Derek Sivers Interview (Full Episode) | The Tim Ferriss Show (Podcast)

1. 0:00 – 9:02

   Introduction and Derek's Background

   1. TFTim Ferriss0:00

      Optimal minimal

   2. DSDerek Sivers0:01

      At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

   3. TFTim Ferriss0:06

      Can I ask you a personal question? Now I receive my perfect timing What if I give you all of it? I'm a cybernetic organism. Living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

   4. DSDerek Sivers0:16

      The Tim Ferriss Show

   5. TFTim Ferriss0:23

      This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront, and this is a very unique sponsor. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive, in a good way, set it and forget it investing service led by technologists from places like Apple and world-famous investors. It has exploded in popularity in the last two years, and they now have more than two and a half billion dollars under management. In fact, some of my very good friends, investors in Silicon Valley, have millions of their own money in Wealthfront. So the question is why? Why is it so popular? Why is it unique? Because you can get services previously reserved for the ultra-wealthy but only pay pennies on the dollar for them. And this is because they use smarter software instead of retail locations, bloated sales teams, et cetera. And I'll come back to that in a second. I suggest you check out wealthfront.com/tim, take the risk assessment quiz, which only takes two to five minutes, and they'll show you for free exactly the portfolio they'd put you in. And if you just wanna take their advice, run with it, do it yourself, you can do that. Or, as I would, you can set it and forget it, and here's why. The value of Wealthfront is in the automation of habits and strategies that investors should be using on a regular basis but normally aren't. Great investing is a marathon, not a sprint, and little things that you may or may not be familiar with, like automatic tax loss harvesting, rebalancing your portfolio across more than 10 asset classes, and dividend reinvestment add up to very large amounts of money over longer periods of time. Wealthfront, as I mentioned, since it's using software instead of retail locations, et cetera, can offer all of this at low costs that were previously completely impossible. Right off the bat, you never pay commissions or account fees. For everything they charge, .25% per year on assets above the first 15,000, which is managed for free if you use my link, wealthfront.com/tim. That is less than $5 a month to invest a $30,000 account, for instance. Now, normally, when I have a sponsor on this show, it's because I use them and recommend them. In this case, it's a little different. I don't use Wealthfront yet because I'm not allowed to. Here's the deal. They wanted to sponsor this podcast, but because of SEC regulations, companies that invest your money are not allowed to use client testimonials, so I couldn't be a user and have them on the podcast. But I've been so impressed by Wealthfront that I've invested a significant amount of my own money, at least for me, uh, in the team and the company itself. So I am an investor and hope to soon use it as a client. Now back to the recommendation. As a Tim Ferriss Show listener, you'll get $15,000 managed for free if you decide to open an account. But just start with seeing the portfolio that they would suggest for you. Take two minutes, fill out their questionnaire at wealthfront.com/tim. It's fast, it's free. There's no downside that I can think of. So check it out, guys. This is one of the hottest, most innovative companies coming out of Silicon Valley, and they're killing it. They've become massively popular. Just take a look, see what portfolio they would create for you, and you can use that information however you want. Wealthfront.com/tim. This episode is brought to you by MeUndies. If I'm not going commando, I'm in MeUndies. I have been testing these underwear for three to four months now pretty much every day, and in fact, threw out a bunch of my other underwear this morning. And on the road, in the house, they are extremely comfortable. They look good, feel good. They are made of micromodal, two times softer than cotton, as scientifically tested using the Kawabata method. Sounds very fancy, of course. And I get a lot of compliments from ladies for these. You don't get diaper butt. You don't get the tired elastic band. They look great, and they have underwear for both men and women. Check out meundies.com/tim, and you can see everything I've been wearing, the ridiculous to sublime, everything in between, including my favorite, which is called out. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention their lounge pants. This is a new thing, and I've been wearing their lounge pants when I record podcasts. I've been wearing them out and about when I'm walking the dog, meeting people for coffee, and they are extremely comfortable. They'll-- They're made from the same material as the underwear, but some of them, like the blue ones I have, have pockets, so you can walk about without seeming like you're off of your meds and completely crazy. So that is awesome. And if you're not happy with the first pair you try on, I assume that refers to the underwear, they'll refund you completely, and you can keep the pair you tried on for free. But if you're that kind of person, you should be ashamed because that's disgusting. Uh, meundies.com/tim, check it out. Derek, welcome to the show.

   6. DSDerek Sivers4:54

      Thank you.

   7. TFTim Ferriss4:54

      I, I am so excited to have you on. This has been in the works for, for many months. [chuckles] And now, of course, the timing is such, and I'm gonna read a bio and a s- a short intro for you for folks in a second. But, uh, we're gonna come back to the subject of fasting because I'm eight days into a 10-day fast. [laughs] And I was astonished to hear when we were chatting a day or two ago that you have done something very similar, if not the same.

   8. DSDerek Sivers5:20

      Yeah.

   9. TFTim Ferriss5:20

      So before we get to that, though, for everybody listening, uh, Derek Sivers, one of my favorite humans, so excited to have him on the phone. And, uh, here is a sketch of his background. Originally a professional musician and circus clown, Derek Sivers, you should say hi to him, @sivers on the Twitter. That is S-I-V-E-R-S. Created CD Baby in 1998, became the largest seller of independent music online with $100 million in sales for 150,000 musicians. In 2008, Derek sold CD Baby for $22 million, giving the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education. He is and has been a frequent speaker on the TED Conference circuit with more than five million views of his talks. And since 2011, he has published 24 books, including Anything You Want, which shot to number one on all of its Amazon categories It is also one of the few business books which I think categorically are generally terrible that I have r- not only read multiple times but listened to, uh, multiple times. Uh, the last of which was in Sweden about a month and a half ago before deciding to take my startup vacation, effectively my retirement from startup investing. So Derek, thank you for putting out such good work, first, before we even jump into it.

   10. DSDerek Sivers6:36

       Thanks. Good to finally... Well, you know, officially talk to you.

   11. TFTim Ferriss6:40

       [laughs]

   12. DSDerek Sivers6:40

       We always talk off the record, which is kind of funny sometimes because, uh, every now and then people ask me about, like, "Hey, do you know what Tim's investing in? Do you know about this?" And I think, you know, every time you and I talk, we just, we talk about women. [laughs]

   13. TFTim Ferriss6:53

       [laughs]

   14. DSDerek Sivers6:54

       So here we are having an official conversation finally.

   15. TFTim Ferriss6:57

       No, uh, we are, and I, I should also underscore for people, number one, I'm eight days into fasting, so if I sound like an idiot, I'm gonna blame it on that. But second is that I consider you a, a reality check for me, and we first met, I wanna say it was at a music and tech or tech and music event-

   16. DSDerek Sivers7:17

       Yeah

   17. TFTim Ferriss7:18

       ... in 2007 perhaps, 2008.

   18. DSDerek Sivers7:20

       Yep.

   19. TFTim Ferriss7:21

       And, uh, I was familiar with some of your work. You had read Th- The 4-Hour Workweek, and the, the prompt for me to call you oftentimes is, is number one, if I just need a sanity check where, for instance, if people around me seem to be asking the question, how should you best grow your company? And then there's an A, B, C multiple choice list. I don't necessarily go to you to get a D and an E. I go to you because-

   20. DSDerek Sivers7:51

       Right

   21. TFTim Ferriss7:51

       ... you, you will say, "Well, why do you wanna grow your company in the first place?" [laughs]

   22. DSDerek Sivers7:55

       Exactly.

   23. TFTim Ferriss7:56

       And [laughs]

   24. DSDerek Sivers7:56

       You ask the wrong questions a lot, yeah.

   25. TFTim Ferriss7:59

       And secondly, because you're very good at simplifying and breaking things down. I recall, and I might be getting lo- the location wrong, but I, I seem to place this in Times Square, sitting on the bleachers, talking about, I think it was SQL and databases.

   26. DSDerek Sivers8:16

       Yeah.

   27. TFTim Ferriss8:16

       And I was saying that I was extremely uncomfortable, felt out of my depth when talking to engineers, and you're like, "Oh, it's not that hard." And you sat down and on a single pace, uh, piece of paper sketched out databases and SQL and how it worked. And I, I just admire the w- not only capability, which is not that common, but the willingness to simplify something where I think we live in a world where many people complicate to profit, right? If what you do is simp-

   28. DSDerek Sivers8:43

       Right

   29. TFTim Ferriss8:43

       ... if, if what you do is simple, then you feel like you're dispensable, if that makes sense.

   30. DSDerek Sivers8:49

       Yes.
2. 9:02 – 15:13

   Circus Clown Years and Saying Yes Early

   1. DSDerek Sivers9:02

      Okay. There's actually a good lesson inside this story, is that I was 18 years old, and all I wanted in my whole life was to be a professional musician. I mean, ideally a rock star, yeah, but if I was just making my living doing music, that was the goal. So I'm 18 years old. I'm living in Boston. I'm going to Berklee College of Music, and I'm in this band, uh, where the bass player one day in rehearsal says, "Hey, man, um, my agent just offered me a gig that's, like, $75 to play at a pig show in Vermont."

   2. TFTim Ferriss9:36

      [laughs]

   3. DSDerek Sivers9:37

      He rolls his eyes and he's like, "I'm not gonna do it. Do you want the gig?" I'm like, "Fuck yeah. A paying gig? Oh my God, yes." So, uh, I took the gig to go up to Burlington, Vermont, and I think it was like a th- you know, $58 round trip bus ticket.

   4. TFTim Ferriss9:54

      [laughs]

   5. DSDerek Sivers9:54

      And I get to this pig show in Vermont. I strap my acoustic guitar on, and I walk around a pig show playing music. And, uh, did that for, like, three hours, got on the bus home, and the next day, the booking agent called me up and said, uh, "Hey, so, uh, yeah, you did a really good job at the pig show. We got good reports there. Um, wondering if you can come play at an art opening in Western Massachusetts. Uh, I'll pay you 75 bucks again." I said, "Yeah, sure." So same thing. I took the, you know, like a $60 bus out to Western Massachusetts, got 75 bucks for playing at an art opening. And the agent was there, and he was impressed, and so he said, "Hey, look, I've got this circus, uh, and the previous musician just quit, so we really need somebody new, and I really like what you're doing. So there's, uh, about three gigs a week. I can pay you 75 bucks a gig. Uh, they're usually Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Uh, do you want the gig?" And I said, "Hell yeah. I'm a professional musician now. This is amazing." So, so I said yes to everything, which is gonna come up later, you know, with the hell yeah or no thing, that I think it's really smart to switch strategies. But when you're earlier in your career, I think the best strategy is you just say yes to everything.

