Everything You NEED to Know to Grow Your Business in 2025

0:00Hey everyone, on this episode of the Gary V audio experience we're sharing a recent 4D's consultation session. Gary tackles some really big questions, like finding the right platforms for your message and making sure each post has maximum impact. You'll hear some real examples, practical tips, and a few surprising strategies, like how local events can generate unique content that connects your audience in a deeper way. And now into the episode. The first question, I think, is how to balance personal branding versus business branding, especially from a social media perspective, and then also across multiple brands if you're trying to do more than one company like you did?

0:37Yeah, so one of the cool things about this format is a lot of times one question helps everyone. So there's so much to that. First of all, I think that we out academia ourselves a lot of times. So we sit in this room and think about the strategy of personal brand versus the business versus multiple businesses when the consumer on the other side doesn't care about what we're doing in a boardroom. That's always been the case. It's now been compounded by how social media now works. The reason I wrote the latest book is social media's really changed in the last two, three years. So best practices on how many handles do you need?

1:22What's personal? All those best practices got completely annihilated when TikTok hit the scene and made it about the individual piece of content. literally, oh, I don't have it. Literally, can you go to my account on TikTok? Literally, this is like the best, it's just happening right now. There's something just happened on my TikTok that I think answers this question better in like me, I'm gonna show it to you for him in a second, than like how I can explain it, which is, as I scroll to my TikTok, this video right here got 1.9 million views, right? 400 trillion to one. First of all, it did below average on Instagram.

2:00let's start with that so this got 1.9 1.9 million views on TikTok I'm looking at this one right here it got like 500k in a world of 700k for me on Instagram that's one different content different platform big part of the thesis here's the most remarkable part this got 1.9 the next post which crushed on Instagram this new format I'm doing where like the water hits the phone and it like does it's a lot of fun we're really excited about it

2:335 ,834 views. So the social media I grew up with, that you all grew up with, was as many followers as you had, was an indicator to the general range every post would get. I would call it like email marketing, right? Get a million emails, you get 60%, 30%, 40 % open rate, you kind of know what you're going to get. Of course there's outliers once in a while. Social media today now is down to the individual piece of content. and I think it's going to continue to get more extreme because it benefits the platforms. The more we stay on it, the more money they make. The more you see things you want to see, the more you will stay.

3:08The more you see things you don't want to see. A lot of you follow me but you may not want the wine content or the crying about the Jets content. You might want the business content. You might want the silly content. I don't know but as you all know, I do a lot of different stuff compared to most people. I would say good news, my friend. It doesn't fucking matter. Just do it. That's right. So if you decide to go one platform under your name and do half of the content about the business and half yours and another business, that individual piece of content is going to find the audience. If you want to have seven different accounts, I'm like even thinking about new strategies for clients.

3:46Like if they're a cereal brand, let's just use Cheerios, they're not a client. If we get Cheerios, should I create another account called At Morning Breakfast so that I can just post on it with Cheerios content just so they don't have to deal with the policy. It's so crazy what happened and all of you should take advantage of this. You should no longer be paralyzed by any of the ridiculous things we think about for strategy, including even the name of the handle. It's like all out the window. It's now the individual piece of content. Whether you post it on your account, your account, or the company's account, the individual piece of T-Porn content is going to be the punchline.

4:25We have this as a T-shirt. There you go. So that's the answer to that, Christian. I don't think you need to cripple yourselves, the three of you, on this issue. One account, five accounts, one for each of you. What you need to do is be fucking psychotic about the individual piece of content. Super focused. Next. Do I still have time? Yeah, you got time. Okay, cool. So we've been... It's longer and shorter than you think. So we've been really active at putting out content for a few years in different places we started with the the podcast and we've done that for a few years and we've just recently kind of started to focus on other areas but it never goes as fast as you want it's always like really like slow going right so my questions may be really specific to financial companies is there anything you're seeing um either good bad or otherwise that companies like ours are focused on um you know helping people better their financial lives Is there anything you're seeing out there?

