Transcript
Gary Vaynerchuk (0:00)
This is the GaryVee audio experience. Hey everybody. Actually, if this podcast has ever meant anything to you, please go to Spotify or Apple right now and leave a review. By the way, even if you give me a one star review cause you think it's shit, I respect it. But just leave a review, an actual review, four or five stars and the actual details of why. Yeah, that would mean something for me. So thanks. This is black and white. I don't know what emotional hurdle you need to get over to get into this. I don't know if you don't realize how content you actually are. I don't know if you don't realize that the words coming out of your mouth from ambition don't match your action because you don't actually mean it. I don't know what, but I know it's happening and that's what we need to break through here today. You got your perspective. I just want to be happy. Don't you want to be happy? YouTube, what's up? So, so grateful that you clicked and you're about to watch a new YouTube video. But before you do. 212-931-5731 that is my texting community platform. I'm doing a lot of one on one engagement in there and also access opportunity first looks in that environment. 212-931-5731 join it now. And now to the video you've been wanting to watch. So super excited to be here. A lot to talk about. I also spoke with the organizer so I'm going to try to do quite a bit of Q and A because I think the framework of where I see the opportunity for many in the room is not overly complicated. And what I'd really like to do is give this audience the opportunity to ask a detailed question about maybe their attempts within the execution and why it didn't work or how they see the perspectives in a different way. So very simply to set up this conversation. I believe that attention is the singular most important asset for anybody trying to achieve anything, whether that's to cure a disease, run for office, sell a sneaker, get a client to create anything. To create anything, you need one's attention and and then the variable of what comes out of your mouth or what you create becomes the way it happens. I have had an incredibly interesting relationship with attention my whole life. It took me probably until five years ago really questioning in a knock on wood why is this going so well Way what has allowed me to be successful? What has allowed me to be happy and successful why is this working? Why is this so obvious to me yet continues to not be for the masses? What is this thing? What is my life? Why does this work? And what it took me back to ironically is, which would make sense everyone's origin stories, but it becomes a DNA thing at some level. The thing that actually brings me happiness is I can't hear the cheering and I can't hear the booing. And that's why it's very easy to navigate through life that came from probably the circumstances of being born in the Soviet Union, coming to America, very humble beginnings, studio apartment, multiple family members in it, complete and utter lack of entitlement, while also having a wildly loving mother who built disproportionate self esteem but knew how to stop right before it became delusion. And, and that is really the balance I think many parents in the room are trying to figure out. And we're Starting to understand 8th place trophies are a really stupid fucking idea. And so that happened. But where it really took me to was my first business, which was a lemonade stand business When I was 6, 7 years old, I legitimately tricked my friends into standing behind lemonade stands all day. And I used to tell that story in my early keynote career. And then I actually, in a keynote, while I was telling the story in the other part of my brain was trying to figure out what was I doing all day if they were all behind. Like I actually couldn't recall. And then finally triggered, what I was doing was I was making signs for five to seven hours a day as a seven year old, walking the streets of New Jersey, sitting on corners, watching cars drive by and trying to legitimately figure out which tree or which sign or which bush or what angle their eyes were looking at while they were driving and where to put my sign. I did not learn that in college. I did not learn that by watching a keyNote video on YouTube. I did not learn that reading a Seth Godin book. You know, I learned it because it was inherently in me. And then it transformed forever. I did baseball card shows when I was 13, making $4,000 a weekend. I was the only dealer amongst grown men to spend the first four or five hours not setting up my table, but walking around and understanding where the attention was going. I would spend a lot of time looking at my table and understanding where to put things because I knew they'd be walking by fast and could I stop them with a Ken Griffey Jr. Or a Michael Jordan or whatever it was. I've been chasing attention my whole life. That manifested when I transitioned into my dad's liquor store business. And it really transformed because I stood behind the register and I watched people walk through the store. And the first impact I had on my