Where you couldn’t sell shit? – Wow. (laughs) I’m gonna throw a lot of
people for a curve ball here. I actually wish that existed. I actually think that I would
be even more successful. I think I have, I think
I’m doing fine financially. I’m actually, in my behavior,
I wish my accountant was here. I’m very conservative, way
more than people think. I don’t value the dollars that much. I’m not– We should go into James’ office right now. Of all the money I’m leaving
on the table at VaynerMedia because I like the feelings
and all the other things that come along in life, I
actually think that if the world had no money that I
would be more successful. Because I think, and I’ve eluded to this, that my ability to communicate to people and to storytell and
to inspire and motivate is maybe my disproportional skill. And that if I wasn’t drawn
to running businesses, that I would be absolutely
in hype-man P. Diddy or preacher. I push very hard against
my motivational aspect because I don’t wanna be bucketed into a motivational
speaker because I do think that it’s the cliche thing
that we talked about earlier that you two really hit on. And I’m scared that people
struggle to cut through the noise which is why I’m impressed with the– You know it’s funny, you two
are the most interesting for me because you’re both the parallels
that happen with me right? There’s only one third person
that wasn’t your story, it would’ve been perfect
of the three versions of my content that’s put out. Instantaneous understanding. Perseverance, but liked it up
front but it was perseverance. And, at some level,
thank god you’re not this but like the, this guy’s full of shit and I just eventually got
there and won that game, right? So I actually think that if the
world was stripped of money, that I would be dramatically more impactful on society. And the weirdest and only scenario that ever goes through my mind. Ever. Of me not buying the New York Jets. Ever. Ever. Is that somewhere along the line, the chemicals inside tweak just enough to where I become guilted by myself to give up that part of my journey to triple down on the other
part of my journey a/k this. It’s a funny story, somebody
sent me an email yesterday and said they were
disappointed in me for sending the email and creating the contest of asking for the books
to be in the question. And I sat there with the
question for like 20 minutes, I said, “My god, I will
never win this game because people are unable
to see one level deep.” (scoffs) I’m not forcing people to buy that book. I’m putting out a show every single day that is free in a world where plenty of people monetize video content. And you’re more the
welcome not to participate in that part of it and I am
picking 500 other questions to put in there and it’s just interesting that there’s so little breathing room for any kind of commerce to some people in a world where you could
provide dispropotionate upfront value and people
want you to be stuck in the jab, jab, jab, jab world and I’m wired as a jab,
jab, jab, right hook guy. If money was taken out and the game of business was stripped. I would then have less of a
right hook mentality of commerce My right hook would then be to
get people to actually do it. So I’d be like chasing all
of you around and be like, “No, you gotta go do it.” Now, motivation isn’t enough. I actually think the
answer to your question in a long-winded way is I’d be really happy and really successful in
communicating to the world my points of view. – [Voiceover] Love it.

“What’s your top tip for a creative mind to start thinking like an entrepreneur?” – Derrick, this is a tough one, right? There’s so many creatives
that just don’t know how to be a salesperson, entrepreneurial. They don’t have that gear. They have incredible, creative chops. First and foremost, I
want to be very careful to try to mold you at tactics that you have no chance of winning at. That’s like me saying, how
do I want to start being a great painter? Well I can go watch YouTube
videos to be better at painting and go buy some good paint,
I can start painting, but I have a funny feeling
if I showed it to India, she’d be polite because she’s a wonderful human being,
but with her artistic eyes, she’d be like, yeah, no, Gary really, I could see some stuff there, yeah. I be like, fuck, she hates it. So to me, I’m very
concerned of forcing people. Just ’cause you may be excited about what I’m putting out there
or what society’s pushing with entrepreneurship, let’s make sure the right
answer to this question isn’t how do I go and find a
partner who is a business mind to team up with me as an artist. I can sell way more paintings
of India’s than India can, ’cause it’s just what I’m great at. That’s without me really knowing, truly, as much as we adore each
other, I don’t fully know your entrepreneurial sales abilities, but I just know mine are better. ‘Cause mine are better than all of yours. Just what I feel. That to me, is the answer
to your question my friend, and obviously I gave that answer
because I want to provide, one of the things I think
I’m hitting a roll on in this golden era, is
I’m starting to understand how to answer the question at hand, instead of picking answering
the question at hand or making it broad, if
you’ve been paying attention, this is my own self-critique which is why I think we have momentum. I’m finding a cadence
right now of how to answer the question and at the same time broaden it to make more sense. And so the real story behind
everything I just said, kids, is hey, don’t force
yourself into things that are not maybe naturally there. It’s okay to have a business partner, a team mate, an employee. You don’t even need a partner. Maybe you hire someone
to be the salesperson. Super important because
just like, how do I become X is a very dangerous game, especially if you just aren’t capable, really truly not capable of ever being X, or just being a two out
of a ten index at X. Were you better off spending four years to become a two instead of a zero, when what you could have
done is gone from an eight to a 12 in the thing that
you’re actually great at? Time is valuable, my
friends, time is valuable. – [India] Awesome. – Thanks India.

