Highlights
Don't be on your deathbed someday, having squandered your once chance at life, full of regret because you pursued little distractions instead of big dreams.
You need to know your personal philosophy of what makes you happy and what's worth doing.
The real point of doing anything is to be happy so do only what makes you happy.
Don't waste years fighting uphill battles against locked doors. Improve or invent until you get that huge response.
No plan survives first contact with a customer.
By not having any money to waste, you never waste money.
If you're ever unsure what to prioritise, just ask your customers the open-ended question, "How can I best help you now?". Then focus on satisfying those requests.
It's counterintuitive, but the way to grow your business is to focus entirely on your existing customers. Just thrill them, and they'll tell everyone.
People will choose one company over another just because they like the customer service.
The best thing to do is to lose the fight with the customer. Let them know that they were right, and the company was wrong. Tell them you're prepared to do whatever it takes to make them happy again.
Because my team was actually running the business, I was free to improve the business.
There's a benefit to being naive to the norms of the world — deciding from scratch what seems like the right thing to do, instead of just doing what others do.
Once you become the boss, your opinion is dangerous because it's not just one person's opinion anymore — it's a command. So adding your two cents can really hurt morale.
You have to just do whatever you love the most, or you'll lose interest in the whole thing.
Happiness is the real reason you're doing anything, right? Even if you say it's for the money, the money is just a means to happiness, right? But what if it's proven that after a certain point, money doesn't create any happiness at all, but only headaches?
Pay close attention to what excites you and what drains you.