POST 4DS: How VaynerMedia Helped a Big Business Make Simple Tweaks For Huge Results

This is an article series I have been wanting to do for a while, which is an in-depth interview with former attendees of VaynerMedia’s Daily Digital Deep Dive (4Ds).

My last interview was with Bradford Manning, the Co-Founder of TwoBlindBrothers Apparel who attended the 4Ds on December 12th, 2017. You can find his testimonial at the end of this article.

Today’s interview is with Habib Salo, The CEO of Young Nails. Young Nails is a professional nail care manufacturing company exporting to over 40 countries worldwide and distributing domestically to over 3000 stores. They have a strong social media with hundreds of thousands of followers and and they are doing millions and millions of dollars in revenue each year. Given their success thus far, you might think they didn’t need to attend something like the 4Ds, but if you read below you’ll learn just why this event is such a game-changer for anyone involved. Before we dive in, I want you to know that what makes me most excited about this day is that the biggest learnings and revelations are stemming from conversations with my team, not me. Obviously when I’m there I aim to give you disproportionate value, but I take a lot of pride in knowing that my team is more than equipped to make sure we’re delivering ten-fold for all those that attend.

These sessions pack a real punch, and the same people I trust to coordinate and lead our client work with some of the biggest brands in the world are there to teach you the exact tactics and strategies needed to help you grow your business or brand.

Read below for our conversation with Habib Salo:

Coming into the 4Ds what did you expect?

We wanted to make sure we’re staying on top of our game. I first heard about the 4Ds from listening to Gary’s podcast so I knew that the day was going to be very strategic and VaynerMedia was going to look at our business, see what’s going on and help us grow and I was like, “okay,” we’ve been working hard to grow our business for many, many, many years but we knew we could do better with social media and marketing.

We wanted to be more aggressive and thought Gary and the team at VaynerMedia could help.

The reason the 4Ds is so special is because you are going to get the details and you are going to sit down with Gary and his senior team. We wanted a deeper look into this world of attention and social media, and I just wanted more knowledge.

I wanted more understanding. I need it to be able to continue to execute at a high level.

What Was Your Favorite Session From the 4Ds?

There’s so many things that I really enjoyed. What I liked most about the day is that the 4Ds is really hands on. Everyone thinks they are coming for Gary but the reality is, there is so much value in meeting the senior team. I think my session with Ben Soffer, VP of Influencer Marketing was really great! After Ben’s talk, he came around the room and started picking up our phones, going into our accounts and doing 1:1 critiques of our social media pages. I knew it was legit because Ben actually runs @boywithnojob, an Instagram page with over a million followers. He knows what it’s like to be on both sides of an influencer campaign and he spends all of his time trying to understand how brands should be using influencers so it just clicked. Ben walked me through the difference between impressions and engagement and help recommend micro-influencers he knows or has already worked with by quoting actual prices that we could use for our brand. We already have a large social media following but Ben really simplified how we should be searching for and reaching out to these influencers to work with us.

What 4Ds Session Will Have The Most Impact on Your Business?

I really loved the session on influencer marketing but I think the biggest, most tangible impact was the session on paid ads. The whole speech centered around the idea of advertising as an “onion” and removing each layer to go deeper and deeper into how one should understand, target and retarget our audience. They showed us the layers for every platform but by far the most powerful was Facebook. We already have 130,000 fans on Facebook but we realized there was so much data we weren’t utilizing! They showed us how to implement and optimize our Facebook pixel and target and retarget existing and lookalike customers. I mean, that alone is worth tens of thousands of dollars for us. Right? Once our pixel and retargeting is done right, we can make that money back in no time and our conversion will be much higher than it’s ever been.

It’s crazy how much important information we weren’t using and we would’ve never have known about if it weren’t for the 4Ds. It’s nuances like that that gave me perspective on the power of Facebook marketing and really demonstrated how much deeper we could go in our personal strategy and execution.

That session right there is … I mean, that’s huge. I don’t know how to explain it and put it into words of how valuable the Paid Media discussion was for our business.

I think people would pay 10 grand to just have Gary come into the room for an hour and get super excited, and that was great. But for me, it was also the team and all the other value from the day that really made this more than worth it.

What about the 4Ds surprised you?

We loved the session with Claude, The Chief Heart Officer who is the head of HR. At Young Nails, we feel like we have a pretty great culture but talking with Claude really illuminated how we should all be approaching certain situations with a little more care and empathy. She gave me a different perspective and made me aware of putting more effort into making sure everybody is really connecting at our the company. Hearing her perspective and having that talk changed a lot for the way I thought about my employees.

What Did You Think of The VaynerMedia Team?

Well, I’ll tell you what blew me away. I came back telling my own company this. You’ll watch or listen to the content of Gary doing his thing and you feel like you know him. He just gives that impression, but when you walk through the doors at VaynerMedia, and when you actually see, first of all, the volume of people that are there, but more importantly, the quality of people that work there – that changed everything. The people that came through those rooms and the team at VaynerMedia really made me look at Gary differently. The caliber of people that work there is so high.. Everyone was so insanely smart, so insanely willing to help, so skilled, and yet at the same time, very approachable.

To me, that’s what an incredible company is made of. Well-rounded, super bright, and super nice people. And once you see that, and look back at Gary, after meeting all these people and experiencing the team, you realize that it’s so much bigger than all of us on the outside think. It’s just an awesome place and unless you go there and spend time with the company and the executives, you’ll never really understand it.

It’s very powerful, and I never would’ve known that unless I attended the 4Ds. It made me think about how I want to build my team, and how I want to build our company, so it’s inspiring. You have to ask yourself, why are these people attracted to VaynerMedia, why are they going there, what is it that is bringing them there? The 4Ds helped me understand the foundation that truly sets it apart.

Would you recommend the 4Ds?

If somebody were to ask me “should I do this?” I would tell them, that for me, it was worth every freaking penny. The value that we got out of it is easily tenfold. 10 grand seems like a hefty investment, and it can be for a small business or an individual, but for me, I would say it’s almost cheap for what I got out of it, and that’s the honest truth.

If you’re thinking about doing it, you should definitely do it, period. It’s incredible. It’s going to change your business, that I can tell you.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE 4Ds

Please note we will conduct an in depth call with all attendees prior to your 4Ds experience in order to gather any and all relevant context. We’ll engage as a group to identify and address all questions you may have.

Follow Young Nails on Instagram and Facebook!

Check out my last interview with TwoBlindBrothers Apparel here.

Thanks for reading ❤ and hope to see you soon!