The #1 Skill to Develop is the Ability to Not Judge Yourself

In this episode of The GaryVee Audio Experience, I talk about the single biggest unlock I've found for spending your time well: the ability to stop judging yourself. I share why actions lead to strategy, not the other way around, and why playing on the extremes beats optimizing the middle. I also discuss the difference between an entrepreneur and an operator, and why speed is a bigger competitive edge than process. You'll learn about: • Why You Overjudge Your Own Decisions • Actions Lead To Strategy • Entrepreneur Versus Operator • Why Speed Beats Process

• 0:05Speaker 00

  ¿Cómo tomas decisiones sobre dónde y cómo pasas tu tiempo, sabiendo cuán valioso y cuán limitado es tu tiempo?

• 0:12Speaker 01

  Estoy muy feliz de que estés haciendo esta pregunta, porque si puedes internalizar lo que estoy diciendo, no creerás lo que te va a hacer. La respuesta es la capacidad de no juzgar a mí mismo.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  Sabes que hay muchas personas... Hay un secreto muy sucio en el mundo de la estrategia, como Bana McKinsey, donde si te vuelves loco, admiten que las acciones conducen a la estrategia, no al revés. Esa es mi respuesta.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  ¿Cómo? Hago decisiones. Y luego trato de mirar mi calendario de la semana que viene y ver si hay decisiones que he tomado cuatro semanas antes que me hicieron pensar que esto era un buen uso de tiempo. ¿Estoy capaz de mover algo, cortar algo? Estoy extremadamente cuidadoso con la corte de tiempo en las reuniones. Así que uno de los puntos que creo que me hacen exitoso es entender que una reunión de siete minutos es real y no solo hacerla una reunión de treinta minutos. Pero la verdadera razón es porque no lo overpienso. Estoy operando mi negocio, estoy en ello. ¿Cómo decides entre ir a la cena con Kevin Hart? Porque puedo y quiero construir la marca de la cadena de la caja, ¿o voy a tomar a un cliente de nivel medio con el que estoy tratando de construir una relación?

• 1:25Speaker 01

  Sabes, preguntas a cada persona normal, parece que esos no están muy cerca, pero puedo tocar el pulso y decir que voy a Los Ángeles cuatro veces más en los próximos tres meses. Sabes, los errores más grandes que hago son los de perder oportunidades, de las cosas siendo cagados por la oportunidad. Cuando realmente lo elevas, mi amigo, realmente es liberador. Nunca te acercarás a tomar la decisión correcta. Lo entiendo. Simplemente no sabes qué sería la alternativa. La gente piensa que hay una respuesta correcta. Tú, como operador de tu negocio, toma la decisión correcta que te parece correcta en ese momento.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  And just move. And people spend all this time and money on trying to think that there's a proper answer. I play on the extremes. I spend as much time as possible on the things that are showing me the most offense.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  Right? However, you're doing your customer acquisition to get to a hundo on a product like that, like whether it's Facebook, whether it's brand, whether it's... And then I spend the amount of time on my biggest vulnerability.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  You know, putting my finger in the holes to make sure the boat doesn't sink? And building a bigger fucking boat? And nothing in the middle? And knowing that I'm making that judgment at all times? And the second I get new data a week later, I might have to completely change what I thought was right the week before.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  It's also why I spend a ton of time with my employees. The reason I'm an HR-driven CEO is if you really understand this, both your biggest growth and your biggest vulnerabilities are actually your own team. So I think it's a lack of... It starts with the ability not to overjudge yourself, because that is the liberator of the model I just broke down for you.

• 3:05Speaker 00

  But even the items that you may have scheduled out four weeks in advance, you still sit down at the beginning of that week to reevaluate?

• 3:12Speaker 01

  At our best, which I don't do all the time. My admins and I are doing some sort of version of an audit on Friday.

• 3:22Speaker 00

  Because again, you find yourself in that paralysis of where are you spending your time on the most valuable activities?

• 3:31Speaker 01

  I don't think that way and nobody... I mean, listen, I'm in the mix for top busy people. I'm in the conversation. You know, I go hard for 15 hours a day. I do seven-minute meetings. I'm fucking in the conversation. And I easily spend 25% of my day on things that end up being dumb shit.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  That is where the speed comes in. Got it? If I spent time looking back at my calendar for the last month, I'd be devastatingly sad. People judge themselves. If you're an operator and you're in the mix on your business, you made the best decision you could at that moment with the data that you had. The end.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Was it to go to a Kroger's meeting? Or was it to go meet a supplier of milk? Or to go meet an influencer who was destined to be the one that broke you out? All three sounds right to me.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  And they all could end up being right, or could end up being wrong. My thing is if you go super fast and go super hard and super efficient, you might be able to do all three if you're not spending half your time judging yourself if you're getting it right. Got it? You see where I'm going? You wouldn't be here. Maybe that's what you needed today. You would have this whole day back. Just even in my... There's no way I'd do this. That's not how I learned. Now, you may learn this way. But there's never a chance in hell that I'd ever be at a 4Ds. Because I learned from so much doing. That's why my data is so clean. It's why I'm an innovator. It's why I'm fast. It's why a lot of good things happened for me. Because I realized just the doing is actually more efficient than the thinking about it. Somebody said something really funny to me once.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  And it was like the dig of this version, and it's a really funny conversation. He was talking about VaynerMedia at the time. This was maybe five or six years ago. He said, "You know, Gary, I gotta tell you, I love your company. But I gotta take a little bit of a knock on you." He was trying to set it up. I'm like, "Okay, what is it?" He goes, "If I was sitting in this room and you guys were standing outside, and I said, 'VaynerMedia, I need you to sit right next to me.'" I know you guys would do it. He goes, "Where I think you need to be more thoughtful Gary is, I have a feeling though that you might run through that glass panel and sit with us, when you could have just opened the fucking door." And I said, "Yeah, but which one was cooler?" You know, and so, and so, the answer to that is, like,

• 6:04Speaker 01

  I think what, you know, what that gentleman didn't understand in his analogy as a critique, was, he was trying to have an intellectual conversation about something that, it's, all of our businesses will be super fun to talk about in a Harvard Business Study, or around a campfire in 40 years with our grandkids, when we can pontificate, and, but, but we're operating right now. That. Got it? It will work. Hey everybody, I hope you're enjoying the podcast right now. Make sure you follow the podcast, that's why I'm interrupting. Let's keep going on this show, but, follow the podcast. It'll make my mom super happy. You can't imagine how much mind time is actually being wasted

• 6:48Speaker 01

  if you're thinking about that question. It's crippling, I mean it. I have a lot of empathy for it. And I'm really like, that's why, you know, I don't normally pause before my answer. I was super pumped you asked that, because it's one of the biggest answers I've got in my repertoire. And if I can, you know, because I'm a good communicator, if this is the moment, and you get momentum on this, you will fucking, you will, you'll be back in a year and be like, "It was just that." "I didn't realize how much that was affecting me." And that makes you then faster. Then all of a sudden, you can see where this goes, right? All of a sudden, because you know you're doing this thing that's foreign to you, fuck it, Gary said, "Let me try this week." All of a sudden, you're like, "Fuck, but I want to get this up." And all of a sudden, that 30-minute meeting becomes 16. All of a sudden, that meeting, you just cancel

• 7:33Speaker 01

  and you do it the next day. You call, you make, you turn it into a call, and the way they're, you, you know, I'm the manifestation at this point of being in my prime of something I've now done for 22 years. And now, tomorrow I turn 44, so I'm right there. 22 years of not running a business, and 22 years of now running businesses completely always, and now I'm in, you know, in this state where like, oof, I feel really, you know, unstoppable, because it's like, there's, you're just at the extreme version of, it's like working out every day for 20, you're at, you're in a different place. I'm in a real crescendo of like, this model. And it really works.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  You don't beat yourself up over a mistake?

• 8:16Speaker 01

  No. Because everyone else is doing it for me. You know what I mean? We just can't. You know, I really do think business is much more like sport. You know, it's really funny. I used to always think that, it always made sense, that I liked both. Now, now I hear things, back to being in the prime, you hear things of like, a quarterback saying, "You know, I just gotta go to the next play. I know I threw two picks in a row." And, and he's right. I'm like, you know, I used to hear it as a fan, like, "Fuck you, you fucking threw two picks, I'm pissed." You know, like I thought about, now I'm like, that's exactly right. Like, I can make seven bad decisions, as long as I don't put us out of business. No, really, I really, it's that binary. It's a funny thing to say, but to your point, and to like mine. As long as I don't put us out of business, I'm like, "Yeah, I'm like, I hate that I made that call." You know?

• 8:59Speaker 01

  I prefer not to. I wish it didn't happen, but it did. And spending, I've learned from it. I don't need to, like, beat myself up to learn from it. I learned from it. I understand that I over, I over-leveraged our ice cream business to too much retail, and gave them too much leverage, and now when they kicked me out, I'm in trouble, and I should've built my direct-to-consumer business. Right? It's not super complicated.

• 9:26Speaker 00

  And speed becomes your ally when you're able to move.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Bro, and you'll love this. One thing that business and fucking sports share, that nobody talks about, speed over everything. There's a reason the Chiefs are good right now. They figured it out.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Draft speed.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  It's not teachable.

