– [Voiceover] Paul asks,
“Can you provide insight into “how you nurtured your
public speaking chops, “besides just hustling on stage? “How do you prepare for a talk? “Have you ever been
nervous to speak publicly?” – Paul, great question. First of all, ridiculously rad picture. DRock, show it again. In love with the drone. Just completely caught
our attention, great job. The truth is, I hit the
stage somewhere in 2006, for the first, first time,
as somebody to listen to, and it was instantaneous. It was love at first sight. I loved the stage, the stage loved me. And so obviously, I’ve
got a lot of practice. Matter of fact, what I’m struggling with more than anything right now, is that I’m getting into such a rhythm, I feel like I’m a stand up comic, right, that I have my kind of talk. And I take a lot of pride of
making it eight to 15 minutes out of an hour different
based on the audience, but I want it to be 45 minutes different. But I’m kind of a cadence right now, so obviously I’ve gotten better. My timing has gotten
down, but I’ve never done anything like, it’s kind
of like this show, right? Like, one of the things I
love about doing Meerkat behind the scenes now
is that people can see how little to no editing there really is. There is no real prep. I think my biggest secret
is talk about what you know you’re good at, right? Like, talk about stuff you know. I try not to answer questions
about foreign-policy or currency or you know, I
stay away from Bitcoin or I don’t talk about the
things I don’t know, right? I can spew my opinion and
at the end of the day, this show and everything
else is my opinion, but boy, is that grounded
in really strong research and skill and practitioner DNA. I feel like my opinion
business matters because of the execution I did to get there, whereas my opinion on everything
else, I have my opinions on a lot of things, but
they’re not as grounded and as much researched. They’re more intuitive, which is fine. Take them for what they are,
you know what opinions are. I stick to what I know, and
that helps me just scream. I’m a good communicator by DNA, and by staying in my comfort
zone, in my lanes of expertise and the places where I
actually spend my time honing my craft, it comes
off very clean because it’s very natural because it is natural.

“on your goals, and separate yourself from “the demands of the external world?” – Andrzej, I’ll take this one first. You know, I don’t know what to tell you other than it’s unbelievable for me how much the external
world has not factored into my decision making,
I’ve talked about, if you’ve been watching
this show long enough that first F on a test in fourth grade and literally making that transition to I’m gonna fight the market, and I’ve been fighting
the market my whole life. I think for me, it was
the level of self esteem that my mom instilled
in me, plus some level of my own DNA, I think
that’s the friction at hand. Heck, a lot of the themes of
our last question were on this, right, like what does the
market want you to do, whether that’s your parents or society, versus what you want to do. For me, it has a lot to do
with intestinal fortitude. A Gorilla Monsoon WWF reference. You know, I think it’s
surrounding yourself with people that give you permission
to take that risk. That to me is the most practical version of what I’m giving you, other than you’ve got to be born with it. It’s finding those like minded people who are taking those similar risks, and give you, through their own actions, a little more umph, or
if you’re amazingly lucky to have that parental, or
mentor infrastructure above you that created that context. Case. – I think focus is everything. I think that you can do 10 things poorly, or one thing well, and saying, “No,” is something that I only
learned late in my career. – I still suck at it. I still suck at it right now. – Saying, “No,” is so
hard, but the truth is like we’re surrounded by leeches, blood suckers, and vampires,
and those are people that want to take, take, take,
and they don’t give back, and learning to say,
“No,” to those people, learning to say, “No,”
to all those distractions is the only way to get anywhere. Cause time is finite, life is short. Quickly you find things in life
that are really incredible, like family, things that you love, things that you’re passionate about that might distract you in a positive way from your career focus. So, you have to learn
to shed everything else. – I’m gonna throw a little
bit of a curve ball. I get so much happiness out
of doing things for people who would be, you know, categorized as the way you just broke it down because I have a weird gear inside of me that has zero expectation for the return on someone’s selfishness. I know that’s a little bit of a mouthful, but it’s just, it’s probably why I’m so ridiculously happy. I have such little
expectation for the return, it makes me happy to do the give, I sit in front of you
knowing I will accomplish less in my career, and amass less wealth, and a lot of other things,
less time with my family, which is my number one because
I get so much happiness out of some of those actions. So, I would tell you if you’re
in a rare group like myself, make sure you recognize,
in a world where people will tell you that you’re
a sucker for doing it, or things of that nature, you still got to make yourself happy,
but I will tell you, I’m way happier than I was five years ago because I have grown in
my no meter moving a ton. It hasn’t gone to zero,
and I think a lot of people close themselves out of serendipity by saying no too much, right,
and I think we’ve probably both benefited through
our years of the yes when it didn’t make sense on paper. But I’m with you man,
I mean I made a video a long time ago that, The Yes Virus. It’s like the sickness of just
saying, “Yes,” all the time, and it’s a tough one. – Yeah, I mean, I’ve made movies, I made a movie that’s Just Say Yes, like I believe in saying, “Yes,” I believe in embracing
risk, and embracing chance, and all the things that… – Do you think you need to say, “No,” more as you get older? – I just think it’s a learning curve, a very steep learning curve to understand when no is appropriate and
when yes is appropriate, and until you learn
that, you default to yes. – It’s a really, really, or no, my dad defaults to no. I think you and I, like
we have some similarities that makes, like I think
there’s a lot of people there that default to no, I think there’s a lot of people that default. My dad’s opening words are, “Hey dad.” “No.” Like I can’t, “I was gonna
say how was your day?” You know, like no is not a proper. Like, I know a lot of
people that default into no. I think we happen to be surrounded by a lot of people that default into yes. – Yeah, lucky us. – But I think, you know
it’ll be interesting, you know what actually, quick little side question of the day, give me are you a
default yes or no person? I’m just curious for my
own kind of like polling. India, move it along. – [Voiceover] CJ asks,
“How has having a family

