The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 282: Seth Godin - You Can't Be Seen Until You Learn To See

Episode Date: November 5, 2018

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Episode #282: Seth Godin - You Can't Be Seen Until You Learn To See "In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is a failure. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible."  Show Notes: Commonalities of sustaining excellence: It changes over time Must be willing to fail - "Okay... Will I do things that might not work?" Some of Seth's failures: many teaching mistakes, tried to build philanthropy platform that failed, blog has failed at times How to handle a slump? - "There's no such thing as a long slump." Stephen J. Gould - "The real problem is how you respond to the failure. You can't tell yourself a story that's not true." Have honest self talk -- "This isn't a slump." Stanford MBA - Friends with Chip Conley.  "Everyone there feels like a fraud or an arrogant jerk. I felt like I was drowning. The sessions with Chip changed my life."  Chips "Random Acts of Initiative" were life changing.  Chip taking initiative and not fearing rejection. Remarkable. Empathy - A mentor wants to see you do things that are bold, leap forward because of them. Be a mentor - "Make the world shinier. Bring life to more causes." Economy of words - "I made the decision to write like I talk." "Talking isn't better because you're afraid." The book publishing world and why Seth chose to traditionally publish This Is Marketing What percentage of Seth's success is luck? "98.2%"  The final 1.8% is "relentless persistence."  "The 98.2% is the parent lottery." How to deal with rejection after rejection... "Culture IS strategy. How we treat people. It's hard to do the things we're proud of." "Great ones have better clients." Side hustle advice -- Start it on the side so that you don't have to make money at it right away. You can choose your clients and never just "do it for the money." "Exactly. Great advice." Keys to storytelling - "We have too much stuff." Better understand the story you're telling yourself. Why joining The Learning Leader Circle is a good idea Use the "Get To Know You Document" "Luck for me is 98.2% of it. The other 1.8% is relentless persistence." Social Media: Follow Seth's writing on Twitter: @ThisIsSethsBlog Read: This Is Marketing Connect with me on LinkedIn Join our Facebook Group: The Learning Leader Community To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12

First is, I think, a bias for carving your own path as opposed to being a cog in the industrial system. That was lucky. My parents taught me that. And then the second thing is when you get rejected and rejected and rejected and rejected, and this is where the skill comes in. How do you deal with that rejection? Do you just repeat yourself and become annoying? Or do you learn from it and go back into the system? And so I've been rejected more than anybody who is listening to this. And I've learned an enormous amount from that.

I chose to learn from that. And that combined with the persistence to do stuff that I think would make other people's lives better has worked out. Hey, everyone, it's Ryan. Real quick before we get started with this episode, I mentioned on the conversation with Danny Eaney, episode 280, that we are building an online course. And part of the process to put the best possible course together is, very brief market research. And that is a two-question survey that I would be extremely grateful if you would take a few minutes and fill that out for me.

You can do that at Ryanhawk. Me. Again, it's very important for us to put together the most useful, the most effective course to help you sustain excellence as a leader. That Danny and I have put together just a couple of questions that will take you a few minutes at Ryanhawk.me. We will be doing a few random giveaways for those who do choose to invest just a couple of minutes to help us out as we build the best possible course we can for all of you.

Thank you so much for your support. If this is your first time here or you've been here more than 280 times, I sincerely appreciate it. I would love it if you would fill out this survey at Ryanhawk.me. Thanks so much. Welcome to The Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thanks so much for being here.

It is Mindful Monday. Text learners to 442-222 in order to join thousands of other fellow learning leaders from all over the world. Text learners to 44-222-2. Now, on tonight's featured leader, the legend is back. It's Seth Godin, entrepreneur, best-selling author, incredible keynote speakers, written over 18 best-selling books, including The Dip, Lynch, Pills. Purple Cow tribes. Most recently, this is marketing, one of the most fascinating people and smartest I've ever spoken to. A few of the topics we got into why and how culture beats strategy.

