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

by Gary Vaynerchuk

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.

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.

reach out, make an offer they can’t refuse, and get to work producing something that doesn’t make them regret giving you a chance.

I won’t lie. Biz-deving this way is hard, tedious, and time-consuming. I like tedious. It means most people won’t do it. If you do, you will win.

It literally does not matter how long a platform lasts. What matters is that it exists. If you’re seeking to build your audience, go where the audience goes, wherever that may lead.

Download every new social platform, taste it, and understand it. Drop it if it doesn’t work for you or you can’t get comfortable, but never reject anything without educating yourself about it first (which is good advice for like, life).

One of the quickest ways to build traction on Musical.ly, for example, would be to open the app, examine the trending tags on the Discover page, and work on producing great content around those trending tags so that you can be spotted by kids who would otherwise have no way to know you’re worth checking out.

the best way to reach out to a community is to become part of a community.

For teens, though, it was worth figuring out, because it addressed two universal adolescent realities: (1) You don’t want to hang where you mom hangs out, and (2) You want to lock your room.

I understand that you want to focus on what is giving you the best returns right now, but what if it doesn’t always? And why would you turn your back on a potentially whole new audience?

The business world is separated into two camps, conversion-based salespeople and branding-and-marketing people. The former are short-term players; the latter, long-term.

Snapchat forces you to show your personality. Are you intelligent, are you funny? What are you bringing to the table other than what you’re wearing?

if you want to bring awareness to your Snapchat profile and you send out lots of e-mails, add your snapcode to the e-mail. Pretty easy, right? You could wear a T-shirt with your snapcode printed on it, or you could create custom Geofilters, which are still underpriced.* Both tactics would allow you to put your brand right in front of people’s eyes in a fun, interactive, unobtrusive way.

What’s the secret to his success? “Personal relationships. I think a lot of people establish fake, one-way relationships—they just want to ask for something, or they want to do a collab and get a shout-out. They don’t develop those real relationships and provide value and just give, give, give. If you do that, eventually you’ll get back, and that’s where the success comes.”

listening well is the key to engaging well on Twitter. It’s by listening that you can find the conversation threads that can lead you to the people passionate about the subject around which you’re going to grow your influence.

Where do you think they get the most requests for favors or collabs? Instagram. So even though they probably spend more time on Instagram, you’re more likely to have a better chance of getting a response if you DM them on Twitter, where there is less competition for their attention.

On Twitter, you are always just one comment away from getting noticed and making a name for yourself, so the more times you get a chance to talk, the better. Remember, though, that the best dinner guests are not just great storytellers, but also great listeners.

You reply to famous people, you create content in response to well-known sportswriters, personalities, coaches, and athletes. You give yourself every possible opportunity to be discovered as people hit those hashtags and watch those conversations. Done right, this should take you four to six hours.

Now he did a one-eighty and decided he was going to give all his information away for free. “Because you know what? People don’t have what I have.”

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.

Don’t ever decide for yourself that videos about you or the things you like to do won’t be compelling to anyone else. Let the market decide. Trust me, it’ll be honest with you.

Vlogging is a great equalizer, and YouTube is the vlogging mother ship. It’s the platform where the person no one thought would amount to anything can make it.

if you simply can’t decide whether you’d rather be the number-one American authority on pajamas or the go-to guru for kombucha, pick up your phone and start documenting your day. Put the results up daily as a YouTube vlog. See which posts get the most attention and double down on whatever it is that’s making those posts stick. But you have to put something out to know if you’ve got the goods.

YouTube isn’t going to make you charismatic and interesting, but it will expose you if you are.

Every single thing that has ever happened on television can happen on YouTube.

Yes, it will be harder today than it would have been had you started doing this in 2011, when there were a lot of people watching but not as many creating, but if you are really talented, smart, funny, or creative, you will win.

When you’ve got no audience, you should be taking every opportunity to engage with people who are taking an interest in you. To do otherwise is absolutely bonkers. The fact that this needs to be said speaks to many people’s audacity and laziness.

you should never ask for anything until you’ve given twice as much or more than you’re hoping to get.

you look for pictures in these accounts that suggest the account owners would be interested in wearing pieces from your store. You then send them a direct message: “Hi, my name is Rick and I’m the manager of EnAvant. Love your look. Come by the store, we’d love to give you a gift certificate for 20 percent off.”