Anything You Want - Derek Sivers
One-Sentence Summary:
Wonderful lessons on building a business and life fitting to your compass from a musician, programmer and inventor of CD Baby.
Rating On Time Of Review:
Awesome. Would Read Again in Future.
Book notes below. My thoughts are in italics. Opinions are mine during the time of review.
Date Reviewed: April 13, 2020
What’s your compass?
“Business is not about money. It’s about making dreams come true for others and for yourself.” / This is a valid point for running an investment fund as well.
A focus on understanding your personal philosophy to start everything off. What makes you happy? What do you think is worth doing?
“When you make a company, you make a utopia. It’s where you design your perfect world.”
Business is… “… answer the cals for help” / add value.
Plans are shit. You don’t know what people want until you start doing things. Reality vs. Theory.
Make a dream come true
If you were the customer… what would be the dream scenario? Try t make that come true.
A business model with only two numbers
“The best plans are simple….. common sense should tell you if the numbers will work. The rest are details.”
Don’t be afraid to start a little higher to give room for discounts.
This ain’t no revolution
“If you think your life’s purpose needs to hit you like a lightning bolt, you’ll overlook the little day to day things that fascinate you.”
“When you’re onto something great, it won’t feel like revolution. It’ll feel like uncommon sense.” / What’s obvious to you but not for others? Something to consider is the environment you surround yourself with.
If it’s not a hit, switch
““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 invest until you get that huge response.” / This sounds obvious.. and there is also the fact that ‘if you build it they won’t come’ so that requires you to explore and hunt to see if what you are building is striking a chord. The fact is… it’s been hard to know when I should stop doing things or when I should be pivoting. I think I’ve been rather awful at it in the last of years of building OMDV. Though.. I do think I am improving little by little.
But there definitely is a pain associated with trying to push things up hill constantly. I guess… the takeaway is indeed to iterate as much as needed until something bites.
No “yes.” Either “Hell yeah!” Or “no.”
Leading in from iterating and pivoting… there have also been times when certain ideas had traction but it was me who wasn’t excited by it…. A case of trying to appease the ‘market’ but not wanting to provide that service…
“When deciding whether to do something, if you feel anything less than “Wow! That would be amazing! Absolutely! Hell Yeah!” Then say no.” / valid. The decimation of setting aside Great vs. Good. This is a model that I initially thought should be adopted for investing as Buffett famously advised people to imagine they had 20 hole punch card and that meant they could only invest in 20 companies in their entire life. An idea of being patient, picky and doubling down…. But I must say, it’s only been after numerous pivots that I’m beginning to understand what that means for what you do in life.
This also applies for any new projects to take on as well.
The advantage of no funding
“It’s counterintuitive, but the way to grow your business is to focus entirely on your existing customers. Just thrill them, and they’ll tell everyone.” / Customer captivity is the ultimate advantage. Also remember that many customers don’t know what they actually want.. so focus on identifying problems they have in their lives. Things they complain about and fill that gap.
Ideas are just a multiplier of execution
“… ideas are worth nothing unless they are executed.”
Proudly exclude people
“ Have the confidence to know that when your target 1% hears you excluding the other 99%, the people in that 1% will come to you because you’ve show how much you value them.” / focusing on the niche
This is just one of many options
“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.” / I almost forgot… that I had set up various strategies for my career post-hedge fund…. There are so many options and paths you can take… this relates to how you can continuously iterate… but sometimes.. even realizing that you can blow everything up and take a completely different option is another model to adopt.
In one way… this is very important to keep in mind because of my propensity to slog things out given my high pain tolerance. Quit faster and embrace other options. The more extreme the options are from one another, the more data you will be able to collect.
"I miss the mob."
“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?” / I find the profit part is the hard one to achieve… but then again, that means you’re ability to truly add value to people hasn’t been proved out either. But it’s also a good reminder to ask oneself what the point of everything is. Especially for me… there is no reason to be in a constant period of anguish.. that defeats the point of why I embarked on this journey of building my dream career in the first place. Back to basics. Find ways to serve people you want to in ways you want to and try to achieve profit by adding value. Focus on doing the work.
How do you grade yourself?
“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.” / aka how will you measure your life? One way I’ve been grading myself is on how I’ve grown as a person. How many uncomfortable situations I’ve put myself in so that I would grow. Another is also on my ability to inspire others. Another is on my ability to constantly challenge conventions. But.. ultimately… I’d say the best grade is if I believe what I am doing is what I truly should be doing…. Quite qualitative but life generally is all qualitatively relative. I’m still trying to do better on that… focusing my energy on things I genuinely believe I should be doing, that is.
Act like you don’t need the money
The classic… people fall in love with people who push them away… people who win negotiations are those that care the least… it’s all widely known in psychology.. and that’s the case for business. Even if I empirically get it… when my back’s against the wall… oh god how hard it is to not get desperate about cashflow.
