Crushing It - Gary Vaynerchuk

Crush It was Gary Vaynerchuk’s first book. Since its release, Gary has become a superstar on social media, impacting many successful artists and creators as an inspiration. He has been one of the best at leveraging every social media platform out there to spread his message, amassing hundreds of thousands of fans, and building an 8 to 9-figure digital agency.

Here are the top lessons I learned from the book:

Storytelling is the most underrated, valuable business skill.

The key to selling is to be able to show someone the value in something that other people are missing that they can appreciate. Certain brands are ingrained in people’s minds, and no matter how much others sell to them, customers will stick to their brand.

Everyone has their issues they have to deal with, even trust fund babies. They just have different issues (psychological hurdles rather than physical). Everyone has bad parents or something that holds them back.

How to build a successful personal brand:

When building your personal brand, just be yourself. Your brand is going to look completely different from Gary’s, and THAT’S OKAY. Gary has distinct interests that you don’t have.

There are only three simple keys to success:

love your family

work hard as hell

do something you’re completely passionate about

By success, he means happiness. He doesn’t measure success by money. If you’re not happy, one of these three is missing.

It’s better to make less money doing something you love. Anyone can get a decent salary job. You might as well choose one that you enjoy rather than one you hate.

How to tell if you should quit your job: Are you truly passionate about it? Do you moan on Monday mornings? Are you allowed to develop a public persona online on the side?

Don’t worry about numbers (or subscribers or followers). Focus more on the quality of the relationships. That engagement matters more. One day, you will miss the intimate connection. Even if you have only six viewers, one of them could be the producer of NBC. You never know. Metrics can be misleading. This hits home for me since I’ve been cruising on ~30 views on my daily YouTube videos for years and ~30 daily podcast downloads.