You don’t need a visionary master plan, loads of funding or a brilliant team to start a business.
All you really need is GENEROSITY.
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. He started in 1998 by helping his friends sell their CDs too. 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. Anything You Want will inspire you to start with what you have, care about your customers more than yourself, and run your business like you don’t need the money.
DEREK SIVER’S PHILOSOPHIES (from 10 years he spent starting and growing a small business)
Most people don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing. They imitate others, go with the flow, and follow paths without making their own. They spend decades in pursuit of something that someone convinced them they should want, without realizing that it won’t make them happy.
Don’t be on your deathbed someday, having squandered your one chance at life, full of regret because you pursued little distractions instead of big dreams. You need to know your personal philosophy of what makes you happy and what’s worth doing.These are my philosophies from the ten years I spent starting and growing a small business.
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- 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 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.
- You business plan is moot. You don’t know people 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.
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Related Reading:
Complement Anything You Want with 5 Traits of The New Entrepreneurz or FreshBizers
