I genuinely believe that every single thing in my companies that's a problem is 100% my fault I'm aware that I didn't forget to close the door but like I think that level of accountability when you're at the top actually leads to a lot less anxiety and a lot more happiness and I also think it's true I hired the person that left the door open or I hired the person that hired the person that left the door open and so I think that's something that is liberating and I think uh is unfortunately a little rare attention
is the number one asset I don't say no I say maybe and I think most people say no and I say maybe with the hope of yes and I think that's an important framework that has worked for me and whether it's AI or whether it's something else VR blockchain I just don't say no because history has proven to me that the people that say no always lose and the people that say maybe eventually find their nugget or their genre Gary how are you welcome thank you so much for having me happy to be here yeah
so let's with this I mean obviously prolific author books have been a huge part of growing your brand growing your business why books and what what are some of the biggest impacts that you've seen on the business side of things from the books that you've published um why books because people read them you know I think um I'm shocked by how many people are overly romantic about the medium of distribution of thoughts and ideas I uh I don't demonize any platform whether it's a platform within social media like a Tik Tok or a Snapchat whether
it's a medium that is evolving from its prime years like radio and definitely not something like books which have been here forever and whether it's in Kindle form or audio book form or or hard cover soft cover um it's just very clear that people read books at scale forever and so I why books is because I want to get thoughts across and share ideas and be creative and it's one of the most substantial mediums in the world as far as business impact I mean I just wrote a new book called day trading attention and I
would say every morning that I wake up there's a LinkedIn message from a CMO or a head of marketing from a fortune 5000 company that says they just read it or listen to it they're buying it for the whole team or I'll get a text from my new business team at vayer media that says somebody just you know RFP us and in the comments section said they just read day trading attention and that's exactly what their company's looking for and so you know the you know I mean look crush it my first book besides the
keynote that I gave that led to the book offer the combination of that keynote and the book that was the watershed moment of transitioning my career from being a wine guide to being a business and marketing personality and you know it's a it's one of the most substantial chapters of my career and can you speak on that I mean because before then like you said you were known as The Wine Guy how what are your thoughts for people here in our audience that are trying to change Industries and use a book to do that obviously
you did that incredibly successfully with crushit like what did you learn from that and what what would advice would you have for folks yeah I mean I think I think it's obviously you need it to be commercially successful and so to me crushit it's one of my most commercially successful book so it helped transition I I think it's very obvious that a book can do that for people you know who I think about a lot Mitch album right I knew him on ESPN for the Sports reporters but weekends with Mor you know like that completely
changed my perception of him like oh wait a minute he's like an author not just a sports report you know um and so it's obviously a very real medium and uh and I think authors should also use use modern mediums to set up that path so it wasn't just crush it it was crush it in combination with 24 months of Twitter and Facebook content that was not this is the best rioa to drink or the new New Zealand subn Blanc it was hey Facebook and Twitter might be a big medium you need to check it
out or here's how I actually built my dad's business or here's how I manage people or here's where I'm investing my money and so you know I think it's a combination of the two and you know I think I think a lot of people that are watching this need to be careful of overp putting a book on a pedestal even though I love putting it on a pedestal it's an and not an or it's not like I need to be an author of a book or bust it's I'm going to use social media creative and
by the way the depth that you can go I mean especially if you're someone who can use LinkedIn properly you can write real paragraphs think of it as the way you would write an oped to the New York Times 30 years ago as a gateway to people becoming interested in your book you can do that for free every day right now and actually reach an enormous amount of people if you're a high quality writer and so I would encourage authors to not only recognize that a book can change the Paradigm and reposition them uh professionally
to the world but I would also encourage them heavily uh because I know so many author friends or ambitious authors who I think view social media writing as a lesser than and it's a humongous mistake and oh I think it's easy to look at the social media landscape right now and take for granted you said a lot of the trends of what we are seeing today and I I just remember you said it's not just crush it it's I was everywhere on Facebook Twitter etc for 24 months so I remember in the in the early
