Gary Vaynerchuk's Blog, page 59
February 3, 2016
Mark Your Calendars, the Super8 Live Stream Event is Going Down!
Who is ready for the best live stream in book marketing history?
On February 23rd, from 10am – 6pm for 8 hours I will be holding a live streaming of the SUPER 8 event.
Don’t know what I’m talking about? Watch the video below:
During and only during the Super 8 event, if you buy 8 books and send in your receipt you will be entered to win a 1 hour solo jam session with me. I’m currently accepting one hour jam sessions for 1,000 books … in other words you’ll be saving yourself a shit ton of book copies 
The Entrepreneurial Spirit: Are Entrepreneurs Born or Made?
We have just lived through the greatest era of fake entrepreneurs.
It was a second-wave dot-com boom that lasted five to six years, when money was so readily available (many have referred to it as the Age of the Unicorns) that it felt like anybody could get in on the “become-an-entrepreneur” game. People believed that raising several millions of dollars for a business meant that they were a successful entrepreneur.
But the fact is this: so many of these businesses are not going to succeed, and so many of these companies were launched by people who are just not entrepreneurs. Nine out of ten startups will fail and according to Bloomberg, 8 out of 10 entrepreneurs who start businesses fail within the first 18 months.
The current misjudgment in the business ecosystem—that raising money means you have achieved something or is something to celebrate—is insanity to me. As the economy gets tighter, these businesses will start to disappear. Some will become acquired by other companies, but rarely does that mean anyone actually made any money. Usually it just means you get jobs. Big Company A launches, it fails, investors lose money, and now they work at Big Company B instead. It is branded as an acquisition, but the reality is very different. It’s an acqui-hire.
Both the rise in the sense of entitlement over the last couple years and the belief that becoming an entrepreneur is possible for anyone have a big role to play in this “fail and get acquired” practice. A business ecosystem that essentially says, “If you read about it and work hard, you can do it.”, is bullshit. How do we fix that? There now needs to be a reset around how we look at entrepreneurship as a skill and talent and what it takes to start and lead a successful company. Most people think entrepreneurship is a developable skill, and it’s just not.
When the NBA Meets an MBA
If someone plays a few games of pickup basketball, they don’t automatically believe that they’re ready for the NBA. But the same understanding of skill and talent just doesn’t seem to be applied when we talk about entrepreneurship. So many “entrepreneurs” over the last five years are people that one day decided they’re just going to “become an entrepreneur” and expect it to be something they can pick up and learn. Build a company. Raise some money. Done, no problem.
We all know how hard NBA players work on their craft to get to that professional level. They are taking shots and practicing their ball handling everyday for hours on end, for years and years. But we’re also equally aware of the massive amount of athleticism and talent that they were born with to harness and execute against.
Imagine if the NBA opened up tryouts to everyone and anyone who tried out made the league and became an NBA player. That’s basically how we’ve been treating entrepreneurs and the start-up culture. Someone shows up to tryouts and they’re automatically referred to as an entrepreneur and someone who builds businesses.
Why don’t we apply the same perspective, how we view the talents and skill sets of our best athletes, to how we teach entrepreneurship and becoming and entrepreneur? So little thought is given to that fact that just like the top athletes in the world, entrepreneurs who build successful businesses come from a certain breed. They have an entrepreneurial DNA that allowed them to hone in on their business skills in the first place.
Because the fact is this: entrepreneurs are born, not made. Of course, anyone can maximize any skillset, but it doesn’t necessarily make them successful at it. I could maximize my singing with vocal lessons, but I’ll still always just be a mediocre singer. To win at the very top of the chain, to make it big in the business world and in any arena, you have to be born with talent.
An Entrepreneur’s Characteristics and Skills
So what are the characteristics and skills of a good entrepreneur? What’s the “it” factor that makes for a great entrepreneur? To be a basketball star, you would most likely be extremely tall, fast, athletic, and have real hops. But the qualities of a great entrepreneur are more abstract or illusive for someone studying entrepreneurship and business. From my experience, I believe there are five major traits that mean you have the chops when it comes to building a business and living the life of an entrepreneur.
Salesmanship. The ability to sell something is absolutely necessary to knowing how to run a business at any stage. Whether you’re starting out on the floor like I did selling a physical product or the CEO of an agency selling the talented employees, you need to know how to make a sale.
A chip on your shoulder. Yes, I’m serious. And that can come in two forms. Either you were born with nothing, zero, and you’re just hungrier than the average human. Or, it’s the reverse: you born into a lot of wealth and opportunity and you want to prove that you don’t need it, and can do it on your own. In either case, some kind of chip can push you a long way, especially for the amount of hours and energy you’ll need to put into your business.
An independent spirit. Being an entrepreneur means you rely on yourself and no one else. At the end of the day, you need to be 100% comfortable with making the final call, being able to trust yourself and your intuition.
Understanding consumers and consumer attention. Zuckerberg is a fantastic example of someone who truly understands and trades consumer attention. He got it with his product: Facebook. He held onto it by identifying and acquiring Instagram. And he saw it with Snapchat too, but that deal didn’t pan out. In any case, the lesson is that not only knowing where the consumer is, but also where they are going, is crucial.
Patience. It can be a slow and lonely climb to the top. If patience is a trait you don’t currently possess, but you want to play in this world, I recommend developing it as much as you possibly can.
Listen, everybody is born with some capability to run a business. But 90% are born with the capability to run a business into the ground. There is an amazing amount of entrepreneurs who can make $80,000-$90,000 working for themselves running a small e-commerce shop around a personal interest of theirs. And the opportunities to do that have never been more available. If you want to do that, do it. It was the main thesis statement of my first book Crush It. I am all about that life and I support it.
But let’s be clear about entrepreneurs and the businesses they run: there are levels to this shit. The higher you climb and the more the business grows, the stakes become a lot bigger. More and more people are depending on you to make the right decisions for them and the company. The league you’re playing in and the skill set required jumps from pickup ball to NBA very quickly.
Sure anyone can start a business, but only the top 25% will actually grow into multi-million dollar companies with more than one employee. To see what I’m really talking about, check out this infographic on how small businesses operate:
The talent and skill set required to make it to the big time are crucial. Real entrepreneurs are born and prove out their DNA with hard work. What I’m saying is this: only a handful of people have what it takes to truly run a million dollar business.
#AskGaryVee Episode 179: How to Overcome a Bad Day, Encouraging Children & Advice to My Teenage Self
On this episode, I talked about how I overcome a bad day, and advice I wouldgive myself if I could back in time to high school.
#ANNOUNCEMENT
If you are planning on buying/have already bought 8 copies of the #AskGaryVee book, send your receipt to super8@vaynermedia.com. And tune in on February 23rd for my all day live streaming event. I’ll be giving away a one hour jam session to one purchaser of 8 books in real time. To enter, you have to send your receipt!
#QOTD: I need comment and feedback. I have a trip to Boston and want something to read.
#TIMESTAMPS
5:06 – What changed the most in your company growing from the founding team to 500 people?
7:39 – As we’ve seen, you hate wasting time, but how do you adjust on days nothing is going right?
10:17 – If you could, what advice would you give yourself in high school?
13:57 – How do you decide when a social media platform is going south and no longer worth putting energy into?
16:16 – My son’s love digital media and Snapchat. They wanna be producers. Any advice for y-gen ?
#LINKS
BARTER FOR THE BOOK https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/agvbook/
SNAPCHAT ARTICLE https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/the-snap-generation-a-guide-to-snapchats-history/
NEWEST DAILYVEE https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/dailyvee-011-day-in-and-day-out/
February 1, 2016
#AskGaryVee Episode 178: Outsourcing, Crappy Products, & Focusing on Depth
#QOTD, 1: Who is going to win the Super Bowl and why?
#QOTD, 2: I’d love to have your audit on episodes 10 and 11 of DailyVee.
#TIMESTAMPS
2:52 – Why are so many people worried about their marketing ability while their “product” is plain awful?
4:37 – What is the best way to bring awareness to your brand when first starting up?
6:49 – What normal tasks do you outsource, i.e., preparing your meals, doing your laundry, etc in order to enable you to focus on work?
8:43 – I might be the best example of someone who gets distracted by width instead of depth. Do you ever have to regain focus? Tips?
10:17 – Do you lose respect for businesspeople if they go all fangirl on you, wanting to take pics, etc? Do you feel respected, or used?
#LINKS
NEWEST DAILYVEE https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/dailyvee-011-day-in-and-day-out/
SNAPCHAT ARTICLE https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/the-snap-generation-a-guide-to-snapchats-history/
NEWEST MEDIUM https://medium.com/@garyvee/why-snapchat-will-be-great-for-b2b-companies-f7d07a553cf3#.u223uvraw
How to Review the #AskGaryVee Book
If you’re on this page it’s because I want you to review the #AskGaryVee book. It would mean the world to me. Whether you review the book on your Instagram account, a write-up on your respective blog or newsletter, a tweet, an Amazon review, or simply passing it to a friend who should read it, please share this book. Be it positive or negative, the truth is undefeated and I ask you to adhere to that.
