I have a question for you
today is how important were your selling skills as an
entrepreneur and what are the different things that make
you improved as a salesman? Thank you very
much for answering. Love your show.
See ya. – Shu, thank you so
much for loving the show. I love you back. I think my salesmanship
was the first raw talent that I understood in my life. It has been the
bedrock of my existence. The unbelievable reason that
VaynerMedia is what it is today has a lot to do
with salesmanship. It is massively important when
you actually, it’s really funny when you actually sell something having sales skills is
extremely important. So many of you are going to fail
in your business because you underestimate salesmanship as a core tenet when you’re
trying to sell something. Many of you make the nicest
thing, the coolest thing, it’s why artists starve
’cause they can’t sell. Like selling is real. I think it’s been an enormous
part and I think the thing that’s made me better
through my career is experience. You know, like experience is a
real thing like us youngsters we want to think it’s not.
(laughter) You know what’s funny,
I put us youngsters because I think of you
as a great youngster. At 22, 23 I thought
I was it, right? I guess I look at it as like
basketball players, ’cause Dunk I know you love it, they become
better shooters as they like as they, they become craftier, they
become more experienced and the guys that are all-time you’ll
notice their game evolves, you know, through their careers
because they can’t rely just on their athletics anymore. They’ve gotta become crafty. They gotta be able to shoot. I mean I would say LeBron,
LeBron to me could have easily been the best all-time player,
he never got his jump shot developed the way that
Jordan and Kobe did. He’s a different type of
player but if his jump shot was unstoppable right
now, forget it. And his three point range has
gone down in his career instead of up and by the way I’m the
biggest LeBron guy of them all but to me imagine if LeBron,
Andy I saw you react to this. I don’t know if you, you got
something to say about this? – I mean his jump shot
is definitely improved, he does hit the jump shot. – [Gary] It hasn’t improved, his three point percentage
was down last year. It improved from early on. Yeah, it was down last year. And I think it’s
gonna continue to go. It hasn’t improved, it improved from like the
beginning but like– – [Andy] He was only taking ones
he only thought he could hit. – [Gary] And he’s
such a complete, you know what’s
tough to analyze? To that point, it’s tough to
analyze LeBron because he’s such a all-around player. He doesn’t need to score but
anyway nonetheless, the bottom line is the 22-year-old me would
be disappointed right now if he saw the 40-year-old me in
salesmanship because he would realized, huh, he’s picked up
some shit along the way that I did have just from
my natural skills. So the answer is unbelievably
and if you’re watching right now and you were building a business
and you are not a natural born salesperson or are great at it
and you are self-aware enough to know that you need to either get
a family member AKA these guys like really in your inner
circle that are gonna be there long-term and allow them to
or even bring in a partner, it is that important and if
you’re a good salesperson never allow yourself to not
continue to learn. Try different tactics,
do different things. Experience has made me better. – [Eliot] I like where
this show’s going.

you a quick question. – Was it challenging for you to
make the switch from selling to consumers wine to selling in to large businesses like
Toyota or Mountain Dew? – And if so how did
you make the switch? Thanks, Gary. – It’s been difficult because
I like selling to consumers a little bit more and I did that and I’m selling to
companies second. So, like in a weird way even
at the height of my career financially, power, brand I’m
doing something that is in the short term, a decade, which is
long-term for every one of you watching which is one of the
fundamental reasons I will win more than most of you because
the level of patience I have and humility to put in the work
is so much greater than you. So in the short term, 10 years,
I’ve decided to do something I don’t like as much because it
builds the platform for them to allow me to do something
that I love the most and so this is the path I decided. Builds the best framework for me
to go out and sell to consumers again one day and I’ve enjoyed
and learned to enjoy and found different nuances and challenges
in selling to B to B to big companies but I definitely it’s
probably the reason I’ve been so hot on the wine stuff lately. You know during my vacation when
I had a little downtime when I was had some downtime when the
kids and family went to go get the fruit stand and my brain
was getting crazy I wanted to do some action I didn’t go and like hit up an executive to
expand B to B work. I started looking at what Wine
Library was selling and try to sell wine to people, right? I still love the speed, the speed in the
day-to-day interaction. As a matter of fact, when things
are just thinking about for our team is that I think
I want to start a little shop. I think we need to sell stuff. I don’t like just GaryVee
t-shirts and stuff like that. I actually mean like
because that’s like whatever. I mean like something. I think we should brainstorm, come up with
something and sell it. – [DRock] That’s be cool.
– Yeah, I think so too.

My name’s Chris. I’m out here today, in
the fucking pouring rain making content for my fixed gear blog, that you’d call my shop. My question is,
lots of my fans are under 18 years of age, and don’t have credit cards, and can not pay for shit
that they want on my website, that they express
what they want. Do I pitch to retail, and if so, are there any
special tactics or ways that I should go about that? Thanks. – Chris, if your demo
doesn’t have credit cards, and that’s what’s stopping you from selling direct to consumer, your answer shouldn’t
be, how do I go to retail to go to my consumers? Your answer should be, how
do I get money from my demo to make my transaction,
meaning, whether it’s Venmo, or PayPal, or virtual currency, you know, there’s a much
bigger lift, my man. One of the great things
about the world, today, is that all of
us entrepreneurs can create a Shopify account, or Magenta,
or whatever you want to, and go direct to consumer. Do you know how difficult it
is to get retail distribution? Do you know how much
they’re gonna hose you? Do you know that you’re gonna
make 50 cents on the dollar? Do you know that you’re gonna, they’re gonna ask you for
things like trade dollars, which is if you even
wanna be in our store, you have to
pay us for the right? Do you know that if your
product doesn’t sell well in the first 30 days,
they discontinue it? Do you know that you’re
gonna spend 94% of your time trying to knock on doors and
get into the retail shop, instead of actually
building your community, and building your business? I think that if, you know,
I think at the highest level, for so many of you,
going back to the well, instead of fixing the sink, which is an analogy I use a lot, maybe your whole business
is broken if you can’t get the money from the people
that you wanna get money from. Right? A lot of people try to target,
somebody pitched me like, I’m gonna sell to
12 to 14 year olds, and they’re gonna
make the decision. That’s the worst zone,
because that 12 to 14 is exactly when kids are
in-between their parents buying them everything, but
them not being able to transact, and so, I would spend a lot
of time trying to figure out whether, what way you can
collect money from them, including things like, I’ve always thought a fun
tactic would be, instead of an add to cart button, an alternative
button to that audience, which is, send the email
to your parents to buy it. So, you have add to cart, but there’s also send
the email to your parents to buy this for you, and you
click it, and it’s got like four different templates, like
the sorry one, the happy one. You know, like, what’s the
angle, depending on your parent, with a transaction
link right there? You need to hack
how to get the money direct from your consumer, not how to go down the
traditional path of retail. – This one’s from Richard.

In a video with Joe Polish you
said that you can sell rocks on the street and still
make 100 grand a year. Is that true? If so, would you make a video
where you sell a rock to someone who doesn’t know you?
Thanks. – So Ryan theoretically,
it is true. Practically, listen
the truth is, actually I’m surprised
I’m answering this. I think I can make 100,000. I wish I was at a point in my
life where I could be so crazy and right now off
of this, do it. Go with DRock to some crazy
place where nobody knows who I am which, oh, by the way
and I love you all for this, which is almost everywhere. Like down the street but you
know, go to a place where I’m not me and
I know that, trust me, you guys perceive
me bigger than I am. I’m just me and I think, now
look, here’s what I would do. I’d go to place, first, I’d go
to a rich upper-middle-class area where it’s not too rich but upper-middle-class demo and I would set up shop on the
corner of the street and I guess most of my day would be, and it’d have to have
rocks in the general area. Access to rocks– – Hmmm.
– No, no I’ll tell you why. I understand but like if
I’m trying to make 100,000 and I can pick anywhere
like you might as well if there’s
a perfect ZIP Code where it’s got the right
income level that I want and there’s access to it efficiency
but I know I can buy ’em on the internet and all that stuff but
nonetheless I guess I would try to market myself as somebody who
is creative on top of a rock. So I don’t think I would if
I was selling rock I wouldn’t try to sell you a rock ’cause
that wouldn’t work but what I would do is I would doodle and create on top of rocks
and try to sell them. And I genuinely with my entire
heart believe that I can make a $100,000 a year
in year two, firm. In year 1, I would make $36,000 in profit. – Could. I believe it’s possible
to sell just a rock. – It is but I think what I would
do because I’d want to get 100,000 is the doodling on top
would then constitute as art and that becomes agnostic and then
marketing can take over and then all I need to do is have
Leonardo DiCaprio take a picture on his Instagram that he’s
bought this rock ’cause it’s art and then it’s game over. It’s just high school
arbitrage, all of it is. – Alright, next
question is from Betty Liu–

