become too expensive for a new start-up to compete with larger
companies for ad spots?” – Marc, the answer’s absolutely. I mean, that’s the whole point. That’s the whole point of
everything I talk about which is jump into new places when the grass is greener, ahead of the market to create the arbitrage
when it’s under priced compared to the market, a la, email marketing for
Wine Library in 96 and 97, nobody else was doing it. I was asking for it. My conversions were better. More people came. The conversion rates went down, it became more expensive, and harder to get people
into the email funnel, that became the expense. Google Adwords, on the word
wine for five, ten cents. A hell of a lot better than
owning it for two bucks, right? Of course it will get more expensive. We’re seeing it on Facebook now. Facebook ads to get into the feed are more expensive than they were 12, 18, 24 months ago. Even when I started this show and told you to do dark posts, it’s
gotten more expensive since then. So the answer and the
question and the debate and the opportunity all
lie in the same place which is what are you
doing about Instagram and Snapchat and Meerkat and Periscope and all these new things. Are you moving there when
the audience is not as big, the returns are not as
big in the short term? My overall plan is to go to those places hold my breath for three
or four or five or six or seven months, when
it’s not as valuable, but be there when it does become more valuable, and then ride that wave for 12 to 24 months before those platforms become an add their ad product. Instagram’s ad product
is still not mature yet, so the organic reach for the people that jumped on three,
four, five years ago. Is it five years already for Instagram? Feels like it is. 2009 for Instagram feels right, right? Or 2010, trying to remember. Anyway, if you’ve been, you know, fuck charity right, and like
other people of that nature, they won, they moved quickly. They’ve got the biggest audience. They can command enormous dollars. So, I think the answer is yes depending on your budgets. It becomes more price prohibitive. What a small start-up or small business has is time versus a big brand’s money. Right, so are you willing
to work seven pm to three in the morning to
get the disproportion arbitrage of new platforms to over index before money becomes the variable. I hate when small businesses are like, oh, that’s it, we don’t
have enough money to compete with the big guys. What you have is speed and time. What I mean by that is they have time too, but people that work in corporate America don’t want to stay up til
four o’clock in the morning that often. And even if they do, they want to move within the system of corporate America, and they cannot do the
same things you can do. It’s not that same
entrepreneurial nimble system. By the time they even understand what Snapchat, Instagram,
Periscope, Meerkat are, it takes two years for it to get approved. In that time, you’re executing, and so, the answer’s yes, but that’s not a bad thing. It only speaks more to
my overall philosophy of jumping into these new platforms, extracting the value before the ad product becomes mature, and then using the ad
product, Facebook dark posts while everybody else is waiting. Now, in 2016, 17, 18, when Facebook darkposts unpublished
posts, the ad product become the mainstream, that’s when it becomes prohibitive for you, but you’re on to the next one.

“differ for a free service
versus a paid one?” – When you’re throw the
right hook that’s free I get excited because
there’s less friction, and it feels like I’m gonna really be able to land that right hook. The problem is, there’s a
really funny thing about free. Free creates a scenario where people value it for what it’s been put out. It’s really interesting. I think that a lot of people who watch this show value it quite a bit. I think that the 10% left,
if I started charging four bucks an episode,
or two bucks an episode, the you know, actually you know what, that’s gonna be the question of the day. And I know this is a tough question, and by the way, I will
not be charging for this, so don’t worry, don’t hedge and say zero, I don’t have any plans on it. But if I was, what would you pay to watch an episode of
The #AskGaryVee Show? And yeah that’s the real question. And clearly, I expect most
of the comments to be zero, or no, because I respect that there’s so much content out
there, but I do believe that my content is better
than a substantial amount of content out there in the world. Especially when it talks about new platforms, business,
running businesses, leadership, entrepreneurship,
start up, tech culture. So, I do think that we’ll
see a surprising number, and I’m sure you’re
probably getting answers right now in Meerkat,
so Staphon, feel free to not shout it out, cause
I want to be surprised. But I do think that
it’s really funny to me to think about the 10% of
you that I would expect to pay for it that if you
were paying four bucks for it you’d actually value the show more. It’s really quite interesting psychology. So, how do I act differently? One, when I throw right
hooks, for example, when I tweet out later
today that episode 80 is up. You know, I expect to
land more than saying, “Episode 80 is up, pay
me three dollars Snapcash “if you want to watch it.” You know, I have a little less angst of the conversion because I know that there’s no friction financially, which is one, besides time,
finance is the friction. And so, I think it’s got a
totally different cadence, different expectation,
different pressure hold. I think it’s easier. – Hey Gary, answer my question.

