Three posts a day to the best of your ability, the other thing that people do wrong with what i just said is they'll post once every three days, that's like that's like doing a push-up and thinking you're, doing good health and wellness. The good news with tick-tock is it's completely based on interest, so you can post something that gets 14 views and the next one might get 47 000. so because you're succumbing to the algorithm, get out of your own head, like don't worry about anything literally besides making It you're not going to be right, you're not going to be right anyway, so you almost have to go through, like almost think of it. This way 500 posts before you're allowed to think.

What's going to work, you don't like being on camera because you feel self-conscious. You don't like how your voice sounds. You don't like. You can hack around everything like a lot of people who follow me.

They think they have to be so high energy, i'm like no. No, you have to be yourself, hi, hey gary, how you doing. I am well hey, brit, hey joe welcome hi everybody! Thank you, brittany for everything, uh appreciate it. So much and uh we're gon na get started here for you here because i know you're you're pretty busy and we wan na get this uh plugged in um.

So let's do a quick little uh round robin we'll go around the the room i'm gon na! Introduce you to gary give quick 30 second high level, just vital signs of you and your company, then we'll come back around we'll spotlight. You and you can have your time with gary. So we're going to start out in vancouver, be gary with inga von olak. Who is working at one of the biggest brands in the world, but she's here to really unlock her personal brand, so inga say hi to gary, oh hi, gary hi? How are you great, i'm super excited session's, been really great.

Um yeah i'm here to start working on my personal brand, and you know i've made a ton of money for other people in my life and uh ready to ready to get myself out there. That's awesome: there you go and sticking in the great white north we've got a guy, that's operating in one of your favorite spaces gary. He is a serial entrepreneur, but he also owns a winery up there in bc. Doug bell say: hi to gary, hey gary uh great to be here thanks, so much for dropping in and um yeah.

This is a second generation entrepreneur. I took over my family group of companies uh 14 years ago when i was 22 and i have had the fortune of growing that business quite a bit and now we're just kind of looking at getting into you know new businesses building existing businesses and we have Canada's largest fruit winery uh, which i uh constructed in 2015., so a bit of a different concept and looking forward to chatting about it awesome man obviously feel very comfortable in that combo uh. Another convo you'll, probably feel pretty comfortable with is uh. I'm gon na draw out the accent a little bit because we're gon na go down to birmingham alabama and say hi to jennifer carlson, who owns a slew of uh restaurants and different brands.

Now, in that area, jc say: hi, hey gary super happy to be here today, my husband, i on a polished, fast casual restaurant. We have two locations right now: getting ready to open a third one, this um spring, and we also have a coffee concept here in birmingham we're looking to grow and scale our brand and that's. Why we're here awesome thanks for being here yeah and over to virginia we've got uh garrett wilhelm garrett say hi to gary. What's up gary! Thank you so much for this opportunity and time.

I know your your time is valuable. I own early education, schools. Child cares in the area, i saw a gap in the education system and not preparing our kids for the actual future and knowing that permanent learning is done in infancy to six six years old. I decided that this case that i was going to attack, and so i have two brands: the ohana school and creative gardens and i'm growing a network of schools across the country, very cool.

I like it a lot. Thank you. Next up, we have doug and brennan who are in the nft space. Uh doug brennan go ahead and say hi to gary hi doug um, my partner hi gary my partner, it's still nice to say hi to doug talk to him for a couple hours um.

Yes, so my partner doug and i based in philadelphia, long-time real estate investors, newly hotel owners, boutique hotel owners and about to dip our toe into the nft space, very cool pleased to meet you nice to meet you doug. How are you i'm doing great doing great? I first met you 10 years ago at yanyx underground event, so uh good to uh, be with you again and, as brandon said, we're getting ready to launch nft um around women, empowerment, very cool and, if you're interested in taking your kids gary up to connecticut to See some goats we've got aaron and elizabeth simon, who own one of the uh awesome uh company up in connecticut i'll. Let them explain a little more to you and carrie. I would invite you to come see, goats any day.

You are a true goat. In my mind, um, you might remember me: i did a couple activations with vayner sports, with our barbecue sauce brand back in the day and now we've created a substantial community about 30 000 strong and my wife makes super fancy high-end, goat milk soap now and we Loved all e-commerce and we just opened our own retail store here on the farm. I love it. You also look remarkably cozy, which is putting me in a good mood, we're good good, that's how we do it so super premium: goat, milk, soap, yeah.

I have some here: if you want to see it when we get to it, we actually, i think what makes us really unique too, is that you can watch the ghosts. 24 7 on our youtube channel, love it and you can watch them from conception to birth and be loved, so smart. So we teach everybody about like yup. How do we find the care that goes into our product and everything? It's really good.

I love it. I'm super into these kind of businesses, okay, awesome and then. Lastly, we have uh neha and brian up in toronto. They're essentially like a cross between like a james orsini because they're both cpas, but they know a lot about dtc e-commerce and they run a grocery store up there.

