60 Minutes Of Direct To Consumer Strategy for Every Business | Inside 4Ds

you have to build a brand that nobody else can buy anywhere else if you're a retail store in 2021 2022 and you don't have a private label that is the number one thing you focus on you will never win this portion is like with me so i think this is when you need to get selfish like you need to ask your question hiring is guessing firing is knowing like you got to go fast that's how you get [ __ ] done that's how you figure stuff out this is the television and the television is the radio the 40s [ __ ] we'll kind of just go around the room one time i'll uh introduce you to some folks and then uh we'll go through the second time and go deep with everyone so uh i'd like to start by introducing you to jonathan cott who's down in australia jonathan say hi to gary give him a little bit of your vitals cool hey gary how are you doing i'm uh hey i'm a sports scientist but i use uh physical health to get leaders to practice mental skills like optimism courage grit and accountability so they can create a work life that i love and experience the five elements of fulfillment so i just wanted to share that there's a very heart-centered mental performance the mental well-being aspect of what i do i don't train athletes i love it cheers we've also got andy richards uh dialing in from north dakota andy say hi hey gary pleasure being able to see you on this i've always watched you and i really appreciate all your work um thank you i got my master's degree in aerospace space studies designing human life support systems around 2017 and i realized i had a knack for complex systems but it also applied to people and i started helping companies find out problems or sales revenues or getting into different markets or whatnot and uh one of the things that i'm kind of looking for the cannabis space with helping some of the true thc companies create delta 10 products to develop brands that are national prior to their ability to access the full national market and then i also help with some companies that do marketing and creating lead funnels and whatnot and my goal from this is to learn how to maximize myself and have a brand for what i can bring to companies learn as much as i can but then also uh kind of glean some information on how to help the emerging markets that i'm forging and do that i have a personal passion for i understand very cool and uh over in california we've got bobby thompson who's in the legal space bobby say hi to gary hey gary how you doing man i'm well bobby how are you good so i have my own personal injury wrongful death um firm and i'm kind of one of those guys where nobody needs me until they need me you know right and um and so my i'm not a billboard guy i'm not a volume guy um i'm very selective in the cases i bring on so i'm really trying to just my social game and then have targeted campaigns for niche i got it cases i got it well yours is gonna be i've been thinking about your space for who knows what reason probably saw a billboard so i'm very prepared i'll be ready awesome thanks dude and uh sticking in california we've got a guy that built and sold a cafe and is now running a content agency and i love it robin xander robin say hi gary so good to see you um jack of all trades self-taught acrobat circus performer uh started a restaurant with no experience on three weeks notice sold it three years later on craigslist came here because i run a conference in the hr space that claude spoke out in new york in 2018. these days run xander media mostly we're doing explainer videos and just trying to figure out how to scale this uh to build an agency where i understand i think and uh somebody that i've really uh thoroughly enjoyed reading all of his e-newsletters recently lee over in denver colorado with turbine labs lisa gary hey gary lee how are you good to see you man good to see you so uh founder and ceo of turbine labs based just outside of denver colorado uh founded the company several years ago on the premise that the way that we're getting our news and information is completely broken in fact it's been broken for over a decade our job is to fix it so we're an ai powered executive intelligence software platform that dramatically reduces information overload and media fatigue for executives policymakers and decision makers i like it understood hey there thanks for having us gary it's great to appreciate thank you um so back in 2005 to make it short and sweet i started in wholesale i sold to retail barney's bloomies anthropology some really big wig clientele and i always um had a passion for fashion it was always in like you know my dna it was always who i was but the life you know that todd and i live it was never something that we were able to do on our own we always hustled we always worked hard i always sold software i worked for groupon i always had side gigs but on this you know for 10 years i built a side business which was an e-commerce website and it was um designer clothes similarly to some of you know what bloomingdale cells or denny cells um but my um my niche has always been customer service based it's always been driving um self-confidence and self-awareness and self-esteem and all different you know we're all created differently and our bodies are all different but we should all feel beautiful and look beautiful and um i really try to hone that in with young girls and really build uh awareness when you start so love that you started a um a brick and mortar during this time where you know stores are closing left and right and we're really trying to set ourselves apart in the industry and be somebody that's here in the front runner you know as a front runner for the long haul so where is that store right in central new jersey in manhattan um so we have a good market and when did you open it we opened the brick and mortar in november uh this past november so it's been a year and we've been online as this um as this business which is called spirit animal for uh about four years now and were you able to lock in just like a really attractive retail situation given the reality of the world yes we were prime space right on route 9 which is the main like we're right next to a starbucks like right in the middle of um of town and we got to go and are you there every day for the most part that's you know i know of course i know we do okay awesome thank you that's amazing very cool yeah thank you thanks for having me of course back around the room we're gonna start with jonathan uh jonathan you're up with gary you've got probably about six seven minutes and then we'll move on so jonathan say hi again and uh what you