Crush It!
by Gary Vaynerchuk

  • Business
  • Ashto = 7/10
  • Jonesy = 5/10
Crush It

Crush It! – by Gary Veynerchuk

Crush It is all about building your personal brand, building an audience and a community by pumping out content about things you love to talk about. By putting out videos, podcasts and blog posts, you can eventually build enough of an audience that you can monetize. You can then make money through advertising, books and TV deals, speaking engagements, consulting, retail, affiliate deals, so so much more!

“Why NOW is the time to cash in on your passion”

 

Crush It! Summary

“When it comes to professional opportunities, this is the best time to be alive in the history of humankind.”

Gary Vaynerchuk

There are parents who forced their kids to stop playing video games because games distracted them from their study. Those kids have probably now grown up and are making a decent enough living, but doing something they just tolerate (or even hate). They could have been a professional gamer instead but will probably end up living a miserable life.  In Crushing It!, Gary Vee is aiming to put you in the right frame of mind. When you release creativity, you succeed in the modern era of business.

The numbers around social media viewership are staggering:

  • Youtube’s daily viewership is close to 1.25 billion hours a day
  • One in every 5 mins spent on mobile is on Facebook
  • Every minute, 65,900 videos and photos are posted to Instagram
  • Over 3 billion snaps are created every day on Snapchat

Your audience is waiting for you and you only need a small slice of the viewership to make a living. The internet got rid of the middleman, allowing every industry to go direct-to-consumer. YouTube, Facebook and Podcasts are the new NBC, ABC and CBS.
Gary Vee gives us the elements you need to make it in the 21st Century of Business:

Authenticity: Your intent will be reflected in your authenticity. This is a welcome relief to people who always feel like they are being taken advantage of, or only hearing a small part of the whole story. Don’t try and fake it. Eventually you will get shown for who you are. You need to figure out the platforms to give out what you have to give. The more authentic you are, the more people will be willing to forgive your inevitable mistakes.

Passion: There are people who make money in their job but aren’t happy. There are people working around their passion, doing something they love – whether they make money or not, they’re happy. Passion helps you get through the times when you are doing it tough, and on the path to turning your passion into your job, there will be tough times ahead. 

Patience: To live with your passion will probably require that you go slower than you may want to. Bide your time. You have no reason to act like something special until you have something special to show for it. Even then, don’t act special. The moment you do, people switch off.

Speed: Patience is for the long term, speed is for the short term. Be unafraid to make mistakes and have a crack at new things. Go through sprints where you’re working super-hard and getting lots done in short bursts.

Work: When you first start there is no time for leisure. If you want to crush it, there is no time for watching NetFlix or wasting an hour on lunch break. If you want out of the traditional work path, your only way out is work ungodly amounts between 7pm – 2am every night after work, plus all day Saturday and Sunday. If you’re building a business around the thing you love to do for fun and relaxation, it won’t feel like losing your leisure time.

Attention: Where are the eyeballs going? People always underestimate the ‘new thing’ in the beginning. Don’t get comfortable on the platform you are on – keep experimenting, even when you’re sure you’re doing right.

Content: There is no way around it: your content must be amazing. But you don’t have to wait until you’re an expert. Quite the contrary. You don’t have to wait until you’ve ‘made it’ before you start sharing your ideas. Drop your excuses by following his advice to ‘document and don’t create’. Share your learning journey with people. Show them what you’re doing to build yourself up, you don’t have to wait until you’re a finished product and can tell people how you did it. Start sharing now, share content from every staging of your development.
In order to win, you need to be where the eyeballs are. Gary has practical advice for all of the content platforms available to entrepreneurs. Given the ephemeral nature of the internet platforms, these may not be relevant when you are reading this. 

Tik Tok: The users are young and creative and eager to grow up. They make original music, comedy skits, educational videos, create clips and compile them into stories. Even though they are young, those 13 year olds grow up to be 18 year and 25 year old entrepreneurs. If you’re seeking to build your audience, go where your audience goes.

Twitter: The strategy for Twitter is to understand it is the  place to listen, react, and hijack. The problem is not many people are able to listen, but listening well is the key to engaging well on twitter. It is a slow process and an immense amount of work to provide insightful engagement.

YouTube: Vlogging is a terrific way to document instead of create. Literally anyone can do it. For Gary, he started with bland content about wine, but in episode 57 he began changing it up, talking about the other things he is passionate about.

Facebook: If you are going to build a brand, you need to have a Facebook page. There are almost 1.15 billion active users, half of those use it every single day. Facebook gives you the gift of flexibility. You can boost content for 13$ and get 2600 impressions, depending on targeting choices.

Instagram: Anyone wishing to build a personal brand should be on Instagram. Gary thinks strategy should search , click, investigate, DM, for 6 hours a day. You should do it every lunch break, in the bathroom, when you are waiting to pick up your kid from dance class and in the 20 minutes you’ve got before the enchiladas come out of the oven. Only a fraction of the people you reach out to will respond, but that’s all you need.

Podcasts: In this hyper speed world, multi-tasking is everything. It is a lot easier to listen to a podcast while you check emails and pay your bills than to watch videos. The key to podcasts is to promote your show through social media channels and encourage symbiotic relationships with others who have bigger platforms than you.

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