– [Voiceover] Craig asked,
“What do you think people like “Chance the Rapper releasing a
lot of his music for free as a “marketing strategy?” – What do you think Chance the
Rapper, people like Chance the Rapper, what do you
think about Chance’s music? – I love Chance the Rapper.
– I’m obsessed. (mumbled singing) What do you think about
people like Chance and others that are putting
out a lot of mixtapes, a lot of product for free as a
marketing play or whatever the strategy may be? – I love it. I love it. I think you keep the relevancy
and you keep the fans engaged. I love it.
I think it’s a hustle. It shows that you dedicated to
the art and at the end of the day the art wasn’t meant
to be materialism and everything is a dollar. It’s about giving back
to your fans anyway. – I think the one thing that a
lot of you are watching know is I don’t have the $500
e-books and the $7,000 courses. I do the shows for free. I pump out content
at scale for free. Thousands of you email me
every single month, “You should charge for this. “This is better than the
shit I’m paying more for.” It plays into that same thesis
which is yes but that’s why so many more of you follow me. – You get engaged. Yes.
– Of course. Either you’re running a marathon
or you’re running a sprint. Figure out what you are doing.
– Exactly.

– Ooh, that’s a good one. – I’m going to jump into this.
(crosstalk) You don’t get this
question after the show? So, I think that that’s a great
question by Heather I think rented land has a negative point
of view here right now in the way that she asked the question. So many people are scared that
they don’t own their Facebook page, they don’t own their
Snapchat account what I don’t think people understand is
that’s the ways it’s always been about everything always. When he showed up on
television on good day, Good Morning America or on
The Ed Sullivan show you didn’t own that. You’re more than welcome to be
able to go and build your own app and things of that nature. How we got connected with
Backstage you know I’m investor in you guys where that world is
going is very fascinating to me but I don’t think it
should cripple one. Do I think that if you can own
it and execute it there and have everybody there like an email
list, like your own website, like your own app, does
that have more upside? For sure. I think there’s a chicken and
egg issue though which is if nobody’s there, why you go
on Snapchat and Facebook? ‘Cause everybody’s there. And you want to siphon and I
love how people are like I’m doing all the
stuff for Facebook. No, no Facebook’s doing
all the stuff for you. They’ve curated hundreds of
millions of people into one place that give you a chance
to be seen or heard so I think there’s a little
chicken and egg thing. I do think as you gain more
traction and have more leverage that you’re able to take a
little more control of your environment if you choose to but
I think both work and so to me rented space is very
comfortable to me. To me, anywhere where there’s
attention is a viable place for one to speak to the world and
achieve their story outwardly and I would not be crippled
by doing either or both. – Jake. – I couldn’t have
said that better. – Damn. Yeah. – I do that naturally that wasn’t 10,000 hours
of work, it was. – For me, I’m like let me let
our manager talk about that. – Alright, let’s move it. – [Voiceover] Erica says, “Talk
to us about the importance of

“sell direct consumer?” – Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think yes. I think Amazon is going to be a
player where they’re basically selling directly to consumer– – AKA with their private labels
or when they’re selling Pepsi through Amazon? – I think they’re going to use
Amazon as a mechanism to sell direct to consumers but the
question is will eventually people like I want Pepsi I want
to Pepsi.com or Pepsi’s Facebook page and just get
directly from there. But that’s not really direct
to consumer because it’s going through Facebook so I think
you still need to use these platforms to go direct consumer.
– Got it. I would say that Amazon is far
less direct to consumer than Facebook because Amazon’s
actually a full-pledged retailer and very honestly I think a
scary one for these guys and gals that are running these
businesses because Amazon’s got real data. In the CPG world, retail and
brands the scariest thing is when a retailer is
gets too much leverage. The biggest brands in the world
are paying for placement in Walmarts and Albertson’s and
Costco’s and Safeway’s that are very expensive. This is not the way
was 30 or 40 years ago. The retailers didn’t have
leverage, the brands did. – Yep.
– And so that got expensive. Direct to consumer is inevitable
the problem is the following big brands like Dove or Pepsi can’t
go direct to consumer because Costco and Walmart and Tesco are
going to say what are you doing? You’re not cutting us out. The second those companies show
a move to wanting to go direct to consumer the big retailers are
going to drop their product from end caps to the bottom shelf
or kick them out of the store. Which then would affect them in
a 90 day period because their sales would collapse which
then would make the stock price collapse so they’re
basically caught in what’s called channel conflict.
