This is Tropical Music, episode 15.
Well, hello and welcome.
We're missing the presidential debate, but it's okay.
Because we are multiple T-Boat.
We are El Gato-ing.
Because I have El Gato ITV for the Mac.
And that's why I'm recording it.
But it doesn't matter that we're missing the presidential debate,
because tonight we're going to meet one of our favorite wine people,
Mr. Gary Vaynerchuk.
He's doing a book signing right here in Miami.
He came to Miami finally.
And then we're going to have a meet-up at Cefalo.
It's at a wine bar.
It's this wine place in Coconut Rock.
Very nice.
Anyways, we'll continue from books and books.
That's where the book signing is happening.
And we have here Gary's book.
One hundred and one wine.
One hundred and one wine is guaranteed to inspire and delight
and bring through the world.
We'll be reading this while I'm driving.
Here we are waiting for Gary.
It is tough to be an enemy territory, isn't it?
No, we always lose.
No, it's been a good one.
Yes, that was a big win by you guys.
I won a lot of money, by the way, in the Dawgs.
You know, watching that Jess Patriots game,
I knew that the Patriots sucked.
I thought that was a good opportunity.
Thank you so much for being here.
It's a lot of fun.
I've been traveling around the country and doing a lot of these events.
And, you know, to have this many people show up on Friday night,
I appreciate it because I know there's a lot of other things
that people can be doing.
And so I appreciate that.
I'm glad you're here.
We have a lot of great wines.
I want to thank Galen who just introduced me.
I would not be here without him.
My family immigrated to the U.S. in 78.
We lived in a studio apartment the size of half of this room
with eight of my family members.
It was hardcore.
It was poor city, you know, and one of the jobs my dad got
was as a stock boy in a liquor store.
And so that's how it started.
And so I've always, you know, attributed wine
to being very good to my family.
And so I built a very large business selling wine.
And then as my passion for the Internet and social networking
and brand building continued to grow,
and this opportunity started coming out with a new social web
when, you know, people were thinking that my space
was for people to put up risque pictures of themselves
wearing jeans and strings or whatever.
I kind of saw it as an opportunity to build brand.
And I felt that wine was broken.
In late 2005, I was doing a lot of events for New York CEOs
that was really the base of my business.
And I realized that a lot of people that collected wine,
even though they were really great in person,
when we got together and started talking about wine,
everybody started becoming a douchebag.
And that kind of really turned me off.
And kind of, you know, a lot of friends in my age group
didn't like wine.
They thought it was not accessible.
They thought that you had to know something.
And I just thought that was wrong.
And I felt like I was the character that knew how to market enough,
knew how to leverage these new tools that were out there.
And kind of maybe, not that I have the right vision,
but I never think that the wrong vision is being happy and awesome
and doing right things for people.
So I felt like I had the right vision.
And so I started Wine Library TV in February 2006.
And, you know, it's done okay.
So somebody might know in the last 18 months
I've been pitched over 100 television deals
and I've passed on all of them.
Which, you know, is very humbling.
You know, your ego can explode in almost every television network
once it put you on TV.
So it's exciting.
At the same token, I think we're going through a very big transition.
I think that we're 45 minutes away, which means three years,
away from a situation where you'll be able to go to Channel 999
and watch any podcast on the Internet.
You know, I think a lot of the cable companies,
who I know a lot of the big executives,
are very concerned about what Apple TV represents.
How many people here have Apple TV raised their hand?
So a very small number, like nine, right?
I promise you, when I come back here in 24 months,
70 to 80% of the people will have an Apple TV mechanism.
I just like that word, sorry.
What Apple TV does, it allows people to watch on television,
on their TV podcast.
You get to watch Wine Library TV instead on your computer,
on high death, which, you know,
obviously as you're seeing me in person,
I come across much more handsome on high death.
So it's good for me, I'm all about it.
That's going to change the landscape.
You know, I call it my Conan O'Brien rule.
You know, many of you might know that I've been on Conan a couple of times.
Have I been 20 years earlier and I was on Carson,
I'd probably be much bigger of a brand.
Taking back 45 years, and if I was on Sullivan,
I'd be a God darn celebrity by now.
Eyeballs are stretched, and the stretch is going to get really huge.
You know why Seinfeld's numbers were not as good as everybody thought?
Because that night, when I normally watched Seinfeld,
I was on eBay all night.
Our attention span is going in different places.
That's why the only place I'm willing to advertise these days
for Wine Library and my VTL side is these new urinal TVs.
Have you seen these?
That's a captive audience.
By far, by the way, by far, by the way,
the biggest thing that I got emailed about,
Conan, I did Nightline from Page Wall Street Journal,
Ellen DeGeneres, all this crazy stuff.
By far, in New York, and I witnessed New Channel 7 did a piece on me,
and they have a deal with the taxi cabs in Manhattan.
So if you've ever been to Manhattan, they play little videos.
By far, the biggest thing that I've ever been emailed about
was being in the taxi cab.
Captive audience.
I had a big-ass lemonade stand business.
It was six.
There was no critical steps.
I watched Scooby Doo when I went outside and I sold stuff.
But I think that what's imperative is to be successful in business.
There's way too many people, especially in the internet world
that I hang out with now, people looking for the quick fix.
They want to find the keywords they can buy on Google
that makes them millions.
Silly stuff.
This is business.
I worked for seven years with not a single day off,
opening the store at 7 in the morning and closing at 10 p.m.
Seven years.
So I think what people are looking for quick fixes is a mistake.
This is why I'm so passionate about people doing what they're passionate about.
Because the only way, in my opinion, to really build a big business,
one that is really successful is to work your ass off.
And working your ass off 15, 16 hours a day about something you don't care about
is not going to happen.
You're going to crack.
So you have to make it about something you love.
I fundamentally loved wine.
And so all those hours and all those years, they were hard,
but I was having fun and I enjoyed myself.
Well, hello everybody and welcome to Tropical Music.
No, it's not Gary, it's me.
We just met Gary Vaynerchuk, a great guy,
and now we're going to hang out with him at Cefalos.
Cefalos
It's a coconut grove, man.
Well, hello.
We just left the meet-up with Gary Vaynerchuk.
Right here at the Cefalos in Coconut Grove.
And although I didn't get any chance to shoot any video, it was nice.
And we look forward to meet him.
Next time he comes to Miami.
Now we're going to the transit lounge to see conjunto progreso.
Okay, so we've been going around the block for like three times,
and there's no parking.
So I guess transit lounge is out of the question for tonight.
Let me drive.
There's the policía.
We're here.
Something happened.
Of course, something happened.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I can't see it.
We're here.
Something happened.
Of course, downtown Miami there's always something happening.
As you can see, there's nowhere to park.
This is it, transit lounge.
Transportation.
That's the way you're going.
This is tropical music, episode 15.
Right?
Episode 14.
That's all the debate that we missed tonight.
