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

“when all of the 420
wonderful, amazing people “quit VaynerMedia?” – Ruke, that’s good work. I like this question a lot. As a matter of fact, if
we can figure it out, let’s clip right now to the
moment where I kind of ranted. I know DRock, four hours editing. I wonder, the right word in that question is “ordinary person,” right? Was that an ordinary person? Yeah.
(clicking pen) 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 are
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, aka, the person that’s not
meant to run a business, can probably only handle one punch, right? I mean, that’s just what it comes down to. You know what my answer is? Unlimited. You can punch me in the face 8,000 times. I’m here to get punched, right? 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. (laughs) On the flip side, you show me a world where all 420 of these wonderful, 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 purebred 100% entrepreneur. And so from me to the person
that is a wannabe-preneur, who, first punch in is like,
“Uh, I’m gonna go get a job,” from there, everybody fits
somewhere in between that, and that’s your answer. (quick swishing by) Alright, so obviously
I put myself out there and I said that I was going
to be able to handle it, no problem. Punch me. I can handle it. First thing I would do is
take a step back and wonder, “What the hell just happened?
(laughter) “Why did that happen?” But, theoretically, if it
was in a positive standpoint, what I would do is I would take advantage of everything I’ve learned
for the last five years, and I would decide, “Do I want
to build back up VaynerMedia, “or do I want to do something else?” And what I mean by that, and this is why this is gonna go a little
bit deeper philosophically, I would not make an emotional decision. If it happened in a way
that hurt my feelings, I wouldn’t go the route
of, “I’ll show them,” even thought that’s what I
referred to in the last episode, and then go out and
rebuild it and start over. I may want to do that, to stick it back and
show that I could do it, but one of the things I
take enormous pride in is that I am capable of taking a step back and not making the emotional decision. This is the real answer, Ruke: What I would do is I would say, “Okay, what do I wanna do now? “Do I wanna go and rebuild VaynerMedia? “Do I …” I’d probably call it
“Chuk Media,” C-H-U-K, just to get the heebie-jeebies
out of the 420 leavings. “Or is there something else on my plate “that I’ve learned from now?” I would just be reacting to the
best opportunity for my time getting close to 40, wanna buy the Jets. “What’s the best use of my time?” If I was to rebuild all over again I feel very confident that I could do it. That’s just how I feel. (strong, beating music)

– [Voiceover] Blue Stripe Creative asked, “How much, if any, time should
be spent on your competition? “Or should you just be focused
on making your own path?” – Blue Stripe, I’m super
pumped you asked this question because I was talking
with my dad all weekend about Wine Library and with that bug, and I reminded him, and AJ
was there to kind of talk about what I’ve done with Vayner
over the last three months, I literally spend (clicking
sound made with mouth) Robert Parish, double
zero on my competition. I could care less. I spend all of my time on people, my team, where we’re going. Do I know what the competition is doing? At some level, a little bit, contextually, but I never go deep. It’s all headline reading. I know who’s making some
buzz and some noise. But I gotta tell you, I truly believe that the biggest mistake so many companies and entrepreneurs make is looking around them. We’ve talked about looking
back, seeing who’s behind you. I just don’t do those things. It’s full steam ahead. I feel like if I take
care of my domain, I win. As a matter of fact, I also do it as a little
razz, as a little sizzler. Like, people are pissed. My competitor are mad. When they meet me in social
settings, and I’m very cordial, I’m a good guy, even though
I wanna slice their neck, you know, in a business
sense, not real life, they actually, if they speak
to me for five or 10 minutes, somewhere in that 10 minutes realize I don’t know what they’re up
to, and it kind of hurts them. I find it to be a competitive advantage. I really find not paying
attention to your competitor as a competitive advantage in a world where many of you
who are watching this right now and think it’s a weakness
to not know what’s going on, I’mma flip. I’mma flip, my friends. I’mma flip. – [Voiceover] Jamie asked, “Who would you recommend
pitching an app idea to?

– [Voiceover] Mark asks, “What’s behind “the recent big surge
in wine time for you?” – Mark, what’s up brother? Great question. I can’t answer you fully. I can just wink a whole bunch. I can also refer to the
fact that I just tasted this insane Chateau of the
Pop and it is remarkable. Let’s link it up in the section if you’re a baller looking
for a gift for your family, $82.13 of pure liquid magic. Yeah, I’m flirting. Stuff’s brewing. Also check out winelibrary.com,
let’s link it down there. Stunwin, show his face, wrote an incredible article yesterday. Let’s link that up. There’s stuff happening. The question of the day
was answered, or asked,

– [Voiceover] James asks, “Do you schedule time to be on social media? Or just jump on randomly during
the day as you have time?” – James, I don’t schedule crap, other than I completely live on my schedule meaning my admin, Matt, he
schedules my whole life. But if I was to be in control, I would not schedule anything. There has never been, you
guys all have access to me, there’s no 15 minutes get on social. Social’s in me, it’s not a
tactic, it’s my religion. So I do it every moment I can, it’s always top of mind
to be with my audience. I’m reading your comments, I’m reading your guesses on the almonds.

