The Exact Marketing Strategy That Will Win in 2026

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Exact Marketing Strategy That Will Win in 2026

Podcast: The GaryVee Audio Experience
Host: Gary Vaynerchuk
Date: December 3, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode of The GaryVee Audio Experience dives into the seismic shifts in management and marketing strategies that will define business success leading into 2026. Speaking to a room of leaders, Gary Vaynerchuk unpacks why traditional marketing and management techniques are quickly becoming outdated, emphasizing the need for data-driven, platform-specific content strategies and a more empathetic, tailored approach to talent management. The episode covers actionable frameworks for brand building, content relevance, and employee motivation—focusing on the mindset and systems needed to thrive in a rapidly evolving business environment.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Evolution of Management – The “M” in M&M

(Timestamp: 02:30 – 13:45)

• Changing Workforce Expectations:

  • Gary acknowledges a generational shift: "I have unlimited employees who tell me they only want to work Tuesday to Thursday and be promoted within the first seven days of being in the organization." (04:36)
  • He rejects the narrative that Gen Z is lazy; instead, they've inherited unprecedented options, such as making a living on TikTok, which older generations never had.

• Building a ‘Full Meal’ in Management:

  • Success requires the right mix of traits—tenacity and accountability are vital, but so are kindness and balance.
  • Gary recounts coming to the U.S. as an immigrant: “I’m not sitting here...without ungodly levels of conviction, tenacity, and hard work. At the same token, the amount of people that do burn out...if you don’t find balance within that." (07:25)

• Retention in the Modern Age:

  • Retention is shifting from being purely financially driven to a multifactor approach (titles, work-life balance, meaningful work).
  • Gary: "I’m not overly emotional on what drives my 1900 employees globally...If it’s money, mazel tov. I understand that game...But you need to understand that we’re building a business." (10:50)

• No 'Participation Trophy' Culture:

  • He’s clear: success is based on output and desire, not simply tenure or participation.

2. Marketing Shift: From Mad Men to Math Men

(Timestamp: 13:45 – 27:50)

• Outdated Attachment to Traditional Media:

  • Most businesses overvalue yesterday's marketing (TV, print) because it's familiar—despite plummeting effectiveness.
  • Memorable audience moment: Gary polls the audience about their initial resistance to cell phones, iPhones, and Facebook—driving home how quickly consumer behavior evolves. (15:28)

• Marketing as an Engine for Sales:

  • “Marketing is an engine for business...what I care about with marketing is selling stuff.” (17:10)
  • Biggest marketing shift since radio-to-TV: the full maturity of the internet as an attention engine.

• The Power (and Arbitrage) of Digital Platforms:

  • Facebook Reels offers a massive organic opportunity because supply (content) lags behind demand (audience).
  • "One of the biggest opportunities in marketing this second is doing videos and pictures on Facebook Reels to sell stuff." (19:40)
  • Emphasizes the model: relentless experimentation and data-driven feedback, not relying on gut calls or subjective opinion.

• The ROI of Social and Influencer Marketing:

  • “The ROI of social media...is predicated on the player. The ROI of a basketball for LeBron James is a billion dollars. The ROI for me is negative $4,000.” (21:12)
  • Success comes from execution and relevance; failure to adapt is usually due to poor content, not the platform.

3. The New Brand-Building Framework

(Timestamp: 27:55 – 42:00)

• Hyper-Relevant, High-Volume Content:

  • Move from “one tagline fits all” to context-specific content for multiple audience segments.
  • “An 18- to 22-year-old guy making $100,000 a year trading crypto is gonna need a different video than a 42-year-old mom buying for her teenager.” (26:10)

• Social Listening & Qualitative Data:

  • VaynerMedia invests in teams reading thousands of comments to uncover real consumer insights.
  • “I’ve hired 200 kids that are psych majors whose job is to read all the comments...and make assumptions...to put us in a position to win.” (35:43)
  • AI (like ChatGPT) will eventually automate some of this, but human intuition still rules.

• Test-and-Learn Model:

  • Don’t “shoot big” until the data says you’re ready; build patience and “hold your breath” before going all-in on brand dollars.

• Local Execution & Culture:

  • Leverage local influencers, NIL college sports deals, and tailor content to distinct interests and regional culture.

4. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Ego in Marketing:

  • “People would rather see a commercial during their baseball game for their company and waste money than not see the TikToks and Instagram and make more money. I will never, to the day I die, understand that ego and yesterday is hurting a lot of people from growing.” (00:00; echoed at 32:37)

• On Brand-Building vs. Awareness:

  • “It’s not just knowing you exist. It’s, did you just make a reference to my favorite rapper? Are you supporting the second baseman of my favorite team...Relevance.” (23:00)

• On Testing Marketing Channels:

  • “Drive time radio bought the right way—still occasionally underpriced. Billboards, when you don’t pay the actual price...remnant sometimes a buy. The problem is most people are just not educated; they’re not practitioners of marketing.” (22:18)

• On Employee Motivation and Merit:

  • “If you want the employees to work as hard as you, make them your equal partner. They’re not supposed to work as hard as you.” (49:40)
  • “Ambition and your work ethic...You just need to articulate that they better not become entitled and expect things.” (50:24)

5. Audience Q&A – Rapid Tactics and Philosophy

(Timestamp: 40:16 – End)

• Blending Brands & Cross-Promotion:

  • Use social media to play in different verticals simultaneously at low cost; make business decisions based on quant/qual affirmation, not guesswork.

• Reels & Dealership-Level Content:

  • Gary’s “Pack Framework”: Platforms and culture are the pillars—know the channel inside out, understand local passions, tailor content accordingly.
  • “There are humans...that should be in the content. Anybody who names themselves Big Mike is one of those people.” (47:14)

• Hashtags & Algorithm Trends:

  • Hashtags matter less now; staying on top of the platforms’ changes is crucial. “What worked yesterday might change tomorrow.” (47:50)

• On Staying Motivated After Success:

  • Beware complacency; keep communication honest and direct. Accept some teammates will slow down, others will “go harder than ever.” (38:29)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• The Modern Employee Mindset: 04:36 – 11:50
• Retention & Management Philosophies: 11:51 – 13:45
• Death of Traditional Marketing: 13:46 – 19:40
• Execution over Opinion in Marketing: 19:41 – 23:50
• Relevance and High-Volume Content: 26:10 – 28:30
• The Test-and-Learn Model: 34:45 – 36:41
• Audience Q&A: 40:16 – End

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Final Takeaways

• Marketing success in 2026 belongs to those who obsess over current consumer attention, not nostalgia for past channels.
• Brand-building demands relentless, iterative, data-driven content—customized for context and culture.
• Effective management adapts to new workforce needs while maintaining accountability and high standards.
• Ego and subjective opinion are the enemies; data, humility, and execution are the allies.

