The Exact Framework for Practical Social Media Marketing, Building a Community, and the Scalable Content Model

Summary

The GaryVee Audio Experience

Episode: The Exact Framework for Practical Social Media Marketing, Building a Community, and the Scalable Content Model

Date: October 11, 2025
Host: Gary Vaynerchuk

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Brief Overview

In this dynamic roundtable episode, Gary Vaynerchuk leads an intimate, in-depth discussion with a diverse group of entrepreneurs and business professionals. The episode centers on practical social media marketing frameworks, strategies for scalable content production, and the nuts and bolts of building engaged communities. From personal branding in niche industries to launching product startups and innovating local marketing, Gary offers tailored advice, actionable tactics, and motivational insights. The conversation is a masterclass in deploying content, leveraging platforms, and thinking entrepreneurially—packed with memorable advice, real-world examples, and plenty of Gary’s trademark candor.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Frameworks for Scalable Social Media Content

• The Content ‘Funnel’ Model

  • Gary advocates the "pillar content" approach: produce high-value ‘hero’ content and then subdivide ("chop down") into numerous derivative micro-content pieces for different platforms and contexts ([05:10]).
  • Repurposing evergreen content is crucial. Many creators "leave a lot on the table" by underutilizing existing material.
    • Quote: “If you’ve done 200 pieces of original pillar content, you probably have 4,000 pieces of micro content that could be brand or performance based as a funnel acquisition.” – Gary ([10:51])

• Post-Production and Remixing

  • Split screens, real-time social commentary, animation overlays, and reaction videos are valuable, especially when new filming is limited.
  • Remix old content for topical or platform-specific relevance (LinkedIn vs. TikTok).
  • Example: Gary references using clips from 2016 and contextualizing them with new commentary to drive current engagement ([07:22]-[11:45]).

2. Content is Platform-Contextual and Evergreen

• Adapting to Pop Culture, Platform, and Distribution
  • Making content timely with relevant events (e.g., a baseball player losing teeth) increases resonance.
  • Different channels require different tones and calls-to-action (LinkedIn for clients, TikTok for virality).
  • Quote: “The remix, it’s the DJing of the assets in perpetuity at scale, contextual to the distribution.” – Gary ([12:10])

3. Getting Others Involved in Content Creation

• Collaborating with High-Earning Experts
  • When seeking expertise from high earners (e.g., surgeons), consider what makes them care—sometimes higher payment, sometimes appeals to esteem, sometimes demonstrating impact or offering shared visibility ([05:10], [10:51]).

4. Underdog Strategies for Entering Dominated Markets

• Going After Goliaths

  • Don’t fear “sassing” or poking market incumbents (as in medical devices).
  • Poking the bear can generate micro market-share growth, attention, and even unexpected opportunities.
  • Quote: “The only way David beats Goliath is by going at it… You poking them will give you micro market share growth.” – Gary ([14:26])

• Pricing & Positioning

  • Relevance often beats price. Keep confident even when outspent or out-credentialed by incumbents ([16:15]).

5. Handling Crisis as a CEO

• Balancing Family and Business in Life’s Adversities
  • When personal or family crises hit, the business must come second. Avoid regret by prioritizing what matters most.
  • Quote: “I don’t think there’s a single person on earth who chose their business over their family that feels great about it when they get older.” – Gary ([16:58])

6. D2C Product Launch and Validation

• Car Security Device Startup Case Study

  • Run simulated sales (fake checkout sites) before mass production to get real data on product pricing ([26:00]-[27:39]).
  • Use video thank-yous at “checkout” to build loyalty and community among early adopters.

• Community Building Pre-Launch

  • Launch Facebook groups, Discords, and nurture small groups of loyal early users ([59:02]).
  • Viral marketing via user-generated content on TikTok (comedic ‘skits’ with the device), and influencer seeding at launch.

• Influencer Marketing

  • Both micro- and macro-influencers are valuable. Use TikTok’s culture and humor to maximize virality ([60:44]-[65:10]).

7. Localized B2B Lead Generation and Community Building

• Leveraging Facebook Groups
  • Start hyper-local and industry-specific groups (e.g., “Sacramento Business Alliance”) to build community and trusted authority ([28:02]-[29:15]).
  • Being the group’s host positions you as a local leader and provides marketing leverage.

8. Hyperlocal Restaurant & Hospitality Marketing

• Standing Out with Irresistible Offerings

  • In competitive hospitality markets (Vegas), create outrageous, visually unique menu items (e.g., $100 burger, $99 pizza slice) to spark viral social content ([40:53]-[42:58]).
  • Hire a full-time person to track and DM influencers currently in the area, inviting them to try and share these items.

• Accepting Market Realities

  • Don’t fight economic or traffic realities—expand intelligently or differentiate rather than relying on nostalgia or legacy.

9. Direct-to-Consumer Merch for Athletes & Legends

• Community and Demand Creation
  • Fragmentation in talent and merchandise markets creates opportunity, but the key is execution and building real demand, not just better percentages ([44:40]-[48:19]).
  • Content, virtual access, and cross-promotion can help, but organizational excellence trumps ideology.

10. Investing Superstore and Next-Gen Fintech

• Market Entrant Realities and Content as Differentiator
  • Consolidation platforms need a robust moat; community is powerful but hard to scale.
  • Content is the lowest-friction path to community.
  • TikTok and green screen social commentary can be effective for financial education, especially for the younger generation ([57:22]-[58:10]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• [05:10] Gary Vaynerchuk:
  “The repurposing thing is a very important combo because as most of you probably know, so much of my world from a brand building standpoint is predicated on that...I've put enough film on...YouTube that if I remix it in perpetuity, I should be able to be effective with the evergreen content.”

• [14:26] Gary Vaynerchuk:
  “By sassing them as much as possible. The only way David beats Goliath is by going at it. What are they going to do?...You poking them will give you micro market share growth.”

• [16:58] Gary Vaynerchuk:
  “I don’t think there’s a single person on earth who chose their business over their family that feels great about it when they get older.”

• [32:12] Gary Vaynerchuk:
  “The number one thing with social media ads that everybody misunderstands is it's the creative, not the media.”

• [40:53] Gary Vaynerchuk:
  “I think you should create a $200 hot dog... But you have got to...make it so visually interesting that when the influencer comes for the free thing they're going to want to make...it's good content.”

• [48:19] Gary Vaynerchuk:
  “The demand creation is always going to have the leverage. Not how good is the deal.”

• [57:22] Gary Vaynerchuk:
  “Content while you're debating is a good idea. You starting a TikTok and being aggressive about it on investing 101 advice from your perspective is a really good idea.”

• [65:10] Gary Vaynerchuk:
  “Right now, everyone on Instagram that's one dimensional, Instagram's crying. Their organic reach is down. It's harder...We are in it right now, and we've probably got another 12 to 24 months where you're just getting better deals from TikTok than TikTok is getting from you. And then they tip...It's the real estate version of attention. You either buy beachfront property first or you don't.”

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [05:10] – [11:45]: Framework for repurposing and remixing content, and the importance of post-production.
• [13:48] – [16:31]: Strategies for underdog startups challenging incumbents, pricing, and leveraging relevance over price.
• [16:45] – [17:43]: Navigating personal/family crisis as a CEO—prioritizing family over business.
• [21:09] – [27:39]: Car security device D2C startup journey, validation, and creative pre-launch strategies.
• [28:02] – [29:15]: Hyperlocal Facebook group strategies for B2B and service businesses.
• [32:12] – [32:43]: The real driver of paid media: creative variation.
• [40:53] – [43:58]: Leveraging outrageous menu items and influencer DM strategies in hospitality/local business.
• [44:40] – [48:19]: D2C merch for athletic legends: execution, team-building, and demand (not just percentages).
• [53:06] – [58:10]: Superstore fintech concept; moat limitations, why content/community first.
• [59:02] – [65:10]: Building community pre-launch for new products, influencer campaigns, TikTok strategy, and buying “beachfront property” of attention.

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Engaging Takeaways

• You don’t need new content, you need new angles. Remix your evergreen content for new platforms and cultural moments.
• Posting is not enough; distribution and creative contextualization (the “remix/DJ” mentality) is everything.
• Sassing the market leader is often the best strategy for an underdog.
• Regret comes from trading family for business—choose wisely in moment of crisis.
• Test new products with simulated sales—get real data, not just surveys.
• Content builds community before tech platforms can.
• TikTok is today’s attention “beachfront property”—move fast, experiment boldly.

