Crush It! Read Free

like to talk about worms. But there’s no way you can make money on worms, right? Wrong. You can use the Internet to build a platform where you can talk about worms to your heart’s content. Passion is contagious. If you channel it into creating amazing content and distribute that content using the social media tools I discuss in this book, someone like me who rocks at business development will eventually find it and become a fan. The day I hear you say that you can use a particular kind of worm to catch 80 percent more bass than you might otherwise, I’m going to see the business opportunity and contact you. Together we create an online show or a written blog or an audio podcast around your passion to reach the fishing marketplace, a billion-dollar industry. We launch the content, and people are immediately drawn to you, we build a community by capitalizing on all the social media tools and techniques at our disposal, we work as many hours as possible, and next thing we know we have the biggest fishing lure company in the country asking to advertise on our site. From there we start building word of mouth and opening up more revenue streams, and ka-ching! Your passion for worms in tandem with my passion for biz dev will inevitably result in a business that crushes it. Thanks to the accessibility and reach of social media and the zero cost, anyone can do this. Salesman Steve who rocked selling for Blockbuster needs to find One Man Stan the Fellini fan and build a million-dollar movie-reviewbusiness. Joanne Jogger who chronicles her marathon training needs to find Marketer Marvin and create a running blog that kills it and attracts Nike as a sponsor. There is room for everyone in the world of social media, which is the same thing as saying that there is room for everyone in today’s business world.
    ----
    Social Media
    =
    Business.
    Period. *
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    Everybody wins in these scenarios. Stan and Joanne may seem like the big winners because they’re enjoying some fame, yet off in the back room, if Steve and Marvin are living their passion, believe me, they’re rocking that party hard. In fact, for all the Web fame and national TV appearances and coverage I have received, it’s the behind-the-scenes brand building that has given me more happiness than anything else.
    Maybe you’re reading this and thinking, Cool, I’m a businessperson, I don’t have to think about my passion, I just have to find someone else who’s passionate and use their content to create a business. Maybe. If your passion, your true-blue passion, isn’t business development and marketing and sales, you need to figure out what it is and do that instead, otherwise you’ll fail. If you do have that passion for biz dev, however, you may not need a partner at all. I didn’t.
    it’s up to you
    The messages in this book are timeless: Do what makes you happy. Keep it simple. Do the research. Work hard. Look ahead. Remember that when I started Wine Library TV in 2006, Facebook was still a college play; I didn’t want to be the creepy guy peddling wine to underage kids, so I couldn’t use it to bring an audience to my online show. Twitter had just been born and no one knew what it was. Once these social networking platforms caught on with the general population, however, I was all over them and knew how to make them work for me; but they only accelerated my success—they didn’t create it. Keep that in mind as you start to put your dreams and plans into action. The tools we’re going to discuss in this book will spread your ideas and give your personal brand more traction in far less time and for far less money than you might have been able to do otherwise, but they are only as powerful as the person who uses them.
    Their power is also only as strong as their most recent incarnation. Technology and innovation and consumer demand are working together at such a frenzied pace that by the time you read this book some of the capabilities and reach of these