Our economy now rewards artists far more than any other economy in history ever has.
Waiting for perfect is never as smart as making progress.
The only thing worse than starting something and failing is not starting something.
You can listen to what people say, sure. But you will be far more effective if you listen to what people do.
The first step toward becoming extraordinary is, of course, to stop being ordinary.
The job isn’t to catch up to the status quo; the job is to invent the status quo.
Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.
Set up a life you don’t need to escape from.
And the reason is that until Wonder came along and figured out how to spread the idea of sliced bread, no one wanted it. That the success of sliced bread is not always about what the patent is like or what the factory is like, it’s about can you get your idea to spread or not?
Please stop waiting for a map. We reward those who draw maps, not those who follow them.
Fitting in is a short-term strategy that gets you nowhere. Standing out is a long-term strategy that takes guts and produces results.
And it doesn’t matter to me whether you’re running a coffee shop or you’re an intellectual or you’re in business or flying hot air balloons. People who can spread ideas, regardless of what those ideas are, win. But consumers, they got way more choices than they used to and way less time.
Transferring your passion to your job is far easier than finding a job that happens to match your passion.
Either you defend the status quo, or you invent the future.
Go ahead and act as if your decisions are temporary. Because they are. Be bold, make mistakes, learn a lesson, and fix what doesn’t work. No sweat, no need to hyperventilate.
You have brilliance in you, your contribution is valuable, and the art you create is precious. Only you can do, and you must.
People don’t believe what you tell them. They rarely believe what you show them. They often believe what their friends tell them. They always believe what they tell themselves.
There’s a huge difference between being a replaceable cog on the assembly line and being the one who is missed, the one with a unique contribution, the one who made a difference.
Your drudgery is another person’s delight. It’s only a job if you treat it that way. The privilege to do our work, to be in control of the promises we make and the things we build, is something worth cherishing.
If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.