#AskGaryVee Episode 130: VaynerMedia Interns Ask Me Questions

- On this episode, I invite the interns. (hip hop music) You ask questions and I answer them. This is the #AskGaryVee Show. Hey everybody, this is Gary Vay-ner-chuk and this episode 130 of the #AskGaryVee Show. It's a gloomy Tuesday here in New York City, like we've had pretty good weather this summer. Like, I was caught off guard when I left my building, it was like pouring, I was like, didn't even look at the weather and I've been taking it for granted. I was reminded this is not San Diego this morning so no taking for granted, I will look at my weather app tomorrow morning. Matt is coming with my phone, that excites me. I'm really excited to be back on the show. This is a very special episode. This is the intern episode. Three interns are gonna sit with me today who have spent their summer at VaynerMedia and ask me a question. I'm excited about that. India is here. Sid the intern is here as well. Sid you should actually ask a question, let's do four, you're in now. So four interns will ask me a question. What else is going on? I'm starting to get serious about my Snapchat game. I tested it a little bit yesterday, I thought it was pretty good. I see some head-shaking, so that's good. I'm excited about what I was doing there. Which will be scary because I think people will now get a real sense of how much traveling I actually do if I document through there. So it excites me, what else? The WineDeals Instagram account has been very much in right hook zone. Emily, thank you for following the account. Emily, you know what, you may be also able to ask a question. I do need five questions so we might as well just do that. Emily is not an intern but she'll explain who she is when she gets on the show. So, I don't even like, India, what are you, just gonna hang? And just like watch? - Pretty much, yeah. A little day off. - All right, interns, and then I'm not even gonna do this with you, all right. Interns, let's get into the show. Cool, who wants to come up first? - [Voiceover] How about... - I'm in. Gotta kick off with the Belichik fan. - Yes, absolutely. I'm excited, are you ready for this season? You concerned about all the injuries? - I'm a little worried. - Yeah, I'm not happy.

Tell the Vayner Nation who you are. - What's up, Vayner Nation? I'm Russell. I am a die hard Jet fan much like Gary. I go to USC. What else about me? This is good. - That's what, yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna work. Listen, anything you can do to show how great I am on camera is always good. Good way to kick off, way to kiss up to the boss. All right, so, good summer? - Yeah, great summer, I absolutely love it here. - This is your last week? - Yeah, we're done, it's crazy. - When are you back to school? - I go back on Saturday. - Excited? - So, we're back, oh, pumped. It's a very big year, that football team is actually gonna be good, so, you know. - I'm actually optimistic. - Are you? - Yeah, I need to watch them play a couple pre-season games, there's a couple key things I'm looking for on the offensive line, and at the linebacker position, but I think I could be optimistic, we'll see. - Well, Gino, but anyway. We're diving into the question. Has there ever been a point for you where you've kind of been overwhelmed with options for where you wanted to go, kind of, in your career, and life and what was the thought process, and the decision making process you went through when you ultimately made a decision? - I think it's happened more, unlike what I think you're going with your question as you're younger, you may be in school, there's a lot of options. You know, to me, I was set at your age, right? I was, I mean, I barely went to college, I was like, I that badly wanted to go into the family business and do my thing. Where I started having these things happen really is more of like the last five to seven year phenomenon where I'm crippled by business options. Do I want to be a venture capitalist, start companies, do I want to do more econ, TV shows? Like, I've had a lot of options in the last five to seven years, and I think for me, you know, what I like to do is run on two parallel paths. So, here's my piece of advice. One, I'm constantly debating them, right? I mean, you just have to, you're a human being, you're thinking about your options. But I'm always doing something. I think the thing that bothers me is that people are crippled by their options, and then actually aren't doing anything in parallel, they're lollygagging while they decide, and to me, whatever you're deciding, given