“that your staff was really young. “I didn’t see anybody
over 40 surrounding you. Why?” – Well, India is actually 44,
she just looks phenomenal. (laughter) I mean, so there’s that. You know, yeah, my staff is young, you know, I think I get
value out of mentoring, though I’m mentoring a lot of people now that are in their 30s and 40s and 50s. Yeah, my team happens to be young, I’m more than open to hiring anybody, race, credence, you know, like, anything, it just hasn’t happened. The company’s young. I mean, like, you know, look, it’s kinda one of these things like, stereotypes, there’s some truth to it? Look, I mean, this company started doing
social media marketing in 2009, ’10, ’11, like, the 60-year-olds weren’t rolling in. You know? And so I just think a lot of people
overthink these things, meaning, like, you know, for example, a lot of people around
me are always, like, wanting me to stage things, for photos, for
interviews, for on my team, you know, like, all this stuff, like, I’m aware that India’s
the female on my team. Like, I’m aware of stuff. I’m aware of everything. I just also think authenticity rules, and so I’ll be answering your question in the question that’s
the broader question. You know, I’m pumped to
have anybody on my team. Listen, and they will all attest to this, I love standing in front of the company and saying, look, I’m 39,
I’m the old man on the team and I’m better at social
media than all of you. Like, I truly believe that. I don’t pre-judge on age,
sex, where you’re from, well, actually, I do judge a little bit
on where you’re from, meaning if you’re from the
streets I do value you more. I do like a little bit of
the grind and the hustle. It’s an absolute truth. It’s so funny, the true
one place where I think more than the cliche things
of age or sex or race, where I’m a little prejudiced, is I value the streets. I just do. And the streets, AKA just struggling. I just, I’m a fan of it. Anyway yeah, just, it’s been
the serendipity of it. The team has been built from people, a little bit less, actually,
so that’s not true, like, India and Steve were here, and I guess the rest of the team, so four, were hired for us, so yeah, it’s an interesting
thought, like, I’m into it. I’m super into it. Apply.

“for pickup hoops and social media. “What, if any similarities do you see “in these two passion points?” – All right DRock, DRock
dropped his headphones. That better be gray DRock,
no editing or you’re fired. Pickup hoops and social media. I think, here’s the one
correlation that comes to mind. I think a good one. I think that it’s super
interesting in the fact that when you play pickup
hoops you actually don’t know who’s going to be on your team, right? Usually ten characters get around, ten, 12 characters, you
shoot some free throws, you have five on five. You look at the dynamics and very quickly, within the first five to ten, 15 minutes, or if it lasts that long, definitely at least through the first five or ten possessions you’re trying
to figure out the dynamics of the teamwork on the team on the spot. I find myself very similar going
through that kind of motion when I’m trying to
learn Vine, or Snapchat, or Periscope, or Meerkat, and old school Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram. Those first days, like something’s popped. Like everybody’s talking, I remember Meerkat, this
just happened six months ago, all of a sudden on a
weekend everybody’s talking and obviously I’m in a nice brand position where everyone’s like, when’s
Gary Vee gonna be on Meerkat? Beme right now, right? You’re figuring out your way of doing it on that platform. And to me, it really does
remind me of a pickup basketball where you’re tryin’ to figure
out the dynamics of the game similarly to early days
in social media apps. That was really good.

