#AskGaryVee Episode 61: Hiring Friends, Funerals, & The Reality Distortion Field

– [Voiceover] Christopher
asks, “What are your thoughts “on employing friends?” – Christoper, this is a great question for a lot of people who watch my stuff. They make that connection on
the family business thing. I get enormous amounts
of, excuse me, email from people that are
the sons and daughters of business owners because
they knew my narrative now that I’m running Vayner with AJ, I’m getting some more
brother and sister stuff, and I’m getting a little older. I’m even getting some of the perspective from the dads and the moms. I have employed friends at both Wine Library and VaynerMedia. VaynerMedia was started with
five of AJ’s dear friends that I think the number
one advice I’d say is you should absolutely. I’m emphatic about this, and you guys know I’m big on, you know,
do what works for you, but I’m a huge fan of hiring friends, especially early on, to establish culture, to have those teammates in the trenches, especially if you’re willing
to practice meritocracy. So the key to friends is that,
here we are five years later, and AJ’s five to six high
school and college friends that started the company with us are in different places
within the organization and not really treated any
differently at the highest levels than anybody else, and very honestly, I hope they’re not listening
or watching the show, they may even be treated
slightly harder and worse than everybody else because
I’m so sensitive to it in the other direction. I expect the six of you not
to hit me up for a raise. I think that I’m a big fan of it. I recommend it. It is risky. I have fired my friends in the past. Brandon was my best friend growing up. He runs Wine Library. Risky. You know, it really comes
down to, here’s my belief. My belief is very simple. If you loose a friendship
from somebody working for you and not working out and
you having to fire them or them leaving, then your friendship wasn’t as strong as you thought. That’s the bottom line.

“relevance to the funeral
business industry?” – Columbia, great question. This was a fun one. India, you’re dark. Because India was like,
pumped for this question. I assume you’re talking
the funeral home business. Ironically, I’ve addressed
this in other places, either in a blog post or a public speech. This is an industry I’m fascinated by. I once gave the recommendation to somebody in the funeral business to become the number one flower
content site on the Internet, because that was the connection
to something positive that I could make, and it was
a really really interesting, you know, back to
everybody’s a media company, you guys have heard my spiel on this. If you haven’t, Google it around. I think companies should
become media companies and play in sections that are
related to their industry. If you’re a funeral
home, you can’t start a reviewing other funeral homes business, you have vested interest,
but something like flowers is an interesting
gateway to that business. You know, look. I’m gonna use your question as it ended, which is innovation is what awakes sleepy gray-haired industries. I came along in the wine world. That was a very pretentious, very this, very look down on, very gray haired. Wine experts were 60 year old dudes. They definitely weren’t 25
year old Jet fans from Jersey, and so I came in there and I innovated. First it was launching
a dot com site in 1996. Later it was doing a YouTube show less than a year after YouTube came out around the subject. The way you wake up an industry is by innovating. Looking at things like Snapchat, looking at things like smart technology and augmented reality and Pinterest and things of that nature, and so obviously, it sounds like you’re
in a very sensitive space. You’ve got to be careful. Obviously death is at the height
of emotion in our society. One thing I’ve been spending
a lot of weird zen time on is we don’t know how to
die gracefully in America. I’m very fascinated by that, meaning we fight and like medicine
ourselves up so intensely. I’m getting on a little bit of a tangent, but I get it, because boy, out
of all the passions I have, the number one core passion I have is I do not want to die, and it is not even a
remotely close second. Fuck the Jets and everything else. That is my number one passion. So I get it, so I would
say navigate carefully based on the question, but
to go on a higher level of waking up a gray haired industry, disrespect the gray haired industry. Understand your history, understand it, but don’t respect it to a fault. Get it? – [Voiceover] Kobus asks, “What
would be your top three tips

