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Anything You Want Summary
About Anything You Want Book
You can follow the beaten path and call yourself an entrepreneur or you can blaze your own trail and really be one.
When Derek Sivers started CD Baby, he wasn’t planning on building a major business. He was a successful independent musician who just wanted to sell his CDs online. When no one would help him do it, he set out on his own and built an online store from scratch.
He started in 1998 by helping his friends sell their CDs. In 2000, he hired his first employee. Eight years later, he sold CD Baby for $22 million.
Sivers didn’t need a business plan, and neither do you. You don’t need to think big; in fact, it’s better if you don’t. Start with what you have, care about your customers more than yourself, and run your business like you don’t need the money.
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Derek Sivers best known for creating CD Baby, the most popular music site for independent artists, He chronicles his “accidental” success and failures into this concise and inspiring book on how to create a multi-million dollar company by following your passion…..
Stop doing what’s not working
- Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently doing what's not working.
- If you're not saying “HELL YEAH!” about something, say “no.”
- Necessity is a great teacher.
- It's counterintuitive, but the way to grow your business is to focus entirely on your existing customers. Just thril them, and they'll tell everyone.
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It’s okay to exclude people
- You can’t please everyone, so proudly exclude people.
- Proudly say what you're not. It's a big world. You can loudly leave out 99 percent of it.
- You should care about your customers more than you care about yourself!
- That's the Tao of business: Care about your customers more than about yourself, and you'll do well.
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Act like you don’t need the money
- A business is started to solve a problem. But if the problem was truly solved, that business would no longer be needed! So the business accidentally or unconsciously keeps the problem around so that they can keep solving it for a fee.
- If you set up your business like you don't need the money, people are happier to pay you.
- We want to give to those who give.
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The book Anything You Want by entrepreneur Derek Sivers shares advice and lessons from starting CD Baby and growing it to a $100 million business. It provides concise wisdom on entrepreneurship, goals, team building, and business philosophy.
Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger.
DEREK SIVERS
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Ideas Alone Are Worthless
Simply having a business idea is worthless without consistent execution and hard work to make it a reality. Endlessly planning and preparing leads nowhere.
Take action by starting small, building momentum in the real world, and learning as you go. Let your business evolve organically from humble beginnings rather than trying to perfectly plan it upfront.
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Stay Focused Yet Flexible
Stay relentlessly focused on a simple core business model and value proposition. However, remain flexible and open-minded about methods and tactical details.
Follow indirect paths when needed, pivot when the situation calls for it, and adapt your approach without losing strategic focus.
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Series : Books in Quotes#1 : If it’s not a hit, switch - Derek Sivers
Don’t be on your deathbed someday, having squandered your one chance at life, full of regret because you pursued little distractions instead of big dreams. You need to know your personal philosophy of what makes you happy and what’s worth doing.
DEREK SIVERS
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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. A quick glance and common sense should tell you if the numbers will work. The rest are details.
DEREK SIVERS
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If you think your life’s purpose needs to hit you like a lightning bolt, you’ll overlook the little day-to-day things that fascinate you.
If you think revolution needs to feel like war, you’ll overlook the importance of simply serving people better. When you’re on to something great, it won’t feel like revolution. It’ll feel like uncommon sense.
DEREK SIVERS
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