#AskGaryVee Episode 226: Simon Sinek, Your Why vs the Company's Why & Always Being Yourself

– Hi GaryVee. – Hi GaryVee and Simon,
hope all is well. Question that
I have for y’all is, can somebody’s personal why,
on why they work for a business vary from the business’s why,
or is that just never good? Thanks a lot, keep climbing. – So, if it’s your business,
the business’s why and your why are
exactly the same thing. – Yeah, but he’s asking if he
works for an organization– – If he works for
a separate company. – He knows the organization’s
why, I mean a lot of people– – He knows the
organization’s why– – A lot of them know
Vayner’s why, but they may have separate
whys within it. Can they co-exist? – Sure. – Can an employee’s
why and an org’s why co-exist, and everybody wins? – Sure. The simple answer is,
yes if they go together. Everybody has their
own unique why, and the organization
has its own unique why. And if they are compatible– – You mean go together in
a peanut butter and jelly kind of metaphor.
– Yeah. If they’re compatible, then
you will look to the people who have joined
the company and say, “Ah, you’re good fit,
you belong here.” And they will see
themselves as a good fit, and each one is
mutually beneficial. In other words,
it’s like any relationship. You and your wife
have different whys, but they’re compatible. You see her as–
– A hundred percent. – Helping you grow,
and she sees you as– – Hundred percent.
– Helping her grow, etc. It’s the exact same thing. – Which is why– – And sometimes it isn’t
compatible, just by– – Which is why divorce
rates are very high. – Well I don’t know,
it’s sometimes incompatible. That’s a decision
making problem. – Okay. But it’s also an evolution
problem right? Like, if you think about it,
one’s whys can be really aligned with the
organization’s today, and five years from
now they may not. – No, absolutely not. Not if both– – One more time. You’re saying no to that? – No to that. – So you’re saying
that there’s a frozen– – Here, let me tell you why. – No, no hold on before you do, I wanna give you
more framework because I’m fascinated by your
decision to say that. You’re saying that things
are frozen, frozen! And that one’s context
of how the world… For example, that it’s so
frozen both North Stars, that one who’s an employee
who’s rolling quite along, and has a why, but then
his child dies from cancer along the way, isn’t
reframed into the context of where maybe it’s
not aligned anymore. – No.
– Okay. – The word,
I wouldn’t use frozen. You’re saying that there can be no growth when
you use the word frozen. Your why is fully formed
by the time you’re in your probably late teens, and the
rest of your life is simply an opportunity to
live in balance with your why or not, so
the decisions you make. And so, whether
somebody’s living, that’s why I said before
which is as long as both organization and person are
working hard to remain in consistent with their
cause then it works fine. Now, the example you give
of someone’s child dying, you know, tragedy doesn’t
form or change your why. Tragedy usually gives us an
opportunity to live our why because it makes everything
else in the world seem stupid, and it forces us to say there is something bigger and
more important here. Very often tragedy
pushes us into why, not the other way around,
not pushes us away from it. – I totally agree with you. I think the most extreme
things that happen in people’s lives actually
just accentuates the reality of what’s going on.
– It’s accentuates of who you really are.
– Hundred percent. – The test of someone is not
when everything is going great, it’s when everything goes wrong. That’s where your
true colors show. – Or, similar to that, but
a slightly different version for everybody, I’m
fascinated by people’s wealth and fame really not
changing them at all, just finally exposing
who they actually are. And that’s not a tragedy.
– And that’s a hard thing – It’s usually in theory,
a good thing. – That’s a hard thing.
– But it’s a real thing. – Absolutely.
– Alright. – It’s fine if they’re
different, as long as they’re compatible. And this is why you
wanna know your why, and this is why you wanna
find out the company’s why, because otherwise you’re
going to make decisions based on money and benefits,
and then there’s nothing. – A hundred percent. – It’s like making a decision
about who to marry based on– – I don’t wanna
side-track the show, but it’s funny I’m sitting here, it’s why I’m so confident
in what I’m building at VaynerMedia because the
platform is being built to be in their benefit to
reverse engineer what they want
based on their DNA. Whether that is
enormous ambition, which is then this is a platform
for them to create that, or within a very
close ecosystem to me, or quite passive and
very nice work life. I have actual
zero emotion, one way or the other
of what they actually want. I just wanna build a
framework and a platform that gives them those
options, and I think that’s the great mistake that
most businesses make. – And isn’t that what you
preach in your work as well? – A hundred percent. I have no interest in– – So the why is clear
internally and externally? – Hundred percent. – I love that. – Which is what, because
to me, otherwise everything crumbles in its hypocrisy
if you don’t do that. – Amen.

– Hey Gary, Matt LaMarsh
here in Atlanta, Georgia. I hope you’re doin’ well. Had a quick question
about self-awareness. Do you think it’s more
about maturity and wisdom or is it something that
you’re just built with? Thanks so much
for takin’ the time. Have a great day. – That’s a good question. – So I’ve been talking a
lot about self-awareness. I’d love for you
to take the floor first. Maybe you haven’t had as much time to
ponder this world. What’s your take
on self-awareness? Do you feel like you have it? Do you feel like it grew? For example, I believe
it is the ultimate power. Once you have that, boy
can you start navigating. I’m struggling ’cause
so many people have really caught
attention to this and are asking me
to help them figure out how to gain more of
it and I’m like Jesus. There are certain places
where your skill set stops. Mine stops at how am
I gonna, I don’t know. Boy do I know the people
that I know that have it are winning and not
just financially or (mumbles). They’re just in a happy place because of that self-awareness. What is your thought
on self-awareness? – Yeah, I think it’s a
skill like any other. – So you do think it’s
something that can be it’s own. – Sure, I mean people
might have natural capacity for it from how they were raised like any other skill. – In the world? – Some people are
good at basketball and some people
have to work very hard to be good at basketball. – Do you think
one caps out though? In a basketball analogy,
Dunk is a nice looking athlete but he’s never going
to be an NBA player. He has a ceiling of
his basketball skills, do you think people
have a ceiling to their self-awareness? – I don’t know if
people have a ceiling, but I think
self-awareness is a skill, a practicable, learnable skill and I think one
of the big things about self-awareness
is we don’t really know how we’re being perceived. We think we know
how we’re being perceived and sometimes we act in a way, when we act all pompous
because we want to appear stronger, we really appear weak. – That’s right. Which is a common
one by the way. – Yeah right and so
I think the big thing about learning to be
self aware is being open to the feedback from
people who love you and care about you who
are wiling to say to you “When you said that,
you looked and sounded “like an ass.” – Yeah, it’s funny– – And to be open
to that kind of harsh but from a good place
critique is the only way to learn how you come across. – It’s funny you said that. I think the closest
I’ve ever gotten to answer this is that
and then, actually putting that inner circle
in a safe place to tell you the truth. – Exactly right. – Because those
same people are scared, they love you. – And if you’re defensive
the whole time– – Game over. – Then you are not
learning self-awareness. – I would tell you that
my reading of comments over the last decade on social, and taking each
with a grain of salt. Your biggest fans,
you can only let your ego go so far and you’re aware
that some people troll for the sake
of getting reactions from the community and
things of that nature but the net, the millions
in a net composite score has definitely been,
I would always say that listening has
done a lot more for me even though I love to
talk and always talk. That consumption
pattern has been a very big deal for me. – So there’s
a wonderful story– – Please.
– about listening. – Okay. – The problem when
people say you need to be a better listener is
we’re human beings and we need to communicate
and communication is two ways,
listening and speaking. So but everybody’s
like “You’ve got to be “a better listener” but
here’s the best understanding I have of that. So Nelson Mandela
is universally regarded as a great leader
which is important because different people
are viewed differently in different nations
but Nelson Mandela universally regarded as
a great leader, right? He was actually
the son of a tribal chief and he was asked
in an interview once “How did you learn
to be a great leader?” And he tells the story
of how he would go to tribal meetings
with his father and he remembers two
things; they always sat in a circle and
his father was always the last to speak. And in terms of
leadership and listening, I think the idea
of be a better listener is actually half the advice. I think the advice is practice being the last to speak. You see this all
the time in meetings where everybody
will sit around a room, the senior guy will be like “Alright here’s the
problem, here’s what I think “we should do
but I’m really interested “in what your thoughts are,”
– Yes. – “Let’s go around the
room” but it’s too late. You’ve influenced them. – You’ve created the footprint. – And people bend and
mold as opposed to saying “Here’s the problem,
I’m interested “in what you have to say”
without saying anything and not even, and having
the, and here’s the, this takes practice. Not even getting a
hint whether you agree or disagree, if anything
you ask questions to learn more,
you get the benefit of hearing everybody’s opinion, everybody gets to feel heard and then you get
to render your opinion. – So I would tell you,
and this is for people that are running businesses, that is a micro
example of the way, and I think
makes a ton of sense. I would tell you
Andy, you obviously direct report to me,
you run our team, I think people would be stunned by how little you talk at all. Like the level of,
right, like the level of micro management I put on, like my version
of that is actually letting people do their thing and watching it from,
speaking last. I guess my punchline
is by the time I get into the meeting
where we’re like “Here’s the problem”,
the amount of listening that has been done
because I’ve created such a white canvas
for the leaders to do their thing and
I can watch it and contextualize
what they’re doing, is the macro version
because once you’re in that meeting room,
that’s basically the final pitch of
what’s been going on over that period of time. – Okay. – Yeah, that’s interesting,
it’s interesting. I believe in that quite a bit.
