7 Entrepreneurs Get Business and Marketing Advice | GaryVee Business Meetings

Like love is that a good thing is it powerful does it matter I mean the [ __ ] that people do for love is everything right that's how I feel about brand it's everything but how to measure that we think that there's an extreme underinvestment in Creative organic and an overinvestment in media that is wasted on Creative that could have been better money's expensive now yeah don't own the building and see how great this Concept really is use the location 11 minutes in the bougie Place treat it like your New York location and innovate on

the idea smk oh my gosh that's genius attention is the number one asset I know we we spoke you know a few months ago so I fig I give you a quick recap just kind of where we're at uh we we um we started that Hospitality Group we moved down to Ace and Jamie by Jamie yeah Ace and Jamie so so we we moved from New York to North Carolina in 2021 we bought three historic properties converted them into you know boutique hotels added some restaurants and an espresso bar and one and and there's a

Florida location right we were looking so we had we started the burger the burger concept that we were looking to franchise and start Florida we actually steep back on that now because the Espresso Bar has taken off so insanely um I mean we're turning away 100 to 200 people a night on the weekend and we Found the margins were really good so right now from an excitement standpoint from a profit standpoint the cocktail the coffee shop cocktail Barts coffee by Day cocktails by night um is we're doing about $350,000 a month last last month we

just did over 400,000 so yeah so we're gonna percent margins on that we're because there's no food involved it's all liquor um yes so we're running just just just over 30% and you're probably starting to Realize like the maximizing of margin and liquor is an endless game like get really good really fast if you keep doing it yeah yeah and so we were talking to the franchise company about doing the burger restaurant and realized that there's no one in the franchise space that's doing anything with the espresso uh coffee shop and Cocktails by night and

we've been getting a lot of emails and people asking are you franchising can we buy a franchise how Do we do this in Raleigh how do we have you two swallowed the concept of franchise or meaning like do you feel like you've exabyt be a franchise or or do you think you're being Intoxicated by the short-term value of it possibly that's one that's one of the questions we wanted to ask you because because we also own 90% of the real estate of all the buildings and we were in the middle of buying another building and

opening a Concord Espresso Bar location two on the other side of town so should we stay private should we franchise and what do you do you know anything about the industry and do you have connects yeah so we wanted to pick your brand on our minds one side we're like oh speed before someone else tries to do the same thing we're doing and then on the other side so by the way I'm sure if you go to Google or chat GPT you'll see this this is not the first time I've heard of Coffee and Cocktails

yeah I'm sure coffee by Day cocktails by night there's like four places by me did it 10 years ago like yeah yeah it's all execution yeah like Burger King and McDonald's and Wendy's there's you have unlimited like that don't worry don't do it for that reason yeah okay okay look I mean the answer is both work what I'd like you to do is spend like a hundred hours of watching YouTube videos and listening to podcasts from the perspective of Franchisors who understand like it's all fun in games until the first person and they give you

money and you're all pump and then they're complaining to you yeah yeah yeah yes you like do you like babysitting no and you're gonna hate being a whole point of franchising right but it's like a catch 22 of course but fast you know fast money is seductive but often leads to headaches yeah yeah so yeah I mean that's good Insight on that and then um and then the on the Other side of the equation right because now franchising would become like a separate thing from what we're if we were did franchise from the hospitality group

so that so us growing the hospitality group and um you know thanks for connecting us to Tony and David we we spoke to them so much value so much value from them much so so want to just pick your brain on you know maybe trying to duplicate what you're doing up north in the South right essentially I mean I Think yeah I think I think you don't need to own every piece of real estate obviously real estate's a great asset but like if you feel like you got something with the coffee and cocktail my point

of view is that keep your cash money's expensive now yeah so if you're borrowing you're paying higher interest rates yeah and you know you know I'm kind of a fan of you know open a another location in a great [ __ ] location like a great location pay the V pay The Vig don't own the building and see how great this concept really is got it like if I was the third partner and we were having our meeting and I was like the Elder Statesman and you know like I was the older brother whatever I'd

be like let's the right way to test this is to go to the best [ __ ] location that we can [ __ ] afford pay the rent High Vig but it we're paying the BG because it's In the best [ __ ] location in the state of North Carolina yeah and let's see how good this concept really is so so You' recommend like see why I like that because give you context yep all of a sudden I'll give you an example why let's say we pay something like we we do that uh instead of

the down payment right on an asset of a building cross town we now are using that cash to have like a real [ __ ] killer spot yeah but what if that spot's doing a Million a month because you you see the kind of location I'm talking about yeah also we could see if it's doing 300,000 a month and everyone's like what the [ __ ] G well we have all these other competitors here yeah and but now we learned yeah yeah yeah yeah and we didn't have to put all that cash down to buy

the real estate to find out that lesson for this one exact lesson you see where I'm going yeah best location y I love it yeah I think that's What I would do if I was the partner right now because you've got something let's really understand if you got something got something got it where would you go after hearing that from you where would you go we we're look well right now we're looking for a spot uh we're in Wilmington like downtown most of our buiness and then there's rville Beach which is like the more bougier

side of town landfall that area yeah rville Beach I guess would be like if we Were looking at Long Island like the Hamptons versus Jones Beach speach I guess um is it a seasonal except it's more populated and less seasonal it's not it's not seasonal it's just that it's nonstop and it's grown so we're look we're looking for something there and then we were then having we we think two would be enough and then we'd have to set our sights on Raleigh and Charlotte after that yeah so let's talk about that area you were thinking

about Buying a building there in yeah in h rville yeah rville Beach is that the good is that the Hampton's one or that's the good part of town it's the good part of town yeah are you able to get a better are you okay what about what's the best is are there better locations than where you is if you were to rent there's not a lot available there so it's kind of like you have to take what it is the the location where we we would get be getting is on a main road it's Very

popular where it is so why would the building be for sale the it used to be a it used to be a brewery that went out of business multiple breweries that just didn't weren't a fit and now the building is is up for sale for for that so why that math was not good yeah no good spots to rent but here's a good spot to buy that we can afford as small entrepreneurs everything smells bad to me I know nothing I know yeah yeah You're right but I know something do you know what I mean

kind of thing like I I don't want to talk you out of something that might be remark I could be 100% wrong yeah but boy does that make no sense to me yeah yeah yeah it's seven minutes from the actual Beach it's 11 minutes from the uh biggest area that everyone in rville Beach shops and dines but talk to me about that area yeah that 11 minutes literally have nothing Nothing you know it's it's like I mean for you to open right now I'm gonna test my concept yeah yeah go in that area skip the

