He Couldn't Afford a Jersey.
His Mom Knit Him One While He Slept.
Now He Wants to Buy the Whole Team.

The Gary Vaynerchuk Story

The Person Who Believed In Me  ·  Hosted by David Begnaud

"Gary Vaynerchuk is the son of Soviet refugees who fled a country you were not allowed to leave. He grew up sharing a Queens apartment with eight family members. He failed German twice. Teachers wrote him off. But on the street, selling lemonade at seven and baseball cards at fourteen, strangers kept telling his mother: your kid's got something. The world had to wait a few decades to find out they were right. And behind all of it - behind every viral video, every company, every time he throws up a number five in a selfie - there has always been one person. His mother."

- David Begnaud

The Video That Stunned Gary V. The One Person Nobody Could Get On Camera.

Gary Vaynerchuk has built a media empire on being the loudest, most available, most documented person on the internet. Yet the most important person in his life has always been someone who refuses to be in any of it. His mother, Tamara Vaynerchuk, is "uncomfortably behind the scenes" by nature. Getting her on video for this episode was, as Gary put it, something that could only have happened one way: through Maha, his head of PR, working quietly in the background. When the video played on set, Gary was visibly stunned. "I am just completely blown away by your ability to pull that off."

In the video, Tamara spoke directly to her son. She talked about watching him as a little boy - always thinking, creating, selling, "always running a business" while other children just played. She said she watched him "with such admiration because it never was just to make money. It was your passion. It was your kindness. It was your excitement." And then the line that cuts through everything Gary V has ever built: "It's not all achievements that make me believe in you. I believe in you because of who you are."

Gary has spent decades telling the world what he thinks. Here was the one person whose opinion he has never stopped seeking - saying it plainly, on camera, for the first time. The man who talks for a living went quiet.

▶ Watch on YouTube: The surprise video from Gary's mom plays on set - ~4:37

A Place You Were Not Allowed to Leave. One Ice Cream for Three.

Gary was born on November 14, 1975, in Babruysk - then the Soviet Union, now Belarus. He wants people to understand what that actually meant. "Where I was born would be like being born today in North Korea." Not Iran, where you can leave to Turkey or Dubai. Not a hard place to emigrate from. A place where leaving was not allowed. When his parents managed to get out - a miracle in itself - they had to surrender everything. Every possession. Every last thing.

Tamara, who had lost her mother young, managed to hide one piece of jewelry before they left - tucked into Gary's baby clothes. "Like a cocaine mule," Gary says. They made their way through Italy while waiting for their visa. His father and uncle sold random things just to get by. His mother, who loves ice cream, couldn't buy herself a scoop. One ice cream for three. "They let me eat as much as possible and then they would eat whatever was left." The family arrived in America with a couple hundred dollars. A great uncle's children helped them get started. His father got a job as a stockboy in a liquor store in Clark, New Jersey. That was the beginning.

Tamara was 23 years old. She spoke no English. She was already pregnant with Gary's sister - conceived in Italy, arriving in a new country before she was born. An aunt-in-law told her plainly: the only thing you cannot do is get pregnant. Tamara already knew she was. She said nothing. She kept going.

▶ Watch on YouTube: Gary describes the Soviet escape and arriving in America - ~7:02

He Got Terrible Grades. She Never Once Let It Touch His Self-Esteem.

Gary was not a good student. He failed German class twice. He filled in scantrons with "A, B, C, D, B, C, D" at random. He was checked out of school by age ten and would stay that way until he graduated. And yet - here is the thing that Gary keeps circling back to with something close to awe - his self-esteem was never damaged. His mother was the reason. "If I was inducting her into the mother hall of fame and had to tell a story," he said, "it's how the f*** did you ground me every single report card and progress report and teach me consequences - and yet not allow that in any shape or form to hurt my self-esteem. It's Mozart-like."

Most parents who drive accountability tie it to worthiness. Most parents who protect self-esteem make excuses for failure. Tamara did neither. She said: you have a job right now, and that job is school, and if you don't do your job there are consequences - grounded, every time, without exception. And none of that has anything to do with who you are. The belief was unconditional. The standards were not.

She also cheered for exactly the right things. Not grades. Not trophies. Kindness. Holding the door open for an elderly person got more celebration than a good test score. "She is a cheerleader of kindness," Gary said. "And I believe many kids end up becoming a very specific version of what their parents cheered for." If they cheer for straight A's, you become a good executive. If they cheer for beauty, you chase it your whole life. If they cheer for kindness, you put kindness on a pedestal. Gary did.

