Art of Vibrant Living
host: Daniel Aaron
entrepreneurship, CD Baby’s success, focus and obsession, philosophy of usefulness
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Transcript:
Daniel
Derek Sivers is a radical, cool, interesting dude who’s actually - I don’t even know if he knows this - played a part in me helping transition my life from being a yoga teacher into being an author, coach, and transformational entertainer. Now, here’s what Derek says about who he is, “I’ve been a musician, circus performer, entrepreneur, and speaker. I’m a slow thinker, explorer, xenophile and I love a different point of view. California native, I now live in New Zealand. I am delighted that you are with us today. Derek, thank you for being here.
Derek Sivers
Thanks, Daniel. I love the vibe up in your intro.
Daniel
Ah. Vibe up that’s, you know, it’s a simple way of saying it, but that’s the way I see it. So cool. Well, I’m again excited that you’re here. And just in case there are some folks that don’t know who you are and how you got to this point, what would you love to share about that?
Derek Sivers
Sure. Yeah, a little context. Grew up in Chicago, from the age of 14 I knew I wanted to be a successful musician, and so I was monomaniacally laser focused on that, and only that from the age of 14 to 29. I went to music school, Berklee College of Music in Boston, moved to New York City. I was doing the whole thing as a full time professional musician. Bought a house with the money I made touring, and I was completely focused on that one thing. And then at the age of 29, I was selling my CD online. But all of my friends in the music industry in New York City said, “Oh, dude, can you sell my CD too?” And so I accidentally started a business at the age of 29 called CD Baby that was a music distribution company. So then for ten years from age, I guess 28 to 38, I did only that one thing. I was completely focused on just running this company called CD Baby. I had 85 employees. It was the largest seller of independent music on the web, did it for ten years, and then I just felt done. So I sold the company, walked away, and that’s when things got interesting. Because I had been very head down for, you know, 25 years from the age of 14 until 39, just doing music and then just doing this music store. And it wasn’t till the age of 39 when I lifted my head up and started, you know, reading books and looking around and looking at what else there was in life. And now I’m 54 and I guess still in that zone.
Daniel
That’s cool. And I recognize that in that you are something of an unusual musician in that you made enough money to buy a house, right?
Derek Sivers
I was very focused.
Daniel
Very focused. Yeah.
Derek Sivers
It wasn’t just a casual thing. No, I was really intense. This is all I want in life, is only to be a professional musician. And I think when you’re that focused on anything, whether it’s losing weight or making money or whatever it may be, if you’re really that focused, you’ll make it happen.
Daniel
Yeah, I’m with you. And a lot of folks would say, “Obsession is the key ingredient in breaking through and creating success.” And it sounds like, you know, very focused, obsessed could be similar.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. You know, sometimes it can just be a matter of top priority. So years later, actually, just a few years ago, I lost weight for the first time in my life, and somebody noticed, I guess you could tell in my public appearance that I lost weight and somebody said, “Whoa, how’d you do it?” I went, “Well, we all know how, everybody knows how. There’s no shortage of how. I just finally got to the point in my life where it became my top priority and that’s that.”
Daniel
Awesome. It’s tempting to talk about CD Baby because that was such a cool and innovative creation that you had. One thing I will say about it and I say tempting because I think there are more current things that might be even more interesting to speak about. One of the things that I love about with your CD Baby story is, to me it really speaks to what I think of as pure entrepreneurship in that you saw, well, maybe you didn’t even see it originally. Your friends said, “Hey, hey, hey, I got this problem. Would you help?” You saw an opportunity to help people to “fix a problem” and that’s, you know, I think that’s a lot of what drove you in it. Is that fair to say?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, I think of business as a bandage. Business is a bandage to heal a problem. And that’s why it exists. Business doesn’t exist to make money for the founder. A business is there to solve a problem. And that’s why I don’t really understand when somebody says, “I want to start a business.” I say, “Okay, what do you want to start?” And they go, “I don’t know.” I’m like, “Well, that’s like saying, I want to wear a bandage. Where’s your wound? I don’t know, I just want to wear a bandage.”
Daniel
Yeah. Well so then that brings up an interesting track for me in that CD Baby was a great business on the financial level, right? It went really well. Especially when we think about the numbers back in the 90s right. So it seems kind of obvious though I’d still love you to say how did you do it for “the right reasons” and create such a successful financial business?
Derek Sivers
Well, luck. I mean, really, I was in the right place at the right time. There was literally nobody else on the internet selling music for independent musicians, which is hard to believe now. There’s, you know, thousands of places. If you’re a musician and you want to sell your music, there are thousands of places and people that’ll be happy to help you do it. But in 1997, there was none, literally none. There wasn’t even PayPal. Amazon was just a bookstore. There were no online record stores that dealt with independent musicians. There was just a guy named Derek in New York, and that was it. So when people started coming my way and I could tell that I had accidentally started a business. I didn’t want this thing to take over my life. I was dead set on being a professional musician still. I didn’t want this little side project to take over, so I decided to make it like a musician’s dream come true. Like in a perfect world, my distributor would pay me every week. That was unheard of at the time. People would pay you like a year later, if ever.
