– [Voiceover] Iwona asks,
“How many punches in the face and failures can an ordinary person handle before achieving success?” – Iwona, the right word in that
question is ordinary person. What was it, an ordinary person? Yeah, and I think that’s the interesting part of your question. Which is this whole
notion that pisses me off that I don’t believe that the far majority of people right now who claim that they’re entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs. You know, I don’t get to claim that I’m an NFL quarterback,
and then I just am one, and that’s what’s happening, right? A lot of people that
don’t have the skills, you put that word ordinary
in for a very specific reason and it’s the reason I want to rant on this which is the ordinary person a.k.a. the person that’s not
meant to run a business can probably only handle one punch, right? I mean like, that’s just
what it comes down to. You know what my answer is, unlimited. You could punch me in the face 8000 times. I’m here to get punched, right? Like, you know I really do think of it like a UFC or a boxer. Have you ever watched
a UFC or boxing match, and literally watched
and thought to yourself holy crap, if I took one of those punches I’d be in a coma for the rest of my life. They’re meant to be in the octagon, I am not. On the flip side, you show me a world where all 420 of these wonderful and amazing people quit VaynerMedia, and I know exactly what
to do the next day. That’s how I roll. Those are the punches I can handle. Top 10 clients quit, cool. Can’t ship to a state at
Wine Library anymore, cool. I can handle unlimited punches because I’m pure-bred 100% entrepreneur. And so for me, to a person
that is a wannabe-preneur, who first punch in’s like eh,
I’m going to go get a job. From there, everybody fits
somewhere in between that. And that’s your answer. – [Voiceover] N asks, “Any
tips on how to get a mentor?”

– [Voiceover] Vernon
asks, “What’s one question “you ask in interviews?” – Vernon, I really like this question. I’m really excited to take a stab at it. I don’t do it every time. I’m not one of these guys who’s like, this is my go-to question, like “When you were 13 and you
went through a forest, and you pick–” I don’t have any of these weird things, but I do always, especially
I think if there’s a lot of momentum in the interview, I love to ask people to tell me, at this moment in time, what they see the professional career becoming. I wanna get into the psychology of what their ambition is and I pretty much spend most of the interview trying to get somebody comfortable enough to tell me the truth to that question. Because I don’t care if
you want to be the CEO of VaynerMedia. If you wanna just be, move a couple levels up and have great work-life balance. I
don’t care if you even want to come here and
work for me for two years, suck out my IP and then
go start your own agency. I don’t care what your agenda is, I just wanna know what it is so
I can help us get there. Because the truth is,
I wanna keep people in my ecosystem forever and the best way to do that is to deliver
to them what they want. And so the quicker I can
get into that insight, are you work-life balance,
are you money hungry, are you title hungry, are you entrepreneur and just coming in here for learnings. I don’t care, I just need to know. The quicker I know and the
quicker it’s the truth, the quicker we can do
things forever together. And so that is usually the essence of the interview question for me. Can I tap through, can I
feel that I’m getting there? Because that gives me a blueprint, a map. Not only that, I have the
self-awareness, and I try to talk to them about this,
that that will change. You know, being a 24 year old dude, 26 year old female, it’s gonna change. You’re gonna fall in love,
your life’s gonna change. Are you gonna start a family? When you make a little bit more money it becomes less interesting. There’s so many different
things that are going on in one’s life. When you make a little money it becomes way more interesting. You get the bug, the blood’s in the water. I don’t care, I just need
the communication funnel and I want it to start from day one, five minutes in to getting
to know each other.

