- On this episode, we talk about delegating weaknesses,
working with friends, and creating
something interesting.
You ask questions, and I answer them.
This is the #AskGaryVee Show.
What's up everybody?
This is Gary Vay-ner-chuk
and this is episode 61 of the #AskGaryVee Show.
Before we get into the show I want to a,
give a, give a.
Start off a little rusty here on 61.
Give a huge shout out for my new head coach,
Mr. Super Bowls.
I'm excited about it, Cardinals nation.
If you've got any insight on your defensive coordinator,
my new head coach, leave some comments,
but he seems exciting to be with.
We have a young secondary, so I'm excited to see
his impact on that, and the Jets
have a bright future, in my opinion.
We'll see what happens in the off season,
but I'm excited.
I know some of you hit me up on Twitter
asking me for my two cents.
That's my two cents.
I'm an excited guy.
- [Voiceover] Christopher asks, "What are your thoughts
"on employing friends?"
- Christoper, this is a great question
for a lot of people who watch my stuff.
They make that connection on the family business thing.
I get enormous amounts of, excuse me, email
from people that are the sons and daughters
of business owners because they knew my narrative
now that I'm running Vayner with AJ,
I'm getting some more brother and sister stuff,
and I'm getting a little older.
I'm even getting some of the perspective
from the dads and the moms.
I have employed friends at both
Wine Library and VaynerMedia.
VaynerMedia was started with five of AJ's dear friends
that I think the number one advice I'd say is
you should absolutely.
I'm emphatic about this, and you guys know
I'm big on, you know, do what works for you,
but I'm a huge fan of hiring friends,
especially early on, to establish culture,
to have those teammates in the trenches,
especially if you're willing to practice meritocracy.
So the key to friends is that, here we are five years later,
and AJ's five to six high school and college friends
that started the company with us
are in different places within the organization
and not really treated any differently at the highest levels
than anybody else, and very honestly,
I hope they're not listening or watching the show,
they may even be treated slightly harder and worse
than everybody else because I'm so sensitive to it
in the other direction.
I expect the six of you not to hit me up for a raise.
I think that I'm a big fan of it.
I recommend it.
It is risky.
I have fired my friends in the past.
Brandon was my best friend growing up.
He runs Wine Library.
Risky.
You know, it really comes down to, here's my belief.
My belief is very simple.
If you loose a friendship from somebody working for you
and not working out and you having to fire them
or them leaving, then your friendship
wasn't as strong as you thought.
That's the bottom line.
Stone...
(all chuckling)
I didn't do it, I didn't do it.
- [Voiceover] Columbia asks, "Any thoughts on bringing
"relevance to the funeral business industry?"
- Columbia, great question.
This was a fun one.
India, you're dark.
Because India was like, pumped for this question.
I assume you're talking the funeral home business.
Ironically, I've addressed this in other places,
either in a blog post or a public speech.
This is an industry I'm fascinated by.
I once gave the recommendation to somebody
in the funeral business to become
the number one flower content site on the Internet,
because that was the connection to something positive
that I could make, and it was a really really interesting,
you know, back to everybody's a media company,
you guys have heard my spiel on this.
If you haven't, Google it around.
I think companies should become media companies
and play in sections that are related to their industry.
If you're a funeral home, you can't start a
reviewing other funeral homes business,
you have vested interest, but something like flowers
is an interesting gateway to that business.
You know, look.
I'm gonna use your question as it ended,
which is innovation is what awakes
sleepy gray-haired industries.
I came along in the wine world.
That was a very pretentious, very this,
very look down on, very gray haired.
Wine experts were 60 year old dudes.
They definitely weren't 25 year old Jet fans from Jersey,
and so I came in there and I innovated.
First it was launching a dot com site in 1996.
Later it was doing a YouTube show
less than a year after YouTube came out
around the subject.
The way you wake up an industry
is by innovating.
Looking at things like Snapchat,
looking at things like smart technology
and augmented reality and Pinterest
and things of that nature, and so
obviously, it sounds like you're in a very sensitive space.
You've got to be careful.
Obviously death is at the height of emotion in our society.
One thing I've been spending a lot of weird zen time on
is we don't know how to die gracefully in America.
I'm very fascinated by that, meaning
we fight and like medicine ourselves up so intensely.
I'm getting on a little bit of a tangent,
but I get it, because boy, out of all the passions I have,
the number one core passion I have
is I do not want to die,
and it is not even a remotely close second.
