– [Voiceover] Clayton wants
to know, “How do you push “your team beyond their best?” – Clayton, great question. Way to start off 2015, good questions. Oh, actually, I picked this one, right? (people laughing) Hit ’em with some Barry Harowitz’. But that was so subconscious, too. It was a great question.
I thought we should do it. I really, really, really
think that the best way to push somebody above their own means is to guilt them into it. And I know that’s a weird kind of answer. But it is my honest belief
that the thing that drive, first of all, everybody is
driven by different things. So, the real answer to your question is to use your hear, right? DRock, zoom in to my ear. Right, you know, the ear
is the key in this scenario because the truth is,
the way to push somebody above their limit is to
actually have individual conversations with them about what is their Holy Grail. What do they wanna accomplish? Like India and I, I have a
good feel of some of India’s long-term career ambitions. That gives me, first of all, her knowing that we’ve even had that
conversation, in and of itself, gives her a little bit more
confidence to work harder. Because she’s tryin’ to get
what she wants out of it, professionally, and
knowing that I’m the person that can most likely make that happen, at least in the context of this world, that just even having the conversation puts her in better spot. But some people are literally
rawly driven by straight cash. Like, truly, you wanna push somebody? You carrot, like, “Hey,
I know you love cash! “I’ll give you 10,000 more if you, like,” You know, and so, you’ve gotta find out what makes people tick. I’m so not motivated by cash, that so many people try
to get me to do things, JV with me, invest in things, do things, speak at things. And they think cash is the way to do it. And, listen, I love the cash, but it’s not my biggest driver. And I make a lot of
decisions based on legacy, long-term impact, on myself by the way. Not like long-term global impact. You know, that’s not how I think. I mean, I think there’s
a byproduct of that but that’s not the
number one thing for me. But, to answer the
question in a general-form, I truly do believe the best
way to get that is to guilt. And what I mean by guilt,
it’s a variation of listening. Which is not only listening,
but delivering in a world where so few people even begin to listen, let alone delivering on that listening. And once you start doing
that, people start realizing, let me tell you what’s
happening at Vayner; it’s not super confusing. I know exactly what’s
goin’ on in this company. It’s starting to get old enough that there’s enough things
happening for enough people that it’s really easy to
point to Phil Toronto, or to somebody else and
be like, “Wait a minute.” Or Steve Unwin, like, you
can start pointing to, “Oh, crap, that person wanted that, “that person’s getting that, “that person’s happy as crap!” I want that, and so, it’s listening and then delivering, which
then creates a scenario where people want to over-deliver because, the only way somebody
will over-deliver for you, ’cause you asked a very selfish question. “How can I get my team
to over-deliver for me?” “For my thing.” It’s very simple. The best way to get them
to over-deliver, John? – [Trouty] I’m Jack,
if that’s a substitute. – No, Jack is not a substitute. I know what you’re thinking. No, that is not a substitute. – Okay, we’re on the hunt. – The only way to get
somebody to over-deliver is to attack their own
selfishness, their’s. You’re selfish ’cause you want more out of your team to help you. Well, the best way to get that to happen is to over-deliver
against their selfishness. I do believe that guilt is a huge driver because, and there’s something that I, I believe in human beings. I mean, some people don’t
have self-awareness, or empathy, or these emotional feelings. So many people, like, it’s amazing to me now living 20 years professionally, like, how many people are not
confused eventually. They may be emotional at
the time you fire them, or not reward them, but
boy, every time I run into somebody four, seven,
nine years down the line; I’ve had a very good
track-record of them saying, “Yeah, I know why you did that.” I mean, like crazy stuff like, “I had a drug problem!” There was, like, you know, stuff! Life, right? So, I would answer your question like I have before on this show. And you haven’t heard me
say it, I’ll say it again. The single best way to win is to give 51% of the relationship. If there was a jury of 500 people, that they would all
agree that you’ve given 51% to the relationship. And you have to be good enough to know what to do with the other 49. So, I would attack their own selfishness. I would make it so good for them, that you’ve guilted them in delivering. And be very prepared in your stomach by making it awesome. And then them under-delivering, still being entitled to
think they did deliver. And then you being disappointed. “You listened to the Gary Vee Show, “and he told you, and he so great.” Yeah, at least you think
so thank you very much. “And you did it.” And then all four of
these people who you gave $10,000 raises to yesterday, a month later are doing
the same crap they did, and it didn’t motivate them at all. Or you gave them four weeks
off instead of one week off, and they’re still just as crappy. Or you, like, got them a
babysitter, and you pay for it, and they still aren’t. Gratitude and all these
wonderful human characteristics are not guaranteed. But the best way for you to have it happen is to consistently keep trying
to do it for that person. And then, look, I just had a meeting with all these characters, right? But the rest of the team, and I was like, “Look, you may not win on this team.” Like, 2015, I wanna take
it up another notch. And the consolation
prize is you get to work for one of the best
companies in the world. But, like, you just might not
be able to be on this team. You’ve gotta be upfront,
you’ve gotta be fair. You gotta know when you’re
setting up people for victory; and when not, you gotta do that. And then you get to
judge, not before hand. Way too many of you are
making a mistake yourself. You didn’t train, you didn’t
put the person in a position to succeed, you’re not
communicating properly on what you expect. You’re not shooting it straight, you’re scared to hurt feelings. You’re too much of a dick. It could be a million different reasons why it’s not happening, but
it is always going to be the greatest form meritocracy
that you can create. And that starts with your ear and it finishes, in my
opinion, on a second-step move of you actually delivering on that. Call people’s bluffs. I live life on calling people’s bluffs. “Oh, you’ll really crush it
if you have another person?” “Here.” Now, you have to be good enough, back to that 49%, to afford
to give somebody that person. You may not have that situation. But you might have to make a decision. One of the quickest
ways I grew Wine Library was by making 30,000 dollars a
year for five years in a row. Because it took all those monies. And I called people’s bluffs. And when they let me down, do
you think it hurt my feelings that I wasn’t making 45 instead of 30? It sure did, but did I have
my eye on the big prize? Sure did! Now I get paid double that
salary to speak for one hour because I bet long-term,
because I was 23 years old! Right, you gotta know where you’re at. If you’re 83 and you’re watching the show, first of all, big ups, ol’ dog. And second of all, second of all, you know, maybe you don’t
need to play the long-game and invest as much. Maybe it’s time to cash out. I have these weird feelings that in my 80s I’m gonna be rogue as crap, and just take! Because I just gave for so long. I don’t know, you’ve heard
me say that’s my concern. But I can tell you this. (sighing) Most of the reasons, let me phrase. If they work for you, all of the reasons that they’re not over-delivering
against their best, all of those reasons are your fault. – [Voiceover] Harold asks,
“Will you force your children

