My Rating: 8 of 10
Summary
Great high-level quippy nuggets about your career and work. Some of my favorites:
- Don’t worry about the plan. Plan for this week, not for the year
- Great businesses have a point of view
- Right now, you’re the leanest you’ll ever be
- Swap out “let’s think about it” to “let’s decide on it”
- Longer it takes, the harder to launch
- Do everything you can to remove layers of abstraction it. Don’t talk about it, do it.
- Not just working harder, use creativity to make it take 1/10 the effort
- Marketing is something everyone in your company does 24/7
- You don’t hire “rockstars” you build them
Notes
Treat your strategic plans as strategic guesses. Now you can stop worrying about them as much. They just aren’t worth the stress.
NOTE: Do you know where you are going today? Then that’s good enough.
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You have the most information when you’re doing something, not before you’ve done it. Yet when do you write a plan? Usually it’s before you’ve even begun.
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Plans more than a few pages long just wind up as fossils in your file cabinet. Give up on the guesswork. Decide what you’re going to do this week, not this year. Figure out the next most important thing and do that.
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So we created Highrise, our contact-management software. There was no need for focus groups, market studies, or middlemen. We had the itch, so we scratched it.
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Best of all, this “solve your own problem” approach lets you fall in love with what you’re making. You know the problem and the value of its solution intimately. There’s no substitute for that.
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Keep in mind why you’re doing what you’re doing. Great businesses have a point of view not just a product or service. You have to believe in something. You need to have a backbone. You need to know what you’re willing to fight for. And then you need to show the world.
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When you don’t know what you believe, everything becomes an argument. Everything is debatable. But when you stand for something, decisions are obvious.
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Standing for something isn’t just about writing it down. It’s about believing it and living it.
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Do you really need an accountant or can you use Quicken and do it yourself?
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Embrace the idea of having less mass. Right now, you’re the smallest, the leanest, and the fastest you’ll ever be. From here on out, you’ll start accumulating mass. And the more massive an object, the more energy required to change its direction.
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Whenever you can, swap “Let’s think about it” for “Let’s decide on it.” Commit to making decisions. Don’t wait for the perfect solution. Decide and move forward.
NOTE: start doing this less thinking more deciding
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And that’s a big part of this: You don’t have to live with a decision forever. If you make a mistake, you can correct it later.
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Long projects zap morale. The longer it takes to develop, the less likely it is to launch. Make the call, make progress, and get something out now
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Be a curator. Stick to what’s truly essential. Pare things down until you’re left with only the most important stuff. Then do it again.
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That’s why Ramsay’s first step is nearly always to trim the menu, usually from thirty-plus dishes to around ten. Think about that. Improving the current menu doesn’t come first. Trimming it down comes first.
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The core of your business should be built around things that won’t change. Things that people are going to want today and ten years from now. Those are the things you should invest in.
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Use whatever you’ve got already or can afford cheaply. Then go. It’s not the gear that matters. It’s playing what you’ve got as well as you can.
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Car manufacturers don’t usually think about selling charcoal. There’s probably something you haven’t thought about that you could sell too.
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Don’t hold everything else up because of a few leftovers. You can do them later. And doing them later may mean doing them better, too.
NOTE: this is why you keep that ongoing list of todos after uve already launched
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If you need to explain something, try getting real with it. Instead of describing what something looks like, draw it. Instead of explaining what something sounds like, hum it. Do everything you can to remove layers of abstraction.
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They frequently have agendas so vague that nobody is really sure of the goal.
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The way you build momentum is by getting something done and then moving on to the next thing. No one likes to be stuck on an endless project with no finish line in sight.
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The longer something takes, the less likely it is that you’re going to finish it.
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So don’t wait too long—you’ll smother your sparks if you do.
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So ask yourself, “What can we do in two weeks?” And then do it. Get it out there and let people use it, taste it, play it, or whatever.
NOTE: two weeks what can we accomplish
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What distinguishes people who are ten times more effective than the norm is not that they work ten times as hard; it’s that they use their creativity to come up with solutions that require one-tenth of the effort.
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and find satisfaction, motivation, and progress. That’s a lot better than staring at the huge picture and being terrified and demoralized. Whenever you can, divide problems into smaller and smaller pieces until you’re able to deal with them completely and quickly.
