Painkiller Already - Sponsored Bonus: "Grand Openings & Life Status"

Episode Date: July 1, 2018

This bonus content is sponsored by American Author & dot com business executive, Seth Godin and his newest podcast, Akimbo. We're allowing the first two episodes of Akimbo to air on our RSS feed, to our audience, because we feel this is a show our fans would really enjoy. Whether it's touching on business or what's happening in our culture, Akimbo is a fantastic show and we hope you enjoy this new podcast. If you do, the Akimbo creators know PKA sent you.

We have something different for you today. Seth Godin has a new podcast called Akimbo. Listeners call it poignant and thought-provoking. It's a podcast about our culture and how we can change it. About seeing what's happening and choosing to do something. Subscribe to Akimbo in Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or at akimbo.me and listen to the first two hours right here, right now. A new podcast. Cool. Who's the first guest?

What are you going to call it? No guests? What does akimbo mean? That's never going to work. Hey, it's Seth, and this is akimbo. And now a word from ZipRecruiter, our presenting sponsor. What do eyebrows have to do with making the right decision? A whole lot, actually. Hey there, I'm Ian Siegel, and I'm the CEO and co-founder of ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. Being an entrepreneur and owning a business has been a dream of mine since I was a kid,

and I've learned a lot of interesting things while turning that dream into a reality. Like how to tell if your big idea is really a big idea. Hint, it involves eyebrows. More on that later in the show. I founded ZipRecruiter because I knew there was a smarter way for businesses to find talent. Today, companies of all sizes and industries use ZipRecruiter to fill their hiring needs. And if you're hiring now, you can try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Seth. 80% of employers who post try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Seth. 80% of employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate through the site in just one day. So try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Seth. See you later in the show.

The Italians have a wonderful phrase, salto mortale, the dangerous leap, the leap into the void. That fear we get in the pit of our stomach just before we commit, that fear that it's not going to work out. It's too soon. I'm not ready. And so we wait. But some people, some people don't wait. Carl Benz, when he launched the car, did it in Germany, where it was against the law to drive a car. And there were no passable roads. And there were no gas stations. He should have waited. Gutenberg, pioneer of movable type, launched the book when there were no bookstores. And when no one knew how to read, and when reading glasses were required but hadn't been invented yet. He should have waited.

Internally, there's constant pressure to hesitate, to hold back, not to launch, to find flaws, to give ourselves one more chance. But recently we made it worse. We made it worse because in all capital letters we added LAUNCH BIG. That you need a grand opening. That if you can't have a home run, you shouldn't even try. I blame it on Gilligan, on the Brady Bunch, and on the Beverly Hillbillies. It goes all the way from there to The Odd Couple. All the sitcoms we grew up with. The Flintstones, which are sort of like The Honeymooners, but in prehistoric times. The Brady Bunch, here's the story of a lovely lady. All these shows had a lot in common.

One of them was this. The first 45 to 60 seconds was a theme song that explained in detail the entire storyline of the show. Even though the show, after commercials, was only 24 minutes long, the network insisted that they spend a minute to catch everybody up. That makes no sense. Why would you do that? So it's a mystery then. Why invest so much of this precious time in repeating a long theme song to make sure that no one was confused? Well, it's not that much of a mystery if you understand that before the internet and cable, there were only three TV channels. Half the country was watching three channels. And if people switched from one to the other, you'd lose them. Maybe

forever. The show was live. That was it. Once and done. And so you got conservative, because you needed the grand opening, the big win, every time. Where did this idea come from? Because it doesn't line up with the way that civilization evolved. For a really long time, if you bought something, you were buying it from someone that you already knew. The people in the village were the people in the village. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. They didn't need a hype man, an advanced man.

