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

by Gary Vaynerchuk

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

Then they noticed that consumers react pretty strongly when they feel that you give a shit about them, which gave them the incentive to play up that side of themselves rather than fight it, which is what most of us rocked in the cradle of capitalism have always been taught to do. Breaking the money-first rule is also how I got to where I am. I have never cared about the money. I do, however, care deeply, obsessively, about my legacy. I want the world to mourn me when I die, not just for being a decent human being, but for building something tremendous

Even then, don’t act special; the moment you do, you’ll start moving in the opposite direction. Take my advice: eat shit for as long as you have to. That means be a bigger man or woman than everyone around you. That means the customer is always right. That means you put your employees ahead of you. That means you don’t take many vacations, maybe for years,

Work 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.

In eighteen hours, he had used his rudimentary Photoshop skills to pull together some photographs and recipes and created an e-book, listing it on his website for nine dollars.

The second thing was that he discovered Crush It!, which helped him come to terms with what had to happen next. “The book says, ‘If you want to make money selling worms, do it, and own it, and be that guy.’ The LEED exam stuff? Those were my worms. I was that guy.”

It’s no secret that I think spending four years getting a college degree if you have your heart set on becoming a businessperson or entrepreneur is a waste of time and money. Make that a fucking waste of time and money. I feel that strongly about it.

Done right, this should take you four to six hours. That’s day one. On day two, you do it again—for four to six hours, or as many as you can spare when you’re not at work or school. Remember, eleven minutes is eleven more than zero, but also remember, twelve minutes gives you more at bats to win than eleven. Day three is a Saturday. Awesome! It’s your day off! That means you can spend ten to seventeen hours seeking out sports-related topics and engaging with others interested in them, too.

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.

We see it all the time. ESPN made Sports Illustrated look old. Bleacher Report is in the process of making ESPN look fusty. Barstool Sports is already starting to make Bleacher Report feel stale. It happened to Macy’s. It happened to Radio Shack, Woolworth’s, Tower Records, Nokia . . . They crushed, they stagnated, they died. They are no different from any brand crushing it today. One day we could have a WTF moment upon hearing that Ralph Lauren filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection or that GQ no longer exists. Learn the lesson now: everyone is playing the same game. If you don’t play offense all the time, every day, every year, no matter how successful you become, someday you will wind up playing defense.