I'm obsessed with the word and versus or and i'm obsessed with people not debating things in board rooms that normal human beings, don't care about. You've got your perspective. I just want to be happy. Don't you want to be happy hi gary? How are you doing i'm? Well, michelle, how are you this is our first yeah fridays? I'm really excited about it.

Me too me too um for everybody tuning in because i know this first episode we're doing on my linkedin live uh shows one of the strongest uh entrepreneurs that i've come across. Uh in my journeys and um we've become friendly and uh. I just really adore and i'll. Let her fully introduce herself to this audience, but i adore what her company and mission is and what they mean to the community and we got to yapping kind of one outside day in the macro and decided.

Let's do a show, i know i'm uh, i'm so excited to be here with you and uh. I think a lot of i got a lot of early inspiration from what you did gary. So it's really cool i've been a serial entrepreneur. My whole life um was lucky enough to join the cast of the canadian shark tank like seven years ago, and i saw that founders were giving up way too much of their business uh in the early stages and then spending most of that money on ads and Inventory and that didn't make sense, and so through that experience thought there had to be a better way to do this.

Um me and andrew introduced this idea of revenue share financing. So we'll give you you know anywhere from 10 000 up to 10 million dollars and instead of taking you know, 10 or 20 or 30 of your company that will own forever. We take a percentage of your revenue until we get our capital back plus six percent. It's not debt, we don't take your business.

If you don't pay us back, it's not a loan, there's no fixed payment timelines, there's no personal guarantees and everyone thought we were nuts and when we started, i think you know we were in your home city of new york and 250 people on wall street told Us we were crazy at the beginning, but we figured out how to do this in scale and, most importantly, we've now backed more than 6 000 different founders with over two and a half billion dollars in capital. So this is not a small thing anymore, and our mission yeah in in garyvee, simple english talk. This is a financing mechanism that doesn't force founders to give up so much equity of their business and isn't predatory. Where you know people are getting screwed and you own their businesses.

True, really i like that. I love that. That's that's as simple as it gets, and it was built on the fact that andrew and i have both been ex-founders and we wish there was a better way to do that, and we hope that this enables anyone with a great idea. Knowing that that statement is very popular and like whoa, a lot of people just got hit like well, what is this i need to? If they don't know this, is it? Is it tough to here's, just the real life question? Is it tough to meet the criteria of getting the financing? No because i'm empathetic to you guys too, like you, don't want to be giving out money to people who can't pay back and there's a lot of headaches that come along with that yeah.

Here's! The here's! The things we're looking for we're looking for a minimum of two thousand dollars a monthly revenue, so you can be very early in your journey and we'll start funding. You then, with our clearangel product um and we're looking for you know positive unit economics, so as an e-commerce business. If you sell something for 100 bucks, you got to have less than you know: 100 of ad spend and product cost, and so that is, you know, should be relevant for your business, no matter what you're selling uh. So it's not hard to get uh to get started with us, and we genuinely think businesses with great unit economics that are just starting to scale are ones that we should be investing in by the way.

The other thing that's really cool about this show is that we see your comments. Linkedin so please say hello: let's do age, sex location, aol, 1995., uh, abram good to see you you're again eric muzik great to see you bachman patel great, to see you uh robert d, stewart awesome to see you thank you for tuning in to yeah fridays, where We talk to real entrepreneurs about real issues, yeah exactly so we're going to bring on our first entrepreneur today. Uh kevin, gould, who's, the founder of glamnetics and uh. Would love we'll get to hear just a tiny bit about his story and then what? What are the challenges to do and the whole point is supposed to be very relevant.

It's like what gary and i are seeing in the market today and and how we can help hey. What's up guys how you doing how you doing kevin doing well, uh i'll, give you guys a quick background. My name is kevin. I'm the founder of combo ventures, kind of under combo, i'm the co-founder of a few different brands.

One's called glamettic. We work. We work with clearbank for a while actually we're in the eyelash space. I know, there's a women's hair brand called insert name here and then the third is a fragrance and candle brand that actually built with these two influencers.

