- On this episode,
we talk about Twitter 140 character limit,
me establishing myself as the boss,
and you, jumping away from that $100,000 plus job
to go into your (whispering) passion.
(whispering) Sion.
(hip hop music)
(crowd cheering)
You ask questions,
and I answer them.
This is the #AskGaryVee Show.
- [DRock] Yes.
- Hey everybody, this is Gary Vay-ner-chuk
and this is episode 147 of the #AskGaryVee Show.
Kept the door open today.
What's up Kaylen?
Wanted the door to be open,
brings a little extra energy.
I didn't like that 15 got so much dap,
so I want to give 16 some love.
Brandon Barnes got a new haircut from Resy.
I'm lovin' it.
Maybe he should come over and show us all.
Kaylen, one of my favorite employees,
sittin' in the background.
Cool.
I'm in a good mood,
heading to London tomorrow,
and yesterday's show was awesome.
15 brought some serious energy,
good to be back in the main saddle,
as I like to call it.
India this is the main saddle.
- [Voiceover] Cool.
(bell chimes)
- Main saddle.
(laughter)
India.
Let's, get into,
- [Gary and India] The shooooooooow.
- Oh, nice, nice. - [India] That was great.
- Actually, what is that called, when you do a what--
- [DRock] Harmonize?
- That was not,
we did not harmonize.
We're not.
No.
(bell chimes)
- Ting, shoooooow, come with me.
- I can't. - Calm it down.
- Ok, ok. - [Both] Shoooooooooooow.
- No, see, I don't have, like,
I'm terrible at singing.
- Don't be self-conscious,
haven't you watched 147 episodes
of self-lifting, self-esteem-building?
Come on, here we go.
- [Both] Shooooooooooooow.
- From Kyle.
- [Gary] Kyle.
- With most of your employees knowing you before--
- Zak, get over here.
Kyle.
- [India] Kyle, Zak, Kyle?
- [Gary] No, Zak just has something I wanted to share
with Vayner Nation.
- What's up?
- Just wanted Vayner Nation to see your hat.
- My hat.
- Pokemon?
- Pokemon.
- Cool, have a good day.
Zak.
- Yes?
- Oh that's you, sorry, Kyle.
- [Voiceover] Kyle.
(laughter)
- [Voiceover] Kyle asks, "With most of your employees
"knowing you before they worked for you,
"how did you establish your authority as the boss?"
- You know, funny thing about VaynerMedia,
a lot of them didn't know who I was.
Kaylen.
Please.
- [Kaylen] Hi, oh God.
- Let's find out.
Question is, you know,
when most of my employees knew who I was
prior to them working here,
how did I establish my authority?
Did you know who I was prior to working here?
- I knew you were in the marketing industry,
but I had not much context.
- See, thanks Kaylen.
- Yeah.
- That's the scoop, you'd be stunned.
I appreciate everybody thinking everybody knows me,
I would say more than half of the employees,
if not 80, 70, 63% of the employees,
did not know who I was.
So, India?
Staphon?
- [Voiceover] Nope.
- Thank you DRock.
(laughter)
So, there you go, right?
Yo, you know, Eddie!
Come here.
You know, so, I'm gonna keep rolling here.
One, whether they knew or they didn't,
there was just no breathing room.
I'm the CEO of the company, I'm gonna establish,
Eddie, did you know who I was
before you started working here?
- I did.
- Oh crap.
- I did, I did know.
- How?
- My friend was reading Thank You Economy.
- Got it.
- And I just talked to Gary,
and that's when I found out about Vayner.
And now I'm here.
- Love you, brother.
- Love you, man.
- Great employee, too.
Thank God for that book.
So, you know, most of them didn't.
The ones that did, it wasn't hard.
They either had one of two things.
They had no idea who I was, easy to establish authority,
I'm the damn CEO.
They knew who I was, they knew all my accolades,
respect for the game, I'm the damn CEO.
Easy.
- [India] Easy.
- Eazy-E, rest in peace.
- [Voiceover] Nikhil asks, what do you think
of Twitter's plan to remove the 140 character limit?
- Nikhil, I think this is a tremendous execution by Twitter.
Twitter really needs a jumpstart in a lot of ways,
and really the reason it had a limit,
was because of the technology in place.
Because it was really in the old 160-character limit
or something of that nature with the phone structure,
of text, and like, there's no reason at this point
to keep that limit.
It created creativity, I think it served a purpose,
but you gotta evolve or die,
and I think the freedom of more characters
could be helpful.
