EntreLeadership - #210: Seth Godin—Change Your Mind, Change Your Life

Episode Date: June 26, 2017

Marketing master Seth Godin returns to the podcast for an in-depth conversation on change, from why we avoid it to how you can make it the number-one weapon in your arsenal. We’re also sharing another EntreLeader story. Small-business owner Mike Langston, owner of Tampa Sheds in Tampa, Florida, discusses his journey to success at his family business. entreleadership.com/podcast Summit 18 Registration Infusionsoft's 2017 Marketing Trends Report All Access Membership Discount Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Now, here is your host, Ken Coleman. Broadcasting from the Music City, this is the podcast of leaders, by leaders, for leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. And, oh, my goodness, do we have a conversation for you this episode? Probably one of my favorite people on the planet to talk to. Many times he's been on the podcast, Seth Godin joins us again.

and we just have a free-flowing, free-range conversation. And then really excited about this. Eric, the producers brought you a story from Mike Langston. This is one of our All-Axswembers. So if you don't know what All-Axcess is, it's our online tribe. These folks are winning because they are engaged in coaching, content, and community. He's going to share his story, and this will really fire you up. And don't forget, we always have some free resources coming your way.

Well, folks, Seth Godin needs no introduction. If you do not know who he is, I'm going to leave it to you. Goethean.com and just dive in. Here is the inemitable Seth Godin. So we've talked about that before. I've interviewed so many times. Just curious, let's say you're out and about, do you do public transportation? If you're out and about and you see something, you notice something, somewhere in Manhattan, Central Park doesn't matter.

Do you jot it down instantly? Do you do a voice memo? What do you do to capture things right in the moment when you're moving? Well, I like to be in the moment. So I tell myself I don't need to write it down. And then two hours later, all I'm left with is the feeling that I just saw the best thing I've ever seen in my life, but I can't remember what it is. And the more I can't remember it, the more perfect it was. And so I've decided that I can't humor myself anymore and I better write something down.

and about half the time I will look at it later and I will not be able to either read my handwriting or know what I meant so all I'm left with are the scraps. That's great. Oh, Will, this is so good. Were you recording that? I was just shooting the bull, but that was really fun.

All right. Okay, well, let's just continue then. Seth, I've never asked you this before. I think I've interviewed you, I don't know, between Entree Leadership, Catalyst, and Beyond close to 10 times now. what is your morning routine or do you have a routine? Actually, I have a rant about my morning routine.

Oh, please share. It involves Stephen King. And I discovered that my rant was stolen yesterday in a column by a Harvard Business Review editor. Wow. So my rant is that Stephen King, one of the greatest authors of our generation, regularly goes to writers' conferences and answers questions. And the fourth question, it's always the fourth question, is Stephen King, you're the greatest. writer of our generation, what kind of pencil do you use? As if having the same kind of pencil as Stephen King will help you. Exactly. I'm certainly no Stephen King, but it doesn't matter what kind of

pencil. And the column I just read was about a guy who got Malcolm Gladwell to use a brand new USB keyboard and then mail it to him as if using Malcolm Gladwell's keyboard would help. Right. So what I have for breakfast is a interesting ritual but not fascinating because it's just weird and I've had it for breakfast every day. And, you know, in terms of juicing myself up, some people wake up and the first thing they want to do is make sure that the internet didn't break while they were asleep or worse that people weren't talking behind their back and saying really horrible things. So the first thing they do is they check all that. And I can't imagine a better buzzer. kill than that. Because it's very rare that you're going to check your email and your social

status and say, oh, good. Everything's fine. Now I feel really creative. And so I think that building the habit of finding your own way to fill in blank space is essential. But filling in blank space with noise that you didn't ask for feels silly to me. You are an observer. You say that. I mean, that's kind of your ritual. It's just a lifestyle now. You observe. You write. You share. And a lot of people benefit from it. I'm curious how much you digest of other thinkers, observers, writers. I asked this question of Gary V one time. Of course, we did an event with you and Dave and Gary Vee one time in New York. And Gary's fast, he's just a fascinating individual. And I asked him about who he digested. He says, I don't have time to read anybody else. I thought that was interesting. Do you,

I don't want to say follow, but do you read other thinkers, whether they be dead and gone from historic context? Just curious, I've never asked you that. What do you consume? Oh, it's such a gift. I couldn't imagine isolating myself from that. Yeah, I agree. I mean, you know, there's $20 bills all over the sidewalk. Every once in a while, you should bend over and pick one up. You know, I've read every word that Tom Peters has ever written. I've read every word Steve Presfield is written in nonfiction, Jackie Yuba. I mean,

there's this long list, Pam Slim. I probably subscribe to 200 blogs. It doesn't matter which ones they are. It matters that I'm looking for patterns. And, you know, if you think about a beautifully trained

lifelong sushi chef, if he goes to another sushi restaurant, it only takes three seconds to figure out what's different, right? That you know enough about the technique you can look for the things that don't match up. And that's where learning happens.

So I've written enough and read enough that I don't have to read a 200-page book to know what it says. I just have to look for the pattern match and the pattern break. And I think that, as Tom Peters taught me, if you get one idea out of a $20 book, it's a screaming bargain.

And I'm always amazed at people who say, they don't have the time to read, but they somehow managed to have the time to watch Game of Thrones or they somehow managed to find the time to check what's going on on Facebook. No one's going to remember seven years from now what you read on Facebook today. But if you read the right book today, it's going to change your life forever. Yeah.

Oh, I so agree. I want to stay here for a second on what you just said, this idea of picking the $20 bill up, paying attention to what's going on, patterns. For the small business owner or just any business owner in the game of business, How is that a competitive advantage? How can they turn that concept into a competitive advantage to make sure they're paying attention to patterns in their own space? Well, you know, you use the phrase game of business, and I'm really glad you did, because the people who are followers of Dave who come to events like these have decided that they are playing a game in the sense that they would like to move up,

they would like to roll double sixes, that they would like to change things. And that's a very tiny portion of the world's population. And this explains why it's so difficult to get people to learn things now that learning is free, now that learning is widespread. That access to learning is there, but people are still standing there, tapping their foot saying, yeah, but if I can't learn it in three seconds, I'm going on in the next thing. And I think where this brings this back to the $20 bill stuff, you know, two university professors. I think they're from Duke are walking down the quad and they're both economics professors and they pass a $20 bill lying on the ground and the first professor walks right on by. And the second one asked the first one, who's a professor of free market economics,

why didn't you pick up the $20 bill? And the guy says, well, it's obviously fake because if it was a real $20 bill, someone would have picked it up already. And that's the story we tell ourselves when we don't want to engage with ideas that stress us out when we don't want to engage with the possibility of change. We tell ourselves the story, well, it can't be any good. I should just go back to my day job when in fact, your day job at this level is to change your day job. That's what you're supposed to be working on. How do you learn a technique or see a pattern or sign up for a course that's going to

change the way you deal with people or money or processes or inventory? Because the only way things they're going to get better is if you do them differently. You blogged about this recently on your blog. In Search of Familiarity is the title of it. If you folks want to go read it, I'm going to tee you up on this because we're talking about change. You write two short sentences in the middle that changes the unfamiliar. Change creates incompetence.

And then you say, in the face of change, the critical questions that leaders must start with are, why did people come to work here today? And secondly, what did they? sign up for. I want you to expound on that. All right. Well, let's start with the incompetence part. You're competent at what you do now, but if the world changes and temperatures rise to three degrees, or if one of your employees quit or you come into a bunch of money, you will now be incompetent because you don't know how to deal with it yet. Change creates an environment where you're not an expert. So if you

don't like the feeling of incompetence, you will fight the feeling of change. And we see this all the time. We see this in, you know, the high school principal who's new on the job or the high school principal has been there for 30 years. In both cases, that person says, well, we don't do it that way around here. They're saying that not because they don't care. They're saying that because they like being competent. And if you hire people to be competent, why are you surprised that when you bring change to the office, they push back? you hired them to be competent.

And so my argument is if you acknowledge that change opens doors and takes you where you might want to go, or even if you acknowledge that change is out of your control and it's going to happen with or without you, then getting comfortable with the feeling of being incompetent is one of the most important things you can do. So that's huge. And so leaders have got to keep putting themselves in a position to, I guess it's, liberate the people on the team. Hey, you're going to make some mistakes because we're going to a place we've not been before. That's really embracing the messiness. Is that what you're telling us? Well, it's a big part of it. And we end up because people are afraid, misdefining mistake, right?

So what happens is someone becomes sloppy, someone becomes disrespectful. And they say, hey, boss, you told me I can make mistakes. Well, no, we both know that's not the kind of mistake we meant. The kind of mistake we mean is the generous one, the brave one, the one that leads to learning. That when you're using your best judgment and it turns out your best judgment is wrong, you just learn something and now your judgment becomes better. That's the kind of mistake we're talking about. So if you look at a hyper-successful company like Starbucks, Starbucks was in the music business, then they weren't. Starbucks was in the bakery business, then they weren't.

Starbucks was in the business selling wine at night and then they weren't. These are mistakes. So, is that a good thing or bad thing? Well, if you measure almost anything about Starbucks, it's easy to acknowledge. It's a good thing because overall their hits are better than their misses and they thrive. Or if I look at someone like John Hammond, the great A&R guy from the music business, he discovered Aretha Franklin and Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan in one career. But what people don't mention is the 250 artists he discovered who were total clunkers.

Wow. Yeah, that's so good. All right. I love to do this, folks. You know this. I love to just take one of his blog posts, just team up, and we already dove into one. So here we go. Another one.

I love this one, thinking clearly about quality. Now, again, I'm going to summarize of folks, Sethgodin. com. You can go read these things. But I love this. You lay out quality defined by Deming and Crosby, then defined by Ralph Lauren. in or Tiffany. And this is a great little post, this idea of how we're defining quality. And there's three ways that you lay out there. But again, the challenge at the end is you ask the question,

what sort of quality are we seeking? Again, break that down. So words get in the way all the time because they're all we've got, but they're not as precise as we need them to be. The word quality has a very specific meaning in Detroit. That when Toyota, was coming up fast behind Ford and General Motors, they were making a really inexpensive car, but it was almost perfect. And the Honda went even further than that. So quality means that the tolerance on each screw is 0.1 inches better than the competition. That quality means that the car is exactly where it's supposed to be, when it's supposed to be there. It has nothing to do with making a Lexus. It has to do with meeting spec, keeping your promise. That is a form of

quality. Then there's this other kind of quality, which is the Lexus, which is the expensive one, which is the one that we really should call luxury. That's not a useful way to criticize a Honda. And then the third kind of quality, I will argue, is the most amorphous and the one that is probably the most spiritual, which is sweat and vulnerability and right effort, which is generosity, which is bringing a humanity to our work. So if you say to your people, we need to improve our quality, well, which of the three are you talking about?

Because there are processes, very specific ones, to benchmark your way to the first kind. But if you try to apply those processes to the third kind, the humanity and vulnerability and real peopleness of going to work, you will fail.

