Crushing It!: How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business and Influence—and How You Can, Too

by Gary Vaynerchuk

What worked for me won’t work for you, however, and vice versa. That’s why self-awareness is so vital—you have to be true to yourself at all times.

You just have to make the choice to actually do it. I am so tired of excuses. Why not try something new? Be optimistic, exhibit patience, shut your mouth, and execute.

And what really matters is a pretty short list: intent, authenticity, passion, patience, speed, work, and attention.

Why do you want to be an entrepreneur? To share your knowledge? To help people? To build something that leaves a legacy? To make a good income to give yourself and your family financial security and breathing room? To have fun with a creative outlet? To create community?

This book features entrepreneurs at all levels of financial success and all stages of influence, but those currently at the pinnacle of both share three characteristics: A commitment to service A desire to provide value A love of teaching

I started approaching venues, which were mostly restaurants and bars, and built a relationship with either the manager or the owner. I’d try thinking about how I could make my event valuable for them. How could I care for their biggest need, their biggest challenges? So I started asking, “What is the night you make the least amount of money?” And they would answer “Tuesday night” or “Wednesday night” or whatever it was, and I’d say, “OK. I’m going to bring you five hundred people on that night, because I want to make every night a profitable night for you, not just the weekends. And I’m going to bring new business leaders, a new audience of quality people to your business.”

Passion is your backup generator when all your other energy sources start to sputter.

I love losing because I learn so much from it. The reason I don’t talk about my failures much is not because I’m hiding anything, but because once I’ve seen I’ve made a mistake, in my mind, it’s over. I’ll admit it: I was wrong in 2010; location-based chat app Yobongo was not the next great startup. But what good does it do me to dwell on what didn’t work out? I’d rather look ahead to the next thing that I’m sure will. My track record speaks for itself. Being unafraid of making mistakes makes everything easy for me. Not worrying about what people think frees you to do things, and doing things allows you to win or learn from your loss—which means you win either way. Hear me now: you are better off being wrong ten times and being right three than you are if you try only three times and always get it right.

I’ve audited a lot of people over the years who on the surface seemed to be doing everything right. They’d established a good niche, they were personable and interesting, their content was on target and valuable, yet they expressed frustration that they weren’t meeting their business goals. When I looked closer, I’d see that they were still playing golf or tweeting about the previous night’s Walking Dead episode. Let me make this as clear as I can: When you first start out, there is no time for leisure—if you want to crush it. There is no time for YouTube videos or shooting the shit in the breakroom or an hour-and-a-half lunch. That is, of course, why entrepreneurship is often seen as a young person’s game. It takes a lot of stamina to get a personal brand and business off the ground. It is a lot easier to devote all your time to a new business endeavor when you’re twenty-five and single with no one to answer to but yourself. Still, 95 percent of the people reading this book, even the young ones, probably have some kind of obligation: college loans (many are likely still in school), mortgages, child support, elderly parents, or dependent families. Most probably already have a job. Maybe you’ve got a flexible schedule because you’re driving for a rideshare company or working part-time or nights. But most of you are working nine to five or even eight to six. Your only prayer to one day live the Crush It! life, therefore, is to deploy ungodly amounts of work from seven p.m. t...

Where are the eyeballs going? What are your customers talking about? What are the newest trends in your field? What are the biggest controversies? You have to pay attention to everything.

The tour was a huge success, but it almost broke Andrew. “That was the hardest year of my life, even past sleeping in my car and going into the Marine Corps. I knew that most businesses fail, I knew that the odds were against me, and I knew that I was not supposed to make it, so I was waking up at four or five in the morning to work twelve-hour days for Pepsi, then working six p.m. to two a.m., putting in time for the O Agency and Bakari. And I was still DJ-ing, too.”

To monetize your personal brand into a business using social marketing networks, two pillars need to be in place: product and content. —Crush It!, chapter 5

Creating all that content can seem daunting, but it’s a lot more manageable if you focus on creating one big piece of pillar content that can be splintered into other smaller bits of content—content that breeds like rabbits, if you will. The concept can best be illustrated by a chart my team and I created for VaynerTalent, a division of VaynerMedia I established for influencers who have grown their personal brands as big as they can on their own and need extra help to keep growing. It’s a service for the 1 percent of the 1 percent. If you’re reading this book, you’re likely not there yet, but I hope to teach you what you need to know so that if you get good enough, you’ll need us one day. Anyway, we use a chart to illustrate our strategy for creating endless bits of microcontent out of one “pillar” piece of content:

In 2009, I devoted only three lines to the idea that “you can even make the learning process part of your content.” It was an aside, a possible solution if you were young or still building cred. Since then I’ve come to realize that, actually, the learning process should be your content. That means it’s not a problem if you’ve got more passion than expertise. Our best-loved icons aren’t the ones born to the manor who stayed in the manor. They’re the ones who started out tinkering in their basements, who sold product out of the backs of their cars, who rose and fell and rose again. The only ones we can’t forgive are people who won’t admit to their imperfections or own their mistakes.

