- On this episode, I talk the long term value
of email, oranges and gurus.
You ask questions, and I answer them.
This is The #AskGaryVee Show.
Everybody this is Gary Vay-ner-chuk
and welcome to episode number 35
of The #AskGaryVee Show.
Fun fact about the number 35,
that is the big hurt, Frank Thomas's number,
my favorite non-Yankee baseball player
'cause I collected all his rookie cards,
and my friend, Brandon and I, who runs Wine Library
right now made a agreement when we were 15
that if Frank Thomas was gonna be awesome
'cause we bought his rookie cards,
and he went to the Hall of Fame that we would go.
That happened this last summer
as the Big Hurt got inducted.
We went up there, but something weird happened.
We realized there was a 90 mile garage sale going on
in the general area,
and we skipped the Hall of Fame and we went to the
90 mile garage sale.
That's called adjusting.
- [Voiceover] Madison asks, "As an email marketer,
I say email is not dead.
Do you think email will be more or less relevant
in three to five years?
- Madison, great question.
For me three to five years is always hard to predict
that way out, but I'll get to that part,
and before I actually answer this question,
I just wanna give a huge shout out to the VaynerNation
for supporting this show.
I'm really enjoying it.
I was super bummed about Friday night,
so I apologize, I think I tweeted that I was gonna have it.
I let some people down, I hate letting people down.
Email is definitely not dead.
I would say that email right now
I like marketing in the year that we live in.
So, I would say right now that email is a very killer app.
Now are open rates at 90 percent like I had in 1997,
absolutely not, but is it an own channel that you control
and don't have to be at the mercy of all these other
platforms that you can market to your people,
for sure, I think we can't be naive to the fact that
Google made changes with Gmail about a year ago
if feels like now, or within the year where we went
to a promotions tab. I see Stunwin shaking his head.
Steve, were you affected by the promotions tab,
were you part of any email lists that you
noticed went there?
- Oh yeah, absolutely.
- Here's the punch line question.
Show me, punch line question.
Here's the punch line question.
Do you feel that some of those that got switched to the
promotions tabs, you've actually fallen off 'cause they
don't go to your native in feed and you either unsubscribe
or you just don't pay attention to anymore?
- Totally gone, yeah, probably five or six emails.
- That's my concern, so what's happening is,
do I think email will matter in three to five years?
For sure, I think it's in play.
It's a channel, it's not going anywhere.
Do I think it's dead?
Absolutely not.
Do I think it will be more or less valuable as a marketing
engine, I will go with less valuable in three to five years.
It will still be very valuable 'cause it's one of the best
channels, but it will be less valuable.
That whole marketers ruin everything line that
I use a lot, that's what this is all about.
Platforms come along.
They have value, and then we market against them
and then consumers kind of push off.
It's cops and robbers.
It's cat and mouse.
Over and over and over again.
And we're living in a process now that we're into
the second decade of email being ruined by marketers.
- [Voiceover] Troy asks, "I work in two different spaces.
"How do I use social media platforms so that
"I'm not confusing my audience?"
- Troy, this is a very simple question.
You adjust to the platform at hand.
So we're very detailed on this show.
For Twitter, the way you don't confuse them,
if you're talking about two different things,
I'll, uh, business and wine talk is you create two
different channels and you have an @winelibrary account
and you have an at @garyvaynerchuk account, Gary Vee,
and that's what I did, or you just become so branded
in both that you feel comfortable being, kind of,
a renaissance man or woman,
and you can go that route.
But you have to react to the platform.
So on Twitter, you just create two different accounts,
and you promote through them.
On Facebook though, the targeting capabilities allows you
to just be yourself and talk to people that act,
you can plan, to people that are 25 to 45 that are
into wine and you put out a wine content,
and they will like that, and you know,
22 to 27 that are into podcasts, and you do that,
and then they want you to talk about that thing,
so Facebook gives you the flexibility to target.
You know, Twitter does not.
And so you've gotta adjust.
YouTube channel, do you have two channels, do you have one.
This is something we've talked about
'cause we wanna chop up every answer into a question.
As a matter of fact, let's link up the first one we put up,
right the tennis thing.
One here.
And so, you know...
The real answer to this question, Troy, is you've gotta
adjust to the platform's capability to drive home
the fragmentation or the one channel process,
so you go place by place.
