Anything You Want

Author: Derek Sivers Created time: March 21, 2021 12:38 AM Page No.: 96 Progress: ✔️

What I am going to to do after reading it?

Start teaching someone something and that you business starts. - -

Points

Clients of Your Business
- The Problem with big clients like Google, Microsoft & Apple.
  - You have to custom-tailor your product to please a very few specific people.
  - Those people might change their minds or leave the company.
  - Whom are you really working for? Are you self-employed or is this client your boss?
  - If you do land the big client, that organization will practically own you.
  - By trying so hard to please the big client, you will lose wants.
- Good thing about small clients.
  - You don’t need to change what you do to please one client; you need to please only the majority (or yourself).
  - If one client needs to leave, it’s OK; you can sincerely wish her well.
  - Because no one client can demand that you do what he says, you are your own boss (as long as you keep your clients happy in general).
  - You hear hundreds of people’s opinions and stay in touch with what the majority of your clients want.
When you say no to most things, you leave room in your life to throw yourself completely into that rare thing that makes happy & fulfilling.
When you are at something great you don't feel something big going to happen.
You can’t prevent bad things from happening. Resist the urge to punish everyone for one person’s mistake.
Business improvement.
- Customers satisfaction.
  - 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, just ask your customers the open-ended question, “How can I best help you now?” Then focus on satisfying those requests.
- Important things to remember.
  - Don't let other people play with your fear. Like Saying that you need this stuff to protect yourself against lawsuits. They’ll scare you with horrible worst-case scenarios. Those are just sales tactics.
  - Have the confidence to know that when your target 1 percent hears you excluding the other 99 percent, the people in that 1 percent will come to you because you’ve shown how much you value them.
  - Don’t think you need a huge vision. Just stay focused on helping people today.
  - Act like you don’t need the money. Because banks love to lend money to those who don’t need it. Record labels love to sign musicians who don’t need their help. It’s a strange law of human behavior. It’s pretty universal.
  - You don't need something big to improve the business sometimes it's little things that's add up.
  - People remember you more for the smile that you put on there face then fancy business stuff.
  - Always prepare for 2x because anytime it can come.
- Self-Employed VS Business Owner
  - Being self-employed feels like freedom until you realize that if you take time off, your business crumbles.
  - To be a true business owner, make it so that you could leave for a year, and when you came back, your business would be doing better than when you left.
- Solve problems
  - Before trusting someone verify that they can do the job.
  - Why businesses keep problems around? (Like- Nord VPN) →A business is started to solve a problem. But if the problem were 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 the company has a problem with your decisions then explain your thought process and philosophy.
  - If you are an owner of the company you can be anything. And if don't feel like doing something then give the role to someone who loves doing that role.
  - Don't freedom but don't give too much that they can overturn you.
- Start now. No funding needed.
Personal improvement.
- Don't follow other people path without making your own path.
- Don't spend decades in pursuit of something that someone convinced them you should want.
- If present is worse than past, then move back and restart improving where things are good.
- Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently doing what’s not working.
- Doing work yourself is inefficient but it is what make it so joyful in the first place.
Derek Sivers philosophies of Business.
- 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.

Meaning

Abdicate - Surrender or relinquish power or responsibility.

Stories

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterward and the whole party marched down the 6th. I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did.

Your picture is on our wall as “Customer of the Year.” We’re all exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!! That one silly e-mail, sent out with every order, has been so loved

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

That one silly e-mail, sent out with every order, has been so loved that if you search Google for “private CD Baby jet,” you’ll get almost twenty thousand results. Each one is somebody who got the email and loved it enough to post it on his website and tell all his friends. That one goofy e-mail created thousands of new customers. When you’re thinking of how to make your business

We answered our phone within two rings, always 7am to 10pm, seven days a week. Phones were everywhere, so even if the customer service rep was busy, someone in the warehouse could pick up. All anyone had to do was say, “CD Baby!” Customers loved this! Someone actually picking up the phone at a company is so rare that musicians would often tell me later at conferences that it was the main reason they decided to go with CD Baby—they could always talk to a weren’t completely swamped, they should take a minute and get to know the caller a bit. Ask about her music. Ask how it’s going. Yes, it would lead to twenty-minute conversations sometimes, but those people became lifelong fans.

Resources

Quote

I’m a student, not a guru.

— Derek Sivers

If it’s not a hit, switch

— Derek Sivers

“No business plan survives first contact with customers.”

— Steve Blank: