don’t be discouraged

The thing that no one ever tells you about your calling is that it’s boring. Oh, everything is interesting if you’re interested… shut up. Yes, it will be exhilarating and fun and fluid and and natural and meaningful. It will also be tedious. It will hurt. You will encounter obstacle after obstacle until you feel like you’re in a video game with... See more

Do you have a “number one principle” that guides you through the ups and downs of running a business?

While it’s not a principle, I often think of the parable of the Taoist farmer. The Taoist farmer has one horse, and the horse runs off. The villagers lament his misfortune, and he replies “We’ll see.” The horse returns with four more horses, and

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I tell a lot of entrepreneurs who don’t have traction, I miss those times. Yes, it’s exciting to have traction, to have a company that has huge scale. But the biggest leaps you ever get are when you’re small. Another way of saying it is: Your product changes less the bigger you get because there’s more customers, more blowback, more systems, more

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The legendary designer Paula Scher said, “I still [a little over 5 decades into her career] make things that are pretty awful. It’s part of the process. You have periods of tremendous productivity and other periods where you’re fallow. The fallow periods are really important because that’s where you’re figuring something it out. You have to work... See more