Jason Calacanis, How to Monetize Your Personal Brand & Future Of Employment | #AskGaryVee 233

- Hey, what's up GaryVee? My name is Bryan AKA MindofBun, I'm on the app Musical. ly and I have a following of over 600,000 people. Not only that but I'm one of four Musical. ly reps that live in New York City. So my question is I don't know what to do next. I feel like I'm stuck in a plateau. I don't know what to do next. I love making these videos, not only on Musical. ly but I'm also pushing everybody to YouTube, too. I ask this question because I have friends who have less followers than me who have managers and people who I know that have millions of fans who don't even have managers or they don't even know what to do. So, what should I do next with this following? Do I go out there and look for companies or brand deals or should I link up with the manager or what should I do? I put my business email out there and I'm not always getting emails every day or something. I am patient, I do wait but lately I just trying to figure out a way to get a source of income from this because, again, I do love doing this, I love doing this but at the end of the day I still have my mom harassing me saying A, are you gonna get a job or this and that? And yeah, so Gary what should I do? - Jason, it's fun to have you here with this question. Good job by you guys curating because again we lived through early bloggers getting famous-- - Sure. - then Twitter was really the first preview to this-- - Sure. - where both of us were lucky enough to be one of those 100, 150 people that everybody was following. - Sure. - What kind of advice do you give to, I'm paying a lot of attention to the Musical. ly stars. - Sure. - This is the youngest generation of stars we've ever seen. You're making a joke of VaynerMedia being young,-- - I know. - We're talking about 9, 10, 11, 12-year-old stars. - Yeah. - Like it's, it's Nickelodeon up in Musical. ly right out. What's your advice for this? - Well, I mean what is the goal here? Does the person want to be, do they actually have any raw talent? Are they actually a musician? singer or are they just kind of becoming popular for doing-- - Do you think that's possibly becoming just talent in itself? - That's a good question. - Like you said that and I'm debating it myself. - Right. Do you actually have a skill? So what I think is adding skills to your repertoire like that can only help you. So if learn an instrument, if you actually learn to sing then you can kind of take it to the next level. So when you saw Justin Bieber on YouTube it was like, "Yeah, he's a YouTube star but he actually had core talent. " - No, he was a real talent. - Then you look at somebody like King Bach. - Yes. - On Vine,-- - he was the number one guy for a while. Probably still is. He actually is funny. - He's a real comedian. - Actor. - Yes. - He's a comedic actor. - So I think adding skills when you're a young person is one thing that this generation got backwards. - That's a good point. - They go get the fame and it's great. You can hit that lightning in a bottle but get that skill you can, it can never be taken away from you. - Yeah, I think networking. I think just even asking this question like, for example, I'm interested. I'm spending more time in Musical. ly so let's get this kid into my office, I want to meet him for 20 minutes. And you just need to do that over and over, right? - Yeah. - How many people have been able to get to you and met for 15 or 30 minutes just by pounding you on social and email through the last decade? Give me a rough estimate of numbers because I know-- - Over a thousand. - That's it. - Over a thousand, it takes time. - You, right and some people they email you one time and you gave them 15 minutes and some people have emailed you 37,000 times and you've never talked to them. - Exactly. - That's the punchline. - I look at the quality like I look for people with skill but that's me. - But you know this, it's a subjective moment in time. - Sure. - Like at that moment it felt like, right? - Yeah. - I mean it's a crap shoot. - Yeah but you know what? It's a numbers game, if you, one of the things is I had, I have a portfolio company that raised money from seven people and they're like we can't raise any more money, it's not working. I'm like well, how'd you get the first seven? They're like well, we met with a ton of people. I said how many people did you meet? They said 15. I was like so you can raise money from 50% of the people you meet with and now you met with another five, you didn't get an investor so you're quitting? - Soft. - So soft. - Soft! - You got to do at least 50 meetings and what you do is you take notes after every meeting and you ask people candidly why did you pass on investing? The way you can help me, I understand you're passing, can you just tell me the truth? - Interesting. - Be candid with me and tell me why I suck. - I love that. - Or tell me what I need to work on. You know what? People will do it if you give them permission to speak freely. - Love it. India, let's move it forward. By the way, I'm serious, I want to meet the kid. Make it happen. - [Jason] Hey-o! - Manu.

