THIS Will Help You Become Better at Making Content

28:23I'm sure you know that. That's why you went down that path. It's one of those classic things that looks a hell of a lot better on paper than reality. It is hard. The reason it's so lucrative is because it's hard. I always say to people, they're like, Gary, I can be anything. What should I be? I'm like, be a professional basketball player. That's a good idea. That's a lot of money. Like, the bench players are getting 30. It's not football. There's 12 players. Right? There's 15 players. And they're like, what? And the reason I always say that is like, well, I can't do that. I'm like, cool. Let's understand that's true across the board.

29:02You have to first ask yourself if you're even a franchisor.

29:09Are you a full-time salesman? Yeah, I understand. But how good are you at it? because right now getting some clients to do production of drone footage may seem hard. It's way harder to convince someone to change their profession. You know what I mean? So, no, I think right now, look, I think you guys are so young. I think there's so much money in drone production companies, way more than you can imagine. It's every day will get better. Kind of like Social 2009. And freelance is a great, contractor's a great business because you're not locked in. and James knows this I demonize franchise freelance I always hate it because I knew I was building something slightly it was a good model day to day P &L but I want to build family like forever so like I needed employees to become like I needed strangers to become employees to become friends to become family you don't do that like if I was just going for margin I would only freelance I would only contract it's smart you're not locked in especially I have offices in New York, California.

30:17If I wanted to fire people, it's impossible. It's hard to do business in these states. So no, I think you got it right and I think you got a long way to go and I think we talked on some really good stuff. All that mind time you've spent on trying to convince people, drone footage is good for them, now imagine you only focusing on people that have already decided it is. That's why we crushed. Everybody we were competing with in 2009 was trying to convince everybody of social media. I was spending all my time and trying to find the 30 people that agreed and tried to convince them. Right, that's good.

30:49Yep. I talked to Juliet yesterday about it, but if you want to, our team is here, I would love to do a flight through the office and show up here. In. Thanks, X, I'll tell you something quick and then we'll be done. Okay. I guess the quick one for me is since it's just been the two of us, we have a lot of overlap in what we're doing every day. Makes sense. And so one of the things is when Jack's doing the sales, I'm doing scheduling. he's partially scheduling. Of course. You guys depend, of course. When you're a small, small company you're overlapping a ton. That's also good because now multiple people know the full thing and so as you grow like the first seven or eight employees 15 employees I think should to the best of their capabilities be able to do everything because now you've built infrastructure for scale.

31:34Because you could truly divide and conquer. Imagine if for some reason Europe passed a law and like the opportunity was obnoxious. The fact that one of you could just go and move to Madrid while the other, you know what I mean? Whereas if you only knew 20 % of it, you couldn't. Overlap, both of you get in the dirt, both of you do the bougie part, you just overmix all of it. There's really no bougie part at this mall. It's the one AI thing, we do a lot of AI in the copy and asking a question, so what's the one thing that we can use AI to go to? I use AI to think about what's happening in pop culture.

32:12Like, I ask AI things like, why did sexy red pop? You know, why are corduroy hats coming back? Like, I like consumer insights and pop culture. That's why I'm who I am. So I don't think people realize you can use AI to be your thinking partner. You can literally type into AI, what would get people to want to, like, use a kayak? You know what insane that is? I don't think, right now people are asking it to do tasks. I'm asking it to think with me. first question kind of going off of the messaging for the previous two I think as a white label agency trying to be the agency's agency it feels like we're pitching concrete not kayaks or drones how would you again agnostic our goal is to get agencies in the door I actually think I actually am going to throw you for a loop I understand why you said that I actually think it's the reverse I got a really good one for you so I understand that because you're B2B2C you're actually B2B2B if you made content about the way I did which is share best practices you're gonna you're gonna get all you may even get brands reaching out to you to tell you to work with their current agency you're one very great piece of LinkedIn content away from 55 medium-sized businesses sending that video to their current agency telling them to hire you because if you just pounded, again, the same 15 messages, 73 ,000.

33:54You know, the biggest compliment I get in my comments or DMs is when like, Gary Vee, you say the same shit. Tired of you. Biggest compliment. I didn't think you saw that. I'm sorry. Biggest compliment. Right, because, yeah, like, what do you want me to make up shit I don't believe in? I'm sorry, I believe in, like, there's only so many things you can believe in. And yes, I'm trying to interject. Today I'll say sexy red, five years ago I'll say the baby, but I'm saying the same shit. Like, I'm going to incorporate it to make it relevant. And I may pick up new adjectives or expand my vocabulary.

