– [Voiceover] Matthew
asks, “Are you worried “you might have created a Steve Jobs-esque “reality distortion
field at VaynerMedia?” – Matthew, first and foremost, I’m massively flattered by this question. I don’t even know how
else to really take it other than, you know, my
ego is very happy with you. I guess not, mainly because, and I didn’t know Steve,
and I knew a lot of people that knew him, but everything’s hearsay. My intuition tells me
that I’m dramatically more a people person and maybe, you know, the answer’s fully no. Do I think that people at VaynerMedia drink the VaynerMedia Kool-Aid and their friends and relatives tell them that they’re drinking the
VaynerMedia Kool-Aid? I do because they tell me
those stories every day. But, you know, look, I mean, is there
times where I realize that if I was a little
more dark and a little bit more of a bad guy that I
could have created a cult and it could have been real negative? I do. But I guess at the end of the day the reason I feel really okay
is I know what my intent is, and I think what matters is if
you know what your intent is, you’re not fearful of that. If I am creating some distortion amongst my employees and my friend base that consumes my content, I think it’s gonna be all for good. I mean, that’s a very, you know. It’s not like, “Ha ha ha,
I’ve got them all tricked “and I’m gonna make 51
cents on every dollar,” it’s, “Holy crap, if I
have them all tricked “I’m gonna make 49 cents on every dollar.” Got it? And that’s a big difference, man. Those two cents? That’s a big difference. That two cents is the whole difference, and so the answer is, I’m flattered, maybe, I don’t think so, and if it’s happening, I
think everybody’s gonna win.

– [Voiceover] Elisha asks,
“the dress-code at Vayner is clearly casual, do you think dress affects professionalism or performance? – That’s a really solid question,
the answer is very deep, the answer is no. I think
that dress does not impact the performance or professionalism. I know that some people disagree with me, I think those people are
going to lose, period. – [Voiceover] Charles asks,
“is the #AskGaryVee show

– [Voiceover] Chris asks,
“Gary, would you support “Vayner employees writing their own books “and curating their own content streams “and personal brands?” – Chris, this is a great question. As a matter of fact, first of all. India, first let’s talk
about Chris bribing you, and, like, attacking you. Let’s go over here to India. India, tell the VaynerNation,
oh, the VaynerNation, the story of, actually,
while you tell everybody Chris’ attack and bribing, I actually am gonna bring a prop for this. – [DRock] You can
mute your microphone. – That’s fine, I’ll be right back. Trouty! All right, I’ll give you the
microphone for India’s story. – All right, Chris was
extremely persistent over the holidays. A time where not a lot of our people were Tweeting questions. And he got his friends to
tweet after his question, and tag me. And then he said that he
might start bribing me. So, it definitely worked; here’s
your question on the show. – It didn’t work because
you didn’t execute the actual bribe gift. Right, you went noble. But now, Chris, I want you to know, and we’ve known each other a long, long long, long, long time. And it’s good to have you on the show. That you will need to send India a gift; it will need to be substantial. (people giggling) And we tell the
VaynerNation what you got her in an upcoming episode. And, so, this is really your
chance to either be a good guy, or a terrible guy. Trouty, can you do me a favor? Can you find me Jason Donnelly? – [Trouty] Yeah.
– He was going through– – He’s floatin’ around.
– [Gary] He’s floating around. He was going through orientation. Cool, we will, we’re
looking for Jason Donnelly. And we will answer Chris’ question with Jason Donnelly as a
human-prop to your question. Let’s go to the next question. I’ll interrupt that question
when Jason Donnelly shows up. That’s how we’re doin’ it, DRock. Don’t fight me, DRock! Let’s move on. All right, here we are to
finish off this answer. This is, actually, tremendous timing because the question came at the same exact time that Jason
rejoined VaynerMedia. Jason, you made the
vital, devastating mistake to leave VaynerMedia,
and go somewhere else; but then you rejoined Vayner today. Why don’t you tell VaynerNation first, just ’cause I wanna hear it
and feel good about myself, about why you did that. But just one sentence ’cause I wanna actually answer the question. – This is home; that’s it. (chuckling) – All right, I figured you
could answer this question better than I did, so, why
don’t you tell the VaynerNation how I did support somebody who
was writing their own book? – Not only did he support
me by just lovin’ the book, he bought copies and gave it to people throughout the office. He’s been nothin’ but helpful,
and the best boss ever. – So, yes, the answer
to the, thanks go work! You gotta make up lost time. The bottom-line is, of
course, I think that you can’t get away with saying you’re gonna take care of people, and you wanna build around them. Too many people wanna act like they’re gonna take care of everybody but then suppress people who
they think can trump them. See, there’s something
amazing that happens when you think you’re
greatest of all time. You don’t think that
anybody is necessarily gonna be able to surpass you. Thus, you don’t need to
suppress, and I mean that. I mean, it may sound like
a douchebag-thing to say, but, like, I believe so much in myself that there is no value in me
tryin’ to hold down people that I think are more talented than me. And that happens every day of the year in organizations all the time. And, so, for me, show them, show them. For me, if they’re better than me, or if they need to fly the nest; well, then that’s what needs to happen. If that means writing their own book and building their brand,
I’m more than happy to do that and support it. I just believe in fair, and in capitalism. And, so, not only do I
believe in supporting it I do support it actively when it happens.

