#AskGaryVee Episode 147: Twitter's 140 Character Limit

“knowing you before they worked for you, “how did you establish your
authority as the boss?” – You know, funny thing about VaynerMedia, a lot of them didn’t know who I was. Kaylen. Please. – [Kaylen] Hi, oh God. – Let’s find out. Question is, you know, when most of my employees knew who I was prior to them working here, how did I establish my authority? Did you know who I was
prior to working here? – I knew you were in
the marketing industry, but I had not much context. – See, thanks Kaylen. – Yeah. – That’s the scoop, you’d be stunned. I appreciate everybody
thinking everybody knows me, I would say more than
half of the employees, if not 80, 70, 63% of the employees, did not know who I was. So, India? Staphon? – [Voiceover] Nope. – Thank you DRock. (laughter) So, there you go, right? Yo, you know, Eddie! Come here. You know, so, I’m gonna keep rolling here. One, whether they knew or they didn’t, there was just no breathing room. I’m the CEO of the company,
I’m gonna establish, Eddie, did you know who I was before you started working here? – I did. – Oh crap. – I did, I did know. – How? – My friend was reading Thank You Economy. – Got it. – And I just talked to Gary, and that’s when I found out about Vayner. And now I’m here. – Love you, brother. – Love you, man. – Great employee, too. Thank God for that book. So, you know, most of them didn’t. The ones that did, it wasn’t hard. They either had one of two things. They had no idea who I was,
easy to establish authority, I’m the damn CEO. They knew who I was, they
knew all my accolades, respect for the game, I’m the damn CEO. Easy. – [India] Easy.

– [Voiceover] Nikhil
asks, what do you think of Twitter’s plan to remove
the 140 character limit? – Nikhil, I think this is a
tremendous execution by Twitter. Twitter really needs a
jumpstart in a lot of ways, and really the reason it had a limit, was because of the technology in place. Because it was really in
the old 160-character limit or something of that nature
with the phone structure, of text, and like, there’s
no reason at this point to keep that limit. It created creativity, I
think it served a purpose, but you gotta evolve or die, and I think the freedom of more characters could be helpful. Plus you have a lot of base of people over the last eight years that use it that will still keep
things short and tight. For me, I can see us now
doing complete blog post type things, like we do on Facebook, in a Twitter environment. Could open up some opportunity. I think this is a very smart
move, a much-needed move, a move that I’m excited to test out, I think this was a need. – [Voiceover] Garrett asks,
what’s the worst mistake

a potential VaynerMedia employee can make during an interview with you? – Nothing. Because mainly I’m on feel. I’m actually not even paying attention to what anybody’s saying. I’m actually more trying
to get the vibe of it. So, you know obviously
then, that would mean lying, or trying to fake the funk. I don’t mind when people
come in and pander to my ego, I like it. I don’t mind when they don’t
know who the hell I am, I like it. See that’s what’s fun. When you want to rise
like a phoenix, it’s cool. And when you think highly
of yourself, it’s cool. I get to win, no matter what. It’s a great structured game. So, I’m not really analyzing for, there’s nothing anybody can do, literally nothing. You tell me that, eh, you
know, this company stinks. I’m just here for whatever. I kinda weirdly get into
teenage girl dynamics, I’m like, ooh, I’m gonna
turn this guy around. Right, so I’ll go that route.
Or you come in and say, this is the greatest thing
of all time, I’m like, yeah, that’s somebody that’s all bought in. I think I’m so goddamn optimistic, that it really doesn’t matter what you do, I’m probably gonna want
to hire you regardless. If you don’t get hired
by me, it means that there just wasn’t a
practical puzzle piece need. It wasn’t something you did. And that’s that. – [Voiceover] Mike asks,
“Do you or have you hired

“college dropouts at VaynerMedia?” – Do you, and have you, yes! Where’s the, Stephan, Lee Jeneau, like, we’ve got ’em, we’ve got ’em. (laughter) This is not something that
even registers in my mind, as a matter of fact, you guys
know how I feel about school, pretty hard core. I’ve gotten hit up on
Twitter a bunch of times, that says VaynerMedia has this need for, two years of, I don’t know,
college, like, whatever. Whatever our requirements are, and I didn’t even know. I assume that we did
that as a standard thing, that HR at one point did it. A.J. or Kelly when she
was Managing Director, or somebody in HR. And literally I reached
out and we’ve changed it. I think we’ve added, like, or have, I didn’t even know Staphon was or wasn’t. Like, that doesn’t even register for me. If you’ve got the skills,
you’ve got the skills. I have no idea, once you get in here. Whether you go to Harvard, or you’re from Schmarvard,
it doesn’t matter. The game starts and then
that’s what ends up mattering. – [Voiceover] Schmarvard College shirt? – Schmarvard College shirt is a good idea.