and I was just curious
if you ever get sick. Maybe you really are Bionic Man. If you do get sick,
how do you handle that? How do you hustle when you’re sick? Really sick. – Ryan, first of all,
hope you feel better. I mean you look like shit in that video. First of all, big shout
out to Lizzie Vaynerchuk because in the last 11 years
that I’ve been married, I have not been sick. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that Lizzie tries to
get me to wash my hands and the fact that I don’t
have a weird draft coming in like I had in my old apartment, which I think caught me a couple times. I mean… You’re talking to a old
school Eastern European kid who actually thinks that
getting sick and being sick is actually psychology. I think the brain is
the most powerful tool. Like, I know the answer
to this is not true, but I do feel like… I’d be lying if I didn’t
think there’s some way that I’m stopping myself
from getting sick. In the same way that I used
to be able to get myself sick to get out of school,
and I don’t mean like, “Oh, my tummy hurts.” I mean, in this weird, yeah, I’m going somewhere. I’ve never said this out loud. This is actually even
scary to say out loud. I’m so convinced that the
brain is this powerful, I used to be able to create a temperature, and I know that every logical
person, including myself, I literally just said, “Bullshit,” but I saw it. I mean, and sure, sometimes,
I put it up to the lamp and that’s how I did it, but
there was a couple of times where I would just psych my… Even right now, I just started doing it, and my stomach turned a little bit. I’m not kidding! Guys, the brain is a sick thing, so I guess the answer to
the final question is, you don’t hustle when you get sick. In the same way you don’t
hustle when you get sleep. We’ve got that quote card
that did really well, right? That quote where I’m like,
“It’s not what you do, “it’s not how many hours you’re awake, “it’s what you do within them.” I’m thrilled to get six
or seven hours of sleep. I love when people think
I’m a three or four guy. I’ll take eight every night, because in those other 16, I will dominate your face. I love people who sleep
four hours, but chill, and chilling is just not
doing something important for 40 minutes or having a
conversation on the trading floor for 30 minutes about the big game or what the fuck happened
in the Oscars last night? Who gives a shit? Execute, and so, but wait, who did this shit for me, I’m
purely focused on my thing. Some people like 30 minutes
of talking about the Oscars ’cause it breaks up their day. That’s their rest. You do you, but let me say this. When you’re sick or when
you’re sleeping, rest. Your body’s telling you something, and so, like weirdly, maybe I was sick
once in the last 11 years, I was pumped. Let me just say that
again ’cause I don’t know if everybody understood that. I weirdly wish I was
sick one day this year. I would really enjoy the time off. I’d enjoy relaxing, and the kids come. Misha comes home at three, it’d be fun! It’d be fun, but there’s something subconsciously that’s really trying to
not allow me to do that. In a world where I take
a hundred-plus flights, where that place is like, I don’t know… Remember how a couple episodes, I said that the 20- to
30-year old Gary Vee is soft compared to me? That guy did get sick. Now I don’t, and I do think it has a lot
to do with my focus on it, so I do think you can
out-hustle your sickness to some degree, but
when you succumb to it, because at some level, we all do, I think you need to
just relax and enjoy it.

“what’s your take on podcasting? “You’re playing in the
space, but not all in. “Not worth it yet?” – Brendan, great question. The only reason I’m not all
in on the podcast right now is because I’m too busy, meaning, everybody has to kind of
decide opportunity costs, and for me, I think I over-index on video. I perform better on
video, I like video more, I like this whole thing. Right, you weren’t
ready for that, Staphon. That’s what happens,
I’m rookie-ing you up. So… I’m half-pregnant because
I’m transcribing this show into audio form. Big shout out to everybody
who’s listening on the podcast ’cause I know a ton of you
are on the way to work. I think podcasting is a huge phenomenon. Obviously, the smartphone
has changed the dynamic. People can take it with
them when they’re running and working out, people are
clearly Bluetoothing it up in their cars, public transportation. Podcasting has clearly exploded
over the last 24 months. Things like Serial became
a national phenomenon. At a podcast form.
It’s fun for me to watch because podcasting was
really big in ’04 and ’05. If you think about what Ev
Williams did, he did Odeo in between Blogger and Twitter. That was podcasting. I’m all about podcasting
in its traditional form as an audio vehicle. To me, I think it’s a huge play, I highly recommend a
lot of people doing it. Let’s not forget, a hell
of a lot more people can do the audio version
versus the video version here. This takes, really, another, not another, a different dimension and skill set, one that I think I own,
thus, I go this route and then use the audio to
create two pieces of content, video and the audio form, and by the way, the podcast listeners, please hit up Twitter and
give me your feedback. I think I’ve been trying
very hard, even the opening, like, instead of saying,
“You’re watching Episode 74,” I said, “This is Epi–,” like, I’m trying to make it a
little more native for both, so I’m trying the best I
can to be podcast-oriented in the form of your question. It is a byproduct of it being video first. If I had time to do two separate shows like so many people have
asked me to, I would. I don’t see the ROI return on just audio for what I’m doing for a living right now, and so that’s this. That was, I would held up a pillow that says VaynerMedia for
all you podcast people. (mild laughter) Let’s go to the next question. – Hey, Gary, Spiker Helms here. I was wondering, if you created
a social media platform,

