The reason i've always been more brand than digital sales is digital sales changes, you're living it right. Now, i'm always going to push brand and i'm very bullish about this mascot thing. I think every small business on earth should have a mascot, including b2b. This portion is like with me, so i think this is when you need to get selfish like you need to ask your question: hiring is guessing firing is knowing like you got to go fast.

That's how you get done, that's how you figure stuff out this is the television and the television is the radio, the 40s jim norman. This is my sidekick dakota uh. We met at the burns bayer thing not too long ago. I have the sit with me.

App um helping servers and partners connect with their best customers. I remember good to see you hey, hey brother, good, to see you again. Uh spanking, founder of a company called ad zombies who are not scaled copywriting service. We write towards the sale everything for about 40.

000, clients, that's awesome: hey gary uh tom lehrer, i run a company called expedia interaction marketing. We are a 500 seat. Employee call center outsourcer located here in the states and not here d.a, that's awesome. How did you get that uh started as a startup? I mean the hoodie, oh just paid 1400 bucks on ebay.

I didn't think your fingers were that fast. My wife is still happy about it. It's a pleasure, jason borenoi uh. I run an agency called jport media.

I launched a coaching program and i have a podcast called perfectly known. It's awesome, dave carroll, uh, doe marketing. We all make direct mail make sure it has something awesome, pleasure, michael munsterman, monster, automotive group, joy, hi, joy, it's good to see you hey gary how's. It going well get go yes, just a few minutes ago.

Yes, check it out, did you see what it was? Johnny? Walker, very cool. Thank you for that. Thank you talk to the four yep. I got a good.

I got great context. Yeah and i've got dakota here now. This i get it, i get it. It's amazing uh.

He does all of our content. Okay, we're only five months in yeah um. A lot of what we did was just like. Is this a good idea? Will it work yeah um do do servers it's kind of a big shift or servers and bartenders willing to start instead of saying remember when i worked or hey, do you want my cell phone number yep? I remember.

I remember everything about our talk um. So my question kind of becomes is what should i do next steps as far as growing the business and not wanting to develop the rest of the features that are in my head? I think you have to have more critical scale on the core feature. The biggest mistake people make is try to add features when they're this young so keep with the mvp there's you know, there's a handful of bugs and little things yeah you got ta fix it yeah. You got ta to that point right, like first get all the bugs out and get critical scale in the core feature.

You know people get very feature like fancy before they've got the thing going right like to me. You've got to have 25 000 servers on the platform active, i'm talking once a month. I've engaged with the app before you even like think about the next thing. I've seen so many people misstep in appland by adding thinking that adding things like adding things makes things worse.

Simplicity is always the champion, and people don't get traction on whatever they have or they're impatient, or they haven't given enough time they start putting all their energy on adding features when what 100 of what you should be doing is getting people on the platform. I know you've been doing those. What i would also do is, i would go to search on instagram search, bartender bartending, all that literally follow every single bartender in the country and once they follow you back dm them and start trying to build your business is in full hand-to-hand combat. How do you like the idea of and it's kind of, a question but going to management that whole sales and say hey? Would you like to have 37 sales people helping fill the restaurant during lunch? We talked about that.

If you, if you stay the course of what we talked about the other day of like trying not to convince them, the difference between me and my dad, when i told you too many restaurant tours are going to think that you're going to lead to them losing People but 25 will see the value, so the answer is a hundred percent. It's how you scale. If you go to 100 restaurants and knock on doors and get 25 to say yes, that's 25 times 3 to 35 servers. I just think you're gon na need to fight on two fronts, direct to bartenders direct to servers right.

Obviously, we talked about the expansion of you know probably sit with me, but, like sit with me also, i think works for hairdressers and barbers right. So i think you have to fall on two fronts: the b, to b the b to b to c and the b to c the b to c is going to the individuals who do it and the b, to b to c is going to the establishments Who then will sell to their people? I just know small businesses. Well, i just think a lot of them are going to be scared for sure right. You see it already right, yeah, it's just three people above any kind of commitment, yeah and just like.

Even if you get directly to the owner in a small business like hey, do you want your servers to use this app like a lot of them are just going to go down the path of like karen's, my best she's going to get a clientele and she's Going to leverage that against me, so i just think you have to be really prepared for that. I think you have to you just have to succumb to like it's gon na be two out of ten and that's okay, because two out of ten is good because, especially, i would probably start with places that are bigger, because if you're gon na go two for Ten you'd rather go two for ten that have 30 servers each then 2 for 10. That have two servers right, so i would think about scale as well. I've got one that i think you'll you'll like and i'm trying to figure out the right way to do it.

I've created with a with a good friend of mine who's, an amazing muralist around louisville, mainly but he's got probably 70 murals around the country. Super talented, hates social media has never put his stuff out. There he's a college friend, an older man of mine, and so we've created an nft project. I actually i like you.

