So, the question to you
is very business-related. – Please. – As you know, we built
something similar to you, we got inspired off of Crush It! – Yes, yes. – So, did the same
thing, did a lot of jobs, put in a lot of work over the years. – Built leverage. – Yeah, built leverage,
put the trust in the brand. – We have a substantial
business now in seven figures. – But, now that, it’s been
a couple years we’ve kind of stagnated.
– Yeah. – Because, so. – Happens all the time. – So my question to you is, and I think, one of the weaknesses
here, is actually scaling, because we tried to do
everything ourselves, we have a small team,
but how do you actually build that team with you, and
the most important question is that, how do you build
and maintain that culture and that, that love that, the same love that you have for the business, – In other people? – In other people. – (laughs) This is a very, this is a very eastern European question,
is very common things that. So, the answer is, you don’t. If you expect somebody
else to love your business as much as you, you two are
out of your (beep)in’ mind. And, this is something
I tried to teach my dad. As a young kid, I’m like,
Dad, you own the business. How the hell do you want them to love this as much as you do? What you need to do is
several different things. First of all, thank you
for asking me the question. I lived it. I did it at Wine Library,
from people that are more like you. You guys went to zero to
something just like my Pop’s. And how I scaled it was, I
taught him these pillars. And I taught him these pillars. Which is, number one, get over that. It’s over. They’re never going to
love it as much as you. If you’re lucky enough, like I find, like that amazing man behind you, if you can find people that can
love it 8.5 as much of a 10, 9.2 as much of a 10, 9.7 on a holy grail moment out of 10, well then, you’ve won. So, that’s never gonna happen,
and it’s actually completely, completely disrespectful
for you to even want that from somebody else,
’cause you never loved somebody else’s business as
much as you love your own. So, why are you going to try
to make somebody else do that? Number one. Number two, the biggest mistake
people make at this point is you start wanting to cash
in on some of the fruits of this amazing hard work. It’s a little bit more exciting to dress a little bit better, to
live at a better place, to take a vacation, to
do all these things. I get it. The way to scale and grow
is to have the dollars to continue to scale and grow. If you’re doing everything yourself, there’s a couple reasons. One, you’re a perfectionist
and don’t think anybody else can do it. Two, you see other people do it and they do it as an eight to your 10, and that’s not good enough. Three, you do not want to
deploy the money because you want to use those
monies for other things for yourselves and other things. All three are massive vulnerabilities. Fix those three, and you’ll grow. I run my businesses the first five, 10 years of their lives at no profit. And I did it, and people
can say, now, easy for you. Bullshit. I was 28 years old, I
build a humongous business, and I was making $40,000 a year. I had friends that were half
me and a hundredth of me making more money, had better
cars, were having more fun, I was 28 years old, making $40,000 a year, and I build a $30 million
business at that point. That’s eating your own dog food. So, get over yourselves,
and be thankful that people want to work for you, and get
them to an eight or a nine, and you get them to an eight
or nine, by loving them more. What you did for your audience, you need to do for your
employees 10 times more. Biggest mistake entrepreneurs make, they treat their employees worse than they treat their customers. Biggest mistake. Treat them better than
you treated your audience. Then they’ll get from a six to
an eight, and that’s amazing. They’ll never get to a 10. It’s not their business. Number two, decide how much
you want to live great now versus every dollar, every dollar, you take that trip to
Spain, is three dollars less that you make three years from now. – Well, what if you have
still substantial money after vacations, after
everything, and you– – Invest it. – And into? – People. – But, people, how do you
find these people who are still eight even or a seven? – But easy, because you
need to treat them better, because you’ve got them,
you just need to change the way you treated them. And, if they don’t get
there after you treat them way better, you fire
them, and you find people who do react to you giving them more value than they’re providing you. – Cool. – You understand?
– Yeah. – Really?
– Not fully. – So, that’s why I’m not letting you go. Here’s my thing: you kick it. So, how many employees do you guys have? – Uh, around the world, seven right now. – Great, you need to really vet them, the number one thing I
would do if I were you is, I would call them right
after the show, and say, What can I do to make
this much better for you? – We do that. – Good, good. Do you deliver on everyone? – Yeah.
– Great. Well then, you should
be having no problem. Then, then, I’m a little
bit more confused. Then, either you have not
built up enough trust with them for them to tell you the truth, or, you’re just not hiring fast enough. – We’re not hiring fast enough.
– Good. – ‘Cause no, because we’re,
we’re, we’re trying to have everybody be like fully 10. – So, you know, (laughs) – [Alex] We want Eric’s– – [Gary] Eric, Eric was
what number in place, 17? 17. He watched Vayner go from 17 to 200, then, for personal
reasons, he went to Boston. He’s back now, and we’re 600. What Eric can tell you
(laughs), all the VaynerMedia employees from 17 to
200, stick with me here, this is not an insult, he
knows how many four, five, six, seven and eights. You need four, five, six, seven
and eights when you’re big. You can’t make seven 10’s,
that’s not how you scale and win. That’s the secret. It’s not about you guys
getting seven people to a 10, it’s about you hiring 40 people at eights. So how about this, here is
the last question, follow-up.

