Take a 48-year-old averaged height Belarusian American man. Inject him with a lethal dose of gratitude and hyperactivity. Then give him an addictive thirst for social media and marketing. There you have it — a recipe for cloning the social media motor mouth that is Gary Vaynerchuk.
Vaynerchuk (or Gary Vee as his followers call him) is seemingly a man of two hats. He is a motivational speaker and a marketing executive. He has gained over 44 million followers across all his social media platforms. With 13 offices across four continents, his marketing agency VaynerMedia reportedly earned over $120 million in fees last year from blue chip corporations requiring his marketing expertise — the likes of PepsiCo, Burger King and Mondelez International.
But what is most interesting about Gary Vee lies in the background of all his social media madness and enthusiastic veneer. What is attracting millennials towards his message is indeed, valuable wisdom — but it is packaged in a refreshingly frank demeanor, sprinkled with a healthy dose of F-bombs.
Everyday I’m Hustlin’
Born in the former Soviet-controlled Belarus in 1975, Vaynerchuk tasted the bitterness of antisemitism and communism as a toddler first-hand. At the age of three, his family emigrated to the United States under the Soviet Jewry movement — a movement that advocated for the rights of Jews to escape from Soviet-controlled nations in search for a better life.
Growing up poor in a studio apartment in Queens, Vaynerchuk’s father initially found work as a stock boy at a liquor store in New Jersey. After working his way up as manager and eventually becoming owner of the store, his father dragged him into the liquor retail business at the age of 14.
As a D and F student, Harvard or Stanford were never part of Vaynerchuk’s academic trajectory. Banker or lawyer were never on the list of his life itinerary. Entrepreneurship and salesmanship were more of his thing. As a young man, trading baseball cards and mowing lawns for cash were much closer to his forte. “Trading cards and trading wine, same shit, I can do this” — he said. Thus was the beginning of WineLibrary.com — the online store he started that catapulted his father’s annual liquor revenues from $3 million to $60 million within 9 years.
Attitude for Gratitude
Vaynerchuck’s peculiar paradox is his insatiable love of capitalism coupled with his intense focus on contentment and gratitude. On the one hand — he has single handedly architected the online culture of grind and hustle — telling the youths of today that they need to be more ambitious, self-directed and robust. “Most kids these days are weak” — he says. “If you want to make money online — or anywhere—you have to grab it”.
On the other hand — he messianically preaches the values of gratitude, gratitude, and even more gratitude. “If I wake up and all my family are alive, I’m good. I’m so fired up. I don’t want shit. I don’t need shit.” At first glance, one might be perplexed by the contrast between his preachings of hustle and his preachings of gratitude. The two seems somewhat incompatible.
Hustle seems to imply a need to attain more and to be more, while gratitude implies a state of not needing or wanting anything at all. But Vaynerchuk does not see these two notions as incompatible at all. Indeed, his equation for success is Ambition + Gratitude + Patience = Success. Despite him failing horribly in math class, one cannot help but appreciate the elegance and simplicity of his equation.
A Man of Paradox
Despite being a former staunch critic of Vaynerchuk, I have gradually warmed up to his philosophies. The mistake that I made towards Vaynerchuk was to expect him to be simple and consistent. But he is not simple and consistent — he is a walking, talking paradox.
This is a 48-year-old man who proudly wears a beanie to high-level corporate meetings. He acts like an extrovert—but thinks like an introvert. He can discuss Tik-Tok dancing trends and impart deep wisdom on empathy all in the same breath.
Perhaps it was me that was too one dimensional in my initial assessment of him. If one listens closely enough, there are usually jewels of wisdom that he imparts in the midst of all the F-bombs.