– [Voiceover] Glenn
asks, “Can you elaborate “on what the middle is and why it sucks?” – Glenn, this is a great question. You know, to me the middle
is the commodity work and thinking that everybody else does. Meaning, it’s what the
market’s doing right now. Like, it’s when start-ups pitch me, “We’re gonna do something
in the photo app space.” You mean like everybody’s been doing for the last five years? It’s commodity work, ya know? I think if you’re not
trying to break things, you’re not doing a good job, or back to clouds and dirt, non-middle, if you’re not doing like,
you know what’s so funny? I’ve sat through four pitches today, and I’ve liked two, and one is because the two guys are just doing the work. They’re like in the weeds. They’re not doing the big
holistic branding thinking game-changing stuff. They’re just executing,
but at a raw level. I just find that there’s not that many hardcore practitioners,
and there’s even less big where’s the world going, ya know, one of those trends at the highest level where am I doing the kind of
things at the highest level, and so I don’t really know
how to explain the work but you’re surrounded, I’m sorry, I don’t really know how
to explain the middle, but you’re surrounded by
it 99.9% of your life. – Hey Gary, I have a question
for you for #AskGaryVee.

– So Gary Vee, this is what I wanna know. Because you have this 500 person agency, I want you to explain why people should use a digital agency? – For looks. – What’s the circumstances? When not to use it, when to use it? How do you optimize it? Well basically, give us the gist. Why use an agency? Why not cultivate all this talent inside and control it, own it,
et cetera, et cetera. Thank you, Gary. – Thank you, Guy. Guy K, one of the real
thought leaders in this space. He’s too humble to do it but I know he has a new book out and I wanna give love to people so DRock, Staphon, take
over the page here. Give him a little shout out. Let’s link it up below. One of the few authors I feel
comfortable enough in saying, check out what they’re doing so VaynerNation, check out what Guy’s doing. It’s a great question, Guy. As a matter of fact,
the answer’s even better ’cause I’m giving it. The answer is you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t hire anybody to do anything if you think you can do
it better for cheaper. My obsession with building this, DRock, get up a little bit, let’s get a little improv. My obsession with building all of this is predicated on one thing which is that I think it’s worth you to pay us to do our thing because I think I can do it better than you could do it yourself or some other agency down the street can do it for the same price or for more expensive. The arbitrage of what they cost versus us, that we’re more valuable in return and so the biggest
reasons most big companies hire agencies is the
head count on their PNL in corporate America,
in a Wall Street World is looked upon as a
negative versus outsourcing it to agencies. The big reason that a medium
sized business should do it is that they feel like
the investment is worth it and the reason a small company
or individual should do it is they’ve run out of time but the fact of the matter is, nobody should hire anybody, digital agency or, I would hire somebody to hang a picture in my house. Let me tell you why. One, I’m just not that handy. Two, my time matters to me so much and so I’d rather pay somebody
100 bucks to hang a picture than to spend those four minutes ’cause I think I know what
to do with those four minutes to make a 101 bucks, get it? That’s the game. Can somebody do it better that brings an ROI to you and that’s why agencies exist. Can we, and don’t forget this other thing, if you bring it in-house,
you become a cocoon, right? Like you’re only working on your brand, you’re only seeing it
from your perspective and you’ve lost all the other stuff. By having so many people here, I have so many different perspectives. We have so much more data across so many different brands and then we use that for execution across other brands, across myself. This team here, what we’re doing right now is giving us a North Star of
execution for other clients. I have better advice for
our clients around YouTube and podcasting because the expectations, not the expectations,
the execution, excuse me, that was funny, I rarely