11 11 minutes go in there directly of course you can buy 11 minutes out you can't buy in the heart of the heart because it's way more expensive and not available right you're right yeah if there was a spot there I would get off what I want for you which is to see if this is A10 million do concept yeah yeah best Location so that being said just because of the population here we have a ton of we we we just Wilmington just doubled in the past two years so they went from 130 to 150,000

people to 300 plus is that because like all the Northeast people are moving down all the Northeast people moving a lot of New Yorkers came down here for sure and um putting a location in rville Beach would still only put us 20 minutes away from our other Location coffee and Cocktails that's like a century away yeah they don't really that side of town doesn't really come to the side and vice versa this concept because there's no food we are the before dinner spot and we're the after dinner spot and we're what about the breakfast spot

what's that are you also a breakfast spot because of coffee yeah yeah the coffee the so the C the obviously the majority of money the chunk you know like 80% of the money is Made at night obviously we only have an agriculture license so we actually we get uh pastry delivered and we don't really have breakfast there we have very limited people buy coffee right or Noe coffee croissants like some baked good if we're doing it without like if a good day we'll do $1,000 Dollar in coffee but we're doing five $6,000 in liquor makes

sense yeah yeah um so do you think that opening a location in rville Beach 20 minutes away versus going to a Bigger city for best location like Raleigh I like I like you know you know this your infrastructure right now of you being able to drive back and forth 247 versus like two hours yeah they like to this is why I'm pushing you to something very specific yep you're going to be in a very competitive spot there's plenty of other [ __ ] places in this 11 minute spot I'm sure as well yeah yeah there

is right so like I assume your side of town there's less Good like bar like less than what would be in the heart of the 11 or no actually there's there's a lot we're kind of we're in the heart of downtown you can literally walk to everything downtown from where we are so people will literally make a reservation and we're reservation only Gary so people will make a reservation are your drinks really good did you nail it they Crush they they Crush yeah we have 20 different espresso martinis it's a big Menu but we also

have a signature cocktail list so it's not just espresso Co we have like 40 different drinks on there so it's a big variety we do flights of espresso martinis and stuff so I just get really excited about staying very close going to Heart of the competition Apex a I'll tell you why if you go in Crush against the most competitive best spot in your town and it's doing 700,000 a month well that changes how you're going to look at Raley yeah true this data is too valuable it's almost like if even if you went out

of like if you if we were on zoom and [ __ ] us Gary we opened it went out of business like well I didn't [ __ ] you we now know that you true it's true it's true okay so the last the last little uh thing is in uh this concept we run natural gas lines and all of our tables are fire pits outside and that's part of the appeal people sit down at a fire pit table we make uh homemade Marshmallows and our concept is really s'mores by the fire with espresso Martini flights

so cool yeah yeah and and that that's what makes fun crushes the after dinner right you become the dessert spot become the dessert spot that's exactly what it is cool so the location that we found that we wanted to buy has a kitchen it has the outdoor space that we can turn into fire pits that's been our hardest thing is finding like uh a place that we Can outdoor area put natural gas lines down um and have the ideal outdoor space use the location 11 minutes in the bougie place as the preview to if you

have to be in New York and innovate on the idea smart oh my gosh that's genius right like bring out the little thing in the middle of the table where people can do like make treat it like your New York location I it makes me like this spot more less Capital expensive yeah yeah gonna answer so many [ __ ] questions If you think you're on to something yeah and it's so close to you that even if you guys are wrong you'll will it to a decent outcome I love it and we do the tabletop

fire pits inside well then you just completely yeah just lines up what exct so all right you're right we just have to be creative with it that's cool you're right because how would we expand it to major cities we're going to have the same problem how do we find the location we're not going to find out Spots yeah yep use location number two to answer all the questions I would have if we were on to something yeah yeah Don that makes total sense freaking awesome all right cool I'm even more excited now one of the

things that I told you was how I was building social curator and one of the things that you had said at the time was something along the lines of oh we thought about building that too and I told you oh I'm so glad you didn't Build it because I don't want to BU I don't want to be in the game Gary vaynerchuck and then you said something that was a classic Gary Juke which was abundance abundance I hope you have competitors because it makes you better and they never forgot that piece of advice and when