that these should all be loaded questions, whatever is in your option point, you need to be doing. Right, executing. So, if there's three or four tangible things going on in your mind, you need to make sure your internships, your free time, you know, whatever you can do to let you taste them and get context around them is what really matters. - Sweet. - That's it, good. - Awesome. - I thought there was gonna be a follow up. - Oh, in terms of that, I mean, that makes a lot of sense, just... - It's about execution, right? Like, to me, what I was doing was I showed up on TV a lot, I did angel investing, I ran VaynerMedia, like, I was doing all these things. I think people are confused that you could be doing a lot of things at once if you're able to stretch that rubber band. - But how much of it would you say is like, following your passion versus kind of like, trying new things, and experimenting, and seeing... - I would never try anything that I'm not excited about. Like, to me, when I hear you say following your passion, literally, what I heard is, how much is it about oxygen? Like, to me, that's the only thing. Like, everything I just mentioned are all things that I want to do. Like, do you know how many people have asked me to go into politics? - I'd vote for you. - So, but I don't want to do that. And so, I've never pondered that. Right? And so, you know, to me, you know, teaching is interesting. I think I'm a modern teacher, I like it, I love this, but I don't wanna do it, it in the way that USC actually wants me to teach a course. The guy that I came, and did that course, where he's like, look, we'll set it all up for you, you can be a professor. And there was a part of me like, my mom would really get a kick out of that, but other than that, I'm like, I don't wanna do that. And so, all of it has to do with passion, but you can have passion about a lot of different things. So, to me, if you're contemplating anything that's practical or money based, get the hell out. Like, oh, I can go into finance and make more money. That's, like, I think that is a terrible idea. Cool. - Thanks, man. - Real pleasure. Next!

Hey. - Hello. - How are you? - Good. - Tell the Vayner Nation who you are. - His, I'm Sabina, the core insights intern, and I'm also a co-founder of Linute. - I love the plug. DRock, give her a little pop up. All right. Really, you came prepared. Listen, I love the, listen, I promise you, they're gonna love the hustle. All right. - Okay, so, my question is, hypothetically speaking, you meet a co-founder of a start-up. What can I, or, that person do? - Oh, this is a hypothetical question. - To convince you to meet their team. For five minutes. A minute. - Well, you, that, I would be more than happy to do for you. In general, it's just a little bit of serendipity. I get asked all the time, I get pounded all the time, like, living my life, like, going to school functions with my wife, or parties, or just living life right now, I am fully in, I get pitched mode. Right, which is, for me, super flattering. I'm humbled that I've hit a status where that's what people want from me, and so, my money or my time, or attention, or points of view, all of it is still humbling and interesting. So, you know, for you, that's a done deal we'll schedule that. For everybody else who's watching, they've all tried. I've got, there's people who are watching right now who have emailed me 90 times, who have hit me up on social media 90 times, and who will never get that at bat. It's literally just the serendipity of it all. There's other people on their first email, or their first tweet, or their first, you know, thing, get that at bat. I have so much volume that I have no real way to truly have a system. My Vayner/RSE has a structure where you can definitely go through that process and can eventually get to me, but you gotta go through the Phils, and the Shauns, and the Kevins, and the Ryans, and the Chloes. So, you know, that's it, that's the answer. I think one of the really smart, strategic ways, hypothetically, is to actually get an internship at VaynerMedia, put... - Slowly. - Put in good work. Finagle your way into the #AskGaryVee Show, where, on the spot, in front of the VaynerNation, you can ask the question, which then compels me to actually do it. That would be something that I would consider. - That sounds like a very smart person. I think you should meet them. I'm just kidding. - Hit up Matt, let's do it. - Okay, hi dad. - Oh, dad, I love it. - [India] Sid, you go. - Sid, my intern. My guy. Sid, tell, they know you a little bit, but give 'em the official.

