Seth Godin Interview (Full Episode) | The Tim Ferriss Show (Podcast)

1. 0:00 – 9:37

   Coffee, Vodka, and Seth's Kitchen Experiments

   1. TFTim Ferriss0:00

      Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question?

   2. SGSeth Godin0:08

      Now we're just seeing a perfect kind of-

   3. TFTim Ferriss0:10

      What if I give you the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over a metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show. This episode is brought to you by Audible, which I have used for years. I love audiobooks, and I have two to recommend right off the bat. Number one is perhaps my favorite audiobook of all time, and that is The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, the only audiobook I've wanted to immediately listen to a second time as soon as I finished. It's amazing. You will thank me. The Graveyard Book. The second is Vagabonding by Rolf Potts, which had a huge impact on my life and formed the basis for a lot of what became The 4-Hour Workweek. So all you need to do to get your free audiobook and a free 30-day trial is go to audible.com/tim, and you can choose one of those two books, The Graveyard Book, Vagabonding, or more than 180,000 audio programs. So that could be a book, that could be a magazine, that could be a newspaper, could be a class. It's that easy. Go to audible.com/tim. That's audible.com/tim, and grab a book. Enjoy. This episode is brought to you by 99designs. 99designs is a great partner for creating and growing your business. It's a one-stop shop for all of your graphic design needs, whether that's a logo, website, business card, or anything else. I used 99designs to get book cover prototypes for The 4-Hour Body, which went on to become a number one New York Times bestseller, and I also used them for banner ads, illustrations, and other things. With 99designs, designers around the world compete to create the best design for you. You give feedback and then pick your favorite. You end up happy or you get your money back. It's very simple. You can check out a few of my own designs and those of yours, meaning Tim Ferriss Show listeners, at 99designs.com/tim. And right now, my listeners, you guys, will get a free $99 upgrade on your first design. That's 99designs.com/tim. Check it out. Hello, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers, whether they are from chess, sports, military, entertainment, or otherwise. I tease out the routines, the habits, the favorite books, et cetera, that you can use. At least that's the goal. And this episode was a massive success because the guest, Seth Godin, 10x'd my expectations, and I already expected him to be incredible, which of course he was. Seth Godin is probably the best-known marketing mind in the world, the author of 17 best-selling books that have been translated into more than 35 languages. He writes about the way ideas spread, marketing of course, strategic quitting, leadership, and most of all, challenging the status quo in all areas. And he does this personally in his own life in many different ways. His books include Linchpin, Tribes, The Dip, Purple Cow, Your Turn, and many others. He's also founded several companies, including Yoyodyne and Squidoo. His blog, which is easy to find, just type Seth into Google, is one of the most popular in the world. He's been inducted into the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame. He's done all sorts of amazing things. And generally speaking, Seth doesn't get into his personal life, his personal habits. This interview is an exception. He tells a lot of stories he's never told before. We get into a lot of details that he has never disclosed or shared before, and we cover a ton, and we had a blast. His favorite list of audiobooks that he listens to repeatedly, some of them once per month, his morning routine, breakfast, dietary habits, how he processes email, meditative practices, why he's fixated on, among other things, coffee and vodka, despite the fact that he consumes neither of them, how to go from wantrepreneur to entrepreneur, and it goes on and on. We really had a great time. I hope that you also have a great time listening to it. So without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with none other than Seth Godin. Seth, welcome to the show.

   4. SGSeth Godin4:24

      Tim, it's a pleasure. What a thrill to talk to you.

   5. TFTim Ferriss4:27

      I have over the years just become more and more fascinated by your entire life, and I really admire not only the work you've put out, but the entire life you've crafted for yourself. And since day one, I think my fans have been asking me to not will I, but when will you have Seth on the podcast?

   6. SGSeth Godin4:48

      [laughs]

   7. TFTim Ferriss4:49

      So it's really fun to, to set aside the time, and I, I really appreciate it. And we've also ended up having quite a few mutual friends, and I thought perhaps a fun place to start would be with something I only learned recently. And, uh, I guess the best way to approach this would be to just ask you to talk about maybe your... How do you prepare coffee or vodka?

   8. SGSeth Godin5:14

      Okay. Um, the coffee thing-

   9. TFTim Ferriss5:18

      [laughs]

   10. SGSeth Godin5:19

       We'll start there. I don't drink coffee. I wish I did. I need a vice, but I like making it. I like the, uh, act of trying, without being one of those people who's like measuring everything, 'cause that's not my shtick-

   11. TFTim Ferriss5:33

       Mm-hmm

   12. SGSeth Godin5:33

       ... to have an intuitive sense of what makes a good pull of espresso. And I used to have a fancy Slayer machine, which is this super digital, uh, hunk of a device that did not belong in anyone's kitchen, particularly mine. So when it started acting up, I was able to sell it for a fair price and switched in the completely opposite direction to a Swiss-made, 17-year-old, totally manual machine. Like, you gotta pull a handle.

   13. TFTim Ferriss6:00

       Mm-hmm.

   14. SGSeth Godin6:02

       I, I roast my own beans, which is key. Marco Arment taught me that. Roasting your own beans is more important than any other thing you can do if you wanna make coffee. And I think there's a metaphor there. I know there's a metaphor there, which is you can spend a lot of time trying to fix stuff later, but starting with the right raw materials makes a huge difference.

   15. TFTim Ferriss6:22

       Garbage in, garbage out.

   16. SGSeth Godin6:23

       There you go.

   17. TFTim Ferriss6:24

       And Marco, just for context for folks, that's Marco, and I don't know why I'm having this mental blank right now. Of course-

   18. SGSeth Godin6:29

       Tumblr

   19. TFTim Ferriss6:29

       ... oh, Tumblr, and now Overcast, which is a great podcast player that I use myself. Really fascinating guy in his own right. Uh, why don't you drink coffee?

   20. SGSeth Godin6:40

       It hurts my stomach.

   21. TFTim Ferriss6:41

       Ah. And-

   22. SGSeth Godin6:43

       Some people ... Here's the thing. Some people are gluten intolerant. I'm just intolerant.

   23. TFTim Ferriss6:47

       [laughs] And intolerant of ... We're talking about food products.

   24. SGSeth Godin6:52

       Food, not humans.

   25. TFTim Ferriss6:53

       [laughs]

   26. SGSeth Godin6:53

       I'm really good with humans.

   27. TFTim Ferriss6:54

       [laughs]

   28. SGSeth Godin6:54

       And if you have to pick one, it's better to be tolerant of humans.

   29. TFTim Ferriss6:57

       [laughs] And the, the, the vodka, can we dig into that for a second?

   30. SGSeth Godin7:02

       So there's a, a place near my house called Stone Barns that w- is actually, used to be the Rockefeller's summer house. And it's a, a nice restaurant. And at the bar, th- I don't drink either, but, uh, I'm told that at the bar, they serve, uh, honey oatmeal vodka. And I reverse engineered the recipe and have, uh, it's not a still, but I make it in my basement. Uh, the recipe, for those who are interested, is you take a bottle of vodka. You don't want the super cheap stuff, but you don't want the expensive stuff 'cause that's a little bit of a rip-off. And you pour it over, uh, like a pound of just plain old oatmeal, uncooked, and half a jar of honey. And you let it sit in the fridge for two weeks, stirring it now and then. And then you strain it out back into the original bottle, and you're done.
2. 9:37 – 15:07

   Cookbooks, Cooking as a Metaphor, and the Brass Plaque

   1. TFTim Ferriss9:37

      that you have the most impressive cookbook collection he has ever seen. How and why?

   2. SGSeth Godin9:44

      Well, okay, so before Amazon, I was a book packager. And what book packagers do for a living is come up with ideas for books and then make them. And I made 120 books in, uh, 10 years, a book a month. I made bestsellers. I made books that sold no copies. I made books on gardening, and I did trivia projects. I made, uh, books all over the map. And the way you do that is, A, you work with an expert. So my second book was Professor Herb Barnes' On the Spot Spot and Stain Removal Guide. And Herb was the world's expert on spot and stain removal. And the deal was I got his notebook. He got half the money. I did all the work. Um, and but sometimes you don't have an expert with you, so what you do is you go to the bookstore and buy every book on the topic. And that's how my book collection grew to many thousands of books because a book is a bargain still, a screaming bargain. You pay 15, 20 bucks, and you have something that might change your life. You have something that re- reminds you 20 years later, sitting on the shelf, where you were when you read it. I love buying books. And so the cookbook thing started with my mom's copy of The Joy of Cooking. And every time I saw a cookbook that seemed like I would get three good insights out of it, I bought it 'cause it was a screaming bargain. And then it grew, and it grew, and then Amazon showed up and one-click shopping, and maybe you should buy this one next. And every once in ... You know, it, growing up, there, you know, people were in my house would, the doorbell would ring, and everyone would go, "Amazon's here," because-

   3. TFTim Ferriss11:25

      [laughs]

   4. SGSeth Godin11:25

      ... every night the doorbell would ring. So there, there's, that's where the cookbooks come from.

   5. TFTim Ferriss11:29

      [laughs] If you were, if you had someone over for dinner, and I've, I've heard you're an incredible cook, and they said they wanted to learn how to cook, are there any particular books that you would recommend to them, or approaches for that matter?

   6. SGSeth Godin11:44

      Okay. So for just about anybody, the right answer is The 4-Hour Chef. Uh-

   7. TFTim Ferriss11:49

      [laughs] Well, that wasn't, I, intended to be a softball. I wasn't trying to set that up.

   8. SGSeth Godin11:54

      Because before that book, you had to weave together, you know, a 30-minute narrative to help somebody think about what cooking meant. Uh, m- my wife got me a Chris Schlesinger cooking class, and it was the only cooking class I'd ever taken. And in 20 minutes, I learned more about cooking than I think I've learned before or since.

   9. TFTim Ferriss12:17

      Wow.

   10. SGSeth Godin12:18

       Because Chris basically taught me how to think about what you were trying to do, and basically said, A, you should taste the food as you go, which a surprisingly small number of people do, and B, he said, uh, salt and olive oil actually are cheating, and they're secret weapons, and they always work.

   11. TFTim Ferriss12:38

       [laughs]

   12. SGSeth Godin12:39

       You can even add them to ice cream. They just always work. So for me, part of the thoughtfulness is I don't use a lot of salt and I don't use a lot of oil, uh, 'cause I know I could, but it's cheating. And, uh, I like to think about cooking, again, as a metaphor for most of what you're, have been teaching, the real lesson that you have been teaching, not the, uh, detail stuff, which is that it costs very little to find out.

   13. TFTim Ferriss13:10

       Mm-hmm. That's a great-

   14. SGSeth Godin13:11

       And-

   15. TFTim Ferriss13:12

       Yeah, exactly

   16. SGSeth Godin13:12

       ... lots of people are afraid to find out, and that's why they're bad at cooking. And the thing I love about cooking, 'cause my projects, like yours, sometimes last for years, is that cooking lasts for an hour, and at the end, you have success or failure. And that cycle of I have an idea at 4:00 and we're sitting down at 6:00 is one that I like very much. And I'll tell you a s- a story that it, I don't think I've ever told out loud. Um, I used to go shopping every single night 'cause I c- I cooked for the family for many, many years every single night, still mostly do. And, um, I would stop at the Korean deli, uh, near my house. Um, and it was a fish store, it was a flower shop, and it was a nice fresh vegetable place. And the man who owned it was a friend of mine. I used to bring him my books when they were translated into Korean, which was fun. And, um, every single night I would go to get the freshest stuff. Anyway, uh, a giant evil drugstore chain bought the place and tore it down and put up a, an evil drugstore.

