The Golden Era of LinkedIn and the Power of "No"

26:21And then when the price of Instagram and Facebook ads go out and your CAC is going up, you're really in deep shit. Yet we don't talk about LTV. Remember, how many years have you been at Vayner? I mean, these are real, when I got into the business, people, people, this is super funny because now I'm thinking I forgot lots of people came to give me advice and I you know I'm a nice guy so I was cordial but in my brain I'm like motherfucker my business is going to be bigger than yours in 36 months and I don't even know what I'm doing yet so your advice is cool but like everyone's like your people are going to stay for 18 to 24 months I'm like no no your people are going to stay for 18 to 24 months my people are gonna stay for five, 10, and 15 years because I actually give a fuck about them.

27:09The only way you can build a$100 million business is the reason the New York Jets are in big trouble right now is their offensive line has no cohesion because they don't ever play together at any level. Agencies are like offensive lines. They need cohesion. You know how fast you can go when everybody feels safe and knows what everybody else is good at? yet people are fearful that they're gonna lose, you know, I remember one of the things I established early on. If we lose an account, nobody gets fired because I remember knowing that I had to establish that. Shit like that. All this stuff that nobody's talking about.

27:49People are like, people are always, it's very fascinating to me. I'm an enigma. I do unusual things. I talk about my unusual things but everybody wants to focus on the other stuff because the stuff I do is hard.

28:02People. The reason why I wanted to come up here to say thank you, I found your content a couple years ago from the Monday morning rant video that you run all the time. And the$400 trillion to one kind of really got me because right when that video came out, I lost my mother to a two-year multi-battle of cancer. I'm sorry to hear that. I realized there's no reason to do shit you hate. None. So I wanted... And by the way, 25 % to 50 % of this room hates what they're doing right now. That was me. That was honestly me. and you really changed my life. So what I did was I got into, I'm like, I'm a ninja with SEO.

28:34I'm going to go like give my services away for free because there's no way for me to kind of like go into a business and be like, yeah, like I've done nothing, but I'm going to make you money. So I like reverse engineered that because of what you said and I ended up doing a lot of business for companies and raising a lot of money and people are like, how much do we owe you? I'm like, I don't know. Like I'm just here to make a brand, but I'd done a poor job of like building my own brand and that's mainly my question because now I'm ready to start scaling because my goal is to give back, form a 501c3, form a non-for-profit, start a chance for charity on behalf of my mom who grew up with literally nothing and gave everything she had.

29:09So it really inspired me. So it's a lot like your content. But now I'm ready to kind of, in order to do that since I'm working. You did build your brand. You executed. I did. So you're actually in a much better place than a lot of people who've done a good job amassing followers but actually don't do shit. I don't have a lot of followers, but the companies I do have, they'll like, they trust me, like they'll give their left kidney for me. Correct. And so you should probably take it and sell it on the black market. Take those down. I'm just kidding. So I think what you need to, listen, what is old is always new.

29:40I think testimonials are powerful. Right. I don't think they should be boring like we saw in the 90s, but like I think that, I think you have built your brand. Like every time big agency holding companies try to razz on me and play the card of like, well it's all Gary, and his relationships, I'm like, yes, GE and Pepsi and Chase and ABI are so enamored with me that they're seven and six and eight year clients of us. Woo! They're clients with us because they've gotten results. Right. Because we execute. You know, yes, maybe I've been more out and about about how I've approached it, but you've built your brand, you just haven't now manifested the equity that you're sitting with, and this is why I would tell you, for everybody here that's looking for new business, this moment on LinkedIn, many of you felt the good effects, many of you regretted for not jumping on board of the golden era of Facebook organic reach on pages.

30:40That's true. We can all agree on that. You know of it one way or the other. You either benefited from it or you kind of wish you took advantage of it when I was screaming about it and most people weren't doing it. I'm gonna give you another chance right now. It's happening right now. It's called LinkedIn. LinkedIn is Facebook 2011. Right now. You can have no followers. Nobody on earth knows you. You make a video, a picture, a written word, a deck, a something. You post it and a lot more people than you think will see it. You're welcome. Thank you, Gary. It means the world to me. LinkedIn, testimonials.

