I play basketball but I don’t play it as well as LeBron James, just ’cause you’ve hired a UX UI designer if you don’t know how to judge it fully you might have chose the wrong one, even if you do know how to judge it. This portion is like with me so I think this is one you need to get selfish, like you’d ask your question. (upbeat music) Hiring is guessing, firing is knowing. Like you gotta go fast, that’s how you get shit done that’s how you figure stuff out. This is the television and the television is the radio. It’s the 4Ds motherfuckers. Awesome. Great.
Let’s rock and roll. What can I answer? – Oh god, don’t start with me. I’ll go second or third. – You can only go last, ’cause then I’ll skip and we’ll go around so your choice, my rules. – So okay. Well I think what I struggle with with in my business, so I created a specializing booking platform specific to working with group bookings. I think where I got a little confused in where, like the growth of the business, I find that because we’re a service business I run into where I kind of either plateau or it’s I can’t hire fast enough for the demand. So then I just am like kind of a sitting duck and trying to chase, hiring more artists, which becomes like management like we just kind of bottle neck. – So on that as somebody who scaled a service business is it hiring or is it retaining? – It’s hiring. – And are you making subjective calls when you hire? – How so? – Are you the one hiring? – Yeah, I’m a part of the process, yeah.
– Right, so the way I ask the question is the most important part. I think most people struggle with hiring because they come from a angle of fear and when they look at hiring they’re thinking about what they’re trying to protect against because you think that person or this person or that person is representing you in this environment and you don’t want them to fuck up in however you deem it. You’re coming from fear. The reason I think I’ve been able to scale two businesses so quickly in my life is I’m the reverse. I always think that if my intent is good that by hiring quickly I can actually scale and that in the occasional 20% of time when it’s really actually fucked up, my ability to fix it out of intent and effort is actually greater than me judging upfront and not hiring at all. – So my fear what that is that my typical client is a bride. – Yep. – Or a large corporate booking and so like reputation wise, like you get one shot. – But you don’t. – With that particular client. – You’re not gonna see another bride again most likely anyway. – Right.
– And you would lose her word of mouth and her word of mouth is only so impactful but what you lose for is you’re not doing and scaling out of the fear that maybe it goes poorly. What most people struggle with in business is they spend all their time on what’s gonna go wrong instead of what’s gonna go right. So yeah, big clients and brides I get it. Good news brides don’t have great LTV, right? And good news seven out of 10 time, it’s gonna be perfectly fine. – Yeah. – And good news you’ve hired people that fucked up anyway.
So where I’m going with all this is you need to hire quicker and be more optimistic versus pessimistic. – I think I get worried where it’s the management of both sides and so like I built my own booking platform to help streamline that management and then what I found is that many other similar business models that are like across the country are struggling with the same pain point with not having the right management system, where I was able to build that, so my question was do I hit pivot a little or stay? – And what, become a SAS business? Which is fine.
You could, do you want to? – I don’t know. – Well that’s what you need to figure out, but I will tell you that on the other side of your service business, it’s been the clearest thing for me. It was my hypothesis going in, it’s my natural state, people spend all their time on defense. What if Carl fucks up this wedding, instead of not thinking that, which then leads you to hiring Carl instead of not hiring him because he answered one question in a way that maybe you as a human subjectively thought would lead to a vulnerability.
– Well it’s usually on the talent level. It’s just like the quality of what they’re able to do. – Yeah, but you’re making that subjective call. What you might think is good may or may not, I mean you’ve had plenty of brides tell you this is shit when you thought it was great and vice versa. Right? I mean it’s a super important part of this question, like you may decide that I’m not qualified enough but you’re making a judgment for the market without knowing.
The reason you’re not hiring fast enough is because of you. Your subjective call. – Not always but– – So let’s talk it through. What would be the alternative to that? When you say not always, give me another scenario that’s not that. – Sometimes I actually eliminate myself from the equation and allow my managers and my recruiters to make the call. – You employ them. – Yeah. – That’s you. Every mistake James and Nick Dio make is my fault. So if you’re taking yourself out of the equation then you’re empowering people who are saying no instead of yes, which is still on you is how I see it. If you’re telling me the question that you are most worried about which makes a ton of sense to me because you’re on it because it is the number one issue for service businesses is not hiring, that’s you. That’s either you, whether you’re in the equation or not it’s still you because you’re the one that hired the people that are making that choice.
– How would you then, what would be maybe the strategy to attract maybe that ideal person of what you’re looking for? I mean I can’t just hire everybody and anybody. – Of course not but by then first understanding what ideological framework that decision is being made on. Once you let go of the fact that you’re making a subjective call and so are your managers and that they’re not right, they’re making a subjective call then it becomes easier to say yes more than no. I think of it as like tie goes to the runner.
Once you change this perspective on this conversation you’ll start saying yes a lot of times when you would have said no in the past and then that becomes the fundamental unlock. – Yeah, well I know that there’s times that I have said yes that I would have said no and then what we did is we created like a supporting lead level and then a top lead level. So we would bring them in like we would probably say no but instead we’ve said yes and put them on the supporting role as opposed to like the one that actually handled the direct client, the main client which is the bride, but maybe like have them on the team. – Bridesmaids. – Yeah exactly and then as they gained skill and more experience then we could push them up so that allowed me to– – So why not say yes more often now there? – So we are starting to that because I did change my strategy ’cause I didn’t fire faster because that was hurting us.
I think for me just being I guess entrepreneurial in my own mind I get caught up as well is like well how much can I actually scale this, at what point do you say, not a matter of like not trying to meet demand, but like it creates additional problems in other areas because then I don’t have enough people to manage the the concierge part of it and courting so like as that grows then we’re creating more problems is it smart to just like take what you’re doing that’s working really well and then maybe pivot in other areas? – Well I think it becomes a question of how much margin do you want to make? Because one could often in those scenarios be able to afford it except most people have an ideology of how much margin they want in this given year instead of investing it into the biz. – Yeah, yeah.
– So that’s a personal preference of what you need to take home. Are you caught up in the ideology of what a SAS business is worth versus a service business? – A little bit. I mean I’ve been in the service business for 15 years and I’ve grown it really well. – Have you converted your product into something that somebody else can use? – Not officially yet. I’m deciding whether that’s the direction I wanna go in. – Even in the energy that you’re bringing to the table I think it would be worth the risk of putting the money in to make it so that you can at least taste what to other people using the platform as a SAS.
You need the context to know. You had 15 years to know the good and the bad of service, right? You know you can do it, service business sucks. – Right. Or push more into it like we’re doing more corporate– – You probably need to, my intuition is if you can afford it I would definitely build out the capabilities of the SAS product to get a couple clients just to have the reference point if you like it better. – Yeah. – Otherwise it’s an unknown. – Well I’ve invested so much already in the tech side of it and now– – Right just making front-facing and adding the variables tends to only be 20% of the equation. – But the biggest thing was when I was going to master classes on the hair side and I was meeting other people just like me that are running their businesses in Miami and they’re doing 150 weddings, they’re like how the hell did you get to 700 and then I showed that my platform and they’re just like, that’s what piqued my interest just for them to see that and realize that there’s really not something like that in the market and that’s how I was able to get to where I’m at.
It’s keeping other people that, because I’m very passionate about other businesses as well. So then my personal is like I wanna help other people that had same pain points and struggles I did and then I created this– – My perspective is that you should run them in parallel and build them both until you have a data point on the SAS business and then decide if that’s what you want to do.
– Okay, thank you. – You’re welcome. – [Man] So, just a little back story like I said– – Brother started it, yeah. – [Man] In 2016 our of his garage selling in time just to prove the concept to see if there was a market there. Four months into it, he seen that it was, got a warehouse, very thin employee situation. So he’s making decent money because he didn’t really have to pay too many people, grossed about 300 or so every year. 2018 was his biggest year, which is 327. He saw enough of me to take me serious enough to take my offer to join the company, obviously not coming in with any money but just feeling that I could bring some value and raise the company up, which I’m proud to say that we did do that.
2019, which was my full year, we did two three last year and so for me the reason I’m coming here is we were able to do that with literally just my muscle if you will. Going to truck stops, going the rest areas, just really get out there. – Will. Will. – [Man] Reviews, we have over 600 five-star Google reviews, which on the East Coast I’ve looked tire shop wise that is a record, right? So on the flip side I don’t understand anything really about the social media landscape except for the fact that it’s a huge opportunity for distribution, I get that part, which is why I’m here. Obviously your team has been great earlier today with a lot of stuff that we’ve learned so far and so for me obviously the personal branding workshop that we had obviously I feel like there’s a lot of value there that a company like mines could get, tagging off what Mary Dale said earlier like in the truck tire space I’m one of the few black people that I know of like nationally that does it.
We’re a national provider of Michelin so I mean it’s a lot of things that we’ve been able to garner in the year that I had with him and obviously he’s happy about it and I’m super stoked that we’re able to do it together most importantly, right? And so for me I just want to– – So can I break it down for you? – Yeah. – On the first hot take. Everything I just heard and an honestly living a very similar life at some level with a father-son dynamic, a couple things you need to wrap your head around.
Number one, let there be no confusion the far majority of what is happening in this room and what we preach here is about branding, not selling and that’s very tough because when you think about Google five star what’s so great about that is it’s transactional and that’s tangible in the short term and a lot of what we’re gonna talk about and a lot of what we’re built on, which is really ironic because Monica and I talk we’re in this what’s called the lower funnel, the digital world, not the TV world yet the juxtaposition that I’ve created and debate and completely believed to be true is that brand is actually built in here, not on TV commercials. And so challenging for an entrepreneur is every piece of it, like it’s gonna take you two and a half years just to start feeling true impact on personal brand arbitrage that you felt immediately from five-star reviews on Google, which then makes nobody want to do it because they’re like fuck that.
I don’t want to do that. I fucking will keep doing Google search Adwords because it’s transactions. And I’m like cool you can do that, I’ll see you in seven years. And so right off top I think if you can run those in parallel which is take what you learn here and realize okay, that’s what I’m investing in and let me keep finding ways to transact on what I naturally have in my natural DNA, I think that’s a very important framework because I think the reason most, you know it’s so funny. From a personal brand standpoint more than from a VaynerMedia standpoint and I think most of you know this. I probably say the word patience more than any other word and nobody wants to hear me and that’s because I build brand and so make sure if nothing else and I’ll let you ask another question but like brand is what we’re talking about here and brand takes time. – [Man] And I’m with you on that, like that’s the conversation he and I have had and he’s like I said, really turned the keys over to me like from a brand plate.
– How old are you? – 27. – And him? – [Man] We’re 20 years apart so he’s about to be 40 in June. Yeah. So for me, like we’ve started to now, customers who buy eight times or more we give them mud flaps. A, because they have to pay for ’em. B, it’s our image on there and our brand statement and all that good stuff and C, if they don’t have them then of course they get a fine from DLT. So like things like that. – Then you win. – [Man] Right like so we’re all in on the brand plate for it because I do foresee us being able to continue to gobble up market share, which again like I said, we haven’t spent any money on anything because I don’t want to do anything until I have some type of fundamental understanding of it, right? Facebook Ads all of that stuff sounds great but if you don’t know what you’re doing to some degree, I just feel like it would be counterproductive for me.
– It is. What’s fun about it unlike traditional media, which is what I grew up in is it doesn’t cost a lot to learn. You know when I had to run a TV local spot or $40,000 full-page ad in New York Times there was no learning. You wrote the check and you fucking ran the ad and you fucking were like holding your breath. Facebook you can run $700 worth of ads and learn shit. So you’re in control your spend because you’re bottom up, you’re not paying an upfront or a VIG that’s good for the media company. So I would tell you just even feeling you out quickly you should do everything, you should just do it in 100 dollar increments.
You understand? – Yeah. – You should know everything at this young of an age in this kind of level of natural talent and curiosity that even brought you here. You should run ads on every platform just a hundred bucks at a time. That’s the beauty of the digital landscape, you don’t need to waste money. And the learning scale, what I learned at eight, what I’m learning right now on TikTok running ads against my brand is what I’m gonna bring to Monica as a conversation and the truths of my $8,000 spending a month are gonna play out if that brand spends eight million because it’s a marketplace, which is powerful so I would definitely tell you to do that. And then for everybody, the creative is the variable. The math of like buying an ad is super, you’re gonna learn that awfully quick.
It’s the psychology of what pictures and videos you put in there against who you target to make them consider you, that’s the whole game. – [Man] Right, lemme ask you this. – Please, that’s fine. – [Man] So from a systemization standpoint process like we have it like really super documentized like even from video. (coughing drowns out speaker) We have that stuff down to the point where on board and for our employees all that sounds much easier now and it’s much more efficient. And so from a scaling perspective because we are a brick and mortar physical retail location store. – One, right? – [Man] Yes, just one.
I’ve thought about very much so of flirting with the idea of franchises. – Of course. – [Man] So because the margins are there I feel like there’s a lot of financial implications that are in place that I feel like it can be sustainable without me or us taking the risk, not really the risk, but taking all of that financial burden of continuing to open up shop after shop after shop. – It’s one of the great business models of the last half century. But you have a lot of in my opinion, even just listening to you’re probably gonna want to do some more work of establishing the brand because it’s too early. The first person that takes it that isn’t good becomes a vulnerability. No matter how many rules you put in place, you’re not in control completely.
– [Man] Yeah, okay. – But as a business model it’s one of the greatest models that the capitalism world has ever seen. – [Man] Appreciate it, Gary. – You got it, bro. – [Man] Decided to see you again. – Good to see you again. – [Man] So basically I have three things that I wanna ask and if anybody has anything to say you can chime in. Number one, I was listening to, you know I was listening and building a name brand which has taken me 10 years and in the beginning was a lot of like physical work and everything and now in the last few years I’ve learned through like Google Ads and Instagram I actually was doing what you were just talking about. I really pay attention to what my clients like with different events or trends that are happening and I put money towards those ads. So now number one thing is– – You were the computer kid that I picked up along the way. – Yeah and just like watching a lot of people actually like you know I should never, I really learned by watching and listening to people.
I’m not a big reader it’s hard for me to read a lot so I used to like listen up or just watch things that I work in and trying to emulate them to see how I can make them better. So now I’m at a point where I geo events, I’m trying to make it it a big brand, doing all these corporate events, private events in New York but also now we have Crush Marketing, which is a marketing company that produces a lot of activations and like new trends so we could go and promote a new brand. So my thing is like how do we take Crush and use geo events to build Crush and make it up, catch up to geo investors because there’s 2 different companies that will go within each other.
– Execution about awareness. You’ll buy the output. It’s your kind of like asking like hey, I’ve only built up my upper body now I want to put muscle on my legs. Well good news, you have put on some muscle on your upper body which allows you to probably in some of your leg exercises be able to hold heavier dumbbells but until you fucking do the leg exercises it’s not gonna happen. (laughing) It’s the right analogy. – [Man] I skipped leg week. A week a day or whatever. – Most people do it doesn’t have the optics. – [Man] I know right. Just work fast. – But it’s a very important point. Obviously with a intriguing kind of analogy by just you know what people struggle to understand is once you establish a new brand, look whether it’s empathy or the SAS, like you’re gonna get some level of siphoning from what you’ve done in the past but you’re building your business bro. You may not like it, I don’t like it, you’re always gonna get some halo but even the biggest companies in the world, Gatorade’s coming out with a new drink right now that they have to build up because they want to be more than just and guess what? They got a fucking spend and execute and like establishing a new brand as a new brand.
Will there be people some like wait a minute, I know that guy like he did a good job, of course. You’ve built a reputation but a reputation is different than a brand and so you’re gonna have to build it. – [Man] And one more thing is I actually have Amazon store that I had for like four, five years and I just really need some guidance on how to make it grow. I mean, I haven’t really I guess– – Have you run Amazon ads? – What’s that? – Have you run Amazon ads? – [Man] No, we had somebody that works on it but the company does okay.
It’s just like treading water but– – What products do you sell on it? – [Man] Just T-shirts for now but I actually want to get out of it. I mean I jumped into it with a friend of a friend basically invited me as like, you know listen, I can’t own any more stores I want to get another store. I see you start all these businesses, let’s to do this 50/50 and I’ll show the model how to do T-shirts and they do like over a million dollars in T-shirts and they have like six, seven stores. The problem came when they noticed that I have all this other companies and I could also offer swag with T-shirts at all these events then they kind of stopped showing me the model of how they get to this point.