   17. TFTim Ferriss14:22

       [laughs]

   18. SGSeth Godin14:23

       And, uh, so I didn't know how to commemorate this loss. I ended up going, uh, online to one of those places that sell those brass architectural plaques.

   19. TFTim Ferriss14:34

       Mm-hmm.

   20. SGSeth Godin14:34

       And I had a brass architectural plaque made honoring the place, and I affixed it to the side of the drugstore where it has-

   21. TFTim Ferriss14:41

       [laughs]

   22. SGSeth Godin14:42

       ... where it has been for the last five years unmolested.

   23. TFTim Ferriss14:45

       [laughs] That's amazing. The, the tangible aspect of cooking, I mean, this is something I, I t- I completely agree with you on compared to, say, some of the more abstract or longer term projects. When you have something to show for your effort at the end that is very tangible, uh, and tactile, uh,

3. 15:07 – 20:21

   Audio Gear and How Seth Consumes Media

   1. TFTim Ferriss15:07

      is, is that part of the reason that you are as interested in audio equipment as you are, or, or appear to be? I've never been to your house, but so I hear that you have the most incredible sound system, uh, many people have ever seen. Is, is it... I mean, is there a, a... I don't know what, what, what the details are, but is, is there a, an analog kind of tactile drive behind that, or what is the, what is the, the reason behind that?

   2. SGSeth Godin15:37

      Well, okay, so here's the, you know, the arc for me for many, many years has been railing against, uh, various industrial complexes. Uh, the TV industrial complex, the, uh, educational industrial complex, and this corporatization of just about everything. Uh, there's... I was in China eight weeks ago. There's a village outside of, uh, Shenzhen called Dafan where they paint one third of all the oil paintings in the world over and over as fast as they can. These paintings aren't art. They're merely paintings. They are what happens if a giant big box store needs 10,000 oil paintings. This is how they get them. Uh, what I discovered, I was at my friend Steve's house 20 years ago, and he had a big pile of this magazine called Stereophile. Um, and Stereophile is a handmade magazine about handmade audio equipment with people arguing with each other-

   3. TFTim Ferriss16:36

      [laughs]

   4. SGSeth Godin16:36

      ... about this, that, and the other thing. A lot of arguing. And it was really fun to read. And, you know, I have no interest in baseball whatsoever, but this was like baseball in that you could track the careers of the various, uh, artisans, and you could be on one side or the other of these discussions. So for me, uh, you know, I started by buying, uh, inexpensive used stuff, and there's a marketplace online called Audiogon with no E at the end where you can find people who buy things new and sell them six months later in perfect condition. Uh, and I found that connecting to the artisan, understanding their point of view, finding the guy in, I think he's in Cleveland, who makes speaker wires by hand, finding the, uh, Paul McGowan in Boulder, Colorado, who is at the cutting edge of certain parts of the stereo but not other ones, making them in Boulder with a team of people, uh, it gives me pleasure, and that pleasure is a placebo that makes the music sound better. Um, and the act of carefully choosing what you're gonna listen to and knowing that the heritage and the terroir of the thing behind it, it feels to me, uh, like a productive hobby that doesn't hurt anybody. So it's something I spend some time on.

   5. TFTim Ferriss17:56

      How do you consume media, or if, or what type of media do you consume? Is it s- is, is the bulk of it still in book form, uh, that is a hard copy? Or, uh- How, how do you consume media?

   6. SGSeth Godin18:10

      Well, well, I'll start with I don't watch any television that's live, and I feel strongly that most people shouldn't. Um, I think that one of the single best hacks, uh, is that after Seinfeld went off the air, that was it, and we ripped it out, and it frees up hours and hours every day to explore media or content that's up to you as opposed to somebody else. Um, so... And I don't watch, uh, any TV at home, recorded or otherwise. But, so that leaves me with books and Kindle and music mostly. Uh, the thing with books is, uh, I really don't have the patience for literature. I didn't grow up with literature. I was in engineering college, uh, and I just never got the knack for decoding really dense fiction. Um, and so on the other hand, like you, every day the mailman brings unsolicited books in the mail.

   7. TFTim Ferriss19:11

      [laughs]

   8. SGSeth Godin19:13

      So there's a, a very high throughput of reading books before most get, people get to see them. And once you do it enough, you don't have to read the whole thing to get the joke. Uh, and every once in a while it's good enough that you keep going. Uh, if I blurb it, it means I went all the way to the end. But, um, I love reading books on paper. It's harder for me to read books on the Kindle when I'm not traveling because it doesn't have that Proustian, uh, reminder to me of what a book actually means. So one of the things people in my generation are discovering is that people who are 20 or 30 are coming up viewing books as nothing but a reminder of the drudgery of high school. And if a book is on an electronic device, it's one click away from email, and email is always better than reading a book if you're 25. Um, and so I fear for the future of our medium because it's not, it doesn't have the s- the place in our culture that it used to.

4. 20:21 – 28:08

   Rules for Saying No: Speaking Gigs and Playing Offense

   1. TFTim Ferriss20:21

      How do you, uh, determine, and if the book blurb, uh, particular example is going to just create a deluge that you don't want, we don't have to address that one. But I've, I've been very impressed in some of our conversations by the rules that you've established for yourself for saying yes or no to certain things. Uh, and perhaps we could start, if you're willing to talk about it, with, uh, speaking engagements. Like, how do you... Because it, speaking engagements, as you've experienced, if you have a successful book, I went from kind of zero to 60 very quickly unexpectedly and said yes to everything, and it just turned into, uh, a parody of Up in the Air. I mean, I felt like a traveling salesman or, uh-

   2. SGSeth Godin21:03

      Right

   3. TFTim Ferriss21:03

      ... Jack Lemmon in Glengarry Glen Ross. It was te- it was horrible. How do you... What are your rules for, for instance, speaking engagements? You don't have to, if, for whatever you're, uh, to whatever extent you're comfortable talking about them.

   4. SGSeth Godin21:16

      Oh, I'd be happy to. And then I'll scroll back a little bit and tell you why I have to have rules for things like that. Um, for speaking engagements, I don't want to do more than 30 a year because they are, at least for me, uh, not additive to the joy of my day, except for the hour I'm on stage. So I am prepared to do an unlimited number of speaking engagements in zip code 10706. Um, you know, Monday I'm going to Carnegie Hall to talk, uh, for free to 25 music students who have, you know, devoted their lives to doing what they do, and it's a privilege to do something like that. Um, if I have to get on an airplane, it's a whole other project. So I think really hard about what impact am I trying to make, um, and will this help me, uh, move things forward, which is the, where this nests into. Uh, my mentor and late friend Zig Ziglar used to talk about, uh, the idea, he used to say, "I've never changed anyone's life with a speaking gig, but sometimes I do a speaking gig and they buy my cassettes. And if they buy my cassettes, I got a shot at changing their life." And for me, my mission, and has been for a long time, is to make a certain kind of change happen. I want to help people see the world differently and, if they choose to, make a different choice after they see the world differently. I want to help people connect to each other and to use that connection to make things better. And I don't want to be a TV personality, so the question is, how do I bring that teaching to people? And what I've found is it's a very unique situation when you have 500 or 5,000 high-powered people in a room who didn't expect that you were gonna be there, but now that you're there are eager to hear what you have to say. And they set aside their Twitter account and they set aside their preconceptions and for 45 minutes or an hour you have a screen that's 30 feet by 20 feet and you have a microphone that's amplified. And maybe, just maybe, you can get under their skin. And if you do, maybe, just maybe they go back to their office and, you know, get 10 copies of Your Turn and hand them out to their team. And then I can, you know, do that practice that I seek, which is to change the conversation. So that's why I do it at all.

   5. TFTim Ferriss23:53

      And the, uh, and the further away it is, the less likely you are to say yes. Is that ac- is that fair to say?

   6. SGSeth Godin24:00

      Oh yeah. Well, yeah, what I did was, uh, having studied a little bit of economics is I changed-

   7. TFTim Ferriss24:05

      [laughs]

   8. SGSeth Godin24:05

      ... I changed the price. Uh, Los Angeles costs three times as much as New York. And if you don't think that's fair, then don't make me go to Los Angeles.

   9. TFTim Ferriss24:14

      [laughs] And, uh, you, you said, um- You were going to elaborate on why you need rules, and maybe you just did. Maybe that was the, the, the answer. But-

   10. SGSeth Godin24:23

       Well, because the pho- you know, the phone rings, right? And lots of people want a thing, and if it doesn't align with the thing that is your mission and you say yes, then now it's their mission. And there's nothing wrong with being a wandering generality instead of a meaningful specific, but don't expect to make the change you seek to make if that's what you do. That, that, you know, the thing is ... And Derek, I thought your interview with Derek was one of the best ones you've ever done.

   11. TFTim Ferriss24:52

       Oh, thanks. Derek makes it quite easy. [laughs] Derek-

   12. SGSeth Godin24:56

       Oh, he's-

   13. TFTim Ferriss24:56

       ... Sivers is amazing

   14. SGSeth Godin24:57

       ... he's awesome.

   15. TFTim Ferriss24:57

       Yeah.

   16. SGSeth Godin24:57

       I adore him. And, um, he talked about offense versus defense. And if you think hard about one's life, most people spend most of their time on defense in reactive mode-

   17. TFTim Ferriss25:11

       Definitely

   18. SGSeth Godin25:11

       ... in playing with the cards they got instead of moving to a different table with different cards. Instead of seeking to change other people, they are willing to be changed. And part of the arc of what I'm trying to teach is everyone who can hear this has more power than they think they do, and the question is what are you gonna do with that power? Because it comes with responsibility, right out of Spider-Man, but that responsibility is you're gonna make change happen or you're gonna ignore it. And if you make change happen, that's on you.

   19. TFTim Ferriss25:48

       Yeah, no, I was just pausing as I was thinking of how well anyone who's listening to this podcast r- relative to the vast majority of people on the planet, uh, how well they are doing [laughs] and, uh, for whatever reason I was just bridging the gap between our little text exchange, uh, before the call where [laughs] I asked you if you were ready and you said, "Born ready." Not actually. I was born naked and afraid and unable to read, unable to type. [laughs] And it's like if you, if you look at that progression, making it from there to where we are collectively, everyone, uh, listening to this podcast or being on it, it's, it's, it's pretty astonishing. Uh, the-

   20. SGSeth Godin26:27

       Can I just interrupt you for a second?

   21. TFTim Ferriss26:28

       Yes, sir.

   22. SGSeth Godin26:30

       I think that's part of the secret plan of Tim Ferriss, which is that when you came out of the gate it was or felt like here are some techniques and some shortcuts, and it was seen as a, a, you know, an early version of the life hacking thing.

