You said garage sailing is one of the best start right now business experiences that you can go get it's very practical So so I took it around with it So I did that first summer I made five thousand dollars, but this snowballed into bigger opportunities So I started with that then my green started to change our yeah, yeah I need to know what we were best single flip. What did you buy for at least and sold for the most? Yeah, so amazing the amazing spider-man first appearance of a carnage. I spent a dollar I sold it for $80 that same day.
I sold travel bags I bought two of them for $15 ended up selling them for three hundred dollars So I never had that like I still got that throw the hunt the amount of people listening or the amount of friends of the people listening right now That like desperately could use fifteen dollars to three hundred is like very real and I know right now someone's like Oh, yeah, but gas and evapies. I'm like cool fifteen to a hundred ninety seven It's like a real win for a lot of people and it is the thrill of the hunt and that's why we're going into that season now It is absolutely garage sale season Vayner Nation. How are you a very very very very special episode of the Gary D audio experience as you know? The guests are more rare the original content is more rare.
It's more chopping and figuring out and obviously working Thank you all for enjoying the podcast as a matter of fact in this opportunity being live with you For everyone who's listening to the podcast. I really do see all my tweets So please hit me up on Twitter and put hey Gary Vee the podcast and then finish your sentence any way you want But I'll search hey Gary Vee the podcast. I'd love to get your perspectives what you like. What's helped you I know it's working with today's episode is really kind of a meta thing I'm gonna let the guests explain it and then I'm gonna jump on and tell you all while it's why it's important But um Jonathan why don't you tell the Vayner Nation how you got here?
Give us a whole story take the next two three minutes and first tell us who you are what you do, but then tell us why you're here Yeah, yeah, definitely So my name is John Tory co-founder and director marketing at searchlight So we match data online activity to offline sales for home service companies We've grown rapidly over the past few years and really this journey started about four years ago in 2019 I was a product manager at a technology company had a really great first part of my career, but I felt very stuck I was approaching my 30th birthday deep down. I just knew that I should be doing more I always had that entrepreneurial spirit, but I didn't know where to turn and I was listening to one of your podcasts And you said garage sailing is one of the best start right now business experiences that you can go get it's very practical So so I took it around with it. So I did that for some frame about five thousand dollars But this snowballed into bigger opportunities. So I started with that then my brain started to change our yeah Yeah, I need to know what would be your best single flip.
What did you buy for the least and sold for the most? Yeah, so amazing the amazing spider-man first appearance of carnage. I spent a dollar I sold it for $80 that same day I sold travel bags and I bought two of them for $15 ended up selling them for $300 So I never had that like I still got that thrill the hunt. I love it You're outside the first experience of carnage which I actually was a comic book and baseball car dealer at that point There was a very short window when I was flipping comics in addition to cards and Cardage's first appearance was the comic that started that business because I bought 80 of them Yeah, and like it really got hot carnage got hot So that's massive.
I love that story But by the way the thrill of hunt a dollar go into 80 or 15 go into 300 We're so caught up in the Elon Musk or the Jeff Bezos or this that the other thing that we don't realize how epic that is or So many the amount of people listening or the amount of friends of the people listening right now that like desperately could use $15 to 300 is like very real and I know right now So I'm like oh you have a gas and eBay fees I'm like cool 15 to a hundred ninety seven It's like a real win for a lot of people and it is the thrill of the hunt and that's why we're going into that season now It is absolutely garage sale season. We need to do it, but go ahead. Yeah, so so absolutely so I started there But the taking that action and it's it taught me business skills and actually helped to get such like seven figures And we go into some of that but that turned into sports card trading So I was walking through a mall I saw Carson Wentz autographed helmet and I thought this is interesting this is April if I buy this now and he gets back to his MVP form there's a couple years ago I could probably and then you started talking about sports cards And I thought oh that's a lot easier to store. I know the print runs things like that So I got into sports cards right away I built a nice little question for myself, but it was during the boom time So I was able to save a year of income literally a year of income buying and selling I got into the communities I learned I know they don't like talking about as investing things like that But then that led me to writing for 137 p.m.
