Never be rigid in your thinking, be open.

Be in the moment.

That everything happens for a reason.

To fail better next time.

So for years I kept calling myself an entrepreneur until one day I realized like, wait a second, this is expired! Like somebody who is an athlete in high school can’t keep calling himself an athlete forever.

Do you have a big visionary master plan for how the world will work in twenty years? Do you have massive ambitions to revolutionize your industry? Don’t feel bad if you don’t. I never did. A year and a half after starting CD Baby, it was just me and John, my first employee, running it out of my house. One night, I decided I should think more about the long-term future of this thing. I sat with my diary for a few hours of introspection. Afterwards, I wrote John an email that went like this: “I think there’s a chance that this thing might be huge one day, so we better start preparing for that now. I mean some day, we might have a thousand artists. We might need a third employee! We’d need three computers, and need to figure out how to network them together. We might even need to start moving CDs into the garage, since eventually they might fill up the living room. Yes, I know it sounds grandiose, but I think things are headed that way.” Years later, after I had 100,000 artists and 85 employees, John would often get a good laugh out of this letter I sent him in 1999. Journalists would ask, “What’s your long-term goal?” I’d say, “I don’t have one. I surpassed my goals long ago. I’m just trying to help musicians with whatever they need today.” So please don’t think you need a huge vision. Just stay focused on helping people today.

In the end, I had to pay $3.3 million dollars to buy back that 90%.

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

And this is my only pair of pants. These three glasses, I don’t even think about it because I just think about having enough.

The rest should go to music education, since that’s what made such a difference in my life. I created a charitable trust called the Independent Musicians Charitable