I've been obsessed with Gary Vaynerchuk since long before I picked up Crush It. I've watched over 100 of his videos, sat through more than 30 of his keynotes — full hour-long talks, sped up 3x through an app called Swift so a ten-minute clip takes three. So when I finally got to his first book, from 2009, I wasn't reading it to discover Gary Vaynerchuk. I was reading it to see where all of it started.
Backstory in case you don't know him: he grew up in the former Soviet Union, moved to New Jersey, sold baseball cards as a kid, then went to work at his dad's liquor store. He built that into a real business, then went out and built his own brand on top of it. Crush It is his argument for why now is the time to cash in on whatever you're actually passionate about — blogs, Instagram, YouTube, speaking, starting your own thing.
It's short. 120, maybe 130 pages. I read it in a day and a half. If you already follow Gary Vaynerchuk closely, you've heard most of this already, because he's repeated these same points in every talk since. That's not a knock on the book — it's why I'm rating it 3.5 to 4 out of 5 as a longtime fan, not as someone discovering him cold.
You might also like
Give value before you ask for anything
The idea that stuck hardest: you don't monetize in the beginning. At all. You give value, give value, give value, give value — and only then do you ask for something. That line is basically the seed of his later book, Jab Jab Jab Right Hook.
I felt this one directly. Right now I've got 55 YouTube subscribers and maybe 700 people on Instagram. I'm not trying to monetize any of that today, because I don't have a base yet. If I had a million subscribers, that math changes completely. But the order matters — value first, ask second — and skipping it is the fastest way to burn trust before you've built any.
Content is everything, full stop
He's blunt about this and I agree: if the content isn't good, nothing else works. If I don't put out a genuinely useful video about a book, nobody's clicking to my next one, nobody's following me anywhere else. There's no hack that fixes bad content. You just have to make the thing worth someone's time.
Choose your platform — don't try to win everywhere
This is the piece I actually use in my business day to day. Gary's point is that some people are incredible on one platform and skip the rest, and that's fine. In my case:
- Instagram is my showcase — it's where I build the platform and put my best material out front.
- Facebook is where I actually monetize — my referrals come from there, and my Instagram photos feed straight up into it.
Two platforms, two different jobs. I didn't try to be great everywhere. I picked where I show off and where I get paid, and I let each one do one thing well.
No person is too small
One more line that's aged well: answer everyone, especially early on. When you have no audience, every question you answer is somebody who might become your first hundred people. That's not a growth tactic so much as just being decent to people while you still can be, before volume makes it impossible.
Who should actually read this
If you've never heard of Gary Vaynerchuk and the book is cheap, pick it up. It's an honest, fast introduction to a guy who really did build a personal brand from nothing, and the core argument — build value first, then ask — is worth the day and a half. If you already know his work well, skip ahead to Jab Jab Jab Right Hook, where he goes deeper on the same idea. I don't regret reading his first book. I just already knew most of what was in it.
0 Comments
Log in to comment
Not a member yet? Join the community
Pick a meme
KlipyHave a great take?
Drop your email — we'll send a magic link so you can post it. No password.
Not a member of the community? Join today.
Join the community →