The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 390: Seth Godin - How To Sell Like A Professional, Build Skills, & Ship Creative Work

Episode Date: November 2, 2020

Text LEARNERS to 44222 Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12 Notes: Sustaining Excellence = The pursuit of WOW... "It's not just meeting spec." Leading is voluntary "Playing covers of yourself is not leadership." Leadership vs. Management? Management is about power and a title Leadership is about stepping up. NASCAR... Starbucks closed for a day to train everyone. Why does Seth teach people how to juggle? "It's about the throw, not the catch." If you want to change your story, change your actions first. We become what we do. Lost in all the noise around us is the proven truth that creativity is the result of desire. A Desire to solve an old problem, a desire to serve someone else. It's not a bolt of lightning from somewhere else... The difference between talent and skill: Talent is something we're born with: it's in our DNA, a magical alignment of gifts. Skill is earned. It's learned and practiced and hard-won. It's insulting to call a professional talented. She's skill, first and foremost. In the words of Steve Martin, "I had no talent. None." Sculptor Elizabeth King said it beautifully, "process saves us from the poverty of our intentions." Surprising truths that have been hidden by our desire for those perfect outcomes: Hubris is the opposite of trust Professionals produce with intent Creativity is an act of leadership We become creative when we ship the work Passion is a choice Practical Empathy -- "We have to be able to say, 'it's not for you' and mean it. The work exists to serve someone, to change someone, to make something better. We live in an outcome focused culture. The plumber doesn't get credit for effort, he gets credit if the faucet stops leaking. Lost in this obsession with outcome is the truth that outcomes are the results of process. Focusing solely on outcomes forces us to make choices that are banal, short term or selfish. It takes our focus away from the journey and encourages us to give up too early. The story of Drew Dernavich — he shared a picture of his "no" pile and of his "yes" pile. He's a cartoonist. "Drew's not a genius, he just has more paper than we do." Embrace your own temporary discomfort: Art doesn't seek to create comfort. It creates change. And change requires tension. The same is true for learning. True learning (as opposed to education) is a voluntary experience that requires tension and discomfort (the persistent feeling of incompetence as we get better at a skill). Generosity is the most direct way to find the practice. It subverts resistance by focusing the work on someone else. Generosity means that we don't have to seek reassurance for the self, but can instead concentrate on serving others. Selling is Difficult - Amateurs often feel like they're taking something from the prospect - their time, their attention, ultimately their money. But what if you recast your profession as a chance to actually solve someone's problem? "Selling is simply a dance with possibility and empathy. It requires you to see the audience you've chosen to serve, then to bring them what they need." Sales is about intentionally creating tension: the tension of "maybe," the tension of "this might not work," the tension of "what will I tell my boss…" That's precisely the tension that we dance with as creators. The story of General Magic - Megan Smith, Andy Hertzfeld, Marc Porat inventing virtually every element of the modern smartphone. And their first model sold 3,000 units. There were 10 years ahead of their time. The business failed, but the project didn't. Seth's initial denial to be on my show… "Keep going and write back to me after you've recorded 75 episodes and have a big show." Episode #75 came out November 26, 2015, I emailed you that day and said, "I'm at #75, are you ready to go?" And he was a man of your word. He was episode #86. His speaking style is built through visuals. He finds the visuals first and then creates the story and application second. Why does Seth fly fish without a hook? "To disconnect with the outcome." The story of Thornton May -- He had no sales quota. He went city to city and invited everyone from a specific industry to a meal. Competitors would join and Thornton would be the person to bring everyone together. He became the person they called.

If you want to be a runner, don't spend a lot of time daydreaming about running, reading runners' magazine, buying running gear, and psyching yourself up to be a perfect runner. Just go for a 10-minute run. If you go for a 10-minute run every day for 30 days, you're a runner. And you didn't need to make any decision other than, I'm just going to go for a short run. If you want to be an empathic leader, don't go to a conference or a seminar. Just find one person and be empathic with them. and then do it again, and then do it again. And by the time you've done it six times, you're an empathic leader.

We spend all this time searching for perfect and a guarantee when what we really need to do is simply do the work. Welcome to the Learning Leaders Show, presented by Rixie and Meyer. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. If you're new, text learners to 4-4, 2-2-2. In order to join tens of thousands of learning leaders from all over the world,

receive Mindful Monday updates, what I'm reading, writing, watching, thinking about. It'll also give you more details about how my book, Welcome to Management, will help you become a more effective leader. Text learners to 4422. Now on to tonight's featured leader, the legend, Seth Godin, is back. entrepreneur, bestselling author, and speaker. Most of all, he is a teacher. In addition to launching one of the most popular blogs in the world, he has written 19 bestselling books, including The Dip, Lynchpin, Purple Cow Tribes, and what to do when it's your turn. His latest book

