In short
The GaryVee Audio Experience
Episode Summary
How to Build a Real Business in the Creator Economy: Q&A With Top Creators
In this episode of GaryVee Audio Experience, Gary Vaynerchuk engages in a dynamic Q&A with several top creators who utilize the platform Stan. The discussion revolves around strategies for building sustainable businesses within the evolving creator economy, focusing on aspects like personal branding, reinvesting profits, and overcoming indecision in entrepreneurship.
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Key Topics Discussed
Choosing Your Path
- Follow Your Passion: Gary emphasizes the importance of pursuing what genuinely interests you, stating that this leads to greater effort and fulfillment in your work.
- Evolving Interests: He discusses how he has pivoted his focus over the years (e.g., from his previous style to building VFriends), and encourages creators to allow themselves the freedom to evolve.
Building a Business
- Reinvestment Over Materialism: Gary strongly advocates for reinvesting profits back into the business rather than spending on non-essential items. He shares his own journey of financial discipline and the importance of hiring the right people.
- Hiring Strategy: When building a team, hire individuals who have agency experience and align with your vision, starting with account managers to handle client relationships.
Content Creation Strategies
- Document Over Create: The mantra "document, don’t create" is reiterated as a timeless strategy for content generation, emphasizing authenticity and relatability.
- Diverse Offerings: Creators discuss monetizing various aspects of their skills, such as high-ticket offers, merchandise, and community-building.
Overcoming Challenges
- Decision Fatigue: Gary addresses the common fear of making the wrong choice in business, encouraging listeners to act and pivot as necessary rather than overanalyze.
- Community Engagement: The importance of creating a community that fosters interaction and loyalty is highlighted. Gary suggests that monetizing through community interactions can provide both value and revenue.
Practical Advice
- LinkedIn and Networking: He recommends using LinkedIn effectively to grow connections, especially for those looking to enter enterprise sectors.
- Utilizing Stan: Gary promotes the use of Stan for creators to easily manage sales and community engagement, highlighting its advantages over traditional monetization methods.
Key Takeaways
- Authenticity is Crucial: Maintaining genuine connections with audiences is important, especially as businesses scale.
- Patience and Humility: Success in the creator economy requires understanding that growth takes time and involves ups and downs.
- Focus on Value: The more value you provide to your audience, the more likely you are to convert attention into sales.
- Iterative Approach: Don’t be afraid to experiment with different content types or business strategies; adjust based on what resonates with your audience.
Conclusion
The episode concludes with Gary encouraging creators to embrace their journeys, focus on what genuinely excites them, and utilize tools like Stan to enhance their entrepreneurial efforts. He reinforces that the creator economy is ripe with opportunities, and those ready to adapt and evolve will thrive.
For further insights, listeners are directed to check out Stan at [garyvee.com/stan](https://garyvee.com/stan) for tools and community-building strategies tailored for creators.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Pick the thing that sounds the most interesting. like the one that you want to do because then you will work harder. If you did what I told you to do but you don't want to do it, it's going to be hard. But if Tim wants to triple down on YouTube because he fucking loves YouTube because he's a filmmaker and he doesn't want to do TikTok, TikTok could have been the right answer for more growth in the short term but deep down, long term, YouTube's probably going to work. Do you understand what I'm saying everyone? If you want to be a business woman instead of a content creator, be more of a business, like what has made me unique-ish?
0:38I don't think I'm unique, but I think all of you know I've had longer staying power than a lot of people. I'm constantly evolving. I haven't disappeared. I don't fuck things up too often, you know, is because I really go with what I want to do and I'm okay. And you also, actually, this is really good. You all also know there's moments when I'm red hot and Gary Vee feels like proper and there's times like, where's he been? Like, I'm not as hot. like even the last two years I've been so head down building VFriends and VaynerMedia the Gary V of it all is not as hot as it was three years ago but now I'm going to start streaming live on Twitch and Kick and doing podcasts and doing more of this stuff and next year I'll feel like fuck Gary V's everywhere I just ebb and flow with what I want to do and you guys need to do that too hey podcast before you go to the podcast I've got a big announcement I know several years ago, a lot of you bought 12 books of 12 and a half to get the NFT, the book games NFT.
1:40I also know that a lot of people have dropped off on their journey with VFriends, which is a massive mistake. Because what we're doing on Burn Island and what we're doing on base with book games is remarkable. So you need to go to VEEFriends, VFriends.com slash old books. Go to VFriends.com slash old books with an S. You will go to that landing page and we will help you explain if you are trying to figure out where your NFTs are, how to bring them over to the website and how to start activating them so that you can start using them for all the incredible exchanges and draws and raffles and experiences that we're doing for people that actually own the book games.
2:21So please go to vfriends.com slash old books where you can start your journey on reactivating your book games journey. This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience.
2:58first exposed to your content at 15 years old in high school. Started my business at around 17 years old. I started posting three times a day on TikTok around financial literacy, self-improvement for my generation. Then that kind of shifted into me creating a second account, teaching people how I built that account and how they could too. And so I was still young. I couldn't even set up Stan. Couldn't even activate Stripe, but turned 18, made a couple hundred, or made$100 ,000 in the first couple of months by just teaching older people how to use social media. And then convinced my parents I didn't need to go to college, went all in on entrepreneurship.
3:39And now that's basically what I do is I help people who didn't really grow up with social media, boomers, business owners, but experts, grow their audience and monetize. My mission is to continue doing that and then like impact to my generation with what i've learned and share more about my interests makes sense um i have so i have so many questions but the main question i think that would be beneficial for me and a lot of people in this call was would be if you were rebuilding vanyard today uh as a solo creator with no team how would you do how would you go about i mean you maybe you can go macro maybe you go micro however you want to answer this question but how would you go about structuring the business and the offers within Stan, you know, like, how would you go about selling them?
4:23How would you go about doing it through Stan? And, yeah, just operating, you know, the content. I would build the stone brand on Stan, like you are more all in, and I would start taking my profits and reinvesting them into two key employees to be the operators of the agency side, if that's what you were looking to do. and then I would pick AI and live shopping and contemporary modern social media, creative and media as the three pillars that I would sell services against on the stone media side. But I would literally do what I did. Gary Vee was being built while VaynerMedia was being built. Got it?