Gary’s Core Advice:
"Hold us accountable. I'm not asking you to be patient to hide. I'm asking you to be patient because that's how the model works. But I think we're on a real journey together." (52:46)

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Listen for actionable frameworks, blunt truths, and a preview of the exact marketing mentality that will “outflank everyone” in business over the next decade.

Transcript

[A]

People would rather see a commercial during their baseball game for their company and waste money than not see the Tiktoks and Instagram and make more money. I will never, to the day I die understand that ego and yesterday is hurting a lot of people from growing. People thinking their subjective opinion, if the picture looks good or the video's funny, is stopping people from making money. I think we need to cross the T's and I's on what I've been saying here for the last 20 minutes so that you understand it. Because if we fall into it and go deep, there will be growth. Significant growth. This is the GaryVee audio experience. Before you go to the podcast, I've got a big announcement. I know several years ago a lot of you bought 12 books of 12 and a half to get the NFT, the book games NFT. I also know that a lot of people have dropped off on their journey with veefriends, which is a massive mistake because what we're doing on Burn island and what we're doing on base with book games is remarkable. So you need to go to vee friends vfriends.com oldbooks go to veefriends.com oldbooks with an S. You will go to that landing page and we will help you explain if you are trying to figure out where your NFTs are, how to bring them over to the website and how to start activating them so that you can start using them for all the incredible exchanges and draws and raffles and experiences that we're doing for people that actually own the book games. So please go to veefriends.com, where you can start your journey on reactivating your book games journey. I'm a businessman who happens to love marketing. Probably two things that I want to ground this chat into is what I would frame up as M and M. One side, I want to talk about management, some of the stuff in the book, kind of where the world's going, and then on the other side talk about marketing. And I think both of them are changing pretty aggressively. I think for a lot of us in this crowd, by show of hands and don't be lazy, how many people here are over the age of 40? Raise your hand. Yes, my crew. I think for a lot of us we have opinions of Gen Z coming into the workforce. I have unlimited employees who tell me they only want to work Tuesday to Thursday and be promoted within the first seven days of being in the organization. And I'm sure a lot of us have a ton of feelings about that. But the reality is, is that these kids are coming up with options. We in this room did not have the ability to make $50,000 a year dancing on TikTok and getting brand deals. And so I don't think Gen Z is lazy. I just think they're living with options that we didn't have. But the reality is that accountability, kindness, patience, tenacity, all the traits that we talked about in the book, it's really cooking a meal. I think all of us know as we manage and build, if you're over indexing on one or two things without having a complete meal, it creates vulnerability. There's unlimited value and tenacity. I was born in the Soviet Union. My family came here with nothing. We lived with eight family members in a studio apartment. I'm not sitting here in front of you without ungodly levels of conviction, tenacity, and hard work. At the same token, the amount of people that do burn out or are unhappy in their journey to dollars or many of the other mental aspects of being a human being, if you don't find balance within that. Hey, everybody. Hope you're enjoying the podcast right now. Make sure you follow the podcast. That's why I'm interrupting. Let's keep going on this show, but follow the podcast. It'll make my mom super happy. And more importantly for me, what's so impressive, Dave, about what you and the family have done and many of the leaders here? How many people here by show of hands, have been in the organization for more than five years? Raise your hand. How about 10? How about 15? I mean, that's the punchline. To me, the only thing that's interesting about when you're building a meaningful business is what's your retention? And retention, for a lot of us who raised our hands over 40, as we all know, 15, 20 years ago, the majority of retention was predicated on the financial upside of continuing the course. And for a select crew, the. And a good amount of the people, the titles that came along with that. I think retention going forward will require us to be a little more well rounded because of the optionality and because of the way the Internet's growing. And I think we do have to take a strong stance on figuring out how to incentivize people. And I call it really reverse engineering. I'm not overly emotional on what drives my 1900 employees globally. If it's money, mazel tov. I'm in. I understand that game. If it's titles, if you need that for your ego or leverage, or your LinkedIn. I'm about that life. Happy to go there if it's appropriate. If it's work life balance, I'm all about that. But the kind candor that I talked about in the book comes along with that. When I sit down with somebody and they say, gary, I need work life balance, I'm like, I'm good. But you need to understand that we're building a business and there are gonna be people in this organization who are gonna go harder and want different things. And as long as you're comfortable in realizing there's no participation in hanging around trophy game here, you will be compensated appropriately and well. But there are going to be people that lap you in this organization, and somebody that now reports to you has a high chance of having you report to them based on this need. As long as you are accountable to what makes you happy, then I'm about that. And I think that is a modern conversation that most of us didn't grow up with. I sure did in the last 25 years. Hey, everybody. Hope you're enjoying the podcast right now. Make sure you follow the podcast. That's why I'm interrupting. Let's keep going on this show, but follow the podcast. It'll make my mom super happy. And these combos are landing. And I think one of the things that we need to think about as leaders in here is there is a generation of employees that don't have the same frameworks we did. And so for me, I'm agnostic. You want to be the c. I mean, I had a kid come in the other day. I want to be the CEO of a company. I'm like, great. He was like, what do I do? I'm like, work 24 hours a day for 14 years and give yourself maybe a chance to be in the mix. And if that's not your life, that's awesome. And so I think we need to start thinking about optionality in the way that we manage and we build this organization. When I think about the growth four years in a row and all that stuff, things are changing and we know it. And I think for a lot of us, you may not like it, but the world and technology and innovation, both on the marketing and the management side, doesn't really care what you think the world's gonna do. The world. And it's our job to adjust to that reality. And so I think there's so many interesting things brewing on continuing the next decade or two. To have the hands be 5 and 10 and 15 and 20 years in here. Some of us are gonna have to compromise on ideologies that we lived for ourselves for the best interest of the organization. That's what I'm spending time on. I worked in a retail store seven days a week, 15 hours a day for 20 years. Like, that's how I saw it. That's what I liked. But I don't have any emotion for the people. I don't view them lesser than if they want to live that nine to five life five days a week. I just don't want them to think that they're going to be the EVP of the company if they do that. And so there's a lot of these kind of combos that I think are really healthy and something worth talking about. The other thing that I'm spending a lot of time on thinking about is the whole marketing shift. We did three Super bowl spots at VaynerMedia in this last super bowl, so I'm sure it's top of mind. We did the Pepsi spots with Ben Stiller and Steve Martin and we did the Mr. Peanut roast. The peanut. Mr. Peanut campaign. That's marketing that we all kind of grew up with. As you saw in the clip of my intro with Larry King, he's like, what are you? I'm like, we're modern day Mad Men. What does that mean? How many people watched Mad Men on tv? Just raise your hands. Great. Solid. So you know, that's an ad firm. That's how Madison Avenue was. I think a lot of us have group grown up with it, but it was always television down, print down, billboard down. I think everyone here is aware that digital is now a part of our lives. I think a lot of people struggle with digital being part of our lives. Watch this. How many people here? By the way, lying is the devil. And when I ask this question, I don't want half. I want full ready half. How many people here recall saying to themselves or to somebody else 15, 17 years ago, I'm not getting a cell phone. I don't need one of those things. My pager is perfect. Raise your hand. I appreciate it. My man back there. All right, seven, eight. Next. How many people remember saying, I'm not getting that expensive iPhone. My BlackBerry is awesome. Plus I need the buttons on my BlackBerry. Don't lie, raise your hands. Look around, look around, look around. Here's a favorite of mine. Remember, lying is the devil. How many people here 15 years ago said, I'm not getting a Facebook account? That's for kids and my children. I'll never be on Facebook. And have had a Facebook account since. Don't lie, raise your hands. This, this, what we just went through for 45 seconds is the only thing I think about, the only thing I care about with marketing is, is selling stuff. My daddy had a liquor store. He didn't care about if people thought the video was funny or interesting. He didn't care what my opinion of a good ad was or his opinion. He cared how much Pinot Grigio and Johnnie Walker Black sold. Marketing is an engine for business. The problem and the opportunity is marketing is going through the biggest shift it's gone through since we transitioned from a predominant