“Gary, how do you motivate
teams of remote workers without a payment incentive? So far, positivity and hustle
are not producing results. I think communication
is key, but I’m not sure how to improve it. – Amber, you’re exactly right, and there’s several things
here that are a problem and that you need to address. Amber, number one,
communication is always key. You don’t know how to
address it because you don’t want to address it, my
darling, because it’s very easy to address communication, you create the scenario for communication. What I would do is I would email or text or hit up on G chat,
or however it’s, stack, or whatever the way you guys roll, hit them up and say,
I want to talk to you, DRock, I want to talk to you, Staphon, I wanna talk to you, India,
I wanna talk to you, Davis. Like, that is basically what
you do in that scenario. You create the communication
and then you ask them, hey India, hey India, you’re not executing to the level that I’m
hoping, but I’m gonna blame that on me. What can I do for you to
make you execute better? – That works. – And so, that’s what you need to do. One on one scaleable. If you have employee, two employees, you know what scares me? And you can leave this in the comments, what scares me is, how many employees are we talking about? ‘Cause I’m trying to do it for 500. And I have a funny feeling
you’re not talking about 500. So, this is on you. Matthew Berry here from
ESPN, and you and I

What do you think of the
new and improved YO app? Is it worth it for my small business, food drug and restaurant to get this deliciousness out into the world? Answer my question. Thank you, and keep hustlin’. – Greek Mike, great question. Shit answer, which is, I haven’t looked at the new and improved YO app, thus I can’t give you a real answer. I’m not even really sure
why I’ve even accepted the question knowing that
my answer was such crap. It was probably mainly
because I loved the video and wanted to give you the
exposure and the shout out that comes along with being on the show, but it also gives me an
opportunity to kind of answer the question as a whole, which is, look, communicating, I have a phone call, what time, right now? Yeah, all right, I need to
run, ’cause this is super important, let me just wrap this up. At the end of the day,
communicating with your audience is the number one thing
that you should be doing at all times, and if you feel
like the YO app brings you value and your audience
value, then you should do it. You should do that, you should do Meerkat, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter,
Tumblr, Pinterest, Facebook. Whatever you think actually communicates and has an ROI that’s time
that you put against it to communicate about the exposure of eating a beautiful gyro, do that. Question of the day: How many siblings do you have,
and what are their names?

“How can I filter years
of exciting adventures “and experiences into value “that someone would
actually be interested in?” – Carolyn, first of all,
that is my favorite picture that has been put up on Instagram so far. It’s a phenomenal picture. Thank you so much, thanks for
listening, watching this show. By the way, this is a
good time to just say get your questions on
the show using Instagram, look at that execution as inspiration. Look, I don’t know. Are your 71 years of
experience interesting? Does anybody give a crap? I mean, you know, I just went from such a lovely place to such a negative place. Throwing curve balls out
there like we do on Mondays. Monday show.
(ding) Monday video. That’s two times you gotta
put it in there, Staphon, if you’re doing the editing. I don’t know which one’s your half and which one’s the other half. So, Carolyn, really what
it comes down to is value. It’s all value exchange. I very much value somebody
who’s lived 71 years long for life advice just on living! Right? But what also matters is how
you’re gonna communicate it and in what form are
you gonna monetize it? Do you wanna put out a show
where you answer questions, or put out content, or tell stories, but then how are you gonna monetize it? Advertising? I mean, there’s just so
many open-ended questions that need to be asked of you based on your question, but
here’s what I would say. There’s a lot of ways to make money. You could have subscription,
you can have coaching, you can sell content,
you can sell advertising, you can build up equity
by putting out content and putting on a conference. There’s a ton of ways. I really do think I’m one
of the golden examples of how to make money
without directly selling it. Meaning, again, there’s a
lot of my contemporaries who sell eBooks, or white papers, or access to their VIP place. I do none such things. I put out the content at
scale, hence, this show, but then it builds brand
leverage that allows me to charge a lot of money to public speak, or when my book comes out, it allows me to have a big
fan base to get a leverage of a big upfront, where I
don’t even need all the books to sell, though I wanna
fulfill that contract. It gave me the leverage to
start a social media agency with my brand equity that
then I operated around. There’s a lot of ways to make money. You’ve got to decide how. If that’s even your goal,
I’m making the assumption ’cause this is a business-oriented show, but it’s all about content, baby. It’s all about content,
and what you’re putting out matters in two forms. One, is it valuable to an audience? Value’s subjective, but two,
how do you want to communicate? Is it video form? Is it audio form? Is it through amazingly cute
and amazing Instagram photos? Like what is it that you do? There’s that Moments in New
York, or what’s that guy, People of New York? – [Voiceover] Humans of New York. – Humans of New York! That was just pictures on Instagram that led to a big book deal, like, how do you communicate,
do people like that, and then how do you decide
to make money on it? That’s really the game.