What do you think about using
Snapchat as a way to sell and buy products with Snap Cash? Would that be
Snapchat’s next big move? – Parsa, I think it is
an interesting thought. Obviously a lot of people in
the US and Europe entrepreneurs scene are affected by WeChat’s
unbelievable success of not only being a content and a
communication but a retail platform in China. I think Snap Cash is something that Snapchat
is de-prioritizing. I think on the flip side,
I think we’re going to see a lot more commerce
coming from Facebook. I predict that a lot of you
will be selling a ton of stuff through Facebook 24
months from today. I think Parsa for
Snapchat I’m not sure. I think that they’re, internally
I’m sure they’re thinking about their roadmap. I’m curious to think about what
they’re thinking about Instagram Stories, do they feel like one
of the observations that I’m kind of leaning towards is
I don’t think Instagram Stories kills Snapchat but I definitely
think it may slow down the migration of 35 to 55-year-olds
over to the platform if they can use Instagram to feed
that kind of storytelling. So how are they
thinking about that? I was bullish and
excited about Snap Cash. I thought it was a good
move by them way back when. I think it’s
something you can consider. My intuition is what you’re
trying to accomplish ends up becoming a big business within
Facebook in the next 24 months. – Awesome.

“as a retailer selling
someone else’s brand?” – Ah, I remember this
one, I sent this to you. I like this one because
I wanted to go tactical. You know it’s so funny, talk
about the ying and yang meet. Like, I also don’t want
this to get too heavy and philosophical,
I want to go tactical. Anybody who’s a retailer
that’s struggling with like wait a minute, I sell sneakers, so am I going to
make Nike content, or Adidas content, or
Under Armour content, and put it out, who is this again? – [India] This is from Matthew. – Matthew, read it one more time, cause guys check this out,
I think this is interesting, how? – [India] How do you create content as a retailer selling
someone else’s brand? – Right, this is so interesting. As a retailer, you sell
somebody else’s brand. That’s the definition of
a retailer unless you’re selling retail your product, and you’re the
Under Armour store, right? So, I really got a kick
out of this question. I think it’s when people
are looking at the lens the wrong way. We live in a world now where
brands are creating content for themselves, at scale,
and I wonder if Michael, Michael right? – [India] Matthew.
– Matthew, I’m sorry, thank you, if Matthew is looking at
this wrong because he sees the optics of brands
creating content. If it’s what you sell,
you create content. Wine Library creates content
of other brands all the time because we are a retailer, and we’re trying to
sell this Pinot Grigio. It is not our Pinot Grigio,
it is somebody else’s, but we’re creating content
because we’re making margin, and we’ve chosen in
the world of business to be a retailer. Matthew, the way you create content, if you are a retailer of
other people’s brands, is to create content of
other people’s brands. – [India] Free content
or something like that? – You know, its what you do, if you sell other people’s
brands you make content. Now, what you could be asking, and more detail oriented,
back to being practical, is you may have to follow
guidelines of a brand when you’re producing content. I think you need to be
conscious of putting those brands in a good light, because they’re you’re supplier, and they are more than
capable of discontinuing you selling that product, so you have to be political
about what that is, but you also have to
find a different angle, that is your angle,
from the brand’s. I think one of those
places is price. You know most brands
are not going to price because they know the
retailers are selling things at different prices, so their content in the ecosystem is more jab-oriented branding, you could actually be more
in the right hook business. This Pinot Grigio got 90
points from Wine Spectator and is on sale for $11.99, so you could, you know, those are kind of things
a retailer does. You could also create
content of that product within your retail store, and so you’re showing
it in that environment. Again, another thing
brands won’t normally do, because they don’t want to
allude to being favorite, picking a favorite from
one retailer to another. So use the advantages
that you have that you know the
mothership brand won’t do, but you can possibly do, and I think for all of you, now leveling us up back
to the theme of yesterday, I’m trying to do that
more in the show. I think way too many people
dwell on what they can’t do, instead of realizing
what they can do, right? So focus on the things
that make you uniquely you, and do the things that you know
that other people can’t do. Whether that’s your partners, like a supplier and a retailer, or that’s your competitors, they happen to be in this state, you happen to be in Colorado, and you have pretty mountains,
use that to your advantage. You know, like I can’t
make mountain content here. – [India] You hate mountains.

