Top 60 Derek Sivers Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Customer service is the new marketing.”

— Derek Sivers

2. “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.”

— Derek Sivers

3. “If I’m not saying ‘Hell Yeah!’ to something, then I say no.”

— Derek Sivers

4. “To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.”

— Derek Sivers

Featured in: Quotes About Ideas

5. “It was the first follower that transformed the lone nut into a leader.”

— Derek Sivers

6. “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.”

— Derek Sivers

Featured in: Regret Quotes

7. “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.”

— Derek Sivers

8. “Business is not about money. It’s about making dreams come true for others and for yourself.”

— Derek Sivers

9. “Never forget why you’re really doing what you’re doing.”

— Derek Sivers

10. “If more information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.”

— Derek Sivers

11. “Whatever excites you, go do it. Whatever drains you, stop doing it.”

— Derek Sivers

12. “Obvious to you is amazing to others.”

— Derek Sivers

13. “The most important lesson is probably to spend less than you earn.”

— Derek Sivers

14. “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?”

— Derek Sivers

15. “You can’t please everyone, so proudly exclude people.”

— Derek Sivers

16. “When you make a company, you make a utopia. It’s where you design your perfect world.”

— Derek Sivers

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

— Derek Sivers

18. “Are you helping people? Are they happy? Are you happy? Are you profitable? Isn’t that enough?”

— Derek Sivers

19. “The single most important thing is to make people happy. If you are making people happy, as a side effect, they will be happy to open up their wallets and pay you.”

— Derek Sivers

20. “Care about your customers more than about yourself, and you’ll do well.”

— Derek Sivers

21. “Go find very early versions of things: the first TV pilot of a later-successful TV show; early audition tapes by famous actors; early demos by famous musicians. Focus on these early examples, not what they became over the next 20 years. Remember that what you’re doing will constantly improve.”

— Derek Sivers

22. “Ideas are just a multiplier of execution.”

— Derek Sivers

23. “You’re free to do anything you want with your company. It’s more like art. You don’t have to follow any norms. It’s an expression of how you feel the world should be. When you make a company, that’s your little place to make your own little utopia.”

— Derek Sivers

24. “There is no movement without the first follower. See, we are told that we all need to be leaders but that would be ineffective. The best way to make a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow.”

— Derek Sivers

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

— Derek Sivers

26. “Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently promoting what’s not working.”

— Derek Sivers

27. “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.”

— Derek Sivers

28. “Making a company is a great way to improve the world while improving yourself.”

— Derek Sivers

29. “When you make a business, you get to make a little universe where you control all the laws.”

— Derek Sivers

30. “Five years after I started CD Baby, when it was a big success, the media said I had revolutionized the music business. But ‘revolution’ is a term that people use only when you’re successful. Before that, you’re just a quirky person who does things differently.”

— Derek Sivers

31. “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.”

— Derek Sivers

32. “If you want to be useful, you can always start now. It will be a humble prototype of your grand vision, but you’ll be in the game. Start by teaching someone this week. Starting small puts 100% of your energy into solving real problems for real people.”

— Derek Sivers

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

— Derek Sivers

34. “In the end, it’s about what you want to be, not what you want to have.”

— Derek Sivers

35. “Learning. It’s really the primary reason behind everything I do. Programming, entrepreneuring, writing.”

— Derek Sivers

36. “I’m not interested until I see their execution.”

— Derek Sivers

37. “If it’s not a hit, switch.”

— Derek Sivers

38. “The creative person basically has two kinds of jobs: One is the sexy, creative kind. Second is the kind that pays the bills. Sometimes the task at hand covers both bases, but not often.”

— Derek Sivers

39. “Instead of staying strong and working through when times are really tough, I usually quit this recipe for failure and start a whole new recipe. So if something is too challenging, I tend to chalk it up as not a good fit, and move on to something else.”

— Derek Sivers

40. “It’s only a little difficult to say no. You’ve got to believe that the work you’re doing is ultimately more useful to the world.”

— Derek Sivers

41. “Make every decision – even decisions about whether to expand the business, raise money, or promote someone – according to what’s best for your customers.”

— Derek Sivers

42. “Don’t pursue business just for your own gain. Only answer the calls for help.”

— Derek Sivers

43. “Make sure you know what makes you happy, and don’t forget it.”

— Derek Sivers

44. “Learning without doing is wasted. If I don’t use what I learn, then it was pointless! How horrible to waste those hundreds of hours I spent learning, and not turn it into action.”

— Derek Sivers

45. “Most people don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing. They imitate others, go with the flow, and follow paths without making their own. They spend decades in pursuit of something that someone convinced them they should want, without realizing that it won’t make them happy. Don’t.”

— Derek Sivers

46. “Busy is what happens when you’re at the mercy of someone else’s schedule.”

— Derek Sivers

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

— Derek Sivers

48. “Delegate but don’t abdicate.”

— Derek Sivers

49. “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.”

— Derek Sivers

50. “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 the money, people can sense it, like they sense a desperate lover. It’s a turnoff. 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.”

— Derek Sivers