- On this episode,
I sneak up on Joanna.
- Oh my God.
- Because she was trying to duck it.
- Hi.
- Don't ever try to duck it.
- I won't do that ever again.
- Good, that's
what we do on this episode. (snaps fingers)
(uptempo music)
- [Gary] You ask questions
and I answer them.
This is The #AskGaryVee Show.
- I've literally lost the intro to this show in my brain.
(laughter)
- Hello everybody this is Gary Vee.
- Thank you guys.
It's unbelieveable.
155?
- [India] 155.
- Ready?
- [DRock] Yeah.
- Hey everybody, this is Gary Vay-ner-chuk
and this is episode 155 of the #AskGaryVee Show.
Hey everyone, sorry.
Sorry do your thing.
Sorry guys.
Look at the Mets jersey in the background I like that.
Buck 55,
double nickels.
Super happy to be on 15.
Which I think is some nice number plays.
Ones and fives, India.
Ones and fives on this Friday.
I will give my Jets official prediction at the end.
I know a lot of you've been waiting.
Now that I'm five for five,
people have really been building up.
Staphon's going to bet is what I hear.
- [Staphon] Really, sir?
- That's what I hear.
- [Staphon] You serious? - That's what I heard.
India, let's
get into the show.
Minakhi asks, "What do you think of Slack as a productivity
"environment for startups?"
- I have not used Slack yet.
The Vayner has used it at scale.
How you guys liking Slack so far?
Anybody using it?
Good, solid, good?
- [Voiceover] Fantastic.
People love it.
It's an incredible, incredible product.
I'm a huge fan of Stewart Butterfield who's behind
the product built Flickr.
Was very much a Web 2.0 hero of mine
because Flickr was one of the first sites that got me aware
of this revolution that got me into the world.
I have a lot of emotional heart for Slack.
I haven't used it yet
because I've been running around so much.
I don't think I can necessarily answer this question, India.
My lack of practitionership.
What I do though is by that quick little reaction,
I don't know if you caught it on camera,
did you DRock?
A little bit?
- [DRock] Yeah.
- People are obsessed with this god damn product.
I don't know how much you guys.
- We all use it on the team.
- And?
- We love it.
- Yeah, so
what do you think India?
- Less emails
because you kind of just ping in Slack
and it's easier to just ask for something really off hand
to the whole team instead of just having to send
an email and compose it and all that.
- It's kind of like the lovechild of email
and GroupMe, right?
- Totally, yeah.
- I think there's some real value behind it.
I haven't jammed yet.
I don't want to necessarily go deep into this.
One of the things I adore about this show
is I talk about shit I know.
I've got my feelings as you can tell.
I can give analogies like the GroupMe email thing.
I know what's going on,
I see the feedback loop,
I have a lot of context from a lot other of people,
but I'm not a dead user of it.
My two cents on it
is I'm bullish on it.
I think there's something there.
- You're reading the next question?
- No I was trying to see,
but I saw it was the next question so I fazed it out.
- From Liana.
- Liana I can sit down over here, Liana?
- [India] Yeah, Liana.
- Cool.
- [Voiceover] Liana asks,
"You talk a lot about serendipity.
"Was there one event that made you a believer
"or a series of occurrences?"
- Liana, there's
no one event.
Liana, serendipity is life.
It's how things work.
There was no singular event.
This was so serendipitous.
I'm such a big believer in serendipity now.
Serendipity is just a structural
aspect of the way our world works.
Chance is an absolute
part of it.
It's the way it is
and so no there was no event.
It was clearly a series of events.
That all probably started happening
when I was five or six years old
when I started paying attention to things.
So it's more of a collective belief.
I almost think of it as like my belief in oxygen.
Like it's just there right.
It's just real.
Serendipity is real India.
Shit is real.
(laughter)
- What about your answer yesterday
about timing and talent?
Do you think timing has something to do with serendipity?
- I definitely believe in serendipity
and luck.
Right like I believe in those things like
those are real things too.
But I don't think everything is one thing
or the other.
I definitely think you can prep for opportunity.
I mean these are all semantics.
I mean now were nitpicking like clearly
doing the right thing
and getting yourself in the right places
and educating yourself
and testing things
and setting yourself up for victory,
clearly those are real things but clearly
other things factor into it, right?