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Summary

This episode distills Gary Vee's most current and practical frameworks for social media marketing and entrepreneurial growth. It balances actionable advice (how to repurpose, remix, and distribute content at scale; why to prioritize creative over media spend) with substantial real-world case analyses and philosophical guidance. Whether you’re building a D2C product, boosting a B2B service, or competing as a local restaurant, Gary’s strategies revolve around relentless content innovation, community-first thinking, and staying ahead of the attention curve. The episode is packed with direct, jargon-free tactics, energetic motivational moments, and sharp reminders about what actually drives business success in 2025.

Transcript

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Podcast nation. Before I get you into today's podcast, big announcement. As you probably heard at this point, because I had John from Stan on the show, I am an investor advisor to an incredible startup called Stan. Stan Store. I'm sending you right now to Gary V.comGaryVee.com Stan go check this out. We've done a GaryVee Stan store challenge, which actually has a weekly call with me. This is built for everyone who's been affected honestly by my overall content. The tech stack, all these features, and the minimal costs per month that Stan Store has built is really the tool that was needed for this world that I envisioned when I wrote Crush it, when I wrote Crushing It. And this overall thing I'm thinking a lot about lately, which is the individual empire, right? This creator, entrepreneur, entrepreneur, creator economy that I think is going to eat up the oxygen. Very honestly, the thing that so many of you want in your life and the reason so many of you are not there yet is you've got the strategy for me. You've got the ambition within yourself, but you don't have the tools for you to fully maximize it. And I believe you can find that at Stan Store. Stan Store. But specifically, I want you to sign up for it through my challenge because I want to get access with you. And plus, there's a bunch of cool things. So if you want to go see those cool things, go to garyvee.com Stan S T A N Now to the podcast. This is the GaryVee audio experience.

[Ivan]

Ivan. I am a dentist by training. I do ed tech for dentists and we're actually moving to our medical to provide a medical device for them as well. That's also in the Central Valley.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Central Valley. Very nice.

[David Moeller]

My name is David Moeller. I'm a serial entrepreneur. Current startup is device smart device company.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Smart device company. How long you been doing it for?

[David Moeller]

Three years.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Nice. And where are you based?

[David Moeller]

Atlanta, Georgia.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Very nice.

[Donald]

How's it going?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Good to see you.

[Donald]

Donald Limac Capital mortgage broker with a.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

B2B model in the Bay Area. You met Russell a few months back. Yes, I remember.

[Ivan]

Herschel.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I remember. Good to see you again.

[Unnamed Stan Store Partner]

Good to see you.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Julia Richardson.

[Ian Matthews]

I'm in the restaurant business in Las Vegas.

[Paul Robillo]

Very nice.

[Ian Matthews]

Four little restaurants and brewing my brands out.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

How long you been doing it?

[Ian Matthews]

12 years.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Good for you. All in Vegas the whole time.

[Ian Matthews]

All in Vegas. Well, I know we had 10 outside and then.

[David Moeller]

Covid.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yeah, of course. Sounds tough. Yeah. Pleasure.

[David Moeller]

Thank you.

[Ian Matthews]

Ian Matthews from Washington D.C. and I'm.

[David Moeller]

Here with David, we same company. Building on what he said. Smart devices.

[Ian Matthews]

We're in the car security business. So it's a connected call on.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Understood. Real pleasure. Gary.

[Paul Robillo]

Paul Robillo.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Long time.

[Paul Robillo]

Yes.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Long time brother.

[Paul Robillo]

Yeah. So 2009.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yeah. It's really good to see you.

[Paul Robillo]

Yeah, great to see you. So three time founder, all in the investment space and want to build something else there. And then I have a bunch of URLs that I've been acquiring that I want to talk to you about.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I love it. I love it.

[Monique Frown]

Monique Frown. I run a organization that teaches life skills. I also work in film and television production, a little real estate investment and brand development for my husband. Legendary career. And, and, and, and film, entertainment, life.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

It's awesome. It's great to see you again.

[Monique Frown]

Great, thank you.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Great. Anybody else?

[Monique Frown]

Joe?

[Ian Matthews]

Nope.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

That's it. Good. We got a nice small group and we can get, we can go very deep today. So let's take advantage of that. So let's go back around and this is the time to get very selfish and be very direct with your question. I'm sure some people pick up nuances on it. Okay, you want me to go first?

[Ivan]

All right, I'll try to keep it. Try to keep concise.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

We're not time.

[Ivan]

We got three questions for you. Just a little bit of backstory on myself. I was very much like, like you as a kid, you know, hustler, immigrant parents, kind of a hard struggle there.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I ended up going to dental school.

[Ivan]

I got some really niche training in my field, which is great, but I graduated about 800 grand in student debt, which is crazy. But it's, it's normal in that I notice I was, you know, getting ready to come out and pay that debt and crush it. My daughter was born with a life threatening condition and so I couldn't really do that as a dentist. So I found another way. Published a book, sold thousands of copies and that turned into an online brand, which is now like my edtech business, which does better than I would have done if I would have done just regular clinical dentistry.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Good for you.

[Ivan]

So that builds a team around it. And now we're expanding to a private label medical device as well. So got a little, nice little business model taking some big, big steps in that. So my first question is I'm basically the bottleneck in my content creation. To create like the pillar hero content. I gotta be in there doing surgery or something and teaching something around that content. It's hard for me to constantly create that content. As the business owner, I'M trying to outsource that to other collaborators, but kind of having a hard time getting them to feed that funnel.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Other collaborators as in other people executing the actual surgery?

[Ivan]

Yes, getting other influencers or people doing surgery, feeding me that content so we can just repurpose it as a team and turn that into 20 pieces of content. Having a hard time feeding that funnel.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Why?

[Ivan]

Because these guys already make $500,000 a year. They don't really need me paying them thousand bucks for their content.

[Paul Robillo]

They do this on, you know, as charity, basically.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

So I want.

[Ivan]

How do I get them to buy into that or how do I feed the. The content funnel?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

There's a lot of things there. So the. Let's talk about the pillar content and the funnel is the model that, you know, obviously I'm very proud of, really working for you. Like macro hero, chop it down, make it, make that into content that's performing against the business. KPI, is that working?

[Ivan]

It does well when I can feed it, I can feed it myself.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

How many times are you refurbishing it?

[Ivan]

Adding new content?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

No, refurbishing the original content. Yeah. So the repurposing thing is a very important combo because as most of you probably know, so much of my world from a brand building standpoint is predicated on that. And so much of that is predicated on me being filmed doing stuff. And that completely got eliminated 18 months ago. I wasn't flying, we wasn't doing this in person. So what ended up happening is at first we did a lot of stuff through zoom and things of that nature, but that obviously is a very one dimensional visual creative. There's only so many times you could see me with in a T shirt that you know and the context matters and in feed it matters. So what ended up happening? When I analyzed the last 18 months, I was thinking about on the flight out here, ironically, because I saw a piece of content do extremely well from three years ago in the last 24 hours is wow, if drock. And I never film another thing. I've put enough film on paper, on wax, on YouTube that if I remix it in perpetuity, I should be able to be effective with the evergreen content. One of the things most content creators don't take advantage enough of is the repurposing. Truly understand what that means. I'll give you an example. I if you've got. I assume I'm making some assumptions, so keep me in line here. If your content is you performing when you're doing that, are you also looking at the Camera and teaching and, like, going through it sometimes.

[Ivan]

Yes.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

So I'm sure you probably have seen this. The. One of the things you can do immediately is how many of the. How many would you say, pillar pieces of content have you created? A lot.

