MBA2509 Extended Interview: Derek Sivers - How to Build a Business in Your Unique Way

27:54It sucked so bad. I had 85 employees that I cared about. A lot of them were my friends. A lot of them had slept on my couch or stayed in my guest bedroom until they found a place to live. We would hang out together. We'd go out drinking together. I'd cook everybody. I head over to my house on New Year's morning breakfast, you know, like after New Year's Eve, hey, come over to Derek's house hungover. I'll make you pancakes. I had been with these people for years. And then something got into the water where everybody just decided that I was the problem in their life. and they just like started basically like a mutiny, even though I was the 100 % owner of the company.

28:37There were no investors. It was just me. But they were like trying to get me to walk the plank, you know. It's like, get off our ship. We run this ship. We don't want you around. And they would say really nasty things about me behind my back and it was unfortunately recorded so I could hear it because all like the weekly meetings are recorded. So I got to hear some of my favorite people talk shit about me behind my back. And it was devastating. It was really devastating. This thing that I cared about so much, the hard part wasn't selling. The hard part was the year before, which is why I sold.

29:15And so I'm mentioning all this to say that when I sold, I just wanted no responsibility. I was like, man, I just had 85 people dumping their problems on me or saying that I'm the problem with their life. I want none of that. I want no employees. I want no responsibilities. I want no customers. I want nothing. So I really looked into changing my name, like legally changing my name and just moving off to Europe somewhere to be an open source programmer under a different name. And everybody would just be like, hey, whatever happened to Derek Sivers? I don't know. Never heard from him again. He's gone.

29:51That was my plan because I just wanted no responsibility at all. So for about a year, a year and a half after selling the company, I was adrift in that mindset of just wanting to disappear, mostly because of the trauma, I guess we could call it, of that final year. By the way, I have to give a sweet little PS here. One guy of those 85, about three or four years later, moved to Idaho and was a guitar teacher and started a business, like a guitar teaching business where he had to have employees for the first time. and in having to work with employees he suddenly went oh my god this is really hard this sucks oh my god I was such a dick to Derek and he found me after like three or four years and he said dude I don't know if you remember me I was one of your team at CD Babywell I'm living in Idaho now and he told me his thing and he said man I'm so sorry he said I don't know why we were so mean to you he said I look back and it's like we just collectively all just decided that you were the problem, even though you'd done nothing wrong.

30:52He said, I'm so sorry. We were so mean to you. And I usually say that like apologies don't, um, don't matter much to me. Like we often say like, oh, don't worry about it. You know, somebody apologizes and you say, okay, well, thank you, but that's fine. You don't have to apologize. But I'll admit that's probably the apology that has meant most to me in my life was that, cause that was such a hard time for me and to have even one person acknowledge that I hadn't actually done anything wrong and that they just collectively decided. That was really touching. What you're saying resonates so much because if anybody's run any kind of business with any significant team, they understand exactly where you're coming from.

31:31There's so much that happens when you deal with people that no one talks about in business. We love to help people, motivate people, see the silver lining of this hard work of creating a business, but we also have to show the reality. And the reality is that when you deal with people, there's problems and that's just how it is um you know with with my software company you know people getting poached like my close friends are poaching my employees uh people just leaving ghosting you and you got to pick up the pieces and figure it out um and the stories you're sharing i mean the people that are talking behind your back you're paying them a salary like you are the reason why they are eating every night and they are like biting the hand that feeds them so to speak but But at the same time, it's just so ironic.

32:17And it's also just so frustrating because you want to be a leader and you want to, you know, turn the other cheek and you want to be, you know, do the right thing. But at the same time, it's kind of frustrating because it's just like, I don't know what you want from me. Like, I'm trying my best here, you know? So I love, thank you so much for sharing that. That means so much to, yeah. On that note, it looks like we're riffing on this now. Why not? On that note, you said you're trying to be a leader. It's funny. I wasn't even trying to be a leader. I was just trying to help musicians. Like, the goal had not changed.

32:49There were musicians that needed to get their music out, and I was trying to help these musicians get their music out. That's all it was. I wasn't trying to make money. I wasn't trying to be a leader. I wasn't trying to build a business. I was just trying to help these musicians get their music out. That's it. At first, I was doing it all myself. Then after a year, I hired one person. Then after two years, I hired another person. And then it just it grew as slowly as I could grow it. And I'm saying all this to say it was so frustrating when a company grows to a certain size that it starts to have its own gravity.

33:26And I like this metaphor, right, because a marble doesn't have a lot of gravity, but the earth does. And there's a certain point where it's like when the business was small and had four people, 10 people, even 20 people, the focus was entirely on our clients. Every one of these people that worked with me were all into this mission of helping the musicians. Everybody came into work every day to help musicians. and after a certain point about 50 employees or so it's like the gravity turned from our clients to the company itself and suddenly the tone of conversation changed people were coming in every day saying well what's my title going to be in and i want to paint the walls in my office and i think we need different kinds of lighting in here and what's our dental plan going to be what about our vision plan i want vision insurance because um something something and when are we going to get employee reviews and when are we going to add this?