So at this point I really need direction of how to get a person, somebody that could just help me grow that store. I had it for five years, I know it’s valuable, I know eventually somebody mentioned earlier, one of the speakers that eventually in like five, six years you know almost everyone’s gonna have a store. That’s the model, they wanna have a store. So I had it for so long and I feel like it’s just stuck there, you know? – Everything about this conversation feels wrong because I feel like you’re doing it out of a philosophical place of like I’ve had it so it I should not waste the fact that I, like you know what I mean? The angle of this conversation feels like I almost without knowing anything want you to shut it down because I feel like you’re doing it philosophically not because you give a fuck.
– [Man] What’s the difference? – The difference is if you’re trying to build a business just ’cause you’ve had it for awhile and the thought of it going to zero when you feel like you’ve put something into it so thus you should, becomes a major energy loss against you putting that energy to something else. – [Man] So let it go. – 100%. The second you said a friend of a friend like I was already not pumped and they’re like a friend of a friend I was like fuck me. (laughing) I think you know like if you were telling me that you were gonna build a brand and your deep dream was to build Off-White or Puma or something of that nature then I got excited. A transactional store of like T-shirts on Amazon and I’ve had the luxury of sitting down with you a little bit prior to this like I think that’s a big fucking waste of time.
– [Man] It’s just like they say, just let it go. – [Man] Lick your wounds and walk away. – 100%, losing is fun in the micro. You don’t wanna go completely out of business but like cutting something that’s bringing you very little in return because of the philosophy of like I don’t want to take this micro L or I’ve already put in this much like people don’t see the opportunity cost issue. – [Man] Yeah, thank you. – [Carl] And for me mainly it’s– – For you need to monetize your voice. Like for you no matter what you’re about to say you should quit working with him and start a voice business and be out. Yeah, bruh. For you that’s that. – [Man] Usually people hashtag like the voice of god. (laughing) When we’re talking or whatever like I have different things I deal with clients, I’m a people person, but when he speaks, it’s like come on Carl.
(laughing) – I feel like taking my clothes off already. Go ahead. – [Man] And he undresses you to so it’s like– – [Carl] I’m trying to keep up I mean for me it’s mainly putting myself out there and over thinking things and you hit the impostor syndrome. Social media to me is like a big giant and I’m kind of a private person so at the same time– – Me too. – [Carl] I love about the industry that we’re in, I love the product that we put out, clients love us, we have a great reputation, but for me– – Carl, you don’t have to put out anything you don’t want to. I’m literally the most public private person on earth. – [Carl] In that part I don’t know how you do it. – By not posting my kids. Nobody knows anything about my private life. – [Man] Just work. – This thought that like it’s in control is laughable.
Facebook didn’t make you vote for Trump, the Russians don’t control you, you are 100% in control of what you put out. People are full of shit. Right? People want to post pictures of their babies and their pets and their lives because they want likes but good news Carl, you’re in control. – [Carl] Yeah, and I think it’s me not worrying about what others think or me feeling that I have to worry about that foundation. I think that is, me getting over that. You guys have already helped in hearing everybody, even you saying what you said made me feel comfortable and relatable to a lot of people out there. – Yeah, this is a judgment game.
It’s a judgment game. I’s all upside. It’s a blank machine. It’s just an exposure of our inner truth. And that’s powerful because the reality is once you realize, I always use the example of like when you had a zit in junior high or high school like you were like fuck. Like you didn’t want to go to school like it was the worst. And then it was just like nobody gave a fuck ’cause everybody was worried about their zit. Once you get to that basic of a level with it, it can get really good. People’s biggest issue is that they over value the compliment which makes them vulnerable to getting shit on. The reason I’ve been able to cruise is in my comments on every post literally in back-to-back comments there’s a goat emoji and there’s a this guy took daddy’s money, he’s full of shit. Back-to-back. And when you don’t hear either that’s when you win. Mon, got anything? – [Mon] Sure.
This actually has nothing to do with Budweiser. So my life and my journey has been completely random but yet retro actively kind of makes sense. So was in the music industry before, signed a record deal then I became a music producer, had some moderate success. Exited, went back to business school, then started working on beer and then sort of rose to the top within that space and through the line I built a story that’s filled with failure but I am comfortable with that and in this last year I’ve now started to get like some coverage on my story. A lot of like women are like okay, I’m the first female vice president of Bud and all these things so I’m starting to see this moment or this calling where I feel like I want to share my story a bit more. I started to get asked to speak at a lot of events now too where it’s a little bit bigger than just marketing but it’s like my point of view on on life.
So I’m kind of at that inflection point where I’m like figuring out if I should be doing that or not. – And then you’re also in a big company, which you know you have to be thoughtful about how that works. – [Mon] Exactly. – I think you should be doing that. You can always work in a company. – [Mon] Okay. – And then knowing enough about your career you’re in such a great spot there too all you have to do is just be very thoughtful and over communicative and what’s really cool and it’s kind of how I see, you know it’s fun I mean, just looking at Nick and Maribel and James they’re doing things that lets them tell their stories. I’m a unique dude in how I structure and I understand that I’m not ABI or 3G or you know, but I think finding the right balance of how to do it like everybody has their confines no matter what. Even as an entrepreneur with no board, my confines are the market. The market controls my outcome but I think even like here’s the actual real answer, just for your great-granddaughter to consume that one day because of the way the internet actually works that is an actual win to the answer.
When I started really getting aggressive with my stuff it was absolutely from the standpoint of holy fuck, everybody in this room is actually the matriarch and patriarch of their family because we will disproportionately have so much more content, pictures and videos of us than anybody before us and in 300 years we are like kind of actually the starting point. And I was just like fuck, that’s really cool and wild and I was like fuck it. Like that’s super cool like if nothing else and maybe I’m affected because I didn’t know either my grandfathers and probably weirdly want to and like other things it made it very natural for me, like if all else fails it’s a nice family thing.
Only celebrities have had the luxury of really, really knowing to some level even, not even to the level that we’re at. So I think you need to do as much of it as you possibly can. Within the confines of yeah. But like over communicating upfront with the machine. – [Man] Podcast is doing actually really great. – How many episodes? – We’re at 30ish. – Okay. – So pretty new. – Yeah, what it’s all about. – [Man] Like top 50 management categories so that’s wicked for us. Anyway the question is not related to that, so started this journey like two years ago and then fiveish months ago figured hey, if we could build my personal brand with negotiations we could probably do the same for other executives for people in my position.
So we started a ghost writing/content company about five months ago and now we’re pivoting slightly in that we’re going to market to enterprise sales teams to create them into thought leaders on LinkedIn. – I understand. – To convert sales better. – I understand. [Man] And so one of the things that we’re struggling with right now is we’re trying to figure out, like we’re a small team four people in a WeWork and we’re trying to figure out, I’m trying to figure out from a leadership perspective how do I lead that small team and grow that, like how did you do it at the beginning while still like keeping professional/too friendly, because they’re basically like my family.
– I made them my family. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, you just have to be willing to give feedback when somebody’s taking advantage of it instead of the reverse. Like to me like kindness and family and like all that stuff is the strength. I’m at my weakest when I don’t give candor ’cause I don’t want to give negative feedback to somebody I care about and I’m at my best when I do. I still think it’s better than the alternative. Even at my worst it leads to some people quitting or firing under bad, I still think it’s better ’cause I think 12 years later everyone still likes each other more than if it was just professional. So I think it comes down to your ability to give candor, which is something that I struggled with and continue to struggle with. – It’s a lot easier than it sounds.
– I’m literally pretty public about the thing I’m probably worst at was that and that’s cost me a lot of money and it’s also made people not like me that I did a lot for but because they became entitled because I didn’t give them feedback that they weren’t as good as they thought they were and they were feeding off of my halo. I also think it depends on what you’re aiming for. Without knowing his story he clearly didn’t have the leverage enough to like in the partnership that he had that it led to whatever it led to but in your scenario we’re not talking about a partnership we’re talking about employees. And so what happened with me in that scenario is eventually I couldn’t hold my breath anymore and I would fire somebody and they would be stunned and that led to them not liking me as much as I could have had them love me if I just told him a year earlier that they sucked and we were gonna try to figure this out.
And I’ve gotten better at it but I’m still not remarkable at it but that’s all it is. Net-net, it’s a strength to have that good of a thing. I think the bigger issue of what I’m hearing is when you go into servicing people to do something most people don’t have the personality traits to actually pull off what you’re saying and they’re gonna blame the service, not themselves.
So what you’re going to really need to do is similar to what she needs to do and what we’ve done here is you’re gonna have to scale more people. – [Man] 100%. – Which is probably gonna make you have less margin up front and then– – Yeah, that’s right. – Got it? – [Woman] Does that help you just like learn? – Yes. – On who to work with more and who to kind of– – Yes. And you start getting too, I think I’m starting to grow a little bit myself because I’m starting to really understand what works for me and I’m doing a better job communicating it upfront to the people that I work with, which is like hey, I’m not gonna reach out to you.
I need you, not I’m asking you, I need you to reach out to me on a daily basis on text so I have context and so I can respond if I want to. And if you are and for my employees that’s weird because they don’t have relationships with the CEOs of the companies that they’ve come from. So they think they’re bothering me. – [Woman] Right, yeah. – Three businesses. – [Man] So basically the first question is now we have two locations New York and Miami for my cleaning company Ramon Cleaning Service and the problem is we are trying to scale right now. We are kind of scaling but and at the moment we started realizing that we cannot scale more at the moment right now. So basically we spend like for ads. We started spending and even though we only see very, very small growth, which is basically like not giving us any more customers mostly we focus on the subscription-based customers. – Well you’re also investing in a platform that’s losing consumer value.
– [Man] But we’re not on here, we’re also on Google. – I’m not judging. I’m telling you why in a place that’s declining and its impact on the consumer will tend to not return as much value. It’s the same thing I do with Monica every day, not her because she’s smart but most of her contemporaries which is like please stop buying regular commercials. Like it’s not going to work. – [Man] And the other way, we also started working with which we can have traffic but also is not enough as let’s say– – Another place that is now more properly priced so the diminishing returns every single day continue to decline on the supply of consumption and demand cycles. – [Man] Yeah, so basically at this moment we are trying to find a way how we really scale and start thinking about getting like a PR firm to kind of get some kind of like organic traffic more.
– Promise that’s gonna be the worst of the three. (laughing) Promise. So let’s talk, let’s talk. So help me one more time, what does the business do and what is the subscription? – [Man] The home cleaning service. We do residential and commercial, but I’m now talking about the subscription-based clients. – Which is residential? – [Man] Yes. – So you’re looking for us to hire you to clean our homes.? – [Man] Yes.
– Good and historically has been good for you? – [Man] Yes. – And now it’s not as good. – [Man] Years by years it started worser and worser and worser. – Like everything. – [Man] We’ve paying more and more money to get every customer. – Good news that’s how every platform in the history of marketing works. One day when I’m older and have no hair I’ll be making fun of social media. That’s how it all works. So what else have you done? – [Man] Besides that we bought some of the SEO, like search engine optimization but we are also getting some traffic over there but the competition is too high. It’s a lot of competitors basically. – It was similar to what I was saying to him. The biggest decision you’re gonna have to make in the short term is you’re gonna have to transition to brand marketing that’s smart versus what all your energy is right now, which is transactional marketing. Right because it’s intent based marketing on I need a house cleaner in Long Island, enter, you show up, cool I want to out beat you, da-da-da.
When I was doing it for wine for five cents a click, good. Now those same words are eight bucks, not as good. Less people even going to search more people deciding to buy wine because of Instagram and because of TikTok and because a YouTube and because of podcasts. A couple things. One, not open yet but it’s for all of you I think one of the really good ad products that’s on the verge of coming out is a pre-roll live read, meaning a human reads it Spotify product that’s gonna be out in about three to six months where you’ll be able to, like you buy Google Adwords and Facebook ads, put in a script that you want podcast readers to read and then you pay for the impressions and people just read them like podcast providers, makers, right? Negotiation Ninjas can decide to be a part of this and when he starts his podcast he goes Ricky’s Donuts now available and like literally live read old-school 1950s radio at scale.
I think that’s gonna be interesting and you can run it in New York and Miami only. I think your business explodes if you figure out how to do Facebook marketing. – [Man] Facebook? – Mm-hmm, because Facebook is the killer app for 45 to 90 year olds, which I already like from a residential standpoint of having the net worth to be able to afford a house cleaner instead of not right, instead of doing it your fucking self. And when you really understand Facebook ads and really understand how to break down New York and Miami into 45 to 50 different segmentations and then what video or picture to put in front of them and really get good at it Facebook will return so much more for you then Google AdWords long term and will build brand equity and creates word-of-mouth in a way that Google doesn’t.
Google I type in “I need a house cleaner in Rochester” enter, its insular. Facebook if you make a really interesting ad I may share it or I may tag Maribelle in it. It’s inherently word-of-mouth structured not transactional structured, which is why it’s so much more powerful. – [Man] Okay and how about the actual traditional PR because you wanna also build some– – No. – [Man] Traffic for your brand. Got some kind of taglines. – What, you’re gonna pay somebody two to $8,000 a month to get you into a magazine? – [Man] That’s something I’m considering because– – I’m telling you that that’s a really bad idea but good news I’m not always right but there’s nothing as much as I hate regular television commercials, traditional PR makes regular television commercials seem like a Jet Super Bowl.
(laughing) – [Man] Even for proof of cost set to go on social media, hey, I was cover of this magazine and– – [Woman] You can be your own PR. – You can DM that fucking second-rate magazine on Instagram instead of paying somebody eight, four, eight, six, I mean there’s nothing that’s more overpriced than truly traditional PR. You could do yourself. 100%. – [Man] Okay. I think that’s a good idea. – Listen, what’s great about me is my first marketing budget was $40,000 for the year, I come from a small business place.
It’s not fun to waste money. It’s gonna take you six months to realize you wasted $24,000. – [Man] 10 years ago that we’ll clean house because I don’t know English. – Yeah, I get it. – [Man] I build myself. – I believe you and I get it and you also paid money to be here I really don’t want you to waste money on traditional PR. – [Man] Thank you. – Like what you want the Miami Herald to say something good about you, DM them. – [Man] I got a call from a company there– – Who reads the Miami Herald anymore? – [Man] $8,000 a month they wanna charge me and I was having a discussion with my wife and she’s saying it’s worth it and I’m like, I’m in a position also that it doesn’t work so it’s very often– – Have your wife call me.
(laughing) – [Man] Have you heard of JIA? – Mm-hmm. (laughing) – [Man] My second question is. About the company I have the roses that last a year, the name of the company is Jardin Deluxe Fleurs so basically we started at the same time and even earlier that the Venus ET Fleur, I’m know for sure you know that. This is our biggest competitor but at that moment we didn’t invest it a lot it was started as a hobby and as soon as they started they started as a real business because they gave their flowers to Kardashians. – Okay. – [Man] Are they real roses? – [Man] Yeah, real roses that last a year. – [Man] Intriguing. – [Man] Yeah they tried to do the special, oils it can make them last year. So now basically the industry that our main competitor they made the industry.
– ‘Cause they’re good. – [Man] They made it like real roses that last year and they even trademark it. – That’s good. – [Man] So the biggest problem for us during the Valentine’s Day I would say like now is Valentine’s. My team was working crazy hard 24/7 while I’m here but the main problem for us is during the Valentine’s time we can sell our conversion rate is not that high, it’s like 2%. – You mean on landing on your site? – [Man] Yeah. – Okay, keep going. – [Man] It’s not that good but like considering the average price per purchase, which is $250 that’s fine.
When they are paying like anywhere between one to two dollars per click. We are getting people from Facebook and Google Ads. – You’re happy with your CAC and LTV numbers? – [Man] I’m not happy honestly. And for the Valentine’s Day, it’s more or less okay. But during off season, like last we spent like closer to $40,000. We had a Google exclusive program and we literally just spent that money. We earned back like only 5K or whatever and so it doesn’t work at all. – Well maybe your landing page doesn’t work. – [Man] We did AB tests and we try different pages and like it didn’t work. – Maybe the product and the price point didn’t match the leads that you were getting. – [Man] No, we specifically targeted very specific audience because our audience is like a high level individuals, like COS managers. – But you were wrong. – [Man] I believe we weren’t wrong because– – It is definitely wrong because you spent $40,000 and you only got $5,000 in sales so you’re 100% wrong. – [Man] No, but the main reason is because we realized the year before when we got the most of our sales, we got it because our lead competitor they were sold out and that’s how we got like thousands of orders.
