Business Advice You’ve Been Waiting For… In One 1.5 Hr Car Ride | GaryVee Backseat Q&A Pt.1

0:00Hey everybody, welcome to the first ever Backseat Q &A. I've done some backseat Q &As in the past. Heck, half of DailyVee was backseat Q &A. But like a sit down backseat Q &A, I'll probably have to do some phone calls or have some emergencies along the way. That's just the nature of my life. Dustin McKenzie and the team are here. And away we go. Before you listen to today's podcast, and I know there's background noise, I'm literally sitting on a plane. I want you to go to my Instagram right now, GaryVee, and add me to your favorites to make sure you don't miss any of my Instagram posts. that's what I want you to do and now enjoy the podcast and uh away we go I'm ready we have Andrea how do you deal with toxic co-workers or family culture like if I have to be nearby someone I'm related to for example you own a restaurant together how do you deal if they're just really difficult family businesses are hard you know like I lived in it I live in it like my my core business partners my whole life are my dad and my brother AJ so first and foremost this is my number one piece of advice with family businesses, which is you're in charge.

1:04Meaning whoever you are, the dad, the mom, the grandfather, the grandma, the niece, the nephew, the son-in-law, the brother-in-law, the oldest, the youngest, the middle. Life is about accountability and how would I deal with it? Either you eat it because you're a C player and you're getting paid like a B player or A player because you're living a netboat life. No, I didn't point at you. You're not. I'm just touching your leg because I'm, you know how I roll, Eastern European. Let's break this down. There are certain people that are about to listen to this that are the nepo baby, meaning they're the kid, the grandkid, and you're getting super compensated even though you're just okay, you're just average, and you're getting overcompensated and you just need to eat it.

1:47You need to eat it. Like how do you deal with it? By realizing you're a nepo baby and you're getting paid four times more than you're worth on the open market. And if grandma, granddad, uncle, niece, nephew, brother are shitting on you and you're hating it, you just decide to eat it because you're accepting the dollar amount versus the day-to-day happiness. Number two, you're not the Nepo baby and you feel undervalued. You know, I lived this life. Like I was building it and felt that there was undervalued. I had the ability to do what I did. I left. A lot of people are gonna say, well, I put in all this time and did it.

2:23No crying in baseball. No crying in business. so how do you deal with this one you're self-aware enough and you eat it and you have therapy and other outlets to make it palpable b you realize that nobody's crying for you and you can just leave the end and i don't want the excuses you know how i talk about perfection as an excuse for insecurity i don't want to hear like but my grandma but you know what my family no no no if you don't fucking love it if it's eating you up alive if you're dead then you go and address it and you address it by action. So you either eat it because you're an EPO baby or you leave because you're capable of standing on your own two feet outside of the family business dynamic.

3:06That is the answer to the question. We have Emma. Emma. Advice for a first-time leader in a first-time manager role in a company that's growing fast, but it's been chaotic since starting. The reason most first-time leaders fail is that they really struggle with the newfound power or they really struggle with the newfound obligation to be a delegator and a manager and a doer, not just a doer. So many people will go through the journey of being great at their job, be promoted to a manager where now they need to lead people to do that job well at scale and they will fail because they're a good doer but a bad manager because they either micromanage and don't delegate so the efficiency for the business is not there.

4:01Meaning if I get paid 80K to do a job, 50K, now I'm paid 90K to manage 350Kers. If I'm not doing the manager part at 90 and I'm just working with the 50Kers, the three 150 that's all in, my 90 if it acts like in down there at 240 you're not getting the value because we're really getting a buck 50 of value because now four of us are doing the job of three and there's friction and you guys know this people tripping all over each other so you have to be a a 90 up here that makes the whole thing worth 240 and then some if you're a good manager getting value out of those 50s so one if you're a micromanager that's not going to work two a lot of people think they've become somebody they had a bad manager when they were down in the 50 land they shit on that manager they go out for drinks with their co-workers and like fucking sally and rick are assholes right and then they become the asshole they're an enormous amount of employees who hate their fucking managers who then when they become a manager replicate the toxic bad behavior because subconsciously or consciously they're just reenacting that bad behavior the hypocrisy of employee becoming manager to only then become exactly what the manager was is like at scale i've seen in my organizations go ahead mcquins why do you think that happens because i think people are hypocrites i think people are not self-aware i think people are insecure i think people are not empathetic so they become a manager and now all of a sudden like oh shit my manager same shit is parenting so many people listening and watching right now made all sorts of jokes about their parents, then they become parents, especially as you become a little bit of an older parent.

