How to Solve Problems Better Than 99% of People | Seth Godin

Seth Godin 0:00 Why do we become mediocre? The first one is deniability. What we end up with is saying, "I am attached to coming up with an idea that everyone is gonna love, being reassured that nothing bad is gonna happen. If I can be guaranteed those two things, then I'll go do it." And that's why most people would rather be mediocre.

Codie Sanchez 0:17 My guest today is Seth Godin. You're gonna hear how Seth survived 800 rejection letters in a single year, and that led him to now writing 21 books, multiple bestsellers. We're going to steal his self-belief so that you can use it for yourself today. Winners are actually quitters, as long as it's strategic quitting.

Seth Godin 0:35 Quitting isn't failing. What's failing is sticking with something that's not working and not making you happy. Quitting is a chance to invest in the thing that I ought to be doing next.

Codie Sanchez 0:44 Is there, like, one single belief that helps to cure mediocrity in most people?

Seth Godin 0:50 Well, I have a mantra, which is...

Codie Sanchez 0:55 I wanna talk about your insane work ethic, which I've admired for so many years. You've published a blog post every single day for, I believe, 26 years, often two to three times a day. That's, as, like, some public math, 10,000 posts, maybe more than 3 million words. It kinda puts you among, like, the most prolific creators, I think, of all time. Picasso, you know, Casey Neistat with his millions of videos, if you wanna go a little bit more, more common. Beeple, 17 years of daily art. I guess my first question is, what does hitting publish every single day teach you, and why do you do that?

Seth Godin 1:29 I don't think of a work ethic being like this. I have a craft ethic. I have a posture of sharing the work 'cause I think it's worthwhile. And the thing is, I made a decision once, and then I don't have to make it again. So there's gonna be a blog post from me tomorrow, not 'cause it's the best blog post I ever wrote, but because it's Thursday, and that changes everything. 'Cause if you know there's gonna be a blog post tomorrow, when you go to sleep tonight, that's what you're gonna be thinking about. Habits create who we are, and what I found was re-litigating each decision was enervating, was undermining me. But if I can show up and say, "This is my craft. Here, I made this," then it becomes who I wanna be.

Codie Sanchez 2:18 Yeah. Like, I, I guess, let's say there's somebody listening right now, and this somebody could be me on many days. But, you know, when you don't wanna do something, like you have that deep in your veins, please, like, I would rather do anything else in the world except the thing I know I need to do. What would you tell them, or what do you tell yourself?

Seth Godin 2:39 Well, I think it's helpful to break it into pieces, right? Is it common for you to not wanna do the thing you have to do? 'Cause if that's the case, then it's not the thing, it's the have to part that you re- re- right? That people go on vacation and do things that they just paid a lot of money to do that are supposed to be fun, but if that was their job, they would hate it. So that's part of what's going on here, and we can talk about what are the trades we make to solve problems. What are the trades we make to create the thing we want to build? Or it could be that you're en- engaging with something toxic, and there's something in your system that's saying, "Don't do that."

Codie Sanchez 3:21 Mm.

Seth Godin 3:22 And I had a young friend who took karate lessons, and after three weeks, he said, "They yell at me, and they hit me." Now, some people think that's fine. He did not. Don't take karate lessons, right? If it's making you sick to negotiate to win in certain settings, small claims court or whatever it is, then don't, because you only get tomorrow once. You don't get, get a chance to do it over again. We have more freedom than we wanna admit, so how are you gonna spend the resources you've got, and what are you gonna get in return?

Codie Sanchez 3:55 It's really good because you've also talked about, like, there's a couple quotes from one of your last books, I think it was The Dip, where it's, you talk about most people are afraid to quit, and that w- and you say winners are actually quitters-

Seth Godin 4:07 Mm-hmm

Codie Sanchez 4:07 ... as long as it's strategic quitting. When do you know whether to quit or not, and what does that mean?

Seth Godin 4:13 So you've talked about this a lot in, in podcasts and books and things. Th- you're not wearing a tutu even though you took ballet lessons when you were six, and you're not still wearing your Boy Scout uniform even though you were in the Boy Scouts. You've quit things many times in your life, everyone listening to this. But the whole Vince Lombardi nonsense of winners never quit makes absolutely no sense.

Codie Sanchez 4:34 No.

Seth Godin 4:34 That what we need to do before we start a project is realize there's gonna be a hard part. That's why it's worth doing. Never quit at the hard part. Either quit before you start or quit after the hard part, but see that the hard part is coming, right? With that said, then we look at our life, our future, our assets, and we say, "Based on who I am and where I am and the way the world is, ignoring the sunk costs, ignoring how much it costs me to get here, if I was gonna make a new decision today, what makes sense to me?"

Codie Sanchez 5:10 Mm.

Seth Godin 5:11 Right? So in the case of my blog, I could quit my blog anytime I want. The fact that I've done 10,000 blog posts is a gift from the old me. I don't have to accept the gift. I can say, "No, thank you. That's not serving me anymore."

Codie Sanchez 5:26 Mm.

Seth Godin 5:26 And being willing to forgive that past self, refuse that past gift, and say, "Quitting isn't failing. What's failing is sticking with something that's not working and not making me happy. Quitting is a chance to invest in the thing that I ought to be doing next."

Codie Sanchez 5:43 Yeah. You know, it's interesting because that idea of not quitting at the hard part is so crucial because on the other hand of having every right to quit when you want to, you have also, I believe you got 800 rejection letters from book publishers-

Seth Godin 6:00 In one year

Codie Sanchez 6:00 ... of which you had one year. Eight, 800 That's, like, impressive almost. Now you've written 21 best-selling books.

Seth Godin 6:06 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 6:07 And so, you know, I guess my question there is, like, what do you tell yourself to keep going when you've got a bruised ego and you wanna give up?

Seth Godin 6:15 Yeah. Well, so many people who are listening or watching to this try really hard and are on the edge of hustling.

Codie Sanchez 6:23 Mm.

Seth Godin 6:23 I don't like hustling, and I want to explain what I mean by hustling and about the letters because this whole rejection Olympics thing and keep hassling people until they say yes, that's not what this is about. What happened 800 times in a row is someone in New York publishing bought a stamp, put it on an envelope, and mailed me a letter that said no. That's a big thing that they had to do to reject me. The thing was, two, one, it's their job to look at book proposals. I wasn't spamming people. I wasn't hassling people. If I-- people like me didn't exist, they would be out of work. It's their job. And number two, my rejections kept getting better. That the beginning first few were, "No." By the time six months had rolled around, it was, "This isn't gonna work for us right now, but would you consider doing something like this?"

Codie Sanchez 7:13 Mm.

Seth Godin 7:13 That people saw that I was listening, and I was there to serve them.

Codie Sanchez 7:18 Mm.

Seth Godin 7:19 So this is a key distinction. You're not asking for a favor when you're selling something. You're not asking for a favor when you engage with someone. You are offering them something. And if you're not offering people something of value, listen to them and go build a thing that is actually valuable for them 'cause it's gotta be voluntary, or it's not gonna work.

Codie Sanchez 7:42 That's such a great point because today's world, there is a lot of, uh, rejection porn that basically, "Oh, I, you know, I pitched a thousand investors, and they all said no." But the part that they leave out is when y- why you get the yes is the iteration.

Seth Godin 7:56 Right.

Codie Sanchez 7:56 Right? It's, "No, I listened to you. We had a conversation even though it was mostly in my head, and I took your feedback. I implemented it. I got better, so by the end of the thousand, it wasn't they all suck. It was I got better."

Seth Godin 8:07 Right.

Codie Sanchez 8:07 Is that right?

