– [Voiceover] Jonathan asks, “I import wines from Italy and sell via e-comm and through distributors. I’m currently focusing on
obtaining new distribution and have fallen behind on the e-comm side. Question: What percentage of my time should be split between
each side of the business, and what’s a good way to balance the two?” You know, Jonathan, it’s interesting. I’m trying to give a general answer to the whole market, but I
know your business so well. When you’re importing, I don’t
know what state you’re in, but when you’re doing e-commerce, are you selling to the end consumer? Because you can’t do that
in New Jersey or New York. Are you in a state- He’s in California, and Kermit Lynch, I think, does do that, so I think he can. I think in California,
I was about to say that, thanks, India. In California, ’cause
Kermit Lynch does that, you’re able to actually
sell to the consumer and also sell to distributors. You know, to me, if you
can sell e-commerce 100%, you’re no dope. You know that you’re making 50 cents more on every dollar by selling that way than selling to distributors, but what you know is you’re not that big, and you’re not necessarily
a retailer by trade, and it takes a lot of money and skill to be able to be a good
retailer to sell enough, where the distributors are
giving you the buying power. So my strategy for you is- Now, I’m giving you as
black and white a strategy as I’ve given on this show’s history. 80% to the distributors, 20% of your time, energy, and money to the consumers. Once you get that established, you spend every minute
to turn that into 70/30, 60/40, 50/50, 60/40, 70/30, 80/20, 90/10, maybe 80/20, right? Because you wanna get some restaurants and key retailers to bring
some awareness to it. And for everybody who’s watching, the reason I’m giving him that advice is he just makes more money
if he sells it direct. He’s also far more in control, where you sell to distributors, they’re maybe giving a deal to a retailer, that retail sells it cheap,
and that all of a sudden screws up the pricing in the market. So, that’s the answer. By the way, before you’re
done editing here, DRock,

Jeff, this question, and
photo accompanying it, is probably the reason
we made this switch. I mean, this is incredible.
I’m so excited about this. I know some people are
like, “Oh, Instagram.” Get over yourselves. Let’s attack the ‘gram
with your questions. This is a tremendous question, which makes it even more interesting. The answer, my man, is very simply like, what you need to decide is short term cash versus long term wealth. Let me explain. My answer to you would be, okay, you’re making the products– By the way, I had a big
business at the time, but the way I did Wine Library TV was all-encompassing myself, except to Chris Mott’s
credit, Mott videotaped, but there was no editing the way DRock– It was just uploading, and in
theory, I could’ve done that for an hour, but probably
not. So big shout out to Mott. You have to decide if you want to make– I don’t know how long it takes you to make one of your pieces, right? I would make seven pieces
instead of 13 in a year, if I can live off of
that. I would do that. I would then spend more
time on building my brand, because that’s really what an artist is. Doing the Instagram stuff
you’re doing, building up your Pinterest, being
smart and knowing the world and look at all the exposure. I really feel confident
one person will buy one of your pieces from this show. You knew about me, you commented on my comments, Alex hit up a bunch of people
over the last couple of days. Not that many replied. You took the initiative to do
it, now you’re on the show. Now you’ve got this exposure,
20-30 thousand views. Now what you do with that
is you’re leveraging that, and all of a sudden it
becomes supply and demand. There are artists who make one– I’m sure, I’m not very
strong in the art world. India, you can help me here a little bit. I know what the answer
is, there’s some artists who make one piece every couple of years. That’s how they make their whole living because it’s worth a ton of money, because they’ve got the brand. Now that you can go brand direct– By the way, Crush It! is
literally the blueprint of the current state of the Internet. I don’t wanna go there, but
I was ridiculously right. Not even kind of. So we’re
all living that world now. Grape Story, my agency
that represents Vine Talent is basically the agency of what
Crush It! was talking about. It’s a very simple thing. Cash, wealth. If you decide to make
seven pieces this year and that’s enough for you to live, then it makes me happy
because you can take the rest of that time, instead of 13, I don’t know all the numbers
but you see where I’m going, to build your brand, to
engage, to put out content, to write a Medium post, to
put up Instagram photos, and that builds up your
supply and demand curve. If you’re equally good enough at both, then the demand will get to
a place where you can start charging more for your pieces
to build up your brand. It’s very simple, it’s
been going on forever. Independent people have always done that, Should you make pieces or
should you open a gallery? It’s chicken and egg. The other thing to debate
is can you bring in somebody at a low cost to do it full-time and help you scale. You’re the only one that can answer. But guess what? I’m the
only one that can answer, but India is here to
make it quicker for me. I do this show so India
has something to transcribe of off, add some grammar,
ask me a couple of clarification questions, and we’ve got two of the top four posts on Medium right now. It all depends on how you wanna roll, I had to build up to that. This is the first time I’ve got
this kind of infrastructure. But it’s just chicken and
egg, cash flow versus wealth. There’s two ways to go about doing it. You can make 13 pieces and then you’re making the money on it that allows you to afford your person and place. Or you make 7 and you do
it yourself for a while. It just depends on how you wanna roll. If you’re not building up your equity, you’re always going to be making pieces that are hundreds of
dollars instead of pieces that are millions of dollars. That’s it. That was a good show.

