Your Next Move - Winning in the Attention Economy

Episode Date: March 10, 2026

In today’s media landscape, mastering digital marketing and social media is essential for business growth. This episode explores building a brand in the current attention economy, what it means to be authentic, and how to nurture a loyal following. It features insights from two prolific founders who have turned social-first strategies into powerful brand-building engines that drive real results.

With the VentureX business card from Capital One, you earn unlimited double miles on every purchase. Plus, the VentureX business card has no preset spending limit, so your purchasing power can adapt to meet your business needs. Capital One, what's in your wallet? I believe every large company should spend at least 20% of their entire marketing budget on just organic, social, creative. Otherwise, we will continue to see more poppies go from zero to billions while the big companies puts around and say, what's happening? Today, on your next move, the attention economy and the new ways to win on social media. Joining us are two masters of digital marketing.

Known to his 44 million followers as Gary Vee, Gary Vaynerchuk started his company in borrowed conference rooms and has grown to 15 offices globally and a reported $209 million in revenue. We're also joined by Allison Ellsworth, founder of Poffey, the modern soda brand that went viral on its way to over 1 million followers. PepsiCo acquired it in 2025 for $1.95 billion. So what is the attention economy, and how can your company dominate it? Gary and Allison are here to discuss their content, their philosophy, and what it means to be authentic now. I'm Mike Hoffman, Aaron Chief of Inc., and welcome to your next move, produced by Inc. and Capital One business. So hi, guys. Thanks for being here today.

Thanks for having us. Hello. So we're here to talk about the attention economy. It's something that both of you and your companies have mastered. It's something I think a lot of viewers who are founders of companies have questions about. So as we get started, Alison, let's start with you. How would you define the attention economy? What is it and how does it work for companies like yours?

The attention economy, I think, can actually be a confusing conversation that people are like, okay, is it my kids on the internet? Do I, as a founder at my company have to be the face of my company? And I think the answer is yes, especially with if you want to win. So a lot of people have looked at me and they're like, Alison, you share your whole life, your kids, the ins and outs, your hair messed up with no makeup, or me in crocs and socks while I'm doing these things. And they're just like, how can you let people in like that? And I think it's free my time. It's free marketing for the company to be authentic and real. I think times have changed. People are sick of the high gloss. And I also think

people think it's overdone, the founder-led company. And I don't think it's been done enough, is the real conversation. That's interesting. How do you feel about that, Gary? Do you feel like it's overdone, not done enough, or where do you come down on that? I think tying it into your opening question, I think for humans, for companies, for politicians, for anything, the attention is the asset, right? How can you possibly change someone's mind? How can you possibly sell something unless someone actually hears it or consumes it, right? How you fill that attention, I think, can happen a lot of different ways. I agree with Allison.

I think there is unlimited opportunity for founders to put themselves in a position to have another weapon in the toolbox to drive their business. However, counter, there are many companies in the Inc. 500 that the founder is not out and about. So there are multiple ways to play the game. I think it's really for the people that are watching a self-awareness game where you are in your journey. Some founders may want in their first company

to be very out in front. Maybe they make a lot of money, and the second time they want to be a little more private. There's a million ways to play it. But I think for me, the attention economy or the way I think about day trading attention is I think a lot of people are overpaying to try to get attention. And I think there's a lot of moves to do where you can get attention for very little price. And that's how I think about it. And so what are some of those moves that you can do for very little price. Well, I think the reason I've been yapping for 15 years about social media is that even as we film this today, it continues to be overall underpriced. Now, you can do it wrong. You can spend a million dollars on Facebook ads amplifying a bad piece of creative, and now you just wasted a million

dollars. But if you play it right, I still think social is incredibly underpriced. I think live social shopping is about to be talked about a ton as an underpriced attention move. I think that long-tail influencers, creators, affiliates continues to be underpriced. I think the live-streaming ecosystem, the Twitches, the kicks are underpriced today because most companies and individuals don't know about it. Overpriced for me are regular television commercials. I think Super Bowl underpriced. Regular television commercials overpriced. Banner ads on the internet. Overpriced. So you're kind of looking at it day by day and it changes. I built my original companies on email and on banner ads, by the way, and on Google AdWords, and those things are

changing. The LLMs are now here, chat GBT, AEO, that's going to be underprice. So it's a constant moving target. So, Alison, for you, when did you sort of discover, oh, hey, I'm a founder, people are interested in my life, unfiltered. Was that something that you were, were you super active on social even before Poppy? Or was that something that developed as the business developed? I was absolutely not on social before Poppy. and didn't really even understand it in my personal life. I remember, like, Facebook came out when I was in high school. You know, you go through college and Instagram with the first...

You were an early investor in Facebook. Yeah. I also was not in high school when it came out. That's why I was laughing. Yeah, you were like, age gap. But no, I think... And then Instagram, like, right now trending is all this going back 10 years. And you're seeing all of the Instagram filters.

Like, the filters were, like, the new thing. And so I was always, like, fun and testing it. But when it came to Poppy, I created it in my kitchen to where I was so passionate and desperate to tell as many people as possible. And I kind of had the mentality of like, why not try it? And I think embarrassment is a undervalued emotion to make a fool of yourself online. I had the ability to just like not care. And I think a lot of people really struggle with that.

