Speaker 1: You're listening to Math and Magic, a production I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: They did not own a computer in my first eighteen
Speaker 1: years of my life. Within the first twenty five minutes
Speaker 1: of me hearing Cuckoo Cooch, within twenty five minutes of
Speaker 1: being on a O l in, I just knew that
Speaker 1: this thing that I was sitting in front of was
Speaker 1: going to change the world. Hi, am Bob Pittman. Welcome
Speaker 1: to this episode of Math and Magic. Stories from the
Speaker 1: Frontiers and Marketing. Today. We have someone who knows a
Speaker 1: lot about those frontiers. He lives on the leading edge.
Speaker 1: He is not afraid of risk, and he breaks through
Speaker 1: again and again. Best Selling author, entrepreneurs, ceo, marketer, thinker, speaker, podcaster,
Speaker 1: and video star Gary Vayner Chuck. Gary was born in
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union and immigrated to the U S when
Speaker 1: he was young and watched his family build success in
Speaker 1: a new country. He went from Queens to New Jersey
Speaker 1: and made his mark as a successful child entrepreneur selling
Speaker 1: flowers back to his neighbor lemonade stands, baseball cards, shoveling snow,
Speaker 1: and working at his dad's liquor and wine store. Throughout
Speaker 1: college and after college, he helped transform the family business
Speaker 1: from a two million dollar a year revenue business to
Speaker 1: a sixty million dollar a year revenue business, in the
Speaker 1: process developing his online marketing Chops, which led to his
Speaker 1: current empire anchored by Vainer Media. He's the quickest guy
Speaker 1: on his feet and always has valuable insights, and he's
Speaker 1: a good guy. Gary, Welcome. I really appreciate that, Bob Happy.
Speaker 1: It's really great to be with you before we dig
Speaker 1: into the meet, Gary, I want to do you in
Speaker 1: sixty seconds. You ready to go early Riser or night owl,
Speaker 1: l New York or New Jersey, New York Mets or Yankees,
Speaker 1: Android or iPhone, call or text, text, coffee or tea coffee,
Speaker 1: baseball or basketball, basketball, red wine or white wine, white wine,
Speaker 1: chocolate or vanilla, vanilla, Cats or Dogs, Cats, g I
Speaker 1: Joe or baseball cards, baseball cards. It's about to get
Speaker 1: a little harder, smartest person you know, My mom. Childhood
Speaker 1: a hero A mix between Macho Man, Randy Savage, Don
Speaker 1: Mattingley and Patrick Ewing. Favorite podcast I'm gonna say Tim
Speaker 1: Ferris is because it was the one that emerged in
Speaker 1: that early era as a real cultural impact and started
Speaker 1: creating the possibilities of how big the genre could be.
Speaker 1: For me first job, the only job I really had
Speaker 1: was working my dad's liquor store. But I always think
Speaker 1: of my first job is selling lemonade, even though I
Speaker 1: was self employed. Favorite food English peas secret talent. I
Speaker 1: can draw really well and nobody knows that last one.
Speaker 1: What's your guilty pleasure? Candy bars? Specifically, what the McCall
Speaker 1: it's though? Kit cats and butter fingers and stickers and
Speaker 1: candy bars? For sure. Let's get going, Let's get into
Speaker 1: the media things. You have had one of the most
Speaker 1: successful startups and the ad agency business and a world
Speaker 1: in which it's hard. How did you manage to break through?
Speaker 1: First of all, thank you for saying that, because it
Speaker 1: means a lot coming from you. And I think I
Speaker 1: broke through because I'm a good businessman. My thesis of
Speaker 1: consumer behavior was right, and I knew nothing about Madison Avenue.
Speaker 1: And I think those are three incredibly intriguing ingredients, and
Speaker 1: if I'm being self assessing, I'll bring them down quickly
Speaker 1: with the hope that somebody can use it as courage
Speaker 1: to jump into doing something that they feel like they
Speaker 1: want to do, and they believe that they're capable of doing,
Speaker 1: but maybe on paper it doesn't look like it. I
Speaker 1: was a good operator, as you referenced earlier. You know,
Speaker 1: I built my dad's business. It was about a three
Speaker 1: point eight million dollar year business and what the sixty
Speaker 1: million about seven or eight years. I thought it was
Speaker 1: a retailer. I thought I was a businessman. But when
Speaker 1: I really started self assess, I realized that was extremely
Speaker 1: good at marketing. And I was very strong and operating
Speaker 1: and c e owing, but this talent of just genuinely
Speaker 1: understanding where the attention is going and how culture works.
