428: Leveraging Real Marketing Strategy Means You'll Never Have to Sell Again: Here's How with Seth Godin
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Welcome back to the Boss Boy podcast. I'm Natalie Ellis, your host for this episode and

And wow, do I have a good one for you. So I got the chance to interview Seth Godin. Let me tell you a little bit about him if you aren't familiar. So Seth is an entrepreneur, a best-selling author, and a speaker. In addition to launching one of the most popular blogs in the world, I think he now has a million unique daily readers. He has written 21 best-selling books. And his book, This Is Marketing, was an instant bestseller in countries all around the world.

Though he is renowned for his writing and speaking, Seth also founded two companies, Squidoo and YoYo Dine, which was acquired by Yahoo. And he is credited as the inventor, wait for it, of email marketing. The inventor of email marketing.

Seth has given five TED Talks, including two that rank as the most popular of all time. By focusing on everything from effective marketing and leadership to the spread of ideas and changing everything, Seth has been able to motivate and inspire countless people around the world.

Now, it goes without saying, he is a phenomenal marketer and a really incredible thinker when it comes to overall strategy. Now, I expected this episode to just focus very, very tangibly on some marketing needle movers. And in fact, it gave so much more than that.

I went into this with one idea of what the interview would be and got completely taken on a different path. That was exactly what I needed to hear in that time. Now, Seth put voice to a lot of things that I have felt, you know, when it comes to having a big team. I personally don't like having a big team. When I made changes to my team, I felt so good about it. And I really want to stick with having a very, very small team.

Because I like to spend my time running my business, not managing my team. And I know that's maybe unpopular as an entrepreneur, but I like to do the things I like to do. And I really like to do business. And I am not the best people manager. And I really want to be true to myself in that. And I feel like this episode with Seth highlighted how that is actually still a really great strategy.

And then beyond that, I feel like for any entrepreneur, this episode could completely change the trajectory of your business. In fact, I ran out of this interview to my husband and I was like, we need to have a conversation because I just had so many light bulb moments, both for your business and my business.

all around strategy and what the path to success in your specific niche looks like. So I won't give any more away than that, but I want to highlight those things just so you know maybe what to look out for in this episode. It is one of my favorites so far. It was short, sweet, and we did not waste any time. So with that, let's dive into the episode.

Seth, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Natalie. It's good to see you. I'm so excited for this and I've been so excited to interview you because every book that you've ever written has really, really changed the way that I think about marketing. And as I was saying when we were diving into this conversation, a lot of the women listening

are about mid-stage in their business where their business is working, but marketing is often the thing that just constantly trips them up. And I know this because this was me for a really, really long time. And the most common questions that I get is,

Is this too saturated? You know, can I still build a community online? You know, how do I stand out when it feels like there's so much noise? And I think that's where I'd love to start because I know when you talk about strategy, you have a list of questions and things that people can think about. So for those kinds of questions that you get, where do you start answering that?

Well, that's a great place to start at the beginning. And people don't usually start at the beginning. People usually say, I've invested so much. I'm out of time. I'm out of money. I just got to get the word out. How do I hustle? Who do I interrupt? It's important. It's urgent. And I say, you should have talked to me two years ago, please. Because by the time it's too late, it's too late. We need to get to the first principles. And the first principles begin with this. The first one is this.

are you a freelancer or are you an entrepreneur? And right now talking to you, I'm a freelancer and I'm proud of it. Freelancer means it's just me. And if I'm going to get paid, it's because I did the work. An entrepreneur is building something bigger than themselves. They are making money when they sleep. They are, anytime they are doing the work, they are making a mistake because their job is to hire someone to do the work, not to do the work themselves. And that distinction is,

is really hard for people to get their arms around. Ursula Burns, when she was the CEO of Xerox, did not make Xerox machines. She did not repair Xerox machines. She didn't even invent Xerox machines. Her job was to hire the people who did all of those jobs. So if you're a freelancer, the only way to have a better business is to get better clients because you can't work more hours.

You've got to say, how do I become the kind of freelancer that better clients want to hire? And we can talk about that strategy in a minute. If you're an entrepreneur, then I would like you to be very specific about who exactly are you here for and what is the change you seek to make? You've got to answer those questions because if you don't, you're basically saying, I'm here for anyone who wants to hire me. And you're saying, you can pick anyone, I'm anyone. And if you do that, which most entrepreneurs do,

You're racing to the bottom and you're always going to be hustling and you're always going to be tired. And what about for those listening who are freelancers, solopreneurs, and they're listening, think, well, that sounds great. But right now, I don't feel like I have the choice of clients. It's kind of anyone that wants to work with me. I'm just going to go ahead and say yes. Right. That's very honest of you. So let's talk about what makes someone a better client. Better clients pay you more. Better clients demand more. Better clients talk about you.

