Rework

If you know me, you've probably heard me talking about Rework before, a lot.

Why? It's the perfect book for a small business team member to learn from. Most of it is pure common sense, but a lot of the time business owners and their employees are stuck under a pile of business procedures that end up crippling the company. Rework helps clear your mind, focus on the important bits and structure your business better, without all the tired old formats that just don't work in today's world.

The First 65 (and the products we're creating) pulls a lot from the key elements that Rework breaks down and re-builds. Every new team member at the company gets a copy to read, it's a perfect introduction to how things are done around here. Hopefully more businesses will start working this way, it creates a great work enviroment and stimulates ideas from every member of the team.

Art-asap

Rework is made up of short, easy to digest essays. Here's a breakdown.

First

  • The new reality

Takedowns

  • Ignore the real world
  • Learning from mistakes is overrated
  • Planning is guessing
  • Why grow?
  • Workaholism
  • Enough with “entrepreneurs”

Go

  • Make a dent in the universe
  • Scratch your own itch
  • Start making something
  • No time is no excuse
  • Draw a line in the sand
  • Mission statement impossible
  • Outside money is Plan Z
  • You need less than you think
  • Start a business, not a start-up
  • Building to flip is building to flop
  • Less mass

Progress

  • Embrace constraints
  • Build half, not half-ass
  • Start at the epicenter
  • Ignore the details early on
  • Making the call is making progress
  • Be a curator
  • Throw less at the problem
  • Focus on what won't change
  • Tone is in your fingers
  • Sell your by-products
  • Launch now

Productivity

  • Illusions of agreement
  • Reasons to quit
  • Interruption is the enemy of productivity
  • Meetings are toxic
  • Good enough is fine
  • Quick wins
  • Don't be a hero
  • Go to sleep
  • Your estimates suck
  • Long lists don't get done
  • Make tiny decisions

Competitors

  • Don't copy
  • Decommoditize your product
  • Pick a fight
  • Underdo your competition
  • Who cares what they’re doing?

Evolution

  • Say no by default
  • Let your customers outgrow you
  • Don’t confuse enthusiasm with priority
  • Be at-home good
  • Don’t write it down

Promotion

  • Welcome obscurity
  • Build an audience
  • Out-teach your competition
  • Emulate chefs
  • Go behind the scenes
  • Nobody likes plastic flowers
  • Press releases are spam
  • Forget about the Wall Street Journal
  • Drug dealers get it right
  • Marketing is not a department
  • The myth of the overnight sensation

Hiring

  • Do it yourself first
  • Hire when it hurts
  • Pass on great people
  • Strangers at a cocktail party
  • Resumes are ridiculous
  • Years of irrelevance
  • Forget about formal education
  • Everybody works
  • Hire managers of one
  • Hire great writers
  • The best are everywhere
  • Test-drive employees

Damage control

  • Own your bad news
  • Speed changes everything
  • How to say you’re sorry
  • Put everyone on the front lines
  • Take a deep breath

Culture

  • You don’t create a culture
  • Decisions are temporary
  • Skip the rock stars
  • They’re not thirteen
  • Send people home at 5:00
  • Don’t scar on the first cut
  • Sound like you
  • Four-letter words
  • ASAP is poison

Conclusion

  • Inspiration is perishable

Now, go get a copy and take out the elements you need to make your business work better.

Unperturbed by conventional wisdom, Jason and David start fresh and rewrite the rules of business. Their approach turns out to be as successful as it is counter-intuitive.