#AskGaryVee Episode 79: Pencils of Promise, Business Reviews & Television Advertising

and how do you get off of it? What’s the biggest “but”
you hear from others that’s holding them back?” – Theresa, the amount of
buts that I hear, is actually stunningly overwhelming. I pride myself in not being a but guy, and so, I think that the buts
that I hear are all the time. I didn’t have any money. I didn’t have a chance, I grew
up in a poor neighborhood. I didn’t have a mentor. I didn’t get the lucky break. People are loaded with buts. It’s why the majority of
people fit into the standard of ones life right? Whatever those ambitions
may be, I think that for me, my but is usually– But I love the process, I love the climb. When I don’t achieve the maximum upside in my career, it’s going to
be predicated on the fact that I hedged about loving the process, and so within the context of finances, I didn’t buy the Jets, because, but– You know, is really, that
whole thing is because, oh, I liked the grind too
much, and that didn’t allow me to scale and create the
level of wealth I needed to be able to actually pull it off. That’s my narrative, and so that’s my but, but I love the process. The amount of buts I hear though, are just everything, and really– You know, what but is, is
it’s an excuse, and now look, before I finish
with my rah rah scenario, let’s very much understand
there’s real stuff going on in the world. I mean, you may be born
in a part of the world where there’s a dictator, or communism, or just you know– Do I think that is as easy to be a female entrepreneur in the Middle
East, as it is to be in New York City? No, I do not. Do I think that it’s
harder for somebody that’s born in Mississippi, a non white male, in America, as it is for
somebody that is born in L.A. white male, to succeed? I do, but on the flip
side, let me flip it, I think the hustle and the
grind of coming from the grind has a big advantage. I see a ton of– I think some people– Some people think you’re dead on impact because you’re born a minority or, or in a bad spot, or
to a drug infested home that you’re predisposed to losing. Ironically in my weird twisted
brain, in the game that I play, the hustle game, the real climb, like it’s almost equally
predicated on your spirit and your gusto as it is on your skill set. I think a lot of people
that are born into kush are in a setback situation
because it’s gonna come so easy, and so, I just
think it’s how you optically look at the world, but
I will tell you this, I hate excuses man. I hate them with all my heart. I really take enormous
pride, and I mean it. We just had a hard core, right
guys, we had a hard core meeting, I don’t know
if any of you were here, VaynerMedia meeting on
Friday, where I talked about stuff and I’m always scared
that I don’t know if the team believed me, when I said,
“Hey look, before I start, this is my fault.” But I really mean it. I take pride in taking blame. It’s crazy. You know, it’s funny,
this Jets/Patriot thing. I see all these Pat fans
making fun of me, right, yesterday, and I feel sad
for them that they’ve won four Super Bowls. I like the climb and the grime,
and trying to win it, right, and that’s kind of how I
think about buts, and blames, and excuses. I take pride and I like taking
the blame in front of my whole company and saying
this is my fault, even though I know there’s so many other people that are at fault as well,
I’ll take that on me. So, you know, buts are
bad, but they’re not as obvious as I think that
some people may think. – [Voiceover] Robert asks,
“Is there value in using social

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

for Pencils of Promise and
documenting my daily videos on YouTube, what other
jabs could I use so that I’m not just right hooking for donations? – Hey Bren, as a proud board
member of Pencils of Promise, I want to thank you personally
for your adventures. You know, the jab, content
wise, obviously even this little question had a great
content, beautiful views, India was really taken aback. And so, let’s just show
India being taken aback— – Wow. – And so, that was amazing, and so– The jab that I’m looking
for from you, you know, you didn’t take this biking
adventure for kicks and giggles, obviously the charity component is in you, but it’s not the only thing,
people always do things that are selfish to them at some level, so you want to create
video content and document it. Maybe you’re a documentary
thing, you know, you’re using this great thing
you’re doing as a global jab to maybe bring you awareness
to an opportunity in the future. I want you to take a step back
because I think you’re gonna do all the jabbing right,
right put out good content on Instagram, and SnapChat,
and Facebook and different native, you know, The Book,
“Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook” respect the platforms,
and put out good content. The one thing that I think
is missing from a lot of people’s repitouires when
they’re in this world, is the listening, the bionic ears
of what Twitter search is. If I were you, the other jab,
you can do at scale, is to go into Twitter search, and
search people who are talking about Pencils of Promise
and then jumping into their conversation, and
not jumping in and saying cool that you raised money,
like “Oh, I raised $48 for “Pencils of Promise in my school
book fair, fourth grader.” Tweets, right, or the
mom of the fourth grader. You don’t jump in and say
cool, “I’m doing this, “watch this.” That’s too much of right hook. You jab within the listening, oh I like that. You jab within the
listening, and so what you do is you jump in there and
say, “That is phenomenal.” And just by you interacting
with that person, they’re gonna maybe look
in your profile and then they’ll see your latest 3
or 4 Tweets were around this content, and then you’ve
really double jabbed into the funnel of that donation, right, you jabbed within the
listening. You jabbed with the content, that
became the gateway to the donation, or whatever
you’re trying to achieve the awareness, so a shit load more
Twitter searching, I think would be a tremendous opportunity.

