– 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

“Gary Vee, your Facebook
numbers don’t reflect “how influential you are. “How do you explain that to clients?” – This is a good question. It’s funny. I think people are lost. Let me explain. Here’s how I explain it to clients, I assume what you’re saying is Gary, you’ve built a personal brand and you only have 336,000 followers on Facebook, and there’s a lot of
people that have way more, and your influence is bigger, and I like you. Being very nice, and I think
you’re bigger than that. I see other people that have
400,000 or 180,000 that are way less than you. How do you explain that? I explain it very simply. My goal in life is not to amass Facebook fans. I explain it by saying, look at all these people that have way more
social media followers who sell nine books when
their book comes out, and I sell hundreds of thousands. I explain and say, look. You know I tell you I’m
good at building businesses? Look at this building,
business called VaynerMedia. Three years ago, the three million and is gonna do 65 million. That’s good, right? I explain it, because a top line, how many
followers do you have on social media proxy is straight bullshit. You want more fuckin Twitter followers? Go to eBay.com and buy them. You trick them. I can go buy a bunch of Facebook pages and merge it. It doesn’t mean anything, because a top line awareness number has nothing to do with the thing that I care
about the most in the world which is selling stuff. Show me it all the way through. Show it all the way through, because the amount of people that can create perception. It’s like being pretty. Cool, you’re pretty, but
are you a good person? Because pretty only gets you so far. Cool, you have 500,000
fans on Facebook, and? If you’re saying that
you’re a business leader, are you making money? Do you sell stuff? Are you good like that? I explain it very easily as you can tell, because I promise you that Pepsi and Toyota and Unalever and Budweiser, and all those
characters that hire VaynerMedia could care less
about how many followers the CEO has. They care a lot more about selling shit.

“Doesn’t he see the value while “he writes books himself?” – Niels, I don’t read books,
because of a couple things. One, I’m very inefficient at reading so it takes me a long, long time, and the truth is I don’t
think I actually grasp what I read. As a matter of fact,
something very interesting has happened over the
last six to eight months here at VaynerMedia. When I see that something
comes in my inbox that’s a very important piece of business, and it’s a very long email,
AKA more than 18 words, I call a five minute meeting,
because in five minutes, and my staff will tell you. You won’t see the body language here, but I’m saying it for them it’s insane. In a meeting, I basically don’t even let people finish saying what they’re saying, because I’ve grasped it,
but if they sent me that same comment in four sentences I literally wouldn’t even
know what was going on. I don’t read, because I
don’t think it’s an efficient transaction of transforming information into my brain, I really don’t. Audio books is something I need to take very seriously, but the truth is I don’t read because the way I like to consume
information is living it. I know that sounds weird, but it’s just the truth. I really do think the reason that I’ve been able to be an anomaly is I know that that’s
probably not the norm. Most people do read books, like as a matter of fact, it’s crazy that the internet came along, because if the internet hadn’t come along, I wouldn’t have written
or read in my life. I was well on my way, if I was I’m sure there’s some 50 to 80 year olds who are watching the show right now, or listening to the show who are like me who realize, holy crap. They really didn’t write or read from 24 to 45, pre-internet stuff. I write books, because I know so many people do read. I know so many people do learn from highlighting the shit out of the books. I don’t, and so you can’t be religious or romantic about these things. Just cause I write them doesn’t mean I need to read them, and vice versa. The reason I don’t do it is ’cause I don’t find value in it for me, and I
highly recommend a lot of you start really auditing yourself
and understanding, are you doing stuff that actually
doesn’t bring any value to you just because that’s what society and the world and you have always done because the answer is yes.

