ANYTHING YOU WANT BY DEREK SIVERS | BOOK

SUMMARY

In Anything You Want, author Derek Sivers highlights the main lessons learned
while building his business, CD Baby. This quick read is full of actionable and
sometimes controversial lessons that go against the norm. Derek challenges
conventional business thinking and turns a lot of assumptions on their heads.

Ten years of experience in one hour

This is most of what I learned in ten years, compacted into something you can read
in an hour. I hope you find these ideas useful for your own life or business. I also
hope you disagree with some of them. Then I hope you e-mail me to tell me about
your different point of view, because thats my favorite part of all. (Im a student,
not a guru.)

Whats your compass?

Dont be on your deathbed someday, having squandered your one chance at life,
full of regret because you pursued little distractions instead of big dreams. You
need to know your personal philosophy of what makes you happy and whats worth
doing.

Make a dream come true

When you make a business, you get to make a little universe where you control all
the laws. This is your utopia. When you make it a dream come true for yourself, itll
be a dream come true for someone else, too.

A business model with only two numbers

A business plan should never take more than a few hours of workhopefully 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.

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This aint no revolution

If you think revolution needs to feel like war, youll overlook the importance of
simply serving people better. When youre onto something great, it wont feel like
revolution. Itll feel like uncommon sense.

If its not a hit, switch

Weve all heard about the importance of persistence. But I had misunderstood.
Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently
doing whats not working.

Present each new idea or improvement to the world. If multiple people are saying,
Wow! Yes! I need this! Id be happy to pay you to do this! then you should
probably do it. But if the response is anything less, dont pursue it.

No yes. Either Hell yeah! or no.

For every event you get invited to, every request to start a new project, if youre not
saying, Hell yeah! about it, say no. Were all busy. Weve all taken on too much.
Saying yes to less is the way out.

Just like that, my plan completely changed

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

The advantage of no funding

By not having any money to waste, you never waste money. Since I couldnt afford
a programmer, I went to the bookstore and got a $25 book on PHP and MySQL
programming. Then I sat down and learned it, with no programming experience.
Necessity is a great teacher.

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Never forget that absolutely everything you do is for your customers. Make every
decisioneven decisions about whether to expand the business, raise money, or
promote someoneaccording to whats best for your customers.

Start now. No funding needed.

If you want to be useful, you can always start now, with only 1 percent of what you
have in your grand vision. Itll be a humble prototype version of your grand vision,
but youll be in the game. Youll be ahead of the rest, because you actually started,
while others are waiting for the finish line to magically appear at the starting line.

Ideas are just a multiplier of execution

To me, ideas are worth nothing unless they are executed. They are just a multiplier.
Execution is worth millions.

To make a business, you need to multiply the two components. The most brilliant
idea, with no execution, is worth $20. The most brilliant idea takes great execution
to be worth $200,000,000.

Formalities play on fear. Bravely refuse.

As your business grows, dont let the leeches sucker you into all that stuff they
pretend you need. Theyll play on your fears, saying that you need this stuff to
protect yourself against lawsuits. Theyll scare you with horrible worst-case
scenarios. But those are just sales tactics. You dont need any of it.

The strength of many little customers

When you build your business on serving thousands of customers, not dozens, you
dont have to worry about any one customer leaving or making special demands. If
most of your customers love what you do, but one doesnt, you can just say good-
bye and wish him the best, with no hard feelings.

Proudly exclude people

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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 youve
shown how much you value them.

Why no advertising?

This goes back to the utopian perfect-world ideal of why were doing what were
doing in the first place. In a perfect world, would your website be covered with
advertising? When youve asked your customers what would improve your service,
has anyone said, Please fill your website with more advertising?

This is just one of many options

You cant pretend theres 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.

You dont need a plan or a vision

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? Dont feel bad if you
dont. I never did.

I miss the mob.

Never forget why youre really doing what youre doing. Are you helping people? Are
they happy? Are you happy? Are you profitable? Isnt that enough?

How do you grade yourself?

How do you grade yourself? Its important to know in advance, to make sure youre
staying focused on whats honestly important to you, instead of doing what others
think you should.

Care about your customers more than about yourself

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To me, it was just common sense. Of course you should care about your customers
more than you care about yourself! Isnt that Rule No. 1 of providing a good service?
Its all about them, not about you.

But even well-meaning companies accidentally get trapped in survival mode. A

business is started to solve a problem. But if the problem were truly solved, that
business would no longer be needed! So the business accidentally or
unconsciously keeps the problem around so that they can keep solving it for a fee.

