#AskGaryVee Episode 48: Ignoring the Competition, Niche Marketing, & Swagger

– [Voiceover] Blue Stripe Creative asked, “How much, if any, time should
be spent on your competition? “Or should you just be focused
on making your own path?” – Blue Stripe, I’m super
pumped you asked this question because I was talking
with my dad all weekend about Wine Library and with that bug, and I reminded him, and AJ
was there to kind of talk about what I’ve done with Vayner
over the last three months, I literally spend (clicking
sound made with mouth) Robert Parish, double
zero on my competition. I could care less. I spend all of my time on people, my team, where we’re going. Do I know what the competition is doing? At some level, a little bit, contextually, but I never go deep. It’s all headline reading. I know who’s making some
buzz and some noise. But I gotta tell you, I truly believe that the biggest mistake so many companies and entrepreneurs make is looking around them. We’ve talked about looking
back, seeing who’s behind you. I just don’t do those things. It’s full steam ahead. I feel like if I take
care of my domain, I win. As a matter of fact, I also do it as a little
razz, as a little sizzler. Like, people are pissed. My competitor are mad. When they meet me in social
settings, and I’m very cordial, I’m a good guy, even though
I wanna slice their neck, you know, in a business
sense, not real life, they actually, if they speak
to me for five or 10 minutes, somewhere in that 10 minutes realize I don’t know what they’re up
to, and it kind of hurts them. I find it to be a competitive advantage. I really find not paying
attention to your competitor as a competitive advantage in a world where many of you
who are watching this right now and think it’s a weakness
to not know what’s going on, I’mma flip. I’mma flip, my friends. I’mma flip. – [Voiceover] Jamie asked, “Who would you recommend
pitching an app idea to?

“Who would you recommend
pitching an app idea to? “What steps would you recommend?” – Jamie, this is an awkward question. Let’s get an awkward alert here. (bell sound) I don’t know what you’re
gonna come up with, guys, (laughter) but I’m excited to see it. On my awkward alert, I don’t
even know what this means. I mean, this is such a basic question. I don’t know why Steve loves this. He was like, “I love this question.” I don’t love this question,
meaning, I don’t know? Who do you recommend pitching an app to? Well, first, if you need money, you pitch it to money
people: angel investors, VCs. If you need press to get
awareness because now you’re out, you pitch it to the media and press opportunities, influencers. (laughs) Listen, we know how much I love
the reverse engineer thing. Actually, I want to make
this crazy link up episode. Link, don’t we have like four? This is gonna take you a
while to get up, DRock. The Cyber Monday wine is
gonna be completely sold out by the time this episode gets up. (laughs) Let’s put up the reverse
engineer hoodie specifically, because that’s the one
I rock, to the page. Who do you pitch it to? Whoever you need at that moment. Everything you do in business life needs to be really strategic, meaning it’s gotta make sense. Who do you pitch an app to? You have an idea but you can’t code or
create an app for crap, so you need to pitch a
co-founder or a dev shop that you don’t want to
charge you a lot of money to actually build it. Then you need money. I
already answered that. Then you need to get it out
there. I already answered that. Then you need to sell it, so then you pitch your
app to a strategic buyer. This is a very, very, and I don’t wanna pick on you. This is more … Show Steve. This is more on, more on– – Can I defend myself?
– [Gary] Yes. – Okay, you were just on Seth Meyers because you invested in Delectable. So, if somebody thinks, “Well, gee, have a really cool app idea. “Gary invested in apps.” I think that would be why
they would ask the question. Right? How did Delectable
come to your attention? – A VC pitched Phil, who vets my deals. It’s obviously in the wine
space, so it came with context. Steve is saving himself
and it’s pissing me off, (someone laughs) so I’ll answer this. It’s very strategic to
understand ones history to predict their future. Obviously coming from the wine world made me more susceptible to
be interested in Delectable. That’s the real answer. (exhales loudly)

– Hey, Gary Vee, Scott Wisotsky here, CEO and co-founder of Campus Pursuit. I run a college marketing business, and I wanted to ask you
about niche marketing. In Wine Library did you market
to people interested in wine, specific niches within
the wine community– – Yes. The answer is “yes” and “yes.” One thing in marketing
that I’m a very big fan of is broad and narrow. Tanks and bombers and Navy SEALs, there’s a purpose for both, so we marketed to wine lovers. Then we focused on Burgundy lovers, and especially when SEO came
along and email segmentation in the early 2000. We were buying keywords on not just wine. I always famously talk about owning wine. What I don’t talk about is
what happened the next year: Cabernet Sauvignon, Silver Oak, Burgundy, Chateauneuf du Pape. So we started going narrow. All of us who’ve ever done any
SEM know about the long tail. That’s where all the magic happened once there was supply and demand that’s happening in social now, long tail. And so, (thinking with mouth)
the answer is “yes” and “yes.” You’ve got to really recognize
the tactic dictates– (phone rings) Oh, look at that. I didn’t have this off. The tactic really dictates the purpose. But you’ve always gotta
go broad and narrow to have a complete picture, in my opinion, and so we did both, and
I continue to do both. And I will always do both because they all have a mission at hand. There’s a reason U.S. government
military has Navy SEALs and Green Berets, because
sometimes you can’t just go big, you’ve gotta go narrow, niche, surgical. Facebook dart posts,
18 to 55-year-old males because you’re selling some male thing, and then 18 to 19-year-olds in Texas who like the rodeo and wine. Got it? Both, both, both. (strong, beating music) – [Voiceover] Ruke S, “What would you do

