Gary Vaynerchuk's Blog, page 60

DailyVee 009: Don’t Be My Friend and Not Be Good at Social

Another day full of meetings: I talk a lot about why I love Snapchat so much and I get to jam with Brandon Marshall!! 

The #AskGaryVee Show: Everything You Need to Know

On a random day in July 2014, I pulled my what was then three person team into a meeting out of the blue and said “We are going to start a new web show.”

That is how The #AskGaryVee Show got its start.

The next day, we were in a room with minimal set-up, a DSLR camera, and some questions we had found on Twitter about entrepreneurship, marketing, and running a business. The camera started rolling, I answered the questions, and thus concluded the first episode of #AskGaryVee.

Why The #AskGaryvee Show?

This wasn’t my first time doing a web show. Those who have been following me for a while know that, from 2006 to 2011, I did a show called WineLibraryTV (also affectionately known as The Thunder Show). I did it nearly every day for five years, rarely missing a day. That show was how I got my start. It launched me into a sort of cult internet fame status and it eventually became the reason I was able to have the social media career I have today.



I did 1000 episodes of WineLibraryTV before ending it in 2011 to fully focus on my businesses and my newly started agency, VaynerMedia. But the success of the show stuck with me; I realized how valuable having that platform on which I could give back to my community in a fun and engaging way. It was inevitable that I would eventually do another show.



While #AskGaryVee was never going to be daily like WineLibraryTV was, I started it for essentially the same reasons. It’s a way to create more content for myself, get more of my message and thoughts out there, and connect with my community.

So…what is The #AskGaryVee Show?

Very simply, The #AskGaryVee Show is a Q&A show meant to provide as much value to the viewers as possible. Period.

In a more detailed way, I would say it’s a YouTube web show and podcast in which I provide my direct, one-to-one answers to questions on a wide range of topics. We cover social media, entrepreneurship, startups, work/life balance and much, much more. I’m able to provide value based on lifetime of building successful, multi-million dollar companies and coming early to technologies and platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and Uber, among many others.

We release two to three episodes per week, reaching not only my 148k+ YouTube subscribers but also my millions of Twitter followers and over 400k Facebook fans. On top of that, the show is also available as a downloadable podcast on iTunes. When you add that all up, we’re talking about a combined audience of nearly 2 million people.

Not too shabby.

But the point is this: the show is for the viewers. I’ve built my business and personal brand on providing real, direct value on a one-to-one basis, and the show has become the most effective way to scale that in a big way.

My co-host, India, picks questions from Twitter by watching the hashtag #AskGaryVee. She usually picks a wide variety of topics for one show so we cover a lot of ground, and always tries to bring up new topics. I don’t know what the questions are before the show. When India reads them to me in that room, it’s the first time I am hearing them. Occasionally I email her a question or two, but otherwise, she’s the only one who knows what is going to get asked.

As of this post, the show has reached episode 176 and there’s no signs of stopping. At episode 100 I joked that I was going to end it, but let’s be honest: there’s no way I could really. Not just yet.

DailyVee 008: Why The #AskGaryVee Book Matters

This was a jam packed day for me, but the real value comes from me talking about the #AskGaryVee Book. 

 

Hope you enjoyed the episode and let me know what you’re thinking of the DailyVee vlog. Would love to hear your thoughts. As always, the best place to hit me up is on Twitter.

First Comes Smarts, Then Comes the Hustle

Because of the position I have put myself in, I’ve made it my responsibility to share as much as I possibly can on what it takes to win in business. I’ve pledged to be a great content creator, to bring value, and to offer as much as possible to my community. And because of that, I’m trying to take a conscious step back for you all and really think about the things that have allowed me to “work smart” all these years.

It’s no secret that one of my favorite words is “hustle”. It’s the most important word in business and entrepreneurship. If you want to make it, you have to hustle. You need the drive to work hard, and the willingness to go all in and put it on the line. This is a narrative that I have explored a lot in my content and daily life. You have to work hard, very hard, to get anywhere. One of the reasons it’s a favorite business thesis of mine is that there are no excuses—your work ethic falls solely on you.

But I haven’t been balanced enough on this issue.

While I’ve been focusing on promoting the “work hard” element of business, I’ve hedged away from talking about something that is just as important: working smart.

I have a lot of ego around my work ethic, and it’s not hard to see that in the content I create and promote. But on the flipside, I have a lot of humility around the actual brains that go into my decision making. The strategy and smarts I put into my businesses every day are not something that I talk about enough with my community.  I disproportionately give credit to the 17 hour work days when working smart in those 17 hours is just as important.

When I didn’t even own a computer, why did I want to launch one of the first e-commerce websites? Why did I consciously decide not to make a catalog when everyone else was doing direct mail? Why did I give e-mail marketing all my attention when it was barely a blip on the radar? And what about maybe the most important decision I made for my career: why did I decide to jump on YouTube and start a wine review show when no one was really producing YouTube shows?

