Lent Day 8… Like A Coke Machine In A Monastery

Derek Sivers, the founder of CD Baby, once wrote about why he refused to sell advertising on his website. Here’s what he had to say:

I got a call from an advertising salesman, saying he’d like to run banner ads at the top and bottom of cdbaby.com.

I said, “No way. Out of the question. That would be like putting a coke machine in a monastery. I’m not doing this to make money.”

He asked, “But you’re a business. What do you mean you’re not trying to make money?”

I said, “I’m just trying to help musicians. CD Baby has to charge money to sustain itself, but the money’s not the point. I don’t do anything for the money.”

This goes back to the utopian perfect-world ideal of why we’re doing what we’re doing in the first place.

In a perfect world, would your website be covered with advertising?

When you ask your customers what would improve your service, has anyone said, “Please fill your website with more advertising”?

Nope. So don’t do it.

Siver’s line, Like a Coke machine in a monastery, has really captured my imagination.

It speaks with such visual accuracy of something that is dissonant…

There’s a garishness about the glowing lights and bright red plastic exterior, the slogans, the low buzz of the electronics and coolant, and the ka-ching of coins being deposited, along with the clank-clunk of aluminum cans tumbling down its mechanical belly into the receptacle for pick up—just waiting to be popped open: pssssshhhhhhh—crack—fizzzzzzzzzz.

Like a Coke machine in a monastery.

This is something that does not belong. Something that offends the sensibilities of, well, everyone who is thinking.

What fascinates me about this picture is how easy it is to recognize the dissonance everywhere else—like in a monastery, or in everyone else—but it can be nearly impossible to see the dissonance in our own lives.

I wonder what the Coke machines in the monasteries of our lives are?

I wonder what the Coke machine in the monastery of my life is?

Be honest (sober) in your evaluation of yourselves. —Romans 12.3