“biz from the ground up,
what trend would you “be paying the
most attention to?” – Justin, this is
a silly question. All of them. What do you mean “what trend”?
All of them. How people are shopping on
mobile, how bricks and mortors are still very viable. Health and wellness,
meditation, technology. There’s no one trend
to pay attention to. I’m not going to give
you, there’s no secret. There’s no episode 201 maybe
Gary will answer my question and give me some incredible insight.
They’re all in play. All the trends matter,
mobile commerce, people shopping behaviors, real time delivery
and then all the genres of things you could
be selling, right? Just a million things that
people are in to like tea and yoga pants and I don’t know. This question is kind of
exhausting and I’m not mad at you, Justin Novello, it’s just it’s a silly question
because they all matter. I pay attention to everything I
can as much as possible, Justin. As many things as possible. They’re all data sets, they
all can lead to opportunity. You know, that’s what I
would pay attention to. There’s a million
things going on. There are 75 different pillar,
core things that are going on in retail. The lack of people
traveling to malls. Postmates same-day delivery. Downtowns and cities
emerging again and the gentrification
of neighborhoods. Fashion trends. What people are
drinking and eating. Sneaker swag. Accessories on cell phones. Everything that’s happening in
Asia that one out of every seven times happens in the US. Like, I don’t know, all of it. – [Voiceover] Melita asks,
“If we aren’t good with numbers,

“sell direct consumer?” – Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think yes. I think Amazon is going to be a
player where they’re basically selling directly to consumer– – AKA with their private labels
or when they’re selling Pepsi through Amazon? – I think they’re going to use
Amazon as a mechanism to sell direct to consumers but the
question is will eventually people like I want Pepsi I want
to Pepsi.com or Pepsi’s Facebook page and just get
directly from there. But that’s not really direct
to consumer because it’s going through Facebook so I think
you still need to use these platforms to go direct consumer.
– Got it. I would say that Amazon is far
less direct to consumer than Facebook because Amazon’s
actually a full-pledged retailer and very honestly I think a
scary one for these guys and gals that are running these
businesses because Amazon’s got real data. In the CPG world, retail and
brands the scariest thing is when a retailer is
gets too much leverage. The biggest brands in the world
are paying for placement in Walmarts and Albertson’s and
Costco’s and Safeway’s that are very expensive. This is not the way
was 30 or 40 years ago. The retailers didn’t have
leverage, the brands did. – Yep.
– And so that got expensive. Direct to consumer is inevitable
the problem is the following big brands like Dove or Pepsi can’t
go direct to consumer because Costco and Walmart and Tesco are
going to say what are you doing? You’re not cutting us out. The second those companies show
a move to wanting to go direct to consumer the big retailers are
going to drop their product from end caps to the bottom shelf
or kick them out of the store. Which then would affect them in
a 90 day period because their sales would collapse which
then would make the stock price collapse so they’re
basically caught in what’s called channel conflict.
They can’t do it. So what’s gonna happen? Here’s what’s going to happen. India and her mom are going to
invent the best peanut butter you’ve ever tasted and they’re
going to start going direct to consumer and they’re going to
sell on Instagram and Snapchat and Facebook and quietly but
surely because that’s where the attention is all of a sudden
their business is going to do $40 million not four
or 1.4 or 400,000. – Yep. – And then, what’s a
big peanut these days? Peter Pan peanut butter?
– [Margo] Laura Scudder’s? – What’s that?
– [Margo] Laura Scudder’s. – [Gary] Laura Scudder’s?
– Smuckers maybe. – [Gary] Smuckers right.
– Jiffy. – [Gary] Jiffy, Jiffy,
there we go. Go ahead. – Well I like grinding
the peanuts in Whole Foods. – Let’s use a soda as an analogy
then Coke and Pepsi are going to be like wait a minute
what’s this new craft soda? That’s doing real volume and
then they’re going to be stuck because they are going to
get squeezed from both sides. They’re going to get
squeezed from the up-and-coming entrepreneurs that actually now
have scale and use things like Uber and Postmates or whatever
for distribution and use social media and this for awareness and
they’re going to get pressured from the retailers for
then not to do the same. Pepsi can’t make Pepsi Gold
the direct to consumer at scale. They can do a little one
off, a little holiday thing. Tough. – Starbucks is an interesting
example because I just went to Seattle and I just saw their
new kind of innovative space. – Okay. – It seems like what brands can
do is develop or create a new product that people don’t
actually know is part of the brand and sell it direct to
consumer and see they kind of have the backup. – No, no, no.
100% they can do that. Here’s the problem, it doesn’t
matter what the consumer knows, the retailer. See the thing is most people
don’t get is the number one competitor to the biggest
brands in the world are their retail partners. – Mhmmm. Mhmmm. – So they can’t again at the
highest levels on a board at Walmart they’ll say look
what Coke just did today. They created Scmoke or Chugabuga
– And they’re selling it. – And they’re selling it and if
it gets big that’s a problem for us because it’s going to build
the cadence and the ability and the data to remarket to
those people and they’re going to cut us out. – What do you think about
the future of the store? Do you right now all the brands,
even Birchbox I know or Warby Parker, who are
disruptors, right, are like they all want stores. It’s actually the best marketing
mechanism in the world. Do you think these retail stores
are going to be the place where conversion rates are
going to happen the most? – No, I think if you look at
e-comm it chips away every year. 11 percent of the market,
13 percent of the market, 16 percent of the market. E-comm will continue to
grow especially with this. Especially with our
impatience, I want it right now. – And through
social channels too. – And whatever, right and were
not even factoring in it’s going to take 20 years for what I’m
talking and by then VR will be there so are we literally living
in a virtual world and shopping in a virtual store and it’s
actually being physically delivered within an hour? There’ll always be disruption
but here’s what I will say they’re not going away. Stores are not going away.
Stores, they’re not going away. Do I think they’re
emerging better than ever? No. Just because Birchbox
and Warby Parker have stores right now. Let’s talk about another thing
when the shit hits the fan and I mean the collapse of the
valuations of these super companies and these unicorns
that are rhinoceroses and I don’t think Birchbox is. – What’s a rhinoceros?
I know unicorn is a billion. – Yeah a rhinoceros is what
these things actually are. They’re actually rhinoceroses.
You like it? – Yeah. Like it a lot. – Anyway nonetheless I think
that too many people who watch this, too many people in
our zeitgeist-y kind of love we think things are binary that
e-commerce is coming and there will be no stores. I mean I made these
mistakes as a kid. There is no absolutes.
– There’s no absolutes. – Right? – You gotta do everything
it seems like today, right? – I would say you’ve
got arbitrage everything. If you can get a store location that
you don’t pay too much rent on, that does great branding
and awareness and your selling stuff, Mazel Tov. If you can figure out a
Instagram campaign that, you have to be agnostic.
– Right. – You have no emotion
to where it happens, you just want it to happen. – Well, how do you
afford all that though? – You don’t. You don’t.
Which is why– – I would rather have Ralph
actually do the real jobs than having him just work on social. – I get it. I get it. – It’s allocation of resources.
– That’s exactly right. – I’d rather have
Ralph do everything. He’s very capable.
– Yeah, he’s the best. – Show Ralph, Staphon, come on.
Let’s wake up here, Staphon. You saw what Kobe did.
I’m kidding, I’m kidding. I think that that’s why
strategy is so interesting. That’s why love to do
what I do for a living. – And you have to
keep reinventing. Now you’re all about Snapchat. – I’m only about attention. Snapchat just
happens to have it. – Yeah. Are you loving it?
– Love it. – [Voiceover] Matt asks,
“The average amount of

