BioGuard Leadership Conference Gary Vaynerchuk Keynote | New Orleans 2017

- I'd like to introduce our first speaker of the day. Mr. Gary Vaynerchuk builds businesses. Fresh out of college he took a family wine business and grew it from $3 million to $60 million in just five years. Now he runs VaynerMedia, one of the world's hottest social media first digital agencies. Along the way, Gary became a prolific angel investor and venture capitalist investing in companies including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Uber, Birch Box before cofounding Vayner/RSE, a $25 million investment fund. He's got a track record of success. Gary was named to both Crane and Fortune magazine's 40 under 40 list in the past year. He has profiled in New York Times, Fortune and Inc. magazines and is frequently sought to share his expertise on CNN, Bloomberg TV, CNBC and many more. He's here today to provide a unique perspective on the changing perception of value. I have my own kinda interaction with Mr. Vaynerchuk. I'm watching 60 Minutes the other day and he comes on 60 Minutes and I go, "He's our speaker. " That was so cool. Ladies and gentlemen, please help us welcome Mr. Gary Vaynerchuk. (audience applause) ("Can't Stop The Feeling" by Justin Timberlake) - [Gary] First and foremost, I want to thank my mom for writing that intro. (audience laughter) That was nice. I'm really excited to be here. I'm gonna give you context on how I got here and then actually I'm gonna pontificate on what I believe but mostly I'd like to leave as much time as possible for Q& amp; A because I think theory is lovely but the fact of the matter is I'm very obsessed with the practitionership. And the goal that I have here which is I think I'll be talking about a lot of stuff that people are either blind to or don't want to believe or aren't doing and the reality is I'll deploy a lot of the energy that I was naturally gifted with and we'll all feel good and debate and then it will be next Thursday and you'll be back to your norm and a lot of this won't happen. And so, my big goal very honestly here this morning is to get one or two people to understand how phenomenal the opportunity for our businesses is in the new world and try to shift what I know is the collective appetite towards the landscape that I market in and build businesses in which is a lot of people look at these things as a negative. something they didn't grow up with and they go completely in the defense instead of understanding the offense of all of this. So, let me start by saying this, I love social media because of two things. Number one, it's just the word that represents the current state of the internet. I think when people hear the term "social media" it's very easy to kind of think it's this nice to have up-and-coming little thing. When you understand that this is now the primary device of every human being in our society and over 50% of every minute that is spent on this device is spent on one of those seven websites, you know, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, LinkedIn it starts to get a little harder to completely disrespect it as something that may sell somebody a product. And so, for me, I love social media because it sells stuff. I want to set the tone very quickly here. I did not own a computer until I was 19 years old. I was not techy. I was an awful student. I don't love technology. I don't give a crap about gadgets. I don't even want to ever own a drone but I know I will have to at some point. I'm not into this. I'm into making money because I want to buy the New York Jets. (audience laughter) And so and I think this is important. The reason I'm more excited, so I'm running out of here after this keynote and I'm going to Las Vegas to CES, the computer electronic show and I will spend the next two days spending all my time with the Fortune 500 CMOs who pay me tens of millions of dollars to do their marketing and to be very honest there is no comparison to the excitement that I have for this 60 to 90 minutes in comparison to that.

Not because of the money or the stage but because I'm so much more you than I am them. I was born in the Soviet Union. I came to U. S. when I was three. We were ridiculously poor. My family lived in a studio apartment in Queens, New York with eight family members in an apartment the size of the stage that I'm on right now. My dad made two dollars an hour being a stock boy in a liquor store in Clark, New Jersey and that's where I come from, that's who I am. I didn't know my dad until I was 14 years old because he would leave before I woke up and got home after I slept 'cause he worked every day as a stock boy and then a manager. And I don't know if any of you are immigrants, anybody here an immigrant or a child of an immigrant? Immigrants have a really interesting strategy. It's called don't spend any money on anything for a decade. (audience laughter) And that's what my parents did and they saved and my dad eventually bought a small liquor store in Springfield, New Jersey. We moved to Edison, New Jersey when my dad became the manager of the Clark, New Jersey liquor store and that's where my entrepreneurial career began. When I was six, I had a five lemonade stand franchise. (audience laughter) I manipulated, tricked, depends on how you want to word this, my friends to stand behind the lemonade stands when I was in first grade and I would ride my Big Wheels. How many of you remember Big Wheels? That little toy. I used to ride my Big Wheels at the end of the day to my locations and pick up my cash like I was Tony Soprano or something. (audience laughter) So that's who I am. I mean I'm starting to paint you a very clear picture. I actually, you know what? This is the perfect crowd. I don't usually tell this part of the story. Actually that was my second business. My first business for about two months before I segued into lemonade was to run around the neighborhood, rip people's flowers out of their yards and then ring their doorbell and sell it back to them. (audience laughter) So you're about to hear a lot of noble, care about your customers, customer service, word-of-mouth stuff but that's the seed that I come from so don't think I'm Mother Teresa. When I was 12, I started my first big business. I'm 41 so anybody in that age group probably it skews a little bit more male but if you're in that age group baseball cards were the real pop culture thing for us in fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth grade and I was making $2-3000 a weekend selling baseball cards in the malls of New Jersey. And I don't know about you but when you're 13 and 14 and you have $30,000 in cash under your bed and you're not selling weed, you're doing a good job. (audience laughter) So, you know, it's really fascinating. I'm sure for a lot of you, you feel this too as I look around kind of get the demo of this audience. It's fascinating that entrepreneurship is now cool. It's crazy to me that people follow me on the internet and think like I have micro internet celebrity around just being a businessman. For me, when I was growing up getting D's and F's in school which is what I did was extremely rare for an immigrant and was unbelievable that my parents kind of gave me that freedom to be the entrepreneur that I was. But it wasn't cool to be a businessperson. You know, grades were the proxy of your success. So I sit here and I think so much about how much opportunity came to me because of the scale of the internet. I was a D and F student. I went to college. I came home every weekend to work at my dad's liquor store. I fell in love with wine when I was 15 or 16 because people collected it. I hated working at my dad's liquor store the first two or three years because I was in the basement bagging ice all day making two bucks an hour. I hated it instead of making $1000 being a baseball card dealer at the mall, my own thing. But some around 16, I realized that people collected wine and I loved my family and I wanted to help and like any good punk entrepreneurs 16-year-old, I thought I could do it better than my dad and so I wanted to help. I was very self-aware and empathetic to this amazing opportunity my family created for me and I wanted to give back to that business but I wasn't interested in selling beer or liquor. The wine thing was very fascinating to me and at 16, 17 I went all-in, pot committed and learned more about wine than any child should. And that became my passion. I'm in my dorm room in 1994, September of 1994. I'm playing Madden '94, dominating by the way, and my friend comes in and he goes, "You have to come and see this. " I end my game, I walk into the room and my buddy's sitting there. Just a couple of them and they're at a computer. Now, I'm really one, there's some youngsters in here. For people of my age and above this will make sense. I mean I had literally at this point, I'm about to turn 19. At literally at this point have spent 15 hours on the computer. Right, nine. I mean like probably computer class but since I was trying to sell baseball cards during class I wasn't really on it. So I'm in front of this computer.

I mean I brought a word processor to do my papers on. Like just to wrap, this is only 20 years ago. Let's stick with this and then I hear sound the changes my life which (imitates dial-up modem). Some of you might remember that. The dial-up internet game where AOL was charging two bucks a minute after you used up your free minutes and I said some profound thing like, "Is this the information superhighway? " Because I had heard of this thing. And within a couple of minutes my friends were on chat rooms trying to get girls. And within the first time that I sat again, one more time for the youngsters, I actually watched people on the internet for 4 1/2 hours because it was so crazy and then I waited my turn and I got on the internet within about an hour I realized that there were these chat rooms and bulletin boards that were selling baseball cards. And within 24 hours of being on the internet, I realized that instead of opening up 1,000 wine superstores across the country and building the Toys "R" Us of wine that I was going to do this thing. And a year and half later in 1996, I launched one of the first e-commerce wine businesses in America called WineLibrary. com and that was a good decision except, and this is super important, this is going to really relate to what I hope to achieve in this room. What I'm gonna go into and what I'm gonna do in the Q& amp; A with you guys is try to push you to spend time and money on storytelling why somebody should buy your services and your pool or spa through the platforms that exist here. I'm going to tell you with a lot of data and a crap load of heart why I can replicate direct mail, like I'm doing every day for Wine Library right now, and deliver 4 to 6 times the result by making Facebook ads act like direct mail instead of direct mail. I will do all that over the next hour and change but here's the part you have to listen to carefully of where Sasha Vaynerchuk, my dad, did something really well. I launched WineLibrary. com in 1996. It cost $15,000. I just want everybody to understand, our business was doing $3 million and change in top line revenue on 10% gross profit. We were taking home $340,000 a year before our expenses. Luckily, he didn't have a whole lot of employees and he was able to take home a little bit of money but we were not making a lot of money. The prior six years' marketing budget was less than $15,000. And I don't mean per year. I mean combined. So I spend $15,000 as a small business in 1996 to launch WineLibrary. com. Couple of fun facts. Number one, I knew nothing about technology or the internet. The Russian guy named Alex that built it for me ripped me off at a level where is there camera here? Yeah, Alex if I find you, I'm gonna slice your throat. (audience laughter) Sorry, I just needed that for me. So, I spent $15,000 on a piece of crap website and in the first year we sold $817 worth of wine on the website for the entire year. Now I don't know how many of you have a Soviet father but that was not the ROI that Sasha was looking for. What's important is that it took me time to figure out what was going on in that world. I was still going to school so it was half-pregnant but the punchline is that same business when I took over and was back from school full time on. com and the store I grew that business from a $3 to a $60 million business in a five-year window. I did it because of this. If you really understand why this is now become the thing that I've attached myself to that I say and how important it is to you, everything will change in your business. And by the way, what I'm talking about today and I think you know it's funny to watch the presidential election caught people off guard in the way that was marketed. If you care about the nonprofit that you're associated with. If you care about helping your school raise money or whatever it is, what we are living through my friends is the greatest shift in communication since the printing press. The way we communicate, do you understand that there are a grown ass men in this room that sent poop emoji's via text last night? (audience laughter) You're, you this is not high school now, your parents are living on these platforms. Your mother is on Facebook right this minute. And you know what's great about her? She goes through it real slow. Which lets me sell to her even better. The great, pssst, secret right now for me is I'm converting more dollars at 50 to 80-year-olds than I am from 20 to 30-year-olds on Facebook because the speed in which they

