I’m from Warsaw, Poland. – I love it. Julian, are you the one who
I was tweeting with today? – Yes, sir. – And so, you didn’t even
know it was going on today? – No.
– [Gary] And then we tweeted. – Yeah. – And then you showed up. – Yeah. – Big ups to Poland, baby, yeah! (audience cheering) – That’s the ROI of twitter, fuck-faces! (audience laughs)
– [Julian] (mumbling) – All right, sorry, hold
on, I can’t hear shit. Go ahead, start over, brother. – I mean, I was already in New York. – I know you didn’t fly from
Poland 20 minutes ago, dick. (audience laughing) – This guy, this guy. I get it, I get it. – [Julian] (mumbling) – Start over, start over! – I have a health care company that’s focused on limiting
obesity in America and I’m meeting with all
these VC’s and they look at me and I look like I’m 12 years old and they’re like, you know,
“What the fuck do you know?” – [Gary] Yep. – so, I explained the problem they’re like, oh, yeah,
that’s a really good idea like we all really like that,
but leave it to the grown ups and I was going, you know, fuck you and your receding hairline. – [Gary] Dude, I’m losing
hairs watch yourself. Go ahead. – So, how do I get like
some respect from them and actually make and see eye to eye you know, a little kid whose
tackling a big problem. – [Gary] You know look, I think I think the truth is
that’s interesting to me because I would tell you like,
I have no empathy for you because, this is the
greatest era of all time of kids getting disproportional respect because we’ve seen technology grow and you know, I was looking
at the 30 and 40 year olds in this audiance who were like that we wish we had any we wish we were allowed to do anything but, go grab the coffee 20 years ago so, I promise you like, you’re
getting way more respect the fact that a VC is willing to see you is like, way advanced
compared to where it was five or 10 or 15 years ago? I would say this though and look you need to raise money, right? Like you’re not going to see them to go see their receding hairline, you’re going cause you want their money. – [Julian] Yes, exactly. – I wanna align you on
some respect factor you’re going to ask somebody
for their money, right? so, you know, we’re in a place now where money is flowing so freely but, I would also keep
that chip on your shoulder because that’s great. I love that. The best thing to do and I’ve said this before on this show is sell to people that are willing to buy. To me this second I feel any indication that somebody is not interested you look, I’ll give you a good example if I went on a VC pitch and it
was allocated for 45 minutes. And if you sniffed out that just like they’re out, they’re like out. I would cut the meeting short I want that 30 minutes back, right? So, I’ll tell you that sell
to people that are interested versus trying to get
somebody and sell it to them. I’m never selling to anybody but the market that attract,
I’m selling to you guys you’re attracted to this
content. I appreciate that. I’m not trying to convince anybody else. This is right. I’m just
gonna go out and prove it. You know, so I would first
it sounds like you need money I’ve never gone out and raised money I just do shit, make
money, and then go back and tell you I told you
so, right? That you know and so, for me it’s sounds
like you need dollars but, money is easy. Go find the people that wanna find their “Polish Mark Zuckerberg” take their money and go and execute – [Julian] The thing is I’ve
been here for seven days in New York so I’ve of kind
of had an up hill battle but I know what you mean. – [Gary] Yeah, get it, but like I’m not sure what that even meant meaning like
– [Julian] Meaning like – going into a bar where
they only let me in because I am 20.
– [Gary] Right. – I already get like shut down–
– [Gary] Right. – [Julian] where all the
networking events are so, I’ve actually
been standing outside of like Wall Street firms and like hitting up the people. – [Gary] I think your
strategy was fucked up then. – Probably like
– [Julian] Why? Well, I mean, there’s
two ways to look at it. I mean, your strategy is not fucked up if you hustle to get in the
New York, right from Poland to try to raise money then that’s awsome,
but, then I wouldn’t be whoa is me about that like, dude I fucking work 19 hours a day like, I’ve, everybody’s got struggles. – [Julian] I work 20. – What’s that?
– [Julian] I work 20. – [Gary] Cool, I work 21. (audience laughing) So, here’s what I think I think that you clearly
got hustle, right? – [Julian] Right. – And like, I guess, let’s go backwards well let’s make it a
ask the Polish kid show. – [Julian] Okay. Bring it. – What do you need right now? Money?
– [Julian] Yes. – Cool, money is I think
money is shockingly easy. So, what I would tell
you is I would’ve before I came to New
York and knock on doors I would’ve use the
internet, new thing, and I would’ve e-mailed
people, hit them up on Twitter done different things to try to have much warmer meetings in place. How many meetings did you have
in place when you got here? – [Julian] I’ve had about seven. – So that’s good.
So how did those go? – They went well, but looked at me like I was 20 years old and said this is a way
too complex problem to solve for such a young kid we’ll give the money
to someone who’s older who has more experience.
– [Gary] I disagree. I think that’s what you
want to think they thought. – [Julian] Well, I mean
you told me and I said you know, I’m not gonna say it. – [Gary] By the way, I bet
you that they said that you because a lot of people are
bad at giving critical advice they probably just use that as an excuse. Because, I promise you, I know
every fucking VC in the game and they’re pumped to
give a 20 year old money. They just wanna give it to
something that they believe in. – [Julian] Okay, cool. – [Gary] Cool man, good luck. – [Julian] Thanks. (audiance clapping)

