Crush it Book
Crush it and why now is the time to cash in on your passion
Crush it is the latest book from Gary Vaynerchuck, that guy that built a 60 millions business empire from his home in New Jersey off his wine passion. Crush it, is about how you need to reinvent business rules to cash in on your passion. For those who heard about Gary, know that he is a guy full of energy and good vibes, and known for a straightforward no-bullshit approach.
I will give you an overview of some of the key elements of this excellent book. Please click here to buy the book.
Passion, rules and social media
First thing he mentions is that the game has changed and that there hasn’t been any better time to live your passion. No more excuses, as this century presents the biggest opportunities for all of us. It is time to turn water into wine. Gary has 3 fundamental rules he lives including:
- Love your family
- Work super hard
- Live your passion
He ends this chapter by emphasizing that social media is business and not just a game, so you need to take it seriously.
Success is in you DNA
In order to live your passion you need to be yourself as people know when you’re not genuine. There has been a huge rise of entrepreneurs in the last decade, as people realize more and more that the job market doesn’t fulfil their needs anymore. The advice he gives is to be yourself and do whatever you are meant to be doing. Learn how to tell stories, how to be a good storyteller as it will help you to succeed.
Build your personal brand
In order to build your personal brand you need to be totally transparent. You need to be honest with you clients, suppliers and the community. I know most of us were raised into believing that in order to be successful in business you need to have secrets, hide your more precious information and strategy, but what Gary is proposing is the opposite. This world of mouth on steroid will enable to build your personal brand.
New world
As so many authors are writing, the world has changed. Today, with the constantly lower cost of information technologies and communications, you may easily own the means of production. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to be able to build anything you dream of with so little investment. Therefore, NOW is the only time to start and plan your future if you haven’t done so far.
Content creation
The most important things that matters on the web is the quality of your content. So you need to know your stuff and be able to tell a story. He uses the “Lure and Lasso” method which basically means that you need to create blog posts (lure) and also write comments on other pages (lasso).
Gary Vaynerchuk
Platform Selection
There are basically 3 blog formats to deliver you message:
- Video
- Audio
- Text
He recommends using a mix of those. The next step is to select the best social platform. As they are so many out there available, he emphasize about the 3 must have including:
- WordPress to setup your page (or Tumblr)
- Facebook to share and reach out
- Twitter for micro blogging
He also adds one of the following should be helpful:
- Flickr to share photographs
- YouTube to share videos or youStream to do it in real time
Keep it real
As we already mentioned before you need to be transparent and authentic. If you are not, people will know about it. This is one of the reasons that most corporate blogs don’t work as they are not real, not genuine.
The key elements Gary suggest in order to keep it real are:
- Authenticity
- Invest in the important stuff
- Patience
- Hustle
Build your community
To build your community you first need to capture their interest with quality content. Once this is done you will have the power of one, and they will stick for you and what you believe in.
Marketing Strategy
The only marketing strategy that he recommends is to Care. It may seem so simple, but how come so many of the big businesses still don’t understand. Most of them start to listen, which is a good start, but they do nothing about it. To really care is to listen and then do something to change the situation and make it better.
Make the world listen
In order to build your community and make the world listen you need to follow those steps:
- Setup (your WordPress page and Facebook and twitter accounts)
- Create quality content
- Search and attract people
- Go back to the second step
These are only summary of the steps that Gary suggest in his book.
Start monetising
Once you have setup your business it is time to monetise it which may consist of:
- Advertising (the most common way)
- Be a speaker
- Affiliate program
- Write a book
- Create a seminar
- Retail and by-product
Conclusion
Crush it is about how it is now time to make a living out of your passion. It is now time to build your personal band as you have all the tools necessary to do so. It also provides a step by step approach of how to do it and which platform to use.
Please click here to buy the book and learn all of Gary’s secrets to success.
Crush it book Mind Map
Here is the Crush it book mind-map. Click here to view the mind-map in a lightbox or click here to open it in a new window.
Rework book Mind Map
