“for the most?” – Go ahead PK. – Helping people to be
the best they can be, family and otherwise. – That’s awesome. For me, there’s a lot
of different things that I think about, but one of the
things that I really want, I talk a lot about guilting
everybody I ever meet to coming to my funeral. I’m very passionate about bringing more value to people than they brought to me. One of the things I
admire so much about my father-in-law Peter, is,
it’s scary to me how many, we’re different clearly in
certain ways, but boy do we have a lot of similarities,
and when I started to get to know it was
interesting to me how his wife Ann, who’s amazing,
would talk about him, I was like hmm, that’s
me, that’s what I like. I like that everybody comes to
me for help and I help them, and all those things, and
so that’s what I would say, 51-49, that I gave more to
them in our relationship than they gave to me. That said, if you agree
with me, I think I better

So, the question to you
is very business-related. – Please. – As you know, we built
something similar to you, we got inspired off of Crush It! – Yes, yes. – So, did the same
thing, did a lot of jobs, put in a lot of work over the years. – Built leverage. – Yeah, built leverage,
put the trust in the brand. – We have a substantial
business now in seven figures. – But, now that, it’s been
a couple years we’ve kind of stagnated.
– Yeah. – Because, so. – Happens all the time. – So my question to you is, and I think, one of the weaknesses
here, is actually scaling, because we tried to do
everything ourselves, we have a small team,
but how do you actually build that team with you, and
the most important question is that, how do you build
and maintain that culture and that, that love that, the same love that you have for the business, – In other people? – In other people. – (laughs) This is a very, this is a very eastern European question,
is very common things that. So, the answer is, you don’t. If you expect somebody
else to love your business as much as you, you two are
out of your (beep)in’ mind. And, this is something
I tried to teach my dad. As a young kid, I’m like,
Dad, you own the business. How the hell do you want them to love this as much as you do? What you need to do is
several different things. First of all, thank you
for asking me the question. I lived it. I did it at Wine Library,
from people that are more like you. You guys went to zero to
something just like my Pop’s. And how I scaled it was, I
taught him these pillars. And I taught him these pillars. Which is, number one, get over that. It’s over. They’re never going to
love it as much as you. If you’re lucky enough, like I find, like that amazing man behind you, if you can find people that can
love it 8.5 as much of a 10, 9.2 as much of a 10, 9.7 on a holy grail moment out of 10, well then, you’ve won. So, that’s never gonna happen,
and it’s actually completely, completely disrespectful
for you to even want that from somebody else,
’cause you never loved somebody else’s business as
much as you love your own. So, why are you going to try
to make somebody else do that? Number one. Number two, the biggest mistake
people make at this point is you start wanting to cash
in on some of the fruits of this amazing hard work. It’s a little bit more exciting to dress a little bit better, to
live at a better place, to take a vacation, to
do all these things. I get it. The way to scale and grow
is to have the dollars to continue to scale and grow. If you’re doing everything yourself, there’s a couple reasons. One, you’re a perfectionist
and don’t think anybody else can do it. Two, you see other people do it and they do it as an eight to your 10, and that’s not good enough. Three, you do not want to
deploy the money because you want to use those
monies for other things for yourselves and other things. All three are massive vulnerabilities. Fix those three, and you’ll grow. I run my businesses the first five, 10 years of their lives at no profit. And I did it, and people
can say, now, easy for you. Bullshit. I was 28 years old, I
build a humongous business, and I was making $40,000 a year. I had friends that were half
me and a hundredth of me making more money, had better
cars, were having more fun, I was 28 years old, making $40,000 a year, and I build a $30 million
business at that point. That’s eating your own dog food. So, get over yourselves,
and be thankful that people want to work for you, and get
them to an eight or a nine, and you get them to an eight
or nine, by loving them more. What you did for your audience, you need to do for your
employees 10 times more. Biggest mistake entrepreneurs make, they treat their employees worse than they treat their customers. Biggest mistake. Treat them better than
you treated your audience. Then they’ll get from a six to
an eight, and that’s amazing. They’ll never get to a 10. It’s not their business. Number two, decide how much
you want to live great now versus every dollar, every dollar, you take that trip to
Spain, is three dollars less that you make three years from now. – Well, what if you have
still substantial money after vacations, after
everything, and you– – Invest it. – And into? – People. – But, people, how do you
find these people who are still eight even or a seven? – But easy, because you
need to treat them better, because you’ve got them,
you just need to change the way you treated them. And, if they don’t get
there after you treat them way better, you fire
them, and you find people who do react to you giving them more value than they’re providing you. – Cool. – You understand?
– Yeah. – Really?
– Not fully. – So, that’s why I’m not letting you go. Here’s my thing: you kick it. So, how many employees do you guys have? – Uh, around the world, seven right now. – Great, you need to really vet them, the number one thing I
would do if I were you is, I would call them right
after the show, and say, What can I do to make
this much better for you? – We do that. – Good, good. Do you deliver on everyone? – Yeah.
– Great. Well then, you should
be having no problem. Then, then, I’m a little
bit more confused. Then, either you have not
built up enough trust with them for them to tell you the truth, or, you’re just not hiring fast enough. – We’re not hiring fast enough.
– Good. – ‘Cause no, because we’re,
we’re, we’re trying to have everybody be like fully 10. – So, you know, (laughs) – [Alex] We want Eric’s– – [Gary] Eric, Eric was
what number in place, 17? 17. He watched Vayner go from 17 to 200, then, for personal
reasons, he went to Boston. He’s back now, and we’re 600. What Eric can tell you
(laughs), all the VaynerMedia employees from 17 to
200, stick with me here, this is not an insult, he
knows how many four, five, six, seven and eights. You need four, five, six, seven
and eights when you’re big. You can’t make seven 10’s,
that’s not how you scale and win. That’s the secret. It’s not about you guys
getting seven people to a 10, it’s about you hiring 40 people at eights. So how about this, here is
the last question, follow-up.

