– What’s going on, Gary?
This is John Max here. I had a question for you. Was driving and listening to
“Thank You Economy” and at the end of the book you talk about
how you would wish the self, the book with self-destruct by
2015 because marketers would have ruined the
thank you economy. Looking back do you think that we still live in a
thank you economy? And if not, what kind of
economy do we live in now? Thank you. – I’ll take a little bit of
this because I’ll help you. The “Thank You Economy”‘s
premise is pretty simple which is can we scale
one-on-one behavior? What’s depth verse width, right? You think of influencers a place that
you and I both played. You can have a million followers
but if you said go by this book, both you and I know that
somebody with 72,000 followers could sell more books, depth. It didn’t play out the way
wanted because I had optimism in a place where I shouldn’t which
is the punchline is businesses don’t get a fuck.
– No (laughs). – It is unbelievable how much
people don’t understand why my whole world has worked. My little thing works
because I just want to go deep. I just want to deliver value
and it works every time and the person who scaled the thank you
economy the best in my opinion is Taylor Swift and
that’s why she’s winning. She understands– – We talk about her
in the book actually. – That’s great, so great
segue perfect I’m glad we can pass the baton. – Buy the book. – Do some kind of
scary thing there, by the way. Edit. I think Taylor understands
that going to somebody’s wedding randomly may cost her 45 minutes
and not have in an ROI positive game but it does
because the pickup, the amplification, dropping a
pop-up shop for these glasses for Snapchat in the
Grand Canyon is not ROI positive until everybody talks
about it through this kind of infrastructure
and then it does. Thank you economy has a lot of
DNA ties to this and to your question the reason it didn’t
play out the way I’d hoped or inspired is
companies are short-term, I’m long-term and people that
are thinking in 20 and 30 and 40 year terms are thinking about
LTV and lifetime value and then do things that don’t have
value in the short term. The reality is 99% of the
players don’t play that way. – You and I have been
in the same business and I think had the same values. It’s remarkably frustrating when
you try to convince a brand to do what you’re talk about,
to go deep and actually attach yourself to a set of values or
people that have those values. I would say make the
content that matters, put it in front of people it
matters to from voices that matter to them
at a time that matters. It’s like very simple
and they never get it. And they only want the top 1% of people and it’s
like their trophy bag. And they’re like well I got
Demi Lovato to tweet about it. It’s like, well, that
really doesn’t mean anything. – Right, Demi.
– No, it is not, I don’t. – I’m kidding,
I’m kidding, I’m kidding. – She’s a mass media artist
but if I’m making a purchase decision than I want
something that’s closer to me. I want something that I trust
and feel some sense of shared values with and these big macro
brands but Taylor she kinda over came that by these
personal experiences. – She understood it.
– Yep. – She understands
there’s an amplification, scaling the unscalable. – Just this weekend she’s
singing Thanksgiving songs with Todrick Hall who’s, you know,
a self-made YouTuber who– – She gets it. She understands
where the attention is. She deploys unscalable behavior in it which then
means it gets amplified. – Yep. – What’s his name
again one more time? – [Dunk] John.
– John. John, all of what you
heard in that book is still an opportunity today as it was
six years ago when I wrote it. Let’s move on. – [Dunk] Next
question is from CK.