– Okay. – [Man] And then the next year we invested even more because we survived with a thousand supporters, let’s invest more and let sell more and the next year then we advertise it, our conversion rate was like 0.7 during Valentine’s Day because they still have the roses because people actually will buy them. – I understand. – [Man] And then our problem how we can make people buy from us? – By building a brand and by explaining to people why your product is better or maybe it’s not, is it better or is it worse? – [Man] I wouldn’t say it is better. It’s the same. I would say in terms of quality or whatever.
We just have different type of the boxes but it’s flowers, you know. – Yeah but guess what perception is reality. Right, so the boxes is part of the flowers. The landing page is part of the flowers. The words you use to get me there are part of the flowers. What you ship it in is part of the flowers. – [Man] So you think the real problem is not because they have a well known brand but we don’t have the brand, that’s why we are not selling? – There could be a lot of things but that’s probably right. I mean if you look at this table right now there’s literally bottles of water that cost three fucking dollars. We buy Fiji, is that true? These are our bottles? You know like that’s the stupidest shit of all time. We’re literally paying, like it’s water. What I think I’m trying to challenge you to do is look at the whole equation and realize everything is part of the customer experience and to me clearly you have not conveyed to the end consumer that you’re valuable the only time anything’s gone well is when there wasn’t an alternative.
That’s a problem. – [Man] But I’ve hired different user experience testers with Amazon and– – Well the Jets have hired football players for 50 years and it didn’t work. – [Man] No, no but I mean like– – No but I’m using an important analogy, but did you hire the right people? You know somebody the other day said to me Gary, but this sounds so much like the agency we currently are using and I said maybe. I said I play basketball but I don’t play it as well as LeBron James. Just ’cause you’ve hired a UX/UI designer if you don’t know how to judge it fully you might have chose the wrong one even if you do know how to judge it.
– [Man] No, I know, but that I hired different people. – How many? – [Man] I would say 10 plus, 10, 15. – You’ve had 10 to 15 people work on UI UX for your site? – No, no, no. – Oh, I’m sorry. – [Man] The website actually, the website I do it by myself. – Okay, well that’s a problem. (laughing) I’ll tell you why. – [Man] I control it but it’s Shopify. – I understand let’s talk, when you have 2% conversion either the things that you’re sending to the site are wrong or what happens when you get to the site is wrong. There’s no magic– – [Man] But it’s not about the branding, it’s not about the product? – Yeah of course it might be about branding and product. That might be what’s wrong on the site. What’s the site? – I will pull it up. – Thank you, bro.
– Yep. – You know? – [Man] Okay, can you tell me your perspective on it? – Mine’s gonna be subjective unless there’s something glaring ia fuck, which there might be that’s why I want to look at it real quick but I think that what everybody here has to realize is sales is very simple, it’s you know who you send in and what happens when they come in. it’s not super complicated. When it’s not working it’s one of those two things or both or the product itself to your point, that’s the only third variable. – [Man] Because I had conversations with a lot of different people and actually even, you know the PR, Runter San.
I think you know him. – Who? – Rauntersan, the 5WKR firm. – Maybe, I do– – [Man] He’s from the Russian community as well. (laughing) – Yeah, there’s a lot of Russians I don’t know if you’ve heard. (laughing) – [Man] This is part of the highest rated PR firm– – I believe you. – [Man] And I got feedback from them as well and it wasn’t something like, was bad on my website or something because honestly like when I get 30,000 people and I get like only few orders and like– – You might have sent 30,000 bad people to the site. – [Man] No, because you can see it what kind of searches they are using and we also targeted audiences, what kind of people we’re gonna bring on the website and it was the right people. – [Woman] Can I give harsh criticism? – Of course you can.
– [Woman] Okay, so I have received Venus ET Fleur and I’ve never heard of your brand and last Valentine’s Day my significant other tried to buy me flowers from Venus ET Fleur and they were sold out so I got it from another brand, not your brand and I just pulled up your website and just on the surface, it doesn’t feel as premium as them and I just mean that like constructively like so some of the imagery like to me like Venus ET Fleur presents themselves in a way that like it feels like a Cartier of flowers.
It feels like a Harry Winston of flowers and frankly like some of the imagery and it’s like the site itself as far as like functionality literally is structured the same way as theirs but I think it’s like some of like– – [Man] The quality of pictures. – [Woman] The pictures and then like some of the arrangements themselves do not feel as premium. And I can only say that just because I’ve bought– – I was making fun of Nick. I got the gist of what you were saying so I moved on to make fun of Nick, thank you. That’s their competitor, right? – No, this is them. – Got it. They look fine to me. – [Man] The website is functional. – [Woman] No, the website itself is– – [Man] But you’re talking about the pictures. – [Woman] Yeah. – It’s just the presence. – Yeah, the presence is. – [Woman] It’s just a little off.
– It’s subjective and I trust it and I appreciate it and it’s a true singular subjective and then the issue becomes is if the far majority agree with her that’s why you’re losing. – [Man] That could be fixed. – [Woman] That’s like a super easy fix. – [Woman] Is this yours? – [Man] Yes. – [Man] This is actually really interesting. Have you had a focus group of women? – [Man] Sorry? – [Man] How have you judged– – And are women the buyer because I would, right. because I would argue that there’s a very high chance that men are the actual buyer. – [Woman] But frankly the only way my significant other knew about it– – It’s because you told him. – [Woman] I sent him on Instagram. – Yeah, I totally get it, I totally get it. Like to your point is the woman the influencer of the decision maker, is the decision maker not being influenced, it’s classic. – [Woman] Well, when I got the off brand, I was like what are these? – Yeah, did you guys break up? – [Woman] No. – Oh damn. That would’ve been the best part of the story.
All right I’m gonna move on but we’ll get back to– – [Man] So what is your opinion because I didn’t get it. – My and Monica knows this my interest in making a subjective creative opinion is zero. What I can definitely tell you is you’ve got a problem. I never take one person’s opinion as truth but if her opinion is shared by 84% of people you’ve got a problem.
Here’s what I can definitely tell you, if her feedback and the collective vibe here is like the imagery is not as good as the other thing my opinion is to hire a very expensive photographer and get higher, bless you. – [Man] They have even worser images. – No, no, you know how people think their children are cuter than everybody. (laughing) You have to be careful they that’s not your opinion because they’re your competitor. – [Woman] I don’t mean the images themselves I mean like some of the staging so like that one with the champagne on it, it feels like you’re like trying to be premium but it’s not translating.
– Go ahead, Mon. – [Mon] Okay, I think the first question I wanna ask you is who are you trying to go after? – He’s a fucking businessman, he’s just trying to sell shit. That’s the problem at hand. – [Mon] I think the design for me right now is like I don’t know land if that makes sense. It’s funny I didn’t know that, it’s that heart shaped– – It’s also, you own this? – [Man] Yeah. – 100%? Let’s start with the fact that it has 33% of his energy. Let’s just before we get into all of our opinions I don’t know the other company that’s the market leader, my intuition on what I hear is that’s their business. This guy has three businesses probably with a fourth, fifth and sixth in his head.
That’s already a problem. – [Man] No, but my wife actually, I had her in marketing but she’s not in control of that business. – Understood, maybe she’s not good. – [Mon] Do you the story of your competition? – [Man] Yeah. – [Mon] Like how maybe– – [Man] I’m not exactly what they did honestly. – [Mon] What is it? – [Man] I know exactly. That’s actually what has been said before, they built a brand, that’s it. – My friend that’s the only thing that exists. – [Woman] That’s the only reason I bought them. – There’s nothing– – [Man] Yeah, but not for us. It’s hard to get to the point where they are because we don’t have that money.
– Brother, they had– – This is a little funny but they actually have a PR agency. – I’m sure, that’s fine, that’s fine. – [Man] We called the PR agency literally two weeks before they signed on the, my wife found the PR agency. – Guys, gals, let me ask you a question. You said that they created the category, like they were the ones that first– – [Man] Yes. – Okay, let me help everybody.
When you’re right about a category you can hire my mom as your PR agent the press picks up on an innovation. Let’s be very, it’s not like they came out with a sneaker like when you create a category you are forever gonna win the press game when you’re the creator of a category. Their success is the best thing that’s happening to you. You spending your time crying about they have more money than you is gonna do you nothing.
