– [Voiceover] Shawn asks, “I was
asked to fill out a self-evaluation, “but I think these are just a waste of time “and don’t help that much. “What do you think?” – I think it depends on
who’s on the receiving end of the self-evaluation. There are things that
I’ve done in my career where I’ve asked employees to do things and never then read it, and that was obviously a waste of time. (laughs) Right? And that’s not fun for me to admit, but things that I learned
as a kid at Wine Library and the truth is even at VaynerMedia there’s been things that I’ve done. A lot of my employees
now know, let’s do it on a call for two minutes
instead of emailing me ’cause that’s not how I roll. If somebody’s on the other
end listening to that feedback and actually does something
with that feedback, the self-evaluation is tremendous. I think you’re barking up
the right tree, though, is I don’t think that’s happening
in 99% of organizations. mainly ’cause the intent
isn’t there to give a crap enough about the employee, and
so my cynical point of view of how businesses are
treating their employees leads me to, you’re probably right. Now, if you’re there because you believe, I’d like to think that India feels good about doing it at VaynerMedia with me on my team, so then it’s valuable. But I think it comes down to more about how much you believe in the organization, more so than the tactic that is deployed in a self-evaluation. I also think people are full
of crap in self-evaluations, like you’re always gonna give yourself, if it’s 50-50 if you’re
like am I good or great? Great! Am I lazy or just solid? I’m solid! So like everybody’s always leaning to their best benefit, it’s human nature. – [India] Really, you think everybody is? – No, I think that’s a good point India, I do think some people are
stunningly hard on themselves. But yes, I think, you know, first of all it’s a good opportunity,
I never think anything’s a hundred percent, the
hell’s a hundred percent? Nothing. But yes, I do think the far majority, and 94%, which allows me to say everybody.

“to improve women’s underwear. “I’m scratching my own itch, but
know nobody in the business. “Advice?” – So India, you and I
worked on this one today we saw this tweet, I sent it to you, you went to go reach out to her. She deleted it, what did she say? – [India] She said oh
yeah, I just deleted it, but I’ll put it back up right
now if you’re gonna pick it. – (Gary laughs) I love it. Mike, this is starting to
get good, look at that. – [Mike] Yeah I know, thoracic extension. – Um, one more, we’ll just bend this out. Rupa, I think that this answer is actually the answer to your question, which is, you don’t know me,
hey Rupa, you don’t know me! You don’t know me, and you tweeted at me, and here I am responding to
you and giving you feedback, in the same way that you can go and map all 700 executives in the industry and hit them up on Twitter and say hello, I’d like to talk to you
about my business idea, and literally three of them will say yes, two of them will cancel on you, and one out of the 700 people, and if you think about three
to five minutes per engagement, three minutes to write the engagement and kinda to check it, and
then maybe four to 10 hours of research of who those
700 executives are, that you need for marketing or production or the retail world, right? Like, as you’ve tried to, (laughs) this is so, this is the most, this is way up there with
ridiculous things that I’ve done. I’m so sorry to the Vayner Nation. I don’t know what I decided, I
don’t know how this happened. Anyway, I think that um, I like take my workout serious too. So, I think you have
to go and reach out to, and so I’m telling you
that you’re gonna get to one person, maybe two, by spending 80, 90 hours of time, which scares
way too many of you off. The problem is, what’s the alternative? The problem is, what is the alternative? When you’re at the bottom
and you’ve got nothing, you’ve gotta scrap, it’s like me and Mike when we first, now I can use this, now I’m gonna start using this gym. When we first started here 16 months ago Mike told me to do this,
this, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it! That’s how at the bottom physically I was, and then we just
systematically did things. That whole thing when I
was like this is good, literally 60 days ago I
couldn’t do crap with that because we hadn’t worked
on that flexibility. So, anyway, what you have to do is you have to find the 700 people and you have to go and get them. And I would use Twitter,
LinkedIn is a place you could use as well, the problem is so many people spam on LinkedIn you get so much more upside on Twitter especially if you don’t
just like spam them with the first move, you know,
jab jab and right hooking. Woops, I use the wrong, anyway! So that’s it, put in the work. Put in the work! – [India] Shawn, I was asked to fill out-