- Hey Gary. It's your Canadian homey Swish. I had a question for you, very short and sweet, what's your career advice to DRock and how he can progress his career because he's a madly talented person and I know, for sure, you want the best outta him. - Manu, great question. For me, I think DRock needs to hold on to me for dear life 'cause I think is grossly overrated because of the fame and stardom of my amazing ability. (DRock laughs) And so if I was DRock, I'd be holding on for dear life. - Is this one of your whack packers? - No, that's DRock. - That's what I said, one of your whack packers. - So DRock, he is obviously filming DailyVee and he's got clearly, he's got video skills and he's built an enormous-- - Yeah. - Now when I take a selfie-- - How long as he been here? How long you been here, DRock? - [DRock] Two and a half years. - Alright, let me tell you something about loyalty. It's year three and four when the magic happens. - Interesting. - Everybody wants to bounce after a year or two, go to the next thing. - [DRock] Yeah. - 'Cause somebody's gonna go, "Oh, DRock's associated with him? "Let me give him a 10% bump in salary to jump over there. " But I'm telling you-- - Or 100 when you're making $2 an hour, you know. - Yeah, exactly. I always find that people that stick around for year three, four, five in a startup they kind of ascend to this level and they learn some stuff and you want to learn when you're young. And the problem is a lot of people don't put the time in. They quit too early. - I think the big thing is, I agree in some ways and I'll go slightly different. You just have to reverse engineer what, you got deploy as much self-awareness as you have of this moment and reverse engineer what you want. If DRock wants, for example, if DRock wants to make a movie, for real. Right, a feature film, he's never been a better position with me because as long as he keeps believing in me and as long as I keep proving that I continue to grow I'm closer to being able to fund a feature, I fund a feature film now. - Sure. Why not? - It's like raising money. I don't want to. No way, DRock. (DRock laughs) But you just have to know what you want. I think that my career advice Manu to you, to DRock, India, Other Tyler, Andy, to Jason, to myself is know what you want and put yourself in the best position to succeed to get there but be careful because the thing right in front of you is normally not the thing that's actually going to get you to the best position to actually do what you want. - Hmmm. There you go. - India. - But you're in the game. That's important. - Yes. - [India] You ready for a crazy video? - Here we go. - [India] Crazy from Zeek. - A minute 44.

- Gary, Gary, Gary Vaynerchuk! Hey you remember when episode three you said it should be your life dream to get your question on my show? Gary, it's my life dream, man. Please, India! Come on, girl. Get me on the show. Just kidding, India, you're awesome. I love you. Hey, I'm really glad you didn't get fired. (laughs) We were worried, we were worried. Vayner Nation was worried. Hey, DRock, can our cameras get together and focus? (laughs) I'm Zeek Fit Freak coming from you Valparaiso, Indiana. Cornfields and everything. Oh God, help me. I need a mountain. Somebody get me a mountain. I'm a personal trainer and a lifestyle manager. Ooh, that's a new one. Lifestyle manager. Ooh, what does that even mean? Well, I'll tell you but let's just get to the question. Okay? No but really, I love what you're saying about self-awareness. It's one of the number one things I talk to my clients about, one of the number one things that is changed my life for the better in so many different ways but being truly self-aware I know that what my best talents obviously is the energy that I bring to the table. And I'm telling you, I'll bring this energy to the table wherever I'm at. Okay? Call me out there, right now. I'm gonna drive out there. You think I won't? I will bring this energy, Gary. And I know this will be really great for brands but I'm trying to brand my own thing on the side, right? So the question is how do you harness an emotion that comes through the energy that I develop and give and share with other people? How can I monetize that online? I've been working on it and I could really use your help. Thank you so much, Gary. I love you, man. Hey, DRock link in the description. Ooh, get right there, right there. Lift life guys and go New York Jets! Woo! - Jason, what are you doing with that? (group laughter) - Wow, it's like Jim Carrey. - He's really, that's got some interesting charisma. What do you think? How does he monetize all that energy? - Well, here's the thing, we both know online is a great way to get attention. It's a little bit challenging sometimes to monetize. Obviously, the CPMs are very low. It's hard to get the brands, that's why big agencies like your's exist and other ones around town. They have the brand relationships, so they'll be some opportunity to join these networks of stars, you know about those. - Yep. - And that's a fine way to do it but I think building your brand online and then increasing your prices offline. So if he's a trainer and he's got five clients and