The Day Gary Vee Called..

I looked down at my phone and didn’t recognize the number. It was coming from New Jersey. I was about to walk into Erin Public School to deliver a presentation and because of the numerous scam robo calls that routinely called my phone, I let it go to voicemail. But the number called right back again. So I picked up;

“Is this Chris?”

“Yes it is.”

“Chris, hey, it’s Gary Vaynerchuk. Listen, I’m calling to apologize to you so much, man. I’m really sorry that me or DRock (David Rock) didn’t get back to you when you were in New York City last week. I would have loved to connect with you – but we’ve been super busy.

“(Crickets)… uh, Gary V? Umm, that’s ok. Thanks for calling me… I know it was a long-shot as we were in the city on a short vacation and my son is in school for marketing and business. We thought it would be awesome to see your space in Hudson Yards.”

“It’s an awesome space and we’re working on processing all of the calls like yours that we get every day for this. What is it that you do?”

I told him. For the next five minutes I just listened; and received a remarkable education and series of ideas on how to address my student and adult audiences and what to emphasize with each of them. I do own all of Gary’s books and have highlighted the life out of them over the years (Kindle and paper copies).

He apologized again saying he was at the airport and his flight was calling him to Board. He wished me and my son all the best – and thanked me for buying his books, consuming his content (DailyVee, #AskGaryVee and more) and sharing his work.

I’m not usually speechless. In this case, I was. The reason is, Gary Vaynerchuk is widely known with a large NYC-based agency, VaynerMedia, and several other businesses. He and his team produce online content almost every day over a variety of social platforms. Gary has thousands of daily DMs and other incoming requests to consider plus running his own business – and has more than two-million followers on his accounts. And he phones me to apologize for not getting back to me in a timely manner on my blue-sky request to have me and my son tour his offices.

I was impressed by his attention to the smallest of details; that it was important to him that some random everyday guy from Oakville thought it would be cool to have his son walk around VaynerMedia one afternoon. It was the embodiment of walking the talk that Gary wrote about in his book, “The Thank You Economy.”

And it’s why I follow Gary Vay-Ner-Chuk, consume and share his content and see his expressions of empathy, compassion, gratitude and kindness in motion, every day.