Giving Advice To Business Owners And Entrepreneurs - F*ck Yah Fridays Episode 2

a lot of founders worry about the optics of profitability because they're told to but they misunderstand the timing like you should not [ __ ] your pants when you're 57 but you definitely are allowed to p you know [ __ ] your pants when you're one and i think a lot of companies start making these decisions at one and two years old that don't make sense for a one or two year old company you've got your perspective i just want to be happy don't you hi gary how are you i'm wamasha how are you amazing so this is our second [ __ ] fridays uh on a thursday first you know that's gonna be another thursday uh where we talk to founders and give them relevant advice on exactly what's happening right now we had a great first episode uh last week and i'm excited to see the founders that uh that join us this week i agree i thought the episode went

extremely well let's give a huge shout out to everybody in the linkedin family out there uh let's take a look here mcmahon and milan and chris juan and isaac and este rob great to see all of you keep the comments coming your questions insights justin long's in the building um a real fun part of this show is the live linkedin community that watches along with us um lizette good to see you susan um so yeah i'm really excited i thought the level of conversation was very high level um and uh i'm excited about it and michelle's face is frozen for me so i will continue to talk um producers if you guys want to jump in i'm just going to talk and say hi to ollie and johnny evereed and samuel and dana jacobson um and uh and omar great to see you come olaf there you are there i am i don't know what happened there like a little network problem it looked like it looks like we're back though yes i was just saying hello to everybody who's tuned in on linkedin please everybody on linkedin hit the share take the url right now and share it on twitter and other places um really fun but let's get into it yeah so would love to bring on our first guest anna peterson uh the ceo of the animals wow hello how are you i'm so great how are you guys good would love to uh a quick you know 30 second pitch on uh on doing your business yeah sure so i created a screen free

meditation device by our first product was for children it's in the shape of a little turtle that plays mind-guided meditations at the press of button and three sleep soundtracks um it's an fda approved uh food grade silicone shell so it's a super safe product it's removable the shell is dishwasher safe there's a speaker and an earphone jack for audio options hospitals schools and other institutions are instilling them as programs for mindfulness and social emotional learning for children and then recently just launched a teen and adult device um so those are going into general hospitals uh and we hope to branch out into the military and the nursing home community as well that's amazing and it's like it sounds

like you've made it a million dollar business already i have it was amazing i was um telling some of the other people backstage it was i officially started marketing in march of 2020 and uh it was an unbelievable time in the world and just being there for people was a really magical experience and quite overwhelming there was a huge sense of responsibility that i felt and um and then also being there i support uh five percent of the profits go to precious dreams foundation and that was like they were instrumental last year in helping children in foster care and um so being a part of that conversation as well was matt it's been wonderful as horrible as the last however many months we've been doing this now yeah ben i think it's been pretty magical for the mental health space and bringing awareness to you know the fact that even pre-pandemic the second leading cause of death for kids age 10 to 14 was suicide this was pre pandemic like this was a conversation we should have been having five ten years ago um we're a little late you know and so i think i guess better late than never but happy again just to be here and be a part of it that's awesome

so what are your questions for us today yeah so i am still running the show by myself i have no full-time employees um and so i have a lot of great consultants in place for accounting i have a great 3pl and so i think my biggest pain point right now is b2b sales that's been really difficult trying to build that team but also supply chain i do manufacture in china and as you all know like that's that has come with some severe difficulties this year and so i guess my question would be what do you who do you think my first hire should be at this stage in my game

so i can weigh in first and then uh we're gonna see what gary has to say so i think uh for me you actually want to look for like a true second line to you jack of all trades that can figure out anything not afraid to get their hands dirty that you can build that level of trust with um it's great that you've used like consultants and key areas like you know jack of all trades is not your best accountant but really like this is a super hard part for every founder where they realize that they cannot infinitely scale themselves and it's really hard and it's really stressful where every customer service email every time a problem happens and so that person sometimes takes a little a hard time to find but they're someone that wants to they're willing to build a business you should be willing to give them a piece of equity if they turn out really well um but that is like so so critical and i actually meet a lot of founders that get to you know a couple million dollars in sales i actually met one recently was about 10 and just could not take herself out of the business and you just hit this point where you cannot get any bigger unless you can learn to trust other folks so it's a critical point uh if you get around the first time remember that you can certainly move on and hire someone else because i know it's scary but that's uh that's what i would say that's great