Speaker 1: And I thought starting an agency would be a way
Speaker 1: to get paid to learn why the Fortune five hundreds
Speaker 1: were not doing what I saw was brewing on Netflix, Facebook,
Speaker 1: Amazon and YouTube. So a my timing was great. I
Speaker 1: started a social media agency right as people were starting
Speaker 1: to consider we needed this behavior, and they did not
Speaker 1: believe the creative agencies that they were working with understood it,
Speaker 1: nor did the Grays or b B d os even
Speaker 1: care about it. It was an afterthought. And to be
Speaker 1: very frank, Bob, and you know this, for the biggest
Speaker 1: creative agencies in the world today, the great ones, it's
Speaker 1: still an afterthought, which is perplexing to me, but understandable
Speaker 1: knowing the margins and the ecosystem. So a my timing
Speaker 1: was good be I'm a good businessman. A lot of
Speaker 1: times artists or people that see things can't operate. So
Speaker 1: I was able to stay afloat those first three years
Speaker 1: when it was difficult to get clients, and then see
Speaker 1: the bet ended up being ridiculously right, no different than
Speaker 1: the incredible things that have happened in your career. If
Speaker 1: you're good enough to get by in the first four
Speaker 1: thirty six months of innovation and stay alive, if you
Speaker 1: end up being right, you're in a position to catch
Speaker 1: all the opportunity. And then I evolved, you know, we
Speaker 1: evolved from just doing community management on social too, the intermedia.
Speaker 1: New York did the most Super Bowl spots un last year.
Speaker 1: Super Bowl is a creative agency. We have three spots,
Speaker 1: so we've evolved into a full service creative and media.
Speaker 1: And I've continued to innovate, whether it's podcasting or influencing
Speaker 1: influencers or being best in class on TikTok. Communications changing,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure if we look in the history of
Speaker 1: the people that want television we were transitioning from radio
Speaker 1: or which agencies razor Fish A, k q A won
Speaker 1: the Internet when we were transitioning into that world. You know,
Speaker 1: this is a historic story of Madison Avenue, who's the
Speaker 1: man or woman that comes along that understands the next
Speaker 1: communication change best and she and he capable of building
Speaker 1: an organization around it. And I think I'm going to
Speaker 1: get a lot of credit one day historically about being
Speaker 1: that person for this social media O T T kind
Speaker 1: of like big shift in the maturity of the Internet
Speaker 1: and how it affected advertising. It's interesting you say that
Speaker 1: because A Mathew Magic We've talked some about those moments
Speaker 1: in time, and I was there for some of them.
Speaker 1: When the cable networks became a viable advertising medium in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen eighties, and I was there when the
Speaker 1: Internet sort of broke through. And when I went to
Speaker 1: A O L in nine six, I think we had
Speaker 1: a couple of million dollars of advertising. We left, we
Speaker 1: had two or three billion of advertising. So it all
Speaker 1: happened in the nineties. And you're right, the established players
Speaker 1: don't really jump on the new very quickly, and creates
Speaker 1: a huge opportunity. And you've been that so let's talk
Speaker 1: a second about that. At the heart of that is
Speaker 1: really having an open mind and also thinking about creativity
Speaker 1: in a very new way. When you look at creativity,
Speaker 1: which clearly you did when you you built this, what
Speaker 1: do most people get wrong about creativity? I think that
Speaker 1: most people get wrong in giving freedom to actually be creative. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: creativity is best when it's free and allows the end
Speaker 1: consumer to judge and everything that happens in between it
Speaker 1: debating politics, subjective opinions treated as truth reporting, and other
Speaker 1: math trying to be deployed against it to be a
Speaker 1: benchmarking system. Creativity is it's a process of finding right,
Speaker 1: far more than a process of being right. And I
Speaker 1: think modern advertising rise to be right and pushed down.
Speaker 1: A friend of mine hit me up the other day
Speaker 1: and let's listening to Jerry Seinfeld talk about how he
Speaker 1: creates this set. And he's like, oh my god, Gary,
Speaker 1: he does your volume model. He goes around and does
Speaker 1: small clubs, testing material, gets a feel of what humans
Speaker 1: react to. Bubbles up, bubbles up, bubbles up. That's been
Speaker 1: my entire career in an internet fast world. Perfection is
Speaker 1: the enemy. Subjective perfection is the cancer. When you think
Speaker 1: about the new forms Facebook, TikTok, etcetera. How do you
Speaker 1: think about risk in that world and how do you
Speaker 1: think they're different from the risk and advertising prior. I
Speaker 1: think there's a stunning amount of risk with coming up
Speaker 1: with a brief, having a strategist come up with a strategy,
Speaker 1: handing it to a creative team internally them coming up
Speaker 1: with subjective ideas, then pitching it to a CMO or
Speaker 1: a brand manager, and making a six to seven figure
Speaker 1: creative output, and then having no clean feedback loop of
Speaker 1: any say whatsoever, and then all of your digital assets
Speaker 1: usually become matching luggage to this creative piece that you've made.
