NeuralZen Venture
host: Justin Varikooty
Useful Not True, business philosophy, handling feedback, entrepreneurial advice
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Transcript:
Justin
Hello everyone. Today we have a special guest on the show. We have Derek. Derek, how are you doing?
Derek Sivers
Good. I wonder, do you ever say we have a not very special guest today, or is everyone special?
Justin
No, I think a few guests are special. And then maybe in the future, I’ll have a not so special guest, and he actually will be special. Or she will be special for being not special.
Derek Sivers
There you go. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we have today the very first non special guest on Neural Zen.
Justin
Awesome. First question, and I hate to ask it because you have so much content out there and a lot of people know you, but if you could give a quick 2O seconds intro about yourself, I would be really appreciated for that.
Derek Sivers
20 seconds. Full time musician for 15 years started selling my CD online and all my friends asked if I could do it for them too. And I accidentally started the world’s largest seller of independent music online, did it for ten years, got sick of it, sold the company. Since then I’ve been writing books and thinking philosophically, always trying to find a different point of view.
Justin
Like that was definitely under 20 seconds. I’m really impressed because when I asked people this question, it always goes above like it’ll stretch to like a minute. So thank you for that. I wanted to first ask you about your book “Useful Not True”. To those listening, Derek actually sent me the download link, and I actually read the entire thing today. But if he quizzes me on it, I’m probably going to get a lot wrong on the concepts. But I had an amazing time reading the book. Honestly, I read through the book and I wanted to ask a few questions about the book. But before that, if you can give everyone like a why as to why you decided to write the book.
Derek Sivers
Useful not true, is an underlying theme behind everything I’ve been talking about for many years. So my first book called “Anything You Want” I only wrote it because Seth Godin asked me to. He started a publishing company and called me up. Like literally just called me on the phone and said, “Hey, I’m starting a publishing company. I want you to be my first author.” I said, “Wow, all right. Sure.” So my first book was how I built and grew and sold my company. And along the way, I’m sharing my point of view on things like, for example, business is not about making money, business is about being generous. The whole point is to go in and be of service. A business is a bandage for a wound, right? It’s a solution to a problem. You’re there to help like a nurse. It’s not about getting everything you can out of people. It’s helping people as much as you can. And that’s my point of view on business. But every now and then somebody would push back and say, “Well, that’s not true.” I’d say, “I don’t care if it’s true or not. It’s useful for me to think this way.” It’s useful for me to believe this, because that helps me go into work each day with a spirit of giving and trying to help the customer, which then, in a Daoist kind of way, ends up benefiting me in the end.
Derek Sivers
Because by doing everything you can for your customer, they reward you with their loyalty or their recommendations, or opening up their wallets happily for whatever you do. But this theme kept coming up of people pushing back, no matter what I’m writing or sharing my point of view. Somebody’s always there saying, “But that’s not true.” And I’d always have to explain again, “I don’t care if it’s true or not. What the hell is true anyway?” I mean, there are very few concretely true things on Earth. There are physically observable things like absolutely necessarily true things that an ant or an octopus could both observe it and we’d all agree that this is true. But most things that we talk about are things of the mind, and things of the mind are never necessarily true. They’re just a perspective that feels like truth, but it’s just a perspective. So finally, I thought, this is an interesting subject worth going into. So I spent the last two years diving into it and made a very tiny little book. It’s my shortest book yet. I was very proud of that. The rough draft was triple the size, and I edited it down to 60 tiny little fables.
Justin
Is there a specific thing that you thought was true for many decades in your life that ultimately did it, and you try to shift your narrative behind it?
Derek Sivers
I mean, there’s so many, getting really personal to ask one of mine. But, like, let’s say the importance of having a life partner. Most people just go through life assuming that’s just a given. Well, who’s my one going to be? Who’s my life partner going to be? And it can be interesting to question that. Go, “Wait, I’ve never really wanted a business partner. I’ve never wanted a music composing partner. Do I really, really want a life partner? Or am I just doing that out of a sense of ego or thinking that’s just something you do?” You were asking for a grand one, that’s a grand one. But they’re often more minute, day to day examples in business.You know, whatever it may be, “We have to have a privacy policy and terms and conditions on our website.” And then you can just catch yourself in these moments going, “Wait, really? Do we really need that? Is that true? Or is that just a perspective?” Or somebody saying the world’s going to shit or if this guy gets elected everything is going to suck. It’s like, well, that’s maybe true, maybe not. Business mindset, there are a lot of people who say, “Nobody’s buying. We’re in a recession. There are no customers. Nobody’s got any money. There are no good leads.” All these kinds of limiting mindsets can be challenged. And if you hold them up in the light, you realize that they’re not absolutely true. They’re just a perspective.
Justin
Yeah. And about perspective, you also wrote about tricking your future self, I believe, or trying to do that as a way to prevent yourself from reverting to old mindsets. Can you speak to us on, like, what that means to you and and how can you use that tactic?
Derek Sivers
Sure. If you know you have a tendency to eat whatever sweet, sugary things are in the house, you make a point of not keeping a box of cookies in the house. You look after your future self, knowing your tendency. So I think that if you are adopting a new mindset on something, if you’ve decided that it would be better to think of this subject in this way, even though that’s contrary to how you’re used to thinking of it. You can stack up your reasons to remind your future self why you were choosing this perspective, knowing that your future self will tend to revert to your previous thought process and behavior.
Justin
I think it’s a good one. I have trouble with that specifically when it comes to candy and stuff like that. Another thing was, and I think this applies to a lot of my audience who are like entrepreneurs who, like, quit their corporate careers like myself. I spent a few years at Wall Street and Goldman Sachs and all that stuff and and quit to start a business. You talked about pretending to be brave. Something along that line, where sometimes if you can pretend, like it can help. Right. But like, how do you balance that authenticity? Because I feel like entrepreneurs who quit corporate careers, like, sometimes they have this thought, like, “Oh, am I good enough?” Like, how do I get out of that thought loop.
Derek Sivers
Well, first let me ask you, what do you mean authenticity? How do you define it?
Justin
I’m not even sure myself. I would just say, like, trying to... I know it’s tough because, like, I think sometimes if you start thinking something, you can embody it. And ultimately it can be you, right? So even I’m not sure. Like what does that really mean? But yeah.
Derek Sivers
You don’t have to go to the deep philosophical definition. I just mean I’m not sure what you mean by authenticity. Can you give any example?
Justin
Yeah. I mean, just trying to be true to your current values, I think. I know that could just be an incorrect definition or just not even a solid definition, but just, like, not trying to fake it, you know? Like, there’s a lot of talk about, fake it until you make it, but I just want to hear what’s your perspective on this? And like, how can you embody, like the concept of pretending to ultimately benefit yourself?
Derek Sivers
Okay. Yeah, I think it’s important to pretend. I think it’s important to fake it in the moments when you’re not feeling it. But you know what’s the right thing to do. And there’s the key. If it’s the right thing to do, say, if you’re in some kind of a service job and if it’s the right thing to do to be calm and kind when somebody is yelling at you. Of course you’re not feeling it inside. To be true to yourself and to punch the person in the face. But you catch yourself and you fake it. You say, “Thank you for your complaint, sir. We will refund you immediately and look into the situation. I’m very sorry for your troubles.” Of course, that’s not what you’re feeling inside. But that is the right thing to do in that situation. Okay? We all know that. That’s an easy one, right? You don’t have kids yet, but parenting. Sorry, I shouldn’t have said yet. That was judgmental of me. Maybe you never will. Who cares. Often as a parent, the right thing to do is not what you feel like doing. Your kids says, “Hey, come play horsey with me. Crawl on the floor. I want to ride on your back.” Your first thought is, “Huh?” But you think, “You know what? This is priceless. This is childhood. Let’s do it.” And so you fake it. And let’s pick one more example on a bigger scale. Say if you’re in some kind of a sales job or even let’s just say just going into work very often, you just don’t feel like going into work or doing your work, even if your work is being an artist or writing a novel or something that you would think is intrinsically driven.
Derek Sivers
Some days you just don’t feel like it. But you know, for your bigger life’s purpose and what you want out of life, that the right thing to do is to just go get your brush on the canvas today, put your fingers on the keys and start moving those fingers. The inspiration will come later. It’s doing the right thing, even though you don’t feel like it. This is crucial, and I’ve just given three different examples. But the common theme is, it’s the right thing to do, and you do it even if you don’t feel like it. And very often, the feeling will come afterwards that by pretending to be generous and pretending to be calm and kind, you are being generous, and you are being calm and kind by pretending and by pretending to be a good dad and getting down on all fours and playing with your kid, even if you don’t feel like it, you are being a good dad by doing that. And let’s say in a creative field, by showing up and putting your fingers on the keys or getting your brush on the canvas, even if you don’t feel like it, you are being a professional creator. So I think it’s really important to do the right thing. Don’t think in terms of authenticity.
