Gary Vaynerchuk embodies authenticity, transparency, passion, and hustle. His dedication to his community has made him a juggernaut in the social media space, so if you don’t know him already, you need to.

Garyvee, as he’s called, can teach you a lot about following your passion.

Gary’s a wine guy. He’s the 33-year-old director of Wine Library in Springfield, New Jersey, where he has successfully built up a following of over 80,000 viewers a day through blogging, Twitter, and Facebook. Wine Library TV, the company’s video blog, now has over 750 video podcasts. To quote his bio:

With a wealth of knowledge and an entrepreneurial spirit, Gary spent every weekend of his college years at his parents’ store, rebranding the family business as Wine Library and establishing himself as a respected expert. As the store’s only wine buyer, he sampled every wine that entered the store. Customers depended on Gary for his advice and within a five year time period, Wine Library grew from a $4 million dollar business to a $45 million business.

But Gary’s career took a new turn with the advent of Wine Library TV. Gary’s key goals are twofold: “First, I want people to try different wines. How can you have a favorite if you only know a few? Second, I tell people to trust their palates. If a wine appeals to your palate, then it’s a good choice. Don’t feel pressured to like popular brands or what experts recommend. Buy what ‘brings the thunder’ for you.”

Even if you’re no wine connoisseur, Gary’s experience in social media and business has far-reaching implications in this new economy.

In internet currency, Gary Vaynerchuk has more reach than Tim Ferriss, who you should be familiar with if you’re a reader of this blog. Gary has spoken around the world and been called the “Social Media Sommelier,” and he’s successfully leveraged all this exposure into a 10-book deal with HarperCollins, national TV appearances, and much more.

At the Web 2.0 Expo, Gary put out a call to action: he says it’s time to stop doing shit you hate and embrace what you love. The web makes it possible to go out on your own and make a living doing what you care about. In his new book out this week, Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In On Your Passion, he’ll share his path to success and teach you how to do just that.

Gary Vaynerchuk’s Truly Badass, Exclusive Video for Thrilling Heroics (Must Watch!)

Since Gary and the guys he works with effin’ rock hardcore style, they took a few minutes to videotape answers to two of my biggest questions for the Thrilling Heroics community:

• How can Gen-Y start applying your advice to “stop doing shit you hate” and the lessons in Crush It! to gear their career around their passion?
• How can the non-profit & social entrepreneurship world leverage social media & transparency to be successful?

I was truly blown away that with his busy schedule promoting the new book, he made time to do this. I pushed hard because I wanted to share with you guys, and I owe a lot to Marcus at VaynerMedia for all his help.

Gary still runs this huge multimillion-dollar business like a mom-and-pop store. He makes time to answer everyone, to interact and respond with the little guys like myself, and I’ve watched him take full ownership of his mistakes. He’s someone who knows how to provide superior customer service, and how to go above and beyond. He treats everyone like a rockstar.

He’s incredibly enthusiastic and engaging in his videos. He’ll be uniquely honest and transparent about his feelings. He’s authentic and entertaining, and all of these things have made him a success. He’s real. He gives a shit. He’s himself.

He’s not afraid to call people out on their bullshit, he advocates radical transparency, and hustling your ass off to make a living doing what you’re passionate about.

If you want to make a living with your passion, pick up your copy of Gary’s new book Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In On Your Passion today.

If you enjoy a nice glass of wine now and then, you can find him at Wine Library TV, and even if not, make sure you subscribe to his social media video podcasts and follow @garyvee on Twitter for some really useful tips.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Why You Need to Listen to the Legendary Gary Vaynerchuk

Since it’s brand-spanking new to the blogosphere, I could really use your help promoting the Thrilling Heroics Consulting site to the community, so please vote it up on the social media sites and share the URL address if you’ve got friends or colleagues who are bloggers too. Thanks!

CodyMcKibben.com Will Now Serve As My Social Media Homebase

I’ll be compiling my portfolio and services listing at ThrillingDesign.com, but I’ve also recently transformed codymckibben.com into a static homepage. All of my articles that were originally posted there have been moved here to the Thrilling Heroics blog. codymckibben.com will serve as a social media HQ of sorts, so please feel free to reference it if you’re looking for my contact info or to see what projects I’m currently involved in, but looking ahead I encourage you to follow all my future updates on personal development, careeer, Gen-Y issues, social media, and more here at Thrilling Heroics (get the RSS feed here).

