PCBC 2014 Keynote at Moscone Center

morning thanks for having me and thanks for coming out uh I know the uh the US soccer match going up against that I'm pretty impressed with the turnout I kind of I came to uh thinking there was going to be four people here today and we're going to be in a Kumbaya table so I'm excited by show of hands how many of you saw my speech two years ago raise your hands great thank you and uh by show of hands uh how many of view have no idea who I am please raise your hands that [ __ ] hurts that's a tough way to start a morning um okay so I apologize for the uh 20 30% that have heard some of this but since so many of you don't I'm going to set up a little bit of context then I'm going to speak a little bit about uh what I would call the current state of selling stuff in America I mean we can call it social media but I want to make sure that everybody in this room understands the only reason I care about social media is because it sells stuff and whether you're B2B or B Toc in this room uh trying to get to the consumer about your project what you're building or a vendor or trying to get to the developers in this room and become part of that business model I am completely convinced understanding the context of this room and being here a couple years ago I'm completely convinced with my entire heart and soul that even the most Progressive in this room are grossly underestimating what's actually going on in our society right now when you incorporate the digital changes we're living through and that's what I want to focus on the truth is as I stand here you know I'm about to give a keyote speech I feel pretty good about it it's going to go well you're going to get excited because I get excited all that good stuff but then next Thursday happens and all the rallying we're going to do this morning kind of goes on the Wayside when actual business gets in the way and so just to set the tone my biggest agenda here this morning is to convince one person of the reality of the marketplace and have that one person actually execute let me explain I was born in uh in bellus in the former Soviet Union I came to the United States when I was 3 years old my family uh immigrated to Queens New York eight family members in a studio apartment half the size of this stage uh very ghetto upbringing my dad really it's kind of fun to say that in this room my dad uh was in the construction business in the Soviet Union when we came to the US it was the late 70s uh my dad thought he was going to get a construction job I see a lot of faces in this room I'm sure plenty of you remember the late 70s the market wasn't so great so my dad had to get a bunch of side jobs one of them was to be a stock boy in a liquor store in Clark New Jersey my dad communed muted from Queens to Clark for an hour each day getting paid two bucks an hour um it was kind of that story right I kind of lived the American dream story first generation immigrant I probably associate with more of the grandparents of the people in this room than that's kind of my life uh when we moved to Edison New Jersey because my dad became the manager of this liquor store in Clark I started my first entrepreneurial venture I had a six Lemonade Stand Fran now um now how many of you remember the big wheels those little bikes remember I used to ride my big wheels at the end of every summer day collecting my cash for my friends like I was little Tony Soprano or something so that was good made a couple hundred bucks which was a ton of money for our immigrant family especially at age six and seven when I was 12 I started my first real actual business um in 1987 if some of you recall baseball cards were the phenomenon of America and so I would do baseball card shows I would rent a table for 200 bucks and sell baseball cards in the malls of New York and New Jersey um when you know and I was making2 to $3,000 a weekend selling baseball cards at this age which you know if you're 14 and you have $330,000 in cash under your bed and you're not selling weed you're doing a good job so uh so that was big you know I do think thanks Brian I do think that I will buy the New York Jets one day uh but I do know that I will never be more Rich than when I was 14 and had 30,000 in cash because Nintendo was like 200 bucks I didn't know what to do with the money right when I was 15 my dad ruined my life being the firstborn immigrant son my dad had now executed on his American dream from 1978 when we came to the us until 1985 in that seven-year

window we spent Zer do on anything we saved every dollar and that allowed my dad to buy a small liquor store in Springfield New Jersey he started building it up I became a teenager and as you can imagine he dragged me into the family business like every immigrant family does and he paid me two bucks an hour to work in the basement bagging ice for 15 hours a day so I went from making $4 to $5,000 $3,000 a weekend to making $30 a weekend bagging ice in the basement of my dad's store I did that every weekend and every summer vacation for two straight years I call those the Dark Ages when I was 17 16 I was finally allowed to come upstairs who saw the movie The Goonies ra Goonies I was literally sloth remember sloth who was like chained to the basement that was me for two years at my dad's store I was finally allowed to come upstairs and something very interesting