#AskGaryVee Episode 84: Germany, Death, & Crowdsourcing Ideas

– [Voiceover] Jill asks,
“One, are you gonna pursue my idea? Two, do you get a lot of quality ideas when you crowdsource a question? And three, do you crowdsource ideas more to engage with your audience or to actually get
serious ideas like mine?” – Jill, this is a great question. First and foremost, it
is not only your idea. That idea of a subscription wine thing has been going on, oh
I don’t know, for about five and a half, six, seven years now I’ve been pounded with that idea, but to answer if we’re gonna do it, the answer is I’m not sure. I’ve been getting more involved
with Wine Library lately. There’s a lot of different
objectives that I want to accomplish that are more top of list, but the Gary Vee subscription or Wine Library
subscription thing is definitely interesting, and
it’s something we’re pondering. I mean, wine of the month clubs have been around forever, and of
course, personalization, or all the other variables
you can add to it. Get it, got it, solid
idea, love your picture by the way on Instagram. Yeah, I think we get quality ideas, and more importantly, quality subjective. To me, it’s my form of listening, and so yeah, I think I get
some quality ideas at times. The truth is I, to answer the
third part of your question, do I do it to engage or am I really looking for the ideas? You know, I’m very
insularly with my ideas. I don’t like getting
ideas from other places, and so I do it more to
engage and to listen and to get a pulse and to collect, and they’re inputs, they’re lightweight. It would be rare for me to
just take Staphon’s idea, but hearing Stephon’s
idea and India’s ideas and DRock’s ideas, and Stunwin’s ideas, and just they’re all little
inputs and then it forms some version. I always feel like I gotta
put my sprinkles on it. That’s been successful for
me, so I think that I’m taking the inputs of the world. That’s why I do so much listening, so much engaging, to get to like an 85, 90% place and then I do
my thing on top of that, and that’s where the
good stuff comes from. – [Voiceover] Megan asks,
“How much of you is creating

content versus making
appearances and attending social things like parties?” – Megan, this is a great question. I often say that money and fame don’t change anybody, they just expose who someone actually is at a bigger scale, and there’s an enormous
part of me that believes there’s a lot of truth in
that in technology as well. We’re not making, you
know, people are like, I had this funny argument
with this guy at Wine Library the other day where he was
like, all these phones, the art of talking to each other. He goes, I was in Starbucks. This was great. I was in Starbucks, and
everybody was head down. Nobody was talking to each other. I was like, where were you? He was like, New York. I’m like, alright, let’s
talk about this for a second. I’m like, do you think
13 years ago at Starbucks that people were just
yapping with each other? Like, hey brother, great shirt. That’s not how New York rolls, my man. And so I think that all
that technology is doing is making more visible
what we actually were going to do. I mean I do believe the
far majority of people are introverted at first, at scale, by math. If you asked me, or any
I think common sense person in society, I think
we’d all agree on looking for refirmation here. There’s way more people that are gonna sit either timid or middle timid or somewhat timid, and then somebody
whose just gonna roll up. The reason we love and hate the people that just roll up and are loud. Zoom in real good. You got him? – [DRock] Yep. – Really? On that angle you get him? You got Gabe right there? The reason Gabe who works at VaynerMedia is somebody that so many
people know, is ’cause he’s loud as shit, right? And some people love it, and some people hate it, but that’s why. He’s an extrovert extreme. He’s probably like singing
his song right now. It looks like he’s in a meeting. He’s probably just doing some Drake lyrics while he works. I think that it’s important
for us to understand, that first of all, could
you be having an addiction? Sure. I think everybody’s addicted
to their cellular device. I fully believe that every
single person is addicted to their cell phone, like straight up. Maybe, but I would say this, I think that it’s great
for all the introverts or the people that don’t like to party and don’t like to go out, what
they were doing before, they were interacting with the television. Let’s call it what it is, or with like a very small
group of one or two friends who equally were close in location to them and were like that. Now people can really communicate at scale with the people that
have similar interests, find new people, and
all that kind of stuff. I think that you are fine. I think your picture is rad. I think you and I are friends. – [Voiceover] Max asks,
“I’m from Germany where

Meerkat is nothing more
than a cute animal, and Twitter isn’t even as
dominant as it is in the US. Would you recommend that I still go there and wait?” – Max, I think that the question is very solid, but actually you should have been able to level up and figure it out for yourself. Here’s what I mean by that. It’s the same thesis that
I talk about in the US. Meerkat is just an animal in the US too and so is Periscope, and so is Snapchat 38 months ago. Yes, every country, like here’s an answer. Will every country like the
same social networking apps and they will hit scale? Absolutely not. It’s funny. Unfortunately, as India
was reading the question I know that Twitter never
popped to real scale at Germany, I was gonna say that. You said it in the question. Look, I think that it’s super important for you to understand what I
mean by sit there and hope. The upside of being an earlier
mover in a new platform that has the potential
to pop is so much greater than the downside of
going to a new platform and wasting your four, five or 10 weeks or 10 months, and it didn’t pop, and that’s why I’ll always do it. That’s about as basic as it gets. That was probably the
best way that I’ve ever articulated it. Thank you Max from Germany for putting me in a position to succeed right now, because that’s it. That’s just it. It’s just that simple. Especially when you’re
an entrepreneur and time is what you have, not money. You entrepreneurs in the
VaynerNation are pissing me off to such an extreme,
because you’re debating these things, and you cry that
you don’t have enough money to compete with the big guys, but then you cry about wasting your time. Oh, you mean the only God damn asset you have besides your raw talent to have any potential to win? Yeah, I think it’s a
good use of your time. – Hey Gary, it’s Brandon
from Human Cry from

