Tips to Grow Your Business in the Age of AI and TikTok | Interview with Forbes Maggie McGrath

0:00Can we start at the beginning? What sparked your entrepreneurial drive? Probably DNA. You know, the truth is it was so early. It's almost hard for me to recall a time in my life where it wasn't a foundational currency, a backdrop. I think about Wonder Years, the TV show, and, like, talks about, like, music and the 60s being a backdrop of Kevin Arnold's life. Entrepreneurship was the backdrop. You know, basically as soon as I moved to Edison, New Jersey in August of 1982, I was born in the Soviet Union. I came to the U.S. when I was three, four. We lived in Queens for a couple years and then Dover, New Jersey for a year.

0:42But then we moved to Edison, which is where I grew up. And that was August of 82, right before school started, first grade. pretty much at that point meeting friends in the neighborhood you know shoveling snow you know when it snowed and we had a snow day washing cars lemonade stands seven eight nine ten years old literally just as I was rolling into this interview I was doing a podcast with Dr. Beckett, who invented the Beckett baseball card guide. This was the price guide, the monthly price guide that dominated the 80s and 90s around trading cards. That was my Bible at 11 years old. So I went from lemonade stands and shoveling snow and those kind of things to baseball cards.

1:38And then I went from baseball cards to working my father's liquor store and becoming weirdly obsessed with building a huge business for my dad and mom, which I feel very proud of. And so it's always been there. Even I was a poor student for probably many different reasons, but at the top of the list was, I just could not think about, it was pure obsession. I would sit in third or fourth grade class and think about how I was going to sell sports cards to my classmates at lunchtime. And like, what were they going to, what was Brian Chen or Tyler Bunting gonna react to her oh this kid's wearing a Cincinnati Reds hat today I'm gonna sell him a Pete Rose after school and and it was just it was really really really ingrained um and so I would say there was no spark I think you know November 14th 1975 the moment I was born the spark was there and and I'm very grateful that you know something that was naturally in me is something I enjoy so deeply.

2:42You mentioned poor grades. I heard you give a keynote to some local high schoolers where you actually told them, I'm paraphrasing, but don't worry about your grades. A bad grade is not the end of the world. How mad were the teachers at you after that? You know, it's funny. 10 or 12 years ago, I started talking a lot about grades in college. And I would get substantial hate emails from parents, you know, from teachers, from educators. And I always tried to refine and tighten my message. I wanted people to understand that I believe education is the foundation of like life. But the system that's in place currently and has been in place for a while works for many, which is amazing.

3:26But it does not work for many. And I think that is a worthwhile debate. So I would say to you, that one, far less, because it's 15 years removed from where we were. 15 years ago, I would have never been invited. And I might have been taken off stage if I was too aggressive. Today, I think a lot of educators in the school system are looking for voices to round out. and they do have a lot of children who overstress and get into very bad mental places over a term paper or an acceptance letter into a college. And I think any grownup should care enough about a child to tell them the truth, which is there is no correlation to being a profoundly great student and having a happy life.

4:16A successful life is even laughable. I like the concept that we are not aware that many many people have been financially successful who have not gone to an ivy league school and got great grades that should have never even been a conversation I think the deeper conversation is not financial success it's are you a happy grown-up and I think everybody who's watching this or listening right now knows there's no correlation to getting good grades in school and having a happy life and I think it's an important message. And I'm happy of where I am on this journey. It was very tough for me. I took a lot of lumps reputationally, business opportunities.

4:53People were very emotional about the college and grades thing 15 years ago. I think we're more around, by the way, plenty of people are about the DME just on this right now. There's still people really holding on. But this is not about being educated. This is about a system in place that has strengths and weaknesses like any system. and I think it's worth debating and rounding out. And most of all, if you love your child, you should have a well-rounded conversation. You talk about how much has changed in 15 years. It's a nice segue to your most recent book, Day Trading Attention, came out last year.

5:28And you write in the beginning that in 2013, it's not quite 15 years ago, but you wrote Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World. It was a guide on how to communicate on the social platforms of the day, Given how much the advertising landscape has changed in the 10 years that have since passed, I figured it was time for an updated version. What has changed in 10 years could be its own college thesis. But I guess my question to you right now is what has been the most important strategy for you in shifting your approach in growing online communities and your brand from 15 years ago to today?

