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ReWork Summary and Review

by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson

Has ReWork by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson been sitting on your
reading list? Pick up the key ideas in the book with this quick summary.

Founding your own business has never been easier than today. If you start small, you
need far less time and resources than you imagine.

First, test the waters: don’t quit your day job to slave 100-hour weeks, but rather
gauge your enthusiasm by squeezing in a few hours each week to work on your idea.
You don’t need to take on crippling amounts of debt either; just use whatever facilities
and equipment you have at your disposal or can easily afford. Only use external
investment as a last resort, as it will not only dilute your stake in the idea but the
process of looking for funding is time-consuming and distracting. In most cases, all you
need is a laptop and an idea to get started; everything else is peripheral to your
success anyway.

When starting your company, focus all your efforts on building the core of your
business. Without this core, your business cannot function. For example, hotdogs are
the core of a hotdog cart operation. The core should be something you think will be
stable in time. Amazon’s core isn’t only about books; it’s about fast shipping,
affordable prices and a great selection. Publishing fads come and go, but these are
things people will always be willing to pay for.

Once your core is ready, launch immediately. Don’t wait for every aspect of the
business to be fully complete. You can work out the details later. When 37signals
launched its Basecamp product, they could not even bill customers yet. But with the
monthly billing cycle, they knew they had four weeks to fix the issue. Just get started
and wing it.

You need less than you think to start your own company – launch as soon as the core
of your business is ready.

ReWork Key Idea #1: Make a stand for something you

care about.

The only way you can attain the sense of urgency and devotion that running a
successful company requires is by doing something that matters to you. If you’re going
to do something, make it something you can be proud of.

Some people start their business with an exit in mind from day one. This is the
equivalent of entering a relationship with the aim of breaking up – absurd. Just like a
relationship, running a business should be based on commitment and passion rather
than the willingness to sell out at any moment.

Making a stand for something that is important to you is also a great way to attract
loyal followers and fans. Consider Vinnie’s Sub Shop in Chicago: they stop selling
sandwiches in the afternoon because the bread is no longer as fresh as it was in the
morning. The extra income they could earn in the afternoon would not make up for
the loss of pride they would suffer from selling mediocre sandwiches. Their customers
love this devotion to freshness.

Once you have a stand, a great way to emphasize it is to pick a fight with an existing
competitor. If you run a small coffee house that you see as a haven for individualists,
position yourself as the anti-Starbucks. Having an enemy will provide you with instant
positioning in the customer’s mind and a great story to tell.

Do not, however, let your competitors dictate your own strategy. If your immediate
goal is to copy the iPhone 5 or to come up with a response to it, you are doomed to
always be one step behind your competition. Focus on what you’re doing, not on what
others have done.

Make a stand for something you care about.

ReWork Key Idea #2: Make your product inimitable so

that you can share everything you know.

If your company is successful, others will try to copy it. Your only defense is to make
your product inimitable by injecting it with what is unique about you.

For example, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is so obsessed with customer service that he
decided to make it the guiding ethos of his company. While competing shoe stores can
sell the same sneakers as Zappos, they cannot imitate this utter devotion to good
customer service.

A great way to find your passion is to make a product or service that you yourself
would love to use. For example, when track coach Bill Bowerman wanted lighter
running shoes for his team, he poured rubber into his family’s waffle iron, inventing
the famous Nike waffle sole.

Usually, people expect great things from products they buy but are disappointed at
the actual performance delivered. Your product should be the opposite: make it so
simple and easy-to-use that people will love it even more than they expected and tell
their friends about it, too. If you accomplish this, you can sell your product like a drug
dealer: give people a taste for free, knowing they will happily come back for more.

Once you have a product that is unique and keeps customers coming back, you can
share everything you know without giving away any secrets that would create
imitators. Just as great chefs can promote themselves by publishing cookbooks with
their prized recipes, you too can promote your company by sharing your valuable
experiences and specialized knowledge openly.

Better yet, teach people with how-to guides, courses and videos! Most companies –
especially big ones – are so secretive that you can gain a real competitive advantage
by actively teaching people about things you’ve learned.

Make your product inimitable so that you can share everything you know.

ReWork Key Idea #3: Relish the good sides of being

small, but don’t forget you are running a business.

Many small start-ups long for mass and greater recognition, but bigger is not always
better. Consider elite schools like Harvard and Cambridge. Do you think they aim to
expand their campuses all over the world, educating hundreds of thousands of people
annually? Unlikely. Instead, they are comfortable being the size they are, as should
you.

For example, having less mass and being off the media radar allows you to experiment
with your business without potential screw-ups being publicized. Just like Broadway
musicals are first tested in smaller cities before reaching New York, you too should
take advantage of your obscurity in the beginning to experiment with different ideas
and processes.

Being small also allows you to keep your entire team on the frontline of the business,
interacting with customers firsthand and hearing their requirements and feedback. A
complex hierarchy can muffle that feedback and slow you down. When everyone is
responsible for customer satisfaction, you can respond to any problems quickly, which
is essential for effective customer service.

