At first when you start a company, everything's gonna feel like a mess and it really should. It should feel like everyday there's a new problem, and what you're doing is fundamentally triaging.

Basically this is what you want - a high performance machine that idiots can run.

It's actually a good thing if you do reference checks on somebody and half the people you call say they are a micromanager and the other half say they actually give me a lot of responsibility. That's a feature not a bug.

The job of an editor is to ensure a consistent voice.

Force yourself to simplify every initiative, every product, every marketing, everything you do.

The first thing that editor does is they take out a red pen, or nowadays you go online, and they start striking things. Basically eliminating things, the biggest task of an editor is to simplify, simplify, simplify and that usually means omitting things.

You can build the most important companies in history with a very simple to describe concept. You can market products in less than 50 characters. There is no reason why you can't build your company the same way. So force yourself to simplify every initiative, every product, every marketing, everything you do. Basically take out that red and start eliminating stuff.