31:19By the way, find out how you communicate. One of the reasons I started making cartoons, which I think some of you have seen on LinkedIn or Instagram, is because I keep trying to find ways to show you that there's a million ways to communicate. You don't have to have gift for gab, one take improv ability to go. You might write incredibly well and your seven paragraphs on the current state of long tail SEO post on LinkedIn and get the hell out and see three inbound leads is real and it will go away because I'm yelling loud. Half will do it, some will do it, one will do it. And then it will get saturated.

32:00The attention will be matched by the amount of content. Ads will go into the ecosystem. You understand? How many times do you have to see this happen? Right? Like how many times do you need, like how do you think I dominated social? I lived it with search and with email. and then I'm like, okay, now I get it. I'm not making the same mistake. When I see it,

32:28you know people here are struggling to get leads and win RFPs and get new business and literally the answer is LinkedIn right now and now I've said it and still 74 % of you next week won't do it which is how I got into insecurity and parenting and perspective, right? Because I couldn't logically understand how this is happening right now, and I know 74 % of you are not going to do it next week. I'm like, oh, right, they're scared of judgment. Oh, right, they don't want their uncle to say they're stupid, or when some anonymous person says that they're ugly, that kills them, right? They didn't get the luxury of circumstance and parenting that I had.

33:09I work with experts. I help them become more of an authority, and I help them become, like, influencers in the space. So a lot of what we do is actually Gary Vee type stuff. And actually, confession number two, I actually spoke at Digital Marketers Headquarters teaching a content strategy that looks a little bit like yours that you talk about. That free deck I put out has made a lot of people a lot of fucking money. Yeah, yeah. No joke, you guys. How to leverage video and turn it into quote images and social media posts and all that stuff and use Square Platform so you can put it on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, everything, and just get the most leverage out of your content.

33:46My question to you is one of the problems that I do have, because the experts that I work with, they're running businesses, mostly they're CEOs, founders, or agency owners. Makes sense. The problem that I have, it's like pulling teeth, getting them to create this content, to invest in their own personal brands. That's why I invented document, don't create. Tell me more. They should film their day. Okay. So I totally get that. People are busy. Yeah, they're busy And so Or They have to start a podcast Which becomes the top of the funnel For the post-production creative across the board Smart With neither You can't Just so everybody knows Unless you're vlogging Or you do a podcast Or You decide to become a guest on People's One of my best arbs is being a guest on People's You think I want to talk to the Paris dude Of fucking episode 100?

34:41Ha ha ha ha ha But here's why it works. I get to win twice. I know and it makes me feel good that when he has me on, his guests from episode 101 on are gonna be better because he's gonna leverage that I was a guest. That makes me feel nice. Number two, when I do that interview, I'm gonna be filming it. He's gonna ask me a question that's gonna take me in a direction that maybe I wouldn't have gone otherwise. That answer becomes a piece of content that gets a million views on Instagram. Perfect. So the follow-up question is to any client who is reluctant on creating that content I'm gonna send them this video.

35:18What would you tell them if they tell me Jeff? I don't have time Well, and you don't get the benefits of the opportunity there it is it's not super complicated like that's great Don't have time to go to the gym You're fucking fat Have time you aren't Don't have time to, you know, spend a lot of hours with your children and give them wisdom and love. You might have a more challenging relationship when they're older. Don't have time. Don't get results. What I would tell them is they're making decisions and valuing something that's less valuable than this for the growth of their business. You talk about, right, giving away your best stuff for free.

36:04Yes. I think one of your recent quotes was, fuck your seven-day trial. And so you... Let me explain. No, let me explain. I think it will help. I'm not against seven-day trials. I'm against the fact that the seed of the intent of that seven-day trial was to get somebody in, give them nothing to make them pay.

