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Do Less

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Uri Levanon
Uri Levanon

Marketing guru and agent of change Seth Godin writes that for your company to do more, sometimes you need to do less! Stop trying to be all things to all people (or customers), and focus (in your life and in your work) on your core strengths. Your business (and probably your sanity) are likely to improve. By Seth Godin a ChangeThis manifest

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ChangeThis tap the ESC [ ESC ] key to exit about this i manifesto email this U manifesto Do Less Years ago, when I was starting my first company, I believed in two things: “Survival is Success” and “Take the best project you can get, but take a project.” I figured that if I was always busy and I managed to avoid wiping out, sooner or later everything would work out. continued > GO AHEAD AND PRINT THIS. This manifesto is toner-friendly: the backgrounds wonʼt print on paper and are only visible on-screen to aid by Seth Godin readability. | iss. 2.06 | i | U | |+| f X Not using Adobe Acrobat? Please go to HTTP://CHANGETHIS.COM/CONTENT/READER NEXT
ChangeThis Most organizations, from tiny to huge, operate from the same perspective. As you add employees, there’s pressure to keep everyone occupied, to be busy. Of course, once you’re busy, there’s a tremendous need to hire even more people, which continues the cycle. If your goal is to be big, thereʼs no doubt that taking every gig you can makes sense. Pricing for the masses, building the biggest factory and running as fast as you can is the very best way to get big. And if big equals successful, youʼre done. Many of us have realized, though, that big doesnʼt equal successful. If success (for you) is a decent (or indecent) wage plus the time to do really good work and enjoy both your job and your family, then perhaps youʼre trying too hard and doing too much. Perhaps you need to be a lot pickier in what you do and for who you do it. A real estate developer I just met told me that he does one new investment a year. Itʼs not unusual for his competition to do ten or a hundred deals in the same period of time. What GO AHEAD AND PRINT Dan told me, though, really resonated. “In any given year, we look at a thousand deals. One THIS. This manifesto hundred of them are pretty good. One is great.” By only doing the great deals, Dan is able to is toner-friendly: make far more money than he would if he did them all. He can cherry pick because his goal the backgrounds isnʼt volume. wonʼt print on paper and are only visible on-screen to aid readability. | iss. 2.06 | i | U | |+| h f 2/8 X
ChangeThis Or consider the architect who designs just a few major buildings a year. Obviously he has to dig deep to do work of a high enough quality to earn these commissions. But by not clut- tering his life and his reputation with a string of low-budget boring projects, he actually increases his chances of getting great projects in the future. How many newly-minted college grads take the first job thatʼs “good enough?” A good enough job gets you busy right away, but it also puts you on a path to a lifetime of good enough jobs. Investing (not spending, investing) a month or a year in high profile internships could change your career forever. TAKE A LOOK AT YOUR CLIENT LIST. What would happen if you fired half of your clients? If you fired the customers who pay late, give you a hard time, have you work on low-leverage projects and are rarely the source of positive recommendations, would your business improve? Even in our dicey economy, itʼs pretty easy to answer that one with a ʻyes.ʼ WHAT IF YOU FIRED HALF YOUR WORKFORCE? GO AHEAD AND PRINT Give the very best people a 50% raise and help the rest find a job in which they can really THIS. This manifesto is toner-friendly: Unless you make a commodity like oil or billiard balls, itʼs not clear that selling more thrive. the backgroundsmore to an ever larger audience is the best way to reach the success you seek. When and your overhead plummets, the pressure to take on the wrong jobs with the wrong staff disap- wonʼt print on paper and are onlypears. Youʼre free to pick the projects that make you happy. visible on-screen to aid readability. | iss. 2.06 | i | U | |+| h f 3/8 X
ChangeThis PROJECTS. A funny word to have used thirty years ago, but one that makes complete sense today. Thirty years ago, we were still fine-tuning our factories. Thirty years ago, everything was part of the assembly line. Today, though, weʼre in the project business. Just about all of us work on proj- ects, and the one thing we give very little thought to is which projects should we do? “If I was always busy and I managed to avoid wiping out, sooner or later everything would work out.” When I was a kid, the buffets in town proclaimed, “all you can eat!” Now they say, “all you care to eat.” Thereʼs a big difference. You only get to eat dinner once, and most of us are smart enough not to eat more just because itʼs free. So, as you head through the line, the question you need to ask yourself is, “would I rather eat this…or that?” You canʼt have everything. Same thingʼs true with our business life. We canʼt have everything. Weʼve tried and it doesnʼt work. What weʼve discovered, though, is that leaving off that last business project not only makes our profits go up, it also can dramatically improve the rest of our life. GO AHEAD AND PRINT THIS. This manifesto is toner-friendly: the backgrounds wonʼt print on paper and are only visible on-screen to aid readability. | iss. 2.06 | i | U | |+| h f 4/8 X Be first in line to get our newest manifestos. Sign up for our NEWSLETTER.