They can’t do it. So what’s gonna happen? Here’s what’s going to happen. India and her mom are going to
invent the best peanut butter you’ve ever tasted and they’re
going to start going direct to consumer and they’re going to
sell on Instagram and Snapchat and Facebook and quietly but
surely because that’s where the attention is all of a sudden
their business is going to do $40 million not four
or 1.4 or 400,000. – Yep. – And then, what’s a
big peanut these days? Peter Pan peanut butter?
– [Margo] Laura Scudder’s? – What’s that?
– [Margo] Laura Scudder’s. – [Gary] Laura Scudder’s?
– Smuckers maybe. – [Gary] Smuckers right.
– Jiffy. – [Gary] Jiffy, Jiffy,
there we go. Go ahead. – Well I like grinding
the peanuts in Whole Foods. – Let’s use a soda as an analogy
then Coke and Pepsi are going to be like wait a minute
what’s this new craft soda? That’s doing real volume and
then they’re going to be stuck because they are going to
get squeezed from both sides. They’re going to get
squeezed from the up-and-coming entrepreneurs that actually now
have scale and use things like Uber and Postmates or whatever
for distribution and use social media and this for awareness and
they’re going to get pressured from the retailers for
then not to do the same. Pepsi can’t make Pepsi Gold
the direct to consumer at scale. They can do a little one
off, a little holiday thing. Tough. – Starbucks is an interesting
example because I just went to Seattle and I just saw their
new kind of innovative space. – Okay. – It seems like what brands can
do is develop or create a new product that people don’t
actually know is part of the brand and sell it direct to
consumer and see they kind of have the backup. – No, no, no.
100% they can do that. Here’s the problem, it doesn’t
matter what the consumer knows, the retailer. See the thing is most people
don’t get is the number one competitor to the biggest
brands in the world are their retail partners. – Mhmmm. Mhmmm. – So they can’t again at the
highest levels on a board at Walmart they’ll say look
what Coke just did today. They created Scmoke or Chugabuga
– And they’re selling it. – And they’re selling it and if
it gets big that’s a problem for us because it’s going to build
the cadence and the ability and the data to remarket to
those people and they’re going to cut us out. – What do you think about
the future of the store? Do you right now all the brands,
even Birchbox I know or Warby Parker, who are
disruptors, right, are like they all want stores. It’s actually the best marketing
mechanism in the world. Do you think these retail stores
are going to be the place where conversion rates are
going to happen the most? – No, I think if you look at
e-comm it chips away every year. 11 percent of the market,
13 percent of the market, 16 percent of the market. E-comm will continue to
grow especially with this. Especially with our
impatience, I want it right now. – And through
social channels too. – And whatever, right and were
not even factoring in it’s going to take 20 years for what I’m
talking and by then VR will be there so are we literally living
in a virtual world and shopping in a virtual store and it’s
actually being physically delivered within an hour? There’ll always be disruption
but here’s what I will say they’re not going away. Stores are not going away.
Stores, they’re not going away. Do I think they’re
emerging better than ever? No. Just because Birchbox
and Warby Parker have stores right now. Let’s talk about another thing
when the shit hits the fan and I mean the collapse of the
valuations of these super companies and these unicorns
that are rhinoceroses and I don’t think Birchbox is. – What’s a rhinoceros?
I know unicorn is a billion. – Yeah a rhinoceros is what
these things actually are. They’re actually rhinoceroses.
You like it? – Yeah. Like it a lot. – Anyway nonetheless I think
that too many people who watch this, too many people in
our zeitgeist-y kind of love we think things are binary that
e-commerce is coming and there will be no stores. I mean I made these
mistakes as a kid. There is no absolutes.
– There’s no absolutes. – Right? – You gotta do everything
it seems like today, right? – I would say you’ve
got arbitrage everything. If you can get a store location that
you don’t pay too much rent on, that does great branding
and awareness and your selling stuff, Mazel Tov. If you can figure out a
Instagram campaign that, you have to be agnostic.
– Right. – You have no emotion
to where it happens, you just want it to happen. – Well, how do you
afford all that though? – You don’t. You don’t.
Which is why– – I would rather have Ralph
actually do the real jobs than having him just work on social. – I get it. I get it. – It’s allocation of resources.
