I received a free copy of the book during Gary’s wine tasting at the Boston Wine Expo 2010 a few months ago. It was a great surprise as I was shopping around online to pickup the book anyway. Crush It is a great inspirational read for those looking to start their own “brand” now, using new media technologies and social networking. I quoted the word “brand” because this book isn’t a simple business book about starting a company, it’s more about building a reputation for yourself or your company.

I’ve given lectures myself at Keene State College about this very topic and I think it helps guide people to something more than a simple nine-to-five grunt job. However, this book isn’t going to equip you with the knowledge to quit your job tomorrow and start your own little venture into the world-wide-web, it’s going to motivate you and give you some guides to eventually getting to such a goal.

The book is much more valuable when you understand Gary’s perspective. He is teaching us his personal techniques to how he went from zero to one-hundred miles an hour using social media tools and new media in the video format. If you’re looking to start a blog that will someday make you money, this book will not get you any technical information. As a matter of fact, I’d start by learning more about blogging techniques, SEO and gathering an audience using other books or free online resources. Crush It, in this capacity, will mainly teach you how to react and understand your audience and encourage you to reach out and treat them as humans rather than just a statistics; this is still good information worth the USD $19 for serious bloggers looking to interact with their people.

The message within this book is simple: work hard and bust your ass. If you’re not ready to do that, seriously not mentally or physically prepared to work 14+ hours a day, then you’ll have a tough time putting his concepts to work for you. While it is mentioned a few times in this book, Gary doesn’t really care if you’ve got a typical 9-5 job, he wants you to come home and work on your own brand from 6PM to 2AM and bust your rump.

Crush It does not really talk to the technical aspects of building a brand outside of getting a content management system like WordPress or Tumblr and using social media tools like twitter and facebook. He does explain a bit about the theory behind buying/hiring a theme designer for your site but Gary is not a big technical guy, he’s really all about business and adapting to circumstances as they arrive. There are thousands of technical resources you can seek out if you’re looking to build up a website with all the tools needed to maximize your search results and track statistics and is beyond the scope of the book.

The premise of Crush It can be summed up by the word “people.” Gary Vaynerchuck documents ways to handle viewers and how to reach out and understand them. From big business to small startups, learning how to put yourself out there and act like a human with other humans can change a single statistic into a dedicated fan. You’ll learn to turn your passion for a topic into a conversation with like minded individuals (the audience/viewers) and build trust.

For Gary Vaynerchuck fans that follow his personal blog about building brands, you’ll find little new information within the Crush It pages. The book expands upon some of the information/rants he’s talked about in his video’s and can be used to re-enforce what you believe you took away from his 3-minute acts of brilliance. Should you still purchase the book? Of course fans should support his efforts, that’s a no brainer. I’m both a fan and a follower in his beliefs and I’d buy the book again (for real) because I’m seeking to learn all knowledge on the topic; even three pages of useful information is better than going without.

The only downside to Crush It is the fantasy world that I believe Gary sometimes lives in. He tells us to work until 2AM for the no-kids family or 3AM if you’ve got kids (since you’ve got to put family first). Unfortunately, this is not a realistic goal if you’ve got a job which requires you to wake up at 5 o’clock in the morning because of a long commute. Many of his ideas work great if you’re working the program as a full-time job and speaks to the fact that almost all passions/topics can build your brand to a USD $40,000+/year job.

In today’s times, a  $40,000 a year job might as well be poverty. I know in my world, 40k was barely enough to cover child care during the day. How long must I struggle at 40-50k a year before I can feed my family and continue the life I lived before following my passion? One reason many of us work the “grind” of a boring day-to-day job is because it pays well and allows us the comfort of living life without financial strife. The reality is, if you cannot make at least what you’re making in your day job then your “passion” is going to require some angel investors or other funding to get you to the next level (and help pay for health insurance). Kids, health insurance, mortgage and all these expenses are not really brought up in Crush It–Gary assumes you’ll just figure all that out on your own.

