How To Win With Hustle Like Gary Vaynerchuk | Interview Mindset Rules

And welcome everybody to another YouTube Hangout. Super excited to be here with you and my special guest of the day, Mr. Gary Vaynerchuk. He is the author of the #AskGaryVee book. I'm going to link it up in the description below for you guys to check out. He's eating something at the moment. What are you eating, Gary?

Uh, English peas. I love them so much.

With the skin?

No, but sometimes I'll bite them and like kind of break them in between my teeth, you know?

I love it. Uh, Gary also runs the Ask Gary Vee Show on YouTube and the, uh, DailyVee Show. Gary's channel is the only business channel besides mine that I want to watch every single video of, so you got to check it out.

That's very nice. That's very nice. Thank you, brother.

Runs VaynerMedia, the, the world's fastest growing digital media agency.

It's Gotta be, you know, obviously I don't really know exactly what's going on out there, so I don't think it's fair, but there's not a lot of agencies that have grown from 30 to 600 people, from $3 to $100 million revenue in 4 years, so it's definitely one of them.

I love it, and the man is a practitioner. Everything he talks about, he actually does. He hustles it out to the nth degree. So Gary, great to have you, man.

Thank you, brother. I really appreciate it.

Now, I wasn't kidding when I said yours is the only channel besides mine that I want to watch every video, but I'm kind of pissed. I'm pissed because when I watch videos normally, I'm doing something else, and when yours comes on, I feel like I'm always missing something when I'm multitasking. So I got to pause and rewind and do it again. So the only thing I can do when I watch your show is work out. And so I'm still like in February catching up to your videos because I don't want to miss the stuff that happens. So I'm still like going through the book launch just the early days, but thank you for putting out such awesome—

I really appreciate that, man. That's super flattering.

Now, we first connected in 2010. I don't remember this. I made a line of famous entrepreneur trading cards, and I asked you who is your favorite famous entrepreneur, and you said Vince McMahon. I got it right here, the Vince McMahon card. And on the back—

I remember this—

on the back, the old the pre-healthy GaryVee, and you wrote 2010, storytelling is the most important backbone of marketing, and once you scale good storytelling, you're in business forever.

You know, listen, one of the great things, and I'm sure you probably feel this way too, the fact that our great-great-great-great grandkids are gonna be able to watch this, they're watching this right now, like 137 years from now, this is being watched, what you and I are doing right now. And to me, things like that where, you know, I start talking about storytelling 6 years ago before it's like the buzzword, you know, those are things that I'm proud of. I like being right historically. I think that, you know, the last couple years a lot of things have fallen my way because people are starting to realize that I've been correct about where things are going quite a bit. And it's been a nice narrative. But you're right, I do value my practitionership, and so, You know, Vince is still hustling. I like people that put in the work, and that's what I want to focus on.

Let's talk quickly about hustle and motivation. I know it's a whole chapter in the book on hustle. You don't like being called the motivational speaker. I know, like, you kind of rejected that mantra. You could make a lot of money doing the speaking, doing the tours. And what my question is, you know, I know you're in the attention game. You want to be where the attention is. When you go type in Gary Vaynerchuk on YouTube, the first word that pops up after your name in the auto-suggest is motivation. There's a lot of attention. There's a lot of need for it. I know you like the 51/49, right? You want to give, give, give. These people could all come back and help you with all your big projects. There's attention, like people are striving for it, but you don't want to do it. I'm just curious. Why not?

So I think, um, you clearly have a lot of context on me and I think you're going to understand this. So A, and I think you know this, I've been giving for the last year a lot more motivational stuff than I did for the prior 3 or 4 years. So A, I'm doing it. I just don't wanna be a motivational speaker because I'm quite proud that I actually am a practitioner businessman, but I'm very aware that I'm motivational, you know? Like, I'm not confused. I mean, it's a, I got very lucky. I'm thankful that the way I communicate strikes people. So I'm humbled and I love it, but there's just a lot of people that are motivational speakers that do lowest common denominator marketing, are trying to very frankly rip people off, and I don't think it's the most comfortable place for me to be positioned. For me, it's my own selfish wants and needs. Everybody watching right now gets to decide if I'm a motivational speaker or not. I just, I just think I'm a businessman who happens to be motivational.

