Inman Connect Gary Vaynerchuk Keynote | 2016

(crowd cheering) - Morning. (crowd cheers) It's early. Wait, I only have 20 minute... oh there we go, okay I got scared. Good morning, super excited to be here. Really, really fun to be here. So what do I want to talk about? Look I think there's a lot of things going on and I feel an enormous kinship to this audience. I think through my career over the last 10 years, I've spent a lot of time interacting, engaging with, I have a lot of friends in this industry, and I think it's been really interesting for me to watch this space evolve over the last decade. I think I spoke at this event maybe eight years ago, or something of that nature and back then it was like, hey, there's technology and there's these things like Google AdWords and Twitter, and things of that nature. And clearly we've evolved in a very big way from there. You know I think what I want to really talk about today is a couple of core things. A, attention. I think the one thing that binds everybody in this room, depending on how much business they're doing, what market they are in, how long they've been in the industry, how they roll, hold on real quick, is that a Jets Jersey? I love you. (crowd laughs and cheers) The one thing that 100% binds all of you is that before you tell me how great this house is, or this property is, or how great you are, we are all battling in this room for attention. And attention is fickle, and attention moves. And that is basically been my career. My career has been predicated on what I call

day trading attention. I wanna know where people are, and I wanna figure out how to story tell to them in that medium, and if that meant billboards, 'cause people drove and continue to, great. If that means direct mail, because people were going through their mail very carefully and aggressively, in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, great. And then for me, as some of you know, that became the internet itself, and so I launched an e-commerce website in the wine business in 1997 long before people believed that people would buy wine through the internet. I think for, how many people here by show of hands have made an Instagram Story already? Raise your hands, so for about 30 or 40 of you, you know that attention can shift in minutes. 48 hours ago, 72 hours ago, there is no Instagram Stories, people are trying to figure out their Snapchat strategies. I see a lot of Snapchat shirts in the crowd, and so these were things, Snapchat or Instagram Stories is not something that I would have even been able to reference at this conference a year ago with any seriousness. Snapchat's something I've been paying attention to. And so that's basically the punchline. The punchline is, what are you doing in a 2017 environment that's actually gonna help you sell more homes, bring more awareness, build your business, build your brand, what are those strategies, what are those implications? Here's what I want to establish right away, this morning, which is A: we are living through the single biggest communication shift that we've lived through since the printing press. The first thing you have to really wrap your head around in this room, this morning is how substantial the culture shift really is. I think the biggest thing that I'm fascinated by, is that every single person in this room, including myself, is grossly underestimating how big of a shift this is. If you were just sitting in my shoes right now, you would realize there's about 90 people right now holding up a cell phone recording this talk. You have to understand how interesting that is, because 10 years ago we didn't even have smart phones, right. We were definitely not recording content at scale. At scale! We are producing content at a level we've never seen before, and so what that means to everybody in this room is something very interesting. Here's what it means. We have a massive supply and demand issue. You're trying to get somebody's attention for what you're trying to sell them, the problem is that end user is getting pounded with 500, 10,000 times the amount of content that they did just 10 years ago. And so how are you going to break through that environment? Because it's not just if they're in the market to buy a new home, it's every product and service that they are trying to achieve in their lives. And to me, that is a fascinating, fascinating supply and demand issue that every single person in this room is dealing with. So how do you break through? What do you do? I think what you first have to do is recognize that attention is driving very, very quickly. I think the biggest thing that concerns me this morning, more than anything is, have you become complacent or romantic about what's working for your business now? The biggest thing that I'm fascinated by is when something works for somebody, do they try to milk it forever and hope nothing changes. A lot of you know, in this room know that Twitter was my coming out party in the digital world. I invested in it, I became big on it, I amassed a million followers on it, it is devastating to me that Twitter does not hold the attention that it once did six or seven years ago. I spent every single hour between 7:00 p. m. and two in the morning from 2007 to 2011 in my life to amass an audience on Twitter, but in 2011 when I started noticing that even though I had 800,000 followers and I was posting something, that I was not getting the same results that I was when I had 50,000 followers, that became the moment that I, instead of what most people do, which is desperately try to hold on, put my head in the sand or what a lot of people's strategy is in this room on digital shifts, which is (holds breath) hope, fuckin' hope, that everything's gonna be okay. What I started doing in 2011 was I started investing a lot more time and energy in figuring out Instagram, in 2012 and '13, in figuring out Snapchat. I spent a lot of time on things that didn't work out, SocialCam became something I spent a lot of time in 2012. Vine 2014. Pinterest is something I spent a lot of time in 2012, 13, 14, right? Tumblr was something I spent a lot of time on. So they're not all wins, but the biggest thing that I could leave you with in this room, and again there's been a dramatic knowledge gain in this collective room, even getting ready for this talk, looking at your content, your hashtags, your tweets, it's just such a higher understanding. There's still some tried and true things that are not being executed. Last night I stayed in my bed when I got here late and just went through a lot of your accounts that were using the hashtag or mentioning them. I'm just like what's the state of the union, of the people in the room, how are they rolling? Couple things, one, unfortunately, the last two books before the #AskGaryVee book, Jab, Jab, Right Hook and The Thank You Economy are both still very underutilized by the market. People continue to put out content that is in high percentage in their best interest and not in the value of the end user. I am still baffled by why the real estate industry on a individual broker level does not realize that they need to