I Don’t Agree with Gary Vee on Everything, But He Nails These 5 Points About Being Successful

Author, businessman, speaker, and social media personality Gary Vaynerchuk is many things to many people. First gaining popularity online by using social media to help promote his family’s wine business, Gary has undoubtedly become one of social media’s biggest and most powerful voices. 

A huge fan of the hustle culture, Gary Vaynerchuk has often come under fire for promoting the idea of giving up a work-life balance in favor of more work, more social media output, and more everything. Regardless of what you think of Gary himself, it’s hard to ignore how much he has accomplished. 

Who Is Gary Vaynerchuk? 

Born in 1975, Gary Vaynerchuk graduated from college in 1998 and immediately took charge of his father’s liquor store, Shopper’s Discount Liquors. Renaming it to Wine Library and launching online sales, Gary took his father’s business from a $3 million a year store to a $60 million annual giant. 

During his time at Wine Library, Gary started his first long-form content on YouTube, WineLibraryTV. Unsurprisingly, this took off and appeared online almost daily for five years, landing him national television appearances with Ellen and Conan. 

In 2008, Gary’s keynote at Web 2.0 changed his career and would lead to a 10-book deal and the publishing of his first book, “Crush It!” in 2009. By this point, Gary was an online star, giving him enough juice to angel invest in companies like Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, Venmo, and more. This led directly to his founding of VaynerMedia with his younger brother in 2009. It now has more than 800 employees and counts PepsiCo, GE, Johnson and Johnson, Chase, Anheuser-Busch, and more as past or present clients. 

Online Conversations

Gary frequently drops wisdom to his followers between his books and social media presence, including quotes like “Ideas are worthless without execution.” Quotes like these highlight Gary Vaynerchuk’s signature belief about how to be successful. 

This quote encapsulates Gary’s belief that action is more important than ideation every single time. Gary’s social media presence confirms that he is relentless about posting on social media as frequently as possible and answering late-night emails. In other words, Gary believes more in doing than overthinking, which contributed to his early success. 

Gary Vaynerchuk’s Principles 

Relentless Work Ethic

Gary’s idea of having a relentless work ethic is a staple for him and something he preaches to others. This individual talks about how little sleep they get to be up earlier than their competitors, and that outworking others is a significant key to success. Gary wants you to believe in maximizing your time, such as learning a skill while you commute to work instead of watching a television show. 

Gary says this is why he does “DailyVee,” talking about how he’s always in “…constant motion. Every day, always, forever. For the most part, and during the traditional work week, I have zero minutes of downtime.” 

Authentic Storytelling

In Gary Vaynerchuk’s world, storytelling is everything, and everything about storytelling needs to be as genuine as possible. This applies to his keynote speech or social media posts on X or Snapchat. Gary has never been one to shy away from what’s troubling him personally, making him easier to connect with, as he feels like a real person and not just a robot that always works. 

Constant Fan Engagement

Gary believes heavily in responding to others, which ties directly back to how authentic his audience thinks he is. Gary will respond to comments on his social media posts or private messages and emails. He spends hours interacting with followers and giving them business or life advice, which shows he practices what he preaches about two-way communication. 

Three months ago, Gary posted a video on LinkedIn responding to someone asking how to promote a local business. Gary’s advice to this person in this video summarizes his philosophy of doing and taking action. His advice was to take their best-performing organic social media video content and promote it for $100 per week for three months, targeting up to 10 miles from their location. Then, watch how fast they became “local celebrities.” 

Practical Advice

In Crush It!, Gary explicitly uses this first book as an opportunity to discuss how he turned his passion into successful businesses and how others can do the same. He highlights that someone who owns a bakery shop should post recipe videos to help attract local customers. Gary loves this kind of advice: actionable, as in, take the smartphone you have and get to work. 

This is precisely what Gary did in the social media above. He gave the person he was responding to practical advice about promoting their business without spending a fortune. This was real-world, sound advice that wouldn’t cost more than $1,200 but could lead to 10X this number in sales. 

The $1.80 Strategy 

If you know anything about Gary Vaynerchuk, you know he loves his “two cents” strategy. He says you should leave a comment on 90 posts per day to help others and grow your social media presence. This is the $1.80 strategy (0.90 x 2), and Gary highlights that it costs nothing more than time but has real-world rewards. 

Take Gary’s Advice, In Moderation

It’s clear that Gary’s advice works on many levels, and a host of people, Gary included, are living proof of the results. The best case scenario is to use Gary’s advice, but to do so in moderation. 

The bottom line is that you don’t have to take his advice, which will almost immediately lead to burnout for most people. The idea of a small business owner trying to push out 10 Instagram stories every day might not be unrealistic. However, taking this advice in moderation, pushing out more Instagram stories, and potentially using the paid media example above is fantastic. 

Cautionary Trendsetting

Gary loves to try to be a trend letter, something he jumped on with the NFTs, which were super popular a few years ago, but now, nobody talks about them anymore. It’s okay to be a first adopter, but this idea proves that you can take Gary’s approach with moderation, as you don’t want to invest heavily in an uncertain market. Yes, it could mean you lose out on a windfall, but far too many people holding the bag on NFTs have also dropped in value. 

Moderation Is Key

One potential solution for most of Gary’s advice is to take it in moderation. A great example is the $1.80 strategy as interacting with 90 comments daily isn’t practical, but engaging with 10 followers daily is less time-consuming. It can also have a solid payoff and be kept up long-term. 

There is a popular story about a freelancer who wanted to try Gary’s “post 100 times a week” challenge but burned out in just two weeks. They were neglecting sleep and work, so it’s a cautionary tale highlighting how you can take Gary’s advice, but that moderation is the key unless you are Gary himself. 

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