Serial Entrepreneur: Gary Vaynerchuk

You know, I've this wine store, I have this wine show, I'm a wine guy. When I started Putting out a little business content in two thousand nine. And every comment said, Stay in your lane, wine guy, what do you know about business? That's when I was like

Wait a minute. These people don't realize You can be a wine guy and a businessman. I couldn't wrap my head around it. I was like, why are they telling me to stay in my lane? I was a business guy before I was this wine guy they know.

Of course I can talk about business. I'm a businessman. Rom NPR, it's how I built this. show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Gary Vaynerchuk started as a wine salesman. Grew into a master marketer. built a massive one man brand. That's inspired tons of people. To start their own companies.

There are lots of people who don't take Gary Vaynerchuk. Seriously. Who think he personifies the worst elements of hustle culture. Who write snarky things about him because he violates their sense of what it means to be cool. Because he's earnest, exuberant, and sometimes so over the top that

it can be a little hard to take. But Gary Vanerchuk doesn't much care about what his critics think. And he doesn't pay all that much attention to the praise he receives either. Gary is about as pure an entrepreneur as anyone who's been on this show. It's in his blood and soul in a visceral way that is almost incomparable.

You can hear it, you will hear it, in his voice, in his expressions, in the frenetic speed and cadence of his sentences. At age forty five. He's already started more than a dozen businesses? And sold a few as well. Gary is one of the pioneers of social media marketing.

And one of its most influential practitioners. He produces a seemingly endless amount of daily content. Videos, tweets Блог з інстаграм пост, фейсбук чат, а подкаст. And yet

For the most part. He's not trying to sell you anything. А нез вебсайт, терсно шап. No pitch to take a course or sign up for a seminar. No products for sale at all.

Partly because Gary has already made a lot of money. From the two businesses he sold, from his best selling books. but also from his branding and marketing studio and other ventures that fall under his company, Vayner X. What he offers is advice. On marketing, on working, on branding, on entrepreneurship, even on how to deal with critics and skeptics and haters.

And I should mention, he does all of this with a lot of F bombs, which Fair warning, you will hear in this interview. Gary has had a remarkable ability to see around corners. Back in the late 1990s, He convinced his dad to let him set up an e commerce website for the family's liquor store, which Gary turned into a

Powerhouse direct to consumer wine business. He was one of the earliest YouTube vloggers. And amassed an enormous audience talking about wine. He saw the early promise of Twitter and figured out how to use it to help massive brands reach younger consumers. He co-founded one of the early online reservation sites called Rezi that he would go on to sell to American Express.

But his biggest secret? It's not a secret at all. Gary Baynerchuk works really, really hard. Work is the fuel that allows Gary Vee to be Gary Vee. And he explains the source of that work ethic and his status as an immigrant.

Gary was born in the Soviet Union in what is now a part of Belarus. His parents were Soviet Jews in a society that often discriminated against Jews. So in 1978, when Gary was around three years old, his parents managed to emigrate to the United States. They settled in a tiny apartment in Queens, New York. They had no money and no language skills and no professional qualifications that were recognized in the US.

But they did have a few relatives in the area. I remember random things like my grand my great grandfather. I actually remember him quite a bit. I remember a lot of one on one time with him. He would walk me to the park I remember riding a a beat up big wheels that we found in the trash, I remember.

that he occasionally would buy me vanilla ice cream and that blew my mind because even at that young of an age, I kinda knew that We didn't spend money on most things besides food and clothes. So we were a poor ass family. Yeah. What did your what did your dad What your parents do for a living?

Uh in those early years. Do you remember? Of course. Yeah, I mean, this is the beauty of being only twenty years younger than your parents. You remember a lot of stuff. Yeah. Um First the family was very big on picking garbage. And selling it up.

flea markets and things of that nature, real rugged stuff. It was really hard. The US was not flourishing. We were it was it was seventies in New York. Yeah, it was nineteen seventy eight New York. My parents were like, wait a minute We heard propaganda of Streets of Gold, Grandma just got mugged. Like you know, like it was like it was hard. And so My dad Was fortunate hi a great uncle. who was extremely well off and so he was gonna kinda take care of us, but when we were in Italy waiting for our visas, he died.

And so we came to the US thinking we had a little bit of this kind of like You know, Genie. gonna take care of us now he's past the credit. of of his children, Bob Segelman and Arlene Newman, they did

do a nice job by my dad. And one of the nice things they did was they gave him a job as a stockboy in a liquor store in Clark, New Jersey. And they were they just be clear, they were like your sponsors. They were like our sponsors. That's exactly right. This was the liquor store they owned? This was a liquor store they owned and My dad gets a job there. Which was very nice. And There was this mass exodus.

at one point in the liquor store and my dad had basically got propelled to manager. Literally my dad's first American words were things like Budweiser and Carlo Rossing and Boone's Farm. Like literally later in my career when I met some of the salesmen that called on my dad when he was just a stockboy, not the owner, they would tell me stories about my dad. Like literally, literally Did not speak English. Mm. Um

And so, you know, my dad became the manager. Got paid more and we moved to Edison, New Jersey. We're really This story of my life starts to truly form. All right, so your family moves to Edison and your dad is a managing

This liquor store. With an eye to eventually. Opening his own liquor store? Yes, because my dad's boss was his great uncle. Yeah. So my dad Obviously.

Giving me a lot of this denay was an entrepreneur, was a hard worker. And so this gentleman recognized that. And at some point in the Mid eighties. This gentleman allowed my father to buy half the business. You know, going from zero, not having a language, to four, five, six, seven years later to own a piece of a business. It's an incredible accomplishment, and I admire my father so much for that.

And so he became half owner of that store. And then only 10 years after he came to this country, He opened a very small store in Springfield, New Jersey, which lay This was called Shoppers Discount Lickers. Thank you for doing the homework. Shoppers Discount Lickers. I'm sitting in my office in New York right now. The his second store was not much bigger than my office. It was literally a tiny home, but it was his. And that Was huge. And liquor is a a a pretty good business because it doesn't go bad. It's a good business that it doesn't go bad. It's better than food that way. It was a good business that people drink when things are good and when things are bad. It's not a good business in the part that my dad store was called shoppers, and let me hit it now. Discount liquors. Yeah.

product everybody bought for the same price because that's the regulation of the liquor industry. He was selling everything low and running ads. That's how he maintained growth top line, but it wasn't a lot of profit. Um and that we kept his expenses low because my dad surely He didn't love the idea of paying employees too too much, so he kept his overhead down, very good operator that way, knew how to like not lose money, but it wasn't a profitable business. Gotcha. And and what I realized was right.

My dad ran. A business where he valued the business more than the money he took out of it. He cared so much about the business. He didn't care that it wasn't profitable. He just wanted to keep being the best store in town and keep his position. Yeah. What kind of um kid were you? I mean, were you f first of all at school. Was school I mean did it come easy for you or was it school school was incredibly easy to me until

Third grade. I got straight A's. And then I don't think I got another A except for Jim for the rest of my life. As a matter of fact, my interest level And my capacity To sit and be bored. Was zero.

