James Orsini 5:47
Thank you. Thank you. It’s great to be here. Awesome.
Rolando Rosas 5:49
We are We are thrilled to have you, James on today’s show. So where are you checking in from today?
James Orsini 5:57
I’m actually at my home. And let me send their jersey today. Jersey guy he
Rolando Rosas 6:01
jersey, live for some time in Brooklyn, on the other side on the New York side, that was many, many years ago in the 80s. I’m sure you can attest to the changes that have happened since the mid 80s. To today, in all up and down New York City as well as Brooklyn.
James Orsini 6:19
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, my wife was originally from Howard Beach, Queens, so yeah. And we have offices and both Manhattan and in Long Island City. So traveled throughout New York.
Rolando Rosas 6:32
Oh, man, and I’m sure that the travel is getting getting different with with people working remotely. Now. I was wanted to just jump into this. Before we get into some of these other questions. How is that work situation? And now that people are wanting to be more hybrid? How’re you all treating that within Vayner and Sasha Group?
James Orsini 6:51
Well, it’s a it’s a tight balance, right? Because we, we understand how we got to where we are, we realize that we’ve proven to ourselves that work can get done from remote locations. So that was an advancement. But we see what’s lost through what Gary likes to call osmosis. I mean, just rubbing shoulders, iron sharpens iron when it rubs against each other. And, you know, if you’re not around to do that, you know, I know we’re going to touch on the topic of college and college students. But you know, when you’re in an office, you can have somebody, Hey, can you just put an eye on this before I hit send, you know, and somebody will look over and say, you know, coming off a little harsh, it may be just tone that down a bit. Now you don’t have that everything is unfiltered. It is raw and unfiltered. It comes out yet 100 miles an hour, I don’t think I’d want to be a 2030 year old working from my one bedroom apartment in Brooklyn. You know, I don’t think it’s, it’s healthy for professional development.
Dave Kelly 7:57
You know, I was just going to say we had Nick Bloom on recently, and he was talking really how hybrid is becoming the most popular way, you know, have give, give employees the dynamic of coming into the office so that they can you know, work with people be mentored, etc. But also have some split time at home. But I’m also not a city guy. I am lucky enough to not have a 900 square foot apartment, sharing it with someone else. But yeah, we have had that conversation where if you’re a new employee to the workforce, you just graduated last year, you’re in your 20s, maybe you did two years of schooling, virtually, you aren’t missing out. If you don’t have that ability to rub shoulders, ask someone to come kind of peek over your shoulder. But you know, with some of the technology that’s available today, flexible work areas, I think that there’s still, you know, great opportunity for people to have the best of both worlds work at home a couple of days a week, and then come on, come on into the office. Yeah,
James Orsini 8:57
I mean, like, for me personally, as a 60 year old guy. I mean, that’s, that’s working out just fine. You don’t realize how taxing some of that commuting is until you stop doing it. And then you’re like, wow, so So this is what it’s like, right? So you know, getting up at 610 versus 720. You know, being in a car if you drive or or train, you know commuting in. It’s it’s tough. I had the same experience when international travel. I mean I for 15 years, I traveled to 31 offices and 26 countries so I was flying flying flying then I stopped flying for a while and I had to take a Dramamine to go to Florida. You know, it’s tough when you stop doing it. What do they say
Dave Kelly 9:47
a moving object stays in motion.
James Orsini 9:50
Yeah, this is the truth. Well,
Rolando Rosas 9:53
let’s jump into a straight up business question, James. You weren’t at that financial companies you’ve done accounting, know what it’s like when it comes to operations. And I want to ask you about something I just saw recently, which is zoo Lilly. They just announced that they are going to close operations in February. And they were at one time valued at $9 billion. Good play that sound, Ori shutting their
Guest Speaker 10:23
doors for good. The company says they’re closing the Seattle headquarters laying off all 292 employees here. They also posted going out of business sale on their Instagram today saying Everything Must Go but shortly after posting it that had disappeared. Now according to Geek wire, the company has already gone through two rounds of layoffs this year. Zulily is also facing two lawsuits over unpaid bills. They report the zoo Lilly is also laying off hundreds of workers from warehouses in both Ohio and Nevada, this layoffs for Seattle will begin February 7.
