- On this episode we talk Chamber of Commerce.
We talk @WineDeals,
the greatest place to buy wine on Instagram,
and when is the right time to have an assistant.
(upbeat, 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 135 of the #AskGaryVee Show.
It is wonderful to be back in the main saddle
after a wonderful three weeks
of spending an enormous amount of time
with the kids.
Tremendous, just a ton of kids time.
Got to spend a good amount of time really putting
a lot of meat on the #AskGaryVee: the book
which was nice.
Feels like that's always a burden on my head,
these damn books.
So that was good to get done.
Just really connected with the family.
Got really zoned in on the New York Jets season.
Have my preview show of the upcoming season on Friday,
look for that,
and just been missing you guys at the Vayner Nation.
Got to interact with you guys a little bit on Instagram.
That was good, but now we're back in full swing,
and that's that, so India,
let, India's on vacation.
Stunwin, with facial hair.
The new Stunwin with
- What I lack in India's hair
I'll try to make up for.
- Well, Stunwin, let's get into the show.
- [Steve] Didn't even give me a chance to
- Nope, no chance.
That's India and I's thing.
- [Steve] Fine, fine.
- [Voiceover] Gregory asked, "If you ever become the CEO
"of a local Chamber of a community of 12,000,
"what would be the first thing you would do?"
- If I became the CEO of a Chamber of Commerce for a
small group of 12,000 people,
12,000 members or 12,000 people in a town?
- [Steve] Community, yeah.
- You know, I'm a very big fan of scaling the unscalable.
Right, I talk a lot about engagement,
one on one engagement, Twitter videos, depth versus width.
When you're talking about a town of 12,000 people,
even if we're answering this incorrectly
and it's a membership of 12,000,
it's still a very small number in the scheme of things.
So, what I would fundamentally do is create a infrastructure
to allow me to connect one by one
with every single member of the Chamber,
and even considering if it's a 12,000 person community
the thousand to 4,000 people that really care
about business in town, and connect with them one by one
via coffee, via Skype, via phone call
as much face to face as possible,
and ask them to reverse engineer their objectives,
meaning what can the Chamber do for you?
What do you want out of it?
I'd also have a better understanding of what I was
trying to get out of it if I was the CEO of that.
So, I don't know if that's fees,
I don't know if it's something as simply noble as making
business better in town, if that's the objective at hand.
That's a little bit of a tongue in cheek
for the people that don't get my humor.
I think I get razzed a little bit too much for this.
I was reading plenty of comments on these three weeks.
Basically my job would be to make the
business environment in this community better,
and I think the number one way to do that is
to get people aligned.
I think leadership comes from getting entire group of
people aligned on a mission.
I actually think the most effective way to do that is
to actually understand each individual person's
goals and objectives and then come and find that
little sweet spot that is the closest thing
to the overall masses that brings value
across the board, and then go backwards.
What's the number one thing that I can do that brings
value to all 600 people at Vaynermedia?
That brings value to all 12,000 members,
and then go down the list to where the number
10 thing maybe brings value to half of the people,
but it's still better than to three people.
So, I reverse engineer by listening upfront,
collecting the data, and then executing against
the top 10 things that will bring value to everybody
in the organization.
Sweet fire off the gate.
- [Steve] Good start.
- Can I get a fire emoji?
A little editing for you DRock.
- [Voiceover] Sam asks, "What is one of your favorite
"questions asked by an interviewee for a position
"at VaynerMedia?"
- I don't like when Interviewees talk.
What is my favorite question,
by the way there's a little bit of a truth
in that statement.
It's something I've been giving a lot of thought to
is, I'm live.
Oh, you got something?
Oh, A.J.
- Did you see the Outside the Lines report?
- No.
Oh, AJ, bring some news here
on the Ask Gary Vee.
- I'm breaking a scoop.
- I see you're happy too,
so it's not the Jets are in big trouble again.
- No, it's about Spygate.
- Oh my God, what?
- Three aspects that came out of the report:
one, a owner confidentially told Outside the Lines
that he thought deflategate was
a make up call for Spygate.
- Makes sense.
- Owners are probably generally happy with
how good Al handled it, even though he lost.
- Yep.
- Outside the Lines is reporting
can't be completely based in fact
that they think Spygate was 40 games worth of tape
at least.
- Wow.
- And, there was one other fact.
Mike Marts, former coach of the Rams,
- Yes.
- on the record is saying that he put out a statement
saying he was satisfied with the investigation,
but that Goodell called him and asked him to do it
and Marts is now on the record with Outside the Lines
saying that he believes Spygate was really bad,
and that,
- They lost the Superbowl because of it.
- He didn't say that.
- I'm saying it.
- But he's saying Goodell asked him to put out the statement
and he didn't believe it, saying that he put out.
Outside the Lines, huge story, exploding right now.
- I love it.
We hate the Patriots around here.
And that's just a bottom line.
Wow.
- [Steve] That's good, I got a question about Deflategate.
- You know what, is that right?
That being said, I do wanna say the following.
I'm not upset about the Tom Brady ruling,
a lot of you asked me, I'm happy that he's playing.
I'm happy.
Alright, I'm serious, by the way.
I'd rather him play.
We don't play them in those sport games.
- [Steve] Interviewee questions.
- Oh, interviewee.
Yeah, you know, the truth is,
I don't have a really great answer for this.
I like when interviewees ask me honest questions.
I think a lot of times, they're just mailing it in,
they went to some website that says,
'seven best question to ask during an interview'
or they have an interview coach,
or their dad told them to say something.
I hate mailed in bullshit, I like when they ask,
or when they pander to me, like,
'Gary, what're you gonna do when you buy the Jets.'
Like, I don't need that either, though I like it,
I like being coddled, I don't need it.
We're there to try to help them help me help us help them
as a team, and the truth is what I'm looking for,
so, you know, not that they have to go the other way
and ask a hard-hitting question, either.
I don't care if it's, if they truly wanna know
what I'm gonna do when I buy the Jets,
then I'm happy.
If they truly wanna ask me, like,
is the vulnerability of this company your charisma
and personal brand of what happens without you,
if they truly mean it and they're not just trying
to win points on asking the hard-hitting question,
you know, I think that that has always been my thing.
I don't want anybody going too far in either direction
of bullshit, just keep it in the lane of
something that really matters to you,
and so, sometimes I like the, you know,
now it's spurring some memories, sometimes I like when they ask
about, like, how much can they contribute
to the 401k, or, do you really, truly allow
unlimited vacation time, like, like,
I like when it's just actually coming from something
they wanna know for themselves.
I feel like I'm there to provide value to them.
I don't think an interviewee is trying to sell me
on them to work for me,
I think I'm trying to sell them on working for me.
And so, I really flip interviews on their head that way,
and that's an interesting thing altogether.
Maybe I just love selling so much,
maybe I'm trying from the day we meet,
create an environment of safety,
which I'm very proud of that I think I create here.
That's the answer.
- [Steve] Cool.
Video question from Vineyard Paul.
- Vineyard Paul, I like Vineyard Paul.
- Hey, Gary Vaynerchuk,
on holiday so I've got a question for you.
What have you learned from WineDeals,
you Instagram account,
the best place to buy wine in America?
Link me up here.
What have you learnt from you WineDeals Instagram account
that small wineries can still use
to make a buck on Instagram?
Cheers.
- Good job, Vineyard Paul.
- [Paul] Hey, Gary Vaynerchuk,
on holiday so I've got a question for you.
- Oh, that was on loop?
- [Steve] Yeah.
- That's cool.
Does it loop?
Oh, yeah, yeah, on desktop, I, yeah.
Vineyard Paul, great question.
I've learned what I thought with creating WineDeals,
the greatest place on Instagram to buy wine,
which is people are disproportionately paying attention
to Instagram, plus Instagram has built-in
word of mouth functionality.
People, by habit, when they see something on Instagram
that they think somebody else is going to
be interested in, tag their friends in the comments.
They leave a comment with that person's user handle,
because everybody's paying attention to Instagram,
they're seeing that alert,
then they are then checking it out.
I have not seen anything work like this
since early e-mail, and early Twitter.
I'm sorry, this is very early e-mail, very early Twitter,
where anybody who's on the platform
is disproportionately paying attention to the platform,
in a way that creates aggressive word of mouth
infrastructure, so we're selling a lot of wine,
we haven't even taken it that serious.
Steve, you're about to get really, really in there,
you know, we're kind of in the Summer months,
which is fun, but now, here we are,
as I start seeing, you know, it's funny,
when I start seeing leaves go orange and,
you know, all that stuff, like, that's when I know
it's time for money, right,
because I came from retail, and the fourth quarter
is what, I mean, literally, this day.
I'm gonna literally get goosebumps.
This exact day for me, the day I stopped going to school,
was the greatest day of my life,
because it was the day that shit was about
to get serious at Wine Library,
because we're about to do a lot of sales
in these next 16 to 20 weeks, and football,
and no school.
I mean, just like the best.
So, as much as I love running VaynerMedia,
and as much as this is gonna be a much bigger company,
and as much as this is awesome,
I'm still a merchant at heart, and I,
as, I'm fired up to, you know, here, today,
and ready to go, but I can't lie,
a little extra kicker, because I love selling stuff
and, even last night, with Brandon, I'm like,
here we go, like, I'm just so pumped
for this Saturday.
I had an interesting Instagram cutpost
a couple days ago about this upcoming Saturday
in the store, I've got surprise gifts for people,
they're going to see Brandon, I won't be there,
don't wanna fool anybody, and so,
Vineyard Paul, I think that people's attention
is on this platform and that you need
to be storytelling on it, and I do think it's a tremendous,
direct response, selling right hook platform,
and WineDeals, as many of you guys know,
is straight right hooks.