So for me, I wanted to win. I wanted to share my story. TikTok, we launched Poppy March 2020. TikTok was kind of like, yeah, dancing. kids, a lot of brands really weren't playing in the space. And so I spent my nights and weekends personally doing trends and transitions and dancing and doing taco video making and anything I can do. And really what worked was me sitting down one night. I will never forget it. It was a Friday night. I sat down and I just told my story. And I hit post. I woke up and it had a million

views. We did $100,000 on Amazon that night. And everyone's eyes were opened to wait. This is a marketing tool for the business. It's not just a platform for dancing kids. And I think that a lot of businesses still don't utilize it the right way. They look at it as a marketing tool and not a brand awareness tool, not a, a, like, there's an ROI or you have to have some kind of return. We always saw it as just like a way to build community. And I think that's what we did really good, is building that founder-led community from the grassroots up.

And, I mean, we've evolved over time. It's not quite the same. I'm not on it as much, which I think all brands do have to evolve. but it was really important on those early days. I think many people worry that they'll have a big post, maybe not a million views, but something like that, something that goes a little bit viral,

depending on the scale of their business, but then not get that $100,000 in revenue right away. Was there something about that post that you think actually drove revenue? Or how do you connect, like, the virality of the stuff that you do on social with the actual business results? Well, people look at organic virality,

and they don't take advantage of it on the paid side. So we took this piece of contract, that originally connected with our community, and then we put a ton of paid behind it. And for reference, that one video and it has 258 million views. I have three billion views on TikTok. One third of the platform has seen my face seven times.

And so we took it as a marketing tool. Yes, we went viral. So a lot of people are like, we went viral, we didn't see me sales. Well, people connected with that piece of content. Now utilize it within your 360 marketing tool chest that I think a lot of people look at virality as like, It's like, well, I went viral once, and then you're always chasing that next virality versus

rethinking how to use that asset, and then post it again, try it a different way, do a different hook at the beginning. Like, I love TikTok, and I always say this with people, is like, no one scrolls down your TikTok feed to see what you posted a month ago. So post the same stuff you posted a month ago. Like, nobody cares. It's that embarrassment factor that hold people back from redoing the same thing, talking about the same thing.

Just imagine, like, singers, how sick are singers singing the same song for, like, 20 years? The greatest hits, you almost have to think of it that way. I also, just to add, when a piece of creative gets 1,000, 20,000, 40 million views, people are interested in if there's a buying element to go buy it. The reason people don't see sales a lot of times off all those views is because their product might not be that interesting to people. They might be overpriced. Their landing page on their website might have.

too much friction. You know, so there isn't, you know, we're very fortunate at the size and scale that Vayner plays at, we see 100% unequivocal data that supports when things get organic views at scales. There's a complete and black and white ROI to it. The levels of ROI are predicated on many other factors that have nothing to do with marketing. What's your value proposition after you get people in the door? Yeah, I mean, there's people that go viral and they've got a product and everyone goes to their site and they're like, wait a minute, that's 20 bucks. I can buy for 13 somewhere else. So the attention goes there, but the conversion has so many other. The fact that Poppy was not just DTC at that time where people have another website, another email, that they went to Amazon

to get it where it's very easy for everyone. That has a huge difference. If they were DTC only, I promise you it wouldn't have been $100,000 because there would have been more friction. Whereas with Prime, boop, poop, poop, I'm just going to add. I like her. I'm going to add it, try a case, try a six-pack. So people have to understand, like, there's marketing, but then there's so many other parts of business. But if you want to have the debate of like, do views that are earned, and by the way, a big thing that people don't understand is to get views in social today, it must be relevant. Relevance leads to consideration and consideration leads to purchase. These algos are built perfectly for what all of us as

marketers and salespeople and businesses want to happen, but there are other elements in the conversion cycle. That's interesting. And so obviously, Vayner is an agency and... The greatest agency of all time. The greatest agency of all. According to my mom. Of course.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to make sure I source it. Yeah. Well, what I wanted to ask is, it's interesting. You obviously been able to be very online and have a big personality on social, and you're doing that in the service of a service industry and a B2B service industry. And I started direct-to-consumer wine brand called Empathy and sold that in 18 months to Constellation.

And I used it when we co-founded Resi, the restaurant app, obviously that we sold to Amex. So I like playing both sides of it. You know, I love having Vayner. And obviously, we've built one of the largest agencies in the world. But I always want to scratch a little bit on the side for my dad's wine business or for building V-Friends, my Pokemon Marvel thing, or some of the prior businesses I've built.

So I'm trying to play on both sides. Well, I'm curious with that, do you see differences in the way sort of service or business to business companies can market themselves through social or is it all very similar? It's similar, but it's contextual. Obviously, when I'm thinking about VaynerX, VaynerMedia, all the agencies I'm building, I want to dominate LinkedIn, right? Because my audience is there. I can reach unlimited CMOs at scale. And I also made one of the most important points in current marketing. When on organic and then have a paid media understanding.

So I can post something about a nuance on live shopping. I can like the way it goes organically. And then I can decide to spend the media dollars targeting CMOs of apparel brands or beauty brands that I think are more conducive to jump on live shopping quicker than maybe an auto company, understand? So it is similar. And obviously, I'm fortunate. I've put 20 years of work in where my personal brand is definitely in a place where I can win B-to-B business, even on TikTok or Instagram and Facebook. I'm humbled that I think I'm in rarefied air currently, but I don't not think I'm an enigma.

I think I'm the preview, and I feel like in a decade, many will be playing that kind of game. That's interesting. I'm sort of curious. So was there a moment when you were like, oh, my follower account is really growing fast, And that's when this is clicking. Was it engagement? What are the metrics that you looked at, sort of at the earlier in your careers

as you were becoming internet famous? And then what are the metrics you look at today? I think it's by platform. I think with TikTok, we really didn't care so much about our followers because you're on the FYP page. It's discovery. It's brand awareness.

