Zach Nadler, CEO of VaynerSpeakers | Building A Disruptive Speakers Bureau With Gary V (+ How to Make It as a Pro Speaker)

Thanks again for joining me today. I'm sitting down with Zach Nadler. Zach is the CEO of Vayner Speakers. Zach has had an incredible career. He spent a long time with a creative artist agency, CAA. He was working with Gary Vaynerchuk while he was at CAA who was one of his clients and now look where he is. Now he's working for Gary Vaynerchuk under one of the Vayner Media brands. Vayner Speakers is one of the brands and I'm going to let Zach get into it, but of course this is with the same brands like Vayner Media, VaynerX, Vayner Productions, Vayner Talent. The list goes on and on and on. It keeps rolling stuff out. Zach, thanks for sitting down. I'm very excited to understand your story, understand your relationship with Gary, how you graduated from working with CAA to working with Gary and what you're trying to accomplish with Vayner Speakers. Let's get into it. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Scott. No, it's my pleasure. I'm very excited to have this chat because your background at CAA was working with... I have to go through the list of some of the people that you've worked with because I don't think you're not going to show both as much as you should. You've worked with Academy Award-winning actors, actresses, writers, directors, producers, noble, prize recipients, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrights, professional and NCAA championships, best-selling authors, Grammy Award-winning musicians, founder, CEO of Fortune 500 companies, US President, Vice Presidents, politicians. I've never seen somebody who's worked with such notable individuals. Let's speak about how you got into speaker management. If that's the correct term, I don't know. I don't want to butcher it, but walk me through your career, man. It's funny. People say those who can't do it themselves teach it. I guess the other side of it is if you can't do it, you represent instead. I've been doing it for a while. I'm a speakers agent. There are managers nowadays. The industry has evolved a little bit over the years. There is a little bit of a differentiation, but we're agents. I'm an agent just like anyone else in this world. Rather than representing musicians who are touring or representing actors, we're doing movies. I represent speakers. I get them on stage. I get them paid to deliver a message in whether it's entertainment or education for corporations, colleges, all sorts of groups. It's never been a bigger industry than it is today. I'm lucky enough to have worked with some really incredible people who work with more than I can remember. You were jogging some memories as you're rattling that off, but it's been a lot of fun career and working a lot of interesting people along the way. How do you get into this type of work? What was your program growing up? May you say I want to manage speakers. I'm sure it wasn't that simple. Walk me through it. It's funny because no one is 12 years old and says I want to be a speaker's agent. Most people, when you're a little kid, you want to be a firefighter, you want to be a football player. You want to do something that you know and you see a lot of people don't even know this as an industry. So when I was younger, I was a huge sports nut. I was really passionate. I followed the I'm a Boston sports guy and followed all those sports teams. And I wanted to work in that world. I was not very big. I stopped growing in seventh grade. So I wasn't going to be a football player, a basketball player, anything like that. But I was passionate about it. And so I kind of pursued that path and I went off to college to study sports management. On the very first day, very first class, our professor actually got up in front of the room, asked us how many of you want to be agents or run a team and every single person raised their hand. And he was like, great, none of you are going to have that job. Look at the people who do that. They're all four athletes. There's such competition. So right out of the gate, everyone was kind of like shaking a little bit of what am I going to do? I'm sure enough, I'm probably one of two people out of that room who actually wound up being an agent. But what wound up happening is I got my eyes open to a lot more of the industry. And the more I learned, the more I kind of had fun with it. And over time, I actually want to work in for a celebrity golf tour. So I started working with celebrities at a very young age when I was 18, 19, 20 years old. And I was doing a lot of different things for that organization. It was a small organization. It was kind of, you know, you had to be all hands on deck. So I got really close a lot of celebrities, you know, people that I was, you know, idolized as a kid. And it was a lot of fun. And so I was like, this is definitely something I want to be doing. So as I started kind of growing, I realized, you know, I want to do something different. I got to break out and kind of find something. And I realized, you know, I'm not going to go find the next, you know, all-star player necessarily, right? I'm not going to be able to scout. And I don't know the first thing about signing an athlete if I want to pursue that. But I know how to do a deal, right? I've seen sales and marketing deals happen through the guys of this events group. So I kind of pursued some opportunities. And I wound up working for an Olympic agent in 2007. And so it was, you know, a year and a half after I graduated college. And I started, you know, representing Olympians from 2007 to 2009 over the Beijing Olympics. And that was a real, that was a huge Olympic games, if you remember. And, you know, we had, we had 14 clients overseas. They brought home something like 2021 gold medals. And it was a lot of fun. And I got to see that side of the business. But what's interesting is Olympians don't make a ton of money from the Olympic committees. So if you want to pursue that and do it for a long time, you got to make money. You got to speak in engagement. You got to do clinics. You got to do endorsement. And so I was doing all those deals for them. And what would happen is I'd work with a group and I'd book one of my clients for a speech. And then they'd say, great, can