Gary Vee – The Talk Everyone’s Talking About
When Dublin Tech Summit CEO Noelle O’Reilly walked out onto the Prism stage at 3pm on Wednesday, February 15th to introduce “one of the people who inspired me to start this,” DTS attendees’ already fueled excitement was about to be unleashed.
When Gary Vaynerchuk appeared, the 2,000 attendees lucky enough to secure a seat in the main auditorium cheered in awe.
For the diehard fans, Gary certainly delivered yet another thrilling rollercoaster of authenticity, honesty and motivational business – and life – advice.
For the first timers, those who wouldn’t be as familiar with Gary and Vaynermedia, they certainly got a memorable introduction to the self-made media tycoon.
As per his usual stage presence and confidence in addressing a crowd, Gary did not hold back sharing with his audience the truth about his success and how to find the perfect strategy. Because for Gary; “strategy is key.”
Gary encouraged hopeful entrepreneurs in the audience – as well as those looking to improve their career – to be happy in themselves and be sure to use their honesty to their advantage, on both a professional level and in their personal lives. “It’s not about how much money I make – I’m an extremely happy guy,” said Gary.
“My success as a human is living happy.”
Gary also gave useful advice based on his own success, preaching work over talk and practice over theory.
“Too many marketers won’t be macro successful won’t be successful because they just read headlines. They talk theory, not practice.”
“I didn’t get here by accident. I did it by work. I commit 7,9,14 hours a day to this.”
Love him or hate him (he probably wouldn’t care) – you can’t fault his enthusiasm for passion and hard work.
Gary and Vaynermedia have grown their success by helping businesses across the world expand and unlock the full potential of their media strategies, resulting in evident growth from exposure and transparency.
“You (as a human being) are a media company before anything else,” said Gary, cementing the importance of media strategy in any organisation.
The New York raised entrepreneur whose family immigrated to America from Soviet Union controlled Belarus is very optimistic on life and the world, “we live in the greatest era” said Gary, pointing out that the world does have its problems, “but it’s all about options.”
If you’re not as familiar with Gary’s persona and ideology, you may have been taken back by his outspoken opinions on those cynical individuals who look for excuses and not solutions.
“If you don’t like your job, stop f*cking crying. Get a new one.”
“There are two groups of people who will listen to you complain,” Gary continued.
“Your loved ones who will listen to your sh*t, and your other loser friends.”
Following Gary’s Thank You Economy talk, he was joined by a panel of fellow communications leaders, including: Ross Kingsland of Inception Business Solutions, Bruce Daisley of Twitter and Kieran Flanagan of HubSpot.
The four exchanged conversation over the evolution of marketing tools and techniques, and the importance of different platforms.
Kieran Flanagan argued that “a lot of businesses don’t do really well on one or two platforms. They stretch too thin over all the platforms and don’t do everything great.
“People try to do too much and get disheartened,” Kieran stated.
On a similar subject, the importance of simplicity and patience was again expressed by Bruce Daisley, “one mega trend right now is that people think the simple answer is the best way. Let’s go back to basics.”
Gary, who was criticised in 2007 for investing in a ‘futureless’ Twitter, leaned in on the importance of social media platforms for businesses – “it’s hard to underestimate Social media in this era. It’s not a small thing anymore.”
Reflecting back on his investment in 2007, Gary pushes to not be afraid of “tasting” new things. “How do you know pork is your favourite meat if you’ve never had chicken?”
He remembers being told the investment was stupid. But as he sees it, “everything is stupid until it’s not.”
The investor had a lot of praise for Twitter, despite it being seen by many as a failing social media, due to its lack of ‘new’ features pushed by competitors such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.
“Twitter is the only pure plate social network left. Other platforms are constantly pushing new features.”
“I am excited about twitter,” Gary went on, “because they make little subtle changes to the product. Twitter is the water cooler of social media.”
Gary and Kieran clashed heads at one point over the future of Twitter, and whether or not it needs to keep up with competitors, but found level ground when the topic of strategic social media campaigns arose again.
Certainly one of the many highlights of DTS 2017, this discussion brought a lot of ideas, motivation and advice to all who viewed it – whether they were fortunate enough to attend or not, But of all the ideas shared throughout from the meeting of the minds, one of the key messages from Gary V to take home is one that can be applied to both your career and your life – “Your truth is the only thing you will ever successfully sell.”
by Evan O’Gorman
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