CD Baby was a revolutionary company for a lot of things, this email was just one of them.
- Talk to us!
- 306.535.9697
- info@strategylab.ca
- Visit us at Path Cowork
- 200 – 1965 Broad St, Regina, SK
Anything You Want by Derek Sivers. A book dedicated to entrepreneurs. Not conventional advice, Derek is unique in his approach to business. Coming out of a business school, I had an idea of what “business, sales, and marketing” was/is/did/does. Derek has changed my mind on almost all of it.
Slow down and enjoy yourself
My favourite story in the book may be his bike rides to work and how he’d always try to go as fast as he could. Every day he’d beat his last time by putting his head down and trying really hard. Then one day he decided he’d take it easy and “enjoy the ride”. He looked down at his watch, he was two minutes later than normal, but he’d got to enjoy the scenery along the way.
Life isn’t about the destination, it’s about the journey.
He has amazing advice on advertising.
Sell things people want to buy.
If you need to sell it to someone then it isn’t good enough yet. Stop putting ridiculous pressure on yourself or your team to “sell” when your product/service needs to innately sell itself. If you have to “market” it, it’s not good enough, go back to the drawing board.
You don’t have to sell out
There were countless times where investors and VC’s offered to buy Derek out. Time and time again he’d say no, his reason being he didn’t care about the money, he just wanted to help. When he finally did sell out, he put the money in a trust fund to help less fortunate people learn to play music.
The CD Baby Email
This will go down in history as one of the greatest emails ever sent. Meant as a joke, the remarkability of the email (you HAD to share it) turned a simple auto-reply into a mega-hit that propelled the company forward. You couldn’t simply ignore the email, you had to say something about it or share it with someone. And that’s how CD Baby grew and grew. digital word-of-mouth.
Derek is one of my heroes.
The Best Email Ever Written!
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