Book Summary

Crushing It! by Gary Vaynerchuk

9 minutes read

Crushing It!

Introduction

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

No job is particularly stable anymore. Imagine the security you would feel if you had something going on the side that you could blow up big if you unexpectedly had nothing but time. Desperation can be a great motivator, but it’s a lot less stressful if you plan ahead so that you never know the feeling.

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.

Get Pumped

The Path Is All Yours

A strong personal brand is your ticket to complete personal and professional freedom.

Use today’s social-media platform to develop your brand and expand your influence, and you can build a business that could continue to grow.

Once you’ve developed a robust personal brand, you will be able to enjoy as much or as little leisure as you want — because you will be entirely in control of your own life.

What (Still) Matters

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

When your intent is coming from the wrong place, customers may still do business with you if they have no other option (an increasingly rare situation), but they won’t tell others to.

Entrepreneurs at all levels of financial success and all stages of influence at the pinnacle of both share three characteristics: a commitment to service, a desire to provide value, a love of teaching.

When we show up and we add value and we care, then we can learn how to make money around it later.

You will be a thousand timer more successful if you wake up eager to share and create something because you believe the world will enjoy it rather than because you have calculated that this is what you need to do to become an Instagram celebrity.

The more authentic you are, the more people will be willing to forgive your inevitable mistakes and stumbles.

When you disrespect your customer, you’re one social-media post away from having your whole business tumble down around you.

I know many people working in jobs that make them heaps of money who aren’t happy, but I don’t know anyone who works around their passion every day who isn’t loving life.

When you’re passionate about what you’re offering the world the quality of both your product and your content will more likely be what it needs to be to get noticed, valued, and talked about.

Passion is your backup generator when all your other energy sources start to sputter.

Be patient. Be methodical. Pay off your debts. Unless your brand is glamorous, live simply, and even then be practical and calculated. Put yourself last. Once you’ve reacted your brand and business goals, then you can start living it up.

When you first start out, there is no time for leisure — if you want to crush it.

Don’t become so comfortable on one platform that you don’t take the time to develop solid skills on the others. On the other hand, don’t cling to your favorite even when it’s become ineffective or overpriced.

You can brand yourself all you want, but if you don’t have credibility or have no done anything, it’s almost worthless. You can only sell something that’s actually good.”

The Eight Essential — Content

To monetize you personal brand into a business social marketing networks, two pillars need to be in place: product and content.

You should be plotting how to adapt your content to appeal to every platform your audience might visit a given day.

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 to your next opportunity.

Put your stuff out in public so you have to live up to it. As long as it’s valuable and you know it’s true, don’t judge it. Let the market show you whether you’re good or not. There’s always something new, and the only way to win is if it’s you truth. Just produce. Become that personality, and own it.

The main thing is realizing that even if you feel terrible for a while, that’s not how you’re going to feel the whole time…. Things change if you just keep moving.

What’s Stopping You?

You are the reason why you’re not crushing it yet.

All the reasons people throw out to justify why they’re not doing what they say they want to do boil down to one of three kinds of fear, each of which requires a different response.

Fear of Failure. You have to let yourself be your sole judge and jury.

Fear of Wasting Time. People are so scared they’ll be wasting time if they try to build a business, even when their time isn’t valuable.

Fear of Seeming Vain. Everyone looks like an ass when trying something new.

As you gather your ideas and put your strategies in motion, set yourself up emotionally to succeed. Find your courage and strengthen your self-esteem until you feel brave enough to make some noise and invite people’s attention. Then show them that you care deeply about keeping it.

The Only Thing You Need to Give Yourself to Crush It

Permission.

Please dig deep into what you know best or what you love most, or better yet, what you know best and love most, and start creating content.

When considering where to build your personal brand, you want to use nothing less than platforms upon which you can actually build your life.

Create Your Pillar

First, Do This

No matter what kind of influencer you want to become, everyone must start with this step: create a Facebook business page.

Get Discovered

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.

Musical.ly

Snapchat

Twitter

Most people aren’t very good listeners, and it’s often an especially big challenge for the types of people who want to build personal brands so the world will listen to them.

It’s a slow, slow, slow process and an immense amount of work, but if you’re willing to do it and your content is special, you should see a payoff.

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.

YouTube

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.

Facebook

It is where everything you do on every other platform will come to live for the remainder of your personal brand’s experience.

Because of its incredibly detailed targeting capabilities — you can specify your audience by their interests, or course, but also by their zip codes or their employers — Facebook is also an incredible place for someone with a small budget.

Facebook is the first platform that has combined the ability to do marketing, sales, and branding all in one place, and it is still vastly under-priced for the amount of attention you can get there from its nearly two billion monthly users.

Collaborating through Facebook is a strategic move that has enormous potential to quickly build your audience.

Instagram

There are many features that make Instagram a requirement for any budding influencer or entrepreneur. You can post for posterity, or you can post for instant gratification.

Anyone wishing to build a personal brand should be on Instagram. Create profile now, or regret it for years to come.

Only a tiny fraction of the people you reach out to will respond. That’s all you need. With every successful contact, you increase your ability to prove yourself worthy of any attention at all, and you increase your visibility. Do this enough times, and the effect will snowball until suddenly you’ll be the brand that people and businesses start reaching out to.

Podcasts

Podcasts are a godsend for two reasons. Most people aren’t comfortable on camera. Podcasts sell time, which is why everyone, including people who rock on camera, should try to create one. In this hyperspeed world, multitasking is everything.

There are really no original, creative ways to build a personal brand within the podcasts platforms other than by producing the best content you can. You’ll have to promote your show through your other social-media channels and encourage symbiotic relationships with others who have bigger platforms than you.

Voice-First

What we’re seeing with the development of Voice-First is the culmination of our addiction to speed. The world moves fast and we want to keep up. If there is a choice between reading a notification or checking an app and getting the same information via Voice-First, which allows us to keep our hands free and multitask, the latter is what we’re going to pick.

Keep your content super brief.

Make it native. Tailor your content to suit the reason people are coming.

Make it the highest quality possible.

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.

Conclusion

Talent has little value without patience and persistence. Success takes a shitload of work, and the people who ultimately break through and crush it are those who get all that and go for their dreams anyway.

Success will happen faster for some people than for others, but if you’re loving life and doing what you feel you were born to do, you’ll be going in the right direction.