“You’ve repeatedly mentioned your love of root beer over the years,
why root beer specifically? Any we should give a whirl?” – You know I grew up a huge root beer fan. The flavor just hit me right. I grew up drinking coke
and root beer heavily, really grew up on soda,
which is why it was so hard to siphon off of it. It’s crazy, I’m about
to hit a one year mark of not drinking any soda,
which is insane to me. Yeah, I actually pulled up a list, because I wasn’t recalling what I love. But here’s some of the ones I’ve- I mean, Henry Weinhard’s is incredible, like just incredible root beer. I’m also a very, very, very big fan- where is it here, I’ve already
forgot, of Hosmer Mountain. Big fan of that, it’s in Connecticut. You were shaking your head, you know that? – [India] No I’ve just heard of it. – Got it, cool. Pirate’s Keg root beer,
which is in Rochester. Love that, huge fan. Thomas Kemper, I’ve drank
a lot of that root beer. Huge, huge, huge fan of that. Virgil’s is a good one that I think a lot of people can find, but
more like an entry-level out of that group. And, that’s it. So there’s a couple of root
beers for you guys to try.

– Dmitry, I took this question
for a very specific reason, because this is absolutely, no question, one of the flaws of my being. I am terrible at celebrating victories. It is actually quite sad in some ways if you decide to look at it that way, or a very strong winner’s mentatlity which is how I like to look at it, but the truth is I stink at it. As a matter of fact,
one of the bigger flaws that I think I’m creating
at VaynerMedia as a culture is that we don’t celebrate our wins. We land big new accounts. We grow like crazy. We win awards. Hush, hush. Nothing. No chest pounding, and I
think it’s interesting, because when you look at me as a character and you look how I roll,
for all the humble bragging and the outright bragging, and the ego and the confidence that I spew out there, it’s funny. It’s always in hindsight,
and it’s in showmanship, it’s not in reality, meaning,
I celebrate victories poorly. For example, the New York
Rangers and the New York Yankees have both won championships for me. They won their championship. I was very happy for
about a couple of hours. No parades, no next day taking
off and like soaking it in. I won, and I moved on,
and I stopped caring. I’m gonna say it here first. I’ve really never said this
out loud outside of my family. I am completely convinced
that if the New York Jets win a Super Bowl before I buy them, that I will no longer
like the Jets that much and all my energy will
then be transplanted 100,000% into the
New York Knicks. I firmly believe that. I just completely believe that. I love the climb. I celebrate victories in a very soft, non appropriate way. I’m really dissapointed in the way that I celebrate victories. It’s something that I want to work on because smelling the
roses is an important part of growing and living, and it’s just not something I’m good at. – [Voiceover] Corey asks, “What should I get my
mom for Mother’s Day?”

asked a very important question of “Star Wars or Star Trek?” – Green Stripes Auto, I am way, I mean, I don’t like Star Trek at all, and Star Wars is the only
thing that I like in Sci-Fi. I love the story; I grew up on it. Empire Strikes back, 1981, 82. What was I, five? 81, right, it was in 80. Movie came out 81, the toys. I think for my sixth birthday, with Misha’s sixth birthday coming up at the end of the month,
this is kind of an emotional nice thing to think about. Which is insane. My parents bought me two Star Wars figures for my sixth birthday; I’m pretty firm that that’s when it was. And I remember completely being blown away because we didn’t spend money on toys. We were fairly poor still,
grinding, trying to make our way. And I remember being stunned that they were willing to
buy me two action figures. It was a big deal for me. Star Wars was a big part of my six, seven, eight year old culture. They were my first, kind of,
toys that we could afford. I was a really, kind of, chaotic kid, so I’d lose the lightsabers immediately. I was in toothpick culture. Immediately, I used to have to use toothpicks as lightsabers. I’m a big fan. Return of the Jedi was something
I was really amped up for because, and we moved to
Edison, I had friends. 84, super pumped, opening night, midnight for when it came back. I’m not even mad at Jar-Jar Binks. Whatever, Binks, and then so, I’ve been into it, I’m into the story. I will definitely go Christmas
day to see the new one. And I don’t like Star Trek at all. I never watched any of the movies. I’ve collected some of
the toys and flipped ’em. But that’s just that Ebay-culture. But I’ve never liked that stuff. I don’t like Star Trek at all. I dislike you, Star Trek, I’m sorry. And that’s that, question of the day.

