- How many cases of wine did you buy?
- [Entrepreneur] 30.
- Nothing, listen it's money but here's what's cool
about it.
You're gonna fucking give it to cli--,
like it's so smart.
You got your perspective.
I just wanna be happy, don't you wanna be happy?
This is the biz dev barter of Empathy Wine episode.
- So I bought Giant, and all he was doing was postcards.
It was called Giant Postcards.
2011 I buy the company, yeah they're this big,
giant postcards.
- How'd he come up with the name of the company?
(laughing)
Go ahead.
- He had one thing right, he was doing shared.
This is where I have to, if we want to debate
a little bit.
- Please.
- [Entrepreneur] I have to debate with you because that plan
right there, so he had a plan.
I took it and I perfected it to that.
Now the manager of the club, if you flip it over,
say that's Gold's Gym, Anytime Fitness, whatever.
That manager right there goes next door to anywhere
from two or one really.
- The New York Jets were paying me millions of dollars
and making millions of dollars by putting a logo
in the bottom left-hand corner of the video
and picture we posted on Facebook.
Shared is not exclusive to postcards or social media.
If you're gonna tell me, which you are,
that they amortized down the cost I'm like cool.
You can do that on Facebook and you can do it at scale.
And you can run more arbitrage on Facebook
because if you know how, a mailbox, the post office
is fixed.
Facebook is broken, it's a marketplace.
You get to take advantage.
I am picking up fans who speak Arabic for 1.9 cents
right now.
Fans, not consumption, follows.
I'm gonna get paid $250,000, $400,000 a speech in Kuwait,
and Jordan, and Dubai in a year because what Facebook does
that the post office doesn't is it doesn't floor it.
So you're right, I understand what you've done.
That's really right.
That's what giant space allows you to do.
- [Entrepreneur] And that's the only way--
- I totally got it.
- [Entrepreneur] I believe that direct mail works.
- Honestly, look I literally just said you know
what's funny?
I don't hate direct mail.
I just know if you use Facebook perfectly,
with the mentality of direct mail, it's scary.
I don't know what else to say the you bro.
This is the same to everybody.
I can literally put fuckin' sushi on it for him.
It's crazy, but much like you've perfected this,
this practice of direct mail's been around
for 80 years.
There's so much work to be done on the content side
on Facebook and on the discipline of being great
at spending $88 against African American males
that live in you know, downtown Atlanta who love
the Hawks but not the Braves.
I mean the shit is fuckin' gnarly and there aren't
agencies yet or humans that really understand
what a Plinko board of that level looks like.
Like I said, yes.
- [Entrepreneur] I want you to know
that crucial part though.
You made me pivot and two years ago, right?
Literally two years ago I said okay Gary's right,
everybody believes him, right?
- I gotta deal with that market behavior.
- [Entrepreneur] I didn't know, I saw you randomly,
but I would say, and I might be completely wrong here.
But I would say you've exploded over the last two years.
- Correct.
I'd been around for eight years, but it's different now.
- [Entrepreneur] And no offense obviously.
- No offense, I'm pumped about it.
I preach to these 24-year olds patience, I lived it.
I don't wanna be a hypocrite.
I'm pumped that I fuckin' ate shit or grinded.
And I was doing great like you.
This is why I'm overreacting to your 37 or whatever.
You're gonna have more ups and downs depending
on your personality trait.
Ups and downs are based on risk.
When you come from the dirt you have more losses
because you're fuckin' playing with, give a fuck.
When you start doing it right a little bit
it depends on my dad hit a place where he was like fuck it
I'm good.
So I'm not gonna put myself in a position ever again,
you know?
And honestly I'm kind of that way, too.
I have enough of a nest egg in the thing,
and even building Gary Vee is really built on what
if all shit goes to shit?
So I always talk about the truth.
The economy being vulnerable, this and that nature.
Because when the economy collapses, I'm gonna be right
'cause I'm right.
And two, I'm not gonna get 150, I'm gonna get 30,000.
But I'll still get 30,000.
And at least that's like my insurance policy.
- [Entrepreneur] Absolutely.
- So you pivoted.
- [Entrepreneur] I knew I couldn't build,
we were doing close (audio skips), bucks, not bad.
- And what, you were super narrow to just this world?
- [Entrepreneur] Just direct mail.
- Just direct mail for gyms or just direct--
- [Entrepreneur] Anybody, anybody.
- But that client was big.
It was disruptive that, my talk there because they
were so big a percentage of your.
