Mark’s new license plate! Who knew you could get an @ sign on a license plate?

We asked our new payroll service if they could mail paystubs to employees. The company rep’s response:

No, but each stub is stuffed in an envelope and sealed. If you put a stamp on it, it could be mailed easily. That is what most of my clients do, when they payroll reports and envelopes arrive, they just stick a stamp on them and drop em in the mail, pretty easy.

Great tone to that reply. Friendly and personal. And, best of all, it’s a “No, but…” When it comes to customer service, a “No, but you could…” is miles better than just a flat “No.”

Update: Jud from Paychex explains why the stubs are mailed.

Lots of questions in yesterday’s 37signals Live chat about what’s going on with the new version of Getting Real.

So here’s the deal: The book is well underway. First draft done actually, but there’s still plenty of revising to go. (Rewriting is key after all.) We’re drawing ideas from internal conversations, posts here at SvN, presentations we’ve given, Q&A sessions like yesterday’s chat, press coverage (it’s always interesting to see how an objective party tells our story), etc. It’s a great read already and is sure to get better!

The new version is quite different than the original. Most of the content is new and the focus is different too. The first edition was for a web technology audience. This new version broadens the scope to small businesses and entrepreneurs of all kinds. Inventors, restauranteurs, clothing manufacturers, MBA students, IT workers, retailers, designers, artists, crafts makers, and tons of other people will all find value in the book.

(Note: Someone asked yesterday if people who bought the original book will get a free copy of the new one. Due to the volume of new content in this edition, the answer is no. The name may stay the same, but it’s really a different book.)

We’ve hired a literary agent to represent us and hope to finalize a deal with a publisher soon. We’re looking forward to partnering with a company that really gets it and can help bring the book to a mass audience. If you’re an interested publisher, drop Jason a note at jason at 37signals dot com (subject line: Publish Getting Real). We’ll forward your interest on to our agent.

Also, a big shoutout to Seth Godin for his help and advice re: traditional publishers and agents. His advice for authors is a great read too. (Also worth reading for aspiring authors: Secrets of book publishing I wish I had known by Mark Hurst.)

We’ll keep you posted as things progress. Stay tuned.

Even the Giants Can Learn to Think Small [NY Times] talks about how smaller teams are more agile and creative. The message: Keep teams small, give employees freedom and a sense of ownership, don’t focus too much on the competition, create a culture of experimentation, and use technology to enable remote teams.

By breaking huge business units into smaller, nimbler teams, companies stand a chance of rekindling the creative spark that got them rolling in the first place. After all, “small is the new big,” as Seth Godin, a prolific blogger and author, puts it in his 2006 book of that name.

It is a point of view shared by a diverse group of business leaders, management consultants and information technology experts. According to Philip Rosedale, founder and chairman of Linden Lab, the company that created and operates the virtual world of Second Life, companies seeking to foster creativity must find ways to break apart the bureaucratic hierarchies now smothering it. Optimizing a company for creativity involves helping individual employees of every rank develop an entrepreneurial spirit. In Mr. Rosedale’s view, the most creative work environment is one where every employee, regardless of job title, has enough freedom to develop that sense of personal initiative.

“Most companies erroneously focus on competition and on differentiation from their competitors,” he contends. “The business opportunity lies in turning creativity into productivity.”

Decentralizing the hierarchy opens the door to creativity, giving workers the leeway they need to make significant decisions without first jumping through executive management hoops. “The idea,” he says, “is to enable a creative environment where there’s a good degree of experimentation.”

Optimizing a company for creativity also optimizes it for small-group collaboration. And that opens the door to new information technology that lets team members work cooperatively from anywhere on the planet. “That’s the revolution that’s making all of this possible,” Mr. Rosedale says.

It’s great to see these ideas picking up steam and getting out there in the mainstream press.

“We get it. But our clients would never understand.” It’s a frequent rebuttal to our Getting Real philosophy.

Read between the lines and there’s a disturbing undercurrent to that message. It’s really saying, “I get it but these other people could never understand. They don’t have the wisdom and the understanding that I do.” It’s like the way some LA or NYC people sound when they talk down about the masses in the flyover states. It’s insulting.

The truth is folks can usually handle a lot more than these wizards think. Are their clients really imbeciles who couldn’t possibly understand why they’re foregoing a spec to build something real ASAP? I doubt it.

A lot of times people are just stuck in patterns. Process gets done a certain way because that’s the way it’s been done in the past. Sometimes the arteries of work get clogged up simply because no one stops it from happening. Inertia happens.

Set a new course
Instead of looking down at your clients, look for ways to convince, educate, and guide them. That’s part of your job.

Start off by agreeing on your common goal: to create the best final product possible. Agreeing on a common goal is an old Dale Carnegie technique that works well because it gets everyone to realize they’re on the same team and fighting for the same thing. You start getting “yes” immediately.

Then steer them in what you think is the best direction. Take the initiative. Set expectations. Explain why you want to do it a new way. Tell them how you think the project should go.

Will this approach lose you the job? If it does, maybe it’s a bad fit in the first place.

But you may be surprised by the results. This kind of effort shows you’re someone who genuinely cares about the final outcome. And a lot of clients would love to work with someone like that. They’d love for you to tell them there’s a better way. They’d love to know that you want to do more than just phone it in.

