Hi Gary, I’m coming from you
from my dental office in North Bergen, New Jersey and my
question is in regards to sleep. How do you develop rituals for
your sleep and bedtime when your life is unpredictable as a
businessperson and a parent and you have a lot of obligations
and a lot of people contacting you at all hours of the day? Thank you. – Okay, well, first of all
you know what they tell you on airplanes put your
own oxygen mask first. – Yes.
– That is key. They don’t say that
because they are nice. They say that because you won’t
be much use to anybody else if you’re not breathing. So you’re not going to be
much use to your children, your patients anybody if you
let yourself burn out. Nobody should be able to reach
you at all hours unless you have what I have which is a dumb
phone that has no data for my daughters and for overnight news
editor if there is a crisis. But my regular phone that a lot
of people have that has all my life and my work on when
I’m asleep it is asleep and it is outside my bedroom. The same thing for me I have it by my bed but it is
completely on silent. It never wakes me up. Never know, I’m out. I totally agree with that
and I think it is binary. To answer your question, Doctor, either you are doing
this or you’re not. There is no half
pregnant in these strategies. For me with health two years ago
I went all in and so now I found the hour that I
didn’t think existed. Excuse me, it’s two hours ’cause
you got to get ready, shower after it’s just binary. If you want to, if you believe
it, if you read this book if you believe this thesis if you
Google, if you watch her interviews, if you believe in
this if this has been bubbling up, now if you have a job where
you have to get paged and come in firefighter, doctor – But it doesn’t
happen every night. – [Gary] No, it doesn’t. – Even if you’re a doctor– – I wanted to ask you how many
times has the news editor– – Never. – It hasn’t happened yet?
– No. – No major thing
has happened yet– – That woke me up? And touch wood, I haven’t
heard from my daughters either. It’s just a security blanket. – It makes you feel better. – It makes you feel better. But the point is that it is
absolutely critical to realize that we have been living
under a collective delusion. I have to say that. We are now where we were in
the 60s regarding smoking. The science was in but people
were still glamorizing smoking and there were doctors I saw an
ad that the other day from the 60’s of a doctor in a white
coat saying, “I smoke menthols “because they
refresh my throat.” So really that’s where we
always sleep deprivation. – Yeah, you know it’s funny over the last year and a half
and have probably not often enough and probably
why I had so much passion to do this with you so I have
something to point to I’ve sprinkled in a lot more
of hustle but that means what you’re doing when you’re
awake not don’t sleep. Don’t watch four hours
of “House of Cards” if you want to build a business. Don’t play video games for six
hours but get your sleep in. I’ve been thinking about more
evergreen pieces of content that I can point to when people are
like, “Gary you don’t sleep.” I’m like, “No, no watch
this episode with Arianna.” That had a lot that was a
deciding factor for me. – Because people
are looking to you. – And by the way,
I sell hard work. And I want to make sure that
it is clarified as in I’m more worried about playing Candy
Crush for an hour when you want to build a big business versus
taking that away from yourself. – Absolutely. Hard work is not the problem. I’m not talking about slowing down just look at what
I’m getting done. – [Gary] Right. – I’m talking about being your
most efficient best self when you show up for work. – How much does
that young man sleeping? – Tell him.
– I sleep eight hours– – [Arianna] Daniel is my
fabulous Chief of Staff. – every single night. – [Gary] Eight hours?
– Eight hours. Oh, we work hard.
We get it done. We hustle like crazy but
when I’m out, I’m out. – [Gary] And before? How long have you
guys been together? – [Daniel] About a
year and a half. – [Gary] And so before that? – Before that I honestly thought
that the hustle meant giving up wellness and sleep. I was convinced then. I had drunk that Kool-Aid. It’s a collective
delusion like she said. – So what were you
spending asleep? – Maybe five hours. – [Gary] Yeah. – Maybe because I
wanted to brag about it. I wanted to say hey folks I
don’t sleep and therefore I’m working my hardest. – You know it’s funny, Snapchat
has been interesting to me I guess last night, not last night
but man when I don’t six to me is the number I’m really, if I’m
under six I’m very concerned. And usually I’m under six
and you guys know this if you’re following
me on Snapchat is when I travel but then I
sleep on the flight to make sure I close that gap.
– Right. When you check into a hotel
especially after a flight I highly recommend a hot bath,
a hot shower there’s something wonderful about
water washing away. – Big fan, big fan.