[Ivan]

200.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Great. So right off the top, there's probably an ungodly amount of content to be made where you're split screening like I do the original piece of content, and now you're just social commentating contextually on top of it with other variables. Right. So to me, what. What's really interesting about the way I think about content, which I do think for every business here, from Vegas restaurants to yours to medical devices, you know, the whole world is predicated on, in. On communication and, and does that create consideration to buy something? What is interesting about how I look at what I do and what I see working is my content is pretty evergreen. Literally. In my hotel, before I came here right now, I just produced a split screen from DailyVee Episode 22 from March 16, 2016, where the person's question was, how do you do what you do? And the two answers were empathy and gratitude. And here we are five years later, and it's like everything that I continue to say. And so I added a piece of content to it right now, and I'm pretty damn sure that. Oh, I'm sorry. So here's this Q And a from DailyVee 2022, my split screen, my additional context went a little bit into gratitude. And this is all improv. In my hotel room, I took the cup of coffee that I had a little coffee lover. I'm like, this is full. I'm grateful for this. What's in here? Because I have more than most. And then when I sent it to the team, actually, this is. Why not show you. So in the WhatsApp thread where my team lives, where this was the original piece of content they sent me because we're. We're doing this, we have the same problem you do, Right? Right. So here's the question. This will now be a visual split screen somewhere. I'm going, you've seen those. From me, I would say empathy. Right? And so I'm answering. And the second one, when gay hits rock bottom, what wakes you back up when you really hit it? Gratitude. Right. And so then I fend. And literally, March 16, 2026. Shit's consistent out here, my friends. If you deploy these mental mindsets and at the end of this, into it, keep pushing. And then, and then what I sent to the team was, I want the title to say you have more than most. What's interesting about that? What's interesting for everybody said so this is gonna be titled you have more than most. I just split screened a piece five years later. I just realized I said 2026. So we'll have to make a joke of that in the post edit. This is a pretty substantially different piece of content that I'm gonna write copy to that's gonna really focus on the gratitude part of the split screen. But I have to do this because I'm at the mercy of the pillar content production not being where it's at. Cause we haven't started moving. If you've done 200 pieces of original pillar content, you probably have 4,000 pieces of micro content that could be brand or performance based as a funnel acquisition. So I think that's what you have to think about. I think the concept of the other thing to think through is in a world of 500k, $100,000 framework that you created, they make 500k a year. They're doing this basically for charity. If you look at James is pillar content as something that extracts 57 pieces of creative for you, because you create post production from it, it might put you in a position where you're willing to pay 5,000 instead of 1,000. So I think the answer to the question is a much deeper thought of post production, which you don't even have to be the pillar, the bottleneck dub. I'm doing the split screens. You probably should as well because it's. It's much more impactful. But don't underestimate hiring an animator or other people where the split screen or the post creative content could be post produced in animation or post produced in video or overlay wording. So it's post production.

[Ivan]

So I realize I'm leaving a lot on the table by not repurposing that enough.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Okay. And what's fun is where I was going earlier, I didn't finish the thought. I'm glad I remembered is what I'm saying is evergreen. That's how I got to that 2016 thing. What I'm saying I'll never change to the day I die the slang term, the nuance to something that just happened. So I'm in the evergreen business. And then daily you're using the context of your industry of the moment. I mean, tomorrow in, you know, in a week in the World Series, a player may take a ball to the mouth and lose all his teeth. And that's a pop culture moment that might have you Being able to. Over which will lead to so much more relevance. Right. He may make a video of a dish in his, of his. One of his restaurants four years ago, but something might happen in Vegas tomorrow that if you post produce on top of it the way I'm talking about. So it's really the Remix, it's the DJing of the assets in perpetuity at scale, contextual to the distribution. So for example, to continue to layer on this for everybody. And I'm going deep on this because this is an answer for all of you. It's not only pop culture relevance like Cody Bellinger losing four teeth and maybe you can figure out what to do with that. It's also distribution. The way you would. The way I would talk if I knew that I'm posting this on LinkedIn to get clients is gonna be different than the way I would talk if I'm gonna put on TikTok. Two platforms that even four years ago weren't even in play when we first met. It was just Twitter and Facebook. That's it. And so it's post production not only for what's happening culturally or topical, it's post production for the distribution too. Those 200 pieces of content, if they've mainly been posted inside of Facebook and Instagram, have they been done for pre roll YouTube? Have we made them for TikTok? You may never need to do anything again. You have enough work for the next five years in what we just talked about for the last 10 minutes. Right? Okay. Is it okay? I have two more questions. Is that all right? So this one's going a little. It's a little different.

[Ivan]

So the medical device space and dental implants, they're all huge companies. They're all really, really big dogs. We're the underdog. I've had even CEO of one of them is tell me, you know, you better not enter the space. You're just going to wipe the floor with you. Basically, yeah.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

That's usually the biggest reason I would.

[Paul Robillo]

Enter a space.

[Unnamed Stan Store Partner]

Every time the air day.

[Ivan]

So we're based. We're entering for Christmas.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yes.

[Ivan]

That's when we launch and kind of do this David and Goliath type story. Right. I don't know how much to sass the big dogs because really I don't want, you know, I don't have as much funding as they do.

[Unnamed Stan Store Partner]

How would you play that?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

By fassing them as much as possible. Because I'll tell you why I've always, you know, I've struggled with this because we have major clients At Vayner, who are the number two in categories and they're petrified. And I'm like, you don't understand. You haven't sassed them or razzed them or poked them in three decades. That's why you continue to be number. The only way you know David beats Goliath is by going at it. What are they going to do? Like ultimately what's actually going to happen is you're not important enough for them to actually spend the money and resources on it. But you poking them will give you micro market share growth.

[Ivan]

So just go, go hard on it.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

What are they going to do? Talk, talk it through. What are they gonna do out market you? They're gonna outmarket you anyway.

[Ivan]

So the, the person in particular who said he's in a crush, just basically he's already started two implant companies, sold the first one, 100 million, sold the second one, 300 million, said, you know, the next one we're gonna price lower than you and I have the credibility. You don't. So you're basically.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

The fact that he's even talking to you is already the most interesting thing to me. Like the fact that he even acknowledges you. I don't even. I would never spend a second on a company smaller than mine. That, that's the most interesting part of it all. It speaks to, in my opinion, irrational competitiveness or slash emotion, which could end up being the best thing for you. If you're a thorn in that person's side, he may end up referencing you more, which is going to only help you. I'm fascinated by that. If somebody who's you haven't entered in at all yet and they've already had two exits of those size and this is the third one. Price is only just one variable. For example, this is where TikTok really matters. Price is one thing. Relevance always beats price. People pay more for things all the time if they think it's better or cooler or represents them more. Price doesn't scare me. What scares me is if David doesn't understand where the arbitrage is. How much is the implant?

[Ivan]

So they're going to price at 100, we're going to price. We're thinking at 130.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yeah. I mean I would, I would be very aggressive on tick tock. Very. Okay. Yeah.

[Ivan]

My last question for you, Gary, just as a CEO, you got to keep, you know, you got to keep your pulse on a lot of.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yep.

[Ivan]

If you have family, personal family crisis he's going on, such as my, my daughter's medical condition.

[Paul Robillo]

It's when the.

[Ivan]

When the shit hits the fan, basically. You still got a business to run and bills to pay. How do you think straight when you can't?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

You don't. You don't. And I think the biggest thing I can tell you, my friend, is, you know, as somebody who has not had to live through a level of challenge of that level, I feel incredibly inappropriate to speak to at first. Second of all, what I've observed from others. The only thing I could tell you that feels incredibly natural to me is my number one goal in life is not to live with regret. I don't think there's a single person on earth who chose their business over their family that feels great about it when they get older. I think every moment you spend on your family situation at the expense of your business is a good moment to be spent. Thank you. You got it, David.

[David Moeller]

Yeah, I will grab a prop, please.

[Ivan]

Sorry.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I like a good prop.

[David Moeller]

What we're working on, please, and prototype.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

So everyone be.

[David Moeller]

Be gentle.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yes.

[David Moeller]

So my background, I studied mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech and then started down the corporate path and quickly realized that wasn't the best fit. Ian was my manager 20 years ago. Ge.

[Unnamed Stan Store Partner]

I didn't fire him if that's what Ian.

[David Moeller]

He didn't probably should have. I. Yeah, I also got shit down from B. Well, I interviewed with. They were one of my investment banking interviews. A friend and I tried out for a reality TV show called American Inventor in between my first and second year at business school. I was at Harvard. And we actually made it. So this is called American Inventor is a precursor to Shark Tank. And long story short, we took this bicycle rack invention, licensed it to Whirlpool. We had a single patent, and they went and sold over a million units through distribution through Lowe's, Home Depot. So I decided not to go into finance. Goldman made the right choice and not extending me an offer they detested. I would have quit or been fired. Probably fired day one. So then started the cloud website backup company. I had a website crash, raised some money. Ian was an investor in that 10 years ago. We grew it to about 500,000 customers. A million websites backed up, sold it for about 30 million, I don't know. Three years ago. Okay. Around that time, I had my car broken into for the third time.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Wow.