happened I hated the liquor business I wanted to get involved in my family business cuz it's just kind of what you do when you're like that way but I didn't want to sell liquor and beer and it just wasn't that interesting to me but we were lucky we were in Springfield New Jersey which is actually around Short Hills Summit Livingston New Jersey affluent areas if you know that area and so in the early 90s as wine started to become something in America that we cared about we felt the impact of that cuz we just have affluent customers around and even though my dad's store was called Shoppers Discount Liquors you know uh you kind of now know why I rebranded it um people came in and asking for wine and on one faithful day everybody came in and asked for K special select Cabernet subon 1990 which was just named the wine of the Year by the wine spectator after a series of questions with 30 different customers asking for that bottle I realized something very special which was people collected wine and once I made that connection of Michael Jordan Wayne Gretzky Ken griffy Jr which is what I was doing with my baseball cards Silver Oak cus shat leit same crap and so I took all my passion from learning about stats of sports to no 16-year-old in the world should know as much as I did about Pina Noir and Sans and everything and for the first time in my life I went from I'm going to open up 9,000 baseball card stores one day sell the franchise and buy the Jets to I'm going to open up 9,000 liquor stores and wine shops sell the franchise and buy the Jets right that became the plan at that moment my freshman year of college now I was a dnf student and as a freshman in college I probably spent 20 minutes on a computer in my entire life I just want every single person to pay attention to what I'm about to say I'm about to spend the next half an hour talking about technical stuff computers and social media and the cloud the internet all this stuff and I've been doing this a long time and a lot of people in this room who are running businesses successfully long before all this stuff always like to say things like Gary I get it but I didn't grow up with this stuff right I just want everybody to know I did not grow up with this stuff I was not techy I did not own a computer I was 19 years old when this faithful day happened where I was in my dorm room playing Madden 94 dominating by the way my friend ran in said you have to come and see this I went to his dorm room there's 10 dudes standing in front of a computer I at least knew what a computer was but like just to put into context I had a word processor that I was supposed to use to write papers I didn't but I had one and they're standing in front of it and it was the first time I heard C remember that sound AOL four bucks a minute dial up internet real ripoff anyway and I and I said this amazing statement I said is this the information Super Highway that's what we used to call it youngsters it was pretty sad anyway and my friend Joe looked me dead in the face and he said the words that changed my life forever which was he signed on it was AOL 1994 signed on me dead in the face and he said we can get chicks on this thing so we did age sex location some of you remember ASL um I waited I this is how to put into context I waited four hours for my chance to get on the internet I watched for four hours 10 other people sit down and go on the internet because it was that mind-blowing that this is only 20

years ago to put into context right I jumped on and within 15 minutes I realized poking around clicking hitting a couple buttons I realized holy crap I can sell stuff on this thing and it was the first time I ever thought about not spending the money or time or infrastructure to launch 9,000 this or 9,000 that I said I can launch something on this sell it and buy the New York Jets This Is Where It Starts becoming important to you guys in 199 8 I went into my family liquor store business full-time in 1996 while still being a sophomore in school I launched the second ever e-commerce wine business in the US called wine library. com I rebranded my family business to Wine Library and from 1998 to 2005 in a seven-year window I grew my family business from a three to a $65 million business now here's what's important where it crosses over to us in the building industry I did a lot of things in that seven years that map to a lot of things that are being done by the practitioners here which was traditional marketing I did the Yellow Pages I did newspaper ads I did local radio I did buy in the B2B magazine I did buy Billboards and local cable and I did so much goddamn direct mail that I still look at trees sometimes and think they're pissed at me I mean I did all those things but there's something else I did that I want to harp on in this room today that is what matters I have now had a 20-year professional career I built my family business to a large business I started a social media agency four years ago with my brother AJ I've grown that from 20 to 400 employees into a $50 million Revenue business in 36 months I invested in things like Twitter and Facebook and Tumblr and Uber and Birchbox and I've watched these businesses go from seed round funding to billion doll companies in five years I also have General Electric and Mountain Dew and Dove and GE and all these enormous Fortune 100 companies as