Gary Vaynerchuk's Blog, page 38

The Best Advice to Anyone About to Start Their First Job

Listen, many of you reading this are just leaving school, getting ready to graduate, have just entered or are preparing to enter your first big job. You may be working at a big media company like VaynerMedia or a small startup with a lot less employees. Either way, I’ve got some advice to help you navigate this transition. I know it feels like “the world is watching” and your parents, friends, teachers, classmates and colleagues are “setting expectations” for what it looks like to succeed. From the hundreds, if not thousands of interactions I’ve have with individuals that are 16-25 in the exact same position, here’s what I have historically seen people get caught up with and where I think I can help.

My perspective is nuanced because I’ve been there and done that. I have 25+ years of real operating experience which has instilled a level of understanding and a level of patience that so many of you need. I see the distress and the insecurities of those who are just starting and don’t know what to do. Many of you, if not all of you, are caught up in the game of “when will it happen?” .. “How will I “get there?” and “how do I find my passion” or fulfill my potential? You’re in a position where things are changing and you have to step outside of your comfort zone. Maybe you were successful in your last city, school, sports team, friend group, neighborhood or previous environment and your deep insecurities about “proving yourself” have you on edge. Good news, it starts and stops with your ability to get rid of those unnecessary expectations.

Get Rid of Expectations For Yourself or Anyone Else

The #1 way to make yourself happy is to get rid of expectations for yourself and others. If you are just graduating college or starting a new job, you need to let go and live in the moment. The fact that you are stressed out about “making it” at 19, 23 or 27 needs to stop. You’re entering a totally different chapter and a radically new environment where your work-life balance, identity, and day-to-day actions are going to change. No one’s first job or starting position has even the slightest indication of future success. Many of the companies you go to work for today, literally won’t be around by the time you’re 50. Your life and career will change a lot. Your passion, interests, talents, and abilities will change a lot. Your status, insecurities, income, friends, and colleagues will most likely change a lot. You have to remember that my first job was bagging ice for $2 an hour in the basement of Wine Library. The prospect of me achieving “great success” didn’t look so firm back then but boy have things changed. It brings me back to the philosophy of “Close Your Eyes Until Your 29” a plea to everyone making this transition to let go, work hard, and live every single moment and experience day-by-day before they even begin to evaluate what they want to do or what their “legacy” will be when they grow old.

Having zero expectation for others is GREAT! I never assume that someone will reciprocate & come through for me. https://t.co/SrTSGNCjXw

— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) October 23, 2013

Handle Your Tasks and Learnings Day By Day

The biggest mistake I see young people make is that they get caught up in the details of how they are actually providing value to a firm. Too many people are romantic about having to “do this” or only “doing that” but the reality is your actual job is going to be a different story. If you are joining a company or a new team within your existing company you have to be comfortable with the chaos of change. On a day-to-day you are going to have new tasks, new projects, new conversations, new meetings, new calls, new clients, new deliverables and more. The company will change, the team will change, your priorities will change, your deliverables will change, your boss’s motivation and outlook will change and you too will have to change. This is why it’s so important that you learn to love the process by living in dirt and obsessing over the details. On a daily basis, you have to go all-in on the task at hand while staying patient in the macro and evaluating your life in ten year terms. Be open to new opportunities and remember to try, taste, test and learn. There’s absolutely no way for you to “find your passion” especially within the context of “work” if you don’t try a vast array of things. Go intern for an executive or spend time after-hours talking with or trying to help the CFO. Get lunch with a project manager or spend a day working on Facebook Ads. Even in your own department you will have to learn to love change and be comfortable with the fact that what you do today, won’t necessarily be what you do tomorrow. Accept it, embrace it, enjoy it, and learn from it.