- Hi, VaynerNation, I am Sid, I've been working with Team Gary for the last 10 months. I'm a graduate student at Babson, and my question is a little bit around you because like, how in depth I've seen you working, and, I've seen you go all in when you were like, doing something, but then we also, as a team, have seen that you step back and see things in a wider perspective and then you change direction, come up with creative ideas. So, how do you decide when it's like, a moment to just step back and reconsider? - That's an interesting question. You know, it's funny, you know, I always say to candidates when I meet with them, meeting with a lot of senior people who are gonna run a lot of departments here at Vayner in the future, and I say, look, you know me in the outside, and you think that I'm gonna micro manage a ton. What's weird is I'm very the other way. Like, I actually have a lot of, you know, it's, you know, I always wanna ask, you know, I almost completely wanna reverse this to the ask Sid show because I'm curious how you quantify for, to me, this is a very hard answer for me because it's just innate, right? Like, it's just to how I, I don't even know. Meaning, yeah, I mean, I feel when I have to go deep, I feel like wide, I'm reacting to what feels intuitive to me at the moment, I'm quantifying the people that are involved in the situation. The market, it's, you know, it's kind of like a feeling to understand what to do at that moment. What I think happens is when I taste it, I talk about, I use the analogy of like, blood in the water, shark mentality, right? When I taste it, then I wanna go all in, right? Like, then I'm like, let's go, right? And so, but I don't know how to quantify what it takes for me to taste it. I feel like it's a combination of me and my partner in crime, team, or individual is now at a crescendo to like, to be able to really attack it, and I can like, really go in, and there's like, a cadence between the two of us that allows us to deliver on it. You know, Sid, I think that's a shit answer, and I apologize. There's some answers that are just tough to, you know, like, it's just, how do you describe the feeling, but I do believe this is the essence of what, why I always believe that entrepreneurship and being a business man or woman is a talent. This question is the same question of like, you know, like, how do you know when to hit the high note? Like, when do you know it's game time, and you've gotta shoot, and stop passing the ball? Like, you know, when do you know like, how to like, being a great surgeon, like, where do you like, it's just the feel and the rhythm of the game, and as a business person, I've said this, Emily, you might have heard this, like, some of you guys I've been saying to a couple people here and there, that the company feels more manageable to me. Like, right now, I feel more in control of four offices and 550 people than I did when we were at 200. It's just, it's the rhythm of it. And so, that's why I know it's a talent. There's nothing I was taught, there's no blue print, it's just being one with the business. So weird. But it's what it is, it's like, it just, I understand it. And you know what's funny? I don't think it's right or wrong, I think what you're observing, and I know you've been very observant, which is why it was a fun question to hear from you, it's right for me. You know what I mean? It's not the right thing that you need to go and deploy against you, it's not right for your start up, it's what's right for me, and what's, the one thing that I do love about myself, and this is just flat out, I don't let, nobody has any equity from my parents, to my brother, to my most trusted employees, nobody has impact, or can wait, make me waiver, or dents that belief in me, and it, and that thing. An that unwavering has brought me enormous amounts of value. It's like, just the strongest thing in my world. Like, me and the business at hand, you know, in harmony without allowing any other voice to even have a peep in that direction has been very, very important to me. Cool. All right, let's keep going. This is a good episode. Interns. (laughing) Bringin' it. - Hey, Gary. - How are you, my man? - Good to see you. - I like your chest hair. - Thank you. - Weirdly attracted to it. - Appreciate it, appreciate it. - Tell the nation.