dad's business was moving around things. I said, dad, when people first walk in, we should not have a huge display of $6 stuff. We should have a display of $12. It was just. It came natural. It continues to come natural. I have written more books than I've read. I consume almost no content other than reading people's comments to things that are going on in the world. I know that Felix Hernandez retired from baseball last night by sitting in the green room right now reading 20 people's comments about it. I only care about the end consumer. I only care about the potential customer and I care about her and his behaviors and attention. I do not care what's currently working for you to get leads. I don't care what's currently working for me to get leads. I'm always putting what's working yesterday through massive friction of is that behavior best today? I built my dad's liquor store from a three to a $60 million business in five years on the back of spending every penny properly. Even though the data showed me that direct mail and newspapers and radios would work better than email and Google search, it didn't matter what it was showing me. What mattered was what were human beings doing right now. To be a person in this room looking for leads and growing their business and to not think social media works is audacious at best and downright fucking stupid at worst. Now I understand why people think that. Because like anything in life, the ROI of something is completely predicated on how good you are at it. The ROI of a basketball is a billion dollars for LeBron. It's zero for me. Just because you ran $1,000 worth of Facebook ads and it didn't work doesn't mean that Facebook doesn't work. It means that you suck. That is not my opinion. That is my knowledge that the shopping app Wish has spent 95% of its money on Facebook and has become a business that sells $8 billion worth of product. That is not my opinion that Instagram can work. It's that Fashion Nova does a billion dollars in revenue on the back of 100% Instagram influencer strategy. I, for the record, could give zero shits about social media. I cannot wait to give a keynote in 10 years making fun of people doing social media. Because voice or augmented reality or blockchain or, or whatever is being invented by a 13 year old girl in Tennessee right now is the better thing to do than right now now. This does not mean that something is dead. I'm very happy for you if your billboards are converting. I'm thrilled if your direct mail strategy is rocking it. My question is, is that the best use of your $4,000 just cause you get 18 leads from it? Could you get 49 from something else you spent $4,000 on? This is the debate at hand. If there is anybody who's confused that this is the single most important thing in our society, then you're just downright confused. I literally sit with friends, including this. I have a friend deeply in this industry and we were having a conversation a year ago, which is why I was so excited to come and give this talk. And the conversation starts with and actually I won't use his cause he didn't go that far into it. Let me actually paint a much clearer picture. I spend my life since sitting down with people about marketing and communications and business and they'll spend the first 30 minutes and it's a little less white hot right now, but the election's not too far away so it's going to come up again. But a year and a half ago, I would literally spend the first 30 minutes of a one hour business breakfast with the executive telling me that Facebook is terrible or social media is terrible, it's ruining our democracy and all this stuff. It literally is all this. And then when we would segue into the normal business, this one meeting sits in my mind. The gentleman is the CEO of one of the major beauty brands in the world. We were talking about makeup. He basically looked me in the face 20 minutes later and said, look, I just don't think Instagram and Facebook can sell makeup. I really believe in Vogue and all this other horseshit. And I said to him, I took a step back, I said, love it, five seconds. Just for myself. Cause I'm confused here over my scrambled eggs. This is correct what you're saying. You're telling me in this breakfast that Facebook and social media is so powerful that it can destroy one of the most powerful things in the world, the American democracy, but it can't sell lipstick. It's real. Let me make it perfectly clear before we get into Q and a, I have 0.0 interest in you doing anything that I talk about this morning. You're not my mother, you're not my brother. I genuinely don't give a fuck about you. I am doing this keynote because it's being filmed and I Want to be historically correct and I will re air it in eight years when I'm talking about something else. And if you follow me on Instagram, I've quite enjoyed the last year of pulling up my videos from 8 and 9 and 7 and 12 years ago because I'm looking to build my reputation. If you want to go back home and do exactly what you're doing, I actually am happy about that because the less money that you put into these systems is making