they're all paying $50 an hour, what I always find is people are afraid to raise their prices and lose clients, right? So if he keeps growing and he's that good, he should be able to double his price. Then double your price, then double your price and maybe have five people who are paying $400 a session where that kind of a thing. So be good at whatever your skill is and then keep raising your price. - Products, services, content. - Yeah. - There's only 4 to 5 things that one can do to monetize. - Sure. Yeah. - You got great energy, you get attention, you get you build a base and then you can do a lot of things. You could sell them stuff, right? - Sure. - Make a product, yep. You can sell a T-shirt like you can sell them a physical thing. - Yeah. - You can create a service. If you train people and it's 50 bucks an hour then it's 100 and 200, you can be in a place where you as a personality gets monetized. You sign a book deal, you sell a lot of them. You speak for 100 bucks then 1,000 bucks then 5,000 bucks. You create a scalable content play. You put out something that is, you know, you put your classes on Udemy and all these kind of things. - Yeah. - You collect, Creative Collective and things like that so you and I can give you like a lot of things. But the truth is only five or six things that are out there. - It's always the rookie mistake when I talk to somebody and say what's your business model? And they say well, it's going to be advertising and subscriptions and then we're gonna sell things the data and they list 18 things. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. The great companies, Uber, take a percentage. Tumblr, advertising. Google, ad networks, right? It's very rare that you see even a big company, Apple selling hardware, goes into a second or third business line. You have to pick one and master it. - Go deep. - And just master it because you know how hard it is to get advertising and content to work. You have to be the number one person in your category and you have to very tight relationships deliver for those advertisers. On a product basis, people who are making great products and selling them at a high profit like Apple, man, it's hard to compete against people like that. You have to be exceptional in this nature. - The other thing for a lot of you that are watching that I think will be valuable is try to do everything. Give a free speech. Create a content e-book. Go try to get a publishing deal. Try different things. - And see which ones pop. - Yeah. - And which one you enjoy. - Yeah. I think so. - That's critical to because if you don't enjoy being in a service business and having customers, you can't do it because you're gonna hate your customers. - Oh my gosh, all my tech friends as you know-- - Yes. - Like from what I came from, they're like you like this? You like having-- - (sighs) Brutal. - I'm like I like it 'cause I know what it's building for me long term. - Yeah. - You know like nobody in tech wants the unscalable nature of this. - Of a service business. - Nobody. - No. - Nobody. - But if you look at it, you have real clients and look at the knowledge you're getting. You have all these Millenials out here and they're different, aren't they? - I don't think so. - Maybe different than Gen X'ers. - You know what, I think that's a popular conversation. I think people pretty basic. - Yeah? - They the same tried-and-true things which is they have some balance of their wants and needs. I just think that they have more power. - They do. - They have more power because the world has gone in their favor. They're 20-something in a time where 20-somethings are respected by 40, 50 and 60-somethings around business because business is being done here. And they know it better. - Do you get the sense when they're looking at you that they're like, "I can be him and I can do what he does. " - I hope not because then they're fucking stupid. - Yeah. I think I'm looking around the room, I think a lot of them are like I could be in charge. - You know what's funny, I hope they feel that way but it won't happen. (group laughter) - It takes time. - Alright, India, let's go. (group laughter)

- What's up Gary and team? Hadi Yousef here. Off of your inspiration, I started vlogging my startup journey. I've been interacting with online communities like the great Vayner Nation and just making sure that I'm putting out good content. But aside from patience and thinking about the long game, what are some things that someone like me should be doing to grow his audience? Thanks a lot. - So I think one thing that stands out for me and then you'll jump in Jason is I think more real-life stuff. Like every meetup. - Sure. - Like Jase, you might remember this, when I first got, it's really fun to get your perspective on this. When I first came into the ecosystem,-- - Yeah. - I was pouring wine at a Jaiku, Leo Laporte meetup. - Yeah. You were the wine guy. - Yeah, I was-- - You were more like, who's that guy? - I was service. I was the help. - Basically, I mean I didn't want to say it but it's kinda true. - And so like-- - They're like we need wine here. - And meanwhile, and meanwhile I had the biggest business in the room. - For sure. - Everybody