radio consuming society to a predominant television society. The Internet is now 30 years old. You know, it's really starting to hit maturity. We're there now. And what's happening on the modern day Internet is remarkable. What's even more remarkable is how many people in this room, in this hotel, in this beautiful city and in this country continue to underestimate the power of the modern marketing and how much they continue to overestimate yesterday. The concept of humanity is very simple. I'm going to overvalue yesterday because it's not scary. I know it. I'm going to. For a small group of people that I roll with in Silicon Valley and others, they overestimate tomorrow. They're like, if you're not on VR selling cars, you're an idiot. There's like nine people using VR. VR. So I'm watching everybody way, way over value yesterday. I promise what I want for all of you is I want you to be obsessed with today. For example, today Facebook reels. If you know what TikTok is and if you know what Instagram reels are, Facebook has a version called reels. All the cool kids are doing everything on TikTok and Instagram. Cause that's the new wave. Meanwhile, because so few people are making content for Facebook reels yet there are tens and hundreds of millions of people consuming those reels. The supply and demand of attention and output is off kilter. And one of the biggest opportunities in marketing this second is doing videos and pictures on Facebook reels to sell stuff. That is the framework that we are going to want to achieve in this room. And because this is real family and I watch how Dave talks about it, and if you're trying to raise money for your PTA and if your cousin is running for mayor in Cincinnati and if you have a little time for a side hustle and you like selling T shirts, it is the framework of our society. The biggest reason the world's confused right now is they don't understand that the attention of our society is shifting so fast to new platforms. Think about commercials. Super Bowl's the best. I'm on CNBC saying these are a steal at $7 million a spot. Why? Because 100 plus Americans will actually watch it. Meanwhile, streaming is eating up all television except sports. How many people here now have Netflix or Hulu or Amazon prime and are consuming shows on that? Raise your hand. Dave, I want you to look at this crowd one more time. Raise it high. All the way. I don't know if you know this. These are not 20 year olds. This crew, the OGs. You're watching Hulu and Netflix, which means every minute you're doing that is a minute you're not watching cable. It's a minute you're not watching local television. And oh, by the way, the random times you find yourself on cable and regular television, predominantly watching sports. When the commercial comes on, I promise you're not consuming it. Even this crowd is grabbing their phone and doing something or going to the bathroom or whatever you're doing. But I promise you, you're not excited for a Jeep going up a mountain telling you it's 399. That is not what you're hyped for. In between watching the Housewives or the Bulls game, consumer behavior has shifted and the amount of money that is being wasted is staggering. Meanwhile, digital's no dream either. The amount of money being wasted in digital and modern marketing is profound. The amount of brands that are overspending on programmatic banner ads on the bottom of ESPN.com that nobody here sees is staggering. Influencer marketing. One of the greatest ways to do business in marketing today, one of the worst. You could pay somebody $5,000 to do a campaign and you could get nothing. You can get somebody for 800 bucks and you get a ton. This is like the ROI of a basketball. Let me explain. The ROI of social media and modern marketing is predicated on the player. The ROI of a basketball for LeBron James is a billion dollars. The ROI for me is negative $4,000. I've torn both of my meniscus. The ROI for a piano. For me, zero. Billy Joel, a billion. A lot of people come up to me and say, gary, social media doesn't work. I've been doing it for a year. It doesn't work. I go, the data is very clear. It works. It doesn't work for you because you suck at it. What we need to really realize in this room is it is about execution. It is about understanding. But we must get educated at school of where the attention is of the customer. I'm so fired up about what we're about to do here in Houston and really use this epic city as a launching pad because brand is being built in social now much more than it's being built in outdoor. Direct mail or television. And you're talking to somebody who still tests for his dad's liquor store in New Jersey. Outdoor local television and print mainly. Just do me a favor, don't tell my dad mainly I'm wasting his money so I can speak with authority in moments like this. But I'm always testing it because it's important to never get high on your own supply. I'll give you an example. Drive time radio bought the right way. Still occasionally underpriced billboards. When you don't pay the actual price for a year or six months and you buy it when they have that two month gap where they have a different person coming in, you buy it right Remnant sometimes a buy. The problem is most people are just not educated. They're not practitioners of marketing. The difference about what's happening is you have a game of haves and have nots of practitioners. There are people who have opinions about TikTok and Facebook and Spotify and then there are the people that actually run ads and do creative on it. That I think is the real interesting part. When I talk to CMOs, the most interesting thing of my day, four times a day, 12 times a week, is we will play a video and it will run and they will look at it or we'll show them a picture and they will look at it and they believe that their subjective opinion of the video is the right answer. The audacity of humans deciding, I don't like that picture. We didn't like that post. The audacity of not understanding it is not about your subjective opinion. It is about the quant and qual data after the post is made to get the insight or the sale. The lack of humility in marketing today is staggering. They are completely, completely confused about what's happening because that was what was required in the Mad Men era. It was your subjective opinion and you ran it. We do not have to do that in modern marketing. The math and the quantum qual of social gives us the insights to then allow us to scale the marketing campaigns. So I think the things before we go into Q and A because I do want to do a bunch on these two things. One, is there any clarity or any depth that we can do on the stuff that you read in the book, on the management stuff. And does anybody have deep. And this is important because in these moments, a lot of people get shell up. I would encourage many people. I'm gonna talk a little bit more, but I want to start setting this up. Please ask your basic marketing 101 questions. Cause everybody else in the room has them too. And you'll be doing a service to each other, but we need to speak about them in a business context, not in theory. And I think what I want to do while I'm here is actually answer those questions or go into it. The punchline really of my talk, and I'm so grateful to be here with all of you, is the two things I most care about in building large businesses, and I've been very fortunate in my young life to accomplish that quite a bit, is management and marketing. And both of them are going through actual transition. And that's going to require us not to fully change because 80% of what we all grew up with is exactly right. But we're gonna need to tweak. We're gonna need to tweak if we keep growing the way we've been growing. Cause you know this like, the biggest vulnerability is when things are good, right? Like I'm this again. When I saw 5, 10, 15 years, hands up, I have a funny feeling I have a good sense of who's in this room in my prep. The biggest thing I'm scared of is things are going well. And I'm especially concerned, though optimistic, because we've obviously gotten a very significant at bat with you is the marketing is such an arbitrage. It's such an arbitrage. I built my dad's business, went from a three to a $75 million business in seven years, and I had no money. And it was because email and Google AdWords were new and everybody else was doing full page ads in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. And I was buying the word wine on Google for 5 cents a click. And we're seeing the same opportunity right now in building brand. We're out flanking with our clients at Pepsi and Procter and Gamble and Craft. We're outflanking competitors because they continue to buy commercials and billboards and direct mail, and we're crushing them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn. But. But it does take a mental shift. There's a big difference in marketing right now, which is potentially getting to people versus getting to them. And I think we're making Too many decisions on what yesterday was about or what we feel good about or even occasionally. My biggest problem is when people make decisions for their ego. People would rather see a commercial during their baseball game for their company and waste money than not see the TikToks and Instagram and make more money. I will never, to the day I die, understand that ego and yesterday is hurting a lot of people from growing. People thinking their subjective opinion, if the picture looks good or the video's funny, is stopping people from making money. I think we need to cross the T's and I's on what I've been saying here for the last 20 minutes so that you understand it. Because if we fall into it and go deep, there will be growth, significant growth. And on the management side, if we understand a couple of tweaks against the way we did it with managing our people could create dramatic retention and acquisition of other employees. And I think that's a great debate that I'm sure a lot of us are thinking through. So I really appreciate this time. I wanted to leave 30 for Q&A. We got 27. I'm thrilled if anybody from the management team wants to come up and kick off anything, but I most of all want to say thank you for having me. I want to be part of this journey with y', all, and I'm around if I could be of help. And thank you. Thank you, my man.

