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Tim FerrissSeth Godin Interview (Full Episode) | The Tim Ferriss Show (Podcast)
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CHAPTERS
- 0:00 – 9:37
Coffee, Vodka, and Seth's Kitchen Experiments
After the intro and sponsor reads, Tim asks Seth how he prepares coffee and vodka even though he drinks neither. Seth describes roasting his own beans, his manual espresso machine, and his homemade honey oatmeal vodka, and brushes off the label "meticulous."
- •Seth doesn't drink coffee because it hurts his stomach, but enjoys making it
- •Roasting your own beans matters most, which Seth treats as a metaphor for starting with the right raw materials
- •Honey oatmeal vodka recipe: vodka over uncooked oatmeal and honey, left in the fridge two weeks
- •Seth rejects "meticulous" in favor of running roughshod over the status quo and learning as he goes
- 9:37 – 15:07
Cookbooks, Cooking as a Metaphor, and the Brass Plaque
Seth explains how his book-packager past led to a huge book collection, including cookbooks. He says cooking teaches that it costs little to find out, and tells a story about a plaque he put on a drugstore.
- •As a book packager, Seth made 120 books in 10 years and bought every book on a topic when he had no expert
- •Chris Schlesinger's class taught him to taste as you go and that salt and olive oil are cheating
- •Cooking gives a quick cycle from idea at 4:00 to success or failure by 6:00
- •He had a brass plaque made for a Korean deli replaced by a drugstore and affixed it to the building
- 15:07 – 20:21
Audio Gear and How Seth Consumes Media
Tim asks about Seth's sound system, which leads into his love of handmade audio and the artisans behind it. Seth then describes his media habits: no live TV, lots of books, and concern for the future of books.
- •Audio equipment ties to Seth's stance against industrial complexes and his connection to artisans
- •He started with inexpensive used gear and calls the pleasure a placebo that makes music sound better
- •He doesn't watch live TV and cut it out after Seinfeld ended
- •Young people see books as a reminder of high-school drudgery, and he fears for the medium
- 20:21 – 28:08
Rules for Saying No: Speaking Gigs and Playing Offense
Tim asks about Seth's rules for saying yes or no. Seth explains his cap of 30 speaking engagements a year, his mission-driven reasons for speaking, and pricing by distance. He also discusses offense versus defense and the power people have.
- •Seth limits himself to 30 talks a year and charges three times as much for Los Angeles as New York
- •Zig Ziglar's idea that a speaking gig can lead people to buy the cassettes shapes his thinking
- •Requests that don't fit your mission turn into someone else's mission
- •Most people live on defense, and everyone has more power than they think
- 28:08 – 34:51
Navigating Transitions and the Daily Blog
Tim asks how Seth handles big career transitions. Seth describes his "this might not work" mindset and why he hasn't written a book since Your Turn. He also explains his daily blog and where he writes it.
- •Seth is prouder of his failures than his successes
- •He designed Your Turn to be easily shared and not to be finished like a long book
- •The daily blog is one of his top five career decisions, with no analytics or comments
- •He types into Typepad because the Typepad editor puts his brain in the right state, an idea he took from Chip Conley's anthropology room
- 34:51 – 38:45
Writing Process: Stephen King's Pencil and Writing Poorly
Asked about his writing warm-up, Seth says the tools and rituals don't matter and uses Stephen King's pencil as an example. His advice for a bad day is to write poorly until it's not bad anymore, and he argues you need many bad ideas to get good ones.
- •Seth sees no correlation between how writers write and how good their work is
- •Tim shares a tip to write about what makes you angry, and Seth says that isn't the real question
- •Seth's answer is to write poorly until it's not bad anymore
- •People with many good ideas also have even more bad ideas
- 38:45 – 42:28
Business Lessons: Selling What People Want and Knowing When You're Wrong
Seth shares top business decisions: sell something people want to buy, and learn to tell failures of judgment from failures of persistence. He gives examples from Lynn's card decks and his own early dismissal of the World Wide Web.
- •Lynn moved from toys to the book business and sold over 5 million decks of cards
- •Build a business you can push downhill instead of uphill
- •Seth dismissed the web for six months in 1994 before changing his mind
- •The cover of All Marketers Are Liars was wrong, and fixing it didn't require persistence
- 42:28 – 51:44
Freelancers, Entrepreneurs, and Fear
Seth separates freelancers from entrepreneurs and describes two kinds of entrepreneurship, one meeting existing needs and one changing people. He advises ignoring business magazines written for voyeurs and says entrepreneurial block comes down to fear.
- •Entrepreneurs build something bigger than themselves, unlike freelancers who are paid when they work
- •The "First 10" blog post: tell 10 trusting people, and see whether they tell others
- •Snow shoveling shows entrepreneurship as systems thinking applied to a clear need
- •Harley-Davidson shows a business that changes people from outsiders into insiders
- •People get blocked because they are afraid, not because they're unqualified, per The War of Art
- 51:44 – 1:01:25
Email, Introductions, and Cognitive Load
Tim asks how Seth processes email. Seth admits it's a trap he chooses to live in, explains his "I don't invest, take pitches, or go to meetings" reply, and ties saying no to cognitive load, skipping Twitter, and doubts about the quantified self.