I work on new business and all things. I’m an account director here. I’ve been here, I don’t
know, about eight months now. Feels like a year almost. I’m really excited for my Vaynerversary. (laughter) So I wanted to ask you a question which I think is going to help some of the entrepreneur viewers but also just the future
leaders of VaynerMedia. When you’re transitioning
from that doer to a leader knowing what your priorities are and where to put your
focus, so that it counts. – Yeah. – Can you talk a little bit about that? – Yeah I can. And you know this is
something that I have a lot. And to put a little more
color for everybody listening, at Vayner and a lot of other
places you get into a place where you, I think you said it right, you’re in execution mode and then all of a sudden you’re managing a team. And those are two very different things. And it’s the thing that I most fear in the organization, period, end of story. Because you have incredible
executors who yearn for the financial upside and the title to then lead a team and boy are those two very, very, very, very,
very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very
different skill sets. And so I think the biggest
thing people struggle with, there are so many things people struggle with with the transition. Number one, the thing I hate
more than anything in the world which is micromanagment. I wanna kick micromanagment in the face. I hate it. And, you know, it’s something I just despise and it’s a major struggle
because if you are a great executor you know how to cross those T’s and dot those I’s. And you know, when you see the person on your team whose not
as strong at executing you can’t help it, it
goes against the grain. So that’s number one thing. Facing yourself in the
mirror and understanding, and I’ve talked to you about this, and I’ve talked to so many leaders in this company about this. This is where people get pissed at me. Most things don’t matter. And that’s a very tough mental transition to somebody that manages a team. The other thing that a lot of
people will struggle with, and I talk about this quite a bit in this organization as well, is when you’re a leader you have to be the bigger man and woman
in every situation. And a lot of times people,
especially when they make that first transition, and it’s the first time
that they’re the leader, they look at it wrongfully
because of society, as I’m the boss and they
try to impose their will instead of what I think
the real skill set is. Which is become a full time listener, a full time empowerer,
a full time eat crap and have humility and
empathy and self awareness. So you go from, what I
believe is I.Q to E. Q. and a lot of people can’t
make that transition. I think the reason this
organization has grown so much is that’s all I focus on
when that transition happens. And don’t try to put pressure on people for new business and client services and all the normal things
one has to worry about. Now I’m the leader, now this
client has to respect me. I need to make Steve happy. I don’t care about that. I can take care of that
at the highest levels. It’s about really empowering
people to become leaders. And leaders, you know I love this. This is obviously a subject matter I love. We talked about it even
in yesterday’s episode. It takes so much more motherly, historically, stereotypically
motherly skills to be a leader and I
think people are confused. I think by default people
think it’s fatherly stuff and I think it’s motherly stuff. It’s emotional skills that allow somebody to make that transition. And really one of the biggest factors in this whole thing is self esteem. If you’re not able to believe in yourself nobody else is gonna believe in you. So I think one of the things is, look I got fortunate, I
got a mother that instilled so much self esteem in me that I’m still trying to get some of it out of me so that I don’t come across
as an egotistical crap head. But I think a lot of
people don’t have that. A lot of people in my family
don’t have that, and I see it and one of the weird
little tidbits that I think can make this episode valuable is if you get into a leadership spot and if your self aware enough to know that your mom or dad put you
down your whole life, or society did, or you
grew up as a minority, or whatever took self
esteem out of your body. Or if you never instilled
in the first place. I think you need to find
an outlet to create it. I think you need to find
an outlet to create it. I think one of the things I
focus on here is I instill it. You know, I instill it. I do talk 90% of the
time about the positives. I just can’t help it. I’m optimistic and I just see it. I see the good, it’s what I do. There’s always bad, but I
think you need to seek it out. And it might come in the form
of extracurricular activities. You might be a great soccer
player, or an improv actor. Or maybe the person you date, maybe you look for somebody
who, instills that. I think that’s a very
attractive characteristic. I can tell you the reason
I married Lizzie so quickly was ’cause she was my mom. And so I like coming home
and having a cheerleader. Like, you’re great. I love that. I want that. And so, I think those are
the things that come to mind. – Thanks Gary.

“What do you is a bigger
obstacle to success, “a lack of time or a lack of capital?” – Roberto, this is a tremendous question. I think the biggest obstacle to success is a lack of optimism. That question in itself
is the problem, my friend. Right? You’re looking at two things
that are both negatives, and guess what? Both of ’em are obstacles. When I started winelibrary.com, transformation for my business, I had time, I worked my
face off every minute, but we didn’t have a whole lot
of money in our profit center so it took more time, right? It’s just the way it is. Today, I have more money,
but boy, don’t I have time. But neither, ever, ever, will be an excuse for me. And so, just to drill
this through the throat of the VaynerNation, that’s
right, I went that graphic, don’t smile DRock,
here’s the bottom line: I refuse to allow you to get
an answer to that question because both of them are firmly square in the excuse column, and I
have no patience for that. There will always be problems. Let’s talk about a million other things that are a way to stop success. The health and well-being
of your family members so it takes your mind away from execution. The country you live in’s government and political concepts in these moments, a la, startups in China that I’ve invested in that got traction, but then people that were
wired in to the government decided to not allow it to happen and then the start up disappeared. Not as easy to be an entrepreneur there, it’s still a communist country. Sorry, it just is. And so all these things
can be problems, right? There’s a competitor
with a billion dollars who’s also skilled and
punches you in the mouth and knocks you out in
the first round, right? The world changing. I mean, there’s just a
million obstacles, right? The media, one bad coverage of you. A moment in time. You know what I think about a lot? You know what I think about a lot? Let’s get really real here,
this is why we did this show. I always, I’m a human being, and I always think about a moment in time. What if I just say the wrong
thing at the wrong time? Right? What if I call out China for
being a communist country in an episode while I’m on a rant, and somebody who’s watching
doesn’t like the way that tastes and that takes away a business opportunity for me in China in seven years? Even though I’m not trying to zing, it’s just things that I saw. What if, you know, what if what if I look down on my phone while I’m driving even though
I’ve really not done that, and I hit somebody and I kill them? And that becomes the story, and then like forget about the story, about what you think about me, I will never recover from that because I killed somebody because
I needed to check a Tweet. These are moments in time. So there are so many things that can keep you from
being successful, right? The people that you invested in having something bad happen to them so it slows you down. My friends, there are a
million reasons why not, but there’s one great reason why, which is, you just gotta persevere, no matter what it is. It’s just the way it is. It’s hard being an entrepreneur. It’s hard building a business. Everybody thinks it’s so easy, that there’s an entitlement. There’s a disaster, zinging China? Here comes my U.S. zing right now: there is an insane generation
of 18 to 25 year olds that think they’re entitled
to having a business because they saw the
social networking movie and everybody’s decided
that if you’re a kid and you know what tech is. Because you used Instagram early on, you’re entitled to
actually build a business. Building a business is hard. And you know what makes it really hard? Everything that happens
every day of every moment. So, you can pick time, you can pick money as the one or two things
that you think stop you from winning your game, but the truth is, there’s a million reasons. 99% of businesses go out
of business for a reason. And that reason is, it’s hard. And so, if you’re watching this show, I’ve got a sense of who you are, and you need to start
creating layers and layers and layers of skin to
be able to get through. Because the glamour of
being an entrepreneur, the goodness, you know you get
very confused by my optimism. Because it’s my optimism, I can’t help it, it’s just how I roll. It’s probably one of
the variable 1% reasons why I’m successful. But please, don’t get it twisted. This is hard. Every day is hard. And if you don’t have the
stomach to weather the storm, you will not be successful. And by the way, let me throw you a real weird curveball, and that’s okay. People have to look
themselves in the mirror and understand if they’re
number two, three, four, five, six, seven in an organization, That has differences
of being a number one, but maybe that’s where
your skill set sits. Maybe that’s how you make
your fortunes and happiness and all the things that
you’re looking for, and so. That question got me
goin’ a little bit, Steve. Because it’s under the context of excuses. And I will never make an excuse. Everything that’s a problem with me, everything I don’t achieve, everything that’s a
problem at VaynerMedia, and everything is my fault. And I succumb to that, and I respect that. And I actually think that’s
the way it should be. And so, um, no excuses my friends.

most big successes have a huge turning point where
things really take off. What was that turning
point for Wine Library?” – Sean, great question. I guess there were some turning points when the Wine Spectator ad that we ran, the first New York Times full page ad, the time I reset the score and took 50% of the beer off the floor
and added more wine, when I started WineLibrary.com, the day I started the email service, the day I jumped into Robert
Parker’s forums in ’97 and became part of the
internet community around wine, the 2000 Bordeaux Vintage,
when we bought heavy, when I first started
promoting wines nobody ever heard of on email, Richard
Partridge Cabernet comes to mind, when I hired Brandon. As you can tell, there are
many moments that we made it, but it was just trucking
along, building on top of each other step by step. My friends, if you listen to
two of my answers on this show, you understand one very
interesting thing about me, which is, I may have
the energy of the hare, but I am the tortoise.
(bell ringing) You know what I’m putting up there, right? That beautiful thing you did, Zak. Show Zak. You did a very nice job on that one. For everybody listening,
I’m pointing to the tortoise and hare image I put out on Instagram. Go check me out on Instagram/garyvee. Anyway, when I made it,
the turning point moment, everybody who’s watching
and asking these questions are looking for this
sign, like I saw the sign, It’s not that. It’s head down, you love
and believe in what you do, and you just never think
about those moments, you just keep trucking along. It’s lunch pail mentality, it’s old school Eastern European
put-in-the-work mentality. I don’t think about these things, guys. The Fortune 40 Under
40 that just happened, is that a turning point in my career? Sure, some people now
think of me differently ’cause I’m in the context of
those people, but it’s not. It’s just chug and chug and chug and chug and chug and chug and chug and chug, And so chug. Thanks for watching the show.

