“What do you is a bigger
obstacle to success, “a lack of time or a lack of capital?” – Roberto, this is a tremendous question. I think the biggest obstacle to success is a lack of optimism. That question in itself
is the problem, my friend. Right? You’re looking at two things
that are both negatives, and guess what? Both of ’em are obstacles. When I started winelibrary.com, transformation for my business, I had time, I worked my
face off every minute, but we didn’t have a whole lot
of money in our profit center so it took more time, right? It’s just the way it is. Today, I have more money,
but boy, don’t I have time. But neither, ever, ever, will be an excuse for me. And so, just to drill
this through the throat of the VaynerNation, that’s
right, I went that graphic, don’t smile DRock,
here’s the bottom line: I refuse to allow you to get
an answer to that question because both of them are firmly square in the excuse column, and I
have no patience for that. There will always be problems. Let’s talk about a million other things that are a way to stop success. The health and well-being
of your family members so it takes your mind away from execution. The country you live in’s government and political concepts in these moments, a la, startups in China that I’ve invested in that got traction, but then people that were
wired in to the government decided to not allow it to happen and then the start up disappeared. Not as easy to be an entrepreneur there, it’s still a communist country. Sorry, it just is. And so all these things
can be problems, right? There’s a competitor
with a billion dollars who’s also skilled and
punches you in the mouth and knocks you out in
the first round, right? The world changing. I mean, there’s just a
million obstacles, right? The media, one bad coverage of you. A moment in time. You know what I think about a lot? You know what I think about a lot? Let’s get really real here,
this is why we did this show. I always, I’m a human being, and I always think about a moment in time. What if I just say the wrong
thing at the wrong time? Right? What if I call out China for
being a communist country in an episode while I’m on a rant, and somebody who’s watching
doesn’t like the way that tastes and that takes away a business opportunity for me in China in seven years? Even though I’m not trying to zing, it’s just things that I saw. What if, you know, what if what if I look down on my phone while I’m driving even though
I’ve really not done that, and I hit somebody and I kill them? And that becomes the story, and then like forget about the story, about what you think about me, I will never recover from that because I killed somebody because
I needed to check a Tweet. These are moments in time. So there are so many things that can keep you from
being successful, right? The people that you invested in having something bad happen to them so it slows you down. My friends, there are a
million reasons why not, but there’s one great reason why, which is, you just gotta persevere, no matter what it is. It’s just the way it is. It’s hard being an entrepreneur. It’s hard building a business. Everybody thinks it’s so easy, that there’s an entitlement. There’s a disaster, zinging China? Here comes my U.S. zing right now: there is an insane generation
of 18 to 25 year olds that think they’re entitled
to having a business because they saw the
social networking movie and everybody’s decided
that if you’re a kid and you know what tech is. Because you used Instagram early on, you’re entitled to
actually build a business. Building a business is hard. And you know what makes it really hard? Everything that happens
every day of every moment. So, you can pick time, you can pick money as the one or two things
that you think stop you from winning your game, but the truth is, there’s a million reasons. 99% of businesses go out
of business for a reason. And that reason is, it’s hard. And so, if you’re watching this show, I’ve got a sense of who you are, and you need to start
creating layers and layers and layers of skin to
be able to get through. Because the glamour of
being an entrepreneur, the goodness, you know you get
very confused by my optimism. Because it’s my optimism, I can’t help it, it’s just how I roll. It’s probably one of
the variable 1% reasons why I’m successful. But please, don’t get it twisted. This is hard. Every day is hard. And if you don’t have the
stomach to weather the storm, you will not be successful. And by the way, let me throw you a real weird curveball, and that’s okay. People have to look
themselves in the mirror and understand if they’re
number two, three, four, five, six, seven in an organization, That has differences
of being a number one, but maybe that’s where
your skill set sits. Maybe that’s how you make
your fortunes and happiness and all the things that
you’re looking for, and so. That question got me
goin’ a little bit, Steve. Because it’s under the context of excuses. And I will never make an excuse. Everything that’s a problem with me, everything I don’t achieve, everything that’s a
problem at VaynerMedia, and everything is my fault. And I succumb to that, and I respect that. And I actually think that’s
the way it should be. And so, um, no excuses my friends.

