Book Review: Crushing It – Gary Vee

“Let me define discipline: it’s backing up your ambitions with your actions.” -Gary Vaynerchuck, Crushing It

Gary Vee is back with a new book. Crushing It is a quick read that packs in the value. Gary covers his pillars of how people can create a digital presence and a future of making a living doing what they love. The book breaks down into two main sections.

The first section is the pillars. He walks through how each pillar can push you to build the platform that can potentially give you the audience to make a living by following your passion.

Gary also walks through each of the major platforms for how to create that content. One of the things I think is significant is that he casts a vision about how you could find success using each of the platforms. But one of the good things about Gary is that he does not make it sound like you would find success as a social media influencer in a few weeks or months; he points out that it takes years.

The second major element to this book is that he walks through actual success stories of folks who took the first book, Crush It, and used it to become successful. Gary showcases success stories of different sizes and different industries. Each of these gives us a picture of how hard these folks had to work to become successful.

If you have any interest in being successful in the digital world in our age, this is a book to pick up and read through.

I Lost a Client

I lost a client this month.

Usually, that’s one of the most challenging realities of a business owner. Losing a client can be discouraging.

But in this case, it was a victory! No, it’s not for the reason you think – they weren’t a difficult or overly demanding client. They didn’t leave me for a competing firm or suddenly stop paying bills or replying to messages.

Instead – they were successful.

That’s right. Successful. Our past year of taking intentional photos of their products, strategically targeting their social media audience, and even taking advantage of Facebook algorithms led to so much success that they decided to hire a full-time employee dedicated to 24/7 digital marketing.

Is there a better way to lose a client? Probably not. It was an honor to serve their business and help them better communicate with their clients. Our efforts were rewarded in a very tangible way.

So many businesses are still struggling to invest correctly in digital marketing. Many business owners don’t understand why it’s such a powerful influencer. Or they may see it working for their competitor but they haven’t invested enough time for it to work for their own business.

In just one year, we were able to help one of these businesses learn the value of using social media strategically. One of my goals is to see other businesses succeed. Even if that means helping train my own replacement once they’ve expanded to the point of hiring full-time employees. That’s quite the testimony of success!