EntreLeadership - #78: Seth Godin—Go Make Something Happen

Episode Date: August 25, 2014

Marketing superstar Seth Godin joins Dave Ramsey and podcast host Ken Coleman to talk about fighting fear, the power of peers and the benefits of royally screwing up. This is a podcast you won’t want to miss because we’re including a special offer for EntreLeaders to meet Seth, Dave and Gary Vaynerchuk in New York City. Listen now! http://www.entreleadership.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Charismatic, passionate, as integrity, humble, servant, faithful, inspiring, persevering, positive, flexible, driven. This is who we are that call ourselves leaders. Helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the untrained leadership podcast. Now, here is your host, Ken Coleman. Coming to you from the Music City, this is the podcast of leaders, by leaders. and four leaders. I'm Ken Coleman.

thrilled to have you with us today. Coming up, our feature conversation is with one of the smartest men in America, Seth Godin. But first, I'm super thrilled. Folks, this is a special treat. Dave Ramsey in studio with us today. Co-hosting the Entree Leadership podcast. Dave, this is awesome.

Thanks for hanging out with us. Man, this is an incredible times. And we get to be on with Seth Godin. I know it's ridiculous. You and me. We're going to be talking to Seth God. You're going to have a great conversation. Incredible.

Get out the writing utensils. the writing pad, or if you want to type it up, whatever you want to do, because it is going to be fantastic. But Dave, let's talk about this because this is all borne out of an event you cooked up, and you said, I'm going to call a couple buddies. Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk. By the way, a tease. Gary Vaynerchuk coming up on the next podcast, so you don't want to miss that. And we'll tag team that conversation as well.

But Dave, let's talk about business gets personal. It's October the 2nd. And you can check it out while we talk about it, Dave Ramsey.com, and just click on the event button. And you can check it out. It's going to be at the Rose Thetown. theater, gorgeous venue at the Lincoln Center, Dave. It's called Business Gets Personal. Why do we do this event?

Have you ever read a book or two or three from a certain author, and you started becoming just a fan, not only of the particular book, but of what that man or woman was saying? And you just say, okay, every time that book comes out, whether it's fiction, whether it's nonfiction, whether it's business, whatever it is, you just become a fan. Well, imagine if you did that, and then you actually picked up the phone. or hit an email, reached out to them, and found out they would talk to you. Wow. Well, that happened with Seth Godin and I several years ago, and we struck up a friendship

because I was just a huge fan of his brain, his writing, his blog, the books he's put out, 17 bestsellers. I mean, the guy's a rock star. Then, more recently, Gary and I have struck up a friendship. And same exact thing. I just reached out and said, hey, man, I don't know if you know who I am, but I absolutely love this new book Jab, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. I just read it and crushed it.

And, man, I'm going to be up in New York. If you ever want to sit down and have a cup of coffee, I'd like to just put a face and a voice with all this energy I see coming out of you, which is Gary is like energy personified. And so, yeah, he's like, yeah, I love it, yeah. And so, you know, it became this little mutual admiration society were fans of each other, but me, more of them. And then I thought, man, I actually know Gary Vaynerchuk.

I actually know Seth. go, I wonder if, what if, what if, I probably couldn't happen. But I wonder if they'd want to, and if they wanted to, if we could ever get the schedules aligned. And so I emailed them, this little brief idea of us just doing a little business conference thing. And then we got on the phone and, man, it just, the three of us, you couldn't get a word in edgewise because we just talked. But it was, it was magical, a lot of energy, a lot of umph. And all of that now is culmination. in this incredible thing that I'm, man, the only bad thing about it is this is probably only only going to happen once.

Yeah. But it's just, what a, it's like a pinnacle thing. It's very cool. October 2nd. All right, folks, it's going to be a great day. And again, we're saying this internally, and we believe this, this event, business gets personal, will save you tens and tens of thousands of dollars. We believe it could save you as much as 10 years of doing business the wrong way.

