The Messy Middle Quotes

“The best way for a start-up to “disrupt” an industry is to be a thesis-driven outsider—someone who hasn’t been jaded by the industry but has a strong opinion for what should change.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“Imagination happens only when your mind has the freedom to run rampant. When you’re always connected and able to find an answer, you stop wondering and wandering.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“Startups win by being impatient over a long period of time.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“You can get the important stuff right and still lose by not enduring long enough.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“Innovation has a nasty headwind, rarely a tailwind.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“There is no better measure of your values than how you spend your time.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“look at what your competitors do, and ask yourself a series of questions: “Are their strategy and goals the same as mine?” If their strategy and beliefs are different, and you still have conviction in your own, then you shouldn’t be distracted. Stay the course.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“Inexperienced yet smart people with initiative will almost always exceed your expectations.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“When you see something wrong, take the initiative to fix it. James Murphy, the founder and front man of LCD Soundsystem, said it well: “The best way to complain is to make things.” When you find yourself frustrated or critical, channel that energy into persistent creation. If it’s not your job, pursue it anyway.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, legendary for his long-term vision, reiterated this point. “Invention requires a long-term willingness to be misunderstood,” he said. “When you do something that you genuinely believe in, that you have conviction about, for a long period of time, well-meaning people may criticize that effort.” To sustain yourself over this time, you can’t look for accolades, and you can’t rely on being understood. Playing the long game is a test of your fortitude, your ability to persevere, and just how genuine your interests are.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“Sadly, most people are not patient enough to reap the fruits of their own labor. Great teams gain their strength and resilience while toiling their way through the valleys, not just from from relishing the view from the peaks.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“Sometimes a reset is the only way forward.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“Most of your experience enduring the middle miles will be couched with uncertainty. You’ll feel like you’re wading through an ocean of unknown depths and inhabitants—in the dark.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“whatever is easily accessible to you is just as accessible to others.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“Great teams gain their strength and resilience while toiling their way through the valleys, not just from relishing the view from the peaks.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“The greatest teams I have worked with over the years were all structured with a few remarkable exceptions to the rules. During my years serving on the board of sweetgreen, a chain of locally sourced seasonal-food kitchens, I was struck by how well the company’s three cofounders, Jonathan, Nic, and Nate, functioned as tri-CEOs. When I first joined the board, many of my peers told me “Good luck—that is nuts!” But the three of them had transformed the traditional CEO role to uniquely serve the company. They divided and conquered most functions in the business but shared the same core values and intuitively knew which decisions could be made by any of them, only one of them, or required all of them. “I feel like we’re pretty lucky because we can share the responsibility of taking action. It’s not just one person’s job to figure something out. It’s not just one person that has all of the weight on their shoulders,” Jonathan told me when I asked him about the arrangement. Nic added,”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“The danger with measures is their gravity and how quickly they dictate our daily efforts. It’s easier to track the growth of smaller things rather than dynamic systems, so we therefore often default to focusing our efforts on spiking the wrong goals.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“It’s as if buy-in and alignment come only from being anchored by something in the visual cortex. “When evaluating a product or a service, [one’s] brain is working to understand and make conclusions, to come to a decision. Imagery is a superb way to demonstrate something and to provide answers to the questions your brain is asking,”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a mock-up answers a thousand questions.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“Be aware of the cost of constant connection. To keep perspective and nourish your imagination, create windows of nonstimulation in your day, rituals for disconnection, and periods of time in your life where you get out of your element and allow for new questions and curiosities to take hold.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“Efficient people want to work in an efficient environment.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“It usually takes at least two years before you have any reasonable traction to show that your business might be working, then another few years of driving growth to create something that looks like a moat. Then you can afford to breathe. A little.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“To create what will be, you must remove yourself from the constant concern for what already is.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“When you don’t have enough money, circumstances force you to be virtuous. Once you’ve raised a lot, you have to force yourself to be virtuous.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“great teams are ultimately grown, not gathered.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“don’t talk: do. Care indiscriminately. If you’re willing to actually do the work, you’ll have more influence than those who simply do their jobs.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“However you decide to hack the structure of your team to allow for a long-term execution of strategy, you must hold on to the key elements of your vision.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“If we have a good quarter, it is because of the work we did three, four, five years ago, not the work we did this quarter.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“Invention requires a long-term willingness to be misunderstood,”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“The perfect question is a key to clarity. It unlocks truth and opens minds. It is distilled by having empathy for your customers’ struggles and ignoring sunk costs and past assumptions to get at the root of a problem.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture