The Social Media Crash Course That will Grow Your Business TODAY | Tea with GaryVee Ep. 71

0:00Before you listen to today's podcast, and I know there's background noise, I'm literally sitting on a plane that's about to be taken off. But before you do anything, I want you to go to my Instagram right now, Gary VEE. Go on the profile, hit where it says following, and add me to your favorites to make sure you don't miss any of my Instagram posts. I've got fire coming this summer. Lots going on, lots of giveaways, lots of exclusives, lots of partnerships, and just lots of rants and fire. That's what I want you to do. Please let me know if you did it on Twitter or on text. and now enjoy the podcast.

0:38Welcome to another episode of Tea with Gary Vee. Should we go to somebody on the screen or we go to Mackenzie first? Mackenzie first. Gary, I went from working in tech for 18 years, got laid off, struggled to find a new job, ended up flipping furniture to make ends meet. I started the Career Flipper podcast. I interviewed people about their weird career changes. It's been a great learning experience. I want to turn both my podcast and furniture flipping into my full-time job. How do you advise people like me who are juggling multiple things to create one unified brand? I think it's one unified brand.

1:07You know, I don't see anything different about being a furniture flipper and a podcaster. Being a podcaster is an overlay, like oxygen around everything. Everybody is a podcaster that is podcasting around being either a creator, an influencer. Jenny, I think you're beating yourself up or making it more complicated than it is. I'm a podcaster. I'm also a million other things. I'm the creator of VFriends. I'm the CEO of VaynerMedia, I'm a partner of VaynerSports, I'm a content creator, WineText.com, and a million other things, I don't have to go into it. So I think that it is a cohesive brand. People doing academia on themselves when they're just living.

1:48If you wanna get paid to speak, if you wanna do other things, it's very easy. Put out content and let the demand come to you. I would be crushing LinkedIn content, I'd be crushing TikTok content, and every other platform for that matter. All right, let's keep it going. My man, how are you? Doing good. How about yourself, Gary? Good. What's your name? Where are you from? I go by Santa Herman. I'm from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Pleasure, my friend. How are things? Going good. Going well, going well. Absolutely loving the VFriend brand, especially with Santa Claus. Fun to have in that. But the question is for my regular day job.

2:27I work for a B2B tooling distribution business, a cutting tool distribution business. We're a small family-run company. There's nine employees. We're literally right around the corner from the juggernaut of the state, which has like 200 employees. What would you do if you were to come in here as an outside tooling salesman day one today to grow and scale this company? The David and Goliath story is always a lot of fun for me because that's what my situation was when I went to my dad's liquor store. And I think it's alternative marketing. And I really do believe the stuff I talk about, brother, is what it comes down to.

3:02So I'd probably first, my favorite B2B move is to start a podcast and interview the people that we want to be clients, right? So you've got the behemoth next to you and you've got you and you pretty much know, do you know how many target clients the company has? Our company? Yeah, like what do you think the target is? Like how many potential clients do you guys have? There's thousands in the state. you know, there's in manufacturing, we've got a lot of medical device manufacturers. We've got all sorts of different manufacturing in this state. So there's thousands of businesses. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a very heavy game of Instagram, excuse me, LinkedIn DMing messages that are really not spammy.

3:49And I think the best way to not be spammy is to provide value versus asking them to buy things from you. And I think the first thing I would do if I was an outside salesman is be a salesman and a marketer and say, hey, I really, really, really want to start a podcast and I want to interview the biggest, realtor Adrian says, how does that help? It helps because you start conversations with potential clients that aren't starting with like, hey, I'd like you to buy for me. It's more like, hey, I'd like to make content and potentially get you exposure. You know, I've given this advice pretty consistently and I've gotten so many, I mean literally emails every single week from very small companies who've been able to get business by just even inviting someone to the podcast, let alone even doing the podcast.

4:43So I think that's number one. I would also think about AI SEO. So I think getting ahead of the next search engine is a big play. The next thing I would do is convince the company to spend some money on starting to make - I'm working on that one. Start, you know, starting, yeah, there's that. Which is hard on a nine person company, which is why I love social. Like my first piece of advice doesn't cost any money. You can record it all on an iPhone. My second one costs a little money, which is starting to work with a startup to get your company to be the first result when people do AI chatbots and are starting to move away from Google, does your business get business from Google results?

