#AskGaryVee Episode 142: How To Prevent Your Drive From Affecting Your Relationships

“I’ve been hustling since the age of 14.” “I now work 12, maybe 15 hours a day.” “I love what I do, but
sometimes I fear my drive” “works against me,
particularly when it comes to” “getting in the way of
relationships with friends.” “How do you deal with that?” “I can’t switch off.” – Yeah, I mean, this is something
I struggle with as well, I mean when you’re on 24/7-365,
it’s difficult to shut down, it’s difficult to
change from in the zone to in the zone, I don’t, and it works in reverse, too,
and I’m sure, right, like right now it’s hard for
me to re-trigger back into the work zone off the high of the sports brain
that I was rolling with over the weekend. Look, I think that actions speak louder than words. And if these relationships matter to you, you’re gonna figure out how to hack and figure it out. It’s as simple as that, there’s
just nothing else to say. Hello. And so, you know, you’ve got to put in the work. You’ve got to learn how
to shut down, I mean sometimes it takes
an hour, two hours, three hours, four hours. Maybe some sort of routine, you know working out has been a good transition period for me, you know. That’s worked for me in the past, or in the recent times. Something that lets you transition. Or what I tend to do… Hey, little man… – Oh, sorry. – No, no worries. I think that another thing that I did that was kind of strategic was I rated and ranked my relationships and then when I was segueing
into off of work mode into a weekend or the holidays, I would actually schedule meetings according to what I thought of them, so like, my mom would be later than maybe a solid friend. Because then I’d feel
like I was in the rhythm of that zone, so. I think you’ve gotta hack
and make it work for you, but your actions are louder
than your words, meaning you can’t have the excuse
of, “My brain is always on.” It means that you’ve chosen your business, your entrepreneurship and your ambition over those relationships. Which, by the way, and this is not super popular, I find that to be okay. I don’t think it’s noble. I don’t think it’s nice. It’s just a reality. And there’s a lot of people that do it. You know, especially as you look higher and higher up the pyramid. You look at the Oprahs and the Michael Jordans. You know. These are the choices
that people make, and so I think you’ve gotta make yours, and I think that you
need to live your life and not take the judgment
of all these people. However, you know, just accomplishing your goals, the monies, the sports teams, whatever they are, to have that by yourself,
and not to share that with the people you love the most, I think is a fairly lonely
place, and you need to keep that into serious consideration. – [Voiceover] Sahil asks,

is a great question selection pick the
South incentive to the team because I felt that I finally had picked
up my rhythm and momentum on Instagram if you look back at some point when I
was really pushing that narrative as a function of this show I was hoping the
thirty forty fifty thousand dollar range not the following matters but they get
on the internet matters a little bit more because I feel the attention
grabbers there and everybody seeing everything but rather have a hundred
thousand there then maybe a million per cent email list or million Twitter
followers some with believing in Instagram I knew I needed to build it up
and really I created a function on this show to create more awareness more
behavior more interaction between me and you and Instagram and you and your
friends on Instagram finding out about me on instagram so it was very tactical
very strategic I stopped asking because I feel as though I’ve gotten to a place
where I got a better kid in some momentum there’s ads now I don’t want to
create unlimited friction with you in the eye and myself so like I want you to
be able to ask questions the way you want to ask them so it was a strategy in
a moment in time for three to four months I executed wanna eat out of it
and I want to make strategy in researching this question is a very
evergreen to everybody and make them understand that strategies have life cycles what works
for you three forty years ago where 34 months ago or 34 days ago can be debated and switched and I i
think way too many people find something that works for them and they milk in
until there’s nothing left in the account was asked what service do you use to
make these amazing images charles is a

