Crush It! (2 page)

Everybody wins in these scenarios. Stan and Joanne may seem like the big winners because they’re enjoying some fame, yet off in the back room, if Steve and Marvin are living their passion, believe me, they’re rocking that party hard. In fact, for all the Web fame and national TV appearances and coverage I have received, it’s the behind-the-scenes brand building that has given me more happiness than anything else.

Maybe you’re reading this and thinking,
Cool, I’m a businessperson, I don’t have to think about my passion, I just have to find someone else who’s passionate and use their content to create a business.
Maybe. If your passion, your true-blue passion, isn’t business development and marketing and sales, you need to figure out what it is and do that instead, otherwise you’ll fail. If you do have that passion for biz dev, however, you may not need a partner at all. I didn’t.

it’s up to you

The messages in this book are timeless: Do what makes you happy. Keep it simple. Do the research. Work hard. Look ahead. Remember that when I started Wine Library TV in 2006, Facebook was still a college play; I didn’t want to be the creepy guy peddling wine to underage kids, so I couldn’t use it to bring an audience to my online show. Twitter had just been born and no one knew what it was. Once these social networking platforms caught on with the general population, however, I was all over them and knew how to make them work for me; but they only accelerated my success—they didn’t create it. Keep that in mind as you start to put your dreams and plans into action. The tools we’re going to discuss in this book will spread your ideas and give your personal brand more traction in far less time and for far less money than you might have been able to do otherwise,
but they are only as powerful as the person who uses them.

Their power is also only as strong as their most recent incarnation. Technology and innovation and consumer demand are working together at such a frenzied pace that by the time you read this book some of the capabilities and reach of these platforms will have already changed. Regardless of what changes we see in the little details in the user interface or individual features of these tools, they won’t affect the big picture—you can pimp your ride, but that doesn’t change the essence of how you travel in your car. These tools will take you to your audience, where you can follow them, reach out, and make them listen.

I can show you how to use social media to plant a garden or
build a whole new house. Some of you want to be mayor of the whole damn city, and I can help you get there. But no matter how modestly or high you set your sights, you have to keep tending and adjusting and making improvements once I’m gone. No matter how successful you get, you cannot slack off or the grass is going to grow, the paint is going to peel, and the roads will start to crumble. Stop hustling, and everything you learn here will be useless. Your success is entirely up to you.

turn water into wine

Here’s the deal: if you want it badly enough, the money is there, the success is there, and the fulfillment is there. All you have to do is take it. So quit whining, quit crying, quit with the excuses. If you already have a full-time job, you can get a lot done between 7:00
P.M.
and 2:00
A.M.
(9:00
P.M.
to 3:00
A.M.
if you’ve got kids), so learn to love working during those predawn hours. I promise it won’t be hard if you’re doing what you love more than anything else. I don’t care if your passion is rehabilitating abandoned ferrets; if you learn to tap into everything the digital world has to offer, you can turn water into wine—you can transform what you love into a legacy-building business that makes a crapload of money, and still be true to yourself.

Ultimately this book is not about making a million dollars, although it just might help you do that. It’s about ensuring your own happiness by enabling you to live every day passionately and productively. Business is not just about making money, and if you think it is, you’re broken. If you’re already familiar with the social marketing tools we’ll discuss in this book, I hope you’ll
pay attention to the big picture. It’s too easy to forget what really matters once you’re digging deep in these trenches.

Learn to navigate the digital waters of social marketing to build a business and promote a personal brand based around what you love most, and you will only be limited by how far you want to sail. Social media tools—Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and all the rest—are modern-day galleons that will carry you to the new world, allowing you to share your passion, differentiate yourself from your competitors, and deliver your brand to the broadest possible audience.

My secret to success is just one guy’s way of doing things, of course, but do things my way—adapted to what works for your DNA, of course—and total happiness is yours.

