Gary Vaynerchuck embodies confidence, but like 99% of other success stories, he wasn’t an overnight success.

When introducing Gary at the Future of Web Apps conference in Miami, Ryan Carson told the story of some enthusiastic guy coming up to him a couple years ago after a conference to meet him. Ryan even remembered thinking the guy was a little weird, but nice.

Two years later, after speaking at the same conference, I asked Gary what gave him the confidence through those years.

My Takeaways:

1. Know who you are

2. Care about the people you’re serving

3. Don’t wait for the Tipping Point. At the conference, Gary said that he had reached his tipping point with his first few viewers. He didn’t wait until he had a few thousand, or even a hundred viewers until he took it seriously. He knew that just one viewer was someone who gave him their attention and was important enough to serve.

Reader: what takeaways did you get?

I’m so Jaded.

I wonder if entrepreneurs are more prone to getting jaded than others. As entrepreneurs we try more opportunities and connect with more people and not only connect, but trust more people. I guess it just makes sense that we’re going to get hurt — jaded.

The more I experience the more I notice areas in my life where I’ve been jaded. I notice a typical curve - I feel negatively about it for a while, then days, months, or years later something changes. Often that something is my perspective.

I’m finding that holding onto those feelings could be keeping us from seeing with a better (or just different) perspective and may be keeping us from a next level of success.

Times change, people change, businesses change, and the best of all, we change. Plenty spiritual principles refer to guarding your heart - I think that applies here. Let’s be careful about getting jaded, and if we’re jaded right now, it might be a good idea for us to work to let that go - we don’t need any extra weight slowing us down.