– Hey, Gary! Huge fans of your show. We’ve watched all 109 episodes. – And we thought it’s about
time we ask you a question. – Here it is. I co-founded Ice Cream
Social a few months ago and we’re planning to have a
livestream summit in September. Here’s my question. Without having a huge
following and brand equity – how do we approach
companies to participate in our livestream summit? – Thanks, Gary.
– Thanks, Gary. (electronic music) – Hold on, I like the music. That’s a tremendous question and actually a very easy
one for me to answer. You need to sell people the
upside versus the reality. Selling often times is also
predicated on where you’re going versus what you have to offer now– (electronic music)
India. And so what I would sell
to them is like look we’re two badass chicks,
we’re going to win and you’re going to want
to be a part of this. And if you invest in us now,
if you give me a $1,000 check now although we might only be worth $350, or it might only be
worth $500 in your mind, I promise you that when you
write us a check for $2,000 in two years, it’s going to be $10,000 cause I’m going to give
you an 80% discount cause you Ricky Thompson
are making the committment and you’re believing in me. That is absolutely the only way to sell something that you don’t
have is to sell something that you’re about to become Period. And by the way as somebody
who bets on that kind of stuff all day long there are plenty
of people that like the idea of locking in the next
three years of sponsorship. And, again, if you guys bail on this you know you gotta give the money back. You gotta be honorable.
It’s a long game. The only way for you to
get sponsors is to sell where you’re going and make promises of financial upside
for them in the future. Again, hey conemaker, hey people… this is ice cream social, right? Like I’m not exactly sure
exactly what you’re doing but hey business that
cares about the audience, this year it’s going to be smaller but we’re hustling and this is who we are. And they’re either going
to believe you or not. This is something that
I’m talking a lot about with people who have worked
here for two or three years at Vayner and are complaining about stuff. And I’m look if you’ve worked
for me for two to three years and you don’t fully, blindly believe in me then you should not work here. If I’ve not been able to
prove to you at this point we’re not getting anywhere
because my patience is running out and so… I don’t know why I just
wanted to randomly say that for anybody who’s
watching at VaynerMedia. The point of it is, the point of it is you, they’re either gonna…oh, I remember they’re either going to trust you or not when you sell them the
dream of where you’re going over the next two to three years. So sell them the dream and then execute the dream. – [Voiceover] Melissa asks,
“When are you going to make

“today and didn’t have your family business “how would you handle the job market?” – Natalie thank you so much. Big shout out to
everybody who’s out in LA. That was a really phenomenal
night for me as well. A lot of peeps came out, I appreciate it. Well, first of all, I wouldn’t
attack the job market, because even at the age of nine or ten, long before I even realized
my parents had a liquor store as my dad managed that store and was buying into a business I was already slinging, as
you heard in episode 118, you know blue curtains and alarm clocks. And clearly you’ve heard
the stories of lemonade and baseball cards. There is no attacking the
job market from my DNA because I would try to start a business especially right now. I would completely take
advantage of the fact that there is an enormous
amount of dumb money trying to become
investors in start-ups. Meaning, unlike the
generation where I became an angel investor in
2009, 2008, 2010, 2011. Right now every dentist,
every real estate agent, every trust fund baby in
their thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties anybody who had a good
career on Wall Street is now an investor looking
for their Mark Zuckerberg. I would take advantage of that. I would network. I assume if I was in college