What I think you need to do is how much Instagram posts do you put out a day for that brand? – [Man] Instagram posts? – Yes, Instagram posts. – [Man] Like whatever, one a day. – Yeah, you better not go with whatever because the entire target market for your product lives on that fucking platform. One a day whatever is why you’re losing. Six a day knowing exactly what the fuck you’re doing is how you can turn your business around. – [Woman] And Pinterest. – And on and on and on. I’m gonna move, we’ll come back. – [Woman] Yeah, so mine is the– – Yep. You’re in San Diego but you’re global. – [Woman] Pretty much, pretty much. Well that’s how it’s going. – Yep. – [Woman] Like last year primarily I was in South California because that’s where I started and then I work primarily a lot with like planners and venues because the beauty side as Ashley knows is very personal as that goes and so I started it because I wanted a more personalized experience to like my specific needs getting ready for events.
So a lot of it is weddings and just like special events in general but with that is that almost every person that I talk to you whether it’s a new planner or venue or stuff like that is they’re like I’ve never heard of what you’re doing, which is wonderful but it’s also like how do you get– – You don’t. You don’t. You just keep going. People get very confused about convincing versus communicating and moving on. – [Woman] Okay, ’cause it was more so is there a way to get people to know that you can search for this or it’s just like this steady long game. – The execution will create the awareness.
I mean you’re more than welcome to put out creative and content that speaks to it but where people really get caught up when they innovate is trying to convince versus create awareness. – [Woman] That’s kind of what my gut feeling was on it. – Like when we started VaynerMedia like social media, like almost every brand, my brother AJ literally on his laptop created the Pepsi Twitter account. The Campbell’s Facebook account and what we were really good at ’cause it was innate in me and now I speak to it is we would go into a meeting that I would get inevitably and sometimes within four minutes I would wrap it up because I was like okay this has no fucking shot. This is somebody’s taking this meeting as a favor that I was able to get into but their actual interest or even knowledge or even thought is zero so fuck it, I’ll take back the 45 minutes and go do something else and people just like convinced out of their little heart trying to convince people and it’s a huge mistake.
– [Woman] Yeah, ’cause it’s not so much trying to convince people it’s just like the awareness of all of it and so my feeling was just this long game– – It’s kind of like what I put out in the world like you just do it every day in perpetuity. – [Woman] Okay, that’s fine. – I think how you do that is important though like this is exactly the kind of thing that you start a podcast around to create a pillar place that you then create post production content in all places but you have a home where literally the entire show is about the genre. – [Woman] Okay, thank you. – You got it. – [Man] You really helped me out on my marketing, I was just throwing things out there.
I had a guy for three years and he was putting me on Twitter, things of that nature, and he went on and I never hired anybody else. After awhile I’m like I need to do something so I started educating myself and right away I learned from you that a lot of times people aren’t going to click on an advertisement for an attorney but you got to come up with some content for them to consume so what I did was I started doing extreme motorcycle trips and documenting it and people were coming in. We split up a brand you’re a badass, look what you’re doing on the motorcycle.
They sort of think I’m doing that in court and I would say 80%, even though I am hitting some home runs in court a lot of people just hire me because I’m in the community, they see me, I ride, and I’ve got all these videos, lookie, I travel from the end of the world to the top. I mean life-threatening stuff. – I understand. – [Man] Okay, so I started doing that. It’s going great. – Good. – [Man] I want to hire two people. where I want to be, I want to shut down my law firm I want to perhaps get a desk at this other law firm and all I do is produce, go out there, make it rain, let them make the money, and I get a– – A lead gen.
– [Man] Sure, so I’ve got my law firm, I got people working for me but eventually I’m 55 maybe when I’m 65 or 70, maybe do something like that because I don’t plan to retire. Retirement, it’s not for me. – But you enjoyed the content– – [Man] Hell yeah. Oh going out there to the bike weeks, the bike nights, going out– – Yeah so I mean I think the concept of converting your business into a top of funnel lead-gen rev-share business that you can then push to seven different lawyers or a hun, as you know content on the internet is not regional. So now all of a sudden you’ve got fans and lead-gen throughout the entire country. – [Man] I’ve got people from South America, Central America, Mexico, Canada– – You probably can build a substantially bigger business by creating a lead gen top of the funnel business by taking a back-end of the referral across the globe.
Be way happier and make a lot more money. So the way you do that is similar to what I said to her. You should start the business right now. You should create content that alludes to it, see what comes to you, make a biz dev arrangement with either somebody in South America for all of South America or just Brazil for just Brazil and in essence franchise out your top of the funnel business and I mean you could have 50 law firms in all 50 states as the person that you’ve made the deal with to send all because you believe they’re reputable and they know what they’re doing and they have the territory and– – [Woman] Kind of lawyers– – Yeah of course, of course.
– [Woman] They give you the phone number and he’s literally just funneling. – Of course. – [Man] Yeah, there’s about 10 of them out there that are doing it right now. – Lead-gen affiliate businesses have existed for a long time to your point what hasn’t existed is the ability for a human being to do exactly what they love to garner trust and then cosign that trust to another place. Listen, it’s really funny in and this happens a lot with albums and art like my first book, even though I like The “Thank You Economy” more, “Crush It” will forever be the best book I ever wrote because I laid out this entire truth in 2008 and it’s become true.
You want to go read bad star reviews, go read the first 500 reviews of it on Amazon of “Crush it”, people are like fuck this guy. This is a fucking pipe dream. You can’t make money on, what’s YouTube? Like go read them, they’re hilarious. Yeah, man. It’s there right now. You don’t the wait for 65. – [Man] No, I understand and to get the taste and see if that’s for me and if I like it– – That’s right, that’s right, that’s right. Because the first time you get a phone call and say what the fuck, you sent me to Karen in St.
Louis– – [Man] I’m getting that now. Things that I don’t do, people say you just handed me off like a cheap whore. – [Woman] That’s my problem. Wait a second. That’s my problem. – Same with me, they’re like you sent me to Nick Dio, he’s a fucking idiot like I get it. – [Man] But if that’s only one in 10 then I’m doing pretty good. – Isn’t that the point though? – Of course that’s the point. Of course that’s the point. You’re more than welcome to build my dad’s business where he put my fucking cousin and the one guy he trust behind the fucking register because he was scared somebody was gonna steal, played complete defense and then capped. Of course that’s the point. You know why? ‘Cause you can fix it. – Because my thing is I don’t want to manage 500 artists like I don’t want that– – You’re gonna build a SAS product and see how much you like it and then it might be boring because you missed the art of it and then you won’t or you will.
– Or dabble in both. – Or dabble both. There is no right, there’s right for you. – Right. – [Man] Thank you for words though. – Yep. – [Man] The long term and how to get there doing that and I know you’ve talked about this, maybe you might throw something out different– – Go ahead. – [Man] I had the one guy– – I got you. You had no idea what the fuck he was doing. You should. – I get three, but I wanna start off with the first guy, the second guy, the third guy. And like I was telling your team I get a lot of guys, they know all the apps, and I’ve interviewed a few and then I stopped– – Do you understand? Like well you know how to judge the guy or the gal that you hired? Will you be able to judge the person that’s putting out the content? – [Man] I can’t answer that question but what I am gonna do is I’m gonna do trial and error, like you said, fire quick, hire quick.
Just until I get the right one. – So the you you answered it the right way. There’s nothing to talk about here and fire. The more educated you are upfront, the more you know that you can do a poll sticker in an Instagram story the more likely you’ll be able to interview her or me. – Right, ’cause right now I’m doing it all myself and I sat down on YouTube. – More. More. I would argue that if you went on 100 day sprint to create content and spend media on every platform from Snapchat to Pinterest to Facebook to YouTube that that would put you in a disproportionately better spot to hire someone.
People trying to hire people without knowing the craft. How the fuck are you gonna hire somebody like I keep telling people I’m like I’ve been saying something on stage. I’d rather you know how to do this than balance your checkbook. That’s how important it is. So I think 100 day sprint on downloading them all because inevitably you have your favorites right now or the one or two you feel most comfortable with.
