Smoky Joe's Key Ideas from Crush It!
by Gary Vaynerchuk

• Plan to develop and grow your own brand and business alongside your current job. This is how you will open opportunities in the digital economy.
• As long as you are working for someone else, you will never be living entirely true to yourself and your passion.
• To monetize your personal brand, you need two pillars: product, and content. Great content is what will attract people to your blog.

Someone with less talent and poor content can beat you if they work harder than you. Before you invest in yourself, you have to invest in your long-term future.

When building your personal brand, focus on creating communities by starting conversations. Once you have created your online brand, do some online advertising. You can also engage in affiliate marketing.

1. Identify your passion
2. Make sure you can think of at least fifty awesome topics and posts.
3. Answer the following questions: Am I sure my passion is what I think it is? Can I talk about it better than anyone else?
4. Name your personal brand.
5. Buy your user name.
6. Choose your medium: video, audio, written word
7. Start a Website.
8. Hire a designer
9. Select all of the platforms to which you want to distribute your content.
10. Post your content.

1. Start creating community by leaving comments on other people’s blogs and forums.
2. Find more blogs that are relevant to your subject on Google
3. Join as many active fan pages and groups relating to your blog topic as possible.
4. Repeat steps 11 through 15.
5. When you feel your personal brand has gained sufficient attention and stickiness, start reaching out to advertisers and begin monetizing