“Hey Gary! “What would you prioritize
as a one person business?” – [India] Yeah, that’s how I do it. – Amber. That’s how you roll? Ladies. That was an L, I don’t know. You can see, that’s
what got me the ladies. (laughter) Amber? Amber, this is a great question, and a very simple one
to be honest with you. And I see, India just informed me about the artistic side of
what you’re pumping out. And so this will be kind of
interesting of an answer, but it’s the truth. If there is one thing I would focus on as a solo-preneur, it is sales. Money is oxygen. And so, you know, you
could do anything you want. You could produce the greatest art, the greatest sneakers, the greatest cup of coffee, if you don’t know how to sell it, you are out of business. Which tends to be the
theme of this episode. So, I would highly recommend
you focus on sales. You have to figure out
can you sell your thing. Whatever that is, it’s a service, sell out the show, your thing that you actually sell. If you’re not capable of
selling as a solo-preneur, there’s really nothing else that matters, because money intake
is the way you continue to the next move, right? It’s like up, up, down, down,
left, right, left, right, B, A, B, A, select, start
powers up your lives in Contra, you need lives. And cash is that Nintendo
cheat sheet hack. And so, that’s what it is, cash is oxygen. Cash, say it with me VaynerNation, cash is oxygen, cash is oxygen. Cash is oxygen, India, come on. Cash, come on India, do it with me. Cash, come on, India. Cash is oxygen
– Cash is oxygen. – Yes! Yes! This is a very special episode. Very special 96th episode
of the #AskGaryVee Show. VaynerNation, question of the day, cash is fill in the blank.

“about Facebook dark post. “Yeah, I know I’m a little
late but there is tons of info “about dark post on YouTube. “There are also people
selling dark post courses. “Would you pay for a course “or use all the free info on YouTube?” – Anthony, I would not pay for a course. I would use all the information
on YouTube and other places. I’m sure there’s a ton of
white papers and SlideShares and if you use that thing called Google, you can find more stuff. Dark posts are not that complicated because you just need (laughs) The usage of dark post
is not that complicated. Is dribbling and shooting
a basketball complicated? No. Is using a screwdriver complicated? No. You can learn those things. Being great at them is
a whole different thing. The way to be successful
in dark post on Facebook is to understand the
psychology and salesmanship it takes to create a
narrative to the end consumer that you target that
predicates an action for them to purchase something
that you want to happen. That’s hard. That’s hard. That’s analyzing data. Interpreting it. Then deploying it with creative call to
actions that are the variable of the success to it against the right demo, at the right time, in the right vehicle, around the right psychology. That’s hard. Understanding how to make
an ad happen on Facebook is not hard, everybody can do that. That should take you 20 minutes, two hours or four hours, depending on how you
learn to figure that out. It’s, are you good enough
to then make it happen. So, no do not pay for a course because you’ll get that
information for free. What you should do is get educated on being at the bigger picture at hand. Which is the craft of
the usage of the tool, not the tool itself. – [Voiceover] Dr. Laurie asks, ?Do you ever have dreams at
night about your business?”