and we’re about to perform at MedLife Stadium with the marching band. My question to you is, if you have a great idea for a business or a product, what’s the next step you should take? – Well, I think, great question. – He followed up, too. – Yes, there was a little
bit of that yesterday, he followed up, I said yeah we got you, ’cause we already had you, and then everybody was
like, oh is that how you get on the show, and all this stuff. So anyway, I think it’s very simple. The next step is to go and do it. You and all your band-mates,
all of you got good ideas. Everybody here’s got a good idea. This dude’s got a good idea, she’s got a great idea,
she’s got a great idea. Everybody, everybody’s got ideas. What you do next is you make it happen. Maybe you quit band and
you go make it happen. Maybe you go ask money
from your Uncle Milton and that’s how you make it happen. Maybe you find a partner
that can build your app, you go to meetups, you’ve
got to make it happen. I don’t know if that’s money,
that’s time, that’s a partner that can actually build out what you need, but the answer always, youngster,
is go and make it happen. The ideas, the thoughts, are nice. I always say, ideas are
shit, execution’s the game. I say that on purpose. I’m actually gonna use this
video as a clarification. Staphon, cut this out
because I’m gonna need it ’cause everybody gets mad at
me, and they’re not wrong. You’ve got to have, a
great idea’s a great idea. It’s just, there’s so many of those. There’s so many great ideas, there’s way less great executions. The 7,000 greatest ideas of all time, never saw the day of light. They just haven’t. Because execution’s
hard, and that’s the key. And so, yes, ideas are amazing, and I’m sure your idea is wonderful. But I equally believe that
everybody’s ideas are wonderful. There’s a lot of great
ideas that are wonderful. I’ve seen a hell of a
lot more people execute very below-average ideas
to build amazing lives. There’s unlimited
multi-million dollar companies, people have made millions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of
dollars, had tremendous success in business on
executing an average idea. Know what’s an average idea? A social and digital agency. That’s a below-average idea. It worked. Like, it’s good, it allows AJ
to have Tyler as an employee. So I think that’s the
key to that question. – [Voiceover] Mike asks, “What have you

– [Voiceover] SaltySnapz
asks, “People say the road “to success is lonely. “Do you feel that’s accurate? “If not, why do you think
it’s a common sentiment?” – You know, I think
people use that statement because the truth is, I mean first of all, it depends on how you define success. In the context of what this show is about, which is business success, obviously we talk about a
lot of life stuff as well. But, you know, when you’re the CEO, when you are the founder, the conversation that’s not being had, everybody sees all the nice
things that come along. But every single thing that
happens in this company that’s wrong is my fault. Every snarky comment on social. Every kind of, like, sad face. Every email bullet points that I, every Friday I get bullet
points from tons of Vayner Media employees and 80% of them have a bullet that’s like,
“Rick is stretched too thin “and is crying in the bathroom.” That’s devastating. It’s very tough to be
at the top of something, even when it’s going great. Vayner’s going great. This is not even, like, you
know Wall Street collapsed and we lost a lot of clients
and we have to have layoffs. This is, like, we’re
rolling and we’re the best and we’re crushing and there’s
always things to worry about. Because you know that there’s no, “Oh, it’s India’s fault.” Everybody here, at some
level, all the way up can still say (snaps
fingers), “It’s Gary’s fault.” I can’t and when you say it’s my fault, there’s a really tough burden emotionally, forget about financially,
that comes along with that. And so I think it can get
very lonely, you do recognize. It’s amazing to me, for
as much of a communinary and extrovert as I am, how
much I keep in my own mind. How much is going on in
this noggin every day. Calculating, strategizing, thinking. And there is no vacations. I desperately love national holidays and, like, I can’t wait for
Christmas and Thanksgiving because everybody else is checked out and that’s the only time,
that’s the only time that I’m able to be off. I have my 40th birthday
coming on Saturday. I’m going away with my family. This is an incredible moment in my life and I will not be able
to be 100% checked out. Because then those, you know
and that Friday and that Monday the world is moving, this world is moving. My responsibilities are moving. I’m always one phone call away from a fire that I have to address. It is a very intense, lonely
place to be, at the tipy top. And so, when you think about, you know, I always think
about, like, “Is life fair?” Right? There’s always things that happen, there’s things that we can’t control. But the notion of, like,
somebody getting compensated a lot of money for things that we, do I think somebody making
20 million dollars a year to be an athlete or an actress. We never talk about
actresses and actors, right? We love to zing on athletes
but, like, actors make, like, the big ones make like
eight, 15 million dollars to make a movie. But still, at the end of the day, it’s because they command the market. People want to pay attention and there’s enormous amount of pressure. As I’ve lived my life and
started spending some time with A-list celebrities, there
life is, I mean, it’s intense. Like, I really secretly
think that I could be an A-list celebrity. That I literally could go
on TV and be a breakout hit. Like in a Mad Money
kind of like, you know, not like Jennifer Lawrence. I just don’t have the looks. But in a Mad Money, kind of like Regis, kind of like Andy Cohen way. But man, real celebrity status is intense. You just have nowhere to
go and so there’s that. Or an athlete where the
physical shape that you have to, 18, you know, 10 hours a
day of putting in that time. People look at the outcomes
they don’t think about what’s coming along with
it and the pressure. The pressure to know
that if I get hit wrong, that my entire life collapses, especially an athlete
that has a short window. Or the pressures that we’ve, look, I don’t think it’s a coincidence
that some of the greatest artists of all time pass
away in their mid-20s because of the intensity. It’s intense, it’s intense. It’s very lonely and so it
could be extremely lonely. I, ironically, and you’ll
find this wild, I love, look I want random extra
people in the room. So, like, I love being around
people more than anything but I’m also very comfortable in my own, being one-on-one with myself. So I’m good but I know that I’m emotionally stable as fuck
and it’s intense for me. I can’t imagine people that
are not as fortunate as I am pulling from both directions. Ambition but humil, you know. Like, do you know how content I am? A lot of people watch
this show and you hear I wanna buy the Jets and you misunderstand really where I’m at. I want it all and I
wanna win the whole thing but if I never win again,
if I plateau at this level, there’s an amazing amount
of content in my body for all my hunger. And that balances me
but I couldn’t imagine if that was tweaked just a little bit. If I really felt the pressure because there’s enough pressure from a day in and day out standpoint. It’s intense, it’s intense. I think people say it I
think much like stereotypes or statements there’s
always so many truth to it. I think the reason so many people say the road is lonely because
to really be successful, in the context of business especially, you’ve gotta make seven to 7,000 decisions that are critical and you can
only make them with yourself. It’s an intense moment on a daily basis.

