- On this episode,
we go into my office,
we finally put Staphon to work halfway through,
and I end it on probably the most important thing
I've ever said on this show.
(pounding hip-hop music)
(crowd roaring)
You ask questions,
and I answer them.
This is
the #AskGaryVee Show.
Hey everybody, this is Gary Vay-ner-chuk
and this is Episode 164 of the #AskGaryVee Show.
In my office, I'm nice and cozy,
oh, today's Friday?
I have to make it, whoa.
I literally just this second realized
I have to make an official prediction.
I am going to Houston.
If you haven't been following along, actually,
I'm gonna send you guys this.
This is a picture of me and AJ at every game.
(camera shutter snaps)
So that's fun.
DRock is back from Australia.
Good to have you back, DRock.
You timed it well.
I was away, you were away.
But you missed a couple episodes,
including the classic "in the gym" episode.
If you're just catching this, this is 164?
- [India] Yeah.
- 163, if you haven't seen it yet,
because we put up late last night,
good hustle there, Staphon, on that,
if you're just seeing this now
on your Facebook feed or YouTube,
make sure you watch 163.
That was a classic.
- [India] That'll go down in #AskGaryVee history.
- [Gary] #AskGaryVee history.
- It's true.
- [Gary] Thank you.
Yes, that definitely has trivia all over it.
I will give my official Jets prediction
at the end of the show.
And speaking of the show, India,
let's get into
- [Both] the show.
Love it.
Let's do it.
- [Voiceover] Roy asks, "Apart from consistency,
"what's the smallest routine
"that's made the biggest difference
"to the #AskGaryVee Show since starting?"
- Uh, the friction between consistency
and constantly trying to evolve.
Now, you know, obviously like the show yesterday,
outside, not asking a question of the day,
now bringing back the question of the day,
India coming in somewhere along the line
instead of Stunwin,
and probably more things that will continue
if we're lucky enough to have a run here.
There's the consistency of doing it,
and really letting the essence of the show happen.
You know, what's really interesting is
if you look, for all of you that have watched,
and by the way, leave a comment
if you've watched every episode.
Actually, I might wanna do a pic,
where's the pumpkin?
Left already?
We'll tell you about it later.
There's obviously a lot of themes.
I'm not gonna change my pillars
or religious points of view on things,
but the reinforcement, it's been interesting.
I've been getting emails lately that say,
"you know, Gary, it's funny,
I've watched all 160 episodes
and this theme has really caught my attention,
but it took me hearing you answer a question,
maybe 15 different questions, with the same theme,
different answers, the same theme,
it really now just hit me.
Like, wow, I really now understand what you mean of
'execution's the game, idea's shit.'
Of course, ideas aren't shit, but boy,
everybody's got an idea."
Things like that, and so
I think the consistency of doing it,
the consistency of there being
four to 15 things I believe in,
hard work, you know, not being romantic
about the current state of the marketplace
and always putting yourself out of business,
being 51-49 to the other person,
so just actually being authentic enough
that you know yourself, that your answers align in that way,
and then just making it interesting and fun,
and different settings,
the outside energy mixed up with being in my office,
the predictions at the end of the show,
those will go away after the football season.
So, you know, just mixing it up,
so putting pressure on the format
while letting the essence always be the same.
Being the same person even though you grow up and mature
and maybe change your outfits, grow facial hair,
get older, start losing hair,
but still always being that same person,
but evolving with the times.
(muffled applause)
Thank you. Thank you.
(laughter)
I don't know if you picked up on that clap clearly enough.
- [DRock] Yeah.
- [India] From Sky.
- Sky.
- [India] Her handle is skyismagic.
- Sky is magic.
Our Skye is magic here.
- [India] She is magic.
- [Voiceover] Sky asks,
"Adele's new album isn't streaming anywhere.
"Is she romantic about selling albums,
"or leveraging people to buy music?"
- Oh, wait a minute, Staphon's just standing here,
and if you're just, I mean, show that, DRock.
He's really, truly just standing here.
(laughter)
One of the things that makes me unhappy,
I mean, really, I know you've gotta watch it
for editing purposes,
but you should be
you should be doing something, Staphon.
- [Staphon] You're right. (laughter)
- So let's do a little Periscoping.
Alright.
Adele's new album is not streaming anywhere, right?
- [India] Is she romantic about selling albums,
or leveraging people to buy music?
- It's a really good question, and the truth is,
there's a time and a place for you to do everything,
so, we talk about spec work here, right?
DRock got his job on it, right?
