- On this episode we come to a very, very special place.
♫ Hey
♫ Gary Vee
♫ You ask questions
♫ And I answer them
♫ This is the #AskGaryVee Show ♫
- Hi everybody this is Gary Vay-ner-chuk
and this is episode 140 of the #AskGaryVee Show!
Super excited to be here in the streets,
but not really a little elevated in New York City
downtown New York.
Obviously a lot of you at this point
have heard the buzz around the incredible,
unbelievable Century 21 mural commemorating 9/11.
It's a real honor to be here and doing this show.
Something I'm sure I'll look back on
for a long, long time
and maybe watch this 10, 20, 30 years from now,
maybe watch this with my grandkids.
Tell them about the history of the tragic events
that happened down here,
but this incredible piece of art,
as street art, graffiti and things of that nature
become bigger and bigger parts of culture.
When I saw the incredible events that transpired down here,
especially the Patrick Ewing and Carmelo Anthony thing
in the corner, I reached out to my dear friend Isaac Gindi
who is the co-owner of Century 21.
I said, "Hey, I want to do a show near by."
So Isaac I'm gonna sneak you in here,
by the way, what about this outfit, Andy?
This is legit.
- Lookin' good, lookin' good.
- Thanks, brother.
Isaac, why don't you tell the Vayner Nation
a little bit about yourself, a little bit about this project
and I'm gonna push you off, not over.
- No problem.
- And I'll continue the show.
- You got it, you got it.
Basically, 9/11, Century 21 was destroyed,
the Tower fell on this building
and this whole building was completely destroyed.
We were closed for nine months,
we almost went out of business
and we decided that we would stick it out here
because we were here for 53 years
and we don't want the terrorists to beat us
so we stuck it out, we were the only store open.
And then for many, many years
it was a thin line for going out of business
and finally this area became better than ever,
it's much better than it was before 2001.
So Mr. Brainwash approached us and said,
"Listen--"
- Give a little context to Mr. Brainwash
for, a quick little bio for people that don't know.
- Mr. Brainwash is a very famous street artist
and he lives in L.A. and he's moving to New York
and he also did Exit Through the Gift Shop
which is a Academy Award documentary about Banksy
and he approached us and he said,
"Listen, I want to get back to New York,
"I'm moving from New York from L.A.
"I want to make the people proud and happy
"and change the whole vibe of the city.
"I want to do a positive tribute for New York City
"representing 9/11."
And we said, "Of course,
"we will lend you our building to do this."
Because we also are very civic minded
and to tell you the truth
when they did the mural people were crying,
people were writing on the memorials on the bottom,
1,000's of people came hugging me, kissing me,
"Thank you for doing this for us."
- Did they kiss you on the lips?
- Uh, the cute ones, ha ha.
(laughing)
So that's the story, basically.
- Why don't you tell, you know,
so obviously you can imagine this means a lot to me,
but you'll see the connection point in a minute.
Why don't you tell for 5 seconds,
this is a very entrepreneurial business show,
little story of your family's history
as one of the great iconic retailers in the region
that I also grew up in.
- Great question, we were 54 years old,
my father and father's brother established the company
and basically, what they had was
they had small ma and pa stores all around the city
and then one day they decided, sell 'em all
and open up a discount department store.
So how did the name Century 21 come?
There was a World's Fair in Chicago
and they had like an Epcot Center
and Epcot Center was like the city of the future
and it was called Century 21 City.
So my father said, "Let's make this the store of the future,
"Century 21."
By the way we got it before the real estate,
so they can't sue us.
- Whew.
- Thank god, so that's how it started.
- And you know one thing that I just want to give you
one last shout at that I think everybody would love is,
you know you're not a 14-year-old teenage girl,
but you were just Snapchatting in the corner.
Talk to me about your personal relationship
with all this new innovation.
What's your gut feel?
Right in here.
- I'm gonna tell you what it is.
All our competitors, Loehmann's, Daffy’s, Filene’s, Syms
all went out of business.
They all started 54 years ago.
The problem was they never changed with the times.
We're still here, we want to be relevant,
we know that social media is the way to go,
we want to hit the millennials,
we want to cater to them other wise if we don't do that
we gonna, God forbid, go the way of our competitors.