– [Voiceover] Nicole asks,
“How do you deal with reviews that could impact your business?” – Nicole this is a great question. One of the reasons I had
always been a big push against cut guy, I don’t
know what that means, why I was a loud advocate
in the other direction of things of Yelp, and
other things of that nature, was they were anonymous
reviews, and I knew of PR agencies that were getting
paid to leave negative reviews of their competitors stuff, which is why I was always a big
fan of Facebook and Facebook Connect, real identity. There’s two things to understand,
one I do think anonymous reviews, and anonymous review
sites are losing their equity. I do think that Steve and
India, and all of you watching, and everybody at Meerkat, what’s up. You know, I love doing that, Take anonymous reviews with
a grain of salt, right? Like that’s changed, like
from 2004, compared to now, you just take them with a
grain of salt because we have become cynical to knowing
people do it on purpose. The big thing that I think
you should do when somebody, your right, we live in this
crappy world, where you guys are serving at a restaurant,
and I always use restaurant because they– Or an airline, airlines are
doing things so right, on a like they’re flying planes,
machines in the air, on crossing the world, at
scale, landing at the proper times, leaving at the proper
times, keeping us safe, they’re given us wi-fi
in there, it’s cozy. These are big machines, they’re
like flying through the air, and if it’s like a 8 minute
delay, you’re like “Fuck you “Delta,” I mean it’s crazy,
it’s crazy talk, anyway, so you’re right, we don’t
get the credit for the good, we get dismantled for the
bad, right? Like the athletes that are doing wrong
things all over the place, all the one that are doing
charitable things and great things, nobody wants to cover that. It’s just unfortunately the way it is. Now, did my boy Aton get a rare, that he’s making a comeback. That makes me happy, I can’t
wait to see what he did, make sure you email me that
moment because I don’t watch the show. (laughing) I think that you should jump
into any Yelp review, or any foursquare review, or any
review, any negative review that you have to jump in
and answer every one of them immediately. “Hey, saltypants49, call
me, here’s the number. “I’m super upset. I don’t understand. “I remember you.” Don’t fight it. Fighting it is feeding the wrong energy. You’re in business, this is their opinion. They could be wrong, but you
need to at least have one more level of empathy and
listening before you get into the fight of it,
and so the way you can handle it is by jumping,
monitoring it, and jumping into all of them, because the
optics of you jumping in, to the rest of the world, is
actually more powerful in the amplification of who
and what your intent is, and the depth of actually
giving a crap about that one person, really, really matters. – Hey Gary, here’s my question,
when will social marketing

– Hey Gary, here’s my question,
when will social marketing spending be bigger than
television commercials? – Fred, great question. First of all, if you guys
don’t know who Fred Wilson is, then you know nothing
about the startup in the VC community in New York or the world. One of the great VCs of all time, Fred. I don’t like you for that,
I like you because you’re a Jets fan. We got Revis, can you believe it? So, Fred, great question,
I appreciate you asking it. My gut answer, and I’m going
to use social as current digital platforms, let me explain why. My answer to that question
is somewhere in the ballpark of 35, 20, 22 years, long, and by then, I don’t think we’re going to be calling them
social networks, we’re going to evolve to whatever
they are, but digital is eating up a lot of TV,
but the web’s been around for 20 years, the consumer
web, since 95, and banners and email, and Google adwords,
they’re still not making an enormous dent against television. Now we’ve got over the top. My prediction is 22 years because all these things take longer. I also think advertising in
general is gonna change and the money is gonna go into
content and it’s all going to be native and interwoven much more, but you know, I’m not sure if
I’m right about the year– 22 years out, 2037, but what
I will tell you is this Fred, that the TV commercial
industry is in the early stages of looking very similar to the
late years of the newspaper advertising world. It was Craigslist that
really was a very important, kind of watershed moment
to the death of newspaper advertising, and I believe that it is Netflix that is the same
to the TV commercial world, because as everything
starts going over the top, and people don’t want
to consume commercials, and really you could even
say DVRs, right TiVo, probably was the first
precursor to it, but we’re well on our way, you know, question of the day, how many people in this room actually watch television commercials? and I don’t mean this room, I mean the people that are watching, I mean Meerkat, give it to me right now. Everybody’s watching when
they want, how they want, outside of live TV shows,
which are basically live result shows, awards shows, and
sports, guys without sports the TV industry would be in
such a different, different, different place. I asked my question of the day.