I
am a walking contradiction. No one believes in himself more than I do, yet I’m well aware of how unimportant I really am. I couldn’t care less what people think about me, but I do respect and pay attention to what they say. When viewers posted comments on a recent episode of Diggnation (one of the biggest video blogs on the Internet) saying that I was obnoxious in the forums of the show, I stayed up until 4:00
A.M.
apologizing to every one of them. I love building businesses and launching new ventures, but the only reason I value money is that I’m going to need a lot of it when I buy the New York Jets (I’m not kidding, I really do want to own the Jets! This has been an obsession of mine since third grade). And although the story of how I became what
ABC News
called the “Social Media Sommelier,” Slate referred to as “the wine guru for the YouTube era,” and
Nightline
named “the Wayne’s World wine aficionado” is in some ways the most common immigrant-makes-good story ever told, it’s also
unheard of, not only because the technology that made it possible didn’t exist until a few years ago but because no one else has my DNA.

For a business guy, I talk a lot about DNA, and this book will be no exception. That’s because I firmly believe that the path to your successful business literally lies in the twists and turns of your own double helix. In fact, I should probably just credit the success of Wine Library TV, the online wine-tasting video blog that put me on the social marketing map, to my mom and dad, who gave me the DNA that enabled me to take my career to a thunderous level. Then again, lots of ambitious people have been born with great DNA and yet eventually found themselves at a professional standstill, frustrated, miserable, stuck. Why? Because they weren’t doing what they loved more than anything else in the world; they weren’t doing what they were born to do.

you gotta be you

I got lucky. From a very early age I knew and accepted the dictates of my DNA, which were that I was born to be a people person and to build businesses. Those were and have always been my passions. I knew I was made to be an entrepreneur and not once did I try to be anything else, as evidenced by the D-and F-infested report cards I’d bring home that gave my mother conniptions. Even though I hated to make my mother cry, I also knew that I had to be me, and if that meant hiding the
Beckett Baseball Guide
inside my math book during class so I could read up for my next baseball card trading show, that’s the way it had to be. Too many people ignore their DNA, however, to
conform to what their families or society expects of them. A lot of people also decide that professional success has to look a certain way. That’s how someone born to design bikes winds up becoming a lawyer, or someone who loves experimenting with makeup works every day pitching someone else’s overpriced brand to malls around the country, or someone who cannot go a day without jotting down some ideas for their next poem spends most of their time at the helm of an emergency IT department. To me that’s insane.

I’ve been dying to do this book, not because I think I can help everyone who wants to become a millionaire—although I’m pretty sure I can—but because it drives me crazy to know that there are still people out there who haven’t figured out that they don’t have to settle. There is no excuse for anyone living in the United States or anywhere else right now to slog through his or her entire life working at jobs they hate, or even jobs they simply don’t love, in the name of a paycheck or a sense of responsibility. The Internet makes it possible for anyone to be 100 percent true to themselves and make serious cash by turning what they love most into their personal brand. There no longer has to be a difference between who you are and what you do.

Now, as cuddly and cozy as this follow-your-bliss message might seem, make no mistake—if you do things the way I tell you to do them, you’re going to work harder than you’ve ever worked in your life. But I’m of the opinion that hardship shapes us. Coming from nothing served my family well. It also gave me the hunger to want it all, and the wisdom to know that none of it matters. I’m convinced, in fact, that if things had been a little easier for my family in the early days, I never would have gotten
to where I am now. To tell that story, we have to go back to the Old Country.

coming to america

My family moved here from Belarus, in the former Soviet Union, in 1978. My father, Sasha, was inspired to come to the States by a great-uncle who had emigrated years before. He came back to Belarus to visit his sister and that’s how my father learned that America was a place where you could build a life for yourself according to your own rules, and you didn’t have to wait six hours in line to buy a loaf of bread, either. A natural entrepreneur, my father knew that America was where his family’s future lay. As Jews we were given special permission to seek political asylum abroad, and after months of working through red tape and cooling our heels in Austria and Italy, we finally landed in Queens, New York. Unfortunately, my great-uncle died unexpectedly right before our journey began, yet his children were kind to us—Mom, Dad, three-year-old me (then named Gennady), my grandmother, and my great-grandparents—until we could move into a studio apartment arranged by a Jewish foundation. We arrived certain that the streets were paved with proverbial gold.

