#AskGaryVee Episode 67: How to Fire an Employee, Wine Distribution Business, Managing Social Media

– [Voiceover] Rob asks “On Facebook the separate business pages are easy to handle, on
Twitter I can switch between accounts on my iPhone with ease, but not on Instagram. Do I need separate accounts that the app hasn’t made it easy to handle, or is there a way to
successfully use one account for all three things without it being jumbled and ineffective.” – Rob, this is a tremendous question, and what I love about this show, somebody in the comments said, this is becoming more like
a master class mentorship, and I think it’s because we’re doing very specific questions. That’s what’s great about Q and A. Oh, a couple of things
by the way, real quick, DRock, Staphon, team, everyone, great new video that just came out about – you’re giving Staphon the credit? Right, ’cause you did the new Twitter one that’s about to come
out later today as well. We are crushing the video game. Show Staphon, and Staphon, you
look at him with the camera. It’s like a little meta thing going on. Let’s link that up right here. Will the Twitter video be up by the time this episode goes up? Great, let’s put that over here, and that one’s for you, DRock. And so a couple of new videos, and why I love Twitter
video, and more importantly, ’cause it’s just true, more importantly, the One Is Greater Than Zero thesis. These videos are great. They’re top line thinking. This show is great
because it’s practitioner. Let’s get to the answer, ’cause I’m being long winded here. You know, Twitter,
Facebook do make it easy. Instagram’s newer, even
though it’s become humongous. People forget how young the company is, and it’s a pain in the ass, much like it was the pain the ass for me, with Wine Library and Gary Vaynerchuk, GaryVee, and on Facebook,
when I used to have personal pages, before fan pages existed, and I maxed out my friends limit. That was a humblebrag. And yeah, so it’s a pain in the butt, but I think you should separate the three. Instagram has become a safe haven for people to consume content. They don’t want ads. They don’t wanna see things
they don’t wanna see, and I think it’s actually very important on Instagram specifically for you to segment out all three. I do think over time
Instagram will figure that out as it evolves as a product, or maybe not, ’cause they wanna make that friction so people aren’t hitting it too hard from too many different directions, but to answer your question practically, you need to create the three accounts, and it’s gonna be a pain in the butt because you gotta sign out, sign back in, but is that really that tough?

– [Voiceover] Rafael asks, “They say you should
hire slow and fire quick. How many chances do you give your staff?” – I feel it’s funny. On this show, multiple times, I talk about not being crippled by hiring somebody because if they’re not good I’ll fire. The truth is, I have struggled for 15 plus year of my career, at least, 22, 37, I would say for the
first 15 years of my career I was not doing a good enough job in the firing department, and it still is something I struggle with. It’s just not fun. There’s nothing worse
than firing somebody. There’s nothing good about it. I usually spend an extra 20 to 30 days just figuring out the justification, of like, “Oh but they were…” I’m literally making
up stuff to make myself feel better about it. So the truth is, the
real answer for me is, we’re slow to it, even… It’s one of the things I’m trying to get this company better at is, don’t worry, any
VeynerMedia people watching. Yeah, I mean, look. I’ve definitely come to
learn that you’re doing the right thing for them as well ’cause you’re just
dragging out the process, and they’re not growing, and nothing good is gonna come of that, but…. The answer, practically,
is I use my intuition. I really do. You just have to make a gut call sometimes on can you give this
person one more chance? We are not in the one, two,
or even three strike policy here at Vayner. We have enormous continuity, and some of it has to do with
the way we fire, in my opinion. I think people see us
trying to handle things with empathy and grace, and
one thing I’m very proud of is when people are let go here, people aren’t that surprised, right? And so, people paying attention… But you don’t wanna hold on too long because then you lose the
trust of all the great people, and so I don’t think there’s a set answer. You gotta go on your intuition. I think the more interesting answer is do you think you have the
EQ and the people skills and the intuition to do
it, and if you don’t, who do you think has it? And empower them to do it. That’s the more interesting part. And by the way, that could go left field. I would tell you that if
I didn’t have that skill in my early days of Wine Library, I would have courted my mother to come in and be that person because I knew she could do it, so even think outside
of your employee base. It might be a friend who
is not happy in their job, but you know they have
the best people skills you’ve ever seen, and
maybe you bring them in for a pseudo-HR doing other things, and you want them to handle that. The firing process is immensely important in every organization,
one that I don’t think people put enough emphasis on, and there’s a lot of angles. It’s not just firing fast. It’s not just not firing. It’s how you fire. We’ve been letting some people go, at least recently, throughout
the last three or four months, and I usually am not
that close to it anymore because I’m very much
trying to scale this, but I make sure that I reach
out a week or two later, when I find out, to that
person and thank them, if they were here for a day. All those things matter.

– [Voiceover] Ashey asks, “Do you think brands need to be represented across all social platforms, or just the most popular ones?” – Ashley, good job by
the double enforcement because you put up the Instagram, but you also hit me up on Twitter and said, “Yo, answer my question.” I like that gusto. Way to get it, girl. I do not think that
every brand in business should be on every platform. I actually don’t also
think that they should be just on the popular ones. If you do not know how to communicate, or your audience is
not there, for example, if you sell mattr- (thoughtful groan) If you sell adult diapers,
I would argue that SnapChat is not gonna kill it for you, even though it is
massively popular, right? If you sell selfie sticks
that are only made… That are pink and only marketed to fifteen year old girls, you know, Facebook’s starting to become a place where you could debate
is not really for you, and so I think you need
to be in the right place regardless of its size. YikYak’s not the biggest, but I think a lot of
college campus pizza shops should be all in on that, right? So, it’s not the size of the platform. (laughter)
There’s something funny about that. It’s not the size of the platform, and it’s definitely not on everything. It’s what’s right for your business, based on who you are trying to reach, and so if you’re looking to try to reach 60 year old, grey haired
business executives, you’ve gotta look at Linked In with a much more crucial
eye than on Instagram. If you’re trying to reach
25 to 45 year old women, now you get into the Instagram
and Facebook game for sure, and a little bit less Twitter. Definitely Pinterest as well. If you’re trying to
reach 28 year old dudes, Pinterest not as much, right? So, you’ve gotta understand the demo. You’re gotta reverse engineer
the demo you’re selling to or you’re aspiring to sell to, and that’s where you need to story tell. Around the attention graph of that person, predicated on the platform
that most matters.

– [Voiceover] Jonathan asks, “I import wines from Italy and sell via e-comm and through distributors. I’m currently focusing on
obtaining new distribution and have fallen behind on the e-comm side. Question: What percentage of my time should be split between
each side of the business, and what’s a good way to balance the two?” You know, Jonathan, it’s interesting. I’m trying to give a general answer to the whole market, but I
know your business so well. When you’re importing, I don’t
know what state you’re in, but when you’re doing e-commerce, are you selling to the end consumer? Because you can’t do that
in New Jersey or New York. Are you in a state- He’s in California, and Kermit Lynch, I think, does do that, so I think he can. I think in California,
I was about to say that, thanks, India. In California, ’cause
Kermit Lynch does that, you’re able to actually
sell to the consumer and also sell to distributors. You know, to me, if you
can sell e-commerce 100%, you’re no dope. You know that you’re making 50 cents more on every dollar by selling that way than selling to distributors, but what you know is you’re not that big, and you’re not necessarily
a retailer by trade, and it takes a lot of money and skill to be able to be a good
retailer to sell enough, where the distributors are
giving you the buying power. So my strategy for you is- Now, I’m giving you as
black and white a strategy as I’ve given on this show’s history. 80% to the distributors, 20% of your time, energy, and money to the consumers. Once you get that established, you spend every minute
to turn that into 70/30, 60/40, 50/50, 60/40, 70/30, 80/20, 90/10, maybe 80/20, right? Because you wanna get some restaurants and key retailers to bring
some awareness to it. And for everybody who’s watching, the reason I’m giving him that advice is he just makes more money
if he sells it direct. He’s also far more in control, where you sell to distributors, they’re maybe giving a deal to a retailer, that retail sells it cheap,
and that all of a sudden screws up the pricing in the market. So, that’s the answer. By the way, before you’re
done editing here, DRock,

but really I’m holding back tears, and my heart is heavy ’cause
Seahawks lost, and I bet $225. I’ve listened to Drake, The Weeknd, Jhene Aido, and even PartyNextDoor, but the pain is too much. How do I cope?” – Casey, I hear you man. I’ve got a couple pieces of advice. You should probably do what I do, which is heavy rotation of two songs. One from Bone Thugs n
Harmony and one from T Swift. Put those on loop, back and forth, go about seventeen T
Swift, seven Crossroads, you know, seven more T Swift. Kind of like seventeen,
seven, sevens are good. Listen to them on repeat. Drown your sorrows. Then take the pain, and put it in this very special compartment. Right? Put the pain in a compartment and build on that pain. Every time you have pain, put it in there, and let that be an engine for the revenge that you will strike against your enemies. That’s what I’m doing in football. Question of the day: