– Gary, what’s going on? It’s Captain Cory
from CaptCory.tv and the Captain’s Vlog on YouTube. I’m in the back of the airplane
because it’s more quiet but I got a couple
questions for you. First off, Gary aside for your
incredible interpersonal skills, what would you say is the most
important leadership quality that you deploy amongst
those that you lead? And the second part
of that question, what are two important
leadership qualities that we as young leaders can develop
that’ll make us more effective as leaders and have a greater
influence and make a bigger difference amongst those? Appreciate all you do.
Love the show. I’m not watching as much any
more ’cause I’m grinding and hustling but love it.
Love what you do, man. If you ever need
a ride too, man, let me know. – That’s good. That’s my big thesis
by the way, Oliver. Unlike a lot of people, I actually want my audience
of people to decline– – Sure. – because I want to inspire
people to actually go do. – Right. – The amount of
reading all our books, watching all our stuff,
that’s fine and I like that. – Yep. My tagline’s always
been I get shit done. Just get it done. – You’ve been a successful
leader in your companies, what’s the biggest thing
that has really worked for you? – I think being humanistic which
is a word that I don’t think many people, especially
in this country, use. But there’s a real value
to putting humans first. And it sounds so trite but
there’s a real value to having empathy and putting humans
first and looking at them from a perspective that you can
say, how do I help you grow? What is both this sympathy parts
and the nourishment parts that are going to help you realize
your potential as a person? And I’ve started
seven companies now and made a lot of mistakes. Human resources is the hardest
thing to do at scaling a company because I always make
the joke they are neither a resource nor human,
human resources. And so–
– That’s why the head of mine is called Chief Heart
Officer, Claude. Claude is the number two person in this company
and everybody knows it. It is the foundation at
Vayner because we sell people. – Yep, exactly and so, I mean
you’re in a service business, in a content business so
that makes sense and so I think taking a lens of humanism has
been the biggest gift for me. It’s one of the reasons
I moved to Iceland. You have a humanistic society that doesn’t punish people
for their weaknesses. – I like that. – You have no poverty,
you have no homelessness. You have reform
instead of prison. Big, important things especially
coming from a place like Mississippi where I was born. You look at that and
that’s a place where people are not
treated like humans. There are systems in place. I remember with American Express
we made a movie called “Spent” about payday lenders in America. Talk about your
audience and the pains. That’s $1 trillion business
in America that is parasitic. – Yep. – It adds no value to
the system whatsoever. In Iceland, a human human right is to be able to
access your money. – Sure. – Here we have the basic
principles of our economy are inaccessible in my hometown to
80% of the people have to go to a payday lender and a check
cashing place and spend a percentage of their income just to take just to be able
to spend their money. That is not humanistic. That is counter to anything that will help a system
grow and evolve. – I couldn’t agree
more with the human– – Not to rant about
payday lenders but fuck– – but it’s a valid point and
I think from my standpoint it’s listening and
it’s self-awareness. I think the biggest mistake
charismatic CEOs make is they try to fake the funk and act
like they know everything. – Mhmmm. – I always feel like I think
I know everything and lot of you leave
comments about ego. Only ’cause I stay in my lane. There’s a very narrow
world where I’m very good. I tend to never go out of it. You notice how
I have social media and business people
on the show. This is not a healthcare expert. We’re not talking about
hair dying activities. This is not, nobody’s gonna be
on the show talking about how to raise cattle because I’m not
gonna put myself in a position where I do not know what
the fuck I am talking about. – Right. – And so being all-in on what
you know and then being very empathetic and listening and deploying humility against
the things you don’t know. People pick up on
that real, real, real fast. Because when you come across
somebody that works for you that does know the thing that
your bullshitting about and you bullshit it,
you just lost a winner. – Yep.
– You’ve just lost a winner. – It’s about building
that trusted relationship at every level of all of this. – I got to get the
hell out of here.

– Hey Gary, Matt LaMarsh
here in Atlanta, Georgia. I hope you’re doin’ well. Had a quick question
about self-awareness. Do you think it’s more
about maturity and wisdom or is it something that
you’re just built with? Thanks so much
for takin’ the time. Have a great day. – That’s a good question. – So I’ve been talking a
lot about self-awareness. I’d love for you
to take the floor first. Maybe you haven’t had as much time to
ponder this world. What’s your take
on self-awareness? Do you feel like you have it? Do you feel like it grew? For example, I believe
it is the ultimate power. Once you have that, boy
can you start navigating. I’m struggling ’cause
so many people have really caught
attention to this and are asking me
to help them figure out how to gain more of
it and I’m like Jesus. There are certain places
where your skill set stops. Mine stops at how am
I gonna, I don’t know. Boy do I know the people
that I know that have it are winning and not
just financially or (mumbles). They’re just in a happy place because of that self-awareness. What is your thought
on self-awareness? – Yeah, I think it’s a
skill like any other. – So you do think it’s
something that can be it’s own. – Sure, I mean people
might have natural capacity for it from how they were raised like any other skill. – In the world? – Some people are
good at basketball and some people
have to work very hard to be good at basketball. – Do you think
one caps out though? In a basketball analogy,
Dunk is a nice looking athlete but he’s never going
to be an NBA player. He has a ceiling of
his basketball skills, do you think people
have a ceiling to their self-awareness? – I don’t know if
people have a ceiling, but I think
self-awareness is a skill, a practicable, learnable skill and I think one
of the big things about self-awareness
is we don’t really know how we’re being perceived. We think we know
how we’re being perceived and sometimes we act in a way, when we act all pompous
because we want to appear stronger, we really appear weak. – That’s right. Which is a common
one by the way. – Yeah right and so
I think the big thing about learning to be
self aware is being open to the feedback from
people who love you and care about you who
are wiling to say to you “When you said that,
you looked and sounded “like an ass.” – Yeah, it’s funny– – And to be open
to that kind of harsh but from a good place
critique is the only way to learn how you come across. – It’s funny you said that. I think the closest
I’ve ever gotten to answer this is that
and then, actually putting that inner circle
in a safe place to tell you the truth. – Exactly right. – Because those
same people are scared, they love you. – And if you’re defensive
the whole time– – Game over. – Then you are not
learning self-awareness. – I would tell you that
my reading of comments over the last decade on social, and taking each
with a grain of salt. Your biggest fans,
you can only let your ego go so far and you’re aware
that some people troll for the sake
of getting reactions from the community and
things of that nature but the net, the millions
in a net composite score has definitely been,
I would always say that listening has
done a lot more for me even though I love to
talk and always talk. That consumption
pattern has been a very big deal for me. – So there’s
a wonderful story– – Please.
– about listening. – Okay. – The problem when
people say you need to be a better listener is
we’re human beings and we need to communicate
and communication is two ways,
listening and speaking. So but everybody’s
like “You’ve got to be “a better listener” but
here’s the best understanding I have of that. So Nelson Mandela
is universally regarded as a great leader
which is important because different people
are viewed differently in different nations
but Nelson Mandela universally regarded as
a great leader, right? He was actually
the son of a tribal chief and he was asked
in an interview once “How did you learn
to be a great leader?” And he tells the story
of how he would go to tribal meetings
with his father and he remembers two
things; they always sat in a circle and
his father was always the last to speak. And in terms of
leadership and listening, I think the idea
of be a better listener is actually half the advice. I think the advice is practice being the last to speak. You see this all
the time in meetings where everybody
will sit around a room, the senior guy will be like “Alright here’s the
problem, here’s what I think “we should do
but I’m really interested “in what your thoughts are,”
– Yes. – “Let’s go around the
room” but it’s too late. You’ve influenced them. – You’ve created the footprint. – And people bend and
mold as opposed to saying “Here’s the problem,
I’m interested “in what you have to say”
without saying anything and not even, and having
the, and here’s the, this takes practice. Not even getting a
hint whether you agree or disagree, if anything
you ask questions to learn more,
you get the benefit of hearing everybody’s opinion, everybody gets to feel heard and then you get
to render your opinion. – So I would tell you,
and this is for people that are running businesses, that is a micro
example of the way, and I think
makes a ton of sense. I would tell you
Andy, you obviously direct report to me,
you run our team, I think people would be stunned by how little you talk at all. Like the level of,
right, like the level of micro management I put on, like my version
of that is actually letting people do their thing and watching it from,
speaking last. I guess my punchline
is by the time I get into the meeting
where we’re like “Here’s the problem”,
the amount of listening that has been done
because I’ve created such a white canvas
for the leaders to do their thing and
I can watch it and contextualize
what they’re doing, is the macro version
because once you’re in that meeting room,
that’s basically the final pitch of
what’s been going on over that period of time. – Okay. – Yeah, that’s interesting,
it’s interesting. I believe in that quite a bit.
