The Bossticks - BONUS 4: Ask Gary Vee: Influencer Marketing, How to Go Viral & Vlogging

Episode Date: August 3, 2017

On this Bonus Episode we sit down with one of our favorite people: Gary Vaynerchuck (@GaryVee). This bonus episode is from The Ask Gary Vee Show, Episode 191 where Lauryn and Michael went on his show as guests back in March of 2016. This episode holds a special place for us because it was the very same week we launched The Him & Her Podcast and the first time we met Gary. It was important for us to have our first 3 episodes live by the time Gary's show aired to let his audience know about the new podcast. On the episode we cover: Influencer marketing, how to go viral, and vlogging.  Watch episode 191 on Youtube To Connect with Gary HERE If you want to listen to of our first podcasts where we talk about our experience on Gary's show, listen HERE Listen HERE for the episode when Gary came on our show The Twitter pic of Michael in the shower that we referenced can be seen HERE To Connect with Sarah Dietschy HERE

She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the skinny confidential, him and her. Aha!

Bringing a little fire this week. Bonus episode. Bonus episode. This one's actually a good bonus episode. I'm super excited about it. Bonus episode number four, I think. Yeah. We're going to keep doing.

these bonus episodes, you guys seem to love them. This one is with my fave, Mr. Gary Vee. Gary Vaynerchuk. And this episode is actually a piece of content from his channel, from his Ask Gary Vee show, Episode 191. If you go to YouTube and search Ask Gary Vee, episode 1951, you can actually watch the video. And this took place in March of 2016, right around the time we were starting this podcast. Actually, if you go to episode three, You'll see an episode of ours titled Ask Gary V where we kind of recap the experience. You can hear all about it. And this episode is particularly on influencer marketing.

But tell them the story behind the whole situation. Lauren loves this story. Originally, Gary's team reached out to Lauren to come on the show to talk about influencer marketing. But me being a big fan of Gary, I took the opportunity to say, wait a minute, I need to get on this show. So diabolical. So I spent the whole day, it was around the time he was promoting his book, Ask Gary Vee, that's the title of the book as well. And I knew he wasn't going to let me on the show because at the time I didn't really have any social presence. I wasn't doing anything. We didn't have a podcast.

You did have your companies in Jetbed, but they were all behind the scenes. Yeah, I didn't have any social presence, as I was saying. But I did have a huge physical presence. Oh my God. Literally shoot me. So I had to use my strengths. And I actually, to get his attention, I ran around New York. taking pictures with his book in compromising positions. I think at one point I was in the shower with it. I was tweeting him. You were butt naked with your carrot hanging low, reading his book.

I think at one point a cop, I had the cop put my arms behind my back and was reading the book then. And so when we got in the office, it got his attention and he invited me on the show. Yeah, it was really, really cool of Gary and his team to get Michael on the show. And I think all three of us provided value. There was another girl that was on it who's a vlogger. Her name is Sarah Dedechi. and you guys should check her out. She actually went viral. The whole episode was on influencer marketing, how to go viral and vlogging. So it was very fitting. We had a great episode. If you actually want to

watch it on YouTube, you can. But we decided that we would put it on this podcast so any of you who have not heard it can take a listen. And also keep in mind when you're listening to this, that we had launched our second podcast when we were on this show. We decided when we got invited on the show that we would launched the podcast immediately because we wanted to talk about our podcast that was newly launched on the Gary V show. So we're a little- You got a growth hack where you can growth hack. You know what I mean? And so you got to take any opportunity. That's why I knew I had to get on that show. You sort of growth hacked yourself. I sure did. At that, you know, it's funny. At that point, I had not been on any, you can not find any interviews with me prior to that. You were a little nervous, but you did good.

Yeah. I really started, you know, kind of in the big leagues. Yeah. So, you know, You can expect a lot of different fun things in this episode. We'll talk about blogging. We will talk about Snapchat. We'll talk about building businesses, kind of everything. And Gary Vee brings fire as usual. Before we get into it, though, I want to make sure that you guys listen to when we had Gary V on our show. And what episode is that, Michael?

I believe it's episode 51. So listen to 51. I'll link it in the notes. We'll link it in the notes. And with that, let's get right. into the Ask Gary Vee Show, episode 191 for you. Yep, and so Gary, my best friend, Gary, hit me up when you can.

I'll be in New York soon. All right, Michael. Love you, Gary. This is the skinny confidential, him and her. Hey, everybody, this is Gary Vey, Nerchuk, and this is episode 191 of the Ask GaryVee show. It is loaded on the show today. Uh-huh.

Uh-huh. A whole bunch of peeps joining. joining us on a very fun influencer entrepreneur show, one of the chapters in my book. First, Vayner Nation, thank you so much for keeping me company on my 11 hour trip to Sydney, Australia. Big ups to everybody down in Sydney,

had a lot of fun. Cleveland, you guys too, St. Louis, Boston, Atlanta. It's been a very busy week, ladies and gents. Sounds like it. India, we missed you. D. Rock, missed you too. When you figured out how to miss your plane. That hurt.

Stefan, great to see you. Nick, good to see you, man, over there. Why don't you guys first introduce yourselves and then Indy and I will start the show. Why don't we start with the ladies? Awesome. My name is Saradici, Rhymes with Peachy. I am a filmmaker, photographer,

YouTuber, and professional interneter. And how'd you get here? Because I think it's a great story. Yeah, so basically I made a viral video around a filmmaker and YouTuber called Casey Nystad. Oh, there, yeah. He featured me in his vlog the next day after I made the video and I knew I've been watching your stuff,

for about a year and the first person I emailed was Gary. And the subject line was Girl from Casey Nice type video. And so I was like, let's do this Gary. Let's collab. Quick moving. Awesome, it's great to have you here. So what happened for everybody from the story? How many subscribers did you have?

How much after the Casey showed up? So I went from 4,000 subscribers to 100,000 subscribers, probably today. Wow. Yeah, I'm right at 99,000 right now. Bainer Nation. Come on, so. Look it up.

Don't be sleepy. Yep. Yep, in two weeks. Good for you. Yeah. Thank you. Originally from Dallas, Texas, and I live in Nashville, Tennessee. All right.

I am Lauren Everett's. I'm from the Skinny Confidential. It's a blog and book and now a podcast. And I'm really excited to be here. I've been a blogger for five years. Awesome. Where do you live? San Diego and L.A.

We kind of go both ways. My name's Michael Bostic. I'm Lauren's better half, worse half? No, worse. Kind of the behind the scenes, business half of her blog, which is crushing it. How did it start? So I started it while I was a bartender,

I was teaching peer bar, I was broke as a joke. And I started, I started, You know how broke you are when you're a joke, India? Really broke. Really broke. Started blogging, was a blogger for free for two years, just continue to create value and content like you always say and just love it, it's my passion,

and I've been doing it ever since. What was your kind of, what was the thing that kind of started, Did you have a break? What was the first moment that you got an interesting bump? Um, it's honestly there's no epiphany. It's like such a slow build. There's nothing where I woke up. You don't say.

Oh my God. No, you had it. I mean, you had your month. Yeah, and by the way, I had Conan, when I went on Conan 07 as a YouTuber, that was unheard of. The entire internet was like, whoa. Like a YouTuber on television?

It was like, I mean, it's so crazy to think. I think to do something like this, you kind of just, like you said, she loves it, and there's never been like a moment she's been doing it, where did you start the, where did the content start living? The content's on the blog and that's my mother's ship

and like the blogs. Instagram a big thing for you? Instagram's big, but Instagram's fleeting and everything that's just started to happen with it, like in my opinion. You're sad about the algorithm? I'm not sad because I'm into Snapchat so I don't give, can I cuss?

No. Okay. No, I don't really give a shit about that. I mean, Snapchat is where like I'm focusing my attention, So Instagram, I'm just kind of like whatever. I mean, I still push that, but it's not my like favorite thing. Right. And what else?

What else? Well, we're doing a podcast. It's the skinny confidential, him and her podcast. We're getting a male perspective. We're talking one night stands. That's me. His perspective's really rude. His perspective on one night stands is, it's phenomenal.

