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Episode 435: Seth Godin Travels at the Speed of Trust in ‘This is Strategy’
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Seth Godin is the best-selling author of more than twenty books and his latest is This is Strategy: Make Better Plans.
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
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Transcript
Podcasting Risks and Humor
00:00:00
Speaker
Yes, it is entirely possible that I will spontaneously combust and lava will pour out of my head and I will turn into a puddle. It's never happened to anybody who's ever done a podcast, but it could.
00:00:17
Speaker
sprinting right out of the batter's box with with the
Introduction to Seth Godin and 'This is Strategy'
00:00:21
Speaker
tape. This is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast. Sure, I speak to badass people about telling true stories, narrative journalism, essays, memoirs, documentary film, podcasts. We do it all. I'm Brendan O'Mara. Welcome to it. Seth Godin, what more can you say about this guy? He's back for his third trip to the podcast to talk about his new book, This is Strategy. Make Better Plans. It's published by Authors, Equity,
00:00:48
Speaker
What Seth does better than anybody is make things you had never seen before.
00:00:57
Speaker
make them visible, and then you just can't unsee them ever again. Sorry not sorry, you can no longer unsee this. He writes with economy and wit, and you walk away better for it. Strategy is hard work, hard thinking is the most important focus you can make for a project, though it lacks the immediacy of the fake work like social media posting, newsletter writing,
00:01:27
Speaker
It's a lean bug, but it's dense. With no page numbers, but nearly 300 numbered riffs to get you thinking about anything from status roles and affiliation, more in this in the parting shot, and seeing systems and how best to change them or work within them.
The Power of Storytelling in Media
00:01:45
Speaker
Show notes to this episode more at printedomera.com hey where you can also sign up for the up to 11 rage against the algorithm newsletter, book recommendations, cool links to stuff I think you'll like. It's a list of 11 things. Like I said, spinal tapian people out there, it goes up to 11. Parting shot on what better means for the podcast as well as seeing status roles.
00:02:12
Speaker
at play with writers online. Something you can't unsee. Seth is the best-selling author of more than 20 books at this point, The the Practice, which is ah an all-time favorite of mine. This is marketing, Purple Cow, The Icarus Effect, is that right? Hank, Icarus Deception, shoot. Doesn't matter.
Niche Markets vs. Average Products
00:02:35
Speaker
Fact is, he's one of the most generous people you will ever hear, an inspiring guy, brilliant guy, and it's my great pleasure to welcome Seth Gooden back to the podcast, Riff.
00:03:03
Speaker
You know, I think a good on-ramp for for our conversation too is, ah you know, I emailed you a couple days ago about that Grant Peterson profile on a Riverside Bikes. And there were so many threads that just had, ah that really had the the fingerprints of your thought processes on him. And it was, when you read that profile, you know, what was, ah what were you thinking as you were just ah metabolizing it?
00:03:27
Speaker
so What does it mean to be an iconoclast? All the media pushes us to focus our attention on Taylor Swift or on someone who is running a giant tech company and happens to be a jerk. that It seems like society wants the goal to be to make average stuff for average people at scale.
00:03:50
Speaker
And the reason we got hooked on that is because big box stores can only sell a few of each item. So they have to sell the popular one. Supermarkets can only carry a couple kinds of ketchup or mustard. So they carry the popular one. And factories were at their most efficient when they made the same thing over and over again. But when the long tail showed up, we got rid of the big box stores. We can buy almost anything we want from lots of different places.
00:04:19
Speaker
and factories aren't more efficient when they make more of one thing. So the door has been opened for iconoclasts, people who might be a little ornery and who might be too sure that they are right, but they are committed to their craft, to what they do and to how they do it.
00:04:38
Speaker
And more of those people can make a living now than ever before. I love iconoclasts. I love things made by iconoclasts. I can't ride an upright bike, but if I could, I would already own one of his bikes. Yeah, and also embedded in that, of course, was this idea of you know status and affiliation stuff that you riff on ah frequently going back you to several blog posts, but also this is marketing. And of course, it it crops up a a whole lot and this is strategy.
00:05:08
Speaker
So even just pulling on the thread of Peterson Riverside Bikes, just ah what it it what did it tell you about status and affiliation with just merely the these handcrafted bicycles? Okay, so for people at home who are just joining the conversation, let's take a minute to explain what I'm talking about. I have argued that human beings, once they have a roof over their head and enough to eat, generally only care about three things.