- Hi, Vayner Nation, my name is Michael, I'm gonna be a senior at the University of Michigan. I am a DJ and huge dance music enthusiast. - Love it. - So, for the last intern question, I'm gonna get a little deeper with you. - Okay. - So, I wanna ask... - Was that a dig at Sid? - No. - I'm not sure, 'cause he went pretty deep. - No, it was good. We're gonna go on a different level, though. - That's good. I love it. - So, I wanna know how you define love, and what that means to you, and how that personal definition affects your relationships. - That's a very good question. I actually, this one is actually very easy for me. It's something that I got to in my mind. Love is very easy for me. Love, to me, is actually shifting your brain or your feelings into a place where you value the other person more than yourself. Like, the people that I love, I truly, in general, I'm a pretty empathetic, like, you know, really care about the other person's point of view, and how do I bring value, but that whole 51 49 thing that I talk about from a business standpoint, which, a lot of you know what I'm referring to, but people that are watching for the first time, or others that don't know is, hey, give 51% of the value in the relationship, you'll always win. When it comes to the people that I love, I'm very comfortable in being at 100 zero. When I make that shift, when I fell in love with Lizzie, to my kids, my parents, my siblings, Brandon, my best friend who runs Wine Library, those core couple of people that I would say I love, I'm very comfortable in providing the entire value in the relationship. That, it's crazy, the more I love you, and this has actually been something that I've struggled with in my life, but it is absolutely how I define love. The more I love you down the chain is the more that I, is the level of which I want less from you. So, like, the people I love the most, I literally don't want anything from. I wanna provide so much disproportionate value, I want to never make myself a burden or something they think they need to deliver on, and I want it to be, I wanna be the first person they call, and the person that they most rely on, and trust in the world. And as my love goes down, that goes down to just maybe even. That's how I define it. - I like it. - Cool, man. Thanks. Thanks for your summer. M. - [Voiceover] Hi. - Hey. - How are you? - I'm well. - It's so rainy, you've got a lot of energy though. - Whoa. Let me see your shoe. Look at this thing. - Oh, oh. - This is what we do on the show. - Yeah. - Yeah, this is how we do it. - It's rainy, and so like, I like a pop of color. All right, here we go. So. - [Voiceover] Will you take off yours? - Yeah, okay. - Yeah, a little side by side style issue. - We match there. - Yeah. I've always got an element, yeah. - Tell Vayner Nation.

- Hi, I'm Emily, I work on VaynerMedia communications team, I am very excited to be there, it's some interesting stuff that we're doing, and I led the internship program this summer, so all of these characters that are in here somehow had to interact with me to get in the door. It's been amazing, I think it's awesome this year that we had interns in different departments. So, not just all social media interns, we had people in studio doing copyrighting, doing interesting things like team fury, so, it's been an awesome experience. - Cool. So, my question is kind of around career growth. - Yes. - And how you map that. I heard you say recently that for your 30th birthday, you freaked out and started Wine Library TV. - I did. - And I thought that was interesting thing to map back, was that the start of a hockey stick that you kinda went on? I know you talk about turning 40, and how that's very exciting. - Couple months away. Exciting. A la, I might just disappear. - I'm excited, yeah. How do you see, sort of like, milestones like that, like, an age or something like that, and sort of like, career, and comparing yourself to sort of like, where you should be or... - I don't know if I'll ever have anything like 30 because 30 was a real kind of interesting moment for me because I really, really felt for the first time in my life, on my 30th birthday, that I would not buy the New York Jets, or that my, you know, and I think, look, this is a good time to talk about it if like, if it's confusing to anybody, I'd be very okay if I don't buy the New York Jets. I want to buy the New York Jets, but more importantly, I want the process of buying the New York Jets, and what hit me was my behavior wasn't acting towards a process of buying the New York Jets. That I was starting to become complacent, which was very weird for me, and it scared me a little bit. Like, I had made it, right? And by everybody else's definition, and I allowed, in a world where I very much, we talked about it in Sid's question, live in my little world, for some reason, you know, obviously I got married at, the day before my 29th birthday, so Lizzie was new in my life, like, whatever had happened in those two, or three, or four years from 26 to 30, it was the most complacent version of myself. I mean, I am a, dramatically, more of a hustler today than I was at 26, which is tough because I have children and a marriage, and I'm like, damn, I mean, this would have been a much, I'd much rather have worked it out, which is why I push that objective so much in people's 