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

by Derek Sivers

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

No “yes.” Either “Hell yeah!” or “no.”

We’re all busy. We’ve all taken on too much. Saying yes to less is the way out.

Anytime you think you know what your new business will be doing, remember this quote from serial entrepreneur Steve Blank: “No business plan survives first contact with customers.”

By not having any money to waste, you never waste money. Since I couldn’t afford a programmer, I went to the bookstore and got a $25 book on PHP and MySQL programming. Then I sat down and learned it, with no programming experience. Necessity is a great teacher.

Never forget that absolutely everything you do is for your customers. Make every decision—even decisions about whether to expand the business, raise money, or promote someone—according to what’s best for your customers. If you’re ever unsure what to prioritize, just ask your customers the open-ended question, “How can I best help you now?” Then focus on satisfying those requests.

To me, ideas are worth nothing unless they are executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.

The strength of many little customers

This goes back to the utopian perfect-world ideal of why we’re doing what we’re doing in the first place. In a perfect world, would your website be covered with advertising? 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.

This is just one of many options

So please don’t think you need a huge vision. Just stay focused on helping people today.

“Yeah. I miss the mob.” “Huh? Really? What do you mean?” “When the mafia ran this town, it was fun. There were only two numbers that mattered: how much was coming in, and how much was going out. As long as there was more in than out, everyone was happy. But then the whole town was bought up by these damn corporations full of MBA weasels micromanaging, trying to maximize the profit from every square foot of floor space. Now the place that used to put ketchup on my hot dog tells me it’ll be an extra twenty-five cents for ketchup! It sucked all the fun out of this town! Yeah, I miss the mob.” (Sure, we could bring up other issues with the mob, but let’s just leave it as a metaphor and a lesson.)

They’d tell me that if I analyzed the business better, I could maximize profitability. Then I’d tell them about the taxi driver in Vegas.

Never forget why you’re really doing what you’re doing. Are you helping people? Are they happy? Are you happy? Are you profitable? Isn’t that enough?

Act like you don’t need the money

If you set up your business like you don’t need the money, people are happier to pay you. When someone’s doing something for the money, people can sense it, like they sense a desperate lover. It’s a turnoff.

When one customer wrongs you, remember the hundred thousand who did not. You’re lucky to own your own business. Life is good. You can’t prevent bad things from happening. Learn to shrug. Resist the urge to punish everyone for one person’s mistake.

You should feel pain when you’re unclear

The most successful e-mail I ever wrote

Even if you want to be big someday, remember that you never need to act like a big boring company. Over ten years, it seemed like every time someone raved about how much he loved CD Baby, it was because of one of these little fun human touches.

Notice that “more of the same” is never the answer. You’d have to do things in a new way to handle twice as much business. Processes would have to be streamlined.

Never be the typical tragic small business that gets frazzled and freaked out when business is doing well. It sends a repulsive “I can’t handle this!” message to everyone. Instead, if your internal processes are always designed to handle twice your existing load, it sends an attractive “come on in, we’ve got plenty of room” message.

You might get bigger faster and make millions if you outsource everything to the experts. But what’s the point of getting bigger and making millions? To be happy, right?

When you sign up to run a marathon, you don’t want a taxi to take you to the finish line.

But I never again promised a customer that I could do something that was beyond my full control.

After a long night of thinking and writing, I got myself into the delegation mind-set. I had to make myself unnecessary to the running of my company.

Then I showed someone how to do the last of the stuff that was still my job. As part of learning it, he had to document it in the manual, and then show it to someone else, too. (Learn by teaching.) Now I was totally unnecessary. I started working at home, not going into the office at all.

There’s a big difference between being self-employed and being a business owner. 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 it so that you could leave for a year, and when you came back, your business would be doing better than when you left.

Never forget that you can make your role anything you want it to be. Anything you hate to do, someone else loves. So find that person and let her do it.

I learned a hard lesson in hindsight: Trust, but verify. Remember it when delegating. You have to do both.

I learned an important word: abdicate. To abdicate means to surrender or relinquish power or responsibility; this word is usually used when a king abdicates the throne or crown. Lesson learned too late: Delegate, but don’t abdicate.

You make your perfect world

No matter which goal you choose, there will be lots of people telling you you’re wrong. 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.