So in February of 2021 I called the M Tyler I had written two articles I wrote a summary for him I said hey, I'd love to do some freelance writing I applied hadn't heard back So let me you know demonstrate that value to you he got me connected with Jay It took a couple months I had to send you know follow up with another article but they said hey We love your your latest piece we're gonna go live with it Like let's do this on a regular cadence so I turned into that and then a couple months later You on the props and drop podcast that hey if one of my listeners writes the top 50 famous failed card games and publish it I'm gonna share across all my social media channels and because I've been writing for 137 p.m I've been doing the list was I was more prepared than ever to see the bull by the horns there So I wrote it was Saturday. I was in Burke Vermont. I was with my friends They were mountain biking so Saturday. I'm in this house alone cuz I'm out biking and I just started going I wrote 50 I added five you shared it across all your socials and then what I learned in that moment was I need my own blog I published it on medium dot com you drove thousands of people turn like banish it out of blog I could have captured email addresses this could become a nice little little side hustle And so two weeks later I launched start with NFTs.com because of that experience like no I'm not letting that pass up and you're talking about NFTs and you know I was kind of drawn to that from the collectibility of sports cards I wrote a couple curio card articles which you retweeted crypto strikers you retweeted then Tyler DMian said hey man You should write about NFTs for 137 p.m And I said sweet like how do you want to do it?
He said I trust you just find some people to interview and write some stories So Ezra on your team Jeremy hone the local weather team I got to interview Matthew Willard one of my favorite actors he played student screaming he was so kind and he's like I love Gary V I love that we're gonna do this so I really built this skill set of writing and putting content out there But in between there we started a little company called searchlight advertising and at first we were an agency in the home Service of space doing PPC and Facebook marketing We got a few clients of his nights and weekends, but I knew at my full-time job They were gonna we're gonna get rid of me at some point because I was remote I was gonna go where my girlfriend is I'm down in Raleigh, North Carolina now and you know we grinded I mean nights weekends we had our first few clients we delivered exceptional experiences PE firms were coming into the space and Buying these companies like crazy so the clients that we went above and beyond force started to get acquired And then the PE firm would fire us and those clients would say no We need this team to do this and we were able to win some of that back But the biggest thing to connect us took a garage selling for people we had three accounts in our first six months of business Family friends just hey we'll do this at a low cost we did this in automotive for 10 years We care about your business where I help you grow One of the things that I discovered with one of my clients that came back to me and said hey Jonathan We love your team We know that you care about our business, but we don't see the return on ad spend in the CRM And so for my eBay days when I would get really deep I would look at the sales comps and the details of the listing if this nerf gun has this cartridge itself for $10 more So I want to look for that so I tracked by hand thousands of leads from lead to revenue And we found a huge problem in the HVAC electrical plumbing industries, which is blown up at the time really accelerated by COVID So we built a solution around that and we're bootstrapped We found product market fit but the best part of all this is we find this product market fit now We got to go tell the world about it and I use that writing experience from 1.37 p.m. From medium calm A lot of it a lot of what you talk about like everybody had a podcast everybody had a Facebook group We had very unique data We could tell you how customers convert on the website the actual customer acquisition costs it's a long journey and HVAC you get an appointment It's worth a consultation I turn it into events so we can track that better than anybody even some of the big players that are competing with us And I started the data-driven trades sub stack took me two minutes It was about eight months in when I have gotten Multiple DMs on LinkedIn week John I love your content. Let's talk. I want to learn more about higher billion-dollar companies PE firms Come and we can't even keep up with it We just partnered with a company called shirt They do outbound, you know get a consultation sense of text so we're measuring the revenue there with our capabilities and that came about because a client heard Me on a podcast they hired us then they hired chirp and it's I've been blown away And it's all of this you talked before about ingredients and then cooking those ingredients garage sailing writing on medium writing for 1.37 p.m Starting to blog the arbitrage of the sports cards and the garage sales all kind of culminated seven figure business bootstrapped six Time and we're growing like crazy at time are very empathetic to you know the larger economy right now But that's created more demand for our data because it's been a lot hard out there Amazing so thank you because your advice just taking it running with it really helped Well, it's it's the thing that I think about every day even like having you on right now It's like there's six people who listen to me for nine years who now that you just said it and it's not me saying it Have decided to do it.