And then I think like Instagram, quote, unquote, is your website at the end of the day. So you really do want high engagement, education, really see that like real, growth, not buying your follower growth, which I think a lot of people get into that cycle. And then I think LinkedIn was a really big piece for us as well, just to be a thought leader in the space. And so I think you're looking at it all the same. Now, as a brand, we have not and yet figured out how to do YouTube. I think it's extremely hard for brands to do long form content

and do it well and make it like an actual thing. Because I think people don't realize with YouTube, and I'm sure you can speak to this, is there's so much editing that goes on in the background, the content planning out. It's like, it's almost like a whole, you need like multiple people to do it, right, to do the long form content. Yes. It's funny you bring up YouTube. You know, you know, internet fay, I'm laughing. It's 20 years for me, you know, in 2006. I started in 2006 on YouTube, long form in the wine business. And that's all I did for five years. And I fully built my brand in long form YouTube, but then I made a hard transition into the business world, and that was predominantly done on Facebook and Instagram at the time and evolved. A couple things. Following count by the

nanosecond is declining as an important metric, because now we are living no longer in social media. How many social friends do you have? We are fully in interest media now. The FYP, you know, if you go back to Tumblr, I was a defining interest media. Interest media is posting content and the content itself is finding people based on them being interested in that kind of content. And if that initial group that is just randomly seeing it, whether they follow you or not, are engaging with that piece of content, it now starts to grow. And the algorithm is trying to see how interesting is this to how many people. And people are the algorithm, right? The audience is actually, there is no algorithm. It's people seeing things and how they act controls it. This is very

important. Like if I make a video today about peanut butter, the first small percentage of people are likely to have some relevance towards peanut butter in their actions within that platform. That is so different than the first 16 years of my career, which is I did

everything I could to get people to follow me and then they would see everything and I was different. I wasn't niche. I believed in a very different game. I did wine. I did Jets content. I did garage sale content. I did marketing content, motivational content. I really played it different than best practices because I believed that I wanted people to connect to my relevance.

No different than no hair makeup or with the kids. I think people are missing the whole point of what's going on right now. Every brand in the world's number one actual job is to be as relevant to as many people as possible to have them buy it. Now, you're going to have a priority chart. You're going to be in a place where you don't want to alienate certain groups by things you'd do, but there's a very easy way to do that in the fragmentation media landscape we now live in. And so that's what I mean my interest media. We're in a place now where the content is finding the audience, not you're trying to build an email list or a subscription list or a following count.

So following is starting to decline. I only look at one metric, which is views achieved organically. Because if you look at likes, comments, and shares, like most platforms, those are just three or four of the metrics that a platform is gauging if you're interested. For example, in feed, we all live. If you stop somewhere, zoom in, sit on that piece of content for a minute, that is a much bigger indicator that you care about that content than a quick double tap because you like the boots real quick, right? That is going to lead to more people seeing it than if I liked and shared it.

If I sat on it for 30 seconds, there's no metrics that we as influencers or brands can see on the back end. The platforms are keeping a lot of engagement metrics behind the wall, and that's a very important nuance that most people are missing. That's fascinating. I'm curious about something you said, which is that Instagram is your website. Can you talk about how you came to that realization and then how do you program Instagram knowing that? I think I'll put the question back to you. When someone says, hey, have you seen this brand?

Do you go to www. No, you open Instagram. And I think that point is why it's your website. And I think our content strategy is very different. And even my personal one versus Instagram and TikTok, like, you can't just use the same content. You can. There's a little bit of a crossover within Reels and TikTok. But I think it's a place where people, one, you can obviously shop on Instagram.

That's never worked for us because we've been 100% Amazon. But I will say it's just different. It's more curated. It's a little bit higher gloss. You might have the same reel. but with like curated cover photos because it's also I think a little bit I don't know if you'd say older audience

but most people just go to your Instagram and it's so funny in thinking why I just talked about the platform for the second ago like I never even like think about Facebook anymore and for us I think it's because we were a very young brand and I think the audience on Facebook is a little bit older

and so I think it's very different for every brand like if I'm starting another company and it's maybe in fiber Facebook that's not as sexy fiber as poppy, maybe Facebook would have been a place that we would want to play. And so I think that, like, it is our website.

I don't know if it'll be like that forever, though. That's the beauty of social media is I think we did a really good job of, like, paying attention and switching versus I think people get really comfortable. It's what's working. They're like, why isn't this working anymore? And they're not paying attention to the trends

and what's happening. And they're like, why am I not growing? Why are not getting the views? And they're doing the same thing they did three months ago. Well, three months ago, it's probably not working the same. And so we're constantly of the conversation day after day after day. What is trending right now? And how are we the trend setters?

How are we not the ones? Oh, someone posted this three days ago. We want to be the first to post or setting the trends. And it's always at the front of our minds, which I think a lot of companies don't make a priority. That's fascinating. You were, that was fascinating. Yeah, there was something she said that like so was fascinating. That's exactly right, comma, to that point, right now currently at Vayner, one of the places

we're highly focused on in selling to 22 to 35-year-olds is Facebook Blue. Here's why. To Allison's point, in the prime of Poppy, Facebook groups and Facebook Marketplace had not triggered into what they have in the last year, which is bringing a lot more 20 and 30-year-olds, which is like so counterintuitive, right? But because it's happened, like you'd be stunned how many 26-year-olds go on Facebook Blue every day, it's created an opportunity for marketers that are out of the second aware of that, an opportunity to market to them because so many people are not marketing in that environment.