6:06Humility. You know, it's probably one of my least obvious attributes when I do interviews and communicate. I'm an aggressive, you know, convicted communicator. But the reality is, is that to really win with the consumer, you have to have a level of relationship with it, with them, with the collective that is grounded in a astonishing level of humility and non-transactional DNA. I would argue that most people struggle in business and marketing because they are overly emotional about how they make their money today. Overly emotional about how they make their money today. Why do you say that? The CMO Summit, which you put on a great one.

6:51Seth's incredible. When I'm in those meetings with those CMOs, when I talk about TikTok live shopping or I talk about influencer marketing, TikTok live shopping. If you talk to a retailer who's got 400 leases around the country and all their cogs are caught up and in stores and fixtures and employees, me pontificating that in a studio like this, you can sell just as much stuff as your store in Midtown right now. with all those costs, you struggle to go there because we've made the financial commitment there and we're going to be judged every 90 days because we're a big company, either publicly or in a PE environment.

7:36And so you start to say no, not because you're not intellectually strong enough to know that it's happening. It's just that you're emotionally and actually tied up into how you're making your economics now. When I talk about influencers six, seven, 10 years ago are coming. Well, if you just paid Tiger Woods$20 million a year to wear your watch, the concept of like, hey, these kids online can do more for you for hundreds of thousands of dollars doesn't sit well. You're locked into a three-year$60 million deal. So if you ask me why things have worked for me or what has been the go-to, it's never fight the market.

8:18If the truth is that consumers are now enjoying social or influencers or live shopping, or here's a good one that's going to really bother everyone, AI influencers. If it hurts your feelings as a human, you're against the concept of AI humans on the internet, people that are not real, that are computer generated. If that's your ideology, you're allowed. But if the consumer is consuming that content and doesn't care if it's a real-life human or an AI-generated human that's communicating to them about a bottle of water or a dress or a blouse or a hat, you're going to lose that game. The customer is undefeated.

9:01I was not going to ask you this till the end, but your book is dedicated, quote, to the 1 % that make consumer-centric decisions versus the 99 % that make decisions based on boardroom politics, which seems to tie in to what you were just saying. You really believe that most entrepreneurs are making decisions based on boardroom politics and that 90-day cycle that you just referenced. No, I don't believe most entrepreneurs are. Entrepreneurs have no choice. They have to be consumer-centric or they're out of business pretty quickly. I believe most executives are. Interesting. So that's your message to corporate America.

9:35Yeah. And by the way, I don't say it from a place of audacity or disdain. I actually come from a heavy place of empathy. You know, if you're making$613 ,000 a year in stock options in a big corporation and you have, you have, you know, you know, your mortgage to pay and your life is run by your income to go into a boardroom and throw a bomb in there and say, we're doing everything wrong. That's politically vulnerable. So I understand how people and why people do what they do. But my point has always been, while I've been in Madison Avenue the last 15 years with all these CEOs, CMOs, board members, CFOs, is I understand why you do it, but it doesn't mean that it's right.

10:24And there's a reason that there's so much decline, especially you look at the CPG space. They used to have substantial moats. If you were a small entrepreneur, you couldn't get into Walmart. You couldn't get into Sephora and Ulta. You couldn't get into CVS or Wegmans. You also didn't have enough money to run television spots. That's all been flipped with Shopify and Amazon and with the retailers needing younger consumers. So now they're taking their shopper marketing dollars from big companies and they're giving it to little companies to come into their stores. Small brands have one TikTok that goes viral that outsells in product what a Fortune 500 competitor there is spends millions of dollars in television investment.

11:11We have a very big day of reckoning going on right now because attention has shifted to the mobile device and to social networks and distribution has shifted to Amazon 3PLs, to Shopify opportunities. You know, you don't need to win at Walmart to build a big business. You need to win at Walmart and Target to get to that next tier. But you can get to$100 million in revenue today without ever stepping yourself into Arkansas or Minnesota. That is unprecedented in the history of consumer packaged goods. And that's just the CBG space. This goes on and on and on. And so look what Melanie did with Canva to Adobe.