Derek Sivers
Okay, in a perfect world, there would be no paid placement. Meaning nobody can buy up the space on the front page, because that’s not fair to those that can’t afford it. You know, again, unheard of every place, of course, has the paid placement. That’s how they make their money. Number three, you’d never kick me out for not selling enough. Again, the way the distributors worked at the time is you’d have a short window to sell, and if you didn’t sell really well, they’d kick you out of the system. And then lastly, I wanted to know the full name and address of everybody that bought my music. And again, Amazon would never give you that. Amazon doesn’t tell you who’s bought your stuff. They just say, “All right, bunch of people bought your stuff. Those are our customers.” And from my opinion, it’s like, no, no, no, they bought my stuff. They’re my customers. They just used you to get at me. So yeah, with those four tenets?
Daniel
Values?
Derek Sivers
Values? Yeah. I decided to make this little thing I had started into like, a musician’s dream come true, and I was just in the right place at the right time. It went really well.
Daniel
Yeah. Cool. And I’m glad you bring that up because it’s a conversation I have a lot with entrepreneurs or friends or colleagues. Like hard work we know isn’t enough, right? Focus or obsession or priority, that’s important. But there are other factors out there, right? Yeah. You know, luck is one of them for sure.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. And also thinking of a business like a bandage. You’re supposed to be there to solve a problem that people actually have. If you’re trying to solve a problem people don’t actually have, you know, say if you were trying to be a, I don’t know, beeper salesman right now, it’s like, well, people don’t use pagers and beepers anymore. I think there might be 12 people on earth that still use them. No matter how hard you worked, that’s not something people are wanting right now. Yeah. You got to be making something that people are actually asking you for.
Daniel
For sure. I’m with you. So that brings up an interesting question for me, which is my sense, and this is actually true for me in the past. And also I see it with a lot of other people. They want to create a business because they have something in them or feel like they do that they want to give to the world right. It’s more like what’s in me that I want to give. Not necessarily what does the world need or what do they want? What’s your thinking on that?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Well put. That was the big difference that I felt in my life. When switching from me, me, me, me, me to you, you, you, you, you. And what I mean is that the 15 years I spent as a musician. Yes, it went pretty well. With tons and tons and tons of extremely hard work, I was able to do okay, you know, to get enough money to buy a house. But it was always an uphill battle. It’s like Daniel, it felt like every door was locked. Everything I tried was a struggle. Everything was uphill because it was all me, me, me, me, me. It was me putting my songs out into the world and look at me and listen to me. And as soon as I flipped that. And I did this thing that was for others. I was completely just public servant. You know, I am in service of those who need my service. Boom, everything felt like running downhill. All of the doors that were locked became unlocked. Everybody just made everything easy for me because I was just serving others. It was a huge night and day difference.
Daniel
That’s awesome and I can relate. And how did you do that? Or what did you do or not do that created that? What instigated that switch from me to you?
Derek Sivers
Oh, well, you know, the story I just told that was me selling my music on my band’s website, and then some of my musician friends saying, “Yo, dude, can you sell my CD too?” And so that’s what I mean. It’s just suddenly I went, “Oh, okay, sure, I can do that for you.” And then calls from strangers, “Hey, man, my friend Dave said you could sell my CD. All right, no problem.” “Hey, my friend Marsha said that you’re selling music now.” I’m like, “All right. Yeah, I’ll hook you up.” So suddenly I just became in service to the world.
Daniel
Okay, cool. I’m with you. It makes sense. And if it’s all right, I’m going to persist a little bit, because I suspect there’s another piece there. Because some people say, oh, okay, here’s a way I can help people or here’s a business. All right, I’ll start doing this and it’s still even though they’re helping people, it’s a lot about. How can I crank up my revenue here. How can I make this work for me in some way right. And so it wasn’t just-- I don’t know, it seems to me there wasn’t just them saying, “Hey, can you help me with my music?” There was something more in you. Was there a turning point or something that happened in you that made that shift?
Derek Sivers
The word enough comes up a lot to me because only for the first few weeks I was doing this as a free favour. Like I was spending hours and hours and hours setting up websites for musicians to help them sell their music. And I was just doing it for free because they were friends. I did it for my friend Marco. Then I did it for my friend Rachel. Then I did it for Rachel’s friend Dave, and I was doing it for free, and I enjoyed it. I was being useful. And then when I decided that I’d accidentally started a business, I decided to charge $35 per album to set up, which paid for about half an hour of my time. And so it was profitable enough, like just charging $35 to help people sell their music. That started making me as much money as doing some gigs would, but I didn’t need to get in the car and drive six hours and set up a drum set and a whole band and do a show and pack up and drive six hours back. I could just sit at home on my computer and set up websites for people, oh my God, this is great. So much easier and so much more intellectually interesting.
