In short
The GaryVee Audio Experience: Transform Your Business with THESE Simple Marketing Tactics
Episode Overview In this episode, Gary Vaynerchuk shares insights on effective marketing strategies, particularly for small businesses. He discusses his personal journey in transforming a family-owned liquor store and emphasizes underused marketing tactics. Key topics include email marketing, Google Ads, social media strategies, authenticity, and the handling of online criticism.
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Key Themes and Concepts
- Marketing Misconceptions
- Self-Assessment: Gary asserts that many business owners are not effectively marketing their businesses.
- Opportunity: Despite the shortcomings, there is immense opportunity for those willing to adapt and learn contemporary marketing strategies.
- Personal Journey
- Background: Gary recounts his early days working in his father's liquor store, which laid the foundation for his entrepreneurial spirit.
- Growth Story: He took his family’s liquor store from $4 million to $50 million in revenue by leveraging innovative marketing techniques.
- Effective Marketing Strategies
- Website Launch: He emphasizes the importance of having an online presence, citing his early website launch as a crucial move.
- Email Marketing: Gary achieved 90% open rates on his email newsletters in the late '90s, showcasing the power of email marketing when it was still new.
- Google Ads: He highlights the cost-effectiveness of early Google Ads and how he capitalized on it to drive traffic and sales.
- Content Creation: Gary launched a wine show on YouTube, illustrating how creating valuable content can drive business without extensive ad spending.
- Social Media as a Tool
- Underpriced Attention: Gary argues that social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook provide underpriced opportunities for business growth.
- Adapting to Changes: He discusses the evolution of social media and how it can be leveraged for business growth, stressing the need for business owners to embrace these changes.
- Mindset Shifts
- Authenticity: Emphasizes the importance of being authentic and engaging with customers rather than just selling.
- Handling Criticism: Suggests that dealing with negative reviews should be approached with empathy and accountability rather than defensiveness.
- Actionable Insights
- Allocate Time for Learning: Gary urges business owners to dedicate time to learning how to effectively use social media.
- Experiment with Content: He encourages businesses to create content that resonates with their audience, even if it means taking risks.
- Amplifying Quality Content: After identifying what works organically, he suggests investing in paid promotions to extend the reach of successful posts.
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Key Takeaways
- Marketing is Evolving: The landscape of marketing is changing rapidly, and staying updated is crucial for business success.
- Invest in Your Digital Presence: Small investments in social media advertising can yield significant returns.
- Content Creation is Critical: Providing value through content will attract and retain customers.
- Embrace Feedback: Use both positive and negative feedback to improve your business practices.
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Conclusion This episode of The GaryVee Audio Experience is a treasure trove of practical marketing advice for small businesses. Gary Vaynerchuk’s insights, drawn from his personal experiences and successes, empower entrepreneurs to rethink their marketing strategies and leverage new platforms and technologies to drive growth. Whether you're a seasoned business owner or just starting, Gary's straightforward and actionable advice can help you transform your marketing approach.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This is the Gary V Audio Experience.
0:30talk, I really want to talk about how all of you are marketing and full disclosure, you collectively suck at it. And that is the exciting part also of why I'm here. And all jokes aside, what I'm excited about is the opportunity to be a contemporary marketer is enormous. If one chooses to understand where they should be spending their time and energy, the opportunity is remarkable. If you look at the sides here, I've written a lot of books, as you can tell. The latest one, which is the purple one on the top right next to the little pig there is called Day Trading Attention. This is basically the core of what I would like to talk to you about besides the fact that we may touch a little bit on managing teams, what happens when you build up somebody on your team and then they go leave and start their own business.
1:16Like all the shit that I know a lot of you are thinking about because I've been through this. Again, back to my story. My dad got a job as a stock boy in a liquor store for two bucks an hour, and that's how his American dream started. He eventually became the manager of that store, and because, and this will really resonate with people that came from humble beginnings, because my family spent no money on anything besides food, barely even clothes for eight years, my dad saved money and eventually bought a small liquor store that I started working in when I was 14 years old, stocking shelves. That was a tough day for me when I started working there, because my story is I am a purebred entrepreneur.
1:53at the age of six I started my first lemonade stand by the time I was seven I tricked all my friends into standing behind lemonade stands I don't know if any of you remember the youngsters here won't who's over 40 raise your hands all of you will remember this you remember when we were little there was something called big wheels it was like I used to ride my big wheels around Edison New Jersey picking up my cash from my lemonade stands like I was fucking Tony Soprano and then I sold baseball cards and actually made a lot of money when I was in fifth and sixth grade. I was making$500,$600 a weekend selling cards.
