– Hey Gary and Simon. My name is Bill Clanton,
billclantonbooks.com I’m an adult
coloring book illustrator. I live here at the Jersey Shore. I make coloring
books for grownups. Up ’til now I’ve been a
one-man band as far as controlling my operation
and doing everything myself but I’m looking to expand
and start building a team. Do you have any
suggestions as I grow to help new team members buy into my why, or my mission as to why I’m doing this. Is there any best
practices or ideas suggestions to help
them buy into what I’m trying
to accomplish here? Any suggestions would be great. Thanks a lot and
keep up the good work. – Yeah. Sure. – Wants suggestions. – Well one is having
clarity of why. Which is something you
have to have the ability to talk about what you believe what you’re trying to build
beyond the business itself. So he’s into adult coloring
books, what specifically– – By the way, which puts in
a good spot to begin with. Right? I mean if you just think
about that in thesis– – Yeah. – there’s a lot of smiling
that comes along with that, there’s like a
lot of positive vibes. – If that’s why he went into it. It could have been for
some zen calm thing or some stress relief thing.
– Or some weird thing maybe he’s a really bad guy
and he’s mad at children. I don’t think so. – But even beyond the
coloring coloring books what is it that he imagines the ability to talk
about his vision and if he can’t talk about
his why in hard terms can he tell stories of
his own experiences or people he admires that
if somebody hears enough of those stories they can kind
of get a sense of who he is? What you’ll find is that the better you are at
communicating your why people will want to work for you regardless of the opportunity
that you afford them. They want to be a part of it. – Yeah. – We do a little thing,
which we’ve been doing for years and years and years,
called a give and take. Whenever there’s any
kind of relationship whether its an outside
partnership or even somebody
who joins our team we do something
called a give and take where we want
somebody to be selfish and selfless within
the relationship. So not give and get,
but give and take. So we’ll ask them, what is
it you have to give to us that you have that you
think that we need, right? And they’ll tell us. And then we’ll say, great. What is it that you
selfishly want from us? And we want them to tell us
what they can get from us and no one else.
– I believe in that so much. – And when those
things match you have a balanced relationship because for example, I’ve had
it with people who they’ll tell me what
they have to offer and that’s awesome
’cause that’s what I want. And then they’ll say what
they want to take and they go “Oh, I want to work
with smart people.” I’m like,
plenty of smart people, what is it you want
to take from me? They’re like “Oh, I want
to help build something.” Wonderful. Do that anywhere. What do you want to
take selfishly from me that you can get nowhere else? And if they can’t
answer the question I won’t engage
in a relationship. And the reason
is because, in time the relationship is unbalanced they’re going to be giving
but they’re not taking and I don’t even know how
to give them what they want. Then they’ll complain they’re
not making enough money– – Yep, yep. – because it’s not balanced. – That’s right– – So that’s a big part of it. – And I think the other thing
you know as being out there a lot of people play the reverse of that. – Yeah. – You know, they wanna give
you something that is very low in value and they want
something insane in return. “Hey GaryVee,
I tweeted about your book. “Now I want a job with you “I want you to babysit my
dog four times a week.” It’s insane with that. – That’s right.
So it’s about balance. – And to me,
I’ve thought a lot about that I think a lot about it,
I call it 51/49. I fully believe in that.
– Yeah. – And then what I always
think about is how incredibly important it is to me to
slightly give a little bit more not because I’m the
greatest human ever I actually just think
it’s a leverage point. I like the feeling, and
I’m not sold that, I don’t know if that makes
me a good guy or a bad guy it’s just my natural state
to slightly over deliver as close to the
middle as possible. I like that. – So one of the
richest guys in China he might even be the richest, since the Alibaba guy,
not so much but one of the
richest guys in China he’s a real estate
developer, and he always gives the majority share
to all his partners. He always does 51/49,
or even more imbalance. And somebody, again, sat
down with him in an interview and said “Why do you
never do 50/50 deals “why do you give away
the majority stake “in all of your partnerships?” And he smiles and says “‘Cause everybody wants
to do business with me.” – That’s right. – I mean it’s that easy. – Makes tons of sense. To answer the question
in a little bit of detail I think you have the
benefit of being out there I think all of us have the benefit of
being out there today. And I think all of us,
whether your audience and we’ve been at audience
sizes of just starting to where we are today,
whether your audience is very large or quite
small, there are always a small group of people that
are attracted to your message. And I think what I would
do in this scenario is if you’re looking to
hire that first person I would look very hard
at the people that are engaging with your content
on social and start there. I’m a very big believer on that because I think
it’s quite practical. They’ve already
been self-selected they’re using their free
time to comment on your stuff consume your stuff,
buy those coloring books and so I think that’s
a very important place. I’ve had enormous amounts
of success with Wine Library and both VaynerMedia
in the exact same way. – And they have a passion
for you and your work before you even met them.
– That’s right. And by the way,
sometimes you lose. Because they had a
vision of what they were attracted to and
then the reality is it’s work, or this and that. But I do like that starting
point, from a practical nature. – Hey, Gary, it is JJ at
97.9 The Box in Houston.

“when to add staff? “What positions are most
critical to line up first?” – Taylor, and by the way before
I get into your answer Taylor, obviously this is a startup
themed episode in honor of the 43North competition. Taylor, I think that there’s a
lot of ways to go about this. I think you reverse engineer
the founders of the company. So there’s a lot of
things that are needed. Financial understanding
is needed. Marketing understanding
is needed. Product understanding
is needed. There’s a lot of needs
when you’re a small company. I think what you need to
do is first you hire as soon as you can afford to. There are startups that I know
that are literally paying their founders and CEOs way too much
money because they want to take the money home. You’ve got to start spending it
to invest in your business but not more than you have. So if you make 30
or $40,000 a year as an entrepreneur that’s plenty. You’re building an asset
for yourself for the rest of your life. It’s better than making 100 so
you can take that 70,000 and go and hire your head of marketing,
hire a project manager, hire whatever needs you have. Who to hire is actually
quite easy my opinion. You hire around the thing that
you most need that you yourself can’t most provide. I don’t hire salespeople
very quickly in my companies. I don’t hire HR
people very quickly. We didn’t have a HR department
or a sales staff for the first five of the seven years of
VaynerMedia and everyboy thought that was so crazy because
those of the things that I did. Those are things that I
could do with my hustle. But we did have a CFO and a
legal person very quickly over our means because
those were shortcomings. I think AJ could have probably
learned it on the job but those are things we
didn’t have as much of. I think when you hire first is
the thing you need to round out your team with even if it’s not. Let’s say sales is more
important than legal but you’re great at sales I think you still
fix legal even though it’s less in priority because by doubling
down on a person you’re still zero here and you might just
gain 20 to 50 percent here, where maybe your hustle
and your efforts could just be the part that gains. I think that sometimes people
say sales of the number one thing for this company but even
though I’m great in sales I’m gonna hire second person and
won’t get to that I find that to be a vulnerability. I would say up your game by 20
to 40 percent and allow you to fill some of the other needs
that can become vulnerabilities on your team.

– How do you feel
about remote workers? – I’m not into it. Now it is a massively proven
successful way to go about doing business. I wish my homie Jason Fried,
the founder of 37 signals, was sitting here he’d punch me
directly in the mouth and he would be right because for Jason
Fried and DHH the way they built their company or Matt Mullenweg
who’s built a billion-dollar company, Automattic WordPress
they have built it on absolute only remote
operators and employees. I, for me, self-awareness,
Gary Vaynerchuk, don’t like it. I don’t like having
satellite offices. I don’t like it. I want to be very hands-on. I’m very touchy-feely. I scale and build my business by walking by people’s
desks and can feel their. I literally sometimes go to the
bathroom to take a piss, right, walk walk by somebody don’t like
it way the felt and as I’m going to take a piss text my HR
company I’m like I need to see Rick for five minutes. That’s literally how
I built my company. That’s how I build my companies. I’m built on EQ. It’s funny when everyone said
social media was like not human and it’s bad the reason why so
optimistic about social media or technology is technology’s a
gateway drug to human connection. I know it because I only
live on human connection. I just use that stuff to scale. Without social media and
technology there wouldn’t have been one person on the corner
of that street last night, let alone 300. I used it to have the three and
half hours I had with all of you last night one by one
by one because of it. It was the enabler. Now, remote workers can do that
but for me to be successful I really like the idea
of having it together. Team dynamics. I’m a guy that loves sports. Clearly I like team dynamics. It’s not for me. I don’t like when people work
from, we had to force people to work from home for a year
because we’re going so fast and we ran out of space and fire
codes and everything and it was the worst year.
