On this episode India turns into the Professor.
(hip hop music)
- [Gary] You ask questions,
and I answer them.
This is The #AskGaryVee Show.
Hey everybody this is Gary Vay-ner-chuk
and this is episode 222 of The #AskGaryVee Show.
Beautiful day in New York City.
Dunk is Periscoping oh he's double fisted.
I like that. Doing something else.
And India has transformed into an elderly, not elderly,
by India standards, an older gentleman from Europe.
- Mhmmm. - True.
Why don't you tell the Vayner Nation who you are, what you're
doing here for the week and then a little bit about yourself?
- I'm Niklas Myhr, the social media professor--
- Not me, them.
- And I actually find your take on education quite refreshing.
You're not the biggest fan obviously but I thought I would
get a cold shower of reality this week so thank you for the
internship opportunity.
The reverse internship.
Learning the real world at VaynerMedia to see what kind of
world my students get into when they get out.
- That's great.
We've known each other for a nice little while now.
Where do you teach?
- I teach at Chapman University in southern California which is
a good private college and we put out MBA students and
undergrads hopefully to VaynerMedia and
other places in the world.
- Awesome. It's great to have you.
How's it going so far? How's Andy?
Andy's, show Andy, he's a tough guy.
- [Niklas] Yeah.
- [Gary] I wouldn't want to work for him.
I'm glad that he works for me.
- [Niklas] Put me to work sorting staplers.
- So what are we, is today Tuesday?
So yesterday was the first day. - Yeah.
- What's your first 36 hour observation of Vayner?
Obviously it's a new fancy office.
- Yeah. - Your timing was great.
- Yeah. - Did you plan that on purpose?
- Perfect.
Very impressed, people are really looking like they fit in
and they're really focused and everyone is talking about
Musical.ly so I started started a Musical.ly account yesterday
and my 12-year-old daughter saw it.
Always got to learn.
- I love it. I love it.
- It seems to be people are really taking this job seriously
but they seem to work for the passion and seem
to be motivated intrinsically.
- Great. - Very impressive.
- Well, appreciate it.
Alright, let's get into the show.
Good to see everybody.
I'm really looking forward to the fall.
I'm trying not to travel as much in September so hopefully we'll
get into a great cadence after Labor Day.
One things you guys should know just for general content
purposes start in the middle of of next week taking a good two
and half weeks with the family so we'll be very quiet.
There'll be a lot of DJing content.
Andy, we can finally find all those little short video clips
that are deeply entrenched somewhere.
I feel like Dunk should watch every hour of raw footage of
every DailyVee so that's 60 by
then times about eight hours each?
- [DRock] Yeah.
- I mean, 480 hours worth of raw footage of just me.
Alright, let's do it.
First question, who's asking it?
- Parsa has a video question here. - Okay.
- Hey Gary, this is Parsa.
What do you think about using Snapchat as a way to sell and
buy products with Snap Cash?
Would that be Snapchat's next big move?
- Parsa, I think it is an interesting thought.
Obviously a lot of people in the US and Europe entrepreneurs
scene are affected by WeChat's unbelievable success of not only
being a content and a communication but a retail
platform in China.
I think Snap Cash is
something that Snapchat is de-prioritizing.
I think on the flip side, I think we're going to see
a lot more commerce coming from Facebook.
I predict that a lot of you will be selling a ton of stuff
through Facebook 24 months from today.
I think Parsa for Snapchat I'm not sure.
I think that they're, internally I'm sure they're thinking
about their roadmap.
I'm curious to think about what they're thinking about Instagram
Stories, do they feel like one of the observations that I'm
kind of leaning towards is I don't think Instagram Stories
kills Snapchat but I definitely think it may slow down the
migration of 35 to 55-year-olds over to the platform if they can
use Instagram to feed that kind of storytelling.
So how are they thinking about that?
I was bullish and excited about Snap Cash.
I thought it was a good move by them way back when.
I think it's something you can consider.
My intuition is what you're trying to accomplish ends up
becoming a big business within Facebook in the next 24 months.
- Awesome.
- Ted? - I'm learning the ropes.
Ted has a video question.
- Let's do it.
- What's going on Gary? Big fan.
My name is Ted Bettridge and
I'm a 13-year-old graphic designer from the UK.
I've recently started my design company and I'm presenting it on
Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and just about to start YouTube.
I'm proud of being a 13-year-old designer and I think I can use
that as a growth hack to make myself better known out there.
But some clients when they find out that I'm 13 take that back
as a negative without actually seeing my work
and knowing the full story.
So how would you recommend me going around presenting myself
and my business as a 13-year-old designer?
Cheers Gary.
- Cheers mate.
Teddy, listen, I think you're all excited up front of like I'm
gonna differentiate myself by being 13 and then you're like
but some clients don't like it.
