[INTERVIEW]
Brad Johnson: Claude, so excited for this conversation. Welcome to the show.
Claude Silver: Brad, thanks. It’s been something I’ve really been looking forward to.
Brad Johnson: Well, that makes both of us, then. I don’t even know where to start, but I’m going to start with this. So, I think there’s a lot out there, especially in finance, that have followed Gary Vaynerchuk for a long time. He got put on my radar, his first book, Crush It. Then I dove into all of the random YouTube videos about wine and saying they smell like pencil erasers, and all the random stuff he came up with. But he has built an incredible enterprise that started very much as Gary, the guy, the personality. But you have taken on really the role of leading the culture, and you got there at 200 employees, and now you all have scaled north of 2,200 worldwide and remote. So, how does a guy like Gary, that very much is based on a personality, how does he make the jump to building a business enterprise that’s exponentially bigger than him? What’s the secret?
Claude Silver: Well, it’s such a great question, and the secret is he has no ego about it. That is literally the secret, and I’ll dive into that. Meaning, Gary is not prescriptive about anything that we do except how we treat people. He doesn’t care if it’s Facebook or Shmacebook or Snapchat or what. He follows attention. That is what he is looking for, and he follows relevance. And so, if you bring that into the world of human beings and people, we, when we are at a job, need attention. We need to know that we are relevant. We need to know that we are psychologically safe here to trust and to say the avant-garde question or idea that comes out of our mouth. His secret sauce is giving people the autonomy and the freedom to not have fear.
Now, that’s very difficult for us human beings to grok because we absolutely, we’re addicted to fear and insecurity. And what he’s saying is, “This is what I’m building. I believe in you. I know you can go do X, Y, and Z. Go. Be on your front foot. Be proactive. Go to the ball.” I’m so sorry.
Brad Johnson: You’re fine.
Claude Silver: And because he’s a disruptor, and he has accountability about being a disruptor, he’s allowed us to do that, too. I mean, we don’t have a lot on our walls in the New York office, where our headquarters is. But one of the things we do have on our wall is we do not get paid to appease clients. Now, that’s craziness. Any other agency I’ve worked in, that is craziness. We don’t have empathy. We don’t have ‘believe in your dreams,’ right? We are a company that literally is going after the audience where they are today, tomorrow, and the future. And in order to do that, we have to have people who are nimble enough, who can take levels of uncertainty, be flexible, have a ‘yes, and’ growth mindset, and go. And so, what he has done is, quite frankly, given so many of us the reins to do just that, with just a little bit of a soundbite from him.
And the amount of trust that he has given us under the umbrella that he’s the owner is pretty remarkable. And that just does not happen in other agencies, and also, other agencies are beholden to the stock exchange and to their board. But for him, it’s like, “Listen, I want to build the single greatest human organization in the history of time. Who wants to be with me?” Well, who doesn’t want to be on that train?
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Well, it’s wild because what started in his dad’s liquor store, which was definitely back to attention, “Hey, there’s this thing, YouTube. I think we could use this to grow our business.” But he’s had this intuition of where the attention’s going before it gets there. But the other thing I’ve seen, I’ve had the opportunity to interact with multiple team members under different enterprises under the Vayner empire at this point. So, Zach at VaynerSpeakers, absolute rock star. Other Zach that helps out with VeeFriends and some of the trading card stuff. But it seems like everyone that I interact with under the enterprise, A-player, and they’ve acted empowered. They have an energy about them. So, is part of what you’re laying out, is it attracting this talent into the organization? What’s the secret sauce there?
Claude Silver: Well, tell you what, there are many of us that come in and have to do a lot of unlearning because we’re different. We’re wacky. Where do you go? Where today can you find a job that gives you that type of autonomy, that type of trust, that type of, “Listen, I believe in you, and I’m going to put you in a position to be successful here”? Where do you actually even hear that from your CEO or leader? So, A, there’s a lot of us that come in, and we’ve had careers, 19 years here, 12 years here, whatnot, so we do have to do a little unlearning, which is interesting to do as an adult. But the other thing is we are attracting people who don’t come from our same nest.