The dolan twins, uh, we'll do you know high eight figures in revenue this year, self-funded everything so we haven't taken on capital and figures, eight figures across the three major brands. You have yeah. You know it's really two, two of them, two of the bigger ones, uh glimetic and then insert name here: um we're omni channels, so we're d to c we're on over a thousand ultas just rolled out sephora um yeah, i mean it's been. It's got about 150 employees now across everything and yeah.

It's been, it's been a fun ride. Man, congratulations! Thank you! Yeah! It's obviously, i'm sure you guys are seeing it's crazy right now with all the ios updates and everything going on the ad space. And so let me let me jump in because i want this be educational yeah. You know obviously you're deeper, along with a real actual business and there's a lot of aspiring people here.

Uh apple with its ios update, has really gone heavy into privacy and and if people think 14-5 is tough, wait till they find out what 15 has in store with email. What that's meant for kevin - and a lot of you here is the retargeting capabilities or just and many other nuances are not where they were over the last decade, which has a lot of direct to consumer small and medium-sized businesses in a in a challenge. In a challenge to be uh better with other best practices that don't require an incredible strategy around media in a facebook, instagram environment, true kevin yeah, very true - i mean, i think, what i tell our team right. Is there certain things we can't control, which we can't control the cost of facebook, can't control cpms? You can optimize for it, but i mean that's out of our control.

So what we really try to focus on is what are the things that we can do as a brand that we can control. So, if you're like an early founder out there, some things we think about are you know like dms right? We look at dms as a sales prospecting channel. Everyone said like we're: we're engaging in scale scale the unscalable, i always say exactly right. Everyone wants scale yeah.

Meanwhile, every one of you by the way, who's trying to build a personal brand or trying to build a company. You always want to find viral and the hack. Meanwhile, there's comments and dms sitting there and you have no effort towards them. You're obsessed with acquisition and vanity metrics and you have no care to actual relationships and retention and that lives in dm.

I agree kevin. I'm devastated that i'm at the point of my career 2007 to 2011. This is real talk now 2007. This is actually insane.

I'm gon na use this format to say it there yeah. The only reason garyvee exists is because from 2007 only reason besides, the everybody does content. The only reason i think i was different is because, from 2007 to 2011 i replied to every dm, every email and every tweet mentioned of me. No all of them yourself me myself.

I still there's a reason. There's a teamgaryvee, twitter and instagram account. I still am the person that replies to everything when it's me that nobody in the history of my life has ever typed anything as garyvee ever by the way. That makes a huge difference, long term too, because for us like when we started the brands a few years ago, we replied to every single you know dm and that fostered and built the community right, and i think the things that make a brand defensible now against Things like changes in ios and facebook is that community and brand factor - and i think the other thing we thought about a lot - is like we're trying to find pockets of things where there's a gap or an opportunity where we can jump in so something i'm personally.

Really bullish on is live commerce, we do 75 um facebook lives a month between our own brand between influencers and i think like we're, trying to get way ahead of it and like be way ahead in building the infrastructure. But you kind of got to do. There's not one thing that can make up for the scale of you know ads, and so you got to do. You have to really do everything right and it's really hard right now.

So i think, if you're a founder, you need to be prepared to go in and work really hard if you're a founder that - and you know this - that over the last decade, facebook and instagram made it math easy yeah right, like you know, by the way kevin You know what you're going through what i went through when email matured i got addicted, but the reason i was there when email matured too, as an ecommerce site that had 90 percent came through email, and i remember that it was covered. You look you're looking at two people that went through this thing when it happened to email right. It happened now that happened a little bit more naturally by the consumer. Um.

But look i mean look what let's call what it is. Web 3 is staring everyone in the face. All of this is going to go to a place where consumers have ultimate control. We have.

We have people going to non-custodial. Wallets people are controlling their money, um, let alone their information. So it's a very, very, very interesting time um. So i i like that.