“Gary, love the iTunes touch. When was the moment you knew you would be okay when starting your company?” – East County, right? That’s a little bone thugs reference to episode, I can’t remember. East county, the moment I
knew that I was gonna make it was the first day I walked
into my dad’s liquor store. And the reason I decided
to answer this question and trying to find value
for everybody watching other than me bragging about that I had the bravado from day one was, the notion of not even
worrying about that moment. Meaning, one of the biggest
things that I’m trying to teach, I’m turning a lot today. One of the things I’m trying
to teach all my management here at VaynerMedia, and all
my founders in my start-up investments and my
co-founders in companies that had meeting with my
co-founders at Resy last night, the number one thing I
keep telling everybody is to not worry about the
things that don’t matter. Worrying about or trying to figure out, this is the moment when I made it, is something that I think cripples people, and I just don’t even
think about those things. I could answer this question two ways, which are the two right
ways, which is one: The moment I walked into my dad’s store, because I had that
confidence, or I could answer the other way that’s equally as true, pulling on both sides
like a bridge, which is, I haven’t made it yet. They both are right, and the
truth is, outside of this question, I don’t think about
it at all, ever, period. And the reason I’m answering
the question is because I’m trying to get as many
of you who are watching the show right now to not
worry about those things. Worry about executing,
worry about feeling good about your life, don’t
worry about making it. Because making it is an outside force. The inside force of you just doing it is what you should be focused on. – [Voiceover] Kyle asks,

– [Voiceover] Aimee asks, “A
professor once said to me, “it’s better to be a big
fish in a small pond, “do you agree?” – Aimee, this, you know,
I’m gonna be very upfront on this question, this is a
good way to bang out the show. That sounds like a loser professor to me. It’s small time thinking. I don’t subscribe to it. There’s a lot of
practicality in it, right? It’s a lot easier to be the
most successful business man in St. Louis, Missouri, than
it is to be in the world, right, so I understand the thesis. But honestly, that to
me is very conservative, not in my DNA thinking. That could be great
advice for a lot of people who are delirious and think
they’re better than they are, though I love to drive through self esteem and optimism, and I
think early in your life, you should absolutely
shoot for the highest stars that you can. I think as life moves on, and time moves on you need
to become more practical. You’ve got bills, and kids,
and all those kinds of things, but to start off one’s
career in the first 20 years, call to your 40, to be in that thinking, I think that limits. There have been so many people who’ve hedged and settled in their lives, and honestly, I’m not the
kind of character that’s going to play in that kind of sphere. I’m going in a different direction. It’s what comes natural to me, but it’s also because I
think I can be the biggest and the baddest in any game I play, It’s just how I’m wired. I think this comes down to it’s probably very good advice to some, and it’s probably
atrocious advice to others, and this is why I continue
to say if I could inject anything into anybody, it
would be self-awareness because it would help
you answer this question because for a lot of people,
it’s probably really solid advice from me, and from
many of you watching this, it’s crap advice. All right, now I can wrap up the show.

– [Voiceover] Troy asks, “I
work in two different spaces. “How do I use social
media platforms so that “I’m not confusing my audience?” – Troy, this is a very simple question. You adjust to the platform at hand. So we’re very detailed on this show. For Twitter, the way
you don’t confuse them, if you’re talking about
two different things, I’ll, uh, business and
wine talk is you create two different channels and you
have an @winelibrary account and you have an at
@garyvaynerchuk account, Gary Vee, and that’s what I did, or
you just become so branded in both that you feel
comfortable being, kind of, a renaissance man or woman, and you can go that route. But you have to react to the platform. So on Twitter, you just
create two different accounts, and you promote through them. On Facebook though, the
targeting capabilities allows you to just be yourself and
talk to people that act, you can plan, to people
that are 25 to 45 that are into wine and you put out a wine content, and they will like that, and you know, 22 to 27 that are into
podcasts, and you do that, and then they want you
to talk about that thing, so Facebook gives you the
flexibility to target. You know, Twitter does not. And so you’ve gotta adjust. YouTube channel, do you have
two channels, do you have one. This is something we’ve talked about ’cause we wanna chop up
every answer into a question. As a matter of fact, let’s link
up the first one we put up, right the tennis thing. One here. And so, you know… The real answer to this
question, Troy, is you’ve gotta adjust to the platform’s
capability to drive home the fragmentation or
the one channel process, so you go place by place. Pinterest, you can create a board, right, you can have an account, you
can create different boards and on certain boards
you put out content about whatever the hell you’re doing, and whatever the hell you’re
doing that’s different, so you, Tumblr, you can
create a bunch of different kind of, blah, blah, blah .tumblr.com, so that gives you flexibility. So I’m giving you very detailed
answers here, my friend. It’s not super hard, you have
to have the right strategy per the platform based on
the flexibility of that platform to deliver the story. – [Voiceover] Michael asks,
“How do you define hustle?”

