3 career lessons from Derek Sivers’s “Anything you want”
Derek Sivers packs a punch in the most lightweight book I’ve ever read
What makes us entrepreneurs can also make us intrapreneurs
What traits make for successful entrepreneurs? Determination, risk-taking, vision, confidence, positive thinking and creativity, found Inc. (2017) in a survey they conducted with CEOs.
But aren’t these same traits what can help us grow a successful career inside a company? Aren’t many of the skills of an entrepreneur those of an intrapreneur as well?
A 2021 self-employment report released by FreshBooks (n.d.) shows that “an unprecedented number of traditionally employed Americans are now contemplating self-employment. Overall, 40% say it’s at least somewhat likely they’ll work for themselves within the next two years. The numbers are even higher among those under 35 and/or the highly educated (>50%).” Millennials, at least somewhat, appear to be heading towards entrepreneurship.
What seems to drive this, according to the same report, is “the pursuit of career control and/or fulfillment”. So how can we get a higher level of control and fulfillment from our current corporate jobs?
You don’t have to be contemplating self-employment in order to make use of the lessons entrepreneurs around us learnt along the way. We can also use these insights to improve our own careers, regardless of the company we work for and our current role.
In this article, we’ll take a look at the 3 most important lessons in entrepreneurship I took from reading Derek Sivers’s book, “Anything you want” and will be exploring how you can apply them to your own corporate career.
Lesson 1: Your business is yours, so you can shape it however you like.
What Derek says:
“When you make a company, you make a utopia. It’s where you design your perfect world.” (Sivers, 2011, p. 2)
In the book, Derek explains that your business is your utopia. You get to create it, you get to make and play by your own rules. You can make it anything you want, you are not forced to turn it into someone else’s utopia. It is yours, so tailor it to you, not to what you think you should be doing/not to what others told you it should look like.
How you can apply this lesson to your career:
While a job always comes with a job description, it is you who is fully in charge of your career. There is a lot you can do to tweak the job you are into your interests and your long-term career goals.
Your career is yours, so shape it however you like. What this can look like in practice:
Look for the projects or opportunities that match the skills you want to develop and the direction you want to take your career to.
Build an internal network of people who have the job you aspire to have one day. Learn what their approach is, their attitude, the skills they developed, the network they have themselves. What can you learn from them and emulate as you gain work experience yourself?
Take a moment to write down how your ideal job and workday would look like. Then look for opportunities in your current role to do more of what you wrote down. Next, identify which job could take you even closer to that ideal, and start working towards achieving it.
Read this LinkedIn article for more tips on how you can shape your career at whatever stage you are in. I wrote it when I was not where I wanted to be in my career at the time either, and I shared the thoughts that helped me at the time.
While you’re at it, will you follow me on LinkedIn for more career tips? Thanks and see you there!
Lesson 2: Focus on your customer first. Your business is there for your customer.
What Derek says:
“Don’t pursue business just for your own gain. Only answer the calls for help.” (Sivers, 2011, p. 3)
Derek’s point, in my interpretation, is that you should not only get in business to make money. Start from a real customer problem/pain point and solve it. Have that as the basis for your business.
How you can apply this lesson to your career:
This principle can apply so beautifully to your career as well. Whether you are in a PM role, a sales role, a marketing role or an engineering role, product always starts with the customer. Are you just developing, marketing and selling features, or are you starting with understanding who your customer is, what their hardest problems are, and addressing them with a frictionless solution?
Similarly, if you focus on helping others around you, whether it is your manager or your colleagues, you are more likely to have success in growing your career faster. Instead of solely being focused on making money or gaining status, focus on your stakeholders and how you can best make their lives better at work. They will notice you and keep your name in mind next time they need someone to count on (or give a promotion to).
Lesson 3: Don’t do more of the wrong thing. Instead, try to find what the right thing is.