I look back at that experience the one question I didn't ask was well why didn't you build it but that's not my question today because shame on me for not asking that question Then but presently when I look at what you have built and I didn't even know the word holding company existed until 2023 and in my mind I had this idea of something that I wanted to build and then I'm now realizing that that is the very thing that you have built and so knowing what you know now would you have built the holding

company and so if you can go back what would you do differently um great question yes I would definitely build it my I I I'm very good at being wide open and changing my mind in micros but holding to a strategy in macro I knew that I wanted to build the best marketing Communications company in the world that was Global and that I was open to it being a series of companies or a company and I was never going to be overly romantic about social media right we started this in 09 it's 24 we're 15

years in I would have said in 15 years if no one's doing Social then we're doing whatever that thing is and I continue to do that so I I wasn't romantic about what services we did how many companies were in The Entity if it was one or a 100 and and more importantly not rantic about what we did but I was romantic about being always current right like as you know what's unique about my career is from 2006 to today there's not a lot of people who have 18 years of on the Record publicly following

the flows of innovation around attention and communication at the same level that I do and that's really humbling and good you know so what would you differently like now knowing what you know now I would have probably hired more people with more experience from the industry earlier I probably didn't need to I was so romantic see how romance is a problem I was so romantic of staying clean with My own intuitive ideas I demonized people from the outside that did it the old way and it probably wasted some time on simple things that I could

have done by having people around I def I mean this is my biggest issue period still to this day I would have fired faster on people I knew weren't capable it's a real disease of mine chess I'm such a bleeding heart it's just not good for business And it's not good for them like because it leads to nepotism and resentment and it never ends up good anyway I fired them eventually anyway so that's a huge mistake of mine I the conversations that I had with Andrea when I was asking how did you Court her to

come into vener and I think that early on like now looking at what Vayner is it is a formidable force in the industry but at the time so when I look at myself and I I know that I want To hire people with experience but they have optionality and so what was like a key factor could you go back and say identify the pattern of I think and I have the same skill which is like I think you'll be able to convince people to do it now you just can't be fixated on one boy but

how did I do it by being okay with all the people that didn't see it in the same way I did it when I was a boy every girl that I thought was cute That didn't want to be with me in my mind I was like they're going to be really sad one day and oh are they and so I think you need to take the same approach with this business you're gonna identify someone and you want Ricky Thompson and he's gonna say no and then literally you're like cool next oh that feels good that's

it um who should I be talking to who should I be aligning to not in not in regards To building a holding company that looks like Vayner X anybody with the idea of holding companies because what I want to do is I'm not the best at coming up with new ideas but I'm really good at spotting patterns and then identifying for my strengths and building from there so when you look at people who've successfully built holding companies out inside or outside of your industry who is who is the formidable leader who is somebody who's creating

content who is The person that I can learn from in regards to just as a history lesson from a m&a standpoint and the history of the game you should definitely talk to James orini I talked to James so he sent me up he sent me up really well for this call thank you I would say um that's a interesting question private Equity firms okay is an industry you should look at talent agencies CAA UTA WME those are I would say talent Agencies and private Equity conglomerates Apollo Black Rock like dig into those two worlds private

equity and talent representation they did a they did a lot of m&a they they did a they did a lot of um executive stuff they did a lot of building from a small base to a big base those are two good Industries for you to focus on if you were building VOR X again and you had nothing what would you be doing Differently or the same that you did you look back at yourself and you're like damn that was pretty incredible or or even when I had nothing I could have leveraged it in a different

way it's a good question you know that's a hard question in that what I would say is I would still want to build if it was today it's pretty easy for me to answer I'd still want to build the same thing which is in in several years I want this to be this huge conglomerate what I Would do is I would have different Services right I would be focusing on AI right now I be focused on on things that are of the moment that people don't have figured out that I could build on top of

so good when we were meeting in Vive and we had lunch you had said something that I am still trying to wrap my mind around and I was just like what you essentially said was are you going to pick up what I'm putting down and you talked about acquiring a company like Cracker Jacks or Snapple and taking it from like a $40 million company that was once like a Beth and then you turning into a $400 million company based on the principles of people who are actually getting what it that you're trying to inculcate the

current team with so there's like it felt like you were drawing a clear Line in the Sand of people who get it and then those who don't and the people who get it are going to go on to this next iteration And to me I felt like are you building the holding company specifically for that or would you just not start focusing on that acquisition and does the team know that culturally the team the team knows people like James and Andrea and other senior leaders that my goal with bayner X is to build a holding

company that is the best marketing company in the world then annoint an active CEO and stay on as chairman and then go build a either Private Equity Firm or a holding company of Brands and build that company and then take the best players from Boehner X over to the owned and operated businesses from services to Owned and that's been very open in the organization yes it's actually probably been very inspiring to the best players because they are like self- selecting like I'm going to be the best and I'm going to go over to Snapple or

rebok when Gary buys it that's one of the Reasons I I do believe the 1% of 1% here you know Pro are are probably here because of that [Music] wow damn so then how are we how are you identifying your 1% I'm in the trenches every day I'm in freaking I live this life that's that's why I'm in the trench M because I know that it's almost like my Navy Seals right like this is an army But I'm going to need my Navy Seals when I go and I'm not willing to guess that is so

and it it's crazy because um when I hear that if I was working there I would self- select and be like it's boot camp like I'm going to boot camp and so I wonder if that is part of the culture because you know how you build like you build you attract more with honey and so I was like you come from this honey but then there's also like there's this really sharp edge To what it is that you're doing in the balance of the two as a leader has been really inspiring and so I wasn't

sure how transparent you were with your team being like oh we're a honeycomb but make no mistake honey Empire you've heard it you know it's here but within the Empire what you're saying is also as a leader is this this honeycomb is not going to be the honeycomb that I that is the next thing that I build it's so empowering for me to and it's really um Invigorating because I want to be that transparent with my team and so I don't want to have myself a false narrative and I see you do it and it's

positive and it's successful and then you have somebody who's literally creeping on the call being like truth facts giving you an amen that's exactly the culture this has been um so so so helpful how are things good good man thank you so much for uh the time obviously and and putting together uh James and Andrea for Vive it's been uh nothing short of my expectations I think it's you know like week two exceeded my expectations never mind here we are like reforce the way through it so thank you for uh for doing that as well

that makes me so happy we really a lot of confidence in it um and it's not the easiest thing to like deliver on given you know there's a real fee behind it but man we knew we knew it you know yeah yeah so thank you for that it's been awesome good but um yeah Anyways little just just quick context um to to catch you back up to speed um franchise or of get up and go kayaking we have 32 locations now four different states U most of them are in Florida but uh Texas Tennessee and

