Reading List: #AskGaryVee

After graduating from college in 1998, Gary Vaynerchuk took over his father’s New Jersey liquor store. In five years, he took it from a $3 million business to a $60 million one. Vaynerchuk accomplished the feat largely by canny use of e-commerce and social media, including the first YouTube wine webcast, Wine Library TV. Started in 2006, the show ran until 2011, with up to 90,000 viewers for its daily webcasts.

Related: First Work Smart, Then Work Hard. (And Hustle 24/7/365.)

Vaynerchuk parlayed that success into a social media consulting agency called Vaynermedia, a 10-book $1 million deal with Harper Studio, and the new YouTube show The #AskGaryVee Show, in which Vaynerchuk answers viewer questions about entrepreneurship, social media and branding.

“I’m a talker,” writes Vaynerchuk, explaining why he prefers video for getting out his message. #AskGaryVee reads like transcripts from the show, and that’s OK when the information being dispensed is this persuasive and accessible. Vaynerchuk answers questions large and small, from whether a business in a non-English-speaking country should use English in social media to how Instagram will evolve. Vaynerchuk’s enthusiasm is infectious.

By Gary Vaynerchuk
March; HarperBusiness; $30

This article appears in the March 2016 issue of SUCCESS magazine.