amazing um and for me i think yes i agree with everything michelle said i think there's a lot of validity there what are you worse that and or what do you most dislike if i ask you right now what do you most dislike in your week to week forget about day to day because i don't think that's consistent enough like you know like in a month like what do you just genuinely not like out of all the things what do you not like that's a it's an awesome question i think on any given day i think there are many things i of course i love development but the supply chain i find very stressful um those logistics are tough i think financials it's i don't like it probably because i'm not super good at it and it takes me a lot of time and i'm a very i love efficiency and it that takes me extra time to understand and grasp and so i get frustrated there so probably financials and supply chain are my things that i could probably do without that that's your hire okay

if you're lucky enough to find somebody who can do both which is not inconceivable people go into court people go into corporate mindset be too fast when they're small right like you're doing a ton of things on paper i don't know what i don't know you you were doing before but on paper it might have not seemed like you could or should do all these things but you do have a necessity right when you start a company i think i would look for somebody for supply chain yeah and then literally interview and like literally post on linkedin and say i'm looking for supply chain comma small company house like are you an accountant by trade or like you they're just a there's a like this concept that people are one thing is very corporate right and startup land like everything chief everything officer the ceo i think you can find somebody who does supply chain and finances okay i'm convinced you can i actually think that they have a lot of similarities from a human and so i think that straight man or woman is exactly who you're looking for okay awesome great um and then oh my second question um so i haven't taken any outside funding to date do you guys think at this stage that it's worth giving up some equity to be able to scale quickly to build an entire team and do the bigger things and throw you know some more at marketing than i'm that i'm currently doing you know risking you know some bouts of you know lack of profitability and things like that do you think that is that would be a wise move or not quite yet

michelle i think this is so in your zone and then i'll follow up yeah sure um you know look i'm biased right the whole reason we built clear co is because i believe that when you do the work as the founder you should own your company because the reality is that um investors are going to put in money they're going to do absolutely nothing to build your business and you are going to be left doing all of the work and so it doesn't seem like you're giving up much in the early days it's like oh i'm giving up 5 or 10 or 25 of my company and it can be so much bigger but my gut is that you'll be successful i mean if you took something from idea to product to prototype to a million sales like most people never ever get there and so on in and that's really problematic when you don't feel like you control your own destiny when people that don't have the same information you have are telling you to make decisions on your business and so we're a big fan of obviously being able to use capital so you can still invest more into marketing you could still um you know be feeling that growth but at the end of the day you know paying six percent for that capital versus you know giving up a piece of control in your company that being said there are amazing investors out there if you have someone super value-add i suggest you doing a ton of homework it's like a marriage with no sex so you should really like that person before starting to work with them and really understand that they want to spend the kind of time and it won't be the same as you but they want to spend true time and true thought um building your business

