Being an Omaha-native, I attended this event and it was excellent from start to finish. Many creative people, entrepreneurs, and developers in attendance.
Gary's keynote is definitely worth your free time. I might just watch it again the next time I'm bored.
I've occasionally bitched and moaned about Gary V as an entrepreneur - basically inheriting a family business makes it a heck of a lot easier - but he's a pretty good speaker. And that's a large part of it.
I'm gonna assume that you are not an immigrant that has worked in a family business. Because you don't inherit the family business.
I worked in the plywood plant where my dad worked when I turned 16 and I worked in all of his side businesses. My uncle that owns an electrical business put my cousins to work when they were 13. My uncle that owns a chain of retail stores put my cousins to work starting at that age, too.
You don't inherit a family business if you grew up in an immigrant family. And it's definitely not easy. It's hard work from the day you are born.
its much easier to build a $4 mil/yr business into a $40 mil/yr business, than it is you build one from 0 to $4mil.
Those people that inherit their parents business, may have worked their ass off since they were young, but they start off ahead off the curve, simply due to the ground work laid down by their parents.
And he was a stockboy at the business when it was being built from $0 to $X million.
How is that any different than Paul Graham taking support calls at ViaWeb or Joel Spolsky putting up blinds at Fog Creek? In a family business, everyone does what it takes to make it successful. They are not inheriting the business. It is their business even if they are not listed as co-founders in the legal papers.
Because Paul Graham and Joel Spolsky were actually the ones running the business while they did those extra things like take support calls/put up blinds.
I actually am an immigrant (to at least 2 different countries) and coincidentally helped my father start a business. But I don't traffic in generalities. I'm sure you worked hard, but it's still anecdotal.
There are a lot of people out there who inherited a family business and failed, It's never easy to grow a business whether you inherited it or started from scratch. He took his business from 3 to 60 million dollars, I don't think that's easy.
I found the first half of this talk to be a little crass and not very substantive. The second half contained a few interesting answers in the q & a. Gary brings so much energy though that this is a decent keynote if you're looking to be motivated.
I said this shortly after on Twitter, but I was not at all satisfied with the answer I got from him when I asked if WineLibrary TV had turned into sales for Wine Library. I don't buy that he doesn't give a fuck at all.
I do believe that he's building a global brand, but he's only tangentially helping Wine Library. More than that, he's building the Gary Vaynerchuk brand, which is admirable, but does me no good when I'm trying to show people who don't "get" the internet that you can actually help the sales of a brick-and-mortar business by becoming a big name on the web.
Can I just say that I loathe the trend of speakers wearing headset mics? And since I don't like headset mics, it's plausible to conclude that I also don't like it when they walk around constantly while talking, thinking that they are creating visual interest.
Awesome awesome! Gary gave our entrepreneurial / tech community just what we needed to hear in what many think was one of his most passionate and motivating talks.
By the way it's GaryVee, not Gary V and it's not necessarily just inheriting the family business that counts, it's what you do with it after it is in your hands and GaryVee is Awesome, phenominal and brilliant!!! He's doing it his way.. YES!!!!! You are going all the way to the top and you deserve it!!!!
Gary's keynote is definitely worth your free time. I might just watch it again the next time I'm bored.