My name’s Rafael, I run the Personal Development YouTube Channel. My question to you is, what would you do if
you were starting over and building your personal
brand all over again? Basically getting the name GaryVee out there, all over again. In this day and age, what would you do to go out there and really spread the word and to get yourself known? – I love this question and
boy, I’m gonna set it up. Do I have a really good answer for this, because you, and thanks for the question, and every other youngster
needs to hear this really, really loud and clear. And this is not being disrespectful because I was a 22-year-old
genius business person in my mind because of what I did. But I would do exactly what I did. Which is, for the first 10
years of my professional career, I didn’t say a damn thing. From 22 to 32, when it comes to business, at 30 I started Wine Library TV. From 22 to 32, and one would argue that I was really doing business since 14, but I’ll just say 22 ’cause it
was all in, no school, fine. From 22 to 32, my friend, I did nothing in building the Gary Vaynerchuk brand. You know what I did? I did the work that allowed me to have the audacity to build the
Gary Vaynerchuk brand. This notion that you can
just come out the gate and build your brand by growth hacking and putting yourself out there,
and getting on some podcasts and leveraging other people’s brands to get on and build yourself
as in expert, in what? Like when are we gonna start
asking all these people that are experts, what did they do? Here’s what I did and why I think you should listen to me in business. I am now in the midst
of building my second 50 million dollar plus business
within a five year window. That’s good execution at a speed that most people can’t
calibrate, at a high volume. Is it 50 billion? No. But it’s a life, right,
for a lot of people. It’s business. I invested in companies early on and made a lot of money because I saw where the market was going. Hence the video I popped
up earlier before, that’s linked below, of
what I saw with Apple Pay. I did things that allowed
me to start having a shot to be worthy of people buying a $15 book. Or spending 15 minutes and
watching his or her show. So I did things. So my friend, to you, and everybody else, I promise you before you
get your name out there, it’d be really nice that you
can go to the accomplishments, because when I ask you, hey bro awesome, that
your branding or health, or personal coach, or
whatever the hell you are, but what did you do to become good enough to do this, I’d like to know? I love when people argue
with me on this issue. They’re like, well look at
all the football coaches. These coaches a lot of
times are not real players. You don’t have to be a
great football player to be a great football coach. Guys, have you looked
at every football coach? There’s no football coach that comes out of nowhere at 23 years old and is then an NFL coach and wins Super Bowls. They’ve been a ball boy
since they were seven, and worked within the organization
for 20 years, 15 years. Eric Mangini, when he
was the Jets coach at 36, had been a ball boy since he was 18. Like they’re in it forever. They’re kids, they’re sons
and daughters of coaches, they’ve been in it their whole lives. That’s how you get there. And so this quick move of
using good, modern technology to build up your brand,
siphoning and doing JVs with other people to
siphon their brand equity, that you’re passing
on, that I’m an expert, and then coming out the gate and saying, I’m an expert building
a brand. It’s ludicrous. I laugh at it in my soul, in my stomach, and so does everybody who’s got chops. Gonna say it one more time, I laugh at it and so does
everybody that’s got chops. And I need you to pay attention to that. You have to earn your opportunity to be a personal brand. And the only way to do that
is to actually execute. And so when somebody asks me, well what makes you a social media expert? I show them things I’ve sold, in sales, business, put money in the pocket, predicated on marketing
within that channel. That’s a way to do it, that I believe in.

“Sometimes my passion
is seen as aggression. “How do I walk the line? “Do I change to someone more passive?” – Nasir? Nasir, first of all,
don’t change for anybody. Now, finding that balance of grace and having that tact to be
consumable is a process. I, somewhere around eighth grade into sophomore year, didn’t hit the right tone anymore. I was too intense for my classmates, and I could taste it ’cause I have empathy and kind of self-awareness, and it’s an ongoing process. Like, you know, for example, my keynotes are interesting, I just referenced them. I’m actually evolving
that cadence throughout the conversation of the tone, ’cause I’m reacting to the body language of everybody else. It’s not about how do
you become more passive, ’cause I’d hate to suck
the passion out of you which is a huge variable to success. Controlling it and people saying, “You’re just a little too much.” I have a feeling that that’s predicated on you caring too much for it to be valuable for you. I’m gonna say that again for everybody. The only reason I think that I’m able to pull off this is because there’s a healthy balance of caring about you. When you care more about your audience than what you have to say, you start winning, right? When you care more about
your global audience listening or watching and it’s not about the 15 minutes of what am I gonna get out of it, then sure, in a right hook world it’s always there. Let me actually use this question to define something that I don’t think I talked about in the book. I live in a world of
jab, jab, jab, right hook. Let me tell you two
interesting things of that. I don’t necessarily feel that I ever have to throw a right hook and I don’t expect the
need to throw a right hook based on my jabs in micro levels. At the holistic level, I do. Also, there’s another part that we never talk about, is there? Which is, what happens when the right hook doesn’t land? I’m actually not disappointed. What happens when I do all awesome stuff for these guys or anybody else? I don’t have any expectation that they’re gonna do something
awesome for me in return. Eliminating that lack of expectation opens up a world of where you can provide. So, based on your question, based on my intuition,
my vibe on this question, it has a whole lot to do with you caring more about them, the people that are judging you, they’re telling you to chill out. They’re telling you that because, not about your passion, because, take it from me
and many other people, people love passion. They don’t like selfish passion.

of a client because they are
just an all around clown?” – Galen, this is a funny question. I think a lot of VaynerMedia
employees are going to have a fun time with this quesiton if they are watching or listening. I think that for me I
hold on for dear life. First of all business is business. I think one of the reasons
people recommend getting rid of clients is they don’t have
the stomach for adversity. I actually can deal with the negativity and it’s business is business. If they fire me then I
deserved to be fired. But the notion of there
are clients to be fired. It’s right and a lot of
times it helps your business and so it’s about self-awareness. So for me, Galen, it’s
very late in the process, like almost borderline, I don’t know, when they take a knife and
stab it through your eye. It might not be a good
relationship anymore but that’s literally the level
that I’m looking forward to because I can handle it and
it’s not slowing me down. We’ve got plenty of clients that I think by all modern standards
should have been fired but I have not and it has
not hindered the growth because yes there’s some time
and attention put into that and even in a world where
we get lots of new business. There is value in retention.
There’s also moods. How about relationships?
Do you just get divorced when a time comes tough? The ebb and flow. Do you
just get rid of a best friend because of a bad night? Do you get rid of friend
after six straight bad nights? One could argue yes but I’d
say hmm there’s a lot there that you may want to fight for it. So I think it comes
down to self-awareness. A lot of people are not capable of dealing with the conflict
or it brings them down. To me, I like to rise to that challenge. I like that game but it comes down to my own self-awareness of me as a leader and more importantly i have
to factor in the empathy of 400 other people and
is it bringing them down. So cool, I can stomach it but
as they’re getting yelled at on the phone every single day, is it bringing them to a
place where they want to leave and so for me it’s when
it’s effecting other people that are in my family that I value more and family I mean my company that I value more than the client itself. That’s when I’m looking at
it but then a lot of times, I’m trying to surround,
interchange and account people of the people that have more of my stomach and can handle it.
To me, that is the timing. Thanks for watching episode
32 of the #AskGaryVee Show.

when you feel you have unique content but not tapping into the right audience or not gaining visibility.” – Nikola, this is where you start
looking yourself in the mirror and deciding if you have
business development chops. This notion that you
have the greatest content and it’s not finding
it’s audience is romantic at worst and audacious at best. To me what you need to
look at is are you capable of also building audience for your content or are you just the content provider and do you need a partner
who can help you go out and do that or have
you just lost all sense of reality and you’re
stuff is just average. – [Voiceover] Galen asks, “At
what point do you just get rid

“social media marketer. “Is it worth doing a course on it “when I’m applying for jobs?” – Maurizio, you know it’s
an interesting question. I’m self-taught. I didn’t take any courses in social media. I think it’s done okay for me. But in general, I’m not
a good student either. I never took a real substantial course in business or marketing either and that’s worked out all right for me. I think this is an answer
that really matters based on being self aware. I think if you find yourself as somebody who, in general, being a
self-taught social media expert, in general, I’m cynical to that. I think 99% of you are clowns and are just reading headlines and are not practitioners
and don’t go deep. I’m even scared of you taking a course because most of the courses I’ve seen when I’ve come and spoke at that class, when I vetted the teacher through the, them interviewing me process, I’ve realized they were clowns. So in a whole Ringling Brothers
and Barnum & Bailey Circus kind of environment, it all scares me. I would tell you the thing
that most matters to me is to become the most surgical deepest knowledgeable practitioner you can be. But I can’t really answer this for you. There’s too many variables. One, are the courses good? Two, are you the type
that actually can learn in that environment? I can’t. On the flip side, by being a practitioner, that’s the best way I learn. So that’s a whole lot of ego and bravado and I apologize for all
my listeners on iTunes that aren’t used to this but
I’m just spitting the truth. Social media right now is in
a very awkward early stage. If you go back and look at
the early internet marketers of 1995, six, seven, eight, nine, they were spewing a lot of crap as well. So it’s a difficult time. I would say this, in five years I’d feel a hell of a lot more comfortable
you taking that course. – [Steve] Chase asks “On an average day,

“Gary, when you left Wine Library “to start VaynerMedia, was
it a conscious decision “not to have someone take
over Wine Library TV?” – This is a great question. People have asked me this question a lot, and I wanna interject some depth, like last couple questions,
last couple episodes with some of this kind of fun stuff. And insight that I’ve never talked about. You know, I don’t know if
it was a conscious decision. Nobody really raised their hand, nobody wanted that spot. It’s kind of like my
speaking career right now, knock on wood I’m doing so well, the bad part is I always
have to speak last because nobody wants to go next. I don’t think it was the
right or obvious choice internally at Wine Library to jump on it, Ian, Brandon, you know all
these great people internally just didn’t’ wanna have
the kind of, you know, not responsibility, look it
takes a certain personality to put yourself out there. We’ve talked about the past, my blog post about this the other day did really well. You can link that, Stunwin. So it wasn’t a conscious
choice, it was the right choice. If that person existed in the building, maybe it would have
continued in that manner, but I think one thing that
I’m really focused on, why I took this question to interweave it to everybody else while answering it is I think you have to assess. Like you always have to assess. And I think way too
many people come in with what they want it to be, the notion of, somebody will take over this show, and then you’re forcing someone to sit in the hotseat, and then you really lose the lustre of it. Not to mention, I may want to jump back in that seat one day. (bell dings) Question of the day.

– Yo, what’s up, Gary?
And DRock, of course. – DRock?
– My name’s Daniel Dennehy, I’m a music producer slash freestyle soccer athlete with Red Bull, check out my freestyle
soccer videos on Instagram, @ImDanDennehy.
– The plug, I love the plug. – Okay, get that (bleep) out of the way, no one wants to hear about that. – Well, you wanted to drop it.
– My question is, is there ever such thing
as too much jabbing? You know, like, is there ever any time where you should just not
really give out much content, or maybe not reply to everybody, so you keep a sort of mystique,
or a bit of aura about you? Or should we just open the floodgates and just have everything transparent? What’s your thoughts on that? Thank you very much, God bless, peace! – Peace! Dee, as I’m gonna call you, this is a great question! And this is where I, you
know I wrote that piece, maybe we should link this, Stunwin, follow along
here, of the one like, maybe my advice isn’t good for you? Yeah, the answer’s yes, there is an absolute time
where there’s too much jabbing, and there’s an absolute time where maybe you should not be in the exact jabbing business at all. You actually asked two questions, Dee, you asked, is there too many jabs? Sure, the reason I wrote the book Jab, Jab, Jab, Right-Hook? Is ’cause the people that I thought best understood social media were in the jab, jab, jab, jab business. And so, the other
question you’re asking is, should I build a brand
or create a scenario where there’s no jabbing? You know who did that? Apple. Apple is just in the right hook business. Look at Apple’s social media engagement. Look at Apple’s real care for their fans over that 10 year period. They just made the best
crap they could make, and then they dominated for that period. Now, then, Samsung came along and started playing
with that vulnerability, and now we have what we have. But for a lot of people there’s mystique. Mystique or exclusivity, look, there’s a business model for me. Here’s a good example! I’m announcing right now that the #AskGaryVee
Show is paywall only, four dollars an episode. How many of you are paying? How many? Leave in the comments. Don’t (bleep) me. And here’s what I know. 90% of you are not paying. But if I have enough of 10% of you paying for four bucks an episode, it might be a better
ROI than what I’m doing. I don’t believe that, because I like the jab business, and I like building up the equity and the awareness, and
you passing on the video. You know, to people.
Caught that, DRock? And, you know, I want that, oh, that was, passing on would be sharing, I actually did subscribe call-to-actions. Subscribe anyway! And so… you know, there’s absolutely a way to play through exclusivity, like the reverse of me is that person, and that works, too. It’s about self awareness. Do you know why I play the jab business? ‘Cause I like you guys. I just like people. If I didn’t like people,
I would go the other way. Never get to me, paywall, hard to get to, secret events where you pay a lot of money, have an island where I charge you a lot of money to come to. But I like people, I
wanna touch all of you. Yeah, I know that sounded weird, but I wanna touch all of you! And not that weird way. And so the answers were clearly in that given response. I am on fire today.

