KEYNOTE

Gary Vaynerchuk, born in 1975, is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling author as well as a self-trained wine and social media expert. From a young age, it was clear that Gary was a businessman. At 8 years old he was operating 7 lemonade stands in his neighborhood and by 10 he had moved onto selling baseball cards at local malls. In high school while working at his family owned liquor store, Gary started reading The Wine Spectator and wine books, and realized collecting wine offered an allure similar to his previous hobby of collecting baseball cards. With a wealth of knowledge and an entrepreneurial spirit, Gary spent every weekend of his college years at his parents’ wine store. Recognizing the importance of e-commerce in 1997, Gary launched Winelibrary.com and helped grow his family business significantly from $3 million to $45 million by 2005.

In 2006, with a flipcam and NY Jets bucket Gary began Wine Library TV which revolutionized the wine world. His wine reviews soon attracted over 100,000 viewers each day and his die-hard fans nicknamed themselves “Vayniacs.” Gary’s cult-like following was the result of his unconventional, often irreverent commentary on wine. Using comical expressions like “Sniffy Sniff” and “The Oakmonster,” he encourages straightforward wine tasting and debunks wine myths. A business visionary Gary also started Cinderella Wine, a flash sale website which features one wine per day beginning at 9PM EST for 24 hours sold at a severely discounted price. In 2011, he’s continuing his mission to expand palates and breakdown wine barriers with the launch of his iPhone app Daily Grape. The new app allows viewers to watch his daily wine review show from their phone (or on the web), and add wines he has tasted to their wishlist. He also started a monthly newsletter that gives readers access to the hundreds of wines he tastes and reviews each month off camera.

Gary does not claim to be a ‘techie’, but in 2005, he began video blogging and is known as a true social media trailblazer! He has close to 1 million followers on Twitter and was included in BusinessWeek’s list of the top 20 people every entrepreneur should follow. Gary’s first business book Crush It! Why Now Is the Time to Cash in on Your Passion (October 2009) hit the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Associated Press Best-Sellers lists in its first weeks. It maps out Gary’s road rules for how to “Crush It” in today’s business market by following your passion and building your own personal brand. His second New York Times bestseller The Thank You Economy (March 2011), details the effect of social media on business and has become required reading for business leaders. In the spring of 2009, Gary and his brother AJ launched VaynerMedia, a new breed of agency that helps Fortune 500 companies like Campbell Soup Company, PepsiCo, Green Mountain Coffee, the NY Jets, the NHL and the NJ Nets find their social media voices and build their digital brands.

Gary has appeared on countless programs from Jimmy Fallon, Late Night with Conan O’Brien and Ellen to MSNBC, CNBC, CNN and NPR. He was also notably featured in Decanter Magazine’s 2009 Power List which is a list of the 50 most influential people in wine and named Innovator of the Year at Wine Enthusiast’s 2009 Wine Star Awards. Additionally, Gary was one of Askmen.com’s 49 Most Influential Men of 2009.

Gary’s ultimate goal is to own the New York Jets. Although his various businesses obviously play an enormous role in his life, he always puts his family first.

Ed Butowsky is an internationally recognized expert in the investment wealth management industry. Ed has a unique ability to combine the current political environment with how it affects investment portfolios. Butowsky has been in the financial services industry for over 25 years. Ed started his career with Morgan Stanley and was a Senior Vice President in private wealth management. In his 18 years at Morgan Stanley, he was the firm’s top producer nationally as well as the first advisor to surpass one billion dollars in assets under management. He was also recognized as a member of both the Chairman’s Club and the Equity Club, a distinction reserved for only the top advisors at the Morgan Stanley.