you help us with XYZ? And if they weren't my client, I wasn't going to say no. So I learned how that side of the business worked. And over time, I, you know, grew my relationships with all their agencies. And I would partner with different groups. And I would book other people's clients. And eventually CAA came knocking because I had done a bunch of deals with them. They were looking to expand their footprints at the time. They were only two agents in the entire department. And eventually I wound up joining the group as I was in the New York office. And, you know, started just doing speaking engagements. So I had this background with endorsements with marketing deals of all kinds. And I wound up just focusing on speaking engagements had this background in sports. So I knew that world. But obviously, you know, now I'm working with Gary and a bunch entrepreneurs. And that expands. So over time, you know, as the people we worked with expanded, my knowledge base expanded. And it became a really interesting thing because, you know, 20 years ago, this was a much more boring industry. 20 years ago, it was pretty much all politicians. There were some business people out there. But nowadays, the people who are doing speaking engagements are some of the most interesting people in the world, people from all walks of life. And so it's been a really interesting thing to watch the industry evolve. And to play a small part in that, because I think we're trying to stay ahead of the curve and kind of push where things are going and kind of constantly innovate. And that's that's the Gary way. And that's kind of why we get along so well as we like to try things to try to do things differently and disrupt things just a little bit. I love I love the story. And I'm curious when you switch over to CAA, that's that's when you landed Gary as a client, correct? Yeah, Gary was actually a client of CAA. Okay. And I was just curious what what did he fit into like what niche did Gary fit into when because that was a while ago, right? And you said it's evolved a lot since then. These are my favorite stories because Gary was the wine guy. And nowadays people know Gary. They don't even know we had a wine show on YouTube. But back then, he was like one of the first stars of YouTube. He saw YouTube for what it was way earlier than most people. And, you know, back then, he was he was producing a wine show. He was drinking a couple bottles of wine, not full bottles. He was tasting a few bottles of wine. He'd never even swallowed. And so he would he would spit the wine out and have fun. And he had this rapid fan base. And it was something where there was obviously something there. He had this great personality, but he wasn't who he is now, right? He hadn't built VaynerMedia yet. So he launched VaynerMedia in 2009. So back then, he was somewhere he wasn't even doing a lot of speaking engagements back then. And, you know, his popularity grew. I also think he was he was very brash. He still is very brash, but I think it it was, you know, a perspective that was difficult for people because he didn't have this history of huge success. He built his father's wine business up in New Jersey significantly. But it wasn't until he got it broke off and did his own thing. He wrote his second book, The Thank You Economy in 2011. And that kind of I think elevated things on the more thought leadership scale for corporate America. And that was when we got a lot closer to starting then when he started doing a lot more speaking, you know, a lot of corporate groups came calling. He was doing deals with some companies where he would do more than one speech. You do four or five speeches or regional offices and things like that. And our career has kind of grew together. I don't take any credit for the work he's done because he's the one on stage doing all the hard stuff. And he drives obviously a lot of business just being the personality and self-promoter. He is an understanding how these platforms work. And he's done a great job of it. And I think one of the reasons we've had a lot of success together is when he was early on. Like again, he wasn't doing a lot of speaking. And as the world's evolved, he's evolved with it. And we've been able to kind of push the boundaries. And so he was always open and willing to get in creative. He was the very first virtual event I had done in 2012 when he's born a thing. So he's someone who I think saw, saw great opportunity. And we kind of got along very early on because we had a similar personality when it came to customer service and the sales approach and honesty and empathy. And so we headed off right away. But he was someone when I started, I was like, who is this guy? I've got no idea who he is, what he does. I haven't seen his YouTube show or anything. So I had to get educated just like everyone else. And do you feel like Gary and yourself innovated the almost we're setting the precedent and disrupting what speaking is and what that role looked like because it seems like from from the wine show and wine library and all the things that he he's grown into the modern Gary Vaynerchuk, which everybody now knows is very focused on media and marketing and sales and social media. But like you mentioned before, that individual did not have the same I guess level of level of awareness or or those individuals were probably not as involved in speaking as they were today. So do you feel like you've sort of set the path with with Gary and this sort of brand in speaking? Well, again, I don't want to take credit for it because I think a lot of what Gary has done is was thoughtful and then consider it and he built a career for himself. And I think he did it the way he wanted to do it. I think I helped along the way, negotiate the deals to get him some of those places. I think what Gary did though is give people a lot of permission to beat themselves, right? He was always unabashedly himself still is. And that's my favorite part of working with Gary is, you know, who you see on camera is who he is all the time. He is a very kind person. He gives a lot of his time. He's extremely hard worker. And so these are things that carry on. And I think when he was on stage doing that being himself, a lot of other people were like, oh, it's okay to be yourself. You don't have to be