What you do is what matters, not what you think or say or plan.
It’s like when you’re on hold and a recorded voice comes on telling you how much the company values you as a customer. Really? Then maybe you should hire some more support people so I don’t have to wait thirty minutes to get help.
There’s nothing wrong with staying small. You can do big things with a small team.
Obscurity is a good thing. You can fail in obscurity. It removes the fear of failure.
It won’t be as easy, but lots of things that are worth doing aren’t easy. It just takes commitment, discipline, and, most important, faith that it’s all going to work out.
When you don’t know what you believe, everything becomes an argument. Everything is debatable. But when you stand for something, decisions are obvious.
It’s a lot harder to pull your head up and ask why.
It’s a beautiful way to put it: Leave the poetry in what you make. When something becomes too polished, it loses its soul. It seems robotic.
What do you gain if you ban employees from, say, visiting a social-networking site or watching YouTube while at work? You gain nothing. That time doesn’t magically convert to work. They’ll just find some other diversion.
Think about it this way: If you had to launch your business in two weeks, what would you cut out?
The problem with abstractions (like reports and documents) is that they create illusions of agreement. A hundred people can read the same words, but in their heads, they’re imagining a hundred different things.
Don’t be insecure about aiming to be a small business. Anyone who runs a business that’s sustainable and profitable, whether it’s big or small, should be
We think of computers as smart and powerful machines. But your goldfish is smarter.
When you’re short on sleep, you’re short on patience. You’re ruder to people, less tolerant, less understanding. It’s harder to relate and to pay attention for sustained periods of time.
Bottom line: If you can’t spare some time to give your employees the chance to wow you, you’ll never get the best from them.