– [Voiceover] June asks, “My
husband is a big picture “kind of guy, but so is his wishlist. “Any advice on Christmas
shopping for this type?” – June, this is a great question. If he’s a big picture kinda guy like I am, I can answer this
perfectly so I hope he is because I know exactly what I want, which is one-of-a-kind experiences or effort, let me explain, meaning, you don’t need to spend a lotta money. For example, here is the greatest gift that Lizzie could ever get me. She could go around for months, my 40th is coming up next November, she can go around and
interview every person that I’ve ever met, or she should come to Vayner and basically get everybody on video telling me that
I’m the greatest, right? That to me is an ultimate present and it’s unscalable, that’s a lotta work. To me, the way to really wow your husband is to make something
that is a one-of-a-kind and something that is not scalable. See, my friends, the reason people like those kind of gifts is it’s effort. Money… A lot of times, listen,
it’s hard to get money, but a lot of money from a
gifting standpoint is easy. You spend and you buy
something, that’s great. But your time, your effort,
your heart and soul, those are the things you can’t replace, and so for my wife and I
and the likeminded people that I’ve met in my life, it
is about those experiences. It’s about the dinner that you have that’s special that somebody cooks, or when somebody makes something. Lizzie got me a gift for
our 10th wedding anniversary that I’ll keep to myself
that is so incredible and it speaks to that
world, and so I would try to do something that’s not scalable. Call up five of his
best friends growing up that he’s fallen out of touch with and have them create an audio podcast of reminiscing of stories
when they were kids, something that just isn’t replicatable, something that can’t be bought, something that took your
effort to execute for him. – [Voiceover] Antoine asks,
“What keeps you up at night?”

– [Voiceover] Roommate Harmony asks, “Hey Gary, do you think
it’s necessary to have an outgoing personality to
be a successful entrepreneur?” – Roommate Harmony, this
is a tremendous question. I think there’s never been less important to be extroverted to be a
successful entrepreneur. Oh, I don’t know. Just look at every successful entrepreneur that everybody talks about. Like Zucks and Ev
Williams and Kevin Systrom and David Karp. You know, Facebook, Twitter,
Tumblr, and Instagram. I mean, Ben Silbermann, Pinterest. I mean… It’s actually the glory days
of the introvert entrepreneur. Because of technology, because
of sitting behind the screen, because it doesn’t all
happen face to face anymore, it’s never been a better time to do that. And that’s, not by the
way, always been the way. There’s way to win at, you know, it’s about betting on strengths. I do things based on my strengths. I’m an entrepreneur that is extroverted and I surround myself with people and I do that kind of stuff. I put myself out there. Introverted entrepreneurs
need to not fake the funk. Like, it’d be stupid for
me to sit behind a computer all day, every day and then that was just the way I rolled. Mistake, leaving the magic on the table. Equally, someone who is awkward and is like, yeah my
startup is, thank you. Yeah, my startup is really, like that guy or gal is
probably not the kind of person that wants to kind of
bet on their personality and they need to sit down all day and focus and so I think
it’s betting on strengths. – [Voiceover] Daniel
asks, “Numbers of monthly

– 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] Michael asks, “Hope you had “a great time at last
night’s holiday bash. “What’s your favorite holiday tradition?” – Michael, hands down, my
favorite holiday tradition is Thanksgiving, just
goin’ to my parents’ house in Hunterdon County. It’s just somethin’, I
don’t know, I just love it. Obviously, we talked about
it a couple episodes ago, but it’s really just you know,
I think you get the theme, it’s happened twice here,
I’m a people person, I’m a family guy, that’s the one that’s almost like the non-debatable. My dad screwed up birthdays
a couple years ago by taking my mom to Italy on the birthday and breaking up the family dynamics, and now I always razz him for that, because then I had a really
dear friend get married during my mom’s birthday,
and we went away, and so now it’s broken up a little bit. Birthdays used to be pretty sacred. The family shifted a
little bit on that one, but Thanksgiving is like,
“We’ve got to be together, “we’ve got to be at mom’s.” And it means a lot to me, I get to see everybody I love so much,
and there’s so, you know. The football games, and the me and AJ doing something crazy like we bought expensive basketball cards this year. You know, just, it’s always a lot of fun, my sister’s kids, blah
blah blah blah blah. So, Thanksgiving, getting together, nothing too crazy, nothing
too, you know, wild, but that’s the scoop.

