數字媒體代理公司VaynerMedia的CEO加里‧維納查克（Gary Vaynerchuk）是個大忙人，每天早上八點走進位於紐約曼哈頓的辦公室後，沒有喘息時間，也沒空邊喝咖啡邊瀏覽郵件或是和同事閒聊。維納查克式的繁忙一天是這樣開始的——助理泰勒‧施密特（Tyler Schmitt）會先來跟他碰一遍當日的工作計畫。這一天將有24場會面，要與公司預約的客戶，包括社交媒體紅人、運動員、演員、音樂家以及他們的隨行人員一一見面洽談。照例，攝像師戴維‧洛克（David Rock）會把這些商務活動逐一記錄下來。除了少數需要保密的會面活動之外，洛克會舉著攝像機跟拍一整天。
忙碌的創業導師
八點十分，第一位預約的客人登門了，這是一個來應聘高管職位的年輕人，他通過參加維納查克在推特上舉辦的一個競賽活動贏得了這次面試機會。很快下一個客人也到了，就這麼一撥兒又一撥兒，大家與維納查克面談五分鐘到一小時不等。他和每一批客人談話時都是那樣情緒飽滿，口無遮攔，肢體語言豐富，時而開懷大笑。客人們確實也從與他的對話中受益頗豐。
「你需要一個合作夥伴，不必過於刻意地尋找，讓那些你正在做但自己又不擅長的事帶領你去尋找吧。」傾聽維納查克建議的是代娜‧福克（Daina Falk），她創辦了為體育迷提供健康餐飲食譜的網站Hungry Fan，並出版了同名食譜書，NBA球星勒布朗‧詹姆斯、穆托姆博，網球明星阿加西等都為Hungry Fan奉獻了自己的看家菜，如今福克正設法推廣這個品牌。
平時維納查克也經常跟自己公司的管理團隊這樣對談，他和大家說：「當我們遇到業務瓶頸的時候，就應該試試這樣的面談。你們大家問我問題，我只能回答『是』或『不是』，我想這樣更有助於看清問題的實質。」他們確實這樣嘗試了，但沒什麼效果，因為維納查克的話太多了……
蘋果公司真人秀節目「應用星球」的評委陣容
左起：傑西卡‧阿爾芭、will.i.am、格溫妮絲‧帕特洛、加里‧維納查克
除了維納查克，公司裡最忙的大概就是洛克了。他得時時舉著攝像機尋找最佳拍攝角度，讓這種類似真人秀的視頻更具觀賞性。以前全部工作需要他一人包攬，從拍攝、剪輯到上傳網絡，現在有了一個小團隊與他分擔工作，視頻更新的頻率就更有了保證。每天等著維納查克更新視頻的粉絲還是很多的，他在YouTube上開設了一個名為「DailyVee」的個人頻道，訂閱人數達到64.5萬，此外他還有140萬推特粉絲、170萬 Instagram粉絲。
維納查克會在這些談話類視頻中反覆強調自己的觀點——做事要集中自己的優勢資源，在勤奮工作的過程中時刻尋覓新的爆發點，一旦找到就全力引爆；不要與無謂的人或事糾纏，讓自己變得更強大才是最重要的，哪怕付出多於回報也在所不惜。
維納查克在視頻中的激情倡導以及對觀眾提問的耐心解答，都為他贏得了越來越多的粉絲，社交媒體的宣傳推廣效應當然也助力不小。有很多粉絲因為他的指點而頓開茅塞，也因此視他為自己的人生導師。維納查克做的這些事也為他自己迎來了事業的成功，他現在是自媒體名人，出書、論壇演講的邀約紛至沓來。最近他還參加了蘋果公司製作的真人秀節目「應用星球」（Planet of the Apps），App開發者將在現場展示他們的產品創想。與維納查克一起擔任評委的是擁有豐富創業經驗的好萊塢明星傑西卡‧阿爾芭（Jessica Alba）、格溫妮絲‧帕特洛（Gwyneth Paltrow），以及新生代科技初創公司i.am+的創始人、黑眼豆豆樂隊成員will.i.am。
當然，維納查克的所作所為也引發了一些爭議。有人覺得他太高調了，就算取得了一些商業上的成功，但也還沒有資格成為創業領域的布道者。還有一個關鍵的質疑是：哪個有真才實學的人會成天后面跟著一台攝像機呢，你真當自己是金口玉言呢。
面對種種非議，維納查克的反應很淡定，「他們對我的低估是讓我變得更強的動力。」確實，他取得的創新性成績也是不容忽視的：他把自己打造成了一個品牌，一個會呼吸的數字營銷範例；他成功地將自己融入了互聯網，並由此成為一名成功的企業家。名人效應不但讓他本人更成功，還帶動了團隊一起成長。憑藉這一切，維納查克的個人資產達到1.6億美元，他的公司員工隊伍超過700人，去年營收1億美元。
加里‧維納查克在公司接待登門求教的創業者，攝影師洛克在一旁跟拍
順勢成就個人品牌
想在自媒體領域取得成功的人，確實可以借鑑一下維納查克的成功經驗，他的網絡媒體社交能力、工作熱情以及創新能力都是一流的。
維納查克的自媒體之路是從在網上賣酒起步的，這讓他逐漸意識到數字營銷的巨大力量，也讓他看到個人魅力在數字營銷領域的重要價值。
維納查克生於1975年，上世紀80年代，他全家從白俄羅斯移民到了美國。當時，維納查克的父親盤下了位於新澤西州的一家酒類專賣店，全家以此維生。1998年大學畢業後，維納查克回家幫父親打理生意，他開了一個名為「酒類圖書館」（Wine Library）的網站，由此開始了數字營銷的探索。他會給客戶們發電子郵件介紹產品，通過郵件下的訂單能享受價格優惠，這在當時已經算得上具有開拓性的營銷方式了。試水數字營銷的業績相當不錯，五年間，銷售額從400萬美元增至4500萬美元。
2003年，加里‧維納查克與父親在自家酒類專賣店的酒窖裡
企業家們常說，有限的條件反而能帶來價值增值，因為它能激發人的創造力。酒類產品本身就是一個約束，因為法律法規對經營酒精飲品有很多限制，對宣傳推廣、運輸、客戶服務等都有特殊要求。面對約束，維納查克選擇了另闢蹊徑——推廣葡萄酒文化。
2006年，維納查克在上線不到一年的YouTube網站上開設了「葡萄酒圖書館電視台」（Wine Library TV）欄目，他天生口才很好，節目一推出便廣受歡迎。說到自己的溝通能力，維納查克開玩笑說：「這都是被我爸逼出來的，他是一個沉默寡言的人，要知道他的所思所想，我就得挖空心思和他套話。」不管怎麼說，人際溝通能力是一個很有價值的技能，對於做市場營銷工作的來說是更是不可或缺的，因為你必須從與人的雙向交流中發現自己營銷策略的優勢和不足，並不斷髮現新的商機。
維納查克的視頻專欄非常成功，不但得到《時代》週刊的報導，他還應邀上了著名脫口秀節目《柯南秀》並出了一本書。登上一級成功的台階之後，維納查克渴望更大的施展空間，他逐漸把視頻專欄的議題由葡萄酒文化拓展到商業與營銷。事實證明，他的粉絲們對這一轉型非常支持，現在葡萄酒文化成了新的約束，大家更渴望聽他分享市場營銷方面的心得。
慢慢地，維納查克逐漸對數字營銷的特點有了自己的認識。以前他和那些傳統的推銷員一樣，覺得只有成為名牌產品的代理商才有前途，沒有名牌做支撐總有種「巧婦難為無米之炊」之感。數字時代的到來打破了這個框框，維納查克發現，人本身就能成為一個品牌產品。每個個體都有機會成為一個能走路、會說話的媒體營銷實驗室。這樣做的靈活度更高，因為不用與客戶和合作夥伴商量，可以無所顧忌地嘗試各種具有前瞻性的營銷思路。一旦這些營銷思路和方案證明可行，就可以傳授給其他人，以此培養出更多的數字營銷專家。維納查克總結的一個營銷心得是，必須為客戶源源不斷地提供價值，價值的內容可以多種多樣，或者是教益，或者是娛樂性，或者是某種思路的啟發，等等。
終於有一天，維納查克再也無法兼顧酒類生意了，他要全身心投入數字營銷領域。2009年，他把酒類專賣店的生意交還給父親，和弟弟AJ一起成立了數字媒體代理公司 VaynerMedia。
VaynerMedia 公司總部辦公區
數字營銷新天地
最初的幾年裡，VaynerMedia公司的業績不好不壞，幾十名員工，年營業額幾百萬美元。隨著時間的積累，公司業務有了飛躍式發展，還在洛杉磯、田納西州的查塔努加和倫敦開設了辦事處，簽約客戶也越來越大牌。2016年的營業收入同比增長了50%，達到1億美元。這一年，公司總部搬入位於曼哈頓的高檔寫字樓，還成立了一隻投資基金，成立兩年的體育類數字營銷代理公司VaynerSports也運轉良好。