– Charles, stop focusing on dumb shit and just keep moving and
don’t be scared of breaking anything, and don’t
think about perfection, and there is no perfect way to cross your Ts and dot your Is, and don’t be crippled,
and don’t be romantic, and just move, and have
no seconds to breathe, and just schedule on schedule on schedule. Five minute meetings, 10 minute meetings, three minute meetings,
eight minute meetings, and just move. – [Voiceover] Rui asks, “Last
year you nailed it when you

“for switching on your brain?” – Ko, this is an
interesting question to me. Like that? Ko, this is an interesting question to me. I don’t really know how to answer it. First of all, I don’t do well
with top three questions, so VaynerNation, don’t
ask me top three questions because I don’t even know
how to gather my thoughts in that way, I’m not an
active enough thinker to execute that. I don’t know. You know, weirdly the only
thing that comes to me on the answer, and it’s
why I took this question, because it’s an interesting question, is passion. It’s a very lightweight answer. It’s a fluffy answer, but I truly believe that it is the answer, meaning, if you actually love what you’re doing, if you actually love
it, there is no friction to turn on your brain. The only time I feel like
I have to turn on my brain was when I was six to 22 years old, when I was going through the
bullshit education system of America, right? That’s when I felt like
I had to turn it on, to appease horse crap that
didn’t match my reality. But every since that
day, when like, “Yay!” and I went into like, you
need to buy this Pinot Grigio, the second that started in May of 1998, there’s never been a day
that I’ve had to activate. It’s always on, and I don’t mean always on buzzword marketing, it’s that I love what I do so much that there is no friction to turn it on, even when I am landing
at 2:00 in the morning from a flight that’s delayed
like the other night, and then going directly into
it at 6:30 in the morning because the fire is so deep inside, you love it so much. You don’t need that jump start. – [Voiceover] Cory asks,
“When it comes to weaknesses

