Anything You Want
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Anything You Want
Derek Sivers
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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 email me to tel me about your different point of view, because that's my favorite part of al . (I'm a student, not a guru.)
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They spend decades in pursuit of something that someone convinced them they should want, without realizing that it won't make them happy.
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You need to know your personal philosophy of what makes you happy and what's worth doing.
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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. Never do anything just for the money. Don't pursue business just for your own gain. Only answer the cal s for help.
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Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently promoting what's not working.
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The real point of doing anything is to be happy, so do only what makes you happy.
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When you make a business, you get to make a little universe where you control al the laws. This is your utopia.
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A business plan should never take more than a few hours of work. Hopeful y no more than a few minutes. The best plans start simple. A quick glance and common sense should tel you if the numbers wil work. The rest are details.
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When you're on to something great, it won't feel like revolution. It'l feel like uncommon sense. If it's not a hit, switch
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But now... Wow! It was like I had written a hit song. A songwriter can write a hundred songs; then suddenly one of them real y resonates with people and becomes a hit. Who knows why? It's not that it's necessarily better. But through some random circumstance or magic combination of ingredients, people love it.
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Once you've got a hit, suddenly al the locked doors open wide. People love the hit so much that it seems to promote itself. Instead of trying to create demand, you're managing the huge demand.
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Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently doing what's not working.
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We al have lots of ideas, creations, and projects. When you present one to the world, and it's not a hit, don't keep pushing it as-is. Instead, get back to improving and inventing.
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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 uphil battles against locked doors. Improve or invent until you get that huge response. No “yes.” Either “HELL YEAH!” or “no.”
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Every request to start a new project. If you're not saying “HELL YEAH!” about it, say “no.”
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No plan survives first contact with customers.
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I'm so glad I didn't have investors. I didn't have to please anybody but my customers and myself. No effort spent on anything but my customers.
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By not having any money to waste, you never waste money.
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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.
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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.
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It's counterintuitive, but the way to grow your business is to focus entirely on your existing customers. Just thril them, and they'l tel everyone.
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It usual y means the person is more in love with the idea of being big big big than with actual y doing something useful. For an idea to get big big big, it has to be useful. And being useful doesn't need funding.
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For example, let's say you have a vision of making an international chain of enlightened modern schools. 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 wil pay to learn something, meet him anywhere, and begin. It wil be nothing but you, a student, and a notebook, but you'l be in business, and you can grow it from there.
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Ideas are just a multiplier of execution
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?
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To me, ideas are worth nothing unless they are executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth mil ions.
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AWFUL IDEA =-1 WEAK IDEA = 1 SO-SO IDEA = 5 GOOD IDEA = 10 GREAT IDEA = 15 BRILLIANT IDEA = 20 NO EXECUTION = $1 WEAK EXECUTION = $1000 SO-SO EXECUTION = $10,000 GOOD EXECUTION = $100,000 GREAT EXECUTION = $1,000,000 BRILLIANT EXECUTION = $10,000,000
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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 wil come to you because you've shown how much you value them.
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This goes back to the utopian perfect-world ideal of why we're doing what we're doing in the first place. In a perfect world, would your website be covered with advertising?
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So please don't think you need a huge vision. Just stay focused on helping people today.
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Then I'd tel them about the taxi driver in Vegas. Never forget why you're real y doing what you're doing. Are you helping people? Are they happy? Are you happy? Are you profitable? Isn't that enough?
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We al grade ourselves by different measures: For some people, it's as simple as how much money they make. When their net worth is going up, they know they're doing wel . For others, it's how much money they give. For some people, it's how many people's lives they can influence for the better. For others, it's how deeply they can influence just a few people's lives. For me, it's how many useful things I create, whether songs, companies, articles, websites, or anything else. If I create something that's not useful to others, it doesn't count.
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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. 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! Isn't that Rule #1 of providing a good service? It's al about them, not about you.
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A business is started to solve a problem. But if the problem was truly solved, that business would no longer be needed! So the business accidental y or unconsciously keeps the problem around so that they can keep solving it for a fee.
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should be wil ing to die for your customers. That's the Tao of business: Care about your customers more than about yourself, and you'l do wel . Like you don't need the money
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Banks love to lend money to those who don't need it. Record labels love to sign musicians who don't need their help. People fal in love with people who won't give them the time of day. It's a strange law of human behavior. It's pretty universal.
