- On this episode, we talk about franchising,
we talk about open courses, we also talk about
cash or exposure, and much, much more.
- [Gary] 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 62 of The #AskGaryVee Show.
That was this.
Alright, let's get into the show.
Lots of stuff has been going on in the world.
I've been super MIA in January, I apologize.
I know we've lost our momentum, on a daily basis.
DRock always wants to shoot episodes in the can,
I like to live in the real world.
He's probably right. I get to make the calls.
Sorry, DRock.
By the way, I've been really enjoying all the love
you're getting. I don't know if you've been noticing,
but every time you get love, I jump in
and try to discredit the love.
The dude was like, "DRock, it's really you behind the camera
that really makes this show." I'm like...
(off-screen laughter)
Anyway, just kidding. Just kidding.
Super happy, things are going great.
Hustling really hard and building VaynerMedia.
That is why I've been busy off the show.
You know, for me to have your attention,
I need to be delivering on the advice I give
and so sometimes that takes me away from the office.
Been hustling hard with new clients,
building new relationships, networking, CES,
different things of that nature.
So, sorry I've been a little choppy, going to Sundance,
you know, like so, super choppy but we'll get into
a nice rhythm, I think we have four or five, easily,
next week. Oh, three now because I'm going
to another meeting, trying to get a new client,
middle America, big ups. Let's get into the show.
- [Voiceover] Harold asks, "Gary, what is your view
on franchising your company when you can't be sure
if others will care for the brand in the same way?"
Harold, that's a great question.
I think the real answer to that
needs one more layer of context.
When you say, "franchising your business",
building a consumer-facing business,
a retailer, a QSR, a restaurant, then franchising
is a tremendous model, we've seen it from
McDonald's, to Five Guys, Sonic.
I mean, it's a great thing to do.
It's the right business model, or it's a phenomenal
version of the right business model.
You can go private, if you want.
What I'm concerned about, and what I don't know,
and India, I didn't really ask you, is--
Show India, everybody's probably missing India.
- Hi.
- [Gary] You can get a little camera time, Staphon.
Are you going down the route of selling your name?
The reason I'm asking that, and I don't know
if you can figure it out from the question,
a lot of people try to franchise "me".
I know there's a lot of "gurus", and "advice people",
where they teach the--
The amount of people that pitched me,
when it was at its heat, in 2010,
on the idea of a "Gary Vaynerchuk Crush It! Course",
and they would be the person teaching,
and they would siphon back up to me,
that was something I wasn't comfortable with.
Because it wasn't something I felt represented me
and I wouldn't want to franchise that route.
So if you're asking that, that's super uncomfortable
to me, somebody representing you, a big concern of mine.
As far as a retailer or a restaurant,
I feel super comfortable with that.
Many people have pulled off making sure the brand
was insured by lots of rules, lots of legal jargon,
lots of training, whatever it took to scale that.
Anything from your end? You get anything there?
Alright. So that's the answer, I give you both.
Who cares? Let's actually--
Before we move on the show, I'm going to switch it up.
I'm going to switch up the way that
you have to ask questions to get on the show.
Me, always trying new things, trying to mix it up.
We're going to switch platforms to ask the question.
Alex DS has been in the trenches on my Instagram.
So a couple of you are my "beta partners" in this launch.
We'll give more details on how to submit for the show,
but I think you're going to like this. Let's go into it.
- [Voiceover] Sean asks, "Gary, what are your practical
#HustleHacks when it comes to diet, sleep,
and your daily routine?
How do you maintain energy and brain power
while hustling nonstop?"
Sean, I think a lot of that comes to--
First of all, great picture. This whole picture dynamic
is going to really flip the switch.
Obviously you guys know I'm super hot on Instagram.
To me, I care about the Attention Graph,
actually I want to write an article on Medium
about this, the Attention Graph.
That's the whole game.
That's actually probably my nugget.
I win on that. Which is, where's the attention?
You know, YouTube, a year after YouTube comes out,
it's got attention that people don't realize is valuable.
Start the #AskGaryVee show, podcasting, snapchat--
Or start Wine Library TV, sorry for the mix up.
One in the same, it's all family.
They're my kids, I love them both.
It's weird that I have two shows.
I'm really weirded out that I'm gonna be
a person that has two shows.
Anyway, to answer your question,
it really comes down to loving it.
The reason I'm able to continue to hustle
and do what I do is because I love it.
I love doing the show, I love flying all over the country.
