Above is a video of Gary Vanerchuk's interview of MSNBC on March 9th. Gary is promoting his new book, "The Thank You Economy"  and dropping mad truths on the future of business in a connected world. 

Do you ever randomly turn on the TV just to have something on in the background only to discover a great show? Well, that's what happened to me this morning at 5:45am PST. I literally flipped on the TV right as Gary Vanerchuck was coming on MSNBC's Morning Joe show. Typically, I would have immediately changed the channel to ESPN. But the "How social media makes businesses more personal" definitely caught my attention, and I've been a fan of Gary's Wine Library TV since my CHOW.com days. 
  
If you are a fan of the Whiskey sites, you should watch this video. We really believe in much of what Gary's saying. For any our paid members (9k and growing!) or people who have bought merch from the Whiskey store, you know that we do our best to make sure each of you feels like you got value for the money you spend with us. Every person matters, and it still feels like that to us, even though we're getting more than 4 million visitors a month, there's still a sense that real people run the company for real customers. I love Gary's "our grandparent's DNA" reference--basically he says that having a one-to-one relationship with customers is coming back into fashion again, just like it was with our grandparents. We live that every single day. 
 
I also LOVED when Gary said "that people scale". Dave is always saying "we make real websites with real people", and that is definitely a core tenet of Whiskey. We hire and value the people who actually create the content, code, and community in our brands. Even though we're small in headcount, I feel like we're having a big impact on how media will be done in the future.  
 
Like Gary, I think lots of people think "social media" is overhyped right now. I also think that social is changing business for the better. By getting smaller and connecting with our customers, we believe we are building a bigger and better business for the future. So thank you to you guys, our customers, for being a part of our business.