Like, you do something for free
and it leads to what you want to happen.
Well look, when you're Jay-Z in the early days
and nobody knows who the hell you are,
it makes sense to go to a club,
not get paid, and spit your fire,
because you're building leverage.
I used to go and speak for free.
Often.
I don't do that anymore.
Because I have an alternative.
I have demand now.
Adele, if her name was "Shmadele,"
if Shmadele came out with a new album
and nobody knows who Shmadele is,
I would hope, I don't follow music enough, so,
if there's a Shmadele, I apologize.
But if you're Shmadele and nobody knows who you are,
you not only want to be on streaming services,
you wanna, like, show up on Instagram people's accounts
and, like, sing, you wanna, like,
go outside and give people your free album,
like, you want exposure because that creates leverage
that you then can charge for.
Adele doesn't have that problem,
and so she's trying to maximize profits through that channel
versus the pennies that streaming does.
It does two things:
it makes her more money,
it gives her less exposure by accident
for people that could find her
through Spotify or other places
that have never discovered her before.
From my point of view, it's a fine balancing act.
Right?
I think if you look at the people
that pushed against Napster, or pushed against technology,
the bands that pushed against MTV, historically,
that didn't make music videos,
if you're too romantic for too long, you can get caught,
unless you're in the top 1%.
I believe that there's an absolute way
to not conform to modern marketing.
A€ la Apple.
If your product is disproportionately the best,
consistently, you can get away with acting differently.
But if you look, even at, like,
actors at the top of their game,
like a Will Smith
who made the same kind of movie for a while,
everybody has their day and time.
And so my answer is, if Adele has this read properly
that she doesn't need more exposure, she has a huge fanbase,
she just put out fire,
and it killed, cool.
Look at Justin Bieber in parallel.
Did a lot of marketing, a lot of Instagram,
a lot of releasing, a lot of stuff out there,
and it really worked.
Now the question becomes,
he needed that because he was in this funny spot,
does he do the same thing next time?
Or does he go a little bit closer to where Adele is
if Adele's over here?
The answer to the question, my friends, is,
there's no absolutes.
There is no right answer.
There's moments in time, like the first question.
There's knowing what to do at this moment.
The things I do running this business at 600 people
is very different than what I did at four.
I don't say yes, I said no to 19 deals today.
I said yes to every deal when we first started.
Right?
And so we just talked about,
we just all got together on my team
to talk about how much book-buying you have to do
for all my packages for the next book.
I think we can all agree,
there's a lot more books that you need to do
to do the things that I did two years ago
for Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook.
'Cause I'm busier, I have more opportunities.
I have more leverage.
This is where the #AskGaryVee show's brand, right,
has helped me.
Why don't you say,
I mean, you're just, this is amazing,
but why don't you just say hello.
- Hi.
- [Gary] Tell the Vayner Nation who you are.
- Uh, Reed Adler, sound guy.
- Yeah, so Reed just was working
on something else I just did,
he's just hanging out,
he said before we aired,
"hey, my brother turned me on to the show,"
his brother and him now know who I am more
than they did before
because this show's working for me,
which then gave me leverage
to ask for 3,500 books to give a keynote,
versus 2,000 books.
So this is how it works, guys.
You put in the work for a year and a half,
you build up leverage,
which then allows you to get more stuff.
So Adele's move, where a lot of people might say,
"oh, Gary's gonna say,"
because I know a lot of you thought this,
"oh, that's bad, you're killing exposure."
No, it's balancing that.
What's important is not reading your own headlines
and doing the thing that Adele's doing
too long, too many times in a row
that now no 17-year-old in America
or 15-year-old even knows who you are,
because they only live in those platforms.
Right?
All the bands that said no
to being the music on John Madden Football
in 1999, 2001, 2004, 2006,
they missed out on being Good Charlotte.
Good Charlotte said yes,
they were willing to give away the music,
or go find out how the Black Eyed Peas worked.
Will.i.am was smart, he's like,
"oh, for a TV commercial?
For this Apple iPod thing?
Okay. We won't be too fancy."
And the three big bands that you've heard of
that said no
missed the chance of being huge.
So yo, I even say yes to things for free,
if the exposure is disproportionately unbelievable.
Saturday Night Live does not need to pay me
to show up and be in an SNL.
Because they're bringing me something.
You, with your local TEDx thing,
in Shmugga-mugga-mugga, Iowa,
sorry to pick on Iowa, I love you, Iowa,
like, yeah, you got a problem.
Because, like, I don't wanna come for those 40 people,
it's just checks and balances.
