“do you most commonly ask your clients “when meeting them for the first time?” – Zac, wonderful question. For everybody in client
services, agency life, this should be fun. Number one is what is your KPI? What’s your Key Performance Indicator? Like what is the thing that
you want us to accomplish? Is it views, is it
sales, is it perception, is it press, is it your own judgement on how you feel about the creative? How are you judging us,
what are the results? And they’re really separate. How are you judging us,
what are the results are number one A and one
B that matters the most, and then, really, the
third one would then be what are you willing to
tell me about your warts? Meaning, there’s just a lot of people that are not gonna tell you about, the politics that are an issue, the money that’s an issue. I’m always trying to get them
to be very truthful to us once I understand what
the issues at hand are, so what do you really want to accomplish? By the way, people struggle
with answering that. People struggle with answering that. Number two, how are you gonna judge me? Sometimes they struggle with that less. Number three, what are the warts? Most people don’t wanna tell me up front. We try to sniff them out
early so we can navigate them, and it’s like a minefield
to get to the finish line. Those are the three, and they’re very important questions, and trying to figure
out in every situation, in absolutely every situation, in dating, in building your own
business, in having clients. I really think those three
are super fun, and by the way, they’re very important equally. I think, for example, I think people that struggle with dating are spending way too much on number three. They’re so concerned about
what the person’s warts are, or skeletons in their closets. They’re not trying to figure
out how they’re being judged to be a good partner in that relationship, or how that’s gonna be scored, and so, having a great balance of all three. That’s a little nugget there. Give you a little fun fact
at the end of this question. It’s the 33% execution
of those three questions that may be equally as important.

“people to make the same decision I made “by leaving a very secure
job to pursue their dream. “My question is, will my
employee retention rate drop? “Since you started building
up your personal brand, “has your employee
retention rate dropped?” – Benjamin, the thing you
need to understand is that intent trumps everything. And so I think one amazing
thing in this company that I’m extremely proud
of is I truly believe that these people that
work at VaynerMedia really recognize that I want to win but not at their expense. I want to buy the Jets, not at
the expense of my employees, with my employees and I equally
want what’s best for them. Of course, you know,
looking at these three, and things are running through my mind and, obviously, I know them
all at different levels, but you know, there’s
narratives in my mind that I can play out right
now that leads to a world of them not being here. And that makes me sad and I really don’t want that. And from an ego standpoint,
I truly believe that I can bring them so much
value over the long haul that makes it interesting
for them to stay. But I think it’s massively
important that they always, deep down, feel as though I want them to have what they want, even though, optically,
it doesn’t benefit me. And I would say 40% of
VaynerMedia believes that. And that may surprise you as a low number, but I hope you understand
the level of cynicism that is instilled in us as human beings to not believe everything I just said. And so I’m massively proud of the 40% and I’m really pumped
that I think that 40% was actually 12% only 12 to 18 months ago and so I’m building momentum, right? Look, I think if you’re
scared to lose somebody who believes in their heart that they have the skill set to go and do it, you’re making a huge
mistake and I actually think you build retention by
showing them the reverse. It’s a reverse psychology
game that is not a tactic because if you don’t actually believe it, that reverse psychology
will come across as bullshit and you’ll lose it. I don’t do it because I want
to reverse psychology India, I do it because I believe it. And then they have to believe
and evolve in their place. You know, I believe that
the evolution of people not being here is gonna
have a lot more to do with things in life, they
fall in love and get married, and have to move ’cause
their spouse really needs to do this and they have
the empathy and being the bigger man or woman
in the relationship to go let their spouse do that, unfortunately, maybe something tragic. I actually think that when you’re pure, when you want to win but
