Twelve and a Half is a book about emotional ingredients necessary to be successful at business. I picked up this book because I like GaryVee and enjoy his content on social media. He is a entrepreneur who has core values of kindness and compassion. He works tremendously hard and strives to create a legacy that inspires to build up entrepreneurs through positivity, good relationships, and hustle. The book starts off with Gary's 12 1/2 emotional ingredients for business success. The ingredients each take a chapter and are: Gratitude, Self-awareness, Accountability, Optimism, Empathy, Kindness, Tenacity, Curiosity, Patience, Conviction, Humility, Ambition.
Gratitude is everything. We all need to wake up and be grateful for our health and the health and wellness of our family. It's so simple, yet gratitude is what brings joy into our life.
Self-awareness is something we all can improve on. "When you fully accept yourself, you're no longer scared of other people." Take a good look at what you excel at and a good look at what you lack. Be willing to work on the things you aren't the best at and be realistic with you goals. I can relate to this as over the past year I have started to meditate in the morning and it has changed the way I approach my day. I have more focus on what is important. I also notice that the mornings that I meditate, I am more calm, positive, and happy. This has been a game changer for my personal life and business dreams.
Accountability is when you are responsible for your actions. Basically, do what you say you are going to do. When you mess up, admit it and apologize. The other day I called our client by the wrong name. I could have easily pretended it didn't happen or not say anything. Instead I addressed it, and told him and his wife that I was sorry for the mistake. They didn't seem to mind, but to me it was better to correct it before it became awkward.
Optimism is how to choice to live my life. I look at each challenge I am presented with getting my mindset right and this tends to affect the outcome. There have been specific moments in my life when I did not want to speak with a difficult client, but I went into the meeting with optimism and telling myself that everything will go great. Usually the meeting will go better than I thought.
Empathy is the ultimate superpower according to GaryVee. "When you can feel what another is feeling, you develop an extraordinary ability to manipulate human beings." His hope is that we use this to create good in the world.
Kindness for me is something that I already feel strong in. I grew up with parents who had tremendous kindness and taught me that this was an important value. You never know when your small act of kindness can change someone's day or maybe even someone's life. Patience is my struggle. As a mom of 3 boys and running a business, patience tests me daily. I tend to force things to happen, which doesn't always go the way I want. I continue to work on this. (I find that I am more patient when I sleep well).
The next section of this book goes into a scenario and follow-up answer format. This is what GaryVee is best at. He gives great advice and puts things in an easy way to understand. I enjoyed this for several pages, but the real life scenarios were half of the book. Although I learned a lot from this section, I really would have loved to have read more about Gary's life. He is an immigrant from Belarus and his family owned a liquor store. He helped his family in their business and after college and renamed their store Wine Library. He created a wine library daily you tube video and was one of the first people to do this at the time.
I would recommend this book, but I would give a warning about the scenarios section. I almost stopped reading this book at one point, because I was just over it. This was a short read for me, and I completed this book in 3 days (It has 194 pages). I will be looking into his other books. I hope that GaryVee's book and message will continue to inspire those who dream to achieve greatness while being a kind and good person.
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