***Note: I am in no way affiliated with Gary Vaynerchuk and he didn't tell me to write this post or structure it in anyway, therefore all the good stuff goes to him and the bad stuff is my ineptitude.
I first ran into Gary when he replied to an email my company sent him 3 years ago. We were sending millionaires emails because we wanted "advice" on our first venture (having no experience on anything business related then), Gary was just another name on a list. I quickly read his description about taking his company from 3 million to over 40 million in revenue and I thought he could definitely be a good mentor.
Gary replied the next day! His reply was a sentence, it had grammatical errors, a misspelled word, however he was the only person at his level that got in contact with us at the time. Out of 100 people 6 replied and the other replies were from secretaries. I knew that the reply was his because it was only a sentence long.
Here it is:
"guys I am so sorry but I am head down these days with new book, family and Vaynermedia, I wish u nothing but awesome!"
No capital letter at the beginning of the sentence or anything, but I was very happy he replied!
Next we asked what we could do to get a mentor and we got another reply!
"exactly what u ate doing ... Ask"
It shocked me that he sent us another email reply! His interaction later lead me down the path of doing more research on him, his company and most recently pre-ordering his book Jab Jab Jab Right Hook. I remembered his name and how he did something so simple, yet it meant a lot.
So without further stalling here are the three lessons I learned from Gary during our on and off relationship the past three years.
1) Caring helps you provide Value, which = Winning
In his latest book Jab Jab Jab Right Hook, I'm going to make a bet on what the book will revolve around...The book will say you need to care and actually listen to your customers, give them value first and to then finally receive it. The rest of the book will give you examples of how you can do this through different marketing platforms and tactics. Every business thinks they can spam to win, take a look at the term "Real Estate" on twitter and you'll see what I'm talking about, people just spam articles in your face, no interaction whatsoever.
What winners do is listen to their core audience, ask questions to possible prospects and then give the prospects something they care about aka value. Once you give the prospects enough value you then have their attention and can make the sale or even learn more about your field to figure out how to give more value, more value = more money.
2) You don't Need a Mentor
When Gary told me to "just ask" for mentorship, I listened his advice it and it worked! I got a mentor, he was very successful and every week he'd meet with our company for a few hours teaching us a lot...thing is however I later learned from him you don't need a mentor. On Spreecast someone asked Gary if he had a mentor and he said "no", after he said that on Spreecast I said "Wait you don't have any mentors" (at the 51 minute mark and 28 seconds in ;D)...and he replied:
"Vlad yeah, I mean its not that I don't have any mentors, I'm like a weird unit this is probably my flaw Vlad, I would not say this is a strength and the truth is I'm wired a certain way...I'm one that learns by actions or watching other people"
After thinking about his answer quite a bit and it just goes to show you don't NEED any mentorship...Personally, I've learned a lot from my mentor, but I've also learned a ton from doing business with people who could be my mentors (latter feels better). If I ever have a question I can always get it answered by asking enough people, but most of the time everyone knows what they need to do in business. Perhaps I'm very biased, but people know they need to hustle, they know they need to care, they know they need to get outside of their comfort zone and stand out. Your mentor, your team can only push you so far at the end of the day you control your own your own success and only you.
3) Way too many people read and don't take action
I wrote "the Theory Guy Never Wins in Business" blog post and got a lot of flack from some people. Now I'm no psychic, but my reasoning is they were mad at me because they didn't want to take responsibility for their lives. In multiple interviews with Gary you can hear him saying "quit watching Lost" everyone has enough time, the only way to win is to WORK period.
I've learned a lot more from Gary than just those three business rules, but those three are the main ones I decided to share with you guys today. I encourage all of you to connect with him. At the end of the day if you show people you care and take enough action, winning is immanent. The secret is there is no secret, no magic pills, no instant results, just instant coffee in the morning you make while you're busy working away.
Connect with Gary on twitter: https://twitter.com/garyvee
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