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Do you have any tips on delegation?
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Sure. Once you accept that 99.9 percent of the things you deal with every day don’t matter as much as you think, it’s a lot easier to let other people do them. Good leaders know when to let go, and they let go of a lot because they’re in the clouds and dirt.
Some people don’t delegate because they’re positive no one can do as good a job as they can. That may be true, but not every job needs your level of perfection anyway. You’ve got to know when good enough is enough. Let the bright, interesting people you hired do their jobs and make yours easier. It takes humility to accept you’re not as unique or indispensable as you think, but it’s also freeing.
GREG PESCI
SPERA, INC.
PRESIDENT & CEO
WWW.SPERA.IO
@gregpesci
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What are some of the key challenges facing freelancers today, and what tools can they use to overcome them?
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I think the biggest challenge that most freelancers have is that while they are great at their individual specialty (design, consulting, video, etc.), they don’t actually know how to run a business. The difference between having expertise in an individual skill and being a business operator is huge, and at the end of the day being a freelancer means you’re running your own, one-person business.
A freelancer’s biggest asset is time, so any tools or software that can help to save time is going to be huge. I mean it applies to me, too. I don’t like doing the billing, following up on invoices, or managing our P&L. None of that stuff is fun for me, and it’s going to be even less fun for a freelance designer. The output is the fun part. The reason so many professionals don’t freelance is that they want to do their thing, but when they start getting into the goop and the gop of billing, insurance, and all the other stuff that comes with running a business, they check out. You should be looking for any and every tool that helps you save time with those tasks.
The other thing that might be helpful would be to find a business mentor, or even take business classes. Learn everything you possibly can about business management so that you can worry less about the side stuff, and spend more time on the fun stuff.
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I need to hire an office assistant, but though sales are great I don’t have the capital to hire anyone. Got any creative ideas?
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Use your social capital. Most people think money is the best compensation, but there is somebody out there who needs experience or visibility more than money. That’s how DRock first started working here. He asked if he could do a video for free, he did a great job, and we formed a relationship, which led to a full-time gig. Without him, I may not have ever done the show, let alone written this book.
There are many ways to barter your services. Announce on Craigslist and social media what money you can offer, and then add all your services free for a year. Make a video that shows why you’re a great person to work with. Offer your stuff, your services, your time, or your name. Make a deal where you pay out very little in the beginning of a project but your assistant gets a sweet percentage of the final payout. Leave no rock unturned.
Whatever you do, however, make sure you can deliver on whatever promise you make.
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They say you should hire slow and fire quick. How many chances do you give your staff?
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There’s nothing worse than firing someone. I’m not usually the one who does it here anymore, but when I was I’d spend a month figuring out how to make myself feel better about it. We’re not in the one-, two-, or three-strike policy here at VaynerMedia. We actually have enormous continuity, and I think part of that is thanks to the firing policy. People see that we try to handle things with empathy and grace. Also, no firing ever comes as a surprise. We work hard with people to try to help them achieve what they wanted to do when they came on board, or to help them find a better fit within the company. I think word of that effort gets around, and it makes people feel good about working here.
I don’t think what’s most important is to fire fast, but to fire well. It’s better in the long run for everyone—you’re free to find a better fit, and the employee is free to go succeed somewhere else. But if you don’t have the EQ to do it well—to make it feel like a liberation and not like a punishment—find someone who does. If I hadn’t had it when I worked at Wine Library, I swear I would have asked my mom to do it. She could make you see how death by firing squad could be reason to celebrate.
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How do you motivate teams of remote workers without a payment incentive? So far positivity and hustle are not producing results.
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Take the blame, and then start communicating better. If there are people on your team who are not performing to their best abilities, that’s on you. But it’s a relatively easy problem to solve. Arrange for a meeting and then tell them they’re not executing at the level you were hoping for. Then ask, What can I do to help you? And then start helping.
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What does it take to work at VaynerMedia?
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It all depends on what job you want, of course. The more interesting question is, What does it take to win?
The losing players at the VaynerMedia game tend to disappear within the first year or year and a half because they’re not playing the long game. They’re either solely motivated by money, or they have the audacity to think they’re better than they are. I like bravado and confidence, but you’d better have the goods to back it up. Admittedly, on occasion VaynerMedia has missed that talent and the employee had no choice but to leave. I hate it when that happens, but even I know we can’t always win.
