Doing Good with Gary Vaynerchuk

The guiding principle of Chaffin Luhana LLP and the Chaffin Luhana Foundation is Doing Good by Doing Right. I want to share with you a recent experience we had that allowed us to implement the power of what Gary Vee teaches for Good. Using a simple photo that Gary was kind enough to take, we were able to help people with paralysis. Let me explain how:

I was at the Crisp Game Changer Summit in Atlanta, Georgia at the end of September. Gary Vee was the Keynote Speaker. As a member of CrispX, I was fortunate enough to have lunch with Gary and some close friends after his talk. I was taken in by his talk, but more so by how engaging and connective he was in-person.

Gary’s talk was focused on attorneys using social media to brand and market themselves and their law firms. He encouraged us to think outside-of-the-box in developing our brand, and suggested that when we develop good content, that we promote it on organic and paid channels like Facebook and LinkedIn. He said 98% of the attorneys in the room would not implement what he preached. My team and I aim to be in the 2% that take action, and of course, do some social Good in the process.

The #CLFInnerReeveChallenge

Leading up to the Summit on September 25, the Chaffin Luhana Foundation (the Foundation arm of my law firm) started a social media campaign in partnership with the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation to raise money and awareness for those with Spinal Cord Injuries (SCI) and paralysis. The #CLFInnerReeveChallenge was our brainchild, and we launched it the day before the Summit on Christopher Reeve’s birthday. It is a meaningful campaign to remind people of the good that was Christopher Reeve and to help those living with paralysis.

The #CLFInnerReeveChallenge seeks to challenge people to post on social media who their everyday heroes like Christopher Reeve are and make a donation to the Reeve Foundation of any size, and in return they receive a chance to win some fabulous prizes including a Peloton Tread, Fenix 5x Watch, 12-months of Peloton Digitial, and for a certain size donation they can receive a limited-edition t-shirt (pictured here).

Christopher Reeve played the original Superman on the silver-screen, but his most courageous work, and what made him a true hero, was his support for those with paralysis when he himself was quadriplegic.

The t-shirt slogan was aligned with our campaign message. The slogan reads: Find your Inner Christopher Reeve (written in under Superman that is crossed out). It signifies that the human spirit of everyday heroes (like Christopher Reeve) is what makes the world a better place.

Lunch With Gary

During our lunch with Gary, we got some great insights from him and he took photos with us. I asked him, “Do you remember Christopher Reeve?” and Gary lit up with a smile, and replied “Of course”. When I held up the t-shirt and asked him for a photo to help promote the #CLFInnerReeveChallenge, Gary simply replied “get over here” and then made sure my personal cell phone was used to capture the photo (I only assume so I could post it for Good). I then posted the photo on my personal FB page, and then the CL Foundation page re-posted it.

Things Get Interesting

Taking Gary’s advice, we boosted the CL Foundation FB post with the photo of Gary Vee with his new t-shirt. The boost, however, did not happen instantly because it required Facebook approval (likely because it tagged Gary and the Reeve Foundation). The first 12-18 hours while we were waiting approval, we got only a handful of likes and no comments.

Once Facebook approved the boost, however, something very different happened. Overnight, the post grew to hundreds of likes, loves, and reactions. Comments also started stacking up. Most were positive. Some, of course, were negative. Gary Vee preached at the Summit that there was no such thing as a bad comment, so after my Marketing Director started to hide the negative comments, I asked him to stop and leave them there (more on that below).

In addition to boosting the post to the Gary Vee crowd, we also boosted the post to others, including those who were in the vicinity of the conference (which was our way to target the 1k+ conference attendees who were seeing our t-shirts and some social media feeds about the #CLFInnerReeveChallenge on an 80-foot jumbo screen in the Summit venue). Lastly, we boosted the post to those who follow the Reeve Foundation.

To date, the boosted post has reached over 100k people and generated over 2.1k reactions! The post has been shared 32 times, and there have been 37 comments so far. Yes, some of them are negative comments, but what was really beautiful is that many of the negative comments were met with responses by the positive voices. People speaking up for what they believe in, which is pretty darn cool. As Gary Vee advised, all comments are helpful, even if they’re negative. People can judge for themselves what is a valuable comment to the conversation.

As of this article, the CL Foundation’s cost for boosting the Gary Vee post is just over $1,000, and the #CLFInnerReeveChallenge team has already raised over half of its stated goal of $25,000 so far. It would be beyond awesome to surpass that goal by our deadline of November 3 (the date of the NYC Marathon – which I am personally running in for Team Reeve), and with the help of Gary Vee, we may just get there.

Thank you, Gary Vee for doing some Good with us for those with paralysis. I can’t help but think that Christopher & Dana Reeve are up there smiling down, just like you smiled when you said, “yes let’s take that picture.”

Meanwhile, Gary Vee said Tik Tok is one of the new, growing social platforms right now with boundless opportunity, and I leave you with this text message from my teenage daughter this morning:

Gary clearly practices what he preaches, and that makes him genuine, convincing and compelling. And his kindness about the #CLFInnerReeveChallenge reflects that he genuinely cares.