#AskGaryVee Episode 164: Streaming Services, Beatboxing, & Telling the Truth

“what’s the smallest routine “that’s made the biggest difference “to the #AskGaryVee Show since starting?” – Uh, the friction between consistency and constantly trying to evolve. Now, you know, obviously
like the show yesterday, outside, not asking a question of the day, now bringing back the question of the day, India coming in somewhere along the line instead of Stunwin, and probably more things
that will continue if we’re lucky enough to have a run here. There’s the consistency of doing it, and really letting the
essence of the show happen. You know, what’s really interesting is if you look, for all of
you that have watched, and by the way, leave a comment if you’ve watched every episode. Actually, I might wanna do a pic, where’s the pumpkin? Left already? We’ll tell you about it later. There’s obviously a lot of themes. I’m not gonna change my pillars or religious points of view on things, but the reinforcement,
it’s been interesting. I’ve been getting emails lately that say, “you know, Gary, it’s funny, I’ve watched all 160 episodes and this theme has really
caught my attention, but it took me hearing
you answer a question, maybe 15 different questions,
with the same theme, different answers, the same theme, it really now just hit me. Like, wow, I really now
understand what you mean of ‘execution’s the game, idea’s shit.’ Of course, ideas aren’t shit, but boy, everybody’s got an idea.” Things like that, and so I think the consistency of doing it, the consistency of there being four to 15 things I believe in, hard work, you know, not being romantic about the current state of the marketplace and always putting
yourself out of business, being 51-49 to the other person, so just actually being authentic enough that you know yourself, that
your answers align in that way, and then just making
it interesting and fun, and different settings, the outside energy mixed
up with being in my office, the predictions at the end of the show, those will go away after
the football season. So, you know, just mixing it up, so putting pressure on the format while letting the essence
always be the same. Being the same person even
though you grow up and mature and maybe change your
outfits, grow facial hair, get older, start losing hair, but still always being that same person, but evolving with the times. (muffled applause)