So we want to stay one-step ahead of the group.
And that's one thing that always made Century 21 great,
we adopted to change.
- My friend, I love you.
- Love you too, buddy, good luck.
- Thank you so much, thank you for doing this.
Fun show for me, fun to have guys like that on.
Now Andy Kay, AKA Leo,
let's get into the show!
- [Voiceover] Sam asked, "Is it too cheap to bite off
"Ask Gary Vee to create Ask Sam Guillen
"in the real estate space to hustle for agent recruits?"
- Ha, ha, I love it Sam, you can do whatever you want.
I want the entire viewership of this show
to call this show, ask Tommy D., ask Leo Leo,
ask DRock, I don't care.
I wanna provide value, bring that upfront value,
I don't feel like it's a ripoff.
I'm not the first person to do a Q&A show.
Absolutely do it, just make sure
that if you want to honor going that route
that you try to provide the value that this show
trys to provide to you
and so that if you're gonna produce
and provide value to the real estate space,
make sure it's in the best interests
of everybody who's watching
and if there is then some fall-over,
some sprinkles that lead to good things for you
then that's great, but make sure the energy is pure.
That would be the best way to tribute,
not just cause you want to use it as a sales channel.
- [Voiceover] John asks,
"How can entrepreneurs avoid being soft in business?"
- John I would argue
that entrepreneurs should be soft at business,
I lead with my heart.
I made 13 decisions today that were predicated
not on the dollars, but on what made me feel good,
what feels right and what the lifetime value
of that decision is, how it's gonna impact others.
So I think there's a completely wrong point of view
that you need to be raw, unemotional.
Family businesses don't stay in business for 54 years
if they made just decisions
on the black and white bottom-line.
I'm sure, what are some of the longer,
tenured employees over here.
Get over here, Isaac.
- We have employees for 26, 27 years.
- And you don't get there
by just making black and white financial decisions.
- No.
- I assume that you made tons of decisions
that didn't make the financial sense at that moment?
- We use common sense, common sense
and we have a culture where people love to work here,
they're all involved, everybody has an idea,
we listen to everybody's idea
and they make a difference.
- All right, Isaac, you gonna keep talking
I'm gonna lose the show, they're gonna be the Isaac Show,
I'm gonna be out of business, get out of here.
- [Isaac] You called me.
- I'm sorry but I messed up.
The bottom line is that's it guys,
you're not in business for 54 years,
two generations, three generations.
You gotta make calls that don't just lead with your wallet,
it needs to come with your heart.
I actually think the future
of entrepreneurship businesses that are big
will actually be considered soft by today's standards.
Because if you're gonna go too hard,
there's too many alternatives for people to do other things
than to work in that environment
as all these opportunities arise.
So I'm a proud, soft entrepreneur.
- [Voiceover] MAngiolillo says, "Waiting for
"Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook to ship from Amazon, and asks,
"Does your theory still work in the Italian Market?"
- MAngiolillo, thank you so much,
does it work in the Italian market?
Does giving, giving, giving and then ask
work in the Italian Market?
Does provide value, provide value, provide value
and then build equity and leverage
to get something in return,
does that work in the Italian market?
It works in the human market,
obviously every market is a little bit different
and there's suppressed governments
and there's dynamics, communism creates different behaviors.
You know there's a million different variables,
but at the end of day humans absolutely respond
to being guilted or feel compelled to return favors
or do good for people that give good to them.
So when you're providing value upfront,
whether you're in Italy or in Egypt or the Soviet Union,
Syria, Afghanistan, Argentina, New Zealand
it's going to work, it's not gonna work on everybody.
Do I believe there's cultures, countries
that there's more upside within based on the DNA
and the overall stereotypes of a country?
I do, I absolutely do, but in general
this is an absolute winning formula
not to mention that it's a winning formula for you
not just your results.
You need to feel good about providing upfront value.
You know, I'm not gonna go,
I'm not gonna judge my life on how much money I made,
I'm gonna judge my life
by how many people showed up to my funeral.
So the process works for me,
not just on the financial aspect,
but on who I wanna be as a human being
and you need to ask that question for you.
