CRUSH IT! by Gary Vaynerchuk

• If you want it badly enough, it can become your story, in a lot less time and for a lot less money.
• Well, my secret is that I live by three pretty simple rules:   Love your family. Work superhard. Live your passion.
• If you don’t already live the first principle, get on it, because what I’m going to tell you in this book is worthless if you’re not taking care of your family. Your family always comes first. But if you’ve got that priority straight, and you’re working hard, and you’re still not 100 percent happy, it’s probably because you’re not living your passion. And that, my friends, although it is only one-third of the secret to success, is the whole key to staking your claim in the new business world we live in today.
• You owe it to yourself to make a massive change for the better, and all you have to do is go online and start using the tools waiting for you there.
• Social media give entrepreneurs and businesses an unprecedented chance to engage with their customers and communicate their message. Those who can harness their passion to the unbelievable reach and power of these tools are in a position to crush it on a level the world has never seen.
• Money goes where people go—where there is an audience, advertisers are eager to follow.
• It’s never a bad time to start a business unless you’re starting a mediocre business.
• The person who can dominate during rough times is the person who can dominate, period.
• Learn to live your passion, and you’ll have all the money you need plus total control over your own destiny.
• Thanks to the accessibility and reach of social media and the zero cost, anyone can do this.
• There is room for everyone in the world of social media, which is the same thing as saying that there is room for everyone in today’s business world.
• The messages in this book are timeless: Do what makes you happy. Keep it simple. Do the research. Work hard. Look ahead.
• The tools we’re going to discuss in this book will spread your ideas and give your personal brand more traction in far less time and for far less money than you might have been able to do otherwise, but they are only as powerful as the person who uses them.
• Stop hustling, and everything you learn here will be useless. Your success is entirely up to you.
• Here’s the deal: if you want it badly enough, the money is there, the success is there, and the fulfillment is there. All you have to do is take it. So quit whining, quit crying, quit with the excuses.
• Business is not just about making money, and if you think it is, you’re broken.
• The Internet makes it possible for anyone to be 100 percent true to themselves and make serious cash by turning what they love most into their personal brand.
• Storytelling is by far the most underrated skill in business.
• Developing your personal brand is key to monetizing your passion online.
• Authenticity is key.
• my popularity stems from the fact that I know what the hell I’m talking about, and that I’m honest.
• Quality is a tremendous filter.
• Consumers want you to tell them the truth. Sure, they want quality and service and value and entertainment, but above all they want to know that the person they’re dealing with is being honest.
• You’ll crush it as long as you concentrate on being yourself.
• Your brand will be unique and interesting because you are unique and interesting. Don’t put on an act to try to imitate me or anyone else who’s had some success with social marketing.
• Embrace your DNA, be yourself, put out awesome content, and people will be interested in what you have to say.
• Leveraging social networking platforms into effective conduits for your personal brand is all about building word of mouth.
• 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.
• Fundamental supply and demand is shifting. Quantity is up, price is down, which means the cost structure has to shrink dramatically.
• It’s a truth at the heart of this book—the game is changing, and your opportunity is huge if you take it.
• If you don’t plan ahead and decide where you want to go, you’re in big trouble.
• To monetize your personal brand into a business using social marketing networks, two pillars need to be in place: product and content.
• Most people talk themselves out of success before they even start.
• Everyone has the ability to achieve great self-awareness, but we all occasionally lie to ourselves. Some of us, however, lie to ourselves more than others.
• You can monetize any passion, but the level at which you can monetize will be affected by the size of your niche and whether you are able to differentiate yourself enough from the other players in it.
• it. If you watch an engineer talking about engineering, and it’s boring, one of three problems is in play: he’s talking about the wrong topic, he’s using the wrong medium, or both.
• There are people who belong in front of a camera, there are people who belong in print, and there are people who belong on the air. These are the extraordinary people. The ordinary ones, the ones like the vast majority of businesspeople and entrepreneurs out there, don’t have the showman DNA.
• Know yourself. Choose the right medium, choose the right topic, create awesome content, and you can make a lot of money being happy.
• To my mind the most effective content medium is video, and that’s the one I prefer to focus on.
• Your blog will be your main home, your central location with a no-exceptions open-door policy where anyone can find you.
• The most important thing to remember is to be authentic, to be yourself. That authenticity is what will give you your greatest chance of success.
• The best use for Twitter, though, is to lure people to your blog. Make your 140-character tweets compelling and thoughtful and quality enough to convince people to find out more about you and consume your content.
