My Perfect Failure
host: Paul Padmore
failure, entrepreneurship, company culture, creative thinking, separating art from the artist
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Transcript:
Paul
Welcome, everybody, to another episode of My Perfect Failure. I’m super delighted because today we have an amazing guest for you. So my guest today is an author. He’s a philosopher. He’s a former entrepreneur. Didn’t know whether to say entrepreneur, but I’ve gone for former entrepreneur. He’s a TEDx speaker. He’s got lots of wonderful TEDx talks, which I will put on the show notes. He’s a former musician and the founder of CD Baby, a digital music distribution platform for independent musicians, which he sold for $22 million. And gave the money to charity, which is amazing. Extraordinary. He’s also the author of some amazing books. So the amazing books are Hell Yeah or No, Your Music and People, Anything You Want and Useful Not True. So a very warm welcome to My Perfect Failure, Derek.
Derek Sivers
Thanks Paul.
Paul
How are you?
Derek Sivers
I almost interrupted you in that intro to say that even the fact that I sold my company was actually quite a big failure for me. But we can get into that later. Well, I’m serious. I’m not being sarcastic. It was actually one of my biggest failures in life was me selling my company.
Paul
I didn’t know that. Maybe that’s a good place to start. And then we can.
Derek Sivers
Sure, if you want.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, I’d love to. Yeah, because it sort of feels quite organic. Because it kind of hit you as a thought so. Yeah.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. So I started this company like most of us. Let me say there are different reasons somebody starts a company. Sometimes people just say, “I want to make a lot of money, what can I do?” But other times it’s somebody who’s doing something that they love. Say you love baking cookies and then everybody tells you how wonderful your cookies are. And friends keep asking if they can have your cookies and you think, “You know what, I think I’m going to start a little business selling my cookies.” But you’re doing it because you love it. Not to get filthy rich, right? So that was my motivation. When I started my company, it was something I was doing as a public service. It was actually my way of giving back to the music community that had benefited me so much. So I had already been a pretty successful musician myself, and I started this company as my way of giving back. So I did it for ten years and I loved it for eight years. And those last couple of years things turned awful in the culture of the company. I let a couple rotten apples spoil the barrel, as they say. There were a couple people inside the company that just had a really negative attitude and just kind of sucked everyone else into their negative state of mind. And the company went from a really happy place to a really angry place all within the course of about a year or so.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, like really instigated by a couple of people. Quite deliberately. And I was just happy-go-lucky doing my thing. Kind of unknowing that things had turned so bad, that the culture had rotted from the inside. And so by the time I went to address it, it was just a completely rotten basket of apples. Everybody was suddenly miserable, suddenly angry at me and I thought of some options of what to do about it. I consider just shutting down the whole company. I considered hiring somebody else to run it, and I would just remain the owner. And I actually tried both of those two things, and in the end I chose the third option, which was to sell. But to me, selling the company was an admission of failure. It was like, “Wow, I really screwed this thing up so badly that I have to just walk away from it. It’s ruined.” And it’s funny, usually when people say sorry for something. It’s just kind of a nice, polite thing. You go, “Oh, thank you. Okay.” But there’s one apology in my life that meant a lot to me. And it was about five years later after this happened, I get an email from a guy in Idaho who used to be one of my former employees. I didn’t even really know him that well. I had 85 employees and he was just somebody that worked in customer service.
Derek Sivers
And I remember Dan, we had talked a couple of times, but I didn’t know him that well and he said, you know, “Hey, Derek, my name is Dan. I used to work for you in customer service. I’m not sure if you remember. I just have to apologize. You know, I’m running a little guitar teaching studio now and I have employees for the first time and I see how hard it is.” And he said, “Now I look back at the way that we treated you back then. I don’t know why we just suddenly decided that you were the cause of all of our problems and why we were so mean to you all of a sudden.” He said, “But I just want to tell you I’m really sorry. You didn’t deserve that. I don’t know why we did that.” I was like, “Well, thank you.” Because it was like the single worst thing that ever happened in my life was how this company that I made out of love and hired a bunch of people that also seemed to be doing it out of love, like in service of the musicians because it was a business selling music for independent musicians directly and how it turned so awful so quickly. I really saw it as like, my biggest failure.
Paul
Yeah, well, it must be incredibly difficult because invariably when we do something, particularly if you sell a company that you’ve put blood, sweat and tears into for ten years, I guess you kind of assume that you’ll potentially sell when it feels right, you know?
