- D-Rock hit his head, tough way to start.
♫ We're unstoppable
what, are you sure?
First of all, it's so cray to look back at 10 years ago.
Yeah, the iPhone X, no.
I don't the X is exactly 10 years old.
More than 10 years ago?
Super fun to see that clip from 10 years ago.
A little baby fat there, anyway.
Just jumped in to, you know,
kind of building off of the stuff that,
first of all, I'm in Seattle.
Gonna do a whole voice day today, TechStars,
they have a voice incubation, TechStars,
one of the premier incubations for the startup class world.
You guys have heard about these accelerators.
Y Combinator, TechStars, these are top players.
They take 6%, I think, these days, five to the 8%
for the company to be incubated
and start another company.
They give a little money, they get networked,
they get characters to come in and speak.
They do things of that nature.
A great model for a lot of businesses over the last decade.
For me, super exciting on this one
because I've stopped doing kind of engagement
with these incubators in the startup consumer-to-app world
but this one is specifically focused on voice.
And if you've been following me at all, I like voice.
So I'm heading there now, gonna do a fireside chat,
and then I'm going to do consulting
for eight, or nine, or 10 of the companies,
then head back and just get a lot of work done
and then head out to Boise, Idaho for a keynote
and then head back home and do a bunch.
But, I'm excited about getting my hands
a little bit dirtier in that world.
I got something for the blog.
You're recording, right?
Good, so you'll even see the transition.
This is Patrick Givens.
What's your official title?
- VP of VaynerSmart.
- Of what?
- VaynerSmart.
- So VaynerSmart, this may actually have to be the episode
because this is something that I will not embark on
as a pillar very often, and I think Patrick's story
can help so many.
Let me explain.
I invested in a company, internet of things, right?
Your bottle talks to you, ah, I'm running out of water,
you can use me for this.
Just, where the world's going, right,
we're here at an incubation around voice.
This is not mobile, this is not social,
this is what I've been in for the last decade.
Three years ago we started three or four one-man,
one-woman divisions in this bigger company.
Patrick comes over from another shop.
I was really impressed with him.
Kind of hired him pretty quickly, on the spot.
And it's about his story, so VaynerSmart,
internet of things is really where we started.
A lot of our work now is in the voice space.
Not necessarily a direct line to that, but indirectly.
You know, this term intrapreneur, you know,
being entrepreneurs within companies, I'm skeptical to it
because I'm so overly romantic about entrepreneurship.
It's interesting.
I think you probably represent one of the best,
if not the single best, version in the seven,
eight, nine-year history,
eight-year history of VaynerMedia.
Patrick was thrown in a one-man team.
No admins, no experience.
- Before we get started, I just want to--
- I'll finish in a second, one second.
- Igor-- - Igor
- pleased to meet you. - It's such an honor, man.
- Yeah, great meeting you
as well. - Take care.
Thank you, such a pleasure.
So while he's introducing,
Patrick made it through this system, stayed alive,
actually, that's so funny.
You know what he did?
He stayed alive until it got good.
We'll go into details later.
Listen, if your idea is stupid, like, right,
if your horse is like a horse on those machines
you put the quarter in, you gotta actually run a race,
you're gonna lose.
But, it's stunning how important the CEO is,
how important she and he is.
It's just, it's stunning.
So how we doing so far D-Rock?
Like, we're a week in to the new style, what do you think?
- [D-Rock] I feel great.
I feel like we're evolving a lot.
We're having a lot of different thing.
- [Gary] Some good, some bad, some indifferent?
- [D-Rock] Yeah, learning.
- [Gary] Learning.
Always be learning.
- [D-Rock] So, the last time that I didn't read back in.
- What about if I ask the questions right now
and you edit it as if I'm not right there, right?
So we're about to interview Patrick Givens
who's the VP of VaynerSmart.
I think he's a uniquely interesting person for you guys,
YouTube, because he won within our organization
and a lot of you work in organizations
and you have entrepreneurial spirit,
and you're not ready to leave.
So maybe how do you act like an entrepreneur,
AKA an intrapreneur, inside of your organization?
- I think my whole approach to it was run
as thin and as hard as I could for as long as possible.
The point of that was to have low overhead
and to be able to do whatever else on the side I could
to make sure my group was not dragging things down
while we built our capabilities up
so that when the market was ready, we were ready to jump.