clients for the last four years I've seen small businesses entrepreneurship Fortune 500 I've played the gamut there's one thing that I want every person in this room to think about if you write down anything from this talk if that's how you roll or if you remember anything from this talk let me explain to you the one thing that connects all those businesses that I've seen win and the one thing that connects all the businesses that I've seen lose AKA when I begged with all my heart for Blockbuster to pay attention to this thing called Netflix and they didn't give a [ __ ] and now they give a [ __ ] unfortunately they're dead so they don't give anything so the one common thread the one thing that binds every person in this room whether you're a vendor B2B contractor developer the one thing that is a common theme and is going to be the variable the single variable to why people in this room 10 years from now are successful versus the ones that are not going to be as successful there's only one variable the one thing that I'm good at the one reason that I've been honored to be able to stand in front of you again here today twice in three years the one reason I've been able to build businesses so quickly pick startups that have made me a lot of money by going public like Facebook and Twitter and Uber next is I actually suck at 99% of things when it comes to business I'm super add I'm not that organized I make a lot of mistakes I'm chaotic but there's one thing that got me here and it's the one thing I want everybody to focus on in this room the one theme for success is are you Marketing in the year that we actually live in and I just want to sit here for 13 seconds quiet for dramatic pause because I want everybody to really think about what I just said if you are sitting here and you think about how you spend your time and money to make more money and it doesn't map to the behavior of the people that you're trying to sell to in 2014 you are vulnerable why did Blockbuster go out of business Blockbuster passed on buying Netflix for $25 million they passed they sat in a boardroom and they said next agenda Netflix do we want to buy it for $25 million by the way this is like seven years ago this is not so long ago and they pass do you know why my favorite thing in business and some of the bigger organizations here people are going to start laughing their data showed that their customers didn't care their data

showed that their customers liked going to the store and touching the DVDs stores because they might serendipitously run into one of their neighbors that's what their data showed I don't know about you guys but here's the experience I like pressing one button while I'm naked in bed and watching the [ __ ] that I want to watch how many people here now watch television outside of live sports and award shows now watch television on your time meaning you're not tuning in when it airs you're watching on DVR too on demand Netflix on the go HBO raise your hands don't [ __ ] me raise your hands if you watch raise it high because I want everybody in the front area to look back real quick raise your hand if you watch television on your time okay thank you I'm going to guess that that's about 95% of this room now I think we can all agree with all due respect to this room that this is not a high school aged crowd right and 95% of the hands went up in this room because you now watch television on your time because technology has caught up to an opportunity where you can do the things you want to do on your time not when it actually happens right and so 95% of this room watches TV now on your time just curious by show of hands how many people in this room in this year the first six months of this year when watching those TV shows have fast forwarded every single commercial raise it interesting another 90% meanwhile 10 billion dollars in money is spent to make commercials and distribute them to tell you a story about the products my clients are spending billions of dollars trying to tell you how good their soda or bottled water or Services several different people in here within your organizations are running local television to tell you how good this thing is and you should buy it we're storytelling like it's 2006 or 2003 or 1994 even for the people that didn't raise their hand in here the 20 of them if a commercial is lucky enough to get by right like maybe you dropped your remote off your bed right even if a commercial is lucky enough to sneak by and tell you how great a product is every person here when it goes to Commercial and they're not changing the channel is taking their attention and they're giving it to their phone to check their email or to tweet out what they just saw because my friends the other thing that binds everybody in this room the number one thing even more importantly than what I said earlier which is Market in the year that we live in because the truth is some of you will be lucky enough to not Market in the year that we live in and hold on for long enough to where you don't care anymore right and that's about how many people here by show hands are retiring in the next six years and I don't mean you're going to crush it I mean you're old and tired and you're finished six years raise your hand raise your hands if you're retiring in six years raise your hands real quick all right so for the nine of you in this