and I have a question regarding platforms to sell your merchandise online. I run an online community designed to help other sellers succeed
on platforms like eBay, Amazon, and tree systems like Amazon FBA. Just recently, probably
the last six months, there’s been a lot of talk of
eBay really going downhill. A lot of sellers are
fed up with their fees, and they’re really disliking
the path that eBay has taken. My question for you is,
if eBay doesn’t innovate, if they don’t change,
if they don’t get out of this old school mentality, do you think they’ll become irrelevant in the next five or 10 years? Do you think places like
Amazon will completely take over the entire market, rather than just owning a
majority of it right now? – Name? – [India] Michael. – Michael, great question. I’m an eBayhead. Taught AJ how to be an entrepreneur
by going to garage sales and selling on eBay. eBay’s become more Amazon-like than what it originally started out, which was sell Pez dispensers and bobbleheads and Beanie Babies. I actually think there’s
a huge white space, so I think eBay’s doing the
right thing, believe it or not, competing a little bit with Amazon, and I do think resellers
are struggling with it, but manufacturers and people
at scale are enjoying it. I think what eBay is doing
is they’re recognizing there’s no alternative to eBay
in the world, so ironically, I think the white space is, I’m gonna make a prediction here, in the next, and I don’t
like doing predictions. I always say I don’t make
predictions, I just follow, but I’m gonna make one, and I failed in a startup
called Yardsale, mobile eBay, and I may be wrong, and I
actually feel pretty weak about this prediction, but
I’m gonna make it anyway. I do think that in the next 10 years, somebody’s gonna build eBay again. eBay is so much not eBay anymore, that when you look at it,
it’s all new products. I still think there’s enormous
commerce in used product, and so Etsy took its own
kind of crafter mold. Ironically, Etsy just
went public yesterday, so interesting timing. eBay is eBay but is evolving
more towards Amazon-like, Overstock retail! I think there’s a huge
open space for somebody to build a billion-dollar company in literally just becoming eBay again, and I mean restrictions. No new products, everything
on the site is used. You know, used. I just, I think it’s a huge play, still, especially with mobile
and smart tech, so much, I’m curious where that goes, so, do I think Amazon can be
the entire marketplace? No. Do I think that eBay’s
gonna go out of business in the next 10 years? No, I actually think what eBay is doing is actually smart for their business, until this alternative
comes, which may never come, thus, I’m pretty positive on their direction, and so, I think if you guys are resellers or certain type of niches,
I mean I’ve been saying, me and my homies that sold collectibles said eBay was finished, not
as good as it was, in 2005. Like, “Oh, eBay’s ruined.” That was 10 years ago, so that’s my answer. I’m so into eBay. I need, everybody’s got one,

“to scale a business with an
inherently low profit margin?” – So, Jared’s got a low
profit margin issue. He’s asking the best way to scale it. Jack? – New products, new innovation, new angle. If you’ve got, the last thing
you wanna be thinking about is making large something
that’s small margins. You wanna find ways to
take the assets you have and transform it into a
high-growth, exciting player in maybe adjacent fields. But take the asset you
have and deploy them to grow the business, but not maybe the existing business completely. – Get away from the low-margin businesses. Create services, right? I mean, isn’t that what you did at GE? Took all the stuff that was low-margin, and you added on high-margin services. You don’t wanna be in
a low-margin business. You’ve gotta do everything
with your innovation and creativity to get away from it. – I’m gonna go with an
interesting, different angle from my own life experience. When I got into my dad’s business, it did three million dollars in revenue and ran on 10 percent gross
profit before expenses. It was a family business, right? – Right, right. – That’s low margin. The liquor business is bad,
cause there’s a middle, wholesale part that takes 25 percent of the 50 percent that a
retailer normally takes. Extremely low margin. What I did was actually
went the other way. Meaning, I took the low margin items that were driving the store’s business, and I actually bet on them. What I did was, I took all the
items like Santa Margherita, Kendall-Jackson, the liquor
items that were low margin, at cost, by the way, and
I used them to market, to drive people into
the store as the honey, and then I merchandized the store and built the brand that they
came in for, Kendall-Jackson, but I sold them a different
Chardonnay with margin. And so, both these things
are, of course, right, I’m curious, and we don’t know, where you are in your life cycle. What I’ve watched a lot
of people do is try to go, you know, bandaid off from low margin to some new innovation that
maybe the market doesn’t want. I think the hedge there, that’s
interesting to understand, I really felt the effects of
this, is use it as an offense. Right now, we’re testing Facebook ads for my wine business, and
everything we’re using are these low-margin
items, because they have the brand equity to drive in,
and then we’ll take care of it from there, so you may be far enough along in your business where, the first answers here
were 100 percent right. You need to get into a
place where the margins are gonna get right,
but I worry, depending on your sophistication as an operator, that you go complete cold turkey. There’s a way to use the
low-margin items as an asset. – That’s a very good idea, but I would use the low-margin items and the margin from those low-margin items
to invest in other areas. – 100 percent. That’s what I did, right? The pennies we made turned
into the advertising, that drove people in, then I
grabbed them, and so, da-da-da. India.

