Three Lessons Gary Vaynerchuk Taught Me About Business

***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 

The Worst Cold Call That Taught Me The Most

After a horrible day of little to no calling I sat there on the couch playing chess. Internally I felt like a failure and like I was completely hopeless...then my cellphone starts ringing. "Surely it can't be a customer" I told myself they never call (This was literally the first person to do that). "Hello" I answered very nervously...who could it be? "Hi this is Janet". After leaving a voicemail she actually called me back to inquire what I was calling about and so the process began.

Pitching her my services and what my company does I finally stopped asking her questions and paused to force her to speak..."I'm not gonna buy from you she said". "Ok I replied not a big deal, we'll get someone else in your region, may I ask why?". "Well let me be honest" she said, "honesty is what I want most of all lay it on me" I replied. "You sound way too nervous for me to do business with you", "the truth is I am nervous" I replied.

"Why are you nervous" she asked? "Well because I don't know you"...That's when it hit me over the head...if I knew the person I was calling it would be so much easier to talk to them yes or no, no matter their reply. I am very confident in person, but over the phone something slips. I love connecting with people, but it goes out the window when I cold call. "Why is that she said? Tell me more about how you could help us". I went on more confident now after I had acknowledged my nervousness. Still I prodded her to be work with us, however after 4 objections I figured I should use the time to simply learn more.

I knew I couldn't sell her because our product simply didn't fit with her needs, so I switched the topic. In front of me was a CEO who called called a lot. "What advice do you have in terms of cold calling?"I asked. "every no gets you closer to a customer that will say yes" she said...well I knew that, I wasn't impressed. Then came the good advice: "I tell myself everytime that this is a conversation, remember that and you'll be fine, you're just having conversations with people that's what this is about." That statement is where I made my breakthrough. No longer do I feel nervous anymore, if I feel nervous I acknowledge my feelings and they die down. Looking at each call as a conversation made me want to connect with people first and sell second.

People can say no, you don't have to close every call and I now hold comfort in that thought. I can mess up because the next conversation will go better. I treated each call as if it was the last shot before the buzzer, however this game is a marathon not a sprint. I'm sure I'll continue to get butterflies, but there's finally a sun after the storm.

The Are entrepreneurs born or Made debate

So I was sitting with an entrepreneurial mentor of mine at a restaurant (whom I very much respect). I hold him in high regard for two reasons. 1) He has a great business mind (successfully sold a company and built another  large one) 2) He is always brutally honest with me (honesty is what I always admire in people).

Anyways, at the time I was telling him about a brilliant friend I had and how I liked her business ideas. "She has the work ethic and is certainly smart enough to make money" I said. After I said this, he responded with a patient, but slightly annoyed look on his face: "You know you might be pushing her on this path, not many people are like you or me and meant to do this."...I know for a fact I wasn't pushing anyone, she came at me with her business idea...At the time I let that comment slip by though because I had other questions and topics I wanted to discuss. He has succeeded a lot and I recognized the rare opportunity I had. Since that lunch though I think about his comment a lot...I've seen the "natural born" concept hit over and over and over again by business people. Do you really think you're that special?

Mark Cuban talks about how he was selling garbage bags at the age of 6, Gary Vaynerchuk says he always had the business DNA owning 6 lemonade stands at age 13, people speak about Bill Gates' natural born genius in his biography, the man I was speaking to said he was very successful very early on as well, Gurbaksh Chahal sold his first company at 18, Donald Trump always says about how he was, well you know Donald...It seems to me people think they're very brilliant from the start. I can go on and on with the young success examples; Elon Musk is noted to have sold a startup at a young age. These people can all argue they were "born" entrepreneurs.

What about people that made it later in life? Surely not everyone was born with it. What about Ford creating his first prototype car at age 32? (Note he still wasn't successful at this point). Sol Price (had a big part in creating Costco, Sams Club and Walmart) didn't start FedMart until he was age 38. Rose Blumkin (Sold her two companies to Warren Buffet) didn't start Nebraska Furniture Mart until age 44. At age 24, Duncan Bannatyne (worth over well over 200 million now) was in jail. Coincidentally Barbara Corcoran (the short haired blonde on Shark Tank) just started her own business at 24. These are the people you can argue weren't born entrepreneurs, but became successful later down the road.

