13 min
Anything You Want by Derek Sivers: the surprising way to grow a company by not focusing on growth Steph's Business Bookshelf Podcast
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- Management
About the book
In this book, Derek tells you everything he learned from starting, growing, and selling CD Baby, compressed into an entertaining and useful one-hour read.
No secrets held back, Derek shares the biggest mistakes, keys to its success, and the philosophies behind the big decisions.
Called “40 lessons for a new kind of entrepreneur”, it’s 10 years of experience in one hour, designed to be immediately usable for your own business or project.
(You can buy the book and support the podcast at the same time by buying through Book Depository (Aus+Global) by clicking HERE or Bookshop (US) HERE.)
About the author
Derek has been a musician, producer, circus performer, entrepreneur, TED speaker, and book publisher.
He’s a monomaniac, introvert, slow thinker, and loves finding a different point of view.
A California native, he now lives in New Zealand.
Some useful links
More about Derek here.
Read Derek’s book summaries here.
Watch his TED talk.
Listen to him on the Tim Ferriss podcast
BIG IDEA 1 - START SMALL
This is one of the biggest lessons that flows throughout the book. Derek talks about how there is no funding required, no MBA required, no fancy office required just to start your business. The most important thing is that you start. Because he says that most people “wait for the finish line to appear whilst they’re still at the starting line” and never take action.
Starting small also means you can 100 percent focus on solving a problem for a customer, which is ultimately the most important thing we should all be doing in our businesses. It also gives a stronger foundation to build from. As if you start small, if you know you can operate at that small level, you are able to leverage and build on this strong base later on.
So before you build an empire, teach one person something, cook something for one person, make something for one person, put something out online. Whatever it is you do, start with one person, one customer who has the problem that you solve.
There's also strength in having many little customers. Many businesses dream of landing that ‘one big customer’. But he says that having many little customers or clients means the acquisition process is easier and losing a client isn't a catastrophe. You also don't have to make as many compromises, which often those bigger clients or big companies will force you to do, which then is often at the detriment of your other clients or other customers.
Starting small means you're also able to maintain creative control. For example, to send quirky order confirmation emails which CDBaby were famous for. You can stay casual. You can embrace that ‘Hell yeah or no’ mentality. You can focus on the little things that make a big difference.
One of the quotes I loved in the book was “when you start a business, you get to start a universe where you set all the laws. This is your utopia”. But you can only do that successfully if you start small, if you're only answering to your clients, your customers and to yourself.
BIG IDEA 2 - IT’S ALL ABOUT YOUR CUSTOMER
This is where you start to push against conventional wisdom.
Derek talks about growth quite a lot in the book and asks the question ‘would your customers really want you to grow?’
Now, of course, they want to you to get to the point where the business is sustainable, where the systems work and everything's slick, but they possibly don't want you to grow too much. That can mean that they become much less important. Maybe as you get bigger, the service would actually decline rather than rather than improve because it gets slower as you deal with more customers. It might also mean that prices go up, too.
Derek talks about the decisions that he made for CDBaby always came back to ‘what would the customers want?’ He didn't take the significant amounts of money he was offered by other companies or venture capitalists or investors to invest in the bus
About the book
In this book, Derek tells you everything he learned from starting, growing, and selling CD Baby, compressed into an entertaining and useful one-hour read.
No secrets held back, Derek shares the biggest mistakes, keys to its success, and the philosophies behind the big decisions.
Called “40 lessons for a new kind of entrepreneur”, it’s 10 years of experience in one hour, designed to be immediately usable for your own business or project.
(You can buy the book and support the podcast at the same time by buying through Book Depository (Aus+Global) by clicking HERE or Bookshop (US) HERE.)
About the author
Derek has been a musician, producer, circus performer, entrepreneur, TED speaker, and book publisher.
He’s a monomaniac, introvert, slow thinker, and loves finding a different point of view.
A California native, he now lives in New Zealand.
Some useful links
More about Derek here.
Read Derek’s book summaries here.
Watch his TED talk.
Listen to him on the Tim Ferriss podcast
BIG IDEA 1 - START SMALL
This is one of the biggest lessons that flows throughout the book. Derek talks about how there is no funding required, no MBA required, no fancy office required just to start your business. The most important thing is that you start. Because he says that most people “wait for the finish line to appear whilst they’re still at the starting line” and never take action.
Starting small also means you can 100 percent focus on solving a problem for a customer, which is ultimately the most important thing we should all be doing in our businesses. It also gives a stronger foundation to build from. As if you start small, if you know you can operate at that small level, you are able to leverage and build on this strong base later on.
So before you build an empire, teach one person something, cook something for one person, make something for one person, put something out online. Whatever it is you do, start with one person, one customer who has the problem that you solve.
There's also strength in having many little customers. Many businesses dream of landing that ‘one big customer’. But he says that having many little customers or clients means the acquisition process is easier and losing a client isn't a catastrophe. You also don't have to make as many compromises, which often those bigger clients or big companies will force you to do, which then is often at the detriment of your other clients or other customers.
Starting small means you're also able to maintain creative control. For example, to send quirky order confirmation emails which CDBaby were famous for. You can stay casual. You can embrace that ‘Hell yeah or no’ mentality. You can focus on the little things that make a big difference.
One of the quotes I loved in the book was “when you start a business, you get to start a universe where you set all the laws. This is your utopia”. But you can only do that successfully if you start small, if you're only answering to your clients, your customers and to yourself.
BIG IDEA 2 - IT’S ALL ABOUT YOUR CUSTOMER
This is where you start to push against conventional wisdom.
Derek talks about growth quite a lot in the book and asks the question ‘would your customers really want you to grow?’
Now, of course, they want to you to get to the point where the business is sustainable, where the systems work and everything's slick, but they possibly don't want you to grow too much. That can mean that they become much less important. Maybe as you get bigger, the service would actually decline rather than rather than improve because it gets slower as you deal with more customers. It might also mean that prices go up, too.
Derek talks about the decisions that he made for CDBaby always came back to ‘what would the customers want?’ He didn't take the significant amounts of money he was offered by other companies or venture capitalists or investors to invest in the bus
13 min