How You Can Spot Trends Before Everyone Else | The OGs Podcast

The GaryVee Audio Experience

Gary Vaynerchuk

Business, Marketing, Entrepreneurship

4.8 • 18.1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2025

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What a conversation! In this episode of OGs of Playmaker Original presented by DraftKings, I sit down for an unfiltered, wide-ranging talk about where I came from, what shaped me, and why I see the world the way I do today.

We go deep on my childhood as an immigrant kid from the USSR, growing up in Queens and New Jersey, and how the adversity I faced gave me a hunger that shaped my whole career. I share stories about building my dad’s liquor store into a $60M wine business, spotting the early days of YouTube, and the lessons I learned (and big misses!) as an angel investor in companies like Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and yes, even Uber.

We also dive into how I read culture, stay ahead of trends, and why mixing up your circle is the secret sauce to learning and winning long-term. And of course, we chop it up about the Knicks, Jets, and how New York sports fandom is religion for me.

This one’s raw, real, and packed with mindset shifts for anyone who wants to build, bet on themselves, and stay hungry.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the OGs of Playmaker original presented by Drab Kings, and we have a very special guest in the building today.
0:08.0	A lot of people don't know. When me and Mike talk about doing podcasts, we didn't want to do athletes originally.
0:14.0	You know, we want to kind of stay away from athletes. You understood. We know sports. We can talk about sports all the day. So this is a very special opportunity for us.
0:22.8	He built a $60 million wide business, serial entrepreneur, invest in a bet on Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter early.
0:29.6	He runs a media empire.
0:31.3	I'm not even going to bring that Jets up.
0:33.1	We're going to go for the Jets.
0:34.5	Gary V in the building, ladies and gentlemen.
0:36.7	Thank you, my man.
0:37.6	Thank you, my man. Thank you, my man. It's a pleasure to be with you. So, I mean, we got a lot to cover, so this is very
0:43.0	excited with me. I very rarely have people doing that I can learn something from. That, I mean,
0:47.1	we have a lot of athletes on. Athletes can't tell me shit. I get it off my life. I mean, I know a lot about that. But for me, obviously, being born in the Soviet Union, you know, what was life like?
0:56.3	Because I know where I'm from.
0:57.3	I'm from Liberty City.
0:58.0	We think we got it rough.
0:59.7	Tell me what rough really is.
1:02.1	You know what's funny is I think about that a lot.
1:06.6	So I moved to the States when I was three and a half four.
1:11.0	So I didn't really live in the shit
1:13.4	my parents lived in either.
1:15.4	But when we came to America, we were broke.
1:19.1	You know, I lived in a studio apartment
	...

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