- On this episode, we talk about switching
from account to account to account on the Gram,
we talk about some T Swift and Crossroads music,
and we talk about
other stuff.
(hip hop music)
You ask questions, and I answer them.
This is The #AskGaryVee Show.
What's up, everybody?
This is Gary Vay-ner-chuk, and this is episode 67
of The #AskGaryVee Show.
Feeling a little bit better
from my post-Super Bowl meltdown, mentally.
That being said, I don't know if you guys caught this,
and I think, you know....
Content, content, content,
like, didn't take a shower.
My hair looked like crap.
I wasn't in the best mood, but many people
on the Twitter and in the comments
talked about that being their favorite episode yesterday,
and I think it had to do with actually good answers,
that tie in thing I did, which is awesome.
Big shout out to everybody who's listening on the podcast.
Been noticing there's a little bit of momentum
going on there, and still really debating
if I should do some original content on the podcast,
and are we gonna do the SnapChat original content today?
Are we gonna answer a couple really quick?
Whether it's today or not, maybe tomorrow.
Let's do tomorrow, 68 feels...
Let's wait for episode 68 to do something special
because I think that we're gonna start
doing some original answers just on SnapChat stories,
so follow me on the SnapChat,
and I'm excited about that.
So we continue to innovate,
and I'm in a really good mood,
so let's get into episode six seven.
- [Voiceover] Rob asks
"On Facebook the separate business pages
are easy to handle, on Twitter I can switch
between accounts on my iPhone with ease,
but not on Instagram.
Do I need separate accounts that the app
hasn't made it easy to handle,
or is there a way to successfully use one account
for all three things without it being
jumbled and ineffective."
- Rob, this is a tremendous question,
and what I love about this show,
somebody in the comments said,
this is becoming more like a master class mentorship,
and I think it's because we're doing
very specific questions.
That's what's great about Q and A.
Oh, a couple of things by the way, real quick,
DRock, Staphon, team, everyone,
great new video that just came out
about - you're giving Staphon the credit?
Right, 'cause you did the new Twitter one
that's about to come out later today as well.
We are crushing the video game.
Show Staphon, and Staphon, you look at him with the camera.
It's like a little meta thing going on.
Let's link that up right here.
Will the Twitter video be up by the time
this episode goes up?
Great, let's put that over here,
and that one's for you, DRock.
And so a couple of new videos,
and why I love Twitter video, and more importantly,
'cause it's just true, more importantly,
the One Is Greater Than Zero thesis.
These videos are great.
They're top line thinking.
This show is great because it's practitioner.
Let's get to the answer, 'cause I'm
being long winded here.
You know, Twitter, Facebook do make it easy.
Instagram's newer, even though it's become humongous.
People forget how young the company is,
and it's a pain in the ass,
much like it was the pain the ass for me,
with Wine Library and Gary Vaynerchuk,
GaryVee, and on Facebook, when I used to have
personal pages, before fan pages existed,
and I maxed out my friends limit.
That was a humblebrag.
And yeah, so it's a pain in the butt,
but I think you should separate the three.
Instagram has become a safe haven
for people to consume content.
They don't want ads.
They don't wanna see things they don't wanna see,
and I think it's actually very important
on Instagram specifically for you
to segment out all three.
I do think over time Instagram will figure that out
as it evolves as a product, or maybe not,
'cause they wanna make that friction
so people aren't hitting it too hard
from too many different directions,
but to answer your question practically,
you need to create the three accounts,
and it's gonna be a pain in the butt
because you gotta sign out, sign back in,
but is that really that tough?
- [Voiceover] Rafael asks,
"They say you should hire slow and fire quick.
How many chances do you give your staff?"
- I feel it's funny.
On this show, multiple times, I talk about
not being crippled by hiring somebody
because if they're not good I'll fire.
The truth is, I have struggled
for 15 plus year of my career, at least,
22, 37, I would say for the first 15 years of my career
I was not doing a good enough job
in the firing department, and it still
is something I struggle with.
It's just not fun.
There's nothing worse than firing somebody.
There's nothing good about it.
I usually spend an extra 20 to 30 days
just figuring out the justification,
of like, "Oh but they were..."