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.

– [Voiceover] Paul asks, “We get like five views on our video, “three of them being from us. “How do very new and small channels “gain a following when
people don’t interact?” – Paul, nice ratio on your viewership because from Wine Library TV I had a similar thing and it was my grandma and mom, so, I know that world. The reason I was able to build up my channel back in the day and now as well, though I have a bigger base now and you can argue with that, is the quality of the output, right? I mean, at the end of the day, how are you gonna find traction? There’s two ways. One, you can put out great content, that’s what I do. Two, and I don’t know
if that’s what you do, maybe you stink, so we need to talk about that. Two, you need to biz dev. Show this man. Right, so, I’ve done all my biz dev my entire career, but, I’m getting stretched so thin. So, Alex DS is gonna come in and start doing biz dev. So, when I see something from a tweet from one of you, and you want to distribute this content on your page, that used to go to my inbox and it would disappear, or the new WineLibrary.com and there’s wine content there, and I want to get that distributed ’cause you have a food blog, and you’d hit me up on Twitter, that would get passed on. But now, he can capture that and biz dev. So, it’s about biz dev. You now, don’t have
anybody talking about you ’cause you have five views, and all those things. But you need to biz dev in reverse. I’ve been lucky enough to have a 20 year well-executed successful career, so it comes to me, I
deserve it. It’s capitalism. You have not done that yet, but you will, hopefully. I want you to. I want to
look back at this video and be excited that you did. When I didn’t have that, I had to biz dev. When Wine Library was
Shopper’s Discount Liquors and nobody gave a crap, I walked around the neighborhood and knocked on restaurant doors and said, “Can you put these flyers on your counter, “for a 20% off coupon
by the case of wine?” I hustled. You, my friend, need to hustle. Number one, the variable
is your creative. No matter how much you hustle and sell and put out flyers, Steve, and put out flyers. Podcast listeners, that was Steve playing something in the background, I apologize, he just
doesn’t have any manners. I was on a big point too, Steve. No matter how hard I hustle, and put out flyers and made it happen. When people came to Wine Library, if we didn’t have a good selection, if we didn’t get good prices, if we didn’t have good
customer service, we lost. So, the two variables are, can you biz dev, can you make it happen or are you willing to hustle? Do you realize that we can’t be romantic, that, we’re just gonna
put out an awesome show and it’s all gonna work out. Bullshit. What needs to happen is you have to put out an awesome show and hustle your face off 15 hours a day to get people to care. That’s very different
than spamming people. That’s very different
than going on Twitter and be like, “Watch our show, “watch our show, watch our show.” Even in a world where you don’t have a huge audience, you have a way to bring value to somebody. If you can figure out how to do that, and then leverage that value for them to give you what you want which is exposure, you will win. It blows my mind how many people email me every single day saying, “Gary, can you tweet about my show?” In a world where I’m such a hustler and such a biz dev guy, and such a wanter to give
to people on the rise, and none of them ask
what they can do for me, or do something for me. Like, where’s that video,
where’s your video show saying “Hey, we want to do like “five custom GaryVee videos.” In our world, we’ll give ’em to you, you can use them as assets and then maybe you can give us some love. No, because people think about themselves and how do I get views. And what the whole world is predicated on when you’re doing biz dev is, can I give that person
51% of the value of the situation. Because if I do, then they’ll say yes and then I can get 49% of the value, and that’s what I do, day in and day out, and day in and day out. And that’s why I continue to win in a world where people
want 100% of the value. You wanted this question answered ’cause you wanted an answer and you were hoping that you could get on this show
and get the exposure, right, for your channel. You know what?
I’m gonna be a good guy, DRock link it up, there it is. Can’t you do stuff
within the YouTube world? There you go, you got some views. Now, bring some value.