– [Voiceover] Anthony asks,
“You recommend working for free, “but how do you know if
someone is just tryin’ “to get free stuff and
passing it off as exposure?” – You don’t. – [India] Cool, next question. – Fine. (laughter) You don’t, and that’s the point. Like, not every (bleep) thing has upside every single time you do it. It’s a net net score. You do it 38 times, DRock, you did movies for free besides me. And this just popped in my head. How many? – [DRock] At least 20. – 20? – [DRock] At least. – For people that looked like my profile? – [DRock] No. – How many that looked like my profile? – [DRock] Two? – Two, right, and then
you got a bunch after, that hit you, that’s right. So, how did those 20 work out for you? – [DRock] Um. – Yeah, I don’t expect you
to say bad, like I’m curious. – [Voiceover] One.
– One. – [Voiceover] I think one project fed me, for the entire three month thing. But the other 19, not so much. – Got it. And then, how about mine? – [DRock] Fed me pretty well. – Yeah ok. So you know, I mean, so I think that, I think you don’t. I think look, you can look
into people’s backgrounds, see their actions. I would tell you off of the, you know, exposure and hyperbole
of DRock’s free work, on this show, I’m probably
in a better position today than I was two
years ago to get people to want to do free work. Because they’re like,
well I want to be that. So you can look into
people’s history, if you can, but you just really don’t, you
have to use your intuition. Do you know how many meetings I go and pitch new business,
and then others I don’t, and I’m making a judgement call. Like it’s a use of my
time, my biggest asset, and was it worth going for three hours and flying, was it worth a day flying, pitching the business,
and then we didn’t get it? That was a bad judgement call, but then sometimes it works out. It’s a net net game. This insanity for the short term ROI, of every action, is so goddamn broken. What’s his name again?
– [India] Anthony. – Anthony, that you know, I think way too many
people are crippled. You don’t! You don’t know a lot of things. Shit, you don’t know almost everything. Like seriously, like
what do you know in life? Is this the right college? Is this the right friends? Is this the right boyfriend? You don’t know anything!
– [India] True. – You make decisions
and you (bleep) adjust and live with them. You counterpunch to reality. Work, too, this freelance
(bleep) high ground of like, nuh. It’s supply and demand, mother (bleep). Like if there’s people willing to do it, then that’s just the
(bleep), that’s the shit! (laughter) (speakers mumble off-camera)

“Adele’s new album isn’t
streaming anywhere. “Is she romantic about selling albums, “or leveraging people to buy music?” – Oh, wait a minute,
Staphon’s just standing here, and if you’re just, I
mean, show that, DRock. He’s really, truly just standing here. (laughter) One of the things that makes me unhappy, I mean, really, I know
you’ve gotta watch it for editing purposes, but you should be you should be doing something, Staphon. – [Staphon] You’re right.
(laughter) – So let’s do a little Periscoping. Alright. Adele’s new album is not
streaming anywhere, right? – [India] Is she romantic
about selling albums, or leveraging people to buy music? – It’s a really good
question, and the truth is, there’s a time and a place
for you to do everything, so, we talk about spec work here, right? DRock got his job on it, right? Like, you do something for free and it leads to what you want to happen. Well look, when you’re
Jay-Z in the early days and nobody knows who the hell you are, it makes sense to go to a club, not get paid, and spit your fire, because you’re building leverage. I used to go and speak for free. Often. I don’t do that anymore. Because I have an alternative. I have demand now. Adele, if her name was “Shmadele,” if Shmadele came out with a new album and nobody knows who Shmadele is, I would hope, I don’t
follow music enough, so, if there’s a Shmadele, I apologize. But if you’re Shmadele and
nobody knows who you are, you not only want to be
on streaming services, you wanna, like, show up on
Instagram people’s accounts and, like, sing, you wanna, like, go outside and give
people your free album, like, you want exposure
because that creates leverage that you then can charge for. Adele doesn’t have that problem, and so she’s trying to maximize
profits through that channel versus the pennies that streaming does. It does two things: it makes her more money, it gives her less exposure by accident for people that could find her through Spotify or other places that have never discovered her before. From my point of view,
