Still One of the Best Talks I’ve Ever Done | Dutch Bros 2017 keynote/Q&A

0:00Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Gary V Audio Experience. In this episode, we're sharing one of Gary's most popular keynotes ever, his live Q &A with the Dutch Bros Coffee team in Portland, Oregon back in 2017. In this one, Gary breaks down why most leaders screw up motivation and what actually works, how to scale a business without losing culture or empathy, the difference between leading and managing, and so much more. The Q &A starts off with Angela, who asks Gary how he motivates his team to be just as hungry and passionate as he is. This is what he has to say. I think it's crazy for CEOs and owners of things to expect their staff to bust their ass and be as hungry as them.

0:40Because when you own something, it's different. And so what I do is I try to motivate by meeting each and every one of them. The reason you've seen it, that I meet with all of them and do those meetings, is I don't need that. I want to buy the New York Jets. I need like seven billion fucking dollars. I work 18 hours a day. I wake up at 4.30 to be here today. I'm going back on the red eye. This was originally, I was supposed to sleep here. Nope, I need to get three meetings in tomorrow. I'm taking a fucking bullshit red eye tonight. Like I don't expect that from others because most people aren't insane to like have this romantic point of view of like not being able to buy a Jets jersey for 20 bucks when he first came to America to owning the team.

1:19I've got to fuck you on me, got it? I don't expect that for anybody else. What I want to know is what makes every one of them tick. Do you know how many people just want to make$200 ,000 a year and have great work-life balance? That's fucking unbelievable. That's fucking hitting the line. Like if you're the kind of person that is obsessed with making$200 ,000 a year and be able to go to all the sporting events of your wonderful children, that's incredible balance. And if that's what you want, I want to empower you to do that. I think the biggest mistake that leaders make is they expect others to care about their shit as much as they do.

1:51That's fucking ludicrous. I want to figure out what you care about and it's my job to put you in a position to succeed, to be hungry. And if that means seeing every fucking recital of your little Susie, I'm gonna fucking do that for you.

2:12What up, G? How are you, bro? Good, man. I'm Logan. I work for West Vancouver Franchise. Oh, is this the thing we do, right? Like, you say where you're from and then you're four people like, yeah, what up, fucking West? Got it, got it. Just trying to get it down, trying to get it down. I got it now, I got it. It's my groupies. Yo, I'm from VaynerMedia, New York. D-Rock, give me something. Yeah. All right, go ahead. One thing that I've learned with working with the company for so long and stuff is the passion. Everybody here has passion. Clearly. And we give so much. And I mean, it could be passion with our job.

2:46It could be passion with outside. It could be whatever it is and things. You guys are so ridiculously lucky. I've rarely met enough. We have an internal job board. I have full-time employees that try to help people get jobs to leave our company because we want it better for them. I've literally never sensed a truer purity of that mission as much as you guys have as well. And it's remarkable. You guys are very fortunate. And it stems from the top. And like-minded people find each other. It's really rad. I'm really impressed. I'm super pumped to be here. Go ahead. Basically, my question to you is, do you ever hold back any of your passion?

3:22like does it ever maybe get the best of you sometimes and that you have to maybe take a couple steps back and realize like I may have gone too far? Why would you, like so the answer is no. But what's, but more importantly the question, so for me it's kind of like I do lots of things out of passion that I'm not pumped about. For example, let's go back to football. Two years ago at a Jets-Steelers game, there was like an 80, right, very good. Jets are getting, Jets are beating the Steelers for no reason. Steelers were much better. Jets were bad that year. Jets are on the verge of winning. This 85-year-old guy is coming up the stairs and I get sports muscles.

4:01When I'm in Jets world, I'm not me. It's the only place I'm not me. I get too emotional, right? So the guy's walking up and the Jets are winning and it's the fourth quarter and I stand up because I'm ridiculous and I'm like, hey, old man, you're finished. Old man, you're finished, right? And and everybody's kind of looking at me because it was super inappropriate, and then I go, and I don't mean the game. Right. So, my passion went too far there. So I understand. Hey, I'm a Seahawks fan, I understand. I get it. I guess ultimately what I'm trying, first of all, I think I just wanted to tell you that story because it's so fucked up.

