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Gary Vaynerchuk

Gary Vaynerchuk

CEO Co-Founder of Vayner Media

 

The Entrepreneurial Skin


I’ve been spending a lot of time lately talking with young entrepreneurs; more than normal, actually. I’ve been finding 15 minutes on my schedule to sit down for coffee, 5 minutes for a phone call, 10 minutes for a quick visit to VaynerMedia, and more interestingly I’ve met quite a few of them through my Q&A 365 series that I’ve been doing this year. Through all these meetings, there’s something that I’m only recently starting to notice about myself. Not that I’ve been taking it for granted, but something I was blessed to be born with, and that is the Entrepreneurial Skin. It’s an extra layer of belief/hunger/no-holds-barred/ego/determination. It’s this extra entrepreneurial layer that allows you to go in for “The Ask.”
The Ask, for those of you who might not know the term, is the moment when you go in for the kill. The moment when you finally convert on all your hard work and ask for that funding, or that business you wanted all along, or even something as simple as the sale of a $15 product. Everything leads up to The Ask and if you can't make it happen, you can't succeed.
I’m watching a lot of people build up great brand equity; build up great little micro-media companies; building up nice little products, but they often have the similar background of either A) Recently quitting a job to become an entrepreneur, or B) Just starting out and not having been doing it long enough, that is not enabling them to go in for that Ask.
What’s fascinating to me is that I’ve met some others who are now just hitting that point, and are completely blown away and excited by the dividends paid off by The Ask.
So I implore everyone here on LinkedIn, whether you’re an entrepreneur, or you’re a sales person, or you’re a manager, adding that entrepreneurial skin that gives you this magical potion to go in for the ask, no holds barred, with no concern for the repercussions (especially when you do it in an appropriate way) and is kind of the final step in starting to see results. Too many people are crippled by being unable to go in for The Ask, but The Ask, and that layer of skin, is where so much of the greatness comes from.