Got it. And you're big on self-awareness and it's like common theme over and over and over again. How can people find their own self-awareness? What advice do you have for someone who's like struggling to figure out what they want to do?

I don't know. I've, you know, I hate that I can't answer this question. Um, but I'm not enough of a scientist or, or a practitioner in trying to really figure out one's, uh, how to help one find their self-awareness. I can tell you it is a gift that if you have, you should cherish. And I do think that listening, so Evan, I think one thing that's really good is I take all my comments, like, you know, I like to say, I don't care what anybody says, and I care what everybody says. Meaning, I read all my comments, all of 'em. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, you know, You know, Snapchat, Instagram. Like, I understand what people think about me, how they consume me at first, if it's the first time they're seeing—

Oh, we got disconnected. I was liking the story. We got disconnected. We'll see if we can get him back on. Thank you guys for all the comments. I wasn't paying attention to them yet. If you guys have a question that you need to have answered, like one question, Let me know what you think in the comments and we'll see.

I like—

there was one about, um, comparing to Tim Ferriss, who has The 4-Hour Workweek, and then Gary's message is all about the hustle and like not working anywhere close to 4-hour workweek. So we can ask him that, but, uh, let me know and we'll try to get him back on. He has the link. He was joining from his phone in New York City. Alex, Alex, Alex, Alex is happy. That was his question. Ask him about balance, family, and work. Do you feel your hustle message is clear enough or does it confuse people? I like it. I'm just going to write them a quick message, let them know that it got cut out. Gary might be in the middle of the story, didn't realize that he got cut out. Let's do it up. Gary, you got disconnected. Connected, bro. Turn it off. You never know what's gonna happen on a live stream. Are you guys liking Alex's question? 4-hour workweek versus the hustle. Yeah, we're missing Gary's self-awareness story. I'll make sure we ask it again. I'll make sure we ask it again when we get him back on. He was, uh, joining from his phone, so I don't know if his phone just lost battery or what happened, but we're on a roll. I was enjoying it. It was a good story to start.

There we go, there we go, there we go.

Back. He's back. They were loving the self-awareness story, like what happened?

I'm back, so I'm not sure what happened. So the punchline is, you know, you've gotta take the feedback. If somebody says your videos are great, you take that and you feel good. When somebody says your videos are whack, or you don't have good editing skills, Evan, right? Like you've gotta take that seriously too. Like if somebody says they don't like my cursing, I can't disregard them. I have to understand that that's real. So I just don't think I'm great enough. Basically Evan, honestly, very seriously, I just live life the following way. Right? I know I have attention, I know people like me, I know I've won, I know I've made money, I know I've predicted things, I know I'm a good guy, but at the end of the day, if you can deploy enough humility, ego and bravado to be open to people's feedback, you can start really getting into a very good place, and that's, That's one way I think about it. I will never, look, I plan on being the guy. I plan on winning the whole thing. I know the entrepreneurs that are ahead of me now by billions of dollars. I think I'm gonna catch, and I think I'm gonna do it my way, and I think my way's gonna be very attractive from a legacy standpoint, in a very nice and human way, And, um, that's that. And, and so, but even when I reach that status as like one of the guys, one of the girls, one of the real pioneer entrepreneurs of this generation, I still plan on doing this goddamn fucking show and every other show and take every selfie. And like, I'm never gonna get too big for my bridges. I just don't know how, and I don't know why I would do that.

What's winning the whole game? What does that mean to you?

That out of all the business people ever, that enormous amounts of people think that the way I did it, which was more noble, done with honey, not vinegar, done in a nice way, always grounded, and then more importantly, the 83,000 people that got to touch me along the way, and especially the 8,000 that got to interact with me very closely, that the closer you get to me, the more you think I'm a good human being, the more I've delivered on the promise that my parents set me up with DNA-wise and the way they parented me. I wanna go down as one of the most successful entrepreneurs that did it not the way Steve Jobs did it, you know, when he belittled people to bring out the best in them. I wanna be the reverse. That I did it in a way that brought people value, and I did it for noble and good reasons. Like, you know, Evan, I think one of the reasons—

We keep cutting out.

