behind why people are on periscope I saw
your interview with Marie for earlier recently where you talked about the
psychology of why people are on Pinterest and Twitter so I periscope
thanks huh welcomes me that like I think the
psychology on that is I think you’ll live TV right and are some people that
are gonna QVC or or Saturday Night Live I was got a lot of kick out of like a
short meeting theme is people I heard a ongoing conversation of the actors and
actresses that would not do Curb Your Enthusiasm because it was not structured
enough they were scared of the Improv nature SML and of course you know that
took spoke to me because I think I can crush those things but if you if there
was cue cards right now I can’t read or spell today on the Ask Gary B show
leaders so moist fascinated by people stinks because i think is great for
people that can improv just roll keep it sing and I think people want to project
themselves I think everybody’s fascinated with television and getting
out there so if you’re doing periscope you’re somebody who doesn’t fully take
themselves seriously end or you’re very confident in your improv and your troops
the reason I’m super into doing daily be and things of that nature is I’m not
scared how it’s gonna be edited the only the only reason even involved in setting
is sensitive information like lines and stuff of that nature but like clearly
like the balls but it’s so crazy I think about another 15 pounds and get a couple
more muscles like I’m getting closer just living like naked do that ok terrible reaction like it’s
cool you understand lets you make it as a yes I’ll probably not walk around
naked though it’s crossed my mind living life pretty naked and by the way I’m not
naive like we’ve all got Skelton’s plenty of things that I don’t share you
guys all know I don’t share my family like there’s a lot I like pushing myself
further and further because it is literally the last battle of a mile when
you take ownership of all your flaws and weaknesses you’ve won and I actually
think that’s the Nirvana of the connected world yes privacy is getting
pushed on yes negatives there’s a lot of positives with us all putting our
laundry to each other to get except that it’s not that high school to college the difference guys this is so basic but
the high school college and everybody likes not everybody but a lot of people
like college more is shortened to a place where you can only ship more
you’re sensitive to your zips and you really think there’s a lot of your shit
that happened between 14 and 18 change a lot we’re not ready to calibrate that
things very far and few between people that can own it all the way we’re
insecure our security is much stronger in our twenties that it is in our teens
and that’s what we like it better adam asks I feel like I’ve lost my
household help what do I do if anybody

If you’re starting– – Hold on, if you had a
question that you’ve wanted to ask me for a very long time, how the hell wasn’t that the
question you started with? – You needed that preface. – Got it, okay, go ahead. – Okay, so the question is, knowing we have a successful business, we have money in the bank, everything’s great,
business is still growing, everything’s awesome, – God bless, go ahead. – Yay (chops words), but, the thing is, who would be your first
five, like, you have, say, customer service hired. – Yes, – And, well, a marketing person, but who’d be your next five hires. – I’d have to look at your
business and understand, so, first of all– – E-commerce. – So, first of all, I’d reverse– – Product. – First and foremost, I would
reverse-engineer you two. Whatever you two like doing
the most and are the best at, I would surround the hires around that. I’d let you continue to do that, ’cause a lot of people try to replace the thing they’re best
at, that’s a mistake. Stay doing what you do
best at, and whatever the two of you collectively
do the weakest, that’s when you hire, in
order, five next people. – Alright. – Whether that’s finance, HR,
product, e-comm, technology, whatever they are. – But, what’s been your most
best hire for you in that first kind of, in that Wine Library
when you scaled, what was one of the best hires
for you, that, you’re like– – The best hires I’ve ever made have been the friends that I’ve hired. That’s the big secret for me, but– – Position-wise. – Probably the financial
people, you know, like the CFOs, the lead financial person,
have been the best hires, ’cause they’ve given me a context to, hey, ’cause I’m so aggressive, I
want to spend every dollar, so that gives a vulnerability. The reason I’ve never
got out of businesses is, I’m so much better at
selling than everybody else in the world, I can always keep the flows, even against my enormous investment. Um, I, so, I, at VaynerMedia, I would say, Marc Yudkin, a lawyer, creating Legal in-house was a huge hire, Kelly, an early mananging director because she created a lot of context,
and then people that look like Eric which were
disproportionately talented and open to allow me to mold, because we were all playing a new game. People that are moldable but
talented are very attractive. – That’s a good one, yeah, cool.

