Everyone has failed, everyone has misspoken, everyone has meant well but done the wrong thing. Your favorite restaurants, cafes and books have all gotten a one-star review along the way. No brand is perfect, no individual can pretend to be either. Perfect can't possibly be the goal, we're left with generous, important and human instead.

The reason business writing is horrible is that people are afraid. Afraid to say what they mean, because they might be criticized for it. Afraid to be misunderstood, to be accused of saying what they didn't mean, because they might be criticized for it.

And it doesn't matter to me whether you're running a coffee shop or you're an intellectual or you're in business or flying hot air balloons. People who can spread ideas, regardless of what those ideas are, win. But consumers, they got way more choices than they used to and way less time.

Making an average pitch to average people, or having an average gala for average people isn't going to scale anymore. You've got to find the people who care. Those people are worth all of your time.

No organization ever created an innovation. People innovate, not companies.

If you think your organization needs a bigger marketing budget, maybe you just need to be less average instead.

It takes three years to be an overnight success, sometimes more.