Get uncomfortable and both organic and paid. – [Man] I’m all organic except for Facebook because that’s the older guys on the Harleys. Those are the one’s that call me. – Facebook and YouTube and very quickly Instagram are clearly going to be your pocket. I mean YouTube pre-roll based on Google search that would be really good for your business my friend, based on both your businesses. There’s a product where you can run YouTube videos on a pre-roll before a video based on what the person was searching on Google so it’s intent-based but it’s actually brand. So somebody’s searching to buy tires in your area but then go watches a Baltimore Ravens video and you pop up and say hey, you looking for tires, I’m like fuck! (laughing) And then everyone’s like Google’s searching me! No, no, you searched for tires. Everyone’s like the phone’s listening! Nobody’s, I mean it’s so ludicrous. The phone’s listening. It’s not listening, you fucking searched for tires, you forgot. It’s like this miraculous like everyone thinks like fucking it’s so laughable.
You searched for tires dick, you clicked on a tires picture. That’s how they knew. They’re not fucking listening to you. Zucks is not under your fucking bed. Do them all for 100 days and then started interviewing. And ask three interesting questions. I always say to my team I’m like look, we’re gonna lose 90% of time because we only win with the 10 best percent of people because we’re so much smarter and we’re not gonna sell bullshit. And that’s how you want to hire. You want to get so knowledgeable especially at your height of that 100 day sprint that when you interview us and you’re like so what would you do with Instagram swipe up? Then you’re gonna get an answer. This is why I make fun of everybody in my world. I sit in rooms with people that don’t do any of this stuff.
They talk about reports and opinions. I’m a practitioner. Be a practitioner for 100 days so you can ask better questions. You’ll probably do a better job of hiring. – [Man] I’m ready to make mistakes so I’m gonna do it. – But don’t use, to your point, exactly, but like fuck mistakes– – [Man] $300 here. – Exactly and just make and just make and just make and just a hun, and then you’ll be fucking, you’re gonna feel better too because you’re thoughtful, you’ve been successful, it’s not fun to guess. It’s a lot more fun to hire with a little, right? So all you have to do is make and then by the way you may discover fuck, I actually love this, back to like what do you like. Who the fuck knows what it leads to, right? – Marketing and scale question.
Two years ago or actually a year ago I was a one man show, a law firm, right. Got sick, really sick. I was like out for six months with Crohn’s. – Sorry. – [Man] No worries. So then I said look, I can’t be seen with one failure so I started marketing for the first time and my bread and butter right now– – What did you market, the firm? Or you? – [Man] It’s really more, I’m a personal brand– – Yeah, makes sense.
Keep going. Good and bad news, you’re still a point of failure. But good news, because this is important because it’s gonna matter in a second. You started marketing but you’re still the point of failure, right? But the good news is what’s the punchline? Like people all the time they’re like Gary, Vayner, it’s too much about you. Like what if you get hit by a bus, I’m like then it shuts down. Whereas a good CEO for a public company when she decides to go work at another company that company is actually in trouble. So like the point of failure conversation of a single person is actually funny when corporate friends of mine say that because I’m like you do understand that it is far more likely for the CEO of your company to go and work somewhere else than it is for me to get hit by a bus.
And by the way if I get hit by a bus, I don’t give a fuck about VaynerMedia. (laughing) I’m dead! I’m dead. – [Man] I’ve got the team now, so I got a team of seven. I’ve got a managing partner. I don’t really wanna do the servicing. – Yep. – [Man] But my business has always been like influencer/trade show. 100% of my ad spend right now is me going to these trade shows and I speak, I get invited to speak on stage. – I love it. – That’s a big one. I have a booth and I spend– – Top of funnel, I got it. – [Man] A lot of travel, I got two little kids at home, so I started doing the digital about eight months ago, organic, and I’m like– – Where? – [Man] Facebook primarily. – Yep. – Loved it. – No LinkedIn yet? – [Man] I just started filling it. – Good. – [Man] So just pure value, had no call to action and it’s working, people are recognizing– – Go figure. – [Man] Right, people are recognizing– – Selfie.
They’re like ah. – [Man] Exactly, all that stuff. I don’t want to do the trade shows anymore. – No shit. – [Man] No shit right, so I want to transition from the trade shows to really doing digital. – Or when you do the three trade shows that you still value you gotta film it so you get a ton of content. Beauty. – I’ve done that. – Okay, keep going. – [Man] So the question becomes is there, I geofence conferences now. So I go there, I geofence, I capture those people who went to the conference but I’m not there now, right? So that’s cool so I can retarget them, so I’ve got that down.
The question is should I be doing something with those conferences even though I’m not there? Like running ads at those because that’s where they congregate, that’s where my client, sales congregate. – They congregate physically there. – [Man] Physically, correct. – But they congregate on the internet 24/7 365. – [Man] So don’t worry about that my competitor’s speaking and so I got to put my face in there even though I’m not there just, it’s just pure digital. – That’s defense. Don’t play defense. It’s a really big theme. It really matters when I analyze from afar who’s winning and who’s losing it’s offense/defense.
– [Man] Offense is usually winning? – Yeah, I have no knowledge of anything, like you know I loved when James joined the organization ’cause he’s like such a career industry guy, he has so much institution knowledge, that was the punchline, I wanted to extract that. But he would talk to me nonchalantly ’cause we’ve been in the business for a while enough and he’d be like you know Johnny Magoo from Magoo, I’m like uh? Like I don’t know anything. I would know that that flower company existed and that’s where it would end. I don’t give a fuck if Rick is speaking instead of me this year. I stayed home because the two kids. I’m tired. The Crohn’s thing fucked me up. I don’t wanna travel as much. I would start a fucking call-in show on LinkedIn every day and that’s offense. – Got it. – Got it? – [Man] And then how do I then transition to more the scaling thing, which is kind of similar to what we we’re talking about which is so I’m top of funnel, I bring in a crap load of leads.
I don’t do a good a job with those leads, but like I said, I’ll starting do a good job with those leads, then I hand off right to the service provider, which is my manager/partner. She does most if not all of the legal work. – You have to be upfront with the audience. – [Man] At what point ’cause I’m at the point where– – Now. – I’m taking the pitch– – Now. Now. You allude to them. Look what I do with all my peeps. As they know like I never say you’re getting me. It’s VaynerMedia. – [Woman] But you have the credibility to maybe pass that along. – 100%. 100%. – [Man] They call me, they talk to me, I sell ’em, they’re great, they get the engagement letter, we hire them, then it’s okay, here we go. – Yeah, you’ve gotta establish that and by the way it will always happen, like I’m sure I’ve had three conversations with Monica through the years where she was like but Gary, I love you but like we love you but like I’m sure her bosses and things say Gary is amazing but you know after that, and I like I love when people like Gary, I’ve had some pretty contentious conversation when people like Gary, listen, like you’re amazing but like the drop off to you and your team, it’s a real problem for us and I’m like motherfucker the drop off for me and anybody on earth is a problem.
The drop up for me and your CEO is a problem, fuck you. Don’t compare me and my team, compare VaynerMedia to fucking your horseshit agency that’s ripping you off. So you’ve got established that same truth. – [Man] Do you announce that on stage when you’re doing– – Yes, you start you start doing what I do like I interject like watch what I’m doing, not what I’m saying. People know there’s a D-roc and a James and a Maribelle and a Nick like yes, that’s exactly right. – [Man] Almost bring them on stage too, get them on video– – Well by the way, like I’m leaving in a minute so you can give them all the answers you want.
So I think the thing there is you can bring her in in however she wants, she might be introverted. Me and you might have a master plan here in the ivory tower and she’s like don’t point that fucking camera on me but you can speak of her existence. You speak in team and business talk not I. – [Man] Okay, thank you. – [Woman] So I launched Sluce on the app store about six months ago, that was in July. – Why? – [Woman] What do you mean why? – Why? – [Woman] Well it started off, I don’t go out too much just because I’m super busy with racing and I’m not really, I’m a little more on the introvert side so it started out because my sister would go out and she would go to a place and like so we live in the suburbs of Philadelphia– – On the Jersey side or Philly? – [Woman] Philly side.
