It’s been one year since Gary Vaynerchuk posted ‘You can have both…Jobs.” at garyvaynerchuk.com. It’s also been exactly one year today since I chose January 31st, 2009 as my last day at my previous employer.
The post is widely known as the ‘Hustle 2.0′ post in the web world, and is often referred to around in BlueFuego meetings. If you haven’t seen the video before, or can’t get enough of it (I’ve seen it at least 20 times), take 2 minutes and watch. Otherwise, skip forward for some of my thoughts, 1 year later.
Hustle 2.0. When I heard this for the first time, it made perfect sense. A week prior, I had lunch with Kyle Lacy, who encouraged me to “just pick a date and go for it.” What was it? I had no clue at that moment. With several offers from other universities and marketing agencies on the table, I had no clue where I wanted to go next. I knew what my ‘hedgehog’ was, and one thing wouldn’t go away: the entrepreneurial fire inside of me. As much as I tried to shake the thought of working for myself, I couldn’t back out of it.
That afternoon, I got an email from Joe, who is now my business partner. He said “you’ve gotta see this video.” But I had. And I knew. The business we’d been loosely talking about for the past 4 months was about to get a lot more attention. So we started, Hustle 2.0. Work a full day, spend time with the family from 6-10pm, and then get to work again. And just like Gary said in the video, we lived on a few hours of sleep for 5 months. In that 5 months we solidified what we wanted to do and went for it. And when I walked away from that job on January 30th (a day early.. 
) to do what I wanted and loved, and then when we started cashing checks, I knew that all of the hard work was worth it.
BIG THANKS to Gary V and for his hustle and inspiring others to hustle as well. It’s hard to believe that within the past year Joe and I took an idea and turned it into BlueFuego, and are now truly utilizing our skills and passion for clients around the globe. This video dropped at the exact moment I needed it. I hope that wherever you are in your entrepreneurial hustle this video can inspire you to take the next step.
And by all means, don’t forget to get out there and buy CRUSH IT!! The book is going to be like this video x’s 50 for you. Go over to http://www.crushitbook.com, check out the sample chapter, and buy multiple copies today!!
Very inspirational, Brad. I have dreamed of doing something like this before and one main thing keeps me from it: health insurance.
Maybe if everyone in my family really PROMISES to not get sick or need surgery …
That was one of the hardest things for us as well, actually. My dad sells insurance so we were comparing rates and stuff and it was literally 5-6 x’s more than we were paying with my university group insurance. We had to go with Jen’s employer, which was still 3-4 x’s higher, but it’s working for now.
Make them sign a piece of paper too.
Whenever we go for the high deductible, one of us ends up in the hospital, now that we’re forking out a couple hundred extra a month for the low deductible, we’ve never needed it. C’est la vie.