– What’s the unforgivable
sin that one of my employ, I mean, actually there’s a lot
of things that I really think are very important to me in
like, not lines in the sand, but you know, what’s
interesting is, it’s funny, hustle and people, I’m
not worried about people’s work ethic, you know it’s funny, actually I’ve been thinking about DRock, Staphon, I’ve been thinking about
making a video, actually about hustle may be my super power, right, but it doesn’t have to be yours. Right back to everybody’s
strength and weaknesses. Mine just, you know, I’m
a little bit concerned that a lot of you who are watching this, you know, you hear my mantra
of hard work, 24/7/365, and you start trying
to force yourself into going into that direction
and really I’m just speaking to the small group
of people that are watching or listening to the show
that actually have that skill of being able to, when they’re passionate, work their faces off and that is one of the competitive advantages. One of my favorites,
mine, in a lot of ways, but it doesn’t have to be yours. So, you know, it’s funny
how the question was asked because I think it’s a leading question to, you know, if they only
work like Steve, right, you know, if they work
like Steve here, right. So, you know, that’s not
the issue at hand at all. I think the only sin and the
quickest way to get fired from VaynerMedia is to
not figure out a way to play nice with the other boys and girls that you work with. To me, the number one thing that I judge VaynerMedia employees
on is how they interact with every other VaynerMedia employee. Some people in the
organization are really good at leading their teams. They have 12, 15 people and
their team loves them to death and they love their team to death. However, cross department,
if they’re on account with creative or with
the paid team or with IT or the video production
team, they’re not as good. They’re fighting just for their team and they’re burning bridges
in those departments. Not good. Other people are tremendous with clients and are great with the
other senior people, but they’re not treating the people underneath them with the respect and their team doesn’t
love working for them or micromanaging them and so. You know, managing styles don’t bother me. People have to learn their
cadence on micromanaging versus giving people air
cover, but being disrespectful or being selfish to what’s
in your best interest, not the logo’s interest as a
whole, within the organization, to me, is just completely unacceptable. Letting your emotions get the
best of you and talking down to somebody or creating
conflict, unacceptable. So, those are the things that are the sins within my environment.

“today, without anyone
knowing who you were, ” “how would you find talent?” – Kyle, first of all I’m
gonna answer the real answer, and then the question I
think you’re actually asking. The real answer is, I would never, and this is going to give a
lot of people a lot of insight, I’m always trying to provide
value, Sid, as you go through your career, you wanna
provide value, so I’m going to answer twice. The answer is I would not
start VaynerMedia, I actually will never in my career
start a business, or be in a business that I don’t have
disproportional leverage from the beginning to
affect the outcome of the business, so the thought
of starting a social media agency, where I am not a
known entity, and I don’t have leverage with brands
already, VaynerMedia started much like the
networking video that Sid, was taught by DRock,
actually link that up DRock, let’s give Sid, this
is like a Sid episode. It’s a Sid explosion guys. Let’s have a little ding,
ding, ding right here, if you haven’t seen it
check out the video. I talked about networking,
and somewhere in that thing I said, let it come
to you, have the leverage. When I started Vayner, I had the leverage. I was already a known entity,
in this space, at that point probably for about 3 or 4
years, 2 or 3 years, brands were coming to me. I scratched the itch,
I reverse engineered. I had a business because it came to me. A talent came to me, because
I was known as a thought leader already in the space. To start a business without
leverage, either having the pure talent, I’m great at
cooking, you know, baking, and thus I have a chance. Maybe I don’t need to
be known for my baking skills, but I have the skill,
or I have the disproportional known factor. Now to answer your question,
you need to go out and network, ironically. If you are somebody who’s
inspired by me, listen, I see a ton of you 23 year
olds starting your social media agency because it feels easy, right. Like, I’m a kid, I know what Vine is. You know, remember these
businesses, need business results, so just because you
use SnapChat to hook up, or whatever you’re doing, right,
just cause you know how to swipe to the right, doesn’t mean you know
how to sell cups of coffee. So, I think what’s really important is do you have the skills first, second, you gotta
go out and network. If you’re starting an agency,
if you’re asking that question selfishly for yourself,
to what should you do, I think you need to go to
meetup.com, go to every social media meet up in your
general area, go to 5-15 conferences, big ones,
around social media, you know Social Media Examiner does
a big one in San Diego, like scrounge up the dollars
and go, network, network, network, learn, learn, learn,
follow people, multiple people, because they’re all
bringing different values. Learn, learn, learn, engage
on Twitter, it’s the open cocktail party of the internet. Engage with people that
are engaging on comments within my Facebook posts. Become parts of communities, leverage, remember jab, jab, jab,
right hook, don’t go in there and be like, “Hey, do
you wanna work for me?” Like, become part of a
community, then leverage the aspects of being part of that community. – [India] Nice. – But it starts, India, with
becoming part of the community. Like I don’t wanna glaze over that. I appreciate your nice,
but I want to make sure we really get it here,
like you’ve got to become part of the community, and
then you can leverage it. Don’t tactically be, don’t fake the, don’t go into the reddit
and your first post is spam, right Steve?
– That’s — – Because you get fleem to
death, and I think a lot of people try to do that,
and they think they’re clever because they’re patient for a
month and acting like they’re part of the, People can sense shit. If your intent was to
become part of the community just to extract value
out of the community, people can sense it. – [Voiceover] Tyler asks, “In
a Snapchat/Instagram world, is

