Gary Vaynerchuck

Gary Vaynerchuk is an entrepreneur, author, public speaker, and internet personality. He rose to fame when he transformed his fathers liquor store business into a specialist retail wine store named Wine Library. Much of this transformation was due to his successful use of social media, including the video blog Wine Library TV. Additionally, from 1998 to 2005, Vaynerchuk grew the business from $3 million to $50 million in annual revenue.

In 2009 he shifted his focus to the founding of a social media-focused digital agency. The agency served clients such as General Electric, Anheuser-Busch, Mondelez, and PepsiCo.

Based on his extensive success, Gary Vaynerchuk has released a course on Udemy titled “Building a Personal Brand” . In this course he shares his experience on how to build a personal brand using social media.

Personal Branding

The course is comprised of 49 “chapters”. 37 of these are video and the remaining 12  are PDF documentation. The course is split into 10 sections:

  1. Why Should You Be Here?
  2. Finding Your Passion and Understanding Your Story
  3. Self-Awareness
  4. Telling Your Story in a Captivating Way
  5. Understanding the Different Distribution Channels
  6. Respecting the Behaviour of Each Platform
  7. Building Your Brand and Spreading Awareness
  8. Monetising Your Traffic
  9. Building a Legacy, Optimising Your Time, and Being a Practitioner
  10. Conclusion

There are about two hours of content meaning that this course delivers some serious value. Vaynerchuk is clearly passionate about the topic. He draws heavily on his success with Wine Library TV. The video content is very energetic and inspiring. Some of the key takeaways for me are:

  • Not everyone will be a celebrity and building a reputation and brand takes hard work
  • How to identify your strengths and overlap these with your passions
  • What the relative strengths of the various platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.) are and how these cater for different audiences
  • The importance of choosing your media, such as video, podcasts, or writing.
  • How to build credibility

The course currently retails for £77 and is available here. There is a free preview available and the course comes with a 30 day money back guarantee. [Update, the course is no longer open to the public, but you can request access to it by contacting the publisher. This can be done by following the same link.]

Vaynerchuk is also the author of a number of successful books such as:

Have you taken the course or read any of the books? I’d be interested in your feedback.