The Biggest Vulnerabilities That Impact the Full Potential of Every Business | GVAE: Robert Hanson

you know people say bring your authentic self to work and it pisses me off when companies do that because i'm like [ __ ] you know you're not letting people do that you're not making it safe because you've got this rule that rule this quota the garyvee audio experience vayner nation how are you uh it is me gary vaynerchuk thank you so much for joining the audio experience i uh have the great pleasure of having a guest on today that i am incredibly fond of uh normally i would say probably 80 percent of the time the guests that have come through here over the last three years have been people i don't really know just a little bit from maybe a little interaction here and there on dm but never a meal never like lots of time it's just uh it's infrequent that i use the platform for people that i have more context for and so i'm really excited today uh robert hansen has become a friend uh but most of all and the reason i wanted to have him on the podcast and i asked him to be on the podcast is i'm spending a lot of time around leadership as a lot of you know i haven't really announced this as some of you my discord if you're following me friends know i do have a new book coming out in november i'll give it a big promotion soon so i'm not going to say any more here but it made me really tap into emotional intelligence from a leadership standpoint it's been always very clear to me i've always put it out in my content but the truth is i haven't been close enough to enough executives to really feel like i'm willing to co-sign somebody i have intuitions if somebody said who's a good leader i throw out names because i have intuitions but i really believe that this gentleman is a great leader and i think he relies on a lot of the things that i rely on and i think it's important to have my audience hear it in a different way from a different perspective with different nuances because it's never going to exactly be the same so robert with that incredibly big co-side why don't you take the floor for three minutes and tell everybody who you are what you're currently doing maybe a little bit about yourself and then i've got some questions for you with very specific agenda around some uh stuff that i want the audience to hear sure i'm happy to do it hey uh gary hey everybody uh and gary i appreciate that uh kind introduction um i uh i'm currently running the wine and spirits business at uh constellation brands i've been in business my whole career uh i'll frame that up relative to the conversation you want to have gary by saying i never really thought i would choose a business and career a career in business but what i realized is i think business has an opportunity to not only be a source of economic opportunity but a force for positive change so i've you know i was trained well early in my days i was at levi's for quite some time and then i became a public company ceo i ran a private equity-backed uh jewelry business where i met get you know you gary the first time around and we've developed a relationship i think uh you know recently obviously we um we partnered as uh constellation brands acquired your empathy brand and we've been leveraging that to great success across our portfolio but you know i think fundamentally this is really about you know the sort of why behind success and uh just as a lead into the conversation you know i never expected to be here uh you know i i feel super blessed to have achieved uh the impact that i've had in business uh and i often you know am asked why and i think it's the combination of aligning your passions to a higher purpose in business and coming back to the point i made earlier i do think business can be a source of economic opportunity but can only be sustainably that if uh your business the business you're homing is a force for positive change and that comes down to uh you know driving a culture of values based high performance and that's really what my brand is about i'm a builder at heart i've never worked in you know big companies where you're trading a sharepoint here or there um you know with competitors it's really like you like the process of building it up i love the process of taking things and transforming them or taking new things and building them up but doing so from a values-based high-performance cultural perspective that's me that so that was your per well actually here's a fun question middle school or high school what did you think you were going to do don't take me that far back even before college do you have us do you recall did you have a sense did you have i certainly didn't i made a very conscious choice not to pursue this and don't hold me accountable in karaoke at some point in the future but i was uh i was training to be a uh a professional opera singer uh when i was in middle school in high school and then i just i chose life over that craft because it would have required dedicating my life when did you do that uh i was doing it all the way through i was competitive swimmer and also i was studying um you know classic music and opera and i made the choice not to really pursue either career as i went into college so i would say in my junior to senior year of high school i just said i've got to choose life i have a big curiosity and a high ambition to get exposed to as much as i can how did that land with coaches parents other relatives friends like if you were doing those knowing a little bit about both of those things just a little bit those are big commitments you've been probably doing them for a long time did who struggled with that decision the most that was close to you know everybody honestly with the exception of my mom um that's awesome my mom was like you know it's your life man you gotta grab it and and live it the way you wanna live it uh i'll always love and respect you but you're yeah you've gotta walk in your own shoes every single day and if you can't