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Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion Hardcover – October 13, 2009
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Do you have a hobby you wish you could indulge in all day? An obsession that keeps you up at night? Now is the perfect time to take that passion and make a living doing what you love. In Crush It! Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion, Gary Vaynerchuk shows you how to use the power of the Internet to turn your real interests into real businesses. Gary spent years building his family business from a local wine shop into a national industry leader. Then one day he turned on a video camera, and by using the secrets revealed here, transformed his entire life and earning potential by building his personal brand. By the end of this book, readers will have learned how to harness the power of the Internet to make their entrepreneurial dreams come true. Step by step, Crush It! is the ultimate driver’s manual for modern business.
- Print length142 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarper Studio
- Publication dateOctober 13, 2009
- Dimensions0.7 x 5.6 x 8.3 inches
- ISBN-100061914177
- ISBN-13978-0061914171
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The Story Behind Crush it!
Everything has changed. The social media revolution has irreversibly changed the way we live our lives and conduct our business. There are billions of dollars in advertising moving online, waiting to be claimed by whoever can build the best content and communities. Despite this change, most people keep working at jobs that don’t make them happy and businesses continue to ignore the major marketing and public relations benefits that can be found online.
Myth #1: I’m not passionate about something sexy or popular like wine so these lessons don’t apply to me.
The internet has drastically decreased the costs of building communities around niche subjects, allowing for even the most obscure subjects to draw enough eyeballs to command advertising attention. Starting a video blog about tortilla chips may seem farfetched until Doritos gives you a call and offers 40,000 a year to sponsor and advertise on your blog.
Myth #2: My business already has a Twitter account and a Facebook page, we’re set in the social media department.
This is the equivalent of claiming twenty years ago that just because your business bought a TV spot and a few ads in the newspaper, you didn’t need to pay attention to your advertising department. Social media isn’t about joining in, it’s about being involved.
Myth #3: I’m happy at my job so this book is irrelevant to me.
First of all, congratulations on finding work that makes you happy! However, the lessons in this book are valuable to anyone, regardless of their employment status. Crush It will show you how to utilize high level and platform specific social media and marketing strategies that will improve your work. It will also show you how to build a personal brand so that even if you’re forced to leave your job, a situation that’s especially relevant today, you’ll be able to easily find employment elsewhere in a field you’re passionate about.
Myth #4: I need to quit my job to take advantage of this book’s entrepreneurial lessons.
While the entrepreneurial strategies in this book do take time, it’s completely reasonable to start the effort as an after-work project to build up until you’re able to replace your current income with the income from your online presence. While you may have to fall behind on the current season of Lost or let your Madden 2010 game suffer, because you’ll be doing something you love you won’t mind putting in the extra effort.
In Crush It, Gary Vaynerchuk shows how anyone can build a career around what they’re passionate about. He also delivers both high-level and platform specific strategy and analysis, allowing you to take advantage of the current business environment while preparing you to succeed as it changes and evolves.
This book isn’t interested in making unrealistic promises while glossing over the work involved. Making a living by building content around your passion isn’t simple and it doesn’t happen overnight. What it is, however, is fulfilling and in most cases just as profitable, if not more so, than your previous job.
Furthermore, a business can’t just pay lip service to social media and expect it to return results. The transparency and accountability inherent in its structure necessitates a comprehensive and dedicated strategy in order to reap its tremendous benefits.
By combining practical analysis and strategy with the same passion and humor that’s made Gary one of the most in demand keynote speakers in the U.S. as well as network television’s go to wine expert, Crush It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand and harness the future of business and work.
Learn: Why social media has evened the playing field, destroying the “gate-keepers” who had previously dictated the distribution of content.
Learn: How to beat unemployment and create wealth-building opportunities by building and maintaining a personal brand.
Learn: Why storytelling is the most important business concept in the current marketplace.
Learn: How you can build an online business around your passion without quitting your day job.
Learn: Why Twitter and Facebook are just tools and not a social media strategy.
Learn: How to take advantage of the half-billion dollars in advertising that are moving to the internet.
Learn: Why transparency and being true to yourself are now winning marketing formulas.
Learn: How to build and maintain an online community around your passion and brand.
Learn: Strategies for turning attention into money.
Learn: Why the legacy element of the internet era is so underrated.
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
“Gary is a force of nature. His authentic, raw passion and caring touches everyone. His insights into social media & his message of opportunity could not be more timely.” — Tony Robbins
“Gary was the first person to push me on the importance of personal brand and transparency – this was months before anyone was talking about it, he’s always two steps ahead of anyone else.” — Kevin Rose, Founder of Digg.com
“Anyone looking to supercharge their career should beg, borrow, and steal to learn Gary Vee’s techniques. He reinvented the rules to build a $60-million business from scratch―on his own terms.” — Tim Ferriss, #1 NY Times bestselling author of The 4-Hour Workweek
“Gary Vaynerchuk is one of those entrepreneurs who has discovered the secret to combining passion with business. He is always an inspiration and always entertaining. You owe it to yourself to read this book!” — Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com
“Gary Vaynerchuk has become a walking, talking (and oh, such talking!), webbing and Tweeting example of how believing in what you do and keeping it fun can step up your life in all ways. There is nobody I would rather talk sports with―or wine or life.” — Scott Simon, host of Weekend Edition Saturday on NPR
About the Author
Gary Vaynerchuk is one of the world’s leading marketing experts, a New York Times bestselling author, and the chairman of VaynerX, a modern day communications company and the active CEO of VaynerMedia, a contemporary global creative and media agency built to drive business outcomes for their partners. He is a highly popular public speaker, and a prolific investor with investments in companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Venmo, Coinbase, Slack, and Uber. Gary is a board/advisory member of Bojangles’ Restaurants, MikMak, Pencils of Promise, and is a longtime Well Member of Charity:Water. He’s also an avid sports card investor and collector. He lives in New York City.
Product details
- Publisher : Harper Studio; First Edition, 1st Printing (October 13, 2009)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 142 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0061914177
- ISBN-13 : 978-0061914171
- Item Weight : 1 pounds
- Dimensions : 0.7 x 5.6 x 8.3 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #100,425 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #83 in Web Marketing (Books)
- #127 in E-commerce Professional (Books)
- #480 in Entrepreneurship (Books)
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A must read for anyone on social media! Highly recommend.
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About the author

Gary Vaynerchuk builds businesses. Fresh out of college he took his family wine business and grew it from a $3M to a $60M business in just five years. Now he runs VaynerMedia, one of the world’s hottest digital agencies. Along the way he became a prolific angel investor and venture capitalist, investing in companies like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Uber, and Birchbox before eventually co-founding VaynerRSE, a $25M investment fund.
Gary also currently hosts The #AskGaryVee Show, a way of providing as much value as possible by taking questions about social media, entrepreneurship, startups, and family businesses and giving his answers based on a lifetime of building successful, multi-million dollar companies. The show is also available as a podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, and SoundCloud.
Gary is also a prolific public speaker, delivering keynotes at events like Le Web, and SXSW, which you can watch on his YouTube channel.
He was named to both Fortune and Crain’s 40 under 40 lists in consecutive years, and has been profiled in the New York Times, Fortune, and Inc.
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I looked forward to this book. I share Gary's idea that the internet + its social media has created amazing new opportunities for entrepreneurs with the know-how to fully utilize it. I agree with his vision of relentless and disciplined branding in every way that this new media offers.
The problems? First, as others have mentioned, Vaynerchuk started out in his father's already-successful wine merchant business. Vaynerchuk expanded his father's business innovatively via social media branding (taking it from $4 million to, he says, $50 million), but that does not make his experience easily replicable for the people he's exhorting to "crush it" like he did. Nor does it seem wise for him to urge others, including many who don't have his financial family "safety net", to quit their jobs and "follow your passion". He hasn't "been there" (struggling, like most people do, without a lucrative family business to fall back on). His advice to give it all up to work 24/7 and follow your passion could be very irresponsible, especially in this unforgiving economy.
Sadly, "Crush It" falls into the category of "book written because someone has gotten rich at doing something". It seems based on the premise that real world financial success (especially with a technological flair) = valuable insights and practical knowledge and skills to teach others.
Unfortunately, that isn't always true. Great salesmen (and Gary -does- seem to be a great salesman) do not necessarily make great writers...thinkers...teachers. Mid-way through this small book, the focus is still basically on one subject: Gary Vaynerchuk, and how he got to be the business success that he is today, primarily using social media to its fullest to promote himself and his business--that all-encompassing "brand".
Of course, personal success stories--told briefly--can be very inspirational and motivational. Told at length, accompanied by lots of personal hype....well, it just seems that "writing a book" is being seen as one more extension of "sharing my brand with the world".
I hoped this book would be a focused "how to", not a personal sales pitch. Definitely disappointing. I really don't understand all the raves, unless its a new form of "applied networking".