“to and from the office? “Car, train, Uber, walk? “And how do you spend that time?” – Travis?
– [India] No Zack. – Zack, I just thought Travis
because of Uber probably. – [India] Oh.
– Zack? – [India] Zack.
– Zack, I live on the Upper East Side. Our office is on 24th and Park, so on the East Side it’s
a straight shoot down from Park Avenue, that is 90% of the time my move in the morning, then I obviously travel a lot. So a lot of the time it’s to JFK or things of that nature. It’s always an Uber or Black Car or taxi, so it’s usually in car. I’m sitting the back, seat belt on. Safety first, what? I don’t even know why I did hashtag there. (chuckles) Safety first, what? (chuckles) Fuck. (laughs) That is ridiculous. I call my mom, call
Brandon, check my e-mail, check my Twitter. Look through my Instagram. That’s really what I’m usually doing. It’s usually mom or Brandon. Brandon who runs Wine Library, to catch up on the day, strategize a little bit. Checking e-mail, checking Twitter, looking through Instagram a little bit. Now, right now, checking
my fantasy baseball team and the news around fantasy baseball. And then moments in time right? Where check my Nuzzel for news, and, you know, maybe
in seven or eight days I’ll start checking the NFL draft news that will go away, then I’ll get into training camp news. But for the most part,
I’m fully in mom, Brandon, sprinkle in my sister there a little bit, but my sister and dad come
more ad hoc during the day. That’s kind of how I do it. – [Voiceover] Brian asks,
“Gary, did you catch

“What usually prompts you
to walk away or turn down “great opportunities?” – Well, Antoine, I don’t
want to be in the business of saying no to great opportunities. I’d like to think that the
answer to the question is my intuition. I’d like to think my intuition
is allowing me to walk away from bad opportunities that
may look good on paper. You know, I just go with my intuition. Really nothing else. I mean, I’m not an analytical thinker. Right? I’m not going to look
at a whole lot of data. A lot of these big funds
that try to ask me like, well how did I know this
startup was going to be great or why did I think this
was going to be great, it was never predicated
on monthly active users or some sort of other data set. It was me, what I would like
to say is that I like to taste things. It’s me observing and then me counter
punching that observation. I tend to be very, very
all-in on my intuition, and so that’s, you know, that’s kind of how I make the calls. It’s funny the way you asked the question. You asked the question in
what I think is more of a defensive mindset, which is if you breakdown the question, it ends with the real kicker which is, run it one more time for
me, India, how do you– – [India] How do you,
what usually prompts you to walk away from or turn
down or know when to say no to a great opportunity? – To me that never runs through my mind. The thought of saying no
to great opportunities is just not in, I don’t
put those words in that pattern of a sentence. So, that is what I think you
should be thinking about. It sounds to me that you’re
crippled by the miss. I’m not. I just keep having the
at bats and the swings, and I know that I’ll
have more wins than loses and if I pass on something good, so be it. But literally, I mean,
we’ve talked about it on this show before, passing on Uber’s angel round
twice and leaving $300 million dollars on the table. Literally, outside of being
a great story to tell you how I feel, doesn’t
come into my mind ever. Well, maybe once in a blue moon. But, pretty much never, and I think that’s an important thing. And an offensive mindset
versus a defensive mindset, something I want to get
deeper into content team.

