- On this episode we talk about Germany, my impending tragic
death, and being addicted to the internet.
It's like an intense show.
(hip hop music)
You ask questions, and I answer them.
This is the #AskGaryVee Show.
Hey everybody. This is Gary Vay-ner-chuk
and this is episode 84 of the #AskGaryVee Show.
Like that Meerkat?
That was just for the Meerkat audience who said
my energy was wack for 83, which it was,
'cause I was pissed, 'cause I lost a basketball game.
Deal with it.
One thing I'm dealing with is we just opened
the 12th floor, a third floor here at VaynerMedia,
and I don't know if it's because it's
Good Friday, but we are not as packed in on this floor,
and the energy level is concerning.
We'll be taping an episode, taping I like that,
we'll be recording.
We'll be producing an episode
from floor 12 very shortly, so looking forward to that.
Big shoutout to Copenhagen.
I'm going there next week,
that excites me, for a conference,
and let's get into the show, India.
- I'm ready.
- Alright.
- [Voiceover] Jill asks, "One, are you gonna pursue
my idea?
Two, do you get a lot of quality ideas
when you crowdsource a question?
And three, do you crowdsource ideas
more to engage with your audience
or to actually get serious ideas like mine?"
- Jill, this is a great question.
First and foremost, it is not only your idea.
That idea of a subscription wine thing
has been going on, oh I don't know, for about
five and a half, six, seven years now
I've been pounded with that idea, but
to answer if we're gonna do it,
the answer is I'm not sure.
I've been getting more involved with Wine Library lately.
There's a lot of different objectives that I want
to accomplish that are more top of list,
but the Gary Vee
subscription or Wine Library subscription thing is
definitely interesting, and it's something we're pondering.
I mean, wine of the month clubs have been
around forever, and of course, personalization,
or all the other variables you can add to it.
Get it, got it, solid idea, love your picture
by the way on Instagram.
Yeah, I think we get quality ideas,
and more importantly, quality subjective.
To me, it's my form of listening,
and so yeah, I think I get some quality ideas at times.
The truth is I, to answer the third part of your question,
do I do it to engage or
am I really looking for the ideas?
You know, I'm very insularly with my ideas.
I don't like getting ideas from other places,
and so I do it more to engage and to listen
and to get a pulse and to collect,
and they're inputs, they're lightweight.
It would be rare for me to just take Staphon's idea,
but hearing Stephon's idea and India's ideas
and DRock's ideas, and Stunwin's ideas,
and just they're all little inputs and then it forms
some version.
I always feel like I gotta put my sprinkles on it.
That's been successful for me, so I think that I'm
taking the inputs of the world.
That's why I do so much listening,
so much engaging, to get to like an 85,
90% place and then I do my thing on top of that,
and that's where the good stuff comes from.
- [Voiceover] Megan asks, "How much of you is creating
content versus making appearances and attending
social things like parties?"
- Megan, this is a great question.
I often say that money and fame
don't change anybody, they just expose who
someone actually is at a bigger scale,
and there's an enormous part of me that believes
there's a lot of truth in that in technology as well.
We're not making, you know, people are like,
I had this funny argument with this guy at Wine Library
the other day where he was like, all these phones,
the art of talking to each other.
He goes, I was in Starbucks.
This was great.
I was in Starbucks, and everybody was head down.
Nobody was talking to each other.
I was like, where were you?
He was like, New York.
I'm like, alright, let's talk about this for a second.
I'm like, do you think 13 years ago at Starbucks
that people were just yapping with each other?
Like, hey brother, great shirt.
That's not how New York rolls, my man.
And so I think that all that technology is doing
is making more visible what we actually were going
to do.
I mean I do believe the far majority of people
are introverted at first, at scale,
by math.
If you asked me, or any I think common sense
person in society, I think we'd all agree on looking
for refirmation here.
There's way more people that are gonna sit
either timid or middle timid or somewhat
timid, and then somebody whose just gonna roll up.
The reason we love and hate the people
that just roll up and are loud.
Zoom in real good.
You got him?
- [DRock] Yep.
- Really?
On that angle you get him?
You got Gabe right there?
