Anything You Want

When Derek Sivers started CD Baby, he was an independent musician who only wanted to sell his own CDs online, and he taught himself enough code to add a Buy Now button to his band's website. He soon began selling friends' CDs too, and the store grew into a business he eventually sold for $22 million. Along the way Steve Jobs criticized him publicly, and he spent $3.3 million buying back 90 percent of the company from his father. From that experience Sivers draws 40 concise lessons: skip the business plan, start with what is at hand, avoid thinking too big, care about customers more than oneself, and run a company as if the money were not needed.

Tim Ferriss praised it as a true manifesto and a guidebook with clear signposts, and Ali Abdaal said it had an enormous impact on his own life. Examine.com co-founder Sol Orwell called it concise and full of wisdom and experience.