Crush It!

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"There is no reason...to do sh*t you hate.  None.  Promise me you won't, because you can lose just as much money being happy as hell." -- Gary Vaynerchuk

Advertising and marketing that once cost corporations thousands and thousands of dollars is now free and at your disposal.  If you are willing to put in the hours, hustle, and be patient, you can kill it doing whatever you want.  This is the premise behind Gary Vaynerchuk's book "Crush It!: Why now is the time to cash in on your passion." 

Gary explains how he turned his parents' wine shop from a few million dollars per year business to a $50 million per year company over a seven-year period.  He talks about the steps he took to monetize his passion by constantly interacting with people and making each and every one of those interactions meaningful.  He discusses how he built up Wine Library TV every single day, but most importantly he provides take-home messages that are actually applicable.

A good part of the book is dedicated to making sure the reader understands that through Facebook, Twitter, and other social media website, all of the marketing and advertising you ever needed to make a massive impact in your business are all in place for you.  He goes through guidelines of how to effectively use these platforms to effectively advertise your brand to interested audiences and discusses some (at the time) up and coming social media sites.

All of this information is incredibly useful, especially if you are unfamiliar with these platforms, but to me the most valuable part of the book is when Gary discusses the two P's:  Passion and Patience.

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Passion:  What makes you feel alive?  What makes you so freaking happy and stimulated that you could do what you do for hours upon hours, working on little sleep and even less stress because all is well when you are doing your thing?

An excerpt from this book that I love exemplifies this point really well:

"Anything insane has a price.  If you're serious about building your personal brand, there will be no time for Wii.  There will be no time for Scrabble or book club or poker or hockey.  There will be time for meals, and catching up with your significant other, and playing with the kids, and otherwise you will be in front of your computer until 3:00 AM every night.  If you're unemployed or retired and have all day to work, maybe you knock off at midnight instead.  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.  You're not going to be stressed or tired.   You're going to be relaxed an invigorated.  The passion and love for what  you do will enable you to work the hours necessary to succeed.  You'll lose track of the time, go to bed reluctantly, and wake up in the morning excited to do it all over again.  You'll be living and breathing your content, learning everything you can about your subject, about your tools, about your competition, and talking nonstop with other people interested in the same thing you are."  -- Gary Vaynerchuk, "Crush It!"

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Patience:  This is where the hustle and the grind come in, putting in hours day after day after day and going months and months without monetizing or getting paid for the content you are producing.  His message with this is keep at it.  If you are being true to yourself in your actions, authentic in your words and content, and the content you put out of higher quality than everything else out there, it is only just a matter of time before people catch on and you are able to make a killing doing what you love to do.  But it's not a matter of just building it and the right people happening to come across it.  You have to connect with as many people as you possibly can, get as much exposure as you possibly can via Twitter, Facebook, etc, and you have to be willing to put time into making that happen ever single day.

The following video is unrelated to the book in the sense that the talk was not intended to be about the book, but Gary brings up some ideas that are presented in the book.  The other great thing about this video is you can see and hear his passion.  And in the book, you can feel it radiating off the pages.

**Warning:  Strong Language**

Crush It! is a short, easy read that I highly recommend to anybody who is needing a different direction in their life, who is looking for some help in the social media game, and anybody who just loves being around passion, like I do.

What makes you feel alive?  Are you getting paid to do that?  Do you want to?

Your body.  Your training.

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