And how to be a better storyteller. Seth gets this near the end of our conversation. It's really interesting. A few of the topics, the failure Olympics. How to handle slumps. What percentage of Seth's success is luck versus skill and how this impacts you and some other great tips for mentors, mentees, and managers. Ladies and gentlemen, this one is so good. It's Seth Godin. All right, Seth. Thank you so much for coming back on the Learning Leader Show. Welcome. Well, it's always a good sign when someone asks you back. Thank you for having. I'm curious, man. So I've told you, I read all your stuff and listen to you on other podcasts, watch your videos, I was a big, big fan.

I'm curious, it's a little bit different in how I asked it from last time. But when you think about performers, artists, people in general who have sustained excellence over an extended period of time, what are some of the common traits that those people all seem to share? Well, I think that we had to be really careful with the word excellence. And I think Tom Peters would agree with me. It changes in definition over time that what it meant to be an excellent performer or artist before contemporary culture kicked in was that you regularly and repeatedly delivered your stuff. That if you went to hear symphony orchestra, you had never heard that music before and you were never going to hear it again because there were no record players. and if you needed a portrait painted, you needed one because there were no cameras.

So once we leave that realm, and I would argue it extended all the way into the 40s or the 50s, just being Frank Sinatra isn't to be excellent anymore. You're not a music box. You're not a wind-up toy. That what you have to be willing to do is fail. That what it means, I think, to be an excellent creator of any kind now is that you are okay with doing things that might not work because that's the interesting part. So someone like Jeff Coons, who's gone really close to bankruptcy four times through his art,

he is an excellent artist, whether or not you like his art, because you know you're going to see something different the next time you go. I would deem your work excellent. What are some examples of things you've tried that have not worked? within the last few years. Well, you know, I regularly take a run at other ways of teaching, things like an entire book applying evolutionary theory to the way organizations work. I spent a year in my life, eight hours a day on it, and it didn't work.

I've tried many times to build engines of philanthropy that would raise significant funds for charity. And some of the ones that sort of worked raised a few hundred K. but I have repeatedly failed at figuring out how to get people to use the same habit-forming gamification that works so well to make entrepreneurs rich to create an engine of philanthropy. So there's an example. And on my blog, half my blog posts are below average. And, you know, I'm not dumb. I do the stuff that works more and the stuff that doesn't work less.

But I'm well aware when I write a blog post that doesn't resonate with people. But that's part of the beauty of being able to post every day is you have the luxury to not waste a year of your life, but just a day of your life to discover something else that might not work. When you say well aware of something is below average, do you mean you reread it and don't think as highly of it or people just don't share it or read it as much? Oh, it's the second. I mean, I write five blog posts, four blog posts for everyone I publish. And I reread every one the night before it goes out. So I don't post junk. But if I put something in a podcast or a blog post that resonates with people, I hear from them.

And I see it working in the real world. And if I put something in a blog post that doesn't resonate with people, they don't share it, they don't talk about it, they don't get it. And so often I'm obstinate enough that I'll be back again sometime soon with the same concept. But other times I just throw up my hands and say, yep, people aren't getting this. I'm moving on. This may relate to the dip, which is one of my favorite books that you've written. You've written so many that have impacted my life in a big way.

Maybe it relates to that. I don't know. But let's say you go on a string, a series. I talked to JJ Redick about this NBA basketball player, a great three-point shooter. And for him, we call it a shooting slump. So let's say he goes on a few games slump where he's just not shooting the ball well. And he has to trust the process that his preparation and his routine will help get him back on track. I'm curious for you, if you've ever wanted to be.

on a, and I would imagine since you've written thousands and thousands of thousands of blog posts, and you've written a lot of books too, if you've gone on a run that you felt like you were in maybe a bit of a slump, that what's your, because so many people, Seth, I think you know, can relate to when things don't go well, or maybe they're in a slump in whatever their creative endeavor is. They're leading a company. They're a mid-level manager. They're an individual contributor. They're starting a business. Whatever it may be that they go on a, they have a little string or a little bit of a run where it's just not going well. It's not resonating. It's not working. How do you handle those many slumps and what advice would you give to others who are going through those right now?

