How to Sell Anything on Facebook and Instagram | Throwback 4Ds from 2018 - Transcripts

in a super conference that all of you need to be at is finally here. Tickets have dropped to the original V friends holders but are now available to buy. I have a link in my bio for the people that have never bought an NFT but want to come because they've heard that Busta Rhymes and Deepak Chopra and Steve Bartland, all these people are speaking, go to vcon.co, C-O, drop the M, to see what's going on there. But the link in my bio has a site that we have on vcon that will let you fill it out and will help you get a ticket to our super conference, May 18th to the 20th in Indianapolis, Indiana. The conference is bananas. The 50 speakers I'm about to announce, bananas. This is the huge super business pop culture and innovation conference. I want everybody in my community be there. So link in bio or click here because the team is using this in all sorts of formats to make sure you get to indie in May

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This is the Gary Vee audio experience. The reason I'm a good business man is because I play outside the framework. You've got your perspective. I just want to be happy. Don't you want to be happy?

What can I answer for you, my man? Okay, do we have a limit? Yeah, there's a limit of time, right? I mean, I'm going to try to get to everybody, but. I mean, everyone's going to kind of hear

about business issues, but.

I mean, I'm going to try to get to everybody, but. Art and furniture has been sold through galleries. Yes. Most of the time. Yes. Well, I'm starting to change that trend but not just art in the sense that it's like, you know, $1,000 art. No, we're talking about things that are escalating into the hundreds of thousands. Okay. And so now I'm trying to create, okay. So I've been successful in doing that. We built a business from zero to now just a little over 2 million this year, which is awesome.

It's amazing.

Okay. But through traditional PR, I'm finding, dude, I've been in architectural digest, fast company, all the magazines, but that's starting to reach its limit, right? So how do I increase sales for the studio

to keep growing with.

Without PR? Yeah, without PR through social media. Yeah. So we, so once I got into Gary Vee, I started, you know, we started to really go heavy on social, started creating more content, now actually have a full-time video team that's in-house that's doing, so we're creating a show and also doing a podcast, basically doing everything that you've been saying to do. The tricky part is to get these consumers, people that are buying high-end, you know, spending 60, 70, 80, $100,000 to buy directly from us and to grow that. Because a lot of people are using interior designers or architects, so I'm reaching out to them. They know us really well. But how do I go even further? Like, how do I take a 2 million to 10 million to, you know? And so that's where, and I feel like it's personal brand building. I mean, it's my name. 100% So I just have to build that part

and then see the sales. I mean, sure, 100%. I've been producing content every day for 13 years. Like, only in the last 18 months has it gotten to the critical enough scale where it feels like it's something different than what you're up to right now. Meaning, like, I had a base. You've known me for a while. Like, I had a base, but it's nowhere close to what it is now. I mean, when you're building a brand,

guys, Nike almost went out of business.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really close. You went to court? So like, I don't think, you know, I think the, you know, Fernando's super simple, man. Like, you haven't even started. Like, the answer is what you're doing. Like, content, acting like a media company and running ads and creating content. And like, it's all the same shit. Like, when TV's a good deal, like Procter and Gamble, like, you buy Tide and like, Crest toothpaste because television was a good deal. And the companies that figured it out and could afford it, and da-da-da-da-da-da, like Schlitz beer and Schafer beer and Valentine's ale and the 30, like your great-great-grandfather drank that shit because radio was a good deal in 1937. Like, the good deal right now, in my opinion, is the seven platforms that live on this. When you take it to the step two of actually becoming the media company and not just an advertiser, right?

Great, that just doesn't- Well, 2014 it did. Great. So now it's not anymore, and so I plateaued with PR, so I'm sort of, I came here actually

to try to hire VaynerMedia to help us in the next stage. And good news, because Nick knows this, like, we're, I mean, I'm spending all my time trying to figure out how to help, like, create a business to service SMB. You know, we don't know how to take money here from Vayner unless you're paying us like two million bucks. You know, like, we have things, but we're not good at taking it, which is bad for a business, so I'm, like, spending a lot of time on it. But the reason we haven't done it yet, and the reason I'm hesitant, and why this took five years to, like, in my head before I did it is, I'm not gonna take somebody's money unless we can deliver. And at a small base, it's just better to do a lot of things internally. Like, the more I realize, I'm like, oh, it's gonna end up being consultant, or this really works. Like, you pay 10,000 bucks, I'm watching all the people that email Nick, and then he tells me, or I see in the Facebook group, like, there's been some crazy shit. What's your, what's been,

you know, keeping closer to it? The guy Joe Mullins coming in November, just, he was in the first group. Okay, and? And you confirmed kind of the personal brand. I think he invested, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars in his personal brand in year one, and he was the number one player in the space, and, you know, he couldn't be happier with the time he spent here.

