I often tell my friends and colleagues that I’m in the business of being historically correct.
Whether it’s my agency VaynerMedia, Wine Library or a business I am still just thinking about starting, being right about where the market is going has always been top of mind for me. Once I have a strong thesis on future trends in the marketplace, I am able to go all in and execute on my strategy, predictions, and business plan.
While I do this, I’m showing and telling people along the way. I am creating content around my business tactics and plans, as well as providing value to my community through articles, videos, and any other means by which I can distribute information.
But there is one thing that I have become truly passionate about in the last year and a half and it’s this:
I want to provide my community with so much value that they don’t need my advice anymore.
I want to make my community so effective at executing on all my advice on company culture, managing growth, and social media that they don’t need to listen to me any more.
I want them to become educated enough as practitioners to start recognizing the themes and patterns that have allowed me to be successful in business.
Many people, when they first encounter my content, might think that monetizing my audience is my number one objective with the content I put out. If a new visitor comes to my website and watches one of my videos or reads an article for the first time, I’m sure they’re waiting for the next shoe to drop. A pop up during a video that says “For the real secrets, pay to join my club!”, or a banner ad that slides as you scroll through an article that says “For the rest, click to buy my $50 e-book!”
The thing is, those interruptions or upsells don’t happen with my content. Ever. In fact, the most I might ever ask for monetarily is a book sale once every two to three years (which usually amounts to $13 a copy).
So many people who sit in the world of giving advice, who retweet articles on Twitter and have the word “guru” somewhere in their bio, monetize a small subset of their audience at the highest levels and for the best information.
Monetizing my community is not what motivates me. Trying to put myself out of business does.
The reason that I won’t ever have the most views or the most books read is because my mission is to become obsolete to my community of marketers, entrepreneurs and small businesses. My mission is to create content around my major business theses, use the current communication tools to distribute those theses, and be the best context and content executor of this generation.
When that is your goal, you start having a shelf life with your audience. Your audience will consume, learn, grow, and then ideally move on from your content because they have used the information they learned from you to run a successful business.
I’m okay with that.
It leaves money on the table, certainly. I could pull back on my best strategies and advice, put up a pay wall, and make people pay for my best content. But that’s just not interesting to me. More importantly, I don’t think it’s noble, and it doesn’t drive me.
So go ahead guys. Put me the fuck out of business already.