Rolando Rosas 10:55
Lily, it’s not that you need to know what what they do. But given that they were almost $9 billion in terms of valuation, and all of a sudden now they’re closing their doors. The landscape for E commerce, which is what they were competing in, is very brutal. When you’re talking Amazon, you still got Walmart is very viable. What does an operation need to look like to lay the groundwork for success, especially when you have incumbents in the industry? Given your insights to a vast number of companies that have been around for such a long time?
James Orsini 11:34
Yeah, well, yeah, seeing companies like that. It’s it’s no news, right? You got Bed Bath and Beyond you got the General Electric, these are all enormous companies that that are dwindling, or have dwindled down to nothing. For me, the answer is always in the simple, right? So. So in some cases, there’s a difference between swelling and growing, both get your big and one is healthy, and one is not. And a lot of companies swell. They don’t they don’t grow in a healthy format. Right. So, you know, at The Sasha Group, we’ve had five years of year over year growth, we’ve gone from, you know, probably 30 employees in year one to 110. Now in year five, we’ve gone from a little under 10 million in revenue to over 20 plus. And but we’ve never dipped below a double digit profit margin in any one year. Wow. So you know, it has been healthy, steady growth. Now, one could say that’s not explosive growth. You know, you you maybe you should that’s
Rolando Rosas 12:39
what the street 100 Now, yeah, you’re a Goldman guy, former Goldman that’s what they really love. They listened that I hypergrowth. Right, that I had that
James Orsini 12:45
problem. I had that problem at Seto mobile, you know, there was a publicly traded company that I brought to cash flow breakeven a year and a half ahead of schedule. Wow. You know, and we were profitable. And they brought in a new board came in, they said, Listen, you run it, you’re running this place, like at General Motors, you know, we want we want revenue growth, you know, at the expense of profits. And they did and 18 months after I left, the company was out of business. So, you know, you there’s a cash burn, I remember back in 2000, okay, when the.com first came out, and I met with a guy from Merrill Lynch, and I showed him this prospectus. And it was a company that said, you know, in the prospectus, we do not make profit, if we do make profit, we do not sustain profit, like in other words, they had no business model for profitability. And the stock went from 10 to 120 on day one. And I said to the guy, what are you doing, and he said, James, we’re rewarding them for taking up whitespace. Right now, the internet is whitespace in the unknown. And if you play in that space, we’re going to reward you for that. Now, back, let’s think about how many of those.com companies have gone, we’re gone. Right? They’re gone. Yeah. See, Priceline is still around, you know, a cup, a couple, a handful. They’re all gone. That’s
Rolando Rosas 14:07
Do you think that the rush for hyper growth and an end to succeed, compounds a situation when you’re talking about especially when you’re talking about startups that are, if you have visions of going public, your mindset is different than probably some of the companies that you’re working with at The Sasha group?
James Orsini 14:31
Do I think that’s the carrot I wrote an article called Sarbanes oxymoronic, all right, because I could not understand how and as a CEO of a publicly traded company for a period of time I could not understand so let me get this straight. I make earnings by a penny and I’m rewarded. I miss earnings by a penny and I’m punished. What’s that gonna breed? Right? Is that who’s more honest, the guy who misses earnings by a penny, or the guy who makes every quarters earnings by a penny. Right now it’s kind of scary. There
Rolando Rosas 15:03
we go. I think that this this the article Ori that James is referencing, I wrote this one here, Warren Buffett and for those that are are not watching it and listen to this on audio. Here’s the article that James wrote regarding that. Thanks. Sorry for pulling that up.
James Orsini 15:22
That’s already on the spot. He is great. Johnny on the spot.