Plus you have a lot of base of people
over the last eight years that use it
that will still keep things short and tight.
For me, I can see us now doing complete blog post
type things, like we do on Facebook,
in a Twitter environment.
Could open up some opportunity.
I think this is a very smart move, a much-needed move,
a move that I'm excited to test out,
I think this was a need.
- [Voiceover] Garrett asks, what's the worst mistake
a potential VaynerMedia employee can make
during an interview with you?
- Nothing.
Because mainly I'm on feel.
I'm actually not even paying attention
to what anybody's saying.
I'm actually more trying to get the vibe of it.
So, you know obviously then, that would mean lying,
or trying to fake the funk.
I don't mind when people come in and pander to my ego,
I like it.
I don't mind when they don't know who the hell I am,
I like it.
See that's what's fun.
When you want to rise like a phoenix, it's cool.
And when you think highly of yourself, it's cool.
I get to win, no matter what.
It's a great structured game.
So, I'm not really analyzing for,
there's nothing anybody can do,
literally nothing.
You tell me that, eh, you know, this company stinks.
I'm just here for whatever.
I kinda weirdly get into teenage girl dynamics,
I'm like, ooh, I'm gonna turn this guy around.
Right, so I'll go that route. Or you come in and say,
this is the greatest thing of all time, I'm like, yeah,
that's somebody that's all bought in.
I think I'm so goddamn optimistic,
that it really doesn't matter what you do,
I'm probably gonna want to hire you regardless.
If you don't get hired by me, it means that
there just wasn't a practical puzzle piece need.
It wasn't something you did.
And that's that.
- [Voiceover] Mike asks, "Do you or have you hired
"college dropouts at VaynerMedia?"
- Do you, and have you, yes!
Where's the,
Stephan, Lee Jeneau, like, we've got 'em,
we've got 'em. (laughter)
This is not something that even registers in my mind,
as a matter of fact, you guys know how I feel about school,
pretty hard core.
I've gotten hit up on Twitter a bunch of times,
that says VaynerMedia has this need for,
two years of, I don't know, college, like, whatever.
Whatever our requirements are,
and I didn't even know.
I assume that we did that as a standard thing,
that HR at one point did it.
A.J. or Kelly when she was Managing Director,
or somebody in HR.
And literally I reached out and we've changed it.
I think we've added, like, or have,
I didn't even know Staphon was or wasn't.
Like, that doesn't even register for me.
If you've got the skills, you've got the skills.
I have no idea,
once you get in here.
Whether you go to Harvard,
or you're from Schmarvard, it doesn't matter.
The game starts and then that's what ends up mattering.
- [Voiceover] Schmarvard College shirt?
- Schmarvard College shirt is a good idea.
Schmarvard U.
- [Voiceover] Andrew?
(laughter)
- [India] He hates being on camera.
- Does he?
- [India] Yeah.
- Well 'cause he's terrible at it.
(laughter)
- Andrew, we need a Schmarvard U,
t-shirt, like Schmarvard U.
- Schmarvard U, like university?
- We can go University of Schmarvard,
we can go Schmarvard U, like this is,
you're the creative, you figure it out.
- True, alright, cool.
- Great, great.
(laughter)
- [India] That was pretty good!
- Please leave in the comments,
who's in for a Schmarvard U, but, t-shirt but.
This is where I'm weird and gangster.
Do not say it, 'cause you think I'm gonna be pumped,
and then not do it.
I will literally track the data,
if you put a comment saying you're getting one,
to see if you then got one.
Gabe, you're not on the show.
Alright.
- [India] That's everything.
- That's it?
Alright, good show.
No, I'm good.
Feeling pretty good about it.
Looking for statements.
I appreciate that.
Also, I'm looking for more share monsters.
One of the things that I've noticed is,
I've taken the foot off the pedal on the right hooks,
I want the show to grow. I want more people to watch it,
it is my oxygen, more people watch, more excited I am,
more likely we can hit a plateau,
more likely we can actually get to, you know,
our end goal of getting 200 episodes in of this show,
which makes--
- [DRock] Uh.
Alright.
- Yeah!
Yeah! (laughter)
Yeah! Yeah!
Yes, yes, yes,
I'm so happy, yes!
Are we back?
- [DRock] Yeah. - Yeah, yeah!
So happy.
Cool, that's it!
You keep asking questions,
I'll keep answering them.
In that part there's a lot of signs,
like DRock made a mistake, DRock made a mistake,
DRock made a mistake.
In that transition part.
(hip hop music)