– Hey, Gary, this is John McAlpine, reaching out to you from Toronto, Ontario. My question for you here
– T-Town – is in regard to my
father-in-law’s business. My father-in-law is from
Minsk, Belarus, originally, so his English is very poor and moved here about three years ago, but he’s an amazing, fantastic contractor, and he wants to grow his
business, and I wanna help him. So, given the scope of,
let’s say, about $1,000, because we’re really small, what are some baby steps you could suggest me, as a marketer of his business, to do so I can help him out and so we can start gaining some traction here. You keep answering our questions, Gary, and I promise we’ll keep asking. Thanks for everything you do. – John, great question. Obviously, you know how
to hit my emotional center by going back to the old country. And that’s a great, great question, and a real practical one. And $1,000, I think, is
really so much more realistic for a lot of people that listen. Way more the clients that
we have here on Vayner, spending hundreds of
thousands, millions of dollars each month in different
marketing activities. Couple different things. Number one, I noticed
you said a heavy accent, which made me believe that you were alluding to
don’t give me the advice to put him on camera or put him out there. Now, if his personality is like my mom’s, who never shows up, actually asked my mom for the first time at the Jets game yesterday, I said, mom, I think it might be time for you to be on the show and make your first ever appearance. She said no, she really,
it’s just not her thing. And so that crushed my heart, mom, and you crushed the entire
Vayner Nation’s heart, mom, they all want you to be on the show. So, now, if his accent is something you’re worried about but
he’s willing to do content and become Bob Vila, which,
I know you’re in Canada, but I think Vila might be an
international star, right, but if you don’t know
who it is, look it up, he became like the home, he became America’s
contractor in the 80s on PBS, when people weren’t
doing the kind of content we see on cable these days, when chefs and real estate
agents became famous, and so I would put, I
would make videos of him, if he’s that great of a
contactor, and I believe you, I think, you know, you
get different skills from different parts of the world, he’ll bring a little of
that Eastern European flair or soundness or whatever that angle is to the Canadian building market. I think you put him on and start
doing Bob Vila-like videos. Now, with $1,000, I would
spend that on the 10, 15, 20, 30 mile radius of your guys’ area to get those videos out
to people that are fans of things like Architectural Digest or things that are into
building and interior design, into the culture of home
building, contract work, renovations, things of that nature, so, now, if he’s not
willing to go on camera because he’s introverted,
shy, worried about his accent, I know a lot of those variables, you need to figure out how to make content that is compelling to people, maybe you translate his
advice into written form, and then you run ads on
Facebook in a 20 mile radius, ‘Did you know you could fix
cabinets by doing this?’ ‘Replacing new floors.’ And you gotta target
people based on interests that may find that interesting. Content is the gateway
drug for small businesses, that don’t have a lot of money, have to put out great
contents, spend little dollars, just like I did with Wine Library TV, but now there’s more things. Instagram accounts, those kinds of things, that’s what I would do.

We have a recycling program
that’s specific to our county. – You weren’t on Andy there. Oh but you caught him? Good, edit that, because if you saw Andy’s reaction as the paid performance guy
it’s a ludicrous question. It means that as a matter of fact, what I just said, ludicrous question, can
you guys impose Ludacris in between, like next to me. – [Ludacris] Move get out the way – I oh baby, it’s a ludicrous question if
you’ve been watching the show. Who asked that question?
– [Andy] Liz. – Liz, if you’ve been
watching the show for the last whatsoever, 130 episodes,
then I think you’re just mailing in your question, but I’m glad you got on the show, because it’s fun to be on the show, but Liz, it’s so simple. Facebook targeting. That’s it. You can literally put
your business address and run a radius around it, or everybody in the 07081 zip code or the 08802 Asbury, Jersey in the house. Zip code, and everybody will see it in that zip code, in that feed. It’s a piece of cake. You can do localized
ads with Instagram now. You can do localized ads with Twitter. It’s the only place you can do this kind of stuff outside of direct mail, which
is very, very expensive for the ROI of the attention, because everybody throws their direct mail in the trash. Like this question. Next.

