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Or maybe they just think business is a dirty word.
You don’t even need an office. Today you can work from home or collaborate with people you’ve never met who live thousands of miles away. It’s time to rework
This real world sounds like an awfully depressing place to live. It’s a place where new ideas, unfamiliar approaches, and foreign concepts always lose.
Other people’s failures are just that: other people’s failures. If other people can’t market their product, it has nothing to do with you. If other people can’t build a team, it has nothing to do with you. If other people can’t price their services properly, it has nothing to do with you.
What do you really learn from mistakes? You might learn what not to do again, but how valuable is that? You still don’t know what you should do next.
Planning is guessing
When you turn guesses into plans, you enter a danger zone.
Sometimes you need to say, “We’re going in a new direction because that’s what makes sense today.”
You have the most information when you’re doing something, not before you’ve done it.
Working without a plan may seem scary. But blindly following a plan that has no relationship with reality is even scarier.
Ramping up doesn’t have to be your goal. And we’re not talking just about the number of employees you have either. It’s also true for expenses, rent, IT infrastructure, furniture, etc.
Enough with “entrepreneurs”
There’s a new group of people out there starting businesses. They’re turning profits yet never think of themselves as entrepreneurs. A lot of them don’t even think of themselves as business owners. They are just doing what they love on their own terms and getting paid for it.
Anyone who creates a new business is a starter. You don’t need an MBA, a certificate, a fancy suit, a briefcase, or an above-average tolerance for risk. You just need an idea, a touch of confidence, and a push to get started.
TO DO GREAT work, you need to feel that you’re making a difference.
Mary Kay Wagner, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, knew her skin-care products were great because she used them herself.
Best of all, this “solve your own problem” approach lets you fall in love with what you’re making.
What you do is what matters, not what you think or say or plan.
The most important thing is to begin.
When you want something bad enough, you make the time—regardless of your other obligations.
You have to believe in something. You need to have a backbone.
Strong opinions aren’t free. You’ll turn some people off. They’ll accuse you of being arrogant and aloof. That’s life. For everyone who loves you, there will be others who hate you. If no one’s upset by what you’re saying, you’re probably not pushing hard enough. (And you’re probably boring, too.)
when you stand for something, decisions are obvious.
Standing for something isn’t just about writing it down. It’s about believing it and living it.
You need less than you think
Great companies start in garages all the time. Yours can too.
A business without a path to profit isn’t a business, it’s a hobby.
Building to flip is building to flop
You need a commitment strategy, not an exit strategy.
If your whole strategy is based on
leaving, chances are you won’t get far in the first place.
Embrace the idea of having less mass. Right now, you’re the smallest, the leanest, and the fastest you’ll ever be.
more massive an object, the more energy required to change its direction. It’s as true in the business world as it is in the physical world. Mass is increased by . . . Long-term contracts Excess staff Permanent decisions Meetings Thick process Inventory (physical or mental) Hardware, software, and technology lock-ins Long-term road maps Office politics
Less is a good thing.
You can turn a bunch of great ideas into a crappy product real fast by trying to do them all at once.
It’s hard enough to do one thing right. Trying to do ten things well at the same time?
Lots of things get better as they get shorter.
start chopping. Getting to great starts by cutting out stuff that’s merely good.
When you start anything new, there are forces pulling you in a variety of directions. There’s the stuff you could do, the stuff you want to do, and the stuff you have to do. The stuff you have to do is where you should begin. Start at the epicenter.
epicenter. Everything else is secondary.
Nail the basics first and worry about the specifics later.
The big picture is all you should be worrying about in the beginning.
Don’t wait for the perfect solution. Decide and move forward.
Decisions are progress. Each one you make is a brick in your foundation.
It doesn’t matter how much you plan, you’ll still get some stuff wrong anyway. Don’t make things worse by overanalyzing and delaying before you even get going.
It’s the stuff you leave out that matters. So constantly look for things to remove, simplify, and streamline.
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.
Build the necessities now, worry about the luxuries later.
when you’re interrupted, you’re not getting work done.
(you’ll never see anyone schedule a seven-minute meeting with Outlook). Too bad. If it only takes seven minutes to accomplish a meeting’s goal, then that’s all the time you should spend. Don’t stretch seven into thirty.