Through his work with professional athletes, Butowsky was recently featured in the Sports Illustrated article, “How (and Why) Athletes Go Broke.” This article to date is the most popular article in Sports Illustrated history. Additionally, Ed was featured in the film “Broke,” an ESPN 30 for 30 documentary chronicling professional athletes and their monetary experiences. He is a frequent guest on CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNBC, Fox Business News, FOX News Channel, and Bloomberg TV, and China TV and has made hundreds of appearances on national television. Butowsky is often seen on “Varney and Co”, “Closing Bell”, “Street Signs”, “Your World w/ Cavuto”, “America Live” with Megyn Kelly, “Willis Report”, “America’s News HQ”, “Taking Stock” with Pimm Fox, TheBlaze TV with Glenn Beck, and “Wilkow!” with Andrew Wilkow. Ed is also regularly heard on radio shows around the country such as “Mad Dog Radio” and “Bloomberg Radio” discussing wealth management, and other subjects that are of interest and timely related to the finance/investments world. Furthermore, Ed frequently publishes articles relating to current financial topics for FoxBusiness.com. Most recently, he was featured as one of seven financial coaches/experts in the first of its kind online reality series, “The Invested Life”, a nine-month series featuring real people facing today’s most common investment concerns and their journey to taking control of their finances. (www.theinvestedlife.msn.com)

Ed has lectured at Yale University, NYU Stern School of Business, and SMU Cox School of Business and speaks around the country to financial advisors on how to properly manage portfolios. Butowsky is also the originator of the CHIP score. The CHIP score is the first metric designed to properly and effectively evaluate and score a portfolio’s strength based on all elements that attribute to portfolio performance; rate of return, risk, inflation, taxes, management fees and investment fees. Additionally, Ed is the creator of the Chapwood Index, a real cost of living index that attempts to show, on a quarterly basis, a more accurate figure for cost of living increases in the nation’s top 50 major metropolitan areas. (http://www.chapwoodindex.com/)

Butowsky launched Chapwood Investments, LLC in 2005, a private wealth management advisory firm focusing on providing comprehensive financial counseling and investment advice to wealthy families and individuals.

Recognizing the need for high-quality alternative investments in 2010, Ed launched Paramount Access Advisors, LLC: a registered investment company designed to work with RIAs (registered investment advisors) and broker dealers around the country, providing accessibility to top-tier hedge fund managers that are usually unavailable to most individual investors. Additionally, Ed developed the Paramount Institutional Access Fund, a 40-Act fund providing access to these institutional quality hedge fund managers for a low minimum investment.

Ed Butowsky is an accomplished speaker on a variety of investment topics. For more information or to book Ed for an upcoming speaking engagement, please visit his profile at The Goodman Speaker’s Bureau.

Ed is a well-respected member of the Plano/Dallas community. He is an avid tennis and golf player and resides with his family in Plano, Texas.

Jeff Pearlman is the author of five books—three New York Times best-seller’s. His most recent, Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton, was called “the best sports biography” of 2011 by Sports Illustrated. Jeff is a contributing columnist to si.com. He has worked as as a columnist for ESPN.com, a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, a features writer for Newsday and — amazingly — as The (Nashville) Tennessean’s food and fashion writer. He is also the author of two New York Times’ best-sellers, Boys Will Be Boys and The Bad Guys Won! as well as the non-New York Times’ best-sellers, Love Me, Hate Me andThe Rocket That Fell to Earth. Pearlman lives in New York with his wife and two children, and enjoys swallowing gum and watching his toes wiggle.

 

 

Mike Edelhart is a long-standing media and Internet start-up investor and executive. Currently, Mike is CEO of The Tomorrow Project, LLC producers of The Pivot Conference, hosted by Brian Solis and Social Week in NY. Previously, Mike was founder and Managing Director of First30 Services, a new company-creation consultancy. Mike served as interim CEO at LiveDeal, Inc. a NASDAQ company that delivers classified and small business marketing services over the Internet. Mike has been an advisor to Deep Dyve, Inc., which has developed revolutionary technology for high end search, after serving as the company’s initial CEO. He was chairman of the board of Olive Software, a Sequoia backed XML software developer, where he earlier was CEO. Mike was also the CEO at digital magazine distributor Zinio. Earlier in his carer, Mike was a senior executive at Softbank and Ziff-Davis Publishing. Advisor, Mass Relevance, Aggregate Knowledge; SmaSh Technology, Citia. Pivot is the only conference focused purely on how major brands, agencies, marketers and content creators can succeed by understanding, accessing and influencing the emerging Social Consumer. Pivot 2013 is October 14-15, in New York City. Social Week, of which Pivot is a part, is the in-gathering of Social professionals in NYC, with events of many types from many companies across the spectrum of social online.

Rick Burnes