5:47The cliche one is, and I have so many friends in this era now, is we all remember the shit we talked about our parents when we were in high school. That you remember. You don't remember when you're two. Well, then when you have kids that are in high school, you're like, oh shit. Same with this manager thing. There's a million people that are gonna listen to this video or audio over the next decade. That will happen. Of those million people, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands have all sorts of opinions on their boss. When they become that boss, they're gonna realize shit's different. What is my advice?

6:24A couple things. One, you need to be the bigger person in every situation. This is your employee. You need to work for them, not them working for you. You thinking like now you're like the fucking prince or the princess and everyone caters around you and you don't do shit is the fastest way to get fired. Happens all the time, by the way. happens all the time everybody's been eating shit to get that moment to point so first you work for them to over communicate over communicate to the people that work for you how are you doing what's up this and that over communicate over communicate over communicate number three attack issues if you see johnny is like moping this week and has always been cheery go in it it's an hr function more than anything else.

7:07Number three, make sure your boss is aware of how you're managing. Make sure your boss knows like I'm in these people's feelings. These 10 people that now report to me, these three people that now report to me, I care about how they feel because I was just them a week ago and I know what's happening in the trenches. Boss, this is what's going on. This is what I'm thinking. This is how we fix it. Number five, notice the question in a high pass chaotic place. this is my biggest strength this is why I think I got to the top you take pressure from above you your boss, your new boss because you're now a new manager and you stop it at your level your new boss comes to you and says you're a middle manager now an upper middle manager comes to you and says oh fuck if we don't hit these numbers everyone's getting fired you don't take anxiety and fear and just take it from you and then pass it down to your homies it stops with you and you may say but wait a minute shouldn't the boss be above me good at that?

8:05Yeah, they should have, but they might not. There's a lot of people in Boehner X right now that are better managers than the manager above them. It's a human game. Everyone treats shit different. And so you must stop the chaos at your level and make people underneath you feel calm and your anxiety and your concerns and your franticness must go above you or parallel to you and not seep underneath you. The most vulnerable, the most junior in a company get the most spun up by a layoff, by a new competitor in the market, by the CEO crack. It's just the same old thing. Less experience, more spun up.

8:51What do you mean by spun up? Spun up means like sent into a tizzy and concerned. We hired like 80 new people in one office recently and we fired two people and everyone's like, everyone's getting fired. I'm like, we hired 80 people. but like for you two you'd be like you're in your career now a little bit you're like okay but for someone six months out of college if that the two people that were fired were their friends after work or their boss they're like ah they don't see the forest for the trees got it so that's what i would say for a new manager stop the chaos at your level you work for them kevin asked kevin if you're trying to take your side hustle full-time and only have three hours a day to work on it.

9:33That's literally it. Would you still suggest working on marketing activities versus sales? The thought is that if I focus 90 % of my time on sales, I'd be able to go full time and then have hours to create content, brand, et cetera. I'm cool with that. He's saying, if I work on sales, I'll get to, I'll get to monies quicker that will allow me to then do marketing. I'm cool with that. None of my advice is universal. That's actually a tremendous this thing to say in this. I'm glad it came up early. A lot of my advice is like valid to 78%, 91%, 83%. I'm trying to go in the margins. Now, the stuff I talk about emotionally, not tactically, we're now talking marketing with Kevin.