business that's great you said something that really caught my attention i don't think businesses should really worry about profitability besides making payroll and paying their bills unless they are on the precipice of selling and are going for that or there's some erroneous events in that human being's life where they just need the money and i don't mean i need a second home or i need a test i need a tesla right so i think um a lot of founders worry about the optics of profitability because they're told to but they misunderstand the timing like you should not [ __ ] your pants when you're 57 but you definitely are allowed to p you know [ __ ] your pants when you're one and i think a lot of companies start making these decisions at one and two years old that don't make sense for a one or two-year-old company right like i spent most of my time trying to make vaynermedia and wine library my two family businesses my family business and my business as little profit as possible because i want to pour back in to build as big of a business as possible sure yeah so like when you know hurt profitability or things that need you know like if you're not that means you're playing defense at such a young age yeah yeah the other thing that i would um the last thing i would share anna is that you know i was a bootstrapped entrepreneur for the first 10 years of my career got lucky enough to sell one of my companies to groupon and it was the only reason i got to build other things is that i actually you know i had two co-founders i owned a third of the company we had a 10 esop pool honest i remember doing the math and even if we had raised a seed round or a series a like you're looking for a 25 50 million outcome because again your investors get their money back first right so if you get a million dollars into your business and your business only sells for a million bucks they get all their money back and you are left with nothing and there is a true downside case and so it also just depends on your personality type like for me i wanted to know my downside case is like okay like i still have a third of this business right um and uh and that really did matter to me but i think it was game changing in my career uh that i was able to retain you know equity at an early age and i get it you can it's just a much higher risk path uh to take another move and i actually think there are there now are capital sources available that can allow you to grow uh without doing that yeah that's amazing that's great cool

i like what anna what what's the biggest difference right this minute in the consumer part than when you launched with success competitive landscape demand evolution staleness um like you know growth like what's the biggest difference right now on the consumer lens like is the map yeah i think if i understand the question correctly i think learning that this is a seasonal product which i think is the strangest way yeah fast even though people buy meditation apps i i it's i don't know i don't know if it's the price point or if it's because it's a physical product but it's very like summer was very slow people were traveling like kids were staying up late parents didn't care that they were having problems sleeping because they could sleep in and you know during the day um as soon as school started back up it was like the moon again um chris holidays are bananas which is like that was a new game for me that i realized last year i was not anticipating that at all there's a lot of ebb and flow throughout the year and

i think it was this is where marketing really really matters yes and in two ways doubling down on key moments right and then a lot of companies go cold when they think it's not season this is where i completely exploded my dad's business people would restart marketing in september and october yeah and i marketed like crazy in july and august and my dad was freaked out yeah because i was building awareness for september yeah so right so like if you start doing content in mid-july that says things in the copy like hey click it for a calendar reminder to make sure on august 30th you're ready to like buy our product like just notice how clever and like how you're like just that yeah just a piece of content like does your kid sleep well and then like here's a calendar i know literally you're being empathetic to them the copy is i know you guys in the summer enjoy it staying up late sleep in click this link to put this in your google calendar for september 1st to make sure you you'd be stunned what kind like that that's so cool i think so yeah there you go what i think i didn't get here with my look santa this is the [ __ ] i do it's really it's about things like that i also hear your neck and i also think content from your customers is huge yeah i think i think you should send an email out to everybody who ever bought and said if you make a tick tock with our product please email it here and randomly some of you will xyz yeah tick tock is not it's not a platform that we're on yet and i am like a bang in my head against the wall trying to get that going because i think it's a huge mystery you need to do that immediately you're one tick tock away one random tuck that you're not even thinking about away from having a totally different business yeah yeah the amount i mean tic tocs explosion is 38 to 50 right now yeah it's unbelievable i think and that's where like i think bandwidth comes in and things like that but this just needs to go to the top of the list and like the other thing that companies make a mistake on is they don't realize the moment tick-tock virality to get 12 million views on a video is going to go away in 24 months and you're going to miss the window correct yeah yeah no it's uh absolutely well i'm sorry michelle i apologize anna you need to prioritize that to number one anything that allows you for brand explosion at high upside low investment yeah brand not sales brand explosion high upside low investment needs to be the number one thing you prioritize yeah and because it's not a sales conversion for a dtc brand tick tock is down the totem pole right because people think people thinking conversion yeah i definitely do yeah awesome all right that's great advice okay so you you have a few ideas around new hires around tick tocks around which would be the top of the priority list and uh and we're wishing you all the best luck thank you both so much i really hold on anna real quick william patrick in the comments it says i'm your guy for supply chain travel there it is amazing thank you i will i will awesome thank you guys cheers bye okay that was fun that was really fun i as a quick interlude here i heard your nft was sold at christie's this week tomorrow that's exciting tomorrow my five original five of my original drawings are being sold so not the nfts like curio cards and art blocks the actual art yeah i am an artist you are an old expert you can use your best sharpies you did them i'm an artist let's keep going that's amazing good thank you we're all cheering on great okay we got lindsey have you on lindsay