Here is Prosper from
Journey to Real Life, here in beautiful Neuchâtel,
taking my morning swim after waking up. So, my question today is, how would be your
approach of creating a more sustainable world with
a media company? Thank you for your answer. – Prosper, I think it’s
an interesting question. I’ve been thinking a
lot, actually, about this over the last couple of months. You know, impact on world. I get a, somebody on,
whether it was on my team or my family, I’m trying to think
who said this to me. I don’t think I realized that
getting 15 to 25 emails a day in your inbox, telling you
that you’ve changed one’s life, that I was doing, it’s so interesting that
people think giving a $10,000 check to research for a disease, or to fix an animal, or put up trees is the way to do it. It’s unbelievable how much,
you know, you were with me when we were just in
New York where the guy’s like, get a tattoo, and I’m
like, that’s the easy part. Like, not missing
a Jets play since ’82. I think people are very
stuck, Prosper, on tactics over religion, and I talk
about that in business all the time. If you’ve been following
me, you’ve heard that a million times, but
it’s how I think about a more sustainable world,
meaning, as a media company, as an individual, I think we take
a lot of shortcuts. Tweeting something
to support something is not making
an enormous impact. It can make an impact. You know, you
supporting something, if five of your friends
care how you support, or if a celebrity and
50 people care, but it is stunning how much
more important action is over little words
or tactical things, so for me, I think it’s
a day in, day out thing to deploy to
the things that matter, and I think it’s a very
human game, I think, I like depth over width. For me, if I can
impact my little circle, and this whole thing, the
Vayner Nation, VaynerMedia, all of my inner team here. I’m impacting them
on a individual basis, and then they go
and impact other people. I’m completely confident,
because I’ve watched it many times, that the
self-esteem and confidence that I deploy, Andy, do you think that you’re
a more confident person, because you’ve rolled with me? – Yeah. – [Gary] And do you think that
you’ve maybe deployed that on other people
within your circle? – [Andy] 100%. – That’s the game. So, I think my answer
to your question is, as a media company,
or as anything else, way too many people are
looking to reach too many. Go individual. It’s what you’re
doing behind the scenes that is way more important than
what you’re doing optically for the PR’ed version of how
you wanna position yourself to the world. – [Sid] This one’s from Chris.

death you ever have to regain focus tips if I
mean you know you’re talking about like worrying about how many followers do
happen how much reach you have not worrying about if you position yourself
to actually convert on what you want to for me my religion is depth not with and
show it I don’t struggle with that I never care about me Twitter followers I
have or how much traffic I’ve to my website I’m always thinking about the
moment I’m gonna deal with in about a month which is you know that I sell
books right did everything lead to that moment by the way is a march 23rd telethon great February 23rd film the
commercial for the 23rd anyway Feb 23rd mark your calendar right now actually
actually can we get that on the counter apple.com when you get that up from what
10 a.m. to 6 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. huge telethon where people by eight books and
holding a huge anyway I need to refocus on different things not the wet the width and depth thing I need to
refocus on opportunity cost this is going to become like the you
think you’re tired of me talk about snapshot we do you too much I’m gonna
pound you in 2016 with opportunity costs because I’m coming for supper later that
night missus in my career aren’t necessarily the things I’m doing their
things I’m not doing because of a certain things I’m doing got it so I
think that’s what I’m trying to focus myself on which is putting myself in the
best position to succeed and auditing my talents and my up side to allocate my
time and my efforts Travis do you lose respect for business people if they go
off and rely on you wanna take pics etc

follow her snap them a personal brands
don’t use it as a two-way street are they missing the point i think that the
missing something I i you know I’ve been feverishly and you know send me a
message renounce snapshot asked me to bring you up and try to do as many as I
can probably snatches all your messages don’t see you start to go away if you
get too many like I do like I can get an accusing gotta keep kind of paying me a
little bit which stinks like I can keeps rolling yeah like hundreds of messages
an hour I’m kidding I’m just the razor fine you probably are you know so so
that kind of stinks but yeah I do I do think that when you look at Mike who’s
been winning on in some of the other people like some of the early people
that are following the blueprint by the way real quick everybody’s kind of yet
yapping at me right now we’re going to put a shot so hard you guys have been
very close to the show nobody was saying that about Facebook with me last year
that’s all I talked about right or Instagram because it’s the first day
I’ve never seen it happen in an early stage the kind of caught me mid Facebook
thesis when I started the shell guys this will happen again the show continues and like smooth like
that’s what all talk about until i feel like im totally screwed anyway yes I
look look the interest they’re not missing the point they’re playing means
that these personalities are playing the with game not the depth game let me
explain if you just keep it as your content pusher and people want to see
you dressed sexy your business advice or whatever the hell you’re doing if you’re
just doing that and you’re not engaging with people because first of all
personal brands have different I mean I’ve already talked to multiple of my
female friends on the that they’re getting from leaving their snapshot open
its like like not good ok that’s number one number two for the guys in the crowd
it’s a complete no-brainer if you want to create depth for four women
unfortunately just life it’s a little trickier for me to give blanket advice
but clearly you know about fact question of the day whether it happened on
Twitter or whether it happened on I’ll or whether it’s happening right now
on snapchat has me personally responding in a world where I’ve done by the way
from the prior question has that impacted how you feel about me that’s
the question and the answer is yes from a lot of people write like people
appreciate effort and that engagement and so when the questions being asked or
the missing the boat I do I think they’re missing an opportunity people
affected by what their elderly putting but those if they took one second and
said thanks lol yeah I said yeah Holland to some guy did you know like if they do
that I’d literally believe that that that person will pay more attention do
more things with them biz dev more with them care about them longer and I think
there’s a real ROI for that little extra effort even go to work my way into work carry this is John Coles sharp the evil said now you know

– So. – Actually I’m scared. – Ready? – Yeah. – So VaynerMedia has always been in like, turbo growth mode.
