
January 14, 2020
Hard Work or Nothing – Gary Vaynerchuk on The Business Casual Podcast
Check out the Business Casual Episode Page & Show Notes
Key Takeaways
- Gary’s secret sauce:
- Being just a hair early on big trends
- Not focusing on social media comments, whether positive or negative
- Giving more value than he takes
- More people need to communicate their happiness and gratitude on social media
- At the moment, Gary believes TikTok is THE social media platform to be on because of its incredible organic reach
- Gary’s parents taught him two important lessons:
- “Hard work or nothing… and kindness over everything” – Gary Vaynerchuk
Intro
- Gary Vaynerchuk: (@garyvee) is a serial entrepreneur and the CEO and co-founder of VaynerMedia. He’s also the author of:
- Host – Kinsey Grant (@KinseyGrant)
Gary’s Secret Sauce
- Gary’s secret formula for success? – Being just a hair early on big trends
- “I think my story will be a story of timing” – Gary Vaynerchuk
- (But you also can’t be too early, Gary believes something big will happen with VR but it still needs time to develop)
- One example of Gary’s secret sauce in action: Launching an e-commerce wine business in 1996 before the massive popularity of the internet
- Gary doesn’t focus much on the comments his social media posts/videos get, whether positive or negative
- By not letting his ego get too high or low, Gary is able to continually put out content
- “Once you’re not scared of the feedback, you actually post the truth” – Gary Vaynerchuk
- (And once you post the truth, you become unique)
- “Once you’re not scared of the feedback, you actually post the truth” – Gary Vaynerchuk
- By not letting his ego get too high or low, Gary is able to continually put out content
- Another secret to his success: Give more value than you take
- Gary is constantly creating content and gives it out for free across several platforms
- 🎧 He’ll never stop a video midway to ask viewers to buy a bottle of wine or a pair of his shoes – he focuses on providing value, not taking it
- His motto: “Build a brand and bring value. Then, you basically karma and guilt people into doing business with you.”
Gary’s Next Mission
- 🎧 Which of Gary’s projects excite him the most?
- “That I’m tricking young entrepreneurs into valuing patience and kindness and empathy” – Gary Vaynerchuk
- Why? – He wants to see more creators displaying patience, gratitude, and kindness within their content
- “That I’m tricking young entrepreneurs into valuing patience and kindness and empathy” – Gary Vaynerchuk
- More people need to communicate their happiness and gratitude on social media!
- One easy way to do so: Write a thank you comment on airline’s Instagram page if you experience great customer service
Get on TikTok & LinkedIn
- Gary believes TikTok is THE social media platform to be on now because of its incredible organic reach
- Twitter and Facebook were the hot platforms in the mid-2000s
- Instagram was the hot platform between 2011 and 2013
- TikTok is the hot platform of today
- Why get on TikTok? – “When you move fast, you land grab… Best always wins, but first is a great place to be too.” – Gary Vaynerchuk
- Why aren’t many brands advertising on TikTok yet?
- New things are sometimes scary
- You can’t legally market to kids under the age of 13 (and TikTok is filled with young users)
- Many brands don’t target customers under the age of 18
- (Unless they’re selling fashion, candy, etc.)
- Gary is also bullish on LinkedIn – he believes LinkedIn today equals Facebook in 2012
- “LinkedIn is wildly underpriced” – Gary Vaynerchuk
- In summary: If you focus on LinkedIn and TikTok over the next 6 months, your business will gain a lot more customers than if you were to focus on Instagram
Fortune 500 Marketing Mistakes
- A ton of Fortune 500 companies make the mistake of focusing on potential reach instead of actual reach
- Potential reach is known as GRP (Gross Rating Point): A measure of the size of an advertising campaign by a specific medium or schedule. It doesn’t measure the size of the audience reached.
- Another way of thinking about this – You may have 50k people subscribed to your mail newsletter, but that doesn’t mean you’ll get 50k opens.
- Part of the problem: Fortune 500 companies are so big that they can’t tell which advertisements are responsible for which results
- “I feel bad for them. I don’t think they’re stupid or don’t care. I think the company scores on reporting, not actual business results.” – Gary Vaynerchuk
Nostalgia is Under-Priced
- Gary is obsessed with nostalgia and calls it the “most under-priced asset in the world”
- He plans to buy up nostalgic brands (Blow Pops, Cap’n Crunch, Ocean Pacific, etc.) during the next economic collapse for cheap and then make the brands contemporary
Additional Notes
- What is a brand?
- “It’s what people think when they hear a word” – Gary Vaynerchuk
- Gary’s parents taught him two important lessons:
- “Hard work or nothing… and kindness over everything” – Gary Vaynerchuk
- Gary is a big believer in hustling but says people took his message too far
- He sleeps eight hours/night thinks other people should too
- Constantly produce content and feel free to cut-up and repurpose existing content:
- Take a blog article: Share quotes on Twitter or images on Instagram
- Take a podcast: Create audio clips for YouTube and TikTok
- Gary believes Chinese entrepreneurs are beating American entrepreneurs because they’re hungrier and more raw
- Gary is anti-venture capital
- Too many founders are spending more on building pitch decks to raise money instead of focusing on their customers or developing a better product
- “We stopped building businesses in the last decade because of VC and all the money. Let’s make this decade a decade where we went back to actually building businesses” – Gary Vaynerchuk
- 🎧 Gary is anti-school system for people who have “natural, artistic talents” and entrepreneurs