Not old like that. Don’t get crazy. Here’s my question: Why do you think men should aspire to date a rich bitch? – Hey Nicole, big shout out to you. I know your book’s out. I took this question because
you are an old great friend and I wanted to give
exposure to your new book, so DRock, let’s link that up. I know you’re doing super
well with your book, and I think we talked a little bit about, the book is about really
financial stability and financial smarts, I
think, that a man should marry a rich bitch or
be in that situation, or a woman should marry a rich bitch dude for the same reasons that, having a stable financial partner is always a good decision in life. People that are unable
to manage their money deal with so much stress, and money is not the most important thing,
but when you don’t know how to handle that, there’s
an enormous amount of stress that comes along in life, and it’s not about how much you make. There’s plenty of people
who know how to manage their money making $37,000 a year and have a lot less stress than people that make $140,000 a year
and don’t know how to manage. To me, I’m anti-stress. Money management is at
the tippy top of the list, probably right below the health
and well-being of family, and that would be the core reason. – Yo, Gary Vee.

where I need to hire an office assistant. Sales are great, but I don’t
necessarily have the capital to pull the trigger. Any creative ideas on how to achieve this?” – David, that is a great
question, and it’s really fun to be in the presence of DRock, one of the people who
I think payed forward and is going to feel the huge
dividend on the way back. Meaning, I know a lot of
real hard-core watchers and listeners. I know that you DRock first
at a video for me for free. Was that Clouds and Dirt? That’s epic, let’s link that up. And, you know, that led to a relationship which lead to a full time gig. And now, will be my heart and soul as long as he’ll have me in my video’s world, which, you know, Super Bowl videos of the Jets winning. Amazing, you never know DRock. So, I think one of the things you can do is use your social capital to put out there that
you’re looking for somebody and that this how you can compensate. Obviously, money is the accepted
compensation in our society but I gotta tell you, like
I think that there’s a day and age with the internet
being a middle platform where other things can be used. And so, I don’t know So, obviously you just felt an
edit because DRock screwed up kind of like Pete Carol
at the one yard line by not double checking the card. Because I’m not double checking the card, or the card went weird on you. Okay, well, you messed up.
– [DRock] (mumbling) – Yeah.
– Right, let’s get a DRock messed up alert. I wanna make sure, I
wanna double check this. Just so you know, I do double check so I want to see if it’s pretty, but it better really over the top to rock the DRock messed up alert it better be legit, ’cause it only happens once every 66 episodes. Does anybody think it’s
interesting that it’s episode 66 one more six, the devil, the
Patriots won, Belichick. And so, anyway, going back
not sure where it got cut off but just make sure you edit it weird DRock everybody knows that there was a mistake on your end. I think that there’s a lot of ways to be able to barter out that service. I would literally put on Craig’s list and on your social media, and e-mail blast and take your ten closest
friends and have them blast and say look, I’m looking for this, this is what I can offer. Maybe that’s minimum wage, plus I’ll give you all my
services free for a year or there’s a million ways to hack. I think that we in our modern
society across the globe outside a very rural part pockets in parts of the world that you know, I’m not educated enough to know this. We are really in a flat
out currency exchange game and I’m a big believer
that over the next 50 years because the internet shrinks the middle but there will be an
opportunity as a matter of fact I’m gonna make another
prediction, Staphon, that there will be a major
platform in the next 15 years that is a major top 50 start-up that is infrastructure for us to trade. Like, straight up like
Ebay, Craig’s list, mobile you know centric where it’s just like, you know I have this coat laying around and someone’s like, “Cool,
I’ll mow your lawn.” Like just, there is so
much inefficiency and stuff and services provided I think you should go that
route maybe make a video maybe take the momentum of this answer go really do something the other thing is to
really pound the streets meaning just like know,
no rock unturned right, just ask a lot of people there is a lot of people out there and I think in our
society not paying in cash feels taking advantage I think I’ve consistently
been on the offense in nuances of like border exchange I just think there’s a
lot that can be done maybe maybe you have a collection
of rare baseball cards that somebody wants. Or, you know you’ve 14
pairs of awesome Nikes maybe you could’ve six. You have assets around you,
your time, your services a crap load of stuff in your house trade that for what you need. Or go with do your when
good enough of a name to make a promise that hey I can pay this but I promise you as soon as we get going I’m gonna make you the full time person I think the one thing that I promise you that you need to make sure you do. is a lot of people
promise and don’t deliver and I highly recommend you
don’t make that promise unless you feel like you can deliver and the reason I make so many promises I always say to myself,
even if I fail business wise I’ll go to my own bank
account and close the gap. If you’re willing to go to that level and I don’t know your
personal finances, but anyway, barter, barter, barter. Hey Gary Vaynerchuk this is
Colin AKA Dj Veaux here

