Review: Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When life gives you grapes crush them into wine!
This metaphor captures the essence of the book and Gary’s personality and style. On the plane ride to the American Muslim Consumer Conference, I pulled out my Kindle and read Crush It!
I love the story about his lemonade franchise that he started as a kid. I can picture him driving his big wheel around to collect the money. From a young age Gary was ambitious. For example, he worked in a wine store read about and studied wine before he was allowed to drink any wine. How many kids do you know that would do this, who would show that kind of initiative?
I have to warn you, that no matter how passionate you are, this book might make you feel terribly bland. Only because Gary is very passionate. I want to know…do you ever burn out? Even if you love what you do, how can you keep the hours? Those questions were not answered but I must point out that most business owners deal with these issues. Gary seems immune to them, which is great, but not typical. His optimism is endearing though…just not sure it’s sustainable to that level. Those who do sustain it pay the price sooner or later (we all have different capacities).
Part of this narrative is one of a 2nd generation immigrant who watched his parents work very hard to establish themselves. This is interesting to me as I attend the American Muslim Consumer Conference and hear how American Muslims are often 2nd generation immigrants — 2/3 is the number quoted.
Summary of Crush It!:
- I have tried putting hours & hours into my work and it means my family life suffers immensely. You should see the drop in my blog stats when I got married last year. A free fall.
- I couldn’t make it on the schedule he proposes and I work pretty hard at all of this. Plus I love it and am passionate about it. I’m more of the 4-Hour Workweek persuasion than putting in such long hours. I do agree that you’ve got to constantly learn and inform.
- I highly disagree with his advice about not trusting analytics. Many times our gut feelings are wrong
and we need to look at stats to see what actually works. Maybe his gut is more accurate than
mine. In my experience, what works and what doesn’t is very unpredictable. I’d say don’t be a
slave to analytics if it stifles your creativity. I wouldn’t say to ignore them entirely. - Gary reminds me that you choose a medium you’re good at and stick to that. I’m a writer and I want to be someone who is comfortable in front of a camera, but so far I’m not. So if this was a video blog, I’m not so sure you would come back. I can tell video is his medium and it’s not necessarily writing. Not that this was poorly written, it just can’t capture Gary at his best – on video.
- Some of the book was elementary and gave an introduction but not enough specifics. I’d give some
actual tools and URLs. I know they change but I’d appreciate knowing what plugins or services he finds useful. Sometimes he does this well, other times I think he leaves too much for the reader to guess.
If you too would like to Crush It!
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November 16th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
[...] on an airplane back home and reading Crush It on my Kindle (see my first review of Crush It here). Here’s the part that made me cry: “Making connections, creating and continuing [...]
January 8th, 2010 at 6:16 am
[...] you want a real trip philosophically, do what I did. Read Crush It! By Gary Vee and then read the 4-Hour Work Week. It will put you in a philosophical [...]