How To Make Strategic Content To Sell Any Product

my garage sale content. It is scary if you look carefully under the hood how my garage sale content leads to business for VaynerMedia with Fortune 500 companies because the people that are consuming the garage sale content are the children of the executives who are making the decisions to go with VaynerMedia. Content is never a bad thing. This is the GaryVee audio experience. I'm going full-time on my personal brand thanks to you because last year you told me to get on the TikTok and I did and I hated it but I saw it and so yeah personal finance and then I also have a podcast that I co-host which is more into like navigating the workplace employee advocacy about type of thing and I'm trying to figure out how to put those two things together but yeah Vancouver Canada and now putting all my time and energy into that. Good for you. Awesome. You know Jeremy? Very well. Jeff, Jeffrey. Hi, I'm Jeffrey. I can't say hi to Jeremy. It's good to see you, Ben. How you been? We're going to give you a walk and talk back to your office. Awesome, I loved it last time. I'm Jeff from Travis, founder of CO2.com and we're a virtual reality studio that produces virtual reality experiences or missions to move people through the magic of the immersive storytelling. So we produce VR content but we also have a technology that is a motion pod that eliminates motion sickness makes the experience far more immersive with scent and haptics and primarily we're building a network of virtual reality theaters and places like museums, tourist centers. Interesting. A lot of B2B makes sense. Awesome pleasure. So here to learn where are you from? I'm sorry. Based Milly. L.A. Awesome. So I'm Karen. This is Yasmin. We're sister in law. We have a company called BIA that helps women from all the way from TV through menopause. So on set of men see founds that are hormones and it uses whole foods. So we're all about food is medicine. I think like 80% of women have hormone on balance and don't know what to do. They're going to band aids like actually I don't know if I should say them. Camera birth control, things like that and we want to give them like an actual solution to their problem. I love that. And we launched last year only direct to consumer subscription days and 100% self-funded. Wow, it's awesome. All whole foods. All whole foods. I'm such a buyer of this thesis. It changed my life and we're like we got to get this out to more women. I'm a disproportionately educated girlfriend when it comes to whole foods. I'm like stunningly educated through osmosis. I'm well more prepared to help you now than before. So can't wait. Good for you. I think you really, but there's real upside in that. Other than DTC businesses are very hard. There's that part. We'll talk about it. All right. Now this whole side of the table comes from Canada. These folks in the middle are one group here. Christine, one of the head and say out of Gary. Introduce your piece. Hi Gary. So I'm Christine Luyenton CEO and Founder of Kip International. This is my daughter Shelby. She's in charge of marketing and this is Triti's here for high five. So what we are is we're an ag tech company and we extract the protein out of yellow peas. So plant-based and it's a clean plant-based protein and we're going to disrupt the industry because people take such shit and ours does not. So we have large companies. I can't say them on camera. Sure. That are at the table. And how do I close them? And how do I raise the real money? Because I just right now currently the guys are commissioning our $30 million pilot facility and we're going to the $200 million. I bought the land, everything else is engineered and we're going big because you can't go small. Because what? Tens of thousands of tons. Of course. Just do a little bit. And so I've partnered with high five who does things that you I think are going to understand the NFT raising money. So I'll hand it over to Troy. Yeah, quickly Gary. So I'm trying to make the island of the German CEO of high five small US public company. We've built securities token offering platform for clients very much like that. She's become a investor in our company as well. AgriTech, GreenTech, these things are essential in humanity. These private companies are looking to do capital raises. Am I getting using our platform to do security token offerings? We have a new form of NFT. We think we can take NFTs from being most of them being foolish to be very serious. And we actually have a new form of security token offering completely legally compliant in the US EU and now in Canada. You have to be a credit investor now. For some types of offerings for her first offering. Yes, it would be a rig D, level six C, but we'll also be doing rig A's. Yeah, not need to be a credit. Understood. Hi. So Hanunu, originally from Portugal, living in Canada for eight years now. Influenza marketing agency. 90% of our business is for some promoting gaming. So we do dedicated videos, integrations in the most organic way possible because I've been trying to do it on a different way from those auto platforms. So we have been growing and I hit a threshold that I didn't know where to go from here. So I was approached a few times for people to try to acquire my company. I didn't know what to do. And then I booked my takings on intro. So I met Matt and he said, like, you're crazy. You're not going on that direction. You're going to learn how to build your second year of your company, your management team that you don't have at the moment. And you will grow your business. And definitely you will need like the four diesel. That's awesome. That's very nice. That's funny. Very cool. Where are you based? Kingston. And do you wrap the talent? No. You wrap the brands? Yes. Understood. Cool. Let's go back there. Let's rock and roll. Yeah. So I have a podcast called It's Time to Clean with ex-hohoes with the friend. And that is all about career, you know, like employee stuff. And really my personal brand, which is what I'm trying to, trying to grow. I'm struggling. I got a TikTok. I started, you know, doing all the like, repurposing the content. And what I've realized is that I'm more, I'm an indoor cat. And social media is requiring me to be an outdoor cat. And I'm like struggling to find my voice. Why do you think? To grow, really? Well, let's break it down because it's going