(hip-hop beat)
(piano music)
- Vlog, wanna get right into the rant.
Maybe it's because I like Iris more than Babin.
I gave him nothing yesterday.
By the way, this brewing like controversy
of the different filmers and producers,
this battle is very exciting for me.
Yesterday I went to a Knicks game.
I wore an ugly sweater, Natty Light sweater
because I knew I had courtside seats
and I knew that the sweater would stand out.
Just moments ago, I was on SportsCenter.
They were showing a ridiculous highlight
that serendipitously happened near me
and then I you know celebrated,
I'm sure we're chopping it in right now.
- [Announcer] With his accuracy went in to pass.
Quite a finisher.
That's like one of those DudePerfect videos.
The dance, I don't know
then the sweater.
Is that a Natty Light sweater?
Yes it is.
I need it.
- And they made a reference to me
which then got a lot of people who followed me
to mention me on social.
I engaged with them.
This, my friends, is what's called
Classic Attention Arbitrage, right?
Understanding what you need to do not only digitally
or by being in the community 90 times, two cents at a time,
but also understanding in real life.
You know, whether it's your speaking style
and it's not about being provocative or ridiculous
for the sake of being ridiculous,
you need to be authentic to yourself, right?
And so it's not a Mohawk or a big hat,
it's like, I can wear some sweaters, I can do that,
I'm comfortable with that.
So it's not forcing it 'cause lack of authenticity
is the vulnerability at the macro of this whole game
but it's also understanding the nuances,
how it actually works, what the world really trades on,
what breaks out, that I think we've seen a lot of
bad versions of people hacking attention,
playing to
the worst of our traits
and we've seen that historically in many different ways,
in culture, in politics, in government, in business
and a million different ways but there's a fun way to do it.
Wearing an ugly sweater courtside at Madison Square Garden
is a fun way to do it, it's a subtle way to do it
and it's an intriguing way to do it
and there's a lot of micro ways to do it as well.
So be thoughtful of not only your online hacking
of attention and the execution of the creative
but also offline, also when you're at conferences.
So many of you are gonna waste so much money
on buying a booth at a trade show.
In 2018, at least do something interesting about it,
not giving away a free stress ball chotchky
or a charger with your logo on it Rick.
- Gary I'd like to introduce you to David Bassinger,
the head of our business.
- Hi, I'm David.
- David, such a pleasure.
Thank you so much for having me.
- No, thanks for joining us.
- Yeah I'm really excited about it.
- Heard a lot about you.
I'm sorry we weren't able to talk in the--
- No worries, no worries.
I've got what I needed.
All I truly need is to reverse engineer
what the audience needs.
And so I have enough context at this point
between the B to B and B to C behavior
and the regionality and actually I didn't get that.
They're from all over Europe, where the companies from?
- Predominantly North America.
- Okay.
- We do have a few guests from--
- Right, got it.
But it's this predominantly North American.
- And North America means 90% U.S.
- A little Canada.
- Little bit of Canada, small or little less of--
- And what would be your guess at B to B versus B to C
by percentage of the audience?
- 75% B to B.
- Yeah and their B's, when their B
that they're connecting to, food services?
- Yes, retail distribution.
So we send everything from the growers to the processors
to the logistics--
- To the distributors.
- To the retailers.
- I understand.
- So it's probably pretty even--
- Spread.
- Spread across those five little or so segments.
- I understand.
Fantastic.
- They're all really excited about hearing about
the full chain.
We always talk, our measure has always been farm--
- To table or a fork.
- And now we're going, actually now it's
fork driving farm to a large degree as well.
So that's--
- Consumer centric.
- That's the theme today.
- You know, one of the things that really works for me
and getting a little behind the scenes here again Iris.
This is strictly because I like you so much more than Babin,
is I'm giving you so much here.
I mean, the vlog's already done, I mean we're done here.
I mean you're done.
You know, we'll call it a day.
If you notice this, I don't really prep for,
I talk a lot about improv, I don't prep.
It's pretty simple.
I work backwards.
Most people think about their business
and then figure out the customer.
I think about the customer and then figure out the business.
I've already understand what's happening in the customer
in a B to B and B to C environment.
It's what I spend 100% of my time on.
And so then when I come here because of my history
of 25 years of understanding business
and really intuitive, kind of entrepreneurial gifts
that I was handed in DNA wise, it came natural to me,
that's it, that's it.
What was this?
Three minutes of talk between two people?
Like I'm gonna go slay,
completely go savage on these people's faces,
one of the best talks they'll ever see
and it wasn't 40 years of you know, it wasn't 40.
It wasn't four to 10 hours of research,
it wasn't making a deck for six hours,
editing it in here right now,
it's because I bet on my strengths.
I know what's going on with the consumer,
which makes disproportionately more powerful always.
The end.
Whoever is closest to the consumer, Amazon,
me with the way I community manage,
read, spend all my time consuming that, right?
Also deploying empathy, not being short term,
so I'm not for as much, I'm so pro consumer, you.
I'm so pro you.
But that gives me the understanding and the leverage
and then I just deploy because
everything else is the same shit.
Like this
and this,
and as big as this is, right?
And this, right?
It's all the same at the end, gotta reverse engineer
and bring value.
Hey.
- So while you're speaking, all three screens
that we have will be on IMAG.
- Yup.
- And then during Q&A we'll put up your agency slide
that we received.
- Okay.
- Alright awesome, thank you.
- Your welcome.
Is there any way that you can put that up,
the agency slide in the first like two, three minutes
for people that may wanna tweet along at home
or anything of that?
I know the demo of the audience but still,
just to give them some context?
- Sure, sure.
- Like maybe the first two minutes and then switch
and then end with?
- Okay, sounds good, we can do that.
- Awesome.
By the way, in my continuation here, this is all for Iris,
if you noticed, I don't if Iris caught it,
I asked for them, they said we're gonna show you live
and then the last 20 minutes, we'll show your slide.
My slide has my information.
My URLs, my YouTube channel, my Facebook.
I asked for the first two or three minutes
for it to be shown and then do what they want.
Why did I do that?
Because it's the same game.
Attention arbitrage.
If only three people in that room,
and that's supposed to be a conservative
baby boomer audience so I'm looking at three of the 300.
If three of them look up, see my Twitter handle,
follow me and start tweeting along the way,
even to 27 followers, right,
one person from that one person may follow me
or be intrigued by something that person
that's tweeting along while I speak,
quote storing my talk.
That is why suddenly, something that wouldn't
normally be edited into this vlog,
in a world where I'm trying to show you more
of my subtle nature, my nuances, that $1.80 strategy,
I'm trying to challenge myself
especially when I love the person behind the camera.
So if D-Rock was here, Babin, Kyle, no I would not.
But for Iris, I'm gonna push it out here,
make a much better vlog, make the best vlog ever,
this is gonna be the best episode ever.
You know that's why I ask for it.
That little subtle thing of asking for the first
two minutes to have this slide will lead to
one potential person tweeting my quotes along my talk
to 27 followers which one person may
actually find interesting which will create them to follow.
One.
The acquisition of one.
It matters.
No matter how many people you have following you.
- Please join me in welcoming to the stage, Gary Vaynerchuk.
(audience applause)
- Thank you.
Morning.
Very, very happy to be here.
Really enjoyed the opening monologue.
In the context of today's morning,
I tweeted just now, it's been interesting
over the last 72 hours whether in a
Wall Street Journal interview or a business meeting,
now a conference and a lot of one on one meetings,
I've heard the same thing about 11 or 12 times
and it struck me finally this last time on stage
which is how many people keep saying the word
or the sentence, it's changing, it's changing.
I think anybody here this morning that hasn't fully
quantified how much has actually changed,
this has changed.
I think there is an unbelievable disconnect
between the framework and strategy of how
we are running our businesses,
whether a B to B or B to C environment
on us calibrating, is it changing or has it changed?
And more importantly, the practicality of the timing.
I spent very little time on the impact
of self-driving cars in a micro,
in a 24 or 36 month window
but I try to understand and quantify them in a macro.
I'm not in the luck business,
I'm in the marathon running business
and more importantly, I'm in the timing business.
I'm so deeply, actually consumer centric
that I don't have any other gear.
The only thing I ever do is try to reverse engineer
the attention of my end consumer
whether in a B to C or B to B environment,
and I try to understand things like,
it blows my mind how many people here
feel comfortable
because they have long term contracts and relationships
with some of the biggest companies in the world
without realizing that those companies themselves
are so disproportionately vulnerable.
And I just, you know, I play with this, right?
I play with the fact that $80 billion
is spent on television commercials
on the Fortune 500 CPG Brand side
yet 94% of them lost market share
because not a human being on Earth
watches a television commercial.
Literally nothing we talk about, or way more importantly,
literally nothing that controls the attention
of our end consumer existed 13 years ago.
We need to take a big step back in this room
and understand what we are talking about
is not social media or Snapchat.
What we are talking about is the maturity
of the internet itself.
What that means to the human race
and everybody in this room including me
is so disproportionately misunderstanding
how substantial this shift is
and what happens over the course of the next decade.
The internet is the middle man, period.
It was some guy or gal that owned 13 medallions in Texas.
In this city, second or third.
It is the hotel rooms and the supply and demand
of that world's turn today.
It is the media companies across the board's
turn right now and it may be your business next.
Wal-mart's not gonna give you the contract.
Wal-mart's gonna have to do it itself.
They're gonna buy dairy farms.
They're gonna grow the grain.
Everything gets shrunk.