5:26Yeah, of course. But let's break this down a little bit. So what would you like them to do after they've been affected by your good content to make their financial lives better? Like a nonprofit would just like it to be good. A profit. Like what do you want them to do? What do I want them to do? I want them to be happy and live their best life. Like I don't think that I have like grandeurs of what they should do once they've built that. I would say a lot of them want to, you know, pass it on to charity, pass on to kids. Makes sense. What is your business KPI? What would you like them to buy from you?

6:02Oh, mostly we sell life insurance. Just like sophisticated life insurance-based strategies. How much LinkedIn content do you put out a day? One post a day. What kind? Mostly video. Mostly video. A clip from the podcast? Sometimes. And other times original. It's just like a short that I've done. We have had like outside FMOs, third party FMOs doing most of it for the last couple years. And so we've mostly done what they said until more recently where I'm like, I got to own this more. That part's good. How has it been going? Slow. Not very well. Not very well, I would say. Because it's challenging to get views on it or because you're challenged to come up with ideas to make content for?

6:49I think more challenging to get views. I mean, like, you know, when I put out a short, I get like a, you know, sometimes a short as in like a YouTube short. What about LinkedIn? Okay, sorry. Back to LinkedIn. Please. I would say every once in a while, I'll get like a good post that has like, you know, 10 ,000 views. But for the most part, it's, you know, I'm getting like a few hundred impressions on it. And that's per day, one a day. Yes. Or you're being kind or that's what we're doing. Five a week. Five a week. We are dedicated at least to that at this point. Understood. Have you thought about, where are you based?

7:25Salt Lake. But we are totally virtual. Understood. And the consumers that you're trying to reach can be national? Yep. That's been a huge advantage for us because we started doing that 10 years ago. I think, a couple things. If I was to join the business, the first thing I would do is pitch the idea of hosting a dinner within Salt Lake, running ads on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn on a 10 to 15 mile radius of our office where the video was an invitation to fill out a form to join this dinner in a private room in one of Salt Lake's nice restaurants where you would send them to a Google form to fill out who they are.

8:12What you're going to talk about is overall entrepreneurship and business a little bit of like Salt Lake local entrepreneur and business and Salt Lake life because that's obviously such a tight-knit community. I know it pretty well. And for this lovely dinner we're all going to have, you're going to have to bear with us. We have a five-minute halftime show commercial for what we do for a living. But the general thing is I, Christian, we would like to be more part of the community and the business community and the growth of the city and the energy of everything that's going on. We have a hockey team now.

8:47Yep, we do. We would like, you know, again, I don't know, like, you know, whether it's steak dinner, whether it's alcohol, no alcohol, whatever the dynamics are, we're going to do this nice dinner. There's only 12 seats. What? We're just running this ad within 20 months. Like, this is literally the video. We are running this ad for like-minded, ambitious people. Footnote, we're also doing this for our social media content. So this dinner is going to be filmed. You don't need to be in it. It's for my content. So your face can be blurred. It can be back in your head. By the way, you can be in it and can get a nice little plug for your local business.

9:21I believe what you're doing in that scenario is a couple things. One, I think it would explode your local business. I think scaling, this is for everyone, I think scaling the unscalable is the move right now in a world of AI. So like a monthly dinner with 12 to 20 prospects who don't forget, filled out a form that you're going to ask the questions you want to know answers to. Are you happy with your insurance provider? Yes, okay, you're not invited. You know, like you could. You could do whatever the hell you want in that form. But you will create an engine for your content. My team, as John may know, like, yeah, the other, literally, yes, as many of you may know, if you follow me closely, yesterday I did Tea with Gary Vee.

10:02I brought it back. It was a show I did a lot during COVID. I did it for two reasons. One, it's one of my best format shows. Like, people like it the most for me because I'm providing real depth. It's what this is at some level. and two, I really believe in social media shopping, and I wanted to do it on whatnot to show people that you can do it on these platforms. There's a lot of, like, I'll definitely get into it with them, but here's the punchline why I'm telling you that story. Because I put myself in my best position to make good content. We made a piece of content, like, I made a piece of content in reaction to the question.