a phony. And, you know, the motivational speaking world is kind of what it was, right? There was the political speakers then you'd get the guy who comes in with the overalls and a pencil over his ear, right? And he kind of, you know, excites the troops, right? And it was kind of this cheesy thing. And it was there was almost like a negative connotation to doing that. And Gary doesn't call himself a motivational speaker. And I don't think he is either. I think he happens to motivate people. But the world of quote-unquote motivational speakers has really changed. And now, you know, after the 0809 kind of recession, what I see was that the industry evolved where it was more about providing value than it was about being in a big name, right? And Gary, what he always says, you know, built a career on is giving more value than he's getting out of any transaction, any relationship. So very early on, you know, he was helping people. He was giving his best advice out for free. And as he did that and his career grew, I think other people saw like, oh, this is working. And I think the thing that he had was this authenticity. And then over time, he got incredible credibility. People saw that he knew what he was talking about. The things he was saying was right. The ways he was saying is why he was so successful, right? The way that he was able to get people to think differently. So I don't know that we can take credit for innovating and evolving the industry. Because I think there's a lot of people who did a lot of things. There's also a lot of external factors that played a role. But I think, you know, we tried to at least be thoughtful about what we were doing. So that it was an industry that allowed for more opportunity. There are more speakers never before. There's more events never before. There's a variety of reasons why that's the case. Gary's got the only one. And I certainly am not the reason behind it. But I think a lot of people give Gary credit for inspiring them to do things. And I think his first book, Crush It, really charted that path. Because it was all about, you know, if you're excited about something, write about it if you're a writer, write it for a blog, right? Tweet about it. You know, talk about a podcast. It's a permission video. And yeah, and realizing that you actually could have a career on that, he was talking about influencing influencers in 2009. That wasn't a thing. So it was something where he was really kind of pushing the limits of what it was. And again, it was, is that permission letting people know that they could do what they want to do? They didn't have to go on cubicle and work a nine to five. They don't want to. But certainly it takes a lot more to permission to be a great speaker. So there's certainly plenty of work to be done. I want to get into, I want to get into that. But first, I want to understand then your career, you were at CAA, then you chose to work with Gary. So walk me through that transaction and how, you know, Zach became CEO of Vayner speakers and what that, what that was all about. Yeah, you know, I loved working at CAA. I agree people. I'm still very close with all my former colleagues talking a regular basis. We still do business together. But what kind of happened was, you know, Gary and I grew closer and we were, you know, we traveled together for events and we talked all the time. We share ideas about what we saw and where we saw the industry going. Right. We talk about ways that we thought we could improve the business. And I looked at it as Gary's one of the foremost speakers in the world. He's doing, you know, 100 speeches a year and has this knowledge base of being someone who's an excellent business person and someone on stage. And let's be honest, he's disrupted many, many businesses. You list them off. Vayner acts, we used to joke like when you'd come to work, there was a new company under the mass at every day because he was just evolving and creating new businesses. And, you know, it was something where he sees opportunity. It's hard to run away from that. And we were so aligned on a lot of things and we had done so much together that it was an easy decision to make in the sense of knowing that we were going to be able to do things differently, that we were going to have success together because he, you know, he's not a bureaucrat, right. He's there when I need him for anything. He's not only my partner, he's my biggest client, which is an interesting relationship. But it's been fun because we get to do things differently. There's no one that we have to ask permission of. And he, you know, he lends really great support to the entire team and what we're trying to do. And it was something where, you know, I was ready for a change, right. I was ready for something different for a new challenge. You know, it's not that, you know, CAA was a bad place. It was more like, I want to, I want to build something the way I see it. And I think this has been an industry for over 40 to 50 years. There hasn't been a whole lot to change. And it's a lot easier to change when you start from the beginning rather than changing the middle of the race. So I think it was, it was a fun opportunity. We started about two and a half years ago with how tremendous success. Obviously, COVID has been a difficult time to say the least. But I'm very excited because I think, you know, what we've built has proven that, you know, we know what we're doing and that we can do things differently and still have significant success. And it's been a lot of fun because, you know, obviously when you're doing things and you're building a team, you know, there's certain challenges about you're in the, you know, in the dirt with one another, that's where the most fun happens. And so, you know, being in the dirt with Gary is a lot of fun because he certainly, you know, loves to get dirty and get creative with the stuff. So we've had a blast. Awesome. And that makes sense that, you know, if you're shooting ideas off Gary all the time, and then you bring, like, you brought so much expertise from the speaker side, like the combination of his love for building businesses and your traditional training and actually doing this successfully, it seems like a great, a great partnership. And I'm curious what your goal and Gary's goal was