And so I just wanted to raise a flag about that Because even in my office, I hear the word quality used in ways that are too general. And I think we got to be really specific. All right. Let's stay here and go more specific. So for the leader who's listening into this, they just heard that challenge. What does that look like as far as breaking it down and saying, okay, this is our product or this is our service? And once we kind of define, okay, what kind of quality are we looking for here?

How does that third quality, this idea of effort, the human, in this. How do we best portray that authentically to the customer? Because I get what you're saying. I think our audience does as well. But I think that's important for the customer to see and feel, not just here, correct? Absolutely. So let's talk about the movie of the founder, Michael Keaton's take on McDonald's. And if you watch the first 20 minutes of him taking over and growing the chain, the first kind of quality is what it's all about. Sweeping up. No. piece of garbage left on the ground for more than a minute. No hamburger waiting for more than nine minutes. Stopwatches. Every single time you go, it's the same. That was the secret to

McDonald's early growth, that they mechanized a non-mechanized industry. But then in the poignant denouement of the movie, Ray Krakko has his own self-esteem issues, totally humiliates and hurts the McDonald's brothers for no reason. He violates a handshake deal. He, he, undermines them, he doesn't give them the respect they deserve, and at the end he even opens a McDonald's across the street from them to put them out of business. That isn't humanity, nor is it the quality that we seek when we run an organization. And I would argue that if you are serious about that kind of quality, the quality of acting as if you were being seen by others, then you will be seen by others. That, you know, the United Airlines debacle happened

because there was a culture of treating customers as the other. There was a culture of cutting costs at every corner and blaming it on being a public company. You can change that culture. You're the boss. It will be expensive. It will take time. But if we do it, it will show itself in a thousand little ways, not in some big planned PR stunt. But in the fact that when we work with humans who work with humans, sooner or later a human who's a customer,

customer is going to see it and know it. Yeah, that's great. So really what you're challenging us to is to look at quality from a holistic standpoint. It's not just one version of quality. It really needs to be the combination there. Is that correct? Well, you see, it was interesting because McDonald's after the movie in the 70s and 80s got lost and decided they needed the third kind of quality.

So they put tablecloths in McDonald's and started serving popcorn. And it failed. And the reason it failed is that they didn't understand. understand marketing. And what marketing said is that McDonald's stands for one kind of quality, but is diametrically opposed to the other kind. We don't want to spend $14 a person at McDonald's. That's not what it's for. That's not what it stands for. So it's easy to get jealous of an iPhone or a Lexus or the Union Square Cafe, but that might not be the business you're in. Let's talk about that marketing with intention.

That's something that anybody who's followed you a long time knows that you're very serious about and gives us some great content. And so to this point, this idea of making sure that the customer is getting the story and understanding what you're here for, how do we market with intention so that we really are cutting through all the noise in 2017? Well, I'm running a seminar right now for a few thousand people online and we spend a lot of time talking about that. this. My argument is that if you can hear my voice, you live in the richest part of the richest world there's ever been, and you are probably not short on water or food. And that means that the things that you buy, you are buying because you want them, not because you need them, and you're buying them because it gives you some sort of pleasure to engage. And the marketer has the ability to tell you a story, a story that will change you.

a story that will give you more joy. So, what do marketers do? What we do is intentionally cause a change to happen in someone's state. We make them feel seen, or we make them feel like they are part of something, or we make them feel like they are taking a risk and swinging through the air, that we get to choose what state we are trying to cause. And I think we've got to be clear that that's what we're doing. I'll give you a really specific example.

Let's say you're a contractor and you build public schools. Now, you could define what you do as we build a public school that meets spec, period. And I would argue that's merely the cost of admission. What you actually do is make the school feel smart for hiring you. That's what you do. If that's your job, then the question is, how would you act differently if your goal, in addition to building a school that meets spec, was to make the school board feel smart. Because if the school board feels smart,

they're going to tell other people, and that's where your next gink's going to come from. Would you, for example, install internet cameras all around the job site so everyone on the school board could check every single day without leaving their desk? Would you, for example, issue more detailed reports than you promised? Would you, for example, meet or beat every single date you sent and be really clear about how and when you're doing that?

These are all acts that have nothing to do with the school itself and everything to do with what you do as the person who runs the organization. That's really good. I love that breakdown. Let me ask you further. Those examples you gave obviously gave peace of mind. I feel like maybe those were peace of mind category items that certainly met the goal of making the school board feel smart. What about the idea of the differentiator? Maybe investing a little bit in future business by cutting your profits.

by offering something that no other school contractor would offer. Is that also a strategy? Oh, by all means. I don't like the word differentiation because it's centered around the marketer. It needs to be centered around the customer. Yes. So that what you have the ability to do is to create something that's remarkable. And what remarkable means is worth making a remark about. And so if you invest some of your money in creating these interactions with people, educating them, changing their state, that investment will

pay off if you understand the narrative of your customer. But too often we think, because it's so hard that our job is to do our job. And for a long time, that was sufficient. But in an internet connected world, in a world where if you make a product, it's cheaper on Amazon, for sure, in a world where if you do a service, I can find someone cheaper than you to do it with three clicks online. You can no longer bet that you are smarter and more aware than your customers. Your customers are probably more aware than you, which means the only hope you have is to do something that other people can't or won't do. What advice would you give to the small business to standing out when they're fighting the Amazon's, the big boxes, the big digital, boxes, stores and competitors like that, and they may have to charge a little bit more because

they can't make the margin the way the big box stores do. About the experience, I just want you to speak to experience. When someone walks in the store, what do you think is a competitive advantage there when you may have to charge more and then you're going to have to build a customer base that decides to come to you because dot, dot, dot. Well, I wouldn't say you may need to charge more. I would say you must charge more. Here's the question. If you knew you had to charge twice as much, what would you do? Right?

