EP083: From the Vault – Gary Vaynerchuk and Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda

embracing what you know, evolving a business plan around your strengths, and then working your ass off every second. Those are the foundations. It's very basic stuff, but it's pure reality

Welcome to the 10 Golden Rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast, featuring the latest strategies and techniques to drive traffic to your website and convert that traffic into clients. Now, here's the founder and CEO of 10 golden rules, Jay Berkowitz.

Well, good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Whatever time this podcast finds you welcome to the 10 Golden Rules of internet marketing for law firms Podcast. Today we're going to play some classic audio recorded on a prior podcast with two of the world's most famous celebrities. We interviewed Gary Vaynerchuk when he worked in his father's wine store. I sat down with Gary to talk about how to make great video content, how to make it go viral. building a personal brand, how to hustle and how to know what you're really good at. And in the same classic podcast. I interviewed Mike Shinoda. Mike is in the band Linkin Park, they've sold over 100 million records worldwide. We talked about the early days of selecting the name for the brand so it could work in digital, how they built their digital presence and a call he got from them Vice President Al Gore to play at Live Earth. Sadly, his lead singer Chester Bennington passed away in 2017. The band hasn't gotten back out on the road ever since. But this is amazing, classic content. So we'll go right live into the interview with Gary Vee, followed by Mike Shinoda. And then we'll play the song that Mike talked about from Live Earth. Enjoy. Give us a five star review on iTunes if you liked this content. And thank you for listening to the 10 Golden Rules of online marketing for law firms Podcast.

I'm excited today to be here with Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary manages his family's wine business. He's the host of Wine Library TV and has his own video cast. He recently appeared on everyone from Ellen DeGeneres, CNN, Conan O'Brien, Jim Cramer's mad money, and he's really exploding in the social media space. He's the keynote speaker here at affiliate summit tomorrow, on and on and on, but he's really become the guy in social media. So Gary, thanks for doing this. And welcome to the 10 Golden Rules podcast.

It's good to be here. Thanks for having me. I appreciate the the interest.

Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into this stuff.

Well, I was born in Russia, and Belarus specifically. And my family emigrated to the US in 78. My dad got a job as a stock boy in a liquor store. And then eventually manager and then eventually part owner, he got me involved in a liquor business. And when I was a teenager, I decided I wanted to get involved in the family wine business. And then I started realizing the internet was coming around, I watched wine library.com in 1997, that went real well. And I grew a $3 million store into a $50 million company from 1998 to 2005. And then in oh five and started seeing a shift in the way online interaction was happening, it became a lot more social. And since I'm totally driven by people, I wanted to get involved. And so when I saw what was going on with Ze Frank, the show when I made the comment with rocket boom, and all that jazz, I decided that I really, really wanted to be a part of that. And so I launched Wine Library TV in 2006. Slowly but surely built that up to getting some street cred. And then in Oh, seven, I launched Gary vaynerchuk.com started talking about the business foundation of how I built Wine Library TV. And that's what I did.

Congratulations. Great story. Thanks. Talk about some of those building blocks. How can people do some of these things? And from two perspectives, I talk about a term called Personal Branding. Sure. And you've definitely built your personal brand and built the Wine Library TV brand.

Yep. You know, I think it's about embracing your DNA. I think the biggest mistake people do out there is try to be somebody they're not. I think if you look in the mirror, and you really are honest with yourself, you will recognize that you are who you are, and you've got strengths and you've got weaknesses. I didn't try to do a science blog, you know, I wasn't going to kill it in the science sphere. So I think first and foremost, you've got to decide who you are. For example, I'm not a good writer. So hence, no Gary Vaynerchuk 2000 to 2004 on the internet, blogging was not going to be in the cards. I had to be patient had to watch it evolve, waited for video to come. That was more of a natural play for me. You know, that kind of stuff. So I think first it starts with your DNA. Second, it's hustle. You've got to work your ass off. This is not minor leaks. You're not going to listen to this podcast right now. Here's something I say. And if you're gonna be able to insert that into machine and make millions of dollars, it's not going to happen. Don't spend $10,000 on any courses. None of that shit is going to help you it's embracing what you know a Building a business plan around your strengths, and then working your ass off every second, those are the foundations, it's very basic stuff. But it's pure reality. I mean, you've got to really know what you're good at. And if you're not good at certain things, you really shouldn't knock your head against the wall, you need to just kind of shrug that off, move on and go to something you are good at. So

you say work your ass off, give people some basic stuff, like a lot of times on the show, I give them basic steps.