is titled The Practice Shipping, Creative Work. A few of the topics that Seth and I discussed. He described the key differences between leadership and management. And then Seth shares a story about why leaders need to regularly seek tension. Followed up by the difference between skill and talent and why it's insulting to call a professional talented. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm certain you'll be entertained and educated. It's the great Seth Godin. Seth, it's good to see you, man. Great to have you back on the Learning Leaders Show. Welcome. Well, it's always a good sign when they have you back. So a lot has gone on. We talked,

it's been two years. I've certainly read just about everything you've published in that time, which is a lot prolific. But I'm curious, I've asked you this before, but two years is a long time. And so I'm curious now when you think about the course of what you do and the people you study and your friends, what have you found to be some of the commonalities among leaders who have sustained excellence? Okay, so excellence means two things. Tom Peters refers to it sort of as this pursuit of wow, this remarkable, unpredictable, passionate human thing. Lots of people use it to mean meeting spec, management, doing what you're told reliably. The second one, is an important part of industrialism, but that's not your question. It's about the first one,

but I wanted to just highlight that. The people who are leading know that they are not management. That leading is voluntary. You volunteer to lead, you volunteer to follow. And leadership comes with no guarantee that you are going into the uncharted territory. And so if you look at people who are on the busy playing casinos as washed up rock groups from the 70s or 80s, they're playing covers of their old self. And playing covers of yourself is not leadership. It's a form of hacking your way forward. And there's nothing wrong with making a living doing that, but it is not the thrilling work of leading. And so I wrote the book to talk about that feeling inside when we're about to do something that might not work. You have written about the difference

between leadership and management. And you've said art is a form of leadership. not management. This is something I'm asked a lot. So I'm curious if somebody asked you, Seth, what is the primary difference between leadership and management? Yeah, it's about power. Managers have to have power.

You can't have a Burger King unless that Burger King has a manager. And that manager is only able to do their job because they can fire people who don't listen to them. Every once in a while, a manager acts like a leader, but they're very different things.

And leadership, as we said, is voluntary, which means that I can't tell you to do it, you have to want to do it. I recently recorded with Arthur Blank, the owner of the Atlanta Falcons, and he told me he aims to treat, he created or he found at Home Depot. And he said he aimed to treat every single associate employee team member as if they were a free agent because he never wanted somebody there because of a contract. He wanted them committed because of the culture. And to me, that feels like your definition of leadership. I think that's a big part of it.

You know, if you're a customer of Home Depot, what you will know is that in the last 10 years, they became an industrial entity racing to the bottom as fast as they could, partly because of pressure from Amazon, partly because of the pressure from the stock market. But the people who work at Home Depot generally aren't there because they had a lot of offers and this was the place that lit them up. They're there because it's a lowest common denominator, or cog job. that they've been trained to do. And I think that there have been glimpses of leadership in the middle of this pandemic in the middle of all these uprisings where institutions have shown up

and said, we don't have to say what we're going to say. We don't have to do what we're going to do, but we're going to do it anyway. That's when it turns into leadership. Is there one or two you can think of off the top of your head that has really exemplified what leadership is, especially during times of a crisis? Well, I'll pick two, one. One is poignant and one is sort of trivial. The poignant one is what NASCAR did after one of their drivers was harassed because he was black. That wasn't easy for them to do. It wasn't an act of management.

The other one a year before that is when Starbucks closed down for a day. And the thing is that no one works at the same time at Starbucks. They could have done it half and half and not closed down at all. But Howard shut it down because he wanted to send a message, right? It's like saying to your teenagers, don't make me stop this car. And he stopped the car. And that was an active leadership, not saying we have to punch a button on some sort of training. So we have a fig leaf.

It was, yeah, we're really serious about this. And the next time we'll close for a week. Seth, you've taught a lot of people how to juggle. and I am curious, what is it about juggling that makes it something worth you teaching to others? Okay, so first let me teach you how to juggle and then I'll explain why I'm attracted to it. You're going to teach me through Zoom how to juggle. Yes, I don't even need video, actually. Okay, let's do it.

Because we're on the radio, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're on both, yeah. Oh, we're on both? Yeah, we're on. Where do I put the balls? They're right over here somewhere. I usually keep them right near me.

I don't know where they went. So if you go to a juggling performance, if you see someone juggling on the streets or whatever, here's what you will pay attention to. You will pay attention to the fact that they don't drop any balls. And if you like this person and they drop a ball, you'll go, oh, because juggling apparently is about not dropping the ball. And when people try to learn how to juggle, what they do is they get the first throw, maybe the second throw, and then they're out of position because it's not a very good throw,

so they lunge to grab the ball because that's what you're supposed to do is catch the ball. But by the time they've lunged, they're out of position for the next ball, and then it's all over, every time. What you learn is that juggling is actually about throwing, not catching. That once you learn to throw, the catches take care of themselves. And it's really hard to teach people just to throw and let the ball hit the ground. And so the way I teach juggling, I'm not a great juggler, but I'm a great juggling teacher. The way I teach juggling is we stand there for half an hour throwing one ball and having it hit the ground every time.

