#AskGaryVee Episode 208: Handling Business Competition & Influencer Marketing Tips

– [India] What is the most important lesson you
learned from Mike? – What is the most important
that I’ve learned from Mike? That I very much appreciate
people who are consistent and are willing to grind in the
way that I like to roll and it’s very important to me to level
up everybody that surrounds me. Because every minute counts,
quality counts, for Mike not to miss a single day including the
one time Mike actually got drunk for the second time in his life
literally came in drunk, dead, finished and just laid in
the gym while I worked out. Like laid, like a baby. Like a 20-year-old frat guy crushed from the night before. Like on the ground. I think he got drunk at Nate
and Trouty’s house, by the way, which is the funniest part. I appreciate, that I am a fan of,
I’d love to say that I only talk about what I believe in
that when I see it in somebody else it’s extremely valuable and
reinforces the tried and true. Two years the guy
never missed a single day. Came through every time. Didn’t miss a single flight. And really did a tremendous job. That consistency does matter and
I know I do it but feeling it on the other hand was
very, very rewarding. And I’m going to miss Mike a
lot over the next several weeks he’ll be around with Jordan
transition stuff but it is quite emotional for me. – [India] It is emotional.
– Yeah. – [India] From Jordan–
– Not the new Jordan.

with basically no
recurring dollars? – Meaning like he just
doesn’t have a lot of money? – [India] Yeah. Yeah, I guess. – He doesn’t have
business model that’s recurring. It’s I get a wedding,
I shoot it, I get money. So how would you scale? First and foremost, if I’m a
wedding photographer, one of the first moves I would do is
very similar to the advice that I gave to designers, immediately
I would layer a tier of Snapchat filter capabilities. I believe every modern wedding
35 and under in America in the next 18 months is
gonna have a Snapchat filter. It’s going to be a big
thing like Karen and Rick. That thing. I would do modern marketing. One, I would go triple in,
quadruple in, all-in uploading all your photos five, seven a
day get approval do your thing on Instagram and
learn all 15 hashtags that matter on Instagram. The five most popular ones,
the five medium ones and five long tail ones
like #HamptonsWedding. You know, #RockawayWeddings. Your area that you shoot in. There is always that hall, that place that everybody gets married at using
that name and weddings. 15 hashtags against 5 to 7
photos every single day on Instagram, I think will
lead to tremendous business. The other thing that I would do
is I would try to guest blog on wedding sites about Instagram
and Snapchat because again if you’re watching my show you’re kind of aware of
these things, right? Use modern social creative as your linchpin to your
actual business. If you think about being a
photographer for weddings as a secondary thing and you think
about being great in Snapchat and Instagram around the wedding
industry, using it and then commentating on it you will
create a much bigger awareness funnel and then people are like,
“Oh, I want to use that girl, “that guy. They’re good and
Snapchat and Instagram and “wedding photos.
It’s 2016, 2017.” I would hustle. I would work. What I just said took work. You like that one, Andy? It’s real. Work three more, four more hours
a day to do it I just told you and amazing things happened. You know how many people are
like “Oh miraculously, I made “$500 this week on eBay because
instead of drinking beers on my “porch and watching
Thunder-Warriors I went in my “garage or when garage
sale-ing and I sold stuff.” Staphon smiled because he
watched all of Thunder-Warriors. – [Staphon] I sure did.
(laughter) – That’s why has $500
less in his pocket. But he has the memories
and enjoyed himself. – [Staphon] It was a great game.
– Escapism. Great games.

