Is it Sivers? Because this is just one of many options

Derek Sivers once had a voice teacher who made him sing the same song as if it was 4am and a friend had just woken him up. That singing lesson somehow changed everything for our company.

You might know Derek as founder of CDBaby. He famously gave away his fortune when he sold the business. He's since written hundreds of sharp, pithy blog posts. One called "This is just one of many options" is a classic.

The post shows how what Derek thought was "the" way a song went was really just one of infinite possibilities. His voice teacher made him sing the same song up an octave, down an octave. Then twice as fast, twice as slow, like Bob Dylan, and yes, like it's 4am and a friend woke him up. And on and on.

Fer Franco and I referenced it one day. Took the core idea somewhere else. And again. And again.

Before we knew it, we had the basis for a model we now use in almost everything we do.

Fer emailed Derek to let him know. Despite our bizarre use case, he wrote straight back with delighted encouragement.

Now when we're unsure about something, we ask: "Is it Sivers?". Are we offering people more than one way? Are we offering structured optionality?

This way is just one of many.

When everything's changing at such a relentless pace, you need to try different versions, different styles, different scenarios. It's becoming absolutely essential.

One of our core pillars of Wavetable's learning design comes from a simple 300-word blog post written by someone we'd never met.

Now we build immersive scenarios where people can try different approaches, make different choices, see what happens when the variables change.

Because the first way you think of doing something?

That's just one of many options.

P.S. Where did we have this breakthrough? In a room, in person, together. Riffing on seemingly unrelated topics until it just... appeared. That's why we co-work.