I removed the need for a college education 11 years ago. Why? Because I wanted to make sure that we were looking at the macrocosm and able to hire the macrocosm. Being an advertising agency, super important, but also there are tons of curious brains out there and hearts that aren’t interested in college or won’t have that opportunity. We have a residency program that we started in COVID, where we still hire 75% of each and every resident class. That is their entryway into this organization. We started in ’21. Those residents that we hired are now directors. Those directors will soon be VPs and leading this company. And all the while, we are all drinking from the same fountain, not the same Kool-Aid, but the same fountain of water, which is, listen, we believe in putting people first.
This is a job and a business, so we need to, while we have empathy for ourselves and others, we need to also understand that there’s a hell of a lot of accountability that needs to take place there. “Are you up for that challenge? We’re going to give you massive at-bats. You’re going to work on Fortune 10, Fortune 50 brands. We are going to push you, though, not to survive and not to just be good, but to be great, if not exceptional.” So, that is a lot of the magic dust that I’m putting in the water every day, our other leaders are putting in the water every day. And I can say now, looking at our leadership team, everyone has been there for at least seven years, if not more.
I’m 12. Kaylen, our chief business officer, 14. So, the level of osmosis, the level of learning because we’ve been next to each other, the level of, “Hey, you think you can look at this for me? I know I don’t work with you, but can you still…” That is real. That’s vibrant, and that connective tissue is what makes us so strong globally.
Brad Johnson: How do you define the difference between a residency program, an internship? Are those kind of the same thing? Are they different? How do you run that?
Claude Silver: So, residency is three months, and for those three months, you will be paid to learn and to do. So, it is school. We will put you through school. You will have classroom exercises. You will learn how to place millions and millions of dollars of ads on Meta or Pinterest or whatever. You will be hands-on keyboard. You get paid just like everyone else. After those three months, we are going to hire you if you’re the top talent, and you come in. So, that takes away the need to recruit entry-level folks. Those are residents, and they are in the media department, project management department, the creative department, and the strategy department. And think about this. This is Gen Alpha, Gen Z. They are exactly where we want to be.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. So, I was going to ask you that. What’s the average age of a residency?
Claude Silver: 20, 21.
Brad Johnson: 21? Wow.
Claude Silver: 21, 23. Yeah.
Brad Johnson: And I’m assuming some of them are in school, some of them haven’t gone to school. It’s just a mix of just top talent you’re bringing through the front door.
Claude Silver: Yeah, the mix. I mean, we have a pretty robust recruitment process there. They do have to take a test, and it’s not like a hard test, but it’s a test to see that, okay, are we going to put them into media or are they more creative? Or do they know how to edit on the phone pretty quickly? Are they interested in being in videos, or are they really great analytically, and we need them to become the next data analysts for X brand? So, the average age, I would say, is about 21. We’ve had some wonderful 28-year-olds, 35-year-olds, 40-year-olds, but it’s not an internship. It is literally living and breathing with us, learning and getting paid to do that, which an internship is kind of a little bit, I would say, fly by night. It’s maybe the summer, maybe it’s eight weeks, but this is like you’re in.
Brad Johnson: Three months of boot camp is what it sounds like.
Claude Silver: It’s three months of bootcamp, and last week we just brought on our summer residency. There were 112 people on the screen during orientation.
Brad Johnson: Wow. How long’s the list to get into residency?
Claude Silver: I mean, it’s long, but it’s not scary. We go through it. So, now that we’ve hired summer and that’s done, and that’ll take us through the end of September, they’ll start looking at fall or winter residency now that they have time, now that everyone’s hired. And maybe it’s that person that, for whatever reason, didn’t pass the test, but we believe in them, so we’re going to give them another shot.
Brad Johnson: Did this replace internships or do you also do internships?
Claude Silver: This replaced internships, and this replaced the need to go hire account executives. This replaced the need for us to hire and train up a media analyst because now they are a resident, they’re being trained, and the minute they get the full-time role, they’re now fully on Sabra. They’re now fully on Pepsi. And what’s wonderful about that is the three months that they’ve been with us, they have gotten a lot of IP already. I mean, they’re sponges.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. They’re indoctrinated into the Vayner way.
Claude Silver: And that’s what we want, because the sooner you get that, the more successful you will be. The sooner you get it and believe it, the more successful you will be.
Brad Johnson: Okay. So, I want to zoom out a little bit before we zoom back in because some might not be familiar with all of the enterprises or properties. So, I know you’ve got the speaker bureau. I know you’ve got the sports card trading stuff that Gary does, VeeFriends. I know now he’s a sports agent. So, what is the umbrella? What’s it look like?