Yeah, okay, and, yeah. So, like, I think the biggest thing I can tell you is that you have to make as much content as possible, and you have to spend as much. This is where people get, this is a very interesting subtle insight. People take pride in organic reach, cause they think there's something special about getting good organic reach in social when the ads are under priced. So, like, I literally would, like, if you didn't have a, I know you do, cause I know some of our limited interactions, but like, if you didn't have an Instagram account, right, and something as great as, like, Taco, and food and Jersey Shore, I'd be like, you don't even need to build one, Just run ads on Instagram. You probably, you know, it's funny. Let me rephrase. I do think having a nice little base for like, I now think people's Instagram account is PR. I feel like people search Google to find your Instagram account to get a read on what you're about. So I think organic content's value now is almost more like brand and PR. Like it's a cost, like you should spend money on it just to have like a foundation. But that should be 20% of your energy and money and 80% should be figuring out the ads that drive your business.

on Instagram.

That's what I believe, first it's doing it. So selling 60 and 80 thousand dollar items on Instagram's a cakewalk.

It's about running ads against people that live in Malibu. Yeah, but do you know that converting a customer at a 60 to 100 thousand dollar price point is a tough thing to do in a Facebook or Instagram environment?

It's tough to do, yes. Yeah, it's tough to do, yes. But not as tough as people think. Meaning, I think, so I'll explain. Give me one second because I want to get this off because I don't want to forget it. I think what we're about to roll out with volume method is really gonna be a big factor. Here's what I mean by that. I think it's easier to close a 60 thousand dollar person if you make 497 pieces of content and run micro media. Because the reason it's hard to close somebody for 60K is people go broad because they want to lower their CPM or reach as many people. The reality is to hit somebody 60K, you almost have to do a one minute rant, specifically to 15 type people in theory that are likely to buy it and overpay for 5,000 people

to see it that don't have any interest to get to the 15. I do it on Facebook. I've targeted Upper East Side

where I know most of the pieces go, or Tribeca. And then it's Upper East Side African American male who works in tech. Then it's Upper East Side, Third Generation, Trust Fund Baby

and you're making a reference to Ibiza. And add a layer with a partner, a fleet client, a watch company that's valuable, right?

Add that contextual relevance. The place where I've seen that, you know, it's funny, Nick, that one's brought me a lot of non-results because so many people are following things from an aspirational standpoint. But buying first party data of purchase and tender things of that nature or creating lookalike audiences on whatever data you already have, you know, it's been interesting. I often say that, but I'm starting to peel back a little bit. Yeah, because if you're a fan of Philippe, right? Like you think you're high, but so many people are aspirational and they're following high net worth brands, but they're not in consideration set. So you're wasting media dollars because you're not really getting to something. This is where like, this is where like really knowing your craft though, like I know a lot about wine. So somebody may say, oh, do Opus One, but I know I can do like Romani Conti Latash. Like you know enough about like comp artists or, you know, so there's like, if you can get nerdy about what you do, that's always just a very important insight. But I think it's content too. I think one of the, but it's interesting about content.

the artist whisperer to a community not selling your shit. Yeah, I don't wanna sell. I mean, you can't sell.

You can't sell a hundred thousand dollars.

So you need to build trust, you know? But also would like to create less friction in the purchase, right? Because everything's custom. But somebody sees a work of art, they're like, okay, I want that, but it's in some other iteration. So they have to email,

they have to set up with a team to sell this audio. Well, yeah, but end. Like what are you gonna replace that with? Augmented reality? Like there's inherent friction in one off. I actually think you lean into your friction. So I would go the other way.

Inherently, if I was making one off. Anything online, you just have to reach out

to somebody else. Yeah, like I would have Breck. Like if it's a hundred thousand, you should have like a coffee with everybody. That should be good. But all the digital stuff should be leading to the coffee. See where I'm going? Instead of like making it feel, you know where everybody goes with this shit. Oh, we'll fucking do it online. Fuck that shit. Nobody wants, first of all,

nobody's buying a $10 item. How are some of these websites doing very well? Like First Dibs is doing very well. They're selling a lot of shit online at a significant price. How much? How much are the prices? All the way up to the millions.

