Anything You Want by Derek Sivers

Summary

Derek Sivers’ (contrarian) philosophy on life and business, including examples from his time building CD Baby. A nice read for anyone feeling overworked, stressed or thinking every company needs to become a billion dollar business.

Key Takeaways

• Your business plan is moot. You don’t know what people really want until you start doing it.
• When you make a business, you get to make a little universe where you control all the laws. 
• The best plans start simple. A quick glance and common sense should tell you if the numbers wil work. The rest are details.
• Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently doing what’s not working.
• If you’re not saying “HELL YEAH!” about something, say “no.”
• Necessity is a great teacher.
• If you’re ever unsure what to prioritize, just ask your customers the open-ended question, “How can I best help you now?”
• Being useful doesn’t need funding.
• Ideas are just a multiplier of execution.
• Starting small puts 100 percent of your energy on actually solving real problems for real people. 
• 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.
• The Tao of business:
  • Care about your customers more than about yourself, and you’ll do well.
  • Set up your business like you don’t need the money, and it’ll likely come your way.
• To have something is the means, not the end. To be something is the real point.

What I got out of it

Anything You Want by Derek Sivers is a quick read and offers a good counterbalance to all business books focused on scaling, VC investing, obtaining unicorn status and rapid, exponential growth. 

The core of business is ultimately – to quote Sivers – “[I was] just daydreaming about how one little thing would look in a perfect world.” 

I think I would’ve gotten more out of this book had I read it around age 20 to 25. At age 30 (and having read hundreds of books) with a natural tendency to building a business and life around what I love, without the stress of outside money, there wasn’t much new under the sun.

What stuck with me:

• If you’re not saying “HELL YEAH!” about something, say “no.” (arguably the thing that has stuck with most people who have read this book)
• Ideas are just a multiplier of execution.
• Being useful doesn’t need funding.
• Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently doing what’s not working.
• Sivers’ most successful CD Baby email

Summary Notes

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

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

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

Your business plan is moot. You don’t know what people really want until you start doing it.

Make A Dream Come True

I thought that by taking an unrealistically utopian approach, I could keep the business from growing too much. Instead of trying to make it big, I was going to make it small. It was the opposite of ambition, so I had to think in a way that was the opposite of ambitious.

I wrote down my utopian dream-come-true distribution deal from my musician’s point of view. In a perfect world, my distributor would…

1. Pay me every week.
2. Show me the full name and address of everyone who bought my CD. (Because those are my fans, not the distributor’s.) 
3. Never kick me out for not selling enough. (Even if I sell only one CD every five years, it’l be there for someone to buy.) 
4. Never allow paid placement. (Because it’s not fair to those who can’t afford it.) 

That’s it! That was my mission. I liked it. It was a worthy hobby. I named it CD Baby, and put my friends’ CDs there.

Those four points were like a mission statement. I wrote them on the site, talked about them at every conference, and made sure everyone I worked with knew them.

The key point is that I wasn’t trying to make a big business. I was just daydreaming about how one little thing would look in a perfect world.

When you make a business, you get to make a little universe where you control all the laws. This is your utopia.

Six years and $10 million later, those same two numbers were the sole source of income for the company: a $35 setup fee per album and a $4 cut per CD sold.

A business plan should never take more than a few hours of work. Hopefully no more than a few minutes. The best plans start simple. A quick glance and common sense should tell you if the numbers will work. The rest are details.

Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently doing what’s not working.

Present each new idea or improvement to the world. If multiple people are saying, “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 invent until you get that huge response.

If you’re not saying “HELL YEAH!” about something, say “no.”

Any time you think you know what your new business will be doing, remember this quote from Steve Blank: No plan survives first contact with customers.

The Advantage Of No Funding 

I’d get weekly calls from investment firms, wanting to invest in CD Baby. My immediate answer was always “No thanks.”

They’d say, “Don’t you want to expand?”

I’d say, “No. I want my business to be smaller, not bigger.”

By not having any money to waste, you never waste money.

Necessity is a great teacher.

Never forget that absolutely everything you do is for your customers. Make every decision—even decisions about whether to expand the business, raise money, or promote someone—according to what’s best for your customers.

If you’re ever unsure what to prioritize, just ask your customers the open-ended question, “How can I best help you now?” Then focus on satisfying those requests.

