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

“The ones that always sound like “they’re whining and pessimistic.” (laughs) – We fire them. (laughs) Because energy is something
I value tremendously and no question, if you
are dragging down the team, that is a heavily– Not having the smarts to do the work is actually viewed as a better option that being Eeyore and woe is me. Look, we are 550 deep now, I’m positive, as people are
watching this from VaynerMedia, saying yeah but, “Ricky is really Eeyore.” You say you’d fire him, why has Ricky been moping for six months? I’m sure there’s a couple
people sneaking through with woe is me but the truth is I heard a story this weekend from my mom, we had an employee that was friends with– My mom’s friends with his mom and she told me a story that the doorman, and the doormen say that they know who the
VaynerMedia employees are versus not just by the pep in their step when they go into the building and they’re happy and always smiling. I think we have a pretty
good atmosphere here and so I’m… I’m very, very, very affected by the atmosphere and the energy of my own company and since I’m the CEO I try to create an
environment that allows me to most do my thing. And I think companies
are disproportionally affected by the top five
to ten people in a company. It’s stunning, if you even look at the
Apples and Nintendos and Budweisers, I mean it’s incredible how a small group of people
really dictate the outcome. And of course everybody’s an impact but for me, if I’m not in a good mood because somebody’s moping, well then I (laughs), that’s a problem. There’s a negative ROI there. You know, the truth is, we try to understand
what makes them unhappy. Now, again, moping is different than being and introvert or quiet. You can be quiet and
focused on your thing. That’s very different
and I wanna make sure, make a big point here that I actually stunningly over-value quiet, focused. I always worry that people at VaynerMedia don’t realize if they’re
an introvert or quiet or focused or headphones on, never really interacting. We have such a culture
of intermingling that, I would even argue that I value them, not more, that’s not fair. I just value them for what they are. I don’t try to change
people for what they are. And you could bring enormous
value to this company by never saying a word or you can yell, like Gabe, 24/7 and bring value. All of it in between
really matters for me. And so, let’s make sure that
as you’re watching this, if your auditing your 5,
10, 15, 500 person company that you’re not digging
through and misjudging moping and just quiet. Or quiet and focused. Or introverted. Those are tremendously valuable things. That’s how they concentrate
and get their job done. Moping is Debbie Downner. I think it’s more Debbie, whaa, you know like Debbie
Downer like this sucks. Try to walk around here for
more than 20 days in a row saying this company sucks. Try. That’s not gonna fly. Being focused, maybe not
being the most social flower and going to every happy hour
and high fiving everybody when you walk through here, that’s more than fine. That should be acceptable. That is acceptable at the highest levels. But saying this sucks. The client sucks. This work sucks. This sucks, this sucks. Just doesn’t work, it’s
too much of a downer. So, how do we deal with it? We try to cut it out. It’s cancer. Straight up cancer.

– [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.

– Gary, my name is Zac. I’m the CEO and lead designer here at Power Labs, which
is a website design company, and my question for you today is: when you’re faced with two
equally qualified candidates, how do you choose which one to hire, assuming you only need
to hire one employee? I’m asking because I
recently needed to hire on a lot of new employees for 2015, and I appreciate your answer. Thanks, man. – Zac, so many things are
running through my head, all of them are gonna razz
you, which pisses me off, because I really appreciate
you watching the show, and you seem like an awesome dude. A couple things. No such thing as ‘equally qualified’, make a goddamn call, right, just make one. Number two, it seems like
you’re growing pretty well. There’s a weird part of me that’s trying to tell you to hire both of them. The only rationale is
that you can’t justify in any shape or form
within the first six months of 2015, you needing, there’s both so narrow,
back to the last question, great way that worked out, that you could never see you using them, because if you both, if you
love both of them so much, that you should absolutely hire them both. I’m a big fan of hiring
ahead of my growth. A lot of people are always like, how did you grow this so quickly? It’s because I am on the offense and I’m hiring ahead of my growth because I’m not worried about my margin. I’m not hiring enough that
I couldn’t make payroll if something weird happened, you know, and in a week I couldn’t make payroll, I’m leaving a cushion for practicality because I’m an immigrant
and I care about people and I wouldn’t want to have layoffs, but I’m always on the offense. So, the two big things
that pop off for me are, one, you know, are you indecisive or was it, like, the best thing to figure
out how to ask a question for the show, or if you really mean it, as a CEO, and, you know, and this is where, if you’re
CEO and lead designer, you need to put your CEO hat on and make a decision, and then, number two, as a CEO, you’re hiring a lot of people, there’s something weird,
I can’t tell you why, but there’s something weird that tells me you should hire both. – [Voiceover] Courtney asks,