So neha and brian say: hi hi gary i'm reading your book every night right now. So i love the exercises. Congratulations, thank you. Anything anything stand out so far.

Uh yeah just the exercises, because a lot of the concepts you talk about are really here and what stood out to me was that and then the other thing was the story about the woman who started a blueberry jam. I love it with her kid right and forgiving herself yeah. I'm really glad you attached to that one. I uh for everybody who's not reading the book.

I did a bunch of scenarios to kind of like re. I feel like i do best and trying to make my point in a story and the one that is uh referring to really got me like it's such a classic female entrepreneur, email that i get you know it's what's great. Is i'm just listening all the time? So that scenario is the combination of at this point - maybe 10 000 emails or direct messages from women in detail of like what they go through in that scenario, and i'm really glad you attached to it. Ironically, i just tweeted a piece of data from people doing the exercises or tweeting about the book.

It's really very funny. Actually, it's um. It's based on the first 739 tweets of people talking about what their weaknesses are. Here's the best one.

This is like so meta. The one that has the least responses to what their weaknesses is humility, which in itself is the meta of the whole thing, like only 16 of 739 people, said their core weakness is humility, which is the whole punchline of the whole thing anyway. Nonetheless, go ahead, um, so i'm neha i run switch grocery and we're an online retail store. Gary in canada, we find food brands uh faster than traditional grocery stores, so find food brands, bring them to canadians ship across canada, uh we're a highly social company and i'll turn it over to my co-founder brian brian.

How are you hi gary good? How are you doing well um? I don't have a time to add beyond what neha said. Uh as joe said, we're neha are also both cpas accountants. So there's that so you're the map, the math of the company, is strong. The math of the company is strong and somehow ne has also learned the social marketing, i'm not there yet yep.

I only joined full-time four months ago, so i haven't got there but yeah we're back right. When you talk about fight like you're, just finding emerging brands quicker high quality, emerging brands quicker, so you have some competitive advantage of like whether it's exclusivity or just storytelling blah blah blah exclusivity a lot of the time exactly you're getting you're you're, making you're making deals Where, whether how much you buy or the fact that you're just expanding to the market, you're getting a 6 or 12 month head start, a lot of the us brands, don't want to deal with canadian customs, all that. So we have we deal with all that and then, as a result, they give us. Some of them were on like third fourth year exclusivity, because they see no reason to change good for you very cool, all right rock and roll.

Yes, yeah, i'm gon na go flip it first over to inga and uh we're gon na go with her uh, so inga. Let me just just to remind everybody. You know. Obviously, you've been go through the day.

This is the time to get very, very narrow and very, very selfish, like what is your actual question? Everybody will find, ironically, value from each other, but um. Please fire away anger you're up thanks, hey gary, so i um - i was just talking to brittany about this, but i'm i'm really kind of struggling to figure out how to separate my day, job from, like all the other personal branding, things that i you know wanted To do you're um when you were talking for some reason, my headphones weren't working super. Well, i caught the tail end, but i was going to ask you up front. What is the job again remind me uh, so i work for tesla um in operations, and i you know i like.

I haven't really done anything on social, because i've been with tesla for almost five years and you know we're under very strict ndas and yes um. You know i just it just like i just couldn't figure out how to talk about, and why do you want to, and why do you want to make personal brand content because i feel like i have a lot to say. I have a lot to give. I have a lot to do that without disclosing, where you work, or without or without referencing anything and talking in general, totally it's just that.

My main platform is on linkedin and that's where i have a current a bit of a base um. I have an invite and is the company giving you any headaches for putting out content uh? No, not yet. I haven't really like. I said i haven't, i, i just went on linkedin in 2015 and i i knew that i you know wanted to build something in the future and i started building up a network and i you know i have 30 000 followers, which is not a lot.

But it's a lot, not nothing, but i haven't been engaging them and i feel like that's sort of my place. That's very incredible and - and i apologize for interrupting because i just want to get you as much value as possible. What what was. Why did you sign up for this? What is the kpi? What would you like to happen? I ultimately would like to like deliver value to people who struggle with the things that i see, people struggle with all the time, um and ultimately monetize got it, and how would you like to monetize at least as a hypothesis right now i i mean i guess I would like to like provide provide training materials provide um, so is your is your hope to so you're in a pickle where you want to build personal brand to monetize, but you'd like to do that, while you're still getting paid by tesla but you're half pregnant, Because you can only go so far because you work at tesla yeah.

Yes, yes! So in this scenario i think there's a couple of things to think about one: you can start building brand on tick, tock, believe it or not, without any reference to tesla or tesla. In your bio and there's a huge white space for every business on here, right now on tick, tock and all of you are going to blow it. I don't know what else to say. That's the word.

I'm going to use organic reaches through the moon, 30 and 40 year olds are on the platform at scale. You can literally post one video and many more people will buy your fruit wine or buy your. You know ketchup that you're exclusive in canada to or sign up for your nursery school like everybody here, is grossly underestimating how much they can do on tick tock, because tick tock is now instagram from seven years ago, but you're gon na wait another three years before You treat it that way like the little rant i just made right now for 74 seconds. Is a hundred percent, a massive roi to what you spent on this program.

