Gary Vaynerchuk's Blog, page 71

Using Data and Intuition to Pivot Your Small Business

@garyvee How do you know when it’s time to pivot an idea to a new market as opposed to staying the course in the current market?

— Josh Doody (@JoshDoody) June 7, 2014

 

The truth is that in this day and age, my outlook on the business world comes down to two things. It’s either data or intuition. So there are two possible answers to the question:

1. You use the data. You see the numbers dipping. You see sinking customer acquisition or retention. You see shrinking profit margins. You see added competition in the marketplace. Or any of the other variables that data can show you.

2. You use your intuition. You just taste it in the air. You see the changes coming. You can feel the culture shift in society.

For me, I’ve always been an intuition guy. It was randomly being at a baseball card game and deciding to sell off all my inventory and pivot into toys and comic books. Or standing in the middle of the wine store in the on a Sunday afternoon and feeling that the customers were a little less interested in the California Cabs and Bordeaux of old. They were asking more questions about New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, and had a sparkle in their eyes when they talked about Argentinian Malbec.

Or “This whole internet thing is going to be big.”

Or “This whole youtube thing is going to be big.”

Or “This whole Twitter thing is going to be big.”

These are things that come to me. They’re a strength of mine, and exist naturally in my intuition.

On the flip side, there are people who have gone totally “quant.” They looked at all the data, understood the trends, and made their decisions. Either can work, and a combination of the two could be downright deadly (the awesome kind of deadly), but the truth is that it’s just that simple. Those are the two variables that I think you can use to make make decisions on pivoting or doubling down on what you’re already doing.

Read more of my writings on MEDIUM and LINKEDIN

Finding Happiness in Your Passion

Since the age of 8 or 9 the idea of being anything other than a “business man” has literally never dawned on me. I never ever dreamed of of doing anything else. So when I was asked this question:

@garyvee what was your dream job when you were a kid? What would you be doing if you weren’t a businessman?

— Amanda Liz (@madebyamandaliz) June 7, 2014

It stirred something in me that I think about quite often, but have never really articulated.

A lot of times I think about the fact that my passion, the one thing I want to to in life, ended up being so practical. So much of one’s life is predicated on the practicality of what that person wants to do. It turns out selling stuff and making money is super practical, but what if your passion is to make art installations out of old pizza boxes? I dream that if my children want to be starving artists that we go all-in on that.

I talk a lot about buying a billion dollar sports team, but the truth is that finding happiness in what you do every day is so imperative. Outside of your health and the health of your loved ones, that luxury of being happy every day is absolutely humongous. We spend an ungodly amount of time on the thing we “do for a living,” the thing we do “when we’ve grown up.” I’ve been fortunate enough to see some of my friends and close acquaintances become ten/hundred millionaires two or three times over, and I’m very aware that I have other friends who are making $50,000 a year. Having seen all that, I can honestly say that there is very little correlation between the amount of money someone has and how happy they are. There are those who say money can buy happiness, and I respect that, but then there are studies that say $75k is the threshold to happiness.

So to answer the question, I never thought that I’d become anybody other than what I’ve become. At some level, I wish everybody could have that luck.

 


Read more of my writings on MEDIUM and LINKEDIN

What Everybody Misunderstands about the ROI of Social Media

I’ve waited, and waited, and waited, and waited and waited.

For 7 years, I’ve waited. I thought that eventually people would get it. That they’d look at it like starting a website, or opening a retail store, or painting, or anything else in life.

I waited for people to realize that social media, like absolutely everything else in the world, is only as valuable as the person who uses it. I just assumed that it would happen, but here we are, mid-way through 2014, and we continue to have the argument. So I decided to make this Slideshare to really drive home this point once and for all.

For all of you who understand that nothing has really changed, that this is simply the current state of the internet, and that the best users will see the best results, I present you this deck. Please, please, please share it with all of the people you’ve been arguing with for the last 7 years.

[Full Q&A] 45 Minutes of SOLID GOLD Social Media and Business Advice

Awesome Q&A session with The Lamppost Group in Chattanooga. Timestamps are below:

00:17 - How do I market my company on Vine and Instagram?

04:18 - How do you know which new platforms to choose?

07:05 - What was your biggest failure, and what did you learn from it?

09:49 - Where do you see wine going in the USA?

14:40 - What insights do you have on company culture and HR?

20:56 - How do I get clients to believe in the value proposition of social media, and then once I do, how do I find the right people to execute on it?

22:20 - Why do you bother doing live events like this for a relatively small audience?

23:39 - What trends do you see in K-12 education?

27:44 - What can Chattanooga do to become more a “startup city?”

30:40 - How can Chattanooga attract more talented Millennials?

31:31 - Can you talk more about VaynerRSE, and what you look for when investing in startups?

33:20 - How can I use social media to promote a Highschool “Model UN” organization?

36:45 - What tools do you recommend for the cold-calling sales process? What about B2B?

39:17 - What’s the future of list-building/email marketing?

41:50 - How’d you like the Jets draft?

42:43 - Where do you see ad content going in the next few years?

44:29 - Are social media platforms niche driven, or should you be on all of them?