   6. TFTim Ferriss11:01

      Yeah. [laughs]

   7. DSDerek Sivers11:01

      Every piddly little gig. You just never know what are the lottery tickets. So this one ended up being a real lottery ticket for me because as soon as I joined the circus... Again, I'm 18. I had no stage experience. And, uh, with-- after a few gigs, they said, "Hey, so the previous musician used to go out and open the show with this big theme song and get everybody up and dancing. Could you do that?" And I said, "Yeah, sure." And another gig or two later, they said, "Hey, the previous musician used to close the show also with that theme song. Could you do that?" I said, "Yeah, sure." And then it was, "The previous musician used to go out in between every act and, like, you know, get the audience to applaud and thank them and introduce the next act. Do you think you could do that?" I said, "Yeah, sure." And I was really bad at it at first, but I, I got good eventually. I became, like, the ringleader emcee of this whole circus, and I was 18 years old. So if you were to go to the circus, it would've looked like my show.

   8. TFTim Ferriss11:56

      [laughs]

   9. DSDerek Sivers11:57

      And I did that for 10 years from the age of 18 to 28. I did over 1,000 shows, and eventually, by the way, you know, got paid more than 75 bucks. Eventually, I was getting, like, 300 bucks a show, and it became my full-time living, and I even bought a house with the money I made playing with the circus, and then that led to all kinds of other things. So just so many huge opportunities and 10 years of stage experience came from that one piddly little pig show-

   10. TFTim Ferriss12:25

       [laughs]

   11. DSDerek Sivers12:25

       ... that I said yes to this little thing. Um- So yeah, the only reason I stopped doing the circus is when CD Baby started taking over my life and I had to start turning down circus gigs. But yeah, that was my life for 10 years.

   12. TFTim Ferriss12:37

       What did you learn that made you better? What were the, the lessons learned that made the biggest difference in your performance as this emcee?

   13. DSDerek Sivers12:49

       Good question. It was-

   14. TFTim Ferriss12:51

       Or the biggest mistakes that you made early on that you corrected. Either one is fine.

   15. DSDerek Sivers12:55

       Okay. All right. Um, yeah, it's kind of the same answer, is that at first I was too self-conscious because I thought it was about me. Like, I was going up on stage thinking that the audience was somehow judging me, Derek Sivers, like as if I mattered, you know?

   16. TFTim Ferriss13:13

       [laughs]

   17. DSDerek Sivers13:14

       So I would get self-conscious about what they thought of me. And eventually, and I think it took maybe like 10 or 20 gigs with the... The, the circus was run by a husband and wife team, and, uh, Tarleton was the name of the wife that, um, she was the one really kind of out on the gigs and leading the circus. The, uh, the husband was more the booking agent. And she's the one that like single-handedly gave me my confidence that I have today. Like, sometimes when people ask me why am I so confident, it's like, that's because of Tarleton. That's, that's a longer story we can get into. But anyway, Tarleton is the one that she just kept pushing me from backstage, like, "Come on, you're, you're up there acting like David Letterman. Like, don't, don't do this whole kind of, 'Uh-huh, yeah, I'm so cool. All right, everybody, here is the next act.'" Like, I think I was trying to be cool because I thought that people were judging me, right?

   18. TFTim Ferriss14:08

       Mm-hmm.

   19. DSDerek Sivers14:09

       And she said, "These people came here for a show. Go give them what they came here for." And so one time I decided to go out there and just be over-the-top ridiculous. I went on stage and I said, "Ladies and gentlemen, what you're about to see is one of the most amazing things you can do. We have an elephant that is going to be coming from backstage." And I did this whole like thing in the fast-talking voice and, and, uh, real like pizzazz to it, and the audience loved it.

   20. TFTim Ferriss14:32

       [laughs]

   21. DSDerek Sivers14:32

       And I came backstage and she said, "There you go. That's what people come to the circus for."

   22. TFTim Ferriss14:38

       Mm.

   23. DSDerek Sivers14:39

       So now that I've been on stage, you know, thousands of times, I... That's, this really sunk in, that you get on stage to give the audience what they came there for. Or even things like this, this interview we're doing, this isn't necessarily for you or me. We could just hang up the phone and talk. We don't need to do this, but we're doing this for the listeners, so we're going to give them something that's useful to them. This isn't about me. This isn't about you. This is about them.

   24. TFTim Ferriss15:07

       Mm-hmm.

   25. DSDerek Sivers15:07

       So that was the biggest lesson learned. Luckily, I learned that early on when I was 18, 19, and yeah.

3. 15:13 – 19:39

   Confidence from Tarleton and "You Are Whatever You Pretend to Be"

   1. TFTim Ferriss15:13

      So I know we could come back to it, but I don't want to forget since I have lo- low glucose brain, which I think I just made Japanese accidentally.

   2. DSDerek Sivers15:21

      [laughs]

   3. TFTim Ferriss15:21

      But yeah. [laughs] Uh, so how did she give you your confidence? Or if you prefer to answer it a different way, because I get this question a lot from fans on Twitter, for instance, you know, how did you get so confident? And there are things I can point to from athletic training with, uh, specific wrestling coaches and so on. But if, if, uh... What did that woman do that, that helped make you more, to help make you more confident? Or if you were trying to coach somebody who's gonna get up and give their first TED Talk, what would you say to them? And I don't know if the answers are similar.

   4. DSDerek Sivers15:54

      Uh, completely different answers, so we'll just do the confidence one.

   5. TFTim Ferriss15:57

      Mm-hmm.

   6. DSDerek Sivers15:57

      I can, I can give TED Talk advice later if you want. Is that in my case, um, [laughs] you gotta understand, Tarleton was hot.

   7. TFTim Ferriss16:08

      [laughs]

   8. DSDerek Sivers16:08

      I was 18. She was 33. And even the first time I ever saw her, I, I told you she was the, the booking agent's wife. So when I took that bus out to Western Massachusetts the first time, I'm sitting in the Worcester, Mass bus station. It's nasty. It's the, you know, the dregs of the earth with fluids dripping f- And, uh, it, it's gross, and I'm sitting there waiting for somebody to pick me up. And then, like, the door opens to the bus station, and it's like that scene in the movie with the backlit woman and, you know, the fan blowing her hair and, "A dream weaver," you know?

   9. TFTim Ferriss16:43

      [laughs]

   10. DSDerek Sivers16:43

       It's that moment. This gorgeous woman walks in the bus station.

   11. TFTim Ferriss16:47

       [laughs]

   12. DSDerek Sivers16:47

       And I'm like, "Who is that?" And she walks towards me and she says, "Derek?"

   13. TFTim Ferriss16:52

       [laughs]

   14. DSDerek Sivers16:52

       I was like, " [gasps] " So that was Tarleton.

   15. TFTim Ferriss16:55

       [laughs]

   16. DSDerek Sivers16:55

       So it's important to know that Tarleton is hot. She still is. And so, you know, I was 18 and, and, uh, I was dating girls in Boston. And, uh, of course just everybody broke my heart, and this one girl from Texas just dumped me, and I was sad. And at that point, Tarleton and I had been traveling together on the circus for a year or so, so she knew me very well. And, uh, when I told her about, you know, the girl from Texas that dumped me, she just said, "Derek, like you don't understand. Like, I've met a lot of guys in my life. A lot of guys." [laughs]

   17. TFTim Ferriss17:31

       [laughs]

   18. DSDerek Sivers17:31

       She said, "You are one of like the smartest, most brilliant, like considerate. Like, you've got a future. You've got your shit together. You're like... If, if some woman doesn't see that, that's her problem." Okay, so the first like 100 times she said this I just thought she was just being nice, you know? I was like, "Oh, thank you, but I'm still sad." And I think it took about a year where she like just kept telling me this and kept telling me this, and after about a year it kind of sunk in. Like, I just noticed that I had kind of internalized this. Like, yeah. Sorry, and you can't see me right now, but I've just like, you know, changed my posture. I'm like, "Yeah, I'm pretty fucking awesome. I'm cool." And like I, I really internalized that. So I just carried that with me ever since, you know? Sometimes... There, there's this beautiful Kurt Vonnegut quote that's, uh, just a l- a throwaway line in the middle of one of his books that says, "You are whatever you pretend to be."

   19. TFTim Ferriss18:25

       That's such a good line. [laughs]

   20. DSDerek Sivers18:27

       And I took that to heart, that I just thought, you know... I'd also been reading Tony Robbins and stuff by then. Actually she... Oh, God, Tarleton is that same woman that she's the one that told me to read Tony Robbins' Awaken the Giant Within when I was 19, and that changed my life. So yeah, she's one of like the big three influences in my life. So-

   21. TFTim Ferriss18:43

       That's probably the exact same age that I read the exact same book, just as a side note

   22. DSDerek Sivers18:48

       That is the good time to read it.

   23. TFTim Ferriss18:49

       [laughs]

   24. DSDerek Sivers18:49

       Those formative years. So, um, yeah, I, I think the you are whatever you pretend to be, I think I just realized somewhere in there that you can just choose to be confident. Um, she helped kind of start it for me, but then I, I kept it up myself. Even when everything's going terribly and I have no reason to be confident, I just decide to be.

   25. TFTim Ferriss19:12

       Seems like most of my f- friends who are what most people would consider successful in various respects can trace their confidence back to either, uh, or both/and, a specific woman and a spec- and a specific coach or mentor-

   26. DSDerek Sivers19:33

       Mm-hmm. Yeah

   27. TFTim Ferriss19:33

       ... of some type. It's all, it almo- always comes down to one or both of those.

4. 19:39 – 27:53

   Kimo Williams and Graduating Berklee in Two Years

   1. DSDerek Sivers19:39

      Ooh, Tim, you know, I've never told you about Kimo Williams.