“will leverage Meerkat the best? “Who is their target user? “What do you think Gary?” – So John, throwing
Periscope in there as well, Meerkat and Periscope will be
leveraged by a lot of people but I actually think retail man. I think QVC like opportunities on Meerkat. Like, we’re Meerkating right now. How many people on? 200? – [DRock] 275. – 275. You know, I can schedule a Meerkat, and I’m planning on doing this by the way, in a couple of months,
maybe a couple weeks, where I’m going to say
from 6 PM to 9 PM Eastern. I’m going to do a QVC-like wine show. Where I’m just going to
sit here and taste wine and somebody, DRock, on the other end is going to be like,
“This person asked this, “this person asked this.” Like we’re literally
going to do a live QVC. I think retail, selling stuff on live is very real to me. I’m a big believer in it. Imagine I’m Meerkating, then I’m Tweeting or Facebooking links to the things I’m talking about. People are interacting, sharing the links. It’s just super fascinating to me. So, my big bet is that retail will be able to take big advantages of
it because it’s the people that can really take advantage
of what this is replicating. The reason I do well with business is I realize nothing really changes, things just evolve. Meaning, Meerkat and Periscope
are just live television. What does well? QVC. What else does well? Entertainment. So that means that someone can start an entertainment show. What else does well? Sports. So, I could see a local
minor league baseball team or you know, like there’s just, sports does well right? So like, you could start a Frisbee league that you get people into by watching it and then sponsors will pay you. Backyard basketball leagues. You know the fighting that… The hardcore fighting
that you see on YouTube that gets me into the rabbit… I mean, I waste no time on anything and even I once and a while
get suckered into like street fighting on YouTube because the knockout is just so intense. You know, I would watch that on Meerkat. I would watch that on Meerkat right now. Like if two dudes want to raise their hand and fight, two chicks, you know, whatever. Fight! I’ll watch that shit. I mean, I’ll pay 2.99 to watch it live. So I think that anything
that’s live on television, Periscope and Meerkat have
the chance to play in, that’s where I see the upside.

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?”