4:40I needed to get it out of me, it's so horrible. I'm glad I was able to share, I feel better now. I guess it's just morally just like like maybe like I feel like sometimes when I give off my passion to it makes people creep out kind of yeah yeah like creep people out and stuff or basically scare the shit out of them just because I give so much bro honestly as long as you're coming from a good place so I do the same thing I curse I've got tons of but I'm coming from such a good place that I'm not trying to impose any negativity as long as your passion's coming from a good place and it's not a shtick because you think it's helping you and it's an act and it's not trying to do something that's bad for them, you're fucking good.

5:15Let the chips fall. You understand? Yeah. This is back to self-awareness. You've got to ask yourself two very important questions. Number one, is it a shtick? Are you doing it because it's self-interest and it's a narrative you're trying to paint to do something selfish for you? Number two, are you doing it to suppress somebody because you're insecure about their skills that you don't have? As long as it's neither one of those two, fucking be as passionate as you want. Thank you. You're welcome.

5:45Wow, yes. Hi, Gary. Hi. I'm Erica, and nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, Erica. I run the social media pages for the Spokane Dutch Bros. Spokane? Yeah. So six months ago, I was at an ad agency running their social media department. I was miserable. Not my kind of humans, just not my place. I watched your videos for about a year, telling me to hustle, telling me to do it, just work harder. So I quit my job. I started my own social media company and I feel blessed. But in three months I doubled my salary and it's really taken off a lot to do with these people. But so my next question for you is how do I go to the next step?

6:28You know, I've got this small business. I'm hustling. We're 12 hours a day. How do I get to 800 staff? Is that what you want? I want to get, yeah. I picture my company's called talk fast social. I picture a TFS on a building every day and I work for it. Love it. So how old are you? I'm 26. Good. All right. Step number one. The next 10 years of your life, you have to close your eyes and think about nothing else. Now, that doesn't mean you can't find love. It doesn't mean you can't do other things. But the only way you can build something very, very, very big is you put those on a building and you put it in the back of your mind and you close your eyes.

7:07The biggest reason almost everybody fails in their big ambitions is because of lack of patience. You know I talk about this all the time. People struggle because they want, what they do is they get a little success and then they start getting greedy in a good way. Not like I'm using it as a slang term for like, okay, right? You got a little momentum. You're like, wait a minute. Fuck, I can do this. And then people start getting greedy and they overextend themselves because they're rushing so fast to do, like people like literally say things to me like I gotta do five million or I gotta put my name on a building.

7:39They make up these things. like the Jets thing. The Jets thing is not even real for me. I've talked about it a little bit. I desperately want to buy the Jets because I think I'm more likely to win a Super Bowl for them than any other way, right? But the chase of trying to buy them is what gets me off. Not getting it. I forever in my life have never needed anything. Not a certain dollar amount, not some vision of the building and I'm not saying that's what you, you know what I mean? I'm just telling you it's one step in front of the other. Patience and doing tried and true things. I leave money on the table at extreme levels every year because I'm being patient and building real legacy and real relationship step by step by step by step.

8:23You just gotta close your fucking eyes for the next decade. You're welcome. Hey. Hey. I'm Gumpy. How are you? I'm great, how are you? Great. I'm from Chico, there's like six of us. Chico. That dude like yawned. He's like, yeah. All right, go ahead. So you have a chief heart officer. Yes. Intermediate, right? Yes. So when you bring her on. Yes. What's that discussion like when you talk about her objectives? Do you have like KPIs, things that are meaningful? Are there incentives? Like how much detail can you go into? Tons. Telling me how much she makes, stuff like that. Whatever. How much can you tell me about how to make it something that's as objective as possible for someone like that to be successful at what you put in front of them?

9:15So first of all, it's a great question. And asking about the black and white around it is super interesting to me because it is the most gray role in our organization. So for example, lifetime retention of employees is not a KPI because if we think Karen, I mean, if we meet like the young woman we just met, we may encourage her to start her own company. Like I'm trying to push six or seven of my best people out and be like, you need to start your own company because we're gonna have a problem in three years because you're such an A and like you just need to like scratch this itch. So I'll be very honest with you, I micromanaged HR for the 20 years that I ran my companies in my entire life.