for Vayner speakers to keep speaking about disruption and doing things differently and starting from the ground up. What do you want Vayner speakers to be? What do you want it to deliver to the world? Yeah, I mean, I think ultimately, you know, we just want to be the best we can be. We want to be the biggest speakers bureau there is, right? We've got a long way to go to get there. But I think what we've proven is that we can do it. And I think we kind of built the business on the core idea that no two events are the same. Let's not treat them the same. The same thing goes for speakers, right? There's this old world is all about scaling. And you can't scale a business unless you start being robotic and making it all about the transaction. We're trying to leave with empathy and say it's not about making every transaction transactions, removing the transactional element from the deal. And the relationships we built are why we've been successful, right? The relationship I have with Gary is why the company started in the first place. So we really want to make a difference, prove that you can be really successful. You can grow a business. We look at this as saying, you know, if we put some innovative ideas behind it, it's not going to take a whole lot that is ruptured in industry that's just old and tired. But we really want to be forward thinking. And so we're always experimenting. We're trying new things. We're trying to be bold. We're trying to be different. You know, very early on, we made a conscious decision. We weren't going to build the roster the way a lot of other groups do, right? They look and say, all right, who's the mountain climber we can get, right? Who's, who's, you know, check these boxes of people that you represent. We looked at it and said, we want to represent people we believe in, people who are like-minded, people who are connected, and represent them to the best of our ability, help them grow their careers as we grow our business. And like I said, we've had some great successes with that. But the idea is really to build the best business we can be. You know, we're not settling for anything. And it's also something where we look at it and say, there's all this opportunity, right? All over the place. There's, again, there's more events than ever before. We have 15 clients. We've turned down well over 1,000 people who want to be clients of ours because we want to represent the best and we want to be the best representation we can. So my follow-up question is through the lens of anor speakers, what should people be doing to get into this agency? What should they do to be a paid speaker? Yeah, well, first off, I mean, you know, again, like I said, we have 15 clients. Yes. We're working our way up. So we're not, we're not signing everyone. No, no. Certainly the emails come in and we love it. We love that there's a kind of a fervor for this. I think, you know, there's, it's a question I get a lot, you know, how do you get into paid speaking? We joke around that it's, you know, the best paid part-time job, right? There's certainly a lot worse ways to make a living, but to do it professionally and make your career does require a lot of time, a lot of sacrifice, a lot of energy. And my favorite part of this is that Gary is a great example. His first speech, he was pouring wine at the event so that they would let him get on stage, right? Who's willing to do that? That's a damn good story too. It comes out of the gate. I love that. And it's great because if he's willing to do it and now he can make six figures of doing a speech, well, what's your excuse for not being willing to do that? So I think people, people kind of expect that they have a sense of entitlement and they expect that, you know, these speeches have come out of the woodwork, you sign with an agent, you just get to start handed checks. But the reality is it takes a long time to build a career. You got to put the time, the energy in. I always tell people, you want to get started speaking, just go find a stage. Just speak at a nursing home, right? Go speak in elementary school. Those are tough crowds, right? You can do it there, you can do it anywhere. And I think you have to hold your message, see what works, make yourself special and different. If you just go out there and just start telling your life story, it's not always going to work. Your life may not be that interesting. You go to a nursing home, I guarantee you it's not going to be as interesting as I was in there. A hundred percent. You really got to really got to try it. And I think some people say, I can be a great speaker for only somebody who give me the chance. Well, make that opportunity for yourself. Call your best friends who have companies and say, hey, can I come speak to your employees at lunch, right? I'll buy them lunch and I'll come speak, right? Go to your kid's school, speak a career day. Like do all these things that you have to to get out there because what happens is, you know, maybe not at a nursing home, maybe not at a elementary school, but when you do it at an event, there's always someone planning another event. And eventually people start saying, hey, that you were great. Would you mind coming to our nonprofit fundraiser and, you know, just talking about your story or sharing these details? Do you do it? Speak at our chamber of commerce. You know, would you donate your time? And eventually, you know, after donating your time, a lot, you're going to eventually say, I can't because I have commitments. My business is doing so great or I have another speech. And that's when you can start to say, you know what, if you, you know, are willing to offer me $5,000, $3,000, $1,000, pay for my flight. Those are the kinds of things where suddenly you can say, like, now it could be worth my time. But at the start, you really got to get out there for free. The best way to be paid for speaking is to do it for free and it sounds kind of contradictory, but it works. No, you've got to put in the reps and it's like nothing else, but I think that it's just because people don't get, they don't understand speaking. There's a veil there. It's it's not something that you go to school for. It's not something most people even get into in their entire career, right? You don't have a mentor. Most people don't