“The main thing is realizing that even if you feel terrible for a while, that’s not how you’re going to feel the whole time. . . . Things change if you just keep moving.” 4

“I am going to do something I should have done ages ago. The only thing that stopped me was my fear of what you’d say, but you need to know that I’m over that now. I don’t need your blessing, but I do need to know that I will have your support when I fail. Because I will. Not spectacularly, I hope, but definitely in the short term. In the long term, though, I’m going to win, and it would mean the world to me to know you’ve got my back and are hoping for my success, not waiting for my failure.”

Fear of Wasting Time If you’re under the age of thirty-five, this isn’t even an issue. You can always go back to the practical world in twenty-four months if you stink or hate what you’re doing. School and the nine-to-five grind are not going anywhere.

People are so scared they’ll be wasting time if they try to build a business, even when their time isn’t valuable. If you’re sacrificing time you could have spent with loved ones or doing something that brings value to your life—or hell, $50K—then I can see how that might cause you some regrets. But if you’re giving up only your downtime—time you would have otherwise spent with Game of Thrones or some video games—how can you say it was wasted? You’re literally giving up empty hours in favor of doing something that could fill your life with joy, and you’re worried about wasting time? That’s bullshit. If you’re not 100 percent happy with your life today, it is never a waste of time to try something that could get you there.

“I dove in pretty naïvely, started creating a ton of videos, starting doing a ton of Facebook. I remember simple conversations with myself: If I was the consumer out there, what would cause me to come back to a Facebook page or a YouTube channel over and over again? And the only answer I could come up with was if it helped improve my life, if it had value in that sense. And that was my guiding light.”

Remember, smart entrepreneurs don’t care what other people think. You’ll look like an ass for a while if you walk around with a camera constantly pointed at your face, but everyone looks like an ass when trying something new. Reality TV was once a joke, remember? Now you can’t turn around without seeing a reality star on a magazine cover, a makeup counter, some exercise equipment, or a frozen-food package. Everyone’s an ass until they’re a pioneer.

It’s very Wizard of Oz, actually. Let me get a little Glinda the Good Witch on you: You’ve always had the power to achieve your wildest ambitions. There is literally—literally—no reason why you can’t become an entrepreneur and influencer in 2018. It’s my greatest hope that by the end of this book, you’ll feel a lot like nine-year-old me as I hurled myself into the deep end of the pool and realized, “Oh, I can fucking swim!”

5 The Only Thing You Need to Give Yourself to Crush It PERMISSION www.garyvaynerchuk.com/permission

Despite his belief in Crush It!, he isn’t trying to be another GaryVee. “I am who I am and he is who he is. That’s what Crush It! is also about, you know: being confident in who you are, not trying to be like somebody else. When you really own it, and you put yourself out there and be you, your vibe is going to attract your tribe, and you’re going to be able to make change in this world.”

You need to understand something: when you’re starting with nothing, you will find that your absolute breakthrough opportunities will be developed in two ways: By the smart use of hashtags, a strategy that requires an unbelievably long grind. By direct-messaging, i.e., reaching out directly to people and offering something of value in return for their attention, a strategy that requires an unbelievably long grind.

It’s the second one that I believe holds the most promise, which is why, whenever possible, I’ve included instructions on how to collaborate and business-develop within each platform we discuss in this book. Collaborations are the absolutely most tried-and-true way to grow a fan base quickly—quickly being a relative term. In most cases, you should count on this process taking years, not months. If that bothers you, close the book.

Now, there’s something you should know: right this minute I have around five hundred DMs from people who want something from me. You know what I have to say to them? Mazel tov, and go away. And that’s if I’m in the mood to be nice. Why would I encourage you to try to get other influencers’ attention when I ignore or reject the majority of people who try this tactic with me? Because if they were doing it right, I wouldn’t reject them. If I felt they weren’t just trying to use me, if I thought they were genuinely trying to be helpful, if they could recognize a hole in my business and had the knowledge and skills to fill it, I might consider talking to them.

If established influencers see an upside to collaborating with you—allowing you to post content on their pages, working together to create content—they’ll get back in touch. If not, they’ll say no thanks, usually by not answering. But if you reach out for six or seven hours a day, you will eventually find someone willing to try something new with you. Once you do, you’ll have raised awareness with thousands of people who previously didn’t know you were alive. Provide something valuable to your collab partner, and you’ll quickly raise your profile as an influencer and in all likelihood make a new friend.

I answer every single snap I get, and sometimes I get two hundred a day. I sit down at night for an hour and in the morning for an hour, and answer every single question. It’s almost like text-messaging your readers like they’re your friends. I think it allowed people to really come into my life and allowed me to come into theirs. It’s just a different way of being social. And it allows me to tell a story, and while I tell that story, I’m 100 percent providing value to the audience.