say the wrong word. That was a very weird moment. And so that, my friends,
is the reason to do it. And that’s the reason
for everything, right? Like why am I, why are all these people, show Andy. He’s not feeling very well. (laughter) Why’s Andy here? Because he can do it at an ROI that’s better than I can do it. Do I have the time, this,
that, the other thing. It goes on and on and on and on and so that’s the rationale,
Guy and VaynerNation. Is it worth the investment
you put into it? Just like everything
else you do in your life. By the way, let’s link up
the movie that Staphon edited

Quick question for you. Greg Isenberg, founder of Five Eye here. When does a young entrepreneur cease being a young entrepreneur? Curious of your thoughts. Also, thank you again for putting some of your best #AskGaryVee
videos on Five Eye and launching them today. – Awesome man. Thanks for the question. Thrilled to be on Five Eye. Let’s link that below,
an app I’m excited about, that’s what he’s referring to. You guys can do your own homework. When does a young
entrepreneur stop being young? You know, it’s funny. I still think that I’m young, and I’m not young. I’m 39 in a world of unlimited 29, 23, 17 year old entrepreneurs. I think young is a mindset. I’m not sure where you’re going with the kind of question. Is it appropriate to act young? I don’t think I ever acted young even when I was young, but I’m young at heart. There’s a lot of places where we can really go with this answer. To me I think at some level,
to be honest with you brother, I think it doesn’t matter. I think it’s a kind of weirdly, and almost a non-impactful question. I know that sounds harsh, but what I mean by that is
there is no variable that the outside world might say, hey you’re not young anymore. Start acting your age, or they may expect you
to act a certain way because you are young,
but at the end of the day all of it is irrelevant. Whatevers happening within yourself is the variable of your
success, your life, your upside, and so that’s how I think about it. It’s scary to me how young I actually. I think I’m, I mean very honestly I feel dramatically younger than every, I mean I actually think all these characters around me are older than me. I still watch sports and think
all those players are older than me, still. These are like 23 year olds. I’m like, like I still am in that mindset, and at some level I’m
pretty convinced that a lot of the narrative that’s gonna be talked about me, I can see the headlines in my, I can see it right there. I can see the headlines when I’m 63, 67 74, 83, which is like old man acts young. It’s just who I am, and so the cliche age is but a number it’s really true. The mentality and more importantly, the execution is the variable. Question of the day, how old are you?

– [Voiceover] Sam asks,
“What differences do you see between fundraising and sales? Any? Do all for-profit rules apply
in a non-profit setting?” – Sam, I love this question, because the ironic thing is I think the answer is they do map. I do think that if I ever get into, you know, I sit on some NGO boards, but if I ever get into a chapter of my life where that becomes the driving force, I promise you my execution in that
world will look exactly the same as everything I’m doing here. I do think the rules apply. I actually think there’s a nuance that I want to address which
is that the rules do apply, which means an absolute
respect to the customer. I believe that many people that operate in the NGO world have the audacity to think there’s an
obligation from the wealthy or people they know to actually support, and that they come across arrogant I would say when they’re
going in for the ask, and they’re less tactful. It’s all right hook city in
NGO world, non-profit world, and then when somebody
doesn’t do something they look down on them,
even though the way they approach them was completely unacceptable in my opinion. I do think the rules apply. I think you have to bring a value prop. I think way too many NGOs, non-profits mail it in. They’re not thinking
about that other person’s life, that person that’s
donating life as a whole. They’re just looking for, you know, their tax return, and trying to extract dollars, and life is about value exchange. Even when you’re doing good things, and that is a huge miss
for so many in this space. – [Voiceover] Ross asks, “Hey Gary,

