The Only Tribute to Gary Vaynerchuk, Casey Neitstat, Chase Jarvis and 33 social media gods.

Hi and welcome to another episode of the Ask Abhiaya Show. Karan has changed the look and feel. I hope you like this one better. In this episode we're going to talk about how to monetize your website. We're going to talk about Viv, we're going to talk about the gods of social media. We're going to talk about how to use anchor and a lot of interesting technology in social media and generally news about life. Sam. So about websites, whatever may be your website. A lot of people have e commerce websites but I meet a lot of people. A lot of people like yourself send us questions on the AskAviari show saying how should I monetize my website? I have a small website, I'm doing a bakery shop or I have a, you know, I'm selling T shirts. You know there are different ways to start your business online. There are companies like Shopify and there are companies like K Design. These companies are actually helping small businesses design their own websites and they have a plug and play model where they give you a monthly retainer and it's very inexpensive, anywhere from a couple of hundred dollars to you know, starting from under 100 and going to a couple of hundred dollars where they give you a proper e commerce store. You set up your products and everything. You have to make sure that you have the best pictures taken. There are great photography, you can go to fiverr or you can go to a lot of freelance photographers that get great photography done. Post them on these websites and within a couple of weeks you have a great e commerce website running. Then comes your marketing strategy. Your marketing strategy however can never be short changed. You need to have a budget allocated for marketing. A lot of people jump into Internet marketing. A thinking is very inexpensive, that's very wrong. B thinking that there is going to be an ROI instantly that is again also a wrong assumption to have and C thinking that they can try and they can plow back the profits of the first few weeks and then start making money. Firstly, the Internet works. It is a science and it works brilliantly. Number two, you have to understand the science. Three, it is not. I don't call it expensive or inexpensive because expensive according to me the term is there's a flaw there because 10 lakhs could be inexpensive if by putting 10 lakhs you're able to get 30 lakhs in return or 40 in return and even 10,000 is expensive if it is money down the drain. So you need to invest time in understanding watch more shows or shows like the Ask Alia show where we're explaining exactly what kind of mindset you should have as a business which is starting Internet marketing, digital marketing or social media. To understand the assumption you should have have money for at least six months, have a campaign done, reach out to three to four or five agencies in the market and find out what they can do for you. Have them present the plan for you and go with the agency which is actually putting in time and effort to understand your business and give you a plan accordingly. Go also with an agency you feel which has done more work in your sector because those people will have more, you know, will be able to save you time and money by not because they already have a learning curve built in. And then based on Those what those 45 agencies have told you then only decide what is the budget you have. So for example, if five agencies have given you a budget anywhere from two to $3,000 a month, you know that you need at least six months money, six months worth of budget for $18,000. So have that money ready. Because if you don't have money ready for marketing, invariably what happens is that the decisions become wrong because you start looking at cheaper options, you start looking at shorter ROI durations, you start looking at shorter Internet sales cycles. And a lot of people then very soon get disheartened and say the Internet is not working or Facebook ads don't convert or God forbid, Google PPC is a farce. I mean I have been trying and working very successfully with hundreds of small, medium and mammoth brands for the last seven years before this industry took off, before digital marketing was known as an industry and now where we meet hundreds and thousands of people across the world and through our social media channels, people who are writing to us and telling us their success stories because of what they learned on the show and what we did for them as clients. Internet, the Internet, the digital marketing, the social media work, if done properly, it works wonders. So if you are here to monetize your website, I would. And if you're watching this show and you have a website which you wanted to monetize and you're getting into digital marketing, I would suggest stop right here. Rewind the last three and a half, four minutes of what I said, listen to it again, make notes. I'm sure this will help you, Viv. I'm very interested. I've been watching TechCrunch on my YouTube, so obviously I'm sure all of you are live streaming or you can your YouTube to your big TV. Watching YouTube on the big TV on a larger Screen is so much more fun and there are so many web series. I'm a fan of tvf. I'm a fan of Gary Vaynerchuk. I love Casey Neistat, I love Chase Jarvis, I love Arianna Huffington, I love Lewis House. I'm crazy about Ryan Holmes. I follow all these people and what they do and what kind of content they're creating, and I like to learn from them and I like to share some of that on my blog post, on my LinkedIn, on or through these social media channels, all of that. But lately I've been doing a lot of