“the future of
music is going to be? “How and where do you
earn most of your money?” – I’m actually very excited by
the disrupt in the music space. It’s deserved to be disrupted
for really quite a long time. And this deserved to fail and
I say that with all kindness. – You mean the people in the middle having
disproportionate economics? – Yeah, if I could do
a brief history of music. Musicians spent a long time
understanding who they were and what they offered as musicians. People call that a brand now. But they were
natural brand creators. And so Led Zeppelin
stood for something. You know, loving a
musician was like an ethos. It was an entire culture and
they were culture builders and they spent years cultivating
that culture on the road. Radio came along and it
just super boosted things. And there’s a golden time there
for when that happened and then radio became so
powerful people realized, “Hey, I don’t have to
have a whole great record. “I can have one good song,” and
then the record labels were like and we can charge for an entire
record with only one good song and the consumer
started going, “Hey, screw you guys.
I’m getting ripped off. “This is a sucky
record with one good song.” Enter the digital age
and people could say, “Oh good, I only have
to buy one good song.” – At first, they’re like, “Wait a minute, Napster.
I’m not buying shit.” – Yeah.
(group laughter) And streaming. I don’t personally feel that
music will be monetizable in a very foreseeable way. I think that we should focus
on musicians as brands and we’re lucky enough to use
music as our brand builder, as our calling card and the
future of the music business is learning to build
brands around artists. The artists get
to have equity in. – Yep. You know, obviously the
monetizing of live event. So I think access is
where all the magic is ’cause it’s the
limited resource. – Mhmmm.
– Right? So whether that means
in a show or one on ones or the brands they touch. I mean look, it’s funny
here you go with the brand move of the equity thing.
– Mhmmm. – When you think about the
economics 50 Cent made on just his sponsorship deal of Vitamin
Water let alone what you’re seeing now where
you’re, you know, celebrities and
musicians are getting 5, 10, 15, 30% of a
business before it launches on the back of their brand. It’s a very entrepreneurial
answer but it’s the truth. It’s a race to the bottom of
control of those economics. – Yeah. – Andy?
– [Andy] Cool.

– What’s up Gary and team? Hadi Yousef here.
Off of your inspiration, I started vlogging my
startup journey. I’ve been interacting with
online communities like the great Vayner Nation and
just making sure that I’m putting out good content. But aside from patience and
thinking about the long game, what are some things that
someone like me should be doing to grow his audience?
Thanks a lot. – So I think one thing that
stands out for me and then you’ll jump in Jason is
I think more real-life stuff. Like every meetup.
– Sure. – Like Jase, you might remember
this, when I first got, it’s really fun to get your
perspective on this. When I first came
into the ecosystem,– – Yeah. – I was pouring wine at a
Jaiku, Leo Laporte meetup. – Yeah. You were the wine guy.
– Yeah, I was– – You were more
like, who’s that guy? – I was service.
I was the help. – Basically, I mean
I didn’t want to say it but it’s kinda true.
– And so like– – They’re like we
need wine here. – And meanwhile, and meanwhile I had the biggest
business in the room. – For sure. – Everybody else had
business on paper. – Yeah. – I actually had a business but
I was willing to earn my keep in to the ecosystem. That’s the advice I would
give here which is if you’re documenting your journey,
amazing but go to every I mean Israel is such a
hotbed for tech startups and just startups in general. Go to every meetup,
meet every person, be part of the ecosystem. I think you did
that extremely well. – Be everywhere.
– That’s right. – When I started Silicon
Alley Reporter here I wore a Silicon Alley Reporter
shirt every day. I had 20 of them so I was the
brand and I would show up at every party and I’d have
copies of the magazine. You have to be the brand and
you have to be everywhere but a little hack for him might be is
be the most intelligent question under the most important people’s blog posts
or their tweets. In other words,
really take your time. Forget about building your own
content and your own audience, find somebody who’s got an
audience that you would like to acquire and be the most
intelligent person in their ecosystem for a while.
– Love that. – Which is kind of what you did. You’d meet the guy you’d be like
this guy is passionate about wine but I’m here to see Leo
but this guy’s also kind of interesting too, right? And so you can put yourself in
Fred Wilson’s comments on AVC it’s like who are these people writing highly
intelligent comments? – You know what this is
really smart, especially in the Facebook ecosystem where if it’s
actually that, it populates up. – Yeah, they trend it up.