Better clients don't hire you because you worked really hard for lousy clients. They hire you because you're the kind of person that better clients hire. So the reason you feel pressure to take whoever walks in the door is because you're taking whoever walks in the door. So that leads to you being on Fiverr, on Upwork, on, you know, you need a resume typed, I can type your resume. The hard work

is to take a deep breath and say, I'm going to be very focused at being the best in the world at blank. And it can be something really specific, like nobody does PR and publicity for orthodontists in New York better than me. Because if you can point to the work you did for three orthodontists, the fourth orthodontist is going to get on your waiting list immediately because you're the best in the world at this.

And when you get a client that isn't going to help you get that reputation, you need to politely and gently fire that client. You need to say, I get it. You want to pay me for my time, but I don't want to buy that. I don't want to sell that. I don't want to be the person who ran errands for you because I am the best in the world at this other thing. And when you earn that reputation, then marketing feels easy.

If marketing is feeling hard now, it's because you're selling average stuff to average people and you're trying to out Instagram everybody else or lower your prices faster than everybody else. Of course, that's frustrating. You deserve better than that. But that's the difference between strategy and advertising or strategy and promotion. Strategy says, I made some hard choices and I'm sticking with it.

Because people will miss me. The right people will miss me if I'm gone. It's so smart that way. And I already know that I can hear some of my listeners saying, but I'm scared. I'm scared to put myself in a box and

Because what if I'm not the best or what if I don't get those clients? And I say this because I've heard it so many times, quote unquote, I'm leaving money on the table if I'm not everything to everyone all the time. Okay, so those are two different things. The first one is really true. The second one is incorrect. It is really true that it is scary to put yourself on the hook. It is scary to claim something and make a promise like this because then you have to keep it.

And isn't that why you signed up to be a freelancer in the first place? I mean, a lot of people want a job without a boss. And the problem with a job without a boss is you end up with a terrible boss who keeps you up in the middle of the night, tells you you're not working hard enough, undermines your confidence. It's you. So you got to fire that person and get a different boss. The boss who says, if you start small enough and focused enough, you can be the best in the world at that.

So a simple example, there's a, I live near New York City. There's a giant place there called Chelsea Market that's filled with all sorts of stores and stuff. Who is the best tour guide in the world for Chelsea Market? Well, I would imagine in about three days, you could be the best tour guide in the world at touring tourists around Chelsea Market. If you were, TripAdvisor would rank you number one.

And you could look at people confidently and say, I know every person who owns every store. I've done this before. You want to tour the Empire State Building? Sorry, I can't help you. I'll send you to someone who can. But this is what I do. And saying this is what I do is critical. And your second point about leaving money on the table, I have met and worked with some very, very successful people. And I promise you, they do not work more hours than you do.

They got that way by leaving quote money on the table because they're not filling their time. They're filling their portfolio. Oh, that is so good. And as you're speaking, it makes me think about something I talk about a lot, which is stop scaling for scaling sake. I've on social media,

It looks like everyone is doing everything so well at the same time. And I know this because I got in this trap for a long time. I mean, I was in this for about six years before I came up and realized what was going on for me, where I just felt like the next step was more team. The next step was more product. The next step was more clients. And I never really stopped to ask myself why. I never stopped to say, is this really what I want? Is this who I want to serve? Is this how I want to serve them?

and I got to a point where I was ready to burn my business down because I built it that way. What advice do you have for that person who is in that place of building their business on a place of shoulds? Because what I'm hearing you explain is real excellence. It's picking your thing and it's going all in with it and building your portfolio. I mean, that's excellence, but there's a lot of noise out there. What advice would you give to that person?

Well, first, a word shift here, which is if you feel like you are selling your services, there's a place of insufficiency and you're constantly trying to persuade someone. But the people who are seen at the best of the world and the best of the world never sell their services. They offer their services. And if you are offering services, you're saying this is worth more than it costs. Well, that's the only time anyone ever buys anything is what it's worth more than it costs.

that your motto isn't I'm the cheapest, it's you'll pay a lot, but you get more than you pay for. And then the question about scaling. So you're looking at every single employee of my company right now. It's me. And I could spend all day on social media. And instead I spend no day on social media, zero on Instagram, on LinkedIn, et cetera, because my job is to do work that other people want to talk about online.

And so if I can take the time to produce something without an excuse saying, oh, I was really busy. This is the best I could do. And instead make something for you that makes a difference. Other people will talk about it. Right. So my job here working with you today is to help you do what you want to do, which is build a podcast. Your listeners will tell other people about that is our work.

