{"id":52175,"date":"2021-10-25T14:45:02","date_gmt":"2021-10-25T18:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=52175"},"modified":"2021-10-26T15:09:39","modified_gmt":"2021-10-26T19:09:39","slug":"gary-vee-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/gary-vee-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Gary Vee’s Story: From Salesman to Proto-Influencer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What is social media guru and entrepreneur Gary Vee’s story? How did he go from working in his family’s liquor store to being a self-made millionaire?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gary Vaynerchuk (or Gary Vee as he is known online) is famous today for being one of the first internet personalities and for being a very successful entrepreneur. However, Vaynerchuk wasn’t always in the spotlight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learn about Gary Vee’s backstory and how he grew to be so successful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Gary Vaynerchuk’s Story<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Gary Vee’s story starts when he and his parents immigrated from Belarus to the U.S. in 1978, when he was three years old. In 1983, Vaynerchuk\u2019s father opened a liquor store in suburban New Jersey and, when Vaynerchuk was 15, he began working in the family store. Although beer and liquor made up most of their sales, Vaynerchuk recognized that there was a culture around wine, so he began focusing on how he could tap into that community to grow the store\u2019s wine business. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While in college, Vaynerchuk got his first glimpse of the internet and immediately recognized that he could use the web to grow the store\u2019s wine business. A year later, he suggested to his father that they sell wine online. From there, it was a short road to rapid growth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1997, he launched winelibrary.com<\/a>; within a few years, the store\u2019s revenue rose from $4 million to $20 million. In 2005, he began focusing on how to leverage the rising popularity of video blogs and social sites (like MySpace and YouTube) to increase wine sales. In 2006, he launched Wine Library TV, a video blog aimed at creating a community around wine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vaynerchuk\u2019s Road to Success May Not Fit Everyone<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Vaynerchuk\u2019s casual and sometimes brash approach to tasting and talking about wine in his videos shook up the wine industry<\/a>, simultaneously upsetting traditionalists and making wine more accessible to newbies. As the vlog\u2019s following grew, Vaynerchuk\u2019s experience and success led him to co-found VaynerMedia, a full-service advertising agency<\/a> specializing in digital marketing, in 2009\u2014the same year that this book was published. Known to his millions of social media followers as Gary Vee<\/a>, he continues to be a prominent social media influencer, focusing primarily on digital marketing and business development. As of 2021, he is worth $200 million<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, critics say that Vaynerchuk\u2019s work-around-the-clock approach is unsustainable<\/a> and unscalable. While Vaynerchuk asserts that passion fuels the tireless work schedule, it may be the case that passion fuels his<\/em> incessant schedule\u2014but that might not work for everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is social media guru and entrepreneur Gary Vee’s story? How did he go from working in his family’s liquor store to being a self-made millionaire? Gary Vaynerchuk (or Gary Vee as he is known online) is famous today for being one of the first internet personalities and for being a very successful entrepreneur. However, Vaynerchuk wasn’t always in the spotlight. Learn about Gary Vee’s backstory and how he grew to be so successful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":52186,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,79,104],"tags":[523],"class_list":["post-52175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-entrepreneurship","category-marketing","tag-crush-it","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"\nGary Vee's Story: From Salesman to Proto-Influencer - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Gary Vee is known for being an internet personality and a successful entrepreneur, but it wasn't always that way. 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