just want to say thank you
because your book, Crush It!, allowed me to go out full time on my own. My question is why did you
start a service business, your agency, instead of
starting a media company, which you seem really good at? – Ryan, great question. I mean this is… Can we get like a, Can you make some sort an all time great episode alert thing here? Put it in my hand. (majestic music) This is a great question and it’s a very specific, detailed answer for a couple reasons. One, I’m not sure that I
was aware of how good I was at it five years ago. Two, I had an inkling when
we started VaynerMedia. The first project we worked
on was something called Daily1to10.com and we were doing Facebook
fan pages driving to a Tumblr. So, I was on that kick from the get, but three, the most practical thing was, I knew that speed mattered
and that money mattered, and that scale mattered
and the agency-client service business was very obvious to me as the quickest path to scale and money. Because now we have Vayner Publishing and we’re building out lostlettermen.com, you can check it out, we just bought it, wait for the redesign, but
we’re now staring to get into the media business and we
have the infrastructure and the scale and the skill set. And I have 500 people that
I’ve been able to effect with my thinking. They’ve got to counter that
with their own thinking, but clearly, as a CEO and a
thought leader in a space, I’m sure I’m evolving their
thinking towards a direction that picks up speed. Because the more I agree with them, and they agree with me, the quicker we can be
at what we need to do. So, really, the answer
to your question is, because I’m patient. I thought the right
strategy was to build out an infrastructure that
allowed me to get to it later. Plus, not to mention, media’s evolved enormously
in those five years. And if you look at media
and the upside of media, and the media sites of today, five years ago they were very
predicated on SEO and SEM, something that I never really loved. Now, we’re predicated more on
social sharing and content, something I love more. So, I think that, my intuition, and I’d like to think rightfully so, at the time was, I was not the
perfect player for that time. But my intuition was, there’s
a chance that the market may move into that, if I’m in a certain place
in five years to capture the market’s evolution on
the media side perfectly, then I can win triple. And I think I’m starting to maybe play out and benefit on that bet. So, I was just strategic about it. “What usually prompts you
to walk away or turn down

content versus making
appearances and attending social things like parties?” – Megan, this is a great question. I often say that money and fame don’t change anybody, they just expose who someone actually is at a bigger scale, and there’s an enormous
part of me that believes there’s a lot of truth in
that in technology as well. We’re not making, you
know, people are like, I had this funny argument
with this guy at Wine Library the other day where he was
like, all these phones, the art of talking to each other. He goes, I was in Starbucks. This was great. I was in Starbucks, and
everybody was head down. Nobody was talking to each other. I was like, where were you? He was like, New York. I’m like, alright, let’s
talk about this for a second. I’m like, do you think
13 years ago at Starbucks that people were just
yapping with each other? Like, hey brother, great shirt. That’s not how New York rolls, my man. And so I think that all
that technology is doing is making more visible
what we actually were going to do. I mean I do believe the
far majority of people are introverted at first, at scale, by math. If you asked me, or any
I think common sense person in society, I think
we’d all agree on looking for refirmation here. There’s way more people that are gonna sit either timid or middle timid or somewhat timid, and then somebody
whose just gonna roll up. The reason we love and hate the people that just roll up and are loud. Zoom in real good. You got him? – [DRock] Yep. – Really? On that angle you get him? You got Gabe right there? The reason Gabe who works at VaynerMedia is somebody that so many
people know, is ’cause he’s loud as shit, right? And some people love it, and some people hate it, but that’s why. He’s an extrovert extreme. He’s probably like singing
his song right now. It looks like he’s in a meeting. He’s probably just doing some Drake lyrics while he works. I think that it’s important
for us to understand, that first of all, could
you be having an addiction? Sure. I think everybody’s addicted
to their cellular device. I fully believe that every
single person is addicted to their cell phone, like straight up. Maybe, but I would say this, I think that it’s great
for all the introverts or the people that don’t like to party and don’t like to go out, what
they were doing before, they were interacting with the television. Let’s call it what it is, or with like a very small
group of one or two friends who equally were close in location to them and were like that. Now people can really communicate at scale with the people that
have similar interests, find new people, and
all that kind of stuff. I think that you are fine. I think your picture is rad. I think you and I are friends. – [Voiceover] Max asks,
“I’m from Germany where

