Before the release of his new book Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion, I had heard of Garry Vaynerchuk as the host of Wine Library TV, but I really didn’t know anything about him. Understand, I don’t drink wine, not for any moral reason, I just never got into it.

With a title like "Crush It" I couldn't resist

In any case, I started to hear lots of positive thoughts about this new book, so I went audible.com and downloaded the audio book. Audio books are my preferred way of reading almost everything, but in this case I strongly recommend you get the audio book even if that’s not normally your preference. I will get to why I say that in a minute.

This book is about passion. Of course the subtitle tells us that it’s about making money from our passion, but more importantly, it’s about how living from your passion is the way to be happy. Gary himself as the ultimate example of this. I found his passion both enjoyable and contagious, now some will say that he’s over the top, and he is over the top. The thing is, this is the real Gary. I have no doubt about it in my mind, it’s who he is. He talks about this in the book, and how important it is to be genuine to you are and your own style.

The book is really about how to create a brand around yourself, who you really are and your passion, mostly using social media. This is illustrated very well by Gary’s own story, and examples from other people who have been successful. As I read this last sentence, I realize that “creating a brand around yourself” can sound like something a used car salesman would do. This couldn’t be further from the truth. What Gary teaches is all about real honesty with yourself, and with everyone you relate with. It’s about being genuine at the deepest level.

So, why do I recommend the audio book rather than the print version?

When Gary went to record this book, he was so passionate and so into what he’s talking  about that he couldn’t stay on the script. For me, many places where he riffs off of what is in the printed text are some of the best parts of the audio book, it gives you everything that’s in the printed book plus bonus insights.

For me though, the single best part of this book, particularly the audio book, is the power with which Gary’s passion comes through. I found this really inspirational, it was really helpful to me at a time that I was a little bit down about what I was doing online. Now as I say, Gary style is over-the-top and this will bother some people. But, it’s who he is and though it took me a little while to get into it, I ended up really loving it and loving him.

So, if this sounds appealing, check out Garry Vaynerchuk’s Crush It, either in audio or print.

What do you think about Garry, and Crush It?  I’d love to hear in the comments.

Note that the Amazon links in this post are affiliate links, and I get a tiny commission from Amazon if you decide to buy through one of them.

It’s amazing for me to think that just over a month ago, November 24, 2009 to be specific, I first started posting regularly on this blog. It feels like forever ago.

I consider myself a pretty technically hip guy, I’ve used all sorts of computers essentially my whole life, from the Apple IIs to early versions of DOS (I first worked on DOS version 1.1) to the many iterations of the MacOS and the endless saga of Windows, not to mention occasional forays into Linux. I did a little bit of web design, mostly to help friends over the years. And there’s always been a list of people for whom I am their unofficial tech support department.

I truly didn’t understand how much another world exists on the web, particularly in social media. As I’ve gotten me into this whole “web presence” thing I have at times felt like I’ve fallen down Alice’s rabbit hole. There’s a whole new language, Pingbacks and TrackBacks and WordPress and inbound links and outbound links and follow links and no follow links and on and on and on…

I’m learning, and having a great time, and meeting so many amazing people who I would’ve never met otherwise. Getting to know all of you through twitter and Facebook and your blogs and your comments here is really wonderful.

So I’m learning, I hope that I never stop learning, not as long as I’m alive. Even though there were times when I feel overwhelmed by it all, it’s expanding my world view, my map and my perception. And all of that is a wonderful thing.

Thank you for being a part of my online world, and joining in the conversation.

Please excuse this blatantly promotional post, but I’m really excited about this, and you get awesome stuff for free.


Self Improvement Gifts 4 is a special website which will only be available for the next 15 days. It contains over 300 free self-improvement downloads from creators all over the world, including my Journey of Relaxation (of course you can get that free for my website already:.)

Here are just a few examples of the really cool stuff you can download for free right now:

* Personal Development Tips – Paul Klein

* NLP – Love Your Physical Self – Elizabeth Benson

* Dynamic Personality – Alex Perez Pratt

* Transformational Fitness – Amy Lundberg

*Anger Management – Giovanni Farotto

* Managing Stress – Heather Step

* How to Stay Focused – Piet Venter

* Unlimited Abundance – Gary L Glasscock

* 110 Self Help Super Tips – Jack Brown

* Outrageous Health – Charly Leetham

* Secrets of the Subconscious – Alvin Huang

* Law of Attraction – Dechen Lau

* How to Reinvent Yourself at Midlife – Iyabo Asani

* Peak Performance – Frank Bauer

* Personal Transformation – Tony Dovale

* Easy Meditation – Esdee Penn

All you have to do is click this link to go to Self Improvement Gifts right now. Keep in mind that this will only be available until January 19 and then the site comes down. I am really excited about getting the chance to check out what all sorts of self-improvement experts are doing for free.

What are your favorite downloads from Self Improvement Gifts? Let me know in the comments, I’d love to hear about them.