5:09And so I would use Stan to maximize my financial impact on the stone front. and then I would take those profits like I did as a 35 year old and reinvest them into employees to get the agency up. Okay. Got it? Any particular, how would you go about figuring out who to hire first, those two main? Guessing. Okay. And I know it's a funny answer. What I would probably, I'm going for effect a little bit to make you feel less pressure. on getting it right. I would hire people that have already done agency life for smaller agencies, not the biggest ones, or maybe Vayner for that matter. You know, sometimes you get lucky and hire epic people.
5:58I once hired Chris D here at Stan to work at Vayner and we were right about him. Other times, I'm sure Chris, while he was at Vayner, worked with some dopey people. They didn't work out. Like, you know, it's life, right? You're trying to, you gotta kiss frogs to find princes in hiring. but I'd probably hire people definitely with agency experience that you could afford and then it depends on how good Stone is, right? Gary was good enough to both build up Gary V and build a huge agency. Not everyone's good enough. Plenty of people are good enough. If nothing else, you'll learn but if you're asking me the question you're asking me which is how do I build an agency while being Stone F?
6:40I think it's making as much money on the stone F side through Stan. This is why I'm obsessed with Stan. Stan can make people money. And then taking those dollars and being able to reinvest into the agency while you build that up.
6:59Hiring is people who've done it before. The first person you want to hire is an account person because you don't want to be dragged in to taking care of the client as much as possible. you need that really strong account person first. Because you know the strategy and the creative that people need to do. You need the babysitter, the hand holder, the accountable one. So account person first for Stone F's outside in the world. Makes sense. All right, good. Good luck, bro. Awesome, thank you so much. You got it, bro.
7:36Awesome, all right. Okay, do you want to bring up Tim next? Also, I just want to check with the chat. We want to make this a group call and let everybody's screen be shown. Yeah, everybody get on screen. That feels good. I agree. That feels good. Let's go. And on screen. Especially when you look like a model like Tim R. Everybody on.
8:00Well, thank you. That's just the picture though. Can you hear me? Yes, Tim. Okay, well Gary, thank you very much for this opportunity, of course. So I'm a filmmaker from the Netherlands. I'm 35 years old. I've had a creative video agency for seven years together with a friend. But I quit that about three years ago. It was pretty successful, but just with the two of us and one employee. So that's not like big time successful, but just enough to to have a little bit of savings and to get a little bit of money when he bought me out of the company. Understood. So I quit with it in search of, in pursuit of more creativity and more, I don't know the English word for it at the moment, but I just wanted to do more what I wanted and not work for clients all the time.
8:51Makes sense. I pursued, I wanted to do this long time dream of me to pursue YouTube. So I did. I started in January. As of now, I've built 60 ,000 subscribers. And I started with a stand store about four months ago. Launched my first product. And since then, I've sold 500 products. It's going very well. I'm sorry, that shopped on me a little bit. So far, you've sold 500, what? 12K a month since then. So I'm really, really stoked about that. I'm just wondering what should be my next steps because the product works but I'm all the time I'm thinking about new tools sorry can you still hear me yes sir yes oh I think there's
9:44okay anyway sorry so I've got a lot of ideas all the time like new ideas should I start a high ticket offer or mid ticket offer should i double double down on making more content or should i be hiring help or should i spread myself on multiple platforms because right now i'm only doing youtube and obviously same time so is he chopping for everyone else Still there. Is that on my side? I think Gary. Are we on? Is it my side? I think it's on your side, Gary. No worries. Give me one second.
10:34Give me one second, everyone. I can hear you all. I think you're good now, Gary. Okay. The answer is yes to everything, Tim. like the answer is yes meaning what you were just describing every but like the answer is there is no right answer everything you just described are all viable things one can do in your situation what i think you need what you need to focus on is not being scared of making a decision and running with it and not being scared to change your mind four months later if every when I look at all these beautiful young faces on this screen if everybody just heard me and really understood me it will completely change their careers Tim there's been three years that I've wasted on some stuff yeah so I'm gonna say it again because I want all of you to hear me everything Tim just said all of you are thinking too right all of it can be the right answer all of it might be the third best thing you could have done out of your five options.
11:44It does not matter. You must pick things, you must do things, and you must adjust to things when they become real. No one on earth has ever existed that knew exactly what the right next step was. There's too much nuance. There's too much individuality around this. There's too much macro new things going on. Go with, I will give you something. I can see this room is picking up what I'm putting down so I'm proud of all of you. It makes sense you've all been successful. So let's keep going. Listen to me. This is very important what I'm about to say. Pick the thing that sounds the most interesting.
12:22Like the one that you want to do. Because then you will work harder. If you did what I told you to do but you don't want to do it, it's going to be hard. But if Tim wants to triple down on YouTube because he fucking loves YouTube because he's a filmmaker and he doesn't want to do TikTok. TikTok could have been the right answer for more growth in the short term. But deep down, long term, YouTube's probably gonna work. Do you understand what I'm saying, everyone? If you want to be a businesswoman instead of a content creator, be more of a business. Like, what has made me unique-ish? I don't think I'm unique, but I think all of you know I've had longer staying power than a lot of people.
13:02I'm constantly evolving. I haven't disappeared. I don't fuck things up too often you know is because I really go with what I want to do and I'm okay and you also actually this is really good you all also know there's moments when I'm red hot and Gary V feels like proper and there's times like where's he been like I'm not as hot like even the last two years I've been so head down building V friends and VaynerMedia the Gary V of it all is not as hot as it was three years ago but now I'm going to start streaming live on Twitch and kick and doing podcasts and doing more of this stuff. And next year will feel like, fuck, Gary V's everywhere.
13:38I just ebb and flow with what I want to do. And you guys need to do that too. Got it?
13:52Cool.
13:59Interesting. I'm sorry about the Wi-Fi. Let me see what's going on. This is so unusual. Classic. Give me one second. Give me one second. I'll be right back. Gary, if you could just have Vayner turn off their Wi-Fi on their phones and computers or whatever real quick, that would be helpful. It's not that. I think I know what happened. Let's see. This could be it. Sorry about that. You're up next, by the way. All good. Let's keep it going. Okay, you want to bring up Dan? I'm here. Hey, Gary. Nice to meet you. Pleasure. Good to be here. I appreciate you doing this. Happy to do it. So for my question, I've gone through the ringer with digital products.