Seth Godin 8:08 Yeah, and it doesn't have to be interacting with the same person over and over again. You learn so much from all the people who walk by your store and didn't come in, that you changed the window, and as soon as you changed the window, someone came in. You say, "Oh, I should do that more." So we get what we measure.

Codie Sanchez 8:25 Mm.

Seth Godin 8:26 And the feedback loops are super important because if you're measuring the wrong thing... So if you go to the gym and you see someone on one of the StairMasters and they put their h- hands on the side rails and to lift their weight up, why did they do that? It hurts your back. It doesn't give you a good workout 'cause it makes the little number on the StairMaster go up. That's the only reason. Is that why you went to the gym, to make the number on the StairMaster go up? 'Cause if so, you succeeded. W- when we measure things that don't matter, if we're busy counting calories but not losing weight, did we count calories 'cause we like counting calories, or did we just learn something about our metabolism and maybe we're counting the wrong thing? So if you wanna get funded and people who care enough to listen to you are saying no, can you imagine why they might be right?

Codie Sanchez 9:14 Mm.

Seth Godin 9:15 The answer, "They're an idiot," is not acceptable. Why might they be right to reject me? 'Cause everyone who makes a decision is correct based on who they are, what they believe, what they want, and what they heard from you. Every single time, they are correct, and if you want a different answer, you need to tell a different story and create different conditions for that to happen.

Codie Sanchez 9:37 That's

Codie Sanchez 9:38 a great point and really counterintuitive to what we actually think in our head.

Seth Godin 9:42 Right.

Codie Sanchez 9:42 Because typically, rejection's painful, so you build up a little armor of no's, and then you get on the defensive about why they're the idiot.

Seth Godin 9:49 Right.

Codie Sanchez 9:50 But I, I love that because you say actually that feedback loops are the secret to improvement. And so breaking this down practically, how could I listening today take a feedback loop and make my life better? Which I loved you had in the book, your most recent book, The Knot, there's a lot about feedback loops in there and how important they are. So can you tell us tactically, how would you use a feedback loop to get better every time?

Seth Godin 10:13 The first thing I would say is who gave you the feedback loop you're using? Who's benefiting from that? Mark Zuckerberg? 'Cause Mark Zuckerberg wants you to have a feedback loop of likes and what people are saying about you in the comments. Because if he can get you hooked on that, you will work for free, and his advertisers will have something to buy, right? If you're on YouTube, is the feedback loop the number of views? 'Cause the easiest way to get a lot of views is to do something horrible, and it'll attract a crowd. Is that why you're here?

Codie Sanchez 10:41 Mm.

Seth Godin 10:41 Well, that's what YouTube would like you to measure. That's why they made the number easy. And so when... You know, I, I give advice to friends who are authors, and they're like, "I-- But I wanna make the bestseller list." Why? Like, what would it mean to be on The New York Times Best Sellers? 'Cause I can tell you how to do it for $65,000. There are people who half the books on there paid money to game their way onto it. Is that what you want? What do you get if that happens? So let's get very clear about what we get for when we put in the effort to do something 'cause that's what... When we're solving a problem, what we're doing is we're making an exchange.

Codie Sanchez 11:17 Mm.

Seth Godin 11:17 We're leaning in, doing effort, and getting something in return. But if you're measuring what's easy, if you're measuring what your friends are measuring, then you're gonna get stuck. So I live north of New York City, and when we used to go to the movies, I noticed many of the teenagers looked the same. This was before the internet. Like, how did they know how to dress? And it, it... I finally figured out they all looked like Barbie.

Codie Sanchez 11:42 [laughs]

Seth Godin 11:42 And that was their method of saying, "I'm an insider." But when we talk to kids in high school, they're all unhappy.

Codie Sanchez 11:50 Mm.

Seth Godin 11:50 So the thing they're measuring, which is how can I hang out with the, the cool kids and look all the same, is actually not the thing that's getting them what they want.

Codie Sanchez 11:57 Mm.

Seth Godin 11:58 But it's super easy, and there's all this pressure to measure the wrong thing. So where I begin is let's get clear about who it's for and what's it for. And what are we gonna get out of this? And then how do we measure more of that?

Codie Sanchez 12:11 Seems like it's taking a lot of mental pauses to ponder, which is not that normal, and actually asking yourself, "Is this a mimetic desire that I have because somebody else has it?"

Seth Godin 12:21 Right.

Codie Sanchez 12:21 "Or is this, like, a deep desire?"

Seth Godin 12:24 Right.

Codie Sanchez 12:24 And so what I wanna talk a lot about today is getting unstuck, 'cause I see a lot of people in their way, and I think this book is a guidebook for that. But maybe I'd ask one more question first about how can you tell if a desire that you have is yours or somebody else's? Because you have so many things that are-

Seth Godin 12:44 Right

Codie Sanchez 12:44 ... quote-unquote weird for, for normal life. You have a lot of boundaries that you put on that would be against normal success, so maybe you could teach us how to do that. [laughs]

Seth Godin 12:53 Two words: high school.

Codie Sanchez 12:55 Mm.

Seth Godin 12:57 When in doubt, look at high school.

Codie Sanchez 12:58 Mm.

Seth Godin 12:59 High school is where we got indoctrinated. Indoctrinated to go get a job at a famous company, indoctrinated to do what the boss says, indoctrinated to say, "Will this be on the test?" Over and over and over again. The hierarchies, the status, the affiliation. It's about high school. And if high school life is making you happy as an adult, please don't change it in any way. But if you find that you are rehearsing those indoctrinations, it could very well be that someone else is benefiting from that, the local insurance company, the local real estate broker, whatever, whatever, 'cause you're fitting in all the way and not you. And yeah, it takes a lot of guts to take a deep breath and say, "No, no, no. That isn't giving me joy, and I'm gonna pay attention to what these people think of me, and I'm gonna ignore those people."

Seth Godin 13:49 And when we were talking about rejection, one of the most powerful things an entrepreneur, a salesperson, a creator, an artist has is a simple sentence, which is, "Thank you. It's not for you." It might be for somebody. You should make something for somebody, but if someone rejects you because they are left-handed and you're making right-handed scissors, you don't try to persuade them to become right-handed. You say, "Thank you, but it's not for you." And this is what a successful stand-up comic does. They don't fly to Italy and yell at people who don't speak English. They wanna work a room with people who are there to hear them. So let's take a deep breath and say, "All right. What is important to me, and why is it important, and how much of this is about high school, and how much is this about becoming the person I wanna be?"

Codie Sanchez 14:37 It's interesting. Right now, I think e- even in what, what I do, I think about this a lot, because when you have a, a lot of attention on the Internet-

Seth Godin 14:45 Mm-hmm

Codie Sanchez 14:46 ... um, you can get really caught into mass people-pleasing, [laughs] you know? And, and I hear this a lot from, from people who work for me, like, "I'm a people pleaser" seems to be a common thing that people say. And one of the tools that you have, I think, to get out of the way of if you are a people pleaser is personal statements. I loved your framework for how you think about personal statements, and I'm curious, how would you start writing a personal statement, which seems to be a way to get unstuck and to make sure you're not stuck on something you shouldn't even be doing in the first place?

Seth Godin 15:18 Right. Yeah. So mission statements, elevator pitches, what a waste. No one ever bought anything on an elevator.

Codie Sanchez 15:25 [laughs]

Seth Godin 15:26 You don't need an elevator pitch.

Codie Sanchez 15:27 That's true.

Seth Godin 15:28 And if you look at giant corporations, their mission statements are all interchangeable, and they mean nothing, and they're hiding the truth, and the truth is we're here to make money.

Codie Sanchez 15:36 Mm.

