Success isn't about being the biggest. It's about letting the right size find you.

I'd love to see more businesses take this approach - intentionally rightsizing themselves. Hit a number that feels good and say, 'Let's stick around here.'

Whenever I speak at a conference, I try to catch a few of the other presentations. I tend to stand in the back and listen, observe, and get a general sense of the room.

People pulling 16-hour days on a regular basis are exhausted. They're just too tired to notice that their work has suffered because of it.

When you're short on sleep, you're short on patience. You're ruder to people, less tolerant, less understanding. It's harder to relate and to pay attention for sustained periods of time.

Give your employees a shot at showing the company a new way, and provide the room for them to chalk up a few small victories. Once they've proved that their idea can work on a limited basis, they can begin to scale it up.

If an employee can demonstrate results produced in a way that the company didn't think possible, then a new way forward can begin to take shape.

I used to think that deadlines should be ignored until the product was ready: that they were a nuisance, a hurdle in front of quality, a forced measure to get something out the door for the good of the schedule, not the customer.

A fixed deadline and a flexible scope are the crucial combination.

I think the story is important in every business. Why do you exist, why are you here, why is your product different, why should I pay attention, why should I care?

A company gets better at the things it practices.

As businesses grow, all sorts of things that once were done on the fly - including creating new products - have a way of becoming bureaucratized.

When it comes to making decisions, I'm not what you'd call a numbers guy.

Statistics rarely drive me. Feelings, intuition, and gut instinct do.

I live in Chicago but own some property up in Wisconsin.

I'm a designer, but I rely on programmers to bring my ideas to life. By learning to code myself, I think I can make things easier for all of us. Similarly, I want to be able to build things on my own without having to bother a programmer.

Unlike a goldfish, a computer can't really do anything without you telling it exactly what you want it to do.

A computer doesn't have a mind of its own - it needs someone else's to function.

Hiring people is like making friends. Pick good ones, and they'll enrich your life. Make bad choices, and they'll bring you down.

If you could taste words, most corporate websites, brochures, and sales materials would remind you of stale, soggy rice cakes: nearly calorie free, devoid of nutrition, and completely unsatisfying.

When you write like everyone else and sound like everyone else and act like everyone else, you're saying, 'Our products are like everyone else's, too.'

If you care about your product, you should care just as much about how you describe it.

It's not easy to sit down and open yourself up and say, 'This is how much I love you,' you know? It's scary to do that.

The fact that I have a Southern accent and write about a lot of rural things leads people to put me in the country category.

The idea of growing up in the South and being a man is an interesting thing; there's a lot masculinity involved, with hunting, fishing, and playing sports that rural people take pride in, but at the same time, I grew up really not wanting to hate anybody.

Songs like 'Outfit' and 'Decoration Day' and 'Dress Blues,' those were good songs, but the output wasn't as consistent in those days.

I have modes, mental modes that I get in, and when I'm on the road, I focus very much on doing the work. On playing the show, on being good every night. And part of me just gets switched off. The part that's very private and very personal and very intimate. That especially, that part of me gets shut off.

Whatever needed to be done, I need to know how to do it just as well as my wife. You know, for us to be able to really balance the parenting. It was very humbling, and it was also, um - terrifying. Because, you know, giving a baby a bath for the first time is one of the scariest things you can do on this whole earth.

I like a cliche if it's sort of turned on its head.

I don't care what 'Pitchfork' says. They write from a place that's a little too self-aware for me to really give a damn about what they're talking about.

Democracy can tie your hands in a rock 'n' roll band, you know? It can be a great thing, but if you've got a certain amount of vision and you write a lot of songs, it's sometimes better to have your own band and make your own decisions.

I didn't grow up with a lot of money, but I grew up with a lot of opportunities that many people don't have.

I've never been someone who's very prone to boredom. I don't know, boredom seems like something you should grow out of at about 15 or 16. There's so much that needs to be done.

I've always known that there are conflicting issues going on where I'm from. It's always been that way.

There was a point when I told my daddy I didn't want to go hunting anymore.

A lot of people make records where there are a couple songs worth listening to and you skip through the rest, and I don't want to do that because those records bore me pretty bad.

Man, that Jim Lauderdale always looks good - he's got more western suits than anybody.

I like those kinds of songs that have details that you remember and that have stories that mean something and that open up into different levels philosophically. I like those kinds of movies, and I like those kinds of books.

If you're the person whose problems were solved when you were born, your job is to try and help the people who aren't in that situation. It's very easy to say you're tired of political discussion when all of your problems are solved. I keep trying to think of it that way.

I write when the baby is asleep or when I'm on the road I write a lot... There's always time to do it. It's like getting exercise.

If you're going to document your own journey, the jokes work better in the first person, just like the stories do.

The more you read, the better you are at writing, no matter what you're writing. A lot of songwriters miss that and don't see the connection there, and I've always felt like you're more able to communicate if you have a bigger toolbox to work with.

For me, the things like the Confederate flag - I just don't think that it does anybody much good, and it certainly causes a lot of people a lot of pain.

What having a child - and especially a daughter - has done is lifted more of the veil for me: allowed me to see things on another level compared to how I used to see them.

When I joined the Truckers, I was 21 and riding in the van with guys who were a generation older than me.

My grandfather was a Pentecostal preacher, and there was nothing really modern that went on under their roof. We watched television, but they were very picky about what we could watch - old Westerns and stuff that wasn't vulgar or violent at all.

Any narrative, whether it's fiction or not, you have to approach it as though it really happened to you. I think that's the only way to get inside the characters and make the narrative work. It's a storytelling tradition, and I think to come off as genuine then you have to really approach it that way.

When I stopped drinking... there were so many things I had to face that I didn't even realize were part of my makeup before. When you do that and have any changes that severe, you lose a lot of things, both good and bad.

As you get up in your thirties, the van touring is not a possibility anymore. We can't all be Mike Watt.

Sleeping on people's floors when you're 22 is fine. But when you get your life in order and have a family you want to keep and a certain level of health, touring bigger means you can keep going for longer.