Nordic Business Conference 2016 Interview

- You mentioned about Sweden, Finland, the Nordics, why is that interesting to you? - To me, why it's interesting? - Yeah. - What would you do here? - Yeah so I've spent a lot of time in Stockholm as well. - Yeah. - You know, I guess the way I think about the world is if you lay out the world in a flat map there are clearly 8, 10, 15 regions one could argue that they want to put a flag if they want to be global. - Yeah. - Very simply, I couldn't imagine trying to achieve my ambitions of building global brands without having a presence in the Nordics. I think it's enough of its own micro culture within a European landscape that it's, first of all, I've been to between Sweden and Finland I've been in the region 9, 10 times already. There's a comfort zone. I like the people. I like the DNA of the, I like the blend of, first of all, I'm a hard-core hustler for American so no part of the world is gonna work as hard but, you know, there's some parts of Europe that don't work at all, by my standards. I like the work ethic, innovation, culture aspects of the Nordic as a whole and so very simply it is on the list of those 10 regions like South America, like Asia, like Western Europe that I just know that I will be. - Hard working and tech savvy. - Yes. - Yeah. - And I'm just enough business-oriented. The things I fear are not, you know, Germany's a good example. It's a great amazing innovation but so much infrastructure, very difficult to do business in. Especially things I care about. If you listen, I don't know if you heard my talk. - [Gabrielle] Yeah, I did. - Hire fast, fire faster. Right? Not very good in Germany when you have six months. - [Gabrielle] Sweden either. - Correct. I am aware so that you know remember I said self-awareness? I know how I like running businesses so I need to be careful where I set up shop because for not only the people but what are the government restrictions? What's the playing field but I feel a merit, listen, at the end of the day, most of European rules are a little bit more difficult for my fire fast higher fast so that becomes an even playing field. The other thing that's gonna play out for me is as my profile as a businessman continues to grow there will inevitably be places that the people that I've more fans. More people interested in me being in so one of the reasons I come to something like this is I want awareness in the marketplace and now over next six months I'll be very careful to watch my numbers of consumption of my content in Finland. What kind of emails I get, what kind of business development things I get. Same way I look at Sweden and Norway and Poland. - [Gabrielle] You can follow it all exactly because you have all the data. - Correct. - [Gabrielle] Fantastic. - And so, you know as I was saying to David before I'm like there's not a lot of things that I do for kicks and giggles. Even though I am a very casual guy, I'm very serious and strategic about what I do in my life and so I'm very optimistic. - [Gabrielle] Even going out to dinner tonight seemed like a thought through-- - Listen, I don't want to, listen, as much as I like to paint myself as a genius, you know you got to eat dinner and I want to see Dick and things but I'll say this Gabrielle even this interview why I always yes, I'm a big believer in the following statement. People make the world. - [Gabrielle] Mhmmm. - And for me I like people naturally. People like me naturally and maybe something, you know my PR team is always mad at me. I'll do some little blog, I'll do an interview and then I'll say no to CNN or Wall Street Journal and they're always like no you have to do better time management and I don't think they understand. Yes, more people will read about me in those places but the depth of people you can only do one on one, one on two, one on four and so I'm always trying to put myself in a position where I'm learning and meeting new people because you know we may do something together 35 years from now. - [Gabrielle] Who knows? - What would it look like if you set up shop in Sweden like in London. - Yes. - Give me a feel for what it would-- - I would take 5 to 6 people from the New York office and bring them. I have a lot of young people who want to travel the world. Very important to me to have that culture. I would then hire three or four people from the market that knew of me or VaynerMedia so they really knew what they were getting into. We would start with those 7, 8, 10 people. We would be very strategic about having a client or two in the market. I met the head of marketing from FinnAir and I said hey, can I have your card. I want to have a client or two in the marketplace and then we would set up shop and I would come over often and I would try to do media and interviews to build up the profile but at the