10:14The emotional stuff, like don't be insecure. That's 100. So don't use what I just said to be like, oh cool, I can be fucking, I can use perfection as an excuse for, I can be a dick face, like no. but the tactical shit. Marketing is better than sales because it's sales that come to you. His circumstance, that's the macro, that's 80%. In this scenario, Kevin needs to get to that paper to be able to leave his job, to be able to go into content. Yeah, I'm cool with that. That being said, for Kevin included, one post on TikTok and one post on LinkedIn could go viral and outflank everything he's doing in sales.

10:53That being said, it's more practical, it sounds like for him to go ham on sales, get that money up, and allows him to jump and start. And then, by the way, he probably has to double down on sales that first year to like solidify it, right? To make it stable. And then he can go into marketing. By the way, it's what I did with VaynerMedia. I wasn't making content for VaynerMedia in 2009, 10, 11. I was doing sales. I wasn't really doing content until the Ask a Review show in 14. I was doing one-on-one TV up until 11. I was MIAing 12 and 13, and I came back in 14 with Ask Gary Vee Show, and then we got to cook it.

11:30Now, I'm also zeroing in on one thing. Me doing marketing, Wine Library TV, and doing Twitter and Facebook is why I was able to sell. So, I started with marketing. Then I did sales. Then I went back to marketing. Got it? So if I didn't have Wine Library TV and had a million followers on Twitter, none of the Campbell Soup or the NHL or GE or PepsiCo would have hired me. So it's a little bit, you know? Saf says. Saf? Saf. What advice would you give to a fresh university graduate who's pressured about financial success? To calm the fuck down. What do you mean pressure for financial success? For financial success?

12:18Heck, I was about to be nicer. Not even financial like getting by in life. Let's break this down. When you are 22 years old, your optionality is bananas. It's actually remarkable. Your life is so good compared to someone who's 40 or 38. You have so many options. If you're 39 and you have two children and you're at home and your shit's hitting the fan and you just save money and you decide to move in with your parents, that shit is tough that's a tough pill to swallow the level of humility that is required to be a 38 year old who's listening or watching right now she or he is the breadwinner to the home or maybe they're both working parents which is so common now and you look at each other's face and you're like we need to sell our home or we need to stop paying rent in our townhouse or apartment and we need to go live with one of our parents to reset and our 11 and 13 year old are gonna know it we may even have to leave the school district and we have a 14 year old teenager who's gonna ask us why and we're gonna say that we got it we just lived above our means and our cash flow is tight or or what's going on right now as we sit here right now the stock market is melting people are losing jobs people are losing money like shit's hitting the fan by the way all my content's about the hits so heavy for the last six years because we've been in prosperity.

13:43Everybody's been crying about dumb shit, about extra luxuries. People are gonna be crying about not having necessities in a minute. Like real talk. If you're a 39 year old right now and you have to move back in with your parents, with your family, fuck that hurts. The judgment, the fucking, like the explaining to your children. You're 22? You can live at home, nobody's got anything to say. Like you can live with five, I mean when you're 22 years old, you can actually live in a shithole with six homies and it's fun-ish depending on how you're wired. Fun for me, I get some people are bougie and they're like eh, but like gotta share a shower.

14:24But like you can fucking do that. Like this is highly not recommended. I don't want Mona to beat me up. But at 22, your body's just in a place where you can eat like shit, which means you could buy 99 cent fucking meals. You got no fucking stress and the only stress you actually got is ideology or delusion. Like deep insecurity of keeping up with the Joneses. Like I had a combo kid. I was doing this combo and the kid's like, yeah, but Mark Zuckerberg. I was like, what? Dude was, yeah, but Mark Zuckerberg at 20. I'm like, bro, you're not Mark Zuckerberg. You're not Mark Zuckerberg. most of you are not me and guess what?

