A Joosr Guide to… ReWork by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

Don’t grow for the sake of growing—only expand if it’s the right move for your business.

If you can solve a problem that you have experienced personally, then you have a viable business model.

Try not to become addicted to work, and do not run your business based on the misguided principle that more hours will equal increased revenue. Rather, you should look for places to cut back on your hours, and ensure that you take regular breaks and vacations. If a project becomes too consuming, take a step back before you end up turning your passions and exciting ideas into things that you resent and dread, or that detract from the rest of your life. Keep your working week to 40 hours maximum, and you will ensure that the quality of your work is the best that it can be.

37signals understand the importance of a healthy work–life balance. They recognize that workaholics aren’t heroes, or even desirable employees. The fact is that when you are tired from working all the time, you simply aren’t functioning at your optimum. You may put in lots of hours, but the quality of those hours won’t be as high as the hours of a well-rested employee. This is why no one on the 37signals team works more than 40 hours a week, and will regularly work fewer hours than this if they can complete all of their required tasks quickly and efficiently.

37signals believe that the smaller a company is, the more agile it is, which enables it to make crucial changes when necessary. To them, this is simple physics. When any object increases in mass, it requires more force and effort to change its movement or direction. In the same way, a large company can quickly become impossible to control, and doesn’t allow for meaningful changes to be made in the short term. Besides, the more people there are working for a company, the smaller each individual’s split of the profit becomes.

It is generally believed that as the size of a company increases, so does its value and levels of success. However, it is possible to continue to increase profits without raising your overheads, or hiring any new members of staff. 37signals are incredibly successful, able to build and produce great products to make millions of dollars every year, and yet by 2012, after eight years of trading, they had still had kept things small, with just 32 members of staff on the team.

Don’t just make statements and declarations about what your company plans to be and what it plans to do. It’s not about what you say you will do; it’s about actually doing it. Be the business you want to be, work by the ideals you hold true, provide the quality of service that will exceed your customers’ expectations, and you will have a business that is uniquely you, and more attractive to these customers than anything else out there.

Avoid spending too much time planning every little detail of your business; it will only become a reality when you start acting on your concepts. Begin with an honest idea: something that interests you and provides value to the world, and that solves problems for yourself and others. And as you establish your company, be sure to stay true to “you.” Don’t craft an insincere identity with grandiose mission statements. Instead, simply be authentic in all that you do: this honesty will appeal to customers and guarantee their loyalty.

Don’t just make statements and declarations about what your company plans to be and what it plans to do. It’s not about what you say you will do; it’s about actually doing it. Be the business you want to be, work by the ideals you hold true, provide the quality of service that will exceed your customers’ expectations, and you will have a business that is uniquely you, and more attractive to these customers than anything else out there.

As you make money, you can grow and build your business in the moment