“and VaynerMedia through
insane growth, what’s your “best advice to those
leading growing teams?” – You know, I think one of
the things that I think about when growing, and you know,
Wine Library probably, from 1998 dad, until
2004 or five, in kind of, that five or six, seven year period, we probably went from what, how many employees do you
think, with Dick and Bob, maybe 10 or twelve to like
eighty or ninety, right? Would you say in that
five or six year period? – Yeah. – So– – But we were overstaffed. – Yes, dad. – No, no, no but we were
overstaffed for a reason. – Yeah, we were growing! – We were growing – And the same thing’s happening now. I’m sure AJ would now
say we’re overstaffed because we’ve gone from
thirty to 525 people in the last three years at VaynerMedia. I think the big thing for
me, and it’s interesting it’s fun to have my dad here. The big thing with me that I think is a little bit different
than my dad and AJ, I’m just, I’m kind of, when you’re going through insane growth, I definitely don’t worry
about the little things. You gotta move fast. There’s going to be a ton of headaches. There’s going to always be issues, but I try to focus on the top line, right. When you’re trying to grow quickly, you’re really growing top line revenue. A lot of times that may be at the mercy of gross profit and net profit. For sure there’s always
issues with personnel, there’s always disagreements
and things of that nature, but for me, it’s not
sweating the small things. To me, I keep my heads
very much in the cloud. I really focus on the agenda at hand, and I think where most people struggle, is they focus on the small things. They get caught up in the things
that may not matter as much in a net net game, and
I think that has been a very major factor in my business success that I’m able to not get caught up in the things that I think
the far majority of people get caught up in. I think people get emotional about things, I think people don’t
project financial outcomes, you know, both when I got
involved in my dad’s business and with VaynerMedia,
the growth of the revenue on the high end, on the top
line, was very extreme and I think that’s something that
people struggle to calibrate. To me it’s not sweating the small things. Dad? – Yeah. – Great, let’s get into the next question. – I think that’s well, well, yeah. – Right? – You know, look, a lot of
people now watch the show. The show’s gotten very big,
I don’t know if you know. – No, I didn’t know. – Ask #GaryVeeShow, it’s very big. – So how come I’m the
first time on the show? – Well, I mean, it’s all
just worked out, timing. You’re very busy, you’re busy. You don’t come to New York
when I’m taping the show. – Right, that’s true. – Tolls, it got too expensive. – You have a very different point of view, you have a very unique point of view on me that the audience does not have. – Listen, no question about
it, not because he’s my son he’s a very, very special kid, no doubt. – I’m almost 40, Dad. – You’re always going to be a kid to me. – I know, I know. – Please. – I get it, I get it. – You’re children will be– – Why don’t you tell the
audience when you first realized how special I was. (laughter) – Oh I knew what– – No, tell them, this will be fun for me. – Shit – I can’t get you to tell me to my face. – No, no! – I always give you the
credit where the credit– – Always. – Okay, what, I’m going
to tell you to your face? No, no, no, you sold drapery right? – Ha, you’re going way back. – Wait a minute. – I was 10. – What year was that? – 1985. – No, before, was (mumbles). – Yeah 1985, I was 10, when
I did the mini flea market. – Mini, Andy, Mini flea market. – ’85. – They had some– – (mumbles) clock. – No, no. – A drapery. A blue drapery. – And my day at that time, I used to take Sunday off once and a while to spend quality time
with my children, right? – Which meant we would sleep. – Listen, I used to work
16 hour days, 14 hour days. – For sure. – That’s not so easy. – Nope. – But, Mom gave you the draperies, right? – Yeah. – And you sold it. – And they were stunned. – Yeah. – And Grandma. – And yeah, listen, I knew it. You’re my son, right? When I lent you, supposedly,
no I did lend you– – You lended me, yep. – Money, a thousand dollars. – You lended me a thousand dollars to start my baseball card
business when I was 14. – I was in the business, right? And a couple people said to
me, you know, you’re an idiot. You’re never going to see this money back. – I paid you back fast. – Fast. – Within the month. – And that was hard, that was like 1989 when I could only go to a
show once every other weekend. – And then you start working in a store. – Kenwood Chardonnay. – No, Sebastiani. – Well, that I asked you to move. – Yeah, well. – Kenwood, I sold. – And that’s uh, yeah. – Alright, let’s go Andy. – Okay, let’s go. – [Voiceover] Buzz.hr asks, I
started a daily vlog series.