I drew one first, i'm a terrible artist myself but drew something. How would you integrate an nft project to help build this community and i'm all for educating i've been you know, since you started talking about it, you did my 80 hours of homework and paid a lot of attention, no expert, but as much as people can know. So how would you integrate that into maybe getting the server community involved in yeah? I would probably start a discord for this community. I would probably run ads specifically towards people in the service industry and say: do you want to learn about nfts? I'm no expert, but i'm pretty far along.

I think the thing that most people struggle with when they're running a business is separating the giving from the thing that they're hoping happenings. When you give, i think the reason i wrote, jab jab, jab right hook and the reason i have to like i'm actually thinking about getting back into that content. I think people go much closer to manipulation than value with karma when they do this. I think the thing that separates me is when i do content i'm in content mode.

I just don't. I don't even like from day one wine library, tv episode, one that i thought i was i i haven't told this story in a long time. I thought i was doing qvc in the week that wine library tv was building in my head. I'm, like i'm gon na, do qvc on youtube.

This thing, youtube's gon na, be big. The second the camera went on. I did, i did a totally different show. I did martha's, you know stuart.

I just like i something about the camera made me say i don't feel comfortable selling on this show because it's gon na be a show. That really is an infomercial. If i do it this way it, let me just be wine. Spectator and robert parker, i'm just gon na review this wine, which is radical as i'm selling this stuff downstairs, and i'm in my office saying this is garbage wine and like, like literally like the first six months, the company really genuinely actually thought i'd lost my mind.

Okay, you have to remember, i was six at a different time. The internet, like none of this, existed yet they're like what are you doing and i'm like i'm doing a show. That's i remember that was my answer. I wasn't really even sure how i answered it.

Now i just recalled like doing a show and on that show it's got to be the show and what i learned through that process was by doing that. You actually gain relationships and with relationships. You then have opportunities. If you choose to create events, and so i think i think for a lot of you - which is obviously why i always want the context overall up front like doing doing content, that is not a lead.

Gen to conversion is an incredibly foreign mindset to most people, and i think it's exactly where all the action is give give give and then ask instead of have some sort of concoction that is fake, give with the hope of taking those are two very different frameworks. I think that's what's worked for me and the things that i've observed have worked for others makes sense. Let's just provide value to this community, maybe from a how do you grow your brand? How do you play with nfts? How do you grow your career? How, like you know, just drop some uncle on them, build, build, build, build and then just by i mean i think the right hook sits in your bio. I mean there was years there where i really besides a book had nothing, and you know just it's in the bio i mean i don't i i think i leave a lot of sales on the table for our businesses at vayner x.

For i mean even me friends, i mean if you really analyze my social content, i'm not looking to sell a lot in comparison to how much i believe in it and how well i think that would go. I just it's just not the framework and i think that's where people are struggling with social content. They make content with always the intent of it being an ad, which is the thing that nobody wants to watch. One thing i've noticed in this group: you know i'm uh, we've got car sales, we've got print ads, um, you know, and and i've got tipping there's some pretty like thing.

There's things in there that people just can't stand, they think they have a bad outlook on car sales. People tipping it's been amazing. We use car salesmen right. We've talked about that before, like there's people that get fired up.

In my comments about you, shouldn't tip, you know it's, it's not my job to pay, which is bananas right. I mean that that's noise right people. You know people don't like paper, people, don't like marketing people, don't like nfts. How would you recommend leaning into i wouldn't say that i would yeah i mean i would recommend? First of all, you only have so much time and energy, so i'm sure there's something very clever and do i think you could make a video that gets four million views on tick tock on making an inside joke around tipping culture.

I do do. I think. That's the best use of your time. I don't, i think what i would do if i was your.

If i was the third person on this team, i would say three times a week for nine to 11 hours a day we dm every bartender on earth. I think the thing that people lose early on is how much dirt work. It really is. People are usually trying to get to 201 and 301.

You have a clear path: bartenders at scale live on, instagram dm them all all of them, every one of them. You know what i mean same for you guys, you literally, i can literally right now go to where your two locations, the exact city, we're in. I can literally type that in right now in location, on instagram and see every person that posts and that accepts zip code and could leave a comment and say: that's cute, that's cool! That was funny. That's outrageous! That's amazing! You just become part of the community.

You can do that four hours a day on a location and it's depth, you just become part of the community. Your logo is showing up in every comment on every single post in your city and if you don't fully mail it in i'm just saying if you actually look at it and try to work like you know, what's great i mean i know this, because this is What i was doing for wine library, you know some of these people. You know like you, leave something like what you think of the coleslaw yesterday. They'll just think.

That's crazy! You give a you know, they're moving yep. Do you know? Do you want people who don't tip on your app? No, what have you just said like here's, a tip, if you don't tip this, isn't for you? Oh, we did yeah like that type, though. Isn't it yeah cool? Let's move on spanky all right. Let's introduce your son too.

It's interesting is where he came all the way from arizona got out of college for a few days and wanted to see garyvee so yeah. Second oldest son, mason mason, it's good to see you brother um, good kid. Two of my five are good: that's a solid percentage, almost all of them uh, so so right before cobin, i had started kind of creating some division between my personal brand and the business just to kind of create a little yeah. I remember, i think i ran into somewhere right.