Okay, well, we have to begin with this. People who are way smarter than me have studied this extensively. There is no such thing as the kind of slump that you are describing. There is the narrative we may tell ourselves about how it feels to be inside something that might feel like a slump. But, you know, Stephen J. Gould wrote an entire book about this and about if we account for randomness, a three-game slump isn't a slump at all. It's to be expected. You're quite likely to have multiple game slumps in your shooting. That's just random. The real problem is what do you do when that random event occurs. And if what you do about it is start telling yourself a story that gets in the way of you getting better, then you could will it into something much worse than it is. And I had that

problem as a salesperson early in my career is I was going to meetings and basically saying, not quite out loud, but pretty close, you're not going to buy anything for me today either, are you? and that self-talk really can cripple somebody's career. And the alternative is to understand that placebos are real, self-talk is real, and we get to pick what it's going to be. So if you can improve your performance by talking positively to yourself, then you should. You know, I wrote a blog post many years ago about the world's worst boss. and my theory is that everyone has met this person and this person is you. And we say things to ourselves that we would never say to anybody else.

And we coach ourselves in ways that we would never coach anybody else. And I wrote that eight years ago and it's as true today as it was then. So really you're focusing on positive self-talk? Well, positive unfortunately has sort of a cynical bad reputation, maybe honest self-talk instead. Honest self-talk that points out this isn't really a slump. It just feels like one. Honest self-talk like, well, this thing I'm bringing to somebody to sell them, it's worth

more than I'm charging. So it's actually, I'm here to give them a gift. And if we can tell ourselves that, which is true, it makes it a little bit easier to work with somebody. Interesting. So I'm going to bounce around a bit, Seth. I think you know my process from before. I don't script questions, but I have a ton of notes.

And I talked to one of your friends leading up to this. And we talked about you a little bit. And I'm not trying to surprise you because I know you know this guy. But anyway, I recently recorded with Chip Conley. And Chip was fantastic. And you wrote a blog post about Chip about 11 years ago now in 2007. You've probably written more since called Random Acts of Initiative. And basically when you and him were first year Stanford MBA,

students. Chip picked out four other students, strangers to him, invited them to a weekly brainstorming sessions. He explained that this is, you guys would meet for a few hours once a week to discuss and brainstorm business plans and entrepreneurial ventures. And I love that post, and I love the story. And I think there are people listening now, all various age ranges and parts of their career, the why they should implement random acts of initiative. I love for you to expand on how that could potentially impact the lives of others and maybe talk a little bit more about chip and what you guys were doing at Stanford. Okay, so when I got there and still to this day, it's a highly regarded school of business.

And almost everyone who's there either feels like a fraud or is an arrogant jerk. And I was in the category of feels like a fraud. I was the second youngest person in the class. I believe Chip was the youngest person in the class. And there were all these people around us, the arrogant jerks, who were acting like we didn't belong there because we hadn't wasted two years of our lives and an investment bank doing nothing. So those first few days are fraught.

We're nervous. We don't know exactly how this thing's going to work. The reputation makes us feel ill at ease. It's really hard to be generous in that setting. it's really hard to see other people for how they need to be seen because we're drowning. And I know now that Chip felt a little bit like I did, even though he had gone Stanford undergrad, so he at least wasn't living on someone's couch. But the point is, he decided two or three days into the semester to put a little note into my mailbox,

my mailbox and three other people. people he had seen foolishly speaking up in class, people he had seen trying their best. And the note said, I'm organizing this, you want to come. And all four of us said yes. And those sessions, we probably did 30 of them, changed our lives, all five of us, for sure. And the question is, what did that cost? What did it cost Chip to do that? Well, I would argue mostly what it cost him was the feeling when he,

he wrote the note that people would say no. That they would say, what business do you have organizing something? Who are you to get uppity like this? And I am forever grateful that he took this initiative. Because the thing about initiative is it's never given to you. You have to take it. And when I think about how the world has changed in the, what is it, 37 years since then, it's only changed in one direction.