- [Entrepreneur] 90%, 90% of our business, numbers.
- Got it, got it, if it was eight percent
it wouldn't have mattered.
If you were Kentucky Fried Chickens and gyms.
- [Entrepreneur] If you ask anybody
you can probably say this.
I mean ask anybody in Anytime Fitness,
I've been around for almost 13 years.
- In that little world?
- [Entrepreneur] In there, yeah.
And I've done 12 Anytime Fitness clubs.
- And you still have them?
- [Entrepreneur] All of them are still open.
I've got a few because I've sold them.
I bought one of my partners out for a big chunk
of money.
- For this one?
- [Entrepreneur] But before I run out of time with you,
the biggest thing that I did,
and this is your doing is I knew I couldn't make it.
If I wanted to get to 10 million, 20 million,
50 million, can't do it with direct mail.
Now I could do it with direct mail, but do I necessarily
want to?
- You don't want to fight, you didn't want to fight,
like you're smart.
You could have.
- [Entrepreneur] It's five, 10% margins.
- But not only that, you would have had to fuckin' fight
the inevitable fact that over time the internet
will continue to gobble up more.
You're gonna have to fight harder on lower margin
for a smaller pie.
- [Entrepreneur] So what I did was of course
I can do the old stuff.
I printed that.
- I love that you did that.
- [Entrepreneur] You've got a couple more here.
And I got some other stuff, but I wasn't super
impressed with it.
I had my production manager do some stuff.
But I got into literally, we still do the direct mail
because it's still a good bit.
It's still 30, 40% of our business.
- But now?
- [Entrepreneur] As you know, direct mail's expensive,
right?
So on our revenue it's good.
Now on the profit side like I said, five, 10%.
- I got it.
- [Entrepreneur] I hate doing a frickin' $10,000 deal
and only make 1,000 bucks.
- I get it.
- [Entrepreneur] Two and a half years ago I said okay
we've gotta do everything.
Not necessarily everything work small.
So we started with the banners, then we went to lanyards.
Then we went to t-shirts.
T-shirts really took off.
T-shirts is I think where it's gonna be.
Now we literally, if you go to my site
we literally do everything.
- You make.
- [Entrepreneur] I hate to say no.
Somebody calls me up, hey can do you do this?
- The answer's yes.
- [Entrepreneur]] I'm like yes.
- Brother, I'm a believer.
I'm at my best when I'm that and I hate the years
where my companies get big and I have to let it be
in the no business for little while.
That's what I'm just getting out of in Vaner.
Like the last three years I haven't been outrageously happy
with the no culture of my own company.
But what you do at times is you start.
I'm a big believer in yes.
Then I think there's times where you're marinating
some of those yeses which forces you to do
a little no.
And I hate those periods.
I'm getting back into yes which excites me.
Is there anything that I can help with right now?
- [Entrepreneur] Absolutely man.
- What?
- [Entrepreneur] Do you have, I know print's not huge.
It's all about online right?
We're mostly offline.
- Don't get it twisted.
I love LinkedIn, I'm talking a lot about LinkedIn.
But I don't love LinkedIn ads 'cause there's a floor.
I don't like floors, I like internet has unlimited scale
and inefficiencies when you start at zero.
I'm a by-product of my reality.
I built a business from three to 60 million dollars
in four seconds with no money 'cause Google
didn't have a fuckin' floor at five cents a click.
Nobody on earth at the time, and I fucked up.
I should have built a trillion dollar company.
But I was in my little wine world.
Nobody was buying silver oak and red wine,
and Bordeaux.
And I just fuckin' cleaned house.
That's why I love social media.
Instagram stories right now will sign up a lot
more people to the gym than that if you know
what you're doing.
It's like anything else.
If you're good at baseball then it's a great idea.
You make fuckin' $23 million a year being
a middle reliever.
But if you're not, you're not.
So it comes down to skill.
I actually like paper, I like real world.
I like events, I just talked about it.
I like paper because there's a place for paper.
I write books in book form.
People make fun of me sometimes.
They're like uh, Mr. Digital.
I'm like because people read them.
There are very few things I shit on that I still do.
I'm doing direct mail this week.
I don't know what else to tell you.
- [Entrepreneur] How can we work together?
- That's probably a better question, right?
That's the bigger, you always start with the moon
and work back, exactly.
- [Entrepreneur] We just partnered with another guy.
Our website is going through the roof.
We're getting orders from everywhere.