Nevertheless, being small to begin with does not mean you should forget that you’re
running a business. Many start-ups live in a make-believe land where they happily
spend investors’ money without worrying about profitability. Such companies are not
really businesses but merely glorified hobbies of their founders. If you want to build a
successful business, you should have a clear path to profitability in mind from the very
start.

Relish the good sides of being small, but don’t forget you are running a business.

ReWork Key Idea #4: Less is more – start saying no and

keep your product lean.

When chef Gordon Ramsay fixes ailing restaurants in his TV show, Kitchen
Nightmares, he always starts the process the same way: by cutting out around two
thirds of the menu items.

Similarly, when you run into problems with your product, consider cutting features
from it. If you want to make something great, you need to chisel away stuff that is
merely good. In fact, embrace your constraints. Just like Ernest Hemingway wrote
Nobel-winning fiction with very sparse language, you too can make a great product or
service with very few features.

If your competition offers a product with lots of features, don’t try to one-up them by
offering everything they do plus more. Instead, offer less features, making your
product simpler and easier to use. Add value by deciding what not to sell. Think about
it: great art galleries don’t display every painting in the world but rather a select few.
You too must cut out the garbage and personally vouch for whatever is left.

Keeping your product or service simple is not easy, though. As you gain more and
more customers, you’ll start getting more and more requests to develop the product
further, both from users and from within your own team.

Never overreact to these requests by immediately modifying your product and adding
new features as requested. If you do, your product will rapidly become
unrecognizable, and probably scare away new customers since the changes have been
catered to the wishes of existing ones.

Say no to even the best-sounding ideas at first. If a customer request is truly

important, it will keep coming up so often that you can’t ignore it.

Less is more – start saying no and keep your product lean.

ReWork Key Idea #5: Don’t emulate big corporations in

your marketing and communications – be honest,
personal and nimble.

There’s nothing wrong with having communications that reflect the true size of your
company. Be proud that your small size lets you communicate frankly, contrary to the
meaningless jargon-filled press releases of big corporations. For example, don’t talk
about how “transparency is a corner stone of your communications strategy,” when
you could just say you’re honest.

Advertising and active marketing are expensive ways to connect with customers.
Instead, build an audience by sharing information that they value and willingly come
back for. This way you will get their attention without paying a dime.

Remember that in a small organization, marketing is everyone’s responsibility. Every

email, phone call, blog post and social media update constitutes marketing and can
deepen your bond with customers. In fact, why not give customers a behind-the-
scenes view of your company, so they can get to know you and your employees.

When you do strive for actual press coverage, go for niche rather than mass media. An
article in a well-targeted small magazine or blog will create much more website traffic
and sales than a story in a well-known newspaper. This also allows you to approach
journalists with personalized calls or notes rather than with mass press releases.

The bond you form with customers will inevitably endure some rough weather as well,
and being a straightforward communicator means being frank about your
shortcomings and imperfections too. No one likes companies that try to sweep
problems under the rug. If there’s bad news to be told, skip the pseudo-apologies in
corporate lingo such as “We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused
you.” Instead, think about what kind of apology you would like to hear as a customer.

Don’t emulate big corporations in your marketing and communications – be honest,

personal and nimble.

ReWork Key Idea #6: Create an environment where

people manage themselves and communicate with
each other honestly.

If you treat your team like children, they will act accordingly, and you will need to
spend half your time managing them and making decisions on their behalf. Your team
will quickly turn into non-thinkers and non-doers, and end up costing you a lot of time
and effort while accomplishing very little.

What you need are employees who can manage themselves, and such individuals only
thrive in working environments where they are given trust, responsibility and
autonomy.

One defining characteristic of a good environment is directness in communication.

Avoid abstractions and long-winded, high-level explanations. Get real, and show your
team exactly what you mean. Don’t sit in meeting rooms discussing problems but go to
the problem sites themselves to get a grip on what’s wrong.

Criticism should be equally honest. If your team is too large and unfamiliar with each
other, you will find that the discussion does not flow freely. You need frank, honest
communication within your team so that bad ideas are criticized when they should be.

Finally, there are certain words you should avoid when communicating within your
team. Consider a situation where you’re facing a seemingly impossible task, and
someone belittlingly says to you “We can’t survive without this; it should be easy for
you to do.” It doesn’t exactly leave a lot of room for discussion, does it? Abrasive,
value-laden words like need, must, only and can’t imply judgment about the realities of
someone’s situation and can rapidly obliterate any hope of a fruitful discussion.

Also, stop using the word “ASAP” entirely when asking someone for something. It
suffers from inflation and merely makes other, non-ASAP requests seem less urgent.

Create an environment where people manage themselves and communicate with

each other honestly.

ReWork Key Idea #7: Don’t over-plan – stay agile with

quick and flexible decisions.

As a small company, one of the key advantages you have over your larger competitors
is your ability to make quick decisions without getting bogged down in bureaucracy.
Start saying, “Let’s make a decision,” instead of, “Let’s think about it.” Don’t look for a
perfect solution; get to good enough quickly and keep moving.

