Why Brand is the Single Most Important Thing

26:02So for you to create a third-party marketplace, like an infrastructure to be a WordPress, on the e-commerce, in Magento, you're going into shark territory, which you could win within a small niche, but you have to make sure that you guys have the DNA to actually, like, as long as you, like, notice, I'm jumping in because I want to make sure you realize that that's not, like, everything so far has been, like, a pass away, like, that is a huge, like, meaning, not to undermine, it's like, it's doable. Yours is doable if you're gonna, but you're gonna build a billion dollar business. That's like a real big thing.

26:40And I think people throw around this theory very nonchalantly in the business world. Every day I get a, oh, we're gonna be a marketplace. I'm like, there's like six marketplaces. Like, you know, it's like Yahoo lost being a marketplace. Like, you know, like, so yes, I just wanna make sure that you understand. Like I'm giving you a reaction to make sure you understand how grand that is. Yes, I do. I do. I actually started website. I believe you. Whatever your thing, it could be anything. Canva helps you make that thing a thing. Canva is a simple online tool thing. It's a way to design with our magic AI tool things.

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28:04Learn more at windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th. Terms at aka.ms slash college pc. I'm sure. Monstrous in terms of the money and the time and the people. At this time, when it's never gonna be easier or less friction to do short-term sales through the Shopify and Amazon ecosystem, it's not about, like, it's not the macro thesis, it's the thesis at this moment in the emergence of those two specific platforms that gives me just pause to think about it. But go ahead. Yeah, I mean, my worry is if we stay with what we're doing at some point, I don't know how relevant what we're doing today on e-comm is gonna be.

28:46Speak to me about that. I just wanna make sure I'm following along. You mean how relevant that one brand will be? Yes. So look, I mean, it's not a very complicated thing. To your point, you just have to understand if you're looking to become a platform or a product. Are you gonna be Smartwater? Are you gonna be, it's not Walmart, but it's a QVC, right? They're just two very different things. I will say this, I believe that we're walking, it's ironic, I'm gonna take a little bit of a different stance, I think we're walking into the golden era of the capability of direct to consumer brands at scale.

29:25You're gonna be competing, but the opportunity to have the leverage. I mean, think about the nature of being a product. You were always at the mercy of your distribution. You're not going to be. And so that's exciting. It's now how good is the product and how good are you at building a brand around a product versus how good are you at building a platform and building a brand about the platform. I think that becomes the debate. But I wouldn't run away from being a brand because a lot more brands are coming. I would try to see, I see the positive in DTC more so than the negative. I really do. Because the ability to compete against everybody else's DTC is I think more of a fair fight than competing with the hope that Sephora carries you.

30:14There was major toll booths that kept all the margin. The retailers have won the leverage game over the last decade. So I think that's the question. I wouldn't, I'm excited about DTC. I just think you have to be the best olive oil. Let me rephrase. I think the long tail of DTC is more fruitful than the long tail of marketplace. Got it. See where I'm going? I do. That's my point of view on it. And I'm spending a lot of time in that world. A lot. I think to piggyback on that, for us we've got 10 % of our sales, about 500 million in sales. 10 % comes from product and then 90 % from service, right?

30:57But the 10 % more profitable, bigger margin for us, we have a site around haircuttery.com and we're trying to, how do we build that name? And the thought was, do you build a different site that allows you to attract more eyeballs to it to sell our product off of versus haircuttery.com? Or you could just, what is the brand called? What about building? We do that, that's correct. But we sell, our concern is the 10 % we sell right now, you can buy anything from Amazon, you can buy from the website of Paul Mitchell, you can go to Amazon and buy it. Our concern is are we gonna lose that 10 %? You're gonna lose it if you're not thoughtful about it.

31:35But if your site has an added layer of value, like a club that creates content or access, I think you should immediately start creating a weekly, monthly, yearly special SKU only available in your world. So like if you're formulating new products, you know, one of the things I'm trying to push a lot of my CPG brands is to create a super premium version. So like I'm literally trying to sell like$100 ketchup that only comes out during the holidays. You can only buy on their.com. So I think what's amazing is, I think, this is fun, my natural DNA is always to look at the offense of a scenario versus a defense.

