#AskGaryVee Episode 202: How to Contact Influencers, Music Marketing & Preparing to Live Stream

revitalize the company?
From Robert. – I think what I would do is
truthfully a lot of M&A, mergers and acquisition. I would go and look at the
Anchors and the Musically’s and the after schools and the
things that are emerging in the marketplace and realize what I
have is a business model that is cold or not working as well
and not rolling so that’s what I have an issue in and when I have
an advantage in is that I have dollars and assets and money
from Alibaba and other places that I can deploy and so I think
when your core business is not driving upward mobility
in growth in your company. The thing you do is you
leverage that asset to try and build up your future. And so my answer would be M&A. I think to Marissa’s credit, the
current CEO, and I have a lot of respect for her and I think
it was a tough gig that she jumped into. She went out and did that and
bought Tumblr for a big nut. And to me in hindsight if she
would have been able to buy Instagram instead of Facebook
buying it though I’m sure Kevin wouldn’t have sold to Yahoo
that he would have to Facebook. There was definitely other, I do
believe that when Marissa became the CEO there was probably a
moment where she could have bought Snapchat for 1 billion
or two but then the question becomes when you buy these hot
things on the way up do they stop becoming those hot things
once they go and get cashed out and there’s not the same energy. The other thing I would have
thought about is hardware. I’m very obsessed right now
with the notion of hardware. I think Facebook should
absolutely, don’t worry about the cost I think that Facebook
should absolutely make a television for example. I think Yahoo could
have made a television, could have made
a Netflix competitor. I didn’t like your
reaction there Andy. Worry about the cost.
(laughter) And so the biggest thing
I would say to all of you to make this a little more
relevant to so many that watch why don’t you focus
on the following. If you’re in a business that
has a situation where it’s not growing as well, you need to
kind of disrupt yourself and try to make new revenue angles and try to do different things.
If you stay the course and try to do incremental things
that grow your business that becomes a vulnerability. So if you’re in a 3 to 4 your
year funk where your business is flat, you have to really change
the business not just do what you’re doing a
little bit better. For example, Wine Library one
thing I’ve always debated that if we capped out our growth on
the wine stuff is to really build out Gourmet Library and become
like a supermarket and sell cheese and gourmet meats
and things of that nature. That’s a big change than
just doing wine selling a little bit better. Doing a little bit better on
email service to adding a couple more selections or changing
the pricing strategy on the core business so if I was Yahoo CEO a
year ago and just trying to grow the business, not taking any of
the Wall Street dynamics into play which Marissa had to,
I would’ve done very drastic things in hardware would
have been on the forefront. I think phones are too hard. I think televisions are easier
and so I would have done is made a Yahoo television
that was unbelievable. Would have bought a TV producing
company that makes TVs and put Yahoo at the forefront of
the brand and then build an over-the-top Netflix like
business and produce original content that would have driven
into there because Amazon and Netflix are now making
some of the best television in the world. That means anybody can. Facebook, Snapchat, anybody
can and that’s what I’d done. I probably would’ve reached out
to this guy named GaryVee and give him a late night show. That would’ve worked. Andy?
– [Andy] Yo.

– [Pedro] I am from
Portland, Oregon. I am the social media
specialist of MotoCorsa Ducati. My question is
about live streaming. – Okay. – [Pedro] As far as preparation
for live streaming if you are going to do Periscope or
Snapchat how much do you need to be prepared for that? – I think that and thanks of the
question it makes a lot of sense obviously when you’re an
entrepreneur or personal brand, I actually think the
more ghetto the better. The more real there are so many
other platforms, your Instagram photos your Facebook posts,
there’s a lot of places to go to polished. I actually think live
streaming’s big upside is actually just the real and the
raw and the lack of preparation is really attractive and has
been the reason people loved reality TV and the reason
they would love Periscope. Now when you work in a big
company like you and others, you need to be careful. Is there something
in the background? Is there a document on the
desk that people can see? You got all these things you
have to worry about that big companies worry about so you
need some level of preparation but I think that’s awareness
to what could happen versus actually prepping. You know what I mean?
– [Pedro] Right, yeah, perfect. Pretty much all of our
good stuff if on-the-fly. – Always man. – [Pedro] No preparation.
– Pedro, always. I’m going to go next call. I appreciate you
watching, brother. I love you. Thank you for that. The bottom line is that people
are always going to be more attracted to the authentic. There is an absolute place
for the polished movies, TV. I think YouTube’s an incredible,
look were doing DailyVee polished because I
believe in the strategy. In a world where now I believe
YouTube videos are going to be very easily consumed on
televisions all across America I think it’s a good strategy. You got a call coming Andy?
How’s it going? – [Andy] I had it
and then right when– – It’s all right.
Here we go. I think it is super important
to recognize that real and authentic is just as potentially
important as polished. I think way too many creators
and videographers and people that make videos
always overthink that. They don’t understand that the
raw (phone rings) can be just as good as the glossy. It’s like fashion, India. Like a great suit is great
a little bit of swag in the T-shirt is great too. Let’s go to the next one.
That’s right. – [Phone] Call
from unknown caller.