Fuck the Jets and everything else.
That is my number one passion.
So I get it, so I would say navigate carefully
based on the question, but to go on a higher level
of waking up a gray haired industry,
disrespect the gray haired industry.
Understand your history, understand it,
but don't respect it to a fault.
Get it?
- [Voiceover] Kobus asks, "What would be your top three tips
"for switching on your brain?"
- Ko, this is an interesting question to me.
Like that?
Ko, this is an interesting question to me.
I don't really know how to answer it.
First of all, I don't do well with top three questions,
so VaynerNation, don't ask me top three questions
because I don't even know how to gather my thoughts
in that way, I'm not an active enough thinker
to execute that.
I don't know.
You know, weirdly the only thing that comes to me
on the answer, and it's why I took this question,
because it's an interesting question,
is passion.
It's a very lightweight answer.
It's a fluffy answer, but I truly believe
that it is the answer, meaning,
if you actually love what you're doing,
if you actually love it, there is no friction
to turn on your brain.
The only time I feel like I have to turn on my brain
was when I was six to 22 years old,
when I was going through the bullshit education system
of America, right?
That's when I felt like I had to turn it on,
to appease horse crap that didn't match my reality.
But every since that day, when like, "Yay!"
and I went into like, you need to buy this Pinot Grigio,
the second that started in May of 1998,
there's never been a day that I've had to activate.
It's always on, and I don't mean
always on buzzword marketing,
it's that I love what I do so much
that there is no friction to turn it on,
even when I am landing at 2:00 in the morning
from a flight that's delayed like the other night,
and then going directly into it at 6:30 in the morning
because the fire is so deep inside,
you love it so much.
You don't need that jump start.
- [Voiceover] Cory asks, "When it comes to weaknesses
"within yourself, how do you determine
"whether to delegate or to strengthen it?"
- Cory, I love this question
because I really don't know the full answer
and I'm not sure anybody does.
I think that's a question that we all have
to answer for ourselves.
You know, I always talk about betting on strengths,
but there's clearly been weaknesses that I've created
at least a nice baseline, a foundation.
As a matter of fact, one of the weaknesses
I've been working on for the last 36 months,
especially in building Vayner, and I give AJ, my brother,
a lot of credit for this, is leading with a little bit
more reality than over-honeying the situation.
I'm such a positive dude that a lot of times
I don't think I was clear enough with negative feedback
or critical feedback to an employee or a teammate
because I was hedging too much,
I was like, "You're the best!
"This is all great!
"Don't worry!
"But maybe you should..."
You know, I've been a little bit more direct,
and that's a weakness that I've strengthened,
no question about it, because I thought it was important,
and because I felt like it was a couple inches off
and just by moving it a little bit.
Does that mean that I'm, like,
the scary guy in the building?
I mean, I'm like the least scary guy in the building
outside of the reputation of who I am
or being the CEO of a company,
but once people get to know me a little bit,
like, I'm the pushover that way because I am positive,
but I think that, look.
I would say this is an 80 20 rule answer to me.
I truly still believe, minimumly, that you need to spend
80% of your time on your strengths,
and if you want to allocate 20% of your time
to audit, you know, I would actually
just do a whole lot of listening.
I would actually ask the people you work with,
the people that work for you,
the people you work for, your friends and contemporaries,
the people that are closest to you,
the 10 closest people to you, friends and relatives
on what they think you could work on.
They're a mirror to that.
You may take a step back.
It might hurt.
You've got to roll with humility and empathy
if you want to address this,
and then you can start addressing those 20%,
because a lot of times the reason we can't address something
is because we can't see it,
and the best way to see it is through other people's eyes,
and you know, it's funny.
The best way to see it is to use your own ears, actually.
It's kind of interesting, there's something there.
India, we need to go long forum on that.
And that's that.
- Hey Gary, it's Sean McCabe.
I just wanted to say thanks so much for doing your show.
It's been the number one inspiration for me
starting my own daily video show
at shawnwest.tv.
- I like the hustle. - My question is
- hustle something that can be taught,
because you're probably the only person I know
that out-hustles me, and I want to help
other people get that, but do you think hustle
is something you either have or you don't?
- Man, these are tough, this is a tough question day, jeez.
You know, I do think work ethic is a trait.
I think hustle is something you're born with,
but I do think the hustle meter is fundamentally effected
by who you're doing it for.
