Book Summary: Anything You Want by Derek Sivers

The book is a compilation of lessons learned by Derek Sivers from his entrepreneurial journey. It serves as a guide for creating a company that mirrors your personal beliefs and values. The core philosophy revolves around starting a business to meet a need, focusing on the customer, maintaining control over your business, learning from mistakes, and knowing when to let go.

Key Ideas

• Meeting a Need: Sivers emphasizes the importance of starting a business to meet a need, not just to make money. He started CD Baby to help independent musicians like himself sell their music online, filling a gap in the market.
• Customer Focus: The book underscores the significance of a customer-centric approach. Sivers believes that the customer should always be the focus of your business decisions, and he exemplifies this by going the extra mile to keep his customers happy. He rejected servicing mainstream artists to avoid crowding out the musicians who didn’t have access to the same mainstream distribution options.
• Maintaining Control: Sivers discusses the importance of maintaining control over your business. He turned down investment offers to keep control over CD Baby and kept the company’s operations simple to continue the mission of helping indy musicians.
• Learning from Mistakes: Sivers shares his experiences of failure and how they helped him grow and improve. He made a mistake by setting the price of a new service too low and learned from this error by adjusting the price to a more sustainable level.
• Knowing When to Let Go: The book ends with Sivers’ decision to sell CD Baby. He knew it was time to let go when he realized that he was no longer passionate about the business.

Key Takeaways

• Start a business that meets a need, not just to make money.
• Always prioritize your customers’ needs.
• Maintain control over your business, even if it means staying small.
• Learn from your mistakes and use them as opportunities for growth.
• Know when to let go and move on to new ventures.