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and pleased to be joined by uh noted entrepreneur and investor Gary vaynerchuk Gary pleasure to have you
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with us today thanks for your time thank you for having me hey so give us the the
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background here on vcon and obviously that's where you are in Indianapolis right now and the kind of the importance
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of this type of event for uh for so many people right now you know I think you know I I have a
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pretty prolific uh public speaking career here over the last 15 years so I've been to you know hundreds and
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hundreds and hundreds of conferences around the world and kind of always wanted to have one
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um when we innovated the V friends project we wanted to use the smart contracts and nfts so we provided
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um three tickets uh when you minted the nft two years ago to three business super conferences that we wanted to
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throw once a year this is year two in Indy last year we did it in Minneapolis um this year we're doing it at Lucas Oil
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Stadium where the Colts play uh and and what's really fun for the audience that
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I know you have is look it's the most contemporary kind of cool contemporary
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uh business marketing entrepreneur conference is the ambition in mind I was very affected by South by Southwest
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um back in the mid 2000s and so that kind of confidence mixed in with some of the other events that I've
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been through in years has been an ambition and so whether it's pop culture or innovation whether it's the CEO of
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lvmh North America or Scooter Braun who's done it in music or Dave grubman who's done it in
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Nightlife or Jessica Alba who's done it from Hollywood then into consumer packaged Goods
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um and and many you know 125 plus other speakers um we're just looking to blow people
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away with the magnitude of the content and then really focus on the community we've built and really one of the things
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I've always loved about great conferences is the people you meet in the Halls the chats you have when the
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content's not going on or even when it is going on and so the layout is very
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conducive for interaction whether you're consuming the content or not what do you
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think is kind of the state of Entrepreneurship right now and I say that obviously because the pandemic
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changed so much for so many people on so many different levels and and we've
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talked on our show about how many times businesses had to Pivot in the pandemic to be able to survive I'm wondering if
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you've seen some of those changes within entrepreneurship itself you know I think there's two extreme
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counterpoints that I most recognize that are happening over the last four years more people than ever are now tasting
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entrepreneurship because the concept of a side hustle or you know the micro economy or gig economy is very real
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people learned how to use the computer more you know in social media more and zoom more and I think a lot of people
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had to do things during covet found new passions um the economy has gotten softer people
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have been laid off people are learning skills flipping stuff online starting a podcast people have gone you know viral
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on Tick Tock without knowing that that was their Destiny and so more people have tasted entrepreneurship and are
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doing versions of it on the flip side another opposite thing has happened the last three four years more people in the
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last three four five years have realized they're not capable of being an entrepreneur if you go back and you know
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this three four five years ago there was almost this concept of like anyone can do it like the amount of people jumping
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into it there was there was this confusion that you being an entrepreneur meant the same thing as being a
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successful entrepreneur and a lot of people were playing successful entrepreneur on Instagram but
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not actually living that life and so it's a really interesting time more people than ever tasting versions of it
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more people than I think a half decade ago coming to terms with it's okay of
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not being an entrepreneur you just might be a number three or a number seven and
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so it's an interesting time for that combo I I think people a lot of people forgotten and this is something that
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I've heard through the professors here at the Wharton School is that people forget that the success rate on ideas as
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entrepreneurs is still relatively low it's not like you know you come up come
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up with an idea and it's a sure winner right out of the gate and you know this
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given you know the pedigree and the caliber and the relationships of the kids that are popping out of war and a
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lot of them are in a position where they are able to raise Capital against ideas
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and you know this and you know people that pay attention though there's been
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more capital in the system than ever and so the success rates are still incredibly hard but you you know and you
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know this when you and I were kids small businesses would usually die within the
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first year because there's so much capital in the system where these companies are taking three to four years
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to die and a lot of times they're doing M A's you know on a penny on the dollar
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so it doesn't look like it died it looked like it got eminent and so there's a lot of variables that go into
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this conversation you know you mentioned about uh with vcon the use of nfts and there's still a lot of conversation
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about where that's going to head uh there's obviously like we we're seeing
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with with openai and chat GPT there's a lot of early jumping on board getting
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involved in it it seems like with nfts it's it's maybe hitting a slow I don't know if it's a
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slow patch or it's kind of hitting its Pat its normal path right now what do
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you see as the pattern with nfts my intuition is that I always thought that the pattern and at the height of
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the height of it I started making these videos after being like hey everyone should learn about this and get involved
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I started making these videos that 99 of nft projects were going to go to zero which wasn't Landing so well with the
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community except for the small percentage of the thoughtful ones I I and the reason I did that was it
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reminded me of the hysteria of things and collectibles like Beanie Babies but just because beanie babies aren't
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worth a fortune doesn't mean stuffed animals aren't a huge category it reminded me of the.com bubble
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just because those companies were wildly overvalued because of greed didn't mean
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that the internet wasn't going to be a thing so I think it's going to be in between
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what it is right now and what it was 24 months ago in the hysteria because right now people are
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scared to innovate in it because there's not a lot of clarity not to mention
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there's not Clarity yet we're waiting for legislation right so I think people are kind of
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stuck a little bit but the macro technology ironically you bring up AI I actually think the blockchain's about to
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become a hero in society when people realize what deep fake videos are and how many there will be in the system in
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three years and how we will rely on decentralized servers to prove Providence and that we will all interact
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with the blockchain to make sure the video that we just saw of a public leader or a famous person what they said
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we today every one of us default into when we see a video to believe it to be true
