#AskGaryVee Episode 124: How to go from Brick & Mortar to Online Store

“Tips for getting up and running?” – This is interesting. This is very much deja vu 20 years ago. Yeah, first and foremost you need to find the right kind of infrastructure, backbone, CMS tool to really get you guys to launch. Contact management system CMS. Magenta or Shopify or one of these platforms that can get you up and running in the retail capacity at a low cost. I would also highly, highly think about how you’re going to promote within your store to drive people to the .com. I think a lot of people
forget about that aspect. Obviously you have to learn how to do Google search ads, SEM, and you’ve gotta work on search SEO, and organic. You gotta figure out
how to use Facebook ads targeted within a two
mile radius of your shop, and a different kind of
marketing campaign for the 15 mile radius. If you’re going into the delivery of it. I think that what you have to really do is I’ve given you some
tactical stuff off the gate. Here’s some more high level things. First and foremost, you
need outrageous levels of patience. It is going to struggle
over the first 12 to 24 months because in general, it’s a high friction area. Obviously with Instacart and Fresh Direct, and there’s plenty of thing going on where people are thrilled to order but a family grocer to
become an internet player is a tough haul, and so patience I think is going to be an
incredibly important part of your success as you
go through this journey. I would make sure that every bag that you have at the store has a flyer in it with some
sort of creative call to action with a coupon that is online only as kind of a cherry to drive acquisition. I would also try to make sure your POS, point of sale system at the store is tied into the .com so that people can use club cards or you
can collect data there and remarket to them on .com environment. Email marketing is going
to be an enormously substantial part and
backbone of your success. I think a very strong
strategy of what to sell on a daily or at worse case every other day basis on your email service is quite important to muster up excitement and most of all, do not create friction. Make it valuable for people
to join your .com environment. Don’t force them into it, and so those are some
of the top line thoughts. It’s nice when you’ve done it before,

“with negative reviews since the update. “What are your thoughts on the move?” – Reuben, I think that if you look at all the moves in the last
five years by Facebook specifically, but Instagram, Twitter, any platform that is extremely popular that then has an aggressive move that feels more selly, and I assume we’re talking about discovery above and kind of the first main screen. I don’t think people realize that people are always going to complain. Anytime that there’s change
that is in the benefit of the business, right, it’s very clear to people at this point that that screen that
you’re seeing Discover. You didn’t want it there. They’re forcing me on Discover. These are exactly the things that we saw with Facebook when they did every update. I mean the news feed was one of the first groups to get a million or ten million I don’t remember the number at the time, but when Facebook switched from you go to, you saw everything, and
you’d go to people’s walls and all those things. I mean, this is constant. I think it’s a tremendous
move by Snapchat, the Discovery consumption
has exploded since the move. Have you used more
Discover since the move? – Yeah, yeah. – [Gary] Staphon? – [Gary] Sid, the intern? My data shows that 100% of people. You know, it’s just, it’s so interesting. It’s a tremendous move by Snapchat. It’s making it more native, easier for them to go into that channel that is the channel that
they are going to monetize. I think it’s a brilliant move. I think you’ve gotta take some of the heat early on. I think every one of those people that have complained have used Snapchat quite a bit, except
for three rogue hippies and that’s fine ’cause Snapchat and Facebook and every
business doesn’t give a crap about that extremism of anti-business, because the numbers don’t
play themselves out, and I think that I think that they did not go too far, and I think that they’ve
done it just right. I think they’ve slowly introduced it first as a swipe over here. Now they’ve moved it up here. I think they, I am blown away, Evan, such a young CEO, and I’m just really, really impressed. I was wrong about story. Stories I didn’t think
was gonna be successful, because there was that swipe, and I thought that was a friction, and that worked. He’s really, really impressed me, and I’m very, very bullish on Snapchat, so much so that in my Vayner/RSE fund I spent the last batch of money, instead of an entire
nother year of investing in 20, 30 more companies. I went all in, all Wuzzles in on Snapchat and wrote a huge check, biggest check of my career at a 16 billion dollar evaluation. I’m a very, very big fan of Snapchat. They’ve blown me away. I wish I was on board way, way earlier. I’ve been writing about
them for a long time, and talking about them for a long time. I think that, not that prediction, but that bandwagon is
playing out to be true, and so I don’t think they went too far. I actually think they played
it absolutely perfect, and that’s not putting on my investor hat, because one thing a lot
of people don’t know is I’d much rather be historically correct than make a couple of bucks. I don’t wanna look back at
this and be like, I was wrong. – [Voiceover] Kat asks,
“How do you continue