   2. TFTim Ferriss19:43

      It's a great name, and I wanna learn more. No, I don't know anything about-

   3. DSDerek Sivers19:47

      Oh, this is so up your alley. I can't believe I've never told you this. Okay. Thanks for prodding me. W- I mean-

   4. TFTim Ferriss19:51

      [laughs]

   5. DSDerek Sivers19:52

      ... you prompted me with that because you're right. It was a gorgeous woman, Tarleton, and it was a music teacher, Kimo Williams, that he... But see, he changed my life a year or two before I met her. Okay, so imagine this. I'm 17 years old now. I'm living in suburban Chicago, and I decide to go to Berklee College of Music 'cause I wanna be a famous musician. And just, like, two or three months before I'm supposed to go, uh, I see an ad in the local Chicago Tribune for music typesetting, and I'm wondering, like, how much sheet music I'm gonna have to be writing. So I call up this classified ad in the paper, and I say, "Can I ask you some questions about music typesetting?" And he said, "Sure. Well, why do you wanna know?" And I said, "Because I'm about to go off to Berklee College of Music in a couple months." And he said, "Oh, really?" He said, "I used to teach at Berklee College of Music." I said, "You did? Um, do you think you can give me some tips?" He said, "Yeah. Um, here's my address. Come to my studio at 9:00 AM Thursday morning. See you then." Uh, so and he lived, like, way downtown Chicago in an area I'd never been to, and I'm gonna do a little foreshadowing of the story-

   6. TFTim Ferriss21:01

      [laughs] Perfect

   7. DSDerek Sivers21:02

      ... right now because, uh, when I got married years later, uh, to the woman I met when I was sitting in Times Square with you, uh, he was one of only three people I invited to the wedding. Uh, it was Tarleton from the circus, Kimo Williams, my music teacher, and my first girlfriend, Camille. Those are my only three guests to my wedding.

   8. TFTim Ferriss21:22

      [laughs]

   9. DSDerek Sivers21:23

      And Kimo Williams told the story to my family. He said, "You know, I tell people all the time, I get all these kids that want, you know, wanna be famous, and I say, 'Yep, show up, up at my studio at 9:00 AM.'" And he said, "Nobody ever does. Nobody has their shit together to show up when I tell them to."

   10. TFTim Ferriss21:39

       [laughs]

   11. DSDerek Sivers21:39

       And he said, "So I'd honestly forgotten that there was this kid that called from a classified ad." Um-

   12. TFTim Ferriss21:44

       That was for, that was his way of saying no, right? [laughs]

   13. DSDerek Sivers21:47

       Yeah, in a way. It was like-

   14. TFTim Ferriss21:48

       Not, not no. It's just his hurdle. He was like, "Yeah, all right, kid. Sure. Here's a seven-foot hurdle. Let's see how you do."

   15. DSDerek Sivers21:53

       Exactly. So, uh, he said, so, you know, "My doorbell rings some Thursday morning at 8:59 AM, and I open the door, and there's some long-haired teenager sitting there," and, you know. So now flipping back to, uh, first-person point of view is, uh, yeah, Kimo Williams is this, uh, large Black man from Hawaii that, uh, was a musician that attended Berklee School of Music and then stayed there to teach for a while. And so what he taught me in four lessons got me to graduate Berklee College of Music in half the time it would take, and here was his thing. He said, "The reason I wanted you to, like, study with me for a bit," he said, "I know you only have, like, eight weeks before you go to school." He said, "I think you can graduate Berklee School of Music in two years instead of four." Um, he said, "The standard pace is for chumps."

   16. TFTim Ferriss22:46

       [laughs]

   17. DSDerek Sivers22:48

       The sc-

   18. TFTim Ferriss22:48

       I should get a T-shirt made [laughs] that says that.

   19. DSDerek Sivers22:51

       Yes. I know. [laughs] This is, like, totally Tim Ferriss stuff, right? This is like, I can't believe we hadn't talked about this before, that he's the one at the age of, like, 17, 18, got me into this mentality. He said, "Where the standard pace is for chumps." That's, the school has to organize its curricula around the lowest common denominator so that, um, almost nobody is left out.

   20. TFTim Ferriss23:13

       Hm.

   21. DSDerek Sivers23:13

       So they have to slow down so that everybody can catch up. But he said, "You're smarter than that, or anybody can be smarter than that if they want to be, so you can go as fast as you want, and here's how." Uh, and so he sat me down to the piano. He said, "Okay. What do you know about music theory?" I said, "Well, I don't know. Let's find out." And he, you know, he just asked me a few of these music questions like, "Okay. What, how does a major scale go? Da, da, da, da, da. Right? Okay. Show me the tritone. Do you know what a tritone is? Okay. Play me a tritone in the C major scale." I'm like, "Uh, uh, uh, okay, B and F." He said, "Okay. Now w- uh, how can you take that and, uh, what other chord can you make from B and F?" He said, "Okay. That's called the substitute chord. Now what is a resolution?" We were like... And he was just like, thump, thump, thump, at this kind of pace. He was doing all this music theory stuff with me. It was so intense, and I was like, I had all this adrenaline, like a video game. I was like, "This is amazing. Okay, keep going."

   22. TFTim Ferriss23:56

       [laughs]

   23. DSDerek Sivers23:56

       He said, "Okay. And that, and this, and this." And-

   24. TFTim Ferriss23:58

       [laughs]

   25. DSDerek Sivers23:59

       ... h- that was, like, a two-hour lesson that went at that kind of pace, and then he dumped a bunch of homework on me. He said, "Okay. Now go home tonight and take this big book of jazz standards. Find me all the two-five substitutions, or, uh, two-five closures. Now substitute chords for that and then come back next Thursday, and we'll do this again." So we did that for, like, four Thursdays in a row, and sure enough, what he taught me in four two-hour sessions was basically, like, two years of Berklee College of Music. He compressed it into four lessons.

   26. TFTim Ferriss24:30

       Wow.

   27. DSDerek Sivers24:30

       So, so that when I showed up to my first day of Berklee, I tested out of the first few years-

   28. TFTim Ferriss24:37

       [laughs]

   29. DSDerek Sivers24:38

       ... of classes just thanks to him. And then he even taught me a strategy. He, just, he offhand mentioned, he said, "You know, I think they might still have a rule in place where, uh, those other required courses, you know, that you have to take to graduate," he said, "I think you could pretty much just buy the books for those and then- ... contact the department head and just take the final exam to get credit. So I did that too. So I, uh, when I got there, all those required classes like, you know, uh, Bach counterpoint classes, I wasn't so interested in it, so I bought the book, did all the homework, approached the department head, said, "Can I take the final exam for this?" And he said, looked at me weird and said, "Okay." Took the final exam and got credit without ever having to attend the class. And, uh, yeah, that's how I graduated Berklee College of Music in two years.

   30. TFTim Ferriss25:22

       That's incredible. What a gift. I mean, did he-
5. 27:53 – 34:44

   Relaxing for the Same Result: The Bike Ride Lesson

   1. TFTim Ferriss27:53

      And on, on a related note, uh, could you talk about, and we've, we've talked about this a bit, but I never tire of it, relaxing for the same result, because I think this is such a huge, uh, observation that it's, it's incredibly important for Type A personalities or, or at least for me, because I have a tendency to almost want to burn the candle at both ends to prove to myself-

   2. DSDerek Sivers28:18

      [laughs]

   3. TFTim Ferriss28:19

      ... that I'm putting forth the maximum effort. I'm not, I'm leaving as little as possible to chance. Um-

   4. DSDerek Sivers28:25

      You? No. [laughs]

   5. TFTim Ferriss28:25

      With, with, with certain, with certain things, you know? And, uh, but tell, tell everybody about the, the bike, about the bicycle experience.

   6. DSDerek Sivers28:35

      Yeah. This was kind of profound. Um, now granted, I didn't learn this until later, but yeah, I'd been very, very, very Type A my whole life, uh, even before I met Kimu Williams, you know? I mean, age of 14, it just, my friends called me the robot because they would never see me sleep or eat-

   7. TFTim Ferriss28:53

      [laughs]

   8. DSDerek Sivers28:53

      ... or relax or hang out. I just was, like, so focused on being the best musician I could be that I would just practice every waking minute. Um, if I'd begrudgingly go to a party, you know, I'd bring my guitar with me, and I'd be sitting in the, the corner practicing my scales and arpeggios while everybody was hanging out, getting high, you know? So, um, so yeah, I've always been very Type A. And so a friend of mine got me into cycling when I was living in LA, and I lived right on the beach in Santa Monica, where there's this great bike path in the sand that goes for, I think it's 25 miles in the sand. Uh, 25... No, hold on. Something like that. The exact number doesn't matter. But what I would do is I would go onto the bike path, and I would get, like, head down and push it as hard as I could. I would go, uh, all the way to one end of the bike path and back, and then back home, and I'd set my little timer when doing this.

   9. TFTim Ferriss29:47

      Huffing and puffing, red faced.

   10. DSDerek Sivers29:48

       Yeah, just red faced huffing. But, like, just pushing it as hard as I can every single, you know, thrust of the leg, just ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh. And, uh, of course, you know, that made me quite fun if somebody was in my way on the bike path. [laughs]

   11. TFTim Ferriss30:01

       I'm sure. That guy, that guy's got places to go. [laughs]

   12. DSDerek Sivers30:04

       So, but I noticed it was always 43 minutes. I mean, you know, if you know Santa Monica, California, you know the weather is about exactly the same all year round. So, um, unless it was a surprisingly windy day, it was always 43 minutes is what it took me to go as fast as I could for that, on that bike path. But I noticed that over time I was starting to feel less psyched about going out on the bike path, 'cause just mentally when I would think of it, it would f- feel like pain and hard work.

   13. TFTim Ferriss30:36

       [laughs] It sounds like pain and hard work.

   14. DSDerek Sivers30:38

       Yeah. I mean, it, it was. But, you know, it, I guess at first that was okay, and after a while it just felt like, uh, I don't know. Riding a bike. Why don't I just hang out and... Um, so then I said, "You know, that's no, that's not cool for me to start to associate negative stuff with going on the bike ride. W- why don't I just chill for once?" Like, I'm just gonna go on the same bike ride, but just, you know, I'm not gonna be a complete, you know, snail, but I'll go at, like, half of my normal pace. So yeah, I got on my bike, and it was just pleasant. I just went on the same bike ride, but I was more like, ah, standing up, and I just noticed that I was, I was looking around more. And, and I looked out in the ocean, I noticed there were, that day, there were these dolphins jumping in the ocean. And, and I went down to Marina del Rey to my turnaround point. And, um ... Oh, no, actually, it was when the, the breakers at Marina del Rey, there was a penguin that was flying above me. I was like, "No way." I looked up. I was like, "Hey, a penguin." And he shit in my mouth. [laughs]

   15. TFTim Ferriss31:35

       [laughs]

   16. DSDerek Sivers31:36

       I was like, "Bleh, bleh."

