Home > Work > Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work That Lasts
21 " Customers will not come just because you build it. You have to make that happen and it’s harder than it looks. —Peter Thiel "
― Ryan Holiday , Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work That Lasts
22 " Phil Libin, the cofounder of Evernote, has a quote I like to share with clients: “People [who are] thinking about things other than making the best product never make the best product. "
23 " As infuriating as it may be, we must be rational and fair about our own work. This is difficult considering our conflict of interest—which is to say, the ultimate conflict of interest: We made it. The way to balance that conflict of interest is to bring in people who are objective. "
24 " Every project needs to go through this process. Whether it’s with an editor or a producer or a partner or a group of beta users or just through your own relentless perfectionism—whatever form it takes is up to you. But getting outside voices is crucial. The fact is, most people are so terrified of what an outside voice might say that they forgo opportunities to improve what they are making. Remember: Getting feedback requires humility. It demands that you subordinate your thoughts about your project and your love for it and entertain the idea that someone else might have a valuable thing or two to add. "
25 " Not only should you be testing your project as you create it, you must most seriously test your creation as it begins to resemble a final product. So you know what you have—so you can improve it. So you know what you have—so that you might figure out what to do with it. So you know what you have—so you can adjust your expectations. "
26 " So we ask ourselves: Why are things the way they are? What practices should be questioned and which should remain sound? This allows us to be both exotic and accessible, shocking but not gratuitous, fresh without sacrificing timelessness. "
27 " Ignore what other people are doing. Ignore what’s going on around you. There is no competition. There is no objective benchmark to hit. There is simply the best that you can do—that’s all that matters. "
28 " In the way that a good wine must be aged, or that we let meat marinate for hours in spices and sauce, an idea must be given space to develop. Rushing into things eliminates that space. Another "
29 " Creating is often a solitary experience. Yet work made entirely in isolation is usually doomed to remain lonely. "
30 " No one is entitled to relationships only because their work is genius. Relationships have to be earned, and maintained. "
31 " You can pay for influence the way you can pay for sex, but from what I understand neither is quite the same as when you get it the old-fashioned way. Just as earned media is always better than paid media, cultivating real influence and relationships is far better than paying for eyeballs and fake friends. "
32 " People claim to want to do something that matters, yet they measure themselves against things that don’t, and track their progress not in years but in microseconds. "
33 " I’m alarmed at how many creators gloss over creating. They fritter away their time on Twitter and Facebook—not killing time, but believing that they are building up followers to be the recipients of their unremarkable work. "
34 " The idea that you won’t have to work to sell your product is more than entitled. "
35 " I always prefer to start from a place of reality, not from my own projections and preferences. Humility is clearer-eyed than ego—and that’s important because humility always works harder than ego. "
36 " Ben Horowitz: “There is no silver bullet. . . . No, we’re going to have to use a lot of lead bullets. "
37 " Focusing on smaller, progressive parts of the work also eliminates the tendency to sit on your ass and dream indefinitely. There "
38 " Successfully finding and “scratching” a niche requires asking and answering a question that very few creators seem to do: Who is this thing for? Instead, many creators want to be for everyone . . . and as a result end up being for no one. "
39 " To be great, one must make great work, and making great work is incredibly hard. It must be our primary focus. We must set out, from the beginning, with complete and total commitment to the idea that our best chance of success starts during the creative process. "
40 " Paul Graham explains, “The best way to increase a startup’s growth rate is to make the product so good people recommend it to their friends. "