Case Study: Gary Vaynerchuck
Book | Crush It
Primary tribes | @garyvee | WineLibraryTV.com
Gary started out as a brick and mortar wine seller in the family business in New Jersey, growing it into a $60+ million a year business. But, that’s just the start of his tribe-building story. A few years back, he sensed the community building and marketing opportunities in the blogging and online video worlds. And he saw them as a potential vehicle to help grow the family wine business.
Gary chose video, launching WineLibraryTV.com, a daily wine review show with a very different, real-world, edgy slant. The first two years saw slow needle movement, but, Gary stayed with it. He had this inner sense that it was going to be huge.
Fast forward to September 2009. Some 80-100,000 watch his online wine show every day and Gary has expanded his tribe into all aspects of social media, becoming not only Gary the Wine Guy, but Gary the entrepreneur, Gary the Social Media Titan, Gary the Motivator and Illuminator and, beyond being a devoted son, brother, husband and new dad…Gary, the future owner of the NY Jets.
He now has about 900,000 people following him on twitter and, earlier in 2009, he signed a 7-figure, 10 book deal with HarperStudio. His first book, Crush It, comes out in October. And, in addition to launching a standalone, social media enabled website for the book that serves as a powerful tool for his online community to evangelize it, he’s regularly brainstorming ways to partner within and without his tribe to drive early book sales. Don’t be surprised to see him tweeting for people to email him to talk about what it would take to get them to buy bulk orders.
Like Chris and Seth, Gary also gives tirelessly to his communities and, with his amazon rank pegged in the low to mid hundreds a month before the release date, the book is a likely slam dunk multi-list bestseller.