14:43I'm looking to get into software, built a software over the past two years with an incredible team. We decided to pivot and we're going to be launching that in January-ish. um i feel pretty clear on what i should do regarding promotion social media etc i feel like i'm good at fucking up and figuring things out but the thing that i'm not clear on a bit down the road let's say a year from now is where to start with enterprise deals when, or at least like getting started in that domain when I don't. I got it. Okay. So you've got a SaaS product that you anticipate growing into enterprise. Yes. Two things.
15:35One, start making LinkedIn content the way you do for other social channels today. Today. Because what's gonna happen is you start making that content. You could be very vulnerable, Dan. You could be like, hey, I'm gonna be in the enterprise space, so I'm here now. I've been crushing it over there now. I'm excited to get to know a lot of you because I'm a good listener and I want to figure out what matters to all of you. You'll be stunned what kind of results that kind of content over six months will get for you. Two, it's similar to what I told Stone. You will hire an enterprise salesperson from HubSpot or from Buddy Media or from Square or Shopify.
16:14You will hire. Friends, the biggest mistake a lot of you make is you take the money you make as an influencer and you buy dumb shit instead of reinvesting it in your career.
16:27I love all of you so much right now because I know that I saw you. Thank you. Listen, I know you hear my war stories through my content. I wish you were my best friend and watched me from 22 to 34. I had nothing. Nothing. Not a handbag, not a cool pair of sneakers, nothing. All of you are caught up in the materialistic world. You're all fucking Madonna out here. You know like trying to be a material girl way too much. Every dream will come true if you stop spending your money on things that don't matter. Now a nice vacation with your family that shit matters. You know what I mean? Like there's things to spend on but all of you You could get much further along if you just stayed disciplined on reinvesting your money into your dream.
17:18Instead of, most of you need more people on your team. But again, it's hard to give up that cash, because for a lot of us, we didn't come from that cash. So when you got it, you wanna either save it or buy dumb shit to get those feelings out that you had, what you didn't have. But it is slowing you down from building your dream. so that's how Dan you're gonna hire a salesperson who knows the space and you're gonna learn from him or her and you're gonna also learn what you don't want from him or her almost everybody I hired at VaynerMedia that same way I learned things I wanted and I learned things that I didn't want to do that they were bringing from the old world and I had a pretty strong opinion on how to do it more modern and you find your way and by the way I want you all to hear this sometimes they were right right you know I was me feeling myself and I'm like I'm gonna do it this way and then three years later I'm like fuck I should have done it the old school way it was more right and you just go through the trials and tribulations of fucking building something and you can't be scared to hire wrong everyone I know a lot of you are scared to hire wrong hiring is guessing firing is knowing it's like hooking up when you hook up you don't know somebody ends up being the person the love of your life and like that's who you're gonna marry and a lot of people are just a bunch of fucking fuck boys that you fucking tell stories about when you're older.
18:40That's hiring. Nice, thank you. Monty, you're up. Yeah, by the way, great call out by Gannon. I actually fully agree with that. Great call out, Gannon. Gannon said, best decision I made was hiring from my audience. I agree with that. Every time I hire people that don't fuck with Gary Vee or know Gary Vee, not as good.
19:04Gary what's up man what's good I'm really good Monty great to see you likewise appreciate you and the team doing this man um so yeah so I've been in the gala don't want to spend too much time on me but I've been you know a content creator for some years I've been blessed to you know work with brands get paid and coach people and stuff like that but I'm in a place right now and I think it's really just because of like everything that's going on in the world and a lot of division that I see happening. I feel like the world needs happiness. They need positive reinforcement. They need joy and things like that.
19:35And I'm actually, as a creator, in a space where I don't really feel fully aligned with what I was doing before and I kind of feel like God is calling me to do something bigger. Good for you. And I have this idea and I'd love to get your feedback on it in the little bit of time that we have. Can I give you the preview? What's that? Can I give you the preview? Sure, yeah. Just by the way you delivered your sentences, I know the answer is 100. You could literally tell me you're gonna sell bacon in Detroit, and the answer's gonna be yes, just by the way you communicated your sentences. Wow. And I will tell you, Monty, the reason I interrupted you and I apologize is because I know we're gonna run out of time and I got a lot of you here.
20:18My friends, your intuition, your intuition has the answers, not your brain. A lot of you are talking yourself out of your destiny.
20:31I'm so happy for you that you feel a calling to something. Go ahead, finish. Yeah, no, I mean, I kind of got the answer there, but just, I guess, for more context for everybody, because I know everybody's like, what the hell is he talking about, though? I have this idea of, quote-unquote, monetizing happiness, or monetizing kindness, and incentivizing people to set a daily goal to go out and do some random act of kindness. I couldn't really figure out how I could monetize it, but I actually spoke to Stone last night or the other day, and we were talking about the idea of creating a community, right?
21:03And maybe having some type of daily checklist of random acts of kindness and kind of make a movement out of it. So I kind of wanted to get - I'm sorry to interrupt you. Stan knows this. My favorite product that Stan has is the paid for groups. Because it can be so inexpensive and there's so much scale, right? But if any of you beautiful people made a video and said listen, I'm creating a closed group, the comments are all fucked up, Reddit's all fucked up, like my little area is two bucks a month and I know if you're paying, you already care a little more and I'm gonna be in there every day. And I still can't get over that product.
21:44I know the digital product's good,$50,$100 courses. My number one thing I think all of you should do is sell your time just to learn. you know 30 minute meetings like you can get your numbers way up over time and I think you'll learn also and I think you'll feel good you don't you could you have no idea how good I feel right now during this call with all of you knowing I'm saying some stuff that might matter for some of you but the community product four bucks a month seven bucks a month because remember if someone's paying nine bucks a month like they care more so that community product's a killer on Stan a killer on Stan for all of you.
22:24Including creating little side communities for other things you're into. Let's say you're into building out a happiness thing but you're also really into golf. You could stand up your own little golf thing on the side. It's very fascinating if you get smart with the Stan product. This is why I'm here. Thanks for that insight Gary, appreciate you guys. Got you bro, let's keep it going. Amazing, Raj you're next. What's up Gary, can you guys hear me? We can, Raj. So nice to meet you, Gary. I'm 22 now, just graduated college. Just a short story. I started because of you through eBay. I started selling shoes on eBay at 17.