Claude Silver: So, VaynerX is our umbrella. I work for VaynerX. And under VaynerX, you have three agencies: VaynerMedia, Chuk Media, C-H-U-K, Maramedia, his mom. Those are three agencies that are doing social, that are doing traditional, that are doing everything that we do. Under that, VaynerSpeakers. Under that, we have a barter company, which is called Tingley Lane. Under that, we have production company. Under that, we have VaynerSports, VeeFriends, Gary.inc. That’s his world. And I’m definitely missing some right now.
Brad Johnson: Gary.inc, would that be like Gary’s personal brand?
Claude Silver: Yeah. And the wonderful thing about being in that type of holding company, like literally, is that you can zig and zag. You can connect with someone on VaynerSports because, I don’t know, maybe you’re doing something for Super Bowl, and maybe there’s a rookie that we want to try out, right? It makes so much sense, and instead of the inner fighting and the inner conflict that sometimes you get at a bigger holding company, it’s one pocketbook, basically. Yes, there’s different P&Ls, but it’s one pocketbook that we’re all kind of serving, and taking from and giving back to, if that makes sense. I mean, it all laps up to VaynerX
Brad Johnson: It’s almost like one plus one equals 10, the synergies among the…
Claude Silver: You said it. I mean, that’s his favorite phrase, I would say, is one plus one equals three. And I remember when I started 12 years ago, I was like, “I don’t know what that means.”
Brad Johnson: Now you do.
Claude Silver: Now I do.
Brad Johnson: Okay. So, for those that have followed Gary online, and I have since the early days, he had something, he had a thesis that I believe to be very true, and it has to tie into the culture you all are building there. He said something to the effect of, “The only person to be is your authentic self.” And I think in the world of social media influencers, which he paved that way early, there’s a lot of fakeness. Here’s who I am on Instagram. Here’s who I am in real life. And his thesis was someday the truth’s going to come out because somebody’s going to capture on video yelling at an employee or whatever. So, if that’s who you truly are, you should just truly be that person and own it rather than fake it.
And Gary has colorful language. You know, some people are into that, some people are not. But he’s always just owned it, said, “This is the way I talk.” So, I’m curious how has that translated to culture and just showing up as a leader that is who he is, and, I guess, just how does that play out internally?
Claude Silver: Massively, because what you see is what you get from your founder and CEO, who’s very operational and in the work with us. It allows us to also be what you see is what you get. It’s easier for someone like me or you, right? Because you and I can walk into any place and probably feel like we belong. So, we have to be very conscious that there’s people that don’t look like us, that aren’t as able-bodied as us, that don’t think like us, right? And so, I look at neurodivergency. I look at all the spectrums and the colors of the rainbow to make sure that we are creating a culture that is not only welcoming, it’s belonging, so you can belong here. So, I wrote a book recently called Be Yourself at Work. It could just be called Be Yourself.
It’s all about showing up as you because we hired you. Brad, we spent three months, six months looking for you. You talked to seven different hiring managers. You talked to me. You talked to Gary. On your first day of work, of course, we want that Brad. We don’t want the Brad that all of a sudden speaks like a PhD or a robot. We hired you because of you could do the skills, but because of your quirks, your curiosity, your fandom, your whatever. So, the deal here is it is something I work on, I would say 24/7, even when I’m sleeping, is: How are we making sure that people feel safe? How do we make sure that they feel comfortable being themselves, or slowly stripping off some of the armor that they come in with?
Because that’s what we want. And the more people come in without the armor or take it off, the more innovative we are, the more creative we are, the more willing we are to take a swing. The more swings you take, the more homers you’re actually going to hit. So, because he is what you see is what you get, because I am what you see is what you get, there is no mask here. And that, I think, is such a piece of the winning formula. We want people to take up space. We want people to be big in the room. We want people to be able to share their ideas and their thoughts and not worry if someone’s going to steal the idea or all the political stuff. And I think the other thing that you touched on, and I will mention about Gary and myself and many of us, is a lot of us are either sports fans or we were athletes or are athletes.
And to be an athlete, you really must know what it’s like to work with a team, whether or not you are Serena Williams, so you’re solo, or you’re Kobe, and you’re working with a team. Serena has an entire team behind her that gets her out of bed. So, it is really like we are great when we are coming from the we, not I. When it’s very apparent that when Brad wins, Claude wins, and when Claude wins, Brad wins. It’s all the same.