– [Voiceover] CJ asks,
“How has having a family “changed your long term view of work? “And what does retirement mean to you?” – CJ asked a good question. I’ll let you go, cause I know you’re a new father of a second. – Yeah, so what does family
have to do with work? I think family is the ultimate cheat, and what I mean by that is I had a kid when I was 16, I’ve always had a family since I was an adult, my entire adult life I’ve had a family, and it gives you a reason
to do all this work, and that downtrodden feeling you can have, which is like, “Why am I doing this? “Why am working another night
til three in the morning?” When you have family, for
me, it gives me my purpose, my reason for doing
everything I do is my family. Part two retirement,
retirement’s my biggest fear. Retirement is what people
do when they wait to die. My grandmother was a tap dancer, and she had a tap dance school, and she taught tap everyday of her life, and she taught tap on a Friday, and she died on a Monday when she was 92. That’s my fantasy. I want to work until the last minute, I want to be working in my
hospital bed as I’m dying. So, that’s how I feel about retirement. – I’ll start with
retirement, I’m you know, in the complete same camp. You know, that is my nightmare. I want to die on Monday, on
the Monday that I’m working. I didn’t need those two days in between. You know, I’m with you
I think, you know look, I will say this, there’s one weird retirement fantasy I have, which is to be an old man sitting at the racetrack, having some nickname like one eyed Gary, and
like betting on the ponies. I do like the notion of
the ponies as an old man, so there’s a little bit of that. You know, the family, work
life balance whole thing I think is completely counter punching. Meaning, I hate giving an answer to this because I think it really is
predicated on your partner, and then the evolution of your kids. My partner part I really
kind of took care of. I mean, I was looking for Lizzie, when I found her, I locked her up, married her immediately, we were married within the year of meeting. I told her on our first date
that we were getting married. I knew that she was independent enough and could, I intuitively
felt that she could handle the insanity that is me. It’s crazy, I feel like
we’re still dating. Because you know I travel so much, and like I’m busy, but like
it’s just over communication. When I see a little
strain, I’ll cancel a trip, I won’t say yes, you know, I try to hack, the kids are a whole new variable. You know, now that
Misha’s five and a half, I’ve got to get ready for: They may not be like Lizzie. You know, my little Xander might want me at every single thing at every moment. So, I’m starting to get mentally prepared to counter punch their reality. Kids are always going to
want their parents around, but what’s the hack, right. Like, do I, like it’s
funny, I’ve been traveling, and where I speak now, I spoke in Anaheim and I noticed that Disneyland
was right next door, so I’m like, “Maybe I’ll do
these speaking engagements “cause I’ll take the kids,
let them see what dad does, “and then a full day of…” So, it’s interesting how my brain is starting to adjust to: What’s their reality gonna be like? So, my answer to your question is counter punching, what I mean by that is gross over communicating. Having those conversations
with your spouse or with your partner,
having those conversations maybe even at an early
age with your children. – [Voiceover] Shay asks,
“Think back to a time