“kicking ass with work while going through “serious personal crisis? “How do you separate yet deal with both?” – You know Kat, it’s interesting. This is a tough question for me. I’m not so sold I really know the answer. One of the things I’m very curious about, and I fancy myself in being very resilient and things of that nature,
but I’m very emotional. Going through a very,
very, how is it worded? A person crisis, a serious personal crisis
for me could be enough to put me in a position where I would check out from a day to day hustle and business standpoint and really go address
that whether with myself or whatever I had to address. I often think about, knock on wood, the bad things that are
conceivable in my life and how quickly everybody
around me will realize how little I give a crap about business in those moments. I’ve been outrageously fortunate, or unfortunate depending on
how you wanna look at it. I lost two of my grandparents long before I was born. I lost my mom’s dad, my grandfather before he was able, a couple months before he was coming
to America to join us. I don’t remember him. I’ve only had one grandparent growing up which created a scenario where I haven’t fortunately had a lot
of death or sickness. That’s a cliche thing. Obviously so many of us, not me thank God, so many of you, so many people here have dealt with crisises
that are way more intense whether it’s siblings or parents, or uncles or aunts or best friends they’re close to. I’ve been extremely fortunate. I think I’m driven by that gratitude. I think people are confused
by the gratitude I talk about. It’s not the monies. It’s, or the amazing audience and admiration I get from thousands. It is far more predicated on the health and wellbeing of my family and dearest friends. I would say as somebody who pushes hustle 24/7 365, that that is probably
the area where I think outside of actually having to do it, to put food on your table, or stay practical, I
think that is absolutely the time and place and the permission to step away, regroup,
have time for yourself, deal with those issues, and come back fresh. I think that it’s a mental game, and it would be insane for me to sit here and impose a strategy without having all the context. I think it’s different for everybody. I know a lot of people that go the reverse and go deep into their
work to shut it down. My intuition is I’m not that. My intuition and having
a lot of self-awareness is I check out a little bit, and I let all the
wonderful people that I’ve done a lot of good for as a leader step up in those days or weeks, or months, because I’ve
empowered them to be able to do things. Like Steve could sit
here and be on the show and eat a couple almonds,
that kind of stuff. Chalene Johnson here, the
author of New York Times

best selling book, Push, and the creator of Smart Success. I am here on the set
filming a little piece for a fitness infomercial,
and they’re calling me right now be mic-ed up. I’ll be ready in a second! Talking to Gary! Gary, I have a question
for you about Instagram. Do you know that there’s no two factor authentication on Instagram? How scary is that, right? You built this huge following and somebody could hack in so easily. I was recently hacked, and I would love to get your thoughts about cyber security and how serious people need to take it, especially those people who are building an online presence or have passive income online and how legit, how serious the threat
of cyber security is and what we should do it about it. – Cyber security. We should fight! C.J., thank you so much for the video. You know, it’s interesting, and maybe you’re just such a positive gal, but my intuition based
on the tone of that video is you got your account back, and so this is my
thought on cyber security and privacy and the same old thing, which is the reason
nobody cares about privacy anymore is in my opinion, and this is, and I know a lot of you said what? I care a lot about privacy. Ah, you don’t, because your actions prove otherwise. Meaning, the two things we
care about in this world are money and the health
and wellbeing of our family. Family and money, those are two, we care about other things, but those are two up there. Show me your top five list. They matter, and both of
those things in the privacy security world, my kid’s
gonna get kidnapped, or somebodys gonna steal
my money from my bank or my ATM or all these things. Two things. One, kidnapping is way
down, because everybodys a media company, and everybodys recording, and it’s just hard to
grab kids at the mall. Number two, when you look at money, everybody gets their money back. I think what happened, and I’m going on
intuition, and please jump in and tell me if I’m wrong here, but I think you got your account back, because you emailed Facebook or Instagram, you’re like cool, and so I think it’s concerning. You could have a day or a week of a real problem, but I think what there’s a couple of, and
I’m worried that people are watching and think
there’s a naiveté here, but it speaks to an optimism that optimism that I really believe in. I don’t think we’ve
quantified how little cyber issues there actually are, and there’s a ton. There’s unlimited. Put in cyber security, cyber hacks, put them into Google news alerts, and your inbox will be pounded. Everyday this is happening. On the flip side, think about
what’s actually happening, and it’s really interesting. We’ve almost become immune to them. Target got hacked which was a huge amount of people. Almost everybody at this
point has been hacked, and what’s interesting
is what then happens? Once you get over the hacking or the issue at hand, you ask yourself,
what was the ramifications of that? And that’s where you get down a much more fascinating debate to me, which is we’re just on the, I mean, I’m almost ready to
shoot out my social security number here on the show. As a matter of fact, 9-4, no. (laughter) Not yet, but soon enough. Maybe episode 125 or 521 I’ll be ready to shoot out my social, you know what’s funny? I used to say this all the time. Somebody came up to me
at a conference and said, you know, blah-blah-blah did that. Head cut off and got all sorts of hacked. I was like, alright I don’t want any, but only because I didn’t wanna deal with the time. The funniest part is
the biggest fear I have in cyber security is time. Time is becoming so valuable, and I think long term that becomes a
more interesting debate to me which is the time you have to deal with, changing this and changing that and changing your password and resetting and emailing everybody and telling them. Those are, that’s the real death blow. That’s bad, but C.J. I don’t think it’s this insanely tough issue, especially because
it’s a cops and robbers game meaning I have enormous
belief in the balance system of cops and robbers, cat and mouse, meaning the good guys, the bad guys. Who are the good guys? Who are the bad guys? All this conversation,
I have a lot of empathy and respect for it. I think it’s a net-net game, because it’s pulling from both directions, and I think we live within that middle, and I think that right now
you’re obviously at the height of your emotion about it, because it sounds like it happened recently, but I have a funny feeling
that six months ago it’s kind of a different feeling in your heart. You might have lost some income for a day. They might have posted
something that embarrassed you or made you lose some fans and then doesn’t allow
you to recoop at the max, but again, you start on
your way back the next day. I think there’s set backs
and things of that nature and so that’s just kind of how I see it. – [Voiceover] The Bades asks,
“When is it appropriate to