– [Voiceover] Apollopoetry asks,
“When all is said and done, “how would you like to be remembered?” – This is a tremendous question. This finally put me in a decent mood. You know, look. I think, I think that selfishly, I would like to be remembered as the greatest human being
that ever lived the Earth. (bell rings) You know, we’ll try to
keep it basic and modest. You know, I’d like to think that, I’d like to think that
people appreciated my effort, in whatever way they define that, right? Like, the hustle culture
that I’ve created, that you know, is clearly, I’m so humbled by the notion that it’s inspired people to
work harder and create things, but like, the effort on
like, on an individual level, and like, all the behind the scenes stuff. Like, look, I often say, I live my life on a daily basis, with the complete intent to have everybody that I interact with, show up to my funeral. And I think the only way you can do that, is to be remembered as such a good person, that you created guilt, that people have to go out of their way on their busy days to
show up to your funeral, even though you only met twice
in two business meetings. And so how do you do that? You become memorable. I take advantage of like,
my extroverted personality, and like, the charisma that I was gifted, but I think you need to
back up that sizzle, right? And I take a lot of pride in my ability to be a practitioner,
and my ability to do, I’ve gotten better and better and better at like, keeping my word. That’s always, you know, tough, because, you know, I would
have all these ambitions, and I’m always on the offense, and that is something
I’ve gotten better at. You know, so I guess, you know, just a good human being who cared about, who cared about more
things than just himself.

– And Lisa, finally, so everybody thanks so much for hanging with me. That was fun. The marathons fun. I have a funny feeling we’re
gonna have a lot of comments like this is what you should
do you’ll get so many more answers. I got so much more value. Lisa, my spirit animal
is battle cat from Heme. Actually Ram Man. Ram Man from He Man. If you don’t know what it look likes, it looks like this.

believed so much in me. Back in the days were you
more afraid of letting yourself down or your family?” – You know, I’ve always
been really worried about letting myself down more so than my parents. Kinda feel as though
that would be a trickle down effect if I worried about myself, then my parents would be proud. I took at lot of pressure
in my mom’s belief in me. I took enormous pressure
in my dad’s belief in me in the way that he set me up for success and gave me all that
autonomy at 22 years old to run a company. It’s always and forever going to be about me for me. It’s a very selfish thing. To me, it’s I need to make myself proud, and that’s kind of how I navigate as a human being and
definitely as a business man. Look I’m not perfect, and nobody is, and nothing. The people that know me the best, they know the only time I’m pissed and I’m fiesty is when
I’m upset with myself. – [Voiceover] Kyle asks, “You
get very personal when building

– Jared, I’m actually not scared of cows. As a matter of a fact, I grew up in high school years in
Hunterdon County, New Jersey and we had two cows. Big shout out, Maschka. I’m really not scared of cows. I was just trying to make
the show entertaining. – [Voiceover] Ryan asks,
“Some companies’ timelines are