   17. TFTim Ferriss31:37

       Was it a penguin or a pelican?

   18. DSDerek Sivers31:40

       Oh, sorry. Pelican.

   19. TFTim Ferriss31:41

       I was gonna [laughs]

   20. DSDerek Sivers31:42

       Yes. A flying penguin above my head. That would be more amazing.

   21. TFTim Ferriss31:46

       I was like, "What, uh, what did you take before your ride?"

   22. DSDerek Sivers31:48

       No, sorry.

   23. TFTim Ferriss31:49

       So you had, so you had a pelican-

   24. DSDerek Sivers31:50

       So sorry

   25. TFTim Ferriss31:50

       ... pelican shit in your mouth. What was ... That's incredible accuracy. Was that from like, how far away was it?

   26. DSDerek Sivers31:55

       [laughs] Uh, like 20 feet up. I mean-

   27. TFTim Ferriss31:58

       Wow

   28. DSDerek Sivers31:58

       ... because I, I don't know if he was accurate or I was, you know?

   29. TFTim Ferriss32:01

       Yeah. [laughs]

   30. DSDerek Sivers32:04

       Anyway, so the point is, I, I'd had such a nice time. It was just purely pleasant. There was no red face. There was no huffing and puffing. I was just cycling. It was nice. And when I got back to my usual stopping place, I looked at my watch, and it said 45 minutes. And I was like, "No way. How the hell could that have been 45 minutes as compared to my usual 43?" I was like, "There's no way." But yeah, it was right, 45 minutes. And that was like a profound lesson that I think changed the way I've approached my life ever since. It's because I realized that, I guess, you know, w- what percentage of that huffing and puffing then, we could do the math or whatever, what, a 93-point-something percent [laughs] of my huffing and puffing, and all that red face and all that stress was only for an extra two minutes. It was basically for nothing. I mean, you know, of course, we're not talking about me competing in something where the huffing and puffing might have been worth it. But for life, I think of all of this optimization and getting the maximum dollar out of everything and the maximum out of every second and the maximum out of every minute. And I think I just take this approach now of going like, or you could just take the lesson, take most of that lesson and apply it and be effective and be happy. But you don't need to stress about any of this stuff. And so honestly, that's been my approach ever since. I do things, but I stop before anything gets stressful.
6. 34:44 – 41:12

   Founding CD Baby and the Co-op Model

   1. TFTim Ferriss34:44

      Now rewinding the clock a little bit, uh, 1998, how did CD Baby come to be?

   2. DSDerek Sivers34:51

      [laughs] Um, it was, I was really just selling my own CD on my band's website. I was just, I had a band called Hit Me, and I had this, uh, CD that, uh, was being played on radio stations across the country. I think I was on 350 college radio stations across America. But the only way to buy it was to mail a check or money order to my address. You know, this is before, uh, the average person could get any e-commerce online because there was no PayPal. I guess I could have put it up on eBay or something, right? But that was like the only way you could sell your CD online as an independent musician. There was just nobody anywhere that would sell it for you. There were a couple big online record stores at the time. There was, uh, musicboulevard.com and cdnow.com. I think Amazon bought them both. But the only way to get into their system was to go through the major labels, basically to get a major label record deal and then be in the major label distribution system, and then you would appear on cdnow.com, right? So I thought, "Okay, this is, this is just a horrible, convoluted thing. Like, it should be dead simple to just put your stuff online, have a Buy Now button, and ship it to the person that buys it. It shouldn't need to be that complicated." So I did the research, and I did the work, and I went and got myself a credit card merchant account, which was like $1,000 in setup fees. They actually had to send an inspector out to my location to make sure I was a valid business. I think I even had to incorporate to make them happy. I set up a separate bank account. Uh, did all of this red tape, a lot of paperwork, $1,000 in setup fees. Uh, but after three months, I had a credit card merchant account. And then I had to figure out how to make a Buy Now button on my website, and that was also hard, you know? It was like, had to buy a book on CGI bin Perl scripts and copy the example from the book on how to make a Buy Now button. And but after three months of hard work, I did it. Like, my band's website had a Buy Now button. That was like, "Wow, look at that." [laughs] And so my friends in the New York City music scene, like my fellow musicians, uh, said, "Whoa, dude, like Do you think you could sell my CD through that thing?" I said, "You mean on my band's website?" They said, "Yeah, if you don't mind." I said, "Yeah, sure. Why not?" So it was like a favor to my friend Marco. Um, actually, here's a little tidbit of information. Marco, who I just knew as a musician, Marco Ahtisaari, I knew him as a cool musician in New York City. He was technically the guy that gave me the idea for CD Baby. Later I found out that he's the son of the prime minister of Finland.

   3. TFTim Ferriss37:32

      [laughs]

   4. DSDerek Sivers37:33

      Uh, and it was, like, all in the news, and I had no idea. But Marco, thank you. He's the one that asked me if I could sell his CD, uh, through my band's website. And so I did, and then, you know, I started getting calls like, "Hey, man, uh, my friend Marco said you could sell my CD through your website." I said, "Yeah, no problem. Friend of Marco's is a friend of mine." And it just, it grew by request, and yeah. Which is ... Which kind of led me to the, the belief that, you know, when people ask me how to... How do I grow my business? I've got this business idea. Basically, I'm trying to push it onto the world. How do I push my idea into the world? I have no idea. I have no advice for those people because I've only ever worked on the, like, the pull method where people ask me to do things for, for them, and I say yes. So CD Baby just happened because all of my musician friends were asking me to, um, sell their CD on my band's website. And then I just... Eventually there were so many that I just took them off of my band's site and put them onto their own site, and that was cdbaby.com.

   5. TFTim Ferriss38:36

      Of your projects that have done well, what percentage have come from scratching your own itch, a la CD Baby? Uh, have, a- are any of the projects that have gained traction projects that you've thought of sending to a market that didn't include you?

   6. DSDerek Sivers38:57

      Actually, after that first one, I mean, yes, I built a thing to sell my own CD, but, um, actually all of them were scratching other people's itches. [laughs] Uh, I, I don't wanna get too, uh, I don't wanna picture that.

   7. TFTim Ferriss39:12

      Yeah. [laughs]

   8. DSDerek Sivers39:12

      Um, so, uh, like for example, um, shortly after that, um, I already had a UPC barcode thing. The way it used to work with that, um, to get a barcode on your album, you had to pay, like, I don't know, $400 to the Universal Code Council in order to get a six-digit prefix, which then let you assign the next five digits, which meant 100,000 products underneath your barcode, um, product ID or something like that. So a lot of musicians in the independent music world wanted to have a UPC barcode for their album that would let them sell it in physical retail stores, and a lot of physical retail stores wouldn't let you sell something unless it had a UPC barcode. But they, it, they didn't wanna all have to pay the $400 to get a company account. But I already had a company account, and so I just let a lot of musicians know, like, if you ever need a barcode, let me know. I can get one for you. So enough people started taking me up on this that I decided to charge 20 bucks for it because it would take me some time to assign them an ID and then generate the, uh, you know, EPS or TIFF graphic file to be included in their album artwork. And eventually I automated it. Point is, um, 100,000 barcodes were assigned at $20 each. That's what I charged for the service. It was like $2 million I made for this $400 setup fee for getting a Universal Code Council account.

   9. TFTim Ferriss40:34

      [laughs]

   10. DSDerek Sivers40:34

       So you could say that I was scratching my itch, but really that... It was more, I think of it as the co-op business model. Let's fre-

   11. TFTim Ferriss40:42

       That was, it was responding to demand instead of trying to create demand. Is that fair?

   12. DSDerek Sivers40:46

       Yes. I've never tried to create demand. I've never done that. I don't know how. I've only basically answered the calls for help, right? And it's usually using-

   13. TFTim Ferriss40:55

       Mm

   14. DSDerek Sivers40:55

       ... this, what I call the co-op business model, which is I've already got something. Other people could use it. I'm happy to share it. I'll just charge a little something to help pay for my time and resources so that we can all share this resource that I've already got.

7. 41:12 – 45:53

   The Goofy Shipping Email and Remarkable Customer Service

   1. TFTim Ferriss41:12

      So I love th- this is a, I think, a great example of spotting something small, perhaps looking at a situation that many, many other people have been presented with, and spotting something interesting, in this case an opportunity. And I, I wanna highlight one other example, which is an email that you wrote, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna just read-

   2. DSDerek Sivers41:36

      [laughs] Yes

   3. TFTim Ferriss41:36

      ... a little bit here. So this is, uh, this is from some of your writing. When you make a business, you're making a little world where you control the laws. It doesn't matter how things are done everywhere else. In your little world, you can make it like it should be. And I know you're better at reading this stuff, but I'm just gonna, just because I have it right in front of me. Uh, when I first built CD Baby, every order had an automated email that let the customer know when the CD was actually shipped. And of course, this is Tim speaking now, uh, everyone's seen these. They tend to be very plain Jane, very generic, very boring. At first it was just the normal, this is back to your writing, "Your order shipped today. Please let us know if it doesn't arrive. Thank you for your business." Uh, a few months later I felt it was very in- incongruent with my mission to help people smile. I knew I could do better, so I took 20 minutes and wrote this goofy little thing. So this is the email that would go out to folks. Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow. A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was the best possible condition before mailing. Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy. We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards, and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved bon voyage to your package on its way to you in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Friday, June 6th. I hope that you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture's on our wall as customer of the year. We're all exhausted, but can't wait for you to come back to cdbaby.com, two exclamation points. Uh, [laughs] so that 20 minutes, what happened after you put that together?

   4. DSDerek Sivers43:15

      People would get it and reply back. Like, whoever replies back to an automated shipping email, right?

   5. TFTim Ferriss43:22

      [laughs]

   6. DSDerek Sivers43:23

      Um, whoever replies back to Amazon saying, "Wow, guys, thank you so much." But the fact that this little quirky email had so much personality, for one, it let them know, like, there's real people here. And so customers will often reply back saying, "You guys are hilarious. That was the weirdest thing ever. That's awesome." But more importantly, people started sharing it. They would forward it to all of their friends, like, "You guys have to see this." And people who had blogs would post it on their blogs, even just their, you know, little Blogspot or WordPress or whatever blog. Um, so now if you take any of those sentences from that email and you put it into quotation marks and, uh, search for it on Google, you'll find literally thousands of blogs have pasted my confirmation email onto their blogs. And I think about this when, uh, young entrepreneurs ask me, like, "How can I get traction for I- my, my idea? How can I get, how can I get word of mouth and buzz happening?" I think y- you can read business books and, and, um, try to do these very serious, you know, furrowed brow analytical approaches to this, or sometimes it's just these cute little colorful things that you do that set you apart from the rest that make you remarkable, that make people remark on you, about you.

