4 business strategies you need to win in 2025

0:00This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience. Love, is that a good thing? Is it powerful? Does it matter? I mean, the shit that people do for love is everything, right? That's how I feel about brand. It's everything. We think that there's an extreme under investment in creative, organic, and an over investment in media that is wasted on creative that could have been better. Money's expensive now. Don't own the building and see how great this concept really is smart oh my gosh that's genius so we moved from new york to north carolina in 2021 we bought three historic properties converted them into you know boutique hotels um added some restaurants and an espresso bar and one and and there's a florida location right we were looking so we had we started the burger the burger concept that we were the franchise and started we actually stepped back on that now because the espresso bar has taken off so insanely uh i mean we're turning away 100 to 200 people a night on the weekend and we found the margins were really good so right now from an excitement standpoint from a profit standpoint the cocktail the coffee shop slash cocktail bars coffee by day cocktails by night um is we're doing about 350 000 a month last month we just did over 400 000 so percent margins on that we're because there's no food involved it's all liquor um yeah so we're running just just just over 30 percent in that you're probably starting to realize like the maximizing of margin and liquor is an endless game like you get really good really fast if you keep doing it yeah yeah so we were talking to the franchise company about doing the burger restaurant and realize that there's no one in the franchise space that's doing anything with the espresso coffee shop and cocktails by night.

1:56And we've been getting a lot of emails and people asking, are you franchising? Can we buy a franchise? How do we do this in Raleigh? How do we do this? Have you two swallowed the concept of franchise or meaning like, do you feel like you've exaggerated? Do you feel like you've fully thought through if you want to be a franchisor, or do you think you're being intoxicated by the short-term value of it? Possibly. That's one of the questions we wanted to ask you, because we also own 90 % of the real estate of all the buildings, and we were in the middle of buying another building and opening a Concord espresso bar location on the other side of town.

2:40Should we stay private? Should we franchise? and what do you do you know anything about the industry and you have connect yeah so we wanted to pick your brain on our minds one side we're like oh speed before someone else tries to do the same thing we're doing and then on the other side so by the way i'm sure if you go to google or chat gpt you'll see this this is not the first time i've heard of coffee and cocktails yeah i'm sure all day cocktails by night there's like four places by me and i did it 10 years ago like yeah yeah it's all execution yeah like burger king and mcdonald's and wendy's there's you have unlimited And like that, don't worry, don't do it for that reason.

3:14Yeah. Okay. Look, I mean, the answer is both work. What I'd like you to do is spend like a hundred hours of watching YouTube videos and listening to podcasts from the perspective of franchisors who understand, like, it's all fun and games until the first person and they give you money and you're all pumped and then they're complaining to you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do you like babysitting? No. Then you're going to hate being a franchisor. That's the whole point of franchising, right? But it's like a catch 22. Of course, but fast, you know, fast money is seductive, but often leads to headaches.

3:46Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, that's good insight on that. And then, and then the, on the other side of the equation, right? Because now franchising would become like a separate thing from what we're, if we were did franchise from the hospitality group. So that, so us growing the hospitality group and, you know, thanks for connecting us to Tony and David. We spoke to them. So much value. So much value from them. So we want to just pick your brain on, you know, maybe trying to duplicate what you're doing up north and the south. Right. Essentially. I mean, I think. Yeah, I think I think you don't need to own every piece of real estate.