Visit the New Thrilling Heroics Bookstore!

In addition to the Thrilling Blog Search tool, I’ve also recently created an online bookstore for the Thrilling Heroics reader community. People that know me know that I love reading personal development and business books, and I really enjoy sharing the best of what I read. I’ve started an Amazon aStore where I’ve hand-picked the best personal and business development books. Several of these have been the most impactful books in my life, while others have been highly suggested by mentors and colleagues.

Whenever I find great new resources that I think the community will benefit from, I’ll add them in. For transparency, I receive a 4-6% commission on any books you purchase through the TH Bookstore and it will go to help offset the costs of running the site. Please consider buying a book to help support the site! (You can also purchase other books through my Amazon link for up to 34% discount!)

Browse the Thrilling Heroics Bookstore »

Thanks for being a member of my online community and please feel free to get in touch with your thoughts and feedback. Cheers!

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Check Out Thrilling Heroics Consulting If You Need Help With WordPress & Blogging

If you’ve got an important message to communicate to potential clients or partners, a corporate blog or an individual personal-branding blog can often be a great solution to establish a presence on the web, build expert credibility in your field, and create relationships with potential clients, partners, and vendors across the globe!

Using WordPress, the most flexible open-source publishing platform on the web, I can help you establish your presence within the “blogosphere,” customize your blog site with your own unique corporate branding and images, give you powerful control over the dynamic contents of your website, and shape the user experience of your readers when they visit your blog.

When you come to me, I’ll be your go-to WordPress guy—your single point-of-contact—serving as project manager and calling upon a versatile team of freelance designers and developers to build and service an awesome blog for you or your company.

I help build WordPress-powered sites for all types of professionals and companies, however my team of freelancers and I collaborate especially well with consultants interested in strengthening their personal brand, authors and columnists who want to transition to a web 2.0 platform, and professional speakers and coaches who seek to build an online community of raving fans!

Our blogs are coded with gorgeous, standards-compliant XHTML, CSS, and PHP.

Some recent projects include:

• MovingFromMeToWe.com
• HighlyObsessed.com
• The Adyana blog
  
• The Life Beyond Code blog

Do you need help establishing yourself on the web or re-designing your blog? Need technical assistance with WordPress? Check out the services I provide on my business site, or send me a request with the contact form currently on Thrilling Heroics Consulting.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: A Little Bit About My Business Blog Consulting & WordPress Services

1. A while ago I remember you were very keen on going to study at Stanford. Are you still with that goal?

2. What new changes are you planning for Thrilling Heroics?

3. If you’re planning to detach your income from your time (as so brilliantly put by [Steve Pavlina in this podcast]) how do you plan to do it?

I ask these questions out of curiosity and as I too am facing them in my own version of things, I’d like to hear your approach to them. To be more specific, I’ve had a long-running goal of going to film school, I’m currently in the process of making some changes to my blog and I’m interested in the concept of detaching my income from my time.

I thought these great questions deserved a little more in-depth discussion, and they give me a perfect opportunity to recommit to my mission here at ThrillingHeroics.com and share some of the plans for its development in 2008, so I’m happy to answer them here on TH with this post!

Revamping Thrilling Heroics for 2008

New Developments & Directions
Some great news — ThrillingHeroics.com has recently been accepted as one of the first handful of blogs to join the new Brazen Careerist blog network! I’m deeply flattered to be chosen by Penelope Trunk and the guys at Employee Evolution, and I’ll be honored to work alongside some other fantastic Gen-Y career bloggers.

Thrilling Heroics has evolved and changed over time alongside my interests and pursuits, and it will continue to do so, but I remain committed to my central mission: to inspire and empower others to pursue their dreams and goals in the face of adversity. The discussion is concentrated more in the direction of personal and career development now than it was at the birth of this blog in 2006, but the central message is the same, with a new twist: namely, Thrilling Heroics is a career-oriented resource for college students and young professionals, with a strong focus on leadership, personal development, productivity, personal finance, entrepreneurship, and “lifestyle design.” Above all, I am passionate to encourage Generation-Y readers to pursue their dreams with reckless abandon!

