How to Ask For Everything You Want with Gary Vaynerchuk

CEO of VaynerMedia – Gary Vaynerchuk

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Discover why you shouldn’t fix what you are bad at, and Gary’s tips for asking for what you want. Plus why quality is more important than quantity in the age of social media.

Check out GaryVaynerchuk.com for more info!

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Transcript:

Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I'm Jaime Tardy and today we have Gary Vaynerchuck on the show. You probably already know who he is, but he is a serial entrepreneur, bestselling author. He wrote Crush It! and Thank You Economy. He has a brand new book coming out. I was actually just at South by Southwest and at midnight he tweeted a location to a secret party and I was there like minutes later and there was a huge line in the pouring rain waiting outside the door. If anyone ever doubted the power of social media I mean that's complete proof. It was ridiculous. Thank you so much for coming on the show today, Gary.

GARY VAYNERCHUK: Thanks for having me.

JAIME TARDY: First of all, you're doing an interview every single day this entire year, which is crazy. Where did you come up with the idea and has it actually been fruitful for you at all?

GARY VAYNERCHUK: I'll answer number two very quickly. The answer is yes because it was fruitful before I even started it. The idea came from, very similar to where we saw each other at South By, with the one on one Q&A booth that I did instead of a keynote. I think a keynote, in front of 4,000 people at South By, was something I had done before. I think being on CNN and The Today Show and Conan, these are things I've done before, they're mass reach, but getting in the trenches and giving back one by one, high impact. Quality over quantity is something that a lot of people don't do.

I didn't promote it outside of my normal channels meaning that the people that got the interviews were fans of mine or cared about my work to begin with. It was my chance to give back to 365 people and basically say thank you to them for giving a crap about my work and what I do. I believe in contacts and I believe that, for example, your and my relationship, after this interview, is deeper than it was before and that's what I was going for and more importantly I wanted to let 365 people leverage my name and build more awareness for what they are doing and as a thank you to again supporting what I have done in the past.

JAIME TARDY: Awesome. I thank you for that because that's huge, especially because you have a million plus followers on Twitter. I mean, just 365 is huge. Actually let's go back, like way back, because I know you've done a lot of these interviews and we kind of know a lot of what you're doing now. You actually came from Russia, right? I was wondering, did you always know you were going to be successful even then?

GARY VAYNERCHUK: Yes. I was born in Belarus, in the former Soviet Union. At the time, it was the Soviet Union. I came when I was 3 so I was really young but I grew up in a lower middle class starting point in Queens, New York, a poor actually, but very quickly my dad worked his face off and gave us a nice foundation. But yes, I would say as long as I can remember I had a really good feel that I was going to be okay. I remember never worrying about grades, when I was literally going back to second or third grade, not worrying about grades; didn't think that that was my way out. Always sold stuff, always had good people skills. Never, never ever waivered or was concerned about my future.

JAIME TARDY: How hard did you have to work, like at first? I think one of the things that we always assume is that maybe it was easier for you, right. You're a hustler; you worked your butt off. You figured it all out but it's easier to say that and totally different to actually hear about what you did. Like how many hours, when you first started your first business, how many hours were you working?

GARY VAYNERCHUK: I mean my first businesses started, when I was in school and it was all of them, hence why I got out. Since I put all my hours into my business card business, as a teenager, you know, I put zero into school. It all depends on how you want to look at it. For the short term I was a loser and wasn't a good student and blah, blah, blah by standard kind of conventional thinking. But, in a Malcolm Gladwell world of like putting in the hours, I put in the hours. I mean all of them. If you ask me how many hours I work, all of them, except for Sunday Jets games and family time, all of them.

JAIME TARDY: It's 10:26 right now Eastern time and we're talking on the phone. I mean that's highlights and we assume that maybe now that you're successful, you can really pick and choose, but it sounds like you're working your butt off even now.

GARY VAYNERCHUK: Mainly because I'm just not content where I am and so many people would be content. Listen, I live in the top 1 percent life and so I'm very aware of why most would be. I don't think I'm cool for not being content. It's just I'm not. It just depends on how you're wired and listen, I think in some weird ways I do think more about work life balance, vacations, what if I didn't grind so hard, more today than I did five years. It's an evolution.

You're always different along the way, but I would tell everybody that's listening or reading depending on how this gets transcribed, that it becomes a hell of a lot easier once you understand what you're good at and so it's really important to understand what you're passionate about and that's what Crush It was all about. But I wonder if like, I'm thinking about writing a book called Practical It. Figure out what you're actually good at because once you figure out what you're good at, then you're on your way. What I am good at is telling stories and selling stuff. Luckily for me, the internet came along and created platforms that allow me to do that.

JAIME TARDY: Do you only do what you're good at now?

GARY VAYNERCHUK: I've only ever done what I am good at ever, in my entire life. That's why I failed at something I was forced to do like school. I've only ever done what I'm good at ever.

JAIME TARDY: Okay, wait. How can you mitigate that? Because we look back and we see people, especially people that are just starting right now who probably can't just do only what we're good at because, as a business owner, there's so many hats that you have to wear, especially when you're starting. How do you answer that? I mean did you do stuff that you hated, at the very beginning?