Rolando Rosas 15:26
He is Johnny. Oh, man, he is spot on today. But But yeah, it’s it’s a it’s a, you know, you lived in Wall Street. I mean, you live in New York City area, and you’ve been there working at Goldman, I remember working at Altria group, it was called the it used to be called Philip Morris, the parent company. Now it’s Altria. And the expectations were different. Because, like you said, General Motors, Altria pays dividends every quarter, boring, you know, there’s they’re not, you know, 20, double digit growth, right 563 percent, you can expect that reliable. And I think that it has a lot of merits being around for a while and having a sustainable growth. And that’s kind of where we’re, I think we want to shift the conversation a little bit and talk about, you know, some of those mistakes, you know, that you see being made. When it comes to ay ay. And where, where the intersection is today with with where it’s going?
James Orsini 16:36
Well, we had a conversation about this yesterday. And we could see, for example, in one of Gary’s recent postings, several of the comments were sort of AI generated comments, right, and they kind of come across loud and clear, rather than a real person in there. But we also talked about the benefit of using AI from from a research perspective and helping us speed up the research process, I was talking with a colleague of mine, and we were, we were talking about the CMO type offerings, Chief Marketing Officer type offerings. And he was able to load up 30, different CMO, job specs, and pull out the seven common items that virtually everybody is looking for in your CMO. And then he was able to build a business practice around those seven items and making sure that he offered that so, you know, I, it’s so early, but but there’s going to be benefits, and there’s gonna be there’s gonna be mistakes made. And it’s excess usage.
Dave Kelly 17:46
Sure. And with your exposure right now to AI and with the years of experience that you have, have you ever considered? No, this tool would have been really great. Back in 1995, when I was working on this project, you know, have you ever thought you know, this would have been a game changer? Earlier on, you’re
James Orsini 18:06
lucky, you’re talking to a guy who when I was at KPMG, we were using ledger paper, 14 column ledger paper to do our accounting and I when I got to Goldman Sachs, there was a cubicle with a computer in it. And I said, What’s that? And they said, that’s your computer? I said, yeah, no, I don’t use computers. And you’ll you’ll learn. And they gave me an assignment that should have taken one hour and 11 and a half hours later, and puddles of sweat under my arms I got through the assignments. So you know, I’m may not be the best guy to talk about having that stuff back then. But I would have loved all those tools back then.
Dave Kelly 18:42
You’ve seen a lot, and you’ve certainly evolved and now we’re here. I almost said the year I’m not gonna say what year it is, doesn’t quite matter. What or how would you. I wanted to ask about AI as it relates to kind of early startups or companies that are, you know, maybe they’re five years in and they’re just growing. Is there. Are there other brands out there that are organizations that are just anti AI? Like, you know, what, not for us? Are you seeing that? Or is it kind of one house going adoption? Look,
James Orsini 19:19
I don’t think it’s 100% adoption? I mean, you know, we’re we’re an agent of a lot of fortune 500 companies and we have master services agreements that say what we can and can’t do and you know, copyright infringement and things like that. So, you know, we’re we’re exploring, but we’re proceeding with caution. You know, we’re not just throwing caution to the wind here. But, you know, I, in my very limited experience, I see it best use as a besides behind the scenes tool that just doesn’t go from the AI generated content to to public usage but needs To have a human touch and be massaged a bit, you know, you’re talking to a guy who still uses a mind pump pen and writes in a, you know, in a journal when I walk into a meeting, so, you know, but I but I recognize the benefit of it. And you know, another article I wrote is reverse 360 mentoring, and too many of us at my level, mentored down and don’t accept the mentoring up from the young, like, there’s, there’s this stuff to be learned. And you got to, you got to, don’t be a rock be a sponge, take it back, you know. So that’s been my experience over the last eight years that I’ve been with, with Gary, and, you know, when I got there were 450, millennials and me, you know, 50 year old dude. But I had one thing they didn’t have, I had wisdom and experience. So, you know, and, and I learned from them and I gleaned from them, you know, I developed my own social media presence, probably how you guys found me, you know, and applied, applied this reverse 360 mentoring approach? What
Rolando Rosas 21:03
do you say? There’s two things in the ad one I want to pull apart, because there you’re talking a little bit about experience. And I’ve heard Gary say on video before that, that’s the main reason he brought you in, because he didn’t want to make 26 years of mistakes. Can you lean into that and talk about that conversation you had with Gary about? You know, okay, um, I’m your guy. Al, you want to avoid some of this mistakes? What is that? What that conversation sounds?