They didn't need somebody pushing for the big grand opening. They were there yesterday, and they were going to be there tomorrow. I think it's worth understanding it came from the carnival, from the traveling salesman, from the medicine man, from the people going village to village. They'd send their hype man up front, their advanced man. They knew they only had one day, two days, four days to make the sale. And then they were leaving town again. If you blew it, it was live. You weren't going to get another chance. And so the grand opening. And so the need to pigeonhole yourself. The need to get it right the first time. To go big or to stay home. The

carnies, the guys in the carnival, called it a bally. The bally was the shtick, the theme song, the thing you'd say over and over again to make sure that every single time you interacted with somebody, you could make the sale. Here's one from a bunch of years ago, trying to get people to go in and see the piranhas. Get your tickets and come in. Killers of the Amazon can devour a cow in a matter of seconds, can leave nothing but the bare bones. First time shown in your city and you may never have the chance to see it again. Alive, alive, alive. As you can see, the goal isn't to edify, to educate, to create an environment that you're going to come back again and again. The goal is to take your money and then leave town.

And this idea that we've got to be in a hurry spread from that to the mass marketing of TV to the movies. It used to be that a movie could run for three months, six months, nine months in the theaters before it went away, usually forever. But then TV came along and TV advertising. And what the movie studios figured out was that they had a chance using TV to have really big opening weekends. And so they spent a fortune on Thursday nights advertising movies so that people would see them on the weekend. What they discovered was that giving away all the attractions in the TV ad, and more important, making a movie that lent itself

to TV advertising, didn't lead to movies that were going to play in the theaters for months. Three days, 10 days, 20 days, gone. And so the same thing happened that happened to TV. We need to hype it. We need to promo it. We don't have very much time. We want to reach the largest number of people. Let's fast forward just a little bit more to Kickstarter, which I think should be called Kickfinisher. The reason it ought to be called kick finisher is that in order to make a Kickstarter succeed, except for the obvious edge cases, the random one in 10,000 to get lucky, someone had to get lucky. In order to have a Kickstarter succeed, you need to begin with the following. You need to begin with people who trust you. A Kickstarter is the end of a multi-month or multi-year effort to earn trust and attention.

It's not a grand opening. It's a grand ending. That what you get to do when you make a successful Kickstarter is go to people, the edge cases, the loyal ones, the true fans, go to those people and say, I'm ready for you now. We're doing a Kickstarter. Those Kickstarters always work. If you have a sufficient following before you begin, they always work. So it's not a lottery. It's not a chance to grab a brass ring. So it's not a lottery. It's not a chance to grab a brass ring.

That as Kevin Kelly has pointed out, 1,000 true fans is sufficient to make it as a creative person. 1,000 people who will listen to you, who will pay you, who will show up, who care about you, who would miss you if you were gone. Only 1,000. who would miss you if you were gone. Only a thousand. So let's compare that to the grand opening thinking of, I need 10 million people to watch this TV show or it doesn't work. That's a 10,000x difference. You don't need to play that game. You can play your game. And your game is slow and steady, daring, risky, thrilling, but slow and steady. Because the goal isn't to hype your way with an advanced man using a bally day after day to get one more rube to give you a dollar to see your piranha. No, you're playing a different game. A game we're playing doesn't need a grand opening. It needs a grand finishing.

There must be an alternative. How did Wikipedia grow without a grand opening? What about Harry Potter or The Martian? What about Fifty Shades of Grey or Microsoft or Kiva or the Union Square Cafe? The list goes on and on. Most of the brands, most of the organizations that we care about, they didn't have a grand opening. They didn't have a hype man. They didn't launch with a bang. There must be another way.

The alternative is called First 10. Everyone knows 10 people. Everyone has 10 people who will listen to them. Tell 10 people. See what happens. If those people tell others, the word will spread. If they don't, make better work. spread. If they don't, make better work. Take your novel. Send it to 40 people. 40 people who trust you and like you. See what happens. Maybe they'll share it. If they share it, it'll spread. If it spreads, it'll reach more people. Sooner or later, someone will reach out to you and ask you to write something else. First 10. 10 by 10 by 10. You put an idea in the world, not to everyone in the world, just to people who want to hear it. And then maybe it spreads. And if it spreads, it grows. And if it grows, you get to do it again. Almost 20 years ago, I was at a conference. There were some cool people there. And we were going around the circle introducing each other. And the guy says, yeah, my name is Sergey. And I have this little