– [Voiceover] Akos asks, “When
you’re working on a project, “with clients, how much
is done online like Skype “versus in-person meetings?” – Akos, I can’t speak for
the whole VaynerMedia team, and I think they’re all individual, but at my level, or what I do, not even probably, probably
not predicated in my level, just the way I roll when I think about the client stuff that I do, ya know, I would say 10% on text, 40, actually I’m not gonna try to make this round out to 100. Let’s see, it probably
is predominantly e-mail, solid amount face-to-face, I’m
a big face-to-face kinda fan, almost non-existent phone, and growing, ’cause I’m pushing them, into more text, so face-to-face is probably 25%, the rest is digital. No Skype or Google Plus,
any of that kind of stuff. I’m just, I’m predominantly face-to-face, e-mail is number one,
face-to-face, texting, and that’s that. No GoToMeeting, none of that stuff. – [Voiceover] Erik asks, “Do
you watch your own videos?”

– [Voiceover] Vernon
asks, “What’s one question “you ask in interviews?” – Vernon, I really like this question. I’m really excited to take a stab at it. I don’t do it every time. I’m not one of these guys who’s like, this is my go-to question, like “When you were 13 and you
went through a forest, and you pick–” I don’t have any of these weird things, but I do always, especially
I think if there’s a lot of momentum in the interview, I love to ask people to tell me, at this moment in time, what they see the professional career becoming. I wanna get into the psychology of what their ambition is and I pretty much spend most of the interview trying to get somebody comfortable enough to tell me the truth to that question. Because I don’t care if
you want to be the CEO of VaynerMedia. If you wanna just be, move a couple levels up and have great work-life balance. I
don’t care if you even want to come here and
work for me for two years, suck out my IP and then
go start your own agency. I don’t care what your agenda is, I just wanna know what it is so
I can help us get there. Because the truth is,
I wanna keep people in my ecosystem forever and the best way to do that is to deliver
to them what they want. And so the quicker I can
get into that insight, are you work-life balance,
are you money hungry, are you title hungry, are you entrepreneur and just coming in here for learnings. I don’t care, I just need to know. The quicker I know and the
quicker it’s the truth, the quicker we can do
things forever together. And so that is usually the essence of the interview question for me. Can I tap through, can I
feel that I’m getting there? Because that gives me a blueprint, a map. Not only that, I have the
self-awareness, and I try to talk to them about this,
that that will change. You know, being a 24 year old dude, 26 year old female, it’s gonna change. You’re gonna fall in love,
your life’s gonna change. Are you gonna start a family? When you make a little bit more money it becomes less interesting. There’s so many different
things that are going on in one’s life. When you make a little money it becomes way more interesting. You get the bug, the blood’s in the water. I don’t care, I just need
the communication funnel and I want it to start from day one, five minutes in to getting
to know each other.

– [Voiceover] Amanda asks,
“What ways can agencies “make staff meetings more productive?” – Amanda, I love this question. By the way, I just took
my wedding ring off. Big week for me. Turned 39 and had my 10th
wedding anniversary this week. Thursday is the wedding anniversary, Friday is my birthday. That’s right, at midnight at my wedding, the whole wedding party
sang me Happy Birthday. That’s how I roll. Amanda, Amanda right? Amanda, great question. The best way to make
meetings more efficient is to cut them in half. To cut them in, to cut seven eighths out of them. The amount of bullcrap
that goes on in a meeting, the set-up, this and that, one thing I’ve just noticed, I hired a couple of very
senior executives recently, three or four SVPs, very
senior people here at Vayner, and to a tee, each of
them have come up to me and said, “Wow, your
meetings are so weird. “They’re five minutes,
they’re ten minutes, “they’re 15 minutes.” Because most of it doesn’t matter. This is becoming the theme of this show. It just doesn’t matter. So I think one of the best
ways to make it efficient is to cut them in time. One of the things that I realized is that people will fit 10 pounds of crap into a 10 pound bag. You give them a 15 pound bag,
that’s what they fit it into. They don’t overfill. What I mean by that is, if
you have a one hour meeting, if we have a one hour meeting, we’ll fit what we need to
get into that into that hour. We’ll banter a little bit,
we’ll go a little bit deeper, but if we cut that same
meeting to 15 minutes, we’ll still accomplish that,
and we’ve saved the 45. So the answer to your
question is restrictions. Create a mandate for the
length of the meeting. – Hi Gary, my name’s Brent Wampler,