34:31But, like, fuck, this stuff is tried and true. This is why it's work, like, this is why it's, like, simple. Like, yes. and I intuitively knew it when I was a kid, which is why I did what I did, but now I'm fucking like double winning. I'm like, knew it and it's true, right? And so I actually think the reverse. I think the content that you are making about operational excellence, think about this video, seven cliche things that agencies do wrong. You can run that ad, you can make that content in different ways for the rest of your life. and I think you'll actually get the end, like you're just gonna, like I don't think your shit's boring.

35:15As a matter of fact, I would argue something really wild. I think if you pounded what I'm saying, you may expand into other areas. Operational excellence is needed everywhere. He needs it. He's not an agency. If you do this content, you might end up having multiple divisions. Right? What's cool about what you guys do is it's universal. It's why I like marketing. The ability to communicate is universal. Everyone needs it. I'm chill all the time. I need anyone, talk business, I'm ready. It's why I never have to prep for speeches. Everyone needs communication. The government. From the government of Dubai to a guy selling pencils in a B2B environment in Wyoming.

36:04everyone needs communication comes in different forms back to your point concrete right but I think yours is universal you selectively chose through the history of this company to be an agency of agencies but operational excellence of course you know deeper nuances of agency life but it's not hard to pick up like you spend one year with a franchisor and you'll figure you'll like I know that to be true because that's why I started an agency to figure out how universal what I was doing was it's universal make sense? yeah I think you gotta pound that. I think you just own unlimited content of operational opportunities, operational fub-ubs, cliche, like pound, pound, pound.

36:45What's the most universal mistake you've seen agencies make? Like the true or a universal mistake? One that is quite common every time you get involved. I think focusing on vanity metrics and not sales. So we are so focused on like making sure tracking's set up properly because I don't give a shit about your click-through rate. Like it has to bring the register for your end client and I mean getting access to what we need to do that is such a fight sometimes and that's almost insanity because like in our sales process as we're working with them the focus is on performance, performance, performance and then we get to it and it's almost like we're being hamstrung because we're being forced to talk about CPMs and CTRs when we just know that it's not translated.

37:26Yeah. What I would do there is I would title a video the reason most agencies lose a client after the first year. Make sense? I think like that title, why agencies rarely hold on to a client for two years and then you run that on LinkedIn on ads against agency employees, watch what happens. The pain agencies have, right? Just build on that as much as possible. Yeah, think about what I'm doing. Reverse engineering is something that an agency owner would like to understand because what you just answered is is the reason. The reason VaynerX is one of the biggest agencies in the world today is because I built it to do the actual thing, not the marketing jargon thing.

38:09You have a trillion CPMs. That's why Super Bowl's the best and the scariest. The ad is the best. You can't get 110 million Americans to know everything about you for$8 million, even if you're the best at day trading attention. The problem is crushing it in a 30-second video is hard. I think that's part of my fear. I know that I preach that but then I see the CPMs on LinkedIn and I'm just afraid to even run too much budget on that. Well, that's because you're a hypocrite. Exactly.

38:45I fucking love you because what you know that I know is that LinkedIn, unlike every other platform, has an artificial floor on cost on ads, which is high. What I know that you also know but don't know as well as I know is, but who gives a shit if you get the thing that you want to happen? And that's what you preach on the other side. I prefer to pay higher CPMs almost always in anything that I own, because I want the actual thing. I don't care about anything other than how many people sign up for WineText and buy wine. So the CPMs, if I'm buying low CPMs, I'm getting bad inventory. if I'm paying high CPMs I'm getting people that are likely to buy wine we figured this out with direct mail 100 years ago you can buy everybody in town or you can pay Amex to just send it to people who buy wine yes of course it costs more the data is valuable the customer is more valuable for you on LinkedIn than it is on TikTok

39:51I just want to dive a little bit deeper when we're talking about the franchisees how do we cut through the noise just as partners in the B2B world for LinkedIn specifically? The quality of the content. Quality of the content. Right, like notice what, like, I'm so fucking in it that I can give you that title to a video and do the video and know it will do better. You break through the noise by the merit of your skills. People always say that, Gary, how do I break through? I'm like, you have to be better. I'm like, I don't know. Like, you know what I mean? but getting better comes back to what I want all of you to be in love with which is more reps this is why like back to saying the same thing 800 different ways somebody the other day literally in comments because this is what I do I read them Gary what is it 10 times a post 13 times a 23 posts a day you say all these different numbers I reply I'm like bro it's because I'm just living my life there's no actually it's just a lot as much as humanly possible once and for all as much as humanly possible.