I hated it. I don’t feel that people are
productive, I don’t give a (censored) what you
say I don’t believe you. (audience laughter)
And so I don’t like it. And so it’s not for me as an
operator to run a company for me. But for a lot of
people it could be great. I will never build a company
that has remote employees at scale ever.
It will never happen. – [Ed] Thank you.
– Cool, you got it. (applause)

Go ahead, play it. – Hey Gary, Benjamin Holmgreen here. You said you wanted some more interesting videos for the show so I
went by this busy street in the big city and
wanted to ask a question. The question is, how do you
feel about employee poaching? Taking employees from
someone elses company and bringing them to work for you, good, bad, or indifferent? Thanks Gary. – I think this is a very
easy question to answer. I think people hire from other people’s companies all the time. This isn’t nursery school, this is business. And if you can steal somebody from another competitor or another company that you think brings
benefit to your company and you’ve got recruiters. I mean, we have, seven, nine,
10 full time recruiters here at the VaynerMedia. They’re just pounding, hitting it, and trying to find the
right people for us. So I think in big
business, this is just part of the equation. Poaching? Poaching makes it seem bad. You mean employee recruitment? You guys, I’m sure you’re getting e-mails from recruiters, from
LinkedIn all the time. And it happens all the time. That’s why I try to build a really, I’m very proud of our turnover. Voluntary turnover here is incredibly low, and that means we’re building culture, people are going to
believe in me as a CEO, believe in Vayner, and so you need to focus on building a good business so that people are unpoachable as you say. But I think that’s common practice, I don’t think there’s anything. If there are shady practices where people are under contract, but normal every day recruiters trying
to find people for jobs. That’s like asking, what do you think about having an accounting department? Or what do you think about having an office for your business. That’s table stakes, that’s oxygen. That’s normal business behavior. So I think you’re eluding to something that I guess lends itself, I love how you how
you hacked the video. I guess it’s lending itself to like, Hey you stole my developer
or you stole my CTO well build a great product so that nobody is stealable. Build a great culture,
so nobody is stealable. I don’t own India. This is voluntary. Build something great that
people want to be a part of. You want to be a part of this, India? – Yeah.

something that signature near mount
rushmore would love one of those anybody near Mount Rushmore I’ll take it as they
are you getting ready for summer vacations as you get around more
visually exciting things for a scary you won’t get on the show we use LinkedIn
hardly pay for the program it’s a great utility works great for Boehner but
nothing works better than the Brant when you build something that special people
are coming to you and said a new recruiting the greatest way to recruit
is to not recruit its to do something that is so significant or interesting or
curious or challenging that people want to work for you banners now starting to get that
momentum even though I don’t promote it was me holding off promotion even though
I don’t promote if you’re wondering if you know i dont promoted what we are
doing is we’re trying to let the word of mouth or two people that try hard enough
to like get through all the traps I put out there to get through and see what’s
actually going on here and so I would say it is a great tool for us we love it
we use it were a lot but the word of mouth of the internal employees telling
other people they should come and work here oh my god this amazing place and
people that are sniffing out and talking to other people clients are human beat my clients are
human beings meaning when I know they’re getting great work and they’re out to
dinner with a buddy who happen to work in an agency that’s a competitor and
like you know we should really look at the inner unique light sweet cuddly
employees will get that way mouth so the two ways to do it is to do
great stuff that everybody wants to work for you and I do think the utility
LinkedIn as great as incredible as well I’m gonna surprise like this part

“Structure a 2015 resume to
stand out and sell yourself? “Would you make a video?” – So I’m not a big fan of resumes. I think, interestingly
enough, if you’re required to use a resume to create your
opportunity, you’ve lost. I think 2016 resume is networking. I think a way better way to get a job is to create relationships. I would start tweeting
at 10 to 20 taste-makers, influencers, important
executives within the industry. You want to get a job in
PR, I would follow 40 to 70 major PR executives, top three
PR executives at Edelman, Hunter PR, those kind of
things, Weber Shandwick. I would follow what they
would say, I would interact with them, I would request
for a five minute coffee, one in every 60 of the would say yes. Networking is the new resume. If you’re relying on a piece
of paper or a cheeky video to break through, that means
that you have no leverage before you’ve walked into the room. Leverage when you walk into the room on the interview is the key. Being hired before you walk in is the key, and I think there’s a huge
opportunity to do that. There’s an unbelievable
phenomenon going on on Twitter, which is that you can
literally get to anybody, and there’s some percentage of chance that they’ll actually
want to engage with you. So the 2016 resume is the networking, fooled you Staphon, is the networking that you do before you
walk into the building. Yeah, Ty Guy likes that.

