Gary Vaynerchuk's Blog, page 28

The 79 / 21 Rule to Build a Long Term Business

Diversifying attention is the only way to build a real long term business.  

So many people only focus on the platform that’s getting the most reach and ignore the rest.

People make this mistake all the time. How many artists and bands on MySpace ignored Facebook, and then disappeared when MySpace became irrelevant? How many Vine stars dominated that platform, but “fell off” when attention shifted? How many influencers with a lot of Instagram followers will become irrelevant when attention shifts away from Instagram?

Because I promise it’s going to happen one day.   

That’s why I talk so much about tasting and exploring other platforms. It’s why I’m on virtually every platform – Snapchat, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Podcasts, written word (on my blog), and more.

That’s why I’ve won and built big followings everywhere in a world where so many influencers rise and fall.

In this article, I’m going to articulate a concept I call the “79 / 21 rule” to build a long term business by not putting all your eggs in one basket.

If You’re Not Diversifying Your Social Media Strategy, You’re Vulnerable

First of all, even getting to a point where you’ve built an engaged following is super difficult – so I’m pumped if you’re there already.

But I’m also scared for you.

I’m honestly more worried about those who are starting to win on platforms like LinkedIn or Instagram because that’s when they start to get complacent. They start to put “what’s working” on a pedestal and start romanticizing it — just like bigger businesses put channels like billboards or television commercials on a pedestal even though they don’t work nearly as well anymore.

It’s happening right now with people who are winning with AdWords and landing page optimization (as the world becomes more mobile and brand-focused). It happened with MySpace stars. And it’ll happen with Instagram influencers.

It’s human nature.

Most people who are on social spend 100% of their time on the hottest platform, and only put in about 70% effort into it.

I spend about 80% of my time on the hottest platform, go as hard as I possibly can on it, and spend 20% of my time getting a feel for everything else.

I call it the 79 / 21 rule, just to be a little different

Why You Should Let Your Kids Lose

Modern parenting needs a much healthier debate. 

Many parents are creating “fake environments” and entitlement which make kids fall hard later in life. These are some of my honest POVs and ideas on why it actually be beneficial to let kids lose up front.

1. Adversity can be the ultimate foundation for success  

So many parents try to protect their kids from adversity. They try to create safeguards and barriers in every area of life so that kids won’t feel the pain of losing or face the consequences of their decisions. 

The truth is, you can decide whether adversity makes or breaks you. It’s in your mindset. 

I shared a clip from my meeting with Kickstrodamis in Episode 540 of DailyVee where he talked about how every challenge he faced in life helped him get to where he today.



There are athletes who get injured and then completely give up on trying anything new – and there are others that go through terrible injuries and decide that that’s going to be the platform through which they’ll change the world. 

Two people can look at a situation and see something completely different. It comes down to perspective, and it’s a lot smarter to instill that mindset in your kids instead of overprotecting them from any struggle or challenge they’ll face. 

2. Kids who get fake accolades will get destroyed in the real world  

This also ties in to my concept of “fake environments.” 

A “fake environment” is when a person’s living in a manner that’s not predicated on what they’re actually contributing. 

In other words… you’ve got so many parents subsidizing a fancy lifestyle for their kids because they love them so much and want to protect them. 

Many kids in their early 20s are traveling the world on the back of mommy and daddy’s credit card. Or in an even more subtle way, they have a job and are working but their Uber expenses are going off of their dad’s credit card. Or their mom’s paying for their gym pass. 

Listen, I have enormous empathy for those with student loan debt or those who really need the extra support. I get it. 

But when you make a kid believe that they are winning in business or in life because they’re living a lifestyle that subsidized by someone else, you’re doing them a massive disservice. 

Eighth place trophies create fake environments. When you make kids think that they’re good at basketball or baseball when they’re not, they’re going to fall hard later in life when they realize it’s not true. 

There are a lot of “fake environments” today and they don’t just apply to kids.

When you can come up with an idea for a business and raise a million dollars for it, that’s a fake environment. When you trade stocks and “win” because the economy is doing great, that’s a fake environment. 

Fake environments give you the illusion that your success is predicated entirely on your merit – when in reality it’s because of something external. 

One of the biggest reasons I thank my parents so much is that they never put me in a fake environment. 

They punished me when I got bad grades (even when they knew I was good at business). They didn’t pay for any of my expenses after I graduated and went into the real world. They forced me to learn how to “hunt” to get my food instead of just feeding me out of their pocket. 

I think merit-based compliments are awesome, and it’s what my mom did for me – she would “exaggerate” my strengths while holding me accountable for my losses.

But when you make kids think that they’re winning when they’re not, that causes problems.

3. Many parents use their kids to fix their own insecurities 

It’s time that parents stop parenting kids on their own insecurities and stop worrying about what other parents think. 

I see this so much now. Parents are pushing kids to win on their own selfish terms, not on their kids’ terms. 

That’s why parents are forcing their kids to take on debt to go to college when their kids have other ambitions. It’s why so many parents push their kids to be baseball players or basketball players to fulfill their own selfish wants and needs. 

A lot of parents put their kids in “fake environments” because they care about what other parents say about their kids. They don’t want other families to think of them as a “loser” when they talk to them at the country club. 

My parents did the opposite. They allowed me to play and win on my own terms. 

Even though they made me respect the alternative (i.e. I still had to go to school, and I got punished when I got bad grades), they still supported me when I wanted to go sell baseball cards or lemonade. 

It was a mix of freedom and accountability.   

4. “Forcing” instead of reacting can lead to bad outcomes

There’s a big difference between “reacting” and “forcing” that a lot of people don’t get. Reacting means giving your kid permission to explore. It means giving your kid rope.

