#AskGaryVee by Gary Vaynerchuk
The Book in 1 Sentences
#AskGaryVee: One Entrepreneur's Take on Leadership, Social Media, and Self-Awareness
"Consider #AskGaryVee my marketing master class. The difference between it and anything else you might have studied in school is that I don’t want you to regurgitate what you learn; I want you to act on it right now.” ~ Gary Vaynerchuk
6 BIG Ideas
#AskGaryVee Book Summary by Gary Vaynerchuk
"My hope is that after you read this you’ll feel empowered and armed with a deeper
understanding of the current business environment, including the ins and outs; the
black, the white, and the gray; the IQ and the EQ; the details and the big picture
surrounding everything it takes to be a successful entrepreneur, executive, CEO,
and manager.
I’ve been spending a ton of hours on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest,
Snapchat, Meerkat, Periscope, LinkedIn, and many other platforms, and from this
man’s point of view we are living in an unbelievably interesting time. I haven’t
felt this sense of disruption since 2006-2007, when Facebook and Twitter started
eating away at Friendster and MySpace.
The stakes and the opportunities are high, and the next thirty-six months of hustle just might pay off more than usual for those people willing to put in the time and effort. See, many people are only just settling into Facebook and Twitter, not realizing the world has already embraced
other opportunities as well. The advantage is yours if you want it.” ~ Gary Vaynerchuk
1. The Clouds and The Dirt
“I spend all my time in the clouds and the dirt.
The clouds are the high-end philosophy and beliefs that are at the heart of everything I am
personally and everything I do professionally.
... the clouds don’t just represent the big picture; they represent the huge picture, the everything.
They are not goals. Goals can be achieved and set aside or moved. I’m Going to Buy the Jets is a goal. It drives me, too, but it’s not at the core of how I run my businesses.
The dirt is about being a practitioner and executing toward those clouds. It’s the hard work. ...
Everyone has their own definition of clouds and dirt, but if there’s any advice I can offer you that will change the entire trajectory of your career, it’s to start pushing on both edges. Raise the bar on your business philosophy, dig deeper into your craft. You want to be an equally good architect as you are a mason.
You’ve got to be able to simultaneously think at a high level and get your hands dirty.”
John Maxwell’s - in his great book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership - also says: “Great
leaders always seem to embody two seemingly disparate qualities. They are both highly
visionary and highly practical. Their vision enables them to see beyond the immediate. They
can envision what’s coming and what must be done.
Leaders possess an understanding of how:
Mission provides purpose—answering the question, Why?
Vision provides picture—answering the question, What?
Strategy provides a plan—answering the question, How?
As author Hans Finzel observed, ‘Leaders are paid to be dreamers. The higher you go in
leadership, the more your work is about the future.’
At the same time, leaders are practical enough to know that vision without action achieves
nothing. They make themselves responsible for helping their followers take action.”
"The clouds and the dirt"...
Take your time and reflect on that...
2. Focus on Your Strengths
“So let’s say you’ve got a good handle on your cash flow. How do you figure out what’s next?
Focus on your strengths. What else are you really good at? Design? Growth hacking? Nail these skills down, and then drill deep with them.
If cash is your company’s oxygen, your strongest skills are its DNA. Develop and cultivate them because they will be the hallmark of your
company. ...
Bet on your strengths. It’s an underrated business strategy in a world where so many people are obsessed with fixing their weakness they give short shrift to the skills they were born with.”
Tom Rath - in his book Are You Fully Charged? - also tells us: “If you spend most of your life
trying to be good at everything, you eliminate your chances of being great at anything. Unless
your goal is to be mediocre at a lot of things, starting with what you are naturally good at is a
matter of efficiency.
Focusing on strengths is in many ways a basic time-allocation issue. Every hour you invest in an area where you have natural talent has a multiplying effect, whereas each hour you spend trying to remedy a weakness is like working against a gravitational force.
Yet many people spend years or even decades working on weaknesses in hopes that doing so will make them well-rounded. Do everything you can to avoid falling into this trap.
While well-roundedness may be helpful for acquiring the basic tools in any trade—such as
reading, writing, and arithmetic—it loses value as you get closer to finding a career. At that
point, what’s more important and relevant is what sets you apart. If you want to be great at
something in your lifetime, double down on your talents at every turn.”