Brad Johnson: On that note, how do you develop that acceptance sort of culture without being soft, like, “Oh, it’s okay,” you know? Because from what I see, and you all kind of broadcast, I mean, Gary’s very much like, “Oh, here’s a meeting I’m running. There’s a camera in there. And it’s probably getting fed out on IG.” So, how do you all keep that acceptance with still producing results at the same time?
Claude Silver: Yeah. I’m glad you brought that up. So, I don’t believe in the word soft skills. I believe that they’re necessary life skills. Like, please, someone tell me that becoming accountable is a soft skill. It’s freaking hard. Someone told me that working on your gratitude is a soft skill. No, it’s not. It’s super hard. These are life skills. These are necessary universal skills. So, I think that’s the first thing I’m going to say about any of the softness. Now, we have a massive ability to coddle and create empowerment. “Good job. Good job. Way to go. Here’s a rose, here’s a rose, here’s a rose.” It’s not how we fly. We definitely are a company that believes in frequent feedback. We call it kind candor.
Radical Candor is a book that Kim Scott wrote. Great book. We’ve made it ours and call it kind candor. Why? Because who we are internally, who we are as a culture, is a kind, collaborative, warm culture, and we want to win. These are people that are ambitious. In order to be ambitious, you must understand responsibility and accountability. What you signed up for, what you are now accountable for, is written down on a piece of paper somewhere. It’s in some kind of sheet. You are going to run this account. You are going to go out and try to hunt for these types of verticals. You are going to whatever it is. So, the energy that you get when you walk in the door is, “Wow. We’re going someplace. We’re going someplace.”
You can feel the momentum, and people are fueled by momentum and the idea and the practicality of progress. You and I want to grow. Every single person in there, what do you think they say almost every day? “When is my next promotion? When is my next ability to get promoted? When can I get a review?” And so, what we need to do is be consistent about that. When we talk about empathy, I’m not saying to you, “Brad, I’m so sorry you have a splinter. Let me take care of that for you.” What I’m saying is, “That sucks. You have a splinter. Did you know that we have a first aid kit over there?” That’s still empathy.
Brad Johnson: Yeah.
Claude Silver: I’m still like, “Dude. I’m sorry. That hurts, and I know and trust that you can take care of your splinter. You don’t need me.” That is called ownership, and so Brad goes and takes that ownership, whether or not it’s a splinter or he’s going to have the biggest meeting with CMO Marc Pritchard. You walk in there knowing you’ve got an entire team behind you that believes in you and will be honest with you, too.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Well, I see some really cool things with your culture that you all have created there, and also how it shows up externally because you broadcast a lot of it. And one of the things we say here at Triad is A players only. And that takes ownership. That takes not being coddled. Go get it done. But we also enjoy ourselves and have fun. And I kind of get that vibe from you all as well. So, is there a filter that you all have? Because I would assume you and your team are kind of in charge of filtering that right talent into the organization. Are there if they have this, yes, if they don’t have this, no, or are they just kind of a little grayer than that?
Claude Silver: Well, things are a bit gray, I will say, because it’s human behavior, and we’re talking about humans, and we don’t live in utopia. I want to go back to one thing before we go forward to answer the question. We are okay with B players. We’re absolutely okay because a B player is a steady Eddie. A B player will get the job done. A B player might be phenomenal with culture, might be phenomenal with making people feel like they belong, might be a great teacher, and they still might be a steady Eddie. So, we’re good with that. We don’t have a problem with B.
Brad Johnson: May I ask how you tell the difference between an A player and a B player? How do you define that?
Claude Silver: Yeah, which answers the next question. So, when you’re already with us, we have a set of core competencies. Each and every department and each and every level within that department has the same core competencies, but they evolve as you evolve. So, our foundational core competencies that you will get reviewed on, Brad: growth mindset, communication, accountability, and leadership. And there are buckets that say, as a director, you will be doing dot, dot, dot, dot as a VP. You are the bigger person in every situation, so forth and so on. Then you have functional core competencies, which is the skills that take to do your job and do your job as an expert.