2:30And with inflation, that was like$5 ,000 a weekend. And I saved it all. So I don't know about you, but when you're 14 and you've got$5 ,000 in cash under your bed and you're not selling drugs, you're an entrepreneur. And so that was my life. I was making real money. And then my dad drags me in and now I've got to go through the journey of immigrant, oldest son born in the old country. So I'm making two bucks an hour. And what connects me to so many people in this room, I'm a yapper, as you're about to tell. My dad is an old school Russian dude that doesn't talk. So we lived 40 minutes from my family's liquor store.
3:08So the first day I ever worked in my life with my dad, this is the first time I'm working. Back to some of the things I know you're thinking about of like, what's my relationship with my employees, especially if they go to death. I get it. We drive 40 minutes. my dad doesn't say a word. A word. We pull up to the liquor store. He looks at me. I can see he's about to say something. I think this is gonna be like a profound thing. He looks me dead in the face in an Ivan Drago-like accent and says to me, keep an eye on the employees. They like this. That is literally how I started my career. My dad viewed the employees as potential enemies, potential competitors, things of that nature.
3:50So I grew up in that culture and I have a real take on that. We'll touch on that. I'm happy to go into that on Q &A. To take a step all the way back to what I want to talk to you about, my dad's business was a$3 million a year business doing 10 % gross profit. $300 ,000 in profit before expenses. It was a small family business. I took over operations in 1998 and a five-year window, I took that business from a$4 million business to a$50 million business. Not only did we not raise any capital, my dad was so old school Russian, we didn't even have a credit line. Everything we paid for, we paid with what we had.
4:27How did I do that? It wasn't because I'm a genius or I got lucky. It was because even back then in 1998, I understood what I'm desperate, desperate for all of you to understand. 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 will explode your business. For me in 1998, for my dad's one store liquor store, that was me actually launching a website to sell wine. At the time, there was literally three other liquor stores in the country of America that had websites. For, again, the over 40 year old crowd here, not for the youngsters.
5:07Like, I just, who's under 35? Raise your hands. A lot. Kids. I went through my entire life, through high school, without ever being on the internet once because it didn't fucking exist. It was a different world. It was a different world. And so for me, when that launched the internet, the first time I heard, you know 40 year olds, what I'm talking about. When I saw that, I'm like, this is something. And I spent time on it and I figured it out and I launched a website, winelibrary.com for my dad's liquor store, Shoppers Discount Liquors. That was the transition. it fine I had a website I outflanked everybody fine and I will tell you what the 20 24 year old version is for the people in this room whether you're trying to get the GCs and retro a building or trying to fix someone's windshield like there's a lot that should be going on in this room and I hope you hear it but I'm giving you the back context to how I did it how I watched everyone else did it and why it's so real it's crazy for me to stand here in 2024 since I've been talking about social media since 2007, it's crazy for me to literally be able to deliver the same line I did 17 years ago, which is social media is grossly underpriced, completely misunderstood, and can completely change your career.
6:25Completely. At the time, there was no social media, but there was internet. First, having a website was crazy. The second thing I did, which was profound at the time, was I started an email newsletter. Email was new. By show of hands, how many people here have done email marketing and are close to it and are close to it. Not that your company emails and someone else does it. You kind of know email marketing. Just raise your hands. I'm curious. Raise it high, please. I'm just trying to get a sense. Thank you. So for people that just raised your hands, you're gonna be blown away at what I'm about to say.
6:55In 1998, 1999, I had over 100 ,000 people on an email newsletter getting 90 % open rates. Just to give context for people that don't know, today if you're 25 to 30, you're 35, you're fucking phenomenal. the reason I got 90 % open rates in 1999 is nobody else was emailing yet and for all of you that you remember back in the 90s early 2000s the first time you were on email kids back in the day we would read every single email because we were accustomed to opening every piece of mail so we would literally look at it and at that point marketers hadn't ruined email yet with spam and bullshit the next thing that changed my career and I'm sure and I know a lot of you work on this but wait till you hear the numbers.
