Book SummaryWhat's Your Dream?, by Simon Squibb

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of What's Your Dream?

In What’s Your Dream? (2025), entrepreneur and investor Simon Squibb argues that everyone has a dream, and the most satisfying—and financially viable—way to realize that dream is to build a business around it.

Squibb is an entrepreneur, investor, and social media influencer who has founded and invested in over 70 companies across multiple industries. He established [The Purposeful...

What's Your Dream? Summary Introduction: What’s a Dream and Why Follow Yours?

According to Squibb, your dream is your vision of the kind of life you want to live and the contribution you want to make to the world. That might sound like a grand way of describing your goals and ambitions, but Squibb distinguishes them as follows:

• A goal is a specific outcome you work toward, like a financial target or a career milestone.
• An ambition is a drive to achieve more than you currently have.

Squibb argues that having a clear dream is what separates a fulfilling life from one spent achieving goals and ambitions that don’t satisfy you. When you know what kind of life you’re building toward, you have a compass that enables you to make choices that consistently move you in a direction you want to go. Without that clarity, it’s easy to spend years accumulating accomplishments that don’t feel meaningful.

(Shortform note: Like Squibb, Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) argues that goals and ambitions only produce lasting satisfaction when they’re anchored to a clear vision of the life you want. Without that anchor, it’s easy to fall into the trap...

What's Your Dream? Summary Part 1: Prepare

According to Squibb, before you can develop a successful business, you first need to ensure your business idea has potential and prepare yourself mentally and financially. This involves three steps: Evaluate your business idea, build your tolerance for discomfort, and create financial flexibility. Let’s explore each step.

Step #1: Evaluate Your Business Idea

Your business will require intense, long-term focus and effort to succeed, so it’s worth ensuring you build something you’ll enjoy working on and can make money from. Otherwise, Squibb warns, you’ll risk wasting time and energy on unsatisfying or unprofitable work. Evaluate whether your business idea meets the two criteria by considering two questions:

1. Will it enable you to spend your time on tasks and interests that engage and motivate you, or will the work feel like a chore? (Shortform note: Many entrepreneurs advocate for following your heart and doing what excites you because that engagement motivates you to drive forward. Billionaire Richard Branson says that [the goal of entrepreneurship is to turn what excites you into capital so that you can do more of...

What's Your Dream? Summary Part 2: Build

Now that we’ve covered the preparation phase, let’s explain how to develop your idea into a functioning business. During this phase, Squibb advises you to focus on two goals:

1. Acquire and learn from customers.
2. Establish reliable processes.

Let’s explore each goal in detail.

Goal #1: Acquire and Learn From Customers

You might assume that your first goal when developing your business should be to perfect your product or service so that you can sell it. Squibb warns against this approach because it may lead you to waste time and money perfecting something that no one wants to pay for. He says that you should instead attempt to sell an incomplete version—like a prototype—of your idea as quickly as possible. Selling early will support the development of your business by letting you:

• Keep costs low by helping you test your assumptions about how profitable your product or service will be before you invest significant time and resources in its development.
• Create a more profitable product or service by helping you collect feedback on how to make it more appealing to potential customers.
• Pay for resources by helping you build your customer base...

What's Your Dream? Summary Part 3: Grow

Once you’ve aligned your product or service with what customers want and are regularly making sales, you’ll be ready to focus on your business’s long-term growth and profitability. Squibb recommends three strategies: Make existing customers happy, pursue expansion opportunities, and build a team. Let’s explore each strategy.

Strategy #1: Make Existing Customers Happy

Squibb argues that making existing customers happy is essential to the growth and success of your business. Happy customers are more likely to become regular customers who offer a reliable source of revenue, promote your business by recommending you to others, and offer feedback that will help you create more profitable products and services. He says that the best way to keep customers happy is to provide excellent customer service and always deliver more than you’ve promised—for example, by completing orders ahead of schedule, including extras they didn’t request, or giving them early access to your latest products and services.

(Shortform note: Like Squibb, business experts Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles (Raving Fans) stress that businesses must...

Shortform Exercise: Prepare to Build a Business

Squibb says that before you can develop a successful business, you need to ensure your idea has potential and prepare yourself mentally and financially. This exercise will walk you through this phase.

Brainstorm business ideas you might want to pursue and write down a few possibilities that come to mind.