else had business on paper. - Yeah. - I actually had a business but I was willing to earn my keep in to the ecosystem. That's the advice I would give here which is if you're documenting your journey, amazing but go to every I mean Israel is such a hotbed for tech startups and just startups in general. Go to every meetup, meet every person, be part of the ecosystem. I think you did that extremely well. - Be everywhere. - That's right. - When I started Silicon Alley Reporter here I wore a Silicon Alley Reporter shirt every day. I had 20 of them so I was the brand and I would show up at every party and I'd have copies of the magazine. You have to be the brand and everywhere but a little hack for him might be is be the most intelligent question under the most important people's blog posts or their tweets. In other words, really take your time. Forget about building your own content and your own audience, find somebody who's got an audience that you would like to acquire and be the most intelligent person in their ecosystem for a while. - Love that. - Which is kind of what you did. You'd meet the guy you'd be like this guy is passionate about wine but I'm here to see Leo but this guy's also kind of interesting too, right? And so you can put yourself in Fred Wilson's comments on AVC it's like who are these people writing highly intelligent comments? - You know what this is really smart, especially in the Facebook ecosystem where if it's actually that, it populates up. - Yeah, they trend it up. The best comment goes up. But this takes time and you have to not be thinking about yourself with your comment. That's the problem I think. People are trying to build a brand so they think it's about-- - They're pitching instead of bringing value to the community of the micro community within that blog post. - Correct. - Yep. - What is the topic we're talking about-- - Yep. - and how do you say something highly intelligent and further the conversation? - And to you, because you don't come from 20 years of experience, 30 years experience you need to put your lens on it. By the way, there's a lot of people reading comments on those blogs that are just like you, entrepreneurs are trying to make it than us reading it. - We're not reading the comments. - So you saying here's my perspective from an Israeli led startup that from a 23-year-old's perspective, you'll get a lot of juice from that. You need to own it. There's way too many people trying to fake the funk right now that their so genius business people and they have no experience under their fingernails. - There's nothing more, I think, appealing than somebody who's a young entrepreneur saying I really don't understand how this works. Can somebody explain it to me or help me because I really would like to be successful? People will come out and help you. - 100% if you deploy the humility and don't fake it. - Yeah, there's no reason to fake it. - Well everybody does it. And by the way, I've been there. When you're not there yet, you kinda wanna, you want to, I used to say yes and this. It just was not smart. I should have said please tell me and this and that. I would have got there faster. - In my meetings, any time a word comes up that I don't know, I say, "What does that mean? " In a business meeting-- - I wouldn't even have meetings then I'm terrible at vocab. - No but when you have to pitch and someone's like oh do you know about this? And I'm like what is that? And I just say explain to me what that is. And they're like oh it's an acronym for this. And now I'm like now I'm getting smarter. - Yeah. 100%. - Right? - India, let's more this. I know we got a call. - Yeah. - Last one. - Last call. - David. - Whoa. David's in a suit.

- Hey, this is David Villa in Tampa, Florida. I'm the CEO of IPD and hey Gary, I got a question for you. How do you deal with the sacred cow with a top performer in your business that generates a ton of business but is toxic to your company culture? - Fired! Fired. Fired, David. Fired, David! Does he have anything else? - [India] Eliot and I thought you were gonna say that. Tox, fired. - Yep. - Even before he finished, right? Good guess. Fired. - Yeah. - Fired. - It's fired. - Life is short,-- - It's not even about like living your best life and life is short. It's you lose. Like, you lose. Like you're just gonna cap out. It's like math-based marketing. Eventually, you run out of time. And you can only extract so much. - You know what? It's like, you know you have someone like JR Smith on your team and he's eventually going to implode and cost you a championship. (crosstalk) - No, JR Smith, JR Smith as the number one on that team. - Yeah. - When the top performer is toxic, you are finished. - It's game over, yeah. - The other thing, by the way is you have to be the most, top performer. To me, that is the number one thing that I've always loved about my businesses which is, I don't know, I just don't rely on anybody. I could never imagine running a business that I would sit there and say if DRock quit. - He's scared of that guy quitting because he's the top salesperson. - 100%. - That's what, I can see the fear in his eyes. - 100%. - If he wasn't he'd be like well, I'll just