and I know you love wines
so you know my country– – Of course.
– I read about you a lot, and what I like is that in one of your videos you say one is better than the zero.
– Yes. – I love it. I love these words
and I always do this. – I think that’s one of the best videos. Staphon, let’s hear it
for Staphon on that one! (crowd cheers) – So, I believe in the same so. – [Gary] Yes. – This way I say I’m holding
the food business today – [Gary] Okay. – And I believe in healthy eating so, my question is if
I target New York City as healthy eaters and
healthy eating city in the future it might be right. I know I will have one or more followers. One is still better than zero,
but should I go in this and should I create some
social media content in those terms and which it should be like, video or deals or blogging or stuff. What do you suggest?
– I understand what you’re saying. – Let’s take a step
back, hold on to the mic. What are you actually doing? What’s the business actually you do? ‘Cause that will dictate the answer. – All right, we have a product
start up with my friends and I’m working at a restaurant. – Got it. What’s the product? – So, the product is a
Georgian recipe well modernized for the American market. – Interesting.
– I mean, the retail market. – Is it an actual like food? – Yeah, it’s a food.
– [Gary] It’s a food. – It’s dip, you know. – Like a humus? – Yeah, like a hummus, but
we are much different. – We’re much better
than hummus. Fuck hummus! Okay. – (mumblling) (Gary laughing) – So, are you asking about
marketing that product? – No, I’m asking about
social media term? Should I go into social media and create some social content about healthy eating
– [Gary] No. – No
[Davey] will it be successful? – You should make content
about your product. Your product
– [Davey] Yeah, of course – well that’s it, there’s not of course you just fuckin’ asked me about some fuckin’ food shit in New York. Your product, focus on making
content around your product and around the lifestyle of that product but not for the sake of New
York City health enthusiasts. Right?
– [Davey] No. – (mumbling) Your so small. Like you can’t worry
about going that abstract. Nobody knows, there’s
not a single person here that knows what the fuck
you are talking about. They are like Georgian Dip,
you mean Georgia like Atlanta? No, the former fuckin’
Soviet Union fuckers. You know, so you know what I mean? So like, you have to understand
like nobody understands you have to educate, it’s
kind of like, you know, I don’t if this, I left Russia young, but like when I was growing up we ate a ton of pomegranates.
– [Davey] Yeah. – Right? But nobody in America ate
Pomegranates in the ’80s. Like my friends would
come over to play Legos and they’d be like what the fuck is that? You know, that’s not an apple. You know, like we ate pomegranates for years, and years, and years. Before Pom juice came and pomegranate became like, you know a Pinkberry flavor so like, I think that you have a lot of educating to do. Like I don’t know what
you’re talking about and I was born in that area. I don’t know what you’re talking about so, I think that you need focus there, you’re going too abstract, and
that’s a good piece of advice for a lot of people
like way too many people back to I said it before,
because it’s just so important. How many people here know who I am? 90% don’t, people make
way too many assumptions they think they are bigger
than they actually are you know, and it’s fine,
it makes people feel good. But like for as much ego
and bravado as I have 24 hours, 25 I think I
can build any business I’m always grounded in reality.
I think you need to focus on building a story around your product. – [Davey] Thanks so much.
– You got it, man. (audience applauding)

“what is the future of
blogging in all this “rented social media space?” – You know Thomas, I think the
interesting thing about blogs and it’s really fascinating for
me to watch what’s happening is in 2003, four, five, six, it was very commonplace to
use the internet in a way where you would be driving
someone to your home, right? Like, come here to consume me here. I think what we’re seeing a lot now is I’m over here. If you want me to know what’s up, you better learn how to speak to me here. And so I think that what’s happened is the attention graph that
I spend so much time paying attention to is shifting, and people’s willingness
to jump to some place to consume is not down
because the truth is I believe social networks,
specifically Twitter and Facebook and Pinterest, yeah those, LinkedIn, are really gateway drug pieces of content to drive to this before mentioned home, a blog, an e-commerce site, your download page to your app. So, I think what’s changed
is people understanding they need a great skill to
be a wonderful storyteller within social networks to
become a first impression to the, ya know, it’s like
you have to be really good at the bar before you get a
chance to do something at home. And I think that’s the
analogy that I’m looking for, if you know what I mean.

