Sorg Learns to “Crush It”

While, I’m not particularly a wine connoisseur, I’ve loved everything else that I’ve heard from Gary Vaynerchuk .  I’ve loved every appearance by him, whether it be on This Week in Startups, or his random videos on his own website.  So when I heard he was putting out a book on the things he’s learned, I know one thing…there better be an audiobook.

And there wise, finally after a while.  I had a chance to listen through the book over the last few days, and first of all, that’s a record for me.  For the first time, I’ve wanted to put aside all of my regular podcasts to listen to this one, instead.  I’ve read some dryly read, yet informative audiobooks since I’ve been introduced months ago, but like Total Money Makeover, this one is read by a passionate author, who, thankfully, has some on microphone experience.  This one was a bit like the “DVD Extra” of audiobooks.  Periodically, Gary would stop his reading to add a little something to clarify what he wrote, or how things have already changed in the past months since he turned this one in.

In this book, Gary goes over how you find something important to you that you can let everyone know about.  Building yourself as a brand, and using the social media tools out there.  More than a methodology and technique this book was more of a pep talk to get the hell out of your job you’re not happy with, and give a go at what you love to do.  His philosophy seems to sum up as, if you love doing it, you’ll put the ridiculous effort into building your brand and community to be as successful as it can be.  We’re taken down the paths of how to use the typical Twitter, WordPress, or Facebook, which many may already be familiar with, but it’s always interesting to see someone else’s take on these technologies and how you can build in a way you didn’t originally think of.  Gary splashes the book with examples of people having the potential to talk about the most mundane of interests and illustrating how there’s an audience for it that can be tapped.

Now, next on my read list happens to be Rework by the folks at 37Signals on their take of business building and thinking.  Some of the striking statements in just the ads and interviews include “fire the workaholics” and “Don’t not get sleep”.  This feels, at first, to fly in the face of Gary’s take on this.  So it will be interesting to see where the two may cross paths.  At this point, both seem like good candidates for relistening to from time to time just to simply motivate myself in my personal development.  I’ve been listening about the same time a a coworker, and turned to say “I want to go crush something right now”.  Say hello to Gary Vaynerchuk.  Your social media cheerleader.