I, like your energies and your eyes, wide open kind of like focus on what um, what you're actually going into, and i think actually not being delusional, is the best way to attack what you're about to go through yeah. For sure i mean look, i think you have to be an optimistic realist right and - and i think the other thing that i think a lot of founders aren't as tight on is you need to be really tight on your numbers like we didn't raise capital right And so when you do go through challenges where marketing costs rise or whatever you need to be really tight on things. The other thing i tell the team all the time is like there's two ways to make money. You can obviously sell more or you can get really tight on your costs and like find ways to whether it's packaging or shipping, or you know reducing vendor costs.

There's a lot of ways to you know, run a business tight and and figure out a way to scale it yeah and hopefully, we've been helpful in giving you that some of that capital to to grow and you still own the whole thing yeah. No, it's been. It's been great, i mean we worked with you guys for a while now and clear bank's been been super, helpful and and uh yeah. We haven't raised any raise any capital outside of outside of uh clearbank kev.

What um? What can we answer for you like? What very narrow, or or any other concept like what what um, what what's like a good question to ask like? What can we answer for you? Yeah? I mean, i think, i'm i'm just here to chop it up with whatever you what what you think is is working now in the space right, because i'm sure you know the brands you work with what we're doing we're all kind of doing the same things. We're trying to get scale through tv, so that's our scale factor. We just launched tv. Let's start right there, let's start right there.

I actually think that's a bad idea. I could be wrong and i know that every brand goes to this place. Let me tell you my take on tv, the remnant tv, dr move, that a lot of the brands that you grew up looking up to or a couple years ahead were financially ahead because of capital raise it's interesting, vaynermedia, my company's starting to really explode because a Lot of that, dtc crew is realizing that tv is not performing for them as much as they'd like for the investment involved. Of course it's performing when you spend tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, things will happen.

I think there's a dollar shave club purple, mattress thing that i'm surprised so many um of these brands have not gone down the path of which is the following: the long form: 35, 55, 95 155. Second, video yep in igtv, facebook and pre-roll youtube matching the creative and distribution costs of remnant. Tv are outperforming tv and you can make more contextual creative. So i guess the question i have with that.

One is have you thought about doing a significant, a b test or how much effort has been put into what i would call brand performance long-form, video that, like uh kin, insurance k-i-n, we worked with them and did something called florida man and it's florida, comma man And that anthem, three-minute video is, is dominating in performance as a top of the funnel to drive down cac yep yeah, i think we're i mean we obviously run a lot on and we should try. I think we should for sure try out some of those formats. I mean we've spent probably 30 million dollars in the last 20 months, so we spent a lot of money on acquisition, and this is this is doing this again, not by raising lots of vc money, and you know burning business yeah, we're running a business. I believe in business, and so i think the way we're looking at tv and i think the debate's out, if it's going to work or not we're in ulta we're in sephora, we've got amazon and so we're trying to figure out.

Because it's a show right now and attribution right. So now you can't look in platform on facebook anymore, we're trying everyone's trying to build a new model and like how do they look at ga where's the attribution coming from the problem? The problem is you're, doing brand right and performance, and so like. First of all, brand is not measurable yep and the thing that i like about so have you done a two-minute brand performance, video for pre-roll youtube or facebook. We've done a we've done a youtube one minute, video that we're running, but the thing is with with costs right now in acquisition right, it's just super high with you know they lost all their data right, so facebook, but television has no data.

It's got. I mean it's got a little bit with the connected tvs and ip addresses, and it's a little bit of us having to be really smart about the way we're looking at data but but the for what you're gon na find out, which is where everyone's gone. Nobody wants to watch it right, we might, we might be like damn. We dropped a couple hundred k, you don't care about that and by the way, by the way up front at first, it's gon na work a little something.

What i know. Let me phrase what i believe - and i have a lot of confidence in this by looking at a lot of stuff - is um. It's the creative yep, it's all hand created oh creative. You know this and the creative flexibility you have on doing an amazon fire.

Stick execution or a pre-roll youtube. They don't have the data, but they have enough data to give you some level. It's not like. You have first party retargeting data, 100.