– So. – Actually I’m scared. – Ready? – Yeah. – So VaynerMedia has always been in like, turbo growth mode.
– [Gary] Aw, crap. – [Gary] Yes. – Right, like always. It’s always bring on more clients, hire more people, run out of space, rinse and repeat, right? – Yes. – Do you think there will ever be a time where VaynerMedia prioritizes depth over width in terms of charging more, you know, bigger, fatter — – Scopes? – scopes, and — – Subjective call on the
quality of the output? – Right, or, but then that
laddering up to sort of… – A plateauing of people? – Turning into like big,
huge, lavish benefit packages and things like some agencies get really, really, really
crazy with that, right? Where we’re scrappier, right? – Yup. – And I’m not saying that’s the point — – No, no, no, you’re not. – But do you think Vayner will ever slow down —
– [Gary] You mean like, paying people 200 thousand dollar bonues to be the best creative director
in the world kinda thing? – Well, yeah sure, I guess. – I mean, I’m just, I wanna
quantify that part of it. – Right, exactly. So it’s like depth over
width in terms of like, sheer dollar amounts as
they relate to clients, employees, benefits, all that stuff. And I’m not saying it’s bad right now, by any stretch, right? – Yeah, no. I’m not worried about that. So I think, for me, the way I run my business, which is why I think I’m running a much better business than all these other
agencies that do that, is because I think you can
achieve both in parallel. So I think what I uniquely
as an entrepreneur am good at, is running both trains. So I think you could easily, as, in the context of your question, speak to a very different level of quality in the building from 18 months ago. – Right. – So, if you just project out, if you think about the fact that we didn’t have a single SVP
or real creative director like of any, real’s not fair. A creative director of 10
years or more experience just 18 months ago. – Mmhmm. – That you can see that
happening in parallel. I think that, I think
where it gets disguised is we have people that come
from Gray and Ogilvy and things of that nature. We also have, what’s
been very happy to me, to see Aton and Harry and Pensoot and all these people
leveling up in parallel. What it gets disguised by is the thing that’s much more obvious. What’s much more obvious is
hyper growth of people, right? – Yeah. – It’s just, getting
crammed when we grow, right? What’s less obvious is,
you know, anyone’s ability to really truly dissect 550
people’s depth of skill. – Yeah. – And there’s pockets of clients. You’re always gonna have
variable depending on the people. Plus, hiring the right people. So, to me, the answer is,
it’s happening in parallel. I think the only thing that makes people think that it’s happening,
is stop the hiring process and then they’re like, “Oh! “We’re not going hyper,
we’re going deeper.” – Yeah. – I think we’ve gone stunningly deep in 18 months by two variables. One, bringing the outside
talent in their 30s and 40s, right, depth, which is gray hairs. in a lot of people’s
subjective point of view. And number two, the actual growth of the people that have been at Vayner that are totally different animals. And I think that, for every
individual it’s different. And I also think that for the people that have been here longer, it’s a different context point
than it is for other people. You know, and so, no I mean, I think as long as I’m running the business, I’m never comfortable in thinking one has to be done without the other. I truly feel that you’re
capable to do both. And I think if you project
out what’s happened in the last 18 months on the depth chart, that it’s actually tremendously scalable and gets way deeper
because as you get bigger, you deploy those dollars to those things. – Mmhmm. – And as far as like, benefits
and packages, you know. I’m very weird when it comes to bonuses. I think bonuses, so we’ve
hired two people recently that left their agencies
because of bonuses. Because they felt they deserved more. I think when you have a graying zone of, I get to be the judge
and jury on the bonus, I think what is safer
is to just try to get to a number together. And I think that those
things ebb and flow. I also think that when you’re
in a fast-growing company, what a lot of employees don’t calibrate, ’cause they shouldn’t,
’cause it’s very hard for anybody to care about anything besides what they care
about for themselves, is the notion of what happens in a 36-month window
versus a 12-month window. So I’ve been happy to be honest with you, of getting three to four
