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

by Gary Vaynerchuk

you can use your personal brand—who you are—to market your business, or your personal brand can actually be the business.

Now it’s everyone else’s turn to learn how to get paid to do something they were going to do for free anyway.

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. What I can offer you is a set of universal principles.

See, this book is for two audiences. The first is people who know to the depths of their souls that they are born to build something great.

It’s in everyone’s best interest to build a personal brand, even if they have little interest in becoming rich or famous.

If you’re earning what you need to live the life you want and loving every day of it, you’re crushing it. That’s all I want for you.

When it comes to professional opportunities, this is the best time to be alive in the history of humankind. I don’t want anyone to waste it.

you are a parent, please give it to your children as they start to imagine what and who they want to be.

There are still people out there who believe that it’s a rare person who loves his or her job. That’s bullshit. Our choices are infinite when we understand today’s digital environment, as are our opportunities. We just have to find the courage to reach out and make them.

If there’s anything this book should teach you, it’s that the only thing stopping you from achieving lasting career and life happiness is you.

Even with only a thousand followers, an entry-level Instagrammer could earn about $5,000 per year with just two posts a week, and ten thousand followers could net almost $20,000 per year.

Let’s say you’re killing it on Twitter. What are you going to do the day you realize you’re tired of Twitter? What are you going to do if Twitter disappears? What if you’re the country’s favorite beekeeper and you develop a deadly allergy to bees? It’s a matter of survival to think beyond your current successes and constantly look for ways to create new ones so that you’re never limited to any one platform or even one topic. How do you do that? By creating a personal brand so powerful that it transcends platforms, products, and even your passion.

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. Your audience is waiting for you.

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. You’re making excuses, like, “Gary makes it seem so easy, yet this is really almost impossible.” It’s not, actually, but you can’t half-ass this. It will require big risks. It will take all your mental capacity, your time, and your leisure. You’re going to eat shit for a long time, but I promise, the sacrifices will be worthwhile.

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

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 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.

I do publish books, but other than an occasional personal anecdote, there’s no information in them that I have not discussed in a public, free forum somewhere else.

CARE. Still the best marketing strategy ever.

figure out how to use the modern platforms—Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and all the others we’ll cover in this book—to give away that good stuff you’ve got,

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

you’re going to have to make sure that you are constantly updating your knowledge and providing information and insight that people can’t find easily anywhere else. Moreover, you’ll have to do it in a unique and memorable signature style. There’s no way around it—your content must be amazing.

the learning process should be your content.

you don’t just have the ability to generate unique pieces of creative—you are the unique piece of creative.

use every platform available to document your actual life and speak your truth.

Documenting guarantees that every encounter and every engagement is captured so I can ensure that I’m never caught off guard when I experience a moment that could spark a valuable piece of content for my followers. Documenting has liberated me from the pressure of having to create all the time.

Documenting to build a personal brand is an especially good tactic if you’re already working a job that you want to leave someday. Build your brand and gain traction in your niche before you ever need to make any money, so that when you are ready to step out of your current job, your brand is there to hold you up and carry you to your next opportunity.

You don’t get to call yourself an expert until you’ve put in the work—and the market decides, not you.

If I could give some advice to my seventeen-year-old self, I’d tell him to turn on the camcorder and capture every minute of his training.

Documenting isn’t valuable because it captures how interesting (or not) you are now; it’s about preparing for how people will watch you ten years from now.