If you actually listened to me and do something about it, so so for you you're in a really tough spot, because you can either save money and like cut down your cost of living so that you can buy yourself an entire 18 months to not work at Tesla and go all in or you can go ham on something like tick tock, which is a blessing because there's not a lot of places where you can grow that fast and do these you know if you look at what's going on on tick, tock right now, Most of you in the world 24 months ago were like well, i'm not gon na dance on there. So what am i doing here right and if you look carefully, there's some crazy content being produced on the platform right now: asmr type, cooking, stuff, um, just like educational stuff, like it's really happening and gary i shared with her the uh example of miss excel earlier Who's got a million followers. She never puts her facebook camera, it's just excel too. That's right, so you know, i think, for you really specifically, if you're gon na do it, while you're employed at tesla, it's gon na be tick-tock.

The other option is to stop spending money for two years on anything but food and shelter so that you can save it, and you can then give yourself two years to then like right, because that's the other and by the way you might have won the lotto Or made great investments, and you can do that now, but but you've got to recognize that you can't you can't change reality and the reality is you know this you're playing this weird game where, like, if you get successful at it, then they're going to see it And that's going to be the problem. Yeah yeah just caught in this like vicious game yeah and the pro i guess part of the problem is that i um i actually like really love my job, and i i love my awesome and, and i i don't, i am in complete position quite my job. I never have to work again. Okay, so then i understood so that you know five years of tesla is a good move.

Uh. You know, i think uh, you know, there's a left field, one! You might want to really go inside yourself and find out if you so, for example, for me right, i'm an entrepreneur, but boy do i have a lot of guidance counselor. You know reverend uh psychologist. You know you might be able to scratch your emotional itch by helping people not in the subject matter of business and like ops.

Well, my my whole other thing is like around personal finance and um. I it's not something i do at all for my work, but i'm not really good at it. That gets that gets really interesting to me, because then you can have your cake and eat it too. Okay! So that's what i need to do.

I just need to. I would do it on tick-tock hard because a it will work b, the quicker you can help the youngsters that stumble on it, the biggest that's the thing people, especially women, have like no clue and they get left behind. I always hear this especially women, especially minorities. I always say this to my good friends: i'm like the amount of white men that have no idea how to manage their money is extraordinary.

So, let's not like kid ourselves like every like the world. The reason is from 0 to 18 back to our good friend garrett. Here the world is broken, the education system of the world is broken. How the did i go through 18 years of school and not learn anything about basic money management, yeah brutal, like absolutely.

I think you should go ham on instagram. Excuse me untick to all of them, but tick tock specifically on this subject matter, will dominate and there's a lot of people out there on it, but i have a funny feeling you could do well just by spending a few seconds, even with you amazing. Thank you. So much that's really helpful.

It will work out yeah, so we're going to go three times three times a day to the best of your ability, three posts a day to the best of your ability. The other thing that people will do wrong with what i just said is they'll post once every three days. That's like that's like doing a push-up and thinking you're, doing good health and wellness yeah yeah. I got ta get out of my own head.

It's my problem. The good news with tick-tock is it's completely based on interest, so you can post something that gets 14 views and the next one might get 47 000. so because you're succumbing to the algorithm, get out of your own head, like don't worry about anything literally besides making It you're not going to be you're not going to be right anyway, like you, don't have enough experience to be right of what's going to work, so you almost have to go through, like almost think of it. This way 500 posts before you're allowed to think.

What's going to work, okay, that's helpful and back to his point again, other things that a lot of you might be thinking through. You don't like being on camera because you feel self-conscious. You don't like how your voice sounds. You don't like you can hack around everything.

Okay, i love it like a lot of people who follow me. They think they have to be so high energy, i'm like no. No, you have to be yourself. Everybody like the 15 years on the internet is very clear.

All versions work pretty not pretty high energy, low energy, uh monotone high pit, like all of it works it comes down to do you know what you're talking about and do you know the platform that you're producing on? So what you need to do is now go consume a ton of tick-tock information content to then get a sense. Okay doing it thanks gary, you got it all right bell! You are up, sir. I, like the i, like the cpa data, real quick in the chat and that the math was run, go ahead. Yeah yeah thanks so much gary uh, just a bit of uh preamble for you, um, so northern lights winery is my brand uh we're canada's largest fruit.

Winery started about six years ago: family company, family group of companies and we're a super niche brand and that we obviously are making wines from things other than grapes. So cranberry strawberry, rhubarb, blueberry, you name it blackberry, all that kind of stuff and because we're in such a niche market there's a lot of education. But you know we're not trying to sell the people who don't want to be sold to. We really want to kind of focus and find our consumers within our area.