34:22And all of this. This is not a world you live in. Right. It was all this me, me, me stuff. Yeah. Where I was like, whatever, whatever. Can we get back to helping the musicians? Are you getting paid enough? Are you good? Okay. Now, back to the musicians. They're like, I want to bring my dog to work. We need dogs at work. We need a policy about dogs. And then somebody else would get mad that now there are dogs at work. And they'd say, Derek, we need an anti-dog policy at work. I can't work anymore. There are too many dogs here. Like, oh God, can we please just get back to helping musicians? That's all we're doing here.

34:53And that was the cultural shift that happened after a certain size. So, sorry, I just had to interject when you said, you know, you're trying to be a leader. But it's like, no, I'm just trying to help musicians. That's all. Like, I don't matter here. In fact, none of us matter. It isn't about us. Ideally, we don't matter here. We are in service of these people. My needs don't matter. Your needs don't matter. All that matters right now are these musicians. When you get home at five o 'clock, you go home, your needs can matter. But here, it isn't about me and it isn't about us. It's about them. Yeah.

35:26So if you are listening and you are starting out and you have a small team, know that that competition you're looking at that has a team of 100 or 200 or 500, they got problems that you don't have to deal with. And that's how a lot of the small players are able to get a share of the market. And that's how I was able to do it in Webinar Ninja. I was early and I was also just nimble and I was able to make quicker decisions and I didn't have to worry about if the water cooler water was too cold or too hot. And that that good one. That's yeah, that was really a relief. So that was anything you want.

36:02This is one of my favorite books. Love it. Thank you. But I want to talk about this book, How to Live. All right. How to Live is a book. That's my soul in there. Okay. So when I read this book, there was so much I was feeling, forget about thinking, I was feeling when I was reading this book. First of all, I'm coming from a, you know, very traditional Egyptian Muslim family, grew up in America as an outsider. You know, people thought I couldn't speak English because my last name is Zen home. And, you know, I'd go to Egypt back home every summer and they would ask me, you know, how was the camel ride and all that kind of stuff.

36:42And that environment growing up, it's so much about filial piety. It's so much about connection, so much about community, so much about obligation. There's so much of one way of like, this is the way to do things in life when I grew up. But when I read that book, I realized, one, it's not only a great book for life, but it's also a great book for business. Because sometimes there's one way to do things in a season in business, in a season in life, and sometimes it's what you need to do now is totally different. And first of all, I want to talk about why did you write this book? It's a little bit different from what you've written before up to that point.

37:21The Unknown was before that. And I just want to know what was inside your mind and what was your goal with like, hey, because if anybody doesn't know, this book is just a lot of conflicting ideas and it comes together at the end. Anybody I speak to who have read this book, they either love this book or they're like, they're really frustrated by it. And I'm like, you don't get it. That's the beauty of it. I love it when people don't like that book. Yes. So tell me, why did you write this book? It's a weird giddy pleasure. When I was at Berklee School of Music, I had a poster on my wall of 20 circles that had been painted by 20 different artists, each one in a radically different style, different colors and textures and different insides.

38:03And, and, um, they were just as different as could be, you know, hiring 20 painters saying, paint in, in as, as different as you can. And then they put the 20 circles together into a poster. And I would look at that poster for inspiration. Whenever I was feeling stuck on my music, I'd kind of think, how would one of these circles apply metaphorically to where I'm at right now. Like I've been making this really aggressive thing, but look at that one up there that looks like kind of soft and furry and grassy. Maybe I can pull that texture into what I'm doing right now. And I'd use it for creative inspiration.

38:42And then we've all read nonfiction books that conflict with other nonfiction books saying, this is the way. And then somebody else says, no, no, no, this is the way. And then another book says, no, no, no, no, no, this is the way. And we've all encountered people that have conflicting views about the goal in life is to get rich. No, no, no. The goal in life is sensory pleasure. No, no, no. The goal in life is to do what the Quran says. No, no, no. The goal in life is to give. You have to give everything. Okay, so each one of these people insists that their way is the way. And I always thought that was kind of amusing that everybody thinks they're right.

39:24And then I thought, oh, well, don't I do that too? So driving down the road one day, I thought, oh, wouldn't it be wonderful to take everything I've learned in life and make a book called How to Live where every chapter would have just the argument in favor of one way of life. A chapter would be entirely hedonistic. Just everything living for the moment. Just fill your life with pleasure. Never mind tomorrow. Never mind yesterday. All there is is now. And the very next chapter would be all of the thoughts around living for the future. Serve the future. Never spend. Only invest. Serve your future generations.

40:02Do everything for your descendants. Be a great ancestor. And then the next chapter would be like, no, it's love. Life is love. Everything is love. And I thought, oh, my God, that would be a great book. So it took me four years to write it. It took me two years to write it and then two years to edit it because the rough draft was 1300 pages of everything I had to say on every subject. But who the hell wants to read that? So then I spent two years compressing it down to just 110 pages that are almost read like poetry. So it makes me really happy. Yeah, it's a really unique book that I'm so proud of it.

