Gary Vaynerchuk is the MAN

Now, as a self-pronounced liberal, musician, artist, and general consumer of counter-culture, one would not expect me to be obsessed with a businessman. But Gary Vaynerchuk is no ordinary businessman. He is a businessman of the 21st century, one who is more comfortable on Twitter, responding to a customer or a fan than sitting at a board meeting, discussing the bottom line.
He believes in the passion as a business plan, and caring as a marketing strategy. And if he sounds like a pansy businessman to you, know that he built his dad's local wine shop from $5 million in revenue to $50 million. And he's only 37.
For my senior writing project, I read two of his books, Crush It!: Why Now is the Time to Cash in on your Passion and The Thank You Economy. I tore through both of them very quickly and found both of them to be very interesting and fulfilling books to read.
As can be guessed from the title, Crush It! focuses much more on personal achievement and betterment. It's all about how to take something you love doing and monetizing it. His advice basically boils down to creating conversation about it, then bringing in ad revenue. Whether you write book, keep up a blog, or star in videos, creating quality content is the key to success. What's interesting about this book is that from a more objective, analyzing-the-writing-style lens, it's not that amazing. It's perfectly functional, but the actual writing really fails to take my breath away. What fascinates me about this book is the raw passion that you can feel he put into this work. He believes in the work he's doing with all of his heart, and it really shows. In addition to the fantastic insights that he makes in this book, that passion is what kept me reading.
The Thank You Economy is a bit more polished, but it still is filled with fairly raw passion. Its point is much broader, focusing not on what one person should do to succeed but rather on what companies should do to succeed. There are many relating themes to Crush It!, especially considering that his main advice for these companies is to be personal. The companies that succeed, he argues, are the ones that create an emotional connection to their customers through excellent customer service. He crushes the ethos here, pounding example after example, including his own. Less empowering than Crush It!, but much more convincing, I found that I enjoyed this one much better out of the two.
If you need a self-empowering boost, or are interested in learning about a very alternate style of business, I would highly recommend checking Gary out. He has plenty of free talks on YouTube and if you want more, definitely check out his books.