Ogilvy’s 10 rules for building and running a business

80 year old David Ogilvy’s advice for building and running a business:

  1. Remember that Abraham Lincoln spoke of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He left out the pursuit of profit.
  2. Remember the old Scottish motto: “Be happy while you’re living, for you are a long time dead.”
  3. If you have to reduce your company’s payroll, don’t fire your people until you have cut your compensation and the compensation of your big-shots.
  4. Define your corporate culture and your principles of management in writing. Don’t delegate this to a committee. Search all the parks in all your cities. You’ll find no statues of committees.
  5. Stop cutting the quality of your products in search of bigger margins. The consumer always notices — and punishes you.
  6. Never spend money on advertising which does not sell.
  7. Bear in mind that the consumer is not a moron. She is your wife. Do not insult her intelligence.

David Ogilvy

Art and pain

“Always move towards pain when making art.”

J.M. Coetzee via pieratt

I wasn’t going to post this. I liked it, but it felt too “tumblr” for my sensible ways. But this morning as I’m editing the book, there’s just one fk’n painful thing – editing this one meandering chapter – and I went to the easier things and edited the rest of the entire book.

Move towards the pain.

Steve Jobs on life, death, heart, intuition

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Jobs

Dan Harmon on how to write good

“First, you need a round hole in your chest that goes all the way through you… Sit or stand in front of paper or a computing device and turn your back to everything, which will incite it to attack you. Everything preys on humanity and goes for the heart, so hold still, arch your back and it should shoot through your hole and onto your keyboard. As it passes, it will be tainted and scattered by the inside rim of whatever you’re made of, which some would call your “voice”but which I call “filth.””

Dan Harmon

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