The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - BONUS 4: Ask Gary Vee: Influencer Marketing, How to Go Viral & Vlogging
Episode Date: August 3, 2017On 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
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She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire.
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 gonna keep doing
these bonus episodes you guys seem to love them this one is with my fave mr gary v V. Gary Vaynerchuk. And this episode is actually a piece of content from his channel, from his Ask Gary V show,
episode 191.
If you go to YouTube and search Ask Gary V episode 191, 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 Vee, 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 DiDici.
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 launch the podcast immediately because we wanted to talk about our podcast that was
newly launched on the Gary Vee show. So we're a little growth hack where you can growth hack.
You know what I mean? And so we got to, 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. You know what's funny? At that point, I had not been on any, you cannot find any interviews with me prior to that.
You were a little nervous, but you did good. Yeah. I really started kind of in the big leagues.
Yeah. So 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 Vee 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 Vay-ner-chuk
and this is episode 191 of the Ask Gary Vee Show.
It is loaded on the show today.
Uh-huh.
A whole bunch of peeps 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.
I 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.
DRock, missed you too when you figured out how to miss your
plane.
That hurt. Stefan, great to see you. Nick, good 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 Sara Dietschy, rhymes with peachy.
I am a filmmaker, photographer, YouTuber,
and professional internetter.
How'd you get here?
Because I think it's a great story.
Yeah. So basically I made a viral video around a YouTuber and professional internetter. 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 Neistat.
Oh, there you go.
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 Neistat 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 KC shout out?
So I went from 4,000 subscribers to 100,000 subscribers
probably today.
Wow.
Yeah, I'm right at 99,000 right now.
Vayner Nation.
Come on.
Hook it up. Don't be sleepy. Yep,000 right now. Vayner Nation. Come on. Look it up.
Don't be sleepy.
Yep, in two weeks.
Good for you.
Yeah, yeah.
Thank you.
Where are you from?
Originally from Dallas, Texas, and I live in Nashville, Tennessee.
Love it.
All right.
I am Lauren Everett.
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 LA. We kind of go both ways.
My name is 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.
As a joke, India.
Do 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 continued 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 the thing that kind of started, did you have a break?
What was the first moment that you got an interesting bump?
Honestly, there's no epiphany.
It's like such a slow build.
There's nothing where I woke up and I was like.
You don't say.
Oh my God. No, you had it.
I mean, you had your moment.
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, so crazy to think.
I think to do something like this, you kind of just,
like you said, she loves it and it's been a slow,
there's never been like a moment she's been doing it
every single day.
Where did you start, where did the content start living?
The content's on the blog and that's my mothership
and like the blog.
Is Instagram a big thing for you?
Instagram's big but Instagram's fleeting.
And everything that's just started to happen with it,
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.
No, I don't really give a shit about that.
I mean, Snapchat is where 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 favorite thing.
Right.
And what else?
What else?
Well, we were 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.
Awesome.
His perspective's really rude.
His perspective on one night stands, it's phenomenal.
Oh, you saw it?
No, but it's every dude's answer to that question. really rude. His perspective on one night stands is phenomenal. Oh, you saw it?
No, but it's every dude's answer to that question.
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 out there.
I see. You're giving advice to women.
I'm not.
No, I think I'm just giving a male perspective on,
so she'll get an audience, she'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...
Stephon's always like, no, 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...
Like you mean that? Yeah.
I just think there's a lot of bullshit guys
on the internet right now.
No, no, good news. There's a lot of bullshit guys on the internet right now and to have them.
No, no, good news.
There's a lot of bullshit guys period.
You're right, you're right.
Okay, yeah.
Guys are bullshit.
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 to the show.
The show. All right, 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 asks, 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, Stephan, 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's 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 KC
and she clearly did something
that was stronger, better, more interesting
or just a moment in time.
D-Rock was the thousandth person
that emailed me and said
I want to make videos for you.
At that moment I was ready. I want to make videos for you.
At that moment I was ready, I was open for it, it worked.
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 Shark 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 that work.