. Macro – Micro – Everyday I see 100’s of people having the game backwards. People are lazy and passive daily but stress and are antsy yearly, while the way to do it is to be fast and antsy daily and patient yearly. – Understand this complicated and unnatural concept and starting achieving! –

A post shared by Gary Vay-Ner-Chuk (@garyvee) on Jan 3, 2018 at 6:19am PST

Respect the Fact that Your Previous Success Doesn’t Map To Your Current Environment

You have to understand that school is not the same as a “professional career.” Your success in the traditional high-school or college system doesn’t map to your abilities and actions at work. Just because you were the captain of your lacrosse team, doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be a good manager, mentor or leader of a team in a traditional work environment. Your good grades and ability to write research papers or do “extra credit” in class has very little to do with your ability to produce the deliverables a company might desire. Obviously the principles of showing up on time, learning and developing new skills, completing assignments and staying on track still apply, but the environment, energy, execution, and atmosphere definitely change. You can only map the blueprint of school being a “learning ground” for how to take direction and complete assignments in the corporate world. It’s not that your success in school is irrelevant but more so the fact that it is separate and independent from your success at work. You have to realize that college or high school or the coding bootcamp you did last summer or the internship you just had is an independent experience and doesn’t map to your current situation. You have to approach each transition, chapter and opportunity as something completely new with its own set of rules, responsibilities and dynamics at play. Once you understand this and live in the moment, you will win. Once you can let go of your own insecurities and the high-horse of your so-called “accomplishments” in a school environment, you can finally see things clearly and evaluate the reality of your role and responsibility.

Act in the moment and accomplish the tasks at hand. You have to operate without preconceived notions of success or expectation in order to succeed. You have to take things day-by-day and be utterly unromantic to work and deliverables expected of you. You have to be open to change and be willing to try as many things as humanly possible over a 10 year period before you can think about your “passion” or “purpose” in life. You have to be willing to backup your ambition with real action and not let your ego get ahead of the results. You have to be willing to learn and willing to do whatever it takes for you to succeed. And most of all, you have to deploy patience and realize that it doesn’t happen overnight. This process is years in the making and you have time.

And that’s ok! And in fact it’s appropriate, have you even quantified the audacity of your ambition. – Do you know how hard it is to build a 1m profitable business? – Do you understand how young 44 years old is let alone 28? – Do you get that all great things take time and nobody cares about the struggle it takes to get to greatness?

A post shared by Gary Vay-Ner-Chuk (@garyvee) on Nov 29, 2017 at 12:49pm PST

Here’s an interview with an employee at VaynerMedia who inspired this article:

Thanks for reading 

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The post The Best Advice to Anyone About to Start Their First Job appeared first on GaryVaynerchuk.com.

Gary Vaynerchuk on ABC Real Biz with Rebecca Jarvis | 2018

The post Gary Vaynerchuk on ABC Real Biz with Rebecca Jarvis | 2018 appeared first on GaryVaynerchuk.com.

3 Ways To Start Accomplishing Your Goals

If you want to start accomplishing your goals you need to understand that your reputation, a.k.a your “personal brand,” is what you trade from in your personal and professional life.

As I take a moment to reflect, and think about how my profile has expanded dramatically on Instagram, YouTube and iTunes through my Podcast and Playlist over the last 15 months, I have begun to see my audience and the attention that I have on social media shifting significantly younger.

As I realize that I am now impacting more 12-22 year-olds through the content that I produce, I am well aware that there’s a real opportunity to lay the foundation and set the blueprint on things like positivity, empathy, kindness, hard work, gratitude and more. My hope is to use the attention I have been gifted with to try to break through to at least one person on every single post, every single day for the rest of my life. That’s what I want. Hopefully, that will be my legacy.

As I continue to study consumer attention and try to reverse engineer what people care about in culture and why, I have started to notice an enormous amount of stress, anxiety, and misunderstanding for a lot of these 15 to 25-year-olds as they try to navigate the next chapter of their lives. On a phone call to a member of #FirstinLine I was able to create and articulate some of my points of view on specific pillars I think that everyone should be thinking more about when it comes to considering the traditional pathways to “success.”