It's made it easier than ever to take initiative to organize something, to coordinate something. But too often we get hung up in our own narrative of being a fraud that we forget that the people around us can't wait for us to lead them. I love the initiative story and think it could really help people, especially they're concerned. And there's a great, not highly viewed Steve Jobs video. And Steve has his own issues. but this video actually is helpful saying that he found the difference between the people that dream about doing things and the people that actually do things is that they're willing to pick up the phone and ask. He used the analogy of the phone because he called Bill Hewlett when he was 12 and asked for some spare parts and then he got a job working for him and that was part of it. And he just kept to that willingness or maybe he was a he found a way to sidestep the fear or confront the fear of potential rejection and ask.

I saw that blog post by you and talked to Chip about that, I thought that was a great example of how anybody, anybody listening could fight any of that fear of rejection or people saying, no, and be willing to write the little notes and ask Seth Godin to be a part of your group. This is before, obviously, both of you guys were famous. But I think that's a really potential story that could make people potentially act. And that's what I hope to do with this show. Well, I think it's fantastic. I want to differentiate Chip from Steve in one really huge regard.

Because one of the things that has taken off on the Internet is this combination of the failure Olympics and the asking hustle. And the failure Olympics, of course, is my failure is even bigger than yours. I got someone at Krispy Cream to laugh at me or whatever. And the asking hustle is, how do I get off? How do I get someone to give me something? How do I get it off of them? Steve Jobs ended up making quite a ruckus three or four times doing revolutionary things. But he was also really selfish and quite difficult.

And I think you get no points from me if you reach out to Bill Eulet and ask him for some spare parts. I think you get extra points from me if you reach out to Bill Eulet and offer him some spare parts. And that's the big difference. That what we know about an economy based on connection is that you can abuse that connection by hustling for your own selfish needs. Or you can amplify that connection by hustling to help other people without regard for what you're going to get in exchange. And I got to tell you, I get too much email and I know it's a bad habit of mine. But the easiest sort I have is that when someone shows up trying to hustle something from me, there's no easier email for me to delete than that one. What's that?

What's a hustle asking you for? Just, you know, what's your favorite color? And then you write back and they say, oh, great, good to meet you. Will you do this for me? Oh, okay. Right? Because they learn that on some, you know, singles bar podcast about how to get people's attention. And the reason that it bothers me so much is because, you know, 145,000 emails later, I've engaged with a lot of people.

But I didn't do it so that I could help people hustle. I did it because I'm looking for something that scales. And what scales is this idea of initiative around generosity. So I get a number of emails about from people who are, let's say, they're in common. college and they say, how can I as the mentee in a mentor, mentor, mentee relationship, how can I as the mentee add value to the life of this 35, 40 year old person who has helped me a lot? I feel like I'm not able to give and I want to, though. They hear your messages and they say, yes, I want to do that, but I don't have nearly as much experience. I don't have any money. I don't have nearly as many

connections. And I get that question. And sometimes I struggle, I have some ideas and I've shared some of those. But I'm curious from your perspective, how does the 21-year-old mentee offer value when they are getting value from a mentor? Yeah, I talk about this in my new book because empathy is at the heart of our culture and it's at the heart of marketing. And what empathy is, is realizing that the people who are around you don't want what you want, don't need what you need, don't believe what you believe. And often, if you're having trouble figuring out how you can repay someone, you might be saying, if I were in their shoes, what I would want is blank. But you're not in their shoes. So showing up and saying, here's $20, thanks for an hour of your time, that's not helpful. That's insulting, right?