I would ask professors. I would ask friends and family. I would just ask. I think when you’re at the bottom, asking is quite important. And so I would ask for at bats, try to network. I would use the incredible
tool that is known as Twitter and I would be replying
to people that I aspire to get in touch with. I don’t, you know it’s funny
to me to see the people that give up after asking to meet with me for a few minutes, after three or four nos. And I know that I’m inducing
now a ton of Twitter chatter to meet with me. And I hope you saw the
video I made for myself, the advice I’ve given myself. DRock, give them a two second clip. I need to get my shit together so I apologize I’m letting you down. But the truth is I need
to heed to this advice I’m giving myself. You know, so I won’t see you but I would have saw you six months ago and Cuban, or Jack Welsh,
or Zucks, or Elon Musk, you just never know when they’ll
actually sit down with you. And then there’s a
million people that maybe you don’t know who’ve been successful, who’ve got leverage, who’ve got money. And so I would attack the
reality of the marketplace. And the reality of the
marketplace right this second is tons of cash, looking
for young people with ideas. I think it’s a broken bubble. I think that gets exposed. I think 99% of people
are not going to deliver on that investment. I think I’d be one of the 1% that would deliver on that investment. So I’d be looking for while in college and like I did in college instead of looking to
hook-up and do keg stands I’d be looking for business partners and business opportunities. I think for anybody else
that is not wired like me which I think is a far majority
of this show’s audience I would tell you this piece of advice. If you were 22 years old, if you were the amount of people that settle for the first paying job versus living with 19 friends on the floor and eating 99 cent meals blows my mind in lieu of trying to get your dream job versus what you’ve settled for. Please from 22 to 24 don’t settle. Go for your dream job. Pound for it. And if you can’t get
into VaynerMedia (ping) then go for the second
best, or third best, or fourth best on your list. Please start with the
moon and go backwards. The amount of you that start at a hilltop and just settle there
is an enormous mistake because 22 to 24 is when you should live really, really humble, ghetto, dirt. Like that’s it,
that’s the time. To settle in in the
middle only lends itself to so much upside. So aspire for as high as you possibly can and be patient. it sucks not having a job in September when all your friends do. Or your friends that were
juniors the year before are going back to school
and the pressure is on and maybe your parents don’t
like that you don’t have a job but that’s exactly when you
should be buying random stuff at Goodwill and selling it
on eBay to pay your $80.00 worth of rent because you
have 94 roommates in a studio. That’s it, get dirty. Cause, and I know a paused there, cause getting dirty is the price to having what you want. The dramatic misunderstanding that amazing things come with a price. A lot of people talk about rich kids. I really negatively look at rich kids because I look negatively at my kids because they’re about to be rich kids. That’s just real. Sorry Xander and Misha, eat it. But you know what comes with the price of being a rich kid? People completely do,
you’ve basically lost in the game of winners. You’ve basically from day
one you were born into money. You actually aren’t
good, you were handed it. You suck.
That’s it, you’ve lost. That’s the price that comes along with it. And take it from somebody
who cried everyday because his dad had a
small family business and I was petrified because
I knew I had the talent that everybody would say
things were handed to me. Cried everyday with my mom on the phone I’m not coming into the family business even though I could help it, even though I want to, I don’t. Because then everybody is going to say, that it was handed to me. In the scheme of things I was an idiot I didn’t realize how
small it was to the world. But everything’s got a price. Everything’s got a price. You’re beautiful?! LIfe is much better when you’re beautiful. That’s what we all say.