Okay, good. I mean I think, I on
the other hand do think that all skills have a max out. At some level,
your hard wiring limits– – So you can’t continue to grow ’til the day you die? – No, I think that’s the
black and white version of that. I think that
you can continue to make incremental steps
but I think that there are people– – Oh, so there’s
a diminishing return. That’s interesting.
– I believe that because I believe some
people are just delirious in this chase that
they’re gonna be at this upside of any skill– – That’s interesting. – and people lose
practicality at some level. – And the question is
is where is everybody? You know, if here is the max out where the diminishing returns. – That’s right. – The question is is… – Do you stop here? – Does anybody even get here? – And which is why
I’m always very careful to not play too
much to the negative because I don’t want
somebody to stop here but in the same token,
in a world where there’s a lot of
voices and everybody can do everything,
we need to level some level of practicality.
– Oh that’s good, I like that. Yeah, that’s interesting.
– Oh thank you.

– Hey Gary and Simon. My name is Bill Clanton,
billclantonbooks.com I’m an adult
coloring book illustrator. I live here at the Jersey Shore. I make coloring
books for grownups. Up ’til now I’ve been a
one-man band as far as controlling my operation
and doing everything myself but I’m looking to expand
and start building a team. Do you have any
suggestions as I grow to help new team members buy into my why, or my mission as to why I’m doing this. Is there any best
practices or ideas suggestions to help
them buy into what I’m trying
to accomplish here? Any suggestions would be great. Thanks a lot and
keep up the good work. – Yeah. Sure. – Wants suggestions. – Well one is having
clarity of why. Which is something you
have to have the ability to talk about what you believe what you’re trying to build
beyond the business itself. So he’s into adult coloring
books, what specifically– – By the way, which puts in
a good spot to begin with. Right? I mean if you just think
about that in thesis– – Yeah. – there’s a lot of smiling
that comes along with that, there’s like a
lot of positive vibes. – If that’s why he went into it. It could have been for
some zen calm thing or some stress relief thing.
– Or some weird thing maybe he’s a really bad guy
and he’s mad at children. I don’t think so. – But even beyond the
coloring coloring books what is it that he imagines the ability to talk
about his vision and if he can’t talk about
his why in hard terms can he tell stories of
his own experiences or people he admires that
if somebody hears enough of those stories they can kind
of get a sense of who he is? What you’ll find is that the better you are at
communicating your why people will want to work for you regardless of the opportunity
that you afford them. They want to be a part of it. – Yeah. – We do a little thing,
which we’ve been doing for years and years and years,
called a give and take. Whenever there’s any
kind of relationship whether its an outside
partnership or even somebody
who joins our team we do something
called a give and take where we want
somebody to be selfish and selfless within
the relationship. So not give and get,
but give and take. So we’ll ask them, what is
it you have to give to us that you have that you
think that we need, right? And they’ll tell us. And then we’ll say, great. What is it that you
selfishly want from us? And we want them to tell us
what they can get from us and no one else.
– I believe in that so much. – And when those
things match you have a balanced relationship because for example, I’ve had
it with people who they’ll tell me what
they have to offer and that’s awesome
’cause that’s what I want. And then they’ll say what
they want to take and they go “Oh, I want to work
with smart people.” I’m like,
plenty of smart people, what is it you want
to take from me? They’re like “Oh, I want
to help build something.” Wonderful. Do that anywhere. What do you want to
take selfishly from me that you can get nowhere else? And if they can’t
answer the question I won’t engage
in a relationship. And the reason
is because, in time the relationship is unbalanced they’re going to be giving
but they’re not taking and I don’t even know how
to give them what they want. Then they’ll complain they’re
not making enough money– – Yep, yep. – because it’s not balanced. – That’s right– – So that’s a big part of it. – And I think the other thing
you know as being out there a lot of people play the reverse of that. – Yeah. – You know, they wanna give
you something that is very low in value and they want
something insane in return. “Hey GaryVee,
I tweeted about your book. “Now I want a job with you “I want you to babysit my
dog four times a week.” It’s insane with that. – That’s right.
So it’s about balance. – And to me,
I’ve thought a lot about that I think a lot about it,
I call it 51/49. I fully believe in that.