[David Moeller]

So just moved to a different part of Atlanta. What I thought was a really nice neighborhood, had been in two prior neighborhoods, had my car broken into. And a neighbor's car was stolen. He'd left his key fob in the, in the middle of his. His car. And so I just said, I'm going to go on Amazon and find like, ring for my call. I'm going to go find this, that buy it and call it a day. So I searched. All I could find were like the club, old school car alarms and the club. And like dash cams.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Forgot about the club.

[David Moeller]

But like legitimate.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

That's what was out.

[David Moeller]

Yeah. And then. And then one of the top recommendations, I believe it was baby cams. You take a baby cam because it's close enough to your house, you could put it in the car and then see what's going on. And so I had an original idea, did a patentability search and it came back free and clear. So started working on the product while I was.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I mean, that must be a holy grail scenario for someone with your kind of skill set. Right. Like the fact that, like, you're living like. I think scratching your own itch is always the best start of a business. When you have. When you're lucky enough to be an engineer and you can actually make it, you know, for me, scratch my own itch in this scenario stops somewhere, which is, I have no idea how to make the thing for you. That. I mean, that must have been a really fun moment. Right.

[David Moeller]

There are parts of it I know Al. Like there's a microwave sensor inside of this thing and the hardware where there's literally electrons bouncing around inside of this that allows you to detect someone outside of a car. That is like way over my head. So I've had to learn painfully, after a software company, how hardware is part of what I was describing with the way we grew Code Guard, you partner with big hosting providers, coastgator and brewhost, they'd add us to the checkout list. And there's your website back.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yep.

[Ian Matthews]

With.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

That's how you got your acquisition.

[David Moeller]

That's how we got it. That's how we grew.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I got it.

[David Moeller]

The claw we sold through big box. So now, you know, I'm sitting through these sessions and my mind is just blown because the D2C and having an individual conversation with a single customer is. It just feels very, very challenging.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

It's foreign to you. You've been in. You've been in the B2B business.

[David Moeller]

Very, very foreign. And so we've raised $4 million to date. We've got 21 patents, five of those issued. We launched a TechCrunch Disrupt battlefield a month ago, and right now we're growing our wait list and trying to potentially get some Pre orders. And we're thinking Indiegogo or Kickstarter in the next month. The next steps would be.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I have a very wild idea for you, but keep going. Next, what is the product?

[David Moeller]

Oh, so this is a. It's hilarious. So this is. It goes in your cup holder.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

That's what I thought.

[David Moeller]

And then you can still put a cup inside of it. It will detect if there's any motion outside of your car and it will flash an LED ring and make a really loud chirping noise. And we call that deterrent mode. Of course they open the door, these PIR sensors will detect them. No false positives. It sounds 120 decibel blast, which is really, really, really louds in your car. An ambulance in your car.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Right. So step one, if it gets too, too close, it's going to show the person like, you might want to pick the next car. Step two, if the car is super fancy, 10% of the time people face people breaking in.

[Unnamed Stan Store Partner]

So that, that's big. Now then most people just walk around, pull up on door handles because we're leaving their car door unlocked. Or they've left a fob inside of it. So they walk around, they pull it in. Or actual theft, you know, taking off with your car. So when we looked at this, most devices fits.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Got it. So you're talking. I'm sorry, I apologize. On the first scenario, you're talking about people just taking shit. Not taking the car, taking the laptop.

[David Moeller]

Out of the battery.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Totally got it.

[David Moeller]

And the billion dollars where the things are taken from cars every year.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Right. That's just where the car isn't even being taken and that's just being reported.

[David Moeller]

Which is being reported. And there's so much shaming around there, of course, because someone's car gets broken into and they're like, stupid. Did you, did you leave it unlocked?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yeah, just some people, like, honestly, some people are in the place of like, just realizing like, I don't, I'm not going to waste the time and report this to police. I'm going to go to Best Buy and buy whatever the. Got your token.

[David Moeller]

Absolutely. And if you can report a police and they say, oh, you know, they don't have anything they can recommend. And so like my neighbor's car was stolen. The police came around, mine had been rifled through. I had left it unlocked because I really like our neighborhood. I don't get home and get paranoid about how bad the neighborhood is. Get home and shoot hoops with some of the kids in the street.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Of course.

[David Moeller]

So one of the things is it anchors you twist. It'll anchor you, install it yourself. You connect it to power and then you have a fob or use your phone so it'll arm automatically and then it senses you and you walk up and disarms automatically. It'll record video. If someone does enter the car transmits it to the clock.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

It's really cool.

[David Moeller]

You can get the. You can have professional monitoring like SimpliSafe. It can view it on your back.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

How much is the club? 50 bucks.

[Unnamed Stan Store Partner]

Maybe it's like 60.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

How much will this be? You're not sure yet.

[David Moeller]

What do you think?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

50 bucks.

[David Moeller]

There are two. There are two groups. So we survey customers and there's customers who view like a 50 to 75 price point. And there's 200 plus because they view.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

It as alarm system.

[David Moeller]

Alarm system. And then we have safety capabilities. So we can.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I assume you get more excited when people say 200.

[David Moeller]

I do. But see, this is the thing too is that I know when I bring out a prototype there are pros and cons and I'm not showing you the mobile apps.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yeah, to your point, I can forget. I can. No, no, that's exactly right. By the way, you're 100% right. If you showed me first at a production line and if you just do anything that Apple fies it in the white box and shows the app and the screen, the justification of A$199 versus 60 goes through the roof to answer that question. And by the way, even the fact.

[Unnamed Stan Store Partner]

That I'm sorry, we were going to start at $299.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Understood.

[David Moeller]

Starting.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I understand.

[David Moeller]

And then we want to have a lower end version down the road similar to Nest model or start buying Tesla model. Start with a higher end.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

There's. You know what's so uniquely fascinating about this from a consumer lens, and you'll probably want to spend a little time on this is where does it become price prohibitive? Also matches the higher propensity for theft and breakthrough. So you're going to have to find that Mendoza line because the people that don't have price friction at 299 are also less targeted, less feeling the pain. And so finding that right area is going to be. That's in your, in this business hypothesis. That's going to be really fascinating.

[David Moeller]

Yeah, Yeah, I think it's going to be really interesting. My street, I mean my, my street in Atlanta. I think some neighborhoods are targeted more than others because on my street three Range Rovers have been stolen. One guy was at the mall.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

And so of course, I mean, every city and state in the country has. There's always towns that begin to have a different income level connected to the town that does. I mean, it's just the most cliche story of them all.

[David Moeller]

So we think that price. I did a survey, I ran Google Ads and found that there. I interviewed 130 people and the split was really interesting.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Can I give you a much better way to do that?

[David Moeller]

Yeah.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Because I love the way you just said that because it's very smart. Before you do Indiegogo or the thing I'm about to throw at you, I would actually run a website that looks like it's actually functional. Design the whole thing. A, B, C, D, Test the pricing. When they're done in the checkout, have a video of you two saying thank you for doing this. This is actually pre launch because we're trying to find the price. Because you completed the whole order.

[Ian Matthews]

Yeah.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

You're going to be one of our first 500 people that's going to get a free one from us. See you soon. Yeah. Okay. Because then you'll get real clean data. And I actually do think specifically for this product, given that it's hardware, you got to produce it, you got to put it right. It's different than some of the stuff you've been involved in. I think it's worth going through that process because then you'll flat out see this will be not a survey where humans subconsciously know that you're analyzing their data. This will be. I actually think I'm buying this. I bought it for 149. I bought it for 299. I bought it for. You'll get some very clean data. Something worth thinking about. Plus the marketing of like the authenticity, like getting a video from you guys at the checkout part when it's done. Like, thanks. This is actually not ready yet. This is not even the real name of the product yet. This is not even the real price of the product yet. You though are going to get this because you just went all the way through and bought it. So we're thankful. You're one of the first 500 people to ever do that in the world. And if you do this now end in spring of 2022, we're going to hand deliver you one to the address you put in here as a thank you for going all the way through. There's a lot that can happen there.

[David Moeller]

Yeah.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

You'll get the data. You'll build a very small community of very loyal people that Feel part of your community. You might even get like some marketing and new coverage for your product because of how unique that idea is.