the Radio Shack stores,
but what is the relevance of Sprint? Is Sprint the new Radio Shack?” – Paul, that’s a great question. I don’t know what Sprint’s got in mind for Radio Shack. I think physical retail
stores need to be innovative and have experiences wrapped around them. You’re right. I think there’s a very interesting
point here that if Sprint just puts up Sprint stores and
executes in a Radio Shack way they become the new Radio Shack. If they don’t and they
take a page out of let’s say Barnes and Nobles,
that realized they couldn’t compete with Amazon if it was just books, and made it more of a coffee
shop, place you visited, a community hub, and
they trickled out some sales from that. It all depends on the execution. You are what you are. People are always like, hey, our brand represents this. This is what we have to do. It’s not true. What you do
then becomes your brand, and so the execution
of Sprint over the next 24 months will dictate if they’re the new Radio Shack or they’re the new Sprint retail store 3.0. – [Voiceover] Charles asks,
“How do you hustle faster?”

“relevance to the funeral
business industry?” – Columbia, great question. This was a fun one. India, you’re dark. Because India was like,
pumped for this question. I assume you’re talking
the funeral home business. Ironically, I’ve addressed
this in other places, either in a blog post or a public speech. This is an industry I’m fascinated by. I once gave the recommendation to somebody in the funeral business to become the number one flower
content site on the Internet, because that was the connection
to something positive that I could make, and it was
a really really interesting, you know, back to
everybody’s a media company, you guys have heard my spiel on this. If you haven’t, Google it around. I think companies should
become media companies and play in sections that are
related to their industry. If you’re a funeral
home, you can’t start a reviewing other funeral homes business, you have vested interest,
but something like flowers is an interesting
gateway to that business. You know, look. I’m gonna use your question as it ended, which is innovation is what awakes sleepy gray-haired industries. I came along in the wine world. That was a very pretentious, very this, very look down on, very gray haired. Wine experts were 60 year old dudes. They definitely weren’t 25
year old Jet fans from Jersey, and so I came in there and I innovated. First it was launching
a dot com site in 1996. Later it was doing a YouTube show less than a year after YouTube came out around the subject. The way you wake up an industry is by innovating. Looking at things like Snapchat, looking at things like smart technology and augmented reality and Pinterest and things of that nature, and so obviously, it sounds like you’re
in a very sensitive space. You’ve got to be careful. Obviously death is at the height
of emotion in our society. One thing I’ve been spending
a lot of weird zen time on is we don’t know how to
die gracefully in America. I’m very fascinated by that, meaning we fight and like medicine
ourselves up so intensely. I’m getting on a little bit of a tangent, but I get it, because boy, out
of all the passions I have, the number one core passion I have is I do not want to die, and it is not even a
remotely close second. Fuck the Jets and everything else. That is my number one passion. So I get it, so I would
say navigate carefully based on the question, but
to go on a higher level of waking up a gray haired industry, disrespect the gray haired industry. Understand your history, understand it, but don’t respect it to a fault. Get it? – [Voiceover] Kobus asks, “What
would be your top three tips

