Business and entrepreneurship lessons from Anything You Want by Derek Sivers

Derek Sivers is the inspiration for my recently published book Essential Habits. One day, he e-mailed his subscribers telling us all that he had extensive book notes on many of the books that he has read (and can be found on his site) and that he was going to create a book about ‘directives’ about how to live. Each directive is essentially a summary or takeaway from the many books that he has read that describe how to live. In my book Essential Habits, I did the same thing, getting takeaways, action steps and pragmatic advice from books, successful entrepreneurs, online courses and more and summarized these into specific ‘directives’ for people to follow.

His book Anything you want is written in a similar manner, with lessons learned from starting and selling his business CD Baby.

Here is what I learned from Derek:

Business is not about money. It’s about making dreams come true for others and for yourself

Never forget that a business is as Zig Ziglar says: “You can get everything you want in life if you help enough people get what they want in life”. It’s not about making money. At its simple core, it is about solving problems for others.