THIS is the Foundation of Every Successful Social Media Strategy! | Auto Glass Week Keynote

0:00Podcast nation, before I get you into today's podcast, big announcement. as you probably heard at this point because I had John from Stan on the show. I'm an investor advisor to an incredible startup called Stan, Stan.Store. I'm sending you right now to garyvee.com, garyvee.com slash Stan. Go check this out. We've done a Gary V. Stan Store challenge which actually has a weekly call with me. This is built for everyone who's been affected, honestly, by my overall content. The tech stack, all these features and the minimal costs per month that Stand Store has built is really the tool that was needed for this world that I envisioned when I wrote Crush It, when I wrote Crushing It, and this overall thing I'm thinking a lot about lately, which is the individual empire, right?

0:48This creator entrepreneur slash entrepreneur creator economy that I think is gonna eat up the oxygen, very honestly, the thing that so many of you want in your life and the reason so many of you are not there yet is you've got the strategy for me. you've got the ambition within yourself but you don't have the tools for you to fully maximize it and I believe you can find that at Stan store Stan dot store but specifically I want you to sign up for it through my challenge because I want to get access with you and plus there's a bunch of cool things so if you want to go see those cool things go to GaryVee.com slash Stan S-T-A-N now to the podcast This is the Gary Vee audio experience Something that everyone needs to know is social media changed heavy, heavy in the last three years.

1:37For the first 15 years of social, it was email marketing. Get as many people to follow you as possible, and then every time you post, a certain percentage of those people would see it. That's what I was built on. Got millions of followers, percentage, build, build, build. In the last three years, and this is huge for the people in the room that have never done this or are just starting, this is wildly encouraging. I did not have the fortune of being able to say these things for 15 years on stage. The fact that tomorrow you can start and outflank everybody in the room is crazy. What happened three years ago, four years ago, is TikTok came in.

2:15It used to be called Musical.ly if you had a high school daughter. It became TikTok and it changed the way things were done. Instead of just posting to your people, when you post now, it could go anywhere. based on people's interest of that content. So if you're making content of literally fixing people's windshields, installing, vinyling vans from a marketing standpoint or protecting paint, installing for solar purposes in a building, whatever you do in here, if you make that content, the fact that that will reach people based on how much AI technology these social networks have, so you can post, have no followers, literally most of you I know are probably not sitting with a TikTok account that you're pounding with content every single day.

3:02And you can post and it will reach people that might have interest in it. That is profound. That is profound. The fact that you can then take a video that does somewhat decent and run 25 or, let me say it so I really need you to hear what I'm about to say. I'm very aware of what the majority of the businesses look like in this room. The fact that you can post a video about how to or why or why this is good, whatever you want to do. We can go into that later. If it does decent and gets 500 views instead of six because you're just starting out so now you know it's a little bit better content than the last one.

3:37And then you can take that video and post it on Facebook and spend$50 in media to amplify it within a five mile radius of your shop is profound. We are living in the best opportunity for small businesses to grow their business through marketing in the history of marketing, in the history of small business. $50. 50. Again, I'm trying to remind everybody about the LeBron thing or the people that stood up. You have to get good at this. All I'm asking, all I'm asking is for 10 hours of research from all of you. Whether you read books or listen to podcasts or you're good at Google or you like chat GPT, I don't know how you research.

4:26I can't read for shit. So I'd never read one of my fucking books. Others in here love it. Some love books, but they need to do audio. Some have gotten really into AI and like chat GPT or perplexed. I don't care how you do it. I just want 10 hours so you know what, at least the baseline of what I know, which is pictures and videos on social media, all seven platforms. How many people are in B2B here or going after B2B clients? Raise your hands. LinkedIn. LinkedIn today is what Facebook was 12 years ago. One more time, how many? Show of hands, please. Everybody who's got their hand up right now, this company, should post a video or a picture with copy supporting it every day on LinkedIn.

5:12Every day. Again, when I say you need to post on LinkedIn every single day, I promise you, one of my favorite things about speaking is watching your fucking faces react to the shit I say. The faces were like, wow. By working. At all times in business, there are ways to market that is a waste of money and there are ways to market that is so underpriced that it will explode your business. Social media is grossly underpriced, completely misunderstood, and can completely change your career. Regardless of what you think about social media, It's ruining the world. It's fucking up the kids. The reality is, is as business people, your subjective judgment of where people's attention is doesn't matter.

6:03Your obligation to build your business is what matters. Knowing there are people in this room who do not do advertising on social, which is disproportionately the driver of you selling more shit, more services, more opportunities because of what they think about TikTok and China or Twitter and Elon or Facebook and Zucks is why people like me continue to grow. Ideology of your subjective opinion has no business being in the arena of when you're trying to build your business based on what humans are actually doing, period. So what does that all mean? It means as we sit here today, most of you, no matter what you do day to day, hire people actually doing the physical labor, whatever it is you do on your 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 hour, 90 hour work week, that 20 % of that time should be made for you as the owner.

