Mark: The most successful email in one company's history wasn't a sales pitch. It wasn't a meticulously crafted marketing campaign. It was a 20-minute joke about a private jet that ended up generating thousands of new customers, completely for free. Michelle: Hold on, a joke email beat a multi-million dollar marketing budget? How does that even work? That sounds like the kind of story people tell, but it can't possibly be real. Mark: Oh, it's very real. And it works because the founder wasn't trying to build a "business" in the way we usually think about it. Today, we're diving into the wonderfully counter-intuitive world of Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur by Derek Sivers. Michelle: Derek Sivers. I know that name. Isn't he the guy with the fascinating backstory? Mark: He is. Sivers is a professional musician who accidentally started a company called CD Baby, which became the largest online seller of independent music. Then, after selling it for $22 million, he famously gave the entire fortune to a charitable trust for music education. This book is basically his manifesto from that wild ten-year journey. Michelle: Wow. Okay, so this is not your typical MBA-from-Stanford business guru. Giving away $22 million definitely buys you the right to have some unconventional opinions. Mark: Exactly. And his core idea is the most unconventional of all. He believes the whole point of a business isn't to make money. Michelle: Alright, I'm already skeptical. What is it for, then? Mark: To build a utopia.

Michelle: A utopia? Come on, Mark. That sounds lovely, but we live in the real world. People have rent to pay, employees to support. You can't pay them in good vibes and utopian ideals. Mark: I hear you, and that’s the immediate reaction everyone has. But Sivers is incredibly pragmatic about it. His idea of a utopia is simply a little world where you get to control the laws. You design your perfect world. And his started from the simplest possible place. Michelle: Which was? Mark: In 1997, he was just a musician who wanted to sell his own CD online. He couldn't. The big online stores at the time would only deal with major distributors. So he said, "Ah, screw it. I’ll just set up my own online store." He taught himself some basic programming, got a merchant account, and put up a "BUY NOW" button. That was it. Michelle: So necessity was the mother of invention. Mark: Precisely. Then a friend asked, "Could you sell my CD, too?" He said yes. Then another friend, and another. His entire business plan, the foundation of this "utopia," was simply answering calls for help. He saw a need and filled it. He wasn't thinking about scaling or market share; he was just helping his friends. Michelle: Okay, that's a great origin story. But at some point, it has to become a real business. You need a model. How did he make the "utopia" profitable? Mark: This is the best part. It was so simple. He walked into a local record store and asked them how they did it. The clerk said, "You set the selling price. We keep a flat $4 cut. We pay you every week." So, Derek did that. He added a one-time $35 setup fee to cover his time, and that was it. That two-number model—$35 setup, $4 per CD—was the entire financial engine of a company that eventually did over $100 million in sales. Michelle: That is shockingly simple. No complex spreadsheets, no 50-page business plan. Mark: He says a business plan should never take more than a few minutes. You don't know what people want until you start doing it. The utopia isn't about ignoring money; it's about setting the rules of your world based on your values. For him, one of the most important rules was about who he served. Michelle: You mean the independent musicians. Mark: Yes, and this led to one of his most powerful ideas: "proudly exclude people." As CD Baby got bigger, major record labels came calling. They wanted to put their big-name artists on his site. Michelle: Which would have meant a ton of money. Mark: A ton. But he said no, every single time. He told them CD Baby was a place for independent musicians, for the artists who chose not to sign their rights away to a corporation. By proudly saying who he was not for, he won the hearts of the people he was for. Michelle: That's a powerful idea. It’s the complete opposite of the typical Silicon Valley mindset of "total addressable market," where you try to be everything to everyone. He was building a walled garden, but a beautiful one for the people inside. Mark: A utopia! And that's the point. He was making a dream come true for those musicians. And in doing so, he made one for himself. But this philosophy of exclusion and focus wasn't just about customers. It applied to every single decision he made.