8 People You Should be Following on Twitter

Bridget Williams

I'm click-baiting my sons. Want them to read a great New Yorker article on self-sufficiency? Email with subject: "easy money this summer"

— Bridget Williams (@bridgetwi) May 26, 2014

One of the sharpest media-minds I have spent time with. She is a must-follow. Maybe the most important follow from this list.

Justin Thorp

One thing that doesn't change, when pitching your product. Gotta help me understand how you're helping make my life easier.

— Justin Thorp (@thorpus) May 23, 2014

Tons of authenticity. Justin’s been in the game a long time, is kind and thoughtful, and is just someone I have always been fond of. He doesn’t follow blindly, and really does his homework.

Anthony De Rosa

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— Anthony De Rosa (@AntDeRosa) May 27, 2014

Disclosure: I am in investor in Circa. I just like this guy’s work, and I’ve liked it since way before we were doing business together. I almost didn’t add him because of a conflict, but I had to because he understood the landscape of modern journalism so well.

Marco Arment

Do I have to change the world? That’s a lot of pressure. Can’t I just make a podcast app for people who like orange?

— Marco Arment (@marcoarment) May 27, 2014

Dude’s just smart. Period!

Doug Conant

#Leadership tip: Always aim for #commitment over compliance. #TouchPoints

— Doug Conant (@DougConant) May 29, 2014

Former CEO of Campbell’s Soup. Has a great POV of old and new world. Definitely worth the attention.

Tara Hunt

Do you know what the number one social era value is? Trust. In your instincts. Your employees. Your partners. Your customers. Trust.

— Tara Hunt (@missrogue) May 28, 2014

I love her POV on culture shifts. She really doesn’t get enough credit (in my opinion) for her understanding of the early social shifts in digital.

John Jantsch

Just read best Drucker quote – so much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to work.

— John Jantsch (@ducttape) May 10, 2014

A gentleman, 1st and foremost. Really on top of things with major work ethic, and full understanding of marketing. I like him a lot.

Kathy Sacks

How you do anything is how you do everything.

— Kathy Sacks (@kathysacks) April 23, 2014

Jersey girl Someone I respect for a few reasons I can’t share, but you should trust me when I say she is a great person, and deserves your attention.

Read more of my writings on MEDIUM and LINKEDIN

How I Create and Preserve Company Culture

I am the head of HR as much as I am CEO. It’s one thing to say you care about your employees, but its another thing entirely for you to put in the work and execute against it.

Throwback Thursday: “Facebook Pages are a Necessity”

Oh man, I love going back and watching these older clips. Beyond just being right about Social and Facebook, this is a really good example of how my views HAVEN’T changed.

A Note on Being Grateful

My energy, every single ounce of it, comes from gratitude.

I was born in Belarus in the former Soviet Union — probably the least capitalist place in the whole world — and had the serendipity of being able to come to the most remarkable country on earth when I was three.

I’m grateful to live in a country where entrepreneurship is something to be celebrated.

I honestly hate it when people hate on this country. You should hear my dad go off when people do. His Russian accent cranks up to 11 and he just loses it: “These fucking Americans don’t understand,” he says. And it’s because there is so much good here. Sure there are bad things. There is tons of bad in everything, but it’s all about weighing the options.

I’m grateful for the health and well-being of my family. It’s bittersweet, but I lost three of my four grandparents before I had a chance to know them. On the other hand, that’s meant that I’ve had a long, happy run in life of never having to know that kind of ultimate pain.

Do you know how grateful I am that you’re even sitting here reading this piece right now?

I’m grateful for the fact that my mother and father, though incredibly different, are an amazing set of parents who were able to reverse-engineer exactly who I was. I’m an immigrant, and classically, the way immigrants get out of poverty is through education (at least on paper). My parents watched me be a D and F student and allowed me to be the entrepreneur I wanted to be. They let me sell $1000 worth of baseball cards every weekend while I was failing classes during the week. I’m so grateful that they allowed me to do what I needed to do instead of getting caught up in the conversation of their contemporaries.

I will never take it for granted.

I’m just so thankful. Do you know how grateful I am that you’re even sitting here reading this piece right now?! That you even care about anything that I have to say? It’s an incredibly ridiculous feeling. I was thankful when I had nine followers, let alone a million.

I’m just very, very, very grateful. I will never take it for granted. I understand the perspective of it all. And I hate how many people think “glass half-empty” when their glass is really four-fifths full.

I’m grateful when I have one drop in the glass because I know exactly what to do with it.

The Value of Effort on Twitter

I answered every single tweet for a reason! The bottom line is that the emotional leverage I’ve build on Twitter is incredibly useful. It’s the way I live my life, and the way I do business. Also, it’s a great way to deal with the haters

A Short Film about How I do Business

A little something special for you All of this footage came from one day in my life.

I worked with the insanely talented David Rock to put this together. See his stuff here:

http://vimeo.com/launchpictures

http://youtube.com/davidrockfilm

Music by my man Rome Fortune:

https://soundcloud.com/romefortune

https://www.youtube.com/user/asRomeFortune