– [Voiceover] Brendan
asks, “Does VaynerMedia “focus much on winning
awards, and what’s your take “on the ad industry’s obsession
with awards in general?” – Brendan, great question. One that I’ve been talking
about for a long time in these halls and in the industry. I think awards are horsecrap. I don’t even know why I’m
not saying horse (beep), because the reason
agencies want to win them is for two reasons. It allows them to recruit talent and they use it as something
to get more business and what they’re doing is,
they’re putting out work for clients that is actually
trying to get awards versus actually trying to sell something, and that’s my real problem with it. I don’t begrudge the
agencies that focus on it because I understand
their business rationale but for me, it’s a unhealthy culture because it takes your eye off the prize which is actually do
something for business. And for us, you know, we’re
lucky because of our work and because of my personal
brand, to be honest with you, we’ve been able to get
a lot of new business. And now, our work is the
word-of-mouth of our business and two, as you can tell, people know this is the right place to
work, so we don’t focus on it. I understand why people do focus on it. I think it’s an energy sucker away from the thing that matters, which
is you need to sell something. – [Voiceover] Rich asks,
“What advice do you have

“How do you not procrastinate that well?” – Cédric. It’s unbelievable how well Cedric the Entertainer branded himself, because I literally was about to call Cédric here the Entertainer. Cédric, I’m calling you the Entertainer. As a matter of fact, I want to make a little piece of content for Cédric and I’ll tweet it out. Cédric, you won. I need a little “Cédric
is the Entertainer,” take his Twitter profile,
and we’re gonna make him. This is a new thing we can
do on the #AskGaryVee Show. We could make things for
fans, one-off t-shirts, pieces of content, I’m
seeing something here. This is gonna make a lot more people ask a lot more questions. Cédric, here’s a curveball, I actually think I’m an
obnoxious procrastinator, while equally not being. Meaning I stay in constant audit mode. Can I get a constant
audit mode alert here? By the way, I have to
watch yesterday’s episode to see what you did with the alerts. Yesterday had a lot of editing.
I gotta watch it outright. I don’t watch my stuff, by the way. It’s a little fun fact for all of you. Sorry, DRock, Staphon,
get to see the great work. There’s a ton of stuff
that I procrastinate, and I think I’m a procrastinator, but what I think I also am is always leveling up
whatever’s most important and prioritizing it in real time. Team can tell you here, I bet you Steve’s favorite inside joke is DeMayo. Can somebody get me the, literally, get me DeMayo? Watch this. This will answer your question
perfectly, VaynerNation, because the truth is, I do procrastinate, but I’m adjusting to
the reality of my life at the moment I’m living it, so if something is
super-important yesterday, I can literally decide that
it’s less important in an hour, predicated on what comes into my inbox, or the meeting that I’m about
to have right after this. And so the reason I think
it feels like I’m not, and so much is getting accomplished, is my pants are on fire for the thing that I deem most important at this exact moment. And that is how it works over and over, where’s DeMayo? And over. I’m trying to stall here. And over, and over, and over again. Let’s go to the next question,
we’ll get back to DeMayo. – [Man offscreen] Oh, here he is. – Oh, here we go. Don’t go, DRock. Leave all that. Don’t
edit that, I’ll be pissed. Now, tell the VaynerNation how– – What’s up, world. – Tell the VaynerNation
how often I’ll send an email that will say “now, this is top priority” versus the next day, this is top priority, and then you get crippled
by the notion of, hold on.
(laughter) If, like, literally, when I’m like, no no, this is the #1 priority in my life. – No, tippy-top priority
is the way you always say. – Tippy-top? Tippy-top. – TIppy-top priority. Yeah, probably every
time you’re on a flight, there’s probably about 15 emails
that come after the flight. – And then you struggle
with, like, what’s tippy-top versus number one. – Yeah, unless you say tippy-top priority. – Is that the new context? (laughter) – If that’s what you’ve
been using for the month. – Alright. – So maybe it’ll change for the new year. – Thanks, man. And that’s what happens, right? Matt, my admin, you know, he has to struggle through what is tippy-top priority of the moment, because it might change tomorrow, so as long as you’re executing
something every day, as a tippy-top priority item, then you’re moving the needle. And sure, something might have moved from second most important
to fourth most important to ninth most important, Alex, you’re dealing with this right now. A lot of things that you
would have dealt with, like BizDev was like the most important, you can’t get a minute from me because something has caused it to become the eighth most important thing versus the number one important thing, and, like, there’s a lot of serendipity, Steve’s been waiting
for this top six things at WineLibrary for four days, I found a minute, I decided it was tippy-top
priority of that minute, and it just works that way at all times. – [Voiceover] Pressian asks,
“How exactly did your mother