hello everyone so nice to meet you both this is just an honor thank you so much for having me i really appreciate it lindsey i think uh michelle was chopping when she introduced you so maybe you can introduce the company one more time and then we'll just go in here sure i'm lindsay with green wallscapes we create um preserved moss walls and ship them all over the us and canada we do projects um we'll do probably about 300 to 350 projects this year um some like the size beside behind me you know small lots of different designs we also do work with succulents and other things like that what's great and the solution that we've created um completely by accident by the way um is no watering no special light requirements so it works really well um in uh part of the homes yeah and homes and offices all over the place so it looks beautiful thank you that means so much to me wow how much are they um they all there's a price per square foot where they range um so like the pieces behind me each one of these is about eight hundred dollars um because they're all you know custom handmade yeah beautiful but then we also have where we really make our money is large-scale commercial applications of materials so um we've worked with companies like starbucks and stella artois and like a lot of major uh huge real estate development firms and things like that uh we do their lobbies we do you know all sorts of different tenant improvement spaces and things like that so we have you know just me and my four team members um have done work with some crazy brands we like we can't even believe it sometimes good for you yeah yeah um and so anyway i wanted to ask you guys some questions about um hiring and retaining talent in this very tight market um what we do there's no school there's no moss school so we want to train people um but they have to have sort of an aesthetic eye um and they also have to be okay with like physical um you know labor there's a lot of lifting and moving and all that kind of stuff that goes with you need

to make an incredibly smart upfront filter for applicants you should have a page on your site where you and your team have an incredible video that's two three minutes long where you really go deep into this okay and then a series of like 15 to 20 very specific questions you need to filter out people got it you need to like really it's about being vulnerable and authentic like this was something i really struggled with for a long time i you know because i would just blast out like come work at vaynermedia and then everybody would come but i didn't put them in a position to really filter themselves out you need to like really go there and like be self-deprecating and fun with it like and you need to do physical labor and then like somebody's then you click on you know then the sh the video shows one of you one of the people working on it carrying and they turn like this stuff's heavy you know like you need to like give everybody i think the video in itself could become a marketing tool god willing it goes a little viral but i think that's like when you're that specific i think that you know travis says higher recruiter i'm not a fan of that as much though i love recruiters and i'm sure there's plenty that'll be great at it i'm a huge fan of a heavy filter that's very unique to you based on the very big uniqueness that's a really good idea and um it will work yeah by the way and then the first thing i would do once that page is up is email it to everybody who bought the product oh okay oftentimes some of the best early employees are early customers of the thing totally oh interesting um and then um so i wanted to ask you just to sort of change gears here for a second um so right now everything we do is custom so there's some limitations with that because you know how long it takes to get the moss and some other things like that should we be looking at repeatable non-custom moss art options right now like i mean currently right now i'm completely sold out until the end of the year almost um and everyone's like oh hire more employees but with the supply chain challenges right now it's really hard um so have you thought have you

hard um so have you thought about are you able to pre-sale yes everything is pre-sold oh even better i mean as long as you make promises to customers one of the biggest changes i made to my dad's business was we pre-sold wine sometimes that was coming out 18 months later oh that's interesting now that was a standard practice in the wine business it was called futures right you would buy the new bordeaux year before it was even bottled maybe a little bit less standard in your world but i will say authenticity always plays you as the founder right even just you're like you know you're just extremely bubbly and positive and like have really like your video just saying hey you know on the product page hey supply chain sure you're all aware this is just going to be six months out because of that we're even being more aggressive with the price here i think pre-selling is something that people are underestimating in this moment in time right yeah i mean we have deposits till the end of the year already so it's you know the other thing is when you're selling at that level your pricing might be too low yeah it's really not that's what's shocking it really it really doesn't have everything have gone through the roof right now i think engine is closer to 40 linz i think you're missing something very important um it's really not because you may be premium in your category you just might not realize how premium your brand is okay i thank you understand just because you're 800 bucks and all your competitors are 500 cartier doesn't worry about what other people sell their rings for nike doesn't worry what other brands you might have just put yourself in a position where you are not maximizing your float in the difference between you and other brands there's a lot of agencies that don't cost a million dollars to get out of bed but we do you know and so like right but then they get to talk to you gary and that's what's so exciting that's right that's that's

