believed so much in me. Back in the days were you
more afraid of letting yourself down or your family?” – You know, I’ve always
been really worried about letting myself down more so than my parents. Kinda feel as though
that would be a trickle down effect if I worried about myself, then my parents would be proud. I took at lot of pressure
in my mom’s belief in me. I took enormous pressure
in my dad’s belief in me in the way that he set me up for success and gave me all that
autonomy at 22 years old to run a company. It’s always and forever going to be about me for me. It’s a very selfish thing. To me, it’s I need to make myself proud, and that’s kind of how I navigate as a human being and
definitely as a business man. Look I’m not perfect, and nobody is, and nothing. The people that know me the best, they know the only time I’m pissed and I’m fiesty is when
I’m upset with myself. – [Voiceover] Kyle asks, “You
get very personal when building

the Radio Shack stores,
but what is the relevance of Sprint? Is Sprint the new Radio Shack?” – Paul, that’s a great question. I don’t know what Sprint’s got in mind for Radio Shack. I think physical retail
stores need to be innovative and have experiences wrapped around them. You’re right. I think there’s a very interesting
point here that if Sprint just puts up Sprint stores and
executes in a Radio Shack way they become the new Radio Shack. If they don’t and they
take a page out of let’s say Barnes and Nobles,
that realized they couldn’t compete with Amazon if it was just books, and made it more of a coffee
shop, place you visited, a community hub, and
they trickled out some sales from that. It all depends on the execution. You are what you are. People are always like, hey, our brand represents this. This is what we have to do. It’s not true. What you do
then becomes your brand, and so the execution
of Sprint over the next 24 months will dictate if they’re the new Radio Shack or they’re the new Sprint retail store 3.0. – [Voiceover] Charles asks,
“How do you hustle faster?”

What’s up everybody? I’m Steve Campbell, DRock you can (dinging)
link that up right here. (laughter)
– Ah. I like the right hook,
I like the right hook. – Right?
(group applauding) I’m a copy writer here at Vayner, I’ve been here about
four and a half years. – Oh gee, baby. – Oh gee. So I’ve always wanted to ask you– – Steelers fan? – Steelers fan, gotta get that out there. – One of our rare wins
this year for the Jets. – Yeah, unfortunately, I remember that. (laughter) So, I watch you answer
dozens, literally dozens of questions over the
years about everything from family to business to
wine, I was always curious, what is one question that you’re shocked nobody’s ever asked you before? – That’s a good question, the truth is, people have asked me this
exact question before, I guess it’s never been on film. (laughter) And since I’ve answered
thousands of questions, not “dozens.” – Maybe more. (laughter) – The funny thing is, even though I think I get a lot of credit for being able to answer questions immediately
(fingers snapping) when I don’t know what they are and they come from so many different directions. I’m trying to figure out the
psychology behind this answer, it is very intriguing
to me that I don’t know how to answer this question at all, right? I don’t know if I’m so pure about loving Q and A that
like, I don’t even know, I’m never prepared for a
question, there’s nothing I, look, I definitely don’t
struggle with telling the world things that I wanna say,
so there’s no question I need for me to be able to communicate something that I want to say. For a little while there, and
I think the #AskGaryVee show has helped it, and definitely
that post I did the other day about, “Here’s how you
build your personal brand.” And it was like, “Just shut the fuck up “for 10 years and build something.” I don’t think it’s that,
it’s not that I’m surprised nobody’s ever asked me questions, I do wish that more people asked me hardcore business building questions. I think that people wanna go towards the motivation and the vision
and things of that nature, but hardcore tactical, like how
do you staff, against a P&L? Like the stuff that I actually
do that’s super nerdy. I mean, I’m sure the reason
people don’t ask me it is because it is super
nerdy, it’s not as sexy, it’s not the sizzle, it’s
clearly the boring slab of steak. But for me, I take so much pride in being an operator, I take enormous
pride in being able to build two businesses now,
in a young business career, that have both grown from a
small base to 50 million dollars in revenue in 36 months, that
just doesn’t happen a lot. Especially in a non-funded environment, neither company got
money to do it, so it was all its own growth and using
its own cash flow to do, which makes three year growth
so much more difficult. So I guess I’m not doing a
good enough job portraying that part of my career to
induce that type of audience to ask me those kind of questions.