“the Jets with regards to
their effect on your mood “as a strength or weakness?” – India, you’re really
picking some doozies. Do I… Do I…? – [India] Do you see your
reliance on, like, the fact that the Jets has such an effect on your mood– – Do I see the Jets impacting
me so much on a Monday, as a strength or weakness? A strength. It means I’m
emotionally in tune with myself, which I deploy in other places. See, this is the whole– You know, I’m gonna
actually turn this question into a really good question. The disproportionate amount of you, who are not winning as much– And I’m not trying to
zing, I love you guys. But I believe a lot of the
people who are watching this right now who are not winning,
back to the cursing question, are looking at things too
much at a micro level. You look at, and people assume– And a lot of people believe,
“Oh that’s a weakness. You’re wasting a half a day,
or a day, or you’re not as efficient as you can on a Monday.” I view it at a much higher level
of if I’m capable of caring about something so much, and
allowing it to affect my mood, that means that my emotional
intelligence is at such a high level, that those are
some of the strengths that allow me to do all the things
that I do, and have the intuition around how
people feel about things, hence the HR question, hence the culture, hence the business success,
hence where consumers are going with their feelings,
my feeling skills are– I’m proud that I cry– I cry, I went to Hamilton,
there was a part in the play that I was almost crying,
I cry all the time. When the Lion King’s
dad died in Lion King, I was on a date in high
school and I cried. You know how wimpus that
is? That’s like the anti– Pam, you like that? – I did too. – Yeah. Beaches? And Steel Magnolias? I cried like a fucking waterfall. So those are feelings,
those are my strengths. I see it as a strength.

and Gary, the question I have for you is about all this talk you’ve had about self-awareness lately and I love the idea of
understanding what our talents are and what they’re not but my fear is that we’re gonna get into a mindset of things we can and can’t do. Robert Browning says, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp.” I want people think that they can try and do a lot of different things and I’m afraid it’ll bleed to our children and make them start saying
what they’re good at and what they’re not good at. Let me know how you feel about that and how you can incorporate that into your self-awareness talk. – Ted, big ups to you. First and foremost, you’ve
been, you know, again, back to the theme of the show not digging fully deep, I’m not completely sure
but it’s been really fun to watch from afar of
you amassing an audience and people really respect
you and kudos, do your thing. I think this is a great
question and a challenging one. First and foremost, here’s
the way I answer it. This. Nothing completely one way
or the other is ever healthy. You should always be
pulling from directions, finding a blend. I will say that I think people
are way more, at this point, June 2015, in belief that
they can do anything, are good at everything,
should try everything, should work on their weaknesses so I believe that I’m being aggressive in starting a conversation
that lends itself to like drawing a line of
strengths and weaknesses that I think is very small. I do not believe this
is a big conversation. I believe modern parenting is like, hey little Steve, you
can do anything you want. Steve sucks at basketball. (laughter) He can’t do everything he wants and the amount of people
that want to play basketball for a living or sing or
wanna be an engineer. You know, like a, entrepreneur, I mean you know how I feel about that. So, I think that, Ted,
I think you’re right. I think right at this moment, my point of view on this is so small compared to the overall conversatIon that I’m going 100% all in and I don’t want to hedge
against it with your point which is correct because I think the whole
market’s hedging against it and thus, I’m just trying to crackle it. It’s the same way I talk
about social media marketing versus traditional TV. I believe in TV but I don’t
need to advocate for TV. 99% of the market’s advocating for TV. I believe that the
market, 90% of the market is advocating for you
can do whatever you want, you should try to do everything,
you should push yourself. They package it in you
should try new things and push yourself. I don’t think people
are talking enough about be very self-aware, know
what you’re good at, force yourself, guys, I don’t know if you’ve broken this down. Do you know what forcing yourself to be self-aware, do you know
what that process entails? Drinking a shit-load of humble kool-aid. Uh-huh, like it’s insane of how much, like, it’s why I talk about liking to lose. Like, it’s insane of how much humility I’ve had to instill to now
make it optically look like I have too much ego and self-esteem. So many of you, the first
time you consumed me, some of you, like I’m really
getting in my Facebook mentions as a lot of you have noticed. Plenty of people sharing my stuff and their friends are
saying screw this guy, ego for days, full of himself. I get it but what it actually is is the post game of me being really humble every minute of my life to recognize what I should stay away from. And I think people have
not gotten into that gear so Ted I would say that I
get it and I agree with you. And everything should
have a push and a pull. I just think the market is way, way in the direction of (pats Steve’s back) and I think that we need a
hell of a more a lot of like you kinda suck at that, you
may want to focus on that. Now, if you love that, then do it. But you need to know what
that comes along with which is if you love singing
more than breathing, cool but you’re gonna wait tables and you’re gonna make eight bucks and that’s great! Because guess what? I pay the price for doing what I love in a lot of different ways. And so that’s just life. That’s just life.