Yeah, you could not focus on the teacher. You couldn't focus on the lesson plan. Your your your mind was funny? I have incredible focus, guy. Like I'm I'm I'm outrageously focused. I wasn't willing to compromise my interests. to appease What seemed to be Required. And that is who I am still to this day. Now I didn't understand it at the time. I

got f's in science, but I got Bs in history. Because I was very interested and I was it was very easy to focus. I think I am a true byproduct. of the vulnerability of a rigid system because if you would have taught me Why New Coke failed in high school. I would have got an A plus plus because I would have been fascinated.

Yeah. And did your parents care that you didn't excel at school? My mother my father had no idea what was going on. He spent one hundred and fifty percent of his time on the business and you know, I didn't see my dad until I started working in the store at fourteen. My mother Yeah. God, she's so smart.

She grounded me every single rapport card. For two weeks, no T V No video games, no friends. І вас вона ті анти і стіль та десь дає. About bringing the report card home. Not bringing the report card home, you'll love this.

Still to this day, like on November sixth, the breeze of the fall winter thing hits me and I can feel sixth grade me saying, Uh oh, it's time for me to check the mailbox for the report card,'cause if I can get it before my mom gets it, I'm gonna flush it down the toilet, which will buy me two weeks before she grounds me. Like that was my life. It was cat and mouse between me and my rapport card. But my mom knew who I was. And she saw it. And I mean clearly you were focused on

Things outside of school, like right, like you I think y you you started to work at your dad's liquor store. Pretty much every weekend when you were around fourteen, right? Yes. My dad's store was in Springfield, New Jersey, on the slightly, slightly wrong side of the tracks of a very affluent area, because it literally my dad's parking lot of his liquor store was in Millburn. And Millburn was attached to short hills and summon and living still and money. And by the way, I didn't like my dad's liquor store at first. I was selling baseball cards, making a lot of money as a kid, and now I was in this liquor store making two, three bucks an hour. And I didn't like beer and liquor, but I realized that people collected wine.

And that was the trigger. Tha that's interesting. I mean, were you I mean, were you expected to work in a liquor store? Was that was an expectation? Yes. I remember at twelve or thirteen my mom saying to me Well, you're not going to Harvard. So you better mentally get prepared'cause you're gonna be working to the store every day of your life soon. There was no conversation. Yeah. I was the son of a merchant of a first generation family.

I was the only child born in the old country, I was the oldest. This was my Destiny. Now I don't think I don't think there was I didn't feel pressure. That I had to take it over one day. Yeah. What did you think about the liquor store? Did you think that it was like I don't know, did you have an impression of what it

Was? Did you think it was sort of low class? What I thought was This stinks. Like Why am I here? Like I Could be at the mall or the JCC or the fire station right now in Hillsboro, New Jersey, selling my Eric Davis rookie cards that I bought this week in school.

And he's hot. He had three home runs last night. And they're up to six bucks a piece right now. I bought them for two, but I can't do anything about it because my parents are making me be here. And by the way, there was no doubt that I was gonna work every weekend and every holiday and every summer vacation in high school. And that was non debatable. I I wonder whether you

how I mean, you were a baseball card collector and a lot of c I love collecting baseball cards and You know, selling'em now and again. Remember Jose Canseco how much that rookie car was worth? It's crazy now. But It seems like your interest in baseball cards and the collecting of baseball cards, you started to kind of connect that with Wine. I mean you were working in a liquor store

But it seems to me that The baseball card Collecting kind of side of you. Got you thinking about wine. Do you think that's fair?

Not only do I think that's Fair. That's exactly what happened. I Learned A lot.

From the ages of Nine. Fifteen.

In doing baseball card shows, I was a child setting up tables. With grown men. And doing business. And by the time I got to my dad's store.

I was a little seasoned for a 15-year-old, 14-year-old. And then I got to listen. I educated myself in class, took advantage of every minute. Started to really know wine. Understood human behavior. understood collecting. And

Took everything. That would be the word I would use. Everything from the By the way, let me give you one. When you're setting up a table at a baseball card show, You start realizing by if you're talented like I was, and you had the gifts that I was given. That the way you set up your table will be a huge variable of how much money you make.

Hm where you put cards, what signage you use, where is your table? And By the time I got to my dad's store. The first thing I did for my dad was merchandise the store. I would make signs. And I would

Move around cases. I would say Dad You wanna sell this wine, right? He was like, Yeah. I was like, why is it here? I'm like look how and this is a fifteen year old. Dad, look how people walk in the store And they walk that way first because of the way you've set up the store.

That's opposite of this thing. You've got the thing we don't wanna sell there, but this is the profitable and so I started merchand I was a merchandiser first. And he was listening to you. He was listening to me, which I you know This gets me emotional, my dad. really gave me a lot of freedom. Now I know for fact it was earned. I know my pops. He would be quick to shut everything down. He very quickly realized, probably he tells me and I believe him because he doesn't bullshit.

He Basically knew right away first weekend because I was at 14 year old supposed to be downstairs. Finagling myself upstairs trying to sell people stuff. It was just in me, right? And he knew that. He knew what that was. And by the way, w were your parents just Expecting you to to stay on

in the business after high school? I mean d do they want You to go to college. Did you want to go to college? No. I planned on not going to college. My parents didn't know anything. My mom was very insular. She didn't go to my parent teacher conferences. She had no idea. This is a true story. My mom asked me February of my senior year of high school.

So what are we doing about college? I laugh. I go, what do you mean? It's over. I'm gonna go right into the business. She rolls up on me.

stares me down and scares the shit out of me, points her finger directly in my face to my and my mom's an angel, by the way. And goes, you're going to college, figure it out, turns around, turns back around. And says And don't make it a community college. Huh.

And and so you actually wound up going to a four year college. It's g called Mount Ida College, which is a sort of a small school in in Massachusetts, right? Yes, in Mal Ida College first semester, I hear the internet for the first time. And I decide, oh my God, I'm not gonna launch 800 Toys A Russ sub wines, which is what my plan was at that time. I'm gonna launch a website. Even though I did not own a computer, even though I

Wasn't techie. And uh a year later I launched wine library.com, one of the first e commerce wine businesses. This is but this is like ninety six, ninety seven. I mean No one's doing I mean the people are going on like Prodigy and AOL and You know, open you've got mail. Like nobody's but you're thinking this is the way to sell wine. Or this is the way to market wine? How are you thinking of it? Sell.

So okay. And I want to say this publicly. The greatest thing that was ever done for me in my life professionally. was my father making an enormous bet. On spending the Fiftін tзенdollars. to buildwine library dot com.

