The Daily Stoic - The Key Media Strategies for Maximum Impact | Gary Vaynerchuck

Episode Date: July 17, 2024

Gary Vaynerchuck, better known as Gary Vee, has always had his finger on the pulse of digital media. His content pyramid is the secret behind how some of your favorite online creators built their platform and is the playbook used by the biggest digital marketing agencies in the world. Gary joins Ryan Holiday at the Daily Stoic studio to talk about creating compelling content, the significance of subjective opinions in an online world, the evolving nature of people’s attention spans, what the current “parenting pandemic” is, and more.Gary Vaynerchuk is a serial entrepreneur and serves as the Chairman of VaynerX, the CEO of VaynerMedia, and the Creator and CEO of VeeFriends. His latest project is a children's book, Meet Me in the Middle: A VeeFriends Book! The book uses a unique, two-in-one, flip-the-book-around format that encourages young readers (and their parents) to see how different the world looks from another point of view. Based on two VeeFriends characters, Eager Eagle and Patient Pig, it is a fun and engaging story about how real success comes from seeing how the other side does it.Grab your own copy of Meet Me in the Middle: A VeeFriends BookYou can also check out Gary’s book: Day Trading Attention: How to Actually Build Brand and Sales in the New Social Media World🎙️Listen to Gary Vee’s first episode on the Daily Stoic podcast: Gary Vaynerchuk on Stoicism, Soft Skills, and Becoming Your Best Self🎥 Tune into Ryan’s interview on the GaryVee Audio Experience: Unpacking the Secrets of Successful Parenting with Ryan Holiday Connect with Gary Vee on Instagram, X, YouTube, TikTok: @GaryVee✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us:  Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the daily Stoic early and ad free right now. Just join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. I've been writing books for a long time now and one of the things I've noticed is how every year, every book that I do, I'm just here in New York putting right thing right now out. What a bigger percentage of my audience is listening to them in audiobooks, specifically on Audible. I've had people had me sign their phones, sign their phone case because they're like I've listened to all your audiobooks here and my sons they love audiobooks we've been doing it in the car to get them off their screens because audible helps your imagination soar. It helps you

read efficiently, find time to read when maybe you can't have a physical book in front of you and then it also lets you discover new kinds of books, re-listen to books you've already read from exciting new narrators. You can explore bestsellers, new releases. My new book is up, plus thousands of included audio books and originals, all with an Audible membership.

You can sign up right now for a free 30-day Audible trial and try your first audio book for free. You'll get right thing right now, totally for free. Visit audible.ca to sign up. Hello, I'm Hannah. And I'm Saruti. And we are the hosts of Red-Handed, a weekly true crime podcast. for free, visit audible.ca to sign up. and weekly show, Shorthand, which is just an excuse for us to talk about anything we find interesting because it's our show and we can do what we like. We've covered the death of Princess Diana, an unholy Quran written in Saddam Hussein's blood, the gruesome history of European witch hunting, and the very uncomfortable phenomenon

of genetic sexual attraction. Whatever the case, we want to know what pushes people to the extremes of human behavior. Like can someone give consent to be cannibalized? What drives a child to kill? And what's the psychology of a terrorist? Listen to Red Handed wherever you get your podcasts and access our bonus shorthand episodes exclusively on Amazon Music or by subscribing to Wondry Plus in Apple Podcasts or the Wondry app. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life.

And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives. But first we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. When I was conceiving the idea for the painted porch, having a sort of a physical space, an office space,

a bookstore, a studio space and office space a Bookstore studio for daily stoic. I had some idea of What it would look and that idea has changed a bunch over time You know, we're gonna have a coffee shop as part of it And then we ended up renting that out to Astro Records, which was there for three plus years Lippy just left. So now I'm deciding what to do with this other side of the office We added in the studio at some point Lippy just left, so now I'm deciding what to do with this other side of the office. We added in the studio at some point. It's been this really awesome, cool experience.

But the thing I didn't anticipate, the thing I didn't think about was just like having this basement, people would drop in. And I never knew who would be in town, who'd be around, the sort of bump in, pass through traffic we would get. And it was cool, a couple of weeks ago, Gary V was out to do the podcast. And as he comes in to record,

we're gonna go next door to record the episode, another friend swung by, not to do the podcast, he was just passing through and he wanted to hang out and check out some books. And it was Manu Janobli, who has also been on the Daily Stoke podcast. As the three of us were sitting there talking before I went in over with Gary and recorded,

I was just like, is this real life? Is this really what's happening? And a couple of days later, Sam Koppelman was there and Chris Bosh stopped by, Matt Choi was there. Again, I was like, is this real life? And it is real life. And that's one of the things that I actually learned from Gary, which is that you kind of take these swings.

They're not big, crazy swings, but when you try something and you put yourself out there, you never know what can happen. And I've known Gary a long time. He and I go not just way back, but he's been a big supporter of my career. Actually, Gary's company, Vayner Speakers, is who I use to do all the talks that I do, or a good chunk of them. So like on the Thursday episodes when you hear me doing the Q&A, or sometimes on the Sunday episodes when you hear one of my talks, Zach

Nathler, who's my speaking agent and one of the co-founders of VaynerSpeakers. He set that up. Gary has sent me all around the world, introduced my work to all sorts of cool people and organizations. And he's a really interesting thinker about marketing and business. He's currently the chairman of VaynerX,

the CEO of VaynerMedia, the CEO of VFriends, and a six times New York Times bestselling author. He's always had his finger on the pulse of what the next big thing is, specifically with digital media. And he's really informed how I think about the content we make at Daily Stoke, the sort of content pyramid as he calls it.

