- What's up guys?
You're about to watch a video from a business meeting
Q and A session I had in Singapore a couple of months back.
Felt that there was some serious details in there
that a lot of you could get value from.
And thus I'm making this silly little intro video
to have you enjoy the rest of this video.
Super excited about it, would love to see
your comments down below, on what you're getting
out of this video, as I try to continue to listen
and build so I can bring you more content.
The wheel of listening and creating, listening and creating,
leave your two cents in the comments.
Thank you for watching my content at all.
It is humbling.
(upbeat music)
You have to do them all.
You're a one woman show.
Your number one move is to immediately afford somebody else
to help you, your number one move,
everything in your life, how you live, what you buy,
what you spend your time on.
When I first build businesses, I make no money, none.
In my twenties, building my dad's business,
I lived in a shitty apart, I took $35 000.00 a year
the first three years.
Vayner Media, I didn't make any money.
Your number one job is to have other people help you,
otherwise you're gonna be spinning in a wheel
your whole life.
You have to actually figure out
how you can afford to grow, so the first way I always
tell solo-preneurs they can grow,
is by making less money personally.
I don't know your living situation
or how you live your life,
but if you're going on this journey to build a business,
the business matters more than you.
So I would want the roof over your head
to cost you less money.
I would like the food that you put in your mouth
to cost less money.
And you have to look at everything else you're doing
in your life.
How much time do you spend on marketing in a day?
Zero, sometimes, I assume.
- [Female participant] Yeah, sometimes zero--
- In a week, how much do you spend at it?
- [Female participant] About two hours.
- Two hours, great.
Now is the most important part of this meeting.
How many hours do you sleep at night?
- [Female participant] I have to have seven.
- Great, so I love the way you said it,
"I have to have seven."
So, if I wanted to say go to six, so that you pick up five,
you're gonna say to me, "Gary, I have to have seven."
Right?
Now let's go somewhere else.
I have to know what you're doing the other 17 hours.
I would bet the house that we can find an hour every day.
I guarantee you.
Because you might be working all 17 hours,
but you might not be working on something smarter
than spending an hour a day on the thing
that you're talking about.
Do you understand?
- [Female participant] Yeah.
- You know, people talk about working hard
and working smart.
The answer is only both.
You have to work hard and smart, based on your ambition.
You need seven, I'm glad you said it that way,
'cause this makes this piece of content more valuable.
It's the 17 other hours.
I'll give you an example.
A lot of people drive to work for 45 minutes.
If they took a bus for an hour and 15 minutes,
they would save money, and get more work done.
But do you have the humility to take the bus,
versus driving your car?
Because your mouth says you wanna pull it off.
But do your actions map it?
Got it?
(upbeat music)
I think most people fear it being tough,
when they're asking for something crazy.
Do you know how hard it is to be a millionaire?
It's unbelievably hard.
- Yeah.
- 99% of people in the world never even
remotely get close.
So I think the first way, forget about what I'm about to,
the tactics, let's start here.
- Here.
- You have to love hard.
You have to love eating shit.
- Yes.
- You have to love people leaving comments
saying you suck.
- Yeah.
- You have to love the process.
Everything's easy for me because I don't care
what people think.
I prefer everybody thinks I'm gonna fail.
The way you get over the obstacles is a couple of things,
number one, biggest mistake all of you make
is you don't realize it's gonna take 21 years for success.
- 21 years for success?
- 21 years for success.
Now look, maybe it will take three years,
but if you think it's gonna take 21 years,
now you're in the right mindset.
Everybody thinks they're gonna take a camera,
post a couple of posts on LinkedIn,
post a couple of posts on Instagram, six months
and I'm gonna be on a yacht.
It's stupid, okay.
So no patience, the reason I get through everything is,
I want the pain, I want the process, I have the patience.
I don't care when I have setbacks.
I know that I'm asking for something special
and if you're asking for something special,
it should be hard.
