Gary Vaynerchuk's Blog, page 45

Don’t Be Afraid to Take Your Next Bite

It’s become so obvious to me that experience is the key…

You have to taste the BERRIES. There is such an incredible conversation waiting to happen around breaking outside of your comfort zone and breaking down the boundaries that are holding you back. So many of you have drawn a line in the sand as to what you can and cannot do. But the truth is, you don’t really know. You haven’t tasted the berries. You haven’t had the experience.

So many people in today’s world are shaming social media, and marketing and advertising and everything else. The problem is they have never tried it. I often find that the people who are most against pushing the envelope, are the same ones who would rather sit on the sideline and debate about why it won’t work. None of you have actually done it. So how do you know?

The greatest metaphor I can imagine is about finding a way to taste the fruit. You have to try it to know the truth. Don’t tell me Instagram ads don’t work if you’ve never deployed a single dollar toward a campaign. Don’t tell me you can’t be a blogger if you’ve never written a single post. Don’t tell me you don’t like blueberries if you haven’t tried them yet!!

So many of you are limiting your horizons. It’s just not fair to you or the world. I want this post to be about breaking barriers. About finding what matters and trying something NEW. If you have already drawn a line in the sand as to what you “CAN” and “CAN’T” do.. I think you’ve lost.

You need to try it first. You need to taste the berries. The single best piece of advice I can give to a young person starting out is just to experience as much as you can. Experience being an artist, or a first time entrepreneur, or writing a blog or playing baseball or selling cards. TRY IT. Go out and see the real world. There is so much opportunity for you to find something cool.

You can not limit your experiences or your possibilities. It’s the biggest mistake you can possibly make and it’s the reason I’ve been able to win. I don’t consider myself a person in wine, or a marketer, or a speaker. I’m an entrepreneur and I’m open to change. In 10 years I probably won’t be running VaynerMedia. I’ll be doing something else and starting something new.

Advertising is the blackberry and wine is the blueberry.. I’m looking for the raspberry and the strawberry and the cranberry next. Maybe I’ve never tried the cranberry, and maybe it will be sour to the taste. But until you take the first bite, you are never going to know. It’s the only way to find out. When you’re the first explorer off the ship, you have to taste the berries and hope they’re not poisonous!

You have only one life, don’t be afraid to take you’re next bite 

How Successful People Think

Listen, this is such a fascinating conversation for me because I think I have real perspective. Some of the greatest entrepreneurs in the world didn’t necessarily start out with a grand vision. They started with an idea and an action. Bezos didn’t set out to build Amazon, he started by selling books online. Zuckerberg didn’t set out at 18 to build Facebook. He built a tool for his college that later became the thing. It was idea + action.. Constant iteration and execution. It was reacting to the market and tripling down on success. The vision came after.

So for me, I always knew that I was going to be big. At 6 years old, selling lemonade I knew I had something special. I was making thousands of dollars every weekend selling baseball cards and toys and items from garage sales before I even got to college. By 18 and 19 and 20 I had very clear picture that my business success would be enormous.

When I was 14 or 15 I realized that I was never going to be the quarterback for the New York Jets. Instead I was going to buy them, and so that was my vision.

That was my big north star.

So look, whether you’re an entrepreneur or an artist or someone who wants to be a number 2 or number 27 or number 47, I think the reality is exposed. For me, at a macro, it’s been one long game of self awareness. The more I understand myself, the more I try to put myself in a position to succeed. Coming out of school, being 22 years old, I thought of myself as a great salesman. I didn’t necessarily have the vision of starting VaynerMedia and building the best digital agency I could. I just knew I could sell and that it was going to be big.

I didn’t really think about emotional intelligence. That word had never come out of my mouth. I didn’t think about “operations.” I didn’t think about “leadership.” I didn’t think about “content creation.” I thought I could sell. Right?

So over the last 20 years I’ve gotten to know myself better and one thing that happens is success compounds on itself, and as you gain more confidence, you continually gain more momentum.

Doing was always my best strategy. I built my vision through taking action. One day at a time. The hard work, the hustle and the grind.

So if there’s anything I can instill through this article it’s not that vision is somehow bad or irrelevant but that it’s actually OKAY if you aren’t starting from that place. You can always execute and figure things out later. I think so many of you are crippled by “I don’t have the right idea” or “I don’t know where I want to end up” but the truth is, it doesn’t really matter. Vision always builds by taking action. One of my favorite examples I like to use is Sam Walton, who started Walmart at 44. It just goes to show that you can literally suck shit, do nothing for the next 15 years.. NOTHING and then build the thing that puts you on the map. It’s really that simple.

