Anything You Want - Derek Sivers

Derek Sivers' tale of starting and ending CD Baby. A short, entertaining read for anyone interested in business. My main takeaway is that starting a business is simultaneously the most selfish and selfless thing someone can do. Selfish because you have to see a gap in the world and have the audacity to think you can fill it. Selfless because the only way to fill it is to completely serve others. That, and just start helping people. The rest will take care of itself.

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You need to know your personal philosophy of what makes you happy and what’s worth doing.

When you make a business, you get to make a little universe where you control all the laws. This is your utopia.

A business plan should never take more than a few hours of work. Hopefully no more than a few minutes. The best plans start simple.

When you’re on to something great, it won’t feel like revolution. It’ll feel like uncommon sense.

Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently doing what’s not working.

No plan survives first contact with the customer.

It’s counterintuitive, but the way to grow your business is to focus entirely on your existing customers. Just thrill them, and they’ll tell everyone.

Starting small puts 100% of your energy on actually solving real problems for real people.

Start by sharing whatever you’ve got.

Ideas are worth nothing unless executed.

Have the confidence to know that when your target 1% hears you excluding the other 99%, the people in that 1% will come to you because you’ve shown how much you value them.

Just stay focused on helping people today.

Never forget why you’re really doing what you’re doing.

All great service comes from a feeling of generosity and abundance.

All bad service comes from a mindset of scarcity.

If you set up your business like you don’t need the money, people are happier to pay you.

But please know that it’s often the tiny details that really thrill people enough to make them tell all their friends about you.

Being self-employed feels like freedom until you realize that if you take time off, your business crumbles.

To be a true business owner, make sure you could leave for a year, and when you came back, your business would be doing better than when you left.

There’s a benefit to being naïve to the norms of the world — deciding from scratch what seems like the right thing to do, instead of just doing what others do.

if your contribution is small and just an opinion, let it go. Let the other person feel full ownership of the idea, instead.

When you want to learn how to do something yourself, most people won’t understand.

In the end, it’s about what you want to be, not what you want to have.

You can’t just live someone else’s expectation of a traditional business. You have to just do whatever you love the most, or you’ll lose interest in the whole thing.

Make sure you know what makes you happy, and don’t forget it.

Not for the money, but because it’s our place to experiment, create, and turn thoughts into reality. We need to pursue our intrinsic motivation.

The happiest people are not lounging on beaches. They’re engaged in interesting work!

Get the ideas out of your head and into the world.

Just pay close attention to what excites you and what drains you. Pay close attention to when you’re being the real you and when you’re trying to impress an invisible jury.