Act that way and only charge 10% more. You're going to clearly have to charge more, but then what would you do? And one thing that we must do is realize that we as a consumer are a hypocrite compared to we as a marketer. So if you're the consumer who never hires freelance help, who never pays extra, who always shops the cheapest thing, who's always handling to get a discount, then why are you surprised that your customers are acting like that? On the other hand, if you can figure out how to become the kind of customer you would like to serve, you'll develop the empathy for what that customer

seeks. So there are car dealers in places like Dallas and others, where instead of haggling with you for every last penny and then trying to rip you off for rustproofing, they just charge extra, but then they drive the car to your house and you never have to pull it in for service because they come and they collect it and they engage with you on three other levels. Plus, they don't try to rip you off when you want to trade in your car next time. That they are doing business in a completely different way. And you can browse the internet all you want. You're not going to find someone who does what they do better than they do it.

So that's the opportunity that we have. It's similar to what happened when supermarkets started selling meat and baked goods. The butchers mostly disappeared and the bakeries mostly disappeared because you could get commercial run-in-the-mill, ordinary, average stuff for average people, bake goods and meat for less at the supermarket. So the butcher's gone and bakery's gone. Except for the bakeries that now make something you can't get at the supermarket because it's fresher. It's more natural.

It engages with you because the person in behind the counter recognizes you because they use that red and white string on the white box, et cetera, et cetera. Or the butcher down the street from me who buys one animal at a time and you walk in asking for one thing. He says, I don't have that. All that's left is this piece. And people wait in line for that. So these are the choices now we have to make even though we're not butchers and even though we're not bakers. Yeah. That's really practical.

Love that. All right. something else that you are thinking about and give us a little preview of what's going on in your head as this idea of leveling up why we're afraid to. So what does that mean? Yeah, I hinted at that earlier. So the two things I'm doing most now are the marketing seminar run and the Alt MBA, which is an intensive 30-day workshop. People in 50 countries have taken it. We only have a thousand students a year. It has live coaches and video conferencing, and it works. It's the most successful intervention I've ever done. And I'm fascinated at how people have interacted with this idea of

becoming someone else, becoming leveling up to becoming a better, more impactful person. One thing we notice is a lot of companies will reimburse folks for their tuition, for continuing Ed, which I think is great. And many of our students hesitate to submit the invoice. And they do that before they take the course. And the reason they hesitate is they are afraid that if they say to their boss, they are leveling up and taking something like this, the boss will misunderstand them, or the boss will ask for something they can't submit to. And it changed things, and it's scary. And I'm delighted that after the seminar, they see the world a little differently and they're okay with it. But the other thing that happens a lot is we get stuck in our status role. We see ourselves as an

assistant vice president. We see ourselves as the CEO of a company with $2 million in revenue. And to become a CEO of the company of $10 million in revenue is too scary. And so we settle for what we're going to do today, which is what we did yesterday. And for me, given the huge access to learning all over the internet now and the low cost of doing an experiment, of launching something, the only explanation I have for people who are stuck is that they're stuck. And they're stuck because they actually like the role that they are in. And it's too frightening to level up and go to the next place. And Dave's work is a great example. Dave has been explaining in great detail how to get out of debt. And millions and millions and millions of people a day listen

to him. But only five or ten percent of them follow through because the other people, it's not that they don't believe it'll work. They know it does. It's that they're stuck in their status role. And part of what we must do to move forward is accept the fact that it's more important, more urgent to go forward than it is to find the comfort of staying where we are. And you know what's ironic about that. It's certainly with the example you gave, for Dave Ramsey's audience is the status. It's some weird mental jihitsu. They think it's more comfortable, but they're struggling.

And if they would just sacrifice for a while, they could get out of that ditch of the struggle. The week-to-week paycheck, the day-to-day, am I going to make it? That's what's interesting. So let me ask you this, because I know you've talked about fear before. If fear is driving these people to stay in the status quo and not level up using your term, Is it that they're afraid of the unknown? What is that actual fear, in your opinion? Is there some specificity to that?

Yeah, I mean, it comes from 10 million years of evolving species, which is if you change your status, you are way more likely to die. That, you know, squirrels don't like change, and chimpanzees don't like change, and earthworms don't like change, because change rarely leads to a better life for a wild animal. And the way wild animals persist is by avoiding. change whenever possible. So that's hardwired into us deep down that don't blow it. Don't blow it is a phrase that we hear over and over again. And so you see these videos on the internet of the person who's

winning the race and then slows down and gets past at the last minute or the kid who's riding a bicycle and screws up and slams into a wall because it's don't get upity. If you get upity, bad things are going to happen. And that phrase about getting upity came. from people who want to keep folks down. They built a culture based on status rules because they're in charge. And the banks really like debt. The banks make billions and billions of dollars on credit card debt. They're not going to try to get you out of credit card debt.

They want you to be in credit card debt. And Facebook really likes it when you're constantly checking what people think about you on Facebook because that's what they do for a living. So what we have to figure out is what really matters to us. And not just what do we deserve, but what do the people around us deserve, our kids or our customers or our coworkers? Do they deserve something better? Because if we can bring generosity to the table, now it doesn't feel selfish.