I agree with that. But, more realistically, you
get completely disrespected. You get disrespected. You can’t be smart, you can’t be good, you’re just too beautiful. I’m serious. I’m really tired of people
thinking everybody’s got it better. Everybody has advantages. You know what the
advantages of being ghetto and on welfare and being
nothing and having nothing being a child of a homeless parent. You know what the advantage is? You’re (bleep) angry. You’ve got a ridiculous
chip on your shoulder. You want to stick it to everybody. All of ’em. Use what you’ve got.
Use what you’ve got.

“where volume is more
important than content, “how would you take
advantage of social media?” – Jay, what’s the matter with you? Volume’s more important
than content everywhere because volume of selling shit
is what you do for a living. Regardless if you sell
weird looking statues or phones or, I love taking off, kicks. You know, like, volume always matters. Content is a liaison
to more volume, right. My content wasn’t more
important on Wine Library TV. It was the fact that that
lead to selling stuff. And so, whether you’re
in wholesale or retail, or B to B or B to C, the
end goal within the context, is to drive a result including
if you’re non-profit. You’re not making content
that’s gonna make somebody cry about, you know, the dogs in
the wild that we need to save because you just want somebody to cry. No, you want them to
take out their wallet, this is what you want, Jay. You want them to take out their wallet and give them the cash. Right, that’s what you want. And so, please don’t
get it twisted, anybody, that so much of this is predicated on how do you provide that value to then have leverage to get the
result that you’re looking for? And so, sorry India, it got
a little bit heated there for a second. Word it for me one more time. – [India] He says, “Your
wholesale business where “volume is more important than content, “how would you take
advantage of social media?” – Yeah, I mean, no I
mean, you know, you know. First of all, when you’re
in wholesale, you’re in the B to B business, so you
have it easy, in my opinion. Go and map who your customers are. Go to Facebook. Run ads against the
companies of the people you’re trying to reach. Employees of the company
you are trying to sell this. Go run it against Foot Locker employees. People that work at Foot Locker. Do you guys have Facebook accounts? I feel like people haven’t
been updating them as well, but the data’s still incredible at scale. This is just a quick test. Do any of you put
VaynerMedia in your profile? – [Voiceover] Mm hmm. – All five of you? Even better than I thought. You can reach all five of these characters by targeting employees of VaynerMedia. As a matter of fact,
somebody could have probably been flown in next Friday
if they were smart enough to spend $40, 40 measly dollars on ads against VaynerMedia employees, where they used the VaynerMedia employees to pressure me to bring that person, but you didn’t, you just didn’t. And so, execution my friends and being a practitioner
is always, always better than headline reading. And so, I will tell you it is very easy. LinkedIn, Facebook, target
your actual customer and then make content
that is valuable to them. Right? Which means different than B to C. So, back to this. I’m a sneaker producer. I’m new, I’ve got to compete
with Under Armour, Nike and Reebok and Puma and crap. Maybe my ad is, hey, introducing
the new Gary sneaker. More profitable for you than the others. Like literally, it is a
B to B promotion, right. Like, here’s a chart. This is what you make on
all these other characters. Sure, they bring people in, but here’s my offer and
I’m able to bring you dramatically more profit and as a kicker, if you email me back, I
will also run ad dollars directly to your store for my sneaker because you’re one of
the first hundred people to contact me.

“a video game, what type would it be “and on what platform
would you sell it?” – Nils, this is a pretty
interesting question. There’s two spaces that
I think video games are really interesting, and
one is obviously mobile. I still think mobile,
kind of word, simple, like, the game that
works for the 13 year old and for the 84 year old grandmother are always super interesting to me, very basic, you know, just simple word, brain quizzes, you know, Hangman 3.0, that kinda stuff is super interesting. But the place that I’d probably go since I love so much the game of following where I think the puck is going to be, is I’d probably make a
virtual reality game, one that had, you know,
kind of like the Zelda of VR, which was a completely open world where you could do a whole lot of stuff. I don’t know if I would go shooter, though I think that’s gonna
be the breakout win early on, I’m a little bit more into like,
Gauntlet really affected me in the early days, it
was like one of the first four player arcade games
that me and my boys back in ’84 would roll into Chuck E Cheese with quarters for days
and just get down with it. And I was always pumped to
be the princess, by the way, everybody would fight for the wizard, I’m like I’ll be princess, she was nasty. Anyway, so I would say
some sorta open-ended Zelda-Gauntlet adventure type game, for virtual reality, that
I don’t think would pop for another 24 to 36 months, but if you follow the
narrative of my 20 year career and hopefully what I do
for the next 40 years, I’m always going to bet on where I think the market’s gonna be
24, 36 months from now use my disproportional ability to sell, to keep me afloat for
those 24 to 36 months, and then be there where the
market’s gonna be there. When I started selling social
media to brands in 2009, they didn’t wanna buy it. Only now, only as we
head into 2016 budgets, am I starting to see some real upside. And as you can imagine, that
bodes well for my business. I would do the same thing
in the video game industry. – Why? Just crashed on you? Cool.