Derek Sivers
Oh, sorry, Paul. I thought I was going to do it forever. I was like, “This is it. I’m going to do this for the rest of my life.” I never wanted to sell. Sorry. I should have said that at the beginning. Like the fact that I had to sell was the failure because I intended to do this thing for the rest of my life. I was like, “I love this. This is my service to the world. This is my sandbox, this is my Lego kit, I love having this company and I love doing this.” And so, yeah, I wanted to run it forever. I didn’t want to sell. So no, that was my failure. Was having to sell.
Paul
Was that traumatic then? That must be traumatic because that’s like--.
Derek Sivers
Very.
Paul
So CD Baby is like your baby.
Derek Sivers
Yes, it was not anymore, but it was. And yeah, I think it was probably the single most traumatic thing in my life was that experience. I’m talking about like that last year of these 85 people that I cared about, suddenly in like a groupthink way, deciding I was their enemy and everything turning so sour that I had to just give up.
Paul
I know that you came to London. Did you come to London?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, actually, I was trying to simplify the story, but all of this that I’m describing happened while I was in Covent Garden, staying at a friend’s house. Is when I heard the recording of all of my employees having a meeting without me. July 10th, 2007, the worst day of my life. I heard that recording that night while I was in Covent Garden of them having this meeting without me going, “Fuck him, we got to get rid of this guy.” And it wasn’t like a company with shareholders and investors. It was just me, you know, like anybody who’s baking cookies and started a thing. I was just the sole owner. I was paying everybody myself. And it was a little ridiculous that they were talking about how to get rid of me so they could run the company the way they wanted. But more than anything, it was devastating. Yeah.
Paul
Yeah, yeah. I can’t imagine what that must have felt like at the time. And I guess it takes a while to get over that and to think about what next. What? How did you--?
Derek Sivers
Oh, yeah. So to get over that. So Paul, I think the biggest lesson I learned from this, and I hope that anybody listening to this might be able to apply this to your own life someday is for the first couple years after this happened, I was still telling this story that everything was their fault. You know, those rotten apples spoil the barrel. Those bad people wrecked the culture of the company. Those mean people got into a group and tried to do a mutiny against me. Them, them, them. It was all their fault, those people. And after a few years, I had like a flash of an epiphany one night and I went, “Oh, wait a minute, it’s all my fault.” It’s like I created the culture that let that attitude flourish. I created the situation in that let it amplify and get worse. I was too distracted doing other work to pay attention to the early signs and to take care of it early. Oh, my God, this whole thing was my fault. And whether that’s true or not doesn’t matter. It felt better to believe that this was all my fault, because now in that mindset, I’m not the victim now. This is something. I can learn from. This is something I can use to improve my future life. Whereas if you just blame others you’re left just feeling like the hopeless victim. Just grumbling. Yeah. Wincing. I haven’t been able to say that word in a while. I love that word. But yeah, when you decide that everything’s your fault. It really helps you feel more powerful, responsible, which we don’t often think of that word of having two parts in it, response able. I’m able to respond. I’m able to have a response. I found it much more useful to me to think that this was all my fault.
Paul
Yeah. And it takes away forgive me if you already said this, potentially takes away that victim feeling that we can have. You know, if that persists, it really does us no favours. We’re not able to move forward. And because we’ve still got this thing that weighs us down and every random moment we have, whether we’re at the gym or whether we’re having a coffee somewhere or-- I know that London is somewhere where you were Covent Garden. You might be having a pint or something and you kind of think about, “Well, you know, these bloody people. I gave them an opportunity. I created this amazing company and they have this meeting. When I’m not even there, I’m not able to contribute to give them some clarity.” Because you never know what’s going on behind the scenes, do you? You kind of have meetings and we whip each other up into a storm when we think, let’s have a meeting, let’s show him--.
Derek Sivers
Yeah
Paul
Who’s boss. So just in relation to that situation, obviously you’ve gone on to do some extraordinary things and you’ve been very consistent with Ted talks and books and moving around different parts of the globe. And do you think that you would have done a lot of what you’ve done today if you hadn’t gone through this episode? Would people be reading your books? Would you be on these Ted talks?
Derek Sivers
No. That’s what’s funny about the common podcast question that people ask of like, “If you could go back and tell your 20 year old self something, what would it be?” That question seems to imply that there’s something you would like to change about your current life, something you wish you would have done differently, but I love everything now, so I think most of us feel the same way, that even if you can look at your past and see some big giant mistakes, failures, whatever you want to call them in your past, it got you to where you are now. And I think most of us are happy about that. I’m sure some aren’t. But yeah, you’re thankful for the way that something might have knocked you off your trajectory, that you were on and onto a different path. Even if it’s just in the name of adventure. Yeah, I’m very thankful.
