Gary Vaynerchuk—There's No One Moment

A Guide To Creating Success

Gary Vaynerchuk is an incredible communicator and an honest, passionate human being. Gary is a powerful guide to success. There are many great ideas but the one that resonates with me is, “There’s no one moment!”

I recently watched a webinar on which he was the guest. He impressed me with his sheer energy and with his straightforward and blunt manner. He is so refreshing in this world of people who whirl you around and keep you hanging on so they can extract more money out of you. He is a great role model for men to learn from. He is a great guide to success.

There's No One Moment

There were many great ideas from Gary but the one that resonated with me was, "There's no one moment!"

This was his response to a question about how do you know at what point you are going to be successful. This is a question that exercises many men, how to be successful.

He talked about the time and dedication it takes to become an expert in whatever field you are in. He worked on his wine business for 14 years before things started to happen for him. He is someone with enormous dedication and energy. He said,

You've got to do it over and over.

There is little substitute for hard work, for staying up late and getting it right. There are no short cuts in any business. There is always competition so you need to create great quality in whatever you do. It's no use expecting fast results from quick fixes.

There is only right or wrong in quality.

This was music to my ears. This is how I have seen it all my life. I can not believe that people lose all sense of discretion when they go into business for themselves.

Being Good At Something

I was a lighting designer for 40 years and I built up a level of expertise which is rare. I saw competition from new, young designers who found it difficult to make it. They missed the fact that it needs time and expertise.

You need to become good at something. Malcolm Gladwell in 'Outliers' talks about the 10,000 hours needed to become an expert at something.

Gary went on to say,

You are going to be embarrassed, do it the right way. Be proud of it.

If you work on the internet there is a permanent record of all that you do. Your grandchildren are going to be able to look back and see what you got up to. Do you want to embarrass them with your sleazy selling tactics or do you want them to be proud of the quality you produced? Do you want them to see how you inspired people? Do you want them to see that you earned a living doing something amazing?

The Secret of Being Successful

Success was an important part of my life for many years. In many ways it still is, but it seems different now, more about me, inside, more about the secret of being successful. If you don’t feel passion for what you do, forget it.

As a designer I worked hard, networked, marketed, designed. I sought the approval of my peers, and the money of my clients. I loved it, but was I passionate? I'm not so sure about that.

Leo Babauta said something very insightful about success in 'Why I Don't Care About Success', he said it's about,

... looking for ... something that exists in the future. [Success that is] ... based on your desire to achieve something, your feelings that you're not where you want to be.

That's the key, looking for something else, the money, the lifestyle. I know that constant feeling that I should be doing something else, that somehow I'm not quite getting there. I used to get so stressed out chasing my 'dream'. What I was missing was what am I doing now.

Kevin Spacey said, about success, in an amazing video,

There is no prize out there...

It is all about what you are inside, who you are.

Watch the video, it's really inspiring, and then we'll carry on to the secret...

Who You Are

It's all about who you are right now, in this moment. What do you want, what do you feel. Success and achievement comes from the moment, from now not from the future.

The Fear of Success

But do you have a fear of success? What is the worst thing that could happen to you? What is it that you secretly dread more than anything else? Do you have a fear of success or failure?

For most people there are two fears that have greater power than any other. They are the fear that they aren't loved or the fear that they aren't good enough.

Fears

All men have fears, but the brave put down their fears and go forward, sometimes to death, but always to victory.

These fears disable people to the extent, sometimes, that they are unable to move forward or do anything. They then become self-fulfilling prophecies. They end demonstrating that they are not good enough and they end up not being loved.

They are able to say, See, I told you so!

How much do you like to be proved right, how often do you create a negative result in order to show to yourself that you can't do something?

Failure

I have found, in myself, that not achieving what I really want in life is a very comfortable place to be. It sound bizarre but having a business go bankrupt can show that everything is right in the world. I set up a business with a new business partner, a few years ago, and a previous partner told him that I would let him down and, ultimately, not perform.

It hurt me when I heard that but several years later I found that that's exactly what happened. The business failed and the new partner lost some money. I had fulfilled the prophecy and had not turned the world upside down.

Why was it that that comforted me, while creating a success of the business and me feeling very uncomfortable?

It was Marianne Williamson who said that it is our light that most frightens us. It is our success which most puts us on edge. We all have a fear of success.

Making Our Mark

When we stand up to make our mark, when we put ourselves out there to create something new, something different, we expose ourselves.

In exposing ourselves we need to be brave, despite the fact that all men have fears, we need to take hold of our courage and brave whatever happens. It's when we put aside our fears and face they world that we really begin to achieve our dreams.

Why is it that through bravery we achieve our dreams? Why do we have to stand on the edge and learn to fly?

Until we put our fears aside we have no idea what we are actually capable of. Until we face our dreams and start living them they just remain dreams. The great thing about turning dreams into reality is that you can then have even greater dreams.

But first you need to take action and by taking action you have to become vulnerable.

What are you going to do today that requires bravery? What victory are going to win today? Do you have a fear of success or failure?

Mindset for Success

Mindset is critical to success, you are told, without it you can never make your business work. I have found this to be true, but what is a mindset for success, and how do you make it work for yourself?

My first real experience of a mindset for success was from Tony Robbins. He teaches a simple approach to mindset called 'The Triad'. 'The Triad' is the combination of three elements; focus, language and physiology. Tony teaches that any state you are in, whether happy or sad, excited or depressed, or any other, is caused by the triad you are in. Your state is created by your physiology, focus and language.

Change Your State

If you change any one of those you will change the state you are in.

So if you want to change how you feel you can simply start moving (your physiology), shift what you are thinking about (your focus) or change how you talk about what is happening (your language).

This seemed clear to me and I was able to prove to myself that what he was saying was true.

What is a Mindset for Success

I found, however, that it just did not seem to work with some people. They would understand it intellectually, but were unable to put it into practice. No matter what effort they put into it they stayed the same depressed/sad/unsuccessful person.

There seemed to be something else going on inside their head. It turns out that this is where the type of mindset a person has comes into play.

Carol Dweck, found, through experiments, that people generally have one of two mindsets. Which mindset a person has governs whether they can improve themselves or not.

The simple difference is that a person's ability is unimportant in whether they are capable of improving themselves or not. What is critical is whether they believe that ability is a given part of their make-up or whether they believe that ability can be learned and improved.

Two Mindsets

If you have a fixed mindset you believe that your talent is an inherent part of you. You believe that you are born with a set of qualities and abilities and that your task is to discover what they are and work with them. You believe that success comes from the talent you have, not from the effort you put in.

On the other hand if you have a growth mindset you believe that talent, or ability, is just a starting point for the growth you can create in yourself. Hard work and effort can transform you so you love learning and have an ability to consistently improve what you can do.

A mindset is, therefore, just a set of beliefs about what you are capable of as a person. A mindset for success is a set of beliefs around your attitude to your ability to be successful. Do you believe that you can change or grow, or do you believe that your nature is fixed and that you should just accept your lot in life?

What Do you Believe?

This brings the discussion back to the starting point. What you achieve is dependent on what you believe. You can change what you believe, but, it seems, only if you believe it is possible. Changing your triad only works if you accept that it will!

But always remember you can only achieve what you believe you can achieve!

The conundrum is how to encourage fixed mindset people that they can change, that they can be successful. They might believe that change would improve their life, but if they don't feel they can go there.

In my view it is necessary to work back to when and why they created that belief and to demolish it by changing their view on what happened to them at that time. I have found that people usually build up this type of belief as a result of something they were taught in the past. The trick is to change that teaching and allow their unconscious to let go the old belief.