100 100. I mean, but i kind of look at it like influencers right like if you look at cost in the space facebook and youtube everything's going up. Influencer costs have basically stayed flat, so we're like okay, we'll invest in influencer. There's a we can see direct through discount codes, you're never going to get back to like more than a one to one, but then there's a there's, a halo effect.

You hit him yeah. I mean kev honestly the biggest mistake that brands and companies like you historically make is they don't take into account the collateral impact of the spend right? Well, if i do something with an influencer, i don't give a about how let me phrase i do care about how they perform back to your one-to-one conversation, but i'm getting their endorsement for sure. That's what i mean so if we can get back to close to one to one, but then we're getting the halo and we're getting the retargeting and more people in the funnel. But this is why i want you to really take this episode and come back and say: are we pushing the envelope to go viral creatively like a purple, mattress, video or a dollar shave club, because once you, you have to understand, there's no shot on tv, you're, Gon na have this, but you do have the chance to make a video.

That's a minute. 47, if you actually try to make it not with performance of mine with. Can i get every human on the internet for 48 hours to share this video? Make that that part makes sense totally makes sense. I agree.

That's where i think the branding go, what you know what how i think about it. Kev i apologize michelle last point. It's like going one for four with a home run, yep yeah right like i'd. Rather, you spend 200k four times on a dollar shave club attempt like we.

We had. It happened with dwyane wade and budweiser a couple years ago, when he retired. We did this video, where, like he was retiring, his jerseys with like real people that he interacted with in his career and it completely like changed budweiser's a massive brand. It's hard to sell more budweiser.

I think that your dna actually from performance and social lends itself to having ingredients that are required to make a video that all of us lose our mind about and share. But you have to go for it and what happens? Is brands go for remnant, performance based tbc to do it and i think that's the opportunity for you to think about makes sense, makes sense. Awesome. Well, good luck! Kevin! I had one more question on social selling, but i think we're almost out of time here.

So we're going to uh, oh no go ahead. It sounds like we're out of time. No, it's! Okay, we'll we're going to give a 30. I want a 30 second answer from you, so you've really used influencers and how the lives and social selling worked and any tips for other founders out there.

On that yeah. I think i think you need to build the infrastructure and the team and need to start small. So i'd set a goal: if you're a new company and try to do five, you know facebook or instagram lives a month go find influencers that are micro. Influencers that are really good at educating the audience, because i think live selling is an amazing opportunity to educate um, and you know you got to kind of test out and figure out which influencers work and then just build the infrastructure from there brother.

What about what about twitch and then? Finally, one last point: have you thought about launching an nft project where the token is actually a subscription to a yearly subscription pass? I love what the hundreds did with that. I think they they like nailed this sort of like they basically turn it into a loyalty program. I'm definitely thinking through it, but i feel like i'm in the exploratory need to understand the space a little bit more phase before i figure out. Let me you know, let me give you the boost that i gave bobby and ben when we talked in february which led to that project, you need to get really serious about the exploratory yeah, whatever you're going to do tomorrow.

Well, it's more saturday! I don't want to take your weekends, but i'm sure at this stage of your career that plays as well, but let's push it to monday. You need to allocate an hour a day to web three because you're way too young. First of all, so it's going to impact your whole life. Second of all, i'm completely convinced i sold over a million copies of my book, that's coming out in november by creating an airdrop of a token for everybody who bought 12 copies.

To give you context the single most successful non-fiction book first week, sales of all time is barack obama and he sold 1.7 million in week, one i sold over a million in 24 hours because of the conjunction we are in a hyper moment of nft right now That will ebb and flow if you create a meaningful project and you plenty of emails and to like give promotion to this where, by buying the nft, it also triggers a discount to a subscription of your core product. But they know that they have an inherent value. In the nft as well, i think there's something there for you to think about. I agree.

What's interesting too, is last point is my co-founder. Ann is actually her. Previous career was an artist, so we've been really toying with the idea now now you're making me throw up now, i'm really focused now now i'm like definitely teeth. It's definitely teed up to to do.

