Gary Vaynerchuk is the loudest man in business advice, and the strategy underneath it is patience
Gary Vaynerchuk
Loud in the micro, patient in the macro
The public image is a man shouting at a camera about how you are wasting your life. It is not an unfair image; he built it deliberately, and he has monetised it thoroughly. But it obscures a genuinely strange fact about how Gary Vaynerchuk actually operates, which is that almost nothing he has done was fast.
Wine Library TV ran daily from 2006 to 2011. A thousand episodes of a man reviewing wine to an audience that, at the start, did not exist. That is five years of showing up before the internet agreed he was worth watching. Whatever that is, it is not a hustle.
Micro speed, macro patience
He has a phrase for it, and it is four words long: micro speed, macro patience. Move absurdly fast on the day-to-day and be absurdly slow about what you expect back. The frantic half is real, and it is the only half that travels well on social media, so it is the one everybody quotes. The other half is where the actual decisions get made.
The evidence is in the arc. A family liquor store in New Jersey, joined at fourteen, taken over and rebuilt into Wine Library at $60 million a year. VaynerMedia founded with his brother in 2009, past 600 people and $100 million in revenue within seven years, and now VaynerX around it. Resy sold to American Express. Empathy Wines sold to Constellation. Early money into the companies everyone wishes they had backed. None of that is a quick win; it is one compounding thing after another over thirty years.
And then the tell, which is better than any of the business results. At fourteen he worked out that he was never going to be the quarterback of the New York Jets, and decided he would buy the team instead. He has said he is more romantic about the pursuit of buying them than about owning them. A man whose whole brand is urgency has organised his life around a goal he might reach in his seventies, and enjoys the waiting.
The objection, and what survives it
The criticism is real and worth stating: he has been called a snake oil salesman, and the hustle gospel he helped popularise has a body count of burned-out people who took the volume as the lesson and missed the timeline. When a message optimised for a fifteen-second clip meets someone in a bad spot, the fifteen-second version is the one that lands. That is a genuine cost of the format he chose.
What survives it is the biography, which is not a story anyone can sell you. A three-year-old arrives in Queens through refugee resettlement. He works in his father's store. He notices the internet before the wine industry does, and he points a camera at himself every single day for five years.
Skip Crush It! and go find the early Wine Library TV episodes instead. Bad lighting, no audience, a Jets glass on the desk. It is the least polished thing he has ever made and by far the most convincing.
Micro speed, macro patience.
Gary, on the four words that contradict most of what people assume about him
The Rundown
The things Gary has actually shipped.
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Wine Library
His father's liquor store, rebuilt from $3M to $60M a year. Where the internet instinct first paid off.
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Wine Library TV
A thousand daily episodes, 2006 to 2011, most of them to nobody. The patience argument, filmed.
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VaynerMedia
Founded 2009 with his brother AJ. 600 people and $100M by 2016, now inside VaynerX with PureWow and Gallery Media.
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Resy and Empathy Wines
Sold to American Express and Constellation Brands. The quiet exits behind the loud persona.
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The Jets
Decided at fourteen he would buy them. Says he prefers the chase to the trophy, which explains more than any of his books.
Common questions about Gary Vaynerchuk
- Who is Gary Vaynerchuk?
- Gary Vaynerchuk, known as GaryVee, is an entrepreneur born in Babruysk, Belarus, who arrived in New York at three through refugee resettlement. He grew his father's liquor store into Wine Library, from $3 million to $60 million a year, founded VaynerMedia in 2009, and chairs VaynerX. He is also an author and investor.
- What is VaynerMedia?
- VaynerMedia is the social-media-focused digital agency Gary Vaynerchuk founded in 2009 with his brother AJ. By 2016 it had around 600 employees and $100 million in revenue, serving Fortune 500 clients. It sits inside VaynerX, which also owns Gallery Media Group and PureWow.
- What does macro patience, micro speed mean?
- It is Gary Vaynerchuk's core operating idea: move extremely fast on daily execution while being extremely patient about outcomes, thinking in twenty to forty year terms rather than quarters. It is the half of his message that gets quoted least.
- What was Wine Library TV?
- A daily online wine show Gary Vaynerchuk hosted from 2006 to 2011, running to roughly a thousand episodes before being replaced by The Daily Grape.
- Does Gary Vaynerchuk want to buy the New York Jets?
- Yes. He decided at fourteen that since he would never play quarterback for them he would buy the team instead, and has described himself as an owner-in-waiting. He has said he is more romantic about the pursuit than about the ownership.
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