– Hi Gary, it’s Amanda from here in LA.
– [Gary] Hey Amanda. – My question is, roughly what percentage of your business decisions
are based on a gut feeling versus being backed by actual data? – Oh, that’s a very good question. (laughter) I think all of my strategy is completely intuition, because if you look at my 20 year career, most of it has been guessing, I’d like to think projecting
where the market’s gonna go. And there was no data on what
e-commerce would do in 1996, there was no data on email
marketing when you’re one of the first hundred people
that’s doing email marketing. There was no data on the ROI of Twitter four or five months after Twitter came out and you’re starting to
use it for marketing. There was no data on what
a YouTube show less than a year after YouTube came out
was going to bring in value. There was no data on
what Instagram was gonna bring us in value when
AJ sold Brisk Iced Tea an Instagram campaign 13 days
after Instagram had come out. There was no data around what
Vine celebrities would mean when we started a Vine agency
110 days after Vine came out. So, from a strategy
standpoint, I mean truly I believe that I get
the accolades and have the luxury of doing a show that people actually watch, completely on intuition, because that’s what I have
that other people don’t have. It’s no different than
being great at basketball or being attractive or
all the other good things that can happen in life,
it’s just there, right? It was just always there. And so that’s my X factor. Now, I think that is equally then 50% quantified against data, right? So I make these predictions,
but then to run an actual business, this is where my
practicality gets underestimated. You know, this company grew very quickly, you don’t do that if you
can’t make payroll, right? There’s a lot of practicality
(laughter) that goes into running a business. And so, for me I’ve always thought I was a super 50/50 guy,
obviously my personality and communication style
gets most people’s attention and they bucket me into
that kind of place, but I take enormous pride
out of the fact that, for the first ten years
of my professional career, I didn’t say a single word
to anybody about anything and all I did was execute, and
I’ll be very honest with you, it’s been extremely gratifying to me to shut up all the people that thought, when I was building VaynerMedia that, “Mister Lot of Twitter Followers,” like there was a
substantial amount of buzz when I started VaynerMedia of like, “Oh, “this social media guru thinks
he can build an agency.” And now building one of the biggest and fastest growing agencies of all time and sticking that directly in
their throat feels tremendous. (laughter)
– [Voiceover] Yeah!

– [Voiceover] Jonathan asks, “I import wines from Italy and sell via e-comm and through distributors. I’m currently focusing on
obtaining new distribution and have fallen behind on the e-comm side. Question: What percentage of my time should be split between
each side of the business, and what’s a good way to balance the two?” You know, Jonathan, it’s interesting. I’m trying to give a general answer to the whole market, but I
know your business so well. When you’re importing, I don’t
know what state you’re in, but when you’re doing e-commerce, are you selling to the end consumer? Because you can’t do that
in New Jersey or New York. Are you in a state- He’s in California, and Kermit Lynch, I think, does do that, so I think he can. I think in California,
I was about to say that, thanks, India. In California, ’cause
Kermit Lynch does that, you’re able to actually
sell to the consumer and also sell to distributors. You know, to me, if you
can sell e-commerce 100%, you’re no dope. You know that you’re making 50 cents more on every dollar by selling that way than selling to distributors, but what you know is you’re not that big, and you’re not necessarily
a retailer by trade, and it takes a lot of money and skill to be able to be a good
retailer to sell enough, where the distributors are
giving you the buying power. So my strategy for you is- Now, I’m giving you as
black and white a strategy as I’ve given on this show’s history. 80% to the distributors, 20% of your time, energy, and money to the consumers. Once you get that established, you spend every minute
to turn that into 70/30, 60/40, 50/50, 60/40, 70/30, 80/20, 90/10, maybe 80/20, right? Because you wanna get some restaurants and key retailers to bring
some awareness to it. And for everybody who’s watching, the reason I’m giving him that advice is he just makes more money
if he sells it direct. He’s also far more in control, where you sell to distributors, they’re maybe giving a deal to a retailer, that retail sells it cheap,
and that all of a sudden screws up the pricing in the market. So, that’s the answer. By the way, before you’re
done editing here, DRock,