5:29We get some business. Most of it right now is literally sales people. Yeah, of course, sales. You're a sales organization, like any B2B company is, which is, again, why I'm bringing up the first point, because I think it's the best version of cold calling. Cold calling and saying, do you want to be on my podcast to tell your business's story or your career story converts dramatically better than cold calling and saying, buy my fucking tools or my toolkitting or what have you. You understand? Yeah. Even if you have no audience, even if you have, like it's amazing because none of these people ever get asked to be on podcasts.

6:12So they're just thrilled to do it or for the content, right? It's a production day. So that would be the move, brother. That to me is the killer move in the game right now. I do think if you've got, for everybody else who's watching, if you've got a couple of bucks starting to figure out that chat bots, chat GPT, all this stuff, chat assistants, they're gonna be giving results to queries. Actually, watch this. Everybody in all of my social and on whatnot, if you are now using chat GPT, perplexing, other AI things to do things you used to do on Google, say me. And I think that when you see all these, look at all these me's in the chat.

6:51It's literally, it's absurd. I mean, I think that that's right, brother. It's content, free content on social, especially in LinkedIn for you based on your business is the way to go. But also the cold call outreach for the podcast. Okay, cold call outreach for the podcast. Just one last thing, do you see any space for our company to be doing anything on Whatnot or TikTok shop or anything like that? I don't, I think, I don't. Okay, I didn't think so, but I wanted to ask the question anyways. not yet I appreciate the question I think it's cool but I don't think it's right for you per se just yet perfect alright brother stay well let's keep it moving everyone you're welcome my man Mackenzie what's the question what's the one quality you look for in an employee I think employees come in different shapes and sizes I think jobs within your company come in different shapes and sizes if I have a universal one when I'm interviewing I'm looking for self awareness and confidence I think an insecure employee is political and fucks up the culture, regardless of what she or he does.

7:54So if you're self-aware, if you know who you are and you know who you're not, you tend to be a little bit more confident as well. And the more confident you are, the less you're dealing with your own insecurities and the less you're dealing with like, Karen in accounting is ruining me. Or like Johnny's, like think about, I'm looking at Team Gary. Like when somebody's getting shine, are you happy for them or are you upset because you're like fuck I'm not getting shine. Like it's a mindset, it's life. And so that is 100 % what I look for. Self-awareness and really just a general self-esteem. I would go with the double selfs.

8:33Self-esteem and self-awareness turn out to be tremendous. All right, let's keep it going. Sherry, how are you? I'm really good, how are you? I'm well, where are you calling from dear? I am calling from country Victoria, Australia. I'm two hours out of Melbourne. Amazing. Well, it's a pleasure to be with you. I've been to the region because I've been there for a wine trip. So I've been there before. And what question do we have for you? Well, I have a pet products brand. I'm a canine herbalist and I make organic skin care for dogs with sensitivities, allergies. Very cool. I'm working really hard to build up my social media.

9:22I've started a YouTube channel and I'm launching a podcast. I start recording this week. Amazing. It's going to be called The Natural Dog Mum and it's all about educating pet parents about natural health and wellness for their animals, fresh feeding, those sorts of things. I'm really excited about it. clean, non-chemical, all that stuff that actually leads to this, right? Yes, absolutely. Yeah, so I've got the products. Let me ask you a quick question. I'm sorry to interrupt. Let me ask you a quick question. Yes. How many TikToks a day does your pet brand or you post for this business? Nowhere near enough and that's one of the first things I'll be fixing starting next week.

10:12Once I've started filming, I'll be... No worries, hold on. How many? Yeah, not daily. Barely even weekly. I've been very, very slack. I'm correcting that. So, my dear, a TikTok strategy for you in Australia. So, Vader Media does a lot of business in Australia. We have 100 employees out in Australia. I know that market extremely well. Way more important than a YouTube channel is for you to go all in on TikTok. and you don't need to have a podcast i'm about to do that why haven't you done it uh well for the last couple of months it's because i've been dealing with um i've had to rewrite all of my marketing and website copy delete half of my social media posts and rename and redesign a bunch of products because i was flagged by the apvma which is the animal equivalent of the the Therapeutic Goods Administration here.

11:12They sent me a very scary letter and flagged 12 of my formulations. So I have been flat chat, tried to sort that out so that I don't get five because of thousands of dollars or get sent to jail. Yeah, you don't want to go to jail. You definitely don't want to do that. I get it. That's the only excuse I feel is legitimate. That's valid. That's valid. So listen, before you go, you must, and I mean you must win on TikTok over any other platform because it's the one place where I feel like you have the likelihood of getting a post that changes the course of your career. Absolutely. And I want to get into TikTok shop when it hits Australia.

