The opportunity is not in being momentarily popular with the anonymous masses. It’s in being missed when you’re gone, in doing work that matters to the tribe you choose.
The joy of art is particularly sweet, though, because it carries with it the threat of rejection, of failure, and of missed connections. It’s precisely the high-wire act of “this might not work” that makes original art worth doing.
Fear is the dream killer, the silent voice that pushes us to lose our passion in a vain attempt to seek safety.
Courage doesn’t always involve physical heroism in the face of death. It doesn’t always require giant leaps worthy of celebration. Sometimes, courage is the willingness to speak the truth about what you see and to own what you say.
When you put your ideas in the world, then, and only then, do you know if they’re real.
Don’t create for the masses. Create for the people who are your kind of weird.
Great work is always shunned at first.
Competition and the market are like water, they go where they want.
When you walk around braced for impact, you’re dramatically decreasing your chances. Your chances to avoid the outcome you fear, your chances to make a difference, and your chances to breathe and connect.
It might be bold to put your work into the world unadorned, but it’s probably ineffective.
We do not need to teach students to embrace the status quo.
Faced with the opportunity to become the category of one, we almost always hesitate, almost always compromise, almost always dumb it down to play it a little bit safer.
Our job as marketers and leaders, is to create vibrant pockets, not to hunt for mass.
If you don’t know how it works, find out. If you’re not sure if it will work, try it. If it doesn’t make sense, play with it until it does. If it’s not broken, break it. If it might not be true, find out.
Think big. Start small.
You don’t become indispensable merely because you are different. But the only way to become indispensable is to be different. That’s because if you’re the same, so are plenty of other people.
The job is not the work.
The world is begging for you to lead.
Before you promise to change the world, it makes sense to do the hard work of changing your neighborhood.
Marketers want to get their messages in front of you. They must get their messages in front of you, just to survive. The only problem is-do you really want more marketing messages?