This week I was able to attend the inaugural Entrepreneur Simplified Entrecon at Utah Valley University. For a first run, it was pretty well put together, and I thoroughly enjoyed most of it.

Better than that, there were two HUGE opportunites. First, Alan (my business partner) and I got awarded scholarships to ES’s retreat next week, a $3500 value. We get to go for free, so that’s pretty exciting. I know a number of people that have gone through it and said it was lifechanging, so I’m excited to see how it goes.

The other one? You guessed it: I got to meet one of my favorite people that I’ve followed over the last few years, Gary Vaynerchuk.

Even though the one one one time was only about 2 minutes, there was a ton of value from his keynote that he gave earlier in the day.

Gary is one of the most charismatic speakers I’ve ever seen. He knows how to get straight to people’s gut, to where it hurts, to where they’ll feel it. He doesn’t hold his punches, and he’s not afraid to offend, which I think is what makes him so effective (and affective).

Here are my big takeaways – scroll to the bottom for a pic of my notes from the keynote.

Philosopher vs. Practitioner

Lots of people have a thesis, a belief, a working knowledge of a subject. As helpful as this can be in certain situations, if that’s all you have, you’ve got nothing. Gary prides himself on being a practitioner: one of the best facebook ad guys, a power user on snapchat, instagram, twitter, and more. He doesn’t just talk about it, he does it. As he says, your philosophy is the clouds, your practice is the dirt. You need both to succeed.

Motivation vs. Discipline

Motivation is great, to a point. That point is ACTION. If motivation doesn’t lead to action, it’s useless. It’s masturbatory. It’s cheap.

The only way to move forward is through your actions. If you need motivation to act, great. Get motivated. But then do the work.

Doing is the only option.

What Can You Control?

You can NOT control a lot of things. You can’t control whether or not YouTube changes it’s business and wipes out annotations because they don’t work on mobile. You can’t control people and force them to consume your content or give you their attention. And you can’t control how successful those around you become.

The only thing you can control is your work ethic. It’s the MOST controllable aspect of our lives and our businesses, yet we lose sight of that fact far to often, and end up distracted by everything that everyone ELSE is doing.

Along with that, we have to respect the market. If the market isn’t responding to your product, or your service, or your content, the problem isn’t with the market, it’s you. If the market decides that snapchat isn’t as good as the cloned stories implementation in Instagram, sucks for you. Adapt or die. Change. Lead. Do.

Gary, if this ever gets to you, thank you again. I needed to hear so much of what you said on Thursday, and I’ll be forever grateful. I mark this week as a turning point, and I look forward to seeing you again in a year or whenever it is to show you what my actions have led to.

If you ever have the opportunity to go see Gary speak, take it. If it costs money, pay it, and when you get there, listen. Take notes. But most importantly, take action.

Here are the notes in case those of you are interested, as well as a link to the whole keynote speech. No promises on the audio, it was my phone placed on the chair in the middle of a big auditorium.