Of course. You're 13.
Literally Andy has speakers older than you. Right?
This is unbelievable.
And your composure and your charisma on the video,
you're going to be very successful.
I have a funny feeling at whatever you decide to do.
The same way I met Dunk when we met in the hotel room.
I'm like, "You're coming to America."
Some young kids just have it.
I could tell way more because I spent more time with them to
know that he did have it.
I'm not sure about you that's a good first impression for me.
Getting on the show at all.
But here's the reality, my friend, Ted, you're going to
learn this at 13, you're going to learn this at 16,
you're going to learn this at 19,
you're going to learn this at 27,
you're going to learn it at 40.
How old are you? - [Niklas] 53.
- You look great. You're going to learn it at 53.
As I'm sure you know what I'm about to say is true,
you gotta take the good with the bad.
You gotta take the good with the bad.
For everybody who's going to give you notoriety or write an
article about you our actually use you 'cause you're 13 there's
going to be people that don't.
For everybody that loves that I keep it real and authentic
there's plenty of people that don't want to work with me
because I curse or because
I push against the traditional systems.
- Not at Social Media Marketing World.
- Did they like it? - Yeah.
- Yes, they did, you're right.
The punchline is very simple which is this,
Teddy, you need to be you.
Don't hide that you're 13 'cause
you think you'll earn more money.
You're 13 and if you got real talent, that's going to serve
you extremely well.
I think the reality is how would I play it?
By just being you and doing your thing and not dwelling on the
negatives and not getting too big headed about the positives.
Don't get too upset when somebody cancels an order when
they found out you're 13 and don't think you're hot shit just
'cause somebody wrote some cool Business Insider headline that
says 13-year-old stuns with his graphical design skills.
- [Niklas] Wonderful. - Thank you.
- [Niklas] Chris has a question for you.
- Okay.
- [Voiceover] Chris asked, "If the Jets win the Super Bowl
"before you buy the team, will you lose interest?"
- So I've been really scared of this question.
This is actually a true story.
I did not want this question to be asked because the truth is
I don't know. Let's start there.
I love how I'm looking into yonder trying to
find my future self. (group laughter)
Basically, I'm looking outside right now and
I'm like picturing myself jumping over a fence and running
on the field and tackling Brandon Marshall and
getting arrested.
I don't think I'll want to buy them.
- [Niklas] Wow.
- Not only that I got something scarier.
I don't know if I'm going to care about them at all.
I'm telling you Ken Skelfo if you're watching right now
please leave a comment.
Ken Skelfo, will tell you that 15-year-old me in 1982 and
North Hunterdon High School was a bigger New York Ranger fan
than a New York Jets fan.
And that is the hidden story of who I am.
I always wanted buy the Jets so that's kind of interesting,
so football was my true favorite sport but the Jets weren't good
and so you lose steam and the Rangers were making their march
to my first championship that was won right there,
one of the great moments of my life.
And I think that, here's what I can tell you if the Jets win the
Super Bowl this year, three years now, six years now before
I get a chance to buy them and when the Super Bowl there is a
significant chance that all of my sports energy will be
deployed aggressively towards the New York Knicks because they
would be my last team that hasn't won.
They've already got a big part of my attention they just been
so bad for 15 years, it siphoned any excitement out of my body.
I'm very, I'm very concerned about this question.
It's actually the scariest question besides the things I
care about which are the health of my family it's one of the
weird scariest things in my life.
I do not want the Jets, deep down I don't think I want the
Jets to win the Super Bowl.
- [Niklas] I'm a hockey fan from Sweden you can go with
the with the Rangers.
- Our goalie, Mr. Lundquist. Alright.
- Alright, then we have Gus here.
- Gus.
- [Voiceover] Gus asks, "Which pro athlete or celebrity is the
"most marketable but isn't monetizing it yet?"
- Oh, that's a great question.
Who is the most monetizable celebrity or athlete right now
who's under monetizing?
Okay so I don't know the answer because I don't really dig too
deep into that world.
I mean I know but I don't know.
And I don't like talking about things I don't know but I'm a
give a very smart answer.
I believe on looks and charisma it is somebody who's an athlete
that is not a star player.
So what I mean by that is I believe that, well look,
Chris Humphries, right?
He's a very solid, gutsy rebounding NBA player but he
became dramatically more famous and could monetize because
Kim Kardashian and him dated and they actually
got married for four minutes.
I think that that's a good comp.
I think there's a stunningly handsome or beautiful man or
woman who's an athlete who's not the star of their team who
either is gorgeous and can play the modeling role along with
athlete though that doesn't play out 'cause sports a lot of times
they'll rag on you that you're just pretty and you can't
get it done on the field.