So it's really easy to hustle for yourself.
So if you're a solopreneur, super easy,
you will be 100% the highest hustle
that you are capable of within your DNA.
When you work for somebody else,
you know, I think the hustle meter
is completely predicated on how inspired you are
and how protected you feel for that leader,
for her or for him and the organization they work for.
I truly believe that the people that work for me
hustle way harder because I instill trust and protection
and I set a high standard for it,
and then thus I am able to get them to a place
where they do hustle harder by the context and the culture
from within, but they do it selfishly for themselves first
and then equally, because they don't want to let me down
or they want to grow up in a meritocracy
where they know they can grow,
but that's a selfish play.
I think there is a level of hustle
that ultimately is predicated on your DNA,
and then, and then I think
that at some level it's the context
of the game you're playing, right?
I'm blown away by how many people on my own team here
hustle harder working for me than a lot of my
entrepreneurial friends working for themselves,
and that, to me, is fascinating.
I think that comes from motivation,
and so the level of motivation you have from within yourself
and the level of motivation you get
from outside sources, whether it's an individual,
an organization, some other variable,
you want to stick it to your dad who said
you were never going to be anything,
or the other way, you want to fulfill
what your mom told you you were capable of,
the neighborhood you came from,
there's just so many interesting variables.
I've been thinking about writing a book
called "I Wish Everyone Was an Immigrant."
It's insane, it's insane how motivated I am
from coming from zippo, and I didn't even come
from as much zippo as my parents did
when they were first here, but I tasted
those early days, and it's a level of taste
that I know AJ doesn't have.
Not that he can't be more motivated,
but that happens to be one of my motivators
that is not one of his motivators.
Maybe one of his motivators is to
stick it to the world and tell them
that he's better than his brother.
It could be a million different things.
They're all fascinating.
I think that you are, I think that you
are born with some level of it,
but I absolutely think this is a nature, nurture game
where circumstances, look, you may get motivated
by something horrible that happens in your life
and I don't want to go dark, but you know,
we've gone dark in the past.
You know, like, everybody in your family dies
on a family vacation that you didn't go to.
You are now motivated in a different way
or you're crumbled by that.
So it's your inner strength and makeup and infrastructure.
I've been fascinated by watching my friends
watch my other friends become billionaires
over the last five years, and some of them
have been motivated, and some of them pushed back.
It's like being the child of a very successful person.
You either try to trump your moms or pops,
or you go so far away from it you want to go, like,
fish in the Amazon for the rest of your life,
and I'm fascinated by that, and so I think
that's DNA, and then there's the circumstances
that wrap around it.
- [Voiceover] Matthew asks, "Are you worried
"you might have created a Steve Jobs-esque
"reality distortion field at VaynerMedia?"
- Matthew, first and foremost,
I'm massively flattered by this question.
I don't even know how else to really take it
other than, you know, my ego is very happy with you.
I guess not,
mainly because,
and I didn't know Steve, and I knew a lot of people
that knew him, but everything's hearsay.
My intuition tells me that I'm dramatically more
a people person and maybe, you know,
the answer's fully no.
Do I think that people at VaynerMedia
drink the VaynerMedia Kool-Aid
and their friends and relatives tell them
that they're drinking the VaynerMedia Kool-Aid?
I do because they tell me those stories every day.
But, you know,
look, I mean, is there times where I realize
that if I was a little more dark and a little bit
more of a bad guy that I could have created a cult
and it could have been real negative?
I do.
But I guess at the end of the day
the reason I feel really okay is I know what my intent is,
and I think what matters is if you know what your intent is,
you're not fearful of that.
If I am creating some distortion
amongst my employees and my friend base
that consumes my content, I think
it's gonna be all for good.
I mean, that's a very, you know.
It's not like, "Ha ha ha, I've got them all tricked
"and I'm gonna make 51 cents on every dollar,"
it's, "Holy crap, if I have them all tricked
"I'm gonna make 49 cents on every dollar."
Got it?
And that's a big difference, man.
Those two cents?
That's a big difference.
That two cents is the whole difference,
and so the answer is,
I'm flattered, maybe, I don't think so,
and if it's happening, I think everybody's gonna win.
Question of the day.
This is a good one, I think.
It's not very deep.
Stick with me here.
Podcast listeners, stick with me.
What is your favorite specific,
I want you to be specific here,
what is your favorite morning beverage?
You keep asking questions,
I'll keep answering them.
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