The First Quality I Look for When Hiring

- We just hired our first chief creative officer. I spent six months trying to find the person and this was the order of what mattered to me: first, emotional intelligence. When I tell you that I don't respect talent, it would upset you. It's stunning when I run my business how secondary pure talent is to people skills. This notion that some creative is so fucking special that they can be a douche bag and fuck up the entire place is the stupidest shit I've ever heard in my life. And I'm very unpopular in tech-land, I did it again at South-By where I was like, "Fuck Steve Jobs. " I don't want to run a business where being mean brings the best out of. I don't give a shit if you're a creative genius. Fucking act like a normal person, you asshole. (laughter) I believe continuity trumps everything. Continuity, you know, it's just like sports. A team that stays together usually beats a team with superstars that were put together for one season. And I believe that. And I love continuity at Vayner. We have enormous continuity already for a young company and I want to keep it forever because I give a shit. Rhys is now living in London, she's going to be part of the London team because four years ago when she started working for me I'm like, "What do you want? " She's like "I want to be in London. " I'm like, "Cool, if we ever go there, you'll go there," and then I did it. And by the way, I don't care if you're driven by money or by work-life balance or by creative output I individually at 650 care about what you care about and I also know when you get married you're going to care about different shit. We're an HR driven organization. I needed to find a CCO that understood that so that was a challenge. Especially when you're looking for them and I was looking for somebody from a world like this because I wanted to taste what a seasoned veteran from a Widen, from a Crispin looked like. What did that feel like internally? (light music)