11:56So I need to build up my followers. I need you all in on that. Okay. Please do me a favor. Go to GaryVee.com Go to GaryVee.com slash attention. Yeah. It's literally, honestly, I'm not even asking people to buy the new book, Day Trading Attention. I literally condensed it to the best of my ability to a free deck. Free! I don't even, don't even buy the$15 book. It's free. It's great. Okay, great. Then use it as a - It's great, and I bought the book as well. Thank you. Well, then now execute, because reading about push-ups does nothing, so it sounds like you're ready. And let's get to work, and make sure your strategy is TikTok first, everything else second, okay?

12:35It will be. What about LinkedIn though? No. Because most of my business is wholesale. I sell to grooming sales, retail, vets. I see. Then yes. Now that I understand that it's not DTC only, yes, that too. And really, I was wrong to say no. The answer's always yes. I'm just worried you're a one woman show and can't get to everything. The answer's always yes. Yes, I am. You know, as many hours as you're willing to put into it and as many places you're willing to post, That's actually the answer to the quiz. I was being overly empathetic, which allowed me to create an excuse for you. But what sort of content on LinkedIn?

13:14Hey, wholesalers, if you wanna buy. What kind of content on LinkedIn? Hey, fucking wholesalers, you wanna buy clean shit so dogs aren't fucking itchy? I've got the shit for you. It's me, I'm fucking here. Buy my shit. God, I can do that. Thank you so much. You got it. You're welcome. Love you, goodbye. Go ahead, McKenz, what do you got for me? Kelly asks, I work a corporate job that I love and building my brand on the side. I've grown to 200K on TikTok talking about pop culture. My goal is to start a podcast, but the company I work for doesn't like it. I don't post anything inappropriate or work-related.

13:44They just don't like me posting online. I don't want to quit or be fired, but I also don't want to give up making content I like. Any advice? Keep doing it until they fire you. I mean, I don't know. What do you want me to do? What I'd probably do is, in parallel, find a job for a different company similar to the one that I'm at. So I would actively be looking for another job. I would be actively continuing to post and hopefully they don't fire you and before that you get big enough to bounce. Then just real life. And if you get fired, don't blame me. Be fucking accountable. That's what I would do.

14:23But if you get fired, don't blame me. Like then, you know, because I love when people are like, well Gary, I don't want to do that because I might get fired. I'm like, good, then stop doing it. Like people are obsessed with cake and eat it too when they're not in control. You're not in control. You work for someone. Everyone's not in control to something. I'm like really in control and I'm not in control. Like if the US is like, I'm taking away your citizenship, then I can't live here. Shit happens. Life is life. I don't know. Go ahead. Sarah asks, when I post the same exact video on different platforms, it does really well on one platform and terrible on another.

15:00No shit, Sarah. I've been talking about this for a fucking decade. Literally, Braden, I've been talking about this for a decade. No shit it does different on every platform. Every platform's different, you need to do different shit. That's why I write fucking books about this shit. This is an algorithm problem. No, it's a you fucking problem, Sarah. You're the fucking problem. How the fuck have you not been listening? We've been talking about this for fucking decades. I used to have black hair when I talked about this shit. I had black hair, now I have gray hair, Tyler. I'm still talking about the same shit.

15:32I wrote Jab, Jab, Jab in 2012. Came out in 13 or 14 or whatever the fuck it came out. Jesus fucking Christ. No, it's not an algorithm problem. It's a you problem. You're supposed to do slightly different content. The first three seconds, the thumbnail, the copy, the edit. You think LinkedIn's like TikTok? Sarah, is her name Sarah? Sarah? Jesus Christ. Joel asked, how do you draw the line in between taking constructive criticism but not giving in to other people's worldview or opinions. By balancing humility and confidence and self-esteem. You know sometimes people struggle with me because they think I'm a contradiction, right?

16:13Like, you know, like one time I'm like, care about what everybody says, and then I'm like, don't give a fuck, and they're a little confused. That's actually life. Like life is figuring out how to balance opposing energies. How do I do that? McKenzie, I take feedback all day. I listen to all sorts of shit. And equally, I'm completely utterly confident and don't give a fuck about what anybody says. And they're both easy and sometimes I choose this and sometimes I choose that. You know, by learning how to balance, the biggest problem for most people is that they're so black and white. Black and white and rigid and binary is fucking all of you up.

