.
If you have the compromised financially live with in your means, but fight for happiness. I love you pal.
Guy Kawasaki:
There, you have it. Gary Vee being all tactical and practical as Gary Vee always is.
I'm Guy Kawasaki again, I'm on a mission to make you remarkable.
I hope this episode helped a bit.
My thanks to Jeff Sieh, Peg Fitzpatrick, Shannon Hernandez, Madisun the drop in queen of Santa Cruz surfing, Louis Magana, and Alexis Nishimura. Until next time, Mahalo, Aloha, and if I drop in on you in Santa Cruz, I apologize in advance.
All the best.