Do you have a hobby you wish you could do all day? An obsession that keeps you up at night? Now is the perfect time to take those passions and make a living doing what you love. Now is the perfect 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 in his hit book; Crush It.
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INTRODUCTION
Who is this book for?
Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk is a great read for anyone that has a passion and wants to make their passion their job. Vaynerchuck talks about making your dreams a reality, that it’s possible to wake up every day and work on something you love. This book is ideal for anyone wanting to take full advantage of the internet as a platform for building a business and pursuing their passions.
About the author
Gary Vaynerchuk is an entrepreneur, not only has he written 4 incredibly successful best-sellers, he also is the co-founder and CEO of VaynerMedia. He runs a podcast and is increasingly sought-after for public speaking. With a history in e-commerce and online marketing, his focus is on the internet, social media and the ever-changing digital world.
In this summary
Gary Vaynerchuck takes you through the essential steps necessary to take your passion and turn it into your career using the power of the internet. Beginning with Passion and Success, Vaynerchuck then explains the importance of creating your personal brand and how the right content and the right platform and crucial elements. Vaynerchuck moves on to discuss how being ‘real’ is essential for building a community. Vaynerchuck concludes with a brief step-by-step guide to building your own personal brand and getting started on making your passion your career.
BOOK SUMMARY
Passion and Success
Vaynerchuk identifies 3 ‘golden rules’;
- Love your family
- Work super hard
- Live your passion
For Gary, it’s not about the monetary value or the size of the business, true success steps from happiness, and in order for him to be happy, he has to follow the 3 golden rules.
Gary explains that if you don’t love what you do, your just another follower, another worker, another person in the business world. It's finding something that you are passionate about, something that you are willing to live and breath, the thing that makes you jump out of bed in the morning that will set you apart from the rest and guarantee success.
”The Internet makes it possible for anyone to be 100 percent true to themselves and make serious cash by turning what they love most into their personal brand.”
PERSONAL BRAND
As far as Vaynerchuk is concerned, your personal brand is the starting point. Without a creative and compelling personal brand, you won’t be able to start monetising your passion.
The key is being relatable and authentic. You want your followers to know you. It’s important to establish something that set’s you apart from the crowd, from the others who are potentially selling similar products/services/content. Gary says you need to use your personal brand as the thing that will keep your customers coming back for more.
Vaynerchuk mentions that it is important to establish how you are going to market yourself, you need to take yourself into consideration. Someone who is shy and reserved may not seem relatable on video or podcasts, but they might be able to come across well in writing blogs. Determine which channel suits you best.
Create Great Content
”To everyone who is freaking out because they fear the noise and distraction of all the additional content on the Internet, you can relax. Quality is a tremendous filter. Cream always rises, my friends, no matter how many cups of coffee you pour.”
Vaynerchuck emphasises the importance of simply talking about the things that you love, your passions. Whatever platform it is, if you talk about something you are passionate about, you will be relatable, come across as authentic and people will feel a connection to you. Vaynerchuck references Simon Sinek who agrees;
”Talking about what you love brings passion to the table. You come across more credible and entertaining when you talk about the thing you love. You also won't need a script.” – Simon Sinek
The two important components of using your personal brand to create a business in the social marketing world are; product and content. One without the other will never work.
Content
This is what you put out into the world via social media. This is what Vaynerchuk emphasises talking about your passion – you have to talk about it and express your passion and love for it on your social media platforms. Bring people in who share your passion.
Vaynerchuk believes that stories are a great platform for communicating your content, tell relatable, enjoyable stories.
”Ask yourself: “Is marketing/tech/ hockey my greatest passion?” And “Can I be the best blogger about this subject?”. The answers should both be ‘yes’.”
The scale to which you can monetise your passion is going to be affected by numerous things; your market, the size of your niche, and most importantly, what sets you apart from the other players.
”Know yourself. Choose the right medium, choose the right topic, create awesome content, and you can make a lot of money being happy.”
Choose Your Platform
Vaynerchuk has a real passion for Twitter in particular, he recommends that you check out Chris Brogan’s ’50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business’. If someone re-tweets you, they are sending out a message to the world that they think you are worth paying attention to.
”The best business tweet of all time: “What can I do for you?”. You'll be amazed at the response you get. You're in business to serve your community. Don't ever forget it.”
”The best business tweet of all time: 'What can I do for you?''Click To Tweet
BE REAL
Vaynerchuk emphasises three key values when it comes to portraying yourself online and being real;
- Authenticity – this means that every decision you make, and everything that you put out on social media, needs to reflect your business and be true to yourself.