Oh, you saw it? No, but it's every dude's answer to that question. Like, that's a pretty universal point of view. So we're doing that. And you're down on that? I'm fine. I want him to give advice to women. Instead of men, I feel like there's so many people there. I see. You're giving advice to women.

I'm not, yeah, that sounds funny. No, I think I'm just giving a male perspective on, like, so she'll get an audience, he'll submit questions. And I don't think there's a lot of men responding in an authentic way. Right, they're bullshitting. They're saying the... They're bullshadding.

Right, Stefan's always like, no, no, I hate it because he's trying to be a gentleman, but deep down when everybody leaves, he tells DRock, he's like, I love it. My whole thing is like, you mean that? Yeah. Yeah. I just think there's a lot of bullshit guys

on the internet right now. There's a lot of bullshit guys, period. You're right, you're right. You're right. But he gives like a really, it's not bullshit. It's that guys are wired a certain way. It's just chemicals. You can't be mad at him.

He's a hunter. He is a hunter. But he needs to ring it in and start giving advice to these girls about hunters. India? What do you think about all this? We should get into the show. Alright, so the show.

So what do we got? We have three questions and then you two are going to ask a question, right? Okay. Let's do it, India. Jonathan asked, Would you say there's such a thing as a viral formula to make things spread?

So my point of view on this is that, you know, it's funny, this is a good time, Stefan, I know you'll be editing, link up the 60 years, you know, six minutes or 60 years video. In the opening line of that video, I say that the video is gonna go viral. I don't think there's a formula for going viral. I really don't, because if there was,

then there would be more people that could do it 40, 50, 100 times. I think there's concepts. There's concepts over here, which is, You goat or bait or get the attention of somebody who's got a humongous audience. You bring them value in some way or do something unique because everybody's doing that to K-Stee and she clearly did something that was

stronger, better, more interesting, or just a moment in time. DRock was the thousandth person that emailed me and said I want to make videos for you. At that moment I was ready. I was open for it. It works. So it's a timing thing sometimes.

So there's going after a big wig to put you on what Dr. Dre did for Snoop, right? It's a very common thing in the rap game. You give somebody a verse, it's a big song, they're a big artist, boom, the game changes, that happens in influencer marketing. There's what I did with the six minutes for 60 years. When I made that video, I knew that I was making it for 30 to 60 year old entrepreneurs, so I targeted 30 to 60 year olds

on Facebook who were also into Sharp Tank and other entrepreneurial things which gave it the match to get it going. So I think Facebook ad targeting for video and I think influencer marketing putting them on are two formulas. as that work, ladies? I think going viral sometimes can actually hurt you. If you look at that guy to leave Britney alone guy, he's known as that forever.

Personally, I would prefer to grow slowly, organically, authentically, raw, real, and really create content, and maybe that takes longer than going viral. Well, let me jump on this, and I think that's a tremendous point of view and something that I push hard. I will say this.

I think that it comes down to how good you are. Right. So like, if Beyonce went by you, viral at 16 off of video, but she actually had the chops. Like now we get to find out what kind of chops she has. So I've seen people go viral and stay because they're great. They have staying power. Sure, I watched Jerome, I watched Rudy, I watched Nicholas,

I watched the whole Vine movement and I was very close to all, Brittany for a lot. I watched all their, we picked Logan Paul to win a contest. That's how he got his career started. In a contest we created here at VaynerMedia, so he went viral in that moment, but he had to have the skills to hold onto it. Right. So I think, look, tried and true, like,

At the end of the day, if you don't have the chops, if you don't have something to say, you're dead. I think it's important to have the backlog of stuff. So when you have that moment, people will stay for what you're creating. So you felt that. You felt a lot of people saying, so you had the moment, and this is all very recently.

