Podcast Notes Key Takeaways

•  People like to stay busy so they often say yes to everything
  • Instead, say no to almost anything. Use the Hell Yeah rule: If an activity doesn’t feel like a hell yes for you, then don’t take it.
    • “Strategically, it’s better to do 5 bigs things with your life instead of 500 half-assed things” – Derek Sivers
• However, don’t use the Hell Yes rule when you’re just starting out in your career. In the beginning, try to say yes to every opportunity.
  • “I don’t think that Hell Yeah or No is something that should be applied to everything in life. You have to know when you’re drowning in opportunity or starving for opportunity.” – Derek Sivers
• Although training someone to help you out with work may take a lot of time and energy, if you try to do everything yourself you’ll become overwhelmed and eventually reach a breaking point
  • When Derek was running CD Baby, he was working from 7AM to midnight because he was so involved in the business and not delegating work
    • “For work to turn into this constant state of every five minute an interruption just made it unbearable. I stopped going to the office. I started shutting off my phone until I realized that I was running from my problems instead of solving them. I realized this was a do or die moment, like I need to fix this or I’m toast.”
• “You know you’re a true business owner when you could leave your business for a year and come back a year later and find that it’s doing better than when you left. That’s when you’re no longer self-employed, you’re a business owner.” – Derek Siver
• Ideas multiplied by execution will tell you how much a company is worth. Imagine two columns (one of ideas and one for execution):
  • Awful idea: -1
  • Weak idea: 1
  • Okay idea: 10
  • Great idea: 20
    • No execution: $1
    • Weak execution: $1,000
    • Okay execution: $100,000
    • Great execution: $1,000,000
• To make a business, you need to multiple those two columns:
  • Great idea X No execution = $20
  • Okay idea X Okay execution = $1,000,000
  • Great idea X Great execution = $20,000,000
• “I’m not really interested in hearing people’s ideas, it’s just not interesting without the execution.” – Derek Sivers
• “I feel like the reflection time is when you really learn. The moment when you read somebody else’s idea, that’s a wow moment, but you don’t really learn it until you’ve put aside the time to reflect on it.” – Derek Siver

Read the full notes @ podcastnotes.org

Musician, speaker, writer and entrepreneur, Derek Sivers chats about creating and running CD Baby, reading, mental models, living a meaningful life and that biggest mistake he’s ever made.

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