My Thoughts On Gary Vee

What's up, you guys? It's Graham here. So I realized that making a video speaking out against GaryVee is quite dangerous, and I'm fully prepared to get some backlash from a video like this because I realize he has one of the most loyal, dedicated fan bases out there that love him. But at least just hear me out and watch this all the way through because I promise this video was not made without a lot of thought that went into it and hopefully a lot of unbiased reason.

Let's get this out of the way early on: I do consider myself a fan of Gary Vee. I subscribed to him on YouTube, I follow him on Instagram, I listened to his podcast, and I've read his books. But just like everyone out there whom I watch, I give it all an open mind. I choose the bits and pieces I want to implement for myself and then I disregard the rest. So this video is meant to be about the rest part of Gary Vee's advice, or lack thereof—in fact, no rest.

Because Gary is known for the hustle, the work 24/7, the grind harder than anybody else. Because it is literally every second of every minute of every day. Imagine not doing anything fun or going anywhere for the next eight years, including Saturday and Sunday. That's what I did from 22 to 30. Every day, I spent 15 hours a day in a liquor store. But is this actually necessary for success, or is this just a surefire way to get burnt out and eventually resentful of the work you once loved?

Now, first of all, before I go into the video, I don't think Gary Vaynerchuk needs any sort of introduction here. I'm 99.9% sure you've seen one of his videos, or you at least know who he is. But just in case you don't, here's a quick background: Gary began working in his family's retail wine business at the age of 14 years old. He spent all of his time working in the family business—from weekends, holidays, late nights, you name it. The hard work and dedication paid off, and by 2005, he grew the wine business from 3 million dollars per year to 60 million dollars per year. Then, in 2011, he branched off to create the digital ad agency VaynerMedia. He also made some rather lucrative early investments in Facebook, Twitter, Uber, and Venmo, to name a few.

From my perspective, Gary is really the epitome of entrepreneurship and the American Dream: that anyone out there can put in the work and achieve whatever goals they have. But the one thing that bothers me is his mantra of "put your head down and work." If you put your head down and just work for the next ten years, no glamour, no new car, suitcase, jewelry, trip, event, no Coachella, no fun, new sneakers—like work—you will have it. And every time you care about one of the things I just mentioned, it will slow down your process of having it.

And listen, I can only speak for myself here, but I have to say that advice isn't meant for everyone. And dare I say that's not the only way to achieve success. I'm just gonna hide from all the dislikes I'm about to get, and hey, you know what? I acknowledge that my advice isn't for everyone either. You really need to find what works best for you. But my experience was that I became miserable when I did nothing but work 24/7.

Here was my experience: from the age of 18 to 22, I didn't do anything but work in real estate. I had no friends my own age. I'd get to the office at 9:00 a.m. every single morning. I'd leave around 9:00 p.m. I'd go to the gym, I’d get home, I'd watch Hey Arnold reruns for 45 minutes, I'd go to bed, and I would do the same thing the next day. I repeated that process for four years. The only time I would ever take off was one to two weeks every single year to visit some family, in which case I would usually just end up working remotely anyway. Pretty much my only social activity for four years was going out to a car meet for dinner. That was it.

But here's the thing: as much as I loved what I did—and it never really felt like work because I enjoyed it so much—after a while, I simply just became miserable. I lost my personality. I lost me. I felt like I wasn't really myself anymore. I was the type of person where I knew every single line in the residential purchase agreement. I knew the average price per square foot in the gated community of Bel Air Crest. But when you took me out of that environment, I really just felt like a fish out of water. I literally forgot who I was. I felt like I wasn't myself anymore. I forgot what it was like to be me. I forgot the type of personality I had—all because I was doing what GaryVee encourages, which is work non-stop. Put your head down and just focus on that: have four jobs, work at Walmart, your side hustle, work clean.

The problem became, after years of doing this, I started thinking to myself, “I am miserable. What is the point of all of this?” Over time, I slowly wasn't becoming myself anymore, and I realized that I'd been sacrificing these early years for what? So we can have a big stack of money at the expense of being an emotionally drained, unhappy, uninteresting person? As much as I loved the work I was doing, I wanted to be so much more than just the person who put work above everything else. And it took me four years to realize that that just isn't me.

Now, I've made some videos about this before, but around the age of twenty-two is when I started cutting back on the amount of hours that I was working. I started going out more, I started making friends, I started doing things for me. I started doing things outside of real estate. I wanted to become so much more than just like this robotic real estate agent where that was all I was good at. And in the process of doing that, I really started to feel more like a human being. I started to feel like me again, and in the process of doing that, I started to develop and understand my own personality and my own style.