   23. TFTim Ferriss26:49

       Mm-hmm.

   24. SGSeth Godin26:49

       But I don't think that's what you're really doing. I think what you are really doing is saying to people, "All right. Now that you are so much more fit in every area, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, what are you gonna do with it?"

   25. TFTim Ferriss27:05

       Mm-hmm.

   26. SGSeth Godin27:05

       And when you think about the, the Seneca stuff and the podcast, that's where you've been going for a long time. And I, for one, just wanted to call you out and applaud you on it, because it's not the easy path. It's the path that's important, and you have been consistent and shown up and done the work.

   27. TFTim Ferriss27:23

       Thank you. Uh, that means, uh, that means a lot, uh, to me. And you're correct. I... The tactics get people in the door, so to speak, but then the question is, all right, once you have more of this finite resource called time and you've sharpened the ax in these various areas, where do you apply your effort? Uh, and you know, I would... This is, this is maybe going to turn into a, a therapy session for myself, but w- I've found myself, I mean, we were just talking about books and their place in culture, feeling like I'm in a transition point. And you've been so consistent and so present, uh, for so many people for so long, your readers, et cetera, uh, w-

5. 28:08 – 34:51

   Navigating Transitions and the Daily Blog

   1. TFTim Ferriss28:08

      how do you navigate big transitions in your own life? And that's a very general question. But for instance, I find my- The reason the podcast started is because I was burned out on books. It was after The 4-Hour Chef, 670 some odd pages. I just felt so battle weary and, and run down by publishing that I wanted to take a break, and the podcast was a side project that then became its own entire thing altogether. But h- h- when you find yourself wondering maybe what to do next, I mean, how do you navigate some of those larger transitions? And I mean, if you have any e- examples that come to mind.

   2. SGSeth Godin28:47

      All right. Well, the good news is you did exactly the right thing, and I applaud it. It's not easy to do that because it means going from a place where by outside measures you are about to succeed again to a place where by outside measures you might not. And s- hence the motto this might not work. And so on a good day my story to myself is this might not work. That's my job, to do something that might not work. And the number of projects I've done, uh, big and small, exceeds most peoples', and the number of failures I have dramatically exceeds most peoples', and I'm super proud of that. More proud of the failures than the successes because it's about this mantra of w- is this generous? Is this gonna connect? Is this gonna change people for the better? Is it worth trying? If it meets those criteria and I can cajole myself into doing it, then I ought to, right? And the transitions aren't easy. I regularly spend months telling people that I'm unemployed and in between projects, and, um, I regularly publicly quit the book business, uh, which I did maybe for the last time a year, two years ago. More than two years ago. Uh, Your Turn came out a year ago November, so what is that? 15 months ago. And I haven't written one word of a book since then. [laughs]

   3. TFTim Ferriss30:14

      [laughs] What was the word? I'm sorry.

   4. SGSeth Godin30:16

      No, I haven't written-

   5. TFTim Ferriss30:17

      Oh, oh, I thought you said, "I've written one word of a book." Sorry.

   6. SGSeth Godin30:20

      Um, and-

   7. TFTim Ferriss30:20

      Misheard you. [laughs]

   8. SGSeth Godin30:21

      And, uh, and the reason is- The people who I seek to serve don't want me to write another book. They want me to do something else instead. And, uh, they... People come up to me, as they might come up to you, and say, "You should be really proud of me. I finished your book." You know, no one goes up to Steven Spielberg and says, "You should be pretty f- proud of me. I finished all of ET."

   9. TFTim Ferriss30:45

      [laughs]

   10. SGSeth Godin30:45

       "I made it to the end of ET."

   11. TFTim Ferriss30:48

       Right.

   12. SGSeth Godin30:49

       And so, you know, with Your Turn, I designed it, I illustrated it myself. I made it so that people would happily share it with each other. Because when you share a book, sometimes you feel a little guilty 'cause someone might feel guilty for not finishing all 600 pages. But when you share maybe a podcast or a blog post or an illustrated book, it makes you feel closer to that person in the sense that you're both gonna enjoy this journey.

   13. TFTim Ferriss31:16

       Mm-hmm. And just, just to peek behind the curtain a little bit with some of your decisions, h- how did you decide, or what is the thinking behind a daily blog versus, say, a longer blog post once a week or at, at some other frequency?

   14. SGSeth Godin31:36

       So the daily blog, uh, evolved, and it's one of the top five career decisions I've, I've ever made in terms of having a practice that resonates, uh, with the people who I need it to resonate with, that I can do forever and have been doing for more than eight years now, um, and that leaves a trail behind. I don't need anyone's permission. I don't need to go out and promote it. I don't use any analytics. I don't have comments. It's just, "This is what I noticed today, and I thought I'd share it with you." And for a while, uh, it was an intermittent blog, and then it was a five-times-a-day blog. And that, w- you know, I do write five posts a day. I just don't publish five posts a day. Uh, but it became clear that I could get the appropriate amount of mind space in that period of time. Now, I'll tell you, I got... I've gotten this note maybe eight times in the last couple years. It's enraging. And the note says, "I wish you wouldn't post every day. I can't read that fast. Please post fewer."

   15. TFTim Ferriss32:47

       [laughs]

   16. SGSeth Godin32:49

       And the thing is it's just so selfish because all you gotta do is just skip some of them.

   17. TFTim Ferriss32:54

       [laughs]

   18. SGSeth Godin32:54

       But these people don't want other people to be reading the posts if they can't read it.

   19. TFTim Ferriss33:00

       [laughs] Right. Oh, man. And the, uh... When you say you wrote or you write five posts a day, you just don't publish five, i- is that because you are writing them in advance to publish all of them later, or you write five and discard four and keep the best one, or something else?

   20. SGSeth Godin33:18

       There is no ritual. They're just... I just notice things. I write them down. I look at them. I look at the post before it is next in the queue. I say, "Could I do better than that?" I try a different one. So it just averages out. I mean, it's not like there's this method. I have no method.

   21. TFTim Ferriss33:37

       Do you draft by hand, in Word, in a particular program?

   22. SGSeth Godin33:42

       I type right into Typepad.

   23. TFTim Ferriss33:44

       Right into Typepad.

   24. SGSeth Godin33:44

       When I, when, when I'm in Ty-... So I learned this from Chip Conley. Have you had Chip on the show?

   25. TFTim Ferriss33:49

       I haven't, but I love Chip. He's a great guy.

   26. SGSeth Godin33:51

       Great guy. So Chip and I went to business school together, and, um, he was the, uh, third youngest person in the class, and I was the second youngest person in the class. So he, he got five of us together, and every Tuesday night we met in the anthropology department for four hours, and we brainstormed more than 5,000 business ideas over the course of the first year of business school. It was magnificent. It wasn't official. It wasn't sanctioned. It was just Chip said, "Let's do this," and we did. And he picked the anthropology department 'cause he knew someone there and could get the conference room, and he said, "This is the only place we will ever do this. And the reason is when you walk into this room, you will associate this room with what we do here. That's all." And I feel the same way about my blog. If I am in the Typepad editor, I know exactly what my brain needs to feel like, and then the writing happens.

   27. TFTim Ferriss34:49

       Hmm.

6. 34:51 – 38:45

   Writing Process: Stephen King's Pencil and Writing Poorly

   1. TFTim Ferriss34:51

      Do you, uh... What does your writing warm-up look like, and when do you typically write? Uh, one of my fans said that you'd, at some point, this could be a misquote, but said that you had s- an elaborate or extreme sort of mental warm-up for writing. But what, what is, what is the, what is your... Do you write in the mornings, or what time do you typically write?

   2. SGSeth Godin35:12

      Okay, so now I need to tell you about Stephen King's pencil.

   3. TFTim Ferriss35:16

      Yes, please.

   4. SGSeth Godin35:16

      'Cause I feel very strongly about this. Um, Stephen King often goes to writers' conferences, and there'll be this question and that question and the next question, and inevitably someone raises their hand and says, "Stephen King, you're one of the most successful, revered writers of your generation. What kind of pencil do you use?"

   5. TFTim Ferriss35:35

      [laughs]

   6. SGSeth Godin35:38

      And it... I d- I won't go there. It doesn't matter. It's a way to hide. It's not interesting to me to talk about how I do it because there's no correlation that I have ever encountered between how writers write and how good their work is. So we should just move on because it doesn't matter.

   7. TFTim Ferriss35:56

      [laughs] All right. So I will... Let me... I'll make a confession then, which is, uh, I've been given certain types... When I feel blocked, which does happen with writing, I take a long time to get to the point where I feel like I have the balls in the air well enough to put pieces together. It just takes me a long time to synthesize, but not unlike some coders, I guess. But the point I was gonna make is that I went to a conversation between Poe Bronson, a writer and a-

   8. SGSeth Godin36:25

      Sure

   9. TFTim Ferriss36:25

      ... and another gent, I'm blanking on his name, and I asked Poe During a Q&A what he did when he felt blocked or couldn't figure out what to do next in writing, and he said, "Write what makes you angry. Write about what makes you angry." And I, I found that very helpful. It was a very helpful way to at least get the hand or the brain moving to break the ice. Uh-

   10. SGSeth Godin36:48

       I totally agree. That's not the question, right?

   11. TFTim Ferriss36:50

       Okay.

   12. SGSeth Godin36:50

       If you, if you said to Poe Bronson, "How do you write these books that are remarkable and thoughtful and generous?" I don't think his answer is, "Every morning I get as angry as I can and then I type."

   13. TFTim Ferriss37:02

       Agreed. Agreed.

   14. SGSeth Godin37:02

       Right?

   15. TFTim Ferriss37:03

       Agreed.

   16. SGSeth Godin37:03

       So you and I could list 25 tricks that help us get past the resistance and start the flow of writing, but that's different than saying, "I need to do it like those other people do it."

   17. TFTim Ferriss37:18

       No, agreed. Agreed. I guess, uh, the, in the buffet of things that have been helpful along those lines, if, if for whatever reason didn't get a good night's sleep, feeling off, you sit down to write.

   18. SGSeth Godin37:31

       Right.

   19. TFTim Ferriss37:32

       How-

   20. SGSeth Godin37:32

       This I got. This is easy.

   21. TFTim Ferriss37:33

       All right.

   22. SGSeth Godin37:33

       The answer to this question is write. Write poorly. Continue writing poorly. Write poorly until it's not bad anymore.

   23. TFTim Ferriss37:42

       [laughs]

   24. SGSeth Godin37:43

       And then you'll have something you can use.

   25. TFTim Ferriss37:44

       [laughs]

   26. SGSeth Godin37:45

       That people who have trouble coming up with good ideas, if they're telling you the truth, will tell you they don't have very many bad ideas. But people who have plenty of good ideas, if they're telling you the truth, will say they have even more bad ideas. So the goal isn't to get good ideas, the goal is to get bad ideas, 'cause once you get enough bad ideas, then some good ones have to show up.