Grandma got mugged within about six weeks. The economy was tanking, and the construction job my dad had arranged before arriving to this country evaporated within a few months. Again my great-uncle’s family helped out by offering my dad a job as a stock boy in one of their liquor stores in Clark, New Jersey.

Times were tough. I still get emotional when I think about the time my parents walked a few miles to and from Kmart to
buy me not one, but two
Star Wars
action figures for my sixth birthday. For families on a tight budget like us—my sister, Elizabeth, was born by then—that was a big deal. I don’t remember anyone complaining much about money, though, or about anything else for that matter. We had our health and we had one another, what more did we need?

We assimilated quickly—my parents changed my name to Gary when we arrived—but inside the home, it was still Belarus. No way was my mother plopping meat loaf down for dinner like those American moms. In our house we ate stuffed cabbage and smoked herring. We never took medicine, only tea; and if you were really sick, you rubbed vodka on your chest. I never wanted to tell anyone I had gotten a cut or burn on my hand because they would immediately suggest I pee on it.

My dad was smart and he knew how to hustle, so it didn’t take long for him to work his way up and become manager, then co-owner of the small liquor store in Clark. By 1983, he had bought a store the size of an office with a partner in Springfield, and later he built that same store up to four thousand square feet. Years later, after I got involved in the business, we built the current Wine Library on the same property. It’s forty thousand square feet, a far cry from the original store, which was called Shopper’s Discount Liquors and looked exactly what you would think a Shopper’s Discount Liquors should look like.

My parents were hungry—hungry to provide for their family, and hungry to win. My dad worked his ass off, so much that I really didn’t get to know him until I was fourteen years old. Yet I have tremendous respect for what he did for us. Thanks to his hard work and chutzpah, we became the epitome of the American success
story. In 1978, we were broke and couldn’t speak English; in 1985, I was the first kid on my block to have Nintendo. You can see why my dad is my hero. My gratitude for what he did drives my own ambition to take my business to higher and higher levels.

rise of the entrepreneur

On the surface my dad and I are very different, though I have a lot of his fire and hustle. I’m a lot like my mom, superemotional, and a true people person, open to everyone from day one but very strong on the inside. Dad is a tougher guy to get close to. He is slower to let you in, but once he does, you are family. I respect him to no end, but I wish more people could get to know him. The other big difference between us is that he allows his emotions to lead his decisions. I am all about passion, but letting your emotional trigger finger make your business calls is a big no-no in my book.

Observing me from an early age, however, no one could deny that my dad’s entrepreneurial DNA ran strong through me. The only thing I loved more than running a business and making money was the New York Jets. My neighbor always said that no season was safe. In the summer I would wash her car, in the fall I’d rake her leaves, and I’d shovel her snow through the winter. There was one spring when I cut the flowers in her yard, then rang her doorbell and sold a bouquet back to her. I’m still kind of proud of that initiative; the profit margin was amazing.

By the time I was eight years old, I had seven lemonade stands and was raking in crazy amounts of cash for someone who was still too scared to ride a bike. My fear was problematic consid
ering that my franchises were located all around the neighborhood. Everyone could hear me coming from a mile away as I roared around on my Big Wheel to pick up my money.

My real business
education began when I caught baseball fever. My mom had taken me to a flea market, where I bought some packs of baseball cards as well as a copy of the
Beckett Baseball Card Price Guide.
It revealed that there was actual value to the cards I had bought. I can still remember the feeling as I realized that my world was changed. It was the same feeling I’d get later when I saw the market potential for wine, when I saw the Internet for the first time, and when I watched the first video blog. Game over. Good-bye lemonade stands, hello baseball cards. We moved to Hunterdon County, New Jersey, when I was in eighth grade. Baseball cards were on like Donkey Kong at my new school, and within weeks I was raking in the dough.

