We must always push back against the allure of complexity.

Just because something can be made, doesn’t mean it should be. Be sure that your intended solution does not become a burden.

Simplicity is the New Currency

As time and attention become scarcer resources, the art of simplicity is becoming more valuable. Less is usually more.

– From The Startup Daily

Marlboro wasn’t marketing to cowboys when it created the Marlboro man campaign. The average Marlboro customer looked nothing like the man in the ads.

Pepsi wasn’t just marketing to teenagers when they were the target of the Pepsi Generation campaign, they were speaking to everyone who wanted to feel young.

The Market is Every Person Who Wants to Feel Like the Target

Don’t try to appeal to your customers by marketing to people just like them. Instead, appeal to the person they want to be.
– From The Startup Daily

Products and services are vulnerable to being commoditized, but businesses that provide unique experiences can charge a premium.

Frame your work as theater, and create magical experiences. Hiring is casting, your processes are the script, your strategy is drama, and the place where you interact with customers is the stage.

Don’t Charge for Products or Services, Charge for Performances

When you are charging for the experience, you can charge relative to the value that you provide, not just the costs of your raw materials.

Experiences are deeply personal, and immune to commoditization.
– From The Startup Daily

If you want to live with fewer regrets, it’s better to blunder forward in the face of uncertainty than to hedge your bets and do nothing.

People Expect to Regret Actions, but they Actually Regret Inaction

Our psychological immune system is better equipped to deal with an excess of courage than an excess of cowardice.

When people look back on their lives, the most common regrets are the relationships they didn’t pursue, the passions they didn’t follow, and the ventures they didn’t start. However, the failures are usually rationalized as learning experiences.

Try the thing you are unsure about. Take a chance, act, and live without regrets.
– The Startup Daily

To find disruptive insights, immerse yourself in the world of your customers. This doesn’t require expensive focus groups or market research consultants.

Innovation Starts By Observing Your Customers and Asking Questions

How and where do they use the current solution? What steps are required? What are their motivations? How are they feeling? Are they using any workarounds? The greatest opportunities are found in the least obvious areas.
– From The Startup Daily

Despite having a nearly perfect memory, Thomas Edison—like many of the world’s most creative geniuses—never went anywhere without a notebook to record his thoughts.

Great ideas are useless if they are forgotten to time. Don’t rely on memory alone to record and organize your ideas, insights, and observations.

Always Carry a Notebook to Capture Your Ideas

Record as many of your thoughts as possible, without censorship, the moment they occur. The very act of writing them down helps solidify your ideas.

Reviewing old notebooks can become one of your greatest sources of inspiration when you are facing new challenges.
– From The Startup Daily

Habits and routines make our lives easier but dull our minds. When we rely on existing thought patterns we operate without original thinking.

Deliberately Breaking Your Routine Stimulates Creative Thinking

Take an indirect route to work, read a book in a new genre, work different hours, or take up a new hobby.

Feeding your brain information and ideas from fresh sources gives you fuel for solving problems.
– From The Startup Daily

Louis Vuitton, Method cleaning products, Patagonia—customers use these brands to tell the world about themselves and their point of view.

Brands that Stand Out Have Made Themselves into Cultural Shorthand for a Set of Values

These brands use every detail and every interaction to reinforce a distinct point of view, and to stand apart from opposing viewpoints.

A strong brand cannot stand for everyone, some people will love people and others will hate it.

If you aren’t sure what your brand stands for, ask yourself “what would you rather go out of business before compromising on?”
– From The Startup Daily

You may not be able to afford to hire the most talented and polished workers, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have the great employees.

When hiring, look for evidence of the candidate’s character, not their skills. A strong work ethic, perseverance, and the ability to think like an owner cannot be learned, but almost everything else can be.

Hire for Attitude, Train Aptitude

Invest the resources you would have spent on high salaries creating training systems that allow your people to grow with your organization. Most companies seriously underestimate what their people would be capable of if their leaders invested in them.

Every act of creation is also an act of destruction. Something must be torn down or cast aside to make way for the new thing.

Pick a Fight, and Channel Your Defiance into Productivity

Pick a fight with the entrenched system, the rules, the way it’s always been done. Harnessed that aggressive energy. Adopt a warrior’s frame of mind and make your work an act of defiance.