Seth Godin 15:37 And all you gotta do is, like, look at a drug company. Which drugs did they bring out? Which ones did they not bring out? It has nothing to do with their mission statement. It has to do with what made the bosses money. So be honest about it, and now we can make decisions. So purpose is what's the one thing? What's the one thing I'm trading my time for right now? What's the one thing I'm taking risk for right now, the one thing if it happened, that would be good? And it's a trap to say money because, yes, you need enough. Enough might be a very big number. But all money is is a tradable thing, a code, a number, a rank. Money itself isn't why you're doing anything

Seth Godin 16:21 once you have enough. So what is it? Who are you trying to please? Who are you listening to? You know, I was walking on Columbus Avenue on the Upper West Side. This was only 10 years ago, so I was 50-something, and as I'm walking, there's a small playground there, and I hear some seven-year-old taunting some other kid, like really taunting i- in an angry sing-song voice. And I looked over to see if the other kid was okay, and I realized the seven-year-old was making fun of me.

Codie Sanchez 16:49 [laughs]

Seth Godin 16:51 He was harassing me 'cause I was bald. He was harassing me. And, and I gotta tell you, for f- like three minutes after that, I felt bad. I felt like, "Oh, how did I let this person down? What did, what did I do wrong? Should I have been wearing a hat?" And I went, "Wait. Number one, he's seven. Number two, I don't know him. Number three, I didn't make any promises to him that I haven't kept. I forgive you."

Codie Sanchez 17:14 Mm.

Seth Godin 17:14 "You're, you're growing up to be a bully, and I can't fix that." But how do I insulate myself? My blog has no comments.

Codie Sanchez 17:22 Yeah.

Seth Godin 17:22 I don't know the stats of my blog. I don't know how many people read my blog. I don't know how many books I sell. Why? 'Cause nothing about that would make my life better. I haven't read a review of my books on Amazon in 10 years.

Codie Sanchez 17:36 That's crazy.

Seth Godin 17:36 Because, tell me the truth, you're an author.

Codie Sanchez 17:39 Yeah.

Seth Godin 17:39 Did reading the reviews make your next book better?

Codie Sanchez 17:42 No. [laughs]

Seth Godin 17:43 Right. Of course not. And are you gonna write the first book again?

Codie Sanchez 17:46 No.

Seth Godin 17:46 No. So why are you reading the reviews?

Codie Sanchez 17:48 Mm.

Seth Godin 17:48 You're reading the reviews 'cause of high school, that what you're doing is going back to, "There are people talking about me behind my back in the ladies' room. I can go listen to what they're saying." Is that helping you? And so, you know, the mindset of turning your life into an art project where you are creating generous work for other people, if you're generous enough, you're gonna get paid. And where you're keeping track of what works for you and ignoring, relentlessly ignoring what doesn't work. That's not easy, but you only have to decide once. That's where your purpose statement comes in, which is to say, "Oh, thank you for that feedback, but I'm looking and you're not on the list of people I care about feedback from. Have a great day."

Codie Sanchez 18:29 Oh, that's so true. I was literally gonna tell you earlier how proud I was of all the reviews we got for the book, so [laughs] that is actually hysterical. Uh, but you're right. It actually didn't make the second book better, and sh- I think a lot of people in life, you know, if you just do performance art as opposed to, to art, that can, that can wear on you pretty quickly.

Seth Godin 18:48 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 18:48 But the other side that you talk about a lot in the book and sort of overall in all of your work is this idea of mediocrity.

Seth Godin 18:54 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 18:55 And you refer to, uh, the four horsemen of mediocrity as deniability, helplessness, contempt, fear. And so I'm curious, one, tell me about the four horsemen, and then two, how could we figure out which one of those is crippling us?

Seth Godin 19:11 Right. All right. First, first let me... The word mediocre just means average, and there are two kinds of mediocrity, uh, and compromise. And so let's... I wanna talk about compromise first, because compromise isn't exactly the same thing. If you are an architect and you have a client and you bring your perfect building to them and they ask you to make changes to it so it will work better for their business, that's a useful compromise. That's a powerful compromise. On the other hand, if you bring an idea to someone who doesn't wanna change, who doesn't want to, they will insist that you sand out all the edges and make it banal. That's a bad kind of compromise. That's the kind of mediocre we're avoiding, right? To make it so that every single human doesn't notice us so we don't get criticized. All right. So then we got indoctrinated. We got a job. Why do we become mediocre? The first one is deniability. Deniability means you don't have to put your name on it 'cause it's what everyone else was doing, and this one is super common, right? The next one is this idea of contempt, which is, "I don't care that much about my job. I don't care about that much about my customers. It's just not worth it." Anytime you hear someone say, "I'm just doing my job," it's 'cause their boss has burned any relationship they have with what they're doing. It's not their fault. They're in a system that doesn't want to reward what they're doing, right? And we can go down a list of many other ones, but what we end up with is saying, "I am attached to coming up with an idea that everyone is gonna love, and to being reassured that nothing bad is gonna happen. If I can be guaranteed those two things, then I'll go do it." And that's why most people would rather be mediocre. Most people would rather stay in the middle, 'cause those guarantees are not on the table.

Codie Sanchez 21:06 Mm-hmm.

Seth Godin 21:07 And when we see someone do a live act, the odds that this is gonna be the best performance they ever gave are zero. You can't have the best one you ever gave unless you have some that aren't the best ones. You have to be okay with that, or else you're just gonna phone it in. You have to make these choices. Is the work I'm doing generous enough? So when you... I talk to emergency room doctors, surgeons. How can you do this? After the first patient died-

Codie Sanchez 21:36 Mm

Seth Godin 21:36 ... how do you go back to work?

Codie Sanchez 21:38 Mm.

Seth Godin 21:38 And the answer is, because someone is gonna go and help this person. Is it always gonna work? No. But that's the price. The price we pay to show up to help people is sometimes it's not going to work and the, its fatal consequences. You and I don't have to deal with that, right? What a treat then. We get to do something. I had to do a blog post. It's might be the worst blog post of the year, maybe even of the decade. It's not fatal. I'll be back tomorrow.

Speaker 22:06 You are arrogant, you are lazy, and you're stupid. If you're sitting there and you cannot afford super cars, you're one of those three. You should work 84 hours a week. No family, no kids, no girlfriend. Every day you wake up, the only thing that should be on your mind is money.

Codie Sanchez 22:20 That's not what being rich looks like. Jeff Bezos is worth $257 billion because of Amazon. He drinks coffee and reads the newspaper in the morning. Tim Cook earned $74.3 million at Apple last year. He turns his phone off to go to the gym. Berkshire Hathaway is worth 1.3 trillion. Warren Buffett founded it with his best friend. You don't have to wake up at 3:00 AM every day. You don't have to give up your life, and you definitely don't have to do it alone. The goal was never a business you run. It's a business that runs without you. It's time to take back control of your business and your life. Come do it with me on September 18th. I'll see you there.

Codie Sanchez 23:00 I feel like when you can, when you can diagnose what you're doing, it's so much easier to fix it.

Seth Godin 23:05 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 23:06 And half the time we know that something's wrong, but we can't diagnose what it is, why it's happening. And so it's not just that we're stuck and we're lazy and whatever. It's, it's we actually just haven't been able to figure out what the disease is, so we're trying all the vitamins and-

Seth Godin 23:19 Yeah

Codie Sanchez 23:19 ... you know, don't realize, ah, it's actually just get outside, get some sun, take a walk. You don't need a vitamin. And so, um, I really like this. I think... I don't know if this is too particular of a question, but is there, like, one single belief that helps to cure mediocrity in most people? Like, if you believe in this, you can cure this desire to just play it safe and be mediocre.