days I mean it's I forget what the figure was it was like you were spending 25 50 Grand 100 Grand whatever it was a month on content on all those platforms so I guess two-part question like and you've done this repeatedly on new platforms and caught new trends before they've really become mainstream so I guess how do you look for and spot those Trends and then how do you know when to go all in CU I think that could that can be scary is like you went all in on these platforms it's like you could
go anywhere I went all in but to your point it's because I saw results right I wouldn't go all in if I didn't uh I'll give you an example I started a new podcast format called podcast with friends with three guests and I did 20 episodes this year and I don't think I'm going to continue doing it um but I went all in with my intuition that it was a good format and the fact that it hasn't hit the audience's you know cup of tea that doesn't upset me that doesn't make me question myself am
I losing it it because all these 30 years where I've been hitting things right there's been a million things I've you know we can talk about what I did on Facebook and Twitter but I also went all in on social Cam and I went all in on Peach and I went all in on jelly and I I was testing and trying everything I think what I have which I would encourage people to analyze themselves and double down on it if they have it or start to change if they don't I'm not scared to waste my
time and I'm shocked by how many people are scared to waste their time when their time is not even that valuable so there's a level of audacity that people that haven't made it yet are like well I don't want to waste my time on that Gary I can't go all in on that I'm like well what are we doing here you're you're talking to me about wanting to be a New York Times bestselling author but you're not willing to do things that you think are beneath you I think what it really speaks to is that
most people don't want to put in the work that is required to achieve remarkable things you know in this genre knowing how much people value being a New York Times best-selling author or a commercially successful author that's a very small group of people that have ever written books and and people that have ever written books is a remarkably small number in compared to all the people that want to write a book so don't you think it should be hard and so I think what what have I done well I don't say no I say maybe
and I think most people say no and I say maybe with the hope of yes H and I think that's an important framework that has worked for me and so whether it's AI or whether it's something else VR blockchain I just don't say no because history has proven to me that the people that say no always lose and the people that say maybe eventually find their nugget or their genre or have a career that looks a little bit more like mine which is like you know listen I'm aware that I've been gifted with intuition around
consumer Behavior so I yes I will have a higher propensity of doing well with this stuff but I'm kissing lots of frogs to find these princes I love it uh soel let gears talk a about business um the the business Empire has grown you've got a bunch of kind of offshoots of Vayner media and the Vayner brand yes how do you jug at all and how do you figure out where to focus your attention um I I juggle it through good people you know so I think one thing I've done very well is I've built
a very large organization with Vayner X so Vayner X holds Vayner media and eight other companies the Sasha group evos Sadam Vayner Commerce um and gallery Media Group purewow.com and things of that nature Vayner speakers and then even outside of that vayer sport sits outside of Vayner uh X my brother runs that and then there's obviously be friends that sits outside of it and now I have Vayner watt which is a TV production company sits outside of it Vayner watt my partner Eric wattenberg runs that dayto day I'm the Special Sauce Vayner Sports my brother
AJ runs that on the Special Sauce Vayner X I run be friends I run but Vayner X I run with Mark yudkin and Alan Harker and Avery and Nick and kayn and Hannah and you know and be friends I run with John Troutman and Andy cranc and meing cowo like so you know I think I scale through people which works for me because I'm very much a guidance counselor a camp counselor a a head coach you know a big brother I'm very I'm very comfortable and I enjoy leading people and building really deep relationships within
my business organizations and that continuity even Wine Library I still run I mean literally while we were listening to that nice music I'm going to pull it up right here on my laptop I texted my best friend Brandon something about today's wine text by the way if you like wine winex e.com sign up for it I texted him something about it and he's running the wine store day-to-day somebody I've known since I was 14 but I'm still very involved you know you know because my family business is kind of my first love and so you
know I think I do it by having great people around me and then how do I focus anybody who's watching this who has three or more children is going to know what I'm going to say You're only as happy as your most unhappy child same with me running 10 15 20 businesses I'm just kind of watching them and wherever I need to help is where I'm at whether that's extreme offense or extreme defense right so I the way I view it is Extreme offense extreme defense either oh my God we've got we've cracked something let's
go all in and that's going to eat up a lot of energy or we're in trouble let me go all in so think of it as a boat uh oh there's a hole in the boat I got to go put my finger in it or a boat race uh oh I see a path where we can beat every other boat I'm gonna go jump and take the wheel and put my foot on the pedal and that's how I run my world that's cool that's really helpful and we had Dan Martel on yesterday and he talked