4:19Obviously, real estate is a great asset. But like if you feel like you got something with the coffee and cocktail, my point of view is that keep your cash. Money's expensive now. So if you're borrowing, you're paying higher interest rates. yeah and you know open a look another location in a great fucking location like a great location pay the big pay the big don't own the building and see how great this concept really is got it like if i was the third partner and we were having our meeting and i was like the elder statesman and you know like i was the older brother or whatever the right way to test this is to go to the best fucking location that we can fucking afford pay the rent high big but we're paying the big because it's in the best fucking location in the state of north carolina yeah and let's see how good this concept really is so so you would recommend like you see why i like that because yeah you context yeah yeah all of a sudden i'll give you an example why let's say we pay something like we get we do that uh instead of the down payment right on an asset of a building across town we now are using that cash to get like a real fucking killer spot yeah but what if that spot's doing a million a month because you see the kind of location i'm talking about yeah yeah also we could see if it's doing 300 000 a month and everyone's like what the fuck gary well we have all these other competitors here yeah and but now we learned yeah yeah yeah and we didn't have to put all that cash down to buy the real estate to find out that lesson for this one exact lesson yeah so i'm going yeah yes location yeah i love it yeah i think that's what i would do if i was the partner right now because you've got something let's really understand if you got something got something got it where would you go after hearing that from me where would you go we're we're looking well right now we're looking for a spot uh we're in wilmington like downtown most of our business and then there's wrightsville beach which is like the more bougier side of town landfall that area yeah right so beach i guess would be like if we were looking at long island like the hamptons versus jones beach i guess um is it a seasonal except it's more populated and less season it's not it's not seasonal it's just that it's not stopping it's grown so we're look we're looking for something there and then we were then having we we think two would be enough and then we'd have to set our sights on raleigh and charlotte after that yeah so let's talk about that area you were thinking about buying a building there and yeah in uh wrightsville yeah wrightsville beach is that the good is that the hamptons one or the that's the good part of town it's the good part of town yeah are you able to get a better are you okay what about what's the best are there better locations than where you is if you were to rent there's not a lot available so it's kind of like you have to take what it is the the location where we we would be getting is on a main road.

7:17It's very popular where it is. So why would the building be for sale? It used to be a brewery that went out of business, multiple breweries that just didn't, weren't a fit. And now the building is up for sale for that. So why? That math was not good. Yeah. Good spots to rent, but here's a good spot to buy that we can afford as small entrepreneurs. everything smells bad to me i know nothing i don't know yeah yeah you're right but i know something do you know what i mean kind of thing yeah i don't want to talk you out of something that might be remarkable i could be 100 wrong yeah but boy does that make no sense to me yeah yeah yeah it's seven minutes from the actual beach it's 11 minutes from the uh biggest area that everyone in Wrightsville Beach shops and dines.

8:08But talk to me about that area. Yeah. Does that 11 minutes literally have nothing, nothing? You know, it's like... I mean, for you to open... Right now... You're going to test my concept. Yeah, yeah. Go in that area. Skip the 11 minutes. Skip the 11 minutes. Go in there. Go directly. Of course you could buy 11 minutes out. You can't buy in the heart of the heart because it's way more expensive and not available. Yeah. You're right. Yeah. If there was a spot there, I would get off what I want for you, which is to see if this is a$10 million concept. Yeah. Best location. So that being said, just because of the population here, we have a ton of, we, we, we just, Wilmington just doubled in the past two years.

8:56So they went from 130 to 150 ,000 people to 300 plus. Is that because all the Northeast people are moving down? There's all the Northeast people moving down. A lot of New Yorkers came down here, for sure. And putting a location in Wrightsville Beach would still only put us 20 minutes away from our other location. If we're shopping cocktails, that's like a century away. Yeah, that side of town doesn't really come to the side and vice versa. But this concept, because there's no food, we are the before dinner spot and we're the after dinner spot. And what about the breakfast spot? What's that? Are you also a breakfast spot because of coffee?

9:37Yeah. Yeah. The coffee. So the call, the call, obviously the majority of money, the chunk, you know, like 80 % of the money is made at night. Obviously. We only have an agriculture license. So we actually, we get a pastry deliver and we don't really have breakfast there. We have very limited. It's people buy coffee, right? Or no coffee croissants, like some big good. If we're doing it out, like if on a good day, we'll do a thousand dollars in coffee, but we're doing five, $6 ,000 in liquor. Makes sense. Yeah. So do you think that opening a location in Wrightsville beach, 20 minutes away versus going to a bigger city for best location like Raleigh?

10:20I like, you know, you know, this, your infrastructure right now of you being able to drive back and forth 24 seven versus like two hours. Yeah. Like, this is why I'm pushing you to something very specific. Yeah. You're going to be in a very competitive spot. There's plenty of other fucking places in this 11 minute spot, I'm sure as well. Yeah. Right? So like, I assume your side of town, there's less good like bar, like less than what would be in the heart of the 11 or no. Actually, there's a lot. We're kind of - Because we're in the heart of downtown. You can literally walk to everything downtown from where we are.