– Hey Gary, my name is
Michael, I like almonds, and reading books. My question for you is, what
can cause the extinction of the real estate agent, as we know it? You keep making t-shirts,
and I’ll keep buying them. Oh, and one more thing, ting! – (laughs) The bar has been raised
for video questions, VaynerNation take note,
the bar has been raised. Amazing question, thank you so much, guys. Great production. DRock,
you love it, right? That was good. Staphon,
yea that was good stuff. I actually don’t think
that there is a lot, you know, I think there
is a false sentiment in the market that
technology eliminates humans. I think technology sets up
the humans that understand how to use that technology
to leverage ahead against the other humans that don’t. So, what eliminates the real
estate agents of the moment, in the future? Well, it’s
their lack of innovation and adjusting to the tools
that are at their hands, and then just becoming a dying breed. My friends, I’m not making up
or talking about anything new. Innovation has forever,
the phone, the yellowpages, radio, television, the
internet, direct mail, video game marketing. Every time there’s been
another innovation, and that will happen forever, it kills off the prior animal
unless the animal is unable to adjust, and it’s not an age thing, there is tons of 60 year olds right now that are crushing modern day marketing. The percentage is very small, and it comes out of getting fat, right? It comes out of, you just made
enough money at this point, you’re on to new and better
things, and I mean that. You guys hear a lot of hustle
from me, but I’m enormously happy for the gal that’s
63, making 240 a year, and, you know, put in her dues,
and she wants to go to the fancy food show on
that Tuesday instead of calling 100 people and
selling another apartment, or she wants to spend an extra weekend in an Aspen timeshare. Do your thing. When I talk about hustle,
please know that I’m not judging you. It’s all
predicated on what you want. The only people I make
my hustle stuff for, are the people that are talking shit, that they want fucking things to happen, and they want to win,
and they want to buy–, “I’m gonna buy the Clippers
when you buy the Jets,” dude, you work four f**king
hours, you ain’t buying shit. And so, that’s where I get pissed off. But if you’ve decided consciously that you want to have a great work life balance and things of that
nature, then that’s great, and those are the people
that get disrupted. They’ve lost the hunger
for a better thing, I’m not looking down at them. Congrats. Let me tell you a real
freaking secret here on the #AskGaryVee Show episode 60. If tomorrow I read that there
was a new drug in the market, FDA approved, and I could
take it, and it would take–, this is gonna f**k with
a lot of your heads, and it could take ambition out of my body, I would do it. My gift is my curse. I love what I do, but I promise you, and so many of you are about
to be disappointed with me, but I’m talking truth
here, I would take the pill that would get me down to ten percent less ambition and hunger because I’d have a
little bit more balance, and there is a lot of attractive
things that come along with that balance. But that’s not the way it is, and, honestly, I’m super
pumped the way I have it, so, and, weirdly, as I’d said that out loud, I kinda don’t wanna take the pill, but, you get the jist, right? And so, who gets disrupted? Fat cats. – [Voiceover] John asks, “you
give with zero expectation

– [Voiceover] Glenn
asks, “Can you elaborate “on what the middle is and why it sucks?” – Glenn, this is a great question. You know, to me the middle
is the commodity work and thinking that everybody else does. Meaning, it’s what the
market’s doing right now. Like, it’s when start-ups pitch me, “We’re gonna do something
in the photo app space.” You mean like everybody’s been doing for the last five years? It’s commodity work, ya know? I think if you’re not
trying to break things, you’re not doing a good job, or back to clouds and dirt, non-middle, if you’re not doing like,
you know what’s so funny? I’ve sat through four pitches today, and I’ve liked two, and one is because the two guys are just doing the work. They’re like in the weeds. They’re not doing the big
holistic branding thinking game-changing stuff. They’re just executing,
but at a raw level. I just find that there’s not that many hardcore practitioners,
and there’s even less big where’s the world going, ya know, one of those trends at the highest level where am I doing the kind of
things at the highest level, and so I don’t really know
how to explain the work but you’re surrounded, I’m sorry, I don’t really know how
to explain the middle, but you’re surrounded by
it 99.9% of your life. – Hey Gary, I have a question
for you for #AskGaryVee.