No attempt to catch. And then we go to two balls, no attempt to catch. And if after an hour of throwing throw, throw, throw, drop, drop, throw, drop, drop, throw, drop, your throws are no good. Then you've got a hand-eye coordination problem. But everybody else can make the throw the same over and over again. then we can go throw, throw, catch, catch. That's easy because the ball's landing right in your hands.

And then you know how to juggle, right? Then you're in. And the marketing reason why I teach people to juggle is because I have deep, deep affiliations with a summer camp in Northern Canada. And one of the 42nd summer would have been this year. One of the best ways to get new kids to come to camp is to send kids home from the summer with a show-offable skill because they're friends that say, where'd you learn how to do that?

And so this place in Northern Canada is about sailing and canoe. You can't sail in canoe back in the city. So I thought if sending kids home with juggling skills, that would be a useful marketing tool. So that's how I got into the whole juggling thing. I knew there was a marketing purpose behind it. One of the things you've written about, just so you know, Seth, my prep was just taking a ton of notes

based on your book. So I'm going to, I'm going to, I want to surface some of those notes and quotes. And then I like love hearing you expand on them and have us relate them to being excellent leaders. So you said if you want to change your story, change your actions first. We become what we do. And that part is italicize. We become what we do. For the leader listening, why is this so important for someone to think about changing their story and to do that, changing their actions first. Great question. So we'll start with the simple. If you want to be a runner, don't spend a lot of time daydreaming about running, reading runners magazine, buying running gear, and psyching yourself up to be a perfect runner. Just go for a 10-minute run. If you go for a 10-minute run every day for 30 days,

you're a runner. And you didn't need to make any decision other than I'm just going to go for a short run. If you want to be an empathic leader, don't go to a conference or a seminar. Just find one person and be empathic with them and then do it again and then do it again. And by the time you've done it six times, you're an empathic leader. We spend all this time searching for perfect and a guarantee when what we really need to do is simply do the work. And I think of the story. of, I may pronounce this name wrong, Drew Dernovich, is that right? It is. So he shared a picture.

This kind of, I think I went a little bit viral where you shared it in your book, the newest book, which I highly recommend like all of your books, which is called the practice shipping creative work. But he shared a no pile and a yes pile. He's a cartoonist, right? Cartoonist. Right. And so he shared, he showed this to, I guess, to kind of give us an inside look of what

it looks like to be a cartoonist and his process. And the no pile is super high for those listening, not watching on a video. It's really high. And the yes pile is tiny. And you've said, Drew's not a genius. He just has more paper than we do. And so I think this is very useful for leaders and creators and creatives to hear when it comes to producing great work that a lot of times it's about quantity, not necessarily quality, because the quantity helps us get to the quality. Right. So Drew isn't just a cartoonist. Drew is one of the top cartoonists at the New Yorker, which is one of the only places you can actually get paid to draw a cartoon.

And Drew, really nice guy. I didn't know him before I put that in the book. I contacted him and we talked. It's like 80 to 1, maybe more. And lots of people think they're funny. And after the third cartoon, they give up. So the problem with the word quality. is the word quality means something very specific. It does not mean perfect, and perfectionism is the enemy. Perfectionism is designed to never be able to be reached. Quality means meeting spec. That is it, meeting spec. And it is not that hard to meet spec if you have an accurate machine tool,

and you are grinding pieces of metal into an oval shape, because the tool will do it for you. It is almost impossible to meet Speck for a New Yorker cartoon because it needs to be a cartoon they've never run before, but it can't be too different from all the other cartoons they've already run. And so you will not know if you have met Speck until after you draw the cartoon, maybe even after you show it to the editor at the New Yorker. That's the only way to know if you've met Speck. It's the only way to know if your jazz riff sounds good is to play your jazz riff. That creative work, by definition, does not have a new song. easily understood level of quality to it.

So people in the music business and the book business are always surprised. Every new bestseller is a surprise bestseller because nobody knows anything. And if somebody in the 70s who, you know, was making the Carol Burnett show or MASH, saw television of today, they wouldn't say, oh, that's really good quality. That's what we aspire to. It's different. It evolves. So the only way to get there is to use a lot of paper.

You've talked about embracing your own temporary discomfort, meaning art doesn't seek to create comfort. It creates change, and change requires tension. The same is true for learning. True learning, as opposed to education. True learning is a voluntary experience that requires tension and discomfort, the persistent feeling of incompetence as we get better at a skill. Can you share Seth more about why leaders need to embrace their own temporary discomfort? So let's talk about surfing for a little bit.

Nobody, except for one inland surf ranch in California, no one goes surfing hoping the waves will be the same every time. Because if they did, they'd be disappointed. And in fact, that's not the point of surfing. The point of surfing is the waves are different every time. And a friend of mine, who was a pretty good 10-foot wave surfer, found himself in Indonesia, and there's a ferry that takes you to this island once a week. So he's on this island for a week, and he gets there the first day, and the waves are 22 feet tall. That is bigger than the second story of your house.

