Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk: Summary and Notes
“If you want to dominate the social media game, all of your effort has to come from the heart; and it can’t come from the heart in the passionate, irrational, wholehearted way it needs to if you’re trying to be anyone but yourself. Authenticity is what will make it possible for you to put in the kind of hustle necessary to crush it.”
Rating: 6/10
Related Books: Jab, Jab, Jab, Ask GaryVee, The Thank You Economy, Crushing It, Contagious, Traction
Get all my book summaries here
Table of Contents
Crush it by Gary Vaynerchuk: Short Summary
Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk teaches you how to use the power of the internet to build your personal brand, and grow your business. Social media is changing the way business is done, and those who fail to adapt will lose. Some of the tools suggested are outdated (the book is from 2009) but the strategies are still relevant today.
Success Is In Your DNA
Your DNA dictates what you were born to do. Follow your passion, don’t listen to what society has to say about success.
“There is no excuse for anyone living in the United States or anywhere else right now to slog through his or her entire life working at jobs they hate, or even jobs they simply don’t love, in the name of a paycheck or a sense of responsibility.”
There is enough success out there and if you want it badly enough, you will get it.
When building your personal brand, focus on the quality of the relationships with your followers and not on their numbers.
Be authentic and produce quality content.
“Quality is a tremendous filter. Cream always rises, my friends, no matter how many cups of coffee you pour.”
The internet and social media platforms are like word of mouth on steroids. Whenever you create an account on a channel such as YouTube, you are also creating your personal brand.
“Developing your personal brand is the same thing as living and breathing your résumé every second that you’re working. Your latest tweet and comment on Facebook and my most recent blog post? That’s your résumé now.”
A Whole New World
“Business in the future is going to be a field day for everyone with talent because they’ll no longer be forced to exist within the confines of old-guard institutions.”
Plan to develop and grow your own brand and business alongside your current job. This is how you will open opportunities in the digital economy.
As long as you are working for someone else, you will never be living entirely true to yourself and your passion.
To monetize your personal brand, you need two pillars: product, and content. Great content is what will attract people to your blog.
You should work your content in two ways:
- To Lure the audience in. Create and publish great content for people to come to you as they discover it
- To capture the audience as a Lasso. Go through comments on other people’s content that relates to yours and bring your points of view to the conversation. Create reasons for the audience to come to you
Keep It Real
Someone with less talent and poor content can beat you if they work harder than you. Before you invest in yourself, you have to invest in your long-term future.
When building your personal brand, focus on creating communities by starting conversations.
“Your long-term goal is to get sticky and create more and more opportunities to communicate. Your audience joins your fan page. They comment on your blog. They tweet and tumble your posts. And slowly but surely their friends take notice, and start doing the same, and their friends take notice, and suddenly your little community of one explodes into a major metropolis.”
Once you have created your online brand, do some advertising. You can also engage in affiliate marketing.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media sites are great places to start your advertising campaigns.
Building A Personal Brand Checklist
The steps to build a personal brand in 2021 changed little from 2009 when the book was published. Change some of the older platforms with more relevant ones and you have a game plan to build a personal brand today.
“How to build a personal brand” checklist:
- Identify your passion
- Make sure you can think of at least fifty awesome blog topics to ensure stickiness
- Answer the following questions: Am I sure my passion is what I think it is? Can I talk about it better than anyone else?
- Name your personal brand. You don’t have to refer to it anywhere in your content, but you should have a clear idea of what it is. For example, “The no-bs real-estate agent,” “The connoisseur of cookware,” “The cool guide to young-adult books boys will love to read.”
- Buy your user name—.com and .tv
- Choose your medium: video, audio, written word
- Start a WordPress account
- Hire a designer
- Include links to your social media accounts, Call-to-Action buttons, Share Functions, and a button that invites people to do business with you in a prominent place on your blog
- Select all of the platforms to which you want to distribute your content. Choosing Twitter and Facebook is imperative; the others you can select according to your needs and preference
- Post your content
- Start creating community by leaving comments on other people’s blogs and forums and replying to comments to your own comment
- Use Twitter Search (or Search.Twitter) to find as many people as possible talking about your topic, and communicate with them
- Find more blogs that are relevant to your subject on Google
- Join as many active Facebook fan pages and groups relating to your blog topic as possible
- Repeat steps 11 through 15 over and over and over and over and over
- When you feel your personal brand has gained sufficient attention and stickiness, start reaching out to advertisers and begin monetizing