– So Gary Vee, this is what I wanna know. Because you have this 500 person agency, I want you to explain why people should use a digital agency? – For looks. – What’s the circumstances? When not to use it, when to use it? How do you optimize it? Well basically, give us the gist. Why use an agency? Why not cultivate all this talent inside and control it, own it,
et cetera, et cetera. Thank you, Gary. – Thank you, Guy. Guy K, one of the real
thought leaders in this space. He’s too humble to do it but I know he has a new book out and I wanna give love to people so DRock, Staphon, take
over the page here. Give him a little shout out. Let’s link it up below. One of the few authors I feel
comfortable enough in saying, check out what they’re doing so VaynerNation, check out what Guy’s doing. It’s a great question, Guy. As a matter of fact,
the answer’s even better ’cause I’m giving it. The answer is you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t hire anybody to do anything if you think you can do
it better for cheaper. My obsession with building this, DRock, get up a little bit, let’s get a little improv. My obsession with building all of this is predicated on one thing which is that I think it’s worth you to pay us to do our thing because I think I can do it better than you could do it yourself or some other agency down the street can do it for the same price or for more expensive. The arbitrage of what they cost versus us, that we’re more valuable in return and so the biggest
reasons most big companies hire agencies is the
head count on their PNL in corporate America,
in a Wall Street World is looked upon as a
negative versus outsourcing it to agencies. The big reason that a medium
sized business should do it is that they feel like
the investment is worth it and the reason a small company
or individual should do it is they’ve run out of time but the fact of the matter is, nobody should hire anybody, digital agency or, I would hire somebody to hang a picture in my house. Let me tell you why. One, I’m just not that handy. Two, my time matters to me so much and so I’d rather pay somebody
100 bucks to hang a picture than to spend those four minutes ’cause I think I know what
to do with those four minutes to make a 101 bucks, get it? That’s the game. Can somebody do it better that brings an ROI to you and that’s why agencies exist. Can we, and don’t forget this other thing, if you bring it in-house,
you become a cocoon, right? Like you’re only working on your brand, you’re only seeing it
from your perspective and you’ve lost all the other stuff. By having so many people here, I have so many different perspectives. We have so much more data across so many different brands and then we use that for execution across other brands, across myself. This team here, what we’re doing right now is giving us a North Star of
execution for other clients. I have better advice for
our clients around YouTube and podcasting because the expectations, not the expectations,
the execution, excuse me, that was funny, I rarely
say the wrong word. That was a very weird moment. And so that, my friends,
is the reason to do it. And that’s the reason
for everything, right? Like why am I, why are all these people, show Andy. He’s not feeling very well. (laughter) Why’s Andy here? Because he can do it at an ROI that’s better than I can do it. Do I have the time, this,
that, the other thing. It goes on and on and on and on and so that’s the rationale,
Guy and VaynerNation. Is it worth the investment
you put into it? Just like everything
else you do in your life. By the way, let’s link up
the movie that Staphon edited

– [Voiceover] Brendan
asks, “Does VaynerMedia “focus much on winning
awards, and what’s your take “on the ad industry’s obsession
with awards in general?” – Brendan, great question. One that I’ve been talking
about for a long time in these halls and in the industry. I think awards are horsecrap. I don’t even know why I’m
not saying horse (beep), because the reason
agencies want to win them is for two reasons. It allows them to recruit talent and they use it as something
to get more business and what they’re doing is,
they’re putting out work for clients that is actually
trying to get awards versus actually trying to sell something, and that’s my real problem with it. I don’t begrudge the
agencies that focus on it because I understand
their business rationale but for me, it’s a unhealthy culture because it takes your eye off the prize which is actually do
something for business. And for us, you know, we’re
lucky because of our work and because of my personal
brand, to be honest with you, we’ve been able to get
a lot of new business. And now, our work is the
word-of-mouth of our business and two, as you can tell, people know this is the right place to
work, so we don’t focus on it. I understand why people do focus on it. I think it’s an energy sucker away from the thing that matters, which
is you need to sell something. – [Voiceover] Rich asks,
“What advice do you have

– [Voiceover] Anthony asks, “If
given an opportunity to swap VaynerMedia for the Jets, would you, and why or why not? Not really, right, Gary? – Anthony, I would switch VaynerMedia for the New York Jets in a hot second. Now, I would take along all the employees and make them all work at the New York Jets, and I’d assume, like,
of the 500 or so peeps that I could probably get,
like, 312 to come over. You know, or I would just create some weird advertising division within the New York Jets that
allowed me to keep everybody because I’ve fallen quite in love. I’m very in love with you guys. – Thanks, Gary. – You’re welcome. And so, you know, I’ve fallen in love with all these peeps, but I would do it, because I want to own the New York Jets, and that’s the bottom line.

– Hey Gary. Miles Keever with HappyHumanoids.com. In episode 49, you were asked a question about high-end wine
business and was it a hoax. Now, I thought your answer
was brilliant and profound. So profound that I checked
out and I began observing your staff members behind you. Lots of them are standing without chairs, and when you asked Lou to go get DeMayo, somebody snatched his
chair out of the way. Do you have a set up in your community? A way to keep the competitive edge going by not having enough chairs? – First of all, who’s Lou? – [Man] Little Lou! – Oh, Little Lou! You’re right. I literally think of him as Little Lou. This question is so perfect for episode 50 because I’m so devastated that I’m not limiting chairs on purpose to create a competitive culture, so the answer is no. I haven’t created that on purpose, but yes, yes, yes, do I wish I did. I love the thesis behind it. I think it’s a phenomenal observation. I desperately wish it was true. And I will say this, I don’t have any hardcore tactics to create competitiveness. And as a matter of fact, one of the biggest things that I really value is that a lot of the senior people that have been coming into VaynerMedia say this is the first
agency they’d ever worked in that people are competitive
because they wanna do great work but not at the cost of their
other employees around them which means we’re building real culture. It excites me and it’s something that I strive for. But I do think everything
stems from the top, and I don’t know how I do it, but boy, do I know I breed
competitiveness here, because I’m competitive as (bleep). – [Voiceover] Terri says,