Pinterest, you can create a board, right,
you can have an account, you can create different boards
and on certain boards you put out content about
whatever the hell you're doing,
and whatever the hell you're doing that's different,
so you, Tumblr, you can create a bunch of different
kind of, blah, blah, blah .tumblr.com,
so that gives you flexibility.
So I'm giving you very detailed answers here, my friend.
It's not super hard, you have to have the right strategy
per the platform based on the flexibility of that
platform to deliver the story.
- [Voiceover] Michael asks, "How do you define hustle?"
- Michael, this is funny because show his face.
'Cause I can see him grinning.
This was the first question--
What are we 35 in five?
This was the first question of 150 questions that I can
see from the corner of my eye he literally said,
"How do you define hustle?"
'Cause he could see this (laughter)
I mean this is a challenging question.
So first of all, it's different for everybody, right,
but I would say hustle is to me,
is that when you have passion around something,
that you were squeezing every last bit of the juice
out of the orange, right.
To me, hustle is maximizing the energy you're
putting into somebody.
I'm blown away by people saying that they're hustling
and they wanna achieve these great things,
and then their actions don't match.
It's like saying you really wanna lose weight,
while eating a Big Mac, right?
So to me, hustle would be putting all your effort
into achieving the goal at hand,
and for me, that means making every minute count.
Hiring a full time assistant who is...
Friday night didn't happen
because I was hustling every minute,
like if I miss my 15 minutes to tape this show,
I've missed my 15 minutes because there's so much
hustle in my day there's no, you know,
there's no like...
There's no hanging out.
There's no time we're like, if I could do like one joke
with you guys as I'm walking in between meetings,
we find that to be a rare acquaintance situation,
like occurrence, not acquantance.
Hustle is putting it all in a line.
Hustle is waking up one day, the day before you die,
and you realizing you gave it your all
until the parenting of your children,
the building of your businesses,
the philanthropy you wanted to do,
whatever you define, it's just,
you know, all in, emotionally and executionally.
In theory and strategy, and in execution.
- Hey, Bridget Willard here from you too can be a guru
and #guruminutevideos.
I finally have a question for Gary Vee and the VaynerNation
for #AskGaryVee Show.
One of my people asked me, "Out of curiousity,
"what do you really get from having 10,000 followers?"
So, I'm differing to you, and your wisdom.
And remember,
â™Ť You too can be a guru â™Ť
- That was a nice voice at the end there,
some real talent in the VaynerNation.
Oh, by the way, there will be no show on
Thursday because AJ and I are going to Cleveland
to see LeBron's first game back in Cleveland
against my New York Knick's,
and so I'm excited about that.
And it's a little public service announcement.
Also, if you've not been paying attention,
I've been writing my ass off
on garyvaynerchuk.com so check that out,
please click out.
I'd love in the comments, as a matter of fact,
in the comments question of the day,
what do you think of garyvaynerchuk.com website?
Pros, cons, your thoughts, your two cents.
Your three cents, if you wanna roll that way.
To answer this question,
you too can be a guru, by the way, I wanna address that
real quick, we kinda addressed that recently.
You can be a guru if you actually got guru skills.
You can't just say you're a guru, that's number one.
And then to answer the question,
that is the wrong question.
What is 10,000 fans get you?
Nothing or everything, I don't know.
If you have 10,000 fans who 9,000 of which
buy every, buy 48 copies of your book when you've
put it out on Twitter, well then that sounds
really valuable.
If you've got 10,000 fans 'cause you bought them on some
weird Ebay auction because you wanted to act cool
amongst your friends and when you post something
nobody gives a rat's ass, I would say that's less valuable,
and so the question, my friends, is always the wrong thing.
So what everybody gets confused about.
I could care less about the top line awareness,
though it matters, right?
What do like 14 million people watching this video mean?
Means I got more at bats of people to get into my content,
into my world, find value in me, thus creating
the beginning of a relationship, which then may lead
to something, but life is long.
It's a long trail.
Only is one follower of 10,000 really change the course
of your business or personal life, right?
And so, that's the wrong question.
The right question is what are you trying to achieve?
See, my friends, I'm a reverse engineer.
Let me say it again
because if you haven't figured it out in the seven years
that you followed me, I'm gonna say it one more time.
As a matter of fact, Zak, show Zak's face
'cause I'm gonna tell him something right to his face.
Zak, I need a t-shirt that says, "I'm a reverse engineer"
and as you know, I never scrutinize the creative,
and I'm always like, great, this one I'm gonna care about
because I wanna wear it every God damn day
because that's who I am, I'm a reverse engineer.