So in detail, I'm very big on interacting with the community. So even if you have a blog of one person, talk that person 30 times a day, just pound that person. I mean, that is your community. Right? At that point, I think what you really need to realize is that it takes a lot of effort to engage with your community, I spend about 11 to 12 hours a day engaging with my community, answering email, searching my name on Twitter, interacting, getting RSS feeds from interactions around my name with Google Alerts, or things of that nature. I think these are very imperative points. I think it's about having the right balance of content to interaction. And I think too many people spend time on their content, and not enough time on marketing, and interaction, you could build the greatest plane in the world. But if nobody's ever heard of it, or seen it, or you've never showed it or told anybody about it, it will stay the greatest planet nobody ever knew probably the 30 best television shows ever made, got cancelled in the first season. So marketing is imperative. And the way you marketing with

websites, absolutely. One of my 10 Golden Rules is if you build it, they won't just come that premises that 90 90,000 companies spent millions and millions of dollars building these incredible technologies. Sure. And then they didn't have the wherewithal or the know how to market them and bring them to market, you have

to you have to be able to bring them to market. That is the absolute fundamental backbone of success. Marketing is what makes things happen. It's what brings people to the game, unless you're skilled to recognize that or have a skill set in it or have the ability to hire somebody with a skill set. I'm much more proud of the way I built Wine Library TV, behind the scenes, getting involved in forums around wine, leaving blog posts on every wine blog out there using Facebook using Twitter, than I am that I'm the frontman and get the fame of that. So the business part of me the business development, the manager, part of me is far more thrilled than the celebrity part of me in the success of the show. So

what are some more of those building blocks? When you say, use the tweets on Twitter went on face when? People? What do they do when someone wants to start today and be Gary Vee,

first of all? Thank you. First of all, they're not going to be Gary Vee. They need to be Johnny Thompson or Susie, you know, but if they want to follow my blueprint, here's my blueprint, I wake up every morning, I read techcrunch.com to see if there's any new websites launched that mean anything when Twitter was built, and I saw it to me that looked like the fax machine when there wasn't one Oh, crap, here's this new tool. And I know how to use it. I'm always looking for tools to extend my brand, understand what tools work for you. Whether it is a blogging platform, whether it is AOL Instant Messenger, listen, I blast out on Twitter ham going on. I mean, who wants to talk to people pop up 500 people pop up in my aim in two seconds. And I've given them a connection. Everybody thinks that's so not scalable. But it's a different experience. If everybody did scalable stuff, nobody would have a differentiator. So use tools that help you extend your brand and your message whether that's a Facebook fan page, whether that's Twitter, whether that's the defunct Pouncer, whether it's a blogging mechanism, MySpace, Orkut, Bebo, you can really run the gamut. The fundamental blueprint dumbing it down, is understand that there are tools, and you have to use them. Really, that's the game, whether it's a flip cam, whether it's the sort of recording thing you're using right now, whether it's a website, it's the tools of communication, that connecting to your audience about what you want to sell is the whole game. What you want to sell is what you need to find first. And that's a problem for a lot of people. There's a lot of people walking around, I have no idea what their businesses, they don't have a tangible thing to sell. You know this a lot of pretenders out there walking around saying their social media marketing experts. Great, fine, but then you've got to sell yourself, you've got to really define if you're selling yourself, you're selling a product or something service, you're selling a conference to find what you're selling to anybody who's listening to this. And

if you don't have something to sell, create something to show we're at the Affiliate Summit show. You can sell other people's stuff, of course,

just sell other people's stuff. You've got to create a destination a lot of people play the SEO game right? The buyer AdWord for less than cost them to a convert. God bless mathematicians. I love them. I can't do that arbitrage, right. Paid search arbitrage. God bless them. They found a niche of to me that can go away. And to me, I'd rather build

a brand Google's shutting that down wherever they can, so it is going away. There you go.