20s, that's when you don't go for the cash, that's when you sleep on the floor. Right? Like, with 19 people, and like, this room. Like, Jerome Jarre slept at VaynerMedia. Right, like, he hustled, and now he makes millions of dollars being Jerome Jarre, freakin' slept here. Like, I know what it takes, and I, so, anyway, I don't know why I'm going left field, birthdays are interesting. You've had some big birthdays recently. Birthdays are interesting for me. I'm definitely freaking out about my 40th birthday. Like, because what's happening in my brain right now is like, 40 to 50 is the foundational decade of like, you know, like, if I don't really crush that decade, and there's a part of me that laughs at me, because then I'm like, hm. Then I'm gonna come to 50 and be like, all right, 50 or 60 is, like, this is where you really go to moguls. Like, I know my, I'm self aware enough to know that's how I'm driven. I have this equal push to like massive ambition and equal understanding of myself knowing that the goals that, you know, it's funny, I can't wait to be a public figure in my 60s, 70s, and 80s, and talk about, there's a weird part of me, and it's an emerging weird part that says, wow, I can make a bigger impact on the world if I don't buy the Jets because I could talk about, you know, the satisfaction that I have in that I gave it my all, and I, you know, there's serendipity, and there's other variables, or that, you know, this, you know, I'm a weird dude, this tragic event happened, and I adjusted my priorities for, this incredible thing happened, let's look at the bright side, and I, you know, my son was a whiz kid violinist, and I decided to deploy against that. You know, so, I think that the way I think about it is for me, birthdays are weird, I, definitely milestone birthdays. 30 and, 40 is ripping me right now, and like, 30 did, and so 50 will, and so, and I don't know if I'm forcing that narrative or not, but they're real, but I think that they definitely make me think about things and readjust, like, I'm sure that, it's a cliche thing that I'm sure happens to everybody, but I didn't have them at 18, or 21, or 25, it started at 30 for me. And probably speaks to what I'm ambitious about. I wasn't as much worried about my childhood, or things that of that nature. My career has been the beacon of my life outside of my family, and that's what, I don't associate myself with, you know, like, being a party dude, or like, getting the most out of my 20s, it was more career oriented. And so, I think it's different for everybody. And I think, you know, it also speaks to, you know, these big birthdays are also a tremendously important time to reflect around family and health. Obviously, I took care of my health, and in spending a disproportionate amount of time on my family hacking, as happy as I am with the extremism of weekends and vacation time, I'm starting to bubble up some other thoughts. And so, I think, you know, I think it's fun being a human, like, it's fun to hang out with the interns here who are like, starting to go to that next chapter where like, the game they've played their entire lives of school infrastructure's gonna go away, and they go into a different game. And that's interesting to watch, and that's interesting that my parents are interesting to watch to me. You know, there was something I read that said, you know, when you save money your whole life, you don't know how to spend it. So, I'm watching my parents struggle to relax and enjoy this next chapter of their lives. And so, like, I'm very observant as a business person around psychology, but also as like, a human, I'm interested in how people roll, and I think the best thing I can say is, you know, go with what feels right. Attach yourself to a couple principles that matter the most, and let the cards play out as they will. - Thanks. - Cool. Deep, deep. (laughing) I didn't know the intern episode was gonna get so deep. I guess that's it, good. nice and kind of tight, I mean, my answers were pretty long, here you go. Hope you enjoyed that show, I really did, I really enjoyed it. It was weird not to interact with you a whole bunch, India, I felt kinda... - I'm sad. - Yeah, I'm a little sad myself. But don't worry. Now that the golden era has ended, we'll get back to like, engaging on 131. Question of the day. Tell me a story about your most impactful birthday, you know, tell me about your year that made you think, or you did something. It's a good opportunity for the community to get to know each other more. Obviously, there's a post I posted on Facebook over the weekend that allowed you guys to kind of like, talk about yourselves, and biz dev, and boy, did you take me up on it. And it was great to see the community interact with each other. I think for Facebook and YouTube comments, lurkers, this would be a tremendous time to come out and tell us a story about you, the birthday, the signature birthday, so far in your life, and a little story around it. You keep asking questions, I'll keep answering them. Why don't you guys come over here next to me and then I'll do the intro with you guys in it. Actually, you know what? Why don't you guys stand? And so, like, make the shot like, of them, and then go up to them. It would be funny. - [DRock] All right, director. - That's good, right? I'm a director now. (hip hop music)