Scott Belsky > Quotes

“An idea can only become a reality once it is broken down into organized, actionable elements.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“Most ideas are born and lost in isolation.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“You can't rely on others—especially your managers and clients—to engage your strengths. In an ideal world, managers would constantly be thinking about how to best utilize their people—and clients would always unearth your greatest potential. Unfortunately, the reality is that bosses and clients are as worried about their own careers as you are about your own. You must take the task of marketing your strengths into your own hands.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“Today never feels like it will be history, but it will. And more likely than not, you will look back and realize that you should have known.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“Self-leadership is about awareness, tolerance , and not letting your own natural tendencies limit your potential.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“Creativity is, quite simply, a genuine interest combined with initiative.”
― Scott Belsky

“Everything in life should be approached as a project. Every project can be broken down into just three things: Action Steps, Backburner Items, and References.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“Constant motion is the key to execution.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“Success Corrupts and Limits Potential as Soon as You Start to Think You Could Do It Alone.”
― Scott Belsky

“Whether it means prizing the value of lessons learned, building games into your creative process, or getting gifts upon certain milestones of achievement, self-derived rewards make a big difference…You cannot ignore or completely escape the deeply ingrained short-term reward system within you. But you can become aware of what really motivates you and then tweak your incentives to sustain your long-term pursuits.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“Imagination happens only when your mind has the freedom to run rampant. When you’re always connected and able to find an answer, you stop wondering and wandering.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“The best way for a start-up to “disrupt” an industry is to be a thesis-driven outsider—someone who hasn’t been jaded by the industry but has a strong opinion for what should change.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“Innovation has a nasty headwind, rarely a tailwind.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“There is no better measure of your values than how you spend your time.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“The rewards system of the traditional workplace keeps us on track, in line with deadlines from the higher-ups. If we adhere to it, the deeply embedded rewards system of our adult lives is likely to keep s employed and secure within the status quo. . . However, these tendencies become destructive as soon as we begin to pursue long-term goals or attempt something extraordinary”
― scott belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“You can get the important stuff right and still lose by not enduring long enough.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“It's not about ideas.It's about making ideas happen.”
― Scott Belsky

“Startups win by being impatient over a long period of time.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“Sadly, most people are not patient enough to reap the fruits of their own labor. Great teams gain their strength and resilience while toiling their way through the valleys, not just from from relishing the view from the peaks.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“When you see something wrong, take the initiative to fix it. James Murphy, the founder and front man of LCD Soundsystem, said it well: “The best way to complain is to make things.” When you find yourself frustrated or critical, channel that energy into persistent creation. If it’s not your job, pursue it anyway.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“Most of your experience enduring the middle miles will be couched with uncertainty. You’ll feel like you’re wading through an ocean of unknown depths and inhabitants—in the dark.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“elevate true productivity over the appearance of hard work.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“Inexperienced yet smart people with initiative will almost always exceed your expectations.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“All great inventions emerge from a long sequence of small sparks; the first idea often isn’t all that good, but thanks to collaboration it later sparks another idea, or it’s reinterpreted in an unexpected way. Collaboration brings small sparks together to generate breakthrough innovation.”
― Belsky, Scott, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“Great teams gain their strength and resilience while toiling their way through the valleys, not just from relishing the view from the peaks.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“The greatest teams I have worked with over the years were all structured with a few remarkable exceptions to the rules. During my years serving on the board of sweetgreen, a chain of locally sourced seasonal-food kitchens, I was struck by how well the company’s three cofounders, Jonathan, Nic, and Nate, functioned as tri-CEOs. When I first joined the board, many of my peers told me “Good luck—that is nuts!” But the three of them had transformed the traditional CEO role to uniquely serve the company. They divided and conquered most functions in the business but shared the same core values and intuitively knew which decisions could be made by any of them, only one of them, or required all of them. “I feel like we’re pretty lucky because we can share the responsibility of taking action. It’s not just one person’s job to figure something out. It’s not just one person that has all of the weight on their shoulders,” Jonathan told me when I asked him about the arrangement. Nic added,”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“Sometimes you need to stop doing things you love in order to nurture the one thing that matters most.”
― Scott Belsky

“whatever is easily accessible to you is just as accessible to others.”
― Scott Belsky, The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture

“Our ability to extinguish new ideas is critical to productivity and to our capacity to scale existing projects. In a team setting, the skeptics—the ones who always question ideas first rather than falling in love with them—are the white blood cells.”
― Belsky, Scott, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“We will ultimately live in a perpetual data-driven talent edition. Everything you create will be measured and tracked by others through comments, share, and likes. Your work will come up on the radar of potential employers and clients, and the data will tell them if you are worth talking to or hiring.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality