Piers Morgan Tonight - Gary Vaynerchuk- Thank You Economy Interview

Gary venu is a fast talking irreverent business Guru who calls himself a Serial entrepreneur his twin passions I share incidentally are wine and social media his latest book is the thank you economy and Gary joins me now what is the thank you economy gck you know the word economy was the big part of this title I think what it is it's the tackling the issue of the ROI of social media all these businesses that you know I consult for they want to know well what's the value of a million fans on Facebook or what do I get if I actually interact with people on Twitter and that's the answer is everything's going old school Pierce you know I think your grandparents are more equipped to run business today than we are because they actually cared about their customer you know consumers don't want to be talked to anymore they're pounded with commercials and print and newspaper ads and billboards and I think now that we can listen to them they're actually looking to shop with the people that actually care about them so how do you run your business you've developed this extraordinary Empire worth tens of millions of dollars from basically a liquor store and you've done it online in a very aggressive and smart way what's been the secret of why you succeeded where so many others hav't I think two things you know I was born in bellarus so I'm an immigrant so ridiculous hard work is interesting to me right it's in our DNA so what I did in ' 07 when I started using Twitter was I realized everybody was going to messed this up look to push more stuff watch my show tonight at 9: right buy my stuff do this everybody was going to push messages what I did was I used a site called semise which no longer exists Twitter bought it it's now search. Twitter in my opinion it's one of the most important sites in the world I just searched Chardon and Shiraz and shat Lor looked what people were saying and responded to it creating context and relationship which then allowed people to discover who I was so you were seeking out custs yeah I was seeking out you know yes no question I'm not Mother Teresa I'm not this is the thank you eom I'm not Zen Rock Climbing drinking tea and saying you know I'm doing this for kicks and Giggles I want to build business I want to buy the New York Jets right I just realize that there's a different way to do it today you know Eric Schmidt the former CEO of Google the other day said you know more content is being produced in 48 hours than was produced from the beginning of mankind until 2003 consumers are inundated pounded with messaging of course they're tuning all that out and not listening to the pitches that we've all done so if I want to promote my show for example which I try and do on Twitter as much what is the most effective way that I should be doing it I watch your show a lot right and in the corner here in the bottom where everybody's looking right now it says follow Pierce on Twitter yeah I think it should say conversate or interact with Pierce on Twitter right for celebrities and people with shows they play too much inside baseball you know everybody's talking to each other the celebrities are and that's not real to anybody watching this to me what you should be doing is you should be searching peers to your account right looking at what people are saying and interact with the actual listeners instead of pushing out a tweet so forget all that kind of egocentric you know narcistic nonsense between celebrities anybody who's watching but are you right though I mean don't a lot of people come on Twitter yep precisely so they can watch celebrities feuding with each other no question and there's plenty entertainment value and nothing should be Allin right you should have a mix but in my opinion if you look at my Twitter stream if you go to twitter. com garyb you will see a boatload of app replies which is thank you Pino Grio a wink a hug and then will say hey buy my book listen I want to sell my book but I think it needs to be one push for every thousand or 100 pulls so it's a kind of modern version of customer care isn't it absolutely and you're go as you say you're going back to what the grandparents used to do which is the guy in the local liquor store for example The Butcher gave you know why is it a Baker's Dozen they cared and more importantly let's understand what really is happening now we live on a word of mouth foundation so when somebody's watching your show if you go and look up your name and say hey thanks so much for watching my show because they made a comment right you know when they say oh my God Pierce Morgan just responded to me their entire social graph is seeing that and 230 people that is following that person sees that and says wait a minute you know what Pierce is a real dude maybe I'm going to check out his show or when a Pepsi responds instead of just doing a Super Bowl commercial you know that means something that day and age is coming I'll give you an analogy the pet dog now stick with me Pierce I know this is a little weird the pet dog in the 50s it was an outdoor creature right by percentage by data the dog was outside over the last 50 years not only has it come into the home but it's in the bed and we're dressing it and feeding it better than we are ourselves I believe that we're living through the humanization of business this is the beginning but I believe that what's that going to do with the pet dog well what that has is that people are treating a pet dog more like a human than they did 50 years ago and I believe you're going to treat logos and Brands the same way you will have a conversation with Nike or Reebok or for about something that has nothing to do with their Core Business in the future because of this infrastructure and that changes everything and what if you're watching this and you haven't got a clue about the internet where should you start you want to start a business y but you're pretty useless on the online Y what are the most simple effective ways to make your business start to SN you know obviously it's super different for a small entrepreneur listening right now compared to you know a Fortune 500 company and the book really tries to tackle both entities I think for somebody who's just starting a business you've got to go to the Googles and the Bings of the world and start searching if you're not educated on how to use it I mean we live in a day and age where you can go to YouTube right now and watch a video of how to use all this stuff but the biggest problem and I got this all the time with my last book which was much more geared towards the entrepreneur everybody just wants to push their product they said Gary well I don't have any followers well I didn't either I didn't have a TV platform I wasn't you know a world known character I went out and got the fans I fished for them and that's what I think brand have to do how expert are you in your field of wine