#AskGaryVee Episode 151: Vayner Employees Ask Questions in 360°

and how they recently
started their own creative in-house agency. What do you think about that? How that gonna affect the work we do? And how do we remain the experts on social when more platforms are
doing work in-house? – Platforms have done
in-house from the get. They’re never gonna replace agencies. And by the way, if they do, cool, then we’ll adjust, we’ll
start selling popcorn here at VaynerMedia or something. I mean, the reality is that there’s too much danger for
Facebook to start doing that because the agencies are
gonna push back against that, and then start recommending other things. I think what they’re doing is, they’re trying to show best of class work, things that they believe in. They’re pissed off at agencies
for not doing Facebook stuff, trying to do TV stuff, and the
other things of that nature. I think they’re looking
for it to be a North Star. They’re looking to find other
agencies to follow that lead, but all of them, Snapchat,
Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, they all have got some level of this. To me, it’s something
I’ve never worried about, or other agencies, I think,
should really worry about, mainly because, one, if they’re good enough, and
that brings the most value to the customers, then that’s
what the market should be, and then all of you will work at Facebook. That’s the way it should be. But, two, I don’t think it’s
in their vested interest as a platform to get in the
client service business. I think it’s a very tiny
dot in the ecosystem to try to move the creative in a direction that I think is meaningful
for their platform, and it’s a good way to spark, look, you’re asking the question. So it’s a good way to spark the market. For me, I default in
living in that environment that you have to make that content, so I’m not scared, and good
for them, and whatever. – Awesome. – Congrats to your Eagles.

– Good, what’s cooking? – I’ve seen this Extra
commercial trending everywhere. – The Extra commercial,
the gum commercial, yes. – How do you foresee cinematic commercials within a social space? – I think the reason the
Extra commercial’s doing well is ’cause it’s a good piece of content. It’s a beautiful love story played out. The brand is integrated
smartly, and not forced, and I think Facebook is the environment to produce video for, and that’s why we’re seeing it do well. There’s been great love
stories executed on television, but if that ran on TV, I don’t know, do you know how long it is? Two minutes? – I don’t know. – It’s longer than 30 seconds, right? – The song is just catchy.
– [Gary] If they did it during the Super Bowl,
or during the MTV Awards, and blocked off the time, and ran it, it would be like, “Aw, that was nice.” It wouldn’t be like this,
’cause people are sharing it, passing it on. This is the kind of work I
wanna be doing at Vayner. This is the kind of work that I think people are gonna be forced into. In a world where people
don’t wanna watch prerolls or commercials, brands are
gonna have to find ways to actually make great stories, and actually integrate their
brand where it’s not forced. It’s not like this is our show, and this was a bottle company we had, and we’re like, “Oh, I’m
just answering your–” It’s actually part of it. I think it’s an absolute preview
to where things are going. We’ve seen things like this on YouTube. I think the power of
Facebook is the targetting and the shareability that is extreme. So I’m excited about it. – Yeah, me too.
– [Gary] Good, great question. – Thank you.
– [Gary] Awesome. – Ben, over there.

– Question. Twitter Moments. – Jesus Christ, calm down, guys. – Now that Twitter Moments
is a week since launch, exactly one week, what
are your initial thoughts, and do you think this is their attempt to take on Snapchat Live Stories? – I think it’s an absolute
Snapchat reaction, though I have a feeling they
were working on it before, which I think is the problem
in itself at Twitter. I think the last five years,
they’ve been slow to innovate. So whether it is a reaction to
what’s working for Snapchat, or it’s always been in place,
they’re both bad answers. I don’t think it’s some
great, unbelievable thing. I don’t know how much
you’ve looked at Moments. As a matter of fact while you’re all in the show.
– [Ben] They need Periscope support.
– [Gary] I don’t feel like the Moments stuff has been
that compelling of content. which I think scares me. I don’t think, if you’re
not compelled to watch it, it doesn’t matter where
it is in the UI or the UX, the content has to be right. It feels like a slapped
together, random skew of different videos and
pictures around a theme with weak editorial
curation at this point. I think if they can get that down, it’s like being a great programmer, right? NBC wins when their lineup is
the best in the 80’s and 90’s, and I think what Twitter needs
for that to be successful is somebody who really
knows how to curate content at that level. For me, it hasn’t hit the mark, and I’ve gone in there a lot already. I think the UI in the
app is very important. It’s work that’s maybe
go in there quite a bit. But I haven’t been
compelled by the content. And the thought of brands
integrating in there, in the same way that I don’t
think Snapchat’s right move is these 15 or 10 second video ads, I think that that’s gonna be
the more interesting part, which is back to the last
question that Sasha just asked. A 10 second video that’s
just like, “Eat Extra gum,” is not as interesting
as what we saw there. I think that’s gonna be their
problem because, don’t forget, they have to build a business around this. So far, I’m not super excited about it. What about you? – I think they need to
add Periscope support. I think that would make
it a lot more compelling. – Why? ‘Cause you’re gonna be
going through a Moments story, and then you’ll see something live, and that will captivate you to stay? – Yeah.
– [Gary] I think the problem with Periscope is, most people
suck a doing live video. – Yeah, but I like the
behind-the-scenes, intimate, sort of rawness of Periscope. It works out nicely that that
content lasts for 24 hours. So do the Moments, so I think
the timing works out too. – Cool, I’m sure they’re debating that. Thanks for your question.
– [Ben] Thanks, man.