If you ever check that out, you'll see that's actually kind of the model of Daily Stoke. And he's also just added added being a children's book author to his resume. This is the week the book launched. It's called Meet Me in the Middle. It's an awesome children's book with a story on the importance of seeing things

from a different perspective. It's also a really interesting design book, like each page is two-sided, so you can like start from either end of the book. So it's sort of a metaphor for itself, like the idea of Meet in the Middle. You can start on either end. And we ended up having a shorter interview than normal

because Manu and I, and he just got caught up in what we were talking about, but I think all of us would have gladly taken that trade any day of the week. But I thought this was a fun interview. He's always got a ton of energy. He always makes me think and see things differently. And I think the same will be true for you.

You can find Gary V on Instagram tick-tock and Twitter. I refuse to say X at Gary V You can check out my episodes on the Gary V podcast Anyways, here is my interview with the one and only Gary V Do you think people's attention spans are getting shorter? No, I really don't. I think that they have optionality on short form consumption that didn't exist prior. But I think in fact, I'll argue the counter. I think people are binge watching eight hours of a Netflix. True, or way more than eight hours.

YouTube shows, like some of my vlogs or other people's can run very long. No, I actually think we have more optionality, but I'll give you an example. The Saturday morning comics used to crush and print. Nobody overemphasized, like, are we getting attention shortage when people would rip through those in four seconds, like Garfield or Charlie Brown? I think we are concerned about social

because it's such a paradigm shift. And we've become obsessed with looking at the negatives of it versus the positives. And I think that becomes one of the subconscious byproducts of us being like, everyone's attention spans are shorter. I'm like, I don't know, like, I'll give you another one. In New York back in the day, there used to be 10, 10 AM,

there was like 10, 10 wins. We'll give you the, and it was all short form. They gave you the news in two seconds where sports radio would have like a one minute sports flash. Yeah, you go on a morning show, you have two minutes to explain a book, but you go on a podcast, you might have three hours. Yeah, I actually think distribution has allowed

for the contrary, it has given merit to both short and long in a way that traditional media consumption for 70 years, which became our framework of how we analyzed short and long attention, so that would be my answer to that. Yeah, although I also feel like on the creator side, people are not as like, it is hard to make something compelling

that's 10 seconds or a minute. Like someone might work on a book for seven years and it's this many pages. The ability to effectively and concisely communicate a big idea is a skill that not enough people have. Correct, and not every format is conducive to that. To your point, people can convey an incredible moment

of escapism in 10 seconds. You can have a really fun joke or a trick, and that's beautiful. That maps a lot of things that happened. It was what was cool about real life. Like somebody would have a joke in the lunchroom in sixth grade, and that was an incredibly well executed seven seconds.

We're seeing the creation format of that out in the public, because there was no formats for that, right? Like even Tracy Ullman would have those little breaks called the Simpson cartoons, which, right? Which, you know, they were short skits and it became something iconic. So I think to your point, I think there's a lot of ways to provide value

in very short skits and short moments, but it is not profound philosophical ideas that clearly take time to think through. Yeah. Although, people think it's, I think the audience side, you think it's easy because it's short or it's concise, but it's hard.

Correct, as a matter of fact, much to what I was talking about with day trading attention, especially for the people that are listening that are in professional marketing, not creators or whatever, they disrespect not only because it's short, they disrespect production value. I would argue that all of Fortune 500 marketing is losing right now because they put production value

on a pedestal, so they feel that a video made by an iPhone that is mundane, that doesn't have the lighting and all the, is not good. Meanwhile, the audience has spoken with their actions. Humans like it. Just like Hollywood didn't think reality TV was good, and then the market spoke, and now it's a very meaningful genre

that used to not exist. I think a lot of the things I think about when I think about attention, or even the concept of the kids book, like finding the middle, I think a lot of it has to do with people's inability to understand that their subjective opinions are borderline audacious

and often delusional, meaning most people walk around making decisions based on a focus group of one. I sit in unlimited boardrooms constantly where they're like, well, I don't like that. I'm like, well, good news, we're not selling to you. You're selling to 19 year olds, you're a 67 year old, you're selling to women, you're a male, we're selling to people who need this, you don't need this.

Why would your subjective opinion of one be a good marketing strategy and a good distribution strategy and a good media strategy and a good creative strategy? Now, if you're a remarkable marketer or decision maker, you become an empty vessel and you try to take, like it's, I believe one of the things that has worked for me is I don't think my opinion counts. I think I have to make subjective opinions all the time,

but I never believe I'm right. I believe that I'm forced into it at times. I have to decide what wines I'm gonna put on my wine show. I have to decide what I'm gonna write about, but I don't think it's right. And I think a lot of people really do live in a borderline delusional audacious state and make a lot of bad business marketing

and life decisions within that framework. Well, that's the mindset in pretty much all internet comments. They'll be like, who needs this video summarizing this thing? And it's like, not you, but like lots of people. Like I get this all the time, cause I write books that popularize

and explain ancient philosophy. And so people will go, well, just read the originals. Why would someone need a book that explains these things? And it's like, I don't know why, but they do. I know why, because context matters. That's very nice, Johnny74, who left the Ryan Holiday comment. Let me give you the answer.