– [Voiceover] Rafael asks, “They say you should
hire slow and fire quick. How many chances do you give your staff?” – I feel it’s funny. On this show, multiple times, I talk about not being crippled by hiring somebody because if they’re not good I’ll fire. The truth is, I have struggled for 15 plus year of my career, at least, 22, 37, I would say for the
first 15 years of my career I was not doing a good enough job in the firing department, and it still is something I struggle with. It’s just not fun. There’s nothing worse
than firing somebody. There’s nothing good about it. I usually spend an extra 20 to 30 days just figuring out the justification, of like, “Oh but they were…” I’m literally making
up stuff to make myself feel better about it. So the truth is, the
real answer for me is, we’re slow to it, even… It’s one of the things I’m trying to get this company better at is, don’t worry, any
VeynerMedia people watching. Yeah, I mean, look. I’ve definitely come to
learn that you’re doing the right thing for them as well ’cause you’re just
dragging out the process, and they’re not growing, and nothing good is gonna come of that, but…. The answer, practically,
is I use my intuition. I really do. You just have to make a gut call sometimes on can you give this
person one more chance? We are not in the one, two,
or even three strike policy here at Vayner. We have enormous continuity, and some of it has to do with
the way we fire, in my opinion. I think people see us
trying to handle things with empathy and grace, and
one thing I’m very proud of is when people are let go here, people aren’t that surprised, right? And so, people paying attention… But you don’t wanna hold on too long because then you lose the
trust of all the great people, and so I don’t think there’s a set answer. You gotta go on your intuition. I think the more interesting answer is do you think you have the
EQ and the people skills and the intuition to do
it, and if you don’t, who do you think has it? And empower them to do it. That’s the more interesting part. And by the way, that could go left field. I would tell you that if
I didn’t have that skill in my early days of Wine Library, I would have courted my mother to come in and be that person because I knew she could do it, so even think outside
of your employee base. It might be a friend who
is not happy in their job, but you know they have
the best people skills you’ve ever seen, and
maybe you bring them in for a pseudo-HR doing other things, and you want them to handle that. The firing process is immensely important in every organization,
one that I don’t think people put enough emphasis on, and there’s a lot of angles. It’s not just firing fast. It’s not just not firing. It’s how you fire. We’ve been letting some people go, at least recently, throughout
the last three or four months, and I usually am not
that close to it anymore because I’m very much
trying to scale this, but I make sure that I reach
out a week or two later, when I find out, to that
person and thank them, if they were here for a day. All those things matter.

– [Voiceover] Austin
asks, “What do you mean when you focus on top line revenue? Is it because you care
more about staying relevant and having attention
because you can cash it on that for more sales?” – Austin, no I talk
about top line revenues, the answer is no. That’s not what I am looking to do. I’m looking to drive top line revenue. I’m doing it in VaynerMedia right now. I’m glad my financial people aren’t here. ‘Cause they’d be like, “I’m not
sure what you’re up to, Gary but it’s super interesting.” So, here’s what I am up to CFO’s. When you drive profit,
if you bring in expenses like I have, when you
have more and more people. You may not make as much money right away because if you are making $12 million, and it cost you $12 million to run your business,
you make zero dollars. And if the year before it cost you, you know, did in 8 million in revenue, but it only cost you $5.3 million in expenses to drive it,
you made $2.7 in profits. So, even though you are doing
a lot more business this year you are not making as much money. But that’s also human
infrastructure and the learnings and the people to be able to for you to do not 14, but 40 million next year, got it? Simple as that nothing else. You just gotta make sure your expenses don’t over go your sales because then you can’t make payroll and you go out of business or you have bumps in the
road and things of that nature. And I as an entrepreneur have had a substantially good career over 20 years of pushing the limit of how
much I can take expenses and cash to be able to grow my business and that is something that
I am always focused on. I think it’s super important,
I know how to do it and it’s the reason
that I know uniquely now have a second business under my belt where I have taken the business from three to over $50 million in revenue within a 5 year window. That is unusual, that is not the norm, and it talks to having a stomach that wants to drive top line. So, that’s not for everybody, and everybody has got to be
safe and wants to make payroll. But a lot of you are not
moving your business faster because of lack of
offense, lack of spending 18 hours a day e-mailing
800 people on Instagram to know about your music stuff. You are lacking offense on
e-mailing every single person talking about volleyball in
the world on the internet and saying “Hey here I am” and
you are lacking by not investing, maybe you have the finances
for that office secretary, who then will allow you
to be on the offense doing other things, instead of
doing some damn paper work.