- I really wanna continue to inspire you guys
to take the voice space more seriously.
I mean, I slipped here into Seattle for it, right,
so I'm not in the business of like
flying places for free just 'cause.
I think it's strategic.
So anyway, back to Patrick.
This interview is to get his perspectives on how to win
within an organization and the voice space.
- I know where Gary's heart was and where his head was
in this space.
I knew he saw the IoT space being important and growing
as a place where a lot of his attention
was gonna move from consumers,
and where his clients need to be.
I see so much opportunity to build
new kinds of interactions here,
so we're in the first half-step of what's gonna be
a really long journey on voice, and it's cool for me
to start playing already with ways to hack
what's still a new system.
I love going in to meetings with clients right now,
or internal teams, and being asked
what the best practices are.
And we immediately will say, look,
here's a few things that work in voice,
here's why they work, but anyone that tells you
they know a best practice is full of shit at this point.
We haven't even been here long enough.
No one's tried enough things and failed at them
to prove out the ones that work.
So, we're super early, we're hacking,
we're playing in the space,
and that's the most fun place to be.
- They don't want anything, so what's gonna be,
no, no, we can film everything.
The whole thing's gonna have
a Russ song over it, or whatever.
Find somebody who's got a song named Patrick.
Patrick, you signed up for
the Gary V wine of the month club?
- [Patrick] Yes, sir.
- You got your email confirmation tonight?
Just now, you, Phil?
You haven't signed up yet?
- [Phil] I haven't signed up yet.
- But you will, right now, right?
- [Phil] Okay.
- Thank you.
- [D-Rock] Phil signing up?
- Yeah, it makes me happy.
- [D-Rock] Phil, you're signing up?
- Absolutely.
- [D-Rock] Good job, bud.
- Are you signed up, D-Rock?
- [D-Rock] Not yet, I'm going to--
- Well, don't, no, I know you did, no, no,
but let me give you a good idea.
Take it out of your phone right and do it.
(all laughing)
I was quick.
No, really, it's a great idea.
- Were you caught up for a second, Phil?
And did you get an email confirmation now?
'Cause I don't know if they started doing that.
Coming to super tasting?
Can you make it?
Pub, because I can see you weren't planning on--
I wanna really have fun, no, it's gonna be fun.
♫ Wine, wine
- [D-Rock] All right, all three of you,
how is the start of your day?
- I mean, this was super exciting for me.
Feels very early, social media reminded me
that I can still play in the tech space and be smart.
And incredible founders with clear vision,
and a different energy because when you're selling something
that the world hasn't bought yet, you're a different animal.
But super easy selling social media and mobile now.
Selling the future of voice
as an infrastructure in our society and how it interacts
is a totally different game.
Enjoyed it tremendously, and a lot of you are watching,
and a lot of you wanna be YouTube stars,
and a lot of you wanna do what I've done.
And I always say, you know, watch what I do, not what I say.
If you're just a curious kid, go deep into this voice space.
I wanna use this moment in my vlog to have those moments
eight years from now that make so happy
because I get an email from you
that you just sold your company
for 713 million dollars
to Google because you literally watched this vlog,
you went out and took the time,
and the 40, 80, 150 hours to learn the space.
You got an internship at a startup.
You learned something, started something.
This moment can be the seed of the rest of your life.
Take advantage of it.
- [Man] Gary, thanks.
- Take care, man.
- It was nice meeting you.
- Real pleasure, looking forward to jamming together.
- That would be awesome
- Good luck, take care.
- Thanks guys.
- Real good day, real good.
I wanted to remember it, voice.
Comment of the day on YouTube,
comes to you live from Seattle.
Huh, Andrew Hazzlee says, you finally convinced me
to get back into Snapchat.
I don't know what, I haven't watched the episode yet.
I don't know exactly what I said,
but I know exactly what I said, which is
there are practitioners and there are headline readers.
And as a practitioner of content creation and distribution,
Snapchat is a phenomenal place to be a marketer right now
if you care about people under 35.
If you're a stock person, and Wall Street,
maybe not so much.
If you're a person that just lives and reads
one thing at a time, maybe not so much.
But, as a practitioner that wants to run businesses
and get shit done, it's phenomenal.
(tense music)
- [D-Rock] Hey Phil, what'd you think?
(all laughing)
- Yes.