right but i mean i think that's the biggest point here right like clearly you've done something that may uh have also created that incredible brand arbitrage and i think that's remarkable and i would not be scared to try listen one thing i can tell you as somebody who sold things since he was five years old selling flowers at door to door you can always lower your price that is true yeah and just remember the incredible testing infrastructure of out there do one drop of the exact same thing say you have exactly 500 units and see if they sell out in a day like when you create this brand on like limited quantities it's like great people want a custom piece and then they might want three more walls in their house that are done by that like just don't be afraid of that testing and i actually think i really like the idea of even testing higher prices honestly i think the market is crazy right now and there is almost insatiable um you know these governments printed unlimited cash like we have to recalibrate the world yeah america printed 15 of all the money it's ever printed but it's history in its i didn't finish it gets crazier in its history 15 or 14 or definitely over 10 and below 20 percent of all the money it's printed in the history of america in an 18-month period during covent that money's in the system now right and so if blueberries are up by double then why can't a moss paint you know picture go from 800 to 1300 or at least 9. 99 which is that last dollar before the mental threshold of a thousand okay it's worth trying absolutely try it out and post it share your story on social we'll keep commenting and we want to see how it goes awesome thank you so much can i ask you one more question yeah one more um so you know i have a small team right now i love my team they're my rider dies and that's so awesome there i'm starting to see like for us to really be able to take it to where i want to go we're going to need to bring some more hires and it's going to change um the environment probably um how do you guys balance like good vibes millennial you know feel goodness with sort of profitability and you know having to stay on the sort of business and numbers side of things um because i find sometimes i'm a little too soft on one um and it impacts the other the right to be profitable or the ability to be profitable gives you the right to do whatever the [ __ ] you want and that's what you have to keep telling your team is that when we're profitable we have the luxury of being able to launch new products build new things support the charities we want support each other like that doesn't exist if this business is not profitable and is not making money and that and that people actually understand when you give them reality i even think the most dreamy millennials when you look at them dead in the whites of their eyes and you're like you know this is the reality of how this is going to shake out and this is why this is the most important i mean i tell our team all the time what we're doing is very hard we're creating a new asset class we have a lot of people that are in the system that are rigged against us this is i you didn't come here because this was going to be easy and reminding people that they can do hard things that they were built for hard teams they have a team that cares about them that there's a lot of kindness around them like that i think that is what happens but don't let people because then other people start controlling the narrative in your company and you know this exists because you built it and you dreamt it and you've kept the thing profitable and if they understand that you actually stop as soon as you set that standard you have a lot less of these conversations and it becomes actually a lot easier

okay my take on that is yes comma um i call vaynerx the honey empire i believe in honey over vinegar i believe in kindness i believe in all good feelings all the time because people go faster when you're worried about the politics you go slow i believe that business is completely misunderstood i don't believe in sharp elbows i don't think that being kind means you're a pushover um i think what you need to make sure is that your candor is on point a weakness of mine for 20 years so what you do what you need to be careful of is the cat is creating you know entitlement because you're not cancerous along with the kindness and the other thing that you have to remember is whether you're four people or 4 000 people one human being can change the culture you've got to cut out cancer when you observe it right so don't be scared about going from how many are you at well so we're at four and we're going to hire probably three to four more four to eight is a piece of cake to keep everything you want it just might mean that you need to fire person number six three weeks in to their tenure mm-hmm don't be scared of the hiring is guessing right the firing is knowing yeah 100 which is also one of my least favorite i'm like can i hire somebody who will just fire people for me because that is my least favorite by the way you absolutely can um human that it's hard to fire people you should never want to take that trait away from yourself that's the it's the worst thing but for me i hated it but i will tell you without a shadow of doubt my core weakness in 25 years was the lack of candor that led to me surprise firing people once i finally got that up yeah awkwardness please please either you could absolutely hire somebody to fire make somebody your number two and make her him in charge of operational hiring and firing and then sally or rick will do the firing and you'll tell them to i did it for years then i wanted to develop it but for years i was like dad you need to fire that person bobby my cousin that wine library fire that person aj fired up like so you know and eventually i realized it was too much of a vulnerability to not have the ability to be candarous i added the word kind to it and now kind candor has set me free and made me a better operator yeah because i think that the entitlement thing i do kind of go back and forth with that a little bit you know because sometimes i feel like well i'm being so gentle that i'm not getting