room I respect you taking where I'm going with this with a little bit of a assault you're probably going to be able to hold off just enough to where it's not going to move fast enough to really disrupt your current landscape of business and you'll be on your way fishing camping enjoy it thanks for all the hard work but for the rest of you the speed in which innovation is happening is extraordinary and that's what we need to focus on how many people here spend money trying to reach how many people here consider themselves in B2B raise your hand B to be you're trying to reach somebody great and how many people consider themselves B Toc raise your hands great so more B Toc which is where this really matters but I would argue that the 30% of this room that's in B2B doesn't actually think this is very important to them that they feel like well my customers or who I'm trying to reach are not on these platforms right that they're not the decision maker is not spending his or her time on Facebook or Twitter or things of that nature let me pay you a picture of how we do B2B business my current agency is B2B I can tell you there's a really remarkable tactic I'm going to I've been trying to make my Keynotes less philosophical and more tactical so people leave and actually get impacted by them not just emotionally but it changes their bottom line so for the B2B people in this room I want you to really pay attention to what I'm about to say I landed a $4 million account for my company very recently spending about 17 minutes using social media let me

explain I have been in BDC with the $70 million wine business I'm now in B2B I can tell you right now and take it for how it is way easier to be in the B2B business it is a business where you actually know the name of your customer you actually know exactly who you're trying to reach I remember all my friends that were in B2B when I was doing the W they're like oh B2B is hard B2B is awesome especially in the world we live in now I know the name of the CMOS that I have to reach for them to hire my company or the brand manager or things of that nature so recently I wanted to Target this one company so I put the person's name into Google right and then I added the word Twitter after it and Facebook and sure enough and I did this for about six people I was targeting two of them of the six did have Twitter accounts even though they're in their 60s and they shouldn't and all that the world is aging down very quickly I'll get into that in a minute and then I started following the two people that I was targeting on Twitter and I didn't tweet them and say hey Johnny you should check out Vayner media we're a great company we'd love to work with you no that's throwing a right hook without throwing any Jabs right that's not Romancing that's not playing the long game so I just watched what this gentleman was talking about and was Colton Wong who here knows who Colton Wong is raise your hand very nice either Cardinal fans Andor fantasy baseball players he's a young second baseman for the St Louis Cardinals and for some ungod known reason this 60-year-old CMO that I wanted his money was really into him and talking about him and excited for the upcoming baseball season ironically two weeks later was my fantasy baseball draft and we do auction not the [ __ ] draft stuff we throw out the name and we bid hardcore so I'm sitting and waiting and drafting along my team and then sure enough my cousin Bobby goes Colton Wong $1 and Colton Wong was barely on my radar I felt pretty good about my middle infield but then something reminded me while he was being bid on of this CMO Who Loved Colton Wong and I decided to Bid and Win Colton Wong so I got my Mr Colton Wong second baseman St Louis Cardinals and then two days after the draft again in my Twitter stream I see this gentl mentioned col Wong is going to have a great season I can feel it I just drafted him on my fantasy team and I replied I struck like a cobra I jumped to Twitter and said I drafted him too hope he has a great year right and he said yeah and then we went back and forth and so we talked about Colton Wong for about six minutes and then about 3 weeks later there was a little more banter he talked about something I jumped in reminded him I was the colon Wong guy we talked about something and this time he took notice of my profile and he said what's Vayner media and I said it's my agency we do social media he's said that's funny send me a DM which for everybody here is Twitter terms for direct message not public and he invited us to come and meet with him we met with him we landed the business and so about 13 to 16 minutes of Twitter engagement by first doing about 13 seconds of Google research on who the customer I wanted to get and by not trying to sell him on my services in the social channels which is what 99% of B2B people do they're like 19-year-old dudes they're trying to close on the first move you guys know what I'm talking about no I had a little patience A Little Romance little culton Wong and I landed a $4 million piece of business on what I think is happening in our world right now which is we are living through the rise of context if you are not sitting in this room and not realizing that there's a word that you should really care about and it's called context is what's selling we live in a world right now my friends where content is abundant we are producing more content videos print ads television ads songs written words we as human beings according to Eric Schmidt the chairman of Google are producing as much content information to pound us with in every 48-hour window as we did from the beginning of mankind until 2003 let me just say that one more time from the beginning of mankind until 2003 every word every video every song print ad television ad catalog Direct Mail everything we created is now being replicated in every 48h hour window yeah no wonder our kids are add right no wonder it's so fast-paced hey

