Waking Up the Workplace
host: Ewan Townhead
The cutting edge of conscious business, with Ewan Townhead
listen: (download)
Transcript:
Ewan
Welcome to the Waking Up the Workplace interview series. This series is all about exploring the cutting edge of conscious business. And with me on the call today is Johan Anders, producing the show in the background today. Hi, Johan.
Johan
Hi. Good to be with you.
Ewan
And also on the call today is our guest, Derek Sivers, who I'll briefly introduce. So Derek is best known as the founder of CD baby, which is an online is a website in music. He's a professional musician since 1987, started the company by accident in 1998 when he was selling his own CD on his website, and friends started calling him to ask if he could sell theirs. So CD baby was the largest seller of independent music on the web, with over $100 million in sales for over 150,000 musician clients. And by now, Derek sold the company, which I'm sure we'll get into it a little bit. He's now a frequent speaker at the TED conference. I found out that he's actually the guy behind the video called Leadership Lessons from a dancing Guy, which is something I knew about and had seen but I hadn't realized was Derek. So that's fun. And earlier this year, he published a book called Anything You Want, which is beautiful and actually made us approach you, Derek. So we're so happy to have you on the show today to interview you. How are you?
Derek Sivers
Thank you. Thanks, Ewan. Good. And we're doing a funny cross-continent call today with you guys in Amsterdam and me in Singapore. So yes, we are. What time is it there?
Ewan
What time is it here? Nine. Ten. 1010. Is it? Yeah. I've been so focused that I've forgotten about time. But it's 10 a.m. here. So generally, we do these calls at 8 p.m. our time, so it feels fresh and different to be doing it in the morning. We're definitely very awake as it's also cold out here. And we just got some fresh air. So I think we're ready to to dive in. I'll just say a few words about the call today, so we'll dive in with a kind of three way conversation between Derek, Ewen and me for maybe 50 or 60 minutes, and then we'll take some time for Q&A. So if you're listening in, you'll be able to ask your question in two ways. One is the screen that you're looking at has a question box in the lower left. So you can pop your questions in there either throughout the call or when we go into Q&A. And the other thing which we can do is to have you join in live and ask your question by phone, which again, we'll get into once we get to Q&A. but for now, I suggest that we start and there's a question that we have asked all 16 people that we've interviewed so far. And I'd like to ask you, Derek, which is:
Ewan
What is work to you?
Derek Sivers
I define work as anything you don't want to do but have to do. So I have this awkward cocktail party question when you meet people you've never met and they say, “What do you do?” For 10-12 years, I had an easy answer. I'd say I run this music distribution company. But after I sold the company, I had this awkward thing where people would say, “What do you do?” And I'd say, “I, um.... What do I do? I don't know.”
Derek Sivers
So these days, I have a little office that I rent here just because I've been working at home for seven years, and I like getting a little delineation between work and home life. And I come in here in the morning, bright and early, and I study my Chinese for 2 or 3 hours, and then I practice some programming skills for 2 or 3 hours, always trying to learn new programming skills. I really love computer programming. And then I spend about five hours actually programming and making some stuff for future projects I'm working on and spend a couple of hours writing. And that's a typical day for me. so that's kind of my work, but nobody pays me to do it, so I don't know if that counts as work.
Ewan
But that doesn't sound like the stuff that you would not want to be doing. Right? Because that's what you were just saying. So actually, maybe it's not work. I mean, it's formally work, but you don't consider it work, is that it?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, I guess it's maybe what other people call work. Well, it's funny when people say, “What do you do? What do you work at?” They kind of mean, like, “What are you paid to do or what do you spend your day doing?” But I guess my smart ass answer would be like, “Oh, well, I don't work. I just, I just learn, I just play, I write, I don't work.” Oh well. It ends up being a conversation killer, though. We all need just the the short, quippy, fun little answer that you can give at a party when somebody says, “What do you do?” And you say, “I help musicians.” There you go. That's all people want to hear. It's just a nice, simple little phrase to give them some conversation starter. It's like when you ask, “How are you?” You don't really want the full answer. You just want somebody to say “Good.” And then you move on.
Johan
Yeah. Yeah. I had that for years as well, Derek, when I was also a musician and people asked me, I used to love being able to give that answer. Oh, well, I'm a musician. And then people would be impressed and I could, like, feel smug about it. And then. Yeah. And then they asked me these days and I also struggled to answer. It's like, well, I kind of play around with stuff and kind of have fun and write and mess about with business, and people don't really know what to say.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Well, you know, Seth Godin had a good bit of advice about that. I met up with him shortly after I sold my company, and I didn't know how to answer this question. And we were we were talking about it because I had just been to the Ted conference. And at Ted, people ask, what do you do? And I was just being a smart ass. I said nothing, and I was just like, deadpan. I would just say nothing and leave the silence, you know, awkwardly. And Seth said "You don't want to spread ennui." That's a word. I had to go look up. And I think it means, uh. Well, hold on. Wait. Let me type. Define ennui, ennui, listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation. Well, so he said. He said, don't spread ennui. He said, "When people ask, what do you do? They don't care what you're doing with your whole day. You can just tell them what kind of mission you're on, he said. So your next company, muckwork, you're you're going to aim to help people with their dirty work. So when somebody says, what do you do? You can say, I help people do the things they don't want to do. Now you can have an interesting conversation. You've risen the conversation up to a higher level. Instead of bringing it down to actually describing what you do hour by hour. Nobody cares." And so, I don't know, it's an interesting idea that when somebody says, what are you working on that it's really just an opportunity to, to have an interesting conversation.
Ewan
So I'm guessing that you've told this story a million times, but also I'm aware that not all of our listeners might be as familiar with your background as we are by now. You know when people used to ask you the question, what do you do? You had a clear answer. So can you, can you take us back in time and tell us a little bit about what you used to do and how you ended up being where you are now?
Derek Sivers
Sure. All right. So, let's see. I was a musician my whole life. When I was 14, I decided I wanted to be a professional musician. And I didn't just mean, like, rock star. I meant, like I wanted to find a way to make a living just making music. And so I did. So I went off to Berklee School of Music in Boston and did a pretty good job for 15 years. I made my full time living touring, playing on people's records, producing people's records. I was even a musician in a circus. I was a children's entertainer. I did a bunch of stuff, pretty much anything to make a dollar as a musician, but I did it. I was living the musician's dream. I even bought a house in upstate New York with the money I made, touring and gigging and such. So shortly after I bought this house in Woodstock and moved in and I was setting up my recording studio in Woodstock, I set up a little website just to sell my CD, because I had gone through all the trouble of setting up a credit card, merchant account and all that stuff.
Derek Sivers
But this is back in 1997, so there was no PayPal. Amazon was just a bookstore. And if you were a musician, there was literally nowhere that you could sell your music online. So I had to build my own shopping cart and my own system just to sell my music. So after I did it, some of my musician friends said, "Hey, can you sell my CD through that thing?" And as a favor to them, I said, "Sure, no problem." And I just started selling my friends CDs on my website, but it was really just meant to be a hobby. But over the next ten years, that just grew and grew and grew and turned into the largest seller of independent music online, and that was CD Baby. And I did it for ten years straight and loved it until the last year, and I hated it. It just kind of felt done with it. And luckily in 2008 a few different companies were asking me if they could buy the company. And so I said yes, and I let them bid against each other and sold the company in 2008. So there you go.
Johan
So, Derek, we were just discussing this off air before we started the call, but I was sharing that I also started in music and seemed to wind myself into business, but you kind of seem to do it accidentally, like you said, that it was a hobby, that you were selling this stuff. Was there a point where you realized that you were actually spending most of your time running a business? Like, was that a conscious thing, or did that just happen by accident as well?
Derek Sivers
Not only was it an accident, I was actively fighting against it. I think it it really shaped CD Baby's DNA. The fact that I was really just doing this as a hobby, and I did not want it to take over my life because, I mean, you know, and you can imagine, I was living the musician's dream, right? I was making my full time living, just playing music. I was thrilled, so I honestly didn't want anything to get in the way of that. So when I was doing this little hobby to help my friends sell their music, it was just kind of fun. It was a little website. I was doing it for fun, but once it started to grow, I was kind of upset. I didn't want it to keep growing and getting in the way of my music, so I was actively doing things to keep it from growing. But I think it was just lucky timing that because CD Baby was, you know, if it was mid 1998, and you were a musician with a CD to sell, there was literally nowhere on the internet that would sell your CD, except this one guy named Derek in New York.
Derek Sivers
That was it. So, you know, it's not like people these days when they have an idea for an app that's going to let you rate your food and see where your friends are. You're going to be competing against 1000 other people doing the same thing. I really just lucked into this situation where there is literally nobody doing this in 1998. So CD Baby just grew huge and out of control without me even trying. So yeah, you're right. There was this point where I had to realize, like, "Wow, I am spending all of my time just doing this now, and I haven't written a song in six months. "But by that point, I've been making my full time living for music for, I don't know, like 14 years, and it felt like a good change. I actually kind of welcomed it after a while. It was more of an intellectual challenge than music had kind of become a bit of a routine for me. It was the, you know how it goes, where it's like you go off to gigs playing songs that you've been playing for years and you can do them in your sleep and, you know, so yeah.
Johan
Yeah, I had that when I moved into business, I had a specific decision point where I decided I didn't want to do music anymore. And when I found myself playing around in business, I found that actually it seemed like an easier thing to leverage my creativity the music actually had. And I know that's something you've written about as kind of the relationship between music and entrepreneurship. Like, there does seem to be something in common there, right? That there's an immense kind of creativity and almost kind of self-directed creativity involved in both of those two. Is that something that you recognized also?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. It felt...especially programming. I think programming to me felt a lot like songwriting. Like in songwriting, it's kind of this solitude of creation, right? You have an idea. There's something you want to say, and you have to figure out how to craft it into a good melody. Or craft your lyrics into an existing melody, or craft a melody on top of existing lyrics that you already say what you want to say. It's kind of creativity, but within certain bounds. And programming to me feels like that. It's like there's this thing that I want this website to do that I think will be useful for people. How do I kind of munge the language so that it does this thing that I want to do? I don't know. It feels very similar to being a musician. And as far as the spirit of it, you know, to be a professional musician, you're out there just constantly hustling, trying to get a gig, hooking up whatever you can, constantly looking for new sources of income. Kind of the creative challenge of figuring out how to get more income is exactly the same pursuit of an entrepreneur. So I feel that anybody who's out there being a professional musician is an entrepreneur, whether they would call it that or not. So, yeah, it didn't feel like a big switch.
Ewan
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Johan
There was, you know, as as Diedrich and I were reflecting on the conversation this morning before we before we came in, there was one theme that was kind of popping up for us, and it was something, you know, I said this in the email to our listeners this morning. You know, I read your book over the summer and enjoyed it so immensely, and it felt like such a fresh approach to business that on the one hand, there was a real kind of interest in doing business differently and having fun in there and, and, and actually not having a division between, you know, work being the thing you don't want to do and the life being the thing you do want to do. And yet, you also seem to be an immense pragmatist. but I'm wondering. There does seem to be something in your book and your work that does seem kind of idealistic in a sense, and that's certainly something we've explored a lot in the series. But do you see yourself as an idealist?
Ewan
Absolutely a joke.
Derek Sivers
You know, my joke is that both pessimists and optimists both tell you that they're just a realist but I think in my case, it's a little bit of my American thing. I know that Americans are very cliched optimists, you know, always almost off the charts in the optimism. But I think in my case, I got it even worse because I was born in California. So I have this, like, insane amount of optimism, but it's kind of self-consciously like, I know I'm doing it. I think I learned early on that that optimism usually you can use it as a tool, you know, that you can be kind of idealistic and say, "Well, no, I'm going to give this mission to myself." Like, say, for example, when I was a teenager and ever since I've been a teenager, I've said my mission is to never work for money or never do anything for the money. So if you find that you're doing something just for the money, like, stop it as soon as you can, or just make sure you never get into a situation where you're doing something just for the money. So what that means is that, I mean just right from the beginning. Then you're creating an idealistic situation where, you're doing something that you would be doing even if there was no money involved, finding a way to do that, but also getting paid to do it. I think it just sets a good mission for yourself. So I think I definitely use idealism or an idealist approach as a tool, because I think it aims you shooting for a best case scenario. And even if you don't make it all the way there, it's better than just that kind of slogging through and looking at business as some, you know, crappy thing you have to do to make a buck. And that just, I don't know, that depressing attitude that just doesn't seem worth it to me.
Ewan
I think it's exactly that depressing attitude that's kind of made us wonder, is there another way and is also part of the reason why we started this series is almost like a like a mini MBA in talking to all the people that deeply inspire us in showing yes there is another way. And yet when you go out into the world, I mean, that's at least that's true in here in the Netherlands. And it seems to be true for a lot of people listening in, is that there is often this choice between I'm either going to be an idealist and really follow my heart and live out my values and be poor, or I'm going to be this realist that, you know, sure, I have values and things are important to me, but also I need to make a living. And so yeah, 9 to 5 and I'll have as much fun as I can. But I'm also a realist about it, you know, that seems to be kind of a choice that people are often making to go either the one route or the other. And I'm wondering, did you were you ever at a point where you felt that you had to make that kind of a choice.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. I mean, if you put it like that, I would have chosen the idealist and poor thing, but I kind of disagree with the question. I'm glad this idea of assuming that idealist and poor or compromise my values and make money. I think that you can be an idealist and learn a lot about, say, the fundamentals of how to be profitable and the fundamentals of how to add value to a situation or the fundamentals of negotiation. You can be an idealist and learn that stuff and combine the two. I never felt that it had to be either or, but to me, being idealist was actually a path to profitability. That by setting up a business that was decidedly idealist that were designed to be idealist. Like, I started CD baby by saying, now that I've accidentally made this little business and it seems it's too late, I've started a business. Like it or not. How can I make it a musician's dream come true? And that was really the mission. And it's kind of using idealism as a competitive advantage, you know what I mean? Instead of other businesses seem to start with the idea of how to watch their ass, how to protect their assets, how to squeeze the most profit out of people as possible. All those kind of things that are very self-centered and selfish, but instead, like, flip that around. Like, how can I be idealistic from my customer's point of view? How can I make it like a dream come true situation from their point of view, and then make it my own personal challenge for how to do that sustainably and profitably is my creative challenge.