And we want to help you. It's going to be an unbelievable day. Here's how you learn more and sign up. Dave Ramsey.com or triple eight 22 piece. That's triple eight 22 piece. And we've got a special code for you. Just type in Entree Leadership at the business gets personal site on Dave Ramsey.com. Entree leadership is the code. You'll get this ticket $100 off. It's unbelievable. And trust me, it's going to be a special day. So we want to see you there. Even at $100 off, these tickets are expensive. Very expensive. And you're coming to New York.

This is not for everyone. That's right. That's a good start. And Seth likes it. He loves to say it's not for everyone. He loves to say that everyone doesn't need to come. And that's true. I don't want you to go into debt to come. I believe in spending time with people who can give you information and inspiration you don't have otherwise. I do that personally.

And I believe in this. This is a very, very unique event. And given the cost of the tickets and the fact you're coming to Manhattan and you can turn into a great New York weekend, if you're smart, take bring your spouse, that kind of stuff. But aside from that, you know, this is a pretty heavy investment. So don't come over there thinking that this one thing is going to change your whole life. It's not. It's one of the things that you will do that will change your life if you're ready, if you're that kind of person. That's great.

So we'd love to see you there. Well, it's time for our feature conversation. This is a real treat. Dave Ramsey and I both got on the phone with Seth Godin. I think you're going to enjoy this. So here it is our conversation with Seth Godin. Seth, we want to launch into our conversation today around this idea of things not. working. I think all of us listening to this conversation today know what it's like to have

something not work. And it's maddening. It's frustrating. And yet you write on your blog and you encourage us in speeches and beyond that we ought to be more optimistic when things don't work. Tell us why we should be that way. I would like to think that most people who are doing something important are in the change business. That what we're trying to do is make something better. We're trying to connect people or fix something or heal something or build something. All of those things involve change. The thing about change is guaranteed. It's totally different than Six Sigma running the factory floor, always having it work.

Totally different way of thinking about your work and what you do. So if you run the Delco assembly line making radios, you better have a Six Sigma mindset. Make all those radios just like you did yesterday, but cheaper and faster. But if you're in the business of change, is to do enough that some stuff doesn't work. Because the only way you know if you're doing your job is if you're getting to an edge where something isn't working. So I think that the mantra that we have to bring to the table is,

I did a good job today because I changed some people and I broke some stuff. You know, I think the rate of change out there in the culture is so rapid that that's most everybody. There's very few of those Delco Radio things really happening. Most of us are making a freaking mess, aren't we? Well, I think that one safe place to hide is to persuade yourself that you're one of those people who need to just comply. And so I try to leave a big, fat loophole at the beginning for those people, and then someone like you, unless you're the guy on the pacemaker assembly line,

I would really prefer it if you were making things better, not making things the same. The pacemaker guys, I would appreciate if they would not invent anything, just keep going. but for everybody else, I think it would be a good idea to make some change. Yeah, it's, there's, and for me, I'm an old sales guy, so I always think of the, that there's not really any failures. There's just experiments. Right, no for now. Yeah.

You know, if you figure that you're going to get a 99% rejection rate, that means every no gets you one step closer to, yes. And if you're doing the same pitch over and over again, you're making a mistake. But if your pitch, if your offer keeps getting better, those mills, Those are priceless. But for me, change is just a no. It's an experiment that failed. Yep. And we've got to do it again.

That's the way I look at it. So that's cool. Man, that's deep, Seth. That's why we got you, man. That's exactly right. Now, Seth, Dave's a perfect example of somebody who's overcome the lizard brain. You talk a lot about this in your speeches, but for folks who haven't heard you talk about the lizard brain and how important it is that we understand it and then combat it when we're looking to make a difference.

Explain that. And do it quickly because I think Ken just insulted me. Actually. Dave hasn't overcome his lizard. I'm going to talk about that for a minute. Wild animals, lizards, foxes, tyrannosaurus wrecks, these animals are wild for only one reason, and that is because right next to their brain stem

is a section of the brain called the amygdala. The amygdala's job is revenge, and it's right next to the spinal cord to tell you're on the airplane, you're 40,000 feet, 30,000 feet. you've studied aeronautical engineering. You know full well that no plane in history has crashed because of turbulence. You're busy writing a memo. That flight hits you do.