Okay, good. I mean I think, I on
the other hand do think that all skills have a max out. At some level,
your hard wiring limits– – So you can’t continue to grow ’til the day you die? – No, I think that’s the
black and white version of that. I think that
you can continue to make incremental steps
but I think that there are people– – Oh, so there’s
a diminishing return. That’s interesting.
– I believe that because I believe some
people are just delirious in this chase that
they’re gonna be at this upside of any skill– – That’s interesting. – and people lose
practicality at some level. – And the question is
is where is everybody? You know, if here is the max out where the diminishing returns. – That’s right. – The question is is… – Do you stop here? – Does anybody even get here? – And which is why
I’m always very careful to not play too
much to the negative because I don’t want
somebody to stop here but in the same token,
in a world where there’s a lot of
voices and everybody can do everything,
we need to level some level of practicality.
– Oh that’s good, I like that. Yeah, that’s interesting.
– Oh thank you.

– Aside from teaching money and
marketing tricks do you have any regarding love? Isn’t that cute? – Yeah, it’s adorable. – My advice on love is very
similar to my advice on, I actually think
my business advice is actually my life advice. If you really unwind it. I think 51/49 really matters
and that’s more relationship now than love. I think that, I always say
the magic is in the gray. I think that’s how love is. It is not calculated. It’s just going to happen in a lot of times in a lot of ways. I actually think all the advice
I give actually executes to a love genre. I think the relationship
part’s more interesting to me. The 51/49, the listening and
counterpunching, a lot of those things the way I think
about customer and business relationships are very much the
way I think of the relationships in general. That’s how I’ve rolled. As far as the falling in love
part, the serendipity, it’s very similar to the things I think
about business where you can’t control what you can’t control
and don’t be crippled by it. That would probably
my biggest advice. Got any love
advice married man? – Yeah. – How long have
you been married? – Going on four years. – That’s awesome.
– Yeah. You want someone
that’ll just complement, that’s an addition to you. My wife is
everything that I lack. I’m being so romantic but
it’s in so many ways it is the cliché that
everybody says it is. I look at my wife and she’s
capable of so many things that I am not capable of that
why I need her in my life. – Sure. I married my mom. – [India] Yeah.
– You married your mom? – Yeah, my wife and my mom have
a lot, a lot of similarities other than my wife is very
organized and structured and my mom’s not. Other than that a lot of
their personalities are similar. – [India] Interesting.
– Yeah. – [India] They say a lot of
guys end up doing that, marrying their mom. – I think the mom is the North
Star for guys they go either hard core to the
left or the right. My dad married the anti-mom. – [India] Maybe it’s
again a generational thing. Maybe it skips.
– It skips. Alright, let’s go India.

“I’d like to know what you
feel makes a great teacher?” – I think what makes a great
teacher is one that doesn’t impose what they want the
student to learn but the person that actually audits
the student and understands where to point them. A counter puncher, per se, more
so than somebody who’s got a strict blueprint and
whether or not you fit into that blueprint is irrelevant. I, teacher Rick, am going to
make you go down this path and this is what you have to learn
and I think it’s a huge mistake. It’s my biggest problem
with curriculum in traditional schooling. It does not account
for the creative. The over smart the
slightly different. And what it’s trying to do is
to create an 80% of these type of output workers. And the 20% either pro or con
get kind of left along the way. And so I think a
great teacher listens. And a great teacher reacts and
a great teacher deploys empathy and understands there’s other
things can sniff out there’s problems at home if you’re in
the younger years or as an older I feel like I’m a teacher and
I feel like one of the biggest things that I try to say all
the time is I’m just telling you what works for me, please don’t,
I don’t tell you have to work 18 hours a day. I don’t tell you you
have to do anything. I tell you that
this is what works. These are some theories and
use the context around that. I think a teachers need a
lot more listening skills and adjustment to the reality versus
how they were taught or what they’re trying to
accomplish by year’s end. By year’s end, these
23 students are going to know how to do multiplication.