what the business is that's exactly what is possible and what you need to do is call a five-person kind camera meeting okay be vulnerable ladies gentlemen i find myself being too kind and i'm starting to build subconscious and now it's conscious resentment towards some of you or sometimes on how we roll i don't want to be that person do that to you um this is what i'm going to need maybe in my baby steps to being more candace i'm going to send a friday email and observations the tone is positive i'll put a bottle of jihad emojis and so this vulnerability this vulnerability and honesty is an incredibly powerful opportunity yeah and it's and i think that you have to change your mindset to actually believe it's cruel to not tell the truth it's cruel to actually not tell people where they stand and how they're doing i think yeah but michelle i'm sort of interrupt but karina z said i think it's more kind to be blatantly honest about employee performance right the problem is blatantly radical candor versus kind candor like like what ends up happening is people end up delivering it poorly oh yeah you can't be an [ __ ] man and you're no one's gonna even listen they're just gonna be hurt comma if you go straight not [ __ ] yeah but there will be inherent fear and fear is poison yeah it is poison and we really don't do that but yes but it requires candor hence kind candor you have to come with compassion points of view you know and people's you know again bruce says clear is kind sure you may feel like you are clear but you have to be empathetic and compassionate to how one receives it if somebody was parented in a way where they over cuddled everything any level of clear proper feedback is perceived as a negative we have to be compassionate to this well gary i have to say i've been following you for like literally 10 years and this is like so amazing thank you so much for your time i really mean it's like me so much well i'm so happy to get to know you and it's just been so wonderful thank you guys both you're very sweet thank you and lindsay can you do me a favor can you send me an email to gary at vaynermedia and say i was just on the show with you michelle i'd like to buy a moss thing and hang it up that means so much thank you guys both so i'm sorry we're getting emotional this is just a really big deal it's amazing i'm playing big hugs thanks lindsay that was awesome i mean what an incredible story and i think it's you know super important discussion about how you have to deal with some of the harder things in business that people don't want to talk about they everything going well they don't talk about the days that we have underperformers and the days that things are not working and how to deliver those messages but um

let's take some questions from the audience you've got a system for this michelle oh there we go any advice for an administrator with creative leanings without an outlet to explore these dreams um i don't know i got a big one greg i really really think greg side hustle you've got to start an nft project please i'll tell you why god forbid aka slang term for god willing one nft collector or influencer finds a liking to it you could be a full-time artist in five minutes if you are creative that way um in visual form video yeah drawing sketching doodling please go that route if it's a different creative essence look for companies like vaynermedia we hire people in creative that have no creative background they come from administrative they come from the concrete business they come from sales there are optimistic curious companies out there find them oh there's another good uh question how can a small business in the custom apparel business that can't afford the dev work for smart contracts embrace nfgs by putting out a tweet with the hashtag nft and finding somebody who's willing to take a piece of the action to do the tech work for three free matt there's a ton of those people yeah i love you get involved in discords matt put in the groundwork like i did when i was starting wine library tv hours and hours of groundwork on twitter and discord you will find tons of devs to do it for free yeah okay next one um just getting started not free excuse me just for clarity they'll take a piece of the action they'll say matt i want 10 of the initial sales in the royalties

