Twelve and a Half

Leveraging the Emotional Tools Necessary for Business Success

Gary Vaynerchuk

• Publisher: Harper Business
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780062674708
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Success

USA Today Bestseller

In his sixth business book, bestselling author, entrepreneur, and investor Gary Vaynerchuk explores the twelve essential emotional skills that are integral to his life—and business—success and provides today's (and tomorrow's) leaders with critical tools to acquire and develop these traits.

For decades, leaders have relied on "hard" skills to make smart decisions, while dismissing the importance of emotional intelligence. Soft skills like self-awareness and curiosity aren't quantifiable; they can't be measured on a spreadsheet and aren't taught in B-schools or emphasized in institutions. We've been taught that emotional intelligence is a "nice to have" in business, not a requirement. But soft skills can actually accelerate business success, Gary Vaynerchuk argues. For analytical minds, it's challenging to understand how to get "better" at being self-aware, curious, or empathetic—or even why it's important to try.

In this wise and practical book, Gary explores the 12 human ingredients that have led to his success and happiness and provides exercises to help you develop these traits yourself. He also shares what the "half" is—that emotional ingredient of leadership he's weakest at and makes the most effort to improve. Working through the ideas and exercises in the book, he teaches you how to discover your own "halves" and offers insight on how to strengthen them.

Gary's secret to success is using these twelve traits in varying mixtures, depending on the situation. But how do we know when to balance patience with ambition? Humility with conviction? Gary provides real-life examples involving common business scenarios to show you how to use them together for optimum results.

This iconoclastic book will help you refine your ingredients and improve your leadership capabilities. When implemented in the proper situation, these ingredients can help leaders land promotions, retain core employees, move faster than competitors, win the loyalty of customers, and build successful organizations that last.

Part I

The Emotional Ingredients

Gratitude

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The quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.¹

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If there were a list that ranked everyone on Earth in terms of overall success and happiness (from 1 to 7.7 billion), where do you think you’d rank?

Write down your answer here: __________________ out of 7.7 billion.

Got your number? Great.

According to the World Health Organization, 785 million people globally lack basic drinking-water services.² That’s a little over 10 percent of the world’s population, and even two million Americans don’t have access to safe drinking water or basic plumbing.³

Do you have enough food to eat every day?

More than 820 million people in the world were undernourished in 2018.⁴

No matter how much you hate your job, do you have even the slightest potential or ability to get another one? According to the Global Slavery Index, 40.3 million people were in modern-day slavery in 2016.⁵ They really don’t have the option to quit.

Do you have a proper toilet at home? Around 60 percent of the world’s people (4.5 billion of them) don’t have a toilet that properly manages human waste.⁶

Do you have high-speed Internet at home? About three billion people aren’t even on the Internet.⁷ Even twenty-one million Americans lack broadband access.⁸

And we haven’t even started talking about income yet. According to CNN’s Davos 2017 Global Wage Calculator, the global adjusted average annual wage is $20,328.⁹ In Russia, it’s about $5,457 per year; in Brazil, $4,659; in India, $1,666; and in Malawi, $1,149.

Obviously, there are too many variables to identify your exact rank out of 7.7 billion. However, by throwing all this data at you, I hope to get you to understand what’s actually going on in the world outside your direct surroundings.

I’m completely driven by perspective and gratitude. I was born in the former Soviet Union in Belarus, so I deeply understand how much worse life could be. In fact, I might not have even been able to get out, had it not been for the following event:

In 1970, sixteen Russians plotted to hijack a small plane. The crew pretended they were going to a wedding but secretly planned to fly the plane to Sweden to escape the Soviet Union. Their eventual goal was to arrive in Israel. But the plan didn’t work out, and the participants got arrested and thrown in jail for treason.

However, that event drew global attention to the human-rights issues in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The media in the United States covered the hijacking plot, and it changed the political landscape. Due to the increased attention and pressure, the Soviet Union loosened its regulations and eventually let more Jews leave.

I believe those sixteen people changed the course of my life.

Luck is an interesting word. I probably would attribute most of my success to my tenacity, ambition, and other emotional ingredients rather than luck, but the fact that I was able to escape the Soviet Union at a young age certainly involved luck.

People don’t understand the reality of what’s happening in the world because their communities are so insular. Many people look at a million dollars as the entry point of success. Many twenty-somethings are trying to “make it” before thirty. When you’re living in a Los Angeles apartment or a house in Greenwich, Connecticut, it’s tough to wrap your head around the fact that women in Africa collectively spend two hundred million hours a day collecting water.¹⁰ People look upward at those who rank higher, but they don’t look downward at the billions ranked lower.

Anybody who owns a business in a First World nation is already living an extraordinary life. I don’t think most entrepreneurs realize how blessed they are. Even if it’s a grind. Even if it’s hard. Even if there are bad days.

Don’t forget—over half the world doesn’t even have a real toilet.

When you develop perspective, the timelines you set for your goals naturally shift. As I write this, life expectancy in the United States is about seventy-nine years. In 1930, it was fifty-eight. In 1880, it was thirty-nine.¹¹

Although 1880 feels like a long time ago, it really isn’t. A grandparent who’s ninety-one in 2021 probably knew of family members who died at thirty-nine or so. If you lived during that time, of course you needed to have your life figured out by thirty. You’d die nine years later!

Even in 1930, people died at fifty-eight. By age thirty, their lives were already more than half over.