Yeah, so this is two weeks ago. Right. So people came and they got to see all the stuff you did in the past, they were like, wait to me, you're good. And by the way, I apologize to cut you off because I get yelled out for that. I know, I know. I'm not, I don't interview for a living.

review for a living. I bet you, I don't know this, I'm gonna actually text him and ask him. I bet you Casey probably even looked at that to make his decision for it to even have happened. Yeah, yeah. And so I think it's super important to put yourself in a position

where it's like, okay, you have the right context for maybe a viral video, but make sure, like are you in a point in your career or life to where those people are gonna stay? Right. Didn't you have something that someone told you about running

a multimillion dollar business that you have to run a business like a multi-million dollar business even if you're not a multimillion dollar? No, I had some advice a long time I was sending up a business and the guys I said, what do I do, like I have no idea, I'm just getting out of school. He says, set this business up,

this is more not to do with accounting. He goes, set it up like it's a multi-million dollar business so that you're prepared for when it gets there. So what's there? So what's there? Yeah, exactly. So like, if you think you're gonna have a million viewers, set it up to go viral.

Set it up so that when you get those million viewers, they want to stand there like, wow, this is legit. Like your content, you should be marketing like you're marketing to 10 million people. As long as, as long as it's authentically true to you. Yes. I think the biggest mistake, that people make is fake the funk.

And I do it in a business context. You might have seen these characters, back to guys being jerk-offs. Like you have all these guys that are faking entrepreneur life like they're winning but it's not true to them and so when I hear what you guys are saying which is right advice I just want to make sure everybody means that means

as long as it's true. That means the behavior, not rolling like you did it or acting like you're already famous. Yeah. Exactly. India, keep us moving. Nicole says, Blogging since 2009, I know my target audience, I post regularly, and promote on all social.

Numbers won't budge. Thoughts? My advice personally is to keep at it. Like, it's something that I literally do seven days a week. There is not one day that I've taken off in the last five years. You have to just crush it. You have to just keep... Did you ever get pushed back to the word Skinny? I mean, Skinny is one of these new politically incorrect words like three years ago. You've wondered at? Great, so I'm answering the questions. You know, it's interesting. You've been doing this for a while.

I think you're actually in a better place where I don't think the words as controversial, but 24 months ago, there was heat. Did you ever feel it? All the time, but I like that. I like heat on me. The things I talk about on my blog are camel toes and boob jobs and vagina steaming and enemas,

like I could go on and on. I talk about really controversial taboo subjects that no one wants to deal with. So having the word skinny and the title's really fitting for the brand. Understood. I mean, when you're talking about coconut, The word can you just-

Coconut oil is amazing for Loub though. It really is a tremendous show. This is a fair much. Everyone go home and try it. You will not be sorry. It's your birthday, DRock. I think that there is one thing. I do think that there's the three, four years

and then you have your moment. I mean, you look at it, it happens all the time in real life. Amy Schumer, Amy Schumer's career has been going on for a decade. She's been like, Kevin Hart. Kevin Hart was working at that shit for 15, like 12, 14, you know, and you have your moment. The problem is, one thing that I want people to know is, it's not necessarily your numbers growing, it's how do you feel about it?

Currently my Snapchat numbers are not growing. I've hit my kind of 30,000 views and I've been there for about a month. I feel fine with that because I feel like I'm getting better at it. I know what I want to do next. I know I've been studying on doing other things because the book has been coming out. Like, I feel content with myself even though that's against the number. Too many people, and this is, I'm sure,

like something we all think about it, you're going to be thinking about it when you see the podcast numbers and you start this new venture. This market is absolutely way too deeply focused on numbers. Now, Nick and Demondo, like, they're a platform, people buy on numbers. I get it. You make your short-term money on numbers.

You make your short-term... That's right. You make your short-term money on numbers. So I would say, who's the person again, India? Nicole, I would say, if you feel like you're moving the needle, and you feel like you're getting closer. If you can taste it, none of us can tell you,

then you keep at it. If you're watching right now and you've been trying to build your brand for 24 months, 36 months, you felt completely stagnant. Both in the numbers, both in the heat, you don't get recognized, less selfies, no selfies, no mentions,

no friend even know you're doing it. If you feel stagnant, I actually compare this to wrestling. So stick with me. I don't know if, you know, I know you talk about coconut oil, but I'm going to talk about WWF wrestling for a minute. When you look at gimmicks, right?