40:53You're all gonna be doing it with AI anyway. You all in nine years are gonna have 4 ,000 ads a day. So as much as possible. You know? You know, that goes back to like how are you gonna break through? You're actually not sure, but you kinda know it's the same thing that closes, like things, why I'm good at content is I watch what works in real life and then I just make content out of it. What was the sentence I said to make the person buy it? This is why I'm unstoppable. I've been selling since I was five. You know, I've been practicing. I didn't read a book on how to fucking, what's that book?

41:28Influence People and Win Over, what is it called? Like, thank you. I just did it since I was five. Of course I didn't have to read that shit. I lived it. I know why I was popular. I know why I was the fifth grade president. I know that not why 94 people said no to me when I rang their doorbell to shovel snow. Just like I know why the six people said yes. and why the baseball card sold, and why when I changed the display cases at my dad's store, it sold, and why when I brought small bottles of wine at the front of the register instead of peanuts, that that was good because the small bottles of wine were 10 bucks and the peanuts were nine cents.

42:04That was good. I saw it, and I saw the 87 things that didn't work when I did it. I'm living it. You need to live it. How do you break through? By doing so much content for so long that you start to get an understanding of the thematics that work. If you think that I woke up one morning and said, you know what we're gonna do? We're gonna make a meme that captures the essence of the video and we're gonna do a two post carousel because that's gonna get the most organic reach. I promise you I had no fucking idea. If you think I thought making photos that says, that has a picture of me in it, that then says the person that's sending you this thinks and then whatever the fuck we've written was gonna be the consistent million organic reach post, that is the when I first posted the first one I'm like this has no shot reps how'd you get those muscles outside of fucking cheating which you can't do in business no steroids in business bro how'd you get those muscles I fucking worked even the really funny meme and culture of like you're not ugly you're poor I think about that I'm like right there's a proxy that made someone look more attractive it was called money like one could see that cynically in the way that I think we should because I think it fucks up people but there's a different way to look at it which is like nothing happens unless you do something.

43:29You know what I mean? Like yes, of course like you know one could envy if you put beauty on a pedestal like somebody having the ability to have plastic surgery and this and that and that but there's still something that happened otherwise it wouldn't have happened. Like there's always cause and effect. We're in full control of this. Right? You guys can answer this. you can all do what I do if you put in the 700 ,000 pieces of content that I did you won't need me anymore I don't want anyone to meet me I want them all to do what I'm saying and never need me again they know the answers before I do I think last question that we have would be what has been the biggest impact you've seen I have on agency life I haven't looked I mean I can give you a ton of answers to that I think first of all the biggest impact it's going to have is on the creative product, but right now there's too much copyright and trademark stuff that has to be figured out.

44:23But the biggest impact is companies are gonna be able to do like 4 ,000 pieces of ads a day instead of four. Ideation, I think. Of course, back to what I said earlier. Strategy is gonna use it the way I do. Thinking partner. Like, why are corduroy hats cool again? And you start working. What will 42 to 48-year-old moms in Iowa, when he, ready? when he has a new franchisee in Des Moines, Iowa today it's not top of mind for him to go to ChatGPT or something like it and say what will get people to buy a kayak service in Des Moines, Iowa but in six years it will be I'm old enough James is old enough to know that people's first move wasn't to go to a search engine in 2000 you know and now they do now everybody here is like look that up that's just normal that's gonna be normal working with AI along the way of everything will be normal so it's gonna have profound effect and it will commoditize certain things if you are a designer who doesn't have a thought in her or his brain and you just sit there and someone else tells you what to make completely you have a problem

45:43but if you are a designer who ideates and thinks and you're creative, you're fine. That's it. Either you're a commodity or you're not. And I don't say that dismissive. It's just the way the world worked. Most of us worked on a farm 150 years ago. Then tractors came and we didn't need to. I think, as a matter of fact, I'm so optimistic. I think someone now who is just like a non-creative, non-thinking designer and just a part of the, I think she or he finds something better on the back end of that. So in terms of storytelling, what's one blind spot that you've observed in mission-based organizations, whether it's something like The Shed or like Mad Parenthood?

46:28So I'm in a lot of nonprofits and when I join the board or advisory or come in to help, the number one thing I say is the number one thing that causes struggle with is audacity. They're audacious to think that just because it's a cause, everyone should do. It's audacity. Like, you know, like, I understand that my brother has Crohn's disease. I have a pretty good feeling that I care more about Crohn's and colitis foundation than other people in this room. Unless they're affected by it. That's how it works. That's why we can't. Like, the biggest problem with the world is lack of compassion. Same with cause.

