694: Make Yourself Indispensable and Other Brilliant Marketing Strategies | Seth Godin AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast The Rachel Hollis Podcast

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Episode: 694: Make Yourself Indispensable and Other Brilliant Marketing Strategies | Seth Godin

Author: Three Percent Chance
Duration: 01:13:01

Episode Shownotes

Did you pre-order Rach's NEW book? Get all your FREEBIES here!In this episode of The Rachel Hollis Podcast, Rachel Hollis interviews marketing guru and prolific author, Seth Godin. Rachel delves into Seth's wisdom on entrepreneurship, strategy, and marketing, sharing insights from his many years of work. With a focus on

serving entrepreneurs, small business owners, and freelancers. They also explore ideas around authenticity, the role of AI, and the essential question of how to make oneself indispensable in their field. Find Seth's new book "This Is Strategy" and his many other incredible works, anywhere books are sold! Pre-order your audiobook of ‘What if YOU Are the Answer’ narrated by Rachel on Audible today! You can also pre-order your e-book or hard copy at Amazon, Barnes & Noble (they have signed copies!), Books-A-Millon, Bookshop.org, or wherever books are sold!00:00 Introduction and Exciting Change00:18 Introducing Seth Godin01:23 The Importance of Strategy04:42 Defining Strategy for Entrepreneurs04:52 Freelancers vs. Entrepreneurs08:15 Getting Better Clients13:57 The Myth of Authenticity16:53 Playing the Game17:26 Being Indispensable28:37 Niche Up, Not Down38:09 Reflecting on Past Experiences and New Book Insights38:57 Understanding Superstitions and Following Hunches41:58 The Evolution and Impact of AI47:36 The Value of Detachment and Authenticity in Creative Work01:06:57 The Importance of Quitting and Recommitting with Passion01:10:40 The Power of Good Questions in Business and LifeSign up for Rachel’s weekly email: https://msrachelhollis.com/insider/ Watch the podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/RachelHollisMotivation/videosFollow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MsRachelHollis/ To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices.

Summary

In this episode, Seth Godin argues that effective strategy in entrepreneurship involves understanding your target audience and your unique value proposition. He emphasizes the importance of authenticity and professionalism in client relationships, suggesting that professionals should focus on attracting better clients through fair pricing and genuine integrity. Godin also discusses the need to become indispensable by offering unique contributions that AI cannot replicate, highlighting the significance of empathy in marketing, and the value of shipping work that is 'good enough.' Overall, the discussion centers around cultivating meaningful interactions and presenting oneself authentically in the marketplace.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (694: Make Yourself Indispensable and Other Brilliant Marketing Strategies | Seth Godin) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:01 Speaker_00
Hi, guys. It's Rach. Welcome to a new episode of the show and a little bit of a change up from what we normally do on Mondays. Typically, a Monday would be a solo episode.

00:00:12 Speaker_00
That's where I talk to you by myself and I share ideas or things I think, hope, might be helpful. But today, I'm actually bringing in a podcast guest because I have been wanting to interview this person for at least five years.

00:00:29 Speaker_00
If you are an entrepreneur, if you're a freelancer, if you want to start your own business, if you are building your career and trying to get ahead, you have probably read or heard Seth Godin speak on the subject.

00:00:42 Speaker_00
I am such a nerd for his teachings, his books, his ideas. I think I've referenced him to you guys like 50 times, I use his quotes over and over. I literally wrote an entire chapter in the new book about a question I once heard Seth say on a podcast.

00:00:59 Speaker_00
So y'all, I have been trying to get him on the show forever and I'm so freaking excited to share this conversation with you. He surpassed every expectation I have. I am not overselling this. I was geeking out so hard.

00:01:14 Speaker_00
I was like taking notes while he was talking, and I was so nervous I was going to get too excited and forget to ask him questions. Like, oh, it was just so great.

00:01:23 Speaker_00
And I did ask Seth at the beginning of our conversation to help me steer this specifically to those of you, like I said, who are entrepreneurs, small business owners, you're freelancers, you're trying to build something, or you're trying to grow in your career.

00:01:37 Speaker_00
Because our conversation today is going to be about strategy and marketing and what it looks like to create and how do you put stuff out into the world. And it is a goldmine. I am so excited to share this with you. I rushed the edit.

00:01:51 Speaker_00
I asked Jack to please get this out as soon as possible, which is why you are getting it on a Monday. And the last thing I will say before I introduce you to this person I absolutely adore.

00:02:02 Speaker_00
is if you find this episode helpful, please consider sending it to someone that you know that might find it helpful too.

00:02:09 Speaker_00
I have gotten so much incredible wisdom from Seth's words over the last decade and as much as we can as a community support him and his work, I think it'll be really helpful to people like us who are entrepreneurs, who are looking to make an impact, who are trying to do good things in the world.

00:02:26 Speaker_00
So Thank you for listening and let's geek out. Let's talk about marketing. Let's fangirl Seth Godin. Hi, I'm Rachel, and in this show, we talk about everything. Life and work, health and healing, relationships with others and with ourself.

00:02:49 Speaker_00
These are stories for the seekers. These are conversations for the curious. This is The Rachel Hollis Podcast. Why are we having a conversation about strategy now?

00:03:13 Speaker_00
Feels like something that you could have talked about throughout your career, but this is sort of this, I don't know, masterwork of all of this information. Why did this feel like the right time?

00:03:23 Speaker_01
So here's an interesting question. What should I do next? That question didn't used to be a question. If you were a housewife or you graduated from a certain school or whatever, you went to a placement office, you got a job, you did what your boss said.

00:03:38 Speaker_01
When you got home, there were three TV channels to choose from. What should I do next? Wasn't that complicated.

00:03:44 Speaker_01
And now we've just exploded all of that, given people all of this leverage, all of this freedom, all of this pressure, and expected folks to figure out what to do next. When we were indoctrinated never to wonder about that.

00:04:01 Speaker_01
And what I found is that people I cared about would come to me with marketing questions or career questions.

00:04:08 Speaker_01
But what they really had were strategy questions and they didn't even know what strategy meant So I just took a deep breath and thought about what would I want someone to tell me?

00:04:19 Speaker_01
about how we navigate how we choose what are we trying to do and It's resonating with people because it scares them and then a light flips on and they realize they can make choices. So

00:04:33 Speaker_00
So just to get really granular with this in case this is a conversation that maybe some of our newer entrepreneurs haven't ever had before.

00:04:42 Speaker_00
How would you describe strategy as it pertains to business at the most basic level and why is it something that those entrepreneurs need to be thinking about as they aim to grow their business this year?

00:04:52 Speaker_01
Okay, so a lot of people who call themselves entrepreneurs are freelancers. I am a freelancer. Freelancers get paid when we work. Freelancers are sort of looking for a job without a boss.

00:05:04 Speaker_01
And the problem with that is you have a lousy boss, someone who wakes you up in the middle of the night yelling at you, someone who doesn't appreciate you, someone who makes you work too hard, you.

00:05:13 Speaker_01
So a key first step is getting a better boss, someone who can see the arc. And then the second step is realizing that you're used to doing good work, you're used to doing your job, you're used to doing tasks and tactics. None of those are strategy.

00:05:30 Speaker_01
Strategy is a philosophy of becoming. Who are we seeking to change? Where are we going? And it's so easy to avoid those questions and get back to work. But my argument is this is the work.

00:05:45 Speaker_01
If you get the strategy right, everything about your work gets better.

00:05:48 Speaker_00
What do you mean by get a better boss?

00:05:51 Speaker_01
That person who's undermining you, who's making you work harder, who's criticizing your work in the middle of the night, that's you. They're making you think small. They're playing games you can't win.

00:06:02 Speaker_01
They are pushing you to settle, to not charge a fair price, to allow yourself to not be treated with dignity.

00:06:09 Speaker_01
And yet there are people around you who have the same skills as you, who are working less than you, who are solving a different problem for different people and living a more generative, respected life. And the choices your boss makes lead to that.

00:06:28 Speaker_01
So to pick a very specific example, if you're listing your work on Fiverr or Upwork or somewhere else, you're racing to the bottom. You're saying, you can pick anyone and I'm anyone, please pick me.

