“that keeps good leaders
from becoming great?” – The number one thing that keeps good leaders from becoming great, very good question, maybe
a great question from Josh. I think there’s a couple things. I think money, I think money is a funny way to hampen a leader. They’re driven by that. I think that emotional skill sets, to be great at something
you have to over-index. You just have to. You have to be able to be great at it. You can be a good basketball
player, you can be a great basketball player,
and a lot of that has to do with DNA, so I think a lot
of natural leadership skills. For me, the reason I aspired
to be a great leader is I truly focused on one
variable, and I want everybody to hear this, and it’s
a very sneaky pillar of my life success, which
is, when I think about you, India, or you DRock, or
anybody that I jam with in my world, start-ups, companies, when I go to Oklahoma City, the client, I’m trying to provide 51% of a value. I really believe that,
and not because I’m this great human being, because
I think it’s leverage. I think that if DRock feels
that I’m slightly providing more value to him than
he’s providing to me, financially, upside in
the future, mentorship, whatever it may be, that that’s going to make me a great leader. A, it’s how he feels about
me, and B, it’s going to focus me on always trying
to one-up the next person, and when you’re a leader,
one-upping comes in many forms. I’m gonna continue to show you angles that you haven’t seen
about yourself, right? I’m going to continue to challenge you, financially compensate you, give you opportunities,
bring you to things. One-upping, trying to provide more value to the other person. And I think a lot of good
leaders are 80-20 for themselves, I think extremely good leaders are 50-50, I think great leaders start
to go to the 51-49 direction. – [Voiceover] Cindy asks,
“What are your thoughts about

– [Voiceover] Paul asks,
(hip-hop music) “How do you ‘diplomatically’ tell the BOSS “he’s F’ing it up?!?!?!” – Paul that’s a good question. I massively overvalue
the people in my company who are comfortable enough in saying like, “Hey, Gary, I don’t
disagree with you now.” A lot of them walk into a
buzzsaw because they’re wrong and then they get clowned. So you better make sure you’re right about the boss being wrong, right? And so, but I think any great
boss will be super pumped if you’re willing to respectfully
point out things that you massively disagree with. And I think it’s a win,
win situation for you if you go down that route
because if you think about it, if you give that feedback to the boss and the boss… agrees with you, maybe she or
he knew that you were right, you’ve won points. If they don’t and they
completely disrespect you and the others within the organization that try to give feedback, well then now you know you work for a dipshit boss and you should
be looking for another job. So to me there’s really almost no risk in going down the route of
giving critical feedback to your boss. Especially if you don’t
love, love, love your job. And more importantly,
it’s an amazing proxy to audit your boss which I
think is massively important if you’ve decided to put your career into the leadership of an individual. Yeah let’s just move
like, let’s just move.

how do you keep your people motivated? – Tommy, thanks for the great question. Obviously, being one of the
great managers of all time this answer’s gonna come
very easy to you and very natural, I think you’ll get it. I spend a lot of time
thinking about motivation and I think the key for me is I try to motivate in a couple of ways. Number one by example,
I think my actions will always speak louder than my words so how I carry myself, how I interact
with everybody, how I live my life as a man I
think really matters as an executive, as a person, I think
everyone’s always watching. But I also think I equally
try to reverse engineer every single individual person, right. They’re just all different,
they all have different KPIs, different objectives,
they’re in different parts of their lives, some are married
some just had kids, some are trying to make more
money, some don’t want to have four roommates in
Brooklyn, so they’re grinding. So everybody’s got a
different thing and I think what’s important for me to
motivate is to do a great job listening to what makes
them tick, both when I have the few moments with them in person. Alex, get over here for a second. Let’s do a real life example
on the #AskGaryVee Show. Alex, what motivates you,
what are you excited about? – What am I excited about? In life? – Yeah, what motivates you in life? – I just like doing cool
(beep), that’s it pretty much. I want to be successful
and just do cool (beep), that’s basically why I’m here so you know. – Cool man, alright, get out of here. So, Alex is easy, he just
wants to do cool (beep). So that’s easy, we do tons of cool (beep). He’s check, he’s good, he’s motivated. And you go on and on and on and you try to figure out, was he
scared that he was on camera and is that the real
answer, like are they really gonna tell me the truth,
they never tell me the truth usually upfront, few and
far between and so it’s a constant behavioral HR driven reverse engineering what they care about. India and I had a pretty
intense conversation about her future ambitions,
remember you wanted to be the head of social
media for museums. I take that very seriously,
like I know these things about my peeps, this is
even before India was on the inner circle of this team, like I I remembered it
better than you did. – Yeah, that’s true, you did it’s true. – So I take enormous, you don’t get to be a great all time leader without being
a great all time leader. There’s a lot of work that
gets put into being good at what I do and I’m very,
very up to the challenge and so it’s predicated on an
enormous amount of listening which is why I’m such a
paradox because boy do I (beep) love to talk but the amount
of listening that I’m actually doing always surprises
people when they start going a couple of layers deeper so
the answer to your question is I motivate, Tommy, by
figuring out what every single person is ticked and wired like and what makes them roll and I also recognize that that changes every
single day and they have four to seven, twelve
milestone things that happen in their lives,
which will change the trajectory of their
ambitions, wants, hopes, and dreams and I need to be prepared for every single one of those
for all of them forever. – [Voiceover] Dylan asks “Do you
still believe that there’s

– [Voiceover] Dr. Julie
asks, “As VaynerMedia “continues to grow, what is the one thing “the company has done to
keep the culture hungry?” – Doc, everything stems from the top. My hunger level is so
intense it’s crippling, and so, because of that, the
culture continues to be hungry because I will suffocate the culture to allow nothing else to creep in. No complacency, no
celebrating the victories allows you to stay really damn hungry. We’ve haven’t accomplished shit yet, and so, yeah, we’re the fastest growing social digital agency ever, and yeah, we’re unstoppable, and
we’re great and all this, but we haven’t done anything that I’d like to accomplish yet, which is, I don’t know, to
win the whole goddamn game. To make every single client,
every single employee, every single agency in the game recognize we are the best
and it’s disrespectful to even allow yourself to think
that you can compete with us and so you should really
focus on being number two. Does that answer your question?

a wrap-up session, but we’re
gonna make a unique thing. Why this book, and more importantly, you have such a mix of people that listen and watch my show, right? You’ve got a ton of people in startup, entrepreneurial culture,
you know, obviously cause of the agency,
there’s a plenty amount of executives in Fortune
500s, bloggers, media types. When you look at this book, and you guys put your
self-awareness against this book, who benefits the most? Of course, that’s like wanting
the book to be successful. We want everybody, and I’d
like, it would mean a lot to me to support these guys, I want you on it, but going down the pecking order, who do you think, or how
do the individual segments that could read this book, what
do you see them benefitting from what angles? – I mean, what we wanted to
do, we wanted to create an MBA in a book, because you
can start off in business, and you can get very good at one thing, and there’s something in your
head that’s saying to you, I wish I had the 360 mindset, you know, that’s sort of what an MBA,
I’ve got one, what it gives you. It sort of gives you the CEO’s mindset, you sort of see all
the different functions working together, and we looked around, and that book didn’t exist. It’s for people who didn’t have an MBA who just wanted one but
didn’t wanna give up two years of their life to go get one. – Or the gadrillion dollars, or the debt. – Right, the flexibility, everything. – Well, I mean, anybody
who’s managing anyone, a small team of five
people or a team of 500, can use the tools that are in here to build a team.
– So, management. – No, no, no, that’s one level. – I know, but that, but
it’s an interesting insight that that’s where you went
first, but I’m intrigued by it. – Well, I– – He always goes there first (laughs)
because he– – I believe in it so
much, so I’m into it too. – But I’m talking about
managing small groups as well. – I get it. – And what we wanted to
do is create an atmosphere in a company that’s got some
of the buzz you’ve got here, across every company. So, building a wow team,
and having employees know how to play on a wow team is
a critical part of this story. – One last thing is that there’s
a whole section of the book on your career, and it’s about, you know, what should I do with my life, how do I get out of a career stall, and how do you become an entrepreneur, what does it really take? There’s all, a lot of the book is about winning strategically,
smiting your competition, building a great team, but look frankly, people spend a lot of brain time thinking about their own careers and how they get to be where – Stuck. – Where they’re really
fulfilled and they’re doing what they wanna do, so the whole, there’s a chunk of the book about that. – Do you believe, on a real
quick question, do you believe, by the way, you guys
look great in this photo. Do you believe, how many photos, how long did this photo shoot take? – Long time for me, not for her.
– Longer than we’d have liked. – To get me on there to look
like that was real work. – I can imagine. (they laugh) Do you believe that a top 25, 50 business school MBA in April 2015, is as
valuable in the marketplace as it was, five, 10, and 25 years ago. – Go back to top 10. – Okay, top 10, yes. – Absolutely. – How about 11 to 25? – It starts to slide pretty quickly. At the top 10, the line is out the door with McKinsey, with
Booz, with everybody else lined up, waiting to get in. So at a top 10 school, you’re making a huge 300,000 dollar investment, but the return is pretty good. – It pays off. – It pays off. – What about, so many of those kids, cause now I’m spending a
lot of time with those kids. So many of those kids want to
become startup entrepreneurs. – Right. – Do you believe that the
ROI is equally as good at that 300,000 dollar investment if they wanna go down that path versus going to Bain and McKinsey, who start paying them
tremendously strong salaries and bonuses that can drive down that debt. – Depends on the quality of their idea. Let’s face it. – What’s your intuition tell you– – We are running all the time into people that wanna be, quote, entrepreneurs. It’s not a profession. It is the output of a great idea. – Yep. – It’s not like being
a lawyer or a doctor. What is your idea, what
is the value proposition, and can you win with it? – Yeah. – So, I always end the
show where I ask a question