James Orsini 21:36
Yeah. So it was at a dinner. And he said, he had a pretty clear vision, hey, I want to build a $500 million independent integrated international communications company. I want a Richard Edelman models what he said, and Richard Edelman is one of the largest independent public relations firms. And I said, I’m familiar with the model. I said, I had I had breakfast with Richard Elumynt yesterday. So he said, Okay, well, you know, you’ve made 25 years of mistakes that I didn’t want to make helped me avoid the potholes and move faster. And, and then he said to me, can you describe what you’re doing a single sentence? And I said, Yeah, I take dreams and visions and turn them into action plans. Right, you’re hired? Because vision? So that’s kind of kind of how that that they played out. But yeah, so. So when I first got there, you know, remember, I had been in public relations and branding and general market advertising. It’s horrible. Right? So the only thing I was really missing was the digital social side of things that I had to learn. But, you know, he had a big vision. He wanted to do everything he knew, eventually, we wanted to do a Superbowl commercial, but he knew it 10 years before, you know, he did his first one. Right? So yeah, so we were just, you know, sharing from experiences. Have you ever done this? How would you do this? You know, somebody who does that? You know, that’s kind of the consigliere a kind of stuff that I brought to the hallways. Carly, I started out as his chief integration officer, because his brother was Chief Operating Officer. And then I became Chief Operating Officer. And we built some studios in Long Island City. I ran that for a couple of six months. And then he wanted to start something new and and I said, What do you have in mind? And he said, Well, I’m on the cover of Entrepreneur Magazine, I got 30 million followers, and we build the company service, fortune 500, I don’t, I don’t have a company for small, medium size, challenger brand type businesses. I want to start a new company, I want to name it after my dad for legacy purposes. And I want you to run it. And that’s what I’ve been doing for the last five years at Sasha group. Wow,
Rolando Rosas 23:43
what a journey of you know, going from basically the financial world, going into working in this in the ad space, you know, with companies like GoDaddy. And that’s what
James Orsini 23:58
everybody always wants to know, how does an accountant go to, you know, running a digital advertising agency. But truth be told, I was an auditor and one of my clients was a Saatchi subsidiary called Siegel and Gale branding company. And I remember just, I remember just sitting in the cubicle there, my three piece suit and saying, This is a cool environment. Like, like, you know, I could see myself here someday. And that’s, that’s how I really got the book.
Rolando Rosas 24:25
I did pitch it bit you the bug pitches. And speaking of biting, I heard some somewhere from from a bird somewhere because you invoked the word consigliere. And I’m from the New York area. That’s a word that also gets thrown around. I heard somewhere that you had a very infamous name at one point during your accounting career. Can you talk about that? Yeah, I
James Orsini 24:45
still use it as my Twitter handle. pencil. The pencil is my Twitter handle my my tick tock cat and they’ll so yeah, I Well, it was a combination of two things. One because obviously we were using pencils and ledger paper, right? do stuff with. And two, I used to have a very paper, you know, razor thin Clark Gable type mustache that I would shave down with so the combination of those two made me Jimmy depends on
Rolando Rosas 25:14
it I’m gonna say this in a very respectful way There we go there we have his Jimmy the pencil handle for those that are that are listening on audio we’re featuring James handle on tick tock so if you want to follow Him that handle is Jimmy the pencil so that you can go ahead and follow him. Yeah, I’m sure I’m sure you’re rubbing elbows with Gary the pickup a thing or two, right? Like you’re saying you’re a sponge. And I’m sure we all to me Gary’s like the gold standard when it comes to being on social media. And he breaks the mold down about you talk, he talks about just being yourself and filming yourself. And but you know, it’s easier said than done. You know, the greatest people I heard this a long time ago, the greatest, make it look so easy. And that’s what he does?
James Orsini 26:05
Well, partly because his mantras document don’t create, you know, so he just has people around filming what he does every day, you know, and then using that, to be chopped up and edit it. And that becomes content. You know, too many people are looking for perfection. And, and he preaches volume, you know, the volume model of put out as much content as you possibly can, you know, he talks about the fact that we’re all a media company, first, your media company that happens to sell furniture, your immediate company that happens to be an architect now. So if we put on that hat, you will continually produce content.
