You’re Quoting Naval. But Building Like Gary Vee.

Author

Peter Delle
May 27, 2025

Somewhere between “play long-term games” and “leverage permissionless media,” you convinced yourself you were building wealth.

But look at your week.

  • You’re still on 10 back-to-back Zooms.

  • Still approving Stripe payouts manually.

  • Still saying yes to anyone with a calendar link and a vague offer to “collab.”

Let’s be honest.

You’ve memorized Naval’s words.

But you’ve built Gary Vee’s life.

The Calm Philosopher vs. The Content Tornado

Naval is about stillness, compounding, leverage, ownership.

Gary is about energy, speed, volume, hustle, reach.

And somehow, you’re doing the worst parts of both:

  • Posting daily but owning nothing.

  • Delegating tasks but still the bottleneck.

  • Talking about leverage while micromanaging your VA.

You’re performing strategy while executing chaos.

Why This Happens

Because Gary’s style feels productive. You’re busy. You’re visible. You’re in motion.

Naval’s path is quieter — and scarier.

It forces you to slow down. To think. To be irrelevant for a while.

To build things that don’t need you. But that kind of silence terrifies founders addicted to urgency.

You confuse momentum with progress.

Attention with traction.

What Leverage Actually Looks Like

Let’s get clear:

  • Leverage is a media asset that earns while you sleep.

  • Leverage is a process you never touch again.

  • Leverage is a person who solves problems without asking.

  • Leverage is code or capital that scales faster than your energy.

It’s not:

  • Posting more.

  • Saying yes to 1:1s.

  • Hiring people you micromanage.

  • Launching things without margin.

Leverage means doing less — and having more to show for it.

The Reframe

If the Gary Vee mentality is leaving you drained at the end of the day…

You don’t need more productivity.

You need more permanence.

So here’s what you can do this week:

  • Delete 30% of your meetings.

  • Document one recurring process and hand it off.

  • Make one decision that eliminates 10 future ones.

  • Invest one hour into something that compounds (a product, a system, a piece of IP).

Stop proving your value by how much you touch.

Start proving it by how much you don’t have to touch anymore.

You don’t need to become Naval.

But build a business that wouldn’t make him mute you.

That’s how you can finally pause and take a well-deserved breath.

Best,
Peter Delle