Gary Vaynerchuk's Keys to Staying Ahead of the Curve

How Gary Vee Predicts The Next Facebook (Every Time)

In this interview video, Gary Vee talks about how school grades are not a good indicator of future success. He mentions his own high school report card as an example. He got a D in Speech, a F in German, and overall his grades were not good. However, he has become very successful in business.

Gary Vee says that a lot of data in the world is dirty and fake, and he believes school grades are not a great indicator of what someone will achieve in life. He mentions that he did poorly in school and did not do any homework, but he was already working and successful in his dad's liquor store by the time he was in high school.

Here is how Gary Vee got into investing. He says that the best investment he ever made was Facebook, which he bought before the company went public.

• Gary Vee says he looks for a few things to stay on the pulse of what people care about:

  • Looking at trending topics but filtering out negativity: He mentioned an app called Break the Web that shows trending topics. He likes that it avoids negativity and focuses more on pop culture and consumer trends. He says consuming less news is important because most of it focuses on negativity.

  • Finding indicators of cultural shifts: He gave the example of Facebook translating its service to different languages. This was a major indicator of a shift towards a more globalized internet.

  • Looking for people who are going against the grain: He admires people who are willing to take risks and do things differently. He gave the example of MrBeast who creates content in multiple languages.

  

• Gary Vee talks about the importance of not overpaying for domain names in the video. He says that names are made and that it's better to focus on building a brand than spending a lot of money on a domain name. He gives the example of Darin Hirsch who founded HubSpot, which bought Gary Vee's company. Darin bought chat.com for eight figures even though he wasn't sure what he was going to do with it. Gary says that Darin was smart because he knew he could probably flip it for a lot of money. However, Gary also says that there is a concern about what happens when domain names are no longer the most important thing. He says that he thinks the future of the internet is VR and that domain names won't matter as much in that world.

• Gary Vee uses the term "day trading attention" but it doesn't refer to stock trading. Gary Vee uses "day trading attention" to mean constantly creating and putting out content to capture people's attention. He talks about the importance of understanding where attention is flowing and how to get your content seen by the right people.

• Gary Vee talks about being inspired by people who are going through tough times in the video. He mentions that he finds those who are facing adversity and are still pushing forward to be highly inspiring. He gives an example of a teenager who lost his father and now has to help support his family by working while being in high school. Gary says that this kind of tenacity and grit is what inspires him. He admires that this young man is taking responsibility for his situation and is not blaming others or giving up.