Please please use this. Please use the serendipity. This is a triple extra push. I appreciate it.

It's good to chat with you guys. I know you got ta yeah. I know we got it. We got ta hop to the next.

Thank you for being here. Kevin all right, see you guys later bye. Okay, so our next segment on advice of the week is to bring back uh bobby and brianna britton co-founders of o positive and flow vitamins. Hey hey here, michelle thanks for having us on yeah um, we're co-founders of o-positive.

Our parent brand flow vitamins is the first ever gummy vitamin for pms uh and we're developing other products in the feminine health space to hopefully change uh the way inner people interact with their with their health and and take vitamins forever. Um so excited to ask some questions: uh, we have quite a bit i'll look brianna and you guys are crushing it so congrats on like thank you what's so our first question um, obviously we're a pms gummy, vitamin, so um. It kind of runs that fine line between being a fun brand that is really focused on women and also being a scientific authority in the female space. So i wanted to ask how you guys, recommend kind of riding that line finding the perfect balance and also which avenue you think holds more weight, going the scientific route or more of the brand route.

I'm obsessed with the word and versus or and i'm obsessed with people not debating things in board rooms that normal human beings don't care about yeah, so you know so my hands. My quick answer to this is whatever the woman on the other side or the person that may influence the woman that will use the product, whether they're passionate about the scientific or passionate about you, taking an important subject matter and giving it a little more breathing room. Where it's not so serious and intense, you should not make the decision for the consumer. You should go both hard on both they both play.

You know they both play. They historically both play, but on the other side, there's humans that will go more for one or the other or love the fact that it's both - and i don't think you take your pedal, your foot off either pedal and you just keep pushing and pushing and pushing Both narratives because they're, both true like like you, you can be funny and very mathematically smart. You can right, you can be ambitious, i'm a living contradiction. I am wildly ambitious and extraordinarily patient and that with people's brains, i don't.

I don't think there is any rules, and i think that people, especially when they go with a student mentality, try to create rules when the consumer on the other side doesn't have them yeah it probably. I was just gon na say it probably funnels really well into something more long form when you're thinking tactically, when you're talking about a a long form kind of purple, pillow video - i mean that's both brand and science. How would you kind of go about that? Is that kind of a strong avenue to both balance brand and have the time to explain the brand, but also have the time to explain really the science between hormones and how these herbs ingredients and how those all kind of tie in together yeah? I think the other thing that i would add is i sometimes found founders, get really precious about their brand and they like are like this. Is it - and i don't want to test like this - is one of those things that you like maybe test the out for yeah? That stuff is more scientific, you have stuff, that's way more fun and playful, and then, as gary said, you end up seeing how these audiences segment, but like just don't, be too precious around like oh well.

If we do this, it's going to somehow ruin the brand. Like a brand is like it's like a person, it grows, it changes your times and it evolves and and most of all and most of all, like a person, it's dramatically resilient and it's like parenting. Parents in today's world are way too into their kids, which is creating anxiety, yeah, and i think business owners are over analyzing missteps. I can't explain to you how many mistakes vaynerx makes a day an hour, and i think that people are crippled by right.

Instead of understanding, it's all just actually a process, yeah and learning yeah yeah, absolutely i mean it's the essence of what you built like. If i asked you is this about science or fun, you know brand like a little bit more fun taking some of the steam out of it. The answer is both. I know yeah you're right.

It is so why, so, why are we picking all of a sudden yeah people? This is what's going on in nft land they're, like all these are people like this sucks, i'm like. Why does it have to suck it's not coming out of you? The people don't understand the world is inherently abundant yeah and you have a lot of customers and there's three ways: they're gon na look at it all science, all fun, loving the fact that it's both love. Your triangle, love your triangle. It's all three yeah yeah, that's great.

