I believe the reason most of you struggle with social media content is because your content is selfish. 'Buy this home for me. Come to my open house.' Like we do — I said this 20 years ago at a real estate convention — be the PR agent or the mayor of the town you sell in. Let the world fall in love with you. If you're... How many people here are into golf? Raise your hands. Raise it. I think people here should make more golf content because I'm like, 'Oh, I like golf. I like you. That's a good piece of content. Now I know you. Now I'm more interested in potentially buying from you when I see a house thing.' When you look at... A lot of people DM me, 'Gary Vee, I'm so pumped. I'll see you in Atlanta.' I'll see you in Atlanta. I went on people's accounts. I like to be prepared for these talks. Every post out of your mouth is, 'Here's a picture of the listing. Buy from me.'
Let's say you owned a laundromat, 'cause I'm into those things. So, let's say you own one laundromat and you had to start your entire empire from one laundromat today. Like, what would you do? What would be the playbook?
Yeah. You know, because you know, you and I are part of a breed that admires a single laundromat owner. Yeah.
And I think you have really done a good job of tapping into something that I think is black and white, which, you know, we talked about the last time we hung — like this whole whether you call it micro PE or just practical business, obviously Main Street is the way you think about it. I think there's a huge opportunity for a lot of those people to build brand. In fact, that's what I did. I built my brand. I am that person. I didn't even own the business. It was my dad's business. I was the person who built it. But my original content as Gary Vee, after 5 years or during the 5 years of doing the wine show, my original first ever thoughts about business and life and perspectives were literally out of a liquor store, one store, and I built my brand. I could have easily, if that's what I wanted, opened up 10 more stores, did micro M&A, and I would have built a very substantial franchise or independently owned multi-unit business which would be worth a lot of money and in today's environment would be a very attractive PE acquisition as every small business is going to get consolidated, it feels like, these days. So I really, the number one thing I would do is get into content for two reasons. One, if you're capable, building your personal brand, I do believe is a moat. I've always believed that it was the moat. I've talked about it for 15 years that it's the moat. It is the one true asset that doesn't get commoditized. Even in an AI world, you still have your IP. It's your copyright. It's you. Two, if you learn to be a content creator, the other thing that worked with me, and this was hand in hand, and this is what I want for this person, is you start getting good at running ads and doing content for your business, too. So, in my brain, what I'm dreaming up right now is Sally's building up her... She's like, 'I did this. This is how I bootstrapped it, or how I inherited it, or whatever is real. Here's what I'm doing. Duh duh duh duh. Here's my day-to-day troubles. Here's how I think about it. Oh my god, coins when people stopped having change on them, we had to put in these, you know, swipe your credit card or...' you know, just like the battle stories of that business. But also what she will learn in the story that I'm telling is she'll learn what really every... And by the way, I know a lot of small businesses listen. So, let me give it to you very straight: disproportionately, the biggest opportunity to grow your business, traffic to your business, average receipt size, is to run — if you're a local business that people come to — is to run 10-mile radius Facebook ads. And so Sally, in this journey of building up Sally the laundromat entrepreneur, would also start to learn how to be good at these things, which she would then be able to use to run ads to her business, which is — advertising matters. It's always mattered and it will always matter. And so, content.
You know what's so interesting too in your story? I remember looking back at those old videos of you in your wine business, and today everybody wants to have a set, right? We're on a borrowed set. This one isn't mine, but, you know, they want to have this fancy set. But you know what the sickest set is today? Your actual mat.
You know, 'cause it's show, don't tell. It's like, 'No, no, I own this. I'm not... There's no fluorescent lights here. Watch me do this. You don't think I own it? Look, I'm right here.'
I believe the best studio in the world is the world. I tell my clients, which are mainly Fortune 500 companies, I'm like, 'Look, let's make content at stores, in parking lots, at festivals.' I genuinely believe that. I've always believed that. I was honestly the Pied Piper in 2009, '10, '11, '12 of no production value. Wine Library TV didn't even have a mic. No lighting. No lighting, no mic. Literally whatever the camera picked up. And so, yeah, I agree with you. I think that store is studio.