Paul
No, that’s interesting because having, you know, doing this podcast and speaking to so many fabulous people and everyone’s got their own story. This podcast comes from my own failure. If I hadn’t failed or perceived that I failed, I wouldn’t be talking to you now or have spoken to all these other amazing people. So it’s kind of worth it. It was worth going through that episode to get to this point where I’m enlightened on a weekly basis. So it always strikes me as really interesting when you speak to so many different types of people from different parts of the world and how their life now in the present moment. There’s so much. When I say they’re so much happier, maybe it’s easier to say they’re happy now because you’re in the present. But in the past, when they were in CD Baby or whatever they were doing, obviously they were happy then, but it’s reassuring to me that we can transition from that difficult moment, failure, whatever you want to call it, to a moment where actually you think in the present action, I’m happier now than I was then.
Derek Sivers
Right. We are resilient creatures. You could pluck any of us up from where we are and put us on the opposite side of the earth in an opposite situation. And it would take a little bit of time to adapt and we’d find a way to be happy. Yeah, that’s what we’re doing moment to moment every day is finding a way to make the best of what we’ve got and make it work out. So yeah. Something knocks us off course. It’s fine. It’s nice to remember that when you’re thinking about the future and you think, “Oh, God. But what if I do this wrong? What if it goes bad?” And it’s like, “Well, then something else will happen and I’ll make the best of it and it’ll be fine.” Yeah.
Paul
That’s interesting, isn’t it? Because sometimes it’s very for some of us--. And I’ve definitely been in this place where it’s easier not to try and maybe do something that feels a little bit of a challenge. I may need to expose myself in terms of acknowledging to somebody or to people that I’m going to change careers or I’m going to try and write a book or start a company. Yeah, because you have to you kind of at some point you’ve got to acknowledge it. And then it can seem as you know, it can feel a bit of a stretch. And then sometimes that can actually stop us from actually doing it because I don’t want to be exposed as somebody that wasn’t able to achieve something. I think that’s quite interesting to me because I’ve definitely been that person at times. I was listening to something earlier where Steven Pressfield talks about the resistance. He took a while to write a book. He eventually got there. Your book, Hell Yeah or No. You talk about minimizing decisions. Make sure that you make smart decisions. And if it doesn’t feel right, then potentially isn’t the right thing to do. And that can help you whittle down. It can help you get to the point where that resistance becomes a little bit easier. And I think for a lot of us that’s a challenge.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Yeah. It it helps to notice which paths are feeling easier or more enticing? Yeah, Sometimes I think of it as what’s more enticing right now? Because sometimes it can be the challenge. If you’ve been stagnant for a while, if you’ve been a little bored, then the exciting, mysterious thing is not necessarily the easiest, but boy, it’s the more enticing path. But other times, if you’ve been pushing yourself too hard for too long, then something a little easier can be more enticing. Right now you just have to notice your compass. Yeah.
Paul
So you get to that point where you know where your compass is going. Then you can, you can lean into it, lean into that. So as I was researching you, I kind of alluded to it before we we kicked this off, before we started recording that, I stumbled across one of your numerous TEDx talks and one that I that really resonated with me for this discussion was the Ted talk you did for in India. Why we need to fail. And I thought you beautifully cascaded three different elements that we all can maybe use and adopt. He talked about learning because we get to learn. And growth mindset, which I definitely have been someone that definitely has leaned into the fixed mindset previously. I think I’m better now. I hope that I am. And experiments and I thought that was a wonderful overview of things that we can do to not be, I guess, afraid to try things and potentially fail.
Derek Sivers
Thanks. Yeah, anybody listening, if you go to YouTube and you search, “Derek Sivers fail.” I think it should pull it up. But it was a conference called Ink that was set up by a woman, Lakshmi Protti, that had been involved with the TEDx conference for years and years and years, and she was originally from India but had been living in California for decades. But she moved back to India and said, “We need something like TEDx here in India.” So she set up Ink like kind of like TEDx. So I think it stands for innovation and knowledge or something like that and asked me to speak. So yeah, you can find the talk on YouTube and any fan of this show might like it. It’s only 16 minutes long or something. Something you won’t see in the video is their entire sound system and lights and everything failed in the middle of my talk. It was kind of funny. I was up there talking to a room of 500 people about failure, failure and suddenly everything went down. The lights went out, the sound went off and took about a minute to come back on. And I thought it was perfect, perfectly appropriate in that talk, but they edited it out of the video.
Paul
So what was good about that? You’re able to know-- the show went on and we still got.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, it’s fun. I’ve learned this thing in customer service running a company, is when something goes wrong, you get to shine. Like if a customer gets the wrong book in the mail and then they contact me to say, “Hey, you sent me the wrong book.” How you handle those moments can make them love you even more than if the mistake had never happened. And we all love seeing bloopers from your favorite TV show or movie. When you see those little scenes of the outtakes and you see the actors delivering their line wrong and then cracking up, it endears you to someone when you see them mess up. Well, it depends how they mess up. Every now and then in those blooper reels, you see somebody who’s wound a little too tightly, and when somebody messes up, they get angry and you’re like, “Oh, wow. He seemed like a nice guy, but, well, it looks like he’s kind of a jerk behind the scenes.” And you know what? That happened to the TV show Seinfeld.
Paul
I love Seinfeld. I’m a massive fan of Seinfeld.
Derek Sivers
So of those four main characters, three of the four would mess up all the time, especially Jerry and Elaine, Julia Louis-Dreyfus. The two of them would, like mess up their lines all the time and just be cracking up. And it was the guy that played Kramer, Michael Richards. That every time somebody would mess up, he would just like he’d get so angry at people for messing up. It was really interesting to see that he was not a lighthearted guy. Who knows? Maybe he was just really into his role. But anyway, sorry for the rest of us. The point is that when you mess up, especially in public, you may find that it’s the most endearing thing you’ve ever done. Confidence is attractive, but vulnerability is endearing. Yeah.
Paul
Yeah. I think your book Your Music and People you talked about when you got bad advice from I think a lawyer. About how you going to pivot your career. And he took you totally down the wrong road. I think he got you to start a label.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, it was objectively good advice. It was just the wrong advice for me.
Paul
Okay. But how did you transition from that moment? Because that was, I guess, something that at the time probably wasn’t the best situation for you in terms of how you wanted your career to shape at that time?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Well, looking at it positively, you could say that because my music career didn’t take off more because I didn’t become the next Prince or Taylor Swift. That’s why I started CD Baby, which ended up doing more good for the world than if I had just put some more songs on the radio. You know? So, yeah, in a way, I could be thankful that guy gave me the wrong advice for me again. So audience I just have to if you’re listening, I just have to explain. I was pursuing a career as a musician, trying to be a successful musician that you would hear on the radio and a music industry lawyer in New York City liked my music a lot. Took me aside and basically told me to follow the Puff Daddy model, which was to start a record label, not just be an artist, but be an artist and a label owner. Sign some other artists, be the boy with the Midas Touch. And he said, “You do that and I can get you well into the seven figures advance from from a bigger label.” And he said, that’s the path I think you should take. And I went home with my shoulders slumped, going, “Yeah, he’s right. That’s what I should do.” But it just killed my enthusiasm for it. And so it’s important to notice that when you ask advice from people, the advice they give you might be objectively good advice. That might be a good strategy, but they just don’t know you as well as you know yourself. You always have to filter their advice through your own preferences and your own soul to know if this is right for you.
Paul
Yeah, absolutely. Because I’ve definitely had-- it doesn’t have to be work. It can be a social with friends and somebody says, “Come and do this. Come and do that.” And not quite sure about that, but might end up doing it. And it’s never the best. And I’ve kind of like I’ve given in to the skills that persuasion. Yeah. And they have an amazing time. But it might not be for me. And I totally get that.
Derek Sivers
Actually, Paul, I’ve never talked about this on the air. Just six months ago broke up a two year long relationship. That was basically a romantic version of that. I was trying to live the life that she wanted. I was trying to be a good husband, a good domestic partner. I’m just not a very domestic person. But because she was such a good person and she really wanted a very domestic life, I was trying to be domestic for her. And I was doing all of the things that I should have. I was doing the right thing, but I was doing it for her. But inside for me, it was not pleasing me. I felt like I was kind of in the act of service at all times for hours a day, every day. I was doing everything for her until finally, after two years, it just broke. And I just said, “I can’t keep doing this. This just isn’t the life I want. I’m doing it for you.” And that was that. But yeah, we can even get into big meta mega situations like that where we are doing things for others, not ourselves.
