#AskGaryVee Episode 142: How To Prevent Your Drive From Affecting Your Relationships

- On this episode, we talk about closing the sale, your drive getting in the way of relationships, and something insane happens in the middle of the street. (upbeat music) - [Voiceover] Gary Vee. - [Gary] You ask questions and I answer them. - [Gary] This is The #AskGaryVee Show. - Want to take a step back? This I don't have to move but you can get more of it. What's that? Move over? [DRock] And... - What number is this? - [India] 142. - 142? - [DRock] And action. - Hi, everybody, this is Gary Vay-ner-chuk and this is episode 142 of the #AskGaryVee Show. Little gloomy here in this city, but my heart is not gloomy, as I've just landed from Indianapolis on a tremendous weekend, went to an amazing wedding. Flew into Indie, on connecting flights, grinded, got there, and then the payoff came through as the New York Jets stunned the Indianapolis Colts. You know Andrew Luck was 14 and one coming off of losses. Pretty excited, I'm in a good mood, that 10 and six prediction that you all made fun of is starting to look a little bit better. I think this team is better than people think. I'm excited. I know a ton of you are Eagle fans. Looking forward to smashing your faces in this weekend. Thought the official prediction comes later in the week, and we'll see what that's all about, so. Live in New York, and some other exciting news. India is finally back after being away for six and a half months. - That was a long trip. - Yeah, it was a long time. - It was a really long trip. - It was. - Got a pretty rad t-shirt on. Are these now available for sale? I know we paid like 4,000 dollars to have this come. Is it up? Like now? It's up, alright, so Staphon (bell rings) link it up, link it in Facebook and YouTube and also play this little clip that happened yesterday after the Jets game. (snaps fingers) - Shut up. - [Voiceover] Let's go. One more time. - [Everyone in unison] J-E-T-S, Jets, Jets. - Alright, India. - [India] Yeah. - You're a little rusty doing this. - I am, too. - Let's get into the show. - [Voiceover] Jordan asks

"I've been hustling since the age of 14. " "I now work 12, maybe 15 hours a day. " "I love what I do, but sometimes I fear my drive" "works against me, particularly when it comes to" "getting in the way of relationships with friends. " "How do you deal with that? " "I can't switch off. " - Yeah, I mean, this is something I struggle with as well, I mean when you're on 24/7-365, it's difficult to shut down, it's difficult to change from in the zone to in the zone, I don't, and it works in reverse, too, and I'm sure, right, like right now it's hard for me to re-trigger back into the work zone off the high of the sports brain that I was rolling with over the weekend. Look, I think that actions speak louder than words. And if these relationships matter to you, you're gonna figure out how to hack and figure it out. It's as simple as that, there's just nothing else to say. Hello. And so, you know, you've got to put in the work. You've got to learn how to shut down, I mean sometimes it takes an hour, two hours, three hours, four hours. Maybe some sort of routine, you know working out has been a good transition period for me, you know. That's worked for me in the past, or in the recent times. Something that lets you transition. Or what I tend to do... Hey, little man... - Oh, sorry. - No, no worries. I think that another thing that I did that was kind of strategic was I rated and ranked my relationships and then when I was segueing into off of work mode into a weekend or the holidays, I would actually schedule meetings according to what I thought of them, so like, my mom would be later than maybe a solid friend. Because then I'd feel like I was in the rhythm of that zone, so. I think you've gotta hack and make it work for you, but your actions are louder than your words, meaning you can't have the excuse of, "My brain is always on. " It means that you've chosen your business, your entrepreneurship and your ambition over those relationships. Which, by the way, and this is not super popular, I find that to be okay. I don't think it's noble. nice. It's just a reality. And there's a lot of people that do it. You know, especially as you look higher and higher up the pyramid. You look at the Oprahs and the Michael Jordans. You know. These are the choices that people make, and so I think you've gotta make yours, and I think that you need to live your life and not take the judgment of all these people. However, you know, just accomplishing your goals, the monies, the sports teams, whatever they are, to have that by yourself, and not to share that with the people you love the most, I think is a fairly lonely place, and you need to keep that into serious consideration.

- [Voiceover] Sahil asks, "Why did you stop forcing people to ask "questions from Instagram? " - This is a great question, Sahil, I actually picked this out and sent it to the team. Because, I felt that I finally had picked up my rhythm and momentum on Instagram. If you look back at the point when I was really pushing that narrative as a function of this show, I was hovering in the 30, 40, 50 thousand follower range. Not that following matters, but don't forget, on Instagram it matters a little bit more, because I feel the attention grab was there and everybody's seeing everything, so I'd rather have a hundred thousand there, than maybe a million person e-mail list or a million Twitter followers. So I was believing in Instagram. I knew I needed to build it up, and really, I created a function on this show to create more awareness, more behavior, more interaction between me and you, and Instagram, and you and your friends on Instagram finding out about me on Instagram. So it was very tactical, very strategic. I stopped asking because I feel as though I've gotten to a better place where I've got better cadence and momentum, there's ads now. I don't want to create unlimited friction with you and myself so, like, I want you to be able to ask questions the way you want to ask them. So, it was a strategy in a moment of time for three to four months. I executed what I needed out of it, and I move on the next strategy, and the reason I picked this question, is I want to make it very ever green to everybody and make them understand that strategies have life cycles. What worked for you three, four years ago, or three, four months days ago, can be debated and switched. And I think way too many people find something that works for them, and they milk it until there's nothing left in the cow.