to matter for everyone in the room. So introverted versus extroverted. Or however you want to paint it. What, let's go higher. Are you worried about judgment? No, no. I don't really go fuck. Okay. Do you not have the ideas? Because that's something that I've, yeah, that's something I've been thinking a lot more about. And some of you consume my content for a long time. Even my own team is hearing this for the first time. Even Andrew films me like, I've been thinking a lot about the ideas. I've come to realize that I took for granted how easy ideas are for me. We talked about this the other day for Vayner and Sasha. So this is what one of the reasons I've started doing green screen content. Again, making assumptions that some of you are paying close attention to me and others aren't green screen. Have you seen this where I take a headline from an article and then I'm over it and I'm talking what early on when TikTok was popping something I said that I stopped talking about that I'm going to start talking more about is these platforms are now helping people with training wheels. Like when I first started YouTube, it was like camera post. Now with all the filters, all the features, the music, the this and that, these platforms are really trying to put you in a position to be able to make the content. The reason I like green screen a lot is for a lot of people here, no matter, I just listened. Almost every, actually I'm going to take a second. Everybody here can speak as a commenter on top of an article within their field, whether it's private equity or influencer marketing or food or food or right or raising capital. Almost everyone here, like I woke up, had an idea. I think having a grudge might be the great poison of our society. I've been thinking about this lately a lot. That if you actually are a human being who is currently sitting with a grudge that it's actually destroying you on an everyday basis. So I was interested in that and normally the way I would do it would be I would make, you know, again, I think all of you know, like a grudge rather than a branded post. White title grudges are bad away we go. What I did instead with this new behavior and I've got a point here for everyone is I googled articles about grudges, scientific and things that nature. Now I'm a little scared because I know I don't want to be a headline reader and just take something that might be a bullshit article, you know, so it's a little challenging, but this is lightweight enough. It's not like I'm making a scientific claim or, you know, like, you know, and so one thing that I'm trying to tap into for you is potentially the concept of is it the ideas. Indoor cat, outdoor cat speaks to putting out stuff. Most common people are actually insecure about judgment and whether it's physical appearance, do they really know imposter syndrome, things of that nature, or just really are at that place in their life where two or three negative comments can really throw them into a snowball if I could sense that. So then it might be about the ideas. Yeah, because I know what I did and my own thing is, you know, I want to help other women who are just like me, you know, I'm going to jump in here. What you've done is a prop. The only thing I do for a living for the last 15 years is based off of what I've done. I've just gotten good at making it more macro than a focus group of one. It's the starting point. The only thing that you need to do in those scenarios is not be fearful of, well, wait a minute, this is I and understand how much of this is we. Like even for these, this is a meta situation. I'm answering your question, but trust me, I'm throwing this at everybody because there's different versions of it for everyone. So I think not fearing speaking from a place of one and understanding how most things are universal and just changing some of the words of I to we may give you a starting point. Yeah, let's keep talking, this is why we have this. Yeah, I, well, and it's, is it a, are you, are you lacking patience for it, us to get there? No, I like, I have all the time in the world, you know, it's really for me more mission driven, like I want to sort of reach more women, more moms, people that are, you know, I don't have a finance debate. Well, well, you, well, you will. If it's an altruistic, emotional point of you, it's completely based on patience. I wanted to reach every one to start in 2009. Very few people were watching. More people watch now. How about the fact that in 2022, I know that I haven't even begun reaching how many people I want to reach, right? It was only the last couple of years that I'm translating my content into Portuguese. Now people in Brazil and Portugal know who I am and they didn't 24 months ago. So, you know, I, I think a lot of times if you're truly coming from a selfless place, if you are, and I think all of us come from some version of selfish and selfless place. It's being a human being. Then we really are talking about patience. Because there is no hack. I'm not going to be able to tell you to be like, well, you know, like, for example, green screen. Why am I saying that? Because green screen is over indexing. That video of me talking about grudges would have gotten 400,000 views on Instagram for my current situation. The green screen will get 1.7 million. That's that's a tactic that I love because one, it's working for people on the other side. Two, the algorithm is clearly seeing that. So, it's helping with organic reach. Three, it will help a lot of you make a piece of content in a way that maybe you couldn't otherwise. You have a thought, you don't know what to do in a one minute video. But if you Google an article, green screen it, and then speak what you were thinking about that subject matter, now you do have a piece of content. I have a 30 person content team. Andrew will tell you that now is probably like, wait a minute, Gary is basically now just doing green screen. He's doing it by ourselves like, are our jobs in trouble? Like, he doesn't need us. That's powerful. That's powerful and very powerful for a lot of people here. Because I, you know, everyone's like, easy for you, Gary. You have a team. I'm like, but I didn't have a team for the first eight years of my content creation. What about that part of the story? So, what else? Well, what else is so I have this podcast and I'm trying to figure out how to, because all of