If you read the original, half the words don't exist anymore. How about that part? How about the English language and slang have evolved? Not everyone went to the same Ivy League school as you. Not everyone was steeped in the same things as you. Ryan, my entire creator career was predicated on that. I was one of the first individuals in the history of wine ever that decided to take wine off of its pedestal.

I loved wine so much that I wanted my friends to like it. And they didn't because it was stoogey and douchey and fucking elitist. And when I referred to a wine, like imagine if the Iron Sheik took off his weird boot and you smelled it, well that was gonna resonate for people that grew up in the 80s and liked wrestling in a way of like deep cassis with ta-wah from the,

that's not gonna work for everyone to your point. Why is it needed? Because interpretations or DJing or whatever you wanna call it is actually how all of, if that was the case, we should all stop because it's always been talked about. That's insanity. No, no, different people are at different places

in their journey and want different things. And there's this kind of narcissism of like, well, the way I get it straight from the start, like what I realized is, hey, I wake up every day and I'm fascinated by ancient philosophy. And I understand how it can apply to my life. And then I look around and I would try to talk to other people about it and be like, what does this have to do with me? Right? Like you realize people don't share the same assumptions as you. And that's where middlemen or popularizers or translators or influencers or explainers come in.

And it's an important role. I think that's absolutely right. Yeah. Like I don't even like movies all that much. And I used to watch Cisco and Ebert when I would find them on the dial. Predominantly because I loved their banter and interpretation of,

I literally had no interest, like literally, had no interest in seeing any of the movies. But I've always been drawn to the explain, it's funny, it's my language. I mean, I live with unlimited acronyms and analogies because I've always felt like it was a way to convey. And I find my career in that. With wine, it was explaining a complicated thing

that intimidates people. And then I went into the business world and I've stayed in the forefront of new things that are happening in business and try to break them down in a manner that provides people value or give them an aha because I genuinely think that those things could be beneficial to them. However, I literally don't expect anyone

to give a shit about modern marketing. I don't expect anyone to care about the nuances of wine. I understand why no one cares about sports or garage sales or trading cards or blockchain. The thought that what I think is good means that it's good, that is a framework that I am fascinated that people don't understand. That is crazy talk.

Well, people shit on influencers. And look, there's a kind of influencer that's kind of, you know, doesn't add much value in the world, you know, just- But again, like I'm sorry to interrupt, like, but maybe they're attractive and modeling has always added value. And maybe they're silly.

You could take it to the full extreme and I'm still gonna say that if a million people are consuming someone, I don't give a shit if they're eating straws. The market has spoken and you can go to the most frivolous. And I would say a attractive person that has nothing to say provides value because people like looking at attractive people.

That someone who's goofy, well guess what? The world's complicated and hard, sometimes it's just funny to laugh at something. Of course. It's escapism at scale. Well I'm just thinking even during the pandemic, you would think that scientists would be able to explain what's happening well, but they weren't.

And so all these people got really good at going like, let me translate this thing you don't understand into what you should actually do with it. Cause they understood most people are busy and confused and overwhelmed. And they want it digested down into something they can do with it. Oh, by the way, also in a medium that they consume.

They did that on TikTok. They're not getting research papers. That's right, I'm very happy you published this in a, I don't even know the name of a single science, like I don't know. The Harvard, I don't know, I don't know. MIT, like I've heard some things in my life, but as someone who failed every science class,

it's not gonna be where I'm gonna win. Right, right. And even if I did read it, I don't know if it's good or bad. I don't know what it means. Especially someone like me who's clearly learned that his reading comprehension was one of the reasons he wasn't good at school. That has become apparent to me in the last decade.

You know what I mean? Like, it's, you know, how many, you know, it was a fun aha, by the way. How many times did I get a long email from someone in my company where I would apply five minute meeting? And what I realized was, wow, I am remarkable in audio and I am atrocious in written word.

And that's what has been my framework. Well, that is a huge thing, right? So people have the thing that they like, right? You like music, you like books, you like whatever. And then realizing that not everyone is in that medium. And so spending time, like to me, what the market for attention is, what I think about is like, I love books, I write books.

That's my medium. That's what I wish everyone consumed all the time, but they don't. Some people like audio books, some people like podcasts, some people like short form videos, some people like blog articles, there's all this stuff. And you as a creator have to figure out how to reach those people to translate what you do

into all those different medium. video. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondry's podcast American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history, events that have shaped who we are as a country and continue to define the American experience. We go behind the scenes looking at devastating financial crimes, like the fraud committed at Enron and Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. American Scandal also tells marquee stories about American politics. In our latest season, we retraced the greatest corruption scheme in US history as we bring to life the bribes and backroom deals that spawned the Teapot Dome

scandal, resulting in the first presidential cabinet member going to prison. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge this season American Scandal Teapot Dome early and ad free right now on Wondery Plus. And after you listen to American Scandal, go deeper and get more to the story with Wondery's other top history podcasts including American History Tellers, Legacy, and even the Royals. podcasts, including American history tellers, Legacy, and even the Royals. My favorite question that I would get four or five, six, seven, eight years ago, when I was on book four or five,

and I was the new technology guy, or the new medium guy, or the pushing the envelope guy, or the innovation guy, you'd always get like the third person in line, be like, all right, Gary, good stuff. Like, you know, that person that's looking for the Raz. All right, tell me this, Mr. The World Is Changing. So why do you write this book?