this is a good crowd for this I have a lot of empathy for this do you guys remember when our work days actually ended right remember like back in the day when like you know I used to think I was a workaholic I got to the store at 8:00 in the morning I left at 10 p. m. but at some level it was kind of over at 10: right I got to get home at 10:15 and like it was over now if I get an email at 12:03 in the morning like people expect me to reply at 1204 we are living in a 247 365 world my friends that's why all of you are watching television on your time we value time now more than we ever watch this I'm about to blow some of your minds completely out of your head watch this by show of hands and don't be embarrassed how many people in this room now actually get upset when another human being calls them raise your hand raise it high as a matter of fact do me a huge favor and you're going to get lazy at me please stand up I'm watching you please stand up I see you sir don't get lazy on me yeah that's right you in the blue please stand up if you are upset liars and don't get lazy on me circulation good there's a couple more of you I will run to you CU I saw you raise your hand please stand up if these people in this room this many people right now are actually upset when another human being calls them let's clap it up for these Pioneers you can sit bro all right when I come back in 3 years 85% of this room will stand up to that question what those people understand or have started feeling is they don't understand why you are calling them on your time and disrespecting their time you can text you can email as a matter of fact how many people here have started texting or have been on the receiving end of somebody texting them saying can I call you right now raise your hands that's almost everybody in this room think about that we subconsciously understand that we are now that that's us being polite to the other person we're respecting other people's time Uber how many people are familiar with Uber great so Uber for the ones that aren't is an app where you hit one button and a black car taxi service comes from here started here in San Francisco one of the best investments I've ever made when I invested in it people were like who needs a black car this is you know this is such a 1% problem right it was this kind of conversation what people don't understand is Uber is not selling Transportation Uber's selling time in New York City everybody told me it would have no prayer we have the best transportation system you can get around easily but if I can get an Uber that guarantees it's going to be there in four minutes versus the chance that I can't get a cab for 5 minutes I'm doing it because we value time my friends the people in this room that are selling whether B2B or B Toc you are not respecting your customers's time you're pounding them with messages that are selfishly good for you come and see my thing come to my open house check out my development check out my thing you are pounding them the people in this room that understand in 2014 that we are now living in a world where I look at all of your faces and it's a good-looking crowd I say to myself every one of these people is in the media business first and then what they think they're doing as you sit here and you think about what do I do for a living if I ask you one by one I'm telling you you're in the media you need to educate me about mortgages not sell me mortgages you need to educate me not only just about a mortgages but everything that has to do with the home world and then I will respect your business even more we need to provide value supply and demand of attention we are living through a massive problem with supply and demand of attention everybody here is being fragmented what do you think your direct mail piece in the how many people here can't wait to leave this conference go home open their mailbox and carefully go through their direct mail that's what I thought yet plenty people here are Marketing in a way that doesn't map to their behavior plenty of people here spending tons of money and tons of effort trying to get to customers how many people here want to get cold called zero how many people cold call plenty got it how many people here love going to their LinkedIn and getting spammed by 80 people that are trying to get to them to sell nobody how many people do it a shitload we Market in a way that has nothing to do to the way that we want to be sold and that blows my mind the bad behavior that is going on in the business world in 2014 right this minute in a world where there is Alternatives that we could be