– [Alex] I’m an IT consultant
and I’m kind of struggling on going to the next level of just
being me, the IT consultant, to actually creating a
business and a brand. Unfortunately, I’m
usually known as the IT guy. – Yep. – [Alex] The PC Guy, and it
sucks but I don’t care because it’s good money.
– Yep. – [Alex] How do I move from
being the PC guy to actually having a business,
a name and grow. – What do you want? Alex, what you want
the business to be? What do you want to sell? – It’s IT consulting and IT
support and IT management. – Got it. You want your own gig and you
want to build a personal brand so that clients then come to
you and you can build employees underneath you. At first you’ll do your own work
and then you’ll get other people and you’ll build a firm like I
did with VaynerMedia, right? – [Alex] Correct.
– You gotta put… Go ahead. – [Alex] I’m putting the work
but it just me and my name and I’m kind of struggling– – Well that’s because– – [Alex] It’s actually
business, not just me. – Yeah, I get it. The way you gotta do that
first of all is produce content. Become bigger of a name. Put out all your best advice. Blog on Medium, put out
Instagram tips, do white papers on Slideshare, do Facebook
Lives, Periscopes, make content, make content, make content. Show your expertise, have
inbound business and just like with VaynerMedia, people want
to hire Gary Vaynerchuk but Gary Vaynerchuk’s
not available. It’s VaynerMedia. But guess what, Gary Vaynerchuk
was available in 2009, ’10, ’11 and ’12 and then I made enough
money to hire other people and Gary Vaynerchuk
wasn’t available. Right now, don’t stress about
the semantics whether they want you or your business you don’t
have the money or the need to hire a bunch of people yet. Create such demand that you take
those dollars and hire people and then just tell new clients
it’s my expertise delivered to my employees but you don’t need
me to physically fix your PC, got it?
– [Alex] Got it. Now, real quick question you
always say that Facebook is doing much better for
ads than Google ads, do you still believe that?
Do you think I should, if I were to run
some ads should I go– – You should do both. I think Google search is great
for the business you’re in. I do think Facebook is
better for content and branding. You should do both but my first
start making a lot of content. I need you blogging on
Medium.com about your thoughts on PC and your thoughts on IT
and your thoughts on tech in today’s society over and over
and over again content, content, content video, written form,
audio, Soundcloud, Anchor. All of it. It’s all about
the content, Alex. Thank you brother.
Thanks for being on the show.

– [Cam] I’m currently working
on a book and I’m interviewing different entrepreneurs. What advice would you give to
someone that is trying to get a hold of influencers
and stuff like that? – Twitter, Twitter, Twitter,
Twitter, Twitter, Twitter, Twitter, Twitter, Twitter. Period. Twitter. No LinkedIn, no cold
emailing, it’s not gonna work. Go figure out the 500 people you
want to interview, go see what they’re tweeting about. If you want to interview Cam
Newton go look at Cam Newton’s last 10 tweets try to jump on
the last thing he’s talking about and add value
to the conversation. Say like “Yeah” or “Disagree” or
“No way” or whatever you want to go with it. Create some context so don’t ask
for the interview right away, get in to a little banter
build up a little rapport. This takes a lot of work, Cam. This is five, seven, 10 hours a
day every day for a month but you get, then you go in for the
ask, you get a little context of those people you ask
them to interview you. They’ve been talking to you
about sports or wine or candy or sailing or surfing or raising
children over the last month now they got a little context for
Cam on Twitter and then Cam goes in for the ask one of the
very 80 of those unbelievable people will say yes so if you
think about 80 people getting one to say yes and you needing
20 people that’s an unbelievable amount of people that you
need in your ecosystem, right? You’re talking about 1600 people
that you are hitting up which is going to take you months but
it’s putting in the work and that’s how you’ll
actually get them. Got it?
– [Cam] Yeah, appreciate it. – No worries, brother.
Cam from Oklahoma City. Let’s go to the next one.

