Small Business Tips from Gary Vaynerchuk The Wine Guy
Let me first say right out of the gate that I am not a Gary Vaynerchuk fan. I’m not a prude, but Gary can barely speak a few words without dropping the *F* bomb. I can’t even listen to what he has to say most of the time because his potty mouth overrides his message. And that’s sad because he does have some good business knowledge to share.
I received Gary’s book Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion when it was released earlier this year and had all good intentions of reading it. But it contains the same expletives as his talks and, well, I just decided to pass. There are people who love him though and his message of working hard to reach a goal is a good one. I’ve heard he is very engaging in person (but still a potty mouth).
At any rate, a couple weeks ago I got a message from a PR person about a Webby Debate between Gary and TechCrunch columnist Paul Carr who went toe to toe on the value of social media.
Carr, who famously quit Twitter and Facebook in August, criticized networks like Twitter for cluttering the Web with inane chatter and giving users false hope in becoming a marketing sensation. “Everyone wants to create their own personal brand,” he said. “The fact is, you’re not going to be famous just because you like the Smurfs, unless you’ve created the Smurfs.”
Vaynerchuk disagrees:
“I’m a businessman. I’ve made money my whole life. I look at this strictly as business, and this definitely does allow people to market whatever they want to market, in a very different way than we’ve ever seen before. The fact that you can build things with sweat equity and not put in dollars does change the playing field. It just does.”
Watching the two new media leaders spar on how to properly build a brand and develop an online following in the debate dubbed “Social Media is Overrated” was interesting and informative. Here are some of the highlights. The full interview is below.
Vaynerchuk on opening his Twitter account: “Nobody knew who I was. I just started answering questions and became useful.”
Vaynerchuk uses the grid-iron to explain opportunity: “I’m going to hit a grand slam, buy the New York Jets, and make billions of dollars. Social media created a platform for thousands to hit a lot more singles and doubles.”
Vaynerchuk on the Everyman: “The guy working a job because he’s paying his college loans and take care of his family, 20 years ago, didn’t have the opportunity to come home and talk and build something by leveraging these tools. At 9pm his alternative was watch television. I love the fact that if they come home and don’t drink with their buddies or play Nintendo Wii for nine hours, social media is marketing platform we’ve never seen before. The cost of entry is zero. It’s a practical way to live the dream.”
Vaynerchuk on finding your audience: “Not everybody needs to become Lady Gaga and have these little monsters, but, if it makes you happy to be the expert of the New York Jets offensive line, because you know what Brandon Moore does and this and that, and there are seven people that actually give a crap about that, it’s a nice thing.”
Perhaps because this was filmed at CNN Gary cleaned up his mouth a bit. You can watch the entire debate below and you’ll not hear one *F* bomb dropped. You will hear “crap” and “frigging” along with the slip of a sh*t at 22 minutes, but it’s worth listening to. And you can pick up a copy of Gary’s book Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion at amazon.
