Taking Accountability as a Leader

0:00I genuinely believe that every single thing in my companies that's a problem is 100 % my fault. I'm aware that I didn't forget to close the door. But like, I think that level of accountability when you're at the top actually leads to a lot less anxiety and a lot more happiness. And I also think it's true. I hired the person that left the door open or I hired the person that hired the person that left the door open. And so I think that's something that is liberating and I think is unfortunately a little rare. Attention is the number one asset. I don't say no. I say maybe. And I think most people say no.

0:35And I say maybe with the hope of yes. And I think that's an important framework that has worked for me. And whether it's AI or whether it's something else, VR, blockchain, I just don't say no. Because history has proven to me that the people that say no always lose. And the people that say maybe eventually find their nugget or their genre. Gary, how are you? Welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Happy to be here. Yeah. So let's dive in with this. I mean, obviously, prolific author books have been a huge part of growing your brand, growing your business. Why books? And what are some of the biggest impacts that you've seen on the business side of things from the books that you've published?

1:13Why books? Because people read them. You know, I think I'm shocked by how many people are overly romantic about the medium of distribution of thoughts and ideas. I don't demonize any platform, whether it's a platform within social media, like a TikTok or a Snapchat, whether it's a medium that is evolving from its prime years like radio and definitely not something like books which have been here forever. And whether it's in Kindle form or audio book form or hardcover, softcover, it's just very clear that people read books at scale forever. And so why books is because I wanna get thoughts across and share ideas and be creative and it's one of the most substantial mediums in the world.

2:04As far as business impact, I mean, I just wrote a new book called Day Trading Attention and I would say every morning that I wake up, there's a LinkedIn message from a CMO or a head of marketing from a Fortune 5000 company that says they just read it or listened to it, they're buying it for the whole team or I'll get a text from my new business team at VaynerMedia that says somebody just RFP'd us and in the comments section said they just read Day Trading Attention and that's exactly what their company's looking for. And so, I mean, look, Crush It, my first book, besides the keynote that I gave that led to the book offer, the combination of that keynote and the book, that was the watershed moment of transitioning my career from being a wine guy to being a business and marketing personality.

2:57and it's one of the most substantial chapters of my career. And can you speak on that? I mean, because before then, like you said, you were known as the wine guy. What are your thoughts for people here in our audience that are trying to change industries and use a book to do that? Obviously, you did that incredibly successfully with Crush It. What did you learn from that? And what advice would you have for folks? Yeah, I mean, I think it's obviously you need it to be commercially successful. and so to me Crush It's one of my most commercially successful books so it helped transition. I think it's very obvious that a book can do that for people.

3:36You know who I think about a lot? Mitch Albom. Right? I knew him on ESPN for the sports reporters but Weekends with Morty, you know, like that completely changed my perception of him. Like, oh, wait a minute. He's like an author, not just a sports reporter, you know? and so it's obviously a very real medium and I think authors should also use modern mediums to set up that path. So it wasn't just crush it. It was crush it in combination with 24 months of Twitter and Facebook content that was not this is the best Rioja to drink or the new New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. It was hey, Facebook and Twitter might be a big medium.

4:18You need to check it out or here's how I actually built my dad's business or here's how I manage people or here's where I'm investing my money. And so I think it's a combination of the two. And I think a lot of people that are watching this need to be careful of over-putting a book on a pedestal. Even though I love putting it on a pedestal, it's an and, not an or. It's not like I need to be an author of a book or bust. it's I'm going to use social media creative and by the way the depth that you can go I mean especially if you're someone who can use LinkedIn properly you can write real paragraphs think of it as the way you would write an op-ed to the New York Times 30 years ago as a gateway to people becoming interested in your book you can do that for free every day right now and actually reach an enormous amount of people if you're a high quality writer and so I would encourage authors to not only recognize that a book can change the paradigm and reposition them professionally to the world, but I would also encourage them heavily because I know so many author friends or ambitious authors who I think view social media writing as a lesser than, and it's a humongous mistake.

5:38And I think it's easy to look at the social media landscape right now and take for granted. You said a lot of the trends of what we are seeing today, And I just remember you said it's not just crush it. It's I was everywhere on Facebook Twitter, etc For 24 months. So I remember in the in the early days I mean, it's I forget what the figure was is like you were spending 25 50 grand 100 grand whatever it was a month on Content on all those platforms I guess two part question like and you've done this repeatedly on new platforms and caught new trends before they've really become mainstream So I guess how do you look for and spot those trends?