TechCrunch, following TechCrunch and their videos, and TechCrunch is a lot of fun. You must look at what TechCrunch, what kind of people are coming and what kind of information they're sharing. This guy who was the founder of Siri, who apparently sold Siri to Apple, has now come up with a device called Wave. This interface called Wave, where you're able to talk in terms of like Siri, I think has one or two communication forums or two, three lines of communication. But this new software, this new forum, this new whole enterprise, this new interface can understand a couple of paragraphs together. So can you help me book a hotel near San Francisco, near the Vancouver harbor, which is less than $200 and has the best, and is known for the best pastry shop. It will go through, you know, where whatever needs to go through and make that happen for you, and the search happens within seconds. Can you sell $200 to a friend of mine, Karan, in Vancouver? It will make it happen. So they're saying that in the very near future, like you have a sign for WI fi and you see that sign and you know that this place is giving you WI Fi. And then now you have a sign for Facebook Live, there's going to be a sign for Viv. And you know, wherever there's Viv, you'll know that this machine, this electronic device, this gadget, this building, this half human, half robot, these shoes, these socks, this digital T shirt, wherever you see the side, Viv means that that that gadget has Viv. That means it's going to talk back to you. So the machines can talk, the humans can talk to the machine, the half machine, half robots will talk. I know we're living in a crazy world, but that's where we're living. It's already started happening. It is already mainstream. A lot of people are building apps based on this. I think the future is going to be very exciting. I Think very soon you'll be able to start using Viv in whatever technology you're building. So if you're a startup or if you're whatever business you are, you might want to look into this technology. Go to TechCrunch. I'm going to put the link here. Go to TechCrunch and watch this particular video where he's explaining Viv. Now, my experience of using Anchor has been great. I told you that I've fallen in love with this new tool. I use LinkedIn, I do Facebook, I don't really like Twitter so much. I don't know why, but I never liked it. I love Instagram, I do blog posts, I do these videos. So I do a lot of social media. Yesterday, in fact, I went to Jimkhana, which is a 100-year-old club in India, one of the very few places where the sign still says there's a 70 year old or a 50 year waiting if you want to apply for membership. And the Thursday nights at Gymkhana are very popular. They've been popular since I was in school. And it's a great place in Delhi to connect with everybody you meet, people from your school, college days or whatever. So once in a while I happen to go there when I find time. And yesterday when I went there, first thing I found was almost everybody who met me said that I've been seeing your show. Almost everybody I met said that. How much time are you investing on social media? You seem to be everywhere. And it made me feel good in a way because I am spending so much time and people are getting to know about what I'm doing. So social media channels are there to help you tell the world what you're doing, how you're doing it. But, you know, in a storytelling format. As I'm exploring more and more channels, it's not that I'm getting. I'm getting any younger or I'm getting any more freer in terms of my time, but I am loving these apps. So I'm talking about Anchor. Anchor allows you to actually talk to the phone, start a conversation, and then people listen to that conversation and then they reply. So yesterday I was talking to James Stewart and we started talking about how about putting Anchor. He had a question saying, how about what if Anchor is bought by LinkedIn? And I thought it was a fantastic idea. And after five minutes I saw over 50 replies. And when I put that on, people were replying to James and then James was replying back. So I could hear it in an audio conversation. And Most of it was live real time or almost real time. So these were chat conversations, video recorded conversations almost in real time happening on anchor and your messages. You could be a thought leader based on anchor because it just about started. So check out anchor. If you like to talk, if you like to express your views, if you like to, if you like to connect with people across the world on similar topics, Anchor is the way to go. It might be a platform which is still ahead of its time. Best time to allow, as I always say on most of my shows, best way to be a good surfer is to ride the wave almost before the wave is surging. So try out Anger. Now we're talking about the Game of Thrones, the contest, the Askavi Arya show and the Askavi Arya Facebook page had almost about 600 people participating in the contest. Karan is going to put a link up here of the contest. It was Game of Thrones and the winner, the first winner was Mr. Raju Paliwal and there were many other winners. We are going to announce the winners on this show. Thank you very much for participating. We promise we will be sending movie tickets and by this Monday we had dispatched every movie ticket to all the winners. I'd also like to show you what the contest that happened last time. And here is the screen of the contest that happened last time. This was between Spiderman and Batman and all of that. As you know, I'm a superhero. I'm crazy about superheroes. And we realized that by doing contests we get way more engagement on our pages and