Gimmicks is like when you're Mr. Perfect or the Red Rooster or what have you. There's a lot of wrestlers who have three or four gimmicks and then they become Stone Cold Steve Austin. And they've been four other things and it didn't take but the new thing works. Now the difference there is that's a character. I could have stopped doing the wine thing

and started a Jets thing and I could be on ESPN right now. Whatever, and then I did a business thing. I had three things that I could have probably done as me. as me. Wine, business, and the Jets. And I've done too, I may become a Jets, a sports writer. If you have other interests, if you're doing a blog about Rupier or about skateboarding, but you're also into clothes or jam or rollerblading, if you feel very stagnant for

two or three years, your system and your thing might be right, but your topic may be wrong to you. It may not be that moment in time. So that's another version to think about this. if you feel in your heart and numbers a 24, 36 months stagnant because I do see people, I mean, I know people right now, because I've been doing this since 06, who've been doing the same thing for seven, eight years,

and there's nothing that's gonna happen. Talent, you always talk about talent. It's real. Yeah, it's real. And interaction, I think interaction with people. It is real. You have to have talent. If you don't have talent in this industry,

I think you are going to get washed away. So you have to know who you are, like you said. You have to remain authentic to yourself. And if you think you have talent to be a blogger, then blog every day. How long were you doing YouTube before this moment? I started YouTube in like 2012 and then I was consistent this past August.

And so I think you have... What happened in August that made you get really going? I was like, I want to build a business someday and I know having an audience is valuable. And so I just started with travel blogs. I started, I love filmmaking, I love making videos. And so it wasn't hard for me because I love doing it.

And I also think that interaction with people is so important. You can look at the numbers all day, but who is like, mentioning you on Twitter. Who is retweeting things? Who is favoriting things? And maybe- Is Twitter an important platform for you?

Yes, it has been so interactive. I only have about 5,000 followers, but everyone is so interactive and every, it's an awesome way to meet. Do you interact with your YouTube comments? Yes, okay, so glad you asked that question, because when I had 3,000 followers, I made it a habit to comment to every single comment.

Every single comment, it's hard to do it now. It's so crazy to watch you guys spur up from all the the thesis that I wrote seven, eight years ago. It's so crazy. I read Crush with, like, recently, and I was like, holy shit, he predicted the future. It is weird. It is weird.

I'm telling you, I read that influencer chapter today in your new book, and it's refreshing to have somebody with such a loud voice say it, because it's what we have been thinking and working on and saying for five, six years now. Tell them about what happened recently to me on a shoot. Because you'll appreciate it. This kind of goes into, like, influencer marketing as well. A brand recently brought her on to offer her, voice and her perspective and it was a video thing of four videos 30 seconds yeah

they brought her in and they said hey you're gonna stick to this script you're gonna do this thing it had 15 people on set they completely got away from her voice and it was kind of like what's the point why do you want me if you're not I got fired up about it because I said this brand's on its way out it's on its way and it may be fired up for her because her brands I know I don't what happened did you do it I know I did the script I did what they said but the point is is they could have hired a model or an actress to just read it they don't need a I'll never do it again.

Her voice and trying to get her audience. If they're not gonna use my voice. They have 15 people on there. We produce six of those videos in three hours with three of us. They micromanage everything. I think brands need to let the influencer do what they do. Well look what was DailyVee.

Like it's literally DRock and Gary Vee. Like, and it works, you know. You don't have five people following you around. The curated things out. I think it's on its way. It's so out. It's so done. Well, the bigger issue is that the people that follow you

know that's not you. Exactly. And that's why there's no, that's right, and there's no money they can pay you that makes it worth it for you. I mean, I had early deals for Wine Library TV before this was a real thing, and a car company wanted me to drive a car

into Wine Library, and it was so wild, it was so early days, and I was like, and it was a lot of money at the time, and I didn't do it because even then, back in 2007-08, I was just like, I just, I think I'm gonna think, people are gonna be like, forget it, like Gary sold out, that was so scary. It's so different now.

brands. I don't. It's a little bit more accepted now, but we refuse to sell ad space on the side. You go to the site, there's no. Now, oh, forget, by the way, if I grew up during this time, I would have done it. Like, back then, it was just so, there was just not,

there was not a single video on YouTube that had a million views when I started. Like, it was just a, like, I mean, this was 2006. How old were you in 2006? I was in sixth grade. Yeah, so like, you know what I mean? Like, it was a different world. India, keep us moving.

