The reason business writing is horrible is that people are afraid. Afraid to say what they mean, because they might be criticized for it. Afraid to be misunderstood, to be accused of saying what they didn’t mean, because they might be criticized for it.
Artists are people with a genius for finding a new answer, a new connection, or a new way of getting things done.
It’s easy to be afraid of taking a plunge, because, after all, plunging is dangerous. And the fear is a safe way to do nothing at all. Wading, on the other hand, gets under the radar. It gives you a chance to begin.
We are leaving the industrial economy and entering the connection economy.
You cannot buy your way to share of voice today; you cannot buy attention anymore.
If you’re in the idea business, it doesn’t matter where you’re from. It matters if we care about the change you’re making.
The combination of passion and art is what makes someone a linchpin.
Popular is not the same important, or often, not the same as good.
And it turns out that tribes, not money, not factories, that can change our world, that can change politics, that can align large numbers of people. Not because you force them to do something against their will. But because they wanted to connect.
The way to work with a bully is to take the ball and go home. First time, every time. When there’s no ball, there’s no game. Bullies hate that. So they’ll either behave so they can play with you or they’ll go bully someone else.
Acknowledge to yourself that the factory job is dead. Having a factory job is not a natural state. It wasn’t at the heart of being human until very recently. We’ve been culturally brainwashed.
What tribes are, is a very simple concept that goes back 50 million years. It’s about leading and connecting people and ideas. And it’s something that people have wanted forever.
The thing is, the future happens. Every single day, like it or not. Sure, tomorrow is risky, frightening and in some way represents one step closer to the end. But it also brings with it the possibility of better and the chance to do something that matters.
If you demand that everything that happens be something you are adequately prepared for, I wonder if you’ve chosen never to leap in ways that we need you to leap. Once we embrace this chasm, then for the things for which we can never be prepared, we are of course, always prepared.
Marketing isn’t done by computers, it’s done by people. And people who sense opportunity and have the confidence to be remarkable will always defeat defensive actions by people who have given up.
It’s almost impossible to have fun playing ping pong with someone who doesn’t care, won’t try or isn’t any good.
Your history of work is as important as the work you’ll do tomorrow.
Here’s the fascinating part, call it the golden shoulder: We have no idea in advance who the great contributors are going to be. We know that there’s a huge cohort of people struggling outside the boundaries of the curated, selected few, but we don’t know who they are.
One reason people who spend a lot of time thinking about and working on a problem or a craft seem to find breakthroughs more often than everyone else is that they’ve failed more often than everyone else.
I think that the economics of book publishing favor hits with long book runs. You make all your money on the last bunch of books, not the first.