It's 9AM
I just flipped over to Instagram.
And saw the rubber meet the road.
Who do you follow that you check everything they do?
For me, it’s uber marketer, Gary Vaynerchek.
Gary Vee.
He’s brash, crass and outspoken. He also happened to start a youtube TV show back when no one said they would work, and has turned a massive social media following into a multi million dollar company.
He talks about authenticity, and just being you when you post and what you post.
He also suggests posting ten times more than you think, on all platforms, because nobody knows what’s really going to work.
It’s experimentation at scale, and he put a team together to make sure he’s walking the walk of the talking the talk he’s doing.
I saw it in action.
Here’s one of his suggestions for creating content.
Film your day. Edit it to fit the platform.
I wondered about this.
I thought, maybe I should set up a camera and film myself talking a handwritten story into Word, and posting it to Youtube.
Cutting it into one minute segments where it fits, and post to TikTok.
But who on earth would want to watch that?!?
Then I clicked on Instagram.
Gary had on headphones and a microphone and was reading his new book into audio files to build an audio book.
Just a talking head in a sound studio.
I watched the whole video. Mistakes and all.
Because I was interested in his process.
He tells anyone who follows him to do the same thing. Film your life. Post your life.
Or film your process, post your process. Post your progress.
A lot of online influencers do this, but I’ve only seen photos with filters showing the bright side of what they’re doing.
Hell, I’ve posted photos with filters showing number one slots, like the pic above, and covers and blurbs.
But what I haven’t done is shown the process.
Shown the mistakes and failures and the effort.
Which makes me wonder why?
You guys know, I share a lot.
I talk about the knocks that have tried to take me out of the game, the times I’ve fallen, and the things that have piled on to keep me down.
How my main attitude is to climb up, dust off my hands and keep going.
I’ve shared how I’ve failed over and over again, and why I’ve learned to celebrate all the wins.
Yet, I haven’t posted any of these honest letters to you on Facebook.
I haven’t put a link on Instagram, or read them into TikTok and Youtube, even though I’ve written it on my To Do list for over a year.
Why?
What’s holding me back?
When you see a successful person doing the thing they tell you to do, why won’t you take their advice?
I can only come up with one answer.
I’m afraid.
Afraid of judgment, afraid of being vulnerable, afraid of what happens if it works?
Maybe that’s the reason I write letters to the mayors and Senators and Presidents telling them what to do instead of taking up the mantle myself.
Because if nothing gets done, then it’s not my fault.
I wonder if sometimes the failures pile up so much that it creates a subconscious fear of this one being the one I can’t get back up from?
What if I only have so much Grit?
When I was in sixth grade, we moved back to Pine Bluff after a few months in a new city. I started at one school, ended up at another, all because we lived on one side of 28th street and decided to use my grandmother’s address to go to the school three blocks from the house.
In sixth grade, I didn’t have Lee jeans or Izod shirts or White tip canvas Nike’s, but I hung out with kid’s who did, and sixth grader’s can be viscious.
It’s where I was called “Larry layup” for cheap TG & Y tennis shoes, and asked why I didn’t get Polo shirts for Christmas.
If you’ve heard of Chinese Water torture, it was like that. Comments, digs, and jibes every day.
It happened in 7th, and 8th and 9th too, until I went to work and started buying my own clothes.
Then it was something else to pick on. Car. House. Smelling like cigarette smoke from living with folks who called two packs a day a slow one.
A long list of reasons to comment, and a lot of comments across the years.
It hasn’t changed.
Don’t believe me?
Check any social media post and count the negative nellie’s pissing on someone’s rainbow.
It happens every time.
Post something good and folks come out of the woodwork to crap on your parade.
Gary Vee said I should empathize with them.
He suggested their comments and attitude have everything to do with them, and nothing to do with me.
My mind says this is true. My heart wonders why it’s true.
I’m not trying to suggest a Pollyanna approach to everything, where we’re all holding hands and singing Kumbaya.
I don’t live in that world.
Kumbaya is not the answer to fear.
I can quote Dune and say Fear is the mind killer, but even that doesn’t work every time.
Maybe that’s why I try to keep the noise and distractions to a minimum, so my mind has time to work against fear.
And then to realize and remember-
All those words, their thoughts, those comments, they’re only ghosts.
Memories about what once was, and thought the ghosts of memories can hurt, they cannot hurt you enough.
These ghosts are working to steal happiness, to take moments of joy from the now.
It’s how they stay alive.
Moments like these, when the ghosts get strong, you must sing the song of strength.
“When there is something strange
In your neighborhood,
Who you gonna call?”
Now if I could only post about it.
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