– What’s going on, Gary?
This is John Max here. I had a question for you. Was driving and listening to
“Thank You Economy” and at the end of the book you talk about
how you would wish the self, the book with self-destruct by
2015 because marketers would have ruined the
thank you economy. Looking back do you think that we still live in a
thank you economy? And if not, what kind of
economy do we live in now? Thank you. – I’ll take a little bit of
this because I’ll help you. The “Thank You Economy”‘s
premise is pretty simple which is can we scale
one-on-one behavior? What’s depth verse width, right? You think of influencers a place that
you and I both played. You can have a million followers
but if you said go by this book, both you and I know that
somebody with 72,000 followers could sell more books, depth. It didn’t play out the way
wanted because I had optimism in a place where I shouldn’t which
is the punchline is businesses don’t get a fuck.
– No (laughs). – It is unbelievable how much
people don’t understand why my whole world has worked. My little thing works
because I just want to go deep. I just want to deliver value
and it works every time and the person who scaled the thank you
economy the best in my opinion is Taylor Swift and
that’s why she’s winning. She understands– – We talk about her
in the book actually. – That’s great, so great
segue perfect I’m glad we can pass the baton. – Buy the book. – Do some kind of
scary thing there, by the way. Edit. I think Taylor understands
that going to somebody’s wedding randomly may cost her 45 minutes
and not have in an ROI positive game but it does
because the pickup, the amplification, dropping a
pop-up shop for these glasses for Snapchat in the
Grand Canyon is not ROI positive until everybody talks
about it through this kind of infrastructure
and then it does. Thank you economy has a lot of
DNA ties to this and to your question the reason it didn’t
play out the way I’d hoped or inspired is
companies are short-term, I’m long-term and people that
are thinking in 20 and 30 and 40 year terms are thinking about
LTV and lifetime value and then do things that don’t have
value in the short term. The reality is 99% of the
players don’t play that way. – You and I have been
in the same business and I think had the same values. It’s remarkably frustrating when
you try to convince a brand to do what you’re talk about,
to go deep and actually attach yourself to a set of values or
people that have those values. I would say make the
content that matters, put it in front of people it
matters to from voices that matter to them
at a time that matters. It’s like very simple
and they never get it. And they only want the top 1% of people and it’s
like their trophy bag. And they’re like well I got
Demi Lovato to tweet about it. It’s like, well, that
really doesn’t mean anything. – Right, Demi.
– No, it is not, I don’t. – I’m kidding,
I’m kidding, I’m kidding. – She’s a mass media artist
but if I’m making a purchase decision than I want
something that’s closer to me. I want something that I trust
and feel some sense of shared values with and these big macro
brands but Taylor she kinda over came that by these
personal experiences. – She understood it.
– Yep. – She understands
there’s an amplification, scaling the unscalable. – Just this weekend she’s
singing Thanksgiving songs with Todrick Hall who’s, you know,
a self-made YouTuber who– – She gets it. She understands
where the attention is. She deploys unscalable behavior in it which then
means it gets amplified. – Yep. – What’s his name
again one more time? – [Dunk] John.
– John. John, all of what you
heard in that book is still an opportunity today as it was
six years ago when I wrote it. Let’s move on. – [Dunk] Next
question is from CK.

Is it just for massive brands
like Samsung or can a startup turn revenue from
influencer marketing? – A startup can turn
from influencer marketing. Influencer marketing is reach
and is awareness and it works. It’s a boring question. Everything that works, works for
everybody it just not possible that you haven’t figured out
your version of making it work. Television. Super Bowl’s
more expensive than late-night remnant inventory, but you can get it. Everything, influencer
marketing works. It’s so underpriced. – [India] All right. – Search hashtags around
your business, find people that
are influencers. You know, if you’re in a niche
business somebody who has 1000 followers may be the and biggest
influencer because you’re not in weight loss or in beer but
you’re in SaaS business API stuff but some nerd has 1000
people, the nerd probably cost nothing and buy him or her out. Buy him out Andy.
– [Andy] Buy him out.