And so we have to take a real step back
and understand that there is only one thing, one,
there's one thing that will keep you from being a commodity.
Your brand.
The only thing that will keep you away
from being completely commoditized is your brand.
Can you create an environment where somebody
actually makes an emotional decision
or a subconscious decision, not a practical one.
Because if you're in the middle
and people are gonna make practical decisions,
there's an enormous amount of vulnerability in the system.
And so look, this is real disruption.
This isn't haha.
This is over the course of the next decade,
90, 80, 70% of the biggest companies in multiple sectors
will not only decline but completely diminish
and completely vanish.
That is minor leagues compared to the fundamental
human shifts we're going through.
Did anybody see the robot that went viral
on the internet the other day?
This like robot that was doing like twists and turns?
How many people?
Just raise your hands, I'm curious.
Did you see what Elon Musk said about it?
Which was, so there's this robot, you have to find this.
I don't have a lot of data on this, so you know
it's in the feed, in the headline reading society,
I don't like to talk about things I don't know.
Here's what I know.
A robot that scared the crap out of me
was in my feed, right?
Just doing stuff that makes Lebron look like me, right?
Elon Musk decides to take that, somebody more educated
in robotics than I am, and said something very clever
and I know enough about how he communicates
where he's like, you think this is cute?
In 24 or 36, I don't remember the timing,
very shortly, you won't even be able to see this robot
without technology that it will be so fast
that the human eye can't even see it.
Everybody in this room needs to realize
that we're about to run an incredibly fascinating
business marathon and most of you aren't even
on the treadmill yet and let me explain.
The treadmill to me is how you spend your money
on marketing and sales.
Thank you.
(audience applause)
(piano music)
The only way you're gonna win this is to run a marathon
when it feels like you need to run a sprint.
So first and foremost, there's no right way.
You don't look at me and that's the right way to do it.
There's only one right way.
What's right for you as an actual human being.
First and foremost, personal brand, a lot of people
try to fix things and make people what they're not
versus going all in on what they are.
You have to go all in on who you are.
I don't even know what else to tell you.
Like this is the framework, I call it a blueprint,
you call it a principle,
it's the punchline.
It's short term, long term.
It's the value of patience.
It's micro failures, macro wins.
It's just all the same shit.
One of the things that's interesting is
I live much more in principles.
To me, things are very macro.
There's rules about patience and the long game
and humility, self-awareness, lack of romance.
I'm just not romantic about anything
that happened yesterday, things of that nature.
Well what that does is it gets very theoretical.
And I'm concerned that my audience is getting
the framework but they are so hungry for the details,
back to schooling and things of that nature
and I always say, leave that to others.
But once in awhile I get inspired.
So I said look, there's nine posts per hashtag.
Every day I want you to pick 20 hashtags
that are relevant to your business
or your ambitions, your nonprofit,
whatever it may be, right?
So nine times two cents for every post,
go to those posts, look at the post, consume the post
and add value to the conversation.
You end up leaving $1.80 a day of your two cents times 90.
- [Ray] Ooh, cool.
- It is very practical.
- [Ray] Right.
- And that is very rare for me because
I'm just not into that, it's not how I process.
- [Ray] But you see, you know those things.
Do it in your own way.
You can just knock these things off like this.
- You'll love this Ray, I apologize.
This is insane that this is happening.
Iris this is how you have to edit today.
Today, Iris came to me, she films me all day today.
I'm at a conference, I'm making a joke
that I like her the best more than D-Rock and Babin,
the other people that film me, and I said because of that,
I'm gonna start articulating and this is maybe
in the subconscious, I didn't even know
we were doing the Q&A show today.
Theoretically, I knew it was coming this week
but it coulda been tomorrow, I literally
started explaining things.
They came to me and they said,
we're gonna put up your slide at the end of your talk.
I said, can you put up the slide for the first two minutes
when I go up there and then you can show me live
on the three different screens
and then you can end with my slide.
Is there any way that you can put that up,
the agency slide in the first like two, three minutes--
That's just my normal demeanor.
But what I did was I challenged myself,
back to what you just asked me to do,
and I looked in the camera and I explained
to my audience, in real time, why I did that.
I asked for the first two or three minutes
for it to be shown and then do what they want.
Why did I do that?
Because it's the same game.
Attention arbitrage.
And it's because, the way Twitter works,
if there was even one person in that audience
that would see the slide go up, follow me on Twitter
or get to know what my handle was
and they wanted to tweet my quotes while I was speaking,
that wouldn't have been able to be done
had the slides come at the end
and that's why I always ask for my slide
to go up in the first two minutes
with my social media handles so that the audience
could become the amplification of awareness
of what I have to say and so I'm starting
to get into a process in this point in my career
where I am starting to challenge myself
to get into these details and I assume
that makes a lot of sense to you because that's what you do.
(electronic piano beat)