Anything You Want

Anything You Want is a challenge to conventional business culture. It rejects the common obsessions with scale, competition, and financial accomplishment, and instead calls entrepreneurs to build businesses rooted in personal values, joy, creativity, and meaningful impact. Sivers teaches that success is not about impressing others, maximizing growth, or accumulating wealth. True success is creating a life where the work itself is fulfilling, aligned with your identity, and useful to others. Entrepreneurship is an art form, not a race. A business should serve the founder, not the other way around. Happiness, freedom, and contribution are far more valuable than expansion or prestige.

The book encourages readers to start immediately rather than waiting for perfect readiness, experiment boldly rather than clinging to rigid plans, treat customers like cherished partners rather than revenue units, delegate thoughtfully but maintain oversight, and recognize when passion has faded so they can step aside with grace. Above all, it asserts that each person has the power to shape their world by choosing what they create and how they choose to live. You can have anything you want—but you must decide what that is for yourself, without being influenced by outside expectations. When you design your business to support a meaningful life rather than exhaust it, you become truly free.

Derek Sivers is a musician, writer, programmer, and entrepreneur best known as the founder of CD Baby, which became one of the world’s largest independent music distribution platforms. He initially built CD Baby to solve a personal problem and later expanded it to serve hundreds of thousands of independent artists around the globe. After selling the company and dedicating the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education, Sivers shifted his focus to writing, learning, and experimenting with minimalist living. He has authored several philosophical business and life books that explore unconventional thinking, decision-making, and intentional living. He is recognized internationally for challenging traditional assumptions about entrepreneurship and encouraging others to design lives driven by freedom, purpose, and creativity.