that attention a better deal for me. So there's no confusion. I prefer you don't do anything. I'm talking about this morning. And the good news for me for doing this for the last decade is I know that 98% of you will not. I will do a nice job here for the next 44 minutes. We will get fired up. A lot of things are gonna make sense to you. In its mix of cursing and comedy. I will answer very direct questions that show you I have deep practitionership in this. This isn't fucking college up here. This is everyday real life. I built two businesses from scratch. One from scratch, excuse me, to a 200 million dollar business over the last nine years in revenue profitable, not valuation. I built a $3 million business doing $300,000 in gross profit before expenses with no credit line and no venture backed money to a $60 million business in five years as a 22 year old. I'm Mariano Rivera, and if you don't know what that means, Mariano Rivera is a Hall of Fame pitcher that just retired and went to the hall of Fame. Recently played for the New York Yankees. He was an extremely good pitcher. He was their closer for two decades. But ultimately, if you're a hardcore baseball knowledgeable fan, he had one pitch. He had one pitch that literally not one human being besides Edgar Martinez knew how to hit. And that's me. I suck at a lot of things. The one thing I don't suck at is understanding what the consumer is doing at this second. I understand human behavior and I understand human attention and I understand it not like buying a mutual fund. I understand it like day trading. I know exactly what's happening right this second on LinkedIn, on TikTok, on Facebook, on Twitter, on YouTube, in print magazines, on the radio, in billboards, on TV, on Netflix. Period. End of story. And that currency is going to be the single most important thing in perpetuity. Because as the Internet continues to evolve, everything in the middle is commoditized. The amount of people that give a shit of what college you went to or how Many years of experience you have is staggeringly low. Knowing who you are is super duper important. This industry as a whole has had quite a historic understanding of personalities. Being able to build quite big businesses by arbitraging where the attention of the consumer was. Sometimes that's outdoor media, sometimes that's direct mail. Often for the tippy top, it has been remnant television commercials. Today that opportunity sits at scale at an underpriced nature in pre roll YouTube. Everybody here is so obsessed with leads and conversion. Which is why if you're current, you love search, you love SEM. Obviously if somebody's typing something in, that's intent. And I understand why everybody loves it here because 99.999% of this room is in the sales business, not in the brand and marketing business. It's short term conversion. It's math. This is why I always beat you. I always beat salespeople. Salespeople. Look at short term ROI. I don't care if I'm losing 27 to 3 at halftime. What's the score at the end? Dick? That is my marketing strategy. You being completely a no name on these social platforms means you are in the process of becoming less relevant. Where do you think we're going? You think this is going backwards? You think we're gonna wake up tomorrow and give up our cell phones? If you are not relevant in building brand today, Let me actually go right to the punchline. How many people here are spending Money on Google AdWords or search or care about SEO? Just raise your hands. Hi. Hi. Makes sense. And I'm a fan. I built my dad's business on it. You want to talk about real good Google? I was there day one. Literally day one. The words were five cents a click. I owned the word wine for five cents for four months. Nobody knew what it was. It wasn't good. I went to little conferences, conferences as big as that table at the Springfield New Jersey Chamber of Commerce event where the guy who was selling yellow pages made fun of me for this Internet fad. I remember those days. Those days are happening right now. Of course you can't like putting out organic content on Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn or anywhere else as much as a Google search term. That's a conversion. There's intent. It happens quick. The math is right there. You can't see what happens when you're building equity and brand. It takes time. I understand. I'm happy. I'm happy that everyone is so this second, this basic math, this not thoughtful. This is my great advantage. It doesn't make it any less true. Let me tell you exactly how search is gonna play out over the next decade. How many people, actually, how many people here are retiring within the next six years? And before you raise your hand, I don't mean you're gonna crush it over the next six years and buy a fucking yacht. I mean you're, you're fucking old and you're finished. So real quick, hands. Next six years, raise your hands. Retiring next six years. Firm. Okay, so for the five of you, for the five of you, I think at some level you can take some of this with a grain of salt, but for the rest of you, pay very close attention