#AskGaryVee Episode 153: Gary's Father-In-Law, Peter Klein, Answers Questions on the Show

myself, what was the most
important thing you did in your 30s to change your future? – PK why don’t you take that. He’s about to turn 30. – That’s a great question,
and the answer is, I took a deep breath, stepped back,
and I said to myself, where did I kind of want to be in the next 10 to 20 years then. I actually was working at Gillette. I worked there twice and
this was 72-78 and I took a step back and I said you
know, I wanted to be in a position between the ages
of 32 to 35, where I can make a decision to either stay
corporate America on a fast track and doing all those things etc. or shift gears and go into
a small start up, or smaller business environment and write
a couple of my own patents. A bit of an entrepreneurial
spirit, but I wasn’t in a position where I really had those choices. I wasn’t getting
inundated by smaller start ups or new ventures. I so I said you know what,
and I love Gillette they were doing great, and they were
by me and everything that counted, and I said
you know, I gotta get into the New York area, and I
made a decision to move into New York, with a large company
whom I communicated with and said hey for 3 to 5 years,
I’m gonna beat the bushes and see if I want to stay
or go into small business. So that’s kind of when I
stepped back and I said and the rest is history. – That’s cool. So, Peter was there, because
I married Lizzy when I was 28, turned 29 on our wedding night, and so he saw this, which a
lot of you have heard before, which is right at 30 I kind of
freaked out a little bit and started really putting
the pedal to the metal, started Wine Library TV right
after it, and as much as I worked and as intensely
as I worked in my late 20s, 30 started the process of this
insanity that I’m executing against now. So, I just wanna buy the
Jets, but I didn’t think I was going fast enough, and so I
also took a step back and said where am I gonna be in 10 or
20 years, let me make sure my behavior maps it. So, I think if you’re entering
your 30s, I think it’s really smart to think about your 40s and 50s. – So what Gary does on
intuition and gut, and heart, and passion, I kind of did
over my career, maybe in a little more disciplined,
little more balanced, left brain, right brain way,
and it was a driver of why we decided to write the
book, Think to Win, was to try to bring some very
simple concepts and how tos in the world of strategy
and execution to folks who are working in small,
medium, large, companies, public or private, even in
the not for profit sector, where they can take a step
back and say hey look, here are a few principles,
a few how tos, to get folks aligned, fact based– – Yep. – Not myth based, and get
aligned on key issues, key opportunities, and how do we execute. Yogi Berra, who I was a
big fan of, and yes I do have a signed picture from
Don Larson and Yogi Berra. – Cause all of you were curious. – Curious of that, who said,
“A good batter will always be “a good pitcher, and vice versa.” – He is the best. – I’m a believer in good
strategy always drives good execution, and vice
versa, and that’s kind of what this book is about,
a more disciplined way to kind of those how tos to let some power strategic thinking can work. – Tremendous right hook
Peter, let’s go India. – [Voiceover] Ryan asks, “How
do you deal with drama in “the workplace, and how do
you avoid having more drama?”

“the workplace, and how do
you avoid having more drama?” – PK, drama in the workplace.
How much were you, as an executive in corporate America
into HR like stuff, or did you kind of let the pros handle that? – I loved that area. I was into it. – I believe that by the
way, I know this guy. – I was Mr. Anal Retentive. – Me too. – So, I kind of got my
fingers dirty, I knew when to step in– – In the anal retentiveness? – But at the end of the day, jargon aside, and I’m a believer of with whom you go is more important than where you go, I got heavily vested in the HR side, because it didn’t make any
difference what kind of idea you might have, start up or big company, big brands, small brands whatever, but
whatever you’re working on combined with no matter how
much capitol you may have, working capitol from start
up business or whatever, at the end of the day, if you
didn’t have the right people or the right team in place– – You’re dead. – Game over, and so– – I believe that so much. I don’t think there’s any Lakers, there’s Kobe and Shaq
era and then there’s not, and then you know, like
Stephan who’s a Lakers fan, he then becomes a Golden
State Warriors fan because he’s just
bandwagon, but most people you know I’ve talked plenty
about HR, I want to get this thing moving, I want some
speed India, let’s go to the next one. – [Voiceover] James asks,
“Banks are old, stiff, and have