– [Gary] Aw, crap. – [Gary] Yes. – Right, like always. It’s always bring on more clients, hire more people, run out of space, rinse and repeat, right? – Yes. – Do you think there will ever be a time where VaynerMedia prioritizes depth over width in terms of charging more, you know, bigger, fatter — – Scopes? – scopes, and — – Subjective call on the
quality of the output? – Right, or, but then that
laddering up to sort of… – A plateauing of people? – Turning into like big,
huge, lavish benefit packages and things like some agencies get really, really, really
crazy with that, right? Where we’re scrappier, right? – Yup. – And I’m not saying that’s the point — – No, no, no, you’re not. – But do you think Vayner will ever slow down —
– [Gary] You mean like, paying people 200 thousand dollar bonues to be the best creative director
in the world kinda thing? – Well, yeah sure, I guess. – I mean, I’m just, I wanna
quantify that part of it. – Right, exactly. So it’s like depth over
width in terms of like, sheer dollar amounts as
they relate to clients, employees, benefits, all that stuff. And I’m not saying it’s bad right now, by any stretch, right? – Yeah, no. I’m not worried about that. So I think, for me, the way I run my business, which is why I think I’m running a much better business than all these other
agencies that do that, is because I think you can
achieve both in parallel. So I think what I uniquely
as an entrepreneur am good at, is running both trains. So I think you could easily, as, in the context of your question, speak to a very different level of quality in the building from 18 months ago. – Right. – So, if you just project out, if you think about the fact that we didn’t have a single SVP
or real creative director like of any, real’s not fair. A creative director of 10
years or more experience just 18 months ago. – Mmhmm. – That you can see that
happening in parallel. I think that, I think
where it gets disguised is we have people that come
from Gray and Ogilvy and things of that nature. We also have, what’s
been very happy to me, to see Aton and Harry and Pensoot and all these people
leveling up in parallel. What it gets disguised by is the thing that’s much more obvious. What’s much more obvious is
hyper growth of people, right? – Yeah. – It’s just, getting
crammed when we grow, right? What’s less obvious is,
you know, anyone’s ability to really truly dissect 550
people’s depth of skill. – Yeah. – And there’s pockets of clients. You’re always gonna have
variable depending on the people. Plus, hiring the right people. So, to me, the answer is,
it’s happening in parallel. I think the only thing that makes people think that it’s happening,
is stop the hiring process and then they’re like, “Oh! “We’re not going hyper,
we’re going deeper.” – Yeah. – I think we’ve gone stunningly deep in 18 months by two variables. One, bringing the outside
talent in their 30s and 40s, right, depth, which is gray hairs. in a lot of people’s
subjective point of view. And number two, the actual growth of the people that have been at Vayner that are totally different animals. And I think that, for every
individual it’s different. And I also think that for the people that have been here longer, it’s a different context point
than it is for other people. You know, and so, no I mean, I think as long as I’m running the business, I’m never comfortable in thinking one has to be done without the other. I truly feel that you’re
capable to do both. And I think if you project
out what’s happened in the last 18 months on the depth chart, that it’s actually tremendously scalable and gets way deeper
because as you get bigger, you deploy those dollars to those things. – Mmhmm. – And as far as like, benefits
and packages, you know. I’m very weird when it comes to bonuses. I think bonuses, so we’ve
hired two people recently that left their agencies
because of bonuses. Because they felt they deserved more. I think when you have a graying zone of, I get to be the judge
and jury on the bonus, I think what is safer
is to just try to get to a number together. And I think that those
things ebb and flow. I also think that when you’re
in a fast-growing company, what a lot of employees don’t calibrate, ’cause they shouldn’t,
’cause it’s very hard for anybody to care about anything besides what they care
about for themselves, is the notion of what happens in a 36-month window
versus a 12-month window. So I’ve been happy to be honest with you, of getting three to four
emails in the last six months from former employees
who left because of money who now make less money than some of their counterparts here
because VaynerMedia is growing, and we’ve been able to rise all ships, and in their other places they haven’t. And so, those are my answers. – Bonus question. – Please. – How fast do you think