As most people’s stress and anxiety in life stems from where they will potentially work or spend the majority of their adult life, trying to pay the bills and support themselves or their family, a lot of this advice centers around the traditional pathways of “getting a job.” Obviously, there are a million ways you could go about doing that beyond the standard 9-5 route but for many this is still a concern.

For those of you that might not know, I’ve written two books, Crush It and Crushing It!, that give you an in-depth blueprint for alternatives to the corporate path.In this article, I am not talking about the endless ways you can pursue your passions but more so the three pathways I currently see that can set you on the right track.

1. Why You Should Go to School

When a lot of people think about being “successful” or achieving a major milestone in their life, they think about graduating from school.

This is by far the easiest one for everybody to understand, and probably the one my blog and others that read this will resonate with the most. I am more than confident that there’s a high percentage of my over-40-year-old crowd that will accept it, agree with it, believe it is the best, if not the only way to succeed, and I get that. I have a ton of empathy for the brand promotion of a top-tier college degree.

I still think a college degree has utility and purpose in a pre-2017 work-force and can definitely help sort you or validate you from a societal or historical point of view. That’s why so many of you still consider it the right move.

However, I would be remiss not to mention the topic of conversation around college debt and the fact that many employers, VaynerMedia included, aren’t over-indexing against where our employees, or potential employees, went to school.

School is certainly one path, but in a 2018 world, it’s certainly not the only one.

And look, I get it. For so long a college degree has been this symbol, and medal of some kind which serves as a line item on your resume and your LinkedIn profile that can bring instant credibility to your know-how and experience. It funnels you into a network and it gives you a common shared experience with other employers or employees and alumni who have went through the same thing. I for one, was a D and F student and chose option 3 for myself, which you will read about in a moment as a way to succeed. I did not go to a top tier school, and I got terrible grades, yet I still turned out okay.

So my point is that there are definitely other ways, and if you can’t get into a good school, or you don’t want to go to college, you shouldn’t feel bad about that decision. Because of the internet, there is plenty of opportunity and access to the information you need to help you succeed.

2. How To Get A Job With or Without a College Degree

Number two, as a new way of considering how you might enter the workforce, is this idea of working for someone you admire or want to be like, in any capacity for as little money as you possibly can.

One concept that has really emerged over the last five years is the question to myself that “If I had to do it all over again, what would I do differently?”

Obviously, I had the fortune, and the ability to go and work for and build my family business for my parents, but I also felt the gratitude and excitement to do so. In hindsight, the only option that I would have even considered besides what I did was if I would’ve gone and worked for some of the top entrepreneurs in the world at the time, even if it meant I had to be poor and get a job at midnight on the side to help support that lifestyle.

I think a lot of the time when I talk about providing value or working for somebody who you want to be one day, people often say, “Well, Gary… You can afford it.” But there are many many people in the world that are living on $10 or $12 or $15 an hour. I would do anything to work for Oprah Winfrey or Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or Jack Welch at a low wage because I know the upside, the leverage, and the education from doing so would be enormous.

Not to mention that, unlike in 1998 when the only side-hustle you could have had to be done in person like shoveling snow, shining shoes, getting coffee, etc., today, you can have a side-hustle selling knick-knacks online. All of the opportunity is literally right there on your phone and your fingertips. If you just went on Craigslist and researched the free section, and sold things or flipped them on ebay, Amazon or Facebook Marketplace, you could very well make an extra $300 week from your iPhone or pc. You’d have to put in the work, but it’s definitely possible.

How to ACTUALLY Make Money for Free | The Craigslist "Free" Section

This video will literally change your life.

6 Reminders That Happiness is a Choice

To me, life is pretty simple. There’s things you can control and others you can’t. Everything boils down to your actions and your mindset but there’s just far too many of you continuously caught up that just don’t see it that way.