my, yeah, leave it in because all of my like professional experience is a leadership, like a child employee, you know, I was a manager. And I really, most companies are like shitty, most managers are shitty. And most employees like don't know what their rights are. They don't know what they can ask for or what, you know, how to go about it. And so, I have this whole thing, which is really sort of skills, like my whole career, which I love talking about. I love, you know, having. So, why are you doing the podcast? Because I love that. And I have like so much deep knowledge on, on that. But it's completely different from the personal finance stuff. That's okay. So, let me give you, let me, let me give you, let me give you an insight. So, my garage sale content. It is scary if you look carefully under the hood. How my garage sale content leads to business for VaynerMedia with Fortune 500 companies. Because the people that are consuming the garage sale content are the children of the executives who are making the decisions to go with VaynerMedia. I often, I just, I wonder if, if, I think, like, if it takes away from, nobody cares, nobody cares enough. That's ego. Nobody's watching those two places and be like, I'm going to take away from this for like, they don't give a fuck. That is, that is just pure ego. Like, nobody cares. Nobody's, by the way, you just gave the number one argument why everybody who cares about me in business doesn't want me to do 90% of things I do. Gary, you can't make a fucking video that's yelling into the screen about receipts because the jets want a football game. You're undermining, you're intellect. I'm like, no, I'm not. The end. The, we have a lot of classic thoughts that were built on the old media and distribution framework. Humans are multiple things. You can be, you, yes. Like, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, the only people that are telling you to niche down are people who sell niche courses and have never built anything for real. Yeah, I hate that. I like hate that shit. So don't do it. Correct. I would tell you to do more shit. Okay. Like, start a third podcast talking about kites. I'm being dead serious. I'm being dead. I believe the more you give the world to attach with you, there are people who are attached to me because they're jets fans because they like garage sales because they like wine because they like business because they love modern blockchain technology because they like, I give, think about how I'm doing it. I mean, it's everywhere. And every, like, it's complete. Like, there is no logic to it by old points of view. It becomes an energy cost game, not a strategic game. If you don't have the energy to do both, that I respect. That becomes logical, right? We only have so many resources financially or emotionally. But if you have the capacity, notice how quickly I said great when you said, I love it. I didn't want to hear anything else because that is an energy driver, not sucker. People actually don't understand this. When I tell people to do a piece of, like, you should do a Star Trek podcast. They see it on service level the way I say it, which is like somebody else might be a Star Trek fan. And then they may give you business. What I really is in disguise is you love Star Trek so much that that hour each week is giving you energy for your other 60 hours. My obsession with the New York Jets, and I'm realizing right now because we've been so bad for so long. And now we're actually having a decent season. I forgot because it's been so dreary. I forgot how that four hours on a Sunday drives my entire week. So I think you need to be doing more. It's just that the content has to be strong and strategic across the board. And that's what four days will teach out of, like, the essence stock. But that theory is not true. It's more that you just have to make more content of the thing that you want to monetize. Got it? It's not decrease the leadership thing. It's add more to the financial thing. By the way, YouTube shorts. I'm repurposing to YouTube shorts. It's like a hot mess. Well, it's only because it's early. Number two, and this is very big for all of you. Remember, when you title your YouTube shorts video, even if it's not directly obvious to what the content you put out, if you're repurposing from TikTok, title it for search, because YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world. Right? Like, so like you might make a video that lightly touches on taxes, but you might title the video, how to fire your taxes. Got it? Because you're doing it for search. Everybody, I hope you're enjoying the podcast right now. Make sure you follow the podcast. That's why I'm interrupting. Let's keep going on this show, but follow the podcast. They'll make my mom super happy. So, you know, I have ideas like I just started a campaign to start posting out a link then three times a week. I want to start a podcast where I interview the filmmakers who correct your content is a very active one. But remember, when the target is a B2B decision maker, that's the sizzle, the make sure back to like jab, jab, jab, right hook for every filmmaker, because that's cool. Try to have somebody on the show once every two or three times that is an actual decision maker that you're trying to reach, because you'll be able to use the content from that episode as ads against decision makers. And she or he's going to say something that is disproportionally going to resonate with the people like her or him. So, where people get caught is they think their thing is boring. And so they go for the cooler thing, right? You thought properly. I'm going to do a podcast. Who the fuck cares about the, you know, like the licensing fee or the structure or some of the hardware thing? Like that's boring. What's cool is the fucking, the movies, right? On the flip side, you're doing it for marketing and you're trying to shoot fish in a barrel of a very small group of people. I still believe that one of the biggest things B2B companies need to do is make their content strictly for the CFO, strictly talking about why their thing saves their company money. Even if it's like like whatever that is. That's why I love HR. All these dopey, dopey business people, like disrespect HR. That's where all the money is. If you're retention and good culture, all the hidden gray of the money you're making versus the black and