in social and what are
they doing that’s so good? – Truth is, you’re so much,
you’re way better in a position to say, answer that question than I am. I’m not paying attention
to what a lot of musicians are doing, but I’ll tell you
that the musicians that are doing it best will understand
the framework that created the greatest bands and
artists of all time, which is, again, it’s the theme
of the show in London, it is providing value. It is so easy to see what
Talyor Swift is doing, it is so easy to understand
what Phish and Grateful Dead and Dave Matthews Band did. It is disproportionately
helping an audience, and then leveraging that
to get them to buy in. So, whoever right now
is replying to people on Twitter and video,
randomly creating meet-ups, like, put, saying happy birthday
to fans, randomly knocking, where are the artists that
are knocking on fans’ doors, and they open it up, and they go, get. Whoever’s doing the things
that nobody else is doing, that the fans want, which is the touch. – Taylor Swift is into that? – Taylor Swift is perfectly
executing it, and it matters, and it becomes word of mouth. And so, I don’t know specifically. – Yeah, yeah. – But whoever’s bringing
disproportionate value to the people that are potentially
interested in her music, and notice, I said potentially
interested in her music, that’s the key. Whoever is doing that,
that’s who’s winning. Alright, man.
– Thanks so much.

“services I provide for
clients in the same market “while respecting their
competitive advantage?” – That’s interesting. And we kind of play with that
a little bit with VaynerMedia. Not that we have any direct competitors, but sometimes they’re some nuances. Providing value to different
companies or individuals that are competing in the
same environment is tricky. First of all, you know, I
would never be in environment of like, Pepsi and Coke,
or where there’s complete direct competitors, you’ve
got to be very, very careful. Number two, I think
that you need to really, really give thought about
how many different thesis’ and strategies do you actually have? How many different things can people do? This is where you cannot
just put one, kind of, blue print and deploy
it against each client, you’ve got to come up with
unique value propositions creatively and strategically,
that allow them to kind of offset the competitive set. I think the answer is very carefully. I think this is a massive
challenge and I think that one of the things that I would
recommend to you is actually broaden the industries your
in just for that reason. Because I think that humans
are emotional and they may not, even if you think
that you’re proving them separate value, they may not. And the consumer’s perception is king. But I think, to me, it’s not that hard. Because I do think you can
get very different strategies, very different creative executions
amongst those strategies to make an action that those
companies or individuals want to happen. I think the bigger problem
is, those individuals feeling as though that is happening
and that’s the vulnerability of your actual business. Perception, my friends, is
absolutely reality because that’s what people are
making judgements on. I mean, who else is making
the reality as a reality decision? There’s no reality lord that comes down. I am the reality lord! Like, there’s no reality lord. Perception is reality
because human’s perception is their reality. They’re making decisions
on that and that is the vulnerability in that question. I can’t wait to see the graphics of.

“from the producers/hedgers
to the consumers. “All of my current and potential customers “are large commercial and
industrial property owners. “What would be the best
way for me to leverage “social media marketing to try and increase “my customer base in this
strictly B2B atmosphere? PS, Chris Ivory is a boss.” – Chris Ivory is a boss, I think