We've been extremely successful because we have built this really nice community of people within um uh, our region, that really kind of know us and love us, but as we're getting further and further away, it's kind of harder to connect with people in that same manner, um. So we're not able to kind of grow as fast as we get further away from our home base. Of course, they're very they're, very different businesses, one's a local business, one's a scaled brand play. That's right so i mean we're kind of in an interesting place because we're struggling with the need to create the community and brand awareness um, with also our desire to grow um to become one of the more well-known brands and really create experiences for people across the Country, um and uh.

So in that we're always getting this push and pull of how much do we time do we spend branding and how much time do we spend on sales uh and how do we kind of balance that so that's kind of my first question? Well, our push and pull with whom you yourself in the mirror, no with uh uh with us and ourselves yeah i mean with our sales team and with uh and with ourselves right. I i think you can really run the gamut of 80 20 in either direction, depending on what you're trying to accomplish yeah what we want to accomplish. We want to create more experiences with people we want them to connect with. I understand, i'm sorry, that's the micro.

I'm going macro: are you planning on selling the business? No, not in any time, not anytime, soon, good news, then you have no problem. I mean this i'm going to bring this down for you. I understand everything. You're saying it's you're just talking about pacing now yeah right, so the answer is, the answer is both can work it just honestly, i think it comes down to what you like more if it's second gen and you're thinking like not anytime, soon and like - and this Is where i need real answers if you're like no gary, actually i'm second gen and i'm the guy who i want to sell it to a pe firm in six years? Well, that's different! If you're telling me 21 years! Well, that's different! So, like that's, the answer to your question comes from the north star.

It's why you know james, you start worships serious. You know, james comes in knows exactly what he's doing in ad land and and because i don't even at that point i even at this point. I don't over communicate everything running through my mind. I was doing things very differently, not because i was right or wrong or james was right or wrong when he was my ceo.

It's just that there are not many agencies on earth that are built being built to be built in perpetuity, so my my appetite to not make any profit is not in the cust. That's not normal. Almost every agency of any size is a publicly traded company. They have to make numbers every 90 days, let alone every year.

So all my decisions were foreign and and for james up front, and then he got accustomed to it and his feedback and his vision were things that i had to factor into hey. This is his framework, that's where i'm going with you and everybody else right now. Most of the decisions all of you have to make is: what are you actually up to like? If you tell me you're trying to sell the company in three years, i'm gon na give you very different advice. If you're trying to sustain it in perpetuity and how much you feel about money versus loving it, that's it.

I really don't want to sell it, but i don't really want to sell in the short term. Of course you know, never know what it's going to be like 10 years. I would say: 20 years is a longer time frame, but we're kind of at a decision. A fair one yeah, you never know what will happen in 10 years, so i definitely don't want to be in a place where i need another 10..

Yeah yeah. Look. I think, here's what i would say the you don't have as big of a local base. As you think, everybody makes that mistake.

Everybody everyone's like man, we've got this squeezed, the community loves us and now we're going to go to toronto. You never have as much local business as you think. It's number one rule of business like this for sure. So a if that's exciting for you right because you're like we really know how to do this, we've got this model down.

You can go ham and quadruple down on it. If it's not because you you got youthful big ambition and conquering montreal sounds more fun. Well then, you can just do that, but it won't be as financially viable as quickly right, so we can grow and it just has to. We just have to kind of suck it up and make sure it's.

You know we're going to keep the lights on, but yeah. That's my that's what i think i'm a huge fan of if you can live like for all of you live as humbly as possible for as long as possible, because that means your business is getting more of the money. I've got a second question really quick. If possible, um, i just want to talk a little bit about strategically.

I really feel like the winery game is very traditional and there's a lot of history and legacy behind it. Yeah, that's something that we we we aren't really about. All of that we want to be kind of a new player with new ambitions and bring it down to earth a little bit for the average person who maybe is uh. You know they're interested in wine, but they feel intimidated by it.

We want to kind of open up and and introduce new people to wine so like how do we? Everyone seems like in a place, especially in canada, that all the legacy players are doing. The exact same thing: they're working sales, funnels they've, got general content. It's not really personalized and it talks about kind of the the prestige of wine. But how do we like? What things can we do to kind of change that game, and that narrative, i mean, obviously our content but um? No, no! No! No! That's it like this is where everybody makes the same move right, like obviously our content, but what else gary? None of the content like if you make content that shows people pairing, blueberry wine with pancakes, and you have a good time with it.

People here might be interested in it in a world where they're not interested in it. At all the reason why library tv was so game changing in the industry was, i did it differently. It wasn't about barbing youtube ads. It wasn't about anything other than i talked about wine differently and you've got fruit.

Wine like like you, should be targeting like your content, should be targeting like. Do you not like wine good news we made a wine you'll like, like. You, have a whole different game. Going on, you should be making content for everybody, but people that are into wine like like, like your content, needs to be about interest graph around hunting and hockey, and you know sledding, and do you like hot chocolate? Well then, you're like this, like you, have so much more freedom than most people, but it's only about the content.