And what the mentor probably wants is two things. One, to see you do things that are frightening in their generosity and bold, that are acts of leadership where you have taken this head start you've gotten from the mentor and leaped forward in ways that you would never have done without them. and the second thing that they're looking for, I think, is for you to become a mentor to somebody else. And so neither one of those things is a tit-for-tat repayment. Both of those things are in the same direction,

and it is the direction of weaving things better. And too often, if you're even thinking of it as a mentor-mantee relationship, you've made it small. You're thinking of it from a scarcity point of view. as opposed to an abundance point of view, a sufficiency point of view. If there's enough in the world, then the way you repay this person

is by making the world even shinier, brighter, more connected. And the reason people don't wanna do that is it's scary. It's easier to think small and say, now we're even. It's harder to enlarge the imbalance by creating more opportunity for people in the other direction. Seth, one of the things that you're really good at is what I think stand-up comedians would call an economy of words, meaning you get your point across in as few as words as possible. Thomas Jefferson famous quote, the most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

Have you developed this or how have you developed this over time? Is it from public speaking? Is it from having a lot of conversations? Is it from writing a blog post every single day for thousands of days? Or is it all of those things? I'm curious, how have you developed this great economy of words where almost every time you open your mouth that people are listening, wisdom comes out? And then nothing more, nothing extra. How do you do this?

Well, you're very kind. I would not quite go that far, but I would say two things. The first is I made a decision a really long time ago to write like I talk. because if you can write like your talk, writing goes much faster. It also makes your talking better. So before I tried to make my writing better, I tried to make my talking better. And it's really quite straightforward to make your talking better. Talk.

And if you want to record it or just pay attention, but talk. And I'm now going to tell you why you're talking isn't better. You're talking isn't better because you're afraid. So the reason you should use nine words instead of, of one is because if people don't really know what you said, it's hard for them to hold you responsible. That the reason a legal document might be too long and filled with words like obfuscate instead of confused is because the lawyer knows that down the road, if there's an argument,

they could probably outlast the other side and just sue them into submission. That you could probably write the agreement with five bullet points, clear and honest. but we don't because we're afraid. We're afraid to put it out there clearly. So what I chose to do is I said, if I'm going to be in the world, if I'm going to be on Ryan's podcast, if I'm going to write a book,

I better be willing to stand for what I say. Not a lot of weasel words, not a lot of room for maneuvering. Simply say it. If you can learn to talk that way because it's scary but you can, then you can probably learn write that way. So I want to get to your newest book. This is marketing. You can't be seen

until you learn to see. There's a couple parts here. First, you wrote a blog post that's one of your most shared post of all time called Reject the Tyranny of Being Picked, Pick Yourself. And so some of that post is about publishing, self-publishing. You have done that in the past some. This one, I believe, was traditionally published. I'm curious what made you want to go that route, especially when thinking about this, rejecting the need or rejecting the idea of having other people say, okay, you can publish using, we'll publish your work because sometimes a lot of different people get their hands in the middle of it, editors, people decide on the cover, those types of things. I would imagine you probably kept all that power, but curious why you decided to go this route.

Oh, it was definitely a non-random active hypocrisy without a doubt. Okay. You know, I have been a pioneer on the cutting edge of the demise of traditional book publishing my entire career. The project with Amazon, the self-published stuff, the last book I did, I sold 150,000 copies without it being in one bookstore. So, yeah, my philosophy for most people, most of the time, is that it's hard to justify traditional book publishing. And I think there's a giant exception here, and I wasn't too proud to take advantage of it once I saw it,

which is now that I can pick myself, I am more attractive to book publishers. And book publishers have teams of people who do things that I did not want to do. My last book, I had a file sales tax forms in 18 states, and I had to worry about warehouses and I had to worry about how big my reprint should be and foreign rights and this endless list of things

that I was able to do. They took a lot of my time. When this book came along, and it's the first significant book on marketing I've written in more than five years, when this book came along, I said, I've got the marketing seminar, it's working, 6,000 people have been through it,

but some people want it in a book form. What's the most efficient? way for me to get this message to the people who need to read it if my goal is not to also set an example for how book publishing can work. And so I made the asset allocation decision to say, all right, I'm not going to try to teach my publisher a lesson. I'm going to let them publish the book the way they know how to publish books, and I'm going to go back to writing. And so I did. And I've known Adrian for years and he's always kept his promises to me and with this book he has also kept his promises to me and so that's been great I will tell you sorry to interrupt that I couldn't