ChangeThis info ABOUT THE AUTHOR Seth Godin is a bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change. In Free Prize Inside, his fol- low up to the best selling marketing book of 2003, Purple Cow, Seth helps you make your product READ THE BOOK remarkable with soft innovations. You need to make each of your employees idea champions so they can find the Free Prize. Godin is author of six books that have been bestsellers around the world and changed the way people think about marketing, change and work. Seth is a renowned speaker as well. He was recently chosen as one of 21 Speakers for the Next Century by Successful Meetings and is consistently rated among the very best speakers by the audiences he addresses. He holds an MBA from Stanford and was called “the Ultimate Entrepreneur for the Information Age” by BusinessWeek. Seth Godinʼs Free Prize Inside: The Next Big DOWNLOAD THIS Marketing Idea is out This manifesto is available from http://changethis.com/2.DoLess in bookstores now. For more information on this SEND THIS and his other books, Click here to pass along a copy of this manifesto to others. click here. http://changethis.com/2.DoLess/email U GO SUBSCRIBE Learn about our latest manifestos as soon as they are available. Sign up for our free newsletter and GO AHEAD AND PRINT be notified by email. http://changethis.com/subscribe GO THIS. This manifesto is toner-friendly: the backgrounds wonʼt print on paper and are only visible on-screen to aid readability. z | MORE f LAST PAGE READ | iss. 2.06 | i | U | |+| h f 5/8 X
ChangeThis info WHAT YOU CAN DO You are given the unlimited right to print this manifesto and to distribute it electronically (via email, your website, or any other means). You can print out pages and put them in your favorite coffee shopʼs windows or your doctorʼs waiting room. You can transcribe the authorʼs words onto the side- walk, or you can hand out copies to everyone you meet. You may not alter this manifesto in any way, though, and you may not charge for it. NAVIGATION & USER TIPS Move around this manifesto by using your keyboard arrow keys or click on the right arrow ( f ) for the next page and the left arrow ( h ). To send this by email, just click on . U KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS PC MAC Zoom in (Larger view) [ CTL ] [ + ] [#] [+] Zoom out [ CTL ] [ - ] [#] [-] Full screen/Normal screen view [ CTL ] [ L ] [#] [L] BORN ON DATE This document was created on 23 August 2004 and is based on the best information available at that time. To check for updates, please click here to visit http://changethis.com/2.DoLess. GO AHEAD AND PRINT THIS. This manifesto is toner-friendly: the backgrounds wonʼt print on paper and are only visible on-screen to aid readability. z | MORE f LAST PAGE READ | iss. 2.06 | i | U | |+| h f 6/8 X
ChangeThis info COPYRIGHT INFO The copyright in this work belongs to the author, who is solely responsible for the content. Please direct content feedback or permissions questions to the author: http://sethgodin.typepad.com This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License. SOME RIGHTS RESERVED creative To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0 or send a cc commons letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA. ABOUT CHANGETHIS ChangeThis is a vehicle, not a publisher. We make it easy for big ideas to spread. While the authors we work with are responsible for their own work, they donʼt necessarily agree with everything available in ChangeThis format. But you knew that already. GO AHEAD AND PRINT THIS. This manifesto is toner-friendly: the backgrounds wonʼt print on paper and are only visible on-screen to aid readability. z LAST PAGE READ | iss. 2.06 | i | U | |+| h 7/8 X

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Do Less

  • 1. ChangeThis tap the ESC [ ESC ] key to exit about this i manifesto email this U manifesto Do Less Years ago, when I was starting my first company, I believed in two things: “Survival is Success” and “Take the best project you can get, but take a project.” I figured that if I was always busy and I managed to avoid wiping out, sooner or later everything would work out. continued > GO AHEAD AND PRINT THIS. This manifesto is toner-friendly: the backgrounds wonʼt print on paper and are only visible on-screen to aid by Seth Godin readability. | iss. 2.06 | i | U | |+| f X Not using Adobe Acrobat? Please go to HTTP://CHANGETHIS.COM/CONTENT/READER NEXT
