Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur

From the moment Derek contacted me about my book, How To Be Your Own Booking Agent: THE Musician's & Performing Artist's Guide To Successful Touring , I've watched his little business grow into a not-so-little business and was amazed at how it doubled every year. This very honest account of how he grew CD Baby from a basement cottage hobby to a warehouse indie institution, is thoughtful, concise, informative and inspiring. If you are running any kind of business and especially if you are a musician running your own business, this book of insightful stories, lessons learned will be a boon to your view of the really important stuff to focus on. These lessons make sense, plain and simple. With all the how-to books, videos and friendly advice one can be inundated by, learn from Derek's down-to-earth, come-from-the-heart lessons learned from trial and error, listen-to-your-heart and do-what's-right-for-you method. Clearly Derek Sivers is different sort of a business founder and his stories demonstrate that. Yet, it always comes right down to being yourself and relying on YOUR creativity that will make a difference in how well your business life goes. If the stories in this little book are any indication of how taking the opposite approach from the crowd can work in your favor, then learn these lessons well. If the lessons in this book can offer you a direction or a theme to guide you, it would be to dare to be unique, strive to follow your heart no matter how far you may stray from what everyone else is doing. Let the creative in you take over and influence your moves so you do stand out from the rest. But most of all, run your business in the service of your customer's betterment. Let them always be your guide. Great, quick read that get's to heart of what being in business is all about.

Terms and Conditions: Use of the material below is ... just kidding... This book sat for a while until the time was right. I plugged the iPad into the charger and picked up my Kindle... today was the day. I'm off work for a few days and one of my goals is to read a book or two... first up "Anything You Want". I previously had just peeked at the first couple pages on the iPad with the Kindle App, but I was going to read cover to cover and for that I prefer the Kindle. I really enjoyed this book. Creating a little utopia; in a world so messed up what could be more satisfying? Is it more about philosophy or the building of a distribution company? You'll learn that the author never really separated the two. It's all about the soul of CD Baby. With a little editing, time compression, and a few more anecdotes it would make a good story for The Moth. The writing is very clear and concise. The fat has been well trimmed and the author provides some real insights that are refreshing, and I believe generally applicable to one's life. Honest and thought provoking I'm sure many will be nodding their heads in agreement with more than one of the analogies presented. I was easily able to read it all the way through with a brief stop for Crispy Pad Thai about mid way, but I was reading again while I ate. I bought this book because of my love for CD Baby and my respect for their success, but it would be a great book for the young entrepreneur, and it might even help the not so young become the entrepreneur they've dreamed of. This book has the potential to invoke change in the reader, and thus the world. Disclosure: I was huge fan of CD Baby, no one other than maybe another true CD Baby lover would understand how much I loved CD Baby and the concepts behind it. I really miss it, even though it still lives on in another form. I did smile the other day buying a CD; "sold by CD Baby Fulfilled by Amazon". F*%^$ Apple

I added this to my list of books to read after it being recommended by Shawn Blanc's monthly book club. Although new books go to the bottom of my list, this one looked like a quick read and given Easter Monday I was able to consume within the hour. What I liked about this book was Siver's open and honest approach to running a business. To him, it is about having fun, being happy and ultimately about the customer; money didn't play a role. It is certainty a healthy approach to have in a business however sometimes I think reality can bite into this approach given our fast paced world of technology and disruption. There were many anecdotes on both his successes and failures along with lessons we can all take from it. For example, the tried and true test of trusting and verifying, to delegate but not abdicate and to make every decision based on the impact to the customer. I don't believe that this approach to business works carte blanche in every industry and idea however there are some great fundamentals for any entrepreneur to take on board with a new venture. Three key takeaways from the book: 1. Delegation is key in the business (especially when you grow), however, with delegation trust but verify. Furthermore delegation doesn't not mean abdication. 2. If you're not saying "Hell Yeah!" to an idea/approach etc. then say no! 3. Siver's Tao of Business: Care about your customers more than about yourself and you'll do well.

Easy to read and full of learned lessons. Derek Sivers’s story is very inspiring. There were so many lessons in this book that i will implement in my business.

