The Fastest Way To Make Your First $100,000 l Erika Taught Me Podcast

0:00What do you think right now is the fastest way to get to your first$100 ,000? dollars. By not liking the word to actually answer you literally the fastest way to get there is attention is the number one asset. Hi nice to meet you. What's the one thing that if you had learned it at 25 it would have accelerated your success trajectory so much more? That candor was a good thing not a bad thing and I didn't really know what the word candor meant at the time but when I look back at my career at this point it's very clear to me that that is the you know that that was the kryptonite. That things were going super well and things went well and things are well but the one place where I could have really taken it to the next level would have been when I look back at my career all of the professional relationships that could be better today and I really believe in relationships were predominantly employees occasionally partners and vendors where I wasn't capable of delivering bad news out of actually loving them and liking them and that then led to muckery resentment on my end sloppy exits and firings or partnership breakups and so over the last three, four years I think I've been able to up my candor game dramatically by reframing it as kind candor and that's really worked for me I'm still probably a five out of ten which is not really great but boy, going from a one out of ten or a two out of ten to a five or six out of ten has been a monster jump and I feel the effects and that is definitely the black and white answer to if I could do it at 25 differently.

1:36So what's the lack of candor you had at 25 and then now if someone is underperforming at your company, what kind of candor do you have with them? I'm just able to have the conversation. You know, hey Johnny, can I get 15 minutes with you? Hey listen brother, I love you, you're a good dude, you do a lot of things right, but this and this, that you're not doing well, it's so detrimental that it might lead to us not being able to work together, so can we work on it? And here's how I can help and here's how you can help. That combo just didn't happen before. You know, it would come out and like, I'd walk by Johnny and be like, hey Johnny, like, you know, get your game up brother, ha ha.

2:10Like, you know, I would do these little things and if I was close to you, I would razz you. Like, I would try to communicate through like a joke or a razz that was heavily, you know, dipped in honey and sugar so it wouldn't hurt. I was just being around the bush. And so now it's like, what does it look like? Even having the combo, just even having it. And the reason I'm five out of 10 is even when I'm having them now, I got to really like get there to like be like, oh no, no, you got to shoot it straight. Because it's in me to be around the bush in that scenario. And I'm really, really practicing on going right at it.

2:42And it's really been helpful. Do you believe in hire slowly, fire quickly? Or do you give people more shots? I'm the reverse, actually. I'm a big believer in hiring fast. I think people overthink it. It's a guessing game. Like resumes are loaded with people's. I don't think I've ever checked a reference check. It's not practical. It's not common sense. Of course you're gonna put the three people that either most believe in you or love you and or you prepped them to be like, hey, get my back. So I think you're making an intuitive guess. I think you're making a logical guess to the best of your ability based on what you know about your organization and the series of questions you asked.

3:18I'm a big fan of hiring fast, meaning I don't think you should just hire everyone, but if you feel it, you don't need to go through too many more rounds. it all depends on how much you trust your intuition and pattern recognition. I think once you have someone in your organization, you now know the truth. Hiring is guessing, firing is knowing. To me it's hire fast, fire faster and I'll explain that in a minute. That doesn't mean like be mean and fire, it means put in the work quickly if you can recognize something's not working and if it doesn't work after six months to a year like you gotta go and make that move and make sure you don't surprise the person, that's what I've had to work on.

3:54and then my big one is promote fastest which is like if you know you have a superstar don't wait while you told them you're gonna revisit their salary in two years if you know somebody's remarkable in four months and you can afford it consider showing them that you wanna be with them long term by promoting a little bit faster. How do you spot those superstars on your team? It all depends on who you are as a boss. For me I'm so in the dirt like I'm in my business so for me I don't know I just see it like if you're doing your craft you see it plus for me I came up the game in a way where I've done all the jobs that people are doing so I know how to judge it which is huge in the wine and liquor store business and the same in this marketing agency like it's just easy for me to see it because I've done it I think one there's that two if you're in an ivory tower if you've got a global organization and you can't see everybody maybe you aren't even someone who's done all the crafts you came up the CFO ranks or something else that's where you need to rely on people you trust I always tell leaders judge the judges I I think too many leaders blindly take the feedback of their direct reports without realizing sometimes their direct reports are undermining people underneath them, because they themselves don't want to lose their spot.