47:13I understand that all of you think that there's a profound social impact of the arts. Other people don't care. And so taking that knowledge to know that people, that you can't convince. Right, focus on the high propensity. Correct. But then focus on the micro realities. An 83 year old widow on the Upper West Side who has a tremendous trust, right? Thinking about those kind of things. she's gonna be compelled with different storytelling than a young artist who's 24 who was born in Jamaica and immigrated here at five that's growing up in Queens is gonna think about The Shed. And both can play. This goes back to and.

47:55Right? And I remember my early meetings with The Shed, like really early, even with the board, before all of you were in place, I remember listening, I'm like, fuck, this is gonna be a problem. And not from like a bad place, but I just knew that they were trying to understand there was incredibly good intent of bringing diversity and diversity of arts and all this. It was really cool. And I could see they were struggling with how to make that connection point to where the dollars are and all these different things. And I was like, it's and, it's and, it's and. You can do both. But from a storytelling standpoint, you've got to matter to the Upper East and Upper West side as much as you have to matter to Brooklyn and the Lower West side.

48:34And those need different stories, which is why they need different restaurants, which is why they have different schools, which is why they have different parks. It's different. And it's and. Our lack of capacity for and is hurting us across the board. Yeah, I think we talked a little bit about dinner, I'll say. It's not living in the non-binary. That's right. Everybody, humans' desperation to make the world black and white when it's gray is devastating. I can promise you almost everyone's anxiety here on any level about anything is based on and and or.

49:15Kevin, do you think brand is more important in the not-for-profit world than the business world? The only reason why I say that is because the business world, we know who our competitors are. In a not-for-profit, you're competing for dollars, whether you're in arts or whether you're in art. Yeah, I mean, look, I think it's tough in the way you framed it up. Like, yes and no. I mean, like, Nike would be out of business if it didn't have a brand. Like, actually. You know, like, I understand what you're saying. I think in some ways it's pretty universal, meaning you just want as many people to not only know who you are, but be compelled to consume you.

49:56Right? Like, it's just very, like, I think about, like, Smartwater. I'm looking at that bottle, right? Like, that could be a purchase of convenience, right? It might have just been what was there. But where'd you buy that? It was here. Right, fair enough. Why'd you buy it? Yeah, exactly. But I think about that a lot, which is like, why? You know, sometimes it's price. Oftentimes it's convenience, whichever one was on the proper shelf, which is why brands pay for slotting fees. But a lot of times, in water, we've convinced everyone you've got to make a choice. I mean, even I was a kid when, like you for damn sure and definitely me, like we didn't even sell water.

50:38It was in the fucking sink. I remember when the Poland Spring Big Bottles first started, I'm like that's a fucking hustle. They convinced people to buy that shit? It's in the sink. I remember that. Now we're paying this shit? Eight dollars? Right? What a job brand can do. Brand matters everywhere. brand is how you charge eight bucks for coffee brand is how we convince people to drink something that is free for most people

51:08and brand is how someone decides to take a million dollars and give it to them versus somewhere else or to go to their show like think about the options in New York City I can go to the shed tonight and check out the exhibit or I can do I don't know 700 ,000 other things we're not in a small town right you know and so So it goes back to and. You have 10 platforms that matter from LinkedIn to YouTube, right? You have 13 to 12. The thing you have to do is create cohorts.

51:41Yeah, please, you've got time. Everybody needs to create cohorts. Yep, the consumer groups you're trying to get. For them, they're not going to get VaynerMedia. And they probably understand that. I don't think they're like trying to get droga five. They have a good sense. They have a good sense of the range. But I also bet that coastal agencies may act differently than middle of America agencies. Agencies that are run by 22 to 30 year olds are acting different than, right? So now you start making cohorts. So their cohort might be 22 to 30 year old Gary V. wannabes. I mean this, because it's a very good cohort if I was their business.

52:2122 to 30 year old Gary V. wannabes male Gary Vee wannabes who are running under 10 % agencies. That's a cohort. Next is 45 to 60 year old agency owners in middle America who've been doing it for 20 plus years. Now all of a sudden when they wake up in the morning and they have to make content, they're like, they look at their cohorts. You can imagine, they're gonna make a very different video. Literally the opening line could be like, hey, did you start your agency because of Gary Vee? You know, what we've seen from people, if they target people that follow Gary Vee, that's like a good idea. Well that video has to be very different to like, hey are you tired of the last 25 years not being able to hold on to, right?