What’s an un-blog post? Well of course it’s where I tell you about the un-products that are part of the unlaunch.    Yes of course, I know now I need to tell you  what the unproducts and the unlaunch are, and that requires a story:

Once upon a time,

not all that long ago there was a musician named Pat O’Bryan. Pat was a blues guitar player, he traveled all over the world and performed with many great blues artists. But there was a problem, as great as the blues is, playing the blues doesn’t tend to pay very well, no matter how good you are. Fortunately, Pat met Joe Vitale and began to learn about Internet marketing. Of course in the beginning, Pat was still on the road a lot of the time, but keeping up his new Internet business. He began to call it his “Portable Empire.” Fast forward a few years, Pat is now an extremely successful Internet marketer.

Pat has been very generous in sharing what he’s learned about doing business online through the seven “unseminars”  that he’s put on. Quite recently Pat started teaching even more through his Portable Empire Coaching Program. I am fortunate enough to be a member of that program. One of the things that all of us in the program have done, or are doing, is to create products to sell online. All of the products which are available are collected in one place which you can see at http://portableEmpirecoaching.com/products.html

My Journey to the Spirit of Healing is not quite ready yet, so you won’t see it there, but there are quite a few really wonderful products. One of the things that Pat recommended to us in creating these products is to keep the value to price ratio very high, and many of these products are being sold very, very inexpensively. The members of the coaching program are amazing people who have made some really cool products, I’ve bought a few of them myself and found them very useful.

So since Pat promotes unseminars, and refers to our weekly coaching calls as unwebinars, we decided that the launch of our products would naturally be called the unlaunch of our unproducts.

A number of my uncolleagues from the coaching program are also posting about the unlaunch today. Here are some links to their posts, each of us is talking about this from our own perspective and I think you’ll really enjoy reading them.

http://thesleepsecretebook.com/blog/you-want-what-for-christmas.php

http://www.TipsOnWriting.net/blog

http://loverockstar.com/

http://kellymariaclark.com/

http://mtnjimfisher.com/

UPDATE: I left off 2 blogs, sorry Claus and Chuck!  Check them out!!

http://harmonicthought.com/harmonicblog/http:/harmonicthought.com/harmonicblog/the-one-thing/

http://www.clausdjensen.com/my-portable-empire.html/

UPDATE 2:

http://internetworkcafe.blogspot.com/

UPDATE 3:

http://marthagiffen.com/blog-unblog-question/

I woke up this morning with a powerful realization. I have felt for a few days now that I have been getting more and more frustrated with what I’m trying to do online. My realization is rather simple, but profound, at least for me. So here it is:

This is Not a Picture (Image by PinkMoose)

The more time I spend finding resources about doing things online, the less time I spend actually doing the things I want to do online and creating the things I want to create. There is an almost infinite amount of information available about virtually any topic on the web. Some of this information is terrific, some of it is worse than useless, but I just can’t look at all of it. There’s just too much of it, and if I try to look at all of it, or even everything that seems interesting, all I will ever do is read about blogging, or any other topic. I’ll never actually get to writing the post.

So at least for today, I am committing to myself to focus on doing, starting with this post. In the long run, I don’t know how ongoing to find the balance, there is very interesting and very useful data out there. For now though I’m just going to focus on doing.

How do you balance what you do online? Please comment, I’d love to hear your methods.

Yesterday, in my post about Greg Mortenson’s new book Stones Into Schools I mentioned that I had a realization about social media and Internet marketing while I was reading it. In this post, I want to tell that story.

First, I need you to understand that I started out as an extreme skeptic that social media (Twitter, Facebook and so forth) had anything to offer me other than annoyance. I just didn’t understand why so many people were so excited by these Web 2.0 ideas. In general I’ve always been in favor of expert content, written by experts and edited by experts. The idea of user generated content didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Why would I want to look at content created by “average people” rather than researching and finding the best content, which I presumed was created by the best experts. Having grown up in a university town in a relatively scholarly family, then attended college and now spending most of my career working at a university, I guess this view isn’t all that surprising. But over a period of years a number of things started happening.

The first one was a couple of years ago I was involved with a high school play in which one character was a mime. The young woman who played that role (a high school freshman) was absolutely extraordinary. I asked her where she had done her training in mime, and was shocked when she told me that she had none. She had gone to YouTube and search for “mime,” and then figured out what she needed to do for her role from what she saw. Don’t get me wrong, she’s an extremely talented performer, but the idea that she could learn just from YouTube enough mime to do such an extraordinary performance just blew my mind. So I guess, that was my first introduction to the idea that user generated content could in fact be useful.

A year or so later, my friend Dave Gallant who had worked for me as a student at UNH, graduated. I stayed in touch with him, and was surprised to learn that he got his first job through Twitter, a service which had never struck me as having any value. As I continued talking with him I learned that he had really dedicated a significant amount of energy to learning about marketing in social media. In fact he now works at HubSpot, a company that helps business integrate social media into their marketing.

