#AskGaryVee Episode 64: Yik Yak, DNA, & Dinner with Winston Churchill

“Gary, in episode 63 you say you
watch and can tell if people are hustling. How do you tell? Engagement, frequency, or gut?” – Austin, that’s a great question. I love that recall to
that long, long, long time ago episode number 63. Yeah, this is how I do it and it’s funny I’m in love with this answer by the way, I’m giving you
a pre-alert that I think the answers on this show
are going to be really good. I feel up for today’s answer. I’m going to go even deeper. I remember why I started
this show, which was can I go deeper on all
my quotes for my fans. I’m going to challenge
myself in this episode to go deeper both in the tactical
aspects and the theoretical aspects. And what I mean by that, clouds and dirt by the way, what I mean by that is
how do I figure that out is very simple. It starts with the fact
that I put in work. So, when I go look at your Twitter account and your Instagram account, I will actually click your posts. I will actually look at all your posts. I go to everybody’s, if you go to a Twitter account,
you can hit their profile and then you can say
‘view all with replies’. So, if you go to my account,
twitter.com/garyvee, you’ll see all my non-reply
tweets and be like, oh Gary’s pushing a lot of these up but if you click on ‘with
replies’ all of a sudden, you get a much deeper picture
in to what I’m actually doing on Twitter, which is
I’m engaging at scale with my community. So, when I get pissed at all of you, one of the things I’m
looking at is I’m like, oh look at all these 15 people
that I just spent the last 35 minutes looking at when I
click their Twitter account ’cause they just engaged with me, I’m double-checking so I
just click very quickly usually I have my phone. Ok, cool, you say hello. Let’s do one right now. Real-time, baby. Let’s do one right now, very simple. This is going to be interesting. Somebody’s about to get really called out. So, you open a Twitter App, right? And, I go to my notifications I’ll look and I’ll be
like, social media twit social media TWTR, this dude, I asked, how long have
you been following me, a lot of you answered,
thank you by the way. So, I’ll click in and I’ll
look at him and I’ll say, ok, 1080 and then I’ll look
at what he’s actually doing and I’ll see he does a lot of retweeting, ok that’s interesting to me. He’s doing a ton of retweeting
’cause that’s his account. So, that gives me a
sense of what he’s doing I’m going to skip ahead
’cause he’s playing that game. Now, Christin will say,
great point by Gary Vee. Thanks Christin. And, I’ll go into here, I’ll
see she has 7,000 followers that’ll give me some information and then I start looking at
what she’s doing and she’s engaging, she’s engaging, she’s engaging, here she’s retweeting,
she’s hitting that person up I love this, saying to
someone they love the new profile picture. This is starting to give
me a sense and actually Christin let’s give her some daps, can you zoom in the top right corner? Are you able to do
something there to give her some daps so she gets some peep love? So, she’s doing a good,
solid amount of engaging, she’s doing some nice, solid retweeting, she’s actually really engaging. If you look now, over
here, DRock, this is very faint. All the way in the right
where it says one hour, one hour, two hours, can you
see that on the right here? It’s very small. But, what I’m seeing is that she’s this is all happening in
the last two hours, a lot. Heavy engagement. She’s crushing the engagement there. So, then the next thing I’ll do, this is work. Like, if anyone understands
how do I know? ‘Cause I’m putting in the work. Next thing I do is I hit her
URL on her Twitter account which is radical.social and then this pops up
and I’m looking at this. Is this her blog, is this where she works? I don’t know yet, but
here we’re about to look. Now, I’m looking and trying
to figure out what is this and if I don’t figure
it out quickly, I’m like I don’t know
what this is, I’m out. Looks like her blog. So, these are the things I’m doing. I’m analysing. I’m looking at the other things you do. If I was looking at my Instagram,
I’d look at the pictures what does that person put out. What I’m seeing my friends
and the reason I called out so many people is; one, I’m
seeing the far majority of people only in the right hook business. Thanks to Christin here, I’m
in a good mood ’cause she’s jabbing the shit out of it. So, that’s great. But then there’s other things. Is she throwing right hooks? Is she trying to drive people? ‘Cause the right hook is
part of the jab, jab, jab, right hook, which is the overall thesis. Put out great content,
create value up front convert it into business
and so, when I see people and I see a lot of you asking
the same questions about your coffee business, your
catering business, all this, I’m trying to see if
you’re doing that mix. Are you only right hooking,
are you only jabbing, are you driving people successfully, is your website responsive
’cause it’s a mobile world? I do this. As you can see, that alone I’m not even done with Christin auditing. That alone is 5, 7, 9 minutes. That’s insanity in a
world where I’m so busy but that is the reason
so many of you follow me. I truly believe that. I believe in this karma, zen aspect to it that I’m capable of giving
great answers on this show ’cause I know you way
better than you think in a world where every
one of my contemporaries that’s at my level whatever
that is, thinks that the last three minutes of this
show, the things that I do with my time in a world where in my inbox, let’s break this down. Let’s understand what I’m talking about. In a world where I’ve got
all these emails right now, some of my clients are going
to get upset here I think, here’s a very important
email from John the lead developer at Wine Library
about a new program that we’re about to launch, from
Friday not answered yet. Because I’m looking at
Christin’s Twitter account. Nobody, no business person
thinks that’s the right move. None. And, so I think if you want to pop, if you want to be an anomaly, you’ve got to act like one. – [Voiceover] Andre asks, “Gary, I’m interested
in your thoughts about