– [India] What is the best
advice you give to someone that wants to start a small business but they’re still
working full time? – To do it after your hours. It was called Crush It! I wrote it in ’08 it came out in
’09, 7PM to two in the morning. This is all the same things. Are you guys willing to
put in the work and pay… Guys, are you willing to pay
the price for what you want? I want to have a business so I
can make lots of money and go on vacation and have lots of things. You want a 1% life but you’re not willing to put
in a 1% worth ethic. Work your job, come home and do I have to go
through it again? Do I have to make fun of
“Game of Thrones” and the Golden State Warriors
one more time. I’m more than happy too. You’ve got to give up all the
leisure stuff and you got to work from seven to
two in the morning. Start a business,
sell shit on eBay. I put that out there.
Everybody can do that. Become the wedding
photographer of America like I became the wine guy. Not everybody can do that. You’ve got to make the mental
switch in the same way that two years ago I said I’m going to
make, there was no tactic to get into better shape. Get in here.
Get it here. – What’s up? – Timing is unbelievable. – Good. I was just talking about my
health switch ironically you started around the time that I
was starting to smoke around it. – Yes. That’s right. – You’re an unbelievably
athletic kinda dude. – Sure. – You agree with me that it is
a mental switch not a tactic. – Oh yeah. – There’s no do this. It’s binary either
you’re mentally in the place I take it
seriously or you’re not. – Life does
whatever it’s gonna do. You just gonna decide what
you’re going to do around it. And that happens with
exercise too I think. So yeah just go
with it or you don’t. – One or zero. – One or zero.
– Thank you. (laughter) Ah, that hurt.
(laughter) Do you remember two years
ago when we went to Vayner Camp and he climbed
the wall in one second? Do you know about this?
– [India] Yeah. – Like this wall thing that
everybody was like, yeah. It took him one second. He’s a machine. Anyway. What’s the person’s, Ash?
– [India] Ash. – Ash, what’s my recommendation? Unless you’ve been in my cycle
for the last 30 or 60 days and I’m new to you I’m going to
get really pissed off at you. The work. And by the way, you may not be
good enough to make $10 million a year with the work
that you make $4,000 but it still gonna be the work. I can’t instill more talent into
you you can do a very good job trying to find white spaces and
figure out what you are good at. But once you put in the work. The talent the white
spaces that’s a coin flip. That’s a lot of DNA,
that’s a lot of luck, that’s a lot of skill. There’s a lot of things there but the work is always
part of the equation. And that’s the part
none of you want to do. Can we just finally have
this conversation together? You just don’t want to do it. You just don’t. You really don’t. You say you do but you don’t. You’d rather lay in bed
and sleep in for 15 hours. You’d rather play video games. You’d rather play
bullshit games on your phone. You’d rather watch TV
you’d rather watch this show. You’d rather go play beer pong. You’d rather do
something else than work. It’s hard. It’s hard. It’s hard. Which is why I push people to
do work around their passions because it makes a
little bit easier. If I had to do this
around bricklaying, I’d suck.

– Which athlete do you relate to
the most or compare yourself to as you’re in the blank
of digital marketing? – I don’t really think that
way but I will say that you know watching the Kobe documentary on
Showtime definitely I was like boy can I really
relate with, I am so scary. It’s unbelievable. I wonder what DailyVee episode
is gonna really going to show how competitive I really am. I’m not competitive
with this audience. I love this audience. I’m trying to give
you guys advice. I don’t even want you
to watch me anymore. Think about that. I love this audience. I’m not competitive with people
that have anointed me and gifted me with their time and their
effort and their attention. I have love for them. You should see the
polar opposite of my love. Because it’s dark. It’s unbelievable how much
I hate my competition with like visceral hate. But then in real life I don’t. I want to kill them in business. I want them to
go out of business but then I want to help them
get back on their feet but don’t fucking
compete with me. – [India] That was scary. – No, it wasn’t. I’m telling you right
now, that’s not even. Do you know how weird I am? Do you know that me
and AJ get into fights? – [India] Corn hole
that was pretty insane. – We talked about
this once or twice. Do you know Agnes? Where is she?
– [Andy] She’s right there. – Agnes! – [Staphon] AK, I need yours,
cause your’s doesn’t lag. Yeah. – I need you. (laughter) Just for a second. – Hi.
– Hey Agnes. So I’m doing this
#AskGaryVee Show. – Mhmmm.
– Right? And I needed you because I’m
talking about this dark place I go into when I compete. – Oh.
(laughter) We’ve all seen that. – Right and so, there’s that
one moment I don’t know if you remember but I do where
you had a breakaway and I came from behind and I– – You just shoved me to
the floor like no mercy. – Yes. – I absolutely remember that.
(laughter) – I just thought it would be
more powerful to hear from you. That was probably
inappropriate, right? – No, that’s fair competition.
Happens all the time. – Yeah. Winner.
That’s a winner mentality. Thanks Anges. – This is from yesterday.
– ‘Cause you’re a warrior. Legit jump shoot too.
Awesome, thanks. (laughter) I think we can all agree that Agnes is a nice 6-foot-5
brooding man. – [India] Right. – She was on a breakaway,
there was nothing. Were you there that day Staphon? – [Staphon] It was a while ago?
– Yeah. – [Staphon] Yeah.
– When I just like– – [Staphon] Yeah. Yeah. – Inappropriately, 1989,
’92 NBA Knicks-Pistons, Agnes the girl. – [Staphon] Yeah. – Yeah, that was inappropriate
but when it’s competition I do not care, by the way it actually
it works for me as a positive for VaynerMedia. I always laugh about minority,
female, things of that nature, this is competition. Whoever I think, I don’t
care what even Patriot fans are allowed at Vayner, right? I’m very dark when it
comes to competition. The Kobe stuff and I hate
Michael Jordan with my heart and soul but even his speech where he’s just like it’s all
about competition. It’s the game. I love the game. I don’t like anybody
who wants to beat me. And I really want to
beat their face in. With a brick. And I mean it. Andy you agree.
In basketball, I’m mad. Right? When we play I’m mad
and that’s basketball, you haven’t seen me
play Scattergories. (laughter) – [Brit] You were angry when
I met you playing trivia. – Right!
– [Brit] The Christmas party. – That was the first
time we met, right? – [Brit] Yeah.
– And that was like, I was weird. Competitive. – [Brit] You were like
super competitive. – Right. I was very upset. – [Brit] Yeah, even if
you weren’t necessarily contributing, you
were very upset. – [Gary] That’s right. If I didn’t have any answer to
these questions I was mad at them for not knowing.
– [Brit] It’s true. That’s like, you know. You should know something too. I do plenty of
things around here. We have this trivia
party because of me. Why don’t you get
the answer right to this bullshit movie? I don’t watch movies. You fuckers waste
time and watch movies. I don’t don’t know movies. I don’t watch them. – [Staphon] Getting fired up.