This is my attempt to clear things up once and for all.

People’s Opinions:

Just don’t matter.

Most people get caught up in other people’s opinions because growing up that’s all they knew. They either had parents who made them insecure, were bullied in school, or had a girlfriend or boyfriend who instilled that venom in them. Me? I don’t give a shit. No one’s bias or uncontextualized thoughts are going to bring me down. Nobody can stop me from going where I want to go and so as long as I know my intentions are good and pure, you can keep those opinions to yourself.

Fuck what anybody else thinks. You’ve got one life. Are you really going to allow someone else, who likely has far more insecurities than you, bring you down from a stupid comment they made on social? I didn’t think so. So please stop dwelling on what others have to say. Nobody cares. This is your life. Do something about it.

. Speed kills in sports and in business. I prefer patience but that’s on the micro, overall, but on a daily basis, if you want it bad, you need to go hard. Make sure your actions match your ambition. – I get way too many DM’s that have people questioning, debating, pondering, contemplating, striving for some perfection that isn’t real. – Please stop using excuses to not work. Put in thoughtful work and be surprise with the outcomes.

A post shared by Gary Vay-Ner-Chuk (@garyvee) on Mar 21, 2018 at 7:18am PDT

Expectations:

Zero.

Nothing I do for anybody else comes with strings attached. I do what I do because selfishly, it makes me feel good. But do I expect anyone to return the favor? Never. I fully understand that anything I want in this world is on me. Period. The second you start relying on others to deliver what you want, you lose. This is on you, my friends. Live a life with zero expectations and you’ll never get hurt. Live a life knowing that your happiness and success are fully reliant on your actions and mindset, and you will win. Got it?

Sign up today? https://t.co/gzHWpEWaHb pic.twitter.com/7F6tVsBC5w

— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) March 16, 2018

Perspective:

No matter how bad you think you have it, there’s somebody that has it far worse. And of course, there’s people in this world that are going through some horrific shit, but if you’re reading this article right now, I’m almost certain you don’t fall into that category, so please stop complaining. If you’re truly unhappy, then figure it the fuck out. Remove money from the equation and understand what makes you tick. Go all in on that and unlock the happiness you seek. Take advantage of all the resources we have out our disposal and put in the fucking work to make something happen. You have to be practical and you have to work your ass off to get there, but if it’s going to make you truly happy, then why would you consider anything else?

Hard Work:

The only thing we can control.

You may not be the smartest, the fastest, or the most well-rounded, but you have the same hours in the day as anybody else. You really want it that bad? Then you’ll put in the hours to get there. And if for whatever reason you don’t get what you initially set out to get, I promise you will still be better off for it. You’ll either stumble on something new that you didn’t initially think of, or, you’ll realize that what you originally wanted wasn’t actually what was going to make you happy. But there’s only one way to find out. WORK.

. So much envy in the system, I am stunned with people’s ability to waste amazing energy on shit that has nothing to do with them. Someone else’s winnings and happiness has nothing to do with you, there is an abundance of joy, wealth and prosperity out there and no one and I mean no one is “taking yours” – Envy is an excuse to not do, not work, not bleed, not grind. – Lets use this Tuesday to no longer deploy envy and to start focusing on the work you need to put in to get what you want. – Tag a Friend in Europe. – #garyvee #entrepreneur #mindsetiseverything #motivation

A post shared by Gary Vay-Ner-Chuk (@garyvee) on Mar 20, 2018 at 2:58am PDT

Gratitude:

Be grateful. You’re here. It’s another day.

All the information in the world is at your fingertips. You want to learn something new? Cool. Go do it. You want to reach out to that person you admire? Great. Go hit them up directly. You want to escape from your reality and be entertained. Have at it. We’re living through the greatest era of all time and for whatever reason, there’s just far too many of you wasting time and complaining with your head down.