Seth Godin 23:45 Well, I have a mantra, which is work that matters for people who care. And it has two parts. You have to start with the second part. Only for people who care. You have to ignore the people who don't care. All right. Among the people who care, what would matter to them? Can I do something that would matter to them? So let's say you have a job in a big company, and you're feeling stuck, and I can talk about why that might be. But you say, "I don't have any agency. I don't have any freedom I just have to do what they tell me to.

Codie Sanchez 24:17 Mm.

Seth Godin 24:18 And I ask you the following: Would you get fired for starting a book group once a week over lunch on Fridays, six people? Probably wouldn't get fired for that. Could you pick five people who would really like to be in that group? If you organized that group, would your life get better? Work that matters for people who care, because guess what happens? After the book group's working really well, the next time they need a little project done, they'll ask you if you wanna do it, 'cause you just demonstrated you could make this thing work, and then the next thing, and then the next thing. That we get freedom by using the agency we deny we have well so that the people around us will give us more.

Codie Sanchez 25:01 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 25:03 It's really prescient in this day and age kind of with how society is and the infrastructure, and you have a quote, uh, that I love from your blog, which is, "The Industrial Age brought compliance, and compliance brought fear, and fear brought us mediocrity." What do you mean by this, and what can we do about this?

Seth Godin 25:21 So what's the industrial system? If you have a car, the reason it doesn't cost f- $6 million is 'cause it's not made by hand. It has interchangeable parts. It was made in a factory. And the fact is you can go get a, you know, a, a little wireless lav now for $99 that should cost a million dollars, but it's made in a factory. Factories are about repetitiveness, and they are about compliance. So we had to build public school. You can look in the public, the history of public school. Public school was built by factory owners to train people to do what they were told. And the way we get people to do that is we give them prizes, weekly salary, and then we threaten them with punishment, fear. "Do what I say, or you're out the door." And so you're on the assembly line, faster and faster and faster, repeating what you did yesterday. And the assembly line doesn't have to look like Charlie Chaplin putting together a car. If you're f- doing insurance claims, you're on the assembly line. And it's one reason why AI is freaking so many people out, 'cause AI w- is eager to go onto the assembly line, doing the same thing over and over again. So we got factories that create value, and then we've got fear as the, the, the weapon that they use, which leads to compliance.

Codie Sanchez 26:30 Mm.

Seth Godin 26:30 And compliance is all about how do I fit in the middle so they don't notice me? And that cycle built our culture. It made us all the richest people in the history of the world, but it also created all sorts of pain and suffering 'cause that's not what human beings were born to do.

Codie Sanchez 26:46 It's interesting. It makes me think of leaders versus managers.

Seth Godin 26:49 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 26:50 Um, you know, I'm a leader at our company, and I've been a manager at other people's company before, and it is actually quite hard even as a leader, I think, to not fall into the salary plus, uh, you could potentially get fired-

Seth Godin 27:04 Right

Codie Sanchez 27:04 ... uh, trap. You know, it's not only like when you are subjugated to it, you're part of the system. You then become that type of leader, and you almost have to fight, I feel like, your inherent desire to just be complied with and have people do what you want them to do-

Seth Godin 27:19 Right

Codie Sanchez 27:19 ... as a leader. And so you draw really important distinctions between managers and leaders. What makes the difference between a manager and a leader?

Seth Godin 27:28 So you are, uh, the leader of your company, but lots of companies don't have a leader. They have a manager. They're not the same thing. Managers use power and authority to get people to do a job they know can be done. So we need managers at hotels, at fast food restaurants, someone to make sure that the subway's running on time. That's management. Leadership is voluntary. Y- you can't require people to follow you as a leader, 'cause if you do, you're a manager. Leadership is, "I'm going over there. Who wants to come?" Leadership is, "This might not work." So in your career as an independent thinker and writer and podcaster and investor, you have done many, many things that weren't in the playbook, and y- your value add is not that you are a boring manager who does... Goldman is filled with people like that. Your value add is you're willing to go to a frontier and do things that might not work, and so people choose to follow you. And so if you are running a business where management is important, you're gonna have to figure out how to run an industrial business where you get people to comply. I'm glad the pacemaker company, if you have a pacemaker, has Six Sigma with compliance. It's not like, "Oh, we did our best, but it was Thursday."

Codie Sanchez 28:44 [laughs]

Seth Godin 28:45 No, they, they really nailed it down. But if you want change to happen, you're gonna need to lead, and you do that by creating the conditions for enrollment, creating the conditions for possibility so that people choose to go on this journey. And then when it's time for the business to be managed, you should probably sell it.

Codie Sanchez 29:07 Interesting.

Codie Sanchez 29:08 You, you have a saying, "Managers want authority. Leaders want responsibility." My question is, what is the first step you can take to become a leader and not a manager?

Seth Godin 29:19 The most important thing is to lead yourself.

Codie Sanchez 29:22 Mm.

Seth Godin 29:23 And we have a lot of trouble with that. And what The Not is about is, you know, many of my books have been how do you get other people to change their mind? This is about how do you get yourself to change your mind, and how do you figure out how to be more curious? How do you figure out how to be more resilient? How do you figure out how to measure what matters? 'Cause once you start doing that, you will begin to move, and when you will begin to move, then people who want to move will begin to follow you. And, you know, I love the Main Street model of boring, small, recession-proof businesses. Most of what makes them boring is on the outside, they're not looking for innovation, right? If I need my lawn mowed, I just want it mowed. I don't need you to be innovative. But on the inside, there's huge value add if you can figure out how to innovate how your employees engage with each other and with the customers. Those sorts of shifts ... are critical, and this is what it means to be a professional. What it meant to do hard work 100 years ago was you needed to change your clothes twice a day 'cause you were digging ditches. We're so lucky we don't do that anymore. Um, at least I am. Okay, so what's the hard work? And the hard work isn't, like, gritting your teeth and getting through it.

Codie Sanchez 30:45 Mm.

Seth Godin 30:45 The hard work is being clear with yourself and then your team about the change you seek to make, what is the purpose of what we're doing. So if you look at Will Guidara and Danny Meyer and talking about hospitality, hospitality doesn't come naturally at the end of a six-hour shift. It's the work. That's what we're talking about. Where is the work?

Codie Sanchez 31:04 It's really underrated and hard, too, because, you know, I think in this day and age, we use Slack so much, in my company, for instance-

Seth Godin 31:12 Mm

Codie Sanchez 31:12 ... which is a great way to remove all emotion and just have sort of-

Seth Godin 31:15 Correct

Codie Sanchez 31:15 ... compliance, top-down leadership.

Seth Godin 31:17 Yep.

Codie Sanchez 31:17 And I always try to go back to the quote that's, you know, "If you wanna teach your people how to build a boat, don't teach them about, um, nails and ropes and bindings. Teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea," which is some saying that I can never remember, but I should remember 'cause I quote it a lot. And I think your work does a really good job of that. It's like we wanna inspire people and ourselves, uh, not just mandate things. Like, I know you famously don't like the word should, too, which I think is probably important. I know you've said optimism is a choice and a tool.

Seth Godin 31:51 Right.

Codie Sanchez 31:51 I can sometimes be proud of the fact that I'm a realist, and that could even border on, on a pessimist take.

Codie Sanchez 32:00 I'd be curious your stance. How do we switch to optimism? How do you have a choice to be optimistic? How could we do that if somebody's stuck being really pessimistic?

Seth Godin 32:10 Well, so Codie, this is the first thing you've ever said to me that wasn't true.

