Jason Fried Quotes

To do great work, you need to feel that you're making a difference. That you're putting a meaningful dent in the universe. That you are part of something important.

If you’re not trusted to work remotely, why are you trusted to do anything at all? If you’re held in such low regard, why are you able to talk to customers, write copy for an ad, design the next product, assess insurance claims, or do tax returns?

Teach and you'll form a bond you just don't get from traditional marketing tactics. Buying people's attention with a magazine or online banner ad is one thing. Earning their loyalty by teaching them forms a whole different connection. They'll trust you more. They'll respect you more. Even if they don't use your product, they can still be your fans.

Remember, there’s no such thing as a one-hour meeting. If you’re in a room with five people for an hour, it’s a five-hour meeting.

If you're opening a hot dog stand, you could worry about the condiments, the cart, the name, the decoration. But the first thing you should worry aout is the hot dog. The hot dogs are the epicenter. Everything else is secondary.

You can absolutely run a great business without a single goal. You don’t need something fake to do something real. And if you must have a goal, how about just staying in business? Or serving your customers well? Or being a delightful place to work? Just because these goals are harder to quantify does not make them any less important.

When you are new at something, you need to start creating.

Audi takes on Lexus’s automatic parking systems with ads that say Audi drivers know how to park their own cars.

Just like work expands to fill the time available, work expands to fill the team available. Small, short projects quickly become big, long projects when too many people are there to work on them.

The best companies aren’t families. They’re supporters of families. Allies of families. They’re there to provide healthy, fulfilling work environments so that when workers shut their laptops at a reasonable hour, they’re the best husbands, wives, parents, siblings, and children they can be.

Companies that live in such a zero-sum world don’t “earn market share” from a competitor, they “conquer the market.” They don’t just serve their customers, they “capture” them. They “target” customers, employ a sales “force,” hire “headhunters” to find new talent, pick their “battles,” and make a “killing.

The future is a major abstraction, riddled with a million vibrating variables you can’t control. The best information you’ll ever have about a decision is at the moment of execution.

In thirty years’ time, as technology moves forward even further, people are going to look back and wonder why offices ever existed. — RICHARD BRANSON, FOUNDER OF VIRGIN GROUP

What you do is what matters, not what you think or say or plan.

The longer it takes to develop, the less likely it is to launch.