DEREK SIVERS

Those of us with business ideas? We need a company. Not for the money, but because it’s our place to experiment, create, and turn thoughts into reality. We need to pursue our intrinsic motivation.

The happiest people are not loung...

Customer service often starts when someone has a problem, and is upset. When you feel attacked, it’s hard not to fight back, especially when you know they’re wrong. But the best thing to do is to lose the fight. Let them know that they were right, and the company was w...

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 ser...

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

Ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.

You 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. Realizing the initial choice you made was just one of many brings all kinds of weathered wisdom and insight...

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?

When someone’s doing something for the money, people can sense it, like a desperate lover. It’s a turn-off. When someone’s doing something for love, being generous instead of stingy, trusting instead of fearful, it triggers this law: We want to give to those who give. ...

Customer service is not an expense to be minimized. It’s a core profit center, like sales. It’s where you should put your best people.

Companies focus so much on getting new customers, but keeping existing customers thrilled is a ...

Three minutes spent talking with them is going to shape their impression of your company more than your name, price, design, or features all combined. This is your shining moment to be the best you can be — to blow them away with how cool it was to contact you. If your...

When you want to learn how to do something yourself, most people won’t understand. They’ll assume the only reason we do anything is to get it done, and doing it yourself is not the most efficient way. But that’s forgetting about the joy of learning and doing.

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

Make sure you know what makes you happy, and don’t forget it.

It’s dehumanizing to have thousands of people passing through our computer screens, so we say things we’d never say if those people were sitting next to us.

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, jus...

If you find even the smallest way to make people smile, they’ll remember you more for that smile than for all your other fancy business-model stuff.

When one customer wrongs you, remember the thousands that did not. Resist the urge to punish everyone for one person’s mistake.

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.

Whatever you make, it’s your creation, so make it your pe...

Watch out when anyone (including you) says they want to do something big, but can’t until they raise money. It usually means they’re 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 ...

When deciding whether to do something, if you feel anything less than “Wow! That would be amazing! Absolutely! Hell yeah!” — then say no. When you say no to most things, you leave room in your life to really throw yourself completely into that rare thing that makes you...

All bad service comes from a mindset of scarcity. They act like they’ll go out of business if they don’t fiercely guard their bottom line. The short-term thinking of desperate survival blocks the long-term thinking of smart strategy.

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