You brought that up, yeah, yeah and uh and big deal, and i had a conversation about it. So i created some separation then covered yet, and i was sick for about six months. You were yeah, i so i was dark. I wasn't online.

Of course i kind of went invisible same time. Ios 14 happens: all the gdrp regulations happen yep and if you looked at the top of oh and then right after i healed recovered from coping, i had put off having a rotator cuff repair, rotator cuff labor bicycle. So this all got done so 2020 was a completely lost year. Our top of funnel collapsed completely like we went from six and six thousand a day, a new business to six thousand a month yeah.

Now we still have great retention on our on ourselves, yeah, but your clients, but your cac model broke right, it broke and i'm trying to figure out how to repair it, and i don't want to get desperate and start trolling for sales. But i i am trying. I have been and dave, and i know each other and jason. I know each other, i'm trying to figure out for months how to fix it.

Well, you know, was it? Was it super retargeting like super hardcore, dr we yeah we were. We were able to take that top of funnel and like because 97 of our first touch comes through this yeah, but all of our transactions come through this yeah, and so we lost the ability to to retarget them, yep and and that in europe simultaneously, it was Like the perfect story, yep, well, look i mean you know one of the things that i talk. A lot about inside of vayner and kind of, like in general, is shit's always going to change, and obviously the timing of those things changing with you having to be kind of out of commission is a compounding effect when the jockey is on the sidelines and the Race changes, shit's, gon na get hairy, um and, and you know, i think i think much like where you were when we first crossed pass. You have to reinvent a wheel that works.

The problem for a lot of marketers is the last era, was very technical and math. This next era is going to be much more art and branding. I love it because i like that more, i don't like it because i know a lot of people are going to not do as well, because it's harder i'm empathetic to that. But you know, i think i think the first thing you've got to get uncomfortably serious about.

Is tick tock you're going to have to figure it out whether it's you, the human or some other human variable or a character? You is a great player. I would highly recommend for all of you to debate the concept of the mascot, so i believe this next decade of interest graph social media is going to create an opportunity for a lot of people to lean into the mascot similar to 1950s to 70s television. So we all kind of got a sense of the personal brand you're living it i'm living it. People are living in this room, i'm pretty hot, on the scalability of mascots.

So if you think about metlife paying, you know peanuts, a fortune to borrow snoopy or what you see from the geico lizard on a commoditized business like insurance, i i'm very hot on that, and one who is good at building a personal brand can also be good In my opinion of being the jim henson to the muppet something worth debating, i know it's a left field thing, but no different than us all. When i first was doing this, it was crazy, like a person following you around, everyone thought it was asinine. It was. I mean the judgment i had inside my own company, who the do you think you are and i was empathetic i understood, but i knew it was going to happen.

So people started having jobs where they were filming people like things changed right. I think the same thing's about to happen with animation, claymation puppeteering and i think you know with ar and nfts uh. You know i think some of the people here should really debate creating a mascot and scaling the mascot and i think, a mascot on tick. Tock scales, okay, so so, let's, let's talk personal brand versus the zombie brands right and the cool thing is, you can just do both.

Okay, so like the zombie brand, should have a zombie. Okay, like that's easy right, like that's, not even hard like. Clearly, you need a song like most companies are like what am i gon na do you're, like i don't know like a zombie, you know so, and we've got some cool artwork, but i think i think you really need to take a step back and be like It we'll never be. You know, i don't know how, when you thought about building personal brand, how you thought about like where that was going to end up, but like it's not like you have to it's not like you have to create ronald mcdonald.

If you just create a zombie that is effective to get your cac and ltv up in the next 24 months, you'll be just fine right and, unlike retargeting, in ios 15, we still know who the the trixx rabbit is. We still know who captain crunch? Is you still know who scooby-doo is people underestimate the value of brand? The reason i've always been more brand than digital sales is digital sales changes you're living it right now i had email open rates of 93. You know like changes. I was buying the word wine on google for five cents: that's just that! Doesn't work anymore right, so i'm always going to push brand and i'm very bullish about this mascot thing very.

I think every small business on earth should have a mascot, so he started including b to b and then covet happened and i'm like and i called it not afraid to go back to dewey. You know you have no choice right, but i'm not i'm not um. What's the word, you always use romantic yeah, you don't mind yeah you're, a scrapper right, and so i'm comfortable doing that yeah but holy. It's scary, like it's less scary, it's it's! You know funny! It's less scary! It's more like you know it's kind of like one, but you know what i mean.

It's not scary, you're, not scared. No, it's more like again, but this time i'm trying to push you down the path of something that is so hard to take away. You know when everyone's like well easy for you gary your nft problem. Like you mean the thing i earned like you had a community, i'm like, i earned it like people like you, your nft project, dude mine's, not i'm like you're 20..