Derek Sivers
But never ignoring the profit. okay, so the reason I never ignore profit and I just disagree with the whole idea of idealistic and broke is because I really strongly believe that profit is nothing more than a measure of how valuable you are to others. That if you are profitable, it means that you've been valuable to others. And that's my measure. Like money is just the very neutral barometer or odometer or whatever you call it, just measuring if I've done something of value to people. So if I go and invent something and I keep trying to make money, I have to say, "Okay, well, I guess it's just not that valuable to people." And because I always want to do something that is so valuable to others that they're happy to open up their wallet and pay money for it because it's that valuable to them. Yeah, I guess that's again, that's my idealistic kind of mission is to do something valuable, that people are not just willing to pay for it, but thrilled to pay for it, that are thrilled to open up their wallet because they're so happy with what you're doing, that they're happy to pay for it.
Ewan
And that resonates a lot. And I'm actually thinking that, you know, if you turn it around, then actually if you go to the root of, for example, you know, the word value that you're just using or entrepreneurship, then. It is very obvious that this is true. Right? With the kind of perspective that you're sharing. And it's maybe this idea of needing to make a choice between idealism and living out your values versus being a realist and kind of just making a buck. Actually, that either or choice becomes very weird and very I mean, I was just kind of realizing that when you turn it around, it's actually not wanting to combine them or integrate them. That's weird. It's actually splitting them. That's a little weird, although that seems to have come true for a lot of people in a lot of places these days.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, I guess I still, I really do believe in this idea of the idealism as a competitive advantage. And every time I see a business that is acting selfishly, I see a business that I'll be able to... I can do it better than them. Do you know what I mean? Like, every time you see somebody who's being too selfish, too protective, not sharing enough, not being friendly enough, not creating a good environment for their clients or whatever it may be. I feel that you can come in and do it better than them by being more generous or more sharing or more, kind of a better focus on customer service or whatever it may be. There's always a way to make a better world for your customers and do it better than somebody else. Not by being ruthless in business, but by doing the opposite, by being more giving, more idealistic, maybe better. Maybe we've beaten that word to death. I don't know, it's just that idealistic. Too many times in ten minutes, if that's okay.
Ewan
So let's switch language then. Because I was just thinking there's kind of a whole world out there at least that we've found that is actually looking at this and that is practicing this and, and doing it. And that's basically what this interview series was all about, to find some of those people and to interview them about what they're doing and why they're doing it and how they're doing it. And the language that we've used so far is, the one of conscious business, which seems to be kind of a phrase that's floating around in that space, and there's some people using it explicitly. And then, of course, for the series itself, we've called that "Waking up the workplace", which for us meant, you know, both waking up work and people in work and in the workplace, waking up kind of the self that goes into the 9 to 5 job, into the studio or into whatever the plant or whatever it looks like for you, the office, but also waking up the workplace as a whole, you know, like waking up to the workplace to fulfill more of its potential than just making a buck, making a living. And I'm wondering whether that language waking up the workplace or conscious business, whether that has any meaning for you?
Derek Sivers
For me personally, no. Just because I never really had a workplace that I had to wake up. I guess because I've mostly just worked alone and just come from that place of more like the solitary guy sitting alone, creating something. It was always just me. I never felt like I was surrounded by a bunch of people. I had to wake up. But I know that most people are. So I mean, you know, I can't personally, use that for my own story, but I know everybody else can. I mean, it's the kind of thing Seth Godin has been writing about this a lot with his, what was his last book called insubordinate or something like that? That was was all about this kind of thing. And you know, it's funny, I admire it, but at the same time, I'm horrified by thinking of what it must be like to work inside these big, giant companies that you're just a person in the machine at a big company that doesn't get it. It just has these shareholders that just want to see big returns, and they don't care about making a perfect world for somebody, "Screw you. Show me the returns." Yeah so I don't know what it must be like to work in a company like that, so I'll just tell my little tale from my musician point of view and hope it's useful, I guess.
Johan
So from reading your book, it does appear that it must have been a little unconventional for people to have worked inside of CD Baby. Like it didn't feel like you were following the dogma of the corporate giant on how things should be done. So maybe you could just paint a brief picture for people on like, what would it have been like to work under you at CD Baby? Like how would that have been different from, you know, going to a normal company?
Derek Sivers
Okay. So, you know, if you've ever been to on a holiday somewhere and if you've rented a mask and snorkel and fins from a little shop where you just, like, give them $5 and they'll give you some mask and snorkel and fins for two hours. You know, you've seen how casual business can be, because that's a valid business. There's somebody on the shore of a beach renting you mask and snorkel and fins, and they're making money and they're probably profitable, otherwise they wouldn't exist. Right? Right. So I always used that as the model that anytime somebody tried to get too serious about saying things like, "Where's our terms and conditions or we need our official employee review hiring policy. Where's that?" And I would just look at them going like, "Does Jim and Bobby's tackle shop have that, you don't need that. I know that you if you're coming from a place with gray cubicles and the 5000 employees. You think you need that, but you don't need any of that stuff." And maybe it also helps out just personally by nature, I'm kind of a minimalist, so everything in life I'm always going through saying, you don't need that.
Derek Sivers
Even like my wife wants to get a hamper to put the dirty clothes in. And I'm saying, "But you don't need that. You can just put them in the closet on the floor, or you can just throw them directly in the washer. You don't need that." So I'm always going around doing that in life. So of course, when it came to business and people want to have legal terms and conditions, I'm just saying no but I'd make sure that all the employees knew, like anytime I'd hire somebody, they usually got this from the beginning. Obviously, like before I ever hired somebody, I had to make sure that I could tell that they were okay with being that if they seemed a little stiff and they were upset that there weren't more formal legal processes or something, that I just wouldn't hire them because it wasn't a good fit. So, yeah, I'd often tell people to think of the little tackle shop, the guy selling worms for you to put on your hook by the fishing spot. Like, that's our role model. We should always aim to be as as casual as that. So, yeah, hiring usually went like this.
Derek Sivers
Okay. Here's two telling stories. The very first guy I hired, the first year of CD Baby, I did all myself. I had no employees. I was just doing it myself in my spare time. But as it kept growing and I needed to hire somebody. Right then there was a guy in town who I had hired to paint my house in Woodstock. He was painting the walls of my house. He had like one of those little tags down at the laundromat saying, "Helping Hand. Here's my phone number. I can do any task." So I called him and said, "I need somebody to help paint my house." And he was painting my house. And as CD Baby was growing. I said, "Hey, can you help me pack some CDs too?" And he said, "Yeah, man. Sure. So same price as painting the house." He was helping me pack some CDs and I was saying, "Can you help me answer some of these emails because it's more emails than I can handle." He's like, "Yeah, man. Sure. No problem." He was answering emails and anyway, that's John. And he became vice president of the company for the year.
Derek Sivers
He even moved with me from New York to Portland, Oregon, when I moved the company across the country. So, you know, we got to Portland, Oregon, and I forget, I think I just asked, like a friend of a friend, like, "Hey, do you know anybody who's available?" And he said, "My friend Ben is looking for a job right now." I was like, "Well, tell him to start tomorrow morning." So Ben showed up the next morning and helped us pack CDs, right. So then he ended up working for CD Baby for ten years, and later was director of digital distribution and head of customer service and all these roles. But, you know, started as $8 an hour helping to pack CDs. And pretty much everybody that started in the company just grew like that. We'd work until we just couldn't do it anymore with the people we had. And then you would just ask around like, "Hey, does anybody have a friend who needs some work?" Somebody would always say, "Yeah, man. My friend Adam could use a job." I was like, "Is he a cool person?" He's a cool person.