You close the laptop and you use your entire force of will to keep the plane awoft. Right? And the thing is, they're lucky for everyone else that you're on the plane because without you doing that, he knows what happened. It's going down. And who made that decision to... stop everything and will the plane to stay in the air. The answer is your lizard brain. Because your lizard brain doesn't know anything about aeronautical engineering.

The lizard brain isn't able to verbalize. So we're sitting at work and it's our boss who's boss calling us on caller ID. And we don't say to ourselves, oh, good, my raise is coming through. We say, uh-oh, I'm in big trouble. The chemicals are flowing is, found me out. I'm going to get fired. I'm never going to get another job. I'm going to lose my home.

I'm going to start the death. I'll be dead. And we go in less than an eighth of a second. We take a second from phone ringing to, that is what the lizard brain does. Now, when you see someone like Dave who makes a ruckus regularly, it's easy to say, oh, that's because he's figured this out, he knows how to make it. What's true is instead of fighting the lizard's brain, instead of putting it down, denying it, trying to make a ruckus dance with it.

They say, oh, I heard what you just said noted, but I'm going to go ahead and do this work anyway. That's good. And so we can't say I would like a perfect safe institutional opportunity where there is no fear and where I make change. What we can say

is to dance with the fear. And my last riff on this comes from the fabulous movie Singing in the Rain. And if you can visualize that movie, the key scene is Gene Kelly. But what you might not remember is that the whole time he's dancing,

he has an umbrella in his hand. He doesn't open it because it's not called singing with an umbrella. It's called singing in the rain. And that's what we have to do. Oh, that's great imagery. Really great.

I want to follow that up because I think we have a lot of entrepreneurs and leaders listening in today who are also raising kids. And I watched a speech of yours recently online where you cited the example of Lego, where our culture has purposely removed the possibility of things not working. And we're talking about this idea of change. And if you're going to change things, things aren't going to work all the time. how do we as parents raise kids to be able to understand that there is value in trying and failing and learning and trying again? It turns out to be difficult than most parents are willing to handle.

So here's example number one. You're a soccer coach of seven-year-old kids. Is the goal of the game to win or the goal of the game for your kids to discover new ways to play soccer and discover what works and what doesn't? it seems to me that every team of seven-year-old kids ought to be coached the second way that what we ought to do if we're playing soccer when kids are seven is rotate every single kid out to the field and have them discover the joy of playing soccer and if they score a goal that's fine but the question at the end of the game is did you learn anything well that's the way i coached soccer and they kicked me out of the league

because that's not what parents want parents seem to think that there's a trophy shortage and they need to win. The second example is your kid, who's always on the edge of experimenting and learning new things, and is home from school with 1A, do you say, what are you learning in the A class that's turning you on that's exciting you that you're discovering? Or do you say, we need everything to be a B or higher?

Because if you're focused on grades, which are a report card of how someone has complied to an industrialized system of compliance, the kid will hear that from you. On the other hand, if you're saying, guess what, Michael Jordan has no idea how to do accounting,

and guess what, Dave Ramsey probably isn't that good at ballet. Being well-rounded is overrated. That's right. So what we're looking for are people who are excited and engaged and willing to fail on their way to succeeding. As parents, we've got to live that.

So that means, to say you're 11-year-old, I'd like you to edit a Wikipedia article and editing it, you've got to be able to have an honest conversation about how they can edit it even better tomorrow, not say you're not qualified to edit Wikipedia. Because when we start creating these sites, improving it when it doesn't do the right answer,

not when we say what year was the war of 1812. Yeah, I think the vast majority of Wikipedia articles could be improved by 11-year-olds. A good point. That's absolutely right. Seth, I want to go back to your early career because this arc of conversation we're on, I think it would be great for our listeners to hear

from a story that pops to the top of your mind of an early failure or when something you tried didn't work and a real lesson you took away from it. So when you say early, can it be as early as this morning because they keep happening? Hey, it's your example, man.

You take it. You know, again, back to this mythology. part of the mythology is that when Seth Godin had hair, he was failing all the time, but then he figured it out and now he succeeds all the time. But that's the opposite of what's true. All those failures that happened to me early were priceless because they got me to the point of where I am today, and my job now is to keep failing to be paid for.

You need to fail. So, you know, I launch ideas that don't work. I start projects that don't work. I start projects that do work, and then they stop working, have to stop. I get threatened with arrest by the vice president of AOL if I show up on campus to apologize to her for everything that went wrong. I opportunities that end up becoming really big. I could have started Yahoo and I did it. I mean, there's this endless list of all these things I did do that didn't work and didn't do that should have worked. My mantra is if I fail more than you,

I win. You know, I think the thing that I run into, there's this mythology. among entrepreneurs. Because entrepreneurship sometimes is lonely. And it's kind of like people think everybody else's marriage is awesome and theirs isn't. And entrepreneurs think everybody else is better at business than I am. And I'm the only one over here that's lonely, afraid. And I really screwed up that last deal. And it's fun to figure out that Ken and Barbie are broke.

You know, it's fun to figure out that if you run around with enough Seth Godin's in the world, enough Gary Vaynerchukes in the world, you find out really that, And even, you know, enough Brad Paisley's in the world or Peyton Manning's in the world, you find out really the gleaming mountain of success is actually a pile of garbage. The only difference is you're standing on it instead of laying under it. Oh, Dave, that's a winner. I love that. You know, I think one of the reasons that people like you, me and Gary, want to speak up is because it's not that we say,

come on over here. Everything here is perfect. We're saying the journey keeps being interesting. interest kind of sell people on the journey, not the destination. The body language, when I'm speaking to a group of 2,000 entrepreneurs or 2,000 business leaders, changes completely when I start telling stories of our screw-ups. The whole spirit in the freaking room changes. You've seen it, too, hadn't you, Seth?

Oh, yeah. I mean, I've altered the usual talk I give, and I'll probably include it when I see you guys in New York, is the very first story I tell is just how badly I screwed up my introduction to the internet and to the fact that I was too arrogant to see what was really happening around me. I just wanted it to be like it was yesterday. You know, this conversation leads me to something you wrote on your blog recently, Seth. I thought it was a great distinction. You said you've looked at your professional life in the scope of projects.

So one project, next project, next project, versus a career. And I think that's brilliant. I think it really helps our psyche. what's the benefit of the project mindset versus looking at it as a career? Well, the project, each project, teaching them something and earning them trust. What's common is that the audience wants to engage with them

and you're doing the same work. And each step is going to be an interesting step along the way. When you go for a walk, if you hit a pebble or interesting, I'll try not to step in that hole next time. Enough to say, but I'm not allowed to start a project unless I'm prepared to finish it.

and I change who can I be trusted by, it becomes significantly easier because there's no ending. There's no destination. That's good. Another one of my favorite phrases from you, Seth, is delighting a niche. This is a wonderful phrase, and it's something that all entrepreneurs need to really understand. Unpack that idea of delighting a niche. I grew up watching Batman and the Green Hornet and the Brady Bunch. You understand mass marketing at its finest.

and cheese on the shelf. 65 and 1975 and 1985 was making average stuff for average people. Because mass market, now mass marketing has fallen apart because everyone doesn't watch the same TV show. You know, a popular show like Mad Men is only seen by 1% of the population in the United States.

And so it's a totally different dynamic. And then the second half is because more and more stuff isn't being purchased at the local target or the local supermarket, shelf space is available. So now instead of making average stuff for average people, we make

magical stuff for weird people. Weird people are people who have chosen to care, chosen to go to an edge. So if you're into fly fishing, you're weird because most people aren't. And if you're into stereo equipment, you're weird because most people aren't. And so this fragmentation

is the enemy of Procter & Gamble. It's the enemy of Simon and Schuster. They're not in favor of everyone wanting their own thing. But it's the now suddenly compete against giant companies because they have an advantage, which is they don't need everyone.