got going on okay sure okay to share my religion so your religion is day trading attention my religion is that your physical health is the foundation of your mental performance and emotional well-being and so the biggest benefit i see when i coach ceos and leaders to live this statement is in their self-esteem and in their personal and professional relationships and so this is i'm talking to a man who's invested in this and really prioritized this in his company but you can imagine who i'm selling to like i'm saying totally execs and group exec level is a big business so if you were in the room how would you sell physical mental and emotional well-being of their people i wouldn't and let me explain what i mean by that i think you have the luxury of being in a moment in time where the conversation is elevating and i think to your point you're talking to somebody who's probably further along down the path but when you're not talking to me nine years ago when i was like where is everybody else you can feel everybody coming i think for all of you that this is something i've got to really do a bigger job of in my content i might even write a damn book about it i don't think you should try to sell to people that are unsellable when for the majority of you and definitely for what you're doing um you only have so much limited resources with your time so i think from a macro strategy standpoint you need to think about i think one of the things you need to think about who you want to get in front of and vet them as much as they're betting you i think um you know one thing that's very wild about the vayner x world is how little i try to spend time on convincing people and to your point similar to you we're selling something that's different we're going to be able to aspirate you know so i think first and foremost jonathan try not to get you know convinced like i think that there's enough people in australia that should already know that it's a viable conversation and i think before i let go of this is why i'm still talking i think you need to think about creating a scenario where you're very much up front letting them know that you're vetting them as well because you really don't have time to convince them yeah so that there's two things that said like i've heard your message about don't sell the unsellable so if i like the person that i'm talking to believes in my religion but then they are someone who's ingrained in that but then they have to go to the upper levels of their organization that means selling that doesn't just because you have a rabbi or a co-signer that doesn't mean you're not you're still the only person that i refer to don't sell to the unsellable is the person writing the check yeah okay fair enough to your point it's a really good point though there isn't an organization that doesn't have a jonathan cheerleader in it right now yeah the problem is that's not what i'm referring to and i think that's a huge waste of your time potentially i'll give you another example i think you can make money to get customers so i will i wonder if you should build a front-facing layered virtual scalable business that charges people two hundred thousand jesus christ sorry two hundred dollars for two hours of a virtual workshop that is the gateway and maybe i don't like that price let me start over maybe twelve hundred dollars for two hours in a virtual environment that becomes the gateway it's really the reverse of what i tell james and and joe here on the call like literally this is not a joke and i'd love to get your body language on this they know that if anybody that ever does a four d's feels that it was a setup for a bigger engagement that they're in deep [ __ ] but i actually want you to build the reverse i a business potentially that charges a thousand virtually because now you know they're committed to the hypothesis yeah i think you get a lot more business by working that and then using that as your leads than just kind of doing any other version of that that's just another important thing for you to think about because to your point every company hates the company right like every employee like every company has employees that like think the company doesn't get it right and so of course they want to push this because this is a progressive you know angle in the scheme of things i don't think that that's a good use of your time unless you're paying 1200 bucks for you know for the ability to sell it harder in your organization otherwise you're going to get too many run around some too much wasted energy yeah and if i've got time to i just asked for a similar question and i asked her right so she got it like we're developing people but the biggest like business benefits so the people who's looking at the dollars and cents uh the conversation went through like retention that is the dollars and cents that this religion or looking after people is going to have the biggest benefit of business do you agree or do you have a different take i meaning that you believe if you tell a cfo in that environment that you have better retention and that's why it's a good investment do i think that lands no not necessarily like convincing the cfo but just like to actually create the business case like to turn this religion into a business case like what's the reason the business invests in this like yeah yes you can get like i don't know i think i think it's not only retention but i also think it's employee acquisition as well right of course because it's a value prop that others are bringing to a workforce that now believes in it yeah cool all right so thank you yep we'll go around if we have more time we can do a little free form at the show now you guys know if uh if i feel a little bit despondent when we're talking about your business it's because i'm not trying to sell you things i have scared joe quite a bit like a one person ever feels that you're in trouble let's roll over to andy uh andy up in north dakota what you got for us hey gary i got a couple sets of questions that are pretty should be fairly easy for you i have a feeling but um my whole life i've sprinted and pulling and shot at everything i've ever done i started a gym while i was in college to be able to train executives and then i realized that most those guys didn't eat healthy so i created a food delivery service that i outfitted my parents lake home to coach the food and delivered to them so that i got more videos and high level people and as my career progressed i ended up becoming a vp of a radiology company where i realized there's a lot of people in there that wanted unbiased advice and i started doing that and as i progressed for my career