Gary Vaynerchuk probably needs no introduction, but here’s a short one anyway: he took his family’s wine business from $4 to $50+ million per year.  He then did a 180 and turned himself into a marketing and social media powerhouse.  My dad is now buying wine from Gary’s newest wine site Cinderella Wine.  If they broke my dad down, that means Gary and his crew are good!

In this now-famous video, he talks about two critical elements to success – patience and passion.  You need to have patience to make it big – Gary often talks about the fact that our fathers and grandfathers built real businesses over many years, while we think we’re going to hit it big with six months of blogging.  AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN!  And it certainly won’t happen without passion – it’s nearly impossible to succeed unless you really love what you do.

As Gary said: “Look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself, ‘What do I want to do for the rest of my life?’ Do that!”

Another now-famous video that I just had to have as part of the history of my blog – here it is [ Warning: some naughty language ] :

Me and Gary in November 2009 at Robust Wine Bar – this was a great night.  Gary left at a reasonable hour – I closed down Robust at 2am – sorry Stanley!