I'm fascinated by the huge difference in feelings that people have toward these people. I think these A-type personalities, unfortunately, evoke emotions in people, which more often than not leads to the people putting up a wall.
Not everything that Gary, Grant or Alex say will add value to your life, and hey, you might even dislike the person. But a wise, wealthy person I am close with told me that I can learn and get value from virtually any successful person; you just need to filter it.
Gary started off in the wine world, and he's far from a "wine snob". The details of his journey are far more interesting, and when people hear these details they think it's interesting but would never go through it themselves.
1. Living far below your means and saving the majority of the money you make for over 10 years
2. After saving all of that money, investing it into high-risk technology startups (instead of buying BMW and house to impress people that you don't honestly give a F*ck about)
3. Leaving the wine world where he was successful and comfortable, to start a marketing/advertising agency in the MIDDLE of a tech boom, where the road would have been much easier and possibly more rewarding in the short term. By the way, to highlight the scrappiness that so many entrepreneurs lose with success... they rented a conference room inside of another companies office to start this agency, even though they had money and could have afforded their own office.
4. Growing that agency to almost 1,000 employees in 9 years. The vision behind why he started the agency is brilliant, and a strategic long-term mindset that enables becoming a billionaire. That is: develop a well-oiled marketing/advertising machine, eventually buy out stale brands that are declining that were once giants, run them through this machine and explode growth, and either hold or sell those again.
Anyway, we could talk about these people for days and weeks. I think the main things I have learned from these 3 people are:
1) watch what they do, don't just listen to what they say. watch how Gary markets himself, watch how much he crams into one single day (probably more than most of us do in a week).
2) do you. you probably aren't on the same path as them (building an ad agency, or developing sales coaching, or building a massive
real estate portfolio). take some lessons, and move on.
3) don't get sucked into the value content whirpool. listen in transitional moments (cooking, driving, working out, etc), and get to F*cking work.