white, all the CFOs, pay attention to. It's not even a fair race. It's a tortoise in the hair. Nonetheless, give that some thought, okay? Right. Okay. Sounds good. And then the other thing I was wondering about is just in terms of calibrating the breadth of the message. So if I start writing posts, I want to create content. I can get very-- This is a struggle, so I get very specific. And. And. Talk about what the message is. And. This is, again, this is the sub, you know how we talk about subconscious bias down society, like you don't realize, but you have these feelings and I'm trying to get people to be okay with that, because we're just human beings. We grew up in our circumstances and the quicker we realize we do have it and the quicker we also don't judge people for having it, the quicker this world can get nice, everything is and. It's unbelievable how deep the subconscious bias of or is in business. If you're posting three times a week, and you know I want you to post four times a day, but if you're two and three times a week, think about what you're asking. You're doing 12 posts a month. And there's not the-- Like, what kind of mindset am I going to see very consistent on your post? This goes back to the ideology of like, there's nobody's going to read all 12 to begin with. Who are we looking inconsistent to? Again, what is really starting to-- and it's amazing, it's right off the bat on both of these. We have a major, major issue with over-believing academia and under-believing reality. The concept of who's consistent about anything. Of course you're a human being and you have your values and what have you, but like all of us as parents and operators and human beings have to adjust to reality at all times. We also should start championing people's ability to change their mind. That is my greatest strength. New data, new decisions, new information, new life situation, new observations. You're not going to bother anybody if you go high sizzle metaverse and then come down hardcore nerdy, you know, motion sickness technology. But then those people aren't going to see the other one go like, oh, this is so pedantic, right? Do you believe humans work that way? Yeah, like that's good. Right? I mean, to your point, one of the-- I almost think that the reason I'm doing some of this stuff I'm doing is to go to the extreme. I'm like a very well-respected businessman who's wildly not respected by the establishment because they see a video of me buying a t-shirt for a dollar and give zero fucks because there's no reason to. All you're trying to win on is relevance to as many people as possible. The people that will eliminate you because you're talking about multiple things are the least interesting people on earth. You're just trying to get people to consider you and the way to get more people to consider you is to touch on more things. You're not-- you're not the encyclopedia. You're not BBC. And even those things we've seen evolve. Right? Even CNBC or even Wall Street Journal, if you look at the history of publications needs to expand for relevance. Even though they started as something very narrow, it's the inevitable chess move. Nobody's going to eliminate you because you touched on two different things. This goes back to how I think it really works. I would challenge you to also add to your content what fly fishing taught me about business and make the whole first 17 sentences about fly fishing because you love it or darts or hockey or rock climbing or surfing or chess. We need connection points. When we're going through that stream on LinkedIn, I'm more likely to stop if you're talking about knock hockey than if you are talking about the metaverse. You see where I'm going? Do you have a sense-- well, before we run out of here, do you have a sense of which communication style suits you best audio video written word? I write written word or video. I mean, I don't mind being on camera. Well, then if that's the case, you should do video and then transcribe, have an intern or lowest-cost transcription, right? Think about the double benefit. You know, if you're willing to do video, I mean, I have a lot of-- I've written five New York Times best-selling books and they've never written a sentence of it. It's all out of my mouth video. Transcribe to book. Even the last book, because I did during COVID, literally, like my team visited me at my apartment. I just talked, we just filmed it all. So, and now you have much more content if you film it that you can use in other places. So I would definitely lean into the video and transcribe it to the written word. Even if you directly are doing an article, speak it if you can, and let that be the right thing, because then even the video becomes extra-- now we'll send you about 12 a week instead of 12 a month. That's how you get there. Makes sense? Yeah. Cool. Cool. Yeah. Well, Gary, thanks for having us. You've been a huge inspiration to how we built the-- we've listened to a tiny or four days. It's an honor to be here. Humbled. I'd love to give you just a bit of a plan so you can have more contacts. But we watched last year. I think the first year was us really figuring out if we have a product market fit to the president. We've hit that. We're at mid-six figure business right now. We're profitable. We're reinvesting every dollar. It's we're barely profitable. For customer acquisition? No, we have not done any paid marketing. No paid marketing. All word of mouth. Yeah. So that's kind of how we built the business and keep it on a share of money. Makes sense. Yeah. We've both heard when your product came on that and the next day decided we're going down content. So we're doing about pre-report pieces of content per social platform. We have a newsletter. Per. Per. For Instagram. That I understand. Three or four per platform per week. Day per day. So how many? What total per day? Oh, 12 to 12. Love you. Yeah, 20. So pumped with you. Yeah. And it's working. Oh, it's been wonderful. Did everybody hear that? Yeah. Three times a week. Go ahead. There we go, my man. Progress. We're doing a little bit of influencer marketing in the beginning and then we decided to double down our own content. Yes. Working way better. Yes. So it's been fun. You know how like, you know, like I always tell people in this one, they're always like, Gary, why is that? I'm like, you know how you love? We all love children. Like