about uh kind of graduating out of becoming the CEO of his businesses so it sounds like are you of those eight businesses are you the CEO of any of those or do you have people that run those so I think so I would say that Dan is probably giving better advice for the masses of this audience than I am and I'll explain what I mean by that I would argue I'm not only the CEO I'm even the COO in a lot of my companies but that is not because I'm trying to maximize money I'm trying
to maximize happiness for me running businesses daytoday is my great joy I would rather run my businesses than go skiing or play golf or go scaling right so Dan's advice is for a lot of entrepreneurs who actually have businesses predominantly to make money to then go spend it on things they enjoy more a yacht trips you know whatever that maybe fancy cars I think I'm in a smaller group of people where you know I've got big I mean Vayner X for context of this audience is 2500 people in a $330 million Revenue business so it's
a big business just that one um but I get enjoyment out of being the COO in a world where I understand what Dan's saying like a lot of people are like become the chairman of the board Gary go do bigger things make more money I'm like yes I understand and that's not that's very good advice it's not bad advice but they don't understand me I enjoy the HR the challenges of restructures I've got a lot of coo DNA in me I've got much more coo DNA in me than chairman of the board DNA right I'm
I'm the CEO but I go down to be CEO way more than I get excited about one day being chairman in fact I hope I'm never the chairman only of my companies I hope that the day I take my hand off the wheel is the day I die and so I I think we're throwing around a lot of titles here right CEO coo chairman of the board whatever I think to Dan's point he wants to he he wants to create content and then shine a light on the businesses because that he feels like that's the
highest value thing that he can do to grow the revenue of those businesses I would assume that you're you probably have a similar stance to that so I guess I mean I would I would argue I wrote the damn book on it right pun intended you know I just think you can do both and so what what are you spending most of your time on in the day-to-day for those business you said defense or offense like what does that look like it's both I mean it es and flows you know so right now I'm so
deep in vayer media and vayer and vends right vriends just came out with a kids book has cartoons coming out I've got vcon coming up next week in La um I'm working on a lot of like people would be stunned that are watching right now if they went to eBay right now and typed in vriends what's going on with the collectible pins and the trading cards and so I'm in it and it's everything from 2026 product planning to you know technology advances with the blockchain and then on Vayner media we just hired a new head
of Australia a new head of Canada um we're plotting Middle East expansion we're pitching seven of the 50 biggest companies in the world to become their creative agency in 2025 we're expanding into it deep AI stuff just like you know I mean and then hiring firing re I mean deep restructure mode right now to make it more efficient make it more profitable cut overhead but move those overhead heads into the floor so just operating brother nice love it I I can relate to that uh now what how I guess how do how do you think
about hiring and developing people you talked about like hey key part is I've got partners that can run a lot of the day-to-day and then either I'm going all offense or all defense and that allows you to kind of float between these eight companies but what's your advice for folks especially at the level that you're at of identifying Talent developing talent and retaining Talent how do you look at that 15 years ago I started Vayner media my dad never paid me a lot of money when I worked at Wine Library which is appropriate because it
was a family immigrant business and so the way I started this was my brother graduated college and he and we hired as interns four of his best friends from high school and college I brought one guy over from Wine Library that I thought was sharp Matt ciner still with the company um and we were six people in a conference room of another company and that's how we started the company and of the people that were in that room four of the six are still in the company 15 years later and everybody in the top 100
employees that I hired I hired with the mindset of I'm going to make this person a family member of mine in perpetuity hopefully that that means that that could be done within the company um but if not they're obviously someone that I'll have a relationship with outside of the company forever and that stands to be true today and so it's the intent to develop a forever culture that I think creates these kind of people if you view people that you're hiring as you pay them and thus they should do whatever you say or I'm going
to build a company for three or four years and I'm going to flip it you're going to be in a harder ramework to pull off really doing what I'm doing which is playing imp perpetuity and Evergreen thus the the relationships you're making and the development of those employees is every my entire everything relies on me developing 50 to 100 forever teammates M and so as you can imagine if that's the case you know I'm you know I'm actually off the grid this week this the only thing I'm doing on a s I'm in Europe right