go through the content. The amount of you that sit here and act one way. You've got an Instagram account. You're on Facebook. You're debating if you should get on Snapchat and then when you've put on your business hat and clothes and go into the office you don't market that way 'cause you don't think your customers on it 'cause you decided it's a young person sport even though your old, John, is fascinating to me and that dichotomy in 2017 world is where all the opportunity it. Attention is the only thing that matters. Why was I able to build Wine Library with no money? This is not a venture capital based Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook story. This is a small business in 1998 story with no money. It was because I made every penny that I spent work it's face off and how did I do that? Instead of doing direct mail and some of the other things, newspapers, and I did all those things by the way. Just so everybody knows I did direct mail. If anybody here, anybody here from New Jersey? Right, so you might've saw the billboards that I put on the Turnpike and 78. Like I did everything but I always created call to actions to understand the ROI against it 'cause I have the benefit of being a retailer just like you. This is easy. You will know if these dollars are effective because you control the whole funnel of the transaction. When I work with Budweiser or Under Armour, they got so many different behaviors going and they're not selling it direct, it's happening in other channels, they don't know if it's TV or if it's radio or if it's marketing or promotions or Facebook. You have that advantage so here's what happened. In 1997, I had a huge email newsletter that I built by every time anybody walked into the wine shop, I collected their email and I built a huge 100,000+ person email newsletter and I had 89. 9% open rates because in 1997 nobody was sending email. And so, what I was doing was I was day trading attention. In 1997, when there was only a table of this size at the North New Jersey Chamber of Commerce event when I was like, "Hey guys, the internet," while they were spending money on direct mail, I was sending email at no cost. It was free and I was selling faster and more and people were paying attention even though not everybody was on email. My friends, it doesn't matter if you're on Instagram or Snapchat or Facebook, it matters that your customer is. You don't get to decide on a focus group of one that this is the way that everybody acts and is. If you do not understand that every penny you pour into this platform to try to sell what you sell is a higher ROI than anything else you've done then you are missing the absolute opportunity in '17. And let me explain what that means. The biggest fear I have in this room is success. I hate coming to these kind of conferences where it's the best of the bunch because success, I love when people, I'll do this whole thing and they'll be spending all their money on print or not at all. I mean there's a lot of people here who are first, second, 10, 15, 20 years in business, everybody here knows this is a word-of-mouth business. And I don't mean pools and spas. I mean everything. Word-of-mouth is the game. What I'm stunned by is the complete misunderstanding that social media is the current plumbing of word-of-mouth in our society. If you crush it for somebody and you put in super nice and it's all great and you're unbelievable and you did everything perfect in your services, how do people do you think that person told in 1986? In 1994? In 2001? A couple of friends when they came over? Seven? Nine? Do you know how many people they now tell after they take one picture and put it on Facebook and Instagram. Everybody they know. And so, to me, I'm fascinated because I've lived it. This isn't, "Hey, I've invented this thing Pinterest and "you should use it. " This is we have no money. We spent it on email marketing in '97. Then something came out called Google. The only time my dad fought me in my career of something that I wanted to do was Google. Google comes out, it starts doing better than Yahoo. I'm fascinated by it and then they start something called AdWords, right? At this point, you all know what that is. The day came out, I wanted to buy the word "wine" on AdWords. It was five cents a click, minimum bid. Nobody was on it yet. I was there so I start running it and it is crushing. There's never been anything close to it. That run of 2001, '02, '03 of Google AdWords, I've never had better marketing success other than what I'm living through right now on Facebook ads and Instagram influencers doing promotion right now. That's why I'm so loud right now. If you've watch my career, seems like a couple you on body language have known a little bit about me. I was very quiet for the last two or three years while I was building VaynerMedia and doing things so it was nothing crazy.

There was nothing that was so blatantly underpriced if you day trade attention. Right now, that is Facebook advertising. That is Instagram influencers. A mom in a neighborhood with 1,700 people that follow her on Instagram that you could pay $150 or give her free services for and she gives you a shout out and you convert four people, that. So to me, Google AdWords was insane but my dad fought me because he said to me so it's working, it's black and white. I show him I go, "I want to bet the farm. " The one thing that is great about marketing is when you've got the best hand, you go pot committed. So I wanted to go all-in on Google Adwords and my dad was, check this out, my dad didn't want to do it 'cause he thought our competitors would go to Google and click our ads. Like that's how early it was back then. And so, anyway, luckily we did it. We exploded and then my career took a huge turn in 2006. YouTube came out. I thought it was gonna be a big deal. I started making a wine show and this is, I want to go into this phase right now and this is where I'm hopeful one or two of you really latch onto and try to perform this for yourselves because this is my belief where there's the most upside for your business in the room. Out of everything I just got finished saying two minutes ago that Facebook ads and Instagram influencers are the best arbitrage and the best buy that I've seen in marketing in a decade but what I'm about to go into has the most upside for you to transcend the revenue of your business. The problem is it's extremely hard. But here we go. In 2006 YouTube comes out, I go, "Holy crap, this is a huge," and I sit down I start a show called Wine Library TV. I send when my stock boys to Best Buy, he buys a camera. I sit down in my office. I get the wine staff to pick me some bottles of wine to taste and I'm thinking that I'm about to do QVC, right? That's the mentality I went in with. If you're grew up in New Jersey, I was really gonna go Crazy Eddie meets QVC. And so I'm ready, I'm pumped and here we go and that camera goes on and I realize, "Holy crap, this is going to sit on the "internet forever," and literally like sometimes I look back at episode one I can see, 'cause I know myself obviously, I can see somewhere around a minute or two in like uh-oh this is not what I should do. And right then and there, in the first episode in the first five minutes of something I went on to do 1000 episodes of, over four and a half, five years, I realized I needed to become America's wine guy, not a salesman for Wine Library. And the reason it became his huge phenomenon for 90% of you that don't know it became a show that hundreds of thousands of people started watching a day and I did five days a week and the format was me sitting at a table drinking four bottles of wine. (audience laughter) By the way, best gig I ever had. But what confused people, as you can imagine, what confused people was these were wines that I had hundreds of cases in stock of I would pour it and taste it and would tell people not to drink it. Yeah, my staff was the same way. Not to drink it. That it reminded me of a sheep taking a poop, right? Or that it tasted like rubber or that it was too sweet and it was chaos internally within my company. But what I was doing was I was building credibility. And I was leveling up. I don't want you to be necessarily the consultant of pool and spa services. You could even go into home decor. landscaping. You've got your skills but if you are an extrovert, if you are somebody who thinks that they can feel comfortable in front of the camera now I'm gonna take it to another place. I don't know how, how many of you are now or in the last year have actively listened to a podcast of any sort? Raise your hands. Raise 'em high. High, I want to see it. Raise it high 'cause I, actually do me a favor. It's early and it's good to get blood. If you, all the hands, stand up for a second. I want people to visually see this. If you actively in the last year listened to a podcast of some sort. So, don't sit yet, I want to really watch this. This is a very high percentage of a room that again I think we can all collectively agree, this is not a 15-year-old teenage girl aged crowd, right? What's happened is technology is changing. Podcast, thank you for standing, I appreciate it. So podcasts is another place where I want you to debate. Here's where I'm actually going. I am asking, I am challenging this room to debate this concept. What would it look like if you started a weekly show, whether it was a radio show on podcast, video show on Facebook video and YouTube or whether it was a weekly thing that you wrote on Medium or LinkedIn or Facebook, what would happen if you didn't think of yourselves as resellers and retailers and service providers but as a media company, retailer? Now, listen again, this is the great advantage of coming from

exactly where you live. If I walked in to my dad's office in 2006 and pitched what I just said 'cause it's what I lived, he would've punched me in the face. He would've said I have no idea what you're talking about. This 10 years ago, 11 years of right now everybody sitting in saying what is this, where is he going? What does that mean? What I know is the following; all the attention, all of it is going here. What that means is distribution has been commoditized. No longer do you have to pay for distribution if you can produce the content that is effective. It's smart to pay for distribution on these platforms but you don't have to. It can happen organic. You can get there and you could spend some of your money building it. What also happens is your end consumer starts latching onto you at a higher level than just the transaction that you're trying to do with them. And for anybody in this room and I did my homework before I came to do this talk, anybody in this room who isn't trying to triple down, 10X down, on being in the service business above and beyond after the first transaction is just not running a smart business as they can. That is where all the economics are in what you do for a living and if you can actually use the pool or spa as the gateway drug to services around the entire house, let alone those two units, that's when you start getting into the economics that change you from being a seven-figure business into an eight figure business. Very honestly, by the way, I just want everybody to understand one thing that's very important to me, everything that I talk about is hard. takes a crap load of work. Everything I talk about takes away from you watching entire seasons of "House of Cards. " So if you sit in this room and you've put in your 30 years and you're happy with how much money's in the bank and you're feeling good and you're a little tired, you don't have to listen to me. But if you want more this is offense. If you want more, this is offense and I promise you here's the part that really makes me ponder. Right now, it's offense. In 2022, it's going to be defense. How many people here are retiring in the next five years? And I don't mean you're gonna crush it and retire and buy a boat. I mean you're old and you're finished? (audience laughter) Raise your hands high. Alright, so for the four of you old dudes, respect. Go fish. (audience laughter) For the 99. 8% of the rest of this room, everything I'm talking about right now, if you have the audacity to own your own business and live the life that entrepreneurship and owning your own business allows you and you do not put in the hours over the next half decade to educate yourself, I do not want anybody running out of this talk saying, "Wait a minute, he's right. "I'm in a letter 23-year-old niece now do her thing. " This is not your outsourcing it to that young buck and I know that's why some of you laughed, you're like, "Yeah, Nancy gonna," no, not Nancy, you John you're gonna do it. If you own your business in this room you need to spend 50 to 100 hours on the internet reading or watching videos or listening, I don't know how you learn but you need to understand where your end consumer's attention is because you're not to be able to reach them and word-of-mouth, listen guys, one more time. Think about this, this is so good. I've actually never said this publicly just literally came to my head, you know how we're talking about social norms? You know you're talking about how upset you are? One of my favorite debates of parents right now is they say that their children aren't, don't know how to be social. They've decided, parents in this room, have decided that our children, their children are socially awkward because they only live in the phone. They've decided that the way humans communicate is only defined by looking somebody in the eye and using their mouth. They have been romantic in this room about the platform that one communicates through instead of actually communicating. Every child 8 to 12 to 17 in America right now is dramatically more social than you. Because when you were 12 and none of your friends were around and it was 4:30 on a Tuesday you went outside and threw a ball against the wall. (audience laughter) You interacted with a tire rapped to a tree. So you may not like the way they communicate but I promise you they're the most social that we've ever seen. They're just using a device and a platform that we didn't have access to. Some of you begged to have your own phone line in your room so you could be on the phone with your girlfriend for seven hours watching 90210.

Yes, I don't know how social that was but here's what I know. I know that the thing that you're complaining about is going to hurt your business because as we continue to communicate that way the way we recommend products and service will continue to happen that way. When 29-year-old Sally who's 17 or 19 or 21 right now is only talking to her friends when they first buy their or 41-year-old Sally, I always try, I want to remind everybody. This is not 2008 anymore. This is not what's coming. This is what happened. 98% of the Fortune 500 CPG brands in America declined last year because they continue to think the following, watch this. You really want to get is the macro of all this. How many people here now when they watch television when you watch your favorite TV shows outside of live sports, now watch them when you want to watch them not when they air? Netflix, DVR, TiVo, on-demand, raise your hands. High, high. Great everybody, 90%. How many of you fast-forward every single commercial when given the opportunity? Raise your hands. 90% and even if the brands, my brands that spend, stick with me here, collectively tens I think it's now $80 billion to make 30 second videos and then air them in-between shows that you actually want to watch, even if they're lucky enough to have you have a chance to see them because the remote control falls off the bed. (audience laughter) Even if that miracle happens, every person here the second their favorite show goes into commercial grabs this. And this is where the attention is and that at a macro is what I'm worried about you. You're not, you are not like Sonic restaurants or Toyota my client in spending on television. You're spending on something else. But boy, is my intuition that it's not being spent in the best place that dollar can be spent or even more scary because you've been so successful and you were the king or queen of that town you've gone completely complacent and aren't spending at all 'cause word-of-mouth is in process which creates the greatest vulnerability and I promise you in 2022 and in 2024 it's not just the kid at the table there was going to do it better, it's also going to be the macro discussion of, you think Amazon cares about your feelings? You think Walmart spent $20 billion buying e-commerce sites so you can sell pools and spas? Where do you think the world's going? And so, if you are not planning on retiring in the next five years then you need to start really understanding what's happening because I'm just talking about simple social media right now. How many people have an Alexa in the home? Raise your hand. their home? An Echo, one more time. Alexa Echo. Okay. How many people don't know what that is actually? It's okay, I just want to get a sense. Great, man that guy in the back there loves retiring, loves not knowing anything. I love that dude. I just got to find him, yeah. He's old school, huh? I like that dude. Alright, anyway. (audience laughter) Let me just give you the average day for somebody needs to have their pool serviced in 2023. Alexa, I want my pool serviced. That's it. And I'd think it be really smart if you understood how social media worked in 2017 so that when you have to understand how Alexa's algorithm works in 2020 that you're the answer to that question not Amazon itself or somebody else. Guys, the stakes are much higher. Please do me a favor, please go read what happened during the Industrial Revolution and how many people went out of business out of complacency because they didn't understand that we were living through the biggest technology shift of that era. We are fully in it. We're now in it and so over the next decade, I want to remind you that 10 years ago everything we live on now didn't exist. 10, 10 years ago it's 11 for some of the websites, 10 years ago no smartphone. 10 years ago. 10 years ago, YouTube's 11, Facebook's 11. These are, if you think a lot's happened in the last 10 years wait 'til you see what happens over the next 10 years. The stakes are enormously high and I'm not here fear mongering.

This is just what's happening. Very honestly, the fact that you're the crème de la crème, I assume that the majority of people in this room are like yes. This is the opportunity. This is where I transition from a $6 million a year business to $15 million a year business. This is when I transition from $180,000 a year business to a $2. 9 million a year business. This is pure opportunity. The problem is and this is where everybody defaults into they raise their hand, Gary, I didn't grow up with this. Me neither, Carl. (audience laughter) I didn't grow up with this either, Carl. And guess what, Carl? You didn't grow up driving and you figured it out. Understanding the digital landscape and what our consumers are doing on it is now oxygen for businesses. If you do not understand it, you will be destroyed. I've lived this. I gave a keynote, so I was an early investor in Uber. I give a keynote at the limo and taxi service thing and when they announced me they said Uber and a couple booed. Half of them, just like the Alexa thing didn't even know it existed yet. And I said, my friends, you have to understand what this means. And where I really went with the talk and this is where I want to go with you to bring you value versus telling you a story, here's my thesis. My thesis is very simple, it is far better to put yourself out of business than to have somebody else do it for you. And what I mean by that is if you know your vulnerability, whatever you heard here whatever you know, well then you should start doing that to curtail that vulnerability and the reason I want you to build a media brand around you is no technology, not Alexa, not Facebook, not anything that gets invented that we don't know exist now, none of that builds or beats brand because they're not gonna ask Alexa for "Let me service my pool or who should I go with? " They're gonna say I want to go with David. Call David and fix my pool. And that's called brand. And there's a very big difference, my friends, between brand and sales. And 90% of people are in the sales business. The direct mail is a call to action, it's a sale. The Facebook stuff that you've been doing and I did some homework it's not working 'cause you're selling. You're not even trying to romance a girl, you're going right in. (audience laughter) How about making a video that's instructional that can actually help people to know what to do. Now you've provided value. I taught people how to decant, this is very nerdy, my decanting how to decant wine video that was the gateway to $1. 7 million worth of sales. It was very easy. I watched it. They'd go to YouTube, they'd watch the decanting video. They'd click WineLibrary. com 'cause it was linked below, they'd go to the website and they'd buy something. When you provide value upfront, you win. I've written four New York Times best selling books. The one that is sold the least is called "The Thank You Economy. " It's the one that matters the most. And the reason it's sold the least is 'cause nobody wants to do the work. When people are done reading it they put down a say, "Screw that. " They don't want to provide the upfront value and all I'm trying to do in my career is provide the upright value. Basically my entire thesis of selling which was the next book I wrote, "Jab, Jab, Right Hook" is how do I guilt you into buying my stuff? How do I provide you so much value that it would be inconceivable to you to go with somebody else. And that is what I want to challenge everybody here to think about as a thesis and then what I want to spend the next 55, 50 minutes I want to start Q& amp; A pretty quickly so let me frame up Q& amp; A. I'll talk a little bit then we'll get going, then we'll see how Q& amp; A. I want to go very detail oriented. When we go in to Q& amp; A I want to be like, "Hey Gary, Sal, own two stores in Minnesota, "you know, shops. "We tried Facebook, it didn't work. " Let's go very deep like how I set up? Is Snapchat worth it? Go very, to me this is the opportunity that this organization has created for you, this is I think you can go watch the first 30 minutes of this on YouTube. What BioGuard did for you is gave me enough time to do the Q& amp; A so please ask me your direct questions digitally. What websites still matter? How do you think about this? Let me give you some other things. By the way, day trading attention my most exciting meeting is with a guy by name of Bob Pittman tomorrow who started MTV who owns iHeartRadio. That's why I asked about the podcast. My belief is that drive time radio is starting to get low enough in cost that it might be a deal again. So I'm not digital-ist. I'm an attention-ist. I don't care where your attention is if tomorrow I woke up and Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and LinkedIn all disappeared I'd be pumped because my contemporaries would be confused and I would be

