#AskGaryVee Episode 234: Oliver Luckett, Snapchat Spectacles Marketing & Leadership Qualities

– Hey Gary. I’m wondering what you think of
Snapchat and their recent way of selling their Spectacles, the
glasses with the vending machine and how you think that plays
in their marketing strategy? Thanks so much. – Oliver, Snapchat Spectacles. – I think they’re
kind of brilliant. I think they took something that
Google spent so much time and energy on but effectively was pretty nerdy and
they made it cool. – Yep. – Pop-up stores and
vending machines are social media worthy. – The distribution’s been crazy. – Yeah, exactly and if you
only have a small amount of them then make it special.
– That’s right. – So I saw a bunch on social
media last night about a store in New York that just popped up. – Yep.
– Yeah, I think it’s cool. – I think it’s a big play. I think it could be maybe the
saving grace move to their IPO. – Sure. – If you think about what
Instagram’s replication of a lot of their functionality has done
it’s created a scenario where there’s little more skeptics
talking about Snapchat’s growth. – Sure. – A lot of people
talking about their decline. – Instagram sucks
out the oxygen out of the room with stories. – So it becomes
Snap and to play, to me what’s most interesting
is Snapchat is the first social network that feels like a brand.
– Mhmmm. – You know, Snapchat
feels as much to me as Under Armour and Soul Cycle–
– Yep. – as it does Facebook or
Instagram and that crossover from just utility social network
to overall brand I feel like this captured that moment and if
they can pull that all the way through well then they
really have something. – And they really made it where you are the media, right?
– 100%. – And so that was part of
this exciting brand and then the filters and the tools
and the creativity– – And then you
think about the live. All they have to do is add an
update that allows that be live streaming and now all of a
sudden you got a whole thing. I’m pretty bullish on it. It’s early, I do agree that
they’ve made it cool what was $1500 and not cool from Google,
three years ago so we’ll see. Evan, from me from afar, continues to deploy
LA brand behavior in a San Francisco,
Silicon Valley world in a very good way. – Yep and they also making big
steps to be a media company. So you saw where they stopped
rev sharing and started buying content now as a
Netflix would do– – The garden walls of the
internet are popping up. – Yeah.
– Let’s keep it going. – [Dunk] Next
question is from John.

– What’s going on, Gary?
This is John Max here. I had a question for you. Was driving and listening to
“Thank You Economy” and at the end of the book you talk about
how you would wish the self, the book with self-destruct by
2015 because marketers would have ruined the
thank you economy. Looking back do you think that we still live in a
thank you economy? And if not, what kind of
economy do we live in now? Thank you. – I’ll take a little bit of
this because I’ll help you. The “Thank You Economy”‘s
premise is pretty simple which is can we scale
one-on-one behavior? What’s depth verse width, right? You think of influencers a place that
you and I both played. You can have a million followers
but if you said go by this book, both you and I know that
somebody with 72,000 followers could sell more books, depth. It didn’t play out the way
wanted because I had optimism in a place where I shouldn’t which
is the punchline is businesses don’t get a fuck.
– No (laughs). – It is unbelievable how much
people don’t understand why my whole world has worked. My little thing works
because I just want to go deep. I just want to deliver value
and it works every time and the person who scaled the thank you
economy the best in my opinion is Taylor Swift and
that’s why she’s winning. She understands– – We talk about her
in the book actually. – That’s great, so great
segue perfect I’m glad we can pass the baton. – Buy the book. – Do some kind of
scary thing there, by the way. Edit. I think Taylor understands
that going to somebody’s wedding randomly may cost her 45 minutes
and not have in an ROI positive game but it does
because the pickup, the amplification, dropping a
pop-up shop for these glasses for Snapchat in the
Grand Canyon is not ROI positive until everybody talks
about it through this kind of infrastructure
and then it does. Thank you economy has a lot of
DNA ties to this and to your question the reason it didn’t
play out the way I’d hoped or inspired is
companies are short-term, I’m long-term and people that
are thinking in 20 and 30 and 40 year terms are thinking about
LTV and lifetime value and then do things that don’t have
value in the short term. The reality is 99% of the
players don’t play that way. – You and I have been
in the same business and I think had the same values. It’s remarkably frustrating when
you try to convince a brand to do what you’re talk about,
to go deep and actually attach yourself to a set of values or
people that have those values. I would say make the
content that matters, put it in front of people it
matters to from voices that matter to them
at a time that matters. It’s like very simple
and they never get it. And they only want the top 1% of people and it’s
like their trophy bag. And they’re like well I got
Demi Lovato to tweet about it. It’s like, well, that
really doesn’t mean anything. – Right, Demi.
