Just finished reading Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk.
About the author. Gary is, self admittedly, a love or hate type of character. He’s got a big personality, he’s very blunt and extremely passionate.
This is instantly recogniseable if you watch his interviews, keynote talks and online communication channel, Wine Library TV.
I can understand why some people might find him hard to watch. He swears quite a lot, if wine tastes like vomit he says it does and I can imagine a lot of people thinking he’s over the top and arrogant.
Personally I don’t mind swearing, I’d rather he told me that wine tasted like vomit before it cost me £27 to find out for myself and I think he’s just confident and doesn’t feel the need to waste his life trying to convince people it isn’t arrogance instead of doing more of what he loves most.
Love him or hate him you can’t argue with the fact that he’s passionate, honest, and extremely successful - by his own definition of how to measure it.
In the book he emphasises why it’s so important to develop a personal brand and gives you a blue print for achieving it online using social media and networking tools. He also promotes a lot of good values to instill into your business and personal life such as loving your family being your number 1 priority in how to be successful and being honest and transparent with your customers no matter what it costs you.
His drive to find and embrace his passion is a reflection of Donald Trump’s attitude to business/life and the result is an inspiring message of success can be acheived by everyone who takes the time out to explore and find their passion and pursue it without being scared of the journey without trying to disguise how easily it can be acheived without hard work, long hours and a lot of patience.
The book is an insight into what he thinks is in store for those who shy away from creating a personal brand and ignoring the inevitabilites that the internet will have on business as a whole rather than just the corporate world.
You won’t get much detail on how to implement anything he outlines in the book which might frustrate some readers whoare already very familiar with the internet and use all the most popular social networking tools already such as twitter and facebook but it’s still worth a read if for nothing else than Gary’s refreshing approach to business, life and being true to yourself without being ashamed or trying to change who you are and what you love – your DNA as he calls it.
It’s a nice set of beliefs to have and very satisfying to see how he’s applied it to his own life with unquestionable success and even if the implementation of his advice doesn’t give you much to think about the philosophy behind it most likely will and the positive message he is spreading will be infectious and inspiring for a lot of readers.
The book is a pretty quick read at less than 150 pages and because of the lack of detail on how to implement the strategy it’s quite easy to hammer through without too much concentration. At less than £10 it’s definately worth the money because of it’s message if not the blueprint and techniques which you may already be familiar with if you are an experienced blogger or internet marketer.
I prefer to read books when theirs details to refer back to but I don’t think i’d ever re-read this so I would have preferred the audio book instead seeing as I quite enjoy Gary’s style of delivery (I’m assuming he would have narrated it himself).
For me it’s not a keeper for the reference shelf but i’ll definately pass it on to a few people I know will really enjoy it and might spot an opportunity to cash in on their passion.
Have you read it already, what did you think?