And so we're seeing higher conversion from 20 to 30 with ads we're doing in Facebook Blue than sometimes on Instagram and TikTok just because of supply and demand. There are more 20 to 30 year olds, obviously on Instagram and TikTok, but there are less brands trying to get to a 20 to 30 year old on Blue. and there's enough hours and attention, they are all triggered by two things you wouldn't think about, Facebook Marketplace, because they're trying to get things for their first department

and groups that have become a safer place for a lot of 20-year-olds than maybe a Reddit or 4-Chine or something that nature. Just fascinating, hence to, like, the intensity it takes to stay on top of the evolution of these platforms on a daily basis. You talked about sort of setting trends and not being overly wed to trends that are, that could be fleeting or passing. Is there something that worked, you know, even a short time ago,

three months ago, six months ago that doesn't work now? And if so, what's your thinking for why it doesn't work? Now, I'd be curious your thoughts on this too, but I feel like the algorithms are consistently changing on all the platforms. One day, static care cells are really trendy and then reels and then captions and then only five hashtags now on TikTok, right? So it's like they are always changing, and so it's being aware of those changes, I think. So it's not necessarily that trends.

And then also noticing carousels, they work three months ago, doesn't work now. Well, in three weeks, let's test it again because it might have changed three weeks now. And so I think it's more of that conversation, not like this didn't trend or whatever. I think like a big trend happening right now is posting what happened in 2016 and posting 10 years ago. Like, throwing about something that happened 10 years ago is not revolutionizing, but it's trending right now. Is it going to probably trend in even four days? Probably not. And so I think it's...

But those pictures are cute. They're cute, and I love it because it's the year we launched Mother Beverage, and it's like 10 years of... It's like, it's really cool. That was a precursor to poppy. It was. So it was a little bit special within that trend. But I do think, like, you can't almost think of it that way, I guess.

Yeah, I mean, I think Allison's touching on the right things. Again, brands have this obsession with the academia that they were taught in the 90s of, like, staying on brand and consistency. And they have this visceral reaction to, I mean, if I hear, hey, Gary, we don't want to be a brand that just follows a trend. I hear that 600 times a week from clients and potential clients. And I ask them, why not? You know, brands have become so focused on literally the academia of marketing versus being in the trenches of marketing,

which is why founders are creating companies that these brands are buying because they're playing a different game. To me, it's a very simple tried and true, ironically, marketing thing, which is relevance, relevance, relevance. I touched on it earlier. I'm going to touch on it again. And if relevance needs to require for this week only, then you're going to take it because what it leads to is trial. If Poppy does something that I find relevant, because I love, you know, American football, and they've decided to do something in that space, and that leads me to try their rupeer. And then I like that rupeer. They've created a real lifetime value customer by making something relevant to me in a nanosecond moment. The second best quarterback in college football has decided to go back to school,

just snubbing my New York Jets. I'm sad. Brand makes joke about that in a way that doesn't upset me and makes me like it. Goes in my head. I go to bodega. I try it. That is real life. Whether it was taught in the 90s pre-internet and social media or not, that is the friction

right now on this conversation. I imagine that there are sort of two things that happen in the world. There are companies like yours where the founder is super excited about and aggressive about their own personal brand and social media and having the attention economy being a driver of business. And I wonder what it's like for you managing your teams who might be more anxious, more conservative, you know, need your guidance or your coaching on this kind of thing. And then I imagine there are also a lot of companies where the social team or the marketing team are, are pushing and the executives are more conservative. Now, I'm curious, like, within your companies, how do you build a culture where the attention economy is something that everyone understands

and is excited about and is nimble? I'll start with you. I will say, I don't think they get, I don't go either how easy or how hard it is. So they're like, oh, you have one person, you're fine, you got this. I'm like, no, there's so much more to it. And it's almost like if you don't get it, you don't get it. And it is actually a really hard barrier to get people that, don't get it to get it. And so for us, I do think it was kind of built within the cultural DNA at Poppy

to be social forward. We hired really young. It was, I mean, like our national meetings, we would get together with the entire company. And part of the agenda was to create TikToks as an entire company. Right. So it was just like part of the thought system within, but it would still be like new leaders would come in. They hadn't seen what would, what happened the two years prior and the virality and the success with it and you're having to rethink or really retrain them. There's been some resistance, but I think we were very lucky because it kind of started from the beginning. But I think there's still a lack of awareness of how much work it is and that it is a job and

that you do need a team and you do need editors and copywriters and graphic designers and art director. Like it's a, you have to build a team around it if you want to make it serious. You can't just hire a kid out of college and say, let's go viral. There's a big disconnect within that. companies. Guy, what do you think? VaynerMedia started in 2009 with one thesis, which was social

media was going to easily and I mean easily ascend to the most important attention platforms above television, print, radio, outdoor. And so it was religion from day one. Internally, there's little room to be confused

on this issue. And it's not that hard. Honestly, we don't say like, oh, you're, like, it's so not confusing of what we're about, where we're about, and how great we want to be in the game. On the flip side, I think the first 10 years of VaynerMedia, not one client actually wanted to buy what we were selling. I can imagine. Yeah, you know, like, I mean, it is incredible the amount of crap I ate for 15 years, having it misunderstood, having it disrespected. We would, I mean, we're talking

as recent as 2018, 2020, when amazing companies were on their way to building billion dollar companies where our clients would spend a half a million dollars a year on social creative, but be thrilled to spend $3 million on a stunt in the Grand Canyon that four people saw. So the confusion was extraordinary. By the way, the confusion continues to be extraordinary. How so? Every single Fortune 500 and 5,000 company in the world is underinvesting in organic social media creative production, all of them, every one of them. Every one of them. them. So what does that investment look like in a company that gets it? As much money as humanly possible because the smart ones know that if you make a lot of content, every time you're trying

to make it great, let there be no confusion everyone. This is not spray and prey. This is not throw against the wall and see what sticks. This is every time we're trying to make content that is good. Every time you don't do that. But when it's good, you take working media dollars and you amplify it against it. Right now we live in a world where working media dollars, the media dollars are hiding bad creative. We are going into a world and some of the great companies of the last decade figured it out early where working media dollar is amplifying good creative. And good creative is not judged by Don Draper or the three of us in a boardroom. It is judged by views achieved by relevance to the end consumer because they like it. That is the punchline. And so I would argue,