Oddly enough, I found that when I started working less, started focusing more on myself, and started focusing more on the type of clientele that was yielding the best results, I started making more money. Despite the fact that I was working less, my income ended up going from about a hundred and forty thousand dollars and scaling all the way up to five hundred thousand dollars, despite me having more free time than ever before. And I hate to admit it, but since then, every single year I've ended up working less but somehow making more money, and this year is absolutely no exception to that.

But looking back, here's what I realized: those early years where I put in non-stop work were absolutely instrumental to where I am today. It was those early years of putting in non-stop work that really built up my client base and fast-tracked me to where I am. But those hours and that workload were absolutely unsustainable long term. What used to be incredibly fun—working all the time, filling up my entire days with showings and meeting clients—eventually turned into a chore. It started losing its appeal, and I slowly wished I could be one of those people out there living in the moment—having fun, having a great time, going out at night, meeting new friends, socializing, doing things stupid. Because this is the exact opposite of what I was doing.

Here's what I think: most of the time, you're not nearly as productive as you think you are. If you really looked at what you do every single hour for a week, I guarantee that half the time you're spending in the grind is leading to absolutely nothing productive or worthwhile. You could have just as easily cut those things out, had some free time, been able to mess around with friends, be yourself, and achieved 99% of the same result. I'd be totally honest with yourself here, too. If you're strictly counting the work hours, track it. I think you're gonna find yourself with a lot of very small busy tasks that don't actually get you any closer to your goal.

But it's easy to hide behind those as a way for you to say, “I work 12 hours a day” or “14 hours a day” or “16 hours a day” because we're all told that's the recipe to success. Just put in work and enjoy it. Enjoy eating dirt and bleeding and the grind. For me, I ended up using work as a crutch, not to deal with all of the insecurities I had, all the loneliness I had, all the difficulties I had. And work was the perfect cop-out: “I don't have time for that because I'm working 14 hours a day.”

But if I've learned anything in terms of scaling up my income over the last few years, it's this: if you can figure out how to work smarter, you can work less. You can devote more time to your personal well-being, and you can earn more money by making the hours you do work that much more impactful. And all of this could be done by working more efficiently and maximizing the hours that you do spend.

And the reality is that many people out there don't want to be defined by their work. They don't want their work to make up their entire being, and there's nothing wrong with that. Some people just don't want to put in 12 to 18 hour days every single day for 10 years. And you know what? I don't blame them. I want to have friends; they want to go out. I want to go on vacation; I want to do stupid things. I want to do totally unproductive days where I do absolutely nothing because I know that it's these times that refresh me so that when I do work, I am that much more productive and better at what I do.

And I'm not just making this stuff up either. It was noted in the 1920s, an executive in Michigan began studying the productivity of his workers and noticed his employees' efficiency was plummeting when they worked too many hours in a day or in a week. You know, to combat this, he implemented a new work schedule, and that was eight hours a day, five days a week. He found that by switching back and forth between ten-hour days, six days a week, and eight-hour days, five days a week, he could accomplish just as much in five days with fewer hours as he could in six days with more hours, with his employees feeling more relaxed.

And do you know who this was? This was the almighty Henry Ford. There's also the study of Parkinson's Law, which suggests that your work expands to the time available for its completion. This is one of the many reasons why you might have an assignment due in a week in high school, but you seem to finish it all the night before simply because you were given an entire week to do it. If you're given 20 hours to do a certain task, guess why you will take all 20 hours to do it? If you're given that same task in 12 hours, I'm almost 100% sure you would find a way to get that done in 12 hours.

This leads to a lot of busy work with very little actual efficiency. Not only that, but the more you work, the more likely you are to be stressed. And the more stressed you are, the more likely you are to do subpar work or make mistakes.

Now, don't get me wrong here because I really believe that one of the main distinctions with Gary Vee is that he absolutely loves what he does and to him, none of this feels like work. And he would be doing it regardless of anything else. I don't get about the end goal; I care about the process, the enjoyment of doing it. I want to buy the New York Jets, but when I clarify it to everybody, I want the process of trying to buy the New York Jets more than buying the New York Jets. Understand that's him just being him.

He can work 18 hours a day every single day for three months straight and be absolutely thrilled with the idea of what he's doing. And I can relate to that perfectly because 95% of my time spent in real estate never really feels like work, and I would be doing it for fun regardless of anything else simply because I enjoy it so much.