Like, why are you even writing books? And I would be like, because people read them. Yeah. Like, just because attention might be moving somewhere doesn't mean the old medium is gone. The question becomes, are you capable of producing within that environment? And number two, what's the juice worth what?

Squeeze. So for example, if you love writing books, just because it might not be commercially successful, or you might make enough money given your time, that doesn't mean that the juice is not worth the squeeze. You might be doing, like when I write this book, I don't necessarily write it to, this is gonna be the best use of my time for money.

This will never compete with me giving a one hour speech for the ludicrous amount of money that I get for it. However, I get incredible enjoyment as a human being of getting, and I'm sure, I mean, you must get this at scale. I get an enormous amount of emails every single days of my life, every day of my life that says, hey, I read Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook.

This is a book that I wrote 10 years ago that is basically day trading attention. This was originally called Jab, Jab, Jab, Left Hook. And I just told you in your store, I write books for two, three year windows more than like forever. And I'm like, wow. And they're like, I got this marketing gig

because I know that a lot of people learn in book form in a much more profound way than they do in short form social media content. And so I wanna put a manifesto down. This one was really, I don't know if you skimmed a red. This one was a little nerdy for me. I went fucking detail. There's like diagrams.

Yeah, there's like charts and shit. I kind of went like, this could be curriculum college course stuff. Even when I read it for the audio book, I was like in a part of them, I'm like, I'm a little bored by this because I read it, but I know who I wrote it for. And so for this book, it's actually,

a lot of people listening to this podcast, knowing how epic your audience is, they may not love me in Instagram, but this book, what's cool about if you're trading for attention is it doesn't have to be commercial. This is not a capitalist book. This is a life book.

You might be trying to raise $10,000 for your PTA. You might be running for mayor in your small town. You might have a family business that your mother just retired, and you're like, wait a minute, what do I do with? Having attention and saying something to make something happen is for everyone. And that's how I wrote it.

Well, what I took from you, and I think it was what you're saying is, you kind of become platform agnostic. Correct. You're very intent on the message. What is it that I'm having to say? And then just as like, I publish a book, and then it gets translated in 30, 40 languages.

I don't think in Spanish, I don't care that much about, you know, languages. I don't think in Spanish, I don't care that much about Mandarin, I don't think about that, but that's the process by which this one single thing gets broken down so it can reach all these other people. And I think that's how I think about social media and audio books and podcasts. It's like I have this thing that I'm trying to say

and I'm trying to communicate, and then I want it to break out and go to all the different people. Not only do I think over the last 15 years when I analyze it, detached from my own self, that what has worked for me is being platform agnostic, but I've also been contextual to the platform medium agnostic,

meaning I didn't want to make short form videos. As a matter of fact, when YouTube came out, I was one of the first humans on earth to do long form video. One of the reasons I got flown out to Google and Yahoo video and before Google even bought YouTube and Vidler and all these companies, Ustream, which was the precursor to Twitch,

was I was doing long form when everything was pirated. Early YouTube was family guy clips. You were on Rever, am I remembering that one? What was that one? Vidler? There was like one that was gonna be like YouTube but you got paid for your videos. Oh no, I never did that.

I'm trying to remember what that was. But yeah, the point that I'm making is like written word. One of the reasons I didn't blog. If you look at my career on the internet from 96 to today, which is now, you know, a chunky little time, we're getting there. E-commerce early, email early, search early, YouTube social, do all of it.

Not blogging, because I couldn't write. I started to blog after I was being transcribed from audio, from video, got it? So like, look, I think this is where I'm going with this, which is like, you have to be self-aware of what you're capable of. But more importantly, I think this is where I'm going with this, which is like, you have to be self aware of what you're capable of. But more importantly, I couldn't wait to blog and write, but I just didn't have that skill.

And once I, I mean, even my, you know how crazy these books are? I audio them. Almost every book I've ever written. Let me phrase, every book I've ever written. Actually, Stephanie Land, my favorite ghostwriter who I worked with for years, lives in Austin, Texas, by the way. Big shout out, Stephanie. Thank you so much. If you need a ghostwriter, Stephanie Land, my favorite ghost writer who I worked with for years, lives in Austin, Texas, by the way.

Big shout out to Stephanie, thank you so much. If you need a ghost writer, Stephanie Land, Google her. She was my ghost writer for the first year. They were wild sessions. I would literally write the book and I can talk. I fucking talked out books. And now I've put out so much content. Ragab, who works with me on my books now,

who's on my team, it's all already written. And then I post and clean up and tighten up and create a framework and all that. But it's fascinating. And I think for everyone who's listening, like not only are you platform agnostic, when I was yelling four years ago about TikTok, all the Instagram people didn't wanna go

because they didn't wanna start over. Ryan, they didn't wanna start over. I got a million followers here and they don't understand. Attention doesn't care where you have your audience. I won email in 1997. I had 90% open rates. 90.

You know email, I know your career. That doesn't happen anymore. I'm not happy that it's 30%. But the world changed. And so I promise you, like tomorrow, I saw Elon tweeted, should we bring Vine back? He's going to bring Vine back. Because short for, first of all,

Vine started this whole thing. Yeah, that's one of the big misses in the history of like big tech companies, that Vine is first. Well, they sold. They sold. No, I mean, Twitter buying it and then effectively killing it. Well, by the way, that happens all the time.

I mean, it's happening in CPG at scale right now. Unilever buys Dollar Shave Club, doesn't know what to do killing it. Well, by the way, that happens all the time. I mean, it's happening in CPG at scale right now. Unilever buys Dollar Shave Club, doesn't know what to do with it. Like M&A has a great history of buying and not letting the organ fit the body. Because what they do is they don't give the people that are building it the autonomy. They try to incorporate it into.