“Just lost one and I’m mad as hell.” – Yeah, mad as hell is good. I think mad as hell is appropriate. When I lose a client, the
first thing that I think about is what did I do wrong? And then, most of the
time I have an answer. If I don’t have an answer,
I try to figure it out. But, I’m pretty interesting when it comes to losing a client. I’m very much onto the next one. I on the other hand am very lucky. Listening to you is really interesting. I was sitting here and saying my god, my ability to dump and
move on in any situation, relationships, business,
it’s the game for me. It’s why I’m always in a good mood. I literally sit on bad news and bad stuff for fractions of seconds. DRock’s shaking his head, right? – What about with intimate
or personal relationships, with friends or family? Now do you just say screw you,
I’m off to the next person? – I haven’t really lost
anybody who I would call in my most inner circle. I’ve had relationships
that have, like, my longest girlfriend relationships
that ended were predicated on me sitting on it longer than, it was in my head for a long time anyway. So, yeah, I mean, I don’t know. I’ve been very blessed that
somebody that meant the world to me hasn’t decided to leave me. So that’s one part of it. And, the other part is, I haven’t, outside of a couple long-term girlfriend relationships, I
haven’t parted from anything that’s been in my inner core. In business, I’ve had to fire
people I care a lot about. But, I’ve come to a
place where I recognize that I was doing more
harm by keeping them here and giving them no growth
here, Wine Library. So, yeah, that’s that.