NOTE: add this note to hustle book breaking down your script projs into bite sized chunks esp when working on side proj
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Pour yourself into your product and everything around your product too: how you sell it, how you support it, how you explain it, and how you deliver it. Competitors can never copy the you in your product.
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Being the anti-______ is a great way to differentiate yourself and attract followers.
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Teaching is your chance to outmaneuver them.
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So emulate famous chefs. They cook, so they write cookbooks. What do you do? What are your “recipes”? What’s your “cookbook”? What can you tell the world about how you operate that’s informative, educational, and promotional? This book is our cookbook. What’s yours?
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They’ll see the sweat and effort that goes into what you sell. They’ll develop a deeper level of understanding and appreciation for what you do.
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Don’t be afraid to show your flaws. Imperfections are real and people respond to real. It’s why we like real flowers that wilt, not perfect plastic ones that never change.
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Why spam journalists when their inbox is already filled with other people’s spam?
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Instead, call someone. Write a personal note. If you read a story about a similar company or product, contact the journalist who wrote it. Pitch her with some passion, some interest, some life. Do something meaningful. Be remarkable. Stand out. Be unforgettable. That’s how you’ll get the best coverage.
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Emulate drug dealers. Make your product so good, so addictive, so “can’t miss” that giving customers a small, free taste makes them come back with cash in hand.
NOTE: that is essence of your free product show em how good you are
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Marketing is something everyone in your company is doing 24/7/365. Just as you cannot not communicate, you cannot not market:
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Trade the dream of overnight success for slow, measured growth. It’s hard, but you have to be patient. You have to grind it out. You have to do it for a long time before the right people notice.
NOTE: grind it out
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We ran with the ball as far as we could before handing it off. That way, we knew what we were looking for once we did decide to hire.
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You may feel out of your element at times. You might even feel like you suck. That’s all right. You can hire your way out of that feeling or you can learn your way out of it. Try learning first. What you give up in initial execution will be repaid many times over by the wisdom you gain.
NOTE: try to do everything within your org first and then hire out
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No one says, “This idea sucks.” People appease instead of challenge. And that appeasement is what gets companies into trouble. You need to be able to tell people when they’re full of crap.
NOTE: these are the people you want to work with who i should be trying to surround myself with
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How can you spot these people? Look at their backgrounds. They have set the tone for how they’ve worked at other jobs. They’ve run something on their own or launched some kind of project.
NOTE: is this mewhat projs have i launched and completedwhat else do i need to be doing
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Getting back to people quickly is probably the most important thing you can do when it comes to customer service. It’s amazing how much that can defuse a bad situation and turn it into a good one.
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These days, that’s what people have come to expect. They’re used to being put on hold. They’re used to platitudes about “caring” that aren’t backed up.
NOTE: answer all notes promptly even if its just to say nohw does not do it this way you will
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Everything you do before things go wrong matters far more than the actual words you use to apologize. If you’ve built rapport with customers, they’ll cut you some slack and trust you when you say you’re sorry.
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The people who make the product work in the “kitchen” while support handles the customers. Unfortunately, that means the product’s chefs never get to directly hear what customers are saying. Too bad.
NOTE: put your whole team out there playing every position
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Everyone on your team should be connected to your
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Culture is the byproduct of consistent behavior. If you encourage people to share, then sharing will be built into your culture. If you reward trust, then trust will be built in. If you treat customers right, then treating customers right becomes your culture.
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Decisions are temporary
NOTE: get in the practiceof making decisions you can always changebetter to make the decision and larn from it than get frozen on the decision and do nothing
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A lot of companies post help-wanted ads seeking “rock stars” or “ninjas.” Lame.
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Rockstar environments develop out of trust, autonomy, and responsibility. They’re a result of giving people the privacy, workspace, and tools they deserve.
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When everything constantly needs approval, you create a culture of nonthinkers. You create a boss-versus-worker relationship that screams, “I don’t trust you.”
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As the saying goes, “If you want something done, ask the busiest person you know.” You want busy people. People who have a life outside of work. People who care about more than one thing.
NOTE: stay busy doing other things so that things get done
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This mask of professionalism is a joke. We all know this. Yet small companies still try to emulate it. They think sounding big makes them appear bigger and more “professional.”
NOTE: sound like you
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greatest assets: the ability to communicate simply and directly, without running every last word
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don’t think about all the people who may read your words. Think of one person. Then write for that one person.
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