Anything You Want
40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur
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Summary
In a universe where passion ignites enterprise, Derek Sivers stands as a testament to the power of uncharted paths. His tale, Anything You Want, isn't just a recounting of CD Baby's rise; it's a clarion call for every dreamer ready to craft their own narrative without a script. Eschewing the traditional trappings of wealth and consultancy, Sivers reveals a raw, unfiltered approach to entrepreneurship that is as exhilarating as it is enlightening. His straightforward wisdom cuts through the noise, reminding us that the true currency of success is audacity and authenticity. For the budding entrepreneur or the individual daring to dream beyond convention, Sivers offers not just a book, but a blueprint for realizing that the improbable is possible.
Introduction
Picture this: you're a struggling musician trying to sell your own CD online, only to discover that every major distributor demands you jump through impossible hoops, wait months for payment, and surrender your customer information forever. What would you do? Would you accept defeat, or would you dare to build something better? This is exactly the crossroads Derek Sivers faced in 1997, and his choice to create his own solution accidentally launched one of the most beloved companies in the music industry. Over ten years, what began as a simple favor for friends transformed into CD Baby, eventually selling for $22 million. But this isn't just another success story about hitting it big. This is a deeply personal account of how building a business becomes an act of creating your perfect world, where every decision reflects your values and every interaction becomes an opportunity to make someone's day better. Through Sivers' journey, you'll discover how staying small can be more fulfilling than growing big, why caring more about your customers than yourself leads to unexpected success, and how the courage to let go at the right moment can be the most important business decision you ever make.
From Accidental Hobby to Thriving Business
In 1997, Derek Sivers was living his dream as a professional musician, making just enough to get by while playing gigs across the U.S. and Europe. When he created a CD of his music and wanted to sell it online, he hit a wall that every independent musician knew well. The big online record stores demanded he work through major distributors, notorious for taking thousands of CDs, paying artists a year later if at all, and kicking out anyone who didn't sell well quickly. The system was broken, and Sivers wanted nothing to do with it. So he spent $1,000 on merchant account setup fees, taught himself programming from a book, and after months of trial and error, finally had a "buy now" button on his website. In 1997, this was revolutionary. When musician friends saw what he'd built, one asked if Sivers could sell his CD too. Without hesitation, Sivers said yes, treating it as a simple favor. Then two more friends asked. Then strangers started calling, saying "My friend Dave said you could sell my CD." Each time, Sivers said yes. What started as a favor was accidentally becoming a business, but Sivers didn't want a business to distract from his music career. So he made a counterintuitive decision: instead of trying to make it big, he would make it small by creating an unrealistically utopian service. He wrote down his perfect-world distribution deal from a musician's perspective: pay artists every week, show them every customer's contact information, never kick anyone out for poor sales, and never allow paid placement. These four points became CD Baby's mission, and they were revolutionary in an industry built on the opposite principles. This teaches us that the best businesses often emerge not from grand ambitions but from solving your own problems with uncommon sense. When you create something that makes your world better, you're probably making someone else's world better too. Sometimes the most powerful business strategy is simply refusing to accept how things have always been done.
Customer-First Philosophy Creates Unexpected Success
Five years after starting CD Baby, when journalists called it revolutionary, Sivers was genuinely surprised. He hadn't set out to change anything, just to help musicians the way he wished someone had helped him. But he was even more surprised to discover the real reason for CD Baby's runaway success. At industry events, when musicians explained why they chose CD Baby over competitors, it wasn't about pricing or features. The number one reason was always: "They pick up the phone! You can talk to a real person!" This revelation led Sivers to structure his entire company around this priority. Out of 85 employees, 28 worked full-time in customer service. But it wasn't just about answering phones quickly, it was about treating every interaction as a moment to shine. When musicians called to sell their music, staff would spend time getting to know them: "What's your name? Got a website? Is that a real Les Paul? Sweet! Let me listen to your music. Nice groove!" For musicians who struggled to get anyone to listen to their work, these few minutes of genuine attention were unforgettable. The company's confirmation emails became legendary. Instead of boring "your order has shipped" messages, customers received delightfully absurd stories about their CD being "gently taken from our shelves with sterilized gloves and placed onto a satin pillow" before being celebrated by "the entire town of Portland" and shipped in "our private CD Baby jet." This single silly email created thousands of new customers as people shared it widely. The deeper lesson here is profound: in our efficiency-obsessed world, taking time to genuinely connect with people becomes a revolutionary act. When everyone else is trying to minimize customer service costs, making it your profit center creates unshakeable competitive advantage. People will choose you not for what you sell, but for how you make them feel.