North Carolina are the others um really just focused on expansion just took on a director of franchise operations to kind of help with some of the operational side of things free up a little bit of my mental capacity to to to focus on growing the Business um but one of the big questions I had is about turning a commodity like kayak tours into more of a community like how do I how do I turn my customers into super fans what are things that you would do to to make that happen I think extending the story

meaning um you know creating a digital creating a digital infrastructure whether it's on text whether it's on a closed Facebook group like you know a Discord where can you put everyone digitally that they can interact with you and them is like a really big deal yeah yeah we do we do um the Clos Facebook and the text group and those have been great I I love just popping on the text group and talk to me a little bit more about that so if you've done that what what's going on with that and what hasn't allowed

that to feel like a community to you yeah I think it's mostly because I'm the one Initiating the conversation and I want them to initiate the conversation so how do I get them more engaged from that side of things you know um similar to the way that you text your community like I'll just show up randomly and say hey hope you're having a good Tuesday you know and and a lot of people reply being like Oh my God thanks so much and it's amazing but like how do I get them to initiate that you know

is is I think the next level of Community yeah I mean I think I think you and and where and do you have a Discord or no no Discord no just the Facebook group and the texting group and what's happening with the Facebook group Facebook group we typically like repurpose some of our content so that it's more Facebook is friendly you know not as um like we'll repurpose a lot of our blog content in shorter form just to deliver here's five restaurants we recommend in this area or here's some Other things you can do while

you're visiting this area and it's just been a lot of us kind of giving tips and and little like local knowledge things um in there but again it's it's a lot of us um being the ones that are initiating the the conversation yeah I mean I think um Pro doing Q&A sessions doing this like Google meet out like get more physical go to that text group and Facebook group and put out a Google URL Hangout and be like I'm here next Wednesday the 14th from 7 to 10: answering questions I think that will take you

to the next level cool yeah it will work and build off of it and then you record it and then you take a snippet from it and then you post it on social and you tell people how to sign up for the text to get into this you know what I mean yeah yeah cool thanks um next question I've got for you so I've heard you say a few times like Reporting on brand is kind of like Santa Claus right like it's it's this thing that it's hard to put a I actually think it's more

like love and God I think it's like real okay but impossible to measure measure yeah Santa Claus is fake obviously love is probably the one I probably want to like love I think you and I would sit here and say because with even with God you can get a little fluffy but I think love yep if you and I said is that a good thing is it powerful Does it matter I mean the [ __ ] that people do for love is everything right that's how I feel about brand it's everything yeah but how to

measure that Justin who Do You Love uh my wife my mom start with that your wife what what point what math are you like it's what yeah yeah it's that's brand brother yeah I can't I can't measure you know right now my brand right now I'm GNA keep it humble but not Like like not too humble right now there's a hundred conversations going on in the world about me where someone's saying something 87% probably positive which is going to be good so on the franchisor side of like selling my brand to people you know how

do I what do focus on your efforts who you like that becomes about you like the content like how you do it like like it it just becomes like the demand they care about their perception on how much Demand you can create right yeah the franchise War you know is going to make a decision based on the demand you can create so for example I would focus a lot on your ability to be good good at 20 mile social media marketing because if you're ping me and you're like hey let me show you a screen

I'm going to do all this [ __ ] within a 20 mile radius of Manhattan for you I'm like oh [ __ ] yeah got it yeah yeah that's the that's it Because you're in a thing that people are passionate about like people actually like a lot of people would actually love to run this business right because you're in a extreme passion Point your issue is you've got to convince them that you can help help them get customers yeah got it yeah that's your it Biz yeah and I guess I can just use the the

history of the business and the history of the other franchises as as that leverage right and I would I would always pitch them modern examples okay like if you spent an extra 30 minutes of like doing some screenshots of backend Facebook ads like where do you sit on that skill set yeah I feel like I'm above average with um everything ad related yeah so I would make an above average two-minute video or 10 page deck per franchise or or like groups of franchise ores like if you did an event just in Colorado and there's 21

perspectives there on Zoom or in a room In that video or deck you're showing seven miles from Boulder this piece of content why you're all the day trading attention [ __ ] like Pro to them you're a marketer yeah yeah this year we have uh you know thanks to day trading attention we have over probably 120 million organic views already so it's been has dat trading has dat trading attention helped yes yeah yeah yeah so I have a community manager also and and I I forced her to read it I was like Gary's Saying it's

the you know it's his onboarding tool for his his own employees like you've got to read it and uh so she's read it and she does a lot of our socials and we've just been crushing it say that like it really helped her yeah yeah it's awesome yeah yeah it's great I and I I enjoyed it too I'm not much of a reader so I listen to the audio version love I love all the little tangents you take on there too which is fun yeah that's awesome yeah Awesome um cool one other thing too um

so Manny is Manny is actually helping us do a mascot and uh I really yeah we talk we talked uh at 4ds last year about you know how important mascots are you brought up the DU lingo example and I kind of went down a rabbit hole of like and how'd you get to uh Andrea and James uh hooked me up with Manny so yeah it was perfect um but next step is like okay we've got the mascot like how do we introduce this to our community what are The ways that we actually leverage this mascot

in a way that like I feel like we fall on more of the high-end luxury side of kayak tours we do you know uh clear kaying and and the price point is higher than most kayak tours if not all kayak tours in our area like how do I introduce it in a way that's not like too childish and feels you know but still makes sense as a mascot you got to try different [ __ ] okay I would go to Tik Tok where you can Get away with it yeah and try a bunch of different