you want to win with, not, you know, on the
back of, people start sticking around because the truth is, if somebody works at a
job, in a lot of ways, they weren’t thinking
purely, I’m gonna put this on my back to begin with, right? And you, and I don’t know your age, is there a picture, or
is this a written word? – [India] Oh, this is written. – You know, I don’t know
your age, but again, if you’re over 30, you were
sold on a world where it wasn’t, I’m gonna go do my own thing, right? So now that we live in
that world, I actually feel that the kids that are going
to work for companies now in lieu of entrepreneurship
are truly not entrepreneurs. Back into that big argument of
entrepreneur-like tendencies and entrepreneurship,
I’ll tell you right now, show me a 23-year-old
that wants to work here and I’ll show you somebody
who is, got entrepreneurial tendencies but isn’t pure entrepreneur. So I just think doing
the right thing is always the right thing and I think
empowering your people to follow their dreams if
they have one, if they think they’re good enough, if
they are willing to deal with the stress and all the
dog shit that comes along with having all the
pressure on your shoulder, then, you know, you empower
them and root for them and try to be part of that narrative. But if they have tendencies, what you’re doing is
actually building a deeper relationship with that person, and actually, my belief
is that percentage, you’re creating longer term. I mean, the stickiness of this company is pretty intense,
given the agency world’s a tough place for stickiness
and so I’m very proud of that and you know what I spew. Great last question. Question of the day,

– [Voiceover] John asked,
“What are your thoughts “on creating a successful, long term “social media strategy for
yourself or your clients? “How long in advance do you create “the content you roll out?” – John, that’s a good question. I mean, I think this all comes down to something that I call reverse engineering. The truth is everybody’s different. You know, my vision is very long-term. I don’t know how you define
long-term in your question, but some people think long-term
is three to five years. I think long-term is until the day I die. And so, my clients may not be as patient when your Fortune 500 company that needs to hit numbers each quarter, your patience to build a three to five
year plan is nonexistent. When you’re a Series C Startup company that just raised 200 million dollars, and you’re only burning
four million dollars, you’ve got a lot of patience, and the idea of building brand and
having a patience game to your execution becomes more attractive, then we reverse engineer that. Then it’s more about branding, Instagram, doing high-end video, long-form content with no right hook, lot of jabbing. If you’re a startup that’s
gonna go out of business in 24 weeks if you don’t sell some stuff, we’re in full right hook,
ya know, Facebook dark post, SEO, SEM, influencer marketing with calls to action to sell. Ya know, all that stuff
completely is determined based on the client’s current
short-term and long-term needs, but the truth is short-term
and long-term needs really balance based on a moment in time, and so, ya know, the reason I think I’m
good at business is, for all of my talking, I am 10X at my listening skills, and it all just comes down to listening, and so the way we strategize
is predicated on listening, and I think the biggest
challenge for so many of the VaynerNation
that’s watching right now is I don’t think a lot
of you, and this is, with all due respect,
this is for everybody, I’m just picking on you
’cause I love you, tough love. I think a lot of people aren’t really sure what they want to accomplish
in a one-year window versus a five-year window
versus a ten-year window, and their behavior doesn’t map to it. Ya know, to me I got lucky. I just decided it’s everybody
shows up to my funeral, hedge forever, build up equity,
cash it in as I need it, if I ever need it, which has
allowed me to be very patient and really has allowed
me to dictate my behavior being probably a better human being. And in a weird way, and
again, I think a lot of people would find this funny. In a lot of ways, I’ve been a pushover as a entrepreneur because if you would look
at it in the short-term, I’m leaving money on the table. I’m not fighting for every cent. I’m not trying to drill it
down to the biggest advantage. I’m not even getting mine everytime because I’m just hedging along the way, and so just comes down to what
you’re trying to accomplish. I think the better question
to this question is how can you help someone
or are you capable of really understanding what
you’re trying to accomplish?

