Top 117 Quotes & Sayings by Jason Fried - Page 2

Statistics rarely drive me. Feelings, intuition, and gut instinct do.

If you tell your story well, it can help attract customers; it can help people understand your business better, and you are more approachable as a business and a company.

If you could taste words, most corporate websites, brochures, and sales materials would remind you of stale, soggy rice cakes: nearly calorie free, devoid of nutrition, and completely unsatisfying.

I casually advise a few young companies, and I'm always surprised when I see them overthinking simple problems, adding too much structure too early, and trying to get formal too soon. Start-ups should embrace their scrappiness, not rush to toss it aside.

I'm not sure a lot of companies know their story, or can explain why they exist and who they are, without just spewing just corporate speech.

I know plenty of entrepreneurs who are numbers first. They tend to be highly analytical people, and before they pull the trigger, all the numbers have to line up just right.

It's easy to forget, as a leader, that when employees don't get the wide view, not only does the point of their work escape them, but it can also lead to real frustration. It's hard to feel pride and ownership when you don't understand where things are going.

I used to think that deadlines should be ignored until the product was ready: that they were a nuisance, a hurdle in front of quality, a forced measure to get something out the door for the good of the schedule, not the customer.

I've run into a lot of companies that invent positions for great people just so they don't get away. But hiring people when you don't have real work for them is insulting to them and hurtful to you.

Who you work with is even more important than who you hang out with because you spend a lot more time with your workmates than your friends.

When it comes to making decisions, I'm not what you'd call a numbers guy.

If you care about your product, you should care just as much about how you describe it.

Deadlines are great for customers because having one means they get a product, not just a promise that someday they'll get a product.

Many of the things we do at Basecamp would be considered unusual at most companies: paying for employees' hobbies, allowing our team to work from anywhere, even footing the bill for fresh fruits and veggies in our staff members' homes.

A lot of people relate leadership to formalities. They believe that leadership is about being professional and strong and always right and being a booming voice. I just don't buy that. I think that leadership is a soft skill; it's a people skill.

A company gets better at the things it practices.

A large user base helps shield us from things we can't control. You can spend years catering to a major corporation, for example, only to see your contact there move on.

You have to live with your decisions every day. Why live with one you're uneasy with? 'Because it'll make you money' is a common reply. But I don't think that's good enough.

People pulling 16-hour days on a regular basis are exhausted. They're just too tired to notice that their work has suffered because of it.

If an employee can demonstrate results produced in a way that the company didn't think possible, then a new way forward can begin to take shape.

Bottom line: If you can't spare some time to give your employees the chance to wow you, you'll never get the best from them.

We like to bully deadlines. Pick on them; make fun of them; even spit on them sometimes. But what a terrible thing to do. Deadlines are actually our best friends.

A computer doesn't have a mind of its own - it needs someone else's to function.

I think what really people want is just a few things done really, really well. And if you think about ever day of your life, the things you really appreciate aren't the complicated things. They're the simple things that work just the way you expect them to.

I think the story is important in every business. Why do you exist, why are you here, why is your product different, why should I pay attention, why should I care?

When time, money, and results are on the line, it's easy for tension to build.

Even companies that do big business online struggle to be noticed by Google users. The Web, after all, is home to some 120 million Internet domains and tens of billions of indexed pages. But every company, big or small, can draw more Google traffic by using search-engine optimization - SEO, for short.

We've never much liked the idea of charging a participation tax, a phrase we coined to represent what it feels like when a software company charges you more money for each additional user. Participation taxes discourage usage across a company.

I live in Chicago but own some property up in Wisconsin.

The owner of a company with supertight margins - say, a restaurant, retailer, or producer of commodity goods - would be a fool not to keep a close eye on the numbers. But when I make big decisions, numbers are seldom, if ever, the tiebreaker.

Unlike a goldfish, a computer can't really do anything without you telling it exactly what you want it to do.

In almost every case, cutting things back is a way of favoring what is left.

What's bad, boring, and barely read all over? Business writing.

I'm a designer, but I rely on programmers to bring my ideas to life. By learning to code myself, I think I can make things easier for all of us. Similarly, I want to be able to build things on my own without having to bother a programmer.

Whenever I speak at a conference, I try to catch a few of the other presentations. I tend to stand in the back and listen, observe, and get a general sense of the room.

Give your employees a shot at showing the company a new way, and provide the room for them to chalk up a few small victories. Once they've proved that their idea can work on a limited basis, they can begin to scale it up.

Hiring people is like making friends. Pick good ones, and they'll enrich your life. Make bad choices, and they'll bring you down.

The risk of relying on a handful of customers is not just financial. Your product also is at risk when you're at the mercy of a few big spenders. When any one customer pays you significantly more than the others, your product inevitably ends up catering mostly to that customer's specific needs.

Lots of business owners spend their lives trying to land the whale - the single, massive, brand-name account that will fatten the top line and bestow instant credibility. But big customers make me nervous.

The design is done when the problem goes away.

No is easier to do. Yes is easier to say.

How can you expect someone to get a good day's work if they are interrupted all day?

Customers don't just buy a product - they switch from something else. And customers don't just leave a product - they switch to something else

Projections are just bullshit. They're just guesses.

The only two people who can give you real feedback about your product are people who just purchased it and people who have just canceled.

You don't need to win every medal to be successful.

What matters is: Are you profitable? Are you building something great? Are you taking care of your people? Are you treating your customers well?

Before you dismiss a beginner's work, remember how much you sucked when you started. You probably sucked worse, actually.

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

Every time something slips through the cracks, the cracks get bigger.

[Facebook and Twitter] aren't the real problems in the office. The real problems are what I like to call the M&Ms, the Managers and the Meetings.

The best feature of a product should really be the customer service.

"Simple" is a tricky word, it can mean a lot of things. To us, it just means clear. That doesn't always mean total reduction, or minimalism - sometimes, to make things clearer, you have to add a step.

Unless you are a fortune-teller, long-term business planning is a fantasy.

"Easy" is a word that's used to describe other people's jobs.

We also get thousands of suggestions. The default answer is always no.

It's simple until you make it complicated.