23:05Did it for five years, and then I rolled that money into a real estate project. So me and my friend from Virginia Tech are developing micro resorts in Virginia, and we've been documenting the journey on Instagram. Smart. Just like how our builds are going, and we've gotten to over half a million followers. So it started like a million followers. I've seen it, brother. I've seen it. And John from Stan is like, you guys are doing it. Like genuinely, like just so you know, your answer overall and then I'll get into your actual question is to quadruple down on what you're doing. Like quadruple down.
23:41And what I mean by that is like more documenting, more going hard, more like it's just you're on it, actually on it, and you need to go harder. 100%. Thank you so much for that. And that's the plan. It's crazy how Instagram can bring investors for us to wear about a close on 48 years. Of course. And try to build the biggest resort in America. Good for you. Our tagline now is building the biggest Airbnb in Virginia, but I think we can build the biggest resort in America. You got nothing but time, bro. You're 22. Good for you. Thank you. So through documenting, I met my other friend at this call, Yanni, who got to a million followers documenting his bowling alley.
24:17Yes, I saw that too. So we've just been purely documenting our business. Look, I'm sorry to interrupt, but some of you might have saw this. I still think the most profound thing I ever said in this office, just randomly in an interview with a kid was document over create. Right. Like I just think documentation is just fucking bananas because it's authentic as fuck. Yeah, and we've just done it purely authentically and I want to hand it off to Yanni because we have a question related. Okay, go ahead. Yanni, go ahead. Gotcha. Hey, Gary. Thanks for your time. This is really cool. So, yeah, me and Raj have a very similar story in terms of documenting our business.
24:56We've, like, fully been authentic in doing that and haven't taken, like, really a single dollar in doing it. And I think that's why we've both seen, like, the crazy growth we have. I grew a million followers and 60 days of posting about my polling alley build. And so, like, what's crazy is, like, for this challenge, we want to win the challenge. but we've never asked for money. I think you double down on authenticity. The piece of content that you bring out is what do you guys think is actual value or should we not do it at all? Just build it with them. Break the fourth wall. Be like, yo, like literally the video is you guys struggling with this and like just saying like, but we want to and we're not against it and we think we have something but we'd rather do this with y 'all what the fuck would you want for what?
25:52Break the fourth wall. So literally just like in my cabin videos I ask should we do brown or black siding? Like the same thing what should we charge for? Yeah and just even like make it just really authentic be together and just be like listen we're like really want to do this we really believe in this a lot of you that are following us want this for you we want to win this but we're like a little caught because we've been holding our breath and like you don't want to monetize and we don't want you guys to feel that from us but like you know like one thing I want you to all hear as you guys know I tend not to monetize sometimes for three four years and then it's VFriends or then it's a book or something the reason I'm always comfortable selling something even though I prefer not to I prefer not to is because I believe in what I'm selling Like I genuinely believe that this comic book from VeeFriends in 20 years, everyone's, like all of you are gonna be like, why didn't we buy Gary Vee's VeeFriends things?
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26:52We already knew he was fucking gas. The fuck did we fade him for? Like because I really believe it. Like when I sell wine on WineText, I know it's like literally in 31 minutes we're sending out a WineText. It's a$200 wine for$49. I'm proud of that. Like you're allowed to sell something you believe in. where you guys get fucked up is you sell something you don't believe in you sell it because you want to make as much money as possible got it? and they will smell it and they will feel it okay that makes sense cool yeah it's just people throw around authenticity all day and 99 % of people are not authentic who say it when you actually live that life you win why do you think I fucking pound on your beautiful young skulls so much on the concept of patience.
27:46Right? Like all of you are tired of me saying you're 39 and you're young but like the reality is it's true and once you believe it to be true you become unstoppable. I was 34 years old working in my dad's liquor store. Rajan, you're 22. Yeah. We're not even close. It's disrespectful to you to compare you to where I was at 22. I made$41 ,000 when I was 22 working 100 hours a week in a liquor store. We're not the same. You're way ahead. Yeah, I'm not even a year into documenting the bill, which is, I'm so blessed. Like, it's crazy the amount of growth we've gotten. Keep going. Keep going. Yeah, just keep documenting it.
28:26Yep, and keep being authentic with them. All right, Sophia. Sophie, excuse me. My dyslexia's kicking in. Hey, no, all good. Lovely to meet you. Pleasure. I'm glad to see everyone else on the call. it's a weird moment for me because a couple of you are like youtubers that i've followed and i heard about stand through you and i basically long story short went on this huge health journey was really struggling with information and had to quit my job because i was so sick and i said i was gonna like find the answer and if i found the answer i would share with people so similar story documented on my socials and found the answers blew up on socials and was also training to be a women's health practitioner so as my series of me getting rid of my inflammation was going viral, I then made a really simple$80 guide, set it up, and it blew up, and we made half a million dollars since being on STEM, which is crazy.
29:21It's really not crazy, and it's what I desperately need. Again, a lot of you have followed me for a long time. I do my own stuff, my wine stuff, my VFriends. For me to do this with a company is unprecedented. It's because I don't think it's crazy what you're going through. I think it's the preview. if people listen and put in the work to understand Stan? This is the kind of next stage in my journey, which is why I'm glad that we get to ask these questions, is that the thing that made me healthy again was something very specific, and it was almost like a medical protocol, and then you adapt your life afterwards.
29:57So it was called the AIP, and I'm now doing anti-inflammatory living, which because of all my book sales on Stan, Penguin then commissioned me to do this book. So I have the guide, I'm launching the book, and I want to launch on Stan a course, which is a courseified version of the book to really give people more help that like visual learning and I can support them more. Now, my problem comes from, I found it really, really easy to make this kind of sharing my journey. Here's my guide. It's one message, one product, super easy to sell. Now that the ecosystem is becoming a little bit more complicated, I'm now kind of in this push pull of like, okay, so this week, if I only want to do one sales post on my page because I want to keep it authentic?
