#AskGaryVee Episode 225: Salty Vee, Passion vs Skill & the Best Platforms for Filmmakers

Here is Prosper from
Journey to Real Life, here in beautiful Neuchâtel,
taking my morning swim after waking up. So, my question today is, how would be your
approach of creating a more sustainable world with
a media company? Thank you for your answer. – Prosper, I think it’s
an interesting question. I’ve been thinking a
lot, actually, about this over the last couple of months. You know, impact on world. I get a, somebody on,
whether it was on my team or my family, I’m trying to think
who said this to me. I don’t think I realized that
getting 15 to 25 emails a day in your inbox, telling you
that you’ve changed one’s life, that I was doing, it’s so interesting that
people think giving a $10,000 check to research for a disease, or to fix an animal, or put up trees is the way to do it. It’s unbelievable how much,
you know, you were with me when we were just in
New York where the guy’s like, get a tattoo, and I’m
like, that’s the easy part. Like, not missing
a Jets play since ’82. I think people are very
stuck, Prosper, on tactics over religion, and I talk
about that in business all the time. If you’ve been following
me, you’ve heard that a million times, but
it’s how I think about a more sustainable world,
meaning, as a media company, as an individual, I think we take
a lot of shortcuts. Tweeting something
to support something is not making
an enormous impact. It can make an impact. You know, you
supporting something, if five of your friends
care how you support, or if a celebrity and
50 people care, but it is stunning how much
more important action is over little words
or tactical things, so for me, I think it’s
a day in, day out thing to deploy to
the things that matter, and I think it’s a very
human game, I think, I like depth over width. For me, if I can
impact my little circle, and this whole thing, the
Vayner Nation, VaynerMedia, all of my inner team here. I’m impacting them
on a individual basis, and then they go
and impact other people. I’m completely confident,
because I’ve watched it many times, that the
self-esteem and confidence that I deploy, Andy, do you think that you’re
a more confident person, because you’ve rolled with me? – Yeah. – [Gary] And do you think that
you’ve maybe deployed that on other people
within your circle? – [Andy] 100%. – That’s the game. So, I think my answer
to your question is, as a media company,
or as anything else, way too many people are
looking to reach too many. Go individual. It’s what you’re
doing behind the scenes that is way more important than
what you’re doing optically for the PR’ed version of how
you wanna position yourself to the world. – [Sid] This one’s from Chris.

My name’s Chris. I’m out here today, in
the fucking pouring rain making content for my fixed gear blog, that you’d call my shop. My question is,
lots of my fans are under 18 years of age, and don’t have credit cards, and can not pay for shit
that they want on my website, that they express
what they want. Do I pitch to retail, and if so, are there any
special tactics or ways that I should go about that? Thanks. – Chris, if your demo
doesn’t have credit cards, and that’s what’s stopping you from selling direct to consumer, your answer shouldn’t
be, how do I go to retail to go to my consumers? Your answer should be, how
do I get money from my demo to make my transaction,
meaning, whether it’s Venmo, or PayPal, or virtual currency, you know, there’s a much
bigger lift, my man. One of the great things
about the world, today, is that all of
us entrepreneurs can create a Shopify account, or Magenta,
or whatever you want to, and go direct to consumer. Do you know how difficult it
is to get retail distribution? Do you know how much
they’re gonna hose you? Do you know that you’re gonna
make 50 cents on the dollar? Do you know that you’re gonna, they’re gonna ask you for
things like trade dollars, which is if you even
wanna be in our store, you have to
pay us for the right? Do you know that if your
product doesn’t sell well in the first 30 days,
they discontinue it? Do you know that you’re
gonna spend 94% of your time trying to knock on doors and
get into the retail shop, instead of actually
building your community, and building your business? I think that if, you know,
I think at the highest level, for so many of you,
going back to the well, instead of fixing the sink, which is an analogy I use a lot, maybe your whole business
is broken if you can’t get the money from the people
that you wanna get money from. Right? A lot of people try to target,
somebody pitched me like, I’m gonna sell to
12 to 14 year olds, and they’re gonna
make the decision. That’s the worst zone,
because that 12 to 14 is exactly when kids are
in-between their parents buying them everything, but
them not being able to transact, and so, I would spend a lot
of time trying to figure out whether, what way you can
collect money from them, including things like, I’ve always thought a fun
tactic would be, instead of an add to cart button, an alternative
button to that audience, which is, send the email
to your parents to buy it. So, you have add to cart, but there’s also send
the email to your parents to buy this for you, and you
click it, and it’s got like four different templates, like
the sorry one, the happy one. You know, like, what’s the
angle, depending on your parent, with a transaction
link right there? You need to hack
how to get the money direct from your consumer, not how to go down the
traditional path of retail. – This one’s from Richard.

