{"id":1677,"date":"2013-07-28T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-27T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wwwneu.strehle.de\/tim\/weblog\/archives\/2013\/07\/28\/1629\/"},"modified":"2013-07-28T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-07-27T22:00:00","slug":"1629","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/weblog\/archives\/2013\/07\/28\/1629\/","title":{"rendered":"My favorite quotes from \u201cAnything You Want\u201d by Derek Sivers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can you read Derek Sivers\u2019 book Anything You Want<\/a> (from 2011) and not want to start a company? I\u2019ve been following Derek Sivers\u2019 blog<\/a> since 2004 so I was familiar with many of the stories he\u2019s telling in the book. But I still loved to read it.<\/p>\n

Favorite quotes:<\/p>\n

\u201cBusiness is not about money. It’s about making dreams come true for others and for yourself. [\u2026] When you make a company, you make a utopia. It\u2019s where you design your perfect world.<\/p>\n

[\u2026] The key point is that I wasn\u2019t trying to make a big business. I was just daydreaming about how one little thing would look in a perfect world.<\/p>\n

[\u2026] When you say \u201cno\u201d to most things, you leave room in your life to throw yourself completely into that rare thing that makes you say \u201cHELL YEAH!\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u2026] Never forget that absolutely everything you do is for your customers. Make every decision \u2013 even decisions about whether to expand the business, raise money, or promote someone \u2013 according to what\u2019s best for your customers. If you\u2019re ever unsure what to prioritze, just ask your customers the open-ended question, \u201cHow can I best help you now?\u201d Then focus on satisfying those requests.<\/p>\n

[\u2026] If you want to be useful, you can always start now, with only 1 percent of what you have in your grand vision. It\u2019ll be a humble propotype version of your grand vision, but you\u2019ll be in the game. You\u2019ll be ahead of the rest, because you actually started, while others are waiting for the finish line to magically appear at the starting line.<\/p>\n

[\u2026] Starting small puts 100 percent of your energy on actually solving real problems for real people.<\/p>\n

[\u2026] When you build your business on serving thousands of customers, not dozens, you don\u2019t have to worry about any one customer leaving or making special demands. If most of your customers love what you do, but one doesn\u2019t, you can just say goodbye and wish him the best, with no hard feelings.<\/p>\n

[\u2026] You need to confidently exclude people, and proudly say what you\u2019re not. By doing so, you will win the hearts of the people you want.<\/p>\n

[\u2026] That\u2019s the Tao of business: Care about your customers more than about yourself, and you\u2019ll do well.<\/p>\n

[\u2026] If you find even the smallest way to make people smile, they\u2019ll remember you more for that smile than for all your other fancy business-model stuff.<\/p>\n

[\u2026] There\u2019s a benefit to being na\u00efve about the norms of the world \u2013 deciding from scratch what seems like the right thing to do, instead of just doing what others do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Can you read Derek Sivers\u2019 book Anything You Want (from 2011) and not want to start a company? I\u2019ve been following Derek Sivers\u2019 blog since 2004 so I was familiar with many of the stories he\u2019s telling in the book. But I still loved to read it. Favorite quotes: \u201cBusiness is not about money. It’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weblog"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1677\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}