[B]

Great, you guys. I've gotten to know Gary some and through, I guess, since. I don't know how many months it's been since we signed the deal, but he really, really impressed our team when he came to Charlotte with your team and. And one of the things that we loved. I know Tim Keane is all business. Did that hit home to you? Tim's all about those like. Like everything he said and the Tim Keane said in our. In our meeting with you, like, before, even before they were done at Carmel Country Club.

[A]

Yeah, I remember presentation.

[B]

What's like. Like, you know, how do we measure your effectiveness?

[A]

Sales. Sales. Sales.

[B]

Tim King goes, I'm sold.

[A]

Can we go sales, Tim? It's because I'm not a marketing agent. Like, agencies are full of shit. They just want your money and don't want to be held accountable. I don't want to lose based on you or him or Dino saying, that video is not funny. So the only way I can do that is sales. Now, the best way to do sales is branding, right? Like, I bought this $300 pair of sneaker, not because I went to a store and the Guy got me or because somebody knocked on my wall at my home and said, would you like this? I did this because this thing means something to me. You are so strong at executing at the store level. I just need to get as many people there as possible. Right. And more importantly, I need them to feel a little something when they head over. It's not just awareness. It's not just knowing you exist. It's, did you just make a reference to my favorite rapper? Are you supporting the second baseman of my favorite team? Do you even know the starting center of our college basketball team? How do you know that? Relevance. If we can get this brand to feel alive and not corporate in the trenches, you will get much more consideration. And if you really step back, for a lot of you in this room and think about. And it's hard to break it down if you don't realize it's happening. But if you start thinking about some of the stuff you've bought and what maybe got it there, word of mouth, just a good location in the store was easy for you to grab it off the shelf. But you'd be surprised how many things you buy day to day because the brand did something some way in marketing that made you think, think or chuckle or it meant something to you. I'll buy anything that has the jets involved in it. If the New York jets are involved in the ad I'm buying, you know, especially if it's alcohol, because we're really losing a lot. But, but, but, you know, I think that's what I'm really worried about. But it's definitely. I mean, what are we doing here? What is market? I mean, I. I have this argument in marketing land all the time. They all just want to do marketing. I'm like, for what? We're here to do business, we need to sell stuff.

