Growing a Cookie Business, Facebook Ads for Car Sales & Betting Against the Market| #AskGaryVee 245

- On this episode, we go rare Sunday late afternoon. (hip hop music) - [Gary] You ask questions, and I answer them this is The #AskGaryVee Show. - What up, YouTube? Good to see you. About to do episode 245 of The #AskGaryVee Show. - [DRock] Live. - Live. Thanks, DRock. (group laughter) I hate when DRock tries to produce. It freaks me the fuck out. What up Instagram? Periscope, Facebook, YouTube, everybody's live. You ready? - [Andy] Yeah. - Alright, 245? Hey everybody, this is Gary Vay-ner-chuk and this is episode 245 of The #AskGaryVee Show. We've got all sorts of things going on. YouTube, Facebook, Periscope and Instagram live and Facebook. Facebook is where we're getting the questions from here today. Oh Facebook on two computers and that's it. We'll see if we can match the intensity of the last episode that created the epic piece of content with Taylor. Andy's not even waiting, he's getting right into it. I'm cool with that. Phone numbers on Facebook if you want to be on the show. - [Kenneth] Hello, this is Kenneth Hanover. - Hey man, it's GaryVee. How are you? - [Kenneth] No way. Good man. I didn't catch your name and turn down the stream if you can. - [Kenneth] Yeah, definitely. It's Kenneth Hanover. - Kenneth, cool man. How are you? Where you from? - [Kenneth] I'm from Tarrytown originally. - Nice. - [Kenneth] Born and raised here in New York. - Love it, man. I went to a great toy show in Tarrytown in 1993 and bought a lot of old-school Star Wars manuals and made a fuck load of money so I love Tarrytown. - [Kenneth] That's awesome. Was that over at the Hilton or something? - Yeah, it was actually. 20, 24 years ago. They still do shows there? - [Kenneth] I don't know if they still do shows there. I mean that's literally right down the street from my parents house. - I love it. So what's your question, bro? - [Kenneth] Okay so, I'll try to get to it. I, over this past year, was working at a startup and then

recently got laid off or was made redundant in December of this year. - [Gary] Okay. - [Kenneth] And I was at a point in my life where I was like in sales and I was pretty into it and I was like this is working for me and then suddenly I was just not that excited about it. So now I'm trying to figure out-- - Not excited because of the gut punch of the lay-off or not excited prior to it. - [Kenneth] I think Okay. - [Kenneth] Like I was working at Yelp. - Yep. - [Kenneth] Lot of high volume outbound cold call sales. - Yep. - [Kenneth] And, you know, it's just one of those things that I started doing. I got into it just because I need to be making money. - Sure. - [Kenneth] I need a job. - Yep. - [Kenneth] I came to a point where it's like another opportunity presented itself and I was just like, alright, well maybe this will be different. I'll be in a startup it'll be, I'll have a lot more autonomy over my day and I kind of just found that I was getting pushed back in that same direction. Which is just a bunch of outbound cold call sales calls. - Right. - [Kenneth] I don't know. For me it was, I felt like I was living a Groundhog Day where I was basically waking up, doing the same thing over and over again. - You were. - [Kenneth] Yeah. And so, now I'm in a situation where I just moved back home with my parents and I guess I'm trying to figure out what's gonna excite me or what my next step should be because I think going and continuing to do the same thing is obviously not gonna be good for my self-esteem or good for me mentally. I think I'm kind of at this point decided I don't want to do this but at the same time I don't know what it is that I do want to do I've been trying to figure that out. - Can you afford, Andy watch this, you're gonna knock that over. Are you in a place where you can afford to go and taste a lot of different things? I think of this like food. People are always like, "What's my passion? What do I like to do? " I'm like I don't know. If you only eat pizza and hot dogs, how do you know if foie gros or sushi or lemons soup is your favorite food of all time. I don't know where lemon soup came from. But are you in a place where you can go and try doing different things? And if you can't go get a 9 to 5 job that pays your basic life away and then spend your 5:30 P. M. to midnight tasting other thing in startup land or internships. That's the actual practical answer to solve this question. (phone rings) Did we lose him? Is that him calling back? Hello? Yeah, alright. He's done. Alright, let's move on. Sorry we lost the call. Where you go when you don't know what you want to do is you have to try to do things. I mean it's not super complicated. So if you've got a trust fund or if you saved some money or if you're living ghetto and don't give a shit and live with 11 roommates and can afford to. Just cancel it out. What you got to do is got to go and try things. You got to try operations. sales. You got to try all these different things. That's really just the only option out there and so you've got to put yourself in a position whether being humble and ghetto to go and try things or maybe you're in a luxury spot where you can go and do that. It's really the only way. You're not gonna find out by guessing. - [Andy] Lisa with a ground level cookie business. - Good. - [Lisa] Hello? - Hey Lisa, it's GaryVee and you're on the #AskGaryVee Show. - [Lisa] Shut up. Are you serious? - I am not joking, Lis. - [Lisa] (laughs) That's crazy. - How are you? - [Lisa] That's awesome. - So what's your question? - [Lisa] So, I literally just started

a very ground level cookie business about a year ago. I literally just did it out of fun. It was a hobby. And I was in full-time school for my hospitality license and unfortunately went through a divorce. - Okay. - [Lisa] But this cookie business has taken off and has become more than just a hobby. Within less than a year I've gotten about 400 fans just on Facebook. So, I'm wondering if I should take it to the next level and kind of get my LLC and really brand it and how to kind of go about doing that on a professional level. - Well, here's what's great about entrepreneurship. There's no amateurs or professional. Like getting an LLC doesn't mean you're professional. There's plenty of people that don't have an LLC that are making tons of money. They should get an LLC when they get to a certain scale for legal and financial purposes but don't think of this like graduating to like I get an LLC and I take it serious. You've already done the hard part. You actually did something. Right? So like, so are we talking about you make cookies and sell them? - [Lisa] I do. They're custom cookies. So it's basically a sugar cookie which everybody absolutely loves. - Right. Yep. - [Lisa] And then I cut them-- - Well, I don't love them 'cause Jordan's sitting here and I don't eat sugar cookies. Tell 'em Jordan. But I get it. Right and then you design on top of them. Right? Like DRock's face or things like that. Yeah. - [Lisa] Yeah, it is and it's all hand designed. And I haven't done anything where I print anything. - I get it. And how much are the cookies and how much have you made so far? - [Lisa] I'm averaging right now about $600 a month in cookies. - And how much profit is that? Like $400? $300? It's pretty profitable, right? - [Lisa] It's very profitable. (laughs) It's very profitable right now, yeah. I'm only doing it part time. - Do you love it? I honestly do. I think that it's amazing that a cookie can bring so much joy to somebody's life. - I agree. - [Lisa] I feel like I can touch people's lives and it's really cool and I very fastly grew outside of the friends and family. I mean there's people on Facebook who don't know who I am and I've never met them and they've never tasted the cookie before that are ordering dozens of cookies from me and are spending hundreds of dollars with me to get them. - What are you guys all laughing about? (group laughter) I'm curious. - [Andy] It's super interesting. It's cool to hear that. - Guys, you know how many people make a million dollars a year selling cookies and brownies and baked goods. I fucking loved baked goods. Why do you think the fat Gary existed? Listen, I think this is a real business. I think here's what you need to think about. Are you going to be capable of hiring other people? Like do you want to manage, right now it's a hobby and it's fun and you get a lot of release and probably even the way you set it up, you decided to bring up the divorce so maybe it was an escapism for you. You love the art part. You need to figure out if you're a businessperson 'cause if you're just the artist, it's gonna get to a place where its-- - [Lisa] No, it's definitely a business. - Fine. - [Lisa] I've been in direct sales for about 10 years. - Well, then you should definitely build this business. I guarantee, let me rephrase, my intuition says that you have the capability of building a million dollar revenue minimum cookie business if you go hard and fast and you know if you're making 70%, 80% margin that's life changing. So I think you should very much consider, I don't see what permission you're looking for from me. I think you should, can you afford to go on all-in? - [Lisa] At this point, I don't know. And I think that's where I, where do I go? How do I do it? - No, no. It's very simple. What were you gonna say? You we're gonna look for what? - [Lisa] Do I need an investor? - No! No, I knew you were gonna say that. No! You need to making fucking cookies right now and putting out content not being on fucking social media and watching my show. - [Lisa] (laughs) Yes, Gary. - No, but I mean I really believe that truth, right? Here's what you need to do and what everybody needs to do when they've got something brewing but they're not in a practical