Gary Vaynerchuk

In class, I watched Gary Vaynerchuk give his Ted Talk.  He discussed the issues with not following your dreams.  He started off giving us a bunch of information on the story of his life and then connected it to his main point.  He told us about how he worked for a wine company and how he had made millions of dollars in profit and revenue from his job.  He talked a lot about the things he did enjoy about his job, but then he shared with us the 1% that he didn’t enjoy.  A few things that he didn’t enjoy as much were things such as: answering all of the customers’ emails daily, and there had to be at least 700 emails coming in each day, memorizing what cheese or what fish goes good with a particular wine, and things of that nature.  The point of him telling us about his company was that you have to follow what your passion is in life.  He loved selling wine and he was good at it. He committed to his job, he was very good at it, and he constantly overachieved to be the best in his career choice.  He was trying to let the audience know that “he does what he loves and loves what he does”.  One of the most inspirational quotes that I took from Mr. Vaynerchuk was “follow your passion; you will find a way to monetize it”.  When he said that string of words, I instantly was inspired to pursue my dance career.

            Now, I grew up in a family of overachievers and highly successful people.  Everyone went to college, received a degree in some field, then went on and pursued a career.  So, for me, it was almost an unspoken rule that I had to achieve the highest level of success that I could possibly attain and be the best that I could be.  Well, becoming a dancer obviously didn’t’ fit into that perfect mold of success that my family expected from me.  So, for the longest time, I never knew what I wanted to be, I just knew that whatever I decided on had to make a whole lot of money.  My family always wanted and still want me to be self-sufficient, independent, and financially stable.  They want only the best for me, and to me, that felt like being a dancer wouldn’t be good enough for them.  I put my dreams aside and went with something a little more realistic, a veterinarian.  A doctor sounds good to the members of my family, so that is what I had decided that I would be for the longest time.  When I came to Full Sail is when I finally opened up my eyes to a passion of mine, dance.  Still holding that mindset that dancers couldn’t make a lot of money, I went with becoming a talent agent instead.  I’m still on the path of becoming one, but now my path has veered back on to dance. 

In a nutshell, Gary Vaynerchuk has completely inspired me to “follow my passion and find a way to monetize it”.  I am going to follow my heart and find a way to not only make a lot of money off of it, but to also be wildly successful at it as well!