– Hey, Aimee. – My question is the following. What’s the most important
thing you’ve learned while growing your company at VaynerMedia from East Coast to West Coast, and how does a company successfully scale? – You know, thanks Aimee. You know, it’s funny, I never
opened a second Wine Library so opening a second
office in San Francisco and a third in L.A. has been
a new phenomenon for me. And quite honestly,
there’s challenges in it. You know, obviously I
wanna be everywhere, right. And that matters so much, but look, even at VaynerMedia I’m not sure the last time I’ve been on the 15th floor. Everybody’s asking for an
episode of the 15th floor. I don’t remember, I haven’t
been on the 15th floor in a week, in a month, excuse me. It’s a challenge when
you’re one human being and so for me so much of it is high touch and kinda the way I wanna scale. Aimee, to answer your second part, how do you scale a company? I actually think you scale a company by doing unscalable things. Because I really believe you have to know your business. So at Wine Library I didn’t
need a lot of people, and it was about selling wine. Thus it was a different company. Here, we sell people. We sell our hours against a scope and our thinking and
so all I got is people. And so for me, scaling this company has been doing everything
that’s unscalable. Which is sitting down
and mentoring one by one spending as much time as I can. And trying to empower
people to feel comfortable with coming to me. Now, starting to build
out an H.R. department after a nine month search. Finding Minnie and
saying, this is a person I’m willing to build and
has the natural nuisances to build the culture and the H.R. and E.Q. that I want for this organization. And then having people
that have been with you for three and a half years, you can show Emily
again, and you can wave, and so moving her into to H.R. department as you just heard earlier. So Aimee, for me scaling
this company because I know. Look everybody who has a
business has to understand what business they’re building. And no matter what you do,
it’s always about people. When you’re an agency or client services, it’s extreme people which is so, for me the way to really scale it has been deeply entrenching myself into the people that work with me, for me, along side me, and that’s very important to me. Um, the West Coast
offices dynamic, you know, Alena, if you’re watching
more Skpye sessions. You know how I feel about that. It’s more communication, communication is the backbone of this whole execution and so more time, more physical time. Something Lizzie and I are speaking about. How much time I’m gonna
spend on the West Coast in 15 and 16 is a big commitment to me. So just hacking, hacking away at the thing that matters the most which is do I have a
relationship with all 400 people. And when it’s 4,000 people,
do I have a relationship with all 4,000 people. And I understand the
cynicism that one could have listening to that answer. Like how could you possibly have that? And the way you have it is by having a relationship with the first 40 people. Then having it with the next 400 people. Because the stunning amount of some of the people in this room, and some of the people outside this room, and in San Francisco and L.A., the stunning amount of people that now help me scale, because when somebody struggling or screw this
place, or I don’t believe Gary, they’re quick to jump
in and tell 400 stories about why it’s the other way which then gives that person the ammo to maybe jump in and
relook at the situation a different way, and that can. I always say the truth
is undefeated. Right? And so, for me scaling it is by, by delivering for your teammates.

that I’ve had to deal with, hands down, it has to be the fact of
siphoning off of Wine Library TV, Daily Grape, that routine of six years, and really leaving the day in, day out operations of the family business, that is the most emotional business. Working with my dad, kind
of this transition of being day in and day out with my dad, to being day in, day out with my brother, enormous emotion comes with that. I probably never even realized
that that would ever happen. It was a very big brain twist for me, that I would be transitioning
out of the family business into another chapter of my life, and I struggled with that quite a bit. A lot of heavy emotion, the relationships with the people at Wine
Library, my dad and I dynamics, just all these very interesting things that was happening right
when Misha was born. It was a very interesting time in my life. I was growing up, and
transitioning and changing. I dealt with it with what
I deal with everything, and really, probably the
cornerstone of my happiness. I dealt with it by over-communicating. The level of communication I had with the people involved was very high and allowed for it to happen. And so, that’s what I did. – [Voiceover] Damien asks,
“When you have a billion dollar