TH started out with strong foundations in green business and social entrepreneurship. But whatever your interests, what remains central to the purpose of Thrilling Heroics is to empower the members of our generation to “think outside the box” of traditional work and traditional business, and really take advantage of all the things that are at our disposal to achieve our wildest dreams. Yes, that’s right — the ones you had when you were a kid. The world is your oyster! Whether your goals are to save the planet or to be the next CEO of GE! Join with other college students and young leaders who want to excel, make their dreams reality, and change the world. Watch as I experiment with entrepreneurship, living the mobile lifestyle, and practicing personal development and growth. Follow my adventures by subscribing to the blog, and share your own adventures as well!

New Format & Improved Features
For 2008, I will renew my commitment to sharing great content with you here at TH regularly, and the strong focus on career development and personal growth will hopefully manifest itself in several ways over the next few months: you should see a fresh, new, more personal design; articles will be organized into new categories and more useful chunk content; I’ve selected a new motto based on input from dozens of friends and colleagues; and I’ll continue to work hard to bring you great interviews within two new series: “Bright Young Minds” with young professionals who are making a difference, and “Proven Success,” a series where we’ll learn from the successes of established entrepreneurs and leaders. Check in later this week for an exclusive new interview with “Duff” McDuffy from Falling Fruit TV — Conscious Media for People Who Care!

Other features in the works include my definitive guide to networking, an introduction to lifestyle design, and further discussion of leadership, travel, personal finance, and personal growth. I’ll be serving up more consistent updates and sharing new, exciting content as I write from my experiences with personal entrepreneurship, and experiments with remote work, living the mobile lifestyle, and geoarbitrage. This is an adventure, so come along with me for the ride and learn from my successes and failures!

Help Me Create a Community for Young Professionals Who Want to Rock Their Careers!
I’ll be looking for guest writers that are interested to share their own stories. Other young bloggers who want to help encourage college students and Gen-Y workers to reach for their dreams, apply here! And to encourage user participation and build a true community, I’d like to potentially set up community forums to continue the discussion beyond the blog posts! That’s up to you guys too, though, so please help me spread the good word about Thrilling Heroics and tell your friends and colleagues. Get involved in the comments, submit your own ideas, and help me encourage our generation to kick ass and take life by the horns! Remember that my mission is to build your confidence to succeed, and to help you realize the freedom and flexibility to invest your time doing what you are truly passionate about.

Cody’s Entrepreneurial Roadmap

Freelancing & Entrepreneurship
To answer questions 1 and 3 above, let me start with the personal side. In the last three months, I left my traditional office job to pursue my true passion and I have been experimenting with freelancing and entrepreneurship. This is why I’ve been somewhat absent from Thrilling Heroics recently — I’ve been very busy with my freelance web development projects and laying the foundations of a business! I now work solely as a freelance web designer and consultant, building WordPress-powered blogs for professionals and small companies. I enjoy serving all kinds of clients, but work particularly well with other professional consultants who want to build up their personal brand, authors and columnists interested in transitioning to a web 2.0 platform, or speakers and coaches who seek to build an online community of raving fans! Some of my recent projects include Life Beyond Code, Moving From Me to We, HighlyObsessed.com, and TomAlexander.com.

I am in the very beginning stages, but my eventual goal is to incorporate and build my own web design company. In the next few months, you should see a full-fledged new business and website dedicated to my freelance design services, and at some point I may need to build a team from among my network of designers and creative-types — or outsource to other freelancers to help me increase my project capacity. This is not something I plan to do for my entire career, nor is it the only project I plan to have going at any one time, but over the next few years my end goal is to create a business that I own. The advantage of being owner, as opposed to president or CEO of a company, is that you profit from a company without necessarily having to run the business. (Not that there isn’t work to be done — but you hire smarter people to maintain things for you.)