we max out the space at Hudson Yards? – I think we might of already. – Nice. I think, you know, I do think that every company has to bear the negatives that come along with the positives for their individual
self around the person that runs the company. I love insanity. (laughter) I like it. I like when we’re like this. I like when we’re sitting
this close to each other. I like it. And if you are not that, if you’re somebody that really like that, and your space, and this
is where I put this, and this is where I put this, then, you know, Vayner
can be tricky at times. Though, no question, I
think it’s a leader’s job to adjust to his reality,
and I’ve definitely deployed more empathy towards the way we plan on scaling Hudson Yards, and if we need secondary offices to try to come back a little bit
on my own selfish love of that kinetic energy. Mainly predicated on, because
the floors are so big. So I think I’m gonna be
able to scratch my itch, ’cause they’re just big floor plates and there’ll be three, four
hundred people comfortably on one floor. And so I’m hoping that
solves that problem. So, thanks Steve.

“from politicians begging for money. “How would you do better
if you ran for president?” Hashtag ready for Gary. – Yeah, I mean look guys. We’ve addressed this multiple times. If you’re new to this show I
will never run for president because I wasn’t born in this country and if I can’t have the top gig I’m not playing the game. How would I do it better? Easy, it’s the whole thesis of all 148 episodes of this show. It’s all about depth, not width. Like, nobody’s winning the random I’m going to blast you with email give me 20 bucks game buy my stuff game. The blanketing and
hoping and praying versus the depth is the complete
misunderstanding of how to sell. I think oftentimes it makes sense to me that politicians are bad at this because most of my politician friends are terrible business
people and salespeople so it makes sense and usually you know, it’s really, it’s actually stunning what kind of level of disrespect I have for most politicians’ salesmanship. They can sell themselves,
but not other products and I think that that at some level is an intriguing aspect and
fine line in this whole thing and so email marketing
is no different than, you know, the direct
mail that they used to do to try to get dollars
and so, I don’t know, I mean there’s so many
ways to do it better. I mean look. I think one of the best
things a politician can do is literally sit in the room,
sit on our God damn ass, and for 15 hours, take a phone, take a phone, and literally do, and literally do, you know, Twitter reply videos. Literally search your name,
because everyone’s talking, and they either love you or they hate you, because if you’re neutral
you’re in deep crap, and just reply to them and say “No Rick, that is not my policy.” or “Thanks Susie for the support.” It’s the depth over the width game. So the same stuff that
works in selling stuff, selling anything, works in this scenario, and so I think Twitter replies I think would be
disproportionately powerful. I think Facebook is the most important platform for a politician due to the fact that older people tend to vote and that I think that
Facebook is the holy grail of 45 to 70 year old reach right now. Even better than television. So I would put a lot of
content in that world and talk more about my
policies and my thoughts and more importantly show
the human side of me. I don’t know if people
have been paying attention but I believe the last four
to five presidential elections have been completely predicated
on a popularity contest and we’re in the
entertainment of politics era. Not to get political, but if
you just look at all of them. I mean like, whether you
hate Obama or you hate Bush, these are likable people to those sectors. In comparison we’re in like complete and what’s going on now. We are in entertainment mode. And so I would be entertaining
if I had that opportunity because that’s what would work and so that’s what I would do. I mean cold emailing is
doing absolutely nothing. It feels completely cold. It, you know, won’t do it. – [Voiceover] Ian asks,
“Gary, what’s your opinion

– [Camera Man] It’s rolling. – Oh, it’s rolling. Gary, Eric Decker. – [Gary] Eric Decker. Jersey right there. – I want to know how can
athletes use social media to expand upon their brand. – Eric, I think one of
the biggest, first of all, super pumped you and B Marshall tag team. I love this. Best receiving
core we’ve had in a long time. Probably since ’98. I think athletes need to engage
with their fans a lot more. You know, just pushing out like, “Come to my nonprofit event.” “Buy my jersey,” “Support my friend.” You obviously have a
celebrity spouse as well. So, bring exposure to her stuff. All celebrities, not just athletes, are always pushing,
