Even companies that do big business online struggle to be noticed by Google users. The Web, after all, is home to some 120 million Internet domains and tens of billions of indexed pages. But every company, big or small, can draw more Google traffic by using search-engine optimization - SEO, for short.
— Jason Fried
When you write like everyone else and sound like everyone else and act like everyone else, you're saying, 'Our products are like everyone else's, too.'
Great people want to work on things that matter. Inevitably, a great person working on imaginary work will turn into an unsatisfied person.
Hiring people is like making friends. Pick good ones, and they'll enrich your life. Make bad choices, and they'll bring you down.
Lots of business owners spend their lives trying to land the whale - the single, massive, brand-name account that will fatten the top line and bestow instant credibility. But big customers make me nervous.
You have to live with your decisions every day. Why live with one you're uneasy with? 'Because it'll make you money' is a common reply. But I don't think that's good enough.
We think of computers as smart and powerful machines. But your goldfish is smarter.
I live in Chicago but own some property up in Wisconsin.
Statistics rarely drive me. Feelings, intuition, and gut instinct do.
As businesses grow, all sorts of things that once were done on the fly - including creating new products - have a way of becoming bureaucratized.
I think what really people want is just a few things done really, really well. And if you think about ever day of your life, the things you really appreciate aren't the complicated things. They're the simple things that work just the way you expect them to.
I'm not sure a lot of companies know their story, or can explain why they exist and who they are, without just spewing just corporate speech.
Deadlines are great for customers because having one means they get a product, not just a promise that someday they'll get a product.
When time, money, and results are on the line, it's easy for tension to build.
Many of the things we do at Basecamp would be considered unusual at most companies: paying for employees' hobbies, allowing our team to work from anywhere, even footing the bill for fresh fruits and veggies in our staff members' homes.
Sustained exhaustion is not a rite of passage. It's a mark of stupidity.
Success isn't about being the biggest. It's about letting the right size find you.
It's easy to forget, as a leader, that when employees don't get the wide view, not only does the point of their work escape them, but it can also lead to real frustration. It's hard to feel pride and ownership when you don't understand where things are going.
If you could taste words, most corporate websites, brochures, and sales materials would remind you of stale, soggy rice cakes: nearly calorie free, devoid of nutrition, and completely unsatisfying.
I've run into a lot of companies that invent positions for great people just so they don't get away. But hiring people when you don't have real work for them is insulting to them and hurtful to you.
The risk of relying on a handful of customers is not just financial. Your product also is at risk when you're at the mercy of a few big spenders. When any one customer pays you significantly more than the others, your product inevitably ends up catering mostly to that customer's specific needs.
We've never much liked the idea of charging a participation tax, a phrase we coined to represent what it feels like when a software company charges you more money for each additional user. Participation taxes discourage usage across a company.
A computer doesn't have a mind of its own - it needs someone else's to function.
I'm a designer, but I rely on programmers to bring my ideas to life. By learning to code myself, I think I can make things easier for all of us. Similarly, I want to be able to build things on my own without having to bother a programmer.
The owner of a company with supertight margins - say, a restaurant, retailer, or producer of commodity goods - would be a fool not to keep a close eye on the numbers. But when I make big decisions, numbers are seldom, if ever, the tiebreaker.
When it comes to making decisions, I'm not what you'd call a numbers guy.
Practice quality, and you get better at quality. But quality takes time, so by working solely on quality, you end up losing something else that's important - speed.
A lot of people relate leadership to formalities. They believe that leadership is about being professional and strong and always right and being a booming voice. I just don't buy that. I think that leadership is a soft skill; it's a people skill.
If you tell your story well, it can help attract customers; it can help people understand your business better, and you are more approachable as a business and a company.
I used to think that deadlines should be ignored until the product was ready: that they were a nuisance, a hurdle in front of quality, a forced measure to get something out the door for the good of the schedule, not the customer.
If an employee can demonstrate results produced in a way that the company didn't think possible, then a new way forward can begin to take shape.
When you're short on sleep, you're short on patience. You're ruder to people, less tolerant, less understanding. It's harder to relate and to pay attention for sustained periods of time.
Whenever I speak at a conference, I try to catch a few of the other presentations. I tend to stand in the back and listen, observe, and get a general sense of the room.
I believe if you start a business with the intent of making it huge, you're already prioritizing the wrong thing. Size is important, but it's a byproduct of a whole bunch of other things that are worth way more of your mental energy - customers, service, quality.
If you care about your product, you should care just as much about how you describe it.
What's bad, boring, and barely read all over? Business writing.
Who you work with is even more important than who you hang out with because you spend a lot more time with your workmates than your friends.
A large user base helps shield us from things we can't control. You can spend years catering to a major corporation, for example, only to see your contact there move on.
Bottom line: If you can't spare some time to give your employees the chance to wow you, you'll never get the best from them.
Unlike a goldfish, a computer can't really do anything without you telling it exactly what you want it to do.
In almost every case, cutting things back is a way of favoring what is left.
I know plenty of entrepreneurs who are numbers first. They tend to be highly analytical people, and before they pull the trigger, all the numbers have to line up just right.
I casually advise a few young companies, and I'm always surprised when I see them overthinking simple problems, adding too much structure too early, and trying to get formal too soon. Start-ups should embrace their scrappiness, not rush to toss it aside.
A company gets better at the things it practices.
I think the story is important in every business. Why do you exist, why are you here, why is your product different, why should I pay attention, why should I care?
A fixed deadline and a flexible scope are the crucial combination.
We like to bully deadlines. Pick on them; make fun of them; even spit on them sometimes. But what a terrible thing to do. Deadlines are actually our best friends.
Give your employees a shot at showing the company a new way, and provide the room for them to chalk up a few small victories. Once they've proved that their idea can work on a limited basis, they can begin to scale it up.
People pulling 16-hour days on a regular basis are exhausted. They're just too tired to notice that their work has suffered because of it.
I'd love to see more businesses take this approach - intentionally rightsizing themselves. Hit a number that feels good and say, 'Let's stick around here.'
