Gary Vay Ner Chuk is not for the faint of heart. This 38 year old self-made typhoon has energy to spare, and then some. Immigrated to the US three decades ago, he catapulted his father’s modest wine business into a multi-million dollar imperium using social media as the sole driver for the mindboggling growth. Vaynerchuk used YouTube to set up a wine TV channel, and went bananas on Twitter, Google+ , a plethora of other social platforms and the speaker circuit.
Angel investor, brand strategist and author of a series of bestselling books, he is now at the helm of his own social media consultancy.
Vaynerchuk stands for right-in-your-face, f-word-carpet-bombed, no-nonsense, transparent communication:
Focus on the climbing, not on the summit, the journey is what gets you there.
Winter is coming: The ones opposing Google Glass are the same kind of people that predicted that the internet was dead, and that mobile phones would never make it. Progress is here, make the best of it. See technology as an extension of brain and body, embrace it. Technology, devices and platforms changed the way we live, communicate, and buy.
Program your kids the right way: why give a whole new generation the flying hillbillies by forcing them to memorize stuff that is fully accessible through the devices in their hands. We should teach them how to do, how to find, how to excel, how to succeed, not how to learn by heart. Kids cram things in their head, just to be able to reproduce at tomorrow’s test. Pathetic. We need to re-invent society, business… and education.
If you cannot swim, you cannot be a lifeguard: way too many agencies, gurus and ninjas are consulting companies and brands without having the necessary street credentials. If you cannot do it yourself, you’re useless as an adviser. Stop guiding people if you have no clue yourself, don’t kill off a social platform because you never even took the time on how to use it.
You will survive: stop being afraid of social media. BP fucked up a complete ocean, and we still pour their oil in our cars. That one tweet will not kill your business. So go express yourself and your brand. Invest in the best talent to help you with that. And that is not your cute looking young trainee.
Tell the best story, or die. Today’s communication business is like the game, music or movies business: merciless. Booby-trapped. Hit or miss. No room for non-greatness. You need to be the best storyteller to survive. Excel and thrive, or go mainstream and die. Good content and good story telling is the Grammy-winning name of the game.
Klout sucks: stop strategizing people’s kloutscore , following numbers or influence, try their relevance. Who are the people that can change your business? Maybe they have a Kloutscore of 21. Great. Work with them. Don t spend time looking what others do, do what is right for you.
Vaynerchuk dances with words, but he knows what he is talking about: don’t pour new wine in old barrels. Reinvent your game.