Which was like a good drillion dollars. Wait so so the idea was to build a website and you wanted to call it wine library dot com. That's right. My dad went to Napa on a trip. 'Cause now he was like Getting deeper into the wine world to wine, okay. Because the business was turning. Everybody kept calling their wine cellars their wine library. This is our library.

And so my dad actually came up with the name Wine Library. I just knew he liked the name. He wanted to use it as a catalogue or as like a thing. I was the one who says this is what we'll call our dot com. But That's how the Name Wine Library

Correct. So you you said let's not do shoppers discount liquors dot com. Let's call it let's just call the website wine library dot com. My dad was part of a co op Forty stores named

shoppers discount liquors in New Jersey. Right. They were all independently owned, but they all wanted to run a full page ad in the Star Legends. It was like it was like Ace Hardware. Correct. I wanted to not be part of that because I wanted to build the biggest wine company in the world. So I strategically. boug wine library dot com Because I already had bet the farm that the internet was gonna be the future. And I knew that if I did this because my dad was not looking to give up the shopper's name. He came up with it. Yeah. He wasn't that was his baby. And he was not listening. That was a place he was fighting me on. I wanted to change the store name. He was petrified of that. But I knew that if I changed the

Dot com to that that eventually it would tip and that's exactly what happened. By the way, how did you learn wine? Okay, so you were just twenty one, twenty two at that time. I learned wines through books. Through books and really Robert Parker's wine spectator. And there was a bulletin board on Prodigy called Mark Squire's wine bulletin board. And so I lived on that community board. And did you have I mean some some people like like Jancis Robinson are known to have like just superpower palette, right? But did you have were you one of those people with a natural palette?

Yes. I knew everything on paper, but the first year of me tasting wine heavily In the store. It all just tasted like wine. Yeah. And I was starting to worry about this imposter syndrome of

Shoot. What are these people talking about? I don't taste poisonberry. The hell is lychee fruit. Like I would literally after work. After working a twelve hour day, go to the King's Supermarket. And bye. All these weird fruits and vegetables and spices and go home at 11 pm. This is this is how obsessed I was. I'm a twenty-two year old boy on a Friday night at 11 p.m. instead of going out, sitting and biting cinnamon sticks.

So that I could Really capture. The nuance of Cinnamon To see if I would pick that up on Barolo's. Like I wanna I was obsessed. Mm.

So after you graduate college, you come back to New Jersey and you work in the shop. And you've got the wine library dot com site. And how are you getting people to find out about it? I work the floor at the shop. That's right. I am in the store twelve hours a day. So you come in the store, I see you. Gotcha. Gary Vanderch comes up to me and he says

What are you looking for? We got the way you even even the way you just said that, you nailed. The Gary Vader trick you see on the internet was that boy. Yeah. How are you? What can I help you? Like just pure pure enthusiasm. And I will not let you leave my store. I will make you a hostage. Unless you give me your email address.

Now This is nineteen ninety six, seven, eight. It was really ninety seven, right before I graduated, and then ninety eight full time. A lot of people didn't even know they had an email, just got it from work. My favorite stories, because I can see them in my brain. Are people say things like

Oh yeah, I got one. Uh it's aol at yahoo.com. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. You probably have an AOL and a Yahoo. Um and and so what I did was I built A very powerful ten thousand, then twenty thousand, then thirty thousand ten thousand emailers or no the not from people just coming into the store. Over the course of the first year, yeah. No, I would say the first year we probably had about thirteen thousand. We did a little direct mail But I would argue, I mean, you know what's funny? I'm such an extreme character that I think when people hear my stories, they don't believe them. They're like there's the level of embellishment there. He's trying to make a point. And I'm like, No, no, no.

I'm telling you right now, every human being that walked into the liquor store for an entire year. I would not let them leave to the best of my ability, which is very high. Without giving me their email address. I I I don't know why somebody wouldn't believe that. Well I think I think I think you know the store was a big enough store that we had enough customers to that ten thousand like it was easy to get to that base. What ended up happening was that worked so well driving people to the website and buying on email that it gave us our first level of profit. You know, the first year I ran the business, we went from a four million to a ten million dollar business. So this was I mean, this was an email list that you would send out to people.

uh with the wine deals and they could directly click on that email And Order one,'cause this is still like the late nineties, early two thousands. I was that uh possible to do? It was, but to your point. Ninety percent of the people didn't know what the hell you were saying. Right. Nobody trusts putting a credit card in a computer. Nobody really even knows how to buy on a website.

Most people don't even know how to look at an email newsletter yet. And look how well my dad's business is going. This is it. Like wait to two this is where I was wrong. Wait to the year two thousand when everybody in America buys everything on the internet. In my youth, I did not understand yet, because I didn't have the you know pattern recognition or experience to know the things that I saw would take a decade to happen, not a year. This was still before like m many states now allow you know, direct wine sales and but even s there's still some challenges with some states, as you know, but at that time Were you only selling pretty much to people in New Jersey?

Yes, comma. In two thousand, we opened it up a little more aesthetics and UPS became more progressive. So yes, ninety eight, ninety nine was very New Jersey. And then we built a r big reputation. Because Wall Street a lot of people live in the Jersey suburbs. Right. And Wall Street was very is very viral at that time because people now have email for the first time. So I'm s think about it, this makes so much sense to everybody. I'm sending an email. for Opus One at the lowest price in the country. What was the price? At the time, Opus One was a$90 wine and I'm selling it for$62.99. And that was the hottest wine. I mean is the hottest wine. Super hottest wine at the time.

So I send it. To Wall Street. Now think about the psyche of a Wall Street guy. Let's call what it is. Rick Thompson comes in from Short Hills, buys six bottles of Duck Horn, Sauvignon Blanc for me. I get him on the email newsletter. Yep. He now gets an email while he's on the floor for Opus at 6299. He yells, guys, Opus at 6299. Oh. Bert from Long Island's like, get the fuck out of here. I'm paying 95 bucks in Long Island. I'll take six. I'll take six. And they start, and then I'm getting emails saying, Can you add my friend Bert to the list? Can you And so we are now in the viral loop and the world. Doesn't know it. Sherry Lemans doesn't know it.

KL doesn't know it. Morels doesn't know it, Zachy's doesn't know it, Sam's in Chicago doesn't know it, Specs doesn't know it, Crossroads doesn't know it, But I do. I'm now spending six years mapping all the stores that I just mentioned to you, reading every single Wednesday the dining section of the New York Times, and I'm memorizing The ads that all the stores are pricing, what their mix is, are they Bordeaux heavy, are they Napa heavy? Wow. And I'm mapping in my little brain. And so now I can see where I wanna play in between and how I can attack them on pricing and selection.

And it it just Was that all right, so you're building this this email list and you are starting to reach people, especially Wall Street people who know a deal when they see it. And you start to see revenue grow. Pretty quickly. By the way, is the store still the physical store still called Shoppers Discount Liquors? The physical store became Wine Library in nineteen ninety nine.

Okay. So your dad agreed to change the name. Yep. Better name, much better name. I think so. And did it increasingly become more wine and less liquor? Yes.

But that was not only because of how I was running the business, it was because that's what was happening in America. Yeah. The cl the the average forty nine year old woman that lives in a high network neighborhood in nineteen seventy seven has a cocktail at night. Yeah, right the cliche forty nine year old woman in a high net worth uh neighborhood in nineteen ninety nine and two thousand two has a bottle of wine. So You're seeing this happen in real time.

And you guys are riding this wave. And and I mean How fast?'Cause you were your dad was doing four million in revenue a year, in gross revenue. His net profit was low, relatively low.

What kind of change were you What are you starting to see when you, you know, start to We went to um We went to ten million in ninety nine and seventeen point five in two thousand and twenty

Eight point three in a while. We went from four to sixty five and sixty to sixty five. In a blink, you know, that was the first. culture shock of my life because Everything changes when something like that happens.

Yeah. And your dad was making serious money, big money. Yeah, but to my dad's credit, he was making big money, but you know what he decided to do? He decided to buy the Burger King next door, which just went out of business, which is unheard of. And then he decided to build a 40,000 square foot store. As if he was building the Taj Mahal made out of mahogany and stone. My dad had the opportunity

to make a lot of money and take it off the table, what he chose to do was to pour it back into the business. Mm-hmm. Something that is still to this day one of the great life lessons for me. I think the reason I have such a big business is I was born in an ecosystem that says Don't take the money out and buy a boat, put the money back in to build a bigger business. Yeah.

What what were you I mean, I'm trying to if you ask me the question, what was I chasing in my twenties? Um I don't quite know. It may have been a combination of of recognition or or proving something. probably there was some insecurity that I was chasing to prove that I could do these things. What what do you think you were chasing in your twenties when you were Working so hard.

Was it money? Was it a was it a number? Was it what was it? What I was chasing, you know, it's really funny, the numbers thing made me laugh that we just talked about earlier. It was definitely not a number. Numbers are just like a very quick way to tell a story. Um Yeah. I could c I never had a goal. I to this day I've never had a goal of like we're gonna do this. I don't even think that way. In my twenties, I was chasing one feeling.

God? You gave me the best parents in the world. You also gave me this talent. I have this incredible relationship with time. I'm patient.

I am gonna give everything I've got for this next decade to my parents who brought me to this country. who loved me, who gave me self-esteem. Who gave me work ethic and accountability. I was so emotionally intelligently charged. That I knew it.

And I said, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna give my prime youth years Fully to my parents. And then I'm gonna go and do my own thing. Ye so in your twenties,'cause it in your twenties and you were really

grinding away. You are totally what? Seven days a week, twelve hours a day? Working at the store? Yes. I worked you know, it was a retail store, Saturday was the biggest day by a country mile. So Saturday was seven to eleven because I had to get there early. Seven to eleven those are insane hours. I did you have friends? Did you hang out with people or not really? I my friends became my employees. And by the way. That's my life now.

My friend group always circles around what I'm doing. 'Cause I'm enjoy it too much. In in two thousand six you launched A YouTube show.

One one library TV. New York Times wrote a review of this show, like a uh two years in. And I just wanna read what they wrote'cause it's So funny. It's actually very Um positive review of the show, but the opening line is When the refined British wine writer Janus Robinson

joined the frenetic Gary Vaynercheck last fall on his video blog Wine Library TV. It was as if Helen Neeren had shown up on an episode of Dog the Bounty Hunter. I love that so much. It's such a great um lead, and it's true. I mean, here you are. You're this young guy shouting about wine. And you know, Janus Robinson and you know these

And she's probably the greatest wine critic on the planet. Yep. But you know, some ha and and initially I I have to imagine People in the wine world just thought Who is this who's this bozo? Hello, everybody, and welcome to Wine Library TV. I am your host, Gary Bay Nur Shuck, and this, my friends,

Is the Thunder Show. A The internet. Most passionate. Wine.

I feel like I do. Wrestling promo videos. In perpetuity. But I had the ambition to make it Possible. for people that were more casual to be influential voices in the wine world because I thought it would be good for the wine world.

Very elegant. Very structured. Almost like a hot dog flavor in the mid palate. I know, stick with me, I'm sorry, but a little hot doggy. Little ganginess meetings. And all the people that thought I was downgrading wine, not holding it up to the standard that it deserved. They didn't realize that I was creating wine drinkers an interest at scale.

And what first initially shook the wine world was not only the fact that I was out of control and talking about wrestling and football and all the things the wine world would never want to be done, especially fifteen years ago. But what was happening was I was also showing that I actually knew what I was talking about, which really confused a lot of people. And then most of all the one that completely was the big one. I was panning.

Wines that we sold. You were panning them. You were saying they're terrible. I was saying Things like How in the world does this winery

believe that they can pass this wine on us for fifty five dollars when on a blind tasting it's a thirteen dollar wine and they're hosing us because they have the word napa in their wine. Wow. There was three reasons why that blew people away. A Everybody in my company, from my dad down in the first year or two, Thought I'd lost my mind.

Right. These are people you're buying wine from. Well that's the next part. The insular industry had a real problem because My friends would call me and they're like What are you doing?

You know, we b you've been buying wine for me for fifteen years. We're friends, you stayed on my couch In Napa. I'm like, John, I love you. I can't lie. It's over if I do.

I remember that being the first two years, just a sheer why are you doing this? And I remember thinking, how do people not understand why I'm doing this? If I'm chilling up here or not telling my truth, I'm one moment away from being finished. I always thought, Guy, that if somebody showed up to a dinner or an event, Gave me a glass of wine without me knowing what was in it, tell me what I thought, and if I didn't say good or bad, You know, you know, if if I said oh this is delicious and like ha ha You said it was garbage. Like so I was so scared of that. That I just always said what I said.

So is this interesting,'cause as you're I mean, this is like you know, this is a time when when news m the news media would would sort of scour the internet for interesting things and say, Oh, there's this thing called YouTube and uh and here's this guy and he he does a wine show on this thing called YouTube and so you started to get invited Onto like the news and you got invited to the Conan O'Brien show and And I have to assume that You were sort of seen as this curiosity. Here's this this wine guy who's got a video show on uh on the internet. Hundred percent.

And I also Was using Twitter and Facebook. and my space to promote the show, yeah, which started the process of me understanding this new medium. What's so interesting to me is that you are building up a a profile, a brand Around yourself as a wine guy.

So so most people In this is like two thousand Six seven eight nine. Ten. They're thinking

There's Gary Vanerchuk. If they knew who you were. He's the wine guy. He's the guy who talks about wine. That is absolutely correct. And normally that is who people stay. for the rest of their careers. Did you think at the time

That's who I'm gonna be? I thought That I am a wine guy. You know, I have this wine store, I have this wine show, I'm a wine guy. When I started

Putting out a little business content in two tausenaine. And every comment said, Stay in your lane, wine guy. What do you know about business? That's when I was like Wait a minute. These people don't realize.