– [Voiceover] Eddie
asks, “What three values “do you hold highest in life?” – Eddie this is a great question. You know, I don’t know
if I have three values that I hold, I’ll just
start rattling off things that I really appreciate. You know, I think the
first, you know, thing, and I don’t know if this is in any order, but I’m a humongous fan of patience. Lack of patience has caused so many people from not achieving the
upside that they deserve, and that kills me. You know, the value of (spits) this. Word is bond, I think really matters. I think, you know, having
somebody in your life that you just know that you can trust because when they say
they’re gonna do something, they do it, and then in a weird way, contradicting that, but not really, I’m a huge fan of somebody who’s nimble and empathetic, because when
you really think about it, I, for example, am telling
you that I love (spits) word is bond, but then when somebody actually (spits) does that,
and doesn’t deliver on it, in a weird way, I’m okay with it. And I’m very attracted to
that own characteristic within myself, because
I think I understand that even though you really wanted to, you know, something
happened that made you not, and I want to dig into why, and so I think nimbleness, or empathy is
very, very, very important. I think people that are grateful
are extremely attractive, you know, nothing’s more ugly to me than somebody who’s spoiled, and I think, you know, at some level,
hypocrisy is the thing I hate the most in the world. So, the opposite of that,
which is maybe (spits) that, or I don’t know, but those
are things that come to mind. – [Voiceover] Chris asks,
“Has the selfie replaced

– [Voiceover] Simplybeingmum asks, are you a morning person? – I am not a morning person. I sleep like a brick. Like, I mean, I literally believe that somebody could break into my home, stab me in the leg with a knife and still then continue
to steal everything out of my apartment. I just sleep hard. And so when I wake up,
it’s just not great. That being said, no
question, I’m waking up a hell of a lot better
because of my working out. A lot of times I’ve been talking about how I haven’t picked up energy but what I have picked up
is the ability to wake up on this five and half,
six hour kind of window that I sleep, which I
know a lot of you think I sleep three or four hours. Heck, I’d sleep seven or eight if I can really like, when and if I can… By the way, and this is a
whole another long thing that we gotta get into eventually, it’s not about how much you sleep. It’s what you do while you’re awake. So, a couple things for
the question of the day.

– [Voiceover] Pressian asks,
“How exactly did your mother instill that self-confidence in you?” – And finally, Pressian, thank you so much for
asking this question, ’cause I always love
to brag about my mama. She she instilled so much self-confidence in me because of a couple things. One, I probably had some
level of it in my own DNA, but she brainwashed me. My mom made me think that
the things that I was doing that many parents, on the negative side, put down their kids for, what the far majority of
parents would consider mundane, like getting a good haircut or, like, running quickly to pick up the ball, like it was so athletic, stuff that none of you would ever think is the kind of thing that you
would compliment your child for, the kind of things I compliment Misha for, which is the greatest
twirl I’ve ever seen ever, is what she did for me, and you know what? You start believing it. I can tell you this, and I’m positive of this, I know that the peeps in this room think more highly of themselves today than before they started jamming with me. The reason this company is so special, one of the funniest things
that happens in this company, is when somebody comes
in new that’s senior and they are completely flabbergasted by the confidence of the
youngsters in this room. And I bet you, as they’re all
thinking about it right now, and obviously Staphon and India
are here a little bit less, and DRock a little bit in the middle, and Alex a little less,
and Steve a lot more, I know that that’s what I do, maybe not to the extreme
level that my mom did for me, obviously it was very focused, one child. We have many children in the house, but I would even say that many of you have started to feel that way, because the truth is, my friends, positive energy is a good thing. I don’t know what else to tell you. And when it comes from a pure place, it’s double good. And so she just focused on it. It’s in her and the way that
it’s in me, we’re similar, and she just kept pounding
me and making me feel like the ordinary was something
that was extraordinary, until I finally believed it so much that that’s what I feel
about myself all the time. And if you don’t have good
empathy and self-awareness, it can go into a very dangerous place, but if you know how to balance it, and my mom balanced it by
punching me in my mouth with her raw hand, not kidding, when I
would do something wrong, so she’s got a little old-school
Eastern European in her, and that’s how she did it, with an enormous balance of just good stuff, man,
really good parenting. Really, really, really good parenting.