40:41But honestly, dude, if I had done nothing else with my whole life than made that book, it would feel like a life well lived. Like that was, that was a worthy life. I made that book. So I'm glad that you said that because I thought of something when you said. Because you're about to die. Sorry. There's going to be a knock on your door right now. So you mentioned that when you sold CD Baby, you thought, okay, this is, this is maybe the best thing I could ever done. It's all downhill from here. And then you just mentioned how to live is your best work. There's a documentary that is one of my favorite documentaries.

41:16I'm an unapologetic Michael Jackson fan, and I think his best album is Bad, because the documentary is made by Spike Lee, and it's about the Bad album. I didn't know that. Wait, when was the documentary made? When it was the 25th anniversary of Bad, so maybe about 10 years ago. Wow, I had no idea. Okay. Yeah, it's on YouTube. You can find it. It's incredible. And the reason why I love this documentary and the Bad album is because he's following up Thriller. Thriller is the best-selling album of all time. And if anybody knows Michael Jackson, if you ever speak to anybody who has ever met him, his blessing and curse in life is Thriller.

41:51Like he had no competition, so his biggest competition was himself and trying to beat the Thrill album. So the album after Thriller was probably his best expression as a musician, as an artist, in my opinion, whether it's his music videos or what he called short films or his music itself, his performances on stage, I just feel like he was at his pinnacle because he felt like he could do anything. I find it fascinating when people do create something incredible and then how are you going to follow that up, buddy? You know? And I feel like you kind of just resigned to the fact that maybe I won't follow it up.

42:26Maybe that seedy baby is just what it is. And then over time, what, 15 years later, you write How to Live? Yeah. How did that make you feel when you wrote that book and felt like, okay, maybe I'm not all washed up. Oh, I think I had, hmm. Those are two separate, unconnected things. Because for one, writing How to Live, especially once I really got into editing it, once it was really becoming what it was really becoming, was such a deep joy. Like every day I felt I was reading the best book ever written. And I was the one writing it. I was like, there is no book on earth like this. Oh my gosh, this is so amazing.

43:04And I would just thrill myself every day while writing it. It's like every sentence was thrilling me. Now I'm thinking of the word thriller too much. Anyway, but the feeling that I had not peaked came way earlier. We left out one little lucky other thing that happened to me. Is just a year and, wow, only one year. One year after selling CD Baby, the TED conference invited me up on stage. not just once but three times at three sequential conferences. I spoke on the big main stage TED three times. And it was such a thrill that right after that, nobody had even, I was meeting people that only knew me as the TED speaker and they didn't know anything about CD Baby.

43:55They'd say, so what did you do before TED? And so that was like by 2010, I felt that everything, Just doing three TED Talks somehow, in the public's eyes, surpassed anything I had done with CD Baby. You know what I mean? It's almost like CD Baby was the ticket that got me into TED. And then everybody knew me as a TED speaker. And so that was a lucky transition for me that people started caring about what I had to say instead of just how I could sell their music. So I encourage anybody who's listening to read How to Live. First of all, just read it straight up and just as life advice. It's great.

44:30Then read it again with the perspective of the life of your business, because I think that helped me a lot when I was at the last few years of Webinar Ninja before I sold it, because I had to let go of things that beliefs that were holding me back in the business. And I thought this is how to do it. And I realized, oh, maybe I'm looking at this wrong. Maybe I need to change my perspective because I've been doing that for a very long time. And that's not what's going to get me to the next stage. and I find it very fascinating. Has anybody told you that this is, or did you intentionally write this thinking that this would help the lifespan of a business?

45:08You're honestly the first to make that connection. I wrote an earlier book called Your Music and People that seems like it's written only for musicians, but it's actually just a holistic approach to marketing. Marketing as if people matter. I do want to say though, that your original title of Anything You Want is, I wish it was called The Music of Business. because that's brilliant. Oh, you do? Oh, thank you. That's brilliant. That's brilliant. You're the first person to say that. I really liked that title too. And Seth Godin published it. And I said, how about the music of business? And he goes, no, no, corny, no.

45:42We're going to call it anything you want. Really? Anything you want? That's pretty generic. Oh, well, all right. You know best. So yeah, when I re-released it, I self-published it. I was really tempted to go, ha, now I can call it the music of business. And I thought, oh, man, that's going to mess with people who think, ooh, Derek's got a new book out. And then they buy it and it's the same thing that they read with anything you want. I was like, all right. So I kept the same title. But thanks for knowing my other desired title. No, because it's so true because business is like a symphony, a song, just like How to Live, the orchestra.

46:19And there's so many parts. There's so many. Sometimes in the song, there's a somber part. Sometimes there's this excitement part. You know, like, and that's business. That's the journey of a business where it's like, it's not all, you know, things going, you know, up into the right, you know? So I love that title. Thank you. There's so many things I want to talk about. I got to be honest with you. Sorry. I feel like I keep taking these tangents. Let's get back on the track. I love the tangent, but I'm saying that because I'm eager to talk about so much. I read your latest book twice, Useful, Not True.