You know, Dave's a perfect example of this. Dave, I want you to speak into this because you are the largest syndicated radio show in the country that's independent. Number three in the country, playing and competing and beating the big boys in markets all over the place, and people told you forever. You can't do this. And then you said in our staff being

today, this is a weird place because we want to be weird. I want you to speak to that, you know, following Seth. And, you know, in the sense of what he's talking about, we became the third largest, not by getting the number one station in New York and the number one station in L.A., which is how you're supposed to do it. You're supposed to get those two and then Chicago and then Miami. I'm still not on in Chicago and Miami, except if you count hundreds of thousands of eye heart listeners or watching our HD TV show or that kind of thing. But, you know, we have made a real. really, really good living delighting our constituency on the second and third most popular talk station in the vast majority of the cities in America. Now, many times we've moved up to number one as a result of that, but it is often started with just getting our foot in the door and then just continuing to churn, continuing to burn.

And, you know, I just, sometimes people are paralyzed. I go back to the whole thing you're talking about with the project versus the career, and I think about these young people graduating from college right now, and everybody talks about, oh, they can't find a job, they can't find a job. It's because they're looking for this freaking mythology, this unicorn of a career, instead of just starting a project. Like if I don't start this magical, perfect career track that when I'm 52, I'll just be lost. Well, news flash, you're going to get lost 17 times before you're 30.

And so go, go mess something up, dude. Go bump into something. For God's sakes. and, you know, instead of, but instead they're like, I'm going to live in my mom's basement, and I'm going to wait tables until the perfect career comes along. And the perfect career is a unicorn. It doesn't exist. I love that.

You nailed it. And, you know, the word accidentally needs to be stated here. No one accidentally tunes into your show two times in a row. And so being on the most popular station isn't being in, even if it's not on the biggest station in town, because they've heard about it. They know of it. The word people sought you out. and that means you make something already exists.

It means inventing and causing change to happen else, but you can do. That's a powerful point, Seth. And I want to pause here for our audience and just re-ask the question for you. If your business or nonprofit or ministry went away tomorrow, who would miss you? It's a powerful and haunting question. And it's really something we need to ask continually. All right. So, Seth, we love your blog.

I know Dave does as well because you give out great stuff in a short amount of time. One of my favorite posts recently, folks. I'm going to read it to you. It's so short. I want Dave and Seth to talk about it. It's called Back to the Drawing Board. Seth wrote, isn't the drawing board the place where all the best work happens? It's not a bad thing to go back there.

It's the entire point. And that's the entire post. Seth, that's brilliant. Talk to us about the drawing board and why it is so essential. Well, if the model is, it'll be done. The drawing board is your enemy. You get something done on the drawing board. you put it into the world, and now you're set.

Now you have the mansion and the yacht and the range rover and people taking care of you're peeling grapes, and you're done. And I couldn't imagine anything worse. Because now you're just going to sit around at home waiting to die. And what's the point of that, right? That the alternative is to say, what I do is I make stuff. What I do is I create projects. What I do is I try to impact the world in a positive way

and make change that I'm proud of. And that means if you put a project into the world and it works for a while, high five, but it's not going to work forever. None of them do. There's no one riding a horse and buggy. Horse and buggies worked a really long time ago. They don't work anymore. So when it stops working, good news.

You get to make another project. The idea of not having to mourn hits a bump, but instead view it as an opportunity to go back to the drawing board. This is uncomfortable. It flies in the face of what we think we want in terms of stability. But I think it's the, and a simple example is you might like brown beans and black rice. But if you had to eat it three times a day, seven days a week, that would get old. That every time we make a new thing to eat, we don't say,

I have to go back to the drawing board, back to the kitchen, and invent a new way to enjoy my meal. We look forward to it. Well, the same thing is true with our project. You know, it's so counterintuitive, too, because I think our human nature is to control as many variables to create comfort as possible. and then when you actually say as soon as it gets comfortable, my goal, if I'm a thinking person, is break it and start again.

