Anything You Want

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

Author: "Sivers, Derek"

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1. Highlight Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently promoting what’s not working.
2. .To me, ideas are worth nothing unless they are executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.
3. Highlight 2017/7/11We’ve all heard about the importance of persistence. But I had misunderstood. Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently doing what’s not working.
4. Highlight 2017/7/11Anytime 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.
5. Highlight 2017/7/11Even years later, the desks were just planks of wood on cinder blocks from the hardware store. I made the office computers myself from parts. My well-funded friends would spend $100,000 to buy something that I made myself for $1,000. They did it saying, “We need the very best,” but it didn’t improve anything for the customers.
6. Highlight 2017/7/11Watch 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. For an idea to get big-big-big, it has to be useful. And being useful doesn’t need funding.
7. Highlight 2017/7/11If you want to be useful, you can always start now, with only 1 percent of what you have in your grand vision. It’ll be a humble prototype version of your grand vision, but you’ll be in the game. You’ll be ahead of the rest, because you actually started, while others are waiting for the finish line to magically appear at the starting line.
8. Highlight 2017/7/11You can’t pretend there’s only one way to do it. Your first idea is just one of many options. No business goes as planned, so make ten radically different plans.
9. Highlight 2017/7/11We all grade ourselves by different measures:For some people, it’s as simple as how much money they make. When their net worth is going up, they know they’re doing well.For others, it’s how much money they give.For some, it’s how many people’s lives they can influence for the better.
10. Highlight 2017/7/11For others, it’s how deeply they can influence just a few people’s lives.For me, it’s how many useful things I create, whether songs, companies, articles, websites, or anything else. If I create something that’s not useful to others, it doesn’t count. But I’m also not interested in doing something useful unless it needs my creative input.
11. Highlight 2017/7/11That’s the Tao of business: Care about your customers more than about yourself, and you’ll do well.
12. Highlight 2017/7/11It’s another Tao of business: Set up your business like you don’t need the money, and it’ll likely come your way.
13. Highlight 2017/7/11When 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.
14. Highlight 2017/7/11the end, it’s about what you want to be, not what you want to have. To have something (a finished recording, a business, or millions of dollars) is the means, not the end. To be something (a good singer, a skilled entrepreneur, or just plain happy) is the real point.