▶ Watch on YouTube: Gary on his mom's Hall of Fame parenting move - ~27:56

The Card Dealer Grabbed His Mom and Said: Your Kid's Got It. He Was Outselling a 40-Year-Old Man at Fourteen.

While school was writing Gary off, the market was doing the opposite. Lemonade stand at seven - which he semi-seriously describes as "franchising" by recruiting the neighborhood kids to run their own stands while he was the boss. Snow shoveling. Car washing. Christmas caroling for money - he would knock on doors and ask if he could sing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in exchange for a tip. At Marissa Byrd's lemonade stand, a man on a bicycle pulled up and offered $10 to fill his water bottle. Ten dollars was "78 trillion dollars" to Gary. He had the bottle filled before the man finished his sentence.

Baseball cards came at fourteen. He set up at shows. An older card dealer, a grown man in his forties, was set up next to him. When Gary's mom came to pick him up, the dealer grabbed her. "Your kid's got it," he told her. "Because I was selling more cards than him and he was a grown 40-year-old man." This was also when Gary first discovered he couldn't be tricked - he knew how to hold his ground with adults who weren't above ripping off a kid if they could. "It was probably the first time in my life where I'm like, I'm smart. Because they can't trick me."

The institutions had nothing for him. The market had everything. And his mother, who watched all of it - who heard from card dealers and lemonade customers and strangers on bikes what she already knew at home - never confused one verdict for the other.

▶ Watch on YouTube: The lemonade stand, baseball cards, and the card dealer moment - ~42:52

Big Boat. Big Body of Water. She Knew He Would Need the Ocean Long Before Anyone Else Could See It.

Gary has built a two thousand employee company, and a media presence that reaches tens of millions of people. He posts constantly. He speaks at packed arenas. He is, by any measure, inescapable. And he says - with complete sincerity - that none of it is about fame or money. When David pushed him on this, Gary found the language to explain: he has "incredible want to do to the world what my mom did for me." Everything he puts out - every video, every speech, every piece of content - is an attempt to replicate at scale the thing she gave him for free.

His mother taught through analogies. She got it from her own father - the grandfather Gary never met, who died before the family could reach him. Tamara's dad was always using analogies to explain things to her and her brother. She carried the instinct across an ocean and into a new language. The one she used most for Gary: big boat, big body of water. Small boat, small body of water. She always told him he was a big boat. That he would need the ocean. Gary has spent fifty years trying to find it.

He carries what she gave him with something he describes as "94% gratitude and 6% guilt." The guilt comes from knowing how rare the mothering was - that almost no one gets what he got. The gratitude is what you hear in every video. And the platforms, the reach, the audience - those are just the ocean his mother always told him he'd need.

▶ Watch on YouTube: Gary on deploying what his mom gave him - and the "big boat" analogy - ~1:05:50

She Knit It While He Slept. From a Boy Who Couldn't Afford a Jersey to Buying the Whole Damn Team.

Every kid on Tingley Lane had a Jets jersey. Eric Godfrey had one. Robbie Turnick had one. Bobby Duffy had one. The twins had theirs. Gary did not. His family was not the kind of family that was going to spend $25 on a jersey. But Gary's mother knew. She saw her son watching Jets games, loving this team, being the only kid in the neighborhood without the jersey to show for it. So she waited until he went to sleep. And she knit him one.

Green on green. His name on the back. The number five - because five was Gary's favorite number. That hand-knit sweater now hangs in his office as the most prized possession he owns. And every time Gary takes a selfie and throws up his hand with five fingers splayed, it is a silent tribute to her. "The reason I always throw up the number five in my selfies," he said, "is a Carol Burnett-like hat tip to my mother." Most of the millions of people who have seen that gesture had no idea what it meant. Now you do.

He has a plan for the jersey. When he buys the New York Jets - and he is clear that this is not a thing he just says, it is a thing he is actively working toward - he will take that green knit sweater and hang it in the stadium. With a plaque. "From a boy that couldn't afford a jersey to buying the whole damn team."

▶ Watch on YouTube: Gary reveals the meaning of the number five and the story of the knit jersey - ~1:24:15

"I'm Gary Vaynerchuk and the person who believed in me was my mommy, Tamara Vaynerchuk."