If your child is selling shoes or lemonade and they’re young, all you need to do is react to the fact that they’re already entrepreneurs and give them a lot of rope. Same thing applies if your kid is really into baseball, soccer, art, or anything else.

Reacting is about giving your kid encouragement and support around something they’re already drawn to — and building up “steam” around those actions.

When I was young, I would rip flowers out of people’s yards and sell it back to them. I was making thousands of dollars every weekend selling baseball cards.

My parents encouraged me to explore that side of myself.

You can enroll them in theater class, or violin class, painting class, or something else to see if they like it.

But there’s a BIG difference between doing that vs forcing them down a path because it makes you feel good as a parent.

My kids are still young. So right now, all I’m doing is listening. I’m watching. I’m seeing what they’re drawn to, so I can create supportive infrastructure around whatever they’re drawn to later.

I have absolutely no intention of imposing anything on them.

Not even entrepreneurship.

 

This is an important read for parents – if you got value from this, please share it on Twitter!

5 LinkedIn Marketing Strategies for 2019

LinkedIn marketing is something I really, really believe in for 2019.

LinkedIn has transformed so much as a platform. Years ago, it used to just be for job seekers. People would post resumes, and only connect with people they knew and no one else.  

Now, it’s become more of a content platform.

People share status updates, articles, and interact with each other within a business or professional context. And because the platform is still relatively early, they’ve made the organic reach insanely high.

It’s where Facebook was at 5-7 years ago.

In this article, I talk about some strategies and ideas on using LinkedIn to grow followers and get actual business results for your organization.

The only way to build a big audience online

You have to understand what value is. That’s the only way to get really big.

It took me 10 years to get to 1.8 million followers on Twitter.  And it’s taken me 3 years to get to 5.2 million followers on Instagram.

It’s because I understand what “value” is on Instagram. I know how people consume content and how to make my content the most contextual to that platform.

I believe value comes in two basic forms:

Entertainment.
Education.

For example, on Instagram, entertainment can come in the form of being very attractive, being funny, or a number of other ways.

Education can come in a number of different ways.

But the problem is… most people create content that’s not built to entertain or educate. They create content that’s in their own self-interest instead of thinking about what value the end consumer is getting out of it.

Here are some marketing strategies and ideas on how to build an audience on LinkedIn by giving value to other people first:

1. Use the $1.80 strategy for LinkedIn

The $1.80 strategy is a concept I came up with a couple of years ago when people were asking me how to build audience on Instagram.

My advice was to find the top performing posts in your space by searching relevant hashtags or looking at the “top posts” in your area — and add your “two cents” in the comments.

Not fluff comments that so many bots leave, but something meaningful that shows that you actually consumed the piece of content.

Do that 90 times a day, and you’ll start building a community and a personal brand. 

What people don’t realize is, the same strategy can apply to LinkedIn.

There are different ways you can find trending posts …

You can look at the “What People Are Talking About Now” section to see what news topics are trending.

 

If you click on them, you’ll see posts from people who are adding their two cents to the topic in the form of status updates:

You can share your own POV along with an article on the topic that you find interesting.

You also can search the top 5, 10, or 20 hashtags related to your field, click on them, and see what people are talking about:

Go through the posts, and comment on anything you find interesting.

You can also follow influencers and leave thoughtful comments on the content they post.

There are so many different ways to engage. If you leave the best comment on a post that gets a lot of reach, people will notice — especially if you stay consistent with it.

The reason why most people don’t do it is because it’s hard to implement. It’s hard to really consume 90 pieces of content a day and leave a thoughtful comment on each of them.

But if you want to build a community of followers, you have to care about adding value to the community before you can expect them to care about you.

2. Write native articles on LinkedIn

There are two ways to “attack” content:

Either engage with it, or produce it.

The $1.80 strategy is about engagement. It’s about seeing what posts and topics can be relevant to the niche you’re playing in, and leaving thoughtful comments to build a following.

The other way to do it is by actually producing content through video, written, or audio form. One thing that I’m seeing get a lot of traction on LinkedIn is native articles and text posts with content contextual to business.

For example, if you’re a travel company, you might be posting a bunch of beautiful travel photos on Instagram. But on LinkedIn, the right way to do it would be writing an article about something like, say, how CEOs can travel more efficiently.

(It depends on your market and your ambition, but you see where I’m going with this).

3. Add your profile link to your email signature

When you create content and publish it on LinkedIn, the people who see it are those who follow you (or are connected with you) and those who follow the hashtags that you’re including.

Here’s one hack to build your audience if you’re starting out without many connections:

If you’re someone who sends a lot of email from your personal or business account, add your LinkedIn profile to your email signature.

It’s a quick way to get more exposure to your LinkedIn profile and get more followers. As you get more and more connections, it could be the match that starts the process of your content getting higher reach.

4. Don’t spam out messages

What doesn’t work on LinkedIn is spamming people through messages.

The thing that blows me away is, so many salespeople and entrepreneurs get spammy LinkedIn messages and hate receiving them — yet they’re so willing to spam other people.

There’s a lot of tone deafness and hypocrisy there because the truth is, it’s just not the best way to build a following and extract value out of LinkedIn.

The proper way to do it is by giving value to the community first by producing or engaging with content.

5. Use LinkedIn to host in-person events 

Hosting in-person events is a strategy I really recommend, especially if you’re in B2B.

People in B2B recognize how valuable it can be to host conferences to get leads and clients – but many don’t consider the value of hosting smaller events.

If you host a small event with attendees that resemble the type of clients that you want to get, you’ll put yourself in a disproportionate advantage to convert those clients down the road.

You can use LinkedIn’s organic reach to get those attendees, or you can leverage the ad platform to target people in specific locations. I recommend Facebook advertising because you get away with lower cost, but LinkedIn could help you get more of the right kind of people.

Structuring the ad itself can be super basic – I would just record a quick video from my phone telling people about where you’re hosting your dinner or event.