“How do you not procrastinate that well?” – Cédric. It’s unbelievable how well Cedric the Entertainer branded himself, because I literally was about to call Cédric here the Entertainer. Cédric, I’m calling you the Entertainer. As a matter of fact, I want to make a little piece of content for Cédric and I’ll tweet it out. Cédric, you won. I need a little “Cédric
is the Entertainer,” take his Twitter profile,
and we’re gonna make him. This is a new thing we can
do on the #AskGaryVee Show. We could make things for
fans, one-off t-shirts, pieces of content, I’m
seeing something here. This is gonna make a lot more people ask a lot more questions. Cédric, here’s a curveball, I actually think I’m an
obnoxious procrastinator, while equally not being. Meaning I stay in constant audit mode. Can I get a constant
audit mode alert here? By the way, I have to
watch yesterday’s episode to see what you did with the alerts. Yesterday had a lot of editing.
I gotta watch it outright. I don’t watch my stuff, by the way. It’s a little fun fact for all of you. Sorry, DRock, Staphon,
get to see the great work. There’s a ton of stuff
that I procrastinate, and I think I’m a procrastinator, but what I think I also am is always leveling up
whatever’s most important and prioritizing it in real time. Team can tell you here, I bet you Steve’s favorite inside joke is DeMayo. Can somebody get me the, literally, get me DeMayo? Watch this. This will answer your question
perfectly, VaynerNation, because the truth is, I do procrastinate, but I’m adjusting to
the reality of my life at the moment I’m living it, so if something is
super-important yesterday, I can literally decide that
it’s less important in an hour, predicated on what comes into my inbox, or the meeting that I’m about
to have right after this. And so the reason I think
it feels like I’m not, and so much is getting accomplished, is my pants are on fire for the thing that I deem most important at this exact moment. And that is how it works over and over, where’s DeMayo? And over. I’m trying to stall here. And over, and over, and over again. Let’s go to the next question,
we’ll get back to DeMayo. – [Man offscreen] Oh, here he is. – Oh, here we go. Don’t go, DRock. Leave all that. Don’t
edit that, I’ll be pissed. Now, tell the VaynerNation how– – What’s up, world. – Tell the VaynerNation
how often I’ll send an email that will say “now, this is top priority” versus the next day, this is top priority, and then you get crippled
by the notion of, hold on.
(laughter) If, like, literally, when I’m like, no no, this is the #1 priority in my life. – No, tippy-top priority
is the way you always say. – Tippy-top? Tippy-top. – TIppy-top priority. Yeah, probably every
time you’re on a flight, there’s probably about 15 emails
that come after the flight. – And then you struggle
with, like, what’s tippy-top versus number one. – Yeah, unless you say tippy-top priority. – Is that the new context? (laughter) – If that’s what you’ve
been using for the month. – Alright. – So maybe it’ll change for the new year. – Thanks, man. And that’s what happens, right? Matt, my admin, you know, he has to struggle through what is tippy-top priority of the moment, because it might change tomorrow, so as long as you’re executing
something every day, as a tippy-top priority item, then you’re moving the needle. And sure, something might have moved from second most important
to fourth most important to ninth most important, Alex, you’re dealing with this right now. A lot of things that you
would have dealt with, like BizDev was like the most important, you can’t get a minute from me because something has caused it to become the eighth most important thing versus the number one important thing, and, like, there’s a lot of serendipity, Steve’s been waiting
for this top six things at WineLibrary for four days, I found a minute, I decided it was tippy-top
priority of that minute, and it just works that way at all times. – [Voiceover] Pressian asks,
“How exactly did your mother