The best comment goes up. But this takes time and you
have to not be thinking about yourself with your comment. That’s the problem I think. People are trying to build a
brand so they think it’s about– – They’re pitching instead of
bringing value to the community of the micro community
within that blog post. – Correct.
– Yep. – What is the topic
we’re talking about– – Yep. – and how do you say
something highly intelligent and further the conversation? – And to you, because you
don’t come from 20 years of experience, 30 years experience
you need to put your lens on it. By the way, there’s a lot of
people reading comments on those blogs that are just like you,
entrepreneurs are trying to make it than us reading it. – We’re not
reading the comments. – So you saying here’s my
perspective from an Israeli led startup that from a
23-year-old’s perspective, you’ll get a lot
of juice from that. You need to own it. There’s way too many people
trying to fake the funk right now that their so genius
business people and they have no experience under
their fingernails. – There’s nothing more, I think,
appealing than somebody who’s a young entrepreneur saying I really don’t
understand how this works. Can somebody explain it to me or
help me because I really would like to be successful? People will come
out and help you. – 100% if you deploy the
humility and don’t fake it. – Yeah, there’s no
reason to fake it. – Well everybody does it.
And by the way, I’ve been there. When you’re not there yet,
you kinda wanna, you want to, I used to say yes and this.
It just was not smart. I should have said please
tell me and this and that. I would have got there faster. – In my meetings, any time a
word comes up that I don’t know, I say, “What does that mean?”
In a business meeting– – I wouldn’t even have meetings
then I’m terrible at vocab. – No but when you have to pitch
and someone’s like oh do you know about this?
And I’m like what is that? And I just say explain
to me what that is. And they’re like oh
it’s an acronym for this. And now I’m like now
I’m getting smarter. – Yeah. 100%.
– Right? – India, let’s more this.
I know we got a call.

“best aspect of a live
music event or experience?” – I can’t answer that. – The most important aspect?
– This is you. – Just getting the
people and getting engaged. See I try to die every
time I’m on the stage. – Die?
– Die. Like physically– – You go so hard
that just might go. – I try to die.
– I like that. – I would love to die on stage. – Seriously, right?
– Seriously. – I get it.
– What happens is– – You look good these days.
– Thanks so much. – You’re probably less likely
to do than I’m back in a day. – I’m trying.
I’ve been trying. – You’re looking good, man. – I’ve been trying
to workout every day. – Back in the day you might
have been able to pull that off. Looking good though now.
– I know, I know, I know. What happens is I’ve analyzed this
so hard to where times are hard and everybody
doesn’t have money like that. – [Gary] Mhmmm. – And everybody doesn’t
give money the same way. I’ve analyzed it to where people
buy tickets to go to shows to where every single dollar
tells a different story. So everybody who’s in
this audience had to do a different thing. Work harder, work extra
hours, borrow some money, sell something that they really loved to see their
favorite rapper. – [Gary] Just to see that show.
– Do whatever. So every ticket tells a
different story so it’s my obligation that if they
went through their, through all these changes to see me being their
favorite rapper then I have to give them my all in the show.
– [Gary] I love that. This is now me jumping in. What is your favorite, what
are your some of your favorite venues to perform in? Do you have a
favorite venue or two? I saw you at Citi Field
the other day. – My favorite show I’ve ever
done in my life was last night. – Hold on, hold on, hold on.
Your favorite show– – I’ve ever done in my life. My best moment in my
career was last night. – Well I worked until two in the
morning and I’ve been up since five working so I
need to hear the story. – So what happened was yesterday
I did Summer Stage in Katonah Park in the Bronx.
