- On this episode, I talk about my dad,
I give some advice to a 14-year-old entrepreneur,
and I talk about meetings.
(applause)
You ask questions, and I answer them.
This is The #AskGaryVee Show.
(hip hop music)
Hey everybody, this is Gary Vay-ner-chuk,
and welcome to episode 41 of The #AskGaryVee Show.
I am in a tremendous mood this Monday morning
because my New York Jets went out
and stunned the Steeler nation.
You know, the Steeler nation that rolled
into MetLife Stadium yesterday and,
look, I've gotta hand it to the Steeler fans.
The way your team travels, and when you catch a team
like my team that's really down in the dumps,
there was over 50% Steeler fans in the audience yesterday,
and the reason I'm pausing is
I'm tryin' to debate if I want to tell you
of how nasty I was to all the Steeler fans around me
and I was just nasty.
So, big win for the Jets.
I'm in a good mood.
Let's get into the show.
- [Voiceover] Elliot asks, "Going personal,
"What are your pet peeves?
"And what skill do you wish you were better at?"
- Elliot, great question.
My pet peeves are pretty basic,
meaning they've been there for a long time,
and it's something I've talked about in the past
if you've watched any of my key notes or the show,
I think I've sprinkled it in,
but I wanted to kinda address it,
and it's really funny, I'm even pausing right now
and buying myself time
because the second part of your question,
"What would I like to be better at?"
is a struggle for me to come up with,
and maybe that's the answer in itself.
We'll get to that in a second,
but pet peeves are clearly hypocrisy and cynicism.
I hate the cynicism in the marketplace.
Steve feels it's a must-needed thing, and I respect that,
but I won't focus on that
'cause we've done that in the past.
It really is hypocrisy.
I have family members, I have people I've done business with
who are so hypocritical.
It kills me.
They literally like talk, and by the way,
the reason I answered this question is
a lot of you in the comments
and a lot of you listening on the podcast right now
that are interacting with me,
you talk a good game about community,
you know, I've been doing a little bit of digging,
I've been thinking about making kinda this slideshare
which, oh by the way, link up the slideshares.
We haven't done some linking up in a little while.
Linking up is a much needed thing.
The slideshares that I put out.
Been thinking about doing a slideshare on bull (censored).
The hypocrisy of people tweeting like,
"Be in your community.
"Engage with your community.
"Give for your community."
And then you look at their Twitter feed,
4713 tweets all time, and nine at replies.
I have a lot of pride with my at reply ratio,
and so those two things really stick it to me.
What would I like to be better at?
Look, you've all heard me if you're hardcore fans
that I say that I'm 99% of things suck at,
and I believe that.
There's a lot of things I'd like, I mean,
I'd like to be able to, look,
I'd like to be able to sit down and read something
for more than two minutes and actually concentrate and do it
I mean, this poor crew, and show them,
because I wanna show how poor the crew is,
and I don't mean financially, I mean,
how I feel bad for them because they sent me
these nice long e-mails, and then literally
after the fourth time they send it, I'll reply and just say,
"Let's just meet for five minutes."
'Cause it's so audio for me, and I struggle to consume,
and there would be a lot of efficiencies
if I was better at consuming, so kind of that ability
to concentrate on things that are not that important.
Take that the way it was meant, guys,
which is, ya know, I can concentrate
on a one, two percent kind of variable,
but I struggle when I think things are important,
but not that important.
- [Voiceover] Amanda asks, "What ways can agencies
"make staff meetings more productive?"
- Amanda, I love this question.
By the way, I just took my wedding ring off.
Big week for me.
Turned 39 and had my 10th wedding anniversary this week.
Thursday is the wedding anniversary,
Friday is my birthday.
That's right, at midnight at my wedding,
the whole wedding party sang me Happy Birthday.
That's how I roll.
Amanda, Amanda right?
Amanda, great question.
The best way to make meetings more efficient
is to cut them in half.
To cut them in,
to cut seven eighths out of them.
The amount of bullcrap that goes on in a meeting,
the set-up, this and that,
one thing I've just noticed,
I hired a couple of very senior executives recently,
three or four SVPs, very senior people here at Vayner,
and to a tee, each of them have come up to me
and said, "Wow, your meetings are so weird.
"They're five minutes, they're ten minutes,
"they're 15 minutes."
Because most of it doesn't matter.
This is becoming the theme of this show.
It just doesn't matter.
So I think one of the best ways to make it efficient
is to cut them in time.
One of the things that I realized
is that people will fit 10 pounds of crap
into a 10 pound bag.
You give them a 15 pound bag, that's what they fit it into.
They don't overfill.
What I mean by that is, if you have a one hour meeting,
if we have a one hour meeting,
we'll fit what we need to get into that into that hour.