Michelle: Okay, so how does this utopian vision translate into day-to-day operations? It can't all be philosophical. Mark: It's not. In fact, his method for execution is incredibly disciplined, and it’s famously summarized in a phrase he coined: "Hell yeah! or no." Michelle: I love that. It’s so direct. Mark: The principle is simple. When you're deciding whether to do something—take on a new project, go to a meeting, commit to anything—if you don't feel an immediate, overwhelming "Hell yeah!" about it, then you should say no. Michelle: It's like the Marie Kondo method for your entire life, not just your closet. If it doesn't spark that intense joy or excitement, you let it go. Mark: Exactly. He argues that most of us are overcommitted. We say "yes" to things that are just "fine" or "okay," and it leaves us with no time or energy for the rare thing that truly excites us. By saying no to almost everything, you create the space to throw yourself completely into the things that matter. Michelle: This connects back to his idea that "ideas are just a multiplier of execution." He's saying, don't waste your execution on a "meh" idea. Mark: Precisely. A brilliant idea with so-so execution is worth less than a so-so idea with brilliant, "Hell yeah!" execution. And this is where the small details become so important. He wasn't focused on a grand five-year plan. He was focused on the tiny, "Hell yeah!" moments that could make someone smile. Michelle: Which brings us back to the private jet email. I've been waiting for this. Tell me the story. Mark: So, like any online store, when an order shipped, CD Baby sent an automated confirmation email. It was the standard, boring "Your order has shipped" message. One day, Sivers decided this was a wasted opportunity to make someone happy. It was a "no," and he wanted to turn it into a "Hell yeah!" Michelle: So what did he do? Mark: He spent about 20 minutes and wrote a new one. It was this completely over-the-top, ridiculous, and hilarious email. It started, "Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow." Michelle: [Laughs] No way. Mark: It gets better. It went on to describe how the CD was inspected by a Japanese packing specialist, how the employees all bowed to it, and how it was now being flown to him on a private CD Baby jet, where it was being served champagne. It was completely absurd. Michelle: And people actually liked this? Mark: They didn't just like it; they loved it. It went viral before "going viral" was really a thing. People started posting it on their blogs and forwarding it to friends. A Google search for "private CD Baby jet" at one point returned tens of thousands of results, each one a customer sharing this silly email. He estimates it brought in thousands of new customers over the years. Michelle: That's incredible. It cost him nothing but 20 minutes of creativity. It proves his point that these small, human touches are what people remember, not the fancy business model. It's about being, not just having. Mark: And that's the core of it. He asks, when you sign up for a marathon, do you want a taxi to take you to the finish line? No. The whole point is the journey. The point of building the business was the joy of building it, of solving problems, of making people happy. Michelle: But he did make mistakes. The book isn't just a highlight reel. He talks about a $3.3 million mistake. Mark: A massive one. Early on, a bank teller casually advised him to structure his company in a certain way. He didn't read the fine print and ended up accidentally giving 90% of his company to his father's business. Years later, he had to pay $3.3 million to buy it back. Michelle: Ouch. And he also talks about being publicly dissed by Steve Jobs. Mark: In a keynote! Jobs was explaining why iTunes didn't have as much music as its competitors, and he said, "We don't want to let that stuff on our site!" while referring to services that let anyone upload a song for $40—which was exactly CD Baby's model. It was a brutal lesson in the risks of depending on a partner like Apple. Michelle: So the utopia wasn't always perfect. Mark: Not at all. He learned to "delegate, but not abdicate" after he gave his employees so much power that they voted to give themselves all the company's profits. He had to step back in, and it created a huge mess. The book is full of these painful lessons. But each one reinforces the central theme.

Michelle: So when you put it all together, this really isn't a business book in the traditional sense, is it? It feels more like a philosophy for life, just applied to the context of a business. Mark: I think that's the perfect way to put it. The central idea is that you have the power to create your own "perfect world"—whether that's a company, a creative project, or just the way you approach your career. And the ultimate metric of success in that world is your own happiness. Michelle: It’s a pretty radical redefinition of entrepreneurship. It’s not about disruption or scale or exit strategies. It’s about usefulness and joy. Mark: And the most radical part is his redefinition of the word "enough." He tells this great story about Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller at a billionaire's party. Vonnegut points out that their billionaire host made more money in a single day than Heller had made from his famous novel Catch-22 in its entire history. And Heller replied, "Yes, but I have something he will never have... Enough." Michelle: Wow. That hits hard. Mark: Sivers lived that. He built this thing, realized it had become bigger than what made him happy, and he let it go. He had enough. And then he gave the money away to ensure future musicians could have their chance. That's the ultimate "Hell yeah!" decision. Michelle: So for anyone listening, maybe the one takeaway is to find one small, "un-businesslike" thing you can do this week. Something that's just for delight, for your customers or even your colleagues. Maybe it's just a funny sign-off on an email. Mark: I love that. A 20-minute experiment to create a smile. And if you try it, or if this book has impacted you, come share your story with us. We're always curious to hear how these ideas land in the real world. Michelle: A perfect world, one small, weird decision at a time. Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.