Speaker 1: I think it's the highest risk, most ludicrous process in world.
Speaker 1: When I think about social and digital and even O
Speaker 1: T T commercials that give you so much more data,
Speaker 1: I think about driving down the cost of creative to
Speaker 1: allow you to have far more opportunities to be much
Speaker 1: more relevant to many different constituents instead of the vanilla
Speaker 1: thirty second video. There is nothing more risky on earth
Speaker 1: today than being a fortune five thousand company that spends
Speaker 1: money on making a commercial and putting it out into
Speaker 1: the world. In your world, how do you put that
Speaker 1: commercial out and cut all that out of the process,
Speaker 1: so you go much more from idea to consumer. The
Speaker 1: way we mitigate it is if you're let's just use
Speaker 1: kick Cats, you don't work with them. It's a candy company.
Speaker 1: We referenced it earlier. I believe what kit Cats needs
Speaker 1: to do is create a conversation around addressable customer what
Speaker 1: I call cohorts. They need to create ten to fifteen
Speaker 1: to twenty of them, because as you can imagine, Bob,
Speaker 1: you and I with a couple of gray hairs, if
Speaker 1: we're still kind of fancying a little kickcap are once
Speaker 1: in a while, they're gonna need to talk to us
Speaker 1: in a very different manner than they're trying to achieve
Speaker 1: with an eighteen year old Latino woman on the West
Speaker 1: coast right. And what brands and companies are not doing
Speaker 1: well is contextualizing in multiple places to create a bigger brand. Instead,
Speaker 1: what they do is get very narrow. The thought that
Speaker 1: kit cat is going to spend eighty percent of its
Speaker 1: money on its t v C and then digital banners
Speaker 1: that support that campaign and it's brand positioning, to me
Speaker 1: is nuts because first of all, the distribution most people
Speaker 1: are not consuming actually with any of the tension and
Speaker 1: intent a t v C. And that it goes to
Speaker 1: be equally true, if not slightly more for banner ads
Speaker 1: on the Internet. To me, the way you do it
Speaker 1: is you take advantage of social media in its current form,
Speaker 1: which is a media and creative place. You create the
Speaker 1: fifteen cohorts fifty five year old males on the East
Speaker 1: Coast from a nostalgic place, baseball enthusiasts, Latino males in
Speaker 1: Texas blackmails into surfing in California. What these cohorts allow
Speaker 1: you to do is have much more teeth around the
Speaker 1: creative and then you run them in a social media
Speaker 1: environment because the ads run in the feed and are
Speaker 1: more native and feel less disruptive and feel more in
Speaker 1: place of what you're consuming in your feed. And if
Speaker 1: you know you're targeting the black mail surfing enthusiasts in California,
Speaker 1: you can imagine what that Instagram post for kit Cat
Speaker 1: looks like. That's going to give people relevance and consideration.
Speaker 1: They're gonna consider kit Cats because they're gonna see themselves
Speaker 1: in that video picture. If you're a brand as big
Speaker 1: as kit Cat, it's about making fifty pieces of creative
Speaker 1: a week, three to four per cohort and looking at
Speaker 1: the quantum quality feedback against depletion reports at seven eleven.
Speaker 1: And you know bulk sales on box, Dot M or
Speaker 1: Amazon or Walmart. So use business feedback loops, look at
Speaker 1: the qualitative feedback of the comments. Use the post creative
Speaker 1: strategist as I call it, to read all those comments
Speaker 1: to inform better content the next week. Everything I just
Speaker 1: said is the polar opposite of what's being done in
Speaker 1: measurability and distribution and where the money is being spent.
Speaker 1: And I'm just much more common sense, practical business oriented.
Speaker 1: This is not how the big six holding companies navigate
Speaker 1: or the Fortune five hundred biggest brands navigate. I'm going
Speaker 1: to add to your story Gary, you know we're in
Speaker 1: the business. At my heart, we happen to have eight
Speaker 1: d and fifty radio stations a hundred and fifty markets.
Speaker 1: It's always surprised me that advertisers think we can have
Speaker 1: one voice, one sound, that there's somehow this national code
Speaker 1: words that people respond to, as opposed to understanding that
Speaker 1: actually every city, every region. In addition to the culture,
Speaker 1: the diversity of people ideas and culture even within those cities.