And I was kind of laughing
’cause I watch it literally walking down the sidewalk,
like stepping over a dog, (Gary laughs)
like in the shower, brushing my teeth, like just
however you can consume it, it’s the one thing I don’t miss every day. – Raise, let’s give this one a– (laughter) Let’s talk about her raise. Alright tell the VaynerNation who you are and what you do.
– [Whitney] Hi Vayner nation, I’m Whitney, I’m an account
manager here at Vayner, and February 10th will be
my one year Vaynerversary. – [Gary] Awesome. (group cheering and applauding) – So, my question is, do you prefer to be around people who are the same as you are or who are different from you? – Oh, that’s a good question. Same or different? You know, it’s interesting,
I had an interesting moment maybe five or six years
ago where I was questioning if I was surrounding myself
with yes men and women, right? Like people that were just
shaking their head to myself. I started noticing it in
other people and my friends, and I thought that that
was super dangerous. And I couldn’t really figure out if I was surrounding myself with
yes people or that (laughs) I’m so forceful of my opinions
that I leave no oxygen in the room for anything else.
(laughter) But I think it’s funny, like
Steve for example, right? I would, and we’ve
referenced this in the past, and Steve and I talk about
this, I like that Steve, you know, I think now he
almost does it as a shtick ’cause I think he, but
(laughter) that being said, right India? – [India] Totally.
– [Gary] Thank you India. (laughter)
Thanks for the confirmation. But I take a lot of pride in really valuing other people, like I think I, for as much as I talk, which is constantly,
(Whitney laughs) and for as much in a meeting for an hour and a half that I
can talk the entire time and nobody else can get a word in, I think I listen quite a bit, and I listen in a lot of different ways. Having a one hour meeting where you listen is very different than what
I’m actually doing which is, when I actually spend
time with everybody here or in the world, that’s
actually my time to talk, because every other minute, I’m listening, every other minute, I’m
looking at what my employees are putting on Instagram
from a selfie standpoint. (laughter) (laughs) You know? Every other minute, I’m looking at what people are favoriting or consuming, or when I walk through
here, looking at what they’re looking at in
their screen, if they’re not “working,” are they reading Reddit? Are they watching YouTube videos? The VaynerNation knows this and you’ve watched the show, you know this, I’m critiquing the shit out of them. Like I’m, again, I think
when it’s all said and done, I like to think maybe this
is what I’m projecting, but I know that I’m doing the reverse of what a lot of people think I’m doing. And so when I’m with people,
I’m talking a whole lot, because it’s my time to
take what I’ve gathered throughout every other minute that’s going on in the world,
to execute again, so I, to me it’s just a people net game, I love being around
people that are like me, but the truth is, back
to being an anomaly, I don’t meet that many people that I think are really similar to me and that’s probably a good thing for the world. (laughter) I find most people are different than me, I definitely feel like, from where the market’s going, 90%,
95% of the market doesn’t see or agree with me and I’m
happy that 80% of the time I think I’m right on those
things long term, but I just like people in general and so to me a good solid debate is equally sexy to yesing each other and just
glorifying how awesome we are or that we see this or
agree on this issue. They’re weirdly one and the same. – Very cool, thank you.
– [Gary] Cool, thanks. (group applauding)

– Hi Gary, it’s Amanda from here in LA.
– [Gary] Hey Amanda. – My question is, roughly what percentage of your business decisions
are based on a gut feeling versus being backed by actual data? – Oh, that’s a very good question. (laughter) I think all of my strategy is completely intuition, because if you look at my 20 year career, most of it has been guessing, I’d like to think projecting
where the market’s gonna go. And there was no data on what
e-commerce would do in 1996, there was no data on email
marketing when you’re one of the first hundred people
that’s doing email marketing. There was no data on the ROI of Twitter four or five months after Twitter came out and you’re starting to
use it for marketing. There was no data on what
a YouTube show less than a year after YouTube came out
was going to bring in value. There was no data on
what Instagram was gonna bring us in value when
AJ sold Brisk Iced Tea an Instagram campaign 13 days
after Instagram had come out. There was no data around what
Vine celebrities would mean when we started a Vine agency
110 days after Vine came out. So, from a strategy
standpoint, I mean truly I believe that I get
the accolades and have the luxury of doing a show that people actually watch, completely on intuition, because that’s what I have
that other people don’t have. It’s no different than
being great at basketball or being attractive or
all the other good things that can happen in life,
it’s just there, right? It was just always there. And so that’s my X factor. Now, I think that is equally then 50% quantified against data, right? So I make these predictions,
but then to run an actual business, this is where my
practicality gets underestimated. You know, this company grew very quickly, you don’t do that if you
can’t make payroll, right? There’s a lot of practicality
(laughter) that goes into running a business. And so, for me I’ve always thought I was a super 50/50 guy,
obviously my personality and communication style
gets most people’s attention and they bucket me into
that kind of place, but I take enormous pride
out of the fact that, for the first ten years
of my professional career, I didn’t say a single word
to anybody about anything and all I did was execute, and
I’ll be very honest with you, it’s been extremely gratifying to me to shut up all the people that thought, when I was building VaynerMedia that, “Mister Lot of Twitter Followers,” like there was a
substantial amount of buzz when I started VaynerMedia of like, “Oh, “this social media guru thinks
he can build an agency.” And now building one of the biggest and fastest growing agencies of all time and sticking that directly in
their throat feels tremendous. (laughter)
– [Voiceover] Yeah!