You can be a wine guy and a businessman. It was the first time I realized Oh. America Is obsessed with

Narrow And or Not wide and both. Yes. I couldn't wrap my head around it. I was like, why are they telling me to stay in my lane?

I was a business guy before I was this wine guy they know. I was very confused. I was like, No, I built this business. This big business with not a lot of money. We didn't get cash infusion. We didn't raise capital for Wine Library. I exploded it from the dirt with my skills and work ethic and Wait a minute, they think I'm a wine cartoon character? I of course I can talk about business. I'm a businessman.

When we come back. Just a moment. How Gary throws an impromptu party for five hundred people in Austin, Texas. And how that party helps him evolve from a wine guy

into a marketing guy. Stay with us. Guy Raz, and you're listening. how I built this. Hey, welcome back to how I built this. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2006, and Gary has launched Wine Library TV on YouTube, what he calls the first ever video wine blog. And when he's not doing that, he's finding out everything he can about this new media ecosystem that he's immersed in.

Aye started really getting into Silicon Valley Startup Web Two point O because I was using it to build Wine Library TV and then YouTube sold to Google for One point seven billion dollars, which at the time Was crazy. Yeah, I mean, that would be like waking up tomorrow and hearing that TikTok sold to Amazon for one trillion dollars. The kind of number that would stop you. It we're in billions now. So it was one of those moments. And so I read everything that I could on the internet, and time and time again the article said Angel investor Ron Conway is set to make this on this And I said, You know

Now I'm thirty two and I'm like, you know I've always thought I was a businessman. Yeah. But I have something. This dot com like I was right about email, I was right about Google AdWords, I was right about

I was Maybe Maybe I should be an investor. And when you d when you start to hear about people like Ron Conway, you said, I want to be like that I mean where did you go? Who did you c yeah. I don't go through the pattern of I wanna be like that.

I go into like Angel Investor enter Google. What the hell is an angel investor? What is investing? What's twenty percent Wait a minute, you borrow money from other humans? Like I'm I'm you know, I was in a cocoon. I surely knew how, you know, champagne was made. But I had no idea of investing. I didn't take economics class. I didn't even pay attention to Wall Street. So I said to Eric Kastner, who is my lead developer and no question one of the most influential people in my career, because he was the developer that showed me web two point oh. And he was working with you on Wine Library. Yeah, he was my lead developer for wine library.com. But our office

Was half the size. A third of the size of the office I'm sitting in now, which is not very big. So I sat with him and I would look at his screen and be like, What's that? I he's the guy that made me stop searching stuff on Yahoo to go to Google. So what ends up happening Twitter comes out. And I really am intuitive to it.

Like it just really blew my mind, and I got very aggressive on it. I did a very good job. I'm good with people. I figured out how to translate that to the internet. And I'm like This is it. This is it. This is I gotta do more of this, and now I find my first.

Passion since wine. Which is the internet. Which is this new internet. Web two point oh So anyway, nonetheless now I know I wanna know Web20, so I wanna go to a conference. So me and Eric Castner go to London.

To something called the future of web apps forward. This is in two thousand this is in two thousand six. Two thousand six seven. I I wanna I wanna give you the right answer, but then we sit in the crowd and I'm listening and I'm blown away by these people, and they were nice and they were like Hippie Techie A tiny bit business, but I was like This is it. And then I went to South by South West and

I threw a wine party I remember at South by. Uh,'cause I just sent wine down there just in case I would need it. And you what you got you and you you had like a hotel suite and you just advertised it or something? I I I wasn't in that place in my life. So instead of throwing this wine party in the suite, I charmed the person at the front desk of the Hilton in Austin and said, can I just use this room over here? And she was like, Sure. And then I tweeted out. By the way, I had 5514 is what I remember. Followers on Twitter at the time, and everybody at South by thought I was the Kardashians. Right. Like they couldn't believe how many followers I had. This is how early it is.

And so like 500 people showed up to this Hilton and like Five hundred people came to a conference room at the Hilton to have free wine. It was actually like the closed restaurant, so there's enough room to get. It was a scene. Actually, I'm gonna Google after this interview the photo, because the photo exists. And that was kind of my coming out party. Hm. And it really was, I mean, in the sense that it it kind of catapulted you into the tech world, right? I mean uh Twitter and and Facebook were pretty young at the time and I and I guess

after that party you were you were kind of able to to walk into those places and And meet people. Yeah, a month later I flew to San Francisco And met. Chris Masina.

For a coffee. And Chris Massina, just to be clear, he is the guy who invented the hashtag. That is correct. He was absolutely the guy who tweeted Let's all use a hashtag to give context to our tweet. He was a connected guy in the game.

As a developer, the hashtag's been around, he kind of commercialized it. As a proxy, I'm sure that the hashtag was being used in nerd I CQs and other things, but anyway, while I was having coffee with him, he's like, Do you want to go to the Twitter office? It's right down here. I'm like, Of course. We go there. There are nine people there. There's Jack, there's Ev, and I get to talking to Blaine Cook, the original CTO.

A year later Blaine's at South by two thousand eight now, maybe. He's leaving Twitter, he tells me. Not only is he leaving But he has to sell all his shares because that's how

religious he is about his passions and ideological points of view. The next thing I know I am negotiating to buy A portion of Blaine Cook, the original CTO's founder shares of Twitter, and now I'm in the game.

And this is based on the money that you'cause you I mean, in your thirties. You start to make some money. Because of the wine business. Here's the hugest part. I never made more than eighty thousand dollars a year, even though I built this huge business because it's a family business and we don't take salaries and I don't own the business and I don't I don't have the grew to sixty million dollars, you're making eighty thousand a year? That's right. Okay. Because my dad was too, because that's like and again, this is where true first generation immigrant family businesses will understand that I'm dead serious about this. Like an immigrant business

That is built by a certain type of immigrant that picks business over luxury. Yeah. Right. My dad's my dad drove a truck that had a hole in the bottom of it. Right. Like he's the anti show off. But how did you have money to buy into Twitter? I put thirty four thousand dollars into Twitter, okay? The reason I had that and then I also put money into Facebook and then put money into um Tumblr. Those are my first three investments. And this is simply because you went out there and you had met

Yes, because got you have to understand this is two thousand six, seven, eight. It was early. People didn't know what Facebook and Twitter were. So you it wasn't it wasn't huge amounts, it was well, these are still big, but uh this wasn't like millions of dollars you had to spend. These were in the tens of thousands of dollars. Correct. And that's all you had. And then I I guess

people start to get to know you as like a social media presence or like a p a person with opinions about about social media and There was a a video that you posted at at one point, uh I think on YouTube was it? Is that right? Actually it was on Viddler, V I D D L E R dot com, a platform that was competing with YouTube at the time. Right. It was a single video I made.