Sorry, bro, I don't know. There we go. Evan, I think one of the reasons you watch me, or you edit and put out stuff on, is you know what I'm about to say. I put out my best stuff. I give away good stuff that helps you. Like, you watch me because I'm bringing you value, like, like tactical value and motivational value. And like, I'm obsessed with that. I want to be the guy that brought the most value to the game.

I love it. And so Steve Jobs is the anti-Gary for you?

Look, I— listen, he changed the world. I don't know him. I'm going— I don't want that to be my narrative. Right, like I don't know how much of that is truth, fiction, lore, but I definitely didn't want to belittle people to extract the most value out of them, right? I mean, like, I was hugging people and they did better. Like, like, I was, you know, and listen, for a lot of people that are watching this right now, they confuse my kind of Jersey aggressiveness, right? Like, if you really look at my stuff, and I assume because you, you consume so much content and then know how to DJ it, I don't know, actually, you know what? This is actually interesting. Can I flip it on you? Listen, from what I know, and I don't know that much, as you know, I don't consume that much media, but I do know that you've been making videos that inspire people, and you're chopping up a lot of different people I saw through some searches and stuff of that nature. What do you think is different? Why from all the people, it seems like you've made, how many videos have you made of different people, like top 10, those kind of things I've seen?

We have, uh, over 3,000 videos on the channel.

Good. You know, why me versus all the other 1,500, 1,700, 2,100 different individuals that make up those 3,000 videos? Why am I worth your time and attention?

Yeah, I think the points you make as well as the amount of content that you're putting out is different.

Right.

So not just the perspectives and the point of view, but you're actually providing the content where if you look at the other people that we're profiling, it can be really hard to get enough content on them where yours is the opposite. Yours is like, there's so much to dive through. How do we find the 10 where a lot of people aren't great at doing interviews, aren't great at self-expression, don't have the self-awareness and just are a bad interview and it just isn't a lot of content on them. And so you are a pleasure in that there's so much content that you're putting out and meaningful high-level stuff that is interesting and helpful and valuable that other people who are running things at your level aren't producing that kind of content.

And to me, what it speaks to is because— and let me tell you why it's happening. I'm patient enough to think I'm going to get mine so that all the time I give up, like right this second doing this, Most guys and girls like me view the ROI of something like this inferior to the level they're at, and this is instead of some business thing that can make them a lot more money or progress them. I'm willing to leave so much money on the table during the journey because the legacy I want is not to make the most money, 'cause I'm gonna get mine. I've made enough money now. It's really cool. Bro, you feel this too, I'm sure. Do you know how crazy it is to get emails saying you've helped people's lives? I'm sure you do. I get 1,000 of them a day. You know how crazy that is?

I hear you, man. That's why I do it.

I get it. It's a high. Like, I don't get the same high. I landed a $5 million contract the other day. I don't get off on that. Not the same way I get from a kid who emails me and says they're homeless and they were fucking sitting outside and somebody was listening to one of my videos. It caught their attention. They figured out who I was by asking the guy, like, 4 years later, like, you know how crazy that is? That's legacy. That's legacy.

I love it. Let's switch gears to Snapchat. I know you're all in on Snapchat. I think you've brought more people on the Snapchat than anybody else. You are the Snapchat marketing maven. Uh, I've always had a challenge with, with stuff that just disappears. I like creating stuff that lives forever. Like you mentioned at the top of the show that You know, 10 years people will still come back and watch this video. I hate the idea of creating something and then poof, it's gone. Like the street artist writing something down and then the rain washes it away. Am I seeing it wrong or is it just— okay, so what's— I get the attention is there, but I want like the lasting stuff.

Well, good, do both. You can download the stories and upload them. Like you can do a ton of things. And so, yeah, I mean, every conversation you've ever had in life disappears. Sure. Most television pre-DVR, all television pre-DVR did it. Like, yeah, I mean, I think, and by the way, not everything has to do the same thing. And most of all, the value of that attention is extreme. You know, like people are just gonna be there. It's just gonna happen. You know, I'm a very big believer of like, look, whether I like it or not, it's gonna be. And so, you know, for a guy like you that is building his brand as a curator of content, And excuse me if I'm wrong with that, that's just kind of how I see it from afar so far. Like, I don't see how, I don't see how, you can't afford, in my opinion, to punt Snapchat. It's gonna be too big. So to me, it starts with that religion, right? Like, if you fully believe that.

Right.

You know, if you fully believe that, then that alone in itself. But yeah, I mean, I think it's kind of cool. Oh, sorry, man. I don't know what's going on. Hello? Yeah, I got you. Okay, cool. You know, I think that, I think that there's gonna be different genres of ways to communicate, and if Snapchat doesn't work for you, that's fine, but I'm telling you like a homie, Just don't disrespect it because it's going to be a beast.

Okay, I'm— yeah, I get it. I'm also not huge on Instagram or doing a ton on Twitter or Facebook. I just hate the business of things disappearing. I want the stuff I make to last forever.

Well, Instagram— Instagram, you, you making 1-minute versions for Instagram and being smart about hashtags would blow up your shit.

Okay. Good advice, writing it down.

And you know, the good thing about advice is like, look, you don't have to, you've got, like, I always think that people need, like, people give me advice all the time, I completely disregard it. Like, you do you, but like, that's one man's point of view, you know?

Sure, I appreciate it. Getting back to the book.

Yep.

So, I mean, this is coming out, or this is already out, sorry, and you know, selling like hotcakes. A bit of a selfish question for me, so I'm getting my book ready for December. I'm curious for you, this is my first one, what, what was the single most effective thing you did in the marketing of this book, and, and what was the most surprisingly effective one? And maybe that's the same thing, but like single most effective and most surprising in the promotion of this book that worked out for you.

I think, um, I think first of all, if your book's coming out in December, is it listed on Amazon already then?

Uh, they're working on it. They're going to put it— I'm with Penguin Random House.

Got it, so the second you have it on Amazon, you should start selling it. Like the second. Like the number one rule is start selling it as soon as you can. Like all the people that are watching right now, right? Like they obviously care about you and you should absolutely create, it really, the number one tactic is selling early, the number, the real, What I call tactic zero is provide more value to the community than you're asking for in return. So having lunch with you, Skypes, whatever, you know, all those packages of buy 5, buy 10, I believe in those so much because everybody wins, right? Like, you wanna sell 10 books at a time, and Sally Thompson right now in Texas really wants to spend 2 minutes with you on Skype, right? So I would give people access and give them what they want.

I love it.

Influencers too. Instagram influencers crushed.

Yeah, who, who was your— or who are some of the biggest people that can— I haven't seen your Instagram stuff. I saw all your book tour videos, but who, who helped you on the Instagram side?

Oh, it was just people that have 1,000 or 400 or 49 or 78, you know, just asking people that were fans to share it on Instagram and just use hashtag book review. And, you know, they listen, you If somebody has 89 fans and they say, or followers, excuse me, and say, you know, I love this book, if 4 of them buy it, that's meaningful. Like, this isn't about Kim Kardashian, this is about Kim Shpardashian. Got it.

A whole bunch of questions coming in from the audience. One around the hustle, and the guy basically just was reading your book and was reading The 4-Hour Workweek and is feeling confused. This is Alec about hustle versus like Tim, who's maybe saying, hey, work 4 hours a week.

And— but Tim doesn't say work 4 hours a week. You know what he says is be efficient, I think, I think, right? And so I know Tim and he's the best, and he just works like— he's, he's much better at being efficient than I am. He loves systems. He's way better at that too. Like, I think I love hard work because I just think it's the cost of entry. Tim Ferriss works his ass off. Now, we all can ebb and flow and have our balances and things of that nature. When your work is your love, like it is for me and others, that's a huge win. But I think Alec has to figure it out for himself, right? Whether he, you know, what works for you? And I think, for me, hard work works. For other people, they can't work 12 or 15 hours a day. They're just not physically built that way or things of that nature, or mentally they'll wear out. You got to do you. You got to figure out your system. They both work.

And how did you find yours? You just, just your DNA, your parents?

Yeah, I think, I think hard work is, from what I've learned, like work, being a workaholic is a learned behavior. My dad worked his face off. My mom worked her face off around the house. Like when she raised us, she didn't have like help of any kind. She, and we didn't do shit. She like picked up after us and everything. Like I think I just saw— I feel like my mom says that me, my dad, and her, all of us in my family, we're all hard workers. Like, we're worker dogs, you know? Some dogs are just working. Like, that's who we are, and that's who I am.

