I knew it!

fuckyeahslightlyamusing:

fuckyeahslightlyamusing:

sofapizza:

straight up, totally redeemed.

]]> http://solipsism.tumblr.com/post/437041872 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:27:26 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik

lookatthisfrakkinggeekster:

(via

lookatthisfrakkinggeekster:

(via juliasegal)

]]> http://solipsism.tumblr.com/post/437041209 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:26:52 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik

thedailywhat:

Tee of the Day, Too: “

thedailywhat:

Tee of the Day, Too: “Van Diagram” by Adam “Apelad” Koford.

If this shirt’s a rockin’, call an ambulance because I am clearly in need of serious medical attention.

[woot.]

]]> http://twitter.com/dominik/statuses/10225988170 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:52:07 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik #sherpagermany]]> #sherpagermany]]> http://twitter.com/dominik/statuses/10225014755 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:28:01 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik http://twitter.com/dominik/statuses/10222798895 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:32:31 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik http://solipsism.tumblr.com/post/436883035 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:22:12 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik
-
- 27. Tatort - Ich werde ein Berliner]]> http://twitter.com/dominik/statuses/10222252640 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:18:35 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik http://twitter.com/dominik/statuses/10219685419 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:08:41 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik http://twitter.com/dominik/statuses/10219249487 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:56:12 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik http://twitter.com/dominik/statuses/10219054283 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:50:13 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik http://i.imgur.com/HLIhf.png #echofon #oauth #ssl]]> http://i.imgur.com/HLIhf.png #echofon #oauth #ssl]]> http://twitter.com/dominik/statuses/10216920461 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:40:36 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik http://bit.ly/9Rp0HC]]> http://bit.ly/9Rp0HC]]> http://solipsism.tumblr.com/post/436657890 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:07:51 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik

thainterwebs:

(via wtfporn)

thainterwebs:

(via wtfporn)

]]> http://feeds.lostfocus.de/~r/Lostfocus/~3/ETUJsFrP6Hk/ Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:00:11 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik 2010 Torrents – Home of the (UNOFFICIAL) SXSW Torrents

Two huge torrents with a total of 1038 songs from SxSW. That's pretty awesome.

2010 Torrents – Home of the (UNOFFICIAL) SXSW Torrents

Two huge torrents with a total of 1038 songs from SxSW. That's pretty awesome.

]]> http://sites.google.com/site/sxswtorrent/ Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:55:50 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik http://twitter.com/dominik/statuses/10215684016 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:53:24 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik http://sites.google.com/site/sxswtorrent/ Awesome.]]> http://sites.google.com/site/sxswtorrent/ Awesome.]]> http://dailybooth.com/dominik/3566030 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:23:42 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik ]]> ]]> http://twitter.com/dominik/statuses/10214547293 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:05:40 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik http://kleinjinx.tumblr.com/post/436842291#comment-38681529 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:39:48 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik http://twitter.com/dominik/statuses/10213902589 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:39:26 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik http://twitter.com/dominik/statuses/10212727247 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:47:53 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik http://solipsism.tumblr.com/post/436504438 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:37:34 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik
- Coco Chanel (via fashionandthecity: classyfabulous: fashionandthecity: classyfabulous: pineappleupsidedown) (via newyorkcanwait) (via tina-fashionista)]]> http://solipsism.tumblr.com/post/435453083 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:05:36 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik

Life is Life

]]>

Life is Life

]]> http://twitter.com/dominik/statuses/10192386726 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:04:08 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik http://blip.fm/~mh2e0]]> http://blip.fm/~mh2e0]]> http://solipsism.tumblr.com/post/435405732 Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:39:30 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik

]]>

]]> http://twitter.com/dominik/statuses/10187481411 Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:55:31 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik http://twitter.com/dominik/statuses/10185153626 Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:51:57 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik http://www.flickr.com/photos/dominik/4416872375/ Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:21:00 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik ]]> ]]> http://www.flickr.com/photos/dominik/4417629070/ Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:17:35 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik ]]> ]]> http://www.lostfocus.de/archives/2010/02/21/turning-japanese/#comment-38602652 Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:16:49 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik http://twitter.com/dominik/statuses/10174623646 Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:16:27 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik http://blip.fm/~mg0lg]]> http://blip.fm/~mg0lg]]> http://twitter.com/dominik/statuses/10174199399 Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:05:56 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik http://twitter.com/dominik/statuses/10174172693 Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:05:16 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik http://blip.fm/~mfzto]]> http://blip.fm/~mfzto]]> http://twitter.com/dominik/statuses/10170805244 Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:39:52 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik http://twitter.com/dominik/statuses/10169228525 Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:55:27 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik http://dailybooth.com/dominik/3547574 Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:22:10 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik ]]> ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/timferriss/~3/55B5NbWKOE8/ Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:07:02 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik
The path to profitability doesn’t need to be complicated. (Photo: El Photopakismo
The path to profitability doesn’t need to be complicated. (Photo: El Photopakismo)

I’ve known the guys at 37Signals for a little while.