I like taking my kind of selfies on Instagram
where I'm sour-face and everybody's like,
"Don't be like--
This is what you want, right? Why are you upset?"
I'm not upset, I'm just--
Kind of fun little pout face that I like doing
when I travel, 13-year-old girls can't be
the only people that pout.
I think for me it comes down to
I love it so much that--
Here's a good answer, I woke up at 5:15 this morning
after landing at midnight on a flight yesterday,
to play six a.m. tip-off basketball today
because I loved it. But if Muscle Mike came in
to work me out at that time, I would've been more begrudged.
Because I love basketball, I love competition.
I've come to love the working out,
I love the way it makes me look.
I've been looking at some old videos like, whew!
But that's what it comes down to.
If you truly love it, it doesn't feel like work.
All these extra hours I'm putting into
the Wine Library stuff right now,
doesn't feel like work because I love
the wine retail hustle game, so it's interesting.
It just comes down to love.
- [Voiceover] Kate Parker asks, "Gary, I am growing
my business and looking to include partners for content.
What's the best way to recruit them?
Money/promise of exposure?"
- Kate, I'm super pumped.
Guys, I went to high school with Kate.
By the way, let me give a big shout out to Kate.
Kate came to my high school junior year
in the middle of the year.
And Kate was a top five attractive girl,
I'm being very politically correct here,
in our school. She made huge noise.
Kate, huge shout out for the noise you made
at North Hunterdon High School, 1993.
And recruited as a soccer star, by the way.
Just giving you some daps, Kate.
I've been noticing a lot of your stuff,
some of your work is incredible,
it's been really fun to watch.
Anyway, I think both work. It depends on
what people are more motivated by.
If you have a big enough platform to create exposure,
people will work for free. DRock hit me up
and offered to make a film for free for me
because he knew that was gonna get him
his exposure. He vetted, or intuitively felt,
that I I was a good guy, sure enough before I gave him
a full-time job offer to work here,
which think about that outcome, but that's for another day.
He did get into contact with Chris Brogan, Ted Rubin,
- [DRock] There were like three other people.
- So he made the right move. You could say,
"Wow he did that for free."
The reason I'm always willing to take free work,
and free hustle, is because I feel comfortable
with the fact that I'm gonna try to pay them back
tenfold on the ROI, by giving them a shout out,
I know other people that are marketing leaders
pay attention to me because I've been on the cusp
of doing new stuff, so he had all those opportunities.
Now, I swooped in and saw the raw, amazing talent
that this man had and had to bring him on board.
And this show exists because DRock joined the family
and it gave me the infrastructure,
so big shout out to you, DRock.
So, I think free works. If you think other photographers
will see value in your platform,
or whatever you're trying to accomplish,
money always works as well.
I think people are motivated by different things.
I'll tell you something people always try to do with me.
I never do it, but people do it all the time,
is leveraging your rolodex. I mean the amount of people
that are willing to do things for me,
for me to get them to...
people, I don't know, I'm not going to name drop.
But it's insane, I never wanna do that.
Because I think that's not doing the right thing
for my relationship, but I understand why people do it.
People do it to me left and right.
They're like, "Hey Gary Vee. Meet my boy, Johnny McGee."
And when I meet Johnny McGee it's like,
"Yeah, I gave Ricky McGee eight billion dollars
to get to you", it happens all the time.
People value different things, I think money and exposure
are two things that actually--
Are we doing Patriot stuff?
Guys, you have to understand. I'm a weird guy.
Guys, I'm a weird guy. I'm weird.
I will fire over crazy, weird shit.
Minnie, I'm not scared about this. I'm not scared, Minnie.
I fire over Patriot shit, I promise.
Hey guys, how do you like this?
(laughter)
- [Gary] Like that?
So, yeah. That's it. Let's go on the next question.
I know you just got taught how to submit questions
and now I'm stretching this out a little bit more,
but let's put up five or six of Kate's photos.
It's high school love.
(slow R&B music)
- [Voiceover] Fireboycreative asks, "Gary, I'm a big fan
of online courses, I see this usurping traditional
institutions of education in a big way.
Do you see this happening?
And is there money to be made?"
- What's up, Fireboy? Quick answer to this question is yes.
You know, yes.
Uber, Airbnb, Skillshare,
that's probably one of the ones you're talking about.
There's a bunch out--
Chase Jarvis is behind one.
Yes. I absolutely believe--
Khan Academy, the fact that when I'm trying
to learn something, I go to YouTube and search
a how-to and watch a one minute how-to video.