10:56So people will literally make a reservation and we're reservation only, Gary. So people will make a reservation. Are your drinks really good? Did you nail it? They crush. They crush. Yeah, we have 20 different espresso martinis. It's a big menu. But we also have a signature cocktail list, so it's not just espresso. Yeah, they have like 40 different drinks on there, so it's a big variety. We do flights of espresso martinis and stuff. I just get really excited about staying very close, going to the heart of the competition. Yeah. Apex. I'll tell you why. if you go in crush against the most competitive best spot in your town and it's doing 700 000 a month well that changes how you're going to look at raleigh this data is too valuable it's almost like if you even if you went out of like if you if we were on zoom and you're like you fucked us gary we opened and went out of business i didn't fuck you we now know that you yeah it's true it's True.

11:49Okay. So the last, the last little thing is in this concept, we run natural gas lines and all of our tables are fire pits outside. And that's part of the appeal. People sit down at a fire pit table. We make a homemade marshmallows and our concept is really s'mores by the fire with espresso martini flights so cool yeah yeah and and that's that's what makes finally the after dinner right you become the dessert spot you become the dessert spot that's exactly what it is really cool the location that we found that we wanted to buy has a kitchen it has the outdoor space that we can turn into fire pits that's been our hardest thing is finding like a place that we can have indoor and outdoor area, put natural gas lines down and have the ideal outdoor space.

12:47Use the location 11 minutes in the bougie place as the preview to, if you have to be in New York and innovate on the idea. Oh my gosh. That's genius. Right? Like bring out the little thing in the middle of the table where people can do like, treat it like your New York location. it makes me like this spot more less capital expensive yeah yeah gonna answer so many fucking questions if you think you're onto something yeah and it's so close to you that even if you guys are wrong you'll will it to a decent outcome i love it and we do the tabletop fire pits inside well then you just yeah yeah that just lines up you're right you're right so all right you're right we just have to be creative with it that's cool you're right because how would we expand it to major cities we're going to have the same problem how do we find the location yeah we're not going to find out there's many outdoor spots yeah yep use location number two to answer all the questions i would have if we are on to something yeah yeah don that makes total sense when i look at what you have built when i didn't even know the word holding company existed until 2023.

13:57And in my mind, I had this idea of something that I wanted to build. And then I'm now realizing that that is the very thing that you have built. And so knowing what you know now, would you have built the holding company? And if so, if you can go back, what would you do differently? Great question. Yes, I would definitely build it. I'm very good at being wide open to changing my mind in micros, but holding to a strategy in macro. I knew that I wanted to build the best marketing communications company in the world that was global. And that I was open to it being a series of companies or a company.

14:41And I was never going to be overly romantic about social media, right? We started this in 09. It's 24. We're 15 years in. I would have said in 15 years, if no one's doing social, then we're doing whatever that thing is. And I continue to do that. So I wasn't romantic about what services we did, how many companies were in the entity, if it was one or a hundred. And more importantly, not romantic about what we did, but I was romantic about being always current, right? Like, as you know, what's unique about my career is from 2006 to today, there's not a lot of people who have 18 years of on the record, publicly following the flows of innovation around attention and communication at the same level that I do.

15:37And that's really humbling and good, you know? So what would you differently? Like now, knowing what you know now? I would have probably hired more people with more experience from the industry earlier. I probably didn't need to, I was so romantic. See how romance is a problem? I was so romantic of staying clean with my own intuitive ideas. I demonized people from the outside that did it the old way. And it probably wasted some time on simple things that I could have done by having people around. I def I mean, this is my biggest issue, period still to this day, I would have fired faster on people I knew weren't capable.

16:24It's just not good for business. And it's not good for them, like, because it leads to nepotism and resentment and it never ends up good anyway. I fired them eventually anyway. So that's a huge mistake of mine. The conversations that I had with Andrea when I was asking, how did you court her to come into Vayner? And I think that early on, like now looking at what Vayner is, it is a formidable force in the industry. But at the time, so when I look at myself and I know that I want to hire people with experience, but they have optionality. And so what was like a key factor? Could you go back and say, identify the pattern?