And that's an uncomfortable place to be as a surfer. And now he knows how to serve 22-foot waves. Whereas if there was a machine that always made eight foot, 10 foot waves, he'd never get better at surfing. And the same thing's true with leaders, the same thing's true with anybody who's trying to make a difference in the world. We don't sign up to do what we did yesterday because then we'd just be a cog at Home Depot, you know, looking for screws on aisle seven. What we do is we show up to make things different and we want things to be different so that we can explore. but that exploring comes with the narrative of this might not work, right? That you could be working on a project for a week or a month or a year and then have to say,

nah, and throw it out because you don't know. This makes me think so much of Navy SEAL, Jay Hennessey, who I spoke with, who now works with the Cleveland Indians. Jay said as a SEAL and even with the Indians now as one of their senior leaders, we have to always be pushing our edges. and I love that phrase. Seth, I'm curious, how do you, as a guy who's so accomplished, so bright, how do you push your edges? I don't spend a lot of time feeling accomplished.

I think that there's a lot of work to be done and not a lot of time to do it. And I can tell when I'm phoning something in and I'd rather not do that. and I can tell when I feel that feeling of pushing the edges. And when I was younger, that's all there was because I didn't have any momentum. And so it's work on a regular basis to go find some more edges. Because if I just stuck with what I was good at, there wouldn't be any edges. I've heard you do random things like make exquisite coffee, even though you don't drink coffee and do other things like that. Is that part of it or why do you do things like that?

A lot of the weird affectations I have are about control because I live a life out of control in so many ways. The idea of understanding coffee culture, understanding the inputs and the outputs, understanding why people are attracted to it was fascinating to me. It's a geeky thing to do. I really wish I could drink coffee. My body doesn't agree with me. But I like doing things that put a smile on people's face. It surprised them that reset expectations. And in the case of coffee, I have this situation where nothing horrible is going to happen when I make a cup of espresso from the fact that I roasted the beans myself, grind them

myself, put them into the single lever action, Olympia Cremini, old stock from 1979. like all of those steps, there's no risk there for me. But there's a practice in that too, which is the craft of saying, can I get 1% better? And when I compare that to the kinds of things that I do in public, where if you get on stage in front of a thousand people with a rift you've never given before, you know, I gave the TEDx talk, Stop Stealing Dreams, which has been seen almost a million times now,

I didn't practice it, and I've never given it again. I worked on it for two months, but I didn't like stand in front of the mirror the way you're supposed to do all that stuff, because I wanted to feel what it felt like to be without a net in that moment. You also are notorious for your keynotes to have hundreds and hundreds of slides, rapid fire, keep you on the edge of your seat. What is it about that style? and that method. A corporate person listening may think, oh my God,

Seth would have 400 slides for a 25-minute speech. And for someone who somehow hasn't seen one of your keynotes, I would say it's not what you think. It's so engaging and entertaining, while also informative and educational. How have you crafted that style? And what is the work that goes into it to creating one of those keynote experiences, both for yourself as well as for the audience.

Well, thank you for that. I don't think I get enough credit for inventing it, but when I invented that style 20 years ago, people laughed at it. I wrote a book about it called Really Bad PowerPoint. It's only 10 pages. It's online somewhere. I don't believe that PowerPoint was invented by people

who think like you and me, and it is mostly used internally for deniability. So PowerPoint was built by engineering, for engineers to basically give them a way to talk through a spec. It was adopted by corporations who are looking for deniability. So they can put together, quote, a deck and bore you with it. And then three months later, when you say, why didn't you tell me, they can say, it's in the deck.

When we put words in a PowerPoint presentation, we are asking the human being to read the words in their head. At the very same time, we are talking words to them. Our brains don't work that way. The second problem is that we can't help it. We sort of use the bullet points as cue cards and we read them. So now we want the person to read them and listen to us reading them at the same time, but no one reads at the rate.

We're talking, so they're bored and confused. What I realized is that human beings are really good at absorbing visual data. and that my job is to implant some visual data in your brain and then tell you a story about it. And the visual hook lasts a long time. So there are people who saw a slide I used to use of a seagull sitting on top of a sign that says no seagulls. And they saw that 15 years ago, and they still remember it. And because they remember the picture, they remembered my story. And so what I'm doing up there with the pictures, first of all, it's about 200 slides in 45 minutes.

What I'm doing here is saying, here's one, two, three, four slides in row to plant one image. And now I'm going to tell you a story. And so I'm dancing with the slides. I'm not reading them. And the slides are there for me. I'm not there for them. And this weaving and dodging and layering is what, its keynote is actually good at. It is not good at the other thing. And I think the other way is

with bullet points is malpractice, right? Bullets are for the NRA. They are not for presentations. How did you feel 20 years ago when you were doing this for the first few times? Yeah, it was, I've seen my old presentations. If you look at my first TED talk, in those days, TED talks were not in public and they didn't tell us they were recording it. And they didn't tell us before they put it on TED.com. And I'm not crazy about that first presentation because it's too slow. And I didn't quite have it yet, but it's been seen a lot because people don't know. I was just getting warmed up.

But what was clear is my peers were aghast because I was doing something at a different layer slash level than they were ready for. And the audience really liked it. And then to answer your last part of the question, because almost everyone has ever asked me about this, I haven't been able to do them during COVID because Zoom does not lend itself well to PowerPoint presentations. So I'm just talking in the real life now. But I will spend my day looking for a picture in the real world or online. And I will build part of my presentation because I found a good picture, not the other way around. the what type of preparation and care and love i mean you'd have to put so much into every bit

every story every sense i think that's the part that is not fully appreciated my friend joey coleman is an amazing speaker and he models his style after yours when it comes to his he it was like 20 minutes 300 slides it was incredible i don't know if you know joey but but just blew me away went to notre dame debate team but then brought some Seth goad into his game and it's like, wow. I love hearing the process of getting ready for things, Seth. I don't know. I think that's exciting to people.

I think it's important to think about that. What about like your prep process to get ready for big moments like that? I think the biggest part is they're not big moments by the time that I am on stage. Every once in a while, there's one. You know, I did a talk for 6,000 people at the Association for Training and Development. that felt big to me because these were my people Oprah was on just before me

I didn't want to let anybody down but generally if you've got your craft the number of people in the audience isn't the point so the process the practice for me is something like this I saw a picture of the 1929

27 Solve conference and it's got Albert Einstein and Marie Curie Niels Bohr and I said, I am going to use this picture for something. So first I had to research what it was a picture of. And then I was looking, as I'm being the Wikipedia article, to understand who was Solvei. Why was there a Solvei conference?

What's going on here? And why is this important? And then I found it. I found the germ I was looking for. And it became the penultimate story in my presentation for five or seven years. years. Because, you know, so that, it was five hours of work, which I didn't know if it was going to work. It could have very well gotten the way a lot of things go, which is, oh, that's a good idea. I own the domain, but nothing after that. But this one I found, like, that insight,

the insight is 17 people in the picture. There's 29 people in the picture. 17 of them won the Nobel Prize in physics. And almost all of them won it after the photo, which means you didn't get invited to the conference because you won the Nobel Prize. You won the Nobel Prize because you were with the people who got invited to the conference. And like, that's six chapters of a book right there, right? That's akimbo right there. Why bother learning in community? Well, because of a survey. Because it turns out that when they connected all of these people, their work advanced so much, they won the Nobel Prize. Your who was everything, right? You surround yourself with those people. It's critical. Some might look at you.

you and say he was born with it. And you've written about the difference between talent and skill. Talent is something we're born with. It's in our DNA, a magical alignment of guess skill, on the other hand, is earned. It's learned and practiced and hard one. It's insulting to call a professional talented. She's skillful, first and foremost, like in the words of Steve Martin, I had no talent, none. Somebody's looking at you and saying Seth was born with this stuff, obviously.

He's just talented. and he's developed some skill too, but he's born with it. What do you think about that? Yeah, I mean, all the evidence shows that that's completely untrue. And, you know, let's start with the fact that my high school English teacher wrote in my yearbook that I would never amount to anything and that I was the bane of her existence. Why would somebody write that? Well, she was sort of kidding, but because I was terrible.

Terrible at what? School? Yeah. I mean, I got good grades because I could fake my way through things. I wasn't a fine student in an English classroom. I was easily bored. I didn't understand why Faulkner mattered, and I wasn't curious enough to discover why Faulkner mattered.

And I majored in computer science in college when it was the early days, and I was terrible at it. And I mean, it was just like all of these moments when if talent was present, it would have won out. and I know people who have had Billboard top 10 songs and have won Pulitzer Prizes, and I know people who can juggle. And all of these people and all these different ranges,

you can't point out that they're talented. They have identical twins who aren't doing what they're doing. I mean, it's not based on DNA. Van Gogh would not have been a famous painter if he had lived 50 years earlier or 50 years later. Just no way, because it wasn't the moment to pick up painting. And we've built this castle on top of the word talent when talent should be reserved for a very small number of things. So for the person listening who may be having a bit of imposter syndrome or they're not really sure, but they desire to lead or desire to impact others, what message do you give to that person?

Well, two parts. First of all, it's good that you feel like an imposter because you can't make it go away, but it's a symptom that you're on to something. and you should welcome it. Oh, you know, like, oh, I was running. I got tired. Oh, I must have been running hard. Oh, I was leading. I feel like an imposter.

I must have been leading well. I mean, it's that simple. And the way forward is to find a smaller group of people. To make your art for a smaller group of people, to lead a smaller group of people, even if it's one person. And suddenly it doesn't feel so scary. Suddenly it's like walking on a tight rope one foot off the ground.

If you fall, you fall. Don't start in the big top. That doesn't make any sense. Jack Butcher was on the show, Seth, and he has this mission that he wants to help people make one dollar online, one dollar building an online business because once they make that first dollar, magic happens. Yeah. And he has countless stories of his students. Now, I'm one of his students. By the way, of his students who have made their first dollar, they share a screenshot.