You know, right? Remember those 10 seconds you
are an assistant when I was like shower before.
I’m a big fan. – I need to get him a shower
and they’re like “No he doesn’t.” – I buy hotel rooms from the
night before because there’s no early check-in just to
take a shower when I land. – Absolutely essential. There is no better investment
than investment in yourself. Don’t buy a bag,
buy a hotel room. How are you are going to show
the next morning, that is the key.
– India. – [India] One more?
– One more.

For an early stage startup that
just received 500,000, 600,000 or $1 million in capital, what
are the critical things they should be looking to address? – These guys have
a great company. Let’s make sure we link up
both Ace’s and their company and Plum’s company in
my description. Staphon make sure you
team up with Sam on that. Well look I mean first and
foremost, you don’t blow it. The amount of people that
have blown through their five or 600, million in cash because
they didn’t have a strategy of what they were going to do
with money is unbelievable. It’s unbelievable how much cash
and wallet is just burning for so many startup
founders it’s quite said. So I think you have to have a
real plan for it and again no different than the first
question on this episode, you have to have a strategy on
where you’re going to deploy it. What are your biggest needs? To me I like to invest in
things that bring back dollars in the midterm. I don’t need the short term but
I don’t need the longest term. I think sometimes
people are too… It’s funny, ideas are shit until
execution I like to say a lot because I think most
founders get caught on one side or the other. Some founders take $500,000
and they want that 500,000 to make them 800,000. It’s all transactional.
Sales, conversion. Other founders start thinking
about what their company needs in three years. In three years, we’re going to
need video editing software so let’s buy that now and you
didn’t get to three years. By the time that you spent all
the money that was what created this scenario you never getting
to those three years from now. I think much like marketing in
the year that you live in, day trading attention, some
of my marketing principles, I deploy in my
operating principles. What is the most important
thing with that money right this second that isn’t short-term
sales turn 500 into 600,000 but what is not the were going to
need this in three years so let’s spend it? By the way furniture and rent
and all these things that’s where people waste money. AJ and I started
this company in a conference room
of another company. This is not a
super fancy office. Right? Yeah.
It’s good. I’m happy about that. This is actually pretty fancy
compared to where we were a year ago so like people just waste
money on a lot of things that don’t matter. Now, it can’t be so screwed
up here that people don’t want to come here. But we don’t need $8000
recliner chairs for everybody and that’s what a lot
of startups do. It’s crazy. They spend more time and energy
on like how fancy this coffee machine is gonna be than
actually building a god damn business. So what you do with it? You better know what to
do with it or your startup is in deep shit. Don’t ask GaryVee, I hate
third person, don’t ask me. Figure out what to do with it. Make it practical as hell
because that money will disappear fast and the only
thing that will disappear faster is your hopes and dreams about
your business if you don’t know what to do with it.

“no to good things so you
can say yes to great things?” – You know Kyle, you’re talking about decision making and time management and opportunity costs is
a tremendous question. Who gets to decide what is good or great? Is first and foremost. What may be good to me may not be great to you. For me if I can meet Ric Flair for dinner that would be great, for India, are you excited about having
dinner with Ric Flair? – Yeah, totally. – Do you know who Ric Flair is?
– No. – Exactly. Now name one
of your favorite bands. – I don’t know. You know who
I really had dinner with? Jeff Bridges. – I don’t know who that is, the actor?
– Yeah. – I know who that is. Give me a band that you love right now. – A band that I love right now? – Follow me here. – This is really scary. – Just say it, stop being scared. Some random. – Grimes. Grimes. – Good, I don’t know
anything about Grimes. I never heard of Grimes. And you’d be like, Hey the lead singer of
Grimes, it’s a singer? E-mailed right now and said,
“I want to have dinner” I’d be like, delete, like
I don’t even know, right? And so who gets to decide
what is good and great and that’s why I’m answering this question with that little skit. Which is you don’t know until you do it. And so, Kyle. Kyle, too many people
crippled by this question. And I’m going to get
serious now for a second. You won’t know if something is good or great until
it actually happens. Some of the greatest things that ever happened to me in business
look terrible on paper. Wasn’t somebody fancy,
wasn’t fancy, you know? It just was kind of like, oh wait, and then that person knew
and then I connected them. Meeting Blaine Cook, the original CTO of Twitter for a taco
at South by Southwest on the dawn of South
by Southwest this week. That didn’t look like one of the greatest meetings of my life, but it turned into one of the greatest meetings of my life. This happens all the time. Too many people are crippled by the right hire, by the right meeting. I say work harder, work more efficient, make more 15 and 30 minute meetings that leave you more
time to do more things. And create more opportunities and don’t be crippled by choosing the right opportunities or not. So the answer is, nobody
can answer that for you. Normally you can’t answer it upfront. I did a bunch of podcasts that I never heard of the people before. And I think some of them
have been paying dividends. And I did a podcast
with Shaq that is going to air shortly. On paper it looks like Shaq is a greater thing than good. But I think we’re going
to sell more books, from some of that good because I didn’t realize the
audience that person had. Be more efficient with what you do to allow you to do more things. Then you don’t have to worry about the subjective and non controllable like knowing what’s good or great. That’s the recap.