spending every minute figuring out where everybody went. And I would know for next 24 to 36 months it would be underpriced because while people debated if it's gonna stick around or matter I'd be executing and selling stuff. So, that's the punchline. Are we in a position, do you think digitally first? The answer is no for 85, 90% of this audience. Are you, if you are, for the other 15%, are you complacent in the things that got you here which was you were just like me and you won on Google? Google Adwords but now that's changing 'cause that expense is going higher and that's not branding 'cause that sales. That's just blue letters. Have you figured out how to make two-minute and three-minute videos and put them on Facebook to drive your business. Have you figured out how to get home and lifestyle Instagram accounts? Paying them $100, $200 for a shout out which then drives conversion for you? Have you figured out the new arbitrages and inevitably what are you gonna then go and do about it? Because the opportunity is real. I believe for small businesses in America you're on the clock. When I gave this talk, a very different version in 1999, you know who's D-Day it was? It was called bookstores. They didn't know it but they were done and then who was on D-Day in 2009, '10, '11 cab and limo drivers. Do you know how sad it is personally for me? As I told you was born in Russia, some of my dad's friends went to LA and started, you know, drove a cab for 7, 8, 10 years. Then eventually saved up all the money and bought a couple of cars and built their business. Got to that age of 55, 56. Had something of a business that was worth something they were about to sell it off and in 24 months Uber destroyed the value of their business by 90%. One of my dad's friends was gonna sell his business for $3. 7 million decided not to for another year or two and sold for $370,000. That's just real so as we sit here today, I promise you the Marriott and the Hilton weren't sitting around four years ago and saying, "What are our threats in the future? " I promise you nobody raised their hand in that room and said, "Hey, wait a minute what if somebody invents a website "that is like the eBay of people's actual homes and "instead of staying in hotels "we would stay in each other's homes? " How many people here have used an AirBnB or on AirBnB? Raise your hands. Raise them high. I want people to look. How many people here don't know what AirBnB is? I expect some, raise your hand, it's okay. It's okay, don't worry. AirBnB stands for air bed and breakfast. It is a website where people list their homes and apartments when they're not there and other people stay in people's homes. That's what's hurting the hotel industry and so you sit here today and I just want you to do good content on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram 'cause that's where the attention is and I'm worried if there's some kid that's Sally right now is about to invent something that's gonna really hurt you and so that's why this is what I call almost like digital fitness. There's no way to run a marathon if you haven't been on the treadmill preparing for it. The most important thing for me for you to do Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and videos and content and podcasts, the most important thing for me is that it's getting you into the mindset of that world in case you really need it in three or four years. Right now, I'm sitting here and talking to you about the differences of you growing your business next year 4% versus growing it 18%. I don't want to come back here in four years and talk about the difference between you selling your business for $3. 7 million or $370,000. Thank you. (audience applause) So who's got questions? Great. How many mic runners do we have? One? Oh three, awesome. Great, let's start with this lovely lady here. Thanks for having me guys. Jesus, I go in such a weird trance. I feel like I'm just like getting out of it. Hey, what's your name? - Hey, my name's Mallory. - How are you Mallory? - I'm from the Chicagoland area - [Gary] Little closer to your mouth, - So... - A little closer. - Closer? - Yeah. - OK one of my questions is, where do you draw the line on informational and actually teaching someone how to do something that you're already trying to sell? Like for our industry, service is really big, and I know our owners have always worried how much content we put on social media so that we're not selling ourselves out. - [Gary] If you don't do it somebody else is gonna do it. - Okay. - Guys, have you been on the internet? What do you think, you're not gonna do it Mal, and your homies are not gonna do it? What's gonna happen is some entrepreneur's gonna do it who works for one of your companies, become the guy, and then get all the referral business to come through him.

And then he's holding, whoever has the end consumer's attention has the leverage. So, give it away. I would absolutely give away milk to sell cows, all day long, but people don't wanna do that, because they're used to selling milk. - [Mallory] Right. - And that's why the guy that comes along and gives away the milk for free kills all the other businesses. And the problem for you is there's no cost of entry to giving away the information. If I knew what the hell to do with the stuff you guys do, I could do it right now. Luckily I don't so please help me. But you know... - [Mallory] Okay. - You know what I mean? - [Mallory] That's always been the work. - And by the way, just 'cause you're now gonna tell them 'cause you met some guy who wrote books, they're not gonna believe you. - [Mallory] No, I know. - [Gary] They're not gonna change. That's why they're gonna lose, 'cause they deserve to lose. It makes me happy that they're gonna lose. That, by the way, that's capitalism! Everybody loves capitalism and business when it's in your favor. You loved it when you outworked the old guy that used to be in town and took the business. You don't like it when it happens to you. That's why I make fun of all my crony 60 and 70 and 80 year old white Republican homies that are my friends who want to then, after hustling and making money want to change laws to protect them, I'm like uh uh. You're old now, you will die. (audience laughter) By the way, unless, my business partner's Stephen Ross, he owns 30% of VaynerMedia, he's my partner in my fund, he owns the Miami Dolphins, he's the biggest real estate developer in America, it's called Related, he's worth $13 billion, he's 76 years old, and if I text him right now and say hey, I just found this weird shed in Louisiana and I think we can buy it for 100,000 and flip it into a million dollar deal, he'll text me back in one minute, he loves the game. It's not about the money, loves the game. And that's the way it is. Question? Hey man. - Steven Metz Central Jersey Pools, Freehold, New Jersey. - [Gary] Awesome, where do you live? - Freehold. - [Gary] Oh Freehold, I didn't catch that. - Yes. - [Gary] Yeah that's awesome. - So we've grown our Facebook audience to a large number but when we post videos-- - [Gary] Organic reach is dead. - It's dead. - [Gary] Yes. - So, is there any way to get around that? - [Gary] Nope, pay. - Just pay. - [Gary] Just pay, and I'm glad you asked that Steven because that hurt so many people's feelings. I wanted to remind all those people, well you pay other places. So what happened was, it was funny. If you check videos online I've talked about this for years, it's starting to correct itself. That was huge for me, and my selfish interests because while everybody was emotional and saying that Zuck screwed them, I was spending money 'cause it was underpriced. It's incredible, you can target people that are $250,000 household income within five mile radius of your office, and you can pick other targeting. The big thing though, so yes pay, it's still under priced. In two or three years, five years, it'll be like Google and it'll be priced accordingly, and then it's gonna be like Google in some categories, over priced. But the key for you to really think about is the content. 'Cause once you get my attention, like this keynote, I have all your attention! The framework has been set for the attention. If this talk sucked, nothing good was gonna happen for me. Right? So really think about the content, back to Mallory's question right? What are you actually putting out there? Is it just feature, feature? Testimonials. You know like, oh let's talk about the "Thank You Economy. " I want to challenge everybody here, thank you my friend, appreciate it, continued success. I want to challenge everybody here to a concept. I call it the Jay Cutler thesis, let me explain. (laughing) Some football fans. So, I'm writing the "Thank You Economy," it comes out in 2011, so in 2010, I asked my order department at WineLibrary. com to search people's names on Google with the word Twitter after it. So, based on when somebody orders something. So if Sally Thompson ordered something, every order. There was two people internally that went online typed in Sally Thompson Twitter, and that'd be hard 'cause there'd be 17 Sally Thompsons could they figure out if it's the right person? Somebody like Gary Vaynerchuk would've been great, one of a kind name. So we got some of those. So we took some of those things and then we followed them on Twitter. Want everybody to pay attention to this 'cause this really works on Facebook. This is the reason I want every single transaction you make, that you figure out a way to be following that person on Facebook. Make it a business practice that that's a prerequisite, or you do something for them, make that relationship, here's why. Not them follow you, pay attention to how much I reverse stuff. You follow them, let me explain. So we find this guy who places a $287 order for a case of Pinot Grigio to Chicago. And we find him online, unique name they find him. And every Tweet he puts out is about Jay Cutler. Jay Cutler you're the man. Jay Cutler great pass. Jay Cutler what the (hums) you know, Jay Cutler this, Jay Cutler that, that. So, I keep getting presented while I'm traveling, hey we found this, this person's into surfing but not really.

