“What do you is a bigger
obstacle to success, “a lack of time or a lack of capital?” – Roberto, this is a tremendous question. I think the biggest obstacle to success is a lack of optimism. That question in itself
is the problem, my friend. Right? You’re looking at two things
that are both negatives, and guess what? Both of ’em are obstacles. When I started winelibrary.com, transformation for my business, I had time, I worked my
face off every minute, but we didn’t have a whole lot
of money in our profit center so it took more time, right? It’s just the way it is. Today, I have more money,
but boy, don’t I have time. But neither, ever, ever, will be an excuse for me. And so, just to drill
this through the throat of the VaynerNation, that’s
right, I went that graphic, don’t smile DRock,
here’s the bottom line: I refuse to allow you to get
an answer to that question because both of them are firmly square in the excuse column, and I
have no patience for that. There will always be problems. Let’s talk about a million other things that are a way to stop success. The health and well-being
of your family members so it takes your mind away from execution. The country you live in’s government and political concepts in these moments, a la, startups in China that I’ve invested in that got traction, but then people that were
wired in to the government decided to not allow it to happen and then the start up disappeared. Not as easy to be an entrepreneur there, it’s still a communist country. Sorry, it just is. And so all these things
can be problems, right? There’s a competitor
with a billion dollars who’s also skilled and
punches you in the mouth and knocks you out in
the first round, right? The world changing. I mean, there’s just a
million obstacles, right? The media, one bad coverage of you. A moment in time. You know what I think about a lot? You know what I think about a lot? Let’s get really real here,
this is why we did this show. I always, I’m a human being, and I always think about a moment in time. What if I just say the wrong
thing at the wrong time? Right? What if I call out China for
being a communist country in an episode while I’m on a rant, and somebody who’s watching
doesn’t like the way that tastes and that takes away a business opportunity for me in China in seven years? Even though I’m not trying to zing, it’s just things that I saw. What if, you know, what if what if I look down on my phone while I’m driving even though
I’ve really not done that, and I hit somebody and I kill them? And that becomes the story, and then like forget about the story, about what you think about me, I will never recover from that because I killed somebody because
I needed to check a Tweet. These are moments in time. So there are so many things that can keep you from
being successful, right? The people that you invested in having something bad happen to them so it slows you down. My friends, there are a
million reasons why not, but there’s one great reason why, which is, you just gotta persevere, no matter what it is. It’s just the way it is. It’s hard being an entrepreneur. It’s hard building a business. Everybody thinks it’s so easy, that there’s an entitlement. There’s a disaster, zinging China? Here comes my U.S. zing right now: there is an insane generation
of 18 to 25 year olds that think they’re entitled
to having a business because they saw the
social networking movie and everybody’s decided
that if you’re a kid and you know what tech is. Because you used Instagram early on, you’re entitled to
actually build a business. Building a business is hard. And you know what makes it really hard? Everything that happens
every day of every moment. So, you can pick time, you can pick money as the one or two things
that you think stop you from winning your game, but the truth is, there’s a million reasons. 99% of businesses go out
of business for a reason. And that reason is, it’s hard. And so, if you’re watching this show, I’ve got a sense of who you are, and you need to start
creating layers and layers and layers of skin to
be able to get through. Because the glamour of
being an entrepreneur, the goodness, you know you get
very confused by my optimism. Because it’s my optimism, I can’t help it, it’s just how I roll. It’s probably one of
the variable 1% reasons why I’m successful. But please, don’t get it twisted. This is hard. Every day is hard. And if you don’t have the
stomach to weather the storm, you will not be successful. And by the way, let me throw you a real weird curveball, and that’s okay. People have to look
themselves in the mirror and understand if they’re
number two, three, four, five, six, seven in an organization, That has differences
of being a number one, but maybe that’s where
your skill set sits. Maybe that’s how you make
your fortunes and happiness and all the things that
you’re looking for, and so. That question got me
goin’ a little bit, Steve. Because it’s under the context of excuses. And I will never make an excuse. Everything that’s a problem with me, everything I don’t achieve, everything that’s a
problem at VaynerMedia, and everything is my fault. And I succumb to that, and I respect that. And I actually think that’s
the way it should be. And so, um, no excuses my friends.

