Jason Fried and Erik Qualman anchored a packed morning at the Day Stage for book readings at the South by Southwest Conference in Austin this morning.
Fried, CEO and co-founder of 37 Signals, likes to dish out straight talk on business. So much so, he wrote a book about it, called ReWork. He highlighted some his favorite lessons from the book, including:
- Planning is just guessing: So just call it strategic guessing, financial guessing, etc.
- Interruption is different than collaboration: Don’t let your workday become work chunks by cluttering the schedule with too many meetings and conference calls and idle chit chat. Creative people need dedicated time to be productive.
- Don’t overwork, get some sleep: Fried says there’s too much emphasis, in startups and the corporate world, about the martyrdom of working yourself to death. On the contrary, getting sleep and rest is productive because it makes you a better worker.
- If you’re building a hot dog stand, you have to get the hot dog right: Focus on the core product or service. If you make a good enough hot dog, you don’t have to serve buns, or mustard, or ketchup. But you have to make a good hot dog.
- There is no such thing a startup: Every company needs to adhere to the basic physics of business, no matter what stage. Make more money than you spend. And make a product people will pay for.
Qualman is the author of Socialnomics which is an Amazon bestseller and also creator of the viral video below. He described a concept called the social media escalator, which is how companies should think about social media.
1. Listen first: monitor what is being said about you, product, brand
2. Interact: Join the conversation
3. React: Answer questions, fix problems.
4. Sell: Don’t do this first! (Which is what most companies do wrong.)
Qualman says social media is “everything in your company” and should be part of every division. If the CEO is not getting a listening report every day, the CEO should be really upset. And if you’re not a CEO, you should start providing this listening report to the CEO.
Show this video at your next staff meeting …
Note: I’ll be on the Day Stage talking about my book, Journalism Next, Tuesday at 10 a.m. and would love to see you there. http://my.sxsw.com/events/event/757