place yet to jump all-in they need to sacrifice every other second so that you can get the cookie sales from $600 a month to $6,000 a month and let you leap. Like I want people if they really love it, let me paint you a scenario that may not be yours but I'm trying to give value to everybody. If you're making $80,000 a year, right and you live on an $80,000 a year kind of budget, right? Your rent and everything and you've got something that's making $600 a month like selling pictures or cookies or whatever you're doing and you want to go all-in, you've never had such happiness, step one, figure out how to bring your expenses to a $60,000 a year life. Right? You don't need nice shoes. Girl yesterday in Vancouver. I'm like you don't need those nice shoes. Stop talking shit, right? Maybe you move if you don't own a home and get lower rent. Like literally you'd get to $60,000 and then you spend every other second and I mean every second. You go to sleep at one in the morning and you wake up at six because you're baking cookies and you're building up your Instagram and your Pinterest. - [Lisa] That's my life. - Good. So to me just go pot committed until you get to a place where you can afford to make the jump and that's what you do. And once you make that jump, let's say you got it up to $5,000 a month 'cause you subsidized to $60,000 but you were doing it part time, if you loved it and you were good enough to get it to that $60,000 when you make the jump and your whole day is that, that $60,000 gets to a buck, 80 real fast. - [Lisa] Wow, okay. - Got it? - [Lisa] Yeah. - Awesome, good luck. - [Lisa] Awesome. Thanks, Gary. - Yeah, you're welcome. That was awesome. I mean that's the thing. Like too many people talk out of both sides of their mouth. They're like they want this new thing, I think she's got it. I'm not talking about her. They want this new thing but they've got student loans, they've got rent. But what a lot of people have is a lifestyle and it's too fancy compared to what they want. Everybody's rushing, yesterday I saw a bunch of 19-year-olds with nice suits. They need to be living in the fucking basement with three friends and saving that $3,000 and putting it back in their business. Just we lack old-school practicality in today's new environment. - [Andy] Ryan. - Ryan? That's what needs to happen. (phone ringing) Save money, invest money. Invest in your business. - [Ryan] Thank you for holding, Ryan speaking. - Ryan, this is GaryVee and you're on The #AskGaryVee Show. - [Ryan] Gary, how's it going, man? - Super well, bro. How are you? - [Ryan] My name's Ryan. I'm in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. - MeetAuto. ca? - [Ryan] Yeah, we're an automotive listing site. - Okay. - [Ryan] Like Autotrader or Kijiji, you can sell your cars on our site. - I understand. - [Ryan] So we're looking to getting some funding and we're a

startup. Two and a half years to build out the platform and we're looking to do some marketing. So if you had $20,000 and wanted to get the best bang for your buck, I've watched some of your stuff-- - Facebook. - [Ryan] But I'm curious. Yeah. - And do you know when you run Facebook ads in the auto industry you can actually tap into Polk data? - [Ryan] Right, I've heard some of that stuff, I've done some research on it. - Stop doing research and start doing. Spend all $20,000 on Polk data backed Facebook ads. - [Ryan] Awesome. - Great. - [Ryan] Yeah, that's amazing. Is there anything else that you would do? - Nope. - [Ryan] Any other marketing strategies? Just hammer it into Facebook? - Yep. - [Ryan] That's amazing. Yeah, I really appreciate that and is there anything else-- - Nope. - [Ryan] that could help us out? - Nope. Facebook, Polk data. - [Ryan] Thanks for being straight up, Gary. Really love your stuff. - Love you too, man. See ya. When you have the best hand, Polk data is an industry data source that actually tracks people and knows that they're in the market for a sedan. You can literally know someone's in the market for a four wheel vehicle and of course the data's not 100% pure but it's doing search queries it's doing people that are doing surveying. It's clean data, you're literally getting into people's feeds that are in the fucking market to buy a car. (phone ringing) Instead of what all these car people do is buy billboards and run commercials all the time 'cause you never know when somebody's in the market for a car. Yes, you don't know if they're in the market for a car if it's 1984. Hey bro, it's GaryVee you're on the #AskGaryVee Show, Jose. - [Jose] Yes, hi. How are you? - Sensational and you? - [Jose] Hi, how are you? - I'm great, bro. This is Gary Vaynerchuk from The #AskGaryVee Show. - [Jose] I can't believe I'm on the phone with you right now. - You are, man. - [Jose] Unbelievable. I'm a huge fan. - Thank you, man. I appreciate it. What can I help you with? - [Jose] Let me get to the point. So I feel like the market's gonna tank in the next few months. Nobody's sees it. I see it because I've been looking at patterns basically all my life. Been in real estate since I was 18. - Okay. - [Jose] I'm doing great. Business is great. So it's weird for me to be the guy that says hey