There is nothing else on earth it. The only thing that matters is the communication, which is the content, of course, there's the distribution of the content. But if you don't start with the content, i can get everybody in canada to see your video if it's boring as or not interesting, it lost so should i spend more time on organic in that realm, like the tick tock and stuff like that or tin, talk Is a dream come true, it's been years since we've had this yeah and trying to do things. Maybe stay not stay away from paid media, but make sure that the paid media's got a better return and then and then the organic, because, but you know this ios 14.5, like there's a lot of paid media issues now for dtc totally.

This is time to lean into creative and brand tick, tocks, heaven and everyone's lollygagging it. If i mean if you're here, you're aware of me and i've been very consistent about this and you're all under-performing on tick-tock - and you know it it's like it's gon na like how many times are we going to do this all together right like like it's the Same game and every time it comes around, like i put out content you're like damn, i wish i found gary when instagram was good and then tick tock comes and you're not doing it. That cool. That's awesome! Thank you, brother.

Thank you, brother. All right uh! We are going to move over to jennifer down in alabama. Let me uh pull you up jennifer here we are ajc, hey thanks for your time gary. I really appreciate it um.

It's a bit of background, my husband. I opened real and rosemary. It's a polished, fast casual concept in birmingham in 2016.. It was an immediate success.

We did really well with it. In 2018, we opened a coffee shop called caveat coffee. It was also a success later that year we opened the second location of reel and rosemary it'd. Have been slow within about six weeks, our investors decided the restaurant wasn't going to make it which made it really difficult to operate, and you know scrambled around all of 2019.

We retooled everything below the sales line. I had a one-year-old and i would take her for a stroll or walk every day and listen to your podcast and you do wonderful social media, but also, i really appreciate the operational advice that you gave because that really helped us navigate when coveted hit in 2020. Everything clicked and came into focus for us uh. My husband and i are both what i would consider wartime generals and it was um.

It was great because we had already done all the work on the brand we had the mousetrap built, so we could really just focus on building the brand. Through kobe, we opened a second unit in birmingham we just hit a year on that one. As of this week, we own the company 100, all our vendors are paid, we have a cash flow, positive business and i'm forever grateful for helping us get there. I'm getting ready in a couple weeks to announce that we're going to open a third location in birmingham which is really exciting for us, and we want to continue.

I completely agree with what you said: we don't own enough of the local market, i'm sure it's impossible to, but we want to do more of that and then no pun intended. We have really big appetites and we want to continue to grow the brand across the south across the southeast, not ready to sell it anytime soon, but maybe within the next five to seven years. If that opportunity presents itself but we're building a brand that we don't have to sell, i understand so one question: what do you yeah? What do you want to narrow in on because that's a great context, one of my questions to you is i've listened to a lot of your content, but i haven't heard you talk a lot about partners when and how you decide to bring on a partner operationally Or financially, when is that appropriate versus going it alone? Never if you can help it yeah, okay, right, you know and that's been my experience. Yeah, i've had some good ones, but it goes back to like what makes you happy yeah i mean i have an offer for somebody for one of the biggest vc firms in the world to buy ten percent of the friends it has my brother on the ground.

In excitement - and i'm not even returning the email to set up the meeting right and it would be a game changer for me - think about the level i'm playing at and it would be a game-changer for me. So we're talking real economics and my i had a meeting with my accountant today, like planning for next year and taxes, everything and he was flabbergasted that i haven't even reached back out in the last 30 days. It's because i kind of almost had my own realization. It's the advice i'm giving you now, which is like.

I don't like it. James knows my deal with steve ross, and i only did that because aj was at a point in his life, where the money mattered to set up his life, and i didn't want to do it. I didn't um but, like i'm sure, when james looked under the hood, it's so egregiously bad for steven ross like they have no rights like i could. I could start a new agency by changing all the names of the company like it's crazy, the deal they made.

That was the only reason i've even had a partner other than like family like it's, not fun right. Well, that's really helpful fun, but in your business model, if you want to take in pe money or things of that nature to expand it make it, you know, if you want, if you want to sell it, i think something like there are. I want to go with speed. I really like the growth and development.

That's what i've done. The problem is, the problem is that's why i hate speed so much. I know. Speed comes with compromise, yes, you're, going to speed yourself into money that has control and that's why we've tried to be patient and we have it ourselves now and so tagging off from that.

The other thing on just on that point something you've heard a lot from me. I wish you knew how young you were yeah for sure. No, but no, no before yeah for sure, like in 17 years, you still have like 35 years. Like you know, you know what i mean like if you can contextualize time yeah, i agree um, the the other thing.

There's a company called clear bank. Okay. So obviously the canadians shook their heads right, like there there's some really new funding mechanisms where you don't have to give up control that you might want to look into right, there's also people that just want to lend money and make interest. Okay.

If james is right, there like the good old-fashioned credit line and the good old-fashioned like like we don't even talk about getting bank loans anymore, that you pay off, so you don't have to give up your. We don't even talk about that. Remember everybody grew up with that concept, so there's a lot there's a lot of other things you can see what's going on in the chat right now, so keep that in mind as well. Thank you.