   7. TFTim Ferriss44:39

      Mm-hmm.

   8. DSDerek Sivers44:40

      So yeah, I think thousands of people heard about CD Baby because of that one little silly email.

   9. TFTim Ferriss44:46

      And I think a, a, a comparable might be Zappos, for instance, and their customer service.

   10. DSDerek Sivers44:51

       Yes.

   11. TFTim Ferriss44:51

       And what was the anecdote that got spread around? The anecdote was you could call up Zappos for anything, even if it was unrelated to the product. You could call them up and say, "Yes, I'm looking at the website, but I'd actually really like a pizza delivered to my house," and they would figure out how to do it.

   12. DSDerek Sivers45:05

       [laughs]

   13. TFTim Ferriss45:05

       And on the serious analytical side, you say, oh my God, that's such a waste of human and capital resources. And can you imagine if everybody called to order pizza? Which, of course-

   14. DSDerek Sivers45:15

       It doesn't scale

   15. TFTim Ferriss45:16

       ... is never gonna happen, ever. And, uh, they got s- I mean, probably millions of dollars of free publicity just by making that okay.

   16. DSDerek Sivers45:28

       Yeah.

   17. TFTim Ferriss45:28

       And, like, how long did that take? [laughs] What? Not long at all. Uh, so-

   18. DSDerek Sivers45:32

       Plus, you know what, man, it's, it's, I don't mean to sound, like, new agey or whatever, but it's the right thing to do for the world, right? It's like, just put aside the numbers for a bit. It's the right thing to do. It's cool. It makes people happier. It makes the people working there happier, which makes them more into the whole feeling of what they're doing. There's so much more to a business than just the money.

8. 45:53 – 55:25

   Turning Down Investors and the Utopian Business Design

   1. TFTim Ferriss45:53

      Yeah. So, [laughs] so tell me about, I remember reading about this, but I, I think we might have talked about it at one point, which was when people would call CD Baby trying to offer you financing.

   2. DSDerek Sivers46:05

      Yeah.

   3. TFTim Ferriss46:05

      How, how did those go?

   4. DSDerek Sivers46:06

      [laughs] Well, y- so remember, I started CD Baby at, like, the end of '97, beginning of '98, so it was the first dot-com boom, and so much money was flying around, and everybody was trying to push money at everyone who had a dot-com on their domain name or had anything going on. So of course, me with an actual, like, profitable running business that was really the only game in town, by the way. Like, back when I started it, if you were a musician that wanted to sell your music online, there was a guy named Derek in New York that could do it for you, and that was it. There were no other businesses that would do it. They, some showed up, like, a year or two later, but at first I had no competition at all. I was it. So yeah, tons of money was, uh, shoved my direction, and I, I, I entertained the first few calls, and they said, "You know, we want to invest in your company." I said, "Well, why?" They said, "So you can grow it faster." I said, "But I don't wanna grow it faster." They said, "Well, you know, don't you wanna scale or get your, get more resources?" I said, "No, I, I have all the resources I need. Like, I'm good." Like, I was profitable, you know, since the first month in business because my startup costs were, uh, $495 is what it cost me to start the business and get it running. It took me six days to build the site and get it up and running, and it was profitable in the second month of business when I sold over, uh, $400 of CDs that second month in business. I was profitable ever since. And, uh, I just didn't need the money. And so yeah, people kept offering, and they would, uh, wave these big dreams, uh, in my face thinking it was going to distract or, uh, entice me, but it just didn't. And I remember, oh, I doubt you remember, uh, MP3.com was a big deal in, like, 1999 through, uh, 2002 or so. They were, like, the big daddy of independent streaming music online and downloads. And so they had all... I think, yeah, they had an IPO. They were public, and MP3.com was interested in buying CD Baby, and they asked what my price would be. And I said, "Uh, just not interested in selling." And they said, "Come on, everybody's got their price." And I said, "No, I'm, I'm not interested. I'm having fun." They said, "Come on, even billions of dollars?" And I said, "What are you, Carl Sagan? No. I don't wanna sell." Um, there's just nothing in it for me. I'm enjoying what I'm doing. I don't need the money. So after that point, like after the first year or two, I just taught my customer service people, like, if you get any calls from investors or I, um, whatever, VC firms or any of that, please just tell them no. Like, don't even send them my way. I'm just, we're just not interested. So yeah, that lasted for 10 years.

   5. TFTim Ferriss48:43

      And how did you, uh, how did you develop that relationship with money? Is that something from your parents? Is that... And I'm gonna ask a very personal question also, and you can feel free to not answer it, but why did your family, why do, why were none of your family members at your wedding?

   6. DSDerek Sivers49:03

      Oh, sorry, they were too.

   7. TFTim Ferriss49:04

      Ah. [laughs]

   8. DSDerek Sivers49:06

      Sorry, when I said, when I said three guests, I meant, yeah, except for my-

   9. TFTim Ferriss49:08

      Okay. All right.

   10. DSDerek Sivers49:10

       Sorry about that.

   11. TFTim Ferriss49:10

       All right. No, no, no. Now that I've checked that, okay. [laughs] It was, it was-

   12. DSDerek Sivers49:13

       I hate them

   13. TFTim Ferriss49:13

       ... it was in the back of my mind.

   14. DSDerek Sivers49:15

       I hate them.

   15. TFTim Ferriss49:16

       So, so, so how did, what, how did you develop this relationship with money where you would say no like that for 10 years? Because that's not what most people would do.

   16. DSDerek Sivers49:26

       Because I had enough. Uh, because I... Ah, actually, you know what? It's, it's a bit of a trick reason, because in the early days, I still considered CD Baby to be a bit of a distraction. 'Cause you remember, I was making my living as a professional musician, which was my original goal and dream. So I was living my dream. Like, I was, I was touring, playing on people's records, producing people's records. Um, I played about 500 colleges in the Northeast. Uh, I was making good money as a professional musician. Like, that's what I really wanted to do. And this little CD Baby thing was just, like, a favor I was doing to my, for my friends to kinda give back to the community, right? So as it grew, well, I didn't want it to grow, um, because yeah, it was taking me away from my music, which was my real love, just making the music, not selling other people's music. So there was this moment when I kind of sadly realized I think I've created a business. Oh, well. I, I might as well make it something awesome. Meaning, um, I wanna make it like a utopian dream come true from a musician's point of view. And I spent a night brainstorming, like, what would a real, like, dream come true from a musician's point of view look like? And I don't know if this will make sense to your listeners, but let's just find out, is that, that it was going against everything that was the unfortunate way that the music distribution world worked at the time. So it's like, number one, I wanna be paid every week. Number two, I wanna know the full name and address of everybody that buys my music. Um, number three, you'll never kick me out for not selling enough, because that was a big problem in the traditional music distribution world, is you were given a window of time, kind of like, like physical books still are. You have to prove yourself in a window of time. They'll put you into the bookstore. If it doesn't sell well, you're, you're yanked out to make room on the shelf for other stuff. And then number four, no paid placement, 'cause it never felt fair that, uh, people could come in and buy up the front page to get, uh, unequal footing, right? So that was, like, my utopian ideal for how this would work. The reason I'm telling you this is that to, to set the tone that, like, I wasn't trying to make money. I already had enough money that I had made, you know, gigging and touring and all that stuff. I already had money, so this was a thing I was doing to give back to the community, to, to create something that needed to exist kind of artistically or just almost like a community service kinda thing. So, so that was the original DNA of this thing. And, you know, from what we know about DNA, it helps decide how th- what things grow into, right? So this was the DNA. So then as it grew, and then it became really profitable, and I was making, I don't know, $100,000 a month doing this thing, and I had all my bills paid off. There was nothing I wanted to buy. So if somebody from California contacted me saying they wanted to give me lots of money to take a big chunk of my business and help turn it, you know, big, big, big. "We think you could do an IPO." Uh, I would just sneer, like, "Uh, no, that sounds awful." [laughs] "I don't want that life. I'm, I'm enjoying being fully in control here and doing things for the right reasons, doing things for my musician friends to make them happy, make the customers happy, make the musicians happy. Like, all's good." Um, we're-

   17. TFTim Ferriss52:56

       What was the business model in the very beginning?

   18. DSDerek Sivers52:59

       Um, it was only two numbers. [laughs] Actually, there's, there's a cute story. Most of us, you know, when we start charging money for the first time for our services or our goods, we don't know what to charge, right? So for Marco, my f- first friend that asked me to do this, and maybe the next f- 10 or 15 friends that came after, I was charging nothing. I was just doing this as a free favor. This was my community service. And then I, once I realized, like, total strangers were sending me their music, I thought, "All right, I better charge something, but I don't know what to charge." So I was living in Woodstock, New York at the time, and there was a cute, tiny little record store in town that sold consignment CDs on the counter of local musicians. So I walked in there one day, and I said, "Hey, um, how does it work if I wanna sell my CD here?" And she said, "Well, you set the selling price at whatever you want. We just keep a flat $4 per CD sold, and then just come by every week, and we'll pay you." So I went home to my new website that night, and I wrote, "You set your selling price at whatever you want. We just keep a flat $4 per CD sold [laughs] and we'll pay you every week." And then I realized that it took about 45 minutes of time for me to set up a new album into the system, because I had to, you know, lay the album art on the scanner and Photoshop it and crop it and then fix the, the musicians' spelling mistakes in their own bio and all that kind of stuff. Uh, that took about 45 minutes of work per album. So it, it shows you what I was valuing my time at those days, that I thought, 45 minutes of my time, that's worth about 25 bucks.

   19. TFTim Ferriss54:31

       [laughs]

   20. DSDerek Sivers54:32

       So I'll charge a $25 setup fee to sign up for this thing. And then, ooh, at the last minute I thought, "Wait a second." In my mind, 25 and 35, they hold that s- they're in the same, like, brain cell in my head. 25 and 35, those numbers don't feel very different when it comes to cost, you know? Like, $10 is different and $50 is different, but 25, 35, that occupies the same space in the mind. So you know what? I'm gonna make it 35. That will let me give anyone a discount anytime they ask. You know, even if somebody's on the phone and upset, I'll say, "You know what? Let me give you a discount."