– That’s exactly right. – I’d rather have
Ralph do everything. He’s very capable.
– Yeah, he’s the best. – Show Ralph, Staphon, come on.
Let’s wake up here, Staphon. You saw what Kobe did.
I’m kidding, I’m kidding. I think that that’s why
strategy is so interesting. That’s why love to do
what I do for a living. – And you have to
keep reinventing. Now you’re all about Snapchat. – I’m only about attention. Snapchat just
happens to have it. – Yeah. Are you loving it?
– Love it. – [Voiceover] Matt asks,
“The average amount of

For an early stage startup that
just received 500,000, 600,000 or $1 million in capital, what
are the critical things they should be looking to address? – These guys have
a great company. Let’s make sure we link up
both Ace’s and their company and Plum’s company in
my description. Staphon make sure you
team up with Sam on that. Well look I mean first and
foremost, you don’t blow it. The amount of people that
have blown through their five or 600, million in cash because
they didn’t have a strategy of what they were going to do
with money is unbelievable. It’s unbelievable how much cash
and wallet is just burning for so many startup
founders it’s quite said. So I think you have to have a
real plan for it and again no different than the first
question on this episode, you have to have a strategy on
where you’re going to deploy it. What are your biggest needs? To me I like to invest in
things that bring back dollars in the midterm. I don’t need the short term but
I don’t need the longest term. I think sometimes
people are too… It’s funny, ideas are shit until
execution I like to say a lot because I think most
founders get caught on one side or the other. Some founders take $500,000
and they want that 500,000 to make them 800,000. It’s all transactional.
Sales, conversion. Other founders start thinking
about what their company needs in three years. In three years, we’re going to
need video editing software so let’s buy that now and you
didn’t get to three years. By the time that you spent all
the money that was what created this scenario you never getting
to those three years from now. I think much like marketing in
the year that you live in, day trading attention, some
of my marketing principles, I deploy in my
operating principles. What is the most important
thing with that money right this second that isn’t short-term
sales turn 500 into 600,000 but what is not the were going to
need this in three years so let’s spend it? By the way furniture and rent
and all these things that’s where people waste money. AJ and I started
this company in a conference room
of another company. This is not a
super fancy office. Right? Yeah.
It’s good. I’m happy about that. This is actually pretty fancy
compared to where we were a year ago so like people just waste
money on a lot of things that don’t matter. Now, it can’t be so screwed
up here that people don’t want to come here. But we don’t need $8000
recliner chairs for everybody and that’s what a lot
of startups do. It’s crazy. They spend more time and energy
on like how fancy this coffee machine is gonna be than
actually building a god damn business. So what you do with it? You better know what to
do with it or your startup is in deep shit. Don’t ask GaryVee, I hate
third person, don’t ask me. Figure out what to do with it. Make it practical as hell
because that money will disappear fast and the only
thing that will disappear faster is your hopes and dreams about
your business if you don’t know what to do with it.

“on today’s Tiwtter
executive ‘exodus’ news?” – Rochell, I think
there’s, I think that… So I asked for this
question to be on the show because I wanna teach
everything about optics. Meaning, when a new CEO
comes in and then there’s this “huge exodus,” a lot of
times it means the new CEO has brought in the people that they want. And they’re respecting
people and letting them leave on their terms. I don’t see, or these
people actually don’t believe in Jack’s vision. My intutition is, based
on Twitter’s track record over the last three to four
years, and I love Dick Cusam, one of my best buds in business
and I saw him recently, but results are results,
meaning it didn’t go good enough for him not to be excited
about the guy who invented it to be back in place,
though you might not like his personality, things of
that nature, but I hate when the media’s like,
everything is so negative. Like when I buy a company,
and become a CEO of it, because that will happen
in my career, and there’s an exodus, becaue big shot Gary is coming, let me promise you, anybody
that I wanted to keep would have stayed, because
I would convince them that I’m coming to do nothing but good. And maybe three or four
just wouldn’t see it, or they were best buds
with the former CEO, or they’re just tired. But please don’t get
caught up in the hyperbole of there’s a new CEO, we’re
still witihin the year of that new CEO, this is
common business stuff, period. Like, this is what always
happens, so you don’t know if they were forced out or
they were left on their own, I don’t know, even though
I’m close to a lot of the people involved. Because when I read those
headlines, I poo poo them because I am an actual operator. I’m not confused by them, I
know what real business is. Jack’s come in, he’s got a
different plan, some pieces fit for that, some don’t,
some people he might have wanted to fit for that, decided
they don’t fit for that, it’s just real life, it’s
not some huge conspiracy. I think that’s what I think. Like that’s what it is, I
just wanted to answer this question because I’m
stunned by how many people just accept very basic
narratives, when if you live it you know the real details
underneath, just like you know anything that’s in your world. My world is business, you know the real, I read headlines, I’m
like “oh,” you’re like “no, that’s what really happened.” Just like we’ve gotten
cynical to “leave of absence.” Did you see “Spotlight?”
