The Tim Ferriss Show #125: Derek Sivers on Developing Confidence, Finding Happiness, and Saying "No" to Millions
Barcode Millions
- Sivers sold barcodes to musicians for $20 each, turning a $400 setup fee into $2 million.
- This exemplified his 'coop business model' of sharing resources for a small fee.
Quirky Email Marketing
- Sivers' quirky CD Baby shipping email, written in 20 minutes, generated significant buzz.
- Customers shared the email, leading to free publicity and word-of-mouth marketing.
Rejecting Investors
- Sivers repeatedly declined investor money because he didn't want to grow CD Baby faster.
- His focus was on creating a musician-friendly service, not maximizing profit.
Originally a professional musician and circus clown, Derek Sivers (@sivers) created CD Baby in 1998. It 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 a frequent speaker at the TED Conference, with more than 5 million views of his talks. Since 2011, he has published 34 books, including “Anything You Want” which shot to #1 on all of its Amazon categories. Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by MeUndies. Have you ever wanted to be as powerful as a mullet-wearing ninja from the 1980’s, or as sleek as a black panther in the Amazon? Of course you have, and that’s where MeUndies comes in. I’ve spent the last 2-3 weeks wearing underwear from these guys 24/7, and they are the most comfortable and colorful underwear I’ve ever owned. Their materials are 2x softer than cotton, as evaluated using the Kawabata method. Check out MeUndies.com/Tim to see my current faves (some are awesomely ridiculous) and, while you’re at it, don’t miss lots of hot ladies wearing MeUndies. This podcast is also brought to you by Wealthfront. 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 2 years, and now has more than $2.5B under management. In fact, some of my good investor friends in Silicon Valley have millions of their own money in Wealthfront. Why? Because you can get services previously limited to the ultra-wealthy and only pay pennies on the dollar for them, and it’s all through smarter software instead of retail locations and bloated sales teams. Check out wealthfront.com/tim, take their risk assessment quiz, which only takes 2-5 minutes, and they’ll show you—for free–exactly the portfolio they’d put you in. If you want to just take their advice and do it yourself, you can. Or, as I would, you can set it and forget it. Well worth a few minutes: wealthfront.com/tim.
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