The same thing applies to wanting to make YouTube videos. 99% of the time, I have so much fun doing it, and I would be doing it regardless. Like, I look forward to going home at 9:00 p.m. and editing videos until like 1:00 a.m. because this is my weird idea of having a good time. And when people ask how I managed to have the time for all of this, my answer is always very easy: I don't go home and watch TV. I don't go home and watch Netflix. Instead, I am just sitting there editing videos because that's what I want to do.

But guess what? As soon as Netflix becomes more enjoyable than making YouTube videos, I will slowly start cutting back on YouTube and watching more Netflix. But I also recognize the unsustainability of keeping up that workload long term before eventually what you love starts becoming a chore.

I've noticed that as soon as something becomes an obligation, it starts to lose its spark. And once the spark is gone, people tend to quickly notice it, and when people notice it, they're less likely to continue coming back. And then you get frustrated that you're not getting the same results as you used to. So you work even harder, despite the work being the problem in the first place— that could have been entirely avoided had you just taken some time off for yourself.

You also run into the problem that at the end of the day, you can only physically work so many hours before you can't work anymore. There's only 24 hours in a day, and what this cycle reinforces is that the amount of time you work is directly correlated with your success— and every hour extra is one hour of further advancement.

But what happens when you physically just can't work anymore? When you can't physically work twenty-five hours in a 24 hour day? Except in 200 million years, when it's estimated that the earth will rotate a little bit slower, giving us a new 25 hour day. But anyway, you see my point. When you're working this much, eventually it becomes more important to focus on productivity and efficiency than it does working more hours, especially if you're doing anything creative.

If your mind just naturally needs more relaxation and downtime in order to just clear and refresh itself. And this is also when I end up doing my best work: it's after going and hanging out with friends, taking a few days off, doing something totally unrelated. And when I come back to my work, I am better than ever.

So here's what I'm getting at, because there's so much more to becoming an entrepreneur than just working all the time. Because at some point, your mind and body will just need a rest, and that's nothing to be ashamed of. We shouldn't have to stoop to the level of posting pictures at 3 a.m. saying, “Still working, still grinding 18 hours a day,” like it's some sort of competition or badge of honor to see who can work the most amount of hours in a day without sleep.

I think it's also important to take some time when you're young to enjoy the simple, stupid, pointless things that are a lot harder to get away with in your 50s and 60s. It's also these really stupid, meaningless experiences that just help you become a more well-rounded, diversified person.

I don't know how to beat around my content, but once in a blue moon, when people ask me the advice for a 25-year-old Gary, the answer is, “Go have fun.” [ __ ] it! It would've been ok to go to Vegas, Acapulco, or like do some dumb [ __ ]!

By doing this, you're gonna be able to relate to people on a more interesting level. You'll be able to have the experiences that just make you a more interesting person. And I really believe that by doing so and having these experiences and being able to relate to these people on a different level outside of business, you should be able to make more money in the process.

We shouldn't have the pressure of just work, work, work, grind, grind, grind, hustle, hustle, hustle without understanding that at some point, that becomes detrimental to your success. At some point, that's gonna hinder your ability to grow, whether it be socially or financially.

And if you're perfectly happy working 18 hours a day and you don't see a problem with it, that's totally fine. I respect that, and I will take the dislike. And I can assure you, from my own experience, I'd much rather be less worked, less stressed, more creative, and more relaxed than a million dollars wealthier and feeling guilty anytime I want to take time off.

My only issue with Gary Vee's advice is that he doesn't stress the importance that the amount of hours that you work doesn't necessarily equate to the level of success that you'll see. I mean, sure, I get Gary's argument that you shouldn't complain about not being successful if you're going out there partying every single weekend, going on vacation for months at a time, not doing anything productive, spending ten hours a day in front of the Xbox. But for most people with reasonable time management skills, you shouldn't have to feel guilty about doing these things.

And hopefully, by becoming a more balanced, well-rounded person, you're just gonna be happier and do better in the long run. Well, Gary's method certainly works well for those that enjoy that type of constant grind work lifestyle. I have a feeling that realistically that such a small set of entrepreneurs out there, and most people would be better off just taking a more balanced approach and taking things a little bit easier, working more efficiently—not more hours.

So with that said, you guys, thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate it. If you enjoy this type of video, make sure to give the video a like; it does really help out a lot. Also, make sure to smash that subscribe button and smash that notification bell so YouTube notifies you anytime I post a video. Also, add me on Snapchat and Instagram; I post there pretty much daily. So if you want to be a part of it, feel free to add me there. Thank you again for watching, and until next time!