You know why I’m so grateful? Because I understand my history. I know what the generations before me went through and I fully understand how good we have it today. My grandparents were thrown in jail because they were Jewish men in Soviet Russia. And you think that you have it bad? Let’s get serious.

I get to wake up every day and do exactly what I love because I leverage the tools we’re all lucky enough to have in order to get there. I’m taking full advantage of this time we have and so many of you are acting like you have three lives to live.

Look, you have the same playing field that I do. You just have to understand yourself and your ambitions and put in the work to get to where you want to be. It’s that simple.

Simple late late night thought

A post shared by Gary Vay-Ner-Chuk (@garyvee) on Aug 15, 2017 at 10:40pm PDT

Positivity:

The greatest form of currency we have. If you understand everything I mentioned above then there’s no reason not to be positive, right? The power is in your hands. And you know what happens when you’re positive? It begins to rub off on those around you and suddenly your world gets that much better. Everybody has ‘something’ so before you judge or spew hate, realize that that we’re all living the same life, just in different bodies. We’re all the same, doing our best to navigate the world that we’ve been thrown into. And so, if there’s one thing I can entirely get rid of, it’s the negativity that so many of us default to. It’s only a reflection of you and your inner turmoil, so if you really want to leave a mark on this world, think before you leave that negative comment or talk behind that person’s back. Spread the love because karma is fucking practical. Do good and good will come back to you. Make positivity louder and begin to see the results.

In case you didn’t know. – People are confused, they count in the short term, mark my words, negative vibes and pulling people down is how you can sometimes be leading at half time but I promise you those motherfuckers get blown out in the second half. – TAG 2 POSITIVE PEOPLE YOU ADMIRE

A post shared by Gary Vay-Ner-Chuk (@garyvee) on Nov 24, 2017 at 5:13pm PST

If you’ve read this far, thank you for your attention. It goes without saying that it means the absolute world to me. I hope this piece helped you in even the slightest bit and if it did, please share with a friend that could also benefit from this.

Thanks for reading 

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The post 6 Reminders That Happiness is a Choice appeared first on GaryVaynerchuk.com.

Announcing VaynerMentors: VaynerMedia’s Newest Offering to Grow and Scale Your Business

At VaynerMedia, we have worked incredibly hard to build world class proficiency in the areas of creative production, paid media, influencer marketing, emerging technology, IoT and voice, e-commerce, personal branding, and SMB advertising, alongside our work for some of the biggest brands and businesses in the world.

Although our primary revenue is from long-term partnerships with companies like PepsiCo, GE, Mondelez, ABinBev, Chase, Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Diageo and Toyota, myself and my senior team knew that we could bridge the gap by creating another unique offering for those looking to get involved.

That’s why we’re announcing VaynerMentors, VaynerMedia’s premium consulting service focused on helping $3M-$25M businesses unlock meaningful growth and scale your company. Think McKinsey meets BlackStone. You will gain access to everything you need from me and my executive team.

Unlike private equity, we do not take an equity position in your business.  

We begin the collaboration with an in-person strategy session at VaynerMedia, where my team and I will dissect and discuss your business objectives, strengths, weaknesses, and potential strategy or business model improvements to succeed.

From there we’ll do a complete topline audit of your business model, organization, product, distribution, sales, marketing, advertising, paid media, creative, and operations to analyze every imaginable unlock to help you scale and grow.

Within the VaynerMentors program, we’ll select an exclusive group of businesses and brands to invest our experience and network to unlock meaningful growth in the businesses we most believe in.

VaynerMentors’ program offers the following 3 stages of service.

GROWTH PLAN

We’ll do a deep dive into your business and leverage our team of elite practitioners to  identify GPRs (Growth Resistance Points) and work on defining ways to help break through barriers and unlock scale with speed.

Sharpen your business model and strategy
Identify potential growth hacks
Focus your brand activities on what matters (i.e. reverse engineering the attention of your end consumer)
Add selective help on execution



NETWORK EFFECT

In stage 2 of VaynerMentors process, we focus on the network effect as you plug your small or medium sized business into our rolodex of fortune 500 companies, brands, and executives that can help scale. Here, we get you into a “private club” by tapping into our network and giving you access to key decision-makers.

We help you identify vendors (e.g. creative, packaging, ecom, 3PL, smart tech, media, SEO / SEM, analytics, CRM)
We help you get access to key decision makers (e.g. retailers, investors, etc)
We help you identify and, in some cases, get access to influencers (to advertise and market your product, service, or business)

VaynerMentors approach is all about making sure you get into the execution mode and start bringing the Growth Plan to life. We are here when you need us when emergencies strike…because they do. For the 3 months following the delivery of the Growth Plan we’ll offer:

THE CEO HOTLINE

Which includes:

Weekly 1-hour consultations on topics of your choice
Hotline for emergency questions
Access to subject matter experts

With this program you will be leveraging countless years of industry experience that is going to put you ahead of the competition by unlocking meaningful growth and insights to win.

If this sounds like the perfect program for you or your business, please fill out the form and tell us more about your company and needs.  As you guys might know, change is the only constant in the business world and if you’re not ready and willing to adapt, you will lose. I’m building this program because I know I finally have the right team in place to deliver the results that you and your business deserve. I can’t wait to see how we can partner, help and grow.

The post Announcing VaynerMentors: VaynerMedia’s Newest Offering to Grow and Scale Your Business appeared first on GaryVaynerchuk.com.

How to Sell

If you want to learn how to sell, how to win in business, and how to get new customers, this article is for you. 

How To Sell in 2018

Sales, sales, sales.

It’s something I don’t talk about enough, but it is absolutely the foundation of my career. I’m challenging myself to go deeper in 2018, because it is 1000% the bedrock of business. And if you don’t understand that, you will lose.

When I think about making something happen in the world, i.e selling something, getting a donation, getting voted for in an election, whatever the “transaction” is, I always break down my strategy into sales and marketing. Obviously, and for anyone reading this, you know that I spend an enormous amount of time talking about brand, the importance of marketing, awareness and gathering attention which sometimes distracts you from my foundation in sales. Marketing and branding is only one part of the equation. Ultimately you need to facilitate transactions if you want to stay in the game.  Numbers don’t lie and sales is absolutely the foundation of your business. There is simply no other way.

So there’s a few tried and true strategies, tactics, learnings and interesting parallels about “how to sell” that I want to share with you. I have been a salesman my whole life, from operating lemonade stands to selling baseball cards, wine and multi-million dollar scopes at VaynerMedia. I can safely say that over the last 35 years I have seen an enormous amount

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!

 

The post POST 4DS: How VaynerMedia Helped a Big Business Make Simple Tweaks For Huge Results appeared first on GaryVaynerchuk.com.

And? What’s The Alternative?

I’m super aware that this will probably be one of shortest blog posts I ever create, but it also might be one of the most impactful.

Look, this is real shit. I’m not saying these are small things. These are the hardest things in life.

Here’s my question. Life is about alternatives. You either dwell on your circumstances for the rest of your days and decide the reason you weren’t successful is because you grew in a bad neighborhood, or your parents had money and you we’re too soft to work, or your friends were ahead of you, or you didn’t go to the best school, get the best internship, or have the most supportive family or friends. 

But here’s the big truth and the decision you have to make. What the fuck are you gonna do about it? I wrote this post because I want you to default into saying “And?”

You have to understand that there is no alternative. You have to put that chip on your shoulder and use it to get more motivated to go harder. You either dwell, or you use “And?” to realize everyone’s got shit that they have to overcome. Read this 8x if you have to. I really want you to win. 