Status and Human Behavior
00:05:35
Speaker
One of them is the freedom from fear, the freedom from feeling fear. The second one is affiliation. Which team am I on? Who's to my left? Who's to my right? Am I wearing the right clothes?
00:05:50
Speaker
And the third one is status. Who eats lunch first? Who's in the front row of whatever institution we're keeping track of? So it doesn't have to have anything to do with money. Spiritual institutions that have deacons and bishops and whatever they're called, they have status too, right? That ah universities have status, who has tenure, who is the head of the department, et cetera. So when we think about buying transportation, if you only have $200,
00:06:20
Speaker
any bike will do because the bike's going to get you from here to the next village. So why buy a bike better than that? Well, part of it is for the story of the iconic last and how that makes you feel. But a lot of it is how does it make you feel when your friends see what you did, when your friends and colleagues see that you care enough and have enough resources to have this bespoke magical device.
00:06:47
Speaker
and the story that you can tell, that gets you affiliation, gives you membership in a circle. And we should be very clear that this affects just about every author, just about everything every author writes about. We're always writing about status or affiliation. Let's think about TED. When the TED Talks launched, there were only a couple dozen Bragging that you had a TED Talk didn't increase your status because no one knew what they were. But Sir Ken understood that if he goosed his numbers by having people look at it, um he would then have status as having the most popular TED Talk. And once you have the most popular TED Talk compared to the other TED Talks, you've got a ah lot of good reasons to talk about you being in that talk. And then if you're a viewer,
00:07:42
Speaker
You raise your status or affiliation by sharing Sir Ken's video because it's clever and funny and insightful. It doesn't expose you to a lot of risk. It's a super popular TED talk. It's safe, but you sharing it to someone who hasn't seen it yet.
00:07:59
Speaker
raises your status as an opinion leader and also connects you more deeply with them. And so it spreads and spreads until a billion of them have been seen. And you know a podcast gets bragged about not because it has the most listeners, but because something about the way the podcaster shows up in the world implies that there's status in being on that buck. Yeah.
Building Trust and Connections
00:08:25
Speaker
Yeah. And I think ah over time, too, and this piggybacks on it, this great, a great quote you have in this is strategy from Adrian me Marie Brown about moving at the speed of trust. And I i loved that phrasing. And I think
00:08:44
Speaker
It's slower, but that is ultimately how you can create a sense of status and have people want to be affiliated with you. So maybe given that there's a lot of hustle going on out there, like what might be just the the best way to build a ah trustworthy presence so you can't move at that speed of trust? So let's talk about the speed of trust. If you know how to drive,
00:09:06
Speaker
and you are driving on a back road faster than the road can handle, you know it. And slowing down five miles an hour will get you there much faster than getting dug out of a ditch. That speed is visible, but the speed of trust is not. If you are at a restaurant And the owner comes over to you and asks you to loan him $5,000 because the boiler in the back broke. You will say no. But if you've been going to that restaurant every week for 20 weeks and they have treated you well, it's entirely likely you will seriously consider it because trust has been earned. You don't get to make that ask after one dinner, but after 20 dinners, you might. So when we think about a podcast,
00:10:01
Speaker
You know, when I ran the podcasting workshop with my friend, Alex de Palma, if you want to hear conversations with Alex de Palma, I spoke with her on episode 130 and episode 239, really great conversations. And she just shows up and brings, just brings it great energy, great conversations. Okay, back to Seth.
00:10:25
Speaker
One of the exercises we did was please name your ideal guest.
The 'Speed of Trust' in Podcasts
00:10:31
Speaker
So Brendan, in your case, who hasn't been on the podcast that you would like to have on the podcast? Let's see, ah liz Liz Gilbert, Michael Lewis, just a name two I've thought in my head. And I should add, being mildly flat-footed when Seth asked me that. Those were the two that just were at the very top of my head for whatever reason, but upon thinking, of other people I've pitched and desperately want to speak with on the show are like Ta-Nehisi Coates, Isabel Wilkerson, Roxanne Gay, Rebecca Solnit. Yeah, there's just four more. Anyway, let's say that these interjections, they are,
00:11:05
Speaker
They are getting in the way, aren't they? Great. I love Liz. So who would you have to have on the podcast for Liz to say, oh, sure, I'd be delighted. Once you get that person, you say, well, who would I have to have to get that person and keep working backwards until you get to your next door neighbor? That is the speed of trust. That is the path.
