This is where I share my ideas, inspiration & thoughts. Generally though I'm just the Creator of Rockstar Awesomeness and this tumblog is further proof of that.
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“Marketing is the art of making people pay attention to you without looking desperate – it’s hard.”
- Zee Yang, on growing their websites traffic from 1k to 35k
I absolutely love this quote as it really resounds with my own thinking in terms of marketing. I believe in being every so slightly pushy in terms of any marketing strategy, whilst still being respectful to your audience and extremely sensitive towards adding value and preventing yourself from being spammy.
“I said, ‘I have to reinvent myself. Why not buy one of these rich pick-and-shovel mines and mechanize it?’
By 1983, I had Brazil’s first alluvial mechanized gold mine running in the Amazon jungle. I underestimated the weather, technical conditions, diseases, logistics—but ultimately the mine was so rich, it was idiot-proof because it survived all my mistakes.”
- Eike Batista, on his journey to become one of the wealthiest people in the world.
Unless your business earns revenue while you are sleeping, it won’t scale.
- Mark Maunder, on The Sleep Test.
“Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?”
Ouch. When he puts it that way, how many of us are really doing a significant thing in our jobs?
“…you need to do what’s right for you, not what’s right for everyone.”
You guys know me: I generally do what I think is best; irrespective of what trends / others dictate. So I love this post by John in which he explains why you should do things that are right for you; not because it makes sense for other businesses.
“But we’re just not critical enough. One person farts and the others start cheering about how good it smells. What ever happened to saying what you really think?”
Can’t say that I disagree with Tim much here… I’ve often felt that cliques are very much alive & well online, which tends to result in circle jerking.
I wouldn’t necessarily say that I’m being 100% objective in this regard, as I’m probably more “friendly” in my opinions to friends as well. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t think that Tim is being spot-on here. I think being 100% true & objective all the time is a challenge that all of us should take on; irrespective of how difficult that will obviously be at times… 
“Fantasy world is thinking that everyone has the ability and the access, the know how or even the desire to upgrade their browser.”
Andy Clarke seems to think we live in a fantasy world.
As indicated by the above quote (which I *love*), Noah Stokes tends to disagree a little.
Me? I’m happy to leave the coding, the browser testing and these type of back-and-forth-going-nowhere-slowly discussions to you guys.
Two friends were at a party held at the mansion of a billionaire. One said, “Wow! Look at this place! This guy has everything!” The other said, “Yes, but I have something he’ll never have: enough.”
This is a truly amazing blog post and in my opinion someone with this kind of mindset, has realized what it means to be really wealthy (beyond money & materialistic possessions).
Don’t get me wrong: I’m very much an ambitious capitalist, but I too feel that there’s more to being successful in business, than chasing bottom lines (hence the reason I’ve helped create The Rockstar Foundation). And from Derek’s post (and a quick calculation), you’ll see that he too is still earning more than enough from the trust he’s set up and he definitely lives comfortably.
But for me, there’s a balance in terms of being ambitious, being profitable and not chasing only the worldly things. Giving back is one of the most rewarding things one can do. Read Derek’s post again if that is not yet making enough sense…
Running my first business with employees, it was a real effort to learn how to delegate. Everyone knows that feeling: “They’re not doing it as good as me. Here – I’ll do it myself.”
Learning to work & play nice with others has definitely been my biggest challenge ever since I decided to start up my own businesses. Whilst I consider myself a good team-player, I also know I have an intense personality when it comes to working and hitting challenges; so I’ve had to learn how to curb that “enthusiasm” and deliver them in more digestible chunks when working within a team.
As Derek has also rightly pointed out: when team members fail to deliver on tasks; there’s a 99% chance that the fault lies with the manager and not the subordinate. As managers / owners, the buck stops with us; so if we take our fingers off the pulse (and trust things will still happen), we need to realize that there’s a risk that everything won’t be completed or won’t be on par with your quality expectations.
Hence… Trust, but verify.
Because outliers are so far outside the norm, standard rules don’t apply. This “outlier principle” – that extreme success is not due to simple, controllable factors – explains the contradictions above.
Absolutely incredible post about how it is effectively impossible to explain why & how phenomenal businesses are indeed phenomenal. We receive so much contradictory advice every day – as Dharmesh points out in his article – that it’s not really possible to copy another companies’ success in exactly the same way.
I think ultimately it comes doing to creating your own, unique, mashed-up strategy based on all the experience & knowledge that is shared online by successful people. Only in this way, will it be possible to take what you think is the best bits of advice suited to the way you’d like to run your business.
What do you think? How do we figure out how we’re gonna be the next big thing?
Further Reading: Why you shouldn’t copy us or anyone else