It's simple until you make it complicated. Jason Fried More Quotes by Jason Fried More Quotes From Jason Fried Meetings should be great - they're opportunities for a group of people sitting together around a table to directly communicate. That should be a good thing. And it is, but only if treated as a rare delicacy. Jason Fried great good together people When meetings are the norm - the first resort, the go-to tool to discuss, debate, and solve every problem - they no longer work. Jason Fried debate meetings problem work Sustained exhaustion is not a rite of passage. It's a mark of stupidity. Jason Fried passage exhaustion mark stupidity 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. Jason Fried words free you taste One of the secret benefits of using remote workers is that the work itself becomes the yardstick to judge someone's performance. Jason Fried judge performance someone work 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. Jason Fried day simple work life When you spend time with potential customers, you get to hear about their struggles firsthand. You see their eyes light up with excitement or darken with confusion. You learn things you would never find in a survey, database, or questionnaire. You learn why people buy. Jason Fried eyes you light time 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. Jason Fried view feel you work 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. Jason Fried customer your you mercy Your employees have lots of opinions about everything - your strategy and vision; the state of the competition; the quality of your products; the vibe in the workplace. There are tons of things you can learn from them. Jason Fried you competition quality vision Statistics rarely drive me. Feelings, intuition, and gut instinct do. Jason Fried drive me statistics feelings 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 internet business struggle home When you can't see someone all day long, the only thing you have to evaluate is the work. A lot of the petty evaluation stats just melt away. Jason Fried day you work long It may be irrational, but if you're local, the client often feels that, if worse comes to worst, they can knock on your door. They 'know where you live.' But when you're remote, they're going to be more suspicious when phone calls go unreturned or emails keep getting 'lost.' Stay on top of communications, and you'll reap the benefits. Jason Fried door phone live you Since your company is the product that makes all of your other products, it should be the best product of all. When you begin to think of your company this way, you evaluate it differently. You ask different questions about it. You look at improving it constantly, rather than just accepting what it's become. Jason Fried best look think you Entrepreneurs love to view risk as binary. The more you put on the line, the greater the potential for reward. Jason Fried reward view you love Remind yourself that other people's jobs aren't so simple. Jason Fried remind yourself simple people I've seen small businesses turn into terrible midsize or big ones because they let their desire to achieve some arbitrary metric get the best of them. Whatever is compromised as a result doesn't matter anymore, as long as the company is growing. Jason Fried result best matter long 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. Jason Fried employees things team work 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? Jason Fried think you care business