“You’ve joked about being overstaffed, “but what’s the balance between hiring “for capacity and waste?” – Tim, that’s a great question. For all of you that are growing quickly, I think one of the things
I take the most pride in is my ability to have a
pulse on my organization from a sales top-line revenue impact, and on the bottom-line cost thing. I think I grow businesses way faster. I do believe that if I end up
operating two more businesses, if I have four businesses
in my career before I die, that I’ve hypergrown, I
have two now in my bag, like, really fast, like,
all-time, like, really, especially non-technology
companies, really fast, I will be known, I mean,
I actually think my legacy as an operator could be speed to victory. I think what I’m really good
at is I have disproportional understanding of the
pulse of what I’m selling, and I’m willing to bet right to the brink, because I don’t need to
take home a lot of money. Like, I’ve always left my own moneys and my own vices on the
table to reinvest back into my business, which
allows me to overstaff, which means I’m them
ready for the new business that comes in, and I
don’t have to go crazy finding the talent, and so, because I’m trying to build culture, sure, you can freelance and
outsource less margin, but you can do better cash
role, make more profit, but I want those people part of my team, and grow with them, let them
learn the religion, grow. So, I think everybody’s
got their own balance, but I think it’s completely
predicated on your stomach for risk, because it comes with risk, you don’t wanna overstaff,
then you lose an account and you have to let people
go, that changes the vibe. I think it comes down to
your salesmanship ability, can you always, in a
pinch, sell some more stuff out of nowhere, and I
think that it comes down to the understanding of where
your business is positioned compared to the landscape, meaning, I always knew that I’m
ahead of the market, and the world’s gonna come to me. A lot of our scopes,
our contracts for 2016, are growing very quickly,
because I knew the world in 2009 would spend more money on
Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram,
Snapchat, or whatever was there at the time, you know, the current state of the internet, so I’m riding that wave. It lets me bet a little bit more. It’s a pulse-cadence feel, taste thing that allows me to get away with it, but ultimately, more than anything, it’s the balance of your own selfish wants of your take-home income,
versus how much you wanna reinvest in your business. It’s as simple as that. If you’re running a
business and you’re making a million dollars in revenue, and you have $600,000 in expenses,
you’re taking home $400,000. You could make it $850,000 in expenses, take home $150,000,
and then know that that extra investment will allow
you to make three million the next year. I believe in myself ultimately, any entrepreneur, CEO, or decision maker that’s taking money off the table, I believe is betting less
on themselves along the way and are playing a short-term game. To me, the time I start extracting dollars is when I believe less in
the growth of the company.

“What’s the best way to start a business “in a space that you’re unfamiliar with, “but see massive opportunity in?” – Become educated. You know this is a great question. I’m glad you asked that. It was a question that was asked a lot of me in 2006, 7, 8, 9 that I haven’t heard while. Maybe because India is doing the picking. And so you know. I think that if you see a huge opportunity if you think eSports is
going to be a huge space like I believe. Well then maybe go intern for an eSports company, maybe get a job at an eSports company. Maybe you read absolutely everything about it. That was one of my few chapters in life. This whole Web 2.0 thing back to Flickr. I read everything on Tech Crunch. I read people’s tweets. It was one time when I actually consumed because I needed to get educated. And then once I found I had the base, then I rolled back to where I normally go. You put in the work. You know if you see a space. You become massively educated. You network in it tremendously. I believe in online video in 2006, I went to three Meetups. In the video 2.0 or the video. What was it called? Yeah Web 2.0 Video Meetup Group. DRock you have been so proud
I went to these damn things. People talking about bullshit cameras and lighting (beep) that it’s
the content (beep). It was really. You like that? It was an interesting time for me where I was soaking up information. If you see an opportunity, go soak up the information. Go become a practitioner. Go work in a company in it. Go to all the events around it. Read about it go to conferences and listen about it. Listen to the podcast like learn. – Learn mother (bleep). – Learn about it. I like that you getting feisty here. Learn about it and then you can do. But you know, if you believe in something you have to become educated in it. And then become a practitioner in it. And then execute in it. And then adjust to the realities of it.

“just started his own
media wine resale company “competing with you in your neighborhood. “How do you respond?” – I would actually be, like I would be fired up happy. Because that is my game, not Elon’s. And so I, and this is the straight up truth. It is insane how I when
I hear that question, how obvious this is to me that I would absolutely destroy him and
he would fail miserably if he was trying to beat me in that game. In the same way that I would fail if I decided to, you
know, invent rocket ships into space and tesla cars
and things of that nature. When I play my game, whatever that is, building an agency,
building a wine retailer, whatever I do next. If I’m operating, right? Forget about investing where it’s a little bit of a crapshoot. Forget about JVs where I have partners. Me, me, Gary. If I’m operating, there’s
not a single person in the world that I’m
scared of at all ever because the only thing that can happen is both of us getting ours. There is nobody that is going to beat me. The markets are too big. I’m going to get mines. And so, I’m not scare of Elon, or Shmelon, or Zucks, or Cubes, or Ashton, or anybody about anything that comes to do with
the game that I’m playing because I’m going to win. I’m going to win. Could they possibly do
more business than me? Sure, I mean I’m not excited about that, but sure I guess it could happen. I don’t think there’s another
agency over the last 4 years that has grown at the size that we have, and in the liquor business
the same thing happened. But of course, somebody could come along with that kind of talent. But that’s not going to
stop me from getting mine, and so the answer to your
question is I would be pumped because I think there
would be a lot of people talking about why didn’t Elon use his mind and go and do start small businesses. And two, I would enjoy the
victory that I would get that would get me more screen cred for punching Elon in the mouth. – [Voiceover] James asks “Why
not go halves on the Jets