Titled Facebook should worry about this thing called Twitter. Mm and it was me laying on a couch. In my house. Sh With my remember the flip cam? Oh yeah. Yeah. So I take the camera to my face and say

Facebook should be worried about this thing Twitter. I've been on Twitter, this new thing. You gotta check it out. And I gotta tell ya. I know my brother and all the college kids are on this thing Facebook, but there's something here with Twitter. Mm-hmm.

And A couple weeks later, I get an email from Dave Morin. who was a top executive there. Sure. At Facebook. At Facebook, and he says, you don't happen to be in California on this. I was like, yeah, ironically I'm coming. Of course I was gonna come and talk to Facebook, right? So I go And there's Two hundred people there?

A hundred fifty? I mean the company was tiny. And by the way, when you when you went to Facebook and you and they asked you to just speak, did you like write a speech? Or did you just kind of come with notes, like did you like sit down and start preparing something? I'm pure improv. No notes, no decks. And so after that moment, I just started making business videos in the first

fifty business videos of random ideas I had about social media. We call it web two point oh back then. We're met with ninety percent comment, stay in your lane, wine boy, stay in your lane. Yeah. And you were putting his up on YouTube. And Viddler, because it had tagging and you could click to the part of it. And I was filming myself with the flip cam for the business stuff. Eric Castner and Chris Mott. They would just, you know, click the button on the camera.

I would do my thing. No editing, no lighting, no microphone. And they would go upload it. And Post it. Hm. And this is all happening, I guess, around like two thousand nine. And and I guess a right around this time you

decided to start a digital ad agency, like a like a branding agency, which would become Vayner Media. That's right. But you were still doing the wine business at the same time. Is that is that right? Yes. From two thousand nine to two thousand eleven, I moonlighted in both businesses because Wine Library wasn't ready for me to leave. And Vayner Media wasn't big enough. For me to And so I was

You know Doing both. And the idea with Vayner Media was Look, I know this space and and I Like I'm a native in this space. I can help brands figure this out. Yeah, the idea in two thousand nine was how does Pepsi and Campbells and the NHL still not have a Twitter and Facebook account? It's two thousand nine. Right. I already knew that I wanted to work with my brother, who's eleven years younger than meet AJ. Maybe I should start a company. AJ's graduating now. I don't have a great idea. You know, we might want to do this fantasy sports thing.

That would have been good. We might want to do this deal of the day group on living social thing. That probably would have been good. Like the ideas were good. But Vayner Media was practical. Gillette paid us sixty thousand dollars for a project that we thought that was a drillion dollars. Yeah, I'm sure. And so we we got to work.

And what we knew was We wanted to be in this space. We wanted to be able to pay our rent. And we wanted to be able to learn. And that nobody loves a good half time adjustment more than me.

That whatever we were doing helping brands do social, it didn't matter to me to overthink what 13 years from now was gonna look like, because I would figure it out along the way. And that's why it was so easy to start. I think people are so rigid. So in need of predicting the future. That it cripples them from actually doing.

I agree. So so you you and your brother start Banner Media and you start to get some accounts And you basically were were were using the playbook that you had developed with the wine business? Yes, the playbook was put out content that people actually want. Don't do television mentality where you're forcing things down. Лисен томенс.

Engage in the comments. Follow people back. Use Context of culture So hey Pepsi, you know would be really cool is if you follow Friday normal people. That would be stunning to people.

That's what they did. Victor Lee, who is at Hasbro. Hey Victor. I know you're launching this new Furby, the reboot of Furby, which was big a decade earlier. Why don't we do it on a Facebook fan page instead of television? And we post a Furby comment that says, Spell your name backwards by writing the words, spell your name backwards in backwards. So it was that that kind of work.

That was working. It was internet native. And at the time every brand was completely dismissing social media or Trying to do print radio or television like content on social media. Yeah.

This is the time like Two thousand nine to ten. Eleven where companies started to hire quote unquote social media gurus. Was was that who you guys were thought of? Or or or is that like when people said, Oh, we'll go to those these social media gurus. Yes, but what was different was even though I was the guru of the guru because of Gifted Gab had the most Twitter followers, my book was a New York Times bestseller, I knew then that I didn't want to be

Gary Bainerchuk the Guru. I wanted to build a business. Mm. So you would be hiring the inner media, not Gary Vener, of course I would come to the meeting, of course I would put my strategies, of course I would talk to you. But I believe a lot of people in Ad World thought that this was like the Gary Vee show. When it never was.

And And it never will be. Yeah. L let me go back to y you mentioned your book and I wanna I wanna talk about that for a sec because I mean you were you you got a book contract, I think like a ten book deal.

to write books about I guess about entrepreneurship. Your first book was called Crush It, Why Now is the Time to Cash In On Your Passion. And I mean, how did you start to get attention that enabled you to attract The book deal. There was a web two point oh conference at the Javit Center in New York. And I give this talk, and the talk was basically Crush It, which is, does everybody understand what's happening here in 2007?

Like this is it. We can do stuff. You could do a blog about Smurfs and make'em a hundred thousand dollars. Like that's literally what I said. I said smurf it up. I said, do something about Alf. I was like, I'm doing it about wine. If you read Crusha Today I basically laid out

Fourteen years ago. Influencer marketing. And it landed, and by the time I got to the green room where I had my phone because I didn't even bring it with me on stage those days. I had three e mails.

from Penum Putnam, from Wiley, from like Publishers saying I'm in the crowd right now. Can you turn what you just said into a book? Wow. This is around the time when Tim Ferris also released work week. Yes. That was about a year earlier, maybe two years earlier, I'm not sure exact timing.

And and and hence Here comes crush it, which is Yeah, the economy's crap. But You can do it. You can be on the internet. You can start a vlog or YouTube show.

And you were in two thousand eight, you were not a rich guy. No. You were making a living, but you were making a living from from the wine business, but it was your passion. Yes, but book writing was my most lucrative part of my life lucrative. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve. That's where I made most of my money.

Yeah. Because I was making nothing at Wa Vayner Media. I was still making eighty. And and maybe you know, to be fair, I might have gotten to a hundred by then at Wine Library just'cause at thirty I got a little testy with my dad of like, yo I need some more money. So you and your brother are building Vaner Media.

And it's growing. And then in twenty fourteen You're still running Venermedia. You helped co found Rezi. The reservation. platform. We did through month the fund that I started Vayner R S C

And so we incubated Resi. in that fund at some level. So you didn't have to answer to investors who were like, Well, how are you gonna do that and this? I was the investor in that scenario. Yeah. As you I mean, as you um

kind of a growing vaner media and and building it out in different extensions. And then started other things. Um what about your personal life? Did you get married? Did you like married two kids? How old are your kids today, by the way?