36:31That's it. We are unbelievably incapable of not thinking about ourselves first. And so when somebody comes along that thinks about it the other way, she or he can disrupt. That deck that I put out that a lot of people are making money on took money out of people who sell$1 ,800 decks. That makes me happy. No doubt. Now, if that deck is valuable, Mazel Tov, but the reality is we've gotten into a place in internet marketing where that is not the case 98 % of the time and that's something that I think, you know, should be disrupted. No different than taxi cabs or bookstores If you do not bring value to the end consumer, you should be disrupted Go ahead.

37:22Yeah, so you talked a lot recently in some of your videos about like whoever can hold their breath the longest is gonna win and so So can you, I guess, kind of elaborate on that a little bit? Whoever feeds their customer and their business instead of extracting it so that they can buy dumb shit to impress people they don't even like tends to build better wealth and businesses. Done. Thanks. Yeah, so I quit my job like three years ago to like jump into entrepreneurship full time. Fell flat on my face like two times and then LinkedIn released video, right? And since then, like I was one of the first creators and my company's gone, I've literally gone from like, okay, negative$900 in my bank account to my company's about to pass seven figures.

38:04So one, I wanted to say thank you. Two, this is a weird question. You said this, like someone's gonna ask something fucking weird, this is it. Can I have a hug? I tried to get you earlier, man. Hell yeah, let's go. Awesome.

38:20I'm proud of you, bro. I'm proud of you. Let's go. Hi, Gary, this is Rafael from Mexico. I just saw that you launched your YouTube on Spanish. What opportunities was seeing to start developing content in Spanish to U.S. companies? Well, there's a lot of people that, you know, speak and understand Spanish. Yeah, but what makes you take the next step? What made me do that? Yeah. The fact that I'm building enough of a business that I can afford more employees so that I can get people onto the next initiative.

39:03Okay. I want to remind everybody who uses the excuse that Gary has a team that I did it all by myself for nine years without one employee. And for all the OG, how many people here were active on Twitter in 2007, 8, 9, 10, 11, raise them? You all know who was putting out the most replies and content. so what did I see? I always wanted to do it. I just systematically went to each initiative that's my top priority and eventually had enough scale on my team to get into the transcription at scale that I needed. So you think it's a good opportunity to start producing content, you as a U.S. company, to Hispanic market?

39:47Yes, I do. Perfect. I think anybody who's confused by the growth of Latin flavor in our, it's funny, when I hear people talk about having a division, and it's really fun to have you Maribel, because we had a lot of these conversations, Maribel has incredible passion for her heritage and her community like many do. I would always say to her, I'm like, we're not building a division. This is America.

40:16So I think it's a huge opportunity, and when you start digging and looking at the metrics, quant and qual, I also think Spanglish is an incredible place where some of the content is half Spanish, half English. Like, they're incredible opportunities. I'm so fucking pissed I grew up, I was born in Russia. If I could have been born in a Spanish-speaking country, I'd be fucking dominating.

40:41Totalmente de acuerdo. See, I don't know what the fuck you said. First of all, I love your content. I started watching you originally when I got into wine and kosher wine by Wine Library with Daniel Rogoff, a lot of those wine reviews. I remember. Very good. On behalf of my community, I'm Orthodox. Everybody wants to know when we're going to get a kosher sign on Empathy Wines. That's a great, great question. The truth is I don't know the answer to that, but I get inspired by stuff like this. And if you email me at Gary at VaynerMedia, I will put it in a folder in my Empathy thing. And when I go and have those meetings, that's what I look at.

41:17and I will ask the question of how we're thinking about it and things of that nature because Nate and Trout are really driving a lot of that boat. But the answer is we're talking a lot about empathy right now from sparkling seltzer to cans to kosher to a lot of different conversations. So it's a great time to ask the question. Okay, awesome. Another thing I noticed on LinkedIn and with all your media, you're very into being yourself, that's who I am, et cetera. I know it's the past six months, maybe a little bit longer on LinkedIn, the curse words are beeped out. How come? I believe that I want to community manage when people are pushing back.

41:56And the LinkedIn community over a long period of time really was getting quite loud at scale about the cursing. And the reality is I believe equally in being yourself and always never being bigger than the audience itself. so the beeping out is because I genuinely believed that it was becoming detrimental to the message and I didn't have the time like I did back in the day to every time it was out to go in and community manage and reply to 44 people and apologize that that's throwing them off but telling them why it was important to me. So I feel like I'm still being myself. It's beeped, you know what I'm fucking saying.

42:42You know, so that's where I'm at. I have an ad agency and I manage clients for like a couple thousand dollars a month. Lots of times if a client comes to me and managing their social media, they're paying me two, three thousand dollars a month. Like, by the way, could you design this brochure for us? And by nature, I'm just a giving person. I like to say, yeah, yeah, no problem. We'll do that for you for free, not charge anything extra. But on the other hand, I understand that people don't pay for it. They don't value it. So where do you draw the line? Whatever your stomach is at the moment. There's no right answer to this question.

43:13The amount of times I've done things for free that ended up being extremely right is enormous. And the amount of times I've done things for free that ended up being a path of being overly taken advantage of that ultimately had negative repercussions, including burnt out staff and many other things, has been often as well. I tend to be like, yeah, I tend to not, you know, people are like, Gary, you always talk about, you know, giving and all this stuff, but I'm being taken advantage of. I'm like, you're choosing to be taken advantage of. Everybody's a big girl and boy in here. You're more than welcome to say no.

43:48We're about to go through a big transformation at VaynerMedia. We're creating a very uncomfortable minimum fee for yearly retainer or we're not gonna talk to you. That's just where we're at now. That's what I think is the right thing. So I think it's a personal question and I think you should test both. I always tell people, ask for a little bit more money on the next scope just as a testing mechanism because a lot of you have subjectively decided on your ceiling. Or one person said no and you're like, fuck, the market doesn't want it. No, no, one person doesn't want it. Awesome, thank you. First of all, I want to say thank you, man.

44:28Just for being here, for everything that you share. I moved from Cuba two years ago and I learned English listening to your podcast, man. Like... I learned how to say motherfucker, man. I get it. That's amazing. Thank you so much for that honor. How can I help you? So my question, we are using an influencer to promote our brand. And people that interact with our ads and with our posts, they just interact with the influencer. We split tasks. we do like videos, photos, you know, but people continue to interact with the, with influencer. What we could do to fire the influencer. Yeah. Thank you so much, man.

45:22Let me, let me, you, you never want somebody else to have leverage more than you have the leverage. If you feel like it's gotten out of hand, you need to fire the influencer, get a different an influencer. I think a lot of people should create influencers, either in themselves. One big thing that I love, if you have any animation skills in yourself or within your organization, way more people need to get into the Mickey Mouse business. Your influencer can be a cartoon, and you get to own the cartoon. The cartoon doesn't get drunk. The cartoon doesn't have sexual harassment issues. The cartoon doesn't become a prima donna and want more money.

46:00The cartoon is something you own. Little V that I put out, and there's only one of them, that wasn't for kicks and giggles. I don't do anything for kicks and giggles. Like, animation is something to consider. Or, understand it's 2019 and it's not about production value, putting your head on a stick figure, literally drawing a stick figure and putting your head on it, and then having post-production animation skills and doing voiceovers so that you could do tons of things visually, but you don't have to actually be doing them, there's another good free idea. I'm loaded with ideas. This is about fucking execution.

46:38My main question right now is we are trying to convince brands that TikTok is real. Yep. And a good placement. So how are you actually convincing the brands that you're working with that that's where money should be spent? By telling them and not spending a second on it when they say no.