And a year later or longer, they have a thriving, growing business. because they had the guts to make one, $1. I think that is an inspiring message for all leaders, creators to think about, try to make just, it's just one person, just one person who impact or make that first dollar. Yeah, but we have to put one asterisk next to it, which is no one wants to be hustled.

No one wakes up in the morning saying, I wish someone would hustle me today. So a lot of people who are filled with fear will make that dollar by hustling somebody. Yeah, great point. And that doesn't count. Great point. make it in a way the person afterwards says, thank you. Thank you. I can't wait to tell my friends.

Yeah. Seth, you went to Wyoming for an event run by a couple of your friends, Alan and Bill, and one morning they woke you up at five o'clock in the morning for a fly fishing lesson. And you go out to do this and you asked the instructor to set your rod up without a hook. What made you do that? It's not easy to get a fly without a hook, I discovered. But they figured it out. So it was fly fishing like in the movies, you know? Yeah. And A, I didn't want to catch a fish.

And B, they were throwing the fish back anyway. So I certainly didn't want to torture a fish. But the biggest part was this. I knew that I am externally motivated enough that if we were trying to catch fish, I was going to try to catch fish. And if I was going to try to catch fish, it was going to get in the way of fishing. and as soon as they got rid of the hook, I was casting like a maniac.

I was so good. I was so present. I was so in the moment and enjoying all of it because I wasn't willing with all of my effort for a fish to bite the hook. I didn't care because all I was trying to do is be present and to feel what it felt like to cast. Disconnecting from the outcome

let me focus on the real outcome, which was casting, not whether if I got lucky and a fish bit my hook or not. And I had the best day of anybody that day because they were all type A performers who didn't catch as many fishes they hoped. And I catched exactly as many fishes I hoped.

So you caught, I caught as many fish as. So you focused on the process, you focused on the moment, you focus on the lead measures, is getting good at casting, I would imagine. However, there is somebody listening who is the SVP of sales at a multi-billion dollar company that says, Seth, we got to make sales, bud, we got to get results. What do you say to that person who is arguing, driving in their car right now or on the elliptical in their home gym saying, sounds great, man, but for me, like, we got to get

the sales. We got to get the deals. We can't just focus on the process. We have to have the result as well. So let me tell you about this story of Thornton May, who built Cambridge Technology Partners to be a 300, 400 million a year company as their head of sales in BizDev. Thornton May never once had a quota and never once tried to make a sale. Thornton May would go to a city, he flew a lot, and he'd find eight or 10 chief technology officers in that city who were competitors, who are nearly competitors, and he would invite them to breakfast. And I know the story because he would bring someone like me along his bait. He'd send a note saying, do you want to have breakfast with me and Seth Godin?

He was just going to have some other CTOs there. So it would be like the CTO of Exxon, sitting next to the CTO of Mobile or whoever, blah, blah, blah, blah, and that was the one in Houston. And he would just go around the country and organize these breakfasts. That's all I did. He was good at that. that was the casting. He was good at that.

Well, if you're good at it, one of the things that happens during breakfast is these people who had never had anyone to talk to before. Couldn't talk to their boss, couldn't talk to their employees, they didn't have any coworkers,

couldn't talk to their spouse, suddenly here were people with the same problems they had. And he would just sit there quietly and for 45 minutes they would all talk to each other about their problems. And then inevitably someone would say,

hey, Thornton, can you help us with this? And he'd take notes and he'd get back to the office and someone would call these CTOs and solve their problem. And that's the right way to build a multi-hundred million dollar company. Focus on the process, but bring a little Seth Godin bait. It might be helpful. I love it.

Speaking of selling, you've said selling is simply a dance with possibility and empathy. It requires you to see the audience you've chosen to serve, then to bring them what they need. Sales is about intentionally creating tension, the tension, of maybe, the tension of this might not work, the tension of what will I tell my boss? That's precisely the tension that we dance with as creators. There are, I get a lot of, I feel like a lot of emails from people who work in sales, because there's a lot of jobs where people work in sales, which is kind of what we're talking about here as a creator, as someone who, who publishes regularly and ships work. When you are working with people who work in sales at, you, who work in

sales at companies. What type of questions do you get from them and how do you help them? Well, a disclaimer, I don't do any consulting or coaching. Right. I mean, like maybe you speak at an event or a conference or for a company, you know. Yeah. So it used to be that you knew more than your customers. And so you could put a shroud of deniability and ignorance around them and they, with no one else to turn to, would buy something inferior from you. That's not true anymore. Your customers are now smarter than you.

And so I begin with this. If you are not eagerly and regularly sending potential customers to your competitors, then you're selfish. Because you know that your competitor has a better left-handed widget than you do, right? And so if someone comes to you and says,

I really just need a left-handed widget, you should send them to someone else because someone else does that better than you. it's really unlikely you make everything better. And so don't start by saying that you're a generous leader and then acting like you have to hoard all the sales. I don't buy it. I don't trust you.