Dave Kelly 26:50
And we’ve certainly adopted that he had helped us kind of come out of out of our shell years ago. You know, we’re we’re a hardware services, communications organization. And within our market, you know, there was this whole, there’s people that do demos of the products that we sell, right, but out of box experiences and live demos and all of that stuff. But really listening to some of Gary, it was you know what? Document? Don’t be afraid to hit record. Yeah, do a lot of it. Do it often, you know, kind of hosting X amount of days and things like that. Yeah. He’s he’s been kind of an inside mentor. But again, I don’t think he’s, what I appreciate about him is he’s giving us what some He’s giving us the information for free, but we have the roadmap, you know, to stay fit, you need to exercise, count your calories, etc. Yeah, but it’s having that motivation to get out there. And to actually apply
James Orsini 27:50
Yeah, well, one of the things that I respect most is that he never asked anybody to do what he wouldn’t do himself. So you know, by the time we’re recommending stuff to clients, it’s because he’s already tested it on himself and proving that it’s worked. Right. You know, it’s less guesswork for us and more, you know, lean in and do this. Right.
Rolando Rosas 28:13
Can you speak to that? So, I mean, you have, again, probably one of the most I can’t even pick up the right adjective, but somebody who is the epitome of knowing and being connected on social media, how have your clients received that information? Obviously, he, Gary shares his information. He’s got a team of people that are also probably looking at the analytics and the data and the numbers and what’s up with sideways, how have your clients been able to take that, you know, from from an execution perspective, they they embrace that and say, yep, we’re doing it and they see the results, or they’re more like, well, we don’t know Gary’s unique and we’re gonna pump the brakes here.
James Orsini 28:51
Yeah, well, we have both sides of the fence at The Sasha group, you know, many of our clients and not marketers, they’re, they’re entrepreneurs or founders. So so, you know, they’re a little more willing to hang on every word that we say think of it like 1960 madmen at the VaynerMedia level, where you’re dealing with Fortune 500, CEOs, chief marketing officers, and what Gary likes to call seasoned seasoned senior executives. You know, those people are a little more set in their ways, you know, bringing them around to what recently happened, right, the Black Friday game football game that was aired on Amazon Prime, which many of the commercials including a couple of our clients like bows, and Gillette had the QR codes that allowed you to kind of screen and make a purchase. You go right into the, you know, Amazon website, you know, you’ll be retargeted at a later date like that whole content capture processes is groundbreaking. It’s totally new. And, and, you know, Gary, thanks, man, that could be the Super Bowl of the future, this black this Black Friday game on prime. So, you know, you kind of just be open to open to accept something, you know, we’re talking about possibly bringing together the some entrepreneurs and some marketers in the in the same room and having them cross pollinate each other right? So, so the marketers from the entrepreneurs learn about speed and not being afraid to fail and learning more from failure than from success. And by the same token, the the entrepreneurs learned from the marketers about scaling your business and how to hire how to let go and hire support that allows me to, you know, to do other things, that’s, that’s the biggest challenge that we found with our entrepreneurs is they want to, they’re holding the baby so tight, they’re choking to death, right? It’s hard for them to hire somebody to allow them to scale.
Rolando Rosas 31:02
And that is the challenge. Because whether you’re scaling media content, whether you’re scaling operations, it requires some knowledge. Because, you know, we’ve faced this challenge our ourselves as a, as an operation, we grew rapidly during COVID. Because invoke your client bows, we sell a product like that we sell, we’re in the like, they’ve said, we’re in the communication space, do it and cameras and stuff for businesses, and that grew rapidly. And so we had to really run faster than we ever ran, because clients were that those types of products were in high demand. And it’s really challenging. If all of a sudden you go into hyper growth mode, because you got to sustain it, you got to have the people, you gotta have everything in place, swelling versus
James Orsini 31:45
growing, right. All right, keep that in the next time you hit that hypergrowth button. Just keep that keep that in mind is a difference between swelling and growing, both are going to get your big, you’re going to be big ones healthy, and one is not a no. So
Dave Kelly 31:59
what are the dangers? So? So I’m curious. But so you take a you take a global brand, and it’s it’s already year over year growth, say it’s it’s double digits, and has been for a very long time, modest growth 10 to 20% growth year over year, what is the danger then when a pandemic hits, and the demand for that product is through the roof, and now we’re looking at 50% 100% year over year growth for a period of time here in this case, call it two and a half years, it sails through the roof. So what are the what’s the danger of that? Because these CFOs for some of the major brands that are in this particular market, you know, it’s all work at home stuff, you know, just accelerated so quickly, what are the dangers when something like that happens?