16:53I posted something yesterday, I noticed one of the comments on my Instagram was, well, this doesn't work all the time. No shit, Dick. Nothing on earth works all the time. Not one thing on earth works all the time.

17:11What thing works all the time? Maybe love. Deploying love might work all the time. But anyway, nonetheless, very easily, McKenzie, by deciding which one is right in the moment. Confident, confident, confident. It's not working. You're getting feedback. Fuck them, fuck them, fuck them. You wake up 18 months later. It's not working. Maybe it wasn't fuck them. Maybe you were delusional. Feedback, feedback, feedback. Fuck them, fuck them, fuck them. Boom, I exploded. I was right. They were wrong. Both happen. Let's keep going, Mackenzie. Sid, I like how you guys are teaming up. Nice little teamwork.

17:48We got one from Mike. Gary I'm a successful realtor in Maryland I'm thinking of ways to TikTok Shopify my business struggling to find ideas on how you can't I mean you can make t-shirts and hats to like build up your brand but like guys TikTok shop is retail just cause TikTok shop is good like you can go on it but like you're not gonna sell fucking real estate on it you don't need to what are you gonna give TikTok 11 % of your real estate deal guys when you sell on TikTok you give up 11%. The fuck are you gonna do? Give up 11 % of your fucking real estate deal? Guys, don't force shit. TikTok shop is for selling shit.

18:28If you don't sell shit, just go live stream. Go live. You don't need TikTok shop. The end. If you don't sell shit, something physical, you can make up something physical like a hat. I just did. We sold them. They're sold out. I made a fucking hat. I'm a human. I made a hat. Go ahead, Mackenzie. Matt asks, true or false, if your business isn't gaining traction by year five, you need to move on. Yes. Five years is too long. Yes, it sounds like it's a bad idea. Five years is too long. I mean, look, if you're happy, then good. If you're happy, the answer is always keep going. If you're making 83 ,000 a year and you live paycheck to paycheck, but you're extremely happy because you like your work-life balance and you just like you're good.

19:14You can deal with the stress of paycheck to paycheck. It seems fine. it's normal well then keep doing it but if your business hasn't gotten traction in five years your business blows McKenz do you know how some people make a small fortune by starting with a large fortune there are many people who inherit money or like come up with some sort of insurance scam and make pretend somebody hit them and their neck fake hurts and they get a million bucks and then they think there's somebody smart and clever and then they lose money because they suck at business or they're good at corporate and made a million dollars a year in corporate and then they start a business, a flower shop and they lose 100 ,000 a year but they don't care because they started with a million.

19:53Some people create small fortunes. Exactly, Preston said my business hasn't gotten more traction in 15 years but Preston says more traction which means it has enough traction for it to be viable. If some people don't get traction, they gotta go get a job or start a new business but happiness over everything. All right, keep it going, McKenz. Today in Space asks, Do you think competition is healthier in sports than corporate life? Yeah, I don't think they're even close. Of course I do. I assume corporate life within your own organization. Find out from them if you see their question. Anybody? Who asked the question?

20:29Today in space. Clarify this for me. I'll have my teammates and Braden. They'll look for this. When you say corporation versus corporation, like VaynerMedia versus, you know, movers and shakers, the agency, or are you talking about, like, within each other, within the corporation competition? because if it's VaynerMedia versus Ogilvy, I like it just like sports. Why not win? Fuck it. I love competition. I think competitive clown is one of the most important V friends and I can't wait to develop him. I really can't because I think modern parenting has fucked us up with trying to demonize competition.

21:05If you demonize competition, you're demonizing life. You demonize competition, you're about to raise an insecure child. You demonize competition, you're about to raise an indifferent child and indifference leads to depression. Do you guys know that? That indifference leads to depression. If you don't think anything matters, the fuck you think your life's gonna be? All right, let's keep it going. Actually, let's give something away for free. Here we go. Fuck it. All of you that are in one item, give you something away for free. A signed happy hermit crab slab that's signed by me right there in the green, my favorite.

21:41And it's a CGC 10. Corso, put it up. free giveaway right now. Fuck it, free. I'm giving this away for free. My guy, fucking let's go magic, man. Let's go, brother. What's up, Gary? What's up, brother? How are you? I'm not gonna lie, I just woke up, but you got me fired at 6 a.m. in the morning. I'm like so, I'm like my heart is like, I'm going, I'm ready, man. You're always ready, man. I've been so enjoying, you know, we've known each other a long time. Watching your journey has been remarkable. I'm so proud of you. Corso, can you swipe out of the bye thing over his face? I want to just, really, really, actually, people can do it themselves.