What the are you talking about? You know what i mean like and that's how i think about brand right when you get funnels when you get arbitrage, math, you've earned it, but you've also put yourself in a vulnerable spot of letting somebody else control your fate apple. You right because they wanted to facebook and google right. You were just just. You were just collateral.

You were just collateral damage, yeah joe. How much on that one yeah two minutes. Can i defer the last two minutes to myself: 100 yeah. Okay.

Well recently, i had this idea, it's kind of a hub. I guess you could call it for athletes and brands. They can't like meet connect with each other and so he's kind of helped me put it all together, but one of the things i've been trying to figure out is: how do you build the value for an athlete for the brand? Well, i didn't yeah. I think more hubs aka what you're describing two-way marketplace is the hardest business to build in the world, which is why, when they're built they're worth a fortune uber ebay, these things are incredibly challenging.

I start with that sentence because i want to make sure you're in right mindset of how hard it is to balance the reason. They're hard is because you have to balance both sides so equally and so effectively that they work, because when one is off kilter people bail, if you get 87 athletes and there's no money on there lily you if you get brands, there's no, like you understand it's A really hardcore patience game you also have to make sure you're, actually solving a problem, so brands that are small are able to dm bengals there's agents, there's marketing firms like excel. So i think i think it's a very big challenge. What you just laid out in a couple sentences, but the answer historically, is to make both sides of the marketplace have enough value in concurrency that you're able to create stickiness.

Does that make sense? Yeah, it's a really big challenge and sometimes i think people try to build things that the problems already solved and i'm always worried when um. What was that thing that meg whitman and jeffrey katzenberg quibby? I remember looking at quibby, do you guys know what quibby is? It was like a pretty famous crash and burn of like a trillion dollars. It was supposed to be. Like i mean it was jeffrey katzen he's a beast and meg.

When b i mean it was like the a team, all the people they hired were like people that i thought were the best in silicon valley in hollywood and they were gon na build. This thing called quibby, which was an ott for short form content, and i remember looking at it and i was like you mean youtube, and and and yet they overspent on making shows for like they were spent, they were paying production companies, the same amount of money, Netflix was paying for long form for five-minute shows that were pretty much not exactly, but like youtube was. I remember i kept telling everybody i'm like youtube scratching that itch youtube is scratching that itch, and so i want to just make sure or like online dating right. A lot of online dating companies right now are trying to figure out their way.

I'm like it's called instagram dm, like sometimes things are solving the problem, so just make sure that when you think about it create something unique enough, that is solving a problem that doesn't exist in different ways already. Does that make sense? You know what i mean yeah ask a lot of questions too, and i also think smbs are really good the biggest brands in the world. They go through funnels that look like this right. They're, like hey, we're doing a national campaign.

Who should that? That's what they're comfortable with smbs are just trying to get the best deal. They can right. My dad, you guys right a lot of we're just trying so think about the s. I would highly recommend starting with smbs and athletes, because you can get both.

In that scenario, it's gon na be hard to get dr pepper. To give a you know, you're gon na have to go through 100 gatekeepers, but getting local businesses like start where you are, if that's zona, it's local businesses, red devils and wildcats like go right. Small business yeah: absolutely, let's get it gary, just quick, i'm a straight d: friends, nerd um, but when you're before dawn, can we have the perfect crazy cat wow? Can we can you sign it yeah? So that's the diamond i'll, bring it down, you pulled it or you bought it, bought it from an ebay like you're. I know how the arbitrage works.

You sign that no ut go ahead, fire away. While i do this all right, um, i won't have a macro. I want the weird visionary, gary okay um. I want to kind of have just a macro conversation, so i don't know a contact center um.

We work for brands, do customer support for them and, like that i know how to do this. Go ahead. I'm listening! That's the best thing i learned so far how to get cards out yeah, that's a lot of years of card shows. Thank you.

You're welcome, um, and so you know we work for companies like melissa, which is a toy town. I know i deal with a lot of you know: financial services brands, and you know people talk about call centers. They they think it's just like a button, a seat in some agent, but it's a pretty high-tech thing: right, yeah, there's speech, analytics and natural language processing and all this stuff. So i want to move - and i'm so now really kind of because of you really moved into this web 3.0, and i want to first just have a quick conversation on where you see kind of customer support how web 3.0 can affect that, like i know from You know from a loyalty standpoint from access, like i kind of get all that one of the things that we're doing and just kind of wanted, your opinion on this, too, is we have our internal developers and then we have two outside groups that are developing like I don't want to say the first and maybe somebody else is doing it, but the first virtual reality contact center right, just a proof of concept, but basically how how's the vr going to be consumed so on on desktop.

So currently like. Let's just say hypothetically, you put on your oculus, but nobody will do that. I think it's proven concept. I don't think it's a viable product, yeah um, but basically go into an office and there's six offices and one is password reset and shipping problems and it basically be able to go.

