Millionaire dishes out brutal advice

Gary Vaynerchuk says we all have the same amount of time in a day.

Want to be rich?

If you feel like there aren't enough hours left in the day to follow your dreams after working, commuting and looking after your kids, this guy has some bad news.

According to serial entrepreneur and business coach Gary Vaynerchuk, founder of VaynerMedia and an early investor in businesses including Uber, Twitter and Medium, "we all have the same amount of time in the day".

"How are you spending it?" he asks in a Facebook video, which has been viewed more than 1.3 million times. "You can live on six hours sleep, so you have 18 hours, you have 18 goddamn hours. I want to know what you're doing with your 18 hours.

"Because you can work your nine-to-five, that's nine. And you can travel for an hour here and there, respect, nice little solid commute. Oh, you want to be a family man? Mazel tov, you can spend two hours with your kids.

"What do you do with those other five hours? You're watching House of f***ing Cards. You're playing Madden. You're relaxing from the other intense 10. 'Gary, I already spent 11 hours.'

"Well great, then don't complain or want more. Respect that by getting rest and this and that, you were giving up opportunity to go into a new world. You want the audacity to have a one per cent life.

"Let's call it what it is. You want to live as well as the one to two per cent in the world. It's not very complicated, the math is very raw. If you want to have one of the best lives in the world, which is you live on your terms, you have to pay your dues to get there.

"And you have to be lucky enough to figure out that you had talent in the thing you actually want to do. Because you can work 24 hours a day and if you stink at golf, or you're not a good content producer, or your logos look like the s*** I would make, then you're going to lose. So that's what you gotta do."

The video generated fierce debate, with some praising the advice and others questioning whether it was healthy. "You can't live with six hours sleep," wrote Tuomas Tuuli.

"You can FEEL like you can do with six hours but that's shortening your life expectancy and makes you many times more susceptible to accidents, illness, mental problems and organ failures. And before all of you start moaning about it, this is from a lecture of a leading pathologist, so he knows his s***, you don't. Sorry but this post about 18 hours is BS. Period. Sleep more. Preferably 10 hours."

Michael Northroup argued the one to two per cent "don't work as often as all that". "I'm pretty sure they make money for doing nothing," he wrote. "I'm pretty sure their money makes their money for them. And I'm pretty sure more than a few of them inherited it."

But Caitlyn Minns backed Mr Vaynerchuk. "Wake at 5am, meditate and morning routine until 6am," she wrote. "Read, educate myself, and respond to emails and social media until 7am. Commute, begin work at 8am-1pm, commute, second round of work 1:30-5:30pm, build my business from 6pm-8:30pm, dinner, then back to work until 11pm.

"It's a full day, but I'll be my own boss at the end of the month just by doing this schedule for less than a year. Eat, sleep, and breathe the goal. It will happen if you choose to make the goal the priority."

Patrick Senas agreed. "Why are there so many negative people on this thread?" he wrote. "His message is simple. If you want to have a certain lifestyle then put in the time and effort to achieve it. Don't complain about not having enough if you don't utilise your time wisely. If that's not the life you want then do what makes you happy."

In a follow-up comment, Mr Vaynerchuk apologised "if the tone was lost". "I'm thrilled if people sleep nine hours a day," he wrote. "It's what you do when you're awake!"