3 practical business tips from folks at Basecamp

Basecamp is a company driven by strong business values and courage. It's a bootstrapped company with a personality and a point of view and has 100K+ paying customers. They have consistently been doing amazing work for last 18 years. They have written some amazing business books and have been very vocal about their approach.

I have been a fan of Basecamp, the company, for a long time. Here are 3 pieces of advice from them that I use often in my daily life.

1. Build a lever - Jason Fried

If you want to make a big change, the best way to start is by finding your leverage. Levers are used to moving heavy objects with much smaller force. You can apply the same in your business or career.

(Image Source - https://m.signalvnoise.com/building-a-lever-7607ea9a7aee)

For example - For a company not used to remote working, experimenting with remote working can be met with significant resistance. So if you want to convince your boss that it’s worth the risk, you have to start small. Remember, you don’t have the leverage yet — you haven’t shown any victories.

So what I often recommend people do is ask their boss for a single afternoon a month where they can work from home. Take the first Thursday afternoon of the month. You leave at lunch and work the rest of the day at home. Prove that the sky isn’t
falling. Prove that you can get your work done without physical supervision or proximity to your co-workers. Better yet, show you get even more done at home than you do at the office.

Prove it. And once you have, you’ve built a lever. It’s still small, but it’s better than no lever at all. And now you can use that tiny lever to move your boss a bit further than you could before.

You can read the related post in details here.

2. Pick a fight - David Heinemeier Hansson

'Rework' a book written by Basecamp team mentions an interesting idea of "Picking a fight". Picking a fight essentially means you believe and stand for something. It's an aligning force and it could be a differentiator between you and your competitor!

If your competitors suck, just say it aloud. People like to align themselves with ideas/opinions that they can relate to, those who agree with you will rally to your side and will be your follower.

For example, Dunkin' Donuts likes to position itself as the anti-Starbucks. Its ads mock Starbucks for using "Fritalian" terms instead of small, medium, and large. Another Dunkin' campaign is centered on a taste test in which it beat Starbucks. There's even a site called DunkinBeatStarbucks.com where visitors can send e-cards with statements like "Friends don't let friends drink Starbucks." - Source ('Rework')

This idea of "picking a fight" is clearly demonstrated in Basecamp's product philosophy (Make Opinionated Software). It has worked wonders for them, it should for you too. Take a stand!

3. Write well, Passionately! - Jason Fried

Being a programmer, I ignored this advice for a while and suffered. I have learned it the hard way how critical it actually is.

You have an amazing product but have been struggling to sell it? What do you think could be the reason?

One could be "how you actually describe it". It's hard to be bad with words when almost every company relies on it to woo customers!

This post by Jason gives some really good examples of business writing. The key is to be passionate and clearly communicate the personality of your product. Hire a writer, if you have to but never go online with loosely written words. Don't just write details, write a compelling story around your product.

Basecamp values writing skills so much that they hire the better writer when they are trying to decide between a few people to fill a position (even developers, designers) because they can communicate and make themselves understood.

The tips mentioned above are practical and helped me start and run RemoteExplorers. Hope it helps you in starting/running your business effectively. Go!