my education i realized that every company buys promotional and branded materials so i started doing that so that i could work with the marketing companies and then also have input and giving free additional input and as i've worked through all this what i've kind of realized is there's a lot of emerging markets that are available that a lot of companies are able to pivot into or i myself and now set myself up to be able to help career into some of those opportunities that are coming and with the point-and-shoot mentality and i know that you do things very fast uh what is your criteria when determining emerging markets for expanding your markets and then what's like the list of criteria that you look at and then the second part of that is of that list of criteria how are you determining what is more important over others what is the most important aspect to help you pick the one that you decide to move forward on are we talking about completely new genres of doing new businesses or opportunities where we talk about expansion of current ones well a lot of the companies that i've been working with have infrastructure and i've helped them pivot into industries that didn't even exist yet like delta 8 delta 10 and other derivatives and then i've also stepped in with other people and started setting up emerging markets that don't aren't really there yet that are speculative i'm trying to figure out a way to well essentially uh when you start looking into potential wars that are happening government contracts are going to come up and there's low-hanging fruit for individuals to fill those contracts is one of the emerging industries that i'm looking at for the next three to six months and then some of the other industries is you can go through the uk into europe to get the stamps of approval with cannabis products that then can be distributed all throughout the eu and i have a distribution network lined up uh through a guy who owned swanson health products so let me download in a world where arbitrage comes natural to you yeah the thing i would start with is [ __ ] you actually are interested in okay because i think what's happening is what you're interested in is the arbitrage i'm a little bit similar to you this way this is why i think i really made a big great decision with vaynerx it wasn't what i decided to do 12 13 years ago would have been very different than what you would have decided because i could have made a lot more money doing a hundred thousand other things but i had incredible self-awareness and in hindsight foresight to understand that everything i was going to do in perpetuity would still find itself doing the thing that i do which is really understand marketing of the second as the arbitrage to make consumer demand happen for something you know i think and now you know knowing all the charges i have on my wall like be friends is just like the logical thing that happened right and rezzy and empathy and all these things worked garyvee the brand it all worked you know the thing that strikes me andy is for you to consider maybe starting a company that is omni and more leveled up similar to what i did that is built around your skills but scales it so that you can then deploy it against anything and everything and or taking a step back and realizing okay i'm good at the science of figuring it out why don't i deploy that against a subject matter that is the single most interesting thing to me from a standpoint of it would be my hobby okay you know i think you because then you could have retention and you could build something meaningful over the long term okay do you see where i'm going yeah see the thing that i'm kind of at a crossroads that is money is arbitrary to me it's i'm more about learning and experiences throughout my life i've been blessed with some great people who have mentored me and one of the things that i want to do something that actually changes the world and i don't know how to apply some of my background yet to do that so i'm trying to gain as much experience in as many industries as i can so that when i come into complex situations i can draw from my rolodex my experiences in different contexts so is your world based on being a company that helps different scenarios or is it you go to thing and you do deals within it that i usually find people through not to be overly spiritual but opportunities happen to fall in my path that i am capable and no people to fix the situation or create the next market have you created the container that this talent sits in is there like a company like is there an andy richards consultants um i created a promotional products company called pledge promo where i bought out all the partners and now that's my vehicle that i do things and it's pledge consulting because i pledge to my the people i work with that i will put every ounce of energy into figuring whatever it is out yeah i mean okay good i mean i think i you know it's very similar to what i'm doing i wanted to get the context of everything so i could use it in the future which is why i built vayner and so i'm a buyer of this how big is the company is it just you and you then it's an army of me it's just and friends of mine that do various things but i get it i got there's a couple very wealthy and i'm talking in the billionaire range that have acquired my services on retainer which has funded me to be more philanthropic through what i decide to do personally but i just have to at the core figure out when they have issues i understand okay is there you know as far as to answer your original question now that i understand uh on complete intuition of what makes me happy okay when you're trying to import and it's a really interesting answer and i think you'll understand and i appreciate your response to it when you want to do everything in perpetuity you're not crippled by the next decision okay like you know that i don't struggle with decisions i'm trying to get around to everything anyway so if we're going to do denver right now or you know nfts production like cool it's we're going to get to everything anyway eventually yeah cool thank you thank you gary got it we'll head over to bobby over in california bobby what you got for gary you said you've been thinking about my space so why don't i just say what you've been thinking about man i think that a better more upscale version in this space than like the infomercial billboard thing requires you acting like a publisher not a marketer can you explain what you mean by that i can so instead of running the ads i think you should build a franchise core youtube or podcast show right and that you should have guests and educate and give