It's three wine offers are discount prices, and,
buy, the end, like, there's no thrills,
you know, clever, Instagram-like pictures,
to the best of our ability, and, but it's the wine.
So the attention graph is real,
people's word of mouth infrastructure is real,
and we're picking up a lot of customers, it's going well.
- [Voiceover] Jordan asks,
"What is your biggest goal heading into
"the homestretch of 2015?"
- My biggest goal, professionally,
is where I'm gonna go with this, is to set up VaynerMedia
for it's biggest year, get all my venture capital,
and investing world in order, a lot of transition,
a lot of exciting stuff coming that you'll be hearing about,
wrap up the book, very much focus on
Resy and BRaVe and FaithBox,
the businesses that I'm, and Grape Story,
the businesses that I'm deeper involved with,
get deeper into the HR of 100 employees
at VaynerMedia that I haven't gone as far with
I wanna have that personal connection with,
dismantle the #AskGaryVee Show through the winter
and put out better and better and better content,
work closely with DRock to make a couple
of killer, original videos, work with you, Steve,
to make WineDeals really powerful, and I think we can,
so those are some of the things off the top of my head.
Hopefully have my first really exciting football season
in five years, four years,
I really am very optimistic, or maybe not,
you'll find out Friday on my football preview show,
and start the process, and most of all,
number one, now put a little personal in there,
continue the workout regimen.
I don't know if you noticed, but I'm starting
to go into muscle gaining mode,
and start the process of hacking more time with the kids
from a Monday through Friday standpoint
than I have, whether that's walking to school,
whether that's coming home early.
It's not built into the infastructure
this September, the way I wanted it to be,
maybe because I got so much time in August
that that didn't populate, but I'm definitely,
in the same way that if this show was going on
the year before I started working out,
I know it started right when I started working out,
you would've heard me talk a lot about
working out, working out, working out.
I'm a very smoke then fire kind of individual,
so I'm starting this smoke on this kids hack thing,
because the extremes are working,
but I'm trying to find a little more time.
- [Voiceover] Tim asks,
"When do you know it's time to hire an assistant?"
- Tim asks, when do you know it's time to hire an assistant.
- [Steve] Show title, by the way.
- What's that?
- [Steve] Show title.
- Yeah, this is a great show title.
Let's go with that, DRock.
You know, for me, it was Matt Sitomer,
who worked in the order department at Wine Library,
who is now a lead account strategist
in our LA office, who's the only employee
I took from Wine Library to VaynerMedia
when we started it, I've enormous heart for him.
He's also battling Brandon, my best friend,
who runs Wine Library for the championship
and our fantasy baseball league this year,
so it's Brandon versus Matt,
I'm watching that very carefully for these next 30 days,
enjoying that.
So, but, for me, it was that
I started to have to be places,
and I wasn't completely in charge, or had all the leverage.
What I mean by that is, when I ran Wine Library
and I was literally in the store
12 hours a day, every day,
I didn't schedule a lot of things, and if I did,
I went off memory, and if they showed up
and I screwed up and made them wait an hour,
I was okay with that, even though that was disrespectful
of someone else's time, I was the biggest wine buyer
that they had, and they were there to sell me,
and I was okay with that.
When I started having to show up to conferences,
do interviews, when no longer did I
have disproportionate leverage, that if I was off on time
and had to make somebody wait,
and this is all predicated because I'm disorganized
and I'm not anal and I'm not into the details,
that's when I changed, and, so, Matt,
I said Matt, you wanna be my assistant,
I just need it.
I'm starting to travel, I'm starting to do other things,
my world's evolving, I need to stop being disrespectful,
I need to fix this, I need to figure it out,
and I felt that I was very unschedulable,
that I couldn't follow a schedule,
in the same way that I didn't think I would ever work out,
and I would tell you that having the assistant
and following a schedule and working out
have been two of the biggest confidence builders,
to me, to know that I'm capable of changing,
because up until that point, the first 35 years of my life,
I just went with whatever was easy to me,
which is why I so mailed in school.
Following a schedule and working out
make me believe that I could've been an A student,
where I used to not believe that to be the case.
So, that's exciting,
that excites me for next four years of my career,
that I'll be able to mold and do other things,
while still completely betting on my strengths,
but trying to round out, not,
round out my weaknesses in a way that's scalable,
that isn't, take disproportionate amount of energy, right,
it's, if you've noticed, I've hacked it
with other human beings.
An assistant, a full-time trainer, so, like,
if I can use somebody else's skills in my ecosystem,
that seems interesting, so, for me,
the time to have an assistant was when I felt
that I was disrespecting other people.
It's an interesting answer, but it's the true answer.
Statement of the day.
You know, I'm just looking for, I'm looking for, you know,
comments on this show,
because the feedback loop has been immensely powerful,
and it's given me ideas on how we're
gonna evolve the show in the fourth quarter.
Also, I'd love to know what you've been up to
the last three weeks.
I miss you.
You keep asking questions, I'll keep answering them.
(upbeat, hip hop music)