it’s a fine balancing act. Right? I think if you look at the people that pushed against Napster,
or pushed against technology, the bands that pushed
against MTV, historically, that didn’t make music videos, if you’re too romantic for
too long, you can get caught, unless you’re in the top 1%. I believe that there’s an absolute way to not conform to modern marketing. A€ la Apple. If your product is
disproportionately the best, consistently, you can get
away with acting differently. But if you look, even at, like, actors at the top of their game, like a Will Smith who made the same kind
of movie for a while, everybody has their day and time. And so my answer is, if
Adele has this read properly that she doesn’t need more
exposure, she has a huge fanbase, she just put out fire, and it killed, cool. Look at Justin Bieber in parallel. Did a lot of marketing,
a lot of Instagram, a lot of releasing, a
lot of stuff out there, and it really worked. Now the question becomes, he needed that because he
was in this funny spot, does he do the same thing next time? Or does he go a little bit
closer to where Adele is if Adele’s over here? The answer to the
question, my friends, is, there’s no absolutes. There is no right answer. There’s moments in time,
like the first question. There’s knowing what to do at this moment. The things I do running
this business at 600 people is very different than what I did at four. I don’t say yes, I said
no to 19 deals today. I said yes to every deal
when we first started. Right? And so we just talked about, we just all got together on my team to talk about how much
book-buying you have to do for all my packages for the next book. I think we can all agree, there’s a lot more books
that you need to do to do the things that I did two years ago for Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. ‘Cause I’m busier, I
have more opportunities. I have more leverage. This is where the #AskGaryVee
show’s brand, right, has helped me. Why don’t you say, I mean, you’re just, this is amazing, but why don’t you just say hello. – Hi. – [Gary] Tell the Vayner
Nation who you are. – Uh, Reed Adler, sound guy. – Yeah, so Reed just was working on something else I just did, he’s just hanging out, he said before we aired, “hey, my brother turned
me on to the show,” his brother and him now know who I am more than they did before because this show’s working for me, which then gave me leverage to ask for 3,500 books to give a keynote, versus 2,000 books. So this is how it works, guys. You put in the work for a year and a half, you build up leverage, which then allows you to get more stuff. So Adele’s move, where a
lot of people might say, “oh, Gary’s gonna say,” because I know a lot of you thought this, “oh, that’s bad, you’re killing exposure.” No, it’s balancing that. What’s important is not
reading your own headlines and doing the thing that Adele’s doing too long, too many times in a row that now no 17-year-old in America or 15-year-old even knows who you are, because they only live in those platforms. Right? All the bands that said no to being the music on John Madden Football in 1999, 2001, 2004, 2006, they missed out on being Good Charlotte. Good Charlotte said yes, they were willing to give away the music, or go find out how the
Black Eyed Peas worked. Will.i.am was smart, he’s like, “oh, for a TV commercial? For this Apple iPod thing? Okay. We won’t be too fancy.” And the three big bands
that you’ve heard of that said no missed the chance of being huge. So yo, I even say yes to things for free, if the exposure is
disproportionately unbelievable. Saturday Night Live
does not need to pay me to show up and be in an SNL. Because they’re bringing me something. You, with your local TEDx thing, in Shmugga-mugga-mugga, Iowa, sorry to pick on Iowa, I love you, Iowa, like, yeah, you got a problem. Because, like, I don’t wanna
come for those 40 people, it’s just checks and balances. And I love you 40 people, but watch the show for free, I can’t make it, it’s just an equation. Adele’s at that place where
she can do this right now, but Adele needs to do what I think I try to be really good at, which is don’t read your headlines, don’t get too fancy to not take a selfie, if you get too separated
from that for too long, and you can do it, but if you do it for too long, somebody else is gonna come along and Shmadele’s gonna be number one. Shmadele’s coming.