on franchising your company
when you can’t be sure if others will care for
the brand in the same way?” Harold, that’s a great question. I think the real answer to that needs one more layer of context. When you say, “franchising your business”, building a consumer-facing business, a retailer, a QSR, a
restaurant, then franchising is a tremendous model, we’ve seen it from McDonald’s, to Five Guys, Sonic. I mean, it’s a great thing to do. It’s the right business
model, or it’s a phenomenal version of the right business model. You can go private, if you want. What I’m concerned about,
and what I don’t know, and India, I didn’t really ask you, is– Show India, everybody’s
probably missing India. – Hi. – [Gary] You can get a
little camera time, Staphon. Are you going down the
route of selling your name? The reason I’m asking
that, and I don’t know if you can figure it
out from the question, a lot of people try to franchise “me”. I know there’s a lot of
“gurus”, and “advice people”, where they teach the– The amount of people that pitched me, when it was at its heat, in 2010, on the idea of a “Gary
Vaynerchuk Crush It! Course”, and they would be the person teaching, and they would siphon back up to me, that was something I
wasn’t comfortable with. Because it wasn’t something
I felt represented me and I wouldn’t want to
franchise that route. So if you’re asking that,
that’s super uncomfortable to me, somebody representing
you, a big concern of mine. As far as a retailer or a restaurant, I feel super comfortable with that. Many people have pulled
off making sure the brand was insured by lots of
rules, lots of legal jargon, lots of training, whatever
it took to scale that. Anything from your end?
You get anything there? Alright. So that’s the
answer, I give you both.

– [Voiceover] Sarah asks,
“As a private music teacher “I have limited hours to teach. “What are your thoughts on
how to increase my income, “or build a brand?” – Sarah, a lot of thoughts on this. It’s called the Crush It! manifesto, which is, there’s plenty of damage between 11pm and three in the morning. I get it, you teach,
you know, I don’t know, teachers to me are actually,
my sister is a teacher, like they have the most
time to do other stuff. They have fairly good schedules. There’s the summer. There’s, you know, and
again, maybe you’ve got a different kind of teaching thing, but to me, if you want to build
more of a scalable brand, you gotta put out content. You gotta look at things like Skillshare where you can put out your teachings and sell that. There’s a lot of ways to do it. Technology has created
an enormous opportunity for you to scale it. You can do live Spreecasts
and Google Hangouts that only have access to people that pay. I would recommend putting
out a lot of content at first as a gateway
drug to the opportunity to charge people so you
can establish yourself. But this whole notion of where is the time, I need more time, I just think people are
loaded with excuses. They aren’t auditing themselves. They don’t realize that
they’re watching every season of Homeland and Game of Thrones. They don’t realize that
they’re having an hour and 15 minute lunch, like lunch. I’ve had two lunches. Robert Souza, our new SVP made me go to a lunch to meet somebody. I was pissed. I was like, why couldn’t
we do that as 11pm drinks? Lunch, like leaving and having lunch? The inefficiency of that time? So you know, I’m pissed at lunch and I’m pissed at Game of Thrones and I’m pissed at playing video games and I’m pissed at a lot of
things in a world where somebody wants more
financially or career-wise. I love it for the people
that need it to escape. I love it for people that are content with their monies and their career path. I love it. As a matter of fact, I envy it. Boy, if somebody could take a shot and suck out some of my ambition,
I’d be really pumped. You wanna do a start up? Create a suck out the ambition app. I’d be really happy about
that because I’d love to be able to take a lunch. I’d love to be able to relax
and play Madden against somebody in Iowa, because
that’s how you can play Madden these days, with the kids, for the last 10 years. But I haven’t been playing it because I’ve been hustling,
because that’s what I want. And so, whether you’re a hundred or zero, you just wanna zen and live in
a mountain with no technology or you wanna buy the Jets
and hustle your face off, or anything in between, you
need to find your cadence. And so if you’re asking this question, my intuition is you’re
spending an hour or two on things every day that aren’t achieving this extra brand or extra
monies that you’re chasing. So cut that crap out and
apply it to these things, putting out content, writing content, making videos, building up a brand, engaging with people,