5:02But if you can judge the judges and have a good feel on that, you can figure out who you need to trust and those people's words should carry a lot of weight. Even in it as I am, there are 30 people in VaynerX out of 2000 whose words carry a lot of weight and have the capacity and the ability to change my mind on someone. I'll double click into it after they're like, I'm like, does Sally stink? And they can tell I'm asking if Sally, I think Sally stinks. And then if two of them are like, no, no, Sally's remarkable, I'm like, huh. And then I'll double click, I'll spend more time with Sally, I'll watch Sally's work more.

5:32It's pretty cool. Getting from one to 100 employees is very different from 100 to 1 ,000, 100 to 2 ,000. Yes. What has had to shift about you to get to that growth? Well, a couple things you have to let go. You know, I hired everybody in the first, like there wasn't a single person we hired that I didn't interview in the first 100. I don't think I've interviewed anybody in the last 500 outside of two or three or four C-suite direct reports. So you've got to rely on the good work at 100 to get you to 1 ,000, meaning too many people listening are looking to flip their business. So let's make this work for everyone.

6:05If you're flipping your business, you're playing a different game. You're trying to maximize profit. You don't care what the company looks like in 20 years. If you're going more family business or evergreen like I am, everything's about the first 100 employees. The reason I had to hire everyone is because I knew that I needed 39 of those 100 to get me to 1 ,000. Back to the prior question of who carries weight with me, right? I needed them to know my religion, meaning like what do I most believe in, you know, and all those things. And that's why we've been able to get here. It's the foundation of that first 100.

6:35The fact that we have 20, 30, 40, 50 from that first 100 or even 10, but 50 from the first 200, 50, 300, that's the game. And so, you know, I think that's the point. Can you be remarkable in your first 100? which means you're over spending your time on HR. You know, you're really building a family. I know a lot of people look to you to learn how to make money online and build these businesses. What do you think right now is the fastest way to get to your first$100 ,000? By not liking the word fast. I'm really scared of that word. I think fast is dangerous. And I think it's a big part of my content.

7:12That's why I talk about patience. That's why I talk about self-awareness. the reality is to actually answer you literally the fastest way to get there is through self-awareness understanding what you're actually good at you know you know like what are you good at you might be good at sales you might be good at operations you might be good at knowing everything about the marvel universe and that is actually your gateway to get there fastest because it's through content or flipping stuff on ebay and stuff of that nature so i think people try to chase trends real estate, crypto, cannabis, AI. They're just constantly looking at these trends because they see them as things that will get them there fast.

7:52And I actually think that those are the things that are most guaranteed to not get you there. So I think if we can get the word fastest out of everyone's mouth, especially under 30, and get the word happiest and most likely in there. So ask that question again by replacing fastest with happiest and most likely. Go ahead, let's do that. What do you think is the most likely way to get to$100 ,000? In the happiest way? It's like what is the question I'm most passionate about? You know, and then that answer becomes super unique. You know, of course there's macro things. If you like selling, understanding e-commerce and social media is gonna really help.

8:32Obviously, if you really know how to use Shopify and you really know how to make TikToks and Instagram and YouTube shorts, there's a real path to$100 ,000. selling almost anything. This is why I'm big on passions and hobbies. I believe almost every passion and hobby. I always use Dustin and his BMX passion or me and wrestling or the New York Jets or hip hop music or drawing or meditation or eating clean and healthy. Like there's so many ways to get to 100 ,000 by being a creator, by sharing in revenue with the platforms, by selling t-shirts about what you do, about selling tickets to a live event.

