Quotes from Derek Sivers

For some reason, ever since I was a little kid, I wake with the most energy of the day, and it slowly declines from there.

There are plenty of millionaires who would pay millions to hang a Van Gogh painting on the wall, but hardly one that would have ever had the crazy nut over for dinner. I feel like the big companies are like that with musicians. They'll say, 'We love music! It's all about the music!' - but if a musician shows up at the door, they call security.

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

I realized why I need to start a new company. Not for the money. Not because I'm 'bored'. But because a company is a laboratory to try your ideas.

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

How you do anything is how you do everything. Your "character" or "nature" just refers to how you handle all the day-to-day things in life, no matter how small.

Customer service is the new marketing.

Everything I ever wanted to know I just ask a search engine and there's the answer. So the least I can do for my clients is share what I've learned.

The first follower is actually an underestimated form of leadership in itself. … The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader.

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

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

Repeated psychology tests have proven that telling someone your goal makes it less likely to happen.

The first follower is actually an underestimated form of leadership in itself. … The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader.

Let's never forget that whatever brilliant ideas you have or hear, that the opposite may also be true.

If you really care about starting a movement, have the courage to follow and show others how to follow. And when you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first one to stand up and join in.

Distributing the music is so easy it's moot. So now the delicate art of calling attention to your music means everything. Marketing is distribution.

Don't be on your deathbed someday, having squandered your one chance at life, full of regret because you pursued little distractions instead of big dreams.

Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently promoting what's not working.

I'm so into music that I just stop and listen, whenever there's music on. That's the problem with being a musician for so long. I can get lost in the bassline, fascinated with the arrangement, curious about the production. I can't shut it out.

You grow (and thrive!) by doing what excitesyou and what scares you everyday, not bytrying to find your passion.

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.

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.

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

A work-only zone does wonders for your productivity. So, I prefer working at the office now. I spend 8 focused hours there, then I go home to be present with my family.