00:06:39 Speaker_01
If you are doing what the social media companies want and hoping that you'll win the lottery and get lots and lots of followers so that then you can succeed, your boss made a mistake because she should have had you do a different project, not one where you're a pawn in somebody else's system, but where you're building something that you own that generates value for other people that they pay for.

00:07:05 Speaker_00
Yeah, gosh, I can so relate to this. When I was younger in business, you know, I started as an event planner. And back in the day, it was just like, I just want to make rent.

00:07:17 Speaker_00
So I'll take any, you know, you give me $10 and a bucket of chicken, and I would plan your wedding. Like, I was just so grateful for the work. And one of the hardest lessons that I had to learn was how to charge appropriately for my services.

00:07:30 Speaker_00
And I'm sure that men struggle with this too, but I know the women in my community really have a hard time calling their shot and asking for what they're worth. And the thing that gave me courage was honestly research.

00:07:43 Speaker_00
I just thought, okay, what is the rest of the market charging? I have to at least be at that level or I'm pricing myself out of the market of the kind of client that I wish that I had. But in the beginning, you're just like hustling.

00:07:56 Speaker_00
You think, man, if I can book any job, that will keep me in business. It sounds to me this strategy, particularly those who are just starting out, is like, what is the business you actually want to have? What's the client you actually want to acquire?

00:08:10 Speaker_00
How do you build a strategy around that?

00:08:12 Speaker_01
Correct. So we can let's go deeper into this.

00:08:15 Speaker_01
If you're a freelancer, you can't work any more hours So the only way to do better is to get better clients Better clients pay you more challenge you more talk about your work more help you learn faster but better clients don't show up because you did a good job with bad clients better clients show up and

00:08:36 Speaker_00
But that's so good. That's so good, Seth. Sorry, I'm going to do that 1,000 times.

00:08:41 Speaker_01
That's great.

00:08:42 Speaker_00
The king of one-liners.

00:08:43 Speaker_01
You're making me very happy. Better clients show up because you're the kind of freelancer better clients want to hire.

00:08:50 Speaker_01
And so, when you take a bad client, not only are you taking yourself out of the market while you're working with that person, but you're sending a signal to say, you can pick anyone and I'm anyone.

00:09:01 Speaker_01
As opposed to hiring yourself when times are slow to do work for a nonprofit you care about or to do work that you can put your name on, that attracts the kind of client that wants the kind of person that does work the way you do work,

00:09:18 Speaker_01
And your motto can be, you'll pay a lot, but you get more than you pay for. And there are clients who want that motto.

00:09:25 Speaker_01
And you have to live up to that, whether you're a wedding planner or a photographer, a coach, in all of those areas, the way we judge quality before we've done the work is how much does it cost?

00:09:38 Speaker_01
that most of the people who are listening to this don't own a $3 pair of earrings. It's not because $3 earrings are bad, it's just we can tell they're not $50 earrings or $500 earrings, and we're not $3 earring kind of people.

00:09:52 Speaker_01
Well, that same thing goes for the kind of work that you can offer people and price is a signal. So rather than apologizing for low price over and over and over again, just explain why you're charging a fair price once and then go do the work.

00:10:08 Speaker_00
Yeah.

00:10:09 Speaker_00
I honestly, I have to say, I don't know if other people in the service-based business would agree, but when I was doing events, the clients that I got when I was sort of just trying to book anything and I would accept any price, those clients were 10 times harder to deal with than the clients who paid 10 times as much.

00:10:27 Speaker_00
Because those people who had the bigger budgets They didn't have time to call me 100 times a day. They were so much easier to manage. They were so much more likely to refer me to other people who had similar budgets that I wanted to work with.

00:10:43 Speaker_00
But it is, oh my gosh, when you've got to make rent, it's really hard to hold out and have faith that you're going to be able to do that. So I'm sure this is a question you get a lot.

00:10:54 Speaker_00
How do you advise people to manage that tension in between where you are and where you want to be?

00:11:00 Speaker_01
Okay, so there are a couple tactical things here. The first one is don't set out to do something really challenging if your rent is really high. The easiest way to make rent is to lower your rent. And the second thing is,

00:11:16 Speaker_01
you don't have to spend seven days a week building the kind of practice I'm talking about. You can say Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I'm busy dealing with all sorts of junk just to get some money.

00:11:27 Speaker_01
And if you're doing that work, I would suggest doing work that doesn't light you up, but is in a different field, right? I mean, that could even include being a dog walker. Being a dog walker can be really lucrative if you do it regularly.

00:11:41 Speaker_01
And then on Thursdays and Fridays, now that rent is made,

00:11:45 Speaker_01
Become the person you're proud to be on Thursdays and Fridays now you're working in and on the business you care about and you can't keep justifying your shoddy or shortcuts work because you have to make rent because it's not an issue anymore and you know when I Started out.

00:12:05 Speaker_01
I sold my first book the first day Chip Conley and I wrote it together in 1986 and we got $5,000 so he got half I got I got half and

00:12:14 Speaker_00
That's a lot for that time. I got $10,000 for my first book in 2014, and I thought I was rich. So that's pretty good for the 80s.

00:12:23 Speaker_01
Yeah, that's what I thought. And then I got 800 rejection letters in a row, Rachel. 800 times someone in book publishing put a stamp on an envelope, mailed it to me, and said, we don't like you. And how was I gonna keep going, right?

00:12:39 Speaker_01
And so what I did was I took a gig doing a complicated spreadsheet for three nursing homes that were being acquired. And I hated every minute of it. But I made enough money doing that to then go back to what I was doing for five more months.

00:12:56 Speaker_01
And that's allowed, right? That's okay. But what would have been a mistake is for me to go begging to Putnam or Perigee or some other publishing house, I'll write a book for a dollar. That wasn't gonna help me.

00:13:08 Speaker_00
That's so real. I used to do, uh, I used to plan events every year, which happens in January at the Sundance Film Festival. And I would go to Utah for two weeks and it would be the most stressful, intense, dealing with the meanest celebrities.

00:13:24 Speaker_00
Like it was such a nightmare, but I would make my entire annual budget in those two weeks. And then I would spend the rest of the year trying to figure out how to be a blogger successfully and get paid for it. So I really understand that strategy.

00:13:38 Speaker_00
But I think for people who are listening, it's important to note that both of us, and maybe the listeners too, are doing jobs that did not light us up and that were actually pretty hard to figure out.

00:13:50 Speaker_00
But you're doing it, like it's easier to do those things when you know that the trade-off is the ability to chase your dream.

00:13:57 Speaker_01
Yeah. And so part of the challenge here is this mythology of authenticity. And you might not agree with me, but I think authenticity is for your friends and your family and that what your clients want is professionals and professionals are consistent.

00:14:14 Speaker_01
So I don't care if you're having a bad day and I don't care if this is your dream project. I want you to consistently show up the way you promised you were going to show up.

00:14:24 Speaker_01
And the problem with being authentic is we undermine ourselves when we're not motivated. And we think the only job we should do is one that we would do if it was our hobby. And that's not true. It's just not true.

00:14:39 Speaker_01
My hobby was never flying for seven hours, staying in a lousy hotel and flying home for seven hours. That's what I did as a professional to give a speech, but I never confused it with my hobby.

00:14:56 Speaker_00
Honestly, there's so much information that's come across social media in the last five years that can be helpful, I'm positive, to certain people. But this is sort of one of those things.

00:15:08 Speaker_00
It's like, can you build a business around this thing that you love? Which is amazing. There are parts of my business that I love. I'm so excited that I get to sit here with someone I admire and get to speak with you.

00:15:21 Speaker_00
But there's a lot of parts about my job still today that are really hard. I mean, you know this, going into promo for a book, if you're a writer who loves to go into a cave and think of things to say, and then you have to start promoting that book,

00:15:37 Speaker_00
It is, these are polar opposites. This is not a fun thing. I would rather be in my little cave writing words, but this is part of it.

00:15:45 Speaker_00
And I am so glad that you said that because it sort of transitions to this idea of like people who are listening who are not entrepreneurs, but maybe building a career.