So, if you are in data, you know how to create the dashboard, you know how to tell stories in the dashboard, all of that stuff. So, those are the core competencies, and that’s how we are going to review people. And then, because of the belief and trust that Gary has put in me, then I get to go in and look at it from a slightly different level and layer, and that’s a whole another story, a whole another fun story. Now, when we are hiring you, I told you I did away with college education. I also did away with the word ‘culture fit’ because it does not mean anything. What? It’s a culture fit that you know you like trading cards, and Gary likes trading cards? Well, how do I know you can do the job, right? I like surfing and you like surfing. You’re hired. Well, not anymore.
So, it’s skill set fit and culture addition. So, the fact that you are an incredible strategist and you know how to create cohorts and audiences and segment them, that is fantastic, as those are your hard skills, and you’re a card collector. That’s cool. But we’re going to hire you because you can do this job very, very well, and we can see that there could be a trajectory there. And so, we have an entire way of looking at that. I don’t use psychometric testing. I don’t want to use psychometric testing, but you are also going to meet with at least six or seven people during their interview process.
Brad Johnson: Psychometric testing, would that be like a Kolbe or StrengthsFinder, some of that sort of stuff?
Claude Silver: StrengthsFinder, and there are companies that do that, and I’m sure you know AI is making that faster and faster. I’m just still I’m a human touch type of person. Maybe when we’re 20,000, but at 2,000, you can talk to everyone.
Brad Johnson: Can a B player make it to the top as a leader?
Claude Silver: 1,001%. How can they make it to the top as a leader? They can understand that leadership is working for their team, not the other way around. They can understand that their job as a leader is to turn those teammates into exceptional players. They can understand that as a leader, they’re going to coach. They don’t have all the answers. They don’t need to have all the answers, right? So, leadership is definitely not a badge that you wear here, and you walk in every day, and you go, “I’m the leader. Watch out.” That’s old school. Many of us have already been at those companies, right? A leader is how do you show up? Are you able to see the gray, or do you only see binary? Because that’s not going to work.
Are you okay that human beings are messy? We all mess up from time to time. Are you okay that we are going to need you as a leader to be able to be the one that we go to when you lose that account? And are you going to be standing up and being able to point thumbs at yourself and then fingers rather than, “Well, they did wrong, and they did wrong.” There’s so much that goes into leadership. Do you care? Do you care genuinely? So, yes, a B player can be a leader, and a B player can become an A. A B player can also become a C. And there’s only so much we can do about that, right? Because I can’t change your behavior, but I can certainly coach your behavior if I need to.
Brad Johnson: You’ve said the word coaching a couple of times, which I love when you talk about leadership. I heard a quote the other day: “Dogs get trained, humans get coached.” So, when you look at leadership and coaching, because a lot of companies would say, “We have an onboard training.”
Claude Silver: Great.
Brad Johnson: You’ve got this residency. I would assume you see it just based on your language more as coaching, and can they grow into what the company needs? How do you define the difference between those two?
Claude Silver: Well, first and foremost, I created the People and Experience department 11 years ago, which is normally called HR. They’re called People and Experience because that’s what we’re doing, right? I’ve trained them all in psychological safety. They’ve all gotten trained in how to be a coach. All of those things. Why? Because I don’t want people coming to an HR department and looking for therapy. I don’t want the HR PET department to just be saying, “The blackout dates are here. The U.S. is off on July 4. Da, da, da.” No, you can’t. No, you can’t. We are a people and experience team and a culture that is very, “Yes, and…” “Yes, that’s true,” and, “Have you thought about it this way,” right?
So, that’s the first thing I want to say is the nucleus who you’re talking to right now. If Gary was here, he would say, “Brad, Claude sets the emotional framework for the company.” So, that’s the nucleus, and then we need to make sure that our leaders, our actual leaders, are up for the challenge of being coaches and being leaders because a coach doesn’t have to have the answers. A coach is here to empower you to take ownership over your life, over your work, over your job, right? I’m going to guide you. I’m going to be here with you. I’m not going to let you go, but I want you to step into that place. I want you to take up space. I want you to be able to go talk to a senior leader at another company, right? Because if not, then who does all the talking?
Gary and the top three A players, well, we can’t scale that way. And you also have to take into account different cultures operate very differently. And if we’re global, the APAC team is wired a little bit differently than the American team, which makes sense. The ability to help someone feel and see that they have ownership is what a coach does.
Brad Johnson: How does your company know when you have to let somebody go?