And I love you 40 people,
but watch the show for free,
I can't make it, it's just an equation.
Adele's at that place where she can do this right now,
but Adele needs to do
what I think I try to be really good at,
which is don't read your headlines,
don't get too fancy to not take a selfie,
if you get too separated from that for too long,
and you can do it,
but if you do it for too long,
somebody else is gonna come along
and Shmadele's gonna be number one.
- [India] Watch out, Adele.
Shmadele's coming.
- And Shmadele's fuckin' pissed.
(laughter)
And hungrier.
It's fuckin' the Rocky movie, right?
Rocky was hungrier, but then he got fancy in LA,
Mr. T whipped that ass.
(laughter)
Alright, let's move on.
(laughter)
- [India] From Gary Movie Reviews.
- We could be the new Siskel & Ebert.
"This movie sucked shit."
"Oh, I don't know, I think it's interesting."
Alright, let's go.
- [Voiceover] Adam asks, "Do you think it's important
"for agency leaders to be active on social?
"Do you weight that when hiring a leader at Vayner?"
- Um, look, I do think that somebody
has to be a practitioner or skilled in your craft,
so yes, I do weigh that, but
I do think we have a machine here
that if somebody's a great executive
and good at building up people's talent,
knows how to do client services,
understands the theory of marketing,
but hasn't used Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook
enough to be a great practitioner,
that we know that's commoditized
and that after a hundred days at Vayner,
we can get them to that place,
so if they have enough of the other things,
you don't have to be crushing it on Instagram
to be a leader at Vayner.
You have to understand why Instagram's crushing it,
and then put in the work once you start here
if you're good at leading a team,
great with client services, great at other strategies,
great at understanding how things,
we have a lot of people
that are great at Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram,
but don't understand how beer is sold,
or how soap is sold, and we have to teach them that.
If you're coming as a 42-year-old executive
and done it your whole career and you know that,
so just teaching the white space.
So that's the real answer.
You have to have the attitude, the appetite,
and the theoretical rationale
to why these things are working to get in the door.
- [India] Nice.
- That was a nice, tight answer.
- [India] Yeah.
- Oh.
- From Todd.
- Yeah, we need to do more videos.
- Hey Gary.
- Hey Todd.
- You say ideas are crap, (beatboxing)
execution is the game.
- Oh, he's rapping.
- Honestly, to most of us, they're one and the same.
- I said, you've had six or seven in your big career.
Tell me last time you were pumped about your biggest idea.
Thanks, man.
- That was well-done.
- [India] Yeah, that was good.
- That is the way to get on the show,
get India's creative juices going.
We need a little bit more creative video questions.
This is a good starting point.
We need that.
Let's do a call to arms to the Vayner Nation,
better video questions, let's step it up.
Jesus.
What's his name? Adam?
- [India] Todd. - Todd.
(laughter)
- Todd, great job, first of all.
The last idea I've been really excited about,
that's a really good question.
I'm really excited about my current ideas
of big opportunities in the business world,
so they're not very specific,
but I'm in love with my thesis of
e-sports and virtual reality in a 10-year window.
And so I just have to make sure
I don't get too far ahead of it,
but I'm very, very, very excited
about that.
I think I was very right
about how much brands and businesses
were gonna spend on social networks.
I don't think people saw, four or five years ago,
the money allocation that's getting poured
into making videos and pictures for these platforms.
That was exciting to me, it's been the backbone of,
that was the strategy
and then the execution was VaynerMedia,
that's when it works, when you have both, right?
Like, you can work your ass off if you're wrong.
If I'm like, "okay, guys, VHS tapes are coming back."
And if I start building a company and hiring people
that are 58 years old
that know how to make VHS tape, like, if I'm wrong,
all our hustle is for naught.
So you have to have both.
I would say that,
I would say the other thing that I can point to
is the #AskGaryVee Show.
I don't know if you heard about it,
but we're in it right now.
It's very meta.
I knew that I was good at answering questions,
I could feel at conferences that people would be like,
"holy crap, that last 15 minutes, that was the bomb."
They were impressed by my quickness in my craft.
It was a way to show everybody
that I know what I'm talking about.
You know, people were stunned,
I was with somebody yesterday.
People don't realize that I don't know the questions.
Like, you pick them.
Yes, I will send you,
- You do.
- like, the first one we did today, like, I sent you.
Like, I'm looking, I'm watching you guys,
'cause I care about you guys and I'm sending stuff,
but I would say, out of a week, 25 questions,
I'm sending you two?