I’m a filmmaker living
here in Los Angeles. Recently, you connected
with Chase Jarvis, and you humbly bragged that you
were one of the first people to say that Vine is a great
place for filmmakers to grow an audience. – Just like if I was a
filmmaker or video person, I’d be very much paying
attention to Vine, and trying to figure out
how to make six second micro-videos that bring
awareness to me, that leads me to gateway
you to my YouTube, which led to you to
gateway me, to hiring me. It’s just this evolution
of opportunity. – It’s now 2016. Is Vine still the best platform, or is there something different
that filmmakers like myself should be looking at?
Thanks Gary. I’ll see you and
the Jets in week four. – Yeah, I mean, look, it’s… – Richard. – Thanks, Richard. I’m not looking forward
to the Seahawks week four, though the Seahawks didn’t
look so good yesterday, and now Russell looks hurt. Might not play next game,
but they won a Superbowl, so it’s like over. Richard, you know, obviously Vine had its
moment of attention. That’s also one
of the reasons, you know, one of the fun things about
creating video at scale, as I have three
screens on my, right now, it’d be so fun to look
at me doing this in 1996, seven, eight, nine, 2000, 2001. Email, or Google AdWords. There’s a lot of
predictions that are right. There’s also things that were
100% right that get outdated. That attention
of that demo on Vine is clearly right now on
Instagram stories, and Snapchat stories. So, I think those two
places completely dominate. I also think there’s some
kind of old school places, and here’s a funny
old school places, I’m a big fan of people
getting into some of these Facebook communities,
right, these private pages. You know, with other
filmmakers or Hollywood types or what have you. Facebook groups is an interesting little hack. I think it’s just all work. Look, it’s all very basic. I always layer the current
state of the market on top of my
general thesis, which is, where’s the
attention of the people that you’re trying to reach, and then, how do you figure
out to be creative on it. And so, obviously, if everybody’s
listening to SoundCloud, but you can’t be creative in
audio, you’re not gonna be as successful as you are in
creating long-form video. Long-form video of
great quality on Vimeo is gonna be a different
opportunity for some of the filmmaker characters here,
than for somebody like me who, why do you think I’ve done well? I do well in 30, 70, 90
second quick thoughts, quick, I don’t know if you
noticed this Larry King, let’s link that up,
actually, right here, this Larry King, actually,
throw a little box up here showing it. This Larry King interview I did, it’s so funny how some
of my smartest friends have been hitting
me up privately, of how great of a format that is when it’s quick
and witty and fast. That’s what I’m good at. So, you’ve gotta find the
medium that you’re good at. And so, if you’re a filmmaker, there’s the
Steven Spielberg filmmaker, and then there’s the filmmaker
that’s emerging today that understands how
to make it in a Vimeo, in a YouTube,
in an Instagram story. Do you know how much storytelling
capabilities there are in Snapchat and
Instagram stories? There’s so much,
but who’s great at it, and it’s a totally
different skillset than making a 22 minute sitcom. So, the attention
is very obvious. It’s on Instagram, it’s on
Snapchat, it’s on Facebook. It’s there, right? It’s on YouTube, it’s on Vimeo, but which one of those
five, as a filmmaker, can you really play in, and
what’s the different versions, because there’s a very big
difference between making a 41 minute film on Vimeo,
and making a great 7 minute Instagram story
everyday on Instagram. – [Sid] This is from Derrick.

I have some people telling me that producing YouTube
videos three times a day is too much content, and
you’ll create more views by having content produced
less, like once or twice a week. Do you think that anticipation really breeds additional views? Should I slow
down my production? – Derrick, I think there’s
some truth to that. I think about the amount
of content we put out. I also just think it comes
down to how good you are. Derrick, there’s some
people that should make zero videos
in their entire life. I mean, it just comes down
to your skill set, right? So, do I think having
a scheduled time, not filling up peoples’ feeds, are there some
tried and true things that YouTube knows from
a big data standpoint? Yes, I do. And actually, I think we
break them a lot of times ’cause I just want to. So, I don’t follow
every best practice because, I don’t know,
I just don’t. And I don’t want to, I don’t
know what else to tell you. I just want to pump
out a lot of content, because I don’t think
of it just as a show, I think of it
as archived content. I think in a 40-year term,
not in a four-month term. I’ll be very honest with you, I’m not worried that I have
300,000 or so subscribers and I should have a million. I just don’t care. There’s just a lot of people that have four million
subscribers on YouTube that are not as happy
or successful as I am. That is not feed metric. I think a lot of people get
caught up in just the numbers. And so, Derrick, first
and foremost, brother, I would tell you
that you should do what makes you the most happy. Now, if you’re
trying to make money, and it’s easier for me,
as I make money, I’m achieving what I need
as oxygen to do my thing. If you need the dollars,
following the best practice is a good idea. I just think it comes
down to you as a person. I think there’s art, and
I think there’s science. I think there’s business
people, and there’s artists. And you have to figure
out what your mix is. If you’re an artist,
and you get excited about making three
pieces of content a day, well then that’s good. If you’re a business person
and you need that show to build up subscribers so
you can sell sponsorship to alcohol brands, you may
want to try a period of time of best practices. I’m in a really bad mood.