   27. TFTim Ferriss38:09

       Yeah. That's ... I remember ... This brings to mind a, I have a photo of it somewhere, but all of the title, that all of the brainstorm titles for The 4-Hour Workweek that were not The 4-Hour Workweek. I mean, for, for those people who think The 4-Hour Workweek sounds like a bad infomercial product, I mean, you should have seen some of the [laughs] some of the, uh, the outcasts on this page. They were horrible. I mean, I can't even ... I- it's atrocious just to, to even look back at some of them. But the, the blog and the daily blog you said is one of, of your top five business decisions. Uh,

7. 38:45 – 42:28

   Business Lessons: Selling What People Want and Knowing When You're Wrong

   1. TFTim Ferriss38:45

      what are some of the other top business decisions that you've made?

   2. SGSeth Godin38:49

      Uh, okay, so we'll go way back, and I would say the first one, which is useful to everybody, is sell something that people want to buy. Uh, my friend Lynn, uh, is a brilliant, brilliant thinker and designer, and for years she was in the business of designing toys and, uh, soft goods for moms with toddlers. And every toy company in America was mean to her, rejected her, had nothing to do with her. And I said, "Lynn, it's simple. Toy companies don't like toy designers. They're not organized to do business with toy designers. They're not hoping toy designers will come to them." I said, "Come with me into the book business," 'cause every day there are underpaid, really smart people in the book business who wake up waiting for the next great idea to come across their desk. They're eager to buy what you have to sell. And within two months she did the decks of cards, the 52 decks.

   3. TFTim Ferriss39:50

      Mm-hmm.

   4. SGSeth Godin39:50

      And sold more than 5 million decks of cards.

   5. TFTim Ferriss39:53

      Wow.

   6. SGSeth Godin39:53

      Um, and that's because they appreciated her. So if you think about how hard it is to push a business uphill, particularly when you're just getting started, one answer is to say, why don't you just start a different business, a business you can push downhill?

   7. TFTim Ferriss40:09

      [laughs] This is, uh, this is a good lesson. Yeah. Sometimes I ... There's a fetishizing of the, the sort of rolling of the stone, like Sisyph- uh, what's that? Am I getting that right?

   8. SGSeth Godin40:21

      Yes. Sisyphus.

   9. TFTim Ferriss40:22

      Sisyphus. And, uh, y- you know, in Silicon Valley there's this, like, fetishizing of it, uh, of the pain, and I'm like, maybe your model's just too [laughs]

   10. SGSeth Godin40:32

       Right

   11. TFTim Ferriss40:32

       ... difficult. Maybe you should choose a different business. Uh, okay. That is a good lesson. Uh, any other-

   12. SGSeth Godin40:39

       Well, so then the, the other lesson i- happens all the time, which is knowing when I'm wrong is, uh, a useful skill. And lots of people who do good work have trouble knowing when they haven't done good work, and they think they should stick with it. Other people have done good work, don't think they have, and they pivot too soon. So figuring that moment out. 1994, I'm running one of the first internet companies. We invented commercial email. And Mark Hurst shows me this thing called the World Wide Web. And I say, "That's stupid. It's just like Prodigy except it's slower and there's nobody to pay us money."

   13. TFTim Ferriss41:26

       [laughs]

   14. SGSeth Godin41:29

       And for six months I persisted in pointing out that the World Wide Web made no sense whatsoever. And I then one day just woke up and I said, "Wait a minute, let me look at that again," and we completely changed how we decided we were going to do our business. Uh, the same thing is true, uh, with the cover of All Marketers Are Liars, because the cover and the title were super clever and wrong. It was not a matter of me persisting and persuading people that they needed to get the joke. It was merely a matter of persuading the publisher we should make the paperback have a different cover and a different title. Uh, that if you're gonna try a lot of things, you're gonna fail a lot, and figuring out the difference between the failures of your judgment versus the failures of not persisting long enough, uh, is a useful skill. And I'm still not great at it, but I'm better at it than I was.

8. 42:28 – 51:44

   Freelancers, Entrepreneurs, and Fear

   1. TFTim Ferriss42:28

      You've interacted with, uh, uh, many more entrepreneurs than I have, I would say, at this point, and one of the questions that I get ... constantly that you might have a better answer for because I don't have a great answer for it right now is when do I know, how do I discern between an idea that I should keep persisting with despite many, many, many, many rejections versus a bad idea that I should abandon that is getting the same type of rejection but I, that I'm equally enthusiastic about? Uh, and that, that's a very wordy way to put it, but I get some-

   2. SGSeth Godin43:06

      Great question

   3. TFTim Ferriss43:06

      ... I get some version of that question all the time. How do you, how would you answer that?

   4. SGSeth Godin43:10

      Well, first we have to scroll back. There's a difference between freelancers and entrepreneurs. Most people who are independent are freelancers. They get paid when they work. They do good work and get paid for it. A few people are entrepreneurs building a business bigger than themselves, a business that makes them money when they sleep, a business where they don't actually do the work that the customer is buying, and a business that they can sell one day. So, uh, you know, we, we look at, uh, Larry Ellison. Larry Ellison doesn't code at Oracle. Larry Ellison doesn't make most of the sales calls. What does Larry Ellison do actually? His job is to think about something that needs to be done and hire someone else to do it over and over again, building something bigger than himself. So the first thing I would say to the person who's confused is, well, are you an entrepreneur or a freelancer? If you're an entrepreneur, then you have signed up for a series of choices and challenges. And again, start with selling something people want to buy. There's no reason to try to invent a need when there are so many needs and wants that are unfilled, right? So people didn't wake up 10 years ago and say, "I need an Uber," but they did wake up 10 years ago and say, "I need an easy, inexpensive way to get from A to B."

   5. TFTim Ferriss44:36

      Correct.

   6. SGSeth Godin44:36

      Once you could go to someone and say, "I have that," people would say, "I want that." But if you're just saying, "I'm really clever. I know what you should want," and when you tell people what it is, they don't want it, you're either talking to the wrong people or you made the wrong thing. So the, the blog post I point people to the most is called First 10, and it is a simple theory of marketing that says, "Tell 10 people. Show 10 people. Share it with 10 people, 10 people who already trust you and already r- like you. If they don't tell anybody else, it's not that good and you should start over. And if they do tell other people, you're on your way."

   7. TFTim Ferriss45:20

      And for those people who hear your description of entrepreneur and they say, "That's what I want. That is what I want. I want to be an entrepreneur," they currently have nine-to-five job or maybe more, maybe it's an 80 to 100-hour-a-week management consultant job, who knows? Uh, this is, uh, also a fan question, and they, they, they desperately want to go from wantrepreneur to entrepreneur. Uh, s- the specific question was, if I had a sticky note to put on my computer to help me make that jump, what would it say? Do you have any thoughts? And you can ag- you can, you can rephrase the question if you'd like or rip it to shreds.

   8. SGSeth Godin45:56

      Well, let's pick two different kinds of entrepreneurs. One kind of entrepreneur you say, uh, "Whose need am I satisfying today, and can I assemble assets where I satisfy it in a defensible way so I don't have to be the cheapest?" And by that I mean, uh, and, and I've, I've written about this, snow shoveling, right? We know that there's a need for snow shoveling. We know that if you spend time and effort, you can arrange a team of 10 snow shovelers who don't have the initiative you have, and you can use existing almost free technology to, uh, assign the snow shovelers to where they need to go. And you're not gonna win 'cause you're the cheapest snow shoveling company. You're gonna win because you can get to customers faster and better and more efficiently. That's a very straightforward form of entrepreneurship. It is available to everyone without an enormous amount of talent or artistic, uh, creativity required. Because you just make a list of the thousand things around you that people need and want, you make a list of the kinds of assets and connections you can build, and you go do it. And you do it, and you do it, and you do it until you're big enough. The other kind, to quote Michael Schrage here, is to say, "The purpose of my business is to change people, to change them from something into something else." And this is the kind of business that we remember generations later. So Harley-Davidson, my favorite example, changed disrespected, disconnected outsiders into respected family members, insiders. That's what you get when you pay $12,000 for a motorcycle. 'Cause if all you want is transport, buy a Suzuki. And the way to think about it is no one gets a Suzuki tattoo. You can decide that you wanna be tattoo worthy, that you wanna change a population in a way that makes you indispensable. That kind of entrepreneurship requires insight at a different level. There's nothing, uh, unattainable about it. I encourage people to go do it, but know that it is a higher stakes game than being the person who applies systems thinking to an existing, uh, clear need.

   9. TFTim Ferriss48:20

      Mm-hmm. This is, this is gonna seem like-

   10. SGSeth Godin48:23

       That's a big Post-It, by the way.

   11. TFTim Ferriss48:25

       [laughs] That is a big Post-It. Who... Or, or maybe, uh, are there any checkboxes that people could use to determine if they should not become an entrepreneur? Or, uh, uh, the... B- because if you, if you look at the, let's just say the narrative on the covers of business magazines- It seems like, uh, to the, the untrained eye perhaps, uh, that, or the trained eye for that matter, that everyone is being encouraged to become an entrepreneur and start their own company. Um, and I, I'm curious to hear if, if you h- h- in what cases do you actively discourage people from starting their own company?

   12. SGSeth Godin49:08

       The first thing I would say is the, uh, discerning reader of business magazines differentiates between the articles who are written for people who are voyeurs and the articles that are written for you. And 98% of the covers aren't written for you. You should skip those. You should skip the, uh, articles that lionize people without actually explaining anything about them other than they are different and better than you.

   13. TFTim Ferriss49:39

       [laughs]

   14. SGSeth Godin49:42

       Um, that said, uh, you know, we, we've gone this far without talking about Steve Pressfield. The, the resistance runs deep, and the same thing that causes writer's block is what causes entrepreneurial block. It's-

   15. TFTim Ferriss49:55

       And just for people listening-

   16. SGSeth Godin49:56

       Yes

   17. TFTim Ferriss49:56

       ... Steven Pressfield, uh, The War of Art and among other books. Very, very worth reading.

   18. SGSeth Godin50:03

       Right. The War of Art is one of those books, at least for me, when I finally was exposed to it, I said, "Why wasn't I informed? Why did it take this long for this book to land on my desk?"

   19. TFTim Ferriss50:14

       [laughs]

   20. SGSeth Godin50:15

       There aren't very many books I could say like that. Most of my books don't fall into that category. Your books don't f- like, you, they're, they're in the world. You find our books. Steve's book was hidden in some little corner, and I'm super glad I found it. I tracked him down. I published the sequel called Do the Work, um, and now he's the publisher of that book. But y- reading The War of Art is, is really essential. Painful and essential. Anyway, people get entrepreneurial block for only one reason. It is not because they are not qualified. It is not because they are not passionate. It is because they are afraid. And you need to be clear with yourself about what you are afraid of, why you are afraid, and whether you care enough to dance with that fear because it will never go away.

   21. TFTim Ferriss50:58

       Hm. Sounds a lot like, uh... I mean, there's so many parallels of course with, you know, the stoicism, meditation, you know, not trying to suffocate these so-called negative emotions because they're going to be constant companions. [laughs] So you have to learn how to navigate and befriend them or at least accept them in a way. Uh, but if we look at fear, uh, I remember, I think it was in The 4-Hour Body I said that, uh, you know, the fears of modern man can be boiled down to two things, getting fat and too much email.