Paul
Well, I think I--
Derek Sivers
Sorry, Go ahead.
Paul
No, carry on.
Derek Sivers
Now it’s going to completely change the subject. What are we going to say?
Paul
No, I like to go with the organic, so please, please do.
Derek Sivers
Okay. Well, I was just going to say that I suspect that my next next book might be called selfish because I think it’s an underrated subject. I think, we think of selfish as a negative word, as a criticism, as an insult. But I think more of us should be a little more selfish. And I think it’s an interesting subject to dive into a little deeper to look at.
Paul
I love where you’re going with this because it’s almost like a contradiction in terms of selfish. So when you say the word selfish, people think of that person’s selfish. They think, well, they have a negative connotation, but if--. Well, I can’t think of a better word, so I’m going to say pandering to a situation and just doing something. And it almost becomes disingenuous because it’s when you do something for somebody because they would ideally I guess they would hope that. We’re doing something, if you use your case, being domesticated or we go to dinner with somebody when we don’t, they would hope that we’re doing these things because we want to. But it’s probably probably nicer to say, “Actually, you know what?” I use dinner as an example, “I think that maybe I’m not the best person for you to go for this particular dinner with because I don’t really like going out for dinner. I prefer to be at home and just watch TV or or read a book or to have a glass of wine at home. I’m just not a dinner person.” I can imagine this. I can imagine. I don’t know how it would be used, but I can imagine this type of discussion in a sketch in Seinfeld.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Yeah. Well, think about also our social media ubiquity these days. That so many people are doing things for others, doing things for how it looks to others, going and doing things because it looks good on their Instagram, posting ideas on Twitter that they think will get applause from others. Whereas I think that this cultural slow pendulum has has gone too far in the service of trying to please others. And I think it could be a nice reminder that we should be doing more to please our self because it’s also more sincere. It’s more optimized for your own effectiveness and joy, your own personal path. Whereas trying to do things for others, I think can just create a lot of friction for everybody like you just said to you, you’d be a bad dinner guest. Yeah.
Paul
Because the thing is you have that scenario where you’ve been invited to dinner and literally all day you’ve been thinking about, “I don’t want to go to this dinner, I just don’t want to go to this dinner.” And then you meet them at the restaurant and you just have to, you hug and you embrace, “How wonderful to see you. What should we have to eat?” But for the previous 8 hours or 10 hours, you’ve been thinking, how can I get out of this dinner? I don’t want to go to this dinner. But then we just act and we become an Oscar winning actor as soon as we think, “Okay.” And then and the thing is, you know what happens then we compound the situation because before we leave, we must do this again. And it’s like, okay.
Derek Sivers
You know, it’s funny, I get lots of interview requests, podcast requests from people that want to talk business and entrepreneurship, and I just don’t want to talk about that stuff anymore. So no matter how popular the podcast is, if it’s clear that they want to talk about how to make your first million dollars or how to start a business, I just say, “Sorry, I don’t want to.” And they say, “No, no, no. We can talk about other things too.” I’m like, “No, I just know that your audience just wants to hear about how to get rich, and I just don’t want to talk about that. I’ll be a bad guest.” Yeah, so I just have to say no to those things. So I think it helps to connect with your own inner core or your own desires and be honest about it. And it really helps to have a template way of saying no. Like once I wrote a form letter by email once and I just saved it. That said basically, “I’m so sorry. Can’t do that. I’ve got my head down in my work. I’m really focused in trying to finish this book. The only way I’m going to get this done is by saying no to almost everything until this is done. So sorry, I can’t do this thing. I wish you the best with it. Let me know how it goes.”
Derek Sivers
And this isn’t a permanent no. Like maybe in the future. Yes. It’s very kind of British of me to overelaborate an apology. So I just saved that letter. And so now I use it many times a week when people are asking me if I’ll meet up so they can pick my brain. Go send. They say, “Hey, would you like to appear on this How to Get Rich podcast.” Boom send. Yeah it’s really handy to write your no in advance and just have it ready and then a verbal version too. So if I’m just on the phone with somebody who’s asking me to or even if it’s like, you know, “Hey, you should totally come to Detroit so we can hang out or whatever.” I don’t even do the fake thing of, “Oh yeah, we totally should.” Because it feels insincere. I’m lying in that moment and that feels bad. So I just have a shorthand way of saying, you know, it’s probably not going to happen, but that’s all right. Thanks for the invitation. That was really sweet of you.
Paul
Yeah, I love that. Because I’m not very good at saying, I think I’m better now. I don’t get the type of requests you do, but I’m not very good at--. Mine can be random things. It can be just anything. Just innocuous things. But historically, I’ve definitely not been very good at saying no, but I’m definitely better now. But I’ve got 1 or 2 friends that literally from the moment we were at school. I might do a bunch of things for them. I’m not bitter by any means. Lifelong friends. But I would do all these things for them. And then I go, “Can you do this for me? Can you?” No. So they actually don’t even say no like that. They’re like, “No.” And they just carried on. The conversation continued. I’m thinking, how can they say no about it? Just almost on autopilot. And you know, these are the things that today I amuse myself with. They just make me laugh because there’s 1 or 2 friends I have. And I guess I got to the point where I was envious of them because they had this unique ability to say no, pretty much on autopilot. And I was like, how do you do that without actually having some type of no conscience, no conscience about it. It’s just like, no, he might have been going home to his partner and say, “I can’t believe that Paul keeps on asking me to do certain things. After all these years, I’ve never once said yes. He’ll ask me.”
Derek Sivers
Hey, well, rejection therapy? Yeah, I love that. Thanks. Before we recorded today. In an email last week, you sent me a great video about a guy doing rejection therapy for himself. I love this.
Paul
Yeah. Yeah, that was that was brilliant. So he was a former guest, Tom. I think it was another guest that introduced him to me. And I think I researched him and I found this video just similar to how I found your video just going online and buying these things. And I was just like, “Wow, brilliant.” It’s a great skill to be able to do that. I don’t know if he’s done it since, but I certainly found that funny. And something else I was keen to ask you about, reading your work which I love, by the way, you’ve got this ability-- when people come up against obstacles, which we all do in life. That there is always a way to think beyond that obstacle. You can think, actually, what next? And I’ll give you an example. There’s lots I could give, but I’ll probably use this one as a as a starting point, I think it was it Karen Palmer, who was a musician, that I think she signed to a label and I think that they thought that her albums didn’t sell enough units. So what she did, I think she left it. I think you might be able to fill in the blanks, but I think she left the label and so I think she put on events. But people were invited. If they wanted to contribute, they could come. I think they could buy tickets or they could just contribute or they could just maybe a donation. Give a donation.
Derek Sivers
Are you talking about Amanda Palmer?
Paul
Amanda Palmer. Yes. Okay. What I loved about that was the creativity around doing something different and not being totally compromised by the record company, which I guess if a record company not having worked in the music industry, I can imagine it being quite a challenging environment. And the music, particularly the majors, they I get the feeling that they wield significant power. So for an artist to come up with something quite ingenious and maybe, probably, maybe untested, I don’t know whether she knew anybody had done that before. She just thought, “Actually, I’m just going to do this.” And it worked.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. But isn’t that the spirit that we all should be taking to life? It’s like if you’re going to choose the normal path, well, then you’re just going to get a normal life. If you want an extraordinary life, you have to make extraordinary choices. If you want an abnormally successful life, you need to make abnormal choices. You can’t just follow the normal path and expect greater than normal results. Yeah, Yeah. So I think at any given situation. You can look at your choices and say, okay. Here’s the well paved path that goes this way or another well paved path that goes this way. But what if instead, if I climb that tree and I don’t follow the path? Or what if instead I curl into a ball and roll down that hill? I’ll stop with the metaphor, but there’s usually a better, more direct way to go for what you want. Than following the usual rigmarole. Yeah. So I love that Amanda Palmer did that. A lot of independent musicians did that in the late 90s when the internet first got popular and MP3’s revolutionized a lot in the music business when musicians said, “Oh my God, wait. So to get my music from my fingertips to my audience’s ears. I don’t need EMI anymore. I can just get it directly to my fans. Oh, my God. This changes everything.’ That was huge. And yeah, you could say it was the same thing with shows. Punk bands did a lot with that too. They would just skip the whole Ticketmaster thing. They would even skip the usual venues like a typical bar music venue would say, “We don’t want your type here.” And so they’d say, “All right, fine. Here’s an empty car park. We’ll just do it here.” And they just put on a show there and just have people show up and pay what they want. And it’s such a great spirit.
Paul
Yeah. Do you personally like the creativity of being able to maybe look at a different way of doing something when you use that car park example. But it could be any given situation. But there’s something that you said I forget in relation to what. It was around the idea that we should abuse situations as games.
Derek Sivers
Yeah.