search engine called Google. And at the time, a lot of people knew about Google, but it wasn't the worldwide phenomenon we know today. And then he said something profound. He said, we don't do any outbound marketing promotion or hype. And let me tell you why. We figure that one day everyone will use Google. And we also know that every day Google gets better. And since we're getting better every day, we're in no hurry to have people use it for the first time because tomorrow or the day after that is soon enough because it'll be better. They'll have a better first impression. We're in no hurry. Instead, we're going to make the best thing that we know how to make and wait for people to tell others. But it's not just digital stuff. There was a little tiny restaurant in the East Village of Manhattan

years ago called Momofuku. No one had ever heard of it. You could walk in anytime. This guy named David Chang, sort of crazy, had a little counter and a bunch of tables. And my family and I used to go there sometimes for lunch on a weekend. And there were all these rules. You couldn't leave this out. No subtractions, no additions, and eat what you eat. That's all you get. But what happened day by day is the word spread. It got to the point, as Yogi Berra said, where no one goes there because it's so crowded. And it turned into an entire empire. Or consider the amazing podcast 99% Invisible from Roman Mars. How'd you hear about it? Did you hear about it from those Super Bowl ads they ran? Of course not. There were dozens and dozens of episodes

of 99% Invisible before you heard about it. Because Roman took the same approach. How do I make something for a few? Something special. Something that's really hard to pigeonhole, something new? Or consider a piece of software like Dropbox. I don't recall ever seeing an ad for Dropbox until just recently. Instead, what Dropbox did was build a service that was important to share. Not just to talk about it, but to use it with other people. was important to share. Not just to talk about it, but to use it with other people. Or my friend Jill Greenberg, one of the most talented and well-known photographers in the world.

How did Jill get there? She didn't get there by being picked by somebody to push her to the masses. She got there by making quirky art. By saying, I don't shoot pictures like everybody else. I shoot pictures like me. And so her photographs are distinctive. They don't fit in. Early on, lots and lots of people didn't buy the photographs she wanted to sell to them. The magazines, the commercial shoots that she needed. No, she was too far out there for the masses to adopt. So she did the smart thing. She didn't complain or conform. Instead, she made something the masses

didn't want. She made something for the early adopters. She refused to pigeonhole it. She didn't have to hype it because the early adopters, they're looking for something on the edge. And she had something on the edge. And then, of course, it spreads, right? The first thing that happens is the art director says, get me Jill Greenberg. And then, of course, the art director says, get me someone who looks like Jill Greenberg. And then you know you've made it. says, get me someone who looks like Jill Greenberg, and then you know you've made it. So the goal here,

when we are making our best work, the work we seek to make, is not to listen to the people in the middle of the curve, because the people in the middle of the curve aren't listening to us. The goal is not the Flintstones or the Brady Bunch or the Beverly Hillbillies. The goal is to go to the fringe, to the edge, to the people who are listening, to the people who care. Not with a bally, but with something real. To invite them in and to tell them something that they didn't know before. To bring them something that's a little more complicated than an NBC executive would have gone for, to take them on a journey from here to there, not with a grand opening, but with a small

opening, with a whisper. Here, I made this. Here, I made this. That's our work. That's our work. After the break, some questions. Questions for me, how we're going to do that, and then a question for you. Hi again. This is Ian Siegel, CEO and co-founder of ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. So you have a big idea. How do you know if it's ready for the big time?

It's difficult to get honest feedback about a new business idea. A lot of people will tell you what you want to hear. That's why I encourage what I call the eyebrow test. Here's how you do it. Describe your business to someone in one paragraph or less, but the whole time I want you to stare at their eyebrows while you're talking and pretty much ignore the words that are coming out of their mouth. We all have an almost uncontrollable reaction when we like something. Our eyebrows go up. When we don't like what we're hearing, eyebrows scrunch. Eyebrows never lie. If you aren't regularly seeing raised eyebrows, your idea isn't ready. That's the importance of eyebrows. I hope you found it helpful. Here's something else that may be helpful. If you're hiring, you can try ZipRecruiter for free today. ZipRecruiter has helped businesses of all sizes and across all