9:09In two years working hard, making content, and I mean really making content, multiple posts a day across all the platforms around your favorite passion, wine. I did that in 2006 when it was hard. And it can be very narrow. I mean, I really do believe in two or three years you can make$100 ,000 a year just talking about Ohio State football because your podcast and your content is a top 10 because you really knew it and loved it and you were good at it. and so I always push people towards that because it will be the happiest way. If you're in love with snow globes, making$100 ,000 a year selling snow globes versus making$130 ,000 a year being a real estate agent, the path to that in the same three-year window was extremely joyful in snow globe land and probably stressful in real estate land but your friends told you that's the way you can make$100 ,000 because real estate is a really good business, right?

10:05And so I think about this a lot. And I think the word fastest is the danger. Because I think fastest leads us to doing things we don't love. It leads us to doing things because we love the idea of making money to do the things we love. Think about that. You have somebody in that scenario who wants to be a real estate agent so she can afford a trip to the National Snow Globe conference and convention and do it bougie. She's tired driving for nine hours to it and staying at the Holiday Inn. she wants to fly first class and stay at the Four Seasons at the National Snow Globe Convention. And that is one of the reasons that she decided to be a real estate agent versus understanding what I'm saying, which is start the Snow Globe podcast, make tons of Snow Globe content, realize that there's millions of people that collect Snow Globes, start an affiliate eBay business, make t-shirts, get sponsors from the top 10 Snow Globe companies by emailing them and telling them a year in that you actually have an audience.

11:01These are things that excite me more. What do you see as the trends on social media right now? The biggest opportunities that are out there? By becoming a better practitioner. And here's what I mean by that. The days of just posting aimlessly a video or picture are getting harder to win because everyone's doing it and it's supply and demand. So now understanding the science behind the art. What's the thumbnail look like? What's your copy look like? What time do you post? How does TikTok work differently than Instagram? I'm working on a new book called Day Trading Attention and it goes very deep into this.

11:33It's a 301 to my book that really helped a lot of people in social called Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. I would call this like a PhD to that high school course and I'm excited about it and what it really opened my eyes to which was in my conscious and subconscious but as I'm going through this six month period working with Raghav who's helping me write it it's just so clear how hard it is to be great at social in 2024 and to be great you've got to really know your craft. You gotta be better. And so the trend is being better. Like really understanding should you post a reel or should you post a carousel?

12:09Posted something the other day and got immediate feedback that it was working from somebody live this Saturday. So last Friday or Thursday, I posted a post that said, hey, have you been noticing that on Instagram I'm posting a two post carousel where the first one is a meme and the second one is the video clip that you were accustomed to seeing me just post? I'm not doing that for my health. I'm doing that because I've observed that it's working. You should consider this too. Sure enough, I think the real Tarzan, that influencer, I saw him on Saturday in Utah at a conference and he came up to me, he's like, bro, you're a fucking genius, thank you.

12:43The first post I did with that tactic, I did a lot better than I've been doing last month, thank you, and that's the ultimate for me when I do content that someone else takes it and runs. So I'm doing this podcast. I'm hoping someone becomes the Snowglobe podcaster and emails me in four years. That thank you card, whether in DM, email, or in person, is like the most delicious feeling for me professionally right now. So that's why I continue to do this work. Anyway, nonetheless, I think the biggest tactic is to actually realize there's science, there's strategy, and this isn't just being pretty or funny or like just gimmicky anymore.

13:21Like you've got to get great at it. And so we call it at VaynerX SOC, strategic organic content. strategic why I want everybody right now to ask themselves why they posted the last or the next post and most of it is grounded in their subconscious that something like this used to work and I want it to work in the algorithm that's not good enough anymore and this whole philosophy is grounded in something we call pack platforms and culture so really understanding the platforms how YouTube shorts works but then also understanding culture like why are corduroyed hats in? Why did sexy red work? You know, why, why, why, why, why?