– So, (chuckles) my mum started a clothing business a few years ago. – Okay. – A kids’ clothing goods business.
– Okay. – So, she wants help building our brand, but then, the selfish part of
me is focusing on my business, viewing myself as a
entrepreneur and whosoever. – Yes. – How do I balance my
self-desire with my real desire to help my family and help
my mum do what she’s doing. – That’s a great goddamn question. So, a couple quick questions. Is your mom, since she just
started, so, small business? – Yes, quite small business, quite small. – So, I would tell you, Danny, that you got something really going for you. Here it comes, guys, get ready. How old are you? – 21.
– 21, perfect. Kinda thought that’s where we were going. Danny, most people, so,
one thing that’s really pissed me off about London so far, is I’ve been running around to meetings, starting at 4 PM, there’s been
millions of people at pubs, and, I’m like, are these people working? If you follow me on Snapchat, you’ve already seen what, I’m angry. So, anyway, taking a step back, you’re 21. You can stay up 18 hours a day. I know that you ran out
of, like, class right now to be here, so I guess you
gotta balance some school hours. But, how many, how many,
I mean, you got hours. – Yeah, hours.
– Right? So, I work two full-time jobs every day. I work 18 hours a day,
that’s nine hours every day. That’s more than a lot
of you work, in half. A lot of people who are watching right now don’t even work nine hours. I work 18, that’s two. So, I think you can do both. – Cool. – You just hafta go to less
pubs, go watch less football, as you call it, soccer, you
just hafta to less shit, like, stop chasing the girls, or whatever. You just gotta, you gotta
work, if you want it. And, if you don’t, what
you gotta do is figure out what balance you gotta do, and
whether it’s 60/40 or 50/50 or 90/10, for your mom, for you, whatever you break it down
to, the way to really fix it is by more, having more hours. You know what I mean?
– Yeah. – And so, I’ve been able to
solve a lot of my concerns, my ambition, my work-life balance, on just doing more hours to a net score.

“on incorporating curse words into “your actual brand and
not just the content?” – Yeah, I think that, Look, I think that if you’re
going to go down a path where you’re going to be doing something that you consciously
know that a lot of people aren’t going to like
whether that is cursing, whether that is before
mentioned politics, religion, gender issues, you know, race. There are pillars in our
society that evoke emotion and have lines in the sand. Cursing is one of them. A lighter version than some of
the other things I mentioned, but you have to weigh the
pros and the cons of it. You will turn off a stunning percentage of people by over-cursing. And there will be a smaller sector that is super motivated by it. For me, it’s just very simple. Cursing for me is very simple. It’s just what happens when
I have the camera on me. Like the more people that look at me, it’s what I do. It’s very, and so it’s
just entrenched in me. And so I believe that I
have to always at all costs be me because that’s my biggest upside. If you’re forcing the curse word because you’re targeting
16 to 22 year olds, and you think they’re
going to think it’s cool and it doesn’t come from your soul, you’re going to lose. But if your cursing comes from your soul. If you are like, if you are like this is peanut mother (censored) butter, like this is it! Like if that’s where you
going with it, then like cool. Like if I truly believe that people have a stunning positive reaction to disproportional authenticity. I am an absolute biproduct of it. I’ve watched as my maturity and comfort zone with it has grown. What’s it meant to me. It allows people to,
it’s just a nice thing. And so if you’re
authentically there, cool. But like coming from your soul. Coming from your heart. Not forcing it is the key regardless of cursing, not cursing. You know many people do the other side? We don’t talk about the other side. You know, I always get talked about being rogue or aggressive
or things of that nature. What about the people that
are forcing the kindness? Or the bullshit? Like that’s going on way more. There’s way more people, way more people forcing the acceptance and approval and following the path than are people, that’s why the people that
are going the other way have disproportional anomaly results. So how about that question? How about any of the people that don’t curse when they feel it.