out tons of free advice create content that on that show that helps people for not reaching out to you or your contemporaries the ones that are good and sleazy when they don't need to because you're giving them information that will stop them from like you know it's like the whole i always thought the best lawyer brand in the world that if i had that skill set i would have built the biggest company because my whole motto would have been i'm giving you as much free information as possible so you never hire us again it's a very common theme it's what back to james and joe right julia like let's like do this is not 4d this was huge james will tell you i [ __ ] spent weeks on this i was like guys you know because they would bring it up they're like oh my god 4d is going to be cool and we can use it as a sales i'm like it is not a sales engine not a person if anybody leaves that spent real money and i think a dollar is really money and leaves like this was just we got we paid to get pitched i'm gonna kill you that's literally how passionate i was about it and i really believe humans are animals and they sense intent i believe bobby you had a weekly podcast where the people over time and you could cut up the content and the whole model that you know we'll go through and you know you'll know about i don't know if you've done that yet or we won't you know but i it will work because then you're not a marketer you don't have to market it people will find you over time in perpetuity right got it you see where i'm going and by the way that stuff then you start chopping up that one hour episode that 30 minute episode and it becomes your ads on linkedin on facebook like but the ad is like a quality piece of information it's not an ad right it's like a movie trailer instead of an ad it's just a clip right right it is the disproportionate the reason i've been thinking about you is it's very obvious to me that in markets that have some hair on it that this model is over indexing because i've been speaking to this model for quite a while and so i'm receiving a lot of emails from people that are very transparent like hey i was a scammy of the scam in this space and something you said in this video made me do this and this happened and this is what happened or my dad was in this space and he was like a pioneer in it was a little infomercially and i did this like you said and this app like i just i think there's something there yeah what so it's you know i just need to be like in the back of people's [ __ ] head when something bad happens to them and like that's the [ __ ] i need to call right now right so how how would you scale that or how would you build i mean like easy it's the life i live yeah literally like and very easy it's why i'm trying to give you the formula right i am at the forefront of people what people think about when marketing because rachel and todd like me because i'm putting out free information that's good and motivational and tactical and i don't know what they or anybody here first thought when they saw me but you know after a little while no matter the most cynical if the other shoe never drops and there is no mastermind there's no eight thousand dollar course that there's no eventually you gotta be like [ __ ] what i guess this you know and then you start digging deeper you're like oh he's got other you know and i that's what i want for you i want you to be top of mind because you're providing value information you know and you can put out tons of content you know how for people to avoid getting sued you know [ __ ] that i don't know but like if this would stop me in my tracks for my dad if i'm just scrolling and says how retailers can stop from getting sued i would literally just click that and said to my dad and be like dad don't mop the floors during working hours okay you know so like you know what i mean like there's a lot of weight you know the first thing you're supposed to do that's right james jab jab right hook is right like but i think if you know if i can get you to think that you're a podcaster not a marketer you'll be more top of mind publishing publishers are always than marketers right when suzy orman's on tv and jim cramer's on tv people think of them for financial advice a hell of a lot more than whoever the [ __ ] showed up in their google adwords or on the infomercial in between at two o'clock in the morning on cnbc you could now establish that brand on the internet for no cost yeah talk to me does that make sense yeah totally um talk to me i use the word the

80 20 rule i think i heard you have a one percent rule so my [ __ ] bandwidth is max right so just give me some some so i got some good thoughts on that so how i'm spending you know eighty percent of my time trying to get twenty percent of my assets how do i spend more of my time getting 80 of my assets well first of all you raise your price one of the things that a lot of people are confused about when they're at a max capacity practitionership

is the need to raise the price if that's true you need to raise your price talk to me about that before i go to the next part well i i don't have a price i'm a contingency fee so i don't build by the hour so god it's kind of hard for me to do resp that's why i wanted i knew you were pausing and i was like there's something i need to know got it so you're making a piece of the action so you're making you're spending your time deciding if this is quote unquote worth your time right okay and so fine comma go back to the 80 20. you're spending 80 percent of your time to get the customers for the 20 of your work well no i'm spending you know like 80 percent of my time dealing with twenty percent of the [ __ ] that i have to deal with instead of focusing on what one the stuff that actually makes me money respect like what the lower end cases um can you hire a lawyer to do that content developments all that sort of stuff let's talk about the lower end cases first because content is easy uh lower cases are you willing can you hire lawyers to do that or i'm just farming them out now and rev sherry right so then has that problem been solved somewhat yeah have you considered adding a per people or no lawyers yeah i'm pretty built out right now how many lower level lawyers do you have uh four and is it better for you to farm it out and rev share than it is to add a fifth or sixth or seventh i sleep better because that [ __ ] that's a great answer yeah that i love okay uh talk to me about the content part that you refer to next well i got a guy i'm paying you know a shitload of money a month four grand to do what develop [ __ ] for instagram facebook and just get it all out there and it's not working right not really yeah and do you spend any

media dollars to amplify the four grand of content no but i will from time to time like um higher companies do targeted campaigns on very niche type cases that you know i'm not like you know like like a billboard guy trying to get car crash cases that's not going to work for me right but if there's some case that i know that's out there that nobody else knows about i'll spend some money on a targeted campaign for those types of cases from an scm standpoint yeah people's intent what they type in and you show up and because you know it right long-term right and is that effective yes so why don't you do more of that well these niche things only come along and they only niche for so long before everybody else finds out about them i understand what about paying more for them even though more people found out about it so instead of paying 39 a lead spending 297. yeah i'll tell you why i'm asking these questions because they're common things that i've seen friends startups things i'm involved in you know people get emotion people take so much pride in finding the niche that when the niche gets crowded they actually think it's time this was a huge problem for me in my 20s i would know things about wine i was buying customers for 10 cents it was a different day back then and then it'd be a dollar and i'd be like oh [ __ ] everybody figured out the [ __ ] australian shiraz thing meanwhile in hindsight years later i'm like i'm an idiot it was working for me at a dollar i should have poured more lighter fluid on it right thoughts on that well i guess i'm just sort of i've always been more organic and i'm just sort of afraid of spending money because you have pride in being organic and by not spending money it makes you feel less like the others no it's just sort of it it i guess it's just it feels like an ideology versus an actual business no i've just thrown some money away i hate doing it because sometimes it doesn't work and i you know i spent a hundred thousand dollars bobby sometimes a lot of things don't sometimes you lose the case i think there's something really here i'll tell you why long tail sem in your business is a real thing if you complement it with what i want you to do which is to do a show instead of having 4 000 wasted on content that's probably not effective turn that 4000 a month into a production team of two people that has a weekly podcast for you and then you clot up the clips from the show and now you're putting out good content in digital form and video form complementing the sem i think you're going to build more of a brand and then over 24 to 36 months people are just subconsciously coming to you and then you really stop spending ads yeah you had already given some thought to that like fireside chat with like really kick-ass lawyers sipping whiskey talking about shop oh i'm telling you that based on everything i've heard from you and just like the way you your feelings are it's gonna work for you more you're wasting 4 000 a month i can smell it from a million miles away because i know what that looks like in social media land and i think you should convert that into a show that produces 12 pieces of social media content from each episode the way my content is produced right i do stuff and then we chop it not make it for it right okay

okay how much content should i be blasting out on a daily basis as much as humanly possible i swear to god this is back to some of the guys here on health and fitness you just asked me how well should i eat and how much exercise should i do a day lots as much as possible now in workout land there's a little bit of resting and some other variables not in this one as much as possible yeah promise let's move on over to robin uh robin definitely creates a lot of content he's got some great questions for you gary go ahead robin i feel like i never create enough um so sold my restaurant event space in san francisco um woke up two weeks later said [ __ ] i didn't create enough content about it and really throughout my career right like done a bunch of weird things never really told the story well so said okay i want to make that mistake never again and there's other people making that mistake too i saw you start talking about that uh unfortunately after the fact right but like if my nephew could come in and uh you know his eyes got big because i owned an ice cream machine right incredible stories so xander media mostly were doing explainer videos nine people didn't realize it was an agency until i hired my second employee because i don't know anything about agencies until now two and a half years later this summer's been incredible we opened up our first office in the bay um hired our first full-time designer after video folks uh are managing a 30k ad spend on linkedin for the first time but there's so many moving pieces of an agency um and then of course the piece around personal brand i'm happy to be on stage i like performing um i don't need to be right how much to promote xander media myself uh and then how to build a content machine around the promotion to feedback to the business um as much as you can as much of you being on stage and building your personal brand as you can afford to that doesn't come at the detriment of the operations of the business too many people don't understand how the world is actually structured they have this philosophy that if it's about them they can't sell their company one day because they're right they think about that they think about well then all our clients won't want any of my account people they're always going to want they come up with all the things that all of them are secondary to the fact that a human being is always going to be a bigger brand machine and builder to business development and then on the client side when they come in you say from second one hey kieran you know before we even get started here i am robin xander but xander media is not robin sanders xander media is the joke of drones intermediates james you know so you control that when they come in the pipe and you the human bring in the most pipe and as far as building a content team around it you need a copywriter a media person a video person and a design person and that's a lot of people one person could be all four in the beginning like it was for me eventually it's four different people and those become managing resources and that becomes a game of you leaving money on the table from the distributions of the profits of the business and pouring it back into the business right and i'm building this for the rest of my life because i'm going to do other things right so no desire