Derek Sivers
At that point, I had been touring for 15 years and to suddenly be learning HTML and databases and okay, actually, here’s a big one, people were thanking me every day to go from this uphill battle of being in the music industry. To having people every day going, “Oh my God, thank you. Thank you for setting up my music for sale. This is amazing. Thank you for doing this.” That’s an amazing feeling. And so was I trying to squeeze every last dollar out of people? Of course not. Like it was enough. Like $35 per album to set up in my store that was enough. So squeezing every last dollar or focusing on the profit was not the reason I was doing this at all. And in fact, doing that would have wrecked what made it good. And that’s a shame that we see in some businesses, it’s that somebody launches with a pretty cool service or product, and maybe you start using it and then they try to like maximize their profit and you go, “Oh now it sucks. You just wrecked what was good about it by trying to maximize your profit.” So I wish more businesses would remember the the feeling of enough.
Daniel
Yeah I agree completely. Okay cool. Well so that’s a great segue for me because I would love to speak about your new book almost released book. And maybe a doorway into that that connects these is, I’ve also appreciated the way you have approached publishing right. You have, I think 5 or 6 books out now and you’ve done it a different way. You mentioned Amazon earlier and you know the channel and all that. So would you say a bit about how you’ve created the publishing and what inspired you to do that?
Derek Sivers
Sure. I never intended to write a book. I never had any interest in writing books. I was happy to just write on my blog. But then Seth Godin called me. Literally my phone just rang from a number I didn’t recognize, I said, “Hello.” He said, “Derek, it’s Seth Godin.” I went, “Oh my gosh, wow. Hi, Seth.” And he said, “I’m starting a publishing company and I want you to be my first author.” What could you say to that but okay. So he said, “All right, about 11,000 words. It’s like more of a manifesto. Let’s make it short and punchy. All right.” He said, “Could you do that for me?” I said, “Yeah.” So I wrote my first book in 11 days, and Seth published it. It was called “Anything You Want”. It was my story of the stuff we’re talking about here, how I started and grew and sold my company. And yeah, I just did it in 11 days and thought nothing of it. He put it out, it sold well. After five years of running his own little publishing company he sold it to Penguin. So then my book was rereleased on Penguin four years later. And so I had what a lot of authors would consider to be the dream. I was on Penguin, it was in bookstores, and I got no deep joy out of it like I would get checks for a few thousand dollars or, I guess, you know, ACH wire transfers into my bank account.
Derek Sivers
But I didn’t know the names, and I wasn’t speaking directly with the people that were buying it, so it was not as rewarding. And yeah, Penguin was putting it into bookstores. But come on I mean, 99% of sales happen online anyway. And so after a while, like when it came time to do the next book, a few years later. My publisher at Penguin said, “Hey, we want whatever you’ve got, we’d love to publish your next book.” And I said, “Thank you, I appreciate it.” And I thought about it and I said, “I’m just going to self-publish.” It just makes more sense for me to sell directly to my fans, to create my own little store and do it the way I want to. So it was so much more rewarding. So once I decided to self-publish, then it’s like, all right, well, in a perfect world, how would this go? And I thought of things like, you know, I never thought it’s fair that if I buy the Kindle version of a book and then later I want to buy the paper version, I’ve got to pay, like the $19 all over again. That doesn’t really seem fair. Like I’ve already bought the contents of the book. I just want the paper. Why do I have to pay for the contents all over again? And then what if I also want the audiobook? Well, now I’ve got to pay audible all over again. I’ve got to buy the whole book three times. I spent like $50 to buy the book three times.
Derek Sivers
Seems to me that I really should just be able to buy the book once. And just choose whatever format I want at any time. Maybe I bought the book six years ago and now I feel like listening to the audiobook, I should be able to. So I made it so you can do that. So whenever you buy my books, you just get them in all formats, you know, e-book, audiobook, paper, book. I even made a video book once. You just get it included for free. It’s part of just buying the book, means you’re buying the contents. You get all delivery formats are kind of moot. The main point is getting the thoughts from here to there. So why charge for the delivery formats. So things like that. And then, you know, quantity discounts or just keeping it all on my own website. Financially it also made a huge difference because of course, if you sell a book on a major publisher like Penguin, you’ll get maybe $2 or $3 per book. But when people buy from me, I get the whole $15. And yeah, I set up my business in a way anyway, where I don’t need the money. So when you buy from me that basically the entire $15 goes to charity after I just pay some basic expenses, like the printing of the paper books. But my company is owned by a foundation, so that money never touches my hands anyway. It just all goes to charity.
Daniel
That’s beautiful. I love that. Well, I love the question, “Well, in a perfect world, right. How would this go?” And then also placing your own experience as a consumer saying, “Well, what feels good to me, what doesn’t feel good to me?” Right. And then overlaying that into, okay, well, what do I want to provide for others. Right.
Derek Sivers
Yeah.
Daniel
Now, I mean-- go ahead.
Derek Sivers
You could think of it as strategic, like a business strategy, do what’s best for your customers. But I don’t even think about it like that, I think that money is secondary. To me money is like the odometer on your car. The point of having a car is not to make the odometer go up. That’s just a side effect of you using your car. If people were really focused on the odometer, and pretty soon they’re building machines to lift the car off the ground and spin the wheels overnight while they sleep so they can make the odometer go up. You’d say that they’d lost the point in life. And I feel that about people that are focused on money beyond their basic needs. They’re like spinning their wheels to make the odometer go up. It seems like they’ve lost the point. So to me, if I’m going to do something, I want to make sure that it’s for a good reason, not just for the money. The money is never the point. So yeah. If I’m going to publish books, I think about it entirely from the point of view of the people that I’m making the books for, and how can I make this the best experience for them.