my business and looking to
include partners for content. What’s the best way to recruit them? Money/promise of exposure?” – Kate, I’m super pumped. Guys, I went to high school with Kate. By the way, let me give
a big shout out to Kate. Kate came to my high school junior year in the middle of the year. And Kate was a top five attractive girl, I’m being very politically correct here, in our school. She made huge noise. Kate, huge shout out
for the noise you made at North Hunterdon High School, 1993. And recruited as a
soccer star, by the way. Just giving you some daps, Kate. I’ve been noticing a lot of your stuff, some of your work is incredible, it’s been really fun to watch. Anyway, I think both work. It depends on what people are more motivated by. If you have a big enough
platform to create exposure, people will work for free. DRock hit me up and offered to make a film for free for me because he knew that was gonna get him his exposure. He vetted,
or intuitively felt, that I I was a good guy,
sure enough before I gave him a full-time job offer to work here, which think about that outcome,
but that’s for another day. He did get into contact with
Chris Brogan, Ted Rubin, – [DRock] There were
like three other people. – So he made the right
move. You could say, “Wow he did that for free.” The reason I’m always
willing to take free work, and free hustle, is
because I feel comfortable with the fact that I’m
gonna try to pay them back tenfold on the ROI, by
giving them a shout out, I know other people that
are marketing leaders pay attention to me because
I’ve been on the cusp of doing new stuff, so he
had all those opportunities. Now, I swooped in and saw
the raw, amazing talent that this man had and had
to bring him on board. And this show exists because
DRock joined the family and it gave me the infrastructure, so big shout out to you, DRock. So, I think free works. If
you think other photographers will see value in your platform, or whatever you’re trying to accomplish, money always works as well. I think people are motivated
by different things. I’ll tell you something people
always try to do with me. I never do it, but people
do it all the time, is leveraging your rolodex.
I mean the amount of people that are willing to do things for me, for me to get them to… people, I don’t know, I’m
not going to name drop. But it’s insane, I never wanna do that. Because I think that’s
not doing the right thing for my relationship, but I
understand why people do it. People do it to me left and right. They’re like, “Hey Gary Vee.
Meet my boy, Johnny McGee.” And when I meet Johnny McGee it’s like, “Yeah, I gave Ricky McGee
eight billion dollars to get to you”, it happens all the time. People value different things,
I think money and exposure are two things that actually– Are we doing Patriot stuff? Guys, you have to
understand. I’m a weird guy. Guys, I’m a weird guy. I’m weird. I will fire over crazy, weird shit. Minnie, I’m not scared about
this. I’m not scared, Minnie. I fire over Patriot shit, I promise. Hey guys, how do you like this? (laughter) – [Gary] Like that? So, yeah. That’s it. Let’s
go on the next question. I know you just got taught
how to submit questions

– [Voiceover] Jelle asks, “what
came first at VaynerMedia: clients or employees? And did you ever do
stuff without employees?” – So let’s get into this question. First, I actually don’t
know how to pronounce this, so let’s go to India, who I
thought helped us with that, DRock, how – ? – I don’t – “yell”? “Yelle”? I don’t know. – [Gary] Got it, alright. Steve? What’s your shot here? – “Yella?” I don’t know. – You know.
– [India] It’s very pretty. – It’s gorgeous. Yeah, don’t worry, you’re not hurting feelings anyway. India’s going to be very
sensitive on this show. (laughter)
Alright, you know, we started Vaynermedia, two
things happened in parallel. We got out, I got ahead of
it, AJ was graduating college and we were gonna start a company in May. In March or April I got ahead of it and got us a big project
with a big client. So I guess customer came first. I kinda used, I did something clever. I made that person pay the
entire project up front and then used those dollars
to pay the first 3-4 employees who were all of AJ’s homies, who are all still here,
hence the foundation. So I guess client, right? I got an upfront campaign
that I used those dollars, and then the official first day we had those five or six employees, so but we never did anything without them, though actually me and AJ
did some of the early stuff for that project by ourselves, so that’s the answer. I don’t know how you wanna look at it. I will say this: any time you can sell
ahead of your expenses, you do it. One of the biggest reasons so many people go out of business, and many of you who watch this
show will go out of business, is you do not know how
to manage cash flow. You think in terms of, you know, accrual versus cash basis,
if we wanna go hardcore, you know, CPA-style here, oh, we’re gonna make 80k so
I can have 70k in expenses, but if you don’t get paid
properly or if there’s a hiccup, or, you know, no buffers, no practical knowledge
of that vulnerability, and then a bunch of you
who are tech-driven, you raise too much money, you
don’t keep your burn in check, you assume you’re gonna raise more money, it doesn’t go as easy
or as well as you think, because once you actually become a company people are looking at what you’re doing versus what you promise you’re gonna do, and those are the vulnerabilities of how you go out of business. – [Voiceover] Gabii asks, “Do
you have any bucket list items