“If you owned a CrossFit gym, “how would you attack the marketplace?” – Jessica, I would attack
it in a lot of ways. I think CrossFit is amazingly ripe for content. People hustling. People wearing skimpy clothes. People in shape. People competing. Just a ton of Instagram,
a ton of Pinterest, a ton of Facebook, a ton of YouTube. Just content, content, content, but, I would have a very
strategic approach, locally. If you actually run a gym, I would care immensely
around the 15 mile radius and so I would also test direct mail, I would test JV’ing with the other, one of my favorite moves
for a local business is, I can’t believe so many local
businesses don’t do this, why not go to every other
local business and say, Hey, India, I’m going to use India
a lot in this episode, Hey India, you have a
beautiful flower shop, here. But you don’t have a lot of customers and neither do I in my CrossFit gym. We need to help each other, right? Like, we need more. You need more people for this. What can we do, right? Maybe I could put your flowers in my gym and I’ll put a sign there. And can you do something for me? And that talk, that biz-dev with local, you know, hey, Staphon, right, like, I’m just
getting into it, now, I’m really now into it, let’s get this light out of the way. Hey, Staphon, I really
like your sneaker store. By the way, I’m going
to buy these sneakers. Some Nikes. You know, but, by the way, you
know, there’s not that many people that come here
Monday through Friday so wouldn’t you, maybe you could put a sneaker display in my
gym and maybe I could have something here. You cool for that? – I’m cool with that.
– He’s cool with that. So, my friends, localized biz-dev. Every small business needs more people. It’s the hustle, it’s the grind. You’re competing against the
thing called the internet and it’s going to win. But it’s going to take 20, 30, 40 years but every day it chips
away at your pocket. Every day, the internet comes and it takes another bill, every day the internet
comes and it just grabs, it just grabs, it just takes your money, and so you need to fight
with your other teammates that have the same problem you have. So, sure all the stuff that I’ve talked about in 102 episodes, watch them all, there’s plenty
of stuff in there to do. But good, old-fashioned knocking on doors and biz-deving with India the flower shop and the Stefan the sneaker
shop is very, very important and I’m blown away, every time
I go into a local business, that they have all this
square footage that they’re not using efficiently ’cause
they don’t have the money for inventory for unlimited sneakers so they’ve just got room, they’ve got room and in that room maybe I could
put a bench with a weight and everyone’s like,
“What the hell is that?” but there’s a sign there
that says Gary’s CrossFit, you know, grab this
coupon, one month free. Biz-dev, locally, I’m
obsessed with it but it takes the guts to go knock on the door and a lot of people just don’t have those guts.

that has a bad reputation
and people only use it in emergencies? Let’s say, for example
the towing industry? Thanks Gary. – Matt, this is a great question,
and I’ve talked about this before. If you’re in the towing
industry, what I would actually be in is I would become a media company in the travel and car industry. I would create a site, you know, especially if you’re regional. I’m gonna assume that you’re
doing this towing in a regional area, let’s call it Kansas City. I would literally call
Kansas City highway.com where you’re reviewing the restaurants, you’re giving people shortcuts. You become a community hub of content and information, and
then sprinkled throughout every third or fourth post you talk about your service. Maybe you do a real hardcore right hook where they click or use the QR code, they put you and your company’s name into their phone, and
then you can control that and put emergency roadside assistance. I like that. That was a really good idea. That’s what you should do. You should become the content player around the culture of driving, highway culture, travel,
and the general area. – [Voiceover] Damon asks,
“Girl Scouts cookies are going