Are they a platform? So they're taking consignment.

Yeah, basically sold products on there. Yeah, basically sold products on there. People come from all over the globe.

They buy and then. Because they have the attention. Same reason, eBay, like they spent the money, whatever they, I don't know the platform. Whatever they did to build their brand or customer acquisition or whatever, they became a marketplace and everybody goes there. So they're doing really well because first of all, they're doing really well because marketplaces when they hit,

they hit, it really, really. We're talking about going into the future trying to sell stuff. Nobody's really gonna wanna come to a retail store.

I don't believe that. I don't believe that. I really don't. I think that nobody's gonna wanna come there if there isn't added value to go there versus what they think they can do online, right? So I think people wanna do more shit than ever because they wanna show people they're doing shit. People go to wineries and hike and yoga retreat and fucking, why do you think all these weird museums are popping up? People just wanna take the photo in the blue fucking balls or in the sprinkles or, like we are in full PR mode of ourselves and we are now living our lives for the Instagram photo. People are literally planning their Saturdays, predicated on the picture that they can put on, so I actually think if you made your gallery, like if I had a gallery, I would just make one humongous thing that everybody wanted to just come and take a picture of. That's it, like put people in jail for like 24 hours. Like they come into your gallery and they get locked up. That would work, like you see where I'm going? People will use online because it's lack of friction for something that they don't value doing physically, but if you can give them something of value physically, they'll do that.

We'll keep bouncing, go ahead.

So essentially, real quick, I apologize. I think your website should literally be a complete and utter gateway drug to have a meal with you. You'll sell a lot of $100,000 things.

Just a better use of your time. We got so good at the music production side, especially my partner, that when we start putting out our sounds and free stuff, drum kits and stuff, like literally it's a sound that sounds like this. And then they put it together with something that's like that. That's like, you know? So essentially we sold all the different sound kits and stuff and we took advantage of Facebook groups because everybody in Facebook groups is spamming, check out my SoundCloud, it's like the weirdest like. Yeah, I know what it is. But for us, we're like, hey, how about you come get some free resources? So we grew really really fast, collected emails, nobody even knew what marketing was in our space. But what happened was is that we got to like kinda like that two million year point and we're profiting 75K a month now at this point cause we really fixed our profits too. Now I'm trying to figure out what are some levers and I have some ideas for voters and levers to get to like the eight figure point or to go at least past this point

cause we've been here for a bit.

Yep. Yeah, I know what it is.

So what are you selling, kits still? Yeah, sound kits, we've added on courses and stuff and we've tried to evolve the product. So the product's gone from 47 to now, the next one we're gonna try at 497 size we've ever tried. It seems like the spike in price has always been something that's raised our revenue. Just keep raising prices and making the product better. We've had this problem to our evergreen sales. We'll sit at a little bit under 100K, but then we'll launch. It'll be like a quarter million in four days. So, and then, you know, we do,

we sell a certain amount of packs and then we take it. So I think, you know, the model that you're running is kind of like that classic internet marketing model. You know, that like kind of really got into fame in the years of like 2000, 2015. I think the thing that you can layer is more content and more brand. That's how you grow. You're in sales. And what you need to layer it with is brand. Like, you know, so like I've watched so many people find the business model where they've got a price, they've got launches, they've got that whole model down, it's funneled, it's landing page optimization, it's CAC, it's LTV, it's all that shit. It's amazing, it's fine, it's really good. It, you know, gets people to a certain level, but then they're in the sales business, not in the brand business. Like a lot of people that fall in love with that model, don't think about their logo, don't think about their content, don't think about reinvesting in swag. Don't think about putting out a pod.

and more about art. Gotcha, so what I was kind of thinking on that because I had been hearing you talk about that and trying to go into that space. So I was thinking about letting the team still do launches once every three months so we have that revenue. And then me and my partner are good at building out the new team to like go forward with that.

Is it good to still keep that alive?

I like that. Yep, yep, I like that. And honestly, like my biggest concern is that you're making 75,000 a month. Like you need to be pouring that back into business. Like I'm desperately curious what's happening with that 75K. Because if it's going into your pockets to like into your lifestyle, that's bad. And that's what every kid does. That's why people don't business, they'll build businesses.

That's why people have moments. And so I'm having a moment that kind of reminds me of what you talked about with AdWords being five cents a click and stuff like that. Right now, Facebook Messenger for us is, I mean it's getting 87% open right now. And I have a list of 30,000. I'm like, okay, I've been doing marketing for four years. I've never seen it. That's right. And it's one click, get their email too. That's right. It's not even. It's insanely good. Yeah, and I'm trying to, is it something that, so I'm a little worried about Facebook building this huge list and then like,

oh, we don't do that anymore.

Yep, that's right, that's right. It's insanely good.

Well, that's life.

Is it still good to like go ham at it and just.

You always squeeze the fuck out of an orange that's full.

That's what I'm saying. And then when it's empty, you go find a pair, which is harder to squeeze. And then you hope a grapefruit comes along. Right? Like that's, like email used to be 90% open rates for me. It's not anymore. Google AdWords with five cents a click. It's not anymore. Like I'm on emotion, like it's amazing. It's really, I'm really glad you asked the question. People do this all the time. Like people get so emotional about it going away, they don't take advantage of it when it's there.

other things, other things. So what we try to do, I didn't think you were depending on this, we try to move it around.

Yeah, yeah. Is that gonna do like? It is. But when you have something like Facebook Messenger and kudos to you for like going in on that, squeeze the shit out of it. But you can also extract those people's cells

and emails and do, yeah, yeah. It's one quick, it's like, I've never seen anything like it. It's really good. And for us, like you can send audio.

So like Amy talking real quick or. It's really good. You need to invest in your business. You need to invest in your business. The profit margin you're making needs to go back into the business on things that don't bring you short term ROI. That's how you build something from two to 10. That, that, right? I took Wine Library from three to 60 and I was paying myself $76,000 a year. 67, 82, you know, discipline. Let me keep bouncing. Do you have a question? Well, that's very sweet.

Yes. He doesn't have his hat.

It's awesome. In here, oh, in here. Thank you. Go ahead. Yes.

Give me one second. 2007, all direct consumer. Yep, yep. And this year we started off on a solid track to hit eight figures and it just kind of died off. Why? That's what we're trying to figure out. Like all of our website conversions, like what got cut in half. The conversions got cut in half?

Yeah, we're averaging 10 and add the cart. Yep, yep. Why? The conversions got cut in half? Did you, and did you change the media you were spending?

Were you getting less qualified leads? See, we were spending a lot on Facebook at the time and we were spending 150, 200K a month on Facebook. Plus, we cut a lot of that Facebook back.

Why?

Why? Because the direct ROI was under like one to one point.

You cut it back before the 6.25

or that's what made you cut it back? No, we cut it back after that. So, we're getting good conversions on the website but the ROI ad that we were spending from our Facebook ads.

Yep, yep.

How many different pieces of content were you running? We were running, we'll see that in the thing too. We were running probably 20 different ad sets, multiple.

We had 60 SKUs, as I mentioned. Just to get everybody on the same page, for this white sneaker, for his sneaker, we had certain ads that were costing us $62 to get somebody to buy and some that were 12. The thing that nobody has really talked enough about and this is really where I'm going, is the sheer amount of content. Like, here's what everybody does, it works. So, I'm yelling five fucking years because it's so good that you could be a dope and it works, right? Like, you didn't know what the fuck you were doing day one and Facebook was returning and you're like, oh shit, Gary's probably right, right? Like, that's what was happening. Then it gets more competitive, shit changes. What everybody does then is, they take their 20 pieces of content, it gets 20 there and they got 400 cohorts and what have you and they're like, oh fuck, Facebook's not as good anymore, let's stop. Instead of making 800 more pieces of content. Facebook can be better today than three years ago if you're better at content and copy and matching it against your targeting, got it? That's it, that's the answer to your question.

When we've been working on Messenger, like, doing stuff through it, we've mostly been using it to send people to, when my wife does a lie with education content and everything else and all of a sudden, when I happened to click on something, it was like, we had like, I don't know, 301 star things, like, why are you sending me messages through Messenger? And like, we had a warning from Facebook and all that stuff. And we have like, not maybe like 17,000 or whatever Messenger was, and we'd send out like a Messenger push

and we were getting 87 to 90% opens and click-throughs.

Mostly, and we have like. Well just real quick, I've never actually sold the media on Messenger.