pushing, pushing, pushing. Like, you know, “Come and see my stuff,” “do this stuff,” “do this
for me,” “do this for me.” How about doing something for them? The amount of people,
Eric, right now on Twitter that are saying, “Eric
Decker, can’t wait.” A lot of people saying,
“Eric Decker, you’re so hot.” You know, why don’t you engage
with some of those people, and literally just use Twitter
video, like I love to use, grab your phone, go to Twitter, reply. I’m gonna do it right now. You know what? DRock,
I’ma do it right now. Let’s just randomly pick somebody. This is the way to do it, right? You’ll probably edit and
do whatever you’re doing. Here we go. Just hitting notifications. Boom. There we go. Let’s see who says something. Here we go, D-Rock said something. DRock, get out of here. Let’s just find something here. All right. Let’s keep
going. Just scrolling. A lot of regramming. Let’s
see if somebody says hello. Dustin Riddle, “Gary
Vee, have a great day.” So, I hit the reply button. I hit the camera on
the bottom left corner. I hit the camera on the top right corner. I switch it to camera mode. I flip it to selfie mode, and now I forgot the
God damned guy’s name. Son of a bitch. Let’s exit out. Let’s go back. Done. Dustin, got it. All right, Dust. Here we go. Here we go. Yeah, that’s what happens
when you do it live. Dustin, video, camera. Dustin, it’s Gary Vee. I
appreciate that, brother. I hope you have a wonderful,
wonderful weekend. Thanks, man. And that’s it. And now, I’m actually
bringing value to Dustin. Eric, the amount of people that when you wave to them in the crowd, or you throw them a glove, or you say hey, they go crazy. You can scale that. You can scale that on social
and create real depth. You know, real depth. The amount of people that
I’ve done those videos for and just engaged with and said hey. Then the next day go out and
buy Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. Or when Jason Glenn,
number 58, special teamer gave me some daps at a Jets Patriots game, when I was on the field and just said hey. The next day I went and custom ordered his jersey at $100 bucks. That is what’s happening. It’s very easy for you to get
into the trenches of Twitter at scale and engage with your fan base. And I highly, highly recommend that.

– [Voiceover] Gregory asked,
“If you ever become the CEO “of a local Chamber of
a community of 12,000, “what would be the first
thing you would do?” – If I became the CEO of a
Chamber of Commerce for a small group of 12,000 people, 12,000 members or 12,000 people in a town? – [Steve] Community, yeah. – You know, I’m a very big
fan of scaling the unscalable. Right, I talk a lot about engagement, one on one engagement, Twitter
videos, depth versus width. When you’re talking about
a town of 12,000 people, even if we’re answering this incorrectly and it’s a membership of 12,000, it’s still a very small number
in the scheme of things. So, what I would fundamentally
do is create a infrastructure to allow me to connect one by one with every single member of the Chamber, and even considering if it’s
a 12,000 person community the thousand to 4,000
people that really care about business in town, and
connect with them one by one via coffee, via Skype, via phone call as much face to face as possible, and ask them to reverse
engineer their objectives, meaning what can the Chamber do for you? What do you want out of it? I’d also have a better
understanding of what I was trying to get out of it
if I was the CEO of that. So, I don’t know if that’s fees, I don’t know if it’s something
as simply noble as making business better in town, if
that’s the objective at hand. That’s a little bit of a tongue in cheek for the people that don’t get my humor. I think I get razzed a
little bit too much for this. I was reading plenty of
comments on these three weeks. Basically my job would be to make the business environment in
this community better, and I think the number
one way to do that is to get people aligned. I think leadership comes
from getting entire group of people aligned on a mission. I actually think the most
effective way to do that is to actually understand
each individual person’s goals and objectives and
then come and find that little sweet spot that
is the closest thing to the overall masses that brings value across the board, and then go backwards. What’s the number one thing
that I can do that brings value to all 600 people at Vaynermedia? That brings value to all 12,000 members, and then go down the
list to where the number 10 thing maybe brings value
to half of the people, but it’s still better
than to three people. So, I reverse engineer
by listening upfront, collecting the data, and
then executing against the top 10 things that will
bring value to everybody in the organization.

