The Making of a Wine Superstar Gary Vaynerchuk | Big Think

The Making of a Wine Superstar

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Gary Vaynerchuk recalls how he first fell in love with wine, and explains how he turned his successful career as a wine retailer into an even more successful career as a video webcast host. He also clues Big Think in on his upcoming ten-book series.

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Gary Vaynerchuk:

Gary Vaynerchuk has captured attention with his pioneering, multi-faceted approach to personal branding and business. After primarily utilizing traditional advertising techniques to build his family’s local wine business into a national industry leader, Gary rapidly leveraged social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook to promote Wine Library TV, his video blog about wine. As his viewership swelled to over 80,000 a day, doors opened to a book deal, several national TV appearances, and a flurry of speaking engagements around the world. Gary’s dual identity as both business guru and wine guy has made him the “Social Media Sommelier.”

Gary’s remarks on personal branding, social media, and business at FOWA, Strategic Profits, and South By Southwest occasioned praise from established web denizens including Kathy Sierra and earned the admiration of countless bloggers and aspiring entrepreneurs. Check out the Keynotes tab above for more video and check out Gary’s national TV appearances on the left!!

Gary’s landmark seven-figure book deal with Harper Studio was featured in The Wall Street Journal and he was recently profiled by The New York Times and Market Watch. Watch his interview with Business Week for Gary’s advice to entrepreneurs and small businesses.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: Do you have a story of when you first fell in love with wine?

Gary Vaynerchuk: Yeah. You know what funny is that my Dad had a liquor store. We were Shopper’s Discount Liquors. That was the store I grew up in.

Wine was not at play in my household. My Dad drank Vodka and Cognac because he’s a good Russian boy. That’s what we do.

I first fell in love with wine when I realized people collected it. And so my reading began at 17, 16 because I wanted to know a lot about it because people collected it. That was my hook. I was a collector. The actual loving of wine started really happening at like 22, 23, when it started going from being a commodity to being, oh, man I really like this stuff. This is interesting. Look at these crazy flavors, like how the heck did that just taste like a racquet ball? Like, those kinds of things.

So, there was one specific Amarone that I had at a tasting when I was 22, when I could really taste the chocolate. So much so that I walked outside and called my Mom. Remember when cell phones were like this big, like that. I called my Mom and I was like, “Mom, it’s going to happen. I can taste these things. I can’t believe this, but I just tasted chocolate in this wine.” And that was probably when I was, like oh, this is really getting good. I was just enjoying it.

Question: Did dissatisfaction with your retail job lead you to Wine Library TV?

Gary Vaynerchuk: I think, I turned 30 on November 14, 2005 and there is a one percent of unhappiness. Like, okay. I want to buy the New York Jets and so that's going to cost a couple billion dollars. Am I going to really make a couple billion dollars selling just wine? And the realization was I could have big, big things happen. I launched Wine Library in 1997, but the laws in this country—people watching this video right now in Boston can't buy wine from me.

So I want to do something else and at the same token, as I was feeling this itch in November, I went to a tasting in December and realized people did not have wine self-esteem. They wanted to drink the same 'ole stuff, they wanted to be jerk-offs to each other because they felt they knew something because they read it in the latest Spectator.

I just felt the wine culture had a lot of opportunity to be much cooler and there is so many places around the world that I've traveled to where there isn't this uptight aspect to the wine industry. It's much more a part of culture and daily life and I felt like I was the kind of character, I knew my personality, and my DNA, and my hustle could create this platform that, not only would be successful then by virtue of that success, would create a different kind of culture.

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