7:43Few years later, why was I able to build my dad's business from four to 50 million? Was crushed on website, fine. Then we killed on email and then something happened. Instead of everybody being on Yahoo, this new website called Google came out. The first time I ever saw Google, I said this has no chance, there's no ads on it. This is a bad business. Thank God I wasn't making prediction videos back then. Google then evolves and has an ad product, Google AdWords. How many people here do Google AdWords for their business? Raise your hands. A lot. By the way, the ones that don't, should, to some degree.
8:23Ads were available. I bought all the wine terms, the word wine, every wine you can think of, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir. I bought them all the first day of Google AdWords. They were five cents a click. It wasn't even 10 cents minimum back then. They were five cents a click. For months, I was roughly one of three advertisers in the wine category, and everybody searching wine was coming to me. Those were the three moves I did there to build my dad's business. In 2006, my career shifted. It's why I'm here today. Another new website came out. I looked at it for a couple hours, and I said, this is gonna be big.
9:00It was called YouTube. I then started making a wine show. Some of you might even see me for the first time from 2006 to 2011, sitting in my office, drinking wine. That show, which cost me nothing, and there was no advertising behind it, drove my dad's business even higher. It was the first time I understood that content without advertising spend could drive a business. A few months, yeah, really 15 months later, YouTube sells to Google for$2.7 billion in 2007. with inflation and the way the world works now it'll literally be like$100 billion today. That obviously, that headline shocked me. I read articles and I heard about the idea of angel investors.
9:49I promised myself that the last 10 years of my career I was right about e-commerce, I was right about email, I was right about AdWords, I was right about YouTube. I promised myself that the next time I was right instead of using it for my dad's business I'm going to invest in the actual company. The first three companies I invested in in 2007 were three little companies called Tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter. Needless to say, I'm rich.
10:23However, as great as those investments were, the way I used those platforms changed the course of my career and is currently, 17 years later, the currency of our society. 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. Your 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.
11:22Ideology 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. And 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.
12:10I'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. Every 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.
13:08There 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. It'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.
13:59It 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. I 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 to heal on the meniscus for seven hours.
14:51There 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. Raise your hands, raise them high. High, stand up actually, please appease me. Stand up if you're one of these people. Please don't be lazy, I saw a lot of hands. Stand up if you're a person. Don't, I know a lot of you are bullshitting me. Please stand up if you're a person. So these individuals, thank you so much, you can sit down.
15:23These 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.
16:04And 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 this 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.
16:33This 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 could 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.
17:18Everybody wants this to be easy when it's the single most important thing. Of course it's hard. I'm gonna say it 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.
18:06So 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.
18:26Ooh, it sounds like there's some Patriot fans in that room. Bandwagon boys. I'm very jealous. Uncomfortably jealous. The last 30 years have been fucking brutal. All right, let's break it down. How many people feel solid about their social media, creative and media? Let's go with solid, raise your hands. I'm gonna talk to this crew for the rest, just getting a sense. All right, for the people that just raised their hands, and this is now for everyone, but I'm gonna focus on this angle. Something that everyone needs to know is social media changed heavy, heavy in the last three years. For the first 15 years of social, It was email marketing.
19:10Get 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. It used to be called Musical.ly if you had a high school daughter.
19:48It 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 and ability. 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, just like you hear the shit about politics when they try to scare you of like, oh, the people are seeing this and the Russians are getting all that shit, it works for business too.
20:31So 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 and 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.
21:08If 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. And 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.
21:59Whether you read books or listen to podcasts or you're good at Google or you like ChatGPT, I don't know how you research. I 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 ChatGPT or perplexed. I don't care how you do it. I just want 10 hours so you know 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 going after B2B clients? Raise your hands. For all of you, actually that was high. One more time, a little higher.
22:37I'm just gonna bounce around here a little bit. 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. Every day. Again, the reason I started with my family business story is when I launched a website or did email or went to internet marketing, my father looked at me and said, who's gonna do this? I was like, I am. He's like, you work the register. I'm like, I'm gonna do it.
23:18When 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. 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?
24:24Has anybody here grown up in a way where they like working out and then they finally figured it out and it works for them now? Just raise your hand. I'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 are 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.
25:01Today, 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. They will market. 18-year-old Garys are growing up and 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.
25:34Yay.
25:38Post it. And then if God willing, for some reason you were funny or you wore 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 dollars 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 and I have to be at the Jets game. And everybody here just did that. Just made a video every day and posting it on social media, YouTube shorts, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, with some copy, your phone number, your email, and spent$50 amplifying it in a five or 10 mile radius.
