Crush It! : NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion
Do you have a hobby
you wish you could indulge in all day? An obsession that keeps you up at night?
Now is the perfect time to take that passion and make a living doing what you
love. In Crush
It! Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion, Gary
Vaynerchuk shows you how to use the power of the Internet to turn your real
interests into real businesses. Gary spent years building his family business
from a local wine shop into a national industry leader. Then one day he turned
on a video camera, and by using the secrets revealed here, transformed his
entire life and earning potential by building his personal brand. By the end of
this book, readers will have learned how to harness the power of the Internet
to make their entrepreneurial dreams come true. Step by step, Crush It! is the ultimate driver’s manual for modern business.
The Story Behind Crush it!
Everything has changed. The social media revolution has
irreversibly changed the way we live our lives and conduct our business. There
are billions of dollars in advertising moving online, waiting to be claimed by
whoever can build the best content and communities. Despite this change, most
people keep working at jobs that don’t make them happy and businesses continue
to ignore the major marketing and public relations benefits that can be found
online.
Myth #1: I’m not passionate about something
sexy or popular like wine so these lessons don’t apply to me.
The internet has drastically decreased the costs of building
communities around niche subjects, allowing for even the most obscure subjects
to draw enough eyeballs to command advertising attention. Starting a video blog
about tortilla chips may seem farfetched until Doritos gives you a call and
offers 40,000 a year to sponsor and advertise on your blog.
Myth #2: My business already has a Twitter account and a
Facebook page, we’re set in the social media department.
This is the equivalent of claiming twenty years ago that just
because your business bought a TV spot and a few ads in the newspaper, you
didn’t need to pay attention to your advertising department. Social media isn’t
about joining in, it’s about being involved.
Myth #3: I’m happy at my job so this book is irrelevant to
me.
First of all, congratulations on finding work that makes you
happy! However, the lessons in this book are valuable to anyone, regardless of
their employment status. Crush It will show you how to utilize
high level and platform specific social media and marketing strategies that
will improve your work. It will also show you how to build a personal brand so
that even if you’re forced to leave your job, a situation that’s especially
relevant today, you’ll be able to easily find employment elsewhere in a field
you’re passionate about.
Myth #4: I need to quit my job to take advantage of this
book’s entrepreneurial lessons.
While the entrepreneurial strategies in this book do take time,
it’s completely reasonable to start the effort as an after-work project to
build up until you’re able to replace your current income with the income from
your online presence. While you may have to fall behind on the current season
of Lost or let your Madden 2010 game suffer, because you’ll be doing something
you love you won’t mind putting in the extra effort.
In Crush It, Gary Vaynerchuk shows how anyone can
build a career around what they’re passionate about. He also delivers both
high-level and platform specific strategy and analysis, allowing you to take
advantage of the current business environment while preparing you to succeed as
it changes and evolves.
This book isn’t interested in making unrealistic promises while
glossing over the work involved. Making a living by building content around
your passion isn’t simple and it doesn’t happen overnight. What it is, however,
is fulfilling and in most cases just as profitable, if not more so, than your
previous job.
Furthermore, a business can’t just pay lip service to social
media and expect it to return results. The transparency and accountability
inherent in its structure necessitates a comprehensive and dedicated strategy
in order to reap its tremendous benefits.
By combining practical analysis and strategy with the same
passion and humor that’s made Gary one of the most in demand keynote speakers
in the U.S. as well as network television’s go to wine expert, Crush It is
essential reading for anyone who wants to understand and harness the future of
business and work.
Learn: Why social media has evened the playing field, destroying
the “gate-keepers” who had previously dictated the distribution of content.
Learn: How to beat unemployment and create wealth-building
opportunities by building and maintaining a personal brand.
Learn: Why storytelling is the most important business concept in
the current marketplace.
Learn: How you can build an online business around your passion
without quitting your day job.
Learn: Why Twitter and Facebook are just tools and not a social
media strategy.
Learn: How to take advantage of the half-billion dollars in
advertising that are moving to the internet.
Learn: Why transparency and being true to yourself are now
winning marketing formulas.
Learn: How to build and maintain an online community around your
passion and brand.
Learn: Strategies for turning attention into money.
Learn: Why the legacy element of the internet era is so
underrated.
From Publishers
Weekly
Yet another rallying cry to the banner of turning your passion
into a career, from braggadocio-ridden entrepreneur Vaynerchuk. After taking
over his father's local liquor store, Shopper's Discount Liquors, and building
it from a $4 million business to a $50 million one, he created the wine-tasting
blog Wine Library TV and discovered the power of the Internet for driving
sales. This book shares his experience and step-by-step advice for using
Twitter, Facebook, etc., and suggestions for monetizing an online persona,
reiterating that the Internet makes it possible for anyone to make serious cash
by turning what they love most into their personal brand. His enthusiasm is
admirable and his advice solid, but there's nothing new here, and his
unappealing swagger—repeated stories of how he crushed it and dominated grate
particularly—gives his story more the tone of adolescent peacocking than of
worthwhile and sober business advice. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed
Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Customer’s Review
“Gary is a force of nature. His authentic, raw passion and
caring touches everyone. His insights into social media & his message of
opportunity could not be more timely.” (Tony Robbins)
“Gary was the first person to push me on the importance of personal brand and transparency – this was months before anyone was talking about it, he’s always two steps ahead of anyone else.” (Kevin Rose, Founder of Digg.com)
“Gary was the first person to push me on the importance of personal brand and transparency – this was months before anyone was talking about it, he’s always two steps ahead of anyone else.” (Kevin Rose, Founder of Digg.com)
“Anyone looking to supercharge their career should beg, borrow, and steal to learn Gary Vee’s techniques. He reinvented the rules to build a $60-million business from scratch—on his own terms.” (Tim Ferriss, #1 NY Times bestselling author of The 4-Hour Workweek)
“Gary Vaynerchuk is one of those entrepreneurs who has discovered the secret to combining passion with business. He is always an inspiration and always entertaining. You owe it to yourself to read this book!” (Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com)
“Gary Vaynerchuk has become a walking, talking (and oh, such talking!), webbing and Tweeting example of how believing in what you do and keeping it fun can step up your life in all ways. There is nobody I would rather talk sports with—or wine or life.” (Scott Simon, host of Weekend Edition Saturday on NPR)
About the Author
gary vay*ner*chuk has captured attention with his pioneering,
multifaceted approach to personal branding and business. After primarily
utilizing traditional advertising techniques to build his family’s local retail
wine business into a national industry leader, Gary rapidly leveraged social
media tools such as Twitter and Facebook to promote Wine Library TV, his video
blog about wine. Gary has always had an early-to-market approach, launching
Wine Library’s retail website in 1997 and Wine Library TV in February of 2006.
His lessons on social media, passion, transparency, and reactionary
business are not to be missed!
“Legacy is greater than currency.”
For those looking
for step by step instructions on how to develop a social media strategy and the
specific tools to execute, this book has some of that, but it’s more about
inspiration than “how to”. To get anything out of a workshop or testing
social tools yourself, you need to be inspired first anyway.
“Crush It” is an excellent book offering personal stories that
illustrate the importance of passion, patience, hustle and the value of doing
what you need to do to be happy. Success takes hard work and this book does a
great job of showing anyone the framework for making what really makes them
passionate and turn it into an online business.After reading this book, I can
imagine a significant number of people gaining the inspiration to start their
own ventures with passion, hustle and a desire to “crush it”. ( Lee Odden : www.toprankblog.com)