Our work is not using our social media accounts to promote the podcast. It's to create the podcast that other people will benefit from talking about. So it comes down to this idea of not the biggest possible audience, but the smallest possible audience. What are the fewest number of people that if they were on your team, if they were rooting for you, it would be enough. Because if we can delight them,

It all takes care of itself. And you should hire no more people than you need to make that happen. Because again, the goal is not to make Instagram happy. And the goal is not to build a giant organization. The goal is to do work you're proud of. That's such a huge reframe. I feel like I needed that coming off of a day of doing so many things. That was not my podcast. And that's been such, that's huge for me. I actually just hopped off of a podcast meeting where we were throwing around a bunch of ideas and

And I said to my team, and maybe you'll tell me you can say this is wrong or like, let's dive into this because I'm so curious your perspective. I said to my team, this all looks good, but I'm not excited about it. I know what I want to talk about and I know it's going to serve my audience, but I don't know that it lives in research and SEO and titles. And I get a little bit caught up with that as a creative person.

Do you think there's like a balance to that approach or do like, how would you see that? Well, first I'm in no position to give you advice or to give most of your listeners advice because they are creating magic all the time. So with that caveat, what I would say is nothing we've talked about so far is me saying you should be excited about the work.

Nothing we're talking about is you are entitled to follow your passion. You're not. That it is really useful to be passionate about your work, but your work is rarely what you're passionate about. So the change we seek to make, so in my case, the change I seek to make is to help a certain group of people, not that many, maybe a million, change the way they see the world. That's my work. Sometimes it means I have to

grind my way through copy editing something. I have to lean into some endless interaction that's not making me happy, but it's the work to get to the other side. So we get to pick what we do, but as a professional, we're not seeking to be authentic. We're seeking to be consistent, to make a promise to the people we're serving and keep it. So you're absolutely right, Natalie, do not make a promise that you don't want to keep.

Do not say, in order to do this work, I have to spend 32 hours a week in meetings about SEO and hustle and hype. Because if you're not ready to spend that kind of time, don't sign up for it. But what we have is the chance to earn trust, to earn the benefit of the doubt, to create tension, and to help people get to where they're going. And we have tools to choose from. I could hire 20 people, but I don't think it would help me do my mission better than if it's just me. So I don't.

I would love to ask more about that, your choice not to hire those 20 people, because I'm sure, I mean, I don't even need to say I'm sure, I know you get inundated with opportunity after idea, after opportunity, after partnership. I mean, there must be a lot coming at you 24-7. How have you managed to stick to what feels authentic to you and your mission and not hire all those people and not do all those things? So one of the things I write about in the book is that every...

Yes also means a no, and every no means a yes. If I say yes to something, I just announce I'm saying no to something else. If I have chickpeas for dinner, I can't have dosa for dinner because you can't have both at the same time, one or the other. If I say I'm going to give a talk today at the New York Times building in Manhattan, I can't also do something else. So what we have to do, no matter how many people work for us,

is understand the difference between a yes and a no. So I say no all the time. And sometimes it's really, really expensive. Sometimes I turn down opportunities that could have been huge, but I don't know that at the time. And other times I eagerly say yes to something that doesn't work out. I didn't know that at the time, but I'm making these choices with intent.

And, you know, Natalie, how often does the podcast come out? Every week? Twice a week. Twice a week. So how come it's not seven times a week? I just like to do it twice a week. You would melt if it was seven times a week. Yeah. Right? And how come it's not once a month? It's not once a month because you wouldn't be able to pay the bills. So you made choices, even though you had the freedom to have the podcast as often as you wanted, right? These choices can be intuitive. The problem with an intuitive choice is it rarely gets better.

We need to talk about it out loud. We need to say out loud, I am choosing to do this. I know it's going to keep me from doing that. And then we need to have peers who can push back and say, you know, you should invest a lot in something, but it shouldn't be this. It should be that. And when we say yes to another line of work, another line of work, another line of work, then we're a wandering generality. And what I'm pitching here is that the strategy of being a meaningful, specific, as my friend Zig used to say,

is really underrated. It's worth so much to be seen as the one and only. And is it hard for you to say no to having a team member come on board that might save you time or might amplify your time? How do you think through that? So I've hired thousands, maybe a thousand people in my career. At one point, Yo-Yo Dine had 90 employees and 52 of them reported directly to me. And it was thrilling.

It was thrilling because there was always someone who wanted my advice and they would do what I would say. I mean, it's like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I was running at double speed. And one can do that for a while, but I realized my life was going to be shallow if that's how I was going to spend it. And as the world changed and it got easier to hire freelancers, what I found is that

While I love the feeling of camaraderie that comes from having a team, people who've got your back, you've got their back. I was spending a lot of time making sure my team was well cared for because that gave me satisfaction. But that time I was spending was sometimes frustrating and was keeping me from doing the work that only Seth Godin could do.

And what I decided, even though it's lonely sometimes, is to say, if I have a task and I can write a spec for it, I'm going to get someone cheaper than me to do it. And so I've got dozens of people who've done projects for me on Upwork and I've got a Rolodex of editors and things like that. But every word that I write, I wrote myself because that's me. That's what I want to do.

But if you said to me, oh, Seth, why don't you make a collectible chocolate bar? I would say, yeah, I'm going to make a collectible chocolate bar, but I'm not going to make the chocolate. Sean's going to make the chocolate. Lauren's going to make the chocolate. I'm just going to make the wrapper because that's my contribution. So I guess what I'm getting at is it's easier than ever to have a team.