All these things involved hard work, obviously. But the hard work was the byproduct of the full commitment to smart strategy. I don’t pay attention to what my competitors or peers are doing, because I trust my own smarts and intuition one-trillion percent.  I hustle 24/7/365 because I know that what I’m executing against is what will work for me and businesses in the current marketplace. The game plan will work as long as I put in the work.

The hard work was the byproduct of the full commitment to smart strategy.

But too many of you are putting in the work on a shitty game plan. If you work all day and put in long hours but the strategy was unclear or weak, those hustle hours aren’t going to amount to much, right?

I’ll give you an example. Let’s say you’re working to market your next book (something I am doing right now). That is something that takes an enormous amount of strategic thinking before you can really get into it. Before I get out there and start talking about the book and asking people to pre-order it, I put in a lot of thought with my team into what the best way to approach this would be.

With my first few books, one-on-one personal emails took me a long way. But I wasn’t copy pasting an email to a bunch of people over and over. No. All I did for a week was write emails. One by one by one by one I wrote emails to people. Literally. Thousands of emails personally tailored. I didn’t jump into book marketing all of a sudden. I took a step back and thought “What would mean a lot to these people? How do I wish I had been approached about buying books?” I realized, I wished people had used empathy and human interaction. So I went all in on that strategy, blocking an entire week off for that thing only. The hustle came after the smarts.

I want to draw a line in the sand for all of you and say, look: of course hard work has so much to do with success. But working smart needs to be the prerequisite to working hard. You can’t have one without the other if you want to win. And I promise to start challenging myself more and more to think about the “smart” part of that equation so I can tell you how you can work smart too. I want to give you the tactics so I can put myself out of business.

Thanks for reading and feel free to hit me up anytime and let me know how else I can drill down the smarts behind my hustle.

DailyVee 007: Going Off-Script On My Audiobook

In today’s episode I had a great client meeting, as well some amazing one on one meetings with employees. Finally, I get started on my long awaited audiobook for #AskGaryVee. Definitely went off script here and there.

DailyVee 006: Intent Trumps Everything

DailyVee 006 is here! I talk about intent a lot in this one, and have an insane day of back to back meetings. Somehow also found time to interview for a podcast. The day was packed and exciting, but the real value comes from the conversations I got to have with so many amazing people.

 

Music by: @JXOnTheyKeyz

http://www.commonandroid.com/

DailyVee 005: The Theory of a Five Year Plan

On this episode of DailyVee, I have a shit ton of meetings, and jam with an awesome nineteen year old entrepreneur.

Music in this episdoe generously provided by two talented people:

TJay- ‘Someone Else’s Dream”

Naem- “The Traveler”

#AskGaryVee Episode 176: Delegating Work, Micromanagement, and Monitoring Employees’ Social Media

In this episode, I talk about micromanaging, delegating tasks and why I follow my employees on social media.

 

#QOTD: What is the thing you micromanage the most because you think it’s so important?

#TIMESTAMPS

5:30 – Do you follow and engage with your employees on social media? Traditional management would say no, what say yes?

9:23 – Are you more of a delegator or micromanager?

#GARY SNAPCHAT CTA

3:28 – Gary has a request

#LINKS

PUT MYSELF OUT OF BUSINESS https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/how-to-win-in-business-be-open-to-change/

ALL THE DAILYVEES https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfA33-E9P7FA-A72QKBw3noWuQbaVXqSD

MY NEWEST MEDIUM https://medium.com/@garyvee/why-i-want-to-put-myself-out-of-business-def274dec678#.4mz2qw1yb

How to Win in Business? Be Open to Change

Early in my career, when I was really entrenched working at Wine Library, my dad pulled me aside and said something that I thought was curious. He said, “You’re always changing your mind.” He spoke about it as a negative personality trait. It was almost as if he was saying I was lying. “But you said…” kind of thing.

It was a very interesting moment in my career, because my immediate response was to say something like, “Yes, but that was nineteen months ago. That wine market was better.” Or “That was last week, Ricky was still working here.” Whatever my response was, it was the first time I really thought about why I changed my mind and what prompted it.

That is something that will always stick with me. The importance of being open to change is always top of mind for me in how I run and manage my businesses.

Just a few days ago, I tweeted this:

What are you ready for ? Answer in comments ( shot via Snapchat

#AskGaryVee Episode 175: IFTTT App, Buying a Franchise Business & Daymond John Asks a Question

On this episode, I talked about why I changed my mind on IFTTT posts, what I think about buying a franchise, and Daymond John makes an appearance to ask a question.

 

 

#QOTD: Has me personally responding to you impacted how you feel about me? Whether it was on Twitter, email or Snapchat.

#TIMESTAMPS

0:59 – This IFTTT stuff has been out for a while and you used to be against it. Why change?

4:59 – What are your thoughts on buying a franchise business?

6:50 – Lots on people on Snapchat don’t let followers Snap them. If personal brands don’t use it as two way street, are they missing the point?

9:54 – You invest in so many people and businesses, how do you ensure they’re applying the Power of Broke?

15:22 – Have you ever released a subpar product or service? If so, why? What did you learn from it?

#LINKS

DAILYVEE 004 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98kMW...

MY NEWEST ARTICLE http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-va...