I mean, I didn't it wasn't even. Yeah, you're right. To me building a brand never loses. I mean, listen, McDonald's hasn't done something right. For 30 years. They're still around. Right. There's so many people that haven't done anything right for 50 years, and are still winter. They're

having a great year. Yeah, Mrs. McDonald, McDonald's here.

Well, you're right. I mean, look at Microsoft. Microsoft hasn't done a damn right thing for 15 years and they're still winning because they built up such a brand and such a business. I think once you can build brand equity. I mean, look at Davy Jones from the monkeys. He hasn't done an important thing in 47 years. He's still getting paid to do commercials because for five minutes he meant something build and equity, MC Hammer had a couple of hit songs and we still care about him here on social media, everybody's pumped to have him as a follower. I think that people are going to recognize that brand equity trumps all create brand equity while you create your business, find what you can execute against, and interact with as many people as possible because word of mouth is what builds business. But the problem is, there's a lot of people who are on Twitter and who understand this that have not figured out what their business is. And that's what I'm passionate about. That's why I'm gonna speak about tomorrow, figure out the hell you're selling. Talk about

that new evolution. Gary, the speaker, the keynote speaker,

you know, that becomes an extension of opportunity. I think what happens is that I got a break and got to speak at one event. I did a really, really good job at this talk. Everybody went wild. A lot of people twittered about it. This is where word of mouth on steroids means a whole lot. Everybody said, I rocked the house, I came on my passion, my thunder, my natural DNA. And then more and more people started to ask me to speak. You know, I think my keynote at web 2.0 in New York last year was a big homerun. And I think people started to realize this, they paid attention to me off those keynotes and look, the Caribbean ship.com That surely come with a lot of passion, a lot of hunger. But I'm very true to myself, and I know who I am. And I execute against my DNA. And I've been successful, and I know how to sell. And, you know, I think that when you are yourself and you garnish results, people respect that. I think everybody wants that at some level. I sure do. I very much appreciate when I see somebody be themselves and are able to be successful. I think that's very, very admirable. I think that's what's been my connection that people have realized, I'm very real,

you've killed it in video videos becoming incredibly important, both for social media also for conversion on websites, can you give us some basic tips for video, both the shooting, and then also the viral thing of it, making it one

shoe doesn't fit all. So for me, I believe that you should never edit. I've never taken a second take of Wine Library TV, I want it to be real. If they want polish, they can go to television, and all the other 9000 Douchebag video bloggers out there to do it. So I just think you have to be yourself. So maybe you are a perfectionist, and you need a perfectly polished, and you want all the streamers and fireworks going off. God bless you knock yourself out. Rule number one, make it cozy for you, for me cozy and sit down, bang it out, get the hell out. I think the way you make it viral is all the other time you have to spend on it.

And the listeners of this podcast can appreciate the unedited, yeah, I mean cozy and bang it out. Because that's all we have time for. I

think that what's imperative is for people to understand that you need a lot of time for a site to get traction, the content needs to be great, but it doesn't have to be long. And it doesn't have to take you a long time. The beauty of online b2b And Gary vaynerchuk.com Is I bang it out one shot, and then I spent all the rest of my time building up virality I guess is what you call it. You know, I twittered out, I Facebook it out. I do all the jazz. But I think at the end of the day, if your content is awesome, and if it's good people will come. There's nothing you could do if you've got bull crap to get people so you can bring up kings and can I replicate crap, I can bring 9 million people to a place. But if once they get to that place, they hate it. I'm done. I'm a one and out. So that's kind of how I look at it. Talk

to me a little bit about basic shooting. So you just shooting on a basic background with your jets paraphernalia, and

anybody that's listening to this just go to Wine Library tv.com They'll see there's no thrills or gadgets one take it's my office. I mean, there's you know, I've got a blank wall. I mean, we're not trying to do anything cute there. It's very basic. And you light it up. It's

great. Yeah, I

mean, it's it's boba. i But

in the early days, though, when you say, Did you get it to spread a little bit? I did it. You worked hard, though. Facebook and Twitter. And