46:53And the reason why I read it twice is because the first time I read it, there were some moments that kind of hurt. That kind of felt like, oh, I don't know if I like this, you know, not because it's wrong or, you know, there's something. I think it just, again, you know, the upbringing I came from and it's just like, oh, I was kind of seeing things in a different way. And there's a couple of things I want to I want to pull out from that book. There's a line from this book that I absolutely love, and that's the part I wanted to kind of revisit because it was kind of hurting a little bit. It's in a section called Obligations Are Not True.

47:29I was wondering if that was going to be it. Family, friends, colleagues, and communities put social pressure on you to do what they want you to do. They say it's your obligation, your duty, your responsibility, but those terms are social expectations. They're not real. They're not even universal. They're just one way to see the situation. I read that part maybe about 10 times in a row because it was just like, almost like, do not compute. You know, like, I don't know what's Derek talking about. Maybe he had too much kava, you know, like whatever it was. Right. And I was just like, and then it hit me.

48:05I was just like, okay, this is the way my, even my family sees things. And the reason why I bring this up on this podcast and with you is because in the journey of becoming, you know, an entrepreneur or just a creative or somebody's trying to do something, you know, significant in the world, you're going to have to ruffle some feathers. Sometimes you're going to have to say no to some things that you'd usually say yes to. I want you to talk a little bit more about this point, because I think a lot of people don't realize the uncomfortability of change and becoming something new. I think the biggest benefit of living in different parts of the world is that different cultures have different norms that go unquestioned in that area.

48:49If you're around a bunch of other people that think the same thing, then social norms feel like laws of nature. Like, well, yeah, duh. You have to take care of your parents. Obviously, no one dare question that. But then you move to a different part of the world where that's not true. And you go, hmm, well, but then maybe this other part of the world has a different belief. like, hey, dude, it's a sunny day. You can't be inside. It's like, well, that's not true. It's like, dude, you're working and it's sunny out. What are you, crazy? But then somewhere else, there would be a different set of beliefs.

49:25So it's really healthy to realize that there are very few things that are absolutely true in life. My definition of true is absolutely, necessarily objectively true for everyone everywhere always any creature and even a machine could look at it and everyone agree would agree that that's true if it doesn't fit that criteria then to me it's just a perspective so if somebody says well omar you have to do this thing for your family i think well no that's not true that you're telling me you want me to and maybe i also want to But let's not mistake that that's not an absolute truth. I don't have to.

50:08But, you know, for business, oh, my gosh, this comes up so, so handy for business when as soon as you grow past a certain size, as soon as you go beyond two or three people, somebody is going to show up saying, well, you know, you have to have the terms and the conditions. So, you know, your privacy policy post, you need to have your employee. And they tell you that you have to do all these things. And most of them you don't. So whenever my business was growing and people would show up telling me about these things that I have to do, I'd always say, will I be arrested if I don't? Will I be put into jail if I do not do this?

50:44They'd say no. I'd say, okay. Will there be a fine, like a government fine, if I do not do this? And if they'd say no, I'd say, okay, well then please leave. I need to get back to helping musicians. If this isn't something I have to do, I'm not going to do it. There's so many things like that. People telling you you have to have insurance. You have to have an HR policy. You have to have this. Like, no, I don't. So even at the business level, it's really handy to realize that almost nothing people say is absolutely true. It's just their perspective or very often their wish. So that's the thing with the obligations point is when people have a wish and they try to legitimize their wish by calling it your duty or your obligation.

51:27But it's just them trying to legitimize it. If they didn't personally want you to do it, they would say, oh, don't worry about it. It's only if they personally want you to do it, they try to legitimize it by calling it your duty or an obligation. so whether it's HR, insurance, terms and conditions or whether it's your parents saying it's your duty to come stay by our side for the few decades of your life to take care of us, maybe it's not yeah and I think that's what I got out of that part of the book was I don't have to, I get to choose to I get to, there's a different feeling when you choose to do things and not choose But also just, OK, I know that I don't have to do this, but I'm going to do it because I'm going to get X, Y, Z for me.

52:15I want to do this for me, which which was very powerful. Oh, so before we change the subject on this point in my final year of CD Baby, when I was feeling so frustrated, I talked to a wise friend of mine who heard me complain like, oh, I have to do this. I have to do that. I have to do this. I have to pay my employees. I have to take care of it. I have to answer all these emails. And he said, no, you don't. And I said, yes, I do. I have got so many emails. I got to do the taxes. He goes, no, Derek, stop. I'm not just being new agey. You need to understand this point for real. You don't have to do any of that.