about people that say
companies like Twitter, Uber, and Snapchat are way
overvalued in the market?” – Tony, what’s really
interesting about this quesiton is I am one of those people. I grew up in the late and mid 2000s into the 2010s 11s, 12s, 13s thinking a lot of things were overvalued. I thought we were at a little bit of a bubble in 2010, 11. I’ve been proven to be extremely wrong. What I would tell you is,
is that inflation happens. The world changes. I’m starting to wrap my head the notion of wait a minute maybe
these things are undervalued because the value of a
hundred million dollar compnay just 15, 20, 30 years
ago was a far grander and wealth just contines
to exponentially grow and so I would say that,
it’s a double-edged sword. There wil be prenty of
things over valued, tons. But if something is proven to have won and you think is the
future of infrastrucure. A la an Uber, where you
can clearly see them getting into FedEx and UPS lanes in other places. Plenty of people have lost a lot of money by thinking things were overpriced. And I want you to listen to
that backwards one more time. So rewind it whether you’re
listening or watching. A lot of people have lost
a lot of money by thinking things have been overvalued. And of course there’s
the ying to that yang and pople have lost in
betting on overvalued things but when things hit scale Amazon and Ebay in the early days of the internet where people thought they were overvalued but the world caught up to them. Be careful if the world is
catching up to something. What I mean by that is
if you start watching normal people doing things
on some of these platforms you’re going to see a scale jump Are they overvalued? If there’s a crash in the market or a terrorist attack in a
major city, can it be overvalued? Of course, but is that
temporary is the real question. And when I say temporary
don’t misunderstand me. Is it overvalued and
will go down for a year but then go back up because they’re living in the future while other things are not. – [Voiceover] Annie Hubbard asks

What are your thoughts
on using Kickstarter to start a business? – Mount Dream. I wanna climb that mountain. Mount Dream, Kickstarter. First of all, I think it’s a
great way to start a business. Tons of people have started businesses on the back of Kickstarter. Didn’t Oculus Rift start
on the back of Kickstarter? And sold for two billy on Facebook? So, what do I think?
I think it works. Here’s what else I think. I think there’s a lot of people that put shit businesses on Kickstarter. This is a classic question of, do you think this
platform can work to do X? The answer is always yes. Especially when it’s already happened. The problem is, do you suck at it? Do I think people can make a million dollars selling on Ebay? Yes. The talented ones. Do I think you can make a lot of money by making YouTube videos? Yes. The talented ones. Do I think that you could become a Vine celebrity on Vine and make lots of money, millions? Yes. The talented ones. And so over and over, my classic, do I think a basketball has an ROI? I do. LeBron makes a shit, LeBron will be a billionaire
because of a basketball. That’s the ROI of it.
I will not. So, can Kickstarter be a great platform to kick off a business? It can, but people that have
bought into this notion of, Oh, it’s easy!
Just go on Kickstarter, people are gonna give you money, and then you start a business! They’re lost.
L-O-S-T, lost. And that is the problem
in our society right now, all of this (bleep) works! Do you have the talent to execute? – Yo, what’s up, Gary?
And DRock, of course.

– [Voiceover] Megan asks, “You’re like, “a billionaire, right? “What do you splurge on?” – Megan, I’m not even sure if I’m a 100-millionaire. Maybe with my assets, you know, VaynerMedia and Wine
Library are doing well, but I splurge on experiences. For example, LeBron’s first
game back in Cleveland against my Knicks, as you notice today I’m wearing orange because I’m starting to get ready for the basketball season. You can imagine why. So, experiences. You know, vacations with my family, and definitely things
like LeBron’s first game back in Cleveland, and
they play the Knicks. AJ’s a huge Knicks fan,
more so than even I am. Let’s go with him to that. Something me and my bro can remember when we’re much older. It’s cool to like, sit
around if you’re an old man and be like, “Remember when we went to “Kareem’s first game back in Milwaukee? “With the Lakers?” That’s like a fun story. Those are the kind of
things, I want to spend money on experiences. Paying for my friends to go
on trips when I was younger, when they couldn’t afford it. I splurge on spending time with people that I care about.