“You may have aspirations of being an entrepreneur, and you may have entrepreneurial
tendencies, but if you are born to be an entrepreneur you will not be able to breathe for more than ten minutes in a ‘real’ job.”
3. Hustle Vs Talent
“Here’s a question that no one has yet asked me: What is the one tangible thing people can do to change the direction of their lives?
Hustle.
Anyone who follows sports, and especially drafts, knows that a less gifted competitor can outplay even the most naturally talented athlete if that competitor has more hustle.
Similarly, it’s hustle, not talent, that is the differentiator between entrepreneurs who succeed and those who don’t.
I have never seen anyone increase his or her natural talent, but I have seen people transform
themselves by increasing their hustle.”
“If you’re single-mindedly focused on your long-term goal, you’ll be more effective in the short term and get there faster.”
Angela Duckworth also talks about the same idea in her great book Grit, she says: “I have been working on a theory of the psychology of achievement since Marty scolded me for not having one. I have pages and pages of diagrams, filling more than a dozen lab notebooks.
After more than a decade of thinking about it, sometimes alone, and sometimes in partnership
with close colleagues, I finally published an article in which I lay down two simple equations
that explain how you get from talent to achievement.
Here they are:
talent x effort = skill
——————> skill x effort = achievement
Talent is how quickly your skills improve when you invest effort. Achievement is what happens
when you take your acquired skills and use them.
Of course, your opportunities—for example, having a great teacher—matter tremendously, too, and maybe more than anything about the individual. My theory doesn’t address these outside forces, nor does it include luck.
It’s about the psychology of achievement, but because psychology isn’t all that maters, it’s incomplete. Still, I think it’s useful. What this theory says is that when you consider individuals in identical circumstances, what each achieves depends on just two things, talent and effort.
Talent—how fast we can improve a skill—absolutely matters. But effort factors into the calculations twice, not once. Effort builds skill. At the very same time, effort makes skill productive.”
4. Hustle is NOT about Working 24/7!
“I think a lot of people make the mistake of assuming that if you believe in hustle, you can’t ever take a step back. That’s too narrow a definition. Hustle means adjusting to business opportunities as they come and adjusting to life as it changes.
If your north star is family, then there’s no shame in revolving your hustle around that. It’s about quality vs. quantity, being fully engaged while you’re working, not necessarily working every day of the week.”
5. Practice the Religion of Providing Value First!
“Don’t skip this one if you don’t think of yourself as a salesperson because if you’re running
a business or trying to make money of any kind, you’re in sales, and here’s the cardinal rule
everyone in sales needs to follow: Don’t close too early.
Most people don’t jab—bring value—enough before pulling back for the right hook—going in for the sale. They’re less concerned with providing value than with making the sale, and it backfires every time. ...
You want to be tactical, but you have to practice the religion of providing value first. How many people put out stories, give free stuff, or engage with people? Probably quite a
lot. Now, how many do that without any expectations in return? Very, very few. Be one of those few.
When you have no expectations people can sense it, and funny enough, the absence of pressure or obligation actually makes them want to reciprocate. That’s the best advice I can offer.”
6. Stop Doing Things That Make You Unhappy
“Q: What was the biggest decision in your life that made you successful today?
It was the day I made the choice to suck at school.
Fourth grade. Mr. Mulnar’s science class. I got an F on a science test. To make shit worse, I had
to get it signed by my mom.
To avoid being punished, I hid it under my bed, where it sat for two days until my conscience got the better of me and I showed it to my mother.
Until that moment, though, I was in hell. I distinctly remember sitting in my small bedroom,
crying and trying to make sense of why I was having such an intense reaction to this test. And
then it hit me, the thought that changed everything: ‘Screw school. I’m a businessman.’”
Gary continues “That moment marked the first time I decided to fight what society expected of me and deliver on what made me happy. And you should, too.
Bottom line: Stop doing things that make you unhappy.”
And always remember :“‘But’ is not a word to use when you talk about your aspirations. If you are serious about reaching your dreams, nothing will get in the way.”
That was my QUICK summary of the great book #AskGaryVee by Gary Vaynerchuk. If you’re interested, get your copy. There is a HUGE amount of wisdom and life-changing ideas in this book, and we’ve only touched on a tiny bit of it.
Buy The Book: #AskGaryVee by Gary Vaynerchuk
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