things are about to tank and let's close shit down. - Okay. - [Jose] Do you think I should be looking for a different avenue to compensate for that or just save for the bad times? - I see, so you're in the real estate business and you think the real estate market's about to collapse. - [Jose] Yep. - So I think you're 100% right. Now whether it's three months from now or a year, I'm not sure. Could be 18 months. You know as well as I do that you can never fully predict for it. So one thing you should do, so do you buy properties and flip them? Are you a real estate agent and sell homes? What do you do? - [Jose] Correct, I do residential sales and I'm also an investor as well. - Well, if you believe it's gonna tank, you should divest into cash. - [Jose] Okay. - Like what? Are you gonna talk about it and then fucking sit on assets when they go down 30-50%? - [Jose] No. I'd have to pretty much sell everything off. - That's how you do it. - [Jose] Okay, I mean-- - I sold my Twitter stock when I thought it wasn't going to be as valuable and I was right. That was a good idea. - [Jose] Yeah. Okay, so sell the inventory off-- - Well, bro-- - [Jose] Well residential-wise how can I produce during the bad times? - So you're less worried about your investments 'cause you don't have that much capital tied in, you're more worried about losing the commissions that come in from selling homes? - [Jose] I'm worried more about producing money and during the bad times because capital is fine. I could sell off the investments that I have and I'll be perfectly fine for the next five years but I'm talking about building. - Yeah, so whenever there's a down market there's up opportunities elsewhere so listen, have you been doing the real estate thing for more... Were you involved in 2007, '08 and '09? - [Jose] 12 years. I got in '05. - Great. - [Jose] Made like 120 grand my first year and then everything took a shit. - So what did you learn? Where was the money made during that shit? - [Jose] At the beginning and then when everything took a dump that's when a lot of people made their money is when the market was down. - Right, so I think you need to use the pattern recognition of what happened then, right? So what are the angles, what are the opportunities? Or do you take a reprieve from that market, get all your cash out and then deploy it into other areas that you think are going up during that time. Right? - [Jose] Right. - Or do you take that cash, right, if you just told me you're gonna sell everything and you're good for five years, then I would sell it, take that cash wait for it to happen and then buy shit on a nickel on the dollar so that when the next come up comes you make a real fucking fortune. - [Jose] Okay. Yeah. That's what I pretty much needed to hear and I was scared to do it, it's just, you know. You're going against predictions. You know, everything's the unknown but as far as patterns go in the market it's always the same. - That's exactly right. So like what too many of my friends do is they love to claim that they got it right but their actions didn't match. - [Jose] Right. - They were thrilled that they said that they predicted the real estate market was gonna collapse yet they didn't sell their seven homes. - [Jose] Right. - So they feel good like I told you over a beer but their fucking bank account got punched in the mouth. - [Jose] Yeah. - I'd rather you not predict shit and fucking sell off and fucking make money. - [Jose] Correct. - Cool. Thanks, Jose. - [Jose] Exactly. - Alright, man. - [Jose] I appreciate the call. - No worries, brother. Take care. - [Jose] Take care. - Jose. I mean look (chuckles) that was a fun call and I get it. It's scary to sell off, if you can afford to hold it through the whole way through you can do that but you know if you're still in the early part of your career, selling at a high, taking the cash and then catching it on the low, that's just smart. It's just not super confusing. The problem is everybody, you know, it's really fun to predict shit when you have no money lost. Everybody loves to Monday morning quarterback. Everybody loves to tell me how to run this business. Let me make them the CEO for a week. See them quiver and fold like a cheap fucking chair. (phone ringing) - [Andy] Fro Knows. - Is this Fro? Get out of here. - [Andy] Should be. - [Gary] Fro! - [Jared] Gar! It's Jared. - What's up, Jared? I know man. How are you? - [Jared] I'm doing well. How you making out? - Tremendous. How's Philly? - [Jared] Philly is looking up and up right now. - I love it! - [Jared] Real estate market's on fire. - (laughs) I love it. What's cooking, bro?

