#AskGaryVee Episode 42: Mistakes, Interviews, and Keynotes

“rarely mention YouTube in
your digital recommendations “despite the one billion
active users per month?” – And this is a great question and I’m really glad you asked it because it allows me to address this head-on on the #AskGaryVee Show. The reason I don’t
mention YouTube a lot and didn’t have it at the bottom logo of Jab Jab Jab Right Hook,
DRock, you can show it, is a really interesting
thing that I’ve thought about quite a bit. Which is because I’m making a mistake. And, you know, boy, do
I hate talking about that stuff. You know, here’s what I think happened. I jumped on YouTube so early back in 2006, wrote Crush It! in 2009
about how YouTube and video would make a lot of people famous, a lot of stuff that’s happening now. And in a weird way, I think that, you know I jumped to Viddler in 2007 so I didn’t see through the YouTube thing, that was a mistake as well. I think that it’s a foregone conclusion in the back of my mind that I have YouTube on a pedestal that is even above everything else, maybe besides Facebook, and I just haven’t done a good job. As a matter of fact one of the reasons I started the #AskGaryVee
Show is to get a little bit back into the YouTube culture and so, honestly, I think that the reason I don’t mention it and dig into it and push it harder is
because I thought I’d figured that out and
kind of pushed that out with Crush It! and was
so associated with that. But that wore out in 2011 and I’ve just done a piss-poor job of
continuing that narrative and it’s a hole in my tool belt in the way that I communicate. Obviously I take it seriously, and so, you know, the reason I don’t mention it is because I’m making a mistake. – [Voiceover] Yash says,
“You changed the intro music.

– [Voiceover] Yash says,
“You changed the intro music. “Why?” – Yash, cuz.

– [Voiceover] Vernon
asks, “What’s one question “you ask in interviews?” – Vernon, I really like this question. I’m really excited to take a stab at it. I don’t do it every time. I’m not one of these guys who’s like, this is my go-to question, like “When you were 13 and you
went through a forest, and you pick–” I don’t have any of these weird things, but I do always, especially
I think if there’s a lot of momentum in the interview, I love to ask people to tell me, at this moment in time, what they see the professional career becoming. I wanna get into the psychology of what their ambition is and I pretty much spend most of the interview trying to get somebody comfortable enough to tell me the truth to that question. Because I don’t care if
you want to be the CEO of VaynerMedia. If you wanna just be, move a couple levels up and have great work-life balance. I
don’t care if you even want to come here and
work for me for two years, suck out my IP and then
go start your own agency. I don’t care what your agenda is, I just wanna know what it is so
I can help us get there. Because the truth is,
I wanna keep people in my ecosystem forever and the best way to do that is to deliver
to them what they want. And so the quicker I can
get into that insight, are you work-life balance,
are you money hungry, are you title hungry, are you entrepreneur and just coming in here for learnings. I don’t care, I just need to know. The quicker I know and the
quicker it’s the truth, the quicker we can do
things forever together. And so that is usually the essence of the interview question for me. Can I tap through, can I
feel that I’m getting there? Because that gives me a blueprint, a map. Not only that, I have the
self-awareness, and I try to talk to them about this,
that that will change. You know, being a 24 year old dude, 26 year old female, it’s gonna change. You’re gonna fall in love,
your life’s gonna change. Are you gonna start a family? When you make a little bit more money it becomes less interesting. There’s so many different
things that are going on in one’s life. When you make a little money it becomes way more interesting. You get the bug, the blood’s in the water. I don’t care, I just need
the communication funnel and I want it to start from day one, five minutes in to getting
to know each other.