30:38Do I do the guide, the book, the course? And then I feel like it gets a bit muddled. Time, time, time. So this is why I'm obsessed with time. Like if you thought about it in a six month window, you wouldn't be as crippled. Yeah. Right? Like if you didn't think about it for this week and you thought about it for this year, a funny thing happens. Everything that you want to push becomes easy to push. And the only thing I struggle with though is how would you, would you focus on one at a time so that the messaging isn't complicated or? The messaging's not complicated. People aren't that focused on you.
31:19Humility. Yeah, maybe I'm just over. Yeah, humility, humility. You know, none of us are that serious, even the ones that are getting more successful, bigger. You throw Beyonce and Mr. Beast and Kaysenet and Barack Obama and Donald Trump all together and nobody's that serious. what I mean by that is don't overthink it go with what you want to go with focus on pushing what you most feel in your tummy right now that you want to push are you most upset about the book are you most worried about the guide and just roll with it three weeks of the book then one with the guide then back to the book then two with the guide then one of the court like play you've got time you've got time okay I promise you it's time I've got one more question if that's okay I don't think they're letting it happen but go ahead But you can DM me.
32:07I'll get to it. Okay. Thank you very much, everyone. Thank you. Nice, Sophie. Mary, go ahead. Hi, Gary. Nice to meet you. Mary, huge fan. Thanks, Mary. I feel like I've kind of gone the opposite way with my business and the way that it kind of came up. I have an MBA in marketing. So for me, I'm kind of like, okay, I kind of understand how everything works. Well, the academia of it, right? Which is less real than what's actually happening. I think it actually on paper is a completely different story but so I feel like I've grown my business pretty much with like one hand behind my back I only just quit my full-time job back in June of this year and I started a mentorship program so I started a community which then kind of grew into a mentorship program so I've been selling high-ticket mentorship to people within my community and I feel like I've had a wall um I'm spending a lot of time coaching people one-on-one and my days are like it's it's me i am the business exhausting you have to you have to you have to raise you have to raise your this is why stan exists you have to go ahead sorry sorry so i basically i started at 2100 for the first round just to kind of see how many people would get in i got five next round it was 3000 i got four the next round it was 3000 again i got six the next round it was eight at 35 and now it's 12 at 38 so I'm stuck in a thing where like I don't know how to scale this thing and I I know that I can break it up in the group coaching and then the one-on-one and raise the prices and I think that my limiting belief is that I don't know who's going to want to pay for it there's so much competition out there why are why are people paying for it now well my belief is that they pay for me they they I see I see I see I see you're talking about the group or the$5 a month community?
33:55No. So my community right now is on school and that's$60 a month. So I pretty much use that as a warming ground for my leads in order to convert them into high ticket mentorship. Yep. So for the high ticket mentorship, I've now run, I'm on my fifth wave. I got it. Getting ready to launch the sixth wave. So I want to be able to spend less time next year because it's going to launch next year working. I get it. I get it. you're misplaying it you need to go to 10 ,000 and at four I guess I worry that because I'm not coaching coaches or anything I'm coaching other creators right so I teach creators how to create content and so for them it's kind of like can I play this game with you?
34:38so break it down a little more because it's going to help everyone so I'm willing to stick on this did I hear that right? 5 ,800 was the last one? so my last one was 3 ,800 3 ,800 What did I get if I paid you$3 ,800? $3 ,800 for what? So you get an eight-week mentorship program with me where I work one-on-one with you. For how long? It's a two-hour kickoff call, and then every week you get a one-hour call with me. Great. Let's just talk. Cool. I get it. I get it. I get it. Let's just play with it. So$3 ,800, two hours, one hour for what ends up being nine hours, right? Cool. So play this game with me.
35:18let's say you go to 8 ,000 on this next wave for the same amount of time just play with me which would allow you to take half as many if you wanted to free up half the time okay if no one buys it it's not like you're out of business it means you reprice the seventh wave the end I want to be very simple with you I guess like my thing is So if that's repricing the seventh wave, what about the sixth wave? What do I do if no one buys the sixth wave? Do I just not do anything? What do you mean not do anything? You do the thing that got you there in the first place. You start bringing more value to the community that's in bulk.
35:58You make more content. Also, you just take a couple weeks. You don't have to be on the same schedule. You just take a couple weeks and you reprice it. And for everybody who's like, wait, you wanted eight and now it's six because no one wanted to do it. You're like, yep, that's exactly what happened. So would you also require maybe splitting it up I was told by another coach to split it up into group coaching and then the one-on-one obviously you're able to price the one-on-one higher. Fragmenting one-on-one to groups of 10 to then having a community pay 60 bucks, 90 bucks, whatever a month of course that makes quote-unquote sense.
36:34You could also do a pre-sale and request and say this time I'm being more selective because I'm doing less so fill out the pre-sale to see how much interest you have at 8 ,000. I have a wait list so I could easily do that I would email that wait list and tell them what you're doing say that you do not have time so you're gonna do way less people here's gonna be the price and I need a little more detail of what you'd like to accomplish so if you're interested do the pre-sale show commitment to the pre-sale and write out three paragraphs on what you want to accomplish so I can select the perfect people to help okay I kind of love that right now I'm not even doing calls they just they pay me because they trust me So I like that.
37:15I get it. Thank you. You got it. Okay. Jenna, you're up. Hi, Gary. My name is Jenna. My background's in real estate. My business took off on social media and real estate agents started asking me how I was selling houses using Instagram. Makes sense. And so I started teaching them and it organically transitioned into me being an online business coach for the last two or three years. I've had a lot of success on Stan's store. and yes, I help people like Mariscale. So I was really passionate about hearing that conversation. But in addition to that, I think my biggest thing right now is you talk a lot about attention being the greatest currency.
37:54And I really appreciated your book, Day Trading Attention. I think my question for me and probably others in the group too is especially being a business coach, we've seen the space get crowded and I'm wondering in the next like year or two, I mean, obviously I want to be doing this for a long time, but what is something that I could double down on to continue to stand out and keep winning attention from my audience? Bringing more free value at scale to create the leverage for monetizable events because the competition's gonna get much harder. It's not gonna be just humans. Like I'm gonna create AI humans that I will own that will give good business advice that look like all of you and will be competing with you.