VaynerMedia總部的新辦公區會給初訪者留下深刻印象——巨大的開放式辦公空間裡容納著700多人同時工作。除了資深營銷專家和程序員，更多的是深諳數字時代電商運營和新媒體玩法的年輕人，其中還有不少專業寫手、攝影師、畫師，負責為大公司及大明星客戶設計公眾形象和交流內容。
維納查克有關個人品牌價值的觀點得到了很多世界級大公司的認同，通用電氣、聯合利華、帝亞吉歐、豐田汽車等都是VaynerMedia的簽約客戶。著名運動品牌Fila的北美地區優雅時尚類產品線業務主管路易斯‧科隆三世（Louis Colon III）表示，維納查克採取的以個人魅力為切入點的數字媒體宣傳思路非常契合當今的社會心理需求，「我們所處的鞋類與服裝行業市場競爭非常激烈，品牌脫穎而出的難度極大。他幫我們設計了非常有趣的品牌故事，成功地吸引了消費者的注意力。社交媒體上口口相傳的力量非常強大，而且能夠連續生成宣傳波次。這意味著我們不用緊盯著產品本身的銷量，只要與Fila品牌有關的運動員、藝術家、零售商能在社交媒體上保持足夠的宣傳度就足夠了。」
加里‧維納查克在2016年北歐商業論壇(NordicBusinessForum2016)上發表演講
加里‧維納查克在2016年集客營銷大會(Inbound2016)上回答創業者的提問
個人品牌建設需要注意什麼問題呢？維納查克表示，首要的一點是要照顧好粉絲的情緒，要積極回覆粉絲們的網上留言，這會讓大家感覺自己的觀點很受重視。他曾於2011年出版了一本名為《感恩經濟》（The Thank You Economy）的書專門探討這個問題。
正如本文開頭描述的，維納查克對待上門求教的非商業合作夥伴也非常熱心，他認為這是一個教學相長的過程。22歲的Farokh Sarmad是一個著名的網紅，他在Instagram上面開設的分享奢侈品及生活方式的圖片博客的粉絲超過670萬，如今他又創辦了名為Mr. Goodlife的網站，準備利用自己的粉絲影響力在數字營銷領域大展身手。他特地登門求教，向維納查克諮詢能夠快速拓展業務的方法。維納查克感覺這是一個對雙方都很有利的合作機會，他告訴Sarmad，像Instagram這種具有壟斷優勢地位的網站，隨時可能針對某些用戶採取限流措施，所以要進一步開拓業務，必須把宣傳推廣的重心更多地向自有網站傾斜，「我會幫助你打造數字營銷的基礎設施。另外，你有必要適度減少在粉絲面前的曝光率，下次我們專門開會來談一下這個事。」
維納查克很清楚，自己在與Farokh Sarmad的合作中不會有太大的經濟收益，兩家公司的業務也沒有太多的重疊。他對此很看得開，「我並不認為永遠需要平等交易，能從與這些年輕人的合作中獲得一些思路上的啟發就足夠了。我可以觀察到他的粉絲們對待新媒體平台的態度，這些收穫都能用到VaynerMedia的經營當中。」
在經營個人品牌的同時，維納查克也清醒地知道保持人格獨立的重要性。經常有客戶要求他用個人推特賬號為他們的產品做宣傳推廣，但總是被他婉言拒絕。「個人品牌與個人之間還是要界限分明，否則個人以及品牌的形象都會受到傷害。過去七年裡，我只在個人推特賬戶上出於公益目的發過四條產品推廣信息。」
關於VaynerMedia公司的未來，維納查克希望它成長為一個獨立的媒體公司品牌，而不是與他的個人品牌捆綁在一起。因為他發現，世界上那些偉大的公司，沒有一家的前途命運是與企業領導人繫於一身的，企業發展得好，不是因為領導人多麼有名，而是因為他管理有方。雖然打造企業品牌比打造個人品牌要困難得多，但值得為之付出努力，因為一家成功的企業的生命，要遠遠長過任何一個人的生命。
出處/entrepreneur.com
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What Gary Vaynerchuk Learned by Experimenting on Himself
Gary Vaynerchuk is half man, half brand, half digital experiment. And somehow, that all adds up.