GARY VAYNERCHUK: I'm always doing stuff I hate, right, but I'm spending 85, you know, 90 percent of my time on what I'm good at and luckily, for me, two things I'm very good at are building operations and selling. Obviously I got lucky with what I am good at, right? There's a lot of people that are good at only the money part meaning like the accounting. There are people that are only good at the human resources part. I think, for me, my dad was my partner and my brother was my partner. I've always had somebody else, you know, I've always had a number three or number two, depending on how you look at. Brandon at My Library, Kelly at Bigger Media, but when it was just me and AJ, before anybody came along, like I went out and sold our services before we had a company.

I bartered office space for the first 18 months of our existence. That's a really quick way to not have overhead and be able to take those dollars and put them right to employees to start working on the things you're not good at. I think a lot of people make decisions that are wrong, like spend too much money on dumb shit like furniture and a plaque and taking a car service. They're just not practical. The reason I've been able to win is that right from the beginning I get very scrappy and very in the trenches and very dirty about it. I mean I had already been very successful when I started Bigger Media. I more than could have afforded to pay for office space but I didn't.

I think that I've been able to put myself in a position to do things predicated on scrappiness. I don't think people ask enough. You got to ask for free office space. You got to ask for, you can get free computers. Just email Samsung and say your product sucks but I'll promote it on my Twitter account. People just are not scrappy enough, they're not gangster enough and I am and that's what I think has been a prelude to me allowing to do what I need to do because I'm saving dollars in a lot of places that I then apply to people because I think people are the greatest asset.

JAIME TARDY: Do you think being scrappy is innate or is that something that we can learn?

GARY VAYNERCHUK: You're talking to somebody who in general thinks most things is innate but things can I guess be taught. But I am very much a nature kind of DNA kind of guy. Yes, I've learned things but you've also heard me earlier, in this interview, that I've only focused on my strengths. So I'm very much in my DNA and then that becomes a scenario where everybody is listening and you're trying to give advice. It doesn't work for everybody and I respect that. What I am trying to do is realize how bad I am at so many things and realizing other people have the exact same issue and I just think that people are going all in on fixing what they are bad at instead of going all in on extenuating what they're great at.

JAIME TARDY: Give us some advice on like asking more. Actually when we were at South By Southwest you were saying the exact same thing. I mean there was a whole bunch of entrepreneurs around you and you're famous so everybody loves you and they're all asking questions and you're like you need to ask more. I remember saying that I tried getting Mark Cuban and I've emailed him like a bunch of times and I still haven't gotten a hold of him yet but I keep asking, what do you suggest for people to keep asking, even in the face of adversity?

GARY VAYNERCHUK: Think about your Mark Cuban question. How hard was that? You wrote an email, right?

JAIME TARDY: Yes. I wrote three, but yes.

GARY VAYNERCHUK: But that's it, right? That's it. Like it makes you laugh, when I say it, because it makes you quickly realize my God it's only three minutes, it's only nine minutes. I guess some people, I'm a quick emailer. I get right to the point. I usually put most of my email in the title. So maybe you gave it a lot of thought and tried to be clever, fine, so it was a couple more minutes, but I am blown away by people saying woe is me, woe is me. I can't do this, I can't do that or and you weren't like that, you were like but listen I've been trying. Fine. Okay, how many times have you emailed Mark? Three? Six? One? Nine?

JAIME TARDY: Definitely.

GARY VAYNERCHUK: There's plenty of people that have emailed me multiple times and I haven't been able to get back to it but on the fifth time I have. I think that if you ask for something at least ten times that I don't think it's appropriate for you to give up on it.

JAIME TARDY: Where do you think the attitude of like oh I feel like I tried and that's good enough or maybe they don't want it. It's funny; I was talking to Christa and she was talking about millennials and Christa is a person that works for you, we were talking about millennials and I think this is really huge because it's like this, and this was me too, right, like I had $70,000 in debt, even though I had a six-figure job, like stupid, stupid things and so why do we have this entitlement as if everybody should answer our beckon call, like the first time? Like why isn't Mark Cuban emailing me? I wrote him three times, really! Where do you think that comes from?

GARY VAYNERCHUK: I think it comes from good times. I think it comes from parents that have done a good job in some ways, but it comes from environments. I promise you that the kids in the ghetto that I'm driving by right now in Jamaica Queens, New York don't feel like Mark Cuban could answer that. I think it's your environment and I think it's your reality and good for you. I mean I feel the same way. My naivet? and blind confidence has brought me very far. On the flip side, me starting with zero and being an immigrant having to learn English and climbing the ladder also allows me to know how to taste rejection and be able to use it as a motivator instead of a deflator.

JAIME TARDY: That's makes a lot of sense. What do you think, were there any specific pivotal moments of your life? I mean we go through and we're hustling and hustling and hustling and I notice a lot of the times it's more about the small wins and the progress but do you think it's more about those small wins or were there huge pivotal moments that sort of changed everything for you?