- [Jared] Question is there ever such a thing as putting out too much content? - The answer is yes in the micro algorithm game of marketing and no in the branding game of marketing. So I say no. - [Jared] Alright. How about... - I mean look, bro, this is a very simple question. The people that are deepest knowledgable about what's going on in social content will tell you there's certain platforms and certain algorithms that you don't want to put out too much content 'cause it can hurt your. I tell you sure, but what happens is you lose certain awareness but the volume makes up for it plus you might've not put out that one fucking piece of content that changed your life. - [Jared] Sure. - It's a massively interesting debate. Probably even amongst my own team. I just believe what I believe. I just don't think you can put out, by the way, there's another thing. It's called your talent on the content. Like if you're a one trick pony and you're not interesting and you can't bring value, well how much content can you put out which is why document over create became such a big thing for me because it allows people to put out more content than they were putting out. - [Jared] Do you ever think you're burning out people? - Sure! Yes. - [Jared] There are people that you're losing? - I think I'm adding more people than I'm losing and I think I'm burning some people out. - [Jared] Right which is bound to happen but people stick around. I'm 2500 videos in on YouTube and micro-contenting everywhere else we need to be. The other thing is-- - You got to remember the other thing is and this is important, if I was a 16-year-old vlogger like blue-eyed pretty boy, I'd have seven million fans on YouTube. Certain platforms over-index. You and I are in a demo and have been doing it at a time, you know, we still don't live in a world where a ton of 40, 50, and 60-year-olds are consuming YouTube all the time. So you're gonna have your audiences. But, you know, I don't... I'm worried where you're going with this and a lot of people going with this is people that have been in the game two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight years you have plateaus. I've had them. And it's almost like an actor, right? Like John Travolta. Saturday Night Fever, whatever. Big star of the late '70s and early '80s. Then nothing from '83 to '94, '95 and then Pulp Fiction, back. Right? Mickey Rourke, I think of it that way. You might just be hot for a year and then cool for three and then one piece of content can change everything. Simon Sinek, somebody I've known for a long time, been in the game putting out content for five years, his interview the other day where he shit on Millennials, I disagree, went viral as fuck and now he's here, you know? - [Jared] Yeah, makes total sense. I'm not stopping any time soon but-- - The thing I would tell you and the thing if you look at my behavior is maybe you need to think about other platforms and being really aggressive. Maybe you would've really, really popped in 10-second form on Instagram and Vine or Snapchat videos. The one thing I would tell you is always taste the other stuff and I know you do micro-content in other places but sometimes put another flag down, not just on YouTube. What's going on with you and Facebook Video? Are you hardcore putting it all there too? - [Jared] I've been hardcore on Facebook Video since they started putting it up. - Good, good. - [Jared] I've been part of some of the beta tests that they've been doing. - How about hiring an intern who loves photography to transcribe your video and make it into blog form? - [Jared] Yeah, I transcribe most the videos. We post the transcriptions up on YouTube, we put them all over the place. I hear the transcriptions get traction on YouTube though I haven't seen any bump from that yet. - How 'bout the part that really works on YouTube, how hardcore have you been about collaborations? - [Jared] Collaborations have been difficult at this juncture. There's not a lot of other people to work with on my side. - Sure there is. You need to figure out how to integrate your narrative into other people's shit. - [Jared] Sure. Beyond photography makes total sense. - No, only beyond photography. That's the punchline. - [Jared] Yeah. - There's nothing but people vlogging, like every single vlogger on YouTube is a play for you. 'Cause photography plays. - [Jared] Good point. - Thank you. - [Jared] That was a good point. - Yeah, that's why I do this show. - [Jared] One more? - Yeah, go ahead. - [Jared] Are you spending money on YouTube? I was, we've stopped, right? We're so hardcore Instagram and Facebook right now so I believe in YouTube ads and believe there's value in it. But I would collab the fuck out of your life. You should literally email and reach out to every single vlogger on YouTube which will take you the rest of your life and your children's lives. - [Jared] Alright, thank you. - You got it, brother. That's really good advice. The collabos really are the game. Like bring value. He's a photographer and he's an amazing photographer. Go and shoot somebody's, you know how many families are vlogging that have tons of people. Email them and say I want to come on and I'll take photography of your family. You'll have some great family portraits and he'll get 4,000 subscribers and he'll fly to Ohio. Alright, solid show. Good advice in this one. I liked it. You liked it, right? It was just like a good solid Sunday afternoon while everybody's like scratching their ass watching basketball right now we're pumping out shit. You keep asking questions, I'll keep answering them. (hip hop music)