But it's more expensive than ever to have a full-time group that is beholden to you for their paycheck and their rent. And was there a specific moment in that when you talk about you had that realization of perhaps that's what you didn't want? Was there a specific moment you can think back to where you kind of looked around and realized this is not what I want? And how did you even start that process of shifting and...

Because what you share now is such amazing perspective. I'm thinking about the solopreneur listening and who maybe thinks they have to hire a team and they might be listening thinking, wait a minute, there's another way of doing this? So I'm just curious, was there moments for you in that? Three times. It's happened to me three times. I'm a slow learner. The first time was when we sold Yo-Yo Dine to Yahoo. And it was, I've never been divorced, but it felt like getting divorced, like breaking up the family.

We had so much love and connection among the 90 of us. And then it was all gone. And it was heartbreaking. And it took me a year to recover. Everyone else recovered faster than me. And then I kept my promise for about four years. And then I built Squidoo. And we had nine people. And Squidoo became the 40th biggest website in the US with only nine employees. And then one day, without explanation, Google shut us down. And we had to break up the family again.

And the third time was when I built the Alt-MBA in Akimbo. And I built that to six full-time people and 140 coaches around the world. And again, I felt the same feeling, which is this is thrilling, but I'm carrying too much. This is hurting my soul to have people depend on me like this. And so when the itch came again and I did the Carbon Almanac, I was very clear. I'm a volunteer. You're a volunteer. This project does not last forever. And I'm not going to be able to pay your rent.

Because I just take it very seriously that if people are depending on you for their livelihood, the word livelihood has a word inside and you don't want to be the person who takes it away from them. That I love being in sync with other people.

I found that being a boss was something I took to personally. Thank you for sharing that perspective because I see the trend of solo preneurship or freelancing really exploding right now and people starting to celebrate the fact that they are doing the thing that they love.

Whereas a few years ago, all I was seeing was I have X amount of team members as if that was the badge of honor for success. So I just so appreciate that perspective of it three times and deciding, you know what, this is the way to go. And I want to go back to something that you said that was just so powerful about being a wandering generality. Just...

I just think that's such an easy place to drop into in the beginning of your business. When you get in and you think, I think this is where I want to go. There's opportunities in multiple different places. Let me try them out and test them.

And just kind of follow that versus coming up with that hypothesis in the beginning. So in terms of strategy, what would you say to that person who feels like they maybe have fallen into being a little bit of everything to everyone and they're not sure how to distill that thing or what it is really that they are great at and can serve people best with? So here's the big secret.

of strategy for someone in the shoes you're talking about. I'm lowering my voice because it's a secret. The secret is you don't have to be original. In fact, you should steal one. You should find somebody in a slightly different industry who is living a life like you'd like to live, who is doing work like you'd like to do. And then you should say, how did they do that? Who exactly are they serving? So in my case,

I met Guy Kawasaki and Tom Peters, both when I was 24 years old, 23 years old. And I saw that it was possible to make a living going to a conference and giving a speech. And I said to myself, there's a model here. And it took me 10 more years to get to the point where it started to happen. But I was just copying, right? I didn't want to be the next Tom Peters. We already had a Tom Peters. But I saw that there was an industry there that could use someone like me.

When I was in the book business before I was an author, I understood that someone could make a living coming up with an idea for a book and selling it to a book publisher. So I met with those people and I said, you know, Hey, uh, John Boswell, how do you do that? Tell me, show me. And people will be incredibly generous about this. And I understood how that was working. Um,

So many of my books are filled with stories of people who made a strategy work. Just copy it. Right. So like today in AI, my friend Dan Shipper is building a newsletter business, teaching people what AI can do. He didn't invent the newsletter business. He's just doing a newsletter about a different thing.

And so to show up and say, this is completely original. I'm starting a restaurant where the lights are off all the time. And we also sell candles during the day. Like, great, that's fantastic. But it's not going to work because it's never worked before. Just go copy something. It's your life's too short to be completely original. I think that's so freeing for people. Life's too short to be completely original. I think it's so freeing. I can even feel people just exhaling, listening to that.

Yeah, I mean, you don't have to, I'm sorry, you don't have to copy someone exactly because it's too late to be the next one of them. But it needs to rhyme. And the rhyming shows you understand their strategy. I love that. And so speaking of taking that big exhale, one thing you mentioned was about not spending time on social media. And I constantly...

have this guilt about not being on platforms. I'm not on TikTok. I'm not on this. I'm not on that. I just do. I know one platform and I do it well, and I've stuck with it and I don't really want to go out there, but I get guilty and I, I can kind of talk myself around it and I have to really consistently reel it in. I want to know, you know, how you think about that of,

feeling like you need, do you need to be on every platform? How do you decide which is the platform for you? You know, as new ones pop up, how do you make those decisions and have that discernment? Because before we know it, we can be on 10 different platforms and we don't even do our job during the day. Yeah. Don't feel guilty, Natalie. You're changing lives all the time. There's nothing to feel guilty about. It comes back to who I'm seeking to serve and what are people relying on? So if someone says, what I represent is,

is the canary. I show up in every coal mine. As soon as a piece of new media shows up, you can count on me being one of the first users. Well, if that's your reputation, then when a new one shows up, you got to do it, but then you got to leave the old ones because you can't do them all. In my case, I saw that my blog was the center of how I could communicate with people. And so if a social media platform shows up that I can plug my blog into, I do, and I never go back there again.