If you’re confused on what to do with this damn thing, let the example below guide you. ☺
How to write an Instagram Book Review
1. TAKE A PHOTO
Take a picture of you and the book. The front cover should be prominent and the focus of the shot because really, who doesn’t like my face?
January 29, 2016
DailyVee 011: Day In and Day Out
More audiobook recording, meetings and announcements at VaynerMedia, and that airport life.
On this episode, we inserted more information about who I am meeting with and why, as well as captions to help you understand my day a bit better. Hope you enjoy!
January 28, 2016
The Snap Generation: A Guide to Snapchat’s History
Just a little over four years ago, Snapchat was supposedly just an idea that founder Evan Spiegel and friends had while in a class at Stanford.
Now, over 100 million active users and 7 billion daily video views later, the White House has joined, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is running a campaign on it and senior ad buyers are starting to take notice and planning to advertise on the platform over other social media sites.
How did Snapchat, an app that first made headlines as the“sexting app”, get here?
The History of Snapchat: How Disappearing Photos Changed the Game
I was surprised early on that people didn’t realize that the way Snapchat works is much closer to how we communicate face to face than any other social network. What I mean by this is that: when we talk to each other, passing in the halls or just living out our lives, those moments disappear. Snapchat emulates that behavior and psychology.
Snapchat was started at a time when everybody and their mom thought they were an entrepreneur who could launch a successful social app. Facebook was where you went for updates on family and friends, Instagram was beautiful photo content, and Twitter was the conversation at a cocktail party. These three social giants dominated most of the conversation, but they all played off of each other in terms of functionality, and, most importantly, audience. However, Snapchat was able to counterbalance the strengths of all three players and create a new social pipeline.
The norm of the internet age is to create platforms in which everything is saved—everything is stored and documented digitally. Snapchat went the opposite direction and is predicated on our reality: moments are temporary and that’s exactly the feeling and behavior that Snapchat mapped to. Snaps could even be compared to television the first fifty years it was introduced: the broadcast aired, and that was it. Snapchat managed to tap into a lot of historical truths, instead of creating something entirely new.
Facebook Offers to Buy Snapchat
All these things quickly led Snapchat to come to the attention of Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Just one year after launch, Zuckerberg reportedly tried to buy the app for $3 billion.
Let me just say this: Zuckerberg is the greatest trader in consumer attention of all time.
He understands the value of attention. He recognized that Snapchat was well on its way to winning the attention of a generation, much like he did with Instagram (which Facebook bought in 2012 for $1 billion). He saw it as a vulnerability and saw that a Snapchat generation could emerge, much like there was a Facebook generation before it. Facebook acquired a monopoly on 18 to 24 year olds with Instagram, they had a monopoly on an older demo with Facebook; they just needed Snapchat to fill the gaps.
But Spiegel turned the offer down. He saw what Zuckerberg saw: the potential to fill-in the social pipelines that other platforms had ignored. He knew he had one of the hottest apps of the time; now it was just up to him and the team to blow out their user base and execute against their core function.
The Maturation of Snapchat’s Attention
But, let’s be honest: what really makes a new social network become popular fast?
Teenagers.
There are two things that are very true when it comes to teens. One, it’s not cool to hang out at the same club as your mom. And two, you want to lock your room.
Snapchat solved both those things. Parents were starting to join Facebook in droves, so teens were looking to leave and looking for somewhere to go. And, the disappearing photos function was essentially the same thing as a “do not disturb” sign on your door, except much more effective. Both these things led to Snapchat’s extreme and sudden user growth. Just a year after launching, Snapchat hit 10 million active users.
In October 2013, Snapchat made a significant update to the platform: Stories. Users could now also add Snaps to a feature called their “Story”, which acted like a longer narrative of snaps strung together. The stories last twenty-four hours after being posted and are public to all their followers.
I’m going to be very clear here: I went on the record saying I thought the update was a bad idea. I thought it was absurd to imagine that users would actually go out of their way to watch something on a platform where things were historically delivered to them (Stories live on their own page and you have to click into a Story to watch it).
But boy was I wrong. This update marked Snapchat’s first big move into becoming a major platform by creating it’s own social language and context. It already had functionality very different from any other social network at the time; you could draw on top of photos, content disappeared, and the gestures of swiping up, down and to the side were relatively new. But after Stories the platform began to take off and mature as a content destination. By August 2014, 40% of 18 year olds in the US were using Snapchat on a daily basis.