UPDATE: A week after I reviewed this book, I wanted to make one more observation. Most reviews, including those written before mine (all overwhelmingly positive) have 1 or 2...maybe as many as 7 in a few cases..."helpful/not helpful" comments. My lone "2 star" review, by contrast, has 50 comments. The "1 star" review has 60. It's the kind of spread you get when reviewing a hot-topic political book. With "Crush It", there's something very odd about this pattern of commenting, and imo very wrong...
1.27.10. This thread is so odd that, as someone who writes a fair amount of Amazon reviews, I keep an eye on it. It's pretty weird. First, disclosure: I don't know -any- of the people who have commented on whether my review was helpful to them or not. But for the last week or so responses have kept this 2 star review listed as "most helpful" which must be annoying to the author who also watches this thread--responding to EVERYTHING (although his book remains at 1, 1 and 2 in his Amazon categories).
Today, in one day, a barrage of negatives (70 or so 'not helpful' votes--an unheard of number in one day!) dropped this 2 star review off to oblivion, now replaced by 5 star reviews with 1 or 2 people agreeing they are "helpful". And, too, today alone there are 8 new comments in this thread (posted last October), including 3 today alone from Gary, the author.
Weird, weird pattern here. And, more than ever, I think this is some kind of "promoted" response to a negative review. So, just to add in conclusion....I wouldn't buy a book from anyone who encouraged (directly or indirectly encouraged) his fans to distort an honest response to his book. 70 "not helpful" responses to a 4 month old review? In one day???? Never, ever happen "naturally" at Amazon. Then again, maybe "Crush It!" has different meaning than I originally thought....
Reviewed by Brian Wing
Crush It, Why now is the time to cash in on your passion, a book by Gary Vaynerchuk, written in 2009, is a book that discusses the use of social media and the internet to develop and market your own personal brand. The book is written in a very conversational mode, where Gary tells a story of his own brand development and the tools and methods he used to make himself the man and brand he is today. Along the way he imparts many of the core values of brand marketing and promotion.
Gary Vaynerchuk, an immigrant from Babruysk Russia, born in 1975, comes to America with his family. His father opens a liquor store in northern New Jersey. Along the way Gary educates himself in wine, a growing market, and proceeds to grow that business from a single store to a wine empire.
Gary delves into his "DNA" and talks about how he sees value in collectible items, such as baseball cards. His focus evolves into entrepreneurship and he takes over the wine business and grows winelibrary.tv into a wine empire. He has become one of the most prominent figures in the wine reviewing business, and commands a ransom to present on social media and the use of the Internet to promote branding and new business development.
The book "Crush It!" focuses on utilizing new, free tools on the Internet to capitalize on branding and developing a business. Some of the major themes include: Becoming the foremost expert in your "passion"; Use of social media and the Internet to promote yourself/brand; Differentiation; Hard work; and Caring.
In "Crush It!," Gary's first pearl of marketing wisdom is take whatever it is you love the most and develop that into a business. Educate yourself in every aspect of your passion. Read every bit of material about your subject, find others who are considered experts in that subject and learn from them. Insert yourself into the conversations on the topic and make your opinion known. Once you become an expert in your field, develop content to "sell" your ideas to others. The key to developing this rapport is building trust. Gary states over and over be authentic and original with the content and the "eyeballs" will come.
A great deal of the book is dedicated to developing and using new age media an social networks to promote your newly developed brand. As we have discussed (at great length) social media networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and a multitude of others, have gained great traction with many "old school of thought" marketers. More and more Facebook and Twitter "badges" can be seen on old media promotions. For example, television advertisements will have the Facebook and/or Twitter logos at the end of the ad, and suggest that you "find us on X." This is the new value marketing play. Brand loyalty is perpetuated by "fans and followers" of these social media networks. New networks are arising daily if not hourly. One such example is "WOMMA " a website devoted to the development and support of word of mouth marketing. Large, household names like Best Buy, McDonalds, Kraft, and Pepsi-Co are all contributors.
A whole new network of social media marketing gurus has been developed. Each has a focus and specializes in certain market segments. Another, more local, company two-five media, specializes in wine and hospitality in Sonoma County. Companies now have the ability to use these social media networks to conduct targeted research as well as have "personal" communications directly with their consumers. This is the most powerful tool to come to marketing in a generation.