James Orsini 32:55
So let’s look at some of the stuff that Gary’s done. Right? Because he’s done a lot of stuff outside of VaynerMedia, right? He’s, he’s done wines. He’s done sneakers, he now he’s got these V friends. He loves to pre sell. So in pre selling and seeing what the orders are, why produce a million products, if there’s only going to be 10,000 Sold? Or why why manufacture 10,000 If you could sell a million. So so the pre sale notion books, I mean, think about he does it for everything he does. It gives you a training issue. And he’s
Rolando Rosas 33:31
been talking about that for like, like months now. And that’s his book that’s coming out. Thank you for that phrase, in the media in the landscape and his videos. Now he’s got it as a pre roll. So when it hits, it’s not going to be a new concept. Jean. Yeah,
James Orsini 33:48
exactly. So. So that’s, that’s one method we use in a simple form. You know, sometimes when I question is, you and you have a very successful restaurant in New York City, people are lined up outside. You open in San Francisco, why not? Build a bigger restaurant in New York, where two people are lined up outside? Like, why not? Give the people what they want? Why? Why are you You know, why are you going to go to San Francisco now have to create a name for yourself off of, you know, the success in New York. So those types of things? I mean, when you’re analyzing a business for operational success, you know, that’s what you have to look at. Gary always says, hiring is guessing and firing is knowing. Right, hire fast fire faster. So you know, that’s, that’s another approach. A lot of times we just don’t, we don’t thin out as fast as we should. When we know. It’s just not on the rails.
Rolando Rosas 34:49
And, you know, when when it comes to operational success, and meeting the challenges of today, I wanted to jump into something that I’m sure you You have a real good insight on you know, the landscape and you talk about Amazon Prime. You know, we we sell products on Amazon and we see the landscape changing where there’s a convergence of E commerce and media or social media to be specific, where the tiktoks of the world have changed, not just the social media landscape, but are actually changing the business side. What are your clients telling you, when you when you’re talking to them? You see, like you said, Amazon, Amazon Prime and how that’s a game changer. And being able to retarget specifically and bringing that whole thing back into E commerce and then you bring in tick tock, which is pushing, probing moving things in a different direction than it has before.
James Orsini 35:44
We, you know, we’ve had success with a lot of our brick and mortar clients in at The Sasha Group and coaching them to find a DTC a direct to consumer type e commerce solution as well. You know, we like to say it’s an and, and not an and or do both, right. We’re so convinced that the to see is the right solution for so many of our clients that at The Sasha Group, we actually have a variable comp, skin in the game type stuff, where we’ll lower our media placement fees, and take a piece of the upside, based on success. So so, you know, we’ve done that for several of our clients. And, and I have to admit, I don’t think there’s a quarter that we haven’t hit, or, you know, a bonus goal on any client, because we’re so convinced about that, you know. So I think that’s what you have to look at now, truth be told, I just questioned why go to retail recently, just just this week, I was doing some shopping for something. And it was a kind of unique product. And I went to two different stores looking for drove traffic, you know, here in Jersey and a half hour to get to 120 minutes to get to the next. And then in the parking lot at my car, I typed it into a Google search, and it clicked on Amazon, hey, Jane, for six bucks, this will be at your house tomorrow. So there is a part of me that that questions, you know, why go anywhere, just stay home, everything on your doorstep, right. And I’ve ever needed stuff. So the convenience is, is a big factor. But, you know, the social aspect, the touching of products, I’m still a guy who likes to try on my shoes before, you know, buying them. So for me, there’s still certain purchases that I want to make I you know, but I could see where where things change, you know, I find it buying a new car, a grueling, grueling process, the same processes are selling cars next year, I saw that Hyundai is going to be the first time and so it’s always that one of our clients.
Rolando Rosas 38:02
It’s that the first step builds, eventually it’s going to you know, they’re gonna see the success the other guys and gals are holding back, there’s no holding their breath to hopefully it doesn’t work out for Hyundai here. And then they crash and burn. But if it works out, right, they’re all be trying to do the same thing in what I want you to do. Now, given the wealth of knowledge that you have, I want you to take a look at your crystal ball if we’re talking about 2024. Now because that’s you’re talking about change, you’re talking about things that are coming down the line. Dave and I are going to ask you a couple of topics and I want you to looking at crystal ball and tell us what you predict could happen. All right, we’re not gonna hold your feet to the fire. It’s just a little fun exercise here. If you’re looking at what’s going on at Twitter, now known as x advertisers, leaving Do you think that’s a sustainable model? Given what is happening right now what do you think’s going to happen in 2014 and 2020 forward all that
James Orsini 38:59
look, I I’m a big believer Twitter, I love the platform. I use it often. You know, threads kind of for me kind of came and went you know, it was a it was an attempt. Everybody got on it really quick, but I still get my my news, my real time stuff. I saw last night Andrew Brower passed away 61 year old actor. I saw that on Twitter. And the funny part was two days before I had breakfast with his attorney who represents him and a few other actors. And so I was quick to just screenshot the ex post and text the guy, the attorney that I had breakfast with like, Hey, I’m sorry for your loss. It was like real time instant boom. So, you know, the good news is is a lot of different platforms. Right. And Gary talks about underpriced attention and we’re not married to any one platform. You know, we go to where the underpriced attention is and if if Twitter goes away Tomorrow or X goes away tomorrow we’re gonna find another place where the attention is. So we’re just we’re just not, you know, emotionally moved by by the platform’s everyone has a particular usage for us and our clients use a plethora landscape because it depends on where, where their audience or what we like to say cohort where their cohort resides. Some of them are on Twitter, some of them are on Instagram reels, some of them are, are on Facebook, you know, it’s our job to find them and and message them properly where they are.
Dave Kelly 40:39
Do you think the shift in advertising on X or on the on the Twitter platform? Do you think the shift of advertising will allow the current advertisers competition to move in there? And if so, do you think that will help shift the market towards that competitor?
James Orsini 41:01
Look, I for me, it’s it’s additive. You know, I remember being down at Saatchi and they’re like James, my God, you know, the internet’s out number. Nobody’s ever gonna watch television again, you know, if you’ve got a business, I’m like, Yeah, I’m still doing 700 million and television commercial. So I’m not too worried about that. So you know, think about it, right? When when the radio came out to do away with newspapers, when television came out, then do away with radio, when Internet came out, then do away with television. So it’s like I said, that’s an and Dan, you know, you should be doing both. Funny example. A year or two back, we were in a conference room, and Gary said something about billboards. And I said, Gary, I thought we were anti billboard. And he goes, No, he goes, we were anti billboard when it was $10,000. The billboards now $500 By the whole block. Right. So it’s a great deal. Yeah. So it’s, you know, it’s the underpriced attention
Rolando Rosas 41:57
in where, you know, so let’s, let me ask you about that. Because if we, you all really have way more insight into into those platforms and attention versus value. Is there a particular platform? I know you say you’re not married? But is there a platform right now where you think is undervalued. And under attention, if I could use that word?
James Orsini 42:22
Well, we like the fact that you can still get, you know, really good organic reach on both Tik Tok and LinkedIn, you know, without having to put paid media dollars behind it, we’re, we’re working hard to lean into that for our clients and something that we call sock, strategic organic, creative. So, you know, working hard to put Korea and then and then, you know, putting some media behind it when we see people interacting with the organic content, right? Because now Hey, now we really see it’s been shared, people are commenting on it, there’s a lot of likes, like people are engaging with this piece of content. Now let’s put some paid media dollars behind it and and see where it goes.