children. We universally all agree. Like we love this seven-year-old. We love our children more. An influencer can only love your product so much compared to you. Yeah. So newsletter about to start podcasts, which we'll probably put on YouTube and we're trying to design all of that right now. You want to talk about that for half a sec? Because it's super important. I think you'll do well. Yeah. We started to record content. We're trying to design here. We're interviewing a lot of experts, but we also want to do our original content. So we started recording, but we haven't figured it out. When you say your own original content, just you guys on the show? Yeah. So I would do both in one show. Let me tell you how to figure it out. Back to Ande versus Orr thinking segments. I think the show should start with five to seven minutes of you guys. Think about Regis and Kelly. Like they like banter in the morning. Like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Close the show. So I think the way you should do it is do six, seven, eight minutes of you guys. Thirty minutes with the guest. Six, seven minutes of you guys to close out. Maybe that one has like a little segment or a little game or hot take or you do something with each other or like for name association or whatever. And then you're done. Then you have the post-production for all of it segments. Yeah. And the way we're thinking about it. So YouTube for sure, and I have a podcast. I've been doing it for like two and a half years, weekly, personal, dispassion of wine that gives me energy. Love that. Thank you. And we had some help interviews and we saw it really works. We now want to double down on YouTube. I guess for us like, I don't know if I'm being too conservative with our marketing dollars. We have not spent anything. Like what do you think? How do you think we should probably? Well, you can't get more conservative than zero. I know. I probably need some help, but should we be spending? Where should we be focusing on marketing? I mean, doubling down on YouTube, like that makes sense. When you guys have, tell me a good war story of a piece of organic content that went viral. Go. I mean, we have a few, but one on Instagram. It was like over a million. It was this like cocktail mocktail that we did. You should you should take that video and run ads against that against target audiences. Because the algorithm, aka the human beings, everyone's like, Mark Zuckerberg, China, it's fucking humans responding to shit. These platforms are very simple. They just want people to stay on it for as long as possible so they can run ads. So they're not like, like, zucks isn't pushing propaganda of like you loving VR. They're just fucking math. And so for you, that mocktail should be turned into an ad. Even if it's not like, because we do a lot of education, so even if it's not our specific product, it's a healthy, hormone friendly. Correct. It's giving people awareness to your brand. It might not be sales-oriented. Like you might run a thousand dollars against it and get no sales. And you'll be like, fucking Gary. But meanwhile, what I know is that you did get sales. You can't attribute it to it. So now people feel fond towards you. Three weeks later, they decide to buy it. They just go to the website because they know who you are, but you can't point to the ad. And you're like, the ad didn't work. Well, the ad's definitely going to work because it already went viral. People are interested. I'm incredibly bullish on everybody here running ads after it succeeded on organic. That's something that we haven't lived in for a long time because it's not how the platforms worked. So we have it way better than we did the last 10 years. We have to guess and run money or run micro money, see if it worked and then pour fluid on it. Now the algorithm does a better indicator if it's going to work than even our micro ad spends. So like to me, if you're going to test some stuff, test it on the things that go viral on your 12 a day. Yes, at some point, the holy grail for DTC businesses is to find scalable math that works in CAC and LTV. The problem is most of them aren't actually working profitably. They're using VC money to subsidize their underwater CAC and LTV. And then there's eventually a funny game of chicken of Kenya's sell it before your math runs out, which is a fucking challenging game and one that I don't like to play because it's like a fake business. See how the big guy got going? Because he knows that's what he sees every day, right? They're on the other side trying to side as this is sustainable or as this is a moment in time, and keep going. Yeah, and I mean one thing that we're not doing right now, we're doing three to four pieces of sample. We're using that same content on different platforms and that's gone on us to where we are. So what are you changing the copy? We are. Good. So you'll take the same bit, yeah. So like that's a quick hack that can really help a lot of people here. It's the same video, but the copy is different because the audience is different on TikTok than it is on LinkedIn than it is on Twitter. So something to think about just copy changes or just slight little edit changes can matter. Yeah, we've been doing them a little bit for you to like the things that you search on the source. And what do you see? I think we're also gathering, we're talking to Joe, maybe making content exclusively for you too. Look, even I have a repurposing model with context, but like there is no comparison when you can make four platform because when I'm saying hey, TikTok versus hey everyone, there's a noticeable difference. It's just, you know, I'm running a ton of businesses, so it's hard for me. So I get it, and but it's real, but the copy for sure, don't mail that in because it doesn't take a lot of time. You know, like there's certain things that you can mail in, okay, like you just don't have the time or resource energy, but the copy, that's mundane. Like yes, I know it's easier to control, seeing control V, but like thinking like this person's on the Instagram versus this person's on TikTok matters. Copy in the description and title if you have it on the client. Yeah, if you're in the editing mode and you can change the title, like titles, every thumbnail and titles, I mean, I don't know if you saw the viral video of Mr. Beast, like he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the