[Donald]

A few months ago.

[Ian Matthews]

Yes.

[Donald]

About how to locate CPAs and financial planners to work with me on my B2B mortgage.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yes.

[Donald]

And you talked about setting up Facebook.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Facebook groups to Sacramento Business Alliance. Not. Yep.

[Donald]

Yeah. And so I'm, I'm still working on the logistics there. I've been super busy on some other stuff.

[David Moeller]

Things.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

No worries. But please do that. So like follow up with Joe or whoever. Like, it's. I'm really passionate about it and at the time when we did that, I. That bit was hot on my mind and I'm starting to get the feedback loop from people that I said it to individually or I mentioned a couple times publicly in some podcasts. It's really working for people. Cool. And just to catch everybody up, the concept is if you try to do local business, the Facebook groups are doing so well, especially in that 40 to 75 year old demo, that if you create something a little more evergreen, literally. Back to your point. Like back to the prior one, the Atlanta Small Business Facebook Group, Buckhead Small Business Group, or like, you know, like, like, like Denver Moms Club. And if you're the host, you're the host. And if you can build up that group, you can do localized marketing inside of it. Cool.

[Donald]

I also want to start looking at ways to probably run some targeted ads on LinkedIn, going after specific companies that are the right size for what I want. Because what I really need is I need a practice where it's one guy in charge and he may have some junior partners, or it may be at the most maybe three partners. Because when we get much bigger than that, it's hard to get the buy.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

In from everybody's like, makes a ton of sense based on what you're doing.

[Ivan]

So.

[Donald]

For me to do that, do I actually target the companies or do I go after just this size of institution?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

It depends on what LinkedIn's gonna. You know, sometimes when it's too small, the targeting capabilities are not there. So you have to pay a little more for it to be a little more broad, but still get what you're looking for.

[Donald]

Okay. Do I run static ads or videos or both? Okay.

[Monique Frown]

The.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

You know, the number one thing with social media ads that everybody misunderstands is it's the creative, not the media.

[Donald]

Okay, so try everything, because it's the.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Only way you're gonna get your math right. The amount of people that just decide that Facebook ads don't work because they ran three ads. It's even back to the way we started today. It's like really squeezing the shit out of content. I mean, we're living it right now for Winetext. Quora is a thing that's really working for us. Yeah, I think all of you should look at Quora too. Answering questions and running ads against the questions. Very effective. Quora does extremely with Google Search. It's not plain Google search. There's sometimes price arbitrage, where a search term is like 19 bucks on Google Ads. But Quora is the first organic answer. And then you can buy the Quora ad for four bucks. So you see where I'm going with the arbs. Quora could be really, really good for a lot of people here. But where was it going? Now I remember when I got off the plane today, I was talking to Jon Morgenstern, who used to be the head of all of Vayner Media's planning of like, what's the right strategy? I've now brought him in to just work with me directly, my brand winx v friends, mainly because I think he'll be even smarter working on this because the clients don't let us do the best stuff. So he's almost working with me. But it's going to make the org much smarter and it's already happened in a week because he's the best of all time and he's like me. He loves to get his hands dirty. So, like, doing it again is fun for him. We're crushing cora. But then there's fatigue. Like, he hit me up right now and he was like, I need more answers to different questions because these three ads that are working are fatigued. So it's always going to be more content. So in the LinkedIn example, it's like, even when something's working, you got to do more. And most people only run one or two or three different variations of creative and call it a day and decide if a platform works when you're supposed to do hundreds of variations, which is why I want everybody to do. For example, I would love for you to start a show to answer questions for those brokers so that you can then chop up the show and run them as ads.

[Monique Frown]

Okay.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

So, like, it's even another move above that, which is like, how are you going to keep creating so much ads? Well, what if you actually had a Q and A show, which is really, in essence, answering. That's the whole point of why Q and a works. AskGaryVee was so brilliant. Because it's no different than Google Ads. Google Ads work because it's intent based marketing. People are searching something, they want the answer. My Q and A show works because it's the temperament. Tea with Gary B. It works because that's the current temperament of what people want to know. One person usually represents 10,000 people's question. That's a good point.

[Donald]

So what I'm thinking about that, what I think I'm going to do then is go to the independent guys I'm already working with who are doing the best at it and interview them.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Love that. And then that's a very, that's a very good stuff. But again, if you start again, the Sacramento, you know, real estate brokerage, like very long tail fate groups, you can extract new people. Sacramento Small Business alliance that goes very broad. Sacramento brokerage, you know, mortgage broker or real estate agents is more narrow but will be very specific. You can oh by the way, the world's about and not. Or you can start both those Facebook groups. Cool, cool.

[Ivan]

Appreciate it.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

John Morgenstorm's pop. Let's go over here.

[Paul Robillo]

Billy Richardson.

[Ian Matthews]

Well, my family has been in Las Vegas since 1970. I love it so I love it. Casino. My family with my dad started out small place, grew it. So I've always been in the hospital. It's always been a part of it. I've always watched him and how he grew three blackjack tables to 12 slot machines to growing it to where it.

[Unnamed Stan Store Partner]

Was in Sarnia Tizan.

[Ian Matthews]

So yeah, so I got into the nightclub business early in Vegas. There was only three at the time and I was one of them mine 54 the Rio and watched all that, then got out of that one, became big money and yeah, of course couldn't afford.

[Unnamed Stan Store Partner]

Of course he's building.

[Ian Matthews]

So I got into the restaurant business in Vegas. My thing is I grew up in Vegas. I'm very local in Vegas. I believe in local businesses in Vegas. And so when I go. And so I started with my first restaurant at Red Rock was a local place. I went in there, I knew the guys and I just pretended I knew how to make hamburgers and do a hamburger restaurant. And I did everything and hired guys and didn't even have a restaurant. We got our first one and then the recession hit in Vegas and then.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

And so what year was that?

[Ivan]

Pardon?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

What year?

[Paul Robillo]

2000.

[Ian Matthews]

So when I 89, I worked at Wynn and left after that lunacy. But I Learned a lot.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

2008. 9. Yeah, yeah.

[Ian Matthews]

I sat in the restaurant you were doing really well and watched the split screen of the they were going to pass the one bill that give river money. And the stock market went through the roof and they said no. And I just heard oh, we're going.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

To Lehman Lehman Brothers business.

[Ian Matthews]

And I watched the whole casino empty out every day. But I got through it. And then we grew our business and we're a business. The thing I buying artists is going and dealing with now with these guys are for they're Wall street guys and all they understand is guy the Eddi Thomas Keller Shake Shack. And I'm a. And I believe in Las Vegas.

[David Moeller]

I love Las Vegas.

[Ian Matthews]

I grow. I have my kids in Las Vegas. They're fourth January on third. But no one but these buildings don't care about local guys anymore. They don't want local guys in or anyone guys that can pay big rents and stuff.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

And, and I know it's, I know it's super well. Yeah, I know it's super well.

[Ian Matthews]

And I sit there and I go, you know what? I know I'm the best in this business in Vegas. I know the market better than anyone. I get out and I say but then I feel like, well then I'm being cocky or I'm doing this and.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

It'S not that you're being cocky, it just doesn't mean anything to the people that have the real estate locations that you're referring to.

[David Moeller]

Right.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

And nothing you say or do will change that. Right, but that's not a bad thing. No, that's only a bad thing if that's the fixation of what needs to happen. Right.

[Ian Matthews]

And I'm trying to learn about like social media and stuff like that. I, I, I've, I've hired PR firms, I've done all that and you know, they tell me how great it is and could do this and this and this. And I have one kid that works for me and I've been doing this for I have if I have one hamburger pitcher, I had nine. No, I thought one no shake pitcher from every season. Halloween doesn't change, Christmas doesn't change. But I being here and you know, learning all this stuff now I have a good tool, a pound of new social media and I have two people that live in my house. A 15 year old girl and a 10 year old girl and I bounce stuff off them all the time and I get this, they're on their phones and I go, what brands do you guys like? I don't know dad, do you like Holstein's? That's my camera's a voice. Yeah, but Shake Shack's better debt.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Okay, yeah listen I get. I get it too. I get it too.

[Ian Matthews]

I try to learn is that someone taught me that if I have a 15 or 15 year olds now in five years or six years they're going to be 21 are going to be coming to Vegas. How do I get them to become my customer in 2020?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

What. What is your business? So you have. Did you say you had four locations?