industries hire great people. In fact, 80% of employers who use ZipRecruiter has helped businesses of all sizes and across all industries hire great people. In fact, 80% of employers who use ZipRecruiter find a quality candidate through the site in just one day. Just go to ZipRecruiter.com slash Seth. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash Seth. Thanks for listening and see you on the next episode. All right, questions. This is the first episode, so I don't have your questions yet about episode zero because there wasn't an episode zero. Instead, we're teeing you guys up to give me feedback and questions about this episode, which I'll answer next time. If you want to give us a

question, just visit thedominoproject.com and click the appropriate button. And while we're waiting to hear from you, here's a question for you and your team. How would it be different if you weren't in the hype business? If you weren't focused on Hoopla and the ratings and how many likes you have right this minute? How would you build your product or your service or your cause? If your goal was to make it deeper and more elegant? If complexity wasn't a challenge, it was a goal? What would happen if instead of seeking to make noise, you decided to do something that mattered instead? If you want to submit a question, just visit akimbo.link, A-K-I-M-B-O dot L-I-N-K, and click on the appropriate button. See you next time.

What are people saying about the Alt-MBA? I just, I needed something, something more, a way to level myself up and find other kind of connection and really be challenged. Maybe I operated for 10 years in my life and this is what was my best space. But then in Alt-MBA you learned what was your best on Monday, it's going to be better on Tuesday night. And you're going to do it in a space where everyone cares about you so much that they're not going to let you off the hook. Alt-MBA, in fact, is not a course. It's a workshop. It's one month in which a professional coming from all over the globe can work with 100 other professionals that will make you a better leader. Not enough time. We know it's not enough time. Do it anyway. Some people want to self-edit.

They want to say, I have writer's block, all these excuses, basically. And so this is just an exercise in getting out of your own way and also collaboration. It's more about how you think, what you're willing to offer yourself and the group. I have a clearer vision with my company and who I'm trying to build it for. Really having a lot of skills to speak more confidently about who I wanted to be and where I wanted to go. Find out more at altmba.com.

It's a simple question, really, but I think it helps us understand so much of the world around us. The question? Who eats first? Whether you're a wild animal, a bee, or a human, status roles matter. Hey, it's Seth, and this is Akimbo. And now a word from ZipRecruiter, our presenting sponsor. When it comes to hiring, we can learn a lot from Vikings.

Hi, I'm Ian Siegel, and I'm the CEO and co-founder of ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. Being an entrepreneur and owning a business has been a dream of mine since I was a kid, and I've learned a lot of interesting things while turning that dream into a reality. Like why talking like a Viking can be helpful when you're hiring. More on that later. I founded ZipRecruiter because I knew there was a simpler, more efficient, and more effective way for people to find jobs that they love and for businesses to find fantastic employees. And if you're hiring now, you can try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Seth. 80% of employers who post

on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate through the site in just one day. So try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Seth. See you later in the show. See you later in the show. proud, legal, few years older than Baxter. And they hate each other. And the reason, I think, is it's not clear who gets to eat first. Who's the alpha? Who's in charge? When I was in fifth grade, I ran for president of the safety patrol, and I lost. And in ninth and tenth and eleventh and twelfth grade, I ran for student council president, and I lost. And in 9th and 10th and 11th and 12th grade, I ran for student council president, and I lost. My senior year, I had the best signs. I put myself out there, and I lost. I got to college, and I ran for dorm rep, unopposed, and I lost. I don't think the question is why I kept losing. I kept losing because people weren't voting for me.

They didn't see me for how I saw myself. The interesting question is why did I keep running? So let's begin with business cards. Joel Bauer has made a famous meme on the internet about your business card. You see that business card? Cheap. Strathmore stock. 60 pound. Holds a crease. And the best riff in the movie American Psycho is about some insecure people

comparing, of all things, their business cards. Look at that subtle off-white coloring. The tasteful thickness of it. Oh my god, it even has a watermark. Why do business cards even matter? How can this little piece of paper somehow be construed as a representation of who we are? And why do we care? Well, if we think about the Godfather, we can start to understand how status roles are portrayed in the media and how we internalize them and believe them. In the opening scene of The Godfather, Bona Sera, the undertaker, the lowest status person in the community, 96 pounds, balding, wearing a nondescript suit, the undertaker, comes to see the godfather. The day he chooses is the day of the godfather's daughter's wedding.

Sicilian tradition, according to the movie, is that the godfather cannot refuse a favor asked of him on this special day. So in this moment, the Godfather is vulnerable. He's vulnerable because his status can be questioned. The Undertaker comes to him and asks him to perform violence on some men who have hurt his daughter. The godfather, Marlon Brando, turns to Bonasera and says, That I cannot do. He cannot do it, of course, because if he did, it would make him nothing but a hired thug. Bonasera raises the stakes. He offers to pay the godfather, which of course is an insult. It turns him from

a mere hired thug to a hired thug who's just doing it for the money. And in that moment where the status roles of the high status, status-seeking godfather is threatened by the low status undertaker, we see writ large something that's been going on for millennia. We understand the relationship between Baxter and Truman because it turns out that throughout the animal kingdom, including and especially humans, status roles matter. Just about everything you will ever see in a movie theater or a theater or read about in a novel is about status roles. The movie Trading Places is about

status roles. The sitcoms of the 60s, the comedies of the 80s, the thrillers that we see today, they're all about who's moving up, who's moving down. But of course, it happens in real life. And of course, it doesn't have anything to do with money. Think about that meditation weekend. Nothing but spirituality. Except some people at the weekend are friends with the instructor, so they have a little bit more status. And of course, the guest instructor is wearing a special outfit and sitting in a special chair, so he has a little bit more status. Tribes, these informal groups of people that we are all part of, groups of people that we are all part of demand status roles because it's a form of governance. Who's up and who's down. And capitalism requires status roles because it gets people to work

even after they have enough. That the ability to be able to say, I might not have everything, That the ability to be able to say, I might not have everything, but I have more than you, is buried deep within our culture. That what we have done is built layer after layer after layer in commerce and in community based around our roles, our status, our business card, our standing in the community, those Labraton shoes that she's wearing, that Birkin bag, who's sitting at the cool table at lunch, who's the head of the football team or the cheerleading squad or the student council, that we repeatedly look at other people and decide where we stand. And what marketers have done is run with this. What politicians have done is run with this. Because we understand that deep down, human beings care about it. Keith Johnstone, in his brilliant book Impro, spends the first third of the book talking about how theater is nothing but this exchange of status roles. Professional wrestling is nothing but an exchange of status roles.

Nursery school is status roles. Who gets to play with the blocks? Is it the kid who's the biggest? roles? Who gets to play with the blocks? Is it the kid who's the biggest? How do we treat somebody who's wearing a cute outfit versus one who isn't? How are we looking and juxtaposing who has status and who doesn't and which status matters? If you had a chance to watch the videos of Donald Trump shaking hands with various world leaders, what you see is an ancient ritual, a battle for supremacy in something as absurd as a handshake. And when a policeman pulls you over for speeding, in that exchange at the window of your car will be a debate about status roles. Are you going to play low and let the policeman play high? Are you going to take umbrage and say,

don't you know who I am and try to get the policeman to play low? We're not on the savannah anymore. We're not lions or hippos deciding who gets to eat first and who just gets the scraps. And yet, it certainly seems that way. Four old friends who haven't seen each other in a while get together over lunch. The first one, Beaming, pulls out his iPhone X, brand new, the most profitable consumer product ever created. The iPhone hasn't offered much new in the way of functionality in five years, but people keep buying the new one, and he knows why. Putting it on the table gingerly,

he's moved up in status. His friend to the left pulls out his Pixel phone from Google, Android-based, a way of showing he's smarter than his friend. He bought something with more power. Not to be outdone, the third friend pulls out a waterproof flip phone, 12 years old, doesn't matter. He's all about the functionality. Doesn't matter. He's all about the functionality. The fourth friend, though, the status of no status, doesn't have a phone at all. Doesn't need a phone. His admin will take care of it. And around the circle we go. How do we keep it running? In a society as rich as ours, with so many resources available, how do we keep it going? How do we keep making people upset and frustrated when they don't have enough status?

How do we get people to work all night, even though they have enough to earn more status? How do we create life and death situations? How do we push people to go into debt for status? Well, it turns out that shame, shame, that basic human emotion, one of the top six emotions that people experience, you know, you've got happiness, you've got fear, and then right up there is shame. Shame is the status enforcer. That what we have done is orchestrate a culture where if you are surrounded by people with more status than you, or if you believe that they have more status than you, we've instructed you to feel shame. And we hate shame. Shame's the deal killer. Shame undermines all of the things that we seek to have.