7:12and I don't want to hear this shit like Gary, you don't get it. I'm 52. I didn't grow up with this shit. I don't get it. Well, you didn't grow up driving and you figured that out. I'm not interested to come all the way. We're in Orlando. I didn't fucking come to Orlando to hear a room like this. You didn't come to this conference on a Thursday because you're complacent. You didn't come here because you're not interested in growing. Like, what are you doing here? If you're here at this conference, the last thing you should have is an excuse to why you're not doing it. You came here because you want to grow.

7:50Every person in this room, standing in the back, up here, left, right, every person in this room, in my personal, humble, one man's opinion, must allocate many more hours, starting on Friday, tomorrow, to actually learn how pictures and videos and words work on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, so that people call you or email you or direct message you to buy your service. There is nothing you can do, not Google AdWords, not door knocking, not billboards, not, I don't want to hear, Gary, but I've been in the business for 25 years in my area. My word of mouth is awesome. That's great.

8:33It's nice. Then why are you here? Curious, by show of hands, who would like to do less business next year? Raise your hands. That. So if you're sitting here saying, cool, this guy seems interesting, this is all fine, but I'm not doing the social media thing, you're asking to do less business. Attention, eyes and ears is the only thing that matters. You can't tell me how epic your service is or how cool your squeegee is or how rad your service is if I don't hear it or see it. It is literally like if I was giving this keynote next door in a room with no one in it. We must understand that attention has moved to this device as primary.

9:23I also need you to understand something else before we get into it. What is the ROI, the return on investment of a basketball for LeBron James? I'll give you the answer. Billions. The return on investment of a basketball for LeBron James is billions of dollars. For me, negative 50 ,000. I've had two surgeries on my meniscus. I've not made a fucking penny playing basketball. Negative 50K, maybe more with the time spent on fucking having the heel on the meniscus for seven hours. There are many people here, actually, this is a very important question based on what I'm starting to say. Raise your hand if you've done some advertising, probably on Facebook and Twitter, but it didn't really work for your business, which makes sense, I mean, this should be very common.

10:15Raise your hands. So, these individuals I'm particularly concerned about because they're similar to me with basketball. They have spent money and efforts on social media, but it has not been particularly good for their business. It's because they suck at it. This is important to understand. Many of the people that stood up said it doesn't work. No, it doesn't work for you because you weren't good enough at it. You hired the wrong person. You trusted your 23 year old niece because young kids do it. You yourself gave a role but instead of building brand, you're just a salesman and you went right in for the fucking sale and nobody wanted to just reply to that.

10:56And I can give you the other 7 ,000 reasons that the people that just stood up did not get return on investment. It's called being good at it. Before we get into the Q &A and all the stuff, I need you to understand the opposite. How many people here have made content and done things on social media and it has worked for their business? Raise your hand. Actually stand up.

11:25This is the only thing I'm passionate about today. Please sit. That. That visual and knowing with all due respect because fuck, I'm at the tippy top of this game. I run an agency today that has 3 ,000 people in it globally all over the world. We're a$350 million a year business. I have tons of other companies that completely run on this currency. I got a lot of shit going on. I sit way at the tippy top of this game for the last 20 years and I can tell you right now, I can take the rest of this keynote telling you everything I'm doing wrong on social media. It's fucking hard. I get it. But just to remind everybody, everything great is hard.

12:10Everybody wants this to be easy when it's the single most important thing. Of course it's hard. I'm gonna say it's slow. Everything that is actually good is hard. So I come here today very focused on this Thursday. two things are my focus. One, to spend as much time on Q &A with all of you right now to go into the details on how to make a picture or a video or spend media dollars on Facebook to get customers, on TikTok to get, I am obsessed to leave with six or seven of you taking something from here and acting on it because I've learned after 15 years most of you will listen today, get it, be pumped, and then do nothing about it.

12:58So I'm focused on two things today. Getting some of the people here to really focus on this marketing, that's number two. And the number one thing I'm focused on today is getting the hell out of here, flying to New York, and watching my New York Jets beat the shit out of the New England Patriots.

13:18Ooh, it sounds like there's some Patriot fans in that room. Bandwagon, boys. The thing that I love coming to stuff like this, and this is why I said yes to it, you worked to get here. Something happens when you build a little something. Some people start to get a little less worky. Some people get a little complacent. Some people start to take their foot off the pedal. That's fine. I promise you I have no interest in judging your ambition I'm just telling you that if you're not doing it someone else is going to and I need you to know that here's why it seems up front until you start doing it think about anything you've done in your life right has anybody here grown up in a way where like working out and then they finally figured it out and it works for them now, just raise your hand.