But when TikTok showed up, I'm like, oh, I get this. If I want to engage with 15-year-olds and 20-year-olds, I got to start being on TikTok. I have no choice but to do that. I have to figure out how to make my content work in 60-second bits, and I got to start making it. And I thought, I can't do everything. And the chances that I'm going to be a star there are zero.

Unless I build a big team and start over. So I didn't stay away from TikTok because I was afraid. I stayed away from TikTok because I had confidence that maybe it would work and then what would happen, right? So the problem is we live in a comparison culture that every year when Forbes publishes its list of the 400 richest people in the world, they make 399 people really unhappy because all the billionaires are keeping track of is who are they ahead of.

If you have $6 billion, why can't you just think you're the richest person in the world? You have all the same resources, but you got suckered in to measuring something that doesn't matter. Well, you know what doesn't matter? It doesn't matter how many Instagram followers you have. It doesn't matter if you get 42 million views on TikTok because 42 million views on TikTok does not change anyone's life. And you also can't make a living with it. So

Focus on what you want, not what Mark Zuckerberg wants you to want. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity, which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place. So it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things easier.

so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet,

Now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial. Go to Kajabi.com slash Boss Babe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's Kajabi.com slash Boss Babe. So speaking of that, focusing on what you want and maybe not what Zuck wants you to want, it makes me think about the algorithm. And...

I will say for me with Boss Babe, I kind of fell upon something that worked. I was putting quotes out there for ambitious women. It was very tongue in cheek. And I was saying a lot of the things that they wanted to say, but felt like they couldn't and they'd share it on their platform.

And my strategy hasn't changed. I'm still doing the same thing, but I'm doing it in different formats now, more of a long format, but it hasn't really changed. And so when people ask me for advice on social, that's generally what I say. I say, you know, the trends and stuff are great, but it's more about, is this shareable? Is this something that someone will see themselves in? And I'm curious how you think about that because I'm, as I was going through your book, I

I can't help but see viral content. I'm like, goodness, that's viral, that's viral, that's viral. And the way you write is like that. And so I'm just curious how you think about virality and think, do you agree with what I shared? And how do you think about virality generally? So, you know, why does the video...

Like Psy's Gangnam Style video got seen by 3 billion people. Why did it go viral? Is it because people like him? Is it because people wanted him to be successful? I don't think so. So this book here is...

This was the book that saved my career. I had been kicked out of book publishing, so I had no publisher. And a dear friend of mine died in a helicopter crash, and I wanted to dedicate a book to him, but I didn't have a book or a publisher. So I wrote Purple Cow, and then I printed it and put it in a milk carton and only made 10,000 of these and sold them for $5 each. And it turns out when people got the milk carton, they put it on their desk and

They didn't open it, take the book out, throw out the milk carton. They put the milk carton on their desk. Why would you do that? Are you trying to promote Seth? No, you did it because if your boss saw it and she asked you about it, your career would get better. Your status would go up. Your workplace would get better. So the insight for me is that what people really need from me is for me to tell them things they sort of already know in a way that they can tell other people.

So that's how my blog got from 100 readers to a million. Not because I promoted it, but because someone reads a blog post and forwards it to someone else. Susan Cain's TED Talk, which you've probably seen, it's one of the great TED Talks, has been seen more than 20 million times. Susan did not promote it. TED hardly promoted it. The way it got seen that many times is that people who are quiet or shy saw themselves in the video and forwarded it to other people to explain themselves.

That's what makes something viral is people share it because it helps them, not because it helps the person who made it. So your reputation was built on your generous ability to give people ideas that they would benefit from telling other people.

Oh, that is so powerful and just helps me reframe the way we talk about creating, whether it's podcasts, newsletters, social, how can you create it in a way that gets shares? And so how do you think about distilling that? How do you think about creating something that people truly will want to share even without you asking them or telling them to? I really like hanging out with people.

I like hanging out with people who are curious and who are trying to make something happen. And I will say things to them. Sometimes I'm on stage. Sometimes we're having a cup of coffee and I'm watching them. And if their eyes light up, and this is one reason why you're such a great interviewer, Natalie, is that I can tell when I say something to you that landed and I noticed that. So I do more of that. It's that easy.

