As a professional I always strive to be the best at what I do, which is why I am a big fan of sharpening my marketing tools. A big part of this is reading the latest business books and trying to learn as much as I can; only a fool thinks he/she knows everything. I recently read Crush It! Cash In On Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk, and have learned some very useful techniques for marketing / branding yourself online, as well as effective ways to use social networking websites to accomplish marketing goals; both of which are essential skills in today’s business world. I’m going to go through this book, chapter by chapter, describing the salient points as well as offering my own commentary. The chapter 1 discussion starts now.
In his first chapter, Passion is everything, Vaynerchuk offers his secret to success.
- Love your family
- Work superhard
- Live your passion
This formula may seem overly basic to some, but if you think about it, you know it’s true. At one of my previous jobs, I found myself dissatisfied even though the pay was good, and the job was challenging. At the time, I had no idea why, but after reading this book, I’ve realized what I was missing. I wasn’t living my passion. I’m betting that this is the point where most people have problems. With food to put on the table and bills to pay, it’s easy to think of success as something to be measured by money. We seldom realize that success should be measured by how happy we are. If you’re not living your passion, you are missing out on one of the most important elements of success.
Living your passion sounds great, but in the meantime you have bills to pay and so you won’t (and shouldn’t) quit your day job just yet. The good news is that with all of the opportunities available using free social networking websites (such as blogs like the one you are reading now), you can still live your passion, and may even be able to make some money off of it in the future. Vaynerchuk discusses these social networking websites as well as money making opportunities later in the book, which we will get to in a future post.
Notable quotes from this chapter:
- Money goes where people go.
- It’s never a bad time to start a business unless you’re starting a mediocre business.
- The person who can dominate in rough times is the person who can dominate, period.
- Social media = business, period.
Have you noticed something missing in your life? Are you living your passion? Email me EdwardViator [at] evil-marketer [dot] com
#1 by Steve on December 3, 2009 - 1:54 pm
I remember a conversation I had many years ago with my father. He was wondering why I was interested in a particular endeavor in the military. He wanted to know why I did not pursue a job in business where I could make a lot more money.
My reasoning was this:
If you spend 40 to 50 hours per week of your waking period doing your job, is that not the most time you spend doing anything? It is more than you eat, more than you spend time with friend, and more than you even spend time with your spouse. Is it not the point of life to find something you love to do so much that to do it is the reward itself? If you cannot do something you really enjoy, really have passion about, then is that not a waste of your time? By doing something you really love it outweighs the benefit of doing something you really hate just so you can make more money for the small amount of time you have left in the week.
I was talking about passion. He got it and agreed with my decision. I still believe that today, and Ed writes about it here. Pursue your passion.