   21. TFTim Ferriss55:06

       [laughs]

   22. DSDerek Sivers55:06

       And so I added in that little buffer so I could give people a discount, which they love. So yeah, $35 setup fee, $4 per CD sold. And then Tim, for the next 10 years, that was it.

   23. TFTim Ferriss55:17

       [laughs]

   24. DSDerek Sivers55:17

       That was my entire business model, you know, was, was generated in five minutes by walking down to the local record store and asking what they do.

9. 55:25 – 56:49

   Against Pivoting and Survivorship Bias

   1. TFTim Ferriss55:25

      I love that story and simplicity because I think there is an infatuation, a fetishizing of pivoting in the tech startup world that has infected many other types of entrepreneurship where people think like, "Oh, if I'm not pivoting, I'm not doing something correctly. I should change my business model and my entire customer base every two months."

   2. DSDerek Sivers55:46

      Yes.

   3. TFTim Ferriss55:47

      And I don't view that as a virtue. Yes, there are times to change if something isn't working, but if you don't take the time up front to think about that, and then you're constantly chasing the latest sort of fad or whatever appears on the cover of, uh, TechCrunch or Inc. Magazine or something like that, it's, uh, it's a recipe for, for failure for most people.

   4. DSDerek Sivers56:10

      Yes.

   5. TFTim Ferriss56:10

      I, I mean, there's a huge survivorship bias. I'm just gonna rant for a second. There's a huge survivorship bias that I think is important to realize if you're hoping to become an entrepreneur or are an entrepreneur. If you're only reading the cover stories, you're only getting the happy success stories. And, you know, for that reason also, I think it's, it's dangerous to idolize people who bet the farm and just happen to pull it off because-

   6. DSDerek Sivers56:35

      Yeah

   7. TFTim Ferriss56:35

      ... those are the people who are gonna be written about, much like if you open a Barron's and you look at all of these mutual funds with these spectacular records. Well, maybe they just got lucky, and all the other ones can't afford to buy ads because they're no longer in existence.

   8. DSDerek Sivers56:46

      [laughs] Right.

   9. TFTim Ferriss56:47

      And, um, so I think it's, it's very similar.

10. 56:49 – 1:03:05

    Hell Yeah or No

    1. TFTim Ferriss56:49

       Now, the, uh, the, the one of the essays that you're best known for is, uh, Hell Yeah or No, and th- this has been extremely important for me to consistently reread, uh, or listen to. How did it come about, and then what is the, what is the gist of that?

    2. DSDerek Sivers57:14

       There was a music conference in Australia that I had told my friend I would go with her to. It wasn't even like the conference themselves were really expecting me. It was my, my friend Arielle Hiyat is, uh, one of the best publicists I know, and she was speaking at that conference and asked if I would come with her as, like, a co-presenter in her mentor session or something. So I had said yes like six months before.

    3. TFTim Ferriss57:44

       [laughs]

    4. DSDerek Sivers57:44

       Yeah, sure, Australia. I'm living in New York City. I'm like, "Yeah, sure." Um, and then once it came close and it was, like, time to book the ticket, I was like, "Ugh, I don't really wanna go to Australia right now. I'm busy with other stuff." And it was actually my friend Amber Rubarth, who's a brilliant musician, I was on the phone with her and kind of lamenting about this, and she's the one that pointed out, she said, "It sounds like, y- you know, from where you're at, your decision is not between yes and no. You need to figure out whether you're feeling like, fuck yeah or no." [laughs] And I said, "Yeah, that's, that's really what it comes down to, right?" 'Cause the idea is if you're feeling anything less than like, "Oh, hell yeah, I would love to do that. Oh my God, that would be amazing," if you're feeling anything less than that, then just say no. Because most of us say yes to too much stuff, and then we let these little mediocre things fill our lives. And so the problem is when that occasional big, "Oh my God, hell yeah" thing comes along, you don't have enough time to, to give it the attention that you should because you've said yes to too much other little half-ass kind of stuff, right? So once I started applying this, uh, my life just opened up because it just meant I just said, "No, no, no, no, no," [laughs] to almost everything. But then when the occasional thing came up that I was really like, "You know what? That would be awesome," then suddenly I had all the time in the world. And you know, people say this, uh, I'm sure you know every time people contact you, every time people contact me, they say, "You know, look, I know you must be incredibly busy." And I always think like, "No, I'm not," [laughs] because, because I'm in control of my time. I'm on top of it. Busy to me seems to imply, like, out of control.

    5. TFTim Ferriss59:44

       Mm-hmm.

    6. DSDerek Sivers59:44

       You know, like, "Oh my God, I'm so busy. I don't have any time for this shit." That's... To me, that sounds like a person who's got no control of their life.

    7. TFTim Ferriss59:52

       Yeah, no, no control and unclear priorities.

    8. DSDerek Sivers59:56

       Yes, exactly.

    9. TFTim Ferriss59:57

       Uh-

    10. DSDerek Sivers59:57

        So the... you asked how it's applying in my life, that still just on the little tiny day-to-day level, even personal things, God, even, even people you meet, even, you know, I'm, uh, as I'm dating, [laughs] you have to do the hell yeah or no approach, or people ask you to go to events or, God, even, you know, even people asking to do a phone call or anything. I think, you know, am I really excited about that? And you know, almost every time the answer's no. So I say no to almost everything, and then yeah, occasionally something will come up. Even a, a little surprise will be dropped in my lap, like this thing that happened just, uh, two months ago called the, the Now Now Now project, which we don't even really need to talk about. The details don't matter so much, but it was just something that popped up that seemed really interesting and people really wanted, and luckily, because I say no to almost everything, I had the time in my life to make it flourish. So for the last like six weeks, all I did full time, like 12 hours a day, was suddenly work on this brand-new thing that showed up because I could, you know? So that's to me the, the lovely, uh, result of taking the hell yeah or no approach to life.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:01:05

        Where can people learn more and check out the Now Now Now project? And also, I should note in advance that for, for folks listening, um, we will also include links to anything we've mentioned in the show notes, which will be at fourhourworkweek.com/derek, all spelled out. Uh, but where can people find more about Now Now Now?

    12. DSDerek Sivers1:01:27

        It's, um, if you go to nownownow.com, you'll find more about that. It was just, in short, I noticed that everybody has, uh, an About page on their site, and people have a contact page on their site. But usually whenever I'm looking at somebody's personal site, even yours, w- a big thing I often wonder is, like, I wonder what he's up to right now, like working on kind of stuff. And Twitter and Facebook don't answer that. You know, you can see somebody's stream of stuff, but it just kind of says like, "Okay, here's what I had for dinner last night," you know, "Here's something in the news I'm mad about," or, "Here's a cute thing I'm sharing." But it doesn't really tell me, like, how are you? You know, like if you and I haven't talked for a year, like, what's up? How you d- how you doing? What you working on? So to me, the whole idea of a Now page on your site, it's just a general like, "Here's what's up with me now." So, uh, I just had one of those on my site. Uh, I had a Now page, uh, and then a, a guy named Gregory Brown, uh, saw it, liked it. He put one on his site, and all I did was just retweet him when he told me. And I said, "Cool, I wish everybody had a Now page." And like within a few hours, there were eight more people had a Now page, and then within a month, the, uh, 550 people had a Now page on their website. So I just put together nownownow.com. It's just like kind of a cute collection of people who have a Now page on their website.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:02:47

        [laughs] Yeah, that's-

    14. DSDerek Sivers1:02:49

        Anyway, but you know what I mean. The, the point is the details don't matter, but like I'm so glad I had the time to do that. And it was only because I say no to almost everything that I was able to just throw myself into this project and build this new thing on a, on a whim and catch the momentum.

11. 1:03:05 – 1:11:14

    Systematizing CD Baby and Working Four Hours Every Six Months

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:03:05

       So I am reading a section of this, this blog post that I wrote about you and your-- the best email you ever wrote with the, the Japanese boxing specialist and so on. And one of the paragraphs that I put here, for those people interested, it's just the most successful email I ever wrote, but, uh, it's everywhere online. And it reads, "Strangest still, at its largest, Derek spent roughly four hours on CD Baby every six months. He had systematized everything to run without him." And feel free to correct that if, if it needs to be [laughs] corrected.

    2. DSDerek Sivers1:03:40

       Mm-hmm.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:03:42

       But what i- uh, assuming that's roughly true-

    4. DSDerek Sivers1:03:44

       Mm-hmm

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:03:44

       ... what were some of the most important decisions or realizations that made that possible?

    6. DSDerek Sivers1:03:52

       Hmm. I love the timing for when I read 4-Hour Workweek because it was actually just after I had done this like complete delegation of everything. Um, that it was feeling the pain from everything having to go through me, right? Like it was, it was my business, right? The 100%, no investors, no nothing. It was me. And so I hired people to help me. It was all me, me, me. So four years into it, it was growing. It was really taking off. I had, uh, 20 employees. But still, almost everything went through me. And it made my day kind of miserable because I'm a real like introverted, focused kind of person. I love to just sit down for 12 hours and do one thing without distraction.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:04:38

       You're an INTJ, Myers-Briggs?

    8. DSDerek Sivers1:04:40

       Uh-huh. Yep. Are you?

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:04:41

       Yeah, so I'm 100% INTJ. Yeah.

