#AskGaryVee Episode 80: Twitter Acquiring Periscope, Airports & Being Young

I love your hustle and
perseverance so much, but I’m gonna zing and zang
a little bit on this answer because I am really tired of 21, 19, 22, 24 year olds wanting to be speaker and coaches about things that they are not able
to speak and coach about because they don’t have the experience. You’re right, it is a disadvantage. It’s very hard for me to want to listen, or pay you for business advice when you’ve never built a business. And by the way, you don’t have to be 24, you could be 39 and try
to sell business advice, when you’ve never sold a business. Now, that’s me making a
leap and an assumption that that’s what you want to talk about. If you want to talk about the perspective of a millennial on how to use social media because you are one, cool. If you want to talk about
the things you’ve learned, you know, in whatever genre. If you’ve been making
music since you were 13, and you’re 24, that’s an 11 year career, but the truth is you can only talk about, and demand and command
attention and respect around something you’ve
actually accomplished. Just saying that you’re
a coach and a speaker doesn’t mean you are one because
you just said you are one. You’ve got to earn the
credit to be able to do it. Now look, do I believe that you can be a football coach without playing football? Yes, but we’ve hit on this before. When you look at the
coaches that were coaches that, you know, didn’t play football, most of them played college football, maybe they didn’t get to the pros. Most of them, if they
didn’t play football, at least, at bare minimum, played high school football competitively, and then had a father normally who was a coach, or was
within the organization of a major sports franchise. I mean, you’ve got to put in the work, and so you know, the reason
there’s a disadvantage of being 24 and getting
people to listen to you is cause they’re right. Now, there’s anomalies, maybe you were 17 and you built a huge
business and sold it at 21. The age is not the variable, you know, I feel like I did a lot by 24. I could walk onto stage and say, “Hey guys, in the last 24 months, “since I was 22, and I took
over my dad’s business, “I’ve taken it in the last 24 months “from 3 to 15 million dollars. “Here’s how I did it.” That’s some credibility,
that’s some chops, but I couldn’t have at that point say, “Let me talk to you about HR as a leader.” Only 24 months of that experience, only so much value compared
to when I do it now of having two decades of doing it. So you know, it’s a
disadvantage for a purpose, right, for a reason. If you’re an anomaly, radical, but if you’re not, you need to respect that people are not idiots.

– [Voiceover] Hans
asks, “What do you think “about the recent Twitter
acquisition of Periscope?” – Hans, this is a tremendous question. As we are filming this right now, so for everybody who’s listening, I’m gonna have DRock
show Staphon right now, who’s actually filming us and Meerkatting. Staphon, flip over the screen, show the camera, flip over your screen. Zoom in DRock, no, no,
flip, don’t look at you. Show the, there we go, thank you. Yeah, so you know, right now we are, we’re Meerkatting, I don’t
know if you know that, but that’s an actual animal,
you can go back to me. I think if I was Meerkat,
I’d be very concerned. You know, obviously we’re all
enjoying the Kat quite a bit, live streaming, phone to phone, peer to peer is clearly here, but if I was Meerkat, I would be concerned about this acquisition because clearly if it’s got the same functionality, which is what it’s rumored to have, I haven’t seen it yet, but
I will probably test it out this weekend if I get a chance, at South by Southwest. Oh, which reminds me, if you’re
goin’ to South by Southwest, please check out my talk, Saturday at three PM, Austin time. I think that I’d be concerned, and I think that I’m definitely gonna check it out because I should, and because it’s gonna be integrated probably natively into the Twitter app. So, it will be interesting
to see this play out if it’s gonna be a fast move by Twitter to integrate. We’ve seen this before, you know, I remember people saying, “Oh
Facebook’s doing check ins, “Foursquare’s dead.” And it didn’t happen because it wasn’t native to the product, but I do think this functionality clearly,
cause Meerkat’s built on top of Twitter, from the sign in, from the push outs, from the engagement, when people are commenting right now, it’s showing up on Twitter. This is deeply integrated into Twitter, and thus will be interesting
to watch what happens here. I absolutely plan on using it. I see a scenario where
this is really detrimental to Meerkat, I see a scenario where Twitter tries to see if both can survive. I don’t know, it’ll be
interesting to watch, but the acquisition has
definitely caught my attention. I’m paying very close attention, and I plan on testing out the product as soon as possible so I can make my judgements on differences. – [Voiceover] Samantha asks,
“How do your right hooks

“differ for a free service
versus a paid one?” – When you’re throw the
right hook that’s free I get excited because
there’s less friction, and it feels like I’m gonna really be able to land that right hook. The problem is, there’s a
really funny thing about free. Free creates a scenario where people value it for what it’s been put out. It’s really interesting. I think that a lot of people who watch this show value it quite a bit. I think that the 10% left,
if I started charging four bucks an episode,
or two bucks an episode, the you know, actually you know what, that’s gonna be the question of the day. And I know this is a tough question, and by the way, I will
not be charging for this, so don’t worry, don’t hedge and say zero, I don’t have any plans on it. But if I was, what would you pay to watch an episode of
The #AskGaryVee Show? And yeah that’s the real question. And clearly, I expect most
of the comments to be zero, or no, because I respect that there’s so much content out
there, but I do believe that my content is better
than a substantial amount of content out there in the world. Especially when it talks about new platforms, business,
running businesses, leadership, entrepreneurship,
start up, tech culture. So, I do think that we’ll
see a surprising number, and I’m sure you’re
probably getting answers right now in Meerkat,
so Staphon, feel free to not shout it out, cause
I want to be surprised. But I do think that
it’s really funny to me to think about the 10% of
you that I would expect to pay for it that if you
were paying four bucks for it you’d actually value the show more. It’s really quite interesting psychology. So, how do I act differently? One, when I throw right
hooks, for example, when I tweet out later
today that episode 80 is up. You know, I expect to
land more than saying, “Episode 80 is up, pay
me three dollars Snapcash “if you want to watch it.” You know, I have a little less angst of the conversion because I know that there’s no friction financially, which is one, besides time,
finance is the friction. And so, I think it’s got a
totally different cadence, different expectation,
different pressure hold. I think it’s easier. – Hey Gary, answer my question.

