Tim Ferriss vs Gary Vaynerchuk: Extreme Opposites
(This post is written by Viralogy Founder Yu-kai Chou. To find out more about him, visit Chou’s Power Coaching Blog)
Tim Ferriss and Gary Vaynerchuk have opposite Celebrity Styles
If you have been on the internet for awhile, chances are you’ve heard of Tim Ferriss, author of the best selling 4-Hour-Work-Week, and Gary Vaynerchuk, founder of Wine Library TV.
Even though they are both pretty famous online, they have radically different celebrity styles in terms of engaging and dealing with their fans.
Gary Vaynerchuk is known for his authentic, passionate and caring style, while Tim Ferriss is idolized by many for his demonstration of Lifestyle Design and making his own life as efficient as possible.
While I think there is nothing wrong with either one of their styles, I believe that Gary Vaynerchuk has the edge in terms of being respected on the internet.
Tim Ferriss’ book and ideas are incredible and I highly encourage all of you to get familiar with it, but I believe that people mostly care about how Tim Ferriss’ ideas can make their own lives better, while Garyvee fans really care about him as a person.
Tim Ferriss vs Gary Vaynerchuk - Hotshot & Coach
One big difference between Tim Ferriss and Gary Vaynerchuk is that Tim acts like a hotshot, while Gary behaves like a coach.
It is well known that Gary Vaynerchuk will respond to you if you email him. Sure, his responses aren’t too long, but he demonstrates the mindset that since an individual took the time to type out something to him, he should respect that by putting in some time of his own too.
He also always helps his fans by teaching them how to monetize their passions. Here is one of his classic videos that demonstrates his style of helping people pursue their passions. In this way, Gary acts as a coach that tries to take care of everyone on the team and push them forward.
Tim Ferriss, on the other hand, acts like a Hotshot of a company or team. His style is more like “Look at the great results I am producing. You should try to be like me!” He would always tell you how he used the shortest time to accomplish the greatest things and how you can do it too. Yes, that link looks very appealing. That’s why he is so successful.
With his cool and cold personality, a lot of people idolize him and really do want to be like him, but when it comes to engaging him as a fan, he makes it very clear that he outsources his emails, he’s not going to follow many people on Twitter, and he would only respond to money making or prestigious opportunities.
Tim Ferriss’ “be like me, but don’t bother me” style is definitely radically different than that of Gary Vaynerchuk’s “it’s about caring and engaging your market!”
Tim Ferriss vs Gary Vaynerchuk - Craft & Authenticity
Gary Vaynerchuk is well known for how authentic he is. He doesn’t like to edit out things in videos, he publicly criticizes what he thinks is wrong on the internet while giving credit for good efforts, and he always puts his personality out there whenever he can.
This is a classic example of it. Gary makes a comment about ESPN’s layout, and a “watcher” writes to him and tells him to “STFU” and calls him a “used douche bag.”
Being a respected celebrity on the internet, most people would delete this comment, ignore it, or address it with a very “crafted” message saying, “Thank you for pointing these things out. Either way, my points are still valid. And there is no need for you to be so rude.”
However, Gary REPOSTS this message as a new blog post so more people can pay attention to it, and responds with this:
“JAMES IS 1000000% right, I am super wrong, I didn’t know that this was a one day play and I feel awful, I just wish it was more obvious so I didn’t jump the gun, but like James said I am in the wrong for jumping the gun, Sorry Man!”
That’s Gary Vaynerchuk for ya.
On the other hand, Tim Ferriss is always about looking as successful as possible and crafting out a slick image. Sometimes when his blogposts are not as successful as he thought in terms of people caring and commenting, he would take it down. He wants everyone to only see his impressive results.
For the longest time, Tim also declared that he will follow 0 people on Twitter while having 5 digits worth of followers. He made it clear that Twitter was not a tool for him to listen to people, but something that allows his fans to stalk him better.
That way he really looks like a super-idol. After-all, it doesn’t look as “celebrity” when you are following 60% of the people that are following you.
Also, Tim Ferriss’ book says you could live a four-hour-work-week. But when people look at his life, they question how he seems to work way more than 4 hours a week. In fact, for that very book he has been hustling a lot, making friends with bloggers (and their family members) and writing all day when he says he hates writing.
He then defines “work” by saying it is “something you do for financial reasons or you would prefer to do less”. So supposedly the book does not apply to people who work 90 hours a week on a job they love doing. The whole concept is that is is much cooler to tell people “I only work 4 hours a week” so that everyone wants to be like you, instead of literally live a lifestyle where you only do four hours of work a week. His original book title “Drug Dealing for Fun and Profit” also stays true to that style of making things sound/look easy.