(laughter)
– [Gary] Is he Joe Namath? (muttering and laughing) Amazing. (laughter) – Oh hi. Gary, I have a question. Nationwide CMO recently
justified their Super Bowl ad by saying, “We weren’t
trying to sell insurance, “we were trying to save children’s lives.” How do you feel about advertising such a somber spot in the Super Bowl? – Great question and great legs Geoff. (laughter) – You like that, Johnny? (laughter and clapping) That’s a really good question,
it’s really interesting, I always have wondered if everybody talking the next
day after the Super Bowl about the monkey that
jumped on the bear with the cute little puddle of
water with a smiley face on it, did that actually help
XYZ thing sell its thing? And I think at some level we have a lot of wannabe movie producers
making TV commercials for the Super Bowl and it’s their chance to do the most creative thing that they’ve always wanted to do, and they’re so happy. I actually weirdly am pretty pro that commercial spot, and I’ll explain why. Number one, at some level,
advertising’s supposed to make you remember and think and recall, and the truth is, that
piece of content makes me think about what those people
actually do for a living a hell of a lot more than
a lot of other things where people bring back
old school celebrities and then 10 minutes
later you don’t even know which snack it really
was or which soda it was or which beer it was and
so I understand peoples’ push back against it,
but I’m a humongous fan of going counter-cultural,
and so in a world of Super Bowl is festive and this and that, and everybody’s kind of
going for humor, I mean, here we are talking about it, right? And so, (sighs) again,
I was at the Super Bowl and haven’t fully even
seen the spot and don’t have all the context so I’m
not super prepared to give my final, final, final
(hands pounding) answer on this, and I’ll
try to do that shortly because I should be on top
of something like that, but my early intuition
is that there’s a lot of value to always playing the other side of the equation and from what I can tell without seeing fully the
spot, ’cause I’ve seen the images but not fully
the spot, the content is at least closely tied in
to what that company does for a living and I think
that way too many people wanna throw Betty White out
there or a cute XYZ kitty cat or something of that
nature, and you’re just talking about the
creative, but you have no interest in going and buying the product. I think there’s real
potential for that kind of effectiveness so, I think standing out and going in the other direction is always the right thing in a crowded environment and I think they’ve
clearly done that because everybody’s still talking
about it and debating it, and it’s tied into the
business they actually do.

– [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.

– [Voiceover] Corey asks,
“What’s the best way to grow a following or a
community from nothing?” Corey, this is easy for me to answer, since I’ve done it a couple of times, and the real answer is,
content and context. My belief is the best way to
build a following right now is to put out daily, if you can, content and get as close to
that as possible, right, and so, every day, put out your picture or your drawing on your
Snapchat that you blast out or your Instagram photos
or your video show or whatever you may be
doing. Your written blog, every day. You know? Six days is better than five days, and five days is better than four days, and four days is better than three days, and two days is better
than one day a week. But if you’re doing it one
or two or three days a week, are you really doing it? And so pumping out hardcore content, and then engaging. I’m going to ask a
Question of the Day today, and hopefully, after I get
home at 11:30, twelve tonight, I’m gonna go into the comments and reply to some of those answers, creating context. You’ve empowered me by watching my show, I then jumped back in to answer your Question of the Day answer, showing you that I appreciate you. We’ve created a deeper context, just like when I reply to
you or I answer your email or some of the Cyber Dusts
I’ve done in the last 24 hours, it’s about content and context. Building a community takes work. Building a community is
not a foregone conclusion. Everybody just thinks
you’re gonna start a show and everything’s gonna magically happen, or you’re gonna start a blog or you’re gonna become
an Instagram sensation. The talent to put out the content is only one piece of the equation. 1% of the magic 1%, get it
just by the content push-out, but for the rest of us
chaps and chapettes, we’ve gotta put in the
work into the community and care back to the
time they’ve allocated. The fact that people are spending
ten minutes to watch this in your ridiculously busy world is something I will never,
ever take for granted. – [Voiceover] Jon asks, “tea or coffee? Or wine?”

“for a boring subject
such as a hardware store? “Any ideas? “Thanks.” – Jan, a hardware store
is very far from boring. I mean we’ve talked to
people that are asking about highways and cement,
and all sorts of things, and I have no idea how you think that a hardware store is boring when you’re selling tools, something that tons, and I mean tons of people are actually passionate about. So, you know, the fact
that you’ve categorized it as boring makes me say, “We have to work on your mindset,” because you need to open it up. Because construction and homes, and DYI, do it yourself, all these things are happening right now, and I would argue that a bunch of people who are watching right now
are gonna leave comments in YouTube saying, “That
is far from boring.” So, I would say, “It’s not boring. “The content is quite easy, “and get your ass to it.” – [Voiceover] Eric asks,
“Need your advice on getting “the first 10 customers for
a creative service startup.

Evan, you’re not selling a hard product, and I paid attention to how
you frameworked your question, but the truth is ultimately Evan, I think you’re trying to play chess to get a donation. I will tell you that the number one sector in social media that is
most struggled in my opinion is non-profit and NGO. The amount of people,
because I have over a million followers on Twitter that
hit me up everyday, everyday. 15 people a day on Twitter that hit me up for can you give to charity? Can you retweet this for our charity? Without even saying hello. Can you romance a girl? It makes no sense. The way you do it. The way you sell that culture is look, there’s Charity: Water as the
gold standard in my opinion of heavy story telling through content. I would look at that as a model. It’s about putting out good content. It’s about engaging with people around their issues. It’s searching the terms,
much like the last question, around whatever you’re
trying to solve and jumping into conversations. It’s about effort, instead of, you know, there’s an entitlement
on the non-profit NGO space that needs to be broken
for them to be successful in an open, transparent one-on-one world where it’s not guilting
or relying on what people think they have to give. I had dinner last night
with a CEO of a major NGO non-profit, and I
said I feel great giving back, and he said, no stop. Get rid of the word back. It’s just good giving. By saying giving back it’s
like you’ve taken something, and it really was powerful. I think we need to get to a place where it’s not what’s expected. It’s what’s appreciated, and
that can be completely executed on social better than any other place, because it’s transparent. It’s open. Get into conversations. Show the effort. Romance a girl. Execute. My friends, I’m excited about this as you can see there’s
very attractive people