We’d like to believe that efficient, useful, cost-effective products and services are the way to succeed. That hard work is its own reward. Most marketers carry around a worldview that describes themselves as innovators, not storytellers.
Don’t worry about your stuff. Worry about making meaning instead.
One way to become creative is to discipline yourself to generate bad ideas. The worse the better. Do it a lot and magically you’ll discover that some good ones slip through.
Scarcity, as we’ve seen, is the secret to value. If there wasn’t a Dip, there’d be no scarcity.
They say the best way to complain is to make things better.
Yes, the Internet is a discovery tool, but no, you’re not going to get discovered that way. Instead, you will make your impact by uniting those you seek to serve.
What happens when the world cares more about unique voices and remarkable insights than it does about cheap labor.
The only thing that makes people and organizations great is their willingness to be not great along the way. The desire to fail on the way to reaching a bigger goal is the untold secret of success.
Do you have the email addresses of the 20 percent of your customer base that loves what you do? If not, start getting them. If you do, what could you make for these customers that would be superspecial?
Conventional wisdom is that you should find a job that matches your passion. I think this is backwards.
We sell feelings, status, and connection, not tasks or stuff.
Great work is not created for everyone. If it were, it would be average work.
Here’s an assignment for you: Write it down. Write down under what circumstances you’re willing to quit. And when. And then stick with it.
When you hire amazing people and give them freedom, they do amazing stuff. And.
You do not equal the project. Criticism of the project is not criticism of you.
I spend 95% of my time persuading people to take action and just 5% of the time on the recipes.
The secret of being wrong isn’t to avoid being wrong! The secret is being willing to be wrong.
It’s Almost Impossible to Overinvest in Becoming the Market Leader.
The purity of the message makes it even more remarkable. It’s easy to tell someone about the Leaning Tower. Much harder to tell them about the Pantheon in Rome. So, even though the Pantheon is beautiful, breathtaking, and important, it sees 1 percent of the crowds that the harder-to-get-to Tower in Pisa gets.
When in doubt, assume that people will act according to their current irrational urges, ignoring information that runs counter to their beliefs, trading long-term for short-term benefits and most of all, being influenced by the culture they identify with.