Whether I need 10,000 followers
or I need to, every decision is predicated on what
am I trying to achieve?
Both long term and short term,
and that's the key, my friends.
One of the things you have to do is you have to balance
both your short term goals, and your long term goals.
So, I wanna buy the Jets, and so a lot of things
that I do I leave tons of money on the table
because I think it would hurt my brand
or my perception of my opportunities where I don't
feel good about it and I feel like I could burn a bridge.
A bridge I may need to buy the Jets.
The same token, I need build VaynerMedia to be
a huge company so I can afford amazing employees
like this to scale content like this.
So, it's all strategy, but I'm always thinking about
why, why, why, why, why, why?
It all has to be reversed engineered.
So why do you need 10,000 fans?
Maybe in 2007 you needed 10,000 fans or the value was.
You were one of the only people with 10,000 fans
and everybody thought you were cool.
Even people just followed me because I had a lot of
followers back in 2006 and seven and eight.
And that gave me leverage.
They then paid attention to me,
lucky for me I don't even know why I'm doing air quotes
right now 'cause that's how fired up I am,
but lucky for me I had something good to say.
Whether it was about wine,
and that's a basketball,
whether it was about, get me some wine.
Somebody get me a bottle of wine,
is there any wine here?
Whether it was about wine,
whether it was about business.
I don't know why this represents business.
Yes, get it to me, hurry.
Whether it was about wine,
whether it was about business, and so...
10,000 fans or anything else you do.
Why do I need a medium account?
Why do I need a million fans on Facebook?
Why should I be marketing on Snapchat?
It's all strategy.
For me, I market on Snapchat because I wanna learn
the platform because I wanna always be ahead
because I want to earn the right for you
to spend these 15 minutes with me,
and the only reason you're spending these 15 minutes
with me, and yes, I'm very attractive,
and yes, I'm massively charismatic,
but it's because I'm providing you with value.
I'm saving you time to spend the hundreds of hours
that I and my organization spend
to give you the punchlines of what you need to know
to navigate through a 2015 marketing world,
and that's it, and it's that simple.
So, the value's a stupid question.
The right question is, what are you trying to accomplish,
and is Twitter the platform that can help you accomplish it?
If it is, now you start understanding what the value
would be.
My friends, is that it?
- [Voiceover] One more, if you want to.
- I'll take it.
- [Voiceover] Aimee asks, "A professor once said to me,
"it's better to be a big fish in a small pond,
"do you agree?"
- Aimee, this, you know, I'm gonna be very upfront
on this question, this is a good way to bang out the show.
That sounds like a loser professor to me.
It's small time thinking.
I don't subscribe to it.
There's a lot of practicality in it, right?
It's a lot easier to be the most successful business man
in St. Louis, Missouri, than it is to be in the world,
right, so I understand the thesis.
But honestly, that to me is very conservative,
not in my DNA thinking.
That could be great advice for a lot of people
who are delirious and think they're better than they are,
though I love to drive through self esteem
and optimism, and I think early in your life,
you should absolutely shoot for the highest stars
that you can.
I think as life moves on,
and time moves on you need to become more practical.
You've got bills, and kids, and all those kinds of things,
but to start off one's career in the first 20 years,
call to your 40, to be in that thinking,
I think that limits.
There have been so many people who've
hedged and settled in their lives,
and honestly, I'm not the kind of character that's
going to play in that kind of sphere.
I'm going in a different direction.
It's what comes natural to me,
but it's also because I think I can be the biggest
and the baddest in any game I play,
It's just how I'm wired.
I think this comes down to
it's probably very good advice to some,
and it's probably atrocious advice to others,
and this is why I continue to say if I could inject
anything into anybody, it would be self-awareness
because it would help you answer this question
because for a lot of people, it's probably really solid
advice from me, and from many of you watching this,
it's crap advice.
All right, now I can wrap up the show.
My friends, this time, thank you so much for watching
the show, you've got your question of the day.
Thank you for listening, watching, jamming,
interacting, the banter from the last episode
was phenomenal.
I miss all of you, and I can't wait to tape tomorrow's show,
which is gonna be early, and I'm excited,
so we'll have that up early tomorrow,
in the scheme of things, early afternoon verses
late afternoon, DRock, no pressure.
You keep asking questions,
I will keep answering them.
I love that part.
Oh crap, wait, subscribe!
(beatboxing)
I need subscriptions because I can't push this many
right hooks in social, so subscribe!