resist Alex Beck my creative director and I have built parallel to this a special edition of the book that includes 19 custom covers and all sorts of weird gimcracks and stuff so we'll be launching that right in the middle of November for the true fans because we love making stuff. And so I felt a little deprived of my ability to make stuff when it came to this book. So we took the opportunity to make stuff. Who's Adrian? Adrian Zachheim is the most successful business book publisher in the United States.

He's worked with Jim Collins. He's worked with Scott Adams, the Dilbert guy, Simon Sinek and many others. And he has published nine or ten of my books previously. Wow. So they're probably always. kind of send you a little notes. Hey, Seth, why don't you come back? Why don't you come back? How about we do this? We'll make it your life so much easier. And by the way, here's a giant advance too. I mean, was that all part of it too? It's certainly nice to be wanted. And I am

well aware that I am living under a lucky star. And I don't take that for granted. And that means that you, if you don't go back sooner or later, then they stop being open. And I learn a lot from Adrian and his team. So I have no regrets. Do I think I could have published it myself in an interesting way, for sure? But I've decided my main work is not teaching the book publishing world a lesson. You bring up an interesting point. I recently, it's been a few months now, spoke with a billionaire guy who sold his company and made a couple billion dollars named Clay Matill. Great, great, incredibly generous soul. And Clay, at the end of that conversation, how much of your success do you think is luck versus skill?

And he attributed a lot to luck. I'm curious from your perspective, how much of your success over many years is attributed to luck versus skill? 98.2 percent. Is luck? Yeah. Really? Okay. So,

I'm very confident. What's the 1.8%? A generous, relentless persistence. Relentless persistence. So, you know, I mean, I won the birthday lottery. Born to the right parents, in the right year, in the right town. That's 92% right there. And then some amazing teachers along the way, the fact that, you know, two people applied for the

that transformed my life when I was in college, and they hired both of us. If they had just hired Steve, I don't know what my life would have been like. You know, you go down this list of all these things that came out one way instead of the other way, the time I didn't get run over by that vehicle, whatever it is. But then lots of people, not tens of millions, but millions had that same lucky streak as me. The question is, what do you do with it? and first is, I think, a bias for carving your own path as opposed to being a cog in the industrial system. That was lucky. My parents taught me that.

And then the second thing is when you get rejected and rejected and rejected and rejected, and this is where the skill comes in, how do you deal with that rejection? Do you just repeat yourself and become annoying? Or do you learn from it and go back into the system? and so I've been rejected more than anybody who is listening to this and I've learned an enormous amount from that. I chose to learn from that. And that combined with the persistence to do stuff that I think would make other people's lives better

has worked out. So good on Clay for selling something to P&G for $2.3 billion. That has never been on my agenda. but I am confident based on what you said about him that he's then turned that dog food money into something really positive for a lot of people. And that's generally what you see, right? What you see is people who get lucky and know it's because they got lucky are smart enough to want to pay it back to the people who helped them get to where they got. How do you know that story? Because I'm a good.

Did you look it up as you were talking? Yeah. It's unbelievable, man. Without losing any stride. I mean, I was like, how do you, how do you do this? Okay. A couple of things actually in the book that I want to talk about. If you're cool with, I took like you, I would imagine, I'd be fascinated just to watch

your reading process because great writers always read a lot. But anyway, so you already mentioned it was based on the marketing seminar and 6,000 people. But one of the big words that come up, I think of Daniel Coyle, he wrote the culture code, is the word culture. And you say culture beat strategy so much that. culture is strategy. And as most of us listening, and this certainly applies for me too, we're working to build something that's excellent, as Tom Peters would say.