I can’t say which style is better in terms of being authentic or crafted. However, it appears that Penelope Trunk hates Tim Ferriss partially because of Tim’s style. Although it is also true that Penelope Trunk can write a long blog post about how she hates anyone. I would like to see her write a post about Gary Vaynerchuk actually.
Tim Ferriss vs Gary Vaynerchuk - Fast Rise & Solid Advancement
How Gary Vaynerchuk and Tim Ferriss gain their popularity is actually a very interesting thing to explore too. Even though Tim Ferriss has been trying out numerous things in a few different countries, his rise to popularity was relatively fast considering his one book became an instant hit and brought him onto the celebrity scene.
Gary Vaynerchuk took a different route. He started Wine Library TV as the first video show about wine on the internet, and for a long time there weren’t a lot of people watching (I mean, I still don’t get how people watch a show just about wine daily. I’m just a Gary fan, not a wine fanatic). You can see his modest first show here.
However, even though it started off slowly, Gary persistently did it for a few years, and very slowly people started recognizing him and invited him to make keynote speeches about pursuing one’s passion and social media. That’s how he gained his status today.
This key difference is not very surprising, because Tim Ferriss’ always teaches about how to use the easy shortcuts to accomplish great things. He tries something, lets it go, tries something, lets it go, until something goes big.
And that’s actually smart for entrepreneurs. You want to throw as many things on the wall as possible and see which one sticks. As you can see, Tim Ferriss’ teaching is definitely very appealing for people who have no patience in slowly progressing in this fast moving world. AKA Everyone.
Gary does it another way. Gary says, “Do what you are passionate about. Keep doing it. Do it better than everyone else on the internet. And then money and success will follow.”
So in that sense, it is natural to want to be like Tim Ferriss, but it is easier to respect Gary Vaynerchuk.
Gary Vaynerchuk vs Tim Ferriss - Consistent vs Double Standard
OK, this is mean to say, but I want to point this out because it is very important in looking at Celebrity Styles.
Based on things I addressed above, Gary Vaynerchuk is very consistent with how he treats people. He obviously enjoys large opportunities, but he tries to care about and listen to everyone. More importantly, he works hard to hold the same standard for himself than everyone else. That’s why he can apologize when he says something wrong. That’s why he reciprocates time spent when people contact him. That’s why he is Gary Vaynerchuk.
Tim Ferriss on the other hand, takes the celebrity stance of “I am famous so I play under different rules.” The respectable thing about him, is that he admits to that from the start. He pretty much says, “Yea, I am an asshole, and I choose to be one to make my life more convenient and efficient. But I have a lot to offer so people can follow me if they want.”
I actually really respect that compared to posers who try to tell people they care about everyone, but all they want is to secretly make their lives more convenient.
A lot of people would publicly say “Yea, I can help you with this and I can help you with that!”, but when it really comes down to helping, they pretty much ignore you. Tim Ferriss just says, “unless you have something valuable to offer, I will ignore you.” I respect that. The fact that I can write this post owes that to him.
However, besides the fact that he thinks having oversea workers schedule 20 dates for him close to his house in 3 days (note: this is outsourced date-scheduling, not outsourced dating as he claims) is not being inconsiderate of his dates’ time, there are times when he is plain out double-standard.
In one of his articles, Tim Ferriss talks about how you can get anyone, including the CEO of Google or the US President on the phone (note how all these links are very attractive to click on). His method is pretty much to stay consistent, be bold, don’t give up, and sooner or later they will see your eagerness and drive and give you a chance. In the post it says, “You won’t believe what you can accomplish by attempting the impossible with the courage to repeatedly fail better.”
Good tips. However, in another post about How to outsource your inbox and never check email again, he teaches about how to get oversea workers to managed all your emails. He claimed that the key to making this successful is to have a very clear manual for the workers so they know how to behave with various situations. Again, good tips.
The double-standard part comes in here. In his “rules”, Tim tells his assistants that he would only respond to income or prestigious opportunities like from Harvard or top people in various industries. He then says that if people are declined and persist, the assistant should then “archive future requests” followed by saying “Some people don’t know when persistent turns into plain irritating.”
That’s clearly a double standard. You can contact people as much as you want and never give up, but when others do that to you, you should tell your assistant to archive it because they have no sense.
However, again, most celebrities are forced to have such double standards, and I give him props on being so open with it.
Tim Ferriss vs Gary Vaynerchuk - Who’s more popular on the internet?