   22. SGSeth Godin51:27

       [laughs]

   23. TFTim Ferriss51:29

       Um, I think that if we look at email, uh, you are very well known for responding extremely quickly to many, many people who ping you. W- and this, we can, I can get more specific if it's helpful, but w-

9. 51:44 – 1:01:25

   Email, Introductions, and Cognitive Load

   1. TFTim Ferriss51:44

      how do you process email?

   2. SGSeth Godin51:47

      All right. Let's also point out for those of you who are considering sending me an email-

   3. TFTim Ferriss51:52

      [laughs]

   4. SGSeth Godin51:53

      ... that according to the surgeon general, f- one out of every 300 people who send me an email spontaneously burst into flame.

   5. TFTim Ferriss52:01

      [laughs] This is true.

   6. SGSeth Godin52:02

      So you have to decide-

   7. TFTim Ferriss52:03

      This is true. I've seen this

   8. SGSeth Godin52:04

      ... if it's worth the risk.

   9. TFTim Ferriss52:05

      [laughs]

   10. SGSeth Godin52:07

       Okay. So, um, it's, the email thing is a real problem for me, and I don't have a way out, and I'm not sure I want a way out because if I wanted one I would probably find one. I decided a very long time ago, um, as the author of, um, Permission Marketing, a book about anticipated personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them, that this medium was going to be a place I was going to spend a lot of time in. And if someone cared enough to send me a generous non-anonymous, uh, email, I could certainly try to spend the time to write back. And it worked for a really long time. And for someone with ADD like mine, it's a thrill because every time you look over on your computer there's something that looks like productive work just waiting to be done. But at the end of the day if all you've done is answer email, unless you work in Help Scout or some tech support job, it's probable you haven't created an enormous amount of value. And I need to work ever harder at disciplining myself to not live in my email box because I'm really good at it. It makes people happy, but it's not part of the change I'm trying to make. I don't want to say to people, "Oh, you were the last one. The person after you doesn't get a response." I don't want to hire someone to answer my email because every word I have ever written has been written by me. Um, and so I soldier on. But I say to people like you who have a platform, please ask people to do the world a favor and write to Tim instead of me.

   11. TFTim Ferriss53:51

       [laughs] Well, well, I've been, uh, yeah, I've, I've, I've thrown myself to the wolves in a way, uh, with, with email just because I, I tend not to respond to many. But it's in the, in a world where many, many folks, and I'd be curious to hear how you handle this particular instance, make unsolicited introductions. So people you know who should probably know better, and maybe you've only met them three or four times but somehow they have your email address, email you and say, uh, "Hi Seth. I'd love for you to meet Doug so-and-so, CEO of such-and-such who's blah, blah, blah, blahbity, blah, and, um, he wanted to connect because of this, this, and this. I'm sure you guys will get along." Uh, do you have a coping mechanism for, uh, for that if you experience it?

   12. SGSeth Godin54:40

       Well, okay, so this is a problem you have created largely for yourself.

   13. TFTim Ferriss54:43

       [laughs] Like most of my problems I'm sure.

   14. SGSeth Godin54:45

       Because-

   15. TFTim Ferriss54:46

       [laughs]

   16. SGSeth Godin54:47

       ... I don't invest-

   17. TFTim Ferriss54:48

       Mm

   18. SGSeth Godin54:49

       ... in any companies. I don't- Take pitches for my blog, and I don't go to meetings.

   19. TFTim Ferriss54:55

       Mm-hmm.

   20. SGSeth Godin54:56

       So it's easy for me to generously write back to someone and say, "I don't invest, I don't take pitches, and I don't go to meetings. How can I help you?"

   21. TFTim Ferriss55:03

       Mm-hmm.

   22. SGSeth Godin55:04

       Because most of the time they want one of those three things. And so if they're being honest, we're now done.

   23. TFTim Ferriss55:09

       [laughs] Uh, and if, if you get... Do you then therefore something like, I mean, Rick Rubin is very similar in this way, the music producer. Do you have people always come to you if you want to meet them or it is deemed worth your time? Or are there exceptions? And if so, how do you decide what makes the cut?

   24. SGSeth Godin55:32

       So going to LA to have lunch with Rick is on my list. I haven't even begun to schedule it 'cause the thought of flying somewhere not to do my speaking work is really anathema.

   25. TFTim Ferriss55:44

       Mm.

   26. SGSeth Godin55:44

       But one day, hi, Rick, I'm gonna come have lunch with you.

   27. TFTim Ferriss55:46

       [laughs]

   28. SGSeth Godin55:47

       One of the things that happens if you live 40 minutes from the world's greatest city is that people in New York don't wanna make the last 40 minutes. So I end up, if I'm meeting someone, c- but I don't go to meetings, I usually end up in New York City.

   29. TFTim Ferriss56:04

       Got it. What other, what other things do you categorically, and I'm not quite done with the email, we're gonna maybe come back to that, but what other activities do you categorically say no to? And-

   30. SGSeth Godin56:14

       Cilantro. Cilantro.
10. 1:01:25 – 1:10:41

    Trust, Attention, and Opportunities Turned Down

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:01:25

       Do you think if you were coming off of, let's just say, your first bestseller and you're thrust into the limelight, would you choose to, would you choose again to do the blog and to do it the way you're doing it, or do you think you would choose different tools?

    2. SGSeth Godin1:01:45

       Well, the first thing I would say is everyone should blog, even if it's not under their own name, every single day. If you are in public making predictions and noticing things, your life gets better because you will find a discipline that can't help but benefit you. If you wanna do it in a diary, that's fine, but the problem with diaries is because they're private, you can start hiding. In public in this blog, y- there it is. Six weeks ago you said this. 12 weeks ago you said that. Are you able every day to say one thing that's new that you're willing to stand behind? I think that's just a huge, wonderful practice. But that wasn't your question. Your question was trust and attention because those are the two things that are scarce in an economy where things that used to be scarce, not so much anymore. And attention is, as you have built your arc around, is scarce 'cause we're not making any more of it. And there are ever more tools to interrupt ever more people, but interrupting people well is not easy, and it doesn't really scale. So first thing we have to do is earn attention. And if we earn attention, over time we gain trust. So if someone says, "Tim Ferriss is coming to give a speech tomorrow," the other person doesn't say, "Tell me exactly what he's gonna say and then I'll decide if I wanna come." They say, "Oh, Tim Ferriss? I trust him. I'll come." That's what we seek to build. So the book industry is magical because the book industry, 500 years of the book industry is someone at a publisher picked you, said to their readers, "I care enough about this idea that I'll spend X number of dollars to bring it to you." The bookstore said, this is before there was an infinite shelf space, "There are a lot of books we could sell you, but we picked this one 'cause the publisher is so excited." And then when, by the time the reader touches it, it's a trustworthy object. Now, that's being hacked and hacked and hacked some more. You can buy your way onto The New York Times bestseller list for not much money. You can self-publish a book that looks like a real book. You can put ... Anyone can publish for the Kindle, therefore anyone does. So we're stripping away the trust-building element of the book industry. But if your book did work and people encountered it and now they trust you, then the job is to find a social media platform, there isn't one right answer, where you can continue to connect people, continue to tell stories so you earn more trust, more permission, which gets you more attention, which gets you more trust, which lets you make the change you wanna make in the universe.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:04:35

       What opportunities were you offered, doesn't have to be specific, that you're glad you turned down? Are there, are there any, are there any particular examples that come to mind? And if not, I can, I can move on. But I'm just curious if there are any opportunities that you've turned down. So for me, for instance, one of them would be, like, every reality TV show invite I've ever had. I'm thrilled, and I was ex-

    4. SGSeth Godin1:04:58

       Ding, ding, ding

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:04:58

       ... I was extremely tempted early on. Uh, but in retrospect, extremely happy I said no to all of that. Uh-

    6. SGSeth Godin1:05:06

       Yes. That's, this is a, this is a great point. TV runs deep in our culture. So they wanted me to be on that super famous one and then that other one, and I never hesitated in saying no because that's the moments when you decide who you wanna be, right? And so I paid extra careful attention to the question and extra careful attention to my answer, and it resonated. I would say, uh, the biggest shift, uh, which is, uh, for Silicon Valley people, hard to get your arms around because there's a game being played there, and it's just a game I've opted out of, is, uh, when I was at Yahoo during the renaissance in 1999, uh-

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:05:50

       [laughs]

    8. SGSeth Godin1:05:51

       ... uh, Bill Gross, who's a super nice guy, came to me and asked me to be, uh, head of marketing for the company he was building. Uh, it had Steven Spielberg on the board. It was teed up to be, you know, the seventh next IPO, and there were a billion dollars in stock options on the table. And I said to myself, "Well, if I say yes to this, I've decided what I do for the rest of my life, which is say yes to the next one, because I don't need to say yes to this to buy cilantro and vodka. Why would I say yes? It's 'cause I like the game." And I didn't say yes. And even though the billion dollars in stock options never came around, I think I'd be even more proud of it if they had because the money is a story. Once you have enough for beans and rice and taking care of your family and a few other things, money is a story, and you can tell yourself any story you want about money, and it's better to tell yourself a story about money that you can happily live with.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:06:57

       Could you, could you elaborate on that a little bit? What is, what is your story about money? Is it what you just said? Uh, because that, this is a really important point. It's something I've been ... trying to mull over in, in the last year or so in particular?

    10. SGSeth Godin1:07:11

        Well, let me start with the marketing, uh, story about money. Which is, uh, take, uh, a $10 bill and go to the bus station and walk up to someone and say, "I'll sell you this $10 bill for a dollar." And you should actually do this. Uh, no one will buy it from you.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:07:30

        [laughs]

    12. SGSeth Godin1:07:32

        And, and there are a few reasons for this. The first reason is no one goes to the bus station hoping to do a financial transaction. The second one is, uh, only an insane person would try to sell you a real $10 bill for a dollar, and dealing with insane people is tricky.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:07:47

        [laughs]

    14. SGSeth Godin1:07:47

        So it must not be a real $10 bill, and you should just walk away. Now, let's try a different thing. Put a $10 bill in your neighbor's mailbox when he's not home and run away. Do it the next day. Do it the third day. On the fourth day, ring your neighbor's te- uh, doorbell and say, "I'm the guy who left three $10 bills in your mailbox. Here's another one. You wanna buy it for a dollar?" You'll sell it, because your neighbor knows you're crazy, but you're crazy in a very particular way, and you've earned the trust that it's a real $10 bill, right? So we assume that $10 bills are worth $10, but no. It's a, it's a mutual belief, and if the belief isn't present, they're worth nothing. Now we get to our internal narrative about money. Is money, that number... It's not even pieces of paper anymore. It's a n- number on a screen. Is that a reflection of your worth as a human, right? One of the things that Derek said on your podcast that I sort of disagree with is that being rich is a signal, a symbol, that you've created a lot of value for a lot of people. Uh, I think m- lots of times that's just actually not true. And, um, there are lots of ways to create value for people, and most of them do not involve money. So what we have to decide once we're okay, once we're not living on $3 a day, once we have a roof, once we have healthcare, is we have to decide how much more money and what am I gonna trade for it? Because we always trade something for it, unless we're fortunate enough that the very thing we wanna do is the thing that also gives us our maximum income. And I don't think that merely because some blog decides that people with big valuations are doing better, that doesn't mean you should listen to them.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:09:44

        Mm-hmm. S- so when you think of the word, if you even think of this word, but if... When you hear the word successful, who's the first person who comes to mind for you and why?

