100 Quotes by Derek Sivers

Go find very early versions of things: the first TV pilot of a later-successful TV show; early audition tapes by famous actors; early demos by famous musicians. Focus on these early examples, not what they became over the next 20 years. Remember that what you’re doing will constantly improve.

I love that sometimes we need to go to the opposite side of the world to realize assumptions that we didn’t even know we had and realize that the opposite may also be true.

Five years after I started CD Baby, when it was a big success, the media said I had revolutionized the music business. But ‘revolution’ is a term that people use only when you’re successful. Before that, you’re just a quirky person who does things differently.

The purpose of money is to trade for things that make you happy. So if you can bypass money and get directly to the happy, you’ve saved a lot of trouble. And it makes others happier, too, when you organize your business around non-monetary things.

If more information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.

Learning. It’s really the primary reason behind everything I do. Programming, entrepreneuring, writing.

I’m not interested until I see their execution.

In the end, it’s about what you want to be, not what you want to have.

Make every decision – even decisions about whether to expand the business, raise money, or promote someone – according to what’s best for your customers.