26:29And 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. The ability to never have done it before and break out is finally here because what happened on TikTok is now everywhere.
27:12I'm sure a lot of you, whether you use social media for business or pleasure, realize that the algorithm's different now. Some of you, by the way, I get 25 DMs a day from people saying, oh Gary V, 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, you 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. So 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 pretty I'm getting pretty close to just going right into Q &A actually they asked me to shoot this cannon I feel like I should do that right how the hell do I fucking do this shit who wants one
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28:08this is a lot more fun than I thought Let me just try this one. Cannon. Here we go. There we go. Here we go. Here we go. Who wants this shit?
28:22Oh! That was a huge fucking drop. Huge fucking drop. Alright, that's it. Sorry, we're down. Sorry, they're just t-shirts. Alright, here we go. 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, sorry about this. This doesn't sound like what we thought happened.
29:06here's my email and my phone number. Please call us. We would love to solve it. 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.
29:49That'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.
30:31Raise 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, it'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.
31:13You 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 wanna 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. But 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. Hey everybody, actually, if you're a really hardcore listener and you know I never do this, I'm sorry to be jumping in the middle of the podcast, but the truth is, I'm like shitting the bed on this.
31:56Everybody else is getting people to review on Spotify and Apple and like the Vayner Nation does none of that because I've never asked. So if this podcast has ever meant anything to you, please go to Spotify or Apple right now and leave a review. By the way, even if you give me a one-star review because you think it's shit, I respect it. But just leave a review, an actual review. Four or five stars and the actual details of why. Yeah, that would mean something for me. So thanks. Now back to the podcast. My man, where are you from and what's your name? Hi, my name is Hamtadine. I'm from Niagara Falls, Canada.
32:26Pleasure. So my question specifically is about marketing. I'm in the window chain industry. Myself and my employees value our anonymity, and we just don't want to be in our videos. But what do you specifically suggest for us, AI voice, UGC, local influencers and stuff like that? We don't want to physically just be in front of the camera. We still want to get the information out. You answered your own question. you just literally gave me four of your five options what would you think works best would I start with and stuff like that they all could work local influencers could work right like I'm obsessed with influencer marketing so many of you could literally so let me give you a this is why I did this today I want to go into tactics if you want to figure out local influencers you go to Instagram you open the app you type in in the search your town your town the name of your town Edison, New Jersey enter When you get results, you'll notice that you can search by location.
33:27Because when you put in a town in Instagram search, you have the ability to search the town. When you click the town, it then shows you all the photos that were made in the town. So I do this for my dad's liquor store. I search Millburn, New Jersey, Short Hills, New Jersey. I hit enter, and then it shows me the top posts in the area. I click on them, and I'm like, oh, this must be the mom that everybody looks up to. She's got 4 ,000 fans in the area. I then DM her and say, do you want free wine? in exchange I want influencer post. Boom. Right? So again, you could do a lot of stuff and good news, obviously I've taken the path early on as a pioneer of being the face.
34:04There's many businesses way bigger than mine where the owner or leader or CEO is not public. Do I think it's an advantage? I do. I think people like doing business with people. Do I think that people who don't want to put themselves out there are making the right call? I sure do. I'm one of the most public figures. I have 50 million plus followers in the world, I never, how many people here follow me? Raise your hands, like actually follow me. Thank you. I think all of you know what I'm about to say. I never post my family. I never talk about my private. So the other thing for some of you that are holding off because you don't want to deal with that part, then don't post it.
34:39Or if you don't want to be in it at all, amazing. Not AI voice, your voice. Maybe you don't want to be public visually, but what about you filming the work that's being done, maybe showing your hand and talking? that would maybe even lead to intrigue. You're in control. There's a million ways to do it. You got it, my man. All right, we got one over here. Let's clap it up for him a little bit. Let's get some vibes going here. What's your name? Mark. Pleasure. Thank you for being here, Gary. Huge fan. Thank you, bro. Yes. So as a manufacturer, coming from a Fortune 100 company with a lot of resources, the customers and the folks in this room here are more strapped bandwidth time resources themselves.