“Who do you ask when you have
life or business questions?” – Jason, this is my
strength and my weakness, and so I want to set that up immediately. I ask absolutely nobody. It is insane, I think about this all the time, and I truly, and you know what, it’s funny, subconsciously
I said it’s my strength and my weakness, I guess
maybe that answer’s my 51/49 question of, is it a strength or a weakness? I do think about it a lot. I do wonder why I’m not
really mentored out, even with the most amazing
dad who’s in the business, you know, I was mentored, you know, and maybe this
is just the way I roll, maybe I’m being mentored by example. You know, I think my parents, my parents, you know, it’s funny, I’m gonna be a different parent I think, and sit down with my kids, and do my spiel, I mean I love doing this, imagine me as a dad, I’d be like, kid, when the wind blows, you know, I’m just gonna like you know, do shit like that. You know, like, I never really went that route, I watched my parents, and maybe I watch other people. And I, you know, Steve Ross, who’s my LP and investor partner now, one of the most successful businessmen of the last hundred years in the US. You know, I have full access to
him at a scary level, and I don’t hit him up for, like, what do you think? And this is a guy who
owns a football team, you know, 5 billion dollar man, and I never sit down and ask him, I’m like, let me tell you. It’s in me, again, it’s either a
strength or a weakness, but the true answer to the
question is absolutely nobody. I’m a big believer that people should see a psychiatrist, and
vent, and like do that, I don’t do that, even though
I believe in it tremendously, I don’t think I’m a hypocrite, because the truth is, it’s stunning, and by the way, if I ever go through a, if I ever went through a sustained 36 hour period
of being really upset, I would do it in a heartbeat, I would change my behavior, but I am so scared, and so blessed and so thankful, and so grateful for the perspective that
I have as a human being, which is, you just can’t
wrap your head, my friends, VaynerNation, you just
cannot wrap your head around the excitement that I would have in my body, if all the things on paper that seemed like my successes would disappear tomorrow. Obviously I want to take care of my family and put a roof over their heads, and those kinds of things. But you do not understand
my lack of taste for caviar like I just don’t give a shit. Like I love the game. You know why I love the
Jets and the Knicks? Because they don’t win. Do you understand? And so for me, the fear of
failure is not a fear at all, as a matter of fact I would argue that I have more a fear for success than I have fear for failure, and so, because of that, I don’t know, it puts me in a very happy place. I don’t look for advice,
because the truth is, I don’t want to screw anything up. I don’t want to speak to somebody to vent, because I don’t want to
screw anything up, like, I feel like the chemicals
are aligned right now, and I’m very happy. I’m super duper duper happy. – [India] Cool, that’s good.

“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.

“within yourself, how do you determine “whether to delegate or to strengthen it?” – Cory, I love this question because I really don’t
know the full answer and I’m not sure anybody does. I think that’s a question that we all have to answer for ourselves. You know, I always talk
about betting on strengths, but there’s clearly been
weaknesses that I’ve created at least a nice baseline, a foundation. As a matter of fact, one of the weaknesses I’ve been working on
for the last 36 months, especially in building Vayner,
and I give AJ, my brother, a lot of credit for this,
is leading with a little bit more reality than
over-honeying the situation. I’m such a positive
dude that a lot of times I don’t think I was clear
enough with negative feedback or critical feedback to
an employee or a teammate because I was hedging too much, I was like, “You’re the best! “This is all great! “Don’t worry! “But maybe you should…” You know, I’ve been a
little bit more direct, and that’s a weakness
that I’ve strengthened, no question about it, because
I thought it was important, and because I felt like
it was a couple inches off and just by moving it a little bit. Does that mean that I’m, like, the scary guy in the building? I mean, I’m like the least
scary guy in the building outside of the reputation of who I am or being the CEO of a company, but once people get to
know me a little bit, like, I’m the pushover that
way because I am positive, but I think that, look. I would say this is an
80 20 rule answer to me. I truly still believe,
minimumly, that you need to spend 80% of your time on your strengths, and if you want to
allocate 20% of your time to audit, you know, I would actually just do a whole lot of listening. I would actually ask the
people you work with, the people that work for you, the people you work for, your
friends and contemporaries, the people that are closest to you, the 10 closest people to
you, friends and relatives on what they think you could work on. They’re a mirror to that. You may take a step back. It might hurt. You’ve got to roll with
humility and empathy if you want to address this, and then you can start
addressing those 20%, because a lot of times the
reason we can’t address something is because we can’t see it, and the best way to see it is
through other people’s eyes, and you know, it’s funny. The best way to see it is to
use your own ears, actually. It’s kind of interesting,
there’s something there. India, we need to go long forum on that. And that’s that. – Hey Gary, it’s Sean McCabe. I just wanted to say thanks
so much for doing your show.

