Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion

I finished reading Crush It: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion about a week ago. Although I wasn’t overly impressed, it did inspire and re-ignite my passion. The book did certainly have the potential to be better though.

The book primarily focuses on going after your passion so that your job no longer is considered work. It only touches on the strategy to do this with a soft bristled brush however.

Throughout the book, Gary explains that if you follow his methods taught in the book and work hard, you can achieve what he has. What he has is wealth and a job that he enjoys waking up to. He explains how he took his father’s small liquor store and transformed it into a multi-million dollar business. However he never really goes into the methods in detail other than using social networks to assist in branding himself.

I am not by any means a millionaire or consider myself an internet entrepreneurial success as Gary is, but I think that the angle he took in the wine market had more to do with his success than his social networking. If my passion were rodents, I don’t feel I could gather a large following as Mr. Vaynerchuk can reach with a “wine for middle class” approach.

Gary’s points in the book come across arrogant in most cases, but he makes it a point to mention that is just how he is and by trying to fake another personality would be portrayed just as that, fake. Knowing that, I didn’t really mind the name dropping and “I don’t care what anyone thinks” comments. Even though these statements and others like are proudly exclaimed, overall I felt he was sincere and trustworthy throughout the read.

Conclusion:

All in all, the book did inspire me. A couple times throughout my reading, I put the book down and grabbed my laptop to put some work into a few of my sites. Crush it! helped me take a step back and look at the big picture. One could say, I stepped out of the now and into the future. If you feel you are in a rut right now and need something to get you going again this could be the book you need. If you are already all inspired, you may just want to save this book for a rainy day.

I’m be happy to give 3 out of 5 PHP elephants to this book for its ability to inspire creative thinking and emphasis on branding yourself with social media.

Visit Gary Vaynerchuk’s Website to learn more about this author.