The reason Gabe who works at VaynerMedia
is somebody that so many people know, is 'cause he's
loud as shit, right?
And some people love it, and some people
hate it, but that's why.
He's an extrovert extreme.
He's probably like singing his song right now.
It looks like he's in a meeting.
He's probably just doing some Drake lyrics
while he works.
I think that it's important for us to understand,
that first of all, could you be having an addiction?
Sure.
I think everybody's addicted to their cellular device.
I fully believe that every single person is addicted
to their cell phone, like straight up.
Maybe, but I would say this,
I think that it's great for all the introverts
or the people that don't like to party and
don't like to go out, what they were doing before,
they were interacting with the television.
Let's call it what it is,
or with like a very small group of one or two friends
who equally were close in location to them
and were like that.
Now people can really communicate at scale
with the people that have similar interests,
find new people, and all that kind of stuff.
I think that you are fine.
I think your picture is rad.
I think you and I are friends.
- [Voiceover] Max asks, "I'm from Germany where
Meerkat is nothing more than a cute animal,
and Twitter isn't even as dominant as it is in the US.
Would you recommend that I still go there
and wait?"
- Max, I think that
the question is very solid, but actually
you should have been able to level up and
figure it out for yourself.
Here's what I mean by that.
It's the same thesis that I talk about in the US.
Meerkat is just an animal in the US too
and so is Periscope, and so is Snapchat
38 months ago.
Yes, every country, like here's an answer.
Will every country like the same social networking apps
and they will hit scale?
Absolutely not.
It's funny.
Unfortunately, as India was reading the question
I know that Twitter never popped to real scale
at Germany, I was gonna say that.
You said it in the question.
Look, I think that it's super important
for you to understand what I mean by sit there and hope.
The upside of being an earlier mover in a new platform
that has the potential to pop is so much greater
than the downside of going to a new platform
and wasting your four, five or 10 weeks
or 10 months, and it didn't pop,
and that's why I'll always do it.
That's about as basic as it gets.
That was probably the best way that I've ever
articulated it.
Thank you Max from Germany for putting me
in a position to succeed right now,
because that's it.
That's just it.
It's just that simple.
Especially when you're an entrepreneur and time
is what you have, not money.
You entrepreneurs in the VaynerNation are pissing me
off to such an extreme, because you're debating these
things, and you cry that you don't have enough money
to compete with the big guys,
but then you cry about wasting your time.
Oh, you mean the only God damn asset you
have besides your raw talent to have
any potential to win?
Yeah, I think it's a good use of your time.
- Hey Gary, it's Brandon from Human Cry from
Washington D.C.
We do a great job of customer experience in the store.
How do we take that same level of experience
and put it online?
- You know, I think you guys
at team Human Cry need to really think about what people
want in a retail store, so you've figured that out,
and I think the way you do it is through a survey monkey
or a survey, or some data of what do people want
in an online experience?
It's about delivering people what they want,
where they want it.
A lot of times people will try to impose the old world
to the new world, meaning, okay.
On our website we're gonna make a video for everything,
or we're gonna put a live person app,
or we're gonna put our toll free number, call net.
You know, I and everybody in this room wants good
UI, UX.
I want it to be fast.
I want to get in and out,
and speed matters to me when I online shop
more than.
It's funny, I actually and listen everybody
has different behaviors, but actually this will be fun.
Steve, I'm gonna make a statement,
and I wanna hear your version of it.
Actually, I hate shopping, but
if for God, I guess Jets shirt.
I'm trying to think, I just don't like shopping, but
I was about to say, in online shopping,
but I can't even order on like Seamless.
Well actually I do order on Seamless.
Do you know that I'm not capable of calling a restaurant
and ordering food for myself?
That it is literally one of the three or four things
that cripples me the most.
If Lizzie just said, can you call and order dinner?
- [Steve] What did you do before Seamless?
- I had somebody else do it
My wife prior to that, A.J. prior to that,
my parents prior to that, girlfriends.
I would just never, I never did it.
- [Steve] Was it just you would choke?
- It just suffocates me.
The notion of being on the phone to order something
suffocates me.
Yeah, anyway, Seamless worked for me, the app.