have mentors that have a prolific speaking career. So for some reason, they just think, oh, you know, if I get famous enough or if I am successful enough, people are going to start contacting me. And actually, that's a follow up question. If I want to be a speaker, should I focus on having an exceptional career and then selling that story? Or should, how would I differentiate if I don't have incredible career milestones yet? That's a fair question. And I think there's like to what you were saying. There's also like the Justin Bieber way of doing things, right? Make yourself a star on YouTube. If you're speaking, it looks like you're on stage or you're speaking in your living room, right? If it's good, people will watch it. People then say, hey, I want you to come to our event, right? A lot of people find Gary find our other clients by, you know, searching stuff on Instagram on YouTube, getting forwarded links. And that's kind of, you know, what separates the good from the great or the bad from the good. And, you know, content is king right now. And if you're producing speaking, it's a great content because people really absorb that stuff right now. They'll go watch, look at the views on TED Talks, right? Millions and millions of views. People are watching, but the difference between a good TED Talk and a great TED Talk can be a few million views because, you know, ideas worth sharing, not all ideas are worth sharing the same, right? Some ideas you want to share a lot more than others. So that's what differentiates, right? Anyone can just get up on a stage until their live story. But if your live story is like 25% of the room, that's not going to be that interesting. You've got to find something that's special and different about yourself. Find a message, find some core values that you can impart because if you're not bringing the value to the table, people aren't going to invite you back, right? It's just like anything else. And I think not enough people really think that through and they think like, you know, just the way I talk is going to be exciting. Well, that's sometimes true, but you've got to be exceptionally charismatic to carry it that way. So really, you've got to be someone who has a, you know, has some message that's really strong because, you know, right now, if you look back, there's never been more celebrities. And so, you know, you can get a big name to come and speak at a conference and why would someone have someone they've never heard of? And then when you look at all the kind of other exceptional people who have been out there, like nowadays, there are, you know, there's 80 year old, 100 year old Olympians. Every one of them have an amazing story. They didn't win an Olympic gold medal because they were a schlub, right? They spent the time and they were exciting and they did something really cool and great. And that's just one aspect of it. That's one, you know, core little niche of speakers. So if you look at all of the different competition, it's like, how do you separate yourself? You make yourself different. You make yourself special. And, you know, it's being authentic. It's not just trying to like inflate your own ego. It's really recognizing like, this is who I am. This is what I bring to the table. And eventually you get to the point where you've established yourself. So you can certainly build your business and then kind of come in laterally and say, like, look what I've done. Like, this is what I should be talking about. But if you're not a business speaker, it doesn't matter if you've never built a business. You can be working on McDonald's, but be an exceptional speaker because you have this incredible story, right? Everyone has it within them and it's kind of uncovering that, which is not the easiest thing to do. But it's also not an industry where we're not, you know, not everyone needs to be a speaker. I was going to say, I think that people default to turning their life into one giant hyperbole. But it's really the opposite because if you highlight all the negatives and the pains and the worst days of your life and you summarize those in a way that tells an impactful story, that's way better than somebody who just speaks about everything in my life worked out, right? Nobody needs to hear the, yet like, you know, like the person who had success multiple times, multiple eggs, it's never had any stress in their life. That's not something I can connect with. Like, you know, life, life really sucks sometimes. So if you can, if you can find a way to weave those into your story, like you said, if you work at McDonald's, you can still be an incredible speaker. If you find a way to tell your story, it's just about positioning and framing. And like you mentioned, it's practice. You're never going to get it if you don't practice it. I absolutely think there's something to that. And the sad part of this is, there are a lot of people who are suffering, right? So just because you're suffering, doesn't mean your suffering is going to be inspirational to others. You have to come out the other side. And it's a tough thing to kind of realize because I think a lot of people are like, look what I've overcome. Everyone you want to hear this. But there's just been so much to overcome, right? There's so many things going on that I think people, you know, I think you're right. They hyperboleize things. But I think it's it's having some self-awareness of where you fit in with what else is going on, right? If you're going to speak to a corporate audience, you know, you can't come in and tell them all to quit their jobs, right? That's just not going to work, right? You got to recognize who you're talking to. You got to recognize what's valuable. If you're coming in as, you know, you know, recovering alcoholic, and that's that's the suffering you've overcome. And then you feel to visit great, you go and talk to a group of elementary school students, that's not really going to land. So you got to recognize that what you've gone through may not always work. So it has to be a message that's somewhat evergreen or something that is relatable for others. But there has to be a message. It can't just be a story unless you're an exceptional storyteller. Good. That's good. Very, very good tip. So if if anybody's listening to this and does