The generous thing for you to do is level up. The generous thing for you to do is serve more people. The generous thing for you to do is get out of your own way and bring that power. you've got to others. And we've been brainwashed not to do that. And I think that's the dominant arc of my career is to point out to people that we don't have to. And you're experiencing this with people who are signed into your class. They're kind of sharing that with you, right? They had to kind of baby step into it. Is that what you're hearing? Yeah. I mean, you know, we don't have any trouble getting enough people to sign up for the Alt MBA. What is fascinating to me is the Q&As,

the backs and force, the questions that people ask, the reassurance that they seek. What's fascinating is that the thing that works the best inside the Alt MBA is when peer pressure, because it's all group-based, strips away so much of what you've been telling yourself about where you belong in the hierarchy, because in this setting, you're not in that mode. In this setting, you actually have a safe place to lead and connect. So that is the essence of what we teach. I have never held content back. There are 7,000 blog posts for free on my blog.

If there's a secret, I'm going to tell people that what I've decided that the future of learning is, it's not telling them a secret. It's getting them to experience what it feels like to think differently. What does it sound like when you change your mind? Because if we don't change our minds, we're in big trouble. All right, so you're calling the Alt MBA. We don't want to give away the farm here because this is something you're doing that's really going well. But give us a philosophy.

Why are you calling it the Alt MBA other than obviously they're not going to go get a full master's from a university? They're doing it through you. But what philosophy? What are you trying to drive home through this group? All right. Well, we teach three things. How to make decisions, how to see the world clearly, and how to get other people to go along with what you see and the change you seek to make.

And it turns out to do any of those three things. You have to change yourself first. So what's an MBA? I got an MBA from Stanford in 84. I've experienced what it is. If you can get into one of the five most famous business schools in America and you want to go into finance or consulting, you should do it because it's going to cost you $200,000, but you're going to earn that money back.

For everybody else, the question I would ask is, what are you going for? If you're going to learn the stuff, well, you can learn the stuff from five books. You don't have to go. If you're going to get a piece of paper, let's be clear about what the piece of paper is good for. But if we dig down, what you're really doing is going to change your mind. You're going to learn how to act like somebody who has an MBA. And I don't think that takes two years. And I don't think it takes learning to Black Shoals option pricing equation.

I think what it takes is enough peer pressure that you will act as if. And if you can do that for 30 intense days, I think, and the people who have been through it think, that suddenly the world looks different. It's like people turned on more lights. It's like you hear the director's commentary on everything that's going on around you. And once you can see, then you can decide. And when you can decide, you can act. So that's my mission.

My mission is to help people go through a process that they can't go through if they just read 20 pages in a book. And if you need business school to do that, by all means, please do. But I was trying to save you $197,000. Which I'm sure everyone appreciates. Okay. At the very onset of our conversation, you mentioned patterns and how you're observing patterns and so forth and so on. So an intentionally big question here, just curious. what patterns are you noticing in business in 2017, or maybe it's even bigger because you look at culture and it all kind of weaves together.

That's one of your brilliant talents is the ability to kind of see things not just in the business space, but culturally. So I'm just curious. Any patterns that you're fascinated by or concerned with? What are you seeing these days? Okay. So pattern number one is the number of people who are making a living. without a job is going through the roof. And it's not for a month or a year. It's a career. And that's new and really significant. Okay, explain that. How do you make a living without a job?

Well, you know, Jay Levinson, I mentioned him a couple times, but Jay Levinson first wrote about this in the 70s or 80s. You know, you are a handyman. You have six different customers who you do coding for. You're a freelance graphic designer. You live in Thailand where the cost of living is one-tenth. And so with the client, you've got remotely, you're doing fine, and you don't have to work all the time. Or you are a conference organizer and you put on three conferences a year. Go down the list. That the number of trade shows everywhere you look, it's possible to be an impresario, a freelancer, a connector, and make a fine living.

There used to be, you know, when I did that in 86, my grandmother, freaked out because she didn't know what that meant. And now it's common. I'll tell you a quick aside. In 85, I was featured in Playboy magazine fully clothed for a project that I had done. And my grandmother kept that issue of Playboy, the Women of Mensa edition on her coffee table because she needed to tell her friends that I wasn't a failure. Oh, so funny. What an opposite end of the Specter, she's concerned about Seth, and then all of a sudden, you're in Playboy and you're on the coffee table. There you go. And then the second thing that I would say is that at the same time that this is going on, the commoditization of almost everything is getting closer and closer to complete.

That it used to be that you could fly under the radar and import something from China or whatever. You can't anymore. I can look it up, and that looking up leads to a race to the bottom if you make a commodity. So that would be the second trend that I see. And then the third trend would be a widening chasm between curious, interested people who are learning a lot and leading, and masses of people who have been seduced into watching more television and are falling ever further behind. Okay.

That's enormous. I'm very passionate about the third one. To me, it's a leadership issue, I guess, for influencers to try to fight that trend of those who are continuing to learn and be curious. And those are the hallmarks of successful people, certainly of leaders who stay the long haul. I'm a parent. I've got 11, 9, and 8-year-old. So I think for parents and leaders, this is an important conversation. How do we buck that trend?