52:49And I said, yes, I do. I have to pay my employees. He said, no, you don't. He said, if you stop paying them, they will stop showing up to work and they will go find another job. And maybe one of them will sue you because you owe them the money because of a contract. But you don't have to do it. There will be some consequences if you don't, but you don't have to do it. And I went, hmm. I said, well, I have to pay my taxes. He said, no, you don't. He said, if you don't, the IRS will come after you after five years and they'll make you pay a penalty for the taxes you should have paid. And if you don't pay that, they'll make you go sit in jail instead of in your bedroom.

53:22He said, but let's always be clear between what you're choosing to do versus what you have to do. He said, you don't have to do anything. You could right now to Hawaii, get a shack on the beach, change your name and never speak to anybody ever again. And things would work themselves out. Or maybe, you know, next time you try to return back to the mainland, you'd be hit with some fines. But you don't have to do anything. Everything you're talking about is optional. Yeah. It's your choice. I went, whoa, okay, it finally sunk in. So this is really in line with this point we're making about obligations.

53:57You have to have a privacy policy. The things you're saying to yourself are not really true. They're just ideas that are kind of pushing you to do things that maybe you have to stop and just say, well, maybe I don't. Maybe I don't have to do this. Maybe I can, you know. And I like the fact that the story went that way instead of, no, no, Derek, you get to do these things. Like, you know, like. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Thanks, hippie. Yeah, that helps better to know like, actually, I actually don't have to do it. I don't have to do anything, which is really refreshing, but also leads to another thing I love about Useful Not True is this idea of sometimes you can tell yourself something to be useful, to help you do something that's not necessarily true.

54:40You can create a new narrative for yourself. It reminded me of a scene from one of my first shows, Seinfeld, where Jerry needs to lie about something to get out of a jam. And he calls upon his best friend, George Costanza, because he's a professional liar and he's prolific at it. And George just looks at him like, listen, this is a gift from God. You know, I can't teach you this. But then as a parting piece of advice, he says to him, just remember, Jerry, if you lie and you believe it, it's true. You know, which is interesting. Like, it's just an interesting line. Oh, and he said, it's not a lie.

55:14It's not a lie if you believe it. Nice. That's how he says it. That's life. Yeah. And how many times I look back at my own career as an entrepreneur in life where I frankly lied to myself. I frankly told myself a story because I needed to believe it because I wasn't there yet. I wasn't maybe that person yet. Can you give me some examples of where you had to tell yourself a story where it was not necessarily true? Lest anyone listening now think that we are talking about lying, bold-faced lying. No, no, no. Even saying, I'm going to start this business and people are going to like it. People need this.

55:58That's not true. These are all predictions that you're imagining to be true. and you imagining this to be true is creating the motivation that you need to go try to make it happen. It's seeing the plan. It's almost like the visual metaphor of somebody seeing like, I'm going to walk this direction and it's going to bring me over this mountain pass and into this beautiful valley. It's going to be great. I can picture it now. And I got my picnic blanket. I got a basket full of food. We're going to have a really nice time. I can't, we can't physically see it right now, but where we're going, it's going to be nice.

56:36You're imagining that it's going to be nice. And that's what gives you the motivation to pack a nice picnic. Same thing with starting a business. You're picturing that people are going to like this thing. People are going to happily pull out their credit card to pay you. And you need that belief to get through the hard work of turning nothing into something. So we all do that. It's a little delusional. Yeah. It's a little bit like writing a story for yourself. You know, it's kind of like saying, okay, I'm going to play this character in this new story and this character, you know, this happens to them.

57:10And we usually don't put any conflict in that story because we forget about conflict when we're starting out. But I find that incredibly helpful. Um, I know one time in my research for this episode, you shared a story in another interview about, uh, being a telemarketer and you had a colleague who was a great telemarketer and you just did what he did and you became a great telemarketer. There's so many times in my life where I just acted as if I was great at something. I knew I wasn't really that yet, but I definitely did better than when I wasn't acting. Right. So do you continue to do that in your life now that you've kind of had successes in life?

57:49Yeah. Every time you enter a crowd of people that you don't know, like say if you're invited to an event, you walk in thinking, I'm going to like these people. I'm going to make friends. I'm going to have good conversations with these people. You go in telling yourself that's going to be true. And then it becomes self-fulfilling because you believe it's going to be true. You enter enthusiastically into conversations or you walk up to a stranger and say, hi, my name's Omar. What do you do? It's that belief that makes it happen. If you believe like, oh man, this is going to suck. Everybody here is an idiot.

58:23I don't want to be here. anybody I talked to is going to be boring. I would rather be at home. Well, that's not true either. Yeah. You choose the belief that will enable the actions that you want. So yeah, every time I do anything, I have to choose the belief that will make it the good actions happen. One of the most powerful parts of useful, not true is about the idea that your past is not true. And that's something maybe some people have a hard time understanding because we all believe like this happened, you know, I was there, you know, and it's not until you show some examples, you share some stories.