So with these drastically different styles, who is more popular on the internet and has more influential power?
As part of the Viralogy method, I used stats like Linkbacks, Compete Traffic (they should install our Viralogy script to get more accurate results), Comments per post, Followers on Twitter, and Retweets to get some insight on who is more influential and popular online.
I added those stats for Gary’s personal website as well as his Wine Library TV. Even though Tim somewhat has a personal site, it has almost no traffic so I mostly just considered his four-hour-work-week site.
The results were interesting. The Compete Traffic for both of them were almost identical, with Gary Vaynerchuk having 218,000 combined visitors last month and Tim Ferriss having 212,000. Not a big difference, considering Compete.com is not always accurate.
Both of their sites has tons of comments too. Tim Ferriss has approximately 150 comments per blog post. Even though Garyvanerchuk.com only has about 30 comments on average on his personal site, his Wine Library TV has gathered up to 190 comments on average. Overall, it looks like Gary’s crowd is slightly more engaging. It’s still not a big difference in terms of how popular they are though since it may just be the topic or niche.
When I looked at Link backs, I was slightly surprised. I really thought Tim Ferriss would win on this end because I hear people point to his articles all the time. However, a quick search reveals that Gary has 6940 linkbacks to his sites, while Tim has only 3240, less than half of what Gary has. There seems to be more people wanting to link to Gary than Tim.
Other than their websites, the most telling factor relating to social influence is Twitter followers. Tim Ferriss has an amazing Twitter Ratio of 230 followers for every person he is following. 41,000 people follow him, while he just follows 178 of the people he likes. Props to you if you happen to be one of the 178 reading this!
On the other hand, Gary Vaynerchuk’s Twitter Ratio is “only” 49 followers for every person he follows. With that said, he really brings home the crown with 410,000 followers, 10 times more than Tim Ferriss.
With all that factored together, Gary Varynerchuk’s “V Score” is a lot higher than Tim Ferriss’, making him the more influential person in Social Media in our books.
It seems apparent that more people are fans of Gary Vaynerchuk and wants to follow him as a respectable celebrity figure, whereas people like and want to learn Tim Ferriss’ tactics, but in comparison don’t care about him as a person as much.
Tim Ferriss vs Gary Vaynerchuk - Who do you like better?
Tim Ferriss or Gary Vaynerchuk. Who do you like better, and why? I look forward to the 41,000 Tim Ferriss fans to bash me in the comments. Maybe that’s another good way to tell who has more supporters.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=ea30e56a-b36a-4b49-9b4b-4190c63c248e)
Haha…who the hell works 4 hours a week? Someone who isn’t doing their job or someone that has 30 people under them doing what they are supposed to be doing. Tim Ferriss for all intents and purposes is full of shit. Gary Vaynerchuk=Real deal.
I’m buying hardcore work ethic and east coast know how over some b.s. new age nonsense.
Haha, well, some people who only have 4 hours of work a week to do works four hours a week.
Jun Loayza’s deal is to make life efficient by doing everything with a four-hour week, but then use the same method and push it up to an eighty hour week. That way he can be 20x more efficient! That’s hardcore work ethics.
I don’t know much about the east coast know how though. Tell me more about it
Something involving coldness, miserableness and general love of being kind of a jerk.
(jk)
Hahaha, sounds exciting
I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Foster!!
Mr. Foster is a cool guy indeed
Some would argue it’s not a popularity contest but if you’re trying to brand or do something better than anyone else you have to be concerned with popularity in order to attract a solid following and or advertisers. There is merit to working hard more than 4 hours a week, in fact, I’m certain very few could do what Tim Ferris does even though he claims anyone can do it…he is DNA’d differently. Same thing with Gary Vaynerchuck, he has an energy level that makes most get tired just listening to him, let alone try to be 10% of his energy level.
My point, I think Gary has it right…it’s about passion, it’s about caring for those around you, those who follow you, they create your sense of success. Nothing happens without people, my father said to me at a young age, ” Son, a man is measured by how many friends he has not by how much stuff he owns”. He also said, “you need at least 6 friends because it takes six to carry the box”.
Make people a priority, care about them and do it through being passionate about what you love to do….your success requires people and it always will…Tim Ferris isolates himself from them. He is popular in the same way we love actors, we just want to be associated with them because it makes us feel important, REALLY?
In the long run Tim will be forgotten, we’ll be hearing from Gary alot longer whether you like him or not. Gary wins hands down!
Owen
Great points and insight Owen! I agree that very few people can be like either one of them.