You see it? Hi, Gary, I'm Piperese from Piperspicks TV, and I'm here at the 2016 Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards orange carpet. So I've done over 700 interviews since I was seven years old. And I've also been pitching a scripted TV show concept. Eventually I want to expand to an online TV network sort of thing. So I want your advice on how to monetize.

Where do I go from here and when can I interview you? Oh my God. That is, so Piper, I'll save you a ton of time. Let's do it ASAP. Tell me where you're at, get to New York. Call me. Actually, sorry, Piper. Text me.

That was amazing. What do you guys think about that? I think that when she talks about how to monetize, I think the short game is to go for brands. The long-term game would to be a continual hosting on YouTube, push it on her platforms, and maybe even grow it into like sort of a brand where she has a clothing line.

I mean, she's adorable. She has red hair, which is different. She could do something with that. So I think there's an hour of ways to monetize. Yeah. And yeah, and I also think right now, you know, it's not about the ads, the pre-roll ads. It's about what are brands, like who are the brands that want to work with you,

and that makes sense with your brand? You know, if you spot, you know, have hoverboard sponsor a video, no one's going to care. But if you, if you really... They're sponsored them all. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, find things that work with your brand and integrate it into your content. Don't, you know. I think I will definitely have you on the show. You'll interview me, and during that show, I'll give you much more detailed answers because it's really predicated in your situation. I don't know the financial situation of your parents or your situation.

There's so many things, like I hate giving general advice when there's an opportunity to give specific advice. So since we're gonna be hanging out, I'll go there. I think the longer you can wait, the more you will make if you've got the talent. And so I think that's the real key. I think the other thing is, you know, I noticed all the things you had there.

If I were you, I would aggressively start looking at musically. I don't know what you guys are doing with musically if either one of you are on it. But I think that is the absolute platform of junior high right now and it seems like that would a very smart place for you to go. So I would continue to be first mover in new places because I think you're at such a young age

where that could be a big, big, big advantage. Supply and demand is differently on Musically than it is on Snapchat, Instagram or YouTube. So we'll have specific advice for you, Piper, very soon. That was cool. All right, now you guys, what do you got? Okay, I was thinking of questions and I pretty much know all of the answers

that you would say. So, yeah, I've been watching your stuff for a year. So I'll give you a question that a lot of people had was if they're trying to start a YouTube channel, in your opinion, how do you break through all of the stuff that is on there right now? I mean, we've talked about it, you know the answer. Talent is the variable.

I really do think self-awareness, it's why I put it on the cover of this book, is super important. You know, I spent a lot of time, like there was three things I could have started with and I went with wine because I knew that I wasn't to be able to leave the wine business right away. I had a business to run and so it was the most

kind of like integrated thing that I could do. So you've got to think about your subject matter. It has to be true to you. All of us have multiple things that are true to us. So I would sit down and first say, what do I actually know? I know how to be a 13 year old. I know the 13 year old's point of view on technology.

Then I would go to YouTube and I would see how many people are winning the 11 to 15 year old technology point of view content game. If there's nobody, I would say, and there's almost nobody, there's somebody for everything almost. But if there's not that many people or nobody really owning it, that's interesting. Versus I also am a great skateboarder. Oh crap, there's 97,000 people doing skateboarding.

So first and foremost, I would look for the white space. Number two, I do think that YouTube's a very difficult game and I do think that whether it's Snapchat though that's about to become very difficult as well. I'm gonna say it again musically or anything else that pops. I think using other social networks white space to drive awareness and attention matters. And then finally, I mean we gave this question early on,

I do think the blueprint of what you did with Casey or if you've got a couple of bucks and you can run ads against people that are skateboard fans on Facebook, there is tactical things that can speed up your process. I do think influencers are the way to go. I think Piper, recalling it all the way back, should absolutely spend all her, if she loves it, spend all her time going to every Instagram account, every YouTuber, every Twitter account,

and replying to people and saying, can I interview you? Can I have, that's probably what she's doing if she's interviewed so many people. And the truth is, one more ask is one more at That's about that. So I would see that. And something to that, all of the things that I've, 70% of the stuff that I've done on my YouTube channel is about other people.

