#AskGaryVee Episode 171: Pets, Cutting Through the Noise, & Gary Gets Sentimental

“brand now looking to build a
direct to consumer presence?” – Matt, first and foremost
I’m saddend by your concern because you are
literally are playing in one of the three or four best genres. Like, you’re selling to pet enthusiasts. Have you looked at the psychology and emotion of people that love their pets? There are people that really really, there are enormous amounts of human beings in the world that love their
pets more than their family. I mean so your talking about
a high emotion category. Instagram is littered,
literally littered, go to the, let’s go functionality here,
it’s not super complicated. There’s something that’s called Instagram, You open it up, you literally
hit the search button. You go to search, you
literally put dogs, dogs. Stick with me here, this
is massively complicated. Slow internet, dogs, tags,
sticking with me here. I don’t know how you’re
zooming in, Staphon I’m sorry for the slow internet I
should be on the wifi. Alright, dogs of
Instagram, oh I don’t know, 34 million hashtags, dogs
22 millions hashtags. Dogstergram, 13 million,
dog sitting, 2 million. Are you nuts? Start putting out content on Instagram, start tagging your stuff with these tags that everybody uses and use hashtag riding to build awareness and it doesn’t cost you anything except
for the production of the content which on
a scrappy business level should be free because
it’s your time, time is valuable but it should be free. So, Instagram for sure
because the attention graph is there, you can buy Facebook ads against dog lovers or
fans of dogs all day long. We had the benefit of working
with a dog brand company, our commercial rates
and engagement were at the highest of anything we played with. Obviously you’re watching
the show and maybe you just want to get your question
on, but this is very basic. Facebook ads, Instagram creative
with using the hashtags, there ghost search, I would
run ads, I made an investment in a company called Bark Box,
they have a content play. Their ads on that site are
converting for your advertising. Not because it’s an investment
I made because I want to be historically right,
I own nothing of it. It’s just a place that a lot of dog people are spending a lot of attention. There’s so many places, I mean, this kind of pissed me off India. This was not the right, I don’t know if you asked me this question on purpose to get me going, you did? – [India] Mmm hmm. – Got it, okay well. – Also he was really persistent. – So you tried to raz him? Were you razzing him a little
bit for his persistence? – [India] Maybe a little bit. – What’s his name?
– Matt. – Matt, first of all I
love the persistence, raz India, I like it. Second, it’s dogs and cats and parrots and people love this crap. I mean, are you nuts? Easy, easy, I’m almost wondering if you’re just crippled by how much you can do vs by being curious of what you should do. – [India] Whoa, that’s good.

“why are VaynerMedia’s
social accounts so whatever? “Why are those outlets afterthoughts?” – That’s a really good
point, we decided to take on this question, it’s not a fun question. We are not doing a good enough job on the VaynerMedia account. It’s 100% my fault, we’ve
had people in the past at a good rotation when
we were two or three hundred people, I think
in 2016 it became a secondary priority as some of those people graduated to more senior
jobs or more responsibilities or something’s lost in translation. There’s two very interesting answers. So, first answer is, it wasn’t a priority. It stems from the top,
it lost it’s momentum and I didn’t create
infustructure to fix it. The second part’s
probably more interesting, which is our funnel of
applicants and high quality employees and new business is so high that we’re taking, it’s the
same reason I don’t think think Apple is a good advertiser. When you have the best product, in the same way I always say the greatest advertising in the world doesn’t fix your shit product, when you
have the best product the worst advertising doesn’t
hurt you as much either. It can hurt you a little
bit, I wouldn’t be naive to think that we maybe missed out on some clients because well, they’re not doing their own social
as well as they used to or could be, cause we
used to be best in class. And two, you know some
applicants were like well they don’t take that
serious so, yes I think we probably run on the
fact that I’m so strong and good at it, there is
that proxy the way you asked the question but it is, I
probably was willing to answer this question to shame myself
into fixing that in 2016. As a matter of fact India
I’m putting you in charge of shaming me, no not in charge
of the Vayner accounts but in charge of me putting
together the team in January that will start
executing in February. Or the system, because I
do have this idea of since we have so many employees
creating a calendar where one employee takes
over the account every day for the entire year, you like that? – [Brittany] I do like that. – That’s a clever little idea. It also , let them do whatever they do. You know I love to run it capitaistic, I’m not scared of anybody
doing innappropriate things. They’ll just get fired
and we’ll own up to it. It’s not super complicated. I hate when companies, this is a good way to answer something else. What are we gonna like check the content and give them a bunch
of handbooks and rules? No, if Marv sucks at it and
like puts up innappropriate pictures of himself, he’ll get fired. – I like when we were doing the Snapchats