00:15:54 Speaker_00
And you've been given all this advice about what the career is supposed to be and how it's supposed to feel and how you show up in it.

00:16:03 Speaker_00
And I'm sure there are companies where that works, but far and above the advice about showing up consistently, I think is incredible and reminds me of linchpin, right?

00:16:14 Speaker_00
This idea, if people aren't familiar, you have a book about being the linchpin, right?

00:16:19 Speaker_00
Can you talk through that perspective of like, what does it look like to show up consistently, to be a team player, for people to count on you, that you are necessary to the existence and how that helps you in your career or your business?

00:16:34 Speaker_01
Sure. Before I talk about that, that book's 15 years old, but it's more relevant than ever. I want to highlight this idea of games. Games can seem silly, but that's not the kind of game I'm talking about.

00:16:47 Speaker_01
Games are any situation where there's scarcity, where there's multiple players, where there's outcomes. And the secret to doing any of this work is to realize you're playing a game.

00:17:00 Speaker_01
You make moves, other people make moves, and if it doesn't work, it's not because you're a bad person. It's because you made a move that didn't work. So you don't have to take yourself so seriously.

00:17:11 Speaker_01
You can say, in this situation, the person I'm consistently being, what move would they make to help all of us get the outcome we want? As opposed to, this is who I am authentically and now they hate me, right?

00:17:26 Speaker_00
Yeah.

00:17:26 Speaker_01
So to be a linchpin is to go against the grain of what most organizations think they want. Most organizations want people to fit into a box. That's why org charts have boxes. And to have the resume that fits in. So you can be easily replaced.

00:17:44 Speaker_01
That, you know, the front desk person at the Avis rent-a-car counter, if they miss a shift, somebody else shows up and none of the customers can tell the difference. They have worked very hard to make everyone disposable.

00:17:56 Speaker_01
And I don't want to be disposable, and I think you don't want to be disposable either. So what's the alternative? The alternative is to be the person who doesn't fit in a box because they don't belong in a box.

00:18:07 Speaker_01
To be the person who brings emotional labor to the table, who knows things, who does things that make it better, who would be missed if they were gone. And when we show up at work that way, we may say, they're not paying me enough to do this.

00:18:23 Speaker_01
And I would say, yeah, you know what? Doing a job where I don't matter, they couldn't pay me enough to do that. I'm showing up like this because it's my choice to be human. It's my choice to be needed.

00:18:36 Speaker_01
It's my choice to have security because it would be really hard to replace me. No one's irreplaceable. But I'm going to be the person who knows things and who brings value to the table if you are that person And it's not just senior executives.

00:18:52 Speaker_01
So I tell the story of uh, the woman who used to be the receptionist at kodak big 11-story office building she was always there every time I went in for a meeting and the thing about this woman is she

00:19:06 Speaker_01
Knew all the folks who were having people come for a meeting and she would ask them who's coming in today Tell me a little bit about this person She would voluntarily fill the desk in the fridge in front of her with little cheap snacks.

00:19:21 Speaker_01
And so you'd walk in

00:19:22 Speaker_01
She'd know your name before you even halfway across the room because she'd been prepped She would ask you because she kept a notebook about your family because she remembered it from last time She would offer you your favorite flavor of dum-dum lollipop because it's in the notebook Do you think the meetings went better at Kodak after someone dealt with this receptionist?

00:19:43 Speaker_01
Of course they did so she didn't view her job as they could get anybody to guard the door and She viewed her job as, Koenig only has one amazing receptionist and it's me.

00:19:54 Speaker_01
And I don't know if she was the last person they laid off after they went bankrupt, but probably, because how are you going to replace her?

00:20:02 Speaker_00
Yeah. When I started my very first real job, my dad said, make it so they can't live without you. And you'll always have a job.

00:20:12 Speaker_00
I really in my career have gotten jobs that I had no business getting and I was the first one to show up and the last one to leave and I would volunteer to do things. I mean, this is a different version of me, right?

00:20:25 Speaker_00
This is like I'm 20 years old and I have so much energy and no family and this is all I'm doing. But that really did serve me so well because I got mentorship from executives at that company

00:20:37 Speaker_00
Because I think that when you're further along in your career and you see someone who's hungry and they're willing to work hard and you're like, oh yeah, like this is the kid that I'm going to give advice to and this is the kid that I'm going to, you know, I got to go to these events I would have never gotten to go to, just had this incredible experience at 20 years old that is still with me today because I followed that path.

00:21:01 Speaker_00
The game thing that you mentioned is one of my post-its and my doggered pages in the new book, because I have to tell you, Seth, truly, every time I read one of your books, this happens more than once, but there's always one thing that you say that I'm like, my brain melts.

00:21:18 Speaker_00
I'm like, what? Oh my gosh. And the game thing was so powerful. And I'm going to do a very bad job of explaining why it mattered to me, and then you're going to explain it in a way that's much smarter.

00:21:32 Speaker_00
But this idea that every single system you go into, every single work environment, every single wanting to get your book published or have a podcast or start your own business, that every single group of people, it's a game.

00:21:48 Speaker_00
and that everyone's playing a game, but they're not all playing the same roles. They're not all trying to win the same things. They're like all, I was like, instead of going into situations thinking, why doesn't I'll give a very real example.

00:22:06 Speaker_00
I have written a screenplay. I've been a longtime writer of books. I wrote a screenplay, new medium, and I thought, well, I have this fan base and I've sold a bunch of books, so certainly people will want to read a screenplay.

00:22:22 Speaker_00
that I wrote, and it's just not the case. We'll get there. But when I first started to work on this project, I didn't anticipate that it would be a bit more uphill than I thought it would be.

00:22:35 Speaker_00
And I read that and I was like, oh, because I think everyone's playing the same game as me. And I think that that producer or that literary agent or that actor wants the same outcome that I want, rather than thinking, what does that producer want?

00:22:52 Speaker_00
What does that actor want? What does that agent want? How can I play the game by their rules to get more traction against my goals? That was like, oh my God, so good. So now you explain it in a much more brilliant way.

00:23:06 Speaker_01
I can't say it better than that. I can, I can fill in some gaps, but what kind of game is an agent playing? What kind of game is a studio head playing? What is important to them?

00:23:18 Speaker_01
Because it's not to make the single best movie ever made because no one knows what best even means. But even if it's to make the movie that wins the most Academy Awards, that's not their goal either.

00:23:31 Speaker_01
What people care about is their status and their affiliation. Affiliation is which group am I a part of? Am I an honored member of that group? And status is who eats lunch first.

00:23:44 Speaker_01
So if you're a Hollywood agent and you've got a project that's buzzy among a certain group of people that's going to get you a better table at the restaurant and the first phone call back, that's what you want, right?

00:23:56 Speaker_01
If you're the studio head, maybe you're thinking about what the shareholders have beat up the person who had your job before you over or the next thing. And so there's all these games that all these people play in their heads.

00:24:10 Speaker_01
And you show up in a fancy neighborhood and you look at the cars people are driving. They traded in a car that worked perfectly fine to get the car they're in now. What they got wasn't a car that moved them from place A to place B better.

00:24:26 Speaker_01
They got the story. They got the status. They got the affiliation, et cetera. So smart car companies understand this. They don't need this car. Their customer needs this car. And here's why.

00:24:38 Speaker_01
So when we show up, you know, the 800 rejection letters I got, I had spreadsheets and proof and data to show that those books would sell. And it never occurred to me at all.

00:24:52 Speaker_01
that the editors who were deciding not to publish my book, number one, didn't get rewarded for a book if it sold. And number two, didn't want a book that I could prove was going to sell a lot of copies.

00:25:05 Speaker_01
They wanted a book that matched the reason they went into book publishing. It took me years to develop this empathy. So one of the things I invented, 1988, was they would publish books that cost them a lot of money that sold almost no copies.

00:25:27 Speaker_01
And they did no research. They did no testing to do this. They just went on an instinct. So I said, here's what we're going to do. We're going to start this service. You pay me $2,000. Send me five book ideas you're thinking of acquiring.