32:21Your defensive point of view is absolutely correct. there's far less friction to buy from Amazon when you're buying your deodorant and your you know peaches and then throw yours in but you actually fucking own the product so your ability to create a club so if you're buying your stuff you're in the club and I have no idea what you want to add on to that because you have one more time and I'm trying to remember so you got this product then you have salons right? we do we sell them in salons and then our products also sell sold on Amazon right and then you have your own salons which we sell about 6 million worth of this product.

32:55But the salons are yours? Yes. I mean, look, in theory, you could tell the end consumer that they get a 5 % discount on their salon work if they buy the product on your site. You have all the advantages. I'm a big fan of fucking Amazon before it fucks you. That's what I did with Facebook. Facebook didn't fuck me. Everyone's like, Facebook, I built myself off of it. You have the leverage. You can use Amazon to get people into your ecosystem and then remarket to them as the brand by printing something on the back of the fucking bottle that says join club, see, like, so I think it's a concept of, I don't think it's as black and white as the convenience of the lack of friction of shipping or cost.

33:41I think it's what are you gonna do to the product and what are you gonna layer as bells and whistles, added value, that forces everybody, I actually genuinely believe that the smartest brands are gonna fuck Amazon not the other way around if they're very thoughtful to some of the stuff I just referred to. When you build added value around buying it from you at the same price, you win. Now you can use Amazon as your gateway drug to acquisition. That's what I would do. Okay. Well, thank you. Appreciate it. Another question on your head is we're gonna talk later on on the agenda about culture. We have a very strong intentional culture and founded business by Dennis Ratner and he's really created that culture which we've got a lot of tenure in our business.

34:30But we're projecting it out over the next 10, 15, 20 years from a legacy perspective. How do we keep that culture and how do we actually make it stronger? So any recommendations on how you believe culture here, for example, what you're trying to do to create a legacy and what you'd recommend? You know, you've already kind of won. even if there's 98 % let alone 100 % truth behind your statement you've already won. The ambition for legacy already changes behavior. I think this is a big game of firing. I think the biggest challenge for people that look like me and sounds like what you guys have is do you have the stomach for short term financial pain by firing the most productive but people that don't actually bring value to the culture.

35:15It's a very simple game of like do you live your truth? It's really easy to maintain culture. Choose culture over money. I really believe it. I live it. I watch it. I see it in companies that I push it into if they're an investment of mine. I really think it's scary when something like that is so simple, but it's like religion. Do you follow it or don't you? Like, and where you choose to bend becomes the variable of how good the culture is. But culture's made up of the humans that are in it at the time. you know and like when there's lore like founder Rick Thompson or Susan Magoo she always whoever's the executive of running that you know whoever runs VaynerMedia when I go and buy Smartwater and become the CEO and that's what's gonna happen the next chapter of this company is I'm gonna buy something when the world melts and when I go run Mountain Dew or Stickers or Puma or whatever the fuck I buy I'm gonna be at the mercy of her or his capability to uphold what I believed in and so I think you make it clear that's why you know it's funny to think about America this way right like how we interpret the Bill of Rights or the Constitution becomes obviously very intriguing that's what becomes our culture but having it is already the starting point but I think it's a one I believe culture is one big game of do you have the ability to fire the most productive worst person

36:46I really believe in that

36:50yeah but the way I think I get there is by that in between move I really do I really think the reason I built Vayner and the reason it's built this way and unique in its way is I think I built something that like if I truly bought Smart Water tomorrow like it would be a much bigger company after four years based on all the things we've done so I'd like to get back to the concept we were talking about, about company brand versus personal brand. Please. Right now, our social media content is kind of focusing on both. We've got our company brand that I focus on probably more than Ari's personal brand.

37:30And Ari really is the brand of the company. Makes sense. So my question is, my time is limited. I only have so much to put into it. Which one makes more sense to put more time into? Which one is doing better from your perspective? Are you doing it yourself on your own page at all? My own LinkedIn page you mean? Or wherever you guys are. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so yeah, gets correct off my own LinkedIn page. You know, what is always the word, I mean, when Harriet was like, I'm sure this is fun to have her in the room, like when you look, when you're in our industry as she is, and you look at Vayner from the outside, people believe the vulnerability is it's so much about me and not enough about Vayner.