14:20I'm one of those people actually. For those people. Remember how hard it was to actually, all those years when you're like, this sucks, I hate it, and then it switches. I really believe that this was exactly what I'm talking about today with marketing. I know a lot of you like, don't like the computers. Or I don't like social, or I don't get it, but I'm telling you, the passion you hear in my voice is because eight, 10 years ago, what I was telling you was an opportunity. Today when I stand in front of you, it's a borderline warning. Private equity firms are gonna come into this industry and buy up a bunch of these companies and consolidate them.

15:01They will market. 18 year old Gary's are growing up in families around here and they're gonna walk into their mommy and daddy's business and they will market. This is too easy when you understand what I'm saying to not do it. It doesn't cost a million dollars. I'll say it again. I want you to post, I literally want you to make a video and be like, I'm fucking Ron. This is my shit. This is what we do. We love you, Ohio. Yay.

15:27Post it. And then if God willing, for some reason you were funny or you were wearing a shirt or it was just your moment or you used the right adjective or the right analogy and that video does well, I want you to spend$50 to$100 to amplify it with media in a five or 10 mile radius of your business. That will work. Literally, if I stop talking now, left, because my flight had an issue, I have to be at the Jets game. And everybody here just did that. Just made a video every day and posted it on social media. YouTube shorts, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram with some copy, your phone number, your email.

16:15and spent$50 amplifying it in a five or 10 mile radius. And the reason I keep saying that because I haven't broken that down is when you post on social, it can go anywhere. Right, so if you didn't hear the full context here and you post and it gets 10 ,000 views but you get no business, you're like, what happened, Gary? I'd be like, well, the videos were watched in Kansas, Dawn, and you're in New Jersey and nobody's coming to your store. So these are the levels of details that I'm passionate about. This is the opportunity. and it is bigger than ever, period. There's more people on these platforms than ever.

16:53The ability to never have done it before and break out is finally here because what happened on TikTok is now everywhere. I'm sure a lot of you, whether you use social media for business or pleasure, realize that the algorithm's different now, right? Some of you, by the way, I get 25 DMs a day from people saying, oh Gary Vee, I just saw your video on Instagram. I haven't seen you for six months. I forgot about you. I'm pumped I got to see it. I'm like, motherfucking Instagram, but the algorithm. This is where we're at. And so you're seeing that as well and this is actually the opportunity room.

17:27So there's a ton of opportunity. It's very real and my main overall concern is that people don't understand it. Again, I'll be honest with you. I'm getting pretty close to just going right into Q &A. before I get into Q &A. There's other things I want to talk about. For example, let me give you a for instance that I think this industry has completely wrong. When customers give you negative reviews on Google, you don't delete them, asshole. Because they screen shoot it and then they call you out for trying to manipulate the market. What you do instead is you reply and say, hey, Ronnie Pants 49.

18:13sorry about this this doesn't sound like what we thought happened here's my email and my phone number please call us we would love to solve it me we're seeing that is a lot more exciting than you deleting it understood there's a lot of devils to the details the top line i want to get away with here is it's kind of like make pretend this was a health and fitness thing my top line is hey guys, gals, if you eat like shit and you don't exercise and you fucking vape and do all the wrong things, you're gonna die earlier. Eat well and exercise and good things will happen. Of course I'm aware that a coconut can hit you in the head and you'll die, but you'll have a better percentage of that not happening.

18:59That's what I'm telling you here. In 2024 going into 2025, tech companies, big companies that are bigger than you. We know what we're talking about and the consolidation that is about to happen in this industry and the youngsters that are coming up in these family businesses are gonna take your money. So let me ask this question before we go and then we're ready to rock. On this top line thesis, before we go into the devils of the details, how many people are planning on retiring in the next five years? not not because you're gonna crush it and buy a private jet but because you're old and you're finished raise your hands okay so for the eight of you you can take some level of what I'm talking about with a grain of salt you might be able to hold on by holding your breath and crossing your fingers and doing the same shit and just go into fucking fishing and golf but for the rest of you I'm gonna say it slow again Five, 10 years ago when I talked about all this stuff and all those other books, it's all the same shit.

20:06It's just tweaked to the realities of the world we now live in. It was a luxury of growth. As I stand with you in Orlando today, it is still a luxury of growth, but if you don't do it, it's about to become the beginning of your demise. You will lose market share. Some of you already know you have. So if we're here, let's get serious about the one thing. Look, you have to manage employees and I want to go into that. I mean, 12 and a half, I mean, how you build a good culture, how do you retain people, how do you not have people build them up and then they start their own business. I would love to talk to you about all the dynamics you're dealing with.

20:47But out of all the things you do for a living, understanding how to do proper marketing will have the biggest impact on the paycheck you take home. Period. Thank you.