So the the truth is, my vision was to buy the Jets and my strategy out of school was, “I’m going to work my fucking face off. I’m going to constantly be in motion.”

I am going to constantly do. Which became, great, I’m going to build Wine Library. I’m going to sell more wine. I’m going to be right about trends. I’m going to launch a website. I’m going to try e-commerce. I’m going to open up more stores.

I didn’t know which of these would ultimately work or where it would necessarily lead, but I knew the building blocks of what I was going to try to do.

And now, when I look at it, it seems comical to me, because obviously I am working harder than ever. My days are literally scheduled by the minute. I recently hired a writer named Colin and he can definitely give you the inside scoop. He’s been asking to interview me for this article for weeks and I just didn’t have the extra 10 minutes.

It’s why I do DailyVee… You all see how hectic it actually is. It’s action. I’m in constant motion. Everyday, always, forever. For the most part, and during the traditional work week, I have zero minutes of down time.

All of my strategy came directly from opportunity. It came from action. First It was building the biggest wine store for my family. Then it became, “Oh my god, I understand what people do. Maybe I should be an investor.” That got me into Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley got me into tech and understanding how the world is going to fundamentally change.

Once I understood that, I realized the biggest businesses in the world, were going to get affected. Then I decided that I wanted to disrupt that world. The quickest path of entry, of learning it, was to actually be an agency and do work. To interact with fortune 100 companies and learn by doing.

Do work. Do work. Do work.

That led me to my vision now which was like, oh my god… I can build a communications Death Star, that I can use for the rest of my life. That I can then buy smaller brands and run them through my marketing machine and turn 10M companies into billion dollar companies through brand.

Now, over the last three, four, five years it’s been very clear to me that I’m trying to build this thing, which is the entire macro strategy, but it came from all the actions.

It came through the obsession with continuing to sell. Winning more clients, building my personal brand, creating obnoxious amounts of content, and watching it all grow.

The funny thing is you can’t really decide. You can’t lay out your epic strategy until you are actually in the place to execute. I couldn’t talk about VaynerX until I built a 150M revenue business. It would have been a complete joke.

So that’s where I see the two align. Through action comes vision and through vision comes action. It all just builds.

Most great entrepreneurs, subtly have some greater vision (which for me was to buy the Jets) but I also knew that it wasn’t going to be a straight line. Every 22 year old wants me to tell them exactly what to do, how it’s exactly going to happen, and what they should do. That’s just not life. It’s just not the way it works.

You have to do, then react, then revise, then win.

What I knew was, I had a vision to buy the Jets, but I realized it was going to zig and zag and there was going to be 857 things that were going to help me get there. I was always okay and comfortable in the unknown, which has allowed me to navigate towards success.

It’s the obsession of the unknown and the acceptance of the unknown that allows me to navigate within it.

So the last thing I’ll say is I think that micro strategy is still grossly underrated. Everyone reading this is so worried about their years, while continuing to waste their days. It’s all execution. You have to do. You have to move insanely fast in the micro and be insanely patient in the macro.

I think the key is to know that. You can’t put yourself in a position where you have golden handcuffs. Where you limit yourself to what you can actually do. Where you enter traditional media and you start to do banner ads and then you begin to believe that it’s the only thing you can actually do.

But the key is to understand that things always change, and if you don’t recognize that, you are going to miss what’s next.

My execution today is to run VaynerMedia… In many way that’s my micro strategy… My macro vision is to buy the jets.. So if something tastes different tomorrow I would be happy to change. I’ll drop Vayner overnight if I truly believe there is a 10X opportunity that is going to help me achieve my vision, which is to have the best possible process of trying to and eventually buying the Jets… The good thing is I don’t believe that will happen 

Let’s Collaborate on Instagram with #AskGaryVee

Hey guys 

August

I named this article August and I’ll tell you why. August simply fascinates me. You’ve seen the video but I want to dig deeper into the details. I’ve flipped the script and this is the first time in my career that I’ll actually be taking a break. I’ll be out of office from August 5th to September 5th with no daily vlog.

Because the truth is, I think life changes along the way and you have to adjust to your realities. So in my twenties, when I had no family, August felt like the perfect month to take advantage of the time when people were sleeping. Everyone is on vacation in August which means if I doubled down and tripled down on my hustle I would be ahead of the competition who were usually taking a break.