Derek Sivers
"All right. Tell him to start tomorrow." And he would just show up the next day. And now we had another hand to help pack CDs or answer emails or scan album artwork, or digitize the audio clips or whatever it is. So, yeah, it really went that casual, until the last couple of years. Then honestly, there's this weird thing that happened after about 50 employees kind of turned into this little Lord of the flies kind of thing, where all these little subcultures crept up and people tried to make it more serious than it was ever meant to be. And, it's at first I blamed them, but really, it's my fault because I let it turn into that. I kind of took my finger off the pulse of the company culture and just spent all my time just programming. And while I wasn't looking, the company culture kind of converted to something that was awful and I couldn't stand. And that's a big part of why I sold the company.
Ewan
So do you think that kind of a casual, friendly, workplace that you were just describing, that's possible in a larger organization because you were saying that there was kind of a turning point at 15, but then that also had to do with how you were, you know, showing up or what you were or weren't doing. Do you believe that's even possible, or do you think that only small companies could pull that off?
Derek Sivers
Both. I think it's possible. So to be fair, I said the number to me where I saw it change was around 50 employees, so not 15, but five zero. And later I was reading the autobiography of Richard Branson from Virgin. And it's funny that he mentioned this in his book too. He said, "I've noticed that anytime a Virgin Group company grew beyond 50 employees, it started to feel too big and people didn't know everybody's name anymore. It didn't really feel like a team anymore. So at any time one of the Virgin companies has grown beyond 50 employees. What we do is we break it up into smaller groups. We really like physically set up a different office somewhere else across town, and we find some logistical way to split it into two different focuses. So now with a small team over here in the east part of town and a small team in the west part of town, and they may have the same parent company, Virgin Airlines or whatever, but they're different divisions, and it can always keep that small team feeling that that keeps it feeling like a small business." So apparently across all of the Virgin, at least he said so in his autobiography, he said that across all of the Virgin companies, there is no office bigger than 50 people for the same reason. So I think it is possible. You just have to learn to split it up into smaller groups.
Derek Sivers
And the other role model then is, what's his name? Zappos. What's the founder of Zappos?
Ewan
Tony something. I don't know how to pronounce his last name.
Derek Sivers
It's Hsei. That's it? Yeah.
Derek Sivers
So he said that when he set up Zappos he wanted to make sure that the culture of the company was the most important thing. Like to never let go of the culture of the company, to keep that first and foremost, because apparently he had the same experience I did at his previous company before Zappos, where he said, once the culture of the company goes, you're done, then you hate going into work and, just everything else is lost. So always make sure to to maintain the company culture, to make it something that you love.
Ewan
something like that.
Ewan
There's actually a guy out here in the Netherlands. He passed away maybe last year or a couple of years ago that did a similar thing. That was also saying that when a company grew over 50 that it needed to become almost a cell of its own, although he did run into kind of a limitation where you would have all these kind of fragmented little cells and teams and companies, and it didn't always add up to kind of a, you know, a whole that is larger than the sum of those parts. So I guess that's probably the challenge with that, but it does make sense that it needs to be human, I guess, you know, like casual, informal, personal that you know everyone's names. That makes a lot of sense.
Derek Sivers
And then I think it has to just be a whoever's in charge it has to be important enough to them to say that we want to make sure that the company does not turn into one of those dry corporate things that we don't hire people we don't like. And things like that, you know? it sounds so obvious, but unfortunately, some people, because they're more focused on, I don't know, procedures or stockholder returns or whatever, they forget that side of things. But, yeah. So I guess it just has to be important to the owner, the founders or whoever's in charge of that.
Ewan
I'm wondering from that perspective. Like, what would you say that a company is for, you know, because I was just saying with our phrase waking up the workplace, one of the things that we're saying is that business is now often a vehicle for something, but that something is often just trade or profit. It's very practical, but also sometimes, very... Let's say there's not a lot of humanity in there. I'm wondering what your perspective on that. What is a company for?
Derek Sivers
I think first and foremost it's to make the world a better place. I mean, that's very vague, but to me that's just kind of a given. Whatever you're doing has to be something that's making the world better, you know? by your own definition, maybe you feel the world would be a better place if all houses were painted pink. And it's your mission to go paint houses pink. And that's just your own personal view. You know, everybody has their own opinion about what makes the world a better place, but seems to me that's the obvious first thing you're doing something that you think would make the world better and kind of equally like tied for first place, then, of course, something that you enjoy doing. And, then profits are to me, profits are kind of like food for people. Like we eat to stay alive and we enjoy eating. And you can even make a mission for yourself to go around the world and eat the most wonderful foods ever. But it's not the reason you're alive is we're not born so that we can eat, you know, we eat so that we can do other things and live. And so to me, profits are like food. Profits for companies are like food for people where it's, yes, you need to be profitable to survive, and you can even enjoy the process and have fun being profitable and find new ways to be profitable and and all that kind of stuff. But it's not the reason you're doing things. It's a side effect.
Johan
So I want to switch this up a little bit. Derek, one of the reasons I was really excited to talk with you is I am really pleased that you say you're an idealist, but I also feel like, you seem to be really good at action and doing stuff and operations and actually kind of getting out there and the kind of pragmatics of being an entrepreneur. And so, you know, our series is kind of idealistic by nature, which might say a lot about us. And I think there's probably a lot of people that are listening in to this series that are also in that place where, you know, we've basically asked the question, how could work and business be different, you know, kind of beyond just profit. Like, what does that look like? And we haven't really gone so much into the practicalities, kind of deliberately, but I'd love to kind of explore that a little bit with you. So let's say there is someone who's listening into this series who does want to make the world a better place and has a bunch of kind of vague ideas, or maybe even concrete ideas about how they want to do that. Like, what do you do? How do you take the first step?
Derek Sivers
A great question. I don't think anybody's asked me this directly. I'm a huge fan of whatever the opposite of a perfectionist is. I don't know what that word would be. The opposite of perfectionist. but I really believe in doing things crappy and quick just to begin. I think so many people get so hung up trying to make everything perfect that they never do anything. So maybe because I don't care how I look to other people. If you can let go of caring what other people think of you, you can just throw something out there and do it crappy and fast. Just to begin and just to get something out there and just do it. So here's a couple stories that might help describe this better that I worked in this circus for ten years. I was the ringleader musician of the circus. So my boss at the circus was this crazy guy that also had this entrepreneur mentality of hey, anything to make a buck. So he also ran this talent agency and no matter what anybody would call asking for. He would just find a way to say yes and make it happen. So around Christmas time when, he got a call from a shopping mall in New York City saying, "Hey, we need some Charles Dickens style Christmas carolers. Do you have that?" And he says, "Oh, of course we do."
