Delightful Surprise

People may forget what you say, but they’ll remember if you made them smile.

Derek Sivers is a jack of all trades and a master of...many. He first made a name for himself by starting the company CD Baby. He has received much more attention for his speaking and writing. He's also a programmer and circus clown.

In Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur, Sivers describes a way of doing business that prioritizes making people smile. One of his company's policies was, “We’ll do anything for a pizza.” Sivers explains: 

If you needed a big special favor, we’d give you the number of our local pizza delivery place. If you bought us a pizza, we’d do any favor you wanted. We’d get a pizza every few weeks. I’d often hear from musicians later that this was the moment they fell in love with us.

When someone was ordering from their website, there was a box that would ask, “Any special requests?” This led to some delightful ridiculousness. Sivers explains:

One time, someone said, “If you would include a small, rubber squid, I would appreciate it. If this is unobtainable, a real squid would do.” Just by chance, a customer from Korea had sent us a packaged filet of squid. So the shipping guys included it in the box with the other customer’s CDs.

The video that the customer made explaining his appreciation is epic. 

A big part of Sivers's way of doing business is surprising people in delightful ways. Those of us who are not entrepreneurs could learn from it.

Delight is like love and faith. By sharing it with others, we are not depleted.

When we delight someone in a surprising way, we get to share in the delight.