Speaker 1: And of course the biggest problem for so many years
Speaker 1: was the cost of producing advertising. But as you point
Speaker 1: out today, with the costs going down, the rules probably
Speaker 1: can change because I think everyone recognizes they should. We
Speaker 1: did something years and years ago with American Express Small
Speaker 1: Business Saturday. We did three hundred and fifty different pieces
Speaker 1: of creative. So we found the small business person in
Speaker 1: every city, and they talked in their language, with their accent,
Speaker 1: with the slang they used for their city. What you
Speaker 1: just talked about with context at scale. Scale is going
Speaker 1: to come now from five thousand jelly beans instead of
Speaker 1: one super jelly bean, and most brands and definitely every
Speaker 1: agency is not built for that. And I have empathy
Speaker 1: for the agencies. They're publicly traded companies and they need
Speaker 1: to drive margin, and they are completely built upside down
Speaker 1: to be able to deliver on the amount of creative
Speaker 1: needed to be a successful brand. They have all their
Speaker 1: most expensive people at the top and they build against that,
Speaker 1: and they need to have all their people at the
Speaker 1: bottom and make against that. That is a transformation that
Speaker 1: is going to be very fascinating to watch The biggest
Speaker 1: advertising firms in the world go through well, you know,
Speaker 1: the content companies went through this many many years ago.
Speaker 1: When we started MTV in the early eighties. TV before
Speaker 1: that always tried to make every show look like it
Speaker 1: was in Middle America. So there's sort of a quote
Speaker 1: unquote typical American family, typical American fashion. If you go
Speaker 1: back and look in the early eighties, fashion just blew
Speaker 1: up because suddenly the mass the people around the country
Speaker 1: saw something other than a TV programmers idea of what
Speaker 1: the typical American family should look like. And I think
Speaker 1: what you're arguing for is that's accelerating and accelerating and
Speaker 1: advertising even more. What you were part of was the
Speaker 1: revolution of going from thirteen to thirty six channels, right,
Speaker 1: sounded like a lot back then. I remember there was
Speaker 1: thirty six channels exactly on my first cable package. That
Speaker 1: gave the freedom to show more. So many more hours
Speaker 1: had been added to the ecosystem and led to the
Speaker 1: iconic executions of the eighties of MTV, ESPN and CNN
Speaker 1: and some others. Of course, on demand has made that
Speaker 1: even more possible. I don't have to join in progress
Speaker 1: CNN schedule. I can get exactly what I want when
Speaker 1: I want it. But it was certainly the first step
Speaker 1: along that way, and it all revolves around one thing
Speaker 1: with consumers, convenience. They want control. They want what they
Speaker 1: want when they want it. If you can say people time,
Speaker 1: they'll pay you money for it. We'll be right back
Speaker 1: with more math and magic after this quick break. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to math and Magic and now more for my
Speaker 1: conversation with Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary, let's go back in time some.
Speaker 1: I want to get a little context on you. You
Speaker 1: were born in Belarus and came to the US when
Speaker 1: you were four. How has that immigrant experience helped you succeed?
Speaker 1: I think accountability and gratitude are the two foundational blocks
Speaker 1: that make me who I am, and they came directly
Speaker 1: because of the circumstances of my life. I came over
Speaker 1: when I was three and a half. We lived in
Speaker 1: the studio apartment in Queens with eight family members. My mom,
Speaker 1: by nature, is frugal. I just grew up in an
Speaker 1: environment where materialistic things had no value. It shaped me.
Speaker 1: If I wanted things, I had to get my own money.
Speaker 1: I grew up as a shmata son of a merchant.
Speaker 1: I want Nintendo everybody has it. Well, my mom looks
Speaker 1: at me and says, get it. This is what led
Speaker 1: me to lemonade shoveling snows. My work ethic is extraordinary
Speaker 1: because I like it, but I was also trained to
Speaker 1: do it. I think there's something that comes along with
Speaker 1: lack of entitlement and lack of spoilage. I really like
Speaker 1: accountability because when you get to the top, whether it's
Speaker 1: a three person team or you build a huge business
Speaker 1: or life or career, accountability is an incredible gateway to happiness.
Speaker 1: I'm very grateful for everything I have, Bob every day.
Speaker 1: Being an immigrant has an incredible starting point to allow
Speaker 1: you to have a lot of privileges that being born
Speaker 1: on third base does not necessarily always give you the
Speaker 1: same advantages. Not that I haven't seen people born on
Speaker 1: third base realized self awareness and gratitude, but it's just
Speaker 1: a lot easier when you come from dirt to appreciate caviare.
Speaker 1: This provides a lot of context on who you are. Gary.
Speaker 1: You talk a lot about the New York Jets. They
Speaker 1: seem to play a pivotal role in your americanization. How
Speaker 1: did that happen and why I was picked on as
Speaker 1: a kid for not speaking the language. And then I
Speaker 1: moved to Edison. My friends there they took me in.
