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Kindle Notes & Highlights
Don’t strive for variation—and thus increase option consideration—when it’s not needed. Routine enables innovation where it’s most valuable.
Work is not all of life. Your co-workers shouldn’t be your only friends. Schedule life and defend it just as you would an important business meeting.
Profitability often requires better rules and speed, not more time.
No one aspires to be the bland average, so don’t water down messaging to appeal to everyone—it will end up appealing to no one.
Many companies will sell direct-to-consumer by necessity in early stages, only to realize that their margins can’t accommodate resellers and distributors when they come knocking. If you have a 40% profit margin and a distributor needs a 70% discount to sell into wholesale accounts, you’re forever limited to direct-to-consumer … unless you increase your pricing and margins.
Is more distribution automatically better? No.
price erosion is almost always irreversible. Avoid this scenario and consider partnering with one or two key distributors instead, using that exclusivity to negotiate better terms:
sustainable high-profit brands usually begin with controlled distribution. Remember, more customers isn’t the goal; more profit is.
Hyperactivity vs. Productivity—80/20 and Pareto’s Law Being busy is not the same as being productive. Forget about
Once per week, stop putting out fires for an afternoon and run the numbers to ensure you’re placing effort in high-yield areas: What 20% of customers/products/regions are producing 80% of the profit? What are the factors that could account for this? Invest in duplicating your few strong areas instead of fixing all of your weaknesses.
“But what if my largest customer consumes all of my time?” Recognize that (1) without time, you cannot scale your company (and, oftentimes, life) beyond that customer, and (2) people, even good people, will unknowingly abuse your time to the extent that you let them. Set good rules for all involved to minimize back-and-forth and meaningless communication.
Skills are overrated. Perfect products delivered past deadline kill companies faster than decent products delivered on time.
Products can be fixed as long as you have cash flow, and bugs are forgiven, but missing deadlines is often fatal. Calvin Coolidge once said that nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent; I would add that the second most common is smart people who think their IQ or resume justifies delivering late.
Like they say in AA: If you don’t want to slip, don’t go where it’s slippery.
Expect small problems. Life is full of compromises, and it’s necessary to let small bad things happen if you want to get huge good things done.
