Gary Vaynerchuk | A Studio Apartment for Eight

Gary Vaynerchuk | A Studio Apartment for Eight

From The Person Who Believed In Me with David Begnaud by Do Good Crew

August 17, 2026 · 1h 30m · Episode 26

About this episode

Gary Vaynerchuk shares his journey from a Soviet refugee to a digital media mogul, highlighting the importance of family support and self-esteem.

Before Gary Vaynerchuk became a digital media mogul, CEO of a 2,000-person marketing empire, and one of the loudest voices on the internet, he was a three-year-old Soviet refugee living in a studio apartment in Queens with eight family members in rotation. In this deeply personal and unguarded conversation, the entrepreneur behind VaynerMedia sits down with David Begnaud to share the story of the woman who believed in him when no one else could, and how that belief came wrapped in unconditional warmth and a refusal to let bad grades touch his self-esteem. Gary opens up about escaping the Soviet Union at three years old, a place he describes as being like North Korea today, where his parents had to give up everything just to leave and his mother hid a piece of jewelry in his stockings like a cocaine mule. He talks about arriving in America with a couple hundred bucks, living in Edison, New Jersey, and watching his father Sasha work as a stock boy in a liquor store before building Shopper's Discount Liquors from $3 million to $60 million. He shares what it was like to be the lemonade stand kid at seven, the baseball card dealer at 14 who could outsell grown men, and the high school…

People in this episode

Host: David Begnaud

Guest: Gary Vaynerchuk

Topics covered

Keywords

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: VaynerMedia, Shopper's Discount Liquors

Places: Soviet Union, Queens, Edison, New Jersey

More episodes of The Person Who Believed In Me with David Begnaud

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the The Person Who Believed In Me with David Begnaud podcast page.