Ladies?
I think going viral sometimes can actually hurt you.
If you look at that guy, the 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 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 Furlan,
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.
So I think, look, tried and true,
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 it's like, great.
So you felt that.
You felt a lot of people saying,
so you had the moment,
and this is all very recent.
Yeah, so this is two weeks ago.
Right, so people came and they got to see
all the stuff you did in the past
and they were like, wait a minute, you're good.
Yeah, yeah.
And by the way, I apologize to cut you off
because I get yelled at for that.
I know, I know.
I'm not, I don't interview 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 say, didn't you have something that someone told you
about running a multi-million dollar business? That you have to run a
business like a multi-million dollar business even if you're not a multi-million dollar?
No, I had some advice a long time ago. I was setting up a business and
the guys, I said, what do I do? I have no idea.
I'm just getting out of school. He said, set this
business up. This has more 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 do that with your YouTube.
Do that with your social media presence.
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.
Your content, you should be marketing like you're marketing
to 10 million people.
As long as it's authentically true to you.
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.
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.
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.
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 hitting it.
Did you ever get pushback to the word skinny?
I mean skinny is one of these new politically incorrect words
like three years ago.
I've wondered that.
You've wondered that? 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 word's 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.
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 in the title
is really fitting for the brand.
Understood.
I mean when you're talking about coconut lube,
the word skinny just fits right in.
Coconut oil is amazing for lube though.
It really is.
This is a tremendous show.
This is a fair amount of money.
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 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 number's 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.
I feel content with myself even though that's against
the numbers.
Too many people and this is I'm sure like something we all think
about, 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, they're a platform,
people buy on numbers. I get it.
You make your short term money on numbers.
You make your short term.
Not long game.
That's right.
You make your short term money on numbers.
So I would say, who was the person again, India?
Nicole.
Nicole, I would say if you feel like you're moving the needle
then 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 mention.
No friend even know you're doing it.
If you feel stagnant,
I actually compare this to wrestling.
So stick with me.
I know you talk about coconut oil,
but I'm gonna 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 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 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.
Wine, business, and the Jets.
Now I've done two.
I may become a Jets sports writer.
If you have other interests, if you're doing a blog about
root beer 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 month 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.
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 like you have to remain authentic to yourself and if you think you have talent to be 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 of the day.
How long were you doing YouTube before this moment?
I started YouTube in 2012,
and then I was consistent this past August.
And so I think you have to look here.
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 vlogs. I started, I love filmmaking, I want to build a business someday, and I know having an audience is valuable. And so I just started with travel vlogs.
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?
Is Twitter an important platform for you?
Yes.
It has been so interactive. I only have about 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
thesis that I wrote seven, eight years ago. It's so crazy to watch you guys spur up from all the thesis that I wrote seven, eight years ago.
It's so crazy.
I know, I read Crush 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. Sure. 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, four videos, 30 seconds. They brought her in and they said,
hey you're gonna stick to this script.
You're going to 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 going to have a voice?
But you know, I got fired up about it
because I said, this brand's on its way out.
No, it's on its way out.
And it made me fired up for her because her brand's...
I don't want to...
So what happened?
Did you do it?
No, I did it.
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 blogger. I'll never do it? No, I did it. 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 blogger.
I'll never do it again.
Her voice and trying to get her audience.
And they're not going to use my voice.
They had 15 people on there.
We produced 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 GaryVee.
And it works, you know. You don't have five people following you around. They curated things out. or do what they do best. Well look what was DailyVee. Like it's literally DRock and GaryVee.
And it works, you know?
You don't have five people following you around. The curated thing's 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 that 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. A car. 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 07, 08 I was just like,
I just, it 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.
I don't.
It's a little bit more accepted now but we refuse to sell ad
space on the site.
You go to the site, there's no...
Now, by the way, if I grew up during this time,
I would have done it.
Back then, it was just so, there was not a single video on
YouTube that had a million views when I started.
It was just, 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.
Hi Gary, I'm Piper Eads from Piper's Picks 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's amazing.