I come from the side that thinks this game isn't about DNA...I think you can start out doing bad, but dramatically turn things around. Henry Ford, Sol Price and Rose Blumpkin plus many more didn't have big successes early on and still all became very financially wealthy. I don't think there's any secret genetic code to being an entrepreneur and I think its pretentious of people to think they're different. You can say there are natural born geniuses that give people a head start, but then again there are people with 180 IQ's who you've never heard about in life with no major accomplishments; Plus, not many entrepreneurs on the high IQ list either.

If I wanted to bad enough or if someone held a gun to my head I'd learn how to program javascript in a month (been putting it off for a while now) and it would give my business a big advantage. I'd argue effort plays a huge role in developing your entrepreneurial success and is by far the most major contributor. Everyone knows that effort is important. As the adage goes the harder you work the luckier you get...yet, sadly we don't have a way to measure effort so you can't tell when someone is bitching or really failing.

So are entrepreneurs born or made? I think made because all of them have stories about their trials and tribulations, none of them speak as if they didn't have to sacrifice everything to get to where they are. As Malcom Gladwell wrote about the 10,000 hour rule on any field, I think sheer dedication is most important for success on entrepreneurship. Happy to hear your agreeance or disapproval.

-Vlad

https://twitter.com/VladMkrtumyan

3 Lessons I learned starting out as an Entrepreneur

Here are 3 lessons I learned starting out as an entrepreneur. I'm not saying I won't learn anymore, but I think these are important to avoid and definitely slow down a startups progress. Now the answer "it depends" applies to literally everything in our quantum physics world, so feel free to tell me where they don't apply or give me your thoughts on why they do as always discussion is encouraged. I apologize in advance for any grammatical errors, I want you guys to see this before I pass out for bed.

1) Never extend free trials

So this one is simple. As a startup you don't have the costly time to give clients extended trials because the more you extend the trial the lesser it makes your product or service seem worth it. For example, lets say you give 3 months worth of service for free that was supposed to have a 2 week trial. Now imagine how hard it is going for a monthly fee after...The client will almost always try to talk you down (in my B2B experience). This happened on two business models I ran and both resulted in no deals. Plus starting out I don't need hard to get clients, I want my good clients to get to the point where I can have the option to afford picky ones. Some people are never satisfied with anything, so if you ever will extend free trials tread with haste.

2) Best do what you have to do directly

Now this one is more complicated to find. A lot of times in startups if you're not doing your tasks as effectively as possible then you'll shoot yourself in the foot or die the death of 1000 papercuts. Happened to me when we were trying to do SEO on a product that made a $150 monthly profit. With some products selling face to face or cold calling works faster and is easier to get going. Of course in the best scenario you want all business channels producing, but in a startup you need to do what's effective first and disqualify or establish the business asap. Cold calling still hurts me to this day, but I do it because like flossing I know its the most effective way to my goals, maybe one day I'll love it.

3) If your gut says something is slowly going wrong, cut it off fast

Following number 3 is similar to 2, but warrants its own bullet point. Sometimes you'll be in deals or be a part of a team that doesn't feel right. Cut that off now! I had my co-founder go off to another state, tried working remotely failed slowly and miserably, while my gut told me to get out the whole time...as a result I wasted a few months of progress. I've also been in deals with people fishing for information and nothing more...should have listened to my gut and gotten out rather than waste my time. Now I follow deadlines meticulously, if you haven't met a deadline something is terribly wrong.

So there you go, those are the three tips I try to follow and would tell myself when starting out, let me know what you think.

Thanks for the read,

Find me on: https://twitter.com/VladMkrtumyan
Find me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vlad.mkrtumyan

Literally Sweating for My Startup

My hands are tingling and sweating as I fight with myself and finally decide to dial the first number. There's a deep pit in my stomach feeling like this call is make or break. Sitting on a bed in the midst of silence, convincing myself watching youtube videos isn't gonna stop me from living with my parents, I slowly dial the number and hit the green call button. All I hear is ringing stuck in pitch black silence..."Hello" the front desk person speaks "how my I help you?".