[B]

Well, with creating the Echo park brand, that's something that I know this whole group and everybody listening, you know, why did we, you know, hitch our wagon to you and Vaynermedia is that philosophy is that actually creating sales is amazing. The strategy you may want to. I think it'd be really interesting. Interesting to the team to hear about it. But the strategy that you guys presented to us in our. In our meetings, and then I remember I texted you about that about Liquid Death.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

And if you guys. Has anybody heard of Liquid Death in the room? A few of you?

[A]

Yeah. Quite a few.

[B]

And so I'm reading this. I think it was a Forbes article. I'm reading it like the guy's talking about how he built liquid death into this, you know, $750 billion, whatever company in this short period of time in his strategy. And oh, there's a Super bowl ad. Oh, it's the everything you just talked about before I came up here and I said, damn, that sounds really familiar. And I texted him, he goes, yeah, I was the first investor in that company.

[A]

Even better than that, Mike Cesaro, the founder and creator of that company, was a creative director at VaynerMedia. And like, that's like incredible pride for me, right? Like, listen, I'm aware that there's confusion, cynicism, curiosity by what we're doing. Anytime you're doing the thing that's going to win in the beginning, there's confusion in the system. But there's no doubt in my mind this works for business. This may not, we may not make a commercial that gets us an award in the south of France for Cannes Lion. Ad Age might not write an article of like Echo park made the funniest. Like, because I don't care about that. It's. You definitely don't care about that. Like, I'm not gonna send you a link to an article saying this was a funny post on Instagram. You're like, and, and so yeah, I think, but the model. Just so everybody understands, this might be fun. Since we got some time, it used to be, let's come up with a tagline. Echo park taking you to the next place, right? And then you'd make a 30 second vanilla commercial because you were trying to make it work for everyone. And then you push it. And then the billboards look the same and the direct mail and you got a campaign, you got a brand. What we're trying to do is say, okay, in Houston, there's people that are going to care about the Rockets, the Astros, cars, beer, hunting, fishing, high school football. There's a lot of interests. And an 18 to 22 year old guy making $100,000 a year trading crypto is gonna need a picture and a video that's different than a 42 year old mom that's buying something for a 16 year old. Like there's just a lot of different humans. Everybody here for me to get you to drink this. I can't say just one thing to really get you to drink this. I need to tell you in a room of this 19 different things to get 80% of you. And so what we wanna do is get a bunch of consumer segments, make content for them in the channels we know their consumers, assuming social use, the insights from people's comments and actions and then build up from there. And that is just clearly the model that is building the future businesses. Clearly.

[B]

Well, if you think about it, yeah, it's the like liquid death. I mean you can get water, you know, right? You can get any water. It's like a used car. You can buy a used car anywhere. How do you create the connection with like Nike has in the shoes you could buy shoes from.

[A]

And look again, I grew up in retail. Not the size and scale that you're playing at, but it's something I was, I had lunch yesterday in Austin with the CEO of Whole Foods for three hours and same conversation. Like some of this is gonna be locations. Like you're all in business. Like some, like I always. Somebody came in the other day with one of the worst products I've ever seen. And we did our meeting and I was like, hey. At the end I was like, hey, I just want to tell you something. Like we're so good at our job with marketing. We're just gonna speed up everyone trying your product. The problem is they're not gonna like the product. And so before you start doing marketing, you may wanna tighten that up, right? So like if one of the locations is the worst location cause you can't get to it and there's construction and you can't do the U turn and this and that, like that's gonna be that.

[B]

Well this gets back to. I think it's before. Cause Gary just flew in from Austin. We were talking about this morning is our guest experience. Our Echo park team has the number one guest experience in pre owned. And we were talking about how incredibly important that that's our product. That's what separates us from the rest.

[A]

And when I get excited when we talk real business is like if that's the case and we want to keep reinforcing that now you start doing all sorts of localized social media campaigns like free coffee and donuts to this crew. And like you're just. I'm upset with Nil. I don't know if you all know what Nil is. Name, image and likeness for college athletes. I want to, I mean that stuff when I've been analyzing that for 18 months now because we also own a sports agency, me and my brother. And you get the right kid, you know, and you know this. And there's a lot of towns, especially ones that we do business in where the college player is more famous than the pro player. And all of a sudden the college player is in for 2 posts for 10k. But in store appearance and we're pounding that in store appearance and we're running the ads against fans of that college or retired superstars that didn't make it to the league but were the biggest stars of all time for that 30 to 40 to 50 year old. So there's just. It just gets back to that relevance once we get them in. Like for me, knowing that getting people just to figure out how to come to your location, even if they're there just to take a selfie with an influencer or an athlete, lends itself to long term business. It's just about the price. I'll do anything in marketing. I just sat here and said I don't want to do commercials. If CBS called me tomorrow and said commercials are 80 bucks, I'd buy every commercial. It's unemotional, underpriced attention. To me, it's just a price. The problem with a lot of traditional stuff right now is they're dying. So they're charging you more. I love. Do you know that newspaper ads cost more now than they did 10 years ago? It's a joke, my guy. It's a joke. And do you know how many people keep paying it because that's how we built this darn place.

[B]

Yeah, I loved how you associate the super bowl ad. That's the only time that Americans actually want to watch the commercials.

[A]

You know, this isn't like I'm making it up, you know exactly that you watch the game. Some people just watch super bowl for Rihanna, some people just watch super bowl for the ads. And you know that even if you were more into the game, you still watch those ads. Meanwhile, the most expensive ads that are not super bowl, the AFC and NFC championship game, not one of you watch those ads, the Grammys, nobody here watched those ads. The Oscars. You don't watch those ads. So to me, I think back to business and selling back to what we're aligned on. The biggest issue with marketing is common sense is not at the table. It also goes back to the other thing we were talking about. Another thing that is common sense is on what earth does my opinion or your opinion or Dino's opinion or Tim's opinion be the final call for the whole bet?