And this is the moment where every C-suite executive is going to have their mind blown. I believe every large company should spend at least 20% of their entire marketing budget on just organic, social, creative. There are very few that spend 20% on all of the things besides working media. And so that is a profound shift. And one they have to take. Otherwise, we will continue to see more poppies go from zero to billions while the big companies putts around and say, what's happening? Right, Challenger brands, right. There's also the thing, though, that many companies, I think, of all sizes are getting a little bit scared of social media because paid reach and performance marketing has become so challenging.

Do you see that? It's become challenging if they don't understand what we're just talking about. No, I don't see that. I see actually more companies figuring it. I mean, think about how many companies have gone from zero to hundreds of million in revenue in a five-year window over the last 10 years. That was unheard of before. It's challenging for people who are trying to play in 2017, Facebook, A-B testing, KAC, LTV, because the dollars have gone up. Creative is the punchline.

The creative is the variable. And so you have to put yourself in a position to get to that creative. So yes, I think it's challenging for someone who's running a five to seven years ago ABC testing model against a meta, Facebook and Instagram play. I do not think it's challenging for people that are committing to what we've been talking about here, which is win on organic, get the creative validated for free while you're doing good marketing to see the views and then run a media play and then use that in Super Bowl and then use that as insights and the brief for other things. I think it's never been easier, yet I think most people continue to be wildly confused. That's interesting. We sort of have talked about training your marketing team to get this if they don't already. I'm curious about the reaction of investors, right, or potential investors to having a personal brand

and building your company's brand and business through a personal brand. I mean, I think with our investors, they were almost the biggest proponents of it. That's interesting. Yeah, and I think we were very lucky, and we had the same investors throughout the entire process. And so they saw the brand, they saw what was working, and we doubled down. I think that's all it is. At the end of the day, it worked, and they weren't scared of it. And it goes back to me, as I, the founder of Poppy, it was a marketing tool to build community.

It wasn't my ego getting in the way trying to be famous, and I'm a diva, and I need this, and I need an assistant. There was none of that. And so I think there was like a mutual respect of, hey, this is working. I'm connecting with our community because at the end of the day, we have community. We don't have customers. And we've always looked at it that way of like, how do we create a movement? We were on a mission to revolutionize soda for the next generation. Like this emotional big movement versus, you know, the fight of it.

And investors, I do think now it's the norm. And people are almost like, I think it's shifted where they're expecting it a little bit more. and the founders are uncomfortable with it, and they don't know how to act, and they're like, wait, I have to get on an edit, and they get very, like, stressed over it versus I spend every morning, still to this day for 20 minutes, and I look online through, like, a research lens of what's trending.

I'm going in saving the content. I'm going down deep, dark holes, and I'm taking it serious from the top down. And I think a lot of times, yeah, they think it's cute, and you're on social media, and that's super fun, and good job, honey. but like we took it serious as this way to build community, and those are the, I think, the companies that are winning.

If a founder is reluctant, because I think that that's a real thing, right? It's the question I get constantly. So how do you, can they learn it? Is it something that you would coach them to figure out and push themselves, or is it the type of thing that maybe there's another solution for their business? I think it goes, Gary said it right. Like, it depends on the business, but I think someone that wants to be in that founder-led or like it serves that business well.

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It's that goes back to that embarrassment thing. You have to make a full of yourself. You know, if you're not doing it, your competitor's probably doing it and they're going to win over you. And so it's this thing of like, do you want to win? And it's almost as simple as that. And then look, if you really cannot do it and it's like a big fear, there's a job. There's a job. job where you can hire creators to be the face of your company. And people get really caught up with, well, what if they become the face of my company and they leave and they go somewhere else? The internet probably will forget after about three days. Like that's okay too. There's also one of the pre-dawn of AI allowing companies to create their spokespeople. Like State Farm has Jake. Jake's a human.

The next version of that in a decade, the tech exists now, but I think it will take time for corporate to get ready. But it's we're really living in a... consumers to be comfortable with an AI talking to him because like they said, oh, also, we can create you an AI. I'm like, well, I don't think that's authentic. Agreed. So it's not quite there yet. Yeah, it is not. However, people are not going to be able to tell. Like, let there be no confusion. In 36 months, the technology be so advanced, not one human will be able to tell. That's number one. Number two, to your point, the stigma will go away. We all know right now consumers do not want AI ads or AI stuff. Perdomal,

on a selfish node that people are worried about losing their jobs and all the things that are going on, to remind everybody who's watching, online dating was wildly taboo in 2002. And if you met on Match.com, you told nobody. You made up a story that you met in a bar. So society will continue to move. But to the point, I think, you know, your advice is so right. Like people living, CEOs living as if they're still in high school and worried about someone making fun of their Zit is usually a bad. business strategy. You mentioned that the thesis of Vayner at the beginning, right, was that social media was going to dominate. Yes. And do you feel that way about AI now and how does the company prepare itself for the future? I think about AI different than social. I view AI more like

electricity. I view AI more like the computer. I look at AI more like a mobile device. I look at AI more like oxygen. I actually think the AI conversation for a lot of people is a hair overblown. I think one of the most profound technologies of all time. But imagine me saying to you all right now, like, what's your computer strategy? Right. Like, what's your internet strategy? And now, you know, as a little bit of no, G, I remember the conversations of what's your internet strategy in the late 90s, right? Like, that wasn't real yet. So I think of AI more as Omni. There is no, no task, no employee on earth in five years that isn't interacting with AI on a daily basis. Social was more a catch-all attention portal, more like the television or radio or the

printing press. AI is far more electricity. Are there ways to marry your social strategy to AI? Or to, you know, back to electricity. Yeah, back to, again, this, I'm glad you asked that as a follow-up. AI's electricity. Of course. There is no person producing content or running ads that, I mean, I would argue the best players right now live in, let me phrase, we live in a world where AI is part of an everyday function. Even if it's something as mundane as taking notes and meetings to get better insights out of the meeting. It's just, it's oxygen, brother. It's just a scary word. It's a trendy word and everyone who wants to talk about it.