[ __ ] [ __ ] okay consume all the dualingo stuff all the Jake from State Farm stuff Geico just consume and then replicate and see what it does okay consume replicate with the interpretation of Your World yeah yeah yeah yeah okay and do you think that's in the in the form of like actually building like a physical mascot like du lingo has or do you you keep it digital I think so okay or or you go very AI you know like yeah I mean both could work but I think with your product I think

just by Nature it's funny to see a big [ __ ] like character fall off a you know what I mean yeah yeah cool cool uh last Quick one for you um we had our call with Damon John a couple weeks ago which was awesome and he had brought up something that kind of stuck with me a little bit that something like it's 25 times more expensive to obtain new Customers than it is to kind of like upsell current customers or just retain your current customers yeah so so like how do I do a better

job of this this get people into Google this the goes back to the first part that's your community thing yeah just give a [ __ ] yeah text all of them and ask them what their birthday is if you don't have it yeah like it's scaling unscalable Behavior yeah cool it's this yeah Literally I mean like this is beyond not Roi positive for me yeah but like I want the karma I want the good you know yeah I start talking with Dr Natasha yes and she has been like working with me in more deep way

to understand um how I react in the past right and um you know like be less um judge make less judge judgment with with myself judgmental to yourself I just got done doing a podcast literally 30 minutes ago where half of the conversation I had was about people being judgmental oh my good to others which actually then leads to them being judgmental on themselves even at a young age okay and that being judgmental on yourself and some people are not judgmental of others but they are on themselves and it is I'm so happy to hear

that I would argue that all of my happiness comes from the fact that I'm not judgmental of myself that I give Myself a lot of Grace yes and I think most people do not yeah that's and I don't know Gary when you are an entrepreneur you are super high with yourself right you are you're accountable because there's nowhere to hide correct yeah but for me losing is a requirement mhm okay and most people try to avoid losing at all costs correct I'm always ready to lose everything let alone little things a bad deal a bad

Pro VI yes after I was done working with James and Andre my brain goes to what happens if you didn't say this I know it's going well yeah but what if it didn't I already made the mental commitment that I would have to spend a lot of time making it up to you and everybody else which was a stupid thing CU my time is very valuable yeah but I was willing to go there and my body and emotion had already been prepared for it not to work correct exactly got it so as You can imagine

it's just the way I see the world I'm always prepared to lose but in in that if you are in that position you are like on on the defensive way all the time believe it or not it's the reverse I'm prepared for it which then makes me grateful for when things are going well it's actually the reverse it's counterintuitive okay it's not crippling okay it's just preparation well that is a good point yeah and in fact it leads to nor Gratitude by by virtue of how I've lived my life I'm deeply grateful every day my

parents don't die is a good day every day my company doesn't go out you know really though it becomes your perspective yeah totally yeah yeah I I agree and and and this is this is interesting uh Gary because um I don't know if if I'm having the the right um attitude but but since we sold the company I don't have the same or fire is that correct I I think So normally this goes back to giving yourself Grace uhhuh today okay you don't have the same passion and fire today okay it doesn't mean forever uhhuh

of course you don't how could you yeah but I feel bad with myself because I should be like in the the front line like moving the team that I have behind me uh you know like uh pushing them hard and you can't judge yourself for passion that'd be like judging yourself for not falling in love with somebody who's good On paper okay you know what I mean you can't do that okay it's just not something that's controllable okay you know so I don't have to feel bad because of that yeah do you know did you

see how I reacted doesn't cross my mind that you could mhm it's a different game yeah yeah totally it's a different game yeah no now being accountable and responsible and grinding through but judging yourself for this Lack of same passion that's crazy okay that's an impossible requirement yeah but I I wonder if I'm going to feel the same fire that I used to feel for my first company of course the answer is you might not that's okay not trying to is the is the problem okay not ever like not ever feeling that same way that's

just how life plays yes sometimes your first think about all the people whose first love was who they Should have married right yeah you just don't know yes exactly but at when you're ready to look for the next thing not trying to find that fire again that's a loss if you're capable and you you're but not like don't fear that you'll like you can't have sellers remorse it's over yeah right yeah maybe it's the least practical emotion of all time yes the least practical emotion is looking Backwards yes that's true it's just maybe I up

with myself because that that's exactly right yeah instead of being grateful there's eight billion people on Earth 700 million of them don't have access to clean water yeah look what you've accom look at your life that's true that but that's what you have this is about perspective yeah totally totally maybe I'm focusing in some more Things right of course yeah that's okay you're a human being we all get caught up in that but that's not what you should be thinking about yeah yeah and um um what you think will be my my perspective after we

finished the program yeah oh the the vibe yeah the vibe program right I think everyone's going to get different things out of it yeah like there's one sentence in like this is what's so amazing about the program We we could have one of the things we just talked about could be more valuable than everything else yes Dr Natasha James on organiz Andre introducing like that's why so confident yes yeah there's so many pillars of value and every person's on a different Journey okay you know I just spoke to Jasmine and you like I got more

today like people are on different places yeah my hope is that it's relationships in perspective and strategy okay there's Just so many places what do you feel that you're getting the most out of it self-awareness yes yeah good yeah guess what the single most valuable thing one can learn really yeah yeah true okay really okay okay and relationship you know like I get excited about knowing that if you email me in seven years Gary I saw you with this person I need them for my new company that's what I get excited about okay you know

yeah yeah now you know something that Interesting that I've been uh thinking uh in the past days like over the few years in the relationship we have with Vayner group we have been growing as a company as a persons uh um and actually I was uh in a meeting this morning here in the the room in the conference room and we land a project that I've been chasing for two months and I was like God please give me this this project and I don't know every every time that I put a food my feet here