– [Voiceover] Bunch of
Deckheads wants to know, “If you’re selling merch,
like t-shirts, “how would you go about doing it?” – Well, Deckheads, I mean– This is a very good question. I like this question. I don’t wanna beat dead horse but I would say
Facebook dark post is incredibly interesting. The targeting capabilities
of what’s going on in that platform are incredible. I think Pinterest
and promoted pins is another place
that I would spend a ton of time and energy. And I would say
traditional digital even though it’s something
I like to pick on. I think SEM, Google AdWords and I think banner retargeting, you know, people
landing on your site, you pixeling them
and cookieing them from the traffic that you
got from the other places and then retargeting
them on banner and things of that nature
have all been proven t-shirt, hoodie, hat selling. I think Facebook dark posts,
though are incredible. The fact that you can
target people that are fans of Teespring or BustedTees
or all these kind of Threadless, JackThreads,
all these places where those kind of things
are sold, Johnny Cupcakes. The fact that you can target
to that level, just incredible. I mean like, you know (scoffs) It’s really a funny
thing to do this show because I keep
pounding this narrative and so many of you
continue not to do it. But a couple of you are
starting to email me saying, hey, thank you for this because
this is what’s happened. So that makes me happy,
makes me continue to wanna spew the best advice
possible, and to me 50% of my money
would be allocated to Facebook dark posts but
the other 50% allocated to things I just told you about. By the way, Staphon,
this whole episode

How would you price
sponsorships for an episode of a show like #AskGaryVee? Would you go by
the number of views? By the number of sales they get? What do you think? Thanks Gary. – Yes. I think that there’s a
very simple answer to this. My big belief, when
you’re selling sponsorship to something new is you ask
for as much as possible. And I’m not kidding. You don’t know where your ceiling is. If you go by cpm’s and views you’re really in a tough spot because views and impressions
have been commoditized to such a level that you’ll
never hit enough scale. Most people are
gonna make four dollars on their show sponsorship
if they go that route. It’s the association,
notice I don’t run ads or sell sponsorship on this show and if I did, I would
expect substantial bank. Because not only,
it’s not about the 20, 30, 40, 50 thousand YouTube and 50, 60, 70, 80 thousand
Facebook imperssions and awareness and
all that nature. It’s about the brand association. I’m endorsing it by accepting it ’cause I’ve never
done it before. And so there’s an
extra value on that. So I think, the thing that
you really need to think about is if it’s a small
business, start up, you need to negotiate. There needs to be just a
price and you start high. If it’s a media buying agency, you’re already in trouble
because they’re looking to buy scale and they’re really looking
to commoditize your traffic and that is not gonna make
sense for 99.9% of the people listening and watching
this show and so my advice is to price it– and then the second
part of your question about the conversion of sales. You don’t wanna
be in direct response, conversion based
business either. What you wanna be is in the
brand association pricing, right. You can’t put a price on a
small business-oriented solution being a sponsor of this
show because they’re getting to entrepreneurs and
executives through this channel and there’s more depth than width. So I would price it as
high as humanly possible and let it land to where
the market actually says. I think one of the big mistakes
that a lot of my friends who watch this show and lot
of people that negotiate in general, they don’t
price accordingly because they ask
for what they want. And usually, you should
at least double or triple what you want to leave
room for the negotiation. Or, you know, a lot of times
you’re limiting your upside by not recognizing
that you missed or underpriced your value prop. – [Voiceover] Bunch of
Deckheads wants to know,

