#AskGaryVee Episode 18: The Ultimate Drug

do you consume and are
there any particular people you listen to? – Thomas, how are you? Thank you for the opening
question on episode 18, little bit a better mood for me than 17. I consume a lot of Twitter, predominantly. A little bit of Facebook newsfeed, a little bit of espn.com. I actually consume a shockingly
low percentage of media and as it comes to following people, who do I listen to? Again, I really don’t really pay attention to a whole lot of taste
makers or notable figures. I’m very within. I’m very selfishly stuck in my cocoon. But this is where I’m gonna
throw you for a curveball and I do think it’s a differentiator. I spend an obnoxious, heavy amount of time listening to my community. Last night, after lots of meetings, right before bed, instead
of consuming stuff as the normal marketplace does, I was reading the comments
that a lot of you left for me in yesterday’s episode. It is more interesting to me to understand what my, the people that I’m lucky enough
to give me their attention, what they’re looking for from me, a little bit about their life. I know that Chef Lizette
is moving to New York. I’m consuming my community which I think is me repaying
what you’re paying me with which is your attention. I’m giving you back my attention and so I haven’t anchored myself, maybe out of pride or bravado or ego to other taste makers or leaders. I don’t do that at all. It keeps me fresh in some way. It continues to allow me to be in my lingo and I don’t really wanna be affected. I’m very in my zone so my
consumption is quite low. I read Techmeme, Jason Hirschhorn’s email for like what’s in the news, but I’m not consuming much and I’m not following much except for you. – Gary, should I still
pursue a degree in marketing

when you say, even though you say, marketers ruin everything.
– I’m a marketer. – If not, then what should I pursue in regards to my career? ‘Cause I really want to work in marketing but approach it differently
than it’s been done in the past several years. – Giann, first and foremost, I like how you were reading
some sort of card over here. I’d eliminate that from your game but I’m not razzing. Marketers do ruin everything and I’m a proud and happy marketer. So, don’t take that literally. I think you should pursue marketing and I love that you’re trying to, look the fact that you even know who I am and are asking a question
on the #AskGaryVee show, believe it not, makes me think
you’re gonna be successful. And, what I would recommend, is the degree’s nice and all, but I would highly recommend
if you’re still in university, to intern at the places that
you most think are innovating. I mean, when I think
about the last two classes of VaynerMedia interns and the fact how many of them get hired
into this organization and how great VaynerMedia is as an organization by comparison to the other people that are marketing as agencies out there and
I really believe that. I think they were very smart, strategic, and made the right move. I would give you the same recommendation. Get into the walls that
you most believe in and you should market in a different way and 99% of the places right now won’t allow you to do that so find the other five,
six, seven, 10 places that look like this place which will create the
culture to allow that.

curious how you feel about
the impact you’ve made on people you’ve touched
and inspired over the years. – Carlos thank you so
much for that question. It’s very sweet. You know, a lot of you really know me because you’ve been following my career for quite a while and
we interact quite a bit and I think I’m more
tangibly and touchable than a lot of the other kind
of people that look like me and we engage quite a bit and I have a lot of contacts,
back to question number one, in comparison to others and
all that, blah, blah, blah, but the truth is, most of you don’t really, really, really know me and I think that, you
know, with the hustler and businessman and the north star of buying the New York Jets, one would say, he loves
and wants to buy the Jets more than anything and thus, the money associated with that process is very important to him. It is a distant second to
know that I’ve been gifted with a communication
style that touches people, that makes them, you know, maybe I’m saying the same
thing they’ve heard before, it’s either my conviction
or it comes from my soul in such a way, I talk about
what I believe in so much that it’s been able to move people. Crush It! was clearly a catalyst ’cause that book really
did move people’s careers. So many of you have been affected. It blows my mind actually to think about how many people have been affected even in small ways. Creating more positivity for some people and there’s just so many variables of how I’ve affected people and I don’t say that in like, look at how cool I am, I’m just so goddamn thankful, you know. It’s, you know, so how
do I think about it? I think it is my legacy. I think it is the essence
of who I am as a human being and it is the singular thing
that I’m most proud of. And it gives me enormous confidence of what kind of parent I’m going to be and that makes me very, very happy. – So um, you know, Gary Vay-ner-chuk,

