WHO IS GARY VAYNERCHUK ANYWAYS??
Gary Vay-Ner-Chuk!
Back in April of 2008 I responded to a craigslist ad for wine sales people. The economy was in full meltdown, I was financially screwed and needed a 2nd job to try to save my house. I ended up selling wine inside Costco’s for Cameron Hughes for 19 months straight. During that period I took 6 days off of work, literally 6 days! The sales experience was awesome, Cameron is a great guy to work for and the people I met who work for Costco and their customers were great!
In an effort to better educate myself on the wines I was selling I started searching the internet. I couldn’t afford to taste dozens of wines a week, but I could read reviews and reference them. That’s when I came across Gary VAY-NER-CHUK!
I literally laughed out loud, up late at night trying to be all serious about wine and this guy just destroyed it! I wasn’t around during the early early days of Wine Library TV so I didn’t get to see the transformation from the quiet guy in the first video to the guy that everyone knows from WLTV. One of my all time favorite episodes is “How to train your palate”. Being exposed to Gary completely changed the way I sold wine. I went on to sell over 1,000 cases of wine, working only Saturday’s and Sunday’s and without giving out any samples.
Then Gary went on tour with Crush it! I saw him speak at the Mesa Hilton, in Mesa, Arizona. It was AWESOME! It was October 2009 (I think) and he was already crushing it in terms of the live stage show the performance and the substance. I decided to follow his advice and start blogging about something I was interested in…wine!
A few months later I received an email from Gary asking if I would be interested in writing content for his wine website/community cork’d. I thought it was my friends pranking me so I didn’t respond. But he emailed again, and boy am I lucky that I responded that time!
I spent 2010 producing 1-3 articles a week. I was paired up with Jon Troutman and he worked tirelessly to help make me a better writer. He would suggest edits and taught me a lot of techniques for writing more engaging content. Which, if you’re reading this I’ve probably forgotten half of! In addition to the coaching and learning experience I got access to the greater wine community that I never would have without being able to name drop that I wrote for Gary Vaynerchuk.
In the summer of 2010 Gary travelled back to Arizona for the Judgment of Arizona, a wine tasting that pitted Arizona wines against wines of the world. After the contest was over, I was kind of just minding my own business while everyone gathered around Gary to ask him questions. I didn’t really have anything to ask, didn’t want to be a bother so I just watched. After a while he got up approached me and asked if I wanted to go to dinner!
That dinner, looking back was HUGE! We were joined by some other people, there were 5 of us total. Just think of that! What do you think a 2 hour dinner session with Gary would be worth these days? Two things that Gary said really stood out for me. First, he said something to the effect of “I know we’re all getting along great here, but I want you guys to keep this going. You don’t need me here to do this, keep in touch with each other.” I’m still in fairly regular contact with a couple of the guys.
The second thing that he remarked on was something to the effect of “I feel like something great is about to start. Like I just feel it, I feel it in my guts. Like I’m on the cusp of something huge.” He couldn’t have had better intuition. This was probably right around the time that was very first putting in place the pieces to start Vayner Media. In case you don’t know, Vayner Media is now a 600 person digital shop with $100,000,000 annual sales.
March 8th, Gary is set to release his newest book: The Ask Gary Vee Book. This book is based on the Ask Gary Vee Show. This show is available on podcast, and youtube and focuses on entrepreneurship and leadership among other things. It’s a really amazing show. You should seriously be watching it. Here’s what I like about it. You get to see a super intuitive guy think on his feet. I don’t know of a better ad lib, think fast, think on your feet person in the world.
The reason I’m writing this post is to, in my small way, the only way I can, repay Gary for the opportunity that was given to me. Gary is a guy who gives gives and gives without asking. He didn’t ask me to write this, I’m just doing it. It’s the right thing to do.
Here’s what I’m going to do: I am going to goto Amazon and buy 8 books (to start) Why? Because if you buy 8 books and email the receipt to super8@vaynermedia you will be put in for a drawing and the winner gets a 1 hour solo session with Gary! Normally you would need to buy 1,000 books or shell out serious $cash$ money for that!
But I’m not doing it for the chance to win something, I’d be doing it anyways. I am doing it because I am going to be giving away this new book to my clients. I think the knowledge, the actionable information is super awesome. Even more than that, I think the value that I got from one on one tutoring from Jon Troutman for a year and all the exposure is worth a lot. I can’t pay $ for it, but I can write, I can promote, I can evangelize the gospel of Gary Vee.
GO TO THESE LINKS RIGHT NOW
LIVE STREAM SUPER 8 FEBRUARY 23RD 10AM-6PM
WINE LIBRARY TV: HOW TO GET YOUR PALATE TRAINED
Weekly Wine Journal 