– [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,

Jeff, this question, and
photo accompanying it, is probably the reason
we made this switch. I mean, this is incredible.
I’m so excited about this. I know some people are
like, “Oh, Instagram.” Get over yourselves. Let’s attack the ‘gram
with your questions. This is a tremendous question, which makes it even more interesting. The answer, my man, is very simply like, what you need to decide is short term cash versus long term wealth. Let me explain. My answer to you would be, okay, you’re making the products– By the way, I had a big
business at the time, but the way I did Wine Library TV was all-encompassing myself, except to Chris Mott’s
credit, Mott videotaped, but there was no editing the way DRock– It was just uploading, and in
theory, I could’ve done that for an hour, but probably
not. So big shout out to Mott. You have to decide if you want to make– I don’t know how long it takes you to make one of your pieces, right? I would make seven pieces
instead of 13 in a year, if I can live off of
that. I would do that. I would then spend more
time on building my brand, because that’s really what an artist is. Doing the Instagram stuff
you’re doing, building up your Pinterest, being
smart and knowing the world and look at all the exposure. I really feel confident
one person will buy one of your pieces from this show. You knew about me, you commented on my comments, Alex hit up a bunch of people
over the last couple of days. Not that many replied. You took the initiative to do
it, now you’re on the show. Now you’ve got this exposure,
20-30 thousand views. Now what you do with that
is you’re leveraging that, and all of a sudden it
becomes supply and demand. There are artists who make one– I’m sure, I’m not very
strong in the art world. India, you can help me here a little bit. I know what the answer
is, there’s some artists who make one piece every couple of years. That’s how they make their whole living because it’s worth a ton of money, because they’ve got the brand. Now that you can go brand direct– By the way, Crush It! is
literally the blueprint of the current state of the Internet. I don’t wanna go there, but
I was ridiculously right. Not even kind of. So we’re
all living that world now. Grape Story, my agency
that represents Vine Talent is basically the agency of what
Crush It! was talking about. It’s a very simple thing. Cash, wealth. If you decide to make
seven pieces this year and that’s enough for you to live, then it makes me happy
because you can take the rest of that time, instead of 13, I don’t know all the numbers
but you see where I’m going, to build your brand, to
engage, to put out content, to write a Medium post, to
put up Instagram photos, and that builds up your
supply and demand curve. If you’re equally good enough at both, then the demand will get to
a place where you can start charging more for your pieces
to build up your brand. It’s very simple, it’s
been going on forever. Independent people have always done that, Should you make pieces or
should you open a gallery? It’s chicken and egg. The other thing to debate
is can you bring in somebody at a low cost to do it full-time and help you scale. You’re the only one that can answer. But guess what? I’m the
only one that can answer, but India is here to
make it quicker for me. I do this show so India
has something to transcribe of off, add some grammar,
ask me a couple of clarification questions, and we’ve got two of the top four posts on Medium right now. It all depends on how you wanna roll, I had to build up to that. This is the first time I’ve got
this kind of infrastructure. But it’s just chicken and
egg, cash flow versus wealth. There’s two ways to go about doing it. You can make 13 pieces and then you’re making the money on it that allows you to afford your person and place. Or you make 7 and you do
it yourself for a while. It just depends on how you wanna roll. If you’re not building up your equity, you’re always going to be making pieces that are hundreds of
dollars instead of pieces that are millions of dollars. That’s it. That was a good show.