southern Spain near the ocean. I rent it, I have a website, I
advertise in agency and I do AirBnB but I still
need more customers. Thanks and greets. – Snapchat. Instagram. Facebook. This is so… Instagram hashtag strategy is unbelievable. Why don’t you give away the
house to 50 influencers on Instagram that have 1 million
followers, DM them and say I have this
beautiful house here. I would like you to come out. Why don’t you reach out to
Turkish Air or Delta or Virgin America or something like
that and say I’ve got this house, I want to surprise and delight
five influencers on Instagram and have them come and stay
and then what you say is all you have to do has have five photos
tag this, use this hashtag. If you ask every airline in the
world 99.9% of them will say no and one will say yes
because they just talked about influencer marketing
the day before. Now, you can go and Instagram
message somebody who’s got 2 million fans and is a pretty
girl or boy and say you should come and stay at my house
in this beautiful place. I will have your
flight taken care of, you can stay in my place, in return I want 10 social
media pieces of content, tag this. Game over.
Winner. Over. Then hashtag culture. Figure out which hashtags
are being used and put out way more content. More content.
More content. More content. Content is the cost of entry
for relevance in our society. – [India] Nice.
– Thank you.

– [India] You haven’t talked
much, oh, Kelsang, crazy names today. You haven’t talked a bunch
about mobile first websites. Advise for doing it well and
how do you structure them for success? – That’s UI/UX talk. That A/B testing. That’s first recognizing that
mobile first websites are the cost of entry in 2016 if you are not mobile first
you’re gonna lose. So when you design using
mobile then you think desktop. Number two, you test your add to
cart button, you test your sign up for my email service,
you test different colors, different positionings,
A/B testing. I don’t talk about it because
there’s a ton of people that are far more knowledgeable about the
UI and UX of mobile optimization for websites and I bet you they
have a tons of blogs and videos out there. There’s a site called Google
and go search stuff and I’m sure you’ll find four to seven
personalities the way I understand consumer behavior
and marketing in a social digital mobile landscape. I’m sure there’s plenty of gals
and guys that know how to do it. India what your picture in here?

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.

to vanquish my enemies?
Which I also like. – Actually, I have a
great answer this question. – [India] Great. – Because it’s really what I do
which is ironic based on what we just talked about with
competition back to me being such an insane contradiction. This is going to blow your mind. By not giving them
the time of day. It is insane how much I don’t
understand about my competitors. I don’t even know their names. That’s how much
disrespect I have for them. I’m being dead serious. I never spent a minute. I knew what the other
wine stores were doing. I know the names of the other
agencies that are in our space. I don’t have a damn clue. There hasn’t been a minute on my
calendar in the last 36 months that was based on getting
recon or intrigue on what any competitor of mine is doing
because the very honest truth is it doesn’t matter what they’re
doing because I’m going to get mine and if they are good enough
they will get their’s second. Second rate. But I’m gonna get mine. So how do you vanish them
by establishing that they’re vanished from the get. What do you want?

They said they’d never
get on Facebook and we saw how that turned out. Hahaha.
From Michael. – Haha, Michael, soon.

starting due to
potential haters? And also what’s your
tip on handling haters? – Love you haters and number
two getting over the fear is something you have to
wrap your head around. It is just the cost of entry. You will never do anything
great if you’re scared.

10 years. In that time I made
any business can and I know many small business
owners in my area. – You want me to sign something? – [India] I have $500, a computer,
internet, a car and a smartphone what is the best way
to start a referral and lead generating business? – To get more 500 bucks. Go to eBay and get
$5000 and then start. Hustle. If you have 500
bucks you need more. You don’t need more but
I’m very, very, very big on understanding that lead referral
you’re gonna have to run ads, you’re going to have a
create landing pages. That’s not what
you do with $500. – [Man] Thanks. – You build up $5,000 and I
think is $4500 worth of junk in your basement and your garage
or you’re auntie’s garage get that shit, flip it make
the cash, India.