Speaker 1: They didn't pick on me or make fun of me
Speaker 1: for my accent or at that point I was just
Speaker 1: starting to really get the English language down. They took
Speaker 1: me in and their great passion was football and the
Speaker 1: New York Jets, and I started watching in that a
Speaker 1: two season. They go on to the a f C
Speaker 1: championship game, the game each order Super Bowl. It was
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. It was a common bond. My
Speaker 1: friends all had Jets jerseys, and I asked my mom
Speaker 1: for once. She said no, And then at night, when
Speaker 1: I was sleeping, she knitted me a Jet sweater that
Speaker 1: looked like a jersey out of yarn. It was my
Speaker 1: prize possession. I wore it almost every day. I have
Speaker 1: it in a safety deposit box and a fireproof setting
Speaker 1: right now because it's the most important thing to me
Speaker 1: in my life. And I haven't stopped watching. I've watched
Speaker 1: every play, every snap of every game since then. In
Speaker 1: third grade or fourth grade, was the first time I
Speaker 1: said I was going to buy the New York Jets,
Speaker 1: and I just kept saying it, and then it just
Speaker 1: kind of became this beautiful fairy tale. My great enjoyment
Speaker 1: is the chase, the thrill of the hunt to see
Speaker 1: if I'm capable of achieving a child who wasn't able
Speaker 1: to afford owning a jet jersey, buying the New York
Speaker 1: Jets and hanging that sweater as a nod to my hero,
Speaker 1: my mom and my dad. America's got plenty of shortcomings,
Speaker 1: as does everything, but what a country like I couldn't
Speaker 1: afford jets jersey. I am now the CEO, chairman and
Speaker 1: owner of the New York Jets. The attempt to try
Speaker 1: to buy the New York Jets is my great love.
Speaker 1: It makes a hell of a story too. Let's make
Speaker 1: the transition to you as the business person you are today.
Speaker 1: You said that thanks to some college dorm mates, you
Speaker 1: discovered the Internet, which led you to building a website
Speaker 1: for your dad's store, And at that point there were
Speaker 1: very few liquor stores nationwide websites. What did you see
Speaker 1: that made you think your dad's store needed one? At
Speaker 1: that point, I did not own a computer in my
Speaker 1: first eighteen years of my life. I just knew Bob
Speaker 1: within the first twenty five minutes of me hearing COUCKU couch.
Speaker 1: Within twenty five minutes of being on a O l in,
Speaker 1: I just knew that this thing that I was sitting
Speaker 1: in front of was going to change the world. My
Speaker 1: dad should sell line on this thing, and that became
Speaker 1: the starting point of me transforming my dad's life and business.
Speaker 1: When you were going through this process, you had quite
Speaker 1: a success with your dad's store. Did you think it
Speaker 1: the whole time I'm in the internet marketing business, or
Speaker 1: did you think you were actually in the wine spirits business.
Speaker 1: I thought it was in the wine spirits business all
Speaker 1: the way up until two thousand and five. I thought
Speaker 1: it was a retailer businessman. I had one on email marketing.
Speaker 1: I was early open rates in the mid to late nineties.
Speaker 1: I was on Google Adwards day one, killing it on that.
Speaker 1: I advertised on the early iteration of blogs in two
Speaker 1: thousand three, doing quite well with banner click throughs. But
Speaker 1: it was YouTube coming out. Me starting a YouTube show,
Speaker 1: wine Library TV in two thousand six. Less than a
Speaker 1: year after it came out, and within the first year
Speaker 1: that I was on YouTube, Google bought YouTube for one
Speaker 1: point seven billion dollars. That one point seven billion for
Speaker 1: something that was around for a year, like YouTube. You
Speaker 1: remember seeing that number and thing in geez right. I
Speaker 1: mean it seemed crazy at the time. Today it seems
Speaker 1: like such a deal and such a steal. When Facebook
Speaker 1: but Instagram. I went on Piers Morgan on CNN and
Speaker 1: said they stole it for a billion dollars. It was
Speaker 1: five fifty years old, and I think that's gonna end
Speaker 1: up going down as one of the great full time
Speaker 1: M and A deals ever. And it's because of what
Speaker 1: I learned with YouTube. It's pattern recognition. The podcast shift
Speaker 1: with my heart like, it's just pattern recognition, being agnostic
Speaker 1: and unemotional, just being religious about consumer attention. I think
Speaker 1: one of the problems you see when something's new is
Speaker 1: not seeing how big it actually can be. When Viacom
Speaker 1: bought MTV Networks, we tried to buy it in a
Speaker 1: management buyout. Viacom got it. I've said I'd go along
Speaker 1: with it, signed a new five year deal, and I
Speaker 1: did a five year plan for him. I didn't stay
Speaker 1: the five years. About five years later, I'm doing something else.