Then, ask people to sign up by filling out a Google Form that you link to in the copy.

In the form, make sure you ask an open ended question that gives you insight into whether or not you can convert them.

Based on the answers and the people who filled out the form, send out invitations to your dinner and host a valuable event. You could talk about the “state of the union” of your industry, ask everyone to share their two cents, or a number of other things.

I talk in detail about how to do it in this article.

 

There’s so much opportunity out there my friends – hope you all to go out and take advantage of it in this era

Effective Ways to Build Trust in the Workplace

I give trust to my employees at work a lot easier than most CEOs would.

To me, it’s about “offense.”

A lot of people struggle with giving trust freely because they fear micro-losses. When you trust someone blindly especially at work, they might make mistakes. If you’re driven by the fear of losing in the short term, you won’t find it that easy to “let go” and let the other person make decisions without micromanaging their every move. 

But building trust and giving it freely are both incredibly important parts of the equation when it comes to climbing the ladder in the corporate world or running your own business.

In this article, I give some thoughts on how I think about trust at work, and how to build it whether you’re a manager or a new employee.

Share your honest perspective, even if that means “dying on your sword”

Recently, I got a question on LinkedIn from Mike, who asked this:

He asked, “What is your best piece of advice from the perspective of a new employee learning the culture and building relationships at a new job, to earn the trust of leaders within an organization? What’s the #1 thing to do in month 1?”

It’s a tough question.

The thing that really scares me is, often times the best way to get trust as a new employee within an organization is to pander to the judgement of senior leadership. It’s by aligning yourself with their point of view.

But their point of view might not actually match with your own.

For example, a common problem I see at big companies is executives and leaders deciding to spend a bulk of their marketing budget on things like billboards or television commercials. Many companies will struggle or go out of business in the next decade because they’re not adapting to the current landscape of advertising and attention.

Toys R Us was just the preview.

If you’re a new employee in a marketing role at an organization and you want to grow within the company, it would be easier in the short term to just align yourself with the POVs and decisions of senior leadership. Even if they go against what you believe.

Personally, the advice I would give would be to “die on your sword” and bet on winning in the long term.

Here’s what I mean by that:

If you express your authentic point of view and disagree with the people “above you”, you might “lose” with many of the leaders within your company and it might stifle your growth within the organization. But you’ll win over the smart people in the company, especially when they leave and move on to other organizations.

I have empathy for those who decide to pander to the POVs of senior leadership to move up within a company, but expressing your honest opinions respectfully and being historically correct will help you more in the long run.

Never sacrifice your ethics for a business “win”

It’s the right thing to do.

Many times, you’ll make more money and get more accolades in your career if you don’t immediately grab what’s right in front of you. On top of that, there’s always someone watching – and you’ll always have to worry about what they’ll say or do after they see you do something unethical.  

For example, I have an assistant with access to my emails. He’d know immediately if I did something unethical or shady, and then he’d question everything I’ve ever said to him.

He’d stop trusting me.

Not only would that be devastating to the kind of impression I’m trying to leave, but it would also slow us down. A healthy company culture is built on trust and openness, and even though there can be healthy debates, there should be never any question of anyone’s intent.

Same thing applies if you’re trying to level up your career within an organization and get promotions – sacrificing your ethics to get what you want might “work” in the short term but it will leave you in a very vulnerable position over the course of your career.

Life is long.

Give trust up front, then take it away if necessary

A lot of managers and people within organizations struggle with giving the people they work with the freedom to win or lose on their own.

To me, “ultimate scale” is allowing people to roam free and expose themselves. By giving people a “blank canvas” to express themselves on, I’m able to get a true read on someone and who they are.



I tell my team all the time that I trust them blindly. And I will continue to do so until they do something that makes me takeaway that trust. If they have questionable intent or if they prove that they’re not capable of handling the challenge they’ve been given, I might take away that trust and put restrictions around them.

But I operate on a different playing field than “trust is earned.” I believe that trust is given first. Who am I to have it earned?

Some people will take that “rope” and create enormous happiness and wealth in whatever we do together, and others will get tripped up in that rope and lose.

Be the bigger person in every situation

A big part of being a leader is being the bigger person – in every situation. 

It means “giving” even when you don’t get anything in return sometimes. It means taking ownership and accepting blame.

You can’t simply impose your will because you’re now the boss. There will be plenty of times where you will need to swallow your pride and do what’s in the best interest of the team.

This means empowering those around you to do their jobs, but it also means something else: you need to be able to accept that certain things are your fault. At the end of the day, you’re the one leading the charge, so you need to be willing to accept responsibility for your successes, and more importantly, your failures.

It all falls on you.

No one likes a boss that passes the buck to an employee in a tough situation.

If you take the blame, your people will know that you’ve got their back – no matter what the situation is.

Why I prefer to earn someone’s trust over time 

Even though I give trust up front, I prefer to earn other people’s trust over time.

It comes down to giving without expectation. I trust and empower other people, but I’m not crippled if someone doesn’t trust me at first.

When people watch my content for the first time, they might be confused when it comes to my intent. But over time if they keep listening and consuming my content, they’ll slowly begin to understand my truths and what I really stand for.

Same thing happens in corporate America. One of the toughest decisions I’ve had to make was the decision to “put myself out there.” I knew that the “establishment” might not respect my self-promotion, and that it might somehow undermine my success as a businessman and operator in their eyes.

But I wanted to stick to my truth – and over time, many of them have come around.

I give trust to others, but I don’t expect it at first – and it’s a big key to my happiness.

How Having “Less” Can Make You Happier

Being happy with “less” is a topic I’m really passionate about.

So many people measure success based on money or materialistic things. I measure success based on happiness.