- [Voiceover] Charles asks, "What service do you use to make these amazing images? " - Charles, that's a very, very good question. This one's super easy. This speaks to something I believe, which is scaling the unscalable. Every time people ask me about image quotes. This one (camera clicks), and this one (camera clicks). You got some work today, Staphon. And this one (camera clicks). People always tweet, and they're like, "What app do you use, what do you do? " Nope. Just use the great Andrew and Zak design team. Mainly Andrew now, who also designed this amazing t-shirt. Buy it, now (bell rings). And so, you know, really what I'm doing there is just scaling the unscaleable. You know, there is no app. Everybody thinks everything's got to be so scalable. No, this is done by hand. I have a design person, obviously look. And it's interesting. I have debated turning it into an app and opening it up to everybody. But for now it's just done by hand. There's a lot of texting. I'll actually pull out my phone, yeah. There's a lot of texting that goes on between me and Andrew. Where I just get a thought and, you know, just. Get ready, DRock. Are you gonna wanna have my? my phone? No, I'm not gonna give it to you, so... Because you're not gonna be there, so you can't do it like you like to normally edit. But let's just find Andrew. And... Okay. - See it? - [DRock] Yeah. - So there you go. You could've been a bus. With an image of me from the Monday morning video in the background. And a smaller font saying "Watch the video now. " I mean, you now, and then it happens. Good, old-fashioned thoughts and execution. Keep it simple. Let's go. Where was I going with that? I feel like I was about to go into some sort of like...

- [Voicoever] Igor asks, "When is it okay to lie in business? " - That's interesting. The 14-year-old version of me would have said, "Anytime, all the time, go for it. " You know, I think the answer is never. I don't see any value prop. I think that having self-confidence and believing that you can do something you've never done before is a great thing for business. But I think you gotta lay those cards out to the person that's making that decision. You can't say, "We've executed a campaign like this before," Sorry. You can't say, "I've done this before. " "I've sold this before. " What you could say is, "I truly believe I can do it "because of these things. " But faking the funk has diminishing returns, puts you in a precarious spot, and when you define it as "lying" versus "a slight little embellishment" or a little bit of hyperbole when you go to lying, I think that has no place in the business world, or in life. And take it from somebody who grew up a liar. It was very tough for me as a kid to break that habit. This is one of the disproportionate reasons I value my dad's fatherly advice. He really snapped me out of it. It's taken me a long time. I truly believe it's the reason that most people struggle with consuming me at first, and don't know how to take me, because I do think there's a lot of bullshit DNA that I started with, but I chipped away, chipped away. And that's the scoop. No, no place. - Can you watch the video? - (unclear) sent it to us. Do you have headphones? - Yeah, I've got headphones. We're really hacking this show together. - Yeah. - Sup, man. - Gary... Vaynerchuk? - Yeah. What's your name? - Adam Keebler. - Adam, that was pretty amazing, thank you for doing that, that was stunning. - Do your thing. - Thanks, brother. Holy shit, that was awesome. - [Voiceover] Very weird. - That was unbelievable. That's one of the great humblebrag, lucky moments of all time, alright. That was insane. Alright, here we go.

- Hey, Gary, what's going on, Sean Mitchell here. I've got a sales question for you. In the last couple of weeks, I've lost two really big deals that I was anticipating closing. On the first call, I felt like I did a really solid job, at uncovering their challenges, in matching up our products, solutions to those challenges, but on the second call, they ended up not moving forward and it was a huge surprise to me, so-- - Huge surprise-- - What is your advice to try and minimize the surprise - [Voicoever] Baba, ba-- - No. Thanks so much. - Great question. Don't steal my headphones, India. Come off of six month vacation, stealing my headphones. First of all, and I think AJ is better at this than me, I always think we're gonna win the sale, because I'm so good at being a salesman. But one of the great ways to not be surprised on losing a sale is to never think you've got it. I think that's actually a stunningly interesting aspect of it. So I think, not buying into your own bullshit or hype is important. I also am a big fan of back-channeling. I do think that you could've been e-mailing and contacting the clients. Some clients are turned off by that. Others can really give you some information, depends on your relationship with that client. But really the truth is it's very tough to mitigate this. I mean, that's the game, right? That's the high of sales. You go in for the kill, and you don't know necessarily if you've made it happen or not, and so I think teetering expectations, trying to communicate back-channel during the time. Sometimes the squeakiest wheel gets the oil. taken off and replaced by a wheel. It's just a way you've got to figure out your own cadence. Your own touch. I'm a big fan of, I always say I like things sold before I start selling them. So, if you're going in for pitches a lot of times, I like having relationships, putting out content, before those things. I think that's really an important variable in sales, which is fundamentally selling before you're actually going in for the sale. I do believe an answer on the #AskGaryVee Show will lead to a business opportunity in the future. That's selling before selling. And so that's it, I mean you can do what you can do before the fact, but once you're in the game you can back-channel a little bit, you can teeter your expectations, but you've got to let the results play out the way they will. That's a good show. I think people really like when I'm in New York City I think I gotta start grabbing people, too. Just randomly. I interacted, I don't know if you noticed a little bit more. Including what I know so many of you thought was as planted person. I just hope they believe. That was unbelievable. Statement of the day. Just tell me about what you think about this show. setting. I'm thinking about getting outside a little bit more. Especially with the winter. You know, I get a-- What was that face? You can talk. - [DRock] Starting to get cold. And the cameras... - You're soft DRock. You keep asking questions, I'll keep answering them. (hip hop music)