10:36My team clipped it yesterday. We normally go into testing. We test under different accounts how well the content does, and then do it on my main channel. I felt so good about it intuitively. We ran it last night. It was the one where I ranted about like, nobody gives a fuck about you, humility's the key. Right, that video, that is the first video that wasn't tested that got over a million views in years. And the reason I think it did that, because the other 50 I've done that way, I thought were gonna hit. But this morning when I woke up, I was like, it's I put myself in a position to make that video.

11:14Right? Like I'm putting myself for an hour in my best spot. I get most excited when I talk to a human and I'm just trying to break through to them and that gets me to a different place. I think you in that setting has the chance to make better content. Yeah. So you're going to get local and by the way you're going to run ads on Meta and LinkedIn to the tune of about$200 in media spend. Because when you're in a very confined area of a 10 mile radius, you don't need a lot of dollars. Yeah. That's what I would do. Very cool. Thank you. I think you'll get the right kind of content. And by the way, your production day is going to be a sales pitch.

11:53You see what's happening? For the low, low cost of like, listen, I don't underestimate covering 12 people's dinner. Like I view that, you know, a couple of, like I think you're going to win. I think you get, I think it's going to work. I like this non-scalable, local, physical, to film to then scale. Got it? All of you have to put yourself in a position to make the best possible content. Good stuff. Thank you. You got it. I think we're here because we are growing really, really fast. We want to make sure we have the right plan. Is it all direct to consumer? Yes. Shopify? I'd say 75 % through Shopify, 25 % through Instagram and Facebook.

12:37Okay. Direct playing. Direct within it, right? Like you're doing it by hand or you're using shop or what's happening? Yes. Is it like DM if you want to buy and you're like kind of handholding it? Also just through the meta ads we're running, like meta will give them the option to either buy through our website or buy just in platform. Right, so they're buying in platform, it's passing on to your shop. Yeah, exactly. And they're taking a rake. Yep. And so we basically, just for context, like we did 250 ,000 in sales last year. And I think we're on track to do 2 million in November. Amazing. And we're growing 30 to 50 % month over month.

13:13And most of it is on just meta ad spend. Of course. And increasing that meta ad spend. And it's been really profitable too. So that's good. That means you have a product that's fit the market against the attention. Yes, exactly. Who's running those ads? You? Yes. And how good do you feel about your capability in that? Like if you had a self-guess, because you probably don't have a lot of, I have a thousand social media buyers literally in this company, so I can assess like Ronnie versus Sally. I'm aware that you don't have a context point, but what's your gut tell you? So I'm 100 % self-taught.

13:47Which is good. Yeah, I think Advantage Plus ads have made me feel a lot smarter this year than in the past. So like basically all we're doing is we're testing a bunch of creatives, but we're like 100 % of our ad spend is in Advantage Plus campaigns, which has been working for us. How much organic social are you doing? Probably two posts a day on Instagram. Just Instagram? On TikTok, but TikTok's just not going very well, but we're still. Well, it's not going well because you look at all of this as like conversion funnels, right? Yes. So you live in CAC and LTV life and that's your rendering. Back to what I just showed you.

14:25you do know that you could go from 2 to 8 million in sales in a year based on one organic TikTok post.

14:34So that's a good thing for everyone to hear. Like you notice if you follow it along of how we were just talking where they'll eventually go is eventually the math won't work. That's what happens to everybody. That might be 6 million, that might be 11 million. I don't know, right? I'd have to like look under the hood. But by the way, if they're destined to do 20 million before the math doesn't work out people are going to watch them and figure it out and do the same thing and then it's going to slow that like the copycat thing will happen very fast. And what I was going to say is that's kind of where we're getting to the point where when I said 2 million in November I mean the month of November we think we'll do 2 million.

15:12And so we think like next year we could hit 20 million. Okay I see. That's staggering. So you're not going from 250 ,000 to 2 million revenue. You think you're going from 250 to 20 million. Yeah. So a couple things real quick for the rest of the room. This is what's happening in social media when you do it right. Just like so everybody wraps their head around it. It's that real. But keep going. Yeah. So I'm just getting kind of nervous that like, okay, we've been riding this wave all year. I feel like we were pretty early on like the Advantage Plus ads, Power Bay AI, like getting really good targeting.

