#AskGaryVee Episode 62: Franchising, Open Courses & Cash or Exposure

on franchising your company
when you can’t be sure if others will care for
the brand in the same way?” Harold, that’s a great question. I think the real answer to that needs one more layer of context. When you say, “franchising your business”, building a consumer-facing business, a retailer, a QSR, a
restaurant, then franchising is a tremendous model, we’ve seen it from McDonald’s, to Five Guys, Sonic. I mean, it’s a great thing to do. It’s the right business
model, or it’s a phenomenal version of the right business model. You can go private, if you want. What I’m concerned about,
and what I don’t know, and India, I didn’t really ask you, is– Show India, everybody’s
probably missing India. – Hi. – [Gary] You can get a
little camera time, Staphon. Are you going down the
route of selling your name? The reason I’m asking
that, and I don’t know if you can figure it
out from the question, a lot of people try to franchise “me”. I know there’s a lot of
“gurus”, and “advice people”, where they teach the– The amount of people that pitched me, when it was at its heat, in 2010, on the idea of a “Gary
Vaynerchuk Crush It! Course”, and they would be the person teaching, and they would siphon back up to me, that was something I
wasn’t comfortable with. Because it wasn’t something
I felt represented me and I wouldn’t want to
franchise that route. So if you’re asking that,
that’s super uncomfortable to me, somebody representing
you, a big concern of mine. As far as a retailer or a restaurant, I feel super comfortable with that. Many people have pulled
off making sure the brand was insured by lots of
rules, lots of legal jargon, lots of training, whatever
it took to scale that. Anything from your end?
You get anything there? Alright. So that’s the
answer, I give you both.

#HustleHacks when it comes to diet, sleep, and your daily routine? How do you maintain energy and brain power while hustling nonstop?” Sean, I think a lot of that comes to– First of all, great picture.
This whole picture dynamic is going to really flip the switch. Obviously you guys know
I’m super hot on Instagram. To me, I care about the Attention Graph, actually I want to write
an article on Medium about this, the Attention Graph. That’s the whole game. That’s actually probably my nugget. I win on that. Which is,
where’s the attention? You know, YouTube, a year
after YouTube comes out, it’s got attention that people
don’t realize is valuable. Start the #AskGaryVee
show, podcasting, snapchat– Or start Wine Library
TV, sorry for the mix up. One in the same, it’s all family. They’re my kids, I love them both. It’s weird that I have two shows. I’m really weirded out that I’m gonna be a person that has two shows. Anyway, to answer your question, it really comes down to loving it. The reason I’m able to continue to hustle and do what I do is because I love it. I love doing the show, I love
flying all over the country. I like taking my kind
of selfies on Instagram where I’m sour-face and everybody’s like, “Don’t be like– This is what you want,
right? Why are you upset?” I’m not upset, I’m just– Kind of fun little pout
face that I like doing when I travel, 13-year-old girls can’t be the only people that pout. I think for me it comes down to I love it so much that– Here’s a good answer, I
woke up at 5:15 this morning after landing at midnight
on a flight yesterday, to play six a.m. tip-off basketball today because I loved it. But
if Muscle Mike came in to work me out at that time, I
would’ve been more begrudged. Because I love basketball,
I love competition. I’ve come to love the working out, I love the way it makes me look. I’ve been looking at some
old videos like, whew! But that’s what it comes down to. If you truly love it, it
doesn’t feel like work. All these extra hours I’m putting into the Wine Library stuff right now, doesn’t feel like work because I love the wine retail hustle
game, so it’s interesting. It just comes down to love. – [Voiceover] Kate Parker
asks, “Gary, I am growing

my business and looking to
include partners for content. What’s the best way to recruit them? Money/promise of exposure?” – Kate, I’m super pumped. Guys, I went to high school with Kate. By the way, let me give
a big shout out to Kate. Kate came to my high school junior year in the middle of the year. And Kate was a top five attractive girl, I’m being very politically correct here, in our school. She made huge noise. Kate, huge shout out
for the noise you made at North Hunterdon High School, 1993. And recruited as a
soccer star, by the way. Just giving you some daps, Kate. I’ve been noticing a lot of your stuff, some of your work is incredible, it’s been really fun to watch. Anyway, I think both work. It depends on what people are more motivated by. If you have a big enough
platform to create exposure, people will work for free. DRock hit me up and offered to make a film for free for me because he knew that was gonna get him his exposure. He vetted,
or intuitively felt, that I I was a good guy,
sure enough before I gave him a full-time job offer to work here, which think about that outcome,
but that’s for another day. He did get into contact with
Chris Brogan, Ted Rubin, – [DRock] There were
like three other people. – So he made the right
move. You could say, “Wow he did that for free.” The reason I’m always
willing to take free work, and free hustle, is
because I feel comfortable with the fact that I’m
gonna try to pay them back tenfold on the ROI, by
giving them a shout out, I know other people that
are marketing leaders pay attention to me because
I’ve been on the cusp of doing new stuff, so he
had all those opportunities. Now, I swooped in and saw
the raw, amazing talent that this man had and had
to bring him on board. And this show exists because
DRock joined the family and it gave me the infrastructure, so big shout out to you, DRock. So, I think free works. If
you think other photographers will see value in your platform, or whatever you’re trying to accomplish, money always works as well. I think people are motivated
by different things. I’ll tell you something people
always try to do with me. I never do it, but people
do it all the time, is leveraging your rolodex.
I mean the amount of people that are willing to do things for me, for me to get them to… people, I don’t know, I’m
not going to name drop. But it’s insane, I never wanna do that. Because I think that’s
not doing the right thing for my relationship, but I
understand why people do it. People do it to me left and right. They’re like, “Hey Gary Vee.
Meet my boy, Johnny McGee.” And when I meet Johnny McGee it’s like, “Yeah, I gave Ricky McGee
eight billion dollars to get to you”, it happens all the time. People value different things,
I think money and exposure are two things that actually– Are we doing Patriot stuff? Guys, you have to
understand. I’m a weird guy. Guys, I’m a weird guy. I’m weird. I will fire over crazy, weird shit. Minnie, I’m not scared about
this. I’m not scared, Minnie. I fire over Patriot shit, I promise. Hey guys, how do you like this? (laughter) – [Gary] Like that? So, yeah. That’s it. Let’s
go on the next question. I know you just got taught
how to submit questions