14:02Why is everyone infatuated with Taylor Swift and Kelsey? Right, it's not just two celebrities getting together, it's a little bit of like that all American kind of like, you know, football player and the cheerleader pop star. You know what I mean? Like, understanding the deeper meaning and understanding what that means to you and understanding is there anything for you to do about it? That's what I spend my time on. I had never heard of Kelsey until last week. Correct, and so the question becomes like, what is that? Like, you know, is that true love? Is that pop culture strategy? Is that, you know, for me, what that learning is for everyone is, forget about the gossip of it all because that always gets buckery and I always feel bad for, you know, people that have a relationship in the public eye because that's incredibly challenging.

14:42Whether they choose to do it or not, I still have a lot of empathy towards that. What I think is, let's take that down to somebody who's a mechanic right now listening. The fuck does Taylor Swift and Kelsey have to do with me? Here's what it has to do with you, Donnie the mechanic. What you just said, this morning I see how many people now follow Kelsey that did it a week ago. Those are people that didn't know who that was. On the flip side, for Taylor, there's a lot of football fans who now know her a little more because she had more awareness, right? Well, for Donnie the mechanic, that might mean in his local town in Detroit, he may want to go do a collaboration with a Thai restaurant where maybe they do something silly together where they cook a meal at the auto shop and in return, he gives everyone a free meal at that restaurant if they use a tune-up with him for a month.

15:31Because the bigger thing in the Kelsey Taylor Swift thing from a small business standpoint was cross-pollinating audiences that have no crossover leads to more business. I know what I just did there for three minutes is not how most people think. I also know that that's why I've had professional business marketing success. It's what I try to bring as a value prop to the audience. That excites me. That's a different level of thinking and that's what I'm trying to get the world into thinking more strategically than just throwing against the wall and see what sticks. Nothing about my career is by accident.

16:06Of course there's serendipity but I think a lot and I act on thoughts a lot and I test and try a lot. many of the things I do don't show up in a podcast like this there were many meme slash video two post carousel efforts that me and the team do all the time they don't all work but what's exciting is I don't have fear in trying and I think most people listening get caught in the same routines and have too much fear of trying new things because they're scared of micro losing and what I'm trying to do is get people in business, in entrepreneurship, and most of all in life, to stop fearing as much because too many are living their entire lives on the currency of fear.

16:53What do you think is the worst strategic decision that you've made? Obviously, you've made a lot of good ones to stay relevant for so many years. Oh, there's so many. I didn't invest in Uber twice when it was my best bud. And it was because I was a little cash strapped and I valued short-term cash over long-term opportunity. that probably cost me anywhere between 250 and 600 million dollars which is more money than I have right now so that was huge when Steven Ross bought a piece of VaynerX he offered me a piece of the Dolphins instead of money I emotionally said no because I love the Jets too much that was obnoxiously bad I switched from YouTube to something called Viddler early in my career because I liked the tagging system of Viddler that probably left me not being able to build 10 times bigger audience on YouTube.

17:41I was there in 2006 before anybody was there. And I really, really missed that moment. I was right and then I was wrong. I mean, I could literally give you another 100 examples. These are big ones. These are big. So I'm on vacation just thinking because that's what I do when I'm laying in the sun doing nothing. I can't help it. And I'm like, you know what? Fucking Netflix is going to be huge. So I never buy stock. So it was even weird for me to reach out to my financial advisor, I'm like I wanna buy stock. Because usually if I have stock, it's because I invested in the company early and called my investment team and said, I'd like to put some of my cash into Netflix stock.

18:23As we're talking through, we're kind of in the middle of details, the wifi was back and it hung up. I call back and it doesn't work. You know, beep, beep, beep, I don't have this, I'm trying to walk around for a minute or two and I can't get the service. I'm like you know what, fuck it. I walked all the way back to my seat texted my team and said we'll get to this when I get back from vacation never do it I mean the number I said I wanted to put I mean seven hefty seven figures of return I was that right and that early I've got too many and anybody I think who's fairly successful in business has too many too because it was all those decisions that got them there which means there was a lot of other decisions they either got horribly wrong or missed out on opportunity.