I think the next question maybe is more around content right and and producing content. I think a facebook ad used to have a life of weeks and months sometimes and would grow the company for that entire time and now you're. Looking at things like tick tock, where an ad might have the life of three days and they burn out so quickly only because people don't know how to run those ads. The difference is the facebook ad was performance with advancement heavily predicated on math with art, tick.

Tock is art, art art, but if you take a viral tick tock and you turn it an organic viral tick tock so tick-tock to me is go heavy on organic four times a day. Yeah take something that went viral, which means it hit the tonality that people were looking for and then refurbish that into an ad call. It like brand performance, yeah and then run that. I think you can get much more longevity than you think and who are the people to make that who is the ideal? Is it native creators? Is it people on your team, like how do you seek out and find this talent yeah by the way, by the way you just answered both yeah, you know the answers bobby.

Yes, it is it's influencers. It's an internal team. It's it's. Why i built vaynermedia, where we do very well with that with fortune 500? It's why i built a sasha group, because i needed to do it well for your size, companies not just budweiser, and you know, um.

I think it should be something you always build internally. I think it's always good to work with external if the people really know what they're doing as kind of like a lease with like. I always tell my clients, i'm like i'm here for 24 months, not 24 years. If we do what we're doing well, it will become so ingrained in you, you'll understand it and then you'll decide it we're going to build this ourselves, and that doesn't bother me that excites me yeah yeah, 100 percent fish yeah, but you're right you're competing against again.

These native creators, so you're almost like bring them into your circle right, have them help. You learn the platform and create things like that platform right and and by the way, this is where everyone's getting caught: you're not competing with them. Yeah like. Let me, let me explain: there's an abundance of there's an abundance of attention.

Yes, karen might go crazy and get very big kim kardashian is quite famous ready for this kim kardashian has not put anybody out of business yeah yeah, you have to go there like. Yes, it's great that these 47 girls are promoting your competitors product. It still means nothing in the end of the day, because there's another 4 700 of them right behind it. I think one of the keys to tick tock, though, is that people relate to them and the authenticity of it.

So i think the the posts that go viral are the ones that are so authentic and so genuine, and i would say i would say that there's unlimited posts because of this in my life going viral and succeeding that are that are contextual to the platform. Not necessarily authentic, okay got it. Don't mix up contextually contextually strategic versus authentic, because when you think it's authentic, you two go into a place over dinner, saying you know if we pay them, it's not gon na be authentic and then it's not gon na work where in reality what's happening is the Reason a lot of people are not winning on tick tock. Is they don't know how to make content for tick tock? But if you make content for tick tock that is actually an ad or paid for through an influencer, it always works.

Yeah yeah, and it's about being content. It's about being contextually native to the platform, not trying to put not trying to put your flow bottle on a dance, and that is popping something exactly. Let me give you an example. You can pick the influencer and then tell her do whatever the you want, yeah.

They built an audience because they know like this is where brands always up they're like hey, we love you. Let's make michelle the influencer michelle. We love you and you're amazing. Okay, now, you've got to at least mention our brand three times.

You've got like they get heavy-handed yeah you control, who you're gon na, give money to and then get out of the way, okay, and do that a hundred times see what you like and then build from there. It's so so so true, because actually the best posts are always when i'm like this. Actually i love my aura ring it's my favorite thing. I talk about it all the time i like post my sleep.

They have never paid or asked me to do that, but the moment, because i've gotten all these brand briefs and it's like pen michelle, they actually sometimes write this script. For you, they say like what you need to mention is like the benefits and features it's like. No one gives a about that people actually want to know that i use the product, and so it's like i. I love that and i've seen that so much, but i'm just i'm just adding this because it's important yeah, we have unlimited things working.

That is a paid influencer thing yeah. We just don't tell them what to do and we always win that with our clients like i do it and i'm great and it's easy for me, but for my clients a lot of times i can't get, even though they hire us even with me involved. Sometimes they can't get there and the reality is it: it bites them in the ass and then they adjust. You pick who you want to endorse and then get completely out of the way which is yeah fallacy in brand land.