looking at is interesting to me meaning how many people here by show of hands and if you raise your hand I swear to God I'm going to run out to you ask you where you're doing it and double check because I don't want you to lie to this question I will double check and then I will tweet to my million followers that you are a liar how many people in this room are doing Facebook dark posts to sell for their business raise your hand zero my friends this is the creme de La Creme of this industry there's not a person that raised their hand to that question as a matter of fact watch this how many people here have no idea what the [ __ ] a Facebook dark post is raise your hand very good everyone I stand in front of you right now June 24 and I tell you that Facebook dark posts is the best converting to sales product that I have seen since Google AdWords in 1999 in 15 years of marketing Banner retargeting website content production Twitter Facebook organic for the last five years right this minute Facebook dark posts they are also known as Facebook unpublished posts what they are is how many people here have a Facebook fan page for their business raise your hand great so a lot of you remember for the last five years what we've been doing right build up your fan page right like an email list build up your page and then put out stuff to them and it's better than email because the truth is they see it and they could share it so it has the word of mouth that email used to have guys do you remember back in 1997 98 when we used to get an email and we would forward it to everybody in our address book remember that behavior crazy anyway how would you like to friends be able to reach every single person on Facebook if you wanted to that's what a Facebook dark post is no longer do you have to build up a fan page you now have the ability to go on an admin in Facebook and create a query maybe you want to Target people that just got married right and just changed their job in the last week might be somebody who is moving and looking for a new home right or how would you like to Target somebody who spent $50,000 at Home Depot in the last 60 days or a million other queries that now Facebook has on the back end that allows you to Target 17 people with these seven different variables or 17,000 or 17 million you want to go AB Brad you want to Target 18 to 31y Old females that like Beyonce you're able to you want to focus on 18 to 31y old women that like Beyonce live in St Louis like Colton Wong and drink beer great 29 of those and you can tell them something very specific I am running ads that cost me,000 and converting $40,000 in wine sales because I'm targeting somebody so narrow I've got clients we sold a $4 million part for one of our clients on a Facebook dark post B2B because we were able to plan on the back end the place that the person went to college because we knew all the people that held that job went to Carnegie melon right and so my friends please if you leave with anything from this leave with go Google what a Facebook dark post is go give that information to whoever runs your marketing and understand that what I talk about where all my money is being made where all the business opportunities are is to Market in the year that we live in right now Facebook dark posts cost a certain amount in 24 months when everybody's doing Facebook dark posts that same thing that you can run for $1,000 is going to cost you $115,000 that's just how it works I own the word wine on Google first result for 5 cents nine months nobody bid me up now that's an $18 word if you do any Google SEO or sem I know this my friends I know more than the sun will come up tomorrow this one statement marketers ruin everything it's what we do and I'm proud of it when I saw Snapchat while you were all debating if it was sexting I couldn't wait to figure out how to ruin that [ __ ] ghost with my Concepts how many people here signed up for Groupon Living Social uh one of those deal of the day daily candy sites raise your hand email Services Group on Living Social raise them one more time I want to make sure how many people signed up remember three years ago when you

signed up and you couldn't wait to get $40 worth of sushi for 20 bucks when that was the best how do you like that now you hate it because marketers ruin everything how many people have done email marketing in their career or close to the email newsletter in their business raise your hand oh great number this wow great wait till you hear what I'm about to tell you 1997 win library. com email service 1997 400,000 people on the list 89. 9% open rates just for the people that don't do email marketing in here if you're in the 30s right now you're a genius right why marketers ruin everything in 1997 how many people had email in 1997 raise it remember we read every goddamn word because markers hadn't ruined it yet spam hadn't taken over and you just read everything because you thought they were letters that's what we did with letters we read everything same thing's happening on Facebook right now how many people have Facebook on their phone and check it once in a while raise your hands great so as you know you're going through baby pictures friends pictures this and that but then something you know but it seems right because you're into it Facebook dark posts sponsored they know who you are you've given a lot of data you've given data to other places like your MasterCard behavior and all this other stuff you may sit here and think o That's spooky but the truth is nobody gives a [ __ ] about privacy you think you do but your behavior proves that you don't and so there they are and you're actually seeing them this is not a banner ad on the right side of a website that you don't see anymore this is right there and everybody in this room can take advantage of this tactic and sell a hell of a lot more homes get a lot more contract deals sell their supplies to development projects and people sign up more people for mortgages whatever you want every person here B to B to C can use this tactic and it will work for 18 months at a certain press and then everybody's going to figure it out it's going to be more expensive and it will still work and you'll still do it for the next 18 months you can get more upside yet not a soul in here knows what it is and not one person does it and by the way with all respect you'll feel good about this is a consistent theme for the last 60 days of every conference I'm at even the most Progressive marketers because the truth is we talk about headlines a lot of people in this room read a Wall Street Journal headline that said Facebook organic reaches down and have debated is Facebook worth it right you might have read the Gallup poll that surveyed 14,000 people this week that said social media doesn't sell anything that's fun they went to people 14,000 of them and said hey John do you think social media makes you buy stuff guys none of us want to think we're being manipulated by marketing if I asked you if you think commercials sell you something you would say no or direct mail no or email no or social no and so we live in a world look of headline reading it's what I do I've stopped talking about everything I realized as I listen to all the smartest marketers talk about Facebook and Twitter and all this stuff and realize how dumb they are in it because they're not practitioners they're headline readers I said man that's how I must sound when I talk about healthare or politics so actually I don't talk about [ __ ] anymore I just talk about the Jets wine and social media you come up to me later and want to talk about something else I'm not talking to you I'm scared to sound that dumb and so I'm talking about the details the practitioner fact that if you search open house on Twitter twitter. com search that if you went there right now and you typed in openhouse and you saw the hundreds of people that every Thursday and Friday say I'm going to open houses this weekend and you realize that if you're trying to sell homes in the real estate business or as a development that you could just jump in and say hey I hope you have a good time not come to my development or come to my no have a good time just like I said hey Colton Wong they're going to see who you are in the profile they'll get there don't try to close on that first move Twitter is the Town Square the cocktail hour of our generation it's free and everybody keeps disrespecting it because here's my favorite there are people in this room that have drawn lines in the sand right people in this room who've been successful for a long time people in this room who've seen talks like I'm giving right now 10 years ago saying the internet's coming and you're gonna go out of business right you've heard this hyperbole before here's what scares me the internet is maturing we're at year 20 now and what's happening is innovation is happening quicker Airbnb goes from idea to really bothering the hotel industry in 36 months Uber goes from idea to completely disrupting the taxi and black car industry in 36 months The Innovation we're living through my friends is faster and that's what we have to pay attention to we are living through the biggest culture shift of our time the internet is the Second Industrial Revolution it will touch

every single industry and if you underestimate it will Bowl you over one by one one by one and so I implore you to pay attention to how to talk because we're underestimating what's really happening which is we're living through the disruption of communication how many people here have a 16 to 22y old child or grandchild raise your hand great remember three years ago when you had this conversation hey little Ricky hey Susan I don't give a crap how you talk to your friends but when your father and mother call you pick up the damn phone remember that just curious how'd that work out for you uh-huh and for the people in here that don't have a child in that range the reason they're laughing is this there are grownass men in this room who in the last 24 hours have texted LOL and OMG and we're underestimating what that means because when 55-year-old John and 62-year-old Carl get forced to text because of 14-year-old Susan and 13-year-old Cindy then they start talking to each other on text we are living through the youthification of our society my friends the biggest Trend that everybody has to figure out here because you may say oh well the 20-year-olds are not buying the kind of homes I'm selling right what you're underestimating is the youthification if you're lucky enough I want you to sit here and think for a second if you're lucky enough fortunate enough to have known your parent at the age that you are right now if you're lucky enough to be sitting here and know how old you are and knew your parent at that age just think for one second right now how much older they were at your age right now than you if I