For me, as my kids get older, it also seems like the perfect month to go all in on family because so many people are checked out. When I first released my video last year I said that you could play it one of two ways. Hardcore hustle or hardcore relaxation. So many people are half pregnant. I don’t care if you want to rest or if you want to work. I just want you to realize the opportunity and go all in.

For me, I grew up in the wine world where you did a lot of business with Europe and in the late 90s and early 2000s I was always confused because August was the time that I got into the zone since I knew everybody was sleeping.

It’s a bigger land grab, because less people are hustling. It’s also the same reason that it’s a great time to go all in on family time because less people are hustling so you’re losing less ground by taking time off. There’s equal opportunity.

The world is kind of checked out in August so you can go either way.

For me, 41-year-old me, working more than ever during the other 11 months of the year.. I have realized that this seems like the appropriate strategy.

Which is why I always say, “My advice, Rick’s advice, Sally’s advice, is only one person’s point of view, you need to read it contextually, you need to be self-aware.”

I would never blindly listen to my own advice and nor do I expect anybody on YouTube, or Medium or Twitter to do so either. I’m just telling you how I do it, by documenting my journey and sharing my actions for what works for me.

My hope is that you might find this interesting, and use at is a barometer to help guide your decisions as well. I’ll be taking my sister to one speech that I’m doing in Boston which is my only “real business commitment” during August but it’s also an opportunity for me to spend more time with her, which gets increasingly difficult because she has two little kids.

Other than that, I’m free.

I’ll still be interfacing with my team and I’ll be planning my strategy for the next 12–24 months at Vayner and with my personal brand.

This month in August is literally more vacation time that I took in the first 13 years of my career. I’m excited and we’ll see how it goes.

But the truth is and why I’m writing this article is to showcase how things change. Things change every day. My advice changes drastically, depending on the circumstance.

It’s impossible to give one piece of advice that appeals to all people. I’m just presenting my POV, which is a snapshot of how I feel at this moment in time.

And let me make this perfectly clear, everything you’re about to see in the video below about the opportunity of August is real. This is the month. And I promise you the DRock’s, and the Andy’s, and the Colin’s, and the Tyler’s (my team members) are going to be hustling hard for our strategy on content, and as a media organization, we’ll be going all in, during this great month of August.

And the funny thing that you people don’t realize is when I’m on vacation, I actually might be working harder 

Why My Door is Always Open

I don’t think people understand that, as a CEO, I’m in the business of solving problems. I need to know what’s going on. The reason I lead with an open door is it is imperative to my success. If I don’t hear from every employee or the one’s that have something to say, then I don’t have a pulse on the way my company works. Whether it’s positive or negative, I need to know.

I think a lot of people either think that I’m too busy or that I don’t want to hear from them,  and the truth is, it’s literally the complete opposite.

Any leader that’s running a healthy organization focused on the long term wants to be able to know what’s happening in the trenches from their people, so they can address it for two reasons.

One, they want to build respect and admiration from the people that are bringing these issues to them and show them the value of inclusive leadership.

And two, on a much more macro level, they need to make sure the company runs in the best way that it possibly can. So I maintain an open door policy, (one that an unfortunately small percentage of my employees take me up on!) that allows me to do both.

If someone has an idea or a complaint or an issue and wants to speak up, the thought of them not having an outlet to do so is unimaginable to me.. It’s a philosophy that has serviced me extremely well my entire career.

I don’t think one can win in business without having the proper teammates and empowering them to play their role. Ideas can come from anywhere but the fact of the matter is you need an offensive line, you need a receiver, you need a quarterback, you need them all and I think any leader that doesn’t recognize that will ultimately not succeed in the long term. Obviously you can have a company that runs for six months and you sell it but over a 10, 20, 40 year period, there is no other strategy that will actually work.

The great thing about having an open door policy is you get to hear a new perspective. You have insights at scale from the finance team, or comms, or paid media, all contributing to the brand. I don’t care if you’re an intern or the CFO, you’re voice matters.

The reason VaynerMedia has a disproportionately low turnover rate among employees is because I execute on this philosophy and make conversation open and accessible to all.

I have never stressed anything more to my employees than the relationships and I’m very proud of the culture I’ve built.

For me, I’ve never even conceived of a winning organization that didn’t disproportionately rely on its people. And that’s how I thought about my businesses. Now what’s ironic about that and the title that I’m using for this article is that I’m changing my open door policy because I’ve run it for the last three or four years and I recognize that too many people are not taking me up on it, so instead my number one ambition in 2018 is to spend five to ten minutes with every single employee every six months.