want to get into speaking, like write some of this stuff down, because you're not going to get a more straightforward answer to getting into speaking. And if you think that there's an easy way into it, or you think you're going to get a paycheck, like it's just not going to happen. That's like that. That's Cole's notes. Like this. I don't know. I've never I've never spoken to somebody who has the resume of various speakers that you have. So it's it's it's refreshing to get this insight. It's, you know, I speak to a lot of people that have great sales strategies, marketing strategies, business strategies, entrepreneurs that have raised millions of dollars of funding. But this is like a very like you said, a very niche area that people don't really tap into or know a lot a lot about. So anyways, I mean, someone told me there's a four billion dollar industry. I'd be curious. No, if it's still a four billion dollar industry. Yeah. So let's let's talk about that. I'm curious how how you've dealt with all of COVID virtual events. So what has happened to the industry from from your perspective? Well, this time last year, let's think of March 11th tonight, right? So this time last year, we were still like, oh, we'll see if this is the last of a month. So we had to readjust. You know, and it's something where obviously as a lot of people know, virtual events are kind of a thing. And, you know, 10 years ago, people kind of had this idea that virtual events are going to take over. No one's going to show up on a plane anymore. You can do everything via video comments. Skype was this thing. Well, that never happened, but this is kind of accelerated that. And we've done virtual events for a long time, right? With Gary, you know, the first event we did, he did a wine tasting with a group. I forget whether it was either in Poland or Hungary. And it was, you know, five o'clock in the morning in New York, he's doing a wine tasting with these this group of people over lunch in Europe. And it was a wild experience. But after that, we realized there is an opportunity. He doesn't always have to get on a plane. So we've done virtual events for a long time, but they weren't the norm. And I think now they're the norm. And I think what's going to happen is they're going to become the norm and there's going to be hybrid events. You're going to see ways we're in person events. Those are not going away. People miss being together. No one's figured out networking. If one of your listeners or viewers wants to figure out, you know, the billion dollar idea on how to replicate networking virtually. It's out there. But, you know, it's something where these events are going to come back. And I think people will be excited to have them. It was a rough year. I think a lot of people had to adjust, not everyone can translate from an in-person event to a virtual event. I think a lot of corporations had trouble kind of figuring that out and navigating that. I'm sure whether or not they should go to a virtual event is that going to make sense? Are people going to stay and watch, you know, understanding what the implications were for their business? There's a lot of businesses that are built on face-to-face interaction, right? A lot of salespeople are not used to having to do go this way. And so it took a little while. I would say, you know, it took through May to really have the industry kind of rebound in a way where, okay, things are going to happen again. You know, people are paying for virtual events. People are watching virtual events and watching them in droves. You know, we've heard of some great great events that we've worked on where, you know, they're like, well, we would get, you know, 2000 people to come in person, but we got 10,000 people to watch online. So there's some really great success stories that have come out of this. And I think people have enjoyed it from a perspective of a speaker being like, I didn't have to get out of playing 50 times this year. Yeah. It's kind of nice. And on the flip side, it's like, I missed the stage. So I think those events will be back and people will be happy to have them. And there's always great energy at these events. And I think that that will be right back when we can be together again. But the industry has evolved and it had to evolve. And I think there are some people out there in our space who are kind of like, I'm just going to wait this thing out. I'll see what happens when virtual events kind of come and go. But I can tell you that the success we've had, you know, we want trying to innovate, you know, we built a book club. We were booking a lot of speakers to talk about their books. You'd have a group of company say, you know, our sales team is going to read this book. We want your client to come in and do a talk about it. Well, okay, great. That sounds fantastic. They'd love to come in, dialogue with your team. So we basically built something and said, great, you want to do that. We can offer your product where you can bring it for authors throughout the year. We'll provide you books, right? We'll give you the opportunity to kind of pick from a menu and then you get to have this great experience for your employees. That's something that I don't think any large corporation would have even considered a year ago. And now it's going to be the norm because people enjoy that. And you know what? Like you may be working in Ohio and you have a colleague in Ottawa. Well, guess what? You're probably not seeing each other that often, but if you have an experience where you're joining a book club together, suddenly there's also additional value for the corporation. And it's going to cost a lot less than getting those two people together in person. So there's a value proposition for a company that there never was before. And we're trying to just really move things forward in that direction because speakers are like the virtual event. They don't love it. Every event's not the same, right? We try to do what we can and make these things special. And people want to be back out there. But there's a place for these events and they're not going away anytime soon. Yeah. And I think that there's something to be said for finding, I think companies that have figured out how to do virtual events in ways that they can build culture and maintain