And so like series like Creative Space TV or anything, it's all about going to other people. You're siphoning people's audience. Exactly. And I'm leveraging others' people's audience for me. And it's, I've promoted. By the way, and I haven't looked enough but I'm gonna make some assumptions here.

Everybody does that. It's you have to be good at it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What you clearly have done is you brought value to, you know, when I put stuff out, and I rarely do it, it's because somebody sings a book review of mine and kills it. You know, like, it's somebody that has to bring value.

Like, if you've got a big audience, everybody's trying to get to you, everybody's trying to siphon your fans and, you know, link bait you. It's can you bring value to that community and to that person? You know, it's funny, that's how she started. She started interviewing models, Instagram.

Of course. My whole platform has been not competing, collaborating. Yeah, it's huge. Of course. When you're starting from the bottom, you absolutely either need to be. You need money, you need an absolute unbelievable skill set of talent, or you need to siphon awareness from other places.

But too many people want, too many people like hit up people and like, hey, you have a million followers on Twitter, can you give me a shout out? No. What kind of value are you offering that? 100% and really not even like structuring, like, and not the email that says, what can I do for you, for you to do this for me?

It's just doing it. And that like, you didn't text Casey and say, hey, I'm going to do this. this for you, like you did it. And I had 4,000 people who really cared about me because I had built that relationship with my YouTube audience for years. And so when at the end of the video I was like,

all right guys, let's tweet this to Casey, let's get it to them. You know, people are stoked about it. Jace Norman, the Nickelodeon star, did the same thing to me. Like all of a sudden I just got on a plane and I had like 7,000 tweets from the Norman maniacs from everything.

All right, your question. Okay, my question is when did you decide to build and why your personal brand instead of focusing on other people's brands. So, like, how did you decide to just put all your eggs in this basket as opposed to kind of putting your eggs in a bunch of different baskets? For me, it's because I'm actually a business operator.

Like, I built a big wine retail and e-commerce business before I became Gary Vee. I mean, don't forget, very different than you guys and most of people's tracks now. I was 30 years old and had built a business before I ever made my first video. I didn't grow up in this generation. If I did, I probably would.

I probably would have. We'd probably be laughing right now in showing videos of baseball card kid, Gary. It's like a 15 year old saying, buy the Frank Thomas rookie card. Like, I just didn't grow up in that era. And so for me, I'm, the reason I could build VaynerMedia and the reason I don't, you know, just live off of being me,

like I always say like I'm the CEO of VaynerMedia, I run businesses, I'm a venture capitalist who plays Gary Vee at times. I like this, I like this, like this. Like I think it's important, it brings opportunity, but it's at the end of the day, In my purest form, I'm a businessman much more than I am a personality.

And so what VaynerMedia did for me was it scales my marketing skill set to deploy against people or brands or my own brands. I want to buy brands in the future, so that's kind of my play on that. Love it. Yeah, I think for everybody, you need to really think about how you want to monetize this. Are you going to deploy it against a product?

I had a deal from Target and CAA to do a wine glass that I probably would have been millions of dollars on. It would have been in every target store. It would have been the big wine glass. It would have been the product this season. It didn't feel like, I didn't feel like I could big the outcome. And let me break this down.

This is gonna be the most valuable part of things. The place where you want to make your money is the place where you think you have the most control, not where you can make the most money. And it's something that I haven't really talked about. So I'm glad, I feel like we got to something. We've kind of been battling that on the blog. Can you like elaborate on?

I'll keep going. Books are an interesting place that I play, It's one of the place I monetize because I can control it. I sell the books. Not Harper Collins, not Amazon, not Barnes & Nobles, me. I can dictate it. Doing a sponsorship deal with a wine glass, like at that point I wasn't big enough to feel

that I was gonna drive thousands, if not tens of thousands of people into Target to buy it. Maybe 1,000, maybe 3,000, but not enough for Target to care if that was the only people that bought it. So what you want to do is always set yourself up in a place where the outcome is impressive to whoever you collaborate with or the market, right?

