Small Biz Bookshelf: Anything You Want
You can always work for a big company if that works for you. If you run your own business though, no matter how small, it can and should be ‘Anything You Want’.
If you’re on my mailing list or follow me on LinkedIn, you know that when I’m fired up about something, I have no problem speaking my mind.
I certainly felt that way when the war in Ukraine broke out. It was international women’s month and the two things became linked in my mind.
I was angry at the disastrous state of the world, run by men, and actively wondered what an alternative universe with a more women in positions of power influence would look like.
My feelings and what I was writing about were totally #offtopic. Would it hurt my SEO? Is it weird to plop these posts down right next to a post on ‘4 Mistakes I Made in My First Business’
I’m not going to say I wasn’t concerned, but ultimately I decided it didn’t matter. This is my business and my show. I can do anything I want.
I’d even argue that we’re in an age of generic, lifeless and formulaic content. Content is optimised for Google within an inch of its life. Going off topic and putting some personality into your writing is a feature, not a bug.
AI can write an optimized blog post, is that an article you’re chomping at the bit to read? Me neither.
Our humanity is our differentiator these days. Our superpower, our ‘USP’.
Recently, I’ve been thinking back to a book I read years ago called ‘Anything You Want’ by Derek Sivers*.
Anything you want is described is “A Manifesto about living life, appreciating enough, and doing what matters”.
It’s most of what fabled entrepreneur Derek Sivers learned in ten years of starting and growing a small business, compacted into something you can read in an hour.
I didn’t remember much about it.
I recalled he made a good chunk of money, that he had the chance to make astronomical sums but realised he had enough and just wanted to get a house in the country and spend his time writing and speaking (or something like that) which is indeed what he did.
I decided to re-read it.
The main point of the book is that starting and running a business is not just about money (although it can feel that way when you are starting out!)
In the mid-late 90s Sivers figured out a way to sell CDs online. This was in the *early* internet days, before Amazon, before PayPal!
Independent musicians had to go through major record labels to have their CDs sold. Sivers, a passionate musician wanted to change this.
He figured out how to code, then how to accept credit card payments online (this alone took three months getting approval from a credit card company), at last he finally put a big ‘buy now’ button on his website, so people could buy his CDs.
The company was called CD Baby.Some musician friends asked if he could do the same for their CDs.
He thought about it and said yes. More musician friends started asking, he started charging for the time to do this, and one thing lead to another.
Ultimately he ended up with a warehouse full of CDs, a staff and a business purchased by Apple.
What stands out in the book, is that he did it his way.Sivers and his team injected lots of little fun bits of humanity in the business.
They usually didn’t do anything custom when putting up a listing but said they’d do anything for a pizza.
They posted the contact info of their local pizza joint on their website. If a customer sent them a pizza they’d make whatever customisation they asked for on their listing.
These little touches were pretty novel in those days, and in many ways they still are.
If you have a small service business it helps to remember people buy from people.
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I believe that showing who I am beyond just a website designer ultimately helps my business and attracts the kind of clients I want to work with.
This book reminds me to follow that impulse to do things a little differently.
Following your heart, and zigging when others are zagging can be a good thing. Even if it means going off topic sometimes.
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