The Biggest Marketing Opportunity in History Is Being Ignored

I started marketing when I was 15,

really actively for my father's

business. That means I've been marketing

for over 30 years. Let me tell you a

story. When I was a young man marketing

for my dad's liquor store and wine

store, if you wanted to get people to

know about you, you had to pay.

You had to pay. I had to pay a newspaper

to put an advertising in the newspaper.

I had to pay

a cable company to run my TV commercial.

I had to pay for a billboard to show my

sign. I had to pay the marketing uh

direct mail company to make a flyer and

send it into your mailbox so you would

see it. I had to pay.

Today,

the attention of the world lives in

here.

The things that dominate here is gaming

and entertainment and social networks.

People here complain that they're not

getting a lot of views on their videos

on Instagram or Tik Tok or these

platforms, but they have forgotten that

it's free.

Let me say this nice and slow. Today,

if you were to advertise on social

networks, the cost of showing up, not

making it, but showing up is free. This

is crazy. Google charges you money when

somebody clicks.

Not everybody converts. You try to

figure out if the amount you pay, do

enough people convert that it's worth

your money. But it still costs you

money.

The social network revolution is insane.

It is free to build brand. Most people

in the world do not produce enough

content for how big the opportunity is

for free attention. That is the biggest

elephant in this room today.

It is a wow. It's a wow because it's

[ __ ] free.

And yet people will complain and say,

"Oh, Instagram shadowbanned me." Nobody

shadowbanned me. You, you just suck at

social media.

Attention will get you everything you

want. You want to sell a course?

Attention. You want to sell a t-shirt?

Attention. You want to be the mayor of

this town? Attention. You want to raise

some money for your nonprofit because

you're passionate about it? Attention.

You want to be an actor, attention.

attention. It is the only asset that

everyone in here must chase to produce

what they want.

Being unemotional

about where the attention is is very

important. Too many of you have

demonized platforms out of your

subjective opinion, a bad experience.

And we must get over that hump. Once you

understand that everything you want to

happen is about building brand and sales

in social networks, then you start

having to get good at it, right? It's

like health and fitness. I can tell you

the way to get healthier is to eat

better and go to the gym. And once you

understand that, that there's no magic

pill, then you can do it. The problem is

there's a good way to work out and

there's a bad way. There's a good way to

eat clean and healthy and there's an

okay way where you get tricked if it's

really healthy or not. The thing I spend

all my time on today in my career, even

though I've been in this for a long time

on the flight here with Dustin with

Ragav, all I was talking about was the

strategies on the creative that we're

posting in social. Is the thumbnail

good? Mr. beast spends $150,000

in testing and production for every

thumbnail of the videos he puts up on

YouTube. Now, obviously, he makes an

incredible amount of money from his

YouTube videos, but understand the it's

not about how much I need everybody here

to understand the commitment. Most

people here when they post on social

media post because they're following a

trend that they think will do well or

some [ __ ] they want to say, but they

give no thought. And this is the most

important line maybe of the entire talk.

So I want everyone to pay attention.

They give no thought to the science of

the art.

No thought of the math around the art to

build brand. If the attention goes away

from Google to search, well, you're not

going to be able to convert as easily.

If you're getting your business from

referrals and affiliates, let me promise

you, they're getting their traffic from

Google. If AI wins the next three to

five years and most of us are going to

chat GPT or something like it instead of

Google, it's just what Google did to the

yellow pages and all the directories of

before. All the money used to be made by

people that would open the yellow pages

or the directories and they would call a

business that went to Google that went

out of business. Google is not the end

state. Google is not the last way it's

going to be. We are all sitting here

today and all very aware. How many

people here have played with an AI bot?

Have used or tried chat GPT. Raise your

hand. Actually, stand up. If you've used

an AI bot, like stand up. I want

everybody to visualize this. It's very

important. If you've used chat GPT or

something like it to search something or

get information, please stand up and

don't be lazy. This is very important to

everybody. I don't care how tired you

are. Get the [ __ ] up. If you've used

chat GBT,

>> I love you back. Now listen

before you sit down, cuz some of you are

lazy. Look around. Look around. Look

around. This is just starting.

This is just starting. You can sit.

Thank you for doing that for me. Cuz

here's what's important.

Do you know what I am scared about every

day when I love people in business? that

they become too high on their own

supply. Meaning they become complacent

to what's working today without

realizing that the thing that's making

their living and their business is in

danger.