Speaker 1: I get an envelope and I opened it up and
Speaker 1: it's from Jerry Lebourne, who was running Nickelodeon, and she
Speaker 1: circled the last year of the five year plan and
Speaker 1: the note said, what you didn't believe? I have put
Speaker 1: down numbers that five years out. The Viacom guys thought
Speaker 1: I was crazy. Five years later it was too small.
Speaker 1: And that was the first time it really hit me.
Speaker 1: And of course, whether it was a oh well or
Speaker 1: as you say, Facebook, TikTok, etcetera, our biggest mistake usually
Speaker 1: is we underestimate how big it's going to be. You
Speaker 1: were very smart, you made some very early investments. I
Speaker 1: think you put your entire savings in two thousand and
Speaker 1: six into a few companies Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler. Do you
Speaker 1: think you're seeing size that others don't see? I know
Speaker 1: that Oculus and Google Home or Alexa or whoever wins
Speaker 1: the battle of VR or in home AI voice devices
Speaker 1: that dominate consumer behavior. Oh my god. In fifteen years,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be sixty, a young man with unlimited
Speaker 1: fire and ambition, and I'm going to have the last
Speaker 1: forty years of pattern recognition. And when I bet my
Speaker 1: farm like I did in two thousands six on social well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have more money, more impact, more leverage. This
Speaker 1: is why I built van Ormedia and vain X. My
Speaker 1: entire agency and publishing ecosystem is completely predicated for me
Speaker 1: to own it in perpetuity and deployed against my other
Speaker 1: business buying behavior. So I've been playing very long. I'm
Speaker 1: a high energy guy that you know seems hyper and
Speaker 1: over the top for people, But my business behaviors have
Speaker 1: been extremely turtle esque, very calculated and slow. And I'm plotting,
Speaker 1: and I'm being thoughtful, and i already concede things that
Speaker 1: are going to happen, not might happen, and I'm putting
Speaker 1: down the foundations to take advantage of that. Probably the
Speaker 1: biggest issue you've got as you age, I certainly did,
Speaker 1: is that although our pattern recognition gets a whole lot better,
Speaker 1: if we're not careful, and I think most people aren't careful,
Speaker 1: our world begins to narrow as to what we've been
Speaker 1: and where we've been. But I think you have to
Speaker 1: begin to do some things that are a shock to
Speaker 1: the system, push you to see things you haven't seen,
Speaker 1: to keep the blinders from coming on. You don't want
Speaker 1: to lose this open mindedness you've got that's caused you
Speaker 1: to see all this. I think that people when they
Speaker 1: start putting real success on the board, do a poor
Speaker 1: job deploying humility and curiosity and leaning into youth culture
Speaker 1: because the answers are in those three ingredients. And for
Speaker 1: me at I've never been more humble, never been more curious,
Speaker 1: and never been more youthful. And that's why I feel
Speaker 1: more enthusiastic of my ability to be good at the
Speaker 1: things I've been even though I'm no longer in the
Speaker 1: kid land, I'm kind of in that middle land. In
Speaker 1: my experience, is very hard to teach anybody curiosity either
Speaker 1: have it or they don't. But what I do think
Speaker 1: happens sometimes is people get afraid to use their curiosity
Speaker 1: once they get a little successful. They're embarrassed they don't
Speaker 1: know something. They're embarrassed to ask the stupid question. And
Speaker 1: I think you're exactly right. Not only is it great
Speaker 1: for business, but it's also great for a sense of
Speaker 1: self fulfillment and as sense of accomplishment and keeping you stimulated.
Speaker 1: When I was able to convert into the man I
Speaker 1: am today who doesn't nod his head and say yeah
Speaker 1: when he doesn't know something, like I did in my
Speaker 1: twenties and even into my thirties, but now says, Hey,
Speaker 1: I don't know what that acronym stands for, or what
Speaker 1: do you mean there, or hey, I'm actually a little
Speaker 1: bit under educated on that, even though I have the
Speaker 1: profile that I have. When you get to that place
Speaker 1: in your life that you're able to deploy that you
Speaker 1: become happier because the anxiety of faking the funk or
Speaker 1: any version of it, it's just not worth it. Gary,
Speaker 1: I want to jump a minute because this is about podcasting,
Speaker 1: and obviously I heart Is is a company built on audio.
