You have to keep looking ahead. I’ve got my eye on Marco Polo, Anchor, After School, AR (augmented reality), VR (virtual reality), and AI (artificial intelligence). You know what’s going to happen? One day there’s going to be a little ball hanging above every single human being’s head recording everything they do. Swear to God, it’s going to happen. Maybe it’ll be a camera embedded in your body. I don’t know the details, but I know that recording and documenting every minute of our lives will seem perfectly normal one day. You might think it sounds awful, and even scary, but just imagine if you could watch your grandmother right now. Imagine seeing her move through her life as a young woman, watching her fall in love with your grandpa, raising her kids, your mom, or starting a new job—not as though you’re watching a movie, but feeling as if you’re physically moving through her world with her. That’s how real the technology is going to be. The question is not if but when.
The passion I have deployed around Alexa Flash Skills is the same passion I had for Twitter and YouTube in 2008 when I wrote this book’s mother, Crush It!, back when the masses didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about. Now people know what I’m talking about when it comes to Twitter and Instagram and YouTube, but they aren’t doing the next step. They aren’t tasting and trying and experimenting. They’re leaving that up to me. They shouldn’t. They should be out there with me trying things out for themselves.
You shouldn’t have to turn to me to ask what’s next. What do you see? All I’m doing is looking toward the horizon to see what platforms are capturing people’s attention and altering their behavior. If I see something that is performing consistently, I take a closer look, and then a longer look, and then I start to execute. That’s all you have to do, too. I don’t have second sight; I just have a lot more patience than you do.
How I’m Crushing It
Andy Frisella, The MFCEO Project
IG: @AndyFrisella
Andy Frisella looks like a man who could squash your head like a grapefruit. For someone in his line of work, that’s a good thing. Built and buff, his face lightly scarred from a long-ago knife attack, Andy is the founder and CEO—actually, the MFCEO (I’ll let you guess what the MF stands for)—of two companies dedicated to fitness and health. A voracious reader, he found Crush It! by chance. He regularly buys books as they come out on Amazon regardless of whether he’s heard good things about them or not, figuring that if he can glean even one or two useful pointers or thought-provoking ideas from each, his time has been well spent. At the time of Crush It!’s publication, Andy had already been in business ten years, selling sports nutrition products through his Missouri-based brick-and-mortar chain, Supplement Superstores (S2). Despite eight locations, S2 was doing what most businesses do—treading water. Business was good but not great, certainly not enough for Andy to take home more than about $50,000 a year. It was all a single guy at the time needed to pay the rent and enjoy dinner out every now and then, but Andy’s ambitions had been significantly bigger when he and his business partner, Chris Klein, had launched the original store. All his life, Andy had been entrepreneurial, selling baseball cards, snow cones, even lightbulbs door-to-door. He liked making money, and he was frustrated that he couldn’t get the business to grow faster. Yet although he wasn’t bringing in the returns he’d thought he would, it was sure better than working for somebody else. No matter what, he wasn’t about to give up and go get a “real job.” So Andy decided that if doing something else wasn’t an option, he’d need to focus on the part of the business that he did enjoy—helping people create their stories. Customers would visit his stores and return six months later completely transformed after using the knowledge and products they’d taken home with them. Some had lost as much as a hundred pounds; many had dramatically changed their lives.
So Andy doubled down on doing right by his customers, making sure they left his store feeling confident and equipped with everything they needed to achieve their goals. Store traffic immediately picked up.
Everybody knows when they’re being sold. No matter how slick and cool and shiny a salesman is, customers recognize a fucking salesman. We all know them. And so when you have somebody who genuinely cares, people feel the difference. They feel it in the conversation and in their heart. And it has to come from a genuine place, or it doesn’t work.
It was around this time that he found Crush It!, which also talked about caring about customers and focusing on what you are providing others as opposed to focusing on yourself. It was a pivot point, reinforcing his instincts and confirming that he was taking the business in the right direction.
I was passionate about making money, and that’s what held me back for so long. I wanted to make money so bad that all I cared about was making money, like most of these dudes who are trying to start businesses. And when you’re always focused on the money, you don’t really think about what you could do better for your customers. When I shifted that focus and started caring about the customer in front of me, things started happening. I’m not super passionate about bodybuilding, I’m not a workout freak. I work out and stay in good shape, but it’s just part of what I do so I can do other things. I’m passionate about creating people’s success stories.
Andy and Chris reallocated a large chunk of their marketing budget to improving their in-store customer transactions. They handed out free T-shirts. They hired extra staff to advise people on their nutrition. They kept a clutch of umbrellas by the door for people to take with them if it started to rain. In short, they provided a customer experience completely different from what most people are used to.
Their business doubled. Every year. For five years in a row.
Eventually they increased their advertising and marketing budget. “Advertising should be used to accelerate the stories that are being told about you. People were finding us, coming into our company, staying, and referring their friends. If people aren’t telling good stories, all advertising is going to do is speed your death.”