38:10and there's real truth to that. If you're an executive at Smart Warner, you're like, am I getting a company? Is it Gary? These are the things you need to think about. At the same token, when you kind of start peeling away and you start realizing this is a company that doesn't have to win business through RFPs and you think about all the dollars, you start having a really, you have a more complicated debate. For me, for example, this is why I'm bringing this up. The thing I'm probably most proud of in the 10 years that I've run this company and built this company is my ability to trick the market of how big it is.

38:42My biggest fear was if anybody in the big boy and girl world of advertising understood how big what I was building was going to be, that they were going to focus on it. And I'd never competed against multi-billion dollar international companies starting from zero. That's a challenge. Because if one really understood me, they could just throw money at it. Literally, if I was the competitor of VaynerMedia, five years ago, I would have literally emailed every single person on LinkedIn that worked here and said, what's your salary? I will pay you three times more. And it would have been the right business decision.

39:19So I've purposely not built VaynerMedia's brand because I needed the market, my competitors, to underestimate it and continue to think it's Gary and a bunch of interns. Like, who is this charlatan? And like, this can't be real. That was our advantage. From the outside, it's too much about me, right? But what nobody knew from the inside is I have no clients. I've built a scalable company. You know, building up Gary, you would think, oh shit, every client's gonna want Gary. I don't talk to any of them. So I was able to successfully create me as a top of funnel awareness but then when it became a real meeting, she or he on the other side, the CMO, knew right away, I'm not your account person.

40:00I can be in the bat phone business. We can have lunch once a year but I'm the CEO and executive of this. I don't service your account. You're buying VaynerMedia. You're not buying Gary. That comes down to how he's running his business right now where you guys are at scale. Right? So I guess those are the questions. Are you servicing the business? Is it a vulnerability right now? Is it small enough where we can keep leaning into what is actually working? Do you do a good job once the customer comes into the funnel to realize it's not him? Or is it still him at this point which is super fine too?

40:30That's the right formula for that. Does that make sense? So to the extent, just to go that one step further, to the extent that it isn't me doing the servicing, where does that fall into the... It is not you doing the servicing? Okay. And it's very clear early in the funnel, like the conversation happens, right? That it's not gonna be, but I still do close almost all the new business. I get that, and so did I. Then I'd probably still, I would say this. If you are fortunate enough to have a face that has all the right personality traits, I'm sure, you know, Harriet's gonna continue. I'm not looking to suppress my people into the press.

41:05I just don't want anybody to know who the fuck we are. There's strategy to it. So I think if you still have all the right characteristics, I think if you're fortunate enough to have a founder, if she or he has good characteristics and it's not about ego and insecurity and all those weird things, then you ride that personal brand because it converts better. A human face converts better than a logo often. The struggle is also his time because he's the CEO and he's doing all these other things, his time is extremely limited. That's why I create a document, not create. Can I just... Yeah, you can bounce.

41:41You can bounce. We got time. So just the riff on that or we struggle a little bit there is sort of in the B2B world, right? So we're a small company, but a little over 40 people. The B2B world, some interesting parallels like our markets as we're looking for companies headquartered very nearby is a limited market, right? There's maybe like a thousand companies that could potentially be our clients locally. so we engage there but the people that we connect to are generally CFOs and CEOs who care very little about the detail of how we execute but care a lot about the outcomes that they get so I find that we struggle or I struggle to see the document versus create when I feel like a lot of the documentation isn't super interesting to them and wouldn't necessarily get them it makes a ton of sense so to that point I agree with you I don't think you should document and create which is why we created the model around the podcast or the show there's two ways to go and I think when you start inviting them, I mean, so you're saying it's literally just like the, nothing excites me more, and there's a couple here, than to having a regional business to do a show around because then you get to host a party.

42:42I like parties. I mean, literally, literally, you guys should literally have every business leader, CEO and CFO on your show. Once you host a party, you win. Like, you know, I've said it a lot and maybe you've caught on my content. I call this the high school party rule. If you're the kid in high school who's lucky enough that your parents travel on weekends and you're a C-level popular kid, the second you throw the junior year party at your house, you go from a C to an A-minus in popularity because you're letting the A-pluses make out at your house. So where do we figure out how to get what that good content is?