15:05Good for you and who gives a fuck? Like what are we talking about here? Financial success? I surely didn't have any until my late 30s. You had vision of what you wanted. I had vision of what I wanted. I had skills. I had patience. That's the one I had. Like yes, I had talent. I had skills. I had a vision. But most of all, I had patience and an unwavering, like an urchin. Be friends, pop that up. Unwavering urchin, one of my favorites. A sea urchin. I had unwavering, non-givings of fuck about what you, Dustin, Mona, Avi, my parents, the world, and JackPants47 in the comments had to say about me and my journey.

15:52I had no judgment on anybody else's journey, which is the key to the whole thing. I had no gives a fuck about what people thought about what I was doing. In fact, and I've said this and both of you have heard this, you're in my content. People made fun of me in my friend group. I work at your dad's store. When I was 26, 27, you've heard the story of some of my homies going to Wall Street, making a little paper, BMWs, me carrying out cases. I say this a lot. I talk a lot about a lot of things and people intake it, but I don't think they believe it. In the way that you both know I work, you two know.

16:24You two know I work. they hear it but they don't know it the way you know it's the same way that you guys hear me saying I was 28 years old and I was carrying a case of liquor out to my friend's car and I saw pity in a human's eye like you guys don't know that like that they definitely don't know like that but I do and I gave no funks because I knew where I was going because I was patient almost everybody wants it fast wants financials almost everybody almost everybody on earth wants financial success in their 20s to prove it to others not themselves i play for me you play for we i play for me and all of you play for them not even we because we is including me almost all of you play for fucking them i play for me and so what do i say to this person calm the fuck down close your fucking ears don't listen to the world definitely not your parents definitely not society definitely not your friends nobody this is your fucking life you're either going to realize this at 90 or you're going to realize it right now literally all i'm doing is speeding in a world where i hate speeding shit up all i'm doing is speeding people's wisdom of actual life up you're going to either hear me now or hear me in a moment of despair or hear me in a moment of prosperity or hear me in a moment of just living life.

17:56You're gonna hear me at 50, 60, 70, 80, 90. Just the sheer amount of people that start a DM to me of like, I used to make fun of you. I didn't believe a word you said. Like now I'm 42 and I this, boom. Some guy hit me up this weekend. I was an alcoholic. Like he was telling me in an email as if I'd seen all his comments on social. I had it, because you know how I roll. It's like this. Fingers and ears. Goat, don't hear you. Piece of shit, don't hear you. But this dude wrote me an email over the weekend who was basically apologizing that he's been shitting on me. He's like, when I would get really drunk, I would lash out on you publicly because you were everything that I wasn't.

18:40People do not understand the power of envy and jealousy. It is destroying people. It is destroying people. So this 22-year-old wants to be successful fast, just like every other 22-year-old. I get it. I wanted to be successful slow. That's so like... How did you know to go fast would be bad? I didn't know fast would be bad. I know that fast is shortcuts. I know fast is gambling. Look, let's bring it back since we got time. my obsession was to build something for my parents. I didn't see anything else. In the same way that most people that want it fast, let me give you dudes because I really know these motherfuckers.

19:26In the same way that a 23 year old that's watching right now wants it fast because he wants to use it to flex, to hook up and to be the envy of his boys and to prove it to his mom or dad who didn't think they could. One of those three. in the same way they're obsessed right now fast my version of that was I'm gonna do this for my parents because my parents did right by me and why did I have that? Because I got lucky with DNA and I got lucky with circumstance. Not everybody's an immigrant. Not everybody was born in the old country. Not everybody remembers the struggles that we went through. Not everybody had a mom that fucking deserved it.

20:06Not everybody had a dad that worked every minute of his life and I was already at a point in my life where I didn't resent him. I appreciated him. I was born with wisdom not every kid wants to hang out with 90 year olds when they're 5, 6, 7 like I did I am who I am a lot of good with that a lot of shortcomings with that but that's me that's what I was upset so I didn't know that fast was bad but I know fast is bad now because kids gamble I don't mean like actual gambling I mean going with crazy idea startups raising money from all their if they're wealthy and connected from their rich friends that goes to zero if they're not like they blame that they can't get funding and everything's just like the system's rigged Everyone wants to say the system's rigged when it's not going their way.