47:03The reason I went for the dramatic pause is because I love you for asking this question because in the macro, it is the biggest vulnerability in the room. The biggest vulnerability in this room is trying to convince the unconvincible. I've done new business meetings that are scheduled for an hour in 16 minutes because as soon as I sensed it was over, I wanted the 45 minutes back. Many, thank you, many of you and our industry will have an 18th meeting with that person. I don't commence. I put shit on the record and then some people benefit and others figure it out later. Thank you. You're welcome.

47:53I run a company that helps digital agencies run more profitably without wasting time on spreadsheets. So we're about to launch B2B SaaS, you know, about 3K ARR price point. If you're in my shoes, what's the strategy that you're doubling down on to start off with? Giving it away for free to the most influential people and then leveraging the fact that they use it successfully. Okay. Well, I guess you're getting a free copy of our software. That's good. Maribel? And LinkedIn, bro. Yeah. LinkedIn. And maybe you make, I like when you ladder up a show, maybe a podcast around efficiency. Got it. Maybe a podcast called Hidden Costs.

48:29Like if I was IDing, I would say, bro, start a podcast called Hidden Costs. The amount of money that people make decisions in the funniest ways. They make decisions without realizing there's hidden costs. You know why I love culture? Because rehiring somebody has a lot of hidden costs. People are like, I'm not gonna give you a raise for$3 ,000 and then the person leaves. And they spend$6 ,000 to replace somebody that has no context. That's fucking dumb. Got it? Yeah. So if you start a show called Hidden Costs and you have different people on from HR, from procurement to different stuff, but the underlining is the innuendo with even the title is that your product, because they're going to know who you are.

49:14You don't even need to mention the company, is that your company is eliminating and creates efficiencies and eliminates hidden costs. That's how I think about the world. Level up your thesis from a programming standpoint that brings even more value, because all of us will listen if it's 53 different topics of hitting costs, but if it's just SaaS, it won't. Do you understand? The show right now is called the Agency Profit Podcast, so it's a little bit more literal, but anyway. No, next because good. Keep fucking going. Thanks, man. Now post, produce, and fucking quadruple down on LinkedIn. Imagine that you have nothing except your mindset, and you are starting a marketing agency today.

49:51What direction are you going to go? what strategy gonna apply? So one of the things that you have to do when somebody pays you is you have to provide value against that payment. So if you're starting from scratch, you need to sell the thing that you think you're best at, no matter what it is. So for me, what I'm best at is observing human behavior and understanding new ways to get people to know something. that's why social worked for me that's why if I was starting today right now if this was a bizarro world and today was day one everything's the same for me I'm just coming out of the business I would probably call my company Vayner Voice here's why I'm capable enough to sell some consulting scopes about where voice is going to keep me around to eventually be the best dev shop on Alexa skills and Google Home because I genuinely think that the voice device is the only potential I do not think it's guaranteed because I don't see the scale yet and this is how I look about TikTok I don't think TikTok is I saw somebody mention that I say Instagram's dead and it's not what I'm saying I'm saying TikTok is the first platform that I see that has the potential to become the next thing that's what I thought about SocialCam that's what I thought about Vine that's what I thought about Snap it's also what I thought about Instagram and Facebook because MySpace was fucking killing it So that's what I would do, but I have a pretty unique awesome skill.

51:26Enough salesmanship and enough ability to be right often enough in a short enough period of time to benefit from that. What I would recommend is people to do what they're best at. And by the way, that is what I did with Vayner. Just so everybody knows, the first two years of VaynerMedia, first two years of VaynerMedia, all we did was community management on Twitter and Facebook. that was our entire business, nothing else. Because that's what I was best at. I wasn't best at creative on Twitter in 2009. I wasn't, I was great at community management. I'm into the voice first world, the voice first, you know, building Alexa skills, you know, the Google actions for one and a half years.

52:10And largely, you know, what the challenge is that the discovery is a huge pain in ass. And the Google, they don't share any data. Alexa doesn't share any data, right? So if you're looking at saying that somebody is gonna build a platform or a product which we are looking at, we are building products now or going to build products now in that phase right now. In this space, for a discovery, to solve the discovery problem. They're gonna solve it. That's why the app store was built. It was impossible to find apps at first too. they'll build it when they feel like it's time. Discovery's a piece of cake.