6:14and then how do you know when to go all in? Because I think that can be scary. It's like you went all in on these platforms. It's like you can't go anywhere. I went all in, but to your point, it's because I saw results, right? I wouldn't go all in if I didn't. I'll give you an example. I started a new podcast format called Podcasts with Friends with Three Guests. And I did 20 episodes this year and I don't think I'm going to continue doing it. but I went all in with my intuition that it was a good format and the fact that it hasn't hit the audience's you know cup of tea that doesn't upset me that doesn't make me question myself am I losing it because all these 30 years where I've been hitting things right there's been a million things you know we can talk about what I did on Facebook and Twitter but I also went all in on Social Cam and I went all in on Peach and I went all in on Jelly and I was testing and trying everything.

7:14I think what I have, which I would encourage people to analyze themselves and double down on it if they have it or start to change if they don't, I'm not scared to waste my time. And I'm shocked by how many people are scared to waste their time when their time is not even that valuable. So there's a level of audacity that people that haven't made it yet are like, well, I don't want to waste my time on that, Gary. I can't go all in on that. I'm like, well, what are we doing here? You're talking to me about wanting to be a New York Times bestselling author, but you're not willing to do things that you think are beneath you.

7:55I think what it really speaks to is that most people don't want to put in the work that is required to achieve remarkable things. You know, in this genre, knowing how much people value being a New York Times bestselling author or a commercially successful author. That's a very small group of people that have ever written books. And people that have ever written books is a remarkably small number in compared to all the people that want to write a book. So don't you think it should be hard? And so I think, what have I done well? I don't say no. I say maybe. And I think most people say no. And I say maybe with the hope of yes.

8:36And I think that's an important framework that has worked for me. And so whether it's AI or whether it's something else, VR, blockchain, I just don't say no. Because history has proven to me that the people that say no always lose. And the people that say maybe eventually find their nugget or their genre or have a career that looks a little bit more like mine, which is like, you know, listen, I'm aware that I've been gifted with intuition around consumer behavior. So yes, I will have a higher propensity of doing well with this stuff, but I'm kissing lots of frogs to find these princes. I love it.

9:18So let's shift gears, talk a little business. The business empire has grown. You've got a bunch of kind of offshoots of VaynerMedia and the Vayner brand. How do you juggle it all and how do you figure out where to focus your attention? um i i juggle it through good people you know so i think one thing i've done very well is i built a very large organization with vayner x so vayner x holds vayner media and eight other companies the sasha group even no saddam vayner commerce um and gallery media group purewow.com and things of that nature vayner speakers and then even outside of that vayner sports sits outside of VaynerX, my brother runs that.

10:03And then there's obviously VFriends that sits outside of it. And now I have VaynerWatt, which is a TV production company, sits outside of it. VaynerWatt, my partner Eric Wattenberg runs that day-to-day. I'm the special sauce. Vaynersports, my brother AJ runs that. I'm the special sauce. VaynerX, I run. VFriends, I run. But VaynerX, I run with Mark Yutkin and Alan Harker and Avery and Nick and Kalen and Hannah. and you know and v friends i run with john troutman and andy kreniak and mi ling chow like so you know i think i scale through people which works for me because i'm very much a guidance counselor a camp counselor a head coach you know a big brother i'm very i'm very comfortable and i enjoy leading people and building really deep relationships within my business organizations and that continuity, even Wine Library.

10:57I still run, I mean, literally while we were listening to that nice music, I'm going to pull it up right here on my laptop. I texted my best friend, Brandon, something about today's wine text. By the way, if you like wine, wine text, e-e-x-t.com, sign up for it. I texted him something about it. And he's running the wine store day to day, somebody I've known since I was 14, but I'm still very involved. You know, because it's my family business, it's kind of my first love. And so, you know, I think I do it by having great people around me. And then how do I focus? Anybody who's watching this who has three or more children is going to know what I'm going to say.

11:36You're only as happy as your most unhappy child. Same with me running 10, 15, 20 businesses. I'm just kind of watching them and wherever I need to help is where I'm at, whether that's extreme offense or extreme defense, right? So the way I view it is extreme offense, extreme defense, either, oh my God, we've cracked something, let's go all in, and that's going to eat up a lot of energy, or we're in trouble, let me go all in. So think of it as a boat. Uh-oh, there's a hole in the boat, I got to go put my finger in it, or a boat race. Uh-oh, I see a path where we can beat every other boat, I'm going to go jump and take the wheel and put my foot on the pedal, and that's how I run my world.

