The old is continually being challenged with the new, so much so that the time
we live in has been coined ‘the era of disruption’. Gary Vaynerchuk explains
the importance of disruption within business success, and how distribution is
a key factor in the growth of disruption.
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Summary transcription
How do you ask about a startup to balance between disruption and
distribution?
Distribution and disruption are in very different places. Disruption is a
thesis of how you look at the opportunity for your business.
You’re either gonna disrupt yourself, or somebody else is gonna disrupt you,
or you’re starting from zero and you’re about to disrupt somebody. There’re
only two groups:
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Incumbents
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Newcomers
The newcomers want to disrupt something that is an incumbent has, and
that’s where their opportunity is.
The biggest problem with incumbents is they’re not willing to disrupt
themselves ninety-nine out of a hundred times, which is why we have what we
have.
Distribution is a totally different thing. Distribution is oxygen.
If you don’t know how to distribute the awareness of what you’re doing, nobody
knows. The end!
Disruption is a thesis, distribution is a currency.
So the best thing in the world is to actually, from the product or service
that you’re providing, to be disrupting, which alludes to bringing more value
to the end consumer than what they’re offered today.
This automatically puts you in a good situation, and then you have to be great
at distribution to let you know that there’re new things that are better than
the things that you’re doing now.
Creating a better way to clean people’s clothes is disrupting it, but if
nobody here knows that to be true through distribution, it’s not going to
matter.
What’s your advice? How do you care about both?
Be religious, blindly religious about being great at both. That’s what I’ve
done!
Why not be disrupted? Everybody was selling wine at their local store, I
wanted to ship it to you through FedEx, and UPS, and DHL, and I did that in
1996 when everybody told me that the internet was a fad and nobody would ever
buy wine on the Internet.
Vaynermedia is disruptive, while the biggest brands in the world want to spend
all their money on print, and radio, and television, and banner ads, I think
that they should spend nothing on that, and should spend it on Kol, Facebook,
Instagram — things of that nature were disruptive. Then I go and do shit like
this for distribution, so that happens.
