Perhaps it is the hope of achieving this ideal that brings a constant influx of immigrants to the Land of the Free. No matter how impossible it might seem, they all know of someone there who’s living their dream.

Just ask Vaynerchuk, who left his Belarusian hometown at the age of 3 for a studio apartment he shares with eight family members, in the bustling district of Queens in New York City. He barely spoke any English, and 1978 was not a particularly great year for the US.

“When we moved to Queens, the American economy was collapsing, morale in America was quite low under the Jimmy Carter presidency. There was a lot of tension in the air,” Vaynerchuk, now 45, says in an edition of the Mola Living Live talk show that aired on March 12.

Living in what was then the Soviet Union, his parents had constantly heard outlandish stories about America, like how the streets were paved with gold.

They set off with high expectations and spirits, only to find themselves in a low-income area at a time when the New York crime rate was “through the roof”.

Even after the family moved to Dover in the neighboring state of New Jersey, they remained solidly blue-collar, barely hanging on to the lower-middle class lifestyle.

“So for me, it was hard to integrate because when you don’t speak the language, kids are going to be a little challenging,” recalls Vaynerchuk.

He says his people-oriented personality was essential to acclimatizing to his new environment, but it was only when he was 7 that he truly felt that he had been “Americanized”.

Vaynerchuk counts many firsts from that stage in his life: his family moved to Edison, he started the first grade, he watched his first American football game, and he was able to understand the cartoons on television.

“It was challenging, but not so much that I look back at it as a negative,” he says. “I’m a big believer that adversity is the foundation of success.”

Perhaps the rapid changes that Vaynerchuk went through at a young age had made him who he is, but he also notes that his mother was an instrumental figure.

“My mom brainwashed me and told me I had incredible amounts of qualities and, it’s funny, I had a lot of affirmations and positive reinforcements from one place: business. At six, I had multiple lemonade stands,” he recall.

He was referring to the makeshift roadside stands commonly seen in American neighborhoods, where children sold lemonade for as little as 25 US cents a glass.

While most children usually had one stand, Vaynerchuk set up stands and recruited his friends to man them. Even in winter, he would ring people’s doorbells, offering to shovel snow off their driveways for 5 to 10 dollars.

The sense that he had a special affinity for business was similar to the feeling other children had that they were talented in singing or sports around the age of 10, he says.

“If you’re an entertainer, a singer or an athlete, you feel special. Not because your parents said so, [or] your teacher said so, but because the game you’re playing [shows] you’re special. For me, that was business.”

His business sense propelled him to start more ventures. He joined the family business at the age of 14, bagging ice for US$2 an hour. After graduating college in 1998, he took over his father’s Shoppers Discount Liquors, transitioning the brick-and-mortar liquor store into the Wine Library online store. He then grew its revenue from $3 million to $60 million during his tenure.

In 2009, he and his brother A.J. Vaynerchuk founded VaynerMedia, a digital advertising agency that counts retail giants like PepsiCo and Johnson & Johnson among its clients.

Along with establishing his personal brand, in 2014 he also cofounded Resy, a restaurant reservation app that was acquired by American Express in 2019, when it served 2.6 million users each week.

The Mola Living Live edition featuring Vaynerchuk was hosted by Dino Patti Djalal, a former Indonesian Ambassador to the United States, and businessman Pandu Sjahrir.

Pandu brought up an interesting point about education, that parents often stress over good grades as the only way to success.

Acknowledging that he did not have the best grades at school, Vaynerchuk says that entrepreneurial students and good grades don’t often mix, as entrepreneurs see outside the system.

“I saw how the school system in the ‘80s and ‘90s in America was not doing me any favors. It wasn’t helping me. It was asking me to memorize things that had nothing to do with my future, even though I had the confidence and support of my parents,” he says. Even so, his mother often grounded him for his bad report cards.

But his mother played it smart, he continues, and she did not connect his report card to his sense of self-esteem. While she taught him that not delivering had its consequences, she never implied that he would never succeed if he did not do well in school.

Vaynerchuk says that the common parental mistake, as he sees it, is that parents are far too concerned about what other parents think of their children.

As for his own children, even with his multimillion-dollar business credentials and an estimated net worth of $160 million, Vaynerchuk says he does not want them to follow in his footsteps. Instead, he wants them to pursue their own passions.

“I want them to redefine success. I don’t want them to think money is success,” he says.

“I also don’t want them to be like me. Something I did not have to deal with is being the child of a parent that people knew had this level of financial success.

“I don’t need them to be an entrepreneur. I already know my daughter is not. I just want them to be passionate in what they do, whether that’s a politician, or a teacher, an artist, a nonprofit executive, a mid-level executive, a stay-at-home dad or a stay-at-home mom,” he says, adding that he was just as happy when he was making $45,000 a year.

One shocking revelation is that he actually does not care about business at all.

“I don’t care about money, I don’t care about success, I don’t care about fame. I’ll take it. I’m flattered, I’m humbled. I enjoy my game so much, but I don’t need the trophies,” he says.

“That’s my life, and that’s what I hope to communicate so well, that others see that this is more fun than making $5 million a year, but being so unhappy how you did it that you have drug abuse, you have unhealthy relationships, you’re insecure, you have to buy a new Lamborghini to make yourself feel better.”

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