Information as education is a commodity,
the Internet has created that platform
for us to learn that way.
I don't need a teacher, as charismatic as they may be,
to just tell me the information, what matters are opinions,
interpretations, context, not the base information.
So even here, my base information is fine.
How I layer the context of the current world
is far more interesting. So I think education is massively
going to be disrupted over the next 20 years,
and I think you're barking up the right tree.
Jeff, this question, and photo accompanying it,
is probably the reason we made this switch.
I mean, this is incredible. I'm so excited about this.
I know some people are like, "Oh, Instagram."
Get over yourselves.
Let's attack the 'gram with your questions.
This is a tremendous question,
which makes it even more interesting.
The answer, my man, is very simply like,
what you need to decide is short term cash
versus long term wealth. Let me explain.
My answer to you would be,
okay, you're making the products--
By the way, I had a big business at the time,
but the way I did Wine Library TV
was all-encompassing myself,
except to Chris Mott's credit, Mott videotaped,
but there was no editing the way DRock--
It was just uploading, and in theory, I could've done that
for an hour, but probably not. So big shout out to Mott.
You have to decide if you want to make--
I don't know how long it takes you to make
one of your pieces, right?
I would make seven pieces instead of 13 in a year,
if I can live off of that. I would do that.
I would then spend more time on building my brand,
because that's really what an artist is.
Doing the Instagram stuff you're doing, building up
your Pinterest, being smart and knowing the world
and look at all the exposure.
I really feel confident one person will buy
one of your pieces from this show.
You knew about me,
you commented on my comments,
Alex hit up a bunch of people over the last couple of days.
Not that many replied.
You took the initiative to do it, now you're on the show.
Now you've got this exposure, 20-30 thousand views.
Now what you do with that is you're leveraging that,
and all of a sudden it becomes supply and demand.
There are artists who make one--
I'm sure, I'm not very strong in the art world.
India, you can help me here a little bit.
I know what the answer is, there's some artists
who make one piece every couple of years.
That's how they make their whole living
because it's worth a ton of money,
because they've got the brand.
Now that you can go brand direct--
By the way, Crush It! is literally the blueprint
of the current state of the Internet.
I don't wanna go there, but I was ridiculously right.
Not even kind of. So we're all living that world now.
Grape Story, my agency that represents Vine Talent
is basically the agency of what Crush It! was talking about.
It's a very simple thing. Cash, wealth.
If you decide to make seven pieces this year
and that's enough for you to live,
then it makes me happy because you can take
the rest of that time, instead of 13,
I don't know all the numbers but you see where I'm going,
to build your brand, to engage, to put out content,
to write a Medium post, to put up Instagram photos,
and that builds up your supply and demand curve.
If you're equally good enough at both,
then the demand will get to a place where you can start
charging more for your pieces to build up your brand.
It's very simple, it's been going on forever.
Independent people have always done that,
Should you make pieces or should you open a gallery?
It's chicken and egg.
The other thing to debate is can you bring in
somebody at a low cost to do it
full-time and help you scale.
You're the only one that can answer.
But guess what? I'm the only one that can answer,
but India is here to make it quicker for me.
I do this show so India has something to transcribe
of off, add some grammar, ask me a couple of
clarification questions, and we've got two
of the top four posts on Medium right now.
It all depends on how you wanna roll,
I had to build up to that.
This is the first time I've got this kind of infrastructure.
But it's just chicken and egg, cash flow versus wealth.
There's two ways to go about doing it.
You can make 13 pieces and then you're
making the money on it that allows you to
afford your person and place.
Or you make 7 and you do it yourself for a while.
It just depends on how you wanna roll.
If you're not building up your equity,
you're always going to be making pieces
that are hundreds of dollars instead of pieces
that are millions of dollars.
That's it. That was a good show.
The Instagram thing--
You know, actually let's just go right into it,
I think that's the question of the day.
Question of the day. Give me your feedback, VaynerNation,
on are you excited about--
Let's do a two-parter, I like when you guys do two-parters.
Are you excited about the Instagram?
Do you think it brings a dynamic visually?
Sorry, podcast people. And two.
Are you going to submit one? I'm really curious.
I missed you guys a ton. I've been really pumped
with the way you guys have been consuming the content.
I'm glad you like the stuff that we've been jamming on.
You guys keep asking questions. On Instagram!
And I'll keep answering them.
On this episode we talk about...
(clears throat)
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