– Hi, I’m Jane Lopes. I’m a sommelier at Eleven Madison Park. My question for Gary is with all the recent press on sommeliers in the last few years, what do you think that’s
gonna do to the industry for consumers, for wine, for restaurants. Is it ultimately a good or a bad thing? – Kind of similar to the last question. Kind of similar to the
last question, Jane. I’ll just, it is what it
is, the serendipity of it. I think it’s a good and a bad thing. I think it comes down to you, Jane, and all the other people. With greater power and leverage… Money and exposure. I do not believe that money
and fame change anybody. I think it just exposes who
that person actually is. So, do I think more
exposure around you, Jane, and all the other, your
cast mates on this show, is good, bad, or indifferent
for the end consumer? I think it comes down to you guys. So Jane, you might be
awesome about it, right? You may have a bunch of young people, 16-year-olds in New York,
going to the kind of place that you work at, you know,
may ask you a question and look up to you and say, “I wanna be like you one day.” And you could be encouraging, or you could be a jerk about it, right? Like, it’s like, it’s just how you play this newfound exposure fame leverage, people looking at you differently, and so if you say that, “Oh my God, “now I’m important,” and
you become more douchey, like that has happened
in so many industries, art, music, wine, food, well then that’s bad for the consumer because now we’re suppressing people. If you take your found leverage and you encourage people
and you use it to teach them about different wines and you get people to start drinking chinion
from the Loire Valley like my agenda was, or Portugese wines or all this amazing thing? Well then you’re doing a
great thing for the consumer because the more different
kinds of wines they taste, the more they’re gonna
appreciate this incredible thing that we’re all passionate about. So, I think it comes down
to the individual somm. And so there’s six, right? So right, so two of you
may be incredible about it, three of you might be average about it, one of you might be a jerk about it, and then that’s what the net
score is for the end consumer. – [Steve] Great, last one

By the way, go Giants. – [Voiceover] Ryan asks,
“I work for a company “that makes animated explainer
videos for businesses. “Is Google pay per click the best option “for B to B companies like us?” – Ryan, great question. Really excited about baseball right now. I’d love to get your
comment in the sections about Brandon Belt, very much on my radar to draft this year on fantasy baseball. Hopefully nobody in the Vayner 20 man fantasy baseball league
is listening or watching, but I know Bobby Glen watches. So, I’m a little upset
now that he has optics into what I’m doing, though I could be throwing him a curve ball. Listen, Google pay per
click is tremendous, but I also think that Linkedin ads have tremendous upside for you. Also, Linkedin creative,
meaning putting out blog posts on Linkedin, and then having a call to action at the bottom I think could actually
work for you quite a bit cause the B to B mentality within Linkedin is so over the top, it’s
the context of the room. So, I’m a big fan of putting out content now that everybody can blog on Linkedin, and then maybe use that content on your email newsletter, on your website, on other places where you have a little bit of a base to
create some awareness around it. I’m a big fan of that. I actually think you can get stunningly, stunning Hail Mary upside on both Pinterest and Instagram. I think Pinterest’s ad product that we’ll probably see roll out this year has a chance to really matter for you if you’re actually targeting people in a business world that
could actually buy this, but yeah I would say Google, I would say content. I would say go and reach
out to any B to B platforms. Podcasts, some blogs that
speak to the audience that you’re trying to reach and see if your CEO or creative
director can be a guest contributor, or interviewed on there because that exposure I think actually can convert for you,
maybe not at the scale that you can get from a PPC Google world. I also think you can target people by their office, you
know by where they work on Facebook dark posts
that I think you could get some really great results there. Especially if you upload
some of the native videos that you actually create
in native Facebook form, I think you can actually get
some interesting results there. So, do I think Google PPC
still wins the day for you? I think it’s clearly gonna
be one of the three winners. I think Facebook dark posts,
and I think Linkedin ads supported by Linkedin creative play and can compete at that level. So, that’s where I would focus. – [Voiceover] CJ asks, “What’s
your favorite airport?”