Yeah. And so you know, like people think because I talk about work ethic as a important variable. But I'm trying to burn myself out and die at four like people are very literal, but you know, I come from The old school, right? Like My family life is like да's like mine.

that's important to me. I come from real family dynamics. And it's very easy for me to have that, prioritize that, value that. So yeah, I I mean like I live Like a a real life. I'm not a

Reality TV star. Yeah. when we come back in just a moment. Gary talks about his latest all-consuming passion. an NFT project called VFriends.

Oh. And did I mention he wants to buy the New York Jets? We'll talk a little bit about that too. Stay with us, I'm Guy Roz, and you're listening to How I Built This.

Hey, welcome back to how I built this. I'm Guy Raz. So we're already up to the present day. And on the day we did this interview in early May. Gary was gear up to launch his latest project. It's called V Friends, and it's a community for buying Gary's own brand of NFTs, non-fungible tokens, which are

Basically unique pieces of digital property. And to build V-Friends, Gary's team created about 10,000 electronic trading cards that can be redeemed for real things in the real world, like, say, a fishing trip with Gary. And he believes that if they do it right. V-Friends could be a model for how other people could get into NFTs. And I believe that it will be the project that every celebrity, influencer, author, podcaster

Expert personality human will look at as a bluprint of how to do an NFT project properly. For me If this thing does thirty million dollars in Ethereum or a dollar. If it becomes the blueprint that I just said I hope it is, or doesn't.

It's completely irrelevant. Since January 7th? It is the only thing I care about. To try. I have to try to launch this thing. I put in hours and hours of thinking and work, but also gleaned off of twenty five years of experience. off of the back of a decade plus now of building a community and knowing how to do better for them than me. And in a world right now where everyone's putting out an NFT project as a gold rush for a quick dollar, I'm building something that's gonna benefit my community.

That's Not Anything other than deep curiosity if I can pull it off. Right. I mean if you can pull it off because there are, you know, there's skeptics, right? There are people who think that the NFT concept is super risky, like maybe not

a a good investment of time or money. Yeah, I mean I think ninety nine percent of the projects that are being launched right now are gold rushes. And they're gonna be projects that fail, and people are gonna buy tokens from celebrities, leagues, different things, and the price is gonna go down. And there'll probably even be an NFT winter. Call it a tipping point. Next year this I don't know when. That I don't know. But what I know is supply and demand, and what I know is human psychology, and what I know is pattern recognition.

And then what's gonna happen, guys, Internet nineteen ninety nine. The stocks declined because those companies were built on gold rush greed. But the technology changed our lives for ever. NFT technology is gonna change our lives forever. This twelve to twenty four months will create incredibly bad projects that don't bring back value to the person that supported it.

But I plan on making my project, for example. The Amazon and eBay of that іra. Hm. Amazon and eBay were during that

March, April crash of two thousand stock. And if you were smart enough to see the bigger picture and bought those stocks for dollars Very nice things happened. Yeah. And that's what's gonna happen again.

Gary, it kind of makes my head spin hearing hearing all this because this NFT project is like one of many businesses you have going on right now. I mean I th I mean you've launched so many companies at least two. I mean I think uh Rezi you sold to MX, Empathy One direct to consumer wine business and then sold that.

But you've got Vainor X and you've got digital content production studios and you've got a a town agency, a sports agency, and I wonder whether You have to do all of these things, that it's like stimuli, that you can't you you have to keep moving, creating. Because some people would say, How do you do all that stuff? How do you focus on all those things? It's impossible. But I wonder whether you actually have to do it to to feel alive. A hundred you you're absolutely right. To me when people are like how do you do all those things, I'm like how would I ever focus on one thing? Okay.

Now, I love focusing on one thing. It is A game for me. I don't mind losing. Nobody talks about Vayner Live. Right, or Vaner experiences, that was a division. Those failed. Vayner sampling, I still want to do it. Hip hop at lunch dead. Uh the first version of the publishing company dead. So I lose a lot.

I just don't care. Mm. I remember interviewing Richard Branson a few years ago on the show and you know, talking about Virgin Cola and Some of the other version vodka just, you know. Failures that but but he tried'em.

And he must be somebody It's more fun. Yeah. What does the Johnson family think about this? D have they ever have you talked to them about this? I've never had a conversation with Chris or Woody Johnson about this.

Mainly because I don't like audacity. You don't like audacity? Stick with me here. Wait a minute. You've been publicly on the record saying you want to buy the jets. Me sharing my public dream. Feels natural to me. Okay. Me rolling into a meeting with the Johnsons where I'm nowhere close to being able to purchase the New York Jets

Feels audacious. And so my Greatest joy. Is the hunt. To buy the New York Jets.

Mm. Would I like it to happen? Sure. It has absolutely been a fun goal of mine. I'm it sucks because I know I'm patient and I know how I'm going about doing it.

Which makes me feel that I'm gonna get it done in twenty five to twenty seven years. The part that bothers me is like How d Deep I want my parents to be there. Mm.

You know Can I Okay. That's tough because I know I won't deviate from my process. Otherwise there's no chance that I get it. But I have this

Ticker. That Ya I'm not in control of. And obviously I'm not in control of a trillion things, but I'm pretty sure if I pull that off somewhere in twenty five years.

That forty years of this energy yelling about it and then it actually happening. It's probably good for a Disney movie and why not? Mm. Here's something I'm interested in, which is

And and and I've talked about this before, which is I don't engage in social media too much, I do it, and I've got you know, I'm I don't have masses of followers like like you, but Um, I don't It doesn't feel good when people are cruel or mean. And you know, you see this with some celebrities, they'll they'll drop off Twitter after a while'cause they just can't take it anymore. You get a lot of hate on social media because you've got millions of followers across your channels.

Um, does it ever get to you? I'm a human being. Right. You know, somebody decided to take Time out of their day.

To spit venom at me. Mm-hmm. And I would never in the world think that that was a use of time that would be interesting to me, even if I disagreed with somebody or didn't like someone. So first I think Where is that person? And that doesn't mean I think that person sucks or should be deleted. I don't block people. It's just a very interesting

Curiosity. intrigue of man, that sucks. Like A Let me look at what I posted. Did I do something there that would

So engage someone to do that. B There's a very big part of how I handle this. I believe that a lot of my friends who aren't able to handle it, which is many, Enjoy the accolades too much.

Mm-hmm. I believe one of the reasons I can deal with this is I can't hear them cheering for me. Which allows me to deal with the booing. Mm. If I disappear tomorrow, God forbid.

I'll get nine nice hours on social media of people sharing clips if I even affected them. Okay. And then everybody will move on their Daily life except for a very small group of people. When you realize you mean nothing.

But you aspire to mean as much as humanly possible? You create a very interesting perspective framework that makes a lot of things easy. I I once asked. Jimmy Fallon.