– Hmmm. – It’s the park I grew up in. It’s like three blocks
away from my neighborhood. My grandmother grew up
three blocks in that direction. I grew up three
blocks in this direction. It’s never seen
no shit like this. So it’s usually
500 people at that. There was literally
20,000 people there and 5,000. – [Gary] You saw people. – No, I’ve seen
everybody’s mother. Everybody I went to school with. – You saw people that
you hadn’t seen in years. – It looked like
Summer Jam, man. It looked like Summer Jam in the
middle of the park I grew up in. I have a scar where I fell in
the pool where I have stitches my father sold Icees
and beef patties in the summer in this park. – [Gary] It was a coming home. – Oh my God. I almost cried on stage. – [Gary] You never
performed there before? – It was the craziest shit
I’ve ever seen in my life. – [Gary] Good for you, man.
Congratulations. – So when I got on stage it was
overwhelming when I looked out it just looked like Yankee
Stadium and it was my whole neighborhood and
I was like, “Oh shit.” And so many years I’ve been
fighting for the Bronx and talking about
yo I’m from the Bronx. I’m representing the Bronx. And when I see they all came
out they were like, “Yeah, bro.” – That’s nice, man.
– Welcome home. – Good for you man. – It was the biggest
moment for me in my life. – Congratulations.
That’s nice. – Thank you.
– [India] That was awesome.

what would you do with it? How would you change how it
delivers news/earns revenue?” – If I own a small newspaper I
would hopefully own one that had big brand equity even
though in a small market. So even if it’s Bethlehem,
Pennsylvania if it’s the Bethlehem Times or
whatever the local paper, actually the Easton Express. Isn’t that their paper
there, the Easton Express? – [Staphon] Oh yeah. – Do you know the
Easton Express though? – [Staphon] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
– There is an Easton Express. So if I owned the Easton Express
that’s a very important thing in that part of Pennsylvania and I
would turn the equity and this is where Jeff Bezos was
brilliant with buying the Washington Post he didn’t
buy it for the print, he bought it for the brand. And to the Easton Express to
that small area of Pennsylvania matters quite a bit for Lehigh
Valley and I would try to make the digital modern version. Today, I would make an app that
is the absolute news app of the moment, notifications driven. I would digitize the IP and try
to milk the print revenue for as long as I could but I would
assume zero print revenue in a 10 year window all IP value being shifted into
something else. Same reasoning 92nd
St. Y is so insane. Do you know how this played out? You know how I talked about
Nintendo at 92nd St. Y and a month later they announce
that they were going to do it. A lot of people
were like you knew? Yes I’m that wired in. CEO of Nintendo’s hitting me up. That’s what I would do. Nintendo smartly finally has
understood that they’re going to take the IP and take it
to the relevant place. That’s what I
would do a newspaper. I would take the IP and I would
take it to and relevant place. I would also create
revenue around event marketing. Instead of taking advertising in
my print, I would take one full page to invest in my
own events business. Like the Fall Festival. And I can use the newspaper and
its awareness to build up this events driven business and every
year in Philipsburg, New Jersey there’d be a Fall Festival
for the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania and New Jersey area
and so I would siphon the waning attention and I would deploy
it into new environments like digital content and other
revenue streams like events. That was tangible and tactical. And really maps to
everything outside. I think of everything in IP
transfer to the modern world, not just the newspaper. So if about a 1980s
cartoon IP, the Wuzzles,

– [Voiceover] Paul asks,
“Can you provide insight into “how you nurtured your
public speaking chops, “besides just hustling on stage? “How do you prepare for a talk? “Have you ever been
nervous to speak publicly?” – Paul, great question. First of all, ridiculously rad picture. DRock, show it again. In love with the drone. Just completely caught
our attention, great job. The truth is, I hit the
stage somewhere in 2006, for the first, first time,
as somebody to listen to, and it was instantaneous. It was love at first sight. I loved the stage, the stage loved me. And so obviously, I’ve
got a lot of practice. Matter of fact, what I’m struggling with more than anything right now, is that I’m getting into such a rhythm, I feel like I’m a stand up comic, right, that I have my kind of talk. And I take a lot of pride of
making it eight to 15 minutes out of an hour different
based on the audience, but I want it to be 45 minutes different. But I’m kind of a cadence right now, so obviously I’ve gotten better. My timing has gotten
down, but I’ve never done anything like, it’s kind
of like this show, right? Like, one of the things I
love about doing Meerkat behind the scenes now
is that people can see how little to no editing there really is. There is no real prep. I think my biggest secret
is talk about what you know you’re good at, right? Like, talk about stuff you know. I try not to answer questions
about foreign-policy or currency or you know, I
stay away from Bitcoin or I don’t talk about the
things I don’t know, right? I can spew my opinion and
at the end of the day, this show and everything
else is my opinion, but boy, is that grounded
in really strong research and skill and practitioner DNA. I feel like my opinion
business matters because of the execution I did to get there, whereas my opinion on everything
else, I have my opinions on a lot of things, but
they’re not as grounded and as much researched. They’re more intuitive, which is fine. Take them for what they are,
you know what opinions are. I stick to what I know, and
that helps me just scream. I’m a good communicator by DNA, and by staying in my comfort
zone, in my lanes of expertise and the places where I
actually spend my time honing my craft, it comes
off very clean because it’s very natural because it is natural.