“What’s the next industry
to be turned upside down “because they aren’t
adjusting business models “to fit changes in technology?” – I mean, the answer is everything. You need the breakout product. The reason the hotel industry and the limousine service
industry have been thrown upside down is because entrepreneurs came and
attacked it full-throttle. You know, the refrigerator, appliances, smart appliances are coming
so all appliances are on-call. Retail. Brands now can go direct to consumer. So, you know, I think
we’ll see that play out over the next 10 years. TV, big media conglomerate companies have to adjust to the
over-the-top networks and all the infrastructure
they have in place to be very expensive to produce
television-like products when people can just do it like this. Or over-the-top as a
new distribution game. The internet is the middle man. Period. And so anybody who was in the middle is on-call. And that’s most things. And so I think every industry
is prime for disruption. It’s why I’m so excited
about this generation. It’s why, back to the film, it’s why I do believe
a 48-year-old who has a nine-to-six job can
do something about it from seven to two in the
morning if they wanna be an entrepreneur because
there’s so much opportunity, so ripe. So many things are convoluted. The way we get wills. There’s a start-up I got
involved with that’s incredible. Abortion. Abortion is such an emotionally
tough thing to begin with. If you’re in that position oftentimes, generalizing obviously, it can
be an offensive move as well, but when you’re going
through something like that, and then you have to go through
the convoluted paperwork where an app can solve
everything in a minute. Like, literally anything that takes time. The DMV. Like, anything that takes time that is predicated on paper or legacy or keeping humans in jobs, like toll-booth collectors. Like, come on, it’s 2016. I mean, like seriously? No disrespect and you might be watching and you are or have a friend or relative that’s a toll-booth collector. Like no joke, they could make that money doing something that can
probably do them more upside than sitting on their
phone playing Angry Birds. I mean, it’s insanity. And there’s a lot of insanity out there. And I’m excited about insanity
getting punched in the mouth by innovation. Innovation, insanity.

If you’re starting– – Hold on, if you had a
question that you’ve wanted to ask me for a very long time, how the hell wasn’t that the
question you started with? – You needed that preface. – Got it, okay, go ahead. – Okay, so the question is, knowing we have a successful business, we have money in the bank, everything’s great,
business is still growing, everything’s awesome, – God bless, go ahead. – Yay (chops words), but, the thing is, who would be your first
five, like, you have, say, customer service hired. – Yes, – And, well, a marketing person, but who’d be your next five hires. – I’d have to look at your
business and understand, so, first of all– – E-commerce. – So, first of all, I’d reverse– – Product. – First and foremost, I would
reverse-engineer you two. Whatever you two like doing
the most and are the best at, I would surround the hires around that. I’d let you continue to do that, ’cause a lot of people try to replace the thing they’re best
at, that’s a mistake. Stay doing what you do
best at, and whatever the two of you collectively
do the weakest, that’s when you hire, in
order, five next people. – Alright. – Whether that’s finance, HR,
product, e-comm, technology, whatever they are. – But, what’s been your most
best hire for you in that first kind of, in that Wine Library
when you scaled, what was one of the best hires
for you, that, you’re like– – The best hires I’ve ever made have been the friends that I’ve hired. That’s the big secret for me, but– – Position-wise. – Probably the financial
people, you know, like the CFOs, the lead financial person,
have been the best hires, ’cause they’ve given me a context to, hey, ’cause I’m so aggressive, I
want to spend every dollar, so that gives a vulnerability. The reason I’ve never
got out of businesses is, I’m so much better at
selling than everybody else in the world, I can always keep the flows, even against my enormous investment. Um, I, so, I, at VaynerMedia, I would say, Marc Yudkin, a lawyer, creating Legal in-house was a huge hire, Kelly, an early mananging director because she created a lot of context,
and then people that look like Eric which were
disproportionately talented and open to allow me to mold, because we were all playing a new game. People that are moldable but
talented are very attractive. – That’s a good one, yeah, cool.