Gary Vaynerchuk Speaks

Last night, in an Atlanta GA Cost Plus World Market, Gary Vaynerchuk appeared to sign his best-selling book Crush It. I for one was really jacked up at the chance to meet a phenom like “Gary V”.

Most of the people I mention Gary to have an extremely puzzled look and are a bit perplexed. For those that don’t know Gary I say he’s the Oprah of Social Media Marketing. He’s got thousands of posts and videos online that are building a digital [$$$] empire. He’s on his way to buying the NY Jets. (If you own the Jet’s I’d be thinking up a number.)

Here, in my favorite Wine Library TV episode, Gary pairs fine wines with popular cereals. What genious. Inspired by this episode I asked him about my Chateau Mouton Rothschild which you’ll see in the video here.

I’d estimate about a hundred or so showed up last night and among them were plenty of the social media folks I’ve had a chance to meet this year. I won’t drop any names but there was quite a bit of internet juice from the local IM’ers, tweeterati, bloggers, and PR pimps, of which I am one.

Meeting Gary was a great experience and I was knocked out with his genuine friendliness. This rock star of planet media (and a damn Yankee!) was the most pleasant celeb I’ve ever run across. He was warm, open, and gracious, and I assume that others there felt the same.

I’m including both an audio file and a video of Gary’s appearance and the talk is complete up to the point of about 30 mins of Q&A but my flip camera just ran out of gas. The audio is enhanced and easier to hear, and is pulled from the video, which has more prelim banter and crowd stuff.

In addition to what is covered here in the video/audio files, I wanted to share a couple of sites of importance during this discussion. First is Vook.com . Video Book= vook. Just see the site and you’ll get it.

Gary mentioned, as he’s said before, that the commercial internet is only 15 years old and “hasn’t had sex yet”. He thinks Jeff Bezos is likely to be the smartest of all the tech/web/business entrepreneurs, and that Zappos is the most brilliant commercial site to date.

OK, so here’s the video. Enjoy!