We want to, we're sending them to a free live training

and stuff on whatever, how to. There was so many ways that people got into Messenger that they didn't know. That's why they were, that's what they were upset about.

I don't know the details.

But is there a way to kind of. Clean it up. You could send one message to get them to unsubscribe if they don't want it. Go up front, yeah. You're better off having 4,000 people give a fuck.

For sure, yeah. Okay, yeah, that makes sense and okay. And then the other one, more around culture. Yes. So as we're going, we're right around 35 to 40 people on our team. Yes. And since we make everything shit, we do all of our stuff.

Yep, of course.

Yes, yeah. I mean, I see some people, you know, we have, you know, on our team, I guess, what's the best way of creating a culture where people are like, watching your team and when I came up before,

I mean, just seeing how your team interacts and stuff. I think as as a small as 35 people, you should have dinner with every single employee and ask them what makes them happy in life because you have employees of those 35, you have some people that wanna make two bucks more an hour. Sure. You want somebody who wants more Saturdays off. You want somebody who wants to be a manager now. You want somebody, you have somebody who was happy yesterday but they fell in love and now they need more time at home, more money, title, work-life balance. Rick, you'll find out if you interview 35 people that there's something weird going on with Rick. You may have to fire Rick. You know, and so, when I hear about companies that have under 50 employees, I can't push them enough to do, you know,

the one-on-one hand-to-hand combat.

Yeah, okay.

That's the answer. Yeah, we started doing like six months ago,

like how much did it go in? It's good, it's good. But the one-on-one is where you can start building, on the third meeting on the one-on-one, Susan will actually tell you about Rick because in the first one, they won't. You have to build a relationship. The smaller the company, the more often you can do it. You know? Mine are like, I text you at 11.30 at night when I'm flying back from something and be like, yo, and we're like, I'm not kidding, he'll tell you. Like, whenever I can get to it,

kind of like trying so hard, you know? Generally, don't go to a store. Yep. But I'm at a different point. Yep, yep. Just taking over, and in fact, some of the content I was really resonating with from you specifically was not just stepping in and taking control of any one thing.

So, I'm in the mode, I was talking to people.

Yep, yep, taste. Serve and taste, yep. Which, how many employees are there? Well, maybe just because we have a lot of front-and-house

people everywhere between the three. Yep, which you can't imagine how much equity that builds with the 30 to 40. And you've been around the whole time,

just like I was, but it's still gonna be amazing. Yeah, so, and to give you some context, I pay myself as little as possible. Yep.

I flip on the weekends. Yep, amazing. What do you flip? Like, literally, literally that garage, like, yard, like that stuff, what's the best, I'm sorry, I'm so obsessed. What's the best thing? It's the same thing in Oregon right now. I know, what's the best, what's the best thing

you found this last six months?

I found an antique dining set, and.

How much did you buy it for?

I bought it for just under $200. And what'd you sell it for? I love that shit so much, man. I like to live on this shit.

Keep going. Anyway, so something I deal with, we were hit super hard during the crash, 2007, 2008. Okay. We lost over 50% of our business. Yep. My mom was freaking out. Yeah, yep. She was getting divorced at the time, actually.

Yep, yep, freaking out. Yep, yep, yep. So, how the business is now structured with you taking over is everything. It's the entire conversation. Because the reality is, do you have the full autonomy or don't you? Do you to a point, but blank? These were the things that really helped it get better and better and better for me and my dad. At first, it was gray as shit. And then as things would spur up, especially when I had momentum, you don't even understand how it actually plays out yet because you'll taste it. When you start doing a couple things and it starts working, and then she tries to stop it, it's even worse than not starting at all. Once I started tasting momentum, anything that my dad would try to bring to defense felt completely inappropriate because I'm like, it's fucking working. And look, I don't want to paint a false picture.

is she looking for you to make all the decisions? Yeah, that's her goal. She really enjoys working with. Yes, yes. She just likes that touch point. Yes, everything else. Yeah, and you talk about being punched in the mouth. Yeah. So, it kind of weighs heavy on her. But coming from that, it's hard to spend money, especially on such a personal heavy business for her. Because it's, you know, there's things that have to happen

in her mind before she is okay with something. Everything else, yeah, yeah, yep, yep. And you're saying spending money as in like investing in the business,

whether in advertising or something like that? Or over hiring, you know, I already talked about this with your dad. I'm not that physical. Over hire, you were over staffed in some time

with the business. Does your mom have a sense of how much she wants, or you guys, like, to me what allowed me to over hire was me and my dad had a good sense of what we both wanted to make in salary. And then basically, after that, I could make no money at all. So, that's why I over hire. It's similar to what I'm doing here. You know, like, I'm not looking for this to be the money I need to take home, thus I'm pouring it in. So, I think the key that I'm trying to get into is what's real and what's ideology and emotion. What I was very good at in hindsight, I didn't even realize I was doing it as a kid, was I was eliminating subjectiveness and emotion because my dad lived on emotional reactions. And I got us over time to a lot of conversations that were, you know, after like crying and yelling, I got us into like, you know, it took me a while, but I just remember these feelings even right now as I'm sitting here, I'm like, okay, okay, how much money, like, do not subject me. Do not like, opinion of the month, flavor of the month. It rained yesterday or we had a snow out day and now you're overreacting to the fact that we did zero yesterday instead of 80,000 and now you're not letting me run a New York Times ad. Take me to the macro.

because they care too much about subjective emotion. Something that I am doing more and more is actually hearing

meals for figures.

Of course, B to B, sure. But then when I try to go into kind of the jabbing type of content, that's a little harder for her to understand.

However, we've had those conversations, so. Over communication, which it sounds like you're leaning into and then when something's either ideology or emotion, grounding it in something so practical and gives you the framework, and then having the one thing that I did, there's something I'm very passionate about right now which is that fake environments, that kids are taking money from parents and building businesses and nobody's acknowledging it. And it got me down this interesting path where I realized, oh shit, the kids of this generation are taking money from parents and don't think they need to pay them back and the kids from our generation and definitely older than us, the game was, your parents would help you, but you had to pay them back. And something in that is just sticking with me that I haven't fully got to something, but it's kind of where I'm going right now, which is like, I said to my dad, I'm like, look, I'm willing to listen to everything you say if I'm unable to deliver on what I'm telling you I can deliver on if you give me this room. To me, there should be consequences if you're not good enough. And I think I'm seeing a lot of people want certain things from their parents in a family business, but aren't willing to deal with the ramifications because there's so much audacity coming from kids going into businesses. It sounds like you're not that, which excites the shit out of me, which makes me want you to lean in, but don't get too crazy. So you know, like I, in hindsight don't realize, I was like, fuck, you know, like I was delusional, but I like was so driven that I made it happen. But you know, I think that matters. Cool.

Dudes? Yeah, so I mean, I kind of already know

the answer to our problem. I know you do. So like what, maybe what subtlety underneath that might be a good example. Let me give you a good example. You should have an intern who DMs influencers until the account gets blocked on 40 different accounts

all day long, every day for life. Completely agree. And do that. Good.

But like, good. But like, but like, you heard the last part. You're gonna regret it. Do it. Does that make sense? Like if you don't have at least one person at minimum wage, who's just a scrappy kid, who, this kid fucking had a board on his head. No, but I mean, this is super important. This is what people understand. Three years ago, but three years ago, you got paid how much by that fucking mattress

or subway or whatever. 15 an hour and I was in like outfits.

Right. Literally goofy. Literally goofy outfits. But in him had the ability to go from zero to build $2 million revenue business. Tell me the truth. On a very serious note, on a true question. Do you have one person who fully spends 10 hours a day

DMing until he's blocked or she's blocked on 13 accounts? There's probably one person that does that like four hours a day.

Great, great. Every day. How big is your business in revenue? You should have three full-time people at minimum wage doing it. Yeah. It's the influencer version of you're gonna be upset that Facebook went away. What if they changed the DM rules? Let me rephrase.

What happens when they change the DM rules? Oh, I know. I mean, I've been thinking about that every day. I love the DM. I basically, every full-time somebody follows us, do the bot thing and send them coupons and like people give positive response because I'll go back in and then engage so it doesn't just seem like a bot. No one has engaged that conversation.

I don't know if it goes to other. But, you know what it is? How do they see it if it goes to other? How do they see that? How do they see those? People check their other.

People check their other. People check their other. Cool. Not everybody fucking does anything.

It's just math.

Yeah, you're right. You have to send out more and more and more.

The whole game is scaling the unscalable.