And hoarding is the opposite of possibility and abundance. So you're going to do one or the other. If you're in the hoarding business, then what you're trying to do is manipulate people into buying from you. And then somehow when they find out they made a mistake, getting them to not be angry. Whereas if you're in the abundance and connection end of the thing, you're simply educating people and connecting people

and finding out what they really want. If it turns out that what you have is what they need, you don't have to sell them anything. They're going to buy it. Right? And so if you call up Singapore Airlines after the COVID and say, I'd like to fly to Tucson, they shouldn't try to persuade you to fly to Singapore.

They should say the number for Air Arizona is so and so. Because you're not interested in flying to Singapore. You really want to go to Arizona, right? Yeah. But the next time you need to go to Singapore, who are you going to trust? And there's almost no industry that I've bought millions and millions and millions of dollars of stuff in my life. And I can't think of an industry where I'm eager to be a customer where they treat me like I'm stupid. I would much rather show up as a customer where they treat me like I'm smart.

what is it about consulting or working with teams? I would imagine you get inquiries constantly. So what is it about that that makes you not want to do that work? So I give free advice to friends all the time if they're willing to listen to me. But paid consultants get paid probably to solve the other person's problem. And you can't solve their problem. They have to solve their problem. And most of the work of a successful paid consultant is the,

persistent, gentle showing up to get them to do what they've always known they should do. And I'm just much happier with the mic drop thing. Here it is. Show your work. You can figure this out. And I get that people probably need more consultants than they need me, but this is my thing. Speaking of being generous, you said generosity is the most direct way to find the practice. It subverts resistance by focusing the work on someone else. Generosity means that we don't

have to seek reassurance for the self, but can instead concentrate on serving other. Seth. The reason I bring this up is because I know in my writing practice, when I'm trying to get a book done by a deadline, this helps me the most of thinking about that person who's reading. And often I'll bring a friend or colleague into the room with me to create prompts that helps me be more generous. I'd love for you to talk about generosity and how that helps you get through the resistance. Yeah, so generous doesn't mean free, right? Generous means somebody needs a light turned on, somebody needs a boost, someone needs to find a path, and you care about that person. And you can make a big difference in their life by helping them get to where they want to go.

So if you're put on a rock concert, it is generous to bring more energy to the show than you might feel like. And if you're selfish, you're like, I just don't have it in me today. But you're not there for you. You're there for them. And if you're imagining writing something and you're on page 80, well, is there a reader who needs to get the page 90? Or you're simply writing to page 90 because that's the only way you'll get paid? If there's a reader who needs the next 10 pages writing for them gets you out of your own head. And it gives you a chance to say, here, I made this, but it's not about you.

It's about them. There are three kinds of quality. And you've written about the difference between Hamilton and West Side Story. But I saw Hamilton in Chicago. And I'm literally at a loss for words at the feeling it evoked for me. I'm sitting with my wife, Miranda, and we looked at each other saying, is this real? Like, how do they do this? And I think you would call that the creative magic.

And that's one of the kinds of quality. Can you talk about the difference between Hamilton and Westside Story and creative magic? And maybe how that applies to us as leaders. So which is the better quality car, a Toyota Corolla or a Rolls-Royce? I would assume a Rolls-Royce. I haven't had either. Yeah, most people would say Rolls Voice. Right.

That's the quality of luxury. That's the quality of we spent a lot of money and you can tell. Yep. But if you had to drive a car across Europe or even across the United States, I'd much rather drive the Toyota because it's not going to break down. That is the quality of meeting spec. That is the quality of the parts fit together properly, right? And so those are two of the kinds of quality that we confuse all the time.

a taco stand can be of extraordinarily high quality because it is the taco as the taco is supposed to be, not because they have lobster and caviar tacos, right? But then there's this third kind of quality, which is the quality of Hamilton. It is not the quality of this is expensive, which is what West Side Story is. West Side Story on Broadway had the single best projection screen

I've ever seen in my life. It had $400 seat tickets. it was in the theater district. It met all the luxury good checkboxes. It was a Rolls-Royce of plays. But nothing. I got nothing from it because it didn't have that third kind of quality. And that third kind of quality punches you in the gut.

It tears you up. It's something you remember a month or a year later. It is the quality of this touched me at a level I needed to be touched and changed me in a way I did not expect. And that is what Lynn Manuel did with Hamilton. Interesting, if you're a fan, he didn't do it with Mary Poppins, possibly because he wasn't in charge, possibly because that wasn't the quality he was seeking. In Mary Poppins, the movie, no one forgets their lines. The lighting is fine. It is quality by the Toyota definition.