Recently, I received an email from a guy named Derek – he’s been following my content for a while, and he sent me a very moving email about how he found happiness by selling his house, car, garage sailing, and following some of the advice I’ve been talking about for the past few years.

I get so many of these moving, emotional emails in my inbox every single day, and I want to share more of them with you guys.

Here’s Derek’s:

Hey Gary,

I know you probably get a 100 of these emails a day and may never even read this, but I just wanted to share my story and what your advice had done for my life.

I live in western Canada where my life basically consisted of life on the road in the middle of nowhere in the Alberta oilfield working as an electrician being the most miserable piece of shit ever. In October 2016 I started into affiliate marketing or basically online sales as it should be called for a company. It’s in doing that I realized how much I hated my life, how badly I needed a change and I was on the path put forth for me on the opinions of others, which as someone who has dealt with anxiety and depression his whole life spent many days wondering if life was worth living.

I did alright with the company making a decent chunk of money in the first little bit and learning a bit about the online world, but I had no passion for it, felt like it was more of a world of fake people and fake it until you make it, which I’ve learned is the worst fucking advice ever. 

I had never felt more lost and the depression I deal with started to creep back in, the idea of going back to my old life, with my old job, I felt I would rather die than go back to that. I had followed so many in trying to change my mindset, but everyone spoke about the same shit with a super pricey upsell after to learn more about their methods. Just buy my program, for $10,000 and change your life, blah blah and their advice never stuck, go to a hyped up convention, get pumped, 2 weeks later be back being lost in life.

Now to state for the record I had created a life that was extremely overleveraged still trying to live like a Rockstar with fancy unnecessary shit because I was making upwards of $125,000 CAD a year as an electrician thinking that money and trinkets would buy me happiness, which it obviously didn’t and combined with a lack of work here my monthly bills were insane. And that’s where you come in as I had heard of you but had no fucking clue at all what you were about or had ever watched one of your videos until June 2018. Someone I knew posted of one yourvideos and the swearing and keeping it real without wanting anything in return attitude had me hooked. I found your YouTube page and from that moment on every morning while working on trying to find my direction and gain the strength to push forward in life your videos and advice would be playing in the background.

It was in August 2018 that I shutout everyone else’s opinions, was on the brink of being broke and realized my true passion was inspiration and motivation and that I would try to spread that message via starting a small clothing brand focused around those topics. I know a hard market to bust into and I was scared shitless, but my gut was telling me to go for it. My gut feeling combined with my new mindset and work ethic from your advice completely transformed me from a scared depressed mess who considered suicide at least once a day to someone determined not to fail. With your advice I created the first 10 designs, really learned the value of social media platforms for marketing, taught myself how to build and create my own shopify site and basically took over all aspects of the business to gain the knowledge and cut costs wherever possible.

I officially launched online in late November 2018 with high hopes and in the first 2.5 months fell hard on my face with virtually no sales, except instead of letting the depression sneak back in and having a pity party, I dug down deep, watched you and put forth new methods and ideas to increase reach and potential customers, improvements to the site and whatever else I could find.

I have never been busier, sometimes stressed, yet happier than I am right now as sales have started happening in the last month. Now not breaking any sales records and obviously only 3 months in, but it’s your constant reminder that shit doesn’t happen overnight, takes time and hard work to achieve success that keeps me pushing forward. I have completely cut down my expenses by not buying dumb unnecessary shit anymore, sold my snowmobile, my $62,000 brand new truck I absolutely needed goes away next week to be replaced by a more cost effective, older and fuel efficient SUV I have purchased and yesterday placed my house on the market and will be going back to renting as of April 1st.

I will be using the $30-40,000 equity from my over the top priced house to live and grow my business while living in a much smaller and cheaper place. I don’t think I would be where I am now, maybe not even alive if it wasn’t for finding you and all of the value you bring daily and for that I say thank you sooo much. I know the road ahead is a long one if I want to see success with my business, but my mindset shift has me fully prepared to deal with that thanks to you.

Oh and before I end this let me touch on trash talk as I started flipping shit on EBay, mostly just stuff I already owned, just recently started hitting thrift shops and stoked for garage sale season. I’ve made $4069 CAD after fees and everything the last 3 months, it was from making that I realized how over leveraged I was from bills and decided to cut down on expenses.

On top of that my dad has also really gotten into it, mostly loves the shopping part, but we have never been closer thanks to the time we spend together out looking for stuff to sell. So thank you again and I hope someday to be able to hit an event where you’re speaking, hopefully meet you in person to shake your hand and be able to tell you in person thank you. Anyhow back to the grind.

With Gratitude and Appreciation,

Derek Todd

HPI Apparel

 

I asked my team to put together a new podcast series called “From My Inbox To Your Ears” where my writer narrates this email with additional context – check it out on Spotify here.

POST 4Ds: How 4Ds Helped A Photographer Build a 7-figure Revenue Stream

As the CEO of VaynerMedia, it has been an enormous goal of mine to be able to share our learnings from working with Fortune 500 brands to help grow smaller companies and help entrepreneurs. 

It’s part of the reason we created VaynerMedia’s Daily Digital Deep Dive (4Ds).

In 4Ds, we take attendees “under the hood” of VaynerMedia — both analyzing the work we do for some of the biggest brands in the world, and showing how those tactics can help small to medium businesses.

Our most recent “Post4Ds” article featured Joe Mullings, the founder of a recruiting firm that grew sales by building brand on platforms like LinkedIn.

Today’s interview is with Jasmine Star from JasmineStar.com. She’s a photographer who built a business around giving entrepreneurs tools to grow their social accounts and their businesses..

After 4Ds, she ended up building a new product and revenue stream that did seven figures in the first 12 months.

Here’s her story:

Can you tell us a bit about your background and what your business is about?

I dropped out of law school in 2005, and had his crazy dream that I wanted to be a photographer.