Gary definitely will get people to care longer. Tim needs to constantly generate useful information and maybe write another book to keep his fan base growing and going.
The 6 friends for carrying the box makes sense but is kinda grim
And bingo on the feeling important by association. Again, the motives of liking Tim would be a lot more selfish than liking Gary (though no problem with either one or both).
Thanks again for the thoughtful comment!
The difference is that @garyvee runs a business ($50M wine business) and @timferris runs himself. Both are famous for being who they really are on a very large stage.
I definitely agree to that
It’s interesting that Tim has the front cover blurb on Gary’s upcoming book.
I’ve heard Gary say a couple of times that Tim works as hard as anyone he knows - in other words, anyone who thinks Tim only works 4 hours/week is a whackadoo.
Both offer value that we can pick and choose to implement in our own businesses/lives but for me Gary’s model is the one that I most relate to.
Hahaha, that IS pretty interesting.
Tim works very hard, and he should get credit for that in being successful. He just likes to make things sound easy, because that is also a key in becoming successful and powerful
They definitely both offer value, but they just have very different celebrity styles.
Great points. In terms of social media Gary has it, hands down. I haven’t really followed Tim Ferriss but I do know it was social media that made his book a success. I wonder how much Gary Vee will set him self apart when his book comes out.
You have to respect both styles, but following your passion, like what Gary practices and preaches, is golden when creating a business.
I completely agree. I’m also very interested to see what happens when Gary’s book comes out. I’m guessing that since Tim has tons of bestsellers, he would be more famous in the off-line world. Maybe Gary can catch up to that once his book comes out. (Just realized a 10-book deal is pretty large….)
What does “following your passion” even mean? Everyone is preaching on and on about it, but to be honest, few people in this world understand what their “passion” is. Most people would rather shop all day, watch tv, or go fishing.
Does that mean that they should start a fishing blog? Maybe. I don’t want to sound skeptical, but few people have the ability to really turn their blog into something that is valuable and worth reading. The people who are able to do it write well, teach well, and have a unique style.
I’m not knocking on Gary. He is one of my heroes. But at times, I think “following your passions” just gets played out and overused.
Tim offers a very realistic approach when he says “automate your income, so then you can do what you love.”
If you love comics, and then comics turns into your job, you may eventually start hating comics.
Great comment!
You have good points Jun. “Follow your passions” is definitely an overused term. However, most overused terms start off with very strong truth, but eventually lose meaning when people say it without thinking what it truly means. The unique thing about Gary is that he doesn’t just say “follow your passions”, he gives more actionable steps to people, which is very useful.
I agree that a lot of people would rather generate passive income and read comic books all day, instead of having the pressure to write a post about comic books 4 times a week.
Jun,
I think what Gary Vee means when “follow your passion” is create a business for the love of it not just for the quick buck.
Nobody said that following you passion is an easy journey, but I think that ups and downs makes the journey worth it when you reach the goal.
I totally agree with that.
The journey is tough, but it is much more meaningful than having a life that you hate but is filthy rich.
Tim Ferris
His information is more useful to me.
He seems more like the guy who has looked far down the line and seen how he can consistently behave. To give an example. If gary’s fanbase miraculously grew to 10 million he would definitely not be engaging them on even nearly the same scale, but tim could.
Tim does appear to have several faults which I think are the result of taking a remarkably unique life path and therefore having very few people whose criticism he could even begin to consider, much like yourself.
Must make it very hard to keep perspective.
It is also seems like he has a remarkably sincere streak to warn people that he only wants to exploit them.
If my figures are off, you can escalate them to 1 billion ^^
I don’t think Tim seeks to “exploit” people. He is a very honest person who understands that it is impossible for him to reply to every single email.
Gary is amazing. He does respond to every email. But when you do, you end up responding with 1 sentence. If you feel happy because Gary Vaynerchuk sent you a 1 sentence email, good for you. But I think the value isn’t there, and time could be better spent elsewhere.
I think both people are amazing. I think I will write a rebuttal on Thursday to back up Tim Ferriss though.
Haha, sounds exciting. A blog war with Jun Loayza, on the same blog!
People like to watch us argue anyway, might as well take it to the public
yes, exploit was the wrong word.
Haha, I agree with you. Tim Ferriss seems to have a more scalable model. Hollywood celebrities are like that but they don’t make it as explicit as Tim Ferriss. But that’s part of why Gary is respectable. Very few people can engage the hundreds of thousands of people like he can. If he scales up to 10 million, maybe he can’t keep up with it, but it sounds like he will still try to engage as much as he can. Gary gets points for effort
I have had the priviledge of hearing Gary speak twice - and the man is down right motivating. His is like a coach in that he gets you fired up, but doesn’t have the playbook to win to game. Tim has that playbook. His step-by-step lifestyle allows you to really pick apart what you set out to achieve.