Historically yeah, it's not what they teach. You in school, you know, and so that is, that is what you need to think about and then when it hit, the other thing you want to ask them for is the ability to run ads against that yeah and then and then, more importantly, you need to Do a lot of dyi your own and learn um in for infotainment style, stuff organically. If it hits yeah slightly tweak, it change the copy and turn it into an ad yep yep. That's great! That's awesome! Infotainment! I love that awesome.

Thank you! So much guys. Those were those were our two questions really appreciate the time and thanks for having us on gary great to meet you michelle, always a pleasure awesome. Okay, so i think gary and i have time for a couple of audiences, a couple of audience: uh q, a so just tell people to drop their comments in uh in the chat and we can do uh one or two other quick, uh, quick ones, while we're Letting people drop their questions in yeah um. Are you going to be looking for them or is somebody going to pop in or how we doing it? That's a really good question: okay, well, dustin or seth.

If you want to pop on camera, i always like breaking the wall. Oh i see what they're doing. They just showed us the preview they'll put on screen. You please read it because i can't read and then we'll jam, but before we go into questions two minutes, because you know i i've been yapping too much and we haven't been able to tap into the brilliance that you are.

What is it give me one or two common themes, you're seeing right now, you're sitting at the top of this company that gets to see a lot of what's working? What's not working anything emerging, that's very of the moment! That's really got your attention. Oh, it's a really good uh, a really good question um. I actually think the number one thing we've seen very recently. I love what you said about nfts earlier.

I think there's tons of potential there. It's actually like we're getting this like critical mass on social selling. Like i haven't seen anything that's like looked quite that big in terms of in terms of live in terms of the influencers and then that that hedge against all these other, rising ad costs, and i think what you said was correct. We are heading to a world where people like you're not even going to be able to see my credit card transactions you're not going to see anything about me, and so our ability to guess is going to go away.

And so what that means is that your friends, which have actually always been the best people to sell you a product because referrals and word of mouth and like there's a reason, we've been talking about an nps score and what's the fine line between that and the Skeeziness of you know where people haven't historically liked. You know the worst case, worst versions of mlm or network marketing yeah i mean i think, that uh, that this is all about authenticity and standing behind your product right at the end of the day, you have to know that that something is going to show up At your door and are all of our mailboxes are full and you're going to open something and you're going to literally keep it on your body and not take it off. Or it's going to go right back in the box right back into the garbage. And that's where you lose and gain all your points, whether you call that an influencer will you call that a friend like it? It does not, and things have always fallen apart there, because it was never yeah.

But it's not the money you make by getting more people in your tree, not the product. You actually sold, not the product, all right. So let's get some questions. Okay, uh, i'm seeing more brands that think about wholesale any tips on how gdc can execute well.

In a wholesale retail environment, your thoughts on that yeah, um i'd, say honestly. This is so hard about building a startup, but you should actually try and get to a certain scale before you start distracting yourself. So i think the right time to be thinking at wholesale is maybe when you're at five million, maybe when you're at 10 million of online revenue, then at least you have your like logistics set up, and you can start thinking about that. I so many brands do wholesale way too early and then they get very, very distracted because there's like three sides of the houses to manage - and you have two separate supply chains, um and then you're looking for um.

This is really about, and the other thing that i've seen brands do really well at this stage is that they can negotiate with their wholesalers and their retailers once they have an online presence. You are at the mercy of these retailers and they're all making. You know they're they're, basically buying your product on consignment, you're gon na have to take it back, like the terms are so bad, but if you have a brand that people want with a big social audience, that's now making a retailer cool. All of those dynamics switch upside down almost immediately.

I don't care if you don't have anything there. I just think that you're, you need to know what is happening when you're dancing with the devil right. The retailers have a lot of leverage and they can really really change the narrative of your brand, and you know i think, um. I think that the longer you can go direct to consumer and collect that consumer and the the i think people go for short-term growth and give up leverage the longer you could be without a wholesaler and without a retailer the longer you have control yeah, i'm gon Na, let you take this one gary first, how do you bring together an influencer community when you don't have much engagement? I'm not sure i really understand how do you bring together an influencer community when you don't have much engagement, i'm not exactly sure jacob.