But there was one problem:

I didn’t own a camera.

In early 2006, I went out and bought a camera. By 2009, I was voted one of the top photographers in the world by American Photo Editors.

It was insane. I couldn’t even believe it when the article came out.

Naturally, people wanted to know what happened between those years – especially how I built my personal brand and got name recognition. That’s when I started sharing photography tutorials, marketing tutorials, blog posts, videos, and more.

Then, in 2016, my Instagram and Facebook accounts exploded.

People would ask me how I was using Instagram to grow my business, so I created my first digital course on how to use Instagram for business, and sold it for $197. It was a 15-hour video course.

That generated a seven figure revenue stream for us.

But even though it did really well, it just didn’t feel in alignment with me or who I was. I didn’t want to sell information that people could just Google. I wanted to build a business where I gave people actual tools to solve their problems.

After 4Ds, I created a resource called Social Curator, a membership program where people would pay $30 / month to get access to pictures, templates, captions, etc that they could post on their Instagram feed. And I started giving away all my information for free.

Today, Social Curator has grown to over 6,000+ members.

What did you expect from 4Ds coming in?

A lot of people might know automatically that 4Ds is exactly what they need and that they need to hit the “buy” button right away.

But personally, I’m a small business owner. I listened to all of Gary’s podcast content and read all his books, but I was intimidated by all the things his was doing on a day-to-day basis.

When I visited the 4Ds page for the first time, it was just a checkout for a $10k+ ticket. I don’t think there was even a real website associate with it. I was asking myself, “am I getting punked right now? Is this legit?”

As I got to learn more about the program and watched the 4Ds videos on YouTube, I thought to myself if I’d be able to generate at least $10k in revenue after going to the event. And in my mind, there wasn’t much doubt that Gary and the team would deliver.

So I invested in it.

I ended up going to a 4Ds event in 2017. I went in without an agenda. I’m pretty familiar with Gary’s content, but I wanted to have an in-person experience because I wanted to understand Gary’s team and his vision on a deeper level.

I didn’t go in thinking that I needed to learn XYZ to grow my business. I was thinking, “I’m going to stay open to everything and see what I can get out of it.”

What was the most impactful thing you learned?

After going to 4Ds, I have a much greater understanding for how Gary values culture and how he thinks about it.

He talks about culture a lot in his podcasts and interviews, but when you hear it from Gary and Claude Silver (Chief Heart Officer at VaynerMedia) in person, you really feel it.

They talked about the holistic approach that they take to caring about their employees which really resonated with me. I don’t have a big business yet, but if I aspire to get to that level, I need to bring in someone who is a “culture creator.”

I walked away with a deep understanding that the most valuable asset I have is my team.

The other big thing that happened after 4Ds was that I completely shifted focus in my business. 4Ds was a clear unveiling that my path wasn’t to continue monetizing my information. It was to share information for free, and monetize on the back end by providing tools that allow people to actually “show up.”

Hearing the same message from Gary really solidified it for me.

We pulled back from monetizing education and built a new revenue stream in our business with Social Curator.

Within 12 months, it was doing seven figures.

Hearing the words from Gary through podcasts, videos or articles is one thing. But seeing him and his team in person and how their actions reflect their words really makes the message “click” in a whole different way.

It gave me the confidence I needed to change direction in my business.

Were there any “non-quantifiable” results that came from building your brand?

Absolutely.

I saw a lot of benefits that came from positioning myself differently in a crowded marketplace. For example, there are so many people out there selling Instagram courses and products. But after the program, I learned how to position myself as someone who provides you with the tools to “show up” and execute.

It wasn’t a positioning strategy I made up. It’s something that played entirely to my strengths. I’m a writer, I understand marketing, I’m good at social media, and I love helping other people out in building their businesses. So I repositioned my business to reflect that.

My product kind of became a “creative Netflix” for entrepreneurs who want to grow their business. It became something that nobody else had ever created.

It positioned me as someone who could talk about these topics from a very different point of view. It’s part of the reason why I’ve been interviewed by companies like MSNBC, Forbes, Entrepreneur.com, and more.

If you come from a creative field, you tend to lead with your talent or an “end result” (like a photo, a graphic, etc).

But after 4Ds, I pivoted my brand to lead with me. I felt a lot more empowered to go in that direction and position the brand around myself in an unapologetic way.

What did you think of the team?

Everybody was super professional and set the bar very high. They were even willing to introduce me to other people in other parts of the agency who weren’t even affiliated with the 4Ds event.

The team is always trying to find ways to help you even 1-2 years after you finish the program — whether that’s meeting with you and answering questions, introducing you to the right people, or anything else.

Stop Living For The Weekend

I hate Fridays.

Work is something I genuinely love — and it’s not fun for me to see that end each week. I look forward to Mondays. 

But in the recent years, I’ve been really fascinated by those who are cheering for the opposite. So many people hate their jobs or where they work, and they see Friday as a “relief” from the rest of the week.

If that’s you… I want to really put some pressure on that conversation today.

First — I want to create some clarity:

I’m not writing this article to talk about how “lucky” I am that I get to do what I love, nor am I disrespecting people who look forward to spending time with their family on the weekends. I’m a big believer in spending my weekends with my family.

I’m writing this article for one person who is stuck in a job that makes them unhappy to wake up and ask themselves “wait, what am I actually doing here?”

The truth is, if you factor out sleep, you basically live to work. It makes up the majority of your life. If you’re unhappy at work, then it’s time to take a step back and ask yourself what you’re actually doing — not by judging yourself or beating yourself up, but by thoughtfully analyzing what you could do to change your situation.

What to do if you dread Mondays  

Listen, I’m empathetic to this. I used to look forward to Fridays so much when I was in school. I used to dread Mondays and would be praying for giant snowstorms every winter so that school would be closed.