– No, it is not, I don’t. – I’m kidding,
I’m kidding, I’m kidding. – She’s a mass media artist
but if I’m making a purchase decision than I want
something that’s closer to me. I want something that I trust
and feel some sense of shared values with and these big macro
brands but Taylor she kinda over came that by these
personal experiences. – She understood it.
– Yep. – She understands
there’s an amplification, scaling the unscalable. – Just this weekend she’s
singing Thanksgiving songs with Todrick Hall who’s, you know,
a self-made YouTuber who– – She gets it. She understands
where the attention is. She deploys unscalable behavior in it which then
means it gets amplified. – Yep. – What’s his name
again one more time? – [Dunk] John.
– John. John, all of what you
heard in that book is still an opportunity today as it was
six years ago when I wrote it. Let’s move on. – [Dunk] Next
question is from CK.

– Hey Gary!
It’s CK here. Presenter, photographer
from Sheffield, UK. My question for you how mindful
are you of differentiation when it comes to personal branding? There’s a million and one
entrepreneurs out there, not all of them
swear like a judge, like you do. Not all of them wear
trainers like you and not all of them wear cool jeans. So my question,
not all of them want to buy the Jets. So how conscious are you, Gary,
of your unique selling point when creating your brand? Epic, you’re a hero. Next time you’re in London I
want to do a photo shoot for ya. Let’s hear it for Gary! (crowd cheers) – CK, I’ll answer
that in a minute. From what you’ve
seen Oliver, what, you’ve worked with a
lot of influencers. You’ve got a lot of great
connections in Hollywood. You knew the
influencers were coming, you knew the old school,
you knew the new school. How do you see that?
Do you think that people are being thoughtful of
their differentiations? – Yeah, absolutely. I mean look, you know, the
really smart ones understand the idea of authenticity, right? And understand and so I remember
sitting down with a bunch of celebrities when Facebook pages
were really scary to them and whether or not it was gonna be,
me the actress or me the actor or me you know the guy
that hung out with you at high school, I didn’t really
know what persona to do or what to present. – And people still, a lot of
people right here are like should I have a business page?
– Sure. Sure. – Should I have
my personal page? I have a job but I also
want to be known as the funny, vulgar, juggler but
I’m a lawyer by day. Everybody’s in this
Clark Kent/Superman issue on Facebook and social in general. – I always profess that
you could have two lives. You could have this public
persona that could be safe to do this and then you have a
private existence here which is important because we are all
stepping onto a public stage now and there are things that should
be kept public and things that are private and I think
we’re all always in a constant collision course with that. Few too many drinks and a
Twitter account you can pretty much fuck up your life. – I agree with you and here’s my
point or people forget like BP dumped all the oil in the world
in to the and people forget. It’s amazing what, I don’t
think anybody’s talking about like all these actors and
actresses and athletes have so many mistakes and issues. America is quite forgiving. What we’re not forgiving
about is the cover-up. – The hypocrisy.
– That’s right. – People don’t like hypocrisy. – It is a death blow,
it is a death blow. – In Iceland, we overthrew the
government in a 24 hour period, and a long-standing system of
government there because we had a Prime Minister who
really didn’t break the law but was a hypocrite.
– That’s right. – And nobody likes a hypocrite.
Nobody likes a hypocrite. – I’m familiar with that
story and you’re right. From my standpoint, here’s
where I’ve been thoughtful, seven years ago I decided that
there was something inside of me and the new mediums
were in my favor, that good things
were about to happen and I better just be me all the way through.