How can someone think about what those threads might be in their business? So just an example, one part of our business is See Your Mama and we create content that entrepreneurial moms want to consume. And I would say it's the easiest part of my business because I'm in the thick of it. And I just have to name one part of my day. And I know that those women are like, oh my goodness, finally someone sees me.

And I've never had content be engaged with as much as that content because I'm really giving voice to just a daily experience, nothing special. I'm not thinking too hard about it. And that's the thread I would say I found in that part of my business. Do you think there's a secret or a way of looking at your business and seeing what's that thread? What's that shareable topic or pillar that I can talk about?

Do you think I would be good at talking to that audience the way you are? No. Of course not. You are doing it intuitively because you are them and they are you. You're doing it intuitively because you have natural empathy for those folks. And it's possible to do it non-intuitively, that you don't have to be a cancer survivor to be an oncologist. You don't have to be a three-year-old to be a toy designer.

So what we seek to do is be able to articulate the fundamental principles of what we think our audience is going through. So one of the great parenting books of all time is What to Expect When You're Expecting. And it was written by a couple of nurses. And they had spent enough time with nervous pregnant moms that they understood deeply what people needed to hear, what they needed to see, what they needed to understand.

And once you can articulate what the top fears, desires, needs are, you can make a checklist and you can start working your way through it again and again and again. And my argument is just do it on purpose. Don't wait for inspiration. Do it on purpose and then do it again and then do it again.

And so, you know, if you cut enough hair, when someone walks into your hairdressing salon for the first time, you know exactly what three sentences to say to them to be able to guess what they're going to need. That's practice. And it's easier now than ever to practice. But too often we say, no, I want a shortcut. How do I just get done with this? But for me, the juice of it is learning practice.

Where, you know, I've been a teacher my whole life. And when you watch someone go from confused to not confused and see that light go on, that's what teachers thrive on. That's what I'm always looking for. And

To go back a little bit to, because I really love how in this episode we're doubling down on, I think it's excellence and just doing fewer things better. That's really what I hope people are taking from this is doing fewer things better and being quite unapologetic about that and feeling, knowing it's okay to leave money on the table and owning what it is that you want your business to provide for you, how you want to show up.

and being unapologetic about that. So kind of going back to the tangent we were on around how you prioritize and how you think about these things. Um, we talked about platforms. You talked about TikTok. How do you discern between all the emails coming at you and the inbound, the texts, the calls, the emails, how do you decide I'm going to reply to this? I'm not going to reply to this. This is a yes. This is a no. Do you have a system for that? I definitely don't have a system. I'm very easily distracted. Um,

I would say what I keep coming back to is this. If you're not in my audience, then I will be respectful of you, but I'm not going to spend a lot of time with you because like if someone sends me a note saying, why isn't your blog in Italian? I would really like to read it in Italian. I'm not going to change my mind. My blog is not for people who don't speak English. I answered that question for myself yesterday.

10 years ago, I could have hired translators. I just, no, I'm not doing that. I'm not revisiting that. But if I hear from someone who's come to a couple of my conferences, who's interacted with me by email over the years, who is working on work that I think is important, and they ask me a question, I'm going to take my time to answer them because that's my work is to be there for someone who is in that position, who is doing that. And it's hard.

to walk away from things you could do or things you used to do because part of you feels like you're never going to get asked again right so i got a note yesterday will you come to bali and give a speech and people who give speeches for a living it's ridiculously lucrative and i can't believe it's an actual way to make a living but four years ago i stopped flying for work

So it's really hard to drive my car to Bali. So I'm not going to be able to make it. And so I write back and say, I'm sorry, I can't come. Now, what I just did by saying no is in addition to honoring my commitment to not fly, I got five days of my life back. So now I'm on the hook to do something really productive with those five days because I could have spent them in Bali giving this speech and I'm not. So we got to just keep coming back to, I only get tomorrow once. Who do I want to offer it to?

Is this additive or am I distracting myself? What made you decide that rule of I no longer fly for work? Well, it gave a thousand speeches around the world. And at some level, it's thrilling, but I was always a little sick. And between COVID and my work on the climate book, I realized me not flying isn't going to save the planet. But me not flying is going to improve my health and also encourage conferences to have virtual talks.

And so I do virtual talks all the time. And if more of that happens, I'm keeping lots of plane people from flying and it multiplies forward. If other people want to fly, I'm not going to argue with them. And there's a whole new generation of speakers coming along and I'm wishing them the best, but yeah,

I don't get tomorrow over again and I don't want to spend it on an airplane. Is that a decision you feel like you would have made before you hit a certain level of success? Or is it when you hit a certain level of success, you said, okay, I get to make these decisions now. Every single person who's listening to this has already hit a certain level of success. You have the freedom to listen to a podcast. You have the technology to connect everyone in the world. You have a roof over your head and enough to eat, but it's easy to get

hooked on the, but just one more, but just one more, but just one more. So, you know, I failed pretty hard for the first, the second 10 years of my career. And after that, I had to tell myself the truth, which is if I never get paid ever again, I'm not going to starve to death. And most of us probably can't go 40 years without getting paid ever again. But if we changed our lifestyle, we're not going to starve to death.