While the concepts in this book are solid ways to build inspiration, the reality of the situation is often left on the cutting room floor. Gary built his video show while also working at Wine Library (the store). Where does he buy all the wine from his show? Does he “borrow” it from the store or does he buy 10+ bottles a week out of pocket? The reality of the situation is this: if you’re looking to do something similar where are you getting the product you’re using on your own shows? Probably out of pocket as an expense, not for free until you get the traffic to start receiving “review copies” from those in the industry.

Overall, while many of the theories seem to forget the reality of the situation, the inspiration and knowledge about how to handle people and build your personal brands is solid information. For myself, this is a nice boost of self-confidence as it re-enforces what I’m already doing each night. The biggest issue many casual readers are going to have is getting your ass off the couch and implementing even 30% of the ideas within the confines of this text.

You hear about sites that take off and get thousands of users overnight, before they know it the owners are getting millions of unique users hitting their site and the world is their oyster. Okay, now let’s talk about everyone else, the 99% of the population of bloggers, podcasters and video producers. Unless you own a successful brand or property with thousands of dedicated fans, you’re starting at ground zero like myself.

Prepare yourself for many nights and weekends working on your personal brand and website. Making money on advertising occurs when you can show advertisers “impressions” on your properties and your new property may be receiving under twenty visitors a day even if you’re pushing one to three daily pieces of content; it’s a slow process. Video bloggers are worse off because all their awesome content is unsearchable–it’s not textual. They’ve got to work hard, craft great headline articles and start supporting blogs and articles to support their effort to bring in organic searches. It’s possible but it takes time.

I’ve found very few working shortcuts to getting seen as a video podcaster and audio podcaster. There are no fast ways to be number-one in a search engine or ranking on the top podcasts in a podcast directory aside from paid advertising or getting a web celebrity to pimp your show. You can setup twitter accounts, facebook fan pages and accounts on all the trendy social network systems on the Internet and that won’t make your show popular until you understand how to use the tools most effectively. You can buy consulting for a hefty fee or do what I did: follow a few other brands that are doing it successfully and mimic their behavior, that’s not a shortcut, that’s an educational experience.

Spend less time looking for the shortest route to success and spend more time pumping out quality content, watching others performing social networking techniques and being an all-around normal guy or gal with the drive and passion for success. Let people know about what you’re doing and why you’re confident it’s a successful venture.

Trust In Yourself

When producing audio and video content, there is only one person you can trust to get the job done: yourself.

When most of your salary is being paid in blood, sweat and tears you’re going to find very few people want to work with you in the effort. Unless you can find co-hosts, guest audio speakers or a video crew of dedicated passionate individuals, you’re going to be doing most of your work alone. Creating a great audio show is only as good as the participants in the show. You may have the best idea in the world along with a great chemistry with your fellow podcasters but if they decided to leave, lose interest or “no show” for a few episodes, where does that leave yours how and your audience? Are they going to work those same nights and weekends to promote the production you’ve all been working so hard on?

I’ve found the most reliable thing to do is build a list of friends that are comfortable on camera (or on a mic) and get as many to show up to the shows as possible. Don’t trust any one individual to have the same drive and interests as yourself but, as a whole, you’ve got enough folks to always make the show. Having a pool of individuals to call upon (much like they do on This Week in Tech), then you can always have a successful broadcast.

Lessons of the day: Only trust yourself to get the job done and plan on working your ass off to get there. Don’t hire SEO experts, social media professionals and all that crap; learn the techniques yourself using articles and free editorials on the Net. Teach yourself how to be successful, don’t expect others to do it for you.

Don’t be surprised when Joe Average gets a million hits for taking a rocket in the pants while you struggle for 40 views. Keep your head up and produce quality content because Joe Average will eventually die out as an internet meem or viral video. While making a viral video is unpredictable and will receive millions of views, it’s rarely going to be a career or hobby; luck isn’t going to win out in the end.

You want to be talked about and be seen by people in your “circle” of interest. In many cases, it’s not about making your viewers happy but making the people in your industry see you standing out and making a name for yourself. If you’re going to make a video show about dirt bikes than make sure dirt bike manufacturers see the show. If you’re creating a political podcast, get some politicians involved.