Delegation and Company Culture Challenges
By 2001, CD Baby had grown to eight employees, but Sivers was still the bottleneck for every decision. Working 7am to 10pm, seven days a week, he faced a constant stream of questions: "Derek, someone wants to change their album art after it's live, what do I tell them?" "Derek, can we accept wire transfers?" The interruptions made real work impossible, and Sivers realized he was running from his problems instead of solving them. The breakthrough came when he shifted from just answering questions to teaching the thinking behind his answers. When an employee asked about refunding someone's setup fee after they changed their mind, Sivers gathered everyone together. He not only answered yes to the refund but explained his philosophy: "Always do whatever would make the customer happiest, as long as it's not outrageous. Helping musicians is our first goal, profit is second. You have my full permission to use that guideline to make these decisions yourself." This process continued for two months. Every question became a teaching moment, with the reasoning documented in a manual that grew into the company's decision-making DNA. Eventually, there were no more questions. Sivers had successfully made himself unnecessary to day-to-day operations, freeing him to focus on improvements and innovations while the company grew from $1M to $20M in four years. But Sivers learned the hard way that there's a difference between delegation and abdication. In his eagerness to empower employees, he went too far, essentially giving away all decision-making power. When employees set up a profit-sharing program that gave themselves all the company's profits, he had to intervene, creating a communication breakdown that ultimately led to his complete withdrawal from daily operations. The lesson is clear: delegate authority and decision-making, but never abdicate your responsibility as the owner to set boundaries and ensure alignment with the company's mission.
Knowing When to Let Go and Give Back
In early 2008, after completing a beautiful ground-up rewrite of CD Baby's software, Sivers looked at his plans for the year ahead. He had broken down the necessary projects into 20 tasks, each taking 2 to 12 weeks, all required for future growth. But for the first time in ten years, he wasn't excited about any of them. The realization hit him like a revelation: he had taken the company far beyond his original goals and had no bigger vision for what it could become. When three companies called that week asking if he'd consider selling, his usual automatic "no" response wavered. That weekend, he opened his diary and seriously considered the question "What if I sold?" Previous years, the answer had always been an emphatic no, but this time was different. He found himself excited about the freedom from 85 employees and their responsibilities, about getting outside again, about new projects he could pursue. The bigger learning challenge, he realized, was letting go, not holding on. A friend grilled him with tough questions about achieving freedom without selling, but after an hour of deep examination, both concluded he was truly done. As Sivers put it, "By the end of that day, I was no longer [email protected]." The emotional disconnection was complete, like being already on the highway with a box of belongings, the old home long gone. But Sivers' final decision revealed his deepest values. Having lived simply without needing luxury, he already had enough money for a comfortable life. Instead of keeping the $22 million from the sale, he created a charitable trust for music education. By transferring ownership to the trust before the sale, he saved $5 million in taxes that would otherwise have reduced what went to charity. This wasn't altruism, he insisted, but the deepest form of happiness: knowing his lucky streak would benefit countless musicians, getting the constant reminder that he had enough, and maintaining the freedom that mattered most to him.
Summary
The ultimate lesson from this extraordinary journey is elegantly simple: your business should be designed to create your perfect world, where every decision reflects what you believe is right, not what others expect you to do. Start by solving your own problems with uncommon sense, because what makes your world better probably makes someone else's world better too. Focus obsessively on making customers so happy they can't stop telling others about you, even if it means spending more on customer service than your competitors think is rational. Learn to delegate by teaching your thinking process, not just your tasks, but never abdicate the responsibility to maintain your company's soul and boundaries. Most importantly, have the courage to let go when you've achieved your vision rather than growing for growth's sake, and remember that true success isn't about having more but about knowing when you have enough.
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By Derek Sivers