00:25:39 Speaker_01
I'm going to build a panel of people, 1,000 people. We'll send them a fake cover for each one of these books. We'll say, which of these books do you want for free when it comes out?

00:25:49 Speaker_01
If nobody picks the book you're thinking about, even for free, maybe you should think about No one in publishing wanted this project. And the reason is, and to this day, they still don't test.

00:26:01 Speaker_01
Because if they test, they're like, well, what the hell am I doing here? Why am I making a low salary to do this job where I've sacrificed the one best part of my life, which is picking, to the audience? I'm the picker. And I have good taste.

00:26:17 Speaker_01
So once I could celebrate the fact that the people I was working with had good taste. They were like, we like this guy because he makes us feel like we have good taste.

00:26:27 Speaker_00
It's so wild when we think of this approach. Is it in any way manipulative? I'm so glad you asked this. Yeah. Is it disingenuous? Or are we just meeting people where they're at? Because that's what pops into my mind. It makes total sense.

00:26:43 Speaker_00
How do I show up in a way that this literary agent is going to want to take my project to this great producer contact that they have? But is that manipulative?

00:26:55 Speaker_01
OK, so let's think about what manipulative means. Manipulative, I think, means After someone says yes, they regret it. Once they know what you know. They regret that you played a game that they succumbed to.

00:27:12 Speaker_01
So it is manipulative to take a lousy car that's unreliable and make it feel like a luxury car because once it breaks down on the side of the road, you feel manipulated because they used simple clues to get you to do something, right?

00:27:28 Speaker_01
On the other hand, if you're marketing a fancy brand of vodka

00:27:33 Speaker_01
and you do it with fanciness, the people who are drinking it paying three times what they could have paid for cheaper vodka, they don't feel manipulated because they got exactly what they wanted, the story of the fancy vodka. So it's consistent.

00:27:47 Speaker_01
And so I've worked very hard not to manipulate people and to be very clear, if you're looking for X, this is an X, this is Y, this is what we do here. We don't do that. I could probably put up

00:28:01 Speaker_01
a good show to make you think we did that other thing, but that would be manipulating you. And I don't want to do that.

00:28:07 Speaker_00
Oh, that also speaks to something you talk about a lot, which is a greener approach to marketing or being in business or even being a personality or writer and trying to put your work out is thinking that your work is for everybody.

00:28:21 Speaker_00
Or thinking that if you don't offer it to everybody that you're going to miss out on leads, you're going to miss out on clients, or you're going to get left behind.

00:28:31 Speaker_00
And like, how niche do you think that people should be going with what they're offering?

00:28:37 Speaker_01
So some people use the phrase niching down. I don't like this. I think you should niche up. And what I mean by that is put yourself on the hook to the right people and forgive everybody else.

00:28:50 Speaker_01
So if we think about a superstar like you who has had such impact on people, I would guess 97% of the people in the United States have never once interacted with anything you have ever done.

00:29:05 Speaker_00
Absolutely.

00:29:06 Speaker_01
It's like 97%. In my case, it's more than 99%. I have 0% market share and I'm great with that. My goal is not to win an election. My goal is to matter to the people who I matter to and to be invisible to anyone who doesn't get the joke. It's fine.

00:29:26 Speaker_00
Wait, let's say that again. That's so good. To matter to the people I matter to and be invisible to anyone who doesn't get the joke.

00:29:33 Speaker_00
Oh, and see, that's so scary to so many of us because we are taught everything that you put out has got to appeal to everybody or at the very least not offend anyone or, yeah, gosh, that's so good.

00:29:46 Speaker_01
Yeah, so I don't mean to disrespect the people who don't get the joke. I'm just politely respecting them by saying, it's OK. You're in that world. I'm in this world. So for example, there are a lot of people who live in Italy.

00:30:01 Speaker_01
And if they don't speak English, they're not listening to this podcast. It's not for them. We're not disrespecting them by not doing simultaneous translation to Italian. We just made it for a different group of people.

00:30:12 Speaker_01
And the reason that this is challenging partly is because if we're coming at the world through scarcity, we don't want people to run away.

00:30:23 Speaker_01
And if you, if you go to a tourist trap and you walk by and there's all those people at the front door trying to get you to come in and come in, they have a scarcity mindset, right? They're rejected so often, everybody, we need anybody.

00:30:34 Speaker_01
But the other reason it's hard is because the people you do pick, you're now on the hook. If they don't like it. now you're really in trouble, right?

00:30:46 Speaker_01
So if you say, I'm a wedding photographer, I only shoot pictures in Montauk, and I only shoot photography for high-end weddings, but the brides and grooms and brides and brides and grooms and grooms you're talking to don't like your work, now you got nothing.

00:31:05 Speaker_01
It was so much easier in the old days when you said, please, everybody pick me, because there was an infinite number of everybody.

00:31:12 Speaker_01
But what's really beautiful, interesting, energizing is when you pick people and you're there for them because you decided this is going to work for them.

00:31:26 Speaker_01
And if you can't tell me who your audience is, and more important, if you're not regularly sending potential customers to someone else, then you're not serious about this. If you're just taking whoever walks in the door, you're not serious about it.

00:31:41 Speaker_00
And I think we as consumers really respect it when someone sends us somewhere else or when someone is, like you said, consistent or honest with... I've had this happen a couple of times lately where I've been looking to work with potential companies and the lead that I'm talking to will say, I love you, I'm so excited, but I just don't have the bandwidth to take this on.

00:32:06 Speaker_00
And I'm like, Thank you. Because you could have actually tried to take my money and done a really crappy job. I think we appreciate that honesty and that integrity.

00:32:16 Speaker_00
And it makes me think, well, maybe not this project, but maybe the next one we'll circle back around. But again, that requires an abundance mindset as it pertains to clients and business. How do you suggest that people lean further into

00:32:32 Speaker_00
Like, is it starting by going, what is your customer avatar? Like, what's the dream client or customer? And then pairing that with how am I best suited to show up for them? Like, how do you figure out how to niche up?

00:32:45 Speaker_01
Yeah, so it's so easy to lie to ourselves about this. to assert that the person we're imagining would pick us. But we haven't done anything to be different enough, better enough to be the obvious choice for that person.

00:33:03 Speaker_01
So there is an enormous amount of hard work and soul searching that has to go on first to say, when someone, you know, if you're looking, to buy a car, the people at Ferrari don't have to spend a lot of time explaining what a Ferrari is.

00:33:19 Speaker_01
But if you want to buy an SUV, the people at Ferrari should be sending you down the street to Volvo. They shouldn't be persuading you that you want a Ferrari. And if you're just making the Ford Taurus, you're not going to get either of those customers.

00:33:34 Speaker_01
You've decided to make an average car for average people. So one of the challenges we have is we show up and say, but I've worked really hard, so you should pick me. No, you wouldn't pick you just cause that person was working really hard.

00:33:48 Speaker_01
You would pick someone because they saw what you needed and that's what they do. And there's countless examples of this. And when you find a, uh, a purveyor that gets the job.

00:34:05 Speaker_01
You will know because they will you know, you'll complain, you know, I did the story I tell about david chang and momofuku He's super famous now when momofuku first opened it wasn't no one went because it hadn't been reviewed It's a little tiny Uh storefront on first avenue in new york city.

00:34:21 Speaker_01
I live about 20 miles away from new york So on saturdays the family would get in the electric car drive down to momofuku for lunch and we'd sit at the counter And I haven't eaten meat in 40 years.

00:34:33 Speaker_01
And one of the items on the menu is Brussels sprouts with bacon. And I would say to the person, can I have the Brussels sprouts leave off the bacon? This is good for them because they don't have to waste the bacon. It's good for me because I can eat it.

00:34:46 Speaker_01
And the third Saturday we're there. I'm pretty sure it's David working the griddle. I'm not sure, but I think it was. And I order this and he turns to me and he says, it sounds like you don't eat meat. I said, I don't.

00:34:57 Speaker_01
He said, with all respect, there's a really good vegetarian place three doors down. We serve the Brussels sprouts with bacon because we like it like that. Thank you for coming, but I don't think this is a good place for you.

00:35:11 Speaker_01
And that was the day he became David Chang. That was the day it became Momofuku, because they said, we know who we're here for, and we know who we're not here for.