How To Automate Your Income
Now to truly separate my income from my time, I plan to generate products that can bring in recurring income. You create it once, and see the profits from it repeatedly. Zen Habits has a great article on automating your income that discusses turning your service into a product:

Do you currently provide a service? If so, you have to devote many hours each week to provide that service. However, if you can turn that service into a product, such as a book or DVD or web site or CD, you can create it once and sell it over and over. Brainstorm the best way to create a product that gives customers the same information or skills that they would get from you in person.

Leo also goes on to speak about other forms of automated income:

Instead of creating an information product, you could create a real-world product, such as a gadget or nutrition product. Freelance designers can turn your idea into an actual design, and contract manufacturers can turn the design into a product. Other types of automated incomes include real estate, online retail businesses (including an eBay business), affiliate marketing, a blog, and a membership-type website. There are many possibilities. Find ways to turn your strengths into a revenue generator.

On my new web design blog, I hope to provide valuable free content, such as WordPress and business blogging how-to’s and instructional training videos that will attract both web design contracts and point users to products like website templates, podcasts, and eBooks that they can purchase from my site.

How To Get Into a Top University
Finally, I do still plan to apply to the Stanford Graduate School of Business, but not for a while. Once I prove myself with a few more years of career experience, either through the success or failure of my business and other professional pursuits, I feel I’ll be more qualified to work alongside other entrepreneurs and young leaders at one of the world’s best B-schools! I still maintain my strong interest in studying green business and social entrepreneurship at the University’s Center for Social Innovation and the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, but of course, coming from a not-quite-so-prestigious state school, it will be quite a challenge. For anyone who wants to apply to a big, competitive university, the keys are to show your dedication to achievement and personal growth, and to convince the program’s admissions officers that you’ll do great things with a degree from their school. Also, it doesn’t hurt to build relationships with faculty or with members of the alumni network from the school you hope to attend! Here are more valuable tips from Penelope Trunk.

I’ll be sure to post more about my personal goals and my 2008 resolutions very soon, so stay tuned for that before the New Year if you’d like to learn more.

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I will be leaving to travel overseas at the end of the week (spending the holidays in Spain), but read my upcoming interview with Duff McDuffee — Co-Founder of Falling Fruit TV, philosopher, life coach, and yogin — in the next few days! Duff will share some great thoughts on things from conscious business to GTD to Buddhism!

Thanks again to Gautam for the great questions! Gautam Valluri is a friend from the blogosphere, a sharp young filmmaker, writer, and designer in Hyderābād, India. He does some fantastic exclusive interviews at BrokenProjector.com.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: It’s Time for Some Thrilling Heroics: Commit to Pursuing Your Wildest Dreams with Me in 2008!

I’ll continue to provide you with important headlines and interesting thoughts and tips about the latest innovations and trends for making a positive impact with your career. I’m absolutely honored to be considered a Thinking Blogger! The Thinking Blog‘s rules are that I must pass on the nomination to five of my favorite bloggers, so without further ado:

Five Bloggers That Make Me Think

• J.D. Roth at Get Rich Slowly. I always find myself bookmarking J.D.’s insights on personal finance, savings and investments. He also shares some great lessons for young people.
• Ryan Healy, at Employee Evolution, is a real sharp young guy with lots of interesting thoughts about Generation Y in the workplace. I haven’t ever spoken to Ryan yet, but I’d really love to get to know him.
• Rajesh Setty at Life Beyond Code. Rajesh was one of the first writers I followed religiously in the blogosphere. I’ve had the pleasure of corresponding with Rajesh, meeting with him, and learning from him as a mentor. He always has tips on how to perform and communicate better and how to set yourself apart from the competition.
• Penelope Trunk, at the Brazen Careerist blog, is another young professional who always has great pointers on excelling in the work world. She has particularly great research on women and on generational differences in the workplace.
• Ron Davison at R World. A humble guy in Southern California with ever-interesting and relevant opinions on current events, from technology to politics to international relations… Ron is a social economist and contemporary philosopher!

Each of you is a fantastic writer who adds something invaluable to our online community. And now you’re each officially a “Thinking Blogger!” Thanks for your great contributions and keep up the fantastic writing!

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Five Bloggers That Make Me Think!