It was just missing the other quality of this changed me. So I know you do this a lot, but I want to bring it up. because it's personal to me and it's worth saying because I think there are people, I want you to know and there are people listening who have the ability to do this as well. And that is, you know, I sent you a cold email at the very beginning of my show. I had a few episodes out and you said follow up after you've had 75 episodes and you have a big hit. And so on November 26th, 2015, the day my 75th episode came out, I emailed you back, responded to that email and said, Seth, I have 75 episodes and a big show. It's a hit. I'd like to have you on. And you,

you agreed within like five minutes and now episode 86 is with you. The impact that you had, I'm not going to say you're the only reason you're not. I'm not going to lie. But it was a significant impact on me to give me a nudge and a push to keep going. even through some of those episodes that if you listen are not very good. But that's part of the deal. That's part of being an artist. That's part of being a creator is pushing through that to get to 75. I've heard stories you've done this with others. I'm sure you do with a lot of people. What is it that says, hey, get back to me after you've put in some reps after 75 or so of these things? What is it that makes you respond in that manner? Because you could have just clicked delete,

ignored me and forced me to be persistent and keep emailing you, which I would have. But this way actually put like a mark on the calendar for me to say, I am going to email Seth when this comes out and I'm going to have them on and I can't wait. What is it about you that makes you want to do that for people? Well, it's a very thoughtful question. First, and aside for people who are listening, I do not have a policy of showing up on episode 75 or episode 100. Don't send me a note saying, I met episode 100. You have to say yes. Number two, I hate being hustled. I'm getting more and more strict about it.

If you start hustling me, you're just going to get deleted. So don't send me email, period. That's just my request. But beyond that, I'm a teacher. I've been a teacher since 1977. I believe in the practice. I believe the only way to make things better is for people to do the work to make things better. And if somebody who cares as much as you do shows up in the right way with the right intent,

and I can make a small difference in their life. It's not scalable, it's not scalable, but that's okay. It mattered to you and to see how you were able to grow into it mattered to me. And I probably got more out of that story than you did. Well, I want to acknowledge it and say thank you because it not only has it impacted me in a small, weird way when I get notes like that, I think of how you responded and I try to respond the same way or even better if I can since I probably have more time than you do, given all the things you have going on. And so that's a ripple effect. That impacts people

well beyond just me and probably even well beyond the people I send it to because I'll even tell them, well, this is what Seth did. And I think that's pretty cool because I know you do that for a lot of people. And it's worth us talking about because for the people out there that get requests and get things like that. None of us want to be hustled. We don't want people who are doing things nefarious or for the wrong reasons. But when you find those good people, man, it is so cool to see the impact you can have on them long term and the ripple effect that has on others in their sphere. Well said.

Well said. Thank you. Thank you. There's a page with samples at trust yourself.com, which is not the name of the book, but it used to be and I still own the domain. So I'm getting the most out of it. Awesome. Thanks so much, Seth. Talk soon, man.

We'll see you. Bye-bye. Bye. All right. To finish this one out, I'm going to respond to another email from a loyal listener of the show. I'm going to keep this one anonymous because it's partially critical. However, I hope it is helpful, both for him, the writer of this email, as well as all of you, the loyal listeners of the show. Okay, here we go. Hi, Ryan.

I've been listening to your podcast for a... over two years and I love the content. It's very relevant for me. I work within a family business within a small company in the Midwest. We have 12 team members, six full time and six part time. When I was listening to your podcast yesterday, you talked about the three traits you used to get promoted. I didn't have a chance to write them down and I do not remember the number of the podcast. I know number one was be exceptionally good at your position. If you could respond, with all three traits, that would be great. Take care. Okay, first of all, just to answer directly, it's episode 384 with Les Brown. If you want to hear me talk about that, fast forward to the end,

this is where I share the three keys to getting promoted. But that's not really the point of me sharing this email. What is the point is it's kind of ironic when asking a question about how to get promoted. One of the primary keys, I would say is do not be lazy. If you know it was a recent episode you listened to, but you're not sure exactly which one, then take a few moments, listen to recent episodes, fast forward to the end, and listen for yourself. When reaching out to people who you admire their work, you want to have substantive dialogue with them, you want to perhaps build a relationship with them so you could seek guidance and get some help. This is not a good first impression.

I value excellence. I value attention to detail. I value people who care deeply about their work. I root hard for those who do. and I'll do everything I can to help them. So the way I responded to this email, I said it's episode 384 with Les Brown, and I clicked send. When you have an opportunity to reach out to someone, don't waste that opportunity, regardless

of who it is. If you could easily find something by doing a Google search or by clicking through a few podcast episodes and fast forwarding to the end to find the answer, then do that. at least do that first before sending an email like this. Be proactive. Do not be lazy, especially if you like to get promoted or if you're giving advice to others on how to get promoted. Ensure that you do not do something like this or at least do not make it a regular habit.

Now, I'm hopeful that this person can learn from this and will get better. I want to help. That's the whole point of doing these segments of the show. But think about this before you decide to write that email. And when you do, ask a question of substance, of quality and certainly of something that you can't easily find by clicking play on a podcast or doing a Google search. All right. I hope you found this helpful. I don't mean to be critical.

I'm trying to be helpful. and I think if this even changes the course of one person changing how they approach someone with an email and the questions they ask, then it's worth it. I want to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the word, for writing a review on Apple Podcasts, for rating the show, hopefully five stars, for telling a friend or two, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show. Because you continue to do that, you give me the opportunity. to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so much. Talk with you soon.

Can't wait.