Claude Silver: Yeah. So, we know when we have to let someone go for a variety of reasons. One, they are cynical, and it brings the teams down, and we cannot change that behavior. We’ve talked to them. We’ve tried to work with them. They can’t get out of their own way. It’s who they are. That’s just not going to fly here. It’s not going to fly in the face of the optimism that we’re fueled by. Not toxic positivity. Optimism, possibility. So, you have to be able to see the gray and to be okay with the uncertainty. The other thing is you may be a very poor performer in project management. We are also, though, going to see if you could be a better performer in client partnership.
Maybe you’re great with people, so we’re going to put people through kind of the ringer before we let someone go. That’s always fair because we’ve invested in you, and now, of course, we don’t want to lose that IP that you have. We don’t want to lose you. So, we’re so…
Brad Johnson: They’re repositioned to another seat on the bus.
Claude Silver: Yep, and let’s see if that flies. Now, there could be someone that it’s just not clicking. It’s not for them. We’re too fast, right? We’re too fast. We change too much. It just hasn’t clicked, and so then we know that we have to make a tough decision. Now, I will tell you to this day, Gary still approves every single person that we terminate.
Brad Johnson: Really?
Claude Silver: Every single person. One of the things we created, maybe in COVID too, was an alumni network. So, that came out of the fact that there were so many business owners and CMOs and whatnot texting Gary, emailing Gary, “Hey, I’m looking for a social media manager. Hey, I’m looking for a sports manager, whatever, whatever.” And so, what we did was we took all of our alumni and anyone that we are letting go or have let go, we put them all into a sheet. We’ve spoken to them many times, and we see if we can match them with an outside position. We can’t guarantee the job, but we can definitely, through Gary’s network, introduce them to the person at Netflix that they want to meet, right?
And so, that’s another way to continue to create this great ecosystem and also fuel the company. We get a lot of boomerangs here, too. There’s people that want to come back because there’s something here that they’ve never gotten anywhere else, and I think it comes from the belief in possibility, the emphasis we put on your emotional intelligence and your ability to regulate your emotion and be an adult, and the disruptiveness of what we’re doing in the world of marketing and advertising, which is exciting to be about.
Brad Johnson: Well, you speak about possibility. From the early days, Gary says he’s going to own the New York Jets someday. I know he’s a lifelong Jets fan when it comes to the NFL. I actually believe him.
Claude Silver: Yeah.
Brad Johnson: Like, he’s so passionate, so authentic, and he’s building really cool businesses. I think someday he’ll have a bank account he can afford it. Is that one of the things like drives possibility? He makes these outlandish comments, but he’s like, “Nope, we’re doing it. We’re going to the moon,” whatever that is.
Claude Silver: Oh yeah, I don’t think Gary minces his words.
Brad Johnson: I think that’s fair.
Claude Silver: Definitely don’t think he speaks for the sake of speaking. That is one thing I’ll say. So, for example, when he and I sat down, and he’s like, “You’re going to be the Chief Heart Officer.” I said, “Great. Well, what are we building here? I’ve been here for 16 months. What are we building?” And he said, “We’re building the single greatest human organization in the history of time.” “Great. That’s my north star now.” Okay, I have that. That’s a north star that I give everywhere. It’s aspirational. I said, “Gary, how do we know if I’m successful?” Here’s my job description, Brad. “You’ll touch every single human being and infuse the agencies with empathy.” “Okay. Well, tell me how to do that.” I have to make that up. I have to figure that out. I have to feel that. But it’s also aspirational.
“Is there a day I will be done?” “Never.” Right? It’s aspirational, so is buying the Jets. It’s aspirational. But I do think buying the Jets, I do think changing this world of marketing and advertising, these are things that he will achieve.
Brad Johnson: You said he has to sign off on everybody you let go. So, you’re at approximately 2,200 employees as we record this, July 2026. Is he a part of every hiring still, or have you all outgrown that?
Claude Silver: Oh man, we outgrew that a long time ago. However, he is a part of the senior, senior hire, for sure. At the end of the day, he needs to sign off on… He’s a feeler. He has to sign off on like, does this feel right in his gut? Just like I do. He and I operate on a lot of intuition, which is difficult to be black and white about. But also, he needs to see that this is a person that is maybe perhaps stronger than anyone else we have right now or will be a phenomenal number two. So, he signs off on the very, very senior hires across the globe.