I first met Jason Fried at SXSW in 2008, and I then got to know David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) over e-mail and in person last year. On a fundamental level, I think, our philosophies just mesh well.

Comfortably situated in Chicago outside of the “start-up” echo chamber, 37Signals is focused on getting sh*t done instead of chasing the Silicon Valley venture capital death spiral. Financing has it’s place, but it’s a means to an end and shouldn’t be confused with an end.

The end is a profitable business. Now, let’s be clear: there are ways to play the acquisition game (or even financing game) and make millions without ever turning a profit. But don’t let the media fool you–you hear of the few successes because the stories are fun to tell. The thousands of failures that die sad but unspectacular deaths don’t get on the magazine covers.

More than 3,000,000 people worldwide use 37Signals products, including me. I use one of them, Basecamp, for project management, and it rocks in its simplicity. I’m not the only one who thinks so: Basecamp generates millions of dollars in profit every year.

37Signals’ employees–fewer than 20 total–are spread across 8 cities on two continents, and no matter how many rules they break, profit seems to be the end result…

This is part of the reason I was excited to get an advanced copy of Rework, their new book, which I encourage people to think of as an Elements of Style for building profitable businesses in a web-savvy world. Each chapter is 2-5 pages long and delivers their tactics and principles fat-free, without fluff. Just like their business models.

Here are a few excerpts to whet your appetite. Profitability doesn’t need to be elusive. It’s a simple process… if you have the right recipe from the outset.

Why grow?

People ask, “How big is your company?” It’s small talk, but they’re not looking for a small answer. The bigger the number, the more impressive, professional, and powerful you sound. “Wow, nice!” they’ll say if you have a hundred-plus employees. If you’re small, you’ll get an “Oh . . . that’s nice.” The former is meant as a compliment; the latter is said just to be polite.

Why is that? What is it about growth and business? Why is expansion always the goal? What’s the attraction of big besides ego? (You’ll need a better answer than “economies of scale.”) What’s wrong with finding the right size and staying there?

Do we look at Harvard or Oxford and say, “If they’d only expand and branch out and hire thousands more professors and go global and open other campuses all over the world . . . then they’d be great schools.” Of course not. That’s not how we measure the value of these institutions. So why is it the way we measure businesses?

Maybe the right size for your company is five people. Maybe it’s forty. Maybe it’s two hundred. Or maybe it’s just you and a laptop. Don’t make assumptions about how big you should be ahead of time. Grow slow and see what feels right—premature hiring is the death of many companies. And avoid huge growth spurts too—they can cause you to skip right over your appropriate size.

Small is not just a stepping-stone. Small is a great destination in itself.

Have you ever noticed that while small businesses wish they were bigger, big businesses dream about being more agile and flexible? And remember, once you get big, it’s really hard to shrink without firing people, damaging morale, and changing the entire way you do business.

Ramping up doesn’t have to be your goal. And we’re not talking just about the number of employees you have either. It’s also true for expenses, rent, IT infrastructure, furniture, etc. These things don’t just happen to you. You decide whether or not to take them on. And if you do take them on, you’ll be taking on new headaches, too. Lock in lots of expenses and you force yourself into building a complex businesss—one that’s a lot more difficult and stressful to run.

Don’t be insecure about aiming to be a small business. Anyone who runs a business that’s sustainable and profitable, whether it’s big or small, should be proud.

Scratch your own itch

The easiest, most straightforward way to create a great product or service is to make something you want to use. That lets you design what you know—and you’ll figure out immediately whether or not what you’re making is any good.

At 37signals, we build products we need to run our own business. For example, we wanted a way to keep track of whom we talked to, what we said, and when we need to follow up next. So we created Highrise, our contact-management software. There was no need for focus groups, market studies, or middlemen. We had the itch, so we scratched it.

When you build a product or service, you make the call on hundreds of tiny decisions each day. If you’re solving someone else’s problem, you’re constantly stabbing in the dark. When you solve your own problem, the light comes on. You know exactly what the right answer is.

Inventor James Dyson scratched his own itch. While vacuuming his home, he realized his bag vacuum cleaner was constantly losing suction power—dust kept clogging the pores in the bag and blocking the airflow. It wasn’t someone else’s imaginary problem; it was a real one that he experienced firsthand. So he decided to solve the problem and came up with the world’s first cyclonic, bagless vacuum cleaner.