I've even talked to Australia about going--
- I don't even want to know how much paper is being printed
in America.
I guess the question is what do you have right?
When you say we're gonna do everything,
are you sitting in the middle and outsourcing?
Do you have a printing press?
I don't even know what to ask?
- [Entrepreneur] When I was with Gold's Gym, I'm back,
I did a full circle.
What I did over the past--
- What's my timing?
- [Male] You're over.
- By how much?
I know, by how much?
- [Male] 10 minutes.
- Okay but we'll have five more minutes.
- [Entrepreneur] Awesome, man.
Basically full circle.
- This is why this barter thing I'm doing is stupid
because I'm not gonna be able to stay.
Like we spent all this time analyzing my time.
Then it's so expensive that we kind of discounted
and I'm already upset.
Then I'm gonna go over by 30% in every meeting
because I get pumped.
That's what I keep telling people.
When I have to sell something, I'm impossible to get to.
- [Entrepreneur] I've been trying to get to you
for two and a half years.
- Right and how many cases of wine did you buy?
- [Entrepreneur] 30.
- Nothing, listen it's money.
But here's what's cool about it.
You're gonna fucking give it to cli--,
like it's so smart.
- [Entrepreneur] That's what I was telling John.
I was telling John yesterday.
- I'm like having the conversation with you guys.
Like this fuckin' sucker.
I feel like I'm not joking, I feel like a sucker.
But I love it.
It's back to the grind of the game.
I love when both people win.
I love that you're winning.
- [Entrepreneur] I'm gonna give away 100, 200 bottles.
What if they all love it?
You're a genius.
I can't drink 300 bottles.
- I know that.
- [Entrepreneur] To be honest, I'm not even a wine guy.
- And who's gonna buy wine?
People are gonna buy wine that can aff-,
who's gonna be able to barter?
They're gonna be able to afford it which means
they're in business.
Or one person just bought 100 cases.
They're donating it to charity.
The charity that I'm on the board of is going
to use it at very high events where it's going
to get good branding.
So totally and here's why good with that
versus other things.
It's truly a $40 wine truly for $20.
So the people that get it are gonna freak
of how good it is.
And if you give it to somebody who normally buys
eight to $20 wine, they're gonna be like
this is so good when they go to the website
and see that it's $20 by the case they're gonna be
like fuck, this is way better than what I'm buying
at Total Wine.
And it's 'cause it actually is a $40 wine for $20.
Anyway nonetheless, what can we do?
Here's what I would say.
You're catching me at an amazing time.
I'm as, okay here's what we can do.
Let me give you the whole gamut.
I don't know if Vaner is in a position where it's so
disproportionately pumped to get the paper
or direct mail business for our clients because we're
competing at the highest level.
They're working with--.
- [Entrepreneur] Aren't you leaving money
on the table, though?
- We are, but the fight to the fight to give me
their business when they're working with who
the fuck knows up the scale, probably they're getting
added value from their national media.
I don't know, but I'll do some homework.
The most extreme, and I don't think this is going to,
intuitively this doesn't feel right.
There's more almost doing it for him and I.
I want Phil and we're going through our own process.
This is me really taking time to sell Phil
on this continued idea.
I'm desperate to create a company called 49.
I have this thought that I'm going to build
enormous amounts of wealth by creating a company
that truly partners with people that are actually smart.
I mean think about it.
You paid a lot of money to buy out a minority partner.
Me rolling in right now and being like give me 49%
of your business is not like the thing
that's gonna get you excited.
So Phil's gonna put you on a call.
I want him on it because I want him to learn.
You should take the business from the guy
that's got it from us at Wine Library.
So that should happen.
I think that's good because I wanna continue.
I'm testing the waters, I still like it.
- [Entrepreneur] Do you do specialty or do you just
do saturation mailing, do you know?
- We do both, we do both.
- [Entrepreneur] Okay because specialty is good.
It's obviously more expensive because you've got
to pay first-class postage.
- I'll be honest with you.
What's really fascinating to me is the,
I think I can do it very weird.
I'm in such a unique spot as a human so cool.
This is the model?
I think Wine Library could probably make $500,000 a year
because unlike all these companies if I actually
have a B side, if I do one video on Facebook
that says hey, I'm doing something with direct mail
I need you to send me the samples of your products
because I will not let you buy space unless
I believe in your product or service.
After we do quality control I could probably be mailing
weekly and making my dad 5,000 to 10,000.