17:00I think you and I have the same skill, which is like, I think you'll be able to convince people to do it. Now, you just can't be fixated on one boy. But how did I do it? By being okay with all the people that didn't see it. In the same way I did it when I was a boy. every girl that I thought was cute that didn't want to be with me in my mind I was like they're going to be really sad one day and oh are they and so I think you need to take the same approach with this business you're going to identify someone and you want Ricky Thompson and he's going to say no and then literally you're like cool next that's it who should I be talking to who should I be aligning to not in not in regards to building a holding company that looks like VaynerX, anybody with the idea of holding companies, because what I want to do is I'm not the best at coming up with new ideas, but I'm really good at spotting patterns and then identifying for my strengths and building from there.

17:55So when you look at people who've successfully built holding companies out inside or outside of your industry, who is, who is the formidable leader? Who is somebody who's creating content? Who is the person that I can learn from? That's an interesting question. Private equity firms is an industry you should look at talent agencies, CAA, UTA, WME. Those are, I would say talent agencies and private equity conglomerates, Apollo, BlackRock, like dig into those two worlds, private equity and talent representation. they did a lot of M &A they did a lot of executive stuff they did a lot of building from a small base to a big base those are two good industries for you to focus on if you were building VaynerX again and you had nothing what would you be doing differently or the same that you did you look back at yourself and you're like damn that was pretty incredible or even when I had nothing I could have leveraged it in a different way it's a good question you know that's a hard question in that what i would say is i would still want to build if it was today it's pretty easy for me to answer i'd still want to build the same thing which is in in several years i want this to be this huge conglomerate what i would do is i would have different services right i would be focusing on ai right now i'd be focused on on things that are of the moment that people don't have figured out that i could build on top of.

19:31So good. When we were meeting in Vive and we had lunch, you had said something that I am still trying to wrap my mind around. And I was just like, what you essentially said was, are you going to pick up what I'm putting down? And you talked about acquiring a company like Cracker Jacks or Snapple and taking it from like a$40 million company that was once like a behemoth. And then you turning into a$400 million company based on the principles of people who are actually getting what it is that you're trying to inculcate the current team with. So there's like, it felt like you were drawing a clear line in the sand of people who get it and then those who don't and the people who get it are going to go on to this next iteration.

20:07And to me, I felt like, are you building the holding company specifically for that? Or would you just not start focusing on that acquisition? And does the team know that culturally? The team knows people like James and Andrea and other senior leaders that my goal with VaynerX is to build a holding company that is the best marketing company in the world. then anoint an active CEO and stay on as chairman and then go build a either private equity firm or a holding company of brands and build that company and then take the best players from VaynerX over to the owned and operated businesses from services to owned.

20:47And that's been very open in the organization? Yes. It's actually probably been very inspiring to the best players because they are like self-selecting, like I'm going to be the best and I'm going to go over to Snapple or Reebok when Gary buys it. That's one of the reasons. I do believe the 1 % of 1 % here, you know, are probably here because of that. Yo, everybody, thank you so much. Just jumping in real quick in the middle of this podcast. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. It would mean the world to me if you could leave a review for this episode. And I'm going to get you back to your pod right now because you don't need me talking about that.

21:25But I realize I'm lagging on getting the support of my podcast listeners. So a review on this episode and overall would mean the world to me. Five star, four star, three star, fuck it, two star, one star. Honest feedback's fine. All right, back to the show. Just quick context to catch you back up to speed. Franchisor of Get Up and Go Kayaking, We have 32 locations now, four different states. Most of them are in Florida, but Texas, Tennessee, and North Carolina are the others. Really just focused on expansion, just took on a director of franchise operations to kind of help with some of the operational side of things, free up a little bit of my mental capacity to focus on growing the business.