Codie Sanchez 32:13 [laughs]

Seth Godin 32:15 You're an optimist, and that's a key to, uh, what you've built. You're not a, a foolish optimist. You're not saying, "I'm gonna invest in this company and hope it's going to go well." I mean, what we want is when we're making a decision, like how do I invest $100,000, we wanna put on a pessimist hat and say, "In this moment, let me make a list of all the things that could go wrong. Let me be very clear about the possible failure points." All right. But the only way you're gonna go forward is once you've established a foundation, is to say, "Now how do I act as if?"

Codie Sanchez 32:53 Mm.

Seth Godin 32:53 "How do I set this up in such a way that if things work, we're going to get even more of where we want to go?" So the problem with doom scrolling, naysaying, and pessimism as a habit is you talk yourself into mediocrity again. You talk yourself into deniability. You talk yourself into a future that you don't wanna end up with. And so when I say that optimism is a tool, it's simply to say, "When I'm gonna make a decision, the first thing I wanna do is put my pessimist hat on to make sure I'm not gonna be out of the game." But then my optimist hat says, "Where are the chances to lead? Where are the chances to create value here?" But if you're fully a pessimist, you're never gonna think through those

Seth Godin 33:40 things.

Codie Sanchez 33:40 Yeah, and I think if you're fully a pessimist, you're not gonna ever get unstuck because you won't take action-

Seth Godin 33:45 Right

Codie Sanchez 33:45 ... which requires optimism. And, and s- I, I like the way you framed it in The Not about, um, confusion is often in the way of moving forward. It's not just pessimism, but, you know, you talk about the conspiracy of stuck is-

Seth Godin 33:59 Right

Codie Sanchez 33:59 ... built on basically three confusions, and the confusions being short-term conflict avoidance, unwillingness to create tension, misunderstanding of risk. What are those, and how do you fight these types of confusion?

Seth Godin 34:12 Yeah. Okay. So short-term conflict avoidance is something that I'm glad we have in our culture.

Codie Sanchez 34:18 Mm.

Seth Godin 34:19 Right? Someone cuts you off in traffic, you don't ram their car, that we don't... We've been calloused recently with all the spam phone calls and all the people hustling us to be confronted all day long with this. But for 10,000 years, human beings were generally kind to each other. And so when we need to speak up to get unstuck, the easiest thing to do is not bring it up at the dinner table, not bring it up with your parents, something that's been going on for too long, not bringing it up because in, for one minute, it will be awkward, so we just live with it for a very long time. So that's why the word short-term is there, that it's worth having a short-term conflict if it leads to long-term benefit to both sides. Just say it. The second one is about the unwillingness to create tension. Tension and stress are different. Stress is bad. Stress wears us out. It leads to trauma. Tension is pulling a rubber band back before you let go. If you don't pull it back, it's not gonna fly across the room. So when Taylor Swift says, "Tickets are gonna sell out in 20 minutes," she just created tension for everyone in the room, because if you don't buy a ticket right now, you're gonna get left out.

Codie Sanchez 35:36 Mm-hmm.

Seth Godin 35:37 So when we show up to lead, when we show up to create possibility, when we get unstuck, we're gonna cause tension for other people. We inflict it on purpose. We willingly inflict tension. Your book comes out in September. When people know that, there's tension that exists until they pre-order it, because you invented that tension, right? And then what we know is we are terrible at being rational about risk. People still buy, uh, insurance before they get on an airplane. Airplanes never crash. It is way more dangerous to drive to the airport than to fly to wherever you're going, but it feels more dangerous to be on a plane. And we hesitate to ask our boss something that's mutually beneficial 'cause it feels super risky, even though in the history of this organization, not once has it ever led to someone's career ending. But it feels risky. So when people show up and they're making huge progress through an industry, it's usually not because they have more skill than you, but, but they're better at understanding what's actually risky versus what feels risky. Public speaking is not risky. It just feels risky. So people like you and I can go on stage and give a speech because everyone else thinks it's too risky. No, it's risky to work in a coal mine.

Codie Sanchez 37:05 You know what's crazy too? I've been in a coal mine, oddly, and even that risk now has decreased so hugely, not to mention how much they get compensated for it, and I was worried about black lung and all of these things that kind of don't exist anymore. Now granted, it's much riskier than me and my spreadsheets, you know. But, um, there's even a perceived risk there that's huge that isn't real. I've been obsessed with this idea lately because I think you can't spell rich without risk. Like, if you want to make money, I don't know anybody who can do that for you with no risk. And if, if they can, they probably keep that secret to themselves. But it seems like our entire society is set up to not have risk. You know, even now, you know, younger people getting married less, having sex less, some of that's good perhaps, but also it's just like tamping down our risk spectrum. So I wonder,

Codie Sanchez 37:56 like, for somebody who's sitting there and worried about taking on more risk and putting themselves out there, what do you say to them, or what do you repeat to yourself when you're like, "This feels risky. I'm going to do it anyways"?

Seth Godin 38:10 The way you learned how to walk and the way you learned how to talk, and almost everything that's important, is you did it a little, you discovered what happened, and then you did it some more, and you got good at it. Please don't quit your day job.

Codie Sanchez 38:23 Yeah.

Seth Godin 38:24 Don't quit your day job. Go try to mortgage your house, risk your life savings. Don't do that, right? But maybe on Saturday, go to a garage sale, buy $18 worth of stuff, and see if you can sell it on eBay. Is that risky? I don't think it's risky. I think it's generous because there's somebody in Toledo who wants that thing you found, and they're eager to pay for it, and you're gonna charge them less than it's worth. And there was someone in a garage who wanted to sell it to you, and they're eager to sell it, and you paid what they thought was... And you came out ahead by creating value for people. So when people talk to me about risk, I ask them things like this. Like, "When was the last time you did something generous that might not work, where if it didn't work, only three people would know?"

Seth Godin 39:14 And that's how I grew up. That's how I spent the formative years when, uh, my business was struggling. I was constantly doing things where if they might-- if they didn't work, almost no one would notice. And you may have heard me tell the story about my mom, but I'll tell it again. My mom was one of the pioneers of museum stores. She co-founded the Museum Store Association, and the museum at the Albright-Knox in Buffalo is a great museum. It was her full-time gig. When I was a teenager, she came home one day on a Friday, and she seemed a little down. I said, "What's wrong?" She said, "Well, we're doing this thing tomorrow," where she had gotten two appraisers from Sotheby's to come to the museum 'cause she wanted to get people who never came to the museum to come. Buffalo's a working-class town. Bring what... You know, your grandmother's candlesticks. We'll tell you if they're worth anything. She said, "So I've made this commitment to these people, and I'm worried because what if no one comes?" And then she turned to me, and she said, "Well, if no one comes, no one will know that no one came."

Codie Sanchez 40:16 [laughs] God, that is such a good line.

Seth Godin 40:20 And it became a mantra for me. And the next morning, we went to the museum, and there were 5,000 people waiting in line.

Codie Sanchez 40:27 Because it was a generous thing to do.

Seth Godin 40:29 And everyone came out ahead. And if no one had come, no one would've known.

Codie Sanchez 40:34 Obviously, Seth talks a lot about getting unstuck, but for business owners, stuck isn't always so clear. It could be another quarter where revenue is technically up, but cash still feels tight, hiring is messy, important decisions somehow lands back on your desk. That is exactly why we built the Growth Boardroom. It's not for people trying to buy their first business. This is for owners with a real business who have real problems and wanna get to the next level of the game without having to do all the expensive things yourself. So what is it? Inside, you get my advisors, who help me build my businesses, operators, our advisory practice, and systems we use as private equity to scale your business to the next level of the game. So let's say you're having problems with cash flow. You want more of it. Or you need to hire a new player, or your sales team is a little bit broken. Or maybe it's the fact that the business only works when you're in every meeting. Yikes. Growth Boardroom is gonna help you fix that. You join us for one year of advisory, and we help you turn the tables on your business revenue, growth, and profits. Also, this, unfortunately, is not for everybody. If you own a business and wanna see if you qualify, you can hit the link below, fill out an application, and if you're a fit, we'll invite you out to join our boardroom.

Codie Sanchez 41:44 So there's a famous artist. You tell the story about Jackson Pollock. And, uh, you have a story that I love, and it's in, it's in The Nod, isn't it?

Seth Godin 41:52 Yeah. Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 41:52 Um, can you tell that story?

Seth Godin 41:54 So in, in the middle of the 1900s, Jackson Pollock was the most famous painter other than Picasso in the world, certainly the most famous American painter, cover of Life Magazine. He had three years in a row where every single thing he painted sold instantly, and today is worth tens of millions of dollars. And, um, then he stopped, and he went back to his studio in Long Island and started painting a totally different kind of work, different scale, different look. And his wife, Lee Krasner, who also an artist, said that he had decided he had gone as far as he could with what he had done before, the drip paintings, and he didn't want it to be like a cover band doing re- rehashes of Jackson Pollock paintings. He wanted to go back to being the artist. And so with all that momentum, with everything going for him, and we've been talking this whole time about what do people do who don't have that, right? With all that momentum, he brings the new work out, big show, and everyone hates it. The critics hate it. No one buys it. You've probably never seen any of the paintings. I had to look really hard to find them. I don't like them either. And it led to an, uh, his drinking increasing, and he ended up, uh, dying in a drunken car crash, taking someone with him. Why? 'Cause he wanted two things, not one. He wanted to be on the edge, to be on the frontier, to be an artist, and... but it's not and, it's but. But he also wanted to be successful, sold out, and rich. And because the two things couldn't happen at the same time, he broke.

Codie Sanchez 43:35 Mm.

Seth Godin 43:35 And that and and but dichotomy completely changed my life. Once you understand that you're carrying all these buts around, and that the buts are what are keeping you from doing the thing you say you want, now you can make a choice, which is stop saying you want it and live with the fact that the but is there, or get rid of the buts and turn them into ands. I'm gonna run the marathon, and I'm gonna get tired, not I'm gonna run the marathon, but I don't wanna get tired.

Codie Sanchez 44:03 Mm.

Seth Godin 44:04 And once you add the and, right, I'm going to buy these sorts of Main Street businesses, and my fancy lawyer friends aren't gonna think I'm fancy, great. That goes with it, part of the deal.

Codie Sanchez 44:17 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 44:19 Yeah, it seems like you've got to do this, too. Like, the indoctrination to not ending up like Pollock is that you have to create things just for you, even if they tank. I mean, we talk about that sometimes on this channel. My, my favorite videos that we ever do or my favorite pieces of content are the ones where I, I'm like, "I don't care if anybody else wa- like, I'm ramped up about this today." Or, um, even, you know, sometimes I'll show them to my husband or friends, and they'll be like, "This is so cringy." I'm like, "I love it. I think it's so fun. I don't care." And I think if you don't have those every so often, then you end up, like, letting other people drive your life, and I see it a lot with the algorithms, too. You know, I was just at this, like, big YouTube creator thing, and it was the biggest YouTube creators in the world, and I don't really label myself as a YouTuber or a podcaster or a whatever-er. I just think I do stuff that I find interesting, and I like business. Maybe I'm a business person. But, um, what was fascinating was they all talked about how once you get boxed in as, like, one type of format, one type of video, it's really hard to break out of that. But then you start becoming sort of a mirror to everybody else's desires-

Seth Godin 45:26 Mm-hmm

Codie Sanchez 45:26 ... instead, and that seems super dangerous.

Seth Godin 45:29 Yes, but we gotta be clear about the choices and the consequences. They called me up a bunch of years ago when it was first starting, and they said, "Will you audition for Shark Tank? We want you to be one of the judges on Shark Tank." And I said, "Well, what, what do you think?" And they said, "Well, you would be the nasty judge."

Codie Sanchez 45:45 [laughs]

Seth Godin 45:47 And they actually have a bald, nasty judge now.

Codie Sanchez 45:50 Yeah.

Seth Godin 45:50 But you would be the nasty judge.

Codie Sanchez 45:52 It's Kevin, right? [laughs]

Seth Godin 45:53 I'm not saying anything.

Codie Sanchez 45:54 I know Kevin, so I could give a crap.

Seth Godin 45:56 And, um, I said to myself, "There's a real cost to that. If you want the prizes that come from that, you have to pay the price that comes from that." So in your case, there's an alignment. There are a few people who, when you like it, they like it, and that's great. But if you wanna be Oprah, you can't do that.

Codie Sanchez 46:16 That's so true.

Seth Godin 46:17 Because Oprah has to do things that large numbers of people are gonna like. So the thing you're not allowed to do is become entitled. When you're entitled, you've just added the but. I wanna do exactly what I wanna do, but I want lots of people to like it. No, can't have it both ways.

Codie Sanchez 46:35 Mm. How many of your books that you wrote were, "I wanna do this. Don't care what anybody else thinks," as opposed to, "I think this is a huge book, and so I'm gonna do it"?

Seth Godin 46:49 I've never written a book that was supposed to be a huge book.

Codie Sanchez 46:52 Whoa. Never?

Seth Godin 46:54 I tried when I was a book packager. I did the Bogleheads' Common Sense Investment guides. Those were very, very big books. They were... I had four of them on The New York Times bestseller list at the same time. But that wasn't my book. I was helping somebody else make their book. Even though, you, you know, I touched all of it-

Codie Sanchez 47:12 Yeah

Seth Godin 47:12 ... their name was on it. The, um, the thing is that it's very hard to make something knowing it's gonna be big. Now, there is a book I wrote called Survival Is Not Enough, and Charles Darwin wrote the forward, which is not easy 'cause he's dead.

Codie Sanchez 47:31 No. [laughs]

Seth Godin 47:32 And I was indulging myself with that book. I spent a full year, eight hours a day. I wrote 200,000 words because I could, and the book didn't sell. And I don't talk about the book on stage 'cause every time I talk about it, people's eyes glaze over. Evolution is just not a good thing to talk about on stage 'cause it confuses people. Okay, fine. Right? But I didn't completely get kicked out of the industry either. I got mostly kicked out of the industry 'cause that was the consequence of writing a book that I was just indulging myself.

Codie Sanchez 48:05 Mm.

Seth Godin 48:05 So when Purple Cow came out, I didn't have a publisher, and I published it myself in a milk carton for only 5,000 people

Seth Godin 48:14 because I was writing it for them. I didn't write that book for me. I wrote that book for them. And so ever since then, I've never written a book for me. I try to imagine who are... what's the minimum, smallest viable audience that would be enough? Is that number commensurate with what I'm gonna have to put into it, what my partner's gonna have to... 'Cause if it doesn't match, then I'm being indulgent. But if it does match, if you can satisfy that smallest viable audience- And, you know, in the case of a, a landscaping business, it's six blocks in the suburbs. If those 500 people think you're the best there ever was, it's enough. And that's the goal, is where can we find that smallest viable audience? There's a, a little shop in Brooklyn called 69 Atlantic and the Art of Play. It's smaller than this studio. And they sell little puzzles and things in the front, and then there's a secret door in the back. Don't tell anyone I told you.

Codie Sanchez 49:14 [laughs]

Seth Godin 49:16 And two or three nights a week, they open a bookshelf, and there's a little room behind it that has 24 seats, and the greatest magicians in the world come to this room with 24 people in it. It's totally worth going. And if it was 240 seats, none of it would work. It's the right number of people in the right room for the right reason. That's enough. Just figure out what your enough is. It might be a million, right? If you're on YouTube and you don't have a million, you're not gonna make a living. But there's eight billion people in the world. A million's not that many. I know a guy who does... You know those reaction videos?