I'm literally making up stuff to make myself
feel better about it.
So the truth is, the real answer for me is,
we're slow to it, even...
It's one of the things I'm trying to get
this company better at is,
don't worry, any VeynerMedia people watching.
Yeah, I mean, look.
I've definitely come to learn that you're doing
the right thing for them as well
'cause you're just dragging out the process,
and they're not growing, and nothing good
is gonna come of that, but....
The answer, practically, is I use my intuition.
I really do.
You just have to make a gut call sometimes
on can you give this person one more chance?
We are not in the one, two, or even three strike policy
here at Vayner.
We have enormous continuity,
and some of it has to do with the way we fire, in my opinion.
I think people see us trying to handle things
with empathy and grace, and one thing I'm very proud of
is when people are let go here,
people aren't that surprised, right?
And so, people paying attention...
But you don't wanna hold on too long
because then you lose the trust of all the great people,
and so I don't think there's a set answer.
You gotta go on your intuition.
I think the more interesting answer is
do you think you have the EQ and the people skills
and the intuition to do it, and if you don't,
who do you think has it?
And empower them to do it.
That's the more interesting part.
And by the way, that could go left field.
I would tell you that if I didn't have that skill
in my early days of Wine Library,
I would have courted my mother
to come in and be that person
because I knew she could do it,
so even think outside of your employee base.
It might be a friend who is not happy in their job,
but you know they have the best people skills
you've ever seen, and maybe you bring them in
for a pseudo-HR doing other things,
and you want them to handle that.
The firing process is immensely important
in every organization, one that I don't think
people put enough emphasis on,
and there's a lot of angles.
It's not just firing fast.
It's not just not firing.
It's how you fire.
We've been letting some people go,
at least recently, throughout the last three or four months,
and I usually am not that close to it anymore
because I'm very much trying to scale this,
but I make sure that I reach out a week or two later,
when I find out, to that person and thank them,
if they were here for a day.
All those things matter.
- [Voiceover] Ashey asks,
"Do you think brands need to be
represented across all social platforms,
or just the most popular ones?"
- Ashley, good job by the double enforcement
because you put up the Instagram,
but you also hit me up on Twitter
and said, "Yo, answer my question."
I like that gusto. Way to get it, girl.
I do not think that every brand in business
should be on every platform.
I actually don't also think that they should be
just on the popular ones.
If you do not know how to communicate,
or your audience is not there, for example,
if you sell mattr-
(thoughtful groan)
If you sell adult diapers, I would argue that
SnapChat is not gonna kill it for you,
even though it is massively popular, right?
If you sell selfie sticks that are only made...
That are pink and only marketed
to fifteen year old girls, you know,
Facebook's starting to become a place
where you could debate is not really for you,
and so I think you need to be in the right place
regardless of its size.
YikYak's not the biggest,
but I think a lot of college campus pizza shops
should be all in on that, right?
So, it's not the size of the platform.
(laughter) There's something
funny about that.
It's not the size of the platform,
and it's definitely not on everything.
It's what's right for your business,
based on who you are trying to reach,
and so if you're looking to try to reach
60 year old, grey haired business executives,
you've gotta look at Linked In
with a much more crucial eye than on Instagram.
If you're trying to reach 25 to 45 year old women,
now you get into the Instagram and Facebook game for sure,
and a little bit less Twitter.
Definitely Pinterest as well.
If you're trying to reach 28 year old dudes,
Pinterest not as much, right?
So, you've gotta understand the demo.
You're gotta reverse engineer the demo you're selling to
or you're aspiring to sell to,
and that's where you need to story tell.
Around the attention graph of that person,
predicated on the platform that most matters.
- [Voiceover] Jonathan asks,
"I import wines from Italy and sell
via e-comm and through distributors.
I'm currently focusing on obtaining new distribution
and have fallen behind on the e-comm side.
Question: What percentage of my time
should be split between each side of the business,
and what's a good way to balance the two?"
You know, Jonathan, it's interesting.
I'm trying to give a general answer
to the whole market, but I know your business so well.
When you're importing, I don't know what state you're in,
but when you're doing e-commerce,
are you selling to the end consumer?
Because you can't do that in New Jersey or New York.