To piggy back off Jun, Gary is passionate about passion. Passion is rarely a job or a career. There are elements of your passion that you can take into a job or career and that is where this new age personal branding comes stuff comes from. We have to remember that not everyone is a marketer and most Americans are not passionate about construction or being a dentist, but have aspects of their job that they care deeply about.
In the end you need the coach and the motivation, but you also need the plays and the strategies to win it all.
Awesome summary BTW!
Great insight Greg!
I agree that Gary is more of the coach that motivates everyone to perform well, while Tim is the top player that is telling his teammates HOW he outperformed the competitor and did various tactics.
Keep the amazing comments coming!
I would say that I am a fan of Gary V, Tim just comes off as a jerk and after reading the Penelope Trunk piece, I would have to agree with her.
Haha, like I said, it’s easier to be a fan of Gary V, but use the knowledge that Tim teaches
They both have valuable messages for different reasons, but I must say that I’ve met Gary Vaynerchuk on several occasions and he was nothing but kind and interested in me each time. That is what will always earn my favor.
Gary is a people-person. Tim is an ideas person. Gary makes friends with everyone while Tim thinks up good ideas. As people, most of us like Gary
Tim just comes off as a beef head/jerk who is self-indulgent. Whether he is or he is not is subjective and not really any concern of mine.
It’s basic human nature really — a person is more likely to turn to someone who [Gary] “acts as a coach that tries to take care of everyone on the team and push them forward.”
Versus someone who [Tim Ferriss], “acts like a Hotshot of a company or team. His style is more like “Look at the great results I am producing. You should try to be like me!”
It’s more about the team player than the me, me, me, me look at me, guy.
Just off the information above I do believe Stuart Foster got it right, lol.
Gary Vaynerchuk = Real deal.
Period.
Haha, wow Sasha. I didn’t expect anyone to REALLY dig into my post (Most people I know just scan and comment). I’m completely flattered that you even quoted me here.
AND apparently you read all the comments, referring back to Stuart Foster. You are one awesome person!
Like I said, it’s way easier for people to see Gary as the real deal.
I think if he wants to ultimately win in the online AND offline world, he definitely needs to crush it with his new book.
What a great summary! Good job! Yu-kai.
Glad to see Gary wined on the ’social media influential power’ war. Yes, as I person, I do like Gray more. He definitely earned my respect. Although I do want to learn from Tim about his ‘four hour work week’.
It’s funny that I was on Amazon last week, I saw the ‘four hour work week’ book, put it into my shopping cart already, but never checked it out. Maybe I should wait for Gray’s book come out then.
Haha, both are extremely good reads I’m sure
Amazingly well written and researched article here. Definitely adding this blog to the RSS reader.
Like several other commenters here, I don’t see the Tim and Gary’s ideas to be contradictions but rather they complement one another. Gary very much is “the coach” personality while I view Tim as being “the trainer” or “the scientist”. You’re going to need both unless you’re shooting for some massive goal which requires your time and focus to be on the much larger picture.
I love GV’s passion about telling people to find their passion and to monetize but I think he misses the mark when he says that he doesn’t care about google analytics or pretty much any small metric and implies that those following their passions shouldn’t either. Tim on the other hand makes business decisions time after time based on small metrics. I think GV has intelligently used his inbox and video views as his metrics platform. Ask him at a conference or if you’re lucky enough to chat with him in a private setting and he knows exactly how many emails are unread in his inbox and how many views and the approximate number of comments the last two episodes of WLTV and GaryVaynerchuk.com have. GV has metrics, he just doesn’t think of them that way and more intriguing he doesn’t make business decisions based on them. It creates an interesting situation which simultaneously benefits those folks sending him emails. Smart when you preach about caring about each and every user/viewer/follower.
Unlike most folks I don’t see lifestyle design as being negative. Tim simply provides both overall strategy and then the ground level tactics to make doing those things which you dislike or simply can be outsourced take less of your time. I suspect GV will move more and more toward the strategy regarding getting in contact with him that Tim currently has even though he legitimately does care about every single one of his followers/fans/facebook friends. There simply isn’t enough time in the day even for a guy who works 21 hours a day, will soon be a first time father and is now involved directly with 3 functioning businesses and is advising several others to keep up this kind of pace even though he’ll want to.