Matthew Berry here from
ESPN, and you and I are friends in real life,
so I happen to know, in addition to all the other
things that you’re into, you happen to love fantasy sports, especially your fantasy baseball. And you know that in addition to my duties at ESPN, I happen to
also own two websites, RotoPass.com and RotoPassBaseball.com. Both these sites cater to
fantasy sports enthusiasts, and frankly, I wanna know what I can do to take it to the next level. I’m lucky that I have a
nice platform here at ESPN, and on my Twitter, and Facebook, social media platforms to
be able to promote the site, but ultimately, it’s just me. And I wanna expand the
site beyond just my reach. What can I do to make the site go viral, what can I do to increase sales, to increase visibility of the site? I don’t wanna take on money or try to raise anything like that,
again, it’s just me. So, what can I do to take
those sites to the next level? – Matthew, first of all, big
shout out, love your work, we are friends in real life,
and digital life, two minutes. First of all, I hate fantasy football, and I’ve never played it, and
never will because my love for the Jets is too intense,
and I don’t wanna hear all the explanations from everybody in the comments section,
leave it for yourself, none of ’em are valid. I do love fantasy baseball,
getting ready for our draft, I’m super pumped. Look, I think it’s content,
content, content, my friend. So, first of all, the
first thing you should do is so many, so many people wanna be in the fantasy baseball, fantasy football, fantasy sports industry. So, first thing is the exposure
of this show’s question alone puts you in the game. I bet you that if, Matthew,
you go into my YouTube channel right now, you will see 11
people that will volunteer to be an intern to work on this project because they wanna put
themselves on the map, and you’ve got brand equity. Like, I kinda, you know what was weird, my first inclining to answer this is like, let me write
a guest weekly column about like, my sleeper picks each week because I want exposure in that world, and you’re the platform for it. And I’m busy, and I’m rich,
and I really still would do it because I don’t need to get paid, I want the exposure, right? And by the way, I said I was rich, and I want everybody to understand that because if you’re poor,
or not as many dollars, it should make you wanna do it even more. That’s the brain twist
that everybody doesn’t see. Anyway, you need to put
it out in the world, Matthew, that I need five
to, you need to take a day of your time and vet 50 to 100 people, and see if they can bring you value, create a team that you give exposure to, and then you need to put out content. Basically, you need to reread
Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, and you need to put out
fantasy sports content, native. Look what’s happened to
this world with my content on Medium and LinkedIn, like, I mean, you need to put out,
where’s your weekly video that you put out on Facebook
of your sleeper pick that then gets amplified? You need to put out content. The answer to your question
in content, content, content. Especially in fantasy,
content is a gateway drug to subscription. You need to figure out how to
afford or use your leverage to bring value to youngsters,
youngsters normally, but maybe oldsters. Do you know how many
retired chicks and dudes would do this as well ’cause it’s fun? You need to find the right
person that matches up to this opportunity that
wants your brand equity in exchange for their work
’cause they love doing the work, ’cause they wanna talk
about how much of a sleeper James Paxton is gonna be
this year in baseball. I am preparing for my
fantasy baseball league,

– [Voiceover] Jaime asks,
“I have an Instagram niche account is building followers pretty fast. What do you think about
selling advertisement like a 15 second commercial
to people wanting to reach my audience?” – Jaime, first of all I’m in love
with your Instagram account super pumped for it, you know super niche very Crush It! Like the
culmination of that for me so, feels cool another prediction global production that I drilled. And so, oh, I’m just getting, this is the worst day. First of all, you’ve 585 followers, so won’t gonna be able to get as much money as you
know a walk in the park so, first I would focus
on next six to 12 months. The answer’s yes I do think once every seven
jab, jab, jab, right hook! You know once every seven Instagram videos for you to make a commercial, is super appropriate will work and if you can make it more
of an entertainment commercial like you staring in it think
1950’s and ’60s television I know lot of you youngsters. But the original commercials
are very integrated even into the ’70s. Alpo I think it was,
you know, the dog food was getting dogs to come on the set of the The Today Show and eat the food. You know, and so, you know
that, that’s been around forever and that’s coming back, old is new like Missy Elliot you see
all the kids on social media being like, “Oh, Katy Perry
put this Missy Elliot on. It’s pretty intense to watch all this. Kids need to get educated,
these 13-year-olds I love though, I mean, I
believe it they’re winning they’re right. So, just wanted everybody to know that. Anyway, what’s really interesting to me is that. What I would do for you, I’m gonna, I’m gonna drop, down flip
it and reverse it on you and give you a different answer. You need to basically
google volleyball blogs, volleyball media, volleyball news And you need to e-mail every single person on the first 80 pages of results and tell them what you are doing and seeing if you can get
them to give you exposure. You should absolutely be pounding the volleyball community right now all 917 influencers that
matter in volleyball need to know who you are
and you need to be the one that e-mails then and
says, “Yo, what’s up?” Period. Email every
volleyball manufacturer and be like check out what I’m doing. Guys, most of you were not taking it. You have to understand what
I did with Wine Library TV I took it. I e-mailed everybody, everybody
that was wine blog in 2006 and said “Hey, I’m doing this.” And I get that not everybody is as comfortable self-promoting. And I love when my friends
from Europe are like, “Oh, it’s a very American thing.” And a lot of people who
watching are introverted or don’t have as much hustle. Look, I’m a funny guy,
I’m very competitive I was in super crazy networking events. This weekend and like the
commissioner is there. And Woody Johnson and you know all these actors and actress and VIP’s and hall of famers and
I’m not going up to them. Because I’m so competitive and ego like I’m gonna make them come to me. But there’s a part of
that that’s super wrong. There they are and then I took way that I took that a way
from myself little bit. And I went and did 5 or 6 some of them. Can’t do it completely. But like, you know,
taking those steps as well so like for all my
extrovert, salesman stuff I’ve my own spiel that like
prevents me from taking it. But I’m telling you, behind keyboard, e-mailing, volleyballdaily.com and being like “Hey, it’s me. I’m doing this thing, you should just check it out. I love to do something.” Be smart, position it properly not like, “Hey, look, I’m doing this
Instagram thing about volleyball. You should write about it.” No, that’s right hook. Jab! Like, “Hey, it’s me, I’m doing this thing I love our community. If there’s anything I can
ever do for you let me know.” Jab.