– Hey GV, it’s TF. Got a question for you for all my friends in the real estate space around the world. And the question is, how much of my advertising / marketing dollars should I be spending on
salespeople, telemarketing efforts, versus direct mail, print, traditional, versus online. You know me, buddy. I’m a no-wrong-way-to-generate-leads
kind of guy. What’s your take on it? (person claps)
(people chat) – Hey, you know, TF, I
gotta tell you, I agree. I mean, obviously I push
new forward ways of thinking about selling stuff, whether
it was ecommerce back in ’96, email marketing in ’97,
Google AdWords in 2000, banners, then content marketing in 2006. I mean, people are talking
about content marketing now. I started Wine Library TV
on February 21st, 2006, to do content marketing, so
obviously all the social stuff. I’ve got peeps in the background, too. You know, I get it. Yeah, I think that if you’ve got a way. I know we’ve talked in
the past that direct mail really works for you as a channel. Agreed. Do it, if that’s working for you. I even did direct mail for Wine Library seventeen months ago, just to make sure it didn’t bring any ROI,
and it was a disaster. It was scary to me. We used to be direct mail juggernauts in ’98, ’99, 2000, where we’d get three, four, five, six,
seven percent redemption of how many fliers we’d sent out. People coming to the store. We had six people bring
the coupon to the store and we had a big value prop in it. So direct mail clearly died for us and then other places that have grown. And, SEM works, and Facebook
dark posts are working, and content clearly has worked. So, I’m a no-romance-over-the-lead
kind of guy, as well. I mean, here’s my thing, though. People fall in love with the way they’ve made their money, right, because it’s working right now. I’m thrilled when I think that Instagram and Facebook dark posts and Twitter suck. Can’t wait for that. Can’t wait for 2024, you know,
when I’m dissing on that. I’m like, it’s all about
this, the virtual reality. Great. Can’t wait, in the words of Bart Scott. And so, I think the biggest thing that I get scared about is that people get romantic
and don’t try new things. Every person watching here
should always be spending between five to twenty
percent of their money, if that’s what you’ve got, or your time, if that’s what you’ve got,
on new and innovative things, because they need to be prepping for 2016, 2018, 2022. And here’s the biggest key, TF. No matter what you tell me, your direct mail response
and telemarketing response is not as good as that
same action 10 years ago. If you were doing that same
calling in the background and that same direct
marketing 10 years ago, it would have had a bigger ROI because more people were paying
attention to those channels, their actual home phone and their mailbox, then they are now in
a world of this, this, and everything pulling away. Not to mention, the costs
are higher in direct mail because, you know, the
post office is subsidizing that loss of money. So, these are the things
that I think about it. It’s the arbitrage of
the value of the ROI, not necessarily the action itself. – [Voiceover] Damian asks,

– Alright, I get it. You want to know about SnapCash. I just watched the video. Nice job, nice production. Look, I think this continues. This is why I invested
in Venmo four years ago. The thought of payment
transfers amongst people in a paperless, cashless
world is very important. And to layer it into a social
network, what I like about it for SnapChat is they’re
getting in very early. What I mean by very early
is not into the game, very early in one’s age
to create the behavior. Because SnapChat has a heavy
13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 year old demo, they can
capture a lot of that behavior. I always thought that Facebook,
I remember thinking that the social network I wanted
to build when Facebook was blowing it up was one that
was around your license. Because I wanted to get the people before they went to college. And I thought like, if we
start a social network where your license was your
gateway in, that there was something there and that’s
what SnapChat has done. It’s gone earlier. It creates behavior. Look, cryptocurrency, Apple
Pay, this kind of stuff with Square and SnapChat, if I’m a
traditional financial service, I’m very concerned about
the enormous innovation over the last 24 months invading on my turf. And if I’m a consumer, I’m extremely happy because competition breeds
enormous innovation. And the number one thing we love is time. And I see a lot of things
in the financial world saving us time now. Saving us time to go into
our wallet and take this out, and take out cash. Ooh, I actually have to
give a receipts to Matt. You know, so that’s good. And you know, or this,
taking out a credit card and swiping it takes time. All these things are much
quicker in this world. Speed, my friends. In sports and in business
really matters cause we value time the most. Might be time to get a watch. Question of the day. What is your number one
most recent app download.