    10. DSDerek Sivers1:04:43

        Yeah. Um, so I hated going to the office and being distracted every five minutes with my, um, employees asking me questions. So that's what I just felt such pain about this, like, "Argh, I hate this," that I, I really literally, man, I booked a flight to Kauai, I believe. And I was going to move to Kauai and not give my employees my phone number.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:05:10

        [laughs]

    12. DSDerek Sivers1:05:11

        And, and literally move. I don't mean like take a vacation. I mean like I am now going to be running C- or I'm going to be the owner of CD Baby on a little island in Hawaii, and you guys just figure out your own damn problems. 'Cause I was just so-- I was just having so much psychic pain about this. But then luckily, with lovely coincidence, that night that I booked the flight to Hawaii, um, I watched the movie Vanilla Sky. And in Vanilla Sky, Tom Cruise is like the owner of this big publishing company, but he gets all caught up with these crazy women and, um, gets too overwhelmed with his life and focusing on his own happiness and/or, or unhappiness and all that. And pretty soon his, his company is just wrestled away from him. And I thought, "Oh, I don't want that to happen." Like, I don't wanna just plug my ears, close my eyes, run away, and have my company taken away from me. Um, I need to give this-- I need to deal with my problems instead of running from them. So I canceled the trip to Hawaii and went into work the next day and decided to fix this thing. So then next time somebody asked me a question, I gathered everybody around. I said, "Okay, everybody, Tracy just asked me, you know, um, 'Derek, what do we do when a guy on the phone says he wants a refund?' You know?" I said, "Okay, everybody stop working. Everybody gather around. Okay. Tracy asked what we do if somebody wants a refund. Here's, here's not only what we do, but here's why. Here's my philosophy. Whenever anybody wants a refund, well, we should always give it to them." And I would just explain not just the what to do, but the why. It was constantly communicating the philosophy, um, to get to the core of it. And I think you mentioned this in, back in 4-Hour Workweek. There's almost nothing that really has to be you. Like, you can almost, uh, get kind of AI and figure out how your brain works, how your decision-making process works, and just teach it to other people, um-

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:07:12

        That's nice

    14. DSDerek Sivers1:07:13

        ... so that other people can do it. And, um, yeah, that's what I did. For every single thing that ever came my way, I would gather everybody around, explain the philosophy behind it, why we do things this way, why I'm about to say what I'm about to say, and now here's what I think we should do. Do you understand why? Now please write it down. But it, it was also important that I taught it to multiple people, not just one, and had them write it down. And then the cool thing is- I wasn't doing the hiring anymore at the company. I had taught other people how to do the hiring. So soon my employees were doing the hiring, and then they were teaching new people how to do this thing from the, the book. And yeah, so by, let's see. So that really started four years into the company. It was six months of difficult work to really make myself unnecessary. But then my girlfriend at the time decided to go to film school in LA, so decided to follow her down there. So I moved down to LA to be with her, which was a nice symbolic way to let the company know, like, "You're on your own. Uh, I'm still the owner." And in fact, so there, there's one little caveat to the thing, uh, where you said that I was working on, uh, CD Baby for four hours a, a year or whatever you said [laughs]

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:08:19

        Yeah. Four hours every six months.

    16. DSDerek Sivers1:08:21

        Is that that's how much time I spent doing the stuff I didn't want to be doing, right?

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:08:27

        Mm.

    18. DSDerek Sivers1:08:27

        The monotony, the bureaucracy stuff. That I had reduced down to almost nothing, like a few minutes a week. But what I was doing from 7:00 AM to midnight every single day was programming, like, the future of CD Baby. Uh, and that's just the stuff that I loved doing. So it was just, it was about making my life the way I wanted it to be, working on the stuff that I wanted to be working on, and not doing the stuff I didn't.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:08:51

        Which, uh, I'm glad you brought that up because I wanna clarify something that is a common misconception related, understandably, to the title of The 4-Hour Workweek.

    20. DSDerek Sivers1:09:00

        [laughs]

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:09:00

        And, and there's, I, it is the, it's, like, the single largest blessing and curse that is gonna follow me for the rest of my life. But it's a catchy title, yes. I tested it on Google AdWords.

    22. DSDerek Sivers1:09:10

        [laughs]

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:09:10

        Yes. Had a great conversion rate. That's why it's that instead of something stupid like Lifestyle Hustling or The Chameleon blah, blah, blah. I had a bunch of terrible titles. That one performed best. But the objective is not to be idle. The objective is to control this non-renewable resource called time so that you can allocate it to the things you most want to be doing. So I don't have, in other words, a trouble with har- I don't have a problem with hard work as long as it is applied to the right things that are determined with some degree of self-awareness and forethought or planning. Uh, so that's, that's a pro- sort of PSA, not for you, Derek, 'cause you-

    24. DSDerek Sivers1:09:46

        [laughs] No, I know

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:09:46

        ... read, read the book.

    26. DSDerek Sivers1:09:47

        Yeah, no problem.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:09:47

        But, but for every, like, dick who stands up at a public Q&A and goes, "Well, Tim, I just wanted to ask, do you work four hours a week? Ha ha ha," I just wanna, like, turn into one of the Fantastic Four and punch him in the neck-

    28. DSDerek Sivers1:10:01

        [laughs]

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:10:02

        ... from 300 feet away. But for everyone who is, i- who's, uh, may be inclined to stand up and ask that question, there's the answer. Read the book. Um, and, uh, I, I bumped into somebody recently. You mentioned this book with the, I guess, frequently asked questions, and he was like, "You should just make..." [laughs] 'Cause I told him, I was like, "You know, I try to be really patient. I try to spend a lot of time answering people's questions when they have them, but it's so clear that most people asking questions have not read the fucking book."

    30. DSDerek Sivers1:10:28

        [laughs]
12. 1:11:14 – 1:24:31

    Fables, Reading Method and Book Notes

    1. DSDerek Sivers1:11:14

       Actually, I think we, we put it on a, um, put it on a, on a wiki inside, but honestly, most of it was just word of mouth, kind of legend inside. Like, there were a few internal stories, kind of like the, the Zappos pizza story you just told. The one I always heard was, um, Nordstrom's, uh, that there's some legend about guy buys a shirt from Sears, and it gets, like, burnt up in a fire, and he goes to Nordstrom's to return it, and they give him his money back. Like, they have, like, such a liberal return policy that they'll let, even let you return burnt stuff from another store.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:11:51

       [laughs]

    3. DSDerek Sivers1:11:51

       And so a legend like that will travel down, and it, it carries the philosophy inside of it. So it's almost like a little story like that can replace 20 pages of an employee handbook.

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:12:05

       Totally agree.

    5. DSDerek Sivers1:12:06

       You know?

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:12:06

       Yeah.

    7. DSDerek Sivers1:12:06

       So-

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:12:07

       It's an, it's an aphorism where it's a story-

    9. DSDerek Sivers1:12:08

       Yeah

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:12:09

        ... exactly.

    11. DSDerek Sivers1:12:10

        Um, fable. [laughs]

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:12:11

        Fable.

    13. DSDerek Sivers1:12:12

        So there were quite a few of those inside CD Baby, especially, uh, for the early people would see the decisions that I had made and the people that I had given all their money back in case anything went wrong or just, just talking to me in the conversations and getting my philosophies. And the early employees at CD Baby really got it, and then they would spread it to the new people.

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:12:32

        Uh, on the, so if we s- flip from book writing to book reading, uh, you have a page on your site, sivers.org/book. I'll link to it in the show notes. I think it's book. Correct me if the URL is wrong.

    15. DSDerek Sivers1:12:49

        Yep, that's it. Mm-hmm.

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:12:49

        You, you have notes on more than 200 books.

    17. DSDerek Sivers1:12:52

        Mm-hmm.

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:12:52

        You appear to be a voracious reader. How do you select the books you read, and how do you read them?

    19. DSDerek Sivers1:13:00

        Okay. I select, I really, I let, um, usually large numbers of people decide, meaning, like, lots and lots of five-star reviews on Amazon, right? Um, occasionally somebody that I really respect and that knows me will tell me, "You need to read this book," and even if it's had no reviews on Amazon, I'll just trust them. But for the most part, I tend to go for things that I've seen lots of rave reviews, then I browse through d- the description on Amazon, then I look at the review, actually read the reviews people have said, and it really sounds like something, okay, this sounds worth my time. 'Cause I don't read fast, and I don't- I don't try to read fast. I like to sit and ponder as I'm reading. So when I'm committing to a book, yeah, that's, that's 20 or 30 hours often. Um, so I don't take it lightly. So yeah, I, I tend to go with lots of Amazon reviews, but then I also give up quickly. So if like chapter three, i- if by chapter three I'm not really into it, I'll just ditch it. Um, and you don't even see those on my site. So I've ditched almost as many as you see there. Um, I just don't write them up. I just delete them on the Kindle and move on. So, but here's the interesting thing, is... Well, okay, there's a couple interesting things. So years ago, actually it was around 2007 when I first read 4-Hour Workweek. I was living in London, even though CD Baby was still, like, up and running back in Portland, Oregon. Uh, just 'cause I wanted to experience the world. I was living in London at the time. And actually, you know what's funny? I don't know if I ever told you this cute story. It was my friend Ariel Hyatt, who I mentioned earlier, that told me about you and the 4-Hour Workweek, but she told me a little fable about you.

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:14:41

        Oh. Oh, uh-oh. [laughs]

    21. DSDerek Sivers1:14:41

        Talk about those little fables. So I can't remember if I ever confirmed this with you.

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:14:47

        Oh, we'll find out.

    23. DSDerek Sivers1:14:48

        She said that-

    24. TFTim Ferriss1:14:48

        We'll find out right now. [laughs]

    25. DSDerek Sivers1:14:49

        I think at the time she was going to some kind of like mastermind seminar by one of those, like, how to be a millionaire kind of guys.

    26. TFTim Ferriss1:14:56

        Mm-hmm.

    27. DSDerek Sivers1:14:56

        And apparently, uh, you know, like five or six of those how to be a millionaire kind of guys held some big mastermind thing in Hawaii or something, and you were supposed to be there.

    28. TFTim Ferriss1:15:07

        Mm-hmm.

    29. DSDerek Sivers1:15:07

        And you didn't show... And I think, like, Robert Kiyosaki and people like that were there, and you were supposed to be there, but you didn't show up until the third day, where you showed up, like, covered in mud because you had just on a whim decided to try sleeping in a tree or something like that.

    30. TFTim Ferriss1:15:21

        Mm-hmm.
13. 1:24:31 – 1:46:20

    The Do This Project: Distilling Books into Directives

    1. DSDerek Sivers1:24:31

       So I, I've gotta tell you. So we haven't really talked about this yet, but this is so up your alley or your listeners' alley or for the people who are into books-

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:24:39

       Mm-hmm

    3. DSDerek Sivers1:24:39

       ... will appreciate this. So a lot of my friends, actually, I don't think any of my friends are as into reading as I am. Okay, a couple are, but most aren't. And so whenever I tell them about some amazing book I've read, [laughs] they, the, the gist I get from my friends is like, "Well, just tell me what to do."

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:24:57

       [laughs] Right.

    5. DSDerek Sivers1:24:59

       So, like, my-

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:24:59

       Give me the index card. Yeah.