I thank you because without people like you. It's not it's not the feeling Yep, you know, I know what I'm putting out. I know what happens if people do it I just know that 99 percent of people that listen to me don't do it, right? You know there was this thing I would do every couple years where I was like stop listen to me right now like unsubscribe from this podcast Unfollow me stop listening and go and I've met a lot of these people who did it I carry up so pumped you told me stop consuming me start doing and I met these people the reason I don't do it the last couple years is what happened was the same people that won't listen to the advice and do anything about it Thought that stopping following me made them do it but they didn't so I really thought that they stopped getting positive, you know energy and karma and they still weren't doing it and Instead they found like bad versions of that energy and like it's almost like I like it's why I stopped doing it Like this is fucking it up.
It's like like that's bad advice The good advice is doing what I'm doing right now, which is like my friends Everything you just heard is real like if you do the push-ups you get the muscles like I promise you like let's just not make this historical If you do Facebook reels right now three a day instead of just doing tiktok and instagram I promise you you'll grow much better on Facebook reels than everywhere else and I don't care if you're selling to 23-year-old cool kids If you title your YouTube shorts the way that people search on Google which oh by the way, you don't need any special tools go type in every word any word HVAC I can type that into Google right now. Forget about Google for them better analytics. Just typing it in Google will populate 10 things that most people type in in the bar If you make a video on YouTube shorts, that's like a tiktok or instagram real or YouTube short But you title it based on what people search your YouTube short might become a video that leads to a lot of business opportunities for you Just the YouTube short cuz unlike tiktok and instagram. It's not like ephemeral where it goes away after a day or an hour It's kind of there because you choose the second biggest search engine If you start a podcast if you post on LinkedIn three times a day If you start a Facebook group if you if you if you eat more protein than cars If you work out every day if you sleep seven hours a day You will lose 13 pounds like you know any like and so it's it's huge that you're doing that and we're not getting on this podcast Yeah, I mean getting on this podcast like I so I saw a tweet from you and look like I pay attention So when we talk about like right now because of the in email newsletter, right?
And I hear you like we need to do video if you turn into videos But it's my email newsletter we are either working with or in conversations are if you with seven of the ten largest private equity firms We didn't exist as a business couple years ago But getting to this podcast I saw tweet where you responded to somebody and said it's my biggest challenge that person sort of mentioned Hey Gary you you talk about doing all these things But most people listen they get hyped they flex and then it just kind of dies off So I saw that and it was for me the story was really just I heard that you know I felt super stuck and anxious about where I was at my career in life So I just went garage sailing I just went and I did it and I loved it I did every single weekend then it turned into sports cards then it turned into writing for one 37 p.m. Summer in the middle there I got you know a call like hey, you're killing it You should join such an advertising Let's grow this thing and and again all the ingredients there help But you and I have interacted much like you've retweeted a lot of my articles because I know you like your incident So by the time I got to that five minute face time with you because I bought one of the slots from an NFT holder And I kind of prepared I think I'm actually your perfect case study because I didn't for years I think I was gonna be able to do this That was my goals inspire people listen this but I just followed it for four years didn't give up There are a lot of times I wanted to but I didn't and now it's like whoa like I wake up in my life I move from Burlington, Vermont to Raleigh, North Carolina I've got a new business I sold a blog in less than 18 months I sold start with NFTs I went to that whole process got myself a nice little bonus and now if you ask people like all of a sudden Like John Tory came out of nowhere in the HVAC space But you need to subscribe to this content and it's open tremendous doors just from written content in the context of what's valuable to Our customers and it was just doing it over by the way John You know this because you really do pay attention I talk about the written play as a real play. Yes, do I think people do Facebook reels? I sure do but it's clear to me you very much pay attention I can't even imagine how many times you've heard me say it starts with self-awareness and if you're a great writer just write be a Blogger like there's a lot of people who are literally let me give you an example If I wasn't if I was scared of the camera if I was scared of the camera Which many people are they're insecure of how they look they don't like it and that was the only difference of my life I'm just scared of the camera.
I'm incapable of writing Which is why I never been a blogger what I would do is I would be an audio monster audio monster I don't mean just a podcast I would turn my audio clips where I would do memos on my iPhone and I would do memos on my iPhone Actually, what am I talking about right now one of my best creative pillars in my GaryVee brand is just audio with a visual on Instagram Where it's just me talking and we're doing word overlays and like a nice little mountain in fucking Vermont I don't know yep, yep, you gotta get the Vermont there Well, so what I would do Gary is I would go into these Facebook groups do that they exist I don't want to compete there That's just it's not my thing it wasn't sort of my that's not my super so I go to these Facebook groups and every night I would just read the comments because you talked about this before to just read the comments get the feel of people So I would people would ask the same questions over and over How do you do with manual calls? What's your cost for acquisition? What is this? What is that?