do the sales. - He wouldn't even ask that question. By the way, in a car salesman world, there's a billion great car salesmen. By the way, in the comments section if you're a tremendous car salesman and up for moving, leave a comment. - Absolutely. - Alright, Jase, you get to ask the question of the day. Any question you want. Great focus group of hundreds if not thousands of answers inside of Facebook and YouTube, what's on your mind to young entrepreneurs and business peeps and social media peeps? What are you curious about these days? What are you looking at? You've been a very successful investor. You've been absolutely historically correct on trends. Even the people that love to razz you and things of that nature,-- - Yeah. - can not deny you've seen things play out properly with your business behavior. - I put numbers on the board. Thank you, Gary. - Putting up. - I put some numbers on the board. - By the way, as people that have put themselves out there,-- - Yeah. - you get your pros and your cons of that. - Sure. - Nothing trumps the resume. Having wins helps. It's air cover. - As I tell people, you know when they criticize whatever, I'm like I'm just a guy who got lucky eight times. - Right, just eight. - Just eight times. - Yeah. - At a certain point, if you just keep hustling and you have one of those wins every few years-- - By the way, is that number really three or four? I'm actually genuinely interested. - There's some that you don't know about. So for example,-- - Please. - I'm an LP in a fund. - Yes. - That fund,-- - Sacca. - I can't say which one it was, not Sacca. - But it was in that stock certificate up there,-- - Got it. - and it was in What's App. - Yep. - And I just got a call one day and they're like you have these two huge wins. I was like I didn't know I had those wins but somebody made those investments-- - I get it. - on my behalf. So those things happened. I just sold my book and I'm doing a book on angel investing. And Hollis,-- - Good luck. Hollis, I know. - from Harper is doing it. - Just so you know, little, behind the scenes I get calls from Hollis once in a while is like what's the story here? And usually I'm like and this and I'm like on this one (clicks tongue). - No, she was like Gary went to bat for you. I was like oh, very nice. And you guys know, I hate to go to bat. - For sure. - No, India, I don't go to bat. - [India] I know. - So, okay, so my question for everybody is what do you think the future is of employment now that we have robotics and AI and what are your solutions if in fact we see a lot of jobs go away? How would you solve a problem of a society with, let's say 20% less jobs available, which would increase unemployment which, you know, we say the number is 3 or 4% right now but it really doesn't include people who gave up which is another 15%. So what if we lived in a world where the majority of people couldn't find a job and half the people were employed, how would you try to solve for that in a creative way? Because in our industry we debate this, but we all and in the past we've always come up with new jobs. But it feels like this could be the different time. - I was at an event where Joe Biden spoke. And the reason I'm name dropping is 'cause maybe because he's got a quote out there that somebody can make this completely tight 'cause I could be wrong. I don't remember if he said it's the number one job in America or the number one job, now I'm recalling, for people that do not have a college degree but whatever the punchline is and again somebody leave a comment for clarification, he said the number one job in the marketplace is transportation, drivers. - Right. - And he goes with this looming, this is the number one job people have. - Sure. - And I actually think-- - Truck drivers. - Right. - Cab drivers. - That's right. Yeah, I mean listen and by the way, that's what happens in industrial revolutions-- - Yep. - like shit's about to hit the fan. - And what is the solution for our society? - Yeah. - That's an open question. - No, that's a big question. - Gary,-- - Congrats, when's the book coming out? - It's gonna come out next summer. - Alright. - Yeah. I may lean on you for a tweet here or there. - We'll have you ask a question and we'll link it up. - Alright, good. I need a little, you got all these kids here working on this stuff, I may need-- - You're blown away, you are fundamentally blown away by the youth of this organization. - I've never, I have never seen an organization this young. I'm looking around the room, that kid's definitely in high school. (group laughter) This kid's 20, 22. - [Gary] Tyler, how old are you, Tyler? - [Tyler] 25. - [Gary] Bang, 19. - I said he's in high school. 22. Hold on. - Okay. - This kid's 21. - [Other Tyler] 23. - Yep. - That kid's 25. - [Andy] I'm 28. - Yeah, Andy looking good. - She's 26. - She told you. - I knew that already, she told me. - This kid's like 22. - How old are you? - I'm gonna, I'm 45. - Nice number. - [Andy] This is the oldest VaynerMedia's looked since I've been here. - Put it this way-- - Did you hear that? - as old as two people here. - I know that. I get it. - I know. - You keep asking questions, we'll keep answering them.