    16. SGSeth Godin1:09:56

        Um, you know, my parents were successful because of how many people they mattered to. Uh, my friend Jacqueline Novogratz, who I think should win the Nobel Prize, who runs the Acumen Fund, is insanely successful. She is changing whole continents of the earth by bringing an idea to the fore-

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:10:17

        Mm

    18. SGSeth Godin1:10:17

        ... um, and doing it relentlessly for year after year after year. Um, and then I think about, you know, uh, people in my neighborhood who are successful because they get to shovel their neighbor's walk who's elderly, and it snowed last night, and that privilege and that trust lets them live a successful life.

11. 1:10:41 – 1:15:59

    Success, Changed Minds, and Books Worth Giving Away

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:10:41

       Is there anything you've changed your mind about in the last few years?

    2. SGSeth Godin1:10:47

       Other than the web being dumb? Um-

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:10:48

       [laughs] Other than the web being dumb.

    4. SGSeth Godin1:10:50

       Yeah, there, there are, there are a bunch of things. Um, you know, I have, uh, changed my mind in each direction about the book industry. Uh, about it not mattering, then about it mattering, and now about it being in a sad but slow decline. Uh, I've changed my mind, uh, about the big companies in the center of our internet. I think that they changed around the same time I changed my mind. Maybe before that. Uh, they went from being really profoundly useful, important public goods that created enormous value to being public companies where there's so much pressure on management by everyone who works there to make the stock price go up, that they don't often make decisions in the public good anymore. And I was probably naive to think that they would keep doing it, but they are stopping.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:11:50

       Hmm. Uh, what is something that you believe that other people think is crazy or insane? And this is a bastardization of a Peter Thiel question that he uses in interviews sometimes. But, um, I'll leave it at that.

    6. SGSeth Godin1:12:04

       I think, I think that deep down I am certain that people are plastic in the positive sense, flexible and able to grow. Uh, I think almost everything is made, not born, and that makes people uncomfortable because it puts them on the hook. But I truly believe it.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:12:25

       What, uh, is the book or the books that you've given most as a gift or as gifts? Besides your own, if, if, if you've given your own.

    8. SGSeth Godin1:12:35

       Well, I wanna talk about my own because-

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:12:37

       Yeah. Well, I mean, well, definitely we can talk about them as well

    10. SGSeth Godin1:12:38

        ... you know, you're supposed to talk about your movie if you're an actor, but you're not supposed to talk about your book if you're an author.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:12:43

        [laughs]

    12. SGSeth Godin1:12:44

        I, I, I wrote, I wrote Your Turn so I could give it away. And so I spoke at a high school two weeks ago. I gave every student a copy a month before I got there. And there are very few books that are written to be given away in the sense that, uh, most books are purchased by the person intent on reading them. And you write a book differently- If you think it's gonna be given away. Um, but I've also given away many copies of Cory Doctorow's books. Uh, if you're into 3D printing and stuff, Makers. If you're into, uh, security and privacy, Little Brother. Uh, I've given away, uh, tons of copies of the right kind of science fiction. Uh, let me d- distinguish between a couple kinds. The movies have ruined science fiction because they have created this sort of violent, dystopian, uh, we all oughta become survivalists, zombie-fueled science fiction that isn't what science fiction was for. Uh, the other kind of science fiction is the science fiction that fundamentally rewires your brain. And this is one reason why, uh, live tweeting a speech is, makes no sense, and why taking tons of notes on certain kind of books make no sense. Because as, uh, Scott McCloud pointed out in his brilliant book, Understanding Comics, which I have given away many, many copies of, all the action in comics happens in between the panels, that that's why comics are an art form. Because in panel A something happened, in panel B something happened, but it's what happened between A and B that changed your mind about anything. The action's in your head. Well, the same thing is true in a great science fiction book. If you read Snow Crash before you-

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:14:34

        Such a good book. Such a good book

    14. SGSeth Godin1:14:36

        ... It's, it's such a good book, but you can't give it to someone now. I've tried. It doesn't work. You have to read it before you've been on the internet.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:14:43

        Ah, right. Yeah.

    16. SGSeth Godin1:14:44

        And then it, then it changes your mind, right? Or if you read Diamond Age before you've thought about molecular anything or 3D printing, then it changes your mind. You know, he, he, he wrote that book before the iPad, before the Kindle. It's just that shift is... Now, I t- tell you the shift, and now the book doesn't work the way it would've if I hadn't told you the shift, 'cause it's, when it shifts in your head. So if you, if you read Dune and you don't read it for the plot, but you read it for understanding geopolitics, suddenly something clicks in your head. If you read Pattern Recognition by William Gibson, you don't even have to finish it. Just read the first five chapters, and suddenly you will now understand what a brand is. And it's just those are the kinds of books that I give away a lot, separate from the books, uh, in audio that I give away, which I've been saving for you to ask me about.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:15:42

        All right.

    18. SGSeth Godin1:15:43

        'Cause au- audio is my focus for today.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:15:45

        Oh, let's get into it. No, I, I mean, I, I've, I'm, [laughs] uh, by virtue of doing this podcast and, uh, also becoming involved with audiobooks, I'm, I'm all about audio right now. So please, just I'll, I'll let you, I'll let you take, take them away.

12. 1:15:59 – 1:24:36

    Seth's Favorite Audiobooks

    1. SGSeth Godin1:15:59

       Okay. So, so here we go. So what we explained, I explained, was certain kinds of books work 'cause they cause something to flip in your head. They cannot be digested. They set you up, and they take you to the next step. Audio is different because you can listen to it again and again and again, and you listen to it when you don't think you are paying attention, and it's working. And when I make a list of books that have profoundly influenced me, they tend to be books that I have listened to, well, in the case of the first one I'll start with, so many times that I wore out 72 cassettes. They could not be played anymore, and I had to buy another $500 set. That's when I didn't have $500 to spend on 72 cassettes. And that's Zig Ziglar. Um, Zig is your grandfather and my grandfather. He's Tony Robbins' grandfather. N- none of us would be here if it weren't for Zig. And, uh, some of his politics and some of his outlook on life are extremely dated, and I disagreed with them, but the fundamental principles of goal setting and motivation and the fear people have of saying yes when you sell to them, those were the three, uh, sections of the stuff, just kept me going. And again and again and again. And I told Zig the one time we worked together, I said, "Any time you need me to stand in for you, I can even do it with the accent."

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:17:28

       [laughs]

    3. SGSeth Godin1:17:30

       Because that's how many times I listened. So that's the first one.

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:17:32

       Is there a particular name to the series, or f- is there just one audio set by Zig?

    5. SGSeth Godin1:17:38

       Well, no. There, so there's one series c-

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:17:40

       Or s- you s- I guess it's a collection maybe

    7. SGSeth Godin1:17:42

       ... Right, three series. One series on goal setting, one series called How to Stay Motivated, and one series called Secrets of Closing the Sale.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:17:50

       Wow.

    9. SGSeth Godin1:17:50

       Yeah, on Secrets of Closing the Sale, Zig tells a 17-minute story about a guy in St. Louis shining his shoes.

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:17:58

        [laughs]

    11. SGSeth Godin1:18:01

        So just, if you just listen to one story, if you're into selling, you just listen to that story 10 times. You can't listen once. 10 times. You'll become a different kind of salesperson. And if you, if you listen to the story about his friend in Canada, um, you will understand, uh, what motivation is. If you listen to him talking, uh, about how we rewire our brains with goal setting. I mean, you, Tim, have talked about it so much, but it's a really fascinating glimpse at 1960, and I encourage it. Number two, almost the flip side, uh, the recorded works of Pema Chödrön, C-H-O-D-R-O-N, and I'm guessing you've talked about her in the past. Uh-

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:18:48

        She has come up, yeah

    13. SGSeth Godin1:18:49

        ... she is a, a Buddhist nun who has a monastery in Nova Scotia. And, uh, Pema, uh, will also get under your skin in a totally different way. She is a disciple of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who was the first, uh, full Buddhist monk in the US. Uh, the way to understand his teaching is in one- ... tiny little parable which is this. We are falling, falling with nothing to hold onto and nothing to slow us down. The good news is there is no ground to land on.

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:19:26

        Mm-hmm.

    15. SGSeth Godin1:19:28

        So those are two. Then, uh, inspired by the two of them and some work I did, um, I did something for charity called Leap First. That's a short audiobook that captures some of the things I was trying to teach people, uh, about this. And you can get that at Sounds True. I have four more. Uh, working our way from the nonfiction to more lyrical. Uh, The Art of Possibility, which is very hard to find on audio and is totally worth seeking out. It's by Roz Zander and her husband Ben, friends of mine. Uh, Ben is the, uh, symphony conductor in Boston, and Roz is a social worker. And the two of them will completely change the way you think about possibility, about enrollment, about leadership. And again, I listen to it probably once a month in the car. Just put it on in the middle. Doesn't matter where you start. The next one is The War of Art, also hard to find on audio. I find Steve's voice to be fascinating. And, um, even before I knew him, I was fascinated by listening to him speak his own work. Uh, two left. Uh, Just Kids, which is the single best audiobook ever recorded, uh, by Patti Smith. It is not going to change the way you do business, but it might change the way you live. Uh, it's about love and loss and art. It's about non-confidence and confidence. Uh, and it's mostly about having a best friend. It's magic. And I can just hear her quoting Robert. "Patti." It's so good.

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:21:13

        [laughs]

    17. SGSeth Godin1:21:14

        And then the last one I'm gonna tell you out of left field is a book called Debt by David Graeber. Uh, I recommend it in audio because David is sometimes repetitive and a little elliptical, but in audio it's all okay 'cause you can just listen to it again. Debt is a... David was a, on tenure track at Yale, then he co-founded the Occupy movement. And it sort of looks like they threw him out. Um, he's an anthropologist, and he studies lots of things in our ancient history. His theory about where did money come from is mind-blowing. And I'll give you the short version, which is, uh, every economics textbook, and he quotes seven of them, teaches that people got tired of carrying around a goat to trade for a sheep, and it's hard to cut it up to trade for some butter and some bread. So with all that trading in the little village square that looks something like Salem, Massachusetts, one day someone said, "Let's have money instead," and everyone was happy.

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:22:17

        [laughs]

    19. SGSeth Godin1:22:18

        It turns out there's no evidence that this ever happened once anywhere in the universe.

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:22:23

        [laughs] That never, never stops the writing though.

    21. SGSeth Godin1:22:28

        And instead, he argues very persuasively that, um, money was invented to keep track of debt and that debt predates money. And this is a book about simple debt, and then the debt that leads to prostitution, and then the debt that leads to marriage debt, and then the debt that leads to developing nations being billions of dollars in debt to the rich world merely because a dictator stole a lot of money. And I found it completely rewired the way I thought our world actually worked. Uh, I'm not ready to go, you know, stand on the battle lines of the next Occupy movement, but I really have far more color and insight now as to what money is and how it changed everything because it's all about debt.