15:48but now I feel like we kind of have experience with a couple other small businesses where we've run them up to maybe five, three to five million in annual sales. Getting to this point where we're like - Did you come from that angle? Were you servicing other businesses and then started? When you say that, why did that happen? So I owned a business with my dad and my brother selling really niche horse-related products. Awesome. And so we've grown that business. It'll probably do about five or six million this year but that's kind of like the biggest business we've ever been involved with. And this one, just the products hitting and the nature of how social is, right?

16:25The addressable market's bigger just given the nature of all women are in play but then just the way women are shopping, like just the reality of the business, okay? So basically I'm coming to like, okay, we're on track to do two million in November. I think it's really realistic. We'll do 20 million. So let's go backwards. Instead of like what you're going to do in November because I've been through that rodeo. Let's talk about what you did do in August. So, like sales-wise, I think we hit close to 600 ,000. And you're anticipating by just putting more dollars into the machine because you're reinvesting what you're making, that's how you see it, right?

17:02Yes. Because for everybody, like the reason, when I said this is how it works, the reason not everyone does it is if your first 100 ,000 doesn't work because you weren't good at it, then you're out. If you only had 100 ,000 or 50 ,000 or 10 ,000. Like these are small bits, right? If you got 10 ,000 and you go and spend 10 ,000 on social ads and you don't convert, then the game's over. On the flip side, if it does convert, you see what's happening, right? If your 10 ,000 makes you 40 ,000, you take 20 ,000, and then all of a sudden you just see what he's doing, he's stacking, got it? But this is why I want to talk about, this is why I wrote the book.

17:34This is why I'm yelling from the loudest way I can that organic social is important when people don't think it's important because they're in one or two places. One, they're advanced and paid. And so like, why guess? He's just fucking running it. Right? You can see, think about being at 600 ,000 in August and sitting here and having confidence, and I believe him, by the way, that he's going to do two million in November. That's just like, okay, I know what works. But then things change too. And so that's why creative is the whole variable. The targeting's there. The people are on social. Keep going.

18:10So I guess my question is like, going into next year and thinking like, okay, we could take this business to$20 million. It's just so open-ended. I feel dumb almost asking it. But like, how would you be thinking about? Yeah. No, I don't think it's dumb. I think you're, first of all, you need to reconcile something. You're in the sales business, not in the brand and marketing business. Notice what's happening. It's all math. So he's selling. So the biggest fear I have, brother, Lexi, is are you building a brand? Because if you're not, you're going to get copied out. Somebody's going to buy something close enough from China and start pounding against your own, the same audience for half the price.

18:51We see it happening. Already. That's right. Because people are watching everything. Got it? So my number one recommendation in the way I hear everything is don't worry about 20 or 30 or 18. Worry that you're in trouble unless you build a brand. Do you know how many people have social media agencies and want to be Gary Vee? Half the people on social media. But the brand is what allows me, I got to back it up by being good and I got to show up in this room and bring, but it's all brand. Everything is a commodity besides brand. Everything. So by far, what's obvious to me is brand, brand, brand. What does that mean?

19:36First off, I think the biggest asset you have is Lexi and her sister. So like to me, that's not replicatable. There's only, what's your sister's name? T 'Kel. T 'Kel and Lexi or T 'Kel and Lexi. There could be other sisters doing, but like, they're them. You know, I don't know you like that, Lex, but if you and T 'Kel are willing to go out in front, I think that is a very important part of the next step. You know, joint podcast, original content, showing them in the field. Like, you're gonna have, what's the name of the brand? Oh Clem Oh Clementine Oh Clementine You've got to make people give a fuck about that That Like jingle Like this is some madman shit Like what's the Oh Clementine Like there's like a song you should make I'm being serious Like I think you should make a jingle and that jingle should be an organic post and maybe the first three seconds of every video or at the end of every video the jingle should play You know 1-877-CAR-4-Kids Like if you're from the Jersey, New York area like PC Richards the whistle like everything is a commodity except brand.