– Tanova, this is a great question. I personally selected this one. I saw it in my Twitter
stream and sent it to India. Show India, I like when we do that. – Eh. – That’s my favorite part of the show. You know, it’s really funny,
this is a funny question. I burn out once every six or seven years, I hit a real like ugh
spot, like where I wanna just check out and I go to sleep. I actually go home and go to sleep. It hasn’t actually
happened, actually I’m on a real good run right now, I
think the last time I did was when we lost Texas at Wine Library, and couldn’t ship there anymore and we lost like four million in revenue and I was just burnt out
like fighting the fight of like in that world,
and so I just literally went home at like 6 PM and went to sleep. I haven’t done it since then,
and that was like 2002 or 3, so it’s been a little, maybe it’s not even six or seven years but,
when I hit my lowest point, I do two things, I go to sleep immediately and two, I make pretend
that my mom was killed. And I know that’s an intense statement, and you should have just
the collective reaction, but when I burn out from work. (laughs) It’s intense. When I burn out, it means that I’m hurt by whatever’s going on in business and I’m focusing on business
instead of the big picture and I directly put my
brain into a place of what do I really care
about, and the second I do that extreme move,
I’m already in the process of going back upstream and so look, I’m a positive person, I
put things in perspective in a very healthy way, I think and so I don’t tend to burnout that often, but the couple times I’ve hit rock bottom, it’s been sleep and recalibration. – Alright, here’s my real question.

– [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

Amy S. Savvysexysocial.com,
maybe you remember me, hi! – Of course. – My question is, I’m finding
that the more I travel, more events I go to, it’s like this major
intensity constant high of meeting people, and great content, and it’s like so insane. And then I come home to
like, total normalness. And sometimes that is
such a drastic change, that it actually feels low,
when it’s not actually that low, it’s actually just normal. But you’re just coming down
from such a consistent high of being at a five-day
conference, and it’s like, crazy. How do you stay level, between all these events that you do, because you actually instill
the intensity in people when you go speaking and
all that kind of stuff. I’m just trying to find some
balance in my life, Gary. Trying to find the balance,
I think you’ve got it. I think you got it. Help me out! – Amy, you’ve got me pegged. I do have it. I am equally as fired up sitting by myself on a six-hour flight in an airplane, as I am speaking in front of 7000 people, being the person that is the
Puff Daddy of that event, which is the hype artist. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know I’m not sure,
maybe it’s very similar to the question that we just did. I do have that balance because I’m thankful for
what is in front of me. I very much live in the moment. One of my flaws, and/or my gifts, is that I’m so into what
I’m doing, of that moment, that I do forget about my
family, or my responsibilities, ’cause I’m so zoned in. Right now I’m literally could
care less of what’s going on with anything outside this cube, ’cause I’m zoned into
the #AskGaryVee show. So I’m very all in on what I’m doing, and so when I come back from that high, first of all I’m pretty
much high, although, I mean, I can create high from calm if I need it, ’cause I’m hyped. And excited. Yeah, I know, I don’t, this is an answer that’s very difficult. I wanted to show this answer because I appreciate the question, ’cause I think a lot of
people think about it. But the truth is, this
is something that comes very natural to me. It’s intuitive. I would just ask all of you,
and I talk a lot about this, I tweeted out quite a bit
over the last two weeks about my grateful kind of post on Medium. I think gratitude, Amy. I mean, just be grateful,
be grateful that you have some down time and it’s
just normal, and it’s nice, and you get to see your
core friends and family, and be very grateful
that you’re lucky enough to go to five-day tech raves, where you can be on that high. – [Voiceover] Duke asks, what
would you say A.J. has learned

that you can only focus on three things?” Erik, as a very underread,
undereducated gentleman, I don’t know all the details of Mr. Collins’ three
things that we can focus or the thesis behind it but I will tell you that I’m a contradiction on this question. Oftentimes I think that if you’re doing more than one thing, you’re not doing anything, and so when I focus on
building businesses, I try to focus on one core
thing, but look at me right now, I’ve never been busier in my life and I’ve decided to
start another video show? Here’s my theory: focus on one thing, and make that 80-90% of your nut, and then have 20%, 10-20%
of complete and utter chaos trying things, probably losing because you’re not focused on them, but it keeps life spicy and interesting. That’s what works for me. The truth is, I have a feeling this works very differently for everyone. – [Voiceover] Corey asks,
“What’s the best way