The #1 Mistake Killing Your Social Media Growth | Tea with GaryVee Ep. 68

0:00This is the GaryVee Audio Experience. Following culture is dying. Everybody's just getting their in the feed. I don't follow anyone when I see good content. I just like it so I see their content again. This is my new TikTok account, Gary V replies. I have 384 followers. Look how many views this post got, 32 ,000. Now I'm going to my regular account, 15 million followers. Less views on my latest post, 15 million less followers. It's all about the content now. I'm actually predicting that followers is not even gonna be shown publicly soon. People are stuck in high school. Welcome to another episode of Tea with Gary Vee.

0:36This is the show where you ask me questions and I answer, plus we give away stuff. I'm gonna give away Common Sense Count a little bit. What's your name, my friend, where are you from? Hey Gary, Adrel from Miami. We spoke maybe like two weeks ago, I don't know if you remember, about cohorts and so forth. I remember, guys, can we get some new fucking people on this show? This guy's on a second time, we've only done like three shows, but I like it, brother. Good hustle. What's some biggest mistakes you see some of these fitness clothing brands when trying to grow on social media that you see that they make on that regard?

1:04They make content that's selfish and they don't make content that brings value to people. So for example, putting out content to show people how to stretch their hip flexor is like a piece of content that brings people value. And that's something they could be doing in the gym. Right. And so everything's like buy my shirt and check out how cool my fucking pants are and fucking sell, sell, sell. Look what I'm doing right now. I want every single person that's watching right now to start collecting VFriends because I think I'm building the next Pokemon. But look what I'm doing in real life. Instead of just doing sell, sell, sell, I'm here trying to provide value and then everyone's like, what's VFriends?

1:43Let's actually do a giveaway. Let's give away this shrewd shark. I'm going to sign this. Now I'm using the platform. Watch this. I'm showing you in real time. Now I've signed this. It brings it more value. Someone can sell this for 100 bucks on eBay. Now I'm going to put up a giveaway. that's gonna go up, right? How many people here are on the show for the first time? They're all gonna click, 100 people just clicked. If they weren't following the account, entering the giveaway made them follow the account. Now I'm gonna point to the notes. There's a little yellow tabby, right? That I'm pointing to.

2:15That's the notes field. If you click that and you click the little VF 15 in there, that goes, there's a code, it goes in your shopping cart. And then later when I sell these for, instead of 25 for 15 bucks, people are gonna get free. and they get into my ecosystem. But what I'm really doing is providing value. It's almost like a global jab, jab, jab, right hook. Yeah, and it further reemphasizes what then, same ones you said with the cohorts last time we spoke, because that's exactly what I've been trying to focus. I don't want to focus so much on the selling, like, oh, here's a new shirt. But like, hey, look, guys, you know, like certain motivational.

2:45I even started a podcast too to just bring other guests to pride, other value and so forth. So awesome. Everybody, 212-931-5731. I just sent a text out and people are asking questions through there. I see all of you, but I need you to see me by going to GaryVee.com slash whatnot. Download the app. It's a global app, not just US only. I need to teach you how to do this social shopping content thing, but I need you on this platform to teach you. Mackenzie, fire away. We got Kelly. I'm 48. How do I get over the fear that AI is going to replace my job as a realtor? I'm going to college, getting my master's in psychology, but it worries me AI is going to replace that as well and then I'll have debt to go along with it.

3:25Don't be scared of AI, like especially if you're a realtor, like robots are not showing up at houses next year. If you're a designer who has no ideas, if you were a graphic designer who has no ideas, you should be worried about AI. But if you're a real estate agent, it's like, come on, like fucking Megan Fox is not showing up at a listing and selling the house like that movie showed anytime soon. We're a little ways away from that. So let's calm it the fuck down. Let's stop always using fear. What this 48 year old young woman needs to do is stop using fear as her reaction to new things. When I see new shit, I go on the offense.

4:03I mean, by the way, AI could disrupt advertising way quicker than it's gonna disrupt real estate home sales. So I think for everyone here, it's about fear or optimism. And I think too many people default into fear on everything they hear. So I think the answer to her is to quit it. Stop being scared. Albert. Hey, good morning. Good morning. Where are you from? I'm from California. Amazing. What part, brother? From the Bay Area, from San Jose, California. It's a pleasure to meet you. What's your question, my friend? So my question is, I've had a food business for about nine years. We've never been on social media.