00:35:21 Speaker_00
Yes. Gosh, it's one of those things, though, that feels easier said than done, particularly if you were raised to people, please, and to make sure that everyone finds you agreeable. But you're so right.

00:35:33 Speaker_00
Even in going through the edit process on the newest book, it was a new editor, because this is the first time working with Authors' Equity, and it was a new editor. And this happens a lot, actually, with my writing.

00:35:45 Speaker_00
I've gotten this a lot from editors over the years. I'll make a joke. And then they'll say, oh, I think we should explain this a little bit more.

00:35:53 Speaker_00
So I'll reference like a TV show that I loved when I was a teenager or a song lyric or something that happened in a Disney movie. And they'll say, I think you need to explain this better.

00:36:02 Speaker_00
And I will die on this hill that if you do not get my reference, that's OK, because explaining it makes it not funny to those of us who understand what Saved by the Bell is.

00:36:15 Speaker_00
So it really is a, once you can figure out how to speak in your own voice, you start to find the people who can, who want to listen to it.

00:36:25 Speaker_01
But now let's branch over to empathy, because it explains the challenge here. It's not that the editor didn't get the book. It's that the craft of being an editor involves practical empathy. You don't have to be a cancer survivor to be an oncologist.

00:36:40 Speaker_01
You don't have to be a three-year-old to design toys. that what you have to be able to do is imagine what a three-year-old wants in a toy. And so the art of editing a book is not to say this book is for me.

00:36:53 Speaker_01
It's to imagine who it might be for and help it make it more for them.

00:36:58 Speaker_00
Do you have experiences in your career where everybody thought you should zig and you zagged and it worked in despite what everyone thought or the opposite is true? You knew you, okay. Yeah. So will you give us some examples of that? Yeah.

00:37:15 Speaker_01
Okay. My job is not to sell as many books as I can. It hasn't been in a very long time. My job is a series of art projects that I am proud of for the people I'm doing this work for, which means I'm going to be wrong and I'm not going to be wrong.

00:37:31 Speaker_01
And so I wrote a book called All Marketers Are Liars. And people I trusted told me that was a terrible title. They were correct. The cover image, because I have approval over all my covers, was me wearing a four-inch long Pinocchio nose.

00:37:50 Speaker_01
People I trust said, this is a really bad idea for a book cover. We did it anyway. I was wrong. On the other hand, in 1989, I saw this thing called Prodigy that turned into this thing called AOL that turned into this thing called the internet.

00:38:08 Speaker_01
I invented email marketing. I started one of the first internet companies. And every single person I trusted said it was a bad idea. So that one makes up for a whole bunch of bad book titles. It all works out.

00:38:20 Speaker_00
When you look back in hindsight, so much of my new book is about learning to know yourself better and listening to that inner wisdom.

00:38:28 Speaker_00
When you look back at those experiences, was there anything that indicated to you that, you know, this book title might not be the right thing or you felt very strongly this was the play?

00:38:40 Speaker_01
So I can't wait to read your book. I haven't read it yet. They didn't send it to me yet.

00:38:44 Speaker_00
I hope you like it. Oh, you are quoted about 10 times. So please don't be weirded out when there's an entire chapter based on something I heard you say once. Well, you're very kind. Just prepare yourself for that.

00:38:55 Speaker_01
My ego is big enough that I'll be fine with that. It's very easy to get superstitious. So what we can teach a dog or a pigeon to be superstitious.

00:39:06 Speaker_01
What it is to be superstitious is you do something and then something good happens and you think that the thing you did is what caused the good thing to happen.

00:39:13 Speaker_01
So over and over you do that other thing, even though it's not related, you just think it's related. And so I had a dog years ago that would always run around in a circle before he started to eat. Because he did that once and there was good food.

00:39:26 Speaker_01
And so now he thinks they're related, you know. So I came to the conclusion that if I have a hunch and a lot of people around me don't think it's a good idea, that's a good sign. But that might not be a good sign. It might be that I'm just wrong.

00:39:47 Speaker_01
And so what I have been trying to do with my books is not do the here is the ABC tactical, you know, the three steps you should take to have a lot of followers on social media. I don't do things like that.

00:40:00 Speaker_01
So I could have written a book called Smart Marketers Tell Stories because that's what the book was about. But I didn't think there was enough tension in that title. I thought it was too on the nose.

00:40:11 Speaker_01
No pun intended So instead I made my nose really big and called it all marketers are liars and then told this whole complicated story About what lying really is and what kinds of lying and manipulation, etc This book this is strategy wasn't called that at first.

00:40:27 Speaker_01
It was called the blueprint And I started with a whole explanation as to why it was called the blueprint. And then I listened to a smart person and I said, who am I? Why am I being clever? Don't be clever. Just be exactly what you're here to say.

00:40:41 Speaker_01
And I'm glad I did. So you can't tell often, but you can practice Trying to understand what are the reasons you're doing something that other people don't approve of, right? If you see, so in the case of the internet,

00:41:01 Speaker_01
I saw that there was an insatiable desire. When you fill an insatiable desire, and Rachel, your entire public career is about this. When you fill an insatiable desire for other people temporarily, they will want you to do it again.

00:41:14 Speaker_01
And what the internet has been doing for 40 years is trying to fill an insatiable desire people have to be connected to one another and have something to talk about.

00:41:25 Speaker_01
And the more we hook people up to the internet, the more they want to be hooked up to the internet.

00:41:29 Speaker_01
I saw that in 1989 and Because I saw it and I believed it it didn't matter that other people were behind me the same way I'm early in AI because I see it fulfilling a whole bunch of things that a lot of people want an unlimited amount of and Other people might be afraid of AI or whatever.

00:41:50 Speaker_01
That's fine But that's not gonna keep me from trying to explore That insatiable desire and whether this might help with that

00:41:59 Speaker_00
So now we have to talk about AI because that's such a... How are you approaching it and what are you thinking about it?

00:42:06 Speaker_01
Okay. So I've been studying it since college, a very long time. I've worked with some, I worked with Arthur C. Clarke, uh, who did 2001. And I also worked with Doug Lenat who did a lot of research on it, but it was always 50 years in the future.

00:42:19 Speaker_01
It was always way off. And it's worth noting that the existing things like Claude and chat GPT, they don't know anything. It's a trick our brain plays on us.

00:42:33 Speaker_01
We assert that they have intention when all they're doing is a math problem over and over again. So the first trap is trusting it too much because it's not smart. It's really stupid. It doesn't know anything. We're just imagining.

00:42:49 Speaker_01
And it's very good at mediocre work. And mediocre just means average. So it can read an x-ray, as well as an average radiologist. It can write marketing copy, as well as an average marketing copywriter, and 500 things.

00:43:05 Speaker_01
So if you do average work, you got big trouble. Because if you do average work, an AI is about to do it instead of you. That's going to happen very soon. That means you've got to become a linchpin.

00:43:16 Speaker_01
You've got to do, in a very small area, work that an AI can't do. The second thing that's, I think, around the corner is right now AI is you and the machine. It is not you and five friends and the machine.

00:43:31 Speaker_01
But once the machine knows what your circle is into and starts connecting you about things you didn't know you should connect around, so let's say you decide to get rid of that sculpture on the bookshelf behind you because you're cleaning things out and AI says, wait a minute, your friend Betty was just looking on eBay.

00:43:52 Speaker_01
She wants to buy that. Think about the value that's created when a very smart, kind thing that's connecting us knows what we all want.

00:44:01 Speaker_01
So we're going to see the biggest change in our culture since electricity when we connect people at a whole level that we didn't think was possible. And at the same time, we're going to wipe out a billion jobs and invent 2 billion new jobs.

00:44:18 Speaker_01
So buckle up, buttercup, because it's going to be a whole different thing.

00:44:22 Speaker_00
I believe it. Oh my God. Well, okay, so I have to segue into the fangirling I do over you in the new book.

00:44:32 Speaker_00
I didn't mean to quote you so many times to the point that the editor was like, I think like at some point you have to stop talking about Seth Godin, but there is one particular question in the book.

