Breaking Rules

Why breaking the rules in a surprising way is so important.

Reaping the benefits of surprise—and how to figure out which rules are made for breaking.

Balancing your strengths and available time with the highest impact moves.

How to think about your rule breaking so you’re not copying someone else, but building your unique brand.

Quotables

“Some of my favorite strategies really do have a surprising piece to them, which is that I break a rule.”—JS

“‘I would never bother my audience with daily emails’—if you’re ‘bothering’ them, why send it at all?”—RM

“If you're known by name it's because you probably broke new ground, you broke some rules, some style practices and came up with something new and different that connected with people.”—JS

“One of the things that makes me crazy is automated content based on SEO. They look like they're written by robots.”—RM

“If you need an extra five hours a week, delete all social media from your life.”—JS

“There's no reason to feel like, oh, you must have music on your podcast. As we've proven.”—RM

“The reason I decided against that (using email salutations) was because I don't send emails like that to my brothers. And that was the feeling I wanted people to have when they got an email from me.”—JS

“You can get sucked into social media, commenting about things that aren’t building your brand.”—RM