Then I started looking into Internet marketing, and after a substantial amount of research joined Pat O’Bryan’s Portable Empire Coaching Program. Very early in my work with Pat, I learned that he saw social media particularly Facebook and Twitter as important marketing tools. Of course I already heard this from my friend Dave, but I really didn’t get it. Don’t get me wrong, I trust Pat, and I think he really does know what he’s talking about, but it didn’t make any sense to me. I just didn’t get how people use social media to market their businesses. I’m sure you’re wondering what this has to do with Greg Mortenson’s Books, I’m getting there, bear with me, this does all come together.

Now by this time, I had finally given in and gotten a Facebook account, but I was using it in a very limited way. I saw it as a way to connect with people who I have lost track of since college who I really wanted to get in touch with, and it had worked for that purpose, but I still didn’t see how this “social media stuff” was useful for marketing. As I remember it, I think that both Dave and Pat basically encouraged me to use the tools to build relationships with people who had similar interests, and through that to build a network. At that time, I guess I wasn’t ready to understand what they were really asking me to do.

When I saw that Greg Mortenson had released a new book I bought it immediately. I started reading it last week, it wasn’t very far into it that Greg reminded us of the primary lesson he learned in the experiences that would become his first book Three Cups Of Tea. I’d like to let Greg share that story with you:

“Haji Ali spoke. ‘If you want to thrive in Baltistan, you must respect our ways. The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family, and for our family, we are prepared to do anything, even die. Doctor Greg, you must take time to share three cups of tea. We may be uneducated but we are not stupid. We have lived and survived here for a long time.’ That day, Haji Ali taught me the most important lesson I’ve ever learned in my life. We Americans think you have to accomplish everything quickly…Haji Ali taught me to share three cups of tea, to slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects. He taught me that I had more to learn from the people I work with than I could ever hope to teach them.”
–Greg Mortenson in his first book Three Cups of Tea

I remembered fondly, the first time I heard the story reading the first book. I still didn’t get how it applied to me though. Fortunately, Greg kept returning to this theme of building relationship before trying to do anything else. And then all of a sudden, maybe two thirds of the way through the book, it clicked. This idea of sharing 3 cups of tea, of building relationships before attempting to do anything else finally clicked. I got the message that I had seen, but not understood in so many other places. So I started using Twitter. Meeting people, talking with them, learning about their interests. One of the people who I’ve met along the way is @WarrenWhitlock and I’m pretty sure that he was the one who said in one of his early tweets to me, “people won’t care what you know until they know that you care.” Which I guess really sums it up.

So thanks Greg for two amazing, inspiring books; thanks Dave and Pat for putting up with my cluelessness, and thanks Warren for saying it so clearly.

How would you describe your relationship with social media? Please comment! And if you know somebody who doesn’t seem to get social media, but who you think would like it if they did, please use one of the links below to send this post to them. You might be able to save a lot of time and trouble.

This morning Seth Godin posted something on his blog that got me thinking:

Thirsty

I’ve noticed that people who read a lot of blogs and a lot of books also tend to be intellectually curious, thirsty for knowledge, quicker to adopt new ideas and more likely to do important work.

I wonder which comes first, the curiosity or the success?

To answer his question directly, I’d have to say that I think the curiosity comes first.

Curiosity, and in particular the drive to learn and network seem to me to be key to success.  But at the same time, curiosity on its own is not necessarily useful.   It can be so easy to get caught in endless loops of surfing and “study” that that somehow feels productive, but never seems to actually get anything done.

So to be truly successful, I think the key is more then just being curious, but directing that curiosity in a way that has you networking with people and learning things that are supportive to what you are trying to do, and balancing those activities with everything else that needs to be done….

I think that the idea of “most productive actions” is an important one – and that people who are successful are people who (at least for the most part) are consistently identifying their most productive actions and focusing on them.

One of the things that’s so hard about the Internet is the avalanche of information on virtually any topic that is available.  It’s so easy for a simple curiosity to lead to extensive surfing or research – and sometimes that leads to a breakthrough – and sometimes to wasted time……  Perhaps the real key is an ability to intuit which of those roads you’re going down.

Jeff Jarvis, a blogger and professor of Interactive Journalism at CUNY (and a really smart guy) loves to talk about the need for what he calls curation on the web.  Finding ways to consume the information YOU are looking for, without spending tons of time looking for it, by finding aggregations of relevant materials.  The aggregations may be created by humans, or by machine automatically, or a combination of the two – but I love the concept.  I’d love to open my google reader (or some other tool) and have, as if by magic, a list of news stories, blog posts and podcasts that I’m interested in and that are relevant to what I’m doing.  We have a way to go to get there.  In the mean time, I think success requires being our own curators – making sure we sift though the maze and engage with the material that is significant and interesting, and leaving the rest.

How do you do it?  Post in the comments.