What I would love to see is Tim come out and coach or do an extended case study with someone who “followed their passion” as instructed by GV and show the improvements in traffic, monetization and conversion which Tim’s love for split testing and keyword strategies can make. That would be really informative and would show that these guys aren’t really on two separate paths.
Thanks for the encouragement!
I don’t see life style design as negative either. You design your lifestyle to be as comfortable as you want it to be.
I’m really interested if Gary can sustain the energy level with his kid and book. We’ll see!
I don’t think it really matters who they are as a person, take what you can from what they offer and forget the rest. After all, internet celebrities are still just celebrities; how they behave doesn’t really affect our lives in any meaningful way.
The personalities of the two are reflected in the way they present their content; Gary’s short, sharp video updates keep his followers watching; video is easier to digest than text and keeping his posts simple and speaking with such enthusiasm allows him to sustain people’s attention and keep people excited about the Gary Vaynerchuk brand. Tim’s posts are usually substantially longer with more in depth content spanning a wider range of topics. It takes greater concentration to follow and is somewhat less accessible. Tim seems to focus less on building and monetizing his own brand and more on producing valuable content.
It is obvious Gary has worked hard to build his brand and his effectiveness can be seen by his followers’ use of buzz words like “crush it” in every day speech. But after a while Gary’s lustre wears off and a lot of what he says seems like blatant self promotion. Such is the case with his Twitter account.
It’s true that Video content is easier to digest.
I think if people are just to learn their ideas, then their personalities don’t really matter. But if people are treating them as role models, then I think personality does matter.
As I stated, they both have very valuable info that people can learn from.
I was working on a similar article, with the same two people. I was very surprised to see your post!
One thing I wanted to do was to go back about 8 months when the two had similar numbers of Twitter followers. Vaynerchuk followed a model of communicating and connecting. Ferris is stuck in the old broadcast model. Even Ferris’ bribe to donate $3 to charity for every new follower didn’t help his numbers much.
Ferris is intelligent, works hard and he definitely understands how to promote himself, but it is clear that it is all about him. He blew his TED presentation with the “Incredible Hulk” topic. “I can swim, dance and learn Japanese, now I am going to fix the education system.” That was the wrong crowd for that self-promotion.
Vaynerchuk’s message is bust your ass and get things done. That to me has a lot more relevance.
Tim is now posting videos on how to peel eggs and balance cutlery on a glass. It doesn’t appear that he has anything new to say. Vaynerchuk is just getting started.
Haha, no way!
I must have felt in the air that some great master is pondering some insightful topic, and it transferred to me.
I’m interested in the Hulk speech. Do you have a link to the video?
I bought Tim’ book and his hype, but I’ve changed my tune. @garyvee is the real thing and he is very transparent. Sure, sometimes he comes off a little crazy or wacky, but I admire his willingness to let us in on his real life.
Tim is a fake…he certainly doesn’t practice a “4 Hour Workweek,” but he is ruthlessly efficient. His blog is self-indulgent and his lifestyle seems like a reach for popularity. I’ve lost interest in him to be honest and I think he is becoming irrelevant.
Haha, Tim works really hard. There’s no question about it. He just picks a nicely titled book. I think people shouldn’t nail him for the book title because it was just a lure to get people to start learning what he has.
Nevertheless, Gary V is definitely good stuff.
Interesting article and honestly, never heard of Tim Ferris until I read your article. Gary, on the other hand, I’ve not only heard of but have corresponded with on Twitter. Why? Because Gary is out there and accessible and passionate and just seems to be an all around honest, straight forward great guy.
Ask him a question and he’ll give you a straight answer, no bull and no self promotion. It’s refreshing and admirable for someone who has accomplished what he has to be accessible and to continually embrace communicating with everyone.
Thanks for the article.
Thank you for the Thanks!
Gary still promotes himself on Twitter. He is a promoter, PR, and show host to begin with (although Guy Kawasaki does it better because he started off as an “evangalist”).
However, it is true how well he engages his people and cares about everyone.
That’s an easy dilemna… Gary V all the way. Gary has core values and a human attitude that most of us should learn to instill in our own lives. I know that I am not interested to be aloof or a plain jerk no matter how much money I make or how much time I have. My prognostic is that Gary V will be here for the long haul. Tim: not so sure if he’ll be around longer if he sticks to his ways. The cool factor will eventually fades whenever something cooler comes around.
Hmmm, Tim is looking to extend his popularity to other areas. Now he is doing shows and angel investing, so he might be fine, just not as popular. There are a lot of investors who don’t have the best personality but they’re fine
I love this post. Well done.