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:23:23

        Which of these, going from Zig to Pema and onward down to Debt with David, which of these do you think I should start with? Or which one would you suggest I start with?

    23. SGSeth Godin1:23:33

        Well, I think it's important to realize that audiobooks are a practice.

    24. TFTim Ferriss1:23:39

        Mm-hmm.

    25. SGSeth Godin1:23:39

        That real books are not. You can, uh, read real books the way you and I do, which is read a chapter and then decide if chapter two has earned it or not. Um, but I find that like dieting, you're not gonna get any benefit if you just start and see how it goes. So for me, if you're feeling stuck, it's all about The War of Art and The Art of Possibility. If you are feeling stressed, it's about Pema. If you need to see a path that is, you know, more colored than the one you're already on, which is pretty Technicolor, then it's Zig. And if you just wanna cry a little, it's Just Kids. And then Debt is the one that's just closest to reading a book. I don't think many people should listen to Debt 10 times.

    26. TFTim Ferriss1:24:27

        [laughs] And, uh, this is not exactly Debt, but just on a, on a money theme. Uh,

13. 1:24:36 – 1:34:02

    Artisanal Chocolate and Seth's Diet and Morning

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:24:36

       can you think of any $100 or less purchase that has heavily impacted your life in the last six months or recent memory?

    2. SGSeth Godin1:24:46

       So, you know, once the stereo's working, it doesn't make sense to buy more stereo equipment because that's just silly, and you can do better than that. Um, but what you could do is become obsessed with artisanal bean-to-bar chocolate.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:25:03

       [laughs] Okay.

    4. SGSeth Godin1:25:05

       Not, I'm not s- I'm saying one could. Not that one should, but one could. So I did. And I worked my way up the ladder. Uh, about a year ago I was about to start my own chocolate company because it's not that hard. Um, and then I Bumped into a few brands that were doing it better than I ever could. And so there is a company in Western Massachusetts called Rogue Chocolate, R-O-G-U-E, and you can only buy their stuff pre-order by mail. It's 12 bucks for a chocolate bar, and I'd pay 20 happily because a party happens in your mouth that's like a whole new ballgame. So every day there's ... I have a huge pile of artisanal chocolates here. Only dark chocolate, please. And, um, I'm actually an advisor to a new acumen company called Cacao Hunters in Colombia. But there are two chocolate companies I want to highlight: Rogue, which I mentioned, and Askinosie. Rogue because I don't believe it's possible to make better chocolate than they are. I think Satan works with them.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:26:11

       [laughs]

    6. SGSeth Godin1:26:12

       And the second one, Askinosie, because Shawn, who used to be a lawyer, is living a life that is worth noting and possibly emulating. He not only buys his beans from farmers in the Philippines and other countries whom he meets, but he puts their children through school, and, uh, he has built a practice of creating a worthwhile luxury good that directly benefits people. Not sort of, not a little, but directly. Right?

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:26:48

       How do you, how do you spell Askinosie? I want to write Ashkenazi, but that's not the same thing.

    8. SGSeth Godin1:26:53

       Right. That's what I say in my head every time.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:26:55

       [laughs]

    10. SGSeth Godin1:26:56

        It's A-S-K-I-N-O-S-I-E.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:27:01

        Great.

    12. SGSeth Godin1:27:02

        I don't do the marketing for them 'cause if I did, it probably would have a different name.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:27:05

        [laughs]

    14. SGSeth Godin1:27:06

        I'm just saying. So anyway, this chocolate habit is finally the vice I'd been looking for my whole life.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:27:12

        [laughs]

    16. SGSeth Godin1:27:13

        I can, I can tell the difference between, uh, one continent and another. I can, uh, tell how long they conched it for. I can talk about-

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:27:23

        Conched it?

    18. SGSeth Godin1:27:23

        Conched it.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:27:24

        I don't know what that means. I know what a ... I've ... Like, a conch, this, the, this, a marine mam- mammal.

    20. SGSeth Godin1:27:29

        Yeah

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:27:29

        Not a mammal, I might say.

    22. SGSeth Godin1:27:29

        Unrelated

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:27:30

        Mollusks. But-

    24. SGSeth Godin1:27:31

        Yes

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:27:31

        ... so what is conch ... Okay, what is conch in chocolate?

    26. SGSeth Godin1:27:33

        So here's how you, here's how you make chocolate. A cocoa pod is like a Nerf football. And you throw them on a net for a while and they ferment. And then you crack them open and you dry them in the sun, and inside each one are something about three times the size of a coffee bean. The shell, uh, you can't eat. That means that there's about to be a lot of labor. But before you can take the shell off, you roast them. Then y- then after they're roasted, you have to one by one take the shell off, and that's really hard, and people have made these really cool machines to do it, but it's still hard. Then you're left with nibs. These nibs are unsweetened and ... But if you eat one, they taste a little like dark chocolate. Then you take it and you put it in this machine that grinds them and grinds them and grinds them. And as they are being ground, they release, uh, a little bit of the oil and the liquor, and it becomes smoother and smoother and smoother. Interesting side note, it turns out that the machine that you can use to do this at home is also capable of making idli out of rice, which are those delectable little Indian crepes. So a guy from India who loves chocolate figured this out, and he imports idli makers, puts a new sticker on them, and sells them as chocolate conching machines. So you put ... It's two granite stones that they're in there, and you can do it for up to 96 hours. And what happens is soon after 40, 50 hours in the machine, it's at a micron size that your tongue can no longer tell when you make it even smaller. You then take that liquid, you put it, if you're adding sugar, in a tempering machine. Tempering is another really cool device that causes all of the molecules in the chocolate to line up in a certain direction by taking the chocolate to a cool but not too cool temperature, so it's still liquid, not too hot, not too cool. And by spinning it around, all the molecules line up, and that is why chocolate bars snap when you break them and why they don't turn gray in the air. If you don't temper it, you don't get either of those effects.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:29:51

        Huh. It's like a, it's like an MRI machine for, for cacao molecules. [laughs] Uh, that ... You know, I did some ... I actually did a little bit of tempering back in the day making, uh, truffles ages ago in Sara-

    28. SGSeth Godin1:30:05

        Sure

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:30:05

        ... Saratoga. It was a blast. I recommend everybody take a, take a chocolate-making class if you can. So this, this is great. Rogue Chocolate. And where's Rogue Chocolate based? Just in case there's more than one. The one that you're referring to.

    30. SGSeth Godin1:30:17

        Hold on. I just ate up all of my last batch, so I can't look at the label. But I can tell you that they are in Three Rivers, Massachusetts.
14. 1:34:02 – 1:43:29

    Education Rant and the altMBA

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:34:02

       Could you elaborate? Because a lot of the questions from my fans on Twitter and Facebook were related to education, and they j- they generally came in the form of, uh, i- in a number of themes. One was, you know, could you have him elaborate on his education manifesto? The other was, "Hey, I have a kid who's in fourth grade. I have a kid who's just going to be entering school. What would Seth do in my shoes?" Um, and you don't have to tackle those right off the bat, but as that as context, could you, could you tell us more about what you're up to?

    2. SGSeth Godin1:34:37

       All right. So this, this is a rant, and it's not about what I'm up to. It's about what I was up to, and the rant is this. Sooner or later, parents have to take responsibility for putting their kids into a system that is indebting them and teaching them to be cogs in a s- in a economy that doesn't want cogs anymore. And parents get to decide. Uh, I'm a huge fan of public school. Send my kids to public school. I think everyone should go to public school 'cause it's a great mix master of our world. But from 3:00 to 10:00, those kids are getting homeschooled, and they're either getting homeschooled and watching The Flintstones or they're getting homeschooled and learning something useful. And I think we need to teach kids two things. One, how to lead, and two, how to solve interesting problems. Because the fact is there are plenty of countries on earth where there are people who are willing to be obedient and work harder for less money than us. So we cannot out-obedience the competition. Therefore, we have to out-lead or out-solve the other people, I don't care what country they live in, in Wyoming or across the world, who want th- whatever is scarce. The way you teach your kids to solve interesting problems is to give them interesting problems to solve.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:36:00

       [laughs]

    4. SGSeth Godin1:36:01

       And then don't criticize them when they fail because kids aren't stupid. If they get in trouble every time they try to solve an interesting problem, they'll just go back to getting an A by memorizing what's in the textbook. That it's so important here, and I spend an enormous amount of time with kids. Uh, I produced the, The Wizard of Oz, the musical, in fourth grade. I used to help run a summer camp. Uh, I think that it's a privilege to be able to look a trusting, energetic, smart 11-year-old in the eye and tell him the truth. And what we can say to that 11-year-old is, "I really don't care how you did on your vocabulary test. I care about whether you have something to say." And we can teach our kids from a young age to be the kind of people we want them to be. And anything that's worth memorizing is worth looking up now. So we don't need to have them spend a lot of time getting good grades so they can go into a famous college because famous colleges don't work anymore. Famous college isn't the point anymore. The point is, is there an entity that will have trouble living without you when you seek to earn a living? 'Cause if there is, you'll be able to make a living. If, on the other hand, you're waiting in the placement office for someone to pick you, you will be persistently undervalued.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:37:28

       S- s- you talked earlier about writing daily as a practice, listening to the audiobooks as a practice. Are there any practices that you would suggest to s- the kinda overwhelmed, busy parent who wants to start to be more proactive in this department? They have an 11-year-old. Are there any practices or exercises that they, uh, that you would suggest?

    6. SGSeth Godin1:37:51

       Well, you know super well that busy is a trap-

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:37:54

       Definitely

    8. SGSeth Godin1:37:54

       ... and that busy is, is a myth. So what could possibly be more important than your kid? Please don't play the busy card. If you spend two hours a day without an electronic device looking your kid in the eye, talking to them, and solving interesting problems, you will raise a different kid than someone who doesn't do that. And that's one of the reasons why I cook dinner every night because what a wonderful semi-distracted environment for the kid to tell you the truth, for you to have low stakes but super important conversations with someone who's important to you, right? That this idea, get home from work, put on your sneakers, and go for a walk with your kid. You know, my friend Brian walks his daughter to school every day. That's priceless. Well, how can you be too busy to do that?

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:38:53

       And the work you're doing now?

    10. SGSeth Godin1:38:55

        So I did a c- couple courses for Skillshare. They worked really well. They were very highly rated, and they had a 80% dropout rate, which is way better than anybody else 'cause other online courses have a 97% dropout rate. Then I did a course for Udemy, and the same thing happened, and I'm thinking, "I love making these courses," and, you know, there I am on screen. It sounds like me, but why are people dropping out of my courses and everyone else's? And the reason is 'cause when it gets hard and there's no social pressure, you leave. So what I said was, "How do I make the opposite of an online course?" And that meant instead of a million people, 100. It meant instead of being free, it's expensive. Instead of letting everyone in, you have to apply. Instead of being easy, it's hard, and instead of being on your own, it's a group thing where there are coaches watching you all the time. And instead of lectures, it's 100% projects. So I built it to see what would happen. And so the altMBA is for people at big companies. We got people from W- Whole Foods and Microsoft, and it's for people at tiny companies, and it's not for everybody. But we get this cohort of people, and, uh, there's a coach for every 10. We put them in Slack. We put them in WordPress. We give them 14 assignments over a 28-day period of time, and we sprint as fast as we can.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:40:23

        Mm.