– Yeah. – And then what I always
think about is how incredibly important it is to me to
slightly give a little bit more not because I’m the
greatest human ever I actually just think
it’s a leverage point. I like the feeling, and
I’m not sold that, I don’t know if that makes
me a good guy or a bad guy it’s just my natural state
to slightly over deliver as close to the
middle as possible. I like that. – So one of the
richest guys in China he might even be the richest, since the Alibaba guy,
not so much but one of the
richest guys in China he’s a real estate
developer, and he always gives the majority share
to all his partners. He always does 51/49,
or even more imbalance. And somebody, again, sat
down with him in an interview and said “Why do you
never do 50/50 deals “why do you give away
the majority stake “in all of your partnerships?” And he smiles and says “‘Cause everybody wants
to do business with me.” – That’s right. – I mean it’s that easy. – Makes tons of sense. To answer the question
in a little bit of detail I think you have the
benefit of being out there I think all of us have the benefit of
being out there today. And I think all of us,
whether your audience and we’ve been at audience
sizes of just starting to where we are today,
whether your audience is very large or quite
small, there are always a small group of people that
are attracted to your message. And I think what I would
do in this scenario is if you’re looking to
hire that first person I would look very hard
at the people that are engaging with your content
on social and start there. I’m a very big believer on that because I think
it’s quite practical. They’ve already
been self-selected they’re using their free
time to comment on your stuff consume your stuff,
buy those coloring books and so I think that’s
a very important place. I’ve had enormous amounts
of success with Wine Library and both VaynerMedia
in the exact same way. – And they have a passion
for you and your work before you even met them.
– That’s right. And by the way,
sometimes you lose. Because they had a
vision of what they were attracted to and
then the reality is it’s work, or this and that. But I do like that starting
point, from a practical nature. – Hey, Gary, it is JJ at
97.9 The Box in Houston.

Had a blast having
you on my show earlier this year
to talk about your new book #AskGaryVee. I read the book. It is amazing. I got a lot of
good stuff from it. I’ve been sharing it
with some of my interns, and my friends, and coworkers
so thank you so much. Today I have a question for you. I’m releasing a book
next month, it’s called Without Bruises: A Journey
to Hope, Help, and Healing. It’s telling my personal story being in a relationship
with a sociopath and, you know, going from
mental and emotional abuse. Well, I am trying to figure out, do I stick with JJ, who
is the radio personality, to market this book or
do I need to stay away because I feel like I can
reach a bigger audience but I’m not sure
if that audience is really ready for the girl
with the shaved hair, tattoos who’s at
the hip hop station. So maybe you can give
me some advice on that. Thanks, Gary, love you. – I’ll take this one first
then you jump in Simon. JJ, look,
the bottom line is it’s not 1984 anymore, it’s 2016. You’re not going to
hide from who you are. People are going
to figure out you have a shaved head and tattoos.
– Yeah. – You can go under a pseudonym, you can go in disguises. They’re going to
figure out who you are. So, I think everybody
wins when they go all in. Listen, I, you know, first 60 episodes
of Wine Library TV, 2006, ten years ago. I was tempered
a little bit because I was scared that the
people on Wall Street and these rich people
that were buying hundreds of thousands
of dollars a year of wine from me would realize
I loved wrestling and football, and I cursed,
that I was Jerseyed out. The truth is the
second I realized, wait a minute,
if people like this show with 80% of me, what’s
really going to happen the second I went all-in on me it became a
totally different outcome and really I’ve never
looked back, both in the wine industry
and who I am today. There are plenty
of people in the marketing book
world that don’t love me. I think the closer one is to me. – Who? – I don’t know.
– No. – People, you know–
– No. – There’s a LinkedIn
post right now, where I saw somebody
write of why GaryVee is really great at social media and the first comment
with four likes from other people is, “I would want to do
nothing like GaryVee.” And I’m like, well,
there’s five people. (laughs) I mean, you know,
you know, and I get it. And I get it but
I think what you have to take pride in, JJ, and
everybody, is if you could live a life where
the people that know you the best like you
the most, you win. I love that my assistants,
when we were talking about India’s one week,
like the people that know more
about my truth win. Like as we’ve gotten to know each other–
– Yeah. – We’ve liked each other–
– It’s true. – More and not less
and that’s the game. – That’s true, I mean,
what’s the definition of authenticity, right? Everybody’s like
trying to be authentic. – (laughs) Right. – But nobody talks about
what authenticity is. Authenticity is saying
and doing the things you actually believe and
so to create divisions, one of them is
inherently inauthentic. So in one of them you’re
either being dishonest or you’re faking it so– – Or you’re hedging, right? – Where you’re hedging.