So to avoid shame, we make bad decisions. We make decisions that honor marketers or those that would manipulate us, as opposed to doing what's best for us and the people around us. And it's important that we learn to see it. That once you see it, once you see how this juxtaposition between status and shame is used over and over again, you can see how you're being manipulated. Manipulated to vote. Manipulated to work. Manipulated to purchase. That status, all by itself, has no real value outside of an arena where someone's trying to take something from us. That the rest of the time, it's in our head. It's the story we are telling ourselves about our worth, about our business card, about how we are being judged.

As always, there's insight from the good doctor, Dr. Seuss in Uridal the Turtle. Turtles, more turtles, he bellowed and brayed, and the turtles way down in the pond were afraid. They trembled, they shook, but they came, they obeyed. From all over the pond they came swimming by dozens, whole families of turtles with uncles and cousins, and all of them stepped on the head of poor Mac. One after another they climbed up the stack. What marketers have learned is that the shame engine, the tribal shame engine, won't stop working.

All they have to do is highlight it, press on it gently, sometimes with an anvil, but often gently, and remind us that we don't want to be at the bottom of the pile. They remind us with images and offers and sales that if we don't respond, we're going to have to deal with shame. And it's all in our head. Consider the market for luxury goods. Last year, it was more than $30 billion spent worldwide to buy things that were more expensive and probably

a little bit nicer than we needed. Luggage or perfume or shoes, the list goes on and on. It turns out the industry was invented by one man named Colbert in France. He worked for the king. The French had a problem, which is they weren't doing very well as imperialists. Spain and England were colonizing other countries, building markets, gaining raw materials better than the French were. So Colbert put in place a ratchet, a way to raise more taxes for the king and to build export markets. And the idea was that they would bless certain industries, give them protections and support, and thus France became the leader in things like lace and leather goods. They figured out how to make things

better than they needed to be so that people who wanted to demonstrate their status could spend extra money and gain a symbol that would allow them to do this. And hundreds of years later, it continues. The race for more status, not more than anyone in the world, just more than people in your circle, continues. And the digital world makes it even easier to play the game. That Instagram and Snap and Facebook give each one of us a stage, a stage to prance on and show our status, to humble brag our way into showing that we're just a little bit better than the people around us, or if we choose, a place to go to feel badly about ourselves, to experience shame because somebody else is moving up while we are

moving down. These networks, and they're busy calling people around you friends, even though you don't even know them, have figured out how to digitize, how to enumerate, how to rank, how to create a game where we are all the players, but we're not the customers. We are the product. We're the product so that someone else, the advertiser, can pay money to reach us. And the thing that they are extracting from us is our attention. We give our attention in exchange for avoiding the shame of feeling like we are falling behind in status. So like the godfather, like the person at the meditation retreat, like the person who's figuring out what shoes to wear to today's meeting or wondering whether our business card is good enough or not, we're all captive on this merry-go-round, a carousel, around and around and around, playing a status game. around and around playing a status game where some people are using status to extract behavior from us and other people are busy trying to gain status so in their mind they can win. So what to do about

it? Well, two things. First of all, if you're trying to do something important, something beneficial, something good, if you're trying to get something important, something beneficial, something good, if you're trying to get someone to adopt a different way of being, I think it's worth paying attention to the status of the people you are working with and the changes that you are offering. Because when your change promises to move someone's status up, they are way more likely to listen to you. That status roles inform every decision that we make. And if you're trying to sell an idea to someone, you need to be aware of them. But what if you're on the other end of the equation? What if there's a long history of status roles being used against you? Well, one more more time we can go back to the good doctor,

Dr. Seuss at the end of Yertle the Turtle. And today the great Yertle, that marvelous he, is king of the mud. That's all he can see. And the turtles, of course, all the turtles are free, as turtles and maybe all creatures should be. Interesting things happen when we start tweaking status roles. The Union Square Hospitality Group is a chain of restaurants, high-end restaurants, in New York City. A couple years ago, they decided to do away with tipping and instead add a service charge to every bill. They did this for a few reasons. One reason is that by law, the people in the back of the house, the people who cook the food, aren't allowed to take a share of the tips.

