Anything You Want
This is a part of the list of read books which I maintain. See all of them. You can only find here a blob of notes from the book itself and some thoghts on them. More often than not the actual book is more useful than what you can see here.
Title: Anything You Want Author: Derek Sivers
Business is not about money. It’s about making dreams come true for others and for yourself.
Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently promoting what’s not working.
Finally, though, I had a BUY NOW button on my website! In 1997 this was a big deal.
When you make a business, you get to make a little universe where you control all the laws. This is your utopia. When you make it a dream come true for yourself, it’ll be a dream come true for someone else, too.
If you think revolution needs to feel like war, you’ll overlook the importance of simply serving people better. When you’re onto something great, it won’t feel like revolution. It’ll feel like uncommon sense.
When you say no to most things, you leave room in your life to throw yourself completely into that rare thing that makes you say, “Hell yeah!”
No business plan survives first contact with customers.
By not having any money to waste, you never waste money
They did it saying, “We need the very best,” but it didn’t improve anything for the customers.
Watch out when anyone (including you) says he wants to do something big, but can’t until he raises money. It usually means the person is more in love with the idea of being big-big-big than with actually doing something useful
I don’t want to hear people’s ideas. I’m not interested until I see their execution
If one client needs to leave, it’s OK; you can sincerely wish her well
If most of your customers love what you do, but one doesn’t, you can just say good-bye and wish him the best, with no hard feelings.
Proudly exclude people
It's a big world. You can loudly leave out 99 percent of it.
That would be like putting a Coke machine in a monastery. I'm not doing this to make money.
Now the place that used to put ketchup on my hot dog telss me it'll be an extra twenty-five cents for ketchup! It sucked all the fun out of this town.
Care about your customers more than about yourself, and you'll do well.
When someone’s doing something for the money, people can sense it, like they sense a desperate lover
What if what you love the most is the solitude of the craft?
Andrei Glingeanu's notes and thoughts. You should follow him on Twitter, Instagram or contact via email. The stuff he loves to read can be found here on this site or on goodreads. Wanna vent or buy me a coffee?