• There is no way to overstate the importance of Ustream, one of the biggest brand-building products that I’ve used.
• I use analytics very rarely and I urge you not to rely too much on them either, especially if you’ve got good business instincts.
• Focus the majority of your attention on your overall brand positioning.
• Authenticity is what will make it possible for you to put in the kind of hustle necessary to crush it.
• I’ve said over and over that if you live your passion and work the social networking tools to the max, opportunities to monetize will present themselves.
• I’ve also said that in order to crush it you have to be sure your content is the best in its category.
• With one exception. Someone with less passion and talent and poorer content can totally beat you if they’re willing to work longer and harder than you are. Hustle is it. Without it, you should just pack up your toys and go home.
• Too many people don’t want to swallow the pill of working every day, every chance they get.
• The thing is, if you’re living your passion, you’re going to want to be consumed by your work.
• Before you invest in yourself, you have to invest in your long-term future. That means your profits should funnel right back into your research, your content, and your staff should you have any. The sooner you start cashing in, the shorter window you have in which to cement your success. So hold off as long as you can.
• What you do after you tape a show or write or record is the whole game. Creating community—that’s where the bulk of your hustle is going to go and where the bulk of your success will be determined.
• Creating community is about starting conversations.
• To create an audience for your personal brand, you’re going to get out there, shake hands, and join every single online conversation already in play around the world about your topic. Every. Single. One.
• You know how to solidify your fan base? Pay attention to them.
• If your content is smart and interesting and eye-catching and entertaining—and if you’re the best, it should be—most people who come to your blog will be happy to become regular readers, viewers, or listeners. Make it easy for them.
• Your long-term goal is to get sticky and create more and more opportunities to communicate.
• How do you know when you’ve built a community? When one person is listening.
• Don’t get obsessed with how many friends or fans are following you—the stats are only marginally important. What’s important is the intensity of your community’s engagement and interaction with you.
• As long as you’re seeing your audience grow, even modestly, over the first four or five months, you’re doing what you’re supposed to do.
• It’s an amazing thing to know someone gives a crap about what’s going on in your world, your life, your brain. Don’t take people for granted.
• Any topic can be turned into a profitable, sustainable social-media-driven business.
• Having navigated a million badly designed websites, I’ve come to the conclusion that hiring a designer to make sure that you’ve got excellent user interface in the form of properly placed links and buttons is a worthwhile investment.
• Put as much content out there as you can. There are people in your field who will hate you because you’ll be offering up information for free for which they often charge. That’s okay.
• Find a way to incorporate some personal stories and details into your posts. Use anecdotes from your own life to illustrate concepts. Let your personality shine so that eventually people who have no need for accounting information are coming to hear you just because it’s you.
• One of my favorite mantras is “Anything is better than zero,” but true to my contradictory nature, let me just say that the longer you hold out to monetize your blog, the better.
• There are hundreds of billions of dollars in ad revenue out there that need a place to go, and they’re winding up online because it’s the best return on investment advertisers can find.
• Remember, where people—consumers—go, money follows, and the people are spending more and more time in the blogosphere.
• Next, start taking steps to get on the lecture circuit.
• It’s almost a cliché to remind you that good blogging can lead to book deals.
• At first you’ll want to offer your time for free, but if you’re sitting on a heavy knowledge base, you should eventually start to charge for your time.
• Nothing in life ever goes exactly the way you think it will, and that goes for all of your carefully planned entrepreneurial dreams and goals.
• You’d be surprised at how many entrepreneurs aren’t good at adjusting to changing environments, and it’s a major reason why so many businesses don’t achieve their full potential.
• For the person who thinks of himself or herself as a brand—and remember, everyone needs to start thinking of themselves as a brand—the ability to spread your great ideas and share your triumphs is a golden opportunity. The downside to this, of course, is that when you mess up or things go wrong, there’s no longer anywhere to hide.
• Successful entrepreneurs are like good chess players; they can imagine the various possibilities ahead and how each one will trigger their next move.
• Achieving 100 percent happiness is the whole point of living your passion, of course, but to my mind that happiness is unachievable if you don’t recognize that with every decision you make, you’re building more than just a business, you’re building a legacy.
• How you build your business is so much more important than how much you make while doing it.
• Don’t ever be afraid to put your feet in that water, whether I’ve said a word about it or not.
• If there’s any message I want you to take away, it’s that true success—financial, personal, and professional—lies above all in loving your family, working hard, and living your passion. In telling your story. In authenticity, hustle, and patience. In caring fiercely about the big and the small stuff. In valuing legacy over currency.