“Gary Vee, your Facebook
numbers don’t reflect “how influential you are. “How do you explain that to clients?” – This is a good question. It’s funny. I think people are lost. Let me explain. Here’s how I explain it to clients, I assume what you’re saying is Gary, you’ve built a personal brand and you only have 336,000 followers on Facebook, and there’s a lot of
people that have way more, and your influence is bigger, and I like you. Being very nice, and I think
you’re bigger than that. I see other people that have
400,000 or 180,000 that are way less than you. How do you explain that? I explain it very simply. My goal in life is not to amass Facebook fans. I explain it by saying, look at all these people that have way more
social media followers who sell nine books when
their book comes out, and I sell hundreds of thousands. I explain and say, look. You know I tell you I’m
good at building businesses? Look at this building,
business called VaynerMedia. Three years ago, the three million and is gonna do 65 million. That’s good, right? I explain it, because a top line, how many
followers do you have on social media proxy is straight bullshit. You want more fuckin Twitter followers? Go to eBay.com and buy them. You trick them. I can go buy a bunch of Facebook pages and merge it. It doesn’t mean anything, because a top line awareness number has nothing to do with the thing that I care
about the most in the world which is selling stuff. Show me it all the way through. Show it all the way through, because the amount of people that can create perception. It’s like being pretty. Cool, you’re pretty, but
are you a good person? Because pretty only gets you so far. Cool, you have 500,000
fans on Facebook, and? If you’re saying that
you’re a business leader, are you making money? Do you sell stuff? Are you good like that? I explain it very easily as you can tell, because I promise you that Pepsi and Toyota and Unalever and Budweiser, and all those
characters that hire VaynerMedia could care less
about how many followers the CEO has. They care a lot more about selling shit.

“who specialize in social media never have “a clear cut social media
brand except tweeting links?” – Matthew, Matthew… Matthew Roth, thank you so much for asking this question to the world,
that I just jumped into and rode into the show. I agree 1,000%, I’m flabbergasted. As somebody who wrote a book called The Thank You Economy, that
talked about engagement, and all the social media,
this was 2011, where I was definitely
supply-and-demand-wise at the top of a pyramid of social media experts, I’d like to think I still am,
but I like separating myself by actually putting in the work. It was stunning to me how
many people were like, “Gary Vee, that was the
best book, you’re so right, “you’re so right,” and I jump in, look, they never replied to anybody. Like all they do is go
around and just share links trying to build up, literally, want to talk about not
understanding the game that matters. Literally their behavior was caring about how many followers they had. You want to talk about an
action I will never care about, it’s how many top-line
potential awareness I have. Width, I care about the depth. I care about the 24 people that jumped on this last week and watched 40 episodes and really care and really
intrigue and see some value. That’s what I care
about, it’s about depth. 24, 24 people, that’s how
much I get excited about it in a world where people
wanna, I’m gonna get to 10,000, I’m gonna get to 100,000. A lot of social media professionals share a crap-load of content because it gets re-tweeted and that’s
how they get followers, not recognizing, what is
that behavior towards? I mean, just to remind the market, I was you know, what I did
by speaking about the future, social media, duh, duh,
duh, was that it allowed me to build a business. Allowed
me to build a foundation off that thought leadership. And it was a clear-cut
plan, right, it wasn’t like super like, oh, how did
we get here, oh weird, how did we get here. No, it wasn’t any of that. It was understanding that
my behavior had a map, what I wanted to happen, and by the way, even this in itself in five
years when you watch something that I put out will make
sense that this wasn’t even the end goal, the end
goal is not to build a hundred million dollar a year agency. And so, I think the reason they suck, is ’cause they suck. I think the reason that a lot
of social media professionals suck is because I think a
lot of real estate agents and a lot of SEO experts
and a lot of like, whatever’s hot let me jump on it, people jumped on social media because nobody knew what the hell it was. And there’s a lot of players
who jump ahead of things that nobody understands
and tries to collect fast nickels and pennies during
that indecisive gray period instead of looking for the long dollars, or the long Benjamins
as P. Diddy and B.I.G.,