Daniel
Yeah, absolutely. Well, and you know, one piece I bring to that is I have one book published, and when I went to create the audio version, then came the question, well, should I read it or have someone else read it? And it was immediate for me. Like, well, I like it much better when the author reads. So of course that’s what I’m going to do, right. And yeah, super glad that I did it that way.
Derek Sivers
Isn’t it a drag when you get an audiobook and it’s read a little too professionally by a real professional speaker? It sounds so insincere. It’s so hard to get past a professional voice and listen to the content underneath.
Daniel
Yeah, exactly. And even more hilarious is when it’s like an American author and then read by a British accent.
Daniel
How does that come to be. Okay well, so making it useful. That’s a good segue into your new book “Useful Not True”. And I don’t know, it feels like, as I’m saying, that it feels like it’s a little bit of a shift in the direction of some of the work that you’ve created. I don’t know if it occurs to you that way. Let’s just start with this, though. What prompted that? Why did you want to bring that book out?
Derek Sivers
Sure, I’ll answer, but I’m curious what you meant by the shift, so I’ll tell you mine. If you tell me yours.
Derek Sivers
All right. So this is my fifth book. So there was that first one about how I started and grew my company. Then there was a book for musicians called “Your Music and People” about how to market your music. It’s actually a book about marketing, but it’s just using musicians as the example. So if you’re really into marketing and if you want to read metaphorically, you might like “Your Music and People”. Then I did “Hell Yeah or No”, which was about what’s worth doing, making decisions. And then I did this one that might go down as my favorite masterpiece in my life. I’m so happy with it. It’s a weird book called “How to Live”. That is 27 conflicting answers to that question on how to live. And one weird conclusion. So it’s 27 little chapters, each thinking that it has the answer and how to live, but each chapter disagrees with all the other chapters, and it’s a head spinning read. And I love it. And underneath all of that in all of my books or just my writing in general, I would share perspectives that I had deliberately adopted to help correct my thinking. Like, say, I’ll just pick the obvious example. If you’re always late for things, if you’re notoriously late, even if you try to be on time, you end up late.
Daniel
I will.
Derek Sivers
Well, then, to correct your habit, you deliberately kind of tell yourself that you need to leave earlier than it seems like you need to leave. You think you need to leave ten minutes early. No, you need to leave 30 minutes early. And if you tell yourself you need to leave 30 minutes early, well then you actually maybe leave 15 minutes early and that gets you there on time, right. We all do this. We all know that we compensate for our faults by thinking the other way. So there are some beliefs that I’ve chosen because they compensate for my biases in life. And so I would share a thought like, say for example, I choose to believe that I’m below average in everything I do. And somebody would say, “But that’s not true.” And I’d say, “Well, I never said it was true. Nobody’s talking about true here. It’s a useful belief for me. I choose my beliefs because they’re useful, not because they’re true. What the hell is true anyway? According to who? True for everyone? Everywhere? Always? Just true for you. Like what? What does that mean?” So I guess I had talked about this kind of between the lines for years. And I finally thought, you know, this is kind of an interesting subject. I should write a book about it. So I spent the last two years, full time, basically working on this new book called “Useful Not True” that dives into that subject.
Daniel
Beautiful. Okay cool. So before I tell you, mine. You reminded me “Hell Yeah or No” right. That has become a a phrase in our culture now, right. And as far as I know, you originated that maybe with an article or a blog post or something. Is that accurate?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. I think in 2009 I published an article called “Hell Yeah or No”, people seemed to like, and so it spread from there.
Daniel
Yeah. Which is, which is awesome, right? You created something that has spread and probably 90% of people that speak that because I hear people speak that about how they make their decisions and, you know, whether they’re going to do this or that is they don’t know that that’s where it comes from.
Derek Sivers
That’s great. I’m thoroughly happy with that. I don’t need any more credit than I’ve already got.
Daniel
Well, and similarly, I’m curious, your experience with the video, the YouTube video you made about how to create a movement, right. Am I rephrasing it correctly?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah.
Daniel
And that got has gotten a lot of traction and a lot of people refer to that. What’s that like for you?
Derek Sivers
I don’t know if I’m supposed to be faux humble right now.
Daniel
No, no, no.
Derek Sivers
The truth is, I love it, I love, love, love seeing that things I’ve done have spread and had an impact. It is such a deep joy. I guess yeah, the “Hell Yeah or No” article. I guess CD Baby itself, I made this thing that grew way beyond me. The “Hell Yeah or No” article, The dancing guy - First follower leadership video, the now page. You know, a lot of personal websites now have a page called /now where they talk about what they’re doing now. I invented that, sounds weird to say that. But I didn’t mean to start a thing. I just did a thing. And then other people liked it and started doing it, and then I guess maybe just articles I’ve written in general. When people tell me that they’ve found that. In the case of “The dancing guy - first follower”, I saw a YouTube video bouncing around the web about the guy dancing alone at a festival, and suddenly everybody joins in. And I watched it the first time and I went, “Huh, that was funny.” And then I thought, “Wow, that’s really a good metaphor for leadership. Like, that’s how it really goes, isn’t it? Somebody just starts doing something and other people join in.” And so I wrote a little article in 2009 about how this video is a good metaphor for leadership.
