What It Really Takes to Build and Lead a Company in 2026 l The CEO Series with William Salvi

What if attention is the only currency that actually matters?

He says it like a dare: day trade attention. That sentence lands heavy in a crowded New York room and lingers as the through-line for a conversation that flips between memoir, playbook, and prophecy. Gary Vaynerchuk moves fast—part cheerleader, part drill sergeant—and watching him account for a three-decade career feels like reading a handbook for an attention-driven century.

From a corner liquor store to a communications empire

There’s a vivid origin story threaded through the talk: a kid who launched a website when everyone else was skeptical, who turned a small family liquor business into a seven-figure machine. The facts are crisp—Wine Library went from roughly $3.8 million to $65 million under his stewardship—but it's the method that intrigues me most. He treated early digital platforms like land grabs, buying attention where it was underpriced and then compounding it into real business outcomes.

Here's what stood out: relentless content, relentless response. He filmed, replied, and repeated until the attention stuck. That grit reads less like hero worship and more like an operations manual for anyone willing to work like their life depends on it.

Brands, businesses, and the cult of the personal

He refuses to separate self from scale. VaynerX sits above a constellation of companies—VaynerMedia, VaynerSports, VaynerWatt, hospitality ventures and more—and he admits his personal brand was once a hindrance to corporate deals. Yet culture shifted. The raw, uncensored voice that once scared Fortune 500 boards has become nearly normal, and he argues that’s good news for leaders willing to be themselves.

Honestly, I didn't expect the tenderness beneath the bravado. When he talks about boards, firing, and the fear that keeps CEOs masked, his tone softens. Authenticity is framed as a strategic asset, not merely a moral choice—even if the boards above many CEOs still prefer conservatism.

Collectibles, IP, and building the next cultural engine

Gary’s obsession with intellectual property is startlingly bullish. VeeFriends—his collectible IP project—gets treated like a decades-long franchise play, not a flash-in-the-pan NFT stunt. He imagines vending machines, pajamas, theme parks, books and kids’ channels. The audacity is magnetic; he wants a new cultural engine that sits alongside the likes of Pokémon and Disney.

What really caught my attention was how he connects human behavior to the idea: people have always collected. Shiny rocks became coins, then comic books, and now digital and physical collectibles. Removing the stigma around collecting, he argues, has unleashed a multigenerational market that’s only getting started.

Predictions that feel less like guesses and more like bets

• Live social shopping will arrive in the West—he calls it the QVCification of social media and expects it to change commerce.
• Communication will remain the last moat—everything else commoditizes, attention does not.
• Collectibles will become mainstream culture—from Gen Alpha wardrobes to dinner-table conversation in fifteen years.

He also warns that AI and automation will push leaders to tighten operations. That tightening often means layoffs. He speaks about this with a rare combination of hard-nosed realism and compassion—an acknowledgment that business consequences ripple through real lives.

Leadership lessons that cut both ways

There’s a recurring tension: be kind, but don’t coddle. He argues that entitlement is a silent business killer and insists consequences are necessary. Yet he also confesses his own kryptonite—an inability to fire people quickly enough—which made him sound more human than heroic.

What if leaders embraced both radical empathy and rigorous standards? That’s one of the quieter provocations of the conversation: leadership is an emotional craft as much as it is a technical one.

Why the personal story matters

When the talk drifts to family, the edges soften. The immigrant grit, the hours at his dad’s store, the decision to under-earn while building something bigger—these aren’t nostalgia lines. They’re a blueprint for resilience. You can hear his affection and complicated pride when he mentions his parents. It made me sit up: authenticity, he shows by example, is rooted in origin stories and obligations that outlast quarterly metrics.

What surprised me most? How naturally he ties sentimental memory to cold strategy. The same man who preaches relentless output also worries about home, time, and legacy.

Takeaways that stick

• Attention is an asset to invest in—treat platforms as land rather than luxuries.
• Build IP like you’re founding a civilization—short-term money is tempting; long-term culture is the prize.
• Be authentic but accountable—boards and people will push back; still, authenticity scales trust.

Walking out of the room, I felt two reactions: awe at the scope of his ambition, and a soft skepticism reserved for anyone who promises cultural revolutions. Then I remembered his operating principle—day trade attention—and realized the gamble is less spectacular than sensible. Attention compounding becomes advantage. That’s his thesis and, more personally, his plea: work hard, be kind, own your lane, and don’t confuse short-term applause with durable value.

It’s a brash set of claims, wrapped in the cadence of someone who has both fought for and lost sleep over them. Whether you cheer or bristle, the thought that lingers is simple and unsettling: are you trading your attention wisely?