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

by Gary Vaynerchuk

That eureka moment led him to found Entrepreneurs on Fire, his daily podcast interviewing the country’s most inspiring and innovative entrepreneurs.

Today his show is one of the top-ranked business podcasts on iTunes, grossing around $200,000 per month. I know this because he posts his monthly financials on his site and shares the details about his expenditures in his podcast so other entrepreneurs can learn from his smart moves and avoid his mistakes.

Stories like that are no longer uncommon, and they illustrate why we need to give our children as much freedom as possible to gravitate toward what they love doing.

An entrepreneur is someone who finds a way. —Shaun “Shonduras” McBride

influencer marketing is poised to eat a real chunk of traditional marketing’s lunch. Younger consumers spend increasingly less time on traditional media and more time consuming content online.

Over 3 billion snaps are created each day on Snapchat, where over 60 percent of ads are watched with the audio on.4

The most popular Instagrammers can earn seven figures per year from their social-media efforts alone.

I’m an entrepreneur who built a $150 million media company in part because of my personal brand, which I developed by first creating valuable content that grew my influence. That’s one way to crush it.

At its height, influencer marketing is reality TV 2.0. I want you to think of yourself as tomorrow’s newest star.

You the entrepreneur are no different from the organic mac-and-cheese brand that branches out into cheddar cheese crackers and chicken noodle soup. The brand was never about organic mac and cheese; it was about organic comfort food.

Oprah was not just a talk show host. Muhammad Ali was not just a boxer. The Rock is not just a wrestler. A strong personal brand is your ticket to complete personal and professional freedom.

Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook are the NBC, ABC, and CBS of our day.

What this should tell you is that if you’re not crushing it, it’s not because you’re too old or poor or have too many other responsibilities. It’s because you haven’t fully committed to making the leap yet.

Don’t look for a nine-step program to success here, though. I can’t give you one. The principles are universal; the path is all yours.

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.

I loved the idea of telling a story and being able to have an emotional control over an audience. It engages all the senses at once.”

Amy realized that the only way she was going to get small companies to take her seriously was to show them why social mattered.

She got her first client, a local sustainable food magazine, by sending an e-mail explaining that although she didn’t have any formal social-media experience, she was sure she could help them develop their brand. Oh, and she was willing to do it for free. It didn’t take a lot of convincing for them to take her on as their social-media manager.

how to use video, how to talk to a camera like it’s a person—and

and then craft the messaging for a very specific type of person.

Now she knew that social-media management wasn’t going to be her sector of the online world. She was going to go after vlog and personal brand consulting. And she was going to ask for what she was worth.

Crush It! allowed me to wrap my mind around the fact that my skill was a major, major asset, both in marketing and customer service for businesses. That’s what made me a lot more confident in my pricing and monetizing on my terms. And my confidence, believing that I’m worth more, has helped me get paid much more over my career. I just kept taking the chance, because I knew I was doing good work.

She was prepared for it to take months to bring in new clients, but all the work she’d done in the wings—getting people to know and trust her by talking about her work, attending BlogWorld, following up with her network, and being diligent with building relationships—paid off.

(To make sure she stood firm on her prices, for a while she created a separate virtual assistant e-mail and negotiated for herself under a different persona.)

While it can be hard to pinpoint why some influencers build attractive, lucrative personal brands that succeed beyond their wildest expectations, it’s not hard to figure out why so many who attempt to do it fail. In general, it’s because they’re putting their energies into the wrong things. They care, but not enough about what really matters. And what really matters is a pretty short list: intent, authenticity, passion, patience, speed, work, and attention.

Intent In business, the how matters, of course, but the why matters just as much. Maybe more. Why do you want to be an entrepreneur?

By definition, an influencer engenders positive word of mouth.

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

By their own admission, most didn’t start out as the most knowledgeable in their fields, and they certainly weren’t the most polished. But what they lacked in experience they made up for in earnestness, honesty, and humor.

