How Gary Vee found the right medium for his message
"Folk girl hero in a magazine / Faking the truth in a new pop song / Don't you wanna sing along" - Radio, Sylvan Esso
If you’ve been on TikTok in the past year, you’ve probably heard of Gary Vee. Gary is the patron saint of “hustle porn” – he frequently talks about trading baseball cards as a kid, working around-the-clock in his 20s to take his family wine business online, and someday owning the Jets NFL team. He urges his listeners to flip garage sale items online, avoid taking on debt to go to college, and ignore what their parents think, all while putting out 64 pieces of online content a day.
Although Gary has been an internet personality for over a decade, his TikTok account catapulted his celebrity into a different orbit. But why now, and why on TikTok?
In the first episode of Wine Library TV (Gary’s vlog reviewing wines) from 2006, Gary talks about embracing new ways to reach consumers and giving his honest opinions on the wines he reviews. Similar to his content today, he talks in his trademark casual style – telling jokes, going off on tangents, and sprinkling in bits of philosophy.
Over time, Gary changed industries from wine to digital marketing, but his core message of hustling hasn’t changed. However, the medium through which he delivers this message has. Gary’s team can edit a rambling 30-minute YouTube video into ten or more 30-second nuggets of wisdom for TikTok. Suddenly, the game changed, and Gary was well-poised to hit a home run.
If we were to rank the platforms that Gary is most dominant at (defining dominance as the ratio of followers of Gary Vee on a platform to that of the most-subscribed creator on that platform), we’d get the following list:
We can see that Gary dominates the long-form text and short-form video quadrants. He is weaker in the other quadrants, as can be seen in how often he interrupts podcast guests or the fact that only 2% of his YouTube subscribers consistently watch his videos. Gary is keenly aware of this fact, which is why he places a particular focus on TikTok and LinkedIn in his social media strategy to play to his strengths.
The combination of Gary’s hustle, the internet’s near-infinite reach, and consumers’ dwindling attention spans have created the perfect atmosphere for his short, motivational posts to take off. By staying true to himself and being the first mover on TikTok, Gary found the right medium for his message and became an inspiration to budding entrepreneurs everywhere. Most times, Muhammad must go to the mountain; but sometimes the mountain comes to Muhammad.
In the course of researching this essay, I came across this video, which is too funny not to share (NSFW language):
Have a great weekend, and I’ll see you next week!