Staying power isn’t a mystery. People have studied it for centuries. Gary has the key: consistent, reliable content delivery and a communicative personality. Gary is a Clint Eastwood.
Tim doesn’t care about staying power. He only cares about getting opportunities to be in the spotlight; he doesn’t have consistent or worthy content. He is much like any new Hollywood celebrity that burns hot for a few months then disappears. He may come back into the spotlight now and again, being deemed “a comeback kid” but then the lights will dim just as fast, because there is no talent or worthwhile contribution. He’ll fade away and be forgotten. He’s a Leif Garrett.
Tim is disingenuous, which means he just ends up being annoying. He’s not much more than a charlatan/snake oil salesman. People will buy his book, but I don’t think he’ll have too many return customers. He knows this; he’s banking on finding only new ones each time.
I don’t watch Gary’s show, but I feel like I should. His reputation for being informative, motivating and helpful precedes him. The one question I asked him about wine on Twitter, he answered quickly. Gary’s a resource. Tim’s just entertainment.
-PC
I’ve never met Tim and haven’t read his book, so I have no opinion about him.
I’ve met Gary and seen him “in action” at several Social Media events… meaning in the trenches, talking to people who are aching to learn from him or at least just rub elbows with him. I would definitely rate Gary as authentic and being the same person IRL that he projects in his media.
I’ve had several people ask me if I know Gary and ZERO ask me about Tim. ‘Matter of fact, I’ve heard of “4 Hour Work Week”, but never read it or cared who wrote it. Before following PurpleCar to this post, I could have met Tim Ferriss f2f, shaken his hand and never known he ever wrote ANYTHING.
I suppose the question here is whether being known on the internet is worth anything or not. This will be revealed in the near future. All these Facebook and Twitter followers people have will either benefit them or not. The real issue is ‘Conversion of Cred’, and we’ll see whether selling a bunch of books is more valuable than endearing yourself to a lot of people that are striving to do the same thing you did.
I think being better known on the internet is definitely worth a lot, assuming your playing field is on the internet. If you are trying to create your legacy through the internet, than those who don’t use it as much become less relevant
Hmmm, interesting. While I don’t think it will be as extreme as how you describe it, I do agree that Tim Ferriss will be up and down while Gary will rise continuously as long as he doesn’t change his style.
Thanks for the amazing comment!
Yukai,
Your post was addressed in this interview with Gary V. here: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/mediabistro.
Haha, interesting. Thanks for the link!
The showhost was not very prepared, “Va-va-Viralogy”, hahaha. Gary somewhat ignored us. That’s normal because Gary cannot in anyway endorse or promote an article that says “I am better than my friend.”
LOL
Hahaha, Good to see Garyvee finally showing up on this blog comment wall. Very brief, but still heart felt
Awesome post Yu-Kai. A lot of detail and useful comparison. I was told that Tim was an arrogant lad recently and had an opportunity to hear him speak at Wordcamp this last weekend. Funny enough, I bumped into him alone in the bathroom washing his hands and I mentioned that I enjoyed his presentation (which was really about his experiments on his blog and how he measured them through analytics and the like).
His reaction seemed a bit bashful and as if out of his element talking about the technical aspects of his site versus the usual 4 hour lifestyle and productivity stuff.
The verdict is still up in the air for me on him.
I have not met Gary yet, but I agree that he seems very authentic. I completely agree with his point about doing what your passionate about. Its not uncommon that people find ways to make a living based on what they are passionate about. I dont think his philosophy is based on fantasy or fluff. Take what your doing as an example, no?
Haha, I definitely agree. I am doing what I love and am doing pretty well with it.
Some people are jerks on the internet, but are nice in real life. Other pretend to be super social on the internet, but are jackasses in real life. But when you find people who are super nice and social on the internet, but even better in real life, then that’s when you can truly respect one’s consistence character.
First off, great article. I really really enjoyed reading it and that doesn’t happen to me a lot:)
Gary Vaynerchuk is someone who inspires me on a daily basis, Tim Ferris is just another successful person. It doesn’t matter to me if Gary is more successful than Tim because of the fact that he truly cares about people. If I feel that someone cares about what I am saying to them, then they win in my eyes every single time.
Haha, thanks for the encouragement! Really appreciated.
So the question comes down to: do you want to become successful or truly inspiring? What if you are never super successful in your business but manage to inspire millions of people in starting their own?
Met them both…. and since anecdotal evidence is what matters (right?)
I met Tim at SxSW 2008. I met Gary at SxSW 2009.