and I have a question regarding platforms to sell your merchandise online. I run an online community designed to help other sellers succeed
on platforms like eBay, Amazon, and tree systems like Amazon FBA. Just recently, probably
the last six months, there’s been a lot of talk of
eBay really going downhill. A lot of sellers are
fed up with their fees, and they’re really disliking
the path that eBay has taken. My question for you is,
if eBay doesn’t innovate, if they don’t change,
if they don’t get out of this old school mentality, do you think they’ll become irrelevant in the next five or 10 years? Do you think places like
Amazon will completely take over the entire market, rather than just owning a
majority of it right now? – Name? – [India] Michael. – Michael, great question. I’m an eBayhead. Taught AJ how to be an entrepreneur
by going to garage sales and selling on eBay. eBay’s become more Amazon-like than what it originally started out, which was sell Pez dispensers and bobbleheads and Beanie Babies. I actually think there’s
a huge white space, so I think eBay’s doing the
right thing, believe it or not, competing a little bit with Amazon, and I do think resellers
are struggling with it, but manufacturers and people
at scale are enjoying it. I think what eBay is doing
is they’re recognizing there’s no alternative to eBay
in the world, so ironically, I think the white space is, I’m gonna make a prediction here, in the next, and I don’t
like doing predictions. I always say I don’t make
predictions, I just follow, but I’m gonna make one, and I failed in a startup
called Yardsale, mobile eBay, and I may be wrong, and I
actually feel pretty weak about this prediction, but
I’m gonna make it anyway. I do think that in the next 10 years, somebody’s gonna build eBay again. eBay is so much not eBay anymore, that when you look at it,
it’s all new products. I still think there’s enormous
commerce in used product, and so Etsy took its own
kind of crafter mold. Ironically, Etsy just
went public yesterday, so interesting timing. eBay is eBay but is evolving
more towards Amazon-like, Overstock retail! I think there’s a huge
open space for somebody to build a billion-dollar company in literally just becoming eBay again, and I mean restrictions. No new products, everything
on the site is used. You know, used. I just, I think it’s a huge play, still, especially with mobile
and smart tech, so much, I’m curious where that goes, so, do I think Amazon can be
the entire marketplace? No. Do I think that eBay’s
gonna go out of business in the next 10 years? No, I actually think what eBay is doing is actually smart for their business, until this alternative
comes, which may never come, thus, I’m pretty positive on their direction, and so, I think if you guys are resellers or certain type of niches,
I mean I’ve been saying, me and my homies that sold collectibles said eBay was finished, not
as good as it was, in 2005. Like, “Oh, eBay’s ruined.” That was 10 years ago, so that’s my answer. I’m so into eBay. I need, everybody’s got one,

“to scale a business with an
inherently low profit margin?” – So, Jared’s got a low
profit margin issue. He’s asking the best way to scale it. Jack? – New products, new innovation, new angle. If you’ve got, the last thing
you wanna be thinking about is making large something
that’s small margins. You wanna find ways to
take the assets you have and transform it into a
high-growth, exciting player in maybe adjacent fields. But take the asset you
have and deploy them to grow the business, but not maybe the existing business completely. – Get away from the low-margin businesses. Create services, right? I mean, isn’t that what you did at GE? Took all the stuff that was low-margin, and you added on high-margin services. You don’t wanna be in
a low-margin business. You’ve gotta do everything
with your innovation and creativity to get away from it. – I’m gonna go with an
interesting, different angle from my own life experience. When I got into my dad’s business, it did three million dollars in revenue and ran on 10 percent gross
profit before expenses. It was a family business, right? – Right, right. – That’s low margin. The liquor business is bad,
cause there’s a middle, wholesale part that takes 25 percent of the 50 percent that a
retailer normally takes. Extremely low margin. What I did was actually
went the other way. Meaning, I took the low margin items that were driving the store’s business, and I actually bet on them. What I did was, I took all the
items like Santa Margherita, Kendall-Jackson, the liquor
items that were low margin, at cost, by the way, and
I used them to market, to drive people into
the store as the honey, and then I merchandized the store and built the brand that they
came in for, Kendall-Jackson, but I sold them a different
Chardonnay with margin. And so, both these things
are, of course, right, I’m curious, and we don’t know, where you are in your life cycle. What I’ve watched a lot
of people do is try to go, you know, bandaid off from low margin to some new innovation that
maybe the market doesn’t want. I think the hedge there, that’s
interesting to understand, I really felt the effects of
this, is use it as an offense. Right now, we’re testing Facebook ads for my wine business, and
everything we’re using are these low-margin
items, because they have the brand equity to drive in,
and then we’ll take care of it from there, so you may be far enough along in your business where, the first answers here
were 100 percent right. You need to get into a
place where the margins are gonna get right,
but I worry, depending on your sophistication as an operator, that you go complete cold turkey. There’s a way to use the
low-margin items as an asset. – That’s a very good idea, but I would use the low-margin items and the margin from those low-margin items
to invest in other areas. – 100 percent. That’s what I did, right? The pennies we made turned
into the advertising, that drove people in, then I
grabbed them, and so, da-da-da. India.