By the way, go Giants. – [Voiceover] Ryan asks,
“I work for a company “that makes animated explainer
videos for businesses. “Is Google pay per click the best option “for B to B companies like us?” – Ryan, great question. Really excited about baseball right now. I’d love to get your
comment in the sections about Brandon Belt, very much on my radar to draft this year on fantasy baseball. Hopefully nobody in the Vayner 20 man fantasy baseball league
is listening or watching, but I know Bobby Glen watches. So, I’m a little upset
now that he has optics into what I’m doing, though I could be throwing him a curve ball. Listen, Google pay per
click is tremendous, but I also think that Linkedin ads have tremendous upside for you. Also, Linkedin creative,
meaning putting out blog posts on Linkedin, and then having a call to action at the bottom I think could actually
work for you quite a bit cause the B to B mentality within Linkedin is so over the top, it’s
the context of the room. So, I’m a big fan of putting out content now that everybody can blog on Linkedin, and then maybe use that content on your email newsletter, on your website, on other places where you have a little bit of a base to
create some awareness around it. I’m a big fan of that. I actually think you can get stunningly, stunning Hail Mary upside on both Pinterest and Instagram. I think Pinterest’s ad product that we’ll probably see roll out this year has a chance to really matter for you if you’re actually targeting people in a business world that
could actually buy this, but yeah I would say Google, I would say content. I would say go and reach
out to any B to B platforms. Podcasts, some blogs that
speak to the audience that you’re trying to reach and see if your CEO or creative
director can be a guest contributor, or interviewed on there because that exposure I think actually can convert for you,
maybe not at the scale that you can get from a PPC Google world. I also think you can target people by their office, you
know by where they work on Facebook dark posts
that I think you could get some really great results there. Especially if you upload
some of the native videos that you actually create
in native Facebook form, I think you can actually get
some interesting results there. So, do I think Google PPC
still wins the day for you? I think it’s clearly gonna
be one of the three winners. I think Facebook dark posts,
and I think Linkedin ads supported by Linkedin creative play and can compete at that level. So, that’s where I would focus. – [Voiceover] CJ asks, “What’s
your favorite airport?”

– [Voiceover] CJ asks, “What’s
your favorite airport?” – CJ, this is a great question. My favorite airports are
always like small ones like in Des Moines, or like,
you know, which I’ve been to. Or you know, where is that,
you know, South something. Somewhere in Greenville, South Carolina. You know, Montana, some
of the places I’ve done, Arkansas, some of the stuff I’ve done, Chattanooga, Tennessee. You know, the airports you walk in, oh when we had Green Mountain Coffee as a client, the Vermont airport. I mean, you know, the airports that you could literally roll up to and be at your gate within,
I don’t know, four minutes, with no pre-check. You know, I like those places. I also clearly feel very, I mean, Newark, JFK, and Laguardia have, and in some weird way
SFO, I know everything about LAX, SFO, LGA, JFK, and Newark. I know those airports, I
probably know the nuances of those airports better than I know the office of VaynerMedia. They’ve become my home. Big shout out to Johnny at LGA. I mean, these people
have become my friends. It’s really quite sad,
like I almost feel like they’re breaking TSA rules,
like they don’t even need to check my ID, they’re like, “Hey Gary.” I’m like, “Hey.” You know, like it’s, you know, so I, the really sad
answer to this question, the actual real authentic
sad answer to this question is all of them. The coziness that I feel at an airport is disturbing at best.

That’s a good question, thanks Meerkat. – [DRock] Who was it? – He doesn’t know. That’s why he said
somebody, or you got it? It scrolls. – [Staphon] Yeah, at, Jesus Christ, now everybody’s asking. – Yeah, it’s over, sorry
if you asked this question. No IP love. You know, I think it takes
a million different things depending on what the job is. It’s about the right job
for the right person. So, the answer is, anybody
probably could work at Vayner at some level, they just have to have self awareness if
they are a project manager, or a creative director,
account sup., a CM, but it definitely takes, I think the more interesting question is: What does it take to win at VaynerMedia? Right, so like getting
in, like we’ve had plenty of winners and losers get in. How to win here I think is a fine balance of one, having empathy and self awareness, and respecting the others around you. Having patience, I think a lot of people lose within the first six,
12, 18 months at Vayner because they’re just not
playing the long game, and they either want a
raise, or a promotion, or have the audacity of
like thinking they’re better than they are, but while equally, this is back to pulling
in both directions, I want that bravado and confidence, and all those things. So, I think it’s about making networks, having relationships,
having self awareness, having patience, over communication. You know, like what if this
machine is doing bad by you, I respect that. We’re not perfect. I want to be there for
you, so are you speaking to Minnie in HR, or me,
or AJ, or your leaders within your organization, or
at least 30 to 50 people here that have been here for
a year to three years that are really the foundation
of the ethos of the company. So you know, I think there’s
a lot of different things that it takes, but it
definitely takes hard work, it definitely takes smarts, but what trumps status, it takes heart. – [India] I found who asked the question.