Crush It! Read Free Page B

technology that made it possible didn’t exist until a few years ago but because no one else has my DNA.
    For a business guy, I talk a lot about DNA, and this book will be no exception. That’s because I firmly believe that the path to your successful business literally lies in the twists and turns of your own double helix. In fact, I should probably just credit the success of Wine Library TV, the online wine-tasting video blog that put me on the social marketing map, to my mom and dad, who gave me the DNA that enabled me to take my career to a thunderous level. Then again, lots of ambitious people have been born with great DNA and yet eventually found themselves at a professional standstill, frustrated, miserable, stuck. Why? Because they weren’t doing what they loved more than anything else in the world; they weren’t doing what they were born to do.
    you gotta be you
    I got lucky. From a very early age I knew and accepted the dictates of my DNA, which were that I was born to be a people person and to build businesses. Those were and have always been my passions. I knew I was made to be an entrepreneur and not once did I try to be anything else, as evidenced by the D-and F-infested report cards I’d bring home that gave my mother conniptions. Even though I hated to make my mother cry, I also knew that I had to be me, and if that meant hiding the Beckett Baseball Guide inside my math book during class so I could read up for my next baseball card trading show, that’s the way it had to be. Too many people ignore their DNA, however, toconform to what their families or society expects of them. A lot of people also decide that professional success has to look a certain way. That’s how someone born to design bikes winds up becoming a lawyer, or someone who loves experimenting with makeup works every day pitching someone else’s overpriced brand to malls around the country, or someone who cannot go a day without jotting down some ideas for their next poem spends most of their time at the helm of an emergency IT department. To me that’s insane.
    I’ve been dying to do this book, not because I think I can help everyone who wants to become a millionaire—although I’m pretty sure I can—but because it drives me crazy to know that there are still people out there who haven’t figured out that they don’t have to settle. There is no excuse for anyone living in the United States or anywhere else right now to slog through his or her entire life working at jobs they hate, or even jobs they simply don’t love, in the name of a paycheck or a sense of responsibility. The Internet makes it possible for anyone to be 100 percent true to themselves and make serious cash by turning what they love most into their personal brand. There no longer has to be a difference between who you are and what you do.
    Now, as cuddly and cozy as this follow-your-bliss message might seem, make no mistake—if you do things the way I tell you to do them, you’re going to work harder than you’ve ever worked in your life. But I’m of the opinion that hardship shapes us. Coming from nothing served my family well. It also gave me the hunger to want it all, and the wisdom to know that none of it matters. I’m convinced, in fact, that if things had been a little easier for my family in the early days, I never would have gottento where I am now. To tell that story, we have to go back to the Old Country.
    coming to america
    My family moved here from Belarus, in the former Soviet Union, in 1978. My father, Sasha, was inspired to come to the States by a great-uncle who had emigrated years before. He came back to Belarus to visit his sister and that’s how my father learned that America was a place where you could build a life for yourself according to your own rules, and you didn’t have to wait six hours in line to buy a loaf of bread, either. A natural entrepreneur, my father knew that America was where his family’s future lay. As Jews we were