I'm pretty solid as you know we were just talking right before I asked you what the greatest wine of all time was yeah and I said 47 you got it wrong you said the 47 CH and I said the second one was the one that you thought was first 51 theour right so and we were talking about 29s and 45s I think that's super important I'm glad you brought that up the biggest problem that I see in social media today and there's so many social media experts they've never really built a business you know I built a $60 million business before I started talking about how to use social to build a business you have to know your craft because no matter how good at marketing you are and you are at fishing social media if you don't know what you're talking about you've lost and content is always King if I want to buy wine off you how do I know that you're going to get me the best example of that wine well I mean I think there's a variety of different things I mean obviously you know for us with win library. com our my family business with my dad Sasha we we're very price driven my dad's liquor store was called Shoppers Discount Liquors you know growing up you know reputation there's Yelp reviews there's people conversating right now on Facebook and Twitter there's new sites like Tumblr right and Kora and Instagram that are changing the landscape and getting information from the Social Web is how you're going to figure that out if we're legit or not see here's the biggest thing that I see going on Pierce why I called it the thank you economy billions of dollars are going to be impacted by the maturity of the web see Twitter and Facebook are getting all the credit but what's really happening here is the internet is maturing it's only 17 years old the internet that we all know the consumer web the one that AOL sent the discs in the mail to get us to sign up for is only 17 years old we are grossly as a culture underestimating the impact of this Social Web we going have a quick break when we come back I want to ask you whether the problem with the Internet is as we get more obsessed with it we become a bunch of boring Geeks yeah back now with my guest Gary vay Gary it's a fascinating thing the internet and it's obsessing all of us but is the danger that we all just become a bunch of boring dead eyed Geeks Who spend 20 hours a day on our computers you know I think people have dramatically become more social see I'm very countercultural everybody's talking about like our kids are not social anymore I don't see it I I've been able to have dramatically more relationships because of the internet's infrastructure real ones or just online dramatically real one see I don't have a difference between online and real for example when I go to South by Southwest a big Tech conference and a lot of people that in that place I'm like you I'm a little famous in that world right and I get a lot of people coming to me it's amazing to me through one or two engagements that I have context with the person that's coming to me right I don't you know I don't know them like my best friend but we're starting at a different point because of our interaction online and I think they bleed together that's my big point with the Super Bowl commercials by the way this year I thought they sucked Pierce I couldn't believe in 2011 that nobody ran a commercial that extended it to the web right I mean how do you leave all those conversations on the table they need to work together and so I view it as another platform to create context of relationships and keep them but these relationships I mean people compete over followers on Twitter or friends on Facebook and stuff it's all a bit shallow isn't it it's ridiculous it's an arms race it's a keeping up with the Joneses and people going to wake up in a year or two and realize well what does that really mean right and you see it with brands with their big compeers they want to fight you see it with celebrities wanting to outdo each other myself I firmly believe that it's not about the numbers and pushing out the content it's simply about the engagement and in my opinion what social has done it's scaling caring I'm telling you that if you took a different tack if Ford that they actually listened and replied the context that creates is different similar to The Butcher you know why the Small Town rules worked because they knew your kids were going to graduate in a month they knew that your husband just got promoted it was small town the internet even though it's big all these gadgets and widgets they're bringing the world closer to each other we know more about each other and that's an important context shift when you saw President Obama have his big Power with all the internet Geniuses recently if you'd been at that table what would you have been telling him well probably a lot of different things but you know I mean I would have said this listen the president has a lot of restrictions that don't allow him or the White House to use it the way we kind of want him to but I think anything that humanizes anything is interesting humanizes a business I think what Obama can do and he has to obviously look at the rules that he's living within is humanize the office right I mean again the president's always in the push business he gives a talk to the Monitor and he pushes any kind of interaction that is allowed and I don't know all the rules of what he's allowed to do I think would be enormous and that's where I would tell him to go how do you regulate the internet how do you stop I've got three young Sons them being bombarded with nasty stuff sure so I talk about this a lot you know there was a site called form spring that came out a couple year about a year ago that caused a lot of hoopla Anonymous Q& A and it got a little nasty talk to a lot of parents uh when I'm on the radio and different things here's what I think about it first of all and this is a big statement and I mean this with all my heart we humans are grossly underestimated and grossly underrated with all the access that we have the amount of bad things that happen is shockingly low I mean we have to paint that picture first and foremost to understand but you've got to be a good parent I mean there's softwares that can track things no question if you don't have access to your laptop of your underage kid you're making a mistake you've got to be a good parent now it's hard I mean I don't want to paint a picture that it's easy but I think the Topline thesis is for every story about the girl that used Facebook and found a bad guy there's billions of interactions that are not creating any negative aspects when you see all the Revolutionary uprisings across the Middle East and the social networking aspect of that has been extraordinary to observe with them getting round these repressive regimes by just talking to each other yeah you must be excited by that of course I mean again thank you economy is really a business-oriented book when I walk into a