he might not play this week for the Jets, I’m concerned. I would go out and create white papers on SlideShare and then run
LinkedIn and Facebook ads against those white papers. What I mean by that is, when
you into a B2B environment, I believe that long form
becomes much more valuable than short form. I think that you reverse the
headlines that people think that it needs to be
all short form content, I think you know your audience, you know who your buyers
are in a B2B environment, you know what they value, and you need to deliver on that. And so, that’s exactly what I would do, I would go out, and I would
create long form content that’s valuable to them,
and not a sales pitch that’s valuable to you. But content that those
decision makers need, not just for what you do for a living, but holistically, let
me give you an example. Even though I’m trying
to get CMOs as clients, I might be able to put out content that teaches them about Cloud computing, or IT infrastructure, or I
would make a white paper of how the CMO needs to
interact with the CIO. These are valuable pieces of content that I brought to them
that have nothing to do with hire me as an agency to do your work, but I brought you value
in a nine page deck that you saw on LinkedIn
because I targeted you properly, so that’s what I would think about, create long form content in video, in audio, but in definitely deck form, B2B people love decks. And get that in front of
them through targeting on LinkedIn and Facebook, put
your branding on the bottom, make the last click go to your world, provide them value, do what I always say, become a media company, not just around what you do for a
living, but what actually brings them value, and
so what I would do is I would call, and let’s get real tactical, I would literally call the
25 customers, 50 customers you have right now,
call them and say “Hey.” Real quick, if you’ve got two minutes, maybe email them, ’cause people
don’t like people calling. Email them, say, “Do you
have two minutes for me, “I’m looking to provide you more value,” you call them and say, “Hey, what are “your other business problems or frictions “besides what we do
together in the world.” If eight out of 25 of
them say the same thing, that would become my first content pillar to put out to the world. Bringing value to people is
an amazing way to guilt them into doing business with
you, even if you bring value to them in a genre
that has nothing to do with your own, but is still
within the collective, cohesive unit of what
they do for a living. Stefan, fire emoji out of my mouth,

– [Voicoever] Igor asks, “When is it okay to lie in business?” – That’s interesting. The 14-year-old version
of me would have said, “Anytime, all the time, go for it.” You know, I think the answer is never. I don’t see any value prop. I think that having self-confidence and believing that you can do
something you’ve never done before is a great thing for business. But I think you gotta lay
those cards out to the person that’s making that decision. You can’t say, “We’ve executed
a campaign like this before,” Sorry. You can’t say, “I’ve done this before.” “I’ve sold this before.” What you could say is, “I
truly believe I can do it “because of these things.” But faking the funk has diminishing returns, puts you in a precarious spot, and when you define it as “lying” versus “a slight little embellishment”
or a little bit of hyperbole when you go to lying, I
think that has no place in the business world, or in life. And take it from somebody
who grew up a liar. It was very tough for me as
a kid to break that habit. This is one of the
disproportionate reasons I value my dad’s fatherly advice. He really snapped me out of it. It’s taken me a long time. I truly believe it’s the reason
that most people struggle with consuming me at first,
and don’t know how to take me, because I do think there’s
a lot of bullshit DNA that I started with, but I chipped away, chipped away. And that’s the scoop. No, no place.