– [Voiceover] Jelle asks, “what
came first at VaynerMedia: clients or employees? And did you ever do
stuff without employees?” – So let’s get into this question. First, I actually don’t
know how to pronounce this, so let’s go to India, who I
thought helped us with that, DRock, how – ? – I don’t – “yell”? “Yelle”? I don’t know. – [Gary] Got it, alright. Steve? What’s your shot here? – “Yella?” I don’t know. – You know.
– [India] It’s very pretty. – It’s gorgeous. Yeah, don’t worry, you’re not hurting feelings anyway. India’s going to be very
sensitive on this show. (laughter)
Alright, you know, we started Vaynermedia, two
things happened in parallel. We got out, I got ahead of
it, AJ was graduating college and we were gonna start a company in May. In March or April I got ahead of it and got us a big project
with a big client. So I guess customer came first. I kinda used, I did something clever. I made that person pay the
entire project up front and then used those dollars
to pay the first 3-4 employees who were all of AJ’s homies, who are all still here,
hence the foundation. So I guess client, right? I got an upfront campaign
that I used those dollars, and then the official first day we had those five or six employees, so but we never did anything without them, though actually me and AJ
did some of the early stuff for that project by ourselves, so that’s the answer. I don’t know how you wanna look at it. I will say this: any time you can sell
ahead of your expenses, you do it. One of the biggest reasons so many people go out of business, and many of you who watch this
show will go out of business, is you do not know how
to manage cash flow. You think in terms of, you know, accrual versus cash basis,
if we wanna go hardcore, you know, CPA-style here, oh, we’re gonna make 80k so
I can have 70k in expenses, but if you don’t get paid
properly or if there’s a hiccup, or, you know, no buffers, no practical knowledge
of that vulnerability, and then a bunch of you
who are tech-driven, you raise too much money, you
don’t keep your burn in check, you assume you’re gonna raise more money, it doesn’t go as easy
or as well as you think, because once you actually become a company people are looking at what you’re doing versus what you promise you’re gonna do, and those are the vulnerabilities of how you go out of business. – [Voiceover] Gabii asks, “Do
you have any bucket list items

“for hiring great employees these days? “What’s your process?” – The best places to hire great employees is actually, this is kind of
like the honey and bees thing. My process is a little bit different. I’m actively running a
social and digital agency, and I am at the lucky stage of my career where I’m a known personality in that, and I’m public speaking. I’m doing the #AskGaryVee Show. Plug. And, you know, it’s coming to us, right? I’m at that place now. So that’s not practical
for the far majority of people watching this, and because I want this to be practical, I would say what I would
think is very simply the best tactic for all of you watching, who want to hire good people is to search the key
terms on Twitter search that are talking about the
things that you do for a living, and then doing the homework. The dirty little secret is my friends, is most people don’t want to work. You know how easy it is
to find good employees? Let me explain. You go to Twitter search. You search the terms
around the job description that you want, not the
job description terms, but the kind of things they’d be doing. Looking at people talking
about design websites, design forums, design aspects, and then looking around
what people are saying. Then clicking on their profile. Clicking their homepage. Probably landing on
their design portfolio. Finding four people that
you think do a good job. Emailing them or Tweeting at them saying, “Do you want to interview for a job? “Are you looking for a job?” Three of the four say, “No.” One says, “Yes.” The other three give you four referrals that are kind of like them. You’ve got five people to interview and you hire one of those people. But that just took eight hours, didn’t it? And that my friends, is how you actually do it. Because everybody’s
looking for quick tactics to make it easy, and putting in the work always, always matters. You, with a little bit of me,