9:54It was until I found a soulmate in Claude who literally looked at all situations the same and she was on the account side. And then she left Vayner and I ordered her to come back to do a totally different role because the truth is the KPI is how do you keep 800 people, 1 ,500 people, 4 ,000 people happy with the machine? And by the way, it's impossible. The level of cynicism that is in our society is extraordinary. It's so hard to prove to somebody that you care. Everybody is so scared to trust because they don't want to get hurt that it's easier to be cynical. I understand. But all that Claude and I do, I mean the whole flight here, we text about individual people.

10:33you know we have lightweight KPIs but Claude and I are outside the lines you know drawers we surround ourselves with people making sure all the things that are black and white that people are getting I mean like simple things like people getting raises appropriately at the time they're promised like not even like just silly shit that you know we've got the special part down we surround ourselves to make sure we don't drop the ball on the commodity the key is how the fuck do we get everybody to feel good every day right that they know that we've got their back whether they work with us for one more day, like every time somebody quits in a weird way, I always grab them, always.

11:07And I'm like, dude, what the fuck, man? I put out content every day. I've told you, I've emailed you. Like, why wouldn't you use me if you were so unhappy? I could have gotten you a job for 50, like if you felt, like the other day, like when I felt I was underpaid, I'm like, dude, you got$11 ,000 pay bump. A, I would have been thrilled to give it to you, but way more importantly, there's like 11 people that need people like you that I'm friends with right now and you could got a 40, let me help you. Basically what I'm trying to do is build real trust through scaling the unscalable. One-on-one conversations.

11:40The problem is that we're learning is at first it worked unbelievably, but now she becomes too much of the machine. So it's me and her, right? Now we're like the parents or the siblings. So you gotta bring in other things. I used to have an open door policy, not working. 2018, mandated 15 minutes with every fucking employee I have twice a year. Mandated. It's gonna take me enormous amounts of time. I don't care. It's all I've got. Religion. You know? I don't care what the church or the synagogue or the temple or the mosque is decorated like. I care about the religion. And too many people care about, you know?

12:19She makes hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Nobody's bonused at VaynerMedia because I want everybody to be obsessed with the logo. And so when people talk to me about their incentive packages or things of that nature, I just match it and put it into their salary. Some people go, well then they're de-incentivized. No, they're not. If you don't fucking achieve, we fire your fucking face. Cool. Hey, what's up Gary? How are you? Good, how are you? Amazing. My name is Nick. I'm with these lovely people from Redding, California right here. I saw that move, I saw that move. All right.

12:54So I took over managing in my stand earlier this year. And one of the more interesting things, like challenges I've come across is identifying qualities and people that I think would translate well into them moving into leadership and management. So I was curious for you, if you have someone in your companies who you're looking at to put in leadership or management, what are some of the most important qualities that you look for? Empathy. Empathy is fucking disproportionately important. for leaders. If you are not capable of thinking about the other person first, you are finished.

13:38Empathy. Work ethic. I think work ethic matters. You know, it's tough, right? Because if you're not working as hard as your team or harder, that starts becoming a vulnerability. Gratitude is one that I look for quite a bit. Are they actually grateful or are they entitled and think, of course, I'm going to be a manager? Like, I look for gratitude. But empathy is like fucking 80 % of it, and then the other 20 % is work ethic, gratitude, things like that. Yeah, you got it.

14:05What's up Gary? Hey bro. I'm Minch and I guess I'm here with everybody because I think we're all here for the same reason. Spect.