“What service do you use to
make these amazing images?” – Charles, that’s a
very, very good question. This one’s super easy. This speaks to something
I believe, which is scaling the unscalable. Every time people ask
me about image quotes. This one (camera clicks), and this one (camera clicks). You got some work today, Staphon. And this one (camera clicks). People always tweet, and they’re like, “What app do you use, what do you do?” Nope. Just use the great Andrew
and Zak design team. Mainly Andrew now, who also
designed this amazing t-shirt. Buy it, now (bell rings). And so, you know, really
what I’m doing there is just scaling the unscaleable. You know, there is no app. Everybody thinks everything’s
got to be so scalable. No, this is done by hand. I have a design person, obviously look. And it’s interesting. I have debated turning it into an app and opening it up to everybody. But for now it’s just done by hand. There’s a lot of texting. I’ll actually pull out my phone, yeah. There’s a lot of texting that
goes on between me and Andrew. Where I just get a thought and, you know, just. Get ready, DRock. Are you gonna wanna have my? Are you gonna wanna have my phone? No, I’m not gonna give it to you, so… Because you’re not gonna
be there, so you can’t do it like you like to normally edit. But let’s just find Andrew. And… Okay. – [DRock] Yeah. – See it?
– [DRock] Yeah. – So there you go. You could’ve been a bus. With an image of me from
the Monday morning video in the background. And a smaller font saying
“Watch the video now.” I mean, you now, and then it happens. Good, old-fashioned thoughts and execution. Keep it simple.

– [Voicoever] Igor asks, “When is it okay to lie in business?” – That’s interesting. The 14-year-old version
of me would have said, “Anytime, all the time, go for it.” You know, I think the answer is never. I don’t see any value prop. I think that having self-confidence and believing that you can do
something you’ve never done before is a great thing for business. But I think you gotta lay
those cards out to the person that’s making that decision. You can’t say, “We’ve executed
a campaign like this before,” Sorry. You can’t say, “I’ve done this before.” “I’ve sold this before.” What you could say is, “I
truly believe I can do it “because of these things.” But faking the funk has diminishing returns, puts you in a precarious spot, and when you define it as “lying” versus “a slight little embellishment”
or a little bit of hyperbole when you go to lying, I
think that has no place in the business world, or in life. And take it from somebody
who grew up a liar. It was very tough for me as
a kid to break that habit. This is one of the
disproportionate reasons I value my dad’s fatherly advice. He really snapped me out of it. It’s taken me a long time. I truly believe it’s the reason
that most people struggle with consuming me at first,
and don’t know how to take me, because I do think there’s
a lot of bullshit DNA that I started with, but I chipped away, chipped away. And that’s the scoop. No, no place.

– Hey, Gary, what’s going
on, Sean Mitchell here. I’ve got a sales question for you. In the last couple of weeks,
I’ve lost two really big deals that I was anticipating closing. On the first call, I felt
like I did a really solid job, at uncovering their
challenges, in matching up our products, solutions
to those challenges, but on the second call, they
ended up not moving forward and it was a huge surprise to me, so– – Huge surprise– – What is your advice to try
and minimize the surprise – [Voicoever] Baba, ba–
– No. Thanks so much. – Great question. Don’t steal my headphones, India. Come off of six month vacation, stealing my headphones. First of all, and I think AJ
is better at this than me, I always think we’re gonna
win the sale, because I’m so good at being a salesman. But one of the great
ways to not be surprised on losing a sale is to
never think you’ve got it. I think that’s actually
a stunningly interesting aspect of it. So I think, not buying
into your own bullshit or hype is important. I also am a big fan of back-channeling. I do think that you
could’ve been e-mailing and contacting the clients. Some clients are turned off by that. Others can really give
you some information, depends on your relationship
with that client. But really the truth is it’s very tough to mitigate this. I mean, that’s the game, right? That’s the high of sales. You go in for the kill, and you don’t know
necessarily if you’ve made it happen or not, and so I think teetering expectations, trying to communicate
back-channel during the time. Sometimes the squeakiest
wheel gets the oil. Sometimes the squeakiest wheel gets taken off and replaced by a wheel. It’s just a way you’ve got to
figure out your own cadence. Your own touch. I’m a big fan of, I always say I like things sold
before I start selling them. So, if you’re going in for pitches a lot of times, I like
having relationships, putting out content, before those things. I think that’s really an important variable in sales, which is fundamentally selling before you’re actually
going in for the sale. I do believe an answer
on the #AskGaryVee Show will lead to a business
opportunity in the future. That’s selling before selling. And so that’s it, I mean you can do what you can do before the fact, but once you’re in the game you can back-channel a little bit, you can teeter your expectations, but you’ve got to let the results play out the way they will. That’s a good show.