of online courses, I see
this usurping traditional institutions of education in a big way. Do you see this happening? And is there money to be made?” – What’s up, Fireboy? Quick
answer to this question is yes. You know, yes. Uber, Airbnb, Skillshare, that’s probably one of the
ones you’re talking about. There’s a bunch out– Chase Jarvis is behind one. Yes. I absolutely believe– Khan Academy, the fact that when I’m trying to learn something, I
go to YouTube and search a how-to and watch a
one minute how-to video. Information as education is a commodity, the Internet has created that platform for us to learn that way. I don’t need a teacher, as
charismatic as they may be, to just tell me the information,
what matters are opinions, interpretations, context,
not the base information. So even here, my base information is fine. How I layer the context
of the current world is far more interesting. So I
think education is massively going to be disrupted
over the next 20 years, and I think you’re
barking up the right tree.

Jeff, this question, and
photo accompanying it, is probably the reason
we made this switch. I mean, this is incredible.
I’m so excited about this. I know some people are
like, “Oh, Instagram.” Get over yourselves. Let’s attack the ‘gram
with your questions. This is a tremendous question, which makes it even more interesting. The answer, my man, is very simply like, what you need to decide is short term cash versus long term wealth. Let me explain. My answer to you would be, okay, you’re making the products– By the way, I had a big
business at the time, but the way I did Wine Library TV was all-encompassing myself, except to Chris Mott’s
credit, Mott videotaped, but there was no editing the way DRock– It was just uploading, and in
theory, I could’ve done that for an hour, but probably
not. So big shout out to Mott. You have to decide if you want to make– I don’t know how long it takes you to make one of your pieces, right? I would make seven pieces
instead of 13 in a year, if I can live off of
that. I would do that. I would then spend more
time on building my brand, because that’s really what an artist is. Doing the Instagram stuff
you’re doing, building up your Pinterest, being
smart and knowing the world and look at all the exposure. I really feel confident
one person will buy one of your pieces from this show. You knew about me, you commented on my comments, Alex hit up a bunch of people
over the last couple of days. Not that many replied. You took the initiative to do
it, now you’re on the show. Now you’ve got this exposure,
20-30 thousand views. Now what you do with that
is you’re leveraging that, and all of a sudden it
becomes supply and demand. There are artists who make one– I’m sure, I’m not very
strong in the art world. India, you can help me here a little bit. I know what the answer
is, there’s some artists who make one piece every couple of years. That’s how they make their whole living because it’s worth a ton of money, because they’ve got the brand. Now that you can go brand direct– By the way, Crush It! is
literally the blueprint of the current state of the Internet. I don’t wanna go there, but
I was ridiculously right. Not even kind of. So we’re
all living that world now. Grape Story, my agency
that represents Vine Talent is basically the agency of what
Crush It! was talking about. It’s a very simple thing. Cash, wealth. If you decide to make
seven pieces this year and that’s enough for you to live, then it makes me happy
because you can take the rest of that time, instead of 13, I don’t know all the numbers
but you see where I’m going, to build your brand, to
engage, to put out content, to write a Medium post, to
put up Instagram photos, and that builds up your
supply and demand curve. If you’re equally good enough at both, then the demand will get to
a place where you can start charging more for your pieces
to build up your brand. It’s very simple, it’s
been going on forever. Independent people have always done that, Should you make pieces or
should you open a gallery? It’s chicken and egg. The other thing to debate
is can you bring in somebody at a low cost to do it full-time and help you scale. You’re the only one that can answer. But guess what? I’m the
only one that can answer, but India is here to
make it quicker for me. I do this show so India
has something to transcribe of off, add some grammar,
ask me a couple of clarification questions, and we’ve got two of the top four posts on Medium right now. It all depends on how you wanna roll, I had to build up to that. This is the first time I’ve got
this kind of infrastructure. But it’s just chicken and
egg, cash flow versus wealth. There’s two ways to go about doing it. You can make 13 pieces and then you’re making the money on it that allows you to afford your person and place. Or you make 7 and you do
it yourself for a while. It just depends on how you wanna roll. If you’re not building up your equity, you’re always going to be making pieces that are hundreds of
dollars instead of pieces that are millions of dollars. That’s it. That was a good show.