I became part of my community. I left comments and wind blogs. I left comments in wind forums. And that was it. You know, I just kind of just became part of the community and just weathered the storm kind of right. I just pumped out content. I pumped that deck with it. You just pumped out content. I did five days a week for a year and a half and nobody gave a shit. You know what, that's hard. That's real hard. But I kind of knew I was onto the right thing. And I knew that this day would come where people cared and they knew it was right. And it was very hard in 2006 to weather that storm. Here we are in 2009. It's a different story. And so I just persevered. I Rocky Balboa, in the in the mountains of Russia carrying a wheelbarrow my head until it paid off. You know what I mean? I mean, that's, you know, while Drago did steroids and all that good jazz rock, he was picking up wheelbarrows full of people in the mountains of Russia. And that's kind of how I look at what I did. You know,

there's got to be some of our listeners who are thinking okay, it's an internet marketing podcast, but I need some wine Tim's I think I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you.

Argentina is on fire. I think people should be looking at Malbec in reds and Toronto's in white. Most people just said what the hell did he just say tonight this t o r r e n t e s really really really good white varietals from Malbec. Excuse me from Argentina that rivals Pinot Grigio, great $10 wine. I think that Portugal is on fire. $78 wines from Portugal are amazing, very into them. I highly recommend people looking at Port should go. I think they bring the thunder $78 wines from dato. Do URL and I would say cooked around. I'm a very big fan of the Rhone Valley in France, still eight to $12 you can get a whole lot of value. I

went cycling a million years ago, and I've never gone wrong with a wine from the bone region. B E au ne.

It's burgundy. So you drank 100%, Pinot Noir, or Chardonnay, depending if you read a white red

area. That's my red. Yeah, I mean, it's never let me down for years. Yeah, I mean, burgundy

is have gotten expensive, especially when you get into some of the serious stuff. But I'm with you. I mean, I'm just adore burgundy. I

always found if I could find bone on the label. Yeah, it could be 12 bucks. 30 bucks in it. It was a winner. And everybody's happy. Yeah,

I agree. I'm a big board fan. Let's

start with social media. Yep. How do people get started? How do they get into play and first

thing I tell people is go to pop urls.com. I'm a big fan of that site. Poipu rls.com. I think it's a snapshot of the important sites on the Internet, all the important voices, I think it's a great place to go and click around and listen and read all the different variety of voices in the space. Social media is not a magic trick. You know, it's not like all of a sudden, if you use social media, you'll be a business superstar. Social media is just the extension of marketing and branding, in a place where the gatekeepers have been taken away. So I hate when people get really excited about Oh, my God, I'm in social media, I'm a genius, you're not a genius, you're maybe slightly ahead of a curve of platforms that people are going to use. I think that anybody who's been a traditional moniker or market or brand or has been successful is going to dominate in social media, because it helps them extend their voice even louder and further, the way you get started the same way you get started in any business, you just read up on it, you get into the trenches, you intern, you read, you hustle, you work, and you start figuring out what clicks and what works. I don't even know what social media means I don't even understand what it completely embraces. I just know this is business

habits and personal brand building tips.

I think that the only way to be successful as a personal brand is to be yourself. 100% of the time, I know that I'm over the top, I know when I started Wine Library TV with Hello, everybody. Welcome to Wine Library. I know that part right there probably eliminates 13 to 14% of my viewership, I can see the stats, right off the bat, who's this annoying guy, I'm out, I respect that. But it's me, I get excited. That boost of energy is really what gets me excited when I get going with the show. And I need that I just think it's imperative to be yourself. I think by looking at stats, and by reading other people's tips, you're making a huge mistake, you embrace who you are. Because this way, when you meet people in person, you don't have to put on a front, it's very easy to be yourself. It's exhausting to act. And even if your personality may be introverted, or too extroverted, I think embracing that completely is imperative. And very important, and really enables people to be successful. And by the way, I think that's the only thing you need to do. And I mean, if you're completely yourself the whole time, and you embrace who you are, and you're true to yourself, and you really, really are uninhibited and just don't care. And that's a tough thing to do. But you know, pulling that cool High School move where you don't care about everybody else, that's a very powerful thing, because then you don't have to adjust, and you just execute. And when you spend time thinking about what other people think, or whatever people are doing this or that you're taking away from time of taking care of the audience of the people to whom you like you. And I think that's a very dangerous time suck.

You're speaking tomorrow, what are you going to talk about?