And then it becomes a line item on their budget and then they kill it. Yeah. Corporate life. Anyway, platform agnostic, to your point, I'm obsessed with the message. Yeah. In what form, how, what slang, where, could give a fuck. To me it is the message and then respect of the audience and mediums.

Yes. And I think a lot of people disrespect audience and mediums. Although you said something to me once that I, that sort of shaped how I do stuff. You said like, I basically say seven things. You're like, I have like seven things. You're like, I have like seven things and I just say that thing over and over and over again.

And I think about that because as a creator, you can get like self-conscious. Am I repeating myself? Is this new? And first off, it assumes that people are paying way closer attention than you are. It also assumes that there's not something new to say about one of those seven things.

And that when you say it in a new context or in response to a new thing, that's not creating something new to say about one of those seven things. And that when you say it in a new context or in response to a new thing, that's not creating a new message. But when people hear like, oh, you do a hundred pieces of content a day or 200, whatever that is, they're thinking that's a hundred original things. No, if you go seven things times

however many networks or platforms there are, that's like seven things. I think one thing I'm excited about with day trading attention is I hope people realize almost everyone who's listening here, who's ambitious and going at this, businesses or humans, are gonna realize after they read this, oh shit, why am I not on Facebook?

Or oh fuck, like I'm crushed, I got TikTok and Instagram Reels, yeah like why am I not doing YouTube shorts? The incremental slight tweak to be on those platforms as well with a slight copy or editing adjustment that respects the room of YouTube Shorts being different than TikTok is one of the explosive things for the A players.

Like this book for me was like a 201 or a 301. Like what I'm excited about this one is like, if you've never been in the game, it will help. But for people that are like you, like real players, the reason I went so deep is like, I'm excited about this one is like, if you've never been in the game, it will help. But for people that are like you, like real players, the reason I went so deep is like, I'm like, hey, let me take that next step in book form so that even the best people in the world that are winning, seemingly winning,

Charlie D'Amelio, Logan Paul, like Mr. Beat, like let me give them three to four things that, because I have the luxury of not only being one of those people, but I also have VaynerX, a 2000 person global marketing agency. We spend billions of dollars in media on behalf of clients, make good trillions of pieces of creative across all platforms.

So I'm sitting at the epicenter of really looking at quant and qual data that makes it very clear of what can and can't be done. And one of the biggest expansions is, to your point, I'm not gonna, the biggest mistake creators make is they change, they talk about things they don't believe in because they think they need something new to say. And what I think is, look, I believe in things,

I get pumped when I change my mind, that gives a whole new genre. But why would I compromise my belief system? I just find new analogies, new context points, new mediums, new platforms, I always layer current events into it. AI allows me to talk all over again of what I talked about with social media.

The analogies I made on social media stages in 2006 of everybody putting their head in the sand and hoping social media wasn't gonna happen, well guess what? It's back. It's back. It's called AI, by the way I'll go into the camera here, your AI strategy cannot be,

you will get fucking destroyed by that tidal wave. You better find a surfboard and ride it because AI doesn't give a shit that you're scared of it. It's just gonna happen. Well, I think where you get yourself in trouble as a creator is if you think you gotta wake up and have a hot take every day on something that you just heard about eight seconds ago.

No, your message should be timeless and then you should be saying it in a timely way. It's funny, that's what we were just heard about eight seconds ago. No, your message should be timeless and then you should be saying it in a timely way. It's funny, that's what we were just talking about. When you just said that, I was like, oh right, the way I do social and the way I navigate is the combination of both of those styles of books that we both have. You write timeless and forever,

which is actually my core message. I have seven to 10, whatever it is. And then I am very like day trading, but like that's how I write books. I like my books to be tight windows. Like here's the opportunity and both matter. But the interpretation of classic back to the starting point of this podcast is the game.

Yeah, and what's funny too is when you're making stuff, you're also creating a library of content that like today, the Daily Stoke YouTube channel will do more views than it would have done in a month several years ago on stuff that is old, right? Like entertainment studios are libraries, they're making new stuff always. And some of those things are gonna be hits

in the present moment, but really what they're trying to do is find the thing that will be a perennial timeless hit. And then you have this library, just in the way that you would have an investment portfolio of things that are paying, increasing this a few percentage every year. That's what you're trying to build.

Like I have, like I'll put out a video today. I hope it will do well, but like my best performing video will do a hundred thousand views today, but I made it 10 years ago. Yep, that's right. Not to mention YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world.

Yes, discovery. And that has a lot to do with that. Yeah. By the way, literally as I walked in here, Meta just launched their AI product, like update into Instagram and WhatsApp. I was just looking at it right before I walked in. Search is changing right in front of our eyes.

How so? Well, I mean, I literally just watched Zuck's two minute video on Instagram, so I haven't even played with it yet. But what is very clear to me is, holy shit. Like, one of the biggest changes in our society, and we've known this with chat GPT, but like, it's very clear of it coming to social.

What I saw in the preview there, or at least how he talked about it, and what I'm definitely gonna be looking at on my flight tonight in detail from Austin back to New York is, oh shit, Instagram search is fucking remarkable and it's very visual and the results are really strong. And like this is going to, just like TikTok has been growing very rapidly

as a search engine amongst Gen Z, the size and scale that Meta plays at with Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp, it's just very clear that the search engine is something they're pushing very hard within it. And the dynamics that we've seen on YouTube play out to what you just described is about to come to a short form social media world.