going to Twitter search, Twitter.com/search searching teachings around, you know, key words around the things you teach. Engage with people, say hello, cold call, saw somebody shout that out in the YouTube comments yesterday. We talked about that, as a matter of fact, link up that video. People need to watch it.
That’s a classic. I don’t know where you want it, DRock. But you guys know which
video I’m talking about. The cold call. I had a
shaved head in there. Anyway, the bottom line is, you need to re-calibrate to your ambitions. By the way, it may be going
from seven hours of sleep to five hours of sleep
because you need all those lunches and video games, and that’s fine. But if you want it, you just gotta go and do that. episode 42 of the #AskGaryVee Show.

– [Voiceover] Joy asks,
“What social media techniques “do you think work best
for promoting a book?” – Joy, I was excited about
answering this question ’cause I was gonna go tactical, but then Steve reminded me
that I’ve answered this a bunch in the past, and I wanna
give that context too ’cause he’s right, and I
wouldn’t have answered it, so kudos to Steve for
making the show better. When selling a book, you
need to be selling it months and years in advance. I am actively, right now,
selling the #AskGaryVee book. Let me explain. I’m putting out content, and I’m jabbing, and I’m building an audience, and I’m building a lot of new fans. As a matter of fact, question of the day going right into it, How long have you been following my work? Please leave that in the comments. Podcast people, jump out of the earphones, and jump onto the
keyboard and go to YouTube and answer this question, because I want a lot of
people in the VaynerNation to see how many people are only
two, three, four, five, six weeks in because this
show is getting virality, bringing people in, and then
thus creating a scenario where, I was just thinking
about what’s the scenario, got excited, anyway, creating a scenario where
I’m bringing value up front, I’m not charging for this. I’m not asking for anything. I’m not trying to make a
gateway to a product, no. I’m just building leverage,
and then when I launch in early 2016 the #AskGaryVee book, which is probably gonna be
a hundred to two hundred of these questions that I’ve
done over the last year or two, if I can get that far. That was a little bit of
a gateway drug preview to how many episodes I’m expecting to do. And two, a bunch of new questions, and three is kind of a cool idea I have. (ding) A lot of people here
who’ve watched every show don’t really need to buy the book, right? I mean, you’ve consumed it, but at 18 bucks or 22 bucks, they will because I’ve guilted them into it because I’ve provided so much of value. And so number one, you need
to provide value up front before you ever sell your book. Let me get into some tactics. One-on-one marketing. One of the biggest mistakes
so many authors make is they send out a bulk e-mail, and it usually says this. “Hey guys, I never normally do this,” I mean, that’s my favorite. You like that, Zak? “I never normally do this, “but I have a book coming
out next Wednesday. “It would mean the world to me,” Why? They want to be efficient. People want to scale. What I did last August was I went to Connecticut with my family and I, one by one by one by one by one, wrote e-mails to people
that I wanted to help. Alex in 12 years. Alex, hey remember I really
gave you a break in your career. You know, we’re great buddies. Hey, nice job last week, da da da. I’d really appreciate
your help on this book. Can I count on you? And I basically went one by one by one and scaled the unscalable,
and what it created was a landfall of a lot of opportunity. The other thing is you have to
cess the market of exposure. That year, August last year, the podcasting was really
starting to happen, right? And so I wanted to really focus on that. So I went and I did a ton of interviews with all the emerging podcast people ’cause I knew that was the arbitrage, and what I mean by the arbitrage was a place where you would get
bigger return on your investment than other places based on its exposure. So whereas three years ago I’d
want to be in the Huff Post and guest blog post,
that played itself out because Forbes opened it up, and a lot of other people did that move, but the podcasting was starting to grow, and now there’s so many more podcasts, so much more competition for those earbuds that it’s changed a little bit. It’s not as valuable to be
a guest as it was a year ago because of the game, unless
a certain podcast overindexed and there’s more, and you keep playing this. So it’s really tactical stuff like that, but it’s really about
scaling the unscalable. The truth is, you’ve gotta get
to somebody’s emotion, right? So that it goes from heart