00:11:29
Speaker
Yeah, and you and you also you talked a moment ago about you using TED as an example of having sharing kind of built into the system and in that you know strategy they're in. And ah when you're setting out to build anything, be it a blog or podcast or whatever it might be, you know sharing is very integral to it. So how is it best to build sharing into the system so ah it does elevate the status of the person sharing and it helps kind of grow the ecosystem?
00:11:59
Speaker
No one's gonna share it because it's important to you. Right. They're gonna share it because it's important to them. So what I write about in this is strategy is building scaffolding.
00:12:10
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building the steps in so that people can find the confidence and status within your ecosystem that they then decide it's better for them to invite others along. And sometimes it's pretty easy and sometimes it's very difficult. If you want to read the idea of 10 day silent retreats in a country that doesn't have them, that's not going to take a week. It's going to take a long time because it's awkward to tell your friends you just went away for a 10 day silent retreat until it's not awkward. So the podcast at the beginning, you know, Starley kinds, uh, mystery shell episode three, still one of the finest podcasts ever made. I must've told 10,000 people about that.
00:12:57
Speaker
episode three of Starly Kind's mystery show is Belt Buckle, and it is a classic. ah It's from Gimlet Media, and Starly Kind has been very vocal about the labor practices at Gimlet, but ah divorcing our thoughts from that just for a moment and that particular episode is is pretty magical. Because there was a shortage of good podcast recommendations and it made me look good to send someone to Mystery Show episode three because they always came back with a smile on their face. Same way, Google was easy to recommend at the beginning because there wasn't a lot of other things to recommend and it was extraordinary.
00:13:43
Speaker
Now, though, it's much harder to recommend a podcast because there's not a podcast shortage. That shortage is over forever. So what has to happen on a podcast for the people listening to the podcast to want to share
Growth Through Sharing
00:13:58
Speaker
it? And one reason why people invite me to be on their podcast is I tend to work very hard as a guest to make a podcast that's worth sharing. yeah With this is strategy, if you do like a word cloud of the whole book, like systems is probably the word used most throughout the the entire manuscript. And ah for for you, what was maybe the first system that you became aware of?
00:14:26
Speaker
um So, for the writers who are listening, I always make a word cloud of my books before I finish them. I used to use the word just a lot. Oh, wow yeah. is Always the biggest word in the word cloud. So then I would go through and replace every use of the word just. It's a good hack. Anyway, there is no doubt in my mind that the first system I was aware of was the educational industrial system that kept hitting me in the face when I was six.
00:14:53
Speaker
And it hit me in the face for many, many years. I couldn't understand why school couldn't be optimized for me. I knew there was a system, and it took a while to develop the empathy for dancing with that system in a way that would help me get what I wanted. When you say empathy of dancing with a system that wasn't serving you, what what does that mean?
00:15:18
Speaker
Okay, so here's a true story that I have, I don't think ever told in public. So when I was in sixth grade, I was a wise ass and I was happy to chime in on various topics. And there was a kid in my class named Joe who was a juvenile delinquent, like a literal juvenile delinquent.
00:15:39
Speaker
and Joe walked up to me one day and he said, hey Seth, they said they're going to move me to another school without telling my parents. Are they allowed to do that? Well, you'll hear about the jailhouse lawyer. I was the schoolyard bureaucrat expert or something. I said, no, they can't move you to another school without telling your parents, which I maintain to this day is almost certainly correct.
00:16:00
Speaker
So he marched into the principal's office and said, Seth Godin said, you can't do blankety blank. And he made up a new thing that I didn't say. The next day there was an assembly for the whole school. And the principal, Mr. Taylor, I still remember his name, gets up in front to do some announcements. And then he says, and last, can Seth Godin come to my office? And I figure, oh, I'm going to win an award. Something really good is going to happen to me. So I go to his office.
00:16:26
Speaker
and He says, how dare you tell Joe that I can't move him to another grade. I'll teach you a lesson. and He moves me to fifth grade. He says to an 11-year-old, this is permanent. We're demoting you a grade. and He sends me to Mr. Verity's classroom. I'm just sitting in the back of the classroom sobbing, thinking my life is over.