– Yep. – A level of transparency and
authenticity that was extreme because I made the assumption
that it was gonna really work out and that everybody on
Earth would know who I was. I still knew I wanted
to be a businessman. I didn’t want to be an actor.
– You’re getting close. – But I knew that, I made a
video seven or eight years, you should edit this in that
said that technology was gonna be hip hop. That we were in this
1985 hip hop moment. Serious, hip hop ’85 is equal to tech web 2.0 2008. That Zucks and Kevin Rose
and all these people, these were people
that were gonna, look I basically think I said in
the video or I said it elsewhere that tech founders were gonna
marry supermodels and like Evan Spiegel’s doing that.
– That is absolutely happening. – And so I knew that then,
I thought that would happen to me and so I’ve been conscious of
the following which is you guys really know my shit. Now that being said,
I have a counterpoint. There is very little content
on my family in the world. – Yeah, I noticed you
mentioned that in your last– – Xander, my little guy, I don’t think anybody even
knows what he looks like. I don’t think there’s
one piece of content. So you gotta pick and
choose what’s important to you. – Yep. – For Lizzie and I, it’s
important the kids don’t have that exposure and they choose,
I think Misha’s gonna choose. I think she’s gonna
be a YouTube kid star. (Olivers laughs) We need to let them choose
but you’re in full control. – You’re the dad-anger. – Exactly, I can’t
wait to be a dad-anger. I’m gonna negotiate good deals.

– Hey Gary, my
name is Miguel Ogas. For some context, I work
in a full-time ministry. I run a network of churches
for my lead pastor where I’m traveling about twice a month
and you have inspired me to give my wife my laptop computer
so I do all of my business full-time through the phone. I believe everything you’re
saying about the future of the cell phone so I just want to
figure out how to do it right. So my question to you is
this, what are some tips, tricks, apps, any type of hustle
advice you can give to somebody who wants to run a network,
run a business completely 100% through the phone no
longer using a laptop? Thank you for all you do.
Appreciate you. – Have you seen
the Google phone? – The Pixel?
– The Pixel. – I haven’t seen it.
– It’s amazing. – Do you have it?
– I have two of them, yeah. – And so what? Have you made the
jump to phone only? – 100%. 100%. – You have no laptop?
You have one– – I rarely use, I have a laptop
which I’m like if I have to download a bunch of,
like right now I’m downloading a
bunch of photos. – Google has such a
great suite of products– – It’s amazing. – they made, I assume, Doc
and Mail and Calendar– – It’s amazing. It’s like intuitive and
smart and and it’s like you’ll have an
appointment and it’s like, “Would you like to add
this to your contact book?” It’s like improving
itself the whole time. – Such a miss by Microsoft.
I thought two years ago– – I had that phone,
I loved that phone. – I thought Microsoft, when it
was when it’s dead in cell phone world, I thought they should
have come out with the Microsoft phone that was built to be you
know the business engine that it sounds
Google has executed. From my standpoint,
there’s only one smart hack. I can talk all about everything. Different apps, here’s the
reason it works for me: anything that isn’t great on
the phone you scale through another human being. If you’re able to afford
an admin which or use some AI assistance and
things of that nature, I don’t write, as my
team will tell you, I don’t write any… My emails are one word
or like an emoji. I do so little actual work that if you’re working in
Excel sheets and Word and PowerPoint and these things
it may be a little trickier. As somebody who doesn’t, as
somebody who has like the team send “Here’s the proposal. Can
you approve it?” and as soon as I get it I write approved and
they’re like you didn’t open it. We can see that
you didn’t open it. I said approved,
mother fucker. You know? And so, I think you have to
know yourself but I think the human element of having an admin or somebody else to close the shortcoming but I think living
in a mobile only environment. – Sometimes I add a few
words because I’m the same way. I’m like, “Thank you,
approved. Good.” – Yeah.
– “Great.” And they’re like,
“I just wrote a treatise.” I’m like, “Well, maybe you
can slim it down a little bit.” – It’s the biggest
inside joke here. People write seven paragraphs and I write back the
thumbs up emoji. And they’re like, fuck. – It’s like can I get a
little more feedback here. – Something!