How do we take that
same level of experience and put it online? – You know, I think you guys at team Human Cry need to
really think about what people want in a retail store, so
you’ve figured that out, and I think the way you do
it is through a survey monkey or a survey, or some data
of what do people want in an online experience? It’s about delivering
people what they want, where they want it. A lot of times people will
try to impose the old world to the new world, meaning, okay. On our website we’re gonna
make a video for everything, or we’re gonna put a live person app, or we’re gonna put our
toll free number, call net. You know, I and everybody
in this room wants good UI, UX. I want it to be fast. I want to get in and out, and speed matters to me when I online shop more than. It’s funny, I actually
and listen everybody has different behaviors, but
actually this will be fun. Steve, I’m gonna make a statement, and I wanna hear your version of it. Actually, I hate shopping, but if for God, I guess Jets shirt. I’m trying to think, I just
don’t like shopping, but I was about to say, in online shopping, but I can’t even order on like Seamless. Well actually I do order on Seamless. Do you know that I’m not
capable of calling a restaurant and ordering food for myself? That it is literally one
of the three or four things that cripples me the most. If Lizzie just said, can
you call and order dinner? – [Steve] What did
you do before Seamless? – I had somebody else do it My wife prior to that, A.J. prior to that, my parents prior to that, girlfriends. I would just never, I never did it. – [Steve] Was it just you would choke? – It just suffocates me. The notion of being on the
phone to order something suffocates me. Yeah, anyway, Seamless
worked for me, the app. Where I was about to
go was in online stuff I need fast and offline site,
I can schmooze a little bit, but then I realize, no I don’t. I only value speed,
because time is the thing that I like the most. India, do you like shopping? – [India] Yeah, once in awhile I guess. – [Gary] Okay, are your
habits different online than they are in real life? Will you spend 40 minutes
in a store looking at stuff? And will you spend 40
minutes looking at stuff on a website? – No, usually on a website
I know exactly what I want, so I’m going to get it. – [Gary] You’re more surgical. – Yeah, but then shopping in person I’m just kind of like browsing. – [Gary] Do you use
Pinterest or other things in theory that are
getting you there online? – Yeah, Pinterest. Definitely have bought
things because I found them on Pinterest. – That’s where it gets interesting. I think there’s something in there, and that’s where my intuition is. Even though I’m not a
shopper, I understand shoppers which is why I led the
questions, if you paid attention very carefully. I think it comes down to realizing that people wanna
be surgical and execution oriented on your site, and
you as a marketing engine need to be great at creating discovery across the whole web, and then funneling it to surgical execution on your site. That was tremendous advice. – [Voiceover] Andrew asks,
“if you were to tragically die

today, how well would
VaynerMedia do in the long term without it’s CEO? Have you been satisfied
with Wine Library’s performance since leaving
to focus on VaynerMedia?” – Andrew, this is a great question. I mean, I always say
everything stems from the top, and so I’m trying to
think about how I wanna answer this question,
meaning A.J. is ridiculously capable. I don’t think the
company would do as well, mainly because he just had his big brother and mentor die, and so even though he’s capable I would assume that he would be pretty torn up. He better be. I think that he would struggle with that, and I don’t think he loves
client services enough to persevere, and he’d be like,
what is it all worth anyway? Who cares? On the flip side, there’s
an interesting thing. Believe it or not, this is a weird thing. Though A.J. is hands down the most capable person to be the CEO of VaynerMedia, I could almost see him
not wanting to do it, and I could almost see so many people here internally saying, no we have to continue the hustle and so, it’d be interesting. I think we built a very
interesting culture here. Similarly, Brandon runs
Wine Library with my dad, and Bobby and Justin, it’s all family. My best friend, my brother
in law, my cousin, my dad. My ego made me think that
Wine Library would hurt more than it did without me there. To answer your question, I am
happy with how Wine Library has performed with me not there. That being said, do I think it
could be way way, way better? Of course, I mean I think I’m great. Do I think the businesses
are better off without me than with me?
Absolutely not. Are they in places where they
won’t go out of business? Absolutely. Are they in places where they have no prayer of the hyper growth that I create when I’m the operator? That’s for damn sure. The biggest thing that
I create is the ability to grow big businesses fast as shit. That’s gonna end up being my
legacy if I do it one more time and I’m not on business number two that I’ve taken in a 36 month
period with no cash infusion to very big heights. That is a very difficult
task in a cash flow basis. The companies that grow big on funding, that make sense. The Ubers, and that
company is way better than what I’ve executed, but still when you have hundreds of millions
of dollars of funding, the speed is what I’m talking about. Forget about the business. Well in a non-funded business, to be able to build that speed,
that takes an incredible game of chicken, because
you’re playing cash flow versus growth. Being able to afford. You know how proud I am that we’ve never had lay offs
because we lost a client? That is unheard of in agency world, and it’s triple unheard of for the fastest growing agency of all time in people. I’m proud. That is what I’m uniquely great at. They won’t grow as fast, but there’s enormous talent around me that is able to do their thing. That being said, I’m so much, not only the executional leader
of my friends and families and business, I think
I’m the emotional leader with a lot of them too. I would think that they
would really struggle with my absence, and would
crumble into a little hole. I’m just kidding. I think they would struggle with that.