Nice to meet you Vayner Nation. (laughs) – What is your question Molly? – My question is I read an article in the New York Times recently. – Is that a newspaper? – It is a newspaper, but my
Mom sent it to me on Facebook. – Amazing. – So, it was called ‘No
Time To Be Nice At Work’ and it was all about how
the workplace is becoming a hostile environment now
because people aren’t civil to one another because of a
bunch of external factors. They’re focused on a bunch
of other different things. – Like what? – So people aren’t nice to each other because the pressure of day-to-day tasks, they’re thinking about something else when they’re in a
conversation with somebody. – OK. – How do you find– – What was the point of the article, like what was it trying to say? – It was trying to say that there’s always time to kind of like take a deep breath and say
hi, how are you, to somebody, which I think you do a really good job of. – Okay. – So how do you find the time to focus? We’re having a conversation right now, this is a great example,
but how do you find the time to focus, be nice to
people, stay in the moment, that kind of thing? – How do I personally? – Yes, you personally. – You know I don’t think I
really have any other gear. I truly believe like DNA and the way you were brought up is real. I truly look around this room and there’s different levels
of being a nice person in this room, it’s just real. It’s just a real thing, right? For me, it’s super easy. So here’s what I would say,
I think that one thing I like to say a lot is money and
micro-fame or real fame doesn’t change a person,
it just exposes a person. So the amount of people
that write me emails or see me in the street like,
“wow you’re…”, they’ll like send a tweet after they take
a selfie with me in the street and they’re like, “Wow, Gary
Vee’s a really nice guy!” Like, you actually get credit
for being a nice person the more exposure you get. Which I think is silly. Which I think is kind of
just a weird kind of dynamic. So, I think that falls in the
same realm as your question which is, you know, I
don’t think external things in the world, like 24/7 world, I don’t think anything’s really changed. I don’t think Gertrude is nicer or meaner because it’s 2013 and
not 1955 anymore, right? I really don’t think that, I
just think Gertrude’s a (beep) and like decided not to be nice just like she wouldn’t have
been nice 30 years ago. And so, for me, I don’t
even know any other Gary. As a matter of fact, I’m
probably a little bit weird the other way, which
is I’m so uncomfortable with negativity and angst,
things of that nature, that I attack it in reverse. A lot of my day is taken up trying to make sure that’s
contained and not happening. So, it’s just my default. I think there’s a lot of value in it. I’m stunned how many people undervalue a head-nod or a “hey”. For me, because as you guys
know I’m running around so much, so much of my stuff is like
a wink or a smile or a, it’s just I don’t have the
time, but it’s so nice. I think people really
value effort, and intent. And I think you can get away with doing so much of that stuff, with
such little stuff, right? And so, for me it’s easy
because my parents had sex at the right moment to give me my DNA. – [Kim] (applause) – Thank you, Kim. And,
– (laughter) and my Mom really parented me in a way to really value other people and all that kind of stuff. And so, I just haven’t
known any different. I love that I get like extra
credit for it now-a-days because a couple people
follow me on social media. But, for me there’s, ya know, and more importantly, and I
think you know this, and I think a lot of you know this and
some of you don’t know this, but it’s what’s more interesting
to me is I believe in it so much the level of which
I’m forcing it down below me, not just leading by example
but being pretty upfront with senior leadership of
how much it matters to me is I think helps our company. – For sure. – Cool.
– It does. – Thanks Mol. – [Group] (applause)

“people missing deadlines they set?” – Ben, this is an
interesting kinda question. Poorly, because usually I… Let me break this down, actually. The way I struggle, the way I react to people who set their own deadlines and miss them are predicated into the A and B bucket that I put them in, meaning, either I put you into a bucket where you’re a hardcore executor, you’re extremely reliable, you’re on your shit, you’re T’s and I’s and everything, and that’s what I value in you because that’s what you’re great at, if you miss a deadline, I am pissed, ’cause that’s what you do. Now if you’re in the magic category, gray, stumbling all over yourself, calling out sick randomly. Weird, but you got magic
and you make stuff happen, well I kind of think
you’re gonna miss your, I actually don’t even believe
you in the first place when you set a deadline. And so then I’m okay with
another two or three days. So I think it predicates completely on where I have you bucketed. And then are you actually
executing on that bucket. So that’s how I react to that question.

