Gary Vaynerchuk on AI, Entrepreneurship and Why Blockchain Is Still Relevant

**Gary Vaynerchuk** (0:00)
I actually think the blockchain, its relationship with AI, is actually gonna make a lot of normies understand the value of the blockchain, a ledger of truth and ownership in a world of deep fakes and fake and fake and fake and fake and fake. I think the blockchain is gonna shine with this AI overlay in society.

**Sam Ewen** (0:29)
Gary, welcome to Gen C. Literally since the first episode when Avery and I started the podcast, we were like, the ideal guest will be Gary. And of course, now that she's no longer one of our co-hosts.

**Gary Vaynerchuk** (0:40)
I waited.

**Sam Ewen** (0:41)
Yeah, exactly. But we do wish her the best.
Gary, I wanna just start with, this is like such an unprecedented time in business. You are someone that a lot of people go to to say what's gonna be next. So in a world of AI in 2026, with all the kind of chaos that seems to be happening, how are you managing both your brand and all the related companies, as well as all of your clients? What do you tell them?

**Gary Vaynerchuk** (1:08)
I think with thoughtful optimism, while trying to be very strategic about the humility that needs to be deployed by anyone that has it going well. I think a lot about the mid 90s, right before the Internet really became a consumer trend. There was just a lot of companies that felt remarkable. I think about Toys R Us quite a bit, given the things I'm into as a retailer and toys and collectibles.
They misunderstood the moment.
I think that for me, I know that AI and all these other things will be in the short-term demonized. There'll be stigma around it. But that's only based on what humans do with very big technologies, electricity, the Internet.
So for me, for my clients, for my brands, for my personal brand, I think curiosity is important. So everything that I hear from AI or blockchain or even like governments passing laws, everything is a maybe, not a no. And I think right now too many people listening to, actually people listening to this, I think are in maybe culture. I would say the masses outside this window are in no culture. And in that no culture, they will be vulnerable. And what I mean by no is people that are overly romantic about yesterday, people that are overly concerned about, can any of these technologies or trends hurt my business? Without realizing that if you don't jump on board and, you know, use these tools and opportunities, that that's the problem, right? If you're an animation studio and you're like, this sucks that us normal people can do animation in a way that they learned how to do for 20 years, and you don't jump on board and start using Hicks Field or Nano or these things, that's the problem, you know, because the invention's out, the genie's out the bottle. And so I think I'm in a very thoughtful place because, you know, I've always been underdog. You know, I was scrappy underdog the whole way, so every new big change was big advantage. I find myself with real businesses now, and so they can be disrupted very heavily, and I don't want to be a hypocrite. I don't want to make the mistake that I've been talking about for 30 years, and I'm not going to, and I don't plan on it.

**Sam Ewen** (3:50)
You've been quite successful at being able to see where things are going.

**Gary Vaynerchuk** (3:54)
Yes.

**Sam Ewen** (3:55)
You know, whether it's social, whether it's e-com, you know, then into AI. When you look at this moment, what's inspiring you for the future?

**Gary Vaynerchuk** (4:05)
I think what's inspiring me is that there's a... I love Merit, right before we started this, we were talking about the Knicks. I love sports. The Knicks beat the Cavs last night. There's no like...
I mean, I guess there's cheating, but you know what I mean, right? Like the score was a score. Everyone knows it. It's not like politics or the Constitution, where people debate it, or judges, six to three. Like it's just clean. And I like that about business, though it's not as clean as sports. There's a lot of fooling around, potential, taxes, and you could play. What I love about big technology shifts is there is a little bit of like opportunity and merit. The thing that inspires me is that there's a 16 year old kid right now, literally listening to this, in the outskirts of Pittsburgh or in rural Peru, that literally, if they have the internet, which third world countries have unprecedented access to the internet, she or he can do something. They can build, they can vibe code something. They can build an agentic.