While it’s important to cater to your viewers it’s also dire to show your production to those that work in the field. This will build you more “street cred” with the industry and allow your contacts to grow. Perhaps, six months ago you’d like to do a special episode dealing with a specific brand; it would be great to have a list of people you can call to get more information or samples of the brand to create the content for your show.

Many industries have “circles” of folks that talk to each other. It’s a small world and the Internet keeps people together, you’ll want to take advantage of it. Making friends with manufactureres, press folks, industry leaders and industry startups gives you an edge because they talk to each other, don’t you want them talking about you?

Industry folks talk to each other because, in many cases, they’ve once worked together. In todays market people don’t commit to the same job for fourty years, they move on to new opportunites across their industry. Often times they’ll find old friends are now new competitors but, on a personal level, they’re still friends and will keep in contact. You’ll want some of their “small talk” to be about you and your content and it’s possible to make this occur.

One great way is to “name drop” on ocassion with those you’ve met in the industry. “Hey, do you know Bob from Company-A, really nice guy you should meet him sometime.” Turns out they worked with Bob at Company-Z five years ago and haven’t kept in touch, perhaps you can link them back together and pass over an e-mail address or phone number? What better way to be seen than bring two old buddies back together.

I keep everybody’s contact information, in the cocktail industry, in an big excel spreadsheet. I keep notes about them (are they married, do they know others in the industry, what’s their dogs name?) so that I can use this information in the future with a “hows Chubby your little pug doing?” I make sure to write down their title, phone number, address and what brands they represent so I have a go-to spot when I need information or product samplings.

My list of contacts grows large and I can trade them with other folks that do the same thing to build a larger list of contacts. I try to fire off an email every few months to each of them to say hi and pass off any of my latests works. I’ll also use people’s products within my shows and then send them a note saying “we used your product here” and link them off to our websites so they can see it. This is a great way to re-established stale relationships and get them talking about you again.

Viewers and community are extremely important, but being talked about by others in the industry and being seen as someone of usefulness and value is also an important key to growing a successful audio or video show.

Just something to think about.

Screw the get rich quick method, I think you’ll be more valuable making some friendly contacts in the industry of your choice. Recently, I watched a video on how you can make money on twitter in a “fully automated” fashion selling who knows what to who knows who for whatever cost — really? There is no passion or challenge, it’s all about finding something exploitable and selling it to anyone your automated bots can find.

I’m not really jealous of the technique that “anyone can do” (so could I, right?) but I am blown away by those that will try the techniques. Most will fail and come out of the experience unchanged and lighter in pocket. The only person getting rich quick is the one taking your money to sell you the techniques that they say they’ve learned. Here is an idea, find an industry you’re passionate about and see if you can find a way to make your own techniques and money making systems.

Here is my modest little technique that seems to work okay: establish relationships with people in your industry. You’re no doubt smaller than most of them so you’re going to have to be ready to give some of your services away for free in order to show them you’re serious. In my video podcasting studio, I’ll record an episode of Common Man Cocktails with a product that I’ve been given (if it works as advertised) and give them free exposure to my viewers.

Why wouldn’t I take the aggressive route and ask them to pay me for the exposure? Because I’d like them to see the results of what I can do, show off my techniques and give them a taste for how successful their product can be in my own brand. No doubt I’ll ask them to sponsor an episode in the future, but what trust have I built if I started by asking for money up front? What trust have I built with my viewers if they find out I’m only pitching an item because they paid me to do so?

As the little guy, you’re going to have to admit to yourself that you’re a nobody with no influence outside of your own audience. You’re building your audience and your brand but you’re going to want others to help you along the way; those friends you establish will come back to reward you later.

Perhaps you show off a product on your audio/video show and send it off to the makers of the product. They may give you a nod and a big ol’ “thank you” or they might enjoy the work you did and spread your video to their friends in the industry along with their own customers. That free exposure you gave them can come back to you ten fold with new viewership and exposure.

Who knows, a few months later that new friendly brand may ask to work together no future partnerships. What’s the risk? Nothing but a bit of work on your side, for free, in hopes of establishing stronger relationships. Give it a try.

Looking through iTunes, I can find tons of untapped niche markets that could bring old advertisers to new media. Want to test the waters before you start down the road of video podcasting? Start a blog.

This sounds like old school marketing but this is your petri dish to start building relationships with companys and PR agencies. If you become a small “professional” in your field of blogging, from yarn, wood, tools, clocks to gardening you’ll start receiving e-mails asking to post reviews, news and events for people in the industry. Once you grab a few PR agencies and establish relationships with them, they’ll send you press releases, product demonstrations and perhaps hook you up with interviews with company owners.

As you build your reputation over the course of three to six months you can start experimenting with some video content as you roll your blog into a vlog. Now, you can push out new shows and begin to build a small viewership of a few dozen or a few hundred downloads. Once you’ve got your fan base started, four months after producing some video shows and providing evidence that people care enough to come back and watch your episodes, you can start pitching to sponsors.

Some people will say you need 1,000 to 2,000 views a day to get sponsorship but that’s highly dependent on your industry. You can get sponsorship with as low as 450 views per show if you price it right and provide content that’s so niche and specific that your viewers actually desire the products of your sponsor.

Using a $30.00 CPM ($30 per 1,000 viewers) model, you can sell a sponsor a full episode of your video show for around $12 (considering you don’t have 1,000 viewers yet) and still get them interested. Why? Because $12 to gain 450 highly focused eyes on a brand is huge value to anyone that understands new media. Plus, when six months down the line their ad is still in the old video and new viewers typically drive through old archives to catch up and see what you have covered in the past. Their old sponsorship grows with the audience of your show, long after they paid the measly $12.

Companies will spend millions of dollars to reach 2% of a large pool of viewership. You’re just asking for $12 to gain 100% attention of the viewership pool, sounds tempting, no? A single episode will not build huge brand awareness and your sponsor knows this; they will buy a block of episodes to test the waters. Realistically, without at least three to four episodes on your show there is no way to track the impact. So, even if they decide not to renew, they’re probably already in it for $36 to $48 which goes into your pocket for your hard work.

It is hard work. Don’t expect to toss your mug on a camera and get people to throw money your way. You’re going to have to prove to them that you’re energetic, consistent, trustworthy and have the passion to get the job done. Of course, $12 an episode isn’t going to make you rich, but everyone has to start somewhere.

You start at the bottom and work your way to the top. If you think there is an easier way, show us. Otherwise, get out there and produce great content and watch your community grow.

Gary is having a child soon and this is a life changing event; beautiful and fun but changing all the same. Add to that the popularity of his show, speaking gigs and all the work that goes into the day-to-day life of retail, there are only so many hours in the day — there is only one Gary. Gary preaches both “love your family” along with “love your job” and most of all “hustle” but too much of any one thing and something has to give.

The big “Gary V” has been a role model for the little guy growing a brand and becoming a “web celebrity” (but not an A list celebrity mind you!) I’ll admit it, I learned a lot from watching Wine Library TV and used the format to launch EverydayDrinkers.tv which is much like a WLTV for cocktails. Many of my viewers have said “so, you’re an @GaryVee fan aren’t you?” However, I’ve learned a lot from Rhed Pixel as well, in relation to lighting, video formats and how to launch a show but people only see the signature “Gary V” in the content. This is because Gary’s shares many of the same qualities that I’ve lived with for years: passion, intensity and the need to meet your own standards and goals.

He says “hustle,” but I believe the next few months we’ll see less e-mail responses from him along with a slight slow down in his social media presence. I believe this is why he’s using user comments on his latest episodes, to redirect some of the more difficult responsiblities of responding to every person by allowing a few key viewers their 5-seconds of fame on his show. This will allow people to “forget” the lack of e-mail responses by trying to get their commet listed on the show. It also helps inprove the quality of comments because “you rock” isn’t a worthy show shout out.

I think he’ll begin answering the most meaningful of e-mails while simply reading the others (without responses) or farming out an in-house e-mail reader to help him out with day-to-date e-mail. Perhaps he’ll focus more on mass mailing community news letters to keep in touch with people through news letters, thus avoiding the single-instance replies. He’s already mentioned the difficulty he’s had keeping up with e-mails on twitter.