Derek Sivers
"We have some of the best Christmas carolers you've ever seen. We have a Dickinsonian Christmas caroling troupe that has been together for ten years. They're one of the best. When do you need them?" And whatever date they would say, he'd say, "Yes, they're available on that date. We'd be glad to do it." And he would, you know, say $1,500 or whatever it may be. And then he'd hang up the phone and turn to whoever was around saying, "Hey, you know how to sing. Hey, do you know anybody that can sing some Christmas carols?" And, I'd say, "Well, I don't know." Then he'd say, "Well, sing me something. Sing me a Christmas carol right now. Go do it. Good enough. Good enough. All right, we got to go find some costumes tonight. The gig is in two days. So we got to put together this thing. We'll practice an hour before the gig, and we'll just go there and do it." So we'd show up to a shopping mall wearing these ridiculous outfits and top hats and sing Christmas carols and get paid 1500 bucks. And we weren't great, but it didn't matter. It's like you just went and did it right. So whereas somebody else that might have tried to be a perfectionist wouldn't have done that, or they would have said, "Well, I don't know how to do Christmas. We haven't practiced." He would just have this way of just throwing and just saying yes to everything and just go do it.
Derek Sivers
So same thing. I, I think that's influenced my approach to everything ever since is first you just say yes and you just jump in and do it. Whatever you want to do, just start. You just start doing it. It doesn't matter if it's crappy and then if there's a demand for it, you know, like if our Christmas caroling group would have continued to get booked, then we would have put more work into improving it and practicing and whatnot. But first you just say yes and you throw it out there and do it. So I think whatever idea you have, just jump out there and do it. The first version of CD Baby was crap. It did nothing. I didn't know how to program yet, so honestly, Cdbaby.com for the first year was nothing more than a hand-coded static HTML site. I literally some cut and paste notepad files that I would, paste the HTML and just type in the artist name directly into the HTML one time per album that people sent to me, and if you clicked "Add to Cart", it would do nothing more than bring you to a page that asked you your name and address and your credit card number, and you'd click "Buy now" and it would do nothing but email me what you had typed and that's it. That's all it knew how to do. And then I would get the email and by hand I would cut and paste that email into a form and charge their credit card.
Derek Sivers
And if their credit card failed, I would email them saying, "Hey! Sorry your credit card didn't charge." And, and that was it. It was like the most lowly site. It literally took me ten days to make it, and I knew nothing. But that was enough to begin. And that was profitable because I spent nothing to start it. I didn't hire programmers. I didn't do anything but buy a little $25 book on PHP and MySQL. that lowly broken, ugly site made me $100,000 in the first year, and by then I could afford to hire somebody to help me improve it in the second year, you know, and I just made slow tweaks throughout the years. And some said the site was always ugly and I'd probably agree with them. It was never a good looking site, but it worked. so anytime I meet these people that say, "Hey, I've got this idea for a business and something, something and this app and this website, and we need to raise $1 million to make it like...." No, you don't, you can make it tonight if you wanted to. You could do some dumb little ugly version of it and throw it up, and it would be embarrassing, but it would exist. And, you know, you just get over that hump and then you can just improve it from there.
Derek Sivers
One last related story is 15 years ago, there was an interview with Sean Lennon. John Lennon's son, shortly after he made his first record. There was an interview in rolling Stone magazine or something, and somebody asked him if he was nervous to make this album, and he said, "No, look, my whole life, as long as I can remember, since I was three years old, people have been looking to me playfully saying, 'Sean, when are you going to make your first record?' But then it wasn't so playful then everybody was giving me this pressure to make a record for my whole life", he said. "So finally, we just grabbed some friends and went into the studio and said, fuck it, I'm going to make a bad record in a week and just do it just to get over this hump of the first record pressure, and I'll just put it out there and then I can just move on from there and improve it. But let me just finally make this first record so people will leave me alone and I can improve and, you know, get over that pressure, relieve the pressure." And I just love that approach. And so, you know, so there's a few stories, wrap it all into one. And I think that's why if it seems like I'm productive, it's probably just because I have no problem with doing things fast and shitty.
Johan
So your advice for any potential idealists who who want to make the world a better place is start as quickly as you can and as crappily as possible, just so you can get it out there. Like, why does getting it out there quickly help? Why is that a good thing?
Derek Sivers
Oh, there's so many reasons. For one, it's just a mental block. We all have perfectionist tendencies. We all care about our reputation and want to look good to the world and all that crap. So I think just by putting something out there first, you get over the psychological hurdle. But then there are all these kind of business school practical reasons that if you just throw something out there, then you start to get feedback from real users that can use it and tell you what sucks about it, or tell you what they love about it. And you can start communicating with real people instead of just sitting in your laboratory writing for a year, hoping to release your masterpiece in a year. Instead, just throw out something quick and ugly and just have people start using it, even if it's just two people. Here's another funny thing is when I meet with entrepreneurs, they're often coming to me asking about how to build an audience, and they tend to think of people in groups of thousands. And I'm like, no, no, no, just make something that one person can use, maybe 2 or 3 people. So you're not too skewed, but you should aim to just have 2 or 3 customers at first, and that's it. And those first few customers you can be so hands on, you can pick up the phone and call them after they place their order and say, "How was it, you know, did it go easy for you?" And any suggestions you talk to them.
Derek Sivers
Hell, you can have them over for dinner, whatever it may be. Aim for just having a few customers for your business at first and then building from there based on their feedback. Instead of always thinking of people in terms of thousands, you think of them as individuals and cherish those those early times where you can actually afford to sit down and talk with every single one of your customers. It's priceless. I loved the first couple of years of CD Baby, where I was the person on the phones full time, and so CD Baby had this toll free one 800 phone number posted right on the site, and all day long customers would call up and they'd say, "Hi, I'm calling to buy a CD by Eileen Quinn." I'd say, no problem. And I'd pull up the order form and I'd ask them some questions. I'd say, "So how did you hear about it?" "Well, just reading this magazine called boating Us magazine, and there's an article about Eileen Quinn there."
Derek Sivers
It was just kind of fun, like talking to customers. And then of course, musicians would call up all day and I would talk with them and I'd ask them questions and I'd say, you know, "Any suggestions? How's the site for you so far or what are your biggest concerns?" And you just talk to individuals, and, you know, again, it's like if you were trying to think of yourself as the next Facebook, you would never do this, but you'd be missing out, I think it's like there are too many people trying to be billionaires and forgetting about the the precious value of of working one on one with people in the early days as you're building your business from the smallest little bit. So yeah, sorry. This is a very long storytelling way of saying start fast and shitty, make things just one or 2 or 3 people can use and talk with them, get their feedback and build it from there. But get over that paralyzing hump of needing everything to be perfect and just put it out there.
Ewan
Yeah I love that. And I'm actually quite a perfectionist myself. So this is really helpful. And I can totally recognize, you know, getting completely hung up and blocked by wanting to get it right, just right and saying, well I'll read this, this one book and then I'll know how to do it or I'll do it in a few months when I've done this and this, etc., you know, like, exactly. So fortunately, I have some people around me that call my bluff and, you know, tell me to get to work already, which helps. But yeah, I totally recognize that one. I'm also wondering, if that works, if you more or less know, what you want to do. Right. But I also read I was checking out some of your blogs, and there was one that jumped out, which was, "Whatever scares you, go do it". You know, so that's what I was wondering, like, how can you tell what you want to do? You know, you have values, you have ideals, but maybe you haven't exactly figured out what it is that you want to work on, what your work is. Can you say a few words about that?