“knowing you before they worked for you, “how did you establish your
authority as the boss?” – You know, funny thing about VaynerMedia, a lot of them didn’t know who I was. Kaylen. Please. – [Kaylen] Hi, oh God. – Let’s find out. Question is, you know, when most of my employees knew who I was prior to them working here, how did I establish my authority? Did you know who I was
prior to working here? – I knew you were in
the marketing industry, but I had not much context. – See, thanks Kaylen. – Yeah. – That’s the scoop, you’d be stunned. I appreciate everybody
thinking everybody knows me, I would say more than
half of the employees, if not 80, 70, 63% of the employees, did not know who I was. So, India? Staphon? – [Voiceover] Nope. – Thank you DRock. (laughter) So, there you go, right? Yo, you know, Eddie! Come here. You know, so, I’m gonna keep rolling here. One, whether they knew or they didn’t, there was just no breathing room. I’m the CEO of the company,
I’m gonna establish, Eddie, did you know who I was before you started working here? – I did. – Oh crap. – I did, I did know. – How? – My friend was reading Thank You Economy. – Got it. – And I just talked to Gary, and that’s when I found out about Vayner. And now I’m here. – Love you, brother. – Love you, man. – Great employee, too. Thank God for that book. So, you know, most of them didn’t. The ones that did, it wasn’t hard. They either had one of two things. They had no idea who I was,
easy to establish authority, I’m the damn CEO. They knew who I was, they
knew all my accolades, respect for the game, I’m the damn CEO. Easy. – [India] Easy.

“at closing and sales. What’s
your structure for your pitches?” – For my pitches. So, my
structure for my pitches is complete and utter no structure. I don’t really structure
my pitches a whole lot. My team may, in certain
scenarios, have a deck. But there’s, I’m sure, an
inside joke in this company that when we go into that
meeting, I’m gonna completely side-rail and drive over that
deck, which I do consistently. I’m much more interested
in reading the room and deploying what that client
wants at that exact moment, versus what we thought they wanted. In the same way I sold
at baseball card shows, I would just always react.
I really think my pitches are structured for counter-punching. Which means no preparation
from presentation form, but complete and utter presentation
for knowing the content. See what I mean? This is
the thing that most people don’t understand. They
think that you wing it. No, you’re winging the way
you’re gonna present it. You’re not winging what
you actually know about it. So the way I prepare,
is holistically prepare. A.K.A. know my shit. I
know what I’m talking about in the things that I’m selling. And then basically I’m
reverse engineering deploying your needs against that
expertise at that moment, versus what order the deck
needs to be in the presentation. My friends, the deck doesn’t sell it. The presentation doesn’t
sell it. The skills sell it. – [Voiceover] Jeremy asks,
“Gary, why do you feel the need

“with any of your businesses?” – No, I don’t think
I’ve ever been reckless with my businesses, hence
why they’ve been successful. I think the only reckless
thing I’ve ever done which has caused me
non-successful ventures is trying to bite off
more than I can chew. Sometimes I’m doing way too many things including now, including always. So there’s a level of
recklessness within it, but on an overall collective, it’s not reckless because
it’s a net net score game and I win in business. And so no, I don’t find
myself to be super reckless. I think I’m very much on the offense, but there’s a level of practicality. I’m very P and L driven, profit and loss. That means cash flow, understanding how not to
put myself out of business. I think I leave a lot of
profit on the table each year. I definitely could have a
lot more take home money from Vayner Media, for example,
in the last three years, but I continue to invest in my businesses. Some may think that’s, not reckless, but maybe leaving something on the table? I look at it as long-term investing, not worrying about short-term cash. So no, I don’t think I’m
a reckless businessman. That’s it. No.