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 continue our hosting on YouTube,
push it on our platforms, and maybe even grow it into 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 a way to monetize.
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 gonna brand. You know, if you have Hoverboard sponsor a video,
no one's gonna care.
But if you really.
We sponsor 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 on 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 going to
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
Musical.ly, I don't know what you guys are doing with
Musical.ly 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 be 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 Musical.ly
than it is on Snapchat, Instagram, or YouTube.
So we'll have specific advice for you, Piper, very soon.
That was cool.
Alright, 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, a lot of, I'll give you a question 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. I spent a lot of time,
there was three things I could have started with
and I went with wine because I knew that I wasn't going to be
able to leave the wine business right away.
I had a business to run and so it was the most integrated thing
that I could do.
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,
Musical.ly or anything else that pops. 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 Kasey 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 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?
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 bat.
So I would say that.
And something to that, all 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 other people's audience for me.
And it's, I promote it.
By the way, and I haven't looked enough but I'm gonna make some
assumptions here. Everybody does that. You have's, I promote it. By the way, and I haven't looked enough but I'm gonna make some assumptions here.
Everybody does that.
You have to be good at it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What you clearly have done
is you brought value.
When I put stuff out,
I rarely do it,
it's because somebody sings a book review of mine
and kills it.
It's somebody that has to bring value.
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 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 hit up people like,
hey, you have a million followers on Twitter,
can you give me a shout out?
No.
What kind of value are you offering them?
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 gonna do this for you.
Like you did it.
And you know 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,
alright guys, let's tweet this to Casey.
Let's get it to him.
People were 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 had like 7,000 tweets from the Norman maniacs.
So I'm like, alright, 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?
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.
I built a big wine retail and e-commerce business before I
became Gary Vee.
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've.
I probably would've,
we'd probably be laughing right now
and showing videos of baseball card kid,
Gary, you know,
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, the reason I could build VaynerMedia and the reason I don't, you know, 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, the reason I could build VaynerMedia
and the reason I don't just live off of being me,
like I always say, 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, 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 made 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 of the season.
It didn't feel like, I didn't feel like I could
vig the outcome.
And let me break this down.
This is going to 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 this?
Books are an interesting place that I play in.
It's one of the places I monetize because I can control it.
I sell the books.
Not Harper Collins, not Amazon, not Barnes and Nobles, me.
I can dictate it.
Doing a sponsorship deal with a wine glass,
at that point I wasn't big enough to feel that I was going
to drive thousands if not tens of thousands of people into
Target to buy it.
Maybe a thousand, 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 what happens is then there's a result.
There's too many, for example, I, and I won't call them out
because 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 2,000, 3,000 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.
I sold over 100,000 copies of 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 kind of like that guy.
Or that girl's kind of like Gary.
No, we're not.
They didn't build a $100 million business.
They didn't sell 100,000.
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?
Like I'm doing Snapchat right.
I'm doing vlog right.
I think it tells us our shift's in the right direction
because I mean there's a lot of people
when we first started they're like,
what the fuck are you doing?
Why are you taking these pictures?
It is cool that you're this age and you know how to do
social media.
Listen, I'm almost dead.
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 know where the
line is of social media expert or what have you but look,
I have real results.
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 in a week or two.
Ask Gary Vee made the New York Times best selling list.
So that'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
what have you and I'm like look, 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 copies 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 if I was number one or number six.
You're giving me the next deal based on how many were sold.
You made $3 million in revenue.
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 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 the show.
My man. Thank you for having us.
Thank you for educating the women of America.
You're welcome.
One more thing, I'm giving out three AskGaryVee books
to find me on Twitter.
Retweet my pinned 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 V. He is a fave. Follow him on Instagram at Gary V. That's V-E-E. 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
asklauren at the skinnyconfidential.com that's asklauren l-a-u-r-y-n at the skinnyconfidential.com
and I will send you five secret beauty tips straight to your inbox thanks again Gary for
having us on the show hopefully we'll come on again all right love you guys bye