I actually think as I'm talking this through
it's the most charismatic.
So what do I mean by that?
I believe that that somebody started vlogging Casey Neistat,
Casey style right now in the NBA
as the ninth man off the bench
was a great guy, had a little charisma, was a great
storyteller, knew how not to blow up the spot of his fellow
athletes, showed the real life of being on a bus before the
game, with fans, his own life, his crazy brother, his awesome
mom I think that that is the person right now.
The most charismatic storyteller that could be doing it with a
phone that happens not be the best player on the team has the
most storytelling capabilities that hasn't been deployed yet.
- [Niklas] Awesome. - Gilbert Arenas did this.
Gilbert Arenas was a very nice up-and-coming NBA player who
then had some big-time seasons who was the first guy to blog
and use MySpace way back when and became much more famous than
he actually was and got better
endorsement deals because of it.
So that's who I would say.
It's really anybody who is a
B or C list celebrity or athlete
that needs to act like me
or Casey or Nash Greer or Musical.ly stars.
They need to the internet thing
while they're on the mainstream plateau.
- [Niklas] Mhmmm. Awesome.
Then I get a chance to ask a question.
- You get to ask a question? - Yes.
- This is a very big moment, Professor.
Can I call you "Professor"? - Yes, actually--
- Professor.
Put up a big, Staphon, little editing for you professor.
- If the Attorney General was forbidding you to--
- This is actually the question? - yes,--
- Oh shit.
- and forced you to go teaching for a semester--
- I would be A pumped.
As long as everybody else couldn't run businesses either.
If I was just picked on I'd be pissed that sounds like
more like communism.
A, if everybody was, I'd be happy.
It's the same I feel about the last two weeks of August.
Do you know I'm comfortably taking
off for the last two weeks of August?
Because most people take the last two weeks of August and
I know there's not going to be as much productivity and so
I'm not falling too far behind.
If I had to teach a semester, what's the question?
- How would you structure and teach social media marketing?
- I would probably if I was allowed to on a university level
I probably would be and obviously take out the
economics, could we afford to, I would try and get them out of
the room, out of the classroom as much as possible whether
physically or mentally and what I mean by that is mentally we
would be in our apps doing, creating.
I would get kids out of, if I was in Chapman in California I would
go to local businesses I would take the 29 kids in class
we'd go to Lou's pizza shop.
Be like "Lou, we're here. And were here to work.
"What do you need?"
I very much believe, I'm so proud of you I was so thankful
that you reached out to me and you're taking us up on this week
because you're going to go be better.
You're gonna go back to school and what you're gonna learn this
week you're going to be better.
- Yeah. - Because it's real.
This is real. - Mhmmm.
- The classroom is less real.
It's less of the market, it just is.
My answer to your question is
I would force them to do real shit.
- Yeah.
- I would just try to get them do as much real stuff
as much as possible.
You can watch GaryVee videos, you can read books,
you can pontificate, you can debate but
nothing beats getting thrown.
I can tell kids about swimming.
Okay, so what you want to do is, right?
I can tell you.
We can debate what the best stroke is.
But how are you going to be a good swimmer?
You're going to throw that kid in the pool.
I would put the kids in as many real life situations as possible
and I would do in a couple different ways.
One, I would try to use my connections if I was allowed to
based on this fantasy world you've created and get them to
go to Under Armour or a Toyota see how they think about it.
But then I'd also do a competition the last
three weeks of the semester I would say okay we're
all going to go to the farmer's market.
You all have three weeks to figure out what you're going to
sell in a farmers market and then all you can use is digital
for the whole three weeks leading up to it and then
whoever sells the most fruit wins.
Try to get them into that kind of mentality because
I think that matters.
I'm very scared, Professor, of eighth place trophies.
I'm very scared of rewarding
people for success that isn't real.
We would have the fruit and vegetable farmers market
competition and then the next day in class I would say
unbelievable job Sally and I would say Elliott you suck.
You are a loser, you sold eight dollars in radishes and
let's break down why you sucked.
Your Instagram was boring,
I don't know what the hell you were thinking.
Your radishes look like shit so let's start with the biggest
thesis which is no marketing fixes crap product.
So these are the things that we would go through.
- Thank you. - You're welcome.
- I will use this for my class. Thanks.
- Thanks for being on.
Question of the day.
You get to ask it, my friend.
You get to ask the Vayner Nation
any question that you want, Professor.
Answer the Professor's question.
- In terms of a CEO what would you advice would you give to
them to humanize their brands?
And then what platforms and what media formats?
- Detail.
- Yeah, detail, examples, state of the art, 2016 August.
- Love it.
Thanks you, my friend. - Awesome.
- You keep asking questions, we'll keep answering them.