I think that is like 12 years away right. I mean 12 years away from the standpoint of i think, being a profitable actionable business um. But the number one mistake people make when there's something big looming is timing. First of all, it's going to be b to c first, before it's b, to b right think about who's going to do that, you barely we don't have b2b people making content on linkedin.

Do you think, though, even from how the am i going to get somebody yeah to kind of show the forwardness of the company right like? Are you looking for an exit? So if you're telling me hey gary, i want to do this because i think for a potential buyer, if they're going to say whoa these, these guys and gals are pushing it so much more in the industry. We need to be on board with them. I do think there's validity to that argument. You got to be careful with timing on that front because it might hurt you if it's super delusional, but, yes, i think you're on to something there i do.

I do always think if you're trying to sell to a private equity, firm or trying to do an m a that the person in the room - that's most progressive in technology, does oftentimes have the potential to have some leverage in in an acquisition. So where i mean where do you see this this, the the customer experience space right like um, you know really like servicing customers was with what 3.. The earliest thing we'll see is transparency and data. So i think what the blockchain does is: give the potential for public data, which i think creates silly little things believe it or not.

That look like knowing how many minutes to the second, you actually are going to be on hold actually like and and seeing like. No, no, i'm not. You know how we get mad when we don't even know the truth behind it. We're like i'm like i'm on hold and like like just knowing that you can see other people being taken in the queue, because it's public servers, not private servers.

We'll just give you peace of mind, we're like look, i'm 17th in line, it's a very sub notice, how it's a very subtle thing, but it's a real application gary, maybe to tag on out to do uh like uh an nft drop for a brand. That basically says you're uh, you know you're a high-end customer. So when you do call in you go to the front of a lot, that's for damn sure the question is for what kind of business and how early are we actually in nft land right right now? Nft land is predominantly driven by speculation and greed, but that's the same thing that drove internet stocks in 96. So that's not my concern.

I can go to sleep at night. Every day i tell everybody, 99 of projects are going to zero when everything goes to zero. Everyone's going to blame me because i'm the poster child of nfts and i'm going to bring out 83 000 receipts and be, like, i told you, 99 - we're going to zero. So what i'd be concerned about right now is you're thinking about scaled consumer execution and we're still five years away from that truly like we are pretty you're just so deep.

I want this so like. I want everything i get it, but that's when people lose money. Yeah, when you want to do something versus you reacting to what they're doing right is the most important delta in the world. I want a lot of things.

How does that? How does that correlate to being first to be delusional? Um, it's it's in the delta of how many people are actually doing the thing i was very aware of. I bought a theorem in 2016., i didn't say outside of a couple videos i had to bring up some because people were like you, look fine, here's the receipt. Here's me in 2017 saying this outside of me digging up that in my our archives. I didn't say much about it because i was just watching right right and then i felt in december on the back of nba top shot and a little bit of crypto punk stuff going on.

Finally did the homework i was like. Oh, it's close and, and it got and it happened real, quick tom before we move on from you. I want to make sure gary understands a bit of context. As we were talking earlier about your personal brand, your business, you were mentioning.

You want to be number one in your niche right and a couple of cool factors that we've discovered along the way is number one. All of your call center staff is based in america. I don't know if that's a thing yet. I think i think it's a real thing.

I would pound the out of facebook middle america in perpetuity, there's an unbelievable amount of people that will make the decision on that. Does that mean i never have my phone on i'm so funny. Another thing that i think is interesting about his business because it's a call center by nate one. Second, i apologize nick i'm in four d's everybody.

Okay, you need something: okay, i'll call you later later is um, because he's got such an interesting opportunity on tick tock, because his call center there's a lot of people talking about call center, complaints and stuff, like that, on the platform stitching, do weddings stuff like that. Could be it's really interesting if you want to own that knee yeah that space, when i, when i saw that sports cards were going to blow up, i spent nine months nine months, making sure that i wasn't forcing it because i like sports cards right you're, taking Something you love and you're interested in and trying to speed it up in your business and it's and you need to be careful of that, but good god, one more minute yeah. So i guess one of the things. That's television that i am doing that i can do is i do have a podcast have a niche pretty large niche following which is awesome and it's called advice from a call center geek.

I love that um and i'm just gon na. Do a 30 token free. Should absolutely do that? That's scratching your that's fun! Right! That's keeping the juices going right! That's not strategically aligning your vision towards vr call centers right! That's two very different things. That's great yeah! You should definitely do that because you'll be pumped and it's good for you to taste it right to learn how to a hundred thousand percent.

Okay cool poor annoying. Let's go all right, um! So question one! Last year we spoke podcast number two, you said june. We were we're in contact, you said june, but in your defense you didn't say what year we're doing early or late depending on how you want to look at it. But i want to make sure that i take the opportunity to lock down podcast number two.

Let's do it i'm happy to do it. Oh my god, yep perfect, okay um from the business side of things 2039 uh. When we last spoke, i was telling you. I was building an agency and i asked you: how would you build an agency? You told me god, no, i wouldn't, and can you stop um? I did not listen to you good built an agency good for you um, but i did take your advice on not wanting to build a huge 800 person agency.