It’s mandatory. No exception.

And so, I believe in my open door policy so much that I’m changing my open door policy to a forced meeting policy, which I hope extracts even more insights, even more relationships, even more comfort and rapport and respect with me and everybody in the organization.

And there’s nothing wrong with digital communication either. I just thing digital is the gateway to physical. I know much more about my employees by scrolling through their instagram and their medium blog which is another part of my overall strategy.

Whether it’s a traditional meeting, coffee on the weekend, my 8pm-11pm dinner with three VP’s and an intern that make’s all the difference. You have to break the pattern and do things others aren’t willing to do. You are building relationships, which builds trust, which improves communication which equals SPEED.

So whether it’s Email, or direct messaging  or texting, it all works. I prefer an employee reach out to me on email or text or direct message or via Smoke Signal to set something up, which will then lead to a time for us to be together as well.

I probably get 90% of the energy and the vibe even from digital because I’m generally intuitive and I’ve studied the markey, but the extra 10% is seeing the expression in their eyes.

It’s the 1% or 2% of way you react that I say, something you don’t want to hear, if it’s overly devastating to you that’s an insight to me on who you are or maybe leads to a followup question about, hey, are you telling me everything about your family situation? Those are things I can get on a text, where in person I think those things matter.

I think communication and transparency leads to trust and I think trust leads to speed.

Every organization would be much faster if everybody trusted everybody because then you wouldn’t be spending enormous amounts of mind energy in debating the relationships, which takes up 80% of the day with somebody worrying about somebody undermining them, not coming through for them. There’s so much to comprehend that it’s crippling and most organizations are ravaged by some percentage of politics and even with all my ambition and aspiration to build something that is strong in that arena, we have our shortcomings and vulnerabilities. Its human nature.

So many people are, by nature, cynical. They’re gonna complain about something.

And more importantly, an ungodly amount of people, once they hit a real level of success in their careers, they turn to defense and try to suppress others around them to not take their spot, which leads to very troubling issues.

I don’t want that to happen. I want to be as transparent and open as possible so that I can avoid those shortcomings. It’s how I run my organization, and I think it’s going pretty well.

Thanks for reading! 

What Startups Really Sell

I see hundreds of startup pitches every year. I am constantly evaluating companies, new incumbents and my competition. I live and breathe the art of business, and if there’s one thing I see emerging, it’s that convenience is king.

In a marketplace of distraction, the company’s, products and services that can save you TIME, are going to win. That is why Amazon is a market leader. That is why Prime Now wins. They have simplified the process of buying and selling. They have saved you enormous amounts of time.

It’s literally universal. AI and machine learning which is the big buzz word of the moment, is an important technology because it saves you time. It can learn and automate processes which would have taken much longer.

Virtual assistants save you time. Google Now and Siri save you time. Text messages save you time. Double clicking on a photo to like it and acknowledge someone saves you time. Emoji’s save you time. Misspelling something on purpose and having auto-correct saves you time. Abbreviations save you time.

So this is important because it’s the one commodity you can’t get more of. No matter where you are or what your economic situation is, you will never have more time. It’s why we as humans will do anything to purchase it. It’s why we choose the $24 Uber instead of walking. It’s why we pay $7 extra for delivery. It’s why we pay $500 to fly instead of drive. It’s all about time.

So I have been hosting a number of dinners lately with some close friends and powerful entrepreneurs and executives and it’s a conversation I have been having a lot. Convenience is king. If you can simplify a current market, product or experience, you have a real opportunity to provide value to the end consumer.

No one wants complexity layered upon their daily life. No one cares about specifications and numbers and horsepower anymore. People literally want cars to drive themselves!! They want freedom and simplicity and SPEED.

It’s one of the biggest market advantages you can possibly create. Uber saves you TIME. Amazon saves you TIME. GrubHub and Seamless and Doordash save you TIME. It’s why they’ve won.

So if you’re startup or business operating in the CPG or consumer space, or you are launching a new company, product or service, you should be considering how you can save people time. How does your product, your business, or you service expedite a market experience that used to be tedious and tiresome for all?

If you can do this, and execute, you are going to have a good chance.

It’s the same thesis around why I’m so bullish on voice. Audio saves you time. Unlike video you can consume multiple forms of media at once.

Hence audio is “convenience.”

With the ever increasing value of speed, I am starting to see consumers replace entertainment (music) with information (podcasting) to get ahead. The proof is in the behavior.  

We would rather check our email while listening to the latest episode of Serial or take notes while listening to music. With video you can’t do both. It takes all of your attention to consume that content the second it starts.

The same goes for Alexa skills. The novelty of being able to use natural language to communicate with your device is going to huge. Google just released a statistic that one in five mobile search queries are through voice.

I mean, if you’re a 4 year old that knows how to search for the videos you want on Youtube Kids.. Why ever learn to read?

My Life & Legacy

The reality is, I’m driven by legacy. Every decision I make is predicated on the long term. It’s not about what’s in my bank account, it’s about how many people will attend my funeral.

I have no interest in making the most money in the world. I have an interest in having the most people at my funeral

— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) August 22, 2012

I want to share my POV because I’m ultimately patient. If there’s one thing I hope becomes evident through my actions, it’s that I’m playing for the long game. I’m also extremely empathetic that my over the top energy and showmanship-like tendencies make that confusing. But I want to make this clear:

I genuinely want to leave a positive impact on the world. Not only on my friends and family and the 150 people closest to me.

The reality is, I think a lot people consider their children to be their greatest legacy. For me I hope it can be that and something more. Because of the fact that I have been so blessed with this opportunity, and this personality, and this energy, I am in a unique position to help.

I want my work to impact people. I want to make a real difference by allowing others to syphon my advice and become successful in their own pursuits. Whether as an entrepreneur, or an artist or a lawyer or just as genuinely good and compassionate human being. I want what I do with the Vlog and VaynerMedia, and PureWow and VaynerX and these articles to be of real use. I’m documenting this journey, not because I’m self-aggrandizing and I want to watch myself win, (However I’d be lying if I didn’t say I appreciate the attention) but because I think it will be the ultimate resource, the ultimate legacy and inspiration for generations to come.

Now I understand that this topic gets inflated, and I’m not here to produce a puff piece about how great or how smart it is to think long term. I simply want to share my thesis, and describe why I believe adopting this philosophy can do others some good.

When you start to think about legacy, you develop an enormous amount of perspective and patience. The fact that I, at 41, still feel the energy and passion and hunger of being 14 is a truth I want to distill. Because the truth is that one of my friends reminded me that the “talented ones are able to be patient.”

So many people in the world are looking for the quick transaction, and making decisions that will benefit them today.

Things to remember : which word or phrase means the most to you? #entrepreneurship

A post shared by Gary Vay-Ner-Chuk (@garyvee) on Apr 29, 2017 at 9:17am PDT

Instead, I’ve chose to go the other route. I’ve chosen extreme patience in the macro to dictate how I behave. I’m not thinking in a 10, 20 or even 30 year timeline. I’m thinking 50–100–150. I’m thinking long after I’m gone. It’s why I care, it’s why I engage, it’s why I produce | so | much | content | for | all | of | you. It’s why I still take selfies, It’s why I travel the world to speak. It’s why I’ll showcase the next 30 years of professional journey to show you the reality of what it’s like to be an entrepreneur. It’s why I give away my best marketing secrets for free.

But it’s more than that. It’s to show you my definition of a good human being. It’s to show you the small interactions, and the impact and the fans. It’s to show you the meetup at 3am and the 600 emails I get every week. It’s to show you the selfie outside of Starbucks and the thousands of you who are able to take my advice and actually go execute. And most importantly, it’s to show you how hard, how truly HARD, I’ve worked to make this happen.

Thank you to everyone .. bottom line is I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for everyone from my parents to the person who just followed me an hour ago! I'm humbled to be on this months cover of @entrepreneur .. tag your favorite #entrepreneur in your life ❤️❤️❤️

A post shared by Gary Vay-Ner-Chuk (@garyvee) on May 25, 2017 at 2:57pm PDT

And trust me, I am acutely aware that my legacy is more about what my community creates than what I create because the scale in which that potential lies is far greater than any one man. No one has complete control over how they are going to be remembered. In fact, what I do is only a small percentage of the equation.

What fascinates me is my community. To be honest, I think my real legacy is you. It’s the content you create about me. It’s how my rant on self-awarenessallowed to find your passion and start blogging about basketball or music or dance. It’s the conversations with your friends about my videos or my articles or the vlog that no one will ever see. It’s your selfie in the bathroom saying @garyvee #hustle!

It’s the countless interactions that will go unseen. It’s the hundreds of thousands of lives I’ll touch just by being part of the conversation. It’s the one thousand or 10,000 or 50,000 of you that will watch my journey and learn from the examples I’ve shown. It’s the girl that had the courage to speak to her teacher about being bullied, and was able to overcome her fears.

It’s my hope of being recognized as the people’s entrepreneur. The one who came from nothing, and grinded for 68 years to make it all come true.

It’s my family and my employees and everyone who ever believed in me. It’s the rural farmer in Idaho who didn’t know anything about Instagram but decided to start an e-commerce business and make an extra 4,000 dollars a year.

It’s the 5,000 people who participated in the #2017 Flip Challenge or the #2027 Flip Challenge that made an extra 500 dollars that really made the difference.

These last 60 days have been crazy! Got in this for the #2017flipchallenge can't believe how far I have come @garyvee pic.twitter.com/qRtdyT1Oml

— meatport (@meatportmusic) July 15, 2017

And my hope is that it goes beyond that as well. Beyond business and beyond entrepreneurship, I think my legacy is going to be the guy who watches one of my videos and finally has the difficult conversation with his mom. Or the conversation with his brother that ends up saving their relationship.

It’s about the 5–10 businesses that I’ll build that will long outlast my time here. It’s about the 800 employees I have now and the 8000 I’ll have later. It’s about their lives and their families’ lives who have made it all possible. It’s about my massive financial success and my massive empathy, humility and respect.

It’s about the work I’ve done with Pencils of Promise as much is it my morning meals with my 5 year old son and 8 year old daughter.

It’s about my first visit to Hong Kong, meeting a 12 year-old entrepreneur who mentioned I inspired her to start her work.

It’s the person that trolls me on Instagram in a comment that says that I’m “full of shit,” that I then engage with which makes them question their cynicism and start to reframe their perspective converting to optimism over pessimism. It happens every day.

It’s why I produce so much content and try to affect so many people. I just feel an enormous sense of guilt and gratitude, which drives me to communicate.

It’s about the tens of thousands of people who may have only ever had a minute of my time, or two or three or 45, but end up having something nice to say about me. Whether it’s that I smiled, or I was positive, or energetic, or lived up to their expectation or simply that I gave them my entire presence, focus and attention.

A beast of a new episode is up !!!! Link in my profile – the energy of this episode matches this quote .. pay close attention – tag your 3 best friends

What Makes Me a Great CEO

Here’s an article you might not expect.

It’s more of a fun piece to describe how I feel. I am going to dissect the characteristics of what makes me a great CEO. It’s really my thesis on pulling from opposite directions. It’s empathy + iron. It’s why I’m 1940 and 2040 all in one.

These are the characteristics and concepts that I subscribe to, which are very much in tune with CEO’s and operators of the past are as follows.

#1 The Market is The Market is The Market.

This is a truism for all old-school operators and entrepreneurs. It’s the key to my success and arbitraging attention in the moment we live. Henry ford wasn’t thinking about his “ideal consumer” he was selling cars. To anyone and everyone who could afford the American dream.

The fact of the matter is, you don’t get to dictate where the market places it’s attention. You don’t get to decide whatever 13 to 25 year olds want to do with their hair, their clothes, their bodies, their cell phones, their friends, their time, their money. You just have to observe and react.

If every 14 year old in America spends 8 hours a day on Snapchat or Musical.ly or Instagram, you don’t get to decide. You just have to accept the facts. You have to accept that truth.

And if you are intelligent, and you understand that you have no control over THE MARKET, then you begin thinking about where the potential upside is. There’s nothing I can do about the fact that people like taking selfies. Now, as I contemplate that, what would be a good business idea to arbitrage that opportunity? That is exactly how Snapchat was born. It’s the truth and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

#2 Respecting Others and Believing in People.

There’s a funny thing about the 1940’s and 50’s and 60’s that I’ve really come to admire about the past. It’s the relentless respect and belief in the power of people. In 2017, all I hear is doomsday and climate change and pessimism around how the internet has ruined human interaction.

The people of the past, who survived wars, and famine, and economic depression, and life without electricity and the internet and cell phones, had an enormous amount of positivity and belief in the power of the people. It was the factory that made Ford, not the CEO. It was the people that helped define this country and economy. It’s the people that have solved every great problem and challenge we have come to face. It’s the people and optimism plays a big part.

A lot of you confuse my energy and my bravado and competitiveness with a lack of respect. I have enormous respect not only for my contemporaries but also the past. The truth is you can compete and still respect others. You can be the best and still want others to win. Nowadays competition is vicious. All of you keyboard warriors tearing others down just doesn’t make sense.

#3 Is something that I like to call Depression Era Swag

It’s the lunch pale work ethic which correlates to tremendous hard work and grind. It’s the mentality that 9:00 to 5:00 is not going to cut it. If you have real ambition, all you were considering is how can I have clothes on my back, and a meal in my stomach. A Roof over my head and that’s it. It’s the fundamental truth. I don’t need anything and I don’t want anything other than the results. I want the work, the hustle, the process and the journey.

I don’t want the bling bling or followers on Instagram to be my “success.” That mentality is broken. I don’t need rims, I don’t need luxuries, I don’t need the newest pair of sneakers.

That’s the old school mindset of 1940. Got it?

Now time for 2040

The world we’re soon to see:

I think the traits that put me ahead in a 2040 timeline are as follows:

#1 It’s my complete admiration of technology, I don’t fear it.

So many people are worried about how Twitter and Snapchat and Instagram ruined the world. I’m the complete opposite. I embrace it. I can’t wait for the world of VR and AR and contact lenses with 24/7 information. The world is going to be begging for the days of selfies and emojis.

#2 My complete and utter obsession over the youth of today.

The youth are the future of everything. They are the future of business, of society, of law and of government. We better pay attention, and empower them to be the best that they can be.

My hope is that we lose the sentiment of age makes a difference in skill. Their are plenty of 22 and 24 and 26 year olds in my office right now that work harder and smarter than some of the 50 year olds I know. It’s just the truth and we are going to continue to see this trend adopted in the marketplace. You can’t deny results.

This is why I’m spending an ungodly amount of time putting up content. Seven, ten, twelve, fifteen, thirty times a day. Putting out content on a daily basis at scale across every social network is a 2040 move. I believe everybody will do that.

And lastly:

#3 I would say a 2040 mentality is continued optimism around people.

It’s circling back to the 1940’s way.

I think a lot of people are stuck in the political climate right now and don’t believe in people. I’m a very big believer in the human race, we’ve overcome so many adversities. I feel that every generation thinks like this and that this is it, it’s over, we screwed it up. I just think that optimism around the human race is a 2040 move.

I believe we will find a way.

Thanks for reading! 

Make Money: Don’t Raise Money

So I recently had this conversation around “Make Money: Don’t Raise Money,” and I think it coincides with everything I have been doing lately with the #2017FlipChallenge

And the fact of the matter is this article is really about two things. Number one, my disproportionate belief that learning sales is a crucial skill in developing ANY successful leader in today’s market driven economy.

And number 2.

My unbelievable fascination around venture capital, and more specifically the prolific fundraising culture that I believe is fundamentally unsustainable in the long term.

Over the last 10 years I’ve watched the tech and startup community go from a place where people were trying to build products for people to use and change the world, to people building businesses around those products, to people building financial arbitrage machines (i.e Amazon, Facebook and Google) to now people raising 6 million dollars for their bullshit idea. More and more, every day, I meet entrepreneurs who are really good at losing money, and then trying to raise more capital to lose more money each year. This culture of celebrating failure and raising 14 million dollars for an unprofitable idea is ludicrous to me and can’t be sustained.

The truth is there are so many people in the world who are going to spend the next 5–10 years trying to figure out how they can raise 25–50,000 dollars for their startup. It’s just not a smart move. There are so many other ways to make money. You can buy and sell, you can get rid of old junk, you can move into a smaller apartment for 2 years, you can get an extra job, you can save money and not go out, you can skip Coachella and the club and spending 500 dollars on stuff you don’t need. And if you are patient and not excessive you will find the money you need. I just think it’s a much greater opportunity to make $5000 selling junk and deploy all of it into Facebook, wait nine years and have $27,000 dollars to start your first business. No debt, no equity, nothing.

I truly believe that it’s time, after almost a decade of prosperity in the public markets and the global economy, that we put pressure on the entrepreneurial community as a whole to start focusing on making money versus raising money. Way too many 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20 year olds that follow me on Instagram think that their first job during college, or out of college, or as they’re coming up, is to learn how to raise capital. They think to be an entrepreneur, they need to learn term sheets, or learn customer acquisition costs, or learn growth metrics just to appease their next round of funding.

Because of this, we have fundamentally lost the art of building a real business, one that is profitable each month and can pay its’ own bills.