Even if you lose 30% of the attention on

search to chat GPT or something like it,

that is going to raise your cost of

clicks and acquisition dramatically

enough to maybe not make it viable to

what you sell. It doesn't have to go to

zero for it to be a problem for you. As

a matter of fact, as people start

changing their behavior and 20 or 30%

less go to Google to look. As that

number goes down, the people you're

competing with to be the first result in

a Google ad are going to start paying

more because they're going to start

getting nervous and it's going to drive

your cost up to compete. Five years ago

when I was yelling tick tock, tick tock,

tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, tick

tock. And all of you thought it was

little girls dancing,

I thought it's where the world's

attention was about to go. Many of you

who just raised your hands did not take

advantage of going hard on TikTok when I

told you. And you left money on the

table. It doesn't mean that your

business isn't good. It doesn't mean

that things aren't fine. It just means

that you could have been twice as big.

You know, when people are like, "Gary,

you keep talking about doing this and

that, but my business is doing 6

million." I'm like, "What's wrong with

12 million?"

And more importantly, when you're

complacent and you become lazy and you

become onedimensional on one or two

things that work, almost always 6

million becomes three, not 12. I've been

following attention on the internet for

20 years religiously. We are in a moment

right now where there's more change

coming in the next 24 months than I've

seen in a long time since really 2005 67

when MySpace and Facebook and Twitter

and I was like okay this is different

this is not blogging this is different

this is not dig and reddit this is

different and obviously social networks

took us to a totally different place we

sit here today with AI looming you just

saw how many people stood up today's

champion

is tomorrow's loser.

There are a lot of people sitting here

feeling good about themselves based on

2015 marketing behavior

and they don't realize that the shift is

coming and the two or three things that

they do well are starting to change

right in front of their eyes. And

instead of being accountable and putting

in more work to learn, they're putting

their head in the sand and saying, "Fuck

AI. I don't care about Tik Tok. I don't

need this. I've got this figured out.

Good news for me. I respect that. You

have to live your life. If you decide to

lose 20 to 50% of your business's

revenue or your growth, that's on you.

You're not my brother. You're not my

mother. I actually don't give a [ __ ] if

you listen to any of my advice.

On the flip side, the last 20 years of

my career has been very, very, very

enjoyable.

I know that in two years I will be on a

flight to Dubai. I'll catch up on all my

work and five of you in this audience

will email me and say,"I was at your

talk in August of 23 in Brazil and I was

strictly doing affiliate lowerfunnel and

you convinced me to get serious about

building brand and social and focusing

on what's going on in AI and I just want

to thank you because you were right. I

was slowly declining a little bit or I

was flat and since there my business has

doubled. That is an email that I am

lucky enough to get almost daily over

the last 10 years. That is my intent.

Attention can be very overpriced and it

could be very underpriced and there is

no general rule. How many people here do

for their company have done marketing

with influencers or creators? You've

paid an influencer or creator to bring

awareness to your business. Raise your

hands. Raise them high, please.

Influencers

in general, remarkably possible for it

to be underpriced. You can pay an

influencer a couple hundred bucks,

couple thousand bucks, 10,000 bucks and

get enormous return on your investment.

On the flip side, how many people here

have paid influencers and it was a [ __ ]

show? Did not do anything? Raise your

hands.

How many people here have done things

with influencers and it was a very good

thing and was good for your business?

Raise your hands.

Almost everyone who raised their hand

for the first thing raised their hand

for the second thing. This is why I want

to talk about attention per behavior in

the world we live in today. Many of you

may ask, is influencer marketing good?

The answer is maybe. It can be good, it

can be bad. That is actually the same

for everything.

If you think about it, a football is

that good for your business? For Messi,

it was very good. For Ronaldo, it was

very good. They made billions of

dollars. The ROI of a football for those

human beings was a lot. For me, I played

two weekends ago and I hurt my

hamstring.

That was negative ROI. The following

platforms have huge opportunities for

business growth, but you may do well

with it or you may not do well with it.

It is based on your skill on how you

pick the influencers, what you're

looking for the influencers to do, the

direction you've given the influencers

to do what you want to do. And the same

is true for the content you make on

YouTube, on Facebook, on Instagram, on

Snapchat, on Pinterest. Every one of the

top 10 platforms in the world are an

incredible opportunity for many people

here. The problem is, if you think back

to the other things you've done, email

marketing, affiliate, Google AdWords,

it didn't do well at first either

potentially because you didn't know what

you were doing.

The key here is to leave this conference

understanding that you have to put in

the work. Put in the work to actually be

good at the craft. Not everybody in this

hall, in this conference, should be

making videos on the internet. They're

not good at it. And that's okay. You can

practice and get better, but maybe it's

just not for you. And that's okay. I

think the biggest problem today is that

most people feel to be good at social

media, you have to be on camera. And

that is crazy. You have a business. When

you have a business, you do not have to

be on camera. It's a good thing to be on

camera. If you like it or you're good at

it, you should be on camera. But if you

are not good at it and you do not like

it and you genuinely understand

yourself, I know no matter how much I

practice singing, I will only be so

good. I will be better in a year if I

practice singing every day than I would

sing tonight.