And it's like, we've been, I think AI has been around way longer than people even realize how everybody's used to it. I think that your point and just saying it simple is like, in the editing. software, people using the filters and the FaceTunes and all of these things. It's just like it's all around us, the algorithms, the way we run paid. Like all of these things, people are using this technology. It's not like AI, big scary AI is coming to get you and take over your marketing. I don't really even think about it. I'm just like, cool, it's there, great.

I want to be the top to top. We'll use it. We'll use the new platform, whatever. But it's not like, what are we going to do in AI? We don't have meetings about how do we use AI. Look, I think businesses and employees and humans, it is a big deal. Like, there will be ramifications. When search engines came out, tens of thousands of yellow pages, salespeople lost their job.

Like, things happened. When the car was invented, like, there was a poor sap that bought 10,000 horses the month before. You know, like, there is going to be some elves. There are incumbent big companies that will get outflanked. But for the humans that are watching, I really need them to hear this sentence. AI is not taking your job. A human using AI is taking your job. And you're able to go and use it as well.

And I hope that liberates some people like, oh, okay, like the typewriter, go meet the history of the typewriter, all up in arms of what's this going to do to the people that write and say it's just what we do as humans. There's always going to be fear with new technology when it's a big one. And again, AI is a big one. The fear will go up and it's appropriate. but we do as individual humans and companies have the ability to adjust. We're aware of it. Are you now going to cry and put your head in the sand, or are you going to put in the work to get good at it?

That's great. So you talked about thinking about Poppy's customers really as a community and not as customers, and community, I think, is a focus of yours as well, right? I'm sort of curious, one part of community is feedback and dialogue and one-star reviews and negative feedback and all. all that. How do you both think of that through the lens of being the CEO or the founder of your company? And then how, you know, has it ever been sort of weird for you personally to, like, have that much feedback to yourself and your personal brand?

Please. No, I mean, I have thick skin. I think I'm built differently of like, like, I think there was a point where I personally had to stop doing a lot of the community management because I did, you know, take a personally, be like, well, I didn't really like this flavor. I'm like, well, you didn't like this flavor. Because you don't know anything. You know what I think, well, that's like a human emotion. Yeah, yeah. Right? And so I put my life into the display, right?

I think I'm in my kitchen, like with my kids. Yeah. And I think that's a human emotion that, you know, everyone has. Like, no one's going to say, like, that doesn't bother me. I'm like, yes, of course it affects the way you feel. But I think, like, it is part of doing business. And so I think at Poppy, we took community management very seriously. We've always kept it in-house.

We never hired on an agency to be the voice of Poppy within the community. So we have three girls full-time, 24-7, living online, replying to every single comment. We reply to every DM within 24 hours. We have a customer service in-house guy. He's incredible, Brian. He is on talking to someone hello at drinkpoppy.com, a real person. We do use Zendesk and some of these platforms. Of course, we're not crazy in like doing all of this, not automated.

But the intent. The intent. The religion. The relationship. Our influencer community. our college community, we own those relationships. So every influencer, we have either DM'd or talked to their agent. We don't once again have an agency running our influencer program.

Our college program, our ambassador program, thousands of kids. We have four people on our college team with relationships with those people. And we invest and we hire and keep that in house because it is the most important asset that we have is our community. I mean, the story of my personal brand is often misunderstood. I will tell you that me replying to every tweet from 2007, to 2011 is how I got here. I wrote a book in 2011 called the Thank You Economy. It talked fully

about this, which is, how on earth are you not replying to every comment and every DM? Why would you not do that? It's the lowest hang. It's incredible. They clearly are interested. To answer your question directly, for me, you know, back to, like,

I've also really always viewed it as I have to be empathetic and sympathetic. Like, maybe they don't like Apple the way I like. or maybe they didn't like the wine I recommended. That was my early stuff. Or, I mean, especially for me, self-awareness matters. Like, you know, I curse. I'm cash. I mean, I was a business person in 2009 that was like this when that was just not acceptable. I was very New Jersey. And for me to not, to have, not to have the humility to understand why someone would think I was a bozo or things

of that nature, or if a client didn't like our services, I didn't default in saying, our team stinks, but I needed to hear why. Sometimes they're a challenge, but this is just human. And I think the reality is if you don't have the humility, if you don't have the compassion, if you don't have the sympathy, if you don't have the empathy to understand this is how this person actually feels. And then you don't have the critical thinking to dissect, is this a real thing, or is that person having a bad day? And they're taking it out on you? Well, then you're going to struggle to succeed. And I've been always detached, completely and utterly detached from the feedback against me as a person, all of my companies, and my service company. And I think that's serviced me well.