“largely the same messaging, safety. “Is their sheer size saving
them from disruption for now?” – Yea, I’ll jump in on this
one because I’m spending a lot of time with Silicon
Valley and that’s really, what’s going on in Silicon Valley now with
start ups that are looking to attack banks, and if you look
at what’s going on in general with like Venmo and so many
other things that we’re living through, yea I mean,
I think banks have enormous infrastructure and have
a value prop, but there’s enormous amounts of destruction. I think the question alludes
to a marketing message, and I think it’s actually gonna be more of a utility message. When you start layering,
you know it’s funny, BitCoin has been not a top
of mine in the start up world recently, but block chain
mentality and just the innovation around financing
and the financial sector is going to be pretty aggressive. I actually think a lot of
bank’s messages are not necessarily just about safety. I think it’s about creating
indulgence and empowering you to do the things that you want to do. I’ve watched a lot of
the banking messaging, as we start planning on
getting into a couple of clients in that sector. I think what’s way more
important is that bank’s brands in our society are very poor,
because of what happened with the Wall Street melt down
and things of that nature, and I think a lot of banks
have been very slow to properly transition to mobile and so there’s a lot of
white space and a lot of innovation coming that, and it’s funny I can see the sharks circling around the banking sector in SF
and it’ll be interesting for the next decade. Keep it going. – [Voiceover] Alex asks, “What
do you want to be remembered

“for the most?” – Go ahead PK. – Helping people to be
the best they can be, family and otherwise. – That’s awesome. For me, there’s a lot
of different things that I think about, but one of the
things that I really want, I talk a lot about guilting
everybody I ever meet to coming to my funeral. I’m very passionate about bringing more value to people than they brought to me. One of the things I
admire so much about my father-in-law Peter, is,
it’s scary to me how many, we’re different clearly in
certain ways, but boy do we have a lot of similarities,
and when I started to get to know it was
interesting to me how his wife Ann, who’s amazing,
would talk about him, I was like hmm, that’s
me, that’s what I like. I like that everybody comes to
me for help and I help them, and all those things, and
so that’s what I would say, 51-49, that I gave more to
them in our relationship than they gave to me. That said, if you agree
with me, I think I better

“a lot, but what cost did you
have to pay to get here now?” – Peter, you worked really hard. – That’s a great, I would
say, at the end of the day, there doesn’t have to be a
cost, and I really believe that. – Hmm, you got everyone’s attention. – You’re talking to a guy
who kind of spent a career maybe averaging a number
of hours say almost 6-1/4 to 6-1/2 days a week, 12-14 hours average days, over an entire career, having said that– – You’re giving a lot of
insight to why Lizzy is able to deal with my insanity. – Beyond multitasking
and learning how to do all this stuff, when again,
you take a deep breath along the way, step back, the
things that make a difference, and the things that count
that you want to focus on, to me, family first,
and so I always planned. I was traveling a lot, half my
career was in the consulting business, and I traveled a
lot, but I always tried to do day trips to get back
in time for a late dinner, whatever, be there when
the kids took baths, managed little league teams, my son– – How was Alex Kline as a
little league baseball player? – He was all defense. (laughing) A little offense, but — – Yes, on the record Alex eat it. – He held his own, and he was a starter. – Okay, all defense. – You make time and you
try to balance it out, so I don’t know if there were
any real trade offs on a day in and day out basis, doesn’t have to be. If you let what your focused
on solely run your life, there will be usually
people, family, relationship trade offs. – I fully believe in that. I think that the practical
level is that probably you and I got to spend a little less time, what we gave up was our
passion for business or our careers, probably
came at the expense of some other potential, hobbies, and other leisures, that it didn’t come at the expense
of the family, but you maybe never developed your
golf game, or your tennis game, or fishing, or other
things that could have been interesting to you in your life. – That’s good enough. – That’s what I can feel. I mean I’ve got the Jets,
so I’ve got a thing for me, but I definitely, I would be
very interested in all these other little things, but I
punt them for the business. – Great point, may or may
not be necessarily relevant I think because again, when
you step back and in business, we make a point in the
book, which is by the way Think to Win– – This is the best. – Strategic Thinking (mumbles). – Link that up boys, let’s
make sure we link that up. – Amazon, 23 testimonials from– – This is awesome. – With that said, life,
personal, business, relationships, is about making choices– – 100%. – And so there’s always choices
to be made, and if you get your top 2 or 3 priorities
right, the order of magnitude of the next level of
those kind of choices, maybe you know, are not as relevant. – That’s right. – If you try to be too much– – That’s right. – Too many, you run in to a stone wall. – Let me close this with
something that I think will connect with the audience
because it’s a truth and it’s something I admire tremendously. I know this dude very well. This man’s retired, from
the day you retired, I visit him in Florida and
different things of that nature, his retirement hustle
is substantially stronger than a lot of people that I
know’s work ethic in their normal environment. I look at you and I get
pumped because I’m like cook, if Peter can retire like
that, which means, oh I don’t