Years ago when I first met Garry Kousoulou he introduced me to the world of his idol Gary Vaynerchuk, not a day would go past when his name would not pop up. One memorable day Garry K came bouncing into the office to say he had been on a Spreecast with Gary V at 3 in the morning, and had awoken his wife and kids with his whoops of delight! (see below)
So you can imagine how excited he was when he told me he was to be instrumental in bringing the main man over to our shores!
The reason for the visit is Gary V has a new book out: Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy, Social World: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy World. The book is a how to guide, how to break through the noise and find a voice. Gary V is an expert in this field and looks after many big companies’ social media in the States.
Yesterday was the day, I had a great journey down there with Thegz who works with Gary K at Loving Social Media. En route we got a text from GaryK informing us that Mr V loves Chocolate ice cream so, obedient as we are, we popped into a lovely ice cream store and got some… fast forward to being in the room with the main man and guess what he HATES chocolate ice cream! he is a coffee icecream kinda guy so for those in the future who get to meet him don’t make the same mistake as us! very funny and typical Garry K… Got to have a quick chat and a piccie with Gary V then it was off to mingle with the others and leave the man in peace.
Outside I wanted to know how Garry K felt about meeting his idol:
As the afternoon went on we were ushered into the auditorium and got to watch the filming of some future podcast’s, fascinating stuff, and amazing to see the guy in action, his brain is just so fast, people firing questions at him and the answers that he gave could change their businesses forever! (and ours) as he kept saying he can tell us all this stuff but it’s up to us all to implement it.
The main event took place at 6.30 by which point the room was packed! One of the other organisers Raj Kotecha got the room buzzing with his DJ skills, Gary came on stage to rousing applause and proceeded to blow us all away with his keen mind and intellect, the lady in front of us was keenly taking notes! The event took the form of a Q & A it amazed me that with every question thrown at him he had a brilliant insightful answer, knew about each of their businesses, maybe less so for the lady selling sex toys, but had genius responses that if they go home and implement them could well turn their businesses around.
To finish off the evening there was a charity auction, it all went a little crazy, pounds were replaced by dollars and in the end two auction prizes were given instead of one and a lot of money was raised for Great Ormond Street Hospital.
We left after this to allow the people who had arrived later to get their chance to meet with Gary, all that is left to say is what an amazing man, what an amazing day and thanks again for the insight !
Thanks also to those who put the event on
Rajkotecha.com Colourpress.co.uk Loving social media, silverpopbookclub.com and great to see the guys from Two Fresh Productions filming it all