43:19Do a show where you interview businesses in the Hartford area. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, But Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18+.

43:51Literally, once you establish some macro show, whether you call it New England this or Hartford that create a macro framework for it and now you're emailing literally the people you want to do business with saying we're intrigued by your leadership we'd love to have you on the show versus emailing them saying we want your business. We're already doing that not at scale it's so obvious. Scale. Scale. I think to add another wrinkle to it is not only is it businesses it's manufacturers high tech manufacturers so it's even more niche love. It's even better. They don't get any fucking love. Like what fucking podcast wants them on their show?

44:27Nobody. No, no, really, this is really quite crazy. I know you know it. You're feeling it intuitively. Like imagine a world, you know, this played out extremely for me real quick just to bounce around a little bit. On the PureWow and 137 side, we have podcasts. We just launched a show called The CMO Podcast. I got Jim Stangle, who's like the former CMO of Procter & Gamble. He's like the legendary CMO to all the current CMOs because Procter was Procter. He's the host. and literally the CMOs of the biggest companies in the world are literally coming through our door every day to be on a show. Imagine an hour, you will get everybody to say yes that you've been dying to have a conversation with about a business if you say come to my office and sit with me for an hour and I'm gonna interview you about your leadership, your business, your thing, they're literally walking into your fucking company and if you really have the discipline to not sell and say nothing, nothing, inevitably she's gonna be on the way out or he's on the way out gonna say, what do you guys do here?

45:24I don't know. Oh, really? Actually, I fucking hate my people. Why don't you call up? I'm gonna put you in touch with Rick Thompson who runs our... 100%. 100%. No, easily. Yeah, no, it's... By the way, there's nothing easier than to be a host of a podcast. You ask eight basic questions. How'd you get into this? What's been going on? It's super crazy. It's challenging. Uh-huh. I know, it's super obvious and what's scary about super obvious is how well it works back to what I think about all the times. The reason I put out everything is I do not believe my ideas even though a lot of times they're early and well thought out historically are my special sauce.

46:02My execution is my special sauce. Right? Can I ask a question? So how did you scale the business so quickly? So one of the biggest challenges that we have is we've almost we've been successful so our marketing strategy we're doing a lot more digital now but it's been a lot of we call it one to many so you know they'll book me to go like to the connectica cpa association do a lot of like just educational content right zero about us all about think about how much if you film that and put on linkedin yeah totally yeah that's what we're starting to do so now the challenge we have is like we're almost overselling the capacity right and it's not like mcdonald's i just get a bigger fry later and i generate more fries right the getting the human capital ahead is a is a challenge people overthink hiring just hire it sounds scary I'm gonna hire a clown she or he's gonna suck and I'm gonna lose the client I'm like but you wouldn't have the client right and when you're willing to bleed if your ambition's high I always feel like I'm able to fix it's not the bleeding of the money although I mean clearly that's somewhat part of it no no but notice how my analogy wasn't the money it was the clients I think you're coming from a good I think most people come from a good place I do have a big fear around that of like breaking the brand and we have so much good street cred, there's that huge fear of fucking up that client.

47:23Bro, everything's fixable. Yeah, they're up ahead of it. Give them the money back. Money's not actually the thing. For me, I'm never scared because everything's fixable. I'll give you a year free service, I'll fucking let your son intern here, I'll do whatever the fuck, everything's fixable if you have that. This is why I talk so much about intent. This is why I talk about lack of fear, plus the biggest mistake a lot of people make is they make a call for the other person. Life's about alternatives. Like if the client's happy, the client's happy regardless of what you're subjective of like our quote, right?

47:57It's hiring. I don't overthink hiring. I try my best, I hire. People have so much ego in hiring. It's just this underlining like insecurity to be wrong. I love when I'm wrong. Guys, I mean this. Like you don't know me well enough to like, this is the truth. like there's a weird part of me I don't know if it's like it's probably a very flawed like sick part I get excited sometimes when I hire a very senior person and like a week later I'm like nope and I know that for the next 18 months because you know like right like right 18 months and that's like C-suite where like you just can't scare everybody that you're just fucking changing like your underwear you know what I mean but like do you know what that's happened to me twice a weekend I'm like, up, fucked it up.