00:16:49
Speaker
And fortunately, my mom figured it out and you know taught the guy a lesson, et cetera. But the empathy is, This guy, who I thought had ultimate authority and power, felt very threatened. He felt threatened by 10-year-olds. He felt like I was undermining his authority. He felt like his grip on the school was loosening, and he acted out on me. But I had no empathy for any of his pain. I just knew about my pain. Let's fast forward to when kids who are 17 apply to college.
00:17:29
Speaker
They don't have any empathy at all for the admissions office. But the person who is in the admissions office doesn't own the college. They didn't invent the system. They're just doing their job. So if you do a good job of making their job easy, your chances of getting in go way up. If, on the other hand, you think that they're going to understand, inspect, and ah detect everything about who you are and what you are, you're sadly mistaken. They're not judging you.
00:17:58
Speaker
They're lookck simply looking for the most convenient, high status person to admit. yeah If people start to see the system, the your your book starts to tell people, like it starts to you know pull the pull the curtain back a bit. Like, oh, okay. You start to see the how the levers are being pulled. So what are what are ways that people can then, at that point, ah start to leverage their newfound ah knowledge of the system to either change it or work better with it?
Change Agents in the Publishing World
00:18:24
Speaker
So systems like to stick around and one way they do that is by inventing culture. Culture is a defense mechanism for systems that seek sustainability. The culture of the book industry is 400 years old and it runs very deep that you get an agent, the agent gets you a real publisher, the publisher gives you an advance, you wait a year and on and on and on and on and on. A change agent,
00:18:51
Speaker
is something in the environment that disrupts the system, puts it under pressure, and creates new opportunities. And so the change agent for the book business, there are two. One is the death of the independent bookstore, and the second is digital books and the alternatives of the web. As a result, it doesn't make a lot of sense for a typical person to hope to get picked by Penguin or Simon & Schuster, because you're not going to get picked.
00:19:19
Speaker
And even if you do get picked, you're probably not going to win. The number of books published by New York City book publishers is up by a factor of 20, but the sales per book are down. And at the same time you can, like the woman who wrote Fifty Shades of Grey, just do it all by yourself. And it's still a lottery, but when it works, it really works. And that is only possible because the system changed.
00:19:46
Speaker
And you talk about a change agent, and a great example that you used was ah Western Union sticking with telegrams in the face of ah the telephone rising. And I think ah it raises a question of you know how best to choose what might be a trend versus a true change agent that you'll be ignoring at your own risk.
00:20:09
Speaker
Well, one way to know it's a change agent is when the dominant forces in the system are stressed out by it, when they are fighting tooth and nail against it, when they are pretending it's not important. Something that's a trend doesn't usually disrupt the system. So a trend is bell bottoms.
00:20:29
Speaker
The companies that made pants could easily make bell bottoms. The stores that sold pants could easily sell bell bottoms. That's not a change agent. A real change agent is casual Friday, which led to the death of the suit and the tie in most of the world. right Because that means that the typical company that made that sort of fashion is really in trouble. And the stores that sold it are really in trouble. Because you can't pay the rent of a store like that if all you're selling is khakis.
Innovation Through Constraints
00:21:00
Speaker
A great part about this is strategy is this notion of constraints as well, and and I just asked Seth about that in this moment, and it's it' such a rich part ah part of the book and how to lean into it. Constraints are beautiful, and we can celebrate them. You can whine all you want about how many characters can go in a tweet, but that's how many characters. A haiku has to be a haiku. It has boundaries to it.
00:21:27
Speaker
If your startup runs out of money, you're out of business. You can't wind for more time or more money. You don't get either one. so Given the constraints, what will you leverage against? What will you lean against?
00:21:39
Speaker
and My explorations in media have always been around. Celebrate the constraints I can't change and experiment with the constraints that I can. And in point or or post or chapter 286 in ah and this is strategy, i you know you wrote you write that you know people have more agency than they give themselves credit for, and which is and which is certainly certainly true once you believe in it. And I wonder, just for you, just freak you like when was a when was a moment you realized that you in fact had more agency than you gave yourself credit for? Well, I grew up as a free range kid with really extraordinary parents. So I had a lot of agency from an early age. I could build a radio and it would work. I could open a lemonade stand and it would make some money. When I was 14,
00:22:36
Speaker
I was sort of arrested on the floor. of The American stock has changed because I was walking around by myself because my dad was in a meeting. and When I was 16, I crewed a boat across Lake Erie and the guy who was in charge dumped me in the middle of a tough neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio at 11 o'clock at night by myself. There were just all these wild adventures along the way, and fortunately, none of them were fatal.
