Notes on the video 13 Years of Brutally Honest Business Advice. I reworded and modified things to make sense to me.
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Sell to the rich Don’t sell to the poor because you need to deliver a very large ratio of value to money. Rich people spend more to get less value. Start with the rich and then, eventually when the product/service is so good, sell to the mass market (poor).
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Priorities make problems easy Most entrepreneurs don’t run their business without priorities and so they have make very little progress. Setting good priorities makes the most important problems to solve obvious and helps others get things done.
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Raise your standards You need to be aware of what the best looks like and continue to raise the bar. For example, always hire someone better than you at the job will ensure the company gets better with each new person not worse (Peter Principle).
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Lots of rules means you have dumb people This one is really a sub-item of the previous. A sign you have the wrong people is you have to write down obvious rules for people to follow. You shouldn’t be spending your time doing that and should instead hire better people.
(I dislike the oversimplification of “dumb” vs “smart”. It’s much better to think about this as “skill fit” rather than a judgment of intelligence.)
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Get better not bigger Getting bigger, hiring more, spending more, etc. can cover up many problems. Focus should actually be on getting better and constantly learning and adjusting. You’ll get bigger as a result.
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Let fires burn You need to spend you time on the things that move the business forward and that’s impossible to do if you have to be the one to always solve every problem.
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Brand is the most valuable thing you can own Brand is the durable way to get more out of all your marketing efforts. It’s built over a long period of time by making good associations between ideas and companies. Most of what we see this days is personal brand bootstrapping a company brand.
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Understand inputs and outputs of your business Get to the lowest level of detail about what is holding back the business and fix that then the next thing.
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Stop looking for hacks The problem with hacks is that they work for a time and then they don’t so you have to find the next thing and the next. The best strategies often don’t change like having really valuable content and product.
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The best people cost more but are worth it Good people pay for themselves in the amount of impact they have. There are many arbitrage opportunities with talent but people don’t recognize it because they cost more.
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The obvious thing is the main problem The main problem with the business is often the work you are avoiding not the hundred other things you think you need to do. Usually it’s the thing isn’t good enough.