And he did say here on my show, what is your thought process? Let's say you're the CEO of a 100-person business right now. And you want, you care so much about culture, so much that you believe culture is strategy. what's your thought process towards that? If culture, if the decisions that you're making in any given moment are about an engineering focus on maximizing value in the short run, that in itself is a culture and then you have no hard decisions to make because you're constantly compromising for that. Every other organization in the world has a culture that exists because in the moment you chose

to do something difficult or something that wasn't expedient or something that wasn't for maximum profitability. That's what makes it a culture. So how do we treat somebody when someone in their family needs help? Or how do we talk to each other in a meeting when we disagree? Or how do we talk to our customers face to face and how do we talk to them behind their backs, about them behind their backs? These are all cultural choices. And too often, entrepreneurs, whose lives are so hard at the beginning because they're scraping everything together, say to themselves, I'll deal with culture later. So they put up with a bully because they need that bully in their sales department because right

now they're trying to make payroll. Or they cut some corners on an area that might be ethically difficult because they need that profit margin in order to make payroll. So they justify these decisions thinking that later, when everything's, you know, is going well, they'll build a culture. And I think what's easily overlooked is that is when you're building a culture, when it's hard to do the thing that you'd like to be proud of. So when we look at, I'll pick a simple example. If you're a freelance graphic designer, my thesis is that the thing that separates great freelance graphic designers from lousy ones is the great ones have better clients.

If you have great clients, they challenge you to do better work, better work at you better clients. If you have lousy clients, then you're going to be subject to their taste and their budgets, and you're going to get worse clients after that. So what it means to build a culture, even when you're a company of one, is you say to the lousy clients, I'm not proud of this work here, call my competitor, goodbye. And the people who do that at the beginning of their career never have to do it again. Whereas the people who always feel like they're drowning have to keep doing it and they spend 40 years doing mediocre work. Let's make this practical for a second.

The person who has high fixed costs, meaning family, cars, house, all of that. One of the ways, I know this from my own experience, one of the ways to avoid having bad clients, and this is my advice not says, maybe you agree, maybe you don't. But one of the ways, in my opinion, avoid having bad clients is that if you start whatever your creative endeavor is on the side, and if you start on the side, then you don't need the money. And if you can do it for a long time or for a good portion of time without needing the money, then you're easy, it's much easier to say no to the bad clients. And so that's one of the things that I recommend to people when they talk about side hustles or whatever it may be or starting your own business that maybe you do it on the side for a little bit before you decide to go all in like

like I personally have done. I think that's what's helped me the most personally, Seth, is being able to say no or not do the projects or not take on things because I needed the money. And so I think that's just from a practicality standpoint can be helpful. Exactly. That's brilliant, brilliant advice. And then the second part of it is the best time to spend money when you're an entrepreneur is later.

Yeah. So you get rid of the fancy car, get rid of the fancy house. You eat brown rice and black beans and you go window shopping and restaurants. And maybe you're not going to have to do that for 10 years, but you might have to do it for two. And that's why most people don't become entrepreneurs is because they'd rather have the debt and the money now. And the price of that is they have to be a cog in the machine. Another key part, I love that you wrote about this in chapter three, marketing changes people

through stories. And I would love for you to teach like a very brief masterclass when it comes to storytelling. I think when I am envisioning the leaders who have moved me, who have inspired me, who have helped me, who have served me, most of them are really good storytellers. what have you found, and you have examples of this throughout the Vision Spring story in India, the desire for gain versus avoidance of loss, like some really useful tips. So for someone who said, I would love to be a better storyteller and people go to two-day conferences just to learn this topic alone and speak about it for a long time.

But I'm curious from your perspective, Seth, what are the keys to being a better storyteller? Most of the storytelling I'm talking about does not start with once upon a time, nor does it end with happily ever after. If horribly you were diagnosed with an obscure disease, and then a week later you found yourself at the Mayo Clinic sitting in the lobby of a doctor who's a specialist. She's the number one in the world at this illness. I'm guessing that as soon as you walked into the building, and sat in her waiting room, you would start to feel a little better. And the reason is not because you've even been given any medicine yet. It's because the architecture of that room, the reputation of that doctor, the way it feels to be there, you are telling yourself a story.