00:23:03
Speaker
but One of the advantages of raising a free range kid is they understand that there are certain constraints that you can play with and it gives them the agency to be a contribution as they go.
00:23:18
Speaker
Yeah, and and to have agency too requires a certain measure of of confidence and in in ourselves. And that can flag ebb and flow over time. And ah and for you, you're always someone who you know strikes for for me in the the limited way that I am able to engage with what you put out in the world is you know a very assured and confident person. But when your confidence is flagged, yeah how how have you reclaimed it, ah if if in fact that has happened to you?
00:23:47
Speaker
Okay. So confidence is a tricky word and I talk about it in the practice. Uh, confidence doesn't necessarily mean you're sure it's going to work out. It means you believe you have a reasonable chance to engage in this risky venture. And if it doesn't work out, you'll be okay. So my mantra is do a lot of things that fail, but don't do anything.
00:24:16
Speaker
that if it fails, you're out of the game. So I don't have the confidence to ride a bicycle without a helmet. I don't have the confidence to take up tightrope walking at my age because you get some of that stuff wrong and you're done. But if I launch a blog post and it no one likes it,
00:24:38
Speaker
that's okay. If I write a book and no one buys it, that's okay. And I've done a lot of projects that have failed, but I make sure they're always an appropriate size that it's okay.
00:24:50
Speaker
Yeah, in ah in the writing ecosystem of which I traffic, and a lot of people listen to the show traffic, I think there's ah there's a ah fear, too, when you talk about ah book sales. Like, if it doesn't sell, that you know that's fine. Let's move on to the next one. I think a lot of people, they do see it as like, well, if it doesn't sell, then I will be closed out of the room. And there's there's a fear there that maybe you'd ah Maybe how can people, you know, you you always say, you know, learn how to dance with the fear and and dance with, you you know, the systems in this case, too. ah You know, how can people maybe, I don't know, just try not to care as much about that ah so they can keep playing the game?
Rational vs. Fear-based Decisions
00:25:30
Speaker
So making a decision is a skill. And I write about this in this is strategy. Decision making doesn't mean you're going to be right. It just means that based on the information in front of you, you've made the right decision.
00:25:44
Speaker
And the problem with fear is it forces us to experience failure in advance. It forces us to make bad decisions. You know, the opposite of fear is wild-ass optimism. Anyone who buys a lottery ticket is making a bad decision. There is no good reason to buy a lottery ticket. Someone is going to win, but it's not going to be you.
00:26:08
Speaker
And so we multiply the imagination of all the good things that will happen as we waste $5. Well, the opposite is true when we let fear paralyze us that yes, it is entirely possible that I will spontaneously combust and lava will pour out of my head and I will turn into a puddle. It's never happened to anybody who's ever done a podcast, but it could.
00:26:32
Speaker
So if I fixated on that, I would never do another podcast. So we have to be rational about what the real risks are. It is more dangerous to drive to the airport than to get on a plane.
00:26:45
Speaker
But it's more dramatic to visualize a plane crash, so that's what we do. In ah section 240 of the book, this notion of cheerleaders versus coaches, it's such a such a wonderful insight and delineation between what a creative person and you know writers are primarily listeners of this, of of what you need. ah ah you know it's I think you need them both, ah but at what point in the in the, let's say in the process of, let's say if you're writing a book or something, do you enlist cheerleaders versus coaches? And what do you look for in either? um If you need reassurance, please understand you're gonna keep needing reassurance. Reassurance is sort of futile.
00:27:29
Speaker
Encouragement is helpful. The encouragement of someone counting on you, someone believing in you, someone saying, we need you to do this work. Those are cheerleaders. They don't have to have any skill. They don't have to understand. They just have to connect with you, see you, care about you, love you, and say, we need this from you. Raise the confidence bar. That's not the same as reassurance, which is everything's going to be fine.
00:27:58
Speaker
It's gonna be perfect. No, everything isn't gonna be fine. Don't lie to me. Encouragement is not helpful. Coaches, and I have, I keep looking, but I have very few, are people who have domain knowledge and empathy. They're the person, you know ah you don't have to be a cancer survivor to be a good oncologist. That a coach doesn't have to have played the game, but a coach needs to imagine this kid's book you're writing. I know I'm not a kid, but this kid's book you're writing,
00:28:28
Speaker
I know enough about the genre that I could say it should be more like this if you want to reach those people. That kind of coaching is scarce, hard to find, and you should not accept it from strangers.
00:28:40
Speaker
And with this is strategy as well, there's ah I believe it's number 77 and there you know you have these 12 slogans and then those get outputted onto the back of the book. And ah so what was it about you know that particular post you know of the nearly 300 in there that really spoke to me, you know, I'm going to this one's going on the back cover, too, because this is really important. Well, OK, so we're doing inside talk here and I will give you the inside talk honest answer, the purpose of a back cover of a book.
00:29:11
Speaker
is to get someone to look on the inside flap. And the purpose of the inside flap is to get someone to look at a couple of pages. And the purpose of that is to get them to buy the book. So if you put on the back cover a lot of pros that defends your thesis, you have relieved all the tension. And so now someone can read the pro, say, oh yeah, I agree, and put it back on the shelf and walk on. Good back covers.
00:29:39
Speaker
are a question, not an answer. Good back covers are an itch, not a scratch. So this felt like poetry to me. And the last one is so good that I wanted it to be elevated. um And I think if someone reads that and they're at least reasonably trusting of me, they'll say, oh, yeah, I'll buy a copy of this because I wonder what's inside.
00:30:03
Speaker
you know, systems can seem like these ocean liners that are just so hard to steer. And know you know, you're right here, big problems require small solutions. up What are what are ways that people can ah break it down into more manageable things that they can either like kind of what you're saying earlier, either work with the system or ah in fact, enact a degree of change that is ah beneficial to the culture. So, you know, big problems took a long time to get here.
00:30:29
Speaker
And a good way to hide is to say, this problem is so big, if we don't fix it by tomorrow, I quit. And then it doesn't get fixed, so we're stuck. The way to solve a big problem is the same way we got a big problem, by building a system that changes it. So climate is a big problem.
00:30:50
Speaker
and If you want to have a protest that says we should dismantle capitalism because it is the cause of climate change, good luck to you, but that's not going to work. On the other hand, if you organize five people in your town, you can probably get the high school cafeteria to have meatless Mondays. and If you can pull that off, you can probably have two days that are meatless. If you can pull that off, you can probably do it in the elementary school. and The next thing you know, you can make your school Meat free meat accounts for 25% of the climate change problem. If one school does that, it doesn't matter. But if one school does that and spreads the idea to the next school and then the next school and the next school, well, then in a short period of time, schools aren't serving meat anymore. Wow, that's a generational shift. And now we start to undo some of the damage that was done, but it doesn't happen.
00:31:45
Speaker
while we're standing on one foot and holding our breath. It happens because we build systems that spread. To what extent are people ignoring strategy and putting energy into it and and at the start of a venture? um Yeah. 100%. Yeah. People don't know what strategy is. They're afraid of strategy. They want to just, quote, get to work.
00:32:06
Speaker
that I saw a study that Fortune 500 companies, CEOs, as far as I know, that's their only job, are spending minutes a week on strategy. And the rest of the time, I'm not sure what they're doing, that we say we want to go to a certain kind of school or date a certain kind of person or eat a certain kind of food, but we're not willing to talk about our strategy to make it happen, because it's scary. And so I wanted to reclaim that word and help people develop a philosophy around it. Yeah, and ah later and later in the book as well, in it's a in Post 272, you're right, at the end of it, the utility of a strategy is not measured by how many people used it successfully. It's measured by what percentage of the folks who used it succeeded. And ah you know and I love that. And how did you you kind of ah you know arrive at that as ah ah you know at that you know at that assertion?
Effectiveness of Popular Strategies
00:33:02
Speaker
Popular strategies aren't good strategies. They're just popular strategies. So there's more than a million people who are trying to make a living making stupid TikTok videos. That's a bad strategy. Yeah. And the number of people who will make a living making TikTok videos is 12 out of a million. So you don't want to say what's a popular strategy. You want to say what's a high yielding strategy where People who have resources like I have resources when they do things like this tend to come out on the other side successful. Yeah. when you When you say the the math is probably i'm pretty spot on about, you know, 12 people to like a million succeed or like really strike a hit that hit that oil well, ah if you will, with ah with TikTok. it's ah ah Why is that so seductive? It's a lottery ticket, right? If it's a low risk, apparently.
