
October 5, 2017
The James Altucher Show: Ep. 260 – Gary Vaynerchuk: Set a Flag on YOUR Thing
Intro
- Gary’s books:
How do I start?
- Check out Gary’s video – How to Start
- Don’t start with money, start with what you loved from the 4th-8th grade
- You can build a life around the passions you had when you were 10
- Gary does this with football, he absolutely LOVES watching the Jets on Sundays. That’s why he’s trying to buy them – to turn his passion into a business opportunity
The Actualities of Entrepreneurship
- There’s depression, anxiety
- You have to LOVE losing, you’ll lose every day
- Gary is an investor in around 100 companies
- You can’t be insecure about asking for help
- “When you’re doing what you love, and you’re into it, it really gives you that 1/100th extra inch that you need to really get crazy”
Optimism and Self-Awareness
- If Gary could only pick one , self-awareness or hustle, he’d pick self-awareness – “If you don’t know who you are, its over”
- James – “Humility is the doorway to self-awareness”
- There’s a big difference between optimism and delusion
- Gary builds business so the content he creates has more credibility
Patience
- People are missing patience
- Squeeze everything you can out of every day
- It will take decades, you have to be addicted to it
- “Nobody has ever built anything meaningful that hasn’t taken an obnoxious amount of time”
- You have to eat shit for a long time
Documenting Instead of Creating
- Check out The Daily Vee – Gary’s daily vlog
- Make a documentary instead of a feature film
- “Instead of trying to make a ‘Three’s Company’, make something like ‘Keeping up with the Kardashians'”
- You don’t need permission, just do it. The iPhone camera is better than any camera in the world 15 years ago. Youtube, Facebook, it’s so easy nowadays!
- James like to think of this as “Process is Art” – people want to know the how
- Check out these podcast notes for more on this with Ramit Sethi
Make a Manifesto
- Gray is coming out with a new book next year – Crushed It
- Gary wrote a book called Gary Vaynerchuk’s 101 Wines
- “There’s a correlation to doing things around your favorite things. It’s just easier when shit is bad“
- One thing leads to another, just start something in an area you enjoy
- “The world walks into you, instead of you walking to where the money is”
- “If you go to your thing, and set a f*cking flag on your thing, I genuinely believe the world will come to you.”
- If you really love something, spend 2-3 hours a day either writing, vloging, or podcasting about it
- For example: if you love coffee, review every cup of coffee you drink on Instagram or invite every barista you know to be on your coffee podcast
- To get ahold of someone:
- Gary recommends direct messaging people on Instagram, but approach them with ideas they can USE
- Or you can connect people who should know each other
- James – “We’re moving from a certificate based society to a skill based society”
- If you have taken the first step and done two episodes of your podcast, use the hashtag #GaryVandJamesIStarted, Gary and James vow to make an appearance on your podcast
- Just start! It’s so easy, you can start a podcast with skype, even your iPhone
- Check out James’ book – Choose Yourself
How does Gary find balance?
- You know you’re doing too much when your partner/kids tells you its too much
- Gary values his kids’ events more than anything, he’ll regularly miss meetings to attend them
Tell Stories
- “Stories are how we create the visions of the future” – James
Odds and Ends
- “It’s about doing what you love, you only get this one life” – James
- Gary enjoys the process, he finds it hard to celebrate – “I’m winning with every f*cking breath”- so how can he celebrate
- The small wins are not bigger than the process itself to him
- James, however, enjoys celebrating the small stuff
- Gary lives for underdog status and having a chip on his shoulder. Adversity is a massive positive.