What Derek says:
“Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently promoting what’s not working.” (Sivers, 2011, p. 3)
This was one of my favorite parts of the book, where Derek presents the idea that you should not keep doing more of the thing that is not working for you but go back to improving instead. Perhaps you can even look at completely different ideas or approaches instead.
My takeaway from what he says is to focus on improving your solution to the customer problem you are trying to solve, rather than pushing your current solution more forcefully toward them. You will know you have a hit when you start seeing a response from your audience.
How you can apply this lesson to your career:
So how could you apply this to your career? If a job or a project is not working out for you anymore, pivot.
If you’ve tried an approach for a while, gave it your best without any significant changes in results, ask yourself, how could I look at this differently? Change the scenery. Change the angle. Change the perspective. Go back to the drawing board. Look at the problem in a different way, and maybe a different approach will reveal itself.
You can always take an iterative approach to your projects, your work relationships, your job, until you manage to improve and invent something that gets you the response you are looking for.
Keeping it small
One of the things that struck me most about this book was that Derek was not in it for exponential growth, fame, or money. Instead, as he explains in the book, he tried to make the company smaller, not larger. He just wanted to help people and wanted to keep his company small. While he successfully helped countless customers, he did not succeed on this last count. :) During the course of a decade, he made millions upon millions of dollars and employed dozens of people.
One person who did succeed in keeping his company small and is very happily a solopreneur to this day, is Paul Jarvis. He explains his entire philosophy (it struck me how Paul and Derek are similar in some respects) in his book, Company of One. Highly recommend.
The main takeaway
According to recruitment consultancy Robert Walters, “91% of millennial professionals think career progression is a top priority” when they consider a new job opportunity. So why not borrow some of the principles entrepreneurs have used to be successful to your own career progression?
If there is something you are taking away from reading this article, let it be this: entrepreneurship is a mindset, and you can apply these principles to your career as an employee of a company.
Personally, I feel very grateful for the opportunities I have had in my career so far. I truly started from zero, made my way to where I am today, and I am working on where I will go tomorrow.
With every new role I take on, I feel I am getting closer and closer to the “perfect” role for me. The one where people say “you were really made for this”. This comes from having taken and created opportunities that moved me closer to what I wanted, but also helped me discover what I wanted from work in the first place.
Derek is showing us that we can. So let me offer this for you to consider: be your own entrepreneur, where you view your career as your business, and you, the CEO, are steering its trajectory.
Photos of me throughout my career. Just like yours, probably, it has highs, lows and everything in between. I am now grateful to have had the career I did so far, even the lowest points. They helped me learn and grow. I tried to make the best of the opportunities I was presented with and, if they were not there, to create ones myself.
Did you find this article helpful?
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If you didn’t, I’d love to hear from you. What didn’t hit the mark for you and what would you like to read about instead? Email me directly and let me know.
Who is Derek Sivers?
Derek Sivers is a musician who stumbled into entrepreneurship while he was trying to get his music out there. And who’s done a whole of a lot since.
Also, please know that this article is my interpretation of his book’s message, so if you want to see his own words, go to the source.
References
Inc. (2017, September). Entrepreneurs Say This Is the No. 1 Factor in Their Success. https://www.inc.com/magazine/201709/inc-staff/2017-inc5000-ceo-survey-traits-successful-entrepreneurs.html.
FreshBooks. (n.d.). FreshBooks 2021 Annual Self-Employment Report. Retrieved April 10, 2022, from https://www.freshbooks.com/press/data-research/usemploymentreport.
Robert Walters. (n.d.). 91% of millennial professionals think career progression is a top priority. Retrieved April 10, 2022, from https://www.robertwalters.co.uk/career-advice/91-per-cent-of-Millennial-professionals-say-career-progression-is-a-top-priority-when-considering-a-new-job.html.
Sivers, D. (2011). Anything you want: 40 lessons for a new kind of entrepreneur. Penguin Random House UK.
