by Dale Shumaker
4spirit@gmail.com
Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk is about how Gary took his parents' wine distributing company from 4 million in sales to over 50 million in eight years using the new potential in Internet communication.
He says the Internet is one of the biggest culture shifts since the printing press. It also represents one of the biggest shifts in how we do business. Where are the people today... they are in the social networks such as Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Tumblr, and Twitter. If this is where the eyeballs are going, this is where business should go. Learn to live your passion and you will have all the money you need plus total control over your own destiny.
Social media equals business, period. Do what makes you happy. Keep it simple. Do the research. Work hard. Look ahead.
Gary's parents came to America from the Soviet Union in 1978. Times were tough at first. His dad was given a job by his uncle as a stock boy in a liquor store in New Jersey. His dad learned the art of hustling and moved up in the store and by 1983 bought a liquor store the size of an office. Gary became good at baseball card trading... a natural entrepreneur. At sixteen he became a cashier in his dad's liquor store. Even though he was too young to drink, he learned about liquor. Then he saw the wine business was much like the baseball card business in how people collected information. He learned the art of the business quickly. As people were ready to check out with a bottle of wine, they would end up buying three with Gary's sales finesse. Storytelling is one skill he learned well, and he saw it as one of the most underrated skills in business.
Build your brand. Branding is all about quality. Quality of content is what draws them and keeps them. Content rules over technique. Be yourself and put out awesome content. Getting people to talk is the whole point. Building your brand is the same thing as living and breathing your personal resume.
It's a whole new world with the middle man becoming closer to extinction. You don't have to ask permission, just get it out and those who like you will be there. Plan your future now... are you happy with your present job? Do you work for a company that allows you to have a public persona. If you can't keep a public persona at work you can do it at home.
Create great content. Tell your story and be a good storyteller. You can monetize your passion. Know yourself, choose the right medium, create awesome content, allowing them to come to you as they discover it. Enter other people's conversations as much as you can and create a lasso that brings them back to you.
Gary recommends using these platforms and how to use them inter-relating your blog with Wordpress and Tumblr, the social network of Facebook, following with Twitter. If your blog is your home, Facebook and Twitter are your vacation homes. For photo sharing add Flickr. For video sharing Youtube or Viddler. For video that allows you to interact with your audience consider Ustream.tv. For vitamins to work you need to exercise, along with good nutrition. It's the same on social platforms.They are used to support and enhance each other strategically. But you must then move on to being real along with your great content and platform access.
To be real, be true to yourself, be who you are, be authentic. The closer you come to being your true self, and perceived as real, your content will advance. Instead of fancy productions, the driving force on your platform is being genuinely passionate about what you believe in. Your efforts must come from your heart and show your heart.
Gary says you got to hustle to springboard your message. It takes effort and Gary responds to all who inquire as well and comments on blogs of interest. You must be patient. In six weeks to six months you may not take off, but stick with it. Hold off as along as you can until you come into demand. Build your brand in terms of a marathon not a sprint.
Creating community is where the bulk of your hustle is going to go. Creating community is about starting conversations. Read blog posts, leave comments. Create a blog post, distribute it through Tube Mogul (video) so your content appears on every social networking platform available. Start paying attention to others' content. Comment on all the Tweets, blogs you find via Tweeter Search. Then capture them. If your content is as good as it should be, people will want to read more, see more, get to know you more. Don't take people for granted. One reader is important, so connect. As more come, connect.
Chapter nine is a great chapter... it has one word on one page: CARE.
Continuing to chapter ten, Gary's process includes get a web domain name, start a Wordpress or Tumblr account, hire a web designer, get a video camera, create a Facebook fan page, open a Twitter account, start pumping out content, Tweet or post your content via Ping(.fm) or TubeMogul, search Twitter for accounts on your subject, blogsearch at Google, search your subject on Facebook... repeat.
Start to monetize. Be patient. Wait as long as you can so people get really committed to your content. The longer the better. See who pays for Google AdSense. Get on the lecture circuit as demand increases. Link to others as an affiliate, create or add products you can sell. Consider articles, seminars, books and TV, consulting. Gary elaborates more on this.
Reactionary marketing is adapting quickly to change. Let people talk and learn what they are really thinking. When patterns develop be ready to re-adjust. Be a trend spotter and take note to the meaning behind cultural change. You have access to real-time, streamlined data.
