MBA1098 Must Read: Crushing It by Gary Vaynerchuk

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Heyo. Welcome to the $100 MBA show. Because a better business begins with you. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar is at home. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online and today's episode is a must Read episode. On our must Read episodes I share with you a book that I've read that has helped me, has influenced me in some way and share with you its takeaways with you. Today's must read is Crushing it by Gary Vaynerchuk. I specifically chose this book because it challenges my perceptions and ideas about social media. If you're a fan of the show, you know I have my own gripes when it comes to social media and and its effectiveness on helping your business. But somebody that has the opposite opinion when it comes to that A proponent and advocate for social media is Gary Vaynerchuk. He iterates this in all his books but he really nails it down in his latest book Crushing It. This is kind of like the sequel to his first book Crush It. So in today's episode I'm gonna share with you what he shares in his book, why he believes social media is so powerful, how it can help you get started in your business, start promoting and marketing your business. Which mediums are good for what and what it takes to be successful on those social media platforms. I share my takeaways and how he's kind of changed my mind about a few things after reading this book. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. When I say the name Gary Vaynerchuk, what do you think of? Some people see him as a motivational speaker, somebody who tells you to hustle, to follow your passion, to keep going. But one of the things I think of is that Gary's everywhere. Everywhere you look, Gary is on the that platform. Whether it's Facebook or YouTube or Snapchat or Instagram or Twitter. He is really taking full advantage of every platform out there. He's basically a content machine. But really what this all means is that he really believes in building a personal brand. Gary has one of the strongest personal brands in business today. And in my opinion, his personal brand is the reason why he's been so successful in business, not only with VaynerMedia, his media company, and before that with his father's wine business and wine library tv. He also gets invited to speak at tons of conferences. He gets lots of speaking opportunities. He gets paid thousands of dollars per speech. He has four New York Times bestsellers, including this book, a hit podcast, a crazy YouTube channel, over a million Twitter followers. The guy is crushing it, pun intended. So I have a lot of respect for his work ethic and his ability to build a personal brand. And that's the root of this whole book, how to build a personal brand and leverage the power of platforms like social media to do so. And he encourages you to think a little bit bigger and think, hey, even if you have a side hustle, even if you have a full time job and you're not looking to become the next Tony Robbins or Oprah Winfrey, but you want to be able to sell whatever you're selling in your side hustle, whether it's your custom T shirts or consulting. He says the best way to do that is make personal connections by building a personal brand. This is really drilled down in the book. Building a personal brand offers multiple routes to personal and financial success. And he thinks it's the clearest path, kind of like the easiest way to be successful as an entrepreneur. One of the best parts of this book is his seven principles of what really matters to building your social media content. Now, later, I'll talk about all the different mediums he talks about and when to use Twitter. When to use Facebook, when to use Instagram, all that kind of stuff. But these principles are great. You can use it for not only social media, but for blogging, for podcasting, for anything, any kind of content you're putting together for your business or your brand. So the first principle is authenticity. He believes that people always smell a fake and you shouldn't disrespect your audience. Be real, be yourself. Second, he talks about, be passionate about whatever you talk about when, whether it's the NBA basketball or you're a fanatic about 80s toys like he man and Barbie. He believes if you love it, it's gonna get you through those tough times. The third principle is patience. He says patience is a virtue and it's an old saying, but it's true. He says building something new takes time.

So just accept that.

