Aspire with Emma Grede
Gary Vaynerchuk: Why Truth, Humility, and Kindness Will Become Your Next Superpower
26 May 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What insights does Gary Vaynerchuk share about fear and insecurity?
I am so excited to share my debut book with you all, Start With Yourself, which is available now. You might have seen the headlines. You might have seen the social. But this book is exactly what I intended, a conversation that will make you think. And it's a blueprint for anyone who wants success without the toxic positivity. Start With Yourself is about self-reliance.
leadership because wherever I go, women ask me how I got to where I am. But what you really want to know is how you can get there. So I'm doing what I do best, sharing and never gatekeeping what's worked for me in the hope that you can borrow from a philosophy that has served me so well. The truth is I'm not an expert. I've just lived it. I've made the mistakes.
I've had the failures and I've learned what actually works. It takes a lot. It takes the most.
Chapter 2: How does reputation impact success in today's society?
And this book is for anyone who's tired of feeling like a passenger in their own life. It's about taking responsibility for your thinking, managing your emotions and getting clear on your ideas and then knowing your next step. It's about picking yourself up after failure, being accountable, but also forgiving yourself, pushing for wins and never, ever apologising for your ambition.
It's also about challenging the rules that you've been told. There is no perfect time. Balance isn't the goal. Alignment is. And there's nothing wrong with you wanting more. I'm precisely sure that the reason I've been so successful is so I can share it with you. Start with yourself. My debut book is available now. Visit emagreed.com to purchase the book.
Also available on Amazon, your favorite audio platforms, and all good bookshops. So something I've noticed lately and it's been bothering me, the loudest voices in the room aren't necessarily the smartest ones anymore. They might still get the views, they're getting them by being mean, by tearing other people down and by being the most aggressive person on the timeline.
Chapter 3: Why is emotional intelligence becoming more important in business?
And honestly, think a lot of us are quietly exhausted by it. My guest today thinks this era is actually about to end. He thinks the next five years are going to belong to people who are kind and have humility, those who brought reputations worth defending. And he's not saying it because it sounds nice.
He's saying it because he watches what's happening online for a living and he can see the cracks forming. Gary Vaynerchuk has been telling people what's about to happen on the internet about three years before they're ready to hear it. Social, creators, attention, AI. He was early to YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, and now live shopping, which we get into today.
He's been right enough times that the people that write him off the loudest are usually quoting him a year later. He runs VaynerMedia, advises some of the biggest companies in the world, and has built a media empire that employs thousands of people and a content engine that produces hundreds of pieces a week. Now, I know what some of you are thinking. You've heard Gary on other podcasts.
You've seen the clips, but that is not the conversation that I wanted to have. I wanted to sit down with one of the few operators who's actually paying attention to what's coming culturally, not just what's happening and coming commercially.
Chapter 4: What role does kindness play in modern consumer behavior?
Listen for what he says about insecurity being the engine that gets you started and why it can't be the engine that keeps you running. Listen for what he says about reputation being the most underpriced asset on earth right now. Listen for the line about fear. I think it's the most accurate description of why most of us don't move that I've heard in a long time.
And listen for what he told me he'd do if he was starting from zero today. That's the part you'll want to write down. When your day starts early and doesn't slow down, the things that tend to fall off are the things your body actually needs. The vitamins, the gut support, the basics that keep everything running. I felt that especially this spring with the book tour.
Eight cities, different time zones, never the same morning twice. It's the kind of stretch where it would be easy to let your routine slip. But AG1 is the habit I've stayed consistent with through all of it. It's a daily health drink with a multivitamin, prebiotics, probiotics, superfoods, and antioxidants all in one step. Just one scoop with eight ounces of water every morning and you're done.
Chapter 5: How can parents foster confidence in their children?
Their next gen formula delivers 75 plus ingredients backed by four clinical trials. It's shown to fill the common nutrient gaps and support your gut health. What I like about it is the simplicity. So even on the road, I know I've taken care of the basics. This is the one thing that covers a lot of ground without adding complexity to my day.
AG1 has over 50,000 verified five-star reviews and comes with a 90-day money-back guarantee. Visit drinkag1.com slash aspire to get a free AG1 flavor sampler and a bottle of vitamin D3 K2 in your AG1 welcome kit when you first subscribe. A $72 value. That's drinkag1.com slash aspire. drinkag1.com slash aspire. Gary, welcome to Aspire.
