I read Rework by Jason Fried and David Hannson of 37Signals and BaseCamp fame and think that if you are tired of working for other people and are interested in starting your own business, or you have one and you’re looking to make it more effective, than this is the book for you.
Rework has a number of choice endorsements from major names in the business world such as Mark Cuban, who says “If given a choice between investing in someone who has read Rework and someone who has an MBA, I’m investing in Rework every time…. A must-read for every entrepreneur.” and Jeff Bezos, who says “Jason and David start fresh and rewrite the rules of business. Their approach turns out to be as successful as it is counter-intuitive.”
This doesn’t meant that information in this book is limited in application just to CEOs and Entrepreneurs with billions of dollars in the bank and those that want to provide them business service. This is equally applicable to artists who want to achieve real professional success.
I’m not going to go into too much detail on the actual content as the book itself is such a quick read and
Instead, here’s five of the titles of their mini essays and how they relate to my own experience.
Decommoditize your Product
Since competitors can never copy the “you” in their product, make you a part of your product or service. This makes it someone that no one else can honestly offer. I realized that this was something that I was doing with this website, merely by posting all of my book reviews, thought experiments, media analysis and other articles on niche topics.
Chances are those end products have zero relation to my client’s needs, but through them they see that my thought processes are informed by years of research into the humanities and best practices for digital marketing.
Sound Like You
“What is with businesspeople trying to sound big? The stiff language, the formal announcements, the artificial friendliness, the legalese, etc. You read this stuff and it sounds like a robot wrote it… This mask of professionalism is a joke. We all know this. Yet small companies still try to emulate it. They think sounding big makes them appear bigger and more “professional”.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be professional, just that the masque of professionalism can be incredibly disingenuous and farcical.
Another aspect related to sounds like you that I sometimes struggle with is avoiding formal terms and acronyms. They can be very effective when working with an internal team or writing for a specific group of people, but when client or sales-prospect facing, it’s important to avoid this.
Out-Teach Your Competition
“Teach and you’ll form a bond you just don’t get from traditional marketing.”
This point is succinct and goes into much greater detail in Joe Pulizzi’s book.
When starting out a business – or even an artistic enterprise – your competition is bound to have more money for marketing themselves, more connections than you, etc. It can be hard to demonstrate credibility when just starting out but you can always start thinking about out-teaching your competition. Most businesses are focused on getting new clients, improving processes, hiring, etc. However, not many are worried about this. In Joe Pulizzi’s book Content Inc., in fact, he gives a story of one company doing this so well that they developed their business to the point where they no longer just installed pools, but started manufacturing them as well.
This new work ethos is in part why I’ve created this online repository of my research and a portfolio of my work.
There’s No Such Thing As An Overnight Sensation
“Those overnight-success stores you’ve heard about? It’s not the whole story.”
If you’re going to do anything and be successful – it’s going to take some time. Have patience, understanding and prepare for the inevitable delays, set backs and failures along the way.
Stop Working at 5pm
“You don’t need more hours; you need better hours.”
I’ve been in a number of working environments where my co-workers complain about having to work late into the night at home in order to complete certain tasks that they’d not completed as if they were proud of it. I’ve never understood why they would want to do this much less take pride for it.
A productive work ethic is a good thing, but the amount of hours you work aren’t nearly as important as what you get done in those hours.
Let me give you an example.
When I was still working as a private teacher, one of my responsibilities was to input individualized comments into a reporting box on an web-based grading application.
However the manner in which the reporting software was designed was poorly thought out and because of this there was a process in place that required three whole days of work for two people to ensure that they were written according to the guidelines.
The results of my thinking creatively? What had taken my colleagues eight hours to complete took me one hour that semester. In total I saved myself a full 24 hours of work simply by working smart instead of hard.
Now that I make my own schedule and work for myself there are some days where I work past five pm, or over the weekend or have a 12 hour day. But this is rare and stems at based because I choose to do so.
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Still not ready to buy the book after all this? Give their Rework Podcast a listen and maybe that’ll help convince you some more
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