I was at SXSW 2009 when Crush It! came out & he keynoted; I had no idea who he was.
Today, he’s pivoted into pop culture.
With Crushing It!, he goes back to his roots. Understand—he already had a successful, $60 million wine business. He already had Wine Library TV. Understand, if email marketing & AdSense kept huge ROI & open rates, we wouldn’t have this book.
But also understand, this book is about the journey. The journey available open to all of us. Couple of quotes that shook me:
“Even with 1000 followers, an entry-level Instagrammer could earn $5,000 per year with two posts a week. And ten thousand followers could net almost $20,000 per year.”
“You don’t get to call yourself an expert until you’ve put in the work—and the market decides, not you.”
“How many people above the age of thirteen in America do not have a cell phone? Practically no one.”
Instagram didn’t EXIST nine years ago when Crush It! came out. Today, it’s minting millionaires. Cell phones had a modicum of the marketing & broadcasting capabilities they have now. Many brands in the first edition—UStream, blip.tv, Flickr—have vanished or lost relevance.
The tactics are different; the strategies remain the same. Intent, Authenticity, Passion, Patience, Speed, Effort, Attention, Content.
What matters is getting into the game. This book starts you off on the journey how. Not only that, it shows you those people who’ve done it. Granted—it’s a little tongue in cheek that EVERY case study read the original book. But hey, author’s prerogative.
Read Chapters 1-7. Then pick ONE of the other chapters & follow Gary’s advice for a year. I know—that’s crazy. But you have to build a pillar—we all don’t have a DRock or Babin to record & annotate documenting our lives. I went to the length of buying a second cell phone so I could always have a device focused on creation.
Pick the platform you gravitate towards. And get started becoming a creator instead of being a consumer. Document, create, listen, consume.