00:34:00
Speaker
high gain, apparently, lottery ticket, you have, you know, if you spend any time with an Instagram influencer, they're no happier than you. They just have a nicer hat. It's sold to us as this is the dream. It's authentic, it's transparent, you have all your free time, you got a posse, yada, yada, yada. It turns out that's not the case. It just looks that way.
00:34:24
Speaker
And there's also this idea of, and you blogged about this and you've written about it, of course, in the dip, it's a you know this idea of giving up versus quitting. And I'd love for you to just you know ah kind of tease out the difference between those two. Anything in a competitive marketplace that's worth doing is worth doing because it's hard. If everyone could be a doctor, being a doctor would not be a good job because everyone would be a doctor.
00:34:49
Speaker
So somewhere between here and there is a dip, the hard part, the part where most people quit getting into medical school, making it through organic chemistry, sticking it out for seven or nine years. People quit. My argument is don't start a project unless you see the dip before you get there and have enough resources to get through it. And on the back cover of the book.
00:35:11
Speaker
I show a picture of the path to climbing Mount Everest. And one reason that Mount Everest is so much more popular than other mountains is that the first bunch of days are a long walk that isn't too hard. And so people walk and walk and walk. And by the time they get to the hard part, they're so emotionally committed, they keep going. If the hard part was on day one, almost no one would keep going. So where's the hard part?
00:35:40
Speaker
Do you have what it takes to get through the hard part? If you don't, quit right now. And if you can see it, don't even start. So we need to think very hard about our strategy so that we end up not wasting our time and our love on a project that's too big for us.
00:35:59
Speaker
Excellent. And lastly, Seth, ah ah a few books ago, it's this is marketing, you know, a couple of books later, this is strategy. I think that's intentional and then their siblings in that regard. So what was the the kind of the strategy behind kind of tethering those two and making them very similar in title?
00:36:20
Speaker
The book had a different title. It was very clever. It was based on one of the riffs inside the book. You needed to ask what the book was about, and then I would answer you based on the story in the book.
Strategic Clarity in Book Titles
00:36:31
Speaker
And then I realized, why do I need to show people I'm clever?
00:36:35
Speaker
I would rather them just get the book. So I did the lazy thing, which is give it the best possible title. Well, fantastic. Well, oh Seth, it's ah it's a it's a it's a book that'll just, yeah it'll keep on giving no matter what stage people are in a certain process. And it's just ah such a wealth of information and such a gift to everyone who picks it up. So ah just thank you for everything you do. Thanks for carving out 45 minutes to talk some shop and ah and just continued success. And thanks for everything you do again.
00:37:03
Speaker
Thank you, Brendan. You are a rock star, the ruckus you make matters, and the people who listen are super lucky. So thank you very much.
00:37:17
Speaker
Yes, awesome. Oh man, thanks to Seth for coming back on the show. Talking to him is always punching way above my weight class, but I think it came out great nevertheless.
00:37:30
Speaker
I've been really working on my interviewing skills of late, and it's kind of like a ah golfer fixing his swing. A lot of shanks off the tee as I look to kind of rewire my muscle memory. I'm a little herky jerky, a bit mechanical here and there, but I'm working on it. I'm working on making it better. That's all in service of making the show tighter and better.
00:37:57
Speaker
Better, instead of seeking more, as in more audience share. and Frankly, if I make it better, the audience share will kind of take care of itself, one hopes. If I continue to follow only my taste, that's not necessarily in service of the audience. And what matters to you guys?
00:38:14
Speaker
That said, a recent guest of a heretofore unpublished episode of this podcast, which will probably happen in November or December. Brooke Champagne, the author of an incredible essay collection called NOLA Face. Anyway, awesome. Just fucking awesome. ah But she I asked her just to, you know, what she would want to listen to, think topics that she would like. And she just said, she was frankly, she was like, my my taste is pretty good. She kind of, she just digs what we do here.
00:38:44
Speaker
that it's a good hang, so I guess I'll keep on keeping on. I like peeking metaphorically into writer's satchel for their notebooks and recorders and information gathering tools. I love that. It's good fun for me. Also looking into the rotten moldy cesspool that is our brains. I think that might be the big hook of the show. It's not pretentious and it it definitely delves into my ugly rotten head. Morning routine stuff.
