Book Review – Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur
‘Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur’ by Derek Sivers of CD Baby fame is supposed to be a self-help book on startups/business, but it’s more of an autobiography than business advice.
There are 40 lessons in this book alright, but most of them are applicable to a personality like Derek Sivers in certain unique situations. I don’t think these lessons can be generalized as the author hopes. But since no lesson can be generalized, there is a lot to learn from individual unique experiences.
Since my personality type is a bit like the author, I found the experience and suggestions very valuable. I listened to the audio book and should say that the narration is too good. The author could also narrate for others in his spare time 😉
It’s inspiring to know that Derek started CD Baby website primarily to satisfy his own need to be able to sell his music CDs online. Today, this might be so simple, but back in the 90s when he did it, it was unheard of. There was no concept of a payment gateway and websites had to be hard-coded.
In spite of these challenges, Derek went ahead, created CD Baby website, and listed his albums for sale. Then a friend asked if he would help him list his music CDs on the net as well. He agreed. Then other friends asked. He agreed.
That eventually scaled up to thousands of musicians selling their creations online through CD Baby. In a way, this site is the mother of all Amazon KDPs of today! The author had to scale his business unintentionally due to the need and then sold his business to a larger player as he no longer enjoyed the work!
The author says, enjoying one’s work is very important.
I liked this book especially because Derek is similar to me in many respects. You might like it and pick up a few valuable lessons on the way too. Do read 🙂
Destination Infinity
Inspiring…
i have never tried an audio book. hmmm!
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