And so going back to your parents and kind of the early days when you're, you know, getting F's in school and not doing well and kind of punching it to do your own thing.

Yes.

And, you know, having the good fortune to have a mom especially like you had supporting you and giving you the confidence that you have For people who may not be as fortunate now and don't have that parental support, right? Or, or, or the opposite, like the parents saying, you can't do this, right? You can't go start that business, or that's such a stupid idea. Or, you know, friends who don't believe in you, like just surrounded by haters.

Yeah.

What do you tell them? Like, I got a dream, but I'm surrounded by haters everywhere.

Then you're not good enough if you're going to let other people dictate your outcome. Like you're just, then you deserve to lose. Like you can't blame anybody but yourself. I really believe that, man. Like I know, I know I'm saying that super nonchalantly while I'm eating English peas, but like, like what, what am I supposed to say? Like they were right. Like being a victim is a losing formula. You know what I mean? You see, like being a victim, That's a losing formula. Like, okay, and? Like, they don't give you trophies. Like, nobody's walking around with like badges, like, oh, I was a victim. Like, let's call it what it is. Nobody gives a shit. Like, we all have problems. Everybody's got problems. Like, and some people have way bigger problems than others. And there is racism and sexism and just, There's all sorts of issues in the world. The problem is, at the end of the day, nobody cares. And you have to care about yourself. And so, you know, a lot of people think whining about it does something. Nobody cares about my problems. And nobody cared about my problems when I had nothing. So nothing changes. When I say nobody cares about my problems, they're like, yeah, okay, you got no problem. Cool, I got problems. Like, the whole world is on my shoulders. Like, I'm the last line of defense for everything in my world. So family, family members, pressure all day. But, you know, P. Diddy was right, Biggie was right, more money, more problems. Like, it's not more problems, it's different problems. They become different problems. You know, some people can't make rent, that's a different problem. The problem is though, is nobody cares. Like, especially if you're unfortunate, you know, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you are surrounded by negative people and people that drag you down, and they're the ones that you're complaining to, they want you to be miserable. Misery loves company, you know. That's it.

So that's the environment. Like, how about Changing your environment, right? Like going to somewhere where you are around people who are like— I think you do that for a lot of people. People watch my videos for that too. Like, we're the only ones in their lives who actually give them hope and belief because everybody around them is just tearing them down.

Yeah, I'm pumped that I can do that, and I'm sure you feel the same way. And like, I, I take that responsibility, and that's— that drives a lot of my content. I'm excited about that. Like, I want to bring people value. Like, I want— I want to be— you know what's funny? Actually, you got me to say something I haven't said. I said to my mom the other day, I feel so guilty that my mom was so awesome that I wanna be that for other people.

Hmm.

You know, like I feel like I got so lucky that I almost have to give back to everybody and play that role. And I can't to the level my mom did for me, but if I can play a little bit of that role, to the market, to the people that are watching right now, well then I've accomplished something. Like if there's somebody right now in the chat, and I can't see the chat, who like can tangibly feel like something that I put out in the world affected them in a positive manner, that feels good, and I almost feel like it's my destiny because I have to pay back that that's what happened to me, and I got lucky that person was my mom for me.

So paying tribute to your mom's gonna be a real legacy.

Yeah, I think that's probably right. No question. I mean, you've heard me, you know I love talking about legacy. It seems like there's about 47 things that are now my legacy. And that's right, right? Which is like, for every, and that's true, honestly, at some level, everybody who's watching right now or anybody who ever watches and I bring value to, my legacy, my reputation, will be different for everybody. Right? Like, it'll be different for everybody. And, you know, I like that. It's a very, it's equally a very humble thing as it is a vanity thing for me. Like, I pull at both sides of the extremes on this issue. Like, I want the vanity of like the attention and the admiration and the selfies on the street, but I also, I'm just so grateful and thankful and humbled that I can make an impact on people's lives.

I love it. Well, I know we're bumping up against the clock. Gary, super appreciate the time. For those of you watching, you could check out AskGaryVee book. We'll link it up below. Thanks a lot, man. Thanks for spending your Friday afternoon with us.

Thank you, brother. I wish you nothing but the best. I wish everybody who's watching nothing but the best.

Awesome.

Thanks, man.

Take care.

Bye-bye.