Paul
And could the same analogy be applied to when we come up against. To see roadblocks.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Anything. I mean, Paul, that’s like my whole way of living. That’s what I’m doing here. Is constantly at any given moment, every day, any time I’m presented with a situation, I acknowledge the norm. I acknowledge the tradition. And then I immediately feel free to completely dismiss it. Disregard it. And think creatively for a second about what are some better ways to be who I want to be, to get what I want to get, the desired outcome. Maybe again, I’ll just use a metaphor. Maybe I thought I needed to climb that tower to get a nice view, but maybe just a picture of the view is sufficient. And you can extrapolate that metaphor into many things in life. Some people think that they need to be rich or famous to be happy, but you find out, no, you can actually just go directly to being happy instead. It’s a hell of a lot easier and you could do it today instead of needing to put it off for ten years. There are ways of doing this. Yeah, a lot of people think that they need to be popular on social media in order to feel loved, but if you realize that’s what you’re doing, you can just go straight for finding a way to to feel loved in a more real way that doesn’t require looking at clicks and being stupid online to get people to react. I know these are all dumb examples, but hopefully anybody listening to this find your own version.
Paul
I totally get it. It’s going to be interesting in. I don’t know how many years time, but in 50 years or 40 years? 30 years when we look back at social media. But I wonder whether we will look back at the way that we’re all not we’re all but the majority of people fixated on social media and clicks and likes and all that stuff. And we might look back and think, what were we doing? What were they doing?
Derek Sivers
Yeah.
Paul
Mum, Dad, were you so dependent on clicks? Were you/
Derek Sivers
Right.
Paul
Yeah. I don’t know how it will go, but it’ll be interesting to see because it’s kind of like, you know, not real. And going after things and likes by people that we will never ever meet. We don’t even know are their values in line with ours and who are these people and what am I and why do I get adrenaline by getting a like by somebody that I don’t know. I never, ever meet. And that’s control, isn’t it? That’s that’s sort of a control of an algorithm has over me, my body, my thoughts. So it’s weird.
Derek Sivers
My shorthand is I would rather win the admiration of ten people I respect than a million people I don’t.
Paul
Yeah.
Derek Sivers
Oh, wait. I think I head back. I’d rather win the respect of ten people I admire rather than a million people I don’t. Because I shouldn’t say I don’t respect those million people. No, but I don’t admire those million people. That’s why I never pursued anything on television. Television, to me seems to be if you pursue that audience, you’re really opening yourself up to the couch potato masses that don’t appeal to me. That’s why I prefer writing books, even though that limits my audience by 99%. People who not only buy a book, but actually read it, that might cut my audience by 99%. But that’s deliberate. I’d rather engage with the kind of people that read books.
Paul
Yeah, that’s interesting as well, because you really get to-- if you know your audience and I guess what should be most important to us is, you know, what excites us, not what drains us. And if we’re able to channel into that, then you would think the law of averages, that we’re going to connect with the right people for us. So, Derek, it’s been fabulous having you as a guest on My Perfect Failure. I’ve really enjoyed researching you, learning about your fascinating journey. I’m kind of excited to learn about your next book. Will it be selfish? If it is, I’ll be delighted that it.
Derek Sivers
Oh sorry. I’m still writing my next book called “Useful Not True”. And I alluded to this mindset earlier when I said this epiphany that I had after two years of saying that everything at my old company was their fault. And then suddenly I went, “Oh, what if I think of it all as my fault?” So somebody could rightfully argue to say, “Actually, Derek, the truth is it was their fault. They did this thing. Actually, it wasn’t your fault.” And I say, “I don’t care. I don’t care what’s true in this case, it’s more useful for me to believe that that was my fault. That mindset is more useful to me. Don’t bother me about whether that mindset is true or not.” Another similar example that we all have probably heard is that if somebody is racing through traffic, being a real jerk and cutting people off and honking their horn. You could get angry. And we all have a knee jerk tendency to get mad first, but then you could tell yourself maybe that person has a sick child in the back of their car, that they’re racing to the hospital. Maybe I should relax and be more empathetic. Maybe other people on earth are going through a hard time and this whole thing isn’t just about me. Okay, so it’s probably not true that there’s a sick child in the back of that car, but man, it’s useful to think there is. It helps you feel better. It helps get you out of your own head. It calms you down. So I’m writing my next book about mindsets that are useful not true. Yeah.
Paul
Yeah, I love that. I love that. And yeah, so I’m excited for that. Is that something that we can expect imminently or in a few months?