12:20That's cool. That's really helpful. And we had Dan Martell on yesterday, and he talked about kind of graduating out of becoming the CEO of his businesses. So it sounds like, of those eight businesses, are you the CEO of any of those, or do you have people that run those? So I would say that Dan is probably giving better advice for the masses of this audience than I am, and I'll explain what I mean by that. I would argue I'm not only the CEO, I'm even the COO in a lot of my companies. But that is not because I'm trying to maximize money. I'm trying to maximize happiness. For me, running businesses day to day is my great joy.

13:02I would rather run my businesses than go skiing or play golf or go scaling, right? So Dan's advice is for a lot of entrepreneurs who actually have businesses predominantly to make money to then go spend it on things they enjoy more. A yacht, trips, you know, whatever that may be. Fancy cars. I think I'm in a smaller group of people where, you know, I've got big, I mean, VaynerX for context of this audience is 2 ,500 people in a$330 million revenue business. So it's a big business. Just that one. But I get enjoyment out of being the COO in a world where I understand what Dan's saying, like a lot of people are like, become the chairman of the board, Gary, go do bigger things, make more money.

13:53I'm like, yes, I understand. And that's not, that's very good advice. It's not bad advice. But they don't understand me. I enjoy the HR, the challenges of restructures. I've got a lot of COO DNA in me. I've got much more COO DNA in me than chairman of the board DNA. Right, I'm the CEO, but I go down to be COO way more than I get excited about one day being chairman. In fact, I hope I'm never the chairman only of my companies. I hope that the day I take my hand off the wheel is the day I die. And so I think we're throwing around a lot of titles here, right? CEO, COO, chairman of the board, whatever.

14:35I think to Dan's point, he wants to create content and then shine a light on the businesses because he feels like that's the highest value thing that he can do to grow the revenue of those businesses. I would assume that you probably have a similar stance to that. So I guess - I mean, I would argue I wrote the damn book on it. Right? Pun intended. You know, I just think you can do both. And so what are you spending most of your time on in the day-to-day for those businesses? You said defense or offense. Like, what does that look like? It's both. I mean, it ebbs and flows. you know so right now I'm so deep in Vayner media and VFriends right VFriends just came out with a kids book has cartoons coming out I've got VCon coming up next week in LA I'm working on a lot of like people would be stunned that are watching right now if they went to eBay right now and typed in VFriends what's going on with the collectible pins and the trading cards and so I'm in it and it's everything from 2026 product planning to technology advances with the blockchain.

15:40And then on VaynerMedia, we just hired a new head of Australia, a new head of Canada. We're plotting Middle East expansion. We're pitching seven of the 50 biggest companies in the world to become their creative agency in 2025. We're expanding into deep AI stuff. Just like, you know, I mean, and then hiring, firing, I'm in deep restructure mode right now to make it more efficient, make it more profitable, cut overhead, but move those overhead heads into the floor. So just operating brother. Nice. Love it. I can relate to that. Now what, how, I guess, how do you think about hiring and developing people?

16:31You talked about like, Hey, key part is I've got partners that can run a lot of the day-to-day and then either I'm going all offense or all defense and that allows you to kind of float between these eight companies. But what's your advice for folks, especially at the level that you're at, of identifying talent, developing talent, and retaining talent? How do you look at that? 15 years ago, I started VaynerMedia. My dad never paid me a lot of money when I worked at Wine Library, which is appropriate because it was family immigrant business. And so the way I started this was my brother graduated college and we hired as interns four of his best friends from high school and college.

17:06I brought one guy over from Wine Library that I thought was sharp, Matt Sinema, still with the company. And we were six people in a conference room of another company. And that's how we started the company. And of the people that were in that room, four of the six are still in the company 15 years later. And everybody in the top 100 employees that I hired I hired with the mindset of, I'm gonna make this person a family member of mine in perpetuity. Hopefully that that means that that could be done within the company. But if not, they're obviously someone that I'll have a relationship with outside of the company forever.

17:49And that stands to be true today. And so it's the intent to develop a forever culture that I think creates these kind of people. if you view people that you're hiring as you pay them and thus they should do whatever you say, or I'm gonna build a company for three or four years and I'm gonna flip it, you're gonna be in a harder framework to pull off really doing what I'm doing, which is playing in perpetuity and evergreen. Thus, the relationships you're making and the development of those employees is everything. My entire, everything relies on me developing 50 to 100 forever teammates. And so as you can imagine, if that's the case, you know, I'm actually off the grid this week.