That is, if your nature is at least 51 percent altruistic and only 49 percent selfish, you have a real shot at breaking out, because the vast majority of people are 70 to 99 percent selfish.

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 and predicting where the future of business lay. And then I want to fucking own the afterlife. Being good and generous and giving a crap is the only thing that will get me either of those goals. Three

There are a scary number of people who say they’re starting their business because they want to make the world a better place yet reveal themselves as frauds and hypocrites in answering one or two direct questions about their model. There are also a scary number of people who are so cynical that they can’t believe anyone does anything without expecting something in return.

Courses can provide a hefty revenue stream, and done right, they can be incredible resources. I choose not to because I’m concerned that, once I put a monetary value on what I know, I’ll feel obligated to reserve my best stuff for the people willing to pay. It would create a conflict of interest that would go against everything I want my brand to be about.

In every decision I make, I consider the balance I’m willing to strike between selfishness and selflessness, with my selfish side often getting short shrift in the short term. I’m fine with waiting a few more years than I might otherwise have to to buy the Jets if it means I get to live with a clear conscience and the knowledge that I haven’t sacrificed my legacy.

In short, the source of their success lies in how much they CARE. Still the best marketing strategy ever.

“I think because I came with energy and passion, I attracted opportunities. I attracted people to come to these events. I became passionate about teaching, because no one else was talking about LinkedIn the way I was. I made it fun when LinkedIn is very boring for a lot of people.”

When I would meet with these influencers, I would never ask for advice. I would just say, “I’m so curious to hear your story about how you became successful.”

people. I never asked for a job. I never asked for business. That one-word chapter confirmed that when we show up and we add value and we care, then we can learn how to make money around it later. But show up with value first. That is how I built the last decade of my life.

Crush It! said you had to be niche, so he decided he wasn’t going to be “the social-media guy” like everyone else in 2008–2009; he was going to be the LinkedIn guy.

Crush It! said work fifteen-to-sixteen-hour days, so that’s what he did. “I was working my ass off.” He built up his expertise until every social-media conference was booking him as the LinkedIn speaker. He also got creative.

“I just started to go for it and ask for what I wanted, even if I thought it wasn’t going to work. I started asking for 20 percent commission off food and bar, as opposed to 10 percent. I charged twenty dollars at the door instead of five. And I started charging more for sponsorships.”

the thing that surprises me the most is learning that it’s not about how much you know; it’s about how much you care.

We can create anything we want to if we have the passion, the energy, the hustle, and commitment to our vision.

Authenticity Your intent will be reflected in your authenticity.

Even if people don’t like me, few ever doubt that I’m for real. There are three things working to my advantage in this regard: number one, I genuinely don’t give a shit what people think, which allows me complete freedom to do and say what I want; number two, I care immensely what everyone thinks and will spend an insane amount of time responding to skeptics who take the time to tweet or comment their criticism, to help them see where I’m coming from; and number three, which might be more important than numbers one or two, I always respect my audience. I believe in people’s intuition, and I believe that most are very good at sniffing out hypocrisy and opportunism.

I hate talking about what I’m going to do. I don’t think I talked about The Skinny Confidential once for the whole year I was building it until it was here. Because I like to show.

‘Always put your money back into your business.’ So, I was like, work, work, work for tips and then put it back right into The Skinny Confidential. And then work, work, work for tips and then right back to The Skinny Confidential. I had zero dollars in my bank account for the longest time.”

“Find that niche that you’re so good at and ride it, and ride it, and ride it until you can slowly expand out.”

I would shoot all my photos from 2:00 to 3:30, bartend from 4:00 to 12:00, come home, write my blog post from 12:00 to 2:00, wake up, teach Pure Barre, teach Pilates, go to school, rinse and repeat, five days a week. And then on the weekend, I would do Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and the e-mails and all the other little stuff that comes with it.

Schedule. Make a fucking schedule.