One day the local mall personnel announced they were hosting a baseball card show, and no way was I going to miss it. I was already a hundred-dollar player thanks to selling cards to my eighth-grade classmates, so I mustered up my courage and asked my dad for the biggest number I could think of—a thousand dollars. Unbelievably (though in hindsight that’s just who my dad is), he gave it to me. The money was burning a hole in my pocket, so I immediately went to Costco and spent it on several boxes of cards. I knew they weren’t a good year but I was impatient (the last time I would ever be that). Sure enough, when I opened them and looked up their value in the price guide I found out they were worth only about two hundred dollars. Oh, man, I was in trouble.

My mom drove my two partners, Jason Riker and John Chur-cak, and me to the mall so we could buy a table at the show. We had agreed ahead of time that we wouldn’t buy a table if it cost more than twenty bucks. We asked for the promoter, and this four-hundred-pound Italian dude comes out. “Hey mister,” I said, “how much for the show?” A hundred and fifty bucks. $150! I handed over the money, shook the guy’s hand, and walked away, ignoring my friends’ gaping mouths. My brain was telling me this was a terrible idea, but my gut said, “Go for it,” and I’ve always listened to my gut.

By the time
I got home and told my dad and mom what I had done I was almost in tears, but true to form, they didn’t throttle me, even though I’m sure they wanted to. Instead, my dad said he hoped that losing the money would be worth the experience. He’s a wise man, my dad. I went to my room determined to show him that I wasn’t in this just for the experience. The fire was burning, and there was no way I was going to lose.

The next day we set up our table and the first thing I did was market research—I walked around the show checking out what everyone else was selling. I then adjusted, repricing every card we had that was available for less than anyone else was selling it. We crushed it and made straight cash. From then on, I did every show I could. My mom and fellow card dealer and best friend Brandon Warnke’s mom would drive us in the snow or rain to Bridgewater, Hillsborough, Edison, Raritan, anywhere there was a show, and every time I’d dominate. I had just learned one of my first lessons in business—scarcity breeds desire. My strategy was simple, I’d buy sets that weren’t mentioned in
Beckett
’s and pro
mote them to create a market. You’re thinking, jeez, Gary, what a scam artist you were. Not at all. I was an optimist. A pessimist would have seen the cards were unlisted and assumed they were worthless. I, on the other hand, quite innocently decided that if these cards weren’t in the guide, they had to be valuable.

I paid my dad back his thousand dollars in about three or four months, and I continued to earn that kind of money every weekend I could. Then I turned fifteen and got dragged out of the mall and into the liquor store.

learning the trade

To go from self-made baseball card king of Hunterdon County rolling in the dough to grunt bagging ice for two bucks an hour was a hard fall. It wasn’t until I turned sixteen that I was even allowed up on the floor and became a cashier. Not too exciting, but it beat hours of shoveling ice and dusting shelves. I couldn’t drink anything we sold (my parents were strict about that), but I was good at regurgitating data, so when business was slow I’d flip through trade magazines to pass the time and then use what I’d learned to help customers. One of those magazines was
Wine Spectator.
Now, the store was called Shopper’s Discount Liquors for a reason. Most of our business came from selling the hard stuff. Beer, too, was a big seller—the beer cooler took up about 33 percent of the entire store. But I learned two things from my time behind the cash register. First, thanks to
Wine Spectator,
I learned that there was a whole cultural cachet to drinking wine and that people collected it the same way I collected baseball cards,
Star Wars
toys, and comic books. That was interesting to
me. I also started noticing a pattern: people would come in to buy their Absolut or their Johnnie Walker and I knew that I or any staff could talk until we were blue in the face about the other brands, they were still walking out with their Absolut or their Johnnie Walker. Those brands were just too established. The wine buyer, though, would often walk in looking a little lost and spend ten minutes tentatively peering at labels as though hoping a bottle would jump out and spare them from making a decision. I knew from my experience with the baseball card business that people want to be told what’s good and valuable, and that they enjoy feeling like they’ve been turned on to something not everyone can appreciate.