“Which do you prefer
[abrasive vs. compassionate] “when getting a point understood
to meet goals and why?” – Josh, I’m curious why
you’re asking this question. I think it’s maybe because you’ve realized I’m abrasive and compassionate
at the same time. And I’m very thankful that
I have a tool belt where I pull out a lot of different emotions. Competitiveness, caring,
warmth, sensitvity, straight disrespect. One of my favorites. (click) Such a deli– that was me drinking self disrespect. Such a delicious flavor. Every situation calls for
a different concoction. And so, what I spend
most of my time really thinking about is getting to know all the different employees
and trying to fig– Did you like that Staphon
showed up in the back? (trucks revving) I’m over here. Getting to know each and every employee on an individual basis, understanding the situation at hand, and then being smart enough as the leader, as the CEO, to deploy the right mix, the
right blend at that moment for the task at hand. I actually have no emotion and no favorite move. No, I don’t prefer
combativeness to compassion to respect to any of this. I really just whatever
I think at that moment is the right move. Sometimes I’ll do six
months worth of compassion and then straight karate chop, sweep the leg to the mouth, because clearly that wasn’t working. So, I’m adjusting in
real time to my clients, to my employees, to my investors, to my startups. This is a never-ending,
constantly 24/7, 365. Test and learn. Use your intuition and not get romantic or not get into a habit of
using one move over and over because a funny thing
happens with these things. It’s kind of like medicine. If you use it too often, it stops working as well. – [Voiceover] Raymond asks,
(hip-hop music)

“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.

“trade one of your weaknesses
for one of your strengths, “which two would you trade?” – This is one of the great questions ever. This is really good,
and I don’t wanna like, I don’t wanna, I’m
scared to screw this up, which is probably why I’m
giving it some thought. So, DRock, Staphon, find
some Jeopardy-like music that doesn’t get me sued as I ponder this and talk this out. A strength into a weakness, what am I really strong at that I don’t think is so needed? God, I love myself so much that I don’t want to change anything. This is why I’m struggling with this. This talks about the
level of happiness I have. What’s a weakness that I
can’t, God, I really… So first and foremost, the
answer to the question is there’s no absolute here. This is more like 80,
20, where maybe I would switch it from an 80, 20 to a 20, 80. That’s one of the first reactions I have. There’s nothing I’d
be, there’s no strength I wanna give up… So fast. You know at some level… (laughter) Yeah, like you know,
I’m a little combative in meetings at times with clients where, like I love competition so much, I would say being competitive is probably as big of a deal as it
is, but I would say that my competition, competitive
gene goes five to seven percent too far, I would give up
five to seven percent of it because it’s insane, like you know, I mean you guys know
how I play basketball. Like I really am mad,
like I wanna hurt people, like I wanna hurt people’s
feelings in meetings. (competitive banter) I literally, like in
meetings will turn red, my eyes will turn red when
somebody says something that I think is really
disrespectful to my company, and literally try to historically
clown them in the meeting so that forever their
contemporaries at that table, I literally want to say
things that the other people at the table on their side
tell to their grandchildren. Like, “Oh, I was once in this meeting with “this Gary Vaynerchuk guy and said that “Rick was a douche bag
boss, he said fuck you.” You know like I’m very into that. I wanna like end the debate in the room at that time, whereas I
could’ve done it afterwards, I could’ve done it a little
more politically correct. But if I get to that rogue
tilt place emotionally in a business meeting,
even maybe the first time we ever meet,
I let my competitive juices, I can feel it, it’s like that
Incredible Hulk type stuff. Like I can feel like, oh
crap, I’m about to destroy this person’s soul. So that’s one thing that I would give back five to seven percent. On a weakness that I’d like
have more of a strength on, I’d like to remember
people’s names better. Actually that’s very easy. I spend an enormous amount of time in our HR software trying to make sure I know everybody’s names. And then the answer really is, I have to listen a little bit better in the initial meeting. Like I’m like, hey, I’m Gary. You need to say, “Hi, I’m India.” – My name’s India. – But like when she says hey she’s India, I’m not listening. I’m already on to like oh, hey, I’m Gary. – I’m Staphon. – Alright I didn’t listen, right. So like not listening
when people say hello is a weakness because
if I actually listen, I’ll have a 50% chance of
remembering their name. It’s crazy, I will remember everything. I’m very visual, like
I can never get lost, I’m killer on directions. I will bring up stuff
that happened between us like 15 years from now,
you’ll be like, “What?” If I see it, it’s on. But if I hear it, it’s
on, but I need to listen in the first place to remember your name. So remembering names is
something I’m passionately upset with myself about,
like, Doc, you could see, I knew Sheldon right away. Visually I know his profile
side face, like hair, glasses, like I know exactly who he is, but names I struggle with.

