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.

If anybody ever called our number, it would be picked up in less than 2 rings with a friendly voice answering, CD Baby. From 7 am to 10 pm, there was always somebody to pick up a call in 2 rings. No voice mail system; no routing to different departments. We treated our customers like our best friends. You don't route your best friend's call to an automated system!

Make every decision—even decisions about whether to expand the business, raise money, or promote someone—according to what's best for your customers.

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.

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

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.

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.