- •Seth replies to generous non-anonymous emails but says living in email isn't part of the change he wants to make
- •He answers unsolicited introductions with "I don't invest, I don't take pitches, and I don't go to meetings. How can I help you?"
- •He skips Twitter to protect writing time and avoid cognitive load
- •Social media was built to make companies money, and quantifying yourself is not the same as dancing with fear
- 1:01:25 – 1:10:41
Trust, Attention, and Opportunities Turned Down
Seth urges everyone to blog and explains how attention builds trust. He then discusses turning down TV and a Yahoo-era opportunity, which leads into his view that money is a story.
- •Everyone should blog daily in public as a discipline
- •Earning attention leads to trust, which leads to more attention and the ability to make change
- •Seth turned down reality TV and a head-of-marketing job with a billion dollars in stock options on the table
- •The $10 bill demonstration shows money's value rests on mutual belief
- •Seth disagrees that being rich signals you've created a lot of value
- 1:10:41 – 1:15:59
Success, Changed Minds, and Books Worth Giving Away
Seth names who he considers successful, what he has changed his mind about, and a belief others find crazy: that people are made, not born. He then discusses books he gives as gifts, including his own Your Turn, Cory Doctorow, Understanding Comics, and certain science fiction.
- •Seth sees success as mattering to many people, and cites his parents, Jacqueline Novogratz, and neighbors who shovel for the elderly
- •He has changed his mind about the book industry and about big internet companies once they became public
- •He believes people are plastic and almost everything is made, not born
- •Some science fiction rewires your brain, and the shift matters more than the plot
- 1:15:59 – 1:24:36
Seth's Favorite Audiobooks
Seth lists the audiobooks he returns to repeatedly and explains that audio works as a practice, since you can listen again and again. He recommends which to start with depending on how you feel.
- •Zig Ziglar's cassette series on goal setting, motivation, and closing the sale
- •Pema Chödrön's recordings, Leap First, The Art of Possibility, and The War of Art
- •Just Kids by Patti Smith, which he calls the single best audiobook ever recorded
- •David Graeber's Debt argues that money was invented to track debt, not to replace barter
- •Match the book to your state: stuck, stressed, needing a new path, or wanting to cry
- 1:24:36 – 1:34:02
Artisanal Chocolate and Seth's Diet and Morning
Asked about a recent small purchase, Seth describes his obsession with bean-to-bar chocolate, naming Rogue and Askinosie, and explains conching and tempering. He then describes his eating habits, breakfast, and morning routine.
- •Seth nearly started a chocolate company before finding brands that did it better
- •Askinosie's Shawn buys beans directly from farmers and puts their children through school
- •Conching grinds nibs for up to 96 hours, and tempering lines up molecules so bars snap
- •Seth avoids wheat, dairy, cilantro, and meat and has a set smoothie breakfast
- •He spends about an hour and a half online before 7:30 checking the blog and clearing email to Inbox Zero
- 1:34:02 – 1:43:29
Education Rant and the altMBA
Seth explains his views on education and parents' responsibility, and describes why he built the altMBA after online courses saw high dropout rates. He and Tim discuss why social pressure makes people finish what they start.
- •Kids should be taught to lead and solve interesting problems, not just memorize
- •Parents should spend two hours a day without devices talking with their kids, and Seth cooks dinner for that reason
- •Skillshare and Udemy courses had high dropout, so the altMBA is small, expensive, applied, and coached
- •"Will this be on the test?" shows the conditioning that makes unsupervised learning hard
- 1:43:29 – 1:52:36
Honest Feedback, Hard Years, and Meditation
Tim asks who tells Seth when he's wrong. Seth discusses skeptical voices and the rare person who truly gets him, the bumps of his thirties, and his decision not to bet all the chips. He also describes his sloppy meditation practice.
- •Seth's early critics included a teacher who wrote he'd never write anything worth reading, and he later dedicated a book to her
- •Real critical feedback from someone who gets you is rare and precious
- •He wouldn't advise his 30-year-old self because the bumps made him who he is
- •He avoids betting all the trust he has earned on one venture
- •He meditates informally, sitting and breathing, without quantifying it
- 1:52:36 – 2:02:41
Closing Messages, Thank-You Notes, and the Almond Cookies
The conversation winds down with billboards, commencement speeches, and Seth's message that people are more powerful than they think. Seth's ask is to send a thank-you note, and the two close with where to find him and a recommendation of By the Way Bakery.
- •The best billboard, per Jay Levinson, said "Free coffee, next exit"
- •Seth's commencement message: you are more powerful than you think, so act accordingly
- •His ask for listeners is to send someone a thank-you note tomorrow
- •His mother nearly named him Scott, but Seth works better to search for online
- •His wife's gluten-free, dairy-free By the Way bakery gets a recommendation, especially the almond cookies