- [India] Two, probably.
- So when people find that out,
they're fascinated by it.
So I thought this format would work for me,
I thought it would elevate my leadership
around marketing and technology thought leadership,
and it has.
Him and his bro.
And many, and many
(Gary laughs)
and many, many, many, many more of you.
And so that idea was percolating, we did it ad hoc one day,
and it worked.
- Here we are.
- When is episode 200 gonna happen,
we're on 164?
- [India] 164.
- 36.
- [Voiceover] I think February, March.
- February-March, cool.
Cool.
- [DRock] Good timing.
- Yeah.
Ooh, we could time it right around the book, March 8th.
- [India] Oh yeah. - Oh, it'd be really,
really nice to charge, like,
come in, and I want the tickets to be,
actually, we may have to reverse-engineer this.
What we can do is, like, getting in the door,
you have to come with six books.
Like, that's your entry point.
I'm a hustler.
Right hook.
Anything else?
- [India] We got one more. - One more.
On this Friday, and then my official prediction.
- Yeah.
(laughter)
- [DRock] Have you thought about it?
- [Gary] Nope.
- I'll stall.
- [Gary] But I'm more prepared
than I was for the Buffalo game.
- [India] Cool. - Weirdly.
- [India] From Craig. - Craig.
- [India] Sorry, I was reading it again.
- Craig Mack?
- [India] No, just Craig at Mountain Race Shop.
- [Voiceover] Craig asks, "How do I stop my competition
"from telling blatant lies about my business,
"without stooping to their level?"
- Craig, by recognizing those blatant lies
have no impact on your future.
Now, stick with me here.
It's hard, because you'll say,
"no way, Gary, it's already had an impact.
This person stopped working with me because of that lie."
Net net with me, my friend.
Net net with me.
If they're lies, and they may not be,
let's first make sure they're lies, my man.
But if they're lies, you will win.
Lies have been, people have tried that tactic on me,
you will never, ever win that game
if you're on the lying end.
Like, the truth is undefeated.
You just have to be patient.
So, the fact of the matter is,
that's too much on your mind.
By you even asking me this question, it's bubbled up,
and it's really no different,
and I'm sorry to use this,
'cause it's an extreme version of it,
and it's obviously top of everybody's mind.
It's really, in some weird way, no different than terrorism.
Like, terrorism works because people get scared,
and that's propaganda.
Right?
And of course things happen,
but what they're trying to do is get people not to fly,
not to go to Europe, like, all these things.
They scare you, they make these videos
and say "we're gonna go after all these places"
to scare people in those places.
That's how it works.
That's what that is as well, which is like,
they're trying to propaganda your clients
into believing that.
But when there's a net result
a year later, two years later,
when people are like, "oh, Gary's just good at Twitter.
VaynerMedia's not," I mean,
you know people said VaynerMedia was gonna fail
because I'm just a social media pundit,
I'm just bullshit and pizzazz, I'm all this?
Well, they lost.
Because now here we are.
And so as long as you're confident in your execution,
please do not spend time going on the defense
against your competitors who are lying about you.
Just go do your thing
and let the results show for themselves.
This is a very important thing.
People get way too hung up on
their negative comments on YouTube,
the competition making lies about them.
The results always speak for themselves.
Marky Mark was not gonna transition into a real celebrity,
until Mark Wahlberg did it.
Justin Bieber was always just gonna be a teeny bopper
until he put out fire.
Right?
Like, the truth always wins.
Period.
- [India] Nice.
- Cool.
Question of the day.
What is your truth?
Who are you at the truest level?
Let's see how many of you,
and by the way, I only expect three of you,
one on YouTube, two on Facebook,
to actually answer this truth.
Because the rest of you are gonna PR it
and put up some bullshit.
But for the three of you, and I'm gonna try to read 'em all,
to see which three say it,
who are you, what's the real truth about yourself?
And the reason I'm doing it is
for the three of you that actually write it
and expose it to the world,
your Saturday or Sunday, depending on when you watch this,
will be different for the rest of your life.
That was some big stuff there.
Jets 16, Texans 13.
Jets are gonna go in there and win,
T.J. Yates, backup quarterback,
I'm worried about the defense,
I know the Texans have not
given up a touchdown in ten quarters,
but I think the Jets go in there,
season on the line,
the Jets know if they lose this game
they will not make the playoffs.
16-13 New York Jets,
I look for Eric Decker to have a huge day.
You keep asking questions,
I'll keep answering them.
(pounding hip-hop music)