14:16Also, this adrenaline rush is like the best adrenaline rush I've gotten since like high school, so appreciate it. Thank you. But real quick. Yeah. Paint me the picture of what was happening in high school when you felt this. Honestly,

14:34I'd say it was like my last home run when I was playing baseball. Respect. Probably. That's not what we thought. Yeah. All right, keep going. So my question for you, you talk about the 7 to 2, right? Yes, 7 p.m. to 2 in the morning. Uh-huh. Yep. And I just kind of want to know, because I know you're trying to be, you know that Jets owner. Yes. By the way, Woody Johnson doesn't have shit on you. That's for damn sure. I just want to know like what's your side hustle looking like right now because obviously if you want to get to that like what do you, what steps are you taking? So when I talk about side hustle I talk about either really wanting something that you don't have right now or getting out of a bad situation.

15:15I'm so in my zone. My side hustle is my hustle, right? I'm working 7 a.m. to you know 10, 11. I don't think I've been home before 10.30 in the last three years on a weekday. Like, you know, my work life balance is in extremes. I take seven weeks vacation, that's my reality. So I don't have that. I would say my side hustle is probably Gary V. You know, I'm spending all my time being the CEO of VaynerMedia, but because of the concept that DRock and I and my team have figured out, it feels like I'm me, like out and about, but it's because I only show, like, the occasion. I only talk 30 times a year.

15:51I just am able to create so much content. So I think my side hustle is Gary Vee because I enjoy this so much. I enjoy jamming with you guys. I'm blown, you know, do you know what, bro, if I could make you guys feel what I felt like when I heard that young woman say to me, I was in a job I didn't like, I watched your shit for a year, you pumped me up, gave me the courage, let's call it what it is, to make that leap, and now I'm doing twice as good. Do you know what it feels like to impact people? It's gnarly. Like, so, you know, that's my side hustle. Thanks, man. All right, yes. What's up, Gary?

16:31How you doing? Doing good. Name's Kyle. Kyle. I'm East Vancouver. East Vancouver. Good job, guys. Yeah, okay, yeah. Don't affiliate with any gangs, but. Respect. Huge mistake. Keep going. Appreciate that. So, for one, I know there are kids here, but holy fucking shit, nice job. It was pretty impressive. Thanks, bro. I could listen to you for hours. I think you should write audio books so I can fall asleep to your voice because it's pretty fucking... Done, bro. Done. Yeah, great. So actually, staying here, still scared shitless, and that's kind of the transition. So with these moments in time and these monumental stuff that you want to take towards success, I know how you're talking about being unbeatable in your own head.

17:15Yes. You know, reaching that status of your own self-awareness. Yes. Absolutely. Just kind of like with the basics, what would be your tactics for? Basic to get to that place? Yeah. Step number one more than anything, I alluded to it when I talk, but this is why I love Q &A. You have to figure out whose opinion is dictating your actions beside yourself. You have to figure out who has say. Let's keep it on him right now because this is going to matter for a lot of people. Let's actually play through this. Who in your life has say when you do shit, who factors in, who runs through your mind, who are you curious about on how they would react or think?

17:55Who are those people? Honestly, that would probably be like, actually Pierce right here. Pierce, if you saw the viral video, or I'm sorry, viral picture, he was the one that was praying. He's a very good friend of mine. So Pierce's opinion matters? Absolutely. Who else? My girlfriend and my parents and my sister. Great. You need to get into a place where you respect Pierce girlfriend parents, you love Pierce girlfriend parents, you'll do anything for Pierce girlfriend parents, but you get into a place where you don't give a fuck about Pierce girlfriend and parents. And listen, like, I don't know, you know, it's just, it's pulling so hard from opposite directions.

18:36Like, you know, I want to stay on this because this will really be a big unlock. If I can get one person to, like, shift a hair, it's huge. it's crazy to me how much I care about everybody's opinion. These two people in the fourth row have hoodies with my quotes on it. I care so much about what they think about me you would not believe it while equally really giving no shit about what they think. And it's like this crazy balance. I never let somebody else's opinion matter more than mine of myself. It's, you know, like there's just nothing you can say from people that know me the best, my mom, to my acquaintances and friends, there's nothing you're gonna be able to say about me that makes me not realize, of course you think that.