20:43So I think the biggest thing that's obvious to me is for you to go all in on organic and all in on ownable shit. But like I would give up a lot of money if I ran the business. I would give up instead of pouring, like what you're just going to do is pouring it back in, pouring it back in. I would take some of that money and bring it to zero. I would level out your CAC. I'd pay more. I take 100K of it to be awesome at organic, to be awesome at brand building. Mostly investing that in basically a team to help us do more. Yes, that's right. External or internal building at the best cost association against the results to get as many views organically with a complete lens on brand.

21:27The other thing you're going to fall in love with, and as great as the AI is for meta, and it's the same AI that gets an organic post to a lot of views. And then that one, that one on organic will outperform the AI generated testing. So there's double benefit from organic social. The organic ad, the organic post that gets 3 million views when you bring it back and slightly tweak it to make it a conversion ad. So just a video of the two gals walking down the street talking about something and just hit. You taking that video back and at the bottom put, but maybe they just tell a story about their pet, I'm literally making shit up right now, their pet dog, Carol, in the video.

22:06It gets 14 million views, four million. Now you run it again as an ad, but at the bottom, you take the bottom of the video and you put, at checkout, put code Carol to get free shipping, because you know it's gonna emotionally hit, it may end up being your best cack ad. The thing that fucks up all the mathematicians in the game that I play, is when I get an organic thing going viral and I convert it into performance, it outperforms all their best shit and they're like, how the fuck did this happen? Because it's the fucking creative. Got it? Totally. Thank you.

22:44Hey Gary. Hi. So Matt Higgins was the one who connected us. He's coaching me. He said that we're sitting on a very valuable asset at having the rights to Think and Grow Rich and Napoleon Help. The first question I have is, so we have the rights to use the name, the material, the content, everything he's ever created in Napoleon Help. Should we be going with Think and Grow Rich or Napoleon Help? Both. Both. And. Both and. Okay, and. So much of the world we live in now, life is about this but life business is about distribution and we used to have to make choices because the internet and social didn't exist so like if you were going to open up stores in 1987 you had to pick one because it's fucking expensive to open up duplicate stores but when you're talking about what i'm talking about which is building brand in a modern social world the answer is and because some people would like it goes to good cohorts some people would resonate with Napoleon Hill so people resonate think or rich.

23:55Plus, if you go Napoleon's route, you have unlimited upside. Do you have the rights to his image? Is it name, image, and likeness? Everything. Yeah, I mean, his is much bigger upside. Napoleon, in AI form, should be competing with me right now. And it has a lot of leverage against me. It's all historic. Like, I think this will play out. Like, if you own the, so if you're sitting on the IP, you need to probably stand him up. So something a little far-fetched that I want everybody to hear is virtual influencers. One of the biggest conversations of the next decade is going to be influencers that aren't real people that you all own.

24:37Now, they're sitting with gold. They're owning something that's real. You're gonna have to make up your third sister. That's right. Or the dog. Should that be the voice? That was our question too because we have the voice tone of like... You have his voice on record, right? No, no, no, I meant like the voice of our brand. Yeah, I mean, you're going to find with me in the audience, like voice and tone become, it's subjective. Let me, like, okay, what's, I mean, I watch people on my team that have been with me for 10 years trying to capture my voice and send me stuff and I'm like, I would never say that.

25:11Yeah. So like, you have to remember voice and tone, like brand talk. The reason I've always pushed against brand talk is it's subjective. Like what's a brief? I'm going to give you a brief. Oh, the brief is bad. A brief is a piece of paper with words on it and how you interpret it. You know what else is words on a piece of paper? The Constitution. I don't know if you've heard. Half of America sees it one way. The other half sees it another way. So, you know, voice and tone is subjective. You four ladies leave and four other people come in and they're going to judge if it's on voice or on tone.

25:45Got it? You need to really reconcile that truth. Okay. So as we bring Napoleon back, whether it's AI, virtual. That's what I would do. If I was in this seat, I would bring him fully back. Like actually. He's the one. Like actually in a year, I just want, like, and by the way, it looks like he's a lot. I don't know if you guys have seen the AI. Yes, we have. We have created characters. We talked to him on the phone. We asked him questions. We asked him a question. He talked to me yesterday. Okay. Okay. So now, you know, Think and Grow Rich is a heavy read. Yes. And it's been thanked by many entrepreneurs, right?