Oh we got somebody, this guy's really into Jay Cutler. I go great, go on eBay and buy a Jay Cutler signed jersey and send it to him and write a note that says thank you for your business at Wine Library, that's it. And the person on the other line goes but he only bought a $270 thing and we made $13 of profit, we're a premium price leader. I said uh huh. He goes okay, so we bought a $330 Jay Cutler jersey and shipped it to him signed, or 289. And I'm pumped, I'm like this person's gonna be blown away. Right, they bought a cocamanian case of Pino Grigio, this is 2011, right, he's gonna be like how the hell did they even know? I'm super pumped. And we sent four or five other things, little things not as extravagant. And some of those people wrote back emails. And this guy has not written back for three weeks. And I'm like where the hell is this son of a bitch, right? (audience laughter) And so I'm waiting and I'm waiting, and finally I'm about to board a plane and I get a phone call and they said, big, we got 'em. I'm like great. I'm like what did he do? They go, it's actually a little bit different. I'm like go ahead. They're like, we just got a $4,800 burgundy order from Plano, Texas. I'm like great. What do you mean? They go let us read you the note in the order. Hey Wine Library, first of all, great burgundy selection. This is insane, your prices are incredible. Can you hold the order 'cause it's a little hot right now in Texas, can you ship it in the fall? P. S., you sent my friend John a Jay Cutler jersey, that's how I became aware of your website. P. S. S., I'm a huge Bruce Springsteen fan. (audience laughter) If your company, whether it's you or an intern or a junior employee, is following every single person that you've ever sold a pool or spa or servicing on Facebook, and they see that wife posts that it's the first day of nursery school for their daughter Charlotte, and you go and send that person to Target and buy some nice flowers or gifts and bring it to them and say congrats. Or you call them on their birthday. Or you realize they're a big sports fan and their team's playing in the playoffs. They're a Dolphins fan and they're playing in the playoffs for the first time in 15 years in the playoffs, and you send them the chicken wings and catering and say thank you for their business. That word of mouth will change your business. Because I'm a salesman and I know that after we make the sale, we go hunting for the next one. And I know that in 1996, when you do something like that, that those people would always talk about you and tell that story. I know in 2017, those people are gonna take four pictures and put them on nine websites and everybody in your town will know that you're a business with a little bit more soul than the ability to fix or sell them that product or service. This is the effort and the uniqueness of using social media and digital media as a gateway to create human interaction. I use this as the first step in my chess match to shake your hand. Do you understand? So many of you think this is replacing something, when you don't realize it became the gateway to the next thing. 10 years ago, it was super weird to be dating somebody you met on the internet. Today, every 20-year-old I know swipes to the right and left 20 hours a day. So social norms change. There was a time when Elvis shook his hips and grandmas and moms all over this country thought he was the devil. Have you seen what people are posting on Instagram? (audience laughter) Questions? There's one over here, one over here. It's a race. Okay, people are very close. Alright. - [Travis] So with all the information-- - What's your name? - [Travis] Travis Hogan. - Travis. - [Travis] Fiesta Pools. So where do you start? You name so many different things. Do you go home with content and you have to make it relevant that people want to watch or else you're just like every other person-- - [Gary] So, Trav, let's start from the beginning. Keep, stay up. We'll use you to really bring a ton of value. - [Travis] Great. (audience laughter) - So Trav, what are you doing now? Anything? - We've done some Facebook ads. I mean, to be honest, not a whole lot. But we've done a few things. So, Facebook ads, we're doing Google ads. - [Gary] How much? - 1,500 a month in AdWords on Google and 500 on Facebook. - [Gary] And what else do you do? - We do some print. - Media direct.

Probably 10,000 a year. Just in print. - [Gary] Yep. - Other, word of mouth is where we get a lot... - [Gary] So how much marketing dollars do you spend a year, you think? - Probably 40,000, 50,000. - And so the rest is word of mouth. That's really driving the business, right? - [Travis] Correct. - So look, very honestly, man? Trav, I think first and foremost, how many customers have you had in the history of your business? - Say it again, I'm sorry. - [Gary] How many customers have you had in the history of your business? - Probably 10,000. - [Gary] Do you have the data? - A lot of it, yes. - [Gary] Yeah, I would really, really latch on to the last thing I just did. First of all, with that limited a budget, I wanna maximize sweat, not cash. So let's go back and look at those 10,000 people. If I bought into your business and I was a new partner, obviously you'd be like "Hey, Gary, you do the marketing. " I'm like "No shit, Trav. " (Travis and audience laughter) - Yes. - So I would say of the 50,000, I'd probably spend 15,000 on thank you economy, right? I'd probably get an intern, because people always want to work and learn. Intern to do Facebook and Twitter data. You'll find somebody, if you try. An intern, very low cost, to reach out and follow all 10,000 people. All of them, I mean it. It's gonna take the whole summer. - [Travis] So do you friend them? - [Gary] Uh-huh. - Alright. - [Gary] And you friend them as your business, so you have to have a business page, not you. - [Travis] Yeah, got it. - 'Cause, I mean, what's Trav up to, you know what I mean? And so-- - [Travis] (laughs) Hashtag creepy? - Yeah. (audience laughter) Can you zoom in on the beard? And so of those 10,000, 847 will accept your friendship. First of all, of those 10,000, 6,900 are still there inactive, so 894. And those 894... And probably work backwards, right? I would attack heavily everybody in the last 18 months, because it's still fresh. How long you been in business? - 60 years. - [Gary] Jesus. - Yeah, I had to stop and think. - Yeah. Let me reframe it, let's restructure. The last two years, every customer, follow them on Facebook and then spend $10,000 on surprise and delight. You know? The other thing you can do while they're doing that is you should go to every local business in town and try to make biz dev deals. Be like, you go to a local business, the barber, and be like "Listen, I know this is gonna sound weird. "I was in Louisiana and there's this weird guy, "he gave a talk and he made me do this, so bear with me. "I want to surprise some of my clients with your services. "I think this could be a great word of mouth for you. "Are you willing to give me five free haircuts? " Let me save you time. He or she's gonna say yes. So now all of a sudden, we're gonna get $40,000 worth of services for, you might not even have to spend 10,000. Remember when I said what I talk about is hard? This is the "House of Cards" part. This is the "Call of Duty" you want your business to grow but you're on four goddamn softball teams. Right? So this is what I would do. The rest, then, I would do is reach out to people in your community that are making content. So it's searched on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube of young kids and other actors. Where do you live? - Tulsa. - Great. Plenty, plenty of content producers. See if some of them want to make the funny videos or the interesting videos. Drive the costs down. And then I would save the last $30,000, 20,000 of it on Facebook ads against that content in the local area, against high net worth individuals that can afford the products and services. - [Travis] Thank you. - [Gary] You got it. - Yeah. - [Peter] So, I work for BioLab as well. - Great. - What role can we-- - [Gary] What's your name? - Peter. - [Gary] Peter. - Nice to meet you. - [Gary] Nice to meet you man. - What role can we play to help Travis and all the other dealers do that, because we have scale, right? We should be able to help them venture into these channels. - [Gary] You know it's funny, we were talking back stage. Vayner, my company, we've gone from zero to 100 million in revenue in six years. What happened is, now we're only able to work with the biggest companies in the world because we're fancy and expensive. Over the holiday, I'm like, "This sucks. " I want to help people that I'm like, so I've spent the last six months, and we're just about to roll it out, of a program that is somewhere in the ballpark of $350,000 to $400,000 a year, you know. I want to start working with more companies that look like you guys because if you then start doing better actions like this with your marketing dollars then you can start using them as case studies to show them and I want to make you do the scaling the un-scalable. We have to remember, what you're doing they may not have the budget for, so it's not that I want the 350 for anything other than amplification. We're still going to do the same kind of stuff as well, but I think the number one, it's parenting. The best way to parent is set an actual example. - [Peter] Good deal, thank you. - Cool. My friend, oh hey, how are you? - [Angela] Good. - What's your name? - Angela. - [Angela] From upstate New York. - Awesome.