The year 2009 also saw Andy and Chris start another company, 1st Phorm, a premium brand of supplements. This one was founded from the get-go on the principles Andy had finally realized were critical to business success.
The marketing strategy to build 1st Phorm was simple and grassroots—care about the customers, give them exactly what they want and more, and then create opportunities for them to easily tell others about their great experience. That’s where social media came in. Andy had been on Facebook for a while but hadn’t been using it properly. Now he took a strategic approach, going heavy on valuable content instead of constant pictures of his dog (though Andy’s dogs still get plenty of screen time, and deservedly so), creating a place where his community could come together. In addition, he started building his personal brand. He tried Twitter but struggled to cram everything he wanted to say into 140 characters, so though @1stPhorm has a healthy following, you won’t find Andy himself there. He calls Snapchat an “edifying” tool because it allows the world to see the real-life, behind-the-scenes work of entrepreneurship, though he admits he uses Instagram Stories more now. As for Instagram, he did exactly the opposite of what normally works best on the platform (to great effect—he has over six hundred thousand followers).
I post pictures and videos and make long-ass captions. And when I first started it, people told me, ‘Oh, nobody wants to read this shit,’ but apparently they do. With social media, I think it’s more about being authentic to yourself and finding what’s going to be the thing that suits you best, versus where everybody is and deciding that’s where you need to be. It’s about finding what works and working with that.
Together, the companies grew from $1 million in sales to $100 million. Andy predicts that 2018 will see in excess of $200 million.
As his brand and businesses swelled, people started to notice that Andy knew something other entrepreneurs didn’t. The press reached out to get his story, and the more he shared, the more people wanted to know. He met a writer, Vaughn Kohler,
who suggested he write a book. He was ready, so the two sat down for a series of interviews. They videotaped their sessions, and Andy thought some clips might make good content for Instagram and Facebook. Jackpot. “They started going crazy. I had one that got two or three million views, and it was a fifteen-second clip!”
After each post, Andy would get messages from people asking where they could hear the full podcast, so Andy figured he’d better start producing one. In June 2015, he and Kohler started cohosting The MFCEO Project, a motivational podcast about business and success. The first episode debuted at number one, and the program has stayed in the Top 50 in the managing and marketing category on iTunes since that day, earning 1.5 million downloads per month. Andy’s persona and fiery delivery made him a natural for the speaking circuit, and the invitations started flooding in. He enjoys public speaking so much that he accepts every opportunity he can, “whether it’s five people or five thousand.” Sometimes when he’s moved to do so, he speaks for free; sometimes he gets a $50,000 fee for a single event.
Starting in spring 2017, he launched a YouTube channel, The Frisella Factor, on which he answers his podcast listeners’ e-mailed questions.
It took eighteen years for Andy to get to where he is now, and he envies the younger generation of entrepreneurs, who have never known a world where they couldn’t connect to the bigger world with the click of a mouse. However, he also thinks that the younger generation would do well to remember that certain values and business practices are timeless.
My journey took much longer than it should have. We created our first business pre–social media, building everything through real word of mouth. Our second business was created post–social media. So we’ve done it in both eras. And the reason that we’re successful is because the lessons we learned pre-social are applicable to post-social; you just have to use the tools the right way to accelerate the word of mouth. But if you’re starting out right now, if it takes you seventeen years, there’s something wrong with your brain. You can reach people instantly, and you get instant feedback. All the things that took us months and years to figure out could be known in a short amount of time. Now you can connect with people all over the world on a minute-by-minute basis. The kids now that are starting out are lucky.
But they’re handicapped, too. They rely too much on the social. They rely too much on the likes, the shares, the messaging, and not enough on the face-to-face interactions. And learning how to create customer experience comes from face-to-face, man. You know, seeing somebody’s eyes light up, seeing somebody smile, seeing somebody reach out and shake your hand and say, “Thank you so much for helping me with this. I really appreciate it.” That’s shit you can’t get through the Internet. Unless they can go through that process, they’re always going to be trying to automate. And that’s why you see so many people creating a product that they sell, versus creating a true brand that represents something. If you can bridge these two things together [the social media smarts with the skills to engage face-to-face with empathy and care], you’ve really got something special.
Conclusion
I’m often asked what I’ve learned in the years since I published Crush It! The answer is this: I was right. Social media does equal business. Innovation makes people uncomfortable. We should care desperately about everything, yet not care at all what anyone else thinks. Someone will always be trying to tear you down. Talent has little value without patience and persistence. Success takes a shitload of work, and the people who ultimately break through and crush it are those who get all that and go for their dreams anyway.