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you set up your business like you don't need the money, people are happier to pay you.
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When someone's doing something for the money, people can sense it, like a desperate lover. It's a turnoff. 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'l likely come your way.
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In the moment, you're angry, and focusing only on that one awful person who did you wrong. Your thinking is clouded. You start thinking everyone is awful, and the whole world is against you. This is a horrible time to make a new policy.
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When one customer wrongs you, remember the hundred thousand who did not. You're lucky to own your own business. Life is good. You can't prevent bad things from happening. Learn to shrug. Resist the urge to punish everyone for one person's mistake.
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serendipity.
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Voca
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When you make a business, you're making a little world where you control the laws. It doesn't matter how things are done everywhere else. In your little world, you can make it like it should be.
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you'l get almost twenty thousand results. Each one is somebody who got the email and loved it enough to post it on his website and tel al his friends. That one goofy email created thousands of new customers.
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But please know that it's often the tiny details that real y thril people enough to make them tel al their friends about you. Little things make all the difference
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If you find even the smal est way to make people smile, they'l remember you more for that smile than for al your other fancy business-model stuff.
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With one line of code, I made it so that every outgoing email customized the “From:” field to be “CD Baby loves {firstname}.” So if the customer's name was Susan, every email she got from us would say it was from “CD Baby loves Susan.” Customers LOVED this!
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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. It's OK to be casual
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Point is: It's not that I wanted to get it done and have good vocals. It's that I wanted to be a great singer. Being a producer:
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They said we were losing mil ions of dol ars in business because we didn't have certain features. But that was OK with me. I loved the process. I was happy. Being, not having:
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But the whole point of doing anything is because it makes you happy! That's it!
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In the end, it's about what you want to be, not what you want to have.
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To have something (a finished recording, a business, or mil ions of dol ars) is the means, not the end. To be something (a good singer, a skil ed entrepreneur, or just plain happy) is the real point.
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When you sign up to run a marathon, you don't want a taxi to take you to the finish line.
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But what if you don't like doing that? What if what you love the most is the solitude of the craft? Or talking to customers? 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.
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For me, I loved sitting alone and programming, writing, planning, and inventing. Thinking of ideas and making them happen. This makes me happy, not business deals or management. So I found someone who liked doing business deals and put him in charge of al that.
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Happiness is the real reason you're doing anything, right? Even if you say it's for the money, the money is just a means to happiness, right? But what if it's proven that after a certain point, money doesn't create any happiness at al , but only headaches? You may be much happier as a $1 mil ion business than a $1 bil ion business.
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I'd say, “Nothing! I'm trying to get it to stop growing! I don't like this. It's too big.” They thought that was the weirdest thing. Doesn't every business want to be as big as possible? No. Make sure you know what makes you happy, and don't forget it.
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I learned a hard lesson in hindsight: Trust, but verify. Remember it when delegating. You have to do both. Delegate, but don't abdicate
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abdicate.
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Voca
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Lesson learned too late: Delegate, but don't abdicate.
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I get the unburdened freedom of having it out of my hands so I can't do something stupid. But most of al , I get the constant priceless reminder that I have enough.
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started CD Baby focused on the importance of making a dream-come-true perfect world for musicians. Along the way I learned the importance of making my business a dream come true for myself, too. 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.
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little profit as possible. Some want to be in Silicon Val ey with Fortune 500 customers. Some want to be anonymous. No matter which goal you choose, there wil be lots of people tel ing you you're wrong.
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Just pay close attention to what excites you and what drains you. Pay close attention to when you're being the real you and when you're trying to impress an invisible jury. Even if what you're doing is slowing the growth of your business—if it makes you happy, that's OK. It's your choice to remain smal .
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You'l notice that as my company got bigger, my stories about it were less happy. That was my lesson learned. I'm happier with five employees than with eightyfive, and happiest working alone. Whatever you make, it's your creation, so make it your personal dream come true.
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The coolest people I meet are the ones who find me through something I've written. So if you made it this far, please go to http://sivers.org/a and email me to say hel o. I get real y inspired by people's questions, so feel free to ask me anything, or just tel me what you're working on. I'm glad to help.
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We hope that one day soon you'l feel the same joy and anticipation this little boy does, because that's what it feels like to pursue the thing you want, to do it with certainty and excitement.