GARY VAYNERCHUK: I think it comes down to self awareness. I mean my only pivotal moment that I can really think about was in eighth grade I went to the mall and asked the guy how much tables were for the baseball card show that weekend and I had two partners at the time, one was in eighth grade, one was in seventh grade, we were little kids and we made a pact on the way to the mall while one of my friend's mom drove us to the mall that if the table cost over $100 we would definitely not do it because that's crazy and we'll never make $100. We get there and we roll up on this guy and he's like 6'2", 400 pounds and I go, "Well mister" and I'm like 3'11", by the way, and I'm like, "Mister, how much for a table?" and he goes "$300 and I go we'll take it."

On the spot and my friends were like devastated as we walk out the mall and I go, "I'll come up with the other $200" which I think was all I had in my life, at that point. On the first day of a 3-day show, because it was Friday, Saturday and Sunday, we made $500 and I just remember knowing, at that moment that I would never ever be scared of anything again. So truly, you know what's fun, this is probably one of the reasons I did this interview series, I put out a lot of content, a lot and I've done thousands of interviews. I don't think I've ever told that story so good job!

JAIME TARDY: Thanks! Okay, wait, what gave you the balls to say yes to $300, when you didn't even have the money?

GARY VAYNERCHUK: Who knows! I was 12. I just knew that I had to do that show. Nothing in the world mattered more to me at that moment. I came home, I remember talking to my mom and dad and being like oh my God and my dad said something smart. He goes, "It'll be a good life experience." Like it was just assumed we were going to lose money.

JAIME TARDY: Did you have fear? Like was there fear, like even after you said yes?

GARY VAYNERCHUK: There was so much fear by Jason Riker and John Churshack that I had to put up a bravado of confidence and I think that leadership has always been there with me. I think it takes a certain kind of breed to be a leader and I think that when everybody else thinks you're dead, a leader has to think you're going to win and I've always had that for sure. It's something I am proud to have.

JAIME TARDY: Amazing. I know you have to get going. There's one last question that I always ask every single person that comes on this show and it's: what's one action that listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of a million?

GARY VAYNERCHUK: I'll give you two things. I'll give you two for the price of one. One I would sit down and make a list of the five people that you think can change your business life and cold email them with a clever title and do it every week with different titles for a month or two, let's do two, let's do 2.5 since I said 10 tries and see what happens and be respectful. On the fourth one be like I know you've seen three emails from me, I don't want to be annoying but I feel like you're somebody that I can learn from just whatever, blah, blah, blah. Maybe sell somebody something. Not necessarily mentors. I think sometimes people think to mentor. What about somebody that you can sell something to or buy something from.

So I would say that is really more importantly, after they're done listening or reading this, go into the mirror right now, look yourself dead in the face and completely strip yourself of all the things that you think you need to do or that you think is right and ask yourself what are you best at? Or post it on your Facebook message wall right now. Hey friends and family, if you had to say one thing, what do you think I'm best at? Collect that data, be honest with yourself and try to put yourself in a position actually do that.

JAIME TARDY: I love it! We think being whatever we're best at is a luxury, but it's not a luxury at all. That's something that we really should be paying attention to.

GARY VAYNERCHUK: I think it's a necessity. I really do.

JAIME TARDY: Perfect. Where can we get your newest book? How can we find you if God forbid somebody does not follow you already on Twitter? Where can we find you?

GARY VAYNERCHUK: Facebook.com/Gary is probably the easiest thing for everybody to remember hearing this. I think ironically Amazon has already listed Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook on their listings. No script or cover yet, it's not going to come out until between October and December. I'm just wrapping it up now. That's kind of the scoop.

JAIME TARDY: Nice and it is. I saw it on Amazon. I love the name of the book. I'm a brown belt in karate so I absolutely love it but I think it's hilarious because it talks all about giving and giving and I'm like yeah except we're punching you in the face, this is awesome. Thank you so much.

GARY VAYNERCHUK: Listen, it's been nice. It's raw.

JAIME TARDY: Perfect.

GARY VAYNERCHUK: Thank you so much.

JAIME TARDY: Thanks for coming on. Have a wonderful night, Gary.

GARY VAYNERCHUK: Bye bye.

So you heard what Gary said. Your action items for this week are to go and email right now someone and do it every week for the next 2.5 months. I promise I'll do it with Mark Cuban too. I'll let you guys know how it goes. Number two though is to post on your Facebook wall and ask people what you're good at. It is not a luxury and we really need to figure out what that is, if you don't know what it is already. There's also a great book called Strength Finders 2.0 so I'd recommend that too, if you have no idea what you're good at. I hope you guys have an amazing week. Take care.

Thanks for listening. You can find out more great information like this on EventualMillionaire.com.

Tags: Business Growth, Failure, Fear, Gary Vaynerchuk, internet marketing, millionaire interview, Online Marketing, social media, Social Media Marketing

Categories: All, Business, Business Model, Fear, Marketing, Millionaire Interviews, Relationships, Why

Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

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