Around noon on April 20th, 2016 I received a text message from my camera guy letting me know he couldn’t check the audio file I had sent him the night before, as he was volunteering at an event in London with Gary Vaynerchuk…
Being hit by a serious case of FOMO, I immediately jumped on Google and searched for the event.
And low and behold, there it was: “The Best Marketing Event Ever featuring Gary Vaynerchuk and Friends” organised by Franc Feliu & Dan Meredith.
Although the cheapest tickets were a whopping £99 and went up to over £1,000, I basically decided to bite the bullet for the following three reasons:
1) Not only were there six speakers scheduled (including Shaa Wasmund, Jamie Alderton, Ketan Makwana, Sean Whalen, Ryan Lee and Gary Vaynerchuk) but you also got free shit such as Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book #AskGaryVee. And God knows I love free shit.
2) The event was being held in York Hall, one of Britain's best known boxing venues. And when else was I going to see a bunch of inspiring talks in an iconic boxing venue?
3) Gary Vaynerchuk promised to deliver "the single greatest business speech in UK history" in a promotional video for the event.
And so, off I went, with my camera in hand, to witness “the single greatest business speech in UK history”.
Shame I forgot my freakin' note pad and pen.
Let’s just put it this way. I was so inspired by a couple of the speakers, especially Gary Vaynerchuk, that I decided to ditch the after party and instead come home at midnight and get cracking on editing the entire video of the day.
It took me more than 4.5 hrs to get this done!
Keep in mind that I have a point and shoot camera, I’m editing on iMovie and I’m using a free online tool (PicMonkey) as a creative tool since I don’t have any Adobe suites.
This is what hustle means to me. That you are willing to push yourself beyond your comfort zone in order to get something out there, when it’s most needed. Even if you don't have all the tools to do it, or the right people to do it with you.
I'm uploading this, and it's 4.30am on Thursday 21st April 2016.