Gary Vaynerchuk is the owner of Wine Library, the chairman of Cork’d and host of his daily show Wine Library TV. He is the ‘Face of Wine’ for today’s young generation. He has assisted wine lovers to realize their own passions.
Vaynerchuk was born on 14th November 1975 in Babruysk, U.S.S.R and moved to New Jersey, United States in 1978. He attended Mount Ida College and after graduation started transforming his father’s liquor store into something much bigger. He renamed the store ‘Wine Library’ and started video blogging through his ‘Wine Library TV’ which is a broadcast on everything about wine. Vaynerchuk boosted the sales of the Wine Library from 4 million dollars to 60 million. He is a wine enthusiast which helped him become immensely successful in his business. Gary Vaynerchuk’s latest venture is ‘VaynerMedia’.
With his strong and magnetic charm he is a people’s favorite. Even though it might seem like his life is like a movie in which he spends most of his time in a high wine bar with models but in fact Vaynerchuk works 15 hours a day and has very less time leisure time. He is happily married and has a daughter. What he does like to spend his very little free time on is football. Being a New York Jets fan the team is often seen in his internet video series. A large portion of his fortune comes from his Wine Library TV project. He is friends with influential people like Wayne Gretzky and Kevin Rose. He is ranked among America’s top wine critics and his status was confirmed when his name appeared in the ‘Decanter Power List’ in 2009.
Gary Vaynerchuk released his first book called ‘Crush It! Why Now is the Time to Cash in on your Passion’ in 2009. The book climbed to number one of the Amazon Best Seller list and was number 2 on New York Times Hardcover Advice bestseller list. In 2011 he released another book, a follow up of his previous one, named ‘The Thank You Economy’ which also landed at number two on the New York Times Hardcover Advice & Misc. bestseller list. His surging business, blog viewers of more than 100,000 per show and a large number of Twitter followers, Vaynerchuk is a perfect example of entrepreneurial success. He is among the ‘Top 49 Most Influential Men of 2009’ at AskMens.com.
Vaynerchuk is called the first Wine Guru of the YouTube era and the ‘wine world’s new superstar’. He has also received several other awards and honors such as the ‘Best Wine Podcast or Videoblog’ in the American Wine Blog Awards in 2007. He was the youngest recipient of the 2003 Market Watch magazine business award of ‘Market Watch Leader’. He was the ‘Small Business Big Shot’ in 2011 according to the Wall Street Journal. Vaynerchuk is also known as the ‘king of social media’ due to his cult-like following on the internet. He is among the most followed people on Twitter and has a maxed out friend limit on his Facebook account. He is also the social media consultant to many big companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Google, Pepsi, Proctor & Gamble and Disney.
