– [Voiceover] Jeanluc asks,
“This questions really “got me thinking. “When do you shift from
hiring a freelancer “to hiring someone for full time?” – Jeanluc, easy question. It’s just easy. There’s really a couple of scenarios. Number one, the moment
you fall in love with them and you say you should
join my team full time because we’re going to be great together, this well bring value to my business. Number two, when you have a necessity. When you’re business is growing, whether it’s a new
client or you’re selling more of your stuff that
they’re producing for or whatever it may be. Your business has grown and now you have a tested employee that goes to full time. There’s a third scenario when the freelancer is so infatuated with love with your business that
they’re pushing aggressively to join the team. It may not be practical,
you may not be able to fully afford it, but
your intuition tells you that long term, you know
nine months from now, the ROI will start kicking in and I want to reward this
person’s passion around me so I’m willing to make a little
less money in the short term for that relationship and that
stickiness of the long game. Those tend to be the
scenarios when you make the shift, Jeanluc. – [Voiceover] Zack asks, “What’s
your travel schedule like

“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.

– 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!

“about ‘execution’ in business. “How do you prioritize which
project to execute first?” – Oto, great question. By the way, real quick,
thank you everybody for getting me to 40. Also,
all the people watching, I need you to get into the podcast. Podcast people, watch. I want people listening
and watching every episode. Is that too much to ask? I think it’s double consumption. It’s #DoubleConsumption that’s a hashtag, want to see if any of
you use it on Twitter. Oto, the way I prioritize is to equally with my intuition, so
it’s a judgment call, equally take care of the
things that are most on fire, the biggest problems, balanced
with going on the offense on the biggest upside things
and the biggest things, the culture, a new client. So take care of these three
employees that are fighting, and they’re not getting along, really, you know, on fire, or
a client that’s really upset, and then over here, strike the vision. What are we doing with
the video department? Where are we going? Like, what am I doing? Like, where’s this all going? How do I buy the jets? And nothing in the middle. Oto, VaynerNation, the
middle is dangerous. – [Voiceover] Yoli asks,
“Before you had an assistant,