Justin
And how do you know when to take feedback? I think you talked about this like when asking friends or just people in general for maybe their perspectives on your views or like how how do you differentiate between genuine feedback from people and external pressures when discussing like with others? I’m sorry if I’m like all over the place. More so like, how can you discern what is the true feedback versus someone trying to put their values on you?
Derek Sivers
Ah, okay. Like that. Well, sorry there are two different things. Giving and receiving. Okay. So if you’re giving feedback, it’s important to think in terms of the other person and what the other person needs to hear. So for example, for years I ran a music distribution company and people would come to me with a finished album that they had spent thousands of dollars recording, had finished recording, had pressed up a thousand CDs, sent me one and said, “What do you think?” And in that moment, it doesn’t matter what I really think, what I really think is that bridge went on too long and the singing is out of tune here. And you know that they should have gotten to the chorus earlier in this section. And there’s too much high hat here. That’s what I really think. All of that would be extremely inconsiderate and straight up harmful to say to somebody that’s already finished and they’re not going to be making any changes to those songs or recordings. And who the hell am I anyway? Who cares what I think? So you have to learn to translate the question when somebody says, “What do you think?” Those are the words coming out of their mouth. But what they’re really saying is, do you love this? Can you help get this to somebody else that can help us. Or basically can you help me? That’s what the question is really saying.
Derek Sivers
Then conversely, if somebody is giving you feedback on something, they might say, “You know, Justin, what you’re doing is wrong. You need to stay in New York and be loyal to where you are. You should not move to Los Angeles. It’s a bad idea. It’s stupid. It’s a bad place. People are fake out there. They’re backstabbers. They’re so, you know, ass kissing. You know? It’s a bad place. You need to stay on the East Coast.” They’re saying it as if they’re saying it for you. But really, what they’re saying is, “I don’t like California.” Maybe, “I’m going to miss you. I like it here better. If you like it there better, I’m going to have to face the uncomfortable thoughts that I might be living my life wrong .”or something like that. You have to learn to translate what other people are saying, to understand that everybody’s just sharing their own perspective. They say it as if it’s an absolute fact that it’s just like a law of nature. You need to be here. You should not be there. This is bad. This is good. But they’re sharing their preference. But to them, it feels like a fact. That’s the trouble. To them feels 100% in their core. Like this is an absolute fact and they communicate it as such, not realizing that it’s just one point of view.
Justin
Another thing I found interesting was, you talked about like minor chords in the book, I believe. Like embracing minor chords. Can you talk about like what that means? I’m a former musician, same as you. But I think those out there, can you just speak as to like, what does that mean in the context of this book?
Derek Sivers
Sad songs are wonderful. Happy songs are wonderful. We don’t need to make all of life into only happy songs. If you were to buy an album of music or listen to a whole playlist of music that was nothing but happy songs, it would be pretty non-nutritious to your soul. You need the sad mixed in with the happy. You need the range of emotions. And so, when I talk in the book about the importance of reframing, about being able to deliberately choose different perspectives. I’m saying, it doesn’t mean you should always choose the happy one. The sad songs are wonderful. The minor chords are wonderful. It’s great music if you just let yourself feel the full range of emotions or have a full range of experiences, you don’t need to think of sad things as bad.
Justin
Yeah. And speaking about music, I wanted to ask, so you spent a large portion of your 20s I think like you worked at Warner. You quit to be a guitarist and, like, tour in Japan and even recorded an album. How has that influenced how you build a business successfully? Like, are there any parallels in being a professional musician and being a business entrepreneur?
Derek Sivers
It’s actually almost the same. To be a freelance professional musician is to be a micro entrepreneur. I didn’t have employees, but I had band members that I was paying per gig. I had to be the leader to put together a band and make people see the vision of what this could be and get them engaged, and then go make things happen and keep momentum. There were so many similarities. Lessons learned from it is how much of business is the soft skills of communication. It’s almost all of it. It’s communicating your benefit. So same thing as like communicating your music. And even how much something like image matters, which it seems like it shouldn’t. But when somebody’s listening to music, they’re not just listening to the notes, they’re listening to everything that goes around it. You know, the persona of the person performing and what we know about that person’s background, how they look, who their other fans are, what it means for your identity to be a person who likes this music. And it’s the same thing with business. What does it say about your identity? To be a person who rides a Harley-Davidson and wears a leather jacket and has a tattoo on your neck? What does it say about your choices in life? If you choose to put most of your time into this social media platform versus that one? It may say something about who you are and so much about business is this soft mimetic social psychology.