So I'm it's just a combination of like science
and art. I always think about
or just you know.
The black and white and the gray.
This is literally the thesis of everything.
And it's funny
it's like you know tastes great less feeling.
People feel like they have been
like pick a spot I mean.
They're both right.
So for me the question
becomes actually.
If you're lucky enough to self-awareness,
could you bet on one
or the other. - [India] Mmhm.
- The reason I love gray so much or talk
about all the things I believe in is
because it's all comes natural to me
it's where my upside lies.
I believe in like taking notes
and studying
and all that shit it's just
not for me.
I wouldn't have the maximum upside for it.
- There you go.
- Thank you India.
- From Destin.
- Dustin?
- Destin.
- Destin, damn.
- Like Destiny without the Y.
- Yeah, I like that, Destin.
Destin Vaynerchuk.
I would have dominated as a Destin.
- You're gonna adopt a fan?
- I don't want to adopt.
I was making pretend if my name was Destin.
- Oh okay.
- India.
- [Voiceover] Destin asks,
"What's the best way to start a business
"in a space that you're unfamiliar with,
"but see massive opportunity in?"
- Become educated.
You know this is a great question.
I'm glad you asked that.
It was a question that
was asked a lot of me in 2006, 7, 8, 9
that I haven't heard while.
Maybe because India is doing the picking.
And so you know.
I think that if you see a huge opportunity
if you think eSports is going to be a huge space
like I believe.
Well then maybe go intern
for an eSports company,
maybe get a job
at an eSports company.
Maybe you read absolutely
everything about it.
That was one of my few chapters in life.
This whole Web 2.0 thing back to Flickr.
I read everything on Tech Crunch.
I read people's tweets.
It was one time when I actually consumed
because I needed to get educated.
And then once I found I had the base,
then I rolled back to where I normally go.
You put in the work.
You know if you see a space.
You become massively educated.
You network in it tremendously.
I believe in online video in 2006,
I went to three Meetups.
In the video 2.0
or the video.
What was it called?
Yeah Web 2.0 Video Meetup Group.
DRock you have been so proud I went to these damn things.
People talking about bullshit
cameras and lighting
(beep) that it's the content (beep).
It was really.
You like that?
It was an interesting time for me where
I was soaking up information.
If you see an opportunity,
go soak up the information.
Go become a practitioner.
Go work in a company in it.
Go to all the events around it.
Read about it go to conferences
and listen about it.
Listen to the podcast like learn.
- Learn mother (bleep).
- Learn about it.
I like that you getting feisty here.
Learn about it
and then you can do.
But you know,
if you believe in something
you have to become educated in it.
And then become a practitioner in it.
And then execute in it.
And then adjust to the realities of it.
- Ready?
- Destin.
And then you've got just kidding, kidding.
(laughter)
- [Voiceover] Jake asks, "Why did you go to college?"
- Jake that's such a good question
because my parents peer pressured me into that bullshit.
There was just no option.
It was back in 1992, 3, 4. You know like
they expected it would have been embarrassing
had I not gone.
That was just the truth.
Like I had by the way,
the reason I end up at Mount Ida College is
because I had no plans of going to college.
I didn't go to see my guidance counselor.
I don't even know my guidance counselor's name.
I think I saw her once in four years.
Right so like. I went
because my parents wanted me to go.
Like it's really so my mom just didn't
I don't think she would have known
how to answer the question of like why didn't
he there was so much
social peer pressure at that point that
if you did not go you were such a fundamental loser.
And it's so different now.
Probably why I have so much passion for it
because if you don't think that I think
that I would be further along and happier.
And happier.
Look I made some great friends
and some great times but like four years.
Damn it.
1994, 5, 6 and 7.
During the Web 1.0 bubble.
(mouth noise)
- This is a video from Richard.
- Richard, I see
Richard a lot.
- Hey Gary it's Richard Lalonde here.
I'm developing a short film about you.
- About me?
- As a child
and your entrepreneurial chops.
- Oh, ok.
- My question for you is at what age did you decide
that you wanted to buy the New York Jets?
- Richard great question.
I think the age when I really decided I wanted by the Jets
was somewhere around.
I don't know exactly Richard to be honest with you
so I think it's somewhere
around fourth, fifth, sixth grade.