Gary Vaynerchuk arrives at his Manhattan office at 8 a.m. There’s no slow ascent -- no sipping coffee while scrolling through emails, no idle chitchat to forestall the onslaught of responsibility. Instead, as he does every morning, he quickly huddles with the two people who will accompany him throughout the day: his personal assistant, which is typical of most executives, and his personal videographer, which is, let’s just say, a profoundly Gary Vaynerchuk kind of role.
The assistant, Tyler Schmitt, runs Vaynerchuk through the day’s schedule. There are 24 meetings, including check-ins with the staff and clients of his digital media agency, VaynerMedia, as well as a wild assortment of guests -- social media stars, athletes, actors, musicians, many with entourages in tow. As usual, the action will be captured by the videographer, David Rock, nicknamed D-Rock. When the time comes, D-Rock will raise his camera, train it on his boss and barely take it off him all day, except during sensitive client meetings.
“All right, you guys ready?” the 41-year-old CEO says to Rock and Schmitt, who are now standing with a few other members of what, internally, is known as either Team Gary or Gary’s Team -- a 16-member group that also includes a brand director, designers, merchandisers, influencer marketers and business developers. “Let’s start the show.”
At 8:10, the guests start arriving. There’s an interview with a potential executive hire, a podcast recording with Digg founder Kevin Rose, a talk with a young Dallas entrepreneur who won face-to-face time with Vaynerchuk in a Twitter competition. Then another meeting, and another, in blocks of five minutes up to an hour, with Vaynerchuk gesturing, laughing, swearing freely, peppering each visitor with questions and offering assessments. “You need a teammate, so let the things you aren’t gravitating to yourself lead you to the partner you’re looking for,” he tells Daina Falk, creator of the Hungry Fan sports tailgating site and cookbook, who is working to manage her brand’s growth. “I really do think Facebook is Netflix’s biggest competitor, so listen -- write a TV show, but do it on Facebook,” he tells Greg Davis, Jr., a.k.a. Klarity, a 32-year-old actor who wants to expand his social following.
There’s a string of internal confabs. “If I’m the bottleneck, let’s try a meeting where everyone hurls questions at me and I can only say yes or no, just to clear up the things that get clogged,” he suggests to his management team. (They try it two days later. It doesn’t work; Vaynerchuk talks too much.) There’s the surprisingly businesslike crew from hit Instagram meme-machine FuckJerry, reps from the NHL, a Los Angeles style blogger and rapper Sean Combs’ social media team. “Diddy’s trying to reach a new audience,” says Deon Graham, the boss. Vaynerchuk is all over it. “Puff has energy, so let’s give your new team the reins on new ideas,” he says. The ideas themselves will come after a dinner meeting between Combs and Vaynerchuk, which Graham vows to set up. After a round of the requisite selfies, which almost every visitor takes with Vaynerchuk, they bounce. More meetings convene. Scheduled ones, impromptu ones, conference room drop-ins, Sorkin-esque walk-and-talks. I ask Schmitt, the personal assistant, what happens if someone cancels a meeting. He looks at me blankly. “He finds a meeting.”
Through it all, Rock is a persistent fly on the wall, training his DSLR on the action. Sometimes he’s in the room, sometimes he grabs scenes from outside the glass partition, moving the camera around for dramatic effect. Originally, Rock produced this reality show himself -- filming and editing the videos of Vaynerchuk and uploading them to social. Now he has a team of videographers, which speeds the turnaround. The meetings I witness today will be cut up, subtitled, set to a beat and released tomorrow as a show called DailyVee on YouTube (to Vaynerchuk’s 645,000 subscribers) or in quick hits on Twitter (nearly 1.4 million followers) and Instagram (1.7 million).