If you were going to market
a brick and mortar bookshop, where would you start?” – So Josh, first of all,
this is a great question. Second of all, I really appreciate
the love you’ve given me. Obviously you put Thank
You Economy in one of your, your Instagram’s tremendous. Obviously the question
was posted, so if you guys could catch his name or slow
it down, go back and watch it, go check out his Instagram. I think your Instagram is really tight. I’ve always said that
marketing doesn’t fix your shit product. Now after being such a
great guy, you’re like, crap, where’s he going with this? Being a bookstore in the
traditional sense of the word is over, right? There’s something called
Amazon, it’s chipping away, it’s just starting. Let me say that one more
time because I think people are confused.
It’s just starting. The corrosion of people going
to bricks and mortar for books has been on like Donkey
Kong, in an iPad, Kindle, and Amazon world. I think if I was to buy 17
bookstores at a bankruptcy, and I had to do it, what I
would do is I would turn them into a live events space
where bookselling was the secondary aspect of it. I would turn it into a coffee
shop, I would turn it into a coworking space, I would
turn it into an events spot. I would turn the physical,
and the fun part is, guys, and this is a little preview,
I’m getting my hands into Wine Library a little bit,
Wine Library’s second floor that has a lot of square
footage, I’m about to turn into an events space. I’m eating my own dogfood on this one. I would say the content you’re
putting out on the ‘Gram, and I didn’t have time to
look at everything else you’re doing, is really strong. But as you can imagine, is that
going to make somebody want to buy a book from you,
for 30 to 70 percent more? Yeah, hippies like India, show her. She would do that, right? But that is a very, no, loving
books is one thing, India. Going and spending 70 percent
more, I can see you, because I know you a little bit, maybe
doing that once in a while. Actually, do you buy
your books from Amazon? – No, I buy my books from
Alexander book company. Yay! Shameless plug! – You know. (laughs) I think that there are some
hipsters out there, but they’re not going to drive your
bottom line, right? That’s the anomaly, not the standard. I’ve done this show for a little
while now, and I would say that India and Staphon’s
head nodding as I was giving that answer was a really good
indication that we’re barking up the right tree here. I would sell 30 to 50 percent
less books to clear up the square footage, within
the store, no matter how big you are, 100 square
feet, 1000 square feet, 5000 square feet, to really
activate the physical location and find other ways and
means to make dollars, because I think bookselling
within a bricks and mortar needs to be the secondary
income, not the first play. I think that’s something
people need to wrap their head around. By the way, real quick,
don’t finish the editing. That is pretty much my
theory on retail, period. Multi use, events, experiential, McDonalds, a lot of people talking about McDonalds. I think they need to triple
down on the playground thesis, right? I mean, I don’t know. People have got to realize,
retail’s in a very new place. – Just leaving this
message because you wanted

– [Voiceover]
Comstock Brewing asks, “Gary, if you were going to
crush it by starting a brewery, what would you do?” – Comstock, great question. You know, obviously I’ve
thought a lot about this, because I always do think
about producing products and selling them. I come from a retail background,
and a lot of our clients are CPGs, consumer packaged good products that sell to consumers, and I always say, what if I had one, and obviously beer, coming from the world I grew up in. As a matter-of-fact, when I first
got into my dad’s business, that was the real first boom of microbrews back in like, 1995, 6, 7, 8. It was a huge boom back then, and I’ve thought a lot about that. Look, I mean, I think the
thing that’s going on is, a couple different things. First of all, I’d win locally. I think microbrews really
need to focus locally, so I would probably go
to every local business within a five-mile radius by hand, and shake hands and kiss
babies to create relationships, so that they use–
you know, like, there’s an insurance company
that has 147 employees down the street in Cincinnati, and you go there, and you become friends, and they use your beer
for their events, right? So I think localization really matters. Next thing I would really focus on would be probably Instagram. I would go all-in on creating
a very serious profile in Instragram, and then using
Facebook dark post ads to drive links from the
Facebook ad to your Instagram to get people following
there because I think the 21- to 30-year-old demo
is living and breathing in that platform, and I
think it matters for you to win in that platform. Number three, I would really focus on getting two to three
states to carry my beer, and then build very strong
relationship with the sales team of that small distributor, because you’re a small microbrew, you’re probably going to be
with a small distributor. You don’t want to get lost in a big one. What I mean by that is the
people that represent Budweiser and Sam Adams, and things of that nature, your little 500 cases a
year gets lost somewhere in the back of the warehouse, nobody cares, so you want
to go somewhere small, where you’re a bigger
fish in that smaller pond. I think you pick two or
three strategic markets and then I would run
Facebook dark post ads and Twitter local ads in that market to build up some hype,
so now all of a sudden, they’re like, oh, your stuff sells, so those are some of
the tactics I would do. – [Voiceover] Dawn asks,