some magic comes you Know it's like you have something you have something I really adire I think it's good intent I'm a little I believe in spiritual it and like the things we can't see a little bit more than most yeah it's good intent I think most things are especially in business are not well intended yeah okay you know yeah that's true I leave a lot a lot a lot of money on the table for that something special a lot yeah okay it costs money to create something special How you sleep when that by not

trying to maximize a money yeah I promise you you saying that sentence makes me feel better than an extra couple of bucks okay that's how for me okay but if somebody else wants to make more money than that's their you know yeah yeah absolutely I'm just comfortable in my self-awareness I know what makes me tick okay okay no fantastic um I just want to say thank you Gary and I have thousands of questions for you um to be honest I Don't know how to how to deal with with this like be in front of you

like this is new for me right and um I just need a good advice because I don't I have few mentors James is one of them um but I want to to have a good advice about entrepreneurship because I'm I'm I'm about to start my second company I have a lot of fears inside me vs about me you know I don't know why you listen it's it's the it's how you were parented circumstances it's Okay we all we all have them in different reasons different ways you might know something real that you're not willing to

like fully get out of the back of your head yet so you know what I mean you you may know that you don't for example even spending a few minutes with you you know what it takes so you might one of your fears is that you don't have the same fire in your belly because it requires that and I feel terrible I feel that I want to cry because this I said This is not me now you're set on your idea yeah set it's it's set yeah maybe it's not the right idea and maybe you

know it okay right yeah you know what I mean yes trust your instincts okay it's even if it cost you like you know many times I've spent like real money and then at the last minute pull the plug yeah wow yeah is this as as an entrepreneur give that chance To give the block like is it is it a requirement to be willing to pull the plug MH 100% if you really feel like the idea is not as good as you might not like the idea as much as youed to M that's why you don't

have the fire yeah well I canot start my company right away because you know I'm of course so I'm starting producing a BL in order to start do you like the idea I have the idea do you like it yeah I like It do you love it not yet that that in that is everything that's what we need to figure out okay I need to go to the next one yeah abolutely write down all your questions for me even if it's 130 of them perfect and email it to me and I'll schedule some more time

thank you so much we have 15 minutes and I have two questions for you um the first is a personal question one for me and then the second one I actually sourced from my audience if They could ask you anything so the second one is is for the group um so my first question actually expands and I brought this because I need you to sign it afterwards or right now yes um I want to make sure I spell this right all right you're amazing thank you course okay so my first question is about a scenario

that you talked in this book and I'm going to quote you um I'm hoping that the people in this scenario are two years away from writing a book Versus two months from writing a book because then that's going to give them a much better chance of achieving what they want so two years from now I would love to publish a children's book and you are in the middle yes of of launching meet me in the middle so I'm really curious what you did two years ago 3 years ago to prepare for today for now to

have a successful book launch I amassed more skills of creating awareness and theast more audience depth To have an ability to create conversion right so a success lots of people like if you come up with a great story you have the capacity of getting a publisher to be excited about writing a children's book having a successful children's book is a whole different game it's called being able to sell yeah Publishers can't sell this is the great misn number the publishing industry literally they do literally no selling you would think I Mean I thought when I

wrote crushit they have their sales team are order takers they don't sell to Barnes & Nobles they just take how many books Barnes & Nobles tell them they want so I think the the key to think about is not not just being able to achieve getting a book made which is a B2B Behavior Serendipity subjective opinions the B to C part of actually being able there I think the question becomes whether it's podcast or newsletter or you know Discord or social media or like how are you going to build an audience that will convert for

the so for the last 18 months I've been focused on on organic growth and it's it's gone well I'm really I'm happy about that and I want to continue to grow the community because I I understand the commerciality of it that you need a marketable platform um do you through all of your books you've written so many and so many best sellers do you have a formula that That you go back to when it comes like you have a 24 month formula of just growth growth growth growth and then what is your game plan when

you know the Shelf date when I really want to sell yeah I incentivize bulk Behavior okay tell me um when you write the book If you say for everybody I'm going to create a 50 Girls Club MH for everybody who buys 50 copies of the book to give to all their nieces and nephews and donate to schools And whatever the heck you want to do with it for the first 50 people that buy 50 of these books on pre-order and email me the receipt to prove it we're going to get together once a month for

the next three months all 50 of us with me for five hours every once a month with all 50 people in a private room in a restaurant or wherever the heck you figure out you could afford to do that okay so that would be a for instance right to talk about you know Mom life or Mom balancing business life or the context of your book so bundling experiences that create scaled sales and also the book getting out there by Word of Mouth from the people that actually bought it yeah by you trading access to you

mhm okay that's so interesting and so it was a it was a direct to Consumer Behavior but you're driving B bulk yeah this a good example I sold 100,000 copies of ask scary V in The first week um and that was so this was back in 2016 okay I the top left corner is how many books were sold on book scan that week okay I sold 100,000 copies the second biggest book in the world that week sold 11,000 copies and you did this with your I did it with what I just told you there was

so many different ways to buy 25 books or 50 books or 100 books and just a lot of people did it but it's I had to sacrifice my biggest asset Which was time time okay um that's fascinating so but you have you have millions of when did you start doing this yeah you know it's so funny I mean like I sold less topies at they trading attention than I did there and that was 8 years ago and a much bigger now yeah did you do the book not really this one I knew I wrote a

really good book and I'm a little too busy and so you wrote a text book yeah and it was like a good one like I knew I Was about to like help a lot of people and like the word of mouth would carry it um but in that scenario if you have a 100 people that think you're the best you're Off to the Races is there a number in your mind that you I would say this this makes a commercially successful book is it different from children's books it it is um the answer is what

are you trying to make happen Yeah so if you're trying to be on a New York text New York Times of a selling list for vanity or brand leverage then there's some number I don't know what that is in kids books yet if you're just trying to make it a financial instrument well that's actually based on your Advance yeah right all right thank you I'm going to Pivot to my second question because I want to make the most over time my second question is around personal Branding and why do you think it's important for corporate

exe it's a two-part question why do you think it's important for corporate Executives to build their brand and how is it a benefit to the to the brands that they serve I'll go to the harder question number two yeah people buy from people yeah it is I mean I'm not going to go to the extreme of Elon Musk and Tesla but even I mean I see it every day on LinkedIn B2B SAS Companies where the head of product makes a video and people like that they're wearing a sh I I literally know this story what