I want you to find your courage and go for it. Somewhere out there is a middle-aged engineer, a single-parent exterminator, or a department store sales clerk trying to get through school who is reading this book and thinking, Man, I fucking hate this job. But I love pizza. I’m going to start a YouTube channel and become the next Mario Batali. People will think it’s a ridiculous idea, just as people thought I was ridiculous when I wrote Crush It! But it’s not ridiculous. It’s not even sweetly optimistic. The proof is in the pudding. When I wrote Crush It!, I was basically just telling the world what I had done to grow a wine store in New Jersey. Now as I write, I’m a judge on Apple’s first original show.
I hope this book has inspired you to change your life for the better. People often tell me they want to be like me. I’d rather you be like you, but if you really want to be like me, quit being a student of entrepreneurship and start doing the goddamn work. If you do, this will be the last business book you’ll need to read. Success will happen faster for some people than for others, but if you’re loving life and doing what you feel you were born to do, you’ll be going in the right direction. Stay the course. It pays to be brave. If it helps, think of me as the shield between you and all the negativity out there. Believe me, I’ve heard every criticism and weathered every insult. I’ve had to defend my position thousands of times, and I’ve faced disappointments. I’ve taken all the punches, and I’m not only still standing, but I’m stronger than ever. There is nothing anyone can throw at you that they haven’t already thrown at me. If I can stomach it, so can you—if you want to crush it badly enough.
Remember, you’re not trading in your day job for an easier life—there’s nothing easy about becoming an entrepreneur and influencer. You’re trading it in for a different life, one with more flexibility and fun. Chad Collins (Twitter: @chadcollins) credits Crush It! with helping him create his seven-figure companies and two Guinness World Record–breaking fan festivals, LEGO Brick Fest Live and Minefaire, out of a YouTube channel he created with his seven-year-old daughter. Collins actively tried to avoid the entrepreneurial life, because he knew how hard it could be. “I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs, and when it was going well, awesome. When it was bad, it was really bad. I made a choice to work for The Man on purpose.” But he wasn’t happy being an “intrapreneur,” and when he saw a chance to create the life of his dreams, he jumped. He believes the experience has primed his daughter for success, too, no matter what path she pursues. “Jordyn was interviewed by Time for Kids, which featured her on the site’s home page. Since she turned nine, she has run the LEGO trivia presentation at the events. She owns it. She creates her own PowerPoint presentation. Seeing how it got started, she knows she will be able to accomplish anything she wants to. She and my son have seen it all play out. She’ll succeed as long as she keeps the confidence that she has and applies it to whatever she does.” Yes, she will. And so will anyone willing to take a risk and take the principles of this book to heart. Please, please, just try, if not for yourself, then for the people you love who are watching you and who want you to be happy.
You know where we are in this game? We haven’t even heard the national anthem. We haven’t even gotten to the parking lot. I cannot wait to see what platforms we’re talking about in nine more years. I’m never afraid of the future. It’s practically a national sport to reminisce about how much easier and slower life was in the past. People wonder if we’re sacrificing something irreplaceable, perhaps even changing the human condition, as we become increasingly obsessed with speed and productivity. I don’t worry about it because we are simply doing what we’ve always done, what we were probably born to do. We wax nostalgic, but our actions betray us. How many people above the age of thirteen in America do not have a cell phone? Practically no one. As long as we exist, humans will continue to embrace whatever inventions and innovations offer us the most speed and convenience. You’re not going to lose your soul if you do this. In fact, if you’re truly an entrepreneur, you’re going to get it back.
Acknowledgments
Five has always been my favorite number, so as I publish my fifth business book, it’s especially important that I acknowledge the team that I value most in the world—my amazing wife, Lizzie; my kids, Misha and Xander; my unbelievable parents, Sasha and Tamara; and my siblings and in-laws. I am only able to live this life because of the love and the infrastructure you offer
me. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I also want to give a huge shout-out to the entire Team GaryVee, which contributed their efforts and expertise to this book, as well as all the people that surround me on a daily basis whose talent and heart make VaynerMedia what it is. In addition, I owe enormous gratitude to the entire team at HarperBusiness, especially my editor, Hollis Heimbouch.
Finally, there is no shot that any of these books would exist without my right hand, Stephanie Land, who has collaborated with me on all five of them. She has become much more than a ghostwriter. She is my friend.
Notes
Introduction
1. With six-figure earnings: Claire Martin, “Feel the Noise: D.I.Y. Slime Is Big Business,” New York Times, June 25, 2017, p. 6.
2. In August 2017: Sam Gutelle, “Karina Garcia, YouTube’s ‘Slime Queen,’ Is Heading on Tour with Fullscreen,” Tubefilter.com, July 7, 2017, www.tubefilter.com/2017/07/07/karina-garcia-youtubes-slime-queen-is-heading-on-tour-with-fullscreen.
Chapter 1: The Path Is All Yours
1. YouTube’s daily viewership: Feliz Solomon, “YouTube Could Be About to Overtake TV as America’s Most Watched Platform,” Fortune.com, Feb. 28, 2017, fortune.com/2017/02/28/youtube-1-billion-hours-television.
Crushing It! EPB Page 23