Rolando Rosas 43:09
I love that. And Gary has said a lot about about that with regard to leaning into LinkedIn, and reels and Tiktok. And then using your best organic, to run ads against that. You know what I would love if, if I was just putting somebody in the suggestion box. I love what Gary gives these nuggets. I would love to see and maybe you guys do this as Sasha group, because it would also help us out to when we do our, our social media with our media team is this, you know, like a little process type stuff. Like, this is how the sausage is made. Because he gives away the nuggets. And he gives them like do carousel.
James Orsini 43:50
Now he’s he’s done that on numerous occasions. I mean, he’s, he’s, he’s published the Gary Vee deck and you know, in how to produce content. It’s like 63 slides. I mean, just put it out there, he gives away his best stuff for free. That’s who he is, you know what I mean? So, so we have that out there, you know, all the time in virtual how to, you know, how to videos and things like that. So it’s not not afraid to share that. And if you guys don’t have access to it, I’ll make sure that I
Rolando Rosas 44:29
would love I would love that I love I love the process the sausage, because that’s where you, you know, again, he makes it look easy. The scaling, how do you scale?
James Orsini 44:40
Let’s talk about that sausage for a second, right? Because you know, we have a product called mentors in the Sasha group where we help companies. The ideal company is doing probably 10 million in revenue been around for at least five years and has plateaued or gotten stuck can’t grow any further. Right. And again, It’s another one of these models where where we take a piece of the upside over the next three years if we help them unlock. And then Gary asked me once on a, actually on one of his podcasts interviews, how come it works for some clients and, and not others? Like, Well, why is it some of them are right? And that’s a really big check because we help them break through and others not. And I said, Gary B, because they’re not following your recipes, the one that break through, followed your recipe to the tee. The other ones, maybe left out a little salt, maybe left out a little pepper, you know, it’s still going to taste the same, but it’s not your recipe. Right? So, you know, my question to you is, when I send you this 65 Page deck on how to produce if you leave out slides 20 to 40, you’re not going to get the impact the way he intended. Wow, right. So so just a word of caution. It is. It is a recipe. It’s a you know, and it’s a prescription that he works very hard to perfect and he has a you know, an army of people in team Gary that that helped perfect that and hone it daily. I mean, it’s a kind of
Rolando Rosas 46:09
top of this game unless you have a well oiled machine, you have a good team of players, you know, there’s no way Michael Jordan could have ever won championships without Scottie Pippen and the rest of them, right. I mean, we could go on and on with analogies that there’s no one man one woman they could say
James Orsini 46:27
I walked by that office I feel like I’m working in Pfizer it’s like you know what I mean people testing and you know, looking at stuff and machines going and it’s it’s wild what he’s created there. Deathstar.
Rolando Rosas 46:46
I love it. Let me give you absolutely love it. James. I know we are we don’t have enough of your time today. I know. And maybe Gary Vee is on the other line saying get back to work. You know, we need you at the at the helm of the ship steering things. But before we go, is there anything that you want to leave us with any thoughts? Any ideas crystal ball? Otherwise, what do you want to leave us with? Anything? You have the floor?
James Orsini 47:13
Yeah, I think if I left you with one thing, it’s that we’re all a media company first. So you know, don’t be afraid to post content, don’t look for perfection, just kind of get it out there and share. As you guys have been doing very, very well around the document and you know, rather than creating and, you know, don’t be don’t be afraid to make mistake. There’s more to be learned from from the mistakes sometimes and from successes. So just just be open. Just be open to it.
Rolando Rosas 47:45
Well said, well, well said. We have been having a wonderful discussion with Jimmy the pencil aka James Orsini of The Sasha Group. I would say right hand man, self professed, consigliere airy and advisor I wouldn’t like you leaning into your mentor yet I’m sure in some ways you mentor Gary, with your your wealth of experience. And we’ve had a wonderful conversation about operations. Then if you want to nerd out on more content like this, about how to scale how to use your operations efficient efficiently. Dave and I had a whole episode around this episode on our podcast. Go ahead to church circuitloops.com And check out those episodes where we talk about the state of remote work as well as operational excellence. Dave and I will see you in that episode.
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