- [Entrepreneur] You could be mailing for free.
- No, no as a profit center.
- [Entrepreneur] Dude, you could actually make money.
There are clause, you know these.
- That's what a profit center is.
- [Entrepreneur] I cap it, I say it's 2,100 bucks
for 5,000 postcards.
If you get 2,400 you get to keep 300 bucks.
- That's what I'm saying, that's what I'm saying.
- [Entrepreneur] So you could absolutely do that.
- Wonder if we can turn that into a business
for influencers?
Think about what I'm talking about now.
Test this with these guys.
We do it for six months, really get it down.
Feel good about it.
We build out some sort of little sales, CRM-y
kind of little thing that becomes scalable.
Then you convince, so for example, fitness influencers.
Like it could be a profit center for influencers
penetrating demos they're not reaching.
You know, if you're the cliche ad, the good looking dude
or hot chic, you're welcome man.
(laughing)
I love your haircut too, I'm super into you.
I was like fuck man, I wish I had that.
You like his haircut?
- [Entrepreneur] I thought I was gonna get tattooed
on the hair.
- Tattoo's cool, but the haircut's good man.
It's like good.
- [Entrepreneur] So I do good bringing him.
- Very good.
- [Entrepreneur] Hey man, he's got a piece of this
if we do a deal.
- Anyway, so I need to wrap.
Here's what I would say.
Through the process you'll send and email to them,
me, and Brandon.
Phil and Brandon will be on the phone with you tomorrow.
You should take that business.
We should do this.
We'll do it once just normal, make sure everything.
That's not what I'm worried about.
It's the holidays.
In January I think I'm literally I'm not joking.
I'm gonna try to roll, I mean just try it.
I like saying yes, trying shit.
I'm gonna try to subsidize it for my dad.
I'm trying to find ways to help my dad make more money.
I'm gonna subsidize it with local New Jersey,
I'll run the ads only in Jersey.
It will literally be like Gary Vee's Jersey
business recommended.
It really is something I think if you think about
how I'm leveraging brand, it's something my dad
could be making 10,000 bucks.
If my dad, if I told my dad, dad, good news.
You're mailing weekly 'cause it works,
it's just expensive.
You're mailing weekly and you're gonna make $10,000 a month
because I'm whoring myself out on the other side
through a process that I feel good about
because I do like that restaurant in Red Hook
and I do feel good about the taffy place in Atlantic City,
and I do feel good about the whatever.
He'll be happy and the business will grow.
He'll make $120,000 in net profit just 'cause
and his business will get a ton more traffic.
It will work, so anyway and then maybe we build
that model.
Then if I like that, probably this time next year
I would then be able to say hey, let's do this for real
whether it's 20%.
We're really trying to figure out what we're building.
We've gone from investing to private equity,
to directed consumer brands, to a holding company.
But I think, and it doesn't have to be Phil by the way.
If he decides not to pass on it,
it will be Andy K or Tyler, or Sini.
I think I'm inevitably going down a path of a company
called 49, Vaner 49.
- [Entrepreneur] I love it.
- It's smart.
- [Entrepreneur] It's an awesome network.
Can you image the network you would--.
- Of course I'm thinking about that.
The amount of people.
- [Entrepreneur] An event with those people.
- The Turks and Caicos weekend every year
on the 49th week of the year.
(laughing)
Oh that's December, it's cold.
I love that, that's what?
Right before, that's literally December 12th, I love it.
That's exactly right.
The entrepreneurial of America or whatever
those fuckin' things are called.
They're outdated, all those things.
- [Entrepreneur] I love it.
- A holding company, and I can really do it.
It's what happens when you build brand.
In the same way that you fuckin' had a deal with the
ramifications of me getting excited on stage
in a hockey arena in New York.
I really, really do think after I got to know you,
or I wouldn't give up my brand.
'Cause that's what you're scared of.
I'm not gonna say you're a fuckin' direct mail dude,
I don't know you.
I like everything so far, intuitive, it feels right.
Like the story, you do a little homework.
You do something for a year and you can say
you're the direct mail.
It's fuckin', it's game over.
You'll pick up an enormous market share.
You're gonna do two million, that's already way better
than one million.
- [Entrepreneur] Do you think I should still continue
to grow on the t-shirt side?
- Yes.
- [Entrepreneur] 'Cause I have to diversify.
- 100,000 percent, alright let's do these one-on-ones,
get it out of here Phil.
(smooth jazz music)