“for switching on your brain?” – Ko, this is an
interesting question to me. Like that? Ko, this is an interesting question to me. I don’t really know how to answer it. First of all, I don’t do well
with top three questions, so VaynerNation, don’t
ask me top three questions because I don’t even know
how to gather my thoughts in that way, I’m not an
active enough thinker to execute that. I don’t know. You know, weirdly the only
thing that comes to me on the answer, and it’s
why I took this question, because it’s an interesting question, is passion. It’s a very lightweight answer. It’s a fluffy answer, but I truly believe that it is the answer, meaning, if you actually love what you’re doing, if you actually love
it, there is no friction to turn on your brain. The only time I feel like
I have to turn on my brain was when I was six to 22 years old, when I was going through the
bullshit education system of America, right? That’s when I felt like
I had to turn it on, to appease horse crap that
didn’t match my reality. But every since that
day, when like, “Yay!” and I went into like, you
need to buy this Pinot Grigio, the second that started in May of 1998, there’s never been a day
that I’ve had to activate. It’s always on, and I don’t mean always on buzzword marketing, it’s that I love what I do so much that there is no friction to turn it on, even when I am landing
at 2:00 in the morning from a flight that’s delayed
like the other night, and then going directly into
it at 6:30 in the morning because the fire is so deep inside, you love it so much. You don’t need that jump start. – [Voiceover] Cory asks,
“When it comes to weaknesses

“within yourself, how do you determine “whether to delegate or to strengthen it?” – Cory, I love this question because I really don’t
know the full answer and I’m not sure anybody does. I think that’s a question that we all have to answer for ourselves. You know, I always talk
about betting on strengths, but there’s clearly been
weaknesses that I’ve created at least a nice baseline, a foundation. As a matter of fact, one of the weaknesses I’ve been working on
for the last 36 months, especially in building Vayner,
and I give AJ, my brother, a lot of credit for this,
is leading with a little bit more reality than
over-honeying the situation. I’m such a positive
dude that a lot of times I don’t think I was clear
enough with negative feedback or critical feedback to
an employee or a teammate because I was hedging too much, I was like, “You’re the best! “This is all great! “Don’t worry! “But maybe you should…” You know, I’ve been a
little bit more direct, and that’s a weakness
that I’ve strengthened, no question about it, because
I thought it was important, and because I felt like
it was a couple inches off and just by moving it a little bit. Does that mean that I’m, like, the scary guy in the building? I mean, I’m like the least
scary guy in the building outside of the reputation of who I am or being the CEO of a company, but once people get to
know me a little bit, like, I’m the pushover that
way because I am positive, but I think that, look. I would say this is an
80 20 rule answer to me. I truly still believe,
minimumly, that you need to spend 80% of your time on your strengths, and if you want to
allocate 20% of your time to audit, you know, I would actually just do a whole lot of listening. I would actually ask the
people you work with, the people that work for you, the people you work for, your
friends and contemporaries, the people that are closest to you, the 10 closest people to
you, friends and relatives on what they think you could work on. They’re a mirror to that. You may take a step back. It might hurt. You’ve got to roll with
humility and empathy if you want to address this, and then you can start
addressing those 20%, because a lot of times the
reason we can’t address something is because we can’t see it, and the best way to see it is
through other people’s eyes, and you know, it’s funny. The best way to see it is to
use your own ears, actually. It’s kind of interesting,
there’s something there. India, we need to go long forum on that. And that’s that. – Hey Gary, it’s Sean McCabe. I just wanted to say thanks
so much for doing your show.

