Book Summary: Anything You Want by Derek Sivers
Before starting the summary, I want to emphasize that summaries might be incomplete or focus on aspects that I find particularly useful. I recommend reading the entire book. You can get the book on Dereks Homepage sive.rs and find details.
The book is really short and only contains roughly 80 pages but they are very dense and give lots of valuable insights.
Business is not about money. It’s about making dreams come true for others and for yourself. Making a company is a great way to improve the world while improving yourself. When you make a company, you make a utopia. It’s where you design your perfect world. Never do anything just for the money. Don’t pursue business just for your own gain. Only answer the calls for help. Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently promoting what’s not working. Your business plan is moot. You don’t know what people really want until you start doing it. Starting with no money is an advantage. You don’t need money to start helping people. You can’t please everyone, so proudly exclude people. Make yourself unnecessary to the running of your business. The real point of doing anything is to be happy, so do only what makes you happy.
Solve your own problems and tell people about it. When they ask if you can solve their problems too, you have a business.
Think about a great deal from a customers perspective and try to make that deal come true.
💡 Put the customer first. And strive to make them happy
A business plan should be done in a few hours or even minutes and are simple! Keep your pricing simple and get inspiration from the competition.
Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently doing what’s not working. Keep iterating on ideas until you found something that makes people want to buy it. Don't keep pushing something that doesn't work.
Say "no" to more things, so you have more room for the things that actually matter.
💡 Planes might change completely in an instant - stay flexible.
No funding is an advantage since you never waste money without having money to waste. Every penny goes to improving the experience of the customer.
💡 If unsure what to prioritize, ask your customer open-ended questions and fulfill their requests