Anything You Want by David Sivers

David Sivers, a musician, started CD Baby to sell his own CDs online. His friends and other musicians asked him to help them sell their CDs online too. Within 10 years, Sivers sold CD Baby for $22 million. In his book, Anything You Want, Sivers shares 48 lessons he learned from being an accidental entrepreneur.

The lessons are short, supported by examples, and valuable to everyone. He titles each of his lessons. For example:  “Don’t punish everyone for one person’s mistake”; “Little things make all the difference”; and “You should feel pain when unclear,” which discusses the importance of clear and concise writing. If Stivers wasn’t perfectly clear in his emails and even if he was clear, but was verbose in explaining something, he would get thousands of replies from people resulting in lost employee time responding to them.

You can read Stivers’ book in about an hour. You will enjoy it and take away something. One of my favorite quotes from the book is: “Never forget why you’re really doing what you're doing. Are you helping people? Are they happy? Are you profitable? Isn’t that enough?”