– [Voiceover] Danny asks, “In the past, “what was your equivalent of that “one almond moment from episode 46? “What did you potentially miss out on?” – Danny, I want everybody
in the VaynerNation to go to their copy of
Crush It!, my first book if you’ve got it, and I
want you to go to the first 20 or 30 pages where I do acknowledgments. You will notice that I
acknowledge every one of my family members and then a random name. That random name is Travis Kalanik. Travis is the co-founder and
CEO of a company called Uber that is rumored today to be raising at a $40 billion valuation. When they were raising money
at a $4 million valuation, I passed even though
Travis is one of my boys and I think is one of the best
entrepreneurs in the world. I, at that moment, just
bought a new apartment that liquidated me at
a very aggressive level and I wasn’t so sure
about the idea of Uber that early on, but not that
I didn’t like that idea. I just didn’t think that
Garret, the co-founder of Stumble Upon and then Uber
who came up with the idea, and Travis, I didn’t
think they were actually going to do it. I thought they were going
to hire somebody else and as somebody who went
through, and you’ve heard me talk about in this past
my failures where I put other CEOs in place and I don’t drive it, if it was them driving
it, I would have got in. Hopefully, maybe, maybe
not, but not once but twice because Travis and I are
such boys that I pass on investing in Uber at the angel round. Now, I later invested in
them and I’m going to do quite well, but the valuation
differences are substantial and that $25,000 investment
that I probably would have made, because those were the size
of the checks that I made, right now would be worth
in the ballpark of, if at this $40 billion
valuation, I don’t know what the dilution was or the
prorata, but you can very comfortably say that
you’re looking at somebody who missed an almond by passing in a world where I was
writing $25,000 checks to a lot of dumb crap, let alone the guy, the only guy that I gave
a shout out to in my book in 2009, two years before Uber came out. That $25,000 investment is probably worth in the ballpark between
$75 and $200 million. That’s one big (bleep) almond. Do you know, and I sit
here in front of you with ambitions to buy the New York Jets and no question if I
made that one decision, that one simple decision
that was right there for the taking for me, I would be dramatically further along to my goal right this minute than I actually am. Remember I told you
yesterday that I can take 8,000 punches in the face? That’s 25,000 punches in
the face in one punch. That’s what you have to do
when you’re playing the game. That’s where you have to understand when you’re an entrepreneur. Those misses are going
to come in my career. That’s as big of an almond as I know.

– We’ve had a couple
opportunities to talk before. I do the sales and marketing for the Lancaster Hummus Company. My question today is what
was the biggest decision you made in your life that made you as successful as you are today? I’ve watched a lot of your
keynotes. I’ve watched a lot of your different rants
and ways and everything and interviews, but I
want to know what is your honest opinion on the biggest thing that you did that made you as
successful as you are today. Thanks Gary, and I look
forward to your answer. – Thanks brother. Man, I’m so pissed that
technology wasn’t around. I would have been able to… Is this was around when I
was around, we would have been able to play me
as a 14 year old asking some entrepreneur that
question on YouTube. So pissed, anyway! You know, I’m glad you
asked this question because I now can really, like, I
was going there in my mind. I know what the answer is,
it’s a weird answer actually. I think the biggest
decision I ever made was in fourth grade when I
got an F on a science test in Mr. Mulnar’s class, and I decided literally after, you know, first I hid the, I had to
get it signed by my mom. I don’t know if they still do
that when you get bad grades, like this was some 80’s stuff. But, yeah they’re doing it? I had to get it signed
and I was not interested in being punished, so I
didn’t bring it to her. Then I put it under my bed and
then it sat there for 2 days but then my, I was still
young, my conscience still had too much power
and like, I got scared and told my mom about it. By the way, three years
later I was flushing every report card directly down the toilet. You can evolve quickly. When you make the mental
decision that I made, no joke I literally
remember sitting in my room and having a weird, weird
kind of like crying, debating, like moment in fourth grade in my small bedroom deciding screw school, I’m a business
man, and I’m going to eat the pain of being punished
every four times a year during the school year,
being viewed upon as a loser or a kid that doesn’t have
a shot by all of society because I see something different. I have enough self awareness of who I am, I’m going to win and
literally, and this is weird as I’m a fourth grader and
you know you’re young… how old are you in the fourth grade? 9, 10, you know, and I’m literally
deciding that I’m willing to eat it for the next 8
years maybe even 12 years of my life where, that was
just a hardcore decision. And it’s not that I didn’t care,
like I went to every class. I just decided to hone in on my skills. That I would learn more
about selling baseball cards that later, at 14, became I would learn more about selling wine, I honed in. And so, it was the first
time, my man, that I made a decision that I was going
to fight society’s optics and deliver on what I thought
I was, and that’s what I did. – [Voiceover] Rollinson asks,
“Is paid promotion for jabs