Codie Sanchez 49:51 Oh, yeah.

Seth Godin 49:52 He does re- He and his partner, who d- who is a songwriter, both from, uh, the Midwest, do reaction videos to Filipino pop songs.

Codie Sanchez 50:02 [laughs]

Seth Godin 50:03 And they did a couple at first 'cause it was funny, 'cause they don't understand the words or anything, but the Filipino audience found them, and they make a full-time living doing this 'cause they found their people. That's what the internet's for. It's a terrible mass medium. It's a very good micro medium.

Codie Sanchez 50:21 It is really freeing when you think about it that way because you can make money doing just about anything, and there's a lot of downsides that come with really, really big.

Seth Godin 50:28 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 50:28 It's just increasing complexity.

Seth Godin 50:30 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 50:30 So I always think, like, you know, what a beautiful thing it is that... And you've talked about this in many ways. You've talked about this, like, minimally viable group of people often in your books, which is really freeing. And then, you know, Kevin Kelly's got his thousand true fans, and I think those two models can really help small businesses who can make millions or tens of millions off of a very small subset of people.

Seth Godin 50:50 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 50:50 You know, we have... You know, we get 130 million views a month, but the people that I actually sell anything to is probably, mm, 3,000 to 5,000 people a year. That's not very many people, actually.

Seth Godin 51:02 And they would, and they would all miss you if you were gone.

Codie Sanchez 51:05 Uh-huh. Yeah.

Seth Godin 51:06 And that's the key. You don't wanna hustle people who wouldn't miss you.

Codie Sanchez 51:10 Yeah.

Seth Godin 51:10 But if you're offering something to people who would, they say

Seth Godin 51:13 thank you.

Codie Sanchez 51:13 God, it's so freeing because, you know, you wanna like everybody to like you. It's that high school mentality. I think, um, one other thing I wanna talk about from you is you talk about... You h- you have this line that I love. "The stickiest entanglements don't feel like traps. They feel like facts." First, can you sort of define what is entanglements, and then what do you mean by that?

Seth Godin 51:34 Right. So entanglements are at the heart of everything we've just talked about. They're invisible action at a distance. They are the magnetic forces that undermine what we're doing. They are the high school teacher we're still trying to prove was wrong in what they said about us. They're the old girlfriend who doesn't even know we exist anymore. They are the, uh, memory we have of getting scolded when we were seven, and we don't wanna get scolded again. We are entangled with all of these feelings, spooky action at a distance. They're not in the room, but they are. We s- you know, we paid, uh, $300,000 to go to dental school. Our family supported us. We made it through, and 15 years later, we hate being a dentist. And so now we're gonna spend the next 50 years drilling kids' teeth because we are entangled with a decision we made 15 years ago. We don't have to do that. We can say,

Seth Godin 52:31 "It's true that happened, and I forgive myself, or I forgive whatever else came along," because these aren't facts. These are just things we are choosing to focus on. And when we watch people who are excellent at what they do, in any field, it's because they figured out as a professional how to get unentangled with that other thing that holds everybody else back. And my argument is the secret to dealing with it is three words. Tell the truth. If you tell me the truth about your entanglements, they've... wither in the sunlight because they're so absurd when we say them out loud. If we keep saying them out loud, "Oh, thanks for offering me to do that, but I remember when I was nine, this thing happened, so I'm afraid to go to this conference 'cause it might hap..." What? Right? S- Tell the truth at work. When we're entangled at work, like, "Why do we have this weekly meeting every Thursday?" "Well, we need to have a meeting." No, we don't have to have a meeting. We could just have a memo. "Why do we have this meeting every Thursday?" "Well, uh..." "Oh, because the boss likes it if we all sit in a circle, shake our heads, and agree with her."

Codie Sanchez 53:46 Mm.

Seth Godin 53:47 Okay, now we're clear about why we're having the meeting. We can make a new decision based on that truth.

Codie Sanchez 53:52 Yeah. Why is it so hard for people to tell the truth, and how do you tell yourself the truth about these situations?

Seth Godin 54:01 Entanglements are very good at preserving themselves. That's why they're still around. So they come up with an enormous number of reasons to keep us from doing it. My friend Steve Pressfield calls this resistance. Resistance is the invisible force that, for example, invents writer's block. No one has writer's block. Writer's block is a myth. You don't get talker's block. No, you go, "Mm, mm, mm." So write down what you say. You're done. You wrote. Now, it might not be good, but you didn't say you have a shortage of good writing. You just said you can't write. So show me all your bad writing, and if you keep doing enough bad writing, something good is gonna sneak in there. I'm sure of it. So resistance is everywhere you look. It's the parts inside of us, the tender parts, the scared parts, the little kids who are protecting themselves in a shell, who are hiding and fighting overtime To force you to sabotage what you say you want to protect themselves.

Codie Sanchez 55:01 Mm-hmm.

Seth Godin 55:01 And if we can tell the truth about why you're going to a singles bar instead of building a real relationship, why you're eating that instead of going to go for a walk, whatever it is, if we can be clear about it, it will wither and die. It will always be something we're aware of, but you can make a difference for people if you care enough to do this work. Every problem is solvable.

Codie Sanchez 55:28 So in practice, how would that work? Like, I remember I sat with Tony Robbins, and I was like, I was trying to... You know, with him, I'm like, "I wanna see him in action."

Seth Godin 55:35 [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 55:35 You know? So I'm like, so like I, I wanna give him something that I'm bad at or struggling at and have him fix me, you know? Like, isn't this what, what we do here? And, um, he was so funny because at the time it was, um, I was trying to drink less wine. Like, it doesn't make... I'm older. This is the lamest thing ever, but it's just what was on top of mind for me. I'm, I'm getting older. It doesn't sit that well with me. I love red wine, though. Like, I d- love the whole thing about it. And, um, you know, so I just would end up drinking a glass or two every night. It was part of my proc- process. And it was very funny 'cause I told him that, and he, like, looks at me, you know, and he's... We've talked about this. He's very intense, but in that moment, he's like, "Ah, honey, you just don't have a big enough why." And then he kinda, like, carries on into the next thing, and I thought about that for a while, and I was like, "Well, I don't feel fixed, so I'm not sure, you know, what happened here." And then I, I thought about it later, and since then my husband and I have been focusing on fertility, which is a big why. And lo and behold, I'm not drinking anymore, and it's not even a problem. And so I was wondering, in your take, like, sometimes I hear these things like we need to find our truths, but they're, they are hidden. They hide, and they're really smooth talk- talkers.

Seth Godin 56:41 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 56:42 So let's say somebody right now is struggling with, "I feel stuck in creating my thing."

Seth Godin 56:48 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 56:48 My art, my work, whatever. How would you poke them to get to the reason why they're... To the, to the story that they're telling themselves, basically.

Seth Godin 56:58 Yeah. Well, Tony is brilliant at this, and I am not.

Codie Sanchez 57:01 [laughs] I don't believe that.

Seth Godin 57:02 My, my take is you should poke yourself.

Codie Sanchez 57:05 Mm.

Seth Godin 57:06 And, 'cause I'm not gonna be in the room for very long.

Codie Sanchez 57:09 Mm.

Seth Godin 57:09 And you can have some things that you can approach. So what we see when we get stuck is stuck is another word for comfortable, and we build all sorts of habits to keep us stuck because we want to be stuck 'cause it's comfortable.

Codie Sanchez 57:25 Mm.