to sell uh no desire to leave this behind i'm still delivering all of our work and so i think in some way uh i'm afraid of letting go of the reins of like client facing control yeah i think that's that immediately has to be step one two three four five six seven is who is going to be the account person that you trust if you go into a tree for 19 months that is your business will not scale in any shape or form without that if you're the deliverer of the client work right yeah right now we're trying to decide between rpg content personal brand content and xander media client work right and because i'm the limiting factor correct yeah you the account person on xander media is everything cool um where to go niche so like most of our money in the last two and a half years has been video production but we're i can do other things right the team is starting to get interested in like how do we manage ad spend or we're gonna produce some squarespace websites for a client um where to go niche at this stage right if the goal is long long term the rest of my life but if you lose your life then much like the earlier thing to andy you can go anywhere and i think going to where current employees interests are passions and skill sets is always a good idea cool right because when you're showing them that you're supporting their decision they're bought in emotionally and that builds a great culture yeah which brought me here right i mean i for five years now run a conference on future work hr that cloud spoke out et cetera so like culture i feel like we've got really going well and will continue to go well but then how to scale essentially scale myself by not being scared yeah you know my number one strength is that it when not if when james or see me james can speak to this maybe now or when i leave when james orsini calls me and tells me we've lost a client the amount of energy and time spent on that is shockingly low i'm almost disinterested in learning from it whereas as you can and that you're gonna have to figure out that year if you're gonna scale you're gonna hire karen or johnny they're gonna be the account person and inevitably as you start to trust them inevitably one day they're gonna call you and say we just lost the blank account and you have to become accountable that you hired that person who lost the account not lose your mind and get fearful any recommendations on cash flow right like that feels like such a i mean i'm paying for it on the back of my own savings from the sale of the restaurant like never had a line of credit anything like that no debt um no investors uh make more money than you use and don't [ __ ] it up so much that i then go out of business yeah i think people get caught on cash flow when they're not in tune with their actual business okay the fact that you even ask that is the follow-up questions already made me halfway confident you know when i get you know james probably remembers this too like when i bring in grown-ups to companies because of my casualness and my true entrepreneurship and pure offense i'm empathetic that people around me focus on all those things and i just always remind them occasionally of like hey been in business every day i have been the person responsible for the pna for the last 25 years of my life with a weekly or bi-weekly you know paycheck that i have to make for everybody and for the first 12 years of my career i had no credit line so you know i know how to make payroll and so that's just being in tune with your business cool i've seen so many trends right looking at v friends looking at nfts like i remember google in 2000 before it went public um what would you do if you were starting an agency now towards sort of web 3. 0 and whatever comes next or should i just not bother and should i because 100 of my sales is me on calls with people right like 100 of the business is organic growth through one-on-one conversations and relationships when i think about we're not video is present but it's not necessarily the only thing in the future would you focus on future or start where i am right now i think you would based on you it's similar to what i did i think you have to build around your interests and skills so if you're actually interested and feel like you have intuitive skills to do web3 strategy then do it you know we built the nft because i thought i could do it right because i knew it because i put in the six nine months before that point that made me feel confident that i could but play in the places that i know the best or that my team knows the best right correct or that you're most intrigued by and you actually put in the work and then you do it right to your point and it's the right observation everything went perfect storm for me with nft land because it's all my life's work you know but uh ai i believe in heavily but i don't stand it up as a main thing here but i invest in it so i can keep it close to me and then eventually you see right i care about acrobatics and circus so like keep creating content about handstands and eventually cirque du soleil will come back around again yeah or what does circus culture mean to every brand that's what you can get really interesting from a strategy standpoint cool cool thank you uh welcome let's move along we got to get to lee over in denver lee uh take your stuff off mute and then uh thank you this has been so great i mean tons of different variety in the businesses and things that you can pick up from everybody's rightly that's why we love this format like even though the businesses are different you know i always answer with hoping that there's collateral impact on everybody who's listening as well and i think that's why this session it works great all my notes have nothing to do with my business but are totally applicable so it's good uh okay so uh actually today we launched a product uh gary our business is kind of split into two uh sections of executive intelligence delivery one of them is delivering truth to power that's sort of the executive side we deliver executives information that they don't have time or they don't have access to the new product is around the notion that credibility is everything so uh this product uh takes uh existing executive thought leadership content uh we run through our ai and then it is validated by third-party media and influencer stories that our ai filters out uh selects and then packages up to an email that's sent to prospects employees i understand yeah so um i i'm gonna spend some time on the thought leadership topic we touched on it a little bit in the media section what do you think the future of thought leadership is in the b2b space um a more well-rounded