become the digital mayor of their town. And what I mean by that is, the number one blueprint that fundamentally, look, you're gonna be here the whole time and you're gonna get a lot of good content from a lot of people. You're gonna here a couple of nuggets from me, a lot of them move the needle a little bit. bit, you might sell two more homes, four more homes. To fundamentally change your business where you go from where you are now to five, 10, 20X the revenue and volume, you have to make dramatic changes. And that dramatic change sits in the form, and here it is, and by the way 99% of you are not gonna do anything about what I'm about to say, (crowd laughs) I'm being very honest with you because the punchline here is, it's hard work. And the reality is, that a lot of people are just not willing to put in the work. I mean that's just the fundamental reality. As a matter of fact, I always think that digital excites people because they think its scalable. They think that all of a sudden the computer's going to do the fuckin' work for them, right? The number one shift that everybody has to do in this room is understand the following statement, and understand it cold, not just shake your head when you hear the words coming out of my mouth. The quicker you understand in this room that you are a media company- comma-real estate agent, real estate software provider, whatever you may be, I know that I am a media company-comma-an agency CEO, a wine retailer. Once you make that shift everything changes. For example, when you make that mental shift, the content that you put out on Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest and Instagram and Snapchat, fundamentally changes. Right now, what many of you do for a living, you're forced to be in the right hook business. What the hell are you gonna put out, content-wise, right? When you decide to become the digital mayor of your town, everything fundamentally changes. If you decide that you, not the local newspaper, is going to be the provider of the content of the best restaurants, reviewing the school system, and every other nook and cranny, in the two, four, six, and eight towns that you live in, you fundamentally start bringing value to end users that are intrigued or interested into moving into your town. I do not believe that most people sitting here this morning think that they're gonna be the editor in chief of a newspaper. But that is absolutely how I view every single one of you. That you have the potential to be that content producer. You're filming now; you could be filming a lot of things that actually bring value to the person that's debating to go from the city to your suburbs, they are looking for that information, why can't you, you Sally, you fucking Frank, you Frank, (audience laughs) why can't you-- why can't you be the person that interviews the principal of all the schools? Why can't you be the person that writes a review of every dish of every restaurant in your town? Why can you not be that person? That is my belief that is the wide open white space, for every person in this room that changed their business, because you then become synonymous with the town. You become the media entity. You become the person that fundamentally has the attention and what comes out of that, and this is very important to understand, is your ability then to market yourself at a greater sense because the content is dramatically, dramatically more viral in the number one platform that everybody should be spending all their time on, which is Facebook. In a world where everybody's very excited about all the new things, as am I, I live and breathe for it, even besides the Snapchats of the world, I'm paying attention to Anchor, and Musical. ly, and Peach, and After School, and there's plenty of things bubbling up that I'm curious, in two to three years will matter to you, and you can sell from, even in that world, we are sitting in a very interesting time. One of the things that I thought was very fascinating when I digged a little deep into a lot of the comments, I went back a little bit, I was curious what you guys said back in November, December, and January, about the Facebook feed, right? What did this collective group think about that? And, much to what I thought, people were very upset and complaining, right? People were upset that six months ago, a year, you lost a lot of your organic reach on Facebook, it wasn't as good anymore. Zucks fucked you, right? (audience laughs) What I found fascinating about that was that in lieu of that feed, organic growth going away, what grew was one of the greatest ad products of all time. If you're sitting in this room this morning, you have a real career, a real business. The fact that most of the people in this room do not deploy at least a thousand dollars a month into a Facebook environment to drive their business is borderline laughable and in reality just down right stupid. Let me explain why. By show of hands, how many people in this room, when they watch television now watch it on their time, not when the actual thing airs, but between DVR, Netflix, HBOGo, besides live sports, and I know it's early and some of you are lazy, but raise your hands 'cause it's important for everybody, how many people watch TV now on their time, raise your hand. Good, everybody. (laughter) How many people in this room, when given the chance fast-forward every single commercial? My friends, I live in a world now, VaynerMedia, I run a 650 person digital agency, it's a hundred million dollar revenue business, Toyota, Unilever, Under Armour, USA networks, biggest brands in the world, Dove, the whole nine, they spend 90 billion dollars, collectively, making videos and distributing them to sell you stuff. Right? I live in a world where I day trade attention. Every person in this room, and I think we can agree, this is not a 15 year old girl crowd, right? Every person in this room just raised their hand that they do not watch commercials at all costs. And even if, even if, the brand is lucky enough to get the commercial in front of you, because you dropped your remote control off your bed, (audience laughter) even if that happens, every person here, the second that commercial runs, grabs this. And you check on your business, you tweet about what LeBron just did, you definitely don't give the attention to the commercial. Let me explain why this matters to this room so much. How many people here in their career did Google AdWords at some point, raise your hands. Great, very good. How many people here did Google AdWords back in 2001, '2, and '3, when I was doing them, just raise your hands. Uh-huh. For the 20 of you, you remember what I remember, which was it was a great fucking deal, right? When I bought the word 'wine,' the day Google AdWords came out, for five cents a click, before Google raised the minimum, I owned it for nine and a half months before anybody even bid me up, because nobody knew it existed. My career's been about day-trading attention. I grew my dad's liqour store from a three to a 60 million dollar business in five years because I launched a website when nobody thought websites were important.

How many people here have done email marketing in their career, raise your hand. You're gonna love this one. In 1997, I had 150,000 to 200,000 person email newsletter that had 91% open rates. (audience groans, laughter) Yeah. Not because I was a hero, oh by the way, forget about that, 55% click to add to cart within the email. Not because I was a hero or I was so smart or I wrote such great copy, it's because nobody was email marketing in 1997. Who here had email in '97, '98, '99, raise your hands. Do you remember, for the youngsters in this room, we read every fucking word of every email. (enthusiastic laughter) We treated email like it was regular mail. Like, very carefully, like 'dear John,' yes, good. All of it. That same email newsletter today, even after ten years of money and strategy and all this, is at 33% open rates, and that's remarkable, and that's because we've consciously put a lot of effort towards it, so that has been my career. What I knew would happen on Google AdWords is about to happen in social media. And my friends, let's get this straight in this room right now, there is no social media. Social media is a slang term for the current state of the internet. There is no social media, we called it Web 2. 0 for all the OG's in this room, right? There is no social media, social media is a term we use to talk about Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat, and we even throw LinkedIn and YouTube, we even throw utilities and content platforms into social media, social media-- you mean the thing that we spend 51% of our time on this device, and if you sit in this room, in late 2016 and you do not understand that this is the remote control of our lives, how many people here, in every 24 hour window, are always within arm's reach of their phone? (audience chatters in agreement) I would literally rather somebody stab me in the streets of New York and steal my wallet than lose my fucking phone. (laughter, scattered applause) Attention. For example, I today, for all my businesses, all my 150+ investments, Wine Library, VaynerMedia, my personal brand, I don't even think about the internet at all in any other platform than my mobile device. As a matter of fact, I just got my design team at Vaynermedia together last week and I told them I wanna redesign Vaynermedia's website and in the next month or so you will go to Vaynermedia. com and if you go on it, in a laptop environment, it will actually go to a page, Vaynermedia. com, that will say the following, it will look broken, and it will say to you: Hey jerk, it's 2017. Go get your fucking phone. (laughter) It will actually not work on a laptop. Here's why this is important. I am extremely curious what your websites, how your marketing, looks in a mobile world. Many people here have been very smart about their landing page optimization, about their marketing material, about their videos that they put on their website, and a lot of them don't even work in this environment. And very quickly, within 24 months, what is this, the 20th, at the 22nd anniversary of fucking Inman Connect, the entire end consumer that you're trying to sell to will only be living in this environment. So if you have any call to action from this talk today, please, go home and adjust your web and social presence only into a mobile-first environment, because there will be nothing else. And a lot of you are converting great leads and other things through a desktop world, you've gotta make that same commitment to understand what's happening in here, because this is the punchline, this is how you will sell. I've got a friend who, in the last four months, has sold four homes through Facebook Live at his open home listings from people that didn't show up to the open house, it was just him walking around with his Facebook Live and he has a very small group of like 50 people watching those Facebook Lives, but three of his four transactions were someone of those 50 sharing it into the network of their friends, and then their friends becoming aware of it. Literally, I mean this is what you do for a living, literally, selling homes through Facebook Live because he's, and think about it, you guys do open houses all the time, I assume some of those aren't well attended, sometimes there is some down time, multiple times you have multiple people in the home that can, one of them, can hold the phone. There's real transactional value going on in this environment and I'm just thirsty, thirsty for people to understand how big of a deal it is, because of this attention arbitrage, there is so much opportunity.