some level of culture remotely are the ones that people want to work for. They're the ones that are winning right now. They're the ones that, you know, there's a lot of employees we were talking before about, you know, there's massive amounts of depression. There's people that are stuck isolated home alone. But the companies that figure out ways to do book clubs to do, you know, I see a lot of happy hours. And I don't know how effective those are after, you know, the 20th time. But I'm sure there's some that do it better than others. And I've actually seen some businesses pop up that are actually entirely centered centered on building culture virtually. And the people that sort of they accomplish this stuff. And now you have this, this weapon in your arsenal going forward that yeah, you're going to have the in person stuff. But now how effective are you for your overseas teams? Like even when I used to work for a major telco in Canada, Bell Canada. And they were, it's just Canada. And you still probably only see 10% of the workforce in your years working there because it's, you know, coast to coast. There's hundreds of offices. And even in a small technically small geographical location, one country, you still have to find a way to to network virtually. And we never had that. Like we never, we never were able to. Just the people in the other offices didn't exist. Basically, that's, that's just how it was. So there's something to be said for this is expedited the industry. It's expedited what businesses have to do. And I think it's just going to honestly be a healthier, healthier, more collaborative, better virtual space, both for speakers and for just corporate communications and what not, you know, whenever this goes back to normal. And I say that in their quotes just because I don't know what the new normal will be. And it's probably not going to be the normal that we left, you know, a year and a half ago. That's right. Yeah. I think you're absolutely right. Yeah, no, I was just going to say, I think you're absolutely right. I think I've been kind of joking. It's kind of like animation versus a play, right? You're on stage. You know, real people, you're, you have to obey a lot of physics when it's an animated, you know, television show or something. Anything can happen. Virtual has kind of opened up the doors for anything to happen. You can do things. You can pre-record. You can insert, you know, video. You can do things in a much different way and you can open it up. So you can do it in person events, you know, when things are kind of open back up and still do it virtually. So that, you know, maybe it's just your home base, but you can stream its other places. Now, a lot of groups were doing that prior to COVID, but now I think it's going to be the norm. People are going to be asking for that. And people are going to demand that they have access because now they realize they can get a lot of value from something that they maybe previously didn't even know they could enjoy. And I think that there's actually an expense component as well. Like I've worked with some broadcast companies that they were doing like green screen backgrounds, placing two individuals in the same room, having a fireside chat. And to the viewer, it looks like they're sitting in two chairs and they're actually sitting in their own living rooms like halfway across the world. Like the things you can do that would actually just save costs and just make things a lot cheaper. If we have the technology to do it right now, which is, which I think is so incredible. Like imagine if COVID happened even like 10 years ago, it would have been totally different. It would have been much worse. It would have been much, much, much worse. Absolutely. When you're not flying people to an event, if you bring 200 employees to San Diego for a conference, that's 200 plane tickets, 200 hotel rooms, 200 tabs at every direction. Now it's like, we get calls all the time. We're doing an event next week because what's stopping us, there's the barrier for entry is really low. You can make it really high end production. You don't have to. You can do it really simply. And I think people are figuring out that there's, I mean, what TV networks are figuring it out too. But you don't have to do everything to the absolute max. There's ways of low cost ways of providing a significant value. So it's certainly changed the way we do things. Yeah. No. I just wanted to get your opinion on one more virtual event topic. As a speaker, how do you master virtual events versus in person? Because I'm sure it's a total, you know, it's so different. Yeah. Well, I'll say to one of our clients, a fellow Canadian, Scott Stratton, put out a great video last September that I highly encourage people to check out light's camera in action. It's all about, you know, the set of the virtual. I've seen that video. And he kind of, he posts fun at it. But I think he does a great job of kind of getting people to think about it. You know, it doesn't take a rocket scientist or a, you know, an entire EV team to put together a good setup. And I think once you have a good setup, then I think you have a comfort level of, I know I look good, I feel good, I sound good. Now you got to make sure that there's actual value there. There's a lot of, I'm going to choose my words carefully. There's a lot of groups that they're offering like, you know, get zoom certified, you know, get certified as a virtual speaker. And it's like, great, how many speeches is the certifier done? Because this hasn't, this hasn't been around for a long time. So I think there's, there's something to, it's more of an art than a science. But I think just like speaking on stage, it takes reps. You know, it's, if you're someone who walks around on stage, well, you're not going to walk around unless you have a camera person in your living room, right? You got to figure out how that works. So it's just like it, it's just like the regular stuff. You gotta do reps. Do it. You can record it and then watch yourself later, right? It's going to be probably painful. But I think the more you do, the better you get. And I think, especially because it's a, it's a world where we see this kind of lasting. If you're going to be an active speaker, you got to figure out what it looks