Are you in a state-
He's in California, and Kermit Lynch,
I think, does do that, so I think he can.
I think in California, I was about to say that,
thanks, India.
In California, 'cause Kermit Lynch does that,
you're able to actually sell to the consumer
and also sell to distributors.
You know, to me, if you can sell e-commerce 100%,
you're no dope.
You know that you're making 50 cents more
on every dollar by selling that way
than selling to distributors,
but what you know is you're not that big,
and you're not necessarily a retailer by trade,
and it takes a lot of money and skill
to be able to be a good retailer to sell enough,
where the distributors are giving you the buying power.
So my strategy for you is-
Now, I'm giving you as black and white a strategy
as I've given on this show's history.
80% to the distributors, 20% of your time,
energy, and money to the consumers.
Once you get that established,
you spend every minute to turn that into 70/30,
60/40, 50/50, 60/40, 70/30, 80/20,
90/10, maybe 80/20, right?
Because you wanna get some restaurants
and key retailers to bring some awareness to it.
And for everybody who's watching,
the reason I'm giving him that advice is
he just makes more money if he sells it direct.
He's also far more in control,
where you sell to distributors,
they're maybe giving a deal to a retailer,
that retail sells it cheap, and that all of a sudden
screws up the pricing in the market.
So, that's the answer.
By the way, before you're done editing here, DRock,
and you're kind of mentally in the next one,
let's turn this show into more tangible-
Like, that was fun.
That was super specific,
and I'm good enough to try to make it general
'cause I gave a thesis there of when you control it
versus when you don't,
but I'm super pumped if you wanna go on the Instagram,
and this is how you give a question.
Let's put a link up here
because I want more Instagram photos
to get on the show to ask a question.
You can go very specific.
Don't feel the pressure of making it broad.
If you're like, "How do I pick this needle
out of this haystack in my farm in Nebraska,
in Chauncey, Nebraska, with my pig named..."
I mean, go detailed.
That was a weird example, but you get the gist.
- [Voiceover] Casey asks,
"Hey, Gary. I'm smiling in this pic,
but really I'm holding back tears,
and my heart is heavy 'cause Seahawks lost, and I bet $225.
I've listened to Drake, The Weeknd,
Jhene Aido, and even PartyNextDoor,
but the pain is too much.
How do I cope?"
- Casey, I hear you man.
I've got a couple pieces of advice.
You should probably do what I do,
which is heavy rotation of two songs.
One from Bone Thugs n Harmony and one from T Swift.
Put those on loop, back and forth,
go about seventeen T Swift, seven Crossroads,
you know, seven more T Swift.
Kind of like seventeen, seven, sevens are good.
Listen to them on repeat.
Drown your sorrows.
Then take the pain, and put it
in this very special compartment.
Right? Put the pain in a compartment
and build on that pain.
Every time you have pain, put it in there,
and let that be an engine for the revenge
that you will strike against your enemies.
That's what I'm doing in football.
Question of the day:
I expect you to the watch-
To the...
To the. Just least it, DRock.
I expect you to watch the One is Greater Than Zero video
and I would like you to critique it.
Give me your two cents on the One is Greater Than video
in the comments section.
And, by the way, I do appreciate the critiques.
Something that happened, I've brought this up once before,
something that happened on Wine Library TV
that is not happening on The #AskGaryVee Show
is people were not so listening to just
answer the question of the day.
They were also critiquing the show,
going a little deeper in the questions.
I'd like to see that compound a little bit more
in the community.
So take that into consideration, hardcore,
hardcore, hardcore VaynerNation people.
As a matter of-
What about-
Do we have the wrist bands?
We have the VaynerNation wrist bands,
the green ones, right?
I wanna start randomly awarding
some people that are doing the right things in the comments.
So, as a matter of fact...
Andrew, do me a favor.
Over the next week or two,
watch the community comment section.
See who you like, what's going on.
Reach out to them directly,
and get their address, and let's send out some wrist bands.
- [Andrew] Cool.
- We'll get into that.
You keep asking questions.
I'll keep answering them.
Yeah, that was fun.
I smiled too 'cause DRock smiled.
He knew exactly what I was doing.
India smiled too.
She's like, "Pssh. More content."