So yes, I wrote these articles But I answer the questions and I saw over and over again in these groups where these HVAC companies are super brutally honest with each other I was able to get in there and I just kind of learn and and read read read read read Answer the questions then what we do is Elena on my team She'll do the same thing we'll do a visual of the data You know you click through we do video content we'll do audio content We can be doing it way more but just literally the new there itself has been tremendous so effective that I've actually had to go Put some of the onboarding and you know some of the partnership are there because it's just it's it's grown that quickly Listen there. There's nothing I'm more sure of I'm more sure that content at scale that comes from an authentic place of either passion or knowledge At scale in all formats in all the relevant distribution channels It I know that that is effective if you do it for a year or two to create unlimited opportunities I believe in that more than I believe that the Sun will come up tomorrow. Yep And then again we talk a lot from the five-minute face times that were part of my entity project Because I want everybody to hear all of this because they need not be able to do it with me But they may be able to do it with many of the others that are people like me Yeah, in that like I believe that I'm one of those people and then what happens in that five-minute face side Yeah, so you know I you you had a fever the night before so I knew going and I'm like Gary's probably tired So I want to be succinct and clear about this journey I started from step one 2019 hated my job was really freaking out about starting 30 like I felt helpless and stuck Not a great place to be Serendipitously, I was driving to Connecticut to visit my girlfriend heard your podcast where he said garage sales great start right now So I took did it then it turned into sports cards Then I actually started a podcast for so many different things I tried I started a podcast interviewing UBM University of Vermont alumni to talk about their career journeys We actually did a show with a student where it was during COVID and she went through the process of getting a job She got my offers a document that I went to you with Gary V with you And I asked like what do you know? How do I grow the podcast and what ended up happening from there is I wrote how I got on TV with Gary V You retweeted it so I wrote for medium and this is what I told you in that call I told you about okay that I wrote 70 articles on me I got my writing chops up made some money doing it and then from there It was writing for 1.37 p.m.
Then writing the 50 famous bill of card games then starting this blog again all behind the scenes doing the starts like thing and growing the hell out of that and I said before you and this is what I said I think this is the not angle But I think this is why yours because I said I see you talk about how you really want to see case studies That's your biggest someone asked you like what's your biggest need or what would you like to see the most like? I just would love to see case studies of people who take the things that are relevant to them Like I like the garage doing it just because you said I liked it. I love it sports hard the same thing And nobody I think nobody's making up at five thirty to take eighteen dollars into a hundred fifty even though they need that hundred fifty Unless there's some level of like the thing that most people don't realize is most of people listening right now Don't realize how much they're gonna like it especially the people. There's somebody right now listening cliche cliche 48 year old dude Fan of Gary V.
Fucks with me. I fuck with you by the way Johnny big shout out has a six-year-old daughter Has working loves his daughter plays with her doesn't have his thing with his daughter yet You know I mean doesn't have a stick has no idea that if the Saturday after he listens Let's say he's I don't know when we're gonna post his podcast Let's take Tuesday that if he right now googles while he's at work while he's running while he's on a treadmill right now It takes his phone and googles garage sales around Gary Indiana because he lives in Gary, Indiana or garage sales near me or downloads a garage sale App on the app store that shows him garage sales around him comes home Tuesday night says his six-year-old daughter We're doing something this Saturday morning you and me just daddy and daughter time Plops her in the back seat and goes from 8 a.m. To noon And then has lunch with her that the reason that AJ Vayner check and I are such close brothers is because garage sale like yep And so like a lot of parents don't realize oh, it's not this or they did or they taken the things But it's not quality time like you took them to karate But you're with them when you're in the car together for four hours when you're driving 17 minutes to your next garage sale And you ask your six-year-old daughter. Hey, why do you want me to buy that rabbit?
