Crush It!: Why Now Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion

by Gary Vaynerchuk

I started building my personal brand in February 2006—to this day it has cost me far less in money (less than $15,000)

Love your family. Work superhard. Live your passion.

It means that when you get up for work every morning, every single morning, you are pumped because you get to talk about or work with or do the thing that interests you the most in the world.

You don’t live for vacations because you don’t need a break from what you’re doing—working, playing, and relaxing are one and the same. You don’t even pay attention to how many hours you’re working because to you, it’s not really work. You’re making money, but you’d do whatever it is you’re doing for free.

How to correctly channel your passion into a blog followed by thousands of people interested in consuming your personal brand.

What real hustle looks like. How to get the attention of advertisers itching to give you a portion of their billion dollars in ad revenue.

Why building a personal brand through social media is crucial to professional survival ...

Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Tumblr, and Twitter.

The person who can dominate during rough times is the person who can dominate, period.

Passion is contagious. If you channel it into creating amazing content and distribute that content using the social media tools I discuss in this book, someone like me who rocks at business development will eventually find it and become a fan.

Do what makes you happy. Keep it simple. Do the research. Work hard. Look ahead.

doing what they loved more than anything else in the world; they weren’t doing what they were born to do.

The Internet makes it possible for anyone to be 100 percent true to themselves and make serious cash by turning what they love most into their personal brand. There no longer has to be a difference between who you are and what you do.

knew from my experience with the baseball card business that people want to be told what’s good and valuable, and that they enjoy feeling like they’ve been turned on to something not everyone can appreciate.

June 1997

Whether you’re delivering your content by video, podcast, or blog, it’s the authentic you, the one thing that is guaranteed to differentiate you from everybody else, including those who share your niche or business model.

opportunity lies in transparency

Entrepreneurs don’t really have a choice—the lines between the private and the public are becoming increasingly blurred, and with people able to share their experiences and thoughts and photographs on video by spraying them all over the Internet within minutes after they happen, the days of being able to con the consumer without repercussions are pretty much over.

So no matter how you shape and color your personal brand, honesty has got to be at your core.

All I’m doing on my blog is being myself and voicing my opinion loud and clear.

concentrate on being yourself.

be yourself, put out awesome content, and people will be interested in what you have to say.

Your latest tweet and comment on Facebook and most recent blog post? That’s your résumé now.

Great content is also all about telling stories,

whoever is the best communicator will win.

Am I sure my passion is what I think it is, and Can I talk about it better than anyone else?—

There are people who belong in front of a camera, there are people who belong in print, and there are people who belong on the air.

Know yourself. Choose the right medium, choose the right topic, create awesome content, and you can make a lot of money being happy.

the most effective content medium is video,

letting people see you is a major plus when you’re trying to sell a personal brand.

Wordpress and Tumblr are the best and most popular blogging platforms currently available.

to Chris Brogan’s “50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business”: http://www.chrisbrogan.com/50-ideas-on-using-twitter-for-business/

There’s nothing scripted and nothing staged about my blogs, and I always, always do only one take.

No redos, no tweaks, nothing. People walk in and out of the office, I wave to folks passing in the hall—whatever happens during filming is what my audience will see. I’ve filmed posts from balconies, hotel rooms, the street, even my editor’s office—anywhere an idea strikes me. Sometimes the sound quality sucks. Sometimes the light is bad. As long as I get my point across and feel like I delivered the message in an authentic way, I don’t care.

No matter how big or small you want to go, your authenticity will be at the root of your appeal and is what will keep people coming to your site and spreading the word about your personal brand, service, or whatever you are offering.

If you want to dominate the social media game, all of your effort has to come from the heart;

Authenticity is what will make it possible for you to put in the kind of hustle necessary to crush it.

if you live your passion and work the social networking tools to the max, opportunities to monetize will present themselves.

Someone with less passion and talent and poorer content can totally beat you if they’re willing to work longer and harder than you are.

Expect this to be all consuming. The thing is, if you’re living your passion, you’re going to want to be consumed by your work.

There’s no room for relaxation in the flop-on-the-couch-with-popcorn-and-watch-TV kind of way, but you won’t need it.

Building and sustaining community is a never-ending part of doing business.

create your blog post and distribute it through TubeMogul (video) or Ping.fm (links) so that your content appears on every social networking platform available.

Subscribe—allows people to opt in to getting an e-mail every time you post a blog Follow Me—keeps viewers apprised of your tweets and status updates Join My Fan Page—announces to the viewer’s newsfeed that they think enough of you to be a fan and helps put your site on other people’s radar Share—makes it easy for viewers to post your link on Facebook, MySpace, etc. Twitter This Email This

Buy both .com and .tv if possible because you never know if you’ll need them and there’s no obligation to launch both.

Enthusiastic fans Free product offers from businesses that notice your growing fan base

Biz dev deals from individuals smart enough to see they need to do business with you while you’re still affordable