It’s so tactical. It doesn’t feel like a teacher
at all and I question and I push and I prod and I poke and I battle a lot of my
teaching friends of are you just checking
the box for your eight months a year job to get it through to
hit tenure to be in a union that never creates any vulnerability
or are you actually trying to teach these kids? And I hope everyone
understands I’m not pumped I’m not cynical against
teachers. I don’t think teachers, I don’t. I think a lot of times,
sometimes people when they hear micro answers from me think
I’m tough on teachers or this and that nature,
I’m mad at the game. I wish teachers got
paid $400,000 year. I send my kids to private
school I spent a lot of money. I don’t like the system that a
lot of people K-12 have to play within and I think a lot of
those talented teachers could be doing unbelievable things
and I’m so excited show the computer. Not that computer, by the
time it actually happens, I’m so excited actually
it’s probably contact lenses I’m so excited for this. Because so many of the great
teachers in the world won’t have to play within the confines of
the politics of the traditional school system and will teach, be
way more profitable and make a much bigger and this is a big
one make much bigger impact on their students lives. – [Voiceover] Ben asks, “Would
you consider adopting children?”

– [Voiceover] Austin asks: “Hey GaryVee, “I’m a sales consultant for
Best Buy selling computers. “What advice can you give me to be “a better salesman?” – Austin, I think you
need to reverse engineer who you’re selling to. So, if I were you, Austin, I would spend all of January taking people
out to lunch and dinner or a drink, or getting them on the phone, but literally spending the
entire month of January not selling to people, and
just listen to the people that you sell to to find out
what their pain points are. I would walk in and be like, hey DRock. You know I sell you computer stuff and things of that nature. What are your pain points? What’s your problem? What’s your struggles in your business? Like, let’s cut the crap. Yes, I want to sell to you,
but let’s take a step back. I want to sell to you by providing you some sort of value. Maybe I have a friend. Maybe I will recommend that
you watch the #AskGaryVee show to make your business better. Maybe I will do a lot of
things, but what I’m doing is I’m providing you
value, and our conversation and our relationship is not just predicated on me selling. You know, I was talking
to one of my friends, and he was like I want to
have better relationships with girls, I’m like cool, why don’t you make it about
something other than sex? Like if your whole relationship is I want to hang out with you
every time to just hook up, there’s probably a good chance that person doesn’t think that you’re
providing them much value outside of that execution,
which is a fine execution. Everybody needs it, I
get it, blah blah blah. Same way I think about sales. If you’re just selling every single time, that is what your foundational
relationship is based on, and you become spam
and sales all the time. Why don’t you spend all of
January not selling ever, once, and opening your ears and
listening, and trying to help, even outside of the context of you. Even out of the context of you, meaning, how can you help them
besides just their business? Maybe you’ll get to know
DRock and find out that his aunt is a huge Dallas Cowboys fan, and you just get a Dallas Cowboys hat. Say, hey, you go to eBay and buy a Tony Doresett opened starting line up for $0.49, $3 shipping,
but you send and say hey give this to your aunt. It’s not what you spent. It was the thought. That stuff matters. That’s it?

“Gary, how do you analyze all
the social media data “that you get every day? “Personally and corporately.” – What’s the corporately part, like, how does VaynerMedia do it versus me? I do it completely on what got me here in the first place, and Brian, you know, this might be interesting, Brian, it’d be interesting, this is
probably to make me feel good, but you can go anywhere you want with it, you have an interesting perspective, because you were actually
there when my thing happened. There’s not that many people that were. So, you know, I did it back then on feel. I was right about a lot
of things intuitively, and that’s what I do now, I mean, I just read it, I read my feeds, I read my comments, I look
at the enagement levels on what I’m putting out, so
I’m analyst on my own stuff. Vayner as a corporate entity is doing it much more
Excel sheet than gut feel than I am, they’re
analyzing numbers deeper, they’re converting that into a report for their clients, I’m sure
you guys do similar stuff, but me, personally, I’m just reading it. Like, I’m watching how fast
I get likes on Instagram when it’s convenient, not every post. You know, if I’m on a plane
and I do it right before I take off, and as soon
as I get the Wi-Fi, I can look at it, like,
there’s kind of serendipity to the way I analyze, but I’m feeling it. I was very intuitive in
the way I marched in, ’06-7-8-9, a lot of
those things worked out. I continue to do that, I continue, look, I’m doing it even with the show. If you’re noticing, Brian
is now the culmination of a period here where we
brought in a lot of guests by comparison, so I’m
always testing and learning, looking at the comments,
trying to understand, trying to vibe with it. Bri? – The one thing I will say about you as your friend, is that
you’ve always cared, right, so at a time where, we’ve
come up with a lot of people over the years that just
really try to buy into the hype, create the hype, and really try to grow their fan bases,