Like, this is what you get. Everybody's looking in this tech world to find the scalable thing. The magic's in the unscalable part. We're building part of like our wine business that if you buy the club, there's a SMS sommelier service that you get. Which is like, literally like you go to a nice, you know, restaurant in Cleveland and take a picture and be like, what wine should I drink? And we're, me included at first, me. We're gonna tell you. I'm gonna look at the fucking picture and be like, the late harvest Zinfandel with your dessert would be great. Me. I scale the unscalable. Guys, every single piece of written word on Twitter and Instagram is me. If I've ever DM'd you, if I've ever replied, if I've ever harden yours, that's me.

So I'm definitely not crying tears for anybody else. Definitely, and then, you know, from a B to B side, our main business has been selling the food to grocery stores, but now we're in this position where we have a semi-established brand name, semi-trusted name in our space. Right. And so CBD is obviously becoming a very good thing. Becoming a billion dollar industry could happen. So now everybody's trying to figure out like, hey, how do I incorporate CBD into my product? You know, popcorn or a lemonade. And so we've got into that position where everybody's asking us. And so we've kind of reversed it because what we do is, you know, we source from Native American farmers. It's very good practices. The genetics are very good. So we've kind of built this little niche.

try to build the intel of the... Right. Oh, yeah. Love it.

Couldn't believe in it more. Yeah, we're trying to get them to put a little excerpt,

like, hey, we trust and we go happy. I would literally, literally pay for those brands

to put my logo on it, let alone get paid. Right, that's what we've been saying. I mean, some of our investors are like, are they gonna pay you? Are you kidding me? Like, no, we want to pay them.

Couldn't agree more.

All we have to do is give them 10% discount, seriously. It's absurd.

You should spend all your time on energy on it. Yep, perfect. Yeah, we were, to your point, we're trying to hire one to two full-time people to literally just focus on that.

You need, who owns the business? I thought it was. You need to make as little money as possible

for the next 36 months. We... Good. We need to start taking, we've been doing this for six years,

we've been starting taking a salary till last year. Give it back. Moments in time. Yeah. Like, you know, obviously, like, I don't know your life, you may have, I don't know, but fucking as little, by the way, everybody, that's the advice. That's how you build a business. That's how you build a business. You gotta feed your business, not buy a new pair of Supremes. That's just what everybody does. And, you know, Supreme, or a house, or, you know, the great mistake of my career was buying an apartment six months before I could have invested in Uber and doubled down on Facebook. Like, it made me less liquid. Lost a lot of money.

and built something for real, you know? Yes. Sorry, I just have one more question. So I know you've said focus on the Instagram DMs and as you know, we can't do the traditional advertising. That's right.

Is that really the main? Yes, that's right. I think podcast pre-roll, I think podcast pre-roll is really good. I would hit up email every single podcast like that you think maps and any shit, you know, it's be creative. I'm obsessed with influencers for you guys and then fully having your own podcast and your own vlog, being a media company.

Yep, that's where you're at now. Cool, just wanted to make sure.

Yep, yep. For us, LinkedIn video content has been a game changer. That's awesome. Yeah, because, you know,

specifically the audience is grocery buyers. That's awesome. And look, you can, I think there's a way for you to build a personal brand about being an entrepreneur and what you've learned and just letting that halo affect your business. There's plenty of people that want to, I mean, what are you guys doing here, right? Like you can halo it to your actual business. You know, you gotta be very clever, but like if you're making more about you and not the business, like no reference to even the business, people will Google. You put out a good video of like how you ate shit before six years and like it does well, people find out who you are. They'll go to Google, they'll figure out what company you work for. So there's ways to run media as, you know,

as a, you see where I'm going? Yeah, no, that's kind of what we're trying to Do. Yeah.

You know, the pay-taking story,

Do. Yeah. The pay-taking story, just be seen for free and you know, we're slowly starting to get paid for it.

I've heard of the concept. I've heard of the concept.

So just to piggyback off the build of the business, I mean, I've been at it for 18 years now, so one taco at a time, opened up like 2000, and then just kind of grew it from there, 13 shops in New Jersey. Just took it on the road, went down to Florida,

opened up down. So cliche Jersey. Yeah, right. Jersey, Florida.

Fucking makes me so happy. So I dip my toes into franchising like 12 years ago. Okay. I got one franchisee. And then I was just kind of pulled back on that. I just want to kind of build the company that way. But now I'm looking at like the next 18 years, you know, and like, how do I say relevant? How do I scale growth?

Okay.

What do you want to happen?