conversation around emotional intelligence can you elaborate on that a little bit i think hard information is a commodity and i think you're going to see a lot of the world lean into conversations that look more like therapy than look like training manuals that what people are going to start gravitating have what i tend to do is not predict has already happened in the b2b space i think you're going to get conversations that speak to what it really takes to build out a sales team in 2023 yeah which is a hell of a lot more about empathy and accountability and curiosity and words that are just like never thrown around in b2b business world and i think that is where thought leadership is absolutely going and do you think that plays the same at the level of a senior executive at you know i do let me tell you why i no matter what you were about to say yes and let me tell you why i believe in that big business and mid-sized business is going to continue to be affected culturally like they have been around movements like metoo and racism and we are having difficult and important conversations in our society that are bleeding into the business world and i believe that the youth movement of their thoughts about this that there will be resistance at the upper level because we a lot of people think it's over coddling and entitlement and there's absolutely nuances and truth into that but i think the evidence will be overwhelming that healthy cultures are going to outpace everybody in business results and more importantly my perspective is that i come from an angle where this isn't about altruism this is about actually winning the game and i think you're starting to see a convergence of alpha ambition i call it honey empire right yeah of course i mean and i it's so black and white to me obviously i'm so in tune with it but it is absolutely i'm blown away by whom is reaching out to me quietly wanting to learn more about some of these things and their characters that i thought would probably retire before they would care and it would be the person that would take over i just think it's mounting and it's mounting quickly and i think the reason it lands is because it's gonna play out on the field like you know empathy isn't a nice to have this isn't about being nice it's not candy at the counter this is not a foosball table in the middle of the office it's not a tactic it's actually going to be black and white for people sooner than later and i think it's absolutely where things are going and this is not and this is a actual answer observation this is not something i i'll be very frank with you i care so much about the empire part as a competitor on the field that i have no horse in this race i just react to what i see right okay so a follow-up to that question again this uh software which we think is sort of the first thought leadership enhancement software that's out there you take three paragraphs of your content you upload it rai reads it and finds content that agrees with or aligns with that topic it sounds to me like we have to play a part in coaching the exec for that concept to be its most effective and by the way we're seeing like 60 70 engagement rates off of test customers um four to ten times what you get off of a blog post yeah so clearly the two variables in that is the training of the input yep and well you just hit the nail on the head the training of the input is actually more important than the training of the ai of course is a commodity over time i have to hold on to it non-commoditized for a little 100 but the but that is the commodity over time the what is not a commodity in that is and i am very fascinated on how ai because i'm spending a lot of time on it and i'm very aware of how nascent it is compared to the hyperbole and your point was well taken it's a marketing term there the two variables of you building a monster are the training of the input and the ability to create uh ai that is extremely strong at tonality context nuance and slang so what would you tell an executive and we're selling this to verizon aeon you know large you know panasonic varys so on and so forth and thought leadership seems to have struck a nerve with executives coming out of the pandemic we're still trying to figure that out what would you coach an executive how if they were buying from us and we're and the input is every single week you give i got here i got it hey ceo conservative old school ceo build a committee of 12 editors for the input i want you to give me a mix of your six to 12 key executives who all hit the spectrum of the hard and the soft so that the collective content is well-rounded fantastic okay one last question uh do you mind james do i have some another okay great um the last decade has brought to the forefront the concept of information overload and media fatigue that bleeds into mental health yes there's a little bit of paradox going on here where we're trying to find eyeballs of individuals who are feeling the impact of information overload and media fatigue and using media to reach them that's easy that's no different than going back to jonathan who i'm sure or andy when he realized executives weren't eating well you know i think we all can agree that if you're a poor eater for two decades and then you've decided to get your [ __ ] together that the notion of cutting everything all at once and demonizing any escapism is a bad idea you know i think i you know i think all of us even the healthiest eater that's raising a healthy family if you over demonize a random cupcake once at a blue moon you're actually doing a detriment i would argue lee that you're building the random cupcake no humans will always want information i love that we might use that somewhere this is what you're here for uh you know that that's exactly right um final question um we have spent a lot of time debating whether or not the feed user interface is a broken way for humans to consume content if they think i've got a really good answer for this one and over or if you gave me the option of getting it in feed getting it in text form or getting an email form or getting in voice recording form i would be very happy and so when you're cuss all of your customers don't make the decision for the customer give them the options uh that actually is and i think that's a great you know piece of advice for everybody on the call is that the feed uh in terms of certain demographics may be wilting somewhat because it's you know this never-ending thing is connected to other problems that we're dealing with including fatigue and inflammation overload in the workplace that re you know in some cases that reduces productivity so