And so all of the stuff that Mayo invested in pays off and the placebo effect that will come simply from you having gone there instead of to a faith healer down the street is really significant. Or the story we tell ourselves when we hook our stereo up with $80 big fat cables instead of $6.00 Radio Shack cables. Or the story you tell yourself when you pick up the phone during dinner and you hear that on the phone that helps you know it's predictive dialing and phone spam. That when that person starts talking, you're not going to believe that the thing they call to sell you is good because the story preceded it. So marketing tells you, a story in every interaction, the semiotics of it, the flags of it, the hints. We've been trained

better than any humans in the history of the world to sniff out the story behind what's being told to us. So in your case, and I confess, I don't know what it is you do when you're not doing this podcast, Ryan, but in your case, the fact that you have this podcast, the fact that you are generously showing up, that you are narrating this path for people, that's a story. And it's a story that when you want to engage with someone about something else, it's a calling card. It takes people to the next step. So, you know, our parents grew up coming from a place where there wasn't enough stuff. Factories were needed to make enough stuff.

Well, now we have too much stuff, too many places to buy the stuff, too many choices. You're not going to win by being the maker of stuff. You're going to win by being the creator of stories. And those stories won't work on everyone, but if they help us feel seen, if they help us feel safe, if they raise our status, then you can engage with people helping them on the journey they want to go on. Love it, man. Seth, thank you so much. When I started this podcast almost four years ago, I wrote you an email cold and said, will you come on the show? And you wrote me back very quickly and graciously and said, write me back in nine months when you have, when you've consistently done it.

And that one email, although you probably wrote it very quickly without thinking very much, had a massive impact on me. And I did write you back nine months to the day and minute of the response of that email that you sent me. And true to your word, you came on the show the first time and now you've come back for a second time. And so I think your work has inspired me to be consistent and to care and to be responsive to people. and to love it. And so thank you so much for coming back on again. I'd love to continue this dialogue, man, as we both progress.

Well, it remains a privilege. And it's only a happy byproduct that you are really good at this as well. Thank you. But we need the kind of people that you are. We need people who are going to say, here I am, follow me, people who can see others for who they are and what they're wrestling with and to make things better. And if everyone did that a little bit more, just imagine how powerful this culture could be. Absolutely.

Normally now, Seth, I would say, where would you send my listeners to learn more about you online? But you're one of the only, maybe the only person that you simply just type in the word Seth and Google and all of your stuff pops up. So type the word in Seth and Google and you'll see everything. But maybe you want to steer them towards the book. This is marketing. You can't be seen until you learn to see like. We actually built a page for people at Seths.blog slash now. Sest.blog.

Now. Slash now. Slash now. Sust. That blog slash now. It doesn't really roll off the tongue, but there it is. Sest, blog, slash now. Perfect.

I'll put that in the show notes, learning later.com too. All right, man. Thanks again, Seth. Really appreciate it and can't wait for the next one, man. Thanks. Keep making a ruckus. All right. Thank you.

Bye. Bye. Wow. Wow. That was so good. Always feel so fortunate. to get the opportunity to speak with someone as smart and thoughtful as Seth Godin. Sometimes these are just surreal.

Thank you so much for being here. If you found that useful, I would really appreciate it. If you would write a review, subscribe and rate the show in iTunes Apple Podcasts. That's write a thoughtful review. Subscribe and rate the show. Hopefully five stars in iTunes Apple Podcasts to truly help spread the message. worldwide and continues to give me the opportunity to do this on a daily basis, which I love so much. Thank you.

I will see you next week. Can't wait. Okay. You still there? Yeah, you did great. Thank you so much. Thank you. I really appreciate again, man.

It's cool to get this opportunity to talk directly to you and to share it with my audience. I know they're going to love it just like I do. So I really appreciate it. Super. We'll talk to you soon. All right. Thanks, Seth. Okay.

Bye. Thank you.