“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.” / Earning one’s path to profitability… the cynic in me maybe disdainful that the 2 years of work I’d put in is being ignored but the market is semi-efficient… and the fact is that… I may be fishing in the wrong market and/or I have yet to produce things of value yet. Though I have been doing things for love… been generous with all the content I produce… I need to iterate to create things of true value.
A real person, a lot like you
“… remember that at the end of every computer is a real person…” / don’t forget your manners.
You should feel pain when you’re unclear
“Unfortunately, people writing websites don’t get this kind of feedback. Instead, if they’re not clear, they just get silence - lots of hits but no action.” / Fuck me. A lesson to try to simplify everything and use that as a backtest to whether you understand what you are trying to do. If you can’t dumb things down…. Then well… you aren’t being clear enough. If you aren’t clear with yourself.. how can it appear clear to someone else?
Little things make all the difference
The details matter. CD Baby’s delivery emails became famous because of how funny and weird they were. They also had a policy where if customers bought them pizza, then they would do special favours… all the personal human touches that a small company can do. Business is always personal and this is how the small business can set itself apart from a boring large enterprise.
The focus is to make people smile. “… they’ll remember you more for that smile than for all your other fancy business-model stuff.”
It’s about being, not having
“At twenty-nine, I had done it. After fifteen years of practice, and about a thousand live shows, I was finally a very good singer, at least by my own standards.” / Derek received feedback that he should focus on songwriting instead of singing. Because he wasn’t born with ‘good vocals’… but the thing is… everyone’s got an opinion. Feedback is just feedback. It’s up to you to decide what you want to be. It’s not about having specific skills that will get recognized but being who you want to be. Derek wanted to become a programmer so he learned PHP and SQL to program CD Baby even though he wasn’t the best programmer the company could get. Sure it wasn’t efficient. But he loved the process… and isn’t that all life is for? What’s the point of running your own company if you don’t do the things you love?
There are different schools of thought. Some believe that you need to outsource and that humanity has evolved as a result of specialization. But life isn’t about being efficient. “… 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 (a finished recording, a business, or millions of dollars) is the means, not the end. To be something (a good singer, a skilled entrepreneur, or just plain happy) is the real point.” / Ergo, remembering to tell myself… the whole of all this… of building OMDV with no income for 2 years is to become a great investor. An investor that invests in the way that I see fit. Using a process I’m excited by. Creating things I want to. With the hope that it will add value to others in the process. Don’t forget what you want out of the journey.
Delegate or die: The self-employment trap
“… I was spending all my time on improvements, optimizations, and innovations. To me, this was the fun stuff. This was play, not work…. my company grew from $1 million to $ 20 million in four years and from eight to eighty-five employees… 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 come back, your business would be doing better than when you left.”
Make it anything you want
“You can’t live someone else’s expectation of a traditional business. You have to just do whatever you love the most, or you’ll lose interest in the whole thing.” / Derek chose not to be a traditional CEO. This means not doing all the business deals and management stuff he disliked and hiring others to do that so he can sit alone to program, write and invent. He also chose to limit growth because he didn’t want to run a large business. He wanted to stop at 20 employees but customer demand pushed the growth. The focus is on making sure that you are focusing your time doing what keeps you excited. Obviously, since I have yet to hit profitability… I’ll have to constantly iterate but it’s still iterating within the parameters that I can live with.
Why I gave my company to charity
“Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller were at a party at a billionaire’s extravagant estate. Kurt said, “Wow! Look at this place! This guy has everything!” Joseph said, “Yes, but I have something he’ll never have…. Enough.””
“When I decided to sell CD Baby, I already had enough. I live simply. I don’t own a house, a car, or even a TV. The less I own, the happier I am. The lack of stuff gives me the priceless freedom to live anywhere anytime.” / Music to my years.
“I created a charitable trust called the Independent Musicians Charitable Remainder Unitrust. When I die, all of its assets will go to music education. But while I’m alive, it pays out 5% of its value per year to me. A few months before the sale, I transferred all the CD Baby assets into the trust. It was irrevocably gone, It was no longer mine, It all belongs to the charitable trust.” / After consulting with Seth Godin and his business coach, Derek sold CD Baby because deep down.. he knew that was the next part of the journey he needed to take on in his life so that he could start new projects. He sold CD Baby for $22M in cash and well.. I must say that this is the kind of life I would love to emulate with my own journey.
You make your perfect world
“A business is a reflection of the creator.”
“Just 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.”
“Whatever you make, it’s your creation, so make it your personal dream come true."
Disclaimer - I’m writing this for myself. For my past, present and future self. Much of what I write is my opinion. If it somehow ignites agreement in you then great, I’d love to hear about it. If it sparks disagreement in you, don’t reach out because I don’t care for it. There always are obvious exceptions and the flawed person in me hasn’t considered them all.