Jorge Quinteros
Blogger, web enthusiast & avid photographer based in Brooklyn.

21st December 2009

Passion With Crush It!

At first I wasn’t aware of who Gary Vaynerchuk was until one day the Tumblr Staff proudly announced that he had chosen the platform to power his site.

After a couple of weeks of following his story, watching his videos, appreciating his gained fame as the host of Wine Library TV and admiring his approach to personal branding and business, I then fully understood the “why” and “how” behind his much deserved success and popularity.

The moment I heard he had published a book, I could not have purchased it even faster than through the Kindle and I haven’t put it down since then. Crush It! is an inspirational/business type of read that guides you through the steps of what you can do if you have a passion for something and how to go about to monetize the heck out of it.

The real one ingredient you need is to identify that subject you obsessively care about, so that it functions as a catalyst to inspire you to move from doing something you’re probably doing now and absolutely hate. It’s about tackling that “someday” thought that we all have without ignoring our current responsibilities.

Regardless of the profession, the one common response you’ll get when asking someone who in our eyes are absolutely successful is that they have a passion for what they do. Sounds cliché but if every professional athlete, singer or chef has the same to say, it’s because the statement is accentuated with nothing but truth.

I can’t highly recommend this book enough and if you need a little nudge to convince how great it is, I suggest you give his Web 2.0 Expo talk a view. Until then, I leave you with this encouraging passage from the book:

Live your passion. What does that mean, anyway? It means that when you get up for work every morning, every single morning, you are pumped because you get to talk about or work with or do the thing that interests you the most in the world.

You don’t live for vacations because you don’t need a break from what you’re doing—working, playing, and relaxing are one and the same. You don’t even pay attention to how many hours you’re working because to you, it’s not really work. You’re making money, but you’d do whatever it is you’re doing for free.

Does this sound like you? Are you living, or just earning a living? You spend so much time at work, why waste it doing anything other than what you love most? Life is too short for that. You owe it to yourself to make a massive change for the better, and all you have to do is go online and start using the tools waiting for you there.

19th December 2009

Great Articles With You

A while back Emmet Connolly shared his decision of taking all those unread articles from Instapaper that he had accumulated, how he converted them into a PDF, uploaded it to Lulu.com and ordered a single book to have and enjoy at his leisure. A great addition to the coffe table if you will.

Needless to say, he had a genuine interest in the pieces that got printed and I can admit to having collected a slew of well written articles myself from bloggers that I admire and have had the pleasure of interacting with.

Bookmarking or flagging them on an RSS readers seems like an appropriate way to indicate they signify something to you but having them with you at all times represents an even greater respect to content that drips passion and that by reading them it inspires you to instill the same in your writing.

As a Kindle owner, I’m interested in doing any extensive reading on the device since I carry with me at all times anyway, so lately I’ve been transferring my favorite reads to it by using the wonderful RekindleIT service.

RekindleIT is an exciting new way to read any content on the web on your Amazon Kindle.

Using our simple tools, you can instantly send a web page from your web browser or iPhone for reading on your Amazon Kindle. It’s simple, free, and opens up a whole new world of content for the Kindle.

Setup is painless and by using a friendly bookmarklet, the transfer happens wirelessly for a minimal charge or you can do it manually via USB cable. Either way, just make sure to grab the printer-friendly version of an article.

In no particular order, here’s what I consider a mere sample of the many articles that live in my Kindle:

• The Minimalist Photographer Manifesto by Everett Bogue
• The Creator’s Culture by Kyle Baxter
• The Myth of Talent by Michael Mistretta
• Content Please by Shawn Blanc
• Why You Should Weblog by Rands in Repose
• Living Purposefully by Andy Rutledge
• Write Articles, Not Blog Postings by Jakob Nielsen
• 30 Minutes a Day by Jack Cheng