people start talking to us and we start engaging with them. So if you're running a social media campaign, if you're doing a Facebook page, whatever you're doing, you must start doing contests because it is the best way of having a two way interaction with your client. So watch out, watch this space for the next contest that we will be doing and I hope for you to participate in the next contest as well. I can't help talking about sneakers. I not found the time but I'm going to have a sneaker, a page on Instagram just for sneakers because I love sneakers. I got these new Ecco sneakers. I wear size 12, not very easy to find across the world. But as soon as I found these awesome shoes and I found black and white, which are my favorite colors and something so comfortable I had to buy these Ecco shoes. I don't get paid to endorse them but they are unbelievable if you are looking for style and comfort. What I was looking for since the last three days were These shoes. Adidas has come up with these great shoes. They are so cool looking. I looked at them and I was like, these shoes are going to be a couple of hundred dollars at least. Whatever the price. I had to have these shoes. So what I did was I actually put them on Facebook. I got frustrated. I put them on Facebook and within 10 seconds I got four replies. One from a very good friend of mine, Amit Gupta from school. He said, I'm in Kuala Lumpur, we'll check this for you in my inbox. Be the size. How sweet of him. Madhulika said, I love these shoes. And my sister Simran Arya, who has the brand called Carousel by Simran Arya was the sweetest. Within five minutes she said, I found them and check your inbox. And she's given me the details. So I'm crazy about shoes, but I'm also crazy about the Internet. It took me five, three days of running around, but then it took me five minutes to post it on Facebook and I found the shoes I was looking for. There's a great, great page on Instagram. I'm going to link it up here for Kicks on Fire. And sneakers. And more sneakers and more sneakers and still more sneakers. I'm crazy about all these pages and as I keep looking at them, I feel I need to buy something more again and again. But I have a strategy. Before I buy anything, I like to earn it, I like to deserve it. So I have my own way of maybe working harder before I start even $1. And this is the advice I like to give to people who are watching the show. Like Warren Buffett says, spend whatever is left after saving. So you must have different set, different sets. If you are saving for travel, put aside a small income, you could be earning a very small income of 6, 7, 8 figure income. Put aside a little bit amount of money to travel every month, put some money aside for your other hobbies, put some money aside in your fixed deposits or your stocks or your bond, whoever. You know, I'm not a stock broker, I'm not an advisor there. But wherever you feel you're going to get maximum investment, put some money aside for your new house or whatever you want to buy. And in the end if you left with no money, that's great because you have put your money in the right places. Time flies out like this within a few years, you realize, yeah, I've got money enough to travel, I can use that money. I'm never going to touch this money which I've set aside for my, for my home. I'm never going to touch this money that I put set aside for my investments. I bought some money for my retirement. So you as a human being, all human beings want security. So as you have, as you build your reserves, you have more security, you're able to make smarter and faster decisions. And investment in digital marketing is something which needs to be. I think the governments of the world need to make it almost. I mean they can't make it mandatory, but they need to tell everybody that you need to start investing in digital marketing. It is still an underutilized medium. A lot of people still don't know. A lot of people still are sitting on the, on the, on the picket fence and trying to understand how it should better to jump in or not. And a lot of people have zero idea how Internet marketing works. So it's a great, it's a great platform for you to get in right now. So within your monthly budget, put in, put aside some money for Internet marketing. If you feel you can't invest six months worth of money, like I said, $18,000, $20,000 which is the least required to start get a business off the ground. Start experimenting with Facebook ads. If you're selling just T shirts, maybe a couple of hundred dollars is enough. Start investing some money. Aside to say I'm going to experiment with social media, another good idea is to get a job at a digital marketing agency before you jump in. Work with them for six months and you will get know the insights well how I have learned. See, I've been, I've been working for, I've been in business for myself forever. I hardly ever worked for anybody else. And what I realized, what I did miss out on a lot of experience. I always told my sister and I always keep telling my kids that you have to work for somebody else till you're 30, really get that experience and then start off on your own. I didn't do that. I was an entrepreneur since I was 21 years old. I was working for my dad. So yeah, he was strict. Thankfully it was a very, very, very, very strict boss. At that point in time, I did not like him being as strict as he was. But today I owe every bit of my whatever I've done in life to him and 100% to him. The way he trained me, the way he made me realize the value of money, the way he made me realize the value of an roi. The way he made me realize how to hire and how to fire people, the