  • 2. ChangeThis Most organizations, from tiny to huge, operate from the same perspective. As you add employees, there’s pressure to keep everyone occupied, to be busy. Of course, once you’re busy, there’s a tremendous need to hire even more people, which continues the cycle. If your goal is to be big, thereʼs no doubt that taking every gig you can makes sense. Pricing for the masses, building the biggest factory and running as fast as you can is the very best way to get big. And if big equals successful, youʼre done. Many of us have realized, though, that big doesnʼt equal successful. If success (for you) is a decent (or indecent) wage plus the time to do really good work and enjoy both your job and your family, then perhaps youʼre trying too hard and doing too much. Perhaps you need to be a lot pickier in what you do and for who you do it. A real estate developer I just met told me that he does one new investment a year. Itʼs not unusual for his competition to do ten or a hundred deals in the same period of time. What GO AHEAD AND PRINT Dan told me, though, really resonated. “In any given year, we look at a thousand deals. One THIS. This manifesto hundred of them are pretty good. One is great.” By only doing the great deals, Dan is able to is toner-friendly: make far more money than he would if he did them all. He can cherry pick because his goal the backgrounds isnʼt volume. wonʼt print on paper and are only visible on-screen to aid readability. | iss. 2.06 | i | U | |+| h f 2/8 X
  • 3. ChangeThis Or consider the architect who designs just a few major buildings a year. Obviously he has to dig deep to do work of a high enough quality to earn these commissions. But by not clut- tering his life and his reputation with a string of low-budget boring projects, he actually increases his chances of getting great projects in the future. How many newly-minted college grads take the first job thatʼs “good enough?” A good enough job gets you busy right away, but it also puts you on a path to a lifetime of good enough jobs. Investing (not spending, investing) a month or a year in high profile internships could change your career forever. TAKE A LOOK AT YOUR CLIENT LIST. What would happen if you fired half of your clients? If you fired the customers who pay late, give you a hard time, have you work on low-leverage projects and are rarely the source of positive recommendations, would your business improve? Even in our dicey economy, itʼs pretty easy to answer that one with a ʻyes.ʼ WHAT IF YOU FIRED HALF YOUR WORKFORCE? GO AHEAD AND PRINT Give the very best people a 50% raise and help the rest find a job in which they can really THIS. This manifesto is toner-friendly: Unless you make a commodity like oil or billiard balls, itʼs not clear that selling more thrive. the backgroundsmore to an ever larger audience is the best way to reach the success you seek. When and your overhead plummets, the pressure to take on the wrong jobs with the wrong staff disap- wonʼt print on paper and are onlypears. Youʼre free to pick the projects that make you happy. visible on-screen to aid readability. | iss. 2.06 | i | U | |+| h f 3/8 X
  • 4. ChangeThis PROJECTS. A funny word to have used thirty years ago, but one that makes complete sense today. Thirty years ago, we were still fine-tuning our factories. Thirty years ago, everything was part of the assembly line. Today, though, weʼre in the project business. Just about all of us work on proj- ects, and the one thing we give very little thought to is which projects should we do? “If I was always busy and I managed to avoid wiping out, sooner or later everything would work out.” When I was a kid, the buffets in town proclaimed, “all you can eat!” Now they say, “all you care to eat.” Thereʼs a big difference. You only get to eat dinner once, and most of us are smart enough not to eat more just because itʼs free. So, as you head through the line, the question you need to ask yourself is, “would I rather eat this…or that?” You canʼt have everything. Same thingʼs true with our business life. We canʼt have everything. Weʼve tried and it doesnʼt work. What weʼve discovered, though, is that leaving off that last business project not only makes our profits go up, it also can dramatically improve the rest of our life. GO AHEAD AND PRINT THIS. This manifesto is toner-friendly: the backgrounds wonʼt print on paper and are only visible on-screen to aid readability. | iss. 2.06 | i | U | |+| h f 4/8 X Be first in line to get our newest manifestos. Sign up for our NEWSLETTER.