11:55She couldn't have done that 30 years ago without the Internet being where it is now. She wouldn't have had the money to go to the trade shows in Las Vegas and buy a booth for$100 ,000 to court corporate clients. It's changed. When you talk about attention, you called your book Day Trading Attention. And obviously it's a whole book, so I don't want to give away the whole book. It's okay. You can. But what is the thesis? What does it mean to day trade attention? From a marketing lens, this will probably land with anyone who's from marketing or knows a little bit about it. We used to spend months and months and months to plan our campaign.

12:36You know, the way, you know, again, if you ever watched Mad Men or if you know somebody in the industry or if you're in it, you get a brief. You work on it for months to think from strategy. Then creative tries to crack the idea. Then you got to sell it to the client. Then they say yes. Then it has to go to a production shoot. Then that takes time. Then finally then, nine months later, this is happening today. There are brands who will spend millions of dollars to take nine months to make a 30-second television commercial. Do you know how insane that is? I'm trying not to laugh because I know a lot of people make money that way, but the world is moving faster than that.

13:17I mean, hundreds of thousands, millions, and then hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. And then they have to spend millions of dollars to amplify that 30-second commercial. My thesis, my argument is that is dinosaur behavior. On the record, I wish it still existed. Very few humans were built to dominate the 1960s, 70s, Madison Avenue landscape more than me. I would have crushed. I would have been in Midtown with a cocktail. I would have been charming, gift of gab. I would have had good ideas. I would have cared. It would have gone great. It would have gone great. We would have built a huge firm.

14:02It just doesn't exist. I wish it did. What we do at VaynerMedia, what day trading attention is about, is harder. than coming up with a slogan and making a 30-second video. But the argument is it's moving that fast, that today, as we sit here right now, every Fortune 5000 company should have already posted three, six, 11 pictures or videos across the seven social networks and watch the organic AI-driven algorithms reach the audience based on the creative value and then analyze the quant and qual data of that success or failure to make another decision to put out another piece of content later today.

14:52Three, six, or seven pictures? I believe that they're - Per social, so that's three on Instagram? No, I would say overall. I'm trying to be empathetic here. The number's gonna be far greater. And with AI coming, these numbers are gonna be, I'm going to watch these. I'm going to make fun of myself about that quote in 24 months. And by the way, Gary Vee, my personal brand, this morning has already put out 12 to 15 pieces of content. Across all the social media platforms. For everybody who's listening, from LinkedIn to Facebook to Snapchat Spotlight to TikTok to X Twitter to YouTube Shorts, every one of these platforms now is very similar.

15:30Facebook proper, Facebook proper, not Instagram. One could argue is the most important platform right this second because of how much attention is actually on it and how many people have forgotten about it because they've moved on to TikTok and Instagram. So you have the best marketers, at least the contemporary young ones or even old ones that get it, putting all their energy on TikTok and Instagram. Meanwhile, back to day trading, Facebook's sitting here with an ungodly amount of attention, especially if you're targeting 45 to 80 year olds, oh, by the way, they have plenty of money. And brands are not posting in there organically.

16:09The other thing that's crazy is in ad land, you always used to make something knowing you were gonna spend media dollars to amplify it to hide if it was bad. I've been saying lately, for 70 years, working media dollars, the money you would pay the print, Forbes to put a full page in the magazine 20 years ago, a billboard outside, a radio station, a television, working media dollars, the media dollars, not the creative. That was for 70 years. Those were used to hide bad creative. Now, when you put out all your advertising on the organic algorithms, when something does remarkable, that's when you should put media dollars behind it because you've gotten validation that people think it's good.

16:53So now I believe the job of working media dollars is to amplify good creative. We've gone from good money, big money, hiding bad creative to now big money, amplifying good creative. The Fortune 5000 brands that most attack that first will win. So that's what you mean when in day trading attention you say use data to inform content creation and optimize ad spending. So basically see what goes viral. I would argue or over index, right? Viral is like a whole different animal in itself. if you and I started a T brand and our first 50 posts got 80 views because we're new and our 81st post got 8 ,000 views we need to take note of that.