22:10But one of the big questions I had is about turning a commodity like kayak tours into more of a community. Like, how do I how do I turn my customers into super fans? What are things that you would do to to make that happen? I think extending the story, meaning, you know, creating a digital, creating a digital infrastructure, whether it's on text, whether it's on a closed Facebook group. like you know a discord where can you put everyone digitally that they can interact with you and them is like a really big deal yeah yeah we do we do um the close facebook and the text group and those have been great i i love just popping on the text group and talk to me a little bit more about that So if you've done that, what's going on with that and what hasn't allowed that to feel like a community to you?

23:14Yeah, I think it's mostly because I'm the one initiating the conversation and I want them to initiate the conversation. So how do I get them more engaged from that side of things? you know um similar to the way that you text your community like i'll just show up randomly and say hey hope you're having a good tuesday you know and and a lot of people reply being like oh my god thanks so much and it's amazing but like how do i get them to initiate that you know is is i think the next level of community yeah i mean i think i think you and and where and do you have a discord or no? No Discord, no. Just the Facebook group and the texting group.

23:54And what's happening with the Facebook group? Facebook group, we typically repurpose some of our content so that it's more Facebook-ish friendly. We'll repurpose a lot of our blog content in shorter form just to deliver, hey, here's five restaurants we recommend in this area, or here's some other things you can do while you're visiting this area and it's just been a lot of us kind of giving tips and and little like local knowledge things um in there but again it's it's a lot of us um being the ones that are initiating the the conversation yeah i mean i think um doing q a sessions doing this like google meet out like get more physical go to that text group and facebook group and put out a google url hangout and be like i'm here next wednesday the 14th from 7 to 10 answering questions i think that will take you to the next level cool yeah it will work and just build off of it and then you record it and then you take a snippet from it and then you post it on social and you tell people how to sign up for the text to get into this you know what i mean yeah yeah cool thanks

25:12i know one thing gary everybody's happy if they hear about us and they walk into a store to buy our product or they come to buy it from us or they go to amazon right there's a hundred million homes out there and a good 70 of them i think could use our product if they if they learned about it How many podcasts are you going on a week? Or a month? Or a year? Not enough. Maybe three a year. Three a year? Yeah. I think that's probably the biggest strategic focus. I think you should be going on podcasts just for the content. Just for the content. I would go on even tiny podcasts that are in your niche to hitting the kind of right demo just so that we can post-produce the content from the thing for more ad.

26:05I think that's the key. My number one performing wine text ad is me doing a radio show. Yeah. Well, some of our best content has been when I've made something or, and it was just a impromptu thing that turned out. I think more of you, so you don't have a lot more money to spend on making more, but you have your time. which makes more. Got it? And my heart. Yeah, I mean, listen, the whole company's built on your intent. That to me is already secondary. That's a given. Nobody knows your intent or heart if they don't see you. I think the right move for you is to spend more time on podcasts and then clipping the clips from those podcasts and putting them into organic.

27:02And when they do well in organic, turning them into a performance ad. That's great. That's the thing I would do if I bought the business tomorrow and we were partners. That's what I would spend my time on. That is a good to know. I think that's the one because what we need is more content from you, but you don't have the dollars to spend on it. Got a lot of ideas from your book. Thank you. The section in there of all the examples. Oh, golden. I've got a list of things to do. Look, I think the founder story is doing better and better and better. And I think that EarthKline would really benefit from you being on a podcast once a week with the intent of getting one to three clips out.

27:51Okay. So now we got to figure out how to get you on those podcasts. Got it. Yeah. Are you able to look at the podcast rankings on Spotify and Apple in your categories of health, wellness, all that stuff, business, whatever it might be, female empowerment, entrepreneurship, all of it. I think you should make a list of all the things you could see yourself on. And then maybe I can call in some favors and we should attack it. If you want to change the world, you need to talk to the world. I have big ambitions to change the world. I talk to the world every day. Amen. And articulating a vision in a way people can see it and taste it is much harder than most entrepreneurs realize.

28:33I think that's a brilliant statement. And then the other thing is many that can articulate it don't say it often enough in enough places at scale. Yeah. That's where you're at right now. Yes. I need you out and about. I need more content from you. and I want it to be free, which is in essence is you going on podcasts. That's golden. I think so.