now but I texted someone about their dad being sick this morning you know it's just part of my everyday life like if I'm developing real relationship I'm going out to dinner with people I'm I'm just acting human not corporate and it's not some sort of like master plan you know it it It just fits my personality and but it also is the requirement of creating 25 40y year Executives there's only there's only two reasons why somebody will stay in a company for 35 years one is you you became family two they're scared and insecure and
never want to leave even though it's a crappy situation um because they themselves have their own issues you much rather be the first one when I and so I love that intent and I love the development and just the Deep care for people how how do you balance like I you're a hard driver you you grow companies very quickly you work very hard how do you balance that with the people that you're developing cuz I would assume that that's pretty hard to work with not at all not at all let me go the other way
I have zero expectation of the people around me working as hard as me zero because they're not being compensated at the same level I think this is a huge mistake and and it's an audacious and delusional mistake that people around you should be working as hard as you when they are not being compensated as much as you are I I deal with it very easily I have employees that are nin to fers my friend really and it doesn't bother me I don't get to judge my employees Ambitions I just have to do a good job
articulating the truth of what comes along with their Ambitions so if you're nino5 and you're off the grid all weekend and after five it's unlikely you're going to be the CEO one day when I move on um but it doesn't mean you can't have a great career at my company and so I need all types I need the people that want to work and by the way I'm also very prepared when it when their Vibe changes I've had many employees sit in my room at 25 and tell me Gary one day I'm going to run
this company and then they fall and then they fall in love and start a family and move out to the suburbs and want to go to Every softball game and I think that's beautiful and then all of a sudden title and comp start to slow down for that person and somebody might lap them and that's okay too like I don't judge how people want to live their life I'm just responsible for being articulate canderous respectful kind and so I'll be honest with you I've never struggled with the level of work ethic or tenacity or even
capability of the people around me I'm if I think someone stinks and are lazy I'm in control I can fire them cool I love it and I I love the emphasis on having clear conversations right because their circumstances might change your circumstances might change or what the business needs of them might change but if you have clear conversations about that and are adaptable to that well then you can build longevity regardless of what the circumstances how they might change in the business and as a business owner for everybody who's watching here by the way are
those all and those screens you have right there is that all the faces the people that are tuned in yes sir oh that's so cool I wish I could see that so for all of you that I see like very tiny in the left corner like just remember if you have employees you're in charge mhm you know like I'm stunned by how many CEOs or Founders are crying about things all the time they're like Johnny's a mess I'm like Fire Johnny you can you know and so just a lot of excuses and a lot of
lack of accountability and like by the way if you're firing Johnny is your right hand and he's the sixth right hand you fired in two years now it's time to not point fingers it's time to point th MH cuz clearly you're the problem so there's self-awareness there's so much that goes into building this out properly yeah I like that which Michael Hyatt would always tell me about stuff like that what about your leadership has led to this result the common denominator I I uh I couldn't explain to you how much I believe the next sentence
out of my mouth I genuinely believe that every single thing in my company that's a problem is 100% my fault I'm aware that I didn't forget to close the door like you know like but like I I think that level of accountability when you're at the top actually leads to a lot less anxiety and a lot more happiness and I also think it's true I hired the person that left the door open or I hired the person that hired the person that left the door open and so I think I think that's something that is
liberating uh and I think U is UNF fortunately a little rare right well there's yeah because there's a freedom that comes from not being able to point the finger cuz if if if every problem in the business is my fault well then I also have the ability to change it that part that part brother that part so it's liberating right and let's uh let's put uh some some of the audience on the back screen here for a second so uh you can see more of them Gary and I'd love for you to speak this next
advice to them which is for folks who are trying to scale to a lot cuz we've got a lot of folks that are pre seven figures uh and and then some folks who are trying to go seven eight n figures so pre seven figures like going back to that version of Gary and those versions of Gary here what advice would you give them 37 is find what you know if you do not have a right-hand person right now you're not you're going to struggle to get to eight figures so we've talked a lot about this
but this is the piece of advice two things stand out pre seven one it's hard to sometimes afford a right-hand person I think people get confused by that but it's not as hard if you go with family friend or youngster that is destined to be remarkable a lot of people think they have to overpay for someone who's been doing it I don't see it that way so right-hand person for sure 37 and number two you know if your ambition is to get to eight figures and you're pre seven you're still at six you're going to