17:41For me 8 ,000 views is a devastating moment for a brand that's just starting with 50 views 8 ,000 is a great win. I was there too. We're all starting at zero. So over indexing but if you have virality yes you should bet the farm on it. But you mentioned a few minutes ago the number of social media platforms and how you should be on all of them. I personally am losing track, and I lose the energy to keep up on Threads and Blue Sky and Instagram, and I've ignored Facebook. I'm not on TikTok. That's Maggie personally, like Maggie and my personal life. And Maggie's allowed. Maggie, the person, is allowed.

18:18But for entrepreneurs and for yourself, how do you keep track and stay on top of all the new platforms emerging? Because one of your other pieces of advice is prioritize early adoption of new platforms and features, which that in and of itself is a job to say nothing of building a business. By knowing I have no choice.

18:39Like if I want to be successful, I need to be able to convey my messages. And success comes in a lot of forms. I have a lot of selfish and a lot of selfless energy inside my body. I desperately want to achieve entrepreneurial success. I love building the things I'm building. I want VaynerMedia to be huge. I want VaynerSports to be huge. I want VFriends to be huge. I want WineText to be huge. But I also have an incredible gift in that I was mothered so damn well. Parented. Big shout out to Sasha, too. I'm not leaving you hanging dead. I was parented so well that there's a lot of things I want to say.

19:17And if I want to reach 8 billion people, I need to be everywhere. And so I think if you're a business, if you're Coca-Cola, you have no choice. You're trying to sell Coke to everyone. If you're a politician, you're trying to win your election. If you're anybody who wants to achieve something commercially, you have no choice. I would argue understanding social networks and how they work for a business is now right on par to understanding how to balance your checkbook. It is oxygen to me. I could not comprehend having the naivete to walk around Earth and not realize that if my business is not good at social, I am vulnerable for decline.

20:02My business is not good with social. I am vulnerable to decline. That's an important message. I do not believe that people have grasped how much of the consumer's attention actually sits on these seven platforms. when you take them you add the streaming service you know the Netflix the Hulu's you add some of the iconic print magazines that have been able to segue like yourselves to online digital you're not leaving much left like after YouTube Twitter Facebook Instagram TikTok Snapchat LinkedIn and Hulu, Netflix, do you know how little cable television is being consumed? I mean, do you know that none of the four of us right now can name five active sitcoms on network television?

20:56I don't know if I can name one. I'm really not kidding. Think about it, Mac. Give me this last fall's new series. It's impossible. And I don't know if you've noticed, but the newspaper keeps getting thinner and thinner and thinner and more and more expensive. Outdoor billboards. Have you watched how humans walk or sit in cars? We're all on our phone. I don't know what else to say. And again, I need everybody to hear this. I'm not happy about this. I'm also not sad. I don't think this is like catastrophe. Like, worlds change. Like, you've seen that photo, right? When everyone's like, the world's ruined.

21:35We're all on our phones in the subway. and then they show a picture of everybody reading the newspaper in the subway in the 30s. Nothing changes, everything changes. But yes, I will say this nice and slow, given the magnitude of the audience that listens to this audio. Whether you're B2B, which is LinkedIn, or you're B2C, which is the rest of them. If your business is not strong, forget about on, strong on social, every quarter is about to get worse. Switching gears a little bit. Please. You mentioned everyone's watching their phones, everyone's online, but you have trading cards. Yes. The Topps V, I want to get this straight, Topps V Friends Chrome trading cards.

22:20And you mentioned baseball cards earlier. I imagine there's a tie between that love at 11 and V cards. But how does this fit into your overall business strategy? Because it's returning to the physical. It's returning to the real world. Well, let me build on that. while I just made that whole rant on social, I would argue one of my favorite businesses to invest in and be involved in right now is experiential. This is not about or. This is about and. The problem with traditional marketing is it's overpriced. It's back to day trading attention. Let me be very clear. I would buy tomorrow for every one of my clients and for my businesses, vFriends, WineText, Gary Vee, the brand.

23:02I would buy commercials on network and cable television. I would buy full page ads in print. I would buy radio, terrestrial radio live reads. I would buy direct mail. I would buy all of them if they actually slashed their prices by 90 % to make it valuable to the actual reality of how much attention those things have. Got it? So everything I just mentioned, as we sat here for the last 15 minutes, plenty of people did consume a commercial on network television during the Today Show or something. Many people are right now across this country having a coffee, reading their local newspaper. The pricing's off.