I appreciate that i'm kind of piggybacking off of that we um you know. I do believe we try to be really patient with the restaurant and grow it the right way, and i think it does need more time as we grow we're trying to do it. The right way, but we have big brains and big motors and we're trying to decide how or when we should add a business um to keep us interested so to speak, versus just focusing on the one and particularly because we have a location-based business kind of you Know a community business and i feel, like i'm missing out on a lot of you, know e-commerce and these the opportunities that are really in front right now we are in birmingham, but you know it's a big world, i'm just trying to balance this i'll. Give you one that might work for you um and it could actually work for doug and doug.

Thank you for the empathy in the background, um uh. Both of you could go into products that are very viable for the things that you know. Brian nihon know like you like, for example, with doug's business. He should, in my opinion, stand up his most signature, fruit, wine and then make a fruit jam compliment product within the brand, so he can ship that nationally and globally.

Yes, you should do the same thing like like, for example, i i've actually am starting a restaurant group uh here in new york right and one of the things i'm talking to guys about i'm like look, i don't i'm really supporting two friends, but now that they've Brought me a little bit more in than just money. I'm like look, i'm not interested in this, but if you say that we're gon na start a restaurant that has a signature mustard that everyone's gon na love, the mustard like everyone's focused on the mustard that i can build a 300 million direct consumer mustard brand. Now i'm really interested, so i think one of the things you can think about is: could you create a signature, condiment or dish in your place that become you strictly stood up the concept of this unique pepper just to create a dtc, pepper business? I would like to do that. I think i'm gon na work on that for sure yeah.

Absolutely that could be that could scratch your big ambition, creativity, muscle right, you create something that lives within your restaurant. That then, can be spun out to be a global dtc. Cpg brand, i just wanted to say when you started the vcr group i reached out to david rodelitz, he's kind enough to give me some of his time and he was amazing and gave me some great ideas for the business. It was also encouraging seeing you going into the restaurant business after covert in the last year.

Oh i love it. I i love it. I when i was saying to them, i'm not interested it wasn't, because i'm not interested it's just that they're such experts. My three partners - i'm like you, don't need me to run a restaurant.

You guys have done this for 74 years, i'll, bring innovation and here's an innovation. Let's create a olive oil that we pour for people the second. They sit down with incredible bread and let's build up the reputation of the olive oil so that we can then sell 100 million dollars a year in olive oil direct to consumer right right, like the level of focus to an olive oil. That's just on the table.

That's not the normal move for a restaurant, but for me that's the innovation all right. I appreciate that. Thank you so much yep. Let's keep it going all right now we're going to go over to garrett wilhelm uh down in virginia here we go garrett yeah again.

Super thankful for your time gary been following your content for quite a while and can attribute some success to that. So thank you. So much, i'm extremely grateful um. My question is very specific: it's around uh people and it's around scalability right.

So my business is at about 1.2 million a year and we're ready to kind of move forward and grow. The challenging thing is, is the cost of humans has gone up uh and so for us. You know we're kind of playing around with this idea of bringing people up through the company comparatively to you know paying the higher cost for more skilled skilled people yeah. I would i would, i would spend all my energy on building an incubator internally to create people and retain people yeah.

That's what we think about a lot. I think the challenging thing around that is is is for me. Is that human to human training, or is it something like a tranual or something human, human, human to human? You know why the part you're gon na need is the nuanced emotional intelligence part and, like your culture, that's exactly right. I was just gon na say: how do you scale a feeling right, like you scale it through dictatorship, like just being that that ambassador of the brand to james and joe know what doesn't fly in my world got it both of them have spent enough time prior To me, knowing there are people that are talented, that they would never consider hiring, because they know if i sniffed out their behavior, which was completely appropriate in places they used to work that there's no shot, that that person's gon na succeed, because i'm gon na smoke Them out, if they don't got it, so you start with kind of your.

Your your mount rushmore of of people and leadership, put your value into that and then allow that to kind of trickle down. If you will and then you what you have to be is never let it be compromised right. So that's exactly right, comma, as you start to scale when i'll give you an example. Carol is adored by every parent and people are signing up to your school because of carol because she's insane with parents and kids, but carol, makes ricky and susan and sally miserable, because she's, audacious and braggadocious and snarky to them.

Because they're not carol. You have to fire carol yeah. Do you know how hard that is for most businesses? The scenario i just told you, i it's a very hard thing right because they bring in a lot of re. I i see your point exactly what i do.

That is highly unusual that i'm trying to teach the business world to do is to not compromise on culture over finance and that's incredibly foreign, because people have to keep the lights on. I promise you right now for everybody here who has employees the biggest vulnerability in your entire company is your weakest cultural employee. So then, spending time on finding that person, poor people creating yeah making and creating them is the best way you get a raw asset at 23., you have a better chance in 25 months, making them the 25 year old version. Retraining is hard.

That's what i'm finding! That's what i'm finding i i come back and you're also you're, also coming and trying to hire people from a system. You don't like exactly i'm aware yeah. So it's you can't achieve what you want. That's right! You can't achieve what you want.

