Creator
Derek Sivers the founder of CD Baby once the largest seller of independent music on the web with more than $100 millon in sales for over 150,000 musician clients. He later sold this business for $22 million.
Purpose
Given his success, a lot of people were asking Derek for advice on how to approach their lives or their business. This is his experience and philosophies from the ten years he spent starting and growing a small business.
Manifesto
- Business is not about money. It’s about making dreams come true for others and for yourself.
- Making a company is a great way to improve the world while improving yourself.
- When you make a company, you make a utopia. It’s where you design your perfect world.
- Never do anything for the money.
- Don’t pursue business just for your own gain. Only answer the calls for help.
- Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently promoting what’s not working.
- Your business plan is moot. You don’t know what people really want until you start doing it.
- Starting with no money is an advantage. You don’t need money to start helping people.
- You can’t please everyone, so proudly exclude people.
- Make yourself unnecessary to the running of your business.
- The real point of doing anything is to be happy, so do only what makes you happy.
Source
In a chapter titled ‘What’s your compass?’ of Derek Sivers’ book Anything You Want he offers the above words as some of his common themes. (Pages 2-3)
Comment
A classic rule based manifesto.
What I like about this one is that it’s a personal manifesto he applied to his own business. As he suggests in his book, “This is most of what I learned in ten years, compacted into something you can read in an hour.” (Page 1)
More
If you want more the sub-title of the book is: 40 Lessons for a new kind of Entrepreneur – read the rest of the book. It’s short, engaging and insightful.
Derek Sivers website – includes links to videos of his presentations
Derek’s most popular presentation – How to start a movement
Ian Berry – Changing What’s Normal
Geoff McDonald – The Expert Manifesto
The Flying Solo Micro and Small Business Manifesto