Derek Sivers
Let me think. If you don't know what you want to do, then I think you probably need to break out of a rut. I think there are a lot of people who, never get outside their little safety zone that they grew up in, and they never exposed themselves to different kinds of work than the kind of work they already know and whatnot. I think that's where it's really good to break out of your comfort zone. Go do something else. And even the kind of job you take instead of working inside a big company where you are employee number four, three, six, two, five and you're given very specific instructions to process these forms sitting at this desk. Even if it's paying you well, you'll never really understand the operations of the company and, not really be exposed to the world. Whereas instead, if you had taken a job that paid a little less but was like a three person company doing something, then you're much more hands on. You can see the way that this company is doing things wrong. You can have a more realistic role model for how you can leave and start your own company and do this better yourself or you know what I mean. Just like we all have to control how we choose our environment.
Derek Sivers
That all of us get to choose the environment that suits us best. So if you're feeling like you don't have any ideas and you wish you had ideas, then either change your environment to something where you're going to be more exposed to the world and exposed to people having problems that need to be solved directly, like face to face with people having problems that need to be solved or honestly, you know, you mentioned my leadership lessons from dancing guy talk. The key lesson from that was about the first follower. That if you're watching the shirtless dancing guy, it looks like he's the one that started a movement. But it was really the the first follower. It was the first person that joined in and imitated him and made it easy for others to follow. That's what really started the movement in that metaphor of the dancing guy. So honestly, I think if you don't have any ideas right now for something you want to do, instead of just trying to sit around coming up with ideas, instead just find somebody else that is doing something that you think is interesting and just join them. I think we don't all want to be leaders. Sometimes the best thing you can do is to be the first follower.
Johan
So I want to transition to Q&A in a second. So if you are listening in and you have some questions you want to ask Derek, you can type those in in the window on your computer screen. We'd love to have your questions and post them to Derek. Before we do that, Derek, there was one kind of other theme that I was really interested to kind of ask you about, which is that. So it seems that your whole approach to work and business, to me, seems like it has to be based on a sense of kind of having fun or feeling really passionate about what you're doing, because otherwise, why would you do it in a sense? Do you think that is also a kind of a crucial part of being entrepreneurial in the way that that you're describing? Does it have to be based on passion?
Derek Sivers
Passion is a dangerous word because I know a lot of people that think that passion has to hit them like a bolt of lightning. Like love has to look like Romeo and Juliet. But it isn't love, unless you're, you know, drinking poison and stabbing yourself and jumping off of balconies and into coffins in the night. If it's anything less than that, it's not love. Some people say, "Yeah, you know, I've been seeing this person for a few years. It's okay. But I don't know. I'm just really not feeling that passion, you know?" It's because they watch too many fucking movies and they think that it's supposed to look like that, right? But if you think that passion or if you think that love needs to look like Romeo and Juliet, you're going to miss a wonderful relationship that could just be very enjoyable and pleasant and a great connection and maybe grow slowly and just be very great relationship. And I think it's the same thing with passion that if you hear people talk about passion too much and you think it's, you know, sitting there with your breakfast cereal, listening to a podcast going, "Yeah, I haven't found my passion, you know, I can't do anything until I find my passion." But then, on the other hand, if you find yourself playing with Photoshop for three hours, or fascinated reading books about psychology or whatever.
Derek Sivers
Well, then I'd argue that you have found your passion. It's whatever you love doing that people don't need to pay you to do that you love doing it. That's it. That's all you need. It doesn't need to hit you like a lightning bolt and feel like some grand dramatic thing. I think that's also sometimes the problem of, interviews like this is you just get a tiny little glimpse into somebody, and, you know, the three of us can have this great conversation for an hour, and and I'm showing you my best side. But, you know, an hour before this phone call, I was sitting here with some programming code, and I'd kind of hit some dead end. And I was just looking at it and my eyes were kind of drooping. I was like, you know, it's not all full of big, massive enthusiasm all the time. It's just a general sense of like something that you like doing, that's all.
Ewan
I really love that. It's a really important thing. And I actually can get into that mode of thinking sometimes of, you know, being a little resistant to some aspects of my work and wondering, like, "Have I really found my passion? It feels like it. But have I really?" And, you know, you can just get so hung up on that stuff and it's so distracting. You know, you can just get down to work already. But I love that. That's really helpful.
Derek Sivers
As we all look at our, you know, girlfriend/boyfriend/spouses and kind of squint at them and going, "Am I really in love? Yeah. You know, there's something better out there. Maybe I better not do anything until I...." Yeah. Anyway.
Ewan
So I suggest that we move to Q&A and give people listening in a chance to ask their questions. They can either do that, like Ewan was saying, by sending it through the web in the lower left, typing it in and that and then we'll see it. Or what's even cooler, although people seem to often be shy to do it, is you can join us live on the call. of course you're muted now, so we'll need to see who you are. So if you want to do that do you have a question for Derek. You want to ask it live. Just dial star two on your handset or in Skype or whatever it is. And that will make you visible to us. So we can unmute you. And we'd love that. So, any questions to get started?
Johan
Yeah, we've got a few here. We've got a question here says, "Great stories. What has been your biggest challenge and how have you dealt with that?"
Derek Sivers
Where does that quote come from that says hell is other people?
Ewan
I think yeah.
Derek Sivers
Is it? Yeah. That's it. I think, I'm really an introvert by nature. Even as a musician, my favorite thing was sitting alone in the studio and headphones on, making music by myself, layering all the parts himself.
Ewan
You know, I recognize that. Yeah, yeah.
Derek Sivers
So now, as with my approach to being an entrepreneur, is I still like doing everything alone if I can. I'm just that kind of introvert. And so the hardest part to me has been dealing with other people. You sometimes get lucky and you find some amazing people that you love working with, and they get you and you get them, and you just have a good time working together. And I have that a lot. And then sometimes it's just fucking hell. Like dealing with other people and various insecurities and miscommunications and whatnot. So the single biggest challenge to me personally was, the year before I sold CD Baby, where the the company culture, you know, I had 85 employees and the company kind of converted into this thing where it was like them against me, and I became the enemy of everyone without even realizing it until it was too late. They had just decided that I was to blame for all of their dissatisfactions in life, and it was just miserable and awful. and the way I dealt with it was by... Well, plan A, I was just going to shut down the company at a time where I was just fighting with all the employees, and it was like them versus me, and everything got really shitty and awful. And that night, I logged into the CD Baby website and I typed this command Apache Control Halt, which just literally just shuts down the site.
Derek Sivers
So if you were to type cdbaby.com, it would just say, you know, like 404 not found. And I shut down the whole site, and I was preparing to just write a letter to all of the customers saying, "Thank you for your business. CD Baby is shutting down." We'll be sending back all of your CDs and whatnot, send a letter to the employees saying, "Okay, well, if you're really not happy, neither am I, so let's all go home. You're all fired, I quit. Business is shut down. Goodbye." And while I was taking the time to write that letter, the website was shut down for about half an hour. And then it was taking me too long to write that letter. So instead I turned to the website back on, and I went to sleep. And the next day, I realized that there were other ways I could achieve the same thing. And that's when I decided to sell the company and walk away. So, sometimes what looks like a success from the outside, you know, like me selling the company. Everybody congratulates me for it. But really, it was just because of a horrible failure. I guess I was just such a bad manager that I had done such a terrible, botched job of managing the company that I had to sell it. So yeah.