– My question’s just
circling around our culture and our growth. Year after year, and I’ve
been here for a year, and just seen our culture
grow twice in its size. Any impacts or learnings
that you’ve taken away that have just shaped how
we’re looking forward, and how we’re staffing our business, how we’re maintaining our culture? – I think the biggest thing I learned over the last 18 months as
we’ve had a lot of growth is that, if the intent is right, and look, you being the head of HR, you have such a view that
so many other people don’t, which is, you get to see in the
closed door meetings with me the consistent North Star. I don’t know, you’ve had HR jobs before. I feel like a lot more people make a lot more business decisions, and the money is a big variable in, let’s not give this
person any more time, or let’s fire this person,
or let’s promote this person. Money, I think you’ve sniffed out, is so not a variable in those decisions. I think what’s happened in the last year, to answer your question directly, I think I’m even more confident than ever that if you’re intent is right, and you’re committed to
that intent at the top, that you can scale that,
whether it’s 20 people. Look, there’s a ton of
people watching right now that work in offices of 27 people, and their culture sucks shit. The amount of people here
that have worked at places that had 29 people. I just met somebody the other day who was like, “I just
came from another agency, and our culture was so bad.” They had 16 people. So I don’t think the number of employees is the variable of a culture. I think it’s cliche and
accepted that, when you grow, you can lose it. My belief, ’cause I’m in a lot of startups that have grown very big, is that, what happens is, the CEO or the founders take
their eye off of the culture, and they start looking for the exit. All of a sudden, if you’re looking to sell to Google, or Facebook,
or to another agency, you don’t care about the
people, you care about the exit. And then the culture hurts. – So how do you define culture then? – I think it’s the collective
feeling of everybody. To me, culture is a backwards thing of, do the people here actually
want to come to work, and actually like it,
and it’s not a chore, or it’s not super stressful? To me, it’s how each individual feels that adds up to one collective feeling. – Right, perfect. – Awesome, thanks.
– [Minnie] Thank you. – India, now what?

So my question is, you’re always super busy, always looking to take on more. How do you do it all? – Let’s let this guy answer that. – Steve, that was a pretty good question, but a really simple answer
to the question, which is, it just comes down to time. At the end of the day, Steve, because you’ve worked at
VaynerMedia for four years, I know that you work, I don’t know, seven, eight, nine hours. I work 18. Just the volume of hours
allows me to do a lot more. Steve, think about it this way. I’m probably living twice
the life that you are. What it comes down to is, there’s just a lot more
hours of execution, and then also recognizing how
few things actually matter. One of the things, as you
know as a Vayner employee, we had a company-wide meeting once talking about, let’s cut meetings in half. All those hour meetings can be 30. All those 30 meetings can be 15. At the end of the day, I
think the biggest thing that people don’t understand is, they waste time on dumb shit. So if you have six minute meetings, if you have a two minute call
when it’s scheduled for 15, and when you actually work 18 hours a day, you can just fit in a lot more stuff. I think it comes down
to, ultimately, intent. How much do you want to accomplish? What do you want to get done? And for me, that’s a lot
of professional stuff. In those massive amounts of hours, if I maximize the width,
18 hours versus nine, and if I fit 97 things in, because you really only need
seven minutes, not 15 or 30, the amount of lollygagging that goes on by 99 percent of the market in meetings or the things they’re supposed
to do is extraordinary. So keeping it tight and
creating a lot of volume is how I execute.