I’m at the RE/MAX Convention this week; attending lots of sessions, meeting lots of people and expanding my mind a bit. Every year RE/MAX manages to line up a speaker (and I can never tell in advance which one it will be), who really and truly gets me thinking. Not like, “that’s a good idea” thinking. But more like, “wow, my brain can hardly grab that concept, I need to spend some more thought on that now to really get it”. And though we have a few more speakers to go, Gary Vaynerchuk, who addressed our general session yesterday has really got me thinking. Was it insomnia, or just an active brain that had me sleeping, not so much last night?
Gary Vaynerchuk is the Wine Library guy, but he is so much more than that. And if you know me in person, you might know that I am allergic to wine, so why in the world would I be even slightly interested in” the wine library guy”? Because he is WAY more than “the wine library guy”. Gary has built his personal brand around not just today’s, but tomorrow’s economy, turning many preconceieved notions, and even avant garde notions on their ear. Distilling even his general message is a challenge. Below are a few quotes that got me thinking and have kept me thinking:
In talking about how we so often look behind us at statistics for indications of what we should do in the future: “Lots of people bought horses in the days before the automobile was invented” .
On establishing relationships in social media: ”Don’t close to soon, don’t be a nineteen year old boy when you close”.
On navigating adversity, ” When you are in trouble, don’t retreat to the tried and true, go the other way”.
“Business is push-ups. You get what you put in to it and sure, your form could always be better”
And then much of his stuff is on changing the direction and focus. of “marketing”. That we need to stop pushing information at people and start pulling it in from them. Be better listeners, become more of a gatherers and farmers and less of a hunters. We need to think of social media as cocktail party marketing. We need to create the emotional context and work with quality of intent; to truly care about the end user. That we are “on the other side of the big box era” and need to act that way.
Technology gives us more and better information than we have ever had about our consumers, so let’s act like it.
Gary’s new book, The Thank You Economy, came out yesterday, so he was kinda pumped about it. I am too. And of course, gone are the days of us crowding around some open boxes to buy a copy. Instead, we got a special offer of an exclusive RE/MAX webinar with Gary if we emailed our amazon receipt by midnight last night. It is on my kindle now.
Tags: Gary Vaynerchuk, R4, RE/MAX General Session, wine library
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