thumbnail. Now he's playing at the single highest level, but I understand I'm spending millions of dollars on a team that is doing the same thing in theory. It's, it's actually scary. How much the title in the thumbnail works, which is why if you have a piece of content, keep this in mind, that you really like. You just feel good about it. And you post it and didn't go, retitle it, change the preview screen, change the copy, go again three months later, six weeks later, four weeks later. Well, I feel like we have a product that, I mean, how much is it? It's 45, so we have a one month bundle because you take it daily. It's a daily thing to support your hormones. So it's 55 for one month and then you can get three months with drops of down to 45 a month. And there's no one year? We don't have a one year. Why? What I like about one year is people forget to unsubscribe and like things that nature and like, you know, like it's definitely worth debating. You have longer tail, you know, to re-get somebody to get somebody to re-up at month four versus the amount of people that forget or are passive or neutral or apathetic to it for one year is a lot of money. How big is your drop off after three months? The average right now for our users is 4.8 months that they're with us. Yeah, I literally think if you go to 12 months instead of three months, that that number would be 9.7 months. Yeah, they're going to be scared shitless about if you're going to raise capital. Yeah, yeah. It's just too expensive to re-engage. What are you doing with your lapsed users? I got something really good for you. I got a real good one for you. Ready? Yeah. I think that you should call on speakerphone every single person who's no longer subscribed and once was for three months. I think you should videotape the interaction of you saying thank you. Not try to sell them to re-up but just to build a relationship around the content and when you have successful conversions, you ask them if they will allow you to put out the video of this successful reconversion. I think there's something there, there, there. Well, first of all, the reason you should do it is market research. I'm adding content creation and re-activation of business and I think you're small enough still where you can just grind that. Yeah, totally. We are all that radical customers. Yeah, so calling, literally calling and saying, I just want you to, we just want to thank you forever being on our service and just hopefully it brought you some value and hope it sprung you into action theoretically whether, you know, we're obviously aware that you're no longer using us but I hope it's sprung you into a better you. Thank you. The most, so I used to do this quite a bit for Wine Library. The most fun part of the phone call is when you're done just doing love and good and there's this awkward three-second pause because they're waiting for you to give them an offer to reactivate but you don't. Try it, even if you don't record it, which is probably the biggest friction of everything I just told you, I think the market research will get to why people unsubscribed. Like by the 19th call, if they all said the berries were the problem, you're like, oh fuck, should we even have berries? Like it's real market research. Yeah, yeah. Time to get a good one. Christine and team, yeah, Kippin Hi-Fi. All righty. So I guess we're in a little bit myself here before we talk about the raising money on the 995 farm is we're B2B. Yeah. But now I've been forced to be to see a little bit because consumers want so so dramatically. So talking to the big guys, big multinationals, they're starting to realize they need our P-protein to reformulate all the way through, like all the Koreas on board and see what you know, they're all wanting to swap out soy protein with our P-protein. So how do I put the message together? And I'm not gonna say we don't actually go on TikTok and stuff yet, but you know, what's that? I mean, if you were B2B up to this point, TikTok is not the logical place to go. Yeah, yeah. And so a little bit of LinkedIn being cautious because we're small and big guys are watching and wanting to stop me. So how would you sit and go, okay, what's my marketing approach to get the knowledge to get the radical fans, as you said, behind it. So when we approach with Hi-Fi here and do the San Ft launch, we get those investors at Kippin Hi-Fi. I'm sure Hi-Fi will tell you like the conversion of, you know, the what's really fascinating about the crowdfunding, the Jobs Act, this whole genre of the last 10 years is it's great on paper in the way that a lot of our ideologies are, like our fans are gonna, but like, you know, and I'm sure they have plenty of case studies through this, like the narrative is, when people invest, even in micro levels, they want a return on their investment. You know, there's like, you know, it's very important because you can get very caught in the ideology of like people want pea protein in the world for a better place. When they're writing a check, like, they really do want it to return. Even when you look at over the counterstock in the popularity of Nike and Starbucks and Tesla and Netflix, there's really fascinating psychology in like how people invest. Let's do it for proxy. They'll buy five shares, feel good that they love Puma, but you know, I think a couple things. One, the thing that's gonna make them convert is the financial story, not the ideological story of like, why soy is bad or this, that's the other thing. So that's very important because I've watched every single Kickstarter, every single in the go-go, every single, you know, modern NFT fundraising thing, like people think this, like they think the consumer cares more about the story than they do. Outside of the occasional like Robin Hood, like where it's like a meme-ification-reddit game-stop thing, which is much more deeply in the human psychology of like, fuck the man than it is. Think of a fuck that it was game-stop. You know, you've got to make sure it's about the actual business story. So that's one like very like curveball that like has to be grounded in. As far as so another thing real quick that you said, it's important. I have historically seen that people scared or scared to put out too much content because the big guys are gonna squash them, but then not putting out the content. They don't get the awareness for the thing