– [Voiceover] The Bades asks,
“When is it appropriate to “have patience versus
just getting shit done “and not making excuses?” – Do you have that problem DRock? – [DRock] Yep. – Do you? That’s a great question, and I think that it’s
a tough one to answer because I think every
situation has it’s own context. I think balance matters. I think that if you’re being told that you’re impatient all the time from many
different sources, you may wanna give
that some thought. Obviously I’m a seller of both. Get things done, be very patient. I think that a lot of the nice things that have happened to me are
predicated on that balance. I think I talk about balance a lot. I think the last quesiton I said it. Here we are again one question later. I think you need to find
your cadence on this issue. I also would recommend to everybody to the next thing that
happens after this show is to try to do the one that feels less natural, to just taste the outcome. I think one of the things
that is fascinating to me is how many people don’t test. For example, yesterday I posted the Stunwin’s sit in no show video as a YouTube video, not native, not the right move, not
putting it as a Facebook video which will get us more reach based on the Facebook algorithm, but I wanted to see what it would do. I was curious about the results. I want to test. I think that the lack of testing the lack of calling your own bluff, the amount of people that are drawing lines, lines in the sand, and then don’t cross
them is a huge mistake. For example, it was pretty
conventional wisdom, that long written out
Facebook post was not a way to go where people would talk about that maybe not being native in a jab jab jab right hook kind of world, but then last weekend I wrote one, and it did really really well, and put up another one,
did really, really well, and another one and another one, and here we are four, five, six posts in, and they do extremely well, because one thing I’m starting to realize is holy crap, Facebook should be treated like a website. Your posts should be long. Shopping should be done that way. Wait a minute, this is
really just the attention and we are kind of evolving, and it’s evolving. I’m fascinated. By the way, the YouTube video got solid reach. It wasn’t so remarkably
lower than a native one. It was though, I think,
you just never always know, but by average, but it’s fascinating, and I try things, I try
things all the time, and I think the answer to your question is the next five things
that are cliche things where you get those that you’re impatient, two times, try to be patient. Taste it, learn, taste it, learn, taste it, learn. These are the things that
people don’t do enough of it’s so interesting. Give me a bottle of wine, Staphon. This kind of makes me
think of the wine world. I always talk about the biggest problem in the wine world is you
find a type of wine you like. Oh I love Rosé, and you drink it forever and never try all these other great wines, think the same thing happens in business. You find your move. Like I’m good at email marketing. I’m good at SEM. I’m good at Facebook. I’m good at Instagram. I’m a good salesman. I make nice videos, and you never try the other things. When’s the last time you
created an infographic? As a matter of fact, we need
to create an infographic. India, make some notes. We need an infographic
ASAP Sid, the intern, because we need to keep
pushing the boundaries as well. I need to eat my own dog food, take my own advice. We have to do these things. That is the key in life,
let alone business. I level up my excitement on this question, becuase it’s important,
and because I feel like so many people don’t do it. Try things, try things, try things, because then you can answer for yourself. When’s the right time
for patience and when’s the right time to move fast? I made a massively
senior hire two days ago, be great for VaynerMedia. Lately I’ve been almost
saying Wine Library when VaynerMedia, it’s the second time I’ve done that in like
two or three episodes. I mean a very senior hire for VaynerMedia, and the meeting with the
CFO, the CIO and A.J. and was like, oh you’re moving fast. And other things I’m
being very patient on. There’s just always a mix, and so mix it up.