“As a rookie, how much
should I allocate to “Facebook Dark Posts for
a Teespring Campaign?” – Javier as a rookie, which I like, I guess a rookie entrepreneur, I would allocate a
disproportionate amount of money into Facebook Dark Posts
for Teespring Campaigns. Especially if you make a
t-shirt that is very thematic meaning, if you made a t-shirt that was like, “Denver Truck Drivers Rule,” and then you dark post against people that live in Denver that are truck
drivers as a profession, you will crush. And so, I think it’s a
unbelievable platform to convert on. We’ve talked at nausea about this. And as a matter of fact, I’m even going to go completely
in a different direction. I actually would challenge
most people watching the show right now that
you should make a Teespring and actually run a $100
worth of dark posts. Go long tail with like, “Teachers From St. Louis Rock,” and learn the dynamics
of specific long tail, surgical Facebook
advertising because I think it will be successful. – [Voiceover] Paul asks,
(hip-hop music)

“Is it okay for celebs to
promote products on Instagram “without telling their
audience they get paid for it?” – No. And I’m sure it can happen. You know, like, listen, we
invest in so many things. I’m always scared, like,
talking about products and apps that we’re in. I’m like, “Ah.” Shyp right now, right? But is it okay? Absolutely not. Like, why in the world would that be okay? India? Like I don’t see any-
– [India] Why put it on the show.
– I don’t see, yeah, I wanted to put it on the show. because I wanna put
the line in the sand, like, ’cause people, “Oh, I know
why they put it in the show,” ’cause people, like, “Hey, this Pinterest “pay Gary to say it’s good,” I mean, are you crazy? Like, I made, like, I have– You know how much
money I have tied up in Twitter as I sit here on every
show saying it’s crap, it’s losing, it’s getting worse? Like, your word is always
your most valuable asset and celebrities that think
they can trick their fans are gonna be in for a rude awakening in the long tail of their career. It’s an insane play. It has no value, It’s stupid. It happen, like, look, I try to disclose
our investments all the time. Of course you are human,
something you have, but knowingly non-disclose
and be like, “This is great” and, “No,” like that’s insanity. Insanity. So also probably to be massively illegal as like the laws catch
up to full disclosure and things of that nature,
how about that part? So no, I don’t think it’s okay.