38:36I will have 800 business coaches that are AI people competing with you. like you have to keep going like it is what it is it's just the jungle out here but the number one way to win this game is be the one that brings the most value. Okay. Right? Look what I'm doing. Look what the stand challenge cost. Yeah. Makes sense. That. Thank you. Just keep doing it Jenna. More and more and more. Free stuff. Free, free, free, free. One on one. How many of you are taking a full day with your favorite cocktail, whether that's water or fucking bourbon, and just replying to 500 DMs one day, just because. The answer?
39:20None of you. Right? You know what I mean? We gotta go deeper, get our hands dirty. Absolutely. Thank you.
39:29Okay, Jalen, you're up.
39:34All right. You guys can see me? Yes, sir. Okay, awesome. Hey, Gary. First of all, Just thank you guys for giving me this opportunity to hop on a call. I really resonate with you, Gary, because you are just so real and raw. And that's how I teach my students. I'm extremely raw and extremely real. Like if you get it done or you don't. And I like that you're like that. I really love that you're like that. Thank you. So for me, just a little quick, quick, quick background. So I started off at my grandmother's house. I was literally creating content with a tripod and a phone. And literally all I did was just create fashion content.
40:05I was fired from my job and pretty much I was like, okay, well, how am I going to make this money? Literally during the pandemic. So I would just started creating content with a tripod and a phone. And literally it just turned into a whole platform. People would just started following me from that. And then I started working with big brands. So like Wendy's, Taco Bell, McDonald's, like they all just hit me up and started working with like me as a person. And then after that, I would say I got into marketing by fluke. Like people were just like, okay, well, how do you get into brand deals? How do you do that?
40:34and I started teaching people how to get into brand deals, how to get into that motion, and then that turned into helping people actually make on social media, which is great. So I'm in five years in business, and this is the first year that I've done one million in revenue just for products and social media on Stan Store. Congrats. So that has been really, really amazing to see the whole shift in my business, just with teaching people and just being a coach and thinking about that. It's huge. So my, so you can hear me? Yes, I said that's huge. Congratulations. Thank you so much. Thank you. So my question is, okay, so when you first scaled to that first million dollar revenue in your brand, like what did you do next?
41:10Like how did you scale that like after that? What did that look like? I never really did that. What I did was I took all the attention I had to build a business. So I'm a businessman who happened to do content later, right? So just to give you all context, VaynerMedia, the company I run, which I think a lot of people don't remember that I actually have a career that I'm not a this company will do 347 million dollars in revenue this year so I decided to lean into who I am which is I'm a businessman so I didn't you know and I think all of you have to do the same thing which is like what do you do with your attention and what do you deploy it against is it services is it coaching for you being having a love for fashion do you make a product right can you build can you build a 10 million dollar eyeglass or hat wear brand for other people it's a restaurant it may be a school like we have to like so i didn't i didn't the next move for all of you is either tripling down on what you're doing so go make three million doing the same shit or knowing yourself well enough of like what should i make what should i what's the next thing i should take this attention and send it to all they're keeping me on track keep it going thank you thank you yeah you're up hi good morning everybody can you hear me right very well all right thank you so much for doing this and honestly i'm just gonna give you a quick background of what i do i'm an immigrant girl i moved here like five years ago i'm 22 and i immediately jumped into doing content creation because I saw the opportunity.
42:53And honestly, I kind of jumped into monetizing by accident. Brands just started reaching out to me, and I was like, okay, this is something that I could make money from. Right now I have a community where I teach women how to monetize in different ways. It's a school community. It's a low-ticket community. Everybody's paying like$67 a month. But my big question is, and I'm doing it, the question is for me and the girls inside of my community, the space has shifted it all off. The question is, what would you say right now is the simplest framework that someone can follow in order to monetize attention on social media?
43:32Stand store. How would you say? Literally making content that sends, literally it's why I'm here. Literally having a tech stack that allows you to sell what you're most comfortable with, whether that's one-on-one coaching, informational product, or group coaching, or my, and I know John's gonna make a face now, I'm obsessed with the communities here and it sounds like some of you are already doing it with school, which is great, but I think the reality is that those are the angles and then it's just about what you're teaching. The problem, this is why I wrote Day Trading Attention, the game changes all the time.
44:07For example, I think your community, a lot of them should be doing whatnot and TikTok shop selling. I think a lot of people are better at taking their time selling on social live selling than trying to become an influencer. I believe that. I believe there's a lot of people that will make a lot more money and have a lot more joy selling clothes and fragrances and shoes and product on live social shopping versus trying to amass a million followers on social. So it all just becomes what advice you're giving. But I think that the stand tool is probably a very good thing to educate your community on.
44:47I really believe that. I'm doing the same thing. I teach them how to do different things, like TikTok Shop, UGC, brand deals. Like I teach them a bunch of different ways to monetize, but my question was like, mainly when it comes to content, how do you convert in the simplest way possible? How would you explain converting attention into sales? Consistent sales? Having your profile URL and copy right, so that people that stumble on you go into your funnel, and making occasional right hook content where you're asking people to go check out what you're selling. Period. That's the framework. Period.
45:24Amazing. Okay, let's keep it moving.
45:30Kamara, you are next. Kamara. You there? Yep. Yes, I am. Hey, Gary. Thank you for having me. Hey, everyone. My name is Kamaria. I am an online business coach and I just made a really big pivot here recently that I was not expecting to make. So this call came at the perfect time. So in the past three months, I have really shifted my content to teaching creators and entrepreneurs how to create custom apps and digital experiences using no-code AI software. And they're loving it. They're eating it up. And I even took it a step further and got a little sassy and started talking about how this has not been something that most women have been privy to.
46:09And so I'm like, men have been dominating the space. It's like, ladies, let's go. Let's catch up, stay ahead of the curve. It's been going amazing. Here's a question I have for you, though. You are a pro at making complex things very easy, digestible, simple. I am in a bind right now with my content with trying to figure out how can I master the art of simplicity and accessibility with something like this that has not been... It's a great question. Honestly, the answer to that question is I got there out of a lot of effort. You gotta practice. You just gotta keep doing it. I'm telling you, first of all, your macro thesis is right.
