Quotes from Jason Fried

Start by empowering everyone to make decisions on their own. If the company is full of people whom nobody trusts to make decisions without layers of managerial review, then the company is full of the wrong people.

If work is all-consuming, the worker is far more likely to burn out. This is true even if the person loves what he does. Perhaps especially if he loves what he does, since it won't seem like a problem until it's too late.

right—premature hiring is the death of many companies.

Leave the poetry in what you make. When something becomes too polished, it loses its soul. It seems robotic. So talk like you really talk. Reveal things that others are unwilling to discuss. Be upfront about your shortcomings. Show the latest version of what you're working on, even if you're not done yet. It's OK if it's not perfect. You might not seem as professional, but you will seem a lot more genuine.

It's much likelier to breed a culture of overwork if managers and owners are constantly putting in He-Man hours.

There's a beauty to imperfection. This is the essence of the Japanese principle of wabi-sabi.

The new luxury is to shed the shackles of deferred living—to pursue your passions now, while you're still working.

Most people suffering from a lack of motivation will blame themselves first. "Ah, it's because I'm such a procrastinator!" "Why can't I just get myself together?" The truth, more often than not, is that you are not the problem; it's the world you're working in.

You need less than you think

Remote work has already progressed through the first two stages of Gandhi's model for change: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

We don't want to bank all our risk on a small collection of big companies. We don't want to lose 20 percent of our business if one big account goes away.

When you spend time with potential customers, you get to hear about their struggles firsthand. You see their eyes light up with excitement or darken with confusion. You learn things you would never find in a survey, database, or questionnaire. You learn why people buy.

It may be irrational, but if you're local, the client often feels that, if worse comes to worst, they can knock on your door. They 'know where you live.' But when you're remote, they're going to be more suspicious when phone calls go unreturned or emails keep getting 'lost.' Stay on top of communications, and you'll reap the benefits.

Sustained exhaustion is not a rite of passage. It's a mark of stupidity.

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.

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.

If you ask people where they go when they really need to get work done, very few will respond 'the office.' If they do say the office, they'll include a qualifier such as 'super-early in the morning before anyone gets in,' or 'I stay late at night after everyone's left,' or 'I sneak in on the weekend.'

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.

I think that sleep and work are very closely related - not because you can work while you're sleeping and sleep while you're working. That's not really what I mean. I'm talking specifically about the fact that sleep and work are phase-based, or stage-based, events.

A company gets better at the things it practices.

Being a salesperson prepares you for just about everything in business: how to listen, empathize, and persuade; when to back off and when to step in; and, of course, how to close.

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.

A diverse customer base helps insulate you; a few large accounts can leave you vulnerable to their whims.

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.