Yeah. I want to ask one question. You mentioned being very New Jersey, and I know you have a wine business in New Jersey. And actually, one thing I've seen is, like, from you, I, I think paid media that's like hyper-local like town by town by town. How did that come about and how does that work? So clearly you must live within a 10-mile radius of the wine line. You know it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the, again, there's this crop of marketers and you're looking at two of them that have really figured it out. It is scary, how effective, five-mile radius to a location.

I'm so happy you ask this because I know like a one-store flower shop owner right now is about to have their business change. five-mile radius to your store, content from your store or your shop, your barber, your beauty salon, like your gym, five-mile radius, hosting organic ads when something does well organically, running media in a five-mile radius

to drive people in is outperforming direct mail, which I grew up on direct mail. I kind of still weirdly in this world ponder direct mail, but Facebook has proved to me, And I still tried direct mail once in a while just to make sure I'm right. But Facebook 1, 3, 5, and even 10, depending on what kind of business you have, mile radius advertising with a call to action to drive into the store is a phenomenal,

wildly successful model. And that's why you keep seeing it. Because, you know, I'm going to, like Allison, I'm going to try things constantly. But if they're not working, you know, early when she was talking investors and I said this, investors just look at the results. You know, they were supportive because it was working. Again, this is my push on corporate. Corporate marketers look at reports in academia.

And this is real friends. They're not looking at the results as much as you would think because they can't make the connection. Media is separate from the creative. They don't control where it's sold. But to answer your question, it's because it is the most effective marketing and it's transformed my father's wine store.

Wow, that's great. So obviously the name of the story, show is your next move. And so for our final question of the session, Alison, what is your next move? We were just talking about this. So, you know, we did sell the company to Pepsi. Congratulations. Yes, thank you. And I am hungry for what's next. So definitely stay tuned, but working on my next project and I will be doing another product. So. Terrific. And Gary, what's your next move? Continued world domination is on the docket.

I want 8.3 billion people to know who I am and the companies that I support. And to the point of today, I'm actually writing a new book called The Individual Empire. My thesis is that the next great massive corporations are actually started by the human, driven by the human, and then everything is built around them. And I know that to be true because I know our lives. Alison Gary, thanks so much for this conversation, and we'll back with you in just a little while. Thank you. Thanks. Now, this season, we're unpacking the most effective ways to hire, educate, and motivate your employees in a new segment that we're calling the People Playbook.

As you know, hiring the right people is one of the most important responsibilities that founders have. But how do you truly attract and engage great employees? We're happy to have April Arnold, director of HR business cards and payments at Capital One, here to discuss how you can figure out the hiring equation. Welcome, April. Thanks so much. I'm excited to be here. So what separates companies that attract elite talent from those that attract only available candidates? Exceptional employees became that way because they've been strategic about their careers.

They're looking for a few key things from prospective employers. Compensation is important, but it's not the top factor. Gallup research found that top performers want to know that they'll be trusted to do what they do best, first and foremost. In addition, they want work-life balance and an emphasis on their well-being, as well as stability and job security. These factors all ranked before salary. Strong talent looks for companies

with a great employer brand and leadership vision. They want employers that can give them a healthy workplace culture or they can do meaningful work. A lot of people today talk about the concept of an employer brand. So what makes for a good employer brand? Well, like a product brand, an employer brand gives you an immediate understanding

of the employer's values and priorities. It's shorthand that helps prospective employees understand if the mission, vision, and values are a good fit. An employer brand is rooted in the workplace culture and should be communicated through every touch point with prospective candidates. Tell the world what your company and team stand for in your job ads, on your website,

through social media, and during the interview process. So when it comes to hiring outcomes, what actions can have the biggest impact? Look at why the top candidates have declined offers recently. You might find areas where the recruitment process needs to be improved. track the process as well.

How long does your hiring process take? Is your team giving timely feedback along the way? Some teams lose candidates because other employers make decisions faster or communicate better. Ask yourself, are your recruiters and hiring managers well-prepared, ready to ask and answer smart questions? They're the ones selling your company to prospective hires, so they need to make a great impression. And what are some new and strategic ways to help keep the talent pipeline full? Well, first, ask employees for work. referrals. Candidates referred by employees are more likely to receive an accept an offer. They're also more likely to stay longer. Developing talent from within helps you retain employees by offering career advancement opportunities and also helps you ensure that you have more options when the time comes to fill roles. Develop relationships with talent sources like education career services, industry association personnel. These contacts can help you reach specific talent quickly. Use technology to track previous,

applicants, too. For every job you filled, you likely had a few finalists. Keep in touch with them. They may be the right employee for another role. And as we all know, the interview process can be a chore for both interviewers and interviewees. So how can companies improve this process? Change some of the tired approaches to interviews. How can you make the experience more authentic and fresh? Perhaps you can replace inquiries like, tell me about a time you solved a problem, with a discussion about a situation that might happen in the actual job. This gives the candidate a taste of what the job is like, while also allowing the interviewer to see how the candidate thinks. April, thanks so much for being with us today.

Thank you so much for having me. It was great to chat today. Next up, we'll take a closer look at one of the key strategies today's guests recommend. Thanks, Mike. I'm Rebecca Dyshinsky here with Rita McGrath for a conversation on how to define a successful social media strategy in the attention economy. Welcome, Rita. Pleasure to be here.

For a company like Poppy, you know, we saw Allison had great success. on social media, particularly TikTok. What lessons should other founders draw from that about how they can kind of capitalize on this space? Well, I think she's got a great product and really believes in it, which is very clear. But she's also very engaging as a person. So she's not afraid to show up with messy hair

and here's my kitchen and here's I just got up and, you know, whatever. And so I think there's a real authenticity that comes with that that a lot of more corporate types just don't have. You know, I remember once I was critiquing, some social media that was done by a big corporation I was working with. And they had posted something, I think it was on Twitter at the time, so this is going back well. And they had some statement and then a little copyright sign next to it on social media. Wow. Talk about inauthentics.

