I am a big fan of Gary Vaynerchuk. He seems to cut through all of the entrepreneurial bullshit and get straight to the point.

As you can imagine, I was very excited when this book arrived.

Even though I was eagerly awaiting the arrival of this book, I had no idea what it was about. The title, ‘Crush It!’, and strapline, ‘Why Now Is The Time To Cash In On Your Passion’, didn’t really tell me an awful lot.

After reading the book, I can now tell you that it is about building a personal brand around your interest and monetizing it so that you can do what you love every day.

Before I got this book, I read and reviewed another personal branding book, Introduction To Personal Branding by Mel Carson, and in short, I hated it.

My video review ended up lasting over 20 minutes and contained several rants all about why I disliked it.

My main issue with Introduction to Personal Branding was that I felt as though instead of it teaching me how to brand myself, taking into account my own interests and uniqueness, it was teaching me how to make a professional version of myself – a façade, in my opinion.

Going back to Vaynerchuk’s book, Crush It! was everything that I wanted, but didn’t get, from the previous personal branding book.

Vaynerchuk understands that, by the very definition of it, a personal brand needs to be personal and he advises his readers to identify what they are interested in and what they love doing. He then educates how to build a brand around that topic.

Being yourself and being authentic are BIG key points in this book.

Vaynerchuk admits that he is very poor when it comes to writing, but he is an excellent speaker. Therefore, in order to produce this book, he recorded the audio and had it transcribed.

Whoever transcribed it did an excellent job in getting across Vaynerchuk’s passion and character – you can almost hear him reading the words to you.

I do, however, have two slightly negative comments about this book. Although I must stress that they are only slight.

Firstly, I think that the text could have been laid out better. Each page is just one block of text and I believe that breaking it up would have led to a better reader experience.

Secondly, this book is almost 9 years old, therefore there are some platforms (such as Instagram and Snapchat) that are not included in the book. I am almost certain that if Vaynerchuk was going to re-write the book again today, both of those platforms would be included without a shadow of a doubt.

Those slight, and almost pernickety, negatives don’t deter away from what the book is about and it’s core message.

I still highly rate this book and believe that it is a valuable read for anyone wanting to build a personal brand around their passion.

UPDATE: Since reviewing this book, an updated version has been released.