Brad Johnson: I want to touch on something that has impacted how I create content and just how I think about building a business. Gary had this concept, I’m sure he still does, of document, don’t create. So, I think of, I mean, he’s a prolific content creator. But a lot of it’s almost like a reality television show where he’ll be hosting a meeting, maybe have some random people in there for coaching. You all are recording it, clipping it up, feeding it out to the internet, which is awesome. But I would also think sometimes being the leader of culture and heart there at Vayner can be a double-edged sword, where it’s like you put something out and somebody didn’t like how they showed up, or a team member got offended. How do you balance those two of ultra transparency without people getting worked up or feeling hurt about it?
Claude Silver: Yeah, it’s actually something I don’t even have to think about that often. I would say because most of the time, there’s a willingness to be attached to Gary and Gary’s content. There’s also a celebrityness about it. There’s also, you know, something fun. I mean, maybe he’s in a meeting, and he’s rocking and rolling, and you’re a part of that meeting, learning something. So, it’s very, very seldom that I need to pay attention to that. The things I have to pay more attention to are, have we hired creators that don’t want to be in content? That’s different. So, if we hired you for a Unilever brand, you’re a creator. The expectation is that you’re going to be in your shot.
And then you say, “I don’t feel comfortable being on camera, Claude.” And then I say, “Oh, okay. Well, we’ve got a miss here.” So, that’s something we have to look at in the interview period, right, is how comfortable are you on camera if you have that type of role? But I would say for the other times that people are in those meetings, I think there’s something fabulous about it. I think that people probably find some joy and some surprise and delight when they see themselves on camera. It’s not like they’re picking their nose. I mean, they’re learning something. They’re involved in a meeting. And one of the reasons that Gary does that is because it is a wonderful way, again, to learn by osmosis. Being close to him, hearing how he’s articulating this to Budweiser is pretty cool. “Wow, I didn’t think about that.” He’s like a magic man, and he’s an alchemist. He’s an alchemist.
Brad Johnson: He’s like Don Draper in Mad Men.
Claude Silver: Yes.
Brad Johnson: I feel like he just flows. It’s just part of who he is.
Claude Silver: It’s part of who he is, and it’s in like how awesome is that to work with someone who’s… He’s just dynamic.
Brad Johnson: Did you all help produce Super Bowl commercials in the most recent Super Bowl?
Claude Silver: Yes, we did.
Brad Johnson: Are you allowed to say some of the commercials you helped create? Because I think a lot of people wouldn’t even know that.
Claude Silver: Yeah, I’m not sure, but I’m going to tell you that last year we did Duracell with Tom Brady. And I am spacey on who we did this past year, which is too bad, but we probably did something for Pepsi. We usually do a lot for their portfolio. We’ve done things for Planters Peanuts with JLo. We’ve done Scott’s Miracle-Gro with John Travolta. These are all in the past. That’s not our bread and butter. And we don’t like to make commercials, but for a sports event like that, where you’ve got a billion eyeballs, that’s where you want to be.
Brad Johnson: Would you say you all specialize more in brands and helping them with their social footprint, kind of social media, with how your all business grew up?
Claude Silver: No, I would say we are absolutely strategists. I would say we are strategists first, and when I say strategists, creative, media, but certainly, where is the attention? Where can we be most relevant today? DripDrop. Where can we be most relevant today? Bausch + Lomb. Like where? And so, we have people that are not only community-managing those channels, but they’re looking to see where little chit chats happening on Reddit, where little chit chat about this product is happening over here on Bluesky, and trying to see if we can create dynamite with some content there.
Brad Johnson: How has AI impacted how your company operates on that front?
Claude Silver: So, we’re all locked into Gemini. We’ve been using it for almost a year and a half now. The efficiencies are hand over fist. They’re just crazy what people are able to do now, even in terms of ideating and like brainstorming. So, I would say it has really, really, really sped us up. We have certain legalities that we have to follow, obviously, when we’re talking creative. But I don’t know anyone that is not working with AI right now at the company, which is great because we’ve really, really spoon-fed them training and development, like mandatory training and development for a good year.
Brad Johnson: So, I would assume part of that was under your umbrella, “Hey, we need to infuse this skill set into our team.” So, you were helping bring in speakers or coaches to help level up on that front?
