I recently attended ACE2010, a conference for, grossly simplified, communications people in Extension. Our last keynote speaker was social media star and wine aficionado Gary Vaynerchuk. As part of our registration, we all received a copy of his book Crush It! Why Now is the Time to Cash in on Your Passion.

  He joined us from his office in New Jersey and was intense, funny, and surprisingly (depressingly?) young. He started in business by turning his father's local liquor store into the Wine Library, going from annual revenue of $4 million to $60 million in roughly ten years. He then started video blogging about wine (Wine Library TV) and has been using Twitter and Facebook to grow his audience.

  His book "Crush It!" is about taking your passion and making it your livelihood. I just started the book, but his talk was incredibly inspiring to my coworker who also attended the conference. She's The Sassy Crafter, and found all sorts of useful ideas from Vaynerchuk's speech.

  She was reading the book on the plane back home. Scribbling away, she turned to me and said, "I think you should start a beer blog. You're supposed to write about what you love, and you love beer. And you're a really good writer - I think you should do it!"

  Insert "Aw shucks, thanks!" moment here.

  She explained that Vaynerchuk's book had really inspired her to pick up the pace on her own blog and suggested we be "blogging buddies" -- like workout partners, we'd encourage each other to keep up with our writing and keep the other honest (isn't it harder to skip out on a workout if you know someone's waiting for you?).

  So I'm thinking about it.

 

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It's never too late to give up your prejudices. --Henry David Thoreau, American author

  
Shameless self-promotion! Check out my blog: Scurrilous Tosh