Book notes: Anything you want

Ideas are worth nothing unless executed.

Starting with no money is an advantage. You don’t need money to start helping people. The real point of doing anything is to be happy, so do only what makes you happy.

Derek is one of the people who inspires me most. I love his unique perspectives on business and life, which is why I've read almost all his books. Today I would like to share some notes I highlighted from the second version of his book: Anything you want.

Business is not about money; never do anything just for the money. In the past, I used to follow some content creators who were involved in businesses such as Amazon FBA, Dropshipping, and self-publishing. They seemed to be making a lot of money, and for a young person could be something attractive; however, I always thought, I really don’t want to make money like this. In fact, most of them are now doing other things, and someone has also disappeared from YouTube. What is important, in my opinion, is to be involved with something we like.

When you make a business, you get to make a little universe where you control all the laws. This is your utopia. When you make a dream come true for yourself, it will be a dream come true for someone else, too. Start from yourself, we are the first customer of our business! I am the first customer of my HappyBudget product. I started because I changed my phone from Android to iPhone, and I really didn’t want to download another financial app, but make one tailor-made for me, so the core of the app is the method I use, but I need to evolve it to make it a bit more general to engage other users as well.

Never forget that absolutely everything you do is for your customers. It’s counterintuitive, but the way to grow your business is to focus entirely on your existing customers. Just thrill them, and they will tell everyone. I really love the customer orientation, for sure, it is one of the most important things in business, people will choose one company over another just because they like the customer service.

Start now, no funding needed. It usually means they are more in love with the idea of being big big big than with actually doing something useful. For an idea to get big big big, it has to be useful, and being useful doesn’t need funding. Hello Solopreneurs!

What’s your long-term goal? I don’t have one; I surpassed my goals long ago. I’m just trying to help musicians with whatever they need today. So please don’t think you need a huge vision. Just stay focused on helping people today. Again, help people!

Pay attention to what excites you and what drains you. I am doing this a lot in this period and focusing more on the problems I can solve with software.

It’s proven that after a certain point, money doesn’t create any happiness at all, but only headaches. I cannot confirm it… yet.

When you want to learn how to do something yourself, most people won’t understand. They will assume the only reason we do anything is to get it done, and doing it yourself is not the most efficient way. But that’s forgetting about the joy of learning and doing. Yes, it may take longer, it may even cost you millions of dollars in lost opportunities, because your business is growing more slowly, because you are insisting on doing something yourself. But the whole point of doing anything is that it makes you happy! That’s it! Nothing to add.

Ideas are worth nothing unless executed.