to brain to wallet, right? Heart to brain to wallet, oh I like that. That could be a really nice picture. Let’s, maybe a t-shirt. Heart, can you make a t-shirt? Anyway, heart to brain to wallet is kind of the way I
think about selling books. First you gotta get them emotional, then you gotta make them
think there’s a value prop, and you’ve got a storytell to them why they should buy your book. What’s in it for them above the fact that they feel that they owe you? And then that’s when they
start pulling out their wallet. And so I do that one by one by one by one, and when I do interviews,
one of the things if you go back and listen
to all of the podcasts, Lewis Howes, Peflen,
JLD, any of those people, when I was doing those interviews, I barely mentioned the book. As a matter of fact, when they asked me questions of the book
’cause they were good guys and they wanted to get me exposure, I’d walk away from it ’cause
the only thing I want to do in those 30 minutes was provide as much value for that
audience as possible ’cause that’s the first step, the heart. Thanks for watching episode
41 of The #AskGaryVee Show.

– Hey, Aimee. – My question is the following. What’s the most important
thing you’ve learned while growing your company at VaynerMedia from East Coast to West Coast, and how does a company successfully scale? – You know, thanks Aimee. You know, it’s funny, I never
opened a second Wine Library so opening a second
office in San Francisco and a third in L.A. has been
a new phenomenon for me. And quite honestly,
there’s challenges in it. You know, obviously I
wanna be everywhere, right. And that matters so much, but look, even at VaynerMedia I’m not sure the last time I’ve been on the 15th floor. Everybody’s asking for an
episode of the 15th floor. I don’t remember, I haven’t
been on the 15th floor in a week, in a month, excuse me. It’s a challenge when
you’re one human being and so for me so much of it is high touch and kinda the way I wanna scale. Aimee, to answer your second part, how do you scale a company? I actually think you scale a company by doing unscalable things. Because I really believe you have to know your business. So at Wine Library I didn’t
need a lot of people, and it was about selling wine. Thus it was a different company. Here, we sell people. We sell our hours against a scope and our thinking and
so all I got is people. And so for me, scaling this company has been doing everything
that’s unscalable. Which is sitting down
and mentoring one by one spending as much time as I can. And trying to empower
people to feel comfortable with coming to me. Now, starting to build
out an H.R. department after a nine month search. Finding Minnie and
saying, this is a person I’m willing to build and
has the natural nuisances to build the culture and the H.R. and E.Q. that I want for this organization. And then having people
that have been with you for three and a half years, you can show Emily
again, and you can wave, and so moving her into to H.R. department as you just heard earlier. So Aimee, for me scaling
this company because I know. Look everybody who has a
business has to understand what business they’re building. And no matter what you do,
it’s always about people. When you’re an agency or client services, it’s extreme people which is so, for me the way to really scale it has been deeply entrenching myself into the people that work with me, for me, along side me, and that’s very important to me. Um, the West Coast
offices dynamic, you know, Alena, if you’re watching
more Skpye sessions. You know how I feel about that. It’s more communication, communication is the backbone of this whole execution and so more time, more physical time. Something Lizzie and I are speaking about. How much time I’m gonna
spend on the West Coast in 15 and 16 is a big commitment to me. So just hacking, hacking away at the thing that matters the most which is do I have a
relationship with all 400 people. And when it’s 4,000 people,
do I have a relationship with all 4,000 people. And I understand the
cynicism that one could have listening to that answer. Like how could you possibly have that? And the way you have it is by having a relationship with the first 40 people. Then having it with the next 400 people. Because the stunning amount of some of the people in this room, and some of the people outside this room, and in San Francisco and L.A., the stunning amount of people that now help me scale, because when somebody struggling or screw this
place, or I don’t believe Gary, they’re quick to jump
in and tell 400 stories about why it’s the other way which then gives that person the ammo to maybe jump in and
relook at the situation a different way, and that can. I always say the truth
is undefeated. Right? And so, for me scaling it is by, by delivering for your teammates.