What about the winners? They tend to have all the qualities we’ve discussed before: empathy, self-awareness, respect for others, amazing work ethic, and patience. They’re not only good communicators; they advocate for themselves in a constructive way (hey, I know we’re not perfect). It takes hard work and smarts to succeed here, but what trumps all of it is heart. Skills can be taught; heart just is. If you’ve got it, I’m interested in working with you.
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What key factors should a Millennial-owned branding company look for when hiring other Millennials as it quickly scales?
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Why are you intent on hiring Millennials? Lou Pearlman was a middle-aged blimp marketer before he put together two of the biggest boy bands of the nineties, the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC. He wasn’t a thirteen-year-old girl, but he knew how to market to them. I am not a Millennial, but I know how to market to Millennials better than many, including Millennials. Just because you’re twenty-four doesn’t mean you know how to sell shit, even to a twenty-four-year-old.
The questions you need to ask Millennials are the same ones you’d ask anyone. Do you know how to market to this age group? Do you understand their behavior? Do you know how to create content that will also create the sale?
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Where would you start building a digital team in a traditional (TV/print) agency?
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Traditional agencies that sell print, direct mail, outdoor media, or PR are all shifting to digital because that’s where the dollars and storytelling are going. This isn’t difficult. Hire seven people skilled in digital social, bring them into your department, and work with your CEO to integrate this new thing. VaynerMedia often starts new divisions, from live events to video production. We have to integrate them into the business and we do it by bringing in people with the right skill set. Now, how does that practice get molded into the org? I’m often hands off for the first three to six months, but then I get my hands dirtier. Leading is knowing when to step in or step back. It’s just about deciding when to do it.
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When do you shift from hiring a freelancer to hiring someone full-time?
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You should transition a freelanc
er to a full-time employee the moment you fall in love with that person’s work and personality and know they are going to bring tremendous thunder to your business and your workday . . .
Or . . .
When you need to because your business is growing or your client is producing more stuff and why would you look for someone new when you have someone you trust and like who knows the brand right there with you . . .
Or . . .
When the freelancer falls in love with your business and keeps pushing you to let him or her join your team. It may not be a practical move to take on a hire, but do what you can to reward that passion and invest in the relationship for the long-term stickiness and ROI it will afford you.
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Is terminating the bottom 10 percent still a good idea? Even on a team of all-stars, someone has to be last.
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This is a legendary mantra that Jack Welch introduced to the business world, and this answer came straight from the horse’s mouth when he appeared on the show:
If you believe that the best team wins and that business is a game, you have to field the best players. So you have to be aware of who are your top 20, middle 70, and bottom 10. Make your top 20 feel 6'4". If they’re already 6'5", make them feel 6'8". You let them know you think they’re that good. Tell the middle 70 you want them to strive to be like the top 20. Tell your players at the bottom of the rankings why they’re there and give them a chance to fix what’s wrong. If they can’t, let them go. But always love them as much on the way out as you did when you let them in.
I asked Jack whether this advice would be true for people who only had 500 employees, not 400,000 like he did when he ran GE. He said it would be even more important. Then I pointed out that a lot of people who watch my show have maybe five employees. And he acknowledged that that would be very difficult, because now you’re looking at the people who got you started. But you have to do it.
Suzy Welch, Jack’s wife and writing partner, who was also on the show, pointed out that there is no perfect team. There is always someone who is performing better than someone else. Instead of bemoaning the fact that you have to let go of the bottom 10 percent, celebrate everything you’re doing to nurture the top 20 percent.
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As a business grows, what is the best solution for documenting policy, procedure, and process so all are on the same page?
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There is no business on earth that won because it had a supertight handbook. Maybe a behemoth like GE should have something in place, but that’s what their lawyers are there for. A company of only five hundred or so employees shouldn’t have to document every little thing. As Suzy Welch said, work on building your values and culture. Make sure everyone knows the mission of the company, where they’re going, and why. Hold on to your entrepreneurial spirit for as long as you can.
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How can efficiency and creativity better work together?
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Jack Welch also pointed out on the show that to get creatives to be efficient you have to get creative. That means hiring creative people. You want everyone in your company, no matter whether they’re on the account, client, or creative side, to be thinking of better ways to do what they’re doing. I think one way to do that is to put your players in a position to succeed. So long as the work that gets produced is quality, I don’t really care how you get it done. I’ve tried to get people to work within my version of efficiency, and I find that it’s just better to let people do things their way. I may not like that you need to retreat to a private Zen garden, but if I like your output, why should I care? Prima donna creatives can be irritating, but if their ROI is awesome, it’s worth it. A supremely efficient creative who lacks the magic is not.
