People love Gary Vaynerchuk. They express it by being his 1.3M+ followers on LinkedIn, 2.4M+ Followers on Facebook, 911k+ subscribers on YouTube, and by over-crowding auditoriums at his speaking events.
An immigrant from Belarus, born into a family of “old-school Communist parents,” as he describes them, Gary has hustled to become a successful entrepreneur, agency founder, investor, and a digital video celebrity.
Scarlet Fu of Bloomberg recently sat down with Vaynerchuk for a conversation. Here are some top quotes and lessons from Mr. Vaynerchuk that can bring inspiration and encouragement to aspiring entrepreneurs:
1. On 9-to-5 Job:
“9 to 5 is not for losers. If you don’t complain, I actually don’t have anything to say to you. If you’re good, you are good! If that’s 9 to 5 and you’re on four softball teams, and you’re loving life, than you’ve won.”
Vaynerchuk says that he’s fascinated by people who complain. “Your actions should match your mouth and your ambitions. I think working 9 to 5 is for a loser who says that they will rule the world, and they watch Netflix for four hours a day.”
2. On limited time and resources for those who want to build a business:
“I think life is about options. Everybody’s got stuff. It’s just remarkable to me how much you can do from 7 pm in the evening to 2 am in the morning to change the outcome of your life. Our parents didn’t have such opportunity. It’s the options that we are now awarded by the infrastructure of scalable technologies that have no cost of entry to build a personal brand or a small business direct to consumer.”
Vaynerchuk makes suggestions on how one can make choices to free up time and save resources for building a business. He says that people often forget to consider a “step back,” or a way to sacrifice something from their current lifestyle to work on a business idea.
Vaynerchuk says:
- “You are more than welcome to take a different job and make less money. Why not go from a salary of $180K a year to a salary of $90K a year? You will open a lot more time.
- Why don’t you sell your home and rent an apartment?
- Why don’t you go from getting four outfits every month to one per year? You can. Life is about options.”
3. On telling your story via one of the core mediums:
“If you are capable of telling your story in a captivating way, you need to pick a core medium you’d like to use to communicate – written, audio, and video, says Vaynerchuk. First, figure out if you can tell a story; then, figure out the medium to tell your story. If you can do it in more than one place, it would be preferable, because our attention is fragmented at scale.” Here are several examples Vaynerchuk lists for each medium:
- Joe Rogan and Tim Ferris on audio
- Fred Wilson through writing
- Gary Vaynerchuk through video
4. On a thoughtful and provoking video episode that resulted in a dinner with Mark Zuckerberg
Learning from Vaynerchuk, it is possible to get attention from the tech-giants on the world by sharing provoking thoughts via one of the mediums. Vaynerchuk described creating a video where he had explained why Twitter was dangerous to Facebook when Facebook was a very small company. He was invited to speak with Facebook employees and ended up having a dinner with Mark Zuckerberg and making a large investment in Facebook. Similar stories of digital engagement have brought him in connection with other prominent tech CEO’s.
5. On great and average entrepreneurs:
“Great entrepreneurs do not care about their losses, because these are their losses – lessons. Average entrepreneurs always care about opinions about their losses.”
6. On giving great content to audiences for free:
“The reason I think I have popped over the last few years is because I end up giving my audience in return more than they have expected. I am putting out the best stuff I’ve gotten for free every day.”
Image credit: CC by JD Lasica
