– [Voiceover] Jarek asks,
“Would you be able to lead any type of company? Do you think that the leaders
can switch industries easily?” – Jarek, this is a great question. You know, I’m speaking for myself that I fundamentally 100,000% believe that I can run any company. I just do. I myself, as you know,
are a reverse engineer. Show the t-shirt. And so what I would be able to do is look, I don’t know, I don’t know dick about
99% of the businesses out there, but it would only
take me about six months with my sponge like skills to figure out whats going on, look at the data, look at the numbers, look at the culture. Reverse engineer,
understand the marketplace and the consumer that’s selling, whether in a B to B or B to C place. There is no business that
me as an operator feel intimidated by. I can’t speak for
everybody, but I do think there’s clearly, I don’t
think I’m that special. I think that there’s other people that also have that
skill set where they can take a look back, really
assess the situation and then operate, and I think that balance comes with sales and HR. For me, I think that’s why I’m able to do so much, for me my strengths are within the HR universe and the sales universe which are really the
two things that you need to know in an organization. You need to be able to sell stuff, and you need to be able to build teams around you. If you’re lucky enough to have that deuce in your life like I
do, then you can do it. – [Voiceover] Ella asks, “What
do you think about Serial?

“How do you not procrastinate that well?” – Cédric. It’s unbelievable how well Cedric the Entertainer branded himself, because I literally was about to call Cédric here the Entertainer. Cédric, I’m calling you the Entertainer. As a matter of fact, I want to make a little piece of content for Cédric and I’ll tweet it out. Cédric, you won. I need a little “Cédric
is the Entertainer,” take his Twitter profile,
and we’re gonna make him. This is a new thing we can
do on the #AskGaryVee Show. We could make things for
fans, one-off t-shirts, pieces of content, I’m
seeing something here. This is gonna make a lot more people ask a lot more questions. Cédric, here’s a curveball, I actually think I’m an
obnoxious procrastinator, while equally not being. Meaning I stay in constant audit mode. Can I get a constant
audit mode alert here? By the way, I have to
watch yesterday’s episode to see what you did with the alerts. Yesterday had a lot of editing.
I gotta watch it outright. I don’t watch my stuff, by the way. It’s a little fun fact for all of you. Sorry, DRock, Staphon,
get to see the great work. There’s a ton of stuff
that I procrastinate, and I think I’m a procrastinator, but what I think I also am is always leveling up
whatever’s most important and prioritizing it in real time. Team can tell you here, I bet you Steve’s favorite inside joke is DeMayo. Can somebody get me the, literally, get me DeMayo? Watch this. This will answer your question
perfectly, VaynerNation, because the truth is, I do procrastinate, but I’m adjusting to
the reality of my life at the moment I’m living it, so if something is
super-important yesterday, I can literally decide that
it’s less important in an hour, predicated on what comes into my inbox, or the meeting that I’m about
to have right after this. And so the reason I think
it feels like I’m not, and so much is getting accomplished, is my pants are on fire for the thing that I deem most important at this exact moment. And that is how it works over and over, where’s DeMayo? And over. I’m trying to stall here. And over, and over, and over again. Let’s go to the next question,
we’ll get back to DeMayo. – [Man offscreen] Oh, here he is. – Oh, here we go. Don’t go, DRock. Leave all that. Don’t
edit that, I’ll be pissed. Now, tell the VaynerNation how– – What’s up, world. – Tell the VaynerNation
how often I’ll send an email that will say “now, this is top priority” versus the next day, this is top priority, and then you get crippled
by the notion of, hold on.
(laughter) If, like, literally, when I’m like, no no, this is the #1 priority in my life. – No, tippy-top priority
is the way you always say. – Tippy-top? Tippy-top. – TIppy-top priority. Yeah, probably every
time you’re on a flight, there’s probably about 15 emails
that come after the flight. – And then you struggle
with, like, what’s tippy-top versus number one. – Yeah, unless you say tippy-top priority. – Is that the new context? (laughter) – If that’s what you’ve
been using for the month. – Alright. – So maybe it’ll change for the new year. – Thanks, man. And that’s what happens, right? Matt, my admin, you know, he has to struggle through what is tippy-top priority of the moment, because it might change tomorrow, so as long as you’re executing
something every day, as a tippy-top priority item, then you’re moving the needle. And sure, something might have moved from second most important
to fourth most important to ninth most important, Alex, you’re dealing with this right now. A lot of things that you
would have dealt with, like BizDev was like the most important, you can’t get a minute from me because something has caused it to become the eighth most important thing versus the number one important thing, and, like, there’s a lot of serendipity, Steve’s been waiting
for this top six things at WineLibrary for four days, I found a minute, I decided it was tippy-top
priority of that minute, and it just works that way at all times. – [Voiceover] Pressian asks,
“How exactly did your mother

