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Crushing It!
What It’s About
The follow-up to Crush It. Twelve real-life entrepreneurs who turned personal brands into thriving businesses on social media. Gary Vaynerchuk shows how Instagram, YouTube, podcasts, and Snapchat created a new generation of self-made operators, and exactly which platforms, tactics, and habits separate the winners from the wannabes.
Three Key Ideas
Intent Over Ambition
Building a lasting personal brand requires genuine passion for the work itself, not a desire for fame or follower counts.
Document, Don't Create
Recording your real work as it happens produces more consistent, trustworthy content than crafting polished, performed pieces.
Platform Timing and Attention
Every new platform offers a window of cheap organic reach that closes as it matures, rewarding those who commit early.
Read a Sample
Crushing It!
In the spring of 2006, Gary Vaynerchuk stood in the basement of his family's liquor store in Springfield, New Jersey, talking into a camera. The setup was not impressive. A desk, a spittoon, a few bottles of wine arrayed on a table behind him. No crew, no studio lighting, no PR team. Just Gary, a camera, and a glass of Riesling he was about to describe as smelling like gasoline and apricots.
He called the show Wine Library TV. His father, Sasha Vaynerchuk, a Soviet immigrant who ran Shopper's Discount Liquors in Springfield, had no idea what to make of it. The store had grown steadily over the years, reaching somewhere around $3 million in annual sales by the time Gary came home from college. Gary had grown up stocking those shelves, making $2 an hour as a fourteen-year-old, counting out change and learning the difference between a $9 Bordeaux and a $90 one by taste rather than by label. He loved the business with the uncomplicated devotion of someone who had never needed to be talked into caring about it.
He also loved the internet with an almost frightening intensity. When e-commerce emerged in the late 1990s and he convinced his father to let him build one of the first alcohol delivery sites in the country, the store's revenues began climbing fast. By the time he launched Wine Library TV, annual sales had already multiplied and the trajectory was steep. The online operation had changed everything. But the show was something different again. Gary was not interested in the patrician cadences of traditional wine criticism. He showed up on camera in jeans and a Jets jersey, told viewers a Cabernet smelled like "a freshly opened can of Play-Doh," and slammed his fist on the desk when a wine excited him. He had no formal oenology training. He also had 90,000 daily viewers within a couple of years, a number most regional television stations would have envied. The store crossed $60 million in annual revenue. Gary was appearing on Conan O'Brien's and Ellen DeGeneres's shows. He was being profiled in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
Who It’s For
- Anyone who wants to turn a genuine passion or skill into a full-time business using social media.
- Anyone who struggles to produce content consistently and needs a sustainable, low-friction creative system.
- Anyone running a small business or side project who wants to grow an audience without a marketing budget.
- Anyone curious about which social platforms are worth their time and how each one actually works algorithmically.
About the Author: Gary Vaynerchuk
Gary Vaynerchuk is an entrepreneur, investor, and author who built his first public profile turning his family's New Jersey liquor store into a multi-million-dollar e-commerce operation, then expanding its reach through one of the earliest daily wine video shows on YouTube. He went on to co-found VaynerMedia, a digital advertising agency serving Fortune 500 companies.
He is known for his direct, high-volume approach to content creation and for making early, often contrarian calls on platforms like Twitter, Facebook video, and Snapchat. His earlier books include "Crush It!" and "Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook."