Fourth is hard work. If you wanna crush it, you gotta spend time during your lunch breaks, before you go to bed, any free time, you have to build your brand. Number five, you gotta pay attention. He says business and the world is changing fast these days, so you have to keep your finger on the pulse. Pay attention. Number six, you gotta move with speed, so pay attention, but be ready to pivot, to change, to modify your strategy based on the trends that are going on in the world. And then finally, number seven, have the right intent. He says all great entrepreneurs have one thing in common. They're not only in it for the money. Elon Musk is not only building electric cars for the money. He wants to help global warming and reduce the carbon footprint by having electric no emission vehicles. Even if you're helping people, a coach, a consultant, the money's good, but really do it so you can allow people to unlock and solve the problems that they have. If you can help people work through their problems, whether it's in business or in life, you're helping people really live a better life. So those are the seven principles. Now he talks about all the different social media platforms, when to use them, what's so good about them, what's not so good about them. So if you're kind of new at building your social media presence or you want to get into it, but you're not sure which one to start with, he really does a good job with outlining which platform is best for what. He's a big proponent of Snapchat. He believes Snapchat is one of the best platforms out there. He's also investor in Snapchat, by the way, so keep that in mind. But he talks about that Snapchat Offers an unpolished reality, he says it's the opposite of Instagram. Instagram is very polished, very manicured, beautiful pictures, people enjoying the best of life. While Snapchat is unfiltered, unpolished and just sort of raw and real. Doesn't allow you to really edit things or change things easily. Also, Snapchat is not as strong when it comes to discoverability, like Twitter or Instagram, where people can use hashtags or be retweeted and be shared. So offer a lot of value so people can share via word of mouth. Now he says Twitter is great for getting really specific audiences. Hashtags and retweeting really help people spread the word. It's also great for quick commenting, commenting on what's happening in the real world. One of my favorite people to follow on Twitter are sport analysts or sportcasters. So you'll be watching a game, but at the same time they are tweeting out their opinions of what's happening on a live game. So between commercials you can read their tweets and find out what they think of the last play or what's going on in the second half of this game or something like that. So having said that, it's totally fine to have like 50 tweets in a day versus Instagram. That's a little bit overload. He says. YouTube is a good platform for creating wealth and opportunity. Do you know that young adults watch more video on YouTube than any TV network at prime time? And while you probably won't get on NBC or any major network and anytime soon, at least you can at least be on YouTube right now, today. And YouTube opens its doors to everybody, experts or people who are learning and going on the journey right now. People love following the journey. So if you want to get into something like snowboarding, then document your journey in learning how to snowboard. Those who are learning with you, or beginners like you, are going to appreciate the fact that you're speaking from a beginner's level or beginner's perspective. So YouTube is great for that, for documenting. Speaking of documenting, if you're intimidated by creating any of the content for any of these platforms he talks about, forget about trying to create content and speak as an expert. Just document your experience as you're learning and people will appreciate it. A great way to have no excuse to create great content. And of course there's Facebook. He says Facebook is still a beast with over 2 billion active users. It's also great for advertising, getting a specific audience to take a look at what you're selling. Even though they might say all the young people have left Facebook, it's still a monster when it comes to marketing. And of course, there's Instagram. Instagram has become more and more popular the last few years, especially since they launched Stories, which is their kind of counterpart to their main platform, which is very, very clean and curated photos with great filters. Everything looks spectacular. Stories is just like your day to day life, unfiltered, taking a SAP of your morning coffee with a cheery caption or something like that. And because people know that stories only last 24 hours, they're not super conscious about it being perfect. So when it comes to business, Instagram is great for using Stories for the latest thing that's going on or a sale that you're having, or some sort of promotion, or even just your daily ritual of how you work as an entrepreneur or run your business, like behind the curtain. And for things that really you want to put your time and effort into establishing, you can use the Instagram photos and filter them by whether you're speaking at a conference or speaking to somebody one on one and somebody snaps a photo of you in action, helping people out. And finally, he speaks about podcasting as well. How the spoken word is a great medium because you can multitask with podcasting. Can't watch a video and clean the bathroom at the same time like he mentions. Of course I'm a big fan of podcasting because we've run a podcast for the last four years, a daily podcast. But I have to say, podcasting is a lot of work. It's probably the most work out of all those choices, but with a lot of hard work equals a lot of great results. You know, the more you put into something, the better results you're gonna get. I also just enjoy the audio format. This is the kind of content I like. It's something that I feel comfortable with. So if you feel the same, then podcasting is a great platform for you.

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So what I liked about Crushing it is that he really emphasizes the importance of building a personal brand. Even though I have a software company called Webinar Ninja, most of our customers know who I am, the founder, because I've built some sort of personal brand through the show, through the $100 MBA, through the webinars I run. So I definitely can resonate with his message there. I also like the fact that he lays out all the different platforms that you should explore and and why you should explore them. He does say it does take hard work and time and patience, so just start and get going with it. But I do wanna say that social media is a very noisy and crowded place and results may vary. Sometimes people put a lot of effort into their social media year after year and see very minimal effort. I think the content of whatever you post on social media is probably the most important thing. That's what's really gonna make you grow unique, interesting, valuable content. Now, I really want to say that I'm not a big fan of focusing too much time on social media because a lot of people think it's a golden ticket or a silver bullet or whatever you want to call it, like it's going to solve all your problems, like it's going to bring all these customers to your door, that you're not going to know how to handle all the business. No, it's just one form of marketing. You still have to have a great product, you still have to have a great team. You still have to deliver your product properly and social media is not going to solve those problems. The other thing I believe is that when you are building your following on social media, you have to be disciplined. Meaning that you can't just sit there and read all the other posts on social media, other things on your feed, because that's a huge time waste. You'll find yourself spending 2, 3, 4, 5 hours on social media and never getting anything done for your business. So get in, get out, do what you got to do. So that's my take. Gary is an expert at this. He's built a great personal brand doing the things he mentions in Crushing It. But that's my take from my own experience of working and building a business and, you know, being involved in social media Myself. Well, there you have it, guys. That's today's must read episode, Crushing it by Gary Vaynerchuk. Check it out, you'll find it a great source to get started with. Marketing with social media and understanding how to build a personal brand or the importance of building a personal brand. Before I go, I wanna leave you with this. I went into this book feeling like, man, I'm gonna really disagree with a lot of things that Gary has to say in this book. So you might be asking, why would you read a book like that? Well, I want to challenge my thoughts, I want to challenge my beliefs. That's how you know for sure you're going in the right path in life and business. You can't be so convinced that you are doing the right thing all the time. Challenge yourself, see if maybe the opposing opinion has a point. And I was pleasantly surprised. Some of the things in the book really, really opened my eyes and made me rethink my own perceptions and my own opinions about social media. So if you're ever approached with a movie, a book, a lesson, a course, and you're kind of like, ugh, I'm not down with that. Challenge yourself and say, let me give it a shot and let me see if I really do believe in those things. Or maybe the person has a point or the course has a point or the podcast has a point. Well, there you have it. Thank you so much for listening. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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