“when all of the 420
wonderful, amazing people “quit VaynerMedia?” – Ruke, that’s good work. I like this question a lot. As a matter of fact, if
we can figure it out, let’s clip right now to the
moment where I kind of ranted. I know DRock, four hours editing. I wonder, the right word in that question is “ordinary person,” right? Was that an ordinary person? Yeah.
(clicking pen) And I think that’s the
interesting part of your question, which is this whole
notion that pisses me off that I don’t believe that the far majority of people right now who claim that they are
entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs. You know, I don’t get to claim
that I’m an NFL quarterback and then I just am one. And that’s what’s happening, right? A lot of people that
don’t have the skills, you put that word “ordinary”
in for a very specific reason, and it’s the reason I
want to rant on this, which is the ordinary person, aka, the person that’s not
meant to run a business, can probably only handle one punch, right? I mean, that’s just what it comes down to. You know what my answer is? Unlimited. You can punch me in the face 8,000 times. I’m here to get punched, right? I really do think of it
like a UFC or a boxer. Have you ever watched
a UFC or boxing match, and literally watched
and thought to yourself, “Holy crap. If I took one of those punches “I’d be in a coma for
the rest of my life?” They’re meant to be in the octagon. I am not. (laughs) On the flip side, you show me a world where all 420 of these wonderful, amazing people quit VaynerMedia, and I know exactly what
to do the next day. That’s how I roll. Those are
the punches I can handle. Top 10 clients quit? Cool. Can’t ship to a state at
Wine Library anymore? Cool. I can handle unlimited punches because I’m purebred 100% entrepreneur. And so from me to the person
that is a wannabe-preneur, who, first punch in is like,
“Uh, I’m gonna go get a job,” from there, everybody fits
somewhere in between that, and that’s your answer. (quick swishing by) Alright, so obviously
I put myself out there and I said that I was going
to be able to handle it, no problem. Punch me. I can handle it. First thing I would do is
take a step back and wonder, “What the hell just happened?
(laughter) “Why did that happen?” But, theoretically, if it
was in a positive standpoint, what I would do is I would take advantage of everything I’ve learned
for the last five years, and I would decide, “Do I want
to build back up VaynerMedia, “or do I want to do something else?” And what I mean by that, and this is why this is gonna go a little
bit deeper philosophically, I would not make an emotional decision. If it happened in a way
that hurt my feelings, I wouldn’t go the route
of, “I’ll show them,” even thought that’s what I
referred to in the last episode, and then go out and
rebuild it and start over. I may want to do that, to stick it back and
show that I could do it, but one of the things I
take enormous pride in is that I am capable of taking a step back and not making the emotional decision. This is the real answer, Ruke: What I would do is I would say, “Okay, what do I wanna do now? “Do I wanna go and rebuild VaynerMedia? “Do I …” I’d probably call it
“Chuk Media,” C-H-U-K, just to get the heebie-jeebies
out of the 420 leavings. “Or is there something else on my plate “that I’ve learned from now?” I would just be reacting to the
best opportunity for my time getting close to 40, wanna buy the Jets. “What’s the best use of my time?” If I was to rebuild all over again I feel very confident that I could do it. That’s just how I feel. (strong, beating music)