4:43I haven't really created any content. And we're trying to get into catering now. But we don't know how to really go about it. marketing-wise, what should we do, what should we not do? Couple things. Number one, you need to look at the companies that are located in a 20-mile radius of where you live. Find their HR people or their CEOs on LinkedIn and send them messages. So if there's an office three minutes from you and you see it's called Logitech, literally find them on LinkedIn and send them a message and say you're a new catering company in the area and would they like to talk? You're gonna just like the post, just literally just like ironically the post that I'm trying to get everyone to look at that I just posted on Instagram, literally you're gonna get 80, oh we had a giveaway winner?

5:31Maple Bear with the big win. Let's clap it up for Maple Bear everyone. Maple Bear with a nice win. Maple Bear. You wanna do that, you wanna make content on Instagram. You also wanna search your town on Instagram. So I'm gonna show you, I'm tired of people not doing stuff. What town are you in? In San Jose. Yep, San Jose. So literally I'm searching San Jose on Instagram. I hit enter. I literally hit reels up here from San Jose. And now I'm looking at content from San Jose, right? And I'm seeing people. I can click that content, get a sense of who that person is. and I see this guy and he does, ironically, he does food and literally he has 178 ,000 followers and I could message him and say, I'm gonna say keep going because I'm gonna give him some positivity but you could have said, I'm a caterer in the area or I've got a vegetable stand.

6:33Do you wanna do something together? Okay. Notice so far I have not talked to you about content. I've talked to you about messaging strategy. LinkedIn and Instagram searching your town after that you need to make content that is just about what you sell and what you make I don't think you need my advice to what to make by the way, garyv.com slash attention everybody tag it up right now garyv.com slash attention my brother, I made a deck how many pages is it? 44? 47? I made a 47 page deck for free. And it will show you how to do content in detail. And then I have a quick question. Sorry to interrupt.

7:20So we went out and we got a professional photographer, did a video, really nice shoot of our product. And my question is, on my social media platform, should I delete all of my shitty old content and put the new content or should I leave it? What's the best thing to do? Doesn't fucking matter. Both work. It doesn't matter? Both work. Okay. If you feel some sort of way and insecure about the shitty content, because you think it's shitty, delete it. I don't think it fucking matters. So good news, it doesn't matter. Okay, perfect. All right, brother. McKenzie, what do you got? I'm 30 and I currently like my job.

8:00Get paid good money, 200K a year. Nice number. Get to travel all around. Wow. Great work-life balance. but I have an opportunity to start my own delivery business. It would be much riskier, take upfront money, won't get to travel nearly as much, but it would allow me to develop people, which I love to do. How should I make this decision? I hate that it's on text because I have a follow-up question, which is does he feel that he stepped into this lucky job or does he feel he's talented enough and has a skill or relationships or whatever it is that he could get the job again? I always think most people should take risks.

8:38I think that we've confused people that risk is bad. A lot of us have parents that tell us old adages, like measure twice, cut once, or bird in the hand is better, right? All these messages, Mark Lorre, the great entrepreneur, and I were talking about this last night, that's why I'm bringing it up. Like everything is like scares you to take risk. I think he should take risk if it's easy for him to go back to such a cush sitch, and it might not be, but if you're watching Ron, that's where I would go with it. This is not for you on social. You've got to get to whatnot. Free Gritty hat signed. Just to give you context, look at the Gritty ghost hat.

9:15130 bucks sold. Sold on January 17th. 130 bucks. Gritty ghost hat is free right now. Just hit the giveaway button. There's 547 of you. Only 243 of you have entered it. This is being given away right now. Let's go to the next question. Everybody in social, you can't win until you go to GaryVee.com slash whatnot. What's up, my man? How are you? What's up, GaryVee? What's up, man? What's your name? Where are you from? Javon. Javon Banks. I'm from St. Louis. I'm in Dallas right now. Javon, pleasure. It's a pleasure, man. When I tell you you're my uncle, I always call you my uncle. Been watching you since I was 17.