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.

“Can anyone create good micro-content? “How can you make sure
your team consistently “creates good content?” – Joe, great question. First, for everybody who’s
watching and/or listening, I want to talk about the
term “micro-content.” It’s something I started
using three, four years ago. Hasn’t really caught on. I myself don’t know how often I’m gonna use it going forward. But the notion was
content made specifically for the platform. You know, the videos and the pictures, the quotes, the written words
that worked on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest,
Instagram, Snapchat, Vine. It was the context of the book
“Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook.” DRock, throw it up there. Throw it up there, show it. They got it? – [DRock] Mmhmm. – [Gary] You got it, ok.
– [DRock] Mmhmm. – [Gary] So, you know, how do you
make good micro-content? How do you consistently
get your team to do it? First of all, content
is subjective, right? Steve likes “Game of Thrones” shows. I don’t, not that I don’t like it, I just haven’t even seen it yet. Some people watch “Game of
Thrones” and don’t like it. Very few, I think,
’cause it’s very popular. But you know, it is
still clearly subjective, that’s number one. Number two, how do you get a
team to be good at anything when you’re scaling your
kind of P.O.V. on the world and marketing to a 400
person, and downstairs, lot of comments about
downstairs, we’ll get there, um, organization. It’s about education,
but I would actually say that for me scaling and
getting my team to get there has a lot to do more with osmosis, right? Like putting it into their water stream, versus having a class that teaches it. Sure you can write a book. Sure we have lunch-and-learns
and learn-ups within the new organization, but they’re not attended that well. Need to talk about that, by the way. Um, what’s happening more here is that people are doing
and people are smart. You know, it starts with hiring
good people, smart people. And then when you realize
that you’ve hired somebody who’s not capable of learning
through that process, well then you gotta make some decisions. But to me, making good content takes a couple core pillars. Number one, you’ve got
to respect your audience. Meaning, you’ve gotta
respect the psychology of what they’re doing when
they’re on the platform. I know a 40-year-old woman
is in a different mindset when she’s on Facebook versus
when she’s on Pinterest. And that is how I try
to story-tell to her, because I know on Pinterest,
she intent to shop, aspiration to shop, and on Facebook, she’s keeping up with her
world or consuming information. And I strategize around
that, the psychology and the platform itself. Number two, when I say respect, I put out content that
I think she will like versus what I’d like to accomplish. Yes, I’d like to, give me a bottle of wine. Yes, I’d like to, a little faster, Alex, I know it’s early. Yes, I’d like to sell this,
but if I put it in a way that is more interesting to her, five under $10 bottles
of wine that, you know, help you get through the day when you have eight-year-old kids, and then you’re targeting
eight-year-old-kid moms, you’re going to start getting into a game that gives you a better chance. You know, 12 wines somebody
who’s 38 will like, and then you target people
from that were born in 1975. These are all strategies that will work. Again, very heavy Facebook. Or Instagram, taking a glamour
shot of it, in an angle, and it’s just like cool and nice. It’s like it’s all the kind of stuff. Respecting the audience,
respecting the platform, taking your agenda and making it third. – [Voiceover] James asks, “What are your thoughts on
podcasters and YouTubers

“on marketing automation software?” – George, the key here is, you know, I’m not a huge fan of automation. I’ve talked about that ad nauseam. Matter of fact, once and for all, because it keeps coming up, and I know a lot of people are
now new listeners on iTunes. If you ever get a Tweet from me or reply to a YouTube comment or a reply in the Facebook comments like I did all weekend, it is me. There is no outsourcing of my engagement. I had to make a video