One of the things I think about is like, how can I get multiple uses out of one single thing? So you and I are having a conversation. That's a podcast episode, right? This will be a clip. So this clip is a TikTok, it's an Instagram reel, it's a Twitter video, it's a Facebook video. You can do short form videos on LinkedIn.

And then I'm gonna take a combination of those clips and put them together in a YouTube video. I'm gonna tack an intro on there and be like 10 times I've talked about this topic. And so- And soon you're gonna put it into an AI model and it's gonna write a profound article or book. I mean, I put this, about seven years ago,

10 years ago, I know a lot of people are gonna hit me up about this, because another thing I get hit up a lot about, I put out a free deck, it was like 84 pages, and it did that, it was the content pyramid. I was like, here's why I do daily VM podcasts. Here's how I take this and make 84 pieces of content. And like, I mean, when I tell you,

every time I'm in an airport, a 27 year old kid, guy or gal comes up to me and says, that's how I built this and make 84 pieces of content. And like, I mean, when I tell you, every time I'm in an airport, a 27 year old kid, guy or gal comes up to me and says, that's how I built my social media agency, that deck, which I put up for free. That's exactly how I've been thinking the whole time. And now the library, to your point, the intellectual property of human, just like Marvel and Disney,

just like why I do VFriends, to build another library of IP is a moat. It's a major, major, major, major moat of opportunity within impact and business. And the main thing, the top of that pyramid is you have to have something unique and interesting to say. Or it might not be the most unique,

but it is profoundly your thing to say. Yes. Right? Because a lot of things are universal. it is profoundly your thing to say. Yes. Right? Because a lot of things are universal. Where you plus a thing becomes a unique thing. Yes. That part. That's why I wanted to jump in and say that. I want everyone to hear this.

Your interpretation, your slang, your framework. People are like, Gary, what about authenticity? I'm like, the most authentic thing in the world is the human being. Truly snowflake. None of us are the same. Twins, even twins, wired super differently inside. Right?

I believe that that's, people walk away from their essence. And I want them, I think you would, I know you well enough to say this, and it's one of the biggest compliments I can give you. It has definitely worked for me, and I admire it whenever I see it. The people that really lean into themselves, like really don't try to put other things on a pedestal,

other people, other opinions, just get really comfortable of the purest form of them. Man, do they have impact, because that's where the uniqueness, that's the uniqueness, like the way you say things, like the analogies, the stories, the interpretations, the subtle observations that are slightly tweaked,

contextual to the moment. And that as a human and that as an operator and that as a parent and that as an executive and that as an entrepreneur and that as author and a consecrator, it all plays out, it all plays out. No one has ever been like you before, no one ever be like you again. You have unique experiences, unique DNA, all that's totally unique. So why would you copy other people? Why would you try to be like someone else?

You should be you. That's your monopoly. I believe this is why I talk about patience so much. I think one of the reasons people do it is they wanna get there faster. Oh, Gary V did it, I'm gonna be like him, I'm gonna be crazy, I'm not loud. Okay, cool, like if you're a Jersey kid from the 80s,

cool, you can probably get, like we probably over, you know, we make, but if you're an introvert from the South, like, and you've never cursed in your life, please don't make videos where you're cursing. It's gonna feel awkward. Just like why I was a little bored in reading my own book because academia is a little bit like, I can glaze over, but I know why I wrote it.

And so, yeah man, it's because people lack patience, right? Right, when you were behind the scenes with Ferris and all that other stuff, when I was in my daddy's liquor store all those years, I didn't make a piece of business content until I was 34 years old. Yeah, people go, it's too late for me. Yeah, I'm 20, yeah, dude,

I did not make one single piece of business content in a world that was different. By the way, one of the biggest theses of day trading attention is social change three years ago. We now live in the TikTokification era. Social media for the first 10 years was email marketing. Get as many followers as you can, and then a percentage of those people will see your content.

Yeah, your number of followers and the views something get are- Had a direct correlation, just like email. If you have 10 million people on the email list, a million, you know, and you have 10% open rates, a million saw it. Same with social forever. Twitter, Facebook, it would tweak

and once in a while some shit would happen, but that was it. Now it's all algorithm. It's why I thought Tumblr was gonna be the biggest social network when I invested in it. It was interest-based, not social-based. Even in 2007, I kinda had instincts to who you follow, challenging game,

because your friends in high school versus college versus middle school versus family life, then you have kids and your friends don't, new parent friends, that evolves. Interests, yeah, you can pick up new interests along the way, but there's some things that will always be with you, sports and wine for me, and there'll be new things.

But even when you get new things, the algo will figure that out. So the interest graph was, the reason I was so hot on Musical.ly was it was the first time I saw the interest graph again since Tumblr. And that is now, and now it's now eating up everything

and it will, because that's how entertainment and all these books and it's how we make choices. We make them based on relevance and that's when you buy something. That's how you get excited about something. So Patience Pig is this one. But talk to me about Stoic Slime.

Oh yes, we've got to talk about Stoic Slime. But yes, and I promise you, I will write a meet me in the middle with Stoic. The problem with Stoic Slime is Stoic Slime and Balance Beetle are the two V friends that are most, like that's your world. It was funny when I was doing this book, at some point I was like, oh, wait till Ryan sees this.