48:46And then all the extra work I have to put in to disguise that and manage it. And manage, then four months later, the smartest people start saying, wait a minute, I think this person sucks and you gotta manage that. And then nine months later when the next level of smart people are like, I think this person sucks. And then you gotta, the game. So just lack of fear. Lack of fucking fear. And more importantly, no business, yeah, firing. And listen, I'm the worst. I'm a bleeding heart like you would not imagine. You're a piece of content where you talked about where you talked about sort of like, you know what?

49:19If you can't do it, just fucking just overpay them out. So we're just like letting somebody go right now. Best. I just feel horrible like she's got a bad situation. She's only been on for three months. I was like, just give her six months severance. Like whatever. I do it all the time, bro. Just get it. It's gonna make me feel better. Dude, at the end of the day, it's not about money out here. It's about like feeling good and happy. And like, I understand that my CFO's not happy with me, but that's what I need. I fucking fire people, give them a huge severance. and then I pay them on the side for two months.

49:43I do so much weird shit. I'm always like, I always think like, man, if somebody investigated me, they'd be like, oh, here's the fucking silver bullet. Why is he paying Rick on the side? Because I'm nice. Like, it's like super weird, but like, it's really, like, nobody would ever believe me. Like, if you played that on like 60 Minutes of somebody trying to get me, they'd be like, impossible. Is it literally just your DNA? Like, is there some like mental mnemonic, like, I know this is crazy kind of question, but it's like, you know what I mean, because we have sort of similar family backgrounds actually, you know, like Eastern European Jew, like immigrants at the right, and like so, you know, we just, first of all, education, education, education, so like when I went off like the lawyer track, my parents were like, oh my God, what's happening, you know?

50:25I got lucky, that's where I got really blessed, and I feel a huge sense of like guilt and gratitude. I can't believe my mom let me get away with D's and F's, where everybody else was like, you're going to fucking Harvard. Like I got really hit the lotto on that one. But that perfection was like almost like beat in. Not mine, not mine. That's where I'm trying to create clarity. Like, it's why I'm so confident. All that happened in my life was everybody said I was losing except my mom. So think about that. You've won. Like that's actually the dream. Like the dream scenario for disproportionate confidence is the world tells you you fucking suck, but your mom tells you you're the best.

51:02And she's also smart enough to not create delusion. So when you go 0 for 4 in Little League, it wasn't the son's fault in your eye or like your coaches, it's you suck. So it's accountability but ugh, she fucking crushed it. Like I am a complete byproduct of, and not only that, I have been hot on my mom's like stuff lately. My dad saved my ass big because what I was also though by being such a good storyteller was I was completely full of shit when I was 14. I would say anything to sell anything. I lied out of my mouth 24 hours a day and that's who I would have become and that's what a lot of people think I am at first because of my showmanship, but he corrected me because I got lucky again that my dad is, my dad thinks if you embellish to him once, embellish.

51:48There were 19 people at the party. He's like, there were eight, and that's it. Three strikes, you're out. I'm not your friend. Literally, like, I don't know a single more extreme version of somebody who's more uncomfortable with exaggeration, let alone lying, than my dad, which over a course of four or five years of my teenage years, scared the fuck out of me because it started with like, dad I sold 98 bottles he's like you sold 6 and then 6 became from 98 to 44 to 13 to 6 and I got I'm very aware of how this all happened and then if like it was reversed and my dad was first parenting me and my mom I would have been a complete nightmare I would have been insecure and full of shit like so like I'm quite grateful so anyway I'm sorry but I wanted to create that clarity that is important for you to know that part though and I think a lot of what you're hearing manifests from that.

52:42But I host the party. Yeah, get back to the hosting of the party. And let's talk more because you got three seats here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you have a question, but like, go ahead. I would bounce back to part of the value of this is confirming what we already know. I'm watching already. For sure. Crap. I know we should be doing that, I know. So, and then you get excited when you start to hear like, dude, you guys have it so easy. It's like a niche within a niche. You know the thousand businesses. Geographically, you know the thousand businesses. Yeah, because geographically gets into branding that I get excited about.