- Our biggest social media concern is reviews. - [Gary] That's not a concern, it's uncontrollable. - Right. - [Gary] Go to Glassdoor right now and everybody I've ever fired at VaynerMedia says I'm the worst piece of crap they've ever met. - Right, so how do you respond? - [Gary] I don't. - You just leave it blank? - Because anybody who's smart in the world, especially if they're going to buy a product and service that costs something is going to take an anonymous review with a grain of salt. So how do I do it? I think that most people when they think about reviews, become ostriches and put their head in the sand. What I try to do is become Loyola Marymount basketball 1992. I know that's very nerdy. I'm trying to win the game 147 to 132. The biggest reason you need to get louder is if you don't get loud, somebody else is going to be loud for you. - [Angela] Okay. - [Gary] I can leave a negative review for every one of you right now. - [Angela] Alright, that's it then. (audience laughter) - So, you know, I'm doing that for effect because it was funny, but the real punchline is people are going to leave reviews. What do you think, just by not being active on the internet, people are just going to not write reviews? People have written reviews. So what's the punchline here? - [Man] Should you be pushing people to review you though? - I mean, I think when you do the right ac, buy somebody chicken wings to watch a football game, they might leave a review. - [Man] For sure. - You know, I think whenever you ask for something it's not as pure as if it would have happened. Sure, again, this is the beauty of having retention. This is why again, I'm a businessman, I happen to be good at marketing. If you're not deploying services on top of your sales, it's just not smart. You're leaving so much money on the table. So first, I would do that and then I would find ways to be in touch with those people as often as possible and then not just when you're asking them for goddamn money. You're super in touch when you want cash. How about when something big in their life happened? How about actually building a relationship? My friends, as we go more Jetsons, the people that act like the Flintstones are going to win. Your grandparents are more theoretically prepared for social media than you are, because they invented the baker's dozen. They invented when you walked into the shop they started cutting your roast beef because they knew who you were. They invented coming over your house and giving you a cake when your grandmother died. Now you have technology and you can scale that. Can we please deploy some soul and scale it? My friend back there? Yes, let's get him a mic. - How are you, my friend? - Pretty good, Russ Michael, DMV Pools, New York. - [Gary] Very Nice. - Two-part question. - [Gary] Please. - Blogs. - [Gary] Blogs. - They were very big. - [Gary] Yes. - But you're pushing video. - [Gary] I am. - Okay. - MASH used to be the number one show on television. - [Russ] Okay. (audience laughter) Regarding content on the videos. Lots of our vendors are producing them. You're saying to do it on your own. - [Gary] Correct. - Home-grown, ignore that. - [Gary] Yes, I mean, you don't ignore it. Maybe when you get really to a scale where you may have a video person that knows what to do with it, maybe they can take that, edit pieces out, but if you're putting out the same content that everybody else is putting out, 'cause you're all lazy, and you're just pushing republish, you're not differentiating yourself. - [Russ] Okay, all right, thank you. - [Gary] You're welcome. More of that, please, by the way, that was super helpful. It's very unusual for me to have this much Q& amp; A time. It's a great way for me to start the year. By the way, I audited a lot of the businesses in here. Nobody should be shy, you all suck. (audience laughter) Hey. - James Robyn from Rin Robyn Pools in New Jersey. - [Gary] Where? - Bernardsville and Hackettstown. - [Gary] Very cool, my sister lives in Basking Ridge. - Great. - [Gary] Let's make a deal. - [James] Does she have a pool? - No, she's got a townhouse. - Does she want a pool? - [Gary] She does, but she needs to hustle a little more. - Okay, not directly in social media, but I'm sure everybody in this room has been approached by folks like HomeAdvisor and Angie's List. - [Gary] Sure. - I have my opinion, I'm interested in yours. - I think that they are taking advantage of your lack of knowledge, and are arbitraging you out of your own customer, and are sitting in the middle, and eventually will have tons of leverage, and will cut into your margin. And so I think you're all collectively digitally lazy, and so you're giving away the real value. What do you think? - Oh, I think they're a total rip-off, yeah. - So what I want is-- - [James] I would not participate at all. - And I don't think they're a total rip-off, I don't. You know, I have empathy for why you would think that

I just think, Jesus, you own your own business. Why don't you work harder, understand what you have to do, to not rely on that drug. That's how I feel about Google. What do you think Google's gonna do? You think Google cares about your business in Bernardsville? I think this is ridiculous, what we're doing. We have an opportunity to build our brand. The reason I want your content is, I wanna see your face. Or, whoever you decide, right? The thing that is not commoditize-able, that's the key. So absolutely, they're arbing you in-between. Do you know how OpenTable built its restaurant business? They took advantage of restaurant, they make money. The reason they charge one dollar, so OpenTable, has anybody used OpenTable to book a restaurant, great. OpenTable charges those restaurants a dollar when you book. Right, but it costs them 90 cents to get you on Google. It's their customer, it's their customer. You Googled one tree restaurant to book it, but because a OpenTable ad shows up first, you booked it through OpenTable. So they became a toll booth for their customer. Are you kidding me? I'm pissed. (audience laughter) So that's the scoop there. Questions? Let's do it, let's keep this goin'. By the way, as I'm thinking, before we get this question, Twitter search. If you wanna write down something very fascinating, if you go to twitter. com/search, you can search pool terms, home terms, the words, putting in a pool, sentences even, the word pool, and then you can search within a five or 10-mile radius of your zip code and then you can see everything people are saying about, literally, people will say things like, thinking about putting in a pool this year. This is the world we live in now. They will actually tweet that. Now, remember what I said earlier. Don't do the 17-year-old dude move. Don't just jump in and be like, I sell pools. Right, romance the girl a little bit. Try to provide them value. What kind, do you have the yard structure? You know, some of those things that you give away for free. Then they trust, and you become the person that they decide to go with. So twitter. com/search, search the terms that you guys know from a maintenance, I'm not an expert, I'm sure there's terms for some of the pipes and different things, not just the word, pool, 'cause you get a lot of things like, in the pool, and that's not gonna do you anything, right? Search within your mile radius, so that's the advanced search. When you search terms, you'll get results, you'll see an advanced search in there, you know, put in your zip code, put in a mile radius, and then just read what people are saying. This is no different than if you were sitting at the park and somebody was talking and saying, yeah, thinking about getting a pool. And you be like, excuse me, you know. And on Twitter, it's accepted. Creeper, on Facebook. On Twitter, it's an open forum, so it's accepted. So you jumping in, just have the right cadence to bring value first. They're gonna know what you are, they're gonna look at your profile and know that you sell it. You don't have to tell 'em, you're wearing the t-shirt. - Yes, hey, man. What's your name? - [Mark] Hi, my name's Mark, I'm from Nova Scotia, Canada. - Very nice. - With the video content, what have you learned in terms of the length of content that's applicable? Are you lookin' for a 30-second teaser, that then gets into three minutes? What's the target in terms of length? - [Gary] It's a great question, thank you. So, the conventional wisdom in my world, it's seems like you're asking a question with a little bit of data, is shorter is better, and I don't believe that. So, I believe that if Stars Wars' next film came out and it was seven hours and 13 seconds, people would watch it. And I know that when Vine was hot for six seconds, I looked at data that showed plenty of people would stop watching after three. So, I would say, whatever message you're trying to say, that's the beauty of it not being a commercial, where you bought 30 seconds worth of time. If what you have to say is gonna take 16 seconds, mazel tov. If it's gonna take four minutes and 10 seconds, great. So, I have videos on Facebook that do extremely well that are an hour and a half long, but no question, when I can find those moments for a minute or two, there's absolutely a little bit more upside in the one to two minutes. But those 60 minute keynotes are very valuable, too. So, it just depends, and I would say, you should produce enough content that does all things, and you'll learn what works for you. Video, look, nothing has changed. Human behavior is just adjusting to new platforms. TV and movie stars were always bigger than authors. So, if you can do video, it's real powerful. - [Mark] Great, thanks. - You got it. Questions? Very good, here we go. Yes. Hey, man. - [Bob] Bob Davis from Virginia. - Hey, Bob. - I'm wondering, a lot of the information that I've, a lot of what I've seen from you is a lot of brief stuff. - [Gary] On Facebook? - Yeah, I've listened to you for about four or five years.

- [Gary] Thank you. - Anyway, what's the future of the website? - [Gary] That's a good question. I still think you need a home on the internet, so I'm pretty bullish on the website still. I'm just sad when I meet new businesses, or talk to friends or small businesses, or even corporations that overspend on the website. So, to me, thinking about the businesses in this room, I think with Squarespace and WordPress like for what you actually do, you could really honestly get away with probably between five and 25,000 all in and be in an amazing place, probably even less in some ways. So, I do think that you don't ever want to, just like in Angie's List, I don't wanna be at the mercy of Facebook, or Instagram, or Snapchat, or Youtube, but I wanna extract the value of attention while I'm there. And I wanna push them to my brand, first and foremost, so that it's remembered, but the website is a good place to collect data to put out the information. But it is stunning to watch how many people now are making a decision on business. The amount of people in this room, my friend, who've lost business last season, because their Instagram and Facebook seem like crickets or they were out of business, is stunning. It is becoming the place that people go first to make decisions, not just the website. But I do not believe the website is dead, I still think it needs to be maintained. If people here have a website that they built 11, 12 years ago, it'd probably be smart to refresh it a little bit to feel relevant. I think it's more of a branding thing. And from a functionality standpoint, a Facebook ad that has your phone number in it that you spend $5,000 a year on is gonna do a lot more than the phone number on your website. So, I'm still into it, but it's clearly, it's an evolving thing, but I do believe there's still value in it. Do you have any followup for that? - [Bob] Well, it seems like the biggest activity that we get on our website is people will call and say, "Hey, I read what you wrote about a pool "or a hot tub or something. " I was in the store the other day, and a guy actually told me, he said, "Yeah, I read what you wrote on the website about hot tubs. " I was like, "That's cool. " - [Gary] It's real, man. - Yeah, and so I think-- - [Gary] You know, to me, literally, if like we were jammin' together, I'd be like, "Hey, let's make the phone number bigger. " It's amazing some of these things, these subtle little tweaks, but I agree with you. You know, even before you said that, notice how I used the phone number, Facebook ad. I just know what's going, I see it, it's not I'm genius, I'm putting in the work 18 hours a day to watch the behavior of consumers on the internet. So, yeah, I would triple down on the phone number. And then you know what I would do, who's getting the phone calls? - Well, we have different phone numbers on the site, but my name is by my cell phone. As long as somebody doesn't call me yellin' and screamin', cussin' mad, I'll talk to anyone anytime of day. And the truth is, I rarely get called. But when I do get called, it's usually for something good. But listening to you standing here, it occurs to me that probably one of the greatest values or the best uses of my website could be to tell the story. Because sales happen from a good story. - [Gary] That's exactly right. - And then inform people about our people and tell a few stories about that. - [Gary] You beat me to it. What I would have done, my website-- - [Bob] Rah rah. - I would have a phone number, I would have two or three videos, and then what I would make in that video is I would reverse engineer the biggest themes of the phone calls. So, the reason I was asking you who gets the phone calls, I'd love to know by breakdown, like having them start documenting the content of the phone call. Because that, I think, is so valuable because then you just reverse engineer what they're actually looking for. And if you're seeing seven out of 11 calls focusing in on this, you storytell against that. - [Bob] Thanks. - You got it, brother. Questions? Oh, great. Stand up. - [Kara] Okay. - What's your name? - [Kara] I'm Kara. - [Kara] Wichita, Kansas. - Very nice. - We do Facebook, Twitter, and all of that but we haven't done an Instagram yet and I think. Do you normally for a business just feature products or how do you get started in? - [Gary] Yeah, so you should A, definitely do Instagram. - [Kara] Yeah. - So much of the decision maker in the home that's making decisions for your products and services is starting to live there. So, here's what I would do. I would go to Instagram. Do you personally have Instagram? - [Kara] I do but I don't use it. - Okay, open it, resign in if you have to whatever. There's a search function. You know what a hashtag is from Twitter? - [Kara] Yes. - Search hashtags, take the six most important terms in your world, pool, spa, and then again I'm not educated enough I want you to get into those second. It's not wine, it's Pinot Noir, it's Bordeaux, it's Silicon Valley, Sonoma Valley. You guys know those terms. Search those terms on Instagram. I want you to spend between five and 10 hours, while you're on the flight

