Umarbek

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

When you make a company, you make a utopia. It's where you design your perfect world.

Don't pursue business just for your own gain. Only answer the calls for help.

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

Your business plan is moot. You don't know what people really want until you start doing it.

Starting with no money is an advantage. You don't need money to start helping people.

The real point of doing anything is to be happy, so do only what makes you happy.

When you're onto something great, it won't feel like revolution. It'll feel like uncommon sense.

We've all heard about the importance of persistence. But I had misunderstood. Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently doing what's not working.

If multiple people are saying, "Wow! Yes! I need this! I'd be happy to pay you to do this!" then you should probably do it. But if the response is anything less, don't pursue it.

Don't waste years fighting uphill battles against locked doors. Improve or invent until you get that huge response.

When deciding whether to do something, if you feel anything less than "Wow! That would be amazing! Absolutely! Hell yeah!" then say no.

When you say no to most things, you leave room in your life to throw yourself completely into that rare thing that makes you say, "Hell yeah!"

We're all busy. We've all taken on too much. Saying yes to less is the way out.

By not having any money to waste, you never waste money.

Never forget that absolutely everything you do is for your customers.

None of your customers will ask you to turn your attention to expanding. They want you to keep your attention focused on them.

The way to grow your business is to focus entirely on your existing customers. Just thrill them, and they'll tell everyone.

If you want to be useful, you can always start now, with only 1 percent of what you have in your grand vision.

Starting small puts 100 percent of your energy into actually solving real problems for real people.

Ideas are worth nothing unless they are executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.

The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20. The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $200,000,000.

There are thousands of businesses, like Jim's Fish Bait Shop in a shack on a beach somewhere, that are doing just fine without corporate formalities.

When you build your business on serving thousands of customers, not dozens, you don't have to worry about any one customer leaving or making special demands.

You need to confidently exclude people, and proudly say what you're not. By doing so, you will win the hearts of the people you want.

It's a big world. You can loudly leave out 99 percent of it.

Have the confidence to know that when your target 1 percent hears you excluding the other 99 percent, the people in that 1 percent will come to you because you've shown how much you value them.

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.

Please don't think you need a huge vision. Just stay focused on helping people today.

Never forget why you're really doing what you're doing. Are you helping people? Are they happy? Are you happy? Are you profitable? Isn't that enough?

It's important to know in advance, to make sure you're staying focused on what's honestly important to you, instead of doing what others think you should.

Of course you should care about your customers more than you care about yourself! Isn't that Rule No. 1 of providing a good service? It's all about them, not about you.

Your company should be willing to die for your customers.

Care about your customers more than about yourself, and you'll do well.

If you set up your business like you don't need the money, people are happier to pay you.

When someone's doing something for love, being generous instead of stingy, trusting instead of fearful, it triggers this law: We want to give to those who give.

It's important to resist that simplistic, angry, reactionary urge to punish everyone, and step back to look at the big picture.

When one customer wrongs you, remember the hundred thousand who did not.

You can't prevent bad things from happening. Learn to shrug. Resist the urge to punish everyone for one person's mistake.

It's dehumanizing to have thousands of people passing through our computer screens, so we do things we'd never do if those people were sitting next to us.

At the end of every computer is a real person, a lot like you, whose birthday was last week, who has three best friends but nobody to spoon at night, and who is personally affected by what you say.

You should feel pain when you're unclear.

When you make a business, you're making a little world where you control the laws. It doesn't matter how things are done everywhere else. In your little world, you can make it like it should be.

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.

Even if you want to be big someday, remember that you never need to act like a big boring company.

Don't try to impress an invisible jury of MBA professors. It's OK to be casual.

There's a benefit to being naive about the norms of the world, deciding from scratch what seems like the right thing to do, instead of just doing what others do.

It's good to prepare for what would happen if business doubled. Notice that "more of the same" is never the answer. You'd have to do things in a new way to handle twice as much business.

When you want to learn how to do something yourself, most people won't understand. They'll assume the only reason we do anything is to get it done, and doing it yourself is not the most efficient way. But that's forgetting about the joy of learning and doing.

The whole point of doing anything is because it makes you happy! That's it!

In the end, it's about what you want to be, not what you want to have. To have something is the means, not the end. To be something is the real point.

When you sign up to run a marathon, you don't want a taxi to take you to the finish line.

I never again promised a customer that I could do something that was beyond my full control.

Trust, but verify. Remember it when delegating. You have to do both.

There's a big difference between being self-employed and being a business owner. Being self-employed feels like freedom until you realize that if you take time off, your business crumbles.

To be a true business owner, make it so that you could leave for a year, and when you came back, your business would be doing better than when you left.

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.

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, isn't it?

You may be much happier as a $1 million business than a $1 billion business.

Make sure you know what makes you happy, and don't forget it.

Delegate, but don't abdicate.

I realized that the bigger learning and growing challenge for me was letting go, not staying on.

"Yes, but I have something he'll never have. . . . Enough."

The less I own, the happier I am. The lack of stuff gives me the priceless freedom to live anywhere anytime.

I get the deeper happiness of knowing that the lucky streak I've had in my life will benefit tons of people, not just me.

I get the constant priceless reminder that I have enough.

Business is as creative as the fine arts. You can be as unconventional, unique, and quirky as you want. A business is a reflection of the creator.

No matter which goal you choose, there will be lots of people telling you you're wrong.

Pay close attention to what excites you and what drains you. Pay close attention to when you're being the real you and when you're trying to impress an invisible jury.

Even if what you're doing is slowing the growth of your business, if it makes you happy, that's OK. It's your choice to remain small.

Whatever you make, it's your creation, so make it your personal dream come true.