“Yelp advertising for
local photographers “is worth the minimum $300-$400
a month in investment?” – I have no idea. That is a rarity on this show. The truth is I’ve
been down on Yelp for a very long time. About five or six years ago, maybe even Thank You
Economy I referenced this that I thought there
would be absolute demise in anonymous reviews. I believe that has
happened to some degree. I think we’ve seen anonymous
review places struggle. I think we’ve become
cynical to anonymous reviews because we have friends that
work at anonymous review PR agencies. Literally you guys all
have friends that you know work at companies when
you have beers with them and they’re like at my PR
company we leave negative reviews on our
competitors of our clients. It’s ludicrous. Because I thought
that was a problem, I kind of never got excited
about Yelp five years ago. I haven’t paid attention. My intuition is that
Yelp probably has enough. Actually here we go I like bringing value. 400 bucks?
– [India] Yep. – You should do it. Anytime you can afford to learn and crash and burn, you should do it. Not that all of you
have 400 bucks to spare. Because if you did, I hope you bought 20 copies of the #AskGaryVee book. I would absolutely
spend 400 bucks because even if you return nothing, you don’t have to #AskGaryVee. You don’t have to Google it up. You actually lived
it in real life. I would tell you to spend
it if you can afford it because of the context. This is what I talked about the other day that caught a lot of people’s attention, micro loss but the macro win. This is the perfect
example of it. You might have a micro loss
when you spend 400 bucks and you got nothing, but the learning is you
don’t have to spend time and energy figuring out Yelp
maybe greater than that ROI.

“that you don’t know how
to answer for yourself?” – Yeah, there are some
questions I don’t know how to answer myself. The number one being,
when you pay forward, when you take 15 minutes
to speak to a former employee to help them with
their next career move because they made a
mistake in leaving Vayner, not you Claire, but like, you know, I question if all these paying
forward, doing the right thing, will I one day,
when I’m not the height of my power and execution, or when I run out of time and don’t achieve the things that I should have achieved,
or will I re-context and say, cool, I made these things, but I’m also a great person and everybody showed up to my funeral, like I’m most wondering, will I ever have a moment where I become bitter or regretful
of the disproportionate amount of non-value for
me, things that I do. And the question really becomes, which one am I more full of shit on, that I wanna buy the New York Jets, or that I want everybody
to show up to my funeral. I’ve two very opposing pulling actions in my life, which is, I
wanna be this very likeable noble great dude that
everybody talks about at the dinner table. I want all of you, I
literally, this is so sick. I desperately want the three of you to like tell your
grandchildren about this great man that you worked with. I mean it.
I really do. It’s so important to me. But to do that, you have
to do so many things that are not in your
best interest financially in the short term, and I’m just curious, the thing that I don’t
have answered for myself is when I’m dying, and
I’d like to by the way, I’d like to not suddenly die. I prefer to die a little
bit slower so I can ponder, because I like pondering. When that’s happening,
or at least I think so so right now, maybe when I’m a hundred and four, but (beeps) this. Shoot me in the head, kids. (laughs) When I’m pondering it, I’m so curious. Because one’s gonna have to give. I’m trying to walk the tightrope, and boy, I think I’m really doing a solid job. But I’m not sure, the
question I don’t have answered for myself is if I’m gonna like the way I played it. Because I’m consciously playing it. I’m so in tune with
what’s going on with me. Am I gonna look back and be like, good job? Because everytime, I just turned 40, I look back at 20 or 30,
I look back at 30 or 40, and I guess that what
I’ll probably always do, because what’s pretty
consistent now is there’s a lot good, there’s things you’d nitpick. I’m sure everybody does that. The regrets, can I minimize the regrets. Because I think having regret is the most unfortunate thing. Meeting a 70, 80, 90,
100 year old who regrets. Regrets that they didn’t have more fun. Didn’t spend more time with their family. That’s the cliche one. But you’d be surprised how many people regret not doing more for themselves. So I don’t know.