– Alright. – Anyways, so you know,
I wanna piggyback on that because you were capturing a certain demographic and age group
so I wanna represent all those who are a little bit older. So I’m asking it for them, you know. – Okay. – People who already have
kids, financial commitments, homes, mortgages, blah blah blah, so when you keep talking about how do you audit your
time, how do you analyze what character traits, can
you speak to the older folks, between the 30, 50-somethings, how to go out and make it happen or analyze do you really
have what it takes, because at this point,
these folks probably have 10+, 15 years of experience
in their endeavors already. – The one thing I think, thanks Chef. The one thing that I
think is interesting is, let’s break down the question
a little bit differently which is, there’s a
level of never being able to fully make it but
still being in a process where you enjoy the effort to get there. This is not an all sum
game, I’m okay with somebody being a nuanced entrepreneur,
where there’s a full time job and they’re trying to make it happen. Because what happens is,
you’re almost talking about being an entrepreneur as a hobby there. Right, it almost takes
on, this is something, and I just got goosebumps, so I’m starting to get into a new thing that I’m trying to figure out how to
articulate, I’m doing it here out loud for the first time which is, when does entrepreneurship or going for it take on, morph on, whether
it’s very practical, ’cause you’re asking for the
for the 35-55 year old demo, or when it’s, you’re still
under 30, in your 20s, but you’ve confided into
or picked a job route, when is it actually in hobby land? – Exactly. – When is it, you like
having your side hustle and you’re enjoying it,
but it doesn’t need to or have to become your
life and you don’t have to make a billi, for you to be happy. So, what I would say is,
if you’re up at night and you can’t breathe and
you have to do your thing well then, you just
might not be good enough. I mean, think about all
the people we’ve seen on American Idol who are
like, “I grew up my whole life “and I knew I was gonna
be Whitney Houston.” You’re all pumped and you’re
like, back when people watched and you’re like, you can do it! And then she like, “Aaah!”
and you’re like no, and it’s delusional, but we
have that in entrepreneur land. I get emails every day,
I meet people every day who are delusional about their skill set. I desperately, desperately, desperately want to be the small forward
of the New York Knicks. If I truly acted on that,
like if right now at 38, I’m overseas trying to be
the 13th man on the bench of an Italian B-league
team, that’s not gonna work. It’s not gonna happen no matter what I do, and so, I think the answer
to your question for me, to make it as valuable
for them as possible is are you willing to get
comfortable in accepting that you’re in hobby
zone versus transitioning into that zone, and if you
are, well then in a weird way, that’s your question, these tie in. You can have a best of both worlds. – Right. – If you’re asking me
like, how to get somebody to become self-aware
enough and not delusional that they’re hurting
themselves, that’s not something I know how to really fully answer.