we're trying to i mean humans humans are the issue with productivity yeah you know like to your point i mean like you know a feed versus a book versus a tv show versus a video if your intent is to not be productive you won't be productive i don't think you worry about the mechanics i just think you just give people options and you call it a day good advice you got it okay let's move on thank you very much rachel and todd take yourself off mute guys hi hi thanks again for your time i feel like we had a lot and i do and my head is like constantly spinning with a lot um but that's really um you know what drives this question i think that we're two people like with moving parts and we need help prioritizing like not only just time management but allocating dollars like yeah we're making the money we have an average of 30 000 per se you know per month in sales we have we're up to date per uh what is it 300 000 to date right for sale let's start with let me help you right away because this [ __ ] talk about something i know you have to make pretend the store doesn't exist that's hard when i have to run it good news i did this and i ran a store for 15 hours a day seven days a week for 13 years so you it's a little bit different let me say it again you have to make pretend the store doesn't exist what did that what does that mean it means that every minute you spend on this store is is a questionable minute because it's not scalable by any stretch of the imagination compared to your dot com infrastructure it doesn't mean you don't spend time on it it means that you consciously look at each other and say are we giving eighty percent of our energy to the dot com or are we giving you and you've and your 20 has to be good enough for the store what does that mean that means all of a sudden very quickly you say wait a minute we're going to hire a manager for the store that's a young kid at a you know that's really going to dominate and they're out there i've lived my whole life in this they're absolutely out there people don't think they're out there it's hard people get paid more to stay home all that shit's about to go away like you you've got to really understand that for you to build the best possible business you have to build up the dot you have to put crazy energy on your best work on the dot com because the comparisons aren't even close to building an actually bigger business it's not even close like i feel like we just can't get ahead no matter how much money we're making we're also spending right on what on product on inventory on marketing on supplies on staffing on indonesia somebody to clean up our images so everything is cookie cutter and looks the part on the website so it's professional so one of the things is my dad had the same problem when i came to his business and so the first thing i did was made much higher margin product so let's start there if you were able to create a brand that is your private label that has some juice to it all of a sudden you can charge 60 for a t-shirt instead of 12. so one of the ways to get ahead in a retail business in your category is to create a low-cost item around a brand that you own okay because one of your biggest issues is the margin structure that you play with it and as you know there's only so much you can get away with on a piece compared to the competitive market space right it's not like you're like oh thanks gary you're a genius and go mark up everything double the price the problem is nobody's gonna buy it right you could google search anything and price match and price count but what i think you need to think about

is creating your kirkland the number one thing i would do if i was the third new partner you know kirkland is costco's private label you need a kirkland if you build a kirkland it will change your business okay i just need to figure out what that kirkland is yes but you have to understand this is like exciting for me because it really matters yeah like if you nail that it changes everything because if you're actually hit pay dirt on that then your margins in a totally different place just feel like so much about the retail store again it's like customer service you don't walk into a store there's nowhere to be seen like when you walk into our store we're there we care like we're fully in everything that is like matters to you as a child as the parent i love it it's great you don't get that anymore but like i don't want to lose sight of that and if i'm not there i'm watching my employee as we speak i'm like are you helping that customer i think you have to something that i really struggled with my dad on this issue nobody cared about customers more than both of us you don't die on one interaction you don't so first you have to take that insanity out of your soul don't be scared of a random yelp review like get you are so fear-based with that statement it's crazy yeah i mean because it can make or break you in this like it feels like yeah i know but it feels like it can well that's very nice a lot of things feel that are true people feel all sorts of things that are wrong that's why people go to jail you know like you know you but rachel's really important because if you have that framework you lose perspective is reality if you believe that to be true you've got no shot there's a reason you're in a hamster wheel you're suffocated by non-scalable ideology well i mean that brings me to you know i know you're crunched for time but like i deal with have you heard of denny's i'm sure everybody's heard of denny's they have nine locations so we're less than five miles away from denny's and denny's loves to go after my vendors and tell my vendors not to sell to me he has bullied his way to the shop for 20 years he is who he is he hasn't bullied i might be nicer than this person but when i was buying lots of wine from somebody i had no interest in them selling to one random store in manalapan a wine that could hurt my margin okay so fair so then what do you do when you're that one mama and pop shop that is strong you know like yeah but this is business nobody gives a [ __ ] about your feelings i think honestly like that's very nice like don't open a [ __ ] store then if you're like you know what i mean like on some real [ __ ] do not play that eliminate that immediately i'm being serious find other vendors i have to run we'll talk more i'll get you five more minutes but we you have to build a brand that nobody else can buy anywhere else if you're a retail store in 2021 2022 and you don't have a private label that is the number one thing you focus on you will never win cheers bye everyone 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