I lived in that mindset for 12 years.

The thought that this is how so many people live their work lives breaks my heart.

But at the same time, I respect practicality. I get the fact that people have bills and other responsibilities that keep them tied to jobs.

Here are some of my thoughts on how to get around it: 

1. Change your bills

So many people are stuck in jobs they don’t like because they buy stuff they don’t need.

If you have “bills to pay”, change your bills.

Look, I get that there are things like student loan debt which you can’t just “change” or get out of. But there are a lot of people who are buying brand name hoodies or sneakers thinking that it will help them “close the gap” on their insecurities. Same thing with cars, fancy homes, and so many other things that people buy to posture to other people. But it forces you to stay at a job you don’t like and causes more unhappiness in the long term. 

If you’re unhappy at your job, really consider selling your home, your car, the junk in your garage that you’ve never used in years, or your old clothes. Move to a smaller apartment with lower rent. Think about whether you actually “need” something, or if it’s taking away more happiness than its giving you.

It’ll give you more air cover to go after a better job, a side hustle, or a business that you’re actually passionate about. 

You can choose what your bills are, to a large degree.  

2. Evaluate your strengths and weaknesses

Not everyone is meant to be an entrepreneur, and that’s fine. Maybe the answer for you is to find a job at a different company, or go after a better job that makes you happier.

The first step here is to get real self-aware about what your skills and ambitions are.

Take the five to ten people that know you the best. Split them into two categories: people you connect with on a deep level of love, and people who you are close with, but maybe you’re a little different in lifestyle and personality.

Then, ask one person from each category to honestly tell you what they think you’re best at, and what they think you’re worst at. “What are my skills and abilities, and what are my weaknesses?”

Are you the type of person who would find happiness by quitting your job and starting a business? Or would you be happier getting a different job? Or do you just need a side hustle you can do in the evenings and weekends for more money?  

I truly believe that collecting market research and creating an atmosphere that allows someone to be honest with you are the two big things that’ll help you evaluate your skills. 

3. Look into practical side hustles

One way to give yourself the ability to pay the bills you need to pay and quit a job that makes you unhappy is by building a side hustle.

For most people, I recommend selling stuff on eBay because it requires no up front capital or investment.

Here’s how:

1. Go to Craigslist.

2. Under the “for sale” tab, there’s a section called “free.” Click that.

 

 

3. You’ll find a bunch of things that people want to get rid of — couches, TVs, etc.

4. Drive to their spot and pick it up (or take the bus if you don’t have a car).

5. Take the item.

6. Go back home.

7. Take a picture of it.

8. List it on eBay or Facebook Marketplace and wait till it sells.

If you have a little bit of cash to invest up front, you can hit up garage sales in your local area, find items that people are selling, buy them, and flip them on eBay for a bigger profit.

You can check what each item is worth in real time on the eBay mobile app — just search the item and select the “sold listings” filter.

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Can’t wait for more of you to execute on this advice and get on the path to finding happiness instead of making money to “feed” your bills

4 LinkedIn Marketing Strategies for 2019

LinkedIn marketing is something I really, really believe in for 2019.

LinkedIn has transformed so much as a platform. Years ago, it used to just be for job seekers. People would post resumes, and only connect with people they knew and no one else.  

Now, it’s become more of a content platform.

People share status updates, articles, and interact with each other within a business or professional context. And because the platform is still relatively early, they’ve made the organic reach insanely high.

It’s where Facebook was at 5-7 years ago.

In this article, I talk about some strategies and ideas on using LinkedIn to grow followers and get actual business results for your organization.

The only way to build a big audience online

You have to understand what value is. That’s the only way to get really big.

It took me 10 years to get to 1.8 million followers on Twitter.  And it’s taken me 3 years to get to 5.2 million followers on Instagram.

It’s because I understand what “value” is on Instagram. I know how people consume content and how to make my content the most contextual to that platform.

I believe value comes in two basic forms:

Entertainment.
Education.

For example, on Instagram, entertainment can come in the form of being very attractive, being funny, or a number of other ways.

Education can come in a number of different ways.

But the problem is… most people create content that’s not built to entertain or educate. They create content that’s in their own self-interest instead of thinking about what value the end consumer is getting out of it.

Here are some marketing strategies and ideas on how to build an audience on LinkedIn by giving value to other people first:

1. Use the $1.80 strategy for LinkedIn

The $1.80 strategy is a concept I came up with a couple of years ago when people were asking me how to build audience on Instagram.

My advice was to find the top performing posts in your space by searching relevant hashtags or looking at the “top posts” in your area — and add your “two cents” in the comments.

Not fluff comments that so many bots leave, but something meaningful that shows that you actually consumed the piece of content.

Do that 90 times a day, and you’ll start building a community and a personal brand. 

What people don’t realize is, the same strategy can apply to LinkedIn.

There are different ways you can find trending posts …

You can look at the “What People Are Talking About Now” section to see what news topics are trending.

 

If you click on them, you’ll see posts from people who are adding their two cents to the topic in the form of status updates:

You can share your own POV along with an article on the topic that you find interesting.

You also can search the top 5, 10, or 20 hashtags related to your field, click on them, and see what people are talking about:

Go through the posts, and comment on anything you find interesting.

You can also follow influencers and leave thoughtful comments on the content they post.

There are so many different ways to engage. If you leave the best comment on a post that gets a lot of reach, people will notice — especially if you stay consistent with it.

The reason why most people don’t do it is because it’s hard to implement. It’s hard to really consume 90 pieces of content a day and leave a thoughtful comment on each of them.

But if you want to build a community of followers, you have to care about adding value to the community before you can expect them to care about you.

2. Write native articles on LinkedIn

There are two ways to “attack” content:

Either engage with it, or produce it.

