Starting a Business, Building Brand and Overcoming Doubt | Tea with GaryVee Ep #86

The New Currency Is Attention, But the Rules Are Changing

At a time when every feed feels overcrowded, the argument that talent alone will cut through is both comforting and dangerous. A blunt, lived-in voice argues that the path to attention is not a shortcut through trends or clever hacks but a slow accumulation: the relentless output of useful work, the willingness to be visible, and the humility to put the audience first. This is a portrait of modern entrepreneurship where the tools of reach have never been more accessible, but the discipline to exploit them remains scarce.

Consistency Over Cool: The Creator's Work Ethic

The most persistent idea is simple and stubborn: consistency wins. When creators obsess over formats and viral templates, they outsource their identity to the moment. The alternative is mundane and radical at once—show up every day, bring value, and endure the grind. That means producing dozens of micro-moments across platforms, obsessing over the first three seconds of a clip, and embracing the long arc of accumulation rather than the quick dopamine of a trend.

Why volume matters

Volume is not mindless output; it’s a data-rich practice. The more you publish, the more you learn what resonates—what thumbnail, what hook, what cadence. Teams that thrive spend hundreds of hours analyzing previews, audience retention, and first-second performance. For those operating solo, the prescription is crude but effective: create far more than you think necessary until patterns appear.

Live Social Shopping: A Virtual Garage Sale with Scale

The reshaping of commerce has a low-ceremony frontier: live social shopping. The idea is almost quaint—sell items from your home in front of a camera—but its implications are seismic. Platforms that surface live streams into random feeds democratize discovery, turning closets and basements into micro-retail stores. For everyday entrepreneurs—the person with sneakers, collectibles, or artisanal food—going live becomes a direct line to liquidity.

Small businesses, big opportunity

For family-run brands selling perishables or niche products, the combination of authenticity and immediacy is uniquely powerful. Live formats reward personality and real-time trust, and even modest audiences can convert with minimal friction. The caveat: half-hearted attempts feel like wasted potential. If a channel shows signs of traction, the right move is to double down, not trot out incremental experiments.

AI Is Not an Opt-In Tool, It’s the Air You Breathe

Further complicating the landscape is the steady creep of automation. The prediction is less speculative and more literal: AI will be embedded in every publishing and distribution layer. Platforms will bake generative features into routine workflows, making translation, clipping, and even idea-priming default behaviors. The implication is freeing and humbling—tools will be abundant, but creativity and unique perspective will remain the defensible assets.

The right way to use technology

Technology is an amplifier, not a substitute. If every creator uses the same generative filters and scheduling helpers, differentiation will hinge on the human material fed into those tools: lived experience, idiosyncratic taste, and original stories. The most interesting brands will be those that marry personal quirks—tattoos, family lore, craft rituals—to high-velocity content strategies.

Trust, Feedback, and Radical Accountability

Beyond tactics, the conversation returns to psychology. Public affirmation can become an opiate; social metrics are an easy way to avoid the work of inner change. When career setbacks accumulate, the practical remedy is disarmingly direct: go ask the people who fired you for honest feedback, take notes, and adapt. Accountability is not cruel; it’s a service to anyone trying to rebuild.

The discipline of candid inquiry

Repairing a career requires more than resilience—it demands curiosity about failure. The same principle applies to creative practice: audit your output, accept which pieces didn’t serve the audience, and adjust. The authors of their own careers are often the ones who ask the hardest questions and use blunt feedback as raw material.

Where Agencies and Newsletters Fit into the New Stack

Two institutional takeaways emerged: in-house social teams can be overrated for large legacy brands, and long-form written newsletters are far from dead. For Fortune-sized companies, internal groups often suffer from structural blind spots—poor KPIs and stewardship that underestimates creative craft. Conversely, startups and small agencies that move nimbly still have a huge edge.

The renaissance of long-form

Meanwhile, the appetite for written connection lingers beneath the noise. Subscribers still value essays that land slowly and deeply, and platforms that host long-form newsletters are flourishing. That long-form fuel converts differently: not for instant virality but for sustained relationship and trust.

Final Thought: Individual Advantage in a Homogenized World

The through-line is a humanist one. Tools and algorithms will fluctuate; platforms will normalize the advanced features. The enduring advantage belongs to the person who cultivates a unique point of view, who treats attention as a responsibility rather than a currency, and who chooses the painstaking work of showing up when it would be easier to chase the next trend. In a landscape that flattens so much, what remains scalably differentiable is the particular combination of story, honesty, and relentless practice.

• Make more content: frequency accelerates learning and discovery.
• Go where the audience naturally gathers: live formats surface new buyers.
• Use AI as amplification: preserve original human perspective.
• Ask for tough feedback: accountability short-circuits repeated failure.