“What value do you place “on getting out there
and pressing the flesh, “in order to expand your fanbase?” – Heromoviepodcast, can I call you HMP? I think I can. HMP, you know, I have
enormous value in it. You go into a confined area, where there’s like-minded
fans to exactly what you do. And, you know, listen, nothing replaces a nice little selfie, or a hug, or a high-five. You know, I think you use the digital world as a gateway drug, to then meet in person, to then solidify, and then kick back out
into the digital world to create amplification. So, I’m a huge fan of
pounding the pavement, showing up in real world places, and it continues to be a reason I go to things like South by Southwest, and I’m a big fan of it. I don’t think you can just
do it in the data world, we’re still human, for now. Robot culture coming, but
not right this second, and so market in the
year that you live in. 2015, hitting the pavement? Yes.

Alright, my man, are we on? – [DRock] Yeah, we’re on.
– [Gary] Alright, my man, why don’t you tell the
VaynerNation who you are, what you do here, how long
you’ve been at Vayner? And then I will be
ready for your question. – Cool, cool, I hope so. Hey everybody, I’m Jordan,
I’m a project manager here. I’ve been here for a little over a year, maybe a year and a half. And I’ve got a question for you Gary. – OK, (laughs) that’s what I figured. (laughter) It is the #AskGaryVee show. – Oh, is that where we are? – Not I’m Giving You
A Statement Gary show. (laughter) Can we register I’m Giving
You a Statement Gary .com? Can we get on that?
– [Voiceover] Yeah. Thank you. – I’m a huge fan of long form media. – OK. – Which is medium to– – Like movies? – No, mainly on-site so like– – [Gary] Got it.
– [Jordan] Vlogs. – [Gary] Like when Verge writes a 7,000 word expose?
– [Jordan] Exactly, 7,000. Yeah, yeah.
– [Gary] Yeah OK. Vice, big fan.
– [Gary] Got it, OK. – [Jordan] What do you
feel is like the next best way to monetize off those sites? So, beyond sponsored
content, beyond placements, how could someone who writes
that make money off of it? – You know, I think
that’s a good question. So you’re saying, if you were to start a long form media company and you hired journalists and your spin was anti, let’s call it, BuzzFeed, and
it was the other direction, and back to the old days of journalism, but from a digital standpoint. Are you saying, to me the mix of that and BuzzFeed has always
been interesting to me, are you saying what if I just went in that whole direction of just that? Like if the site put out
three to four long pieces of content a day, is
that where you’re going? – Yep exactly. – You know, to me, obviously
sponsored content would work. Obviously people will still sell banners and things of that nature
against those things. But if you wanted to go
in a different direction, there’s a couple of places to go. First and foremost, I
actually think events is a sneaky thing. I don’t
think people recognize or understand Re/code or
TechCrunch or Mashable, how much money they actually make on event arbitrage versus ad revenue. So I think that’s one way to go, I also think the keystone
sponsor is something that people haven’t thought enough about. So imagine a world, if
you were the modern day Sports Illustrated with long form and Pepsi was your anchor sponsor. Almost like, for anybody who watches ESPN, I’ve been fascinated by 30
for 30, the documentary series where the brand comes in and says, this 30 for 30 was
brought to you by Levis, and then that’s it.