important observation you’ve ever made in your life?” – Sean, I think the biggest observation I ever made in my life was I needed to really trust my intuition over what I was being sold by anybody. From my parents to my teachers to the television. I just, you know, I always talk about betting on your strengths. You know, for me, and you know, maybe most people are different. Like, everyone’s different, but for me, you’re asking me, the #AskGaryVee Show, that’s
why we called it that. For me, it was just
somewhere in my early teens, it was just obvious to
me that I was right. And I know that’s an
obnoxious thing to say, but my happiness and success always followed me going down the path that seemed obvious to me, yet I was confused why everybody else wasn’t, it wasn’t, besides my mom, it wasn’t so obvious too. And so I, that’s what I would say. I would say that’s my answer because observation was I was right, don’t be scared of what that meant, have the confidence to
follow through with that, don’t hedge, don’t, respect other people’s points of view. Have the humility that has been such an important balance to the gift of the intuition, but never
waver, never waver.

– [Voiceover] CJ asks, “What’s
your favorite airport?” – CJ, this is a great question. My favorite airports are
always like small ones like in Des Moines, or like,
you know, which I’ve been to. Or you know, where is that,
you know, South something. Somewhere in Greenville, South Carolina. You know, Montana, some
of the places I’ve done, Arkansas, some of the stuff I’ve done, Chattanooga, Tennessee. You know, the airports you walk in, oh when we had Green Mountain Coffee as a client, the Vermont airport. I mean, you know, the airports that you could literally roll up to and be at your gate within,
I don’t know, four minutes, with no pre-check. You know, I like those places. I also clearly feel very, I mean, Newark, JFK, and Laguardia have, and in some weird way
SFO, I know everything about LAX, SFO, LGA, JFK, and Newark. I know those airports, I
probably know the nuances of those airports better than I know the office of VaynerMedia. They’ve become my home. Big shout out to Johnny at LGA. I mean, these people
have become my friends. It’s really quite sad,
like I almost feel like they’re breaking TSA rules,
like they don’t even need to check my ID, they’re like, “Hey Gary.” I’m like, “Hey.” You know, like it’s, you know, so I, the really sad
answer to this question, the actual real authentic
sad answer to this question is all of them. The coziness that I feel at an airport is disturbing at best.

“Gary, how do you maintain
a good, pleasant mood with family after a long day of hustle?” – Sandy, great question. India, was it you replied
in email who’s like, yeah, I wanna know that answer too? Look, here’s the thing. You know, this is only one person, I’ve always had, and my
dad did not do this well, and maybe that’s why it affected me, I am so grateful and so thankful to the family members that allow me, my wife specifically, allow me the freedom to hustle the way I do. I feel like it’s totally inappropriate to disrespect that
love, to then carry over my headaches home, in general. And this is something that
the people that know me best, the nicest thing they can say to me, and it happens, you know,
it’s been said to me 12 times in my life,
nothing, but my best friend, Brandon, who runs
Wine Library, my mom, my sister, my wife,
AJ, my dad hasn’t, anyway, there’s been a couple
people that have said to me how much they admire that
I never take my headaches out on them. I think it was really,
at the end of the day, two people, people that need somebody else to dump their headaches
on, and people that collect those headaches. I admire my mom tremendously, she collects everybody’s headaches. I’m very thankful that I took that DNA. I’m thrilled to hear your headaches, but I have no interest in giving you mine. And so, that foundation, that DNA trait allows me to walk right in home with all the insanity, lost this client, cash flow’s not as good, problem, can’t ship to this state anymore, didn’t get that deal,
this deal fell through, didn’t get that opportunity, number two in the New York Times, you know, something way worse than that, like, somebody’s leaving that I don’t want, somebody’s sick that I don’t to be sick. All these things that
are life and are intense, the second I walk in that door, I need to repay that amazing family that has given me the
opportunity to do my thing, I need to shut that all off
and turn on a different gear, and the truth is it’s just easy for me. No different than when Kobe, Staphon, let’s Kobe, show Staphon, you know, when Kobe goes on the court, he becomes a different character. That’s how, I’m very much like that. On stage, different dude. Right now, different dude. Running this company, different dude. Walk in the house, different dude. And so, I just have a lot of gears. I gear it up.