“Gary, I’ve got a question for you. Who is the historical
figure you would have lunch with if you could? And why?” – Lex, great question. First and foremost, two things. One, Lex I really think you
should put a URL in your Instagram account so it links out and two, the VaynerNation you should
check out is Instagram it’s a tremendous, tremendous
effort, great pictures. We’re rolling with heavy
truth in episode 64. The answer to this question is nobody. And I really, really, really
hate giving it because if I’m on the other side
of this camera, I’m looking at that and saying, you
think you’re so great that there’s nobody you want to meet and weirdly there’s
probably a truth to that. It is actually fundamentally,
completely insane how little energy I have of
meeting anybody all the time. There’s plenty of people I
find ridiculously fascinating. Winston Churchill, is
super high and interesting. Randy The Macho Man Savage
is a big one for me. Pete Rozelle, the former
NFL commissioner I just read his book, I don’t read a lot of books, when me and Lizzy went away in November. I’m up to 9 or whatever. Walt Disney is interesting, story telling. There’s people interesting but it’s crazy. If you said, you could have
dinner with any historical figure, we’re talking
Abraham Lincoln, Walt Disney, or the Jets could be, not playing in the Superbowl,
that’s not where I’m going. You could be in August right
now and watching the Jets first pre-season game, I’d
rather do the Jets’ pre-season game. Think about how insane that is. Pre-season I said. There’s something really
broken with me and I think it comes from ego DNA. I do. Or it just speaks to a theme
that a lot of you know which is I’m like this. I’d rather look at Christin’s
Twitter account for 19 minutes and bring that value to the
people that have bestowed in me the interest in
paying attention to me than for me to go and spend
a nice meal and drink some nice wine with Joseph Stalin
so I can tell him he’s a piece of crap. I don’t feel it, I’ve never
felt it, I have no interest. Just super not interesting for me. Question of the day. Which historic figure would
you like to have dinner with?

“within yourself, how do you determine “whether to delegate or to strengthen it?” – Cory, I love this question because I really don’t
know the full answer and I’m not sure anybody does. I think that’s a question that we all have to answer for ourselves. You know, I always talk
about betting on strengths, but there’s clearly been
weaknesses that I’ve created at least a nice baseline, a foundation. As a matter of fact, one of the weaknesses I’ve been working on
for the last 36 months, especially in building Vayner,
and I give AJ, my brother, a lot of credit for this,
is leading with a little bit more reality than
over-honeying the situation. I’m such a positive
dude that a lot of times I don’t think I was clear
enough with negative feedback or critical feedback to
an employee or a teammate because I was hedging too much, I was like, “You’re the best! “This is all great! “Don’t worry! “But maybe you should…” You know, I’ve been a
little bit more direct, and that’s a weakness
that I’ve strengthened, no question about it, because
I thought it was important, and because I felt like
it was a couple inches off and just by moving it a little bit. Does that mean that I’m, like, the scary guy in the building? I mean, I’m like the least
scary guy in the building outside of the reputation of who I am or being the CEO of a company, but once people get to
know me a little bit, like, I’m the pushover that
way because I am positive, but I think that, look. I would say this is an
80 20 rule answer to me. I truly still believe,
minimumly, that you need to spend 80% of your time on your strengths, and if you want to
allocate 20% of your time to audit, you know, I would actually just do a whole lot of listening. I would actually ask the
people you work with, the people that work for you, the people you work for, your
friends and contemporaries, the people that are closest to you, the 10 closest people to
you, friends and relatives on what they think you could work on. They’re a mirror to that. You may take a step back. It might hurt. You’ve got to roll with
humility and empathy if you want to address this, and then you can start
addressing those 20%, because a lot of times the
reason we can’t address something is because we can’t see it, and the best way to see it is
through other people’s eyes, and you know, it’s funny. The best way to see it is to
use your own ears, actually. It’s kind of interesting,
there’s something there. India, we need to go long forum on that. And that’s that. – Hey Gary, it’s Sean McCabe. I just wanted to say thanks
so much for doing your show.