00:44:45 Speaker_00
So the book is 26 different questions that when I heard them, they changed the way I looked at life or they changed the course of my life. And one of them is from you.

00:44:54 Speaker_00
So I would love to share the question with you and hear you talk about it live because that just tickles my heart. But I heard you say once, what would you do if you knew you would fail?

00:45:09 Speaker_00
Which is so different than what would you do if you knew you could not fail, right? The thing that's on all the motivational cards and like, dream big and chase the thing you really want. And you said, what would you do if you knew you would fail?

00:45:21 Speaker_00
Like, what do you love so much that even if you suck forever and you never make a single dollar doing this thing, it would be worth it to you to pursue it? And that made my heart explode in really different ways. And I love it so much.

00:45:36 Speaker_00
And I would just be tickled if you'd talk about it.

00:45:39 Speaker_01
Oh, Rachel, this means a lot to me. Yeah, I was obviously riffing on the, what would you do if you knew you couldn't fail? As a game designer and a clever nerdy kid, that question's a trap, right?

00:45:53 Speaker_01
Because, oh, I would start the Justice League of America, learn to fly, and do all these things that are impossible. So it's not useful. But what would happen if you knew you were going to fail? Well, that happens to me all the time.

00:46:05 Speaker_01
So, you know, I did a year and a half of my life as a full-time volunteer organizing the Carbon Almanac, which is a 97,000 word illustrated footnoted document I wrote with 1900 other people about the climate.

00:46:22 Speaker_01
I am certain that that book is not going to save our climate. But we needed to do it anyway, because it's one more brick in a wall that's worth building.

00:46:35 Speaker_01
I have launched 145 books in my career, 23 as an author, and not one of them has been a number one runaway bestseller. The chances that I'm going to write a number one runaway bestseller are close to zero, but I'm writing the books anyway.

00:46:51 Speaker_01
Because by some measures of failure, They're failing, but by other measures, they're worth doing. That we forget that the purpose of culture is not to enable capitalism. The purpose of capitalism is to enable culture.

00:47:07 Speaker_01
That we're here for a very limited time, surrounded by people of less privilege than us. What are we doing? Why are we doing it? And keeping track of this golden ring over there, that it's not worth it unless that happens, that's enervating.

00:47:23 Speaker_01
I would rather say this was worth doing. And if it works, that would be nice, but probably disappointing too, because at that point I would hope for even more. No, it's just, I did it. I'm really proud I did it.

00:47:36 Speaker_01
Here I made this so these two sentences here. I made this and this might not work How often do we get to say those two things? With sincerity about something we care about and that's what I try to fill my days with

00:47:51 Speaker_00
Well, the beauty of that mindset is that you are detaching yourself from the outcome, which is so helpful as a creator, as a writer, as anyone who's trying to make something, if you can detach yourself from what it needs to be once it's out in the world.

00:48:07 Speaker_00
You know this world, so I've spent two years writing this book and I will do everything that I can from now until after it comes out to promote it because all I can hope for is that the people who've read my work before

00:48:22 Speaker_00
will know that a new book's coming out. That's all I can do. And I hope that the quality of the writing is so that you enjoy it and that you want to share it with your friends. But I have no idea.

00:48:34 Speaker_00
It was not my job to ensure that it sells a bajillion copies. My job was to write it.

00:48:40 Speaker_00
And to put it out, and like, I don't know, I've had, just like you, I've had books that have exploded, and I've had books that only my Aunt Linda read, and that's okay, because that's about the process, it's not about the final product.

00:48:53 Speaker_01
Yeah, so you talked about attachment, and this confuses a lot of people, particularly if they're not trained in Buddhism. Attachment is easy to understand if we think about it like this. Let's say you and I are going to swim across Buck Lake, right?

00:49:09 Speaker_01
It's a mile swim. And to watch out for each other, we agree to swim five to 10 feet apart. And I'm watching you and you're watching me. We're likely to make it across.

00:49:21 Speaker_01
But if I hook up a rope from my hand to your hand, my leg to your leg, and we are attached, we're both going to drown. We're both gonna drown because my swimming and your swimming can't be separated and neither one can help.

00:49:36 Speaker_01
And so when we become attached to an outcome, what we're saying is, I need to use my energy to cause something that I don't have control over to change. And when we do that, we take our energy and our focus away from the thing we do have agency over.

00:49:56 Speaker_01
And so is it okay to care?

00:49:58 Speaker_01
Yeah, I think you and I both care about whether the work we're doing is going to impact somebody, but that's different than being attached and requiring that the next person who walks through that door gets the joke, likes us and does what we want them to.

00:50:12 Speaker_00
Well, and then it's so easy to be manipulated by something, let's say like social media and how many likes you get and how many shares and you get wrapped up in just you get wrapped up in things that don't actually matter.

00:50:26 Speaker_00
There's so many vanity metrics now that people are using. But behind the scenes, that's not actually pushing the work forward. And if you don't understand that as an outsider looking into an industry that you'd really like to be a part of.

00:50:39 Speaker_00
You think, oh my gosh, they're killing it because they have 10 million followers on YouTube. But as an author, they might actually not be doing the thing that you think that they are.

00:50:51 Speaker_00
So it's so dangerous to get wrapped up into that world because, I don't know, I think the only thing that I have control over is the work that I do. And so I just keep coming back to that.

00:51:03 Speaker_00
I'm, I guess, pretty old school in thinking that if I stay focused and I work hard, that the work will find someone who needs it. And I don't know if that's one person or one million. I'll just be over here continuing to do my thing.

00:51:16 Speaker_01
But false proxies kick in here. False proxies are the kind of numbers you're talking about. If it's easy to measure, but doesn't help you do better work, you must ignore it. And the more you can put Like, I don't know how many people read my blog.

00:51:33 Speaker_01
I don't know how many people are responding to it in social media. Because I'm not aware of it on purpose. Because if I was, it wouldn't make my blog better, it would make it worse. Because I would do things to make those numbers go up.

00:51:48 Speaker_00
I have to actually write this down because it's so good. Wait, say it again.

00:51:51 Speaker_01
If it's easy to measure- But it's not helpful in causing you to change what you do. And so, yeah, if you need to make rent, you need to pay attention to how much revenue is coming in.

00:52:02 Speaker_01
But once you get going, making decisions to make your revenue go up if you're not a public company, well, yeah, it's easy to measure your revenue, but is that why you're doing this?

00:52:14 Speaker_01
Is adding 10 more employees and opening another city's worth of thing, that's an easy metric. It's easy to bring that up at a cocktail party. I'm killing it, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, but is that why you're doing this?

00:52:25 Speaker_01
Or is there a different metric that might be harder to measure that if you focused on that measurement, your work would actually get more resilient, more generative, and by your definition, better?

00:52:39 Speaker_00
So what do you measure?

00:52:42 Speaker_01
I measure what I hear from people who learn something from someone I taught, which means that when you tell me that one of your 26 questions is something that I taught you without even meeting you, and I think about the million women and some men who are going to touch that and have their lives impacted, that tells me that the day I did that work was worth it.

00:53:10 Speaker_00
Oh, I didn't think you're going to make me cry. That's so good. God, that's so good.

00:53:17 Speaker_00
So especially coming from someone who is this marketing guru, like you talk about this idea of, you know, books aren't tested or whatever, but like, is that where you started or the sort of this heart for what you're doing?

00:53:31 Speaker_00
Is that an evolution over time as you've gotten older?

00:53:35 Speaker_01
So I started in the book business by trying to show the book industry how clever I was, and I failed at that. And then to pay the rent, I decided to be of use to the book industry. So I did the Stanley Kaplan test prep books.

00:53:52 Speaker_01
I did the People Magazine Celebrity Almanac. I did very complicated, difficult projects that few people had the computer skills to do that the book industry needed. And that was chopping wood and carrying water.

00:54:06 Speaker_01
That was books that I was proud of, but books that weren't quote by me. And every once in a while I would squeeze in a book that was by me. Like I did the smiley dictionary, which was the first book of emojis. Uh, it took three days to write that book.

00:54:19 Speaker_01
It was fun, but then the shift was okay. Now I've paid the rent. Why am I even bothering to show up here? How am I going to do a book?