As his fame grows he’ll hit the same brick wall Leo Laporte hit. Niche markets can still have thousands upon thousands of viewers and subscribers – one man cannot carry the world upon his own shoulders. When you breech 100,000 viewers and your inbox is constantly full of 1000 new e-mails, what can you do? You need to take a realistic view and realize you can’t please everyone all of the time.

I’ve read some of the comments, had a presence in some of the UStream live broadcasts and I see a pattern: a large portion of his fans do nothing more than scream “you rock” or become the first to post about how right he is or that he’s “the man.” That’s wonderful, fans are great for your show and your ego but you really don’t have to respond to them all, do you?

We’ve seen this happen with small music bands as well (anyone remember when Dave Mathews used to let you plug into his sound board for personal recordings?). Like a brand, Gary and his products will grow and he’ll find it harder and harder to touch every single soul along the way. Having a child arriving and “loving his family,” Gary is going to have to make some hard decisions in life, do you respond to another 1000 emails and “hustle” or do you rock your baby to bed instead?

Success is a bitch. But I’m happy for him just the same.

The Internet is not only a place to find information about products, it is a place to build information about yourself for others to learn about you. The trick to this seminar will be covering all the major disciplines by giving them relevant information that could potentially change their lives. The methods of promoting yourself with social media as a teacher entering the field is not the same as a student in broadcasting, geography or software development.

We’ve got to put reality first, students graduating from college this year are entering a market where extremely talented and experienced folks are being laid off due to budget cuts. How does a student walk into the “real world” and get a job in an economy where the unemployment rate is rising a percent at a time? For this, there is no clear answer, but there are other solutions to building your reputation and experience so you’ll be a valuable asset when hiring freezes thaw.

Students should create accounts on a few key social networks, such as Linkedin. For the Facebook and Myspace generation, this should be a fairly straight forward process, except, rather than showing people what your favorite music may be, you’re showing them where your focus and talents can be found. Students should be building their linkedin profile along side their resume and link up with all their friends on the social media site so that you can review each other and explain “why” your friends are worth looking into — you scratch their back and they’ll scratch yours.

Plenty of headhunters use Linkedin and like site to farm for new talent. Market yourself, build a profile that is both desirable to potential employers, headhunters and friends alike. Believe it or not, a potential new hire at a company may be inspected through a “background search” involving pulling up profiles on linkedin and/or google to see what you say you know and what others are saying about you.

Broadcast and communications major should be using twitter to build their fan base and audience, promote products you love (for free) to try your hand at building yourself and your personality. You’ll want to build a large quantity of followers so you can promote yourself to them when the time is right. You may use that audience to “crowd source” (ask them questions) when you do get your first job, or perhaps use it to ask folks if anyone is looking for your talents and, in general, make friends with folks of like interests – this can be a handy tool in your future.

Students who plan to become teachers or explore further avenues of education can start practicing now. How? Get yourself a microphone and computer and start podcasting your talents. If you’re looking to find a career in biology and you’re having problems getting that job, start by podcasting some educational shows about biology, this may be audio or video depending on your budget and willingness to promote your own brand.

Creating your own video or audio podcast will grow your experience along with give you real life technological advances over your competition. When going into an interview to get a job as a science teacher you can either say “I graduated six months ago but I’ve not found a job” or you can say “While looking for a job I’ve started an audio show teaching listeners about weather, cloud formations and natural disasters, I’ve got a thousand listeners interested in the content.” You can build niche markets quickly and get dedicated fans that are interested in learning about new topics and concepts. Use what you’ve learned for students in a classroom when teaching students remotely. Your potential employer will no doubt be impressed with your focus, effort and passion compared to that other kid that watches History Channel while eating nachos and waiting for call backs from schools.

There is a great deal of potential to get your name known, be found by potential hires and discover new experiences and technologies you never thought were possible. You’ll gain experience in across many fields including communications, networking, media recording and promotion regardless to your actual major. Who knows, you may find yourself interested in something completely unique and different, something you didn’t learn in school.

Those are just a few ideas that I’ll be talking about in the 45-minute presentation at Keene State College in the moutains of New Hampshire. I wish I had that knowledge when I graduated!