you have to learn from the best. So, I’m gonna be a little
bit cheeky here and ask, how do I get a job working for you? – Great question, and
it happens all the time. And the reason I want to take this is, obviously after episode
100, I had 12 to 15 people, and by the way that almost fell and broke. I had 12 to 15 people
at the show ask me like, “Hey, I want to work for you.” I’m always flattered by that. I get hundred of emails a month. And I think it comes down
to, there is no right answer. There’s plenty of people
that’ve gotten here by pounding me 15 times, and then eventually I
get them an interview, but I think that’s going 0 for 47. So, that’s like an interesting insight to people that pound me 47 times. There’s people that just
went through the system and just applied, and VaynerMedia’s website
has tons of job openings. I think the one move that a
lot of people haven’t done, other than maybe DRock,
that I can think of. And that’s really interesting, I wasn’t gonna give this answer. I was gonna go in a different direction. Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, internet personality
extraordinaire, great friend, did something super smart. Years ago he wanted to get into Square, he thought it was gonna be a big company, and Jack didn’t let him in. Jack had his homies that came in. So, Kevin went out and made a video that was enormously interesting with great insights and
things around Square. And it was so viral, and it was so strong, and that gave him the
ability to invest in Square at a very early stage where now it’s worth billions on paper. And I’ve always been fascinated by that. DRock. DRock, how many
times did you reach out to do a video for me? One? Was it lucky like that? Three? So, DRock, three times reached out and asked to do a video. Paid forward first,
made a piece of content, showed me his skills, and then, you know. Obviously, the rest is history. Now, he’s like, I mean I
don’t know if you guys are paying attention, but like, he’s got a bigger fan base than I do. So, I, you know. Look, look. Chris Green now could, like I’d hire Chris Green
to make Lego structures for clients at VaynerMedia. I’m not even joking. He’s doing his own thing, but if Chris hit me up and said, “I want to make Lego-like structures for campaigns at VaynerMedia,” I would hire him. Here it is, I see it. I mean, India’s hair is long. Like the Starbucks thing. Like Stephan’s Brooklyn hat. Like the detail is insanity here. I mean, just crazy. So, so, you know. You know. I think doing something
first is a real hack. So, give that some thought. Question of the day.

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.

“What are bad habits you had and overcame, “and how did overcoming
them aid your growth “as an entrepreneur?” – Shady, good question. Not like the last one. I think the things I
overcame were big eyes. Which was, hey I’m gonna
do a lot of things at once. Actually, I don’t know
if I’ve overcome it. I’ve gotten a little bit better. Definitely in this chapter
of building VaynerMedia I’ve overcome that issue, I’ve been really focused
as CEO of VaynerMedia, and general partner of Vayner/RSE. So, I’ve been really focused. And so, big eyes. Just trying to do too many things at once. And what that’s allowed
me to do is be successful and build another big business instead of half-pregnant across the board. I think the other thing that I’ve overcome is I’ve started, and I’m still not great at this either, these are always works in progress when it’s not the thing that
comes most natural to you, but I think what I’ve
been doing well lately is I’ve been giving more honest, critical, direct to people’s face feedback. You know, I tend to be a little bit soft, I’m much more of a honey over vinegar guy. Between our former manager
and director Kelly and AJ, very straight-shooter operators, they’ve moved me along. I’ve definitely evolved in that category. I’m definitely better at it. I still want to deal with a ton of empathy and heart and soul, but shooting it straight is
bringing more value to me and it’s just speeding up
the process of victory. You can’t have a CEO,
I wouldn’t say I’m not, I’m very decisive, but boy, delivering bad news
does not come natural to me and I don’t love it. Building infrastructure around me and then doing it myself
has been an important evolution that I’ve done
much better at VaynerMedia than I’ve done at Wine Library, and what that’s given me is a thing that a lot of you know that I value which is speed.