You May Be Overcomplicating It...

Advice I wish I told myself a year ago

At 24 years old, I achieved the highest professional goal I had set for myself: Working for Gary Vaynerchuk, aka GaryVee.

The funny thing is… I knew in my soul for years that I’d make it happen. There was zero question.

I never set a concrete plan. I never had a timeframe. It was always somehow, one day.

But somehow, one day doesn’t work by waiting around.

I busted my ass at a real estate company for three years before landing the job at Gary’s company. It was 10-12 hours a day in a high-pressure environment, learning how to make interesting videos about real estate.

I basically taught myself how to write, shoot, direct, edit & post videos.

After work each day, I would spend time contributing to my daily poster project, making a piece of art every day for a year and a half.

I wanted to make art to express who I was and what I was going through at that moment. Many of the posters had a lil journal entry attached in the Instagram caption; an artsy miniature newsletter in a way.

To this day, the daily poster project serves as a time capsule of how I viewed the world from December 2019 to May 2021. Every single one of them is still on my Instagram if you scroll down far enough.

During that time, I didn’t know where I would end up, but I knew I was heading in the right direction.

Fast forward to the present day, and I don’t know where I want to put my long-term energy.

When I spend an extended period of time not knowing what the long term end goal is, I get antsy and feel like I’m falling behind in life.

But then I sit back and realize I’m not falling behind at all.

Since landing the job nearly a year and a half ago…

• I moved to New York City to work at the VaynerMedia office in person at a time when remote work was the norm.

• Got a promotion by switching jobs within the company to work for VeeFriends

  • VeeFriends is Gary’s cartoon storytelling company and he’s betting his entire legacy on. I’m one of the main people deciding what we post on the Instagram page.

• Starting to make my way into Gary’s ‘inner circle’

  • First name basis with Gary

  • Occasionally play basketball with Gary and other Vayner folks

    • In my first basketball game, I played so well that Gary started to guard me the rest of the day

  • Have opened VeeFriends cards with Gary and a few others in Gary’s home

Zero of these things were in my long-term vision for what my life would look like.

Additionally, I’ve been writing a newsletter every week since January 16th, so that’s a fun addition to the we’re heading in the right direction bucket.

In the newsletter and beyond, I’m aiming to get back to the wanderlust mindset of simply living my life and sharing my observations as if I’m writing to one of my descendants who will stumble on my life’s story in 100 years, just like with the daily posters.

And in sharing my observations, there are no expectations of who or what I need to be. I don’t need to be an expert in everything. Hell, I don’t need to be an expert in ANYTHING. I don’t need to have everything planned out or under control.

Going forward let’s simply try our best, learn something new every day, share the learnings and observations with who we care about, and let the cards fall as they may.

It’ll all make sense eventually.