“Or do you even have free time?” – Lucky, I have a ton of free time. Well, it’s not free time, I mean I assume you’re asking
when I’m not working, spending it always with my family, and then the only other thing I like to really allocate time to is the New York Jets. Lizzie and I sometimes
watch documentaries, movies, that’s a fun thing for me. I really like docus. I don’t talk about that. There’s that. Let’s keep going. This is fun. Let’s do a rapid, kind of like a

“platform to make a virtual
bookshelf with quotes “and books that mean a lot to me? “Pinterest?” – Yes. Good job, Anders.

“is that next book coming anytime soon?” – Oh that’s a good, oh I’m supposed – Oh the book announcement! – See, Sid, see this is what’s so
incredible about life. – This is good, this is good. – You love this, right? You need to right a Medium
post about this actually, and stop spilling coffee on yourself. – That’s the plan.
– Let’s talk about this. This is the first time in 124
episodes that I’m like no, let’s keep going. I think we’ve done some maybe there’s one other thing, something, but no, this is really
the first time I’m like flat out no, let’s just keep going. Definitely the first
time we’re going improv, and we are supposed to announce something very special, and now we’re going to. The new book is coming soon. Who asked that question? – [India] It was Kenneth. – Kenneth, thank you for saving the show. We have a new book coming, a lot of you know this, Kenneth didn’t. It’s coming out in March. It’s called #AskGaryVee, the book, and I’m trying to position it, I’m trying to create the
subtitle in a point of the modern MBA or the
holistic view of being a business, like business
2016 and be the way to, like I gotta come up
with the subtitle, but I wanna give it. I’m worried that it
being called #AskGaryVee makes it very narrow, and
you’re at the bookstore and you’ve never heard of me. You’re like I don’t know. I gotta give it a strong
subtitle of a 360, as a matter of fact, question of the day. What should the subtitle be
of the #AskGaryVee book? I like that, somebodys about to really get pumped. Here’s another way for you
to be a part of the book. It’s going to be 497 answers, and this was
the original subtitle. 497 answers on how to be great at remember it was super long. Zak made an incredible cover. I’m not gonna link it up yet, because I’m not sure it’s that, but and then it’s like and 80 never before answered questions which you and I and my ghost writer Steph Lan are gonna be attacking very shortly. I have a feeling some of
you want to be one of those never before asked questions and answers. We’re doing a competition. Oh, I get to make up the email address. Yes, so if you email right up here, bookquestions@vaynermedia.com, that’s right,
bookquestions@vaynermedia.com. This is what you will be emailing me. The question, and that may be a question that’s already used in the book, so India, world famous India may
be reaching out to you to get another question from you, because that ones not gonna make it, but more importantly, this
is the gameification. This is the kickstarter aspect of it. This is the salesman. This is the right hook part of it. You have to email blind auction. Blind, you have to email your name and how many books you’re willing to buy, because believe it or not, it’s actually already on Amazon. Do not buy it, by the way. I know a bunch of you are like Gary, I already went and bought it. I don’t want that yet,
because I wanna get the cover out there, get it really
right, and then do a huge push probably in November,
December, juice it up, let people discover it. Don’t get crazy. You can get a little
crazy if you want to, but don’t get there yet. How many books will you buy? Literally, let’s say DRock enters, Hey Gary Vee, you’re the best. By the way, you look so fit lately. You look great. I love the show. I haven’t missed any of them. You’re just super handsome and massively, massively, massively smart. You’re my favorite. Okay, here it is, I will buy 137 books. Here’s my question. The top 80 or 90, we have to decide. We’ll decide very shortly, and we’ll keep a database. Whatever we decide of 87 never before, the top 87 book amounts
will get into the book. You’ll be there, from
you, it’ll be really rad. You’ll be super happy. I’ll be happy because I
have a bunch of books. You’ll be happy ’cause
you’ll give up a bunch of books for next Easter,
something like that, or for your group, or your
clients, or your friends. That’s what it is, my friends. Join, send, we will
give you some time here, but we will be calibrating
those numbers immediately. See how that worked out. You keep asking questions. (instrumental hip hop music)