Derek Sivers
And then the TEDx conference asked me to do it on stage. So I did it on stage at the big Main stage annual TEDx in California. And it was overwhelming and amazing. Like my heroes were in the audience. I mean, there’s the guys that started Google, there’s Bill gates, there’s Tony Robbins, and there’s Al Gore, and these people are just sitting in the audience listening to me give this talk. And as soon as I was done, people tweeted the hell out of it and shared it everywhere. And it has been spreading ever since. But at this point now it feels maybe like somebody who wrote a hit song in the 90s and has like, moved on with their life. And it was 25 years ago. When I see that somebody is sharing the “First follower leadership lessons from a dancing guy”, I’m like, “Oh, sweet.” It’s really nice to see I did that a long time ago. But yeah, I’ll admit it’s a deep source of joy. It makes me so happy to see that things I’ve made, often in just a few minutes, are spreading out to the world still.
Daniel
Yeah. Beautiful. Well and you know my perspective on that is there’s no need to admit. I say, you know, shout it from the rooftops like it’s great to be fulfilled by that. That’s my perspective on it. Okay, that brings me to a question that will also lead to my responding to what you asked me a moment ago, which is, you know, one theme I have seen in your life and your work is innovation, right. Like, oh, I see a I see a different way. I see a new way, something hey, this could be done differently. Well, you know, you better maybe. And with that or underneath that is a a courage, a willingness to put yourself forward right. Speaking of leadership, there’s a leadership axiom that says, “Those that go first end up with arrows in their back.” Right, and it’s sometimes a little scary to go against the grain or the mainstream. So one, would you say that theme is true for you in terms of innovation and two how did you cultivate that courage? Where did that come from?
Derek Sivers
It’s not courage and there are no arrows in the back. I get the metaphor, and I think I’ve probably said it myself too, but not for me. The things I’m doing, I just do them for myself. I’m not trying to make a thing. And if nobody else ever did it or ever followed that would be fine. You know what I mean? Like the fact that I just built my own little bookstore on my website to sell my books. Right now, there aren’t that many authors doing that. If in the future it becomes a thing and lots of authors do that and somebody says like, “Hey, Derek Sivers started this thing.” I’d say, “Well, I mean, I did at first, but I wouldn’t say that I was trying to start a thing.” You know, it’s not like, oh, I’m going to brave out and attempt to do this thing that nobody else is doing. I just was doing a thing kind of irregardless of others, you know what I mean?
Daniel
Yeah.
Derek Sivers
I was doing it just for me and my existing audience and that’s it. If other people pick up on it, it won’t be because I tried to make them do so. And I think that’s maybe the arrows in the backs come from that idea of somebody doing something too risky, too soon, and they’re doing it for public approval. You know, they want the world to buy their new innovative idea, you know, flying vacuum cleaners or whatever. And the world wasn’t ready for flying vacuum cleaners, and they lost their investors money, and nobody wanted to buy their flying vacuum cleaners. And so they look at the arrows in their back for being too soon. A hundred years from now, when flying vacuum cleaners are a thing, we’ll all look to that guy and went, “Oh, he was too soon. He got the arrows in his back.” But, I can’t relate. I’m not doing anything for that reason.
Daniel
Yeah, I’m with you and that’s great. I appreciate what you shared with that. And I’ll go another level deeper with it, which is here’s an example. When I published my first book, one of the things I was indicating in there is just questions about language in the way we use language. And you’re probably aware that one way of saying is that a distinction between the word “and” and the word, “but” right. And so you know what I’m talking about. I don’t need to go into detail on that. And to me, that’s a worthy distinction. It’s been something that I’ve been semi-consciously deprogramming. For like decades now my conditioning to say, “but” when actually “and” would work better and it’s both. I know you have some experience with comedy improv right. So and when I was in the process of editing, I got a lot of pushback from my editor saying, that’s incorrect. For me to use “and” when it should be in his opinion, from the way the language is understood up to this point to use “but” and it was really a fascinating dilemma for me through the process of like, okay, is this going to be too far for people? Is it going to sound too weird? And ultimately I went with mostly “ands” in that because I made a point of it in the book right. And so, you know, for me that was like one, this is being true to myself. If I keep using “buts”, I’m going to feel hypocritical. And two, I want to, you know, help people understand this. Does that make sense?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, I love it. Editors will try to make your writing proper, but sometimes there are things that we’re doing for more artistic reasons than just being proper. So I’ve had those struggles with editors, too, I guess you could say in general. I mean, there are norms and there are reasons to follow norms. And sometimes it helps when people point out norms. You know, I’m at a formal dinner and I didn’t know I’m supposed to switch hands with my silverware or something. Thank you for pointing that out. And there are other times when you just make a creative choice, you say, “No, I’m choosing to do it this way, even though even though I know it might ruffle some feathers, some people won’t like it, but it’s important to me to do it this way.”