Both men were cordial and polite. I should note they weren’t in throngs of people at the time. It was just standing hey how ya doing… low stress.
I saw Tim again at Google I/O a few weeks ago where he was going give a talk. Tim had those shoes with toes on at the time. I asked to see them and he showed the treads/soles (what I was curious about from a block copolymer point of view). Nice guy. Cool shoes and he looked like he was having a ball there — thinker type.
Gary was getting ready to give a talk at SxSW and still took time to strike up conversation with a complete stranger. Nice guy. I don’t recall much about his shoes but really engaging — sunshine on tap type.
Proxemics are interesting. Tim’s a 2-3 footer. Gary’s a 1-2 footer.
At any rate… nice guys.
Haha, pretty cool that you have first hand experience with all of them and how you notice such subtle things!
Well, Tim loves showing off his shoes, so that doesn’t mean much, but I think chatting with a strange right before a talk is quite impressive.
So when Tim and Gary talks to each other, how far do you think they will be from each other?
I guess a mix of both is a great way for being successfull. Like Gary once said: “Timmy tells people how to life, like he does, but he doesnt tell the people how he got there. He got there, because he did it like i did it, he hustled 7 days a week” something like that.
I think Jun Loayza did a great job bringing it to the point: Try some things Tim suggests, so you can save time and use the saved time to do it on Garys way… something like that
Haha, great quote by Gary. I completely missed that!
Tim Ferriss is a legend now. His philosophy does work!
Oh? What makes you say that he is a legend? What’s the threshold of getting there?
very interesting post!
i agree with most of the comments above. Gary is definitely the more likable one, but his content tends to be less relevant to mainstream readers (not everyone is into wine). Tim has very click-enticing/useful content, but has the online etiquette of a typical celebrity. However, both are sincere/honest, but for different reasons.
Gary tries to reply to and engage everyone, while Tim just flat out tells you that it’s quite difficult to do that when your inbox/@replies are constantly flooded. So they just have different priorities (remember, Tim is all about efficiency, so it wouldn’t be like him to try and engage everyone). In the end, they both deliver unique value to readers and are liked for different reasons.
Everyone’s unique, and no one can please everyone!
Thanks Nik for the comments. That’s definitely true and we can learn from all of them.
Well, when you put it that way, shouldn’t they just faceoff in a caged death match?
I think Tim will win since he is a also a kick-boxing champ
If I were plotting an epic journey of personal and professional growth, I’d:
1) Hire Ferriss to consult, as a technician, on how to be efficient and execute.
2) Invite Vaynerchuk to be on my team and join me on the journey.
Thanks for commenting on our blog Brendon! Sounds like a great plan
They are both in it for the $. Ferriss needs five zeros in front of the decimal to coach. Vay Ner Chuck only needs three, plus a 25. Gary V is the better deal, but who has $25K or $100000K to hire either. At the end of the day it’s about building wealth . . . for themselves. The masses will follow as they both speak to success with self fulfillment. Sure, they like to help others, but what’s the REAL end goal for both? I would argue both are modern day snake oil salesmen. Make your own path, and you will succeed. A single formula for all does not exist.
I should clarify. The $25K for Gary V = a four hour session with him. Not sure how many hours you get with Tim F. for $100K. In the end, Tim may be the better deal.
I wouldn’t disagree with that. Gary tells you why you should do things, while Tim tells you how you should do them!
Great post!
I’ve always been a huge Tim Ferriss fan. I sent him a few e-mails, commented a lot on his posts but never was able to reach him. I’ve had my first “breakthrough” last month when he put my 4HWW case study up in the finalist and I just received by the mail a gift package from Amazon to thank me for having done so. So I guess he’s not that bad afterall.
But I agree with you that it’s nice when people take the time to answer you. I read that link you put about: 5 Time management tricks I learned from years of hating Tim Ferriss. It’s actually pretty funny to see him on another side. Yet, can you blame him to do what he does, he’s pretty successful at it! To succeed, you do need to put efforts into it, just that some people do what they love and for them this is not work.
I didn’t Gary so I can’t really say much but looks that he’s a great guy from your post. I love wine too so I better start checking him out.
Cheers!
Haha, thanks for sharing your experiences. It’s good to know that Tim secretly reads what you send it. But like you said, it’s good to get a response no?
I see Gary’s perspective as a first step to start doing what you like, get motivated, understand that by hustling you can build a solid base. However It seems like Tim’s approach comes after you have built a solid foundation. Now you can put the boat on normal speed and watch your business respond-back to your hard work.