I stayed lean yep um specializing. What we specialize in scaling 70 figure brands um, making the money 30 to 40 margins. That's great! So pretty pretty impressive. On that end cope.

It happened. Ios happened. You told me what you warned me about with building an agency happened, which was i'm not the guy anymore the strategy's gone. I now have a team that does everything.

So what do i do um, but i love the education side. So when ios happened, i love the branding side, i'm a marketer more than a more than i'm a button pusher inside the platforms. So i understood all these things. I spent a lot of time going on back on with clients and educating them through the process.

Love the coaching aspect of them, so i decided i was going to monetize my knowledge, my systems, all that in the space and i started a group coaching program called market domination and we're now two months in nine members, uh fifteen thousand dollar price point uh per Year, yeah per year, yep uh, that's the beta i'll, probably increase it yeah. It's less about that. I just wanted the context yeah yeah, so i guess my question: isn't what the content or how i could help the people, i'm pretty good yeah! You know your craft, i'm pretty clear on that, it's more, i guess the who right and i guess i wanted to jump inside your brain - that when you're making content when you're trying to push something um, what's your heuristics? What's your process when it comes to refining your message when people want to work with agency, whatever it is, and putting out content that actually baits the people, you want to work with the thing that everything that's built on with me is based on the fact that I do 96 listening, even though the world thinks i'm talking all the time so creating scenarios that allow you to listen because you'll know the answer way faster than i will it'll be right there in your messages. So, for example, back to the whole jab jab right hook - thing, maybe you do, i think you would crush.

I know you would crush with a the thing that people always get confused about when they're selling their smarts. Is they don't want to give away things for free when giving away things for free is the way you sell more stuff? So i would, if i were you, i would do a weekly two-hour live across all platforms, use stream yard and put it on all your platforms, even if you're tiny right now, even if you have nine followers on your facebook fan page because you never set one Up from facebook to linkedin to twitter youtube and do a live two hours a week, q a show about marketing - and you start with - i mean dude. I was that you know like everyone's got, such a struggle with, like you know, going back or going but like if there's seven listeners the first week it doesn't matter because the content saves yeah again, it's not the going back that bothers me, but i believe that, But the answer to your question: is you got to get the questions if you get the questions, you'll know what to make in the content, because, like the who part is really a tough question? Well, the who's, the who i deal with plumbers. I deal with econ owners like it's, who is everyone yeah exactly? Well, that's a good! That's a weird thing! No people know people struggle with that.

I understand what you're saying this is a classic example of the philosophy sounds better than the reality. The philosophy of like target you're on like no, he like you're the world, is in play right, the world's in play for you, i think, what's really good is the way social networks are now built, there's so much entrepreneurship in those pipes that if you live there, They're there there's just a lot of people that are doing 250, 000 to 2 million a year in revenue that can afford 15 000 a year to dominate their marketing. You just don't know if it's a tattoo artist with two parlors in nevada or if it's you know somebody who's got a b2b company doing 100 million like it's all kind of like there. I think it's more about.

Do you make contextual creative for the platform like do you know how to make a tick tock that people actually want to watch that may lead to virality? That leads to lead gen? Do you know how to make content on linkedin? That works, which is why i want to put you in a position to answer questions because from the questions you'll figure out the answers. Um, you don't consume a lot, but everyone here consumes. You consumes other people. The buzzword is authenticity right when you're putting out content.

Be authentic be authentic, but i mean i don't really know what i think it means anymore when you start consuming so much content. How do you, then? You know that's a good question. How do you then break off? Who you are right right? That's a real! That's a really great question. You know, i think, just the fact that you're even asking that question already has you 90 of the way there means you're gon na fight for it along the way i consume more content than everybody.

I just consume it from the people directly, not a middle man or woman in between. So when i say, don't consume it's i don't need tim, ferriss or ryan holiday or or oprah or anything in between. I just need you at the second. The reason my content works so well is: i have a leading pulse on because i'm reading - and at this point i'm at such scale that i'm getting a lot of optics like the thought that rich kids were upset because they subconsciously were mad at their parents for Paying for everything was very foreign to me.

That's not how i grew up, but it became some of the most important content i've ever made for parents and 25 year olds. That was just by reading them right, and so you just got ta. You know in 2014, when i came out of content retirement, i don't talk a lot about not making a lot of content from 11 to 14.. It was kind of the biggest gap since 2006 for me, because i was building vayner and everything was going into that um.

I started with the askgaryvee show that was my first re-entrance post wine library, tv notice, what it was called notice, what it was i needed to get the insights. My biggest beer is oh another gallery, and i i'm a business owner before guru. Yeah and now you have so many people take one of them, yeah take it from somebody who, like legitimately, is like a real businessman and a shocking percentage of the world thinks is a motivational speaker and a guru. It doesn't matter if you're a real business person, then you're a real business person.

Yeah i mean there's people who think i'm a scam artist. You know what devastating that is. People are going to see what they want to see. I just i worry about my own line being blurred right yeah.