The $1.80 strategy is about engagement. It’s about seeing what posts and topics can be relevant to the niche you’re playing in, and leaving thoughtful comments to build a following.

The other way to do it is by actually producing content through video, written, or audio form. One thing that I’m seeing get a lot of traction on LinkedIn is native articles and text posts with content contextual to business.

For example, if you’re a travel company, you might be posting a bunch of beautiful travel photos on Instagram. But on LinkedIn, the right way to do it would be writing an article about something like, say, how CEOs can travel more efficiently.

(It depends on your market and your ambition, but you see where I’m going with this).

3. Add your profile link to your email signature

When you create content and publish it on LinkedIn, the people who see it are those who follow you (or are connected with you) and those who follow the hashtags that you’re including.

Here’s one hack to build your audience if you’re starting out without many connections:

If you’re someone who sends a lot of email from your personal or business account, add your LinkedIn profile to your email signature.

It’s a quick way to get more exposure to your LinkedIn profile and get more followers. As you get more and more connections, it could be the match that starts the process of your content getting higher reach.

4. Don’t spam out messages

What doesn’t work on LinkedIn is spamming people through messages.

The thing that blows me away is, so many salespeople and entrepreneurs get spammy LinkedIn messages and hate receiving them — yet they’re so willing to spam other people.

There’s a lot of tone deafness and hypocrisy there because the truth is, it’s just not the best way to build a following and extract value out of LinkedIn.

The proper way to do it is by giving value to the community first by producing or engaging with content.

 

Let me know if you found this valuable

10 Examples of Positivity on Social Media

Finding kindness and positivity on social media is super easy.

So is finding hate and negativity.

I’m a firm believer that you find what you’re looking for. So many people talk about how social media is tearing people down or that there’s so much hate on every platform. But there’s so much empathy, kindness, and positivity too.

You just have to find it.

I’m writing this article in hopes that it will help a few of you look at things differently and seek out positivity instead of negativity in your online behavior.

Here are some examples of positivity I found from Twitter search:

“A kid maybe like 11-12 years old just opened the door for me. That hasn’t happened to me since 2014.” – @yessyiswrite

“Thanks to some really kind people at Starbucks who helped me out today. I took a nasty fall right outside my door. Cut my hand up. Hit my head on the concrete and bruised my knees.” – @ReassemblyR

“My sister is having a baby girl and I’m so excited. I’m going to be an amazing aunt to a wonderful baby girl!” – @InimitableArts

“To be nominated and recognized in such a massive way by University and by DUSA is completely overwhelming. I’m so grateful! I honestly just hope that future students at the University of Dundee feel a benefit from my time as School President.” – @garadith

“Being told you’re beautiful by a random stranger and not in a cat call way. Just a lovely woman telling another woman she’s beautiful. #PayItForward” – @Lopezinq

“People are being extra nice today and I LOVE IT.” – @AmandaMoreno72

“Thank you to the very nice young man and woman who helped push my car out of a snowy ditch that I got stuck in just now when trying to stop and take a photo – misjudged the lack of shoulder on the road with all the snow.” – @IAStartingLine

“Wow, I was having a terrible day until a lady approached me who was lost and alone visiting the campus from Brazil. I helped her charge her phone, get connected to wifi, and get her Uber app working which unfortunately didn’t work out. I called her a cab and she just now left.” – @guitarguybry

“My 17-year-old son just showed me his school paper saying, “First time using footnotes!” I’m having a proud writer mom moment. My baby’s growing up!” – @LauraKatePalmer

“Strangers have opened their homes to me, hotel clerks have helped keep me safe, fellow travelers have helped me shovel out my car, change a tire, charge my phone, make it safely home at the end of the night.” – @rebeccaloebe

Social media is “exposing” our mindset

I’ve talked a lot before about how social media isn’t changing us. It’s exposing us.

Social media platforms don’t show you random content that you don’t want to consume. They don’t push negativity on anyone.

They just show you content that you (or people similar to you) respond to — either through its algorithm, or the topics / people you’ve decided to follow. If you don’t like the content you’re seeing on social media, it would be really valuable to take a closer look at your own consumption behavior – both online and offline.

Forget about social media for a second. Ask yourself… are you looking for positivity or negativity in the “real world”? Do you notice the random acts of kindness that happen around you? Do you believe “nice guys finish last“? Do you notice people being nice to each other at work, or do you mainly notice people tearing each other down? Do you notice people giving to one another without expectation, owning their truths, and being kind?

Social media platforms just give us a new “medium” to act out the same old behaviors that we acted out before – and in my point of view, they’re being unfairly demonized for negative effects in society.

In most cases, they “feed” us the sort of things that we already want to consume.

In closing… here’s my challenge to you:

Spend the next 24 hours looking for “the good.” Look for the kindness, positivity, and empathy. Look at the world “glass half full.”

Just 24 hours of looking for the good could change your life forever once you see what starts happening to your mindset.

If you’ll commit to this, tweet me @GaryVee with the hashtag #GaryVeePositivityChallenge and share something positive that happened in your day

7 Important Ideas for First Time Managers in 2019

Many first time managers face significant challenges as they go from a place as someone who “executes” to someone who’s responsible for a team.

Here are some tips to remember if you’re transitioning to a management role for the first time:

1. Understand that you work for your employees, they don’t work for you

This one is hard for a lot of leaders to understand.

Most new managers think that becoming a manager is the “graduation.” Truth is, it’s the reverse.

Leaders work for their employees.

That means you have to understand what your employees want at a deep level. You have to be constantly adapting to their needs and what they want from the organization.

For example, one of my employees might want higher pay when he’s 24. But maybe he falls in love at 28 and decides he wants to spend more time with his family. Another might be more interested in a fancy title. Another might want to get access to me and build a relationship. Another might want to go to one of our international offices and work there.

