gary vaynerchuk. why he gets it

Posted on May 17, 2010

i am taking a little distraction from my normal writing and including a small brief on someone that i have known for a few years now and someone, while not necessarily conventional, is successful because he exerts all that he is into making whatever he touches successful. now if gary vaynerchuk can just buy the jets. (disclaimer: gary is known for being very animated in his talks and the video snippets i have included here from big omaha are no different. do not play if you are offended by multiple drops of the f bomb)

 

i met gary a couple sxsw ago before his talk and realized this guy is either out of his mind or truly brilliant. his family came to the united states from the former soviet union with no language or money and started a small liquor store that gary eventually turned into a 50 million dollar business in a very short time. not to mention starting the most popular wine tasting web series, wine library tv and recently a branding powerhouse with brother aj, vaynermedia. how you ask?

 

 

what i learned from gary (and reading his best selling book “crush it!”) is that passion is everything and gratitude and appreciation for family is what is important. what i admire about gary is that i don’t ever remember hearing him speak and not mentioning at least once his love and gratitude for his family. he totally gets why he is the way he is and appreciates that his family contributed to that. having said that, gary also has a passion for what he does that is unmatched by anyone i have come across. people say i am passionate when i speak at events and conferences. my passion looks like debbie downer compared to gary vaynerchuk.

 

 

last year’ish, i met with gary and aj at vaynermedia to talk brainstorm on some entrepreneurial ideas and i was amazed by the kind of clients that they were amassing. i wondered how could big brands get behind a relatively new startup that was selling unconventional ideas on brand marketing (like scaling 1:1, analytics aren’t everything, go with your gut, etc.). i realized pretty quickly that what gary is selling is what is working and that big ship that is sometimes big business is starting to make that turn to get on board.

 

gary also has a complete appreciation for the people that watch, listen, and pay attention to him. he calls it the thank you economy and will be the title of his next book. i truly believe this about him. i have never met an individual or business take so much effort in responding to email or tweets as much as gary does. you can imagine the amount of time this must take him but he does believe in scaling one on one and he is an example of how it can be done. big business can learn a lot from these efforts and i am planning on incorporating some of this into what i do immediately.

 

there is so much more i could say about gary, but i would encourage you to check him out on wine library tv or garyvaynerchuk.com  or pick up “crush it!” for a peak into his passions. i know that one day his passion for buying the jets will finally come to fruition. i think that any professional sports team would be lucky to have him.