– [Voiceover] James asks, “What are your thoughts on
podcasters and YouTubers “building a business
model around donations?” – James, great question. You know, it’s a trend
we’ve seen for a long time. I saw bloggers do this back in 2003 using PayPal as a tip jar. Right, there was a, you know, this has been a thing that’s
been around for while. I think though, as the
evolution of the Internet is happening, much like the
reasurgence of podcasts, I see this model in a
world of post-Kickstarter, becoming more of a trend. I definitely see it as something
that I won’t do for myself because I’m just using my
content as a global jab, but I could see myself that if
it was the only thing I did, if I was only this, right? If I was only the character that I am when I put on the podcast
and the show, meaning, when I say character, I
want to define that for you. Meaning, this is what I
do for a living, right? I put out my marketing thoughts. Like, I’ve had my career. I don’t wanna be a practitioner anymore, I don’t wanna run this company. And I just wanna write books,
speak, and put out the show, I would probably go
with that kind of model because I need a sense of
and a source of income, and more importantly, you start realizing, and this is a great piece
of advice for all of you, no matter what you do,
sell cheese, put out shows. Whatever you do, and a lot of you do a lot of different things,
real estate, you know. That 5-10% that most
give a crap about you, boy! The VaynerNation, boy! That stuff really matters,
and a lot of times you can rely on them because
they’re getting value. I have been blown away, humbled even, by the amount of people who have commented over the last seven to 10
episodes saying things like, “Man, I’ve come to realize
I’m really into this show.” Or, “This is my best part of my day.” Or, “This is when I get
motivated,” like, you know, it starts becoming valuable. And then I can see the kind of, it’s a hedge against
I’m charging for this. It’s kind of like a guilt move, but it’s also like a support me move. You know I think it’s a
very viable kind of attack. And if you’re considering it, or anybody here is considering it, you know, if you have
enough mass of loyaltists, you can actually make it valuable. You know, if you only have seven people that give a crap about you
and they give you $10 a month, you’ve got 70 bucks a month. Not gonna necessarily crush it that way, but if you’ve got a real big audience and you can get that
5 -10% to really support, there’s some dollars behind it. – Hey, Hunter Walk from Homebrew.

most big successes have a huge turning point where
things really take off. What was that turning
point for Wine Library?” – Sean, great question. I guess there were some turning points when the Wine Spectator ad that we ran, the first New York Times full page ad, the time I reset the score and took 50% of the beer off the floor
and added more wine, when I started WineLibrary.com, the day I started the email service, the day I jumped into Robert
Parker’s forums in ’97 and became part of the
internet community around wine, the 2000 Bordeaux Vintage,
when we bought heavy, when I first started
promoting wines nobody ever heard of on email, Richard
Partridge Cabernet comes to mind, when I hired Brandon. As you can tell, there are
many moments that we made it, but it was just trucking
along, building on top of each other step by step. My friends, if you listen to
two of my answers on this show, you understand one very
interesting thing about me, which is, I may have
the energy of the hare, but I am the tortoise.
(bell ringing) You know what I’m putting up there, right? That beautiful thing you did, Zak. Show Zak. You did a very nice job on that one. For everybody listening,
I’m pointing to the tortoise and hare image I put out on Instagram. Go check me out on Instagram/garyvee. Anyway, when I made it,
the turning point moment, everybody who’s watching
and asking these questions are looking for this
sign, like I saw the sign, It’s not that. It’s head down, you love
and believe in what you do, and you just never think
about those moments, you just keep trucking along. It’s lunch pail mentality, it’s old school Eastern European
put-in-the-work mentality. I don’t think about these things, guys. The Fortune 40 Under
40 that just happened, is that a turning point in my career? Sure, some people now
think of me differently ’cause I’m in the context of
those people, but it’s not. It’s just chug and chug and chug and chug and chug and chug and chug and chug, And so chug. Thanks for watching the show.

“Gary, love the iTunes touch. When was the moment you knew you would be okay when starting your company?” – East County, right? That’s a little bone thugs reference to episode, I can’t remember. East county, the moment I
knew that I was gonna make it was the first day I walked
into my dad’s liquor store. And the reason I decided
to answer this question and trying to find value
for everybody watching other than me bragging about that I had the bravado from day one was, the notion of not even
worrying about that moment. Meaning, one of the biggest
things that I’m trying to teach, I’m turning a lot today. One of the things I’m trying
to teach all my management here at VaynerMedia, and all
my founders in my start-up investments and my
co-founders in companies that had meeting with my
co-founders at Resy last night, the number one thing I
keep telling everybody is to not worry about the
things that don’t matter. Worrying about or trying to figure out, this is the moment when I made it, is something that I think cripples people, and I just don’t even
think about those things. I could answer this question two ways, which are the two right
ways, which is one: The moment I walked into my dad’s store, because I had that
confidence, or I could answer the other way that’s equally as true, pulling on both sides
like a bridge, which is, I haven’t made it yet. They both are right, and the
truth is, outside of this question, I don’t think about
it at all, ever, period. And the reason I’m answering
the question is because I’m trying to get as many
of you who are watching the show right now to not
worry about those things. Worry about executing,
worry about feeling good about your life, don’t
worry about making it. Because making it is an outside force. The inside force of you just doing it is what you should be focused on. – [Voiceover] Kyle asks,