[Paul Robillo]

Four locations.

[Ian Matthews]

So one. One is I do hamburgers and milkshakes primarily and then one is all pizzas and. And then all hot dogs. We do lobster rolls and hamburgers.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Okay.

[Ian Matthews]

So I specialize in.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I see it. And what. Where are politeness.

[Ian Matthews]

I'm in the resort world. I'm in the.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I'm in. So you're in the places.

[Ivan]

Oh yeah.

[Ian Matthews]

I'm in giant traffic areas like whole scenes.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

That's massive. Yeah.

[Ian Matthews]

Raider stated I'm trying to get locals to come down because Vegas is done. These guys have done a really good job saying we don't want locals to come down. Ran in charge parking local street for parking.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yeah, I mean as some. You know I, I have a real sense of this market. I almost bought the minor league baseball team with Tony Shea who unfortunately passed. I was very involved in downtown in the early days. I was really friendly with Tony at the time and spent a lot of time analyzing the market because I was going to bet the farm on buying a minor league baseball team. Here are my kind of couple concerns or thoughts. One, I hate friction. Like fighting. Reality is always a losing formula in business. You know this way better than I do. Back to generation three. I learned this after four months of very good homework. Getting locals to come to your place is not mathematically right for them. The fuck are they going to do that for? One strategy you could have is actually opening a fifth location in a local place. Building equity that way. And then when they do happen to go to the places there's that residual brand affinity that is like a macro strategy to think about. The other thing to think about is how do you create differentiation inside those places. Forget about the famous chefs and things of that nature. The reality is is that very concise marketing within the feeds of social can always work no matter what the circumstances are. So running very aggressive ads to the Vegas, you know area code over and over and over is going to have residual effects. It's going to come down to the creative. But, but I think let's break these down because I assume the four locations you have and I've got a sense of what you've got going on. That game is very real estate driven. Like whatever location you have, you have those patterns in those casinos are consistent and you've got a pretty good sense of what that is. Rightfully so. As an entrepreneur, you're like, okay, so this is what it is. And my growth can come if I can get locals to come down or.

[Ian Matthews]

Just more people are even just generating more in the United States and worldwide because of the people that are coming to.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yeah, but it's not going to work that way, I don't think. Unless you do ridiculous. Right. Like the virality and consistency that you'll need for like me to see it on my TikTok and then remember in nine months, like there's so much branding that has to go into that. To me, this starts. So I would tell you what I would do. I think that if I'm your partner, I would say we need to start at the product level. So let me give you an example. Something I've always loved about this kind of food. I think you should create a $200 hot dog.

[Ian Matthews]

Oh, I have, I have a billionaire burger.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

It's a billion dollars.

[Ian Matthews]

No.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Okay, what is it?

[Ian Matthews]

It's $100.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

You're like a duck boy.

[Unnamed Stan Store Partner]

Gras and tropical.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yeah.

[Ian Matthews]

So I have, I have now I am, I am the only partner and I have other people and then they tell me, hey, rua, no one's going to do it. And I, I have thought of saying, well, this burger is a billion dollars and someone will buy it. I see, like the million dollar.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I think what you need to do is create multiple food items per place that are so outlandish and are content driven. So here's what you could. Here's what I would do. I would create a $99 slice of pizza for the pizza place. I would think about what the fuck that means. Is that caviar? Is that some sort of like weird ostrich egg or am I pouring? Am I cook? Am I pouring? Dom pee over it after it comes out of the oven? I don't know what it does, but you have got to. It can't just be 99 bucks. You actually kind of have to try to get it there. That's number one. Number two, I would have somebody full time hired for your four locations in the, in the main casinos. That goes into TikTok. And Instagram uses the hashtag Las Vegas. Search sorts it by recent sees who's just posted because it's proving that they're in Vegas and DMing them to come to the place to get a free piece of the outlandish product. If you, if you create the bait and then bring them in and you're giving me. And if you hit up Drock because he somehow has a lot of followers and we're in Vegas a lot for a speech and you DM him and say, hey, Drock, we love your work. We'd love you to come in and get a free $100 slice of pizza. There's two things that happen there. One, he'll probably do it because I know him. Two, the $100 will catch him off guard. Even if he wasn't going to do it, that might make him do it. Like you're like, what is, what is that? Even I do believe that would work. I really do. I think you, you, you know, and.

[Ian Matthews]

I'm just, I'm trying to.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Let me break it down one more time because I really want to make sure you get it because I'm going to move on. One to two ridiculous items.

[Ivan]

You've.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

You're already aligned with me because you have $100 burger. So you're already there. One to two items that are really outlandish. Rethink them, because the $100 burger potentially should be refurbished because you thought about it maybe with a different context point. You need to make it so visually interesting that when the influencer comes for the free thing they're going to want to make, you're not going to ask. The second you say Drock, come in. If you post on your Instagram, we'll give you $100 burger, you're already dead. If you just say, hey, we see that you're here. We love your stuff. Come in, ask for Carl the manager, and we'll give you the $100 milkshake. When that person gets the $100 milkshake, you know, you clearly want them to do the thing we want them to do. You have to make it so visually ridiculous that they themselves want to do it because it's good content. You need to hire a full time person to constantly stay on TikTok and Instagram to see who's hashtag Vegas and DMing them. You need a full time person. Got it.

[Ian Matthews]

Yes.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Awesome. Thank you.

[Ian Matthews]

I appreciate it.

[Donald]

Yeah, thanks.

[Ian Matthews]

Over to Monique.

[Monique Frown]

Oh. Oh, that's interesting. So one of my biggest challenges right now is we had a, you know, in the sports and athletic space where you have athletes who have gone to shows and they travel and during the pandemic, that was all shut down and I Said, you know, we can really have our price point a lot higher for a direct to consumer. Yes, but we're competing against the fanatics. Against.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yes, we talked about that.

[Monique Frown]

Right? Yes. So what is your thought in terms of the feasibility of something like that? For us to create our own, like, legends or go agency for direct to consumer merchandise for other.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

For other people besides Jim? I think it's real. You know, I think there's a lot of fragmentation available in talent. It's why there's so many managers. It's why there's so many agencies. I think the feasibility is very real. I think the question you have to ask, and we've obviously have a little bit of a preview of this because you and I spoke recently about this. It's going to come down to how good you are at it. The problem with, like, you know, do I think that Jim and you and. And somebody you hire or somebody on the team reaches out to 12 hall of Famers and say, are you really happy with the way you have it? We're starting this thing. Would you come. You know, you know this better than I do. I'm just around it a lot. Legends trust other legends more than they trust somebody else trying to get in their pocket. So do I think you can get six people, Roger Staubach, this or old Campbell? Of course I do. I think you can. The problem is, and you also know this part, a year later, if they're selling less helmets with you, even if they're, you know, if the money's not the same or better, then they're going to start saying, wait, maybe I should go back to upper deck. Maybe I should go to. So I think the question there, the feasibility is incredibly real, very real and forever real. The question is, how much belief do you have that you can build the organization that can create that demand. I'm not scared, you know, about. You know, as much as I love Michael Rubin fanatics and I do, they're real homies. Do I think there's fragmentation? Of course I do. Because it's happening. There's a lot of fragmentation. I think the question becomes, can you create the demand creation outside of, you know, John Elway putting a link in his Instagram saying, this is where my memorabilia is. You're going to need. You're going to need more than that.

[Monique Frown]

Much more.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Much more than that. So are you an organization? You become a retailer. How good of a retailer are you? And that's right. I think the ideology always gets people going, right? They're like, yeah, we're going to get 50% of the action instead of 20. But 50% of 17 sign balls is a lot less money than 20% of 20,000 balls. And I think, I think that's the thing you're going to have to figure out.

[Monique Frown]

That's right. And that's really where we are in terms of the feasibility of it.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I mean the other thing is look for you specifically your guy situation. You're at such the tippy top of it that you could leave for a year and if you decided, oops, we need to go back, every major player is going to be very thrilled to have that convo with you. So you got to keep that in mind too. Yeah, yeah.

[Monique Frown]

We wouldn't do it ourselves. Definitely have a team. We build the team around it.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

That's the decision you're making. Do you believe that this team with better economics can close the gap on a team that's out there that's been doing it at the scale that whomever you're with. I don't have that fully figured.

