Gary Vaynerchuk, storyteller?

I have concentrated here at BwP for over four years now on the power of stories, and it's great when someone I admire backs that up.

Gary Vaynerchuk, the Internet TV star and wine and social media expert (about whom I have written before), just gave a long interview on ObsessedTV.com where he characterized himself as a storyteller and affirmed his desire to be the greatest storyteller "of this generation":

I think of myself as a storyteller-- selfishly, because I think the people that I really look up to... in the business world...[are] Walt Disney, Vince McMahon, and Notorious BIG. And the common thread between those three men is that they are tremendous, world-beating storytellers...

Walt Disney I knew, but Vince McMahon and Notorious BIG were mysteries to me. I knew Notorious BIG (real name Christopher Wallace) was a rapper from the nineties, but that's all. Vince McMahon, I learned, is a television personality for wrestling shows and owner of the World Wrestling Federation.

A strange combination-- Disney is the king of family entertainment, while Notorious BIG (here and here), who was murdered in 1997, was a "hardcore" rapper with all the undesirable and family-unfriendly qualities many have decried in hip hop music for a long time now. Meanwhile, McMahon presides over the ultra-violent and yet ultra-campy professional wrestling world.

You'd think a wine connoisseur wouldn't be into such popular culture icons, but Vaynerchuk breaks a lot of molds. He made his reputation busting the stereotype of wine as a highbrow drink with a limited clientele. Often on his show he will have plastic wrestling action figures, and sometimes describes the color of a white wine as reminiscent of wrestler Hulk Hogan's blond hair.

After reading a bit about Notorious BIG and McMahon, I can see why Vaynerchuk puts them together. Notorious BIG used his raps to tell stories about an extreme life involved with drugs, money, and violence. McMahon orchestrates a huge complex of stories which get told in and out of individual wrestling matches.

Nevertheless, I don't see Gary Vaynerchuk as a storyteller. The three men he cites tell extreme, entertaining stories that make use of basic American mythological themes: the good guys versus the bad guys, for example, or in the case of Notorious BIG, the anti-hero you love to root for.

Vaynerchuk tells anecdotes, but his main activities veer more into the uncool profession of teaching. In the above-linked interview he admits to being a "class clown," and I have found in my twenty years of teaching that that one characteristic is a better predictor of who ends up a teacher in life than any other.

The class clown seems to be the opposite of the teacher-- loud, disruptive, dismissive, and seeming to want to be anywhere else but class-- but in reality, I've found, the clown feels completely at home in class, envies the teacher's ability to hog all the attention, and secretly wants to be the one in front of the whiteboard with the dry erase marker, telling everyone what matters.

Vaynerchuk also has a subject to get across: wine knowledge, expanding his students' wine palates, and now, as he expands his empire, teaching people how to develop their own personal brand. He is "passionate" and evangelical about his subjects, he loves his students (he has said he wants to "meet everyone in the world"), and spends a lot of time studying his subject and bringing new knowledge to his students. In fact, he has mastered the teacher's secret of knowing so much about his subject that he creates respect simply by opening his mouth.

If that's not a teacher, I don't know what is.

If you'd like to see Vaynerchuk in action as a teacher who is helplessly sandwiched between two class clowns, watch this episode of Wine Library TV.

As a former class clown myself, I admire Vaynerchuk's crusade to bring enlightenment to as many people as possible. He is already a thousand times richer than any schoolteacher I know, and God bless him for it. I wish all of us had the drive and initiative he has for doing good work and making it pay.

Comments

[Sean]

As we talked about a few weeks ago, I too have been following Garyvee. Great insights about the class clown as a teacher.

I wonder how much Gary can push the "I'm going to be as successful as Oprah" thing while people cheer him on...instead of booing his success. For now, he seems amazingly able to generate new fans while maintaining his legion of current adorers.

[DF]

The announcement that Gary has made a deal with Harper for 10 books and seven figures (wow-- but it's not a gamble on Harper's part; he will deliver on book #1) will be a challenge to him. He made his rep on new media, and he's made a huge deal with old media.

I don't think that will affect his street cred that much, however. My question is, can he continue to be fresh for a lot longer when his message finally gets out to a large group of people? He is running on

a. Follow your dream
b. Work hard
c. Value family
d. Have integrity
e. Be engaged in and benefit from your community

which is a great message, but maybe not one he can keep telling successfully once people know about it and want to hear the next great thing.

What I like about Seth Godin, another Internet marketing guru, is that he comes out with new messages pretty often, feeding people's need for novelty.

Gary has flared up very hot. Now we get to see whether there's fuel underneath that initial heat. I hope he knocks it out of the park.