Anything You Want: The Lessons, Summarized

Derek Sivers is one of my favorite writers. I saw him give the best talk I’ve ever seen in person, and his ideas are all over this website, from my now page to the reason I built the site myself in the first place.

Anything You Want is where most of those ideas come from. In the late ’90s Derek was a musician who just wanted to sell his own CD online. There was no easy way to do it, so he taught himself to code and built a little store. Friends asked him to sell their albums too, and without ever meaning to, he had started a company. CD Baby grew to sell music for well over a hundred thousand independent musicians. When he sold it, he put the money into a charitable trust for music education and kept only a modest income for himself.

The book is tiny: you can read it in about an hour. It’s the story of CD Baby told as a string of short lessons, and most of them are about one thing: a business can be anything you want it to be, so make it something that makes people’s lives better, including your own.

• The Quick Summary
• The Lessons, Explained
• Resources

The Quick Summary

1. Business is about making dreams come true, not money.
2. Start now, with what you have.
3. Keep it simple enough to fit on a napkin.
4. If it’s not a hit, switch.
5. It’s either “hell yeah!” or no.
6. Ideas are worth nothing until you act on them.
7. Many little customers beat one big one.
8. Proudly exclude people.
9. Care about your customers more than yourself.
10. Little things make all the difference.
11. Delegate or die, but don’t abdicate.
12. You make your perfect world.

The Lessons, Explained

1. Business is about making dreams come true, not money. Derek didn’t start CD Baby to get rich. He started it to help musicians, including himself, and every decision came back to one compass: is this good for the musicians? Success, he says, comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from pushing something that isn’t working. Know what you’re really in it for, because that answer will shape everything.
2. Start now, with what you have. You don’t need funding, a business plan or a vision statement to begin. You can start by serving one customer today. Having no investors turned out to be an advantage: with no one else to please, CD Baby could focus only on its customers and grow at the speed of its own money. And CD Baby worked like a co-op: when Derek learned something useful, he shared it with everyone.
3. Keep it simple enough to fit on a napkin. CD Baby’s whole business model was two numbers: $35 to set up an album and $4 for every CD sold. It barely changed in ten years. A simple model is easy to explain, easy to trust and easy to run. And a business doesn’t have to be a revolution; it can just be something small that helps.
4. If it’s not a hit, switch. Derek spent years pushing his music at audiences who were only mildly interested. When he finally started CD Baby, people loved it right away. The lesson: keep improving and inventing until something takes off. When it does, you’ll know, because people will pull it out of your hands.
5. It’s either “hell yeah!” or no. When you’re deciding whether to do something, if you don’t feel an enthusiastic “hell yeah,” say no. Saying no to almost everything leaves room for the rare thing you can throw yourself into completely. It’s one of my favorite ideas of his; I wrote a whole essay about it, If It’s Not a Hell Yeah, It’s a No.
6. Ideas are worth nothing until you act on them. Derek thinks of an idea as a multiplier of execution. A great idea with no follow-through is worth nothing; a so-so idea done brilliantly can be worth a fortune. The value is in the doing. He’s just as skeptical of formalities: contracts, lawyers and elaborate paperwork often feed on fear, and he found you can bravely skip many of them.
7. Many little customers beat one big one. CD Baby never had a customer so big that losing them could sink the company, which let Derek say no to anyone who wanted special treatment. He also never advertised. He’d rather make something so good that the people who love it tell their friends, and he found that even a tiny slice of the world is plenty of customers to build a life on.
8. Proudly exclude people. You can’t please everyone, so don’t try. Decide who you’re for and say it plainly, even if it turns other people away. Being clear about who your business isn’t for makes it that much better for the people it is for.
9. Care about your customers more than yourself. Run your business like you don’t need the money, and be generous. Treat every interaction as a chance to shine. Lose every fight: when a customer is upset, apologize and make it right rather than trying to win. Don’t make everyone suffer with new rules because one person made a mistake. And remember there’s a real person on the other end of every email, a lot like you.
10. Little things make all the difference. His most famous example is an order confirmation email. Instead of the usual dry receipt, Derek wrote a silly, over-the-top description of CD Baby staff lovingly preparing each CD for its journey. People loved it so much they forwarded it everywhere, and it brought in thousands of new customers. A small moment of fun can be the thing people remember.
11. Delegate or die, but don’t abdicate. Doing everything yourself is the trap that keeps a business small and wears you out. Derek learned to make himself unnecessary by teaching his team how he thinks, so they could make decisions without him. But handing off work isn’t the same as walking away from it: trust people, and still check in. He tells the hard lessons too, including his costliest mistakes and how he knew when he was done.
12. You make your perfect world. A business, or a life, is a place where you get to set the rules. You can make it anything you want. So make it a world you’d actually love to be in: one that serves people, fits who you are and feels like being, not just having.

Resources

• Anything You Want on Amazon
• Derek Sivers on the book (sive.rs, where he also sells it directly)
• Uncommon Sense, Derek’s talk at the World Domination Summit, the best one I’ve seen in person
• If It’s Not a Hell Yeah, It’s a No, my essay on his best rule
• The Pathless Path by Paul Millerd, another favorite on building a life and work on your own terms
• More of my book summaries and reviews on Book reviews