emails in the last six months from former employees
who left because of money who now make less money than some of their counterparts here
because VaynerMedia is growing, and we’ve been able to rise all ships, and in their other places they haven’t. And so, those are my answers. – Bonus question. – Please. – How fast do you think
we max out the space at Hudson Yards? – I think we might of already. – Nice. I think, you know, I do think that every company has to bear the negatives that come along with the positives for their individual
self around the person that runs the company. I love insanity. (laughter) I like it. I like when we’re like this. I like when we’re sitting
this close to each other. I like it. And if you are not that, if you’re somebody that really like that, and your space, and this
is where I put this, and this is where I put this, then, you know, Vayner
can be tricky at times. Though, no question, I
think it’s a leader’s job to adjust to his reality,
and I’ve definitely deployed more empathy towards the way we plan on scaling Hudson Yards, and if we need secondary offices to try to come back a little bit
on my own selfish love of that kinetic energy. Mainly predicated on, because
the floors are so big. So I think I’m gonna be
able to scratch my itch, ’cause they’re just big floor plates and there’ll be three, four
hundred people comfortably on one floor. And so I’m hoping that
solves that problem. So, thanks Steve.

“You’ve joked about being overstaffed, “but what’s the balance between hiring “for capacity and waste?” – Tim, that’s a great question. For all of you that are growing quickly, I think one of the things
I take the most pride in is my ability to have a
pulse on my organization from a sales top-line revenue impact, and on the bottom-line cost thing. I think I grow businesses way faster. I do believe that if I end up
operating two more businesses, if I have four businesses
in my career before I die, that I’ve hypergrown, I
have two now in my bag, like, really fast, like,
all-time, like, really, especially non-technology
companies, really fast, I will be known, I mean,
I actually think my legacy as an operator could be speed to victory. I think what I’m really good
at is I have disproportional understanding of the
pulse of what I’m selling, and I’m willing to bet right to the brink, because I don’t need to
take home a lot of money. Like, I’ve always left my own moneys and my own vices on the
table to reinvest back into my business, which
allows me to overstaff, which means I’m them
ready for the new business that comes in, and I
don’t have to go crazy finding the talent, and so, because I’m trying to build culture, sure, you can freelance and
outsource less margin, but you can do better cash
role, make more profit, but I want those people part of my team, and grow with them, let them
learn the religion, grow. So, I think everybody’s
got their own balance, but I think it’s completely
predicated on your stomach for risk, because it comes with risk, you don’t wanna overstaff,
then you lose an account and you have to let people
go, that changes the vibe. I think it comes down to
your salesmanship ability, can you always, in a
pinch, sell some more stuff out of nowhere, and I
think that it comes down to the understanding of where
your business is positioned compared to the landscape, meaning, I always knew that I’m
ahead of the market, and the world’s gonna come to me. A lot of our scopes,
our contracts for 2016, are growing very quickly,
because I knew the world in 2009 would spend more money on
Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram,
Snapchat, or whatever was there at the time, you know, the current state of the internet, so I’m riding that wave. It lets me bet a little bit more. It’s a pulse-cadence feel, taste thing that allows me to get away with it, but ultimately, more than anything, it’s the balance of your own selfish wants of your take-home income,
versus how much you wanna reinvest in your business. It’s as simple as that. If you’re running a
business and you’re making a million dollars in revenue, and you have $600,000 in expenses,
you’re taking home $400,000. You could make it $850,000 in expenses, take home $150,000,
and then know that that extra investment will allow
you to make three million the next year. I believe in myself ultimately, any entrepreneur, CEO, or decision maker that’s taking money off the table, I believe is betting less
on themselves along the way and are playing a short-term game. To me, the time I start extracting dollars is when I believe less in
the growth of the company.

