Buy this book immediately.
And I hate business books. They’re always written by someone who’s been successful, telling you if you just do it their way, you’ll be rich too. They don’t account for your personality, they certainly don’t account for your industry. They just give you hope. That if you read this book your prayers will be answered, you’ll get rich!
"Rework" isn’t supportive, it’s oftentimes negative. It’s telling you the way everybody else says to do it is the wrong path. You’ll get the idea just by reading the chapter titles:
"Learning From Mistakes Is Overrated"
"Planning Is Guessing".
"Why Grow"
Everybody’s trying to get rich, by coming up with an idea that someone else will fund and the public will ultimately buy, on the stock exchange, allowing you to cash out and lie on the beach.
Is lying on the beach that much fun?
Not for someone who’s built a business, who’s sweated and nurtured an idea into reality. That’s what turns them on, not leisure.
Not that you can’t get rich by investing your own funds and staying private. But is that the goal, beaucoup bucks?
Our society is so screwed up. We alternately revere and excoriate bankers. We envy their money. College students are dying to work in finance. And the bankers themselves? They all want to be artists. Yup, if you don’t know a banker who’s a secret guitar player, who wants to play in a band, you don’t know any. They’ve subjugated their desire in pursuit of money. They refuse to flower, to find their own way, to ask themselves the hard questions, to take the road less-traveled, they’d rather just play it safe, doing it the way their parents told them to.
"Rework" says first and foremost you need to make a dent in the universe:
"To do great work, you need to feel that you’re making a difference. That you’re putting a meaningful dent in the universe. That you’re part of something important."
This doesn’t mean you’ve got to find the cure for cancer. It’s just that your efforts need to feel valuable. You want customers to say, ‘This makes my life better.’ You want to feel that if you stopped doing what you do, people would notice.
You should feel an urgency about this too. You don’t have forever. This is your life’s work. Do you want to build just another me-too product or do you want to shake things up?"
Once upon a time, Wall Street built America. Now it only makes money…for its inhabitants, oftentimes screwing the rest of us in the process. A dent is being made, that’s for sure, but it’s in America’s wallet.
But even more importantly, "Rework" says to "Scratch your own itch":
"The easiest, most straightforward way to create a great product or service is to make something you want to use. That lets you design what you know – and you’ll figure out immediately whether or not what you’re making is any good."
Napster was successful because Shawn Fanning wanted to use it. He had a desire to trade files amongst his friends. And his passion was also driven by a desire to provide this service to others, who couldn’t even conceive of P2P file-sharing until he invented it.
Needless to say, Napster was a gargantuan success. It was simple to use, and it delivered not only what was in your record store, but much more, including concerts/live takes/studio alternate takes that you never heard, but wanted to listen to.
What did the music industry do?
Shut it down.
Rights holders still don’t get it. As long as they try to protect their revenue stream by withholding innovative ways to listen to music, they’re doomed. Because this doesn’t help people, this doesn’t put a dent in the universe. And they can’t create something desirable because they’re too removed from the end user, they don’t know what he wants. If you’re rich and get all your music for free anyway, why should you worry about whether the public has access to the history of recorded music at a cheap price?
This is also why so many music startups have failed. The creators wanted to get paid, they didn’t really care about getting the music to listeners or helping musicians. And people could tell. ReverbNation provides a service where it’ll scrape the Web and tell you the age, social networks and other information of those on bands’ mailing lists. Privacy be damned, we’ve got to make money! That’s a doomed plan.Â
As for Rhapsody and Napster, they’ve got lousy interfaces…they broke the rule, they didn’t create what they wanted, everybody wants usability, isn’t that Apple rule number one? It isn’t about including everything, just the necessary thing.
The starting point for too many of today’s entrepreneurs, and "Rework" hates that moniker, is the wrong place. The motivation is wrong, and all the basics of business are thrown out the window… What is the road to profit? Don’t spend more than you make… Â
What we hate about bands today is they don’t speak to us. This is the main crime of SiriusXM. It’s made for a theoretical listener who doesn’t exist. One who likes bogus bumpers and sunny presentation of patter you already know or is irrelevant all the while playing the same damn tracks over and over again. I’m a subscriber, I’ve already heard them! How about making stations for me!
But that would be too risky.
I’d like to sit Scott Greenstein down and make him listen to the jive talk on SiriusXM. I’d like to see him smile and say he likes it. But he doesn’t! Mel Karmazin cares about the bottom line, not the listeners, which is why subscriptions barely tick up. It’s not about the price so much as creating a desirable service that people want to listen to!
But that’s not reading "Rework". Every page, you’re nodding your head saying "That’s right!" It’s like finally finding a friend you can connect with, one who knows a little bit more than you, who will challenge you, make you think, help you choose the correct path and inspire you to do your best work.
P.S. "Draw a line in the sand":
"As you get going, keep in mind why you’re doing what you’re doing. Great businesses have a point of view, not just a product or service. You have to believe in something. You need to have a backbone. You need to know what you’re willing to fight for. And then you need to show the world.
A strong stand is how you attract superfans. They point to you and defend you. And they spread the word further, wider and more passionately than any advertising ever could.
Strong opinions aren’t free. You’ll turn some people off. They’ll accuse you of being arrogant and aloof. That’s life."
Amen.
Isn’t that the essence of rock stardom? Having enough rough edges that you hook the audience? Rock stars of yore stood for something, they were hated by many, but loved by more than enough to insure huge success. Once upon a time, Bon Jovi was a renegade. Then he played it safe. Those who remember when will still go to the show, but no one wants to hear the band’s new music… Selling out and going country?
As for GaGa, people hate her because she’s successful, but what does she stand for? Perez delineates her outsider status, but wouldn’t it be better to come up on stage without the costumes and say I’m not the prettiest girl in the world, but I’ve got talent, and that’s enough?
P.P.S. "Standing for something isn’t just about writing it down. It’s about believing it and living it."
Once upon a time, people believed Vincent Furnier was Alice Cooper. When he started playing golf and spewing establishment politics, his hits dried up.
If your goal is to make it so you can hang with the fat cat bankers on their private planes, you’re screwed. Once an outsider, always an outsider. The establishment can come to you, but you shouldn’t go to them. Otherwise, word will come out how you whored yourself out for their benefit, and that you just want to separate yourself from your fans. Metallica puts fans first. Do you see James Hetfield at the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute Ball? He may fly private, but it’s on his dime, he earned it. You believe Hetfield is still that angry, passionate, insightful outsider guy, which is why Metallica can still sell tickets.
P.P.P.S. "The problem comes when you postpone decisions in the hope that a perfect answer will come to you later. It won’t. You’re as likely to make a great call today as you are tomorrow."
Indecision leads to paralysis. You’re trying to get it so right that you do nothing at all. Both artists and labels are victims. You have a big hit, you’re so intimidated that you take forever on your next project and it ends up overlabored and uninspired. As for labels…without a solution to the Internet, they ignored it. So, to quote my buddy Jay Frank: "Music companies are still transitioning from CDs to digital downloads, while the consumer is transitioning from digital downloads to cloud-based streaming.":