53:11Like, to me, I wish, like, just because I know how big I can make something because I'm an operator, I'm like, man, if I had the New England business podcast, it's game over. Give me one year. The New England manufacturer business podcast is even easier. Yeah. But like, you know, like, yeah, that's exactly right. I think we've been struggling a little bit with like, time out, we've done this, we've done that. What are the results? Why aren't they calling us yet versus this patience? That is audacity. That's ego. I never think anything. I think I suck. I'm being dead serious. I'm confident, but I genuinely wake up this morning and be like, I could suck for the next year and make a ton of bad decisions and literally everything I've done is wiped.

53:55You know? I believe that. Business is unforgiving compared to sports on this one. In sports, Muhammad Ali can lose to Trevor Burwick in his last fight. We don't know that. I know that because I'm a boxing nerd. You don't know that. Business is different. When you lose, everyone then wipes out what you've done well. Like Boeing. What's that? Like Boeing. Yeah, you know what I mean? The narrative can change very quickly. We shit on Woolworths. It was the dominant retailer in this country for a hundred fucking years. But on that journey, right? Not just saying the audacity of expecting why doesn't it happen faster, but there's gotta be something to know you're on the right track, right?

54:38Is it just content? No, no, no, the market speaks, your business. I knew I was on the right track because the first two years when I was half pregnant on VaynerMedia, we did three million in revenue and the first year I ran it, we went from three to 14. That was very obvious. And 14 to 27, like business results. And that was all based on what? Larger, less clients, bigger fees? More like, talk about that. There's a lot of things I'm good at and the core thing I'm good at is a mix of the followings. I tend to sell something that most people don't see at first. It ends up being right a lot of times which creates the back end.

55:13But at the time, I'm extremely good at selling in the short term. There was no brand. Twitter, I had a lot of followers so there was a little something. But what I'm really good at is wasting no time on selling to the unsellable. Like one of the reasons I'm fascinated by franchise to become a franchisor, and I'm like, what would I do? It's because I would be incredible at getting franchisees for a couple reasons. One, I'm just, a lot of entrepreneurs look up to me, and like, so that would be good, probably. But after I filled the bucket, looks like empathy. Okay, I've sold my$2 million worth of wine, now I've got another$4 million to sell.

55:47Now it's work. In that part, I just don't fucking waste time. Like, I go to a new business pitch, back to the same way I know somebody I fucked up on. I go to a new business pitch, it's scheduled for an hour, I sometimes bounce after 30. Because I decide it's over three minutes in. I'm like, she has no interest in me. And I don't have ego to be like, to convince her. I'll give it my best at bat, and hopefully he or she will like it. But I think the reason I was able to grow so quickly is I'm very good at selling and focusing on people that will actually buy. So get enough people interest and then move on.

56:27I don't think, I think it's funny, back to what you said, I never think I deserve anything, period. And look, VaynerMedia is the only company run by somebody who actually has success in doing the work that they do. Like in the whole fucking ad world, like I laugh when people think I'm GaryVee and don't realize I'm running this company. You're doing social media work with an agency that was built to make television commercials? I'm like the fucking poster child of the whole game. You know, and yet we don't get business from people all the time. Yes, of course, of course. You're only gonna get a certain batting average gonna work out the way it does.

57:05But I think if you host a party and go, if you create the right packaging and then the right merchandising of that packaging, it's off to the races. How did you recruit early on? What was the technique to fill the funnel, get the staff? I hired 50 kids who had no idea what the fuck they were doing. Just from where? You mean employees or? Yeah, employees. At the time I had a big enough Twitter. my brother brought like six of his friends from high school and college. I mean it was a fucking rat. We didn't have any agency people. So at the level you're at now the content will recruit. Run your podcast against employees of your competitors that you want to hire.

57:43We need to do a lot more paid. You have to do a lot more paid. When organic, this is for everybody, when organic went away from Facebook and everybody got their anger and like fuck Facebook I got fucked I got pumped because people started getting confused because paid was underpriced. And I was like, I'm unemotional. I get that this was free, but if this is still a good deal, then it's still a good deal. I don't care about yesterday. Back to that mentality. Yesterday doesn't matter. Facebook's free. You got all that organic traffic. You weren't paying Facebook for that organic traffic. It was a trade.