Claude Silver: Oh yeah, we’ve got a phenomenal coach who does a daily. You can bring him a problem or a thought, and he can help you walk through the prompts and walk through the decision tree to get to maybe where you want to go. So, we’ve done a lot of that. Most of the time, we have in-house experts that they’re hobbyists. They just so happen to be like a hobbyist with Claude or a hobbyist with Chat. So, we don’t have to seek out in a lot of cases what it is we’re bringing in because AI has been in the zeitgeist. It wasn’t just brand new. So, that’s what I’ll say. What we do need to do is make sure that people continue to play with the tools because the train left the tracks, right, left the station, and it’s very difficult to get caught up right now.
Brad Johnson: Yeah.
Claude Silver: You have to be in there using it, and we obviously have to hire people that use it already. And I would say for anyone out there looking for a job, please be using it. Understand the tools.
Brad Johnson: So, it sounds like you built an organization. It’s almost like study hall, and there’s a tutor, an AI tutor, walking around, “Hey, I’ve got a question.” Boom. Direct them right over there, and they’re organizationally going and helping people grow there.
Claude Silver: Yes, I mean they have office hours for sure, but we also have created our own bot internally where you can ask it a ton of questions, and you can ask them a ton of questions about how to do work within Vayner or how to be an employee of Vayner, whether or not you want to know about your payroll, or is it okay if I use an AI image of Taylor Swift, right? Those things are really important to know, and it’s been locked and loaded, and you’ll get a current answer on, “No, you may not use an AI image of Taylor Swift.”
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Well, we’re getting towards the end here, so a couple of rapid fire, and I’ll let you get to what’s next. I’ve loved this conversation, Claude. Okay, so you sit in a room, and we were talking before we hit record. Gary has had this knack for here is where the attention is going. He was early on YouTube. He was early on Twitter. Early on LinkedIn. I feel like everywhere attention has gone, he was there before it got there. If you were going to give financial advisors advice, here’s looking out into the future where the attention is going. Where should they be looking? Where should they be building a platform?
Claude Silver: I definitely think you need to be looking at the younger generation, which you’re already doing at Gen Z, but you have to look at Gen Alpha. And I would say, either figure out their spending habits and how they spend, or create it for them, because they’re still in high school. They’re still just graduating college right now, and so I think they are incredibly hungry, and they’re sponges. What we don’t want to give them is what you and I grew up with. We don’t want to hand someone a checkbook anymore, right? Because that’s obsolete. We don’t necessarily want to hand someone an ATM anymore. We want to make sure that wherever a person wants to spend, they can spend.
Wherever they want to grow their money, they can grow their money. So, is it the next Robin Hood? But is it in a you know, forgive me for saying, a TikTokable or Instagramable platform? I don’t know, but we need to be thinking of how this cohort will consume, and it might not be through a phone much longer. It might be through glasses. So, what are we doing?
Brad Johnson: Interesting. Well, final question here, which you’re the heart behind Vayner, and I know you would pass that on to a lot of your team just based on this conversation, and I’m sure how you lead. But one of the things we do here, we live in finance, and sometimes if you deal with money, it can consume you. And the whole idea between Do Business, Do Life is how do we build businesses that bless our life that don’t become our life for ourselves, for our teams, and I feel like that’s very aligned with what you all are building there. So, I would love to hear Claude’s definition of what is do business, do life to you.
Claude Silver: Yeah, I’ve really been thinking about it since I’ve been looking at the sign, and I have been thinking, is it do life do business, or is it do business do life? And I’ll tell you why. Because we are caught with work-life balance. That’s a phrase that I think should die. I think we need to empower people to have a life, and work is a part of life. So, that’s how I’ve been looking at your sign, which is, is business a part of my life? Obviously, commerce is. But so, anyway, that’s just where my philosophy has gone while we’ve been speaking, which is this is our life, and what we do with our life can be a number of different things. So, in your case, one feeds the other, and in order to have, I believe, a happy life, you need to have a relevant, successful, ambitious business.
Brad Johnson: Well said. Well, we did the sign right then because I feel like the foundational piece is at the bottom that supports everything above. Well, Claude, I’ll let you get to what’s next. Love the conversation. Thanks for taking the time to hop on here. Thanks, Zach, if you happen to be listening for setting this up, and I’ve just loved every minute, Claude. So, I appreciate you.
Claude Silver: Appreciate you too.
Brad Johnson: Until next time.
Claude Silver: Bye.
[END]