Yeah gary you're, winning it firsthand. We've got julia balak here straight out of school she's, a good one, she's a keeper we're growing her from the ground up. I i get it and we have a better chance with julia than if she was you, because you came in with a lot of baggage joe. So i'm making a joke but like joe's like the greatest and you and what you don't realize is the sub.

Some of the teachers you're hiring they're wonderful. They don't even realize that they're doing it i'll i'll, give you joe's it's a lot easier. If i get julia from the beginning to be like we're going to be vayner x, centric, not client-centric, we do it our way. Joe has 7 8, 12 15 years of doing client services anywhere else in the world.

He subconsciously doesn't realize that he's letting the client seep in the dictation, which ultimately becomes the reason we lose them. Yeah, it's wild in my business in my business. The number one reason we lose is because we let the client get what they want in the short term, and then they fire us for it. I'd rather not i because they stink yeah and they tell you to do stink and at first they love it because you're doing what they feel comfortable with.

But then they fire you because it's not doing well and they don't even know how to score it. Amen. Yeah, that's what you're dealing with you're trying to hire teachers who already conform to the education system, which has remarkable flaws against your hypothesis yep, and it's unlearning people rather than teaching people, which is what i'm great and unlearning is impossibly hard and teaching is wildly easy. If you get them in the right state awesome, that's it yeah! Thank you! So much you're welcome yeah, i'm excited for you.

It's gon na work! Thank you because what here's, what it is garrett, if you like, if you now execute on what i just felt from you in response it becomes a religion. So you waste no time you just don't hire from there. That's it! That's it! I love it. Shifting focus younger yep love, it awesome all right, thanks garrett uh next we're going to bring on brennan and doug, who want to talk about guild of women and entities.

Thank you hi. So i'm going to as concisely as possible share a bit of the history and i'm going to hand it to doug who's going to bring us into the future. So, as mentioned, we recently opened a small luxury boutique hotel in philadelphia. The property is inside a national historic landmark and the property was deemed a landmark due to deep, deep roots in the women's movement so founded in 1882.

A group of badass women, suffragists abolitionists one woman, was a founding member of the naacp. They all gathered here and changed the history of women. You know across the country and beyond and while it's very nude less than three months old, the res, what we did was we've dedicated each of the rooms to one of these founders or women and told their story, which is largely unknown through these rooms and suites. And the response, the response has been incredible.

Everyone who walks through here is really wowed by it. We, of course, are in love with ourselves. Our city is now in love with it, which we're so proud of um, but we recognize that there are many more women both as members of the guild and throughout the world that really deserve light shining on them as well, which led us into this concept that Doug's going to share of uh dipping our toes into the nft space. I understand right and essentially it's to tell that story on on a grander scale right to honor those women as well as give women uh of today.

How are you gon na handle the name, image and likeness of the women? If this is how direct you're gon na go with it handling? Well we're not using the actual names in the nfts. Is that what you're saying got it yeah? That's where i thought you were going to go, got it no. So again we want to we're honoring the actual women, but really what the nfts is about the women of today right that are breaking down doors and glass ceilings, and so you know, there's a bunch of utility that i can get into. But the the to me, the the connection on um, the women's movement, is not only the charitable donation to the cause that still exists today right, so some proceeds will go to that um, but also the nfts.

Essentially, each owner would be able to create their story and have that you know on the blockchain with their nft and so obviously it's a male dominated space, um and so our biggest challenge is you know? How do we wait wait way less than you know, everyone likes to throw that around by comparison. Web 3 is remarkably more diverse than web 2 and one water. And if you look at the projects, i mean the female movement of whether it's world of women or you know i've been very active in it. It's very advanced agreed, it's very advanced there's also.

I think you can see pretty easily the women's projects that you've. You know tweeted about or whatnot and haven't right kind of two different things uh in terms of, i think some of the results, but um for sure. So they are there, but i think the thing that we're dealing with is yes, our audience is women. We also feel we need to incorporate men into that as well, and so that's also part of um, not only the finance, so not only the financial aspect right so there'll be income earned from owning the nft as well.

We're also incorporating it with the hotel, where you can get some free hotel stays what about income earned, because if you go to income earned you're going into securities. So my understanding from the attorneys that we've spoken with, if you do it off the mint and it goes to a separate wallet, and it goes to them directly that that's not a security, the other thing no you're talking to very bad lawyers. Okay, of course, it's a security just because you're setting up a different functionality, okay, yeah - you should definitely kick into by the way. On the record, i could be wrong, but that's not.

I've spent a lot of time on this. I would be surprised if that's the case yeah so and look we come from a finance and capital raising background, so we need to err on the side of caution with with everything that we're doing that's what i'm work. That's what i'm worried about, because you also don't need it right. It's not a trigger that you need, and so i just want you to again.