Please remember, I didn’t raise a single dollar to start VaynerMedia and I had nothing to loan on. At the time I was making a very modest income and I had used all of my money to invest in other things.

At the end of the day, the reason I want to make this statement, and one of the reasons why I started the 2017 Flip Challenge is, that you can find another way. It may not be a million dollars but it’s something.

And of course there is going to be a lot of cynicism from people emailing me saying, “Oh yeah Gary, you’re really going to change people’s lives by them making $48 a month, or $350 a month, or $1,000 a month.”

  

But I remind those people via email when I’m able to reply that, for somebody who’s sending me an email and thanking me for making $500 a month, that means that amount is massively meaningful. There was a time when $500 a month was absolutely life-changing for my family not too long ago. So it’s all very relative.

The one thing I’m actually doing is I’m teaching and pushing a different conversation than the one that has become popular, which is about unlimited fundraising and venture capital, and this unbelievable ecosystem where entrepreneurs don’t believe they can start their business until they’ve raised a million dollars.

It’s not true! Build a real business, find real revenue, have real clients! There is nothing special about that either. Celebrating your fundraise or even your annual profitability is a joke.

That’s what business is. It’s money in vs. money out. You either make more money than you spend or you don’t.

So when I made the statement that people have $15,000 or $20,000 in their home, obviously I was talking about a middle-class, upper middle-class, wealthy family. I took some shots at the community, and I understand that’s not always the case. But whether it’s $100, or $1,000, or $4,000, everybody’s got more stuff in their home than they need, and they can turn that into actual cash that starts their business or gives them the opportunity to do what they really want to do.

 

If not, they can go work a job for a couple years, save some money, and then start buying things at thrifts stories, garage sales, AliBaba, eBay, Amazon, Craigslist, or Letgo and start flipping them on Etsy, by arbitraging the different marketplaces on the internet. Over a five or six year period you can save up some real money and make a little nest egg for yourself.

Everybody’s impatience leads to them not thinking about what the impact of a profitable business means over a five-year macro. Because there’s no 22-year-old that is excited about just getting started at 27. That’s the opportunity. That’s where you can strike. I started VaynerMedia at 34. You have time!

Trust me, you are going to feel a whole hell of a lot worse at 27 knowing you gave up 40% of your company that is now worth 10x the value because you raised money to early. Or it will be the opposite and your career will be over because you raised a million dollars and lost it all in 18 months. Your reputation will be ruined and you’ll be working for someone else. The percentage of 22-year-olds that are going to go from zero to hero is one to none.

If you don’t mix passion with practicality, you are going to lose.

If you can avoid raising money, please do. Please build a real business, learn how to sell and create something tangible.

It’s 2017. When the shit hit’s the fan and things begin to change, I hope this article will help you make it through.

Thanks for reading! 

The Three Best Restaurant Tips for Customer Retention

Two weeks ago:

I had my buddy Jon Taffer from Bar Rescue stop by VaynerMedia for an episode of AskGaryVee. When a fan called in to our show looking for help with his Kentucky based BBQ, Jon gave the three greatest pieces of advice for customer retention and life-time value. I wanted to share our conversation below.

Here is what we had to say:

The Set-Up:

Chandler From KY:

Restaurant owner in Kentucky running a local BBQ ask’s “How do I ensure my customers return?”And then, this happens:

Jon T:

Listen, if you buy a guest through traditional media, the cost of that guest is typically 40 to 80 dollars.

Me:

Bingo.

Jon T:

Let’s say your rib dinner was $5, concerning the actual “food cost” meaning the ribs, the potato, the platter, the whole thing. I would give out a 100 coupons for a free rib dinner to people that have never been there before. No restrictions.Now, Gary walks up to the front door of your store in Lexington with a new coupon. “I got a coupon for a free rib dinner. Never been here before.” he says.

“Come on in!” you say. First of all, don’t make them pay until the end. Second, you’re paying $4.65, not $40 to $60 for each customer. And here’s something that nobody else will tell you. If somebody goes to a restaurant for the first time and has a flawless experience, the statistical likelihood of them doing a second visit is about 40%.

The second time a customer comes and has a flawless experience, The statistical likelihood of a third visit is still about 42%. The third time they come, the statistical likelihood of a fourth visit is over 70%. You have to market to three visits, not one. This is the part everyone misses!

.@garyvee and I talked about the THREE most important steps for customer retention and life-time value. #AskGaryVee