46:51Vibe coding, AI coding is gonna be a massive space for a lot of people in this room. There are people in this room who are going to build an app in that way that is gonna change their life. And to your point, the people you're teaching are gonna be able to make tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands and then it's gonna get competitive. it's all the same shit but for you from 14 to 30 for 16 years of my life I was trying to educate people on complex things about wine using common sense language so by the time I was starting to break down business stuff and other opportunities I had a lot of practice you're early in your journey there's no magic pill I can give you to make you better at breaking shit down you just need to keep trying the fact that you know that that's what you're trying to achieve is huge so you just keep doing different tactics and every piece of content every day until you find your flow.
47:41This is really trial and error. Trying different things, trying different adjectives, different words, different styles, singing it, dancing it, talking it, calm, high energy, very simple words, harder words. You just play and you will get there. Honestly, it's really testing and learning. That's so helpful. One of the things that has worked and I know I'm at 20 seconds is going live. So I go live and I literally show them. Obsessed. Obsessed. Until I get good at explaining it in 60 seconds, let me show you for an hour and that converts with the real. More, more, more. Live is huge. More. More of that.
48:16And you'll see what works through that. All right, Millie. Okay. Hi, can you hear me okay? We can. Perfect. I have one yes or no question that I don't need context to so I could ask a secondary one. Do you review every piece of content before it goes live? No. Okay. When taking a look at what your day-to-day looks like now versus when you had a newborn, how would you advise somebody to go about going hard and scaling a business to your level of success while balancing parenthood? By not overanalyzing one or two years. You'll get crippled by that. like you know this is not the time for you to you know spend 24 hours a day on a business right I didn't every chapter of my life early when I had kids even what I'm pouring into my relationship with Mona now and my new wife like I do not judge myself in six month and 12 month windows.
49:26You know, by realizing this moment's not going away, Millie.
49:33Okay. And to give a parent advice on like what they do with their newborn is crazy, right? Because it's so personal. There's so many variables. Everyone here views things different. I can speak from, you know, men and women have different dynamics and then men within men and women within women are different at so many levels. For me, I'll just use me, I grew up with a father that I barely spent any time with because he worked every minute of my life until I was 14 when I started working there and I have the greatest relationship with my father so I'm not petrified of missing a moment because I don't think that's what leads to a great relationship.
50:09So I just think you go all in on what you feel and if you go hard for three weeks on the baby and nothing on the business. And then like Monday morning, you're like, fuck, the business is fucked. I've got to go all in. But you missed something from the baby. None of it is catastrophic. And I think it's giving yourself grace.
50:26Okay, cool. And that goes for everybody with new hires, new relationships, parents that become sick. Like life is multidimensional. There's no right answer on this one. The right answer is not to beat yourself up on the decisions you made. Thank you. You're welcome. I appreciate your time. Of course. Okay, Chloe, you're up. Oh, you're on mute, Chloe. You're on mute. You look like you sound great, though. Yeah, it was good. Hi, Gary. Hi, Chloe. Hi, Gary. Can you hear me? Yes. I'm obsessed with you and Stan. So this is so exciting. I'm obsessed with you, Gary, because you just, like, light the fire.
51:05You're so inspirational. You get me so amped up. And I freaking love Stan because it gives people a chance to monetize no matter how big or small your clothing is. I agree. So I'm a fashion creator. And I'm actually an elementary school teacher turned stay home mom. And then I stumbled upon content creation. And my whole goal is to inspire moms to get dressed up for the day and feel fabulous looking. Love. Amazing, living your best life. And when I had like 30 ,000 followers, I wanted to monetize. but the affiliate links weren't enough with my following. And then the brands weren't reaching out to me yet.
51:43That's why we're all here. And then I found Stan. I'm like, oh my gosh, I can start making money. So I made style guides, wardrobe, capsule wardrobe style guides for busy moms every season. Now, I am really happy with what I have. People want more of me. And so I've gotten a lot from this call. Community is huge. I didn't even know that existed. Yep. people want one-on-one calls with me but I'm scared. Why? I'm scared to charge. Let me make you feel so good because I was scared to charge. How about that everyone? Okay. Do you know why I got over it? When I did my first speech and they paid me$5 ,000 I was scared.
52:25And I said to myself before I flew down to Florida for the speech that if I don't do a good job because I knew I wasn't going to prep I knew I wasn't going to make slides I knew what I was going to do and I literally didn't know if I was gonna be the greatest, which is what ended up happening, or if I was gonna suck. And what I promised myself was, and I meant it, and this is not a story for the sake of the story. I'm telling you I meant it. I promised myself that if it did not go well, according to me, that I was gonna give the money back. Chloe, I have good news for you. You can put up on stand$500 for a 30 minute consultation, whatever you come up with.
53:01You can do it. And if you feel like the woman on the other side didn't get value or isn't happy you literally can look her in the face and go you know what that didn't feel good enough for me I'm refunding you it was really nice to meet you Sarah do you know how powerful that is I'm dead it is it's the ultimate dead move it's the great by the way everything has worked in my life because I've always been willing to give the money back amen see I'm inspired let's go I think I think I think that will help a lot of you It's a big deal and I've done it and I've done it in very, very significant ways because it makes me feel good and that's what good people do when they're trying to go on a journey of monetization and that's that.
53:48That's the game. Thank you for your time. You're welcome. Thank you, Chloe. Eileen, you're up. Cool. Hey, everyone, and thanks so much again, Gary, for taking the time. Really inspired by everything that you do. definitely feel like some imposter syndrome being here but i guess like for some context um i kind of consider myself a bit of an accidental content creator where i worked in tech and startups um and broadly my dream was just to be able to work on my ideas full time and i feel like i've gotten there now just through creating a lot of cinematic lifestyle content so i make a lot of series-based stuff about the lessons that i've learned in my 20s yep um so i've been doing it full time for about a year now and i still feel like most of my eggs are in like the brand deal and like content creation bucket um just this year i started launching my first product on stand uh and it did really well but i think i know that my end goal is more on the entrepreneurship side but i don't fully know what i want to build next whether that's a journal a course or that makes sense those things like realistically i want to do all those things you you by the way by the way yeah go ahead go ahead my question to you is as a generalist um how do you keep a cohesive narrative across everything that you try and experiment with.