– [Voiceover] Sarah asks,
“As a private music teacher “I have limited hours to teach. “What are your thoughts on
how to increase my income, “or build a brand?” – Sarah, a lot of thoughts on this. It’s called the Crush It! manifesto, which is, there’s plenty of damage between 11pm and three in the morning. I get it, you teach,
you know, I don’t know, teachers to me are actually,
my sister is a teacher, like they have the most
time to do other stuff. They have fairly good schedules. There’s the summer. There’s, you know, and
again, maybe you’ve got a different kind of teaching thing, but to me, if you want to build
more of a scalable brand, you gotta put out content. You gotta look at things like Skillshare where you can put out your teachings and sell that. There’s a lot of ways to do it. Technology has created
an enormous opportunity for you to scale it. You can do live Spreecasts
and Google Hangouts that only have access to people that pay. I would recommend putting
out a lot of content at first as a gateway
drug to the opportunity to charge people so you
can establish yourself. But this whole notion of where is the time, I need more time, I just think people are
loaded with excuses. They aren’t auditing themselves. They don’t realize that
they’re watching every season of Homeland and Game of Thrones. They don’t realize that
they’re having an hour and 15 minute lunch, like lunch. I’ve had two lunches. Robert Souza, our new SVP made me go to a lunch to meet somebody. I was pissed. I was like, why couldn’t
we do that as 11pm drinks? Lunch, like leaving and having lunch? The inefficiency of that time? So you know, I’m pissed at lunch and I’m pissed at Game of Thrones and I’m pissed at playing video games and I’m pissed at a lot of
things in a world where somebody wants more
financially or career-wise. I love it for the people
that need it to escape. I love it for people that are content with their monies and their career path. I love it. As a matter of fact, I envy it. Boy, if somebody could take a shot and suck out some of my ambition,
I’d be really pumped. You wanna do a start up? Create a suck out the ambition app. I’d be really happy about
that because I’d love to be able to take a lunch. I’d love to be able to relax
and play Madden against somebody in Iowa, because
that’s how you can play Madden these days, with the kids, for the last 10 years. But I haven’t been playing it because I’ve been hustling,
because that’s what I want. And so, whether you’re a hundred or zero, you just wanna zen and live in
a mountain with no technology or you wanna buy the Jets
and hustle your face off, or anything in between, you
need to find your cadence. And so if you’re asking this question, my intuition is you’re
spending an hour or two on things every day that aren’t achieving this extra brand or extra
monies that you’re chasing. So cut that crap out and
apply it to these things, putting out content, writing content, making videos, building up a brand, engaging with people,
going to Twitter search, Twitter.com/search searching teachings around, you know, key words around the things you teach. Engage with people, say hello, cold call, saw somebody shout that out in the YouTube comments yesterday. We talked about that, as a matter of fact, link up that video. People need to watch it.
That’s a classic. I don’t know where you want it, DRock. But you guys know which
video I’m talking about. The cold call. I had a
shaved head in there. Anyway, the bottom line is, you need to re-calibrate to your ambitions. By the way, it may be going
from seven hours of sleep to five hours of sleep
because you need all those lunches and video games, and that’s fine. But if you want it, you just gotta go and do that. episode 42 of the #AskGaryVee Show.