yeah and that's fair because honestly this is not going to get off the ground unless you do it um so i got another one just getting out of um started in the supply chain business and due to container shortages facing some difficulties how to keep yourself going through some of these toughest times in your business okay rowhead uh container prices are absolutely out of control i mean from three grand i've seen canada prices at fifteen to twenty thousand dollars there is no simple way these are going to come down because ports are full shipping containers are full and unless you have massive volumes it's extremely difficult to negotiate right now um and so i think it is figuring out a way to beg borrow and steal and see if you can actually solve the problem seeing if you can look for manufacturing um in other places but it's actually i think your question is a little bit different which is like how as an entrepreneur do you pick yourself up when you're down and for me it's always actually listening to other entrepreneurs understanding that like even what seemed to be the most successful businesses almost failed like 20 times as they were being built and uh and then having that circle of friends and founders uh and other people that are building businesses that can be like yeah i mean i'm in the same show as you are so here's either my ideas or here's how i can solve it but i think you know misery loves company and that group of my own entrepreneurial friends has been critical uh i also think there's moments in time where you can't do anything yeah like you know a global pandemic came along like i don't care how good of a business woman or man you were what in europe when world war ii broke out your business wasn't as good right like that's just real life and so we are living through a global pandemic where the small group of shipping companies have finally used this moment to create much more margin and the walmarts and the costco's and things that nature have lost their leverage and you know michelle you're more educated maybe not maybe in this than i am i don't think containers are coming down anytime soon they are not all this infrastructure is not there for these to come down that's right so this could be it i mean maybe they go down from 15 and 20 to 10 and 12 but the days of three have no rationale to come back unless governments regulate and so which they have no incentive to do and no right it's kind of like it's cut it's pressuring like it's not gonna happen it's just that's right it's dealing with uh dealing with your business so what that's gonna do is it's gonna lead to india and the us and parts of europe and other parts of the world to probably start really aggressively on the 10-year plan building out manufacturing i think people are you know it's okay this is when you pivot you know michelle's point is absolutely well taken but the misery loves company when your business is never going back to that place is a you know e-commerce came out it happened which meant you're never going back to just having leverage as a big box retailer yeah like that's like you know and so containers are here to stay at high prices wrap your head around that and decide what you're gonna do okay i thought we were wrapping up but we got one more what trends do you see in a post ios 14 world when it was harder to reach customers um i'm gonna go real fast and i'll let you wrap up the show i think people are gonna have to get better than just doing math arbitrage on facebook and instagram how about that uh you know like yes i understand you can't read cookie and read people got very lazy it was easy to build a dtc brand yeah facebook instagram at scale big brands didn't understand how big those platforms were build a good shopify build a good media plan run good math many people in the world are good at math go to sleep it's going to go back to branding and marketing and absolute creativity you will have to get 100 and get them talking about influencers starting your own media company uh still doing social media marketing but doing it from a brand standpoint finding new ways building your own first party data there's a million things that are gonna happen it's gonna get harder for sure and i think the best you know we talked about this previously but like this will be like when email just declined and we just had to figure out what that next generation is it is there right it is in new platforms it's in new ideas like it's there but we're gonna have to go build it gary this is so much fun as always great show thank you so much for having me as your partner in crime on [ __ ] yeah fridays on this special thursday which i'm predicting thursday will get more juice than people think because we're both very busy and we just might not make some fridays in the future so it's a lot of fun thank you bio entrepreneurs and friends we are back october 8th uh next week if you want to apply for the show go to clear. com fyf that's [ __ ] yeah fridays for a chance to be on next week's show i'm really looking forward to seeing the new folks there cheers youtube watcher what's up it's garyvee first of all thank you so much i hope you're doing super well during these times i also want to ask you please subscribe because my commitment and exploration of youtube is about to explode stories polls more content more engagement more surprise and delight this is the time to subscribe i hope you consider it and i hope i see you soon