<ul><li>Delight customers and generate loyalty by going above and beyond basic transactions. </li><li>Fix problems quickly and thoroughly. </li><li>Surprise customers with unexpectedly positive experiences. </li><li>Build genuine relationships, not just commercial transactions.</li></ul>

Help Customers in Unexpected Ways 

Plan an exit strategy even at the beginning. Sell your business when you have reached a personal peak of satisfaction in running it and maximum external value. Move on excited for your next adventure rather than sticking around too long.

Sell at Your Peak

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.

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.

Ideas Alone Are Worthless

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.

 Stay Focused Yet Flexible 

<ul><li>Take most conventional business advice with a healthy dose of skepticism. </li><li>Have confidence in your own vision and perspective. </li><li>Some established wisdom can and should be ignored or reinvented. </li><li>Let your unique intuition as an entrepreneur guide you more than others' opinions.</li></ul>

Business Advice is Overrated 

When hiring team members, prioritize eagerness to learn, high energy levels, and shared values above existing skills. Skills can be taught, but having the right attitude cannot. Avoid hiring people who seem arrogant or combative. Seek humble team players.

Hire for Attitude, Train for Skills

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.

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 is an author of philosophy and entrepreneurship, known for his surprising quotable insights and pithy succinct writing style.Formerly a musician, programmer, TED speaker, and circus clown, he sold his first company for $22 million and gave all the money to charity.Sivers’ books (How to Live, Hell Yeah or No, Your Music and People, Anything You Want) and newest projects are at his website: https://sive.rs/