And not intentionally destroy something of value. I don't mean that. But this idea that the mythology of perpetuation is just scary stuff, that you're going to build something and it's just going to run forever. And without any change, without any adaptation, without any 2.0, 3.0, 3.642, And, you know, it's just, but it's counterintuitive. We work so hard in our, I guess it's our lizard brain to create, to create the variables under, to control the variables in such a way that we don't have to fear anymore and that we don't have to think anymore.

And yet the very thing that we have to do is go back to those things. So that's the brilliance of your drawing board analogy. That's why you're the man. You're very kind. You know, if you watch a four-year-old playing with blocks, here's what she'd, doesn't do. Now I need to go watch it forever. Right? But don't touch it. I'm leaving

it there forever. No. She knocks it down and built another tower. That's what we were born to. And giggles. Yeah, right. Exactly. Exactly. That's good. Well, both of you gentlemen know very well that when you try to do anything, and these are entrepreneurs and leaders that see a problem, they see what could be and what

should be, and they start a business to fix it. And when you do something that matters, both of you guys know that there's going to be critics. and you know all too well. And, you know, Seth, I want you to speak to this. You wrote about this, the idea of critics in high school, and, you know, it hurts. But there's a way we've got to handle. I love what you said in the analogy of high school on your blog.

Talk about that. I, like many authors, I'm not speaking for Dave because he's probably never done this. I used to go to Amazon to read my reviews, particularly my one-style reviews. and then one day I realized I had never once met an author who said to me, Seth, my writing is so much better now. I read all my one-star reviews

and took it to heart, and I've improved dramatically. It doesn't make you writing any better whatsoever. And so I stopped three and a half years ago and have not read an Amazon review since then, voluntarily. Sometimes people annoy me by sending them to me, but I've never read one voluntarily since then. And it's so freeing.

One-star review is made something, I did my best, and if you hate it, it's not for you. You're someone different than you. And we do not need to let the critic in. And if we do let the critic in, we do not need to say, or that person's different than the person we made this for. And I think that the lizard brain desperately wants us to go read those one-star reviews, desperately wants to let the critic in,

to memorize every word the critic says, dancing in the rain. it certainly helps to get rid of all the lightning and the thunder and just let it rain. That is good. That's just so kind. It is, yeah. No, I don't read my one-star reviews. I read other authors, one-star reviews. You know, I was thinking, I jumped over, I was reading a John Grisham novel the other night,

and I jumped over in John Grisham, how in one of his novels, had 12,700 reviews. Wow. Now, I've got like 1,000 on my biggest selling book. You've probably got 12,000 on your set. I don't know. I never looked at yours. And after 12,000 reviews, I'm scanning down there, and the third one from the top recently entered, in other words, was a one-star. And I'm thinking to myself, who is arrogant enough to argue with 12,000 other people who have given this guy? You really, your mama did tell you you were special, didn't she?

I mean, you are not that special, boy. I mean, it's interesting to me. And, you know, it's a, the problem, though, there's a, I think there's a societal problem with this. There's always been critics, and there's always been trolls. But the problem is that the Internet has given them a voice that outweighs their value. Yep. And so we have major Fortune 500 companies shifting policy based on a Twitter troll. Or based on somebody bashing them on Facebook, or somebody's opened up your company.

sucks.com and has decided to go to town on you. And it's some guy who's never done anything or gal that's never done anything. And they actually really just need to spend their time in counseling. And yet we're shifting our entire organizational pattern to fall for this troll or these guys. And it's really, really dangerous. I mean, you need to respond to legitimate problems. I do on Twitter, on my Twitter account. I know you're not a Twitter guy, Seth, but if someone tweets and says, hey, one of your

endorsed local providers is screwed up. I immediately tweet back, sorry, one of my team will get on it, email it to that department, and they do get on it. We use it as a customer service mechanism that way. But the haters and that Dave Ramsey, you're just an idiot, and you just don't understand about this, and your politics are all wrong, and, you know,

Dave Ramsey's a moron, block, block, block, because it just doesn't carry any weight once you understand who it is at sending it. That's good. And what's fascinating, Dave, is that the generation, that's coming up, completely understand this. You know, you and I see a white tablecloth with one drop of red wine on it, and we go through and been on the Internet since high school.