Thank you for having me.
Well, I'm very, very excited about our conversation. And I feel like with you and I, the more research I did about you, the more similarities that I found you and I had, which is kind of unsurprising. But there's something that you said that really got me.
Chapter 6: What opportunities in live shopping are still being underestimated?
And you said, and I believe this so deeply, you said everyone's got something and every person is carrying some version of hardship. But there's a choice and we all have a choice whether you weaponize it as an excuse or you use it as a foundation. Insecurity.
You know, at its most basic fear. It's why so many people weaponize it. It can control people. So I think the number one reason people are held back is they worry about the judgment of others because they're insecure. They're trapped. They're scared to fail in front of others. And they don't have self-belief because it was imposed inside of them through circumstance or someone.
And, you know, I'm very motivated by putting out content and talking about it because every day people get unlocked, whether it's through therapy or meditation or a podcast or a friend or the serendipity of meeting a college roommate. There's just a million ways people can get out, but it is always words. that start the process of action. But the answer to the question directly is insecurity.
So what do you say to people that are living with real fear, like fear that comes from a place of real concern, perhaps that they don't have the circumstances that
Chapter 7: How can individuals overcome the fear of judgment?
are best, but they really want to move forward in their life. Like, how have you in your own life been able to do that?
You know, I don't really use myself as a comp. You know, I'm the byproduct of an extraordinary mother and really, you know, humble beginnings, which is like the perfect formula for world domination. Yes, it is. But if you experience fear, you must have it. Oh, my God. My sister and I were driving here. We were just laughing that I got all my fear out of the way as a kid.
I was ultimately mostly scared about my parents dying. It was a big, real big track in my life. My mom lost her mom at five. My father lost his dad at 15.
So it was a legitimate fear.
It was a legitimate fear.
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Chapter 8: What does Gary believe about the future of kindness in leadership?
It was in the air. Yeah. My mom did almost everything right. But my mom would say things like, you know, if anything happens to us, you got to take care of your sister. And then later, my brother. I did so much fear in my youth and such real important shit that I think by the time I got to 18, I'm like, oh, we're cooking now. Like, I'm not scared of shit.
I mean, that's definitely something we've got in common. And I talk about that a lot. I feel like I went through so much stuff that was actually scary. As I've come up in my professional life, stuff that would frighten the life out of somebody, like losing money. I'm just like, that's not real. Like, that's not actually... something to be really scared about.
But one of the things I've heard you talk about a lot is whether or not everyone should be an entrepreneur. I think that what holds people back so much is the fear. So how do you even begin to work through that in your own mind as a person, whether you should branch out, whether you should be really entrepreneurial when the stories and the fear is really what's holding you back?
by having a relationship with what's really important in life. I think a lot of people listening right this second know they want to take some sort of risk, but they are not willing to live less bougie If it doesn't work out, they're not willing to fly coach instead of front in the first class.
It's almost like we've created massive taboo of taking a step back from a materialistic or social status that we're willing to not live our lives on what we want to actually do just to keep up with the Joneses. Normally to impress people that we don't even really like. When you wrap up, when you start going to those 80s, 90s, 100s. Oh, yeah.
You're not going to be happy that you didn't take those risks. You're going to regret it. And I think regret. is a very devastating energy.
We all have regrets. And I think the biggest regret is just when you don't try something, right? When you actually allow the fear to hold you back. How have you been able, as you've gone through your career, to get more and more comfortable with taking risks? Like, what does that actually look like?
You know, I'm just so uncomfortably curious of how good I am at the game. It drives me. Whereas I've been in a place in my life now where I've spent a lot of time with a lot of people that are really at the tippy top. I was stunned when I got there. In what way? I was like, oh shit, they're insecure. I didn't realize that insecurity was the more prevalent fuel to get to the top.
I thought, you know, I was such a cocoon of myself and my environment. I thought it was confidence. I thought, of course, you can get to the top with confidence, right? Because you're strong. What I didn't realize was insecurity gets you there as well. What I didn't know then that I try to talk a lot about now is insecurity gets you there, but it's also the reason you don't stay there. Right?
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