I can’t Vlog because I don’t have a camera and don’t have money to get one pic.twitter.com/ydVr8r9iWj

— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) February 18, 2018

My boss is holding me back pic.twitter.com/5KCNjucAIJ

— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) February 18, 2018

That account gets so many views but their videos suck, mine are so much better … pic.twitter.com/Dszq497SmN

— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) February 18, 2018

My boyfriend doesn’t support my entrepreneurship pic.twitter.com/fiXp9jjGE7

— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) February 18, 2018

I have too much debt pic.twitter.com/dWjQSvHfFO

— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) February 18, 2018

My parents tricked me and brainwashed me into thinking school was most Important pic.twitter.com/QBJLozfYnH

— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) February 18, 2018

They had a internship that helped them get ahead pic.twitter.com/lMakDILi2z

— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) February 18, 2018

They went to a better school pic.twitter.com/XCa2ZjXAol

— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) February 18, 2018

They had more money then me to start pic.twitter.com/nd94JFwosf

— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) February 18, 2018

They changed the Instagram algorithm pic.twitter.com/06QbtuPBon

— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) February 18, 2018

My 3 book stores were thriving until amazon … pic.twitter.com/MGyA7F6Iew

— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) February 18, 2018

I was crushing it with my black car company and all of a sudden Uber came out pic.twitter.com/lBCnXaa1Nv

— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) February 18, 2018

I was the oldest and had all the responsibilities for the younger siblings pic.twitter.com/wozeVs4fO0

— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) February 18, 2018

My older brother was a dick! pic.twitter.com/v6XkmlKMbX

— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) February 18, 2018

I came from such a rich area no one learned to be hungry pic.twitter.com/fl7FJb2hpN

— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) February 18, 2018

I came from a bad neighborhood pic.twitter.com/L6Euknn5rF

— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) February 18, 2018

I had so much money my parents didn’t teach me to “get at it” pic.twitter.com/9GoI0VhD7A

— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) February 18, 2018

I didn’t come from money … pic.twitter.com/epOY5mFLts

— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) February 18, 2018

Forget the tweet storm … what about this dude! pic.twitter.com/ZfPED2hdnt

— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) February 18, 2018

pic.twitter.com/OuYm2O6e6h

— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) February 17, 2018

Get into the mindset of “And? .. Ask yourself, “What’s the alternative?”

I love you all.

Thanks for reading.

Gary.

The post And? What’s The Alternative? appeared first on GaryVaynerchuk.com.

How to Start a Podcast

Every influencer and individual interested in producing content, building a brand, starting or growing a business, selling a product, service, or idea should learn how to start a podcast on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Sticher, iHeart Radio, Google Play, and any other platform offering the real estate. It’s a massively important space that I constantly get asked about so I decided it was time to put this article out.

I have been preaching the power of podcasts and voice technology for the last 18-24 months. Podcasts and audio-first consumption are clearly exploding, and they’re one of the best ways to get started creating content for your business, product, service or brand. I recently wrote an article on “The Rise of Audio and Voice” that you can read to understand my $.02

As multitasking culture continues to grow, podcasts take on a more important role in our everyday life. We all care about our time and if there’s a way to save some, we’ll do it. Just like music or audiobooks, podcasts can be consumed while doing laundry, going to the gym, washing the dishes, or just relaxing. They’re a great way to learn something new, catch up on news, or be entertained.

I get dozens of emails each week asking me how I produce the GaryVee Audio Experience, my Alexa Skills, and my newest addition #podSessions which is a new show made directly for my audio experience. I thought I would have my audio engineer Seth give you his POV and the knowledge he has gained since producing my podcast firsthand. There’s no one better to explain how to start a podcast than him so I hope you enjoy

The Show That Started It All

Guys .. This is a very special day for me. It’s the 12 year (!!!) anniversary of when I first began putting out content through my long-form video series Wine LibraryTV. It’s an important day for me to reflect and celebrate as it cemented so many of the core principles I still hold true today. First and foremost, I am not an overnight success