For example, best practices, I wanna get very detailed here today, to be honest with you. Instagram: how many people are using Instagram for their business, raise your hand. If you're posting content on Instagram for your business, A, anybody who's not is making a massive mistake, because the attention of 28 to 65 on Instagram is stunning, deep, and when you think about the decision maker in home transactions, female gateway drug to those transactions, there's enormous attention. As a matter of fact, one of the most interesting data points on Instagram right now is the fastest-growing demo of selfies on Instagram are 40- to 50-year-old females. Literally cougar selfies. (loud audience laughter) Literally. - [Audience Member] Meow. Listen, I love it. Swiping through it. I'm enjoying it. However, one of the things I did last night was I went to four of yours, and that four is a very small sample group, but I went to four of your Instagram accounts and looked at the content. Many of you posting content, rooms, homes, information. Mixing it up, I'm fine with the jabbing and the right hooking, but when I look at the posts, of the four people, only one of them used a hashtag and they used one. So, just to get to details, A, I would take it far more seriously, and I would produce a lot more content on Instagram. B, when you post on Instagram, for so many of you, you do not have a large audience. For so many of you, there's not a lot of people following you and so for so many of you, I highly, highly recommend using 10, 15, 25 hashtags because if you're sitting here today and you wanna start your Instagram, you know, journey, the number one way to get discovered is through tactical hashtag evolution. So please go into that world, understand which hashtags have a lot of results, understand which hashtags don't where you can pop out, whether it's the name of your towns, by adding the word house, or things of that nature. So much business opportunity in that environment. Let's talk about Facebook again one more time. Gonna go back to it because it's super important. One of the things that I'm stunned by is how unbelievably strong the ad product really is. One of the things that, how many people here have run Facebook ads for their business? Raise your hand. Fantastic. So we are deep in here. Couple things. One of the things that I have been fascinated by is Facebook video content and how it drives down the cost of conversion on your non-video content. So I'm giving you a very detailed execution here, but because so many of you raised your hand, I'm gonna go there. One of the things that is wide open in your space right now is the following execution. This is kind of how I would pattern it. And I know I'm going way more detailed in this talk than ra-ra, you can do it, and I think that's the right tone. Here's where we're going. Open house or you're gonna list it, video content, Facebook Live. Obviously, you have to get permission from the seller, you know, you guys figure all that part out. First Facebook Live does that content. It's very raw, you're dropping the phone, you're walking up the stairs, but when it's done, it saves and it posts. You then go into that content and you edit that video. Take out parts of that video. 30 seconds here, 60 seconds there, 30 seconds here. Now again, some of you are single practitioners. Others have people in their company that can help them. For the people, how many people here, if they're gonna do, bless you, you're gonna do Facebook advertising or video creation, it's gonna be on your head, you don't have the overhead or infrastructure to have somebody else do it, raise your hands? Great, so that's a lot of you. Here's a really important part. For a lot of you, you're gonna go into excuse mode right now. I don't have the time. I didn't grow up with this. I love it when people come up to me like, "Gary, this technology, I know it's important, "but you gotta bear with me, I didn't grow up with this. " And I'm always like, "That's fine, Stan. "But you didn't grow up driving "and you figured it the fuck out. " (audience laughter) The fact that you didn't grow up with this is not an excuse. (chuckles) Love that. So, for a lot of you that just raised your hand, there's a lot of things here. How do you edit a Facebook video? How do you post this, how do you even place a Facebook ad? Not all of you have done it. It's really simple. I know a lot of you have pads in front of you, they gave 'em to you this morning. I'm gonna give you a website that will help you tremendously through this journey if you wanna write it down. It's spelled G O G L E dot com. It's called Google. Every single person here, basically, I've been thinking about this weird format of a keynote, which is I come out, I say like the seven or eight things that I think matter right now, Facebook video, you know, Instagram hashtag culture, couple of other things, and then I basically say, and now go to Google and spend 10 hours on Google and/or YouTube. For example, Google wouldn't work for me, 'cause I'm very bad at reading, I don't consume information that way, so then I would just go to YouTube and watch the, you know YouTube by the way is the second-biggest search engine in the world. And so for a lot of you that are more visual, if you wanna figure out how to use Snapchat or how to use a 360 camera, which would be a very good idea for a lot of you here that are listing that kind of content. Thank you, man. The 360 camera dude is here. (audience laughter) Um. - [Audience Member] And here! - And here, sorry, I got, oh! And right there! Respect. Nerd it up, baby. I love it. (audience laughter) I'm stunned by the following statement that I think rings very true in this room. How many people, you know what, I'll ask this question and it'll make it a lot better before I make the statement. How many people here are retiring in the next 10 years, and I don't mean you're gonna crush it and retire. (laughter) (chuckles) I mean you're old and you're finished. (loud audience laughter) So, raise you're hand if you're retiring. Too young, too young. You're a little bit older, dude. I see you in the back. (laughter) So for the four of you that are retiring in the next 10 years, respect. You can take a lot of what I'm saying with a grain of salt. I do think you might be able to hold on for dear life and hold your breath, right? For the rest of you, I need to remind you something. 