"May I please be connected to John?" I ask, she replies "sorry John is out of the office" can I take a message or would you like to leave a voicemail?", "voicemail sounds good" I say in a hesitant tone...When I finally get through to the voicemail I hang up the phone because they never call me back. On and on this process plays 20 to 30 times everyday until I finally I speak to the decision maker 2 or 3 times. Those are the make or break moments knowing that if they don't like my pitch I have to start all over again.

This is crazy I say to myself. Cold calling is the only way I can reach my demographic, they're not a techy group of people so online marketing channels are out of the question...I repeat this process a lot, my much more technical co-founder seems to be getting people on trial what am I doing wrong!? At night I watch cold calling videos hoping there's some sort of solution, but its even painful to watch those videos as well. I tell myself the more I do this the better I'll get, but progress is slow and my hands still sweat. Weeks go by with little to no progress. Will it ever change? Well it does.

Our first two clients came from friends and this week is finally different. My less social and caring co-founder seems to have convinced a guy in another state to get on trial the past weeks and finally one verbally commits to paying monthly. This is our first client! Our first real straight up business, no "friend introduction" or "I'm doing this as a favor" client! We need ten of these to make a living on top ramen and hopefully can.

I got a few people on trial and am hopefully improving. I don't get that pit in my stomach like I did the last few weeks, but my hands still sweat...the only thing that differs is I fake confidence now and it works. I switched my pitch up, I don't ask anymore I tell them I'm doing them a great favor by putting them on trial. I let them ask me questions, but I ask them their email and contact information during the instigation process. I no longer care about questions such as: "what's your companies name?" or "how many people are you working with?" I quickly answer those and steer the conversation to results and how they will get a sample of what we do in a couple of days.

I still don't meet my sales goals, but I have been consistently meeting half of it the past three days and slowly improving. From concepts, pivoting to here... I and my co-founder have created our B2B SaaS business in the last 4 and a half months...my hands still sweat and I get nervous and I might fail, but I'll do so fighting down this path...I wonder if other co-founders are as scared as me?...I wonder if I'll ever move out of my parents house doing what I love with a great team I built together from scratch?...I'm stuck in a place of wondering, hoping I'm going down the right path with my life.

The Theory Guy Never Wins in Business

I recently met up with an undisclosed wantrepreneur in business (someone who wants to do this full time, but doesn't have the means) and it has greatly disappointed me with what he was saying. The main question he presented to us during the meeting was "Who do you think could use this product I just built?".

What am I supposed to say to that? The truth is you need a targeted user before you build your product and hopefully a cash commitment as well. Playing the "is this product useful" game is very tough and a pitfall I see all too often. 

Thinking about it today I've realized that all of my successful friends in business HATE reading. Even billionaires may read 3 hours max a day (Mark Cuban for example), but take action on their company at least 8 hours a day. 

The theoretical guy never wins in business and I'm not saying you can't predict anything, the main point I'm making is that the winners are the ones that take more action Period. Get in contact with your client!!!

If you have an idea, don't ask your friends, or build it and then ask what you can use it for because its cool. Go to a person you think is the target demographic or  ask what your own problems are and solve them while also getting a cash commitment (You can build a non-profitable billion dollar site later).

No matter what aspect of business we you look at, the theory guy still loses. Marketing people for examples can only guess so much, until they TEST (important word everything you do in business should be a test) an idea to see if it really works. The faster you can  get anything live in the field the better, this is one of those business sins people talk about, yet still commit. Forget months of getting your product out, we got our first user in 2 weeks (one of the beauties of B2B, B2C on the other hand is still a huge headache for me).

So here I am getting this post out in the field ASAP, let me know what you think lets talk about all the theory we've seen, how does it still exist in this "lean startup" world? Perhaps we should go from lean to anorexic startup. I've never heard of a company launching too fast as Paul Graham says very few do and so far I know none. Once you're in the field you are forcing yourself to fix up the product before you get embarrassed anyways as I'm sure I'll edit this post later.

Now don't get me wrong I'm not saying thinking is bad at all, or theorizing is bad; I'm ultimately trying to make the point that action is the most valuable thing you can do. Action gives you deeper insight on your theories. Even the guy I mentioned in the beginning of the article built something, which is much better than him giving me an idea of a product with no audience; now he has a product with no audience, by taking action he can get somewhere. :-)

If you can find me on:
https://twitter.com/VladMkrtumyan

or search my name online. 