    12. SGSeth Godin1:40:23

        And it's unbelievable. Tim, I just gotta tell you, it's unbelievable 'cause I'm not actively involved. I just watch and ... 'Cause eventually the goal is to have more of these sessions. I can't be in them if they have more of them. And people change because we don't give them any other choice.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:40:41

        [laughs] Could you, uh, could you expand on the social pressure piece? I think this is such an important point, and I was asked recently. I get asked all the time. Maybe you get asked this too, but, like, how do you maintain the discipline, or how do you change this habit? How do you do this? And, and my answer is almost always the same. Like, you have to have a punishment or a reward [laughs] for following or not following it, for doing it or not doing it. And it's, it's, it's just incredible to see how people who've never been able to lose weight before, as soon as they have $100 of their own money on the line and it's a betting pool with five other people who will be able to heckle them at the office, all of a sudden they figure it out really quickly, and the how-to isn't as hard. But, uh, in, in, in this particular example, could you expand on the, uh, the social aspect? Because I think it's really, really important and transfers and applies to a lot of other areas.

    14. SGSeth Godin1:41:35

        There are some people in some areas who have the self-discipline necessary to get the work done that needs to get done. You know those people, and I need, and I know those people, and when we find one of them, it's fabulous. Like, I think I am like that with certain parts of my craft in that no one would notice if I didn't do it the way I do it. I just choose to do it. When it comes to education, though, all of us have 12 to 20 years of brainwashing going on with, which is epitomized by one sentence I hate with a passion, which is, "Will this be on the test?"

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:42:15

        [laughs]

    16. SGSeth Godin1:42:20

        Right? So as soon as you say, "Will this be on the test?" you've instantly defined why you are doing something. And then when we invite you to an online course for free on artificial intelligence in which there is no certificate, which there is no accreditation, and you get to problem number four and it's really hard, and you ask yourself, "Will this be on the test?" And then you realize there is no test, and no one even knows you're taking the course. Then you stop, and you go eat some M&Ms, and you turn on the TV.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:42:53

        [laughs]

    18. SGSeth Godin1:42:55

        And so the goal here was, um, if you need, if you benefit, if you thrive from being in an environment where you will push yourself to get what you wanted all along, I'll give you people who will push you, your fellow students and your coaches, and there won't be a test, and there won't be grades. This is better than that. This is teaching you to, you know, internalize the narrative of, "My mom's not here, my mom's not watching, but I should act like she was."

15. 1:43:29 – 1:52:36

    Honest Feedback, Hard Years, and Meditation

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:43:29

       Who do you, in, in, in your life, who helps tell you you're wrong or point out when your work isn't good or, um, otherwise, you know, talk to the emperor so to speak? Because you've had so much success that there's, there's always the risk that people will tell you what you want to hear or just give you, uh, give you praise in, in all circumstances. Uh, who, who do you lean on for the, the truth when you, when you need bitter truth sometimes?

    2. SGSeth Godin1:44:03

       Okay. So I, I would break this into two, uh, kinds of people. I have been blessed by being surrounded by very skeptical people. And, um, you know, people who turned to me in 1991 and said, "This internet thing's never going to amount to anything." Or an English teacher who wrote in my yearbook, uh, "You are the bane of my existence."

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:44:28

       [laughs]

    4. SGSeth Godin1:44:29

       "You will never write anything worth reading."

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:44:31

       Ho- hold on. Let me just pause there for a second. What did you do to this guy [laughs] or the woman?

    6. SGSeth Godin1:44:37

       I dedicated one of my books to her.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:44:39

       [laughs] Did you send it to her?

    8. SGSeth Godin1:44:42

       Yes, I did.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:44:43

       Uh, how did, how did she take that?

    10. SGSeth Godin1:44:44

        She was, she was al- she had tongue in cheek all along. She was fine.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:44:48

        Okay. [laughs]

    12. SGSeth Godin1:44:49

        Um, but so the, the sort of uninformed skepticism is easy, at least for me to find, partly 'cause I don't live in San Francisco.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:44:58

        [laughs] Right. You're not fully in the echo chamber drinking the Kool-Aid.

    14. SGSeth Godin1:45:03

        Um, but the other kind is so rare, so scarce, so precious, I only get little dribs of it now and then, which is someone who gets you, someone who can see right through to your soul, who with generosity and care can look you in the eye, hand you back something and say, "I think this would be better if you did it again." And, um, I had a business partner, Steve, who was like that in 1979 and '81. '80 and '81. And finding that again in a consistent way is really precious and really hard.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:45:47

        Yeah, it is difficult. Um, what advice would you give your 30-year-old self? And if you could place us for you, like where you are, what you're doing.

    16. SGSeth Godin1:45:59

        Um, I'm gonna cheat 'cause I've been asked this question before.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:46:03

        [laughs] Cheating's allowed.

    18. SGSeth Godin1:46:05

        So first, do you know about the science fiction book Replay?

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:46:09

        Uh, no, I don't.

    20. SGSeth Godin1:46:10

        Brilliant. Brilliant game changer.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:46:13

        Replay.

    22. SGSeth Godin1:46:13

        Replay-

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:46:14

        All right

    24. SGSeth Godin1:46:14

        ... is, uh, I won't tell you. It's a, it's the best time travel book ever written. Anyway, I had so many bumps starting when I was 30 years old. They lasted for nine years, and I wouldn't tell my 30-year-old self anything. Because if I hadn't had those bumps, I wouldn't be me, and I'm glad I'm me.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:46:38

        What was the, if you're comfortable telling us, I mean, what was the hardest or one of the hardest bumps in that period of time?

    26. SGSeth Godin1:46:47

        Um, you know, I was trying to shift my dream of what I wanted to do for a living. I was growing up. I was failing at business. Uh, I had some quiet, relentless, repeated failures of no. I had failures of, uh, sloppiness where if I knew what I knew now, I wouldn't have done something and it would've saved me a year of my life. Um, there were failures of how big does something need to be and all sorts of visible scarring that, um, was hard.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:47:27

        Mm.

    28. SGSeth Godin1:47:27

        But it was part of the deal.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:47:30

        When you have a protracted difficult period of time like that, is, is, is there any particular activity or technique or self-talk that you use to try to get back on your feet more quickly?

    30. SGSeth Godin1:47:46

        Well, now I'm so much better at it because of Pema and because of meditation and because of, um, knowing how to sit with it and not insist that the tension go away.
16. 1:52:36 – 2:02:41

    Closing Messages, Thank-You Notes, and the Almond Cookies

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:52:36

       if you could have one billboard anywhere with anything on it, what would it say?

    2. SGSeth Godin1:52:42

       Uh, Jay Levinson, another old friend who passed away recently, uh, wrote Guerrilla Marketing. And he liked to say the best billboard in history said, "Free coffee, next exit."

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:52:54

       [laughs] Free coffee, next exit. Uh, have you given commencement speeches, Seth?

    4. SGSeth Godin1:53:05

       I have been asked. Let's go over this. A whole bunch of people who don't wanna hear from you waiting for you to be done.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:53:15

       [laughs] I suppose that's one way to look at it. [laughs] So, so that's the reason why you have not done commencement speeches.

    6. SGSeth Godin1:53:26

       Ding, ding, ding.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:53:27

       Let's ... All right. So let's say, uh, with, with your class, right? With, with, uh, with your MBA, you have, you're giving the commencement speech to them. They are motivated. They do want to hear from you. They're not waiting to get shit-faced two hours later. [laughs]

    8. SGSeth Godin1:53:43

       [laughs]

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:53:44

       Or maybe they are, but not all of them. Uh, what would, what would you, what would you say to them?

    10. SGSeth Godin1:53:50

        Well, I would like to believe that one out of every three days, my blog is a commencement speech, right?

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:53:55

        Sure.

    12. SGSeth Godin1:53:55

        When it's not talking about technology or marketing, I'm talking about respect, I'm talking about choice, I'm talking about the impact we can make. And, you know, the, the problem with commencement speeches is the only ones we hear are the ones that were transcribed and written for people like us, not for actual graduates.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:54:17

        Right. [laughs] Yeah.

    14. SGSeth Godin1:54:18

        Because what we really wanna say to actual graduates is just a reminder of what they should have heard at least three times a day in every one of their classes. And that is, "You are more powerful than you think you are."

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:54:31

        Hmm.

    16. SGSeth Godin1:54:31

        Act accordingly.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:54:34

        I like that. Just a, just a few more questions. This has been a-

    18. SGSeth Godin1:54:38

        You're doing great. It feels like we've only been talking for 15 minutes.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:54:41

        Oh, yeah, no, this is super fun. I've just, uh, I love every opportunity that, uh, that I have to chat with you. Just a few more. Uh, do you have any ask or request for my audience? And the next question is just gonna be where people can find you. So this is ef- effectively the last question. But do you have any ask or requests for my audience? Suggestion for the people listening? Anything at all that you'd just like to transmit to them?

    20. SGSeth Godin1:55:07

        Uh, send someone a thank you note tomorrow.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:55:10

        Hmm. Do you have any particular way that you like to send thank you notes?

    22. SGSeth Godin1:55:15

        No, it's, I'm, I'm giving people lots of freedom here.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:55:19

        [laughs] Well, freedom, I think that's a great place to actually wrap up. I, I think your work, your thinking, uh, the, the daily contact that people can have with your blog, even if they get some type of angst by, by, by skipping one or two a week [laughs] instead of sending you an angry note, uh, is, is really significant. So, uh, I just wanna thank you for putting it all out into the world, and I think people are able to create greater freedom for them- themselves and the people they care about as a result of it. So it's, uh, it's a meaningful thing that you do. And, um, where can people- Where, where can people find you online? The basics, where would you like them to learn more about what you're up to? And of course, for everybody listening, we will put, uh, tons of links in the show notes, and I'll give out that URL when we wrap up. But Seth, where can, where can people find you on the interwebs or elsewhere?

    24. SGSeth Godin1:56:11

        My mother's plan was to name me Scott, and my grandfather, Yezo, said to her, "Don't do that. That's a brand of toilet paper."

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:56:19

        [laughs]

    26. SGSeth Godin1:56:20

        And so she named me Seth instead, and if you type Seth into the Google, there I will be.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:56:26

        [laughs] Well, that keeps-

    28. SGSeth Godin1:56:29

        It would not have worked if my name was Scott.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:56:32

        That's very true. Well, that keeps it simple. Seth, thank you so much for the time. Uh, and you know what? We should, we should maybe... I really wanna recommend this because I almost ate an entire box. Can we touch, can we touch on the almond cookies for one second?

    30. SGSeth Godin1:56:48

        Let's talk about the almond cookies.

Episode duration: 2:02:41