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.