She says something you get a little more insight to her you say something you by the way are such a good listener that that that would really work for You but like I just don't think people realize what I'm saying which is like hey a lot of you listening right now Could use an extra five thousand bucks this summer. Hey, this works every time if you do the homework of searching on eBay What's valuable? It's not you do it 10 20 times you get your chops up you learn how to copy right headlines You learn how to take photos you learn how to have humility of like packing the boxes and shipping it But most of all you're gonna get quality time with your under 10-year-old because taking them to soccer matches And then watching them is amazing and talking about the game out there but being in a car together for six hours Going to garage sales where there's a million different things at these homes that lead to conversations learned interests shared interests If you watch your child and what they're gravitating towards you like oh you like that why? Like like i'll give you the i'm just gonna keep playing up this imaginary story She picks up a bat mitten like racquet.
She thinks it's cute. You're like oh you like that You buy the fucking set for three bucks you come home you put it up in the afternoon now you're playing bat Like this is life. Yeah Anyway, i'm starting to rail you wanted to get that out because to your point the whole meta of this conversation I am desperate for more people after this podcast to do the thing And I don't think I can be the only storyteller of it because they didn't see me at 17 20 I said this to dusted in Asia. I was like, I wish I was dramatically less successful so that everybody would believe me more They only see the end result Right when I say in my 20s that I was making less than 100k and working You know all these hours and doing it for my parents They don't hear me.
It's the same reason when I was saying 99% of NFTs are gonna go to zero people didn't hear that They they heard it as 20% of NFTs are gonna lose 30% market share They didn't hear 99 to zero Yeah, I mean when I quit my full-time job to go to search late I made less than $100,000 and I live with my parents in south philadelphia for five months And ended up selling my car. I still haven't gotten a car again And I love every second of it like like in those moments you think i'm 32 and living at home with my parents Right, it didn't bother me at all because I knew where I was going but just to the point of You know, I always talk about don't give a fuck what they're saying You said something right now that I say but not as clear as you just said I never was confused how the outcome I always say I said it in a brunch a few minutes ago with a bunch of T holders I know how this movie ends I know what the scoreboards gonna look like when it gets triple zero The reason you didn't give a fuck at 32 is the same reason I didn't give a fuck at 32 I knew where I was going Yep, and I have more data on it because you asked me that five years ago I don't know I had success in a large company, but then I started to get data through the Oh gosh, I'm actually good at this so the writing actually goes in audience I got as I got more data when i'm 32 working 15 hours a day, you know, my parents bear better I'm like I know where this is it would tell you what's important about the data you got It was affirmation on merit not based on subjective opinions in a corporation And I thought it always right, you know, you know in a job, right? You're getting julian is gonna get affirmation of my subjective opinion and i'm a human since dustins DRock's it's flawed data. It could be it's fine, but it's a human's opinion Yep, when you buy and sell on eBay when you write articles the market decides Yep, and that's important because when I felt stuck I knew those subjective opinions like these people are undervaluing me and they're overlooking me because I didn't get promoted for five Years and I was traveling across the country presenting to Audi and a lot of these big grants like subjective taking for granted They didn't even do it logically sometimes sometimes managers and owners I say this because it's happened to me and I watch it happen to a million people Sometimes it's not even quote-unquote on purpose Yep, sometimes that not will intended as a matter of fact I would argue the best people live lives where they're being taken for granted my kindness my empathy my my generosity is always taking for granted Because people become used to it.
Right. Anyway, we're wrapping this up I gotta go to my next thing. Unfortunately, but I think for everyone you can tell why I wanted this man on I feel like this episode is gonna get 16 of you off your butt and 16 out of 150,000 is better than zero out of 150,000 So brother i'll give you the last few seconds here if you want to shout out anything or say anything or do anything It's yours No, I mean just shout out to you Gary everybody listening. I promise you like just just try it out But nothing better than a Saturday morning when the sun is shining and you're sitting think about what Netflix So you're gonna watch it by the time then to go out do it your friends like I would do it my girlfriend that brought us closer together You're outside you get to see all this cool collectibles.
Why do people buy this? Why do they air about it? Why are people paying all this money for it as a way to get started because look at what it turned into for me Searchlight digital.io if you want to go take a look at my LinkedIn and some of the interactions this stuff that are happening But Gary man, I'm so humbled that you made the time and obviously I made the time to let me tell this story so my man I'm so grateful. Listen, honestly brother.
I'm being selfish. I want this for my community because too many people Just don't believe it. They don't think them. I can't work for him.
I'm not it's just not true Yeah, love you. See ya. Bye everyone. Hope you enjoyed this episode