“that is growing fast, is it more important “to perfect the system and process “or focus on adding more
people to the team?” – Jared it’s a good question. I’m a big fan of both. I don’t understand why
not both, I do both. As building VaynerMedia, I
was perfecting the system while hiring people and training them up and building out the team. This is not an either,
or my man and this is where I think people struggle. To really be victorious, I
think you need to be able to do both at the same time. That’s what separates the
women from the girls right? The ability to be able to do
both things at the same time and by the way that’s
where hustle comes in. Because you know what, to
do both you’ve gotta kind of integrate the team nine to five
while kind of spending five ’till like two in the morning
to perfect the system. This is where hustle matters. This is where extra hours
in the day actually matter because you can’t get to both
actually, like physically, you can’t get to both and
so in a nine hour work day. So if you’ve gotta business
that’s growing fast, first question is are you
actually deploying 18 hours a day because remember too
many of you have missed or are gonna miss your moment in time. When it’s happening, when it’s happening if you don’t triple pedal down,
that’s pedal on the metal, like foot on the pedal, if
you don’t go all the hell in, all of it, if you don’t
do that at that moment you will regret. You have missed your moment in time and that is why I’m burning the
candle from both sides right now because everything is
hitting a proper crescendo as I’m going into my 40th
birthday in November. VaynerMedia, Vayner/RSE my fund, cruising, just cruising and the
#AskGaryVee Show cruising you know just, family life and
health, I mean, cruising and so I’ve gotta push harder
because you know what at 42 I mean it might
just be that break and that moment in time where
things aren’t cruising as much and so you’ve gotta extract,
you’ve gotta extract all the value when you’re
hitting that point. You’ve gotta live it,
you just have to live it. As a matter of fact, for all
of you that in your senior year of high school that are watching
your show, squeeze the crap out of that ’cause it’s the best. And college, you’ve gotta
squeeze everything all the time and especially this
question really hits a nerve because I want people to
understand the answer is both.

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

called Brick Fest Live. We run live Lego events that attract tens of thousands of people. – Fucking love that
– [Chad] (mumbling) – Yeah, that’s cool. So, our mission is inspire,
educate, and entertain you have the next
generation of lego builders because, you know, ’cause that’s the – Cause it’s a big fuckin’ industry. – Yeah, and it wires your
brain to problem solve. – No question.
– which is what we’re all doing. – Yeah.
– [Chad] Right. My question is actually more about what you do with this show and the people that you have
around you to support it how much of their time is spent on you as opposed to other things. – All their time is spent on me. – Okay. – The entire team that’s mixed in is all a part of brand
Gary team, all of it. So, some of them have
worked at VaynerMedia within VaynerMedia before
and we plucked Steve you know, India, you know Alex plucked out of the machine on to the team and others have been, you
know, cold hired just for it Zak, Andrew, DRock, Staphon for it. – That’s awesome. ‘Cause we started actually
on a YouTube channel – Yep. – Where, you know, all
the production was us. – Yes. And that’s how Wine Library TV
was, but with this I have so much more
scale and as you can tell what I’m doing is I’m
producing so much more content off the show for Medium
and all the distributions so, and I’m learning through these guys as they are actually now doing it. DRock’s right over here,
Andrew is Meerkating, India is taking photo’s. What I am learning is what does a production company look
like for a human being? – Right, what does it look like? – Which I think Fuckin’ rad, you know, and I think that there’s
you gotta understand there’s, you know, as well as I am doing there are a whole lot
more successful people, wealthier like they are
that top 3% of celebrity that are way grossly over
paying their PR people, their managers, their
boy from around the way that they are taking care
of like all that stuff that I think creates really
interesting business model of the future because I do believe, and you know this every single
person is media company, I believe that cold. And so, not only am I producing, not only my giving back to a
community that’s been in place and growing but I’m getting
to learn the infrastructure of how I would scale this if
I wanted to do it for LeBron. – Awesome. Thanks bro!
– [Gary] Cool.