CEO of a multimillion-dollar company: 'Never be romantic about how you make your money'
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To be a successful entrepreneur, executive, or employee, you need to be driven and confident, but you need to be humble, too, Gary Vaynerchuk told Business Insider.
In his new book "#AskGaryVee," Vaynerchuk writes that one of the "commandments" he's used to build his digital media agency VaynerMedia into one with more 600 employees and $67 million in annual net revenue over the past seven years is, "Never be romantic about how you make your money."
It's built on the idea that "the way your revenue stream is being made now is not necessarily the way it's going to be made in a year or two," Vaynerchuk told us. It's an idea that's as applicable to an organization's senior leadership team as it is an individual.
For example, cable companies like Comcast are scrambling to catch up to streaming services like Netflix and streaming hubs like Apple TV. Instead of trying to get up to speed, big cable companies could have kept an eye on the cutting edge a couple years ago and attempted to acquire a company like Snapchat to make use of its potential as a content outlet, Vaynerchuk said.
On the individual front, he explained, it's easy to lose some of the creativity and desire to change the status quo when it leads you to a leadership position. Then you get replaced by "some young buck" who doesn't believe in the tried and true.
It's about never letting the reward of money make you comfortable, regardless of where your company is in its life or where you are in your career.
"The way you tangibly made your money is probably going to lead to your demise, and you should always be on the lookout for what you did to somebody else," Vaynerchuk said. "So be prepared for that."