“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

– Hey Gary, my name is
Michael, I like almonds, and reading books. My question for you is, what
can cause the extinction of the real estate agent, as we know it? You keep making t-shirts,
and I’ll keep buying them. Oh, and one more thing, ting! – (laughs) The bar has been raised
for video questions, VaynerNation take note,
the bar has been raised. Amazing question, thank you so much, guys. Great production. DRock,
you love it, right? That was good. Staphon,
yea that was good stuff. I actually don’t think
that there is a lot, you know, I think there
is a false sentiment in the market that
technology eliminates humans. I think technology sets up
the humans that understand how to use that technology
to leverage ahead against the other humans that don’t. So, what eliminates the real
estate agents of the moment, in the future? Well, it’s
their lack of innovation and adjusting to the tools
that are at their hands, and then just becoming a dying breed. My friends, I’m not making up
or talking about anything new. Innovation has forever,
the phone, the yellowpages, radio, television, the
internet, direct mail, video game marketing. Every time there’s been
another innovation, and that will happen forever, it kills off the prior animal
unless the animal is unable to adjust, and it’s not an age thing, there is tons of 60 year olds right now that are crushing modern day marketing. The percentage is very small, and it comes out of getting fat, right? It comes out of, you just made
enough money at this point, you’re on to new and better
things, and I mean that. You guys hear a lot of hustle
from me, but I’m enormously happy for the gal that’s
63, making 240 a year, and, you know, put in her dues,
and she wants to go to the fancy food show on
that Tuesday instead of calling 100 people and
selling another apartment, or she wants to spend an extra weekend in an Aspen timeshare. Do your thing. When I talk about hustle,
please know that I’m not judging you. It’s all
predicated on what you want. The only people I make
my hustle stuff for, are the people that are talking shit, that they want fucking things to happen, and they want to win,
and they want to buy–, “I’m gonna buy the Clippers
when you buy the Jets,” dude, you work four f**king
hours, you ain’t buying shit. And so, that’s where I get pissed off. But if you’ve decided consciously that you want to have a great work life balance and things of that
nature, then that’s great, and those are the people
that get disrupted. They’ve lost the hunger
for a better thing, I’m not looking down at them. Congrats. Let me tell you a real
freaking secret here on the #AskGaryVee Show episode 60. If tomorrow I read that there
was a new drug in the market, FDA approved, and I could
take it, and it would take–, this is gonna f**k with
a lot of your heads, and it could take ambition out of my body, I would do it. My gift is my curse. I love what I do, but I promise you, and so many of you are about
to be disappointed with me, but I’m talking truth
here, I would take the pill that would get me down to ten percent less ambition and hunger because I’d have a
little bit more balance, and there is a lot of attractive
things that come along with that balance. But that’s not the way it is, and, honestly, I’m super
pumped the way I have it, so, and, weirdly, as I’d said that out loud, I kinda don’t wanna take the pill, but, you get the jist, right? And so, who gets disrupted? Fat cats. – [Voiceover] John asks, “you
give with zero expectation

– 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] Vernon
asks, “What’s one question “you ask in interviews?” – Vernon, I really like this question. I’m really excited to take a stab at it. I don’t do it every time. I’m not one of these guys who’s like, this is my go-to question, like “When you were 13 and you
went through a forest, and you pick–” I don’t have any of these weird things, but I do always, especially
I think if there’s a lot of momentum in the interview, I love to ask people to tell me, at this moment in time, what they see the professional career becoming. I wanna get into the psychology of what their ambition is and I pretty much spend most of the interview trying to get somebody comfortable enough to tell me the truth to that question. Because I don’t care if
you want to be the CEO of VaynerMedia. If you wanna just be, move a couple levels up and have great work-life balance. I
don’t care if you even want to come here and
work for me for two years, suck out my IP and then
go start your own agency. I don’t care what your agenda is, I just wanna know what it is so
I can help us get there. Because the truth is,
I wanna keep people in my ecosystem forever and the best way to do that is to deliver
to them what they want. And so the quicker I can
get into that insight, are you work-life balance,
are you money hungry, are you title hungry, are you entrepreneur and just coming in here for learnings. I don’t care, I just need to know. The quicker I know and the
quicker it’s the truth, the quicker we can do
things forever together. And so that is usually the essence of the interview question for me. Can I tap through, can I
feel that I’m getting there? Because that gives me a blueprint, a map. Not only that, I have the
self-awareness, and I try to talk to them about this,
that that will change. You know, being a 24 year old dude, 26 year old female, it’s gonna change. You’re gonna fall in love,
your life’s gonna change. Are you gonna start a family? When you make a little bit more money it becomes less interesting. There’s so many different
things that are going on in one’s life. When you make a little money it becomes way more interesting. You get the bug, the blood’s in the water. I don’t care, I just need
the communication funnel and I want it to start from day one, five minutes in to getting
to know each other.