None of your customers will ask you to turn your attention to expanding. They want you to keep your attention focused on them.

The way to grow your business is to focus entirely on your existing customers. Just thrill them, and they’ll tell everyone.

Being useful doesn’t need funding.

You picture it as a huge, world-changing organization, with hundreds of employees, dozens of offices, and expensive technology. But instead of waiting for that, you start by teaching somebody something this week. Find someone who will pay to learn something, meet him anywhere, and begin. It will be nothing but you, a student, and a notebook, but you’ll be in business, and you can grow it from there.

Starting small puts 100 percent of your energy on actually solving real problems for real people. It gives you a stronger foundation to grow from. It eliminates the friction of big infrastructure and gets right to the point.

And it will let you change your plan in an instant, as you’re working closely with those first customers telling you what they really need.

Ideas are just a multiplier of execution.

Formalities play on fear. Bravely refuse.

Imagine that you have designed your business to have NO big clients, just lots of little clients.

You don’t need to change what you do to please one client; you need to please only the majority (or yourself).

If one client needs to leave, it’s OK; you can sincerely wish her well.

Because no one client can demand that you do what he says, you are your own boss (as long as you keep your clients happy in general).

You hear hundreds of people’s opinions and stay in touch with what the majority of people want.

It’s a big world. You can loudly leave out 99 percent of it.

Have the confidence to know that when your target 1 percent hears you excluding the other 99 percent, the people in that 1 percent will come to you because you’ve shown how much you value them.

We analyzed a business plan for a mail-order pantyhose company. Like all business plans, it proposed only one plan.

After reading the whole thing, I felt like saying things my old voice teacher would have said:

“OK, make a plan that requires only $1000. Go!”

“Now make a plan for ten times as many customers. Go!”

“Now do it without a website. Go!”

“Now make all your initial assumptions wrong, and have it work anyway. Go!”

“Now show how you would franchise it. Go!”

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.

Journalists would ask, “What’s your long-term goal for CD Baby?”

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.

There were only two numbers that mattered: how much was coming in, and how much was going out. As long as there was more in than out, everyone was happy.

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?

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.

A business is started to solve a problem. But if the problem was truly solved, that business would no longer be needed!

The Tao of business: Care about your customers more than about yourself, and you’ll do well.

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.

It’s another Tao of business: Set up your business like you don’t need the money, and it’ll likely come your way.

You should feel pain when unclear. Email blasts are the best training for being clear.

One goofy email created thousands of new customers.

When you’re thinking of how to make your business bigger, it’s tempting to try to think of all the big thoughts and come up with world-changing massive-action plans.

But please know that it’s often the tiny details that really thrill people enough to make them tell their friends about you.

Even if you want to be big someday, remember that you never need to act like a big boring company.

Over ten years, it seemed like every time someone raved about how much he loved CD Baby, it was because of one of these little fun human touches.

There’s a benefit to being naïve about the norms of the world— deciding from scratch what seems like the right thing to do, instead of just doing what others do.

Prepare To Double 

No matter what business you’re in, it’s good to prepare for what would happen if business doubled.

“More of the same” is never the answer. You’d have to do things in a new way to handle twice as much business. Processes would have to be streamlined.

It’s about being, not having.

It’s not that I wanted to get it done and have good vocals. It’s that I wanted to be a great singer.

When you want to learn how to do something yourself, most people won’t understand. They’ll assume the only reason we do anything is to get it done, and doing it yourself is not the most efficient way.

But that’s forgetting about the joy of learning and doing.

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.

Delegate or die

1. Gather everybody around

2. Answer the question and explain the philosophy

3. Make sure everyone understands the thought process.

4. Ask one person to write it in the manual

5. Let everybody know they can decide this without me next time

Being self-employed feels like freedom until you realize that if you take time off, your business crumbles.

To be a true business owner, make sure you could leave for a year, and when you came back, your business would be doing better than when you left.

Make It Anything You Want 

Never forget that you can make your role anything you want it to be.

Anything you hate to do, someone else loves. So find that person and let him do it.

Trust, but verify.

Remember it when delegating. You have to do both.

Delegate, but don’t abdicate.

You Make Your Perfect World 

Business is as creative as the fine arts. You can be as unconventional, unique, and quirky as you want. A business is a reflection of the creator.