“decisions you’ve stopped
making or put on autopilot “in order to maximize your
brain power for the day?” – That’s a great question. Thank you India, and No Fun Press. I’m gonna blow your faces off. Almost all of them. – Whoa, whoa. – Almost all of them, and
what I mean by that is, I fundamentally believe
that I recognize for me that 99% of things don’t matter. I mean, you guys roll
with me, you know, right? Like, I don’t care, fine. Like think about the lack
of micromanaging I do, the lack of being weird, you know. Really the only
micromanaging I ever did was when I would make Zak photoshop out my double chin during the fat years. I really really really
believe that most things don’t matter, and so
what I do is I put people in positions to succeed, I recognize, I do believe that most
people that do things for me or with me, especially if
they’re tasks that I can do, don’t do them as well as I do. I’m like every other person with ego and skills and all that. The problem is, I recognize
I can’t do them all. It’s about how you look at ’em. DRock and I had an interesting
conversation the other day on a different subject, but it was like, you can look at this, or
you can look at this, right? And that’s how I look at it. I could do all these 29 things at an 11, or I can outsource that
and let all of them be eights and sevens and sixes and fives, ’cause they don’t mean that much, and I can focus on whatever’s
left for me and do it at a 37, or an 11, just to
make the analogy proper. So I think most things don’t matter. I go with my intuition to focus
on what I should be doing. That’s it, that’s it. I’ve been able to level up in my career by leaving my ego at the door and recognizing that other people could do it better, and if they don’t do it
better, that their eight is as good as my 11, because
the end result of the marketplace judging is an
eight and 11 is the same god damn thing, and my
time and energy can be deployed against something bigger, while, optically, back
to the prior question, we’ll focus on something
like VaynerMedia where holistically people
thought a waste of my time, I knew what my 25 year,
40 year strategy was, and so that’s a scoop, India. It was a good day here in the streets.

“Doesn’t he see the value while “he writes books himself?” – Niels, I don’t read books,
because of a couple things. One, I’m very inefficient at reading so it takes me a long, long time, and the truth is I don’t
think I actually grasp what I read. As a matter of fact,
something very interesting has happened over the
last six to eight months here at VaynerMedia. When I see that something
comes in my inbox that’s a very important piece of business, and it’s a very long email,
AKA more than 18 words, I call a five minute meeting,
because in five minutes, and my staff will tell you. You won’t see the body language here, but I’m saying it for them it’s insane. In a meeting, I basically don’t even let people finish saying what they’re saying, because I’ve grasped it,
but if they sent me that same comment in four sentences I literally wouldn’t even
know what was going on. I don’t read, because I
don’t think it’s an efficient transaction of transforming information into my brain, I really don’t. Audio books is something I need to take very seriously, but the truth is I don’t read because the way I like to consume
information is living it. I know that sounds weird, but it’s just the truth. I really do think the reason that I’ve been able to be an anomaly is I know that that’s
probably not the norm. Most people do read books, like as a matter of fact, it’s crazy that the internet came along, because if the internet hadn’t come along, I wouldn’t have written
or read in my life. I was well on my way, if I was I’m sure there’s some 50 to 80 year olds who are watching the show right now, or listening to the show who are like me who realize, holy crap. They really didn’t write or read from 24 to 45, pre-internet stuff. I write books, because I know so many people do read. I know so many people do learn from highlighting the shit out of the books. I don’t, and so you can’t be religious or romantic about these things. Just cause I write them doesn’t mean I need to read them, and vice versa. The reason I don’t do it is ’cause I don’t find value in it for me, and I
highly recommend a lot of you start really auditing yourself
and understanding, are you doing stuff that actually
doesn’t bring any value to you just because that’s what society and the world and you have always done because the answer is yes.

