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Every week, I profile a prominent individual who helps shape my perspective on life, business, and the world around me.
I graduated from college ten years ago this spring. Over the past decade I’ve learned a lot about the business landscape and how the world works in general. While my quest for knowledge is never ending, I faced an extremely steep learning curve coming straight out of school. Getting over this initial hump was a brutal challenge. I’ve always been a hands-on, trial-by-fire type learner, but over the past few years I’ve discovered the power of soaking up knowledge from people more experienced than myself. In this series, which may or may not be a regular thing, I will share content from various people who have helped shape my understanding of business and the world.
To kick things off, I’d like to introduce you to a man named Gary Vaynerchuk, better known as @GaryVee on social media. While Gary has an extremely abrasive personality, the dude knows some serious shit. In fact, I haven’t come across anyone who has a better understanding of consumer marketing and the current landscape of the media industry. Beyond his specific industry insights, I’m a huge fan of his general philosophy on life, business, and what it takes to be successful.
He isn’t some fluff “life coach” or motivational speaker. The guy built a $50MM+ e-commerce wine business in the 90s and most recently is running Vayner Media, an ad agency that does $100MM a year. You may remember this masterfully produced #ad we did for Seagrams:
Seagrams is a client of Vayner Media and Vayner brokered this deal between Seagrams and Grandex. #DCOnation
On the side, Gary produces a fuckload of content where he generously shares his knowledge and insights on life and business. Here’s a taste:
On hard work…
On graduating college…
On passion…
On marketing and “trading” attention…
You can dive deeper down the GaryVee rabbit hole by following him on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and SnapChat
If you enjoy this article and want more let me know in the comments or on twitter @MadisonWickham
Respond
Madison Wickham
#CoolDad / Husband | Founder / CEO of Grandex Inc
@madisonwickham
@madisonwickham
madisonwickham
I’ve been visiting Grandex sites since TFM was just the wall and I have to say, y’all have taken PGP next level these past few days.
I had my doubts and did a bit of bitching re: the new logo, color scheme, and layout, but this reverse in course to make PGP a positive place is probably the best decision Madison, et al could have made for this site and their brand. It feels so much more empowering now as opposed to the “let’s just all share some self-deprecating humor and comments” of yesteryear.
shoot me an email david@grandex.co
Who?
Oh. You and Rico.
Completely agree
Frat on, good sir.
Between this and Morning Coffee Thoughts, PGP has me wanting to run through a damn brick wall this morning. Keep spitting fire content, gents.
2 “new” podcast recommendations for the day: New Joe Rogan with Shane Smith of VICE, and Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History: The Destroyer Of Worlds. Joe and Shane have amazing chemistry and Dan Carlin’s casts are, while long, amazingly informative.
I’m a little disappointed that the Shane Smith/Rogan ep is only 2hrs. No way they can get as drunk as I need them to be in that amount of time. Surely it’ll be a great one regardless
Listened to the new history pod strait through yesterday, couldn’t turn it off
Dan Carlin isn’t good history. It’s the talk show radio of history podcasts. His research is at best surface level and he often goes on long and ultimately irrelevant tangents. Tangents might work for other podcasts (looking at you Dudes Doing Business and Touching Base) but it’s often not doing a whole lot to advance the narrative. Don’t get me wrong, Dan Carlin is entertaining and might be a good way to get introduced to a specific historical area, but there’s definitely podcasters out there who get more into the details of history without losing the narrative thread. I’d suggest Jamie Jeffers’ “The British History Podcast”, Robert Pierson’s “The History of Byzantium”, and Mike Duncan’s “The History of Rome” and “Revolutions” podcasts. All of them are excellent, although the early episodes of The History of Rome are a bit short and the recording quality isn’t so great, but that quickly improves. The best part of these podcasts is that, unlike Carlin’s sporadic releases, they’re putting out high quality 30- 60 minute podcasts almost every week and have extensive libraries already so there’s plenty to binge through.
Why do folks in finance refer to millions as MM? I get that it’s from roman numerals, whereas M means “thousand”, thus MM means “thousand thousand” which is equivalent to a million, but you don’t see people referring to $50M to express $50,000, we use K for kilo, so it’s not like there’d be any confusion if you just used “M” for million. What gives?
I honestly have no clue. I was corrected by a rich white man once a long time ago and have used MM to refer to millions ever since
Please keep this series going. Admire the hell out of business you’ve built and would love to know more about the influences you’ve had.
I fucking love this series idea. Keep up the good work.
For those who have a desire to improve at managing and working with others, check out Travis Bradberry. Ignore the articles where he is stating the obvious and touch upon the ones where he dives deep into emotional intelligence. Always a good read to reinforce the challenges of working with difficult personalities. Has helped me a lot
https://www.linkedin.com/in/travisbradberry
Diggin’ this series idea. You could ask the DDB listeners if they’d like it, definitely seems more on that side of PGP.
This Gary Vee guy is a tool. Dime a dozen self help bullshit with nary a scintilla of objectively useful information. Douches that work at Vitamin Shak in the mall and post about their #grind, or instragram fitness trainer/meal prep guys/guy that can’t hold a real job are the only people I know that listen to this crap. I thought this site catered to college graduates with real jobs?
On the surface he does appear to be one of those bs motivational speaker guys, but I assure you he is not. He is the guy all of the fraudulent dudes are trying to imitate. He has serious professional substance to back it up and if you know anything about consumer-focused businesses his industry takes are 100% spot on.