11 years ago, nothing that we talk about in society existed. Not Netflix, not YouTube, not smartphones, not Facebook. Zero. I hope you understand that the biggest point of my talk this morning is not go use that hashtag or go make YouTube videos, it's that if you are not digitally native, you will die. And what I mean by that is not that you will die that, like, you'll go directly out of business. It's just, the people that are gonna take your business. And by the way, you know what I'm most worried about? Good markets. A good year this year. Success. That is my enemy. That is my enemy, because you become complacive. It's tried and true, this works for me, why the heck do I need to figure out Facebook video? Why do I have to figure out Snapchat? I'm good now, I'm the guy in my town, I'm the 20-year-old lady that has dominated Rochester, New York, fuck Gary. Right? Like, you know, like, I don't need this. I understand. The problem is, and let's get really humble together real quick, way bigger businesses than you have been put out of business because of technology shifts. Borders was a bigger business than yours. Right? When I invested in Uber five years ago, I called my dad's Russian friends in L. A. And, you know, how many people in the L. A. market? - [A Few Audience Members] Woo! - Great, awesome (chuckles). So, a lot of you know a lot of the black car service guys and gals over the last 20 years came from Eastern Europe, Soviet Union. That's where a lot of my dad's homies came when we emigrated from Russia. These are guy, think about this narrative. These are my dad's best friends now in their 50s and 60s. They came to this country in '78, '79. They were dead broke. They lived in studio apartments. They drove taxi cabs for two, three bucks an hour. Hustled their way, worked every hour, no Saturday and Sunday for 20 years, built up a business, didn't buy anything, saved all their money, eventually bought their own car, eventually had four or five guys or girls underneath them, built a business, had the American dream, finally got into their 50s and 60s, worked every goddamn minute to get there, and now were gonna kind of, like, enjoy it a little bit. And then Uber came along. And so I called Marik and Vladimir and these guys and said, "Hey. " Vladimir, I know. And said, "Vlad, I've got good news and bad news. "Good news is you've done well and America's "the greatest country in the world. "Bad news is you might be in trouble. " And literally, the three of them, verbatim, were all like, "That's nice, boy chick, we'll be okay. "So, what you're telling me is they're gonna take a phone "and hit a button and the car is gonna come? "Very good, very good, I'll talk to you later. " (laughter) - The funny part is these are very close friends of my family. That's a funny story and I say it funny. Here's what's not funny: every one of those three guys' businesses have been slaughtered. Absolutely slaughtered. All of their businesses now, that they're trying to sell, are literally worth 15 cents on the dollar of what it was worth just four years ago. Their revenues have been cut from high six figures to low six figures even five figures. They're basically out of business. Nobody here is super excited to go run and buy an independent black car service business, and so the one thing that I implore all of you to understand is in a world where the internet came along only twenty years ago... There's a lot of youngsters in this room, so pay very close attention, especially if you wanna be in business in 20 years. Only 20 years ago, Windows 95 came out and finally got some of us on the internet. Okay? We're talkin' bout a very recent phenomenon. I am very confident that a lot of my venture capital friends are gonna lose a lot of money betting on virtual reality right now because it's too early, but I'm equally as confident that in 20 years, we're gonna be deeply playing in a VR world. A VR world that is gonna actually do to the internet, what the internet did to real life. Everything will reset because the only thing that matters to this room is the attention and if that attention means we put on contact lenses and never take them out and live in a world that is virtual alongside with physical, I think more and more people here don't think that is the most insane thing they've ever heard. I think more and more people here, especially if they're 45, 50, 60, 70, remember how they judged the fad of the internet and won't do the same thing with VR. I think a lot of people here didn't expect people randomly running through their backyard looking for virtual Pikachus. (audience laughing) And so, I just really want you to understand something. I basically look at this like a race. I think all of you are about to run a very long marathon in business and the reason I want you to be on Snapchat is not because I necessarily fully, 1,000% believe that Snapchat's gonna change your business. It's that I need you to understand how Snapchat works because that's like gonna on a treadmill and getting prepared for the marathon. Nobody here, without training for it, ya just gonna wake up tomorrow and run the New York marathon successfully. If you are not acting digitally every single day, if you are not understanding that all the action, all the opportunity is in the people that draw lines in the sand and say they're not gonna do. How bout this? Let's be very honest here and this is very important. I want everybody to see this. How many people in this room, in the last two or three years, said that they would never go on Snapchat? It was stupid and now have Snapchat accounts? Raise your hand. Raise it. Raise it high. Don't be embarrassed, it's a good thing. Raise it high. You need to understand in those hands is where all the money is. I'm gonna buy the New York Jets because I'm really good at knowing what you say you're not gonna do and then know you're gonna actually do it. Plenty of people in this room, especially if they're over 45, said that they would never get a cell phone. That their pager was good enough. (audience laughing) A ton of you said you would never go on Facebook, eight, ten years ago. Why? It was for college kids and now you live in it. Right? We just saw 20, 15% of this room say they would never go on Snapchat and now there's t-shirts in the crowd and on phone cases and it is a part of our world. Right? 