– Something. I worked on this. Alright, let’s move it. – [Dunk] Last one.
– Last one. – [Dunk] From Cory.
– Cory.

– Gary, what’s going on? It’s Captain Cory
from CaptCory.tv and the Captain’s Vlog on YouTube. I’m in the back of the airplane
because it’s more quiet but I got a couple
questions for you. First off, Gary aside for your
incredible interpersonal skills, what would you say is the most
important leadership quality that you deploy amongst
those that you lead? And the second part
of that question, what are two important
leadership qualities that we as young leaders can develop
that’ll make us more effective as leaders and have a greater
influence and make a bigger difference amongst those? Appreciate all you do.
Love the show. I’m not watching as much any
more ’cause I’m grinding and hustling but love it.
Love what you do, man. If you ever need
a ride too, man, let me know. – That’s good. That’s my big thesis
by the way, Oliver. Unlike a lot of people, I actually want my audience
of people to decline– – Sure. – because I want to inspire
people to actually go do. – Right. – The amount of
reading all our books, watching all our stuff,
that’s fine and I like that. – Yep. My tagline’s always
been I get shit done. Just get it done. – You’ve been a successful
leader in your companies, what’s the biggest thing
that has really worked for you? – I think being humanistic which
is a word that I don’t think many people, especially
in this country, use. But there’s a real value
to putting humans first. And it sounds so trite but
there’s a real value to having empathy and putting humans
first and looking at them from a perspective that you can
say, how do I help you grow? What is both this sympathy parts
and the nourishment parts that are going to help you realize
your potential as a person? And I’ve started
seven companies now and made a lot of mistakes. Human resources is the hardest
thing to do at scaling a company because I always make
the joke they are neither a resource nor human,
human resources. And so–
– That’s why the head of mine is called Chief Heart
Officer, Claude. Claude is the number two person in this company
and everybody knows it. It is the foundation at
Vayner because we sell people. – Yep, exactly and so, I mean
you’re in a service business, in a content business so
that makes sense and so I think taking a lens of humanism has
been the biggest gift for me. It’s one of the reasons
I moved to Iceland. You have a humanistic society that doesn’t punish people
for their weaknesses. – I like that. – You have no poverty,
you have no homelessness. You have reform
instead of prison. Big, important things especially
coming from a place like Mississippi where I was born. You look at that and
that’s a place where people are not
treated like humans. There are systems in place. I remember with American Express
we made a movie called “Spent” about payday lenders in America. Talk about your
audience and the pains. That’s $1 trillion business
in America that is parasitic. – Yep. – It adds no value to
the system whatsoever. In Iceland, a human human right is to be able to
access your money. – Sure. – Here we have the basic
principles of our economy are inaccessible in my hometown to
80% of the people have to go to a payday lender and a check
cashing place and spend a percentage of their income just to take just to be able
to spend their money. That is not humanistic. That is counter to anything that will help a system
grow and evolve. – I couldn’t agree
more with the human– – Not to rant about
payday lenders but fuck– – but it’s a valid point and
I think from my standpoint it’s listening and
it’s self-awareness. I think the biggest mistake
charismatic CEOs make is they try to fake the funk and act
like they know everything. – Mhmmm. – I always feel like I think
I know everything and lot of you leave
comments about ego. Only ’cause I stay in my lane. There’s a very narrow
world where I’m very good. I tend to never go out of it. You notice how
I have social media and business people
on the show. This is not a healthcare expert. We’re not talking about
hair dying activities. This is not, nobody’s gonna be
on the show talking about how to raise cattle because I’m not
gonna put myself in a position where I do not know what
the fuck I am talking about. – Right. – And so being all-in on what
you know and then being very empathetic and listening and deploying humility against
the things you don’t know. People pick up on
that real, real, real fast. Because when you come across
somebody that works for you that does know the thing that
your bullshitting about and you bullshit it,
you just lost a winner. – Yep.
– You’ve just lost a winner. – It’s about building
that trusted relationship at every level of all of this. – I got to get the
hell out of here.