  • 5. ChangeThis info ABOUT THE AUTHOR Seth Godin is a bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change. In Free Prize Inside, his fol- low up to the best selling marketing book of 2003, Purple Cow, Seth helps you make your product READ THE BOOK remarkable with soft innovations. You need to make each of your employees idea champions so they can find the Free Prize. Godin is author of six books that have been bestsellers around the world and changed the way people think about marketing, change and work. Seth is a renowned speaker as well. He was recently chosen as one of 21 Speakers for the Next Century by Successful Meetings and is consistently rated among the very best speakers by the audiences he addresses. He holds an MBA from Stanford and was called “the Ultimate Entrepreneur for the Information Age” by BusinessWeek. Seth Godinʼs Free Prize Inside: The Next Big DOWNLOAD THIS Marketing Idea is out This manifesto is available from http://changethis.com/2.DoLess in bookstores now. For more information on this SEND THIS and his other books, Click here to pass along a copy of this manifesto to others. click here. http://changethis.com/2.DoLess/email U GO SUBSCRIBE Learn about our latest manifestos as soon as they are available. Sign up for our free newsletter and GO AHEAD AND PRINT be notified by email. http://changethis.com/subscribe GO THIS. This manifesto is toner-friendly: the backgrounds wonʼt print on paper and are only visible on-screen to aid readability. z | MORE f LAST PAGE READ | iss. 2.06 | i | U | |+| h f 5/8 X
  • 6. ChangeThis info WHAT YOU CAN DO You are given the unlimited right to print this manifesto and to distribute it electronically (via email, your website, or any other means). You can print out pages and put them in your favorite coffee shopʼs windows or your doctorʼs waiting room. You can transcribe the authorʼs words onto the side- walk, or you can hand out copies to everyone you meet. You may not alter this manifesto in any way, though, and you may not charge for it. NAVIGATION & USER TIPS Move around this manifesto by using your keyboard arrow keys or click on the right arrow ( f ) for the next page and the left arrow ( h ). To send this by email, just click on . U KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS PC MAC Zoom in (Larger view) [ CTL ] [ + ] [#] [+] Zoom out [ CTL ] [ - ] [#] [-] Full screen/Normal screen view [ CTL ] [ L ] [#] [L] BORN ON DATE This document was created on 23 August 2004 and is based on the best information available at that time. To check for updates, please click here to visit http://changethis.com/2.DoLess. GO AHEAD AND PRINT THIS. This manifesto is toner-friendly: the backgrounds wonʼt print on paper and are only visible on-screen to aid readability. z | MORE f LAST PAGE READ | iss. 2.06 | i | U | |+| h f 6/8 X
  • 7. ChangeThis info COPYRIGHT INFO The copyright in this work belongs to the author, who is solely responsible for the content. Please direct content feedback or permissions questions to the author: http://sethgodin.typepad.com This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License. SOME RIGHTS RESERVED creative To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0 or send a cc commons letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA. ABOUT CHANGETHIS ChangeThis is a vehicle, not a publisher. We make it easy for big ideas to spread. While the authors we work with are responsible for their own work, they donʼt necessarily agree with everything available in ChangeThis format. But you knew that already. GO AHEAD AND PRINT THIS. This manifesto is toner-friendly: the backgrounds wonʼt print on paper and are only visible on-screen to aid readability. z LAST PAGE READ | iss. 2.06 | i | U | |+| h 7/8 X