Daniel
Yeah, yeah, I’m with you. Okay, well, so ruffle some feathers. I know, “Useful Not True”, your latest book is not fully released yet. Though some lucky people like myself have had access to it. Have you had any feathers ruffled from it?
Derek Sivers
No, surprisingly. You know, I talked about religion in there and that was a stretch for me. I only learned about religion in the last few years. I wasn’t brought up with any. So I learned a lot in the last two years in preparation for writing this book. I went and did a deep dive on a bunch of subjects around theology, and it was really interesting. So I felt out of my league writing a chapter or two about religion. But shouldn’t we all often feel out of our league? Isn’t that a good thing? It’s pushing beyond our comfort zone. So yeah, the only feathers I was worried about ruffling were the chapters about religion. But luckily I think I laid up my case strong enough so that by the time the religion chapter comes along, people aren’t offended.
Daniel
I’m with you.
Derek Sivers
What did you think about it?
Daniel
The religion part?
Derek Sivers
Yeah.
Daniel
I mean, it’s very much in alignment with my own philosophy. So I didn’t feel any ruffled feathers. Yet I do suspect that a lot of people believe in truth with a capital T, and, you know. So I think there are a lot of the chapters in there that I hope will shake people up. I don’t know, one of my teachers used to say, “Whenever we say I like you, really what we’re saying is my neurosis is like your neurosis.” Right or another way of saying it is my genius is like your genius or my values are like your values. So I’m a bad test case in terms of you know, being offended or having feathers ruffled.
Derek Sivers
Cool.
Daniel
So actually, let me rewind a moment and then bring this into another question. You you said in your bio, “slow thinker”, and you talked about some of the origins of this book being around correcting our biases right, in some way. And so as I think of slow thinker and correcting our biases, I think of Daniel Kahneman right. And his work, was that an influence for you in creating this?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Cognitive behavioral therapy mixed with Daniel Kahneman’s system one versus system two thinking have this thing in common. Which is that it can be much wiser to pause for a second and think for a second, think it through for a second before responding to anything. So cognitive behavioral therapy often focuses on that gap between something happened, you’ve got your immediate impulsive response. But hold on, think about it for a second, is that true? Is that is that who I want to be? How could I think about this? It can only take a few seconds or just a minute to put a gap between the stimulus and the response. So yeah, a lot of what I’m talking about in “Useful Not True” is actually cognitive behavioral therapy. But I didn’t learn that term until just a few years ago. And it’s how I’ve been living my life the whole time. Maybe thanks to Tony Robbins. When I was a teenager, I read a Tony Robbins “Awaken the Giant Within”, and he talks a lot about reframing, choosing your response. And I think I really took that to heart. And I’ve been living that way for 30 years. But I try to whenever I write, I try to not name isms and formal philosophies. I try to just say what you’re saying without needing to refer it back to some ism that you’re quoting. So I don’t actually say cognitive behavioral therapy anywhere in the book, but it’s a lot of that.
Daniel
Yeah, that makes good sense. Perfect sense. So will you take us a little bit into some of the pieces of the book? Well, let me ask it this way. Do you have-- this is silly, but do you have a favorite component or story or chapter from it?
Derek Sivers
Sure. Yeah. Well, okay. Why not? I’ll do it: A group of adventurers need to cross a narrow bridge over a deep canyon. But a fearsome guard appears in front of the bridge like Aladdin’s genie. The genie from Aladdin’s lamp and blocks the entrance to the bridge and says, “No one can pass until you tell me what’s true.” And then he snaps their fingers and their vision is replaced with a scene of a king being offered a bowl of soup. He takes a sip and he pushes it away, saying, “It’s too salty.” And their vision is restored. And one adventurer says, “The king thinks the soup is too salty.” The guard says, “No.” “The king doesn’t like the soup?” “No.” And he says, “The king said the words ‘It’s too salty.’” “True.” And that one person is allowed to cross the bridge. And then again he booms, “No one can cross until you tell me what’s true.” He snaps his finger, and now their vision is replaced with a scene of a woman trapped inside a box. She’s pushing and pounding and nothing’s working. She can’t get out. Boom! Their vision is restored, and one of the adventurers says, “The woman’s trapped in the box.” “No.” “She’s trying everything and can’t get out.” “No.” And then one adventure says, “She’s pushing and pounding the box.” “True.” And that adventure is allowed to cross the bridge. Then one more time, he says, “No one can cross until.” But the youngest girl in the group got the message. She walked straight up to the fearsome guard and she said, “I’m going to cross the bridge now.” And she squeezed between his legs and crossed the bridge. So all of the other adventures did the same, and the guard smiled with pride.
Daniel
I love it. And I love it because just before I semi-restrained myself, when I asked you, do you have a favourite, what would you like to talk about. Because the first thing that was on my mind right then was that particular story, bridgeguard
Derek Sivers
Oh, really? Oh, sweet.
