Gary Vee’s Emotional Confession About His Success & Family! | E207

There's certain things that I'm not ready to talk about.

Why?

I just feel like... (sniffs) She made me happy. Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary V. Gary Vaynerchuk.

One of the world's leading marketing experts.

Entrepreneur, investor. A New York Times best-selling author.

And is one of the loudest voices on the internet.

I've exhausted the conversation of grinding, learning how to be an entrepreneur in the streets of New Jersey. There was a kid who wrote a Medium piece about me being the face of hustle. I was on a plane, I landed and it was just all this chaos. And there was a lot of things that weren't true. There were some things that really, like, triggered me. I didn't inherit my dad's liquor store. I built my dad's store for him. I knew at 17 that I was a fucking guy.

What's your dark side?

The only place I feel like I'm dark is when I'm competing. We did rock-paper-scissors tournament with our leadership team. I quickly thought after I lost in the first five seconds, "Should I fire him?" I was incapable of dealing with losing. What is it that makes me want to be like this? And to be very frank-

You don't have to give me the details.

I'll tell you. It's-

Five years ago when we had a conversation, I asked you what your biggest fear was, got these photos here.

In Russia.

How does that make you feel?

It's very clear to me. It's been there for a long time in my head.

Quick one. At the start of these episodes, I told you that 74% of people who watch this channel frequently haven't yet hit the subscribe button, and I told you that the bigger the channel gets, the better the guests get, and hopefully I've delivered upon that for you. So there's two things I wanted to tell you. The first is, if you've ever enjoyed this channel, could you do me a favor, and my team here a favor? Which is hit that subscribe button because it helps this channel more than you know, and as I say, the bigger the channel, the better the guests. But also, we're approaching one million subscribers and when we hit one million subscribers, we've been working for many months to do something very big in which you're all invited to. I'll reveal that when we hit a million subscribers. Enjoy this episode. With age, my perspective and my recollection of my childhood and my understanding of what was most significant, defining and important has evolved.

Mm.

You've just celebrated your 47th birthday.

Yes.

More energy than ever, shall I say.

(laughs) .

But, um, what have you... As you rel- recollect on your, your childhood from, from that vantage point now, what are the new insights that you've attained about yourself?

Probably the most recent one is, like, this incredible need to be a superhero. You know, I, I really took the being the oldest brother to heart. You know, it's funny, my sister and I have a joke that a lot of people don't know that she exists 'cause obviously me and AJ were in business together, and I talk a lot about the Jets, and that has AJ. But my relationship with my sister, who's three and a half years younger than me, may be one of the most profound relationships I have. She (laughs) undoubtedly was the first person besides my mother that kind of cheered for me. You know, she looked up to me. Uh, my mother is incredibly close to her brother, and so she spent a lot of time building that relationship. We're incredibly close. I feel much more kinship to her when I think about my childhood than AJ 'cause I was 11 years older. We didn't have the same childhood. We also moved when he was three. So, all my childhood memories have her in it. And I think as I've gotten... In l- you know, last two, three years, I'm like, "Oh, I have this, like, need to be admired, need..." You know, everything that works for me is when I feel like I'm doing it for someone besides myself. I'm doing it to make my parents proud. I'm doing it to show my sister the right way. I'm doing it for my employees. Even the way I got into better health and fitness was I hired a babysitter, but really what I hired was someone to do it for. Mike and Jordan is who I want to make proud today. My scale being 175 versus 176.8 which it was two days earlier, and Mike texting me, "Great job" on the travel day, I did it for him. And so as I'm getting older, and so much of the Gary V-ness I'm realizing is I'm happy when I'm doing things that make other people happy. Or even at a higher level, creating a framework or a blueprint that they can interpret into themselves. The thing I... You know, as I got older with my sister, a lot of the things I talked about was, "This is my DNA, your DNA is different, but, like, I just... I want you to be happy. We're... It's going to be different for..." You know, those kind of things.