Ewan
Well, there's kind of theory of the life cycle of organizations where you also say that there's different phases, right? And there's kind of a phase where the company is growing and it needs the entrepreneur, like it needs the mother, almost. You're almost fused. And then at some point it becomes almost a love hate relationship. You know, like with children when they become teenagers or adolescents. And then it becomes pretty hard and you need to let go and maybe something else is needed. You know, you develop a different type of relationship. So actually it sounds like you managed to do that. And in a way, I think it happens to a lot of founders at some point that they get into a love hate relationship with the companies. So you seem to have navigated that.
Derek Sivers
That's a really interesting point. But it's funny if you think about what is I felt like if I could do it all over again, I probably would have let go of the company a couple of years earlier, because I think we all have different specialties. And I think with the stories I told you about my approach of doing something fast and shitty and just getting it started, I think I'm pretty good at turning nothing into something and just getting things started and starting to build them and turning it into something and making it profitable. And after a certain point, then you're not being an entrepreneur anymore. Now you're being a manager. Yeah. So if your goal is to be a great entrepreneur, then, you should probably at that point go back.
Ewan
To nothing, right?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Or just sell the company to somebody whose specialty is being a manager and go back to starting something else.
Ewan
So do you have another question for us?
Johan
Yeah. There's another question asking, "I'm a big reader, are there any books that have had a big impact on you that you'd recommend?"
Derek Sivers
Oh, God. My my answer to that is so prepared. It's crazy. If you don't mind. I mean, I'm a huge, huge, huge, huge fan of books. I think most of what I know in life, I learned from books. I read a book a week and I have for years. So if you go to my website, sive.rs/book, I made it a whole section on my site under projects, there's a thing that says "Book notes". And if you click book notes, you will see all of my recommendations for the last four years, I take detailed notes on every book I read, I write a little review and I give it a 1 to 10 rating and so on that page, I put my tens at the top and then the nine and then the eights, and it's constantly updated. So go to sive.rs/book and click book. And if you haven't read the ones at the top of the list, start there. And if you've read those then just keep moving down the list. And these books have changed my life. So yeah, huge recommendations for all of those.
Ewan
Awesome. That sounds something like something to check out for sure.
Johan
We could post up the the link on the blog as well. Awesome. We have a question here from Philippe who is saying, "Derek, you once said that you should not talk too much about your ideas. but is not spreading out your ideas. Is that making it possible that they won't grow?"
Derek Sivers
So what Philippe is talking about is, I did this Ted talk. This talk at the Ted conference, short little three minute talk saying, something like announcing your goals makes them less likely to happen. And it was just an interesting article. And I'm no expert. I'm not a psychologist. But I had read an interesting article that basically said this point and then the Ted conference was going on, and I sent in a proposal for a few different ideas of something I'd be willing to talk about at the conference. And I submitted three ideas, and they chose that one, which was my least favorite. And so I said, "Oh, crap, now I'm going to have to go talk about that." So I'm no expert. But I went and contacted the the psychologist that did the original studies. And to be clear, it's only really true for what they call identity goals. So if you go tell all of your friends, I'm going to run a marathon And your friends say, "Wow. That's great. Wow. Boy, I couldn't run a marathon. Man, I am so buoyed. I'm congratulating you." Then you've already felt some of the pleasure just by saying I'm going to run a marathon. And then actually your self-identity now has updated to be like, I'm someone who runs a marathon, and you're less likely to do the slogging, hard work necessary to actually go train every day to run a marathon because you've already felt half the pleasure just from people acknowledging your announcement.
Derek Sivers
That's what it was really about. But unfortunately, now, people, because I did that talk and maybe I didn't say it clearly enough. So I do meet people who think that what I was saying is that you shouldn't tell people your ideas. But no, I think it's very useful if you have a great idea for a business or just something you want to do, just start telling people. Just go around and say, "Hey, what do you think about this? What do you think about that?" And just tell whoever will listen. You don't need to make them sign some nondisclosure agreement, and you don't need to ask them to invest in it. Just a quick like, "Hey, what would you think of this?" And I think sometimes it can be very useful to bounce your ideas off people, even just hearing yourself explain it to somebody else and watching when people either get it or don't get it, or watching which aspects of what you tell them, get them more excited. I think it's really useful. So, yeah, I would recommend when you have an idea, go tell everybody and don't worry about it. Don't try to protect it too tightly or whatever. Everybody has their stupid ideas and everybody thinks their ideas are better than yours. So don't worry about people stealing your idea.
Johan
We have another question here saying, "Derek, could you share a bit about the current projects you're working on now?"
Derek Sivers
Sure. Well, again, everything I'm about to say, I'm wide open about everything I'm doing. So it's all out in the open again on on my sive.rs website if you go down to projects. I set up a silly little site called 50 pop, which is named after a story about £50 of pots. And it's again, it's this idea of just keep doing stuff. Just keep making stuff. It doesn't need to be good, just keep doing it. And that's where I tend to throw all of my ideas and what I'm working on. I put them all on 50 pop. And so right now I'm programming God, I think like seven different projects at the same time.
Derek Sivers
Just various things that I've been wanting to do for a few years. One of them is called Muckwork, which is a network of assistance, real people that are already pre-trained to help musicians with the stuff they need help with. So if you're a musician and you need some help with the non-musical aspects of your career, whether it's booking gigs or copyrighting your songs or updating your Facebook page or whatever it may be, if it's not music, there's probably somebody else who can do it for you if you're busy. So Muckwork is a company full of like a worldwide network of assistants ready to help musicians with that stuff. I have an idea called Song Test, which is an open source song contest, because there are too many rip offs of song contests out there that are trying to scam musicians and make them pay $100 per song to submit a song for a contest in hopes of winning the grand prize. And I think those are all such a scam, and it would always hurt me to see musicians kind of fall for that stuff. So I realized that I could make an open source Song contest that anybody could throw up their song there for free. And it's all just like no money trades hands and hopefully put all of those stupid song contests out of business. and let's see, another one is called Serrano. If you're being told that you should be tweeting more often for the sake of business or even just personal charm or whatever, but you don't feel like tweeting anything. You feel like you have nothing to say. Serrano can do it for you. we can tweet as you with more interesting things. So little projects like that. I don't know, they're all out in the open. You can even look at all my programming code. I'm just doing everything wide open source. If you feel like following any of these little things, I'm doing.
Ewan
So do we have a last question?
Johan
Yeah, we have a question from Roland. And Corinne has just done a great little translation job for me. It came in in Dutch. She's asking, "What do you do after you get started? When you do it quick and crappy to get the ball rolling? Is it possible that you will then be judged? And how do you deal with the negative feedback?"
Derek Sivers
I think there's human nature to think of how you can improve something. So if somebody hands you a bad screenplay and they say, "Hey, can you read my screenplay? I want to send this to Hollywood agent or whatever." And they send it to you and it's bad. Then you're looking at this going like, no, no, no, no, no, this is Betsy. This part is boring. And that, like, this guy isn't believable and you need more action in there. I think when people see something that is clearly a work in progress, they almost can't help but have their imagination sparked and want to give you their opinion on how you could improve it. So, don't worry about being judged. I mean, honestly, I also have this kind of life, motto that nobody cares about you. They all just care about themselves. So it's like, you know, this thing, like, people care too much about what they're wearing when they're going out to a club, and it's like nobody's looking at you. They're all just too concerned about themselves. Like, nobody cares what you're wearing. They're all just caring what they're wearing. So I think it's kind of the same thing with it. It's like, don't worry that somebody's going to judge you. I think it's admirable enough if you're one of the few people that actually make something happen at all, like my story of Christmas caroling. How many people would, you know never actually got off their ass to go get a paying gig doing music? And just the idea that you kind of get off your ass at all and make something happen, I think is admirable enough and people recognize that. So just let people know that this is a work in progress and say, "Hey, this is a really rough draft. What do you think? Any suggestions for improvements?" And I think people are happy to understand that it's a rough draft, that it's your first attempt at something and give you all kinds of suggestions.