59:02I don't want to ruin it for people. But can you share a time where your past dictated the way you acted, whether in positive or negative way, because of what you believed? Oh, yeah. I'm going to I'll tell you a quick one that's not in the book. I for years thought that I had been wronged by all of my ex-girlfriends, maybe not all, but most. I felt that like, man, I am unlucky in love. I have been just like dumped and screwed over and all of this. And then it was really just recently, like just maybe five years ago, that somebody said something that made me look back again at the past and go, oh my gosh, wait a second.

59:47and I replayed all my past relationships in my head, realizing I kind of screwed over them. I think I've actually been the screwer, not the screwy. I've been the one that really wrecked that relationship. I think I actually, I dumped her. I was kind of wrongly thinking that she dumped me, but oof. Yeah. And so I actually contacted some exes to ask them. And yeah, Basically, the new updated version was closer to how they saw it, too. They all felt that they had been dumped and screwed over by me. And here I was for decades thinking I had been such a victim. I'm like, whoa. I suddenly saw my past through a new light of like, oh, I've been kind of a bad person.

1:00:30I haven't been the victim. I've been the destroyer. Oops. That's one tiny example. Yeah. I mean, it's very significant. But I think that either way. You can either you think that, you know, you've been wronged or you might think that you did something horrible. And really, it was either a mutual mistake or maybe one sided and you just remember it differently. And I think that part of the book really is very powerful. I think that so much of what we think we are, what we're capable of is dictated by the story of our past. And because we think our past is who we are. We think, OK, this is what I've done.

1:01:08This is who I am. Right. Hey, let's do one more example that just came up a couple days ago. Almost everybody has some story about their childhood school years that they were bullied and teased. And, well, I was never a popular kid. I mean, you did a version of it earlier. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think a lot of people think that they were somehow particularly unlucky in this. But then you realize actually everybody gets teased. There's maybe two kids in school that don't get teased. Like 98 % of everybody feels that they were on the receiving side of bullying and that they were on the receiving end of a particularly large amount of ridicule and teasing.

1:01:53But actually, everybody thinks that. So we're all kind of delusional. It might help to kind of replay your past. Yeah. Realizing you weren't such a oddball, an oddball. In fact, that was everybody. We all went through that. That was a big one that just came up recently. And it's partially from my kid. My kid's 12 now. And there was a situation where I was there when one kid, when he was five years old, said something once to him, teased him about his name. And here we are like seven years later. And he said, people always teased me about my name. And I said, like, what? And he said this thing.

1:02:29I said, no, I was there when that happened. That was one kid said it once. He said, no, it happened all the time. and I said can you think of another example and he goes well I mean it was mostly that kid but he did it a lot I was like no I was there he did it once it was a kid on the playground you never saw again he said well it felt like a lot yeah it probably played in his head a lot like over and over it just upset him so he's just gone you know for seven years kind of thinking that people everybody makes fun of his name it's like no it was that one idiot kid that you never saw again This is so interesting.

1:03:04And I love that you're bringing this up in the book because there's a common theme I find in all your books is this idea of questioning. You should question everything. You should be a little bit skeptical, you know, and you don't have to be facetious about it. You don't have to be, you know, not believe in anything, you know, like and have no, no conviction. But just at the same time, just, you know, when something's presented to you, just see like, well, you know, poke a few holes on it, see if it still stands up, you know, and I think I think that's helpful advice in general. I want to talk about your website because you sell your books through your website.

1:03:39For those who are interested, S-I-V-E dot I-R-S. Without the I, S-I-V-E dot R-S. S-I-V-E dot R-S. Sorry. Yeah. Sivers. But there's a dot between the E and the R. and you sell these books on your site. You have formed a C-Corp. You do not get a salary. All the profits of your books go to charity to help people that have malaria, cure malaria. And you continue to write these books. Why did you set things up in this way where you don't get compensated? Actually, where it forces you not to get compensated. Yeah, because I don't need the money. And with some soul searching, I realized I just don't want the money.

1:04:18I've got enough. I'd rather it just never touched my hands. Instead of it coming to my hands, me paying 30 % income tax, and then it going right back out again, it's just, I'm not anti-government. I'm very thankful for the New Zealand government where I live, but it just doesn't make rational sense. It would just make more sense to have 100 % of the profits go all to a charity. So, yeah, I don't receive a dollar when you buy my books. I'm very thankful that the company I set up gets the$15 instead of giving, you know, 11 of it to Amazon. The$15 goes directly into the company that gives 100 % of its profits every year.

1:05:01It just, everything left over that wasn't necessary to just basically pay for the server, the, I don't know, the credit card processing fee, the paper to print the paper books. everything else just goes to the Against Malaria Foundation or basically goes to givewell.org, which has done the hard nerd work of figuring out what's the best bang per buck to save the most lives per dollar. So I just let them figure it out. I don't play favorites. I also, sorry to interrupt there, but what I also love about how you sell your books is something I never seen, have seen before. But if you buy, for those who are listening and you buy a book from Derek's website.

