There’s nothing wrong with staying small. You can do big things with a small team.
Decisions are progress. Each one you make is a brick in your foundation. You can’t build on top of “We’ll decide later,” but you can build on top of.
If you’re not trusted to work remotely, why are you trusted to do anything at all? If you’re held in such low regard, why are you able to talk to customers, write copy for an ad, design the next product, assess insurance claims, or do tax returns?
When you build a product or service, you make the call on hundreds of tiny decisions each day. If you’re solving someone else’s problem, you’re constantly stabbing in the dark. When you solve your own problem, the light comes on. You know exactly what the right answer is.
If a worker’s motivation is slumping, it’s probably because the work is weakly defined or appears pointless, or because others on the team are acting like tools.
Besides, the perfect time never arrives. You’re always too young or old or busy or broke or something else. If you constantly fret about timing things perfectly, they’ll never happen.
Remember, there’s no such thing as a one-hour meeting. If you’re in a room with five people for an hour, it’s a five-hour meeting.
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. Make decisions right before you do something, not far in advance.
The owner actually tried the oil and chooses to carry it based on its taste. It’s not about packaging, marketing, or price. It’s about quality. He tried it and knew his store had to carry it. That’s the approach you should take too.
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.
One of the secret benefits of hiring remote workers is that the work itself becomes the yardstick to judge someone’s performance.
They’re need, must, can’t, easy, just, only, and fast. These words get in the way of healthy communication. They are red flags that introduce animosity, torpedo good discussions, and cause projects to be late.
Chaos should not be the natural state at work.
Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
Working more doesn’t mean you care more or get more done. It just means you work more.
The ability to be alone with your thoughts is, in fact, one of the key advantages of working remotely.
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.
The problem, as we’ve learned over time, is that the further away you are from the fruit, the lower it looks. Once you get up close, you see it’s quite a bit higher than you thought. We assume that picking it will be easy only because we’ve never tried to do it before.
Commuting isn’t just bad for you, your relationships, and the environment – it’s bad for business. And it doesn’t have to be that way.
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 – while you’ve got the motivation and momentum to do so.