“what is the best solution for
documenting policy, procedure “and process so all are on the same page?” – Jeremy, I hate this question
for a couple of reasons. You know, it’s interesting. I’m gonna piggy-back off
the last statement here, which is, to me, this is
a defense question, right? This is a bottom 10 percent question. – Yeah. – There is no business on earth that won because they had a tight
handbook situation, right? So, for me, I mean, unless
you’re talking about liabilities on a legal level, you know. GE should worry about that to some degree because of the level of lawsuits. and by the way, they
have 400,000 employees, and there’s probably 8,000
lawyers, there’s people to do it, but a company of 500 people. India, they’re not gonna hear
this, but you prepped them, like how we have a handbook here and nobody really knows about it. I mean, this is a 500 person,
and it’s still a baby, like that is something
that I think you need to be worrying about at your– – Yeah, forget documentation,
have a culture. Over here has a culture. And as soon as you’re documenting things, you’re wasting everyone’s
time, it becomes a bureaucracy, all that matters are your
values and your culture. Make sure they’re being lived, and you don’t have to document anything. – But everybody has to
know where you’re going, why you’re going there, and
how you’re gonna get there. – Well, that’s leadership, right? – And that is the job that– – That’s my job. – That’s yours, and the
people that work for you, and cascading down. But everybody’s gotta know the mission, they gotta know how they’re
gonna do it with behaviors, and then they’ve gotta be, and what are the consequences of getting there? – There’s another thing that I think people need to understand. And by the way, this is
gonna get very Vaynerized, and India, you’ll enjoy this. And everybody here. As I started bringing
in more senior people, they wanted to bring in
more of these things. And I made them understand, I’m like, “Look, you don’t understand. “We’re still this entrepreneurial engine.” And if somebody comes into this company and they’re so worried about the handbook, and so worried about
reviews, and so worried about all these things, I
don’t want them here now. Not that they’re bad, but they’re not the right players at this time. I was the best player on my
fourth-grade baseball team. There’s not a single
baseball team in America in Major League baseball
that needs me on their team. So, I was the right player for that time, but then as everybody
got much bigger than me, I became not so much. And so we now need different people that maybe care about some of those things as we continue to grow,
but not at that time. So the other thing here
is, the right employee at the right time, at the
right age of the company.

– Lewis asks “Where would
you start in building a digital team within a
traditional TV or print agency?” – Lewis there’s an interesting
thing that I believe in very much which is you are what
your actions show you are. It’s very similar, I’m probably
affected by Bill Parcells, in football legendary hall
of famer coach Bill Parcells former Jet coach always said
you are what your record says you are because everyone’s
like we’re eight and eight but we could have been 10
and six if we you know, but at the end of the
day you are what you are. Thanks Mike. It’s very easy to create
a digital practice within a traditional print or direct
mail, outdoor media or PR. All these agencies now have
to shift into the world that we’ve created because
that’s where the dollars and the momentum and where
the story telling is going. This video will be consumed
a hell of a lot more in YouTube and Facebook
native than it will as a pre roll pop up somewhere. And so I think it’s super
important that you understand you are what your actions say you are. Meaning it’s very easy, go out
and hire seven to 12 people that work in digital social,
bring them into your department and now you have that capability. Now the key for the CEO or
the chairman of the board, her and his job is to
really integrate that new, we’re going through it now
VaynerMedia has a new live division called VaynerLive,
it’s live events activation. It’s not what we’ve historically done. It’s activating at Coachella or South By or things of that nature. And we’re six months in and
we still have to integrate it into the business but we brought in Robert and other people that have
done that work in the past. Now we have the skill set. Now how does that practice mold in to the whole organization? That’s the tricky part, that’s
where dictatorship comes in. That’s where letting things happen the way they have to happen. I’m a big fan of letting things
lie so I’ve stayed hands-off for the first several
six and a half months. Now maybe I feel like maybe
like I’ll get my hands in a little bit dirtier
just get it molded in. Leadership is knowing when to
listen, knowing when to talk. Knowing when to take a
step back, knowing when to jump in and integrate it. But the commodity of
hiring people that have the skill set to do the
work, it’s out there. It’s just making the
leap to decide to do it. – Andrew asks “Do you plan
on embedding Facebook videos

“on delegation?” – Denni, you know, I
actually think the best piece of advice that I can give
to delegating is actually going to be very much up in the clouds, and as you know, I like
the clouds and the dirt. DRock, link it up. I think I’m tremendous at delegating and I’ll tell you the number
one rule to delegation, recognizing that 99.9% of things don’t mean shit. If you actually think
it’s not that important, it becomes a hell of a lot easier to let somebody else do it. If you recognize somebody
else’s 7.7 skills is better off because
that job is worth that, versus your 10.0 skills,
it’s humility, my friend. Ego oftentimes is the
issue with delegation. Even though I have a ton of ego, I have a boatload more
humility than you think. – [Voiceover] Tommy asks,
“Gary, isn’t working long hours

today, how well would
VaynerMedia do in the long term without it’s CEO? Have you been satisfied
with Wine Library’s performance since leaving
to focus on VaynerMedia?” – Andrew, this is a great question. I mean, I always say
everything stems from the top, and so I’m trying to
think about how I wanna answer this question,
meaning A.J. is ridiculously capable. I don’t think the
company would do as well, mainly because he just had his big brother and mentor die, and so even though he’s capable I would assume that he would be pretty torn up. He better be. I think that he would struggle with that, and I don’t think he loves
client services enough to persevere, and he’d be like,
what is it all worth anyway? Who cares? On the flip side, there’s
an interesting thing. Believe it or not, this is a weird thing. Though A.J. is hands down the most capable person to be the CEO of VaynerMedia, I could almost see him
not wanting to do it, and I could almost see so many people here internally saying, no we have to continue the hustle and so, it’d be interesting. I think we built a very
interesting culture here. Similarly, Brandon runs
Wine Library with my dad, and Bobby and Justin, it’s all family. My best friend, my brother
in law, my cousin, my dad. My ego made me think that
Wine Library would hurt more than it did without me there. To answer your question, I am
happy with how Wine Library has performed with me not there. That being said, do I think it
could be way way, way better? Of course, I mean I think I’m great. Do I think the businesses
are better off without me than with me?
Absolutely not. Are they in places where they
won’t go out of business? Absolutely. Are they in places where they have no prayer of the hyper growth that I create when I’m the operator? That’s for damn sure. The biggest thing that
I create is the ability to grow big businesses fast as shit. That’s gonna end up being my
legacy if I do it one more time and I’m not on business number two that I’ve taken in a 36 month
period with no cash infusion to very big heights. That is a very difficult
task in a cash flow basis. The companies that grow big on funding, that make sense. The Ubers, and that
company is way better than what I’ve executed, but still when you have hundreds of millions
of dollars of funding, the speed is what I’m talking about. Forget about the business. Well in a non-funded business, to be able to build that speed,
that takes an incredible game of chicken, because
you’re playing cash flow versus growth. Being able to afford. You know how proud I am that we’ve never had lay offs
because we lost a client? That is unheard of in agency world, and it’s triple unheard of for the fastest growing agency of all time in people. I’m proud. That is what I’m uniquely great at. They won’t grow as fast, but there’s enormous talent around me that is able to do their thing. That being said, I’m so much, not only the executional leader
of my friends and families and business, I think
I’m the emotional leader with a lot of them too. I would think that they
would really struggle with my absence, and would
crumble into a little hole. I’m just kidding. I think they would struggle with that.

“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.