Minutes ago, I finished Gary Vaynerchuk‘s “Crush It!“, a simple, concise book that demonstrates ways to “cash in on your passion.” First off, it’s a great read and highly recommended (I’ll be starting his new book, “The Thank You Economy” in the coming days).
More importantly, the book lays out several steps to developing your personal online brand and eventually monetizing it. Perhaps the most critical of these steps is identifying your passion and committing to talking about it better than anyone else.
Over the years, I’ve put lots of hard work into several subjects (online), be it wiffleball or design. I also lived most of my life focusing on 3-5 passions, knowing the world is just too big to digest everything. Well, the time has come to potentially reduce that list to 1 passion for this site and my personal brand. The tough part: deciding on that passion. Here are the contenders:
- Design and Branding (extremely broad and difficult to differentiate myself)
- Living simply (admiring simple design and strategy, reducing the amount of “stuff” in one’s life)
- Golf (the sport I will play the most for the rest of my life)
- Technology (potentially in over my head)
There are other topics where I’m sure I could “crush it,” but this decision is an important one. I may even be forgetting something incredibly obvious – please make recommendations that may or may not appear in the above list.
In the words of LeBron James, what should I do?