A year of no writing/what has happened so far

Jesus christ a year has whizzed by so fast...I looked back and my first post on this blog was 2/2/2012...Man have things kind of changed/not really...where do I begin? Well firstly since I wrote my last article the first start up I've had has been thrown in the closet.

Lets start with the negatives:

 Apparently since I couldn't program it and my cousin "the CTO" was just starting to program he underestimated how hard it would be to create it...I still get about 5,000 mobile app users a month making me about 7 dollars a month, but that's not really anything. I'm not the master programmer I thought I would be by now, in fact I can't program at all...way for slacking off...I'm not close to rich and making less money then I was making in the first place from my mobile start up apps. (Around 65 dollars a month). I broke up with my ex-girlfriend due to the horrible work/life balance I have had before it made creating a healthy relationship harder. Plus being broke definitely didn't help since I quit my sales job at a music store. I have lost my mentor because his company is taking off and very successful I don't get coaching anymore losing him obviously makes things tougher. I haven't been blogging consistently...man whatever happened to that right? I am way not as far as I thought I'd be by now...At 22 I still live with my parents...thought I'd move out by now...I've decided that I have to be single until I'm at least 24 to put in the hours it takes to make this start up stuff work so I can get a grip on it, 10 hour days are no longer enough...I haven't landed any real deals, yet...I know soooo little its insane...I have figured out that you need to be a master of online marketing/sales/programming/team building and leadership to have a successful business and currently I am a master of none of the above.  I think a big question people should ask themselves whenever doing something is how do they stack up to the greats? I think the closer I am to saying I have Bill Gates' skill level at business the more successful I can be...and let me tell you right now to have Bill Gates level of skill looks like Mount Everest and I'm feeling like an ant.

Now we can comment on the positives:

Although I can't program I have learned how to utilize twitter bootstrap to the point where I can make my own websites now. I may not be able to program, but I can code and am definitely more technical then last year. I am learning Javascript from code academy currently since my cousin who has returned from Berkley is now on the team full time and I can learn more from him, he has turned into a pretty decent programmer. I know code academy is bad, but I'll get my hands dirty and then pick up a book on javascript later. I met a billionaire last year. He's one of the founders of Costco, I got to interview him face to face for 30 minutes even though I will probably never see him again. The conversation I had with this guy him has changed my life even though he forgot about me already (there where 3 other people my age in the room). I am actually close to coming up with a real business model. I have made good friendships and added a partner on my team who has my same business principles. This guy has made enough income to do start ups full time, which I consider a success. I feel comfortable with sales, I really don't give a fuck, if it needs to be done I'll do it. This is the attitude many say they have in start ups, but I can honestly say I feel I represent it quite well now. Even though I am barely surviving, I haven't quit yet and have learned a ton. I feel like I could literally lecture the old me for hours on end about business.  I paid off all my financial aid. Instead of moving out i've decided to stay with my parents and pay off all my debt. My networth is finally positive although I won't give a specific number lets say its below a couple thousand (still not good).

I am also in the best shape of my life right now health wise. I have never stopped working out and can bench press 230 while weighing 175...guess I'm running out of positives to be desperate enough to add that one huh? lol

Overall things are going ok for me. I'll keep you guys up to date on my progress/business thoughts. The biggest thing I can say for now is don't underestimate the necessity to be technical in a start up.

If you can program then you can actually 1) Keep sharpening your skills daily without heavily leaning on others 2) Offer contracting to pay the bills, while you think of your idea/modify your business 3) Not have to flail around on your start up idea like I did. 4) Become very hard to dispose of in the team (while you guys are starting out early 5) Let business guys do their things and learn from them, while all you do is build their idea and collect cash. 6) Become much more flexible in your product since you can change it faster to actually create something valuable easier

Most of all I have learned that at 22 I'm still a baby (although walking a tightrope I have a limited time until my goal comes trough) and with enough concentration and perseverance I think I can own my own software company and have the ability to retire by then. If things don't go well before I turn 24 then I will have to get a job and have failed my goal at retiring before the age of 25...now's the time that really counts.

Overall I'm still at it and doing well, hope you guys are too. I took a look at my blog post and I still agree with  a lot of my views, but as always feel free to disagree/comment.