The clips tend to capture Vaynerchuk frenetically hammering home his favored themes -- focus on your strengths, work your ass off, spot the next big shift and get there first, stop obsessing over stuff that doesn’t matter, be the bigger person, give more than you get and above all, execute. All this output, plus his relentless social media engagement and videos where he answers viewers’ questions, has fostered an ever-growing group of fans who treat him as an all-knowing sensei, enamored with his ability to cut right to the heart of their problems. And that, in turn, has turned him into an entrepreneurial celebrity. In addition to the videos, he pumps out books, podcasts and many conference keynotes, and is now costarring in Apple’s first-ever original TV series -- a tech-based reality competition called Planet of the Apps -- alongside Jessica Alba, Gwyneth Paltrow and will.i.am. Last spring when he tweeted that he was in London and offered to meet with followers, 200 people converged on a city park, all hoping to pick his brain, #AskGaryVee-style. (That would be his YouTube Q&A show, of course.)
This high profile has also drawn a different, less flattering kind of attention. The world of entrepreneurship is, to be frank about it, full of hucksters -- people who had one business success, or maybe skipped that part entirely and went directly into wisdom-spouting mode. To the polished bosses of old business in their sepulchral C-suites, Vaynerchuk can look a lot like King Huckster himself. After all, who the hell is so sure of their golden word that they’d pay a videographer to tail them?
Vaynerchuk insists this doesn’t bother him. “Underestimating me is what I fucking live for,” he says. And anyway, to dismiss Vaynerchuk is to overlook something important about how to build a brand today. He is the living, breathing version of what digital marketing can do -- because once he started mainlining himself into the internet, it helped him be a successful entrepreneur, which made him a celebrity, which helped him become an even more successful entrepreneur, which made him an even bigger celebrity, with each part feeding the other. His net worth has grown to $160 million, and his fast-growing agency now employs more than 700 people and pulled in $100 million last year.
Gary Vaynerchuk is, in other words, what every brand wants out of social media. He connects and excites and inspires loyalty. So, the thinking goes, if brands want all this -- to connect and excite and inspire loyalty -- they should be more like Gary Vaynerchuk.
If you’ve ever heard Vaynerchuk interviewed, you’ve likely heard him tell his origin story -- in which a small-time wine guy discovers the power of digital marketing. But the tale is really more than that; it’s about how a small-time wine guy realizes the power of personality. His father, Sasha, took over an anonymous New Jersey liquor store in the early 1980s, shortly after emigrating from the then Soviet Union, where his son was born in 1975. Vaynerchuk assumed operations after college in 1998 and began experimenting. He rebranded the store as the Wine Library, then initiated online sales and fired off weekly emails to customers with special deals -- both pioneering moves at the time. Sales grew from $4 million annually to $45 million in just five years.
Entrepreneurs will often say that constraints are valuable -- that they force people to be creative. Wine was Vaynerchuk’s constraint. Alcohol is hard to market; there are regulations about advertising, serving and transporting it. But, he realized, there were no restrictions on marketing himself talking about wine. In early 2006, barely a year after YouTube launched, Vaynerchuk created a daily show on the platform called Wine Library TV. He turned out to be a natural communicator, something he attributes to growing up trying to understand his father. “My dad doesn’t talk. He literally doesn’t talk. The human does not speak,” Vaynerchuk jokes. “So I’ve had to spend my life trying to extract from him what he was thinking and feeling.” This turned out to be a valuable skill, because marketing, by its very nature, requires the same sort of intuition.
You must infer and analyze based on small, stray amounts of feedback. You listen, in effect, by speaking and listening for echoes.
Wine Library TV earned him coverage in Time, an appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien and a book deal. It also made him itch for a bigger platform. The YouTube show gradually evolved into conversations about business and entrepreneurship. His followers became more interested in marketing than merlot. At that point, wine became a constraint that was no longer valuable. “I had so many ideas but couldn’t execute them all at the Wine Library,” he says.
This, it seems, is where Vaynerchuk’s philosophy crystallized. Like every marketer, he originally thought he needed somebody’s product to sell. A marketer without a brand to manage seemed like a bricklayer with no bricks to lay. But the digital revolution changed that. It may be an old observation now, but what Wine Library TV taught Vaynerchuk back then was still a revelation: People could be brands. He could be a brand. And by treating himself like one, he could fashion himself into a walking, talking R&D lab, testing his more forward-thinking marketing theories on himself, without having to gain some client’s permission first. Then, if his personal brand took off, he could package those theories and strategies and sell them to clients, in effect helping them be more like Gary Vaynerchuk. “I never actually set out wanting to be a personal brand, leveraging that to sell my own stuff,” he says. “Instead it’s how I learned my craft, by being the plumber and the electrician and the general contractor. I got to test my beliefs.”