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] Aimee asks, “A
professor once said to me, “it’s better to be a big
fish in a small pond, “do you agree?” – Aimee, this, you know,
I’m gonna be very upfront on this question, this is a
good way to bang out the show. That sounds like a loser professor to me. It’s small time thinking. I don’t subscribe to it. There’s a lot of
practicality in it, right? It’s a lot easier to be the
most successful business man in St. Louis, Missouri, than
it is to be in the world, right, so I understand the thesis. But honestly, that to
me is very conservative, not in my DNA thinking. That could be great
advice for a lot of people who are delirious and think
they’re better than they are, though I love to drive through self esteem and optimism, and I
think early in your life, you should absolutely
shoot for the highest stars that you can. I think as life moves on, and time moves on you need
to become more practical. You’ve got bills, and kids,
and all those kinds of things, but to start off one’s
career in the first 20 years, call to your 40, to be in that thinking, I think that limits. There have been so many people who’ve hedged and settled in their lives, and honestly, I’m not the
kind of character that’s going to play in that kind of sphere. I’m going in a different direction. It’s what comes natural to me, but it’s also because I
think I can be the biggest and the baddest in any game I play, It’s just how I’m wired. I think this comes down to it’s probably very good advice to some, and it’s probably
atrocious advice to others, and this is why I continue
to say if I could inject anything into anybody, it
would be self-awareness because it would help
you answer this question because for a lot of people,
it’s probably really solid advice from me, and from
many of you watching this, it’s crap advice. All right, now I can wrap up the show.

My name’s Rafael, I run the Personal Development YouTube Channel. My question to you is, what would you do if
you were starting over and building your personal
brand all over again? Basically getting the name GaryVee out there, all over again. In this day and age, what would you do to go out there and really spread the word and to get yourself known? – I love this question and
boy, I’m gonna set it up. Do I have a really good answer for this, because you, and thanks for the question, and every other youngster
needs to hear this really, really loud and clear. And this is not being disrespectful because I was a 22-year-old
genius business person in my mind because of what I did. But I would do exactly what I did. Which is, for the first 10
years of my professional career, I didn’t say a damn thing. From 22 to 32, when it comes to business, at 30 I started Wine Library TV. From 22 to 32, and one would argue that I was really doing business since 14, but I’ll just say 22 ’cause it
was all in, no school, fine. From 22 to 32, my friend, I did nothing in building the Gary Vaynerchuk brand. You know what I did? I did the work that allowed me to have the audacity to build the
Gary Vaynerchuk brand. This notion that you can
just come out the gate and build your brand by growth hacking and putting yourself out there,
and getting on some podcasts and leveraging other people’s brands to get on and build yourself
as in expert, in what? Like when are we gonna start
asking all these people that are experts, what did they do? Here’s what I did and why I think you should listen to me in business. I am now in the midst
of building my second 50 million dollar plus business
within a five year window. That’s good execution at a speed that most people can’t
calibrate, at a high volume. Is it 50 billion? No. But it’s a life, right,
for a lot of people. It’s business. I invested in companies early on and made a lot of money because I saw where the market was going. Hence the video I popped
up earlier before, that’s linked below, of
what I saw with Apple Pay. I did things that allowed
me to start having a shot to be worthy of people buying a $15 book. Or spending 15 minutes and
watching his or her show. So I did things. So my friend, to you, and everybody else, I promise you before you
get your name out there, it’d be really nice that you
can go to the accomplishments, because when I ask you, hey bro awesome, that
your branding or health, or personal coach, or
whatever the hell you are, but what did you do to become good enough to do this, I’d like to know? I love when people argue
with me on this issue. They’re like, well look at
all the football coaches. These coaches a lot of
times are not real players. You don’t have to be a
great football player to be a great football coach. Guys, have you looked
at every football coach? There’s no football coach that comes out of nowhere at 23 years old and is then an NFL coach and wins Super Bowls. They’ve been a ball boy
since they were seven, and worked within the organization
for 20 years, 15 years. Eric Mangini, when he
was the Jets coach at 36, had been a ball boy since he was 18. Like they’re in it forever. They’re kids, they’re sons
and daughters of coaches, they’ve been in it their whole lives. That’s how you get there. And so this quick move of
using good, modern technology to build up your brand,
siphoning and doing JVs with other people to
siphon their brand equity, that you’re passing
on, that I’m an expert, and then coming out the gate and saying, I’m an expert building
a brand. It’s ludicrous. I laugh at it in my soul, in my stomach, and so does everybody who’s got chops. Gonna say it one more time, I laugh at it and so does
everybody that’s got chops. And I need you to pay attention to that. You have to earn your opportunity to be a personal brand. And the only way to do that
is to actually execute. And so when somebody asks me, well what makes you a social media expert? I show them things I’ve sold, in sales, business, put money in the pocket, predicated on marketing
within that channel. That’s a way to do it, that I believe in.