Literally, meet me in the middle. Patient pig and eager eagle. Patience and being eager. The point of this book, and I'm so excited to be going into kids' book land, because the truth is, I really felt the impacts of getting to kids 15 to 25, especially now that I've been doing it for so long.

It's fun to find that 40-year-old that's been watching you since they were 25, and you talk to them and you listen to the impacts, and it for so long. It's fun to find that 40 year old that's been watching you since they were 25 and you talk to them and you listen to the impacts and you get so humbled. And now I'm getting a little greedy. I'm like, okay, let's go younger. Like to me, you know, patience. Do you know that I believe most alpha winners

that hear me talk about patience, that it's one of the things that they like me, go get all that, but they don't like when I go patience because they interpret it as complacency. But there's a reason there's two words in the dictionary. Patience is not complacency. Eagerness, I love, ambition, you know. But this book is basically telling kids,

and parents by the way, that in America we've become way too red and way too blue. And the magic is purple. By the way, that's why this was purple. I'm like all about purple now. Do you know Aristotle's golden mean? All right, so many, many centuries ago, Aristotle said that most virtues

are a midpoint between two vices. So courage, the opposite of courage is not cowardice. There's recklessness and cowardice and courage is in the middle. For the Stoics, the virtue of temperance or self-discipline would be between eagerness and patience, right? Like it's in the middle there. Love you.

And so I'm using these V friends to show, being eager and hungry, amazing. Being patient, amazing. What I do in here is I go, too much patience becomes complacency. Too much eagerness becomes sloppy. And how these two V friends, you know, it's fun, come together and I think it's gonna, and it's cool,

it's a middle book for kids, so you can read it from both sides. So two nights out of that week, you can get them on both. And I'm so darn excited about this because I love both audiences in a parent and kid world. So the cartoons I have coming out for VFriends on YouTube Kids this summer, the books, the master plan I have for the next 50 years of VFriends,

my audience is gonna be both. Unlike a lot of things, Cocoa Melon is driving parents crazy, but crushing for little kids. I'm hoping to be, like I'm excited, I can't wait to get the first DM or email. Kids and parents like Bluey. By the way, it's one of the reasons I was like,

the Bluey founder flew out from Australia and we had a meeting in New York and just give me some nice flowers about some of the stuff I did around TikTok and how it helped blow up Bluey. And I was like, fuck, I gotta do that for myself for VFriends. It was profound.

Bluey does that, correct. And that's what VFriends is gonna do as well. Like I want it for both. And this is like kind of my first like real foray into it. I'm excited to get the first email this summer from someone who's like, hey, got the book because I'm a fan of you, read it for my four year old.

Gotta be honest with you, the patient pig thing really hit. Like I know that I'm gonna be on a plane and I can see my face in the screen on a plane already grinning because that is a little bit of my secret plan. But that's absolutely right. The whole concept of me in the screen on a plane already grinning because that is a little bit of my secret plan, but that's absolutely right. The whole concept of me in the middle.

Because people think stoicism has no emotions. No, there's has no emotions and then there's a slave to your emotions. Stoic is in the middle between those two. You have it and you choose which ones you utilize or don't utilize, but you're not overpowered by them. The biggest pandemic in parenting right now, a lot of parents right now that are listening

have an opposite view of their co-parent, right? Their wife or husband thinks something, they think the opposite. Yes, yes. One parent takes the lead on something and goes over here. Yeah. The other parent that has a different view, to get their kid in the middle,

they think they have to go here. Yes. You're too soft on him, you're too hard on him. Correct, and so the answer actually is to go here. But that is like the opposite of what most people do. So I fully understand, it makes so much sense, and I think about it daily. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you should,

if like your instinct is to be hard, you're probably actually already being too hard on them. So you should actively go easier. And if you're like overprotective, you should be like, hey, I'm gonna really push them. Correct, but what ends up happening in a parenting environment, why do co-CEOs not work? Parenting is hard.

So you have one parent that is third generation wealthy, and their framework's different than the person they married who was born in Mexico and is an immigrant. They're gonna have different PSVs under kids, of course. But again, when the first parent moves on whatever, the other parent that's on the other side of the pillow tends to go too far. This is what happened, by the way,

this is politics right now in America. It's everyone's much more a shade of purple, but we keep pushing each other because of these moves, because everyone's actually trying to get the purple, but what they're doing is extremely making red and blue get more red and blue. I'm very passionate about this, and I'm very hungry as a person that loves to communicate

and make content and hopes that, you know, every day I hope one of my purple, which is the predominant message I put out, disguised in business and other things, that it really has that ultimate viral moment that makes everyone that's too far left or right on anything, parenting, business, politics, go, huh, that's right.

Well, it's funny, parents are super concerned about how much screen time their kids have, right? And so you all want your kids to do stuff in the real world. So one of the strategies we came up with is like, hey, you love watching YouTube videos. I'm gonna make, we're gonna choose to watch videos about places, then you're gonna get excited to go to those places, then we're gonna go to those places.

So instead of banning them from the thing, which makes them wanna do it more, you think, how do I take this thing you have interest in and use it as a bridge to go to this other place that I want you to go? Watching parents today, who are of the era where parents demonized alcohol, which then only led to kids loving to drink alcohol,

and then kids going through college experiences where they saw someone who never drank alcohol because it was demonized, completely get wasted on their first week of college. Watching that generation of parents not realizing that with social media and screen times, they're doing the same thing. That's brilliant, good for you. And look, the other thing I would say to parents is you're the parent. If you think TikTok, like TikTok is a good one,

because I talk about it marketing a lot of times, the most extreme parents are like China or bad or whatever. I'm like, why are you yelling at me? I'm talking about TikTok about business. Like you don't like TikTok for your kid, you're their parent, delete it off their phone. Oh, we can't do that. The peer pressure at school.