– [Voiceover] Rollinson asks,
“Is paid promotion for jabs an effective way to build
an audience for right hooks?” – Rollinson, this is a great question. It’s something I’ve been
debating a whole lot. Now to frame it up for everybody, the notion is should
he, you, she, him, it, where am I going, I don’t know. But sorry, stick with me
here because I’m excited. Should we as a collective pay for jabs, meaning a non call to action. Not buy this wine, but should I create an infographic about the tempranillo grape and it’s just a did you know about… and it’s just a piece of good content. Should a spend three,
four, five hundred dollars on getting this awareness
to build up equity to then later come in with the right hook. I think the answer is predicated
on how much money you have. Right, like, if you have a
limited budget, you’re probably going to want to save it
for, hey buy this wine for $14.99, it’s a killer for Thanksgiving. You know, like, that is
probably what you want to save it for, but if you have
an overall marketing budget, if you’re a bigger brand, if
you’re spending real money, I think there’s enormous value in jabbing. I’m spending a ton of money on jabbing to build up awareness, to get
people into the ecosystem. So, I’m a big fan of
spending dollars on jabbing. Content that benefits
the audience that doesn’t have the direct R.O.I. to you, and you’re spending even more money on not just producing it but
getting it reach and awareness because I think of myself as a marketer and a brand guy not just a core salesman. That has to do with your finances. I can do that today, I
couldn’t do it 3 years ago. I couldn’t afford it,
10 years ago, forget it. So it depends on where your business is at but if you can afford it, I would allocate some level, 10 to 30
percent of your budget on just jabs, if your limited. If you’re a bigger brand,
big pockets 50, 50 even. Maybe 80, 20 on just the branding because you’re building exposure. I mean look, every TV
commercial, every billboard, 95% of those aren’t infomercial,
they’re brand building. That stuff works. – [Voiceover] James asks, “Do you

– Hey GV, it’s TF. Got a question for you for all my friends in the real estate space around the world. And the question is, how much of my advertising / marketing dollars should I be spending on
salespeople, telemarketing efforts, versus direct mail, print, traditional, versus online. You know me, buddy. I’m a no-wrong-way-to-generate-leads
kind of guy. What’s your take on it? (person claps)
(people chat) – Hey, you know, TF, I
gotta tell you, I agree. I mean, obviously I push
new forward ways of thinking about selling stuff, whether
it was ecommerce back in ’96, email marketing in ’97,
Google AdWords in 2000, banners, then content marketing in 2006. I mean, people are talking
about content marketing now. I started Wine Library TV
on February 21st, 2006, to do content marketing, so
obviously all the social stuff. I’ve got peeps in the background, too. You know, I get it. Yeah, I think that if you’ve got a way. I know we’ve talked in
the past that direct mail really works for you as a channel. Agreed. Do it, if that’s working for you. I even did direct mail for Wine Library seventeen months ago, just to make sure it didn’t bring any ROI,
and it was a disaster. It was scary to me. We used to be direct mail juggernauts in ’98, ’99, 2000, where we’d get three, four, five, six,
seven percent redemption of how many fliers we’d sent out. People coming to the store. We had six people bring
the coupon to the store and we had a big value prop in it. So direct mail clearly died for us and then other places that have grown. And, SEM works, and Facebook
dark posts are working, and content clearly has worked. So, I’m a no-romance-over-the-lead
kind of guy, as well. I mean, here’s my thing, though. People fall in love with the way they’ve made their money, right, because it’s working right now. I’m thrilled when I think that Instagram and Facebook dark posts and Twitter suck. Can’t wait for that. Can’t wait for 2024, you know,
when I’m dissing on that. I’m like, it’s all about
this, the virtual reality. Great. Can’t wait, in the words of Bart Scott. And so, I think the biggest thing that I get scared about is that people get romantic
and don’t try new things. Every person watching here
should always be spending between five to twenty
percent of their money, if that’s what you’ve got, or your time, if that’s what you’ve got,
on new and innovative things, because they need to be prepping for 2016, 2018, 2022. And here’s the biggest key, TF. No matter what you tell me, your direct mail response
and telemarketing response is not as good as that
same action 10 years ago. If you were doing that same
calling in the background and that same direct
marketing 10 years ago, it would have had a bigger ROI because more people were paying
attention to those channels, their actual home phone and their mailbox, then they are now in
a world of this, this, and everything pulling away. Not to mention, the costs
are higher in direct mail because, you know, the
post office is subsidizing that loss of money. So, these are the things
that I think about it. It’s the arbitrage of
the value of the ROI, not necessarily the action itself. – [Voiceover] Damian asks,

