Why I took a night off to Crush It! and why you should to.

Posted by Ben Lumley on Dec 17, 2009 in Success, Think Differently | 8 comments

Image from of CrushItbook.com

My usual day if I’m working at home goes something this…

• Wake up / Breakfast / Say good morning to the wife and kids
• Install myself at the desk and work through work for my 9-5 job working for No Limits
• At 5, I clock off and start working on this site and my business site Smashing Business
• Have dinner and spend some time with the family until around 9/10pm
• Pick up working on the sites again to around midnight-ish (sometimes later)
• Go to bed
• Rinse and Repeat

That’s usually how it goes these days during the week, while during the weekend I just concentrate most of my attention on my sites and around spending quality time with the family. But yesterday for the first time in a very long time I broke away from the norm and give my full attention to something else.

Yesterday, after a long wait, I finally got my hands on my very own copy of Gary Vaynerchuk’s Crush It! And after itching to read it all day, I finally closed the laptop around 5pm and eagerly began reading.

I’ve been a massive fan of Gary’s now for around 6 months; ever since a good friend showed me a video of Gary talking at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York, entitled Building Personal Brand Within the Social Media Landscape. If you’ve not seen it then I really recommend that you do as it’s a very enlightening watch. Since then I’ve followed him on Twitter and watched his video blogs on his personal site GaryVaynerchuk.com, trying to absorb as much content as I could from someone who has made such a massive success of his personal brand and company from engaging in social media. Gary took his Dad’s wine company, Wine Library, from a $20 million business to a $60 million one, utilising social media and the so-called “web 2.0″ tools available to anyone while at the same time building himself a huge personal brand as well as enabling him to launch his own company Vaynermedia.

What’s personal brand?

Personal brand is key if you want to be successful now and in the future. If you want to work for yourself then you need to be your brand as everything you do online leaves a legacy and that will effect what you’re able to do in the future. If your Facebook profile is full of pictures of you drinking on nights out and all of your Twitter updates are rude and offensive, you’re going to struggle like never before as everything we do moves online. The same applies if you want to work in the corporate world. Employers don’t want to know about you if you can’t control your online presence and as Gary points out the traditional CV is dead, as employers are moving to Googling potential employees, prior to interview. Do you want to loose out on potential opportunities because your personal brand stinks?

So what has Crush It! got to do with personal development and geeks?

Well quite a bit actually. Have you got a passion that you’re using to make your living? Something that you would gladly spend your time on no matter how much money was involved? Well Crush It! will show you how to turn this addictive side of your personality into a money machine that means you can do something you truly love everyday of the week rather than working in a job that makes you cringe at just the thought of it. For people like me who are already into self-improvement and development it’s also a motivational kick up the backside.

Gary talks about how you can easily share your passion with hundreds of thousands of people via the internet, using social networking tools that are freely available to everyone and build yourself a personal brand that can open up opportunities that you never thought we’re available before. He explains about the importance of developing a personal brand in today’s online society and shares how he did it to make himself become the internet phenomenon that he is today so that anyone reading Crush It! can go out and do that same thing straight away.

It’s certainly not a “get rich quick book” as talks about the need to be patient and details the kind of time frame you need to be considering if you want to cash in on your passion. Gary didn’t do it quickly and certainly didn’t have thousands of Twitter followers or millions of views to his web TV show WineLibrary.tv after only a week’s worth of work. Creating success for yourself just isn’t that easy and anyone who knows how hard it is to become successful at something will understand. In Crush It! Gary shows how to set yourself up a little piece of the internet that is yours and how to build up a community around it that  will bring you success to whatever degree you want it. From choosing the right platform and creating great content, to communicating your message and creating a legacy, Crush It! covers everything you’d need to take yourself online and create your own personal brand.

This is a must read book for anyone who wants to cash in on their passion and start something online!

Has anyone else read Crush It? If so what did you think?

Don’t forget I’ve still got some Google Wave invitations up for grabs, just leave a comment on Who’d Like An Invitation To Google Wave? to get yours…

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