The purpose of an elevator pitch is to describe a situation or solution so compelling that the person you’re with wants to hear more even after the elevator ride is over.
No more than six words on a slide. Ever. There is no presentation so complex that this rule needs to be broken.
The only path to amazing runs directly through not-yet-amazing. But not-yet-amazing is a great place to start, because that’s where you are. For now.
The future isn’t so much about absorbing or tolerating change, it’s about making change.
Everyone is not your customer.
If your organization requires success before commitment, it will never have either.
Confusion sets in when you’re not sure if your product or service is bought or sold, or worse, if you are a salesperson just waiting for people to buy.
Design is the last great competitive advantage.
Developing expertise or assets that are not easily copied is essential; otherwise you’re just a middleman.
By all means, fire the customers who aren’t worth the time and the trouble. But understand that the moment you insist the customer is wrong, you’ve just started the firing process.
A bully is playing a game, one that he or she enjoys and needs. You’re welcome to play this game if it makes you happy, but for most people, it will make you miserable.
The mistake so many marketers make is that they conjoin the urgency of making another sale with the timing to earn the right to make that sale. In other words, you must build trust before you need it. Building trust right when you want to make a sale is just too late.
I’m not proposing that you let the crowd dictate, or that you work hard to fit in. Far from it. I’m proposing that you know the impact your choices are having and act accordingly.
Genius is the act of solving a problem in a way no one has solved it before.
The sooner we realize that the world has changed, the sooner we can accept it and make something of what we’ve got. Whining isn’t a scalable solution.
Desire can’t be sated, because if it is, the longing disappears and then we’ve failed, because desire is the state we seek.
Choose your customers, choose your future.
Be relentlessly generous, without focusing on when it will come back to you.
Incrementalism ceases to be a good strategy when there’s a cliff on the route.
It turns out that the people who like their jobs the most are also the ones who are doing the best work, making the greatest impact, and changing the most.