“I don’t care if your passion is rehabilitating abandoned ferrets; if you learn to tap into everything the digital world has to offer, you can turn water into wine—you can transform what you love into a legacy-building business that makes a crapload of money, and still be true to yourself.”
—Gary Vaynerchuk
Chapter 1: “Passion Is Everything”
Life’s too short to spend so much of it working on anything other than what we love. While financially supporting ourselves and our loved ones will always be a priority, it doesn’t have to come at the expense of our happiness. Gary Vaynerchuk, an entrepreneur and bestselling author, tells us that the Internet and social media have made it possible for those of us with ambition, patience, and a strong work ethic to build a profitable business around our passion. By channeling our passion into developing an online personal brand, we can grow an audience and profit from the connections we make.
Chapter 2: “Success Is in Your DNA”
Vaynerchuk believes people are born to succeed at something, but too often “ignore their DNA” to conform to someone else’s vision of success. He discovered his own “entrepreneurial DNA” at an early age and chose to embrace it. As a child, he made money by maintaining a neighbor’s lawn, operating lemonade stands, and selling baseball cards. As an adult, he helped grow his father’s liquor store into a business that made tens of millions of dollars per year!
Chapter 3: “Build Your Personal Brand”
To monetize our passion, we must connect what we do with who we are, as that will differentiate us from our competitors. Celebrities of the past accomplished this offline through film, television, radio, magazines, and newspapers. We, however, can make a name for ourselves online at low to no cost and without the approval of gatekeepers. What’s more, in the digital age, word of mouth—that is, information shared among people—travels farther and faster, making it easier for us to connect with those who can elevate our success. However, we can just as easily be exposed as con artists and would therefore be wise to present our authentic selves. By being honest and transparent, we can earn and leverage a trustworthy reputation.
Chapter 4: “A Whole New World”
The Internet is proving to be as disruptive as the printing press. Entire industries are being revolutionized in its wake. Vaynerchuk warns that failing to adapt will put us at a disadvantage compared to the people who do. He encourages those of us with an unfulfilling job—especially one in which the people in charge disapprove of us having a public persona—to take responsible steps toward leaving it, believing that if we don’t grow our own brand and business, we’ll miss the opportunity to live our passion.
Chapter 5: “Create Great Content”
To monetize our personal brand, we need a product or service to provide and content to publish online. Our market offering should be something bloggable and monetizable that we’re not only skilled at providing but also passionate and knowledgeable about. Our content should comprise relevant, informative, and entertaining stories, comments, and messages. It should also utilize a medium (such as audio, video, or text) that best suits our strength as a communicator.
Chapter 6: “Choose Your Platform”
We should have a website to provide information about our offerings and facilitate sales, a blog to convey our brand, and a social media presence to engage with the public. Our blog should include articles, videos, or podcasts. It should also have buttons that encourage continued engagement with our brand and enable our audience to share our content. Vaynerchuk recommends WordPress and Tumblr as platforms for blogging. For social media, we’re advised to use as many platforms as manageable, leveraging each to discover market opportunities, build relationships, and attract people to our blog. Vaynerchuk specifically mentions Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Viddler, and Ustream. (Had he written Crush It! today, he might have included Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and Twitch.)
Chapter 7: “Keep It Real…Very Real”
Celebrities were once expected to lead choreographed lives and be “red-carpet ready” when appearing in public. Today, they’re praised for “keeping it real.” We can satisfy this modern preference for authenticity by simply being ourselves. Moreover, when we fake passion—whether for fame, fortune, or something else—we’re more likely to become impatient and find our work stressful and tiresome. But when we genuinely love what we do, effort and patience are easier to maintain. And to succeed in entrepreneurship, we’ll need to exercise an insane amount of both!
Chapter 8: “Create Community: Digging Your Internet Trench”
The bulk of our success will be determined by the community we build around our brand. To attract an audience, we must find the corner of the Internet where our passion is discussed and contribute to those conversations while leaving our name and a link to our blog. The goal is to spark interest in our brand so that people visit our blog, consume our content, and hopefully subscribe and share it with others. Our initial focus should be on the quality of the conversation surrounding our brand—not the size of our following—as improving the former will ultimately help grow the latter. Throughout this process, we should neither take our audience for granted nor underestimate the reach of any one member.
Chapter 9: “The Best Marketing Strategy Ever”
In the shortest chapter of any book I’ve read so far, Vaynerchuk emphasizes the importance of caring, presumably about the work we do and the people it serves. This chapter consists of a single word: “CARE.”
Chapter 10: “Make the World Listen”
To launch our brand, we must first purchase the domain name (the web address) for our blog. Vaynerchuk advises using our first and last name or something creative but relevant, such as “BobtheBudgetman,” along with a “.com” or “.tv” suffix. Next, we must register that name on the social media platforms we plan to use. Afterward, we’ll create our blog site and point our domain name to it. Since the blog will be our “home base,” Vaynerchuk suggests hiring a web designer (if our budget allows) to make it as inviting and navigable as possible. Once our blog and social media accounts are set up, our ongoing tasks will include producing content, sharing it on social media, and participating in relevant conversations on other blogs and in social media groups dedicated to our niche.
Chapter 11: “Start Monetizing”
Once we have a passionate audience of sufficient size, we can begin monetizing our brand. We can sell ad space on our website by using a service such as Google AdSense or by partnering directly with specific businesses. We can enter the lecture circuit, speaking about our passion to interested audiences—starting with free talks and eventually transitioning to paid opportunities. We can join affiliate marketing programs, earning commissions on products purchased through links on our blog and social media profiles. We can also develop and sell our own promotional merchandise, contribute articles to magazines, host seminars, provide consulting services, and seek investors. We can even sign book or TV deals if those opportunities arise!
Chapter 12: “Roll with It”
For better or worse, the world is constantly changing. By practicing what Vaynerchuk calls reactionary business—that is, adapting to markets and responding to trends—we can turn challenges into opportunities and reach our full potential. One reactionary move we can make right now, which will also make us more adaptable, is to embrace social media. Doing so will allow us to identify more trends and market opportunities, quickly learn about and address concerns and criticisms, and share our side of a story when media outlets don’t.
Chapter 13: “Legacy Is Greater Than Currency”
A social media presence is a double-edged sword. While transparency and publicity can benefit our brand, they can also damage it if something goes wrong or we make a mistake. Vaynerchuk reminds us that with every decision, we’re building more than a business—we’re building a legacy. He encourages us to be just as thoughtful about how we build our business as we are about how much money we make. This means we should consider not only the financial but also the reputational consequences of our decisions.
Conclusion: “The Time Is Now, the Message Is Forever”
The Internet and social media have only just begun to change our society—and, with it, the formula for success. While both will continue to evolve, Vaynerchuk argues that success will always require loving our family, working hard, and living our passion.