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Fear of Seeming Vain

When I wrote Crush It! in 2009, I got a good amount of grief from critics who accused me of glorifying narcissism. I don’t hear much from them anymore, because I’ve been proven right by the consumer, aka the market: developing a strong personal brand leads to business success. Don’t worry about seeming vain. Embrace it. Everybody else who is crushing it did. Remember, smart entrepreneurs don’t care what other people think. You’ll look like an ass for a while if you walk around with a camera constantly pointed at your face, but everyone looks like an ass when trying something new. Reality TV was once a joke, remember? Now you can’t turn around without seeing a reality star on a magazine cover, a makeup counter, some exercise equipment, or a frozen-food package. Everyone’s an ass until they’re a pioneer.

Set Your Mind to Success

The most exciting part about being an entrepreneur today is that we’re still living in the early years. The pool is crowded, but there is still plenty of room for you. Get in while you can! Look, I’m sympathetic. I didn’t learn how to swim until I was nine years old because I was too scared to put my face in the water. The only reason I finally learned was that one day I was playing air hockey at the community pool when I heard my mom clapping and cheering. My younger sister had just figured out how to do the crawl stroke and was making her way across the pool. I ripped off my shirt, threw myself into the pool, and started swimming before my mom’s applause stopped echoing. There was no way my sister was going to learn to swim before me.

Sometimes you just have to jump into the pool, even when you’re scared.

As you gather your ideas and put your strategies in motion, set yourself up emotionally to succeed. Find your courage and strengthen your self-esteem until you feel brave enough to make some noise and invite people’s attention. Then show them that you care deeply about keeping it.

Several of the people interviewed for this book said that, while hugely inspiring, Crush It! didn’t actually compel them to change anything about how they were growing their personal brand or running their business, because they couldn’t imagine operating any other way. Caring about quality, value, and the customer experience above and beyond anything else was already working for them. We live in such a fast, casual, cynical world that it can be almost disorienting to customers when they come into contact with someone whose eagerness to help or please bowls them over like an enthusiastic Saint Bernard. Disorienting but also delightful. And addictive. Crush It! merely confirmed what these stellar entrepreneurs already felt deep in their hearts, and it gave them the satisfaction of knowing they were right to follow their instincts.

It’s very Wizard of Oz, actually. Let me get a little Glinda the Good Witch on you: You’ve always had the power to achieve your wildest ambitions. There is literally—literally—no reason why you can’t become an entrepreneur and influencer in 2018. It’s my greatest hope that by the end of this book, you’ll feel a lot like nine-year-old me as I hurled myself into the deep end of the pool and realized, “Oh, I can fucking swim!”