[B]

Gotta have a little bigger group than that.

[A]

Yes, the whole world. Right. Back in the day, to your point, pre Internet, you had to make that call. There's no other. We did focus groups, right? We put 10 people in a weird room and we were watching on the other side and like they like that. It was super freaky. And we made the whole bet on that. Now we have something. I don't know if you heard about it. It's called the Internet. There's a lot of people on social media and they give a lot of opinions and they do a lot of things and we need to take advantage of that. But you know, again, people have like theoretical opinions about stuff when they're not in.

[B]

Gets back to your conviction. Your chapter in your book makes me think of that. You know, it's like if you're gonna go buy a focus group of 10, you gotta have a lot of conviction.

[A]

That gets me emotional because I think we share being in business with our dad dads and I've done a lot of homework on this business now. And like we don't even sit in this room. If your dad didn't have conviction.

[B]

No, but he's also. He would also be the one that was. Who was like a die hard newspaper long after, you know, he'd want to spend 300,000amonth at one store on newspaper. Yeah, like, but no one's gonna read that.

[A]

Yeah, I mean I wish I would. I wish I had the opportunity. You need to yell at him. You know, like it's, you know, I think this is an important combo. The biggest thing that freaks me out about business is there's businesses like this when it's family owned. They're always dangerous. Right. When it's got that DNA and you do so many things logically and then some reason marketing is the one place where it all goes out the window and people are about opinions and thoughts and just like silliness. We need much more practicality in our marketing. Much more. Because it's meant to drive business. We also need patience to build brand. Doesn't happen overnight, but we can't waste money along the way. People get impatient and start doing the wrong thing. Staying the course. It's like working out. I'm sure. How many people. I just want to see it. How many people here at some point in their life decided for a New Year's resolution, I'm going to lose some weight and get into shape. Raise your hands. And of those people, do you know how many quit on January 26th on February 19th? And we see that a lot too in marketing. That story sums up what we're dealing with a lot. Which is if you're going to do something new, you have to like actually do it. You know, if you decided you now play pickleball instead of tennis, you can't show up to the pickleball court. The third time because you haven't figured it out yet with a tennis racket, you gotta keep playing pickleball. And so I'm excited about this journey, but we're empathetic. We know it's a process, especially the creative opinion. People are so used to making a subjective call on one commercial and one billboard. And it's a whole process. And now we're coming at you and saying we're gonna put out 15 things a day. And that just is like such a different thing. Cause you're like, am I supposed to judge this? Does my opinion mean anything? And it's a whole to do, but I'm really excited about it. I think we're going to build something meaningful here.

[B]

Well, I love it that we're here. We are in Houston and we're going to launch it in Houston. And then for the team out there, something that I know that we're all very excited about is that we're going to see the results. Right. And like you were just talking about, if we see the results, then we'll be able to scale that across the whole organization across the country.

[A]

Yeah. I think the thing, the biggest result you're going to see right away, and I don't know how many people care about this, but it's the only thing I care about in marketing is we're going to see the results of what people think about you, what they think about you, what they know about you. Have they heard about you, what are the alternative things they think about, what are they interested in in this region? And so the consumer insights are going to come. And then you start pouring, you know, back to the Green Mountain coffee cup. It's like, when do you spend the money to make the sale? Like finding A plus. This is a different K cups are very different than a car. And so we know that. I mean, we sold a jet engine for GE on one post on LinkedIn and it blew everyone's minds. That company, they didn't think it could be, but marketing is the same. It's just where's the attention? Do you put something in front of them that they want? I think the thing that the organization's gonna have to have strategic patience on is what people normally do when the market doesn't know any, doesn't know you, is you spend heavy up front. Awareness. Right. You hit it. The problem is 99% of marketing campaigns in that model fail. So my point was, and how I built everything and how I've watched all the things that have become big built palaton Tesla, all of it is build up for a little while. And to me, I always think whoever holds the breath the longest wins. So I want to hold my breath as long as possible. Now, I own tons of businesses in that scenario. I get to make that decision in this one part of my life. I don't. So it's about a lot of communication with, like, what are we doing here? Because to me, the longer you can hold your breath and do that model, the more likely you're gonna know what to put out when you spend the big dollars for that awareness. It's just logical. It's science. It's science. Test and learn, test and learn, test and learn. But it's not test and learn. Every time you're doing it, you're marketing and you're getting more people to know. And so it's going to be a fun journey. And the reason we went from 0 to $350 million business, 0 to 1800 people globally, from somebody who was in the wine business to Madison Avenue, is we fully. We live on that. We think that's oxygen, comma, we think the comments, what's called the qualitative data, is the secret sauce of the whole industry. And no one's doing it because it's hard. For example, I've hired 200 kids that are psych majors whose job it is for a living to read all the comments about every dealership in Houston and make assumptions and observations on the chatter to put us in a position to win. That's an investment that one day I think everyone will make today. Very few do, as a matter of fact. Have you seen this whole chatgpt AI thing going on? I'm really mad about it because people are gonna figure out what I'm up to and use it to do the same thing. And it's gonna take away one of our advantages. But that's exactly right. It's. When do you decide to spend and pour lighter fluid on it? My biggest thing is, like, when you've got it narrowed in and you understand it, that's a better shot than just shooting up and, you know, praying. And those bullets are expensive. When you do heavy TV and launch and billboards, like, you're really guessing on four people's subjective opinions.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yep. Should we do some Q and A before I get out here? Yeah.

[B]

I was going to say we've got not much time left and we'll jump into some questions. One question I had that I mentioned to you earlier is, you know, this. This team is coming off our fourth consecutive all time record year. We're all very thrilled and excited and grateful. How do you, you know, whether you want to speak to, you know, personally or in your company, how do you, you know, stay motivated? Because I believe our team's going to have to spend a lot of time this year motivating our other teammates out there who are listening and, you know, to jump out of bed every morning and be as hungry as they were and get the job done in 2023.

[A]

I've always said to business owners, leaders of companies, this is the most challenging one. I actually referenced it earlier in my talk. I'm very concerned when that happens because complacency, there's a lot of things. And companies reactions are usually too extreme to the left or the right. They either go with a subconscious fear structure or they go with rah rah. And really neither actually works. The reality is, the reason I'm not as scared here is this is less corporate than 99% of things that I see. This is family. So everyone's in it. And then you just got to analyze people's behaviors. There could be people in it for real. They're just really genuinely thinking about fishing for the rest of their lives and they're just quote, unquote, wrapping it up. That at the top you just got to watch people's behaviors. But I think it's just a candorous conversation. And I think again, what's amazing about having continuity at the senior of a level is we're not 20 year olds in this room. We've seen the ups and downs. We know how this works, right? And so, you know, it's hard, it's hard to win this game except being candorous of like we're paying attention. We Dave down, we're paying attention to this vulnerability. And that's not a threat. That's not a bad thing. We're just aware that that's something we're thinking about. And every individual has to think about that for themselves and inspire the others around us and then be okay with the 10% on each. 10% of this crew is gonna go harder than ever. 10% is in that life cycle and in that reality of their life that they just might not want that. And that's okay. Especially, you know, when they've given 15, 17, 20 years of great stuff. It's just real life. And I think that's how you think about it very practically.

[B]

Good answer.

[A]

Thank you, sir.

[B]

Why don't we jump in? We got. We actually have a great question from Chris Parker.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Echo Park, Houston. J.D. you know this guy Parker. Never heard of it. Speaking of family. Right.

[A]

Real family.

[B]

Is there any benefit you see in blending or overlapping the future branding of Echo park and the power sports segment? Yeah. Or are the brands best managed separately?

[A]

No, I think you can do a lot of that. I mean, I think, I mean that's the point of our model. I think you should be playing in every sector. And power sports is one of those. I mean, the answer to any question of crossing over in Houston or the whole country, the answer is gonna be yes. Cause that's the brilliance of social media done properly. You can play in everything at a low cost and get quant and qual affirmation and then make much more thoughtful business decisions versus guessing on a tagline and making everything match. Or the production value of the video or the social media post has to be like Martin Scorpion Scorsese movie. You can see I have some pent up anger about that. I just, I keep showing businesses like this sold 80,000 units and it was done on an iPhone. And they're like, yeah, but do this. And it cost us $200,000 to make the video. And we sell nine.

[B]

Let's see.

[A]

Oh, you got a good one.

[B]

Did you refresh? Did I? Yeah, I've got quite a few. It looks like they're coming through. Let's see. Concord, Toyota, Tracy Goose, Tree. Let's see this guy. He says you comment on bruting the newspaper ads. Reminds me back in 85 when I started in this business, the GM would hide the checks for the newspaper ads as the owner still thought advertising was word of mouth. Look how far we've come here. Just a good comment.

[A]

True.

[B]

Let's see another one. Where do you see cross promotion, marketing and marketing shift in building a brand?

[A]

You know, I think cross promotion is that in reference to the brands that we're selling or I just want to make sure I feel.

[B]

Strategy person, Jamaris McNeil.

[A]

Jamaris, make sure you send me like send me a LinkedIn with the full detail of the context of that. Because there's a couple different ways that cross promotion is defined. I just want to make sure I give you the right answer.

[B]

Okay. Edward Freehart, BMW, Denver. We were. If we were to try and make reels at the dealership level, what are the basic pillars we should follow to try and get the most success out of them? You also mentioned the Jeep crawling up the mountain, at least payment. What messaging would be better to resonate and grab the attention of our customers?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I think Anything is better than a jeep going up a mountain. So that's number one as far as the pillars, you know, I think that's, you know, at the dealership level, we've given you the. So the framework is called pack Platforms and culture. The only thing that matters when you make stuff for social media is do you understand the platforms? Do you know that TikTok, you can duet and stitch? Do you know that Instagram, you can do a carousel? Do you understand that Twitter has now changed? And you don't have to be just 240 characters or 280. You can be 4,000 if you pay $8. Like, do you know what's going on with the platforms? There's a lot of things you'll talk about that I don't understand. Right. I understand how to operate stores. I understand location, location, location. I understand convenience is king. I built my company on service. I understand a lot of things, but there are absolutely things that I won't fully understand. That is not my world. This world, though, I really do understand. One of the things my dad taught me is don't talk about things you don't know. Right. And so one of the most interesting things as we go on this journey is there's gonna be a lot of talking from people don't even know what they're talking about. I respect every opinion, but let's talk it through and let's see if you actually know what we're talking about. Right. And so I think these platforms matter for the dealer level. But then there's the culture. He said in Denver, where did we move it? So let's just. I think it was Denver. In Denver, what's the culture in Denver? There's definitely the Broncos and the Nuggets and the Avalanche. That culture matters, obviously, hiking and skiing, but there's just what's going on, you know, you know this in New York, I always think about this. Like seven years ago, somebody, a chef, a baker, mixed a croissant with a donut and it was the Cronut and it like took over New York and every brand. We did anything with a Cronut thing crushed. But it was a two week thing, right? And so like, do you know who the coolest rappers are? Who are the influencers? And then what demos are you trying to reach? Obviously, if you're talking about Polo G, you might be talking 18 to 25. You might, you know, Warren G might be 40, Kenny G might be 60. And so do you understand the culture of sports, music, entertainment, food, the local politics that's the stuff that has to show up than a generic Jeep going up and you need to hit that 12, 15, 20 times a day. Then you see what works. You double down. Some of it works so well, you turn it into an ad to sell stuff. Other becomes the brief to making a video for 50,000. Because now you're sure it's college football that no guessing.

[B]

This is a perfect follow up to that from CG Safford.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And I would say cg, I'm preemptively saying this that if you follow Gary's social media, you'll learn a lot of this stuff. To answer your own question, but what do you religiously read on a consistent basis to understand what is happening in the market?

[A]

A couple things I do. Every morning I wake up, I open up the Apple App Store and look at the the top 200 free apps to see if anything's brewing. Why is Bereal doing this? Why is Snap going up, down, left, right? So I always look at that. Cause that's pure data. That's what the humans of America are using on their app. So that's one thing I do. I also have like tons of alerts to different terms and marketing. But like at this point in my career, I have all internal data, right? We work with all the platforms so we know stuff that's coming before it happens. We have a pack team, platform and culture. The culture team's job broken up into fashion, sports, politics that are just watching literally everything that's happening on Reddit, Twitter, Google, the news, the newspaper for a living. We do listening so that we do effective talking on the back end. And so the answer is everything for us if somebody individually wants to do it. I think you actually alluded to it. There's 20, 50, 500 human beings that I think do a good job curating it. So people are good to follow. Google Alerts is good. Google Trends is very interesting. We do a lot of that work as well. Is that Big Mike?