Speaker 1: Audio is really hot down finally, and you were preaching
Speaker 1: it really early. Why did you see that caused you
Speaker 1: to know that people were maybe running out of time
Speaker 1: for their eyes but have plenty of time for their ears,
Speaker 1: or that they really liked conversations and wanted to hear
Speaker 1: about it, That people go to dinner parties and enjoy
Speaker 1: it to know end that people go to conferences and
Speaker 1: get a table of eight and shoot the ship, and
Speaker 1: that time and friction are the things that customers thought about.
Speaker 1: You said a brilliant thing that I'm sure has been
Speaker 1: foundational in your career, which is if you give them time,
Speaker 1: they'll give you money. It became very obvious to me
Speaker 1: that the remote control of our society is the phone.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, the experience of audio consumption now because
Speaker 1: of these three to four major players is so remarkable.
Speaker 1: We're busier than ever, multitasking more than ever. I love
Speaker 1: the idea of running, walking the dog, commuting, and consuming
Speaker 1: what we want Allah the internet, not what they give
Speaker 1: us allaw radio forcing us or allah television forcing us
Speaker 1: into some limitations. Unlimited choice will always win. And oh
Speaker 1: my god, it's so low cost for personalities to get
Speaker 1: in here and do things. And oh, look at the
Speaker 1: good job that Tim Ferris or Pat Flynn or others
Speaker 1: are doing here. It's just gonna happen. I know it.
Speaker 1: I have conviction. And so then when I have conviction,
Speaker 1: I go and taste it. I start my own top
Speaker 1: one podcast. I pay attention to the other people that
Speaker 1: are popping in it. I start building those shows mom
Speaker 1: bringing the CMO podcast with Stengel. I'm a practitioner, not
Speaker 1: just a hypothesis guy. And so that's where expertise comes in.
Speaker 1: So you have this quick hypothesis, I see things early.
Speaker 1: I then have no fear in the value of attacking it. Immediately.
Speaker 1: I'm not scared to lose the money if I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: because the learnings will be too valuable in the long term.
Speaker 1: I then learn now I'm speaking with triple conviction, and
Speaker 1: you've then become a thought leader and executor of modern
Speaker 1: consumer behavior. Why are marketers so hooked on the video
Speaker 1: form when they know it's the conversation that sells. They
Speaker 1: know it's the dinner party, they know it's the best
Speaker 1: friend telling you something. Why does video still rule the
Speaker 1: roost in terms of add dollars because the six holding
Speaker 1: companies that deploy most of their capital to your platform
Speaker 1: and many others make more margins in television commercials. There's
Speaker 1: nothing less based on the truth of what customers are
Speaker 1: doing than what the fortune five companies are spending in
Speaker 1: their media dollars on. I say that with respect and
Speaker 1: understanding and compassion of how it got there, But it
Speaker 1: is my greatest belief. If you are Hershey's and you
Speaker 1: want to sell chocolate, the allocation that I Heart and
Speaker 1: its four major competitors get in consumer behavior world versus
Speaker 1: how much money Bravo or ESPN or Fox gets in
Speaker 1: television commercial distribution is so lacking common sense and business acuum.
Speaker 1: It's unbearable to me, but it's just the truth. You know,
Speaker 1: the whole world is talking about politics, this election cyclic center.
Speaker 1: I don't want to talk about it from that angle,
Speaker 1: but looking at this election cycle, what does that tell
Speaker 1: us about marketing? There's a lot there um Is there
Speaker 1: any confusion how the former president United States built leverage
Speaker 1: with the end consumer? He went direct the consumer. This
Speaker 1: is something that I've soy pioneered and spoke about and
Speaker 1: wrote a book in two that came out of No.
Speaker 1: Nine that spoke about this exact phenomenon, the ability for
Speaker 1: people to start their own podcasts. Even by the way,
Speaker 1: you don't even need Amazon, Apple and Facebook. You can
Speaker 1: get your own servers. You can make your websites and
Speaker 1: your apps mobile centric. Like what society is asking big
Speaker 1: tech companies to regulate. The Internet has independent u r
Speaker 1: l s and proxies all day long. There's message boards unlimited,
Speaker 1: there's websites unlimited. There will be millions of live stream
Speaker 1: and live audio and audio and video platforms that pop
Speaker 1: up on top of the Internet all the time that
Speaker 1: have different points of view. The Internet is the middleman.