9:51Grew up straight out of high school. You were heavy on TikTok, so I just went head on into it. Now my mom watched you and everything like that. Thank you, brother. So thank you. I made a nice following on selling cars now. Good for you. And I just wanted to ask, if you were a car salesman in 2025, how would you utilize live shopping? And I do comedy skits, but I also like to convert those things into sales, my audience into car sales, which I've been doing. But what are some things that you would do? So how often have you been on TikTok Live? I literally have never been on it. I only post content.

10:26I only post because that's what works. I want you to hang up right now. Okay. And go on TikTok Live and start chopping up. Do you know the craziest part about TikTok Live is they're just gonna put you in the For You page and random people are gonna discover you. Okay. Open your TikTok app, go to the bottom, hit the plus sign and go fucking live. And put the title first time, put it up and just start fucking talking and walking around just like you are now. I want you to do it for an hour just to get your fucking feet wet. Okay. Everything is about action. Yeah, for sure. Everybody wants to think, strategize.

11:02You know what I mean? How do I? Yeah, for sure. There is no right, Jay. There's no right. You understand? For sure. Everybody thinks there's some sort of right way. There's no right. For sure. No, thank you. And what you've got is so visual. Yeah. Like all those cars and you've got a good demeanor on you. Just go and talk. For sure, thank you. Answer people's questions. people are gonna ask you how to become a car salesman, where are you from, just talk. What you're over worried about is if you spend an hour on it and there's no audience there that can afford those cars, you think you're wasting your time.

11:37It's the same shit that you did building your organic social. People told you that you were wasting your time on that, nobody was gonna buy cars, but you listened to Gary Vee and it fucking worked. For sure, it worked big time. Well guess what? Live is gonna work even more for you, get on it right now. Oh, there's only nine seconds left on the giveaway. How did 200 of you not hit this? Are you fucking kidding me? All right, here we go. Free$150 hat for no reason is going to Baker Breaks. Let's cap it up. Cap it up. Let's go Zach Owens. I see you in the corner. Nice little win for Baker. That's free fucking money.

12:15All right, for the rest of you, here's some more free money. Click this little notes thing. It will open and then click the little VF 15. that little white button, if you did it, just say, just did it. If you're only for the new people, because it's only gonna work for first time buyers, only for the new people, if you just did that, you click this little notes thing, it opened, and you clicked the white little thing. Now, these are VFriends trading cards, they're graded. These are graded by CGC, these are a collectible. These things sell for different prices, obviously, depending on what the card is, but as you can see, these things sell.

12:54These cards sell. Who was asking? Madison. Madison. How would you get your mindset to work 40 hours a week? I'm struggling so bad. Madison, if you're struggling on 40 hours, there's a lot of things that could be going on. One, you might just hate your job. McKenzie, do you know this? That I struggled to even put one hour of concentration to school past fifth grade? You saw the report card. Zero hours of concentration. So I've lived that life. By the way, there's only 15 left of these. Newbies are killing it. Anderson Keith just said, got one, busted my cherry. Congrats to that. What's that, sold out?

13:29And they're sold out. There's a lot there. Either you hate your job, either you're in a very, very tough place right now. It might be about health, it might be about your relationship, but I believe that optimism is the drug that unleashes everything. I think no matter how shitty your life is or you perceive your life to be, A, I think there's a lot of people who have a shittier life. And I know that doesn't work for everyone, it works for me. Like putting my life in perspective to the rest of the world always makes me feel better. But two, you've gotta start surrounding yourselves with positive people.

14:03I think it's positive people and positive content. Right now, like at home, I'm putting on the TV and on phone and on laptop, I'm just consuming a lot of information. Fucking television is a disaster. Has anybody watched Fox News or CNN? They're just scaring the fuck out of you. Social isn't. Everybody blames social, right? Everyone's like social's so fucked up. Here's my feed. Luca, Luca, Grammy news. Let me keep going here, let's see. Sports, comedy, V friends, next post. Music, next post. Basketball, next post. Trading cards, next post. influencer in my screen ad. Notice it was an ad. Next, New York fucking Jets.

14:53The algorithm is you. Team clip that. Once and for all, I'm putting this to bed. The algorithm isn't making you depressed. The algorithm isn't sending you to racism. The algorithm isn't red or blue pilling you. You motherfuckers, you're not accountable. You motherfuckers are not accountable. You're not fucking accountable. I just showed you my algo. The algo is you. We will eliminate all excuses in the culture. Enough. Vinnie Pat's I am fired up. You are the algorithm. Enough. I just showed you. It's you. Right, Mace? It's fucking you. It's you. Mark Zuckerberg doesn't give a fuck to turn you into this, that, or the other thing.

15:44China is not tricking you. Do you know how audacious you motherfuckers are? You think China gives a fuck about you, Pat, in Kansas? You think China? You think the fucking Chinese government's sitting around being like, all right, let's get Pat and his daughter Sally to fucking hate America. You fucking idiots. Enough. You're the fucking algorithm. I'm gonna actually change 3000 people's lives right now looking at all these different chats. I'm gonna do something right now. If you don't like your algorithm, even if you do like your algorithm, go to TikTok and Instagram right now, go to search and search Gary Vee, enter and just click a lot of likes to all the Gary Vee content.

16:28Then type in New York Jets and like four to five Jets posts. then type in wine and type four to five wine posts. And then put in trading cards and click four or five. Tell me what your algorithm looks like tomorrow. You're gonna be living that Gary Vee life. You wanna turn into me? That's how you do it. Frankie Fashion says, my algo's all hot, slightly big-boobed girls. There you go. The algo is you. The algo is you. 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.

17:12And I'm gonna get you back to your pod right now because you don't need me talking about that. But I realize I'm lagging on getting the support of my podcast listeners. So I hope you want 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. Hi. Hey, Gary. I appreciate your passion so much. So thank you for taking me on. Of course, what's your name, where are you from? Wait, name, I'm from. Oh, hi, I'm Dina and I live in Dubai. Amazing, hi, Dina. My question for you is, is I am very goal oriented, very consistent, I've done very well in my career.

17:46I am really struggling with my Instagram platform and growing my audience, even though I've been doing it 15 years consistently. And I'm just wondering, do you recommend maybe spending on boosting content? I know that it then stunts your organic. No. It doesn't stunt your organic, but you're boosting for insecurity a piece of content that nobody liked. Right? Think about it. You posted it organically. Don't forget, let me show you something that will blow your mind. This is my new TikTok account, Gary V replies. I'm gonna start replying to people randomly. I have 384 followers. Look how many views this post got.

18:2432 ,000, right? Now, watch this. Now I'm going to my regular account. 15 million followers, right? Look at my latest posts there. Less, less views on my latest post. 15 million less followers. It's all about the content now. So what I would recommend you do is not boost content that's already been proven by the algorithm that nobody's that interested in. I would challenge you to start mixing up your content and going on a complete detox and completely going left field. Make a cooking video. be more vulnerable than you've ever been. Change up your fucking content. Try like, like sit down and make 10 totally different pieces of content that you have not in the past.

19:10That's like different style, different topics, shit you've never talked about. Maybe with other random people, maybe, I mean, one of my most viral posts was me talking about me liking blueberries. I think you need to mix up your content if you're stuck. People when they're stuck need a creative reboost of trying different shit, not boosting content that's not doing well. I feel like my content is doing well. I'm just not growing my audience. My audience is losing as many followers as I am gaining. Good news. Followers mean nothing. Okay. Followers mean nothing. I'm actually predicting that followers is not even gonna be shown publicly soon.

19:51It means nothing. I'm not growing either. No one's following anymore. Everything's coming up in your feed. I don't follow anyone when I see good content. I just like it so I see their content again. I stopped growing too. Okay. I'll try not to focus on that then. Thank you so much, Gary. By the way, I love you for what you just did. People are stuck in high school. Don't worry about how many friends you have. You're focusing on the wrong metric. I'm so glad to hear that because I feel like I'm doing well. I'm getting campaigns. I'm getting paid. I'm getting the recognition, but I'm just so frustrated that I've been at the same number for years and I just don't get that.

20:31I've been at the same number for years too. Following culture is dying. Everybody's just getting their shit in the feed. And like my whole young crew is like shaking their head right now, like they all know, they're like, occasionally you'll follow, but like, it's not like it used to be where if you saw anything you liked, you followed. Did we get beers on TikTok said, I wish my daddy gave me a liquor store. I want to take a moment to address this. Did we get beers? It sounds like you don't actually know my story, my friend. In fact, my daddy did not give me a liquor store. In fact, as we sit here today, Sasha Vaynerchuk still owns Wine Library.