end of the day it would be about the work. London is working. I did a good job promoting we got good people but the only reason next year looks healthy is the people that hired us are blown away by the work. They tell somebody else. At the end of the day, no marketing, no charismatic leader trumps being good at your craft and so the number one thing would be who are the 10 people a mix of original Vayner employees and a mix of the Swedes or the Finns or wherever it is that could actually know what to do in this market or in the Stockholm market better than anybody that anybody else could hire and we're obsessed with the quality of the work. - [Gabrielle] I have a conservative leadership of people who run all the companies. What's your message? Why should they hire you? What's your...? - The truth is, I think you'll find this interesting. I'm not so compelled to say they should hire me. What's way more interesting for me is if they believe in what I believe in they'll naturally be interested in what I do. Which is the world's changing. I mean, you know, I think people take things for granted. How are we recording this interview? You're doing it through your telephone. Do you know how crazy that is if you talked about that 15 years ago? People don't understand how big this is and so I think the thing I would say conservative leaders and we have 'em the US as well is look if you're not looking at how you're doing your business every day and trying to say is this smart for the world we live in today because 2016 is already very different then 2009 and it feels like yesterday. - [Gabrielle] Mhmmm. - Right? I mean 2009 all three of us, well none of us here are that old, I'm probably the oldest but 2009 feels like I don't know yesterday. Seven years ago you have leaders that are 50, 60, 70 years old in these companies and 1984 and 1975 feels like yesterday. - [Gabrielle] 10 years ago yeah, there was no Facebook. - That's right and so and go back 15 years and nobody had a smartphone. I mean, most of our communication in Sweden is through text. And people didn't text 15 years ago, 20 years ago. So, I just don't think people understand, so I think the number one thing I would say to the conservative leadership is I'm a businessman not a social media enthusiast. I think you need to look at your profit and loss, your P& amp; L. - [Gabrielle] Yeah. - And you need to think about what you're spending money on and if you're not spending enough money on things that are happening in this device to drive your business results, that's something that needs to be challenged. - [Gabrielle] Let's say you weren't, you get the message-- - Yes. - I'm doing it right, how do I start? I don't really get this stuff. - I think as I said in the room, I think you spend the 20 to 50 hours as a leader to educate yourself. There's a site called Google and a site called YouTube that you can type in unbelievable amounts of words and they will give you unbelievable free information which then, in my opinion, allows you to make a senior hire. You know I'm worried about? I'm always worried that when I talk, 'cause I'm motivational, people get excited and then I'm scared they're gonna hire somebody to be their head of social media but they themselves don't understand it and that's a bad situation. So what I would say is educate yourself. Know what this is, then make a smart hire because you know and then build a department around it. - But if you Google it I imagine you'd find an incredible amount of good advice too. - Good and bad, right? yeah. You go to put in the work. If you own a business or if you're the CEO of a big business, you've gotta put in the 50 hours of reading and listening and watching. It's like anything else you had to learn how to drive. walk. You have to put in the work. - Now you got to learn how to use Snapchat. - Yes, right and it is a funny way of saying you have to know how the world is communicating. You can't just show up and not understand the shift and again like a been saying the biggest problem is it's so big. This is big. What you and I, we're lucky the three of us. The last 60 years were the same. Radio, television, newspaper, it was the same. You have to go back to ancestors that weren't, aren't alive anymore. If you and I and DRock and everybody watching had our great, great, great-grandmother here she would explain. She would say yes then they invented the radio and we used you know or the telephone like this has happened before. There were people who lived without a telephone. They wrote letters. Yes and when the telephone came, go read the articles. Western Union said that the telephone was a fad and would be gone in three years. - There's a Swedish minister who said the internet was a fad too. That's very famous. - I know what you're referring to. - Speaking of which, let's bring in politics. - Okay. - Or politics to business is politics understanding something that business isn't? Is it different or similar? - No, I think it's the same. There're unbelievable amounts of politicians that don't believe in this and then occasionally you have some that do and they're benefiting and it's not just Donald Trump that people want to refer to. There are 25-year-old, 30-year-old mayors all across