- Okay, true.
- Like, why are you entitled to be a millionaire?
In America, one of the wealthiest countries in the world,
the top one percent, at the bottom of the top one percent,
you make 440 000 a year.
If you make $440 000.00 a year in America,
you are in the one percent earners in America.
Most people don't understand what it is to do a million.
Everybody thinks everyone should do a million,
a million, a million.
I laugh at a million.
99% of the people watching this video right now,
or 31 years from now, 'cause everything will be online,
will never taste a million, 99% of you.
Now, when you internalize that, all of a sudden,
now you're gonna respect what you're asking.
I want people to respect their audacious ambitions more.
(upbeat music)
You scale it through more people and more executions.
I know it's crazy to hear it,
when you're in the services business,
you scale it with more services.
Now what happens, is a lot of people try to talk people
out of service business and say,
especially in a market like this, you have to build
technology, you have to do this, because that's theoretical.
That's what sounds right, but if you're gonna build
a bigger production company,
there's only two ways to do it.
You do more productions, or your productions
cost more money.
You either do one production like George Lucas does,
and they pay you four hundred million dollars,
or two billion dollars, or whatever.
Or you do 80 times more productions than you do now.
How did I grow Vayner Media?
We just did more, and it was more expensive,
of that thing.
(upbeat music)
The thing that a lot of people forget about me
as an influencer, was I didn't really start becoming
an influencer till I was 35 years old, after having
a 15 year career of being a business person.
My influence is not out of the arts, or looks,
or the arts, the classic ways.
If entrepreneurs didn't start becoming cool,
it would have never been a path that I think
I would have taken.
I think you're right.
I think the thing that you need to think about is
if you are gonna build technology, in between an influencer
and their audience, you are staggeringly vulnerable
to Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter, like staggering.
Your features, they're all gonna be features.
Look what happened with stories on Instagram.
Influencers lived on Snapchat, as well.
One feature, and they move so quickly.
Anything a third party vendor offers,
that becomes something that the platform offers,
will die immediately.
Because of the seamlessness of it happening inside there.
That is not gonna be the part that you're gonna have
an advantage over Facebook in.
(mumbling) the infrastructure, Instagram until it's not.
There's only one currency, which is the attention.
That's all they trade on, and whoever has the attention
has the leverage.
The biggest thing you need to ask yourself,
is how much of your opinion is predicated
on the fact that it's yours.
The thing that has always worked for me,
and I genuinely believe is the cornerstone of my success,
is I refuse to get high on my own supply.
You have to put yourself out of business
before somebody else does it.
So, you can debate anything you want,
what you have to ask yourself is, is this your point of view
'cause you've made this bed.
The reason Vayner Media is not profitable ever,
is because I'm always reinvesting in things
that are my vulnerability.
Voice is to mobile social what mobile social
was to traditional digital.
So I have to invest in that, and AI, and all this stuff.
It's why when it comes to influencer stuff,
even though I've watched it and been right
for the last decade,
I continue to not build scalable things.
I continue to build influence and relationships
in human infrastructure, because that is something
the platforms have no interest in.
(upbeat music)
- I know you're gonna scold me if I don't boost ads--
- I want you to boost ads, yes, I do.
- Okay, we've been boosting ads.
I actually got--
- I'll tell you why, I'll tell you why.
This is a very important point that a lot of people
are getting confused about.
Even if you listen to how you're saying it,
people are putting organic reach on a pedestal
because they think there's a purity to it.
Even subconsciously, if you listen
when you watch this back, you'll see that you and many,
most, have organic on a pedestal,
'cause there seems to be a purity of that.
It speaks to the quality, I understand.
The problem is, for me, why I will scold you,
and you're right, is when ads are so under priced,
you have to take advantage of them.
Because in four years when organic will still matter,
but the ads cost $88.00 to get in front of 1000 people,
instead of seven, people are gonna regret
not spending on the ads.