and #guruminutevideos. I finally have a question for
Gary Vee and the VaynerNation for #AskGaryVee Show. One of my people asked
me, “Out of curiousity, “what do you really get from
having 10,000 followers?” So, I’m differing to you, and your wisdom. And remember, ♍ You too can be a guru ♍ – That was a nice voice at the end there, some real talent in the VaynerNation. Oh, by the way, there will be no show on Thursday because AJ and
I are going to Cleveland to see LeBron’s first
game back in Cleveland against my New York Knick’s, and so I’m excited about that. And it’s a little public
service announcement. Also, if you’ve not been paying attention, I’ve been writing my ass off on garyvaynerchuk.com so check that out, please click out. I’d love in the comments,
as a matter of fact, in the comments question of the day, what do you think of
garyvaynerchuk.com website? Pros, cons, your thoughts, your two cents. Your three cents, if
you wanna roll that way. To answer this question, you too can be a guru, by
the way, I wanna address that real quick, we kinda
addressed that recently. You can be a guru if you
actually got guru skills. You can’t just say you’re
a guru, that’s number one. And then to answer the question, that is the wrong question. What is 10,000 fans get you? Nothing or everything, I don’t know. If you have 10,000 fans who 9,000 of which buy every, buy 48 copies
of your book when you’ve put it out on Twitter,
well then that sounds really valuable. If you’ve got 10,000 fans
’cause you bought them on some weird Ebay auction because
you wanted to act cool amongst your friends and
when you post something nobody gives a rat’s ass, I
would say that’s less valuable, and so the question, my friends,
is always the wrong thing. So what everybody gets confused about. I could care less about
the top line awareness, though it matters, right? What do like 14 million people
watching this video mean? Means I got more at bats of
people to get into my content, into my world, find value
in me, thus creating the beginning of a relationship,
which then may lead to something, but life is long. It’s a long trail. Only is one follower of 10,000
really change the course of your business or personal life, right? And so, that’s the wrong question. The right question is what
are you trying to achieve? See, my friends, I’m a reverse engineer. Let me say it again because if you haven’t figured
it out in the seven years that you followed me, I’m
gonna say it one more time. As a matter of fact, Zak, show Zak’s face ’cause I’m gonna tell him
something right to his face. Zak, I need a t-shirt that
says, “I’m a reverse engineer” and as you know, I never
scrutinize the creative, and I’m always like, great,
this one I’m gonna care about because I wanna wear it every God damn day because that’s who I am,
I’m a reverse engineer. Whether I need 10,000 followers or I need to, every decision
is predicated on what am I trying to achieve? Both long term and short term, and that’s the key, my friends. One of the things you have
to do is you have to balance both your short term goals,
and your long term goals. So, I wanna buy the Jets,
and so a lot of things that I do I leave tons
of money on the table because I think it would hurt my brand or my perception of my
opportunities where I don’t feel good about it and I feel
like I could burn a bridge. A bridge I may need to buy the Jets. The same token, I need
build VaynerMedia to be a huge company so I can
afford amazing employees like this to scale content like this. So, it’s all strategy, but
I’m always thinking about why, why, why, why, why, why? It all has to be reversed engineered. So why do you need 10,000 fans? Maybe in 2007 you needed
10,000 fans or the value was. You were one of the only
people with 10,000 fans and everybody thought you were cool. Even people just followed
me because I had a lot of followers back in 2006
and seven and eight. And that gave me leverage. They then paid attention to me, lucky for me I don’t even
know why I’m doing air quotes right now ’cause that’s how fired up I am, but lucky for me I had
