I love Gary Vaynerchuk as much as the next overcaffeinated 23-year-old start-up founder. Which is exactly why last week I decided to take on the challenge of Gary Vee Mode, where for 4 days in a row, I planned to:

1. Post on my blog (as usual)

2. Post on Instagram

3. Post on Facebook

4. Post on Instagram stories (10x minimum)

5. Film and post a YouTube video

6. Post on Tik Tok

Some of this went to plan. Some of this did not go to plan. Here’s why:

1. I did post on my blog every single day, as usual. One night, I was up until 2:30am doing it, but I managed it, because it is a priority to me. (For reference, the only time I don’t post on my blog on time is when I’m traveling and have no internet access on a flight (although I’m working on this for the future, having posts scheduled in advance.)

2. I only posted on Instagram two out of four of the days. There’s really no excuse. However, my reason is that I want to only put out content on my Instagram I’m super happy with, and I wasn’t happy with the content I would have posted. What I should have done, was make the goal to “create beautiful photos”, as posting on Instagram seems to be a natural byproduct of that.

3. Post on Facebook. My Instagram content gets “pushed” to Facebook, so my answer is the same as above.

4. Post on Instagram Stories (10x minimum). I did post on Instagram stories, every single day. But I only managed 1 day where I posted 10x, and on that day I noticed I was proactively thinking about posting the things I was doing, rather than just hoping they would happen in the moment.

5. Film and post a YouTube video. I’m actually impressed I managed 2 out of 4 days! Especially considering that I have only got about 8 videos on my entire channel, so two extra in 4 days is great. Learning lesson: plan ahead what you will create! I didn’t end up creating more because my days ended up filled with so many other things, and I didn’t have a plan.

6. Post on Tik Tok. Woohoo! I managed to post a video on Tik Tok every single day of these 4 days. It felt like one of the most straight forward ones, so I always managed to do that. There was one day where I felt like I couldn’t be bothered, but I did it anyway. Woop woop!

What are my overall learning lessons?

• Gary Vee Mode is supposed to be intense, that’s the whole point.

• I needed to leave room for error. Or in my case, just life. On the first day, I completed absolutely everything, because I squeezed the most out of every moment. But the next day, my mum invited me for a 3 hour car trip to our national park, and I decided to go. 3 hours was enough to throw off the whole plan. Gary Vee would have said no to his mum. I wasn’t willing to do that.

• If I do Gary Vee Mode again, it will be altered. It will be more specific, and less insignificant. Posting on Facebook, for example, is not my #1 priority. I have to remember: the main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing. So, next time, I will really carve out what is important to me.

What would Gary say to me? I think he would say I focused my energy on the wrong things. If they really mattered to me, I would make them happen (aka, the blog).

So next time I do Gary Vee Mode, it will be something along the lines of:

• YouTube

• Instagram

• Blog
  
  And doing them all with 100% energy and passion.

Let me know if you try Gary Vee Mode or something similar, I’d love to hear your thoughts!