22:13If you want to not see the words over his face, just swipe to the left. What's your question, my man? Yeah, my question is, you know, I'm at a point right now where I really want to start expanding out and I have so many ideas as you do as well. And I guess my question is, you know, I don't have like a team that can execute every single idea that I have. What do you recommend like the process you go through to like choosing what ideas to specifically focus on? Sean, how long have you watched my content? since like 2016 when you were yelling that could have been a fucking buzz yeah so that's nine years ago back then I had five or six people on my team or whatever it was like it's one at a time brother pick one pick one of the ideas you want and look I've been seeing you you've been glowing up like heavy right which means there's an opportunity for you the biggest mistake that creators like you make is they spend the money they make on dumb shit not reinvest it in their business I did that for the first three years of like making money.

23:13Think about that. So in those three years, you could have been pouring it into employees. Like think about how many people see you doing tricks with Charli D 'Amelio and this and that and all the cool shit you do that would want to work for you for minimum wage. They'd rather work for you and hustle on social than work at Wendy's. Do you know how many employees right now between 16 and 22 work at Wendy's and Target and Walmart and a car wash and random ass fucking places that would break their arm to make the same per hour working for you, doing whatever. And do you know how many of those kids are actually talented?

23:49Five to 10%. And you may have this video with me and hire the wrong kid and have to fire them six months later, three months later. But you need to invest in a team, brother. Yeah. You have to stop. I mean, I gotta be so real with you. I've done everything, pretty much everything myself. And so it's like that next part. It makes sense to me. You've been spending your money on fucking Air Force Ones and trips and fucking jewelry and fucking, whatever the fuck you're buying. Yeah, yeah, you're right. But I also like, it's like, when I look at all these other YouTubers when they get to the next pinnacle of like what they want to do, it's like everybody has a team.

24:25And right now it's like very small. I did my own stuff all by myself from 2006 to 2014. Eight years. Eight years. I don't know what people think this game is. It's a fucking marathon. Everyone's gonna realize that I was right about the patience thing. everyone's gonna realize I was right about you're 50 you're still young people can make fun along the way do you know I get fucking 50 messages a day basically people swallowing their pride and being like you were right about this that the other thing and it's not because I'm right brother I'm just speaking wisdom OG shit all those 90 year olds that I hung out with my whole life because that's what I did weirdly they taught me this shit I'm not a fucking smart I just spoke to old people not my grandparents maybe because I didn't only have honestly maybe because I only had one grandparent because everyone died You know, it was that Russia shit, everyone died young.

25:12Like, I'm not smart, I just listen to old people who lived. All of us are so obsessed with the youth right now. Everybody wants to look young, everybody wants to think 22 year olds are fucking whiz kids on AI and social. We're all fucking putting 22 year olds on a pedestal and we're shitting on 90 year olds. They're old, they don't get it, they don't understand technology, ha ha ha, grandma doesn't know how to use TikTok. Motherfuckers, they know how to live life. You don't know shit. Oh, who's the winner? Natalie California Selling. Natalie California Selling. Let's clap it up for Natalie.

25:46So when you're talking to me about being a creator and being a businessman, well guess what? I've been doing it every single day since February 21st, 2006. And before I did that, I built a business every single day from 1994 to 2006. I lived it. That's why it's so easy for me to tell you. That's the answer, my guy. and you know doing it by yourself of course everyone does it by themselves Logan did it by himself Charlie did it by herself everybody did it by themselves until they didn't some people buy Lambos and some people invest in their business that's so real as real as it fucking gets my guy what if like I have three like ideas I'm just like so passionate and I just believe in all of them flip a coin flip a coin I do too when I did V friends I had all sorts of other things one of them was to create an AI influencer Now I'm getting around to that now after I did the VFriends thing.

26:38You gotta pick one. What are you gonna lay in bed and debate the rest of your life? Pick one. Flip a fucking coin. Gary you're so real bro. And I really love you bro. I appreciate you for that bro. Thank you. Action, action. Just remember that. Only action. Mackenzie go. We have Tessa. Tessa. I am 78 years old. I've been on social media for four years and six months. My friends tell me to quit because I should have a thousand followers but I enjoy helping and guiding others. Tessa, tell your old ass friends to shut the fuck up. I really have nothing else. As if friends opinions on your lack of followers on social should strip you of doing something that makes you happy.