and I’m a marketing consultant. I have my own blog, but
I don’t do any podcasts or videos, basically anything
that involves me speaking. That’s because I have this
terrible Russian accent and I’m worried that it might
hurt my trustworthiness. Do you think this is
something I should worry about or people from US don’t
care about my Russian accent as long as I give them tons of value? Thanks. – Thank you, Tim. First of all, clearly I
might be dramatically biased because you sound like all my relatives. That Russian accent is so endearing to me that made me feel at home. I think the … Look, do I think there
are certain Americans in the American market will hear that and jump to conclusions? I absolutely do, let’s live in the world we actually live in. Current events in our society prove that. There’s a lot of things
still grounded in our society that maybe many of us wish
that wouldn’t be the case. Do I think that people look at accents as a sign of inferiority,
not as much intellect? I absolutely believe that to be true. On the flip side, I think, Tim my friend, you’re looking at the negative. What about all the people
that who do have accents, by the way a crap load? Let me tell you another thing. As a marketing person, you’re
speaking to entrepreneurs. Do you know the far majority of pure entrepreneurs
and who have that hustle? Many of them in this amazing country do have accents and so
I think you’re looking at the negative instead of the positives. I do also believe that there’s enormous, and I believe the
VaynerNation is a big part of this, because look, the way I roll is something that a lot of people don’t think is the right way to go. I have too much bravado, too much cursing, too much oomph, too much all of that, and so I think it’s
massively important … (laughing) Nice work. I like watching A-time. He loves getting on the show. This time, I’m just really enjoying. I’m enjoying. He doesn’t like it as much when I know which was a big victory for me. I really think that people need to recognize that there’s pros and
cons with everything. My intuition is that if you
think that you can communicate through video or audio podcast, then that is something
you should invest in and that you should not
worry about the market because the market will come to you if you believe that you’re
actually good at it. Unless, you’re not. It comes down to are you good at it. Look, you clearly want to go there because you just made a video question and you got the exposure here. I’m sure you’re probably even using The #AskGaryVee Show
as a little test case, but don’t let the
VaynerNation who’s all going to jump in here and say “Do it, Tim, do it.” You’re part of this community and they’re going to build you up. The real answer is,
once you start doing it, do people give a crap and to me, the fact that I know based on your actions that you want to do it, the bigger answer to your question is go and
do it for the next 100 days and then figure out was it a prejudice or preconceived notions that didn’t allow you to have the upside and then you adjust and that’s the real answer, my man.

– [Voiceover] Damian asks, “Gary, do you script answers or improvise? How much time do you invest in
prep and production per show?” – Damian, you know,
here’s how it goes down. Steve, you know, or India in the future might, you know, just run through the questions. I do want to have once, you know, it’s funny, I just did the Rapid Fire on Bloomberg. As a matter of fact, it’s
weird that we actually even read the questions because I actually
prefer them coming cold. We may even go to that. I’m not sure why I do that. But that’s it. Here come the questions. Cool. Maybe gives me a minute or two while I’m answering this question to think about the next one, ’cause I want to give the
best answers I possibly can, but I’m very comfortable in improv. I prefer it. I feel like they’re fresh. I think one of the main reasons
you guys watch this show is because I bring it fresh and real, and I think that matters, and that’s pretty much where
I’m at with the prep time. And the production,
that’s DRock, Staphon,

She’s two and a half. And I was wondering in the
future, how are you going to treat social media with your children? Oh no, don’t hide. Say hi. Can you wave? – Oh, cute. – Hi. – Hi. – Hey. Kyle, Ruby, you know
it’s been interesting. Lizzie and I, look it’s hard
to find pictures of Lizzie on the internet. Let alone, you know, all full blast. And Misha and Xander are even more of a rare commodity. I’m not sure. I mean, obviously, I have a
partner in crime in this answer. Lizzie, is very much the
CEO of the household. I’d like to think I’m the COO. Sometimes I’m just like, you
know, the maintenance man. No, I mean, the truth is, we
communicate a lot about this. You know, I’m a counter puncher. I talk a lot about that. I react to the time. For me to predict where
social is gonna be or the technology. But what I do know is one thing. It’s amazing to watch 13
year old girl behavior where their spending 45
minutes on the lighting and the angle on a Instagram photo. And then if it doesn’t get
enough likes in the first three minutes, they take it down. So clearly self esteem is very
wrapped up in these things. And every parent loves
their child so much that you want to keep them away
from bullying and being made fun of or getting into
things too early in their lives. I have the extra pressure,
in my opinion, of deciding to raise my children in
Manhattan where an 8 year old maps more like a 17 year old in many other parts of the country. And so, it’s a challenge. And it’s something that
I think a lot about. And something I care a lot about. I’m not sure exactly how
we’re going to handle it. I think we’re going to
handle it by instilling an enormous amount of love into our children. It’s very important to us
to establish a foundation of who they are. We’ve been spending a lot of time of like, mission statements, and
like key pillars that we want to instill of how we
want them to act, how we want them to treat others
is very important to me. Imposing enormous self esteem into them is important to me.
And I think that to me, there’s new dynamics, but
it’s still always the same and what I mean by that is
the core pillars of good parenting haven’t changed
since the beginning of time. There’s new dynamics.
Those things are probably more important than ever. Having more self esteem,
more perseverance, better manners, all those
things probably matter more than ever. And so, I’m gonna just try
to deliver tried and true things to my kids, much
like I do with business. The world changes, but the
principles of patience, and believing your
people, and establishing infrastructure and playing the long game. I’ve said it before in this show, you know, a tortoise in a
hare’s costume, you know, I believe in old school things like that. So I’m just gonna instill
really good, core fundamentals and let the outside world evolve
because I can’t control it. And just instill my
children into that world, most prepared and best
positioned to succeed. – [Voiceover] Everybody
asks, “What do you think