“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.

“I’ve been in sales for over
20 years and I’ve excelled at “being able to read
people’s body language. “But how do you do that over the Internet “or on Social Media?” – Todd, first of all, India, you’re crushing this episode, or maybe you VaynerNation,
actually forget you, India, you VaynerNation are
crushing this episode with the questions. The truth is I love this question. I love it because I’m
freaked out by the answer. And look, this falls very
much into bravado and ego, but that’s part of me too. I’ve been blown away by my
ability to make that transition. I too, did everything the way you did. I stood on a floor, I watched, I read. I do it all the time. It’s why I love Q an A, it’s why I love public speaking, it’s why I don’t have a set presentation. I’m reading the room in real time. I’m reading my staff. It’s how I scale my
ability to read at scale. Like walking through the
12th floor and be like, that person’s in trouble. It’s weird, kind of like I don’t
even like talking about it. It’s like a really nice
innate skill that has helped me scale my personality. I, for some reason, feel
those feelings in people’s comments and tweets. Now, maybe it took me a long
time to get the cadence. Of course, there’s been times
where I’ve maybe read into it wrong because context and tone is lost, but I’ve go to tell you, my intuition is if you go
hardcore in trying to do that through Twitter, through
your Facebook comments on your posts, and this is more about me
reading people responding to my stuff so maybe I know where
the North Star starts, but it’s been stunning to me
that exactly what I’ve done in the real world is how I
scaled Twitter, specifically, in being able to read people’s emotions and asking for clarity. Maybe in the real world, my man, we don’t ask for clarity. I won’t say DRock, are you feeling, oh you’re feeling uneasy
about this wine, cool, let’s go in a different direction. Maybe I have to ask that
a little bit more tangibly black and white in a
conversation on digital, but it’s the same effort, same mentality, and the beauty is emojis
and short form and slang have given more context around
the written word online. We, as human beings, are great at communicating. People grossly underestimate our ability to be communicators. Whether drawing on caves
or making smoke signals or radio television, the written word, the Internet, commenting, emojis, we’re talented at this. I’m watching all of us evolve. Very many of us, many of you
who have been romantic about grammar, have finally let it go. All of us are misspelling words on purpose so it auto-corrects, because we value the speed. We’re using emojis, not only 13 year olds
or just people in Asia, now it is a worldwide phenomenon. We’re evolving and we’re great at it, so I look for those cues
and keep trying to evolve and stay ahead of where I
think we’re all evolving to. – Hey Gary, Ryan here
from onproperty.com.au,

“and they are slowly
letting in biz accounts. “Are you optimistic?” – Jeff, this a great question. We haven’t talked enough about Pinterest on The #AskGaryVee Show, so
I appreciate the question. Good job, India of picking that out. I’m a huge believer in
Pinterest’s product. You might have noticed very
recently that they’ve made it a term of service that you
can’t do affiliate sales. My belief is that means
that they are now going to turn that on for themselves. If you start thinking about
the amount of commerce that goes on, on Pinterest, even if they 5% of every transaction, they could right away be one
of the top five to 10 companies in revenue in the digital space. I’m a big believer in the business, and seeing what’s going on with Faithbox, Willie, the CEO of the
company we’ve incubated at Vayner/RSE, just like $4 in
ad spending on promoted pins. Some of the stuff we’ve
seen at VaynerMedia, the stuff I’m seeing from Wine Library, I’m massively bullish. I actually think that
Pinterest’s ad product, a year from today, let’s
call it 18 months from today, we will recall this video, somebody make a note,
(ding) put it into your calendar
18 months from today. We will make a video
or a piece of content, however we do it in those days, 18 months from now, to talk about this video
where I make this claim, which is that Pinterest’s ad
product is a major competitor to Google AdWords for
e-comm businesses that are digital focused. Enormously passionate about
Pinterest’s ad product and I highly recommend
everybody watching this. If you’re selling something on a dot com, that you get very serious about
understanding what’s going on in the Pinterest environment, bullish would be an understatement. Super bullish, super bull like I’m into it. (laughter)