– [Voiceover] Anthony asks,
“You recommend working for free, “but how do you know if
someone is just tryin’ “to get free stuff and
passing it off as exposure?” – You don’t. – [India] Cool, next question. – Fine. (laughter) You don’t, and that’s the point. Like, not every (bleep) thing has upside every single time you do it. It’s a net net score. You do it 38 times, DRock, you did movies for free besides me. And this just popped in my head. How many? – [DRock] At least 20. – 20? – [DRock] At least. – For people that looked like my profile? – [DRock] No. – How many that looked like my profile? – [DRock] Two? – Two, right, and then
you got a bunch after, that hit you, that’s right. So, how did those 20 work out for you? – [DRock] Um. – Yeah, I don’t expect you
to say bad, like I’m curious. – [Voiceover] One.
– One. – [Voiceover] I think one project fed me, for the entire three month thing. But the other 19, not so much. – Got it. And then, how about mine? – [DRock] Fed me pretty well. – Yeah ok. So you know, I mean, so I think that, I think you don’t. I think look, you can look
into people’s backgrounds, see their actions. I would tell you off of the, you know, exposure and hyperbole
of DRock’s free work, on this show, I’m probably
in a better position today than I was two
years ago to get people to want to do free work. Because they’re like,
well I want to be that. So you can look into
people’s history, if you can, but you just really don’t, you
have to use your intuition. Do you know how many meetings I go and pitch new business,
and then others I don’t, and I’m making a judgement call. Like it’s a use of my
time, my biggest asset, and was it worth going for three hours and flying, was it worth a day flying, pitching the business,
and then we didn’t get it? That was a bad judgement call, but then sometimes it works out. It’s a net net game. This insanity for the short term ROI, of every action, is so goddamn broken. What’s his name again?
– [India] Anthony. – Anthony, that you know, I think way too many
people are crippled. You don’t! You don’t know a lot of things. Shit, you don’t know almost everything. Like seriously, like
what do you know in life? Is this the right college? Is this the right friends? Is this the right boyfriend? You don’t know anything!
– [India] True. – You make decisions
and you (bleep) adjust and live with them. You counterpunch to reality. Work, too, this freelance
(bleep) high ground of like, nuh. It’s supply and demand, mother (bleep). Like if there’s people willing to do it, then that’s just the
(bleep), that’s the shit! (laughter) (speakers mumble off-camera)

“of tech companies using
billboards to advertise? “Slack, Snapchat, Yahoo!,” et cetera. – Um. God, I’m a bad mood. (laughter) Evan, you’re seeing that
because, first of all, you should never put 100, and by the way, I speak
in absolutes on this show, so please let me use this moment, especially for the people
that catch this episode, or watch every show, contextualize this. I love to talk definitively,
’cause I don’t think people take action, and I think
it takes definitive stances to kind of move the needle. But there’s no situation
where 100% of actions is the right thing. There’s always a proper
hedge to everything. I really, really do believe
that, in your execution, and so in marketing,
when you’re in a Yahoo!, or a Slack, or a Snapchat, and
you’ve gotten to that scale, and you have that much
money, in marketing budget, there’s only so much you can allocate to 100% Facebook, 100%
Instagram, 100% digital. And when there’s these
big consumer brands, there’s a demo from, call it
the 45 to 75-year-old demo that people, like Snapchat
wants 45-year-olds to use Snapchat. Like that’s just straight up. And definitely Yahoo!,
it’s a mature brand, and Slack, is a SAS enterprise software that, you know, 52, 49, 63. I mean James Orsini, who’s in his 50s, is an executive at VaynerMedia, he’s helping make a decision
if we’re gonna use Slack, along with AJ and things of that nature. And they want that demo to be educated, and their belief is that
billboards is a place to play that. Look, I’m not high on billboards,
I think they’re overpriced because I think people are
looking at their mobile devices, but they’re not worth zero. And if you know that you’re going in and you’re gonna spend $7000
on this billboard a month, and you think it’s only worth 2300, but, that 2300, value is worth it to you, paying 7000, follow me here. Then that’s the right thing. Like, you know, that’s it. I mean, you know if it’s worth
spending $1000 on a dinner with the prettiest girl you
ever went on a date for, for the ROI of a kiss, if
you decided that the kiss was worth 1000, well then it’s worth it. And that’s what I think
on billboards, which is, you know, if they decide it’s worth 7000 even though they know
that they’re overpaying, well then that’s what you do. And so I think you’re gonna
see more television commercials for that reason from internet companies. You’re seeing it with Airbnb and Uber. When you saturate one medium, you have to go to another place
where you get more upside. Once you crush digital
like those companies have, overpaying for traditional
has more value to you. So it’s the timing in
which those companies deploy the media. They didn’t start at that place. They first got a better ROI. You’re getting all these
people digitally for, call it eight bucks a
head, 18 bucks a head. Well, now it’s startin’
to cost us $38 a head ’cause we’ve gotten everybody
and we can’t get no mores. So we’ll go over here and we’ll pay 52, because at least we can get new people, and it’s now worth 52 for us. That’s why. That was really good, considering,