Don’t over-analyze or over-plan. Unless you have a crystal ball, estimating and
planning are basically guesswork anyway. If you start assuming your plans are correct
and following them blindly, you lose your ability to improvise, which is downright
dangerous.

Instead, just wing it. Don’t make decisions far in advance but rather on the spot. Think
about things that affect you this week, not next year. Small, reversible decisions that
work for the time-being are much easier to make than big, life-changing ones where
you have to worry about long-term consequences.

Similarly, don’t make wide-ranging estimates like, “This one-year project will cost us
about $1 million.” If you want to have any semblance of accuracy, chop your estimates
into more manageable bits, like weeks rather than years. The impact of being wrong
will also be far smaller this way.

Finally, when you’re trying to make a decision, don’t be daunted by what might go
wrong. There are always possible downsides to any decision but you can always deal
with them when they actually happen. (Most never will.)

Don’t over-plan – stay agile with quick and flexible decisions.

ReWork Key Idea #8: Productivity doesn’t follow from

long hours, but rather from focused work and quick
wins.

Many people equate productivity with working long hours, when actually the opposite
is true. The best employees have busy lives outside of work so they work hard to leave
at five o’clock. Workaholics who stay late can even hurt the overall productivity of an
organization by making non-workaholics feel guilty and less motivated.

The way to maintain high productivity at work starts by stripping away interruptions
that break people’s concentration. Ensure your team has some designated time during
the day or week when there are no interruptions.

The worst kind of interruption, of course, is a meeting. A one-hour meeting of ten

people will in fact cost at least ten hours of aggregated working time. In some rare
cases this may be warranted, but often meetings lack goals, agendas and any
connection to actual work. In short, they only generate talk, not action.

Another enemy of productivity is perfectionism. Getting bogged down in complex

problems and trying to devise perfect solutions for them can consume weeks’ worth
of effort, when in fact a quick fix would often be fine. To really be productive, go for
solutions where you achieve the maximum effectiveness with minimal effort. “Good
enough” is often better than “perfect.”

One way to encourage this non-perfectionism is to chop large projects and tasks into
small chunks and to-do lists. This not only makes complex endeavors more
manageable but also provides more causes to celebrate along the way as minor
milestones are reached. Such quick wins help sustain momentum and motivation.

Productivity doesn’t follow from long hours, but rather from focused work and
quick wins.

ReWork Key Idea #9: Hire people only when absolutely

necessary, and forget about resumes – trust your
instincts.

Some companies are addicted to hiring people. They find someone great and decide to
hire her, even without a specific job or title in mind. This is where trouble starts.

When you hire someone, it should only be to solve an acute problem that is causing
your company immense pain. Keeping your team lean for as long as possible will force
you to adopt time-saving practices and an efficiency ethos, whereas hiring
unnecessary people, no matter how great they are, will just lead to frustration and the
creation of unimportant, artificial work to keep them busy.

You might worry about missing out on “once-in-a-lifetime” hires, which might be a
legitimate concern if your hiring pool is small. But if you are willing to hire employees
from across the globe, you’ll always be able to find more great people. Almost anyone
can work online these days, so the geographical location of your employees is basically
irrelevant.

When you do end up hiring someone, ignore the established recruitment doctrine of
analyzing resumes, grade point averages and years of experience. Instead, trust your
instincts and concentrate on what they have actually learned to do thanks to their
past experience.

Finally, test-drive your employees. No amount of interviewing will show you how a
person will actually perform on the job, but giving them a mini-project to work on will
let you judge them by their actions, rather than their words. BMW even went as far as
to build a fake assembly line where recruiters could watch prospective employees in
action. To better facilitate this on-the-job testing, always hire people to do jobs that
you yourself have done at some point or another. This will also help you to manage
them later on.

Hire people only when absolutely necessary, and forget about resumes – trust your
instincts.

In Review: ReWork Book Summary

The key message in this book:

Starting and running a company is far easier today than ever before. To build a
successful business, you must inject your own uniqueness into your product and
embrace the benefits of being small. Build a great working environment by
emphasizing trust, independence and focus.

The questions this book answered:

In this summary of ReWork by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson,How can you
start your own business immediately?

You need less than you think to start your own company – launch as soon as the
core of your business is ready.
Make a stand for something you care about.
Make your product inimitable so that you can share everything you know.

How can you use your small size to your advantage?

Relish the good sides of being small, but don’t forget you are running a business.
Less is more – start saying no and keep your product lean.
Don’t emulate big corporations in your marketing and communications – be
honest, personal and nimble.

What is the new way of building and running a business?

Create an environment where people manage themselves and communicate

with each other honestly.
Don’t over-plan – stay agile with quick and flexible decisions.
Productivity doesn’t stem from long hours, but rather from focused work and
quick wins.
Hire people only when absolutely necessary, and forget about resumes – trust
your instincts.

If you liked this book summary, also check out:

Purpose

Work ethic

Vulnerability

Happiness

Overcoming anxiety
: