Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur

by Derek Sivers

Never forget that there are thousands of businesses, like Jim’s Fish Bait Shop in a shack on a beach somewhere, that are doing just fine without corporate formalities.

When you’ve asked your customers what would improve your service, has anyone said, “Please fill your website with more advertising”? Nope. So don’t do it.

When someone’s doing something for the money, people can sense it, like they sense a desperate lover.

Even if you want to be big someday, remember that you never need to act like a big boring company.

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

Never be the typical tragic small business that gets frazzled and freaked out when business is doing well.

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