“Adele’s new album isn’t
streaming anywhere. “Is she romantic about selling albums, “or leveraging people to buy music?” – Oh, wait a minute,
Staphon’s just standing here, and if you’re just, I
mean, show that, DRock. He’s really, truly just standing here. (laughter) One of the things that makes me unhappy, I mean, really, I know
you’ve gotta watch it for editing purposes, but you should be you should be doing something, Staphon. – [Staphon] You’re right.
(laughter) – So let’s do a little Periscoping. Alright. Adele’s new album is not
streaming anywhere, right? – [India] Is she romantic
about selling albums, or leveraging people to buy music? – It’s a really good
question, and the truth is, there’s a time and a place
for you to do everything, so, we talk about spec work here, right? DRock got his job on it, right? Like, you do something for free and it leads to what you want to happen. Well look, when you’re
Jay-Z in the early days and nobody knows who the hell you are, it makes sense to go to a club, not get paid, and spit your fire, because you’re building leverage. I used to go and speak for free. Often. I don’t do that anymore. Because I have an alternative. I have demand now. Adele, if her name was “Shmadele,” if Shmadele came out with a new album and nobody knows who Shmadele is, I would hope, I don’t
follow music enough, so, if there’s a Shmadele, I apologize. But if you’re Shmadele and
nobody knows who you are, you not only want to be
on streaming services, you wanna, like, show up on
Instagram people’s accounts and, like, sing, you wanna, like, go outside and give
people your free album, like, you want exposure
because that creates leverage that you then can charge for. Adele doesn’t have that problem, and so she’s trying to maximize
profits through that channel versus the pennies that streaming does. It does two things: it makes her more money, it gives her less exposure by accident for people that could find her through Spotify or other places that have never discovered her before. From my point of view,
it’s a fine balancing act. Right? I think if you look at the people that pushed against Napster,
or pushed against technology, the bands that pushed
against MTV, historically, that didn’t make music videos, if you’re too romantic for
too long, you can get caught, unless you’re in the top 1%. I believe that there’s an absolute way to not conform to modern marketing. A€ la Apple. If your product is
disproportionately the best, consistently, you can get
away with acting differently. But if you look, even at, like, actors at the top of their game, like a Will Smith who made the same kind
of movie for a while, everybody has their day and time. And so my answer is, if
Adele has this read properly that she doesn’t need more
exposure, she has a huge fanbase, she just put out fire, and it killed, cool. Look at Justin Bieber in parallel. Did a lot of marketing,
a lot of Instagram, a lot of releasing, a
lot of stuff out there, and it really worked. Now the question becomes, he needed that because he
was in this funny spot, does he do the same thing next time? Or does he go a little bit
closer to where Adele is if Adele’s over here? The answer to the
question, my friends, is, there’s no absolutes. There is no right answer. There’s moments in time,
like the first question. There’s knowing what to do at this moment. The things I do running
this business at 600 people is very different than what I did at four. I don’t say yes, I said
no to 19 deals today. I said yes to every deal
when we first started. Right? And so we just talked about, we just all got together on my team to talk about how much
book-buying you have to do for all my packages for the next book. I think we can all agree, there’s a lot more books
that you need to do to do the things that I did two years ago for Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. ‘Cause I’m busier, I
have more opportunities. I have more leverage. This is where the #AskGaryVee
show’s brand, right, has helped me. Why don’t you say, I mean, you’re just, this is amazing, but why don’t you just say hello. – Hi. – [Gary] Tell the Vayner
Nation who you are. – Uh, Reed Adler, sound guy. – Yeah, so Reed just was working on something else I just did, he’s just hanging out, he said before we aired, “hey, my brother turned
me on to the show,” his brother and him now know who I am more than they did before because this show’s working for me, which then gave me leverage to ask for 3,500 books to give a keynote, versus 2,000 books. So this is how it works, guys. You put in the work for a year and a half, you build up leverage, which then allows you to get more stuff. So Adele’s move, where a
lot of people might say, “oh, Gary’s gonna say,” because I know a lot of you thought this, “oh, that’s bad, you’re killing exposure.” No, it’s balancing that. What’s important is not
reading your own headlines and doing the thing that Adele’s doing too long, too many times in a row that now no 17-year-old in America or 15-year-old even knows who you are, because they only live in those platforms. Right? All the bands that said no to being the music on John Madden Football in 1999, 2001, 2004, 2006, they missed out on being Good Charlotte. Good Charlotte said yes, they were willing to give away the music, or go find out how the
Black Eyed Peas worked. Will.i.am was smart, he’s like, “oh, for a TV commercial? For this Apple iPod thing? Okay. We won’t be too fancy.” And the three big bands
that you’ve heard of that said no missed the chance of being huge. So yo, I even say yes to things for free, if the exposure is
disproportionately unbelievable. Saturday Night Live
does not need to pay me to show up and be in an SNL. Because they’re bringing me something. You, with your local TEDx thing, in Shmugga-mugga-mugga, Iowa, sorry to pick on Iowa, I love you, Iowa, like, yeah, you got a problem. Because, like, I don’t wanna
come for those 40 people, it’s just checks and balances. And I love you 40 people, but watch the show for free, I can’t make it, it’s just an equation. Adele’s at that place where
she can do this right now, but Adele needs to do what I think I try to be really good at, which is don’t read your headlines, don’t get too fancy to not take a selfie, if you get too separated
from that for too long, and you can do it, but if you do it for too long, somebody else is gonna come along and Shmadele’s gonna be number one. Shmadele’s coming.

“for agency leaders to be active on social? “Do you weight that when
hiring a leader at Vayner?” – Um, look, I do think that somebody has to be a practitioner
or skilled in your craft, so yes, I do weigh that, but I do think we have a machine here that if somebody’s a great executive and good at building up people’s talent, knows how to do client services, understands the theory of marketing, but hasn’t used Snapchat,
Instagram, Facebook enough to be a great practitioner, that we know that’s commoditized and that after a hundred days at Vayner, we can get them to that place, so if they have enough
of the other things, you don’t have to be
crushing it on Instagram to be a leader at Vayner. You have to understand why
Instagram’s crushing it, and then put in the
work once you start here if you’re good at leading a team, great with client services,
great at other strategies, great at understanding how things, we have a lot of people that are great at Facebook,
Snapchat, Instagram, but don’t understand how beer is sold, or how soap is sold, and
we have to teach them that. If you’re coming as a
42-year-old executive and done it your whole
career and you know that, so just teaching the white space. So that’s the real answer. You have to have the
attitude, the appetite, and the theoretical rationale to why these things are
working to get in the door. – [India] Nice.

– Hey Todd. – You say ideas are crap,
(beatboxing) execution is the game. – Oh, he’s rapping. – Honestly, to most of us,
they’re one and the same. – I said, you’ve had six or
seven in your big career. Tell me last time you were
pumped about your biggest idea. Thanks, man. – That was well-done. – [India] Yeah, that was good. – That is the way to get on the show, get India’s creative juices going. We need a little bit more
creative video questions. This is a good starting point. We need that. Let’s do a call to arms
to the Vayner Nation, better video questions, let’s step it up. Jesus. What’s his name? Adam? – [India] Todd.
– Todd. (laughter) – Todd, great job, first of all. The last idea I’ve been
really excited about, that’s a really good question. I’m really excited about my current ideas of big opportunities
in the business world, so they’re not very specific, but I’m in love with my thesis of e-sports and virtual
reality in a 10-year window. And so I just have to make sure I don’t get too far ahead of it, but I’m very, very, very excited about that. I think I was very right about how much brands and businesses were gonna spend on social networks. I don’t think people saw,
four or five years ago, the money allocation that’s getting poured into making videos and
pictures for these platforms. That was exciting to me,
it’s been the backbone of, that was the strategy and then the execution was VaynerMedia, that’s when it works,
when you have both, right? Like, you can work your
ass off if you’re wrong. If I’m like, “okay, guys,
VHS tapes are coming back.” And if I start building a
company and hiring people that are 58 years old that know how to make VHS
tape, like, if I’m wrong, all our hustle is for naught. So you have to have both. I would say that, I would say the other
thing that I can point to is the #AskGaryVee Show. I don’t know if you heard about it, but we’re in it right now. It’s very meta. I knew that I was good
at answering questions, I could feel at conferences
that people would be like, “holy crap, that last 15
minutes, that was the bomb.” They were impressed by
my quickness in my craft. It was a way to show everybody that I know what I’m talking about. You know, people were stunned, I was with somebody yesterday. People don’t realize that
I don’t know the questions. Like, you pick them. Yes, I will send you, – You do. – like, the first one we
did today, like, I sent you. Like, I’m looking, I’m watching you guys, ’cause I care about you
guys and I’m sending stuff, but I would say, out of
a week, 25 questions, I’m sending you two? – [India] Two, probably. – So when people find that out, they’re fascinated by it. So I thought this format
would work for me, I thought it would elevate my leadership around marketing and
technology thought leadership, and it has. Him and his bro. And many, and many (Gary laughs) and many, many, many, many more of you. And so that idea was percolating,
we did it ad hoc one day, and it worked. – Here we are.

“from telling blatant
lies about my business, “without stooping to their level?” – Craig, by recognizing those blatant lies have no impact on your future. Now, stick with me here. It’s hard, because you’ll say, “no way, Gary, it’s already had an impact. This person stopped working
with me because of that lie.” Net net with me, my friend. Net net with me. If they’re lies, and they may not be, let’s first make sure
they’re lies, my man. But if they’re lies, you will win. Lies have been, people have
tried that tactic on me, you will never, ever win that game if you’re on the lying end. Like, the truth is undefeated. You just have to be patient. So, the fact of the matter is, that’s too much on your mind. By you even asking me this
question, it’s bubbled up, and it’s really no different, and I’m sorry to use this, ’cause it’s an extreme version of it, and it’s obviously top
of everybody’s mind. It’s really, in some weird way,
no different than terrorism. Like, terrorism works
because people get scared, and that’s propaganda. Right? And of course things happen, but what they’re trying to
do is get people not to fly, not to go to Europe,
like, all these things. They scare you, they make these videos and say “we’re gonna go
after all these places” to scare people in those places. That’s how it works. That’s what that is as
well, which is like, they’re trying to propaganda your clients into believing that. But when there’s a net result a year later, two years later, when people are like, “oh,
Gary’s just good at Twitter. VaynerMedia’s not,” I mean, you know people said
VaynerMedia was gonna fail because I’m just a social media pundit, I’m just bullshit and
pizzazz, I’m all this? Well, they lost. Because now here we are. And so as long as you’re
confident in your execution, please do not spend time
going on the defense against your competitors
who are lying about you. Just go do your thing and let the results show for themselves. This is a very important thing. People get way too hung up on their negative comments on YouTube, the competition making lies about them. The results always speak for themselves. Marky Mark was not gonna
transition into a real celebrity, until Mark Wahlberg did it. Justin Bieber was always
just gonna be a teeny bopper until he put out fire. Right? Like, the truth always wins. Period. – [India] Nice.