Something has to be flawless. What it needs to be in evidence. Authentic. That's good. I want to have both of you speak to this. We've been talking about the critics, obviously, but let's talk about the importance of peers, men and women in your life who are wearing relatively similar shoes. if we can put it that way, and how important that is to stain the course,

not being drug into the mess by the critics and people who just simply don't understand what it's like to wear your shoes? Yeah, so when Dave asked me to work with him on this event in October, my instant answer was yes, and then my second answer was also yes. And the reason that my second answer was yes is the audience is more important than the people on the stage. that finding your fellow travelers, finding your audience members, finding people who,

not just that you can sit next to for a day, but that you can, a cycle of people calling each other's bluff, a cycle of people saying, yeah, I know that you make barbecue grills and I make rubber ducks, but let's keep in this communication because your problems are going to be

a lot like my problem. And actively seeking out a peer group that is more than just a cocktail party, actively seeking out a dozen people who will meet every month at someone's office and hold each other accountable and give each other comfort is one of the most priceless things an entrepreneur could do.

And even if you can't meet in their office just to drop an email and say, hey, you may bounce this off of you. And you get back of one paragraph response, which I have done with you several times and you've done with me not enough, but once or twice. and you've asked me to get involved in projects, which I was honored to do.

But you find people like that that are trustworthy. They're worthy of your trust because of their authentic, they're accomplished, and when they look at you and say something, you know it's not some character who's never done anything dropping a one-star review based on his arrogance. It's, you know, I need to listen to this. I mean, Malcolm Gladwell addressed this.

or Seth Godin addressed this or Gary Vaynerchuk addressed this. You know, Jack Welch said this. I need to look at this and think this through. And even if the person that you're interacting with is not necessarily a household name, like some of those names I just named, if they're respected in that particular niche. Like, for instance, I got to sit in with a group of Christian men who were all worth in excess of a hundred million,

the vast majority of them were worth in excess of a billion, and spend two days with them and learn from them, and them learn from each other and empower each other on giving and generosity and creative ways to give away vast amounts of money in ways that are effective and not wasteful and not impulsive. And let them sit there and watch these titans. I mean, I was a wiener in a steakhouse, you know. Watch these Titans encourage each other because there was a part of them that even at that level discussing their vast generosity still had a lizard brain fear.

And I think the lizard brain is beat up on by the group. Yep. That's good. We are in those moments more afraid of being shunned by the group than we are afraid of the lizard. And so it pushes us to be brave. Wow. Good advice there. Well, hey, Seth, before we let you go, you know our team and Dave.

We're so excited about business gets personal October 2nd in New York City at the Rose Theater at the Lincoln Center. It's going to be a fantastic day. Dave, you schemed with Gary Vaynerchuk and Seth to put this day together. Seth will start with you and the Dave. I want you just tell our audience, maybe those who have yet to say, hey, I'm coming. I want to be a part of this. We believe this event's going to save them tens and tens of thousands of dollars of mistakes, even though mistakes are good. And we think it'll save them 10 years.

Seth, what are you excited about on this day? I guess the thing that I would say to somebody who's not yet coming and said they probably shouldn't, if you come with your arms folded and say, all right, show me, so the person who comes eager and the person who comes open, for the person who can say, I am trying to not just change my market, but to change the way I walk through the world and change what I keep track of. I've done this enough times. I've seen Dave do it enough times that I am confident we can repay that eagerness by helping people feel like the path is right there.

And only when, you know, it's great for me to be able to share this stuff online and great for Dave to be able to put it on the radio. But I think it's when we are breathing the same molecules of air and when we are in a beautiful setting that people are the most open. You know, I was on my boat dock at the lakehouse this weekend listening to, I got a real nice little Bose speaker thingy that Bluetooth's in with my phone and all this. And I was actually sitting there reading a couple of different books and just chilling. And I had some jazz music on. And it was good. The jazz was really good. But, you know, and that's a pretty cool place to listen to jazz and read a book on the bow dock, you know.