A nice distillation of a number of his blog posts into a single coherent narrative. Here were a couple of pieces of advice I found very helpful: "Making a company is a great way to improve the world while improving yourself." "Never do anything just for the money." "Don't pursue business just for your own gain. Only answer calls for help." "Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently doing what's not working." "For an idea to get big it has to be useful and being useful does not need funding. Start now with a humble prototype of your big vision and you will be in the game." "Make every decision--whether to expand the business, raise money, promote someone--according to what's best for your customers." In some ways he built CD Baby while he was on his way to somewhere else. The first part of the book is a portrait of an artist as a young entrepreneur. Sivers' fundamental goal--as he states repeatedly--was not to become a successful entrepreneur. He wanted to be a singer in a rock and roll band and continued to take vocal lessons and play in bands. The very first iteration of CD Baby was just designed to sell his own band's CDs until other musicians asked him for help when learned he had solved the on-line distribution problem for himself. He details how at various points he had unwittingly given his father 90% of the company for a token amount of money, he had delegated so much authority to his employees that they designed a profit sharing plan that allocated all of the profits to their profit sharing plan, and he didn't come to company headquarters much in later years. I don't think this detracts from his observations about what was required to get CD Baby off the ground and up to a several million dollars a year run rate.

I just finished Derek Sivers new book, Anything You Want. What a great read! In case you don't know who Sivers is, he was the Founder of CD Baby, the largest online seller of independent music. He grew it from nothing in 1998 then sold it to Disc Makers for 22 million in 2008. Not bad for what started as a little hobby! Now I've read my share of business books over the years and most are (yawn) boring, long and full of fluff. Not his book. This hardcover is 77 pages of great information and advice dished out in 40 lessons. It was hard to put down. Sivers gives the reader ten years of his business experience in one hour. Yes, you can sit down with this book and read it cover to cover in about an hour. He talks about how he turned a hobby of selling his own music online as well as helping his friends do the same. Mind you, this was happening several years before PayPal came about. Sivers was definitely ahead of his time! He recounts stories and ideas that helped him shape his business into a huge success. This is not just a business book. It's a great motivational read too. Insightful and interesting. Again, hard to put it down. You'll see. Here are some of my favorite pieces of advice: * Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently doing what's not working. * Don't waste years fighting uphill battles against locked doors. Improve or invent until you get that huge response. * Care about your customers more than about yourself, and you'll do well. * The real point of doing anything is to be happy, so do only what makes you happy. Get yourself a copy of Anything You Want today. You'll thank me.

The main emphasis I would make from the get-go, was that I was entertained from the first page to the last. Derek's ride through the business world - which was only meant to be a fun hobby at first - is narrated in a very engaging way in this small book. In his own words, he discusses not only the various events and decisions that went into his growing of CD Baby, but also how he refused to allow the small-minded, scarcity-consciousness urgings of the business lawyers who urged him to take precautions to protect himself (the kind of legal precautions that annoy or push away customers ..) As well, he ignored "marketing gurus" who insisted that he is losing money because he didn't plaster advertisements on his site. It was *his* business, and that's not what he wanted. He was simply running his business to help independent musicians, that's it. He wasn't in it for the money - he was in it to do what he loved, and to help others. As just stated, I enjoyed reading how he insisted on asserting his own right to run his business as he saw fit, not having to answer to anyone, and just make everything he did, an expression of just pure fun and joy and of making friends with his own customers through entertaining emails, and company policies that customers got a kick out of. You could tell that Derek wasn't trying to prepare the message in this book to convey some kind of I'm-an-expert-listen-to-my-business advice.. he was simply telling an entertaining story about a business he ran, that at the same gives you an insight in his personal values, and that will end up being a set of principles summed up that you will re-read to remind yourself how to engage customers and spread the viral message of your product/service as powerfully as Derek did. Some Siver-isms: - 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. - When you set up your business like you don't need the money, people are happier to pay you.

I wasn't aware this book was so short when I ordered it, but man it packs a wallop! Easily read in an hour, the insights I took away from reading this book were immense. It was nice to see that I don't have to worry about being a cardboard cutout of all the other "professional" entrepreneurs and businesses in the world today. I have permission to do things my way. Best of all, even though I've used them, I don't have to fall prey to the virtual assistant and outsourcing craze that's taken the self-employed world by storm. It's okay to do the things I love to do, even if that means it takes away time from other things. I also don't have to feel as if I need a business plan, sales/production team, and many other expenses of bigger name companies. I love how this book also teaches the value of an idea. Think about how many ideas you have on any given day and, most likely, you'll find one you can capitalize in some way. Most definitely a recommended read. The best part about it is it's so short I can re-read it over and over again when I have an hour or so to spare and be reminded that it's okay to do things my way.