I recently chanced upon this book at a local bookstore. It was thin and compact, so I thought that I would just take a couple of minutes reading through a few pages.
Through the few minutes of reading I gained much inspiration and wisdom. Sometimes you can get clouded by various technical and minute details when trying to run your business or project. Reading the book gave me fresh thought and reinvigorated me.
This book is ‘Anything You Want’ by Derek Sivers. I ended up reading this entire book’s online through his blog, which you can similarly access via this link.
In this post, I would like to highlight key quotes and advice that I have taken away from the book that I found especially relevant. I hope that you would similarly find these helpful, and I’d strongly encourage you to read the whole book as well!
1. It’s okay to start small.
“Starting small puts 100% of your energy on actually solving real problems for real people… And it will let you change your plan in an instant, as you’re working closely with those first customers telling you what they really need.”
Well, it helps to first start. Many people will worry having large future plans and scale, but starting small is important! It helps us to focus, be extremely agile and build a strong foundation.
After having a strong, small start, perhaps then it is a good time to think about growth and scale to bring the further the strong foundation.
2. Big growth comes from small details
“When you’re thinking of how to make your business bigger, it’s tempting to try to think all the big thoughts and come up with world-changing massive-action plans.
But please know that it’s often the tiny details that really thrill people enough to make them tell all their friends about you”
Now that we’re thinking about growth, Derek argues that growth doesn’t always come from detailed plans and visions. Not that it is unimportant, but customers don’t really care about our huge world-changing vision and plans for the company.
They really care about what we have done for them, and these often come in the form of small surprises that exceeded their expectations.
“If you find even the smallest way to make people smile, they’ll remember you more for that smile than for all your other fancy business-model stuff.”
3. Advertising and Customer-centricity
“In a perfect world, would your website be covered with advertising?
When you ask your customers what would improve your service, has anyone said, “Please fill your website with more advertising”?”
Derek highlights over and over again in the book that a business should be customer-centric, with a huge focus on fulfilling the customer needs.
In this case, he uses the example of advertising to bring out his point. Considering whether to place advertisements on our website simply seems like short-term gains for ourselves.
When facing any similar problems, look back at why the business was started in the first place. Realign with these initial goals we set out to achieve, and answers to advertising and other conundrums will be clear.
4. Persistence is important
“Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently doing what’s not working.”
What’s more important is persistence about change, growth and improvement. We cannot be afraid to falter, acknowledge mistakes and to learn and adapt from them.
5. Ideas are just a multiplier of execution
Ideas are not worth much, everyone has ideas. It is the execution that allows our ideas to grow and develop. A million dollar idea would go nowhere without proper execution.
6. Personal goals and actions
“How do you grade yourself?
It’s important to know in advance, to make sure you’re staying focused on what’s honestly important to you, instead of doing what others think you should.”
How do I measure success on my own terms? Do I value money, autonomy, work-life balance, or anything else?
Understanding our personal priorities and working towards them is crucial. In today’s world we can be caught up with other people’s goals and feel like we need to also strive for them. But that is untrue and exhausting.
“There’s a benefit to being naïve to the norms of the world — deciding from scratch what seems like the right thing to do, instead of just doing what others do.”
7. Preparation to scale
“No matter what business you’re in, it’s good to prepare for what would happen if business doubled.
Notice that “more of the same” is never the answer. You’d have to do things in a new way to handle twice as much business. Processes would have to be streamlined.”
I’ve previously read somewhere that if your only skill or strength is to work harder and more, that’s not a recipe for long term success.
Similarly, at a certain point of the business we need to be prepared to scale and grow. And that entails finding new ways to handle new demand. Simply staying with the same strategy but working doubly hard is not the answer.
8. Enjoy the process
“When you sign up to run a marathon, you don’t want a taxi to take you to the finish line.”
You want to Be something, not Have something. What this means is that our goal shouldn’t be an end product or destination. Instead we should aim to successfully achieve and learn from a journey.
I know, this sounds cliché. I’ve heard it many times myself, but never quite internalized it. But when I read the quote above, it really struck me.
If the purpose of running a business is simply to earn big money (Have something), then the business processes and strategies taken might be compromised to reach this goal.
But when we have a goal to be a good business person, to learn business and develop from the experience (Be something), we will tend to do things the right way and not be influenced by the wrong goals.
9. Self Employment
“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 sure you could leave for a year, and when you came back, your business would be doing better than when you left.”
There is a significant difference between self-employment and being a business owner, and this got me thinking:
Am I a business owner, or am I simply employed to the business 24/7?
10. It’s your business: Do it the way that makes you happy
“A business is a reflection of the creator. Whatever you make, it’s your creation, so make it your personal dream come true.”
“When you make a business, you get to make a little universe where you control all the laws. This is your utopia.”
We can truly determine our businesses to be anything we want, and not traditionally what a business is supposed to be: because it’s ours! At the end of the day, we set up businesses and projects to achieve our own personal goals.
So we should aim to take control over the business and build it in a way that makes us happy, makes the customers happy, and maybe that’s enough.
“People also assume that you want to be big big big — as big as can be. But do you, really?
You may be much happier as a $1 million business than a $1 billion business.”
I’ll end with one of the quotes that left a biggest impact on me. Whenever we feel unclear and directionless, here’s a good reminder:
“Never forget why you’re really doing what you’re doing.
Are you helping people?
Are they happy?
Are you happy?
Are you profitable?
Isn’t that enough?”