Well, your kids are so lucky to have you. Let me tell you what I have seen that matters when they're that age. Getting straight A's is a horrible trap. And if you are pushing and rewarding your kids to engage in compliance and to prove that they can comply, you are starting a pattern that's going to last their whole life. And I am way more interested in a kid who's learned to solve interesting problems. and has figured out how to lead. Those two things are key. That means that by the age of 11, they're editing Wikipedia articles in the real world, or they're organizing a neighborhood fundraiser, or they are sitting and working out math problems that have no answer that can be looked up in a key. These activities are truly essential to build as a pattern, because if a kid can learn that there is no right answer and they can learn that there's something more important

than having an authority figure say, yes, you did a good job, then by the time they're 20 or 30, and there are no jobs, they're going to be fine. But the kid who expects that their A's going to get them into a famous college and that's going to get them into the placement office and the placement office is going to get them a good job and they're going to be able to keep that good job for 40 years, that's gone. It's gone. I do this for our audience quite often, so this won't throw them, and I ask your grace on this. And I'm not asking for you to affirm what I did. I want you to truly tell me what you think, right or wrong. So to follow up on that, Seth, our 11-year-old just finished fifth grade, public school, great public school system here in Tennessee.

They have this thing in the fifth grade called Biztown. And so all the fifth graders in these schools, elementary schools, go to this big giant trade fair type thing, and it's a real town, and it operates, and it's really cool, and they all love it. They think it's the greatest thing in the world. And so the kids get to sign up for a job that they would like to get, and you know where this is going. To be fair to the teachers, they can't give every kid what they want. It's impossible based on the system. So my son comes home, and he says, they gave me meter reader.

So he's the guy that has to walk around and read meters. Now, I could see it, Seth. I mean, he was truly crestfallen. I mean, it was real. It was genuine. It wasn't a tantrum thing. And he has dyslexia. And that, you know, he's done very, very well.

He's excelling. But we've had to really work with him there because, you know, in the public school system, they're not really set up very well for kids who have these unique learning challenges. All that said, I made a decision. After talking with him and my wife, he was really disappointed. I said, buddy, you're not going to have to go do that. That's a, that job. You hate it, the idea of it, and you feel less than.

You wanted to do something creative. He loves video editing and shooting things. So I brought him to our office. We have a world-class video channel that I'm on every day. And he worked that whole two days with different members of our team. Was I, and I don't mind you criticizing me, I just want to know. I think this is important for parents. Was I right in kind of saying, hey, I'm bucking the system, and I'm going to let you go do something you actually enjoy and something you'll learn for?

from because he was very empowered after those two days. Well, it's a complicated question. I'm not going to answer it directly. Let me first describe what I thought you were going to say, and then I'll go backwards sideways. When you say meter reader, like the Con Ed guy who figures out how much electricity you've used? Yeah, yeah. Okay.

So one possibility is to say, what would it be like to be the most astonishing meter reader who ever lived, the one who when he retired? everyone in the neighborhood would come to his retirement. Because you and I have met someone like that at the post office. You and I have met someone like that who might be a meter reader. Could he model that behavior? Because if I was a teacher and I was going to go to all the trouble of having my kids go through this, you can bet that there would be no job that I would assign that would require people to act

like a compliant cog. That's silly. And if each job gives people an outlet. to be a human, there's a really cool lesson there. But leaving that aside, I think it's thrilling when kids go and do work in the real world. I think it's thrilling, you know, if you think about a kid who gets sick with the flu and misses two weeks of school in fifth grade, people don't notice when they're an adult that they miss two weeks of school in fifth grade.

So why not if your kid doesn't get the flu, have them spend two weeks not in school doing something extraordinary that they will notice. I'm a big fan of that. So what I would challenge you and he to do is to follow it up by having him actually make and edit and publish movies because he can now. And if that becomes an essential part of his regular homework pattern, he can treat it like something as important as school, not something he does despite school. And that's where doors really begin to open. because when you say to a 10-year-old or a 15-year-old, what did you make? And they can point to something that they made.

That builds a super-important pattern going forward. And I have never met a 10-year-old or 12-year-old or a 15-year-old who was not capable of making something. That's good. All right. Well, thank you. I mean, that's what I wanted to know. I want to buck the system, the institutionalized, you know, the assembly line thinking. But at the same time, that's good advice.

Seth, I want to get back to the blog. You blogged on this idea of three ways to add value. We hear this concept of value thrown around in business and leadership spaces all the time. But you broke it down to a very digestible, I think, takeaways, how I would put it in a nice formula to be thinking about tasks, decisions, and initiation. Walk us through that, how we can be adding value daily. Most people spend their day doing tasks, meaning there's a to-do list. They finish the day having done more than they started, and it feels satisfying. The thing about tasks is it's easy to find people to do tasks.

That's how companies get big. The second way we can add value is by making decisions. Right now, should I do this or should I do that? Should I pick up this or should I pick up that? Customer wants something, should I do this or should I do that? Decisions are a higher level of value creation. They require more training. They have bigger repercussions.

The third level is initiation, which is the whole idea of even figuring out what to decide, what to do next. And that's the highest level. The mistake that many freelancers and entrepreneurs make is they get stuck doing tasks. And tasks are fine, but if you're hiring yourself to do tasks, you're leaving an enormous amount of value on the table. Because if you can figure out how to get someone to do a thing, you should so you can go back to your job, which is making decisions and initiating. Let me do a spinoff question there on initiation. How do we take that idea?

Initiation is what happens when you start something out of nothing, you break the pattern. How do you get your customers to take part in that initiation process as well, where there's this back and forth and you've got this great communication and they're so into the product or the service or to your brand that they're initiating ideas as well. so that you've got this wonderful communication system to continue iteration when necessary. Well, that's a great dream. I don't see that happening very often. Why?

Most customers have been trained to engage with their status role. Most customers look to the supplier to tell them what's next. Henry Ford famously didn't or did say, if I'd ask people what kind of car to make, they would have told me to make a better buggy whip. Right. because customers didn't ask for the iPhone and customers didn't ask for Starbucks. So we can certainly figure out how to dig deep enough with a trusted customer base that they'll accept the initiation we choose to make.

But in my experience, it's a little like driving by watching the rearview mirror if you ask your customers what to do next. Good stuff. As always, Seth Godin, a lot to give us. let you go. Tell our audience what to be looking for from you, how they can engage with you. Obviously, we talked a little bit about the AltMBA, but I'd love for folks to know how they can continue to engage with what you're doing. Well, I've really settled into spending the next bunch of months on these two projects, AltmBA.com and the marketing seminar.com. But every day,

for the last 15 years and going forward, my blog's there. So I encourage people to check it out. Just type Seth into Google, and there I am. Seth now. That's beautiful. How long has it been where you just type in Seth and boom, it pops up? Well, I owe my late mom a lot, but one thing I owe her for is not naming me Scott. Because if my name was Scott or Bob, I certainly wouldn't have won the Google lottery, but I've been on there for a long time. That's awesome. Hey, man, we appreciate you so much. You're a good friend to Ramsey Solutions and to our Entree Leadership brand. And we're going to continue to have you back when we can. and thank you so much. We're better for it.

It's a pleasure. You guys are great. Thank you. Hope you enjoyed that again. All things Seth Godin are at Sethgoden.com. And, you know, I don't tell you this. I just assume you do this, but let me just put this in your head. You have conversations like this that you hear, and they inspire you, they challenge you, why don't you share them? Of course, we want you subscribing, but we want you sharing these conversations with others. It's simple. Grab the link, fire it off. and whatever format you want to and tell them, hey, here's one thing, two things, three things I learned. I think it will help you.

And folks, we're not being selfish there. We just think that is sharing. Don't be selfish yourself. Share it. And of course, we love for more people to join us on the podcast. Hey, Seth is going to be with us, by the way, at our summit 2018, San Antonio, Texas, May 20 through 23. This was amazing. We had 1,500 leaders at our summit event in Orlando.

And, folks, I'm not kidding you. I think we're now at about 1,200 people signed up from that event. So this is not smarmy marketing telling you, you got to move if you want to be a part of it. You have to move. It will sell out, and it looks like it's going to sell out really fast. Of course, Dave Ramsey, our leader is our real host. I get to MC the event. Dave is welcoming Seth Godin.

Donald Miller, guest of this podcast. Gary Kelly, CEO of Southwest Airlines, former guest of this podcast, CEO of Chick-fil-Aid and Kathy, former president, CEO of the Ford Motor Company, Alan Malawi, world-renowned economist from the Reagan era, Dr. Arthur Laffer, former Secretary of State Condoleez-Rice,

Christy Wright, Chris Hogan, and myself, all on the stage. If you would like to get your podcast discount, text the phrase, Summit 18, that's the number. So the word summit, and then 18, smashed in there. Summit 18.

Text that to 33-44-4-4, or of course, you can go to Entreeleadership.com, click on podcast, click on this show, and get the link in the show notes. And don't forget, Infusionsoft, bringing you an amazing tool, the 2017 Small Business Marketing Trends Report. This is data that they have mined. Over 1,000 small business owners gave them this research. This is huge. They created a report to go with the research, and it's going to help you understand where a lot of small businesses, businesses are and probably where you are. And now what does that mean and what should I do? Infusionsoft.com slash 2017 trends. That's infusionsoft.com slash 2017 trends. Of course, we have the link in our show notes.

Well, folks, over the last three years, I have had the extreme privilege to meet all access members from all around the country as we travel. It is just so encouraging. You hear so negative news about the economy from time to time. Things are going really well right now, obviously, but you hear things. And then you actually meet real men and women who are winning. And boy, boy, does it not just make you feel positive about the entrepreneurial, capitalistic spirit of Americans. And so we just passed the one month mark for our summit 2017 event. Eric the producer was there grabbing all kinds of real stories. And Mike Langston is our latest. His company is Pope's utility buildings. And you're going to hear, actually, you'll hear the

den of the lobby, as Eric was talking to Mike in our summit lobby. You'll hear folks walking around, and you'll just get a sense of how enthusiastic the event was, which you're really going to be encouraged by listening to Mike. Here it is. So my name is Mike Langston. I'm in Tampa, Florida, and I own Pope's utility buildings, and I own two locations. And we deliver and sell portable utility buildings, gazebos, and sheds. And my brother's also in the business, and his business is Langston's utility buildings, and we kind of set up under an umbrella called Tampa Sheds.com. And we serve as the greater Tampa Bay Area for people's storage needs. The business was founded in 1976 by my grandparents. I worked with him as a young boy through college, and in 94, they decided

they were ready to retire, my grandparents, and they gave me the opportunity to buy the business. So from 94 till now, I've been running at it pretty wide open without a ton of guidance. We've had success, but it was just because we just stayed after, stayed after it. When I fell upon the Entree leadership model and what it was doing, it honestly was kind of a saving grace. When the economy crashed, we were okay, we were debt-free, so we were riding it out. But I quickly turned from an owner to an employee. and there's nothing wrong with putting your head down and going after it and getting it done, but I was exhausted.

After four or five years of that, you know, the economy wasn't picking up in Tampa. I was, you know, really, really doubting if it was something I still wanted to do. And that's when I came over to the Master Series here, actually in Orlando, and I was blown away within 45 minutes of being in the room with the attendees and then hearing Dave start the story, I could have never imagined that it was going to have that big of impact on my business and on me personally and on my family. So from there, that was 2013, tried to shift some things around, get back in place, trying to get back in an ownership mode, start working more on the business and in it. And it is still important. I mean, we still do that. That's still

a struggle when you've done that this many years. But we're starting to create leaders within the leadership and grow them. So to be able to have the podcast and these events and to be able to come to them and kind of just keep getting refreshers, keep getting reminders, and gentle nudges, and then with all access kicks in the butt from our mastermind group to stay the course, it's meant a big difference in everything we do. Personally and financially, last year was the best year we ever had in business. This year is on track. We're a little bit behind last year.