So what was happening was there was a huge gulf between how much some people were paid and how much others were paid. By adding a service charge, they were able to treat everyone on the team as a professional. And what they discovered was that it shifted. It shifted the posture of the people in the back who were paid more fairly, but it also changed the way the service staff acted. Instead of it being a sexist or racist lottery where how much you were going to get at the end of a meal was based on the whim of a diner and how he or she was dealing with their own narrative about status, the people in the front of the house

were able to act like every other professional in a field, getting paid fairly for what they did and doing their best possible work. It's interesting to note that some of the customers are uncomfortable with this, that having tipping be taken away from their discretion doesn't change the service experience, but it very much changes the status experience. That if in our head we believe that our status role is impacted by our ability to leave or not leave a tip, by what our compatriots see us do when we leave a tip, then part of the experience of going to a restaurant has shifted. It's fascinating to watch an experiment like this unfold, because each of the parties involved is shifting their experience of status, often for the better. After the break, I'll be back with answers to the questions you

submitted from the last episode. If you have a question about this one, please visit akimbo.link and press the appropriate button. candidate, they try to make a friend. And the reality is that's not a great way to figure out what it's going to be like to work with someone. It's because everybody's on their best behavior. That's why my number one interview tip is to talk like a Viking. And what do I mean by that? I mean, be direct. If they say something that you like, you tell them that you like what they just said and you see how they react. If they say something you don't like, you also tell them that and you see how they react when you give them feedback that some would consider to be tough to take. That's one of the most important reads you can get in an interview, and it's the way to find out what it's like to really work with somebody. That's the importance of being direct. I hope you found it helpful.

Here's something else that may be helpful. If you're hiring, you can try ZipRecruiter for free today. ZipRecruiter has helped businesses of all sizes and across all industries hire great people. ZipRecruiter has helped businesses of all sizes and across all industries hire great people. In fact, 80% of employers who use ZipRecruiter find a quality candidate through the site in just one day. Just go to ZipRecruiter.com slash Seth. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash Seth. Thanks for listening and see you on the next episode.

Hey Seth, it's Maria. Hey Seth, my name is Kyle Gray. And first of all, I love the show. And that completes my question. Hi Seth, This is Paul from Huntington Beach, California. Hi, Seth. This is Anupam. Hi, this is Caitlin. Hi, Seth.

Warm greetings from Curacao. Hey, Seth. Hey, Seth. Hi, Seth. And greetings from Lithuania. Hey, Seth. Tons of questions came in last time. I was really gratified at all of the wonderful feedback you shared with me about the first

episode of this podcast. Thank you. Some tips for Q&A going forward. We're never going to be able to get to all the questions that you're submitting, and I apologize for that. The questions that I'll choose will tend to be specific about the previous episode. They'll tend to be general in that lots of people want to hear the answer. And they'll tend to be cogent, compressed, urgent, so that they don't ramble. Here's our first question. My question is, when you're doing your work, you receive feedback. How do you use this feedback, both positive and negative feedback, in a manner that is constructive and makes your work better rather than reduce its quality? Thank you.

The essence of the thinking behind 1,000 true fans is that there are a few people who matter a lot more to the creator than other people. And that's the secret of processing feedback. When a critic doesn't get the joke, when they don't understand you, when it's not what they need or want, well then there's nothing to be done about that. Let it go. Move on. On the other hand, when you hear from the core constituents, from the people that you're counting on, hear from the core constituents, from the people that you're counting on, you need to listen very carefully to that feedback. Treat different people differently. Being on your own and indeed building something that will spark change in a community. If you want to still have a balanced life, I'm talking about raising kids and also making sure that you get

at least a couple of hours sleep a day. How do you manage to build something slowly, but then at the same time make money to survive? This was the most common question that came in. And it's based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what I'm talking about when I say that the grand opening is a mistake. Grand openings are expensive. They are fraught with risk. They are foolhardy. The other approach, the smallest possible market, the idea that we can find our people and delight them while ignoring everyone else. That's not slow. That's smart. And so if you're going to make something, you have to be prepared for the fact that it's not going to work right away, that it might never work. If you're going to make something,