So we have to keep making these choices about when I come home to my family, am I a better person than I was when I left? Did I leave footprints that I'm proud of? Have I earned the benefit of the doubt from people who I respect? That feels to me like a useful way to spend my day. And if Zoom hadn't come along...

it would have been much harder for me to retreat to my little town because then I wouldn't be able to talk to you and I wouldn't be able to talk to audiences and things like that. But the combination of Zoom, turning 60,

COVID and everything else, it seemed like a very easy choice for me. I love hearing this. There's a part of me that just feels freer listening to that because as a mom of a toddler, I don't ever want to leave her and work used to be such a big part of my life. And it's not such an important part of my life anymore. I enjoy it, but it's not the most important thing in my life.

And so just hearing that feels really freeing. And I'm curious, do you feel like it's helped or hindered your success at all, putting in place rules for yourself like that? So constraints are not a problem. Constraints are the point. Problems always have solutions. But the reason they're problems is that people aren't comfortable with the constraints. So if you can loosen a constraint, you might be able to solve the problem. The problem with work-life balance is there's no such thing. There's just life.

And you can't loosen the constraint and expect that your life will be the same. So I always had the constraint that I would stay wherever I went as little as possible and be home for dinner. And that commitment cost me money, but it was totally worth it because if I hadn't had the constraint and I know people in my field who have done this, I would have one guy I knew had a secretary and five suitcases and

And he lived on an airplane and the suitcases would just get FedExed to the next hotel each time. And he did, you know, a hundred plus gigs a year. Well, where else you got to stop sooner later, right? My point was, if I can't be home for dinner, I'm not going. And now it's, I'm not going, but you still have to have constraints, constraints about your time, constraints about your ethics. You know, if you want to take a vaping company as a client, go ahead, but you can't,

compromise your way into that you gotta say that's okay with me or it's not and everyone's gonna make their own choices but you should make choices that's beautiful i totally thought i was gonna come on here and talk marketing with you but i feel like i've wanted to ask you so many things outside of marketing which is so awesome um but you but you know natalie i'm sorry to interrupt all we've been talking about is marketing tell me more about that well marketing is

What's the story we would like to live that we can tell to other people that they'll share with others? Can we do that storytelling and make a living we are proud of? That's what marketing is. Marketing isn't advertising or hyper hustle or social media. Those are symptoms of some certain kinds of marketing. But how we show up, how we see ourselves in the mirror, the promises we make to people, the people we decide to make those promises to, that's all marketing.

Is that marketing because it's how we show up? It's the stories we tell? How do we think about that as marketing, as business owners, or in our careers, the way we live our life? How do we think about that as marketing? Because I'm hearing you and I'm like, okay, but how is this marketing? Okay, so if you're an accountant, you do nothing but work with accounts. That's why it's called accounting. And if you're a marketer, you work with the market. And the market has a choice.

If you have a job, the market is your boss and your boss's boss. And if they decide to give you a promotion or a good project, it's because you did good marketing to them. They're the market. If you're in the world selling popcorn at Yankee Stadium, the market are the fans at Yankee Stadium. And if you show up in a way that makes them want more popcorn, they're going to buy it from you. If it touches the market, it's marketing. That makes so much sense.

Wow, you're really making me think a lot about just things I want to implement after this too. I think I've definitely had myself in a box of what I consider marketing or appropriate or the right way to do something. So that's really been illuminating for me. So thank you. Thank you. And I'm curious why this book? Why this book now? What led you to want to write this? So here I am.

Talking to this person who's got a lot of experience, a lot of success, is insightful and smart. And yet we just talked about a whole bunch of things that hadn't occurred to you because people don't know what strategy is. They think strategy is for MBAs or generals. They think strategy is maybe I need a plan that's guaranteed to work. It's none of those things. It's a philosophy, a philosophy of becoming. And it's been a long time since I sat down to write a book. I only do a book when I feel like I have no choice.

But I do write every day. And after I had written, you know, 30 or 40 of the elements of this, I thought, oh, I'm writing about strategy. And then I just kept going. But it's not a careful plan on my part that the next thing I should do is X, Y, or Z. It's just spending time with my audience and discovering this is something that I think they would like to hear. And so do you make that, do you make writing decisions based on experience?

what your audience would like to hear versus what you feel like talking about? What I feel like talking about is usually what I think my audience wants to talk about. When I am being selfish and cranky, I want to, you know, yell at a hotel that did something stupid or rant about something else in the universe, like an old man. And those never, you never see those.

Because that's not consistent. That's not the brand of Seth Godin. So those disappear. I find I am the best version of myself when I'm having a conversation like this with you. That makes a lot of sense. And I think that goes back to my question I was asking around the podcasting, around talking about maybe things I'm told to talk about versus what I feel like talking about. Because I often feel like what I say is what my audience are also feeling and wanting to hear.