“Gary, I’m interested
in your thoughts about marketing opportunities on Yik Yak!” – Andre, so this is a great question. Back to the attention graph
that I just told India that we need to drill on. The biggest reason I’m
talking about Yik Yak so much is, it does have the
overwhelming attention at scale of this kind of 18-22 year
old demo that’s on college campuses. The truth is, I’m not really
prepared to answer this question that’s why I took it. The truth is, I haven’t put
in enough work on Yik Yak, it’s here, but look where Yik Yak is, this is important, this is
another insight, this is why I grab so many people’s phones. Look where Yik Yak is. As you can see Social
is really jamming here. But, Yik Yak’s in this little
folder that says Social. And, it’s not even on
the first one, it’s here so clearly… Are you laughing because
you’re not getting a good zoom? – [DRock] No, it’s hiding.
– Oh, it’s hiding. That’s right, DRock
it is hiding. (laughter) So even though I’m talking
a big game about my belief in Yik Yak, my actions
aren’t following my words right now. I’m doing a bad job, I’m
not being the best expert at Yik Yak. I haven’t spent a lot of time in there. Obviously, the kind of
anonymous commenting how do you get away with
promoting your burger joint or a pizza shop or Wine Library, to 21 and 22 year olds
Yik Yak users, what do you do? Do you ask a question
about your own business? Or do you make a statement
about your own business? That’s a little spammy. The problem with Yik Yak
as a marketing platform right now is that it’s like
the old forums back in the day when everybody was anonymous
in the 90’s and I would go to wine spectators, wine
bulletin board and be like Wine Library is an amazing store in town. You don’t know how to do it right. I guess in theory, you
can make a comment of, I hear that the Johnny
Burgers own cook is really hot hahaha ’cause it’s me. I guess there’s a way if
you’re very authentic you can win that game. And there’s clearly ways to market. Unfortunately, the thing I
make fun of so many of you of and so many people of, which
is you’re not a practitioner, you’re reading headlines,
I unfortunately in this situation am a lack of a
practitioner and I need to do a little bit more of my own work. As you can tell I have
enough dangerous knowledge of giving you an example
of some of the things you can do, but the question would become what would Yik Yak allow
brands to do if anything, but clearly, if you have
a restaurant or hang-out in the college demo right now
and you’re not desperately trying to figure out Yik Yak every minute, you’re making a huge mistake. – [Voiceover] Coach asks, “Gary, we spend all of our time
pouring our creativity into

“Gary, we spend all of our time
pouring our creativity into projects for our clients, so
that when it’s time to shift gears and focus on our
brand, we’re exhausted. How do you keep it burning for both?” – Coach, the simple
answer here is very simply that you need to you need to work harder and faster. There’s really nothing else. Im exhausted every day,
but I’m making enormous amounts of things happen in my 18 hours. Not only am I working 18 hours, but I’m working fast as
hell in those 18 hours and I’m prioritising what’s
important and what’s not. So, I guess the answer
to your question is, we’re all different. If you need to be A-type
and rigour and organised I would just schedule
non-negotiable time for your personal brand if that’s important to you from 6-7pm because you
have that whole day to check the box that you
want to and you’ve just got that time, it’s just allocated. Maybe that time is 10-midnight. But, really there’s no magic answer here. The answer is more time and
faster within that time. I think the faster part
confuses a lot of people. I always talk about stop
watching Lost, sleep less. But there’s another variable. Be much faster in the hours
that you’re actually in. These guys can tell you, there
is not a second that’s down. I work with people who are
like, ‘I work ten hours a day’ and then when I audit them,
there was like 15 minutes here where they watched a Youtube video. We fight for minutes here,
we fight for seconds here, I wish there was other cameras
showing you how hard the bobble heads are of the crew here every minute. And so my gut is, because
I, when I thought I was the biggest workaholic that ever
lived from 22-30 in running Wine Library but I had
enough time to bullshit about baseball with Branden for
9 minutes or talk to my dad about something for 15 that
made no sense and didn’t matter or went to ESPN.com to
just check Jets scores. I had time, I had time. I’m dramatically faster
at 39 than I was at 29. And, I’m working more hours. That’s how it’s happening. I know the answer, I lived it. I am making fun of 29
year old Gary Vee for all the spewing that I do, that dude wasn’t as fast
and didn’t go for as long every day, and that’s
just how I’ve done it. – [Voiceover] Ben asks,