Justin
Another thing is, I’d love to hear your perspectives on when do you think a person should quit doing what they’re doing versus like continue. I think I mean, it would be a good candidate for this question. I think you started your business CD Baby, I think was like around 28 and then, like, maybe exited around like ten years later. Or maybe I’m mistaken by that.
Derek Sivers
Yeah.
Justin
But I’m sure along the way, have you had, like, thoughts on whether you should have quit earlier or sold earlier or like thoughts like this that could be intrusive to do the business building experience.
Derek Sivers
That is so per person. I forget what word that is. It’s such an individual choice. There’s some people that will just stick things out for their whole life, that they’ll just do this thing for their whole life. I thought I was that kind of person. I intended to run my business forever. But then after ten years, partially because of surprising circumstances. But mostly just out of my own intrinsic motivation I felt was gone. I was feeling done. And by my own values. I think it’s important to keep changing and keep doing something new and keep pushing into the unknown. Because I like to be metaphorically an explorer, I like to explore different ways of thinking and explore different ways of living and explore different things to spend my time thinking about and doing. Other people are more of the leader type that pride themselves in just following a straight line and not being distracted, you know, “Stay the course. This is where we’re going. This is a multi-decade plan. This is where I’m taking it.” And they do not want to be distracted with exploration. Exploration can be like the opposite of leadership in a way, in that sense.
Derek Sivers
So it’s just an individual decision. For me, I felt that the personal learning, growing experience for me after ten years of running my company, the personal growing experience was to stop and force myself to do something else. I didn’t even know what yet. I just knew that I’ve plateaued doing this thing and I plateaued a year ago. I’ve just been maybe a few years ago... I’m sorry, I’m saying at that time, when I was 38. It was like a huge learning and growing experience from the age of 28 until 36 or so, and then the last two years, I just kind of plateaued. I was maintaining it. And so from my personal growth, it was time to sell. But that’s, for example, why I would be a very bad leader of a public company, is I just filter everything through the personal experience. I’m doing this for my own personal growth, for my own personal interests. I’m not trying to increase shareholder value. You know, I’ve never had investors. I’ve never had to do this for anyone else except myself, first and foremost, and pleasing the clients or customers most of all.
Justin
And the last question I want to ask, I mean, to my listeners, they’re mainly in their 20s, like myself. What maybe advice or maybe a few principles of success would you give to someone in their 20s who is, you know, quitting and starting that era of entrepreneurship? Or is it just feeling lost in general with it?
Derek Sivers
I think going and being stupid and doing stupid things and trying things and making big mistakes and not letting it bother you, that’s the recipe. That’s the recipe for success and it’s the fountain of youth at the same time, to do crazy, stupid things and not try to be cautious. Don’t play it safe. The more experiences you have, the better, because you’ll be trying things firsthand. Instead of taking in all this information online where pthere’s an endless amount of podcasts and articles and books telling you what you should be doing. You get this information overload where you just sit there sedentary in your house, and you’re just taking in so much information and doing nothing with it. I highly recommend reversing that and just trying everything firsthand, because a lot of times the advice you hear is the general advice that applies to a lot of people, but it doesn’t apply to you. You might have different motivations, different incentives, different reasons why you’re doing what you’re doing that are different than others. Like in my case, I started a business with no intention of making any money, so all the business advice was generally moot for me. And I just had to go start something and go do it and go try some crazy, stupid shit, even if it broke. Oh, well, if it failed, who cares? At least I tried and did some shit. So I would highly recommend to anybody in their 20s, especially if they are a fan of this podcast, that you might be taking in too much information, and it might be a good time to make sure that the amount of time you’re spending creating is greater than the amount of time you’re spending inputting.
Justin
Derek, this was an extremely productive session. I really enjoyed this. I’m sure our audience who’s listening definitely did. I think the last response was key to people in my age range. Thank you again for being on the show.
Derek Sivers
Thanks. Hey, anybody that listened to the end, go email me. That’s how we met. You just finally emailed me out of the blue. So I actually really enjoy my email inbox. I like meeting people from around the world. So anybody go to my website sive.rs and send me an email, say hello, ask me anything.
Justin
Okay. Thank you so much, Derek. Thank you. Really happy for this. I hope you and your son have a great time in India and thanks in the upcoming months.
Derek Sivers
Cool. Thanks for having me.