I’ve been a fan of John Gruber’s blog for a while, but never really listened to his podcast (The Talk Show) until now. Part of the reason for not listening (to a lot of podcasts, not just his) is when I see that the episodes are usually more than an hour long I just give up – when am I ever going to listen all of that? Turns out though, that if the content is interesting enough you’ll find the time.
And so it is with The Talk Show, that I finally gave it a listen, and found it quite thought provoking. I’m picky so I won’t listen to all the episodes, but this recent one with Jason Fried was interesting to me. I don’t care much about the 37signals rebranding, but I do care about Jason’s approach to business. And I really like his attitude. In the podcast John and Jason talk about doing what’s right for the customer, giving examples of where they’ve made mistakes in the past, and how their focus now is on doing what’s right. This isn’t without costs (often big costs, and there’s examples they give to highlight that) but it’s a philosophy worth embracing early in your business if it is important to you. It is to me, and I found their chit chat inspiring.
In some ways it reminds me of Steve Wozniak (if you don’t know him, he’s the guy known for his decision to have dinner with Michael Kordahi recently) who when asked why he sold a lot of his shares very cheap to staff after they were left out of the Apple float simply said because it was the right thing to do:
I did give a LOT of stock to early employees that had none because it was the right thing to do morally. Steve Wozniak
They also discuss some big examples of how companies don’t get it right eg cable companies screwing over consumers for the short term buck – whilst long term it’s likely the consumer backlash will make way for disruptor to enter the market.
Worth a listen.
(btw a big hurdle with posting blog posts is trying to find an appropriate image to use… you know to make the site look pretty. I’m gonna skip doing that for a while and see if I can at least get back to blogging a little more. Although I was tempted to add a womenlaughingalonewithsalad image just for the point of it.)