– [Voiceover] Jelle asks, “what
came first at VaynerMedia: clients or employees? And did you ever do
stuff without employees?” – So let’s get into this question. First, I actually don’t
know how to pronounce this, so let’s go to India, who I
thought helped us with that, DRock, how – ? – I don’t – “yell”? “Yelle”? I don’t know. – [Gary] Got it, alright. Steve? What’s your shot here? – “Yella?” I don’t know. – You know.
– [India] It’s very pretty. – It’s gorgeous. Yeah, don’t worry, you’re not hurting feelings anyway. India’s going to be very
sensitive on this show. (laughter)
Alright, you know, we started Vaynermedia, two
things happened in parallel. We got out, I got ahead of
it, AJ was graduating college and we were gonna start a company in May. In March or April I got ahead of it and got us a big project
with a big client. So I guess customer came first. I kinda used, I did something clever. I made that person pay the
entire project up front and then used those dollars
to pay the first 3-4 employees who were all of AJ’s homies, who are all still here,
hence the foundation. So I guess client, right? I got an upfront campaign
that I used those dollars, and then the official first day we had those five or six employees, so but we never did anything without them, though actually me and AJ
did some of the early stuff for that project by ourselves, so that’s the answer. I don’t know how you wanna look at it. I will say this: any time you can sell
ahead of your expenses, you do it. One of the biggest reasons so many people go out of business, and many of you who watch this
show will go out of business, is you do not know how
to manage cash flow. You think in terms of, you know, accrual versus cash basis,
if we wanna go hardcore, you know, CPA-style here, oh, we’re gonna make 80k so
I can have 70k in expenses, but if you don’t get paid
properly or if there’s a hiccup, or, you know, no buffers, no practical knowledge
of that vulnerability, and then a bunch of you
who are tech-driven, you raise too much money, you
don’t keep your burn in check, you assume you’re gonna raise more money, it doesn’t go as easy
or as well as you think, because once you actually become a company people are looking at what you’re doing versus what you promise you’re gonna do, and those are the vulnerabilities of how you go out of business. – [Voiceover] Gabii asks, “Do
you have any bucket list items

“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)

– Hey, Aimee. – My question is the following. What’s the most important
thing you’ve learned while growing your company at VaynerMedia from East Coast to West Coast, and how does a company successfully scale? – You know, thanks Aimee. You know, it’s funny, I never
opened a second Wine Library so opening a second
office in San Francisco and a third in L.A. has been
a new phenomenon for me. And quite honestly,
there’s challenges in it. You know, obviously I
wanna be everywhere, right. And that matters so much, but look, even at VaynerMedia I’m not sure the last time I’ve been on the 15th floor. Everybody’s asking for an
episode of the 15th floor. I don’t remember, I haven’t
been on the 15th floor in a week, in a month, excuse me. It’s a challenge when
you’re one human being and so for me so much of it is high touch and kinda the way I wanna scale. Aimee, to answer your second part, how do you scale a company? I actually think you scale a company by doing unscalable things. Because I really believe you have to know your business. So at Wine Library I didn’t
need a lot of people, and it was about selling wine. Thus it was a different company. Here, we sell people. We sell our hours against a scope and our thinking and
so all I got is people. And so for me, scaling this company has been doing everything
that’s unscalable. Which is sitting down
and mentoring one by one spending as much time as I can. And trying to empower
people to feel comfortable with coming to me. Now, starting to build
out an H.R. department after a nine month search. Finding Minnie and
saying, this is a person I’m willing to build and
has the natural nuisances to build the culture and the H.R. and E.Q. that I want for this organization. And then having people
that have been with you for three and a half years, you can show Emily
again, and you can wave, and so moving her into to H.R. department as you just heard earlier. So Aimee, for me scaling
this company because I know. Look everybody who has a
business has to understand what business they’re building. And no matter what you do,
it’s always about people. When you’re an agency or client services, it’s extreme people which is so, for me the way to really scale it has been deeply entrenching myself into the people that work with me, for me, along side me, and that’s very important to me. Um, the West Coast
offices dynamic, you know, Alena, if you’re watching
more Skpye sessions. You know how I feel about that. It’s more communication, communication is the backbone of this whole execution and so more time, more physical time. Something Lizzie and I are speaking about. How much time I’m gonna
spend on the West Coast in 15 and 16 is a big commitment to me. So just hacking, hacking away at the thing that matters the most which is do I have a
relationship with all 400 people. And when it’s 4,000 people,
do I have a relationship with all 4,000 people. And I understand the
cynicism that one could have listening to that answer. Like how could you possibly have that? And the way you have it is by having a relationship with the first 40 people. Then having it with the next 400 people. Because the stunning amount of some of the people in this room, and some of the people outside this room, and in San Francisco and L.A., the stunning amount of people that now help me scale, because when somebody struggling or screw this
place, or I don’t believe Gary, they’re quick to jump
in and tell 400 stories about why it’s the other way which then gives that person the ammo to maybe jump in and
relook at the situation a different way, and that can. I always say the truth
is undefeated. Right? And so, for me scaling it is by, by delivering for your teammates.