“about ‘execution’ in business. “How do you prioritize which
project to execute first?” – Oto, great question. By the way, real quick,
thank you everybody for getting me to 40. Also,
all the people watching, I need you to get into the podcast. Podcast people, watch. I want people listening
and watching every episode. Is that too much to ask? I think it’s double consumption. It’s #DoubleConsumption that’s a hashtag, want to see if any of
you use it on Twitter. Oto, the way I prioritize is to equally with my intuition, so
it’s a judgment call, equally take care of the
things that are most on fire, the biggest problems, balanced
with going on the offense on the biggest upside things
and the biggest things, the culture, a new client. So take care of these three
employees that are fighting, and they’re not getting along, really, you know, on fire, or
a client that’s really upset, and then over here, strike the vision. What are we doing with
the video department? Where are we going? Like, what am I doing? Like, where’s this all going? How do I buy the jets? And nothing in the middle. Oto, VaynerNation, the
middle is dangerous. – [Voiceover] Yoli asks,
“Before you had an assistant,

– [Voiceover] Michael asks,
“How do you define hustle?” – Michael, this is funny
because show his face. ‘Cause I can see him grinning. This was the first question– What are we 35 in five? This was the first question
of 150 questions that I can see from the corner of
my eye he literally said, “How do you define hustle?” ‘Cause he could see this (laughter) I mean this is a challenging question. So first of all, it’s
different for everybody, right, but I would say hustle is to me, is that when you have
passion around something, that you were squeezing
every last bit of the juice out of the orange, right. To me, hustle is maximizing
the energy you’re putting into somebody. I’m blown away by people
saying that they’re hustling and they wanna achieve these great things, and then their actions don’t match. It’s like saying you
really wanna lose weight, while eating a Big Mac, right? So to me, hustle would be
putting all your effort into achieving the goal at hand, and for me, that means
making every minute count. Hiring a full time assistant who is… Friday night didn’t happen because I was hustling every minute, like if I miss my 15
minutes to tape this show, I’ve missed my 15 minutes
because there’s so much hustle in my day there’s no, you know, there’s no like… There’s no hanging out. There’s no time we’re like,
if I could do like one joke with you guys as I’m
walking in between meetings, we find that to be a rare
acquaintance situation, like occurrence, not acquantance. Hustle is putting it all in a line. Hustle is waking up one
day, the day before you die, and you realizing you gave it your all until the parenting of your children, the building of your businesses, the philanthropy you wanted to do, whatever you define, it’s just, you know, all in, emotionally
and executionally. In theory and strategy, and in execution. – Hey, Bridget Willard here
from you too can be a guru

What are your thoughts
on using Kickstarter to start a business? – Mount Dream. I wanna climb that mountain. Mount Dream, Kickstarter. First of all, I think it’s a
great way to start a business. Tons of people have started businesses on the back of Kickstarter. Didn’t Oculus Rift start
on the back of Kickstarter? And sold for two billy on Facebook? So, what do I think?
I think it works. Here’s what else I think. I think there’s a lot of people that put shit businesses on Kickstarter. This is a classic question of, do you think this
platform can work to do X? The answer is always yes. Especially when it’s already happened. The problem is, do you suck at it? Do I think people can make a million dollars selling on Ebay? Yes. The talented ones. Do I think you can make a lot of money by making YouTube videos? Yes. The talented ones. Do I think that you could become a Vine celebrity on Vine and make lots of money, millions? Yes. The talented ones. And so over and over, my classic, do I think a basketball has an ROI? I do. LeBron makes a shit, LeBron will be a billionaire
because of a basketball. That’s the ROI of it.
I will not. So, can Kickstarter be a great platform to kick off a business? It can, but people that have
bought into this notion of, Oh, it’s easy!
Just go on Kickstarter, people are gonna give you money, and then you start a business! They’re lost.
L-O-S-T, lost. And that is the problem
in our society right now, all of this (bleep) works! Do you have the talent to execute? – Yo, what’s up, Gary?
And DRock, of course.