Ewan
Unless of course they're professional critics, which is something else entirely.
Derek Sivers
It's even more so than those people who try to be so perfectionist up front. I think when somebody shows you something and it's clearly like already perfected, there's kind of not much to say. It's either, well, I like it or I don't. you know, and we'll do another, if you don't mind another music comparison, that if somebody plays me a song they're working on and they say, "Hey, I'm working on this song that I've been writing this week, what do you think?" And they play it for me. And because it's still clearly a work in progress. Now I can get engaged and I can say, "Well, you know, I think that bridge goes on too long there and you don't need to bring in the chorus that last time again, I think it would be nicer if you just left it there and your intro was too long. Try to shorten that or this word was too awkward." But then if somebody hands you a CD that's like they've already printed up a thousand copies with graphic design and professionally recorded, and they hand you a CD and say, "What do you think? "Now there's no room for constructive critique anymore.
Derek Sivers
Now it's just either you like it or you don't. It's like, what are you going to say? Oh, the intro should be a little shorter on track four. They're not going to go back and rerecord the whole album because you thought so. So I think people often think that if they have a business idea that it's going to be presented to the world like a finished CD, that people either just go, you know, they either like it or they don't. But instead, if you just make it clear to everybody that this is a rough draft, a work in progress. You know, like the popularity of the term beta. you can be even clearer than that. Instead of just putting the word beta on something, really make it clear to whoever's there and saying, "I'm trying this idea. Let me know what you think. Any suggestions? How could it be better?" I think people are happy to give their criticism and critique and try to help you improve it. Everybody has an opinion. You know, they're happy to share it.
Ewan
So, I'm mindful of time and suggest that we move into closing. And the way that we generally do that is by, just sharing our own and asking for your closing thoughts. and I wanted to start with maybe asking you and for his closing thoughts.
Johan
I just love that last thing you said, Derek. God, I wish I'd heard that when I was still considering myself a full time musician. God, I would have needed that. It was kind of like this feeling of I need to get this song absolutely perfect before I show it to anyone, in case they think I'm an awful musician when I show it to them. It's like, yeah.
Derek Sivers
And it's also ego, isn't it? It's like we're all insecure that we worry what people think about us. And if you can't let go of that, you know.
Johan
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, later in life I'm a little bit older now, but once I kind of get the mindset shift of going rather than having everything perfect, I can kind of give it my best guess and kind of consciously ask people's feedback consciously from a learner perspective, that I'm just genuinely interested in what they have to say that I might not have thought about, and how I can improve that and kind of have a genuine engagement with them and doing that consciously has been so... I mean, it's great fun for me because I love kind of talking with people and getting their ideas. So that last point resonated with me immensely. and then just generally in the conversation, I so appreciate I think in your approach, Derek, this what I see is a wonderful kind of marriage of both idealism but extreme pragmatism. And I think this is such an important message for the kind of series that we're doing that we often concentrate on the kind of visionary and idealistic side, which is great fun. And, you know, we deliberately kind of focused on that part. But I think this is such an important message that I know I can do this, and I know a lot of people that also do this, where you kind of get stuck in and not knowing how to go forward with the things that you feel are fun and you want to be doing. And I just love your approach of get out and do that quick and crappy. I think that's so powerful.
Ewan
Thank you. Yeah. I mean, my own closing thoughts kind of echo that. And on a personal level, I really love the not crappy and quick. You know, like being quite the perfectionist, just almost giving myself permission to do that. It feels very liberating and very powerful too. So I really love that. And, otherwise, just stepping back from the conversation and looking at the whole of it. I mean, what I really get is, that what you're doing, at least for me, is kind of dispelling some myths or, you know, more profanely calling my bullshit, if you will. And I mean, the phrase that came up is like, you're kind of, for me, a minimalist entrepreneur or a minimalist idealist. And I mean, putting those two together, really. I mean, I love that there's something about that. I know you are kind of a minimalist, so it probably makes total sense for you, but I really got that about you today and really appreciated that. So thank you so much. And I also want to ask you for any closing thoughts on your end.
Derek Sivers
Well. Somebody just a few months ago said to me in the middle of a conversation, they said something like, "Well, you've never been that into money." Something like that. Or maybe something like you didn't set out to make a lot of money. And I was like, they meant it as a compliment. But I said, "Well, actually, the hell, in my 20s, I was dead set, like I wanted to be a millionaire." And I really saw everything I'm doing not as some kind of alternative, like, "Oh, hey, man, I don't care about money. That's why I'm so positive." But I really do see it as that your competitive advantage can be doing what others are not doing. So if you're in an environment where everybody is extremely formal, then it can be your competitive advantage to be extremely informal. And if you're in an environment where everybody's being very paranoid and holding on too tightly to their ideas and they won't share anything, they're trying to charge everybody money just to for every word that they tell them. Then you can have a competitive advantage in being the one that's more open and sharing with people or, you know, whatever it may be.
Derek Sivers
But all of this, it doesn't clash with the idea of making money. I think that if you just stay focused on how to be valuable to other people and how to do things that are so valuable to others that they're happy to open up their wallet and pay you money. Maybe just because you're the coolest person doing the same thing. Maybe you're an accountant like everybody else, but you're just cooler than the other accountants. And that's why people tend to choose you instead of others, because you're friendlier or more helpful. It really is a path to getting rich. And I think getting rich to me means nothing more than, you've found ways to to add a lot of value to people's lives in a way that they're happy to pay for. And money can just be a good measure of how valuable you're being. So yeah, please don't think that anything we talked about in this past 90 minutes goes against the idea of making money. It can all just be it can also be used as a strategy to be very profitable.
Ewan
I'm glad you mentioned that, because that does seem to come up sometimes and that it goes back into that either or thing that we talked about. Beautiful.
Ewan
Okay. Well thank you so much for joining us today, Derek. I know that originally you said, well, I don't really do interviews, but then we kept bugging you and you ended up saying yes. So you know, really appreciate it.
Derek Sivers
Thank you for bugging me. And also everybody who's still listening after this hour and a half. seriously, feel free to email me. I because I say no to most things. I say no to everything I don't want to do. It actually does leave room in my life, so I'm always happy to answer emails from anybody. So even if you just want to email and say hello, go to sive.rs and my email address is on the bottom of the page. And just email me and say hello or ask me any question. I'm happy to help.
Ewan
Beautiful. Okay, so well thanks again and to all the listeners. This has been the last interview, at least for this year. So we want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas. And we're working on some stuff, so you'll be sure to hear from us in the new year. so in the meantime, enjoy listening back to this. If you want to check out the other stuff that's out on the website and on the blog, wakinguptheworkplace.com check out Derek's stuff at sive.rs and that's it for now. Thanks.
Ewan
Thanks, Derek. Thanks. Cheers. Bye bye.