Don’t assume ignorance. People live up to the expectations placed upon them. If you assume intelligence and flexibility from your clients, you just might get it.

Charlie Rose talks with David Chang, chef/owner of Momofuku Noodle Bar, Momofuku Ko and Momofuku Ssäm Bar in New York City.

Some choice bits excerpted below.

He describes what you don’t get at his restaurant:

We wanted to strip away all the nonsense. Do we really need a sommelier? Do we really need all the other accoutrements that you see at a 3 star or 4 star restaurant? Our goal was not to be a three star. Our goal was to serve the best food we can. Our goal was to try and make the best food in New York City regardless of anything else, regardless of the environment.

On how Henry David Thoreau has influenced him:

There’s a great line in Walden: “I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestioned ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.” And that’s always stuck with me. That basically means if you really try and you want to do something, then go for broke. At the restaurant, that’s something we go for.

On how he feels about vegetarians:

I respect them, just not in our restaurants…You don’t go to a BBQ restaurant and be like, “I want everything vegetarian.” You don’t go to a sushi restaurant and say, “Please remove the fish, I just want the rice.” Our restaurants are what we serve. And if you don’t like it you can go eat somewhere else.

On avoiding the fear of losing what you have:

I want to be sure we don’t lose that recklessness. And I think that was the catalyst for a lot of the things that happened when we first started. No one cared about us. When you have nothing to lose, you can be as reckless as possible.

Related
David Chang’s recipe for sustaining food/business mojo [SvN]
David Chang Is So Stressed Out [Serious Eats]

“Fast Food Nation” was revealing. “Kitchen Confidential” was juicy. But wow, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” is something else. The best book on food I’ve ever read.

In the book, Pollan shoots a pig, hunts for mushrooms, slaughters a chicken, works as a farmhand, examines industrial and local farms in person, explains how we’ve come to be dominated by corn, shows how grass is the key to life on a farm, explores the connection between oil and food, and much more (PDF of the introduction and first chapter).

But as I was reading it, something kept gnawing at me: how terrible the title of the book is. “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.” Yawn.

“The Omnivore’s Dilemma” part sounds like a math problem. Plus, omnivore is a word that most people won’t even get. And “A Natural History of Four Meals” isn’t any better. Sounds like a biology textbook.

The book is thrilling to read, intensely scary, and a real call to arms. So why is the title so lame? (Sure, it sold well, but that’s because the content is so strong. I’d argue those sales came despite the title, not because of it.)

Moving to simple and strong
Perhaps Pollan felt similarly, because the title of his latest book packs a lot more of a punch: “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.” Simple and strong.

He even comes up with a short, tight call to action: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” No way to miss the point there. He explains it in this article.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy.

Great to see a title and call to action that are as clear and cogent as the rest of what Pollan writes.

There’s a lesson here for all writers: Spend as much time on your titles, subtitles, headlines, summaries, and calls to action as you do on the bulk of your content. If you don’t hook readers upfront, they may never dive in and get to the rest of your message.

I can’t get over how ugly my new running shoes are (click for larger versions):

So comfortable inside, why so ugly outside? Unfortunately, few of the other choices were much better. Apparently sneakers must be FUTURISTIC and have 593 different elements in order to prove they were DESIGNED.

So I went ahead and bought them anyway. Function over form + I didn’t want to spend all day shopping for shoes that I’m just going to use when I run. Too bad. I’d prefer the minimalist look of a pair of Stan Smiths over this overproduced crap any day.

Hmm…I do want to run away from them every time I look down. So maybe it’s a motivational technique.

Thsrs

Thsrs helps you get briefer.

If only there were a service that helps with the struggle of rewriting a 146-letter message to fit in a 140 character limit. Well now there is: Thsrs, the thesaurus that only gives you synonyms shorter than the word you’re looking up. Just enter one of the longer words in your message, and Thsrs will suggest shorter words to use instead.

Posterous

Posterous, a Tumblr-like service, lets you post things online fast using email.

You can attach any type of file and we’ll post it along with the text of your email. We’ll do smarter things for photos, MP3’s, documents and video links.

A couple of Getting Realish ideas spotted in Best Life magazine:

Greg Gianforte is the author of “Bootstrapping Your Business: Start and Grow a Successful Company With Almost No Money.” In Follow Your Dream, he advises throwing out your five-year plan and focusing on building something now instead.

Gianforte describes how to build a company from sales rather than enlisting professional financiers. The secret is to stop sweating your five-year plan and start moving the product from day one. If your business idea requires more money than you have at hand, then shrink the idea.

“An entrepreneur getting started doesn’t need a $100 million idea,” says Gianforte. “A $1 million idea is enough. The beauty of a $1 million idea is that big companies don’t care about it. Find a niche within a niche.”

The same issue of the magazine also includes Mark Cuban’s Three Rules for Building a Company. He writes, “Do everything you can to avoid taking money.”

Sweat equity is the best equity. “Taking money from someone else kills more start-ups than anything else does. Do everything you can to avoid taking money. If you must, your best prospects are potential customers. You have something they want, so if they invest in you, it can be a win-win situation.”

Related Getting Real essays:
Don’t Do Dead Documents
Race to Running Software
Fix Time and Budget, Flex Scope
Fund Yourself