America that have won because they went on Facebook and their 50-year-old competitor tried to do a television and signs. It's happening. - [Gabrielle] Interesting. - It's happening in all walks of life. Nonprofits, Charity: Water, Pencils of Promise, they were small charities, now they've become big charities 'cause they're playing here and big charities are playing the old world. - [Gabrielle] I want to go back to politics but first,-- - Please. - [Gabrielle] Any specific field that is particularly interesting? Do you see something in charities or something in churches? - As far as somebody doing good or bad? - [Gabrielle] Interesting stuff. - I think the most interesting stuff to me right now is media companies that sell traditional media spending money on this new media to drive their business to sell old media. Think about that. You have television and newspaper companies spending a lot of money on social media to get people to read to then sell companies to buy print and commercials. - [Gabrielle] It is very interesting. Makes me think of Amazon, Jeff Bezos for some reason. I guess modern buying old. - Stores you mean? Oh, by the way, let's talk about that. That's so weird I almost brought that up in the other room. I think the two of the best business deals that have happened in the last 10 years is the person Jeff Bezos buying the Washington Post and I don't remember who bought the Boston Globe but it was an entrepreneur. Very inexpensive. - [Gabrielle] Sure. - Here's why. Not because I believe in the newspaper model but I believe that the brand is very valuable. - [Gabrielle] And you believe in content. - Always but brand. The Boston Globe and The Washington Post are brands and for the 35, 40 million if you make that brand. When he bought the Washington Post a lot of people asked me why did Bezos buy it. I said if you open your Kindle if he would've won the game. For example, if Apple bought the Wall Street Journal and every time you turned on your phone, Wall Street Journal would be the front page of the and you'd have to swipe and start, it would be the most important media company in the world. - [Gabrielle] Interesting. - So it's when you, Marvel comic books as a comic book company it was crap. But the people that bought it made movies and it went from being bankrupt to being worth billions. - [Gabrielle] Like a Star Wars. Very interesting. - IP. - [Gabrielle] Let's go back to politics, who's-- - Sure. - what do you think of the current Clinton versus Trump? I mean Trump is doing thing on Twitter for sure. - Yeah, I think Donald Trump has activated social in a way that people didn't understand and has benefited greatly and I think that neither one of them are doing a good job. - Why not? - Because they're both really full of shit. Meaning they're, the best way to do social if you're a politician is to prove that it's you. More vid, both of them should be doing unbelievable amounts of Facebook video and of Periscope and things of that nature but they're behind the written word, you can look, I know when Donald's tweeting as Donald and when it's his team doing it. - Yeah. - Hillary is a machine. It's all not her and so I think the great thing about social is that authenticity and I think that as well as Donald's doing if he or if she would do a lot more video. For example, I just gave this talk. I was looking at people saying nice things. I replied in video form. That person knows it's me. They don't have to guess if it's my intern, if it's somebody back in the States and that depth is a connection and so I think the great miss of politicians is not to use more video and audio and that's why I would say that they're not using it as well as they could. - Because they're scared. They want control. - Of course and they want scale. - Yeah. - So if-- - You can get scale, can't you? scale if your interns are tweeting for you. It's harder for you to do it. - Alright. - But I think when Hillary's on the way to her next event, in the 10 minutes she's in the car she should be videoing 10 people because it scales. Taylor Swift does this extremely well as a pop star. She does a lot of engagement. She shows up at people's weddings. It's not a good use of Taylor Swift's time to show up to somebody's wedding that they said, "Taylor, can stop by my wedding," but it is. Let me tell you why. When she goes even though there's only 45 people at that wedding or a hundred 200 people at that wedding, the media picks up on it and gives her millions at scale. And so what people are misunderstanding is that when you do authentic deep engagement, the market rewards you for it and you actually get scale. - But that's hard to fake. You gotta be authentic you got to be genuine when you do it. So,-- - It's no different. It's no different than the guy asked in the other room he goes, "Well how do you become a thought leader? " By being a thought leader. You're right, it's hard.