Last year was really a big bounce from where the economy had come. But we were gradually growing again every year. and I attribute a lot of that to the Entree leadership plan and program and kind of giving you a framework for what we do in business. I think that was the biggest thing. It gives names to different processes that we were doing, some of them, some of them not well, some of them were new, but to give me a game plan to work inside of, to help you,

and a group of people to go back to in your mastermind and all access and say, hey, I'm bumping up against this, and I don't know what to do. And, you know, with them standing back from a distance, it's always easier for them to be able to say, hey, have you thought about this, have you thought about that, and you make those adjustments, and then you're off and going again. It's like having this group of people that are on your side to help you excel.

So when that economy crashed, and we had no debt, no mortgage at home, no car loans, whatever, we were able to ride that out without taking a check for a year. It was great, you know, advice from some people early on, but it was Ramsey and them coming in at a really, rough spot in all access and the entree team and saying don't quit don't give up this is something that is for you to do and there's work to be done and you know and then start wrapping your head around the family's aspect of our business and how many kids are involved in our business through the parents that I employ the team members and that was just a big change and we started doing team

events we started going bowling a Christmas event where we we gave away a bunch of bicycles and everybody bought a bicycle to the party and then we went and took them and gave him away, and we just started seeing the team camaraderie grow, because honestly we pushed everybody about to their limit through that rough spot. So it made it fun again, made it exciting, you know, gave us a bigger mission, you know, or helped us see the bigger mission, and, you know, we love it. So, you know, I listen to the podcast every time I get a chance or go back and listen to them, and I love them.

I was honestly just telling somebody the other day, I said, I can't remember anything that I've listened to it on a consistent basis, like the Entree podcast where afterwards, you know, I've never listened to y'all's podcast and thought, wow, that was 45 minutes I wasted. Not one time. And that's just the truth. It really is. You guys have great interviews, and there's always something to be grabbed and applied. Okay, so, you know, I talked about when I went to the Master Series, I didn't realize how isolated I had become. You find out real quick when you run a small business, especially if you start as a young person, and as you're growing it,

your friends and neighbors and what have you that end up going and taking a job, you start losing things in common, things you can discuss about business. You end up being the man, or so they see. And so you can come very isolated, and I'd found myself there. I mean, you'd start talking about a business decision

or a money decision, and the people around you are like, what are you talking about? You own a business. That's easy. You got an open check. Well, all of us at home businesses know, That's not the deal.

That's not how it works. So with all access and mastermind, you've got other people that are dealing with the same type issues and that are also trying to find community that are coming around the same problems that can push into each other and kind of call something out when you're not seeing it right or can pick you up when you need picking up

and can celebrate. Because quite frankly, a lot of times when we win, there's not a big group of people we can celebrate that understand what that win is. So when you've got those other small business leaders, around you, they know what that is. They know what it takes to get there, and they can enjoy it with you, and you're not coming off

as arrogant or over the top. It's just, we know, we know what it takes. And that's where the fun comes, and that's where the real friendship. And so even here at these summit events, I've made a friend in Brandon Meyer, Meyer plumbing out on the West Coast, so we've got kind of East Coast, West Coast

thing going, and we've been to all three summits together, and, you know, we talk throughout the year, you know, once or twice a month, and then we meet at these summits, and hang out, and it's just been a great friendship. Our families have also become friends. We went out to California on vacation and visited with them. When you talk about the mastermind groups, this year alone, I've had three different people

from either our masterminds or summit friends show up here in Tampa and visit me at my office while they were on vacation. So it's just been a blast. I mean, it's just a big family. Hey, folks, in last week's episode, I mentioned my feelings about all access and what I have seen and I want you to experience it. It's risk-free. As I said, text the word, all-access. That's all you got to do. Text the word, all access to 33-44-4, or click the link in show notes. Give it a spin and get in it, dive in it, stay in it. I promise you you're going to win. Can't wait to hear

your stories of those of you who said, you know what, Ken, I took your advice. All-access and the community of all access, and the content and the coaching has changed. business. Well, folks, next week, you're going to have a great episode. I sat down with John Tabas. John Tabas is the co-founder of the Bookes Company, and the backstory is, was rejected on Shark Tank, but they were already winning. They knew they would continue to win, and they did, and then one of the sharks contacted them, got involved, and the story is just up, up, up, they go. You're going to love it. It is so practical. Here's just a portion of what you're going to hear next week.

Let's not focus on what's cool today. Let's focus on what problem you're solving. And is it a real problem for consumers? And my response to that criticism of, you should be building the Uber for Flowers is like, that already exists. If you want flowers delivered today, I will show you 10,000 websites that do that. That is not a real problem.

Getting flowers from a local florist to the end consumer is easy. I can give you 10,000 websites to do that today. So that's not a real problem for the customer. The problem for the customer is those are old flowers. and they don't know where those flowers came from and those flowers are really expensive and what they order is not what shows up. Those are real consumer problems

and I have built this foundation upon which I can give those things to them. I can give them fresh flowers that are sustainably sourced that came straight from the farm so we know it that has zero waste. All right folks, can't wait to talk with you again next week on behalf of Eric the producer, engineer Will Rudder and the entire Entree leadership team.

Thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon. Thank you.