I had the pleasure of talking with Gary Vaynerchuk last week about his new book “Crush It! Why NOW Is The Time To Cash In On Your Passion.” I received a copy of the book a couple of days before and was able to read through it in short order (about 2.5 hours). I highly recommend you get a copy. Below is the video I put together for your viewing pleasure (with the help of Brian Matson, Mr. FargoMoorhead).
The biggest takeaway from the book and talking with Gary was the focus on branding and how to pursue branding to the ends of the earth. In the end, everyone has their own brand and if you aren’t managing and interacting with others, your brand will be determined for you. So as Gary would say, jump in the trenches and get dirty.
All of this brand management and social interaction comes at a great cost of time and participation. It doesn’t take a lot of money or talent to set up a Twitter account and start talking to people. But the currency of the day is sweat, not dollar according to Gary. The more you spend doing what you love and building your relationships with others, the more successful you’ll be. The reality is this works for everyone and everything. That is why Gary’s message is priceless. Here is the video he references in the interview, The 80/20 Business Rule.
I mentioned the other day on Aylln Hane’s Video Blog that it really boils down to what you want, your goal. Without knowing your end goal or desire it doesn’t matter who you get your information from: Vic, Griz, Problogger, Gary Vaynerchuk, Seth Godin, Warren Buffett or whoever. You have to know what your goal is, find the person who best fits your personality and style to model, then spend every waking moment (minus family and work) pursuing that goal. And guess what? You’ll reach it.
Reading Gary’s book “Crush It!” is one way to help you reach your goal. I said before I highly recommend you pick up a copy and get fired up. This book with help you tremendously in organizing and prioritizing your work to reach your goal the Gary Vaynerchuk way. If you don’t want to go the same route as Gary to reach your goal(s) then use the book as inspiration to get fired up about your goal and dominating everyone else in your niche.
I give the book two thumbs up and will reference and recommend it to just about everyone. It’s your choice in how you pull information from the book and apply it to your life. For $13 or so, it is more inspirational and packed with solid info than any other e-book. Most of the information presented in the book can be found on GaryVaynerchuk.com and if you started at the very first post you’ll gain a lot and save the $13 and reading time. Knock yourself out and Crush It in one way or another!
I would never advocate you try to become and do something that you are not. But if you’re so excited about your goal or a subject that you can’t sleep and want to connect to every single person on earth about it, Gary and Crush It has the formula for you. Care more about everyone you come across in life and business and you’ll win.
Tags: Book Review, Branding, Crush It, Gary Vaynerchuk, Interview, Josh Whitford
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Josh,
great interview, I waited until now to take time to watch the whole thing. I have always respected Gary, but I think he is full of poop and too far to his “passion and hustle” side of the aisle. He has no balance that that is dangerous and foolish.
For him to think that search engines will die is craptacularly stupid. Sure, it is Google right now, but tomorrow it will be another search engine.
The truth is that ORGANIC traffic will NEVER be extinct and will ALWAYS be targeted. The internet is about SEARCH, …not social media.
Social traffic will always be “info seeking” and not necessarily targeted. But the cataloging and finding of web pages (what search engines do) will never be out of print. (for him to elude differently show that he is a friggin’ idiot)
Gary says he could take a $240K adsense blog (that gets search engine traffic) and turn it into $2million, but the problem is that his social $2million site will take hours and hours to maintain. Your $240 adsense search traffic site is passive and needs very little work to stay where it is *why???, because of good content and good seo links (something GV is ignorant of). Plus, I could take the authority of that $240K site and link it to others of similar niche, and double or triple the income with VERY LITTLE WORK. (using LINKS, ie: off page SEO… Gary is ignorant of this strategy… cuz he is busy Twatting)
What privileged Gary (yeah, his Daddy GAVE him a biz to build up, he did not start it from scratch) does not know is that there are millions of things more important than a $2million site anyway. TIME with your family, freedom etc outweigh the difference in $240K passive vs $2million that takes 60 hours a week to maintain.
You see, Gary is a young kid who has NEVER faced any type of corp stress or knowing what it’s like to work for “the man.”
he is a small biz family guy who’s Daddy built something good, and he made it great.
Long story short, Gary is passionate, but naive of REAL life and certainly naive of what REAL internet marketing (balanced between SEO Links and social media) really is. he is also naive about being a real working American in the real world… ask him who paid for his college???
He should stick to the “get fired up” talk and stay out of the “I know about SEO and traffic” convo…he just makes himself look foolish.
AL
PS– you should have told him your passion was “poop on sandwiches” and asked him how you could cash in on that. LOL
Allyn, I think you are totally right. If you want to be GaryVee that is more than possibly by following in his steps. I know for a fact that backlinks has made me lots of money and twitter hasn’t made me shit. I like twitter for the information and interaction not for monetizing.
You have raised that I have in the past about taking something that is already successful and making it better vs starting from the ground up. Going to the next level is always easier than starting from nothing and building everything.
The one thing I do appreciate about Gary is that he doesn’t promise you anything in any amount of time. I had to ask the SEO question because it was SEO that got my blog in front of his minions eyes when they google marketing blog and found me. So the whole conversation we had was a result of SEO, not twitter.
The biggest thing I took away from the whole experience is knowing what the hell you want. If you want to be a social bar fly there’s someone willing to show you how, if you want to be a golfer that makes passive income online there’s someone for that as well. Knowing what you want and not what someone things is best for you and then going after what you want (lifestyle, friends, work, play and so on). I respect Gary for trying to help because I genuinely think that is what his is trying to do but there is no one shoe fits all for people.
Hhmm, this should be interesting…
Allyn, I agree 110%… there is far more value in spending your time doing what you want over spending it making more money, because lets face it… if I have to work 18 hours a day to get a $2m site, when am I gonna spend all that moolah? $240k is find with me (as I get ready to go fishin…)
I disagree however about search. Oh sure, there will always be search in one form or another, but the model that we’ve all built a big chunk of our business around is changing… and not in our favor.
Bing introduced and Google has implemented the sidebar. More shopping sites, less shopping sites, last year, last month, last hour… We’re not competing for #1 in a single SERP any more, we’re competing for #1 sliced a dozen different ways. Not to mention that with the searchwiki turned on, I can flag your site and it will never show up in my results again.
Yes, search will persist, but not as we know it today. We need to be updating our models now to remain competitive and real-time (Twitter, Facebook status, etc) is going to be a big component of that. If you question that, look at the deals Twitter struck with Facebook, Microsoft/Bing, and Google today. Its coming!
And finally on to the subject of Gary Vee… (isn’t that what brought us here anyway?) AWESOME interview Josh! Great job! If he is nothing else Gary is passionate and the world needs passionate folks, but Allyn is right. Be passionate about your area of expertise. Getting to far afield is a recipe for disaster.
I have a copy of Cruch It on the way and I’ll read it… and treat it just like I do all the other books from “experts” that I read… as one person’s opinion that I, as an intelligent person, must digest and apply to my situation.
Thanks for the post and the work you put into the interview! Great stuff man!
Hey, here’s a link to a post on TechCrunch on how Google and Bing are Getting ready for the firehose and what that means to realtime. Just FYI.
Josh – I liked the video, and interview. Great job
@Tony, Thanks for stopping by and checking it out. Sure takes a little while to watch/listen to.
It might take a while but think it is worth it, and interesting also.