way he made me realize how to run operations, the way he made Me realize that if you're not getting successful, you're not working hard enough, start working more. The way he made me realize there is no Monday, I'm no Friday. The way he made me realize that there is no weekend. The way he made me realize. At one point in time I did not go home for nine months at a stretch. I used to go home only on Sundays. And nine months I stayed at my workplace. At that time it was a hotel and I was, I was, I was stationed over there and I took my hotel company with my dad from one level to another level. Just because till it was done, something else had to be put in. Till the objective was achieved, till the success, till whatever you venture out to success, till you've achieved that, keep on putting in more effort. Effort could be in terms of time, it could be in terms of money, it could be in terms of energy, it could be in terms of learning. And now when I'm almost 40 years old, I sit back and I realize, what do I need to do in the next five to 10 years? Obviously the energy will not be there. So I'm now starting focusing little bit more on my health. I'm trying to exercise more and more, I'm trying to eat better so that I have more energy to do more things that I want to do in life. But the most important thing right now, I don't think I can go out and get a job for six months and start learning from somebody. So the best thing that I do right now is every day before I sleep, every Saturday, every Sunday. I listen to a lot of podcasts, I listen to a lot of videos. I never sit idle. Whenever I'm sitting alone, I'm trying to learn something and that. And I feel instead of working for Chase Jarvis, instead of working for Gary Vaynerchuk, instead of working, which I would love to, but I can't at this point in time. I'm building my own brand. I'm doing Aska Bi Aarya and I'm doing Internet mogul. These YouTube videos and these podcasts are great for you to learn every day, set aside 20 minutes, learn from these podcasts, Learn from these amazing people who are putting the content out there day in and day out and helping you learn to achieve your dreams. Story ready? The gods of social media. You know, India has got 33 million gods. We have a God for money. We have a God for prosperity. We have a God for knowledge. We have a God for wisdom. We have a God for Monday, we have a God for Tuesday. We have A God for air, we have a God for water. We have a God for energy, we have a God for mother, we have a God for father, we have a God. We have a God for everything. We don't have a God for social media. So I thought one day let's make a God for. Let's make gods for social media. And I have never. I mean, hero worship. Everybody grows up with some heroes. There are some people who are crazy about Amitabh Bachchan. There are some people who are crazy about Sylvester Stallone and crazy about him. But then as I started growing up, I started getting more and more confidence in myself. I started not thinking of myself lesser than anybody else. And this is a humble brag that I never thought I was lesser than anybody else as I built my own company and all of that and all of that. Very off late I started following Gary Vaynerchuk and I became an instant fan. And I had to say that there are people like him who I feel need to be in the gods category. So if we as Indians have a God for everything, there should be a God for social media. So we made a God Internet God series. And here is my favorite, Gary Venayachad, who is one of the gods of Internet marketing, digital marketing, social media. This guy is absolutely phenomenal. We made him like Lord Rama. We gave him the crown, we gave him the blue color that Vishnu and Rama used to have in all the mythology books that we used to read. And Gary Benia Chuck is definitely one of the gods of Internet marketing, digital media. I always maintain that family is the best thing ever. I meet a lot of people. Just my work is such that I meet a lot of people and over a few drinks sometimes I find once we make bonds with people, once we make relationships with people, we realize a lot of people are not very happy. Lot of people are, you know, not as busy because sometimes when you're busy, you preoccupy. A lot of people are not happy. A lot of people are shy of going to psychologists. I feel a psychologist is great help. You should go there, they clear your mind, they help, they organize your thoughts. But anyway, this brings me back to a story. This daughter goes to the father and said that I'm unhappy in life, there's nothing working for me, I'm tired of struggling. And so the father, who's apparently a chef, tells her, you know, he takes three pots and he puts boiling, he puts water in there, starts boiling the water and he takes a potato and he puts it in one and he takes an Egg, and he puts it in the other. And he takes some coffee beans, and he puts it in the third. As all three of them stand boiling, he takes them out and he says, now what do you have in front of you? The girls? The daughter says, this potato and hard boiled egg and coffee. He says, yes, but touch them. So she touches the potato and it's become soft. She touches the egg, it's become hard, and she sips the coffee. And the coffee beans, they melt it and the aroma has become great coffee. So what happens to you in life? Whatever situation you put in, different people react differently. The potato became soft, the egg became hard, and the coffee blended and made an aroma and made a taste out of the whole exercise. So what life brings to you, it might not be in your hands, but how you react to it is what makes you a winner. So anybody who