– Hedging. – So–
– Hedging is what pisses me off. – So, I mean,
you are who you are and you want to
bring that personality. And at the end of the
day, the more authentic you are in all of your work, the more the people who
love you for who you are will take your work and
help spread it for you. Those are champions
but it’s very hard to even find champions
if you’re always hedging and trying to be what
somebody else wants you to be. – JJ, I think you’ve got
a misread on America. I really do. – People like you
for you and they like you for your message.
– A hundred percent. And especially, if you’re you. For example–
– Neither of us, neither of us fits the role that we expect. And I show up to
these meetings in jeans and things and Gary, you know, he curses and
he shows these things. But people like
us for who we are. And the people who don’t like us for who we are don’t invite us and that’s totally fine. – I also think that
you’ve got to understand the American psyche, right. They’re not going to care
as much about tattoos and shaved heads and
things of that nature. America forgives
everything except if you’re trying to deceive them. Like you can literally do
anything in this country, probably outside of murder,
and get away with it, as long as you
don’t try to pull one over on us, right? Presidents have proved that, the most famous
people have proved that. We will forgive
all day but if you try to make us a sucker
because you’re trying to put one over on us–
– Yeah. – We hate that.
– Yeah. – That’s it.
– Be yourself. – Is that it? – There’s one more.
– One more? – Be yourself.
– Let’s do it.

– Hi Gary my name is
Gbenjo Abimbola from Nigeria, West Africa. It’s 2:16 AM in the morning here and I’m grinding.
I hope this gets in. My question is short and
simple to you and Simon. When do you know you have the chops as a young
person to start talking? When you have the
results to back it but you’re not an all time great yet. Do you start talking
or do you document? Thank you. – I think you start talking,
the whole thing’s a process. You start talking immediately. It takes a long time to become
an overnight success, right? I think for the both of us and
everybody we know that we admire who’s
achieved anything. They’ve been
at this a long time– – Work!
– talking at it, and by the way, they weren’t great
at the beginning. Go watch–
– Speak for yourself. – Go watch early interviews
of Steve Jobs. Right? Early interviews of
Steve Jobs are fantastic. He’s terrible and he
actually in one of them says, “I need to go throw up,”
because he’s so nervous about talking on camera.
He’s terrible. And the point is he practices and he practices
and he practices. He gets better but
he does it out loud and I think the idea of
hiding until it’s perfect it’s a fool’s game. I think you put
yourself out there, you start, you practice,
you practice out loud, then you get feedback
and you can grow. – You counterpunch,
you adjust. – Yeah, you put it out there. – I would say the one thing
that you may be referring to that I talk about a lot is,
it’s tough to come out the gate at 22 and say this
is the definitive thing, here’s my advice. I think talking to
the world about your– – About what you believe.
– correct, is the game. – Is the game.
– I think what we’re seeing on the internet
right now like I’m a– – 22-year-old guru.
– I’m a business coach and I’m gonna teach you
and the only business I have is you’re gonna pay me 20K
and I’m gonna teach you how to charge other people down
the ladder 20K to give you guys that’s the bad stuff. So, your point of
view on the world,– – Yeah.
– and like what you believe and where you come from,
that’s gold. Your process. That’s why I talk a lot about
documenting instead of creating. It’s just truth.
– Yeah. – But I agree with you. There’s no substitute for doing. The amount of people that
wait for the perfect thing,– – Yeah.
– and then never do anything. – You know the most beautiful
thing when you’re young and you think you have
something to contribute is to admit that you
don’t know everything, admit that you’re learning.
– Yes. – If you say I’m a
22-year-old expert and I can help you do X, Y and Z,
you actually, it’s not true. There’s so much more to learn
and everybody knows that. – Everybody who is the
kind of people that you want. – Yes. – People that are attracted
to that are gonna do very little for you besides some
short term dollars. – Agreed. And if you say look,
I’m in this business, I’m fascinated by it.
I’m growing fast, I’m learning fast, I’m still a student
of this stuff but I have this service to offer, that humility is
unbelievably attractive and people want to be a part of that
’cause they know you’re showing up to learn not, you know. – Simon, I don’t know if
you’re paying attention to this but in reverse what’s
happening is people are renting expensive things, showing a bullshit
lifestyle on Instagram. Going to their, asking their dad
to take $25,000 out in cash from a bank putting it on a bed,
taking a picture then putting it back in, just complete
and utter fraud and it pisses me off. – That’s insane. – Yeah and by the way,
it’s just a non-winning game. – And you only attract
people who want that– – The worst. – and that’s not
even who you are. – The worst. The worst. Anyway, Simon.
– Probably lying, isn’t it? – Question of the day,
every guest gets to ask