– No. – Okay, it was about the priest
that did sexual harassment. – Oh yeah, I heard about it. – Their official, when
they were doing bad things was they got relocated on
assignment, or “sick leave.” “Sick leave.” So this “exodus” may
be on strategy, get it? Question of the day, actually educate me.

“working 7 pm to 2 am doing
what they love, but aren’t “sure how to monetize it, such as a blog?” – Helena?
– Yeah. – You know Helena I think, you
know, I think it’s dangerous not to have a concept of
how you’re gonna monetize if you want money
as a KPI meaning, I need everybody understand, there’s a difference between strategy and patience. You need to be patient to
execute your strategy but you need a strategy, and by the
way, strategy is very easy. If you’re building a personal
brand or you’re talking about coffee or things
of that nature, whatever you’re doing there’s
a lot of ways to sell. You sell as being a personality,
you show up at events to get paid for that, you
make a book and you sell that, you create a product, like a
coffee maker and you sell that. There’s not a lot of different
ways to monetize and make money, you make it through
advertising, you make it through appearance fees, you
make it through selling stuff. It’s quite basic so I’ve saved
you time on your strategy, that’s how you’re gonna monetize. You’re either gonna
syphon the leverage into a product, a service or your time. That’s it, that’s your strategy. I’ve told you, you now know
how you’re gonna do it. Now, what you really need to
worry about is does anybody give a crap about what you’re
doing between seven and two. You can’t just talk about
loving knitting or loving sneakers but nobody
thinks you’re good at it. You know there’s a little
bit of a metatocracy in this. The market has to care, and if the market doesn’t care, you lose. – [Voiceover] Daniel asks,
“I’m starting a fatherhood

“of screenshot reposts on social–” – I like screenshots. – [India] Yeah (laughing) – [Gary] (laughing) I
got you with that one. – [India] I was like yes.
– I just like ’em. – [India] Say something else. – I just like for you to
know that I like them. – [India] Now we know.
– Okay. – [Voiceover] “How do you see
brands protecting themselves? “Do we say goodbye to copyrights?” – Listen copyright is on,
on, is, is on watch right? Like copyright’s been put on shade like it needs to understand
it is being trolled. Yeah, and on the fip side there’s
a lotta push the other way but yes, we’re not you know, we’re not in the same world as
we used to be anymore. Technology has created a scenario where, we all collectively
have to figure this out. I mean music was put
on blast by Napster and then we had a whole decade
or two of innovation. Apple came along, figured out
how to make it compelling. YouTube came along found out
how to make it compelling over time, at first it
was not as compelling to the copyright people. Yeah, I think, listen we
will never fully get away from where somebody creates something that they’re not being compensated. I don’t think, we’re too far
down the culture of that. On the flip side it’s a rub because the truth is a
lotta people want people to use their stuff. They want both, they want both right? They want to use, you want
them to use your music or picture in the commercial
so you get commercial success but you wanna be compensated for that. The truth is there’s so much
content and so many things that can be used that alternatives
of things that are free are becoming more and more of the fad. I think that much like we
answered the Adele question, which worked out for her. I think, you know, I think we use shmadele and I think this was three
or four episodes ago. I think every person whose
watching and listening needs to make a decision for
themselves if they’re better off letting people use their stuff or not. I watch people use my
imagery all the time. Somebody made a salty
V t-shirt on TeePublic, the team hit me up,
they’re like whadda we do. Do we wantta take it down? I decided no, that’s in my
benefit, that if people buy that I won’t make the 18
cents or four dollars or whatever it is per shirt that’s
okay ’cause it’s valuable for me at this moment. On the flip side people use
my image to sell like bullshit like information products
where I don’t believe in it, that’s bad. I do tell them to take that down. That’s a copyright issue
’cause that’s falsely making it look like I’m endorsing some bullshit $300 ebook or course. So I think you have to make
an individual investment. Weigh the value props,
you know there was a vine for, I brought this up
before, where the girl used a booty shaking song in her twerking video that made that song shoot up. It was like 10 years old,
shoot up to number 10 in the iTunes Store. If they would’ve taken that
down, they would’ve missed out on all the sales of the album
which they made money on. So you’ve gotta be
strategic in this new world. It’s not a one size
fits all kind of answer. What’re you looking at India?