Move to legacy. Making connections, creating and continuing meaningful interactions with other people is why we are here. Set the tone. Leave a legacy.
Gary likes to talk to people. He invites you to email him with your questions to gary@ at his website:
http://vaynermedia.com/
From Golden Grain by John Wright Follette, he talks about prayer, intercessory prayer.
Follette has a unique view on prayer. You can read more about this author at the Christian Classic Ethereal Library. Here's an excerpt from Chapter 32 on intercessory prayer from CCEL. The complete chapter is at:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/follette/golden.xxxii.html
Touch Him when you don’t know how to read the Bible, but touch the Word—touch Him; know His will; know God; know His purpose. Keep up a wonderful fellowship with the Son of God.
You can read a lot of books on prayer, some of which are quite materialistic, but no one has a form of prayer which is adequate for you. Every soul has to develop, and work out his own technique and method of prayer. Don’t try to work it out by somebody else’s method—it is good only for suggestions. We learn to pray by praying.—We can’t change God by prayer. Prayer never made God do anything. Prayer helps us become more adjusted to His will.
Look at Jesus; talk to Him; if you dare to, be informal with Him. Don’t be stilted and pray, “Oh, Thou, My God!” You can’t get very far that way. How many know He is very real; very tender. Do you know that the best prayers you ever prayed never had words in them? They are so clumsy; they don’t have words, because there is an understanding there; a deep, lovely, rich, inner fellowship that needs no words.
We don’t know prayer: the vocal prayers, and prayers of contemplation, all the different types of prayers. It is such a vast field! We just go clattering along, saying the best we can . . . “for Jesus’ sake, Amen!” To me it’s such a lovely, open field we ought to get into.
What prayers are answered? Prayers that fall into the category of the will of God. We can pray all we want to, but John says, “When we pray according to the will of God He heareth us. ”In the end, all that great big prayer has to be censored in the will of God. The Holy Spirit prays according to His will.
Jesus said, “Peter, Satan hath desired to sift you . . .” This should actually read: “Satan hath obtained permission of God to sift you—all of you, but I’ll stay over here and pray for you:”—Don’t pray now, and ask the Lord to kill the devil. He is going to use him. On the power of Jesus’ prayer, Peter got through. Prayer is never wrestling with God, but wrestling with the powers of darkness. The “unjust judge” is not a picture of God. Our heavenly Father wants to answer us; His whole heart wants to bless us. He is not the “unjust judge”.
Another prayer pattern we find, is the man asking for bread at midnight. Sometimes we have to ask many times before the answer comes, but we must ask in faith. Hungry? He doesn’t tease us; He feeds us.
Jesus prayed because He had to, to keep that contact with the Father.Think of Jesus interceding for us this morning before we got out of our beds! That is how I wrote that hymn: “My High Priest is Interceding for Me.” He said to me, “You have faith that I am your Savior, so if you have faith in Me as your High Priest, My intercessory prayer will carry you.
”There is no prayer just like intercessory prayer. It is not saying prayers; nor is it just weeping, but He says, “With groanings that we can’t utter.” It is past words. Why? Because the Holy Spirit makes intercession in us, and through us according to the will of God, and we can’t make Him do anything else than that. We are yielded as an instrument; the Holy Ghost is praying—we aren’t praying.
He has a vehicle that is pliable, surrendered, and He comes in and takes possession of us. Isn’t it sweet how He dares to do that? Very costly, and terrifying at times, but it’s real. How is this intercessory prayer formed? It is formed according to the will of God, “with groanings which cannot be uttered”; it cannot be expressed in our language; not even with tongues, because it becomes too intense.
For whom is this intercession made? It is made for the saints. Did you ever have the Holy Spirit moving through you? What did He say? I haven’t the slightest idea. He speaks secrets to the Lord. That’s scriptural. I don’t have to have an interpretation of what the Holy Spirit is saying to God through me. We don’t have to have an interpretation every time He speaks through us. It is unto the Lord.
Did you ever get into the agony of prayer when you were identified with another’s need? That is intercessory prayer. We, in the Spirit, become identified with a need until we are united with it, or with a soul, or with a condition. No one in the flesh can pray a prayer like that. This is where intercessory prayer comes in. The Holy Spirit can pray prayers like that, because we can’t. He wants the vehicle; He wants the instrument tied up with the condition. That is real intercessory prayer.
There are all kinds of prayer. The best prayers never have words.
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