From rags to riches: how the son of poor immigrants from Belarus managed to become a millionaire in the USA

Gary Vaynerchuk, the son of practically impoverished immigrants, managed not only to find himself, but also write 5 best-selling books on business, create several companies and become mega-popular on the Web. Gary inspires millions of people of all ages to do what they love.

In 2018, Gary Vaynerchuk’s fifth book on how to build a business and attract attention on social networks, Crushing it, was published, writes “Rambler". Like the four previous books, it became a New York Times bestseller.

Gary 30% of his working time is traveling - he speaks at business conferences around the world. They listen to him because he has earned a reputation as a digital Nostradamus. The businessman almost unmistakably guesses where the attention of buyers and customers is concentrated, in which social network to publish what kind of content and how to win the endless love of subscribers.

In his video blog on YouTube - more than a million, and in his Instagram account 3,4 million subscribers. At the first meeting, Vaynerchuk is incredibly annoying - he swears, looks egocentric and neurasthenic. But then you delve into what he is saying, and it becomes clear that you are facing a professional whose experience is worth it to adopt.

Difficult start

Vainerchuk was born in the Belarusian city of Bobruisk, says AIN. In the 1970s, when the USSR exchanged its Jews for American grain, the boy was three years old, and the family moved to New York, in the Queens area. My father did not speak English, he could only afford to rent a small apartment with 8 people, and worked as an assistant in a liquor store. According to Vaynerchuk, when his father received several promotions in New Jersey, the family moved to Edison.

In Edison, Vinerchuk's entrepreneurial activity began. “I made literally all my friends work for me,” says the entrepreneur. Young Vaynerchuk developed a business selling lemonade.

I had 8 stands with lemonade all over Edison. I rode a bike between them and collected the proceeds. Almost like Tony Soprano.

At the age of 11, Vaynerchuk opened a business selling baseball cards. The popularity of this venture is easy to evaluate by revenue - after two years, the entrepreneur earned from two to three thousand dollars over the weekend. He himself stood in shopping centers and offered visitors rare and not very cards.

“If you are 13, you have several thousand dollars hidden under the mattress and you are not selling marijuana, which means you are doing something right,” Vainerchuk believes.

The life of the young entrepreneur was ruined by his father. A very loud match was approaching, and Vainerchuk was preparing a collection of cards for sale. Father entered the room and said that Gary will grind ice in his store today and next weekend.

I cried for 40 minutes in a row - all the way from home to the store. Then he asked how much I would receive. "$ 2 per hour," was the answer. And then I cried even more.

Vainerchuk spent the next year and a half every weekend and all holidays in the basement of his father’s store. The working day lasted 10 hours, the salary was $ 20 per day. Compared to the entrepreneur’s previous earnings, this was a complete failure.

“My life changed when I was 16,” says the entrepreneur. Every day people came to his father's shop and asked for the same bottle of wine. Vaynerchuk found out that this wine was well responded in the magazine Wine Spectator. “All these people came, asked exactly about this wine and left. I could not understand why we do not make them our customers. ”

During the next shift, Vainerchuk came up with the idea to create a pre-sunset system. To all clients who asked about wine that was not there, he suggested leaving contacts and payment. Then he called back when the wine entered the store.

A week later, a man entered the store and asked for the same wine from the Wine Spectator. I asked how much he needed. He replied - 6 mailboxes. I thought, "Hmm, an alcoholic." And he was a collector.

“Then I realized that there is a separate layer of people who like to not only drink, but also to collect wine,” says Vaynerchuk. The entrepreneur spent the last classes of the school studying wine catalogs, reviewers of observers and sommeliers. “I was fucked at Saturn,” Vainerchuk jokes.

At the university, Vainerchuk's friend introduced him to the Internet. At first, friends used a computer and access to the Network to communicate with girls, but the entrepreneur immediately realized that he could sell wine products here.

Vaynerchuk Sr.'s store was called Shopper's Discount Liquors. His son wanted to build a brand, so in 1997 he bought the domain winelibrary.com and renamed his father's store. A year later, Vaynerchuk began managing the store and in seven years its turnover grew to $ 60 million.

“I used banner ads, mailing lists, radio shows, television ads. But the revelation was different. We live in a unique time, because for the first time, the buyer also has a voice, ”Vainerchuk means social networks and interaction with customers in them.

Customers who subscribe to the Wine Library on Twitter leave 60% more money on Vainerchuk’s online store than everyone else. “We are creating context. We ask readers a question about wine, they respond, feel more attached and buy from us, ”says the entrepreneur.

Do you think it's cool to answer questions about which wine is right for fish? 68 times a year? This is shit. But I did it for 000 hours every day. And this is not Pinot Grigio, that's enough to think so.

Promoting yourself as a brand

Gary Vaynerchuk is an example of how to build a personal brand on the network. Until 2015, he produced a large amount of content, hosted AskGaryVee shows on YouTube. But then he stopped creating content, and began, as he himself puts it, to document. His assistant walks around the businessman with a camera everywhere, takes almost every step, all the speeches, many meetings and business negotiations, mounts and uploads to the network.

An important tip from Vaynerchuk is that if you are promoting yourself as a brand, you should be many everywhere. You need to focus on any viewer. Someone is comfortable listening to audio podcasts, someone is used to videos on YouTube, for some, the native platform is Instagram. In each social network, you need to upload content regularly, adjusting it to the laws of the platform.

If you shot a video, separate the audio track and post the podcast. Take screenshots, put your quote on top - this is suitable for Facebook and Instagram. Cut the video into pieces, accompany with subtitles for easy viewing without sound and post on your Instagram account. Decrypt the text from the video for a blog or site. So from one video you get content for all social networks.

Self understanding

Despite the fact that Gary is an entrepreneur and his main audience consists of businessmen and startups, he appeals a lot to those who are not destined to start their own business. Gary talks about it rather rudely, but in the case. According to statistics, only 4% of the population can independently conduct business, but nowadays, the media and social networks promote the idea that everyone can become an entrepreneur. Unfortunately, this leads to the fact that many young businessmen do not just go bankrupt when the investor’s money runs out, but also part with life without enduring stress.

Therefore, Vaynerchuk talks a lot about how important it is to understand yourself, to know your strengths and weaknesses and not to meddle in business if this does not suit you.

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