My name is Jenny A. Hansen, and I’m coming at you from Utah. And my question is, do
you go with your passion, or do you go with
what you’re good at? I’ve been doing
nails for 12 years, my grandmother did
nails, my aunt did nails, and there aren’t any decent
nail salons in my area. So, do I open a nail salon? Or do I go with my passion,
which is more in consulting? Which, consulting
salons would be good. But again, there aren’t any
good nail salons in the area. So, what are your thoughts? Thanks for the show,
thanks for your work. Thanks VaynerMedia. – Jenny, thanks
so much for the question. Look, I mean
I’m a big fan, Jenny, and I think you know
this, of practicality. Awfully hard, Jenny, to
consult for nail salons where there are none, or there
are none that are good enough that would actually
pay a consultant. So, I think your
options are you can move, and go to LA, New York,
Philly, you know, places where there are more, or you open a salon. You’re a young lady, so I think you have
time and a long career. Maybe you open up
one for a little while, build up some dollars,
some equity. It’s easy for me to say go move. Maybe you’ve lived in
Utah your whole life, your whole family’s
there, everybody’s there, you’ve gotta be there. You can consult virtually. It is 2016,
technology has caught up. I wrote a book
in 2009 called Crush It!, and it became successful,
and it started a huge debate in my ecosystem
of passion over skills. I don’t think anybody
can answer that question for any of you
watching right now. Really, I don’t. I think what you need to do is deploy as much
self-awareness as possible. I do believe,
it’s why I wrote Crush It!, it’s why I’m thinking about writing a follow-up
to Crush It! right now. I do believe that
there’s nothing greater than being able to do the thing you’re most passionate about. And I think that
if you’re blessed, and you’re able to make
the most money that way, and I actually
think I’m in that category, well then that’s like nirvana. But, I do think that a lot
of people should consider, I am of the camp,
and you know what, that’s the question of the day. Where do you sit in this camp? In the comments,
lets sit on this one. Where do you sit in this camp? Here is my theory, that if
you make $130,000 a year doing something you don’t
love as much, or at all, versus making 89 and loving it, that you should
always go with B. Now, people could say,
that’s easy for you to say, because I have student loans, because I have all
these other headaches. I have a weird
thesis that that 89, because you’re so happy and you’re willing
to work 18 hours a day, becomes 131 over time. And 130 becomes
fired or flat forever. I really do believe that
passion works out that way. And I’m not a secret,
I’m not Oprah. I’m not like sunshine
and rainbows, especially not after the
fuckin’ Jets miss an extra point and lose by one point. I just think it’s practical. I just think being happy
brings a better energy and a work ethic. Listen, I don’t know
if you’ve heard, I believe in work. And I believe the easiest way
to work is to fuckin’ love it. And so, I think, Jenny, you
should go with your passion, I just don’t think that it’s
practical for everybody. I think a lot of people’s
passion is to become the biggest rapper in the world. I think a lot of people’s passion is to
become a supermodel. I think a lot of
people’s passion is to become
a professional athlete, or the next great
director, or this or that. I think people
are completely tone-deaf to their actual skill sets, and they make up ludicrous,
unachievable goals, which then means the blueprint
is broken from the get, which means they
have no shot at victory. So, I think if your passion is to be the greatest
rapper in the world, you should deploy some
self-awareness around, maybe your passion should be being around the greatest
rappers in the world, if you have no flow. You know? I don’t know. I think there’s
a lot of things, Jenny. I think self-awareness, I think recognizing
you only live once, realizing how
much regret is poison. And just really,
and really, Jenny, I’ll give you a
really good answer, try your passion. I’ll give everybody
a good answer, try your passion for two years. What’s gonna happen? Your debt’s gonna compound? It’s not the end of the world, I mean you can
always get practical. You could always get practical.