“How do you define value
wine and what are a couple “of your favorites?” – The way I define value
wine is by tasting it. I have a great palate, a deeply
knowledgeable wine palate at this point I like to say so myself. But this answer’s for
anybody who’s into wine. When I taste something that I know tastes a hell of a lot better
than what I paid for it, it’s obvious to me, it’s very obvious. The Chocolate Box that we’re
selling today on Wine Library, big push, actually here comes right hook. Put the big label here
and link it up Staphon in Facebook and YouTube,
guys you should buy this wine it’s $13.88, it
tastes like it’s a $35 wine, the end, that’s value. So to me when I taste, you
know it’s like that senator who said when they were
defining pornography on the internet on Capitol Hill
and he was like I don’t know how to define it but when I see it I know what pornography is. I can’t fully define it for
you but the second I taste it, because I have context, that
scale, I know what it is. And so to me the thing that
you should be thinking about is tasting wines, if you
like them and you feel good about what you paid for it. I’ll give you a couple fun facts. So I gave you the Chocolate Box, I would say Portugal’s a great region to try a lot of value for sure. The Italian reds, there’s a
ton of value in non chianti’s, non Tuscany, non Piedmont,
there’s a lot of other stuff. But just try a lot of wines in the $8 to $15 range. It’s an incredible sweet
spot, there’s a ton of wine. And Stunwin why don’t we take this answer and this question and write an article on GaryVaynerchuk.com of
my eight, uh let’s do this, my 11 favorite wines at $11 and under. And then we’ll link it to this
and we’ll catch up with it. That was actually fun, a little
more wine once in awhile. I predicted the Jets to be
10 and six in last episode.

“Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook to
ship from Amazon, and asks, “Does your theory still
work in the Italian Market?” – MAngiolillo, thank you so much, does it work in the Italian market? Does giving, giving, giving and then ask work in the Italian Market? Does provide value, provide
value, provide value and then build equity and leverage to get something in return, does that work in the Italian market? It works in the human market, obviously every market
is a little bit different and there’s suppressed governments and there’s dynamics, communism
creates different behaviors. You know there’s a million
different variables, but at the end of day
humans absolutely respond to being guilted or feel
compelled to return favors or do good for people
that give good to them. So when you’re providing value upfront, whether you’re in Italy or
in Egypt or the Soviet Union, Syria, Afghanistan, Argentina, New Zealand it’s going to work, it’s
not gonna work on everybody. Do I believe there’s cultures, countries that there’s more upside
within based on the DNA and the overall stereotypes of a country? I do, I absolutely do, but in general this is an absolute winning formula not to mention that it’s
a winning formula for you not just your results. You need to feel good about
providing upfront value. You know, I’m not gonna go, I’m not gonna judge my life
on how much money I made, I’m gonna judge my life by how many people
showed up to my funeral. So the process works for me, not just on the financial aspect, but on who I wanna be as a human being and you need to ask that question for you.