There are a million different variables, and it’s on you as a leader to adjust to reality as it changes.

When you go from being someone who “executes” to someone who’s managing a team, you go from trading on IQ to trading on EQ. You go from doing the actual work to listening to employees, catering to what they want, taking blame, and being the bigger person.

The best managers are actually the best mentors.

2. Lead with empathy and kindness

Empathy and kindness are two massively underrated qualities when it comes to leading a team. They’re not qualities that most people would think makes a good leader, but I believe in them so much.

I genuinely believe that the best leadership qualities are maternal, not paternal. It’s a lot more appropriate and helpful to have a caring, empathetic, understanding personality when you’re a leader than something stern, paternal, or aggressive.

A lot of people overlook the idea that showing emotion is important.

Even if you already think of yourself as an empathetic or kind person, becoming a manager will change how you practically apply that empathy.

A lot of this just comes down to self-esteem. If you’re not secure in yourself, you’re not going to feel as comfortable being kind, positive, and empathetic to other people. It won’t come as natural to build someone up (instead of tear them down). It’s why so many leaders lead with aggressive, mean personalities. Many of them are just insecure on the inside and they project that insecurity on their understudies.

At VaynerMedia, you can’t lead with ego. We suffocate that out. People who lead with negativity and ego get fired really quickly.

3. To Build Culture, Focus on Firing

When I hire, I do look for certain qualities.

For example… emotional intelligence matters above everything else. Then, I care about the actual tangible skills candidates have.

It’s not even close. If someone’s a jerk, I won’t hire them – even if their numbers are phenomenal. It’s similar to sports — a team that sticks together will end up beating a team of superstars that were put together for one season (over the long term).

Another big piece of advice I give is hiring people that complement your strengths. If you’re a visionary type of person, hire someone who is obsessed with excel and freaks out if you’re a minute late. Hire someone who loves details.

A lot of leaders get “caught” because they hire friends that are similar to them, but aren’t what they actually need.



But ultimately, to maintain great culture within your team, you have to do one thing:

Focus on firing.

In the early days of VaynerMedia I would hire people real easily — but I would fire quickly if and when I realized they weren’t a good fit on my team. It didn’t matter to me how great they were on paper or how talented they were — if they didn’t play well with the other people on the team, they were out.

If you don’t cut that “cancer” out quickly, your team will crumble long term.

4. Being nice is ROI positive

Truth is, you could have the greatest HR tools and software of all time to “monitor” how your employees are doing – but if you don’t actually care about your people at a deep level, you will lose. None of those tools are going to do anything.

As a leader, it’s my job to give my employees 51% of the value in the relationship.

But I’m not Mother Teresa. It’s just practical.

If you’re using negativity as a way to extract value from employees or people on your team, they’ll build resentment towards you and it’ll kill your culture long term.

I want to create a conversation around the practicality of positivity, kindness, and empathy within my organization. I’m not just saying it to be ideological — instilling those characteristics and traits as part of your culture has significant long term impact for your business. At VaynerMedia, Claude Silver, our “Chief Heart Officer”, is number two in the org chart at our company.

And if there’s ever a debate on what’s good for our employees vs what’s good for our bottom line, she’ll win that debate nine times out of ten.

Nice guys always win in the end.

5. Say “Yes” to Everything

As a leader, I’m very “yes” minded. I say “yes” to virtually everything.

I say “yes” to everything because I look at business as a net-net game.

Let’s say I say “yes” to 12 things, and 7 succeed. On one side, I won 7 times. On the other side, I have to deal with failures — including trying to make up for them because I have may have let people down directly or indirectly through those losses.

Even if it breaks down into those two categories, I will still take the 7 wins that resulted from saying “yes” to everything rather than just trying to do 2 or 3 with the goal of “getting them right.”

6. Give Trust Easily

I give trust a lot easier than most CEOs would.

I think it’s just smart. It’s offense.

The reason most people don’t give trust is because they fear losses. They’re afraid of an employee messing up, failing, or creating short term losses in business. But the truth is, at some point, you have to let your kid swim. You have to let your kid swing the bat.

And for me, I’d rather do that sooner than later.

Too many managers put restrictions around their employees, and then lift those restrictions as employees prove themselves. I’d rather give my employees unlimited trust in the beginning, and then slowly take that trust away if and when they do something to do lose it. That’s what helps me move fast.

Giving trust also minimizes the risk of micromanagement. When people who are amazing at execution move into a management role, they tend to still be in that “execution” mindset which leads them to be stuck doing other people’s work instead of focusing on managing the team.

But the problem is, most managers are either 1) afraid of short term losses that come with giving trust, or 2) they’re afraid of potentially allowing their understudies to be better than them.

7. Communicate with underperforming employees

There are different types of employees that you’ll have to deal with as a manager — underperforming employees that have strong talent, hardworking employees that aren’t talented, and more.

The way I deal with them is strong communication.

When you have the luxury of being the “judge and the jury” as a manager, the pressure and the onus is on you. If there are employees at VaynerMedia that are highly talented but underperforming, it’s my fault for not creating the infrastructure for them to shine.

Maybe their bosses aren’t “clicking” with them and that’s making them feel demotivated. Maybe they’re just in the wrong department. Maybe we haven’t asked the right questions when it comes to the interests they have.

If you have an employee that’s talented but underperforming, sit down with them in a meeting and ask them:

“Hey Rick, I noticed you have talent oozing out of your eyes but you’re not delivering on the hustle – and that’s an important variable here. What am I doing wrong? What’s the company doing wrong? How can we help you succeed?” 

Unfortunately, most managers have conversations that go like “Rick, you’re being lazy. Step it up.” 

When you’re a leader, you have to put the onus on you. You’re the one creating the rules of the game.

If you don’t like how it’s played, change the rules.

 

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