53:08And maybe in that one it's a little more Midwest values than like maybe drop an F-bomb in the Gary Vee one. That's called cohorts. 83 year old trustee woman on the Upper West Side who's a target that tends to do really well for something like The Shed versus a 35-year-old minority in a Brooklyn townhouse because they made it themselves. Both could be in The Shed and could be impactful, need completely different content. Right? The end again. Which means your grid's gonna be fucked up. But if you want to protect the grid because you have a board that looks at the grid, then you run ads and it never shows up on the grid.

53:51We also talked about a team account on TikTok versus a Shed account. That's right. There's a lot of ways to do it. Or you create a general account on TikTok that you own called New York Arts that just happens to only do Shed content. Right? Like for me, I can make a, if my dad was rigid and didn't want me to do the right thing for him, I'd be like, cool. I wouldn't try to convince my dad. I'd tell Brandon, my best friend, to create a TikTok called Wines of New Jersey and just post there so my dad doesn't look at it. Luckily, I won that battle with my dad 35 years ago, but if that was the case, which it could be for all the people that have a family business where your mom and dad is about that grid life, if you're about my life, don't fret.

54:37Just create convenience stores of Indiana on TikTok and just pound your shit. Because now you don't have to have, right? Remember the old game, but this account has 100 ,000 followers on it that we build up, and I'd have to start at zero. Woe is me. Today, it doesn't matter. It's the individual post. Gives all of us a lot more flexibility. Did you get your question? I think my question is more general. Please. It's a lot about convincing. Yes. Yeah, it's been a theme. Yes, have conviction. How do you navigate that as like an entrepreneur or young professional when it feels like when you are young you have to convince, like you have to get people on your side?

55:22By understanding, well there's two things. As an entrepreneur it's easy because it's you in the market and you figure it out by realizing it's true. But I think you're more talking about being an employee. you know when you're young as an entrepreneur like you don't have anyone to have to commit as a matter of fact you could have a business and no one even know how old you actually are it's when you're an employee that to your point one first of all the youth has it better than any other youth when we were all growing up like the youth today has way more respect from their for elders in professional settings than we did.

56:04Because of all the technology shifts, you have leverage. People respect you on shit. You didn't even get talked to for a decade as an employee, right? Like it wasn't even like, right now I have people here for a year thinking like, when am I gonna be a VP? And I'm like, motherfucker, do you understand that you'd be getting coffee for the first, next four years of your life? You wouldn't even be able to talk in the old days. Like, you know what I mean? so A by recognizing you have it better which is really comforting like there's never been a generation that's had it better which has led to some of the friction because they have it so good two by being empathetic to them you know I think the way 20 year olds break through is through empathy they come in hot because they do know a lot of shit but boy do they not know a lot of shit I'm sitting here saying I don't know 13 big things and business and I'm like about that life and I have a lot of 20 year olds coming in thinking they got it and they don't.

57:05No one does. So having empathy for why your boss might think that but to your point, you're absolutely right. When you're an employee, you are often trying to convince but I feel the best form of convincing is conviction and conviction looks different than convincing. Convincing is when you're trying to figure out what the board will say yes to. Conviction is telling them the truth consistently until you break through.

57:33Right, agencies' biggest vulnerability by the way to you is being yes men and women to clients. The reason we win is we have conviction and we let the chips fall. The reason agencies lose is they say how high every time. They just want the money in the short term. Same with a board. The reason I can win with boards is I'd rather get fired, but I will respectfully answer the truth. Like for you to win, respectful conviction. I have, notice how I get things done. I respect that you care about the grid. I understand why you care about the grid. Now let's talk about the truth. The truth is it's an in-feed game.

58:20The truth is I can still do my thing ready. I get a no, I've referenced that as well. Oh, I can't? Then I'm gonna run ads that won't show up on the grid. Got it? Conviction versus like these fucking people don't get it. That's all that I hear from everyone. Right? That's where you go. They don't get it. Cool. The thing that I always do to inspire youngsters, I'm like if they don't get it, you go do it. But as long as you're taking that paycheck from it, you've gotta figure out how to have, if you're gonna convince, it's gonna come from conviction, not compromising convincing. Everybody, if you enjoyed this podcast, please go back and look at the prior episodes.

59:00They're loaded. I appreciate your attention and thanks for being part of this journey. See you later.