and all of that activity, without actually adding
value to the community. You’re still hustling probably
harder than ever before, maybe more than you did early on. You take that feedback, I watched this, you take that feedback, you
actually do something with it, you do shows like this
where you can add value to people’s lives, people’s streams, with everything that you do, so I think your metric
system is just sort of a validation of the fact that
you’re listening to people and trying to give back to the community. That’s evident, and you
should be rewarded with that. – Appreciate it. You like that, India? And by the way, by the
way, I have been asked by 900 people to sit in this seat and do this, and we’ve been at 6, and, like, 5, and one of them was my father-in-law,
so it’s not, you know, I think it speaks to your ways. Well, and then there’s all
the behind-the-scenes stuff that you and I know, which is, there’s the business stuff, and you can be very business-oriented, this is a good lesson for
a lot of the youngsters, there’s the black-and-white
business stuff like, ‘yo, homie, support my book?’ Sure, I could do that, but
then there’s just life, right. Like when somebody’s sick, when you post something on your Facebook that you’re having a tough time, or the, all the people
that we share in common that we’ve never sat
in the same room with, that, how they talk about us to each other when we get brought up
in a setting, right? It’s all those other things that are part of the equation as well. – You know, I think, if
there’s one thing I’ve learned along this journey is to constantly give more than you take and. – 51-49. – Treat people in ways that
make them feel more special when they leave an engagement with you, and then, last is, just
live and act and breathe as if you want people to talk about you when you’re not in the room
in a way that’s complimentary. – 100%. Legacy and brand.

“Can you build a strong
social media following “solely by engaging with your audience “or is content an absolute must?” – Content is an absolute
must, interesting. (laughter) Listen, I mean, I think you
could build up something really, really interesting by
being a full-pledge listener. You know, it depends on
how you define content, which is why I kind of wavered off. If you’re listening, you’re gonna respond. Your responses are your content. So, if you’re asking me,
“Can you just search, “engage with conversations
and put out those answers?” I would argue that that’s what I did do in 2006, seven, and eight. Outside of me just putting a link to the Wine Library TV show, which is a pretty big piece of content, so I can’t really go there, so. Look, I would you I’ve
disproportionately gotten value from my engagement, but
I think historically, I’ve underminded, or even
slightly disrespected my content. I’ve changed over the
last three to four years on that point of view. I realized the content did matter. I think it’s a really
interesting question. But I think your answers are your content. I mean, very honestly, I
think that’s why my brand in the business world
and entrepreneur land and startup land has gotten stronger, because I think I’ve positioned myself to actually use my
responses as my content. We are literally, this is
literally a very meta-answer. We are in the context of a show that is predicated on me giving answers and engaging versus me
self-starting around the content. But then, that in itself is
the depth of the content. So I think it depends
on how far you take it, in the, you know, semantically,
I would say, yes you can. Because I think you can put a lot of depth and a lot of oomph and a lot of weight, you know, this is heavy,
and a lot of weight. Um, you know what Mike makes me do? This crap. It’s the worst. Um, uh, yes, because I think
you can put a lot of oomph behind the content in response. I call it counter-punching. I would argue that Floyd Mayweather is gonna go down as this
generation’s best boxer completely predicated on your answer, so take that for what it is.

“good listener?” – Malik, I think good
listening comes from actual intent and actually wanting
to be a good listener. Like anything in the world,
when you want to beat something, be something, and beat. I wanna beat some things right now. If you wanna be something,
you need to actually mean it. Meaning, I decided I
wanted to get in better shape and health, I just
went out and did it. Like words are such shit. You know what’s the matter
with a lot of people? Like a lot of people. A lot of people watching this show, a lot of people in the
world, a lot of people, is there’s only actions. You know I always talk about
intent is what matters, right? Like at the end of the
day, I’m publicly tending, every time of that, I get tons of comments with like scripture
from the Bible, I think. I apologize I’m not up
on that, but I think I’m pretty sure what it’s like. Intense is good for leading things like, basically it says, intent’s great,
but like you can say you have good intent, but if your actions are you’re doing wrong things, like, and I get it. To me, like intent is the starting point so I think it’s nice to start there, but I agree. I agree. Words are the problem. Malik, you wanna be a good listener? Be a good (beeps) listener. Like, when somebody’s talking, listen. When somebody’s saying something, listen and try to do that. Because listening is not just listening, listening is listening
and then doing something about it. Like there’s a comma. The definition of listening
is consuming it and doing something about it. The problem is that
most people aren’t doing things about it. Just a whole lot of talking. A whole lot of talking
going on in the game.