18:43It's the only thing I'm doing on a set. I'm in Europe right now. But I texted someone about their dad being sick this morning. You know, it's just part of my everyday life. Like if I'm developing real relationships, I'm going out to dinner with people. I'm just acting human, not corporate. And it's not some sort of like master plan. You know, it just fits my personality, but it also is the requirement of creating 25, 40 year executives. There's only two reasons why somebody will stay in a company for 35 years. One is you became family. Two, they're scared and insecure and never want to leave even though it's a crappy situation because they themselves have their own issues, you'd much rather be the first one.

19:38And so I love that intent and I love the development and just the deep care for people. How do you balance, like you're a hard driver, you grow companies very quickly, you work very hard. How do you balance that with the people that you're developing? because I would assume that that's pretty hard to work with. Not at all, actually. Not at all. Let me go the other way. I have zero expectation of the people around me working as hard as me. Zero. Because they're not being compensated at the same level. I think this is a huge mistake and it's an audacious and delusional mistake that people around you should be working as hard as you when they are not being compensated as much as you are.

20:30I deal with it very easily. I have employees that are nine to fivers, my friend. Really. And it doesn't bother me. I don't get to judge my employees' ambitions. I just have to do a good job articulating the truth of what comes along with their ambitions. So if you're a nine to fiver and you're off the grid all weekend and after five, it's unlikely you're going to be the CEO one day when I move on. But it doesn't mean you can't have a great career at my company. And so I need all types. I need the people that want to work. And by the way, I'm also very prepared when their vibe changes. I've had many employees sit in my room at 25 and tell me, Gary, one day I'm going to run this company.

21:15And then they fall in love and start a family and move out to the suburbs and want to go to every softball game. And I think that's beautiful. And then all of a sudden title and comp start to slow down for that person and somebody might lap them. And that's okay too. Like I don't judge how people want to live their life. I'm just responsible for being articulate, candorous, respectful, kind. And so I'll be honest with you. I've never struggled with the level of work ethic or tenacity or even capability of the people around me. If I think someone stinks and are lazy, I'm in control. I can fire them.

21:58Cool. I love it. And I love the emphasis on having clear conversations, right? Because their circumstances might change, your circumstances might change, or what the business needs of them might change. But if you have clear conversations about that and are adaptable to that, well, then you can build longevity regardless of what the circumstances, how they might change in the business. And as a business owner, for everybody who's watching here, by the way, are those all, in those screens you have right there, is that all the faces of the people that are tuned in? Yes, sir. Oh, that's so cool. I wish I could see that.

22:26So for all of you that I see, like very tiny in the left corner, like just remember if you have employees, you're in charge. You know, like I'm stunned by how many CEOs or founders are crying about things all the time. they're like, Johnny's a mess. I'm like, fire Johnny. You can. And so just a lot of excuses and a lot of lack of accountability. And like, by the way, if you're firing Johnny as your right hand and he's the sixth right hand you fired in two years, now it's time to not point fingers, it's time to point thumbs. Because clearly you're the problem. So there's self-awareness. There's so much that goes into building this out properly.

23:06Yeah, I like that. Which Michael Hyatt would always tell me about stuff like that. What about your leadership has led to this result? You're the common denominator. I couldn't explain to you how much I believe the next sentence out of my mouth. I genuinely believe that every single thing in my companies that's a problem is 100 % my fault. I'm aware that I didn't forget to close the door. But I think that level of accountability when you're at the top actually leads to a lot less anxiety and a lot more happiness. And I also think it's true. I hired the person that left the door open or I hired the person that hired the person that left the door open.

23:52And so I think that's something that is liberating and I think is unfortunately a little rare. Right. Yeah, because there's a freedom that comes from not being able to point the finger. because if every problem in the business is my fault, well, then I also have the ability to change it. That part, that part, brother, that part. So it's liberating, right? And let's put some of the audience on the back screen here for a second. So you can see more of them, Gary. And I'd love for you to speak this next advice to them, which is for folks who are trying to scale to a lot, because we've got a lot of folks that are pre-seven figures and then some folks who are trying to go seven, eight, nine figures.