– Hey, Gary, what’s going
on, Sean Mitchell here. I’ve got a sales question for you. In the last couple of weeks,
I’ve lost two really big deals that I was anticipating closing. On the first call, I felt
like I did a really solid job, at uncovering their
challenges, in matching up our products, solutions
to those challenges, but on the second call, they
ended up not moving forward and it was a huge surprise to me, so– – Huge surprise– – What is your advice to try
and minimize the surprise – [Voicoever] Baba, ba–
– No. Thanks so much. – Great question. Don’t steal my headphones, India. Come off of six month vacation, stealing my headphones. First of all, and I think AJ
is better at this than me, I always think we’re gonna
win the sale, because I’m so good at being a salesman. But one of the great
ways to not be surprised on losing a sale is to
never think you’ve got it. I think that’s actually
a stunningly interesting aspect of it. So I think, not buying
into your own bullshit or hype is important. I also am a big fan of back-channeling. I do think that you
could’ve been e-mailing and contacting the clients. Some clients are turned off by that. Others can really give
you some information, depends on your relationship
with that client. But really the truth is it’s very tough to mitigate this. I mean, that’s the game, right? That’s the high of sales. You go in for the kill, and you don’t know
necessarily if you’ve made it happen or not, and so I think teetering expectations, trying to communicate
back-channel during the time. Sometimes the squeakiest
wheel gets the oil. Sometimes the squeakiest wheel gets taken off and replaced by a wheel. It’s just a way you’ve got to
figure out your own cadence. Your own touch. I’m a big fan of, I always say I like things sold
before I start selling them. So, if you’re going in for pitches a lot of times, I like
having relationships, putting out content, before those things. I think that’s really an important variable in sales, which is fundamentally selling before you’re actually
going in for the sale. I do believe an answer
on the #AskGaryVee Show will lead to a business
opportunity in the future. That’s selling before selling. And so that’s it, I mean you can do what you can do before the fact, but once you’re in the game you can back-channel a little bit, you can teeter your expectations, but you’ve got to let the results play out the way they will. That’s a good show.

– [Voicoever] Igor asks, “When is it okay to lie in business?” – That’s interesting. The 14-year-old version
of me would have said, “Anytime, all the time, go for it.” You know, I think the answer is never. I don’t see any value prop. I think that having self-confidence and believing that you can do
something you’ve never done before is a great thing for business. But I think you gotta lay
those cards out to the person that’s making that decision. You can’t say, “We’ve executed
a campaign like this before,” Sorry. You can’t say, “I’ve done this before.” “I’ve sold this before.” What you could say is, “I
truly believe I can do it “because of these things.” But faking the funk has diminishing returns, puts you in a precarious spot, and when you define it as “lying” versus “a slight little embellishment”
or a little bit of hyperbole when you go to lying, I
think that has no place in the business world, or in life. And take it from somebody
who grew up a liar. It was very tough for me as
a kid to break that habit. This is one of the
disproportionate reasons I value my dad’s fatherly advice. He really snapped me out of it. It’s taken me a long time. I truly believe it’s the reason
that most people struggle with consuming me at first,
and don’t know how to take me, because I do think there’s
a lot of bullshit DNA that I started with, but I chipped away, chipped away. And that’s the scoop. No, no place.

“should never take a loan
to study entrepreneurship. “what should they do instead?” – I believe that if you go to college and collect debt to be an
entrepreneur, not a doctor, not a lawyer, not a
consultant at Baynor McKinsey where you have to go to
an Ivy League school, graduate and leverage that. But a true entrepreneur,
like father and brother, go out there and hustle, be a merchant. You know, that to me
is a crazy proposition to collect debt for in a 2016 world. So what I think they should
do instead is go work. Literally just go work,
I mean think about it, instead of going $80,000 in
debt, you can go work for $1 and be way up in the pot,
you can work for free and be on the way positive. And speaking of that, that
speaks to my next strategy. Go work for somebody,
a woman that you admire the way she did it and
take a lot less money working in her organization
than somebody else because you’re trying to
sap the IP out of her, out of that leadership. So not only go work, go work for the lowest
possible way you can survive. Go live with four roommates
in a studio apartment and eat fast food if you have too. You can go lose that weight
later, like the I did. The bottom line is you need to go work in an environment that inspires you and really you want it to be a place that you want to be like. To go work for somebody
that you want to be like is a tremendous value
proposition for an entrepreneur. When I think about what Andy and DRock have been affected by through osmosis, they’re probably scared to think about some of the tendencies they now have that are my tendencies
because I’ve affected it. It’s crazy how it works, it’s crazy, you should see the ego all 600 people at VaynerMedia walk around
with, it’s disgusting. But the bottom line is
it’s affected from the top so go work for somebody you
admire and want to replicate and regardless of the cost,
if you’re a true entrepreneur. – [Voiceover] Elite Sports Tipster asks,