– [Voiceover] David asks,
“What would you do “if you were the new CEO of Twitter? “How would you turn that ship around?” – David I would do a couple things. One I would recognize that
the data that we’re collecting on a daily basis is
disproportionately valuable to a lot of real time marketers
and real time data analysts. You saw Bloomberg Twitter
JV come across the headlines for me I haven’t read it
yet but that’s exactly where I’d go putting my
money where my mouth is. I invested in the company
called Data Miner years ago that I felt Twitter would or should buy or become a big company
on the backbone of that. I would also recognize that normal people don’t understand Twitter. Twitter as a product is
not as easy to understand as Facebook and Instagram
and that is a friction point. When you look at the data
that shows how many people have signed up for Twitter
but then have not been active that’s a vulnerability. So I would hire the
single best product guy that I could, or gal,
and so product person would be very, very, very high on my list. I would not guess, I would
poach with all my ability with disproportional
economics and give them as much stock as I had to from
a Facebook or an Instagram or things of that nature. I would probably make
a very aggressive plan. I would change the logo of the bird. I would probably change it to a cat and have the cat eat the
bird as a symbolic notion to it’s a totally different company. So I think you’d need a branding play that would change the optics. So I would change the
logo from a bird to a cat. I would tell Wall Street that they should start
selling my stock now because I’m not gonna be a CEO
that’s gonna confine itself to making numbers on an
every 90 day basis and that I have empathy for that’s
how they have their business and I probably only would
have gotten the job as CEO of Twitter if I communicated
that to the board and the biggest stockholders
who then clearly, weirdly allowed me to go become the
CEO ’cause they wouldn’t care about their stock price
over a 24 month period. ‘Cause it would go way, way
down because my behavior’s more predicated on business building not so much Wall Street appeasing. So there’s a lot of
things that I would do. I would also recognize that Twitter is one of the true social networks. That the value in listening
is very big on Twitter. Whereas Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, Tumblr they are, Snapchat,
it’s pushing content out. It’s more of a content
management system, a CMS, where Twitter has a lotta
listening capabilities. It is where you have a conversation. It is the place you go for
now when something happens in the world ’cause people wanna talk. Starting to move a
little bit in Instagram, there’s some of that behavior. But those are some of the
top line things I would do. – [Voiceover] Kamil asks,
“How would you raise money

– [Voiceover] Gregory asked,
“If you ever become the CEO “of a local Chamber of
a community of 12,000, “what would be the first
thing you would do?” – If I became the CEO of a
Chamber of Commerce for a small group of 12,000 people, 12,000 members or 12,000 people in a town? – [Steve] Community, yeah. – You know, I’m a very big
fan of scaling the unscalable. Right, I talk a lot about engagement, one on one engagement, Twitter
videos, depth versus width. When you’re talking about
a town of 12,000 people, even if we’re answering this incorrectly and it’s a membership of 12,000, it’s still a very small number
in the scheme of things. So, what I would fundamentally
do is create a infrastructure to allow me to connect one by one with every single member of the Chamber, and even considering if it’s
a 12,000 person community the thousand to 4,000
people that really care about business in town, and
connect with them one by one via coffee, via Skype, via phone call as much face to face as possible, and ask them to reverse
engineer their objectives, meaning what can the Chamber do for you? What do you want out of it? I’d also have a better
understanding of what I was trying to get out of it
if I was the CEO of that. So, I don’t know if that’s fees, I don’t know if it’s something
as simply noble as making business better in town, if
that’s the objective at hand. That’s a little bit of a tongue in cheek for the people that don’t get my humor. I think I get razzed a
little bit too much for this. I was reading plenty of
comments on these three weeks. Basically my job would be to make the business environment in
this community better, and I think the number
one way to do that is to get people aligned. I think leadership comes
from getting entire group of people aligned on a mission. I actually think the most
effective way to do that is to actually understand
each individual person’s goals and objectives and
then come and find that little sweet spot that
is the closest thing to the overall masses that brings value across the board, and then go backwards. What’s the number one thing
that I can do that brings value to all 600 people at Vaynermedia? That brings value to all 12,000 members, and then go down the
list to where the number 10 thing maybe brings value
to half of the people, but it’s still better
than to three people. So, I reverse engineer
by listening upfront, collecting the data, and
then executing against the top 10 things that will
bring value to everybody in the organization.