do that authentically then you know you're not gonna be a happy person so i everybody from coaches to you know my opera coach to uh you know the rest of my extended family i had a uncle that tried to chop me off at my knees for not pursuing you know my athletic career so it but it all worked out in the end i feel super blessed speaking of working on the end and you said you were trained well levi's you know i always think giving flowers is a nice thing especially if the person is alive um are you do you have a sense of which leader really impacted you in your professional career that you were like oh she or he i like that i like the way they're doing that i want to emulate that or maybe they were maybe cancerous to you or who knows what does anybody stand out in that first five to seven years sir certainly and look i don't want to belabor this point but i would have to recognize a series of people my first i would say true professional coach was my original boss that levi's a woman named julie pally and the division president that hired me a guy by the name of tom fano both who are around and then uh you know subsequent ceos that were running the company john anderson phil marino as two examples because they really instilled in me this concept of i think driving my career sort of horizontally to have vertical ascension and that meant really just getting a lot of skills and experience working domestically working abroad taking on different challenges but they also as leaders instilled in me this concept of value space high performance i had one uh early on mentor uh who ran the international division and i was thinking about moving into the public sector and he's like don't do that you're a rare uh you approach business in a rare way and i think if you can really develop your career in business you could have a bigger impact than a lot of non-government organizations or even governmental organizations on culture and on the development of society so it was really interesting earning learnings early in my career and then i had incredible mentors you know mindy grossman's one that comes to mind uh at ww she's been a great mentor and coach over time and i was exchanging with someone yesterday about ursula byrne she was the ceo at xerox at the time and she took a cold call from me and just said she wanted to be of help so you know long story short i tell people all the time people want to help make the call and people generally have a good heart and good values and they want to be able to help and i took advantage of that and feel super lucky to have had people like that in my life what um what do you think about uh you know it's this is something i really admire in the way i watch you know obviously you are now managing uh at a higher level but you there's everybody falls underneath you but you know john and nate my partners at empathy i mean these are two kids i took out of college and they worked every day of their life with me actually john left and worked at a wine distributor for a year but like 90 percent of john's career and 100 of nate's career were under my cocoon and they were close to me the whole time and you know to think that they could get as fortunate as they did to land into your world where you know i think my the greatest thing i do when i do it well is eliminate fear and it has become so obvious to me in my interactions of watching you interact with others and then obviously i have such a front row seat because i'm still very much big brother to those two and so i get even more details in this 18 months two years whatever it's been now um you know probably more than you want no no honestly i mean this authentic you know this is what's fun about my audience like they know like i don't give a [ __ ] about anything other than like myself in the scheme of like i'll never say something i don't believe in and so you know why do you think you do a good job eliminating fear and how much does that impact people being able to actually bring you know

people say bring your authentic self to work and it pisses me off when companies do that because i'm like [ __ ] you know you're not letting people do that you're not making it safe because you got this rule that rule this quota and i think you know i think you're doing that and i like that and i think it's interesting and i'm curious what your perception is to what i just said yeah sure i mean look there's a lot to unpack there maybe i'll say three things please um one and i'll challenge a point that you just made and others have made it to me as well i just happen to believe it you know intrinsically i do think you have to bring your authentic self to work in order to have the kind of impact that you want to have because i would say what i try to do with john and nate is to role model what i say and you know if i just go back to the you know first moment i stepped through the door of any organization i worked for i decided to be an out gay man in business which in the mid 80s wasn't such a popular thing back then no and it wasn't hard for me you know i'm a white guy that grew up in the san francisco bay area i worked for you know levi's i had an incredibly supportive family so i get there was a lot of ease to that but it was a conscious choice i made because i believe ultimately if you want to create followership and you want to make sure that you're creating an environment which is more about love and innovation and creativity and you know courage uh and empathy uh and integrity you have to lead authentically and that means bringing your whole self to work you have to be open and check yourself because you need to be a student of learning every day in order to lead a broad and diverse group of people so that's kind of the first point the second thing i would say is you have to lead with a level of authenticity to who you are and what your skill base is and what your passions are and i mentioned to you earlier i was a builder i'm a builder you know that's if i had to use one word to describe myself it's that so i bring a level of intrapreneurialism if you will into large companies and then try to build the bridge between the larger organization and the more innovative mindset that an entrepreneur like you and they bring to bear because that's where the formula for success is and then root route how to get to the outcomes that we need to deliver together in this concept of values based high performance i think if you're helping people be courageous uh you know authentic creative uh to operate with empathy listening you know no pun intended to empathy but it's one of my core values and then you know obviously having integrity and how you show up that creates a culture even if it's demanding that isn't fear-based and i'll tell you gary i mean it's i get feedback all the time for the employees people are fearful of something with me um but it's not they're afraid they're fearful of disappointment yeah well that's what that's the dirty little secret for how we roll right everything that people think they're getting out of fear you actually get in reverse out of love right like i learned this because i had such opposite parents right and like i just i saw it my dad ran his company in a soviet environment like he thought like scaring people like you're gonna get fired or i like and i it was just so in my face and my natural dna was so the opposite and you're absolutely right people like if somebody admires you like you don't want to disappoint them which is a whole nother thing because then you start having it becomes chess right like i when i figured that part out i was like oh [ __ ] i got to make them understand that they can't disappoint me in the result they can only disappoint me in this or that you know it's like becomes a whole three-dimensional game of chess let me ask you a question yeah because i've had the luxury of owning my own business for you know even when i was building it for my dad i was making the calls and occasionally he would try to get in the way but he knew better and he let me do my thing so i've never really experienced having to be this person with having bosses right in public company numbers like you know what what is that this is a fun question for me because i actually don't even know where you're going to go with this

when is it hardest to uphold your principles and your values because the reality is one of two things it isn't in the benefit of the company's p l the company's bot like you know in the macro diversity behind this of course it's going to impact it but i'm talking in the micro sometimes you know i have delusional requests from my employees out of complete like ideology that would like literally put our company out of business like i literally had an employee come in and be gary facebook and netflix have this policy we have to do it i'm like do you [ __ ] understand that facebook and netflix makes more revenue in a day than we make like do you understand that i can't do that i'm like i'm happy to do it you're gonna be looking for a job in four months that was literally the conversation when or let's just call it let's be even more authentic you have your life and your family like some you know they're like when is it hot meaning sometimes a decision like if you were to do this you will get fired like when is it hardest or what do you do when it's hardest where you know you have these ideologies but you might have to bend a little bit in the micro to make the macro work like how do you go through all of that besides pouring a nice glass of wine from you know premium mondavi from tokolone to get through that decision like you know what else what do you do look one of the benefits of being in this business is you can uh pour a great glass of water at the end of the day you know it's a great question what i would say and i don't want to answer in too simplistic of a way maybe we can just rip back and forth and unpack it a little bit but i think you come up against these moments where you have to make a choice and it's a juncture you know you've got to decide and oftentimes i think what it is about gary is are you able to bend because you can keep on the course to the outcome that you're looking to deliver both in terms of shareholder value creation and building a high performance values based culture or is it something that's truly going to break um break your brand of leadership and your commitment to driving the right returns in the right way and so i always come to really simple you know principles don't compromise your values don't take shortcuts don't go for a short-term victory that's not sustainable because you should also always be building organizations that are going to be better for your time of leadership and will be sustained as a result and if you start bumping up against those questions and you can't answer you know with a really firm yes that you're taking the right decision because it's the right decision culturally contextually it's the right decision from a value standpoint it's going to deliver sustained you know profitable revenue growth for your shareholders and especially for your employees if you can't answer those questions then you're making the wrong choice and it should be really simple doesn't mean you shouldn't be flexible and agile and you shouldn't there's no straight line to an outcome you're always taking a windy road to get where you try to get to but you know um when you're taking too big of a curve uh and you could crash or break and you just need to listen to that inner voice uh and always follow uh you know essentially follow your authentic values and authentic self robert what uh let's go a little fun for a little bit what uh what's been the most fascinating thing that has happened in the last five to ten years three years you know two years with the consumer drinking wine in a let's just use america i'll go first in a little way i'm still because i grew up in the business my whole life just completely blown away that rose got there for years right basically from the time i was 14 to the time i when i left kind of full true day-to-day wine library which i always say is 2011 even though vayner media started in 2009 so in 2011 you know i couldn't believe um that you know even at 36 years old like my whole career and rosie still wasn't happening and the fact that it's happened and it's really happened is just mind-blowing but let's go a little bit more contemporary last two three years what has surprised you or been most interesting or caught you off guard or your think is really cool like when i talk about the consumer what's going on there you can go broad obviously consolation goes way beyond wine with beer and spirits like what's caught your attention of like wow i never saw that coming or i can't believe how big this calories gotten or it's really interesting to see people do yeah you know look i mean a lot there are a few macro level trends and you covered rose i think i've been struck by how uh how strong of an uh a sort of sensory appetite people have for uh really fruit forward um really yummy cabs and red blends and that's from the very high end all the way through to an incredible um value table line with a similar sensory which is slightly sweeter so that i think has really driven a lot of consumption over the last um several years but the thing that's been most interesting to me is seeing the market bifurcate people are demanding incredible quality and really tasty product um you know at the lower end from a price segment standpoint you know if you can economically afford to buy a 10 bottle of wine you deserve an incredible bottle of wine and then the high end and the high end is not only in wine but in craft spirits but the thing that is most disruptive right now is i would say just all you know alternative adult beverage um you know thinking about ready to drink uh pack formats and wine in spirits uh you know even a big disruptive category to the beer and wine category like seltzer uh the consumer's in charge and i think it's fun because it's demanding and companies that are innovative and agile uh will get there and then if you layer on top of it you know your whole you know career has been at least in the wine and spirits business but i think really broadly uh has been built this way the consumer's in charge you know uh direct to consumer omni channel um social digital technology it's all about being with the consumer understanding because of what you learn from them day in and day out what they're looking for what they like what they don't like and being able to respond quickly and also to surprise and delight them in ways that they didn't expect but it's those big macro trends that really i think stood the industry on its ear what about um a different thing talk to me about your personal robert hansen personal social media life tick tock instagram uh actually as a big executive something i'd love to hear from you how much do you post or and or consume content on linkedin let's start there actually i'll take advantage of having you here you and you know what's going on in linkedin for you and have you sensed over the last two three years its rise as a content play in the business world and your contemporaries or other things that nature thoughts on linkedin yeah sure i mean look i'm a huge user of linkedin i tend to post um around temple moments that are really important to me personally that um you know i've posted on uh most recently on um moments where there has been a cultural context where i think business and society have converged a lot about uh the social unrest that we've been dealing with a lot about um the issues relative to how um you know communities of color particularly african americans and blacks have been treated um but those moments are important to me because i think i'm very committed personally and i think the company is to diversity equity and inclusion so i tend to use linkedin for that purpose you never go do you ever go fund business in linkedin will you ever talk about like a report you saw or because you've been in fashion and other areas like i will although i will tell you to answer your broader question and this is maybe a little lazy you could challenge me on this because of who you are what you do but i tend to be a social and digital media voyer um you know my uh my husband has like a crazy amount of twitter followers not gary vaynerchuk or uh you know a man with a pretty strong point of view and a wicked uh talking sense of humor uh you know he's got quite a lot of following so i use twitter as my news source i use um you know i use instagram um you know as my predominant social platform i am an observer on tick tock i'm really fascinated by how people behave and kind of what works and doesn't work and the implications of society and business but i tend to be more of a voyeur there and i use that predominantly and what about podcasts um i'm a big consumer of podcasts what

are your favorite podcasts whether they're entertainment escapism or whether they're business like what truly what do you actually listen to i tend to listen to um podcasts that are going to help sort of expand my horizons personally i am so from a business standpoint i you know obviously i'm talking to you i listen to everything you put out i listen to a lot of the influencers in my business world um so when i'm personally consuming podcasts um i tend to go to my passion points you know whether it's food whether it's um you know travel whether it's um sort of just expanding my understanding of a particular topic where i may not have the level of skill or experience that i want what about ott what about netflix hulu hbo max what is robert watching these days oh god um i am i get in so much trouble personally for this gracious binge watcher so i will go in and go hard um so everything from you know ted lasso to you know i was one of the few people that could stomach seeing you know the