So like if you can sell your own music direct to consumer digitally and you get a million downloads and you did it, well now you have leverage. And so it's all, everything's about leverage and what happens is too many people take the short-term money and they, what happens is then there's a result. There's too many, for example, I, and I won't call them out because it's, I don't like negativity,

but there's 12 to 15 social media experts who get paid to speak and get paid to consult whose books sold two, three thousand copies. If you're so good at social media marketing, then wouldn't have you done that to sell your book? And so these conversations are happening behind the scenes, not publicly, I won't throw them out like other people, but there's people not hiring them

or they have them as a C-class citizen because they're like, well look at their book scan numbers. Like I sold over 100,000 copies in my book the first week. And that's a very big difference from people. And by the way, if I list some of the names of the people that I'm referring to, for a lot of people that follow social media, they're like, oh yeah, Gary's kinda like that guy,

or that girl's kinda like Gary? No, we're not. Like, they didn't build a hundred million dollar business. They didn't sell 100,000, like, and so for me, I have the audacity and bravado is because what I preach is also what I use to create results. You guys, I mean, look, you guys are living it

and you think I'm doing the right stuff and I'm an old dude, right? Yeah, that's cool. I'm doing Snapchat, right? I'm doing blog, right? I think it tells us like our ships in the right direction. Because I mean, there's a lot of people

when we first started, like, what the fuck are you doing? Why are you taking these pictures? Like, do you get it. It is cool that you're this age and you know how to do social media. Listen, it's, you know, I'm almost dead. You know, like, I'm like.

Aren't you the only social media expert that's ever been on the New York Times bestseller? No, I'm sure there's others. And I don't really even like know what, like where the line is of like social media expert or what have you, but look, I have real results. Like this book is, we just found, oh thank you, that's a good segue.

Guys, thank you so much. Just found out yesterday. It's coming out a week or two. You know, Ask Gary Bee, made the New York Times best selling list. So it's like four books that have done it. But way more, thank you, that's like a weird list where a lot of things are weighted.

It's how many I sold, right? Like I had a great conversation with my editor yesterday. I'm a free agent now and I can go to any publisher or what have you and I'm like, look, I'm like, I didn't get number one which is what we wanted, right? I think it's number six on the list. I said she's like, oh, this is bullshit. She was like mad she wanted to be higher

because it's an algorithm not just copy sold. I said, don't cry for me. I'm like, you're not giving me my next deal based on if I was number one or number six. You're giving me the next deal based on how many were sold. Right. You made $3 million in revenue. Like that, you know, like that's what,

so I think you have to know what your North Star is. All right, any question you like, this is a bunch of marketing people, business people, entrepreneurs, this would be a smart time to ask a question that you might get value from Facebook and YouTube. You go first. Okay. Okay, where do you guys see Snapchat in the next two to three years?

Great question. Do you guys think Twitter is dead? Because I'm really liking it, still. Really good questions. Guys, thank you for being on a show, my man. Thank you for having us. Thank you for educating the women of America. Thank you, you're welcome.

You're welcome. One more thing, I'm giving out three Ask Gary Vee books to find me on Twitter. Retweet my pin tweet. I'm giving out three on Snapchat. I'm giving out four. You keep asking questions. We will keep answering it.

I hope you guys loved that episode. with Mr. Gary Vee. He is a fave. Follow him on Instagram at Gary Vee. That's VE. And make sure you're subscribed to our podcast. Tell your friends. Tell your mom.

Tell your dad. Tell your dog. Tell everyone. And if you do rate and review the show, screenshot it and email it to me at AskLorne at the skinnyconfidential.com. That's Ask Lauren, L-A-U-R-Y-N at the skinny confidential.com. And I will send you five secret beauty tips straight to me. your inbox. Thanks again, Gary, for having us on the show. Hopefully we'll come on again.

All right. Love you guys. Bye.