55:01By realizing no one gives a shit about me and how cohesive I am. Okay. You understand? You're overthinking for the audience. Yeah, I do that a lot. And you will get to everything, just pick one and do it. I'm telling you. This is why, even though everyone's sick and tired of me talking about it, it is patience that is the secret balance. Notice what I talk about, patience and humility. Not obvious from an alpha white dude who's rich, but I'm telling you it's fucking patience and humility. Lean into those two things. You will get to everything and no one gives a fuck about your continuity. Okay, that's good.
55:43I think I'm like a super impatient person. Everybody has that vulnerability because most people are trying to impress people for no reason. Once you stop worrying about everybody else, you will get very patient. the follow-up question i guess to that is like can we we got three minutes you gotta get three people of course sarah sarah you're up oh my god i'm so glad to be here gary i see so much of myself in you because i'm a russian immigrant jew in brooklyn love it um and yeah i think like i mean there's so many things i could ask but i think like maybe the question i have is like the thing I am actually really good at is attention like I feel like I get so much attention virality but the thing I'm trying to grow out of is the thing I'm getting attention for is something I'm so like not in alignment with anymore it's like videos about how to get your ex to come back or like stupid shit like that and it makes sales and it makes so much money but I'm so over it well good news you could go through now that I know we're the same you can do what I do my entire career was wine for the first seven years that everybody knew me literally I was the internet's wine guy so many of you are so young that you may not even know that how many people in the chat did not know that the first seven years that I was basically the wine guy did not know and then who did know just leave a chat like so Sarah you could do through the same transformation I did like nobody would have ever believed that Jonathan T at this point this many years later would have not known that part of me because for seven years I was the wine guy and Dwayne The Rock Johnson was a wrestler and Jake Paul was a YouTuber.
57:28Like the second you start making new content is the second you become the next thing of you. Do you have any tips on that pivot? Yes, just start making shit that you want to make and don't be scared of the short-term financial ramifications. I love that. Thank you so much, Gary. Abigail. Hi, Gary. Thank you so much for this call. I'm really really enjoying it and learning so much already from everybody else's questions. Yes, right. I feel very privileged to be here as well. I think a lot of people have also said they feel a bit like, oh wow, this is really happening. But yeah, I'm very happy to be here.
58:04My question is, the bread and butter of my business is a membership. So it's reoccurring revenue. It's low ticket, it's about$7 a month. And it's grown at a very, very big scale recently. and I think my question is how do I kind of keep that personal connection that I had when it was smaller now that it's growing a lot? Effort. Just effort. Just making hard choices. Like I said it earlier, taking a full day and DMing when you want to do other things instead of spending a day making content that might go viral that might get a bunch more people for$4, today's a day you just go one-on-one with as many people in there as possible.
58:44It's just effort. it's just effort you know like if you want to you will I guess I have a second question as well as I still have go ahead go ahead but do you think it's still possible to grow a cult following with the amount of people sort of doing what we do right now and how would you go about that because I know none of you none of you existed seven years ago when I got this question asked 7 ,000 times a day yes i believe you can okay gannon did time for one more yes okay good see if we can hit a buzzer buzzer beater um so yeah for the past for some context uh for the past like two years i've been running just kind of teaching people how to like run instagram content and build an audience on instagram and then i had a conversation with a friend where i was like hey over the next six months i want to build out this like community of people and show them how to build on instagram he's like ultimately you're a fucking idiot uh which i respect the guy because he told me that and he was like just go all in on what you're really good at which is like the automation and many chat stuff so i did um so yeah that was three months ago uh and now i have an agency that will probably do 300k for the end of the year and i am not an operator uh and i've realize that.
1:00:07So I'm really good at content. I've generated just like talking about chat and complex topics. I got it, I got it. You probably got a lot, Ganon, from what I said about bringing the client partnership operating person. You're just missing one either partner or key employee. That's all. Yeah, I was gonna ask, is it an operator or is it a partner? It's a, you know, really just depends on your long-term ambition. They both can work. Obviously, once you go into a partnership, there is some hair on that in case, God forbid, you don't get along. so if you can get away with it, I would say hiring someone that you bonus very well and then if she or he earns it over time and you wanna do a partnership right now, you have the leverage but I'm so proud of you.
1:00:46This quickly understanding you're the strategist and the creative, not the operator. That's what fucks me up. I'm both and in fact, I should probably not operate because I have so much magic on the other side but I like it too much. For most of you, you just took the words out of my mouth. for almost everyone on this call, they fucking hate it because they're more creative and strategic. Everyone's allowed to be a version of themselves, what they are. The fact that you're self-aware enough to make the move, you're fucking golden. Go find that person, LinkedIn, TikTok. Like literally, you guys are smart.
1:01:20Make the video that is, I'm looking for my first key hire. This is who I'm looking for. Make it entertaining and informational and you'll find it. Like you said, Gannon, you literally were the one who said, I found employees in my community. Do it again. All right. I gotta go. Love you all. Appreciate it. See ya. Thanks Gary. Big announcement. As you probably heard at this point because I had John from Stan on the show. I'm an investor advisor to an incredible startup called Stan. Stan.store. I'm sending you right now to GaryVee.com GaryVee.com slash Stan. Go check this out. We've done a GaryVee Stan Store Challenge which actually has a weekly call with me.
1:02:01This is built for everyone who's been affected honestly by my overall content the tech stack all these features and the minimal costs per month that stand store has built is really the tool that was needed for this world that i envisioned when i wrote crush it when i wrote crushing it and this overall thing i'm thinking a lot about lately which is the individual empire right this this creator entrepreneur slash entrepreneur creator economy that I think is gonna eat up the oxygen, very honestly, the thing that so many of you want in your life and the reason so many of you are not there yet is you've got the strategy for me, you've got the ambition within yourself, but you don't have the tools for you to fully maximize it and I believe you can find that at Stan's store, stan.store, but specifically, I want you to sign up for it through my challenge because I wanna get access with you and plus there's a bunch of cool things, so if you wanna go see those cool things, go to garyvee.com slash stan, S-T-A-N.
From the publisher
In this episode, I sit down with some of the top creators using Stan (garyvee.com/stan) to talk about building real businesses in the new creator economy. We go deep on how to pick the path that actually excites you, why reinvesting profits beats buying dumb sh*t, and how to hire when you’re just starting out. I also share thoughts on building both a personal brand and a company at the same time, why “document, don’t create” still wins in 2025, and how to stop overthinking and just do the thing that feels right.