But you know what's cooler is when you're sitting in the presence. of that musician in a good jazz bar. And there's something different. The music is just different. And that's why live events are important. That's why we go to concerts. I went to an Eagles concert not long ago. I know every one of those songs.

I was a child of that generation. That's how old the Eagles are. But, I mean, I enjoyed the freaking concert. And why? They sung the same songs. Now, I'm going to try not to sing exact same songs. Seth will try to bring something new as well. Gary certainly will. He can't help himself.

But, you know, but the deal is there's something, those air molecules that Seth is discussing, that's why we go to a concert. And that's why you go to something like this. There's a different level of lift when you connect with this kind of thing. And, you know, and I've got to tell you guys that are listening, Seth, for Dave Ramsey to get to be on the stage with Seth God and Gary Vaynerchuk is like, this is just huge. And it's such a rare thing.

for the three of us to be able to align our schedules and to find something as unique as the Rose Theater in jazz at Lincoln Center. It's a world-class venue. And to be able to do something like this for us is a treat. Now, let me just tell you, when you go to a concert and the musician, it's a treat for them to be playing,

you get a different experience than you go to a concert and they're on tour and they're tired and they wish they were at home. and we're not on tour. We're not going to be tired and wish we were home. All three of us are so excited to get to do this with each other and do this for you guys. It's just going to be a freaking treat.

Seth says maybe you shouldn't come. I think he's wrong. I think if you don't come, you're an idiot. It's incredible. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You need to come. Yeah, it's going to be a great, great day on October 2nd. We'll tell you more about that in a little bit.

We've got to let Seth go. And so, Seth, you know, there's much love for you here on the Dave Ramsey team. and Dave is a big fan as well. We really appreciate you being with us. I know our audience is better for it, and we are too. Thank you, sir. Oh, you guys are awesome. It's always a privilege.

I have one last request. Dave, in October, will you sing a little Hotel California? I want to see that. Yeah, brother, there's a reason I'm in talk radio. All right, have a good one, guys. Thank you, Seth. Be good. Bye.

All right, we want to thank Seth. He is a friend of the organization, of course, close friends with Dave. And these guys are busy, Dave. And so when they give us 35, 40 minutes of their time, it's a big deal. And I know our audience is much better for it. I can't recap the whole conversation, but I want to get your thoughts coming out of that on this idea of fear of failure. And there's this cultural norm, you know, that, hey, if I blow it, I've blown it. And we talked about that in the conversation to the entrepreneur, to a leader.

I want you to address how does the leader lead through their failure with their people? I think we've coached them a lot today on how they handle it personally. But then they've got to stand up in front of eight people or 18 or 80. How does the leader lead well when they have led the team into failure? You better have set the table before it happened. And setting the table before it happened means that we have a culture of non-fatal failures. We don't shoot our wounded. And every time you make a mistake, we don't fire you.

We're not trying to hire perfect people. We're trying to hire people who are ex-aunt, who are thoroughbred. but every thoroughbred doesn't win every race. And so if you've done that and you've already given them grace when they stumbled, the people you're leading, then when you stumble and make a bad call and you stand up and you go, well, screwed that up, people. And so, but by the way, we're not going to quit.

We threw an interception, but we're not going to succeed the rest of the game. It still is the first quarter. We've got three more quarters. Every time a quarterback throws an interception, he goes sit on the bench and brood. That's right. So we're going to keep throwing a ball, and there'll be another interception maybe,

but we're going to keep throwing the ball because that's how you get touchdowns. And, you know, in the midst of interceptions or touchdowns. So we're going to keep going. But nobody said you work for a perfect guy, and we have a real clear reminder that today you don't. All right, folks, that is just a sample of what you're going to get.

And again, we'd love to have you. We'd make sure that you really review the event at Dave Ramsey.com. The event is business gets personal. We'd love to have you there with us. We have a special code. Entre leadership is your. your code to get $100 discount at Dave Ramsey.com or by calling Triple-822 piece. It's going to be a fantastic day.

Well, folks, that is going to do it before we sign off. I want to thank Dave Ramsey. And on behalf of our producer, Eric Anthony, and the entire Entree leadership team, thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.