Yeah. I'm curious to hear more about if you think that there are any common mistakes that entrepreneurs are making on social media, maybe when it comes to building their brand strategy or things that they might be overlooking. That could be a very easy win for them. Mistakes on social media, well, you know, there's a lot out there, right? So being too much the same as everybody else, I think, is probably the first canonical mistake. Secondly, is being inconsistent. And then I guess the last thing would be not being clear on what it is that's the call to action. You know, I see a lot of entrepreneurs get up and they talk about stuff and you watch it and that was interesting, but what am I now supposed to do, right? So you want to be really clear about what is the behavior that you're trying to motivate by getting people to listen to your message on social. media. We know from Gary and Allison's conversation that organic social media is super important. I'm curious how founders can look at the success or the pitfalls of their performance with their organic social content and how they can apply that to a paid strategy and what a successful paid strategy should look like. Yeah, so the question of what do I pay for versus what do I sort of earn is a perennial one. So I think you want to have organic at the

core. And then depending on the product and depending on your goals, you may want to just goose that with some paid ads and paid promotion to get the word out in a faster way. You know, organic tends to be slow, unless you are lucky like Poppy was and you go viral and everybody watches it. That can really be great, but it's rare. Is there any way that an entrepreneur can make that process a little bit easier for them? You know, of course, hiring help, but how can they kind of maximize their time when understanding they have to be posting basically everywhere all the time. Right. It's hard. I mean, you could spend 24-7 doing nothing but PR, right? Not everything worth doing is worth doing perfectly. You know, a sort of amateurish but authentic post may get you

just as much traction as something that's really slick and professionally done. So you can get a really long way with some very basic equipment. Now, when I think about entrepreneurship, it's a lot like any other kind of launch, right? You don't want to wait until you need that audience to start building it. Rita, we've covered a lot of ground here today. I'm wondering if you have any final piece of advice for our audience when it comes to brand building and social media. Yeah, so I think one of the things we haven't talked about is what AI is going to mean for content creation, because basically that's what you're doing. If you're posting on social media, you're generating content. And what AI is already doing is it's allowing an awful lot of sort of average quality content to just,

flood the channels. And so what I think is going to become increasingly important is to get to be known for having tasteful curation of whatever your thing is so that people can come to you as a trusted and reliable source. But the money is going to go to where the scarcity is. Attention is scarce, curation is scarce, good taste is scarce, and that's where the money's going to go. An example of that is what's happened in the music business, right? Artists today really make almost nothing on their pre-recorded music, it's all kind of a build-up to the in-person because that's scarce. And so I think as an entrepreneur, you really want to be thinking about where is the scarcity in this sort of universe that I'm creating, and how do I monetize that

rather than expecting to be able to make yourself known in a sea of just absolutely average content. Thanks so much for joining us today, Rita. This was a really insightful conversation. It was a pleasure. Thank you, Rebecca. Back to you, Mike. Now, one of the goals of the show is to connect our audience with founders like you, Gary, and Allison. And so it's time for viewer questions. And here's our first viewer question. What are the keys to building a strong social team? Gary, we'll start with you. Holding them accountable to views achieved organically on social media. And I say that because once everyone knows what we're trying to achieve, you're giving clarity to your team of what the actual black and white North Star is.

And then the other key is to make them feel safe to communicate who they are. and then you as a leader auditing, what are they great at? Elsa, what about you? Confidence. So there was a point at Poppy where over seven people had our login to our socials and had the ability to post without approvals from leadership. And that was confidence in them knowing what was trending, moving at the speed of culture, and confidence that they also know what won't get us canceled. So our next viewer question is, as your business scales, how are you thinking about evolving

your brand's voice to increase your audience? Alison, we'll start with you. I think you can't do what worked in the past. I live by the 80-20 rule. Plan 80% of what you're doing within your content strategy and leave 20% open for trends, hopping on immediately doing things within your content, and then jumping on new platforms and testing it out. I mean, there was like the eliminates of the world. There's all these like different platforms that people are like, I want to be the first to you. Don't be scared to be the first to that platform.

To me, it's taking the risk to be relevant to a new audience. I mean, look at poppy, like domination in that young female. Through the years, every time I would cross paths with Allison, I was like, go a little bit more for the dudes, try it somewhere else. I really believe in that. I think relevance to more consumers will really drive top line revenue. And our last fewer question is this. So we all know that the algorithms are shifting constantly and sometimes your reach dips. How do you pivot when that happens?

Gary, we'll start with you. The reach is dipping only because of the creative. So this goes to a very easy thing, which is you need to shake up. up your creative. You need to take the risk. The embarrassment factor that Allison's talking about, like, you have to do different things. This is the answer. A hundred percent agree. Couldn't say it more. I think on top of it, you might have to go back to the basics. So sometimes what worked really early in the beginning and just like toning it back to, I think is something people don't look at. They've learned. They're chasing the next virality and they're going bigger.

Like sometimes just stepping back. And like for us talking about, hey, this is Poppy. It has has five grams of sugar and it tastes good. And then all of a sudden, we'd blow up again. And it's like, don't forget that kind of just realism within your content as well. Gary Vaynerchuk of VaynerX and VaynerMedia and Allison Ellsworth of Poppy. Thanks so much for being here today. Thank you. Thanks for having us.

And thank you for watching. We hope today's conversation gave you a fresh perspective on creating community and what it truly means to be a social first brand. So join us next time for more industry experts, candid conversations, and the strategies you need. to make your next move. I'm Mike Hoffman, Aaron Chief of Eng. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time.