(hands smacking) I think there’s a real play
that if you show quality and there’s a brand wanting
to be associated with it, where there’s just one
anchor brand that owns, let’s call it, like a
stadium naming rights. Like if I was starting
something like that, I’d go out and try to sell
my thing up front to a huge brand for three years as
the anchor sponsor period. I actually think television
over the next decade, as they start struggling
with monetizing commercials, you’re gonna see a lot
more product integration, but all of us are cynical
to product integration, I think if you, for a
lot of you who watch, you know how when you watch TV there’s the NBC or Fox logo, I think
there’s a substantial chance that in the next decade,
when you’re watching a TV show, you will see the Fox logo, but you’ll also see on the other side, the Bud Light logo, and they’ll be there the entire time, and it’s
a college show, right? So, to me, the keynote, the
kind of the keystone sponsor, to me there’s doing events around it, and so what would that look like? It depends on your genre I guess. And so those are the
two things that really most stand out for me, I also think media companies and the
agencies are combining. I think one of the weird ways to subsidize and make money is, if
your Sports Illustrated’s playing here, and then
you’re producing content around sports for brands,
I mean, I do think that that is what Vice and BuzzFeed
and Refinery29 are doing. And so, that’s my answer.
– [Jordan] Cool. – [Gary] Thanks, bro.
– [Jordan] Thank you. – [Gary] Thanks for being on our show. – [Jordan] Yeah.
– [Gary] Say goodbye. – Thanks for having me. – Cool. (cheering and applause)

If you were going to market
a brick and mortar bookshop, where would you start?” – So Josh, first of all,
this is a great question. Second of all, I really appreciate
the love you’ve given me. Obviously you put Thank
You Economy in one of your, your Instagram’s tremendous. Obviously the question
was posted, so if you guys could catch his name or slow
it down, go back and watch it, go check out his Instagram. I think your Instagram is really tight. I’ve always said that
marketing doesn’t fix your shit product. Now after being such a
great guy, you’re like, crap, where’s he going with this? Being a bookstore in the
traditional sense of the word is over, right? There’s something called
Amazon, it’s chipping away, it’s just starting. Let me say that one more
time because I think people are confused.
It’s just starting. The corrosion of people going
to bricks and mortar for books has been on like Donkey
Kong, in an iPad, Kindle, and Amazon world. I think if I was to buy 17
bookstores at a bankruptcy, and I had to do it, what I
would do is I would turn them into a live events space
where bookselling was the secondary aspect of it. I would turn it into a coffee
shop, I would turn it into a coworking space, I would
turn it into an events spot. I would turn the physical,
and the fun part is, guys, and this is a little preview,
I’m getting my hands into Wine Library a little bit,
Wine Library’s second floor that has a lot of square
footage, I’m about to turn into an events space. I’m eating my own dogfood on this one. I would say the content you’re
putting out on the ‘Gram, and I didn’t have time to
look at everything else you’re doing, is really strong. But as you can imagine, is that
going to make somebody want to buy a book from you,
for 30 to 70 percent more? Yeah, hippies like India, show her. She would do that, right? But that is a very, no, loving
books is one thing, India. Going and spending 70 percent
more, I can see you, because I know you a little bit, maybe
doing that once in a while. Actually, do you buy
your books from Amazon? – No, I buy my books from
Alexander book company. Yay! Shameless plug! – You know. (laughs) I think that there are some
hipsters out there, but they’re not going to drive your
bottom line, right? That’s the anomaly, not the standard. I’ve done this show for a little
while now, and I would say that India and Staphon’s
head nodding as I was giving that answer was a really good
indication that we’re barking up the right tree here. I would sell 30 to 50 percent
less books to clear up the square footage, within
the store, no matter how big you are, 100 square
feet, 1000 square feet, 5000 square feet, to really
activate the physical location and find other ways and
means to make dollars, because I think bookselling
within a bricks and mortar needs to be the secondary
income, not the first play. I think that’s something
people need to wrap their head around. By the way, real quick,
don’t finish the editing. That is pretty much my
theory on retail, period. Multi use, events, experiential, McDonalds, a lot of people talking about McDonalds. I think they need to triple
down on the playground thesis, right? I mean, I don’t know. People have got to realize,
retail’s in a very new place. – Just leaving this
message because you wanted