– [Voiceover] Ben asks, “Gary, what have your children
taught you about life and business?” – First of all that was a great video I think the Instagram
videos have huge potential as well. The creativity’s coming
through more than the YouTube videos where it’s
just that person’s face. So, that’s a lot of fun. You know, it’s funny. I took this question as well
because I think my answer is going to be super unpopular. I think a lot of people are going to be, everyone’s looking for
the romantic answer, you know the truth is, I love my kids insanely, but I love my
wife and I love my parents so insanely that, I love them more but, DRock’s always scared when
I go politically incorrect, it’s the truth and I promised
to be very honest in this. Do I love my kids more than my parents? It’s a really interesting debate for me. It’s much closer than the
normal politically correct answer that I hear from others, so it’s not like that taught me how to love. People say that all the time. I was fucking loving everything before. I guess at the end of the
day, the things that really really, you know what
this is the true answer. The thing that my kids
have taught me about life, and I guess I believe
this very much in business and so many of you that
have been jamming with me for a long time know. They’ve taught me from the
other side, how powerful DNA really is. Watching my kids do the
same exact things I do, like Misha when she
performs in our living room, she’s spending more time
trying to paying attention if we’re paying attention than
on her actually performance. That’s what I do. When I give talks, I’m like
looking in the crowd to make sure they’re not on their phone. You know Xander’s looks of ‘I got you’, it’s just crazy. So, they’ve taught me how powerful DNA is, and maybe they’ve taught me to a more extreme level of respect for Lizzy. She’s just an incredible
mother and just watching how she’s executing in
her role with them is has taught me a lot about her. But, for me, they haven’t
taught me jack crap about business and other
than the reason I bet on people is based on my
intuition around their DNA and then I watch their
DNA come full throttle I’m just a big DNA guy. – [Voiceover] Lex asks,

“Gary, I’ve got a question for you. Who is the historical
figure you would have lunch with if you could? And why?” – Lex, great question. First and foremost, two things. One, Lex I really think you
should put a URL in your Instagram account so it links out and two, the VaynerNation you should
check out is Instagram it’s a tremendous, tremendous
effort, great pictures. We’re rolling with heavy
truth in episode 64. The answer to this question is nobody. And I really, really, really
hate giving it because if I’m on the other side
of this camera, I’m looking at that and saying, you
think you’re so great that there’s nobody you want to meet and weirdly there’s
probably a truth to that. It is actually fundamentally,
completely insane how little energy I have of
meeting anybody all the time. There’s plenty of people I
find ridiculously fascinating. Winston Churchill, is
super high and interesting. Randy The Macho Man Savage
is a big one for me. Pete Rozelle, the former
NFL commissioner I just read his book, I don’t read a lot of books, when me and Lizzy went away in November. I’m up to 9 or whatever. Walt Disney is interesting, story telling. There’s people interesting but it’s crazy. If you said, you could have
dinner with any historical figure, we’re talking
Abraham Lincoln, Walt Disney, or the Jets could be, not playing in the Superbowl,
that’s not where I’m going. You could be in August right
now and watching the Jets first pre-season game, I’d
rather do the Jets’ pre-season game. Think about how insane that is. Pre-season I said. There’s something really
broken with me and I think it comes from ego DNA. I do. Or it just speaks to a theme
that a lot of you know which is I’m like this. I’d rather look at Christin’s
Twitter account for 19 minutes and bring that value to the
people that have bestowed in me the interest in
paying attention to me than for me to go and spend
a nice meal and drink some nice wine with Joseph Stalin
so I can tell him he’s a piece of crap. I don’t feel it, I’ve never
felt it, I have no interest. Just super not interesting for me. Question of the day. Which historic figure would
you like to have dinner with?