“Gary, I’m interested
in your thoughts about marketing opportunities on Yik Yak!” – Andre, so this is a great question. Back to the attention graph
that I just told India that we need to drill on. The biggest reason I’m
talking about Yik Yak so much is, it does have the
overwhelming attention at scale of this kind of 18-22 year
old demo that’s on college campuses. The truth is, I’m not really
prepared to answer this question that’s why I took it. The truth is, I haven’t put
in enough work on Yik Yak, it’s here, but look where Yik Yak is, this is important, this is
another insight, this is why I grab so many people’s phones. Look where Yik Yak is. As you can see Social
is really jamming here. But, Yik Yak’s in this little
folder that says Social. And, it’s not even on
the first one, it’s here so clearly… Are you laughing because
you’re not getting a good zoom? – [DRock] No, it’s hiding.
– Oh, it’s hiding. That’s right, DRock
it is hiding. (laughter) So even though I’m talking
a big game about my belief in Yik Yak, my actions
aren’t following my words right now. I’m doing a bad job, I’m
not being the best expert at Yik Yak. I haven’t spent a lot of time in there. Obviously, the kind of
anonymous commenting how do you get away with
promoting your burger joint or a pizza shop or Wine Library, to 21 and 22 year olds
Yik Yak users, what do you do? Do you ask a question
about your own business? Or do you make a statement
about your own business? That’s a little spammy. The problem with Yik Yak
as a marketing platform right now is that it’s like
the old forums back in the day when everybody was anonymous
in the 90’s and I would go to wine spectators, wine
bulletin board and be like Wine Library is an amazing store in town. You don’t know how to do it right. I guess in theory, you
can make a comment of, I hear that the Johnny
Burgers own cook is really hot hahaha ’cause it’s me. I guess there’s a way if
you’re very authentic you can win that game. And there’s clearly ways to market. Unfortunately, the thing I
make fun of so many of you of and so many people of, which
is you’re not a practitioner, you’re reading headlines,
I unfortunately in this situation am a lack of a
practitioner and I need to do a little bit more of my own work. As you can tell I have
enough dangerous knowledge of giving you an example
of some of the things you can do, but the question would become what would Yik Yak allow
brands to do if anything, but clearly, if you have
a restaurant or hang-out in the college demo right now
and you’re not desperately trying to figure out Yik Yak every minute, you’re making a huge mistake. – [Voiceover] Coach asks, “Gary, we spend all of our time
pouring our creativity into

“a Kickstarter campaign
beyond providing content “to raise awareness and
reach funding goals?” – Matt, you know. (stammers) I’m bumbling on this. No, no, I’m sticking, DRock,
I just fucking told you that I’m not editing
on any of my mistakes. Jesus with this guy. All you editors are the same, want to take out the natural, authentic. You guys like when I
struggle with my words cause it happens so rarely. (ding) I treat Kickstarter no
different than anything else. Just cause you have an ice
thing that you want to do and you decide to do it on Kickstarter because that’s a platform
that has virality, back to the question
about Medium and Linkedin, that’s fine. The answer is the same. Facebook dark posts, targeting
people that give a crap about ice cream and ices,
putting out content in blog form. Guest contributing. I would literally email
every single person that has a blog of any size or magnitude that plays in your space. I didn’t look deeply, but
if you’re in organic ices or just ices, or desserts
or ice cream culture, I would map out the 700
people that are in that space that have blogs or media outlets and reach out to them and say, “I’d like to guest contribute.” Talk about Italian ices or ice cream or dessert culture in America
or the world, generally, not spamming like, “I want to
tell you about my product.” It’s all about being content and not being about infomercials. Too many of the people watching this show and the rest of the world,
when they think about content they hear Billy Mays, an infomercial. When I think about content, I hear New York Times and Scandal. Get it? It’s about making that decision, and so getting distribution,
putting out good content, and that means guest contributing, Facebook dark posts if you’ve
got money to drive towards it, reaching out to influencers and chefs that are in the dessert space to see if you can JV what I would
call business development. “Hey,” you know, “Mario Batali,” “Here’s what I can do for you. “Give you 8% of my company if you “can get me the spark that
starts out my awareness. “Hey, Carla Hall, I think you’re amazing “in your southern cusisine, I’ll give you “five years worth of my product for free “if you give me a little love. “How can you give me love? “A tweet’s not enough.” So it’s biz dev, it’s content creation that’s not infomercial but actual content, and then it’s proper internet marketing, which right now to me is creme dela creme is Facebook dark posts. You’ve been watching the #AskGaryVee show. My question of the day
for you is very simple.