you were just born to be an entrepreneur, that’s just what you do and I’m sure you– – I believe in that. – Well until you’re an
entrepreneur like that, you’re not gonna be fulfilled. – Yes. Talking to me about my
first 18 years of my life. – Yeah, so that’s my
question, like at what point are you being fiscally responsible and what point is it just
like analysis paralysis where you think well, I
can’t go into full time yet, I need a full time job. – That’s a tough question. Now I understand what you’re saying so. Let me make sure I dissect this properly. For people like me that happened to feel that they are that and
then happen to be good at it, it’s easy right, ’cause it worked out. Are you asking me, if you feel
like you’re an entrepreneur but you’re not good enough
to be an entrepreneur that can sustain a lifestyle
where you have to balance something else, what do you do? – Maybe– – Or do you keep trying,
or are you asking, actually I apologize ’cause
now I’m recalibrating. How long can I go at it,
thinking I’m an entrepreneur until I have to wake up
and say wait a minute, am I tricking myself, and let
me get a little more practical and jump off that train? – I mean more like, say
you have a full time job and it’s good pay, good
benefits and all that. – If you have a full time job,
you’re not an entrepreneur. You have to understand, that
is a very important part here. You may have entrepreneurial tendencies, you may have aspiration
to be an entrepreneur but when you are an entrepreneur, you can’t breathe having
a job, you can’t breathe. Now look, maybe I’m the extreme of it but the fact is, especially
right now, especially I’m guessing at some
level, this is for you, not your friend kinda thing,
or it might be a friend or it might general. You’re so young that you have
so much less risk than the, look, when you’re 18 to
29 in American today, by all standards, to
me, that’s your time to, if you’re an entrepreneur,
you’re being an entrepreneur. If you’re ready and willing to take a job, then you have entrepreneurial tendencies, and that’s a thing you have to figure out, but to me there is no such
thing as an under-30 year old entrepreneur that has a
job, it doesn’t exist. – Alright thanks. – Alright man, thanks. Chef get in here. You notice her from the comments section,

because they refuse to accept
what they’re not good at. For example, I suck at accounting, so I have somebody do accounting for me. But I see people, you know,
they suck at photography, but they’re still doing their photography and it’s hurting their brand. – Yeah. – They’re not accepting that. – Okay. – Your thoughts on that. – Cool, thank you. I mean, you know, again,
as somebody who’s been following my stuff, I think
we agree on this, right. Like I’m a big fan of going
all in on your strengths and outsourcing or not
focusing on your weaknesses. I think you got it pegged
right, I think the one thing is sometimes it’s obvious right, don’t get caught in the obvious, meaning. It’s obvious to you that
you suck at accounting. It’s kinda easy right, it’s math. You probably also don’t
wanna or like doing it. That’s easy. It’s the thing that’s in the
shadows, that’s not as obvious. There’s something you’re doing right now that a lot of people
could do better than you. It’s easy when you’re an F at
it, and you know you need an A but what about the fact that
you might be doing something right now, a tiger somewhere else, where you’re a B at it,
but you could afford to have somebody be an A at it. That’s where people make mistakes so it takes deep self-awareness, you know. I’m not a big believer in like,
try, try, try, try harder, be better at this thing.
I think it’s a waste of resources, energy and happiness often. Now, if you get off on that kind of thing like perserving, knock yourself out, roll how you wanna roll but for me, big believer in betting
on all your strengths and trying to find complements
to your weaknesses. – How would you– – Oh a new one for #AskGaryVee like this is cool, when they’re
live, they can follow up. – How would you bring up, you know, people have terrible
websites, it doesn’t even work on a mobile device and
they’re just not getting, do I just accept that
okay, they’re gonna get it and walk away, or how
would you bring up, saying hey, you’re not really good at that. – Now you’re asking me a
sales question, I think right? Like are you saying, to reach
out to somebody and say, “Hey we should do that for you.” – No, even just like from just
a help in providing value. Like hey you’re not good at
this, I don’t think my company is the right fit but
you’re not good at this, I’m just telling you like– – You know, one of the
things that I do tactically is just call people out on it, right. I’ll reply to them publicly
on Twitter and say, “Hey, you just tweeted wrong, here’s the.” You know, my classic, like everybody does this wrong on Twitter. You know, I’m not scared
to, my route is simple. Polite, polite, polite,
you’re not getting it, and I still care enough,
which is very rare, then I’m gonna drill you in your face. Thanks man, enjoy, next let’s go.