once in a while I want
to rant about things. Airbnb going into print. A magazine I think called Pineapple. I’ve been a little off the grid.. I gotta answer this Snapcash
question and I haven’t really even played yet, so. But, a really interesting move to me, something I want to
address with everybody. I’m very fond when the
new world goes old world. I love when Warby Parker€Ž and Birchbox, an investment of mine, for disclosure, open up retail stores. I love when Airbnb makes a print magazine. CNET making a print magazine. You know, I’m one who,
you know, kind of like, pounds on traditional media. But if the cost structure is
right and the strategy is right for Airbnb, as they continue
to grow, they’re now trying to get to that final
step which is broad awareness. And a print magazine in
supermarkets across the country or Barnes and Nobles is a
way for them to get to that 45 to 75 year old that is not
as savvy, and maybe that cost of printing on trees
might bring them value. And so to me I like the
convergence of the new world going into the old world. Versus the old world
going into the new world. – [Voiceover] Tyler asks,
“Do you still think the

– [Voiceover] Joy asks,
“What social media techniques “do you think work best
for promoting a book?” – Joy, I was excited about
answering this question ’cause I was gonna go tactical, but then Steve reminded me
that I’ve answered this a bunch in the past, and I wanna
give that context too ’cause he’s right, and I
wouldn’t have answered it, so kudos to Steve for
making the show better. When selling a book, you
need to be selling it months and years in advance. I am actively, right now,
selling the #AskGaryVee book. Let me explain. I’m putting out content, and I’m jabbing, and I’m building an audience, and I’m building a lot of new fans. As a matter of fact, question of the day going right into it, How long have you been following my work? Please leave that in the comments. Podcast people, jump out of the earphones, and jump onto the
keyboard and go to YouTube and answer this question, because I want a lot of
people in the VaynerNation to see how many people are only
two, three, four, five, six weeks in because this
show is getting virality, bringing people in, and then
thus creating a scenario where, I was just thinking
about what’s the scenario, got excited, anyway, creating a scenario where
I’m bringing value up front, I’m not charging for this. I’m not asking for anything. I’m not trying to make a
gateway to a product, no. I’m just building leverage,
and then when I launch in early 2016 the #AskGaryVee book, which is probably gonna be
a hundred to two hundred of these questions that I’ve
done over the last year or two, if I can get that far. That was a little bit of
a gateway drug preview to how many episodes I’m expecting to do. And two, a bunch of new questions, and three is kind of a cool idea I have. (ding) A lot of people here
who’ve watched every show don’t really need to buy the book, right? I mean, you’ve consumed it, but at 18 bucks or 22 bucks, they will because I’ve guilted them into it because I’ve provided so much of value. And so number one, you need
to provide value up front before you ever sell your book. Let me get into some tactics. One-on-one marketing. One of the biggest mistakes
so many authors make is they send out a bulk e-mail, and it usually says this. “Hey guys, I never normally do this,” I mean, that’s my favorite. You like that, Zak? “I never normally do this, “but I have a book coming
out next Wednesday. “It would mean the world to me,” Why? They want to be efficient. People want to scale. What I did last August was I went to Connecticut with my family and I, one by one by one by one by one, wrote e-mails to people
that I wanted to help. Alex in 12 years. Alex, hey remember I really
gave you a break in your career. You know, we’re great buddies. Hey, nice job last week, da da da. I’d really appreciate
your help on this book. Can I count on you? And I basically went one by one by one and scaled the unscalable,
and what it created was a landfall of a lot of opportunity. The other thing is you have to
cess the market of exposure. That year, August last year, the podcasting was really
starting to happen, right? And so I wanted to really focus on that. So I went and I did a ton of interviews with all the emerging podcast people ’cause I knew that was the arbitrage, and what I mean by the arbitrage was a place where you would get
bigger return on your investment than other places based on its exposure. So whereas three years ago I’d
want to be in the Huff Post and guest blog post,
that played itself out because Forbes opened it up, and a lot of other people did that move, but the podcasting was starting to grow, and now there’s so many more podcasts, so much more competition for those earbuds that it’s changed a little bit. It’s not as valuable to be
a guest as it was a year ago because of the game, unless
a certain podcast overindexed and there’s more, and you keep playing this. So it’s really tactical stuff like that, but it’s really about
scaling the unscalable. The truth is, you’ve gotta get
to somebody’s emotion, right? So that it goes from heart
to brain to wallet, right? Heart to brain to wallet, oh I like that. That could be a really nice picture. Let’s, maybe a t-shirt. Heart, can you make a t-shirt? Anyway, heart to brain to wallet is kind of the way I
think about selling books. First you gotta get them emotional, then you gotta make them
think there’s a value prop, and you’ve got a storytell to them why they should buy your book. What’s in it for them above the fact that they feel that they owe you? And then that’s when they
start pulling out their wallet. And so I do that one by one by one by one, and when I do interviews,
one of the things if you go back and listen
to all of the podcasts, Lewis Howes, Peflen,
JLD, any of those people, when I was doing those interviews, I barely mentioned the book. As a matter of fact, when they asked me questions of the book
’cause they were good guys and they wanted to get me exposure, I’d walk away from it ’cause
the only thing I want to do in those 30 minutes was provide as much value for that
audience as possible ’cause that’s the first step, the heart. Thanks for watching episode
41 of The #AskGaryVee Show.

