Eric Jensen

I had the oppor­tu­nity to hear Gary Vayn­er­chuk yes­ter­day, at a Drucker Busi­ness Forum event. Vayn­er­chuck is a social media expert, entre­pre­neur, and best­selling author of Crush It! — Why Now Is The Time To Cash In On Your Pas­sion, and The Thank You Econ­omy. He is a reg­u­lar speaker at events such as the TED con­fer­ence and SXSW and con­sults on social media with com­pa­nies like John­son & John­son, Dis­ney, Pepsi, and Google. He is best known for build­ing a huge online wine busi­ness with his irrev­er­ent WineLi­braryTV video blog and exten­sive use of Web 2.0 tech­nolo­gies. Gary is in the top 100 of peo­ple fol­lowed on Twit­ter. He is funny, intense, com­pet­i­tive, and has a ridicu­lous work ethic. In The Thank You Econ­omy he pas­sion­ately advo­cates for the human­iza­tion of busi­ness by strength­en­ing authen­tic rela­tion­ships with cus­tomers using Web 2.0 tools and old-fashioned gen­eros­ity and con­sid­er­a­tion. Build­ing strong rela­tion­ships with cus­tomers is a long-term play. Estab­lished busi­nesses, par­tic­u­larly pub­lic com­pa­nies, resist invest­ing in this kind of cul­ture shift because they are focused on short-term prof­its and have dif­fi­culty com­put­ing the ROI on  Web 2.0 engage­ment. Vayn­er­chuk insists that this is the future of busi­ness and if com­pa­nies don’t start car­ing about their cus­tomers and employ­ees they will not sur­vive. As pas­sion­ate as this guy is about peo­ple, his focus is on mak­ing money. He believes that build­ing gen­er­ous and sin­cere long-term rela­tion­ships is the key to suc­cess, not because he is Mother Teresa, but because he is dri­ven to com­pete and cre­ate wealth. Many people…