would you recommend a white-label video
player or YouTube for media companies looking to monetize video content if you
have an advertising department can get your own sales team to sell pre roll or
integration within your own video player that gives you more flexibility than
what YouTube could based on what your advertisers or partners would want from
the player and that you can justify building a player for a couple hundred
thousand dollars because of a million dollar sponsorship but this sponsorship
wanted these unique things that you didn’t have to do that if you like 99%
of the rest of the world use YouTube type guy lot of people enjoy watching
the show took forever to fuckin sense to

Pat from Smart Passive
Income, quick question, when you get a new idea, when a new idea pops into your head, how
do you, do you have a validation process before
actually taking action on that idea to make sure
it’s worth it or not? Do you have a vetting process,
does your team help you? I’m curious because a
lot of us entrepreneurs, we have a ton of ideas, how do you know which ones are going to work or not. And to follow it up,
do you have an example? – That’s a great, great, great, great, great, great, great question. I’ve two processes. One is completely emotional, the other one is completely rational. There have been ideas,
a la, the #AskGaryVee Show where literally in one shot, though it’s perculated a little bit, in one moment I go, I execute against
the idea and I let the results speak for themselves
and I can stop it. For everytime I look like
a hero, where I make the first episode of Wine Library TV
or #AskGaryVee and I say we’re gonna look back at
this and this was right. There’s seven other things
that I have done like that which are floating
in the internets, and I’m gonna be, we’re gonna look
back at this and be like merr. My first picture from Flickr,
my first picture for Flickr. – [India] I have it somewhere. – Do you have it somewhere? My first picture from Flickr I drew out gourmetlibrary.com. Drew it and I said one day
this will be one of the most iconic pictures in my
life or something like that. And it was because at
that time I thought I was gonna launch gourmetlibrary.com
and I knew that I was gonna build $100 million gourmet business. What happened was I
started Wine Library TV two months later as well
and that became the thing and I never got around to
really doing gourmet library. So, I think I got that intuitive part. The other part is like Wine Library TV, since February, since
really like March or April of 2005 I knew that I
wanted to do a Youtube show. That it was gonna be
big, but it took me until February ’06 to start Wine Library TV. I knew that I wanted
to do an ecommerce site in ’94 but I really didn’t launch it until ’96 but really run it until ’98. I know that I’m going
to buy a brand one day. Puma, Snickers, you know
Pabst Blue Ribbon but I’m perculating and learning for
10 years before that moment. So, I’ve both, but Pat
really the answer is it’s very internal, I don’t go
to my dad or to Brittany and be like hey Britt what do you think. Like, I don’t give a shit
what Brittany thinks. Now that is either a strength
or a weakness, sorry Brit. That’s either a strength
or a weakness but I want to give you the truth which
is I go very internal, I feel it with myself, I
care, you know what’s funny? I don’t care what Brittany
says as my consultant or teammate, I care what
Brittany does as a consumer. I respect the market over
my friends, my family, the people I respect and even myself. And so I think the way to find out what the market’s gonna feel and do is by giving them a chance to react to it. So, I let the things that
I feel the most bubble up and then I execute against those things and then I let the chips
fall where they may. – [India] I found it.
– You found the picture? – The caption is so
funny, one day everyone will know why this pic is so amazing. – Oh my God, see this
is so cool because look, I mean obviously you’re
gonna put the subs on, the so is very similar to show. – Yeah. – That’s unbelievable, one
day, December 30, 2005, oh my God, this is
literally, what’s today? – [India and man] The 16th. – This is literally,
literally a decade ago. Like, two weeks short of a decade ago. There’s a picture of the
pasta I ate while I drew out gourmetlibrary.com
and one day everyone will know why this pic is so amazing. And I’m gonna tell you why
this pic is so amazing, though I didn’t execute on
gourmet library ten years ago, and big shout out to
Eric Caster and John Kay who were there with me that day. Even though I didn’t, this
date was the two week period, this was the height of the
holidays, this date represents the day that I knew that
I wasn’t gonna be in the wine business the rest of my life. This picture really
represents the transformation into what all of you have known me to become over the last ten years. – The dirty bowl is so significant though. – I told you that one day everyone would understand why this pic is so. – I even bookmarked it
cause we were eating. – Cause it’s so amazing, that’s cool. – [India] That is cool. – I’m a little bit emotional about that.