I think that's right, i'm like! Is that really me, or is that me trying to be well? That's where i think, like the advice we talked about earlier, was the most important forget about you. Trying to be anything if you sit down and you're like how can i help people, so i love this like. I don't have a gear right now other than like listening intently, trying to give the right answers to the best of my ability on intuition and pattern. Recognition and then you leave yeah, but that's the best thing i learned from you when i do speaking events, i sit there and say i'll talk for 10 minutes.

The rest i want to do is q, a because good. That's where i thrive yeah. I think that's great. I think you should scale that i think you should do a q a show on linkedin and pound it in oblivion.

There's not enough live content on linkedin you'll. The algorithm will reward you perfect. Thank you podcast in 2015. For me, uh.

First apology, i didn't introduce connor. I was so excited connor such a pleasure. That's right, joe made a rule of like one person. I think that was more on joe um.

My question is leading towards scale so uh we've been in business three years we started selling subscriptions about eight months ago. We got to a 160 000, a monthly recurring revenue in eight months, questions what's subscription uh, so we sell a subscription to our direct mail platform. The software that we built got it so it's a sas product yeah, so i just the subscription shop until you're crazy. That's not the plan at all.

Fulfillment partners, we've tried all the other they're a piece of equipment. They have manuals. We hired humans to put it all together, so we do it all in-house yep huge in home service right now. So my background, i have a cleaning company we've had for 12 years.

We leveraged that a lot i've been doing the public speaking, the trade shows come out with products in that space and it's working, but we hate it. It's painful so like the mom and pop the customer service, it's the same compensation from chuck in the truck who started yesterday all the way up to a 500 million dollar looking business like there's, no predictability, yep so looking towards scale. We want to sell the company for 500 million by the time we turn 40. That's in three years.

I would tell you right off the bat. The first thing about that sentence is when i've noticed when entrepreneurs make those kind of ideologies they dig into it, and they tend to make mistakes when they have something good because of some arbitrary number like why not 750 million by the time, you're 30, because we Keep putting a number to it, it's got to keep going up. I get that just keeping just make sure you have a good relationship with it. I think that number yeah can it change, of course, that that sounds like a good relationship with it.

Okay, i just have noticed a lot of people make these crazy numbers like when i'm 35. It's i'm going to sell this for 100 million and then, if you want, when i've watched it, i'm like they were well on their way to building something awesome, but because they put this outcome on a pedestal. They did this m a deal and then they did. This and it all kind of unraveled, so you know just even you saying: can it change already made me feel a hell of a lot better like having ambition is, is an incredibly beautiful kind of framework.

Sometimes people dig a little bit too deep into numbers and it changes their decision making and it hurts them so keep going the number's so trivial for us, like, i want to say a billion. It's kind of like the jets thing for me like. I will be very okay if i don't buy the jets like beyond i'm okay, now forever for the rest of my life, the process of trying is the fun dude. We sell it for a hundred or going keep going yeah.

The idea is that, like we see the home service base, we see the scalability um james dude said something dinner last night about like not killing the golden news. So we can't just pull out of home service getting into cannabis real big. They can't send they can't advertise online. They can't do anything, we're doing huge stuff with mail with them and make sense practices make sense, qr code straight to make sense, aggregating lists all that type of smart.

Also, full-time agencies really love because we're not threatened. You know, of course, you're the back end exactly we were we were debating with like do we do a white label or not and conor the rational one in the relationship was like dude. It's the ads, we're like the agency. Vanderbilt isn't going to want to have their clients, get an invoice from dope right when you get the english from when you're on facebook ads yeah.

Of course it works the ad spender yep. So as we look towards this acquisition, whatever that number is, you know it's easy to set a metric of 40 being a goal or whatever. Okay, as we build towards that path. What would your advice be about a focus as like, so we tie in with crms? Um send dave the roofer to a job, get a job crew, 50 postcards or the neighbor we've got your neighbor approved mark the job scheduled another 50 plus cards going part of the dose part of the noise and it works for every particle.

So what we say internally, if it's timeless, we spend time on it, surrounds us covered wagons. We want something to do with it, so the idea is like or my question first one is: where would you focus time? Is it all of them? Is it one of them directly, would you you mean the service industries yeah? Maybe you know service industries, you look at relatives about 70 or on labor your equipment or something yes swing. Relative conversation cannabis. I say my my intuition in this scenario off of what i'm reading the answer would be all of them, but it would require you to be less profitable each year.

Well, what james knows um is vayner made no money for three years in a row. Most people don't have that appetite, which is why they can't build big companies, then go to every vertical, just hire more people and make no money yeah it becomes it becomes, it becomes a game of hey. Are we? You know i don't know what you're doing with the profits the company's an llc wrong, yeah right, so like you're gon na get taxed on that and you're gon na, like you're distributing to yourselves at the end of the year, distribute less. So you can be in more verticals fast great, so then it's so then it just maximize your profits to reinvest in people so that you could have heads and verticals and go hard at every vertical that you see opportunity in what do you see in the canada Space as far as the opportunity, i think it's gon na be one of the top 10 consumer products in our society.