– Okay. – [Woman] So my sister would go out and one week she would go to a place and it would be a great time and then she’d go there the next week and there was nobody there and so basically what I was getting from her, an app evolved a lot just through the ideation phase. What I was getting from her was just like the desire for more transparency. – Like is anybody actually there? – [Woman] It started out that like that and then I realized I couldn’t really scale that. – No, yeah. – [Woman] There wasn’t really much value there. – It’s really funny bring this up. It was such a fun early problem that everybody in Silicon Valley was trying to solve with the early iPhone because we knew now we had something on us and to your point that is like the big one, but the contradiction between what a venue would want you to know versus, there’s so many variables but nonetheless keep going. – [Woman] So when we launched I had hired a marketing agency, which I embarrassingly admit that I was unprepared from my personal knowledge of how all the platforms work.
– Of course. – [Woman] So like I’m like here’s your budget and I literally got it’s as close to saying I got zero out of a six-figure budget and like that’s a hard pill for me to swallow because it was my responsibility and I have people to answer to for that and so now I like to pivot, so we were launching specifically in Philadelphia and there was like a polygon that it was allowed within like for people to operate the app. And for me it was like about creating concentration. – I understand. – [Woman] And so we sort of extended that now that we stopped working with that marketing company and we’ve extended to the suburbs and the reason we did that is because when we did our primary pitching in Philadelphia to get venues on board, they’re really hard and then they don’t give a shit about you.
– You didn’t have the leverage of the users. Good news, I promise you this if you walk into a venue and say if I press a button 19,000 people show up, they’ll listen. That’s what I mean, you didn’t have the leverage, keep going. – [Woman] So we decided that on this whole, not that we got rid of that agency and I’m trying to learn some of this myself, so I can least be versed and responsible, we’re going to the suburbs now knowing that like they’re probably going to be slightly more receptive even to trying. – Couldn’t agree more. – [Woman] But one of the problems that I experienced when I was going into the venues in Philadelphia primarily was about trust and so they’re like okay, well your platforms free, how do you make money? And I remember the first handful of times that I got asked that question, it’s like why do you care? And then I started thinking about it like from, like had I started this idea 10 years ago, if the technology is permitted obviously like I was in a place where in my mind it would’ve been like oh, I’m doing this and I need to make this much money in this much amount of time and my folks would be like an exit strategy and selling or something like that and like now like just as I’ve gotten older like I come from a very different place of like through me it’s just about right now building this platform out to have value and then caring.
I already have ideas about monetization but they’re so far down the road for me that when people ask, I’m like who cares right now? – Do you feel like their energy came from a place of the war stories of Groupon and LivingSocial– – [Woman] Yeah, they’re all so nasty about it. – Of course well because people went out of business, which was the funniest part of it all. Groupon and LivingSocial were so effective people went out of business because the people were stupid and made offers they couldn’t afford and somehow the platform got blamed. I’ll never forget like you know, I’m a pretty like be accountable for your actions.
This woman’s like crying in Chicago of a cupcake store, she’s like Groupon put me out of business. And this is like the sweetest old lady and I’m yelling at the TV screen in my hotel room, brushing my teeth, I’m like motherfucker, you put yourself out of business! The fuck are you, what are you talking about, Groupon put you out of business? – [Woman] That goes back to the voting thing, like you were the one that ultimately put that out there. – So? – [Woman] So like with the app I guess that one of the struggles that we’re having is that like when we go into a venue, right now are biggest struggle is acquisition of these venues and it’s a very chicken and egg problem. – Of course.
– [Woman] So like when we go in there like right now we’re so new with onboarding these venues, how do I garner that trust– – It’s actually similar to three questions ago. I think you don’t have the time or energy or scale to convince. – [Woman] Even locally? – Yeah, I think you just try to, have you asked every single business? – [Woman] No, so we just pivoted– – You know what I mean? Like that’s where my head goes.
Here’s how my head goes if I was like the third sister in like building this. Ask, ask, ask, ask, ask, you know get through a month of asking everybody then sit down be like fuck, all nos. Shit, now we have to either pick another suburb or convince, convince, convince but convincing… Let me ask you a question, so let’s play it out. I’m a gourmet food store. Like you go to Wine Library and we have gourmet food because liquor’s a little tricky and I’m like hey, I like to innovate, I’m Gary, I like the innovate. I’m interested in doing this. What’s the value, shit what are we asking? – [Woman] So it’s more directed towards live essentially. – Okay. – [Woman] So if a restaurant was a little, and it’s not necessarily a little on the slow side but it’s also the increased transparency so you can put your daily specials in and you can send out an offer. – What are they scared of? – [Woman] It’s just like I don’t wanna deal with it.
It’s too confusing. – [Woman] I think it’s just an additional thing. Like being a small business owner, I owned a salon for 11 years and like you get asked all these different things and you get confused on what platform to be on. It just becomes one more thing to push that content to. – [Woman] So to like fight that argument from them, we did Facebook integration as like a sign up and now we’re realizing like we want to get away from like Facebook sign ups because that’s actually– – Can we take a step back? Where are you at with the business? So like scratch.
– [Woman] I mean I used to work in the hospitality industry so I saw a need for like slow times– – That makes sense. Did that come from you want to be the greatest hero of the hospitality industry or more from like I’m in a place in my life where I feel very entrepreneurial and I want to do something. – [Woman] No, I wanted to do something. – Yeah, so I think that, so I’ll tell you why I’m going down this series of questions. What’s really interesting to me about this is you’re trying to create a two-way marketplace. The businesses that’ve created two way market places like eBay and Uber and Airbnb are the biggest businesses in the world.
I don’t think when people go into two-way marketplaces they realize how almost impossible it is to pull off. So the reason I’m asking you the question is in my knowledge of the last 15 years of knowing that you have a .0000000000000000001% chance of building this company, I want to make sure why are you doing it and if it’s I want to do something because I have entrepreneurial DNA and I’m in a position to do something and I want to scratch that itch, it gets to a much bigger version of close down your T-shirt company. I want to make sure that you’re going eyes wide open of like fuck, these are the hardest businesses to build on earth. – [Woman] So the reason I’m okay with that and I know sort of outed me a little earlier– – [Man] Sorry. – [Woman] It’s okay. I race professionally and you follow a girl I race against but I won’t hold that against you.
– The one that came here with her family? – [Woman] Yeah, Hailey. – Yeah, yeah. Okay. So you do that. – [Woman] Yeah, so basically what racing has taught me is what it takes to win. And that’s like the best thing in my life that it’s ever giving me so to me that lesson transcends. – It does accept what’s really cool about what you do for a living is there’s multiple races to win whereas with a business you’re running one race and if it’s a race where I’m racing against you and you actually know what you’re doing and I don’t, it’s highly unlikely I’m gonna win.
So for you to have the eyes wide open of oh shit and maybe you know it but like for real now, for everybody like two way marketplaces are literally the biggest companies in our society. 100,000 of them launch a month and nobody ever succeeds because the balance of chicken-and-egg at scale. – [Woman] It’s so fragile. – I’m gonna say it one more time.
Ebay, Uber, like you’re talking about public companies that built, I just want to make sure you realize how insane of a marketplace that is. – [Woman] I guess my hardest part is to just get a little bit of a traction just to start. Like just the catalyst of it. – Incentivize it. – [Woman] But in what way? – Pay small businesses to do it. Let me tell you one thing about small businesses that are busy to your point, you knock on my dad’s door and say hey Sasha, I will pay you $2,000 to try my product because I need the example to sell to other people, you will get that answer from every one of them. Definitely. – [Woman] So like right now we’ve been incentivizing like I hired a photographer that shoots for the Michelin group.
– Money. – [Woman] Like good money? – Nope, give them money. They like pictures, they like money more. Hello, Sara at the Cherry Hill Inn, we’re gonna give you a $1,000 in cash to just try our product. It will work. If you’re just so itching to just taste it, I’ve given you a really good answer that’s gonna save you a fuckload of time and money by giving them money.
You will go four for four of giving somebody a thousand dollars for Saturday night to test when you go transparent and you say, I’m only doing this because I need the example to sell to everybody else around the country, they will understand, it will be transparent, and you will close deals. – [Woman] Can you as a business if you’re paying me to do that also if I go and share with my fans, like hey, check us out on this platform because we’re gonna post our specials.
– Don’t even ask that. It’d be nice but then I’m saying oh, you’re paying me actually to give you exposure. You just need the example. – [Woman] But I would think as a business I would maybe potentially do that– – I wouldn’t because I’d like fuck her, I’m gonna do that and then she’s gonna go to another liquor store and use my fucking customers. That’s how I got here..
