I’m a big fan of Gary Vaynerchuk.
For those of you who don’t know who he is, he’s a first-generation immigrant to the United States from Belarus who lives in New York. He worked at his father’s wine business from the age of 14 and eventually took it over in 1988. He rebranded it into The Wine Library and transformed the once small wine company into a US$60 million a year business by 2003. Pretty impressive.
Now he runs VaynerX and VaynerMedia, both highly successful communications and social media businesses employing more than 770 people and generating around US$200 million a year. In 2017, he was listed as one of Forbes’ Top Social Influencers. Also pretty impressive.
He’s not everybody’s cup of tea though. He’s not shy to speak his mind and he’s no stranger to using profanities – lots of them – he’s a straight-shooting New Yorker after all. Some critics complain that he lacks management skills and he’s more like a snake oil salesman than a reliable businessman. Others have blasted him as the “most dangerous man on the internet”. That’s pretty debatable.
But what he says resonates with me, especially as it relates to content creation and the concepts of care and kindness in business.
Why?
Because he believes that doing the right thing is always the right thing.
Seven Stones Indonesia
For us at Seven Stones Indonesia we also believe that first, you do good, then you do well. We believe in the power of a positive mindset. We believe in helping our clients, partners and communities create a better world and to focus on what matters most to them. We deliver solutions, peace of mind and we help businesses grow, which is why we encourage our partners to use these extraordinary times to determine what can be done more efficiently and to best prepare for the future.
Empower Sessions
We’ve just finished our first public Empower Session in our new offices in Bali. We wanted to share what we know about new visa regulations to encourage businesses, particularly those focused on hospitality, to look at alternative ways to attract guests and help breathe some life into Bali’s struggling economy, which as you know is overly dependent on tourism.
In a nutshell, we let people know that under the latest visa regulations there was the opportunity to legally sponsor guests under their PT PMA or a PT PMDN to come to Bali. We showed them how they could do this for themselves, without an agent and without us. We’re pleased to report that it was a great success!
We Believe in Helping People
Sure, we can help if people want us to and so can more traditional agents, but we thought it was important to share what we knew because it was the right thing to do. We figured the more people who know about this and the more people that do this, the more people will come back to Bali and stay in villas, boutique resorts and hotels.
And the more people that stay the quicker Bali’s economy can rebound from this truly unprecedented global knee-jerk that seems to have locked the world down and walked away with the key.
It’s true that this is the chance some of the people that attended our Empower Session will come to us and ask us to help walk them through the process of either setting up a company or to look after their visa applications. But the ethos behind us taking this approach and sharing what we’ve learned isn’t because we want to make a fast buck. It’s because we genuinely believe in helping people. We believe working together, sharing what we know and finding positive solutions is far more beneficial for far more people. For us, this is a good example of how doing good is certainly good for business.
And We’re Not Alone
Deloitte recently published their annual survey on business’s preparedness for a connected era, in which they reason that “a new form of capitalism seems to be emerging, one that considers a broader group of stakeholders and measures societal impact alongside financial performance. In August 2019, the CEOs of nearly 200 multinational corporations signed a statement issued by the Business Roundtable, publicly pledging to lead their companies for the benefit of customers, employees, suppliers, and communities in addition to shareholders.”
Forbes summarised the report quoting a range of multi-national C-Suite Executives. One of these was Sarah Kennedy, who’s the VP, Global Marketing at Adobe Experience Cloud – a collection of integrated online marketing and Web analytics products by Adobe Inc. Anyone who’s ever used Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash and Acrobat Reader is using Adobe … and I’m guessing that’s quite a few people.
Anyway, according to Forbes, she agrees that having a genuine social agenda is intimately linked to your businesses health and growth. “The companies that will excel long-term,” she says, “are the ones that know it’s not just about shareholder value. It’s also about focusing on the customer and employee experience, and how those, in turn, contribute to society.”
Be the Change you Want to See
Deloitte Global CEO, Punit Renjen, sums it up nicely. He says, “we’re in a new era where shifting societal attitudes have made it imperative for businesses to place societal responsibility at the heart of their strategies. Business readiness now demands leaders understand this expanded responsibility and deliver solutions not just for business growth but also for societal progression.”
In our own small way, we’re doing this. Right now we’re running our Empower Sessions three times a week, but we’re already talking about doing them every day and perhaps in two sessions – every day! We love the energy it brings to our office. We love the engagement and the words of thanks. We love how our team has stepped up to the plate. And that’s why, like Gary Vee and a whole bunch of other entrepreneurs, we believe that doing good is always good business!
If your business needs some help and positive advice on how you can tap into this growing trend, let us know. We’d love to help!
Send an email to [email protected]
Sources: Deloitte, Forbes, Gary Vaynerchuk, Seven Stones Indonesia