I could be wrong because it's all so new uh, but please quadruple check that one, because that's the because that's gon na hurt your reputation exactly so i will we can move on from that because, like you said yeah exactly that's not what the project is about Right, what can i answer because i'm following very easily go yeah? How do we sell out? How do we sell easy? You, you stand up a discord. You produce ungodly levels of uh twitter content around everything that you just talked about. You have a lot more going for you than most projects yeah, and you just launch in four months instead of four weeks, everyone's biggest problem of why they're not selling out is everyone's in gold rush mode, and they just want to get their project out as quickly As possible, and then they pray to your point that i tweet it or somebody that, like me, does, which is the reverse of building a tangible, real business which is build a real community through the story, i mean the fact that you have this hotel and i Love the story right and then i wrote something down. I think you should launch 1882 tokens right because it sits right into your narrative right yeah, a little bit less than what you can maximize in.

But maybe you do that as the original thing and then you could build a second one, but like yes like doug, i think the by you wearing that hoodie and you guys doing this. The thing that's happening right now. Brother in this space is everyone's up because they have no patience to actually spend the four to six months to actually build a dysport community. If you build one for four to six months, you'll do quite well otherwise you're leaving it the chance and back to me being so involved in a lot of female projects.

There's like 87 000 being built right now right, it's insane like every you know, i'm getting 15 to 50 texts a day on i'm building a female project because they think that's the advantage. It's just not going to be right. So one question about that. I don't know if you followed women rise like they just launched.

I just hung with them yesterday in miami, so i was shocked. I think they've sold like 1500. So far i mean it seems like they got discord. The twitter they've been doing it for a while yep and and that's why they're pinging me 450 times a day and even with randy zuckerberg twice yesterday like um, i don't think they.

I don't think they built enough. She's, lovely, they're, lovely, it's a great project. One of the reasons i'm not doing anything about it is, i can't support it just because it's been, i can't support everything right in terms of our focus so there's look. The mission has been self-supporting women right and so obviously we're talking about that.

The other aspect that we're looking to incorporate is finance a financial literacy component, because one it's authentic to the history like they set up a trust. It's funded women's projects for 140 years, we're also really passionate about financial literacy and so, whether it's an investment vehicle which maybe it's not but incorporating that into the message with the self-supporting women, do you feel that could make sense? Or do you feel like it's trying to serve two two different things i think you're? Looking i i love the way you ask the question directly and all your behavior matches your question, which is what i love the focus i think you're looking for the triggers to create success and the reason you're surprised by rise is it's not about the literature like It's not about the altruism well right! It's not it's about it's about the variables of, like first of all, 90 of the people in the space buying nfts are buying it with the thought that they're going to make a profit right right, so you're in a you're. In a very unique spot, where first of all, i think at any second, the whole thing could have a massive collapse like internet stocks in 2000, two nobody's building meaningful, like like, like everything that worked in may and march and april, is dead already. Those were the first mover advantage.

That's just not how it works. You know real estate. Sorry, you didn't buy beachfront property, that's done now! So you know now you got to decide if this is going to be malibu or malibu, because if it's going to be shmalibu you're not going to buy the fourth street off the beach. If it's going to be malibu good news, you're going to crush you have to decide that and then number two i think you have to build.

This is why i'm in such a good place, you have to build on actual community, which you have none of yet digitally, which is okay. You got ta start, you know, you're gon na start to and two you've got ta build on. Content like you've got ta make and the good news is. The game is very well laid out.

It is a twitter and discord game, yeah, dominate twitter and discord for six months and then launch your project. That gives you an incredible chance of success. Why is everybody not doing that because everybody doesn't know when the whole thing's gon na stop and sort of trying to get out as fast as possible, get as much ethereum in their wallet as possible? Yeah so last thing on that, so on the nft or the crypto front, like i'm the one, that's driving that right, we've got amazing women, like brennan our artist. You know everyone else is female, but i feel like i'm the one like i mean i can't be the best part yeah um.

I don't. I have a concern about that, and maybe i should just put that to the side or trying to figure out. Transparency always works, you got ta, you know just cause you're. One of the team members like boys can help girls right.

Okay, i i again i'm very excited, because what i'm hearing is somebody who really knows what's going on in nft land you, but i think it's trapping you into all the wrong things. It's why i'm so pushing against the space right now you're on it you're on it. The problem is the on it. Right now are doing the wrong things and the whole thing's gon na.

That's. Why there's going to be a crash? The behavior is way too short-term way too, like it's not in the depth, we're in the sizzle phase. It's the gold rush. This is 1800, whatever the it was, and everyone's and everybody on the east coast is saying you got to get to l.a.

Everyone makes money they're, just gold. The problem is it's not going to work out like you've got to do the real stuff. You need to build a community for six months and then you'll sell out. Otherwise, you might not, or you can get lucky and somebody that influences sales does it all right sounds good.

I don't think you should by the way, you should definitely not hide as a team member. No, ah i'm not hiding. As a team member, i think you could be you could just because you can speak about nfts better than brett, and your artist doesn't mean that that's going to undermine the female nature of the project.