“Are there any common mistakes you repeat “over and over again? “Either way, any tips
for overcoming them?” – Dan, I think I repeat all my
mistakes over and over again. First of all, my thesis on life is scaling the unscalable, which is one big mistake in itself. We just had a meeting with the whole crew about all the mistakes I’m making, bottle of, bottom of the funnel things. So you know, like, you know, I’m a big believer of betting
on strengths, not weaknesses, you know, you try to get better as you go through the process and go along. I don’t know if I’m the
right person to answer this. I repeat a lot of mistakes. I continue to always, I have good moments for a year or two or a month of two of not trying to bite off
more than I can chew, but then I get right into it. For all the process and scalability, I continue to create things that allow me to be the bottleneck, though I think this crew and I are doing a good job of hacking away and we have an ambition
for ’15 to be better at it in my limited time world. You know, I… But, really, these are
all hard questions for me because I really struggle to think about what I’m bad at because I spend all my time
thinking about what I’m great at and those are a lot of things. And that’s where I put my energy and time and that’s why I think
I get the permission and the luxury and the awesome feeling
of having so many of you watch this show, betting on strengths is
the grossly underestimated execution of our time. And that’s what I do and I do it well, and so I answered it out of
being a cordial human being, but the truth is, I don’t give a rat’s
ass about my weaknesses. I surely don’t know how to fix them because I don’t focus on them much.

because they refuse to accept
what they’re not good at. For example, I suck at accounting, so I have somebody do accounting for me. But I see people, you know,
they suck at photography, but they’re still doing their photography and it’s hurting their brand. – Yeah. – They’re not accepting that. – Okay. – Your thoughts on that. – Cool, thank you. I mean, you know, again,
as somebody who’s been following my stuff, I think
we agree on this, right. Like I’m a big fan of going
all in on your strengths and outsourcing or not
focusing on your weaknesses. I think you got it pegged
right, I think the one thing is sometimes it’s obvious right, don’t get caught in the obvious, meaning. It’s obvious to you that
you suck at accounting. It’s kinda easy right, it’s math. You probably also don’t
wanna or like doing it. That’s easy. It’s the thing that’s in the
shadows, that’s not as obvious. There’s something you’re doing right now that a lot of people
could do better than you. It’s easy when you’re an F at
it, and you know you need an A but what about the fact that
you might be doing something right now, a tiger somewhere else, where you’re a B at it,
but you could afford to have somebody be an A at it. That’s where people make mistakes so it takes deep self-awareness, you know. I’m not a big believer in like,
try, try, try, try harder, be better at this thing.
I think it’s a waste of resources, energy and happiness often. Now, if you get off on that kind of thing like perserving, knock yourself out, roll how you wanna roll but for me, big believer in betting
on all your strengths and trying to find complements
to your weaknesses. – How would you– – Oh a new one for #AskGaryVee like this is cool, when they’re
live, they can follow up. – How would you bring up, you know, people have terrible
websites, it doesn’t even work on a mobile device and
they’re just not getting, do I just accept that
okay, they’re gonna get it and walk away, or how
would you bring up, saying hey, you’re not really good at that. – Now you’re asking me a
sales question, I think right? Like are you saying, to reach
out to somebody and say, “Hey we should do that for you.” – No, even just like from just
a help in providing value. Like hey you’re not good at
this, I don’t think my company is the right fit but
you’re not good at this, I’m just telling you like– – You know, one of the
things that I do tactically is just call people out on it, right. I’ll reply to them publicly
on Twitter and say, “Hey, you just tweeted wrong, here’s the.” You know, my classic, like everybody does this wrong on Twitter. You know, I’m not scared
to, my route is simple. Polite, polite, polite,
you’re not getting it, and I still care enough,
which is very rare, then I’m gonna drill you in your face. Thanks man, enjoy, next let’s go.