35:25What suggestions or ideas or thoughts do you have around on the manufacturing side, you know, the amplification, the enablement, things that we can do to help our customers in this room, you know, grow their social presence? So let's hold on to the mic. Are you saying that you're interested in actually helping them grow their audience if they're your exclusive retailers? Essentially, yeah. I mean, helping them amplify to the car owner, right? I mean, the answer is money and strategy. Like, what can you do? You can give them$1 ,000 a month for media amplification of content that you approve. You could.
36:03How the hell? They like that. You know, another thing you can do is you can make content that they can green screen, right? So a lot of people here are gonna ask me in this line, but what do I make? But here's the good news. A lot of you consume social media content. So one of my favorite pieces of content, especially for a crew like this, is taking a headline from an article and then just talking over it. You guys know what I mean by green screen where people talk over articles in the back? You usually see it for politics or pop culture, but you could do it for your industry. So you could make articles, content with important headlines that you then email to all the people in this database.
36:45and tell them now green screen over this like this new technology. So there's a lot of ways you can bring value. It comes down to executing against that beautiful intent. Yeah, well if anybody's interested, let's talk. Well I'm interested in a free$1 ,000 a month. Thanks brother.
37:04Anyways, Carlos, the Tens of Squeegee and I have a question about what type of content marketing strategy do you recommend it to get in front of general contractors who may not be social media savvy or get on social media much? There's two ways I would think about that. First and foremost, for sure, LinkedIn's targeting against contractor job descriptions is real. Now, to your point, do I think general contractors, especially solo or small ones, are in LinkedIn all day? They're not, right? But you still gotta test it to see. Number two, by far my favorite move on this one, I'm gonna give you a very, very clever move that I think a lot of you should use.
37:48I think you should market to the children of the contractors. You, in a video, where it says, is your dad a general contractor? And the opening line is like, hey kids, is your dad a general contractor? He needs to know this, because he'll make more money and he'll buy you a new car. Got it? Shit like that. So, one of the things that people don't think enough about is marketing to someone who can pass it on to someone. Years ago, we were marketing V8, the drink, and the client told me, my company, VaynerMedia, mainly works with Pepsi and Chase, the biggest brands. We do Super Bowl commercials. If you remember, Mr.
38:26Peanut died, we did that. That's the kind of marketing we do, Mad Men shit. Years ago, we had a brief that said, we need to sell more V8 juice to 55-year-old men our pitch was we're gonna market the teenage girls on TikTok to convince their mom to buy V8 for their dad. And it crushed. And that was some crazy chest ninja shit. That's what I would do for you. Thank you. Thank you everyone for being here.
38:58How are you brother? What's your name? Thanks for being here. This is Mike. I'm from Nauvin, Florida. Amazing. Just got a couple questions. Please, please. We've hired three to four different social media companies to handle the worst because we're, we know how to be dangerous, but we don't know enough to really get to what we need to get to. Heard. We're on our fourth one now, and she doesn't push Facebook, she doesn't push Twitter, she's all about Google Ads, which basically, it seems like she's probably not the right person. Well, you know what's funny? To her credit, Google Ads is sales, not marketing.
39:35The reason she's pushing Google Ads is she doesn't want you to fire her like you did the last three and you can measure Google Ads. Right? So I actually think she's being smart. I think this is a game of and. I'm not telling anyone here to stop Google Ads. In fact, if you rewind my talk, I told a lot of people that didn't raise their hand to do Google Ads. But don't be twisted. Google Ads is not marketing. Google Ads is selling. Someone types in, I need to fix my windshield enter, you show up. That's not marketing, that's transacting. So I think, you know, she's not doing social media, she's doing digital media.
40:15If she was doing marketing, or you were, or if we were in the office right now, I would explain to you why YouTube Shorts would help your Google AdWords, because you know, if you're this deep in it, you know what your CAC is on your conversion on Google AdWords. you know that for every$219 you get a customer. I know that if you posted a video every day on YouTube Shorts in six months, that$219 would go down to$113. Gotcha. Cool. Cool?
40:49And let me finish that story. The reason it would go down to$113 is when people decide to buy from Google Ads, they buy on things they know. Sometimes it's just convenience, the first one. Sometimes it's a good headline, free shipping or whatever, but a lot of times it's because they know it. The more they know your business, the more they will convert. The more you put out brand, the more people know it. That's why I love being out in front because there's nothing bigger of a brand or more ownable than your face. Sir? Awesome, awesome. Chris from Detailers Roadmap, just wanna say you completely changed the way I did business.
