Moving at a cracking pace in business should be valued above anything else, says Gary Vaynerchuk.
But the serial entrepreneur says many company founders fail to understand how essential their every single minute is in their longer term quest to scale their startup. Instead, in Vaynerchuk’s words, “in the day-to-day they’re slow, and in the macro, they want their business to be huge tomorrow”.
In a recent blog blog, Vaynerchuk described how “unbelievably fast” he works, praising the benefits of ‘micro-speed’ and ‘macro-patience’.
“On a daily basis, I am scrutinising my 12- to 15-hour days, down to the second and trying to fill in as much stuff with the smartest stuff into that bucket,” he says.
“To me, it’s all about speed. I actually don’t care about anything else. Speed, both in people skills and hard work, will trump anything.”
Vaynerchuk says organising your time efficiently demands attention to detail, right down to the smallest details.
For instance, how long does it take you to travel to work, and is there a faster way? How much time do you spend browsing social media? How long is your lunch break?
Focusing on the smaller things will in turn help build the larger vision.
“It matters,” Vaynerchuk writes.
“And believe me, I’m taking meetings and making decisions that are going to disproportionately affect the success of my business and long-term career, every-single-day.
“I’m deciding what I’m going to eat for lunch or how I’m going to respond to that email. I just move fast.”
It may well be that you’re happy to focus on the present, however, does this conflict with your greater long-term plans?
Hard work now can lead to proportionately greater rewards later, so how prepared are you to make short-term sacrifices?
Vaynerchuk believes such short-term thinking “dramatically changes your behaviour”.
“So, most people are working eight hours and trying to make money on every single hour and I’m here working 16 hours and trying to make money on four of those hours,” he writes.
Micro-speed and macro-patience are dual attributes that will work together to help realise your long-term goals, says Vaynerchuk.
It is matter of keeping goals in perspective and recognising that every little thing counts.
Cutting corners may lead to short-term gratification, but where will this leave you in the long term? Are your short-term goals at odds with your long-term planning?
Having got a handle on speed, Vaynerchuk observes that you also “need to have patience”.
“You need to understand that no matter how fast you work, it doesn’t happen overnight,” he writes.
“It may happen in seven years (which is incredibly fast by most people’s standards), but it’s not going to happen overnight.”
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Martin Kovacs is a journalist with experience covering the IT, consumer electronics, retail, finance and energy sectors.