handmaid's tale all the way through because i love the politic you know social political commentary about it um you know you name it i'm uh i'm the queen's gambit oh my god the queen's gambit i required the thing i asked for the most because i didn't have one for some reason or at least that's four it was a chess board uh that's what i got as one of my christmas presents last time around the queen's gambit was amazing love it so those kinds of programs um and if i want to be um particularly uh sort of just playful uh i watch hell's kitchen a lot i love that he's so brilliant i love that um empathy right we did the transaction together you said it quickly so i want to bring it up when did that when did you know that word you know it's funny what a word for me like so much of what is good to me in life is based on that word hence why i wanted to name the wine that incredibly interesting to look at the google search terms and things that nature what an under used word in our society and now is just so in the zeitgeist gets thrown around and misunderstood i think sometimes as sympathy or you know other things like when did that word really resonate to you and like and then more importantly why do you actually think it matters so much in business because i think i'd like to think people can understand why it should matter in life but like in business yeah well you know look i'll come full circle and um and sort of you know i know we're getting close to the time you have so um you know you asked about the mentors that i had early in my career what was interesting to me is i was always taught from my mom and from my personal life empathy matters a huge amount treat people with respect listen to them demonstrate empathy no matter who you are you owe that to the people that you come across in life so that was instilled in me personally and then in business when i first started working with the people i mentioned earlier uh we spent a lot of time on values and we were asked to explore our personal values and the five that always come up which were aligned with every organization except for when i made a mistake personally in context we can talk about that next time is my values are clear courage um creativity authenticity integrity empathy and it was well before i got to know you and was surprised by the way that you named you know the wine brand that you launched with john and nate it is fundamental to who i am and um it's i meditate every day and a lot of people i know do um and part of my meditation is really focusing on those values and making sure that i'm living them every day and reminding myself which ones have lapsed and oftentimes empathy is the hardest one because it requires patience a commitment to listen and to hear other people's stories and it's always been important to me and i think it makes better leaders in business robert what if i asked you because i'm just trying to bring as much value as possible i think this one can really land for a lot of people i'm excited about it actually

what is the most common mistakes you see in leaders right what's so fun about your position and i have it too is you get to be the leader of leaders super fun for me like i'm watching i have some great leaders but it's fun i get to like learn so much now that i've got scale i get to learn so much and you know i used to have to when you're a smaller company you're pretty much the leader like you know like now i'm in a different place where i'm truly leading leaders you in your position have led and continue to lead leaders what is a very common call it 2018 to 2022 because i want to contextualize it like a recent thing if i said to you what do you see the leaders what is the mistake you see up close and personal or like maybe parallel or people your friends what is the most common mistake with an s or just one that really stands out for you that like people get caught up or tripped up on yeah you know the one that is the most obvious to me is leaders who set an agenda but don't make it our collective agenda make it their agenda because when they do that even if the strategy's right and they built the right operating and financial plans they can't get the culture and the people uh necessary for followership and so it falls apart so that's one the second thing i would say is assuming they've created um alignment and everyone's kind of bought in um the challenge i think a lot of leaders face is their level of impatience and they can outpace and this is an issue i have to watch all the time they can outpace the capability of their team so you gotta orchestrate the performance for the team so that people can achieve goals and you know not burn themselves out and have full lives and all that stuff and the third thing i would say and this is the toughest one i think there's an a job out there for everybody and oftentimes leaders don't recognize when they're asking somebody to do something they either can't or don't want to do right and i think making the call because it's actually the most empathetic thing to do is making a call to help someone understand it's time to find that next day job and i believe that i really think there's an a job out there for everybody it may not be the current assignment so those are the three things i see that people make mistakes around and when i really get other leaders talking and they're open and vulnerable they would say a version of what i just shared robert this was super enjoyable when two seconds i wish you nothing but health and happiness brother thank you so much for being on the show same to you man great to talk to you youtube watcher what's up it's garyvee first of all thank you so much i hope you're doing super well during these times i also want to ask you please subscribe because my commitment and exploration of youtube is about to explode stories polls more content more engagement more surprise and delight this is the time to subscribe i hope you consider it and i hope i see you soon