they wanted to get done. And one thing that we all know about the big guys is they're slow and they'd rather M&A it anyway, right? Notice how many giggles we just got, right? We just all know that. Like it's, I get it. I think that's the boogie man. I think what you need to do is dismantle it on LinkedIn. I really do. Because LinkedIn will service you twice. He'll service you for the business development deals because you're making content that you know you're gonna target. I mean, you could literally target the job. So what's the job title? What's the job one holds in the big companies that works with you? What are they? The chief what? The fact that you can literally target the COOs of the Fortune 500 CPG companies with creative is fucking bananas. Like LinkedIn didn't get caught up in the issues that Facebook did so their targeting is still remarkable. And so now if you know this video or this article or this image is going to be targeting the COO, well then you know what you're going to say. Which then becomes the same game of what you're going to say to the general population of LinkedIn and YouTube shorts is where I would go because of the search capabilities on the over-the-counter play that we're about to get into. Yeah, we have two communicators inscriptions for this kind of targeting. That's right. That's right. But that is sales. The navigator is spam email, hat scale, I want content. Like the reason it took people a long time with LinkedIn was LinkedIn obviously started recruiting. And then when it got into marketing, it was lowest common denominator email marketing. Let's just spam the fuck out of all the people with the right titles and get lucky, right? We all were receiving end of this. We all know what I'm talking about. Where LinkedIn got cool and interesting was and I started talking about it was three, four years ago when it started acting Facebook, right? Sales navigator to me is what I told those two wonderful ladies to do, which is go very one-on-one. People forget that humans are animals. This is back to like your tummy and your gut. Humans are animals. None of us are confused by a bulk email. We don't even consume it. And the people that do, you probably don't want it to be doing business with if they got tricked by a bulk email, right? So I think on the sales part, you go one-on-one. I'd much rather go one-on-one there. Hey, Don. Saw you went to Duke because you looked at their LinkedIn. Go Devils. Anyway, and then on the content, you go broad. What do you think about the story of traditional bricks and mortar meeting fintech? So here you have a very conventional bricks and mortar business. Our pilot in the city is 19,000 square feet. She's building a much bigger one. Right. It's a meter demand. Yes. She's come into the fintech space. Now we have across all. We have traditional manufacturing, business innovation coming into it. What is the innovative business itself? Yeah, I think that will be more challenging. Okay. Is my intuition only because if you really look under the hood, the smart money already understands that our technology is like talking about the internet. Like when I first did WineLibrary.com, like people wanted to write that article, like liquor store has website. That was a story. That's like, right, the reason everyone's giggling now is that's insane. And I think at some level, I get where your energy is coming from. I just don't know if you're going to get buy in from anything that's going to get significant reach. Because I think most of the business publications that I've been in this store for the last two years, 18 months, the kind of cats out of the bag of like, this is a macro technology. I think your spidey senses are right from like normal people still having grasped that. But the media, like the business media does understand that. And I'm not sure like P warehouse goes to blockchain is like going to like completely compel them. But again, I don't want to be the beacon of no. I think it's worth a shot. If you're asking me the question, I don't, I don't think it's the story the same way it was 18 months ago. I do think the, it's time for us to get serious about what NFTs are is definitely going to be a universal story. My biggest passion though is for you to pound the content to why you have a good business. Because if you, if you're banking on high five, which I know you, but you, but you have to, it's yes, exactly. You wouldn't be here. Correct. No, but yes, which is a perfect answer of a real operator. You would really like this to be a financial execution of money raising. It's going to be based on how much you can compel the masses to think you've got something good. Yeah. And so like we, so I have investors on these at the table. I'm, of course, devil the dance with. So if this was something that we haven't tried it. So we're going to test it with the soft rays of five million to 10 million, whatever. And we have people at the table that are going to, I totally get it right. We're setting it up for success. But you know, I have the $50 million dollars players over here. They're coming in, but then they want to take your company. Of course. This is so much, you have much more leverage this way of course. Like dip over here, dip over here. The only way you're going to do that is have mass amounts of people interested in the business. And that comes through the content about the business. Like why it's a good business. Like why the, and where you bleed it into where you want it to is the consumer trend is showing X. Yes. That. I just really told the story together about sort of the tale to see who was innovating. It blew up for content. The fact that we had, we had a blended news release. Love it. And and and. Okay. Yes. Yes. It's just so common for us to go. It's always and more. The cost of entry so low, the back end of it is so high. Why wouldn't I mean, why wouldn't we? I'll be way more focused on the business and less on the content. I already had like, no problem. I'm thrilled. Yeah, we're talking about building out the infrastructure. I should start like a podcast and and start getting like those decision makers on the podcast so I can get like more content so I can build out. But in terms of the business. Yes. So when I got to this threshold, I feel that I'm a little alone in those decisions of my own business. Makes sense. And I don't have that second tier of