Title Page Copyright Dedication Ten years of experience in one hour What's your compass? Just selling my CD Make a dream come true A business model with only two numbers This ain't no revolution If it's not a hit, switch No "yes." Either "Hell yeah!" or "no." Just like that, my plan completely changed The advantage of no funding Start now. No funding needed. Ideas are just a multiplier of execution Formalities play on fear. Bravely refuse. The strength of many little customers Proudly exclude people Why no advertising? This is just one of many options You don't need a plan or a vision "I miss the mob." How do you grade yourself? Care about your customers more than about yourself Act like you don't need the money Don't punish everyone for one person's mistake A real person, a lot like you You should feel pain when you're unclear The most successful e-mail I ever wrote Little things make all the difference It's OK to be casual Naive quitting Prepare to double It's about being, not having The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote My $3.3 million mistake Delegate or die: The self-employment trap Make it anything you want Trust, but verify Delegate, but don't abdicate How I knew I was done Why I gave my company to charity You make your perfect world Contact me anytime Acknowledgments Dedicated entirely to Seth Godin. This book only exists because of his encouragement. Visit http://bit.ly/1Vs8MCB for a larger version of this graph. Ten years of experience in one hour From 1998 to 2008, I had this wild experience of starting a little hobby, accidentally growing it into a big business, and then selling it for $22 million. So now people want to hear my thoughts. People ask me about that experience, so I tell stories about how it went for me. Many of them are about all the things I did wrong. I made some horrible mistakes. People ask my advice on how to approach situations in their lives or businesses, so I explain how I approach things. But my approach is just one way, and I could argue against it as well. I'm not really suggesting that anyone should be like me. I'm pretty unusual, so what works for me might not work for others. But enough people thought that my stories and the philosophies I developed from this experience were worth sharing, so here we are. This is most of what I learned in ten years, compacted into something you can read in an hour. I hope you find these ideas useful for your own life or business. I also hope you disagree with some of them. Then I hope you e-mail me to tell me about your different point of view, because that's my favorite part of all. (I'm a student, not a guru.) Excerpted from Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur by Derek Sivers All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