to something that is about to happen over the next decade that will be very important. Why I'm telling you that brand over search or conversion will transform your businesses in a decade. When somebody needs you, they will be in their kitchen, in their car, in their office, and they will say, alexis, Alexa. Excuse me, Alexa. Google, Apple, Samsung, or whoever wins. I need a lawyer. What are you gonna do then? Just curious, what are you gonna do then? You gonna be so clever with your copy? There is nothing left besides brand. When that voice machine gives an answer in the back, either they will give the business they bought and take all the business. Or if you think Google search terms are expensive, wait till you see what a referral from a voice device is going to cost you. Oh, no, by the way, only one person can get it. You don't see 11 people. I don't get to make a choice because you put a clever name in it, or I like the way your last name sounds or you got some sort of other variable. It's a binary thing. And you better be in the fucking business of this. Alexa, get me Susan Thompson. Because if you're not, you're going to be finished. And that is how it's gonna play out. So I hope you keep enjoying your philosophy of lead generations and sales driven. I'm super excited that you can't figure out how to put out content and give people advice of how to avoid using you or how to avoid getting in trouble or other things that people should learn which would then give you equity. This is real. And in a room where only five people are, are retiring in the next six years, and by the way, three of them looked way too young to be retiring in the next six years. I highly recommend everybody understands that we're at a massive crossroads in technology where personal brand is not some goofy thing or some audacious thing or something. We look down on because we don't like the word because what it really means is reputation. You don't like the word personal brand? Fine, call it reputation. I have a funny feeling a lot of people in here know exactly what that means. And if you are not putting out content at scale on LinkedIn and YouTube and Instagram and whatever else emerges, if you do not have a podcast around what you do for a living or show up on podcasts, if you are not digitally native because either a traditional media of print, radio, television and those other things are appeasing you enough and your only digital behavior is just sales driven intent from search queries and you're overpaying of the next guy or the next gal a little bit more to be the first Result in Google AdWords. Your strategy is uncomfortably vulnerable. Now how do I know this not super complicated? I gave this Talk to the 2011 Limo and Car services and told them this Uber thing was not a joke and they laughed me out of the room. I went in 2014 to Toys R Us, which was my favorite store as a kid, to meet with the CEO and pleaded not even for the business, for them to take their strategy. I don't have to tell you what happened to that business. The bookstores were very naive about Amazon. This is historical. This is not a prophet, a futuristic. You know, I'm not fucking Yoda. I just respect two core things. What customers are actually doing this. Second and history always repeating itself. I just don't understand how anybody is not pot committed in a service business predicated on human beings and building awareness around that human being. And that's it. So that's what I think is happening. I couldn't recommend a couple things more. And we're about to do Q and A, so start thinking about questions. Couple things. Number one, when producing content to use it as a lead gen for your business, the number one rule is to do everything reverse of what you're feeling right now. You have to make content that actually brings people value and not mix in a sales call. It's very disciplined, it's very difficult. It's why I wrote a book called Jab jab jab right hook years ago. Give, give, give and then ask. Too many people bleed their give and their ask in the same piece of content. Thus it's actually an ask. Thus you don't convert building equity in the ecosystem around things that you've learned from your experience, whatever that may be, is completely imperative. There's also a lot of people that may just hire you because you're a Chief span and sharing. That variable matters too. You don't have to. I produce more. How many people here follow me in social at all? So the hands that just went, thank you. The hands that you may know. Nobody produces more content a day than me. I've got 100 pieces going across 11 platforms. But I share nothing about my personal life. No family stuff. You're fully in control. The machine and algorithm don't take you over. You get to put out what you want to put out, but you have to provide value, not put out a sales call number. Two, you have to be self aware of how you communicate. There are a lot of people in here that would never put out a video because they don't feel good about the way they look. They're insecure when that camera light goes on. They just don't like it. And that's fine. That's amazing. Not everybody is wildly charismatic and handsome. I get it. However many of you here can write 11 sentences in a way that I never could and post something on LinkedIn that would absolutely crush and become the awareness to you. Maybe you draw well. I'm not kidding. Some of my best content right now is the transformation of the things I believe into comic format that looks like a Sunday comic. Maybe your audio. Maybe you're the kind of guy or gal that walks around earth, has a thought, started to understand the kind of value people are looking for. And you take out your iPhone or your phone and you hit record and it's a memo and you talk for two minutes and you hit stop and you post that. On these platforms, communication has been established a long time ago. It's visual, it's audio, it's drawings, it's videos, it's words, it's basic radio, television, print is the Internet. Now it's all the same shit. You have to figure out how you communicate. Unable to be you. You're a one woman shop. You better understand why MetLife has Snoopy. You wanna go real extreme. You're super private. You can't do it. You can't put yourself out there. It's really interesting for you to come up with a logo, to come up with a character to to speak on your behalf. Not building brand on the digital platforms of today is completely unacceptable. And before some classic dog raised their hands and says, gary, I didn't grow up with this shit. That's why I'm not doing it. I want to remind everybody in this room, none of us grew up with this shit. And more importantly, the customer doesn't care that you were born in 1964 or 1952 or 49 or 92, you didn't grow up driving. You figured it out. And before you off source this to your 23 year old niece because she's young, I want to remind you that if this is your business, it is now as important. In one man's opinion, I could be wrong. It's as important to understand this as it is to balance your checkbook. If your business and company does not understand contemporary communication, it is far more vulnerable than you think. It just is. This is happening quickly. Please be thoughtful, Please audit your businesses. Please notice a lot of your clients may be historical and that there is no lead gen that you're not acquiring new leads in the classic way. Or more importantly, don't get high on your own supply if something's working now cause you're crushing some search term or you've got some ad buy and that actually represents 63% of all your business. A, things change and B, the whole thing breaks. Somebody was crushing this industry on the yellow pages because they were AAA lawyer guy and then that medium went away. You have no ability to be successful in ar, VR, blockchain, machine learning, new platforms, all the things that are coming in the next decade. If you are not at least somewhat capable of understanding what's happening now, you're gonna miss the whole middle part. One of the biggest reasons I implore people here to produce content at scale on these platforms is just to get on the treadmill of being a digital native communicator. Because when the next thing comes and it does really crush what you're doing, you're not even gonna know where to start. This is why everybody declines. This is why everybody declines. I don't want you to decline. I wanna emphatically create energy in this room that might make three people actually say, fuck it, it's time. Thank you. Hey guys, sorry to interrupt your video. I'm just giving you this call for my number to let you know that you have to join my text community. 212-931-5731. Hit me up with a text. Let's go. Right here. How are you? Sir, I need you to stand up for your questions, please, for the video. So keep your hands up. We'll get to as many as possible. I'll go fast. Very good. Big fan. Follow you. Thank you. What's your name? Paul Faust. Ryan Lovis texted you. Yeah. Do you have a sense of, you know, percentage when you're spending, like right now? You let you. You say LinkedIn is where I see Facebook was. And how much should a brand be spending on the platforms of Today, the Facebook LinkedIn? And what percentage should we be testing on? I mean, I just set up a TikTok account with my nieces. I have no idea. You know, is it 5%? And throwing out to these other things that might happen versus what, you know, where is the. And one other question, please let me bang on that real quick. Yes, we can get a picture, but we'll do that at the end. But to answer your question, I think of it as three stages. The majority of people here are spending their dollars in something that I think has less of an ROI than Facebook and LinkedIn and podcast advertising right now. So I would spend 70. These are arbitrary numbers, intuition. I'm going 70 there. I'm taking my hundred or 80 of the traditional stuff. Google search, direct mail. I'm taking that to 20 and then I'm doing 5 or 10% of weird new stuff just to get myself used to it. The problem is 99.999% of this room is not going to do that because within the first hundred days you'll have a decline of leads and they'll bail because they're soft. Hi.