and I’ve got one question for you What is your advice for musicians looking to establish themselves on Instagram? I know you’ve talked
about it on Twitter before but I love hear your thoughts
on this specific platform Thanks, my man, keep up the great work. I like this young hustler,
there’s something about him. I’ve seen this video before
I’ve seen him interact a little bit there’s something about this kid. I’m just saying it now on the record so I can be writer with
another prediction, Staphon 17 years from today this kid is gonna have some juice. You know, I don’t know
up in the music world but like I just can feel it. Anyway take that and run with
it kid. It’s good momentum. You know, I think it’s
15 second videos, right? Like you just did, I’m
pumped that you made a video and the answer is predicated
on the communication format. I think for Musicians to
over index on Instagram it’s gonna have to be around the music I think the 15 second video format works I think using the right hash tags is the way to be discovered I think reaching out the other Instagram influences in the space matters. So, hitting people up finding, you know, a ton
of Instagram people are putting their e-mails in there. Now a lot of those people are getting compensated financially and, you know, I’ve no
idea of your finances, but I’m going to be prejudice or assume that on the younger
side it’s not unlimited. But again, back to like this maybe this is the theme of the show. There’s probably a ton
of Instagram hoochies a muscle dudes, who’ve
huge, huge followings. That you can hit up and say look, I’ll make you 15 second theme song or something for your world if you can give a little
love to me in return. If I were you and man, am I pissed that the internet wasn’t around when I was 14, 15, 16, 17, 18,19. I mean it was around but, normal people not straight up nerds The internet itself, is
basically 20-years-old. And I know there is some
nerd in the background like, “Oh, actually 1959.” I know (bleep) but I mean
when normal people went on. I really, really think that I think that I would spent
just 17, 18 hours a day hitting up people via
e-mail on Instagram accounts going to explore, finding some people that are popular hitting their accounts seeing that they have
over 100,000 followers and just pounding them
with e-mails saying hey I make music, I’ll make some music for you I’m looking for exposure,
but just we very up front don’t try to trick them
like if we’ll make a song and something interesting can happen. How many beverages does a man need? – You asked me to get coffee. – Oh okay, Mike got me coffee too. Double fisted, what? And so, you know that’s
the route I would go You need as much exposure as possible You’re in an Instagram community
get into the trenches. A lot of those people
who look for money they won’t say yes, but I’m telling you you’ll get four yes’s
for every 800 e-mails and for lot of people listening that’s a lot of time for four yes’s but, the truth is what’s
the alternative, losing? – [Voiceover] Jaime asks,
“I have an Instagram niche account

my business and looking to
include partners for content. What’s the best way to recruit them? Money/promise of exposure?” – Kate, I’m super pumped. Guys, I went to high school with Kate. By the way, let me give
a big shout out to Kate. Kate came to my high school junior year in the middle of the year. And Kate was a top five attractive girl, I’m being very politically correct here, in our school. She made huge noise. Kate, huge shout out
for the noise you made at North Hunterdon High School, 1993. And recruited as a
soccer star, by the way. Just giving you some daps, Kate. I’ve been noticing a lot of your stuff, some of your work is incredible, it’s been really fun to watch. Anyway, I think both work. It depends on what people are more motivated by. If you have a big enough
platform to create exposure, people will work for free. DRock hit me up and offered to make a film for free for me because he knew that was gonna get him his exposure. He vetted,
or intuitively felt, that I I was a good guy,
sure enough before I gave him a full-time job offer to work here, which think about that outcome,
but that’s for another day. He did get into contact with
Chris Brogan, Ted Rubin, – [DRock] There were
like three other people. – So he made the right