In an interview. How does he deal with the just being on all the time when he's in public? Like you know,'cause he walks to work, right, from his apartment and he's walking down the street and people are high fiving him and then he's it goes to a restaurant and people are kind of all always around him and I I was in a an event with him and he was just getting mobbed. And he loves it. He loves it. All the time. It's just so natural. He loves talking to people.

And it's part of what makes him so approachable. But I am an introvert, so when I see that I'm like, Oh my God, I am I need to just go into a room for a while by myself. Do you ever wanna just jump off the hamster wheel for a a couple of weeks and just Not

Be around people. My answer is s balance. I love it. The airport. The cab, the high five.

The the Jets games I love it. Um you know why? I can't believe it. I'm so grateful.

And by the way, I'm not a comedian. I'm not a supermodel. I'm not an athlete. People like me because of things I'm saying that I'm hoping will help them. or or giving out information that did help them. I figure out TikTok, I'm telling my people. I figure out NFTs, I'm telling my people.

Like I'm getting it. Not from fame. I'm getting it from Someone admiring it or being grateful, it's an incredible energy. On the flip side

I actually completely understand why people In first glance, in an Instagram feed of a 30-second clip at my height of a feeling and conviction will be like fuck. This guy. Mm.

But I also know there are people that walk around the world that are adored that know as people get closer to them, they hate them more. I have the reverse. And it I mean sounds like the people that are your detractors, your your view is like, come on, come meet me. Come talk to me. You're not mad at them. You're not like definitely not mad at them. I understand them. I'm a lot when the lights are on.

Uh you've never seen me and you're and y and you see a thirty second video on Instagram where I dropped seven F bombs in nine seconds, and you have no context for me? And and to your point, like even your reaction on my audacity, like I'm not confused what audacity and conviction and Even the disgusting word ego and all these things that people might think. But but I just know the truth. Like, I think of myself as an athlete. When I am on the field. I will do what it takes to win the game. In the rules.

But when the game is over, guy I'm going right up to my competitor who I try to rip his fucking eyeballs out and saying, hey, how's Karen? And can I give you a donation to your charity? So when I see athletes at the end of a game hugging each other after they were bashing each other and I'm pissed because I'm like, don't hug them, they just beat us. I'm fucking angry as a fan. But I understand them, brother, because even though I know I'm competing with people day to day or this and that. I'm on the field. When people see me on social media, I'm on the field.

You are obviously super passionate about the the new project that you're building around NFTs and There will be other things and and You have this reputation of somebody who never stops working.

Right. Never ever stops. Constantly working, constantly on the go. First of all Do you think that's true? Because it seems to be true. No, I don't I don't think it's true. I try to communicate Here's the problem, right? No matter how many times I make a video, I can easily say

With the same conviction as I've said everything else. Guys sleep eight, nine hours a day. Yeah. Even though hundreds of thousands of people will hear that. Somebody will come out and be like he sleeps four hours a day. It's not hell. Like people see what they're looking for.

Right. You know I am high energy because I'm passionate and excited. Um and optimistic and enjoy it. And that comes through.

I really like work. And I am Very addicted, no question. to the notion of legacy. I wanna leave a mark. It's nice. Why not? Why not? Why not try to give the world more than it gave you?

There's a a renewed or a new kind of view on And I I hesitate to use this term because I think it's a lazy But um For shorthand purposes I'll use it, hustle culture.

There's a kind of a a new or a different perspective on it now, and there's a lot of criticism. About And we get it about our show too, even though I don't believe that's what we do. you get a lot of criticism for

promoting hustle culture, this idea that anybody can succeed and make a living off their passion. I know that's oversimplifying. It's not what you say. No no it's not what I say, not only it's not what I say, it's not what you say, but you're Well, I mean everybody gets, right? I say in T. When crush came out.

The economy's crap. Everyone lost their their jobs. Yeah. You have the ability to use the internet. To build a business around things you like. That was Factual.

In hindsight. Yeah. It doesn't mean that I'm not Guy, I'm not the secret. If you just work, it will cut like it's just not true.

And nor have I ever said that. People are so incredibly selective. I don't even use the word hustle anymore, a word that I loved my whole life because I believed in grit. And I believe in tenacity, and I believe that work ethic is one of the variables of success. But nobody read the parts of the book where I say make sixty thousand dollars a year. And be happy.

Let there be no confusion. Mm-hmm. I'm not drippin'. by people Making money, buying BMWs, having You know

Private planes. I think there is a certain group of people on earth That love Building businesses the way people love golfing. Love being a mother, love being a doctor, love, and that I'm one of those people.

Yeah. Do you um when we think about your Your journey. From Yeah.

Childhood and and Queens and and your dad. Opening that liquor store and The work you did and and where you kinda Came to the

Now. How much of that do you attribute to to you, your values, your hard work. And how much do you attribute to luck? I worry.

That People use the word luck. to eliminate accountability on their own efforts and they give up And cease. mental control and don't realize how much control one has.

in their lives So I I play very Carefully with the word luck. Because I think people love to use it as an excuse engine. However, I think it's incredibly powerful reality. I mean you know to me the luck starts and stops.

With Tamara Vaynerchuk. To be the Firstborn son of that woman is the greatest lucky thing that ever happened to me. The way she molded me. And navigated me. Nothing.

in the outside world had any chance of competing with that. Yeah. Yep. You know, I've never said that before that way. I was in a cocoon.

Of love And accountability. You're punished. You got F's. But she made me feel like I could do anything. And so

If you ask me what drives you right now. And I've only realized this in the last five years, which is why I'm like, Oh, that's right, that's what I was doing in my twenties. I'm so damn curious. About how good I am at this. Mm.

But it's it's interesting because when you say that and articulate that, right, if somebody read a transcript of you saying that without hearing the the tone in your voice and the cadence they might think, God what a That guy's full of himself, but when you say it and you hear it It's clear that that's not how you're trying to express it. You are sounds like you're almost amazed.

That you just ha that just came to you. You just Gratitude. The way you just articulated that. If this was red, you're a douche, but if you listen to this with all the nuances of context, It feels right. And honestly. I like that.

And by the way, could you imagine a better life? Could you imagine a better life? That's Gary Baynerchek. CEO of Vayner Media, author of Crush It, co-founder of Rezi, launcher of many, many other projects, too numerous to name. And one day

Possibly? The proud owner of the New York Jets. By the way, I had a great conversation with Gary at our virtual How I Built This Summit back in May. He had all sorts of incredible insights about marketing and time management and lots more. So be on the lookout for that. It will be in your podcast feed on Thursday, August 5th. And Thanks so much for listening to the show this week.

This episode was produced by Liz Metzger with music composed by Ramteen Arablui. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Dereth Gales. Our production staff includes Casey Herman, JC Howard, Rachel Faulkner, James Delahousey, Julia Carney, Farah Safari, and Annalise Ober. Our intern is Harrison VJ Choi. And Jeff Rogers is our executive producer. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening.

how I built this. This is NPR. Yeah.

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