Speaker 1: Once people get off the bandwagon, of Facebook and social
Speaker 1: media and realize Internet It's gonna be really interesting because
Speaker 1: I think people that are looking for democracy, happiness good
Speaker 1: may find themselves in an place where they're asking government
Speaker 1: to regulate Internet in a much more aggressive way like
Speaker 1: they do in China and Russia. And it's all fine
Speaker 1: and dandy when you like the leader of your country
Speaker 1: regulating at the time. But in America's case, four eight
Speaker 1: years later, do you like that? I mean, we're going
Speaker 1: through major societal changes up and I think we're having
Speaker 1: very basic conversations based on Netflix Social Dilemma documentary and
Speaker 1: the political nature of where we are, and I find
Speaker 1: them to be very surface level debates that lack accountability
Speaker 1: around parenting and what you do in your own home,
Speaker 1: and lack of deep understanding of how the tech stacks
Speaker 1: are actually built and where this is all really, really
Speaker 1: really going, and even the capabilities of restricting communication on
Speaker 1: an overlay of the Internet. There's a lot of chess
Speaker 1: moves that are happening. But ultimately, to answer your question,
Speaker 1: it means that people and companies and organizations need to
Speaker 1: realize the way to get people to be interested in
Speaker 1: you is to have a far more contemporary Internet centric
Speaker 1: communication structure, which I think sits in podcasting, in O
Speaker 1: T T commercials, and definitely in social media. Let me
Speaker 1: go back to you. You're pretty self aware guy. If
Speaker 1: you could give your twenty one year old self some
Speaker 1: good advice, what would that advice be? Don't run away
Speaker 1: from Canador just because your father delivered it in a
Speaker 1: very negative way, and it's actually the final ingredient that
Speaker 1: you need for you as a man and a communicator
Speaker 1: that will take you to where you want to go.
Speaker 1: I hope your next career is as a therapist. Carre,
Speaker 1: you do this very well. We're coming to an end
Speaker 1: that we end each episode with a shout out to
Speaker 1: the grates of math and magic, because I believe marketing
Speaker 1: is that combination of the analytics understand what's going on,
Speaker 1: who's where and what, and then the magic, which is
Speaker 1: the sheer creativity. Okay, I got them, I know where
Speaker 1: they are, but I gotta tell them something that's going
Speaker 1: to motivate them. In most cases to separate skill sets,
Speaker 1: some people have both, but very rare. Who would be
Speaker 1: your vote for the best in math in the analytics
Speaker 1: of the marketing and advertising world, or even business world.
Speaker 1: I'm very fond of Wish, the retail shopping app, and
Speaker 1: those individuals. I think they most understood my thesis and
Speaker 1: built a multibillion dollar retailer that most people still don't
Speaker 1: even realize exists, completely based on incredible math centric art
Speaker 1: that allowed them to be the biggest of them all.
Speaker 1: That really stands out. Talk to me about magic. Who
Speaker 1: gets your vote for the best magic? I'm going to
Speaker 1: give you somebody who's emerging in magic. For me, there's
Speaker 1: an influencer by the name of Mr Beast who I
Speaker 1: think is subtly building some of the most interesting magic
Speaker 1: and the way he's layering business and fun and entertainment
Speaker 1: over himself. I believe that if I was a full
Speaker 1: time influencer the way he is and not spending fifteen
Speaker 1: hours a day being an operator, that I would have
Speaker 1: some of the nuance is that he's got. And so
Speaker 1: it's very obvious when you see your own and I
Speaker 1: think he's going to be put on a pedestal in
Speaker 1: the next fifteen years in a way that he isn't today.
Speaker 1: I hope we can invest in him. Gary, You're a
Speaker 1: legend and you always make for great conversations and have
Speaker 1: wonderful insights. Thanks for the time today. Here are four
Speaker 1: takeaways from my conversation with Gary. One Gary believes the
Speaker 1: best creative ideas come through testing and iteration. Just like Seinfeld,
Speaker 1: Gary tests and refines his ideas with new audiences over time.
Speaker 1: Two Gary believes advertising should be relevant in multiple context
Speaker 1: with a low cost for creative. Brands are missing an
Speaker 1: opportunity when they don't target different consumers in different ways.
Speaker 1: Three even if you're successful now, stay humble and stay curious.
Speaker 1: You'll need those skills to stay relevant in the future.
Speaker 1: And four, if you see a trend early, go for it.
Speaker 1: As Gary says, even if you're wrong, what you learn
Speaker 1: will be valuable. Thanks for listening. I'm Bob Pittman. That's
Speaker 1: it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening to
Speaker 1: Math and Magic, a production of I Heart Radio. This
Speaker 1: show is hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sue
Speaker 1: Schillinger for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is
Speaker 1: no small feat Nikki Etre for pulling research, Bill Plax
Speaker 1: and Michael Asar for their recording help, our editor Ryan Murdoch,
Speaker 1: and of course Gayle Raoul, Eric Angel Noel Mango, and
Speaker 1: everyone who helped bring this show to your ears. Until
Speaker 1: next time,