[Monique Frown]

What's missing? Like what is it that they're not.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Doing correct that that different and what's. That's right. And what can you add to it? Access, virtual access, content, all that stuff.

[Monique Frown]

And the second.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

But, but let me say this because I've seen a lot. Don't get over romanced with the better percentages.

[Monique Frown]

Right.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

A lot of people lose on that game. Because in your specific thing, unlike other, you know, there's. It's one thing when you're. I'll tell you my story as a public speaker. When I looked at the data after two years with caa, yeah. And at first it was great because actually God rest his soul, when Tony Hsieh would say no and I was at caa, they'd be like how about this guy Gary Vaynerchuk? He talks about similar stuff. So that was great for me. But as my brand got to a different place the last two years I was CAA, 85% of my speaking engagements came through my website. Then you're like, well I'm creating the demand. So I think the demand creation is always going to have the leverage.

[Monique Frown]

Yeah, that's right.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Not how good is the deal.

[Monique Frown]

That's right.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Got it. That's the key.

[Monique Frown]

Absolutely.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

And it's hard to compete for traffic.

[Monique Frown]

It's almost like we have to cross promote amongst like the various projects that we have, you know.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

But the scale. Yeah, but the scale in which. And what are we talking? Exclusive. And then you think about friction for the consumer, you know, like, if I'm looking for, you know, I'm going to go to Google or I'm going to type, go directly to Fanatics, maybe Upper deck and type in his name. Ebay. Right. That'd be the other place I'd go. You got to think those things through.

[Monique Frown]

Yeah. I definitely can begin to feel that obviously Fanatics has a footprint that's way larger in this space, but there's so many other areas that they're not as big in.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I agree.

[Monique Frown]

You know, certain types of apparel or even lacrosse as a growing sport. So kind of.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

And Jim's. I mean, you know what I feel about his opportunity with lacrosse and telling that story. Yeah.

[Monique Frown]

Okay.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

You might be able to carve some stuff out too. Exactly. He's so, like, revered.

[Monique Frown]

Absolutely.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

That I could see. I think some. Com. I think some companies might even be willing to compromise and say, if you said, hey, we want to do all our own lacrosse stuff, can we have that exclusively? I think you might find some yeses because they might think it's too small and they have too much respect for him. And then you could test, maybe start there. I mean, he is the greatest lacrosse player of all time.

[Monique Frown]

Thank you.

[Paul Robillo]

Awesome.

[Ian Matthews]

Yeah.

[Donald]

Gary.

[Paul Robillo]

Yeah. So I am working on my next startup and I am thinking about kind of how do I help the masses?

[Ivan]

Right.

[Paul Robillo]

I've always built niche sites in investing. You know, dividends, mutual funds. So just talking to my daughter one day, she's 25, she's like, hey, you know that if it wasn't for you, me and my friends would never invest. Like, you know, you keep me up to date and whatnot. So I'm like, wow, that's like a big audience. Mid 20s, not investing.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I mean, I mean, and now, right, the whole Robin Hood phenomenon, I mean, you have more 20 year olds. It's now it's like cool culture to be a trader.

[Paul Robillo]

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's the thing. You know, everyone's into that. But the problem then is people get intimidated.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Right?

[Paul Robillo]

So, like, daughters aren't thinking about like, oh, you know, I'm going to trade crypto, I'm going to trade this. Right? So my thing is, I came up with this idea at the investing superstore. So when you think about a superstore, you think about Walmart, Target, you know, everything's superstore, superstar.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

All right, sorry. I heard superstars, the investment superstore. Keep going.

[Paul Robillo]

So the idea is to have any asset that you can buy in one location.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Okay.

[Paul Robillo]

So partnering up with A different sort of platform. So if you want to buy fractional shares of a rookie card, you want to buy stocks, you want to buy crypto, whatever the asset is, partner up with these companies and everything is done in one place.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

So the idea is, are you going to do that through APIs or are.

[Paul Robillo]

You going to be able so build like the Amazon.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I understand what you're saying.

[Paul Robillo]

You know, so like a discovery engine. So people that bought this asset also bought these assets.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yep.

[Paul Robillo]

So the idea is to build the anti Robinhood. Right. Because Robinhood is very gamified. It's trading. I want to build something that's more Zen. Right. I guess. I've been in San Diego 5 Nixon's dog. So I'm in this very like Zen. No noise. I don't want any alerts from Wall Street. No upgrades, downgrades, earnings reports. I just want people to buy assets.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Well, won't that only work for people who are further along in their knowledge base? If you're, if you make a very Zen place where I'm just transacting and nobody's bothering me. I love that, comma. Won't have to be pretty damn knowing what the I want to buy when I go in there. Yeah.

[Paul Robillo]

Well, there'll be an education part.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Right? Okay. There's, you know, the education basics, my hot take. And we've got more to go through. But my hot take is I've always historically struggled when somebody wants to be a consolidator of information coming from other sources because it's a dangerous business. Let me explain. It's very hard to win that game because once, first of all, it's hard to get people to come to a new place. And that takes a lot of money. It's a theme. Two, if you're even able to succeed in that, which is a monumental win when you're relying on APIs or other data sets. If you become too big, they shut it off. Right. Because they don't want to pay you the vig. So that's one thing to think through.

[Paul Robillo]

Yeah. Well, like this, you know, the way I thought about it was like lead generation. Right. So we're telling them.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

And I have a good enough sense of like how you came up, so it makes sense to me.

[Paul Robillo]

So it's, you know, so it's lead generation. The flip side, you know, the other aspect that we thought originally was this chrome extension. Right.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Like we see MetaMask.

[Paul Robillo]

Yeah. Or even, like, you know, join honey. Yep, join honey. People like, you know, they're in their cart they're about to buy us something. So even to create something where we can see what's in your car and say, hey, there's five of the 12 things are investable.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I think the question becomes the following. So the hypothesis of everybody being an investor in their twenties is very real. That. Let's start there. The macro hypothesis that is super real. The amount of content on TikTok right now like, of like actual investing advice that 16 and 17 year olds are taking very seriously. Between sneakers and sports cards and definitely NFTs and crypto and stock and Robinhood Life and the whole GameStop stuff, it is enough has happened that I would bet the farm on what's going to happen with 20 year old behavior on investing. So that's great. The, the thing that you're thinking about, my first reaction on the next part is you're taking a very web 1.0 approach to it. Consolidation, fragmentation, arbitrage. I do like the extension a little bit more. I, I think, I think all of them are going to do it. Coinbase, Robinhood and these, these platforms have tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of users already and they're going to continue to verticalize and horizontalize offerings. So the superstore thing doesn't fire me up because I think that's the roadmap of all the people you're competing with that have 100 million user head start and billions in fundraising head start. Interesting. So that's one thing to just be open eyed to. Yeah, yeah. I don't think that's enough of a moat.

[Paul Robillo]

Yeah, well the moat part that I was going to add in was the community part.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Right.

[Paul Robillo]

So that now that we always. Yeah, so like we own like the same asset if we can create the communities in these.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

But that's a chicken and egg thing. Right. Like what size of scale does a community need to be to be a moat? It needs to be pretty large. And like how do you get them there and why? It's why I'm so in love with content. I always think that content at the end of the day always is the lowest friction point to creating community. Yeah, I mean I think the superstore thing is concerning just because I have a good enough read on what Robinhood and Coinbase and others, even the like everyone's battling for the same thing now. Right, Right. The macro superstore thing scares me. The super macro hypothesis, I'm in love with like the whole like that the way this started, like hey dad, me and my friends are like, that's Huge. Because it's real.

[Paul Robillo]

Yeah.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I just wonder where you should put that energy.

[Paul Robillo]

Yeah. Yeah. The investor rest was like the brand that we had for the chrome extension idea, right. Which is like now you're in your.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Car, it's like, hey look, do, do I think that that can work as a chrome extension? I really do. Yeah. Is that the best, is that the best use of a four year period to like build that up and the amount of dollars to like customer acquire is what I'm really thinking through. Because I love that you're on the macro macro and sometimes I've done this a lot. I've been so right about the macro macro. But where I put my energy was getting nickels instead of dollars against a very proper macro macro hypothesis.

[Paul Robillo]

Yeah.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Like if I was smart enough, that would be the word I would use to realize what I was doing in 1996 with open cart optimization. Because I knew I had a website and I knew that people were stuck and didn't check out. Mainly I used to be petrified of the tech because I just always thought our site didn't work because it was so early and it was fucking very hard and I wasn't an engineer. And even though I hired Engine, like it was just like an everyday thing for me. Is our site broken? Like what's like it was just so that's why Web3 comes so natural to me. Everyone's all scared about NFTs. I'm like, this is 1996. Like nobody knows what the fuck in a, you know, a custodial wallet is. Of course people are getting like, it's a different shift. I, if I, instead of thinking about selling Pinot Noir for my dad, commercialized and productized open card optimization, I'd have, I would have owned the jets in 2002. That's kind of like a sense I'm getting here, which is like I'm not scared of anything you said. I just love your macro macro thesis so much that I want to make sure you pressure test yourself on where you're going to deploy your attack on it. Yeah. You see where I'm going?

[Paul Robillo]

Yeah. I think that's kind of where I'm at.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I get that. I respect that. I can tell you one thing, and this is for all of you, content while you're debating is a good idea.

[Paul Robillo]

Yeah.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

You starting a TikTok and being aggressive about it on investing 101 advice from your perspective is a really good idea.

[Paul Robillo]

Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. I like the part you said about sassing. Right. Because, like, I'm sort of like, I'm not a big fan of the things that happen, like, you know, on cnbc.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

You know, and I don't know if. Do you know, do you have TikTok?

[Paul Robillo]

I don't.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I don't. Good. Let me tell you a theme in TikTok, a thing that's done in TikTok that will crush for you. You can green screen. It's a very common meme in TikTok where something's playing in the background and you're social commentating. Your ability to, like, if you're not pumped with CNBC film stuff, then talk over it while it's playing will work real well with the kids because CNBC is their dad's channel. Right. So you'll win them over real fast with that.

[Paul Robillo]

That's interesting.

[Ivan]

Yeah.

[Paul Robillo]

Because I'm thinking about sort of the content angle.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

And by the way, social commentating on top of a piece of content is the easiest way to create content. It's your hot take on what you say. Yes, sir.

[Paul Robillo]

One last question.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yes, of course. Yeah, I know. He's good like that.

[Unnamed Stan Store Partner]

So you. You get the device.

[Paul Robillo]

Yes.

[Unnamed Stan Store Partner]

It's going to be ready May, June of next year. We have raised funds. We have money to spend on marketing.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yes.

[Unnamed Stan Store Partner]

If you were in our position where you've got a prototype device, that's what we have.

[David Moeller]

We don't have a bunch of production.

[Unnamed Stan Store Partner]

Devices to ship to influencers.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yes. When will you could be in the next three months?

[Unnamed Stan Store Partner]

Maybe within the next three months. Our challenge right now is if we.

[David Moeller]

Can launch in May.

[Unnamed Stan Store Partner]

If you are us and we're launching in May, how would you drum up as much attention as you could now with, you know, we. We do have a considerable marketing budget.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I'll give you a bunch of things. I think I got a lot for you. So I don't know if you know what Discord is, but Discord and Facebook groups. I think a Facebook group around, literally, the group's called tired of getting your car with group.

[Unnamed Stan Store Partner]

You know, it's funny, there's one in Kansas city. It's like 300,000 members in it.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

It's just real used.

[Unnamed Stan Store Partner]

A lot of it.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I love that. I think you should own the party instead of watching the party. So I think you should start your own Facebook groups because that's going to be your customers eventually. That's another thing. I think that you should make an animation kind of cartoon or stick figure. I think you should try to get the lowest cost, three videos of Reenacting how the product works for content now. Right. So think about how fun you can make some of that. If it's cartoon, if it's a pretty cool cartoon.

[Unnamed Stan Store Partner]

It's playing a video right now that's actually good.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Send that over to me on email. It's Gary VaynerMedia. I want to see it. I want you to make it. Not for the website to explain. I want you to make it for social media content demand creation. And I'm sure you could tell how that would be different. One is yours is probably very literal. I want these to be a little more fun and just like cause virality. I would hire. I would definitely, when we get closer, do some hardcore influencer TikTok. Work the skits on TikTok with your product that can go crazy. Viral is pretty extreme. I mean it's just made for comedy and made for TikTok. And I think you're one $3,000 influencer campaign away from having outrageous levels of awareness.

[Unnamed Stan Store Partner]

Would you start with a hundred small influencers or would you go after two or three big ones?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

I mean the answer is both can work. I think what I'd probably do right away is make sure both of you actually get serious about downloading TikTok and just like spending 15 minutes a day like using it so that you are a better judge and jury of who you do something with the biggest issue for everybody. So yeah, place that.

[Unnamed Stan Store Partner]

So I'm in. My daughter will be excited about that.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yes. She'll be devastated. Yeah, exactly. Do it.

[Unnamed Stan Store Partner]

So if I did that, how, how would I best do research? So, so what to get into?

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Yeah, you'll love this. Not your category. I just want you to have the tone and temperament of TikTok. There's probably not a whole lot of Carl alarm car stealing content. What I want you to do back to where your, your partner in crime here, he referenced basketball and has a basketball shirt on. Good. Let him fucking like have his stream filled with that basketball content. I just want both of you to have a taste of the temperament. You're not going to find content around you. What you're going to find probably along the way, what I hope my, my dream is on March 9th, you're just doing, you're, you're staying the course 10 minutes a day. You're just going through and you're like enjoying it as a human. You find something that really makes you laugh. You click on the person. They've got 87,000 followers. You look at their other six videos. You're like this person's fucking good. This is me dreaming. Oh, shit. This person lives in, you know, in Alabama. Not too, too far. You message the person, go, I love your stuff. Would you consider doing something for a brand? You see where I'm going? That's like my dream state. It doesn't have to be that lucky. It could be something else. But at some point in, based on your timing in April, or maybe I'm going to want you to spend 10,000 bucks on two or three or four or five influencer campaigns. And I want you to be dramatically back to pr, back to lovely Gemma to the left. People waste money when they don't know how to judge it. The amount of people that have wasted a fortune on almost everybody who tells me that social media doesn't work, I already know exactly what happened. They. They wanted to try it out because they were scared to waste money. They went with someone that's bullshit. Either completely full of shit or just is. And they don't even realize it because it's small. They do their thing, it doesn't work. And they decide after three months of putting 2,000 bucks a month into some horseshit, that that doesn't work. That's like me going outside right now and dribbling a basketball, not being good at it and saying that basketball isn't a viable option. You have to be good at it. So you need to know, you understand why I brought up TikTok so much. From 2011 to 2013, if you were the best in the world at running Facebook ads, you built a huge company. In 2015-2017, if you were the best at the world being an influencer on Instagram, you really built something big. We are in it right now, and we've probably got another 12 to 24 months where you're just getting better deals from TikTok than TikTok is getting from you. And then they tip. Right now, everyone on Instagram that's one dimensional, Instagram's crying. Their organic reach is down. It's harder. They're not growing as fast. They're not making as much money. You know, they love. They're mad at the algorithm. Instagram, meanwhile, they don't. Instagram doesn't charge you anything. And you built your whole career on it. You just had good timing and you got it when it was good. TikTok's got that right now. And I just need everybody to go hard at it because it will go away. Yeah, just like Instagram went away. Just like Twitter went away, just like Facebook went away. It's the same game every time. It's the real estate version of attention. You either buy beachfront property first or you don't.

[Unnamed Stan Store Partner]

Yeah.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

And it gets progressively worse.

[Unnamed Stan Store Partner]

Steel and TikTok is where all the cranes is.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

That's exactly right. It's just where the attention is. And it's not 15 year olds anymore. It's 30, 40. Like it's, it's. This is a rodeo I've seen before.

[Paul Robillo]

Yeah.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

You know, so I think, I think. And what I love about your product for TikTok, unlike Instagram Perfect Marketing four years ago, where it was just a nice image of your product with a little click here and you go to your website and you convert and you cookie them and you retarget them. Now with iOS 14 update, you can't retarget the same way, but on TikTok for your product, one aspiring comedian does the right hilarious video of somebody scared shitless of trying to steal the car and it gets 14 million organic views. You're off to the races.

[Donald]

Love it.

[Ivan]

That's all we got for you, man.

[Ian Matthews]

Thanks so much.

[Gary Vaynerchuk]

Such a pleasure. This is the GaryVee audio experience.