Gary Vaynerchuk: Daily Routine

Gary Vee built an empire on nonstop hustle, but behind the scenes, he’s working just as hard to stay grounded with family and sleep.

For the longest time I had ambivalent feelings about Gary Vaynerchuk aka Gary Vee. There was just something about his aggressive, hustle-non-stop mentality and Instagram meme-ready quotes that rubbed me the wrong way. In fact, a part of why I started Balance the Grind was to push back against what has been commonly referred to as “hustle porn.”

Reddit co-founder, Alexis Ohanian, who came up with the term described it as “the fetishisation of people — particularly entrepreneurs or employees in the tech industry — overworking themselves.” Safe to say, I just wasn’t a fan. To start off with anyway.

But, as time went on and I came across more of his content, the more I realised that it wasn’t just an act to sell speaking event tickets (in 2013 he was earning $40,000 to $50,000 for his speeches); this was genuinely who Gary Vaynerchuk was – a positive-minded, hard-working entrepreneur who really enjoyed putting in the hours.

There are not a lot of 20-year-olds who can say they worked every single Saturday of their entire 20s. Period. I did. I worked 50 to 52 Saturdays a year, from 22 to 29, until I met my wife and started having to build some level of work-life balance. That’s hard work.