to prove it this weekend. I don’t know if you guys saw that. Like to prove that it was me Tweeting. It is me. The way to humanize automation for people that want to send out
things is the follow-up. So if you put something
out and you schedule it, not my style, I’m against that. Because here’s what’s
dangerous about automation, specially in social and email, for all the people, I had a lot of friends and I killed them on this. Let’s go back to a very sad day. The Boston Marathon massacre, right. After that happened, over
the next hour or two, the amount of people that Tweeted promotional buy my
book, check out my show, sign up for my course, my friends. I was emailing and DMing them saying “You are ruining your brand. “There are forty people
right now that will never “respect you again because
of what you’re doing.” So in a world where
everything is real time, scheduling is dangerous
for those anomaly moments where you can look really bad. Don’t let mainstream media pick you up that you’re promoting your book after the President’s been shot or a building’s been exploded or terrorist act happened
because that can be the end of your career completely. To me that is not worth the
upside of the automation. But if you go the automation route, fine. Here’s how you make it human. You act human behind it. You put something out,
people are engaging with it, you come in humanly and engage it. This will be always a debate
that I’m in a minority which is I want to scale the unscalable in a world where people
are trying to use modern technology to scale. It’s as simple as that. I’m counter cultural. I’m over here, you’re over here. You’re over here, I’m over here and I will stay here
because I believe in it and I believe in it not
because I’m romantic or Zen or such a great guy. I believe in it because
I think it sells shit. You’ve been watching Episode 31

– Kyle say hello to the VaynerNation. – Hi everybody, I’m Kyle with LockerDome. I run for partnerships at LockerDome. – Awesome! – You can reach out to me at
lockerdome.com/kylecummings. – I like the plug Kyle, go
ahead what’s your question. – Yeah absolutely, you’ve
been in the influencer space for just over a year,
specifically with GrapeStory. With that business model what are the biggest
challenges you’re facing in scaling that business model and what is the brand you would say is embracing that model for marketing with mobile and those channels: Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram specifically. – Which brands are doing a
good job in those channels using influencers? – Yep. – Uh, I think a lot of brands
are starting to do it well. Right like any brand that’s
not doing well is losing but I think our GE
client was first to jump, did a really good job. Virginmobile’s done a really good job. I think Hewlett Packard
right now, Samsung, there’s a lot of brands, I
think, that are getting the value of influencer. The problem with scaling my business is we’re a talent agency, right. And so these guys and gals get built up. We build up with them and then they get too big and they want to go to CAA
or things of that nature. So, unlike Niche which is an
investment that’s building technology in a platform, you guys, there are people who are
doing it smarter than me. The model issue for me is, it’s just client service. It’s just people. You’ll only have the leverage for so long. But it’s not different
than CAA or William Morris if you’re the best and you’re good at it. There’s a real business there. But that is clearly the challenge. To make this an over arching
question for everybody, when you decide to build a model where you’re not building an asset, which is technology or
something of that nature. You’re only vulnerable to your sources. It’s being an accountant or a lawyer or an agency. You’re only as good as
your last billing cylce. And that’s why those businesses don’t get the higher multiple. That’s why people want to
build technology companies. For me I love people and so I’m always gonna
have a competitive advantage betting on my strengths which is people interaction. So I like building those businesses but I gotta tell you something. It’s really not for everybody and there’s definitely
a huge vulnerability. – Cool.
– Cool man, thanks for stopping by.