Total transparency

Welcome to Rework, a podcast by thirty seven signals about the better way to work and run your business. I'm Kimberly Rhodes from the thirty seven signals team joined by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hanssen, cofounders of the company. This week, I thought I'd talk a little bit about the transparency that both Jason and David have here on this podcast, in their writings. They're pretty much an open book. Sometimes I'm even like, wait. Y'all are gonna say that? So I thought we could talk a little bit about it today. Okay. Let's just jump right in to this. Have you guys always been as open as you are with your business? I think a lot of business owners would be like, nope. This is, like, private information. But you guys are sharing company announcements, just how the company is doing, decisions that you've made. Has it always been this way? I think so. I mean, it seems harder to hide things. That's the thing. It's like, if you know it, just say it kinda thing. If you're thinking about it, just say it. If you have something you can share, just share it. Like, why why not, essentially? This is something we wrote about, I think, in rework as well, which is, like, sort of emulating chefs. They share their cookbooks. They share their recipes, or they share recipes in a cookbook. Like, the recipes are, like, what they do. Like, that is the fundamental thing that they do. They cook. This is what they do. This is how much salt they put in the thing. This is it. This is the blueprint. They don't worry about, like, someone making a dish and opening a restaurant next to them and putting them out of business. Like, they know that sharing gets people to try things, gets people to explore things, get people maybe to come to the restaurant, if they come to their city, this is the way to do it. And, again, it just always seemed harder not to. I know so many people who run businesses and there's, like, I have to run this by legal. Like, I don't know if I'm allowed to say this or share this or can I do no? I get it. It's different in a public company and whatever. But, like, these aren't public companies. I'm talking about these are private companies, and everyone's just afraid. They're just, like, afraid that someone's gonna use this idea and take it from them or or whatever. I mean, look. We don't have anything proprietary. Like, I get it if you're inventing some new medication or chemical thing and you've invested a billion dollars into the r and d. Whatever it is. I don't even know. But that's not what we do. That's not what pretty much anyone actually does. And it just seems far more lucrative, frankly, just to share as much as you can to get people's eyes on things …