Gary Vee and Authenticity, "Social Equity Trumps Private Equity."

I just watched Gary Vaynerchuk on The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch which aired in May of this year and got it me motivated to complete this draft post I started weeks ago and publish it. I was originally inspired by a post by Fred Wilson titled "Authenticity" who spoke directly to Gary's line “Social equity trumps private equity” and why it's important to be authentic and engage in the community. One example is to answer your own emails rather than let your handlers do that for you like Britney Spears. Gary says he'd rather have a million friends than 10 million dollars and he answers his own emails.

Fred Wilson said, "Authenticity is hard, but it's critically important in the world of social media and "digital branding". GaryVee gave a talk about building your personal brand at Web 2.0 in NYC, the same day I gave my talk. His talk was awesome and is worth watching so here it is."


Web 2.0 Expo NY: Gary Vaynerchuk (Wine Library), Building Personal Brand Within the Social Media Landscape
Description: Building Personal Brand Within the Social Media Landscape. Note: This presentation contains adult language.

In a recent Tweet Gary said, "I guess this keynote I gave a few months ago http://tinyurl.com/68mmcy will be my "thing" 0f 2008! Still get 30-40 emails a day about it!" - @garyvee Sat 29 Nov 21:55 via web

Gary Vee is tearing it up wherever he goes preaching the gospel of building brand equity and continues to break down the walls between web video and mainstream with his most recent appearance today on CBS Early Show.

It got me thinking that despite the current economic state it's really been a break out year for social media and personal brand.