One of those beliefs became this: Provide value over and over again -- educate, entertain, enlighten -- and then present your “ask” to the audience. Subscribe to my channel. Buy some wine. Read my book. (He’d go on to spell this out in his 2013 book Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. The jabs are the value; the right hooks are the asks.) So he handed control of the wine shop back to his father and began preparing for his biggest ask yet: If you like my social media insights so much, hire me to execute them on your behalf. In 2009, Vaynerchuk and his brother AJ launched VaynerMedia.
In its first few years, as Vaynerchuk transitioned away from the wine operation, VaynerMedia lingered in double-digit personnel and a few million per year in revenue. With time, however, came traction. The company opened offices in Los Angeles, Chattanooga and London. It signed bigger and bigger brands. Last year revenues were up 50 percent over the previous year, to $100 million. In 2016 it moved into shiny new digs in a massive Manhattan high-rise to house the agency, a newly launched investment fund (Vayner/RSE) and a two-year-old sports agency (VaynerSports).
The VaynerMedia office is a spectacle. It contains endless rows of open-space desks populated by more than 700 strategists, marketing experts and business-development personnel -- most of them young and few with typical agency backgrounds -- who manage clients’ digital marketing campaigns, influencer programs, e-commerce strategies and technology integration, as well as personal brand development for celebrities, CEOs, artists and athletes. The staff also includes 200 writers, designers, photographers and animators, all focused on helping large companies and huge stars act more like their boss.
Here, on a grand scale, is where Vaynerchuk’s philosophy that what works for a one-man brand can translate to the world’s largest companies -- including General Electric, Unilever, Diageo, Toyota and Chase -- is put to the test. Louis Colon III, director of the Heritage line at Fila North America, says Vaynerchuk’s strategic personal touch on social resonated immediately. “Gary understands firsthand what it is to be an underdog and an entrepreneur,” Colon says. “We’re in a highly competitive industry in footwear and apparel, and for us to stand out, he helped develop a cadence of interesting storytelling that keeps the consumers’ attention.” That’s meant a steady stream of product launches amplified through social media placements and collaborations with athletes, artists and retailers, on their channels and Fila’s. “We never ask for the sale, we just ask to be a part of the conversation and to have the consumers’ attention.”
And what does a brand do with all that attention? It engages. Through Vaynerchuk’s personal brand-building, he’s found that heavy engagement -- replying basically to everyone who reaches out -- boosts not just your following but also your reputation. Today, 85 percent of his 135,000 tweets are replies. He wrote a book about this, 2011’s The Thank You Economy, and the point is reproven on social all the time.
Sometimes his clients need more than content help; they need to be awakened to the breadth of digital possibility. When Toyota hired Vaynerchuk to help with social strategy, it wasn’t leveraging new social tools or platforms fast enough. “Gary’s point was that anyone marketing for today is a full day behind. That opened everyone’s mind up,” says Jack Hollis, a group vice president and general manager at Toyota Motor North America. Vaynerchuk pushed them to be in new places first. Facebook video could become as significant as TV ads, he said. Demographically appealing influencers should be hired to help market specific car models, rather than brand-wide. Toyota did so, and entered Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat in ways it hadn’t before -- even as Vaynerchuk warned that the clock was ticking fast on every new strategy.
But as VaynerMedia helps teach brands what it knows, Vaynerchuk is also creating a pipeline for ideas to come in -- so that he’s learning from the next generation of social stars. This is a big part of why he so happily meets non-clients in his office. During that endless-meeting day, for example, he sat down with Farokh Sarmad, the 22-year-old founder of a luxury lifestyle Instagram feed and website called Mr. Goodlife. The guy had racked up millions of followers, but he wanted Vaynerchuk’s advice on growing his business further. Vaynerchuk sensed a mutual opportunity, so he began a trade. First he provided value. Rely less on Instagram, he told Sarmad, because at any moment the platform could change its terms and screw him. “I’ll help you build infrastructure to be independent,” Vaynerchuk said. Then he made his ask. “I want to siphon off as much exposure as possible from your audience. When we meet again, be prepared to have that meeting.”