“There for everyone to see “but people’s attention is elsewhere.” – No, I don’t think,
Glenn, that is the case. I actually think it’s more
like the Facebook newsfeed. I think it’s there and it’s in the front of your eye and base on the data of people clicking clearly the content there is valuable. I think the thing that
you need to understand about Facebook, excuse
me, Snapchat Discover is it is content, it is not ads. A billboard is an ad and you and I and Alex, let’s show Alex ’cause
the shirt he’s wearing, just needs its own attention today. Two days in a row he wore that shirt? Alex, what the– Oh, got it, got it. (laughs) – [India] He’d never
repeat a shirt. (laughs) Snapchat Discover is content. When you click that, you know, ESPN or Cosmo or the Snapchat logo you know you’re about to get content. You’re not gonna get ads. There’ll be some ads mixed in. That’s a very different value proposition than a billboard. And we’ve been all kind of trained to know that billboard doesn’t bring me any value, it’s trying to sell me something. Versus tv and print and radio, the reason we tolerate and still enjoy it is, okay, I’m gonna
get something of value. I’m gonna have to suffer
through being sold to which is why technology’s
shifting away from that is the big rub that I talk a lot about but Discover platform for me is a belief that it’s there as a billboard, sure it’s
in your face, it’s there but what is behind it, is the variable. Now if they program it
correctly, Daily Mail all the people that program there, the partners, Daily Mail, Cosmo, ESPN or Snapchat itself. If they program successfully,
you’ll go there. A la NBC, ESPN, ABC, A&E. When Walking Dead is what you program and people wanna go
there, they’ll go there. When Schmuck-A-Ma-Ma-Ga tv show that nobody wants to watch is there you don’t go there. So the content is the variable. Knowing that there’s content behind that makes it very different than a billboard. Make sense, right? – [India] Yeah.

“The ones that always sound like “they’re whining and pessimistic.” (laughs) – We fire them. (laughs) Because energy is something
I value tremendously and no question, if you
are dragging down the team, that is a heavily– Not having the smarts to do the work is actually viewed as a better option that being Eeyore and woe is me. Look, we are 550 deep now, I’m positive, as people are
watching this from VaynerMedia, saying yeah but, “Ricky is really Eeyore.” You say you’d fire him, why has Ricky been moping for six months? I’m sure there’s a couple
people sneaking through with woe is me but the truth is I heard a story this weekend from my mom, we had an employee that was friends with– My mom’s friends with his mom and she told me a story that the doorman, and the doormen say that they know who the
VaynerMedia employees are versus not just by the pep in their step when they go into the building and they’re happy and always smiling. I think we have a pretty
good atmosphere here and so I’m… I’m very, very, very affected by the atmosphere and the energy of my own company and since I’m the CEO I try to create an
environment that allows me to most do my thing. And I think companies
are disproportionally affected by the top five
to ten people in a company. It’s stunning, if you even look at the
Apples and Nintendos and Budweisers, I mean it’s incredible how a small group of people
really dictate the outcome. And of course everybody’s an impact but for me, if I’m not in a good mood because somebody’s moping, well then I (laughs), that’s a problem. There’s a negative ROI there. You know, the truth is, we try to understand
what makes them unhappy. Now, again, moping is different than being and introvert or quiet. You can be quiet and
focused on your thing. That’s very different
and I wanna make sure, make a big point here that I actually stunningly over-value quiet, focused. I always worry that people at VaynerMedia don’t realize if they’re
an introvert or quiet or focused or headphones on, never really interacting. We have such a culture
of intermingling that, I would even argue that I value them, not more, that’s not fair. I just value them for what they are. I don’t try to change
people for what they are. And you could bring enormous
value to this company by never saying a word or you can yell, like Gabe, 24/7 and bring value. All of it in between
really matters for me. And so, let’s make sure that
as you’re watching this, if your auditing your 5,
10, 15, 500 person company that you’re not digging
through and misjudging moping and just quiet. Or quiet and focused. Or introverted. Those are tremendously valuable things. That’s how they concentrate
and get their job done. Moping is Debbie Downner. I think it’s more Debbie, whaa, you know like Debbie
Downer like this sucks. Try to walk around here for
more than 20 days in a row saying this company sucks. Try. That’s not gonna fly. Being focused, maybe not
being the most social flower and going to every happy hour
and high fiving everybody when you walk through here, that’s more than fine. That should be acceptable. That is acceptable at the highest levels. But saying this sucks. The client sucks. This work sucks. This sucks, this sucks. Just doesn’t work, it’s
too much of a downer. So, how do we deal with it? We try to cut it out. It’s cancer. Straight up cancer.