19:21You don't really know me. And that goes all the way to my mom, right? Like, you know what you've seen. I know why you think that. If this is the only piece of content you've ever consumed for me, this is where I'm most a little, like I'm a different version than I, like I get it. I get it. I'm empathetic to why. but the way to get there man is very simply you first like do it's so weird to say do everything you think you should do but that's what I do and I think maybe for me it's easy because somewhere along the line I figured out that I could get everything that I wanted for myself by myself so I don't need anybody which is a really important thing to be in that place where you know you don't need anybody emotionally or financially it's just a very lonely and very not lonely place.

20:12And so it's hard, you know, like honestly I wish I could give it, like fuck man. I think I'm trying so hard to put out so much content because it's the closest way I'll ever get to giving it. I wish I could give it because it's fucking so peaceful. You know? Much appreciated, man. You got it. I can keep going, right? I'm in great shape, right? Like, right? Cool. Fuck it. Let's keep going, Gary. I really want to go long. You guys want to keep doing this? Yeah. Thanks for being here. Of course. Set a bunch of fires in this room. We need it. We're always on fire, but this helps. Like double firing?

20:50What are we, double firing? Yeah. All of it. Big fire. Let's go. On the subject of self-awareness. Yes. I saw you at the hologram. Super dope. Set a big fire. Thank you. On the subject of self-awareness. Yes. I want to do an opinion on someone else's content. they said that a strength isn't something you're good at and a weakness isn't something you're bad at a strength is something that strengthens you yeah activity that strengthens you and a weakness is an activity that weakens you yeah just been stuck on that and i wanted your opinion one more time a strength isn't something you're good at right you can be really good at something and it can bore the shit out of you and you're gonna have no passion whatsoever understood but but you're good at it, not a strength.

21:32A strength is something that strengthens you, a weakness is something that weakens you. Yeah, cool. And how much of that comes into self-awareness and work ethic? I think there's a lot there. It makes sense to me when you, now that I've grasped it. Look, I'll be honest with you. I'm, for somebody that talks so much and puts out fucking four quotes on Instagram every day and fucking does all this stuff, it's insane how much I hate words. Like, I was just thinking, you saying that to me, I'm like, man, if somebody's saying one of my quotes to their buddy, I hate that. Like, I don't want that. Like, to me, that makes sense.

22:10But my whole big thing is, and now what? Okay, cool, a strength is a fucking strength. Right, like, I don't know, like every fucking thing I just said. To me, it's about the engine. To me, why I like that you brought it up is it hit you in a way that made you thoughtful. Now my question becomes, are you gonna do anything with it? To me, what I think has worked for me is the reason a lot of 25 % of people don't like me at first is I'm suffocating excuses. People want to think it's other people's faults. It's fun to think you're suppressed. It's fun when you're not a manager because then the manager sucks shit, right?

22:50And then when you become a manager, it's the regional manager that's an asshole. And then when you're the regional manager's an asshole. Some context for our audio-only audience. In this portion, Gary is pointing to the Dutch Bros CEO. But who does he get to blame? And the answer is nobody, at least for this organization. Or, like many CEOs that I've met, my mom did this. Here's the thing. To me, I just hope it inspires you to do it. If it broke an insight to you to make you do something differently that tastes better, that's all I want. The reason I try to suffocate excuses is because it's the thing that holds everybody down, right?

23:27It's the thing that you can rely on when you don't want to work 15 hours a day. It's the thing that you can rely on when it's hard or it's painful or you can't figure it out or da-da-da-ba-da-da-da. And so, yeah, it sounds awesome and what is most interesting to me is it meant something to you. Now, I'd rather you not care about my opinion on it. That person, I want you to like, right? Internalize it and go do something with it. I swear I'm going to pass out right now. Thanks, man. So personally, I think that growth and development within a company is like super huge. It's like you got to grow your people so that you can grow.

24:06So I just want to know what are some of the methods that you use to grow somebody, whether that's somebody that you see potential in or somebody that's lacking? Listening. Listening. It's listening. Everybody, there's no blueprint. There's 3 ,700 different things you could be, like maybe you're slacking because you're in pain because your parents are going through a tough time. Like there's just eight million things. To me, it's always listening. Every day, forever. So it's not an x-ray of today. It's not, hey Susan, oh Susan, you're a little overconfident because you were a good student, but that doesn't actually translate to life.