Vic Firth came up with the idea of making a better drumstick while playing timpani for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The sticks he could buy commercially didn’t measure up to the job, so he began making and selling drumsticks from his basement at home. Then one day he dropped a bunch of sticks on the floor and heard all the different pitches. That’s when he began to match up sticks by moisture content, weight, density, and pitch so they were identical pairs. The result became his product’s tag line: “the perfect pair.” Today, Vic Firth’s factory turns out more than 85,000 drumsticks a day and has a 62 percent share in the drumstick market.

Track coach Bill Bowerman decided that his team needed better, lighter running shoes. So he went out to his workshop and poured rubber into the family waffle iron. That’s how Nike’s famous waffle sole was born.

These people scratched their own itch and exposed a huge market of people who needed exactly what they needed. That’s how you should do it too.

When you build what you need, you can also assess the quality of what you make quickly and directly, instead of by proxy.

Mary Kay Wagner, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, knew her skin-care products were great because she used them herself. She got them from a local cosmetologist who sold homemade formulas to patients, relatives, and friends. When the cosmetologist passed away, Wagner bought the formulas from the family. She didn’t need focus groups or studies to know the products were good. She just had to look at her own skin.

Best of all, this “solve your own problem” approach lets you fall in love with what you’re making. You know the problem and the value of its solution intimately. There’s no substitute for that. After all, you’ll (hopefully) be working on this for years to come. Maybe even the rest of your life. It better be something you really care about.

Tone is in your fingers

Guitar gurus say, “Tone is in your fingers.” You can buy the same guitar, effects pedals, and amplifier that Eddie Van Halen uses. But when you play that rig, it’s still going to sound like you.

Likewise, Eddie could plug into a crappy Strat/Pignose setup at a pawn shop, and you’d still be able to recognize that it’s Eddie Van Halen playing. Fancy gear can help, but the truth is your tone comes from you.

It’s tempting for people to obsess over tools instead of what they’re going to do with those tools. You know the type: Designers who use an avalanche of funky typefaces and fancy Photoshop filters but don’t have anything to say. Amateur photographers who want to debate film versus digital endlessly instead of focusing on what actually makes a photograph great.

Many amateur golfers think they need expensive clubs. But it’s the swing that matters, not the club. Give Tiger Woods a set of cheap clubs and he’ll still destroy you.

People use equipment as a crutch. They don’t want to put in the hours on the driving range so they spend a ton in the pro shop. They’re looking for a shortcut. But you just don’t need the best gear in the world to be good. And you definitely don’t need it to get started.

In business, too many people obsess over tools, software tricks, scaling issues, fancy office space, lavish furniture, and other frivolities instead of what really matters. And what really matters is how to actually get customers and make money.

You also see it in people who want to blog, podcast, or shoot videos for their business but get hung up on which tools to use. The content is what matters. You can spend tons on fancy equipment, but if you’ve got nothing to say . . . well, you’ve got nothing to say.

Use whatever you’ve got already or can afford cheaply. Then go. It’s not the gear that matters. It’s playing what you’ve got as well as you can. Your tone is in your fingers.

###

Odds and Ends:

Rework – the first mainstream book by 37Signals
Tim Ferriss on Twitter – Follow my misadventures, experiments, cool findings, and mischief in real-time. It’s fun to watch me stumble.

]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/sethsmainblog/~3/Ye3fk0meGaw/you-rock.html Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:07:00 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik This is deceptive.

You don't rock all the time. No one does. No one is a rock star, superstar, world-changing artist all the time. In fact, it's a self-defeating goal. You can't do it.

No, but you might rock five minutes a day.

Five m [...]]]> This is deceptive.

You don't rock all the time. No one does. No one is a rock star, superstar, world-changing artist all the time. In fact, it's a self-defeating goal. You can't do it.

No, but you might rock five minutes a day.

Five minutes to write a blog post that changes everything, or five minutes to deliver an act of generosity that changes someone. Five minutes to invent a great new feature, or five minutes to teach a groundbreaking skill in a way that no one ever thought of before. Five minutes to tell the truth (or hear the truth).

Five minutes a day you might do exceptional work, remarkable work, work that matters. Five minutes a day you might defeat the lizard brain long enough to stand up and make a difference.

And five minutes of rocking would be enough, because it would be five minutes more than just about anyone else.

]]> http://twitter.com/dominik/statuses/10147919972 Mon, 08 Mar 2010 03:02:04 CET http://lostfocusnet.com/dominik