CEO of a Fortune 100 company I say if you think that this is not impacting your business but it's Uprising countries you've got it completely Twisted I mean this is the biggest platform that has ever hit the human race we are grossly underestimating it and of course Egypt's happening and it's going to continue listen with Wikileaks that affected the US everybody has to understand and they don't want to Piers nobody wants to accept what's really happening here which is that the game has changed and the rules of that game are very difficult for people that want to control I am excited about it I am but here's my problem with that yeah you know I don't go shopping anymore I buy everything online okay my three sons 17 13 and 10 yep spend hours and hours a day yep can't be good for anybody that we just don't get out as much it's better than them watching TV let's not paint a picture that of what was happening in the 80s and9 is it better than going out playing sport in yes but that wasn't happening in the ' 80s or ' 90s either they were watching television and playing video games I mean we're a long ways away from Little Ricky going out and playing ball I mean you know it's not like this is a new phenomenon and more importantly they're a lot more worldly our kids right you must look at your sons and be shocked I think they're smarter than I was at the same age it's not even close they're better informed they get news better faster but their attention span is absolutely minuscule no question but I have a family friend little Lou right he used a site called Chat Roulette do you remember that thing got a lot of attention he found a family in like Peru he spent an hour and a half talking to them he didn't know who they were his context of his life how good he has it changed forever no documentary in class no sitting down with your son telling him you've got it so good none of that could have done it so there's enormous positive coming out of these Innovations you just got to look for it these big companies that you go and advise are you shocked by how non interet Savvy they are you know at first I was going to be the punk kid entrepreneur and you're going to do it this way and you guys all don't get it I've learned over the last couple years of working with a lot of these companies they get it they're just playing a different rule the thank you economy the new Social Web is about running a marathon Pierce it's about creating a real relationship it's about marrying somebody instead of having a one night stand the problem for all these big businesses is they report quarterly right they're playing a different game the street is looking at their numbers and they have a very difficult time going all in on investing in something that takes a long time to develop so what I'm trying to do is help them form little ninja units while they're doing what they're supposed to do and how much do they pay you for this privilege well they pay lots of money rates VOR media charges you know between 20 and $30,000 a month for Consulting and Community Management so it's not I'm not revolutionizing the world but it's a solid Living Well given I've got you here for nothing obviously I may as well take the opportunity so forget Twitter for a moment else would you promote my show what is what's the smartest coolest way expand an audience first and foremost Topline thesis it's not about you talking what that's be Heist to I understand it's about listening I'll tell you what I would do first and foremost the only way that I would use Twitter is through search. Twitter looking up your name and the show's names the guests you have on and actually engaging with people not named Ryan Crest or Kim Kardashian actual human beings right number two I think Tom is the most important site of 2011 it is exploding um it's a micro blogging platform I think you would push out content there maybe behind the scenes clip maybe after we're done taping this we do a little flip cam thing and you push it out there a different place to do something we actually do that on our side on ourn side I think that's great and I think Kora have you looked at Kora yet yeah so Kora is a Q& A platform has a very Darkhorse chance of becoming the new Wikipedia you know it's going to be interesting to see where they go I would go in there as you you're a pretty knowledgeable smart dude I'd go in there find things that you know answers to and answer them Pierce you're a major star thank you Gary okay thank you say that again you have to humanize yourself and so does Pepsi and so does Ford and so does the National Hockey League the cons what we're seeing really we're seeing the whole world everybody now believes they have a voice don't they that's what I find really interesting and they you know you get the reaction on Twitter and half of them say great things about the other half want to kill you but I quite the freedom that this Twitter and social networking has brought people to have an opinion absolutely it's better than have no opinion right and the marketers that are sitting in the room or the people that are you know marketing this show no longer can you be like it's working you get instant feedback right you know and I think it's just level the playing field it's here's what it is Pierce it's a different skill set for a long time the person that could give the best PowerPoint presentation W now it's the person who has the best skills in a cocktail party and every business and celebrity that has better skills in cocktail party instead of presentation is going to win going who is your biggest rival and I really you know who's the one you look to and think that they're stepping up the one person that I would say you know that's a great question you can see you stump me and I answer everything I don't really think of it that way I don't want to give the real answer everyone's got a rival you know I don't want to give the real answer which is that I think I'm better than everybody that's fair enough who do you see threatening your patch I'm always scared G I'm scared of anybody who's bigger than I am who will work as hard as I will you know Fallon scared me when he first came out because I thought he was going to really interact Andy con at Bravo I think is a sneaky kind of character right Kim Kardashian's probably executing it as well as anybody could she's got six million followers I had her on here yeah and I got her to look at the camera and say follow Pier Morgan and literally it exploded I mean I got about 30,000 followers VOR Nation vayer Nation follow Pierce Morgan I want to Trump Kim is that what you call them the V Nation the veiniacs Absolut you know Pierce I think that anybody who's got a bigger platform than me who's willing to bleed out of their eyeballs for their Community will beat me anybody who's smaller won't because I'm just going to outwork everybody Gary good luck thank you my friend good to meet you real pleasure that was Gary vich