1:05:39When you buy the book, you kind of buy the content. So you get the audio, you get the PDF, you get the digital version. And then if you want to buy the physical book, like I've done, then you would then pay another$4 or something for the print version. And then you get that shipped to you. So it's like, where did you come up with this concept where it's like okay you get certain things and now you can download the book whenever you want like it's a very interesting concept novel where did i come up with it uh right here my i can't pull it out of my um no i really just like i said earlier i just sat down with a blank slate wait we got to back up one step yeah my first book anything you want was published on Penguin.

1:06:31So it was put into bookstores. It was on the big major publisher. I got to experience having a publishing deal from the largest publisher. They were nice to me, but I just didn't like it. I attached no meaning or value to having a publishing deal, to being a published author. I don't care about that. It means nothing to me. So I didn't get the warm and fuzzies or a feeling of status or pride from being on Penguin. Instead, I just felt out of control. Like they'd kind of just send me these royalty statements like, all right, well, a few thousand people bought your book. Here's your money. I'd say, well, who were they?

1:07:08Like, come on, I want to talk with these people. So the connection means way more than me than the$4 I get from selling a book. So I want the connection. So I just realized when I was writing my next book and Penguin said, hey, we'd be happy to publish it. I said, thank you, but no, I'm going to publish it myself. And in fact, I even paid them a few thousand dollars to buy back the rights to my first book so that all of mine could be self-published. So I took it off of Penguin so I could self-publish it because it's just more rewarding. It's more rewarding to get the direct connections. It's more rewarding to have the entire$15 go to charity.

1:07:45And it's more rewarding to set up things the way I want them to be. I mean, I guess that was the message of anything you want, right? It's like you get to make your own little utopia whenever you start a business. So I thought, okay, as a reader, how would I like it to be? And I was like, well, as a reader, if I buy, whatever, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F***, if I buy The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*** on the paper book at the bookstore and I read it and I like it, and now I want the audio book, man, I got to pay$18 again to get the audio book. and if I want to have it on Kindle, I got to pay$13 again.

1:08:18Why do I have to buy this book three times? I already bought it. I just want different formats. It's just the words. Come on. It's just getting the words from Mark's head into mine. The format is moot. Why do I have to pay triple for the three different formats? And what about if there's a new format someday? Things are beamed into our eyelids or whatever. Am I going to have to buy that again? All of my favorite books I'm going to have to buy again? I mean, you know, people experienced this with music years ago when they bought the LPs and then they had to buy the CDs all over again and then they had to buy the MP3s all over again.

1:08:48It just seems to me that the right way to do it would be to set a good price once for the content. So for me, I just picked$15. And I figure if you pay me$15, that's it. You own this book forever in every format that will ever be invented. If there's an AI, if there's a robot that shows up to your house to sing this to you, you've already paid for it. It's done. You've paid me the$15. bucks. That's all I ever wanted from you is just that was just the 15 bucks once. The format is moot. The whole point is getting the thoughts from my brain into yours. And so that's it. The only catch of that is like, oh, but paper.

1:09:23Yeah. If you actually want me to print a few hundred pages of paper and ship it across the world, all right, well, that's going to cost. So I just, I found out what the breakeven cost of that is and it was four bucks. So if you've already paid me for the contents and you want a paper book mailed to you, then you pay an extra or four bucks for the paper. Or conversely, if you knew from the first moment you wanted the paper book, well, then you pay$19, the 15 plus the four, you ship the paper book. But hey, you also have the digital contents now. So I'll mail you the paper book immediately. But hey, anytime years from now, if you want the audio book, the ebook, the video book, the AI book, you've already paid for it.

1:10:02It's all there in your account. So that's something that Amazon can never do for you. I just find that, similar to what you said about CD Baby, you know you just wanted to help musicians get their music out there and you're you're you're so focused on helping the end user the the customer the person that is going to consume this content and this is kind of the same thing you're just putting yourself in the place of the reader like what would be the best situation for them actually to nerd out i i set up a foundation first uh a non-profit foundation and then the foundation set up the c-corp and that's sivers Inc.

1:10:38that owns all the copyrights to my books and everything. So I liked it just feels better to me in the same way that I think about this in the same way we do interior design on our home because we like it to be a certain way or even you choose what house to buy because it has a view or where you live because it's near the beach. We all just set up our environment the way we want it to be. Techies do it with their layout. Maybe they want a vertical monitor or the split keyboard and they go like, ah, this makes me happy. This is the way I like my environment to be. We can do that business-wise. There are different ways to set up your business structure itself that can make you happier or just, you know, please your sense of values in some way.

1:11:21So when I thought it through and thought, well, yeah, what I really want is to just have this foundation and it sets up the business. So I'll do the work, but it's a C-corp so it doesn't flow through. So it's there and then everything gets to go out to charity. but the parent owner is the foundation. Yeah, this makes me happy. I like this. This is the interior design of the business that I want. I love it. Derek, I can't tell you how much I love this conversation. It's been long overdue. I want to thank you so much for your time. And I also wanted to say thanks because you're one of the few people I know that has so much success in business and life and being an author.

1:11:59And you're still somebody that's approachable. Like you reply to emails. And to me, I love when I meet great minds, interesting people, fun people, people doing interesting things that are also just good people. And that's actually quite rare, you know, and I feel like maybe that doesn't get pointed out enough in entrepreneurship. And I just wanted to thank you for just being a nice guy, you know, like you've been so kind to me throughout the years and encouraging. And the fact that I got to stand to speak to you today, and be able to help share your message and share your wonderful knowledge with my audience has been so wonderful.

1:12:38And it's genuine. It's so hard to put into words because I feel like I don't usually say this to anybody because most people are very kind of self-fulfilling. Thank you. But if you don't mind, since it was just what we were talking about one minute ago, these two things are connected. Did you say that you used to live in the village in Manhattan? Yeah, I used to live on McDougal Street. That's what I thought. Okay, there are some people that choose to live in the village right there, like on Bleecker Street with their window open. It's like they like to hear the bustle of the crowd around them.

1:13:10But there's some people that, no, they want to live way up in the Catskills, isolated, don't bother me. So let's use this metaphorically that it's not that people who are aloof are not nice. They just have a different set of values around like not wanting the world to bother them. I'm like, yeah, no, keep me, keep all of you away. So I know a lot of famous people that there's no way to reach them on purpose. Like, no, I don't want anybody contacting me. It's like the digital version of just wanting to live in Montana on a ranch. Like, you know, keep everybody away. But there's that other version.

1:13:48It's like some of us like the bustle of the energy of living right on McDougal right there. And so I like that digitally. It's like I'm physically aloof here in New Zealand. Sorry, not aloof, but I'm physically remote. But digitally, I love checking my email every day. I check it once a day. It takes me one to two hours. And I hear from so many interesting people around the world. I was just talking with somebody right before our interview that was talking about how he went and did the Hajj in Mecca. And how much he loved it and how safe he felt in Medina and Mecca and how he just didn't want to leave.

1:14:24He said, I've just never felt such comfort and such safety. He said, I was in this little bubble of love because he grew up as like a Muslim in Texas. He said, I don't think I could describe to you the joy of just being there amongst like my fellow men and just feeling such love and trust. And that's the conversation I was having 10 minutes before we hit record. I was like, God, I love my inbox. And, you know, somebody else was telling me about his tough decision to leave Boston and go back to Colorado to live with his parents and how he's trying to make that choice. And it's so interesting. I love hearing from people around the world.

1:15:01I think it's like the digital version of living on McDougal Street with your window open. So it's not that I'm so nice and other people are not. I mean, thank you for the compliment. But it's more just I really enjoy hearing from people and hearing about other people and learning about the way that other people see the world and hearing other people's experiences. And then when I travel, I get to actually meet these people in person if they've been emailing with me for years. In six days, I leave for a trip to South America for my very first time. I've never been to South America. And I'm going to go to six countries and meet with 50 people one on one that have been emailing with me for years.

1:15:39And how cool that I get to do that because I've got the open inbox. You know what I mean? So I love it. It's totally self-serving. It's a thrill. So it's not that I'm being nice. It's that I get a lot out of it. That's great. Well, I'm glad that you get a lot out of it because it's been beneficial for me and many others. So Derek, thanks so much. And hopefully we'll see each other in person soon. Someday soon. Thanks, Emma. Wow. That was an incredible conversation with Derek Sivers, who I find to be one of those one of a kind kind of people. I really hope you enjoyed that episode as much as I did.

1:16:13And if you want to connect with Derek personally and who wouldn't head on over to his website at S.I.V.E. dot R.S. Go to the contact me area and click where it says say hello and then you'll become Derek's pen pal. I did this 10 years ago and I've been corresponding with him ever since. he really does respond or reply to his own emails it's really refreshing for a guy that's been so successful to be so personable also i highly encourage you check out and buy his books this isn't something that he asked me to do but i believe that the wisdom and the insights that you're going to gain from this book or these books i should say are invaluable derrick's books are just a treasure trove of inspiration information perspective this book anything you want really helped me start out in business and set my mind right when it comes to carving out my life as an entrepreneur when I got started.

1:17:10Super influential, love it. This book, How to Live, is a game changer. It's gonna change the way you think about life, business, everything in such a small book. You're gonna absolutely love it. Pick up this book for sure. Yeah or no. This is a book that really makes you, forces you to reevaluate your priorities and how you're spending your time. If you have a hard time saying no, this book is for you. These are my three favorite books, and I just read his latest book, which I highly recommend you read as well. I'm ordering the physical copy right now, and it's called Useful, Not True. We discussed it on the show.

1:17:49Thank you so much for joining us today. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button. And if you found this episode useful and you think somebody that you know, a friend, a family member, a colleague would enjoy it. Share with them. Send it over to them. We're on every platform, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube. Share away. Thank you in advance for doing that and spreading the love and helping your friend, your family member, you know, enjoy an incredible episode that we just enjoyed together. Until next time, keep on learning, keep growing, and of course, keep moving forward.

1:18:30Thank you.