I think, while facebook and google are giving you an opportunity for land grab, you should go as hard as possible because in about 40 minutes it's not going to and you'll lose 80 of your market. You know what i mean. I think i think for that. One specifically because it's so unique out of everything we're talking about you should go incredibly hard.

How would you push agencies? Agencies are easy. We have a lot of agents, that's why you already have they're the easiest yeah they don't want to do. They want you to do all the work and they want to take a skim off the top they're. The easiest that's yeah like, like you know this agencies are thrilled to be a toll.

Booth. Do nothing have you know, make a margin on top of what you do and call it a day there you should get. All of that. Would you like for those big ones, the little ones little ones are easier.

I think because big ones can have politics and like are dopey, would you take their leverage so, like chris, we love chris yeah right? Yes, i was like. I could change your life chris. Would you do that for me? I promise like they come with that ego. So yeah, i would say, i would say, an unemotional service provider.

Small demander go after the big ones. Again this becomes a game of opportunity like at your level like to me. It's you know, i'm going through this with be friends right now we have 29 people we're gon na have 130 in september, i'm about to hire a hundred people. What's the best advice you can give to someone make as little money as possible? If you think you have a good business, the biggest mistake people make is they want to take money from the business instead of putting money into the business? Now everyone has different circumstances.

You know some people have 400 000 in debt and harder for that person to stay chill than someone like so but the longer you can hold your breath if you have a good business and pour it back into the business, the bigger your business is going to Be so we debate right now with funding we're pretty liquid right now. Do you take and carve out 10 equity to use leverage with that? Are you just borrowing money as opposed to taking in funding? I think if the funding can be strategic, it can be very interesting right, right, yeah, which is really sometimes hard to tell up front, there's a lot of trickiness to that. But if you're, when you say you're liquid to me, if you decide to take the concept that we're talking about and hire a lot more, all of a sudden having more cash at your disposal is pretty interesting. I think credit lines are interesting.

We forget about that. Nerdy simple thing called credit lines. You know, i think i think, but i do think funding at times can work. I think money is the commodity for a good operator.

I think finding someone who's strategic who can get you more business is interesting example. If a family owned a private business of the biggest service provider like that's, where you want to go because immediately once they invest in you, they're also going to give you all the clients, and it's almost like you - get a double bite at the apple yeah. So, look for that kind of person any verticals that we're missing. If you had your head on this, that you would be looking at so this is direct mail, automated direct mail, no minimum, that's really cool um influencers.

I think if you educate influencers through tick, tock ads that it's almost like the ad is really funny it's like hey. I know this is gon na sound crazy. You know what i mean like. I know this is gon na sound insane if you're an influencer but running direct mail in your no local area for like pop-ups or events like it just might become ironic enough.

When i hear no minimum, everyone should almost try it. I would. I also think that people don't like direct mail in a world where ios 14.5 has changed, has more leverage than it used to i say, and so yeah i mean ecom already, does it i assume you're already yeah. I think the weird ones are influencer for sure.

I think it's a weird one. I think most influencers will struggle with it. But if you get momentum, what's cool about influencers is that world is small, if, god forbid emma chamberlain, doesn't it works for her coffee like all of a sudden everyone's doing it and they can get real big real fast? That's the one that probably stands out as like a weird one, yeah, and i think in your business. If you're running on the kind of margin that you should be on a sas model, you should be doing like trial low-cost stuff, like it's just worth it for acquisition, especially for your own learning.

Oh yeah, every curious segmentation just give people free executions occasionally once in a blue moon i'll, definitely look at it all right appreciate it. So tell you a quick story, please yeah, so i was sitting on the cops next to joey watching we wrecked. I don't know if you ever think of that, so i've seen this guy gives um the founder of the company 4.2 billion dollars before seeing the financials and he gets called over and so we're sitting here. Washing this up, i'm playing holes on my phone holds high up you're this little guy and you're eating you get bigger and bigger bigger and you have to eat your competition, i'm playing holes and watching half-assed watching this show with her, and this guy gets called to Japan, when, when the japanese investor figures out how much money he's submerging a day inside a beer right, and so he gets him over there, he says who wins in a fight: the smart guy or the crazy guy and um.

The the letter says: well the smart guy and the visionary like this jackal smile. He looks up and he says crazy and the japanese investor spends around. He looks at him and and right when he does that i eat my last competitor and success first, and so i get the success first message and he turns around and he says you're not being crazy enough. My son, do you understand, and i paused the show.

I was like instead, i was trying to go like. Let me just tell you what just happened in my head, because you know when we were here last time: um we were around three and a half million in annual sales for a small car dealership, doing 25 to 35 cars a month and just over the course Of of trying to find my way and do whatever it doesn't really matter, i started to be pretty bold. Like we, we pulled money out of other investments.