“between bad marketing
strategy that’s not working, “and just having a crappy product?” – Got it, so Andrew’s been watching enough to know that I talk a lot about, like, even the best marketing in the world isn’t gonna fix your crap product. So he’s asking, how do we decipher? Bri, do you wanna take a shot at that, or do you want me to go? – You go, and I’ll add. – You know, to me, it’s pretty easy. There’s only those two
things at some level, and so I think what you do first is, if you’re unsure, you
change your entire marketing approach, and I would
say you do that twice. So, over a 12-to-24 month period, you change your marketing
approach radically. If you go oh-for-three, there’s chances that your marketing
sucked all three times, but it is starting to
give you an indication that nobody wants your pet rock, or your iPhone case
that glows in the dark, or your crappy wine that you made. So, the other thing to do is
to look at your lifetime value and repeat business. One of the reasons I know
that Wine Library works, is we have incredible lifetime value, and a lot of repeat business, so then the waves of that
business are usually predicated on the marketing, because
once we get people in, they stay. And so, I think we can feel
that as people that write books, you’ll look at your numbers this week, and you probably will look at, like, historically, since you’ve written seven. What’s your most successful book? – End of Business As Usual
and Engage were, I think, the most successful. – Got it. So, like, to me, like, it’s funny, I think that Thank You Economy
is the best book I wrote, but it’s the least successful, and I look back at, like,
yeah, I gave it the less umph, by far the least umph, because it was deep in the starting of running VaynerMedia. So, I think you look at lifetime
value and repeat business and what your product is,
because if people are coming in and they’re using it and
buying or what have you, well, then you just need to
figure out how to get more of them in. If you’re getting a ton of
people in, but you’re not getting any long-tail action,
that’s your vulnerability. – And I think we live in
a time of social media, right, and the key part of that is social, so I think some of the best marketing starts before the marketing, right, so, listening, talking,
being inspired by people through all these technologies
that humanize people again and humanize communities. I think you can actually take
that insight and build better products, and build not just products, but products that are experienced and so that you can
invest in relationships and lifetime value and retention
as well as acquisition. – Love it, let’s move it, India.

“changed your mind about
in the last six months?” – Oh, I saw this come through. Good one, India. Mike, what have I changed my mind about in the last six months? As you can tell, this is hard for me because, what have I
changed my mind about? It’s hard, I think the only
thing that comes to mind is, I will tell you that I’m
in constant motion with VaynerMedia around culture, around skill, around offerings, around people, I’ve changed my mind on
people, both pro and con. But there hasn’t been anything
massively philosophical. I stay pretty consistent with
my seven, 10, 15 key pillars. There’s nothing really so
unbelievable other than, when you’re the CEO of a
company, you’re slightly pulling levers at all
times, and some of you could say you’re changing your idea again, around strategies, around opportunities. Publishing, building out
the VaynerPublishing stuff, I’ve changed a lot of different strategies ’cause the market’s moving. Virtual reality, I’m way
more into it than I was, that could be a change of an idea, it’s more of an acceleration of idea. There’s been no hard, like, I believe, actually, this is an interesting
time to open this up. I’d be lying if I didn’t say this. Maybe it’s because my 40th
birthday is coming in two days. I have secretly, for the
first time in my life, thought about the notion
of, in the next decade, taking an entire year off
and not working at all. Yeah. That’s a bomb, right? That’s a real, that’s a bomb. But we’ll see, we’ll see. But you know what? I’ve consistently been a
where-there’s-smoke-there’s-fire kind of guy, and I don’t
mean shut down from social, weird stuff, I mean just, move the family to Sydney Australia, let
the kids spend a year there and just zen it out, get real real buff. And I want to stretch more. Anyway, official Jets prediction.