“when all of the 420
wonderful, amazing people “quit VaynerMedia?” – Ruke, that’s good work. I like this question a lot. As a matter of fact, if
we can figure it out, let’s clip right now to the
moment where I kind of ranted. I know DRock, four hours editing. I wonder, the right word in that question is “ordinary person,” right? Was that an ordinary person? Yeah.
(clicking pen) And I think that’s the
interesting part of your question, which is this whole
notion that pisses me off that I don’t believe that the far majority of people right now who claim that they are
entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs. You know, I don’t get to claim
that I’m an NFL quarterback and then I just am one. And that’s what’s happening, right? A lot of people that
don’t have the skills, you put that word “ordinary”
in for a very specific reason, and it’s the reason I
want to rant on this, which is the ordinary person, aka, the person that’s not
meant to run a business, can probably only handle one punch, right? I mean, that’s just what it comes down to. You know what my answer is? Unlimited. You can punch me in the face 8,000 times. I’m here to get punched, right? I really do think of it
like a UFC or a boxer. Have you ever watched
a UFC or boxing match, and literally watched
and thought to yourself, “Holy crap. If I took one of those punches “I’d be in a coma for
the rest of my life?” They’re meant to be in the octagon. I am not. (laughs) On the flip side, you show me a world where all 420 of these wonderful, amazing people quit VaynerMedia, and I know exactly what
to do the next day. That’s how I roll. Those are
the punches I can handle. Top 10 clients quit? Cool. Can’t ship to a state at
Wine Library anymore? Cool. I can handle unlimited punches because I’m purebred 100% entrepreneur. And so from me to the person
that is a wannabe-preneur, who, first punch in is like,
“Uh, I’m gonna go get a job,” from there, everybody fits
somewhere in between that, and that’s your answer. (quick swishing by) Alright, so obviously
I put myself out there and I said that I was going
to be able to handle it, no problem. Punch me. I can handle it. First thing I would do is
take a step back and wonder, “What the hell just happened?
(laughter) “Why did that happen?” But, theoretically, if it
was in a positive standpoint, what I would do is I would take advantage of everything I’ve learned
for the last five years, and I would decide, “Do I want
to build back up VaynerMedia, “or do I want to do something else?” And what I mean by that, and this is why this is gonna go a little
bit deeper philosophically, I would not make an emotional decision. If it happened in a way
that hurt my feelings, I wouldn’t go the route
of, “I’ll show them,” even thought that’s what I
referred to in the last episode, and then go out and
rebuild it and start over. I may want to do that, to stick it back and
show that I could do it, but one of the things I
take enormous pride in is that I am capable of taking a step back and not making the emotional decision. This is the real answer, Ruke: What I would do is I would say, “Okay, what do I wanna do now? “Do I wanna go and rebuild VaynerMedia? “Do I …” I’d probably call it
“Chuk Media,” C-H-U-K, just to get the heebie-jeebies
out of the 420 leavings. “Or is there something else on my plate “that I’ve learned from now?” I would just be reacting to the
best opportunity for my time getting close to 40, wanna buy the Jets. “What’s the best use of my time?” If I was to rebuild all over again I feel very confident that I could do it. That’s just how I feel. (strong, beating music)

– [Voiceover] Sean asks,
“How do you instill “soul and swagger into a
physical product you create?” – Sean, this question is
phenomenal for so many reasons. One: The Wednesday before Thanksgiving I met with a bunch of new
employees at VaynerMedia, and so many of them
talked about this notion of loving it here three months in because that’s usually
when I see somebody, two to three months in. They’re blown away by how
competitive and great everybody is but not at the expense of others. Whereas every other agency they worked, you know, you’re killing each
other politically to move up. You’re like climbing the
dead bodies to the top. And they’re caught off guard by what we have here. My answer to them is,
“Everything stems from the top.” And I really believe that. I’ve said four or five times on this show, “Everything that is wrong at
VaynerMedia is 100% my fault “because I’m the guy.” And I’m empowering Steve
if things are screwed up or anybody else behind me, and so I have a very big belief
in what I’m about to say, which is products take the
byproduct of its leader. So if she has got swag and flavor, then her product is gonna
have swag and flavor. I truly believe that
physical products, right, that physical products
take the personality of the people that are dictating it, that literally, in essence,
the soul, the swag, the vibe, the DNA, is
extracted out of the person and put into the product. And I’ve seen it 100 times because I think when you pay attention, a lot of brands change, and ebb and flow, and a lot of times that
coincides with the CEO, the CMO, the people really dictating the product’s course. You’re making decisions. Humans are the variable. This doesn’t come alive; it’s the people behind
it that instill that. So the answer to your question is the humans behind the
product dictate its outcome, period, end of story. I truly, truly, truly believe in that. Question of the day: I’m gonna ask Steve to ask
the question of the day.