If you can do a follow-up question, but it sounds like a kind of a chicken and egg thing like you can only have a community when there is engagement. It's like you know. How do you get into shape when you're not willing to do exercise and eat? Well, you're, not so that's how i kind of took that let's get a follow-up on that, let's keep going on the topic of nfcs. What does gary vaynerchuk think about companies like masterworks, which are democratizing the art industry? I haven't had a chance to look at masterworks um, so i apologize.

I can't. I can't speak to that. What i can tell you is companies, don't need to exist to democratize the industry. The blockchain by nature is democratizing the industry, the concept of nfts and decentralized servers.

If you know there will be middlewares, but they will need to bring a lot of value to artists, not take huge commissions, bring demand, help them sell the things that galleries always did, but with far smaller economics, how does a construction company build their brand? Oh, my gosh, have you not seen the way people follow homes online? I mean it's like you know it's it's like the same way that you got food porn. You got, i think, but but i think to trevor's point. You know, i agree with you, but i think a lot of that is the consumer and trevor he's looking right for the b2b behavior you're in the right platform right this minute trevor. I think you need to speak to bring value to decision makers right the developers you know.

Can you make content? That is things like six things developers need to worry about in 2022. How do you bring high value information to the person that makes the decision on which construction company do they use? Those people mainly live on linkedin. A linkedin content and media strategy is what you need yeah and then, at the end of the day i mean a construction company can exist on very few customers and so that referral network having every single one of those projects create three more for you is actually Probably the most powerful way to build both your company and your brand. I like that, what kind of nft product, art or other eyes that is not on the market? Would you like to see the most i mean all of it matthew.

You know like we're in the beginning stages: that's like asking what websites would you like to see in 1995? All of them right, i mean, i think i think the reality is is in the art is unlimited, so i want to see all 7.7 billion people's opinion on what art is to them uh and then what we talked about earlier, the utility functions have not even Begun to start and there's so many ways to do it, and i think people need to spend real time thinking about that. You know what does the smart contract hold people going to buy homes in nft forum people are going to make business transactions. People are going to give up pieces of equity if you buy the nft royalties, there's so much. So that's how i'm thinking about it.

Yeah just getting started. Okay, uh last one. What are some of the things one should focus on when creating content on linkedin at the start of their entrepreneurial journey, um talking about what they actually know, not faking it till you make it like actually talking about stuff, you know uh and uh. Why would anybody that sees this in this stream watch this? The world is filled with selfish content creators.

We need more selfless yeah and i i'd say the other thing is like at the end of the day. One of the the biggest story lines in the world is how you build a company, it is filled with drama and downside and tears, and i mean i've been doing this. My whole life - and it's like you know my life - is a tv show and and did did get to become a little bit of that um and so sharing some of those really vulnerable. Authentic moments, i think, is so critical.

I mean that's what people want. They want to understand, at the end of the day that we are not alone, and so you know we we build content. That is exactly what gary said, that that looks, selfish and looks promotional, uh and looks like i'm doing so. Well, i actually think you stand out when you say like i things up and like this, is i made this mistake, so you don't have to um and when it's when it's genuine and it doesn't feel over produced, i actually think that's you know early stage.

Companies have some of the the craziest stories of all time, and so you have incredible content to start out with. I agree all right. This was a lot of fun episode, one in the book, so your friday fridays. Thank you guys all joining us for yeah fridays uh because of travel schedules.

We are going to be doing this on thursday next week, which is the 30th at one o'clock eastern time. So we'll get you know uh a little bit of that could be cold. Can we call it duck yeah thursday yeah? We can call yeah thursdays, we can do whatever um, and so, if you want to apply for the show, go to clear.com fyf um to be selected at uh at next week's gary. I had so much fun doing with this me too.

I know a lot of you who are watching in my community desperately trying to get time together, it's impossible for me, so take advantage of it clear dot, co, slash fyf, put in your applications. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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