One thing Jack, Suzy, and I were all in agreement about when we heard this question is that it’s an awful thing to elevate the innovators in a company above everyone else. Don’t put them on an altar and tell everyone else to just put their heads down and get to work. Don’t let anyone’s mind go to waste. Encourage everyone to be an innovator. At VaynerMedia we expect our creatives to be practical, and our account strategists to be creative. It works, creating an energizing sense of mutual respect.
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My business is completely digital. How important are real-life meetings?
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The number of online tools at our disposal makes it extremely easy to allow people to work from home, or to facilitate conversations and transactions with people working across town, across the country, or on the other side of the world. But even if your company is entirely digital, you should not eliminate in-person meetings.
Why? Because human beings make decisions, not machines.
Digital should be seen as the gateway to a human interaction, but not as a replacement for it. You just can’t get the same nuance or establish the same context via conference call or Google+ as you can in person. That isn’t to say emotion can’t be conveyed digitally; I get plenty emotional on Twitter and more and more on Instagram. But those exchanges don’t have the same energy as an in-person one does. And it’s important to keep fine-tuning your ability to read a room and people’s body language. It’s a tremendous skill that doesn’t just make you a better boss or employee; it makes you a better person.
So whether you need to talk to an employee, client, or your boss, create opportunities to meet in person sometimes, especially if it’s been a while or you have something important to discuss. Keep doing that until the robots take over. When that happens, we can reevaluate.
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How do I keep my old employees from hazing my new employees?
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Be the parent. Tell them to stop or you’ll fire them.
I had a similar problem at Wine Library. My staff wasn’t hazing anyone per se, but they were making immediate judgment calls on new hires. Within two days, if they had decided a new person sucked, they froze that person out or made their life hard. My ultimate solution was to sit down one by one with my entire staff and tell them that if they didn’t work with me to fix the problem and become part of the solution, they would be gone. And you know what? I had to fire a few people. It happens.
* * *
How much of your staff’s time is spent on you as opposed to other projects?
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If you mean the staff that helps with my content production and the business development around it, then that entire team is part of “Brand Gary” team. Some were already working within VaynerMedia and were plucked out of the machine, and others were hired specifically for the team. I didn’t need this many people when I was producing Wine Library TV, but now that I have so much more scale I can produce more content outside the show, and I need help to do that. This is what a production team for one person looks like. I believe the future for people with sizable audiences is less about having a PR person and more about building a modern production company around that person.
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How do you handle it when people miss their deadlines?
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It all depends on what I expect from you. If you’re a person who is usually a hard-core executor who’s extremely reliable and I rely on you to be that all the time, I’m going to be pissed. If you’re kind of disorganized and a little weird, and I never quite know what’s going on but somehow you always make magic happen, I probably didn’t ever believe you’d make your deadline and had planned accordingly. Bottom line, the level at which I or anyone else should get upset at a missed deadline will probably change depending on our expectations. If you know what someone usually brings to the table and they “miss,” you have to wonder whose fault that is. Is it possible you put them in a situation where they weren’t working to their strengths? It’s great to challenge your strong players but you need to be fair. Put players in positions to succeed and when you put them in a spot that is challenging, make sure you remain empathetic. Above all, be fair.
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&
nbsp; How do you diplomatically tell the boss he’s f***ing it up?
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I think any boss worth his or her salt will be pumped if you’re brave enough to respectfully point out where you disagree, and I think it can be a win-win situation. If the boss agrees with your feedback, you’ve won points. If he or she doesn’t and starts disrespecting you, then you know you work for a dipshit and need to look for another job. For that reason, there’s no risk in giving critical feedback, especially if you don’t love your job. It’s a good way for people to audit their bosses and gauge whether it’s wise to put their career in their bosses’ hands and follow his or her leadership. I have massive respect for the people who are comfortable telling me they disagree with me. The key is to make sure you remain gracious and respectful while still expressing passion and holding true to your point of view. And of course you should go in with a good sense of who your boss is. My direct reports know they can get away with a lot more with me than they could with many of the bosses in my own companies that are below me. Know your judge.
#AskGaryVee Page 24