00:39:16
Speaker
Yeah, that seemed in vogue a while ago. Process, I don't know. See, I go go back and forth with that, because sometimes I feel like people like hearing about that. But then other times I'm like, who gives a shit about someone's process? I care that you have a process, but I think it's just... If we're constantly listening to other people's processes and stuff, I think a lot of people get hung up trying to find the perfect process, the perfect routine, instead of just fucking doing it and then learning through trial and error what works. And I think we maybe if I just listen to one more person, how they start their day for the first 90 minutes, oh, maybe that'll be the trick. It's like, no, just just fucking do it when you can do it.
00:40:02
Speaker
Stop trying to find the perfect routine. It doesn't exist. I will always love the mind games we have to play with ourselves dealing with imposter syndrome, focus, discipline, the practice of doing the work. Seeing younger people get more success than us and wanting to punch them in the face, LOL. But also not glorifying the hustle of it all. You know, like, I'm up, I'm up at 430 grinding away while my competition is asleep. It's like, no, i'm I'm asleep. I'm gone. You can have 430 if it makes you feel good. Feel free to shoot me an email, creativenonfictionpodcastatgmail.com with things you might want to hear from guests that I might not be touching on and things that maybe I'm already doing that you want me to stay the course with.
00:40:49
Speaker
Okay, so here's this idea of status roles. I've riffed on this in the past, who knows where. I don't have a good record of what episode I may or may not have talked about this stuff. A recent guest of the podcast, actually a couple if I'm being honest, um but this particular one, Publicis wanted all the links, yeah even the raw audio so they could syndicate it or something. ah That way this person who has a significant following on social could share it and give them more juice and I'm like, fine, cool.
00:41:18
Speaker
Go ahead. It hasn't happened. Meanwhile, I often keep tabs on my guests and what they promote, kind of like a creep. I'm sort of a stalker that way. I'm like, alright, you know what? Don't judge me. Get off my shit.
00:41:32
Speaker
they have I that they have been promoting the yeah hell out of the higher profile status elevating shows that they've been on. I've seen links and things shared to their stories and other podcasts, but surprise, not this one.
00:41:52
Speaker
The omission is is glaring. I have to think, if they're thinking at all, is i if I promote my appearance on this show, it gives me this level of gravitas, so I'm up. But if I promote my appearance on CNF Pod, it doesn't do anything for me. In fact, if I promote that show, Brendan gets more of a bump, and I'm not having any of that.
00:42:11
Speaker
Fact is, my audience might be smaller, but my audience is 100% readers, and you guys buy books. You might not vault such and such into the New York Times bestseller list, but you guys buy books for yourselves and others, which is, I don't know if you can say that for some other, let's say, higher profile shows. Oh yes, I keep receipts. I find it rude, quite honestly.
00:42:34
Speaker
It'd be one thing if guests didn't promote any show they're on. I can live with that. I put a lot of effort into celebrating ah the guests work. You know, editing the show to further spotlight them, highlight the strong points of the book even when I don't like it, which is more often than I admit.
00:42:50
Speaker
But when you're hip to this idea of status roles of the who's up and who's down, you can't unsee it. People will do backflips on Instagram if they appear on the Rich Eisen shows or the Rick Roll or who whoever. But I'll be sitting in my little studio wondering if they're ever going to get around to recognizing the old CNF pod. I suspect.
00:43:13
Speaker
There are other little podcasters out there like myself who are similarly shunned, despite the effort we put in, but we just don't see it. At least I don't see the other little guys. It's a kind of rejection, and there's nothing we writers love more than rejection. For me, I don't care what show I do. It'll always get a mention either on the podcast or in my newsletter. As you know, I don't really post Instagram. And since I don't have it on my phone, I can't post to stories or repost anything to stories.
Dealing with Rejection in Podcasting
00:43:44
Speaker
It's just a bummer. It always makes me feel crummy. You know, you're hosting a party, and you go to all these lengths to stock the fridge, a vacuum, scrub the toilets, and not just the bowl, like the nasty-ass area near the floor and the curvy pipe thing that never gets fully clean, and you mop the floors, and you pick the perfect playlist, and you set it to the perfect volume, they leave, and you come to find out how great the other parties they went to were.
00:44:11
Speaker
I wish I didn't feel this way. I really wish I didn't. But I can't shake it. It's who I am. I can note it, see it, try to swat it away. But there are times when it subsumes me, and right now its it is subsuming me. And these past few weeks, it has overtaken me. So remember, CNFers, stay wild. And if you can't do interviews, see ya.