- [Voiceover] Ayoub says, "Hi Gary,
"you told me in a previous video that students
"should never take a loan to study entrepreneurship.
"what should they do instead?"
- I believe that if you go to college
and collect debt to be an entrepreneur, not a doctor,
not a lawyer, not a consultant at Baynor McKinsey
where you have to go to an Ivy League school,
graduate and leverage that.
But a true entrepreneur, like father and brother,
go out there and hustle, be a merchant.
You know, that to me is a crazy proposition
to collect debt for in a 2016 world.
So what I think they should do instead is go work.
Literally just go work, I mean think about it,
instead of going $80,000 in debt, you can go work for $1
and be way up in the pot, you can work for free
and be on the way positive.
And speaking of that, that speaks to my next strategy.
Go work for somebody, a woman that you admire
the way she did it and take a lot less money
working in her organization than somebody else
because you're trying to sap the IP out of her,
out of that leadership.
So not only go work,
go work for the lowest possible way you can survive.
Go live with four roommates in a studio apartment
and eat fast food if you have too.
You can go lose that weight later, like the I did.
The bottom line is you need to go work
in an environment that inspires you
and really you want it to be a place
that you want to be like.
To go work for somebody that you want to be like
is a tremendous value proposition for an entrepreneur.
When I think about what Andy and DRock
have been affected by through osmosis,
they're probably scared to think about
some of the tendencies they now have
that are my tendencies because I've affected it.
It's crazy how it works, it's crazy,
you should see the ego all 600 people
at VaynerMedia walk around with, it's disgusting.
But the bottom line is it's affected from the top
so go work for somebody you admire and want to replicate
and regardless of the cost, if you're a true entrepreneur.
- [Voiceover] Elite Sports Tipster asks,
"If you were starting again and needed to make $2K/m
"in as few hours as possible, what would you do?"
- If I was starting again and I had to make $2,000
as quickly as possible, what would I do?
Without all the brand equity I have, obviously right?
It's funny usually I say go to a garage sale,
I'd probably go to Century 21, buy stuff
and flip it on Ebay on the arbitrage
cause they're such a discounter
or Wine Library and return the wine to another store
that charges more for it.
Deep down, the joke is and I'm making a fun joke,
garage saling, Goodwill, I'm a merchant.
Buying something for less than what I can sell it for
is what I'm really good at.
With no money, with not a lot of money
and I have to make 2K, the quickest arbitrage I know
in today's society, is to go to places,
buy it and flip it on Ebay, the speed is very quickly.
That is literally what I would do, I know my strengths.
If I was to have to build up again,
you know, imagine I did fail and made some critical mistakes
and lost everything.
First I would have to rectify my family situation,
but then I make a lot of money
and I've had a lot of success at being right
for the last 20 years, that's what I live off of.
If I was then to be so crazy wrong
that I went out of business,
I would no longer be able to rely
on my advice as my foundation,
so I'd have to go back to the way I built it
in the first place which is truly sales, selling stuff.
Deep down I'm a salesman, you know the truth is,
I need to spend more time
and I encourage you Vayner Nation
to ask me more sales questions
because I think I have a lot more
to offer publicly around sales.
This show has allowed me to talk
a lot more about HR, management, leadership.
The one category where I think
I've disproportionately under-serviced my community,
is a lot more about my sales skills
which are really the disproportional skills
that grew Wine Library while the technology was catching up.
The first year of Wine Library
went from three to nine million
just because I was on the floor.
So yeah, I would say that, sales.
That's it, that's a wrap.
Very special episode, Isaac thank you so much
for being on the show, I really appreciate it.
If and when you visit New York City
come downtown, come and check this out.
It's an amazing, amazing story, the business itself,
I know how many of you are business people
but the mural, if you're in town over the next two months.
Statement of the day, you know,
I don't want to make it somber
but you know a lot of you were young,
but any comments on that very tough day in American history
any of your short stories to share with everybody else,
I think we all remember where we were
if we remember that day.
It'd be nice to be a community
and talk about it a little bit,
very special episode for me, it means a lot to me,
very tough day for a lot of us that grew up in this area.
So thanks for watching, I hope you enjoyed it.
You keep asking questions, I'll keep answering them.
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