Daniel
Yeah, yeah. So, we’re in sync on that. And part of why I love it is because, well, personally, I had to read it a second time. Like I read it, I was like, “Huh? Wait, what?” It took me a minute to get it right. And of course, it’s always better when when we get it, right when it’s not immediately obvious, when we work a little bit to understand something. And it points to such a not obvious truth. Which is so much of what people say is just interpretation.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, yeah. And that’s essentially what half the book is about. Is that just because somebody said something, just because the king said, “It’s too salty.” Doesn’t mean the king necessarily thinks it’s too salty. He could be hiding the fact that he’s too tired and wants to go to sleep, but doesn’t want to admit it. He could be testing the chef, to see if the chef will push back and say, “No, Your Highness. It is perfect.” All we really know is the king said it’s too salty. We can’t imply anything else from that. And same thing with the woman that seems to be trapped in a box, pushing and pounding and can’t get out. All we really know is she’s pushing and pounding. There could be a key right there and a button that she’s forgot to push that could unlock everything. And too often, all of us in day to day life have these limiting beliefs where we take one glance at something and it looks like we’re trapped. And so we declare that we are trapped. But it becomes a a limiting belief that’s not necessarily true. So the idea in the little story, is that the girl put those two examples together and got the hint that the guard was trying to tell them you are not actually blocked, even though I’m saying you can’t cross until you tell me what’s true. And even though I’m big, and standing in front of the bridge doesn’t mean that you can’t actually cross.
Daniel
I love it. And, you know, part of what I get from that is the implication that the world is malleable, right? That if we choose to be reality benders, we can create what we want. I think that’s a tough pill for a lot of people to swallow. Go ahead.
Derek Sivers
It’s funny. I thought you meant it the opposite way. We are already reality benders when we see, for example, a situation that seems to be a dead end and we just instantly declare it to be a dead end, “There’s no way out, there are no jobs. Nobody’s hiring in this town. The economy’s going to hell. This is bad. You can’t do that. There is no way, they’d never hire somebody that looked like you.” We are already bending reality for the negative when we assume these disempowering interpretations and declare them to be fact. So a lot of what the book is about for more than half of it, for 3/5 of it is pointing out again and again and again that’s not necessarily true. That’s not necessarily true. Just because somebody said this doesn’t mean it’s true. Just because you seem to be trapped doesn’t mean it’s true. Just because you believe that you can’t be president doesn’t mean it’s true etc. I’m trying to remove people’s limiting beliefs.
Daniel
Hallelujah. Thank you. I love it. Right. You’re you’re doing a lot of my work for me with that.
Daniel
And I appreciate the bulk discounts because I can, you know, make it easier to give it to all my clients. Well, so the two things that come to me from that are, one, you know, I think for me, Tony Robbins was instrumental in that too. I remember the first time I saw him at an event and he told this story of his first client being himself and all the limiting beliefs he had, “I’m too young and blah, blah, blah, blah.” And and what he created from that, phenomenal. And he’s a great instigator of people being able to create. So the other piece that comes is a TV show I saw years ago called, House M.D., right. Kind of based on Sherlock Holmes and there’s this great diagnostician with really bad bedside manner, terrible to be around, sarcastic and obnoxious. Yet he’s the best diagnostician in the world. And every time there is, “Okay, differential diagnosis, everybody.” Someone would say, “Well, they said this and that.” He said, “People, they’re all lying.” Right that would be you know, like going to what patients said. He said, “You got to remember they’re all lying.” And I remember when I first saw that, I was like, “Oh, that’s kind of harsh and negative and obnoxious.” But it really got to the same point that you make in that story and make throughout the book in lots of ways. And it’s not that they’re necessarily meaning to lie or necessarily that it’s not true. Maybe it’s it’s not the whole truth. I guess we could say it that way.
Derek Sivers
Any time Daniel.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, yeah. On the first page of the book, I say, “The book is called ‘Useful Not True’. So we need to narrow down that word true. So to be clear, when I say true, what I really mean is absolutely objectively, empirically, necessarily true for everyone, everywhere, always. That’s what I mean by true.” The reason to have such a narrow definition is that whatever you consider to be true is closed. No questions, that’s that. That’s just true. I’m never going to question that because it’s true. Everything else if you say it’s not necessarily true as soon as you think not necessarily true, your brain instantly goes to, “Well, what else could be true then? What other perspectives could there be on this?” So I just want to point out that except for some absolute physical realities that any creature or machine could observe and agree, everything else is just subjective. And so when people say things like, “You can’t do that.” It’s not true. It’s just a perspective. And so kind of like yeah in your example House M.D where you said they’re lying. My version is it’s not true because that’s shorthand for, you know, absolutely, necessarily objectively, always true for everyone, always, everywhere. You know, it helps to narrow it that tightly so that you can see that everything else is up for reframing.
Daniel
Yeah. Beautiful. And then that’s part of the beauty and power of Byron Katie’s work. Right? When she says, is it true? And everybody goes, “Well, yes, it’s true.” And they say, “Can you absolutely know that it’s true?”
Derek Sivers
Right.
Daniel
“Okay. Maybe not.” So right. Time is flying. I got one more question for you from the book, though. If I remember right, there’s a chapter called “Perspectives”, or maybe more than one, right. And part of what I recall from that is, yeah, everybody that’s speaking, they’re really just saying their perspective right. And for a lot of us that can be hard to be aware of, hard to remember, especially when it comes to authorities right. Be those people in white coats or speaking legalese or, you know, in some kind of spiritual garb. So well, I guess first, you know, does that make sense am I understanding correctly? And second-- well, let me ask that first.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Interesting. Yes.
Daniel
Okay. So what do you suggest or what would you say to people that tend to abdicate their power to authorities is the way it comes to me to say.
Derek Sivers
Well, since we’re wrapping up. Let’s not forget that word useful. That just because I have a chapter that says, “No religious beliefs are true.” Because remember, that doesn’t mean they’re false. But by that definition of absolutely, objectively, for everyone, everywhere, always. In that definition, no religious beliefs are true because every religious believer knows that there are other people that believe other things. So therefore you can’t say that your beliefs are absolutely true for everyone, everywhere, always. Including creatures and machines. You know they are your beliefs that you are holding on to because they’re working for you. They’re useful to you. Believing this makes you happier makes you a better person. Maybe it makes you more thoughtful, more generous, more connected to others. There are so many reasons to hold on to your beliefs. Because they’re useful to you, and that’s the only argument you need. You don’t need to argue that they’re true. You don’t need to fight with non-believers. To argue that you’re right and they’re wrong, or vice versa. They don’t need to argue the opposite. All you need to understand is that your beliefs are useful to you. Or let’s just say you only need to judge your beliefs by whether or not they are useful to you. If it makes you a better person, if it makes you take better actions, that’s all that really matters.
Daniel
Beautiful, I love it. Thank you. All right. Well, so as we are wrapping up, what’s the best way for people to get in touch, in contact with you? And let me say this actually, because one of the things that amazed me about you when we first met many years ago is you said, well, I think it’s on your now page now, “I respond to all emails.” Right and most people don’t in the world. Let alone people who are authors and you know, famous people. Well, actually, let me ask you this then why do you do that?
Derek Sivers
I live on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean like yourself. I’m in New Zealand aka Hawaii South. And I love hearing from people around the world. One of my favorite hours of the day is the hour I spend with my inbox each day. I get these emails from people in Tunisia, a musician in Finland, an author in Brazil. It’s so cool to hear from people around the world, I love it. It’s one of my greatest joys. And then later when I travel, I end up meeting up with these people in person. So a week from today, I’m heading off to South America for the first time in my life, where I’m going to Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, and I’m going to be meeting with, I think, 70 people there. Just one on one, 70 one on one kind of meetups with people that have been emailing me for years or I’ve been emailing with for years. And that’s why we’re meeting, is because 15 years ago they reached out to say hello, and now here we are, 15 years later, going to meet up in Mexico City or whatever. So, I just love connecting with people. It’s so rewarding. So yes, anybody listening to this, go to my website, go to sive.rs and introduce yourself and say hello.
Daniel
Perfect. I’ll pop that up on the thing. And so sive.rs for those listening in. Where does that come from? That’s an unusual URL.
Derek Sivers
Well, I just realized I used to have for years-- well, I have sivers.com sivers.net sivers.org I bought all these way back in the 90s. When I first got online, I was like, “Oh, look, they’re available my name.” So I registered them all andnI’m a ridiculous minimalist. I only have one pair of pants. I’m one of those weird guys, don’t hold it against me. But at a certain point, a few years ago, I looked at myl URL sivers.grg everything was sivers.org/this sivers.org/that and I went “.org. That’s not really necessary is it? I’m not an organization am I? I’m just me.” And so I saw that I could get the domain name sive.rs. And I went yeah that’s just me. No .com. No .net, no.org, just me. So yeah, rs stands for Republic of Serbia, but they let anybody register it.
Daniel
Well, okay. Good. I learned a lot of new things and that’s one of them.
Derek Sivers
I wonder what you know somebody is .el. What would that be? No, I don’t know if .el-- but, you know, a lot of us have names. Like, if you would be like Dani.el. Well, I’m not sure if that one’s available, but, like, Naval Ravikant I know has, like, nav.al. Because al maybe Algeria or something like that. It’s like sometimes you can use the country code dots to use as the last couple letters of your name, but yeah, just nerdy. The nerdy fascination of a devout minimalist that I’m always looking to scrape away every unnecessary line in my books. My books are very short. I get rid of every sentence that doesn’t absolutely need to be there. And I do the same with my programming code. I do my own programming, and when I looked at my domain name, it was like, yeah, I think I can get rid of a few letters here.
Daniel
That’s beautiful, I love it. Essentializing, distilling.
Derek Sivers
Essentializing. Yes. Good word.
Daniel
Yeah. Derek, thank you so much. Not just for, you know, in spending this time with us. I really appreciate that. Also for all that you’ve done and all that you’ve done to create yourself into who you are and the work you’ve done from your heart into the world. You’ve created a lot of positive impact for so many people, and I’m grateful that you did spend this time with us.
Derek Sivers
Well, you too. I mean, you and I have been emailing for years, and I really love and admire what you’re doing, so thanks for having me on.
Daniel
Yeah. Pleasure. Awesome. Thank you.