41:25We made 301 and I think 5 ,000 list just this year, so we're on track to do eight figures purely from implementing what you had said. Sir, if you could just repeat that one time slowly. And go a little more detail because very frank, very frank, I just realized that I should sit down and go home because I know how humans work. I'm talking and people are listening. However, you're of this. You've been listening to it and you just said eight figures. That means$10 million plus. I have a funny, How many people here would like to do$10 million plus next year? Raise your hands. Great. So I have a funny feeling if I give you the floor with a little detail that you may be the single reason we get this accomplished, which is my goal today, which is that just like you just did for me, because you can imagine how good that makes me feel, I'm predominantly here to get emails or messages on social in three years from people in this room saying, you changed everything for me.
42:22This is epic. So break that down. What was it or how was it? Bring it down a little bit because this is going to be valuable. Yeah, yeah. So probably the instance, so just for background, we sell websites and SEO to PPF, tint, and detailing businesses. But specifically what Gary said that I had listened to and just didn't get through my thick head for a couple of years was get in front of a camera and just start being real and educated and serve people. Right, don't sell, right? Again, let me give you the single best thing you can do. Single best video because we're gonna now play a little bit here that a lot of you can do.
42:57If the video started with, hey, do you have a cracked windshield? Let me teach you how not to come to my company and charge you for it and fix it.
43:09That is the single best ad you can make. Yeah, so when we come, when someone comes to us for a website, we will ask them, why should we not do a website for you today? Yes. What is the reason you really need us? and we fix it without us being able to. Yes. And by the way, and fucking mean it. Like what I just told you wasn't, there was no, notice how it got real quiet? It was almost like everyone was waiting for like, and then what? Nothing. Yeah, I don't want to sell a website where they don't really need it. Period. It's real. So I was hoping you could talk to, please. These are my customers, right?
43:49Yes. And the thing that works for me, frankly, and obviously everything, you have a lot of great knowledge and what worked for me personally was just shutting up, getting on camera, and teaching. And I think what a lot of these people might have is they're not struggling of getting maybe on camera potentially, but maybe what to say. Correct. And I was wondering, you know, let's say - Let's talk about it. Everybody here would have an unlimited flow of employees for the rest of their career if they made a video every day teaching the craft. Literally teaching. Hey, I'm John. I've been in this business for 15 years.
44:24Here's my video. I'm gonna show you how to actually do it so you can start your own business. People, bro, this is church. Life is fucking church. Like you fucking do good shit for people, I have a good, good news for you. Good shit will happen for you. You will make more money. Yeah, let's clap that shit, that's exactly right.
44:50We're just two examples of it. There was something I told my sister, not to throw her on her bus because she's my favorite. She's three years younger than me. This was about seven years ago, so I'm 41 at the time. So after about 35 years of us jamming together, I finally just was on a call with her one day and I said, Liz, I was like, I got a new concept. Everything you think, just do the reverse. and we reference it a lot because it was obviously like a little tongue in cheek but there were certain things she did and it's like actually been meaningful for her life. I will tell you that this moment what I'm trying to tell you if you're getting the energy of the room right now the less selling you do and the more value you do in environments that you thought historically were selling environments will actually get you more money.
45:43Bring value in your content. it can be anything by the way there's people that do business with me because i'm a jets fan there's people that do business with me because i like wine there's people that do business with me because i fuck with sneakers like you don't have to just make glass content talk about golf talk about the local you here's a fucking brain twist if you review how many of you have like a really good deli in the general area that everybody fucks with it's like the best deli in the area Raise your hand. Raise it. I just want to see how many. For the 11 of you, make a video reviewing the fucking deli hoagie of choice, post it, and watch people in the general area become aware of you, click who you are, because they're like, yeah, I like that sandwich too.
46:28And like, oh, he does glass. I need a windshield replacement. A fucking hoagie video will lead to business. You want to hold the hoagie while you're tinting and say, what's wrong with this picture? A hundred percent. Thank you, Gary. You're welcome. Thank you, brother. Congrats.
46:46My man. I just wanted to ask your advice on what's the best way to deal with someone who trolls you online and spousalize about you and trashes your reputation. Great question. My friends, the only people that an active troll who's trashing you, trashes your reputation with is people you don't want to do business with anyway. Let me start and say it nice and slow for all the people that clapped for that question. Because I want to take fear out of your body. The only people that believe, a troll. Now, again, prepping for this, when I looked at some reviews, I got bad news. If 37 people are giving you one star, you suck.
