#AskGaryVee Episode 30: How to Pick a Name for Your Business

– [Voiceover] Maurizio asks, “Hi Gary, “what’s your opinion on listicle sites?” – If you haven’t noticed,
back in San Francisco for episode 30, excited about that. Listicles. You know, it’s interesting. I have a very different view on this than a lot of my friends and contemporaries because a lot of my
friends and contemporaries are journalists or have loved growing up reading the Wall Street
Journal or the New York Times or the Post, or these kind of things. I think there’s way too
much romance in journalism, and here’s what I mean by that. I’m a huge fan of it because BuzzFeed and UpWorthy and companies of that nature, and let’s not forget the
USA Today really started infographics and listicles
in its modern sense, though listicles have been around for 100 plus years. The people that are exploiting listicles and our worlds are being
overrun by 12 things a cat did while it ate
food, everybody who’s complained about that needs to understand, this is the same debate
we had about reality TV, the same thing we had about the people that didn’t like game
shows during the daytime, the same thing we are
about everything, meaning there’s a huge misunderstanding of how these things work. Here’s my example, what do
I think about listicles? As a business? 24 months ago, phenomenal. You were going up in trend. Right now, super strong. 24 months from now, solid. 48 months from now, hmm. 72 months from now, concerned. See what happens is we get these trends, they matter, people enjoy them, and then marketers ruin it. We love listicles 24
months ago as a big base, then you had the cynics and the haters that started a little bit earlier, and now what you’re seeing
is, you’re starting to have a conversation of like, is it too much? Are we clicking as many? And the reaction of the market
is always what dictates. I love the customer. I don’t love anything else. So as long as the customer is enjoying it and they’re clicking it, everyone says the Kardashians are crap, but
million of people watch it. These things are subjective. Listicles are subjective. My POV on it, my subjectiveness on it is if people enjoy them, then
that’s what it’s going to be. And so for now and the next 36 months, I’m bullish on it as a business. As far as a consumer, I
don’t consume anything, so it doesn’t matter. – [Voiceover] Gabriel
ponders, “Gary, in the age “of social media, tweet, vine,
Instagram length limited,

– [Voiceover] Gabriel
ponders, “Gary, in the age “of social media, tweet, vine,
Instagram length limited, “how does, should this affect a startup “in choosing a name?” – Gabriel, this is a great question. I understand what you’re saying, right, Twitter, tweet, you know,
kind of the short form, you know I actually think
it’s an interesting question. The reason I decided to choose it is, a name is made. Meaning, when everybody’s sitting around, I have friends who sit
around and think about picking the name of the
startup for 900 years. And I tell them, what did
Google mean to anybody? What did Facebook mean to anybody outside of people that were
in the Harvard community that knew what the facebook was? None of these words mean anything until there’s something, right? People email me like, uh
I don’t like my last name, like you’re emailing Gary Vaynerchuk. I mean, Vaynerchuk sucks. Let’s call it what it is, right? And so now a bunch of you are gonna leave in the comments. No no
no, it’s kind of unique, it’s good. I get it. But it’s only good because
I made something out of it. And so, what does it mean? It means nothing to me. If you went with a long-winded startup, you could get abbreviations. I actually think that’s a new trend. Somebody’s gonna come out with a company called like Copperhound Thompson, but everybody’s gonna call it CHT, right? And so like in a world where
we’re short-forming everything, people call me V-chuk
because they don’t want to say Vaynerchuk and that became my slang last name to my
friends in high school and so we will evolve our
name into our convenience if it brings value. So stop worrying about the name, and start worrying about the product. – [Voiceover] Noble Rot Society.

“Gary, when you left Wine Library “to start VaynerMedia, was
it a conscious decision “not to have someone take
over Wine Library TV?” – This is a great question. People have asked me this question a lot, and I wanna interject some depth, like last couple questions,
last couple episodes with some of this kind of fun stuff. And insight that I’ve never talked about. You know, I don’t know if
it was a conscious decision. Nobody really raised their hand, nobody wanted that spot. It’s kind of like my
speaking career right now, knock on wood I’m doing so well, the bad part is I always
have to speak last because nobody wants to go next. I don’t think it was the
right or obvious choice internally at Wine Library to jump on it, Ian, Brandon, you know all
these great people internally just didn’t’ wanna have
the kind of, you know, not responsibility, look it
takes a certain personality to put yourself out there. We’ve talked about the past, my blog post about this the other day did really well. You can link that, Stunwin. So it wasn’t a conscious
choice, it was the right choice. If that person existed in the building, maybe it would have
continued in that manner, but I think one thing that
I’m really focused on, why I took this question to interweave it to everybody else while answering it is I think you have to assess. Like you always have to assess. And I think way too
many people come in with what they want it to be, the notion of, somebody will take over this show, and then you’re forcing someone to sit in the hotseat, and then you really lose the lustre of it. Not to mention, I may want to jump back in that seat one day. (bell dings) Question of the day.