– [Voiceover] Chip asks, if
you owned a winery in Napa, what your left jabs look like? – Chip, thanks for the question. And honestly, I’ve been
reading the feedback. Thanks for the critiques yesterday. Some of your took it a little to far. I mean, what I was really
saying from critique this show was, give me compliments, not actually nitpick and
find something to upset me. But anyway, you know, I want
to start answering these questions in a different
little bit of a way, and so thank you guys. You guys continue to evolve this show. Big shout-out to the people
that have been tweeting and Instragramming the fact that it’s been interesting to watch the
show evolve from one to ten. It is pretty crazy for the
amount of shows I’ve done and videos I’ve done to
watch it actually have an evolution even with intention. You grew with that, Steve. Show Steve. – [Gary] Zak, do you agree with that? – Yes. – So to answer your
question, I’m gonna answer it in a way that I hope
everybody who’s listening doesn’t miss the point that
this works for everybody, not just wineries. If I was a winery in California,
I would actually make my jabs Wine Library TV. Let me explain. Could you imagine if a
winery in Napa Valley did a show where they
tasted wines from all over the world that were not
from Napa and critique them and gave their thoughts. All of a sudden you start looking at them as an authority instead
of somebody who’s just pitching their wine, right? Everybody wants to go the route of like, let’s show the day in
the life, and they take video, like cropping the
crap and like tasting. Nobody cares about that. They will care a little bit
about the dog running around. And if you teach them
the dog’s name is Goldie and make more videos about Goldie, they’ll care about that. But what they really want
and what you really want is utility. The reason this show
exists is this is the next coming of my ability to give utility. I’m giving content that actually
is a little more tangible. Now it’s opinions, so take
it for what it’s worth but you’ve decided you’re
gonna allocate your time and I’ve somehow become
important enough to you, or you’re curious enough
about my POV and brings value. Value comes in entertainment,
value comes in a lot of forms, but I really do think
opinion, context, information, these things are very powerful. And so to answer your
question is, I would just review other wines from
the world and give my two cents on that, because
then, you’re leveling up and not just pitching. In the same way that everybody
here, instead of talking about their products or
their ebook, or their blog, can talk about other stuff. Hence, look at the structure of this show. These are questions from you
that I have to respond to, thus they matter more to you. You have to put out things
that matter more to others. That’s a little bit of my curve ball. Take it for what it’s worth. – [Voiceover] Ivan asks, do
you respond to posts, tweets,

Is it some local listings in SEO, writing content, social media? Antoine, what’s up, brother? Gary Vee, but you know that. You know, look this is
always the best question. This is the question that
I rappled with, rappled, grappled with, when I got
involved in my dad’s business. It’s very hard. What do you do? I made flyers at home and
gave them out when people walked into the store. When you’re hustling and
you’ve got limited budget, you’re in trouble by many
people’s points of view. Let me give you the real first answer. The real first answer is work more. The greatest way to
close the gap financially is to put in the extra two or three hours. So, whatever you’re doing, add
an hour or two to each day. Still eat healthy, still have
sleep, but an hour or two of hustle, little less watching
Game of Throne marathons and Madden 15, extra hustle
because when you’re limited, that’s the play. To me, Facebook dark
posts has one of the best ROI’s right now, Google AdWords is always a strong contender, banner retargeting. It really depends on your
business, it depends on if you’re e-commerce, to me,
those three would really work. If you’re a local business
that’s trying to drive people into the store, you start
looking at Yelp and Foursquare and things of that nature. Sometimes it might even
be, believe it or not, local radio, local cable
television, believe it or not. There might be ways, but the
truth is, there’s very specific answers based on very
specific small businesses. But, don’t, don’t lack hustle. Biz dev, one of my favorite things when we didn’t have a lot of dollars was biz dev. Go to the barber and be
like, can I put some flyers of my business in your store
and then you can put some, there’s that move. There’s
the call for advertisers thing that was my classic YouTube video. We can link that down below,
that’s probably the second time in three episodes linking
it, but it’s a classic. Go and get the money, and so, those would be my first answers to a local financially strapped. Networking, hustling, biz
dev’ing, go to the local businesses around you, trade,
go to the Chamber of Commerce events, figure out if you can do something and just print coupons and hand them out, you know, in quotes. Guys, I appreciate you jamming
with me in episode three.