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within the next decade it will be the reverse there will be more fake videos of people saying things than real videos
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of people saying things so we will have to reverse and we will need the blockchain or some combination of new
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technology that I don't understand or hasn't been invented to create affirmation and so I have a hunch that
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the blockchain is going to go there and I think nfts again are stuffed animals not beanie
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babies and I think just like sports cards 99 of them won't be valuable from a collecting lens but
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Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky rookie cards are and then there's the whole
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smart contract of it all right Title Insurance signing a deal like literally actual
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contracts a lot of those things are going to be in non-fungible token form so right now we talk about nfts as a
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collectible the world does but we used to talk about the internet from a place of it just being about
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information remember the information the internet is much more than just information nfts are much more than just
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a collectible so I think over the next decade that will play out well and the thing about blockchain is I it's been so
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associated with cryptocurrency that uh I think people forget that it's so much
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more than just that and obviously with some of the the negative things that have gone on with cryptocurrency in the
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first few years I think it's been Associated to the downside with that blockchain seemingly has so many more
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options it feels like moving forward that we really haven't even kind of dug
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deep into at this point this is why when you know when people like to razz Bill Gates for underestimating the internet
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what he was doing in that micro moment was he was only looking at it from the lens of like this is good for Academia
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and government to get information he hadn't played out all the other use cases and as soon as he did he went Full
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Throttle I think what you're touching on is exactly right but it's also a
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branding game you know this greed and all this effects it's going to take a half a decade to shed some of that bad
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taste right the media is going to run with it for a while and so that will evolve but like look when you're running
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a marathon versus a hundred yard dash you're not devastated if you're falling behind in
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the first leg it's a long race what's the advice you give to entrepreneurs the best advice you give
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to entrepreneurs right now me personally my favorite is accountability and patience I'm shocked
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how many entrepreneurs want to buy a boat next year with their big business and I'm shocked by how many
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entrepreneurs when they are fully in control of their business like to blame everybody around them besides themselves
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I think the best way to be a happy entrepreneur is to be 100 accountable and try to play the long game
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otherwise you get too anxiety now and you get blown out of the game is the landscape there for young
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entrepreneurs right now or do you have to have a little bit of that life experience in you before you make that
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jump the answer is both I mean the opportunity is greater you know this like I mean I don't know if I my mom and
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I laugh all time I don't know if I would have graduated Middle School let alone
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High School in college if I lit if I was growing up in this technology era the opportunities are just obnoxious uh on
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the flip side as someone who had great success as a child and a young man in business it was my talent I can tell you
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47 year old Gary runs circles around 25 year old Gary as an entrepreneur because
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experience matters so and and then I think you see that in sports a lot right like unless your body starts to break
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down which it does to every athlete even the the best of best players the LeBrons
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the Kobe's the Jordans you know or a Federer or Brady whatever they are they're they're clearly very good when
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they get out the gate but you get into that five years later seven years later nine years later they just know the
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whole game everything slows down and so I think the answer is both what do you think the landscape is then in the world
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of advertising with digital and and then the next step which I know you've talked
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about is web3 and how that's going to impact a lot of this you know look I mean the first part of
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that question is we could we should do a four-hour podcast on that because I can
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tell you right now I think one of the biggest elephants in the room globally in the world in business is the sheer
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amount of money being wasted by big brands on traditional advertising and when I say traditional I don't mean just
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television print and outdoor I mean traditional digital programmatic banner ads you know and then you have to
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actually be good at Social or influencer or this stuff so you know I think the way Technologies affected the
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advertising industry is profound and we have not calibrated that on Madison Avenue yet
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and I mean you're talking about 80 billion dollars spent on television commercials
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media placement forget about the creative in a world where like I'm struggling to find the human beings that
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are able to consume commercials on cable and television I'm struggling to find
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people that watch cable and television outside of live sports because they're all living in streaming
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services and so and and so you know I guess the answer to the question is we need a Day of
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Reckoning in adland and we need to recalibrate the way we're scoring success and measuring brand and
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media efficiency and I think there's gonna be a lot of Carnage in the next 20
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years and a lot of big brands that we know today are going to lose profound market share because every time somebody
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walks into Walmart and buys a Mr Beast chocolate bar that's a chocolate bar that Hershey's does not sell every time
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that somebody goes into a Target and buys a Prime energy drink I got bad news for Powerade that used to be your sale
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and so there's there's a lot going on out there and I see Fortune 500 Brands
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putting their head in the sand and they're going to get run over by this tidal wave well and I'm just amazed how
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many secondary brands have come onto the market and had unbelievable success you
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think with some some of the companies that are out there that are doing golf shirts and polos and all these different
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companies and they have that digital connection and they are doing just as well as some of the big name brands
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these days it's because media has become commoditized and so has distribution you
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have to understand in 1984 Kraft or PepsiCo or Procter Gamble or Unilever a small entrepreneur couldn't get their
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product inside of Walmart or Kmart or ShopRite right they couldn't get on television
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as a commercial today you can post one tick tock and it can go viral and your product can
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sell out and they all go to your Shopify store and they have it delivered to their home
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yeah awareness marketing and distribution selling at stores has been completely wiped out as something that costs tens
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of millions of dollars to get into thus rendering competition being able to start taking market share from the
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biggest brands in the world Gary great to have you with us enjoy your time in Indianapolis thanks very
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much for joining us today thank you my friend have a great day thank you Gary vaynerchuk joining us here on the show