I just want to take the brand to its potential.

The game of it.

The game of it. I mean. It looks pretty good. Yeah, so then I think franchisee at this point, you being this grounded and mature is a good debate. It's a good debate if you want the game of it. And to me, when I hear the game of it after somebody who's anybody who's been in business for 18 years is a successful entrepreneur, you know, like the amount of people who like make a lot and then lose it like, like being a entrepreneur, saying you're an entrepreneur versus being a successful one is completely predicated on life cycle. To me, one man's point of view the game of it gets into the vanity of it. I watched my dad do it. I've watched, with my fame or local fame or internet fame, it's been interesting to see my dad go from caring less about money and caring more about the game. Actually, that's actually not fair. My dad always cared more about the power and influence in his industry than being bigger than other stores. It was like being the king of big fish in a small pond was his passion.

I struggle with just the customer though. I'm only as good as the last taco and if I have a franchisee

that's serving a bad product, that's all I'm made. Here's the good news, you're an operator. You don't have fucking 14 stores and not being an operator. You just change your agenda of operation to making sure that Nick Dio, when he opens up his shop in Little Lake Harbor or Delaware or the fuck, fucking stays on point. Your operations change. It's like becoming a manager, right? You know this, you were the guy fucking serving with tacos in store one. You don't do that as much. You managed over time, right? Well, now you're just managing something else. You could have a six month fucking course to get through to, you could spend a year picking franchisees. Franchisees fail because they want the money.

I know, I know.

It'll work. The best thing that, the reason I'm a good businessman is because I play outside the framework. That's what being a bad student is so comping to being good entrepreneurs. It was easy for me to come up, I've never thought of that concept. But it was so easy for me after I even listened to six seconds because I got enough context to ideate on an idea that is specific. That's why this stuff has been so fun for me. Because I can put out content that's evergreen all day long but it's in the nuances. It's so, I'm so, I want you to dig into the thing that's not scalable, you know? Because you're not gonna be able to change the inherent nature of a one-off product. There's no scalability in a one-off. What's scalable is you can meet seven people a day for a coffee and if your content and web does that, you're probably, you know, you're gonna close two. You get them to dinner, well guess what?

You take them to dinner, you'll close even more. Is it relevant?

You're like 20 years out, fast-casual. Food is always gonna be okay. You know, QSR and fast-casual, whatever the trend of the moment is, make a good fucking taco

for the right price, you'll be all right.

Especially, especially, you know, yeah. I think that's right. And by the way, Acai may, like a lot of people have said that about things that did stick, right? And other things didn't, right, to that point. But if you just look at the basic Latino, you know, influence on America, your grandkids are gonna be fine on that specific food. Tacos are gonna be just fine. And Acai may become the new taco thing,

or may not, but you're exactly right. I have a question about, so, you know, building a brand with content stuff, what do you think about using, like, so I've been doing this thing, where I'm just getting, I'm hitting up like hundreds of YouTubers, getting them to use my stuff, I'm like, dude, just do whatever you do, just use our stuff while you're doing it, and we can get it away for free. Of course, product placement. Yeah, so what do you think about using like all of them

to then run ads from their Facebook? Of course, product placement, yes. To put in the audience to work, of course. Yes, but you should probably be up front with them. Because your one blog post, the way of like, you fucking used me, like somebody did that with me, that came to four D's, and that was not a good situation for that person. If you're, remember intent? Yo, what's great about why that's worked? Yo, dog, I'll give you something and you just use it. I want that exposure, you want the shit for free. Bet, I then run ads against fans and fans are hitting me up and saying, yo, did you, like what?

Then the person feels like you got them. I actually think they like it though, because they get thousands of dollars

pumped into their content. So now going, I don't disagree with you, but 50% of them will like it.

So you say it up front and you're in a much better place. And you think it's a vulnerability relying on like a mass contest strategy

where a lot of people doing it- No, no, no, I do not. It worked out for Nike.

Because me and my partner, we're not in the music like doing that every single day now, we're at the points where we gonna,

I got it, I got it, I got it, I got it. Of course I think you're fine with that, I think you're fine with that. I think you're siphoning attention

and then you become the thing. Thank you so much for listening to that entire episode. We want to remind you to give Gary feedback. So make sure you tweet him at Gary Vee. But if you're listening on Spotify, you can drop your comments, questions, and anything in between in the Spotify Q&A section down below. See you in the next episode.