– [Voiceover] Cory asks, “What
have you found is the best “way to introduce
non-wine drinkers to wine “without it seeming overwhelming?” – Cory, I took this question because not only for the wine people listening, but for the business
people that are trying to educate about social media or apps or tech culture, it’s the same game. Why did I over-index in the wine world? And why do I think I over-index
in the business marketing, operations, social media marketing world? I said marketing twice
’cause it’s so nice, it’s because I talk to
people, not down to them. How do you get people into your thing? How do you do that? You talk to them, to them, not down to them. That’s the struggle for everybody who gets any level of expertise. They get this expertise and
they want to leverage it against their audience to
establish I’m here, you’re here. I fully believe, and I
can guarantee the comments coming right now that one of the reasons people watch and listen to this show and have followed me for
the last seven years, when I was educating about
wine, intimidating subject, or social media, new intimidating
subject to a lot of people is I’m talking level set, right? I’m not imposing my expertise. I’m not making anybody feel bad that they don’t know as
much as me, snickering like, “How could you ask me
this question, Ricky?” I don’t do that, right? I understand that there’s 99% of the world that I know jack crap about. I know my couple little things, and when I’m trying to
learn about other things from other people that know, it’s nice to be talked to at that level, which is respect as a human
being, not being imposed on something you learned
a little bit more about. And so, you want to get people into wine, or anything else for all
of you that are watching, and I see a lot of you
who are watching trying to impose your expertise on food, or pets, or anything of that nature, I highly recommend you start realizing you’re talking to
somebody, not down to them. – [Voiceover] Adam says, “I
understand that marketers

– [Voiceover] Gabriel
ponders, “Gary, in the age “of social media, tweet, vine,
Instagram length limited, “how does, should this affect a startup “in choosing a name?” – Gabriel, this is a great question. I understand what you’re saying, right, Twitter, tweet, you know,
kind of the short form, you know I actually think
it’s an interesting question. The reason I decided to choose it is, a name is made. Meaning, when everybody’s sitting around, I have friends who sit
around and think about picking the name of the
startup for 900 years. And I tell them, what did
Google mean to anybody? What did Facebook mean to anybody outside of people that were
in the Harvard community that knew what the facebook was? None of these words mean anything until there’s something, right? People email me like, uh
I don’t like my last name, like you’re emailing Gary Vaynerchuk. I mean, Vaynerchuk sucks. Let’s call it what it is, right? And so now a bunch of you are gonna leave in the comments. No no
no, it’s kind of unique, it’s good. I get it. But it’s only good because
I made something out of it. And so, what does it mean? It means nothing to me. If you went with a long-winded startup, you could get abbreviations. I actually think that’s a new trend. Somebody’s gonna come out with a company called like Copperhound Thompson, but everybody’s gonna call it CHT, right? And so like in a world where
we’re short-forming everything, people call me V-chuk
because they don’t want to say Vaynerchuk and that became my slang last name to my
friends in high school and so we will evolve our
name into our convenience if it brings value. So stop worrying about the name, and start worrying about the product. – [Voiceover] Noble Rot Society.

– [mayanmurfee] Matthew asked, “You talk about upcoming companies and predicting their success. Where and how do you find
these rising companies?” – Matt, this is why I love this damn show. We are getting into actual tangible stuff not just the sizzle that
I have to do on stage because I only have an hour and I got to make you pay
attention and then drill you. This is the quality of this show. Here are two tangible things
you should do every day. I’m going to add a third. Three things. Jason Hirschhorn. Pause because I was going to say Google it and then I wanted to say Bing it and then I got caught. You know I never get caught so little rusty here in San Francisco. Google Jason Hirschhorn. Media ref is what I think it is. He’s got a newsletter. Tremendous way to stay on top of it. TechMeme T-E-C-H-M-E-M-E Recode. These are two blogs that I think, well, TechMeme’s an
aggregator of all the news. I go there every morning to see what’s bubbled up. Recode I just like in general and TechCrunch, that’s mostly just solid but TechMeme aggregates everything so I go to Tech M-E-M-E every morning. I read everything. That helps me see things and then my littlest funnest hack. I go into the iTunes
App Store every morning, click the Apps tab and look at the top 150 paid and free apps on the iTunes store to get a sense of when
things are bubbling up. Both Yik Yak, Snapchat, a lot of these things I kind
of watched grow organically through that channel before the TechMemes and Recodes even wrote about them and so it’s about putting in the work. Those are your two tips of the day.