• 9:46Speaker 00

  To your point, though, you find often, you're in situations where you have to make, you have to make snap decisions. "I can choose to do this, or I can choose to do that." And you're only basing it on the available data.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Correct. I don't even need to do any homework, that's why I'm always improv. I'm fucking operating my business. I can make a decision right now. It's the lack of judgment. Right? You see where, see how that's kind of frothy? But you're like, "Oh, right, that makes sense." Because if you choose, and then it was super obvious, six months later, that you should've went triple retail, instead of doing diet milk, you know, making up shit now. Well, well, okay, but like, I didn't, but like what? Like, I don't, I don't think, I think people think they're gonna do some pro, they, they value process.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  When you're, when you're, when you're dealing with the actual consumer, they're moving as fast as you are.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Not with me, that's why I win, right? Like, I feel like I'm with them. I'm day trading. My decisions are in day trade mode. And people think that they're... They overvalue what they were taught in school. The process.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  You know how many more decisions you can make when you're not in the process of one? And then what ends up happening is you net win. Because that mistake you made was offset by four other good decisions you made.

• 11:04Speaker 03

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• 11:19Speaker 05

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• 11:38Speaker 01

  It's so cool to like, even like, like I'm listening to myself almost right now and I'm like, "God, it makes so much fucking sense." But it speaks to why entrepreneurship is hard and talent-oriented. It is truly a skill, like, there's a very big difference between being an entrepreneur and being an operator. And some entrepreneurs can be operators and they tend to do well. And some people can be operators and they build very nice businesses. But getting good at those two things, and the entrepreneurial part is where the real hyper-upside actually lives. The operating part is commoditized. It's a more teachable skill than leaning into intuition, leaning into listening to the end consumer,

• 12:19Speaker 01

  leaning into, you know, nuances of innovation, enjoying risk, not being fearful. I think, I think that what I just talked about is being the chiefs. And I think most people are trying to build the 85 Bears. People are defense-oriented, which is great. Both, both can be good, right? In the way that I just said it, but like, there are way more teams that have won because they were the best offense. Defense wins championships is a very, very misleading, very misleading statement.

• 12:55Speaker 00

  You have Hall of Fame defensive linemen or linebackers that disrupt the offense, sure.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Go ahead, we have enough time to bounce. If you've got something on the tip of your tongue, please feel free.

• 13:07Speaker 00

  One of the things I'm really impressed by is the VaynerX umbrella. You've got different distinct businesses. We met today, different folks across those. Gary, what's driving that structure?

• 13:23Speaker 00

  Oh, okay, it's the speed, you can move faster.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  Zach, you know, I'm tired of paying a big commission on my speaking fee. The kid who's been doing it for nine years is becoming a grown-up. I really genuinely like him. I'm building one massive communications framework. Part of communications is humans that communicate.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  We should start a speaking bureau.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  That's the success. I don't talk about Vayner Experience and Vayner Live. I've had two failed attempts now at doing event marketing.

• 13:56Speaker 00

  He was in the hallway today.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  I know, I was with him.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  I love losing. As much as I love the Sasha Group, as much as I love Vayner Live and Vayner Experience, because I know the fifth time I'm gonna get it. Because live events matter in today's world. Definitely matters in your world, it's a place to think about. So like, you know, so...

• 14:17Speaker 02

  Do you move fast when you decide something's not working?

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Yes. But, where my team thinks I move slow is, it might not manifest in as quickly as it ought. It's because I haven't decided that's not working. I'm okay being down 31-0 at halftime, if I truly believe I'm gonna win 35-31. As you can imagine, if you've got executives, consumers, business partners, they're like, "You're down 31-0." You know? And I'm like, "Mm-hmm." But I was at the Monday Night Miracle. We were down 30-7 with 10 minutes left, we won. It sure was. I wish social media existed so I can prove I was there, because every Jeff Bam claims they were there, but there was only fucking 4,000 people there. So, you know, I think that, I do. I do, but that is singular decision by me. Not my experts rallying around.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  But, when my experts rally around, and I hold the line, and the final comes in 48-17, I look at them and say, "I was wrong." So if you're gonna do it to keep credibility with your teammates, you have to acknowledge when you're wrong. So yes, I do. And sometimes that goes the other way. You know, sometimes, I mean, there's a story I reference a lot of hiring somebody and literally knowing within 24 hours of them being in the building that I fucked up big. Hey everybody, if you enjoyed this podcast, please go back and look at the prior episodes. They're loaded. I appreciate your attention and uh, thanks for being part of this journey. See you later.