Where I was about to go was in online stuff
I need fast and offline site, I can schmooze a little bit,
but then I realize, no I don't.
I only value speed, because time is the thing
that I like the most.
India, do you like shopping?
- [India] Yeah, once in awhile I guess.
- [Gary] Okay, are your habits different online
than they are in real life?
Will you spend 40 minutes in a store looking at stuff?
And will you spend 40 minutes looking at stuff
on a website?
- No, usually on a website I know exactly what I want,
so I'm going to get it.
- [Gary] You're more surgical.
- Yeah, but then shopping in person
I'm just kind of like browsing.
- [Gary] Do you use Pinterest or other things
in theory that are getting you there online?
- Yeah, Pinterest.
Definitely have bought things because I found
them on Pinterest.
- That's where it gets interesting.
I think there's something in there,
and that's where my intuition is.
Even though I'm not a shopper, I understand shoppers
which is why I led the questions, if you paid attention
very carefully.
I think it comes down to
realizing that people wanna be surgical and execution
oriented on your site, and you as a marketing engine
need to be great at creating discovery
across the whole web, and then funneling
it to surgical execution on your site.
That was tremendous advice.
- [Voiceover] Andrew asks, "if you were to tragically die
today, how well would VaynerMedia do in the long term
without it's CEO?
Have you been satisfied with Wine Library's
performance since leaving to focus on VaynerMedia?"
- Andrew, this is a great question.
I mean, I always say everything stems from the top,
and so I'm trying to think about how I wanna
answer this question, meaning A.J. is ridiculously
capable.
I don't think the company would do as well,
mainly because he just had his big brother
and mentor die, and so even though he's
capable I would assume that he would be
pretty torn up.
He better be.
I think that he would struggle with that,
and I don't think he loves client services enough
to persevere, and he'd be like, what is it all worth anyway?
Who cares?
On the flip side, there's an interesting thing.
Believe it or not, this is a weird thing.
Though A.J. is hands down the most capable
person to be the CEO of VaynerMedia,
I could almost see him not wanting to do it,
and I could almost see so many people here
internally saying, no we have to continue
the hustle and so, it'd be interesting.
I think we built a very interesting culture here.
Similarly, Brandon runs Wine Library with my dad,
and Bobby and Justin, it's all family.
My best friend, my brother in law, my cousin, my dad.
My ego made me think that Wine Library would hurt
more than it did without me there.
To answer your question, I am happy with how Wine Library
has performed with me not there.
That being said, do I think it could be way way, way better?
Of course, I mean I think I'm great.
Do I think the businesses are better off without me
than with me? Absolutely not.
Are they in places where they won't go out of business?
Absolutely.
Are they in places where they have no
prayer of the hyper growth that I create
when I'm the operator?
That's for damn sure.
The biggest thing that I create is the ability
to grow big businesses fast as shit.
That's gonna end up being my legacy if I do it one more time
and I'm not on business number two
that I've taken in a 36 month period with no cash infusion
to very big heights.
That is a very difficult task in a cash flow basis.
The companies that grow big on funding,
that make sense.
The Ubers, and that company is way better than
what I've executed, but still when you
have hundreds of millions of dollars of funding,
the speed is what I'm talking about.
Forget about the business.
Well in a non-funded business, to be able
to build that speed, that takes an incredible
game of chicken, because you're playing cash flow
versus growth.
Being able to afford.
You know how proud I am that we've
never had lay offs because we lost a client?
That is unheard of in agency world,
and it's triple unheard of for the fastest
growing agency of all time in people.
I'm proud.
That is what I'm uniquely great at.
They won't grow as fast,
but there's enormous talent around me
that is able to do their thing.
That being said, I'm so much,
not only the executional leader of my friends and families
and business, I think I'm the emotional leader
with a lot of them too.
I would think that they would really struggle
with my absence, and would crumble into a little hole.
I'm just kidding.
I think they would struggle with that.
Cool.
What did we ask here?
- [India] Are we doing intro?
- Yeah.
Oh, question of the day, yeah.
Oh shit, I forgot about the question of the day.
What are you doing this weekend?
You keep asking questions.
I'll keep answering them.