my audience who are
struggling with this. And a lot of my friends are
giving me advice that I should presell it.
– Okay. – [Roberto] I feel awkward about
selling something that I haven’t made because I feel awkward
about I want to just deliver on something, deliver the value. I feel like why should I sell
it if I haven’t made it yet. What are your thoughts on that? – I think a lot of people that
watch me and hear me and feel they know where I’m going to go
with this answer may be confused by this. I’m very comfortable with you
preselling it as long as you feel like you’re actually
going to deliver on it. If you feel like it’s actually
going to happen and you’re not taking people’s money, I think
pre-selling something and then not delivering in two ways,
one, not delivering and being a criminal and stealing people’s
money, I don’t think you’re going to do that. And I actually think it’s
unacceptable to also even return the money because you not a god
damn bank and it would’ve been much better for them to have
it in your bank account than you. You just have to hundred percent
make sure that you’re going to deliver and the big
vulnerability because I know you little bit and I know you’ll
deliver on that too the problem is if you lose energy or
some other amazing opportunity happens tomorrow, right? If I email you tomorrow and say
I want to be the new official cohost of The #AskGaryVee Show
with me but you have to work 10 hours a day when we’re not
filming doing X, Y, and Z but you got to go deliver on this
guide what’s going to happen Roberto is going to bullshit the
guide over the next month or two ’cause your not going to have
time and it’s not going to be the thing you actually thought
it was going to be because you still finish your word. The vulnerability of pre-selling
is not delivering to the capability that you have set in
your mind because you don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. Got it?
– [Roberto] Got it. That is exactly what my concerns
were and you are really good at figuring that out and yeah you
do know me a little bit so that was perfect, thanks so much.
– You got it brother. Thanks watching the show. – [Roberto] I know
what I need to do now. – Good brother.
Take care. Alright. Changing lives
Andy K on episode 202. See what I did there.
The mouth was the zero.

My question is my question is
after you have come off this super successful book number
four launch at what point do you now set your sights
on book number five? – That’s a great question. – [Calvin] The next big thing?
– And why are you asking that? I think that’s the more
interesting part of this question for me. – [Calvin] I’m just
interested in the minds of successful people. How long they bask in their own
success or when they go to the next thing.
– Cool. Well, that’s a
great question Calvin. I would tell you and these guys
can say this especially when they all kind of maybe India
really was in the Vayner world more than the rest of the gang. Calvin, I’ll tell you it was
crazy what happened inside of my body when you said
“basked in the success.” I have zero capability of
basking in the success. I wish the camera was 360
right now because all of my team except for Andy who is worried
about screwing up the show the three of the rest them were all
shaking their head because they know way more than anyone
that’s watching right now that there wasn’t even a remote
moment, not a celebration, we didn’t have a dinner.
We didn’t get together– – [Calvin] You
suck at celebration. – I suck at celebration, man. I don’t have my eyes
set up five right now. I’ve got my eyes set on making
VaynerMedia huge, building more businesses, making smart
investments, helping my investments build
their businesses. Getting credibility as a great
businessman while I’m out of GaryVee mode for a little bit. Putting out good content,
continuously upping my game in my distribution of my content,
so there’s no book 5 but what I’ll tell you, and Calvin thanks
for calling, what I’ll tell you is that I am always,
always onto the next thing. As a matter of fact, I would
actually argue this is a slight vulnerability of mine. I actually think it would’ve
probably been smart to have a dinner with all of us especially
Andy and Alex, you know all of us really. To just be like hey
that was a nice launch. No, we don’t have that. As a matter of fact, let’s make
it really intense today is AJ’s last day at VaynerMedia. I was at a business meeting at a
breakfast spot this morning with a client, I looked over and AJ
was there was Yudkin and Nate and Tyler and everybody was
celebrating AJ’s, Tyler get in here real quick.
This is perfect timing. Why wasn’t I invited to AJ’s
celebration breakfast this morning?
– ‘Cause you were busy. – Okay great, get out of here. What’s really interesting
about that there wasn’t even consideration, Tyler,
AJ’s former assistant my current team mate
with India assistant. There wasn’t even consideration. Think about this: this is my
cofounder little brother’s last day at Vayner
they have a symbol. This wasn’t a one week trip. This was a simple 90 minute
sendoff breakfast and we didn’t even consider for me
to be a part of it. Yeah. It’s funny, we don’t celebrate
it’s a celebration by the way. It’s not like a sad thing. Now I’ll be with AJ tonight
which is great, second day of the draft but even when we
sold a piece of the business we forced ourselves a year later we
went to Atlantis in the Bahamas. We thought we were really
going to celebrate but we just became degenerates and
gambled for 39 straight hours only barely even talked about it. I’m just not good at celebrating
Calvin and by the way I’m not so sold that’s a good idea. As a matter of fact, I guarantee
that you’ll see a blog post from me whether it’s on Medium or
whatever it is of the day six years from now of
finding celebration. That’s what it’s
going to be called. Finding celebration and it will
talk about me not being happy that I was so extreme
to the non-celebrating aspects of business. I think you should celebrate
the good things in life. I think it is a miss on the
way that I navigate the world. It still doesn’t come natural to
me it still doesn’t, even though I know this, I’m trying to sell
myself right now but I still can’t get there and I’m
always following this over this. This says celebrate. This, that’s heart and gut, this
is still not saying celebrate. And so I can’t celebrate. And honestly if this never says
celebrate and I take last breath and I think about it for a
second I won’t regret it because I always listen to this. But this understands that
it’s not necessarily the best move. And I think it would’ve been
really nice if we had a nice dinner and talked war stories,
“Oh remember that time the “person canceled the
order at the end. “Ah ha-ha-ah!” – Where is it?
You need to reset?