21:08In fact, I worked for my daddy from 14 to 34 and took his business single-handedly from 3.8 million to 65 million and he never paid me any kind of salary whatsoever, paid me between$40 ,000 and$80 ,000 a year over those years. And I left with so little that I had to start VaynerMedia in a conference room in another company. In fact, I put my daddy on my back, not he put me on his back. And I built it for him. I think it's fun that people like to have excuses. Oh, the Yeti, I don't think he's a hater. I want him to win. And I want to explain. Oh, I wasn't 14 making 40K, Daniel. I was making two bucks an hour when I was 14.

21:53I was making 40K when I was 26 and had already taken the business from 3.8 million to 25 million. Imagine going on social and trying to make up stories to make yourself feel better because you're not fucking winning. I love all you guys. All right, go ahead, Mona. My question is, do you have advice on how to go against tech giants? Because you know Oracle and these companies are now getting a ton of funding because of the change in administration. Mona, I wouldn't be scared of that. You can find niches within the big tech companies. Yes, there's gonna be a lot, but you'll be able to adopt all those.

22:24And there's, you know, think of them as layer one, you'll just be layer two. Does that make sense? You're not gonna out tech them. You're just gonna build on top of their tech and they're gonna be able to take a tax. Make sense? Makes sense. And do you have any advice on pre-seed funding? Like, you know, talking to investors. I've never done that before. Just tell them your truth. You're such a dynamic girl. I know you well. You're gonna get one yes out of 25 and then it will start. The end. literally the video I posted this morning on Instagram. You gotta just get meetings and ask. That's it.

22:55If you want money, you're asking for money. You gotta grind. All right, let's go to the next question. Mackenzie. Maddie asks, why do you think companies aren't hiring people in their 40s? Because I think you're deciding to look at negatives. People are hiring, we hired nine people in the last three weeks in their 40s. Unlimited companies are hiring people in their 40s. I believe that Maddie, again, is a, what I'm seeing in the universe is people are choosing negativity to feel better. McKenzie, do you believe that companies are not hiring people in their 40s? No. Okay. People are hiring in their 40s, but if you decide people are not hiring in their 40s, you're gonna sit in your house and be like, I'm getting fucked by ageism, Gen Z and AI are taking all the jobs.

23:38Unlimited companies are hiring people in their 40s. Maybe they're not hiring you, and maybe you need to look at that. Rubo, how are you? Hey Gary, how's it going? Things are going incredibly well. Where are you from? Sweden. Sweden, beautiful. Amazing, it's a pleasure to see you. I can't believe I'm speaking to you. My God. I've been following you for so many years and I'm speaking to you now. It's crazy. It's a pleasure. My heart is pounding. Gary, oh shit. It's a pleasure, brother. What's your question? So my question is this. Only because of you, I started making content on TikTok four years ago.

24:15about perfumes and I was growing really fast became the biggest perfume influencer in Sweden in just one two years and last year I started my own brand and expecting kind of people to buy just because of me but what happened no one really bought I underestimated the hard work of building a brand and now I can't got hit by that reality check and now I'm starting to kind of figure out about what I should do from here. And I read your book, of course, fully in line with building a brand for making organic content. But I'm a little bit stuck now feeling like, what should I do? What content should we make?

24:55How many TikTok followers do you have? 77 ,000 on my private account, not on a company or on the brand account. And how often are you going live? Almost never. I think you need, what happened in your transition was, I love that you said you underestimated. I think a lot of people take the audience for granted. You know, and do you have any insight to why people didn't buy it is the question. I would tell you that I would go live if I were you for three hours a day for the next month and just talk to people. I'm looking at it right now, like Gigi Allen. I'm on TikTok as well. Obviously, everybody get over to whatnot over here, GaryVee.com slash whatnot.

25:40but Caden says facts and you could talk to Caden. You'd be like, Caden, why did you not buy the fragrance? You could just talk to them on live and ask them why they didn't buy the fragrance. Some will tell you they didn't know about it. Some will tell you that they didn't like the description of the scent. But I think you need to spend a lot more time interacting deeper with your audience because what happened was it wasn't as deep as you thought because they didn't feel like buying it just to support you and you need to build a deeper connection. And I believe the biggest way that you can build a connection is live, not content.