Week 30: CRUSH IT!: WHY NOW IS THE TIME TO CASH IN ON YOUR PASSION by Gary Vaynerchuk
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Harper Studio | 2009 | 160 pages | List price: $19.99 | Get it for less at Amazon
It’s a slim book this week. The week I am officially back in the office for just one week before I am out for another week. You know how that goes. Busting your ass so you can be out for a week only to come back from a week away to more work than you know what to do with. And then I had to use that week to prepare for another week away. So blah, blah, blah. I am talking in circles and just need to get going with what was going on this week between the covers… ummm book covers, that is!
This week, at the recommendation of a colleague, I read CRUSH IT!: WHY NOW IS THE TIME TO CASH IN ON YOUR PASSION by Gary Vaynerchuk. I have a role in my company’s social media strategy and presence and this colleague knows about my love of reading and blogging and this little online nook I have carved out for myself and thought this would be a perfect read for me.
In some instances, CRUSH IT was perfect. At just 160 pages during a crazy busy week, the perfect size of it screamed out to me. It’s also very readable and easy to digest. But in tone and overall impact, CRUSH IT was far from receiving a 5 star rating.
Vaynerchuk is a successful business man, having taken his father’s wine business from a single brick and mortar liquor establishment to a multi-million dollar online business. He’s created a highly social, easily accessible online environment for wine lovers to congregate, get informed and buy wine. Vaynerchuk has leveraged social media (and this is more than Facebook and Twitter) to cultivate a space for his business and his customers that is not just all about buying wine. By utilizing a different space and newer technology, he’s promoting not just a business, but a lifestyle. He’s crushed it. He’s living his passion and wants everyone else to do the same.
And that’s part of the same-old, same-old of CRUSH IT. In many ways, it’s just another book by someone who has made it telling those of us who haven’t to get off our butts, quit our jobs and live our passion. It’s a great idea in theory but so very hard to execute. Maybe that’s the non-risk-taker in me talking… When I get past that, the next hurdle is Vaynerchuk’s explosive energy that really comes across like a multi-level marketing plan sales pitch. I’m all for positive energy and the old go-gettem-tiger! attitude… But CRUSH IT lays it on pretty thick.
When you can get past the get-rich-quick sounding vibe, Vaynerchuk does share some great ideas, gives access to online resources that are both familiar and some very new ones. He also goes out of his way to be a resource and mentor for his readers to help them do whatever it is they love, how to be the very best at it, create a space for it, and at the the end of the day…crush it.
To order the book directly from Amazon for less, CLICK HERE.
Rating: 