We'll banter a little bit, we'll go a little bit deeper,
but if we cut that same meeting to 15 minutes,
we'll still accomplish that, and we've saved the 45.
So the answer to your question is restrictions.
Create a mandate for the length of the meeting.
- Hi Gary, my name's Brent Wampler,
and I was actually born in Russia like you were as a baby.
I'm 14 years old, and here's my question.
I wanna be an entrepreneur when I get older,
but I don't know where to start.
Like, what actions should I be taking right now as a kid?
Thanks.
- B, listen to me.
First and foremost, by asking this question
and knowing what The #AskGaryVee Show is,
you're putting yourself in a position to be an entrepreneur.
I like that.
What I don't like is the question
because what you should know
if you're a purebred entrepreneur,
so wanting to be an entrepreneur versus
being an entrepreneur are two very different things,
and I have no interest in giving the medicine
to a 14-year-old, especially 'cause I gave the medicine
to a 14-year-old Steeler's fan yesterday,
and it wasn't pretty and I'm not proud of it.
On this show is probably the second most competitive place
I live in, and so what I want to tell you is this.
Look, if I were you, I would sell
that Under Armour sweatshirt that you're wearing
in the video to some other kid in the neighborhood.
I would go back in the woods in the video that you just had
and find some rocks and sell 'em to some nine-year-old girl.
That's what I did.
I was that raw.
Now, we're not all the same.
What I'm trying to tell you is
the best way to become something is to act like something.
So, you wanna be an entrepreneur?
Start acting like one,
meaning start a business, start selling things.
Both will work, or find a mentor.
Find the 18, 19, 20, 21-year-old kind of entrepreneur
in your neighborhood and start helping her or him out
for free just to learn the hustle, to taste the game.
You've gotta put yourself in the position.
There's no reading about entrepreneurship.
There was a question today that came through for #AskGaryVee
that said, "Gary, name the first,
"name the four best business books you've read this year."
And I laughed my ass off because
I don't think I've read four books in my life,
and definitely not four business books,
and so there's no reading, my man.
There's doing, and so sell the shirt off your back.
- [Voiceover] TJ asks, "As a fellow son of immigrants,
"when you were 25, how did you overcome fear
"of not doing as much or not having it as hard?"
- TJ, this is a great question.
In life, there's certain things that you can control
and other things that you can't.
One of the things that really stand out to me
is how much I,
this is something I've rarely shared.
I think I've shared it once or twice,
Stunwin, keep me honest here.
I'd be curious if you know.
I think I've talked about it once or twice.
I often, when I was 18 years old,
would call my mom while I was in college
and cry, literally cry, like a baby,
get that emotional about the fear that,
at that point, I thought I was going
into the family business, right?
I was in a crap college.
I was all in.
I was going home every weekend working,
and I had a huge fear that I was never gonna get
the credit I deserved as being,
this is, ya know, the confidence inside,
by going into my dad's business
because everybody would always say that Sasha gave it to me,
that my par-- look there's even in Crush It!,
there's even negative reviews on Amazon of like,
"Oh yeah, but his dad gave him
"a 3 million dollar liquor store."
Now, you know, as,
I underestimated people's knowledge
that a three million dollar revenue liquor store
is not a three million dollar grant,
and things of that nature,
and then obviously my skills.
I said recently in an episode,
a lot of you caught it and tweeted it,
"The truth is undefeated."
If I was gonna be a great businessman,
I would get the credit that I desperately, clearly wanted
at that age and still at this point do
'cause the narrative does matter to me,
not just the dollar results.
And so, it's interesting,
this question really struck a chord
because I remember not only having that feeling,
but I had a separate feeling
which is the answer to your question.
The answer to your question is very simple.
One, I knew that I would never have it
as tough as my parents, so what I did was
I had to execute against that privilege.
Executing against your privilege
is the only thing that you can do.
I remember two things that stand out for me.
One, growing that family business.
I wanted to pay back my parents as quickly as possible.
I, the greatest two feelings I have in my body
as an entrepreneur, answer this question.
One, the fact that me and my parents walk around
and all feel like we've given to each other.
I paid back, right?
I built such a big business that it helped them
as much as it helped me getting that at bat.
And number two, the day my dad a couple of years ago
maybe 18 months ago, said to me
that I work harder than him,
and that was a good feeling.
That was something I wanted
because that was another way to pay back my privilege.
The fact that my dad sacrificed his entire life working
to set up the foundation where our family is going
is something that I wanted to pay back by doing the same.
Now look, to pay that back, I also want to have
a better work life balance, to spend more time with my kids,
something he wasn't able to do.
So there's other things besides just working hard,
but the fact of the matter is the only thing you can do
is to execute against your privilege.
- [Voiceover] Joy asks, "What social media techniques
"do you think work best for promoting a book?"