is watching this and anybody who's thinking what should be done in life, you're feeling down. Firstly, it's very temporary. Nothing can be down, which nothing can be down for a long time, and nothing can be up for a long time. Try to keep your thoughts up. The one thing that I encourage people to do is to stay connected with the right people. And when you say, how do you choose the right people? Is by weeding out the wrong people. And sometimes the wrong people could be part of your family and friends. Shakur which means people who are not allowing you to go to the next level, not because they are bad people or they are not, it's just because they have different aims in life. I might have a best friend from school, but he does not feel that he needs to give up drinking right now. Or he does not feel that he needs to work extra on a Saturday, or he doesn't feel the requirement for a gym. But if I am wanting to improve my life, I want to give up drinking for now. I want to start going to the gym. I want to start working extra on the weekend so I can finish my book. Then. During this phase in my life, from the dreams that I have, I don't need to be selfish. I will meet that friend when I can. But at this point in time, I need to hang out with people who want to take me to the level where I want to be. In some cases, parents, According to me, parents are great. My parents have always encouraged me to do whatever I want to do. For me, when I go back to my parents, I always get advice. But in some cases, if you feel your parents are not understanding, you might want to again spend time with with people who are understanding what you want, where you want to be. They say you're the sum total of the five people you spend most time with. So try to find, if you're working for a company, find the right boss. If the boss trying to uplift you, is he trying to take you to the next level? Is he trying to make you work hard, think smart? Is he trying to help you achieve more in life? Join that company. If you are playing soccer or squash or whatever, is your partner stronger than you? Work with him. Anybody who's challenging your comfort zone, work with those people. Because that is when your game will become better. That is when you become a great player in doing whatever you're doing. That is when you want to achieve the success that you are going to do. The one thing that I don't agree with is Gary Vaynerchuk and he says everybody should live their own life. And he doesn't want me or anybody to follow him. But he works too hard. Eighteen hours a day, he says, I sleep about four, five hours. I mean, this is, I don't think it's natural. I don't think somebody can survive that long. But he puts it on his JDV show that he's doing that great. But I tell everybody to have to work hard to be with people there who are going to take them to the next level. When you were in college, when you want to become a lawyer and you go three years to law college, you forget your family. You've gone to Oxford Law School or Cambridge Law school or Harvard or Stanford or wherever. So that you can be with the best people in the world, the best students in the world and the best academician. But you know, you're not living with your parents, you're living with people surrounded. So that's why after three years you come out and say, I got a degree, I got a diploma, I am now a lawyer. Because you've left everything in the world and given your life to being surrounded by the right people. That is the environment of college, that is the environment of school. So if you becoming an entrepreneur, if you're doing a good job, please ensure that you're surrounding yourself only with the right people. One more thing, even if you're doing a job, you might be working in a company which has got hundreds of people. Most people start what happens is as an immigrant, if you're an Indian immigrant and you go to America, you automatically start thinking with people who are, who have the same values, same value system, same festival, same holy Diwali. So you start spending time with those people. I challenge you to spend more time with people who are different than you. Similarly, when you join a company, you find your comfort zone with four people who are like you. I challenge you to start working with people who are not like you. I challenge you to start going, start working out more with the management, go to the gym with them, spend more time with them. It is going to be challenging. It is going to challenge your comfort zone. But guess what? In the end, you are going to come out and achiever way faster than anybody else if you're hanging out with the A team in your school, in your college, in your company, or wherever you are. This brings us to the end of the Askavya Show. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed bringing it to you. I'm now going to go and check out my Facebook Live. I'm sort of getting addicted to it, so I've got a lot more social media work to do. You write in to us subscribe to this show Send us a question Go to the Ask Kavyaria Facebook page. Send us a comment Send us a question we are sending out movie tickets almost every week to the latest movies coming out. You could be watching from anywhere, any part of the world. We will send you movie tickets of the latest movie coming out. Look at our contest and subscribe to us. And if you know anybody who would learn or benefit from this show or whatever we've brought to you on this show, please share this with your friends and family. We would appreciate it and we look forward to seeing you on the other side of the next show. Thanks very much for watching the Ask and the Aarya Show.