“Do What You Love, Not What You're Told”
👉 For more insights, check out the full book and audio summary here 📖
📕 Transcript and audio of this episode is available here for free
Title: Anything You Want
Author: Derek Sivers
Category: Startups & Entrepreneurship
Derek Sivers built CD Baby by accident, just solving his own problem. Sam and Sophie sit with that idea for a minute, because it's not the typical startup story of grand visions and market research.
They walk through Sivers' philosophy of customer obsession, from answering every email personally to refunding a customer who complained about an autographed CD. They explore why he refused millions in ad revenue and venture capital, and how he defined success on his own terms. The episode also covers his counterintuitive approach to delegation and his honest account of the emotional toll of selling his company.
If you've ever felt pressured to follow someone else's blueprint for success, this episode is for you. The takeaway: your business is a tool, not an identity, and you get to choose what success means.
Anything You Want by Derek Sivers. If you want the full written summary, the whole library is on 7minutebooks.com/app — over 6,000+ fiction and nonfiction titles, readable or listenable in any language, from $2.99 a month, $9.99 a year, or $19.99 lifetime.
Chapters
00:00Accidental Success and Personal Problems01:38Customer Obsession and Radical Service02:44Values as Strategy and Saying No03:46Defining Success and Delegation05:47Selling the Company and Identity Crisis07:04Final Takeaway: Choose Wisely
Topics
Related episodes