Seth Godin 57:26 So if we want to undo habits, the best way to do it is not to constantly require willpower, but to build new habits. A blog post every day is a habit. So if you tell me that you want to do this, and I'm gonna take you at your word that you're serious about it, let's explore where the entanglements are. Well, I, I don't like criticism. I'm worried that I'll fi- get fired from my job. I, I'm afraid that if I do this, no one will come. Okay, great. If you did it under another name, how many of those problems go away? Because what you were saying is you wanna do creative work, and you wanna get credit for it. Those are two different things. So the but was a problem 'cause it wasn't really an and. If you were willing to not get credit for it, would it be easier for you to do creative work? So let's make a habit. There's gonna be a blog post every single day for four weeks. Doesn't have your name on it. There's absolutely no downside. If you come back here in four weeks and you haven't done it, then you don't wanna do the work. But if you do the work, a month from now you're a blogger. A month from now you're a writer. A month from now you're somebody who's written 3,000 words, and your next 3,000 are gonna be better. But what you were really saying is that you wanna be Codie and you want 130 million view without doing... Yeah, yeah, of course you're not gonna get that. But let's discover how do you become the kind of person

Seth Godin 58:54 who does this, the kind of person that when they look in the mirror sees someone who does things like this. When I am in public, I am playing the role of Seth Godin. I'm not really Seth Godin. I know what that role is like. I know how to act that role, but that's a choice.

Codie Sanchez 59:13 Mm.

Seth Godin 59:13 So you become that by forgiving the entanglements, letting go of the person you've become habituated to be.

Codie Sanchez 59:23 Mm-hmm.

Seth Godin 59:24 And instead, make one decision and turn it into a series of habits. And if you're willing to do this work, I've never once heard from someone who did the work and didn't get the output. But you might not be willing to do the work, and that's fine. It's fine with me.

Codie Sanchez 59:39 Do you take off the yellow glasses when you're not Seth Godin?

Seth Godin 59:41 [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 59:41 Like, what's the one, what, what's the, what's the Superman to, you know, Clark Kent?

Seth Godin 59:46 So one thing I found, I used to go to TED a lot. Um, people don't believe it, but most TED speakers are introverts.

Codie Sanchez 59:56 Oh, yeah.

Seth Godin 59:56 That they don't walk into a cocktail party and shake hands with every single person. And so most of the time I'm sitting in a room by myself with my puppy, and I'm writing or I'm thinking or I'm talking to Claude or whatever it is, but I'm not like that. I mean, I think Tony's like that all the time, but most of the people who do what we do, we're not like that all the time.

Codie Sanchez 1:00:16 Yeah. No, I'm the same. I actually, it gives me anxiety, although I'm very loud on the internet. But my husband is actually the one, when we go out in public, he's great.

Seth Godin 1:00:25 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 1:00:25 You know, I call him my frontman because he gets to go have all the action, talk to everybody, and I kinda chill. I like to think about things-

Seth Godin 1:00:31 Mm-hmm

Codie Sanchez 1:00:31 ... which is probably why we yap on the internet or write books. You know, I'm, I'm actually quite comfortable with that. I just feel like there's some sort of service that comes from sharing it with other people.

Seth Godin 1:00:39 Right.

Codie Sanchez 1:00:39 Then I get those feedback loops.

Seth Godin 1:00:41 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 1:00:41 I want you to tell the story, um, that goes with this quote that I gotta put on the wall, which is, "Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life that you don't escape from." Very poignant, especially today, when for a lot of people, that is possible. You know, that, especially in the US. Pretty possible. And you open up with a parable about a man named Alexander and the knot, and I thought there was a lot of similarity between the two. So would you mind telling that story?

Seth Godin 1:01:10 So they call him Alexander the Great. I think when he was 17, knowing, he added the Great part. He was just Alexander. And there was a legend in a small town in Turkey that, uh, there was a, an ox cart that was tied with a very complicated knot to the edge of town, and it was said that whoever could come and untie this knot would become the ruler of all of Europe. And, uh, Alexander showed up, and there's a myth about it that's not true, which is that he took out a sword, cut it in half, and said, "There's no knot." That's not really what the story was. The story was this. He showed up, he heard the story, he saw the complicated knot, and he said, "Wait, there's a wooden post in the middle of it. If I just pull this post out, the knot sort of takes care of itself." Because it had entwined itself and was concealing the real problem. Pull out the post, and the knot gets fixed. That doesn't mean it's easy. It takes a lot of practice to realize where's the post, where's the entanglement, where's the thing I'm gonna pull out. But we're surrounded by knots. There are all these people who want us to be mildly unhappy. There are all these people who want us to measure the wrong things and buy solace in the form of a bottle or a fast food or whatever it is. That's good for them, to make us reasonably unhappy all the time.

Codie Sanchez 1:02:34 Mm.

Seth Godin 1:02:35 But when you see where the post is and you see where the knot is, you can make different choices. Now, the quote you shared is from the beginning of my book Linchpin, which I wrote 20 years ago, 15 years ago, and the world has changed since then. It has made it harder for freelancers and for people with a, a day job to find joy in their work because they basically have mechanized everything and turned us into keystroke-counting cogs.

Codie Sanchez 1:03:06 Mm.

Seth Godin 1:03:07 But there's still an attitude shift that goes on. And it was... I'm not good at jet lag. It was 4:00 in the morning. I'm sitting in the lobby of this hotel when I'm on vacation, and my family's asleep. What am I gonna do? And I'm checking my email, and I'm enjoying it because no one's telling me what to do. I get a chance to do it. And these two people walk by. I don't know why they were up at 4:00 in the morning. And one turns to the other and says, "Look at that poor man working on vacation." And I said to myself, "Look at those poor schmoes. They're gonna spend 51 weeks unhappy so they can come here for one week a year and escape." I said, "Wouldn't it make more sense to make difficult choices about why we're spending our time this way? What's important to us? Do I really wanna be a millionaire, or do I just wanna tell people I'm a millionaire?" Right? Because what would make a good life? What is my purpose? What am I keeping track of?

Codie Sanchez 1:04:02 Mm-hmm.

Seth Godin 1:04:02 'Cause if you make $30 million and your family doesn't speak to you, I don't think you won.

Codie Sanchez 1:04:08 Right.

Seth Godin 1:04:08 And I get that Goldman Sachs wants you to make $30 million, 'cause that's the only way they get clients. But that might not be what you want. So let's get unentangled and clear. Tell the truth about the change we seek to make. Who's it for, and what's it for? 'Cause when we bring this intent to the work, we might fail, and we have to own that, or we might succeed, but at least we're just not coasting along as a victim.

Codie Sanchez 1:04:32 So this book and this conversation that we've had today, what do you hope that people get when they read The Knot? Like, when they're done, it's the last page, they've read through it, what will have changed in their life?

Seth Godin 1:04:45 I tell a bunch of stories in the book about tuberculosis, and I tell stories about homelessness and mass transit. Big, big, big problems. And I talk about little, tiny, annoying problems, like who loads, who loads the dishwasher. And problems can be solved. Situations cannot. If you have a situation, accept it. Doesn't mean it's fair, doesn't mean it's right, but it's not worth your time. Gravity, you're not gonna be able to do anything about gravity. But if it's a problem and you can solve it and make things better for yourself and other people, I hope you will. We're not gonna run out of problems anytime soon. We are running out of optimism. We're running out of enthusiasm. We're running out of the ability to lean into the work.

Codie Sanchez 1:05:32 Mm.

Seth Godin 1:05:33 And I'm naive enough to think that maybe if I wrote a book about that, it would help.

Codie Sanchez 1:05:37 Well, it's a beautiful book. Seth Godin, thank you so much for being here today.

Seth Godin 1:05:40 Thanks, Codie. [upbeat music]