24 minutes ago, it feels like, definitely two, three days ago, five days ago for some of you that watched my vlog. I said that I was worried about Instagram's positioning in the marketplace. That it was getting squeezed between Snapchat and Facebook and then it... Out of nowhere I wake up and they make a product feature change that competes with Snapchat and makes it dramatically more relevant overnight. This is a moving marketplace. I am actually thinking about buying drive time radio ads for the first time in 10 years because the price has gone down so much that I'm now curious if the ROI is there. I'm not a digitalist or a futurist. I don't give a shit about technology. I care about your attention because if I have your attention, if I'm good enough after that point, I can sell you something. It's not confusing. It's not complicated. The problem is it's hard work. The difference between the people that are gonna win and lose here is far less about talent. It's gonna be built on two very simple tried and true pillars that existed long before the internet came along, which is the following two things. It's 100%. I could look at you one by one and map your success based on two very simple principles. Number one: your work ethic. It's just gonna matter. You know zero successful people that have built it themselves that haven't put in the work. And number two, the one that almost everybody in this room is struggling with and it's been the absolute calling card of my career: patience. The utter lack of patience in this room is the absolute variable of the people that win and lose. Especially when we talk about the things that I believe in like these platforms. The amount of people that have e-mailed me and saying, "Hey Gary, you got me super pumped "on Snapchat in January. "Well, I've been really going at it hard "and I'm not getting the results yet," and that e-mail came in fucking February. (audience laughing) The amount of time it takes, let me give you a good example. I think a lot of you can agree 'cause I know a lot of you know me, that I've been good at this stuff. content and social media thing for the last ten years. The day Facebook pages came out for people, the day it came out, six, seven, eight, nine, I'm trying to think about eight years ago? Until four months ago, I've been putting out content everyday. I've been GaryVee. I get plenty of exposure, pounding away doing everything right, and from that day eight years ago to four months ago, I amassed 550,000 likes, followers, on my Facebook fan page. In the last four months that page has gone from 550,000 to over a million followers, organic, because four months ago, I figured out how Facebook video was working in a better way. All those hours, my entire livelihood for seven years, running the biggest agency in the space, and I got to a half a million. And in four months, an additional half a million because chipping away and learning, patience, hard work, (snaps) and a huge game shift for my business and my personal brand world. That is what it takes. If you have the audacity to sit here and want to have a business on your terms, and crush it and live your life your way, then you have to put in the work into this craft because there is so much of your consumer's attention living on it, it is unbelievable. It is going to be the only place to reach consumers. It's funny. The reason I brought up drive time radio is because again, I'm just attention arbitraging, right? I been running a lot of direct mail. Who's running direct mail here for their business? Raise your hand. I got to tell you, if you're running direct mail, I don't know what you're spending on your direct mail versus your Facebook, but I've been testing for Wine Library. very aggressively, direct mail for the last two years because I'm always curious if my bullshit is real, right? And then I been looking at big data for my big clients around their couponing and things of that nature. I'm sitting here and telling you today that Facebook is far better direct mail than direct mail itself. Everything you want direct mail to do is done 10 times better and half the price in a Facebook environment. And again, I didn't close my thought earlier because I just wanna get into Q& amp; A. Are we doing Q& amp; A? I thought there was some Q& amp; A. I hope so. There is? Great, awesome. The reason I'm worried about my brands, Budweiser and Diageo, and all these brands coming into Facebook, is that five cent word wine is now $9. For all of you that are running Facebook ads and it costs you XYZ amount of dollars to reach a thousand people and CPM to bring awareness to your open house or your organization or you as an agent, that is gonna cost you five to 25 times more than it's costing you today in 24 months. As last year was the biggest decline in CPG, consumer packaged goods, cereals, toothpaste, all that stuff. Last year was the biggest decline in that industry of all time because they spend all their money on television and you're not paying attention anymore. When those characters figure out that they need to spend more money in this world. It's not like one more agent in here decides to do it and they're gonna spend 5,000 bucks and it doesn't really become that much more competitive. It's that a company goes, like Macy's. Macy's went from a million dollars to fifty million dollars spent in Facebook this last year. Right? When you have the other Fortune 500s do that, you're gonna be wiped out of the feed. You're not gonna be able to afford the ads that can drive your business right now. And so, I don't want you to sit with the regret that I have. You've heard my story of Wine Library: three to 60 million. Let me tell you the great regret of my career. That story should be three to 400 million. Let me tell you why it's not. Because when I had Google AdWords really working for me, I wasn't smart enough to go all in. When it was five cents a click, I didn't maximize all the people I could've had. I was still buying print. radio. I was still doing a lot of direct mail. I was doing local television commercials. I was doing event marketing. I was doing a mix. What I should've done and what I'm doing with Facebook now for my clients is I'm going pot committed. When something is grossly underpriced, in attention, you strike. And that is what we're living through right now in a Facebook environment. And I think you guys know me well enough. I'm giving this advice right now, not because I love you so much, but because DRock is filming this and I can't wait to run this in three years and say, "I fucking told you. " (audience laughing) And so, please please, if nothing else, if this is your business and livelihood, are you telling me that you don't have five hours to go home after this conference and read every article and watch every video of how to run great Facebook ads and make creative? You don't have that time? time for your business? Are you kidding me? So please, please become disproportionately educated on what's going on there. Number two, figure out the following thing

how do you become a media company? Because that is the absolute only way that you can actually double or triple your business. You may not be as extroverted as me or the next person. So maybe it's not even video. Maybe it's the written word. Maybe it's some other communication cell. Maybe it's radio, podcasting. Podcasting is-- how many people listening to podcasts? Raise your hands. It's real, it's happening. So you don't need a national podcast. Have a local podcast. Because the funny part is, it's not about how many followers you have, it's need to buy something. You don't need a million people listening to your podcast. If you have all 37,000 of the town that you are selling within, you've won. You're gonna win. And so, we are just not thinking about the opportunities in the market place in a significant enough way. We are living through the single biggest culture shift of our time. Because I promise you something right now, for all of you, that dude back there, respect. But only four of you are retiring in 10 years. What do you think, somebody that's 22 right now, is gonna be doing when they decide to buy their home in 10 years? How do you think they're gonna act? Where get their information from? How's it gonna roll? And by the way, the punchline is, it's the same tried and true shit that's going on now. It's word of mouth. It's word of mouth! So many of you do business on word of mouth, but the important part is that cell phone, the internet, that is the infrastructure of word of mouth in our society today. 20 years ago, when somebody did a good job for you, sold your home, bought your home, served you a nice cup of coffee. Whatever it was, 20 years ago, when somebody did something great, you told one or two of your girlfriends or homies. Today, we feel compelled to share every one of our fucking thoughts on social media. (crowd laughing) Right? That is very important for this room. And what you need to be doing tomorrow, is producing a disproportionate amount of content and distributing it everywhere. Some of them will work, some of them won't. But here is the punchline my friends, the "wasted time" that I put into Vine and Socialcam was the reason that I dominated on Snapchat and Instagram video. The things that I learned on those platforms mapped to the next thing. So while you sit in your seats here and ponder is it worth your time, or my favorite: "Will Snapchat be around in two years? " Who gives a shit? It's around right now. (crowd laughing) No advertising company worried if "Friends" or "Seinfeld" was gonna be cancelled in two or three years. They cared while everybody's attention was on it. They ran commercials. It's not to you to decide where society should be. You know what I love about business people, agents, marketers, people that run their businesses? They feel like their personal point of view on the world is how they should be running their business. I'm sorry that you're upset that all our kids are on technology. I love my modern parents now. You know, now I have a seven year old and a four year old. So I've got a lot of parent friends, right. And they love to go out to dinner with Lizzie and I and say, "Oh" and they know what I do. "Oh this technology is really shitty. "It's ruining our kids. " I'm like, "Rick, that's super cool, "but the last two times I hung out with you, "when little Jake got really uppity and kind of crazy, "you threw that fucking iPad at him "so fast he couldn't even move. " (audience laughter) And you guys loved to go into a restaurant, walk in and see a couple, and both of them are on the phone the whole time, and you loved to say to your partner, "Look how sad that is, right? "Isn't that so sad? " When I see that, I think it's the greatest thing I've ever seen. Let me tell you why. That same couple, 10 years ago, when they didn't have their cell phones, they just sat there in front of each other and didn't say a fucking word. (audience laughter) Their marriage was fucked. The phone didn't do it. (loud audience laughter) And so I'm just happy for them, 'cause they're actually doing what they wanna be doing, right? (audience laughing) So, I understand how you don't want it to be, but let me remind you this: your grandmother thought Elvis shaking his hips was the devil. (audience laughing) A lot of us grew up in a world where they didn't want us playing Zelda and Mike Tyson's Punch-Out! because we were gonna get ruined, yet a lot of our contemporaries, mainly the kids younger than us, are making five to $10 million a year playing video games. The world changes and the biggest part that I'm worried about is the world is changing in a much bigger way that you and, or I realize. And you need to make a religious decision here today, not a tactical one. This isn't about signing up for Snapchat when Gary gets off the stage. This is about a binary decision of are you understanding how important digital is or are you not? And more importantly, making your actions map your words. Thank you. (audience cheering) Thank you. Thank you so much.