walking down whatever. It doesn't have to come in prime time. Chip away in inefficient times. And I want you to search those hashtags and look at all the content that's being produced. Click into the content, look at the engagement, look at the comments, and you get an audit and a feel. And you're like oh wow, these kind of photos are over indexing across the entire Instagram ecosystem. It seems like when people take photos of their pool at sunset people get like really like you'll pick up on some action shots or one minute tutorials of how to fix it instead of back to that. So, put in the work. - [Kara] Yeah. - Cool. - [Kara] Thank you. - Yeah. Questions? My man's back over here. Let's, we'll get to second time over there. Somebody over here? One more time raise your hand for me? Okay, just one. Got it. Great. - [Josh] I'm Josh from Grand Rapids, Michigan. - Hey, Josh. - How do you find Instagram influencers for neighborhoods and markets? - [Gary] You search again. Hold the mic in case there's a followup. You search, you search by count. So, you go into search and you can search every single photo that was posted in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And the first 12 photos are the top posts and underneath that are the most recent. So, you search your zip code. You click the first photo. The amount of hand-to-hand combat this is that people don't want to do, it's like sit ups. We all known what sit ups do. They do good things, we just don't want to do them. So, you have to do this work. You have to go and search. You click. The first one's a 42 year old female that has 1400 followers. You look at her content. She seems to be like a trendy mom. You hit the upper right hand corner and send her a message and say to her we think you're an influencer. We'd love to have you post about our, you go right there. I'm comfortable going in right for the hook. You say look we love your profile. We'd love for you to give a shout out to our service. But this is where you deploy some empathy. Are you aware of our service? Do you care about that stuff? If you are, we'd love to do a business transaction with you. The reason I want you to do business transaction, these smaller influencers, they're not even expecting money. If they happen to have a pool just you go and checking out everything. Or like who knows? Whatever like light weight supplies? And by the way, sometimes just by bragging that a business reached out to them and thought their Instagram was cool enough to give a shout out. So you just do that at scale. Other people will surprise you. You'll listen to me. You'll do three of these. You'll be pumped you're getting some shout outs. You do the fourth one and she's like I want $18,000 for a post. You know? So, you've go to learn that game. But that's how you do it, hand-to-hand combat. - [Josh] Thank you. - You're welcome. - Yes, sir? - [Man] Question, clearly content is king. Many of us have, "Click here to get our free "pool building guide. spa buying guide. " You're saying to cut that up into little pieces and turn 'em into videos? - [Gary] I do, I do. I assume you're using that as a gateway to get the information to get-- - [Man] Capture, yeah, putting in your email address and then, bam, out it goes. Then it's a trickle thing-- - [Gary] Of course, it's a funnel. - First five ideas on things you need to know, the next five things that you need to know. So, you're saying to turn everything into a video? - [Gary] Yes, I'm saying that one of those five ideas in a minute, 37 second video on Facebook, on Memorial Day weekend gets shared enough to change your business way more than that funnel will ever do. - [Man] Thank you. - You got it. Hey, what's your name? - Megan Spillers, I'm from Champaign-Urbana in Illinois. My question is regarding Snapchat. I'm just, kind of, wondering your opinion on the format since it's pictures, 10 second videos at max. I use it to send pictures to my friends, cool places, all the places I went last night in the city. How can you connect as a business? Are you just trying to be forefront of mind? Are you trying to get in touch with influencers on Snapchat? How can you utilize that? - [Gary] As somebody who invested five million dollars into Snapchat several years ago, I'm very bullish on the platform. I thought it was the first platform that came along that could really bring Facebook a challenge because it had won the entire, at the time, 13 to 22-year-old demo. It's an incredibly powerful tool. The reason I didn't bring it up a lot here versus the last talk I gave, I spent 80% of my time on it because the people in the room were marketing to 15 to 25-year-olds, is my concern is that the demo is still too young. In 2007, when I was talking about Facebook I wasn't necessarily talking to companies that were marketing to 70-year-olds. Today, you heard me talk about 50 to 70 being my favorite demo.

I'm helping a startup that goes after people that are going to retirement homes. Their number one conversion is Facebook, targeting 50 and 60-year-olds of people who have parents that are 70 and 80 and 90-year-olds. So I think Snapchat's amazing. I think it's got a ton of work to do. As you know Instagram has copied almost all their features over the last three to four months, which has slowed down some of the growth for Snapchat. They've obviously got spectacles and that's a whole 'nother thing of AR and VR and live streaming. I don't think that Snapchat, today at this moment, is the craziest, most important thing for this room. But, back to me saying get on the treadmill before running the marathon, do I believe every single person here should download Snapchat and figure it out? I do. I know that seems insane for so many of them. How many people here are now on Snapchat? Raise your hand. A year ago this would've been three hands. It would've been three. What nobody realizes is we're living in a world where everybody's living a younger life than their parents did. The younger generation's dragging you down. If you want to talk to your daughter, you gotta get on Snapchat, that's where she's spending 83% of her time so you're gonna be there. It's an important platform. Filters are super fascinating. The fact that people here can buy a filter for a hundred bucks around the radius of the most important park in town, that they may bring awareness, I think is, kind of, cool. I think in a year that would be the strategy I'd probably do which is buy a filter. The way filters work is, if you've been on Snapchat, I know a lot of you haven't but it seems like a lot have, you take a picture and you can swipe and get these little filters. As a small business, you can buy a filter. I see University of Kentucky, you could buy a filter over Rupp Arena, one day, for 500 bucks, and then everybody becomes aware. They're like, "What is this? " And you have to be smart, how do you make a basketball and pool you gotta be creative. But, that's branding, that's less funnel, and less conversion, that's more branding. Once something has all the attention, if I want to sell something right now to a 17-year-old in America, I'm only spending my money on Instagram and Snapchat not a penny anywhere else. That 17-year-old becomes 27 very quickly. You got it. Back there, yup, got 'em. This is fun. - [Nick] Absolute pleasure, thank you very much. My name's Nick, I'm from Toronto, Ontario. I'd like to get your input on augmented reality and where it's going. - [Gary] It's gonna happen. How many people played Pokemon GO, raise your hands? Raise it high. It's a good number. So, prior to Pokemon Go, zero hands, augmented reality, we will be seeing things. You wanna really get into black and white? The reason I won't give this advice is because this would cost $150,000 to build and I don't think that's practical for the high-risk, low-reward chance of pulling this off, but this is a perfect example of how Angie's List or, remember when I said put yourself out of business? If somebody here's big enough to do this, you should debate this. What if you built the app that looked at your backyard like this, and helped them put the size of the pool that they should put in, and then that app, because it's a utility, was a gateway for your service? So what I just said is gonna happen. People are gonna go into their backyard, they're gonna pull out their phone, they're gonna point it, they're gonna see their backyard as if they were taking a photo, but they're gonna do that through the app called Pool Locator. And it's going to do whatever the hell you guys do for a living and figure out that he needs to cut that tree and the app would eliminate that tree and would show him the options of the pool, and then he would say, "I like that," he would press a button, she and you would be the person that does it. And as you think, if you make the utility and get tens and thousands and hundreds, and then you could not only service Grand Rapids, Michigan, but then you could refer all the leads, 'cause the app was big, to all the other people in this room and make 20% referral fee through having the biggest app of how people now decide where they're gonna put a pool. That's what I think's gonna happen. That was cool, actually. That was a good idea. Somebody should do that. (audience laughter) Yep, over there, yep. Oh, great, yeah, let's get on this side. - [Kathy] Hi, Kathy from Aqua-Tech in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Just wanted to find out if you could help me prioritize in the exact order that you think I should be spending my time. Right now we do a lot of email marketing, primarily, so my marching orders, when I go home, should be what? - [Gary] How's email doing? - Fabulous. - And so explain that in detail. You're collecting emails somehow and then you're marketing against it? - [Kathy] Correct. - Yeah. The thing that will probably excite you the most in the quickest period of time, because the vulnerability is the first six months or year

