Pod Insights The GaryVee Audio Experience How to Start. About this episode In this episode of The GaryVee Audio Experience, I talk about the key to content
success: documenting instead of creating. I break it down into the What, the How, and
the Where — the three pillars you need to actually start. I also discuss why
self-awareness comes before hustle, why macro patience matters, and why 147 views
is better than zero.
You'll learn about:
• Document Don't Create
• The What, How, and Where
• Self-Awareness Before Hustle
• Macro Patience
• Why 147 Views Beats Zero
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 There's no excuse for not talking to the world. It just doesn't have to be your thoughts and words every time. My friends, the key to content success is you've got to start documenting instead of creating. Let me tell you how to start.
0:22 Speaker 00 This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience.
0:31 Speaker 00 Hey guys, I know I look like the Emperor from Star Wars right now, but I'm very high in the air, back from London, headed to New York City. I decided to do a video. So many of you are stuck and can't start. And I broke it down into the what, how, and where, right? W H W, right? Like, what are you gonna talk about? But the way all of you need to do this, and how you actually start, is by doing. You haven't done anything yet. You know, this whole fake it till you make it brings no value to anybody. You need to make something, and that thing is a manifesto. It's always been obvious to me, it's always been obvious what caused the success, what I needed to do.
1:15 Speaker 00 You know, every time I watch content through the internet or on television, I watched Oprah the other night, Lizzie was watching it, I was working. She was interviewing George Lucas, and he was saying the same shit.
1:25 Speaker 01 We took it to all the studios, every single one of them, and nobody wanted it. So what did you do? So I said, "Well, I'm not gonna give up now."
1:32 Speaker 00 You're stuck, you haven't started because you're stuck. I think the fear of losing trumps the excitement of victory for so many people. So here you go. What? What are you gonna talk about? What do you want to be known for? Look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself, "What do I want to do every day for the rest of my life?" Do that. And see, what people need to understand is, the way we communicate today is so different. And the platforms have been redefined. You want to be in health and fitness, you want to be in strategy, you want to be in social media, you want to be in sneakers, you want to be in coffee, you want to be in electronics, you want to be in fashion. You collect Smurfs? Smurf it up! You can make $70,000. Talking about the smurfs. Whether that's your mission, or where you're at right now. Your truth manifesto.
2:17 Speaker 00 Tell me what you're thinking about it. Like, if somebody made a video eight years ago that I think fashion should be high-low. I think people should wear expensive stuff and inexpensive stuff in one wardrobe. They would have been like the queen or king of the vision of the fashion industry, just by making a video. Predicting that Facebook acquires Instagram. It's like, Facebook's gonna buy Instagram. Four months later, it happens. So I was on Piers Morgan. This company's 550 days old. How the hell is it worth a billion dollars? And my opening line is, "They stole it." And then, I guess last year this time, right? Facebook bought WhatsApp for 18 billion. And every article, like, the next day after the news came out is like, "Oh, wait a minute, they fucking stole Instagram." The how is, there's only certain few ways to communicate in the world.
3:02 Speaker 00 Whether this is video form, something extreme. Yeah. Like, just get on a train and go away for a week, or something different. You have to break patterns. Whether this is audio form. Sitting here, listening to my music list, and I'm starting to find a little clarity. Audio being a podcast.
3:17 Speaker 02 You're an outspoken advocate for both hustle and self-awareness.
3:20 Speaker 00 Yes.
3:20 Speaker 02 But if you had to put them in order, even if it's a 1A and 1B.
3:22 Speaker 00 Self-awareness.
3:23 Speaker 02 Self-awareness is more important than hustle.
3:25 Speaker 00 When you know who you are, yes, when you know who you are, hustle's sexier.
3:29 Speaker 02 Yeah.
3:29 Speaker 00 Like, it would have been cooler for, like, the people listening, for me to say, "Hustle, cuz it's cooler." Right? Heck, you don't even do podcasts. Put the recorder on your phone and just speak your truth. As I sit here right now, writing this article, um, or at least memoing it, cuz that's how I do it. Get in front of a camera, selfie style. You know, I'm old now, kids, so at 40, I've observed a lot. And I can tell you that optimism and positivity is a huge variable. Good morning, Instagram. It's me, Gary. Instead of a motivational quote or some sort of clip, I just wanted to... Camera to face, just telling you how much I appreciate all of you guys. Your attention is the world's mate. Set it up on a tripod, or have a D-Rock.
4:13 Speaker 00 It's your nephew, your sister. Nate, give me this. Give me this real quick. Nathan, the intern is here. You know, somebody [bleep]. You guys might remember him. Or you write it. But, the way all of you need to do this, and how you actually start, is by doing. I create an obnoxious amount of content, because of the strategy of how we do it. Don't do anything, just keep watching. Keep watching my stuff, keep being entertained by my energy, keep being inspired. Don't do... Don't fucking have dinner at 7 o'clock and drink two beers. Like, when your strategy is right, you win. And so, we have figured out that pillar content creates content underneath it at scale. Hey everybody, welcome to the first hashtag #AskGaryVee.
4:57 Speaker 00 I think it's the first one, but I actually do think I tried to do this once before. I feel like I've got the team now in place to actually do this more often. It's macro patience. Macro patience. Deploy patience. You've gotta deploy patience, you've gotta love the process. What's the ROI of social media? So I look at her and go, "What's the ROI of your mother?" There are so many people in here that shouldn't be producing video, because that is not the best way they communicate. Only a decade ago, if I was speaking here, all I would be talking about is blogging. Yet, there are people in this room that are caught up by picture and video communication, and they are tremendous writers, and they don't realize that blogging, or posting on Medium, or even my favorite little hack right now.
5:42 Speaker 00 If you're a good writer, and you want to build up a profile for your business or for yourself, I actually highly recommend you start blogging inside of Facebook and Instagram. I literally mean, writing 7, 15, 25 sentences, 3, 4, 5 paragraphs, word of written content within your feeds, that people will absolutely consume. So that's number 1 and 2. The what, and the how, right? Like, how are you gonna do it? And then where? Distribution. That's, that's what you need to figure out. And it's the hardest part for a lot of you. Hardest part is to start, the next hardest, a lot of things are hard. Hard to start, hard to know what format to do it in, audio, written, video. And then number three, how do you get people to see it? It all goes down in the DM.
6:26 Speaker 00 The key is providing other people more value. I just don't see people doing it. It blows me away. And it is absolutely, I want the full. And it is absolutely going down on Instagram DM. Influencers, where you pay for it. Either you pay in Facebook ads, Instagram ads, sponsorship deals, YouTube pre-rolls, against people of those interests. Fashion, you know, food, wine, sneakers, technology. Or, or, you reach out to people that have audiences. Search hashtags, click them, look at the account. Then see how you can bring them value. DM them. Go in soft, bring value.
7:10 Speaker 00 Rinse and repeat, two, three, four, five thousand times. So the thing Manny should do is go Upper East Side. Looking good, this guy, looks like he took a picture. Hey G. Instagram influencers right now, today, for doers, is the probably only behind Facebook ads, the single best arbitrage in marketing. And then you try, and then you learn. When you're a pioneer, you have to taste it. There's no report, there's no white paper, there's no modeling mixed metrics that are gonna teach you how that's gonna work. When you're the first explorer, you have to taste the berries, and hopefully they're not poisonous. We're living through this incredible era of massive opportunity,
7:51 Speaker 00 yet everybody's talking and reading, and nobody's fucking doing. Start fucking executing. So what does that mean? That means you should write a medium blog post every week. Content, podcast, video, written, quotes, pictures, and then tactics. What scares me quite a bit is that most When you see these logos, you think of a piece of content that you make, and you think of those five channels and more as places where you distribute it. Twitter and Facebook are tools. Twitter and Facebook are markers and crayons.
8:27 Speaker 03 Right.
8:27 Speaker 00 They're a fax machine. These are not just distribution channels. These are channels where you have to natively storytell. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram are ABC, NBC, and CBS. And what I've figured out for the last decade is how to make Mash and the Emmy Griffin Show an ER in Seinfeld.
8:46 Speaker 03 And my question is, how do I hustle and stop being a pussy and attack the world? Like, I want to be where you are. I've got...
8:52 Speaker 00 What's blocking you?
8:53 Speaker 03 Some, I don't know.
8:54 Speaker 00 Other people's POV?
8:55 Speaker 03 Yes.
8:56 Speaker 00 That's the one, man.
9:02 Speaker 00 Please, take a step back and think about how awesome it actually is. It is imperative that not only do you start thinking about your content strategy on these platforms for your business. Facebook targeting, I mean, like, you know, I mean, that's it. Like, you can literally put your business address, run a mail a radius around it, or everybody in the 07081 zip code, or the 08802 Asbury, Jersey in the house, uh, zip code, and everybody will see it in that, in that zip code, in that feed. It's a piece of cake. So if you talk about coffee, Google the word coffee and the word blog, or coffee and media company, and literally email every editor and writer of every coffee blog on the internet. The way you're gonna make money online,
9:46 Speaker 00 and by the way, anywhere, is by grabbing it. So if I were you, I would do this. I would go to Google, I would type in beer. So I would click this one, pubglasses.com. I'd go to this site, I'd see what they have, I would find the phone number of this place. Here's a phone number, I'd pick it up. Hello, who would I speak to about you guys possibly, um, advertising on my beer blog?
10:11 Speaker 04 Uh, that's me, the owner, Dean.
10:13 Speaker 00 Then, search the hashtag coffee, and go to every coffee influencer and coffee barista and coffee media site on Instagram, and DM them and ask them to give awareness to this manifesto you just wrote. And one out of every 147 will. But that's better than zero. Undervaluing just that one view needs to be the right view, but it's one view is a humongous mistake. That's it, that's how you do it. The what? That I'm willing to sit here right now and make this video. Hoping that one fucker, one fucker, says, "Oh shit, yeah, like fuck it." The where this written word, you look at the mediums, the LinkedIn, the WordPresses, you start a blog, right? Or you do it on your Facebook, or you do it on your Instagram. How? There's only really three core ways in the current internet to really communicate to the world.
10:57 Speaker 00 The written word, or video. What I'm doing right now, YouTube, Facebook video, Instagram, one-minute version. Video is the other way we communicate. And number three, audio. The boom of podcasts, these are things that matter. What the fuck do you want to talk about? How are you gonna communicate it? Written, audio, or video? And how do you get people to actually see it? This is where we showed you how to go into the DM, right? Then, or you've got to figure out how to use some money and use Facebook ads, and target the people that you're trying to reach. Or, grinding hustle. Just literally emailing 700 to 1500 different blogs or media sites and saying, "Do you want to distribute my content?" Somebody has a 14,000-person email newsletter about coffee news. Find that person, and ask them. Just gotta ask.
11:41 Speaker 00 And be smart, jabber, jabber, hook. Ask them what you can do for them, because you want everybody to read this. Post it on Medium and hit up the editors of Medium who curate content. Post a link on it into Reddit, right? Hit up the 4,700 coffee influencers on YouTube, and send them a message, and ask them if they want to read it on their YouTube channel that has 147 views. 147 views is better than zero. The fucking work. That's how you start. Hey everybody, if you enjoyed this podcast, please go back and look at the prior episodes, they're loaded. I appreciate your attention, and uh, thanks for being part of this journey. See you later.
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