you have to accept the fact that it's different than having a day job. Bank tellers get paid when they show up at work every day. Creators don't. So I don't have a shortcut for how to live the life you deserve, how to have a steady income while doing this work. That's beyond the scope of what we're talking about today. But what I am arguing for is that the most efficient, smartest, productive way to do your work is not to wish and hope for the fairy of success to come and say, everyone knows your idea, because she's not coming. Alternative is to be specific, urgent, and important, and to make a difference for a few people. Because then they'll spread the word, and then you can do the work you wanted to do all along. Sometimes it feels like you're saying that it doesn't matter the quality at first, just get out there with your work, the work that you believe in. But then what if people give you their attention at first, and then you create this not perfect, you know, ugly duckling, and then

people see it, and they never take you seriously again. There's a big difference between just ship it and merely ship it. And I have never argued that people should just ship stuff out, whatever it is, just take a flyer, throw it into the world. Merely do it though, merely is something else. Merely do it means with focus and with care. You cannot know what your audience actually wants until you engage with them. So my argument is, yes, build it with care. Build it as if everything depended on it. But no, don't hold it back in fear. Don't hold it back wondering and waiting. You must engage with the audience. Does that mean that some people you engage with who don't get the joke will write you off in the future?

Probably. But if you want to, go listen to Billy Joel's early demos. Only a man who's broken can appreciate the awful pain I feel. Only a man whose world is always real can never know. Go look at Jerry Seinfeld's early stand-up. Go find anybody whose work you care about and notice that at the beginning, it wasn't that good. So you're saying to worry about organic traffic before anything else. I see a lot of creators I feel like should be getting traction faster than they are.

When is advertising the answer, if ever? Not all ideas spread organically, and there's nothing wrong with advertising. Anticipated, personal, relevant advertising that reaches people who want to get it can be really effective. My argument is that it never makes sense to buy a Super Bowl ad, ever. That you're not trying to reach everyone. But if you know specifically who you seek to reach, by all means, buy the ads. Two good questions about Kevin Kelly's notion of 1,000 true fans. How might you quickly and cheaply demonstrate the power of 1,000 true fans to someone who's a non-believer? When going through, when building up our 1,000 true fans, how do we know who to target and what to aim for? So let me take another minute to go

through the math here. True fans aren't merely fans. There are people who show up with time and money, acting as patrons, insisting that the work continue. 1,000 true fans are the core of how ideas spread. 1,000 true fans can pay for a small team of people to create magical work. The math is pretty simple. If you've got 1,000 people that will come to your rock concert weekend to spend time with the band and pay $1,000 each. That's a million dollars. When you've got 1,000 true fans who are willing to subscribe to your work, paying every month, you can make a living on that. Can you support a giant corporation? Of course not. But you can support an artist, a human, somebody who wants to make a difference. So how to choose these people? Because the people who choose you, they might be

fans. But true fans are a little different. True fans understand that they are actually engaged in the process of creation. True fans define their future through the work that the artist is doing. They're grateful for it, and they are willing to participate. So part of the discernment that we need as creators is to tell the difference between someone who will take our time and someone who will amplify our time. who will take our time, and someone who will amplify our time. That's it for this round of questions. One more time, thank you so much for being part of this. If you want to see previous episodes, if you want to see the show notes, which are sort of cool,

or if you want to ask a question for next time, head on over to akimbo.link. That's A-K-I-M-B-O dot L-I-N-K. Until next time, keep making a ruckus. Thanks. People are talking about the marketing seminar. I was completely blown away. It is incredibly comprehensive. Crazy, crazy, crazy useful.

It's easily worth five times what I paid for the course. The content in the class was awesome. What I learned, I actually could apply immediately and get results. I thought it's going to be kind of an automated course. And the big shock is the cohort. I have never felt more supported in any online program I've done. And that actually changed the way we talk about the project. It changed the way we promote it on our website.

I use it in other projects. A way to really evaluate it and to apply it that I have never experienced anywhere else. It's so much more than just a marketing seminar.