for vetting clients,
specifically at VaynerMedia?” – Dan, answer number one. Do you have enough money? Dan, answer number two. What I’m really looking
for, to not make a joke, and you know, this show’s putting
me in a better mood, guys. I gotta be honest with you. I forgot that that’s what
Wine Library TV did for me on these Mondays where I want
to annihilate people’s souls. Putting on a show with my
community does help my feelings. I need a lot of comments on
this episode, by the way. I need comments in there. I need, I need, comments. Anyway, you know, the things
we’re looking out for is, are they creative? The number one thing I’m scared of is we have a ton of creativity and we can do real work. But if people want to
follow a very strict process of how they’ve always done it versus how we’re supposed to do it. I’m petrified in that. So really there’s no way to do it, because everybody says
they want to be innovative and do the new thing and
invest in the future. And then you get into practicality and the first thing
that’s cut is the future, which is why so many people lose. So everybody’s into defense versus offense when times get tough. For me, when times get
tough, you go harder, not eh. Anyway, so I’m trying to sniff out if people have the
stomach to be innovative and do things differently. To take some risks, but be practical, but have a little more
patience for that practicality and that ROI to present itself. – Gary, I’ve got a very
serious question for you.

what role does internal culture play in the company’s success? Can you give one concrete
tip on building that culture? Ekaterina, how are you doing? It’s always great to hear from you, I’m glad you’re on the show. Company culture is actually the only, you know what’s funny,
it’s funny this question’s coming up today, I actually
on the way to work today said, “you know what, the
book that I’m gonna write that’s really gonna like,” you know, I always think is Crush It!,
ooh, Thank You Economy’s gonna sneak up on people.
I know, as I sit here today, the book that I write
on culture and how to build an organization through humans, not CFO cash tactics, is
gonna be my book legacy, so whenever I get to that,
so it’s everything to me, as an operator I’m all E.Q. over I.Q., the one concrete tactic I have is way too many people make
decisions on who they fire or hire based on money. “Oh, we have the budget
to hire another designer, or camera person, or” like
it’s a financial decision. All my decisions on hiring
and firing are emotional. What is it gonna do to
the collective community? You know, if I fire this
person, who’s so popular internally, because they
have great people skills, will that hurt everybody else, and can I can I push that person
into another direction to help them get another job over 90 days instead of firing them
abruptly in one day? That costs me a lot more money, but does a hell of a lot for me in the culture. And so, that is my one concrete kind of curve ball haven’t heard a lot of
people talk about that kind of stuff, example.

I am from Fittr, a small fitness app available on the app store. – That’s a plug. – We’re a four-person
team, and we are seeing a rapid growth in our customer base. Currently we have a very
intermit customer experience, but I’m kind of worried that as we grow, we may have more and more
trouble with maintaining that. Is there any advice you could give me? Thanks. – Kik, there’s some serious
advice that I can give you which is, if you grow,
(wood thuds), thank God, you will make money, or
you will raise money, those are two things that
happen when you grow, and you will take some of that money and you will apply it to
hiring more human beings to continue to scale your four-person team to a 23-person team that can then do, obviously, in that scenario,
around six times more engaging and intimacy. This is the insanity that
pisses me off more than anything which is that people think
that engagement doesn’t scale. It doesn’t scale when you roll like me and you answer everything yourself, but it does scale when you’re a logo, or water, a league, a thing, it scales. As a matter of fact,
I’ve been comtemplating an #AskGaryVee Show Twitter account that allows me to scale, right? I can have four human beings
behind this show engaging, you know, that’s not me,
’cause it’s a show, me is me. And so you can scale all day long, or you and your four-person team willing to make the commitment to allocate dollars into humans, one that most CFOs and
other financial people do not believe in. I believe in it, do you? – [Voiceover] Mark and
Patti ask, “What’s better