have to you're going to have to compromise certain things like you're going to have to bleed a little bit it just you know like there is a willing your way to seven figures variable that I and and by the way when you hear that if you're like ah I don't like that Gary then maybe you actually don't want to get to eight figures and that's okay as a matter of fact let me give you a curveball a lot of people have businesses that do 800,000 a year that they make 250,000 from and they they like
life and then they go to 2 million where they make 700,000 but they don't like life because it just came along with a lot of extra stuff I've seen this a lot something to keep in mind but I would say right-hand person more tenacity cool I like that and then selfish question for me personally we about 15 million a year right now next big Benchmark is 100 million what are the things you would think about if you were two things two things on that one is patience believe it or not it's just you might be
able to just stack like when I was at 14 which was the year at Vayner I told AJ I think we can get to 500 million by doing very little different just more and we're doing it comma 15 to 100 sometimes also takes new product line Innovation like a real additional thing I mentioned win text earlier I built my dad's business at 65 million I left it went back down to 25 I invented weex back to 65 MH so it took me inventing something so you may need to be into another genre or another product
or service um or the mistake so many people make is you don't realize that it's just another seven years of doing the same thing cool I like that and by the way when you're seeing this stuff come up on the screen that's our the audience reacting to what you're saying I was enjoying it I I live on feedback so those things I've been enjoying those for the last 30 minutes all right so if if you're me Gary what would you be focusing on as the CEO to to break through what are you trying to what
are you trying to attract from a customer lens let's start with that who say that in a different way what do you mean yeah who what uh if you're so you're the CEO you're what should you be focused on I always think it's customers right so who's your Target customer uh people who typically it's people who want to grow their business using a bug then then I think you should be making an obnoxious amount of content I mean LinkedIn is just loaded YouTube shorts I I would become remarkable at organic social you personally so that
you then know who to hire and how to judge them so I don't mean that you have to be at the front of it you can be but I need you like what's unique about me is I'm the front man but I'm also the behind the scenes man mhm I had one of my guys on team Gary go to another prominent individual and he hit up one of my teammates a year later and goes I didn't realize how weird Gary was in that he did both he was in front of the screen but he was
also the guy behind the screen I think for you you have to definitely at least be the guy behind the screen like know what works on Facebook Instagram Snapchat right then what content you put in there obviously everyone's fixated on the personal brand I actually think the Avatar and the mascot are coming next anyway so like if you made the author Advantage ant and made that the character maybe that's who you explode as something that everybody follows and that's you're making animations instead of podcast videos so I would say the number one thing a CE
needs to do is she needs to be remarkable at getting new customers getting new customers for Wann toe authors to grow their business all the attention sits on social media all seven platforms you need to figure them out love it and my team's probably going nuts right now like Chandler you got to do this but again Chandler it's key here I'm glad to hear that's what you said because I preempted it it doesn't actually have to be you but you the human needs to know how it works and then whoever you put in front of
it the the Geico lizard Flow from Progressive or yourself like Gary B D Marell like you can make that call but the organization needs to be putting out multiple pieces of content a day across every one of those platforms that's why I wrote that's why I wrote day trading attention I knew that I had the followup for jab jab jab right hook and it's completely based on this cool and it's the it's by far the biggest elephant in the room for every business it's the biggest opportunity cool well Gary um final question here uh what's
your parting piece of advice obviously you've published a bunch of books successfully scaled businesses successfully parting piece of advice for this audio who wants to grow their business using their books don't try to convince the unconvince don't dwell on one publisher if Harper Collins didn't like your book move on if shyan s like do not try to convince conviction there are many people when I started my career that don't didn't get me I didn't try to convince them I just went and executed and found the ones that did there are people still who don't get
me and that's okay do not try to sell to the non-sellable find find The Ghost Writer find the publisher find the distributor find the bookstore find the people that do get it do not waste your energy being inse cure that you want this person to get you it doesn't matter that's awesome well Gary um what what's the book or place that you'd like to send people that they can check out I'm Gary be on every platform um I'm Gary vuck on LinkedIn feel free to reach out and I really appreciate your time and I hope
everybody has a tremendous weekend [Music]