    7. DSDerek Sivers1:25:01

       Yeah. Like, they don't wanna read the book. And, and so my friend Jeff is a smart guy. I mean, he's, he's a lawyer. He's smart, but he just looks at me with these tired eyes, and he just says, like, "I'm not gonna read the book, dude." Like, just, [laughs] "You can stop pushing it on me. It's just never gonna happen." He said, "Just tell me what to do." He said, "I trust you. I like you. You know me, so tell me what to do." And I realized that if you trust the source, you don't need the arguments, that so, so much of a book is arguing its point. But often you don't need the argument. If you trust the source, you can just get the point. So after reading, you know, taking detailed notes on 220 books on my site, I realized that distilling wisdom into directives Is so valuable, but it's so rarely done. In fact, the only time I can think of that it was done was, uh, Michael Pollan with his three books in a row about food, each one getting shorter and shorter. Um, I think the, the first one was, uh, was it like Omnivore's Dilemma?

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:26:05

       Omnivore's Dilemma. Yeah, yeah.

    9. DSDerek Sivers1:26:07

       Which was big. So I know that you're the kind of guy-

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:26:09

        Big

    11. DSDerek Sivers1:26:09

        ... that would

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:26:10

        It's a great book, but also, I mean, th- there are like 70 pages on the, on corn production in the US.

    13. DSDerek Sivers1:26:17

        [laughs] Right.

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:26:17

        And most people just drop out. Uh, even I-

    15. DSDerek Sivers1:26:19

        Yeah

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:26:19

        ... even I was like, "God, my eyes are glazing over here."

    17. DSDerek Sivers1:26:21

        [laughs]

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:26:22

        "But I, I know there's some good stuff coming, so I'll, I'll slog through it." But yes, a very great book-

    19. DSDerek Sivers1:26:27

        It-

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:26:27

        ... but a very big book.

    21. DSDerek Sivers1:26:28

        And then he did one a year later that basically took the best of the stuff from Omnivore's Dilemma and made it into a shorter, kind of more, uh, pop market, two to 300-page book, I believe. I forget the name of that one. And-

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:26:42

        Might have been In, In Defense of Food, maybe

    23. DSDerek Sivers1:26:44

        ... that sounds right. Yes. Thank you.

    24. TFTim Ferriss1:26:45

        Sure.

    25. DSDerek Sivers1:26:45

        Um, so even that one, I remember somebody telling me I should read it, and me looking at it going like, "I don't know if I really want to read 300 pages about food." Um, but then a year later he put out a teeny, tiny little book called Food Rules. I think that's what it's called.

    26. TFTim Ferriss1:27:00

        Mm-hmm.

    27. DSDerek Sivers1:27:01

        And it's like, you basically can read the whole thing while just standing in the bookstore. It's, he took the energy and the effort to compress everything he's learned into very succinct directives. Uh, and that's what it's go- you know, sentences that tell you what to do. Do this, do that, or don't do that. Uh, if, if your grandmother wouldn't recognize it as food, don't eat it. Uh, and his tagline for that book, the popular phrase was, "Eat food, uh, mostly plants, not too much."

    28. TFTim Ferriss1:27:34

        Right.

    29. DSDerek Sivers1:27:35

        And I so admired that. I got inspired by the effort it takes to distill the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah down into the specific sentences for the people that just aren't going to read that 900-page book, right? Like, probably all of that same information is in the 900-page book, but we just have to realistically admit that most people will never read the 900-page book. So as I'm reading these 300-page books, 220 of them, very often there will be some like brilliant, amazing, important point on like page 290, and I feel a little sad that almost nobody's gonna read that. Like, I wish that these little tiny points were extracted, like without all of the surrounding argument. So especially... Okay, I'll admit this was also sparked by the idea of, uh, when I had a kid and I thought like, I might not be alive when he's my age, or even when he's 19. I might die before he gets older. How could I compress everything I've learned that I think he should know into a real succinct format that he will definitely read? And then of course then I thought, and, and you know, other people will read too. So I got onto this idea of the Do This project, which is, um, instead of talking around a subject, just giving directives. Saying, "Do this, do that, don't do this, don't do that." Which is kind of funny because it feels very presumptuous, right? Like who am I to tell others what to do? But then I think, well, who am I not to, right? It's useful. So ps- get over myself. Kind of like you asked about like, you know, me on stage when I was 18, what was the biggest lesson learned? Like this isn't about me. People aren't here about me. They're, they're here for their own gain. Even, you know, that... Oh, you asked about my advice to TED Speakers. That's my m- main advice to TED Speakers. It's like people aren't here to see you and your life story. People come to TED or watch TED videos to learn something. So just speak only about what is surprising and skip everything else. Um, but anyway-

    30. TFTim Ferriss1:29:43

        What if, if people could talk, if people could start with one of your talks. I know I'm interrupting for a second.
14. 1:46:20 – 2:07:44

    Rapid-Fire: Books, Purchases, Billboard and Advice to a 30-Year-Old Self

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:46:20

       but the, the, uh, the question that I always ask that I'd like to ask you, and, uh, I think we might have to do a round two sometime because we're c- probably gonna have to hop off in, uh, uh, maybe 10 minutes or so. But what ... There's so many questions I wanna ask you. Uh, what is the book you've given most as a gift?

    2. DSDerek Sivers1:46:41

       Geek in Japan. Um-

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:46:43

       Geek in Japan.

    4. DSDerek Sivers1:46:44

       Geek in Japan by Hector Garcia because I'm, I'm fascinated with understanding the mindset of a place, right? Like, I would love to really understand the philosophy of Brazil, India, China, Finland, France, Japan, Thailand. Like, to me, each place seems to have its own cultural norms in how it, uh, approaches time or long-term versus short-term thinking or what's precious and should be protected, or human interactions, relationships, dealing with obstacles, conformity versus rebellion, uh, or just, you know, how it approaches, uh, people who are unfortunate. So we think of philosophies like existentialism, stoicism, nihilism, but I'd love to study Brazilism, Japanism, Thaiism [laughs] , you know? I really do think of each country's culture as kind of like a, a working modern applied philosophy.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:47:39

       It totally is.

    6. DSDerek Sivers1:47:39

       So-

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:47:39

       Totally agree.

    8. DSDerek Sivers1:47:40

       Yeah.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:47:40

       Yeah.

    10. DSDerek Sivers1:47:41

        So Geek in Japan is written by this Spanish guy who's been living in Japan for 10 years, and while most of the book is kind of like, "Hey, check out this. Look at that," um, it has a section in the middle that I think explains the Japanese mindset better than anything I'd heard before. And I'd spent months in Japan over the last 20 years. I've gone there five or six times, and I used to play guitar for a Japanese pop star and tour the country. But somehow Geek in Japan made me understand Japan more. So I give that to everyone who's going to Japan. But actually, an, an even better book I've found since then on describing the mindset of a country is called Au Contraire: Figuring Out the French.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:48:20

        Oh.

    12. DSDerek Sivers1:48:20

        It's so deep. It explains the mindset so well. I wish there was a book like this about every country. I highly recommend it. So you listeners out there, if you know of any other books like this that, like, explain the mindset of a country, please email me to let me know.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:48:35

        There is a book, and I'm gonna rely on the readers as well. What is your email address, Derek? If you wanna give it out, I'll-

    14. DSDerek Sivers1:48:41

        Yeah, derek­sivers.org.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:48:44

        And, uh, in the comments, guys, so this, all the show notes and everything, links to these books will be at fourhourworkweek.com/derek. Uh, but there is a book out there, I wanna say Enrico something is the author, but an Italian, I'm pretty sure it was an Italian, ef- effectively writes Geek in America.

    16. DSDerek Sivers1:49:05

        Mm-hmm.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:49:06

        But from the standpoint of Italian traveling through the US, including the heartland.

    18. DSDerek Sivers1:49:10

        Nice.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:49:10

        Uh, so that's, that's one.

    20. DSDerek Sivers1:49:13

        Cool.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:49:13

        Uh, what $100 or less purchase has most positively impacted your life in the last six months or recently?

    22. DSDerek Sivers1:49:22

        [laughs] Well, I'm such a minimalist that I always avoid letting any new possession into my life, right? But I took my three-year-old kid to a g- cafe one morning that had a huge box of toys, like little figurines and car, or cars and dolls and monsters, and he was just in the zone for like two or three hours, completely engrossed in all these toys. So I was like, "Yeah, okay, I can't, you know, push my minimalism on, on him. He needs toys." So that night I went onto eBay and I found someone selling a huge box of old used toys just like that, you know, figurines and cars and stuff. 20 bucks and, uh, endless hours of entertainment since. Best $20 I've spent in a long time.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:50:04

        [laughs] That's awesome. Uh- Do you have a favorite documentary or movie?

    24. DSDerek Sivers1:50:11

        No. Um, I really don't watch hardly anything. Um, I don't... I mean, g- relative to the norm, right? I mean, I watch movies, but more kind of for the artistry, the cinematography. I l- and I listen to music, of course. But, like, I don't watch TED Talks or documentaries or TV shows. I, I also, I don't even read blogs or articles, and I, I don't listen to podcasts. In fact, I listened to my very first podcast two weeks ago. That was the one with you and Tony Robbins.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:50:40

        [laughs]

    26. DSDerek Sivers1:50:40

        That was, like, the first time I'd ever listened to a podcast. Because I just have this lovely optimized life where I just wake up and I write, write, write, write, write all day long. I, I have no commute. I, I, I'm never really driving anywhere, so I don't have any downtime like that. And if I'm outside, I wanna hear the birds and the trees, you know? And if I'm working out, I'll either crank up the hip hop or sometimes just enjoy the total silence except for the hardcore sound of the clanking metal plates, you know? So I really just prefer books as my medium of learning and input.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:51:11

        Of information intake. What do you listen to? What are you listening to now or recently for working out? What music?

    28. DSDerek Sivers1:51:18

        Ha. I've started realizing that I don't know my American history of hip hop, that I've always been loosely aware of it. But I recently saw the, um, Chris Rock movie, Top Five, and the running punchline in that movie is, like, he's goes around like, "What are your top five?" And, and people kind of name their top five hip hop artists, or the ones that f- they feel are, like, the most important. And there were some in there I realized, like, well, I don't... I've actually-- I know who these people are. Of course, we've all heard of KRS-One and Rakim and... But I was like, "Wait, I don't think I actually know their music well." So I've started giving myself an education in the history of hip hop. And so lately I've been listening to nothing but hip hop, going back to the very beginning, the Wild Style movie and the kinda early stuff, and giving myself the chronological history of hip hop. It's been fun.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:52:04

        Any favorites so far? I would say it'd be Eric B. & Rakim are way up at the top for me.

    30. DSDerek Sivers1:52:09

        Yes. E- especially once I understood the context.

Episode duration: 2:07:45