What If I Told You “GaryVee” Was A Side-Hustle

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It’s 3:30PM in Las Vegas.

Our plane touched down 40 minutes earlier.

And Gary steps on stage at 5:00.

But in this very moment, he has a beta alanine tingle, a biceps pump, and 90 seconds to catch his breath before set number three of inverted rows.

He uses this precious time to berate my copywriting skills on a recent Facebook video.

“Bro, your upper back strength has improved so much these past six months!”

Lying flat on his back under the smith machine, he ignores my praise and retorts:

“You really should have titled it ‘blah blah blah,’”

I chuckle on the inside and kind of tune him out, I mean, the video in question has 6.7 million views.

But a few minutes later, between sets of reverse curls, something hits me.

Gary Vaynerchuk’s personal brand is his side hustle.

He replies to IG comments at the urinal.

Checks his twitter notifications in airport lines.

And snapchats his post-workout carb engulfment.

My personal brand is how I attract clients. It’s how I pay rent and buy groceries.

Gary’s personal brand is his “smurf-it-up” project.

He spends the majority of his time building his digital agency and investment fund.

“GaryVee” is an after-thought

Now, initially, I was incredibly disheartened with this realization.

Here is this dude, effectively becoming mainstream famous before our eyes, while not trying that hard.

It reminds me of the time Brian Connelly flipped his hockey stick upside-down during tryouts and I still couldn’t get past him to get a shot on net.

Yes, yes. I know. Gary has help.

You can leverage your time or you can leverage your money.

If he really cared, he wouldn’t just have a back-end team – he would also be putting in 16 hours per day himself.

And that’s not the case.

So don’t whine “but Gary has D-rock!” unless you want to reveal yourself as eternally mediocre.

The bottom line: Gary spends far less time on his personal brand than his other ventures.

 

The Good News: This Can Help You Win

There is another way to look at this.

One where the captain of the hockey team doesn’t embarrass you in front of the cute figure skater from rink two who ventured over to watch varsity tryouts.

You can use this as an opportunity for personal reflection. 

Audit yourself.

What do you really want?

Do you want to blow up? Do you want impact, accolades, or income from a passion or hobby?

Then go execute: post native content where people pay attention.

If this dude is half-assing it (you know what I mean), imagine the dent you can make with all-in effort.

Afterall, effort is the one controllable behavior that directly impacts our results.

And if don’t want those things, that’s amazing too. 

Because now you know!

And you can allocate time toward the things you DO value in life.

Just don’t sit on the fence though – then you lose both games.

 

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