– Hey Gary, it’s Mark Cuban,
I like to know what your go-to interview questions are. Questions you have to ask every candidate that you interview every time. Inquiring minds wanna know. – Cuban’s with the nice hat. I like that. Mark, who’s accomplished
in his life the goal I have, which is to own
professional sports teams, I like that. And a lot of you are fans of Mark and he’s a really smart
dude, knows his stuff. With interviews, I really
try to reverse-engineer what the person wants. I try to break down the
person in an interview within the first few
minutes of meeting them to fully trust and believe
in me, which is something I tried doing to all these
guys on a daily basis. It’s a never-ending battle
from the day I try to interview to four years into our relationship. How can I disproportionately
get their trust because I know my intent and my actions mapped to doing good things 96 percent of the time. And I’d like to think 100, but sometimes there’s a miscommunication
if it is the right thing. And so I try to get them
to tell me the truth. Things like, I wanna come
to VaynerMedia to steal all your ideas and see how you do it, so I can start my own agency
and steal some of the people here to start it. I’m not bothered by that. I’m like, cool, great. Staphon, that’s your plan. I’ll help you. I’ll speed that up. But I expect you to work
your fucking face off 19 hours a day for the next three years for me to then help you
start your own thing. I don’t care what you want. I don’t care. I want to know what it is, so I try to get to that place very quickly. I think the other that
I’m always doing as well is at the same token as
I’m hearing those answers, I’m trying to feel out the person. I’m complete. When I interview, there’s
times where I’m in compelete Charlie Brown mode. I’m not even hearing a word you’re saying. It’s is want want want
want, I’m just going by the feel. The feel is what has
guided me the whole time. Not necessarily the words,
there’s no black and white answer. I still find it intriguing
that I ask almost everybody about siblings. It’s maybe because I love
by brother and sister so much. And I don’t judge if you’re an only child, I don’t say, oh, well you
don’t work well with others, all that dumb, cliche shit. I know plenty of only-children,
the most charistmatic of all time, and can work with everybody. And I know only-children
that cliche don’t play well with the others. I know plenty of jerk-offs
in this office that have 17 (beeps) brothers and sisters
and don’t know how to play. So that’s not what I’m looking for. I don’t know even why I
asked that question, Mark, about the siblings. But it makes, I’d like to think,
and I explain it’s because of my relationship with
mine and how I like it. And so it’s really the feeling, and trying to reverse-engineer the person. That’s what I’m looking for, Mark. Those are the insights, my man. – [Voiceover] Shannon
asks, “How do you feel about

If you’re starting– – Hold on, if you had a
question that you’ve wanted to ask me for a very long time, how the hell wasn’t that the
question you started with? – You needed that preface. – Got it, okay, go ahead. – Okay, so the question is, knowing we have a successful business, we have money in the bank, everything’s great,
business is still growing, everything’s awesome, – God bless, go ahead. – Yay (chops words), but, the thing is, who would be your first
five, like, you have, say, customer service hired. – Yes, – And, well, a marketing person, but who’d be your next five hires. – I’d have to look at your
business and understand, so, first of all– – E-commerce. – So, first of all, I’d reverse– – Product. – First and foremost, I would
reverse-engineer you two. Whatever you two like doing
the most and are the best at, I would surround the hires around that. I’d let you continue to do that, ’cause a lot of people try to replace the thing they’re best
at, that’s a mistake. Stay doing what you do
best at, and whatever the two of you collectively
do the weakest, that’s when you hire, in
order, five next people. – Alright. – Whether that’s finance, HR,
product, e-comm, technology, whatever they are. – But, what’s been your most
best hire for you in that first kind of, in that Wine Library
when you scaled, what was one of the best hires
for you, that, you’re like– – The best hires I’ve ever made have been the friends that I’ve hired. That’s the big secret for me, but– – Position-wise. – Probably the financial
people, you know, like the CFOs, the lead financial person,
have been the best hires, ’cause they’ve given me a context to, hey, ’cause I’m so aggressive, I
want to spend every dollar, so that gives a vulnerability. The reason I’ve never
got out of businesses is, I’m so much better at
selling than everybody else in the world, I can always keep the flows, even against my enormous investment. Um, I, so, I, at VaynerMedia, I would say, Marc Yudkin, a lawyer, creating Legal in-house was a huge hire, Kelly, an early mananging director because she created a lot of context,
and then people that look like Eric which were
disproportionately talented and open to allow me to mold, because we were all playing a new game. People that are moldable but
talented are very attractive. – That’s a good one, yeah, cool.