What’s your business model behind the #AskGaryVee show? – The business model
behind the #AskGaryVee show is pretty simple. It is completely a broad awareness game. I want more exposure. Exposure is leverage, especially when you’ve got chops. The more people that know that I’m not just charisma, hyperbole, bullshit hype, and that I have depth is something that is important for my brand. Statement of the day,
in the comments leave if you originally thought
that I was just another bullshit marketer, and have I won you over with you doing the homework about me actually building real
business multiple times, and have listened to things
that I’ve talked about here that you won’t expect
from a bullshit marketer. Anything that puts me in a position to show my depth in a world where I know that my personality
creates a scenario where people may not think
that I have that depth is an important process for me. Once I have the infrastructure
to be able to do it, I did it and so the business
model is quite simple. It’s about more leverage around me which leads to in the short term things like getting paid
for public speaking, selling more books, getting asked to do TV and other things, and
getting on 40 under 40 list which creates more
exposure and it’s a rapid wheel. It leads to better employees coming into VaynerMedia. It leads to more people
buying on Wine Deals, the greatest place on
Instagram to buy wine. It leads to a lot of other things. It leads to depth with current employees, ’cause they get to see
so much more about me. As a matter of fact, here’s
a statement of the day. VaynerMedia lurkers, because
I know there’s a lot of you. Some of you have been
writing some awesome feedback notes that are completely
taken from the #AskGaryVee Show. VaynerMedia employee
lurkers, get in the comments on this episode and say hey. It’s given me the ability
to scale my thoughts and strategies to my own employees. There is, my mom gets to see me everyday. She watched yesterday’s episode twice, because A.J. was in it. Two for one, for mom, mom I love you. There’s enormous, enormous amounts of ROI business
models in the concept of putting out great content. Putting out great content, if I may say so myself,
is always the right idea. DeMayo they’re gonna like that one.

to engage with customers, even
if they’re not in your market and will never buy from you? – Robert, this is a great,
great, great, great question, because riding the hashtag, I
wrote a blog post about that, ding, you know, and all that stuff, but your questions is the
right question, which is what’s the ROI of jumping in– So the Apple watch comes
out, and everybody’s talking about it, what’s
the ROI of you know Twinkie putting a Twinkie
on their wrist and saying yea this is our version of it,
or riding a trend and putting out content of what
everybody’s talking about whether it’s that new
technology, a new app, Meerkat, a new celebrity, you know, whatever it is, if they are not likely to buy from you. Look, I think the value is
very low, and I think that that may throw somebody
for a loop, but the truth is, the one upside is the home run, the anomaly, which is,
you get somebody because they care about that trending
topic, and they amplify you, which then brings people
awareness to your high end shoe store, or purses, or your $50,000 pieces of art. So, as people
have become the infrastructure of media distribution, riding
the conversation of what people care about, with
the hope that they create the retweet, the reblog, the
share, that then creates the amplification of awareness
to somebody who is connected to them, does have some Hail Mary, some rogue, long tail upside, but speaking to,
and communicating with, people who are not going
to buy your product no matter what, does not
have enormous ROI. Never did in the old world,
has a little bit more now, because they have the
opportunity to share it and bring awareness to people
who may buy, but it is absolutely limited and it’s
a tactic that needs strong strategy around it. – [Voiceover] Brendan asks,
“I’m biking across Canada

What do you think of the
new and improved YO app? Is it worth it for my small business, food drug and restaurant to get this deliciousness out into the world? Answer my question. Thank you, and keep hustlin’. – Greek Mike, great question. Shit answer, which is, I haven’t looked at the new and improved YO app, thus I can’t give you a real answer. I’m not even really sure
why I’ve even accepted the question knowing that
my answer was such crap. It was probably mainly
because I loved the video and wanted to give you the
exposure and the shout out that comes along with being on the show, but it also gives me an
opportunity to kind of answer the question as a whole, which is, look, communicating, I have a phone call, what time, right now? Yeah, all right, I need to
run, ’cause this is super important, let me just wrap this up. At the end of the day,
communicating with your audience is the number one thing
that you should be doing at all times, and if you feel
like the YO app brings you value and your audience
value, then you should do it. You should do that, you should do Meerkat, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter,
Tumblr, Pinterest, Facebook. Whatever you think actually communicates and has an ROI that’s time
that you put against it to communicate about the exposure of eating a beautiful gyro, do that. Question of the day: How many siblings do you have,
and what are their names?