– Alright, I get it. You want to know about SnapCash. I just watched the video. Nice job, nice production. Look, I think this continues. This is why I invested
in Venmo four years ago. The thought of payment
transfers amongst people in a paperless, cashless
world is very important. And to layer it into a social
network, what I like about it for SnapChat is they’re
getting in very early. What I mean by very early
is not into the game, very early in one’s age
to create the behavior. Because SnapChat has a heavy
13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 year old demo, they can
capture a lot of that behavior. I always thought that Facebook,
I remember thinking that the social network I wanted
to build when Facebook was blowing it up was one that
was around your license. Because I wanted to get the people before they went to college. And I thought like, if we
start a social network where your license was your
gateway in, that there was something there and that’s
what SnapChat has done. It’s gone earlier. It creates behavior. Look, cryptocurrency, Apple
Pay, this kind of stuff with Square and SnapChat, if I’m a
traditional financial service, I’m very concerned about
the enormous innovation over the last 24 months invading on my turf. And if I’m a consumer, I’m extremely happy because competition breeds
enormous innovation. And the number one thing we love is time. And I see a lot of things
in the financial world saving us time now. Saving us time to go into
our wallet and take this out, and take out cash. Ooh, I actually have to
give a receipts to Matt. You know, so that’s good. And you know, or this,
taking out a credit card and swiping it takes time. All these things are much
quicker in this world. Speed, my friends. In sports and in business
really matters cause we value time the most. Might be time to get a watch. Question of the day. What is your number one
most recent app download.

– [Voiceover] Muscle Company asks, “How do you generate novel ideas in an “overpopulated, seemingly stale industry? “The fitness industry, for example.” – The Muscle Company, I
kinda like saying that. The Muscle Company, I
always find the best way to attack an industry that you’re in and is stale, and you want to innovate, by spending zero time in it. One little fun fact that
most people don’t know is I spent an awful, excuse me, an extreme lack of time
within the wine industry and within the agency industry. I don’t think I’ve ever been, I’ve been to six other agencies in
my life cuz they were meetings there. I know nothing about it. I read nothing about other agencies at Ad Age, spend no time asking
my senior people about what they did at other agencies. When I was in the wine
business, everyone was like, “You should go check
out this store in Dallas, “they’re doing X,” I’m
like, “I don’t give a crap.” For me, the way I’ve
always been innovative is lack of education, and I’m not joking. I tend to stay within myself
and what comes natural and two, I look to other industries. So if I were you, I
would be paying attention to what’s happening in the food industry or in the rock-climbing industry or things completely left field
like hip-hop or sports or just stuff that has nothing to do with your industry, because the best way to stay within the zone and not innovate is pay attention to everybody else, because they’re doing the same crap too. – [Voiceover] Joe asks, “With
the NFL in London this week,

“helped you innovate in marketing. “Do you think any of
your areas of expertise “hold you back from innovating?” – Jared, thank you so much
for making the #AskGaryVee Show what it is. For all you hardcore Vaniacs, and I’ve appreciated all
of you, and by the way, all the new lurkers, that means the people watching this show on YouTube
or natively in Facebook, ’cause that’s the way
I’ve been putting it out, and are not leaving
comments are pissing me off. So lurkers, episode 19, get your asses in the comment section. It is the fuel that helps me continue to do this show. Jared, thank you for
making this show what it is and what I mean by that is,
so many of you have heard, if you’re hardcore about me, which is that that Medium post like,
maybe you’d wanna put the picture up here like, you know, me failing all my classes is why I’m good. My lack of reading, my lack of knowledge of a lot of things, that
keeps me very creative ’cause I’m not folding into things and using the same thing over and over, there’s that, it’s a big advantage for me. My lack of education, IQ knowledge on a lot of subject
matters, really helps me. And so for the same
reason I say that, Jared, the answer is yes, the
things that I believe in or I’m more knowledgeable
about hold me back because they get entrenched in my brain, I believe them to be the way they are. Now, because it’s in my soul to fight and to counteract and to go in the grey, not the black and white,
and all that stuff, I think I maybe get away
with it a little bit more, but truth is, I’m still human and yeah, those things are holding me back. – Hey Gary, my name is Mark Cersosimo.