00:12 Scott Gerber: At this point you have had wine businesses, you're an Angel investor. You work with the VaynerMedia which does brand building and social strategy among other things. Is there a constant when you look at a new market and say, "I understand not the industry, but the business that I'm going to put in to this industry." What are the constants when folks like yourself and advice you give to others to look for when they might be diversifying or moving on to different businesses?



00:35 Vaynerhcuk: The constant for me is; if I work really hard, which is always automatic, will I crush everybody that's doing it? That's what I look for. I look for vulnerable markets where I think that they're stale, fat and lack hustle. I thought that agencies were lost with what's going on. I swore that I would start the VaynerMedia and that the bigger agencies would just squash me by offering the same thing at better pricing. I just didn't realize, as fat as I thought they were, as slow as I thought they were, as dopey as I thought they were, they've proven to be more of that not less of it.



01:11 Gerber: It's interesting. That being one POINT, are there other things you look for beyond weakness in an industry before you move into it?



01:17 Vaynerhcuk: No. Weakness, because weakness is very important. Here's why. I'm not looking to start a book online retailer because I don't see enough weaknesses in Amazon that the speed in which I want to grow would be justified to go after them. Do I think I could beat Amazon in 15 years? I do because I'm that ridiculous even though I think Bazos is the best. But why? Why? VaynerMedia went from 20 to 200 people this year. I like that growth.



01:44 Gerber: And what would you say in terms of looking at viability of a market? Like why... Beyond weakness, why do you say, "Okay, I could find weaknesses in 20 different markets. Why am I going into this market?"



01:54 Vaynerhcuk: Market cap and reality of sticking around. So you can look at the market cap of like organic strawberries but is that where we wanna go? And if you believe that's where people wanna go, you go. To me, marketing and branding and selling products in the US system is gonna continue to stick around and I just realized that, "Oh, my God! We're gonna sell in different places and all of these establishments are gonna wanna keep all their clients on TV and print and radio because that's where they have their skill sets and they're big. And it's hard to move fast when you're big. When you're big, kind of spaceship, you're not gonna move so fast, when you're little you can move." And so to me it was obvious that there was gonna be a three to five-year window, where I knew the market would be there in five years so why don't I get to be the best at it so by the time that everybody wakes up in 2017 and says, "Ah, this is the game." Well, then I'm gonna be there. And that's what I'm doing with Vayner. The same way I did with Wine Library. I launched winelibrary.com in 1996. We sold like $2 worth of wine the first two years period. Zero...



02:55 Gerber: So your advice to others and what you do yourself is you take an essence of forecasting?



03:00 Vaynerhcuk: Yes.



03:00 Gerber: You take a look at your gut feeling about a certain industry or trend, and say, "This is here. This is not yet here."



03:04 Vaynerhcuk: Yes.



03:05 Gerber: And how would you...



03:06 Vaynerhcuk: But I think practical. I'm not into 30 years from now.



03:08 Gerber: What's a good time? Like five years?



03:10 Vaynerhcuk: Twenty four months is good, 36 months is good. Because you need to get there, because you might not be able to get there. For me I'm such a good salesman that I knew that I could get enough clients with my brand equity and with the fact that I just knew business that I could get there, and that's why I did.