#AskGaryVee Episode 127: What Keeps Good Bosses From Becoming Great Bosses?

“that keeps good leaders
from becoming great?” – The number one thing that keeps good leaders from becoming great, very good question, maybe
a great question from Josh. I think there’s a couple things. I think money, I think money is a funny way to hampen a leader. They’re driven by that. I think that emotional skill sets, to be great at something
you have to over-index. You just have to. You have to be able to be great at it. You can be a good basketball
player, you can be a great basketball player,
and a lot of that has to do with DNA, so I think a lot
of natural leadership skills. For me, the reason I aspired
to be a great leader is I truly focused on one
variable, and I want everybody to hear this, and it’s
a very sneaky pillar of my life success, which
is, when I think about you, India, or you DRock, or
anybody that I jam with in my world, start-ups, companies, when I go to Oklahoma City, the client, I’m trying to provide 51% of a value. I really believe that,
and not because I’m this great human being, because
I think it’s leverage. I think that if DRock feels
that I’m slightly providing more value to him than
he’s providing to me, financially, upside in
the future, mentorship, whatever it may be, that that’s going to make me a great leader. A, it’s how he feels about
me, and B, it’s going to focus me on always trying
to one-up the next person, and when you’re a leader,
one-upping comes in many forms. I’m gonna continue to show you angles that you haven’t seen
about yourself, right? I’m going to continue to challenge you, financially compensate you, give you opportunities,
bring you to things. One-upping, trying to provide more value to the other person. And I think a lot of good
leaders are 80-20 for themselves, I think extremely good leaders are 50-50, I think great leaders start
to go to the 51-49 direction. – [Voiceover] Cindy asks,
“What are your thoughts about

I’m very bullish on it. I don’t know if you know that
you’re talking to the person that wrote one of the first
two checks into Birchbox, angel Investor in BarkBox
in my own fund, Vayner/RSE. We incubated only three companies, BRaVe, an incredible company, Resy, an incredible company,
and our third incredible company is Faithbox. I really believe in it. I don’t know if it’s a change in behavior. You guys are young. Old timers, remember there was a Columbia house music subscription thing? Subscription models have existed forever, but what’s that pair
company, David and Harry, Harry and David, it’s
like, basket of the month, wine of the month clubs that came from it. It’s not a change. I think that it’s always been
something that we as consumers want, which is I’ll pay one
time, just have it show up. I actually think there’s
way more upside in it. I think that there’s way
more to go, and I think the brands a-la-BarkBox
that get into the lifestyle business, into the media business, have a real play, and so
I’m very bullish on it. I do not think it’s a fad. It’s clearly not a fad
because of-the-month clubs have existed for a long, long time. – [Voiceover] Shan asks,
“What is the best way

I don’t love this question,
to be honest with you. I think that there’s 17,000 ways to make supplementary income. You can babysit, you can
collect cans on the street and return it for deposits,
you can go garage sale-ing and flip it, you can to all the
freelance sites in the world and do your thing if
you can design or video, you could become an
Uber driver, you can mow fuckin’ lawns, like what kind
of question is that, India? I think the answer to that question is, the way you make supplemental
income is to put in work. – [India] I thought you were
gonna tell ’em to quit school. – You can quit school, too, but I mean, that question stinks. It’s a stinky question, and
I’m sorry, I know you watch the show, I love you, I love you. This is straight tough love. It’s a mentality thing,
not a tactical thing. There’s eight billion ways to make money, we’re in god damn America. Or, if you’re not, 98% of the countries in the world, you can make money. Go work at McDonald’s. – [India] From Perth Champagne Club,

“What are your goals for VaynerMedia? “Is there an end game?” – There is an end game. I want to build the greatest
marketing company of all time that is an evergreen business for me that I can deploy all my
future activities around. AKA, when I own the New
York Jets, VaynerMedia will be the marketing company
that re-designs the logo, that does the marketing
plan to take more of the New York market share from
the Giants back to the Jets. To sell tickets while
everybody’s living in a virtual reality world and feel
like they’re playing, and why would they go to a stadium? I think what will end up
being one of the great pillars of my business career, the
decision four years ago, really six years ago, but
really four years ago, to build an agency that
scales my skill set to build infrastructure around me to
then enhance all my future. Take one step backwards,
’cause that’s what VaynerMedia was, to build a client
service business that was taking away from all my other behavior. One step backwards, for two steps forward, DRock, you’re too slow.

“decisions you’ve stopped
making or put on autopilot “in order to maximize your
brain power for the day?” – That’s a great question. Thank you India, and No Fun Press. I’m gonna blow your faces off. Almost all of them. – Whoa, whoa. – Almost all of them, and
what I mean by that is, I fundamentally believe
that I recognize for me that 99% of things don’t matter. I mean, you guys roll
with me, you know, right? Like, I don’t care, fine. Like think about the lack
of micromanaging I do, the lack of being weird, you know. Really the only
micromanaging I ever did was when I would make Zak photoshop out my double chin during the fat years. I really really really
believe that most things don’t matter, and so
what I do is I put people in positions to succeed, I recognize, I do believe that most
people that do things for me or with me, especially if
they’re tasks that I can do, don’t do them as well as I do. I’m like every other person with ego and skills and all that. The problem is, I recognize
I can’t do them all. It’s about how you look at ’em. DRock and I had an interesting
conversation the other day on a different subject, but it was like, you can look at this, or
you can look at this, right? And that’s how I look at it. I could do all these 29 things at an 11, or I can outsource that
and let all of them be eights and sevens and sixes and fives, ’cause they don’t mean that much, and I can focus on whatever’s
left for me and do it at a 37, or an 11, just to
make the analogy proper. So I think most things don’t matter. I go with my intuition to focus
on what I should be doing. That’s it, that’s it. I’ve been able to level up in my career by leaving my ego at the door and recognizing that other people could do it better, and if they don’t do it
better, that their eight is as good as my 11, because
the end result of the marketplace judging is an
eight and 11 is the same god damn thing, and my
time and energy can be deployed against something bigger, while, optically, back
to the prior question, we’ll focus on something
like VaynerMedia where holistically people
thought a waste of my time, I knew what my 25 year,
40 year strategy was, and so that’s a scoop, India. It was a good day here in the streets.