when it's not working as well 'cause you don't have all the expertise, is Facebook. Facebook is the closest thing to email in the marketing realm right now. So how are you collecting email? - [Kathy] With every water test and every transaction. - [Gary] Got it. And then you're remarketing for services? - [Kathy] Correct. - So it's more of a farming mechanism than a hunting? - [Kathy] Correct. - Got it. So, I think email and text messaging, and following them on Facebook and surprising them-- - [Kathy] That's a kick butt idea. - And I knew you would like that because you like email because it's a retention vehicle. So let's talk about the hunting, instead of the farming. How are you getting clients? - Our website, primarily. We've spent a lot of time and effort into Google ratings, so I think that we should stop half, and maybe-- - [Gary] I don't think you should, by the way, it's never like, people still look at billboards. Do I think they're as valuable as they used to be? They can't be, because every passenger's looking at their phone, and those are lost eyeballs. (audience laughter) So, it's not that you should stop that, but back to having so much time, money, and energy. Facebook. You have to understand what Facebook is. Facebook is direct response sales and branding. You can do both. Whereas Google and Google reviews it's all black and white, it's all blue, actually, blue, right? It's not building brand. These videos that I'm desperate, and by the way, are you guys completely blown away as I am, the quality of video from just this? You don't need to hire DRock. Sorry, DRock. (audience laughter) This! And the other thing is, every single 17-year-old in America knows what to do. So you've unlimited kids in Winnipeg or Toronto that are willing to do it for minimal or free. More video content on Facebook as a gateway drug. There's a phone call ad on Facebook which I brought up to you, I really want you to do that. It's an ad that is underused because small businesses are underusing Facebook, and big companies, Coke and Pepsi and BMW don't want you to call them. So it's an ad that has creative but it also has a button for the phone, and as you guys all know, now we look at Facebook on this, not on your desktop as much, so when you see it, you press one button and you're calling. So, Facebook, Facebook. Targeted, geo-located to the Winnipeg area, that would be the place. And again, because we have limited time, there's a website, all of you should write this down. This is probably the information gateway you're looking for. There's a website, I'll spell it for you, and that's where you can get deeper information about this. It's spelled G, O, G, (audience laughs) L, And here's why I'm making that joke. If you wanna say, "How do I make Facebook video "for a small business," you type that into Google and you'll have plenty of articles and plenty of videos. This is like exercise. You know what to do, you just don't want to do it. So, now I can give you one good answer, now that I've understood where you're coming from and what you react to: get great at Facebook. We're gonna have two to three years, everybody in this room that doesn't listen to me, in three years, will regret it when all the articles of 2020 is, now it costs $80 to get in front of 1,000 people on Facebook instead of $6. We all "missed" it from 2015 to 2020, got it? - [Kathy] Got it. - Because you know how much the word wine cost per click, in 2002? Five cents. Now it's $13. Installing a pool cost probably something else. And so that's what's gonna happen on Facebook, that's why I'm pushing you all. It's a supply and demand. Everybody wants to get to a 40-year-old female in Winnipeg, Calgary, a 40-year-old woman in New York. They're the decision maker of so many transactions. You're not competing with everybody in this room, you're competing with every business in the world 'cause Facebook has to keep the ads under control, 'cause if you get too many ads, you're gonna leave, so only so many ads can get in there, which means the price of the ad will continue to go up once people realize how well it's working. Supply and demand. You're welcome. - [Kathy] Thank you. Let's get another one over there. Yeah. - Hi, I'm Mary from Maryland, from Regina Pools and Spas. - [Gary] How are you? - Good, how are you. - [Gary] Amazing. - Good, my question to you is we've actually started shooting Facebook Live videos, because it sends a notification out to our followers that we're live, so that they can come to us. And shooting little tidbit videos on how to maintain a hot tub right now, because pool season is closed for us. - [Gary] Yup. - Do you think that... There's also Instagram Live, but you can't do that at the same time as Facebook Live. - [Gary] You sure can. - You can do it? - [Gary] Yeah, you just have to get a second phone. - Yeah, well yes, there's that. (audience laughter) - [Gary] Guys, I'm a genius!

- But my question to you is-- - [Gary] So definitely do that! - Yes, so we'll get a second video going. If we're not doing Facebook Live, and you're telling people to shoot content, what kind of camera? Should we just use iPhones, or should we actually go get a camera and some mics? - I think that the iPhone is more than capable to produce the quality video that everybody in this room, based on the size of business that I believe is in this room, needs, yeah. - [Mary] Thank you. - How is the Facebook Live going for you? - So we recently just started it last month. - [Gary] How many Facebook fans do you have on your page? - Not much. - [Gary] How many? - 465, I believe. - [Gary] So I assume that means you're getting one to two people watching the streams. - Yes, at the current moment but some-- - [Gary] You know what, I love you for that. I don't know, one to two is better than zero. - Right, and we get a couple likes. The first couple videos, we've only done three. The first two got around 200 views, and then our third one actually got over 300 views, so it's slowly-- - When you finally post it, make sure you're adding a link to drive to a conversion. - [Mary] Right, so that's something that we haven't been doing, but as you were speaking today, that is something in my notes to do for the next one. - Because what I like is when people are trying to be pioneers and do new things... Like, you know what old man Stan, 67, sitting over there and thought about 300 views, jack crap. He wants to know what it meant for the business. And so for me, what I like is I don't care how many likes, followers, I don't care. I mean, I care because it's a proxy normally if you're good at it to where it's going. I wanna figure out where does it lead to. And the good part is you're just starting. Like to me, back to patience, reason I said the first six months scare me with you, like the biggest fear I have here is this was a good session, it was this, and then you know, you're gonna go out of business if you don't listen, then it's been detailed, and da da. It's all this, and there's like nine to 15, to 22 people that are sitting here saying, you know what? Yes, this is gonna... Oh, and it's January 4, exactly, so we're like yeah, this is the year! You know, it's all that stuff, but it's hard and it takes time. Right, now what I'm excited about, back to pool season, I don't know when people decide that, or service it, or buy that, or what have you but if you can do this hard and well, and learn for the next three, four, five, six months, really nice early things can start happening the back end of this year. And then '18 can be really interesting. I just wanna make sure everybody understands the advice I'm giving here, if you decide to go look deeper and you look at it, it's not easy, it's called work. This isn't a I'm gonna miraculously hire this 22-year-old. 22-year-olds use Snapchat and Instagram to hook up. (audience laughter) Not sell pools. It's a different skill set, but they do understand it. Cool, thanks. - Any other questions? Yeah, that's good, this will be the last question. Thank you guys so much for your attention. - [Ava] Hey, I'm Ava from West Bernard, Louisiana, and we live in a very small area about, all of our little small areas, maybe 60,000 people. - [Gary] Okay. So, our Facebook following, currently, is 231, to be exact. How do you know if you're actually reaching enough for your area? We only have one other competitor, they have about 400 followers. How can we maximize getting our customers to our Facebook page? - [Gary] So, I think and is your ambition to continue to service that 60,000? - [Ava] Huh? - Are you guys gonna expand the business, do you want more locations? Do you want to go into other cities? Or this is a family business, this is what you're doing? - we're doing. - Great, I would go knock on all 60,000 homes, door. - [Ava] Realistic. - I'm being dead, seriously. I swear on my children's health that I would spend the rest of my life trying to build a relationship with all 60,000 people individually, because I think it can be done, it's not that big of a number. I'm being dead serious. So the way I would do that to scale is if I ran your business, I would probably try to invent a town wide event that everybody went to, that I was the owner of that event, and used the event as the gateway to be the biggest business in town. I would create the annual 100 meter dash, or pickle eating contest. I'm being dead serious with you by the way. And then the content would be about the event because when you have such a small circumference, you can really do the thank you economy in hand-to-hand combat, and so I'd probably run Facebook, I wouldn't care about likes at all. 231 versus 400 means nothing. I would probably run some Facebook ads against the zip code

and I would try to literally meet them. I'm not kidding, I would think a lot about event marketing. I mean, I assume you're not spending a lot of money on marketing. - Actually, none. - [Gary] Right, that makes sense. - We have good word of mouth. - [Gary] Of course, so you're basically sitting and waiting for people to call you? - [Ava] Absolutely. - I hate the living shit out of that. (audience laughter) - But we do, we offer so much for our community, and we're so well known that... My father-in-law owns the business, and his mentality is I don't need to spend money on marketing when we have as much business as we can handle at this current time. So we're kind of-- - [Gary] Listen, I can't deploy my thesis or ambition on your father-in-law. Like, when I hear that we have more business than we can handle, my mind goes to you better hire a bunch more people, jerk. (audeince laughter) - Yeah. - [Gary] Yeah. Family dynamics. (audience laughter) Thank you guys, thank you! (audience applause)