Do we have time for Q& amp; A or did I lose my time? What happened? - [Man] A couple Gary. - We got a couple? Let's do it. Who's got a question? Do we have mics or we goin' ghetto style? Let's go ghetto style. Go head, I'll repeat the question. (mumbles) Really good, Michael. (mumbles) 'Preciate it. - [Michael] Question for you, I spend a lot of time on Snapchat-- - Yes. - [Michael] you're an inspiration to everybody, of course. - Thank you. - [Michael] and of course, this whole Instagram Story game. Yes. - [Michael] Everyone's coming up to me and asking me saying you're spending all this time on Snapchat, they're time, Michael. You're spending all this in Snapchat and now you got Instagram Stories comin' out. - You're dead, you're fucked, it's over. - [Michael] Yeah, all that scary, scary stuff, right? I'm excited about a new opportunity, but my question to you is there is obviously only so much time in a day and I've always been told you should also focus. - Real quick, on that. - [Michael] So, how do you deal with those two things? - Yes, there's only so much time in a day, but Sally who's thinking about buying a home wants to watch Instagram Stories and Rick, who wants to buy a home, is watching Snapchat stories. Yeah. (audience laughing) How is this complicated? Have you guys not just lived through everybody saying Facebook was dead for the last three years 'cause it's not young anymore and it's the single best fucking ad product in the world? My man, the answer is both. now, it's important to be smart. For example, I believe that Instagram stories is very powerful for a lot of people in here because Snapchat skews a little bit younger and everybody's gonna default into thinking here is if I'm gonna sell a $800,000 home, it's more likely gonna be a 42-year-old than a 24-year-old and I think there's some validity to that. So, Instagram Stories is something I think every single person should do here because I think it will 100% work to sell a home today. Snapchat is something every single person should do here because I think it's a platform, you have to understand, Snapchat's gonna be an augmented reality platform. All the AR companies they're buying, the way they do filters, Snapchat's doing a lot of other things and again, I don't know. The young and wealthy on certain, it depends on your market. If you're in Kansas and I love Kansas. - New York City, Gary. - What's that? - [Michael] New York City with you. - Yeah, I mean if you're in New York City, you have to do Snapchat because Snapchat in New York City is 45 and under. There's obviously middle parts of America and other places where it skews younger. You just have to look at your data, but the answer is both. And focus, stop fucking watching fucking Netflix and do both. I love when people are like, "I've been taught to focus," and then I look at their day and they work six hours a day (audience laughing) between their fucking hour and a half lunch, them bullshitting in the morning to talk to everybody, fucking checking YouTube 13 times a day for four minutes each. I'm like focus? Fucking work. (audience laughing) (audience cheering and applause) Right? Both. Questions? Yep, yep. Yeah, take it wherever you want. - [Dylan] Gary, thanks for the time. My name's Dylan Hayle out of Raleigh, North Carolina. I'm still hitting doors. Home to home, I love it. - You should. - [Dylan] You're not gonna get me off it. Thank you. - But real quick. - [Dylan] Sure. - What's your name again? - [Dylan] Dylan Hayle. - Dylan, while you're walking up to the fucking door, to knock on it, you could be knocking on the door here and knocking on it. - [Audience Member] Facebook Live it. - [Dylan] Yeah, that's my question. How do I incorporate social media and modern media marketing to maximize that? - I'm being dead serious. A lot of people know that I, hold on to it, that I engage a ton. I'm busy every minute. When I get up from my desk to go to the bathroom, I open my phone and engage with three people on Twitter or I make a piece of content that's on my mind, right? So, literally, I'm being dead serious. That wasn't a joke. When you get out of your car and you walk and you go to knock, in between those two minutes, in that 39 seconds, either produce content or engage with a small community that you've started building. - [Dylan] I'm puttin' out some content there. Here's me hittin' doors in this new neighborhood on a targeting type of thing. Specifically, how do I engage that person that I just made a contact with, so that they're connected to me on social media? - You mean the person on social me-- - [Dylan] Yeah, the guy I talked to that says yeah, I'm thinkin' 'bout selling my house. - On the knock? On door? - [Dylan] Yep, that guy. - I would get his cell phone number. - [Dylan] Okay, yeah. - You know what I mean? I would be like, "Hey, give me your cell "and I would text him. " That is the most intimate relationship in technology today. Nobody here is giving their cell phone out for text marketing because it's the one protective place we have. If I were you, I would get as many of them into the text. I would take a picture of their door and have that as their image, so you could keep track and that's what I would do. - [Dylan] Fair enough. Thank you. - You got it. You're welcome. I got to run. They're kicking me off, I'm sorry. Love you, guys. Thank you.