management. And I got scared. Makes sense. Like I mean, big C lots of sharks. I'm a little fish. Making myself out there and successful out there because I've been growing this year of the year. So I got scared. So the first question would be, how do you know when you should sell or you should just keep investing on yourself or building that second tier team? It's a very personal question. First of all, there is no, unlike a lot of the questions here where I think there's a real path, I always believe one should sell if they want to sell. Let me break that down. The thought I've ever selling any business I've been involved in has been zero. We sold empathy wines because my partners were of the life cycle. We're both of them. We're on the precipitous of getting engaged and starting their next real chapter of their lives. And the dollars associated with selling it were high. And it was going to change their lives. But I was like devastated. Because I just never even want to have a company that I don't want to have forever. But if you are tired or interested in something else or just want to put the dollars in, but selling out of fear because you think something bad is going to happen is not a good reason to sell. That was pretty much everything. So when building like because I'll tell you why, the little fish can always succeed because there's not enough sharks in the world to fill up how big the sea is. It's a really big propaganda that sharks have scared small fish into. There's just too much out there. In influencer marketing, there's unlimited brands and unlimited gaming influencers, let alone influencers for the rest of your grandchildren's life. What are we talking about? The toughest part with that is one of the biggest advantages of working with influencer is being like we really care about our clients. And the fact that we are on the side of the brand and mess on the side of the talent gives us the advantage. And we always understand that we don't want to change the type of content of the content creator. So we respect this content. So that's not what we are there for. But on the other side, we are not a talent agency that we are going to the brand and say we have this talent that can promote your product. So the biggest thing is it goes with the motto of my company is we connect brands with audiences, not with influencers. So we're more important than finding the influencer. I understand the business model very well. Yeah, amazing. So in terms of like building that business, should I invest in preparing the people that are already working with me and bringing them up, promoting them to always first choice, because when you're home grown, you have context. When you're working with people for a length of time, you know a lot. When you're hiring from the outside, you're guessing. Right? But the question becomes, do you feel confident in anybody who's internal? Well, do they have the skills? Well, the question becomes do you feel confident in them? Because skills are teachable. What about the will? Like or just the way they work with you or who you think they are as a human being? How many employees do you have? I just readjusted. There's a lot going on. So of those 12, when we're talking like this, who do you feel like, how many people of those 12 do you feel like can really actually grow? That work well? Yeah, that you think about these 12 and you're like, I could see in four years him or her or him actually being quite senior. I would say that they are all good people with devoted to what they do. If in three years, you have to go away for a year, in three years, and you have to go away for a year. Of those 12 people, how many do you think can grow into someone you feel you could trust to keep an eye on the house while you're gone for a year? I trust them. I just don't know if they have the skills, but you already said that I can get them the skills, you can. I'll say I have like people inside that I can. Well, those people that you're thinking about need to get an obnoxious amount of your time. Not your clients. The biggest mistake a company of this size does is they spend most of their energy on getting new clients or with their clients or scouring influencers when they should be spending all their time with the 12 people. When I think about this organization, how we got to 1,500, 2,000 people, it was because of the time I spent in 2011 to 2014 with a hundred of them, which 39 are still here 10 years later. That's the organization. I also think that you hiring one person that fills the gap of this insecurity, curiosity, pondering that you're feeling is very, very, very good, and I would hire it from something that is exactly like you. Meaning, hire them from an organization where they're the number two, or the number three, which is probably even better, that does similar work whether they represent the talent or the brands. Because I think just feeling your energy, you need to scratch that edge, just that one first person, to be or not having a right hand is very discomforting for a leader. I always had that, right? I recruited my best friend Brandon to be that with me and I had my cousin Bobby and I had my dad, and then when I started this I had AJ, right? Then we started bringing people in. James, when AJ was going through his transition, so. One final question. Please. We have in terms of our content, what we have been producing in terms of Reels and Tick Talk has been focused on the influencers, or what influencers have been doing with us, right? But it doesn't get us to them. No. What the invoices are doing with you run as ads on LinkedIn against CMOs in Canada of brands is what you should be doing. Did you get that? What the influencers do? Then you post, by the way, you want a good one, you green screening video of an influencer doing work with one of your brands and speaking to why this was well integrated, or what brands should be looking out for, and then posting that. So you green screen it on Instagram, you post it on Instagram, it's going to get 13 views. You then take that video and post that I linked in and write 15 sentences or four or five, and you make it towards CMOs or heads of media agencies that will get you business. Everybody, if you enjoyed this podcast, please go back and look at the prior episodes. They're loaded. I appreciate your attention, and thanks for being part of this journey. See you later.