This is a review of the book Crushing It - How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business And How You Can Too by Gary Vaynerchuk. In the introduction to the book the 
author says the world of opportunities is changing rapidly than we envisaged a few years earlier. The advent of social media has created personal branding opportunities that we could not have anticipated. We are able to have one on one conversations with our customers. We are able to react to people across the globe. Today people are able to build billion dollar businesses from the basement of their homes. Your personal brand can become your business. The aim of the book is to make the reader aware of the platforms available how how to work on each of them. This book also has tonnes of advice from those who have walked the talk.
This book is both for those with natural born talent and those who do not yet know their talent but want to explore the various options available.
The book is divided into two sections. Section 1 is called 'Get Pumped'. It comprises of 5 chapters. In the chapter 1 titled 'The Path is All Yours' the focus is on facts and data. The author convincingly argues about the shift in consumer focus from traditional media to social media. Due to these changes, businesses are spending vast amounts of money on these channels. Due to the proliferation of platforms anyone with a passion can make a living out of these media. Anyone who is smart and strategic in using their content can capitalise on this shift.
 |
| Seven Traits for Successful Personal Branding |
The focus of this book is for anyone willing to put in the effort in their personal brand. Personal branding starts by identifying specific target audience.
Chapter 2 is titled 'What Still Matter'. There are a few personal traits that matter in the personal branding journey. These are intent, authenticity, passion, patience, speed, work, and attention.
The first trait is intent. You have to decide why you want to do personal branding. The three characteristics that every successful entrepreneur shares are commitment to service, a desire to provide value, and a love for teaching. Money should not be the motive. You have to care for your customer.
Intent is reflected in your authenticity. Showcase your true self, your work, and passion. Respect the intellect of your audience.
Passion is what makes you enjoy what you do. Spend your time on your passion. The advantage is that passion will keep you going when things become tough.
Passion goes side by side with the next characteristic patience. Success in the social media journey will take time. Keep your head down and keep working.
While you must be patient in the long term, speed is of essence in the short term. Once you figure out what needs to be done, do it quickly. You have to be always in the 'Do' mode. Do not overthink.
At the bottom of every other attribute lies work. There is no time for leisure in your personal branding journey. Work fourteen, fifteen, eighteen hour days come hell or high water. Every minute must be spent producing content, distributing content, engaging your community, or engaging in Business Development. Do things! Put in hard work. Enjoy it.
The final trait, attention has two aspects. One is attention to the environment. You have to be aware about which are the new social media (Smule?), where are customer's eyeballs going, what are your customers talking about etc. People tend to underestimate new trends. There lies the opportunity. Keep experimenting with new platforms. Do not get comfortable with the existing ones.
While author does not mention it, in my opinion, other aspect of attention is focus - the ability to block out noise and focus on the task at hand.
Chapter 3, titled 'Eighth Essential' deals with content. Here the author presents a counter-intuitive view. As per him you should start now and let your evolution be your content. Let people see your struggles and the victories. Let people be a part of your journey. Another point is to tailor your content to different platforms. People are in different mindsets on different media. What works for Twitter won't work for YouTube for example. Keep updating your knowledge so that people cannot easily find the information that you provide. Your content must be amazing.
Document your learning process. Let that be your content. Use YouTube Live, Facebook Live and other media regularly to tell your story. Documenting will keep you on your toes. Do not manipulate. Let your evolution be your content. That will give you freshness and enthusiasm.
Putting your progress out there will force you to live up to it. Let world see you up close and dirty.
Approach each message you post from a professional viewpoint. Before every tweet, Facebook post, or YouTube video, ask the question, 'how will this help my business?' If there is no convincing answer don't do it.
Remember to keep moving. Things change for the better if you keep moving.
Chapter 4 titled 'What is Stopping You' discusses about 10 reasons reasons why people are not crushing it. For me the relevant reasons are 'I don't know where to start' and 'I don't have the right equipment'. As per the author, there are three fears that hold people back. They are fear of failure, fear of wasting time and fear of seeming vein. Fear of failure may be a fear of what people will say. Do not bother about other's opinions. Be clear eyed and strategic, be willing to work harder and longer than you ever have and you will surprise everyone.
Fear of wasting time leads you to losing great opportunities. Exploring different platforms is not a waste of time if you want to build your personal brand. People are scared of visiting time even when they have nothing else to do.
Amazing feature of the book are the examples of who have crushed it. One of the achievers advises you to look at platform and answer the question 'what will make the users to come back to your page'.
As you gather ideas and execute your strategies, set yourself up for success. Find your self-esteem and make some noise. Show that you care for quality and customer experience. Show that you care for people.
The most inspiring story in this book is that of Mimi Goodwin whose Instagram handle is @mimigstyle. She had suffered from childhood abuse, teenage motherhood, and domestic abuse and came out of it to build a huge personal brand.
The only thing you need to give yourself to crush it is permission. There is an inspiring story of Pat Flynn who set up the website smartpassiveincome.com. His Insta handle is @patflynn. He created an e-book collating ideas from his blog posts and sold it in his website. This is what I had done with my ERP book. Reading that example was very gratifying. If he can take an esoteric idea like LEAD exam and make it work my ERP idea is a cakewalk.
Go deep, go niche and provide real value in the form of information or entertainment.
Section 2, Create Your Pillar, starts with a mandatory task, create a Facebook business page. I have already done that. Check it out
How can one get discovered? There are two ways in which your opportunities will develop. One, by smart use of hashtags and two, by direct messaging - reaching out directly to people and offering them something in return for their attention. The second option is what the author recommends. Collaborate with people and get to work delivering something that they will be proud of. If established influencers see an upside in collaborating with you, they will get back. It is your job to give them reasons to get back to you. Business development this way is hard and hence many people won't do it. There lies your opportunity.
The next 8 chapters deal with eight different platforms - Musical.ly, Snapchat, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Podcasts and Voice–first.
The book ends with a concluding chapter summarizing the ideas discussed in the book.
This is an amazing book. Any great book of ideas should have one feature. After reading the book the reader should ask herself, "The ideas in this book are so sensible and easily executable. Why did I not think of this before?". This books meets that criteria to a T. Have this book in your library. Read it more than once. Follow Gary (@Garyvee on Twitter) and make use of his benevolence as he give you one amazing content after another.
Thank you Gary. I hope I will be able to live up to your inspiring words.
No comments:
Post a Comment