- Joy, I was excited about answering this question
'cause I was gonna go tactical,
but then Steve reminded me that I've answered this a bunch
in the past, and I wanna give that context too
'cause he's right, and I wouldn't have answered it,
so kudos to Steve for making the show better.
When selling a book, you need to be selling it
months and years in advance.
I am actively, right now, selling the #AskGaryVee book.
Let me explain.
I'm putting out content, and I'm jabbing,
and I'm building an audience,
and I'm building a lot of new fans.
As a matter of fact, question of the day
going right into it,
How long have you been following my work?
Please leave that in the comments.
Podcast people, jump out of the earphones,
and jump onto the keyboard and go to YouTube
and answer this question,
because I want a lot of people in the VaynerNation
to see how many people are only two, three, four, five, six
weeks in because this show is getting virality,
bringing people in, and then thus creating a scenario
where, I was just thinking about what's the scenario,
got excited, anyway,
creating a scenario where I'm bringing value up front,
I'm not charging for this.
I'm not asking for anything.
I'm not trying to make a gateway to a product, no.
I'm just building leverage, and then when I launch
in early 2016 the #AskGaryVee book,
which is probably gonna be a hundred to two hundred
of these questions that I've done over the last year or two,
if I can get that far.
That was a little bit of a gateway drug preview
to how many episodes I'm expecting to do.
And two, a bunch of new questions,
and three is kind of a cool idea I have.
(ding)
A lot of people here who've watched every show
don't really need to buy the book, right?
I mean, you've consumed it,
but at 18 bucks or 22 bucks, they will
because I've guilted them into it
because I've provided so much of value.
And so number one, you need to provide value up front
before you ever sell your book.
Let me get into some tactics.
One-on-one marketing.
One of the biggest mistakes so many authors make
is they send out a bulk e-mail,
and it usually says this.
"Hey guys, I never normally do this,"
I mean, that's my favorite.
You like that, Zak?
"I never normally do this,
"but I have a book coming out next Wednesday.
"It would mean the world to me,"
Why? They want to be efficient.
People want to scale.
What I did last August was
I went to Connecticut with my family
and I, one by one by one by one by one,
wrote e-mails to people that I wanted to help.
Alex in 12 years.
Alex, hey remember I really gave you a break in your career.
You know, we're great buddies.
Hey, nice job last week, da da da.
I'd really appreciate your help on this book.
Can I count on you?
And I basically went one by one by one
and scaled the unscalable, and what it created
was a landfall of a lot of opportunity.
The other thing is you have to cess the market of exposure.
That year, August last year,
the podcasting was really starting to happen, right?
And so I wanted to really focus on that.
So I went and I did a ton of interviews
with all the emerging podcast people
'cause I knew that was the arbitrage,
and what I mean by the arbitrage was
a place where you would get bigger return on your investment
than other places based on its exposure.
So whereas three years ago I'd want to be in the Huff Post
and guest blog post, that played itself out
because Forbes opened it up,
and a lot of other people did that move,
but the podcasting was starting to grow,
and now there's so many more podcasts,
so much more competition for those earbuds
that it's changed a little bit.
It's not as valuable to be a guest as it was a year ago
because of the game, unless a certain podcast overindexed
and there's more,
and you keep playing this.
So it's really tactical stuff like that,
but it's really about scaling the unscalable.
The truth is, you've gotta get to somebody's emotion, right?
So that it goes from heart to brain to wallet, right?
Heart to brain to wallet, oh I like that.
That could be a really nice picture.
Let's, maybe a t-shirt.
Heart, can you make a t-shirt?
Anyway, heart to brain to wallet
is kind of the way I think about selling books.
First you gotta get them emotional,
then you gotta make them think there's a value prop,
and you've got a storytell to them
why they should buy your book.
What's in it for them above the fact
that they feel that they owe you?
And then that's when they start pulling out their wallet.
And so I do that one by one by one by one,
and when I do interviews, one of the things
if you go back and listen to all of the podcasts,
Lewis Howes, Peflen, JLD, any of those people,
when I was doing those interviews,
I barely mentioned the book.
As a matter of fact, when they asked me
questions of the book 'cause they were good guys
and they wanted to get me exposure,
I'd walk away from it 'cause the only thing I want to do
in those 30 minutes was provide
as much value for that audience as possible
'cause that's the first step, the heart.
Thanks for watching episode 41 of The #AskGaryVee Show.
Clearly, I've asked a question of the day,
and more importantly, clearly you can tell
I yelled my ass off because my voice sounds weird.
You keep asking questions.
I'll keep answering them.
Oh crap, wait, subscribe!
(mocking gun sounds)
I need subscriptions because I can't push
this many right hooks in social, so subscribe!