I'm about to tell you to be true a head of product made a boring video that had 70 freaking views on LinkedIn but he was wearing a bears t-shirt and somebody bought their SAS product CU they Bears get too yeah because people buy for people yeah on the first part there's endless reasons why every Corporate executive knows one if you have a personal brand that's called reputation yeah it leads to a bigger demand Market if God forbid to get fired out of nowhere it's two two if you do it really do it it becomes what

I am you become a practitioner of marketing the biggest issue for corporate Executives is they're living in Ivory Towers the reason we're so Unstoppable is because I'm I the CEO of the company am in the craft like literally Literally in the craft meaning this is me literally writing the copy to a post at 11 o' this morning yeah so what really gets great about building a personal brand in Social is if you're the practitioner of it you actually learn skills by building your personal brand that you can deploy against the logo yeah I I believe

this and I think you're spot on I actually think it would be a really interesting post or real that I've been thinking About is how creating content actually made me better in the boardroom I promise you it's incredibly needed and your voice is needed on it yeah it's practitioners ship it's also a minority opinion right now and I think and I think that that's the the challenging thing is the good news is all the best opinions start as minority Ops there's not a single when I wrote crush it that book top left corner in I

wrote it in 08 came out in 09 The premise of that book is basically you can make money being an influencer basically the first 100 responses to the idea was this is complete UT [ __ ] nobody can make $100,000 a year a year on YouTube oh wow what a time what a time so I think that um I think that the best part of that is you'll have the receipts when you're a young woman yeah I have people people who liter and I screenshot them so I have the receipts that are like I I

love Bugaboo now because you're a mom and you talk about being a mom and running this stroller company I'm empathetic to why any board would be scared that a CEO or any CEO would be scared that a CMO becomes the face of the brand yeah but then they're quick to give a celebrity money who's just a rented one like it's crazy crazy they have it so backwards yeah that's a sound bite right there right right we're we're not going to let we're going to keep our CMO down because We don't want her to get too

big and then she might go to Coca-Cola but let's go give four times more money to somebody who we rent for an hour right I never thought of it that way I just like my mind is blown right now because that is that's celebrity and influencer marketing today that's a very winnable sentence in a b that that's like back pocket wild card I wanted to give it to you yeah I appreciate that thank you you're welcome Um I have t i want you to know that I have taken Pages out of day trading attention have

brought it directly to my team and we have completely re-evolved how we approach our experiences and our events to be social First Love and what do you call it the the sawdust yeah yes yes I'm like what is a size I only I'm literally leaving right this second to do a Barnes & Noble book signing for I'm going it for one reason yeah the content yeah one of them yeah all the other nice Stuff Shake sh hand kiss some babies thrill definitely not to sell books right right 50 books like that's a that's like a

so you approach everything through the through the lens of how does this become a snackable cont unfortune 5,000 yeah companies realize that organic social creative is the disproportionate most important part of the entire media mix is when they will start to grow every company is allocating 80% of Their marketing budget to working media dollars to amplify bad content yes that's another thing that we did is we took our best performing organic pieces and we started running them as performance yes brand performance go figure yes miraculously and then we're looking at the data and they're like

the ones that we created are outperforming in terms of click and view um seconds Feud and I'm like my God it's working it's working Yeah I mean the best part about me writing books is I write them after I proved it yeah I'm not guessing right creating impr of concept what are you working on next honestly I'm very deep in coo life even though I'm CEO I'm operationalizing us to be the best in the world at this yeah I wanted to tell you one of your newest Ventures that you have Vive yes I'm in this

program yes has unlocked so many things for me that's awesome I Believe in it so much yeah and it's a it's it's a it relates to my second question which is why personal branding why investing in this what it can do how to do it the right way what are the tactics what are the tools and I've I've also gotten so much from the personal coaching aspect yes and working with Natasha and she's created this tailored individual business plan for me and um thank you thank you for having me as part of the inaugural class

yes and Thank you for your time and thank you for sharing and being so generous so such a pleasure how are things things are good you have a black eye yes I took an elbow in basketball oh good good I'm happy it wasn't on your way up here to meet with me because you were so excited you R so fast how are things things are good got this yesterday thank you so much yeah looking forward to all I'm so happy to talk to You let's uh get started yeah what can what can I answer for

you what will bring you the most value of course it's what I don't know that I need to know y I met you 11 years ago at a Tony Robbins conference y went back to my room that night got on Facebook started running ads that's 30 $60 million later and here we are I didn't take all that advice so amazing but I got in touch with the customers did something that Was pretty rare able to build a brand two Brands actually to National without outside capital and uh without selling my soul yep I remember I

remember our chat over at 10 Huts 35 Huts in yards so I you know the whole retail media all this stuff what is there anything into is there anything that you'd love to double click on is it the advertising it is the business strategy is it Staffing is it anything any yeah yeah business strategy there's been obviously A lot of changes um over the years especially with uh with social media and all of that so we always wanted to make our product available to everyone in this country that needed it so it was we put