Like I said before, I'd like to talk about people knowing their business model. But the fact of matter is, anytime I speak, I have no idea what I'm speaking about. I really do no prep word.

I am so jealous.

I have no slides.

I've spent about 20 hours on my presentation for affiliate summit. Yeah, I'm gonna kill it to in a different way. I'm sure that everyone's gonna come away talking about you know, that's genetic stuff. We're gonna learn a lot. Don't get me wrong. No, I'm

sure. I think that, um, you know, it's one of my gifts. I'm lucky that way. I'm just gonna speak from the heart. This is something I live in breathe. And, and I'm very fortunate that I've been gifted with a really good talent of communicating. It's probably what's made me successful on the video blogging, you know, listen, I want to be Lebron James. But I wasn't gifted with that skill. I can't dunk a ball from 40 feet away, right. So the fact the matter is, is that I'm executing against my gift, which is a, a analogy driven, I can break things down to a simplicity. I'm a good communicator, I can tell good stories. And that kind of, that's my strength. That's why probably I've learned

though, like you said, for a year and a half, five times a week, you sat down and recorded some stuff about it. Listen, now you can get up on stage and wing it. And I'm sure execute against that.

You know what I've always been from the heart. I do feel like that. Some of it is learned. But I'm a big field. I'm a big believer in finding your niche and just driving it home. When you find out the thing that God gave you better than anybody else, or in the top thing, whatever it may be. I mean, I feel like somebody listening to this right now could be one of the greatest chess players of all time. They just don't know. And I think you got to go through life trying to explore and taste and do different things. Because if you stumble on the thing that you've dominated, it's almost like think back to your childhood. What were you good at as a kid? Find that and just do that.

How do you think you help people find it? Because I always say follow your passion. What do you love? What do you

who are scared? To tell you the truth? Somebody might not want to tell you that they're the best ballerina dancer, or they always found them. They have a great eye for dresses. What about a cool dude who doesn't want to tell you that he probably be a fashion diva? Yeah, I think people are embarrassed or don't want to be good at maybe something they were gifted at. So I think it's about letting go and, and truly being honest with yourself. Most people lie to themselves, Jack do. Most people lie themselves and don't have the self esteem to just listen to their hearts instead of listening to their parents, teachers or compadres. And I think that letting that go and executing is a very powerful opportunity.

I have two final questions. You mentioned new sites and looking for the new Twitter what new stuff scary using? And the second thing is, what blogs? Are you reading? What podcasts? Who are you following on Twitter?

On Twitter? Basically, I search my name all day long? Because I want to answer the people that want my answer. So between that and getting 1000 emails a day, I really am just interacting with my community more than absorbing, which is probably bad. You know, I'm definitely out of the realm a little bit. And the only thing I read every day is TechCrunch. I rarely consume any other media pretty much. I'm down to TechCrunch and Gossip Girl on TV.

That's good, isn't it? I love it. There's too much Oh, guys, and we admit it, we love it. I'm very authentic. Lots of girls Great.

I'm all about it. And so that's what I'm down to and meeting new sites, nothing has really sparked my interest lately. I I do continue to love to ustream and livestream. I love that interaction with my audience and my, my fan base out there. But the fact of matter is, is right now, you know, I'm excited about Facebook, maybe altering itself a little bit and opening up itself a little bit more, because right now it's a little close to me, I've got 17,000 pending friends. So I'm not able to execute on on Facebook as much as I'd like. But other than that, that's really kind of, I mean, I'm very limited right now. I mean, I really

you're following on Twitter, there's nobody that you know,

I don't want to be I mean, I don't want to be a douchebag and say, Oh, my God, nobody. But you know, I've got to be truthful. And the fact that matters. Nobody, you know, because I've spent all my time interacting. I'm reacting to my community every minute. And that's probably a big loss for Gary Vaynerchuk, following your followers, and following my followers. Oh, this

is awesome. Thanks a lot for doing this. Gary.

Thanks for coming. That last part up. You nailed it. I appreciate it. I hope everybody who listens to this got something out of it. You know, guys, I just want to say one thing, it's, we can go into detail all day long. You're all more than welcome to fly to New Jersey and watch me for a full day, I'll even buy you a cup of coffee to hang out all day, because it's 18 hours of pure madness. But the fact of the matter is, it's just hard work. And it's just caring. And it's not that complicated. And I hope you guys all go out and crush it. Thank you.