I just wanted to say thanks
so much for doing your show. It’s been the number
one inspiration for me starting my own daily video show at shawnwest.tv. – I like the hustle.
– My question is – hustle something that can be taught, because you’re probably
the only person I know that out-hustles me, and I want to help other people get that,
but do you think hustle is something you either have or you don’t? – Man, these are tough, this
is a tough question day, jeez. You know, I do think
work ethic is a trait. I think hustle is
something you’re born with, but I do think the hustle
meter is fundamentally effected by who you’re doing it for. So it’s really easy to
hustle for yourself. So if you’re a solopreneur, super easy, you will be 100% the highest hustle that you are capable of within your DNA. When you work for somebody else, you know, I think the hustle meter is completely predicated
on how inspired you are and how protected you
feel for that leader, for her or for him and the
organization they work for. I truly believe that the
people that work for me hustle way harder because I
instill trust and protection and I set a high standard for it, and then thus I am able
to get them to a place where they do hustle harder
by the context and the culture from within, but they do it
selfishly for themselves first and then equally, because
they don’t want to let me down or they want to grow up in a meritocracy where they know they can grow, but that’s a selfish play. I think there is a level of hustle that ultimately is predicated on your DNA, and then, and then I think that at some level it’s the context of the game you’re playing, right? I’m blown away by how many
people on my own team here hustle harder working
for me than a lot of my entrepreneurial friends
working for themselves, and that, to me, is fascinating. I think that comes from motivation, and so the level of motivation
you have from within yourself and the level of motivation you get from outside sources,
whether it’s an individual, an organization, some other variable, you want to stick it to your dad who said you were never going to be anything, or the other way, you want to fulfill what your mom told you
you were capable of, the neighborhood you came from, there’s just so many
interesting variables. I’ve been thinking about writing a book called “I Wish Everyone Was an Immigrant.” It’s insane, it’s insane
how motivated I am from coming from zippo,
and I didn’t even come from as much zippo as my parents did when they were first here, but I tasted those early days, and
it’s a level of taste that I know AJ doesn’t have. Not that he can’t be more motivated, but that happens to be
one of my motivators that is not one of his motivators. Maybe one of his motivators is to stick it to the world and tell them that he’s better than his brother. It could be a million different things. They’re all fascinating. I think that you are, I think that you are born with some level of it, but I absolutely think this
is a nature, nurture game where circumstances, look,
you may get motivated by something horrible
that happens in your life and I don’t want to go dark, but you know, we’ve gone dark in the past. You know, like, everybody
in your family dies on a family vacation
that you didn’t go to. You are now motivated in a different way or you’re crumbled by that. So it’s your inner strength
and makeup and infrastructure. I’ve been fascinated
by watching my friends watch my other friends become billionaires over the last five years, and some of them have been motivated, and
some of them pushed back. It’s like being the child
of a very successful person. You either try to trump your moms or pops, or you go so far away from
it you want to go, like, fish in the Amazon for
the rest of your life, and I’m fascinated by that, and so I think that’s DNA, and then
there’s the circumstances that wrap around it.

– [Voiceover] Matthew
asks, “Are you worried “you might have created a Steve Jobs-esque “reality distortion
field at VaynerMedia?” – Matthew, first and foremost, I’m massively flattered by this question. I don’t even know how
else to really take it other than, you know, my
ego is very happy with you. I guess not, mainly because, and I didn’t know Steve,
and I knew a lot of people that knew him, but everything’s hearsay. My intuition tells me
that I’m dramatically more a people person and maybe, you know, the answer’s fully no. Do I think that people at VaynerMedia drink the VaynerMedia Kool-Aid and their friends and relatives tell them that they’re drinking the
VaynerMedia Kool-Aid? I do because they tell me
those stories every day. But, you know, look, I mean, is there
times where I realize that if I was a little
more dark and a little bit more of a bad guy that I
could have created a cult and it could have been real negative? I do. But I guess at the end of the day the reason I feel really okay
is I know what my intent is, and I think what matters is if
you know what your intent is, you’re not fearful of that. If I am creating some distortion amongst my employees and my friend base that consumes my content, I think it’s gonna be all for good. I mean, that’s a very, you know. It’s not like, “Ha ha ha,
I’ve got them all tricked “and I’m gonna make 51
cents on every dollar,” it’s, “Holy crap, if I
have them all tricked “I’m gonna make 49 cents on every dollar.” Got it? And that’s a big difference, man. Those two cents? That’s a big difference. That two cents is the whole difference, and so the answer is, I’m flattered, maybe, I don’t think so, and if it’s happening, I
think everybody’s gonna win.