19:07Not to mention, the way I actually think about life is it's the meetings and opportunities that you don't even know that you missed. Last night, there was a dinner with a bunch of leaders of agencies that at the last minute, for family reasons, I canceled. That could have been the meeting that changed the course of my career. So I just listed four or five good ones. I promise you, the 10 top biggest mistakes I've ever made were things I didn't show up for or didn't say yes to that would have led to remarkable opportunity that I have no idea even happened. I think once you get to that place mentally and realize you're constantly making mistakes and you're okay with it, it actually liberates you to enjoy this process more.

19:47And I think too many people struggle with that. On the flip side, what's been your most profitable investment? I mean, Facebook and Twitter as investments were remarkable. But the biggest investments I'll ever have is the ones I put my own time and effort into. VaynerX and things of that nature. but there's been many great investments I've made in my portfolio and they all take on, to give you a little bit more value for the audience, let me tell you what I've now realized 25 years in that I look for. I have to love the idea and the person and every time I've either loved just the idea or just the person and made an investment, I've lost.

20:26So I think if you're doing early stage investing in someone's company or an internet company or even like a local baker, like I'm starting to think about investing in small businesses more. because I'm starting to notice what works. And so if I go look at a young lady or a young man who has a bakery or a tea shop or a healthy, clean food store or a t-shirt shop or a bike shop, I'm starting to think more about, could this be the next Starbucks? Could this be the next Toys R Us? When I look for that, I know now that I'm looking for, I like the idea and the person, and I've made too many mistakes with picking only one, so I have to be two for two now, and that's what I recommend to everybody who's looking.

21:04if somebody's asking you to invest and you've got a couple dollars to invest in something, even if it's like a local dentist who wants to open up another office, like believe in dentistry and believe in Ronnie or Sarah, the dentist. My sister's a dentist if you want to invest. I love it. I love that I used that analogy. How do you think about growing your money? Are you allocating certain percentages to certain things? Yeah, recently in the last five years I've gotten to a place where I have a money management team and they're pushing me. I'm still way too entrepreneurial I'm not maximizing my money I would still rather gamble and it's really not gambling I'd rather I'm just saying that because I want everybody to understand what I'm actually doing I'd rather entrepreneur than invest I'd rather lose my money going for a home run than make 7 % on my money and have it sit there and that's because I'm trying to maximize joy not money I'm going to leave more than enough money for my grandchildren let alone my children right so I'm not here trying to maximize my money I'm trying to maximize my joy I've worked really hard for a really long time and I've really done right by my dad and my brother and many others and you know at this point in my life I'd like to enjoy the process of making or losing money as much as possible and so I don't think my advice is right for everyone but I think it's right for a lot of people and I've done that my whole life by the way some of my best investments Facebook Twitter, things of that nature, I didn't have a lot of money.

22:31I wanted to make money through joy and it was fun to bet on the future that I saw and it worked out. And so I think, you know, even if you have$5 ,000 in savings, if you'd rather buy 100 shares of your favorite company's stock because you rock their clothes or use their video games or whatever it is, that's a good debate. Are you better off to enjoy it than to have a guaranteed return in a 401k? Right? Something worth debating. Just gotta know yourself and know what you're trying to maximize for. If you're trying to maximize for money creation, then you should let professional money managers handle it.

23:09On maximizing joy, how do you make sure that you're not straying away from the things that give you joy? Because I'm sure as you're scaling, it's easy when HR gets involved and you have so many employees to lose sight of the things that give you joy just because you're running a larger operation. So how do you make sure that doesn't happen? By hiring people to do the things that you don't love. So what do you absolutely love in your business that you would never hire out? Well, at the scale we're at now, you hire, but you still do it. So for example, the things I love is HR. I love my people. So even though we have a full pet team, people, experience, and talent, we wanted to rebrand it once I realized people didn't like HR.

23:48Even though we have a huge team, I still allocate a lot of time, but I get to be the cherry on top, not the sundae. You understand? It's not a requirement. It's a joy to have. I love selling. So even though Kaylin, our chief business officer, and the new business team is doing a remarkable job this year and this is the best year that that team has ever had, I still join a ton of them because I like selling our company. I like being in the big meetings where there's a crossroads in the relationship. So even though Nick and Lisa Buckley and all these head of partnerships and account are remarkable what they do, I like joining the occasional meetings that really matter.

24:27not because I don't trust them because I enjoy being a part of them. But at first, I'll give you a different example. We hired a lawyer and we hired him fast. Mark Yudkin, when we couldn't afford it because there was no joy or knowledge or understanding of anything legal on my end and I did not want to even begin to learn it. Right? We hired AJ, my brother, and my dad have always handled the finances. in essence were the CFO and we hired a CFO pretty early in our journey even though AJ liked it and so like if AJ didn't like being a CFO and handling the books we would have hired somebody to do finances day one.

25:11So those are examples of how I think about it and how I think it would help people to maximize joy. Hire for things you don't like to do and even though you hire for things you like to do spend more time on that because you're doubling up on sale. This company has a high happiness ratio for how big it is and always grows in top line revenue. It's because I'm doubling down on HR and new business. Where does the revenue come from for the business? Clients. You know, the Pepsis, the Chase Banks, the Crafts, the Fanatics, the Alaska Airlines are clients. So is the majority of the revenue direct from the clients?

25:51100 % of the revenue. 100 % of the revenue, VaynerX is client services, 100%. This was the client service engine that I built in my world. So, and that's the business. We're like, you know, an advertising holding company. There's VaynerCommerce and Iva Nosadam, which is Madison Ave spelled backwards, that's our production company. There's Vayner3, which is like our consulting innovation agency. There's the Sasha Group, named after my dad, for small businesses to do what we do at VaynerMedia, VaynerMedia. There's Gallery Media Group, which is our publishing arm, that houses 137 p.m. in PureWow.

26:25There's Tingley Lane Trading, which is a barter agency that takes physical goods from companies and converts it into media for them. So we're like a WPP, an Omnicom, a publicist. These are publicly traded companies that are marketing service businesses. That's the business we're in. Earlier you were talking about the home runs. What are the home runs that you're going after right now? In general, in the macro? VFriends. My VFriends journey, which is my intellectual property that is kind of like a mix between Pokemon and Sesame Street, both in NFT form, trading card form, animation form, collectible toys form, that is a very big project, a very big home run, that's a grand slam.

27:05If I pull that off, which I intend on, you know, you're talking about a very big deal. The Hanna-Barberas, the Disneys, the Pokemons, the Hello Kitties, the Transformers, the Power Rangers, the Harry Potters, these intellectual properties are major business. and so I'm really enjoying that especially because the Sesame Street part is the purpose. You know, there's a purpose in me wanting to make Gratitude Gorilla something kids want to put on their backpack. It's called teaching the world to love gratitude and once you have gratitude, you don't have as much jealousy and envy because you're grateful for what you have versus worried about what everybody else has and so that's the biggest home run.

27:43I think the other biggest home run or Grand Slam I'm working on is how do I make Gary Vee as big as popular as possible with the intent of reframing how to be an entrepreneur or what the success, if we can reframe success, we can reframe everything. Even notice how I jumped in on that fastest question. You know, if you can do it meaningfully, if you can do it with joy, I don't know why people would compromise being happy for money. It's literally people think money makes you happy and we know and everybody knows people that have money that are not happy and yet we give up happiness every day in the pursuit of money thinking that will buy it for us.