Hey Gary, great show. Totally obsessed. My favorite thing now,
ahead of Game of Thrones. Anyway, here’s a question for you. If you had a business or a blog or a personal brand or a book, how would you get more people to know about you and to buy that? How would you get results? I guess at the end of the
day, Gary, I’m asking you how would you get results? Thanks, love the show. Gary, great question. Looking great, by the way. (giggles) Ya know, one of the things I haven’t talked about on the show a lot, I’ve talked about it a little bit, and I saw people get value from it in that local, small
business biz to dev thing is the gross underestimation
of distribution in a JV, joint venture environment. There are so many of you on this show with businesses that
have locked so heavily into social media, ’cause
that’s how you view me, as the way to get distribution, you have left some of the
greatest opportunities on the table including if you are not hitting up the
top 100 blogs in your space, if you’re selling cupcakes, and you literally aren’t
spending the time to figure out what the top 100 cupcake content
sites are on the internet, and then sending an e-mail and saying, “Hey, I’m India from India’s Cupcake Shop. “I love reading your site, Cupcake Daily,” This is me, typing the e-mail. “I love reading your site, Cupcake Daily. “I’m very passionate. “Here’s my site. “Here’s my Instagram. “I would love to write for you once a week “on new sprinkles concepts or
on decorations that matter. “I will give you my labor for free, “and what you’ll give me is
distribution and awareness.” If you don’t realize that, ya know, it’s like Kendrick Lamar. Did anybody pay attention
to what Kendrick Lamar did? If you don’t know who Kendrick Lamar is, he’s a rapper, an artist, and he went on to a lot of other albums as he was starting to get a little fame. He leveraged that to get on, and he came in trying to kill it on, like he basically went on everybody’s track and he tried to be so much better than the persons whose song it was that everybody was listening be like, “Oh shit, that guy’s dope. “Like, I’m gonna check him out.” That’s what India, the cupcake lady, wants to do on Cupcake Daily. Oh, crap, that was such a good thought. Let me follow that. And so, in the earliest
earliest earliest days of me building my brand,
I went on wine blogs and wrote blog posts to contribute, and because I had the chops, ya know, Kendrick spits incredible lyrics, India writes about incredible toppings, and I talked about
incredible things about wine that people hadn’t thought about, that gave me the ammo for my
work to have a positive ROI. The truth is a lot of you
don’t wanna put in the work because the output of your content in video form, in audio
form, in written form, isn’t good enough. You just aren’t good enough. What you’re selling, they’re not buying, and the quickest way to find out is to actually go on a road show, put in the 40 hours a day
to get yourself into places where you, why can’t you
e-mail all 500 people on YouTube that have
some level of audience and ask them to be
interviewed on their show? Or to be part of it? Why can’t you? Why can’t you ask? Why can’t you ask? Why can’t you ask? That, my friend Gary,
is what you need to do. If you’ve got something to sell, you need to go and knock on doors, right? Ya know, you gotta know how to build ’em and walk through them. You gotta knock on doors,
and you’ve gotta ask like, “Can I guest contribute to your world? “Can I write a blog post? “Can I just show up and like?” How do I bring value to what you need because all these people that have homes that have audiences, they need more content to feed them. Content costs money, so people
coming in and contributing, it’s the ultimate kind of leverage deal. You come and you write for
me for free ’cause I need it, ’cause I need to keep feeding
the kids I have in the room, and you need kids for
what you’re gonna do, and that is something that 99.999999999 of you are absolutely not doing enough of. Putting in the work to get in front of
audiences to be discovered. Putting out a picture on
Instagram and holding your breath and hoping somebody’s gonna see it ’cause you used a (censored)
hashtag isn’t enough. Go out and take it, and
that, my friend Gary, is what you should do if you
want something to happen. Two minutes.

“of Instagram. Like now people
try to sell a fridge on it. The fuck?” I like how you delivered that. Yeah, I mean this is clearly
the theme of the show. Oh, by the way. Real
quick shout out to Scott. This is an incredible personal wine box. Let’s give them
PersonalizedWineBoxes.com shout out. I love how people are hacking
me for free promotion. I feel like a sucker right now, but like, I do love. And Chris, this is insane. I mean, Chris Green, this
is just absolutely insane. Show them up, D-Rock. This is unbelievable. He dismantled it. How about this? I mean, does Aton know about this? Listen, I just said it earlier. People are ruining Instagram. People are trying to sell their fridges, people are trying to sell clothes. There was one that I saw, “Why are people trying to
sell food on Instagram?” But I didn’t think I could stop from laughing through that question from India. The bottom line is attention,
attention, attention. That’s where the value prop is. You know, the reason I
picked both those questions is to thematicsize this episode. I don’t know what that means, sorry. Grammar police. But the theme of this show is very simple, which is Instagram has the attention, people are gonna sell on it, get over it. That’s what’s always gonna happen. And, so, the reason people
are trying to sell you a fridge on Instagram is the same reason you asked the question on Twitter. Which means, it caught your attention. Where as if they tried to
sell their fridge on Twitter, I’m not sure it would have. Get it?