like. I think a lot of people have gone to Q and A because it's easier, right? It's, it's simpler to say I'm not going to repair anything. I can just answer questions. But I think ultimately they're, I need to still want a kind of lecture sometimes, right? There's a time and a place for it. So you're being able to be comfortable in front of the monitor, you know, in front of the screen and the camera makes a difference. And people can tell, right? They can tell if you're being authentic or if you're scared. You know, you don't get unscared by just, you know, hoping to keep your fingers crossed. You really gotta try it. That's, that's the best advice I've, I've gotten on this show. It's so simple. But I love that. That's, that's portable. Yeah, you don't, you don't get, you don't get unscared just by, just by, by crossing your fingers or thinking about it, you got to do it. You got to do it and and speaking no different. That's a, that's, that's damn good advice. It's so simple. Um, okay. I wanted to, I wanted to wrap up with some, some rapid fire question just about you and your career. Sure. I asked these to everybody. Is there anything else you want to touch on in the world of VaynerSpeakers of virtual events of your career that we didn't go into? No, I would say, you know, we come, come check us out. VaynerSpeakers.com. If you are doing an event, if you have questions, call us, shoot us an email. We're here to help, right? That's ultimately what we do. One of my clients told, or one of my customers told me that we actually offer free consulting. And I was like, no, I just want to make sure your event goes well. So we want to be there. We try to be a resource for everyone out there. So it's a, it's kind of, it's still the wild, wild west. Um, so don't hesitate. Let us know if we can help you out. Cool. Good. Good. So, um, one lesson that you would tell your younger self. One lesson I would tell my younger self, um, that's a great one. I think that, uh, I would probably tell my younger self to enjoy it along the way. Now it's not to say that I haven't enjoyed it, but this journey has been a lot of fun. I've done, I've done a lot of great stuff, but I think you, you lose track of time. And I think you also, you, you know, I'm not a workaholic per se, uh, but I work a lot. And I think to be successful, you know, it takes a lot of hard work. But I also think there's ways of, of doing it where you can separate a little bit. And I would probably tell my younger self, like relax a little bit. You're going to get there. You'll be fine. One piece of career advice that you give somebody looking to pursue a career similar to yours. And pay whichever career you want to give advice for it, because you've, you've, uh, had a few different things that you've done. So I would say you got to, you got to learn everything about the industry. So I worked in sports and I get a ton of people still who call me and ask me for advice and how do you break into the industry? And, you know, it's not easy. You're competing with people who are doing it from your competing with political science majors and finance majors and English majors, not just sports management majors, right? Everyone wants to work in sports or music or entertainment, but you have to be willing to, to sacrifice. You have to be willing to, to learn and be better than everyone else. But you have to be willing to learn, learn about it because there's so much that goes on in the sexy industries. And it's not just the, the sexy things, right? It's sometimes it's the grunt work. It's, it's all sorts of backward, you know, sales, right? Sell tickets for a sports team. That's the easiest way in the front door, right? So I think there's a lot of opportunity, but people don't really look around the edges. Very good advice. What is a resource? It could be a person, a book, a podcast, anything that you have used over your career. It's really helped you out. You would recommend people go check out. So I'll steal from Gary. It's called the G-O-O-G-L-E. And it literally has every answer. So I, I use it non-stop, right? It's, it sounds condescending, but at the end of the day, like I really think you have to learn a lot of stuff yourself. I think a lot of people are looking for the shortcut. And I, I know that for me, like I learned stuff all the time that I had no idea how to do yesterday. And it really is just like hunting, right? You become a hunter on figuring out where the information is. So there's not any one resource, but Google certainly provides you with the, with the resources. So I, I've even created my own search engines using Google, like little things that got to search certain places. So I think, you know, the more you haunt, the more information you're going to find. So that's, that's certainly my number one resource. You know, it's funny. The people that I find across any, and any industry that are the most successful are the most curious are the people that are entirely self-taught in things that even our relatively trivial things, they just figure it out no matter what. That's a good answer though. The very good answer. What does success mean to you? I would say success for me is kind of the respect and gratitude of peers, right? And, and those I work with. So that means my, my colleagues, my employees, my, my clients, my customers. I want them to know I'm, I'm, I'm working my ass off for them that I'm doing the best I can for them. And, and I hope that they see that, right? Because ultimately sometimes the work we do, you know, in the shadows gets lost, you know, the time spent redlining a contract isn't something that people watch. You know, you don't get a lot of b-roll of a speaker's agent pouring over a computer, but ultimately, I think, you know, success to me is, is people knowing that we're working hard for them. It's not just myself, but everyone I, that's on our team. That's a, that's a very good answer. And then, most important, where can people connect with you? And you already gave a website, but other links or socials, people should go check out. Vanner speakers across all platforms, right? We, you know, we follow the lead of our, of our co-founder, Gary Vaynerchuk. So you'll find us all over the place. VaynerSpeakers.com. Please check us out. Let us know how we can help you out.