Do you think that is a good strategy? Is it a strategy to say, I talk about what I feel like? Well, it depends. If your audience were jockeys and you're not a jockey and you hate horses, you should probably not make your podcast about what you feel like talking about. You should spend more time with the jockeys. In your case, pretty much you are your audience. So you have this intuitive sense as to what they need to hear. In my case,

I was a struggling freelancer and entrepreneur for 20 something years. So when I want to empathize with many of the people I'm talking to, I reintroduce myself to that guy because I'm certainly not writing for people who have written bestselling books or given speeches because there aren't very many of those people and they're not the people who are reading my work.

I'm looking for universalities among my people and I am relentlessly ignoring everybody else. If someone comes to me and says, I hate your blog because you never write recipes. Like, yeah, because I would love to share my recipes, but my blog isn't for people who want my recipes. So what advice would you give to someone like me who has a podcast or a platform and really wants to go all in?

and double down and think about what kind of strategy would support that. Okay, so if we're going to get specific and if I'm going to give you free advice that's worth what it costs, I would say that the single best area to create value among audiences like this and get paid for it is when you connect people to one another. That it's tempting to be in the media business where you broadcast to everyone.

But what people are eager for and which there is a scarcity of is being in the room, being in the room with the right other people. And it can be a virtual room. Like I run a community called purple dot space that has thousands of people from all over the world. And that costs money. Or it can be a real time space where three times a year your people get together. It can be you being the hub of peer to peer coaching.

It can be you creating an app just for them to be able to connect with one another. Because what we know is when you assemble a group of people, a cohort who want to be connected, they stay connected. So if I was the CEO of your company, that would be something that I would explore and invest in. And then the second idea I would share is real opportunities show up when the world changes. So when podcasting got invented,

Things changed because you didn't need NPR to give you a contract. You could make your own show. So we need to look for what is going to change systems. And right now, the two biggest changes of our lifetime are climate and all of the things that are going to come with that and AI. And AI is going to wipe out a whole bunch of jobs that were mediocre because it can do them faster and cheaper. But it's going to open up all sorts of extraordinary opportunities for

That will allow people the same way podcasting did to stand for something, but not have to build a giant team to do it. I love that. Thank you. And yeah, I love, I love that. The way you talked about AI there too, because I've noticed that,

The amazing team members that I have, they've just gotten so much better with AI. They have not resisted it. They don't pretend. They don't use it. They put their work out there and they're so proud to say, I did this in like a fifth of the time I normally would have with AI. And I just think that's amazing. I love that.

I love your book. It's incredible. And one thing that I wanted to call out to my listeners that I really, really love the most, and I'm wondering what you would say is the best way to use this, is you have questions that lead to strategies. And I actually was writing, I was writing a new, a memo for the brand I was talking about, See Your Mama.

With someone on my team. And we sat and went through all of these questions. And it was so powerful. What came out of the other side. So firstly thank you. Because it's really been a needle mover in my business. But secondly for someone who is.

Let's say they're listening to this and they're in the early stages of their business and they're realizing, oh shit, I really need to start doubling down and I need to narrow my focus. Would you say this is one of the best places to go and action something from the book, these questions, like put them in a Google Doc and start to answer them? You have to do one step before that. Okay. But first, thank you. That was really kind of you to say. The step before it is you need to find a buddy or two buddies.

You cannot do this by yourself. And that's why I needed to go through all the pain of making a book. Because if someone just reads a blog post and go, oh yeah, then it's not gonna make a difference. But if there's a book, it demands a different reaction. So it's super simple and it's free. Just find two other people and meet every week on Zoom or in person for half an hour. And you're on the hook to tell these people the truth about your strategy, to answer the questions out loud.

That alone is going to change everything. So yes, this list of questions is a great place, but if you do it by yourself, you'll just skip over some of them when they're hard.

Yeah, the hard ones.

That miracle is not a strategy. I'm going to make a quote out of that. I love that. Anyone that's listening, if you grab the book, go and post this inside the podcast channel in society, because I bet there are so many women listening right now that are just wishing to hop on a call like that and have that accountability. I think that's incredible. And yes, you do need someone because when I was doing this solo, I was skipping some of the hard ones. Yeah.

Good call. Seth, thank you so much for being here. This conversation took so many amazing turns that I feel like I needed to hear today. So I'm really grateful. Where can people find out more about you? I'll put the link for your book in the show notes as well. Well, thank you, Natalie. If you go to Seth's blog, which is hard to say, but fun to read, there's 9,000 free blog posts there and there's information about the book and stuff. I'm not in the book selling business, but

I'm in the idea sharing business. And if these ideas have helped, it was totally worth the time to talk to you. Thank you for doing this. Amazing. Thank you so much. Wait, wait, wait, before you go, I would love to send you my seven figure CEO operating system completely free as a gift.

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