Differentiation is another core marketing value discussed in "Crush It!" With the Internet age upon us it is exceptionally easy to blend in with the noise and chaff. One must truly be exceptional to stand out in a crowd. A favorite quote of mine from the book is "So how are you going to differentiate yourself from all the other clowns? ("Clowns" is, of course, used in the best possible way.)" It's this, in-your-face method that Gary delivers the message that you need to be the best you that you can be. It's a challenge, no doubt. Just Googling "differentiate using social media" gives the following: Results 1 - 10 of about 59,500 for how to differentiate yourself in social media. The social media landscape is moving at light speed and a marketer needs to "hustle" just to keep up with it, which leads me to the next pearl.
Hustle! Gary Vaynerchuk makes no bones about the fact that 99% of the people who embark on a journey to "Crush It!" will not have the "chops" to get the job done. Hard work and patience are the two keys to making it happen. Another gem Gary provides is about patience, he says "If you contact me within a year of starting your business to complain that you haven't made the money you thought you would, you're not listening. I said that you could make a ton of money being happy; I didn't say you could do it overnight." Patience and hard work, seems reasonable, right?
Gary devotes an entire chapter to the next pearl of wisdom. Chapter nine is called the best marketing strategy ever. The entirety of this chapter consists of only five characters, C-A-R-E-. It may be just that, the best marketing strategy ever, many companies have lost touch with their consumers. This harkens back to the use of ethnography and psychographic segmentation. Both of these market research strategies hinge on understanding the emotional connection with brands and products as well as the behaviors that motivate a consumer to make the choices that he or she does. By "Caring" a marketer should be able to glean this information.
In summary there are some great anecdotal stories in "Crush It!" that expose Gary's brash and cavalier personality. Behind these stories lay some basic marketing strategies that can and should be applied to any marketing situation. Understand your business and be the most knowledgeable about your market and products. Use technology to your advantage. Your competition is! Differentiate yourself and stand out in that online crowd. Work your ass off but don't expect instant results, hard work takes time and patience. Finally and most importantly, take the time to care about your consumer. They are after all the sponsor of your business and their recommendations are worth more than anything you could pay for.
Top reviews from other countries
This book is the ultimate guide for all the people who want to own it, for people who want to work for themselves and follow their passion. It gives you tips and tricks to build your personal brand and tells you how social media is the biggest asset in the present world.
When I first came to know about this book I was dying to do something of my own, trying to look for ways to do something I love to do and as the book says, it did help me crush it.
The language is very simple, easy and raw. You can legit hear Gary Vee talk like he talks in his videos or podcasts. You can smell the authenticity and see that Gary Vee has written what he clearly follows with a very honest writing style.
I must say that the tips and tricks given in this book are extremely useful and relevant. Though yes it is not a motivational piece at all. It is completely practical and this brings me to the point that if you don’t want to build your personal brand, this book won’t bring a lot to your table. It is work and social media centric.
In the end, I did find the book useful and would love to recommend it to people who want to take the best advantage of social media to get what you rally need and want.
This book does the job of making you work towards your passion tirelessly. Why do we get tired when we work for long? Because we don't love doing that. And, when we do something we love, any chance of getting tired goes away.
What is better than a book that motivates you to work towards your passion? That the book is informative. Yes! This book is easily a booklet on all the tools on the internet that can be used to cash in your passion.
I felt like I knew whatever is being told in this book about passion. I think we all know it deep down. That working on your passion through the night won't get you nowhere. Maybe we just don't believe in our passion strong enough to just go for it. This book even had an answer to this: if you enjoy doing it, it's worth it. Isn't all this simple yet fascinating?
This book talks about how we can use each of the social media platforms including Facebook, twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, WordPress and many more to built your personal brand. The tools have been explained in detail as well. Even though the book was published almost a decade ago, most of the information is still relevant today as well. Since social media platforms like Instagram weren't present when this book was written, there is no mention of them. But a passionate person will surely do things the updated way, keeping this book as base.
This book has so much information, written in a precise manner. It is certainly not possible for me to tell about each one of them here. But I'd surely like to talk about one last concept mentioned here which I think everyone should know. It is that legacy always outweighs currency. This book talks about how being true to your audience or customers is much more important than making money. Sure, it'll work for the long run in terms of money. But won't it give you peace of mind as well?
This book surely boosted up my willingness to pursue my passion. To all the passionate people out there: do read this book, for it'll help you to a path full of passion and happiness.






