move. You could say, “Wow he did that for free.” The reason I’m always
willing to take free work, and free hustle, is
because I feel comfortable with the fact that I’m
gonna try to pay them back tenfold on the ROI, by
giving them a shout out, I know other people that
are marketing leaders pay attention to me because
I’ve been on the cusp of doing new stuff, so he
had all those opportunities. Now, I swooped in and saw
the raw, amazing talent that this man had and had
to bring him on board. And this show exists because
DRock joined the family and it gave me the infrastructure, so big shout out to you, DRock. So, I think free works. If
you think other photographers will see value in your platform, or whatever you’re trying to accomplish, money always works as well. I think people are motivated
by different things. I’ll tell you something people
always try to do with me. I never do it, but people
do it all the time, is leveraging your rolodex.
I mean the amount of people that are willing to do things for me, for me to get them to… people, I don’t know, I’m
not going to name drop. But it’s insane, I never wanna do that. Because I think that’s
not doing the right thing for my relationship, but I
understand why people do it. People do it to me left and right. They’re like, “Hey Gary Vee.
Meet my boy, Johnny McGee.” And when I meet Johnny McGee it’s like, “Yeah, I gave Ricky McGee
eight billion dollars to get to you”, it happens all the time. People value different things,
I think money and exposure are two things that actually– Are we doing Patriot stuff? Guys, you have to
understand. I’m a weird guy. Guys, I’m a weird guy. I’m weird. I will fire over crazy, weird shit. Minnie, I’m not scared about
this. I’m not scared, Minnie. I fire over Patriot shit, I promise. Hey guys, how do you like this? (laughter) – [Gary] Like that? So, yeah. That’s it. Let’s
go on the next question. I know you just got taught
how to submit questions

should you ever work for exposure only? – Mary, congrats on being the, by the way, the first person to
get two questions asked on the #AskGaryVee show, and I know, I know I’m gonna see in the comments, everybody’s gonna be like, you haven’t even answered mine yet, and now you’ve answered
Mary’s second question? Yes. She asks good questions. But, this question, I really wanna answer because I’ve been having a lot of Twitter conversations
lately, and very honestly for the basic eight to 10 years that I’ve been in the tech game, meeting all these wonderful people, especially when you
think about the tech game when I first got into it, it was a very, save the world and much more zen, it was less business-y. Characters like me probably ruined it. (thumping) This is a big debate, this
is something that I sit on a very firm line on,
which is, I do think that people should do things
for free, for exposure. I still do things for free. And I get very compensated for my time, and my efforts, and I still do it, and somebody will say,
I had an easier base, people have to pay the bills. But the fact that people
don’t take into account that there is strategy in
doing things for exposure, that then lead to bigger
money in the future. This is not about elitism, like
some people jump on Twitter and say, pay the people! You gotta pay for the quality of work! I agree. But one needs to understand that money is not the only way to pay. Giving people in an at-bat, the platform, the exposure, is an absolute monetary way to compensate them in the
way that I define monetary. Listen, by the way, you
might fully disagree with me, and that’s ’cause you’ve
gone romantic on the issue, in my POV, and I respect that. But I just don’t know a
single person that is deemed, has achieved success without doing a solid percentage of things for free, as a jockeying chess
move to their success. So if you’re asking me, the answer’s yes. If you don’t do it, and
you only pay to play, I get it. And, by the way, it ebb and flows. I now respond to many of you, no I cannot speak at this
event unless I get my fee, because I promised my
wife I will not travel without getting my fee, because
I’ve got two young kids, this and that, and so like, it changes. You know, I will not be sold by anybody that it is inappropriate
to do some spec work, because I really believe in its strategy. – What’s up Gary, it’s Mitch Schneider,