Derek Sivers
I’m just I’m writing it right now and as soon as it’s done. So, hey, anybody listening to this show, go to my website and say hello, go to sive.rs and you’ll see there’s a link to email me. I read every email, I reply to every email. It’s the main reason I do podcasts like this, is I really love the people I meet that contact me after hearing it, so please do.
Paul
Yeah, no, I’m excited by that. I love the idea of having mindsets that can enable us and support us. And because, you know, we get so wrapped up in unhelpful situations when we apply the right mindset. So that’s interesting. So with. A mindset by applying the the right mindset. It’s almost that we can pick out the right mindset at that time when we potentially could explode or just handle something in a very different way with the wrong mindset.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, I’m going to argue that we should not be thinking about whether it’s true or not. But just think what would be more useful for me to believe right now? What would help me be who I want to be?
Paul
Because that’s what I like about it. I like the fact that it’s almost we can tailor make the right mindset to help because it ultimately helps us out in in a situation when we need it to. A relationship, an argument with somebody at work, our traffic example you used so and that happens every day. You lived in London on the tube in the morning when somebody has taken a seat that you had been waiting ten minutes for, they’ve just literally beat you to it. You think, “That was my seat.”
Derek Sivers
Yeah.
Paul
Derek, thank you so much. There was one question I would love to ask you, and this is the recurring question. So you could invite three inspirational people for dinner and they can be alive or they can be past. Who might you invite?
Derek Sivers
So, Paul, I’m glad you emailed me this question in advance. I actually spent over an hour thinking about it. I turned to my diary. I considered many options and my real sincere answer is that I refuse the question because I don’t want to meet my heroes. I think it’s better to acknowledge that somebody’s influence on you can be at its best when it’s through their work that they’ve poured their best self into. The actual person that made that work might not be somebody you really want to get to know. It might actually be an inspirational to meet the real person behind a work that really inspired you. So I do not want to spend any time with any of the people that have inspired me.
Paul
Yeah, no, I get it. I get it. Yeah, I do get that. Because we have a vision, don’t we? We have a vision of what few people are and what they mean to us. And because of how they’ve impacted us over the years.
Derek Sivers
So I’ll tell you one tiny story and we’ll leave it at that. Is that I was and am a huge James Brown fan, specifically James Brown from 1966 to 1974. That whole like Superbad Sex Machine, funky president like that deep funk time in there. I love his music in that range so much that I named my band Hit Me because that was his famous, you know, “One, two, three hit me.” So I named my band Hit Me, massive James Brown fan pictures of him on my wall. So in the year 19--. Oh. What year is it? Yeah. The year 1992. I was working at Warner Chappell Music Publishing in New York City, Manhattan, Rockefeller Center. And everybody knew what a big James Brown fan I am. And on some random Tuesday morning they said, “Oh, Derek, guess who’s coming to the office today? James Brow. And it’s a little office with only 15 people. So they said, “You’re finally going to meet James Brown today.” I thought about it for a second. I was like, “You know, guys, I’m going home sick. I do not want to meet James Brown, and I don’t even want the random chance. Even if I hide in my office, I don’t want the random chance that somebody’s going to knock on my door and say, ’Hey, Derek, I want you to meet somebody.’ Like, I do not want to meet this guy. I respect him too much. His music had such a huge influence on me. I love it so much that I don’t want meeting the guy to ever influence my love of his music either direction. My love of his music cannot be greater. So therefore I do not want to meet the person.” So I literally had somebody take over for me that day and at 10:30 in the morning I went home sick for the rest of the day and the next day people told me like, “Oh yeah, we all met him.” The pictures show his head, “Oh, what a guy.” And I’m like, “Well, glad I didn’t meet him.” So there’s my proof speaking to everybody.
Paul
And you still glad after speaking to everybody?
Derek Sivers
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Even if he was a great, wonderful guy, I don’t care. I’m glad I didn’t meet him. What I love is his music. I think it’s really healthy to separate the person from their work. And it’s his work that I love. I don’t need to love the person that made the work. And even if I did, I don’t want to. Yeah, so there’s there’s my proof, that is my real answer to your wonderful question.
Paul
That is fabulous proof because James Brown, you know, is an icon or was an icon, you know, and still is in pretty much everybody’s eyes. Yeah. So definitely accept that. So, Derek, thank you. It’s been amazing to meet you. I listen to all your books, read your books, and to have you on the podcast is a dream. So thank you so much.
Derek Sivers
Thanks, Paul. I really appreciate it.