24:33So pre-seven figures, like going back to that version of Gary and those versions of Gary here, what advice would you give them? Pre-seven is fine. You know, if you do not have a right-hand person right now, you're going to struggle to get to eight figures. So we've talked a lot about this, but this is the piece of advice. Two things stand out pre-seven. One, it's hard to sometimes afford a right-hand person. I think people get confused by that. but it's not as hard if you go with family friend or youngster that is destined to be remarkable a lot of people think they have to overpay for someone who's been doing it i don't see it that way so right hand person for sure pre-seven and number two you know if your ambition is to get to eight figures and you're at pre-seven you're still at six you're gonna have to you're gonna have to compromise certain things like you're gonna to have to bleed a little bit.

25:30There is a willing your way to seven figures variable. And by the way, when you hear that, if you're like, I don't like that, Gary, then maybe you actually don't want to get to eight figures and that's okay. As a matter of fact, let me give you a curveball. A lot of people have businesses that do 800 ,000 a year that they make 250 ,000 from and they like life. And then they go to 2 million where they make 700 ,000, but they don't like life because it just came along with a lot of extra stuff. I've seen this a lot. Something to keep in mind. But I would say right-hand person, more tenacity. Cool.

26:08I like that. And then selfless question for me personally, we're at about 15 million a year right now. Next big benchmark is 100 million. What are the things that you would think about if you were me? Two things on that. One is patience. Believe it or not, you might be able to just stack. When I was at 14, which was the year at Vayner, I told AJ, I think we can get to 500 million by doing very little different, just more. And we're doing it. Comma, 15 to 100 sometimes also takes new product line innovation, like a real additional thing. I mentioned WineText earlier. I built my dad's business to 65 million.

26:48I left, it went back down to 25. I invented wine text back to 65. So it took me inventing something. So you may need to be into another genre or another product or service. Um, or the mistake so many people make is you don't realize that it's just another seven years of doing the same thing. Cool. I like that. And by the way, when you're seeing this stuff come up on the screen, that's our audience reacting to what you're saying. I was enjoying it. I live on feedback. So those things, I've been enjoying those for the last 30 minutes. All right. So if you were me, Gary, what would you be focusing on as the CEO to breakthrough?

27:35What are you trying to attract from a customer lens? Let's start with that. Who? Say that in a different way. What do you mean? Yeah. So you're the CEO. What should you be focused on? I always think it's customers, right? So who's your target customer? Typically it's people who want to grow their business using a buck. Then I think you should be making an obnoxious amount of content. I mean, LinkedIn is just loaded. YouTube shorts. I would become remarkable at organic social. You personally. So that you then know who to hire and how to judge them. so I don't mean that you have to be at the front of it you can be but I need you like what's unique about me is I'm the front man but I'm also the behind the scenes man I had one of my guys on team Gary go to another prominent individual and he hit up one of my teammates a year later and goes I didn't realize how weird Gary was in that he did both.

28:42He was in front of the screen, but he was also the guy behind the screen. I think for you, you have to definitely at least be the guy behind the screen. Like know what works on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, right? Then what content you put in there, obviously everyone's fixated on the personal brand. I actually think the avatar and the mascot are coming next anyway. so like if you made the author advantage amp and made that the character maybe that's who you explode as something that everybody follows and that's you're making animations instead of podcast videos so i would say the number one thing a ceo needs to do is she or he needs to be remarkable at getting new customers getting new customers for wannabe authors to grow their business, all the attention sits on social media, all seven platforms, you need to figure them out.

29:38Love it. And my team's probably going nuts right now. Like Chandler, you got to do this. But again, Chandler, it's key here. I'm glad to hear that's what you said, because I preempted it. It doesn't actually have to be you. But you the human needs to know how it works. And then whoever you put in front of it, the Geico lizard, flow from progressive, or yourself like Gary Vee, Dan Martel, like you can make that call, but the organization needs to be putting out multiple pieces of content a day across every one of those platforms. That's why I wrote Day Trading Attention. I knew that I had the follow up for Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook and it's completely based on this.

30:23Cool. And it's by far the biggest elephant in the room for every business. It's the biggest opportunity. Cool. Well, Gary, final question here. What's your parting piece of advice? Obviously, you've published a bunch of books successfully, scaled businesses successfully. Parting piece of advice for this audience who wants to grow their business using their books? Don't try to convince the unconvincible. Don't dwell on one publisher. If HarperCollins didn't like your book, move on. if shyman's just like do not try to convince have conviction there are many people when i started my career that don't didn't get me i didn't try to convince them i just went out executed and found the ones that did there are people still who don't get me and that's okay do not try to sell to the non-sellable find find the ghostwriter find the publisher find the distributor find the the bookstore, find the people that do get it.