– [Voiceover] Joy asks,
“What social media techniques “do you think work best
for promoting a book?” – Joy, I was excited about
answering this question ’cause I was gonna go tactical, but then Steve reminded me
that I’ve answered this a bunch in the past, and I wanna
give that context too ’cause he’s right, and I
wouldn’t have answered it, so kudos to Steve for
making the show better. When selling a book, you
need to be selling it months and years in advance. I am actively, right now,
selling the #AskGaryVee book. Let me explain. I’m putting out content, and I’m jabbing, and I’m building an audience, and I’m building a lot of new fans. As a matter of fact, question of the day going right into it, How long have you been following my work? Please leave that in the comments. Podcast people, jump out of the earphones, and jump onto the
keyboard and go to YouTube and answer this question, because I want a lot of
people in the VaynerNation to see how many people are only
two, three, four, five, six weeks in because this
show is getting virality, bringing people in, and then
thus creating a scenario where, I was just thinking
about what’s the scenario, got excited, anyway, creating a scenario where
I’m bringing value up front, I’m not charging for this. I’m not asking for anything. I’m not trying to make a
gateway to a product, no. I’m just building leverage,
and then when I launch in early 2016 the #AskGaryVee book, which is probably gonna be
a hundred to two hundred of these questions that I’ve
done over the last year or two, if I can get that far. That was a little bit of
a gateway drug preview to how many episodes I’m expecting to do. And two, a bunch of new questions, and three is kind of a cool idea I have. (ding) A lot of people here
who’ve watched every show don’t really need to buy the book, right? I mean, you’ve consumed it, but at 18 bucks or 22 bucks, they will because I’ve guilted them into it because I’ve provided so much of value. And so number one, you need
to provide value up front before you ever sell your book. Let me get into some tactics. One-on-one marketing. One of the biggest mistakes
so many authors make is they send out a bulk e-mail, and it usually says this. “Hey guys, I never normally do this,” I mean, that’s my favorite. You like that, Zak? “I never normally do this, “but I have a book coming
out next Wednesday. “It would mean the world to me,” Why? They want to be efficient. People want to scale. What I did last August was I went to Connecticut with my family and I, one by one by one by one by one, wrote e-mails to people
that I wanted to help. Alex in 12 years. Alex, hey remember I really
gave you a break in your career. You know, we’re great buddies. Hey, nice job last week, da da da. I’d really appreciate
your help on this book. Can I count on you? And I basically went one by one by one and scaled the unscalable,
and what it created was a landfall of a lot of opportunity. The other thing is you have to
cess the market of exposure. That year, August last year, the podcasting was really
starting to happen, right? And so I wanted to really focus on that. So I went and I did a ton of interviews with all the emerging podcast people ’cause I knew that was the arbitrage, and what I mean by the arbitrage was a place where you would get
bigger return on your investment than other places based on its exposure. So whereas three years ago I’d
want to be in the Huff Post and guest blog post,
that played itself out because Forbes opened it up, and a lot of other people did that move, but the podcasting was starting to grow, and now there’s so many more podcasts, so much more competition for those earbuds that it’s changed a little bit. It’s not as valuable to be
a guest as it was a year ago because of the game, unless
a certain podcast overindexed and there’s more, and you keep playing this. So it’s really tactical stuff like that, but it’s really about
scaling the unscalable. The truth is, you’ve gotta get
to somebody’s emotion, right? So that it goes from heart
to brain to wallet, right? Heart to brain to wallet, oh I like that. That could be a really nice picture. Let’s, maybe a t-shirt. Heart, can you make a t-shirt? Anyway, heart to brain to wallet is kind of the way I
think about selling books. First you gotta get them emotional, then you gotta make them
think there’s a value prop, and you’ve got a storytell to them why they should buy your book. What’s in it for them above the fact that they feel that they owe you? And then that’s when they
start pulling out their wallet. And so I do that one by one by one by one, and when I do interviews,
one of the things if you go back and listen
to all of the podcasts, Lewis Howes, Peflen,
JLD, any of those people, when I was doing those interviews, I barely mentioned the book. As a matter of fact, when they asked me questions of the book
’cause they were good guys and they wanted to get me exposure, I’d walk away from it ’cause
the only thing I want to do in those 30 minutes was provide as much value for that
audience as possible ’cause that’s the first step, the heart. Thanks for watching episode
41 of The #AskGaryVee Show.

– [Voiceover] Amanda asks,
“What ways can agencies “make staff meetings more productive?” – Amanda, I love this question. By the way, I just took
my wedding ring off. Big week for me. Turned 39 and had my 10th
wedding anniversary this week. Thursday is the wedding anniversary, Friday is my birthday. That’s right, at midnight at my wedding, the whole wedding party
sang me Happy Birthday. That’s how I roll. Amanda, Amanda right? Amanda, great question. The best way to make
meetings more efficient is to cut them in half. To cut them in, to cut seven eighths out of them. The amount of bullcrap
that goes on in a meeting, the set-up, this and that, one thing I’ve just noticed, I hired a couple of very
senior executives recently, three or four SVPs, very
senior people here at Vayner, and to a tee, each of
them have come up to me and said, “Wow, your
meetings are so weird. “They’re five minutes,
they’re ten minutes, “they’re 15 minutes.” Because most of it doesn’t matter. This is becoming the theme of this show. It just doesn’t matter. So I think one of the best
ways to make it efficient is to cut them in time. One of the things that I realized is that people will fit 10 pounds of crap into a 10 pound bag. You give them a 15 pound bag,
that’s what they fit it into. They don’t overfill. What I mean by that is, if
you have a one hour meeting, if we have a one hour meeting, we’ll fit what we need to
get into that into that hour. We’ll banter a little bit,
we’ll go a little bit deeper, but if we cut that same
meeting to 15 minutes, we’ll still accomplish that,
and we’ve saved the 45. So the answer to your
question is restrictions. Create a mandate for the
length of the meeting. – Hi Gary, my name’s Brent Wampler,