47:36They're not a troll. They're right. You're a fucking troll. Fix your fucking business.
47:47That's number one. Number two, I know especially local business get overly fixated. They got like six fucking 68 fours and fives and then they get a one and they're all bent out of shape. They're not putting you out of business. I told you again. What do I do? Well, trolls especially for the first 15 years of my life, I don't think of them as trolls. I think of them as one of two people. One, they're actually right and they had bad experience and I need to fix it. How about we do that? We've gotten lazy and have labeled people trolls instead of being accountable and fixing our shit. That's number one.
48:20Or number two, they're a very sad person. They're hurting and they're taking it out on you and so they're trying to tear you down. In both scenarios, I'm approaching it with compassion, sympathy, empathy, and accountability. if people see that you're replying every time saying I'm here, this is my email I would like to fix this you've got to give me the details I've never heard about this this is not like us let's talk you will not be hurt so again I need people here to first be accountable deliver on their intent and if it's God forbid something egregious and the more you grow the more you'll get it honestly and this is just another thing for people that don't want to put themselves out there when people just can I break this down for you could you imagine living a life where you go around the internet and social media and try to talk shit about people it's a sad life I'm not mad at these people I feel bad for these people so I really think that's the answer we need to be more accountable first and foremost and second we need to be public in our responses to these negative reviews it will help your business tremendously.
49:36In fact, many people, the data's pretty clear to me on this, many people actually prefer to work with a business that has a couple of bad reviews and they responded to it than something that's fully five-starred because we've become so cynical that we don't even fucking believe all the five stars. I'm starting to think about putting one star in some of my own shit just to get it. I'm serious, I'm like Wine Library, I'm like, dad, your store sucks. I'm being serious here. There's like a real opportunity for us to be a little more human. So that's my answer. But I'm telling you, I watched your faces.
50:15A lot of you deep down know, how about being accountable? Maybe one of your employees did mess up. My employees, I mess up every day. Let alone my employees. Sometimes our companies make mistakes. Let's own them. That would be good for your business.
50:34Cool.
50:39Jackson.
50:43When you were talking about putting money into videos, I just want to know, do you let your videos grow organically first or do you put the money into it right away? I do all organic. Like I said earlier, Jackson, everything starts organic. I'm not guessing anymore like I did for the first 15 years of social. I'm not guessing if the creative's good. I'm letting the AI algorithms show me that it's good. The algorithm only works by showing people stuff that they think it will be good for, that they will like. Like if you go with my algorithm right now, it's just all fucking Jets football, a little bit of wine, a little bit of business.
51:19Like these things, you know, this shit has gotten good. You know this, all of you are like, oh fuck, I'm getting rid of fucking Facebook. They just showed a watch ad in front of me and I was just talking about a watch. It's listening to me. You guys are all fucking conspiracy theorists. It wasn't listening to you. You've been fucking liking and looking at watch content for the last fucking week on the platform. So, no, I do everything now. The best practices of the last two, three years is everything's organic. Then if there's an over-indexing or virality, then it gets media like that gentleman with the linkers hat.
51:52Then I tweak it to make, I don't really do, for my world, I don't do much boosting, but for Wine Library I do. So we put out wine content. And if something does well, even though it might be a video teaching everybody here why stop drinking fucking Santa Margarita Pinot Grigio, it's garbage, and here's a better Pinot Grigio, but we may add copy to make more business sales after it does well as organic brand. Got it? Thank you. That's been a big shift, you know what I mean, Jackson? Because, Jackson, the other thing, just so you know, is, as you know, best performance marketing pre-IOS 14.5, they changed the targeting capabilities.
52:28so now the all variant testing of like five different things seeing which one has the best that changed so now building on brand it just will really work you got it brother let's go back there thank you I apologize I'm so sorry bro I have to run thank you Mike look on some real shit thank you thank you
From the publisher
In this episode, I dive into the strategies and mindset shifts that can transform how you approach marketing, especially for small businesses. I share the story of how I helped scale a small family liquor store from $4 million to $50 million, focusing on practical, underpriced methods like email marketing, early Google Ads, and leveraging social media platforms. Along the way, I also discuss the importance of authenticity, how to deal with trolls and reviews, and why your subjective opinions about platforms like TikTok don’t matter if you want to grow your business. Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting out, this episode is packed with actionable insights to level up your marketing game.