“engage to become the number
one knowledge leader?” – Ah, T this is such a good question. India you’re getting very
strategic about your book ending of questions, I’m very
proud of you actually today. You’ve really grown in your
DJing of question skills. – [India] Thank you.
– Great year for you. – [India] It was a good year. – The reason I said that is India knows that I’m gonna go off on this one mainly because it’s such a simple answer T. Yes there’s so much noise and there’s so much bad crap and the
way to break through, this is crazy now, stick
with me, is to actually be the best and actually have the skills that allow you to break through. Being a thought leader
is no different than being the best football player in America. How does one become, with all the people that want to be a
professional football player, you know, 80% of dudes that are 15, 60, whatever I don’t know. Of all those people how do
you become Aaron Rogers? Crazy thing, you have to
have the natural ability and then you have to put
so much work into that ability that you rise
above all the other people that equally had around the
same level of that ability. How do you become the thought leader or the one in your space? You need to be the best. The reason I was the one in the wine space is for 15 years, since I
was 15, before I started Wine Library TV, I had learned an insane amount about wine, I had
executed for eight years running the fastest
growing and then ultimately one of the biggest wine
businesses in America. I amassed my knowledge,
I went all in, I worked 15 hours a day and then
I started content on what would then become
one of the most important communication tools of
our time called Youtube on top of the internet and
then after I showed everybody the way, every other wine
personality decided to get a camera like this and do it too. That was 2006, 7, 8,
and 9 was in wine world. They’re like wait, if that
idiot can do it, I can do it. And then I had to be the
best and that’s what this business show’s about,
there’s a lot of other business shows, either
I’m gonna be the most valuable for you or the
second most valuable or the third most valuable or
you’re not going to watch me. It’s the quality. You break through, not by your tactics. You break through by your
ability and your skills. It’s the truth, that’s whats
so great about a market. The customer gets to decide,
not you, not me, not you. And so, you go out there and you execute and then you let the chips fall. Do you know how many people are running around on Youtube and
Instagram and Twitter right now trying to do my tactics? A lot. See it everyday. Do they have the same business acume? Do they have the same business skills? Do they have the same 20 years of experience of running businesses? Do they have the same
history of being right where the consumer behavior
is going in the country? Not as much and there are others that are. And there’s plenty of
you watching right now, there’s a 16 year old
watching this right now whose got more chops than me whose gonna put in just as much work as me and he’s gonna go out and win. There’s a girl right now in Alabama who has more natual DNA to understand what the consumers are gonna do in 2020 and 2030 and if she puts in the work, cause she’s gonna,
she’s gonna go and she’s gonna be bigger and more successful and more dominant than me. That’s what’s awesome about the game. That’s how you break through the clutter. You break through all that crap that you decided is crap by being
better than that crap. Now let’s just see if
you’re not that crap too.