- Hustle – essentially, if you’re willing to work, longer and harder than the others, then you’ll come out on top.
- Patience – it’s going to take time, be patient. It won’t happen overnight.
”You have to live your passion. Think of building a business as a marathon, not a sprint. You have to love what you do as it's the only way you'll keep going. And even if you fail, you won't have any regrets because you were doing what you loved.”
”You have to live your passion. Think of building a business as a marathon, not a sprint.'Click To Tweet
Create Community
Part of being real is creating a community that supports and gets you. Creating a community is going to take a lot of work, as Vaynerchuk says;
“That’s where the bulk of your hustle is going to go, and where the bulk of your success will be determined.”
A few ways Vaynerchuk suggests you start building your community are;
- Comment on other people’s blogs
- Comment back to people who reply to you
- Get conversation going
- Link back to your content whenever you can
- Have quality conversation
- Have quality and relevant content
”It's the quality of the conversation and community that matters most. Not the numbers.”
More than just money
Vaynerchuk pushes the idea that you have to be following your passion, not money. This is where people will trip up time and time again. Make sure that what you do is something you love, then ask yourself if it will make you money, and more importantly, will you be proud of how you made that money.
It’s important to realise just how unforgiving the internet can be, everything you post on social media or the internet, in general, is going directly to the public, opening yourself up to scrutiny. Always take care when you interact with people, you never know how they are going to respond. Your intentions may always be good, but it’s so easy to be misinterpreted.
When making the big business decisions, always think it through.Never make hasty decisions you may regret. Always look at the ‘big picture’.
”If there's any message I want you to take away, it's that true success—financial, personal, and professional—lies above all in loving your family, working hard, and living your passion”
GARY VAYNERCHUCK’S STEPS TO BUILDING YOUR PERSONAL BRAND:
- Establish what your passion is
- Establish enough blog/video/podcast content, have over 50 topics up your sleeve.
- Make sure you are able to articulate your passion and talk about it better than anyone else doing the same thing.
- You need to name your personal brand, whether you broadcast that name or not.
- Buy your domain name.
- Decide on what platform your voice is best for; video, audio, the written word.
- Start a blog.
- Have someone help you with the design.
- Ensure that there is somewhere that people can contact you and invite you to do business with them
- Set up a Facebook fan page
- Identify what platforms you will broadcast your content on. Always choose Twitter and Facebook, the rest is up to you.
- Sign up for Ping.fm or TubeMogul.
- Post. A lot.
- Work on your community building, leave comments on blogs, participate in forums.
- Search Twitter for users talking about your topic, reach out to them and create conversation.
- Similarly, find blogs relevant to your topic. Create more community.
- Find all the relevant Facebook pages and groups. Join them all.
- Repeat steps 12 through 16 over and over.
- Do it again.
- And again.
- Once your community has been established and your personal brand is out there and reaching masses, reach out to advertisers to begin monetising.
- In the words of Gary Vaynerchuk;
”Enjoy the ride!”
CONCLUSION
Key Takeaways
- You need to be truly passionate about something in order to turn it into a business
- Identify your passion
- Decide what your content will be
- Decide what platform suits you best
- Build a community by reaching out to others who share your passion, create quality conversation and relevant content
- Keep pushing until you’ve reached enough people
- Then you can try to monetise your content
- Be willing to live and breath your passion, your going to have to hustle to turn this into a business
Further Reading
Also by Gary Vaynerchuk are; The Thank You Economy – a closer look at the changing platform of marketing, diving deeper into the world of social media marketing and #ASKGARYVEE – a more personal look into Vaynerchuk’s world as he answers some of his most asked and most interesting questions.
Passive Income by Richard Gadson offers 30 strategies and ideas to start your own online business. By sharing his own journey, Ben Horowitz offers an interesting insight not starting and running your own startup in The Hard Thing About Hard Things.
As a bit of an interesting comparison to Vaynerchuk’s hustle approach, Tim Ferriss’ The 4 Hour Work Week gives you a perspective on creating a lifestyle where you work less and have an automated, passive income.
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Action Steps
- Ask yourself what your passion is. Could you talk about it for hours?
- Have you got a personal brand? Summarise it in one sentence, what sets you apart from your competition?
- Are you building a community? Reach out to others that share your passion.
- Do you think you represent yourself authentically? Are you relatable?
- If you liked the summary and want to read more you can purchase the book on Amazon.
DOWNLOAD THE CRUSH IT SUMMARY PDF FOR FREE!
This summary is not intended as a replacement for the original book and all quotes are credited to the above-mentioned author and publisher.