mean it's remarkable if you look at the data right now the average 46 year old woman in her behavior what she wears what she spends her money on what she does for entertainment how she rolls the average 46y old woman right now acts more like a 29-year-old woman just 10 years ago as a matter of fact you guys familiar with selfies who knows what selfies are got it here's a good one the fastest growing sector of people telling taking selfies are 40 to 48-year-old women that's right friends cougar selfies you agree with me but what's going to happen next Thursday when you didn't hit your number or there's a bad meeting or something happened we need this room this industry with zero hands on Facebook dark posts I don't even want to get into Pinterest don't even get me started on Pinterest will be the single most important platform for this industry in 36 months write it down Pinterest will be the most important platform digitally for everybody in this room because Pinterest is intent to buy people go on there and they search pictures they're not there to keep up with their friends or their friends kids like they are on Facebook they are there to windowshop 3. 0 right and it leads to sales the amount of developers and look my minority investor in my agency that I took money from very recently is a guy by the name of Steve Ross he owns related real estate and some of the stuff we've been able to do he's building a$8 billion project right now on the West Side Highway called Hudson yards right and when I look at what they want to do to promote it which is let's buy full page ads in the New York Times right and all that stuff it just blows my mind and when we show them just the little things that a Pinterest or Facebook can do for a h hundredth of the price and that's what I'm talking about my friends Instagram another platform but you can't track the sales it's like print there's no linking out of Instagram however every 15 to 35-year-old in America right now is spending an ungodly amount of time in their Instagram account it is the new Facebook and so there are plenty of things going on and we can continue to ignore them you're more than welcome you're going to roll and run your business the way you want to but I implore you if you get anything out of this talk if you got up this early if you skipped the USA Germany game if you went to sleep at 2: a. m. because you drank a crapload last night and you still got here at 8:30 if you're here then I'm hoping to bring you some level of value and that value is simple if you audit everything you spend your time and money on everything organizationally externally if you audit it list everything you do every day time and everything you spend money on and you drop the bottom 25% of the dumb [ __ ] you're doing because you've always done it it's your normal behavior it's what used to bring you value and you cut that out and you

apply that 25% into trying the new things that are happening your business will be dramatically healthier because when we draw lines in the sand we lose my friends the quickest way to go out of business is to be romantic about how you make your money there are people in this room who are romantic when somebody comes to them in their organization you may be that person coming to the boss in your organization and they say hey how about this and they look you in the face and say no this is how we've always done it that guy that girl is a loser I'm not joking that is a losing player in business and I'm not trying to soften it that is a losing mentality I'm trying to put myself out of business every day I don't give a [ __ ] about social media I can't wait for Oculus Rift virtual reality and robots and smart watches I'm ready because the truth is innovation doesn't care about you or me I'm pumped that I understand Marketing in 2014 but guess what I can be out of business in marketing in 2016 if I'm not willing to put in the work and live in the world that we actually live in and I'll close you with this and then I want to do 10 minutes of Q& A so please get your questions ready I sat in a room with a CEO of a billion dooll company selling to 14 to 17 year old girls I came in I said look we need to spend a lot more money this year on Instagram Snapchat Vine we have to gave them all the compelling reasons because at the end of the day you need the attention of who you're trying to sell to they're spending their time in there I gave him all the data made it all MBA Harvard Business School for him because that's how he likes it did all that [ __ ] and then he looked me in the face and he said Gary this is great stuff he goes I gotta be honest with you I just don't get Instagram and then I look him in the face and I said that's great dick oh no that's his name sorry I go that's great dick I go but you're not a 13-year-old girl and so you sit here and you say to yourself as the developer as the proprietor as the guy well I'm not on Instagram but I don't check Facebook it doesn't matter what you do it matters what your customer does and if you underestimate the innovation of what's happening at the customer level in 2014 and if you don't understand that 10 years ago Facebook Twitter Youtube smartphones did not exist 10 years ago and you apply what's going to happen in 10 years and you don't understand you're goingon to be looking for a job thank you thanks brother thank you