When I realized that I was more likely to buy them
than to play for them,
Started seeing other kids growing.
Little bit faster than I was growing.
Being a little bit faster.
Wakeil Shaw.
Fifth grade Wakeil Shaw.
I think gave me one
of my first previews
into being owner not player
because he was a beast
and he ran over me
in backyard football.
So I think a lot of old school references
By the way,
made that Oded Weinstock reference
with Peter yesterday.
A friend of mine from middle school
hit me up
and he's like oh my god Oded Weinstock,
so that was kind of fun.
Wakeil anybody went to Martin Luther King
1982 to 85
Edison, New Jersey Martin Luther King Elementary School
knows the name Wakeil Shaw.
If you know Wakeil Shaw,
find him
and say actually so easy just search on Facebook.
It's so ridiculous.
He moved I think the Baltimore area.
Anyway yeah Richard that's the answer.
I think,
to make this more of an interesting answer for everybody
who's watching.
Which I'm going to start doing more of.
One thing I'm going to start doing India's when these answers
are the fun question
what have you I'm going to trying to go a little bit broad.
If you were lucky enough right now
to have a younger sibling,
a niece or nephew,
a cousin.
Or if you're the parent of a child
of that is as early as six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years old
really starts talking
about what they want to do for a living.
Please, please, please think
about how to put them in the best position to succeed.
The kids.
The children our future India.
- True. - They're our future.
And so I think.
You know.
And that.
Should I want to be a baseball player
and you may not think their athletic enough
and I get that.
And then so the question becomes
do you send them to baseball camp?
Or do you actually look at them
and say look you know me and mom are 5'4".
You're not going to come a baseball player one day.
But can you start showing them
other parts of baseball, right?
Can they become a future amazing G.M. or manager
things of that nature.
I think we need to do better jobs at really
reverse engineering the child that over indexes
in disproportionate passion not the flavor of the month
but has shown two, three, four years
of consistent conversation around a hobby
or your subject matter.
There's so much we could be doing with them.
In those years where they have a lot of time,
impressionable moldable,
that can be very powerful so please take it on yourself
to be responsible to sniff out the young me's
of the world who really never wavered
and we're all in didn't pivot,
didn't change their passions.
And try to put them in that position.
- That's good. - Thank you.
- That's everything. - That's it?
- A lot of people were asking about YouTube Red.
- YouTube Red yeah we kind of talked about it yesterday.
Look the YouTube Red thing
is super interesting.
YouTube needs to make money.
Here's what I think about YouTube Red.
I think that tons of humans
and thousands
and hundreds of thousands of businesses
have made a shitload of money on the YouTube ecosystem.
And YouTube hasn't.
I think it broken
for YouTube.
So I think they need to fix it.
And that's why we're seeing it.
And you can cry about it.
And you can have your panties in a bunch.
And you can do whatever you want,
but the bottom line is,
they've got to do that
because if YouTube doesn't make money,
then it shuts down, India
and where are you going to go with you know,
where are going to go India?
- Not over here.
- Can't go through the wall.
And you can't go on YouTube.
If they go out of (bleep) business.
So you can wa, wa, wa,
but that's the bottom line.
That's what I think that's not noble
and it's not the Zen thing,
if they go out of business
where you going?
- No where.
- You're going to go somewhere else.
- Oh, right.
- Someone else that's going to make money.
They're going to be like (bleep) I'm not going
to do it YouTube's way.
We lost money that way.
- That's everything.
- Prediction time.
So I will say this.
And you've watched five episodes so
alll of you I don't want to hear like I don't hedge.
I don't hedge
but I'm hedging meaning
this is clearly the game
I'm most confused about.
The reason I think I drilled
the last five
was I was completely confident,
I know the matchups,
I know what's going on
and I felt confident that's why I went five for five.
This one I'm not as confident about.
I don't know exactly what's going to happen.
I heard amazing news that Buster Skrine's going to play.
That's huge
because he's our best
slot receiver coverage
man and I'm pumped
because I love Busty, Bust.
With Buster in mind,
I'm changing the prediction a little bit.
But I'm going to still unfortunately go,
27-16 Patriots.
You keep asking questions,
I'll keep answering them.
(uptempo music)