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Once Mr. Goodlife departs, Vaynerchuk admits he may not get much out of that deal. Their two brands barely overlap. But that’s fine. “I don’t think equal trades are always necessary,” he says. “What I gain from these exchanges is the big-picture wisdom -- the psychology of how creators and followers view these new platforms, the nuances of how they’re used. I get people’s insights and make my own decisions for both my own brand and, yes, the brands that hire VaynerMedia.”
The man feeds the brand, and the brand feeds the man. The synchronicity has worked well for him so far. And he’s discovering that as both parts of his life grow bigger, the balancing act gets even more complicated.
Vaynerchuk hands me his cellphone and points to a text message he received earlier in the day. It’s from a client asking him to personally tweet about their promotion. He shakes his head. “There’s a bright line around that,” he says. “I’ve done maybe four posts in seven years that have promoted clients, and only because they were noble causes.”
These requests happen every few months. It’s wise to turn them down. If he sold access to his Twitter feed, it would devolve into spam and trigger a tailspin: He’d become less interesting to fans and brands alike. Yet it’s easy to understand why a client would expect otherwise. Vaynerchuk and VaynerMedia are ascendant, intertwined entities. Toyota, for example, also hired him to speak at a critical meeting with the company’s regional directors. And as he builds his sports agency, he’ll occasionally pitch himself as part of a deal. Sign his athlete, he might say, and you’ll also gain access to him, behind the scenes, advising on marketing. It can get confusing -- when he’s for sale, and when he’s not.
To strike the balance, he’s building it into the very fabric of VaynerMedia. He’s clear up front with clients about what his role will -- and will not -- be. To make clients comfortable with a team of people who are not named Gary Vaynerchuk, he makes a big deal out of hiring top talent. He calls his company the honey empire -- as in, a powerful entity built to attract people -- and dubs his executive in charge of HR, Claude Silver, the chief heart officer, to emphasize the importance of treating workers well. “If we get the people part right,” Silver says, “you’ll see phenomenal results in the empire part.”
He’s also built what he calls the Office of the CEO, a team of four VaynerMedia veterans who serve as his proxies throughout the company. They’re stationed in the mission control center, right outside his glass-walled office -- alongside, rather symbolically, all the Team Gary personnel. The four Office of the CEO members consult continuously with division leaders, update Vaynerchuk, and then funnel his feedback back outward. That way everyone at this increasingly sprawling company can feel like they have a line in to the boss. “The goal is to build a bigger, scalable version of the chief of staff idea,” Vaynerchuk says, “to give me more operational eyes and ears in different pieces of the business. If I’m going a thousand miles per second and can’t keep up with everything, this gives me a way to see things through.”
Here’s one thing he won’t do, though: Pull back on the Gary Vaynerchuk show. “I get so much out of it. It allows you as a talker to listen and get feedback, on a vast scale,” he says. But in conversations with him, I can see him working through the distinction -- wanting to support both his personal brand and his business, but without one overlapping the other. “I don’t want anybody to hire us because of me,” he says. “It’s OK to be aware of us because of me, but that’s where it ends. Look, marketing and personal branding are important. It’s real. But it doesn’t trump what goes on behind it.”
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Instead, he’s come to think of his two brands as on divergent paths -- that one day, VaynerMedia can be a thriving media company that’s eventually fully separated from his own brand, in both appearance and practice.
Because when he looks back at the world’s greatest companies, he sees that they succeeded not because of their leader’s public profile but because of their leader’s true skills as an entrepreneur. “If you’re good enough at what you do, the market plays itself out,” he says. “Steve Jobs was ridiculously great at self-promotion. Bill Gates wasn’t. They both won.”
Because when he looks back at the world’s greatest companies, he sees that they succeeded not because of their leader’s public profile but because of their leader’s true skills as an entrepreneur. “If you’re good enough at what you do, the market plays itself out,” he says. “Steve Jobs was ridiculously great at self-promotion. Bill Gates wasn’t. They both won.”
In a digital world, yes, a person can become a brand. Vaynerchuk has done that. Building a brand that stands on its own? That’s harder. But do it right, and it lasts longer than any one man.
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