I'm like, oh, you're a puss parent. I understand now. Don't be mad at me. I'm like, oh, you're a puss parent? I understand now. Don't be mad at me. I'm talking about marketing and selling flowers on TikTok. Like you have a problem with anything, address it. My favorite V-Friend, actually it was gonna be the first book, but I got to this.

The V-Friend that I most wanna make popular is Accountable Ant. We have become remarkable at pointing fingers. Biden's the worst, Trump's the worst, Republicans, Democrats, America, China, my spouse, mom fucked me up, dad fucked me up, my boss is a dick, capital, we are, what about this brother?

The thumb, Ryan, the thumb doesn't exist anymore. Do you know why I'm so happy? I stay in thumb. I spend an ungodly amount of time in an enjoyable way. This is the interesting part of like, what could I have done better? I fucked that up, damn, I shouldn't have done it. I could have, it's,

and some people when they hear me say things like that, they're like, doesn't that get depressing? I'm like, no, I'm in control. When you think everyone's in control, but you, you're finished. Yeah, yeah, I talk about this, it's like, it's called self-discipline for a reason. You know what I mean?

Discipline is this mythical thing that you get, you think you get to enforce on other people. No, discipline, it's here, it's here, right? Like you can hold yourself to high standards and then you can hope other people come up to this. It's not this weapon you really can take. Man, does it have a ripple effect? It's so funny you say that.

Somebody, man, this struck me. I was on an Asian tour speaking, and I was in Singapore. And it was like this kind of like VIP dinner afterwards. The only one I did on that tour. And this young woman, she might've been 27. We got into one of those favorite dinners I have. 12 people, everyone gets deep. And she talks about how she resented her mom her whole life

because she was one of the biggest judges in Singapore and she was never around. And then she was young, 25, 27, 29, she goes, in the last five years, I realized my mom was showing me how to live versus telling me how to live. One of the profound things of self-discipline is it accomplishes the goal that most parents, coaches, managers, and leaders want.

A lot of people wanna deploy discipline on others by acting with self-discipline, by acting. It actually creates the osmosis on your circles that you're looking for. Yes, and by the way, it's really the only part you control. Like I remember I was interviewing this Air Force general and he was like, even me, he's like,

I'm a general, he's like, I've probably given two direct orders in my entire, you think, you fantas was like, even me, he's like, I'm a general. He's like, I've probably given two direct orders in my entire, you think, you fantasize like, that CEO, they have like an iron grip, or that coach. It's all volunteer world out there. You know what I mean? It's only self-discipline. Do you know the people that consume my content

listen to my marketing habits better than my 2000 employees? Yeah, I'm sure. Cool. Yeah, of course. Like people like always saying about like, oh, your kids. I'm like, what are you talking about? I'm their dad. I'm the. Yeah, of course. Like people are always saying about like, oh, your kids, I'm like, what are you talking about? I'm their dad. I'm the only creator or person

they're not gonna listen to. They'll take some good stuff and it's parenting, but like they're not putting Gary Vee. Like I'm not Gary Vee to that. Like I do that for my friends and some of my friends are gonna do that for my kids. That's just the way the game works. You have to be about it more than you talk about.

God, man, talk about life, man. That is it, man. And honestly, that's, by the way, just as a side note for all the people, there are a lot of people building marketing agencies and things of that nature. The reason VaynerMedia has become one of the largest independent global agencies in the world

is I'm still a practitioner. Yes. The fact that I'm still, I wrote the copy to my Instagram post walking into this bookstore today. I wrote the copy. Like I'm still in the dirt. And I think that a lot of people,

here's one thing, more universal than agencies. Friends, when you go from being the employee to being the manager within your company, everything changes. And a lot of you think that all of a sudden everyone works for you when in reality it's the reverse. You start working for everyone. Well, what I found too from my marketing agency,

which doesn't really exist anymore, because I just, I got tired of trying to tell other people what they should do, and I just said, I'm gonna start making my own stuff. If I'm actually good at this, I wanna market me and what I'm interested in and things that are, like that I controlled, right? Makes so much sense.

I just went to super scale. Of course. But you represented that era, and I always thought that. I remember hearing about you and others that were doing it for bigger, prominent figures, and I'm like, they're gonna figure out that they should just, because my belief was, even if you were not an electric video personality,

that everybody, if they had chops, whether in written form, audio or video, not every, by the way, tons of people don't consume my content because it's too much. So they prefer someone like you to be the messenger. That makes sense. There's a lot of people that stop listening to this podcast already because it's yours

and I'm too much for them. Just like when you come on mine, it might not be dynamic enough to hit up that adrenaline for them. That's beautiful. That goes back to a thing we touched on here, not every flavor for everyone about everything. Just be you, do what you do and-

And let the chips fall. But to the broader point I was making there was, I was like, oh, these kids that are actually the practitioners, they're gonna have their day because once you don't know how, you are not as valuable, and as long as you know how, you are always valuable. Yeah.

Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us, and it would really help the show. We appreciate it, and I'll see you next episode. If you like The Daily Stoic and thanks for listening, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music.

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