on whether a PR company
or a person should be overseeing social media for a business.” – Barry, great question,
and before I even answer it, I just want to thank you
for being a long time interactor friend with me. I don’t like using the word fan, but I say it sometimes, it just slips. Barry, I’ve always
enjoyed our conversations on Twitter over the last four years, so thrilled to have you on the show. I think I know where you’re
going with this question, which is the notion of,
VaynerMedia was built on coming into companies and taking the social media away from PR companies. Some of the bigger PR companies
in the world right now have built out social media departments and they’ve done a nice
job, to varying degrees. I wanted to answer this question because I want to get people around the psychology of the difference between PR and social, and why I do think that,
of course there’s people, hundreds of people in
this company have worked in PR before, so there’s
some great things about PR. Being able to handle
pressure, the speed of it. The difference though, is PR is very B2B. When you’re a PR person
and you’re working with a client, the Yankees,
you’re trying to get them press in the New York Times,
The New York Post, ESPN. You’re working directly with a human being who’s the gatekeeper to make a decision. When you’re doing social, you’re dealing with all the fans, and it’s much more B2C. So I don’t have a problem if a PR person or company is doing the social
for a company or individual, I just want to make sure
they have a different gear in their brand understanding, brain, not brand, but that
was an interesting slip-up. I just want to make
sure they have that gear to know that they need
to be looking at this as a B2C game, versus
the B2B game that is PR. – [Voiceover] eastcountytoday says, “Gary, love the iTunes touch.

– [Voiceover] Troy asks, “I
work in two different spaces. “How do I use social
media platforms so that “I’m not confusing my audience?” – Troy, this is a very simple question. You adjust to the platform at hand. So we’re very detailed on this show. For Twitter, the way
you don’t confuse them, if you’re talking about
two different things, I’ll, uh, business and
wine talk is you create two different channels and you
have an @winelibrary account and you have an at
@garyvaynerchuk account, Gary Vee, and that’s what I did, or
you just become so branded in both that you feel
comfortable being, kind of, a renaissance man or woman, and you can go that route. But you have to react to the platform. So on Twitter, you just
create two different accounts, and you promote through them. On Facebook though, the
targeting capabilities allows you to just be yourself and
talk to people that act, you can plan, to people
that are 25 to 45 that are into wine and you put out a wine content, and they will like that, and you know, 22 to 27 that are into
podcasts, and you do that, and then they want you
to talk about that thing, so Facebook gives you the
flexibility to target. You know, Twitter does not. And so you’ve gotta adjust. YouTube channel, do you have
two channels, do you have one. This is something we’ve talked about ’cause we wanna chop up
every answer into a question. As a matter of fact, let’s link
up the first one we put up, right the tennis thing. One here. And so, you know… The real answer to this
question, Troy, is you’ve gotta adjust to the platform’s
capability to drive home the fragmentation or
the one channel process, so you go place by place. Pinterest, you can create a board, right, you can have an account, you
can create different boards and on certain boards
you put out content about whatever the hell you’re doing, and whatever the hell you’re
doing that’s different, so you, Tumblr, you can
create a bunch of different kind of, blah, blah, blah .tumblr.com, so that gives you flexibility. So I’m giving you very detailed
answers here, my friend. It’s not super hard, you have
to have the right strategy per the platform based on
the flexibility of that platform to deliver the story. – [Voiceover] Michael asks,
“How do you define hustle?”