For instance, if I go to cryotherapy, I take a picture of where I am, and then I show me in the booth freezing my ass off. And then I can show what I wore, and after that, I Snapchat the little flier with the benefits. So what my followers get out of that is where to go, what the benefits are, what they should wear, and what it looks like when you’re in the chamber. With every single thing I do, I try to hit those four points. I’m not just going to post a picture of my coffee cup. I’m going to say, “Today, I’m drinking iced coffee. I’m drinking it with a silicone straw because it’s BPA free, and I like cinnamon in it because it helps with your blood sugar.” Every single snap needs to leave them with something or else it’s narcissistic.

Let’s say you’re like me, a forty-two-year-old influencer who has become somewhat pigeonholed in terms of the kind of content that’s expected of you. You already have a blog, a Q&A show, and a daily vlog. While playing around on Snapchat, you realize that it could provide you with an interesting outlet where you could create a new narrative, a place to microvlog. It’s the place where you can talk about your coffee, show a picture of the colorful cereal aisle at your supermarket, and reveal that your favorite color marker is green.

This guy was very real and not trying to sell anything, even though he’d just written a book. And he said, “There’s no secret to being successful on the Internet. You need to be good at what you do; you need to be passionate about it and go crush it.” That resonated with me. It was like a weight lifted off my shoulders because someone else was saying what I was thinking. I had tried some things in the past, to make a couple videos and put them up, but for whatever reason, my head wasn’t in it. I just wasn’t ready, I guess, at the time. And reading the book, something clicked, and I thought, Now I’m ready to do this. He did this in the wine world; there’s no reason why I can’t go out there and exploit it in the photo world.

I found the thing that I could do, and I beat the shit out of it. I locked myself away for two years. Every day, day in and day out. I shot a video every single day. Wake up in the morning, come up with an idea, shoot a video, edit it, have lunch, come back, put it out into the world, have dinner, then stay up until one or two in the morning replying to comments. I didn’t use teleprompters or anything. If I made a mistake, I would make fun of myself and keep going, partly because I didn’t know how to edit video. All I knew how to do was put a beginning and an end on it. Sometimes good enough is good enough.

You are not going to be successful unless you put the work in. If anybody tells you otherwise, they’re full of shit. It’s all of the perseverance and all of the hard work you put in in the decades leading up to it that make you ready. Are you passionate about what you’re doing? Are you good at what you’re doing? Then fucking do it. It’s one thing to read the book; it’s another thing to take action.

Vlogging is a terrific way to document instead of create, which means that literally anyone can do it. You don’t need to be accomplished (at least not in the way 99 percent of you reading this define accomplishment) to break out on this platform because, remember, when you’re documenting and not creating, you’re allowed to learn as you go. You don’t have to be an expert (yet). You don’t have to be successful (yet). The only thing you really do have to do is make the road to getting there interesting.

7 Steps to Biz Dev Make sure your Instagram is full of incredible content, the best you can make. More people are about to come see what you’re about. Search relevant keywords. For example, if you’re building a biker brand, motorcycles. Click on the first hashtag that shows up. As I write this, there are over 2.4 million posts with #motorcycles. Click on every picture you see with that hashtag. The first four that show up in this instance belong to accounts that have a combined following of over one million Instagrammers. Investigate every account and any linked websites to confirm that they are owned by people or companies in your field, or even if they’re not, to check if they could use your services or products anyway. Click on the three dots in the upper right corner of their pages and send those individuals or businesses a custom-written direct message. Do not spam with cut-and-paste bullshit. If that’s the best you can do, you’ve already lost. In your message, explain what drew you to them (I love your work; I’ve always admired you; you post the funniest memes; this post is so creative; etc.), why you are worth paying attention to (my goal is to promote better biker safety; I’ve designed a helmet even the most helmet-averse rider won’t mind wearing; I’ve launched the freshest, most exciting biker-themed YouTube channel on the Internet), and what value you can offer (I’d like to send you one of my helmets to try; I’d love to invite you on air to talk about your new bo...

Podcasts sell time, which is why everyone, including people who rock on camera, should try to create one. In this hyperspeed world, multitasking is everything, and it’s a lot easier to listen to a podcast while you check your e-mails and pay your bills than to watch a video. In addition, as of 2014, the 139 million total commuters in the United States spent 29.6 billion hours traveling to and from their workplaces.1 A lot of that commute time is spent in cars where drivers can’t watch videos (for now). They can, however, easily listen to podcasts. In the information age, podcasts allow us to efficiently and effectively maximize our knowledge.

People wonder if we’re sacrificing something irreplaceable, perhaps even changing the human condition, as we become increasingly obsessed with speed and productivity. I don’t worry about it because we are simply doing what we’ve always done, what we were probably born to do. We wax nostalgic, but our actions betray us. How many people above the age of thirteen in America do not have a cell phone? Practically no one. As long as we exist, humans will continue to embrace whatever inventions and innovations offer us the most speed and convenience. You’re not going to lose your soul if you do this. In fact, if you’re truly an entrepreneur, you’re going to get it back.