“Gary, awesome segment with Seth Meyers.” Lisa asks, “With all this
talk about Snapcash, what is the one thing you’ll
teach your kids about money?” – Thanks for the love, Lisa. That’s an interesting question. You know, my parents taught, my mom, actually, really
taught me to respect money. You know, my dad, for an immigrant, was a big thinker with
money in the business. He really let me splurge and take chances. I give him a lot of credit for that. You know, it’s funny. I have a
weird relationship with money. I want it. I’m aware of its benefits. But I’m much more into the PR legacy. You know, where’s my place in history. Much more so about the dollars. I think if you try to
put yourself in history, the money finds you very quickly. You know, I don’t know. My biggest fear is my
kids are going to be rich versus what I grew up with and so I’m trying to figure out some level of creating respect around it. I guess the only thing that’s
defaulting into my mind is I’m going to make those two work. They’re going to work so they earn their own cash and then they can figure out
what their relationship is with their cash. – Hey GV, it’s TF.

I actually just started
at VaynerMedia yesterday, so I’m on day number two. – Newb. (laughter) Newb. I’m impressed with the hustle though, like sneaking in to the
first episode of questions on your second day? That’s an impressive start. Trying to make an impression on the boss. I, I appreciate it. All right. What’s your question? – Okay, so my question is, so you know how Facebook reach has been going down. – Organic. – And this is the lowest
levels we’ve ever seen. – Yep. – So, I’m curious, what do
you think is the role of organic or unpaid content where the brand is always on
strategy, and the second part– – Within a Facebook world? – Within the Facebook world, and the second part of the question is, just how much reach is
enough to actually justify the time, effort, and
resources that go into producing these assets? – That’s a great question, man. Nice start. Um, you know I think it all depends on size, scale, and objective, right. So I think the biggest problem
that everybody makes is there’s no one size that fits all. Obviously, the brands
that we work with here are at huge scale, versus let’s say a lot of people watching who’ve got a small business. You know, we manage some brand pages that I can think of right now, that are so large in overall size and have done a good job
putting out great content that they’re still getting
hundreds of thousands of impressions organically
without paid up front. Now obviously, all of you have heard me ranting about dark posts for quite a bit. And we even talked about this
when you were interviewing. So for me, you know,
do I feel that Facebook has evolved into a place
that you want to look at 80, 90, even 100% of your posts are being preplanned to its audience and then paid upfront? You know, if you’re a fortune 500 company I do believe that that justifies the case. And I believe that
because I actually think that those working media
dollars, those paid dollars, are a hell of a lot
better spent on Facebook, than they are on traditional
banner or things of that nature places and organizations that you can from giving those kind of advices. So, I think that that’s the case. Now, what’s the threshold? I think that comes down
to the objective at hand. Look you can be a Fortune 500 Company, only reach 16 hundred people organically, but try to be selling
something that’s $10,000 as a B to B product and if you convert four people, and you’re making $40,000 on it. You’re profit margin is 50% and you’ve made $20,000 in profit, and your agency charged you $800 or $1800 well then you justify the means. So I think it’s, one of the biggest things that we try to do here, and one thing I think all of
you need to pay attention to is how do you become
efficient on the back end. I think what’s separating us, and what I’m excited about here, is we’re producing quality
content at a cost level that the market has
never seen before, right? And that’s out advantage, right? That for you, with fresh eyes, is probably the difference
that you’re seeing. That’s what you guys have to think about. For a lot of entrepreneurs
that are watching, and I know that’s a core
of my audience, is is your time worth it. Because it’s not a money
game, it’s a time game. So it’s always resources. To me there is no one size fits all. For all the brand managers,
and the CMOs and the CFOs and the corporates that
are watching the show or listening to the show, I know for a fact that they need to really look at just the math, right. Like, am I paying more
that what I’m reaching. So if you’re paying a
traditional digital video shop $10,000 to make a video, and then you post it organically and it reaches 900
people, that’s off, right. So, I just think that you have
to look at it case by case. – Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.