But I'll still be at a very low level. I

can never be Beyonce.

I can practice football like I did two

Sundays ago, but I promise you there is

no World Cup in my future.

Other things I was able to maximize. All

that practice as a child selling

lemonades and baseball cards and wine

led me to being a very successful

entrepreneur. That is true for everyone

here. You need to figure out if you are

not doing this because you don't want to

and you're not good at it or because of

the thing that scares me the most in

this room today. that the reason most of

you aren't doing what I'm talking about,

even though you didn't need me here to

fly 12 hours to tell you to do it, is

because you're scared of other people's

opinions when they leave comments on

what you post.

The biggest thing I fear is that you are

not living your happiest life or your

most successful business because you are

worried about the opinion of someone who

is anonymous

on the internet.

I'm just going to give you one tidbit on

this. If a human being lives a life

where they spend their time going around

social networks finding your content and

leaving something nasty about you that

you are not good-looking, that you are

stupid, that you don't know what you're

talking about. Do not feel bad for

yourself. Feel bad for them.

[applause]

Do you know how sad of a life it is to

take your time to seek out people on the

internet that you don't know and leave

nasty comments to make them feel bad?

That person is in a very bad place. When

I say feel bad for them, I don't mean

say [ __ ] you and be mad at them. I'm

saying have compassion and sympathy for

them that they are in a bad place in

their lives. that they are spending

their valuable time to try to hurt your

feelings, someone they probably don't

even know. If we can get the world to

have more compassion

for the people that are nasty,

the world can be in a much better place.

And more importantly, thank you. And

more importantly, that's a big goal.

You'll be happier if you can find

compassion and empathy for people that

are dragging you down. Do not let your

self-esteem be wrapped up in the fact

that you only got 25 views on a video. I

only got 25 views on my first video,

too, and my second and my fourth and my

ninth. Nobody was watching my [ __ ]

[ __ ] But I knew that the video on the

internet thing in 2006 was going to

happen. And I put in the work. All the

best stuff is happening when you're

putting in the work, not the results.

So, please be self-aware of who you are.

Are you insecure? Or are you self-aware

and realize video is not your format?

But maybe the written word is. This is

the remote control of the universe.

Every single thing that you are sitting

here on the ground or in a seat hoping

and dreaming could happen can happen

because of this.

The only thing that's stopping you is

your mental perspective or your lack of

knowledge on how to do it.

Please, no matter what you do, please

get serious about LinkedIn, YouTube,

YouTube Shorts, Twitter X, Snap,

Instagram, Tik Tok. Please get serious.

The attention of the entire world is on

these eight or nine platforms at scale.

It costs zero

money to post on it. This is an

opportunity that has never existed in

the history of mankind and we are all

sitting here on our hands not doing

enough. This is a [ __ ] business

conference and you're [ __ ] sitting

here and not posting on social every

day. You don't have to cuz you don't

GIVE A [ __ ] MASLETOOUGH, I'm happy. BUT

IF YOU ARE NOT posting on social because

your business is good enough and you're

happy, please be careful. I've seen this

movie over and over. And now I have gray

hairs. And kids, you know what happens

with gray hairs? Experience. And you

know what comes with experience? You've

seen this movie before. I was at

conferences like this 15 years ago when

everyone was like, I'm good. I have

email marketing. I don't need search. I

was at conferences when people said,

"I'm good with search. I'm perfect. I

got search. I don't need YouTube.

YouTube's a fad. Twitter's a fad.

Facebook's a fad. Tik Tok's a fad." I

remember for some of you that are older,

remember this thing. How many people

here had a Blackberry before this phone?

Raise your hands. Raise it high.

Kids, keep it high. One more time. Keep

it up. Kids, do you know how many of

these people that raised their hands

said they would never get an iPhone

because they needed the buttons on the

[ __ ] Blackberry?

Humans are very good at saying no. No, I

don't want to know AI. It's bad. No, I

don't care about Tik Tok. It's for kids.

Brazil, as I leave this stage, I ask you

for one thing. If you sit in this

audience and you say no a lot, promise

me one thing. Change that no to maybe.

Maybe. Maybe. Spend five hours actually

downloading and researching and trying.

Taste it. Taste it. You do that, you'll

find yourself in a much bigger place

than you started.

Thank you.