00:54:35 Speaker_01
Not that sells a lot in this first two weeks, but that maybe 25 years after it comes out, people mentioned permission marketing to me. And could I write a book like that that could stand up over time? Because otherwise it should be a magazine article.

00:54:53 Speaker_01
And so when I built the blog, which I haven't missed a day in a lot of thousands of days, the blog is great because it gets something off my chest and I don't have to write a whole book about it.

00:55:03 Speaker_01
I can say, this is important today or maybe it'll be important in the future, done. But if there's going to be a book, I need to think really hard about why did this medium need this book and why did this book need this medium?

00:55:17 Speaker_01
Why am I showing up in that world of hard to get, hard to store, easier to share? That's what I'm trying to do. And so I've been trying to do that for, I don't know, 20 years or so.

00:55:30 Speaker_00
I wrote down one of your quotes because I wanted to make, well, I wrote down what I think the quote is, and I'm probably going to mispronounce this, but this idea that being remarkable doesn't mean being perfect, I felt was especially relevant for a community like mine who often will hold themselves back because they feel like, well, it's not ready yet.

00:55:51 Speaker_00
I haven't tested it enough. It's not as good as it can be. versus a world nowadays where some people are just like, everything is going out the door. They're like, just throw all of the crap at the wall and see what sticks.

00:56:05 Speaker_00
What does the Balance Act look like today of the courage to send something out maybe before it's perfect?

00:56:13 Speaker_01
Okay, so again, the words matter here and it's not a balance between those two. That's like saying, do you walk to school or take your lunch?

00:56:20 Speaker_00
Exactly, I told you, I did warn you I was gonna write that down wrong.

00:56:25 Speaker_01
No, you didn't write it down wrong at all.

00:56:26 Speaker_01
What I'm saying is this first of all Perfect is a place to hide and a trap Perfect is by definition impossible that the most perfect sphere in the world which they keep in France to show how much a kilogram weighs which has been built by scientists and it's

00:56:46 Speaker_01
It's not nearly as round if you blow it up to the size of the earth as the earth is that nothing is perfect so if you want to say I'm holding this back until it's perfect.

00:56:57 Speaker_01
You should just say I'm afraid Because you're being selfish Imagine that you're on lifeguard duty back to Buck Lake and there's like five of us on lifeguard duty on the dock and the person in front of you starts drowning and

00:57:13 Speaker_01
You could accurately and honestly say you are not the best lifeguard in the world. You might not even be the best lifeguard on that dock. But if you don't jump in and save that person, they're gonna die. So perfect isn't the point here.

00:57:27 Speaker_01
The point is good enough means good enough. When something is good enough, the generous thing is to ship it. If you're not happy with the definition of good enough, change the definition of good enough.

00:57:40 Speaker_01
Like a 1968 Chevy Nova was good enough, but after Toyota raised the bar, it wasn't good enough anymore. So go, sure, please raise the bar. But the most perfect car ever made isn't perfect. With an electron microscope, you see all the defects.

00:57:57 Speaker_01
So that's the first thing. The second thing is remarkable has a very specific meaning, which means worth making a remark about. It's not a gimmick, it's not a hustle. It's if I write something and Rachel gets it, will she feel better if she shares it?

00:58:17 Speaker_01
Will it raise her status or her affiliation? She's only going to share it because she wants to, not because I want her to. So when we make something remarkable, other people talk about it. in a good way because it helps them.

00:58:32 Speaker_01
And then the last thing you talked about is shipping junk. And, you know, Nike has this slogan, just do it. And what that slogan means is stop complaining and go for a run. I have a different slogan, which is not just ship it.

00:58:52 Speaker_01
It's merely ship it, which means once it's good enough, Bring it to the world without drama. Bring it to the world without heartache. Merely bring it to the world. Here, I made this. It's not junk, but it might not work.

00:59:07 Speaker_01
I am detached from the outcome, but given the time and resources I have and the people I'm making it for, I honestly believe this is generative and helpful. This is generous work. Generous doesn't mean you lowered your price.

00:59:19 Speaker_01
Generous means you brought something helpful to people. And so, The trap that goes with perfect, which is exactly the same is shipping junk. They're both the same. It's, I can't be held responsible because it's junk. I can't help be held responsible.

00:59:35 Speaker_01
I didn't even ship it in the middle is I'm responsible. I saw you. I hear you. I made this for you. Put your name on it.

00:59:45 Speaker_00
So do you ever, or do you advise people to, because I love this idea of like merely you put it out, there's not drama, it's not pomp and circumstance, it's here's this offering.

00:59:56 Speaker_00
And then are you hoping to get feedback from the market and make it better and then ship again? Like what does that relationship look like?

01:00:03 Speaker_01
Yeah, you must listen to the people who it's for and ignore the people it's not for. Right. So when my blog posts started to get really long and complicated, what I discovered is they weren't resonating with the people I was writing them for.

01:00:22 Speaker_01
So I learned from that and my blog posts got less long and less complicated because I wasn't going to change who they were for. And those people weren't going to change what they wanted. So if I wanted to serve them, I had to show up.

01:00:35 Speaker_01
When I started my career as a public speaker, there was a conference called Internet World, and they had 700 speakers at the conference because they had all these breakout rooms and stuff. And they posted the rankings of all 700 from the surveys.

01:00:51 Speaker_01
And I was the 640th ranked speaker out of the people at Internet World. And I decided, this was a very long time ago, I decided I was going to have as my work to work my way up. And three internet worlds later, I was the number one ranked speaker.

01:01:09 Speaker_01
Because I decided to change, like the speech I gave the first time was the speech I wanted to give, that's why I gave it. But then I thought, I'm not here to hear me, because I know what I'm going to say. I'm here for them to hear me.

01:01:24 Speaker_01
How do I bring them what they need and want to create the kind of talk that they're going to be glad they heard? And that cycle of learning is the only way we learn to walk when we're a toddler.

01:01:40 Speaker_01
And it's the only way we learn to write or to give a speech or anything else is we see what makes someone's eyes light up. Comedians do this all the time. That's the only way to get funny.

01:01:51 Speaker_00
They test the material, yeah. Well, it also comes back to that where we started with this idea that you need to show up authentically, you know, that you have to do a job where you can absolutely be yourself. And it isn't always the case.

01:02:06 Speaker_00
I mean, I think this is probably a, I don't know, maybe a controversial thing for me to say, given that I am in this

01:02:13 Speaker_00
world where I am constantly trying to offer ideas and wisdom and here do this and and I get most often described as authentic because I do try and show up just this is who I am if we were sitting here at my house you'd be like yeah that's Rachel.

01:02:28 Speaker_00
But simultaneously, I don't think that authenticity is me showing up crying on, you know, my podcast or sharing something on social where I'm having a really hard day. I'm feeling and those days absolutely happen.

01:02:43 Speaker_00
We go through hard times and hard seasons, but I don't think that's my role. My role in this, I hope, is to put some joy into the world and maybe give you ideas that help you.

01:02:54 Speaker_00
I don't think it's helpful if I am super hormonal and crying about my oldest son's about to go off to college and I don't know what I'm going to do when he's not here. I don't think that's the audience's job to hold.

01:03:07 Speaker_00
But the standard now is more of this like show every single part of it. And it really, I'm totally in agreement with you. I don't think that that's what the work is.

01:03:17 Speaker_01
Well, it was very brave for you to say that given what you do and how you do it. But it's true. You are playing the role. of Rachel Hollis. Sometimes the role of Rachel Hollis is actually very easy for you because it's the way you feel in the moment.

01:03:32 Speaker_01
But you have learned from saying your lines and seeing the audience what makes the best version of Rachel Hollis. So I learned this from one of my teachers, the late Zig Ziglar.

01:03:45 Speaker_01
Zig was the person who invented pretty much the whole give a funky speech kind of motivation. And I did a gig with him once. I published one of his books, but he and I were on stage. It was in Wisconsin. There were 18,000 people there.

01:04:01 Speaker_01
Gerald Ford, me, him, Mia Hamm. And backstage,

01:04:06 Speaker_00
No big deal. Nobody of note.