The biggest update in recent Snapchat history, and the one that really changed the game for me to push it towards the mainstream, has to be Discover.
Snapchat Becomes a Media Destination
In early 2015, Snapchat launched Discover. It’s a feature that allows users to receive content provided by top media companies. Launch participants included National Geographic, Vice, ESPN, and more. Eleven participants in all started it off. It was, and still is, a serious play to be part of Snapchat Discover because it puts a company in a very aggressive place within the overall user interface of the app and delivers an unmatched form of attention from their youthful user base. It also completely changed the swipe navigation and how the app is used.
It was very exciting step forward for Snapchat. It was obvious they were paying attention to current trends and were ready to act: the explosion of content and companies becoming media companies, putting out their own content, the importance of mobile being first.
Using Discover as their platform, Snapchat went out and made deals that allowed them to curate some of the top content providers in the world in this one spot. This gives them more power in the micromanagement of what shows up on the Discover page.
The brands that launched as partners, and the 18 brands now currently in the space, have an enormous relationship with Snapchat, and they are getting great equity for it. Why? 45% of Snapchat’s users are under 25. There are over 100 million users, nearing 200 million. Snapchat is basically handing these brands the 25-and-under demo. So it’s no surprise that these media companies have hired entire teams around the initiative. Their only job is to make content for Snapchat.
Now, Snapchat is partnering with the NFL, the White House has recently joined, and it’s safe to assume they’ll continue to broker relationships with more content creators as they’re proving that they are a real media property to be reckoned with.
The Basics of Snapchat
So now that you know everything there is to know about the history of the platform, let’s get down to the most important part: how the fuck do you use this thing? On every article I have written about Snapchat in the past, most of the comments come back to me saying something like “Yeah, but how the hell do I use this this?” or “It’s so confusing!”
No problem. Below are some handy guides I have put together to teach you guys the basic functionalities of Snapchat, as well as some cool hacks.
The Difference Between Snap, Story, and Chat
So…how exactly do you define a Snap?
Great question. A Snap is the main functionality of the app and is what the disappearing photos and videos are called. You send these directly to friends in the app. They last anywhere from one second up to ten seconds after being opened, then the “snap” disappears.
And the difference between that and a Story is…?
A Story is a collection of Snaps put together to create a, well, Story. Unlike direct Snaps, these can be viewed by anyone who follows you. When you send a Snap to your Story, it becomes public to your followers. Stories last up to 24 hours before disappearing, but still can only be up to 10 seconds long.
There’s also chat right?
Yep. When you swipe right on a person’s name in your direct Snap inbox, the chat function will appear. You know you’ve received a chat when a blue speech bubble appears next to someone’s name. Chats also disappear after being opened.
Quick GIF Guides to Using Snapchat
Snapchatting a Video vs Photo
How to add Filters and Double Filters on Snapchat
How to Use Snapchat Video Filters
How to Save a Photo or Video
Snapchat Accounts to Follow
This is just a short list of people who are killing it on the platform. There aren’t that many yet because people still aren’t taking it seriously. So get on it now.
DJ Khaled: @djkhaled
Shonduras: @shonduras
Casey Neistat: @caseyneistat
LACMA: @lacma
Diplo: @diplo3000
Kate Hudson: @khudsnaps
Oh by the way, I’m on there too: @GaryVee.
The History of Snapchat in One Timeline
DailyVee 010: The Family Business
On this episode of DailyVee, I head to Wine Library for some family business.It’s a great opportunity for you guys to see the inner workings of it and how I run a business that is very different from my agency.
Music at the end of this episode is “I Can See Us Forever” by SPEC feat. Toro.
January 26, 2016
#AskGaryVee Episode 177: How to Get More Snapchat Followers, Buying Email Lists & the Twitter Exodus
#QOTD: Tell me something that happens in your world and how it’s explained, but what’s really going on?
#TIMESTAMPS
1:20 – How do you grow and audience on Snapchat? Do you have to go to Facebook and Twitter to tell followers there?
3:17 – When you are hustling, how do you spot the difference between “busy work” and “valuable work?”
5:58 – If we wanted to start a subscription box service, should we buy an email list?
7:42 – What’s your opinion on new domain extensions and emojis in URLs? If you could have an emoji, what would it be?
10:00 – What are your thoughts on today’s Twitter executive “exodus” news?