should you ever work for exposure only? – Mary, congrats on being the, by the way, the first person to
get two questions asked on the #AskGaryVee show, and I know, I know I’m gonna see in the comments, everybody’s gonna be like, you haven’t even answered mine yet, and now you’ve answered
Mary’s second question? Yes. She asks good questions. But, this question, I really wanna answer because I’ve been having a lot of Twitter conversations
lately, and very honestly for the basic eight to 10 years that I’ve been in the tech game, meeting all these wonderful people, especially when you
think about the tech game when I first got into it, it was a very, save the world and much more zen, it was less business-y. Characters like me probably ruined it. (thumping) This is a big debate, this
is something that I sit on a very firm line on,
which is, I do think that people should do things
for free, for exposure. I still do things for free. And I get very compensated for my time, and my efforts, and I still do it, and somebody will say,
I had an easier base, people have to pay the bills. But the fact that people
don’t take into account that there is strategy in
doing things for exposure, that then lead to bigger
money in the future. This is not about elitism, like
some people jump on Twitter and say, pay the people! You gotta pay for the quality of work! I agree. But one needs to understand that money is not the only way to pay. Giving people in an at-bat, the platform, the exposure, is an absolute monetary way to compensate them in the
way that I define monetary. Listen, by the way, you
might fully disagree with me, and that’s ’cause you’ve
gone romantic on the issue, in my POV, and I respect that. But I just don’t know a
single person that is deemed, has achieved success without doing a solid percentage of things for free, as a jockeying chess
move to their success. So if you’re asking me, the answer’s yes. If you don’t do it, and
you only pay to play, I get it. And, by the way, it ebb and flows. I now respond to many of you, no I cannot speak at this
event unless I get my fee, because I promised my
wife I will not travel without getting my fee, because
I’ve got two young kids, this and that, and so like, it changes. You know, I will not be sold by anybody that it is inappropriate
to do some spec work, because I really believe in its strategy. – What’s up Gary, it’s Mitch Schneider,

potential business plan without the financial resources and the inventory, where do you start with funding?” – Damien, this is one of those questions that I like picking for the show, because I’m always scared to be too rude to the audience. You guys are smiling. Okay, now I’m freaked out
that Aton’s doing stuff. Oh, you guys are worried about how much I’m about to thrash Damien? Got it.
– [DRock] A little bit. – Damien, the answer to that
question is very simple. We’re in a bubble of financing right now. There are people that would finance this venture just on idea. It’s happened, people come in with a deck, they have nothing. People give them money for
a piece of the business, and they go on and do it. That’s your only option,
there’s nothing else practical. Any time somebody sets up a question… Do you know how many people have emailed me with the title, “About to Help You Buy
the New York Jets,” or “Gary, Open This Email and You Will Buy the New York Jets,” or “I’m Gonna Help You
Buy the New York Jets,” and the next line is, “Hey
Gary, I’m a fan of your work. I have a billion dollar idea.” Ideas are (bleep).
Everybody’s got an idea. Steve, you have ideas? – [Steve] I have all sorts of ideas. – I have unlimited ideas. If you have the idea that’s nice. If you don’t have the dollars, and if you don’t have the inventory, or even if I have nothing,
and so the only way you do something about
that is go and get dollars from somebody to, I
assume, get the inventory. I don’t understand what the inventory is in this exact question. The reason I’m answering this question is for the entire
VaynerNation to understand that practicality matters, right? Passion, which I’m loaded
with, is great. Right? Ideas, transcend the world, great, agreed. But, in execution, in practicality, is when these things become true. That’s what matters, that’s what the people we all look up to have done. They’ve taken from here,
and they’ve made it happen. That is massively important,
and that is something I push all of you to start
spending some more time on. Question of the day for Episode Nine,

– [Voiceover] T.Jay asks,
how would you suggest an indie artist use their marketing money when the royalty check
comes in six months later? – Jay, first of all,
thank you for the music, today. Big ups to him. And, the royalty check
coming six months later, how do I think you should execute on that, is very simple. I think you should execute
six months of patience. If you don’t have the money, you just wait for it to
come, and then you execute. There is a lack, word play Jay, and everybody else is watching. There is a lack of patience. The thought that your royalty
check comes six months later, means that whatever you
wanted to do with that monies, you know, to attack, just
has to wait six months. And so, practically, I’d just wait. – [Voiceover] Thomas asks, cake or pie?