I’m not in tech.
I’m actually a songwriter. I’m releasing an album and I’m
trying to avoid spending money in ways like hiring
publicists so on and so forth. – Yes. – [Daniel] I’m trying to really
ramp up my social side. What I’ve been doing is I’ve invested in
several giveaway items to try and accumulate a street team
which has worked and I was just going to find out if you had
any additional ideas because you will hear about me sooner or
later because this record will get heard.
– Good for you man. – [Daniel] I just wanted
to ask your opinion. – Well, thanks and I’ll give
you some opinions and I’ll even throw out there something
that we’ll give you. If you want and you might’ve
noticed in the last DailyVee we featured Ron Gilmore Jr.’s music
if you want to reach out to DRock and talk about some of
your music if you want to have some of your music featured in
an upcoming DailyVee, I’m not sure what kind of music it is or
what DRock and Andy’s ears are for that kind of stuff. – [Daniel] Arabic rap. – Great. I think you’re
really cool. – [Daniel] I’m kidding.
– Got it. (laughter) The craziest is part I was
actually fucking pumped. I was like yes Arabic rap I know
exactly with the kind intensity. Anyway, one I’d love to offer
you that because fan of the show, I’d love to be some
exposure so speak to them and let’s see if that’s a fit. Here’s my big plug: Influencers,
influencers, influencers. I think you took a very
smart tactic of street teams. I think books and albums when
they do that do quite well. I think the biggest arbitrage
for attention at the lowest possible cost right
now are influencers. If you can get people to
do skits or other things on Instagram with your music
I think you would crush. And so I think if you spent two
hours a day just reaching out to people based on
hashtags on Instagram. So you go to Instagram you
search hashtags and then you engage with people that
are putting out stuff around thematics of either the names of
the songs or the genre of music or things of that nature I think
you could really have a major impact by getting some
influencers on board to give you some awareness and
exposure to your music. – [Daniel] What about TweetDeck? Do you think I should continue
doing that ’cause I am engaging with people through hashtags? – Yes but I think Instagram
is a better push platform than Twitter which is why
I’m pushing you that way. I would also document the
journey of releasing an album. I would write at least 2 to
4 articles of the journey of releasing an album on Medium.com
because their editors there pick some articles and they populate
them to the top and I think there could be some
real opportunity for you there as well. I would also reach out
to places like HuffPo, Forbes,
Business Insider cold. Send them an email and say would
you like me to write a piece original for you on one
musician’s point of view on releasing an
album in 2016, 2017? All of them are always looking
for content and I believe that’s a very inexpensive quick way for
you to get exposure to a crowd that might be reading for
business or other things but everyone loves music and you’re
getting awareness, got it? – [Daniel] Got it totally. How can I get in touch
with DRock regarding– – It’s DRock@VaynerMedia.com. – [Daniel] Okay and would it be
okay if I send you a signed copy of my album and maybe a poster. – That would be amazing. Work with DRock he’ll
figure everything out and I wish you well Daniel. Thanks for
listening and watching. Thanks brother. Awesome, good show I
think we got better. We made a quantum leap
from 200 to 202 but