“You always say that people pay
for services that give time. “What area needs a timesaving
business like an Uber?” – Sam, I don’t know all of them. For example, I would absolutely pay for my clone to do this show right now so I could be in the meeting that I really have to be in, right? Obviously that’s a little
farfetched and a little faraway, but I think there’s a ton of things. I think I would pay a
lot of money right now to have somebody on
demand do certain things for my grandma in her
retirement home, right? Picking up my cleaners. Obviously there’s the Postmates and people that are saving
time, but I actually think, I got a good one for you. I’m gonna go deep here a little bit, even though I’m a little bit of a rush and I clearly am talking a
little faster than normal, so all of you, so for all of you that are
listening to this on 2x speed, let’s 4x this shit, here we go. When Facebook really hit and
MySpace was still leading, like kind of leader, everybody started creating
niche social networks, right? Niche social networks. I would have invested in
the baseball social network, the gardening social network, the Goth museum social network, like, I’m kidding. I really, really, the niches were happening, right? What it turned out to be, hindsight, was we only needed one social network. I actually think the
reverse is gonna happen for the timesaving economy. Meaning, there’s Postmates and there was all these kind
of, like, “We do everything.” I actually think this is gonna be a space where people win on niching out. So, like, a dry cleaner pickup thing. Shyp, S-H-Y-P, I’m obsessed with. We got a little money in in our last fund disclosure for Shyp, no, not a lot, but boy, do I love them because nobody wants to
go to the post office, so I think that’s an incredible one. You know, I think there’s, look, I’ll give you one, like,
“I don’t wanna go shopping,” like, “Come to me here at Vayner. “Let me put on some shoes
and pants real fast, “five minutes, and I’m out.
I will buy so much more.” So, personal shopping
coming here, big one. There’s Instacart, so there’s food. Literally, anything you do, any, like, Question of the Day. List two things that you
do that you hate doing. That’s in play. ‘Cause you hate doing it because you’d rather
be doing something else and that’s where the time arbitrage is and so, you know, gardening,
hanging pictures in your house, like, just everything. Just everything is gonna be arbed. Anything a human doesn’t
want to do is in play. I’m trying to think of
one more good example. Anybody got one that popped to their mind? – [Staphon] Laundry. – [Gary] No, but laundry’s-
– They’d come in and hit it. – No. No, no. Get back
to here. Staphon, no, no, There’s nothing that’s
a singular app right now that literally you press a button and you give somebody a bag, like, how about you don’t even put a bag? How about they walk into your
house and take your pile? Because we’re living
in a more open society where trust is a real play. We’re letting people stay in our home. Wait a minute. You’re telling me that somebody wouldn’t leave
their door open and let, and just put a pile of,
this is what I would do. Put a pile of clothes in the front and somebody could come
with a key and get it in a world where Airbnb, you’re letting people stay in your home? Trust is on the rise, my friends, ’cause transparency is on the rise. Getting harder to hide
and do the wrong thing. Very, very interesting times.

– Hey Durrell! – How you doing? – Tremendous. – Hey, Co-founder of Stost
which is P-to-P marketplace for storage.
– [Gary] Okay. – I wanted to ask you about the economy of, the sharing economy. – Okay. – Where do you see it going
in the next five, 10 years? I wanna make sure,
you and I are aligned on the sharing economy term. Because a lot of people are throwing it out on different ways. Give me some examples of
companies or some executions. – Okay, so like Uber. Why do you, find Uber has
a share in your company or Resy is where you about the go? – Well, I was about to say Breathr? – Okay, Breathr, cool. – Basically connecting two people. – Got it, got it! I just want to know, where
you see that industry going?

Sucks here. What can they do to bring
themselves into this decade? Online and off. So antiquated.” – Jose, there’s nothing they can do. Now, let me explain why. There’s nothing they
can do because, I think, I’m not even educated on this. They are run by the state. Which would make sense. Which means it’s political. It’s all the things that
I do not believe in. And they won’t fix it. The only way that DMV’s can be fixed is if they go private and are run by entrepreneurs who then actually care about the customer and will fire somebody
if they suck at the DMV like everybody I’ve ever had. And care about efficiency
and time and speed and getting people out and do things like bring in
Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts into the DMV to make
more money on the rent. Or the arbitrage of making
a percentage of each sale. You know, innovate and
care and give a crap. All the things that government industries and objects don’t do because it is not in
their best vested interest because the people that can’t innovate and can’t win in a competitive landscape they default into doing
those things instead. How’s that for some (beep) fire? It pisses me off, it’s so crazy. And I don’t wanna be a hardcore like– Honestly, I don’t wanna
be a hardcore capitalist on this issue. And that was as hardcore to that side of an answer I ever give
’cause I do think I blend but like, I don’t know. If you don’t incentivize
humans in some way to do the right thing, you can’t win. And more and more, in a digital world, I would say I’m more
passionate and more hardcore about my points of view
on government agencies and school today than
I even was 10 years ago because there’s alternatives. I’m a pragmatic kind of
dude and I understood that some of the things but now
there’s so much innovation. There’s so many ways we can solve. It’s just, we’re not incentivizing. These are bigger issues than you and I and so privatizing is the way
I think those would be better. I really do and look, privatizing
has its own bad stuff. I’m not one of these like,
everything should go that route because I believe– but in the same way that I believe unions were really valuable
when the titans of the first– By the way, I could see unions coming back as an important thing as
we live through the second industrial revolution but for right now, while we’re alive, take
advantage of these opportunities. – [Voiceover] Anthony
says, “I recently learned

“How can efficiency and
creativity better work together?” – They will be inefficient into the time and space you give them, to be honest. I mean, I was a creative a long time, and then I became the
boss of the creatives, and I knew how much fat was
built into their writer’s block and their, you know, thinking
and everything, and– – The zen room they needed. – And I had to come out
of the associate press, where you had to turn out
seven, eight stories a day. I knew that the creativity
expanded into that space. And of course, you gotta be creative, and creatives need some time
to decompress and so forth, but we give them a little bit too much, or maybe not we in general, but it is easy to listen to them moan and
groan about needing more, and so creatives can be efficient. – To get efficiency,
you gotta be creative, and you gotta have creative people. And efficiency doesn’t
mean some guy or woman in a hole, driving every day. It means that people
are thinking of new ways to do things, coming up with
incremental improvements, making things better every day. Finding a better way every
day takes a thinking head set, and you want that
mentality in your company. You want the whole company
to be thinking about, every day, what is a better way
of doing what I’m doing now? – I’m a big fan of
betting on your strengths, and also really
recognizing putting players in the best position to succeed. And we have nothing but creatives here, of the 500 employees, 200 of them, and if I’ve deemed, if we’ve deemed, if Tina, who runs our
Creative Department deems that this person is bringing us quality, I think one thing that a
lot of people try to do is mold them into being more efficient. I’ve done that plenty
of times in my career. One of the things I’ve
decided now is to look at it more as a net-net game, right? You know, I may not like
that they need to be in a zen room with unicorns in it, I may not, but if I’m
okay with the output. If I’m okay, net-net, 365 day year output, I’ll take it, right? You could have the most
prima donna creative, but if they do that one
thing that you decide drives the ROI, on the flip
side, you could have somebody who’s the most efficient
but lacks the magic. What you have to really do is, it’s wide receivers in football. Listen, they’re at the
mercy of the quarterback getting them the ball, that’s why, they don’t get to touch the ball. The quarterback touches the ball, the running back touches the
ball when the call’s played, the receivers don’t, so many variables, and I’m very intrigued by that psychology. That being said, you know, I value speed and execution over everything. And so, I definitely sit
on that Mendoza line, if there’s a coin toss. If I’m even debating it, if
I’m even debating your value as a creative over the
efficiency and the output, you’re in trouble. – That’s sensational, one of the things. No it is!
– Thank you, Jack. – One of the things that
really can kill a company is the innovators sit over here in a box, and they are Thomas Edison,
and they are Steve Jobs, – The ninjas. – And they’re these people. And then, everybody
else, keep your head down and be a grunt. You lose the minds of these people. You want everybody to be an innovator! – Right.
– 100 percent. And it’s interesting, here at Vayner, we’re a classic agency,
we want more practicality from our creatives, and we
want our account strategists being creative, and that’s
been a big benefit for us. And, you know what else it
does, it creates mutual respect. Because when the innovators are over here, they sit on a higher ground,
and it deflates the momentum and the equity. – Right, any time you get prima
donnas in an organization, it enervates everyone around. – So, let’s wrap up with this, we don’t do a wrap-up session, but we’re
gonna make a unique thing.