As our life expectancies increase, shouldn’t our timelines for goals increase too? Shouldn’t you be OK with not having everything figured out until later?

With advances in modern medicine, I believe many of you will live to ninety or a hundred years old. If you’re twenty-seven and hate your job after working your way up for five years, it’s fine to take a step backward and find another job. If you’re thirty-three and decide to start your own business from scratch after getting a degree in something you’re not passionate about, you’re not “too late.” You’re actually the luckiest of the lucky. You get to be alive during an era when the math shows you probably have another sixty years to play. Regardless of what happened yesterday or every day before that, you still have a generous amount of time ahead of you.

Be thoughtful and honest with yourself about your missteps, but don’t start dwelling on them. People beat themselves up and obsess about something that happened thirteen years ago—a business partnership that didn’t work out, a startup that failed, or a boss they didn’t like—and it becomes the jail they live in. With all the time you have left, there’s zero value in getting bogged down there. If I ever get into that mud, I’m grabbing my gratitude hose to wash it off.

I’ve had major disappointments in my career that I’ve dwelled on for maybe an hour. Maybe a day, if it was really a gut punch. How can I be upset about such a small thing for so long? I’m playing my life’s mission. I’m doing my thing. Of course I’m going to lose every now and then. It’s like losing a playoff series in basketball. It’s going to happen. In the face of disappointment, gratitude is my chess move to limit dwelling on it.

Actually, as long as we’re talking about dwelling, I need some help: send an e-mail to [email protected], and title it “The value of dwelling.” I need to know what it is.

I’m not talking about the value of mourning. I’m not saying you shouldn’t give yourself time to mourn. I just think we should reserve mourning for the death of people, not bad business decisions. What’s the value of dwelling? What could possibly be productive about beating yourself up for weeks, months, or years over a bad outcome?

I get it. Susan broke your heart in college, but it’s over. She’s forty-seven now, with three children.

One of the biggest points I’m trying to make in this book is that positive emotional ingredients provide more sustainable fuel than negative ones. If you draw energy from gratitude, you’ll find that it lasts much longer than energy drawn from insecurity, anger, or disappointment.

I understand why people like to use the dark side as energy. I love being an underdog and having a chip on my shoulder too. Why do you think I love being a fan of the New York Knicks and the New York Jets? I love losing. I’m motivated by it. But I’m more motivated by the light than the dark. That balance matters.

Anger can give you a short-term energy boost, whether it’s anger toward yourself or others, but once you achieve the gratification you’re looking for, you’ll often find that it’s not as fruitful as you imagined it to be. A lot of people are motivated to “stick it” to their parents for doubting them, but by the time they do it, things are different. The situation has often changed, the parents are no longer around, or maybe they’ve mellowed. Insecurity and anger can be tremendous drivers of success—but I don’t believe they lead to happiness.

Anger and resentment are heavy ingredients to carry around. Gratitude is light.

I’m fascinated that people think that gratitude creates complacency. There’s a reason why complacent and grateful are two different words. The definition of complacency is “a feeling of smug or uncritical satisfaction with oneself or one’s achievements.”¹² They’re not the same.

For example, I can separate my gratitude from my requirements for the financial structure of a business deal. If those requirements aren’t getting fulfilled, I know I’m in control of making a decision on whether I sign the deal or not. Same thing applies if you work at a company: you can be grateful that you have a job, but if you feel it isn’t paying you enough after you’ve delivered results for three years, you can take another job instead of dwelling on it.

As you’ll see in part II, you can be grateful and ambitious. You can be grateful and tenacious. These traits don’t have to come at the expense of one another.

Want to know where my energy and smiles come from when you see me on social media? They come from gratitude. If I wake up in the morning and nobody I love has passed away or come down with a terminal illness, then my day starts off great. If the people closest to me are OK, I’m good. I won. Nothing else can truly faze me beyond that.

If you’re truly grateful for what you have instead of being envious of what you don’t have, you’ll be a dominant force in business and, way more important, in life.

Self-Awareness

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Conscious knowledge of one’s own character, feelings, motives, and desires.¹³

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If there’s anything that I could wish upon society aside from good health, it would be a new drug to help everyone develop these emotional ingredients. If I were the FDA, the first one I would prioritize would be self-awareness.

The value of self-awareness first hit my radar in 2011 to 2013 during the explosion of interest in entrepreneurship in popular culture. When I saw some students and executives become startup founders, it struck me—how do they not realize that they have no chance? Why are they trying to be a number-one (a CEO)? How do they not realize that they’re better suited to be a number-two, number-three, or a number-twenty-seven player in an organization? Do they not realize that they’re making this jump because they think it’s cool, instead of doing it because it’s their calling?

There are many reasons why humans try to become someone they’re not. Sometimes, it’s just delusion. (I don’t say that in anger; I say it with empathy.) Delusional people lack awareness about their strengths and weaknesses.

However, what surprised me was that many of them aren’t delusional—they’re actually very self-aware. They do recognize they have no shot, so they overcompensate for their insecurities by propping themselves up with a job title like CEO. They’d rather put “entrepreneur” in their Instagram bios to appear successful in the eyes of the world than lean into their strengths and passions and start building sustainable, long-term happiness.

Many of those who dream of being entrepreneurs today would’ve dreamed of being astronauts and pilots back in 1957 or rock stars in 1975.

Self-awareness has a close relationship with self-love and self-acceptance. I’m realizing...