Gary Vaynerchuk built an audience by saying things a lot of business content avoids saying: that most people quit too early, that attention and patience compound, and that the unglamorous daily grind of building an audience or a customer base is the actual work, not a side quest before the real work starts. A lot of that holds up regardless of which side of the Atlantic you're on.
What genuinely transfers
The core idea — that consistent, useful content built over years beats a single viral moment — is sound advice anywhere, including for a small UK business trying to build a local or niche audience with no ad budget. So is the emphasis on treating customer relationships and attention as the actual asset, rather than a means to a quick sale.
The patience argument in particular is worth taking seriously, because it cuts against a very natural impulse for a small business owner watching a competitor's viral moment: the temptation to chase the same spike instead of building the slower, more durable thing. Vaynerchuk's core insight — that the compounding value is in the accumulated trust, not any single post — holds up as well for a Yorkshire joinery business building a local following as it does for a New York media company.
Where it needs translating
The volume and intensity of the delivery is very American, very New York, and doesn't always land the same way in front of a UK audience that tends to respond better to understatement than to constant intensity. The relentless positivity can also read as slightly hollow against a UK business culture that's generally more comfortable with dry humour and honest complaint than nonstop hype.
There's a real risk in copying the delivery wholesale: a UK founder performing American-style intensity to a UK audience often reads as try-hard rather than authentic, precisely because the audience can tell it isn't native to how the founder actually talks. The content that performs best for UK small businesses tends to sound like an unusually switched-on version of how the founder already speaks, not an impression of someone else's public persona.
The content strategy travels well. The tone of voice usually needs a British accent, not an American one, to actually land with a UK audience.
Where his advice fits less well for smaller UK operators
Some of the underlying advice assumes a scale and time horizon that many UK small businesses genuinely don't have. 'Post constantly for five years and build a media empire around your business' is real advice that's worked for some people, but it's a strategy, not a guarantee, and it requires a sustained volume of content creation that competes directly with the actual delivery of a small, busy business. For a sole trader already stretched thin, a more modest, sustainable version — consistent rather than constant — usually serves better than an attempt to match his output.
The practical takeaway
Take the patience and the volume-over-virality thinking. Leave the delivery style at the door, and build a version of 'show up consistently and add value' that sounds like you, in your market, talking to people who'll actually buy from you — not like a copy of someone else's persona.
The most useful test before posting anything inspired by this style of content: would I actually say this, in this way, to a customer standing in front of me? If the answer is no, it's probably not going to land as genuine online either, however well it's worked for someone else.