– [Voiceover] Sarah asks,
“As a private music teacher “I have limited hours to teach. “What are your thoughts on
how to increase my income, “or build a brand?” – Sarah, a lot of thoughts on this. It’s called the Crush It! manifesto, which is, there’s plenty of damage between 11pm and three in the morning. I get it, you teach,
you know, I don’t know, teachers to me are actually,
my sister is a teacher, like they have the most
time to do other stuff. They have fairly good schedules. There’s the summer. There’s, you know, and
again, maybe you’ve got a different kind of teaching thing, but to me, if you want to build
more of a scalable brand, you gotta put out content. You gotta look at things like Skillshare where you can put out your teachings and sell that. There’s a lot of ways to do it. Technology has created
an enormous opportunity for you to scale it. You can do live Spreecasts
and Google Hangouts that only have access to people that pay. I would recommend putting
out a lot of content at first as a gateway
drug to the opportunity to charge people so you
can establish yourself. But this whole notion of where is the time, I need more time, I just think people are
loaded with excuses. They aren’t auditing themselves. They don’t realize that
they’re watching every season of Homeland and Game of Thrones. They don’t realize that
they’re having an hour and 15 minute lunch, like lunch. I’ve had two lunches. Robert Souza, our new SVP made me go to a lunch to meet somebody. I was pissed. I was like, why couldn’t
we do that as 11pm drinks? Lunch, like leaving and having lunch? The inefficiency of that time? So you know, I’m pissed at lunch and I’m pissed at Game of Thrones and I’m pissed at playing video games and I’m pissed at a lot of
things in a world where somebody wants more
financially or career-wise. I love it for the people
that need it to escape. I love it for people that are content with their monies and their career path. I love it. As a matter of fact, I envy it. Boy, if somebody could take a shot and suck out some of my ambition,
I’d be really pumped. You wanna do a start up? Create a suck out the ambition app. I’d be really happy about
that because I’d love to be able to take a lunch. I’d love to be able to relax
and play Madden against somebody in Iowa, because
that’s how you can play Madden these days, with the kids, for the last 10 years. But I haven’t been playing it because I’ve been hustling,
because that’s what I want. And so, whether you’re a hundred or zero, you just wanna zen and live in
a mountain with no technology or you wanna buy the Jets
and hustle your face off, or anything in between, you
need to find your cadence. And so if you’re asking this question, my intuition is you’re
spending an hour or two on things every day that aren’t achieving this extra brand or extra
monies that you’re chasing. So cut that crap out and
apply it to these things, putting out content, writing content, making videos, building up a brand, engaging with people,
going to Twitter search, Twitter.com/search searching teachings around, you know, key words around the things you teach. Engage with people, say hello, cold call, saw somebody shout that out in the YouTube comments yesterday. We talked about that, as a matter of fact, link up that video. People need to watch it.
That’s a classic. I don’t know where you want it, DRock. But you guys know which
video I’m talking about. The cold call. I had a
shaved head in there. Anyway, the bottom line is, you need to re-calibrate to your ambitions. By the way, it may be going
from seven hours of sleep to five hours of sleep
because you need all those lunches and video games, and that’s fine. But if you want it, you just gotta go and do that. episode 42 of the #AskGaryVee Show.

Give, give, give and then ask. You keep asking questions, I’ll keep answering them. And welcome to #AskGaryVee. Do you consider yourself
in the VaynerNation? Or do you consider yourself a Vayniac? (typewriter keys clicking) – Ishmael, somebody is very smart. You’ve got me pegged. Absolutely, I’m excited about
building the brand equity of the #AskGaryVee Show so I can have my ambition, and
you’ve probably heard me say this five to 10
times in my career so you might have a leg up from anybody
else who hasn’t heard this. Nothing would excite me more, look, I’ve contemplated
television and other things to build up my profile so
that my keynotes going forward can be me walking into
a auditorium, an event, and just going directly into
Q and A, #AskGaryVee style, because the truth is, that’s where you can bring the most value. If people walk in with context of who I am and my spiel, we can get right to it, which is really bringing the value, which is why this show matters so much. So yes, my friend, the
answer to your question is a big, fat Y-E-S. I’d like the #AskGaryVee Show concept to be my new keynote. Hey everybody, this is Gary Vay-ner-chuk