23:45So I don't believe we've gone completely digital. In fact, I actually think experiential, like concerts and festivals are growing because we need a little bit of detox from digital. and you know this, we also want to take the photos at these places for digital. People literally go to events to take a photo to post on Instagram at scale. Anyway, back to VFriends. I'm going to add to this. I hope this brings some value to someone. One could argue in the next decade with the explosion of AI that the only safe business is intellectual property. one could argue. Obviously, there'll be many others. Four years ago, I decided to launch my own intellectual property, inspired by Pokemon and Marvel and Disney and ultimately really Sesame Street.

24:41As I've been on my journey, I've realized back to that selfish, selfless energy, Jim Henson really does it for me. I feel like he really was very entrepreneurial and wanted to win, but he had a lot of soul. There was a lot of good in there. I really resonate with that. So anyway, VFriends was born on a NFT project, blockchain. Remember that little exciting moment? Which by the way, on the record, that is gonna be fun to watch. I'm sure some of you in this room, you guys are youngsters, you may not know this, but in 2000, all the internet stocks collapsed in April of 2000. And literally, major magazines and newspapers, including this one, wrote versions of the internet was a fad.

25:27I'm sure we could find that Forbes article. I'm sure. And then obviously by 2004, it was quote unquote back. Same will happen with NFTs. There was too much greed, just like on internet stocks, but non-fungible tokens on the blockchain, in fact, is one of the most important innovations that sit today because I'm sure it's not lost on anybody who's listening. you know deep fakes no longer being able to trust video is a crisis in our society for the last hundred years video proof has actually been the judge and jury of our society now there will be literally millions of videos of me in the next decade saying things i never said because ai deep fakes are that good and nobody will be able to tell the difference the blockchain actually is one of the counters to that and i don't want to get on a tangent we'll talk about that another day.

26:17But anyway, VFriends is a big deal for me. In fact, if I had to bet on the most substantial business I will build in my life, it's going to be VFriends. Interesting. The trading cards is a very big deal. Tops is the iconic trading card company. Even people that don't collect have heard of it. They've only done intellectual property deals with Disney. So Star Wars, Marvel Disney. This puts V friends in amazing, amazing company, way too premature, but the tops Chrome is the iconic brand. I want kids around the country to buy a pack of cards and fall in love with my characters. They will discover it on YouTube kids.

26:58We have cartoons. They will discover it. We have kids books with Harper Collins. We do ungodly amounts of things on digital every day. We're on whatnot and Tik TOK shop selling collectibles on live social shopping, but I believe trading cards and comic books are incredibly imperative for me to have a prayer to pull off my ambitions. And that's why I'm so excited about it. Ambitions to reach 8 billion people. That's right. I was going to ask if the cards were a way of building community in a different way, but what you just described sounded like an IP play. It's fully an IP play. I don't think an IP can be successful without community.

27:35Let's think about it. Right. Harry Potter. Right. All those kids and grownups dressing up as Harry Potter to go to the Midtown execution or to a new film if they came out with one, that's community. All those nerds that go to the Javits Center or go to San Diego for Comic-Con, by the way, back to sports. You diehard Philly fans, us Nick fans, what was I in last night at Madison Square Garden? I was there with a community of 30 ,000 other maniacs that desperately wanted us to win a game and all left as if someone in our family had died. That's true community. And if you go to Whatnot and you go type in VFriends and you watch 1 ,500, 300 people watching us live in the middle of the day, as we open up trading cards, as we read comic books, as we show off our little new pins, you'll realize what community is about.

28:32For me, what's crazy is I was so affected by my childhood and I grew up right in the 80s. Garbage Pail Kids, Cabbage Patch Kids, My Little Pony, Strawberry Shortcake, Transformers, G.I. Joe, Max Hedrum, Alf, the Smurfs. I was being bombarded with intellectual property. He-Man, much that was commercially driven, right? Make a cartoon to sell toys. I was an entrepreneur. I love pop culture. This was almost written in hindsight. I wouldn't have been able to predict it 15 years ago, but I'd always thought about potentially buying Gumby or Scooby-Doo. I always thought about buying one day later in my career some IP and refurbishing it.