uh, uh, you know, my
question for you is this, uh, um, do you speak Russian? (speaking Russian) And for all of you that
don’t understand that, that was Russian with a
very heavy English accent predicated on the notion
that it was important for my parents to become Americanized and so we didn’t live in Brooklyn in Brighton Beach with
all the other Russians. We went to New Jersey. We were very proud to become Americans and very much pushed English
language in the home.

– [Voiceover] Mrs. Jones asks, how do you make sure lack of confidence doesn’t stop me from chasing my dreams? Mrs. Jones, this is a very
important question to me because I’m actually quite scared to give you the answer which is we need to seriously think about how to build up your confidence. I am the the kind of person that believes that self-esteem is the
ultimate drug in society. And I believe that when
you have self-esteem, you give yourself the
audacity to dream big aka buy the New York Jets. When you dream big, what ends up happening is the little things
stop mattering as much and you’re not crippled by them and you start really kind of becoming, you know, I’m actually maybe the least anxious person I know in a world where anxiety
should be, on paper, the thing that I most
have ’cause I have so much going on and I have these
enormous aspirations. You know, I really
struggle with this question because I would actually tell you to not say, well don’t worry
about it, you’ll get there. And no rah-rah I can do real quick here is going to affect you, but what I’m hoping to affect you with is I would highly recommend
doing some deep searching into what you can afford and what is practical to work on that whether that’s literally
seeing somebody to build it up, mapping your life backwards, surrounding yourself with
positive, self-esteem driven people, I think is a
very unique way to do it. This is the big one for
me fellas and ladies. I am all in on self-esteem and I would say if you
are self-aware enough to know that you lack it, I would tell you to execute about finding a way to gain more of it. – I’m loving the show, like loving it.

Great to see you back. I hope you remember me from Wine Library episode 759 where we drank out of bottles. Enough of that, my question. I run a video blog inmymug.com. Plug, got the plug in.
– Smart plug. – And get about 5,000 views a week but we’ve been kind of there for the last 100 or so episodes. Should I kick on, should
I be bothered about that? We get in sales from it, we
get lots of interaction from it but should I kick on and if I am, should I look at dark posts, should I look at Twitter? What should I kind of do to kind of find that next level? And thank you for the show. – My pleasure, my friend. I definitely, definitely remember you and that was a lot of fun. You know, it’s funny I
was just about to segway in closing off the show about, I also want more viewers and I wanna keep building, like, when you’re in the game,
you’re in the game. You wanna build. And you’ve done the patience thing which is normally my answer. That’s my answer to me. I’m only 18 episodes in and you gotta restart
and rebuild an audience and get people used to behavior and it’s not email or RSS
like I had with Wine Library back in 06, 7, 8 and
so it’s different ways. It’s Twitter but that’s
noisier and different. You know, so, I would say distribution. The reason you’re stuck right now is you need distribution,
distribution, distribution. I highly recommend you say to yourself, what are the 100 websites that are the biggest websites in the world that speak to or are in
the genre of my show? And then literally email them one by one and ask them if they want the rights to distribute your content with maybe you writing on top of it. I’d also reach out to the top 100 podcasts that you can get out there
on and promote the show. Give interviews, you need to hustle. What you just did by
getting on this show worked. You were gonna pick up 39, 42, 73 new listeners for your
show by being on this show. And you need to just scale
the living crap out of that. It’s hustle, hustle, hustle,
hustle, hustle, hustle hustle, hustle, but with
a thread in distribution. You need more awareness. You need to show up on other
YouTube celebrity’s show. You need to get into
the LinkedIn community and start putting out that content. You need to get the hell out there. That is the game, my friend. And that is a nice way to
kind of wrap up the show