52:47It's just at the mercy of the platform. Yeah, okay. The end. So if somebody's looking at the voice, somebody's looking at the voice platform from a discovery point of view, it's gonna be totally on the mercy of Google and Amazon of the World pretty much? Ish. And now you're gonna understand why I built a creative and media shop because it solves that. Our ability to create discovery because of our ability to create content at scale that's contextual for every platform and arbitrage against the media costs is greater than everybody else's on earth. Thus gives me the opportunity to have a leverage point against anybody who's building Alexa apps right now because I can create the part that they can't.

53:32They become the commodity. I have the leverage. Got it. So if somebody is looking at building a product into this. But real quick and I apologize. I only have the leverage. until Amazon flips the switch, and on Amazon.com, or on every Amazon package, or on Google's homepage, there's discovery for every app. We lived this. It was called Apple Apps. It wasn't hard. The first year and a half, there was no discovery. Got it. And then there was. So somebody's looking at building a product into this space, you know, for a discovery, or a, you know, in the voice space, what would you suggest that would be?

54:07As an app for the consumer? Yeah. Like you're not being an agency in DevShop, you're building for yourself a consumer? Yep. Be great at discovery.

54:18That's the punchline, you know what I mean? You have to add that capability. Yeah, thanks. Otherwise you just built a great app. Tree in the forest, tree in the forest. Nobody knows you built the best app. Somebody's gonna build a better app in a year because the capabilities are gonna be better and you're fucked and that's what happens all the time. Right now I'm the only person that's client facing in my agency, so I know the next hire is going to be something like an account manager. My question for you, I do a lot of local networking, that's how I get all my clients. My question for you is how do you gracefully transition to giving them an account manager when they're really obsessed with you?

54:56By not selling them me. So how did you frame that from the beginning with your agency? I imagine a lot of people coming to you thinking it's gonna work with Gary. Yeah, and then I'm like, not true.

55:12Here's Maribel. Yeah. You can back phone me if you pay enough, you know, by being unbelievably upfront. You know, just back to that gentleman who talked about me always saying yes, I'm telling you, everybody's biggest vocab edition is no. Bless you. And it was really funny and some of you, if you're very deep in my content, you may know what I'm about to say next. In Russian superstition, when somebody sneezes right after a statement, it means it's true. So I appreciate that sneeze because it came after a very important point that could have been glossed over. The biggest word that everybody in this room needs to add is no.

55:57And it was hard at first because I had no other leverage. Now it's easier. their Vayner's real. But at first, it was me. And this is Pepsi and GE. This is not like, you know? And I'm like, not me. And they're like, what? And I'm like, yep. I'm like, I'm the CEO. I'm building a company. I'm here just by telling them the truth. So, Gary, about 20 floors up from here, before I get there, before I get there, could I have Jason, Goldie, Sammy, and Ada stand up for me? so Gary we came out here this week and instead of listening to all the sessions we decided to say fuck it let's go talk to strangers and meet some new people and we said let's start a podcast while we're at it why not so these are our first four guests will you be number five ah yes well played super good so good So fucking good.

57:01Thank you so much. You're welcome. So as a CEO, taking a business, working with clients that are bringing in like 50 to 100 mil, what was the mindset shift that you had to work with the big boys, like the Fortune 500s? Nothing. Nothing? Nothing. I let them come to me by being historically correct with what their customer was going to do. The reason I win often is because I'm not worried about the person in the middle. Got it? I didn't change for them, they changed for me. Why? Because I focused on you. The end customer is the leverage, not the relationship with the person that writes the check.

57:53If you're playing long.

57:58perfect everybody if you enjoyed this podcast please go back and look at the prior episodes they're loaded i appreciate your attention and uh thanks for being part of this journey see you later