Gary Vaynerchuk

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Gary Vaynerchuk is like a god to me. Simple. His content is the only resource I truly consume on a regular basis. He beats everyone else. He is the one I search for first—I don’t wait to see him pop up in my newsfeed because I go directly to his page to devour his latest observations. (And I’ll let you in on a little secret: His is the only one I have ever done that for.)

The day I met him in San Diego at SMMW ( Social Media Marketing World) it was one of those ‘cue the chorus of angels and harps and let the clouds open’ moments, I kid you not. I was in that space and as scary as that is to say out loud, it’s the truth.

His content has changed the way I live and work with one word: Hustle.

It’s a word Gary uses a lot to get his point across but more importantly it is a word that he has adapted and re-formed to his choosing. He isn’t tied to the mainstream definition of ‘hustle’, the one now in various dictionaries as: (verb) to push roughly; jostle; or obtain illicitly or by forceful action; (noun) or a fraud or swindle.

And it is genius.

Gary Vaynerchuk’s legacy is that act of adopting a word as his core value and making it his own. He has been so successful at it in fact that the people who write the dictionary meanings are seriously looking at modifying the existing definitions because of Gary and how he has made the word evolve. (I like to think in more down to earth terms that he has made it his bitch.)

Totally Gary’s style. AND that is what I love about this little New York Bullet of a man. No one tells him what to do or how to do it. He figures it out himself and he follows his own set of rules to do it.  And he works. He works like he doesn’t have time to wait.

Thanks to Gary, the word ‘hustle’ now means ‘to work with a sense of determination and focus; to  ultimately work on your craft to the point of perfecting it.’ (Again, more colloquially, I like to think of it as cutting out your own path with your bare hands.)

I believe I hustle—my work, my hard work, is what gets me through. The work I do with my clients, the singular focus on results, is my bible.

Nothing else matters.

I know when I get there I am the reason I made it there. No short cuts. No following someone else’s game plan. Me. Making things my own, learning everyday how things work and trusting in my own ability. If I don’t know how to do something, I find out. I learn and teach myself.

I trust in myself. I know I am intuitively good and I have learnt to trust my intuition because it is never wrong.

Gary showed me how to unlock it. Not with any ground breaking ritual (no, we didn’t sit around the campfire and talk to the rain spirits). It was as simple as trusting in me.  

Trust. Trust in the hours I have put in. Trust in the research I had undertaken. Trust in the fact that when I am in my flow, I am able to get to my destination.  

I have had NO goal I haven’t hit. NO goal. (Okay, I am still on the weight loss goal but with a loss of 20kg…goal one of that task hit!)

Once I put my mind to something and I say my intentions, I am head down, bum up…. It happens.  I make it happen.

So apart from this becoming an homage to all things GARY (can you hear the harps?), what is my point?

Simple: We all need a Gary and yours is out there. There is someone out there right now who is singing your tune and you not only need to listen but you need to take the message and make it your own.

I didn’t copy Gary’s every move or change myself to emulate him. I learned from him and that knowledge that we all need to FIND our HUSTLE became mine.

So take my advice. Find your hustle. What does it look like? What is your legacy? What and who are you? And once you do, be the BEST YOU that you can be.

That is the lesson.