it in a store next to them they could run down get that product they didn't have to wait for shipping the whole game has changed now that Amazon's in there they're oftentimes getting shipping same day we still need to get the word out so I'm you know curious About the best way to invest um to do both we have to build the brand awareness we also have to build that customer path to purchase and I think it's all based I mean I literally did an offsite last week in Los in Los Angeles with a small

team building out a deck where uh let me give you this example back to competing with bigger things this is a little bit off the Record but I want to give you value Gap is a multi-billion dollar company Gap Inc so it's Gap it's um what's in their portfolio uh Banana Republic and uh one more in there so it's a it's a big business um and then there's a t-shirt company called cut Cuts Cuts is a brand new teacher company the last five years they only do Revenue Cuts spends a year on organic social media

yeah un organic uh do you know cakes which is Like the bra the Spanx or like what right they have grown a in Revenue this year from so to up to from to they're only a couple years old because they made a full commitment to organic social media okay here when you do organic the AI of the news feed the algorithm the feed is so good now over the last 24 months it shows you what's good content and then so you're building brand but then you take that good content and you turn it into performance

Ad okay we're doing that on a limited we're running two content posts a week right now with Sasha and um I'm thinking we need to do much more and continually test and learn test and learn take it my my belief is that quote unquote Sasha hopefully when we're at our best we know what are we're doing the issue is we think that there's an extreme underinvestment in Creative organic and an overinvestment in Media that is wasted on Creative that could have been better so let's break it down how much does your business right now spend

on including Sasha fees includ you know how much do you spend on social media organic creative no about so that's how much do you spend on media oh goodness much much less than that we're about so what's the net number how much do you spend on media we just did a change up It's it's close to about got it so and so that's it that's what you spend on marketing though you know three yeah yeah overall all marketing overall is under of of gross revenues that's uh do you do revenue or do you do more

or less yeah so we're uh in Revenue understood so where's the other going oh goodness um geez off the top of my mind it's more Going to our retailer The Shopper spends that they do the Shopper marketing plans um they're not nearly as effective I know but you have social that runs through the ad targeting through the Facebook and the stay in the store right yes uh just looking at one thing um yeah so I to me the question the question is how do we get what the the that's spent on media is that Pure

Performance or is that Amplification of the brand content from Sasha it's it's both it's yeah it's both want yeah we definitely want the brand awareness so we're doing um meta which you know does with the strong hook um tip pick top is good for us too Problem Solver this captivating um they're learning from that we're not doing anything on Creative are you doing myself I I post about five times a week across a few Different platforms I've always enjoyed the community part of it I'm going to get a I'm texting the team to do an

audit on everything Sasha's doing um just to see if there's anything that we can maximize there um I know one thing Gary everybody's happy if they hear about us and they want walk into a store to buy our product or they come to buy it from us or they go to Amazon right there's 100 Million homes out there and a good 70% of them I think could use our product if they if they learned about it how much how many podcasts are you going on a week or a month or a year not enough maybe

three a year three a year yeah I think that's probably the biggest strategic Focus I think you should be going on podcast just for the content yeah just for the content I I would go on even tiny podcasts that are in your Niche to hitting you know Hitting the kind of right demo just so that we can post produce the content from the thing for more at I I think that's the key my number one performing wine text ad is me doing a radio show yeah well some of our best content has been when I've

made made something or and it was just a impromptu thing that turned out I think more of you so you don't have a lot more money to spend on making more but you have your Time which makes more got it and my heart yeah I mean listen the whole company's built on your intent that's that to me is already secondary that's a given nobody knows your intent or heart if they don't see you true that right yeah car I think the most practical thing on those numbers of and spending you know advertising I think the

right move for you is to spend more time on Podcasts and then clipping the clips from those podcasts and putting them into organic and when they do well on organic turning them into a performance ad that's great that that's the that's the thing I would do if I bought the business tomorrow and we were Partners that's what I would spend my time on okay what else that is a good to know I think that's the one because what we need is more content from you yeah but you don't have the dollars To spend on it

um and uh go ahead a lot of ideas from your book thank you the section in there of all the examples oh golden I've got a got a list of things to do look I think um I think the the founder story is doing better and better and better and I think that um Earth kind would really benefit from you being on a podcast once a week with the intent of getting one to three Clips Out okay so now we got to figure out how to get you on those podcast podcast got it yeah are

you able to look at the podcast rankings on Spotify and and apple and in your categories of Health Wellness all that stuff business whatever it might be female empowerment entrepreneurship all of it I think you should make a list of you know all the things you could see yourself on and then we could maybe I can call in some favors and we should attack It great I love it I have one one question please I'm a Visionary you're a Visionary I heard you so many years ago you said where things were going I met Brian

chatsky and he told me if you do nothing but Vision focus on your vision think of it talk about it higher around it align resources around it you'll have a billion dollar business within 10 years right I didn't take his advice because I Thought well that's an easy thing to say what advice do you have for entrepreneurs wanting to start something and they had this big idea they want to change the world um what you say that they need to harness that into communicating to if you want to change the world you need to talk

to the world I have big Ambitions to change the world I talk to the world every day amen articulating a vision in a way People can see it and taste it is much harder than most entrepreneurs realize I think that's a brilliant statement and then the other thing is many that can articulate it don't say it often enough in enough places at scale yeah that's that's where you're at right now yes I need you out and about I need more content from you and I want it to be free which is in essence is you

going on pod gu that's that's golden I think so Carri remind me where do you live I'm in North Carolina that's right that's right yeah NASCAR country oh I know well I'm on the board of Bojangles I'm right around the corner from Kid Rock's place and yeah we're just yeah all right it's a great Community here an amazing Community um I'm gonna follow up with Sasha to see if there's anything tweaks there but I need you to focus on podcasting email me if you need anything thank you [Music]