something good to say. Whether it was about wine, and that’s a basketball, whether it was about, get me some wine. Somebody get me a bottle of wine, is there any wine here? Whether it was about wine, whether it was about business. I don’t know why this represents business. Yes, get it to me, hurry. Whether it was about wine, whether it was about business, and so… 10,000 fans or anything else you do. Why do I need a medium account? Why do I need a million fans on Facebook? Why should I be marketing on Snapchat? It’s all strategy. For me, I market on Snapchat
because I wanna learn the platform because I
wanna always be ahead because I want to earn the right for you to spend these 15 minutes with me, and the only reason you’re
spending these 15 minutes with me, and yes, I’m very attractive, and yes, I’m massively charismatic, but it’s because I’m
providing you with value. I’m saving you time to
spend the hundreds of hours that I and my organization spend to give you the punchlines
of what you need to know to navigate through a
2015 marketing world, and that’s it, and it’s that simple. So, the value’s a stupid question. The right question is, what
are you trying to accomplish, and is Twitter the platform
that can help you accomplish it? If it is, now you start
understanding what the value would be. My friends, is that it?

– [Voiceover] Mrs. Jones asks, how do you make sure lack of confidence doesn’t stop me from chasing my dreams? Mrs. Jones, this is a very
important question to me because I’m actually quite scared to give you the answer which is we need to seriously think about how to build up your confidence. I am the the kind of person that believes that self-esteem is the
ultimate drug in society. And I believe that when
you have self-esteem, you give yourself the
audacity to dream big aka buy the New York Jets. When you dream big, what ends up happening is the little things
stop mattering as much and you’re not crippled by them and you start really kind of becoming, you know, I’m actually maybe the least anxious person I know in a world where anxiety
should be, on paper, the thing that I most
have ’cause I have so much going on and I have these
enormous aspirations. You know, I really
struggle with this question because I would actually tell you to not say, well don’t worry
about it, you’ll get there. And no rah-rah I can do real quick here is going to affect you, but what I’m hoping to affect you with is I would highly recommend
doing some deep searching into what you can afford and what is practical to work on that whether that’s literally
seeing somebody to build it up, mapping your life backwards, surrounding yourself with
positive, self-esteem driven people, I think is a
very unique way to do it. This is the big one for
me fellas and ladies. I am all in on self-esteem and I would say if you
are self-aware enough to know that you lack it, I would tell you to execute about finding a way to gain more of it. – I’m loving the show, like loving it.

“personal/business goals –
aside from owning the Jets? “What do you find useful in the process?” You know, I really don’t
set any business goals other than to continue to gain leverage. You know, pay forward. Provide value to the audience. Make money. Keep it practical and ambitious. But I don’t have a goal of like, “I’m gonna get VaynerMedia to 100 million “and then this is gonna happen,” or “The fund is gonna return three times “its 25 million dollar
investment at Vayner RSE “and then this will happen,” or, “In four years, I’m gonna get into the “car wash business.” I just don’t go that route. My route is really my fundamental play is I always talk about my
one goal being the Jets and for the hardcore people
that followed my career, I’m gonna throw a little
bit of a curveball to you, give you a little more fun fact. That’s kinda the thing that
I wanna do with this show. The only other core strategy I have is collecting people. You know, finding the
individuals that I think I can jam with for the next 15, 20, 30, 45 years professionally. That to me is the global strategy. Who can I do business with
as a teammate forever.