58:17They had a platform with a lot of attention. You produced content for it and a trade. The organic goes down. You have to pay for it. You have to do a lot more paid. The reason you have to do a lot more pay to everybody is you can target who you want to reach. When you know you're about to spend$150 against employees of your direct competitor from eight towns over, you're already thinking differently in the video you're about to make. You might make a video of how fun it is at your foosball table in your office. Because Rick at the other company's like, we don't have a foosball table. Like, I only make content knowing who's going to see it.

58:54And the answer is do it, right? People are like, you always go viral. I'm like, I made a video called, you're 65 and your life's not over, and I ran ads against people who are 65. It's gonna do well. It's really, people underestimate how powerful it is. Action's the key, execute. Just do something. But if you make the podcast, you'll crush, because now you're gonna have CEOs and CFOs come in and be guests. that's gonna already be a slight biz dev opportunity but you're also gonna be able to post produce and run some of those funny quotes, funny moments. She's gonna be looking, you're gonna be thinking oh, Jason and I are doing it right now.

59:36I'm like what I'm telling you to do, I'm doing right now. As I'm talking, I'm looking at him like did you see that? Was that smart? Should we cut that? Let's test that. That's what you'll be doing in a year and now all of a sudden you answered a question where the CFO of the top 15 company is really caught off guard and she's like, that's smart. Now you're like, ooh, you know? Now you're running it against all CFOs. The machine. One question. Yep. So you always talk about the content, you know, the market decide. Yes. So for you, when you launched one library, you said a year and then we launched it.

1:00:09Yes. So if we're producing content, personal brand and other things, you didn't let that swing you but the market, you know, eventually. because I have no expectations of the market for a long time. But the wine versus the motivation and business mindset that seems to be driving different. Do you think the wine content would do well right now for the long term? I think I'm a showman in hindsight. Something I didn't know about myself at 34. I really didn't. Like I never, I got a D in speech. You know, like I didn't know that I had this shtick. I knew I was a good salesman on the floor at the liquor store.

1:00:44I knew that I was a good class clown where the teacher wasn't mad at me so I knew I had a good tact but none of this stuff even crossed my mind. So now, I mean I think if I did anything tomorrow it would work. Really. If I talk about something I knew. Like if I did a sports, I would be the number, I genuinely believe I'd be the number one voice in sports today if I decided tomorrow for the next three years to go all in. I think I'd be bigger than Stephen A. Smith and Max Kellerman and all these, I just do. Because I think I have a personality that clicks with people. That's just a trait. Some people don't.

1:01:16That's why I talk about writing and audio. You might not be great on video, but you might be a tremendous writer. Or you might just not be cracked up to be the personality. Then you lean into the logo or hire somebody. MetLife hired Snoopy. You know? So that's where. You did a piece of content where you talked about how you did this thing at Vayner where you invested and then investment year, profit year. Oh, the stairs? Yeah, just talk about that. I think I'm uncomfortable with not having some cash on hand for a rainy day. So I used to think a lot. Now I've molded a little bit from it, but I'm a very big fan of getting people to invest in their business instead of taking the money off the table.

1:01:52Like just everybody wants to build big businesses, but then what they're really doing is building lifestyle businesses for the things they want, which is also tough for me because if you want a car, like kudos, do your thing. But yeah, I mean I aggressively, in the first five years of Vayner and the first five years of Wine Library, had a pretty hardcore system where like one year I would try to make no profit. All of it. Zero. In the following year? A little bit. More. Which is like five? For both, I'll give it to you. For both businesses, between five and 10%. Is that where you run it today?

1:02:33Is it like keep running it the same way? You've changed that? I keep running it because I'm just like, but again, I'm building it in perpetuity. You have to know what you're up to. Like again, if somebody here wants to flip their business, and I'm sure everybody's big boy and big girl enough to know that but yeah, I mean like look, it's your other family member, right? You gotta feed it. Gotta take care of it. You know? If you wanna build big. Yeah, yeah, which is the goal. Well then, you gotta feed it. And then that's when you can hire and fire like all that stuff because you're not worried about the, people are like, well Gary, it costs more to fire somebody.

1:03:05Well, I'm not as worried about the profit margin being insane. I'm trying to catch the growth. Hey everybody, if you enjoyed this podcast, please go back and look at the prior episodes. They're loaded. I appreciate your attention. And thanks for being part of this journey. See you later.