to be authentic. So how do you be authentic? By being authentic. You know, listen I always used to say this, it's like doing push-ups. You and I if we want muscles you have to do push-ups. You can't read about the doing push-ups. You can't outsource doing the push-ups and so there's a reason that people who are authentic and actually doing are winning. Because everybody else is trying to figure out the shortcut. - Ah, but it's interesting. You talk about all this new technology and you're also talking about some very traditional values. - Because I believe technology is the gateway drug to traditional. - Hmmmm. - I believe what I do here allows me to get to the moment where if you watched me, all the stuff he recorded, all those handshakes, all those selfies, it was all the work I did here that got to the moment where I got to shake his hand and take that picture. So I use technology to scale the intimacy. - And that pays off in terms of more business. - I think so. Sure, I mean look, think about who you're willing to do things for. It starts with your family then it's your best friends, then it's your acquaintances, then it's strangers. - Sure. - I'm trying to close it. - So you're making the world smaller. - 100% by putting in the work. - [Gabrielle] And then you have more customers comes to you. - Absolutely and to me, if you're really smart, the way I think of it and this is very important I make the world smaller for potential customers, not customers. That's a very important distinction. If you were to do things with the intent to cash in on it, you will lose. Because the other person will taste it. The reason my stuff works is the same reason when you asked me why don't you tell me what to tell the conservative business people why they should hire you. I don't want to. I don't like to sell. I like to guilt and leverage people into being interested. - [Gabrielle] But that's interesting, you describe yourself as a hustler. - I am. - [Gabrielle] As a wine salesman. - I am. I think the best salespeople in the world are the ones that don't sell that actually have people coming to them to buy. And there's only one way to do that, provide upfront value with zero expectation in return on a micro level. On a macro level, I expect it turning out to being good. - But on the individual-- - Correct. Correct, so if I give you 50 interviews, a business advice, a tip on a stock, pick up your daughter at a abandoned house in New Jersey and I ask you for something small-- - That was weird. - That was very weird. I have no idea but I'm trying to go extreme. - Yeah. - If I do so much for you and I ask for a little bit in return and you say no, I'm unphased. I think most people are phased. Most people give and do expect something in return. I think the reason I'm winning is 'cause I don't. I just don't. I know it works out but I'm empathetic to know sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes people want from you and don't want to give and that's okay because you will win on a macro level. I genuinely believe that. - I should know this but how do you make the bulk of your money? What's the most profitable? - My life is broken up into Wine Library kicks me dividends each year because it's still owned family business. Speaking I do very well in that but much the far majority my money is my salary and the distribution of profits of VaynerMedia which is really what I do for a living and then you know luckily occasionally some of my companies I invest in sell or go public. I have big events. Right, when Twitter went public. When Facebook went public. When Buddy Media was bought by Salesforce so that's it. But I'm also very investing in my world meaning I can make a lot more money from VaynerMedia if I just stayed a 500 employees instead of 800 this year, I would've made a lot of money but I'm reinvesting in myself. - Because you're long term. You mentioned your venture capital company on top of the media company. - Yes. - Is that real or is it a future project? - Venture is already happening. What I mentioned was private equity, buying brands, it's very real. It's the only reason I built VaynerMedia. To build a business that was client services would've not been interesting to me. They're just not good businesses. - And this applies to anything, anything you want to sell, do you should have a media/content part. That's why I built it. - [Woman] Last question. - No problem. Yes, and that's why I built it because remember right now I'm still hungry and on fire and I want to buy the New York Jets but I've hopefully another 60 years in my life and here's what's gonna happen in those 60 years. My kids are gonna grow up and have interests. I'm gonna lose family and friends to diseases.

Something will happen at a macro geopolitical level that scares me and so not only do I want a marketing machine to sell the bubblegum brand that I buy and flip it or to buy at an American football team but if my mother dies from a rare disease that's not been cured, I'm gonna want to use that machine to build awareness and to find a cure. If my daughter becomes infatuated with volcanoes I want to use that marketing machine to give her the best position to do what she wants in her life. If my grandson wants to do X, Y, and Z I want that marketing machine to give him the best chance to do that and so I think it's a very important machine to have for the rest of my life. - Interesting so it doesn't really matter if you never get to buy the Jets anyway. - Just the process to buy them. To me the journey is way more interesting than the finish line. - Interesting.