01:04:08 Speaker_01
I couldn't believe that I was in that room because it was sort of early in my career and Zig was my hero. And we're sitting backstage and Zig looks like he's going to fall asleep any minute.

01:04:18 Speaker_01
And he's not a particularly good conversationalist and he doesn't have a lot of stories. He's just sitting there slouching. And they come in and they say, three minutes, Mr. Ziegler. And it was like the Macy's balloons. He went.

01:04:32 Speaker_01
And he got an inch taller, two inches taller, three inches taller. His eyes lit up, his skin changed color. He stood up, he walked through that room for like 30 seconds like he was a totally different person. He walked on stage, he killed.

01:04:49 Speaker_01
And then he came back and he went, like this. Because he's not a fake. He was just playing the role of Zig Ziglar on stage.

01:04:59 Speaker_00
Yeah, yeah.

01:05:00 Speaker_00
And I also think it's worth noting that for people who are in the public eye, there's a certain level of energetic protection, not to sound too much like a hippie for you, but that it allows you to kind of step into it and step out of it because obviously

01:05:16 Speaker_00
The person who's going to go make my kids dinner later is not the same person that's on stage speaking to 15,000 people. Those are two completely different spaces to hold. And if you understand that, it's easier to show up and understand the role.

01:05:31 Speaker_00
I don't know. That has made my career much easier.

01:05:33 Speaker_01
But let's be very clear. The same thing is true if you're a copywriter. The same thing is true if you're a wedding photographer. So people aren't all watching this on video. I am wearing my uniform.

01:05:44 Speaker_01
I wear my uniform every single time I am doing this work, because when I put on this smock, I am doing the work. And you can have exactly the same attitude in whatever service you are offering to people.

01:06:00 Speaker_01
And, you know, if you think about the best doctor you've ever visited, that doctor knew that they were being a doctor.

01:06:09 Speaker_01
And if you think about the worst doctor, they just didn't care enough to exert the emotional labor to show up for you the way you needed them to show up.

01:06:17 Speaker_00
Yeah.

01:06:18 Speaker_00
There's actually a great book on this called, if I'm not mistaken, The Alter Ego Effect, of the power of like literally putting on a certain piece of clothing or putting on a talisman or having something that signals to you like, okay, now I'm the CEO and I'm going to go lead my team of 200 people.

01:06:34 Speaker_00
And then, okay, now I'm the mama and I'm going to, it really helps to compartmentalize, I think, your energy. I have to jump because I realized I didn't talk to you about my favorite book of yours and I'm scared that we're going to run out of time.

01:06:49 Speaker_00
This is another thing I reference in the new book is the dip. I have quoted you. I mean, the audience is going to be like, oh, she's fine. I have told this audience this quote a thousand times. And now I get to say in front of you.

01:07:02 Speaker_00
But and I'm probably going to misquote you again. But the opposite of quitting isn't just doing the same thing. It's recommitting with passion. It's so good. And I think I say this in the book, like that line is so good.

01:07:16 Speaker_00
I'm sad I didn't come up with it myself. It's so freaking great. Will you talk a little bit about that book? And I'm hoping people who are listening, I know it's not the newest book, but it's so freaking good. And it's like, you could read it in a day.

01:07:29 Speaker_00
It's so helpful. I just, I got a fangirl the day.

01:07:32 Speaker_01
Well, thank you. If it takes someone a day to read it, they should get some help. It takes about 20 minutes to read it.

01:07:38 Speaker_00
I didn't want to, I was like, we're going to just give, we don't know the speed people read at Seth. I didn't mean to judge.

01:07:45 Speaker_01
So how many books are there on quitting? You know, now there's two because Annie Duke wrote one too, and hers is really good. Why are there only two books on quitting?

01:07:54 Speaker_01
If you're not wearing a tutu, you quit ballet sometime after you were three years old, right? There's nothing wrong with quitting ballet because the chances that you were going to be a professional ballerina are zero.

01:08:08 Speaker_01
And yet, we associate shame with quitting. And yet, we don't consider when we start a project, under what circumstances am I going to quit this project? And a project can be a business project, a relationship, or anything in between.

01:08:22 Speaker_01
So I wanted to start by celebrating the idea that not only do winners never quit, which is a ridiculous statement, but the happiest, healthiest people quit all the time. because they're quitting on their terms, not when the world forces them to.

01:08:41 Speaker_01
So then the second part of it is, if there's something of value in the economy, a role you can play, A lot of people are probably trying to get to that position, and most of them quit before they get there.

01:08:55 Speaker_01
So to be a doctor, you gotta take organic chemistry. Not because dermatologists do a lot of organic chemistry, but because they're trying to limit the number of doctors.

01:09:04 Speaker_01
Because that is how you keep medical schools in business, and that's how doctors become valuable. So what is it that you're hoping to create a value here, And why is it going to be hard to get to that spot?

01:09:22 Speaker_01
When you hit that hard spot, don't curse it out. Don't complain. That's a good thing that there is the hard spot. Because on the other side is where real value lies.

01:09:33 Speaker_01
So the worst thing to do is pretend there isn't a dip, act surprised when you hit it, and then quit after you've spent all this time and money.

01:09:41 Speaker_01
Instead, either quit before you start, because you know where the dip is and it's not worth it, and I do this all the time, or stick it out and know that if I start, I'm going to finish, because that's where the value is.

01:09:57 Speaker_01
And so what we got sucked into is I'm just doing my job. I'm just doing my job. It's Tuesday. Friday's coming soon. I'm just doing my job. And the next thing you know, your life is gone. And what I'm challenging people to do is to say,

01:10:14 Speaker_01
You, if you're listening to this, you are richer than the last king of France was that we have the ability to reach billions of people that we have, you know, trillion dollars worth of computer power at our fingertips that we are connected and trusted.

01:10:27 Speaker_01
And we have all of this insight. Don't waste it just because you're afraid to quit. Find something that's worth going through the dip for and go do that.

01:10:39 Speaker_00
So good. Okay, last question. I promise I'm going to let you get on with your life.

01:10:43 Speaker_01
This is my life. This is like so much fun.

01:10:47 Speaker_00
Good. I know that you care about good questions as much as I do, because in the new strategy book, there's so many of them.

01:10:55 Speaker_00
There's even a section where it's like, these are the questions to ask yourself, 17 questions to ask yourself about your strategy.

01:11:03 Speaker_00
What is a question that more business owners, entrepreneurs, small business, people who are freelancers, who are trying to be their own boss, trying to work for themselves, what is a question that more of them need to be asking themselves to get to a better solution in 2025?

01:11:22 Speaker_01
Well, what would it take to be missed if you weren't there?

01:11:26 Speaker_00
Yeah. Yeah. It's so simple and so It's the thing that we don't think about. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, honestly, that's a beautiful way to approach life in general, to approach your relationship with your family, your children, your partner, if you have one.

01:11:47 Speaker_00
Yeah. How could I show up in such a way that I would be missed if I wasn't here? Seth, this has been truly a blessing. I'm so, so grateful for the time.

01:11:58 Speaker_00
And if the audience wasn't already familiar with you, I feel like they're going to go buy all the books because there is wisdom in each and every one. But is there a place that they should hang out with you besides your books?

01:12:10 Speaker_00
And will you tell them where that is?

01:12:11 Speaker_01
So the blog is called Seths.blog, and there's 9,000 posts there, so after you read all 9,000 of them, drop me a note and I'll give you a prize.

01:12:19 Speaker_01
And if you go to Seths.blog slash T-I-S, you can see all this bonus extra stuff, including the collectible chocolate bar. Do you have one?

01:12:27 Speaker_00
I don't. Okay, email me right away your address.

01:12:30 Speaker_01
It's going to you immediately. The collectible chocolate bar is delightful.

01:12:34 Speaker_00
Fabulous. Thank you so much for the time. I really appreciate it.

01:12:38 Speaker_01
Thank you. I would miss you if you weren't here.

01:12:40 Speaker_00
It's so good to talk to you. Same. Same. The Rachel Hollis Podcast is produced by me, Rachel Hollis. It's edited by Andrew Weller and Jack Noble.