Act like you dont need the money

If you set up your business like you dont need the money, people are happier to
pay you. When someones doing something for the money, people can sense it, like
they sense a desperate lover. Its a turnoff. When someones 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.

Dont punish everyone for one persons mistake

When one customer wrongs you, remember the hundred thousand who did not.
Youre lucky to own your own business. Life is good. You cant prevent bad things
from happening. Learn to shrug. Resist the urge to punish everyone for one
persons mistake.

A real person, a lot like you

Its dehumanizing to have thousands of people passing through our computer

screens, so we do things wed never do if those people were sitting next to us. Its
too overwhelming to remember that at the end of every computer is a real person, a
lot like you, whose birthday was last week, who has three best friends but nobody
to spoon at night, and who is personally affected by what you say.

You should feel pain when youre unclear

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Writing that e-mail to customerscarefully eliminating every unnecessary word,
and reshaping every sentence to make sure it could not be misunderstoodwould
take me all day. One unclear sentence? Immediate $5,000 penalty. Ouch.

I see new websites trying to look impressive, filled with hundreds of puffy,
unnecessary sentences. I feel bad that the people behind those sites havent felt
the pain of trying to e-mail that text to thousands of people, to directly see how
misunderstood or ignored it is.

The most successful e-mail I ever wrote

When youre thinking of how to make your business bigger, its tempting to try to
think all the big thoughts and come up with world-changing massive-action plans.
But please know that its often the tiny details that really thrill people enough to
make them tell all their friends about you.

Please know that its often the tiny details that really thrill people enough to make
them tell all their friends about you.

Little things make all the difference

Every outgoing e-mail has a From: name, right? Why not use that to make people
smile, too? With one line of code, I made it so that every outgoing e-mail
customized the From: field to be CD Baby loves first name. So if the customers
name was Susan, every e-mail she got from us would say it was from CD Baby
loves Susan. Customers loved this!

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.

Its OK to be casual

The thought was that its almost impossible to tell what someones going to be like
on the job until hes actually on the job for a few weeks. So Id hire lightly and fire
lightly. Luckily we didnt need to fire that often. Maybe the fact that the new hires

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were friends of friends helped with the trust part.

Naive quitting

Theres a benefit to being naive about the norms of the worlddeciding from
scratch what seems like the right thing to do, instead of just doing what others do.

Prepare to double

Never be the typical tragic small business that gets frazzled and freaked out when
business is doing well. It sends a repulsive I cant handle this! message to
everyone. Instead, if your internal processes are always designed to handle twice
your existing load, it sends an attractive come on in, weve got plenty of room
message.

Its about being, not having

But thats forgetting about the joy of learning and doing. Yes, it may take longer.
Yes, it may be inefficient. Yes, it may even cost you millions of dollars in lost
opportunities because your business is growing slower because youre insisting on
doing something yourself. But the whole point of doing anything is because it
makes you happy! Thats it!

The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote

But I never again promised a customer that I could do something that was beyond
my full control.

Delegate or die: The self-employment trap

Theres a big difference between being self-employed and being a business owner.
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 it so that you could
leave for a year, and when you came back, your business would be doing better
than when you left.

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Make it anything you want

Happiness is the real reason youre doing anything, right? Even if you say its for the
money, the money is just a means to happiness, isnt it? But what if its proven that
after a certain point, money doesnt create any happiness at all, but only
headaches? You may be much happier as a $1 million business than a $1 billion
business.

Trust, but verify

I learned a hard lesson in hindsight: Trust, but verify. Remember it when

delegating. You have to do both.

Delegate, but dont abdicate

I learned an important word: abdicate. To abdicate means to surrender or relinquish

power or responsibility; this word is usually used when a king abdicates the throne
or crown. Lesson learned too late: Delegate, but dont abdicate.

How I knew I was done

Ive been asked a few times by other entrepreneurs, How do you know when its
time to sell? My answer is, Youll know. But I hope this detailed story describes
how it will feel.

Why I gave my company to charity

When I decided to sell CD Baby, I already had enough. I live simply. I dont 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.

You make your perfect world

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No matter which goal you choose, there will be lots of people telling you youre
wrong. Just pay close attention to what excites you and what drains you. Pay close
attention to when youre being the real you and when youre trying to impress an
invisible jury. Even if what youre doing is slowing the growth of your businessif it
makes you happy, thats OK. Its your choice to remain small.