Tell me the story you told about the importance of changing the band's name to get a domain? Absolutely,

absolutely. In the beginning, we were called by a couple other different names. And at a certain point, we needed to find that we need to settle on the name of the band, we needed to find our real name. And this was at a time van started around 96. The time when we were making this decision was around 9899. And at this point in time, the internet had not blown up. The mp3 was virtually non existent. It existed but nobody knew about it. And it was just starting to tap and Napster was not around yet. And people just switched from pagers to cell phones, our mailing lists at our shows was probably more than half snail mail, because that half of the people didn't have email addresses yet.

No MySpace yet. Yeah, that goes without saying we didn't have Apple GarageBand

either. Lucky for us, we have some guys in the band and myself included that had a pretty good in at a pretty good feeling that the internet was going to be really important. And we decided that we would well when we finally decided on the name Linkin Park. It was the Presidential spelling was li N Colm, and we went online and tried to find linkin park.com That was taken.org.net taken everything taken. And we said you know what? We want.com That's priority number one, to have a good name and has to be you have to have a good home to you know that easy to find and people know where to go. And so we literally changed the band name to Li n k i n p AR K so we could get the.com That's how important it was to us back in you know, nine mazing

foresight at that time to know the internet was going to be as important. Thank you.

We love to pat ourselves on the back. But to be honest, it was just a feeling. And we lucked out, you know it was it did come true. And we definitely at this point, are happy that it's so easy to find this on the web and you know, I say that to a lot of bands that it could not be more important the name you choose for your business for your band, whatever it may be. If it's your blog, if it's your your you know, you're selling something your product you If the name is everything, you know, if it name is misleading, people get the wrong impression, they're not going to be interested in it. If if you can sum up what your thing is what it's about the promise you make to your fan, so important in a way that it all just kind of comes together and it's consistent in that one name, then you you are so far ahead of the pack at that point, that people will have a hard time catching up.

Just allow me one fan moment. I think the live recording at Live Earth last year was my favorite song of the year. Wow.

Thank you. Thank you very much. That was exciting. We were we played in Tokyo. And it was just like, I've never seen an indoor venue that was so big. And knowing it was going out to to potentially 10s of millions of people everywhere around the world was just like, we were actually nervous, which we don't really get nervous anymore.

It's fun when that happens once in a while. How do you guys, how did you get involved with Live Earth? And what did it mean to you to do that?

I will be totally honest. And it sounds like I almost couldn't believe it when it happened. But Al Gore literally called like, they offered it to us. And we we had other obligations at the time, we were already booked. And so we turned them down. We said we would really, really, really love to do it. But we're booked and we want you to know we're in it for the long haul though. If you need anything, we will do it we will film stuff early. We will do it next year. If you do another thing we'll do it whatever it takes, we'll do it but we just can't play the show. And Al Gore actually called us on the PTO organize the conference call and talk to us on the phone and said guys you don't understand how important this thing is Vice

President calls what have you had to answer and that's great. We couldn't say no I mean

you know that's that's too too flattering a situation and he definitely had a great message and they handled it well. I mean I think there was a lot of there's a little bit of confusion in the beginning about what was it a green concert but I'll tell you from firsthand experience that our show was being powered by renewable energy it was like wind and solar and that's what powered the show they had no parking like you had to take public transportation or find some other way to get to the show you know stuff like that it's like that's what they did they were thorough when it came to that show.

That's great. Well thank you so much thank you

hands up like this shine go back to haze streaky dot accessible book get loose truth to shoot your stop instead two episodes out no one got the trick shot laid down there was shuffled except for making a joke dance clothes and stuff like that when they put that corset deeper justice decongestant snap a shot back in Washington desperately named after he first became on his brand new worse can continue to be nosy works the search doesn't satisfy so try to make an attempt to snuff it out danger just taken decongestant away just to watch the taking you got to do that now take a deep breath just now take a deep breath. Justin. Justin. Justice Justice, justice, justice

Thank you for listening to the 10 Golden Rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast. Please send questions and comments to podcast at 10 Golden rules.com That is podcast at t e n Golden rules.com