Anything You Want: 40 lessons for new kind of Entrepreneur

1. What's Your Compass?
   1. Business is not about money. It's about making dreams come true for others and for yourself
   2. Making a company is a great way to improve the world while improving yourself
   3. When you make a company, you make a utopia. It's where you design your perfect world
   4. Never do anything just for the money
   5. Don't pursue business just for your own gain. Only answer the calls for help
   6. Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently promoting what's not working
   7. Your business plan is moot. You don't know what people really want until you start doing it.
   8. Starting with no money is an advantage. You don't need money to start helping people
   9. You can't please everyone, so proudly exclude people
   10. Make yourself unnecessary to the running of your busienss
   11. The real point of doing anything is to be happy, so do only what makes you happy
2. If it's not a hit, switch
   1. We've all heard about the importance of persistence. But I think had misunderstood. Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently doing what's not working. When you present one to the world and it's not a hit, don't keep pushing it as is. Instead, get back to improving and inventing
3. No "yes." Either "Hell yeah!" or "no."
4. The advantage of no funding
   1. Never forget that absolutely everything you do is for your customers. Make every decision - even decisions about whether to expand the business, raise money, or promote someone - according to what's best for your customers. If you're ever unsure what to prioritize, just ask your customers the open-ended question, "How can I best help you now?" Then focus on satisfying those requests. None of your customers will ask you to turn your attention to expanding. They want you to keep your attention focused on them. It's counter-intuitive, but the way to grow your business is to focus entirely on your existing customers. Just thrill them, and they'll tell everyone. 
5. Proudly exclude people
6. This is just one of many options
   1. You can't pretend there's only one way to do it. Your first idea is just one of many options. No business goes as planned, so make ten radically different plans. Same thing with your current path in life
7. How do you grade yourself?
   1. Knowing what you're keeping track of determines how you play the game
8. Care more about your customers than you do yourself. 
   1. That's the Tao of Business: care about customers more than about yourself, and you'll do well
9. Act like you don't need the money
   1. It's another Tao of business: set up your business like you don't need the money, and it'll likely come your way
10. The most successful email I ever wrote
    1. Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow. A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing. Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy. We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved “Bon Voyage!” to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Friday, June 6th. I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as “Customer of the Year.” We’re all exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!
    2. 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
11. Delegate or Die: The self-employment trap
    1. Always do whatever would make the customer happiest, as long as it's not outrageous. Little gestures like these go a long way toward him telling his friends we're a great company
12. Make it anything you want
    1. Never forget that you can make your role anything you want it to be. Anything you hate to do, someone else loves. So find that person and let her do it. 
13. Delegate, but don't abidcate

What I got out of it

1. A great, quick book which is fun and has a lot of worthwhile lessons. While all 40 lessons are key, I've only included the ones that seem most relevant/differentiated. Make yourself unnecessary, build a business for the love of it