20:43But when it's going their way and they fuck up, is the system rigged when all these motherfuckers took the$2 ,000 check from the government that we printed for COVID when we fucking are printing cash that is not grounded in anything and they took those$2 ,000 and bought fucking Nikes and a Dom P bottle? Is the system rigged? Anyway, I didn't know that fast was bad. I had a 50, in my 50th year being alive, as I turned 50 in November, I definitely know fast is bad for most people now. Look, some people are all-time remarkable and catch a perfect moment in time. Mark Zuckerberg is all-time remarkable and caught a perfect moment in time.

21:19If Mark was born 30 years earlier, he might just have a successful scale dentistry company because his dad was a dentist. He's just a good entrepreneur who happened to come at the right time. If Friendster wasn't invented, if MySpace wasn't invented, Mark might have not built Facebook. All of them, me included, will tell you that timing is a huge part of this. but you have to be good enough to take advantage of your timing. Cable television, I would have crushed. I would have known that cable was the internet. I would be the king of cable. Right? Virtual influencers now, if I was 18, I'd have the biggest virtual influencer agency.

21:49I'd be building it right now. I'd be building right now if I was indifferent. If I was 19, I would be building the largest virtual influencer agency in the world. What's fun about this two and a half hour is I can go so deep. This is not Tea with Gary Vee. This is probably gonna be the legacy of the backseat Q &A format. I can go deep. I actually feel like I leave 10 to 15 to 20 % off of every answer because of timing. So I hope, I'm even like talking myself into going deeper on these next follow-up questions. But the 22-year-old that wants to be successful fast is in these foundational bricks.

22:25They are doing it for everyone else. Because if you're doing it for yourself, you're more guaranteed to get successful slow. That's it. Actually, I'm so happy. I got it. There it is. When you want to do it to impress everyone else whether it's noble your parents whether it's it's deeply toxic your parents again your parents both thought you were losers that's going to make someone want to win i was the reverse your parents think you're the best you want to you want to help them right cliche for guys the opposite sex have fun like that's what guys see they're like i want to take a private jet with a 10 and go to St.

23:04Bart's. Like, I know, like, you know, and with a million dollar, like, they want that life. They don't realize, like, sure, that's great, but, like, is it soulful? Is it, like, is it deep? Like, why are so many people that have that life miserable as fuck? Drug addicts. Suicidal. Sounds like it's not guaranteed. Like, do it the right way. If you do it for them, you want it fast. if you do it for yourself you want it slow I'm sorry to be jumping in the middle of the podcast but the truth is everybody else is getting people to review on Spotify and Apple and like the Vayner Nation does none of that if this podcast has ever meant anything to you please go to Spotify or Apple right now and leave a review by the way even if you give me a one star review because you think it's shit I respect it but just leave a review an actual review four or five stars and the actual details of why yeah that would mean something for me so thanks now back to the podcast I think the reason I'm not flashy is very similar to the reason I was willing to do what I did from 22 to 34.

24:07I just don't do shit for them. Not for their validation. For their benefit. People sometimes are like, what do you mean you do everything? You're so public. I'm like, look. I'm not looking for their accolades. At least not for what I've done. I'm looking for the accolades of what I've done for them that they then did for themselves. that feels real. I don't want you to admire me for like my companies. I want you to admire me because I really gave you something that you did it with that and now you're happy and you're thankful. Right, Mo? When we were this weekend, we were at that restaurant for brunch and that lady came to me and she was like, I don't want to interrupt you.

24:51We had a family thing going on. She's like, but you had a real impact on me and my husband. And then she saw, oh, she was like, no, no, like a real, real impact. I didn't get into it, I was family time. I wasn't gonna, but like, I just think there's a lot of incredible people listening and watching right now who with a couple of tweaks

25:10can live a better life by impacting people in a positive way, which then will come back to them in a positive way. And I believe more people are capable of doing what I do and it's in them, but they get straight away and they go to the dark side. and I want to be Yoda to everyone's emperor. If you're putting out cheap shit, you're going to have cheap fans. You're going to have cheap interactions and it's going to not last long. I have one here. It's a bit full on. It's full on. Yeah. Okay. You want to go there? I want to go there. Okay. So no name but the username is... No name. Yeah. It's a full on.

25:51Terp McGirt. Terp McGirt. The username. Okay. I've waited my whole life to take over my parents' multi-million dollar bakery. They're heavy into gambling and can't stop. So they're just lingering while making me do all the work and not getting the credit for the most part. It's an I can't outshine the king type of situation. My pops is a narcissist and so is my mother. I'd open up my own in a different city, but they're almost ready to retire. However, they know they can't because of their gambling addiction. I can't leave and open up my business because they need me. Do you have any advice? Well, it's crazy because this touched so heavy on the first question.

26:33This is a more detailed version and I love that you asked it, McKenzie, because the first one was a little more broad. This gets real deep. And like, what I think is amazing about this Q &A session is that like, when I use my examples of like, your mom is toxic. I don't go into like, both your parents are gambling. Like, this is perfect. This is why this is fun, so thank you. Look, I think, though I think this is a different, nuanced question. And I'm so glad that people are going to be able to hear it. Because somebody might be in the exact same situation. Or instead of gambling, it might be alcoholism.

27:11Or instead of gambling and alcoholism, it might be spending, right? Their parents are just shopping and traveling. So it might make it more real for someone. But the answer is the same as the first one. the answer is very simple they're in charge they will never know if they jumped off too soon like so for example if I go on to say what I'm about to say leave leave go do it because I think just the trauma and the emotional baggage is worth it even if you do financially less than inheriting also I'm not so sold that they'll ever get off the payroll like a lot of people in this situation are like they're about to leave and they stay for another nine years.

27:53And so he's just wasting another three, four years before he realizes that, right? But to me, what I want him to hear, or them, could be she, or others, is you'll never know. For example, in this situation, if they leave and then their parents are like, oh, I'm retiring a year later, and they give it to like the cousin, or they sell it, he'll be like, fucking Gary Vee gave me the wrong, Not true. If you stayed, they might have not left. If you leave, they're going to be out because they're stuck or they're going to go back and work in the business or they're going to find some other chap like a manager or a niece to come and play your role.

28:33So I want this person to know they wouldn't know anyway. There is no right answer. They leave now, that plays out that way. They don't leave, they never know. And I do believe if I'm reading this question right, as long as they stay, the parents are staying given the circumstance. So he has to play a game of chicken. Tell them you're leaving, make the actions. Like fly to Cincinnati and look at a location. Like act as if you're playing a game of chicken to try to get them to bluff so that they would view it as, well, let's get our son or daughter to like make some sort of deal with us so we get some monies versus they're leaving and we know we can't or don't want to run this anymore and it's gonna go to zero.

29:20And then most of all, if you have double narcissistic parents, they're probably gonna call your bluff. So not only do I need him or her to act as if they're leaving, I need them to be prepared to leave. So you really wanna inherit it because it sounds like you put in the work to inherit it. But you've gotta be mentally prepared to leave. Look, some may listen to this and be like, man, poor person's in a tough spot. A lot of other people that have nothing to inherit are like, fuck this kid, Nepo baby. Life is how you see it. By the way, if you're one that always is like Nepo baby or lucky or any, you're not seeing it well.

29:59Like weaponizing envy and jealousy from the perspective of your position is why everyone's unhappy in life. It's insane what happens when you actually just decide to be happy for everyone that has a good and to be compassionate, sympathetic, and empathetic to everybody that has it bad and just kind of be neutral about all of it. It's a level of detachment from one's own self-interest that most people are never able to get to. Spiritually, mentally, emotionally. Bro Candle Co. Bro Candle Co. Yeah. Love it. I'm fired up already. Let's go Bro Candle Co. I want to buy some candles already. All right, go ahead.