[B]

Big Mike, I like that. Concord Toyota Big Mike. Regarding effective by the way, Big Mike.

[A]

Should be in the content real quick. On, on a dealership level, there are humans that work at these dealerships that should be in the content. And anybody who names themselves Big Mike is one of those people.

[B]

I understand he is a big man.

[A]

And JD Is a big. He's a big dude.

[B]

Well, he says regarding effects of posting on social yes. Are tags, hashtags, locations, etc. More or less important than the content itself? They're dramatically best practices for knowing which are the Best.

[A]

Yeah. So we'll continue to feed that and then you from central will need to figure out how you want to do this on that fragmented level. But that's. That's what we. That is the p. That's the platform. What it's. Big Mike's been in the game. Hashtags used to really matter six years ago really matter. Now they matter very little. Right. The gate for this will make sense. Is it in my. Yep. You see my slide. I day trade attention. What worked yesterday might change tomorrow. Instagram makes one change that changes the whole product. Right. TikTok comes out and it changed every other social media product. Cause it was so dominant. Cause it wasn't about who you followed. It's what kind of stuff do you want to see? Because you know, right. I see a lot of you shaking your heads. You followed somebody who was your buddy six years ago. You may not care anymore. You might not have the same interest. Especially high school and college. Cause now social's been around. But who your friends are at 18 a lot of times aren't at 28. Different interests, different life cycles. And so now social media is not about who you follow and what they're saying. It's more about the algorithms of putting the kind of stuff you're into right now, which completely changed everything. So great question by Big Mike. Hashtag's lessimportant to answer a question of like how do you stay on top of it? That's either you doing your own research or that's what we do for a living.

[B]

Great. Mike Walker, BMW, Fairfax. One of our superstars. If you're running at 1000 to 100 scale on ambition, energy, expectations, etc. Are you at peace? Accepting that a colleague at best will get to 85% of you. What does the conversation with a 70 sound like?

[A]

I love the this question. I know we're wrapping up, but I'm going to try to milk this the most. So my dad and I, my dad and I lived 40. My parents lived 45 minutes away from the liquor store that we worked in. So we had a 45 minute drive on the highway there and back. As you might be able to figure out, I talked a lot in those cars. My father, I don't know how many people here have a Soviet father, was born in the 50s in Soviet Russia. He talked about zero. But there were certain things that he would say. Actually I think everyone will get a kick of this the first time when I was 14, oldest son, immigrant family, were going to work, my world flipped Upside down. I was making $1,000 a weekend selling sports cards in the malls of New Jersey. Now I'm getting paid two bucks an hour to bag ice for 17 hours a day. So my world flipped upside down. He didn't say a single word on the entire drive to the liquor store on my first day. Not one word. We pull up into the parking lot. He turns to me. Now, do you remember what Ivan Drago sounded like in Rocky? Imagine that voice turns to me, looks at me and goes, keep an eye on the employees. They steal. So this is the man I'm dealing with for the next 25 years on this issue of 85s and 70s. The number one thing my dad complained about in my teenage years is that the workers didn't work as hard as him. And finally, the seventh time he brought up, I said, dad, if you want the employees to work as hard as you make them your equal partner, they're not supposed to work as hard as you. The way I deal with 85s and 70s is similar to what I said earlier. If you want to work nine to five, that's amazing, I'll comp you for what that is. Hopefully you'll enjoy that compensation. But you need to be prepared for people to lap you. If you're 100, you can't expect people to match your ambition. Ambition and your work ethic. Because you're going to end up in a different place than they are. You just need to articulate that they better not become entitled and expect things. This is why school is a problem. This is why 8th place trophies are a problem. You want to know why America's all bent out of shape? It's because 25 years ago we gave kids trophies that came in eighth place. We confused people, we confused merit. So what I say to 85s and 70s, as long as that 70 isn't in a place where you feel they shouldn't be here anymore. Cause you can replace them at the same cost. For somebody that will go 85, I just say manage your expectations on your execution. Now, if he's saying that I don't own the place and I'm not the boss, and this is me about a fellow coworker. You need to be over communicating to your managers and your bosses that you expect that the manager merit of your efforts outlast. There's also one other thing that we never talk about. It's called talent. Especially in selling stuff. Some people can go 60% and outperform people that go 130%. Talent is part of this. Nobody tries harder on the basketball court than me. I lose a lot in basketball. So the other part we have to talk about in this scenario, if it's a different version of the question is you might be going 100, your friend might be going 50, but that friend might be so charismatic, so good at selling, that her or his results are better than yours. And that's the real game. So it depends on which angle that 185 and 70 came from.

[B]

But I feel like you've thought about.

[A]

This one a little bit, Dave. I thought about everything, my man. I've spent the last 25 years thinking about everything human beings do, which is why the framework and thank you for having me of management, managing people and marketing, getting people to buy what I want them to do is the only thing I've been doing since I. When I was seven. Seven, I tricked my friends to stand behind the lemonade stands that I had so that I could walk the streets of New Jersey and figure out which trees and poles were best to put the signs for my lemonade, because I was trying to figure out the attention. I didn't read a book. I didn't see a GaryVee video. Like many of you, which is why you're in this room. Some things you're just born with and you gotta really execute on it. And I will tell you one thing for sure, that this organization is starting is on a marketing plan that is gonna outflank everyone. I ask all of you to be thoughtful and patient, but hold us accountable. I'm not asking you to be patient to hide. I'm asking you to be patient because that's how the model works. But I think we're on a real journey together and I'm really available for all of you Now. I gotta fly back to New York and do three meetings tonight because work ethic matters. Everybody. If you enjoyed this podcast, please go back and look at the prior episodes. They're loaded. I appreciate your attention and thanks for being part of this journey. See you later.